'For Illustrative Purposes Only' : The Female Body as Allegory and Personification in the Scientific Revolution

During the Scientific Revolution, illustrations acted as a major vehicle to express the motivations and achievements of the great minds of science. It is important to consider that the field of ‘natural philosophy,’ as it was then-called, was a male-dominated space of inquiry. The illustrations for male-authored publications, however, did not reflect this, and in fact, symbolic and allegorical human figures were female-dominated, especially for the decorative titlepage or frontispiece. This thesis considers in what circumstances the female body was utilized as a visual allegory, why she was preferred to the male body, and what the symbolic message reveals about the consequences and implications of this celebrated period of scientific advancement. This is achieved through the analysis of early modern illustrations from scientific publications, in conversation with peer-reviewed sources covering the early modern period, art history, racial theory, feminist theory, and the history of science and the Scientific Revolution.