Abstract
Cultural historians have long been concerned with visual sources. Their research has centred on ways of reading images and how they can most accurately be interpreted. This article focuses on an alternative aspect of these visual sources: on how images were made and used. It analyses how the identity of a Bohemian Catholic, Bedřich z Donín, is constructed by his use of images in a travelogue based on his pilgrimage in the early 17th century. Highlighting the process of ‘visual intertextuality’, it claims that the ways in which Donín adopts and adapts visual images reveals his association with various affinity groups. The distinction between ‘actual’ and ‘habitual’ intertextuality is applied to the analysis of this historical source and shows how competing voices are present in the images. This article is an example of how historians can use the methodologies of semioticians to benefit their research.
Introduction
Visual communication was a feature of early modern European texts, and is of interest to cultural historians (see works such as Burke, 2001; Jordanova, 2012; Scribner, 1981; Skinner, 2002) just as much as to researchers of the contemporary semiotic landscape (see works such as Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2001; Van Leeuwen and Jewitt, 2010[2001]). In this article I show how the identity of a Bohemian Catholic is constructed by his use of images in a travelogue based on a journey undertaken in 1607–1608 and entitled ‘Pilgrimage to Loreto’. I focus on the process of ‘visual intertextuality’, the appropriation of images from other sources which were publicly and privately available in early modern Europe. I claim that the ways in which the writer of the travelogue adopts and adapts visual images reveals his association with various ‘affinity groups’ (Gee, 2000, 2001) and thereby locates his identity at the intersection of a number of different groups. I explore how a route between conformity and individuality was negotiated through competing voices. While these findings cannot be generalized beyond this specific case study, I suggest firstly that they are likely to provide a useful touchstone for the study of other early modern multimodal texts, and secondly that the conceptual and methodological approach I take here might be applicable to a wide range of texts. After an overview of the historical context, purpose and processes of production of the manuscript and an introduction to the methods and analytical approach, I examine the visual intertextuality of the religious, costume and geographical images.
Donín’s ‘Pilgrimage to Loreto’: Context, Purposes and Processes of Production
Bedřich z Donín (henceforward referred to as ‘Donín’) lived in Prague during a period of religious pluralism. Calvinists, Lutherans, Utraquists, Catholics and Jews coexisted in what had become the residential city of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II in 1583. Tensions existed between these communities. Donín identified himself as being amongst the minority Catholic community by both undertaking his pilgrimage to Loreto and creating his account for an audience. Across this religiously divided landscape, humanism emerged with its focus on science and knowledge and its distinctive strategies of description and categorization for dealing with an influx of information from a world with increasing horizons (Blair, 2010). Donín’s travelogue shows that he also identified with this humanist strand as an educated member of the elite. Travelling as both a pilgrim and someone interested in learning from his travel (in the humanist mode), Donín had to tread a tricky path. He had to maintain his focus on the pilgrimage, but he also had to negotiate the right balance in his encounters with other cultures so as to learn from them, but only in a supplementary way, not in a way that might change his manner, thoughts or behaviour. Donín’s travelogue shows this negotiation through its images: by appropriating images connected with the sights and sites he encountered on his journey that were already established and recognizable to his audience, he engaged with subjects relevant to Catholicism and humanism, and identified with both those affinity groups. By adapting the images to varying degrees for his purposes he revealed both his individuality and openness to those encounters.
The likely purpose of the travelogue manuscript was as a display of status amongst an elite social circle and also as a personal aide mémoire. It would have been costly to produce because of all the expert work and time spent on its production and the use of expensive materials, especially the gold and silver paint used for every illustration. Therefore the manuscript retained a great value. In this article I focus on the section entitled ‘Pilgrimage to Loreto’ which numbers 174 pages and, unusually for a travelogue, 58 coloured illustrations. Both the textual and visual content of the manuscript indicate that reference books and guides were used to compile the travelogue. The many detailed illustrations correspond to existing images available in both the public and private spheres. They depict costumes, landscapes of scientific interest, maps, and religious images from a variety of sources in print and manuscript. The similarities to extant images are extremely significant, whether or not Donín’s illustrations were made directly from them.
It is worth paying attention to the selection of certain material, modes of categorization, and how the material was sorted and presented in the travelogue. These factors reveal a great deal about identity, but it is important to note that this was to some extent a ‘collective’ identity, since it appears that Donín employed a scribe and an illustrator to create the text and illustrations of the travelogue. It is likely that Donín had the initial ideas and the final authority on what was written and depicted and it seems reasonable to extrapolate that the travelogue reflects ‘his’ identity and choices. The assemblage of the manuscript indicates that great care was taken over every detail and that it was not just a case of ‘compiling’ information, but weaving information and images from reference works into a daily narrative to cover both the pilgrimage and the experience of learning along the journey.
Methods and Analytical Approach
The aim of my original research project was to study images of dress in Bohemian records from the early modern period. Whilst researching sources I came across Donín’s manuscript travelogue located at the Strahov Monastery in Prague. I translated and analysed the text and studied the images in the section relating to Donín’s pilgrimage to Loreto in 1607–1608 and narrowed my focus to examining how he presented his identity to the reader. I found that the travelogue revealed Donín as having various identities held simultaneously – as a Catholic pilgrim, humanist (normally seen as being related to a northern European Protestant tradition) and Bohemian (S Ivanič, 2012 and forthcoming). Whilst analysing the images in the travelogue I found that they were similar to other images in circulation during the period and I attempted to track down the sources. I was able to identify similar images in extant sources such as similar depictions of costume in Cesare Vecellio’s Habiti et Moderni (1590), but owing to the proliferation of similar images in many forms, it is impossible to assert definitively the provenance of the images in the travelogue. This search revealed that Donín’s travelogue embodied a rare attempt to merge three different genres – religious ephemera, costume books and atlases – into the genre of the travelogue through visual means. In this article I examine what the relationships between the travelogue and other visual sources can reveal about Donín’s identity.
Donín’s travelogue provides a fertile source for visual intertextuality. It is particularly the analysis of the visual intertextual act (R Ivanič, 2004; Meinhof and Smith, 2000) that provides the richest evidence for how the author negotiated a route between conformity to affinity groups (certain communities and values) and individuality in presenting his identity to the reader. The standard texts on visual communication in the field of history are concerned with deciphering meaning in images with an understanding of context: what the image-maker was trying to ‘say’ (see Panofsky, 1955; and critically reviewed by Van Leeuwen in Van Leeuwen and Jewitt, 2010[2001]: 92–118). I have however found the methodological developments in understanding how images were ‘made’ and the meaning contained within those processes is more beneficial in studying this early modern multimodal text. The processes and ‘design’ (Cope and Kalantzis, 2000; Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2001) of the creation of the images reveals authorial identity-projection, just as has been shown in relation to the meaning-making processes in children’s projects (R Ivanič, 2004; Ormerod and Ivanič, 2002).
The choice of what to include and the way in which it was included can provide valuable information. In his work on cultural translation, Peter Burke notes that what was translated from one culture to another and how it was decontextualized and recontextualized can be seen as a ‘refraction’ of the ‘priorities of the recipient culture’ (see Burke and Hsia, 2007). Burke’s observation relates to language but it is also pertinent to what can be observed at play in the travelogue. Images from other sources were decontextualized through selection and adoption and then recontextualized through use and adaptation in the travelogue. The result is a refraction of the priorities embedded in presenting Donín’s identity. It is how these visual ‘references’ are processed that I will focus upon here.
These decontextualizing and recontextualizing processes construct the ‘heteroglossia’ (Bakhtin, 1981[1934]) of the images: the competing voices (Volosinov, 1973) of the original source’s author and the new author. In the analysis I refer to the original author’s voice as the ‘primary voice’ and the new author, Donín, as the ‘secondary voice’. As will be seen in the analysis of how images in the travelogue were changed, it is possible to identify agency and a new authorial voice within the images. The degree to which each voice is present also indicates whether the image is an example of what R Ivanič (2004) calls ‘actual intertextuality’ – where images are evidently direct copies of existing images – or of what R Ivanič distinguishes as ‘habitual intertextuality’ – where images bear signs of a genre or discourse (in content, form or structure) without necessarily being exact copies. As already mentioned, the travelogue represents a unique example of intertextuality in its attempt to combine a number of visual genres within the genre of the travelogue. The complex and sometimes overlapping relationship on this spectrum between these two types of intertextuality will be further explored here. From here I structure the article by looking at three image-types in turn: religious images, costume images and images of places.
