Sparks through the Pictures: Illustrations, Illustrators and Iconographies in the Development of Electricity in the Eighteenth Century

This research project will study the connections between the illustrations of electricity and the development of this field in the eighteenth century. The project has three perspectives. First, I aim to understand what were the functions of the illustrations in the different types of publications of the period, as I suppose that not every image included in books and papers had the same roles. It will be considered only materials published in Germany, Great Britain and France in the eighteenth century. In the second perspective, I will analyze the rising of different iconographies of electricity and the relationship between the illustrations and real apparatus. In the third perspective, I will study the previous background of the illustrators, their interactions with the authors of the books and papers they illustrated and their experiences with natural and experimental philosophy. From multiple methodologies, this research proposal intends to reassess a consolidated historiography of electricity through the new lenses of the history of illustrations.