2 - “A New Visible World”: Developing a Visual Vocabulary for the Microscopic

Summary

Abstract

This chapter uses Robert Hooke's Micrographia to examine the intersection of visual conventions in portraiture with the viewing of the microscopic world. In the “Preface” to Micrographia, Hooke asserted that he had discovered “a new visible World” through the help of newly invented optical devices. Before the publication of Micrographia there was little visual consensus about how best to display this new microscopic world. For Hooke, accuracy was produced through repeated looking and drawing with continued reference to the visible world. Hooke was aided by the visual vocabulary developed by engravers for translating a three-dimensional world into a two-dimensional representation of it, and his awareness of these conventions is what set his illustrations apart from his predecessors.

Keywords: Robert Hooke, Microscope, Portraiture, Engraving

Robert Hooke (1635–1703) saw differently. Not only that, he described what he saw in a way that others could understand with precise reference to what he saw and the visual culture with which he and his readers were familiar. When he looked through a microscope, he saw what others did not or could not and he translated that perception with the aid of his broad visual education. For example, when John Wilkins, a founding Fellow of the Royal Society of London, looked through a microscope at deer hair, he saw a quill-like structure. Hooke, on the other hand, saw a sponge-like form. Hooke was right. This chapter explores how seeing differently, in this case, was facilitated by Hooke's early training and lifelong interest in the arts, which developed his visual judgement. Hooke's understanding of line and particularly the engraved line allowed him to resolve the images he saw through his microscope in ways that others could not.

Hooke described his working method in the Preface to Micrographia: “And therefore I never began to make any draughts before by many examinations in several lights, and in several positions to those lights, I had discover’d the true form.” His working method was critical to his seeing differently. Hooke struggled with discovering the “true form” of his object of study and this awareness, coupled with his familiarity with artistic techniques, allowed him to see the microscopic world differently than his predecessors and contemporaries. Before the publication of Micrographia there was little visual consensus about how best to display this new microscopic world.