The image of Giordano Bruno

One excuse for not making use of the visual sources is the difficulty in interpreting them. Before the historian can even try to make valid use of an image, he has to know what he is looking for, when and for what purpose it was made, in what circumstances, current visual conventions, technical and other constraints.1 Thus, extracting information from visual sources and combining it with literary evidence is a demanding and time-consuming undertaking, but from studies like Peter Burke’s The Fabrication of Louis XIV we have learnt that it is well worth the effort.2 Admittedly, studies dealing with high-ranking official persons, such as kings and emperors, are comparatively easy to carry out since images in those contexts may normally be regarded as visualizations of a political programme. Here monuments, coins, frescos, prints, state portraits and other kinds of images help us to complete, supplement and widen the analysis of what is known from other sources. In the case of less official figures the task is more difficult. Depending on a wide variety of factors – for instance age, status, position and character and the way artists and commissioners understand them – the same person may be represented in many different ways already during his lifetime. From a distance, and in the absence of official sources, these changes often appear quite dramatic. If the person in question is frequently portrayed over time, the scholar soon finds him or herself entangled in a conundrum of interactions between various conventions, traditions, prototypes and biases, especially if there is no canonical original to refer to – as in the case of Giordano Bruno.