How did early printed book illustrations guide readers’ perceptions? What do they reveal both of publishers’ aims and actual readers’ responses? Dr. Andrea van Leerdam (Utrecht University Library) delves into these matters in a lecture that focuses on medical-astrological books in Dutch from the first half of the sixteenth century (many of them translated or adapted from German sources). She shows how the concept of visual rhetoric and a parallel with modern-day science communication help to identify and understand early printers’ strategies of popularising medical knowledge. She also examines how readers engaged with these illustrated books, in order to assess whether the sixteenth-century ‘science communication’ was successful.

Andrea van Leerdam is curator of printed works at Utrecht University Library. For her book Woodcuts as Reading Guides: How Images Shaped Knowledge Transmission in Medical-Astrological Books in Dutch (c. 1500-1550) (Amsterdam University Press, 2024), which is based on her dissertation (Utrecht University, 2022), she was awarded the Victorine van Schaick Prize for the best publication in the field of information studies in 2024.

Zudem besteht vor dem Vortrag für alle interessierten Teilnehmer:innen die Möglichkeit, zusammen mit der Referentin einige originale Stücke im Lesesaal der Augusta zu sichten. Treffpunkt ist um 16.00 Uhr am Haupteingang der Augusta.

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Bildquelle: Den groten herbarius (Antwerp: Claes de Grave, 1514), Leiden, Rijksmuseum Boerhaave, BOERH g 3301, fols. d5v–d6r.