Medical Science Portrait Engravings

Philip Theophrastus Paracelcus (1493-1541) by John Payne (artist) & John Fillian (engraver)


Franz Antoine Mesmer (1734-1815) by Dupin Le jeune (engraver) & Claude-Louis Desrais (painter)

The only way to circulate pictures of famous people prior to photography was to have their portraits engraved. Most were completed with reference to oil paintings or sketches. The Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University School of Medicine have a HUGE database of portrait engravings. Most subjects are from the medical and science fields but they also have statesmen, lawyers, theologians, philosophers and more. Search by artist/subject/academic area/title/keyword, with and without thumb displays. [inadvertently via]

The Labyrinth

"..amid the insipissated grime of his glaucous den making believe
to read his usylessly unreadable Blue Book of Eccles.."
James Joyce Finnegans Wake 1939.

Circe and Ulysses
Michael Wolgemut 1493
Woodcut










" "Where do you begin in this?" Stephen Dedalus asks his Dalkey schoolboys, 'this' being the book before them. The question returns with each new reader approaching Ulysses for the first time. The commonplace response of the contemporary Joyce critic is itself Joycean: of course, there is no possibility of beginning Ulysses, much less of finishing (with) it. Joyce's book has so colonized twentieth-century Anglophone culture that we can never now enter it for the first time. Instead, we most resemble members of that parade of guests Bloom imagines both preceding and succeeding him into Molly's bed: 'he is always the last term of a preceding and succeeding series even if the first term of a succeeding one, each imagining himself to be the first, last, and only and alone whereas he is neither first nor last or only nor alone in a series originating in and repeated to infinity'. "
Jeri Johnson Introduction. Ulysses by James Joyce. 1993. Oxford University Press.


James Joyce sketched by the author in Zurich, 1919 in
James Joyce and the Making of Ulysses and other writings by Frank Budgen.

"..it is very likely that Ulysses is cast in a form for which, even yet, there is no name. Perhaps that is as it should be, for a name is a barbarism, a limitation; and Ulysses is an endlessly open book of utopian epiphanies. It holds the mirror up to the colonial capital that was Dublin, 16 June 1904, but it also offers redemptive glimpses of a future world which might be made over in terms of those utopian moments."
Declan Kiberd. Introduction. Ulysses by James Joyce. 1992. Penguin Books.

This is Banned Books Week. More from wikipedia.

• James Joyce From Dublin to Ithaca exhibition at Cornell University.
• An Overview of James Joyce's Ulysses by Robert Martin Adams (horrible formatting, but a good read by way of introduction and best copied into a word processing program and printed).
• IQ Infinity & JAJ portal by Jorn Barger remain the definitive and erratic online Joyceana sources.
• The Brazen Head - A James Joyce Public House
• Ulysses for Dummies - I still have a chuckle at this after all these years.
• James Joyce and the making of "Ulysses", and other writings by Frank Budgen - complete, scanned online.
• The unbanning of Ulysses in 1933 in USA.
• James Joyce's obituary - New York Times.
• Reading Ulysses - Irish 19-episode discussion and dramatization RTÉ radio program to mark the centenary of Bloomsday in 2004 (downloadable and excellent: about 30 mins an episode)
• Ulysses one page a day
  
• Ulysses complete - selfreferencing hyperlinked concordance all-in-one.
• James Joyce reads from Aeolus episode himself (direct .ram stream ~4 mins)
• Bloom by Sean Walsh
  

Go read it, you know you want to.

The History of the Printed Image

The Nymph of Fontainbleu c.1545-54
Pierre Milan & René Boyvin
Etching

Boxers 1818
Jean-Louis-André-Théodore Gericault
Lithograph








Casspirs Full of Love 1989-2000
William Kentridge
Drypoint






















The Metropolitan Museum of Art have a very fine visual and educational exhibit describing the history and techniques of the printed image in the west.

