Glassmaking Goes Public: The Cultural Background to Antonio Neri's L'Arte Vetraria (1612)

Abstract

Glassmaking has prospered as an art since the late Middle Ages. It is therefore surprising that the first systematic treatise exclusively devoted to it appeared as late as 1612. In this article I explore the experimental background of Antonio Neri's L'Arte Vetraria, and its intimate connection with an ancient alchemical tradition and with more contemporary efforts to introduce technical innovations. Furthermore, the active role played by Antonio Neri, a clergyman and alchemist in the service of Antonio de' Medici, sheds new light on the patronage of the Medici court. This article aims at contextualizing Neri's book within the Florentine tradition of glassmaking and, above all, within Francesco I de Medici's alchemical interests in this art. Finally, the almost contemporary publication of Galileo's Sidereus Nuncius and Neri's L'Arte Vetraria raises the question of the role played by alchemists like Neri and by Florentine glassmakers in the making of optical instruments.

Shattering crystal with crystal: Galileo’s rhetoric, lenses, and the epistemology of metaphor

“…109 Neri's book described the glassmaking process in ways that exposed some of its secrets while also abstaining from providing sufficient detail to recreate the work without an extensive preexisting experiential knowledge of glassmaking practices. 110 At a time when many natural philosophers were especially attentive to the material characteristics of glass, Neri's book provided them with a rich language for describing types of glass and making comparisons between them. Galileo owned a copy of this book, and he procured another at the request of Federico Cesi, sending it to the Prince of the Lincei in Rome in the winter of 1614.…”

Deconstructing Glass and Building up Shards at the Early Royal Society

“…For Neri, see Mentasti, xli–lxix; McCray, 101 – 09; Douglas and Frank, 14 – 15; Beretta, 2004, 85 –8 6, 177 – 83, 193. For Neri's text at the Medici court, within the Italian tradition of glassmaking, and in relation to alchemy, see Beretta, 2017, with further bibliography; for Neri's wider interests in pharmaceuticals and the Florentine Paracelsian chymical culture, see Dupré, 2014a, 307–11; Dupré, 2014b, 84–87.…”

“…See in particular Eamon; Kavey; Smith, 2004; Dupré, 2017. For the role of Neri's 1612 book in making public recipes previously held in books of secrets, see Beretta, 2017. This is not to imply that information given out by craftsmen was always accurate or that those who shared it were above duplicity.…”