Portraiture and Arithmetic in Sixteenth-Century Bavaria

Deciphering Barthel Beham’s Calculator

Bibliographic Data

ID10417484
AuthorsJessica Buskirk (Technische Universität Dresden, corresponding author)
Year2013
Volume66
Issue1
Pages35-80
Publication date2013-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueRenaissance Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0034-4338 • E-ISSN: 1935-0236
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/670404
OpenAlexW2312615148
LanguageEN
References cited17

In his portrait of an unidentified man (Vienna, 1529), Barthel Beham portrays the sitter paused in the midst of a math problem. As has been discovered, the numbers and symbols belong to the vocabulary of numerical calculation. This finding first raises the question of why a patron would want to be shown doing computation with Arabic numerals in a portrait. In 1529, numerical calculation was a commercial tool, not a field with humanistic/social cachet such as geometry. Further, the depicted computation does not make sense: the symbols and numbers are arranged in the form of a problem without actually being one. Yet the patron either did not notice or care. This article argues that the incomplete computation is not only a reflection of the contemporary status of mathematics using Arabic numbers, but also provides a way of understanding how the painting functioned as a portrait in the social milieu of the sixteenth-century Munich court

Algorithm · Arabic · Arithmetic · Art · Art history · Computation · Field (mathematics · Linguistics · Notice · Political science · Portrait · Pure mathematics · Architecture and Art History Studies · History and Theory of Mathematics · Law · Mathematics · Philosophy · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity

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