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Antoni Van Leeuwenhoek, His Images and Draughtsmen

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Antoni Van Leeuwenhoek, His Images and Draughtsmen Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, His Images and Draughtsmen Sietske Fransen Bibliotheca Hertziana—Max Planck Institute for Art History This article provides, for the first time, an overview of all images (drawings and prints) sent by the Dutch microscopist Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (1632– 1723) to the Royal Society during their fifty-year long correspondence. Anal- yses of the images and close reading of the letters have led to an identification of three periods in which Leeuwenhoek worked together with artists. The first period (1673–1689) is characterized by the work of several draughtsmen as well as Leeuwenhoek’s own improving attempts to depict his observations. In the second period (1692–1712) Leeuwenhoek worked together with one un- known draughtsman, while the work in the third period (1713–1723) can now be attributed to the young draughtsman Willem vander Wilt. This ar- ticle also shows how Leeuwenhoek did not only rely on draughtsmen for the depiction of his own observations, but rather, how he worked together with them in his workshop to observe, confirm, and witness microscopic experiments, replicating the collaborative working methods of the Royal Society in Delft. 1. Introduction This article provides for the first time an overview of the drawings and prints Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723) sent to the Royal Society and its Fellows, and discusses how these images were produced by Leeuwenhoek and his draughtsmen. By comparison and analysis of the way Leeuwenhoek described the images, the making of the images, and the ways of seeing, This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (grant no. AH/ M001938/1). My thanks go to Douglas Anderson and Huib Zuidervaart for their invaluable comments on an earlier version of this article; to the editor Puck Fletcher, making this a readable text; to the wonderful staff of the Royal Society Library and Archives for all their help; and to Felicity Henderson, Sachiko Kusukawa, Alexander Marr, and Katherine Reinhart for their many comments and support in the process of writing this article. Perspectives on Science 2019, vol. 27, no. 3 © 2019 by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology doi:10.1162/posc_a_00314 485 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/posc_a_00314 by guest on 26 September 2021 486 Antoni van Leeuwenhoek depicting, and constructing visual evidence, I hope to contribute to a better understanding of Leeuwenhoek’spracticeof“doing science.” It will become clear that he was fully aware of the impact of visual evidence needed to prove his observations to his correspondents in other parts of Europe. He was also fully aware of the role of the draughtsman, who was much more than an intermediary, invisible workman. Instead, Leeuwenhoek used his draughts- men as collaborators and witnesses (although without crediting them by name) in his business of observing and communicating the smallest objects the human eye had seen so far. On 6 August 1687, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (fig. 1) wrote the following to the Royal Society: People have come to talk to me, and sing the praises, of a certain little Book, dealing with Microscope Observations, which were uncommonly magnified, which Booklet was for sale at the last Frankfort Trade Fair. I was very eager to have that, as I hoped to get some enlightenment from it: But no sooner had I received that Book, called Micrographia Nova, published by Mr. Joh. Francisco Griendelio, than I saw that it was to me quite worthless: for the small creatures that, amongst others, are depicted therein, as Louse, Flea, Ant, etc., were indeed big, but drawn very imperfectly and deformed. Now whether this is due to the lack of good Magnifying glasses, or whether it is the Draughtsman’s fault, is not known to me. (AdB, 7:36–37)1 By the time Leeuwenhoek wrote this letter, he had been confidently corresponding with the Fellows about microscopy for fourteen years.2 The Dutch cloth-merchant from Delft was an autodidact when it came to scientific investigation, but he sustained an intense correspondence with the Royal Society and its individual Fellows from 1673 until his death. In this period he wrote more letters to the Royal Society and its Fellows (223 in total) than any other correspondent.3 Since most of these letters (ca. 200) still survive in the archives of the Royal Society, his writings and his images are a valuable source for historians interested in the history of microscopy 1. AdB, Letter 102 (6 August 1687). All English translations of Leeuwenhoek letters are taken from this edition, with small emendations by me, unless otherwise stated. The book referred to in the quotation is Griendel’s Micrographia nova (1687). 