Religious Images
Identifying with a Catholic community
By choosing to depict or ‘copy’ religious images, Donín connected with a wider discourse and network of images that identified him with a specific affinity group: the Catholic community. In the section about his visit to the pilgrimage site of Loreto, Donín depicted the scene of the transfer of the Holy House to Loreto (Figure 1). Certain visual elements of the image made it recognizable as the scene of the transfer of the Holy House to Loreto from Dalmatia. The ‘vocabulary’ or ‘iconography’ of that scene consisted of the small square chapel with minimal windows being carried by angels with a haloed Mary and Jesus on the roof in a cloud. The force of these signifiers is testified to by their repetition in prints such as that in Orazio Torsellino’s Lauretanae historiae libri quinque appearing since 1597 (Figure 2), various pilgrimage certificates during this time and paintings of the scene. Donín uses the same type of image in his travelogue (Figure 1) and thus connects and identifies with this wider visual discourse. That is, in this example, he is employing habitual intertextuality by participating in the discourse for representing this well-known miracle of the Catholic faith. Donín may have been copying from a specific image, but I have not come across an image that corresponds exactly with his. Nevertheless, comparing Donín’s image with that in Torsellino’s work further reveals that although the images shared a visual language certain individual elements are specific and therefore perhaps adapted. Donín’s image excluded any landscape and had a complete cloud around Mary and Jesus. In particular, by engaging with the discourse of this image of the Holy House of Loreto through portraying and adapting it in the travelogue, Donín identified himself with a Catholic community that revered the shrine and believed in the importance of Mary as a central part of their religion. Moreover by emphasizing Mary through making her comparatively much larger than the house, Donín reinforced a personal relationship with the shrine. Thus he accented the ‘primary voice’ of the familiar image with his own individual ‘secondary voice’.
Donín, Travelogue, DG IV 23, p. 136 detail, Transfer of the Holy House of Loreto. © Strahov Monastery Library. Reproduced by kind permission.
Engraving from Orazio Torsellino, Lauretanae historiae libri quinque (Moguntiae: Apud Balthasarum Lippium, 1599), S.11.25. Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.
Religious icons and statues often located in churches could become representative of locality, events, miracles and saints. Many of these icons and statues came to be known to the Catholic community across Europe through the repetition of their distinctive iconographies in religious ephemera in print and manuscript form. The case of Marian devotion in the 17th century illuminates these linkages particularly well. Mary was a ‘Universal’ saint, representing a shared belief in Catholic values that overcame local differences – a ‘global communitas’ (Turner and Turner, 1978) – yet icons and statues ‘localized’ her divine power by tying her to specific shrines through visually recognizable identifiers. Donín included in his travelogue drawings of the statue of Mary at Altötting (Figure 3), and of the Madonna and Child by St Luke at Loreto (Figure 4). Both portray the distinctive visual characteristics that make the respective locations of the ‘Marys’ identifiable. The ‘Mary of Altötting’ is signified by her staff and crown, and Jesus being held on the left. The distinguishing signifiers of the icon at Loreto were Mary’s draped gown, hair and blazing celestial rays with Jesus on the right. By selecting these images with their recognizable visual elements for his travelogue, Donín identified with the Catholic community – their values and beliefs – that supported the shrines at Altötting and Loreto and believed in and reified the miracles that were associated with the icons in those places by referencing their unique imagery. Although Donín’s drawings are copied from statues and are therefore translations of one mode of visual representation to another, I would argue that they are still examples of actual intertextuality as they accurately reference distinctive imagery from particular sites. They show how the maintenance of a strong primary voice can reveal identification with an affinity group. Donín’s Catholic religious identity, as shown through these intertextual acts, was complexified by his humanist interests. This is evident in the ways that he responded to costume and place as discussed in the following sections.
Donín, Travelogue, DG IV 23, p. 80 detail, Altötting Church and Chapel. © Strahov Monastery Library. Reproduced by kind permission.
Donín, Travelogue, DG IV 23, p. 139 detail, Statue of Madonna and Child by Saint Luke at Loreto. © Strahov Monastery Library. Reproduced by kind permission.
