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ABSTRACT
This article responds to Quentin Skinner’s chapter ‘Hobbes and the Humanist Frontispiece’ in his book From Humanism to Hobbes: Studies in Rhetoric and Politics by raising methodological questions concerning meaning and understanding in the study of intellectual history. It focuses on three methodological issues pertaining to the examination of visual contexts in intellectual history, and specifically pertaining to the study of early modern European print culture. First, it raises the question of how one should parse instances of co-authorship – especially those in which one of the purported authors of a print is also responsible for producing a related text. When multiple hands are involved in the making of an image that accompanies a written text authored by one of these hands, how does this impact the ways in which we should describe, explain, and interpret the image under consideration? Second, the article raises questions concerning the practice of editing early modern prints for interpretive purposes. It asks whether and when historians working today should and should not try to look beyond the lines printed on the page. Third, it re-examines the slippery problem of influence and what the conditions of influence are when dealing with political iconography.
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Notes
1 I thank Quentin Skinner for inviting me to participate in the 2018 Queen Mary Annual Symposium in the Humanities and Social Sciences. I am grateful to Anthony Ossa-Richardson and Daniel Garber for reading this article. Millum, “Professor Quentin Skinner”.
2 Thomas, “Politics: Looking for Liberty”.
3 Skinner acknowledges a comparable methodological commitment in Greene, “Objectives and Methods in Intellectual History,” 58–74. He also stresses his debt to Collingwood, An Autobiography; and Dunn, Political Obligation in its Historical Context, 13–28. See Skinner, Visions of Politics: Volume I, 87.
4 Skinner, Visions, 1: 87. For the original essay, see Skinner, “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas,” 3–53.
5 Skinner cites Turner, “‘Contextualism’ and the Interpretation,” 273–91; Boucher, Texts in Contexts; Gunn, “After Sabine, After Lovejoy,” 1–45; Zuckert, “Appropriation and Understanding in the History of Political Philosophy,” 403–24; Spitz, “Comment lire les textes politiques du passé?” 133–45; Arnold, Thoughts and Deeds, 15–21; King, “Historical Contextualism,” 209–33; and Bevir, “Taking Holism Seriously,” 187–95.
6 Skinner, Visions, 1: 87.
7 Tully, “Overview,” 3–6 (4).
8 Austin, How To Do Things with Words. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, para. 546, p. 146.
9 Ruskin, The Works of … , 456.
10 My emphasis on the logocentrism of intellectual history is not novel. See, for instance, Roy Porter’s characterisation of ‘the vast bulk of historians’ as ‘iconoclasts’ in a review article from 1988. He writes, ‘Our training encourages us to assume the primacy of written records in terms both of reliability and representativeness. And we ourselves prolong the primacy of print, for our most serious monographs are rarely “illustrated” (the very term suggests mere decorativeness). And when we do resort to pictures, publishers help by keeping the illustrations at a safe, non-contaminating distance from the chaste body of the text. Insert too much visual evidence, and we commit the solecism of producing a “coffee-table” book.’ Porter, “Review Article: Seeing the Past,” 186–205 (188). Justin Champion also notes the neglect of pictorial sources: “Decoding the Leviathan,” 255–75 (257). Relevant as well is Annabel Brett’s discussion of fields of intellectual history focused on representations and practices: Brett, “What is Intellectual History Now?” 124–7. On the emphasis on word in intellectual history and the articulation of thoughts in aural or visual media, see also Milam and Maddox, “Visual and Aural Intellectual Histories: An Introduction,” 285–98.
11 See, for instance, Skinner’s discussions of visual representations in Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes; Hobbes and Republican Liberty; and “Ambrogio Lorenzetti and the Portrayal,” 39–117. For other path-breaking studies that stress the role of the visual and the material in the generation and transmission of intellectual culture, see Reeves, Painting the Heavens; Bredekamp, Stratégies visuelles de Thomas Hobbes; Freedberg, The Eye of the Lynx; Smith, The Body of the Artisan; and Feingold, The Newtonian Moment. See also my own work on visual representations and philosophy in early modern Europe: Berger, Art of Philosophy.
12 Skinner, Humanism to Hobbes, chapter 10.
13 See Horst Bredekamp’s discussion of the attribution of the frontispiece on historical, stylistic, and pattern-related grounds to Bosse in collaboration with Hobbes: Stratégies visuelles, 34–47.
14 Some of the prominent writings on the Leviathan frontispiece include Bredekamp, Stratégies visuelles; Malcolm, Aspects of Hobbes, 200–33; Corbett and Lightbown, The Comely Frontispiece, 218–30; Brandt, “Das Titelblatt des Leviathan,” 13–41; Pye, “The Sovereign, the Theatre, and the Kingdome of Darknesse,” 84–106; Prokhovnik, Rhetoric and Philosophy in Hobbes’s Leviathan, 130–48; and Champion, “Decoding the Leviathan,” 255–75. See also Berger, Art of Philosophy, 187–209.
15 Skinner, Humanism to Hobbes, 222–70.
16 Skinner, “Motives, Intentions, and the Interpretation of Texts,” 393–408 (393).
17 On this engraving see, Berger, Art of Philosophy, 75–113; and Berger, “Martin Meurisse’s Garden of Logic,” 203–49. For sources on illustrated thesis prints, see Gieben, “Iconografia antoniana in due fogli di tesi del Museo Francescano di Roma,” 273–98 (273–74 n. 2); and Rice, “Jesuit Thesis Prints,” 148–69, 165 n. 1.