The Sailors Return

The Sailors Return engraving by C. Mosley mid-to-late 1700s

Maritime Art Greenwich has an essays section and this image (I can't find or work out what publication it's from - does anyone know?*) appears alongside Geoff Quilley's excellent read: The Image of the Ordinary Seaman in the 18th Century.

We are told that the accompanying verse clarifies the scene depicted. The sailor's sweetheart, in her enthusiasm to see her beau again, drops and breaks some eggs - an allusion to her loss of virtue during his absence. Her mother with 'The wealthy Chest, on which she plac'd her hopes, And for the Richest Prizes careful Gropes'. Note too the further vulgar tone of the scene with whoring in the background and vomit cascading down from yon' window. Good times.
Addit: *I don't rule out ignorance on my part - it may have been produced as a single work without publication of course.

Endeavour Maoris

The Head of a Chief of New Zealand, the Face Curiously Tataowd or Mark'd According to their Manner in A Journal of the Voyage to the South Seas, in His Majesty's Ship, The Endeavour. Sydney Parkinson, 1773. (high resolution image)

An Heiva, or kind of Priest of Yoolee-Etea, & the Neighbouring Islands in A Journal of the Voyage to the South Seas, in His Majesty's Ship, The Endeavour. Sydney Parkinson, 1773.

Parkinson was draughtsman to Joseph Banks, the great naturalist who accompanied Captain Cook on his southern world tour. These images are from the same book but the Chief is a direct digital scan from the book housed in the Sir William Dixon Library at the State Library of NSW. It's on display with other miscellaneous rare book images.

The Heiva image was produced by optical character recognition (OCR) scanning of a photocopied microfilm. All the engravings from Parkinson's journal are displayed among the National Library of Australia South Seas Voyaging Accounts exhibition.

The OCR Chief image for comparison - click on the image for a zoomable flash interface. The black and white image has its own intrinsic aesthetic merits for mine.

Jacques Callot

Les Deux Pantalons (The Two Clowns)
Jacques Callot etching c. 1617

L to R top to bottom: [all c. 1622 etchings by J. Callot]
Gobbo with a Crutch; Gobbo Playing the Bagpipe; Gobbo with Big Belly; Gobbo with Wine Bottle and Glass.

French-Italian printmaker extraordinaire Jacques Callot (1562-1622) produced an astonshing number of prints and drawings during his relatively short career. The above images might be regarded as grotesqueries but his work covers the whole gamut from landscapes to war images to religious illustrations to myriad other forms.

Information wise, the University of Pittsburgh, University Art Gallery (where most of the above were found) has a good collection and background - just a couple of the old links in there are dead. [There's a good explanation about etching -vs- engraving techniques too]

The best repositories otherwise are: the Fine Arts Museum in San Francisco and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
Other examples of Jacques Callot's work can be found via these links.

Doncker Sea Atlas

De zee-atlas ofte water-waereld : vertoonende alle de zee-kusten
van het bekende deel des aerd-bodems seer dienstigh
voor alle schippers en stuurlieden, mitsgaders koop-lieden
om op 't kantoor gebruyckt te werden.
Nieuwelijcks aldus uytgegeven. by Henrick Doncker, 1659.

In the Treasures from the National Library of Australia is a complete digitized 1659 issue of the gentleman's edition of the Doncker Sea Atlas with beautiful embellished colour maps covering the then known world (sans Australia, of course).

Doncker ran a navigational aid and maritime bookstore for 50 years in Amsterdam and became renowned for his cartography skills. The Sea Atlas ran to 30 editions over 60-odd years of publication. He died in 1699 and his son carried on the proud tradition of Dutch cartography.

Women Working

From Harvard University's Open Collections Program comes Women Working, 1800-1930. It is a huge storehouse - 3,500 books, trade and consumer magazines, vocation pamphlets, photographs and lots more - all digitized in an annoying framed interface. 2 hours in there! But where else could one learn about the anarchist woman of yesteryear or how to raise chickens? Really.

