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The idea that the Leviathan frontispiece offers a visual summary of the contents of the work is widespread. However, the analysis of the frontispiece often under-explores Leviathan's text or leaves certain iconographic elements aside. In discussions of the Scholastics 'Dilemma' emblem, for instance, the image is commonly reduced to a representation of 'logic' or 'scholasticism', leaving aside the intricate interrelationship between the objects present in the image and their connection with the content of the book. This paper argues that this image helps understanding Hobbes' critique of Scholastic doctrines and their political effects in Leviathan. For Hobbes, these supposedly pure philosophical concepts either in logic (trident of the 'Syllogism') or metaphysics ('Real/Intentional' bident) hide a central part of Scholastic thought: a 'seditious' political conception claiming that the Pope has an indirect right to temporal power in affairs concerning spiritual matters theory ('Spiritual/Temporal' and 'Direct/Indirect' bidents). The Scholastic model made the common people believe that the Pope would have at least as much authority as the Sovereign. When faced with the choice between obeying either the Pope or their Civil Sovereign the subjects would find themselves in a dangerous 'Dilemma'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Rasāʾil Ikhwān al-ṣafāʾ wa-khullān al-wafāʾ (Epistles of the Brethren of Purity and Loyal Friends), copied in Baghdad in 686/1287 and kept in the Süleymaniye Library in Istanbul, is known for its double page frontispiece, headed by the names of the authors and the book title, and painted with an image of debating scholars surrounded by luxurious architecture [Fig. 1]. The copy features diagrams and tables and is of interest for the study of medieval manuscript traditions of the Rasāʾil. This article re-examines the codex, expanding observations and insights into its history. It discusses the function of the frontispiece, which has been perceived as an authors' portrait in the succession of pre-Mongol Arab book painting, but is unique among known Rasāʾil copies. Reviewing the text on the double page and considering that the Rasāʾil was an anonymous book, we argue that the frontispiece advertised a particular opinion and reference regarding the authorship, visualized and emphasised through the medium of the figural image. Situating the copy in the scholarly book production of early Ilkhanid Baghdad under the Persian Juwaynī governors from early Ilkhanid Iran, the article examines how that time and place are referenced in the painting. Extending the question to the unknown patron and his milieu, it discusses figures with portrait-like faces presenting a book as possible references to the Juwaynīs. We suggest to see the novelty of the painting not only in its style and close text-image relation, but in its function as editorial statement and in the layered references. These evidence a concept of visual commentary on both history and present, that has been argued for Ilkhanid painting of northwest Iran, but was used here several decades earlier in Baghdad. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chapbooks are versatile print media that, more than any other print form, made available a wide variety of texts intended for popular reading to a broad and diverse readership. Gothic chapbooks or bluebooks, in particular, occupied an intermediary position between expensive editions of belles lettres and cheaply produced ballads and other literary ephemera. Adapting and appropriating genre conventions and narrative strategies, they both capitalised on and further contributed to the popularity of the Gothic genre in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. To date, however, little scholarly attention has been devoted to the frontispiece illustrations included in these chapbooks. This article examines the frontispieces to the Gothic bluebooks issued by Thomas and Robert Hughes in 1807 and 1808. Exploring the multifunctionality of the illustrations, it explores the ways in which they developed visual interpretations of Gothic horror and terror, generated metageneric reflections, and participated in a visual culture shared across different media networks. Functioning as a critical access point for readers, the frontispieces represented an integral part of the paratextual framing of the bluebook texts, generating meaning and affecting the Gothic reading experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a book-historical study of text-interpretive frontispiece illustrations that accompanied eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century editions of James Thomson's The Seasons. It discusses these editions as constituting a commodity group of its own and as separate from those that featured sets of multiple illustrations and argues that the cost-effectiveness of these editions ensured widespread consumption. The relative cheapness of these editions, once Andrew Millar's copyright monopoly related to The Seasons had come to an end, stimulated formal experimentation and innovation that contrasted with older practices of reprinting and the opportunistic recycling of illustrations. The article traces not only the development of frontispiece formats but also how bookseller-publishers moved from allegorical to realist-sentimental modes of representation, in the process creating iconic lenses through which reader-viewers would apprehend Thomson's work. Paying attention to the strategies of competitive marketing as part of which publishers sought to differentiate their own edition from others on the market, the article concentrates on small-format editions featuring frontispieces that were published from 1780 and studies the ways in which frontispieces in these editions functioned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tobias Smollett's works were among the most frequently illustrated in the eighteenth century. Smollett's eclectic output encountered equally diverse types of illustration that both accompanied these works and inhabited their own independent creative identity. Frontispieces occupy a unique place within this wider context. This article investigates two main points: first, booksellers deemed Smollett a saleable author, deserving of potentially expensive illustrated additions that enhanced his works' circulation on a competitive book market; second, these illustrations were considered useful visual tools in deciphering the verbal text, with frontispieces serving their own specific introductory function. Two types of publication by Smollett—his translated texts, Gil Blas (1748) and Don Quixote (1755), and original prose fictions, Roderick Random (1748) and Peregrine Pickle (1751)—and their earliest frontispieces (by Francis Hayman, Henry Fuseli, and an anonymous artist) shed new light on Smollett's early reception, and on the wider forms and functions of eighteenth-century frontispieces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is no more analyzed image in the history of political thought than the frontispiece of Hobbes's Leviathan (1651), yet the tiny figures making up the giant have largely escaped scholarly attention. So, too, have their hats. This article recovers what men's failure to "doff and don" their hats in the frontispiece might have conveyed to readers about their relationship to the Sovereign and each other. Sometimes big ideas—about the nature of representation, for example, or how to "acknowledge" equality—are conveyed by small gestures. When situated textually and contextually, Hobbes's hats shed important light on the micropolitics of everyday interaction for those who, like Hobbes himself, hope to securely constitute a society of equals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thirty-three years before Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, George Wither had the famous engraver William Marshall produce an intricate “Frontispiece” for his Collection of Emblemes, Ancient and Moderne (1635). The engraving teems with figures either emerging from a dark cave at the bottom, or at some stage of a journey towards twin mountains at the top, one representing salvation and the other damnation. Marshall has his pilgrims meet personified Virtues and Vices, drawing their lot from an ewer in the middle under the auspices of Fortuna, and then choose between the initially arduous path leading to the first peak, or the inviting, but gradually deteriorating path leading to the other. In this article, the picture is considered as a mise-en-abyme of the work as a whole, proposing to guide the willing reader towards moral and intellectual improvement while exemplifying − rather than merely expounding − a decidedly humanistic take on the notion of one’s path in life.

