Hobbes Hidden Monsters PDF

European Journal of Political
Theory
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Hobbes's hidden monster: A new interpretation of the frontispiece of

Leviathan
Magnus Kristiansson and Johan Tralau
European Journal of Political Theory 2014 13: 299 originally published online 30
September 2013
DOI: 10.1177/1474885113491954
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European Journal of Political Theory
2014, Vol. 13(3) 299–320
Hobbes’s hidden monster: ! The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885113491954
frontispiece of Leviathan ept.sagepub.com
Magnus Kristiansson and Johan Tralau

Uppsala University, Sweden
Abstract
In recent years, much work has been done on the role of images in Hobbes. But there is
an unsolved riddle with regard to the famous frontispiece of Leviathan (1651). Why
is there nothing monstrous in the sovereign body depicted, despite the fact that it is
named for a Biblical sea monster? In this article it is argued that there is a monster just
barely hidden in the image and that the iconographical tradition helps us rediscover this
creature. We argue that this monstrosity serves a theoretical and political purpose
pertaining to fear and imagery within Hobbes’s overall project and in the political con-
text of his time. Moreover, we argue that the discovery of the hitherto unknown
monster should make political theory and intellectual history sensitive to the role
played by physical images in Hobbes as well as in political thought at large.
Keywords
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, image, monster, animal
The frontispiece in Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan is the most famous image in the
history of political thought. But there is an enigma. Despite the fact that Hobbes
named his sovereign state for a Biblical sea monster, there appears to be nothing
monstrous and nothing aquatic in the giant sovereign depicted in the frontispiece.
Previous scholarship has arguably been unable to account for this supposed lack of
monstrosity in the Leviathan. In the following, we will argue that if one revisits the
title page in light of the early modern iconographical tradition, one will see that the
body of the giant sovereign is in fact that of a sea monster. Moreover, we will
suggest that the frontispiece depicts a state of war quite similar to the situation in
England at the time of Hobbes’s birth in 1588. Through the discovery of these two
elements in the image, the monster and the war, we will offer a radically new
interpretation of Hobbes and Leviathan, with important implications for his
Corresponding author:
Johan Tralau, Statsvetenskapliga Institutionen, Uppsala Universitet, Box 514, Uppsala 75120, Sweden.
Email: johan.tralau@statsvet.uu.se

300 European Journal of Political Theory 13(3)
politics and philosophy. Three things are at stake here. First, the interpretation will
shed new light on the importance of fear and the use of images in his political
philosophy by showing that Hobbes and the artist of the frontispiece have hidden a
monster in the image. Second, it will contribute to a new understanding of
Hobbes’s relation to the political context of his own epoch, specifically the con-
troversies regarding the obligations to sovereigns and usurping powers. Third, it
will point toward the fundamental importance of images in political philosophy
and for political thought more generally. While political theorists and historians of
political ideas quite naturally tend to focus on arguments and the application of
normative principles, the interpretation presented below should make these discip-
lines much more sensitive to the role played by images and visual representations in
political thought. The frontispieces of early modern books, including those in pol-
itical philosophy, were used and intended as gateways to the works themselves.1
Systematic interpretation of the physical images employed in works of political
philosophy would be a vast, promising enterprise and a new kind of history of
political thought.
The argument will be unravelled in five steps. We begin by discussing previous
scholarship on Hobbes and images, particularly with regard to physical images in
his works. In the second step, we will argue that the frontispiece depicts a state of
war but that there are some intriguing details in the picture that remain unex-
plained in previous interpretations. In the third step, we show – in light of the
pictorial context of early modern and earlier monster images but contrary to all
other interpretations – that the Leviathan in the frontispiece does indeed have a
monstrous body. In the fourth step of the argument, we suggest that monsters are
highly important in Hobbes’s epoch as well as his work and that the state of war
and the monstrous body of the sovereign may well allude to a very specific event
in English history. We conclude by discussing the implications of our interpretation
for the understanding of Hobbes and of political theory. We will uncover a hid-
den monster, a state of war and a telling historical allusion and that will open up
new and unexpected horizons and perspectives on Hobbes, politics and
philosophy (Picture 1).
Hobbes’s images: back to the frontispiece