Kunijo Kabuki Ekotoba

Scene at the Entrance to a Kabuki Theatre c. 1650

Scene of Kuni's Nen'butsu dance c. 1650

I have been informed that although the Kyoto University website states in english that these illustrations are reproductions, that it is likely that it is a translation error in the explanatory notes.

The 'Kunijo Kabuki Ekotoba' or Illustrated manuscript of Kuni's Kanuki, is an important historical and artistic record that documents the classical Japanese play the kabuki.

The manuscript was retrieved from a house in the mid-19th century and purchased by the University and is regarded as the best quality of 4 surviving similar works. This type of manuscript is referred to as Naraheon as they were produced by a group of artists at various shrines in the city of Nara.

The website has digitized all of the illustrations and there is an accompanying translation of the text into english and explanatory notes. [Note: 1650 is my estimate - I'm not certain of this]

Book of the Hunt

Gaston Phoebus, Count of Foix and author of the book, surrounded by hunters in The Book of The Hunt, France 15th Century.


Stags and Does in The Book of the Hunt by Gaston Phoebus, France 15th Century.

Gaston Phoebus wrote that the 3 special delights in his life were "arms, love and hunting". His c. 1388 book, Livre de chasse or Book of the Hunt allowed him to permanently record his thoughts about the latter. In 5 sections he wrote about the different types of game, training and care of hounds, how to hunt stags and other wild animals with a closing section on the art of trapping.

La Bibliotèque Nationale de France has about 80 or so images from a 15th Century reproduction of The Hunt.

Anatomia et Magna Lucis

Giulio Casserio Nova anatomia, continens accvratam organorvm sensilivm, tam hvmanorum, quàm animalium brutorum, et delineationem æreis figuris... subiectam, et descriptionem... Opus... iam primùm in Germania visum. 1622

Athanasius Kircher Ars magna lucis et umbrae 1646

The first image is from The Body Revealed: Renaissance and Baroque Anatomical Illustration from William Hunter's Library at the University of Glasgow library website.

The second image was found in the rare text images of University of Kansas Clendening History of Medicine Digital Exhibit.

Serbia Musica

Igor Stravinski, Petruška, scale

There is only a small amount of digitized material at the National Library of Serbia and the above image is in the collection of printed music. It suggests 60s playhouse/tv cartoons to this untrained eye.

The Library website is well constructed and in english and it appears that they are just starting to post some of their collection online.

[Found by googling 'bibliodyssey' - Serbia & Montenegro Book Market Upgrade BibliOdyssey 2003-2006. I hope they don't sue.]

The Original Alice in Wonderland

Portrait of Alice Liddell by CL Dodgson, c. 1863

Alice and Red Queen Play Croquet by CL Dodgson c. 1863

These are original Lewis Carroll manuscript pages from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland which have become available today for viewing (allegedly) through the British Library 'Turning the Pages' website with an accompanying voiceover. I say allegedly because I was getting a 404 error trying to use the shockwave entry point, but that may be because I am quite a few hours ahead of Britain. The above images were snaffled via an image search (interestingly without the 'British Library' logo on display).

As an Oxford mathematician, Dodgson befriended the new Dean Henry Liddell and his wife and particularly the three children, Alice, Ina and Edith. He took them on picnics and told them stories and Alice implored him to write down Alice. Alice Liddell sold the resulting manuscript at an auction in 1927.

Carroll earned about £50,000 from self-publishing both Alice and Through the Looking Glass. Even James Joyce was influenced by Carroll's works and despite any latterday inconclusive witch hunts, Carroll deserves applause for his lasting contribution to children's literature.

• Looking for Lewis Carroll
• Lewis Carroll home
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland e-text in colour (11Mb .pdf)

Addit: I read about the "Alice's Adventures Underground" exhibit here.

Hummingbirds by William Lloyd Bailey

Mexican blue-beard : Trochilus cyanopagon

Mango humingbird : Trochilus mango

Swallow tail : Trochilus hirundinacea

Violet crowned wood nymph : Trochilus glaucopis

There are 58 such beautiful images including these within the 4 volume set by WL Bailey, executed from nature between 1855 - 1858, but never published. They are displayed on the (non-Firefox compatible, at all) website of the Academy of Natural Sciences.

