Reassessing Epistemic Images in the Early Modern World

This edited collection of papers explores from an interdisciplinary perspective the role of images and objects in early modern knowledge-making practices with an emphasis on mapping methodological approaches against printed pictures and things. The volume brings together work across diverse printed images, objects, and materials produced c. 1500-1700, as well as well as works in the ambit of early modern print culture, to reframe a comparative history of the rise of the 'epistemic imprint' as a new visual genre at the onset of the scientific revolution. The book includes contributions from the perspective of international scholars and museum professionals drawing on methodologies from a range of fields.

Ruth Sargent Noyes is Marie Sklodowska-Curie EU Senior Research Fellow in Art History at the National Museum of Denmark. Author of a number of books and articles, she is a 2014 Fellow of the American Academy in Rome and recipient of a number of research grants and awards. Ralph Dekoninck is professor of early modern art history at the Université catholique de Louvain, co-director of the Centre for Early Modern Cultural Analysis (GEMCA) and member of the Royal Academy of Belgium. His research focuses on early modern image theories and practices, specifically in their relation to spirituality. Dániel Margócsy is professor in the history of science, technology and medicine at the University of Cambridge. Mark Somos holds the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft's Heisenberg position at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, where he directs the Grotius Census Project. He published five books and over 50 scholarly articles, and co-edits Grotiana and the History of European Political and Constitutional Thought book series. Stephen N. Joffe is visiting professor in history of medicine at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles and esteemed professor of surgery and medicine at University of Cincinnati Medical Center. Angela Campbell is an independent scholar and the Book and Paper Conservator/Project Inspector for the Northeast Region of the National Park Service. She received her Master's, C.A.S. from Buffalo State College in 2009. Prior to joining NPS, Angela was an Assistant Paper Conservator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Jolien Van den Bossche (MA, Painting Restoration) was project assistant within the typographical collections of the Museum Plantin-Moretus in Antwerp, Belgium. She is currently advising curator at the Mercatormuseum in Sint-Niklaas. Gwendoline de Mûelenaere is a postdoctoral researcher in history of art at Ghent University. Her current project focuses on illustrated lecture notebooks from the Old University of Louvain. Her book Early Modern Thesis Prints in the Southern Netherlands was published by Brill in 2022. Julia Ellinghaus is art historian and research assistant at the Interdisciplinary Center for Science and Technology Studies (IZWT) at Wuppertal University. Volker Remmert is professor in the history of science at Wuppertal University and director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Science and Technology Studies (IZWT). Britta-Juliane Kruse, PD Dr. (Free University of Berlin), Medievalist, Literary and Art historian in the research department of the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel, analyzes the text-image tradition in the Liber Quodlibetarius, with emphasis on the history of the codex, chiromancy, and the inscriptions of the images. Stephanie Leitch, associate professor of Art History at Florida State University, investigates how images in early printed books coached visual acuity and gave rise to new disciplinary practices by cuing observation and calibrating sightings. Anneke de Bont is a PhD candidate in the History of Art at the University of Cambridge where she specializes in early modern European print culture. Her dissertation explores interdisciplinarity in Christian printed visualiza_x0002_tions of order from early modern Northern Europe through the framework of the Christian epistemic image. Tawrin Baker is a historian of early modern science, natural philosophy, and mathematics. He is a visiting assistant professor in the History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Notre Dame. Emily Monty received her PhD in the History of Art and Architecture at Brown University (2021). Currently, she is the Fagel Collection Visiting Research Fellow at Trinity College Dublin. Her research has been supported by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation and the Fulbright Program among others. Stephanie Porras is associate professor of Art History at Tulane University. The author of Pieter Bruegel's Historical Imagination (2016), and Art of the Northern Renaissance (2018), her forthcoming book, The First Viral Images, considers the role artworks played in early modern globalization.

1. Prologue, For a Metaphorology of Engraving: from Epistemic Images to an Imaged Epistemology (Ralph Dekoninck), 2. Introduction,Pittura filosofica: Ink on Paper, Bitumen on Iron, and the Discursive Field of Early Modern Epistemic Images (Ruth Sargent Noyes), Part 1: Approaches to print matrices, 3. The Well-Ordered Print Shop: Sequencing the Woodblocks in the 1543 and 1555 Editions of De humani corporis Fabrica Daniel Margocsy, Mark Somos, and Stephen Joffe, 4. Meticulous Matrices: Building a Chronology of Albrecht Dürer's MeistersticheImpressions through the Analysis and Documentation of Microscopic Scratches in his Engraved Plates (Angela Campbell), 5. Digital resuscitation of the Officina Plantiniana's woodblock collection: goals, approaches and new technologies (Jolien Van den Bossche), Part 2: Imprints as instruments, 6. The Art of Learning: The Role of Prints in Early Modern Education in the Southern Netherlands (Gwendoline de Mûelenaere), 7. 'Ideas in brass'. Imagery on Early Modern Scientific Instruments: Types and Messages (Julia Ellinghaus and Volker Remmert), 8. Visual Tools and Searchable Science in Early Modern Books ( Britta-Juliane Kruse and Stephanie Leitch), Part 3: Imprint, knowledge and affect, 9. The hydraulics of Jacobus Meilingius's Figurata Meditatio Microcosmi (1629) (Anneke de Bont), 10. Images of the Eye from Vesalius to Fabricius ab Aquapendente: The Rise of Metrical Representation in Anatomical Diagrams and the Cross-Fertilization of Visual Traditions (Tawrin Baker), 11. Illustrating the Vernacular Body: Juan Valverde de Amusco and the Art of Embodied Anatomy (Emily Monty), 12. Epilogue, Forgetting How to See (Stephanie Porras).