Costume Images
Identifying with humanist practices of categorizing through appearance of clothing, but also observation and openness to change
Although costume illustrations regularly appeared in alba amicorum, the books of signatures and pictures that a traveller would collect on his journeys, they were not normally part of travelogues produced by travellers, and it is particularly unusual to see them in accounts relating to pilgrimages whose purpose had traditionally been for spiritual exploration only – not as a means to engage with the people and cultures of other lands. Costume illustrations had grown in popularity and availability to the public due to the production of costume books since the 1560s (Rublack, 2010) and similar images being reproduced in atlases, and on enamelled glass leading to ‘stereotypes’ becoming cemented in the public consciousness. Although the circulation of images by many different means makes it impossible to locate the exact provenance of Donín’s images of costumes, many do correspond closely with those depicted in Cesare Vecellio’s Degli Habiti Antichi et Moderni (1590) – the most comprehensive costume book of the time, which itself took existing images from many different sources. Donín’s images and the way in which they are presented to the reader reveal strategies of both habitual and actual intertextuality in relating himself with a humanist affinity group.
The extensive and categorical way that Donín used costume images in the travelogue indicates habitual intertextuality with humanist modes of viewing the world that Vecellio’s Habiti inhabited. Although not categorized in a ‘scientific’ way, Donín’s images systematically relate to the different locations to which he travelled. Its comprehensive nature reflects the genre of the costume book and humanist modes of information gathering. Donín selected specific images to illustrate the people that he encountered and made a specific effort to include a wide variety of ‘types’ of people distinguished by locality, profession or situation (e.g. married) and rank. Inclusion of peasant images to exemplify the full variety of people in Venice (known as the ‘theatre of the world’) embodied a step away from the selective images often copied in alba amicorum that focused on the more glamorous and female costumes of a city. Donín appears to have attempted to cover a cross-range, even noting that he portrayed the female and not the male costume of Genoa because the male costume ‘is not different from other cities’ (DG IV 23, p. 113). Though unsystematic, Donín’s extensive inclusion of costume images of people from the places he visited and across the social spectrum portrays him as open-minded and curious about the world in all its diversity. This strategy of habitual intertextuality reflected the qualities of the humanist affinity group with which he was keen to associate. In the following analysis of particular costume images, I show how Donín also employed actual intertextuality to this end.
Both Donín’s and Vecellio’s costume images perpetuated the idea that location and ‘belonging’ to that location could be identified by the appearance of one’s dress. Vecellio’s costume images had become a common visual ‘language’ across Europe and Donín’s selection of these images and the degree to which he chose to retain a strong ‘primary voice’ in his images show that he closely adhered to the prescriptive models of appearance reproduced by these means. Through actual intertextuality with these existing images, Donín positioned himself within an affinity group which concurred with these contemporary visual stereotypes of the material appearance of other cultures with both national and religious connotations. Even though the images are closely copied, all are distinctive and unique: they are hand-drawn and hand-painted, produced using different media including coloured pigments and gold rather than in black and white print, they are approximately half the size of Vecellio’s prints, and are contextualized within Donín’s text. The way in which Donín selected and then adapted and layered his own ‘secondary voice’ in the images reveals his negotiation of discourses and identities primarily relating to social status and national distinction but also to morality and religious belief.
The exceptional degree to which social status could be signalled by visual identifiers in the form of pose and dress is revealed in Donín’s portrayal of a character well-known in the early modern period as the ‘basket carrier’. Donín depicted Venetian ‘domestic merchants’ costume’ in a composite illustration (Figure 5). The characters correspond to three images on different pages in Vecellio’s Habiti (Figures 6) and thus suggest that the images had been carefully selected to depict a range of peasants or perhaps to reflect the characters that Donín had himself seen in Venice. The distinctive poses and clothes of these characters are portrayed almost exactly the same in both Vecellio’s and Donín’s works and show how social-stereotyping could be constructed visually through the repeated reproduction of such images.
Donín, Travelogue, DG IV 23, p. 254 detail, Venetian Peasants. © Strahov Monastery Library. Reproduced by kind permission.
Cesare Vecellio, Habiti (Venice: Appresso i Sessa, 1598), EPB/A6511/A, 144v, ‘Contadino’ A Peasant at Market; 143v, ‘Contadina Triuisana’ A Peasant Woman from the territory of Treviso; 140v, ‘Cestaruoli’ Basket Carrier. © Wellcome Library, London. Reproduced by kind permission.
