A clock picture as a philosophical experiment: the tableau mécanique in the physics cabinet of Bonnier de la Mosson
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[1] University of Oxford
University of Oxford
Oxford District, Reino Unido
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- Localización: Art history: journal of the Association of Art Historians, ISSN 0141-6790, Vol. 39, Nº. 2, 2016, págs. 340-355
- Idioma: inglés
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Resumen
This essay focuses on a rare, technological marvel: the "Automaton Landscape with Clock" of 1739. The result of a collaboration between a painter and a clockmaker, this hybrid image-object was commissioned by wealthy collector Joseph Bonnier de la Mosson to be placed on a shelf in his celebrated "Cabinet de Mécanique et de Physique", in between replicas of engineering machines. I argue that its position as a device rather than a decorative object makes this clock-painting a model of mechanical ingenuity as much as a 'philosophical instrument'. In the context of the changing attitudes towards mechanical philosophy and the central position of the clock metaphor, proffered by Descartes, Robert Boyle and Christian Wolff among others, I suggest that the clock-painting participates in this debate as the materialization of the philosophical problem as to whether the world was mechanical.
