The king's animals and the king's books: the illustrations for the Paris Academy's Histoire des animaux

Summary

This essay explores the place of natural philosophy among the patronage projects of Louis XIV, focusing on the Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire naturelle des animaux (or Histoire des animaux) of the 1670s, one of a number of works of natural philosophy to issue from Louis XIV's printing house. Questions particular to the Histoire des animaux include the interaction between text and image, the credibility and authority of images of exotic animals, and the relationship between comparative anatomy and natural history, and between human and animal anatomy. At the same time that the Histoire des animaux contributed to Jean-Baptiste Colbert's management of patronage and of Louis's image, it was a work of natural philosophy, representing the collaborative efforts of the new Paris Academy of Sciences. It examined natural history and comparative anatomy in new ways, and its illustrations broke new ground in their depiction of animals in a natural setting. However, the lavishly formatted books were presentation volumes and did not gain wide circulation until their republication in 1733. Sources consulted include Colbert's manuscript memoires on the royal printers and engravers.

Acknowledgements

My thanks to Nico Bertoloni Meli and the other participants at the Indiana workshop for their comments. Thanks also to my research assistant Tina Schweickert and to Bruce Bradley and his staff at the Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering & Technology for assistance with illustrations. My research for the larger project of which this is part has been supported by a University of California President's Research Fellowship in the Humanities, a Franklin Grant from the American Philosophical Society, and the Horning Endowment in the Humanities at Oregon State University.

Notes

¹Peter Burke, The Fabrication of Louis XIV (New Haven, 1992), 49–50.

²Roger Hahn, The Anatomy of a Scientific Institution: The Paris Academy of Sciences, 1666–1803 (Berkeley, 1971), 4–5, 16–7.

³[Claude Perrault], Extrait d'une lettre écrite à Monsieur de La Chambre, qui contient les observations qui ont esté faites sur un grand poisson disséqué dans la Bibliothèque du Roy, le 24e juin 1667.—Observations qui ont esté faites sur un lion disséqué dans la Bibliothèque du Roy, le 28e juin 1667, tirées d'une lettre écrite à M. de La Chambre (Paris, 1667). This pamphlet was also a quarto, but the illustrations were page-sized, not fold-out. The 1669 publication was: [Claude Perrault], Description anatomique d'vn cameleon, d'vn castor, d'vn dromadaire, d'vn ours, et d'vn gazelle (Paris, 1669).

⁴Simone Balayé, La Bibliothèque Nationale des origines à 1800 (Geneva, 1988), 80–1.

⁵Marianne Grivel, ‘Le Cabinet du Roi’, Revue de la Bibliothèque nationale, 18 (1985), 36–57, at 38. On the status of the graveurs du roi, see Merilyn Savill, ‘The Triple Portrait of Pierre Bernard. Gérard Edelinck and Nicolas de Largillière and the Debate in the French Academy in 1686 over the Status of Engravers’, Melbourne Art Journal, 5 (2001), 41–52.

⁶The memoire, which is unpaginated, is ‘Memoire que Monseigneur a dressé touchant la publication des ouvrages ou Il y a des Planches gravées’, Archives nationales, Paris, MS O¹ 1964², Cotte 2, dated 22 feb. 1670.

⁷[Claude Perrault], Description anatomique d'vn cameleon, (note 3), Preface: ‘Ces cinq Descriptions que j'ay mise dans ce Recueil, sont celles des animaux dont j'ay trouvé les figures gravées. I'espere de donner les autres à mesure que les Graveurs fourniront les planches’.

⁸The four copies I have seen of the two editions have all had similar binding. Grivel (note 5) gives details of the paper and binding.

⁹For the sake of comparison, the Académie's chief anatomist in 1680, Joseph-Guichard Duverney, earned a yearly pension of 1500 livres.

¹⁰Two hundred copies were ordered of the 1676 edition: ‘Memoire de toutes les Planches qui ont esté gravées pour le Roy, depuis l'année 1670 jusqu'au 15 may 1675’, Archives nationales, MS O¹ 1964², Cotte 2.

¹¹[Claude Perrault], Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire naturelle des animaux (Paris, 1676), ‘Preface’, not paginated. Henceforth cited as Histoire des animaux.

¹²E.T. Hamy, ‘The Royal Menagerie of France and the National Menagerie established on the 14^th of Brumaire of the Year II (November 4, 1793)’, Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution (Washington, DC, 1898), 507–17, at 511.

¹³Wilma George, ‘Sources and Background to Discoveries of New Animals in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, History of Science, 18 (1980), 79–104; Eric Baratay and Elisabeth Hardouin-Fugier, Zoo: A History of Zoological Gardens in the West, trans. Oliver Welsh (London, 2002), 17–28.

¹⁴Gustave Loisel, Histoire des menageries, de l'Antiquité de nos jours, 3 vol. (Paris, 1912), 2, 96–7.

