Art and science have never existed in isolation. From the anatomical drawings of the Renaissance to today’s climate-focused installations, artists have long responded to the discoveries and dilemmas of science.

Sometimes they visualized new ideas before words could describe them. Sometimes they challenged the ethics of progress.

This post explores how art has mirrored, magnified, and even anticipated the shifts in scientific understanding—shaping how we imagine the world and our place within it.

Whether celebrating geometry, dissecting bodies, or melting ice in city squares, these works reveal a centuries-long conversation between observation, imagination, and responsibility.

From Anatomy to Climate Change: 15 Artworks That Merge Art and Science

Leonardo da Vinci – Vitruvian Man (c. 1490)

Leonardo da Vinci drew the Vitruvian Man around 1490, combining close observation of the human body with a mathematical approach to proportion. The figure, shown with arms and legs outstretched inside a circle and a square, reflects Leonardo’s interest in geometry and his deep reading of classical texts—particularly those of Vitruvius, a Roman architect who believed that the human body followed precise ratios and could serve as a model for harmony in design.

Rather than copying Vitruvius, Leonardo questioned and refined his ideas. He measured actual bodies, dissected cadavers, and adjusted the proportions to match what he saw. The drawing captures a moment when the study of anatomy was beginning to move beyond tradition and into the realm of empirical science. It also reflects a broader Renaissance belief that understanding the world required both technical skill and philosophical inquiry, where the body could be read as a key to understanding the universe.

Islamic Geometric Patterns

Between the 8th and 15th centuries, Islamic artisans developed intricate geometric patterns that adorned mosques, palaces, and manuscripts across the Islamic world. These designs, characterized by complex interlacing stars, polygons, and tessellations, were constructed using precise mathematical principles. Artisans employed tools like the straightedge and compass to create patterns based on grids of repeated shapes, such as equilateral triangles, hexagons, and squares.

The evolution of these patterns coincided with significant advancements in Islamic mathematics. Scholars like Al-Khwarizmi, working in institutions such as the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, made foundational contributions to algebra and geometry . Their work provided the mathematical frameworks that artisans translated into visual forms. Notably, the development of girih tiles—sets of five standardized shapes—allowed for the creation of complex, non-repeating patterns, demonstrating an advanced understanding of geometry and symmetry.

These geometric patterns were not merely decorative; they embodied philosophical and spiritual concepts. The repetition and symmetry symbolized the infinite nature of creation and the unity of the divine.

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Ludovico Cigoli – Assumption of the Virgin (1612)

When Ludovico Cigoli painted the Assumption of the Virgin on the dome of the Cappella Paolina in 1612, he followed a traditional Christian iconography in which Mary ascends to heaven, standing on the moon. But what sets this fresco apart is how Cigoli chose to represent that moon—not as a smooth, perfect sphere, but as a cratered, uneven celestial body. This detail, almost invisible at first glance, marked a radical shift in how the natural world could be portrayed in religious art.

Cigoli was a close friend and correspondent of Galileo Galilei and was among the first painters to visually integrate Galileo’s astronomical discoveries into his work. Just two years earlier, Galileo had published the Sidereus Nuncius, which revealed the moon’s rough surface based on telescopic observation.

Cigoli’s fresco echoed this revelation with astonishing precision, a decision so bold that it drew the attention and praise of Federico Cesi, founder of the Accademia dei Lincei, who publicly commended both the scientist and the artist.

Jan Brueghel the Elder & Peter Paul Rubens – Allegory of Sight (1617)

Painted in 1617, Allegory of Sight is part of a larger series on the five senses created by Jan Brueghel the Elder in collaboration with Peter Paul Rubens. In this version, Rubens provided the figures—most notably the central allegorical female and Cupid—while Brueghel rendered the surrounding objects with his characteristic precision. The painting celebrates the act of seeing, not just as a human faculty, but as a gateway to scientific understanding.

The room is filled with artworks, rare objects, and scientific instruments. Among them is one of the first realistic depictions of a telescope in Western painting, likely included shortly after Galileo’s discoveries brought the instrument into widespread attention. The painting also includes globes, astronomical charts, and lenses, reflecting the early 17th-century fascination with exploration, measurement, and the cataloguing of knowledge.

Rather than treating science and art as separate domains, the painting presents them side by side—part of the same intellectual curiosity. In Allegory of Sight, vision is not merely passive but active: a tool for discovery, inquiry, and reflection in a rapidly expanding world.

Rembrandt – The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp (1632)

Painted when he was just 26 years old, Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp marks one of his first major public commissions. The painting shows a real event: a public anatomical dissection conducted by Dr. Tulp, a prominent physician in Amsterdam and a member of the city’s Guild of Surgeons. The body is that of Aris Kindt, a convicted criminal, as dissections at the time were legally restricted to the remains of executed prisoners.

Rembrandt presents the scene with a striking sense of structure and clarity. The cadaver lies at the center, while the men—colleagues of Dr. Tulp—observe with attention. The details of the dissected arm are rendered with careful accuracy, matching the medical knowledge of the period. At a time when anatomical textbooks were becoming more widespread, this painting connects the visual arts with scientific teaching.

In early 17th-century Amsterdam, science, trade, and civic life were increasingly interlinked. The city was a center of publishing, cartography, and medical innovation. Institutions like the Guild of Surgeons had growing prestige, and scientific knowledge was shared not just among scholars but also with the educated public. The painting reflects this environment, where professional expertise and public education were beginning to overlap.

Maria Sibylla Merian – Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium (1705)

In the early 18th century, many people still believed that insects were born from mud, decaying matter, or even spontaneously out of thin air. The concept of metamorphosis—the idea that a caterpillar could become a butterfly through distinct, traceable stages—was not widely accepted or understood. When Maria Sibylla Merian published Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium in 1705, she offered not only a visual record of tropical insects, but a detailed, observational argument against centuries of misinformation.

The book was based on fieldwork Merian conducted in Suriname, where she traveled with her daughter to study insects in their natural habitats. Her illustrations documented each stage of development, from egg to larva to chrysalis to adult, shown alongside the specific plants each insect depended on. This approach was entirely new—bringing together ecology, entomology, and botanical science in a single visual format.

Merian’s training as a painter and engraver allowed her to present scientific information with clarity and elegance. As a woman outside the academic establishment, she used illustration and publication to enter scientific conversations that were largely closed to her gender. Her work helped reshape the study of insects and established a model that would influence both scientists and illustrators for generations.

Eadweard Muybridge – The Horse in Motion (1878)

In 1878, Eadweard Muybridge was hired by Leland Stanford, former governor of California and a racehorse owner, to settle a debate: do all four of a horse’s hooves ever leave the ground at the same time while galloping? Painters had long shown galloping horses with their legs extended, front and back, in mid-air. But this image was based on assumption, not observation.

To find out, Muybridge set up a row of cameras with tripwires that would capture split-second photographs as a horse ran past. The result was a sequence of sharp images showing each phase of the gallop. One of the frames clearly showed the horse with all four legs off the ground, but tucked underneath the body—not stretched out as artists had imagined. The experiment settled the question and became a landmark in both science and photography.

More than just a technical achievement, The Horse in Motion showed how photography could capture motion too fast for the eye to see. Muybridge went on to study the movement of people and other animals, creating sequences that laid the foundation for motion pictures. 

Georges Seurat – A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884–86)

Georges Seurat painted A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte using a method called Divisionism, also known as Pointillism. Instead of blending colors on a palette, he applied thousands of small dots of pure color directly to the canvas. The idea was based on contemporary optical theories: colors placed side by side would mix in the viewer’s perception, creating a more luminous and vibrant effect than traditional methods allowed.

Seurat was deeply influenced by scientific research on visual perception and color contrast, particularly the work of Michel-Eugène Chevreul and Ogden Rood. These studies focused on how the human eye interprets adjacent colors, and Seurat applied these principles with precision and control.

