The Architectural Image and Early Modern Science: Wendel Dietterlin and the Rise of Empirical Investigation explores the advent of images of architecture as vehicles for scientific discourse. Through its protagonist—Strasbourg artist Wendel Dietterlin (ca. 1550–1599)—the book demonstrates how northern European artists, architects, and natural scientists between the eras of Dürer and Rubens revived the Vitruvian understanding of architecture as both art and science through a new genre: architectural images. The central argument suggests that the rise of architectural images rendered architecture a crucible of empiricism, or the notion that knowledge comes from sensory experience, while also shaping image-making practices among scientists. The Architectural Image establishes that the new, empirical imagery of architecture proved instrumental to the emergence of architecture and science as the mutually interrelated arts we know today. It also models a new method for assessing images as key platforms for the enduring rapport between architecture and science.

Elizabeth J. Petcu is a lecturer in architectural history at the University of Edinburgh. Her research and teaching examine the intersections of visual and scientific inquiry in the architectural culture of the early modern world, particularly the Holy Roman Empire and the Viceroyalty of Peru. She has published in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, and 21: Inquiries into Art, History, and the Visual. Her research has been supported by the German-American Fulbright Commission, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, and Villa I Tatti: The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. Petcu’s first book is The Architectural Image and Early Modern Science: Wendel Dietterlin and the Rise of Empirical Investigation (Cambridge University Press, 2024).