Optics, Heart Metaphors, and Print in the Age of Jesuit Science

Abstract This article examines some of the tensions and contradictions inherent in Athanasius Kircher’s (1602–1680) treatise Ars magna lucis et umbrae . In the concluding section of the work, Kircher likens the heart to the camera obscura and the mirror, using the vocabulary of optics to describe the purifying effect of divine light. The heightened evocativeness of this imagery came with theoretical difficulties, however, in part because of the negative spiritual connotations of reversal and inversion, operations performed by optical devices upon their objects. Kircher grappled with these challenges in other portions of his treatise. The fact that printmaking involves image reversal, and related errors in the illustrations of Ars magna lucis , complicated the situation further. It is argued here that the infelicities found in these illustrations offer a parallel, on the material level, for the conceptual difficulties negotiated by Kircher.