by Jon Lackman | 11 April 2006 | Modern
Horst Bredekamp’s latest study in Bildwissenschaft analyzes Darwin’s sketches and concludes that the scientist thought more in terms of a coral of life than a tree of life (Wilhelm Trapp, Die Zeit). Corals had since antiquity represented the signature of the artist Nature. Darwin saw in them an alternative to the struggle of each kind for its own survival (Uwe Justus Wenzel, NZZ). For all its erudition, the book remains an exciting art-historical detective story, writes Christina Tilmann in the Tagesspiegel, as Bredekamp marshals such dramatic evidence as the Amphiroa Orbignyana that Darwin picked up on the Beagle voyage, which strongly resembles Darwin’s own diagrams. However, the FAZ‘s Christian Geyer finds the book’s thesis no more compelling than a reinterpretation of Italy’s boot as a sock.
