Mapping Spaces

The ZKM throws new light on 17^th century landscape painting. Comparable to modern satellite surveying (GPS), true to scale landscape representation is also indebted to the interdisciplinary exchange of knowledge: the alliance of geodesists, mathematicians, instrument makers and painters. Artists had designed modern surveying systems long before new media drew on images from outer space.

The exhibition »Mapping Spaces« examines, for the first time ever on this scale, the influence of early modern guide books in geography, the science of surveying and the construction of fortification on Dutch painting around 1650. The prelude to the project, developed at the University of Trier, is Pieter Snayers‘ large-format depiction of historical battle scenes, in which maps and landscape paintings are projected over one another so as to document the most recent developments in modern engineering, ballistics and the fortification construction.

Over 220 exhibits, among them paintings, surveying instruments, graphics devices, books, maps and globes drawn from the most important collections of works, such as from the Prado (Madrid), the Louvre (Paris), the Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam) or the Kunsthistorischen Museum (Vienna) testify to these new theses in pictorial science. The new mapping of an early modern area of knowledge is accompanied by contemporary works of art that thematize the influence of technological developments on our present-day perception of space.