New light on the rediscovery of the Archimedean solids during the renaissance (Q942901): Difference between revisions

The story of rediscovering the Archimedean solids by Renaissance artists is well told in a fundamental paper by \textit{J. V. Field} in the same journal [ibid. 50, No. 3--4, 241--289 (1997; Zbl 0879.01008)]. Here is summarized what has been said and generally accepted until now. In autumn 2006, in the course of creating a digital catalogue for the depot of the Albertina in Vienna, attention was once again given to a set of 40 printing blocks for woodcuts exhibiting the nets (planar developments of the surfaces) of all regular and semiregular solids. A number of these woodcuts show how the semiregular solids may be constructed from regular solids. The catalogue was made by Dr. Gisela Fischer, who now discovered the signature of Hieronymus Andreae on three of the blocks; Dr. M. L. Sternath, Curator of the Albertina, presumed a connection with Albrecht Dürer. Andreae, who died in 1556 is well known as a collaborator (the engraver) of Dürer. Dr. Peter Schreiber, Univ. of Greifswald, assumes that the other blocks (the Xerox copies of all of them were sent to him) perhaps were made by Andreae's workmen. He concludes that hence we must accept that Kepler had a remarkable forerunner in exploring the full set of Archimedean solids. But unfortunately until now this forerunner is entirely unknown; in the paper he is named Anonymous, these wooden blocks were seemingly never used for printing a book. In the paper all 40 wooden blocks by Anonymous are listed in details, 5 of them are illustrated by figures, the Xerox copies. For one of them the same by Leonardo da Vinci for De divina proportione is illustrated by a figure. One figure shows how the snub cube may be constructed from a cube; this leads to an equation of the third degree. There is stated that it is a pity that we do not have the text for which the illustrations were made; Anonymous seems to have been entirely independent of the people around Dürer and Nuremberg. A first tentative hypothesis about Anonymous concerns Johann Tscherte (ca. 1480--1552), who lived mostly in Vienna but visited Nuremberg several times.