The image of the peasant basket carrier appears again in Donín’s illustration of the Piazza San Marco (Figure 7) (in itself similar to many images in circulation at the time). The tiny characters and dogs in the square are just big enough to express individual characteristics and the basket carrier image is evident in the bottom of the picture, distinguished by the bent shoulders and legs (bowed under the weight of the basket), the stabilizing hand on the basket on his head, holding the geese in his other hand and wearing a garment that reaches just above the knees. The fact that the character is identifiable even on such a small scale shows the extent to which visual characteristics – mere angles and lines – made an image recognizable as representing a ‘type’ of person and tied into a much wider social-stereotyping through visual elements.
Donín, Travelogue, DG IV 23, p. 244 detail, Piazza San Marco in Venice. © Strahov Monastery Library. Reproduced by kind permission.
Donín’s intention that the images in the travelogue were to act in part as an informative guide disseminating knowledge about different ‘people’ is revealed in the importance he attached to depicting the correct images and specific details. This is exemplified in the travelogue where attempts were made to correct obvious ‘mistakes’ in a number of drawings. For example, the under-drawing of a different image is apparent when examining the illustration of the Pisan woman (Figure 8). The picture of the Pisan woman appears to have been originally drawn like the image of the Perugian woman depicted three pages later in the travelogue (Figure 9), but changed afterwards by painting over parts in white and redrawing the hands and clothes. In Figure 8, evidence of ‘mistakes’ are visible in the remains and overpainting of a hand, overskirt ruffles, a hanging sleeve on the right and of the yellow band of material on the green hem. All these features correspond to aspects that are correct for the Perugian woman’s costume in Figure 9. These determined efforts to change the image reveal how the choices of image were specific and important for the travelogue. For a parallel in children’s projects see the explanation of ‘traces of decision-making processes in the construction of a meaningful message’ (Ormerod and Ivanič, 2002). If a mistake was made, it was both recognized and corrected down to the specific details: the precise image constituted an important part of the account’s description of cities and their cultures.
Donín, Travelogue, DG IV 23, p. 128 detail, Pisan female dress. © Strahov Monastery Library. Reproduced by kind permission.
Donín, Travelogue, DG IV 23, p. 131 detail, Perugian female dress. © Strahov Monastery Library. Reproduced by kind permission.
This example shows that accuracy was key to creating these costume images. It therefore follows that where there is a difference between the images in the travelogue and those in Vecellio’s Habiti, the difference was consciously made as an important visual element of the image. Two distinctive strategies of such individualization are apparent in the travelogue. Firstly, Donín individualized ‘stereotypical’ images for the purpose of the travelogue through creative manipulation. Certain groupings were selected and figures were manipulated in the travelogue in order to make them face each other. For example, the figures representing ‘Neapolitan dress’ did not just consist of a group of Neapolitan women dressed in the same costume, but corresponded to Vecellio’s Neapolitan ‘Married Woman’, ‘Neapolitan Girls’ and a ‘Present-day Married Woman’ located on different pages. Characters that were not necessarily adjacent to each other in Vecellio’s Habiti were selected and this suggests that the choices were made intentionally to cover a variety of costumes. The poses are the same as the corresponding images in Vecellio’s Habiti, but they are put together in a way that formed a group, with the central character looking outwards, and the side ones facing her. In the images of Neapolitan, Roman, and Pisan women and in the Council of Ten of Venice (Figure 10) characters are ‘turned round’ from their original stance in Vecellio’s Habiti to create this intimate scene. By doing this, and by sometimes overlapping the images and suggesting interaction, for example by depicting an arm behind another figure, Donín brought the groups to life in the travelogue. Donín adapted these existing images to form his own story and to represent his travels: he associated with an affinity group that recognized the rank and nationality of these costume images, but his adaptation made them his own and laid claim to an individual and first-hand experience and knowledge of what he was depicting.
Donín, Travelogue, DG IV 23, p. 259 detail, Venetian male dress. © Strahov Monastery Library. Reproduced by kind permission.
