THIS was our first look at the realm of the invisible. In 1665, Robert Hooke’s Micrographia brought microscopic observations out of his laboratory to a wider world.
Hooke believed that, through the lens of a microscope, nothing could be “so small as to escape our inquiry”. The 38 copper engravings from his book, now republished by The Folio Society, detail many objects smaller than a grain of sand, in the manner of the diaries of travelling contemporaries who sketched rare exotic specimens on their travels around the New World.
Hooke chose subjects he thought looked attractive for his idealised and ordered catalogue of the microworld, including poppy seeds (above), an insect larva (below the poppy seeds), and a louse clinging to a human hair (below). Before drawing the head of a fly (top), Hooke first detached it so he could observe the organs inside the animal’s abdomen.
But he showed more tenderness to a tiny ant (bottom). Fearing that killing the insect would squash its miniature parts and destroy their beauty, he instead submerged it in alcohol so it would revive after the study was over “as if it had been awaken out of a drunken sleep”.
Micrographia by Robert Hooke is available from The Folio Society
This article appeared in print under the headline “Drawing the invisible”
More on these topics: