Portret van Samuel Thomas Sömmering 1820 - 1828

This stipple engraving of Samuel Thomas Sömmering was made by Ambroise Tardieu sometime around the turn of the nineteenth century. As a leading anatomist and natural scientist, Sömmering helped to lay the foundations for modern medicine as an institution. Tardieu’s image presents us with a figure of considerable civic importance. The print emphasizes Sömmering’s membership in Europe’s transnational community of scientists, with mentions of the Académie des Sciences in Paris and his professorship in Munich. The print establishes Sömmering as a figure of scientific authority, and it subtly reinforces the idea of science as a male preserve, a world in which learned men could correspond with one another and consolidate their status. To understand the role of images like this, we might look at how the institutions of science were emerging at this moment, a project that requires research in archives, libraries, and museums. In the end, these portraits tell us much about the social and institutional context in which art is made.