The second strategy of individualizing images is evident in the variations in patterns between Donín’s images and those in Vecellio’s Habiti. Where it is possible to compare the travelogue images with those in Vecellio’s Habiti, most of the patterning is slightly different. This could have been partly for ease of drawing on such small images, which were approximately half the size of Vecellio’s images, but is more likely because of new fashions in patterns. Manuscript images of costumes allowed for the depiction of up-to-date styles in patterns or hairstyles in a way that was not possible in printed images even if the basic contours and gestures remained the same between the two media (also see Wilson, 2005). Keeping depictions up-to-date was of concern to those representing costumes. Donín implied that he was aware of the problem of fashion changing quickly: in his description of the Roman female dress he commented that ‘the current Roman dress or costume you have here laid down’ (emphasis added). It is likely that the differences between Vecellio’s printed images and those hand-painted in the travelogue to some extent represent these changes in fashion. Figures 11 and 12, for example, show a comparison between Vecellio’s Habiti image of a Neapolitan woman’s dress (Figure 11) and a corresponding mirror image from Donín’s travelogue (Figure 12). The looping pattern of the skirt is made distinctive on the material of both images, but the depiction of flowers is quite different, with the travelogue image depicting a stylized ‘fleur-de-lys’ in substitution for the daisy-like flowers on Vecellio’s dress. Keeping up to date with fashions proved to Donín’s readership that his knowledge was ‘current’ and that he was a reliable source of information for the latest trends. The extent to which his images were adapted and his ‘secondary voice’ added to the image proved this.
Cesare Vecellio, Habiti (Venice: Appresso i Sessa, 1598), EPB/A6511/A, 216v, ‘Matrona moderna’ Neapolitan female dress. © Wellcome Library, London. Reproduced by kind permission.
Donín, Travelogue, DG IV 23, p. 196 detail, Neapolitan female dress. © Strahov Monastery Library. Reproduced by kind permission.
This analysis has drawn attention to categorization through range and accuracy, and peripheral acts of individualization through grouping and patterning in the travelogue costume images. Costumes could also represent deeper issues and beliefs of their wearers and observers. Clothes had become markers of religious divides and their visual portrayal could conjure up moral issues and points of debate between religions. As Ulinka Rublack (2010: 222) has shown, costumes could represent ‘visual moral geographies’ – representative of faith and locality at the same time. Many Protestant commentators, for example, criticized the ‘immoral’ fashions of Italian Catholic women in their overdressing or exposure of flesh. Donín however portrayed the dress of the Italian Catholic cities he encountered with great reverence and celebrated the beauty of the ornaments in detailing them so carefully in his images, revealing an affinity with a Catholic identity. At no point was there any reference to negative aspects of the Italian dress that he came across and this absence of critique coupled with the desire to show many forms of the extravagant Italian costumes suggests an underlying moral and religious solidarity with those Catholic Italian societies.
Images of Place
Identifying the writer with new humanist values of science and curiosity
Donín’s images of landscapes reveal that he identified himself as a traveller with humanist values of science and curiosity. A number of images in the travelogue correspond to Joris Hoefnagel’s prints from Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg’s newly popular Civitates Orbis Terrarum, six volumes of which were published from 1572 to 1618. Maps at this time were based on scientific observation and measurement, and often included ethnographic images of different cultures relating to the places they depicted. At that time the Civitates Orbis Terrarum atlases collated the most information to date in one publication and contained detailed representations of scenes that characterized the humanist impulse to categorize and mark out features and habits that identified locality. Donín included similar types of sketches in his account of the Bay of Pozzuoli. His account of the Solfatara located there is accompanied by a sketch (Figure 13) illustrating how the sulphur was collected. It corresponds visually with Hoefnagel’s engraving of the same place (Figure 14) though the detail and colour reveal aspects of recontextualization. Donín did not explain the exact processes of the sulphur collection in the text, but by selecting a visual depiction that was a common image of the area and practice of sulphur collection, he participated in a scientific discourse about it, which was circulating in the public domain.
Donín, Travelogue, DG IV 23, p. 199 detail, Solfatara. © Strahov Monastery Library. Reproduced by kind permission.
Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg, Civitates Orbis Terrarum (Coloniae Agrippinae, 1572–1618), Atlas.4.57.4, III/58, detail of engraving of Solfatara by Joris Hoefnagel. Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.
Further scientific observations were highlighted in Donín’s report of the ‘Grota del Cane’. Donín included more text than in the previous example, describing the cave and the effect of the gases on dogs – how guides would throw the dogs into the cave and the dogs would pass out, then the guides would revive them by dipping them in the lake. This was a common anecdote much repeated by those who visited the area. The image in Donín’s travelogue (Figure 15) can also be compared to Hoefnagel’s print (Figure 16). The distinguishing visual signifiers for both images are the position of the three dogs, the stance of the two men holding dogs, the building on the right of the cave, and the skeleton with a spear above the cave. The actual intertextuality of these textual and visual descriptions of natural phenomena show how Donín identified with the secular and scientific impulses of the affinity group of educated travellers despite being on a ‘pilgrimage’.