¹⁵Loisel (note 14), 103 and ch. 7, passim; Baratay and Hardouin-Fugier (note 12), 35–6, 39. On the gift economy and early modern science, see Paula Findlen, ‘The Economy of Scientific Exchange in Early Modern Italy’, and William Eamon, ‘Court, Academy, and Printing House: Patronage and Scientific Careers in Late Renaissance Italy’, in Patronage and Institutions, edited by Bruce T. Moran (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1991), 5–24 and 25–50. It is to be noted, however, that both these articles refer to sixteenth-century Italy, whose circumstances do not directly map onto seventeenth-century France; see also Roland Mousnier, L'age d'or du mécénat (1598–1661) (Paris, 1985).

¹⁶ Histoire des animaux (note 11), ‘Avertissement’ (not paginated).

¹⁷[Perrault], Extrait d'une lettre (note 2); oddly, Fontenelle's Histoire of the Academy ignores these, claiming the first dissection was of a beaver in 1668: Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, Histoire de l'Académie Royale des Sciences, 1666–1699, vol. 1 (Paris, 1733), 52.

¹⁸On the making of the image of Louis, see Burke, Fabrication (note 1); Jean-Marie Apostolidès, Le roi-machine. Spectacle et politique au temps de Louis XIV (Paris, 1981).

¹⁹See Anita Guerrini, ‘The “Virtual Menagerie”: The Histoire des animaux project’, Configurations, 14 (2006), 29–41.

²⁰Aurélia Gaillard, ‘Bestiaire réel, bestiaire enchanté: les animaux à Versailles sous Louis XIV’, in L'animal au XVII ^e siècle, edited by Charles Mazouer (Tübingen, 2003), 185–98.

²¹Burke (note 1), 3, 28, 35; K. Corey Keeble, ‘The sincerest form of flattery. 17th-century French etchings of the battles of Alexander the Great’, Rotunda. The Bulletin of the Royal Ontario Museum Toronto, 16 (1983), 30–5.

²²For further discussion of Perrault's method, see Anita Guerrini, The Courtiers’ Anatomists: Animals and Humans in Louis XIV's Paris, chapter 1 (forthcoming).

²³John Jowett, ‘For many of your companies: Middleton's early readers’, in Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, edited by Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino (New York, 2007) 286–327, at 290.

²⁴British Library Online Gallery, ‘Hortus Eystettensis’ http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/landprint/hortus/index.html, accessed 10 September 2009. There was also a black-and-white version which sold originally for 35 florins. For an overview of the role of images in the era of the Scientific Revolution, see Renzo Baldasso, ‘The Role of Visual Representation in the Scientific Revolution: a Historiographic Inquiry’, Centaurus, 48 (2006), 69–88.

²⁵[Claude Perrault], Memoir's [sic] for a Natural History of Animals. Containing the Anatomical Descriptions of Several Creatures dissected by the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris. Englished by Alexander Pitfeild (London, 1688). See also Roger Chartier, The Order of Books, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Stanford, 2004), 14–7.

²⁶On these issues see Guerrini, Courtiers’ Anatomists (note 22) and Gianna Pomata, ‘Praxis Historialis: The Uses of Historia in Early Modern Medicine’, in Historia: Empiricism and Erudition in Early Modern Europe, edited by Gianna Pomata and Nancy G. Siraisi (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2005), 105–46.

²⁷Hahn (note 2), 15.

²⁸On the definition of comparative anatomy, see F.J. Cole, A History of Comparative Anatomy from Aristotle to the Eighteenth Century (1949, rpt. New York, 1975).

²⁹ Histoire des animaux (note 15), ‘Avertissement’: ‘qu'il étoit important de marquer autant qu'il seroit possible les differences & les convenances qui se rencontrent souvent dans les Animaux d'une mesme espece’.

³⁰ Histoire des animaux (note 15), ‘Preface’, not paginated. The preface in the 1671 and 1676 editions are identical. The order of dissection can be discerned via the manuscript Procès verbaux of the Paris Academy, contained in the Archives, Académie des sciences, Paris.

³¹Accounts of comparative anatomy include Cole, History of Comparative Anatomy (note 28); Howard Adelmann, Marcello Malpighi and the Evolution of Embryology, 5 vol. (Ithaca, NY, 1966); M.D. Grmek, La première revolution biologique (Paris, 1990); Luigi Belloni, ‘Severino als Vorläufer Malpighis’, Nova acta Leopoldina, n.s. 27 (1963), 213–24.

³² Histoire des animaux (note 11), ‘Preface’: ‘Dans la Description des Animaux rares, & qui viennent des Païs estrangers, nous avons apporté vn grand soin à bien dépeindre leur forme exterieure, & à marquer la grandeur & la proportion de toutes les parties qui se voient sans dissection; parce que ce sont des choses presque aussi peu connües que tout ce qui est enfermé au dedans’.

