Die Form des Wassers. Korpuskularphilosophische Imaginationen des Fluiden im Venedig des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts

The article examines the interactions between corpuscular-philosophical explanations of flooding in the early modern period with pictorial representations of water. Atomistic pictorial programs and then tractatus by Trevisan, Montanari, and Guglielmini, written primarily in Venice, Padua, and Bologna, are treated. From the tractatus written in the decades before 1700 alone, we can note that quite different, even partly contradictory ideas of matter could circulate at the same time even within a local knowledge network like that of Venice (in exchange with Padua and Bologna). Thus, several equally recognized theories were in competition with each other, each with different views on the material composition of nature and the forces at work within it. Whoever at that time wanted to capture fluids with the help of illustrations, whether as an illustrator of scientific works or as a painter, had to realize that depending on how he wielded his brush or stylus, he was not only simply making water visible, but at the same time also its particular epistemic configuration.