This thesis asks: what was the intellectual attitude towards nature in late Renaissance Europe? To this end, it finds that De Boodt’s illustrated albums throw fresh light on an old question. It is...Show moreThis thesis asks: what was the intellectual attitude towards nature in late Renaissance Europe? To this end, it finds that De Boodt’s illustrated albums throw fresh light on an old question. It is the intention of this study to explore the relation between developments in empirical and emblematic approaches to natural history, especially in visual representations, through the examination of the work of an individual who was involved in all three. The works of Anselmus de Boodt demonstrate that he drew on a variety of approaches to the study of the world and is therefore representative of the late Renaissance intellectual ideal of the polyhistor. The polyhistor as an ideal derived from the desire to achieve a holistic understanding of the world by taking into account its physical as well as symbolic attributes. The study of these attributes is seen retrospectively as the object of empirical and emblematic methodologies respectively, methodologies that are understood as being in conflict. Nonetheless, they are united in the work of De Boodt, as asserted by this study, on the grounds that vision was the point of convergence and departure for both.Show less
