As long as people have ventured out onto the open sea in boats, exposing themselves to the whims of tides and winds, they have sought to observe the weather and interpret the signs in the sky. This project focuses on written and visual representations of meteorological phenomena, through which artists, practitioners, and natural philosophers in the 17th century attempted to explain atmospheric processes.
Methodologically, two complementary modes of transmission are relevant: these, that transfer historical concepts into modern frameworks of knowledge, and those that challenge ancient theories through empirical observation and experimentation. What makes this approach novel is the attribution of explanatory power to aesthetic modes of representation , which correlate with scientific models developed in parallel within natural philosophy. Very early Dutch marine painters (Vroom, Porcellis, de Vlieger) established a causal link between sky color, water transparency, and the intensity of spray. Respecting meteorological practical knowledge, the numerous shipwrecks depicted on canvas appear as collateral damage caused by those elemental forces which, in the 17th century, could neither be measured nor described in technical terms.
The aim of this art-historical research project is to interpret the signs of nature from an epistemological perspective, rather than symbolically or emblematically. As such, the sea becomes an early modern sphere of knowledge, which can be understood by investigating the forces both above and below the waterline.
