Nova Reperta

Johannes Stradanus, also known as Jan van der Straet, was a Flemish artist active for much of his career in Florence. His designs were widely circulated through Antwerp print publishing, especially through the Galle family. Nova Reperta, or “New Discoveries, ” was published by Philip Galle in Antwerp around 1588 and presents a sequence of early modern inventions, discoveries, and technologies through engraved allegorical scenes.

The series as we know it consists of a title page and nineteen engravings. Alice Bonner McGinty argues that the discovery of America gives the series its main organising theme. This is introduced on the frontispiece through symbols such as the Southern Cross, the Amazon, the map of America, the compass rose, and guaiac wood, and developed in plates associated with Vespucci’s landfall (plate 1), the syphilis epidemic and its New World remedy (plate 6), Vespucci as a Florentine navigator under the Southern Cross (plate 18), and the marine technologies of the compass and longitude by magnetic declination (plates 2 and 16). The second theme is the conquest of matter and motion. McGinty divides this into a mechanical series, including iron clocks (plate 5), watermills (plate 10), windmills (plate 11), and metal polishing or grinding (plate 17), and a metallurgical or technical series, including gunpowder (plate 3), horse stirrups (plate 9), and distillation (plate 7).

The third theme is the rationalisation of agriculture and production, represented by sericulture or silk production (plate 8), olive pressing (plate 12), and sugar refining (plate 13). The fourth theme is the mechanisation of words and images, represented by printing (plate 4) and copperplate engraving (plate 19), together with related visual technologies such as oil painting (plate 14) and optics or spectacles (plate 15). Taken together, these themes show that Nova Reperta presents “discovery” broadly: not only as the discovery of new lands, but as a transformation of technology, agriculture, communication, perception, and knowledge.