The image of Restoration science: the frontispiece to Thomas Sprat's History of the Royal Society (1667)

Abstract

This book is about a single image - the frontispiece to Thomas Sprat’s History of the Royal-Society of London (1667). Designed by John Evelyn, and etched by Wenceslaus Hollar, it is arguably the best-known representation of seventeenth-century English science. The use of such plates to celebrate and legitimise the ‘new’ science of the period falls into a tradition that was well-established both in Britain and in Europe more generally, and which has increasingly attract attention from historians. Nevertheless, there are many questions to be asked about it and how it came into being.