1600–1789
The Scientific Revolution & Enlightenment
In the 1600s and 1700s curious people began to explore the world with experiments and reason. Galileo looked at the sky with a telescope, Newton explained gravity, and Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire and Diderot argued for freedom of thought. Their ideas inspired revolutions and modern science.
Why artists painted it
Painters in this age began to show scientists as heroes. Joseph Wright of Derby lit his experiments like religious scenes, as if the glow of discovery was holy.
An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump · Joseph Wright of Derby, 1768
An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump
Joseph Wright of Derby · 1768
👁️ Painted at the time
Wright lights a science experiment like a holy scene: a bird gasps in the glass while a family decides whether to save it.
A Journalist Lecturing on the Orrery
Joseph Wright of Derby · 1766
👁️ Painted at the time
A lecturer shows a model of the solar system by candlelight, and everyone leans in to see how the planets move.
Newton
William Blake · 1795
👁️ Painted at the time
William Blake shows Isaac Newton measuring the universe with compasses, which he thought was both brilliant and too narrow.
Milton Visiting Galileo when a Prisoner of the Inquisition
Solomon Hart · 1847
🕰️ Painted 58 years later
The poet John Milton visits Galileo, who was held by the Church for saying the Earth moves around the Sun.
A Reading of Voltaire's Tragedy at Madame Geoffrin's Salon
Anicet Charles Gabriel Lemonnier · 1812
👁️ Painted at the time
A crowd of writers and thinkers listens to a reading in the salon of Madame Geoffrin, one of the places where Enlightenment ideas were discussed, while a bust of Voltaire looks on.
Sir Isaac Newton
Godfrey Kneller · 1702
👁️ Painted at the time
Sir Isaac Newton, who explained gravity and the movement of the planets, looks out of this portrait by Godfrey Kneller from 1702.
Benjamin Franklin
Joseph-Siffred Duplessis · 1785
👁️ Painted at the time
Benjamin Franklin, scientist, printer and American diplomat, in a portrait painted in Paris in 1785 by Joseph-Siffred Duplessis.
Benjamin Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Sky
Benjamin West · 1816
🕰️ Painted 27 years later
Benjamin Franklin raises a hand to catch lightning from the sky, while cherubs bring electricity into the room.
Frontispiece of the Encyclopédie
Charles-Nicolas Cochin · 1772
👁️ Painted at the time
At the front of the great French Encyclopédie, Truth is unveiled by Reason and Philosophy, with the light of knowledge shining.
Portrait of Denis Diderot
Dmitry Levitzky · 1773
👁️ Painted at the time
Denis Diderot, the editor of the Encyclopédie, which tried to collect all of human knowledge in one set of books.
Louis XIV Visiting the Royal Academy of Sciences
Sébastien Leclerc · 1671
👁️ Painted at the time
King Louis XIV visits the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris in 1671, where telescopes, globes and instruments show how science was becoming an official part of French life.
Alexander von Humboldt
Friedrich Georg Weitsch · 1806
👁️ Painted at the time
Alexander von Humboldt, the scientist who explored South America and described the planet as an interconnected whole, sits with his notebooks after a five-year journey.
Aristotle with a Bust of Homer
Rembrandt · 1653
👁️ Painted at the time
The philosopher Aristotle, dressed in rich 1600s clothes, rests a hand on a bust of the poet Homer and seems lost in thought about wisdom, fame and money.