Bibles unbound: the material semantics of nineteenth-century scriptural illustration

Abstract

This article takes as its starting point The Pictorial Bible, considering it as an historiographical vehicle for both biblical imagery and print history in the nineteenth century. The publication is significant alone as a compendium of visual forms, functioning for viewers even today as a vast collection of Judeo-Christian pictorial expression in the West stretching back to antiquity. This will become an underlying characteristic of much nineteenth-century scriptural illustration: the attempt to underscore the heterogeneity of the Bible while preserving its status as discursively unified object. What distinguishes this context from earlier moments in the history of the Bible and of print culture are an increased emphasis on historical authenticity and objectivity, and the availability of a diverse set of print processes, each with its own layers of perceived value.