When images became evidence: the Guarani reinvention of the emblem
In the twilight of the seventeenth century, Jesuit missionaries and Guarani artists in the Province of Paraguay collaborated on a Guaraní translation of Juan Eusebio Nieremberg’s 'De la diferencia entre lo temporal y eterno' (1705), lavishly illustrated with forty-three copperplate engravings designed and executed by indigenous artists. I argue that this editorial innovation is deeply embedded in the evidential logic of the Guarani language and its distinctive ways of articulating knowledge and belief.
College of Arts School of Modern Languages and Cultures Stirling Maxwell Centre
Date: Thursday 11 December 2025
Time: 17:00 - 18:00
Venue: Library Seminar Room (formerly TalkLab, University of Glasgow Library, level 3) + Zoom (see below)
Category: Public lectures
Speaker: Pedro Germano Leal
Document: When images became evidence poster
In the twilight of the seventeenth century, Jesuit missionaries and Guarani artists worked together to build a printing press in the Province of Paraguay. Their first undertaking was nothing short of audacious: a Guaraní translation of Juan Eusebio Nieremberg’s De la diferencia entre lo temporal y eterno (1705), lavishly illustrated with forty-three copperplate engravings designed and executed by indigenous artists.
This presentation examines how the Guarani edition transformed the book’s structure of authority—replacing footnotes that once cited classical and patristic sources with references to the images themselves. These images functioned as visual arguments, conceived within the emblematic tradition yet reinterpreted through Guarani modes of expression and understanding. I argue that this editorial innovation is deeply embedded in the evidential logic of the Guarani language and its distinctive ways of articulating knowledge and belief.