In recent decades, there has been an upsurge in interest in Hobbes’s use of images.
Once considered the geometrician of political philosophy, scorning and scourging
the use of metaphors and images, Hobbes is now widely recognised as a creator of
images for political purposes.2 An important impulse to this strand of research was
given by Carl Schmitt, who pointed out that Hobbes’s use of the image of
Leviathan is profoundly ambiguous.3 Most of the work on Hobbes and images
has focused on literary tropes such as metaphors. This is true of analyses of
Hobbes, poetry and literary theory.4 More recently, scholars have paid attention
to Hobbes’s rhetoric.5 Moreover, studies of individual metaphors employed by
Hobbes have become an influential current.6 One aspect of this is interpretations
of Hobbes’s use of monster images, notably Leviathan and Behemoth.7

Kristiansson and Tralau 301
Picture 1. Hobbes: Leviathan, 1651. Reproduced with permission of Uppsala University

Library.
This revival of interest in Hobbes’s images is not a case of scholarly aestheticism

encroaching on the pure and rigorous field of Hobbesian deductive ‘civil science’.
Rather, the importance of images derives from Hobbes’s own account of imagin-
ation and images – a theory that acquires the utmost political relevance given

Hobbes’s conception of the role of images in shaping the thought, and hence
behaviour of citizens.8 ‘Apt images’, Hobbes says, –‘govern all the rest of my
thoughts’9 – a very good reason to keep an eye on what Hobbes is doing.
Attention has of course also been paid to the actual physical images employed by
Hobbes, particularly his most famous image, the title page of Leviathan. There
have, for example, been debates about the anonymous artist of the drawing – with
some arguing for Wenceslaus Hollar being the culprit and Horst Bredekamp more
recently for Abraham Bosse.10 Likewise, scholars have discussed who the sovereign
in the different versions of the drawing is supposed to portray – Hobbes, Cromwell,
Charles II or even Christ.11 Francesca Falk has drawn attention to a tiny fascinat-
ing detail in the image, namely two plague doctors with characteristic bird-like
masks, and argues that this recalls the interplay between sovereignty and sanita-
tion.12 Yet another debate has focused on the bodies that constitute the sovereign’s
body and the gaze of the subjects on the one hand and that of the sovereign on the
other hand. Keith Brown has argued that the hand-drawn image presented by
Hobbes to the future king Charles II represents Hobbes’s theory better than the
printed version; the former had the citizens that make up the sovereign body look
at the reader, thus merging their gaze and their will with that of the sovereign
head.13 Conversely, however, it has been argued that the fact that citizens look
at the sovereign in the printed version – whereas the sovereign looks at the reader –
portrays the fundamental lack of reciprocity between them in Hobbes’s account of
political obligation.14 On the other hand, MM Goldsmith has claimed that ‘both
versions literally depict’ the doctrine.15
One problem remains to be solved, however. Why is there nothing monstrous
about the body of the sovereign named for a Biblical sea monster? Reinhard
Brandt has shown that if one follows Polykleitos’ aesthetic rule of proportions
(which was surely well known to Hobbes and the artist through Vitruvius), and
according to which the head of a human figure is to make up one-eighth of the
height, then the feet of the human Leviathan rest upon the author’s name on the
frontispiece. Hobbes himself is thus portrayed as the basis of sovereignty and pol-
itical authority. Of course, the lower body of the Leviathan is hidden behind the
landscape and the curtain on the frontispiece but according to Brandt’s reconstruc-
tion, the lower body is well proportioned, in accordance with the classical ideal of
the human body.16 Philip Manow has argued that the frontispiece represents the
transition from sexual disorder to a bourgeois privatisation of sexuality and that
the Leviathan is thus presented ‘ohne Unterleib’ (‘without a lower body’) at all.17
But why the monstrous name?18 In his eye-opening contribution, which argues that
structures deriving from architectural theory and music theory abound in the
image, Brandt does not give an answer: in the image, an ‘Ungeheuer läßt sich
sicher nicht entdecken’ (a ‘monster cannot be discovered’).19 And in what is the
most comprehensive and arguably the most important contribution to the field,
Horst Bredekamp simply claims that the sovereign has ‘keine monströse Form’ (‘no
monstrous form’).20 The figure is, Roberto Farneti says, an ‘emblem of a well-
ordered community in which the only abnormal characteristics were super-human
size and strength’.21 Likewise, Paolo Pasqualucci claims that the readers find

