Ad Vivum? ― Visual Materials and the Vocabulary of Life-likeness in Europe Before 1800

Ad Vivum? explores the issues raised by this Latin term and its vernacular cognates al vivo, au vif, nach dem Leben and naer het leven with reference to a variety of visual materials produced and used in Europe before 1800.

Thomas Balfe, Ph.D. (2014), is currently a Teaching Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. His research focuses on animal, hunting, fable, food, and human-animal inversion imagery. His most recent publication is “Hunting, Inversion and Anthropomorphism in Two Scenes from the Upside-Down World”, in Sas M. (ed.), Hunting Without Weapons: On the Pursuit of Images (2017).

Joanna Woodall is a Professor at The Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, where she teaches a research-led MA entitled ‘Bodies of Knowledge in the Early Modern Netherlands, ca. 1550–1670’. Her most recent publication is “For Love and Money. The Circulation of Value and Desire in Abraham Ortelius’s Album amicorum”, in Melion W. – Zell M. – Woodall J. (eds.), Ut Pictura Amor: The Reflexive Imagery of Love in Artistic Theory and Practice, 1500–1700 , (2017).

Claus Zittel teaches German literature and philosophy at the Universities of Stuttgart (Germany) and Olsztyn (Poland), and is since 2014 Deputy Director of the Stuttgart Research Centre for Text Studies. He is the author of Theatrum philosophicum: Descartes und die Rolle asthetischer Formen in der Wissenschaft (2009), editor of Nietzsche-Studien , and has co-edited some thirty-four volumes, including (with C. Luthy, C. Swan, P. Bakker) Image, Imagination and Cognition: Medieval and Early Modern Theory and Practice (2018).