Grotto design with automata from Salomon de Caus’ Les raisons des forces mouvantes, 1615.

Featured on PDR in the essay Petrified Waters: The Artificial Grottoes of the Renaissance and Beyond

Idling alongside the waters of artificial grottoes, visitors found themselves in lush, otherworldly settings, where art and nature, pleasure and peril, and humans and nymphs could, for a time, coexist. Laura Tradii spelunks through the handmade caves of the Italian Renaissance and their reception abroad, illuminating how these curious spaces transformed across the centuries.

Grotto Design with Automata

Date

1615

From

Les raisons des forces mouvantes


Underlying Rights

Public Domain Worldwide

Digital Rights


Image Size

1400 x 894

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