• Citer

Neptune as Emblem of Peace, Sovereignty, and Environmental Knowledge

par Martino, Davide ;Crofts, Frederick G.
Référence 71st Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America (RSA) (20-22/03/2025: Boston, United States)
Publication Non publié, 2025-03-21

Communication à un colloque

• Détails
• Contenu

Résumé :

From the mid sixteenth century onwards, Neptune experienced an extraordinary surge in popularity in European visual and plastic arts. The ancient god of waters was often represented quelling a storm, in reference to the famous Quos ego passage from Virgil’s Aeneid. Traditionally, Neptune has therefore been understood as a symbol of peace and the quelling of discord. By analysing and comparing a set of early modern emblems including Neptune, we will update this interpretation. In this paper we argue that Neptune was also the embodiment of a trans-confessional language of sovereignty, which became particularly popular in the Holy Roman Empire after the 1555 Peace of Augsburg. This could be understood territorially, as sovereignty over land or indeed a body of water, but also conceptually, as sovereignty over global and local environment(s). This metaphorical sovereignty was achieved by means of knowing, collecting, and studying the world in ways that were fundamental to the development of the new empirical and mechanical philosophies around 1600. Emblems of Neptune, in other words, did not just stand for peace and sovereignty but also for new natural philosophical, experimental, and environmental knowledge.