2. On Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, see the comprehensive, but slightly old-fashioned biog- raphy by Dobell (1932), and the rich and well-researched website by Douglas Anderson, with- out whose work this article could not have been written: https://lensonleeuwenhoek.net (last accessed 28 February 2019). 3. For a more general understanding of the visual culture in the early Royal Society see the article by Kusukawa (2019) in this special issue. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/posc_a_00314 by guest on 26 September 2021 Perspectives on Science 487 Figure 1. Jan Verkolje, Portrait of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, 1686. Mezzotint. 296 × 227 mm. London, Royal Society archives. (Photo © The Royal Society). and microbiology in the seventeenth century, as well as the history of sci- entific correspondence, and the use of text and image. The quotation above shows how well informed Leeuwenhoek was about new publications on his favorite topic. The first thing Leeuwenhoek did after receiving the book was to look at the images, and his judgment was brutal. Although he had been looking forward to learning something new, the images, despite their size, were “drawn very imperfectly and de- formed.” Leeuwenhoek, however, did not blame Johann Frantz Griendel (ca. 1631–1687) directly for this, as Leeuwenhoek was the first to Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/posc_a_00314 by guest on 26 September 2021 488 Antoni van Leeuwenhoek acknowledge that the drawing of microscopic observations was a complex process. He acknowledged that anyone using microscopes was dependent on the quality of the instruments (the microscopes or magnifying glasses) through which both the primary researcher and the draughtsman had to observe the object, and that subsequently, an author/researcher was also dependent on the craftsmanship of the draughtsman for the final result. These were matters Leeuwenhoek had been dealing with from the start of his correspondence with the Royal Society. In April 1673, at the age of forty, Leeuwenhoek was introduced to the Royal Society through a letter by his fellow citizen, the physician Regnier de Graaf (1641–1673). The Secretary at the time, the German-born Henry Oldenburg (ca. 1619– 1677), responded with approval and immediately published the text of Leeuwenhoek’s first observations, on the sting of a bee, in his journal Phil- osophical Transactions (Leeuwenhoek 1673a). However, from further corre- spondence we can see that Leeuwenhoek had not sent any images with his first letter, as three issues later, Oldenburg wrote: This Curious observer [i.e., Leeuwenhoek], having been desired by the Publisher [i.e., Oldenburg], since his first Communications, already printed in these Papers, that for further satisfaction he would please to transmit the Figures of what he had so well observed, and he having not only very obligingly complied with that desire, but also added New Observations; we thought ourselves bound to do him right in publishing both the Figures of his former Communications, and his Additions thereunto. (Leeuwenhoek 1673b) Leeuwenhoek continued this practice of sending figures with his observations to the Royal Society. In the case of the imperfectly drawn images in Griendel’sbook, Leeuwenhoek responded visually. In his letter to the Royal Society, Leeuwenhoek had a copy made of the faulty depiction of the louse’s leg from Griendel’s book, and he compared it to a drawing he had sent to the Royal Society twelve years earlier.4 I have thought fit to get only two legs copied, of the Louse, that was in that Booklet, to indicate the deformity of the same. Fig. 9. AB. and CD. [see fig. 2] are the two legs of the Louse that are found drawn in the aforesaid Micrographia Pag. 14, and which legs were indicated there by I. and C. I have seen several Lice as drawn through the Microscope, but they all differ from my own Observations. About 4. The original handwritten letter is lost, but Leeuwenhoek’s printed copy remains. See AdB, Letter 102 (6 August 1687). Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/posc_a_00314 by guest on 26 September 2021 Perspectives on Science 489 Figure 2. Unknown engraver, Legs of a louse as observed by Griendel (fig. 9) and Leeuwenhoek (fig. 10), in Antoni van Leeuwenhoek’s, Vervolg der Brieven, between pp. 66–7, 1687. Engraving. 50 × 140 mm. Leiden, Rijksmuseum Boerhaave (detail). (Photo Rijksmuseum Boerhaave, Leiden). twelve years ago I sent Your Honour the drawing of a Louse’sleg [see fig. 3], in order that you might see the perfect shape of such a tiny creature. And as I have also found another drawing of it, I have caused this to be printed here as well [see fig: 10 in Fig. 2], in order that one may see the structure of the Louse’s leg, as I showed it to the Draughtsman, and which he has drawn from life [na’t leven], against the structure such as they have depicted it in Germany (AdB,7:36–39).5 Again, Leeuwenhoek is giving his contemporary readers a lot of infor- mation at once.
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