Between Allegory and Instrument: the Seventeenth Century London Anatomy Theatres of Inigo Jones and Robert Hooke as Sites of Visualization

In the course of the seventeenth century, two anatomical theaters were established in London for the performance of public anatomies. For the first theatre in 1636, the Barber Surgeons Company commissioned the Renaissance architect Inigo Jones, who was known for his courtly stage designs as well as for his public buildings. The mathematician Robert Hooke, who was the curator of experiments at the Royal Society and among the founders of an empirical science, oversaw the construction of a second theatre for the College of Physicians from 1679. The first theater can be characterized as emblematic of Renaissance culture, based on an analogous understanding of the world, and linked to practices of veiling and unveiling. By contrast, the second theater is seen to open a new path to a rational and anti-illusionistic way of perceiving nature and the role of humans within nature.

Several historical developments suggest that the approach to representation adopted in the two theaters differed considerably; between the construction of the first and the second building, the English Civil War took place, which ended the monopoly of the Church of England in matters of faith and led to a short period of parliamentary rule that was followed by the restoration of the monarchy. The loss of political and religious unity and the fragmentation of English society were accompanied by a fragmented view of the human body: After 1628, the discovery of the circulatory system by the English physician and anatomist William Harvey called into question the doctrine of the four humors, which had held sway since antiquity as the basis of the entire system of thought. In the spirit of René Descartes, the single parts and functions of the body came to be seen in isolation, and inductive reasoning gained prevalence.

While both buildings as a type find their reference in the anatomical theatre of Padua or Leiden, their epistemological reference points seem to diverge. If Jones’ theatre is read as an allegory, Hooke’s theatre is seen as an instrument. The present text aims to explore to what extent such a distinction is accurate, to what extent it is shaped by discourses of functionality in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In order to clarify this question, the text examines which concept of representation the two spaces were subject to in each case.