18 Meurisse, Artificiosa totius logices descriptio: ‘Fr. M. Meurisse Logicorum regens licentia superiorum excudi iussit et in lucem emisit.’
19 Meurisse, Descriptio: ‘L. Gaultier incidit’.
20 In the dedication, which is appended to the top of the broadside, Meurisse praises de Thou. Meurisse, Descriptio: ‘Illustriss[imo] et nobiliss[imo] viro … F[rater] M[artinus] Meurisse S[alutat] Tibi Jacobe Thuane Litterarum et litteratorum deunculo … Tibi nostri Seraphici non modo Lutetiae sed et totius Galliae ordinis patrono appendimus hanc Philosophici certaminis tabulam. suscipe modo et si cordi est me meosque in hoc Franciscano tuo Caenobio ama fove tuere. vale.’ (‘Brother Martin Meurisse greets the most illustrious and most noble man … For you, Jacques-Auguste de Thou, a minor deity of literature and literateurs … for you patron of our Seraphic order, not only in Paris, but in the whole of France, we append this picture of philosophical debate. Take [it] up now and if you wish, love, cherish, [and] protect me and my colleagues in this your Franciscan brotherhood. Fare Well.’) Typically a specialist in lettering engraved writing onto illustrated broadsides: Meyer, L’illustration des thèses à Paris dans la seconde moitié du XVIIe siècle, 26.
21 Meurisse, Descriptio: ‘Parisiis apud Io. Messager via Iacobea, sub signo spei’.
22 Skinner, Humanism to Hobbes, 232.
23 Ibid., 247.
24 Berger, Art of Philosophy, 188.
25 Skinner, Humanism to Hobbes, 250.
26 Ibid., 251.
27 Ibid., 251.
28 Ibid., 257.
29 Berger, Art of Philosophy, 190.
30 Skinner, Humanism to Hobbes, 271.
31 Berger, Art of Philosophy, 192.
32 Skinner, “Meaning and Understanding,” 48–9.
33 Skinner, Humanism to Hobbes, 290. See Brandt, “Das Titelblatt,” 13–41.
34 Skinner, Humanism to Hobbes, 290–3.
35 Ibid., 292 and 300.
36 Bredekamp ascribes this 1652 frontispiece to Bosse, although one might question Bosse’s involvement in its production on stylistic grounds. Bredekamp, Stratégies visuelles, 13.
37 Ibid., 12–14.
38 Skinner, Visions, 1: 79.
39 Ibid., 1: 67, 69, and 70.
40 Skinner, “Meaning and Understanding”, 21. Emphasis in original.
41 Berger, Art of Philosophy, 85.
42 On the reading of plural images, see ibid., 112.
43 Skinner, Humanism to Hobbes, 290.
44 Ibid., 294, 296–9.
45 Ibid., 290 and 292. Urquhart, The trissotetras, sig, a, 1v-2r.
46 de Bovelles, Que hoc volumine continentur, 189r: ‘Ex his manifestum est trigoni ysopleuri potentiam esse trinam … . Trinus est: tria potest. Ut trinitatis insignitus nomine: ita et trium fecundus est triaque gignit.’ Cited and translated by Zorach, The Passionate Triangle, 110. See also Sanders, “Charles de Bovelles’s Treatise,” 513–66.
47 Skinner, “Meaning and Understanding,” 26.
48 Skinner, Visions, 1: 75–5.
49 For an analysis of this engraving, see Berger, “Martin Meurisse’s Theater of Natural Philosophy,” 269–93.
50 Berger, Art of Philosophy, 196.
51 Ibid., 200.
52 On this print, see Berger, “Philander Colutius and the Visualisation of Natural Philosophy,” 33–44.
53 For a discussion of this detail, see Berger, Art of Philosophy, 200–1.
54 This passage is drawn from ibid., 202–3.
55 Ibid., 202.
56 Ibid., 202.
57 Ibid., 203.
58 Ibid., 206.
59 It is possible that Hobbes or Bosse came into contact with the Synopsis. The engraving was issued in at least four editions. For the editions, see ibid., appendix 1. Moreover, during the summer of 1615 when the disputations that made use of the Synopsis took place in Paris, Hobbes was in the city together with William Cavendish (c. 1590–1628). In addition, Bosse, who worked with Jean Messager − the Synopsis’s publisher − on a number of works, could have come into contact with the image in his publisher’s shop. See ibid., 289 n. 88.
60 Baxandall, Patterns of Intention, 58–62.
61 Ibid., 58–9.
62 Skinner, Humanism to Hobbes, 278.
63 Ibid., 278 n. 150.
64 Ibid., 278 n. 150.
65 Berger, Art of Philosophy, 206.
66 Skinner, Humanism to Hobbes, 311–12.
67 Ibid., 312–15.
68 Malcolm, Aspects, 217–33. Bredekamp, “Thomas Hobbes’s Visual Strategies,” 29–60 (40–4).
69 Hobbes, A Briefe of the Art of Rhetorique, 8.
70 Quintilian, The Orator’s Education, vol. 2, Book 5, chapter 11, 455.