Canales, Jimena

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 Review of The Claude Glass: Use and Meaning of the Black Mirrorin Western Art  (Article begins on next page)The Harvard community has made this article openly available.Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters.Citation Canales, Jimena. 2006. Review of The claude glass: Use andmeaning of the black mirror in western art, by Arnaud Maillet. Isis97: 149-150.Published Version doi:10.1086/504531Accessed February 18, 2015 1:47:51 AM ESTCitable Link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:3353755Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University's DASHrepository, and is made available under the terms and conditionsapplicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth athttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of-use#LAABOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 97 : 1 (2006) 149sense of planetary theory and dynamics. In keep-ing with the title of his book, Linton has little tosay about techniques of observation; nor is thereany attention to physical astronomy or astro-physics.Linton’s topics include the development ofgeometrical planetary theory (Eudoxus, Ptol-emy, Copernicus, Kepler), planetary tables,Newtonian gravitation theory, celestial mechan-ics, perturbation theory, the stability of the solarsystem, and the modiﬁcation of planetary theorybrought about by general relativity. These are allsubjects with deep mathematical roots, and it isnot an easy task to write about them at once ac-curately and engagingly. Linton’s approach tothe material is well chosen. There is little math-ematical development or argument in the book.Rather, the mathematical results are displayedand discussed in plain language. Clear discus-sion of mathematical formulas in plain Englishis a difﬁcult art, and Linton has achieved a highorder of conciseness and clarity. Controversialtopics—for example, the competing claims ofLorentz, Poincare ´, and Einstein over credit forrelativity—are discussed dispassionately andevenhandedly. Theprehistoryofrelativitytheoryis particularly well treated. Since we are nowused to hearing cosmologists attempt to placeconstraints on the theoretical possibilities opento particle physicists, and vice versa, it was par-ticularly amusing to read George Darwin’s 1902comment, about a meeting in Go ¨ttingen, that“the greater part of one day’s discussion was de-voted to the astronomical results which wouldfollow from the new theory of electrons” (p.456).In a work of such scope, the author naturallyhas had to rely on the secondary literature,whichhe has surveyed with admirable thoroughness.Readers who want a detailed technical accountof some development in mathematical astron-omy will often be able to ﬁnd an entre ´e to theprimary as well as the secondary literature inLinton’s book. However, the bibliography is re-stricted almost entirely to English-languagepub-lications, which means that important workshave sometimes been overlooked. Thus there isno mention of Michel-Pierre Lerner’s masterfulhistory of the planetary orbs (Le monde desspheres, 2 vols. [Les Belles Letters, 1996]). Andthe author has not always made use of the mostrecent work. For example, in the discussion ofPtolemy’s star catalogue there are no referencesto work published after 1998.A work of such scope will also inevitably en-tail a few slips. Thus Linton says that the title ofPtolemy’s Almagest is a medieval Latin corrup-tion of the Arabicword for “the greatest”(p.61);al-megiste is actually the Arabic deﬁnite articleattached to the Greek word for “greatest.” Theﬁgure on page 91 showing Thabit ibn Qurra’stheory of the trepidation of the equinoxes mis-represents Thabit’s theory. On page 452 Lintonsays, “George Fitzgerald suggested in The Etherand the Earth’s Atmosphere (1889)” that motionthrough the ether might produce a longitudinalcontraction of objects—thus giving the impres-sion that there was a book of this title. Fitzger-ald’s suggestion was actually presented in theform of a short note in Science (G. F. Fitzgerald,“The Ether and the Earth’s Atmosphere,” Sci-ence, 1889, 13:390).Still, the merits of the book are considerableand easily outweigh the minor inaccuracies.Par-ticularly strong are the chapters devoted to theeighteenth- and nineteenth-century developmentof celestial mechanics. This is a technically dif-ﬁcult, and some would say dry, subject. Butgreat things were at stake, including the validityof Newton’s law of gravitation and the stabilityof the solar system. Linton displays a knack forclear explanation of the most important devel-opments and for making them matter to thereader. I also thoroughly enjoyed the section ofthe book’s ﬁnal chapter devoted to Einstein’ssteps toward the new theory of gravity, from theequivalence principle of 1907 to the ﬁnal equa-tions of 1915. Linton does as nice a job as onecould wish of explaining what was at stake, aswell as what went right and what went wrongalong the way.Within the limitations of the survey genre,Linton has done an excellent job. I came acrosssomething new to me in every chapter and wasconstantly impressed by the clarity of Linton’sexposition. Professional astronomers are likelyto ﬁnd the book engaging. Professional histori-ans of astronomy will ﬁnd it an indispensableresource.JAMES EVANSArnaud Maillet. The Claude Glass: Use andMeaning of the Black Mirror in Western Art.Translated by Jeff Fort. 300 pp., illus., table,index. New York: Zone Books, 