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CMCULTURE VISUELLE – SUKIC
Visual Culture in Early Modern England
It is not a course on History of Art, but we will look at visual documents as we look at other
objects of study. They can help us understand literary works. They can be used as context.
And they can help us understand that a time period is made up of various aspects in Social
History, Political History, Religious History… To have a wider idea of the Early Modern EN. It
concerns Visual Culture: Visual imagery. It can be art but not only. We will not necessarily look
at these documents with an aesthetic idea in mind.
The difference is about the nature of the documents, and the way we look at them. In the
History of Arts: Historic Masterpieces / Here: Nothing to do with it. It has a broader meaning.
We might call it a History of Images. We will try and understand those images, give them an
Historical significance. Visual Culture as field of study is sometimes part of Cultural Studies.
It’s a new category of knowledge that first appeared in the US. It’s about looking at any kind of
cultural phenomena and looking at how those objects reflect a social or historical fact.
We can study a painting representing Queen Elizabeth Ist, if we look at it with a History of
Arts: the colors, how they can be understood within the History of Western Art / Political
Propaganda / The Image of Women / The Representations of the Women’s Body.
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Each period of History has its own codes, characteristics. People in the Early Modern Period
didn’t have the same type of Religion, Politics, Economics, Arts… And they are the various
fields of knowledge, the epistemological fields. Starting from a book that was originally
published in French by Michel Foucault “Les Mots et les choses”: “The Order of Things”. It’s
a classic of both philosophy and History. He explains that each period of History has its “order”
and its own “truth”. For each period, he uses a Greek word “épistémè”. A word that you find
in the word epistemology, which means knowledge. Foucault uses it as “the condition that
makes it possible to talk of truth” for each historical period. It’s about what helps separate
true and false. He says that an épistémè corresponds to all the scientific discourses of a
period. It is how people envisage it.
He starts with the Early Modern Period. In his introduction, he stars with a Spanish painting
“Las Meninas” by Diego Vélazquez, and wants to show how that painting represents a change
in the vision of things. It’s considered to be one of the first modern paintings. It signifies a
change in the way things are represented. It is a portrait of the Infanta, the Spanish Princess,
the Daughter of King Philip IVth and around her, her ladies Menines.
In the background, we see on the wall a frame with the Royal Couple themselves, as well as
on the left-hand side of the painting, Vélazquez himself. The painter actually uses the self-
portrait. Of course, the painter is in the process of actually painting a work from which we only
see the back. The painter seems to be looking at us, the viewers. In the background, a door is
open, and a character is probably leaving the room, there is a sense of inbetweeness with
him. Is he leaving the room, coming back? When Foucault described that painting, he said
that the fact that the painter is looking outside the painting shows that there is a
metadimension: the painting is about painting. This is confirmed by the fact that there is a
painting within the painting.
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Of course, we can’t see what he is painting. But according to Foucault, the subjects of the
painting is reflected within the frame, which is a mirror. It suggests that the viewers are the
Royal Couple. It’s as if we had been defined as that couple.
Since this couple is represented as a reflection, we could either say that they play a secondary
part, or on the contrary, that they are central to that painting since they are actually the viewers
AND the subject. What Foucault is trying to explain when he chose Las Meninas as a starting
point in his introduction is that if we look at this painting in a traditional way, we can think that
it is a portrait of the Infanta, but there are other implications. Those implications and the
metadimension of the painting depend not only on what we see but also on the relation
between the painter, the painting and the viewers.
Foucault concludes that this painting does not really represent in the traditional sense, that its
subject is not the representation of the Princess, but that it is about representation. It is a
representation of a representation. This, for Foucault, is a sign of modernity. He sees it as the
beginning of modernity, that consciousness of the representation. Of course, that painting is
from 1556, and the period we will study will cover the 60’s and the 70’s. So, it is a period in
which who can find those representations but also more traditional aspects.
If we look at what precedes that modernity, and what characterized the beginning of the Early
Modern Period, we could use a word that is used by Foucault: the importance of
“resemblance”. “Up to the end of the sixteenth century, resemblance played a constructive
role in the knowledge of Western culture”. The analogy is a very important notion to
understand. This notion of resemblance means that things were represented in the same
way in every field of thought. For instance, when we look at knowledge, we find the same kind
of order in animals, in men, in stars… Usually: very hierarchy, with in mind the idea that there
is a sort of general harmony in the world.
We find traces of that kind of knowledge when we say in popular culture “The lion is the King
of animals”. It means that animals were envisaged as a hierarchy with the lion at the top, in
the same way as human society was envisaged with the King at the top. For example, Foucault
mentioned Pierre Belon. He wrote a treaty on birds: A History of the Nature of Birds. In that
book, he compares birds to human beings.
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In the way he represents birds, he makes sure that there is a striking analogy between birds
and humans. “Affinité” means resemblance. We will find this many times in the knowledge of
that period. Knowledge corresponds to an idea. It’s the idea of the resemblance. It’s based
more on that idea than on an actual thing.
This type of knowledge is part of a system, which is seen as harmonious. It is possible to see
resemblance between all creatures of the world, all fields of knowledge. This system is usually
called The Great Chain of Being which comes from “Scalae natura”. This great chain is mainly
a hierarchy with God at the top, the angels, humanity, animals, vegetables and minerals. Inside
each category (except God), there is another hierarchy.
Robert Fludd is a famous physician and an astrologer. He worked on “the metaphysical,
physical and technical history of the two worlds”, namely “the greater and the lesser”, published
between 1617-1621 in Germany. Robert Fludd travelled a lot, he published his book in Latin
(universal language for scholars). What is interesting about him is that he is a typical scientist
of the time in the sense that he used a combination of traditional and modern knowledge. He
accepted some ideas such as alchemy or astrology that he considered to be scientific but
defended modern ideas like the circulation of the blood.
He was also an artist. He drew himself then the engravings were made by Théodore de Bry
(a Protestant). An engraving representing the two worlds that appear in the title of the work
“the greater and the lesser world”. The greater world, the whole universe, “the macrocosms”,
and the lesser world is the “microcosm” (world on the level of Man). A system that was usually
accepted by most people, scholars at the time. This series of spheres allows for the whole
system to be arranged in a hierarchy, since the whole system is moving. Each sphere moves
at its own speed, it represents one part of that world. Each planet has its own sphere, the
spheres that are related to the world of Man: the human body was supposedly contained four
humors. Then, spheres representing the vegetable world, the animal world. The whole system
suggests a perfect harmony between the microcosm and the macrocosm, since the figure of
man represents a sort of ideal proportion.
They consider that the center of the world is the earth and not the sun (one of the planets).
Each sphere rotates, turns around the whole system at a different speed, when a sphere is set
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