Natural Light: The Art of Adam Elsheimer and the Dawn of Modern Science [Hardcover]

A brand-new perspective on early modern art and its relationship with nature as reflected in this moving account of overlooked artistic genius Adam Elsheimer, by an outstanding writer and critic. Engrossing... Elsheimer's works, little only in size, unlocked new possibilities for art at a time when contemporary astronomy unlocked the heavens... Mr. Bells incandescent prose offers a perfect verbal analogue for Elsheimers hushed intensity; it has a tactile, prehensile quality, as if the words had formed themselves in the writers mind and then taken on a life of their own before he found the time to stick them in a sentence. This study does discerning justice to [Adam Elsheimer's] achievement. Bells focus is not just on Elsheimers registering of natural details, as the title suggests, but also on his evocation of the supernaturalnever richer than in his final masterpiece, A revelatory account of the German artist Adam Elsheimer, contextualizing his small oil-on-copper paintings within the intellectual and cultural milieu of Rome around the year 1600& Bell is much less interested in what would eventually emerge as science during the next 300 years than he is in new ways of seeing and depicting that emerged in the early 17th century& Combining life writing with close looking,