Vernacular Viewing: Searchable Science and Visual Tools in Early Modern Books
Wednesday, March 4, 6–7:30 pm
Stephanie Leitch
Associate Professor of Art History, Florida State University
Location: Bard Graduate Center, 38 West 86th Street, Lecture Hall
The sixteenth-century printing press codified disciplines of knowledge by distilling available information into visual tools. By presenting data in useable and searchable formats, printers and printmakers frequently rewired the emphasis of older genres. For instance, the pseudo-Aristotelian Book of Secrets was updated and organized into the more marketable genres of complexion literature, physiognomy, and cosmography. This talk argues that the trajectory by which ancient knowledge domains became how-to skills can perhaps best be tracked in a codex produced in southwestern Germany c. 1524, which seamlessly imported images from a variety of printed genres. The manuscript’s compiler merged information from books advertising designs for bridle bits for horses, tools for field surgery, manuals of musical instruments, and artists’ model books on the strength of their visual kinship and the degree to which images were critical to their argumentation. In transposing the images from these printed books, the manuscript aimed to make their data searchable and useful. This talk will shed light on early modern cross-referencing and collecting practices, as well as the role of printed books in shaping the visual horizon of the vernacular viewer.
