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  • The English Virtuoso: Art, Medicine, and Antiquarianism in the Age of Empiricism
  • Francisc Szekely
Hanson, Craig Ashley , The English Virtuoso: Art, Medicine, and Antiquarianism in the Age of Empiricism, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2009; cloth; pp. xvii, 316; 62 b/w illustrations, 10 colour plates; R.R.P. US$50.00; ISBN 9780226315874.

This book proposes to tackle a problem of fundamental importance to the understanding of the epistemological shifts registered in seventeenth-century England. The personae of the practitioners of Early Modern experimentalism are key. Craig Hanson's plan here consists of drawing a map of the meeting points between the discourses of seventeenth-century medicine and those of artistic representations and antiquarian curiosity, two significant discourses with which medicine came into direct contact, and based on which the portrait of the Early Modern 'virtuoso' was established.

Hanson's argument is multifaceted, and because of this not always clearly aligned to its main purpose. The book works very well as a periodization of the phenomenon of virtuosic culture in England, sketching it in three distinct stages. The preparatory stage, characteristic of the first half of the seventeenth century, is depicted by Hanson in connection with Lord Arundel and his circle of enthusiastic collectors. This initial phase ends with the beheading of Charles I, whose death provides both a chronological and symbolical rupture within an established way of dealing with social, political and cultural distinctions. 'The regicide,' Hanson argues, 'entailed not only the violent repression of the Stuart dynasty but also an attack on the larger court culture it had nurtured' (p. 58). At this moment in the history of virtuosi, one may distinguish the 'medical virtuosity' of John Evelyn, whose 'inability to conceptualize his medical pursuits' Hanson sees as characteristic of the history of seventeenth-century virtuosic culture at large (p. 62).

The next distinctive period coincides with the Interregnum and Restoration, when the most important events are the establishment and consolidation of the Royal Society and the emergence of the important figures gravitating around this new corporate knowledge-making structure. Hanson focuses in [End Page 231] this period mainly on the work of John Evelyn, with a brief digression on the contribution of Christopher Wren. The chronological perspective on the phenomenon ends with satirical responses, from, for instance, the likes of William Hogarth, when, following the reception of Don Quixote in England, the former respectability of the virtuoso diminished.

It is important to mention that Hanson draws the entire lineage of English virtuosi from Thomas Howard, second Earl of Arundel (1585-1646). In an effort to consolidate these origins, almost every figure mentioned in the book is in some way linked back to Lord Arundel. This is made relevant by a statement in the first chapter of the book: 'The importance of Arundel's circle was not that it defined the essence of the English virtuoso but that it provided models for subsequent generations as they refashioned their own intellectual landscape' (p. 56).

There are problems, it must be said, with the organization of this book. The most significant of them has to do with Hanson's tendency to individualize the figures he is dealing with, to such an extent that the sections of the book dedicated to Arundel or Aglionby, Haydocke or Evelyn, read almost like hagiographies, linked to the scope of the project only superficially. The problem at this level is that the personages analysed in these disparate sections are not sufficiently linked together to allow the reader to conclude that their features were indeed characteristic of a distinct 'class' of virtuosi. Statements made in these hagiographies work well in themselves, but they need more collation in order to be applicable to the seventeenth-century virtuoso as a concept.

The same thing happens when it comes to the history of the reception of Don Quixote in England. Once again, the weight accorded the topic seems excessive, and as a consequence the entire part feels as though it had been taken from a different work. However, The English Virtuoso is a book worth reading, as it points out, even if sometimes only in passing, several aspects of importance to the history of this socio...

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