Religion, technology and the arts in the early modern period

International audienceWhat should we make of a seventeenth-century wooden Christ, who drenched spectators in the blood spouting from his wound? How are we to understand an artfully crafted automaton, performing battles between ferocious animals, until Orpheus and St. Xavier pacified them? And how are we to read representations of a magic lantern symbolizing divine emanations and representing a metaphysics of light? In this project, I study the intersection between religious, technical, artisanal and artistic knowledge in the early modern period