Francis Bacon Research Trust

Bacon’s World

Engraved title page illustration to the first continental edition of Francis Bacon’s De Dignitate & Augmentis Scientiarum, published in Leyden in 1645, printed by Francis Moiard and Adrian Wijngaerde.

Of all the Baconian illustrations, this title page engraving shows Bacon most clearly as a philosopher-poet and secret dramatist. It also portrays symbolically the whole scheme of Bacon’s Great Instauration.

Bacon is shown seated on a similar chair as in the 1640 Advancement of Learning frontispiece illustration, hatted and robed as the Lord Chancellor. A large folio book lies open on the table in front of him—presumably the De Augmentis—to a line or word of which he is pointing with the first finger of his right hand. This book, together with his right hand and arm, is illuminated and therefore ‘in the light’.

By contrast Bacon’s left arm and hand is ‘in the shadow’, and is supporting and pushing the figure of a wildly dressed man up a rocky hill, on top of which is a temple, also in shadow. The figure is clothed in a tunic of fawn or goatskin and has an out-sized face with an unusual nose that looks like a mask, all of which identifies him as a bacchant, a performer of the rites of Bacchus, the god of Drama.

The classical rites of Bacchus involved a mixture of comedy and tragedy, reflecting the nature of life and the universal principle of strife and friendship as taught in the Orphic schools of philosophy. When clothed in a fawn skin the bacchant (or female bacchante) wore soft sandals made of fawnskin, the original of the socks of comedy. The tragic actor or bacchant, by contrast, wore high-soled hunting boots made of goatskin, known as buskins, and a goatskin tunic. The bacchant in this picture is not wearing buskins, and therefore the deduction is that the bacchant is wearing fawnskin and is performing comedy which leads to resurrection (i.e. psychological rebirth) and illumination, a goal symbolised by the temple on the hill.

The mask was used in the Dionysian masquerades to represent the way the incarnate god functioned. Just as the mask veiled the bacchant whilst he played his role on the stage, so the bacchant or tragicomic actor was himself the mask or earthly representative of the god Bacchus on the stage of the world.

Quite clearly the picture is showing that the actor is the mask of the poet-dramatist Bacon, the Italianate form of whose name is Bacco, the same as that of Bacchus. Just as the actor in the picture wears his own mask, so Bacon in his chair holds his human mask, the actor, who looks back to Bacon, the author, for his words or instructions. Bacon’s particular actor-mask was Will Shakspere.

Held out in front of the bacchant, in both his hands, is a clasped book with the symbol of a mirror on its cover. Above the actor, on the crown of the rocky hill, is a temple, symbolic of the Temple of Philosophy which Bacon’s method can build.

The picture is beautifully made, with every detail carefully thought out and executed. Just to demonstrate absolutely that this is so, look carefully at the cloak which is draped over Bacon’s legs, hanging just beneath the large folio book and his right hand. Near the hem of the cloak you should be able to see the face that is picked out in dots upon the cloth—a face which appears to be that of the sun god, Apollo, crowned with solar rays.

This title page illustration in fact depicts the whole of Bacon’s scheme, and complements the title page illustration of the 1640 Advancement of Learning with great skill. For instance, the depiction of the De Augmentis book at Bacon’s right hand is a straight-forward pictorial illustration of Part I of the Great Instauration. Part II (the New Method) seems to be represented by the half-concealed book which lies beneath the large folio of the De Augmentis. Part III (a Natural History) is more subtly but neatly represented by the Apollonian sun face on Bacon’s cloak that is draped over his right leg—a fine symbol of the light of nature. In the 1640 Advancement of Learning illustration these first three parts of the Great Instauration are shown as three books stacked on top of each other and supporting the right-hand solar pillar. In complementary polarity to this, in the same 1640 illustration Parts IV-VI are similarly represented by three books stacked on top of each other, but supporting the left-hand lunar pillar. Matching this, the 1645 De Augmentis illustration places its own explanatory symbols for these three parts of the Great Instauration at Bacon’s left hand side—the actor held by Bacon, the book held by the actor, and the temple on the hill symbolising Parts IV, V and VI respectively.

* Further explanation of this can be learnt by searching the web page illustration with the cursor.

(N.B. Rather than making this illustration a simple pictorial index to the various parts of the Great Instauration, as is the case with the web page ‘Bacon’s Library’, this index page ‘Bacon’s World’ follows a different and more labyrinthine path.)