Visual arts and medicine in early modern Europe and beyond

Visual Arts and Medicine in early modern Europe and beyond is a volume edited by Robert Brennan, Fabian Jonietz, and Romana Sammern. The book features nine essays and six key historical sources, contributed by a team of scholars including Carly Boxer, Robert Brennan, Julia Czapla, Fabrizio Federici, Frances Gage, Jana Graul, Fabian Jonietz, Catherine Lawless, Katharina Anna Sabernig, Paolo Sanvito, and Katharine Stahlbuhk. It explores connections between art and medicine during the late medieval and early modern periods in Europe. This era was pivotal for the development of both medical and artistic professions. Our book highlights how art theory was transmitted through medical texts, how early medical diagnosis paralleled the methods of art connoisseurship, and how these interconnected histories spanned not only Europe but also regions like the Middle East and Central Asia. We focus on how artistic methodologies and visual literacy significantly influenced early modern medical practices. By exploring the overlaps between visual culture and medical science, we examine shared institutional settings, such as guilds and patron saints, as well as shared intellectual predicaments, like the commitment to observation and the use of embodied knowledge. Using a historical-analytical approach, we draw on a rich array of sources, including medical treatises, artists writings, and pharmacopoeias, employing case studies to explore how visual culture and medical knowledge influenced each other, and in particular, how art informed medicine through shared methods and institutional frameworks. Visual Arts and Medicine in early modern Europe and beyond introduces novel perspectives on the relationship between art, medicine, and science. It uncovers collaborations between artists and doctors, such as painters and physicians working together on color charts and sculptors sharing skills with surgeons. The book traverses traditional disciplinary boundaries, scrutinizing distinctions between physical and mental health, religious and medical healing, and practical versus theoretical knowledge. It also addresses how these fields intersected with ideas of gender, race, and neurodiversity.