2004. $26.95(cloth).If you have never heard of the Claude glass, Ar-naud Maillet’s book might possibly lead you tobelieve that this largely forgotten optical devicechanged the world. This feat is accomplished byexpanding the deﬁnition of the Claude mirrorbe-yond the small, tinted convex mirror used as anaid in painting. Maillet’s topicenc ompasses a150 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 97 : 1 (2006)general array of references to mirrors—so longas they differ from traditional ﬂat silvered mir-rors in their shape and tint. Using the “lowestcommon denominator” deﬁnition of “convextinted mirror,” the author takes the reader on amind-boggling journey across time and space (p.15).Let me list a few of his examples: Pliny theElder’s anecdote in which a tigress is tricked bya convex mirror; Albrecht Du ¨rer’swoodcutVan-ity and the Devil, showing the reﬂection of “thedevil’s ass” in a convex mirror; catoptro-mancy—divination by means of mirrors—where necromancers use black mirrors to con-jure the dead; “the lustrous convexity of awoman’s head” resembling a mirror (p. 70); Az-tecobsidian mirrors and their assoc iation withthe divinity Tezcatlipoca; Saint Paul’s famous“through a glass, darkly” expression; a citationof the black mirror by Truman Capote; the blackmirror in modern art (Roy Lichtenstein, RainerMu ¨llet, Gerhard Richter, Franc ¸ois Perrodin);Subcomandante Marcos’s musings about revo-lution and dark mirrors; autoeroticism (if onlyby virtue of the fact that the mirror is held “withonly one hand” [p. 174]); and, ﬁnally, the blackmirror in the Internet (this last accompanied bywarnings about the phrase as an entry into theworld of hard-core porn).These pell-mell references lead Maillet toform a few very broad and very schematic con-clusions. He sees the development of these mir-rors as parallel to the emergence of the uncon-scious (“We see, then, how the notion of theunconscious emerges partly in conjunction withthe black mirror” [p. 63]), as part of the historyof blindness (“The history of the black mirror isalso the history of a blindness” [p. 176]), and asan essential tool of modernity (“This object isthus inseparable from modernity” [p. 152]).Hidden among these claims is a very carefulstudy where Maillet narrows his focus to Claudeglasses and mirrors proper. These two instru-ments, often confused and classed together, aretinted glass ﬁlters and convex mirrors, respec-tively. They owe their name to the French Ba-roque painter Claude Lorrain (1602–1682),known for his sober landscapes and deeply ad-mired in eighteenth-century England. TheClaude mirror had its golden age at the end ofthe eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenthcenturies, when it was commonly used by pro-fessional and amateur painters to draw in themanner of Lorrain. Alongside this careful ac-count of the history of the Claude mirror,Mailletprovides an inventory of existing exemplars inmuseums and private collections.Maillet does not always strive for coherence,denouncing a prevalent “hyper-specialization inevery branch of study” (p. 28). There is similarlyno intent to produce a strict chronological nar-rative or geographical treatment, and the authorguides the reader into frequent detours.The most analytical part of the book, whichwill perhaps be of most interest to historians ofscience, is Chapter 12, “Limits on the Use of theClaude Mirror.” This chapter turns to JonathanCrary’s thesis in Techniques of the Observer(MIT, 1990) and sees in the history oftheClaudeglass further evidence of a rupture in scopic re-gimes occurring sometime between 1810 and1840. The turn from geometricto physiologic aloptics noted by Crary coincided with the apogeeof the Claude mirror. This changewasevidencedin the widespread use of the Claude mirror as atool for turning away from the nature-as-is goalsof the Dutch school of painting. Further supportof the role played by the Claude mirror in nine-teenth-century debates in the arts comes fromJohn Ruskin and Pre-Raphaelite painters, whodisdained its use and for whom direct, unme-diated experience was essential. Via Crary’sthe-sis, Maillet ties the history of the Claude glassto some of the central themes of historical epis-temology.Maillet offers an important contribution to thehistory of the material culture of art and science.Thanks to his full-length treatment of the Claudemirror, this understudied instrumentwillperhapsone day obtain a place in art andsciencehistoriesalongside the camera obscura, the cameralucida,and the graphictelesc ope.JIMENA CANALES AntiquityPaul U. Unschuld. Huang Di nei jing su wen:Nature, Knowledge, Imagery in an Ancient Chi-nese Medical Text. xii  520 pp., illus., bibl.,index. Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: Univer-sity of California Press, 2003. $75 (cloth).The Huang Di nei jing su wen (translated in thisbook as “Huang Di’s Inner Classic, Basic Ques-tions”) is a foundational work of Chinese med-icine. Along with its companion volume, theLing shu, the Su wen served for centuries as anauthoritative fount of revealed knowledge thatphysicians used to explain the normal and patho-logical functions of the body. But the Su wen isas vexing as it is important. The receivedversionof this work was never a coherent statement ofdoctrine but, rather, a “compilation of fragmen-tary texts” (p. 24) originally written by unknown

Review of The Claude Glass: Use and Meaning of the Black Mirror in Western Art

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