themselves ‘di fronte ad un uomo, non ad un mostro’ (‘in front of a man, not of a
monster’).22 In short, previous scholarship appears to be unanimous in arguing
that the sovereign in the frontispiece is in effect not monstrous at all. We will argue
that a careful interpretation of the image will enable us to rediscover the monster
hidden in the frontispiece and that the frontispiece does not depict a peaceful
society but a war.
The war in the image

The impressive frontispiece of Hobbes’s magnum opus is a copper engraving show-
ing a giant monarch and a landscape, hills and a valley in which there is an orderly
city surrounded by a defensive wall patrolled by soldiers. This is, evidently, the
sovereign – in Hobbes’s words, the ‘Governour, whom I compared to Leviathan’.23
In his right hand (to the left in the picture), Leviathan holds a sword representing
military and political power and the left hand sports a finely chiselled crosier
symbolising religious authority, as the Protestant state unites ecclesiastical and
worldly power. As we have seen, all scholars seem to agree that there is nothing
monstrous and nothing aquatic about this sovereign body – enigmatic, it would
seem, for a political symbol named after the Biblical water creature Leviathan.
The monarch’s body is constituted by human bodies which are linked together,
all looking up toward the sovereign. The head and the hands of the sovereign’s
body do not consist of bodies, however. And there is something curious about these
bodies that make up the king’s body, for when united in the latter, they look
strikingly similar to something else. A key may be provided in the description of
Leviathan in the book of Job:
His scales are his pride, shut up together as with a close seale. One is so neere to
another, that no ayre can come betweene them. They are ioyned one to another, they
sticke together, that they cannot be sundred. (Job 41:15–17)
As pointed out by Marco Bertozzi, the people that make up the sovereign’s body
look like scales.24 Just like a sea monster, then, just like the Leviathan in the Old
Testament text, the sovereign is covered with scales. Bredekamp, however, points
out that when seen on a human torso, the scales should make us think of a cuirass;
the citizens that make up the body resemble scale armour.25 Now, this may not
seem too strange, for there was nothing eccentric about portraying a king in dec-
orative armour. In the 16th and 17th centuries, and with the advent of more
powerful firearms and artillery, such armour had lost much of its practical value.
But as argued by Carolyn Springer, as ‘instruments of rhetoric’ they had become so
much more important (when Francesco I of Medici got married in 1579, there were
cuirasses with painted scales as well as fish-shaped helmets in the wedding proces-
sion).26 The bodies of the citizens thus look like armour.
On the lower part, to the right, under the crosier, we find religious and intellec-
tual symbols – a chapel, a mitre, the thunderbolt of excommunication, the logical
instruments of scholasticism and a scholarly disputation. On the opposite side,