The painting itself shows people relaxing by the Seine on a Sunday afternoon, but its construction is methodical. Seurat planned the composition through dozens of sketches and color studies, treating the process with the discipline of scientific observation. Rather than improvising, he worked slowly and deliberately, turning visual experience into a system of color, light, and structure. 

Santiago Ramón y Cajal – Drawings of Neurons (1890s)

In the 1890s, Spanish physician and scientist Santiago Ramón y Cajal produced a series of detailed ink drawings that revealed the inner structure of the nervous system. These drawings, based on microscopic observation using Golgi staining, documented individual neurons with remarkable clarity and complexity. At a time when the brain was still poorly understood, Cajal’s work helped establish the neuron theory: the idea that the nervous system is made up of separate, individual cells.

Cajal was both a trained doctor and a skilled draftsman. His illustrations were not decorative, but precise tools for research, analysis, and communication. He spent long hours at the microscope, then transferred what he saw onto paper by hand, capturing the delicate branching structures of dendrites, axons, and synapses. These drawings offered evidence for the one-directional flow of information in the nervous system, laying the groundwork for modern neuroscience.

In 1906, Cajal received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, which he shared with Camillo Golgi. His visual approach to science, combining observation and documentation, continues to influence researchers and artists alike.

Mikhail Larionov – Red Rayonism (1913)

When Mikhail Larionov painted Red Rayonism in 1913, he was responding to a profound shift in how people understood the world around them. At the turn of the 20th century, scientific discoveries like X-rays, ultraviolet radiation, and radio waves revealed that invisible forces could be measured, visualized, and even used for communication. These discoveries challenged long-held ideas about perception and matter, opening up a new space for both science and art to explore.

Rayonism, developed by Larionov and fellow Russian avant-garde artist Natalia Goncharova, aimed to represent not objects themselves, but the rays of light and energy that connect and surround them. In Red Rayonism, intersecting colored lines suggest the movement of unseen forces across space. The canvas becomes a field of pure energy, not a window onto a visible scene.

The idea that reality extended beyond what the eye could see was groundbreaking. Artists like Larionov began to imagine painting not as a tool for recording surfaces, but as a way to express what lay beyond them—radiation, vibration, electromagnetic fields. In that sense, Red Rayonism is more than abstraction: it’s a response to the expanding scientific knowledge of the early 20th century and a visual experiment with a newly invisible world.

Cubism and Non-Euclidean Geometry (c. 1907–1915)

In the early 20th century, revolutionary changes in mathematics and physics were reshaping how people understood space, time, and perception. The rise of non-Euclidean geometry—mathematical systems in which the familiar rules of perspective and flat space no longer applied—challenged the very foundations of how the world was represented. Around the same time, the idea of a “fourth dimension” was being explored not only in scientific texts but in popular culture and artistic theory.

Cubism, developed by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, reflected this shift. Rather than painting objects from a single, fixed point of view, Cubist artists fractured forms into multiple planes and perspectives. A figure, a guitar, or a glass might be shown from above, below, and straight on—all at once. This wasn’t just stylistic play; it was an attempt to represent the complexity of real experience, where objects unfold in both time and space.

In works like Ma Jolie, the fragmented surface can be read as an echo of a universe no longer bound by linear perspective. The flattening of space, the layering of time, and the simultaneous viewpoints mirror the disintegration of classical notions of geometry. 

Gilberto Zorio – Acidi and Related Works (1960s–70s)

After World War II, the optimism of scientific progress took on a more ambivalent tone. Artists of the 1960s, particularly those linked to the Italian Arte Povera movement, began to explore not only the material world but its processes of decay, transformation, and instability. Gilberto Zorio’s Acidi series is a striking example of this shift—a poetic intersection of chemistry, time, and form.

In these works, Zorio used acid solutions to etch metal or trigger visible chemical reactions. The installations are not fixed: they change, corrode, and evolve over time. Viewers don’t just look at a finished object—they witness an ongoing event, shaped by entropy and natural laws. The work might stain, evaporate, or oxidize, echoing the scientific principle that all systems tend toward disorder.