Donín, Travelogue, DG IV 23, p. 198 detail, Grota del Cane. © Strahov Monastery Library. Reproduced by kind permission.
Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg, Civitates Orbis Terrarum (Coloniae Agrippinae, 1572–1618), Atlas.4.57.4, III/57, Engraving of Grota del Cane by Joris Hoefnagel. Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.
These are examples of actual intertextuality in which existing images are faithfully reproduced with a strong primary voice, which makes them recognizable. Through the processes of decontextualizing and recontextualizing, they reveal an association with a genre which in itself constructs the author’s identity. By selecting images from the newly popular genre of atlases, Donín identified himself with a group that was consuming new humanist ways of seeing the world. Furthermore, the significant fact that the Braun and Hogenberg volumes from which Donín appears to draw for his illustrations were only partway through production (to be finished approximately 10 years later), positions Donín at the cusp of humanist developments. By reproducing the images accurately and recontextualizing them within the genre of the travelogue, he reconceptualizes the relationship between science, exploration and pilgrimage for his readers. In so doing, he represents himself as a new type of pilgrim, less constrained by the rigid prescriptions of Catholic travel as set out in the literature of pilgrimage guides (see Williams, 1998).
Soon after these examples of actual intertextuality in the travelogue, Donín revealed an even deeper understanding of humanist practices by drawing on a genre associated with them. This, I suggest, is an example of habitual intertextuality. Donín structured his description of the Bay of Pozzuoli in Italy around a keyed map (Figure 17), which was a device he also used in describing the central square and buildings in Venice (Figure 7). Cartography was a particularly empirical mode of analysis and viewing the world, and Donín’s choice to use it revealed an educated approach to the landscape and its interpretation. The hand-drawn and painted map was marked with letters from ‘A’ to ‘V’ that related to the surrounding text, which he marked with the relevant letters in the margins. This format was a structured way to pinpoint sites in the landscape. For example, next to ‘A’ he wrote that there was ‘Pucuolo, or ancient Puteoli’, and he described the Christian history of this ‘ancient’ place. At ‘B’ there is a port, and ‘D’, ‘E’ and ‘F’ were labelled respectively Monte Gauro, Montagna Nuova and ‘Lacus Lucrinus’. Donín’s map of the Bay of Pozzuoli is very similar to other keyed maps of the area, and in particular to that of Mario Cartario’s Carta dei campi flegrei curate da Charles noavue, con data 15 settembre 1586 (printed Naples, c. 1588). His images utilized the same elements, including the windmill in the bottom left, a ship with a sail at the same angle in the bay and the fields and orchards, and were likely to have been part of a common way of ‘describing’ the area in a pictorial and schematic way, even if it was not an exact copy of that particular map.
Donín, Travelogue, DG IV 23, p. 201 detail, Bay of Pozzuoli. © Strahov Monastery Library. Reproduced by kind permission.
The fact that it is possible to trace similar images that appear in the travelogue to atlases and maps shows that Donín’s discourse was shaped by this genre. The exact way that they appear in the travelogue reveals a constant negotiation between referring to existing images that were an already-established way of seeing the world and personalizing these images by adapting them and bringing them together in the format of the travelogue. The resulting presentation recontextualizes the images to refer to Donín’s personal experiences and communicates an individualized and ‘new’ message about these places. By adopting and adapting images in this way, Donín positioned himself within the affinity group of those who viewed and described the world scientifically, merged with his identity as a Catholic pilgrim and Bohemian nobleman.
Conclusion
The approach of studying visual intertextuality is particularly suited to questions about identity. This research has shown how visual intertextuality was a strategy of identity-projection. By analysing visual intertextuality in the travelogue, I have revealed how Donín engaged in visual discourses and therefore identified with affinity groups that used certain images and valued what they represented. These shared visual discourses were made recognizable through the repeated reproduction and circulation of images with similar visual vocabularies in different media across Europe. Furthermore the travelogue provides evidence of Donín’s multiple identities through this visual intertextuality. Donín built a hybrid identity as a Catholic who identified with certain Catholic localities and their associated miracles and spiritual meaning, as a nobleman concurring with stereotyped social and cultural differences that were made visually apparent through costume (and pose), and as someone interested in the science of new humanist influences.
