Place and functioning of images in Renaissance visual rhetoric

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Abstract

This article discusses Quentin Skinner's contributions to the analysis of images in Renaissance political rhetoric and explores a theoretical elucidation of their argumentative functioning by applying Horst Bredekamp's theory of image acts. After reviewing the dimensions of Skinner's rhetoric, the paper focuses on examining the place of images in rhetorical arguments. For this, it discusses some iconic images of the Italian and English Renaissance such as Lorenzetti's Siena Fresco and the frontispiece of Hobbes's “Leviathan”. The work establishes that, at least, three Renaissance rhetorical figures that elaborated images with persuasive purposes served effectively to build political abstractions, fictions and to modify meanings of political concepts. In visual terms, the functioning of these three discursive figures finds an explanation in Bredekamps’s theory of images. The article concludes that, although the link between the rhetorical and visual concepts of both authors can be exemplified with the analysis of a section of the frontispiece of "Leviathan", the feasibility of using this assemblage as a theoretical model for the examination of other Renaissance images. This depends, among other considerations, on the possibility of associating them with texts, contexts, and the understanding of the reception of the arguments in a specific discussion.