Artists, natural philosophers, and architects in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century northern Europe regarded images and image-making as sources of knowledge. Diverse practitioners of art, architecture, and natural philosophy – from artists Albrecht Dürer and Martin Schongauer to medical practitioner Walther Hermann Ryff and natural historian Conrad Gessner – used images to revive Vitruvius’s vision of architecture as both art and science, for instance in collaborating to complete the Strasbourg Astronomical Clock in 1574. Architectural ornament came to act as a model for visualizing nature’s regular forms and systems, playing a vital role in the revival of such Vitruvian interdisciplinarity. That process, in turn, prompted early modern architects and designers of architectural ornament to combine artistic and scientific techniques of visual research, a phenomenon exemplified in Dietterlin’s Architectura treatise.