Infidels_ A History of the Conflict Between Christendom and Islam - Andrew Wheatcroft [163]
THERE IS NO ACCURATE TOTAL FOR IMAGES MASS-PRODUCED IN THE Western world between 1480 and 1800. In seventeenth-century Netherlands alone the number reaches the many millions.27 Cheap popular literature often had a decorative cover image, often disconnected from the detail of the text. The picture defined the genre, such as a horrible murder or a romance. But by the eighteenth century a more elevated role for the printed image had also emerged. The “pattern book” for this concept of publication was the great Encyclopédie published by Denis Diderot between 1751 and 1772, in seventeen volumes of text and eleven volumes of plates.28 Diderot had originally intended a close integration between words and images, but the circumstances of the publication of the Encyclopédie and the physical separation of images from related text made this impossible. In handling words and images together the Encyclopédie had a number of successful precursors. One of the most ambitious was The Ceremonies and Religious Customs of the Various Nations of the Known World, in seven volumes, published by the noted engraver Bernard Picard.29
Picard was born a Catholic in Paris. His dazzling talent as a draftsman first emerged during his training at the Académie Royale. But in his thirty-seventh year he settled in Amsterdam and converted to Protestantism. He was already an established and successful engraver when he conceived the idea of a comprehensive and comparative study of all the religions of the world. The nineteenth-century Catholic writer Count Joseph de Maistre lambasted Picard’s “Protestant burin” because he attacked the Spanish Inquisition which Maistre sought to defend.30 This trivialized Picard’s objective, which was to depict all religions equally. The texts of the many editions of the book vary considerably. The first version, published in Amsterdam between 1733 and 1743, was the work in the form that Picard intended. In the second part of the seventh volume, in a note to the reader (Avis au lecteur), he denounced the 1741 French edition, which had been “adjusted” to meet the requirements of the censor. The Amsterdam volume reprinted the new material that had offended Picard. The various English editions were abridged and reworked. But while the texts altered, the pictures remained. In one sense, this is not surprising: Picard’s renown was as an engraver, and the texts were written and rewritten by a number of different authors, around his images.
However, it is odd that one particular illustration, perhaps the most sophisticated in the entire work, should have escaped the censor’s attention. In the seventeenth century the frontispiece—inside the book, usually facing the title page—had developed as a visual epitome of the book, rather like the dust jacket in the twentieth century. By the eighteenth century readers had become used to these visual arguments.31 Picard’s engraving was extraordinarily complex, and to make sure there was no ambiguity he provided a long caption. But he did not describe in this everything that he showed. Protestant sectarians stand side by side with the bishops and priests of the Catholic Church. Behind them are pagodas and fanciful idols, while to one side animists worship animals and the powers of nature. But in the foreground there is a little cliff, no more than a few feet high, and on the ground at the foot of that cliff sit the Muslims.32 The reader immediately inferred by their clothes, weapons, and wild look that these were Muslims. Another sure sign was that they are grouped around a signature camel. It was no accident that