Bailey published several books on nature but these watercolours, in which he pioneered the depiction of plumage iridescence, were his most notable achievements.

These volumes are but a small part of the Ewell Sale Stewart Library natural sciences display, which I shall have further cause to explore in the future. (This inventory of available works is viewable in Firefox)

May 2011 - note to self : fix this! Working link = http://www.ansp.org/library/getty_findaid/Baily11.xml

Serves me right for hotlinking back in the dim dark ages!

Grolier Club

Early eighteenth-century Dutch binding, silver répoussé over silver-gilt: Dominque Bouhours, Vita S. Francisci Xaverii Societatis Jesu ... (Munich, 1712).

Binding by the Club Bindery in full crushed morocco, gilt and inlaid 'Grolieresque' design on front and back covers, signed by Leon Maillard, and dated 1900: Richard de Bury, Philobiblon . . .(New York: The Grolier Club, 1889), vol. 1.

New York's Grolier Club was founded in 1884 to provide bibliophiles with a centre for devotion to the book arts. It has a library 0f over 100,000 books now and holds regular exhibitions. There are a few choice visual pieces at their website.

[Times Online article about the current Plath/Hughes exhibit at the Grolier Club - copied in as a comment]

Carta Marina

Detail from Carta Marina by Magnus Olaus 1572

Update: Wikimedia's version of the map (via Wikipedia + MK)

The Helsinki University National Library of Finland has a database of manuscript items (chronological index) dating back to 1100 A.D. There is a little english in relation to webpage controls but the bibliographic details are in finnish. I spent too much time wandering around as usual but only saw a small sample which included religious, musical, literary and cartographic materials. I love the beasties depicted above surrounding what I'm presuming are the Faroe Islands of today. There are other interesting exhibits around but it's pretty much trial and error. (author database) (Helmi database)
[This foray into Finland came about inadvertently through sitesworld - I'm not sure if it is actually any good in terms of the websites they plug list, but the overall concept has merit.]

Shahnama

Pishdadian episode - The Greatness of Kayumars
and the Envy of Ahriman in Shahnama
by Abolqasem Ferdowsi (Firdausi) c. 1010 A.D.

The Iranian Shahnama or Epic of the Kings is one of the great works of literature, encomapssing mythology, poetry, history and propaganda. There are more than 50,000 couplet verses in persian, complete with exquisite and detailed illustrations. Many copies exist around the world, the earliest dating from the beginning of the 13th century.

Manuchir episode - Manuchir Ascends the Throne and Makes an Oration
by Ferdowsi in Shahnama c. 1010

These images come from the failing Princeton Shahnama site (cache of introduction) [LINK UPDATED]

Other relevant sites:

• UK Shahnama project (not fun with Firefox, but using the viewer allows easy zooming and this is arguably the best/most comprehensive site around)
• Shahnama home (english beginning but arabic/persian discussion logs)
• The complete persian text.
• UPDATE: See this Metafilter post from 2009.
  

Salem

The Salem Witch Trials website.

US Naval Rare Book Illustrations

L to R, top to bottom..
1. Atlas céleste de Flamstéed 1776;
2. Curious Mathematical Forms - Robert Boyle 1670;
3. Uranometria - Johann Bayer 1603;
4. Poeticon Astronomicon - Hyginius 1482.

These are on a page serendipititiously found in an absent-minded googling fashion. They are within the United States Naval Observatory Library in the Rare Books section. (The jpeg links for each image from that page are HUGE)

A complete high resolution scanned copy of Uranometria can be found at the Linda Hall Library.

Istituto e Museo di Storia Della Scienza

Lorenzo Sirigatti:
Veduta prospettica del tempietto di San Pietro Montorio a Roma in
La pratica di prospettiva 1596.

