‘This highly innovative book connects well-known histories of science and technology with neo-materialist theory and histories of materiality, art, and observation. In his edited collection The microscopic material Renaissance, c. 1400–1700, Stefan Hanß brings the microscopic and the minute to centre stage in historical investigation. The sheer breadth of the contributors’ approach—spanning natural history, alchemy, medicine, art, religion, botany, and archaeology—ensures that the volume will immediately reshape how we study the early modern fascination with detail, with the smallest and sometimes invisible, as a cultural phenomenon. It reveals how profoundly that fascination shaped practices and practitioners across disciplines, and why we as historians should pay still closer attention to the tiniest parts of the past.’
Sietske Fransen, Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History and Radboud University

‘From the exquisite micro-carvings that entranced collectors, to the mathematical doctrine of infinitesimals, fiercely opposed by the Jesuits as subversive to the natural order, investigations into the minute existed across a surprising range of cultural and intellectual registers in early modern Europe. The larger history of this early modern engagement with the microscopic is explored for the first time in this highly original, ground-breaking volume. It brings together scholars across a wide disciplinary spectrum, from visual and material culture, the history of making and materials, the medical humanities, to the scientific analysis of plants and metal residues in establishing patterns of European colonization. A work of outstanding scholarship and theoretical coherence, The microscopic material Renaissance challenges the conventional view that discovery of the microscopic world came only with the invention of the compound microscope; more broadly, it demonstrates the agency of the material-world-at-micro-level in determining human affairs, prompting exciting new directions for historical investigation.’
Andrew Morral, Bard Graduate Center, NY


‘In this major scholarly achievement, Stefan Hanß and his extraordinary group of authors demonstrate how between 1400 and 1700 a vast series of practices, languages, and sensibilities not only observed but paid homage to the minute as a window into both matter and artistry. Embracing three centuries and a vast range of case-studies from all around the world, The microscopic material Renaissance makes a compelling case to locate the advent of the compound microscope in a much longer-term history of human scrutiny. Far from being a celebration of this history in terms of a gradual perfecting of visibility achieved when lenses provided magnification to an always higher degree, this extraordinary book addresses the questions that the ‘practitioners of the minute’—as well as us today—have to face in front of what we achieve to see.’
Alessandra Russo, Columbia University, NY

Part I: Microscopic records, c.1400–1700: introduction
1 Microscopic records and practitioners of the minute, 1400–1700
Stefan Hanß
2 Science, history, and the materiality of microscopic records
Timothy J. LeCain
Part II: In-depth observation: microscopicrecords, the history of science and visual culture
3 Relevant details: between superficial and in-depth observation of naturalia, 1540–1610
Florike Egmond
4 Drawing as technique in the early history of plant microscopy
Pamela Mackenzie
Part III: Small-scale bodily matter: microscopicrecords, the early modern body and heat
5 Distilling subtlety: insensible materialities in medicine, craft and the body
Tillmann Taape
6 Heat, healthcare and microscopic material knowledge in early modern England
Sasha Handley
Part IV: Crafting microscopic records: artisans, making and material cultures of the minute
7 Art cabinets and microscopic makers in early modern Germany
Ulinka Rublack
8 Religious renewal, embroidered textiles, and the artisanal eye for detail in Renaissance Catholic Spain
Stefan Hanß
Part V: The microscopic world of early modern colonialism: encounter, extraction, exploitation
9 Micro-botanical encounters in colonial North America
Rachel Winchcombe
10 Microscopic records of rubbish: fire assay and the colonial quest for minerals at the Cartier-Roberval settlement in French Quebec, 1541–43
Umberto Veronesi and Marcos Martinón-Torres