IMMpress Volume 13 Issue 2 – The Art of Science

This issue’s cover is a surrealistic digital collage celebrating the works of notable artist-scientists. Pieced together are the masterful creations of – Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Maria Sibylla Merian, Dorothea Maria Gsell, and John Russell. This cover is an homage to the greats who revealed the beautiful marvels of our world with their scientific curiosity and artistic sensibility.

Read below to learn more about the featured artists.

John Russell (1745–1806) was a British painter and an astronomy enthusiast. Enamored by the moon seen through his telescope, he carefully depicted every patch, crevice, shadow of the alluring celestial object. His dedication to detail can be seen in his stippled (patterned dotting) engraving, Lunar Planisphere, Flat Light (1805).

Michelangelo (1475–1564), an iconic Italian Renaissance artist, deeply appreciated the human anatomy. His love for the human form is shown by the fine details of the man’s torso sketched in his Studies for the Libyan Sibyl (circa 1510-1511).

Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) was a German scientific illustrator. With body color (opaque watercolor now known as gouache), she painted colorful and accurate studies of insects and plants – as exemplified by the Great Blue Butterflies and Red Fruits (circa 1705-71) on the left.

Her daughter, Dorothea Maria Gsell (1678-1743), also painted beautiful botanical and animal illustrations – as shown by the Scarlet Ibis with an Egg (1699-1701) at below right.

Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852-1934), a Spanish neuroscientist and Nobel laureate, published seminal papers on the central nervous system. His pioneering work featured meticulous and captivating drawings of the brain and spinal cord with their constituting neurons – one of which is shown above.

The legendary Italian Renaissance polymath, Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519), strove to understand the inner workings of the human body. After performing post-mortem dissections, he recorded his observations through exquisite sketches – as shown by the above Studies of the Foetus in the Womb (circa 1510-1513).

– Jennifer Ahn