Introduction: Kant’s Body in Images

“I saw my portrait on the front of the [Allgemeine deutsche] Bibliothek. It is an honor that disturbs me a little, for, as you know, I earnestly avoid all appearance of surreptitiously seeking eulogies or ostentatiously creating a stir. The portrait is a good engraving though not a good likeness. But it pleases me to see this sort of gesture stemming from the amiable partisanship of my former students.”

— Kant’s letter to Marcus Herz[1]

Overview of the Images

Immanuel Kant (1768)
Becker(c), oil on canvas, 59 x 46 cm.

We have available to us 15 original images produced by artists who had seen Kant in person[2] (open the set of images in a new window):

five 3/4 portraits [Becker (A, B, C), Keyserling, “Dresden,” Döbler (A, B), Vernet (A, B, ...), (Stägemann[3])]
five profiles [Collin, Lowe, Senewaldt (A, B), Schnorr, Baltruschatis]
two full length profiles [Puttrich, Hagemann]
three busts [Mattersberger, Bardou, Hagemann[4]]
In addition, we have five silhouettes [associated with Hippel, Häberl, Stein, Kant’s Bible, and Kant’s Mittagsbüchlein (Aug/Sep 1802)]

The busts and larger paintings (Becker, Dresden) are all roughly life-size, the Keyserling sketch slightly smaller, and the Döbler paintings one-quarter size; the remaining images are miniatures (their relative sizes can be seen here). A great many other images derive from these, with varying degrees of artistic license.

A few Latin terms and abbreviations: ad vivum (from life), del. et sc. / delineavit et sculpsit (drew and engraved), fecit (made), pinx. (painted), sculp or sculps. (engraved).

Four indices help sort the images: the left window includes indices arranged by Chronology (first listing those images prepared by someone who at least had seen Kant, even if Kant might not have sat for the portrait, sculpture, or silhouette, with copies listed under these), the Artist (listing each artist with their own works, as well as copies prepared by others), and the Medium (grouped as painting, drawing, relief/sculpture, engraving). Clicking on the links in these indices should open a window with all the data collected on these images.

Finally, an Image Index with thumbnails of all the images discussed, sorted by the source image (when known), is available in the “Images” links in the header above).

Also available in the Image-links above is a Relative Sizes page that depicts the various images in relative size to one another (scaled to 28% of their actual size), an Assessment page that collects together contemporary assessments of the iconography; an Early Lists page of the Kantian iconography, provided by Mortzfeld [1802], Wald [1804], Borowski [1804], and Schubert [1842]; a Summary page that compares the lists prepared by Borowski [1804], Minden [1868], and Clasen [1924]; and a Bibliography of references to the iconography, which is separate from the website’s main bibliography.

Previous Studies

More systematic studies of Kant iconography were published by Minden [1868] and Clasen [1924], with the latter including plates of some of the images discussed. A table comparing the lists prepared by Borowski, Minden, and Clasen is available on the Summary page, and includes descriptive quotations from these works and thumbnails of the images discussed. A collection of images from the Museum Stadt Königsberg in Duisburg (although closed since 2016, with many or all of the materials moved to the Ostpreußisches Landesmuseum in Lüneburg) and reproduced in Grimoni/Will [2004] are available online courtesy of Andreas Vieth.

Minden discussed reliefs and sculptures, but did not include them in his list, which is limited to paintings/drawings and engravings, and here he distinguished between those images prepared from life (“original images”) of which he knew of seven, and the copies made from these (of which he listed twenty-six). It appears that Minden, who lived in Königsberg, had inspected only a few of the originals — Becker(b) and Hagemann(a) — as these are the only original images for which he offers dimensions, while he gives the dimensions of all the engravings that he lists.

Clasen’s list is not as thorough as Minden’s, although he also includes three-dimensional icons, and Kant’s death mask and skull, for a total of twenty-one images in his Verzeichnis, as well as the silhouette from Hippel’s Nachlaß (on the title page), the sketch by Hagemann of Kant preparing mustard (p. 27), and two silhouettes from Stammbücher (p. 16). [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20]. Digital images are from the copy at the Marburg UB and the Van Pelt Library (University of Pennsylvania).

Malter: An early catalog on the web of these images (and many texts relevant to the iconography) come from Rudolf Malter’s collection at Mainz, which has been helpful in preparing this page.