The Insect and the Image: Visualizing Nature in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1700
Janice Neri
Abstract
Once considered marginal members of the animal world (at best) or vile and offensive creatures (at worst), insects saw a remarkable uptick in their status during the early Renaissance. This quickened interest was primarily manifested in visual images—in illuminated manuscripts, still life paintings, the decorative arts, embroidery, textile design, and cabinets of curiosity. This book explores the ways in which such imagery defined the insect as a proper subject of study for Europeans of the early modern period. It was not until the sixteenth century that insects began to appear as the sole foc ... More
Once considered marginal members of the animal world (at best) or vile and offensive creatures (at worst), insects saw a remarkable uptick in their status during the early Renaissance. This quickened interest was primarily manifested in visual images—in illuminated manuscripts, still life paintings, the decorative arts, embroidery, textile design, and cabinets of curiosity. This book explores the ways in which such imagery defined the insect as a proper subject of study for Europeans of the early modern period. It was not until the sixteenth century that insects began to appear as the sole focus of paintings and drawings—as isolated objects, or specimens, against a blank background. The artists and other image makers the book discusses deployed this “specimen logic” and so associated themselves with a mode of picturing in which the ability to create a highly detailed image was a sign of artistic talent and a keenly observant eye. This book shows how specimen logic both reflected and advanced a particular understanding of the natural world—an understanding that, in turn, supported the commodification of nature that was central to global trade and commerce during the early modern era.
Keywords:
insects,
imagery,
early modern period,
specimens,
specimen logic,
early Renaissance,
visual images
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2011 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780816667642 |
| Published to Minnesota Scholarship Online: August 2015 |
DOI:10.5749/minnesota/9780816667642.001.0001 |
