Picturing Knowledge: Scientific Images in Printed Books (1450–1800)

Science on the Page

Science on the Page

Jessica Fan, Charlotte Fowler, Sabrina Niu, and Dominic Pak

Visual aids in written materials have a long history of supplementing written text to convey more comprehensive ideas to the minds of readers. The production methods for these images, however, have gone through several iterations over the centuries. Before the digital image there was the printed image, first created using woodcuts and later using engravings. Before the printed image, there were hand-drawn and hand-illustrated images in manuscripts. Each process reflects not only the evolution of printing technology over time, but also the evolution of the role of the image in books. The ornate hand-illustrated images of the manuscript era before print reflect the role of illustrated books as valuable status symbols. Each book had to be created individually, making it less easily acquired than later mass printed books. The price of books was further increased by their intricate designs, vibrant colors, and fine gold detailing. Illustrated books of this period were limited in both audience and topic. Most people would not have had the funds to pay for these skill-intensive manuscripts. Similarly, only individuals or institutions with considerable wealth could afford to commission or purchase multiple copies of books. After the introduction of the printing press in Europe ca. 1450, books—with and without printed images—became cheaper and easier to produce. Thanks to the printing methods outlined below, books with images and figures could be mass produced, and these images became tools that scholars used to produce and communicate knowledge.
Case 1: The Advent of the European Printed Image

The advent of the printing press (ca. 1450) allowed for books with images to be produced much faster and more cheaply than was previously possible. Before the printing press, images in manuscript books were painted by hand, requiring considerable time and cost. Early printed images were produced using two different techniques: woodcuts and copperplate engravings. With these cheaper options available, books with images became more available to the public and covered a wider range of topics. (Charlotte Fowler)

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“Funeral Mass,” illuminated miniature in Book of Hours (Northern France and/or Bruges, 1460–70)
Woodblock of ampeloprasum by Georgio Liberale and Wolfgang Meyerpeck for Pietro Mattioli, Commentarii in sex libros Pedacii Dioscoridis des medica materia (Prague, 1562)
Rolling press, in Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, Recueil de planches . . . Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et métiers (Paris, 1762)
By 1500, printing presses throughout Europe were producing illustrated books. In the sixteenth century, there were two main technologies for printing images: woodblocks and incised copper plates. Prints from woodblocks are made using a relief technique. After an image is drawn into a piece of wood, carvers cut away the wood around the design. When the woodblock is inked, the relief design impresses the ink onto the paper to produce a printed image.[1] Woodblocks could be set together with metal type to print both image and text simultaneously, with a single pass through the press. This made it relatively simple to produce pages that combined text with woodcut images. The size of a woodblock would be designed to complement textual information and page layouts. A different technology, copperplate engraving, is an intaglio technique. An artist would create incisions on metal plates (most commonly copper) using a burin; the parts of the plate that are sunken or incised form the final design that is printed on paper.[2] The practice of engraving allowed artists more control over the lines in the images they designed. Compared to woodcuts, engravings allowed for more detailed illustrations with fine lines. However, engravings could not be printed together with text in the same press; they required a different machine, the roller press, and had to be printed separately. For that reason, engravings were often printed separately from text, on a different press and on a different page. They often were larger in size than woodcuts.[3] Engravings added significantly to the financial cost of printing, and often comprised the most expensive portion in the entire process. Authors, publishers, and printers had to make concessions based on the technical and financial considerations related to these two methods, and the complexities of printing meant that each image had to be carefully designed and placed with intent and purpose. Nonetheless, these early images supported new epistemologies and helped to communicate information that transformed early European societies.

