Events

22 May 2024 – 24 May 2024: This conference brings together almost five years of research from the Max Planck Research Group “Visualizing Science in Media Revolutions.” The Research Group has compared different scientific disciplines of the late medieval and early modern periods, from anatomy to the study of magnetism.

21 March 2024: Panel discussion on Drawing Practices in Knowledge production organised by Katherine M. Reinhart of Bringhamton University, and Sietske Fransen, Biblioteca Herziana, Max-Planck-institut für Kunstgeschichte.

With a talk by Sietske Fransen: ‘Drawing to see the Invisible. Focussing on how the practice of drawing was part of the observational process’. For more information, and the abstract, please click the link below:

12 March 2024: A presentation by our PI Eric Jorink: ‘Visualizing the Unknown: reverse-engineering and reconstructing 17th-century microscopical observations’ at the expert-meeeting Fertile Uncertainties II in Milan, in the context of the ERC-project TACITROOTS. The Accademia del cimento in Florence.

The conference was organised by Fabrizio Baldassarri, Giulia Gianinni, Francesco Luzzini and Noemi di Tomasso. An edited volume with the proceedings will follow.

26 February 2024: a presentation at the university of Milan by Sietske Fransen on copying and re-using prints in early modern microscopy.

The colloquim was organised by Giulia Giannini, in the context of the ERC-project TACITROOTS. The Accademia del cimento in Florence.

For more information on the program, or booking tickets, please follow the link below.

10 October 2023: KIIP Talk & Workshops by Sietske Fransen

Team member Sietske Fransen will hold a talk at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel entitled ‘How to See the Invisible: New Instruments, Observation Techniques, and the imagination in Seventeenth Microscopy’. This talk will discuss how an interdisciplinary approach to the history of microscopy can gives us new insights into practices of science and art in the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries.

For more information on the talk and workshop, please follow the link bellow:

14-15 September 2023: Three hundred years ago the Dutch microscopist Antoni van Leeuwenhoek died. He had been corresponding with the Royal Society for fifty years. Leeuwenhoek, born in Delft in the Netherlands in 1632, developed himself into one of the most prolific early microscopists. He made his own lenses and small hand-held microscopes which were more versatile than most other devices at the time. With these instruments and his outstanding preparation and observation techniques, he was the first to see and describe red blood cells, bacteria and many other things.

In this conference we will take a close look at Leeuwenhoek’s seventeenth- and eighteenth-century microscopic practices as well as the development of the field of microscopy from his death to the twenty-first century. We will show how Leeuwenhoek was working as part of a large European network of scientists exploring the natural world with microscopes. The papers in this conference will make clear that microscopic practices and the way in which scientists communicated their findings to each other started in Leeuwenhoek’s time and are still used today.

Conference organisers: Dr Sietske Fransen, Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History; Drs Tiemen Cocquyt, Rijksmuseum Boerhaave; Professor Dr Eric Jorink, Leiden University & Huygens Instituut (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Science; PI of Visualizing the Unknown).

20 April 2023: Book Presentation at Rijksmuseum Boerhaave of: Veel, Klein en Curieus, de wereld van Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723). A biography of the seventeenth-century Delft microscopist by historian, science journalist and team member of  the MicroLabs of Visualizing the Unknown, Geertje Dekkers.

18 April 2023: Book presentation of ‘Antoni | van Leeuwenhoek en de microwereld’ at Rijksmuseum Boerhaave

17 April 2023: Opening Van Leeuwenhoek exhibition Onvoorstelbaar/Unimaginable, at Rijksmuseum Boerhaave

13 April 2023: KNHG spring congress on peformative methods in historical reserach. Prof. Dr. Eric Jorink will take part in a round table discussion on re-making, re-doing methods and Visualizing the Unknown at the Dutch ‘Openlucht Museum’ in Arnhem.

Besides the round table, Eric will give a workshop together with microphotographer and microscopist Wim van Egmond, titled:  Rebuild (and work) with a 17th-century microscope.

16 March 2023: Colloquim organised by NICAS where our PhD Student Ellen Pater will discuss the artistic skill and knowledge as well as the artistic processes involved in the production of early modern images made with the microscope by taking Johannes Swammerdam as a case study

24 November 2022: Opening, Trippenhuis, KNAW (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Amsterdam)
Organised by: Huygens Institute (KNAW), Shoreline Productions, KNAW Akademie van Kunsten
Made possible by: Huygens Institute, NWO-project Visualising the Unknown, Koninklijke Nederlandse Vereniging voor Microbiologie / Stichting Microcanon & de Microbenclub, Nederlands Instituut voor Biologie, TU Delft, Wim van Egmond Microphotography, Shoreline Productions

International Workshop in Rome: 14-16 September 2022

Organised by: Dr. Matthijs Jonker (Head of Art History and Cultural Studies at the Dutch Royal Institute in Rome) and Dr. Katherine Reinhart (Binghamton University)

Made possible by: Dutch Royal institute in Rome (NL), Max Planck – Bibliotheca Hertziana (DE/IT), Accademia dei Lincei (IT), Society for Renaissance Studies (UK), Huizinga Institute (NL) and Association for Art History (UK)

22-24 June 2022

International workshop at the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History
Organized by Sietske Fransen (BHMPI) and Tiemen Cocquyt (Rijksmuseum Boerhaave).

Taking as as a starting point the drawings and printed images that were created by seventeenth-century microscopists and their artists. In a conversation between experts on seventeenth-century lenses (in microscopes and telescopes), early modern scientific instruments, epistemic images before and after the introduction of the microscope, the Italian microscopic networks, and drawing as an observational art, this workshop aims at understanding better the visual strategies of depicting the previously unseen and unknown.

18-19 June 2022

At the 9th Gewina Meeting of Historians of Science in the Low Countries, Sietske Fransen (BH-MPI) gave a keynote lecture on seventeenth-century microscopy. Focussing on how microscopists communicated about and compared their observations, how different magnifying instruments were made and the visualization of the micro-world.

1 October 2021

Launch of the NWO-project Visualizing the Unknown. Videos of all presentations available via: Learn More.