VISUAL COMMUNICATION HISTORY BLOG

Alchemy entered into European popular culture in the late middle ages, with the translation of Greek and Arabic texts into Latin and the European vernaculars. Based on the tenets of the Corpus Hermeticum, a body of texts attributed to Hermes Trismegistus and meant to date to the age of Abraham, alchemy, or al-kimya in Arabic, can be summarized as the attempt to decipher a divine presence in the material world. Hermetic philosophy taught its pr…

Published by Schalekamp, van de Grampel en Bakker, Amsterdam. Found on the Memory here > > >

The Book of Fixed Stars is an astronomical text written by Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi (Azophi) around 964. The book was written in Arabic, although the author himself was Persian. It was an attempt to create a synthesis of the comprehensive star catalogue in Ptolemy’s Almagest (books VII and VIII) with the indigenous Arabic astronomical traditions on the constellations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Fixed_Stars

A vanitas is a symbolic work of art showing the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death, often contrasting symbols of wealth and symbols of ephemerality and death. Best-known are vanitas still lifes, a common genre in Netherlandish art of the 16th and 17th centuries; they have also been created at other times and in other media and genres. Common vanitas symbols include skulls, which are a reminder of the certai…

A page from a musical score book of enigmatic canons by composer Juan del Vado (1626 - 1691), completed between 1677 and 1679 and given as a gift to Juan José de Austria, the brother of Charles II, for usage in his royal chapel. See/read more here: https://www.emblematica.com/blog/2010/02/enigmas-resueltos.html

Oronce Fine's " Le sphere de monde: proprement dicte Cosmographie: manuscript" , 1549. Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. http://pds.lib.harvard.edu/pds/view/18260773

When Carl Jung embarked on the extended self-exploration he called his 'confrontation with the unconscious', the heart of it was "The Red Book", a large, illuminated volume he created between 1914 and 1930. Here he developed his principal theories - of the archetypes, the collective unconscious and the process of individuation - that transformed psychotherapy from a practice concerned with treatment of the sick into a means for…

The Legacy of Aldus Manutius and his Press What this site lacks in appearance it more than makes up for in content. A modest, bare bones html interface takes you through the life and times and the work of one of the greatest book designers and printers of all time. Very good textual descriptions as well as lots of plates showing the beautiful book pages created at the Aldine Press.

The page of an exhibition held in England in 1977! Gives lots of information on the era. Some nice images also, but mostly text: http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/printing/index.html The images below are William Gilbert's "De magnete" , printed in London by Petrus Short in 1600 (top), Galen's and "De temperamentis, et de inaequalia intemperie" from 1521 (middle), and James Pilkington's "A godlie exposition …