under the sword, there are five symbols of political power – a fortress from which
artillery is fired, a royal crown, a cannon, a number of rifles and spears and a battle
between two units consisting of cavalry and infantry. This is a perfect illustration of
Hobbes’s doctrine of the unity of state and church and the parallel is striking.27
Moreover, we should note how well the parallel between firearms and logical tools
displays Hobbes’s view of the importance of political control of such dangerous
weapons as syllogisms, distinctions and concepts. In so rich an image, we may
expect a great number of interesting components, the complications of which
must not detain us here. However, the essential part of the interpretation that
will be undertaken here is not about the foreground but about what the foreground
conceals.
We will begin in the open sea behind the hills. It has been noted that when looked
at more closely, the sovereign’s lower body does not appear to be found in the earth
beyond the hills but in the sea. Brandt suggests that this is in fact the way – the only
way, as it were – in which the image may take up the Biblical connotation: it may be a
hint that the sovereign emerges from the water.28 Bredekamp has pointed out that in
the 1667 Dutch edition of Leviathan, there is land behind the sovereign in the fron-
tispiece, perhaps demonstrating that he is to be considered a land creature.
According to Bredekamp, this affirms the identity of the Dutch as a sea power as
opposed to an island power.29 But the first edition differs from this: the frontispiece
appears to show a sovereign actually emerging from the sea.
Why is this important? In order to explain why, we must first look at another
essential detail. There are four ships approaching land (Picture 2, labels 2 and 3).
There would be nothing strange about this if it were not for the artillery fired from
a fortress towards the ship closest to the shoreline (Picture 2, labels 1 and 1.1).
The cloud (Picture 2, label 1.1) clearly resembles the gunfire marked as 1 in
Picture 3. There is nothing else on the title page that resembles this cloud more,
such as trees or bushes. We can safely conclude that this is gun smoke. The fact that
the ships are fired upon would suggest that they are battleships. One of the ships
even has its broadside turned against the fortress and this indicates that (though we
cannot observe any armament) the ship’s crew prepare to fire back.
There are further signs in the frontispiece that indicate that there is a war. No
civilians are present in the streets of the town, apart from the two plague doctors; the
only other civilians in the image are those who constitute the scales of Leviathan’s
armour. No farmers are working in the fields, no horses or carriages can be seen in
the streets. Clearly, this indicates a state of emergency or curfew. Moreover, the
soldiers in the town are all within the garrison walls but three of them, those who are
in movement (Picture 4, label 1), seem to be marching in the direction of the opening
of the protective wall. They all carry rifles. We can also observe a roadblock (Picture
4, label 2) in one of the streets – the one leading straight to the entrance of the
garrison. The street is blocked by some kind of fence, possibly consisting of chevaux
de frise. Furthermore, the only way leading up to the castle in the upper middle left
of the picture seems to be barricaded (Picture 4, label 3)
What are the reasons for barricading castles and streets? Obviously, the road-
blocks serve to suppress a present threat; they indicate that an attack is expected.


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Why are the soldiers in Picture 4, label 1, heading for the exit of the garrison? We
find a plausible answer in what is arguably an attack from the foreign naval forces
shown in Picture 2, as well as the coastal artillery counterattack. What we are
witnessing is most probably a war. The frontispiece exhibits various military phe-
nomena such as fortresses, artillery, infantry and cavalry battles. Yet the lack of


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heraldic naval symbolism in the image, such as anchors, is striking. There seems to
be a naval harbour on the shore of the river in the upper middle right part of the
picture, however (Picture 5, label 1). This is surely a military edifice since the walls
surrounding it are of the same kind as the protective walls surrounding the garrison
in the town. Moreover, the flag (Picture 5, label 1) seems to be the same kind as the
flag of the garrison. The harbour is guarded by soldiers (Picture 5, label 1.1). Small
vessels are moving along the river (Picture 5, labels 2 and 3), which probably ends
somewhere close to the four ships approaching from the sea (Picture 2, labels 2 and
3). These vessels cannot be identified as military boats. But some of them are
moored to this military construction.
We may thus arguably conclude that there is a war, or the beginning of a war,
going on in there, in the image, as the ships appear to be part of hostile military
forces (it is not easy to see why they would be fired upon otherwise), soldiers are
patrolling the area, a street is blocked and a building is barricaded. Hobbes’s great
work on the sources of order is thus illustrated by war, specifically, a foreign
invasion. What does this tell us? In order to give an answer to that, we need to
scrutinise another detail – as we know, God is in the detail.
The unidentified objects behind the hills: the hidden

monstrous body
Under the left arm of the sovereign – the ecclesiastical arm, holding the crosier,
under which the set of images relating to spiritual power is to be found – there is a
church. There is nothing strange about that. But on the same spot under the right
arm, specifically the elbow, there are some unidentified peaky objects (Picture 6,
labels 1–3).
The lack of crucifixes makes it clear that these items are not church towers – all
the churches in the picture have crucifixes, even the one beyond the horizon (under
the Leviathan’s left arm). This shows that the crucifixes can be seen even at this


