Bones of contention: Johann Heinrich Merck's palaeontological encounters with academic scholars and professional printmakers

Abstract

Printed images played a role in the strategies of savant amateurs of the Enlightenment in consolidating their scientific networks, traced here through the case study of Johann Heinrich Merck. Convinced of the importance of his palaeontological findings, Merck developed an impressive network from Johann Wolfgang Goethe and Samuel Thomas Sömmerring to Petrus Camper and Joseph Banks. Academic celebrities set an important horizon for Merck's aspirations, but his ambitions also depended on professional artists. Increasingly disappointed with printmakers' contribution to natural history, Merck eventually emancipated himself as an etcher in his own right. This article's focus is on printed images regarded as both visual and material sources; both preserved—some neglected hitherto—and those only known via written sources, whose record allows for a detailed reconstruction of events and the intentions behind them. As images used to disseminate knowledge, they were expected to be reliable; as objects employed in the pursuit of scholarly recognition, they were supposed to reach their recipients post-haste. An inspection of Merck's utilization of printed images, with their concomitant demand for reliability and speed, reveals a pattern of misjudgements in his career and a craving for attention and primacy, which repeatedly exposed him to predicaments.