Constcamer Paintings as Epistemic Images: Early Modern Theaters of Wisdom

This paper argues, against existing literature, that 17th-cent. constcamer paintings were objects to think with, functioning as the two-dimensional space of artificial memory. In turn, these artworks complicate conventional definitions of epistemic images more broadly. I focus on an analysis of constcamer paintings accounting for the reception of the ancients and the mnemonic and propaedeutic role of images, entailing concepts such as wonder or thauma (from Greek θεάομαι), the drive to gather knowledge, memory as the locus of this ‘collection’, and recollecting as the intellectual process of interaction with memorized knowledge. The term inventor, referring to the creator of a given collection, is derived from the rhetorical technique for the retrieval of information. The theatre or ‘place for viewing’ provided the physical context for the collected wisdom. Inventors of constcamer paintings – often artists themselves – vitally participated in knowledge formation contributing to contemporary intellectual debates.