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distance and that they are all turned in the same direction. Other possible explan-
ations could be that these items are trees, rocks or towers of castles. However, there
is nothing else in the picture that resembles these items so as to identify them; no
buildings have such towers and no such rocks occur in other parts of the picture.
Corbett and Lightbown state – in passing – that the objects are cypress trees.30 But
this is highly improbable, for the rest of the landscape does not look Mediterranean
at all – indeed, there are no other cypresses.31 Moreover, the objects would be
abnormously enormous cypresses in so tidy a landscape, exceeding the fortresses
and churches in height. So what are they? These strange details occur in one more
place in the picture – in the depiction of the artillery fired from the fortress in one of
the panels on the left hand side of the frontispiece (Picture 3, label 2). Even here,
the objects seem to be unidentifiable. The fact that the gun is fired at them indicates
that these unidentified objects are hostile. Another possibility that has to be taken
into consideration would be that the objects could be flames from, e.g. gunfire. Yet,
when we look at the drawing closely, this is not a plausible hypothesis. If they were
flames, there would be a substantial amount of smoke as well and they would be
inexplicably thin and tall.32
Where does this reasoning take us? We saw that Brandt has made a very good
case for the giant sovereign having a well-proportioned human body emerging
from the sea. Moreover, we have seen that there are unidentified spiky objects
behind the hills. Furthermore, we have seen that as a composite, the human
bodies that cover the sovereign’s body look like scale armour. What should we
make of this? More specifically: what should we make of it in light of the icono-
graphical tradition that Hobbes and the artist had to relate to? Perhaps the scale


Library.
armour is a clue. ‘Scale armour’ is derivative: it draws its signification from real,
literal, animal scales. And as we have seen, the Biblical sea animal is in fact covered
with scales – ‘His scales are his pride’ (Job 41:15). If we take the image and name of
Leviathan seriously, maybe we should understand Leviathan’s torso as covered
with scales. This interpretation would make the Leviathan of the frontispiece
more monstrous and it would allow us to see the torso as covered by the citizens
and monstrous scales at the same time.
But could it account for the unidentified spiky objects? Again, we need to know
what they are. Previous scholarship has paid little attention to this question. Yet, in
an image like this, we cannot finesse things we do not understand by just saying
that they are mistakes on the part of the artist: not a line is superfluous. If, as we
argued, the Leviathan emerges from the water in the image, then one possibility
would be that the objects are immense water drops.33 But approaching the people
on the torso as scales gives us another possibility. Of course, the scales on the upper
body could not be visible under the right arm. But if, contrary to Reinhard Brandt,
we do not understand the lower body as a well-shaped human form, then the spiky
objects could be part of the lower body. In that case, the model for the Leviathan in
the frontispiece would be a very different kind of man – a man from the sea, or, in
Latin, homo marinus.
This image is from the widely read and reprinted 1573 Des Monstres & Prodiges,
written by Ambroise Paré, a French physician.34 Paré was a skeptical spirit disin-
clined to believe in most archaic superstitions, yet convinced that there were such
creatures.35 An influential work in medicine, Paré’s book offers a great number of
visual representations of monstrous humans, including several homines marini, such

Picture 7. Ambroise Paré: Des Monstres & Prodiges, 1573. Reproduced with permission of
Kungliga biblioteket, Stockholm.
as this aquatic monk with a fishy lower body covered with scales. On the fins – or
arms and legs, if you wish – there are scales or spikes protruding from the surface.
The real mystery, for Brandt’s and others’ interpretations, would be how to
account for the unidentified peaky objects under discussion. Yet, when looked at
in light of the image of the monster that is half man, half fish, another interpret-
ation forces itself upon us. These items are not solid parts of the environment; the
spiky things are parts of the Leviathan’s body. The giant does not have the shape of
a human being even though his torso is that of a man – the lower part of his body
has the shape of a fish or a dragon. The strange objects behind the cliffs are fins or