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The article focuses on engraving of Edmund Spenser's tomb, which usually appears as a frontispiece to the volume and faces the title-page that is bound immediately after sig. A1. Topics include considered that in the place of the usual frontispiece, this copy has George Vertue 1727 engraved portrait of Spenser, which has been cropped to fit the volume.

The article focuses on Henry Highland Garnet reprinted Walker Appeal in Four Articles just under 20 years after David Walker's death, it was newly accompanied by a frontispiece as a complex and detailed illustration of the biblical story of Mount Sinai when Moses receives the commandments from God.

Copyright of Drawing Ideas Images / Disegnare Idee Immagini is the property of Gangemi Editore S.P.A. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

F. Bacon, like many other philosophers of the early modern era, highlighted the importance of artistic representation of his philosophical concepts. F. Bacon’s innovative ideas are revealed not only through actual philosophical narrative, but also through the interpretation of mythological and historical subjects, as well as through the complex symbolism of engravings adorning the title pages of the works of the English philosopher. The famous engraving on the frontispiece of F. Bacon's treatise "Instauratio Magna" (1620) expresses metaphorically the idea of science development project presented in this work. The article regards the symbolism of this engraving and its historical and philosophical contexts.

The research, which results are presented in the paper, coincides with current issues related to the scientific discourse space investigation and relates to the subject sphere of semiotics. The article analyzes the pragmatic significance of one of the circumtext elements of the 18th century French Encyclopedia – the frontispiece, meaningful for a potential reader to understand the reference book as a whole. It is proved that in the architectonic-pragmatic division of the work the frontispiece plays a significant role due to a strong pre-text position, fulfilling a prospective function in orienting the addressee. Being a part of this reference edition, the para-text element precedes the language component of the text, joins the word and shapes a semiotic unity. It is specified that the Encyclopedia comes across as a multimodal text, where scientific knowledge is coded by verbal and iconic text. The structural-semantic relations of the iconic and verbal components of the Encyclopedia as a multimodal text are described. Frontispiece being a visual component carries out a semasiological connection with a verbal sign, denoting related subject-matter associations. It is proved that the role of the frontispiece is to expand and deepen the content of the verbal component of the 18th century largest reference edition. The semantic relations between the frontispiece and the text are realized through a visualized symbolic image, which explicates their connection within the whole book.

The article examines two classical allusions on the frontispiece engraved by William Hole for the 1611 book "Coryats Crudities," an account of Thomas Coryate's travels within continental Europe. Topics discussed include a description of the portrait of Coryate in the frontispiece, the ways in which these allusions illuminate Coryate's attitude to travel, and the humor of the prefatory materials.

