Images and Institutions. The Visual Culture of Scientific Societies in the Age of Baroque

Matthijs Jonker, Katherine Reinhart (eds). Pages: xx + 386 p.Illustrations:4 b/w, 118 col. Language(s):English. Publication Year:2026. Brepols. ISBN: 978-1-915487-20-9. Hardback - Summary One of the most important developments in the history of science from the early seventeenth until the late eighteenth century was the foundation of institutions for collaborative research and the publication of knowledge, such as the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome (1603), the Royal Society in London (1660), the Académie Royale des Sciences in Paris (1666), and the Scientific Academy of St Petersburg (1725). Within these institutions, knowledge was not only acquired and disseminated orally and textually, but also visually. From drawings, which circulated in society meetings to the printed plates in their published books, images across all media were vital to the developing practices of early modern science. Images and Institutions provides the first broad-range consideration of the use of images and visual practices within these knowledge-producing institutions from a comparative perspective. Spanning two hundred years, fifteen institutions, and large parts of Europe and America, the articles in this volume reveal the widespread importance of images and visual practices in the early days of collaborative science. Collectively these essays show that early modern scientific institutions in different regions used very similar visual strategies, relying on images in the conduct and communication of their work. Moreover, these essays reveal that various institutional members, officials, and practitioners were debating, advocating, and arguing for how images should be made, regulated, and deployed. By combining approaches from history, art history and visual studies with a wide geographical point of view and long temporal framework, the volume provides new insight into the critical role of visual practices within pre-modern scientific societies. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction (Matthijs Jonker and Katherine Reinhart) Part I. Images and Authority Ut pictura manifestat: The Accademia dei Lincei and the Reliability of Images (Irene Baldriga) Understanding the Exotic: The Accademia dei Lincei’s Images for the Tesoro messicano (Matthijs Jonker) Science and Statecraft: On the Epistemic and Political Functions of Images in the Académie Royale des Sciences (Katherine Reinhart) Visual Culture in the Experimental Reports of the Accademia del Cimento, ca 1657-62 (Stefano Gulizia) Individual Images and Collective Empiricism: Observations in the Miscellanea curiosa of the Leopoldina (Simon Rebohm) Author or Editor? Image-making in the Society of Physicians in London (1754-1784) (Alicia Hughes) Part II. Artists and Naturalists Tasteful Science and Networks of Knowledge at the Jardin du Roi: Madeleine Françoise Basseporte’s Shell Paintings on Vellum (1747-68) (Carole Nataf) On the Use of Drawing in Eighteenth-Century Botanical Expeditions for the Development of Hispanic America (Juan Ricardo Rey Márquez) The Supervision of Draughtsmen and Printmakers in the Early Académie Royale des Sciences (Antoine Gallay) The Arts in the Academy of Sciences of St Petersburg (Bert van de Roemer) Institutional Interdependencies: The Visual Culture of the Collegium illustre Carolinum (Sophie-Luise Mävers-Persch) Epistemic Emblems: Ottavio Scarlattini and the Network of the Accademia dei Gelati in Bologna (Immacolata Iaccarino) Part III. Images and Debates Two Previously Unidentified States of Mattheus Greuter’s Melissographia (1625) and the Interdynamics of the Early Accademia dei Lincei (Ruth Sargent Noyes) With Compass and Ruler: Drawing Echoes for the L’Académie Royale des Sciences, Belles-Lettres et Arts in Bordeaux (Leendert Van der Miesen) Images, Mechanics & Institutions: The Debate on Ancient Triremes within Late Seventeenth-Century Academies in Rome (Federica Favino) Microscopy and the Signatures of Plants in Early Royal Society of London (Xinyi Wen).…