Within the Institute and Museum of the History of Science's (Venice) digital exhibits is the Italian-only section entitled: Bibliotheca Perspectivae. In there are quite a number of book scans dealing with artistic/science perspective and largely dating from the Renaissance (as above). The site is a little cumbersome with frames but there are some quicktime displays and high resolution images available if you persist/search around.

The Schøyen Collection

Cicero: De Republica; Plinius: Epistolae:
Germany 1478 [large jpeg]

The National Library of Norway has a very extensive manuscript repository within the Schøyen Collection. In fact, the 13,500 manuscript items spanning 5000 years and covering a myriad of subjects and countries is the largest collection established in the 20th century. Although only sample images of each are displayed, it is a formidable database of historical writings. The website is in english and is easy to navigate.

Domesday Book

Domesday book entry for Dunwich, Surry 1085-1086

Domesday is a variant of doomsday and alludes to the day of reckoning. In Norman times, William the Conqueror ordered that an economic survey or audit be carried out on the citizenry, essentially for taxation purposes. The data compiled included land ownership and usage details, neighbourhood customs and disputes and livestock numbers and it constitues a unique public historical record. It is still the first point of reference in genealogy research in England and is the oldest surviving government document. The volumes of the Domesday Book have been divided for preservation and are held at the National Archives in Kew.

• National Archives (1 page) exhibit and background.
• More information (aimed at school pupils).
• Purchase scans.

Gutenberg Challenge

The bindery of Laurens Janszoon Koster.

Engraving by Jan van de Velde after a design by Pieter Janszoon Saenredam, in Petrus Scriverius' Laure-crans voor Laurens Coster van Haerlem, Eerste Vinder vande Boeck-druckery (1628).





Although the evidence is somewhat scant, Dutch legend would have it that Laurens Janszoon Koster from Haarlem invented moveable type while walking in a park with his grandchildren. The idea occurred to him when he was cutting letters out of birch leaves. If it is believed, his first printing efforts in 1440 predate Gutenberg's printing press by 12 years. Or so the story goes. All that is known about the tale appears at the Psymon Web Bindery (cache) which has a nice interface and a collection of woodcut and art images and a history of printing.

Blue Devils

G. Cruickshank: The Blue Devils, 1835.

George Cruickshank was a humorist of the school of Hogarth and considered by some to be the best England has produced. He began as a painter of theatre backdrops, moved onto political caricatures and finally found his niche in the 1820s as a book illustrator. Perhaps his most famous work accompanied some editions of Charles Dickens novels.

This illustration appears as part of the small The Language of the Age : Depictions of Medicine in Graphic Satire exhibition at Countway/Harvard Medical School.

Update June 2008: The Countway exhibition site appears to be totally gone now and only the text survives at the Wayback Machine. That's a shame. I had stupidly hotlinked the image but managed to find an alternative copy which I've uploaded.

Update Two: Upon enquiry, I was advised that the library website has been updated and the exhibition site: 'The Language of the Age: Depictions of Medicine in Graphic Satire' is still available!

The Green Girl

The Green Girl, by Jack Williamson (Avon Publishing) 1930.

From the Paskow Science fiction collection.

It's a shame Temple University doesn't have any more of their sci-fi collection digitized, save for this great cover.

A Horse is a Horse of Course

I do admire the Victorian age's sense of pedantry when it came to publication titles but I couldn't help but laugh at this one. A flitch of pony brisket anyone?


There's a quote in there --- "In studying animal nature, we find a general law that the larger and more active the brain, the more intelligence and docility is exhibited; and the smaller and more sluggish the brain, the less intelligence is possessed, and the more determined and active the resistance to control." --- in which 'animal' could be substitued with 'internet discussion board participant', in some cases.

These images were jagged from the Making of America books series of some 9,500 19th century books (>3 million pages) that have been digitized and made available by the University of Michigan and Cornell University. It's of course a commendable effort but once you start viewing book pages, there's an unnecessary and annoying 1/2 page loss of viewing area with the header frame.