In her doctoral project, Anita Markmiller examines the relationship between humans, the sea, and the Divine in the sixteenth century from an art historical perspective. At its core is the question of how artistic representations of the sea visually interlinked different registers of knowledge—such as religious, natural-philosophical, political, and navigational ones—and thereby shaped early modern understandings of maritime space. The study analyses how images not only depicted encounters with the ocean but also structured their interpretation by translating knowledge, uncertainty, and religious conceptions into narrative and iconographic forms. In this context, the ocean appears both as a space of imperial expansion and as a boundary zone in which human agency, divine order, and natural forces were renegotiated. The project thus contributes to the history of knowledge of the early modern maritime world and demonstrates how visual culture participated in negotiating relationships between religion, power, and conceptions of nature.
