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- Title
Portraiture and Arithmetic in Sixteenth-Century Bavaria: Deciphering Barthel Beham's Calculator.
- Authors
Buskirk, Jessica
- Abstract
In his portrait of an unidentified man (Vienna, 1529), Barthel Beham portrays the sitter paused in the midst of a math problem. As has been discovered, the numbers and symbols belong to the vocabulary of numerical calculation. This finding first raises the question of why a patron would want to be shown doing computation with Arabic numerals in a portrait. In 1529, numerical calculation was a commercial tool, not a field with humanistic/social cachet such as geometry. Further, the depicted computation does not make sense: the symbols and numbers are arranged in the form of a problem without actually being one. Yet the patron either did not notice or care. This article argues that the incomplete computation is not only a reflection of the contemporary status of mathematics using Arabic numbers, but also provides a way of understanding how the painting functioned as a portrait in the social milieu of the sixteenth-century Munich court.
- Subjects
MUNICH (Germany); BAVARIA (Germany); 16TH century portrait painting; PAINTING &; society; MATHEMATICS -- Social aspects; MATHEMATICS in art; NUMERICAL calculations; ARABIC numeration; BEHAM, Barthel, 1502-1540; ART; HISTORY
- Publication
Renaissance Quarterly, 2013, Vol 66, Issue 1, p35
- ISSN
0034-4338
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1086/670404