Portraying technology in gallery paintings

Following the developments in other fields such as archaeology, anthropology or museology, the study of material culture has been progressively attracting the attention of many historians of science and technology. In the area of early modern science in particular, the interest in scientific instruments and practical knowledge as well as in the circulation of objects related to collecting practices or the complexities of gift culture in the context of court science seems to corroborate this trend. In addition, the publication of a considerablecorpus of studies on science and visual culture has left us facing the challenge of dealing not just with the all-inclusive realm of things but also with the extensive repertoire of their images. This essay examines a particular instance of this confluence of material culture and visualization: the representation of technology in seventeenth-century gallery painting. Also known as cabinets d’amateur, gallery paintings constitute a particular pictorial genre characterized by the depiction of spacious rooms, richly decorated with paintings, antiques and diverse naturalia and artificialia, where a number of connoisseurs are seen performing various artistic and scientific activities associated with refinement and good taste.The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the FPU Programme and the Project HUM2007-63267 from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science, as well as the Fundación Esquerdo and the Residencia de Estudiantes of Madrid.Peer reviewe