This paper reports on the text-pictures relationship in French manuscripts from the middle of the 13th century to the middle of the 15th century, considering the organization of the manuscript, its page layout, and its receipt by the reader. It first studies the various presentations of the frontispiece forms (first narrative elements, dedication scene), and the links they can have with current reality (historical, political or literary contexts). It then considers the respective functions of the picture and of the text(s) (explanatory booklet for the miniaturist or for the commenting reader) in didactic works with a religious vocation, then the interference between image captions and chapter titles in some works in verse. Finally, it investigates the comparison between original and copy manuscripts, and through it the role of the originator of the manuscript; then the case of twin manuscripts for various purposes, that of notable interpretations of important iconographic programs; last, it recalls the importance of the place of production in such a study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The frontispiece of the De Humani Corporis Fabrica, painted by a pupil of Titian, shows a neoclassical amphitheater in which the scene is represented of an autopsy performed by Andreas Vesalius, just appointed as Professor of Anatomy at the University of Padua. The body on which Vesalius is carrying out the anatomical investigation is that of a woman executed for committing a crime and who had attempted to escape execution by claiming to be pregnant. The autopsy therefore had the purpose of verifying the veracity of her statements, but also the professionalism of the midwife who, expressing her negative opinion, had determined the execution of the sentence. Many figures are around to assist, differently motivated, each representing a quite singular aspect. Under the sector table, two menials (cerusics) are arguing with each other to maintain a role that, with the advent of Vesalius, will no longer be up to them but to the medical sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Illustrations accompanied the Divan from the first publication of poems in the Taschenbuch für Damen auf das Jahr 1817 and the frontispiece with writing in Arabic, arabesque ornamentation, and framing of the title page in the 1819 complete first edition. My article investigates the reception of Goethe's Divan by contemporary artists who provided frontispieces, Titelkupfer, or vignettes for editions of Goethe's works in the last decade of his life (Ramberg, Eichholzer, and Schnorr von Carolsfeld). It appears that the publishing market was not ready for a wider adaptation of a new West-East combination of traditions suggested by Goethe; the editions were illustrated in the established figurative style, including some clichéd orientalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bossuet inherited both from doxa and catholic dogma representations of man and woman, which are unfavorable to the last one. Nevertheless, epidictic rhetorics, which is one of the aspects of funeral oration, supposes that the preacher exceeds this dichotomy and creates an image of extraordinary men but also women, according to there aristocratic origines or their exceptional destiny. This article analyses how poetics of funeral oration can change doxical representations of male and female aspects.

This is an introduction to a special issue on the theme 'The Sexes and the Sciences'. Here we provide useful context for the ensuing research articles by way of discussing specific terms ('science' and 'sex'), detailing relevant historiographies and presenting select, illuminating case studies. Taken as a whole, this special issue demonstrates that eighteenth‐century scientific understandings of the sexes – male and female – were diverse and debated, and that, while formal scientific institutions and publications were almost exclusively comprised of men, their gendered relationships were various, and numerous women still meaningfully contributed to science as both practitioners and patrons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the two uncollected poems by Christopher Smart published in the periodical "The Universal Visiter or Monthly Memorialist" (UV). Topics discussed include the role of Smart as provider of material for the periodical together with Richard Rolt, influence of the intention of Smart to memorialize the English poetic tradition in the selection of engraved frontispiece for UV, and reason behind the attribution of essays on English poets published in UV to Smart.

In 1648 Andreas Rauch, an Austrian composer living in the Hungarian town of Sopron, published the Currus triumphalis musicus, a collection of thirteen Latin motets, each dedicated to a different Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor. With its sumptuous paratexts and impressive musical scope, this "triumphal musical chariot" was not a typical commercial commodity. Instead the volume functioned as an assertion of Habsburg power at the end of the Thirty Years' War (1618-48). A straightforward reading of the book is complicated, however, by the exile of Rauch, a Lutheran, from Austria in the 1620s. This musical panegyric, produced by a composer with a troubled relationship to the honoree, opens the door to a reading of the print as an act of diplomacy, in which the composer not only seeks reconciliation by acknowledging the Emperor's power but also subtly admonishes the Habsburgs in the wake of a peace settlement that was decidedly more favorable to his side. Through close readings of the paratexts and the texts of the musical works against a political and theological backdrop, it is possible to uncover the diplomatic functions of the print for Ferdinand III, the town of Sopron, and Rauch himself. In shedding light on a fascinating cultural artifact, this article offers a fresh perspective on the diplomatic potential of printed music in early modern Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the 16th century onwards many map-makers and authors provided decorative titlepages or frontispieces at the beginning of their works. These often displayed allegorical images and symbols reflecting the books’ contents, in order to attract potential readers. This contribution looks at some notable examples depicting images of Europe. Similar visual pictures often occur in the cartouches of maps of Europe. One mythological image frequently used was that of the rape of Europa by the god Jupiter disguised as a bull, a fable based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Other representations show Europe seated on a throne, as a superior ruler of other continents or, later, as the sponsor of the arts and the sciences. In some titlepage engravings of the 17th century she is shown defending the continent from the attacks of the Ottomans from the east. Later 19th century images may depict Europe in a more nationalistic role, flanked by each country’s armorial shield.

