Dissertation Research: Images of Anatomy, Idols of Devotion: The Reformation of Mortality and Experience in Sixteenth-Century Germany

Harvard University, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

This dissertation research project uses popular anatomical prints (single sheet woodcuts with superimposed flaps) produced in the late 1530s in Reformation Germany as the starting point for the study of several issues of importance to history of medicine and science studies. This project continues ongoing interdisciplinary research which indicates that these anatomical images cannot be fully understood outside the broader context of changes in visual culture and visual practice around the Reformation. This project is primarily concerned with the implications for early modern science of the way in which these prints made use of and reformulated preReformation devotional viewing practices. The project argues that forms of visual attention considered proper for medieval devotion (but improper for the study of nature) were recast during the Reformation as proper for studies of natural objects and phenomena. After charting this shift from devotional to anatomical images and their association with religious and social changes in the Reformation, the researcher follows its effects in two directions: first, she looks at the influence of these prints on later sixteenth-century presentations of anatomy; second, she uses these prints as the starting point for a discussion of the changing epistemological status of visual experience in the sixteenth century. The understanding of these images in relation to broader changes in visual culture and viewing practices - people's interactions with images and the production of meaning through those interactions - adds to the knowledge of history of medicine and science studies on the following topics and issues: the origins and significance of specific forms of anatomical representations; the ways in which anatomy addressed moral and spiritual concerns, and the relationship of body and soul; the social and intellectual mechanisms of change in anatomy and science (especially, with regard to networks of publishers, scholars, and artisans); the role of images and crafted objects in effecting change in the epistemological status of visual experience, important for seventeenth century empiricism; and, the ways in which aesthetics, affects, sensibilities, and values can play important roles in the production of knowledge (not only in tenns of which objects and phenomena investigators study and how, but also in terms of what constitutes legitimate knowledge itself). This project emphasizes art historical methods of close visual analysis of objects and images, with textual support from primary and secondary sources. Because this research focuses on the importance of the visual and physical relationships between images and viewers, and because many prints and objects for this study are not well-reproduced (if reproduced at all), it is essential for the researcher to work directly with the images and objects. The resources made available by this grant will make it possible for her to travel to European collections which house the research materials she needs. She will base herself primarily in London, Munich and Berlin for three to four months each (ten months total) in order to work in several different libraries, large print collections, and museums of material culture.