Open AccessImages and Meaning-Making in a World of Resemblance: The Bavarian-Saxon Kidney Stone Affair of 1580
Author(s) -
Claudia Stein
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
european history quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.153
H-Index - 18
eISSN - 1461-7110
pISSN - 0265-6914
DOI - 10.1177/0265691413479085
Subject(s) - meaning (existential) , context (archaeology) , politics , natural (archaeology) , closure (psychology) , protestantism , sociology , epistemology , aesthetics , philosophy , law , history , religious studies , political science , archaeology
This article de-constructs and re-constructs the dynamic of a sixteenth-century political dispute between the Catholic Bavarian Duke Wilhelm V and the Protestant Saxon Elector August I. By focusing on the visual imagery which ignited the dispute, the paper explores sixteenth-century ‘ways of seeing’ and the epistemic role realistic images played in the production of knowledge about the natural world. While the peculiar dynamic of the affair is based on a specific understanding of the evidential role of images, the paper also argues that the wider socio-cultural context, in particular certain strategies of truth-telling, provide further clues as to the dynamic and closure of the affair.