For Zorio and other Arte Povera artists, the goal was not to represent transformation but to stage it. Their use of unstable materials—fire, water, salt, copper—aligned with a broader postwar skepticism of permanence and control. Acidi is both sculpture and process, a fragile experiment that exposes the energy hidden in matter and the beauty found in irreversible change.

Agnes Denes – Tree Mountain – A Living Time Capsule (1992–96)

By the 1990s, the intersection of art and science had taken on urgent new dimensions. No longer focused only on perception or material experimentation, many artists began to address environmental collapse, sustainability, and the ethics of human intervention in nature. Tree Mountain – A Living Time Capsule by Agnes Denes is one of the most ambitious and forward-looking responses to these concerns.

Planted on a former gravel pit in Finland, the work consists of 11,000 trees arranged in a precise golden ratio spiral, combining mathematical order with ecological regeneration. Each tree was assigned to a caretaker, making the project not only an artwork but a long-term commitment to environmental stewardship. Designed to remain untouched for at least 400 years, the piece is a living, breathing ecosystem—and a time capsule for future generations.

Denes, one of the few women in early Land Art, brought a distinct voice to a movement that had often celebrated monumentality and masculine conquest of landscape. Her work is often read through the lens of ecofeminism, which critiques the exploitation of both women and the Earth through parallel systems of domination. 

The piece reflects a broader shift in postwar art—from abstraction and formal inquiry toward a sense of collective responsibility. In Denes’ work, science becomes a tool not for control but for healing, and art becomes a vehicle for ecological vision and philosophical reflection.

Eduardo Kac – GFP Bunny (2000)

At the turn of the 21st century, the boundary between nature and technology was being fundamentally redefined. The cloning of Dolly the sheep in 1996, the commercialization of genetically modified crops, and breakthroughs in gene editing were not just scientific milestones—they were cultural shocks that sparked heated public debates about the ethics of manipulating life itself. In this context, Eduardo Kac’s GFP Bunny was not an isolated provocation but part of a broader cultural reckoning.

The project centered on Alba, a genetically modified rabbit created by inserting a green fluorescent protein (GFP) gene—originally found in jellyfish—into her DNA. Under ultraviolet light, Alba’s fur glowed bright green. Kac described the work as “transgenic art,” merging the laboratory with the studio and using biotechnology as a medium. 

Public reaction was polarized. Some viewed it as a powerful critique of how biotechnology was racing ahead of ethical consensus. Others accused Kac of exploiting a living creature for attention. At the heart of the controversy were questions already circulating in medical ethics, animal rights discourse, and the emerging field of bioethics: What constitutes life? Who has the right to alter it? And should the tools of science be used for expression, not just function?

Kac maintained that Alba was to be treated as a companion, not an object, and that the work’s true purpose was to generate public dialogue around these unresolved questions. In doing so, GFP Bunny became emblematic of a new kind of art—one that does not merely represent scientific concerns, but participates in them.

Olafur Eliasson – Ice Watch (2014–2019)

In recent decades, environmental urgency has reshaped the dialogue between art and science. As climate data becomes more alarming and abstract, artists like Olafur Eliasson have sought to render it physically, viscerally real. Ice Watch—created in collaboration with geologist Minik Rosing—is one of the most arresting attempts to do just that.

For this project, Eliasson transported large blocks of glacial ice from Greenland to urban public spaces—first Copenhagen, then Paris, then London. Arranged in a clock formation, the ice was left to melt slowly in front of passersby. No special lighting, no protective enclosures. Just ice, time, and gravity.

The concept was simple but devastating. Viewers could touch the ice, hear it crack, watch it shrink hour by hour. The installation didn’t present charts or predictions—it made planetary collapse tactile. As a confrontation between everyday urban life and distant environmental trauma, Ice Watch collapsed the distance between viewer and crisis.

Eliasson, long concerned with the politics of perception, framed the work as a direct translation of climate science into human experience. “We all have feelings about the climate,” he noted, “but those feelings are often abstract. This makes it real.” In that sense, Ice Watch is a powerful evolution in art-science collaboration: no longer exploring optics or theory, but making visible the consequences of inaction.