Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, His Images and Draughtsmen

Abstract

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. Analyses 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 unknown draughtsman, while the work in the third period (1713–1723) can now be attributed to the young draughtsman Willem vander Wilt. This article 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.

Measuring and Manipulating the Rhine River Branches: Interactions of Theory and Embodied Understanding in Eighteenth Century River Hydraulics

“…37 Brunings 1789b. 38 This situation is analogous to that in the collaboration in microscopic experiments between Antoni van Leeuwenhoek and artists, who closely worked together with draughtsmen to depict the observations in drawings that show evidence of idealization and of different hands of draughtsmen and engravers (Fransen 2019). Brunings also had artisan knowledge of instrument building himself but collaborated with instrument makers such as John Cuthbertson for their construction.…”

Neutron tomography of Van Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes

“…Ever since Van Leeuwenhoek started communicating his discoveries to the Royal Society in 1673, Hooke, who was then the Society’s secretary, was unsuccessful in obtaining details about Van Leeuwenhoek’s observation methods. Such details were deemed important because of the controversial nature of Van Leeuwenhoek’s findings, and because transparency and reproducibility were important values to the Society ( 14 ). Underlying the controversy, too, was a contrast of characters ( 15 ).…”

The Early Royal Society and Visual Culture

“…This is a rare, documented case where a print carried weight because of its maker, whereas the reliability of images was often subsumed under the more general concern about the reliability of reports of objects or events which members of the Society had not the chance to observe or verify directly (Lyon 2017). It is in fact relatively rare to see draughtsmen or engravers invoked as witnesses at the Royal Society, except in the case of Leeuwenhoek, which may have to do his perception of his status and the distance from London (Fransen 2019).…”