Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
[ Background Music ]
>> The exhibition is called "Word and Image"
because of course in the early modern period words were
enormously important.
You have the print revolution, you have the first translations
of the Bible into vernacular languages
and their dissemination and spread.
Along with that of course came cheap print images being widely
circulated amongst people.
And of course, their use in books, so you have the contrast
between text and image in one product.
[ Background Music ]
>> The other reason why the interaction between word
and image is very important in this period is
because of the reformation which calls images into question,
are images idolatrous, do they corrupt us, do they take us away
from true contact with God.
And the word becomes privileged far more
in the Protestant faith, the Bible scripture and all kinds
of texts become very important as a means
of disseminating the faith.
And yet, paradoxically, images,
visual images still remain very important so the Durer images
which actually predate the reformation by a short time,
his image for example "The *** of Babylon" becomes adopted
by Lutherans as an icon of the evil Church of Rome.
[ Background Music ]
>> The discovery of the New World by Columbus 1492 encounter
of the Americans began a series of very,
very important exchanges and expanded the mental horizons
of people living in early modern Europe enormously.
And forced them in, you know, in some ways,
not just to confront a set of peoples
who were radically different from themselves
but it also forced them to reflect upon who they were
in an attempt to understand them.
So exchange is also about travel and the discovery
of the four corners of the globe.
In addition to that, I think also is the exchange
between the ancient paths and their sense
of themselves living in that period.
The rediscovery of classical learning,
new philological techniques, new techniques for exploring
and understanding the kind of great works
of the Roman and Greek Empires.
[ Background Music ]
>> Maps become very important because that takes us back
to the theme of travel and cultural exchange.
We have a volume of Richard Hakluyt's Principal Navigations.
Another map that we have that's very interesting is a map
of London.
Now that map interested me a lot
because as a Shakespearian scholar, I'm very aware
that whenever you read a book upon Shakespeare's playhouses,
the London playhouses of the Elizabethan period,
that's the map that's usually reproduced.
This is a very accurate map of Elizabethan London
where you can see the Tower of London, the city walls,
the Strand going down to Westminster,
the centre of government.
All these features of some London characters at the front
of the map is a very vivid representation
of Elizabethan London and it's presented as a kind
of documentary record of Elizabethan London and
yet it was produced
by a Netherlandish artist working for a German printer.
And that is another kind of emblematic case I think
of cultural interactions that are going on in this period.
[ Music ]
>> So, we have a section of the exhibition which is all
about natural history which is of course a very important field
where we see interaction between cultures in this period.
We see travellers going out observing different kinds
of animals and plants.
But what we also have is also a place
where reality and imagination meet.
And we have a lovely drawing here of a lion
but I'm not very sure that the artist has really seen one.
And I have to be absolutely frank with you,
when I look at this lion, I think of my cat at home.
He's a rather cuddly lion and he seems rather domesticated
and I rather suspect that the artist was thinking at least
as much of a cat or cats he knew as he was of an actual lion.
[ Background Music ]
>> When we think of the visual culture
of the early modern period, we tend to think of paintings
that might go to see in art galleries, of big oil paintings
but actually, for most people living at that time,
what they would have seen would have been the popular prints
that we have on the walls in this exhibition.
So whilst Protestants might have had problems
with the idolatrous nature of images, in fact,
images were a critical weapon too to spread the word
of God amongst the kind
of mostly illiterate population living in the period.
[ Music ]