Painting of the Month

'The Ambassadors': Arithmetic Book

The arithmetic book is 'Eyn Newe unnd wohlgegründte underweysung aller Kaufmannss Rechnung' ('A new and reliable instruction book of calculation for merchants'), published 1527. It was the first arithmetic textbook written in German, by Peter Apian, a brilliant mathematician and astronomer at the University of Ingolstadt in Germany.

The book is carefully propped open so that we can clearly see a page that begins 'Dividirt' (divide). Towards the back of the shelf a pair of dividers seems to echo the same idea. These items may have been included to alert the viewer to the two men's concerns over other kinds of division, religious and political, in Europe at the time. Protestant beliefs, and the resulting divisions within the Church, were particularly well-established in German speaking lands, and were spreading rapidly to other countries.


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