Stevin Seminar: Knowledge collection in the manuscripts of fray Juan Ricci de Guevara (1600-1681)

Research Institute CLUE+ and the Stevin Centre for History of Science and Humanities are proud to present the Stevin Seminar # 26 “Knowledge collection in the manuscripts of fray Juan Ricci de Guevara (1600-1681)” Juan Ricci de Guevara entered the Order of Saint Benedict at the age of 26 and combined his religous duties with his artistic talent during his entire career. Not only did he complete an impressive oeuvre of paintings, also surviving are manuscripts dealing with a wide rang of topics, and illustrated by Ricci himself. His images, both on paper and on canvas, prove to be powerful agents for the transfer and understanding of the divine. Ellen Prokop and Martijn van Beek will present and discuss the way in which Ricci connected visual arts, architecture, theology, philosophy, natural history and mathematics.

Ellen Prokop is an art historian who specializes in Spanish art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In 2006 she completed her dissertation “Fray Juan Ricci (1600–1681) and the Commissions at San Millán de la Cogolla and the Cathedral of Burgos” at New York University, Institute of Fine Arts. She is the Associate Photoarchivist of the Frick Art Reference Library, New York, and regularly teaches at New York University and Hunter College, City University of New York.

Martijn van Beek is an architectural historian who specializes in architecture and architectural theory of the early modern period. At the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam he is preparing a dissertation on the references to architecture in the manuscripts of Juan Ricci de Guevara. Comment by Fokko Jan Dijksterhuis, Professor of Early Modern Knowledge History, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Lecturers: Ellen Prokop and Martijn van Beek

Commentator: Fokko Jan Dijksterhuis, historian of science Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Twente University