Sven Dupré is Professor of History of Art, Science and Technology at the Faculty of Humanities at Utrecht University and the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Christine Göttler is Professor of Art History at the University of Bern, Switzerland.

Table of Contents

Illustrations
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Hidden Artifices
Sven Dupré and Christine Göttler

Part I: Sites of Discernment

1 Transforming Nature into Art: Fall of the Rebel Angels (1562) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Tine Luk Meganck

2 Vulcan's Forge: The Sphere of Art in Early Modern Antwerp

Christine Göttler

Part II: Artifices and Imitation

3 Superb Craftsmanship in Antwerp: Baroque Goldsmiths' Work in Competition with the Visual Arts

Lorenz Seelig

4 The Veronica according to Zurbarán: Painting as Figura, and Image as Vestigio

Felipe Pereda

5 'The Various Natures of Middling Colours We May Learne of Painters'. Sir Kenelm Digby Looks at Rubens and Van Dyck

Karin Leonhard

Part III: Secrets and Knowledge

6 Oil Painting as a Workshop Secret: On Calumnies, Legends, and Critical Investigations

Oskar Bätschmann

7 Peiresc in the Parisian 'Jewel House'

Peter N. Miller 8 Germanic Antiquity in Rembrandt's Circle

Thijs Weststeijn

Part IV: Mechanical Science and Technique

9 Rembrandt and Painting as a Mechanical Science in Dutch Seventeenth-Century Art

Jan Blanc

10 From Mechanism to Technique: Diderot, Chardin, and the Practice of Painting

Paul Taylor