This article analyses the allegorical frontispieces of the History of Mallorca by Joan Dameto and Vicente Mut, a work consisting of two volumes, both printed by the Guasp family: the Historia General del Reyno Baleárico (1633) by Dameto and the second volume, the Historia del Reyno de Mallorca (1650) by Mut. These are two of the most emblematic printed works of the Baroque period in Mallorca. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to trace the history of woodblocks created in 1542 by Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564). Carved by the Venetian workmen on pear tree boards, the woodblocks were used in the Basel printing of Vesalius' works De Humani Corporis Fabrica and Epitome from 1543, The China Root Epistle (1546), and the frontispiece of the Fabrica, the edition from 1555. The blocks remained with the printer Oporinus in Basel until his death in 1568 when they were sold to the Froben family. The woodblocks reappeared in 1706 in a publication by Maschenbauer and were subsequently used by Leveling in 1783. An incomplete set of woodblocks was moved from Inglostadt to Landshut and then to Munich where Roth in 1885 documented them. At the suggestion of an American physician, Samuel Lambert, the University of Munich found the “missing” woodblocks in the attic. This led Wiegand and the New York Academy of Medicine to publish the woodblocks in the Icones Anatomicae in 1934. The second edition frontispiece was returned to Louvain where it was destroyed by bombing in 1940 and all the remaining woodblocks were destroyed in Allied bombing between 1943 and 1945. Thus, the Vesalius woodblocks travelled a 400-year journey from their creation, through the use in eight publications with over 5000 prints and ended in their tragic destruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The frontispiece to Purcell's Sonnata's of III Parts is examined as a potential source of new information about the composer's life and personality. A discussion of the rhetorical status of frontispieces and other preliminary matter in 17th-century print culture reveals that they played a significant role in shaping the reception of a text, predisposing readers to award it considerable status. The attribution of the unsigned portrait to Robert White, the most prestigious engraver of the day, plays into this desired reading. How one saw oneself and expected to be perceived in a community or hierarchy found expression in one's choice of dress, and Purcell's selection of apparel is analysed as an indicator of socio-economic status. His coat of arms beneath the portrait further substantiates the gentlemanly persona projected by the sartorial image. The publication's dedication to the king, and the image of the composer as court musician and member of the cultivated élite, combine to validate for English audiences the novel foreign genre materialized in the Sonnata's. One hitherto unnoticed feature of Purcell's escutcheon settles a controversial issue concerning his position in the family succession; the five-pointed star is a cadency mark, showing conclusively that he was the third son. The armorial bearings of his wife Frances are identified as those of the Petres, an aristocratic Catholic family; the conjoining of those arms with his own on the Purcell memorial in Westminster Abbey suggests that the impalement was a further strategy to demonstrate his exalted social standing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I argue that the famous image on Hobbes' frontispiece of Leviathan provides a more honest picture of authority and of contract than is provided by today's liberal images of free and equal persons, who are pictured as sitting round a negotiating table making a decision as to the principles on which to base laws. Importantly, in the seventeenth century, at the start of modern political thought, Hobbes saw no contradiction between contractual agreement and subordination. I will draw out these arguments by comparing three images of politics that employ the human body: Hobbes' frontispiece is compared firstly with an earlier picture of the state, the illustration of the Fable of the Belly, and then with a later Rawlsian image of the social contract described above. At stake is Hobbes' view of two associated concepts: authorship and authority. I argue that Hobbes' image is a vivid portrayal of a 'persona covert', akin to the feme covert, a wife characterised in common law as so dominated by her husband that she is imagined as being 'covered' by his body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For over a thousand years, frontispieces for religious scriptures produced in China were based on two basic compositions: the diagonal composition and the symmetrical composition. The two compositions enjoyed persistent currency by offering great flexibility for religious sects to fill in the compositions with their own patron gods and saints. Meanwhile they served different functions: while the diagonal composition illustrates the narrative of the scripture, the symmetrical composition focuses on the main deity and its pantheon, and engages viewer-worshippers in the assembly depicted. Daoism appropriated the two basic compositions and developed its own tradition of scripture frontispieces. This essay analyzes frontispieces for the Scripture of the Jade Emperor as a case study. By portraying deities of different natures in the frontispieces, Daoists specified the means whereby the main deity bestowed divine assistance upon the commissioners of the scripture, and distinguished Daoist scripture frontispieces from their Buddhist counterparts by placing extra emphasis on the frontispieces' efficacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on the sale of the frontispiece and connoisseurship of Romance "Urania" by English poet Mary Wroth Countess of Montgomery. It cites on the role of the frontispiece to convert the actual circumstance of selling a book to a general and impersonal audience. The essay also analyzes the complex ideological maneuvers of this frontispiece infers Wroth's involvement in its design.