Miracles and machines : a sixteenth-century automaton and its legend / Elizabeth King and W. David Todd ; with photographs by Rosamond Purcell.

By: Contributor(s): Material type: TextTextPublisher: Los Angeles, California : Getty Publications, [2023]Copyright date: ©2023Distributor: [Chicago] : University of Chicago Press ; London : Yale University PressDescription: 245 pages : illustrations (chiefly color), color map ; 27 cmContent type:
  • text
  • still image
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9781606068397
  • 1606068393
Other title:
  • Sixteenth-century automaton and its legend
Subject(s): Additional physical formats: Online version:: Miracles and machines.
Contents:
Part I : A legend. To set the stage -- A miracle and a vow -- Diego de Alcalá -- An automation by Juanelo Turriano -- The attribution of the monk -- A letter -- A monk's opinion -- Part II : The monk. An immaculate object -- The monk performs -- A mechanical anatomy -- Part III : Eight androids. Monks, saints, and musical ladies -- A second monk? -- A saint in Budapest -- Three sister musicians -- The Vienna cittern player -- A late arrival from Milan -- The category challenge -- The earliest free-walking androids -- Part IV : A search for origins. Craft guild or imperial court? -- Two masters, two cultures : Jakob Bulmann and Juanelo Turriano -- A Nuremberg clockmaker's workshop -- The art cabinet of Rudolf II -- Searching the lost and found -- A monk's opinion, continued -- Part V : A machine that prays. Miracles and walking sculptures -- Perpetual devotion -- The machine and the corpse -- Appendix. Table of comparisons : eight automata.
Summary: "This richly illustrated volume tells the uncanny story of a sixteenth-century automaton and the legend that has grown up around it"-- Provided by publisher.Summary: "An abundantly illustrated narrative that draws from the history of art, science, technology, artificial intelligence, psychology, religion, and conservation in telling the extraordinary story of a Renaissance robot that prays. This volume 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." -- Publisher's description
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number Status Date due Barcode
Books Books Jost Bürgi Library Reading Room NK3649 .K56 2023 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Available 31560000007761

Includes bibliographical references (pages 202-232) and index.

Part I : A legend. To set the stage -- A miracle and a vow -- Diego de Alcalá -- An automation by Juanelo Turriano -- The attribution of the monk -- A letter -- A monk's opinion -- Part II : The monk. An immaculate object -- The monk performs -- A mechanical anatomy -- Part III : Eight androids. Monks, saints, and musical ladies -- A second monk? -- A saint in Budapest -- Three sister musicians -- The Vienna cittern player -- A late arrival from Milan -- The category challenge -- The earliest free-walking androids -- Part IV : A search for origins. Craft guild or imperial court? -- Two masters, two cultures : Jakob Bulmann and Juanelo Turriano -- A Nuremberg clockmaker's workshop -- The art cabinet of Rudolf II -- Searching the lost and found -- A monk's opinion, continued -- Part V : A machine that prays. Miracles and walking sculptures -- Perpetual devotion -- The machine and the corpse -- Appendix. Table of comparisons : eight automata.

"This richly illustrated volume tells the uncanny story of a sixteenth-century automaton and the legend that has grown up around it"-- Provided by publisher.

"An abundantly illustrated narrative that draws from the history of art, science, technology, artificial intelligence, psychology, religion, and conservation in telling the extraordinary story of a Renaissance robot that prays. This volume 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." -- Publisher's description

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