³³ Dictionnaire de l'Académie française (Paris, 1694), s.v. dresser. Dossiers for Perrault and for the Histoire des animaux in Archives, Académie des sciences include drafts in Perrault's hand. On the Academy's collaborative ideal, see particularly Alice Stroup, A Company of Scientists (Berkeley, 1990).

³⁴ Histoire des animaux (note 11), ‘Preface’: ‘Ce que nos Memoires ont de plus considérable, est ce témoignage irreprochable dvne verité certaine & reconnuë … nos Memoires, qui ne contiennent point de faits qui n'aient esté verifies par toute vne Compagnie, compose de gens qui ont des yeux pour voir ces sortes de choses, autrement que la plupart du reste du monde, de mesme qu'ils ont des mains pour les chercher avec plus de dexterité & de succes’.

³⁵Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Objectivity (New York, 2007), ch. 2, passim. Daston made a similar argument in Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature (New York, 1998), chapter 9, passim. See also Nancy Anderson, ‘Eye and Image: Looking at a Visual Studies of Science’, Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences, 39 (2009), 115–25.

³⁶Georges-Louis leClerc, Comte de Buffon, Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière, avec la description du Cabinet du Roy, vol. 1 (Paris, 1749), ‘Premier discours’, 1–62.

³⁷[Claude Perrault], Les dix livres d'architecture de Vitruve, Corrigez et traduits nouvellement en François, avec des notes et des figures (Paris, 1673), 12–3. On the trompe l'oeil technique, see Thomas Da Costa Kaufmann, The Mastery of Nature. Aspects of Art, Science, and Humanism in the Renaissance (Princeton, 1991), ch. 1, pp. 11–48.

³⁸Brian W. Ogilvie, The Science of Describing (Chicago, 2006), 175; Nancy G. Siraisi, ‘Vesalius and Human Diversity in De humani corporis fabrica’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 57 (1994), 60–88, at 60 n.3.

³⁹The English edition (above n. 25) was a folio, but not an elephant folio.

⁴⁰William West, Theatres and Encyclopedias in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2002), 102–7.

⁴¹Madeleine Pinault Sørensen, ‘Les animaux du roi: De Pieter Boel aux dessinateurs de l'Académie Royale des Sciences’, in L'animal au XVII ^e siècle, edited by Charles Mazouer (Tübingen, 2003), 159–83.

⁴² Histoire des animaux (note 11), ‘Preface’: ‘parce que l'importance en ceci n'est pas tant de bien representer ce que l'on voit, que de bien voir comme il faut ce que l'on veut representer’.

⁴³ Histoire des animaux (note 11), 88.

⁴⁴William B. Ashworth jr., ‘Marcus Gheeraerts and the Aesopic Connection in Seventeenth-Century Scientific Illustration’, Art Journal, 44 (1984), 132–8, at 133–7. Ashworth does not mention the Histoire des animaux.

⁴⁵On the relationship between artistic genre and scientific illustration see James Elkins, ‘Art History and Images that are not Art’, Art Bulletin, 77 (1995), 553–71.

⁴⁶Galen, On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body, trans. Margaret Tallmadge May, 2 vols (Ithaca, NY, 1968), vol. 1, 69. Galen devotes the entire first book of this work to the hand.

⁴⁷ Histoire des animaux (note 11), 120 : ‘La fig. d'en bas fait voir comment les Mains & les Pieds du Singe sont différent des Pieds & des Mains de l'Homme’; 126 : ‘Les Muscles de l'Os Hyoïde, de la Langue, du Larynx, & du Pharynx, qui servent la plupart à articuler la parole, estoit entièrement semblables à ceux de l'Homme, & beaucoup plus de ceux de la Main … selon ces Philosophes les Singes devroient parler, puis qu'ils ont les instruments necessaires à la parole’. The ‘philosophes’ include Anaxagoras, Aristotle, and Galen; Perrault does not mention Descartes.

⁴⁸ Histoire des animaux (note 11), 29.

⁴⁹ Histoire des animaux (note 11), 112–3, 131.

⁵⁰S.L. Star and J.R. Griesemer, ‘Institutional Ecology, “Translations”, and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907–1939’, Social Studies of Science, 19 (1989), 387–420; Roger Chartier, The Cultural Uses of Print in Early Modern France, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Princeton, 1987).

⁵¹ Memoires de l'Académie Royale des Sciences, depuis 1666 jusqu’à 1699. Tome III Premiere partie (Paris, 1733), ‘Avertissement des Libraires’, not paginated; Troisieme partie (Paris, 1734), ‘Avertissement’, (not paginated). The Dutch edition is : Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire naturelle des animaux et des plantes per Messieurs de L'Academie Roiale des Sciences (La Haye, 1731), 2 vol. (of 5).