An analysis of visual intertextuality such as the one demonstrated in this article could further be complemented by other kinds of analysis across a wide range of texts. In Donín’s travelogue it was revealing also to attend to what might be called ‘intermodality’ – the interaction of visual, material and linguistic modes of communication within a text (S Ivanič, 2012; see also Parkin, 2009). Intertextual analysis of images can be integrated with content analysis and analysis of the ‘grammar’ of visual communication (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2006[1996]) to uncover the meanings that are carried by discourses and genres as they travel from one text to another. Visual intertextuality provides an important starting point for opening up issues of visual communication in the travelogue by locating the images within it in wider networks associated to affinity groups.
I have used the distinction drawn by R Ivanič (2004) between ‘actual intertextuality’ and ‘habitual intertextuality’, in which ‘actual intertextuality’ refers to direct lifting or copying of visual images from other sources, and ‘habitual intertextuality’ refers to the use of culturally recognized genres and discourses of visual communication, evident in other similar, but not identical, images of the time. Applying this distinction to images drawn by hand in 1608, I have found that the instances of ‘actual intertextuality’ in my research are not only recontextualized but also to a greater or lesser extent transformed by the person using them, and hence I have needed to distinguish sub-categories to show how closely copied images were adapted in various ways.
Donín’s account can be seen as a patchwork of texts and images from many different sources available to him, and it is the choice of patches, how each patch is in fact remade with slight variations and the needlework that binds them that reveal his identity. At first glance the work might appear to re-present ‘stereotypical’ images of the world copied wholesale from other sources but, as this article has shown, a closer viewing reveals far more about the subtleties of visual communication. These were not mere decorative illustrations. Careful attention to which images were selected and how they were appropriated reveals individual engagement with these shared visual discourses through a practice of actual intertextuality. The accuracy in copying elements and specific pictures – and therefore in maintaining a strong primary voice – reveals the degree of importance in selecting the ‘correct’ images to convey meaning, identify with communities familiar with these images and perhaps to disseminate knowledge. Additionally, subtle physical changes to patterns and individual groupings revealed a degree of personalizing the images by accenting them with the secondary voice to fit the travelogue’s purposes. Through these changes a level of individual meaning was ascribed to these images. Examples of habitual intertextuality in the travelogue are evident in the appropriation of the visual genre of the identifiable religious image, costume book or keyed map to construct an image or structure a section. This alternative strategy of connecting to recognizable genres identified Donín in each case with a wider discourse concerning Catholic religious identity, or scientific and categorizing impulses.
This analysis of visual communication in an historical context is important to enrich our understanding of contemporary visual communication. This study of visual intertextuality gives us clues about how visual discourse is time- and culture-specific. It has highlighted how visual repertoire, technologies, varying purposes and values are the real agents at play in how visual communication changes over time, whilst construction of identity through intertextuality continues as a strategy throughout. Particular images were in circulation in 1608 which shaped Donín’s travelogue in a way that would have been impossible 50 years earlier. It would make a very interesting further study to tease out the parallels and differences between this and the making of 21st-century travel blogs. Moreover, this research highlights the historical difference in communications. In this period there could never be a wholesale borrowing in the way that the internet and computer technology allow today as highlighted in R Ivanič (2004). Rather, there was always a personal mark of adaptation as these documents were made by hand. Indeed, wholesale borrowing was both common and seen as positive. It was these copies that spread knowledge around the world to such an unprecedented degree in this period.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Strahov Monastery Library for giving me access to the wonderful manuscript by Bedřich z Donín, and especially to Jan Pařez for bringing the travelogue to my attention. I would also like to thank Ulinka Rublack for guidance on historical aspects of my research and Roz Ivanič for comments and advice on the article. This research was aided by grants from the Pasold Research Fund and Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge.
Afterword
This source was not just an end-point, a culmination of various visual influences containing some individual adaptations, but there is evidence that it was very much in the middle of a visual conversation. Indications of deeply scored but unmarked outlines suggest heavy tracing around two of the figures in 
and imply that the images had an ‘afterlife’ as well as a pre-life existence. It is not possible to deduce anything further about this, but it highlights the way images have histories of their own and are interlinked to visual discourses with long trajectories.
Biographical Note
Address: University of Cambridge, Faculty of History, West Road, Cambridge CB3 9EF, UK. [email: