
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Miracles and Machines: A Sixteenth-Century Automaton and Its Legend (Getty Publications, 2023) tells the singular story of an uncanny, rare object at the cusp of art and science: a 450-year-old automaton known as “the monk.” The walking, gesticulating figure of a friar, in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, is among the earliest extant ancestors of the self-propelled robot. According to legend connected to the court of Philip II of Spain, the monk represents a portrait of Diego de Alcalá, a humble Franciscan lay brother whose holy corpse was said to be agent to the miraculous cure of Spain’s crown prince as he lay dying in 1562.
In tracking the origins of the monk and its legend, the authors visited archives, libraries, and museums across the United States and Europe, probing the paradox of a mechanical object performing an apparently spiritual act. They identified seven kindred automata from the same period, which, they argue, form a paradigmatic class of walking “prime movers,” unprecedented in their combination of visual and functional realism. While most of the literature on automata focuses on the Enlightenment, this enthralling narrative journeys back to the late Renaissance, when clockwork machinery was entirely new, foretelling the evolution of artificial life to come.
Elizabeth King, a sculptor and writer, is professor emerita of sculpture and extended media at Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Richmond. W. David Todd is associate curator emeritus and former conservator of timekeeping at the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.
Lauren Fonto is a Master's student in the program Heritage and Cultural Sciences: Heritage Conservation at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. She is also a collections management intern in the public sector.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies
4.6
1313 ratings
Miracles and Machines: A Sixteenth-Century Automaton and Its Legend (Getty Publications, 2023) tells the singular story of an uncanny, rare object at the cusp of art and science: a 450-year-old automaton known as “the monk.” The walking, gesticulating figure of a friar, in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, is among the earliest extant ancestors of the self-propelled robot. According to legend connected to the court of Philip II of Spain, the monk represents a portrait of Diego de Alcalá, a humble Franciscan lay brother whose holy corpse was said to be agent to the miraculous cure of Spain’s crown prince as he lay dying in 1562.
In tracking the origins of the monk and its legend, the authors visited archives, libraries, and museums across the United States and Europe, probing the paradox of a mechanical object performing an apparently spiritual act. They identified seven kindred automata from the same period, which, they argue, form a paradigmatic class of walking “prime movers,” unprecedented in their combination of visual and functional realism. While most of the literature on automata focuses on the Enlightenment, this enthralling narrative journeys back to the late Renaissance, when clockwork machinery was entirely new, foretelling the evolution of artificial life to come.
Elizabeth King, a sculptor and writer, is professor emerita of sculpture and extended media at Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Richmond. W. David Todd is associate curator emeritus and former conservator of timekeeping at the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.
Lauren Fonto is a Master's student in the program Heritage and Cultural Sciences: Heritage Conservation at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. She is also a collections management intern in the public sector.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies
5,425 Listeners
3,187 Listeners
206 Listeners
193 Listeners
161 Listeners
161 Listeners
49 Listeners
78 Listeners
109 Listeners
103 Listeners
1,873 Listeners
293 Listeners
1,834 Listeners
30 Listeners
61 Listeners
1,076 Listeners
127 Listeners
4,650 Listeners
359 Listeners
358 Listeners
3,092 Listeners
13,126 Listeners
212 Listeners
331 Listeners
2,138 Listeners