Defining features: scientific and medical portraits 1660–2000

Ludmilla Jordanova set herself a daunting task in writing this book. She has endeavoured to blend three distinct elements or disciplines into a single product. First, modern approaches to science and medicine which look at these disciplines not only as forms of knowledge but also as forms of work. Such approaches also look to the changing social place of doctors and scientists and to the extent to which they have sought to present themselves as, say, scholars or gentlemen or experts or even craftsmen or more than one of these simultaneously. Second Jordanova has drawn on modem scholarly approaches to portraiture. She has tried to look at the ways representations might have been read, wittingly or unwittingly, what the viewers might have understood about the sitter (and perhaps the sitter's profession) from numberless overt and covert clues in a picture. Only recently have scholars begun to bring this approach to scientific and medical portraiture, and Defining features does this both over time and over a range of scientific and medical areas. It also deals with a variety of media (oils, bronzes, photographs, for example) and with high art and key rings. This is ambitious enough, but Jordanova attempts (indeed is obliged) to draw on a third "discipline": her vehicle for this book is popular writing on scholarly themes. The book is also a catalogue of an exhibition of the same name put on by Jordanova at the National Portrait Gallery, London, between April and September 2000. Perforce she has had to write for an imagined audience of National Portrait Gallery visitors. To say it is also a catalogue is hardly fair to the book's conventional narrative style interspersed with illustrations. Jordanova first introduces portraiture, then in a chapter on 'Boundaries' she looks at professions and work, 'Gender and scientific heroism' is self-explanatory, and 'Portraiture in practice' looks at the relation of artist and sitter. The range of material presented here is impressive. Medically, Jenner and the Hunters get a lot of space. The twentieth century is far from neglected, however. Nor does Jordanova confine her notion of portraiture to the face. A bronze cast of the right hand of Harvey Cushing and representations of the hands of Dorothy Hodgkin get analysed. Only some of the many questions addressed by this book can be indicated here. How are scientific and medical heroes made and portrayed? What is the relation between a hero and a celebrity? How important is gentility to scientific and medical credibility? What is the relation between science and femininity in pictures? How can portraiture discredit scientific claims? Jordanova leads the reader through these and many other questions with authority and at times selfadmitted tentativeness in the face of new territory. Because I was familiar with much of the material and the approaches used here I knew (I think) what Jordanova was up to. Indeed her need to spell questions out made me impatient to push on at times. Whether, on the other hand, she spells out matters in enough detail for the imagined gallery visitor only a pollster could tell (or perhaps a bookseller). None the less, this is an