Workshop: A ‘Faithful' Reproduction: Photomechanical Processes and the Making of Modern Knowledge.

How did knowledge, and in particular visual knowledge, circulate among scholars before the digital turn? Much of it travelled through the pages of publications, books and journals, in the shape of photomechanical images. The workshop brings together international scholars and museum professionals to discuss how photomechanical processes actively participated in the shaping of modern knowledge thanks to the promise of a faithful – and apparently unmediated – reproduction which combined photographic verisimilitude and printing quality and duration over time. The workshop will pose methodological challenges for the study of visual knowledge in printed materials while also being an opportunity to engage with materials from the Commissione Vinciana collection.

Organiser and moderator:
Francesca Strobino (LABA Firenze / Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague)

Registration is required: to participate, in person or online, please send an email to infomuseogalileo.it
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Programme 9.30-12.30 am:

Marta Binazzi (I Tatti / Researcher, Institute of Art History of the Czech
Academy of Sciences in Prague) and Cristiana Sorrentino (University of Florence): Photomechanical Objects and Print Culture in Italy: Challenges and New Perspectives of Inquiry

Kelley Wilder (Eikones - Center for the Theory and History of the Image, University of Basel): Glass and the Photomechanical Image

Elisa di Renzo (Galileo Museum): The Reale Commissione Vinciana Archive and the Challenges of Publishing Leonardo da Vinci's Papers

Barbara Cattaneo (Opificio delle Pietre Dure / CNR IFAC): Beyond the Print: Exploring the Separation Negatives in the Commissione Vinciana's Glass Plates