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Early Modern Print Media and the Art of Observation

Training the Literate Eye

Stephanie A. Leitch (Florida State University)

$193.95

Hardback

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English
Cambridge University Press
04 April 2024
Early modern printmakers trained observers to scan the heavens above as well as faces in their midst. Peter Apian printed the Cosmographicus Liber (1524) to teach lay astronomers their place in the cosmos, while also printing practical manuals that translated principles of spherical astronomy into useful data for weather watchers, farmers, and astrologers. Physiognomy, a genre related to cosmography, taught observers how to scrutinize profiles in order to sum up peoples' characters. Neither Albrecht Dürer nor Leonardo escaped the tenacious grasp of such widely circulating manuals called practica. Few have heard of these genres today, but the kinship of their pictorial programs suggests that printers shaped these texts for readers who privileged knowledge retrieval. Cultivated by images to become visual learners, these readers were then taught to hone their skills as observers. This book unpacks these and other visual strategies that aimed to develop both the literate eye of the reader and the sovereignty of images in the early modern world.
By:  
Imprint:   Cambridge University Press
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 261mm,  Width: 182mm,  Spine: 23mm
Weight:   930g
ISBN:   9781009444521
ISBN 10:   1009444522
Pages:   360
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active

A specialist of early modern printmaking, Stephanie Leitch received a collaborative research fellowship from the ACLS for a new project about the role of copied images in early modern travel narratives. Her book Mapping Ethnography in Early Modern Germany (2010) won the Roland Bainton Book Prize in Art History.

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