Even though these new image-printing technologies could reveal the intricate details of objects and facilitate the dissemination of knowledge, the main approach to understanding the surrounding world was not through images for scholars in the sixteenth century. At the time, European natural historians widely adopted the humanistic approach to knowledge through philology, or the study of language and its historical development. They emphasized the analysis of ancient classical (Greek and Roman) texts to make sense of the world and humanity’s place in it. During the time, some scholars in the field, such as German physician and botanist Leonhart Fuchs, advocated for the idea of autopsia—seeing for oneself—to attain precise knowledge about nature.[4] This emphasis on observation, nevertheless, did not mean that books were to be disregarded altogether. Fuchs himself published a profusely illustrated book on plants, De Historia Stirpium (Basel, 1542), and natural history was still a discipline largely built upon bibliographical resources rather than physical observation. For example, in his study of animals, the Swiss scholar Conrad Gessner focused on philology and privileged ancient writings about animals in his Historiae animalium (Zurich, 1551–87). Gessner claimed there was a close interconnection between human culture and nature. He dedicated the largest section of his book to associations—ways in which animals and their attributes were interpreted and related to human language, literature, and art.[5] People’s interest in animals’ symbolic meanings was also evident in emblems, a popular genre at the time that combined a symbolic image, a motto, and a poem. When scholars explored insects in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, many works focused on insects with rich cultural and symbolic meanings such as bees and butterflies. Nonetheless, these works on natural history, unlike earlier works, were not solely comprised of textual descriptions but rather a combination of text and images. This change gained momentum as image-printing technology advanced and an increasing number of scholars recognized the ability of images to enhance knowledge and add authority to printed texts.
Case 2: The Evolution of Scientific Texts and Images

In the 1500s and 1600s, it became increasingly common for scientific books to include images. Scholars used pictures to share information, communicate their observations, and to add authority and credibility to their arguments. The visual culture of early modern science emphasized observation involved not only print technologies but also new instruments such as the telescope and the microscope. Scientific books from this period show the various approaches that scholars took, among them analysis of ancient classical texts, first-hand experience, and the interpretation of human cultures’ relationships to nature and the divine. (Sabrina Niu)

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Owl, in Conrad Gessner, Historiae Animalium (Zurich, 1551–1587)
Insect transformation in Suriname, in Maria Sibylla Merian, Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium (Amsterdam, 1705)
“Of a louse,” in Robert Hooke, Micrographia: or, Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses (London, 1665)
The desire to learn more about the world inspired the practice of using both images and text to convey knowledge about the world and its relationship to people. The effectiveness of this method of communication led to the widespread use of images within the diverse and evolving world of print. One of the most notable advancements, made not only within science, but print and images as well, was that of the microscope. Robert Hooke’s book of microscopic observations, Micrographia: or, Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses (London, 1665), was a landmark in the use of images and copperplate engravings. Microscopic images provided a new method allowing people to observe a world previously unknown to them. In turn, illustration and print allowed for the dissemination of this new type of knowledge. With numerous new images in print, it was difficult to distinguish between the methodologies and tools that produced credible knowledge. One way of distinguishing between credible and noncredible images related to their techniques of production—specifically the techniques of counterfeit and autopsia.[6] Counterfeit images were produced using second-hand knowledge, as opposed to autopsia which was used to create illustrations from direct observation. Additionally, the idea of pictura absolutissima, an exact copy of a subject, was often compared to the use of generalized images that were considered less authoritative.[7] The evolution of printing techniques during the early modern period is a necessary component for understanding the historical development of the relationships between texts and images. The changes in this relationship can be observed in the growth of print as a form of humanistic inquiry and the communication of knowledge for so many people. It is by studying these images and the tools used to create and mass produce them that we are able to better understand the diverse ways in which humans have interacted with the world around them.
 

[1] Sachiko Kusukawa, Picturing the Book of Nature: Image, Text, and Argument in Sixteenth-Century Human Anatomy and Medical Botany (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 29–30.

[2] Kusukawa, Picturing the Book of Nature, 29.

[3] Kusukawa, Picturing the Book of Nature, 32.

[4] Kusukawa, Picturing the Book of Nature, 107.

[5] William B. Ashworth, “Emblematic Natural History of the Renaissance,” in Nicholas Jardine and James Secord (eds.), Cultures of Natural History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 17–37.

[6] Kusukawa, Picturing the Book of Nature, 127–129.

[7] Kusukawa, Picturing the Book of Nature, 119.

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