INTRODUCTION

On the most basic level, the tools of the humanist have been standard and unchanging since the fourteenth century: the liberal arts of rhetoric (we still say rhetorical “device” in referring to some of these tools) and grammar whereby the humanist constructed texts and presented them in books, speeches and letters. These have evolved and expanded into the essential philological tools that most humanist scholars continue to use. Next come material tools, including the pen, ink, sheet of paper or parchment and the codex. At the next level, these might include the nearly uniform elements of the humanist's study so often depicted in Renaissance paintings, as for example in Ghirlandaio or Van Eyck's portraits of St. Jerome in his study: a walled-off space, writing and reading table, storage structure for research materials and a private collection of books, letters and visual materials; and musical, calculation or other instruments. In the case of Antonello da Messina (see Figure 7) this expands out in a grand contextualization of the scholar within a far broader environment: St. Jerome set amid the sacred space of the Church. Finally we might also think of tools as the public aggregations that humanists use: the archive or library, the collection of objects, whether in a cabinet of curiosities or a gallery of drawings, prints, paintings or sculpture. As a physical extension of the letter and of the study, humanist scholars have also convened in classrooms, symposia, lectures, seminars and conferences for centuries. Used consciously for pedagogy or modes of scholarly communication these too might be considered tools. In short, all these provide the immaterial, performative and material bases for humanistic work.

At the same time, everything from the scholar's desk and shelves, study, studio, rehearsal and performance space, lecture halls, campuses, research institutes and convention halls can also legitimately be considered environments. Only most recently with the digital has this kit of tools begun to change rapidly and fundamentally.