![]() ![]() In analysing Hobbes’ imagery there are a number of perspectives one could take: See for example Horst Bredekamp, Thomas Hobbes Visuelle Strategien (1999, 2007, 2012) and Justin Champion, “Decoding the Leviathan: Doing the History of Ideas through Images, 1651–1714” (2010)). There has been some interesting recent research on the imagery used by Hobbes in his political writings and I am glad to see the historical profession catching up with me. This got me thinking about the meaning of Hobbes’s frontispiece as a piece of political iconography, which is a topic I have been exploring for a couple of decades in my collection of “illustrated essays” on “Images of Liberty and Power”. If the individuals which made up the Leviathan’s body decided to walk away or do something else, then the “body politic” would collapse and the Leviathan would then no longer exist. The “leviathan” monarch’s body is composed of thousands of small figures of his subjects. This edition by Payot (2016) shows the classic illustration from Thomas Hobbes’ book Leviathan (1652). ![]() In a recent post on the cover art of the French thinker Étienne de la Boétie I remarked about one cover that: Thomas Hobbes and the Iconography of the Leviathan State Introduction ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |