Paula Findlen

Biographic Data

ID104105
NAMEPaula Findlen
GIVEN NAMESPaula
FAMILY NAMEFindlen
SIGNATUREFINDLEN P
AFFILIATIONSStanford University
ORCID0000-0001-5000-7794
VERIFIEDNo
TOTAL WORKS79
TOTAL CITATIONS206
AUTHOR COUNT77
EDITOR COUNT2
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1989
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX7

  • Provenance and Possession: Acquisitions from the Portuguese Empire in Renaissance Italy, written by K. J. P. Lowe

    Paula FindlenARTICLEJournal of Early Modern History2026

  • The Past, Present and Future of the Study of Collecting

    Open AccessPaula Findlen, Anne Gerritsen et al.ARTICLEJournal of the History of…2025

    To mark thirty-five complete volumes of the journal and the retirement of the journal’s founding editor, Arthur MacGregor, the journal’s editorial team and UCL’s Centre for Early Modern Studies brought together a panel of experts, most of whom have not been involved with the journal before, to give their thoughts on the past, present and potential future of the field. Here, we capture the essence of the discussion through short contributions writ…

  • Collective Wisdom: Collecting in the early modern academy

    Open AccessPaula FindlenARTICLEJournal of the History of…2024

    Journal Article Collective Wisdom: Collecting in the early modern academy Get access Anna Marie Roos and Vera Keller (eds.), Collective Wisdom: Collecting in the early modern academy, Techne 10. Turnhout, Brepols, 2022. isbn (e-book: 978-2-503-58807-0). 323 pp., 51 col. illus. €85 Paula Findlen Paula Findlen USA [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the History of Collections, fh…

  • The Marvels of the World: An Anthology of Nature Writing before 1700

    Paula FindlenARTICLESpeculum2023

  • Noël Golvers, Johann Schreck Terrentius, SJ: His European Networks and the Origins of the Jesuit Library in Peking

    Paula FindlenARTICLEEast Asian Science Technology and…2022

  • Father Kircher’s Big Beautiful Books

    Open AccessPaula FindlenARTICLEJournal of Jesuit Studies2022

    Kircher (1602-80) has always been a daunting enterprise.By the end of his life, Kircher produced a vast scholarly corpus.In 1634, he arrived at the Roman College from war-torn German

  • Early Modern Things: Objects and their Histories, 1500–1800

    Paula FindlenBOOKEarly Modern Things2021

  • Early Modern Things: Objects and Their Histories, 1500-1800

    Paula FindlenBOOKEarly Modern Things2021

  • Why put a museum in a book? Ferrante Imperato and the image of natural history in sixteenth-century Naples

    Open AccessPaula FindlenARTICLEJournal of the History of…2021

    The first image of a natural history museum appeared in Ferrante Imperato’s ‘Natural History’ (1599), a book that is, nonetheless, not a catalogue of the contents of his museum. This article explores contemporary accounts of the Neapolitan apothecary’s collection, and offers a close reading of its portrayal in this woodcut, in relation to the contents of the ‘Natural History’. How did Imperato’s museum reflect his relations with other naturalists…

  • Kircher’s Bohemia: Jesuit Networks and Habsburg Patronage in the Seventeenth Century

    Iva Lelková, Paula Findlen et al.ARTICLEErudition and the Republic of…2020

    This study analyzes the relations between the Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680) and his correspondents in Bohemia and elsewhere in Central Europe. This research began as a digital humanities project. By analyzing data from Kircher’s correspondence with the Palladio visualization tool, we discovered a remarkable number of letters that had been sent from Bohemia, especially early on. The Jesuit network proved crucial for Kircher’s earl…

  • Ulisse Aldrovandi. Libri e immagini di storia naturale nella prima età moderna

    Open AccessPaula FindlenARTICLEJournal of the History of…2020

    Scholarly interest in the Bolognese physician, naturalist, and collector Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605) is enjoying a resurgence, especially after his anniversary year in 2005 that produced new publications and stimulated further interest in this remarkable Renaissance scholar and his immense archive. Aldrovandi has long occupied an important place in the history of natural history for his thirteen printed volumes, most of them posthumously publis…

  • M arkus F riedrich . The Birth of the Archive: A History of Knowledge

    Open AccessPaula FindlenARTICLEThe American Historical Review2020

    In 1680 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz composed a treatise, On the Useful Institution of an Archive, in which he presented the archive as an essential component of a well-ordered bureaucracy and repository of administrative knowledge. An archive was a foundation for making policy, filled with documents establishing precedents and offering proofs. Assessing the mountains of paper with lawyerly acumen, by 1686 Leibniz concluded that archives were also g…

  • Objects of History: The Past Materialized1

    Open AccessPaula FindlenARTICLEHistory and Theory2020Cited by: 1

    What is the role of material culture in understanding the past? This review essay explores two principal approaches-the history of museums and antiquities and environmental history-to reflect on their shared investment in historical materialism. It reviews Timothy LeCain's The Matter of History and Peter Miller's History and Its Objects, discussing their perspectives on objects and the writing of history. One important part of this history concer…

  • Florence After the Medici: Tuscan Enlightenment, 1737–1790

    Corey Tazzara, Paula Findlen et al.BOOKFlorence after the Medici2019

    Introduction: Tuscany and Enlightenment in the Atlantic World Corey Tazzara and Paula Findlen Part I: The Politics of Knowledge in Enlightenment Tuscany 1. The Enlightenment at Work: Ideology, Reform, and a Blueprint for a Constitution Renato Pasta 2. The Politics of Libraries Under the Habsburg-Lorraines Emmanuelle Chapron 3. The Economics of Healthcare and the Tuscan Medical Enlightenment Elizabeth W. Mellyn 4. From the Body to the Body Politic…

  • Florence after the Medici: Tuscan Enlightenment, 1737-1790

    Corey Tazzara, Jacob Soll et al.BOOKFlorence after the Medici2019

  • The Museum’s Renaissance Revisited: Histories, Objects, Exhibits

    Paula FindlenARTICLEI Tatti Studies2019References: 4

  • Deciphering Galileo: Communication and Secrecy before and after the Trial

    Open AccessHarold Marcus, Hannah Marcus et al.ARTICLERenaissance Quarterly2019Cited by: 1References: 5

    Galileo participated in exchanges of encrypted correspondence at key moments in his life. In 1610–11, following the publication of the “Sidereal Messenger,” ciphers helped Galileo to diplomatically reveal what he was observing through his telescope. After his Inquisition trial of 1633, Galileo and his closest allies relied on a substitution code (gergo) to protect the privacy of his conversations and to facilitate the removal of his library and m…

  • Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy

    Paula FindlenBOOKPossessing Nature2019Cited by: 27

    In 1500 few Europeans regarded nature as a subject worthy of inquiry. Yet fifty years later the first museums of natural history had appeared in Italy, dedicated to the marvels of nature. Italian patricians, their curiosity fueled by new voyages of exploration and the humanist rediscovery of nature, created vast collections as a means of knowing the world and used this knowledge to their greater glory. Drawing on extensive archives of visitors' b…

  • Etruscan Dreams: Athanasius Kircher, Medici Patronage, and Tuscan Friendships, 1633–1680

    Suzanne Sutherland, Paula Findlen et al.ARTICLEI Tatti Studies2018References: 4

  • Tools of Reason: The Practice of Scientific Diagramming from Antiquity to the Present

    Open AccessGraham Priest, Greg Priest et al.ARTICLEEndeavour2018Cited by: 3

  • Historical Research in a Digital Age: Reflections from the Mapping the Republic of Letters Project

    Dan Edelstein, Paula Findlen et al.ARTICLEThe American Historical Review2017

    What can a big data approach bring to the study of the early modern Republic of Letters? This is the question we asked ourselves in our collaborative project Mapping the Republic of Letters. For the past nine years, we have been exploring the limits and possibilities of computation and visualization for studying early modern correspondences, whose massive and dispersed character have long challenged their students. Beyond cliometrics, what new wa…

  • The Celebrated Museum of the Roman College of the Society of Jesus: A Facsimile of the 1678 Amsterdam Edition of Giorgio de Sepi’s Description of Athanasius Kircher’s Museum, edited by Giorgio de Sepi

    Open AccessPaula FindlenARTICLEJournal of Jesuit Studies2016

    The Celebrated Museum of the Roman College of the Society of Jesus: A Facsimile of the 1678 Amsterdam Edition of Giorgio de Sepi’s Description of Athanasius Kircher’s Museum, edited by Giorgio de Sepi" published on 30 Sep 2016 by Brill

  • The breakdown of Galileo’s Roman network: Crisis and community, ca. 1633

    Open AccessPaula Findlen, Harold MarcusARTICLESocial Studies of Science2016Cited by: 1References: 1

    Rome has long been central to the story of Galileo's life and scientific work. Through an analysis of the metadata of Galileo's surviving letters, combined with a close reading of the letters themselves, we discuss how Galileo used correspondence to build a Roman network. Galileo initially assembled this network around the members of the Lincean Academy, a few carefully nurtured relationships with important ecclesiastics, and the expertise of wel…

  • Communities of Learned Experience: Epistolary Medicine in the Renaissance by Nancy G. Siraisi (review)

    Paula FindlenARTICLEBulletin of the history of medicine2014

    Reviewed by: Communities of Learned Experience: Epistolary Medicine in the Renaissance by Nancy G. Siraisi Paula Findlen Nancy G. Siraisi. Communities of Learned Experience: Epistolary Medicine in the Renaissance. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013. 163pp. Ill. $45.00 (978-1-4214-0749-4). Why did Renaissance physicians write and, more important, publish letters? This simple question animates Nancy Siraisi’s most recent book, the prod…

  • Seeking a Job, Renaissance Style

    Paula FindlenARTICLELeonardo2014

    October 01 2014 Seeking a Job, Renaissance Style Paula Findlen Paula Findlen Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Paula Findlen Online Issn: 1530-9282 Print Issn: 0024-094X ©2014 ISAST2014 Leonardo (2014) 47 (5): 529–531. https://doi.org/10.1162/LEON_a_00811 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supple…