Spectacles: technology unknown to the ancients, c. 1290

Image. 'Conspicilla [Spetacles]', Plate XV from Jan van der Straet (a.k.a. Johannes Stradanus, 1523-1605), Nova reperta [New discoveries] (Antwerp, c. 1600). Artist: Jan van er Straet. Engraver: Jan Collaert I (1530–1581 ). Dimensions: sheet: 10 5/8 x 7 7/8 in. (27 x 20 cm). Source: Bodleian Library, shelfmark Don. b.8 (1)

Caption. ‘Inventa conspicilla sunt, quae luminum / Obscuriores detegunt caligines.’ / ‘Glasses have been invented, which remove the more obscure darkness from the eyes.’

Description. On the edge of a market square, a shop (to the left) sells prefabricated glasses and lenses and the cases to protect them when they are not being worn. An elderly man tries on a series of them, taken from a tray, to find one that improves his sight. While the modern optometrist measures eyesight and then prescribes lenses for the individual, the equivalent process here is trial and error with prefabricated lenses. Many of the other figures are wearing spectacles and illustrate occupations which depend on good eyesight: a scholar (in a doctoral cap) reads a letter (his glasses case suspended from his belt); a bookseller keeps his accounts; a tailor or seamstress sews; a cobbler prepares leather and his apprentice stitches it into shoes. As if to illustrate the alternative, in the background a blind man with a stick makes his way across the square, led by a guide dog.

Commentary. The trades illustrated in this image help remind us that eyeglasses are the product of a urban and commercial society. Pin-sharp short-range vision is less indispensible for those engaged in gross-motor activities in the countryside practiced at arm's length: tending livestock, weeding fields, gathering the harvest. Correcting the long-sightedness which increases with age is far more necessary for artisans involved in meticulous work (such as the tailor depicted) and for literate and numerate professions. Given the prominence of the scholar and the book-keeper in the foreground of this image, it is tempting to infer that the introduction of paper-making into Europe might have accelerated the development and proliferation of eyeglasses: increased engagement with written letters, numbers, and figures would also have increased the need for clear short-range vision especially amongst the more elderly section of population depicted here. 

The scholar reading the letter on the right margin of the image is particularly suggestive of the acceleration of communication which accompanied the development of optical instruments. In October 1608, two Dutchmen -- one a spectacle-maker, the other a lens grinder -- applied independently to the States General for a patent for the device later known as the 'telescope'. Within a few months, the networks of manuscript correspondence which tied together the early modern 'republic of letters' had communicated this news via Paolo Sarpi in Venice to Galileo in Padua. By August 1609, Galileo had offered a perfected 'spyglass' to the Republic of Venice as a practical aid in navigation and warfare. In January 1610 he began the series of epoch-making telescopic observations of the moon, planets, satellites, and stars which undermined the received Aristotelian-Ptolemaic cosmology. In March 1610, print technology disseminated these findings throughout learned Europe in his celebrated pamphlet, Siderius nuncius. Manuscript correspondence then brought him into contact with the Imperial Astronomy, Johannes Kepler, who worked out for the first time a theory to explain the magnifying power of the telescope. 

The fact that none of these developments is illustrated in this image is one of the clearest reasons for dating the Nova reperta before 1608.

Origin. Eyeglasses were first manufactured in Italy, most probably in Pisa, around 1290. In a sermon of 23 February 1306, the Dominican friar Giordano da Pisa (ca. 1255–1311) wrote "It is not yet twenty years since there was found the art of making eyeglasses, which make for good vision... And it is so short a time that this new art, never before extant, was discovered. ... I saw the one who first discovered and practiced it, and I talked to him."* Essentially this same remark by Brother Giordano features in Umberto Eco's novel, The Name of the Rose (1980), set in 1327, and in the film based on it (starring Sean Connery, below).

“Oculi de vitro cum capsula!” he cried. “I had heard tell of them from a Brother Jordan I met in Pisa! He said it was less than twenty years since they had been invented. But I spoke with him more than twenty years ago.”
     “I believe they were invented much earlier,” William said, “but they are difficult to make, and require highly expert master glaziers. They cost time and labor. Ten years ago a pair of these glasses ab oculis ad legendum were sold for six Bolognese crowns. I was given a pair of them by a great master, Salvinus of the Armati, more than ten years ago, and I have jealously preserved them all this time, as if they were—as they now are—a part of my very body.”
     “I hope you will allow me to examine them one of these days; I would be happy to produce some similar ones,” Nicholas said, with emotion.
     “Of course,” William agreed, “but mind you, the thickness of the glass must vary according to the eye it is to serve, and you must test many of these lenses, trying them on the person until the suitable thickness is found.”
     “What a wonder!” Nicholas continued. “And yet many would speak of witchcraft and diabolical machination. …”

Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose.

Further images. The Nova reperta is a series of full series of 19 inventions unknown to the ancients.  The full series is available here.
Further reading. Edward Rosen, 'The Invention of Eyeglasses,' Journal for the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 11 (1956), 13-46, 183-218; Thomas F. Glick, 'Eyeglasses',  in Medieval Science, Technology, and Medicine: An Encyclopedia, ed. Thomas F. Glick, Steven Livesey, and Faith Wallis (New Yorik, 2005), pp. 167-8; *Vincent Ilardi, Renaissance Vision from Spectacles to Telescopes (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2007), p. 5 (quoted above).

Credit. Howard Hotson (February 2019) supplemented by Leyan Jin (second-year student, St Anne's College, November 2024)