spikes protruding from the monster’s tail. This is, then, the connection between
Hobbes’s sovereign in the frontispiece and the Biblical sea animal: the sovereign is a
monster.
Given the appearance of the lower body in the image from Paré, it could be
objected that it would be outlandish for there to be such spikes or scales as far from
the body of Leviathan in the frontispiece. But this depends on the position of the
Leviathan’s lower body. If the Leviathan bends its tail, it would be natural for the
spikes to be visible under the elbow. To be sure, we can find such iconographical
models in other depictions of homines marini.
Picture 8 is older than Paré’s, dating from the late 15th century, and was printed
in the famous Hortus sanitatis.36 This kind of monster, sporting a human upper
body, the tail of a fish, armour and a helmet, is sometimes called Zitiron. But the
creature itself is of course not particular to Ambroise Paré or the work mentioned
above: these are members of a more general imagined species of aquatic humans
(with different names, such as mermen and mermaids, tritons, sirens, etc.) that
feature in the literature on medicine (such as Paré), and natural history, such as
Conrad Gesner’s influential Historiæ animalium.37 It may seem strange, of course,
but the assumption about the existence of such monsters had strong scientific cre-
dentials in the widely accepted principle expounded by Pliny, according to which all
land animals have counterparts in the sea.38 Given this principle, the existence of
sea humans can be derived from the observation that there are ordinary humans.
The most common type of homo marinus seems to be a being with a human upper
body fused with the back part of a fish. In a few cases, there are human upper
bodies integrated with a whole fish and in some cases there are complete human
bodies riding on fishes or other sea animals. In any case, as we said, relevant
scientific works of the 16th and 17th centuries unambiguously acknowledged the
existence of such beings. The examples of homines marini could be multiplied ad
infinitum. In other words, the individual example chosen is not the point; rather,
what we need to emphasise here is the fact that the position of the objects in the
image does not form the basis of an argument against them being spikes or scales
on the monstrous sovereign’s body. On the contrary, this kind of monster is often
depicted with its tail bent upwards and thus the spikes of scales could be (just
barely) visible on that level. The lower body would not necessarily be that of a
fish but could just as well be that of a dragon.
Again, one could raise the objection that this interpretation is unlikely since the
objects in the frontispiece are vertical, unlike the fins or spikes protruding from the
Zitiron’s body above. But depending on the position and direction of the spikes
and the tail, this would be compatible with the Leviathan having such a lower body
(a possible point of comparison would be an image of an aquatic creature in a
collection of portraits of saints from the late 15th century, whose tail sports spikes
very similar to the spikes behind the hills in the frontispiece of Leviathan).39 If the
tail of Leviathan is bent further towards the head, as in the image from Hortus
sanitatis, the spikes on its tail would be visible above a line like the hills in the
frontispiece of Leviathan. What is more, if the lower body is bent upwards and
diagonally in that way, the spikes would be vertical or near–vertical, and the rest of

Picture 8. Hortus sanitatis, 1491. Reproduced with permission of Uppsala University Library.
the tail would not be visible, which fits in perfectly with the frontispiece. It must be
emphasised that these creatures are not confined to older literature, such as medi-
eval bestiaries and archaic folklore, but very much present in state-of-the-art sci-
ence of Hobbes’s time. In Ulisse Aldrovandi’s influential Monstrorum historia
(1642, reprinted several times), for example, we find humans with the tail of a
fish, one of them (Picture 9) pointing to its tail, which is at shoulder height.40
The hitherto unidentified objects are thus parts of the Leviathan’s monstrous
body, and the forces defending the country against the foreign invasion are con-
sequently firing at the Leviathan. In accordance with the parallel patterns of reli-
gious symbols to the right and political and military to the left – as well as the
military garrison and the church on opposite sides of each other in the town – the
barely visible parts of Leviathan’s monstrous lower body would be a symbol of
the physical violence of the state, just as the church is a symbol of the power of the
mind. In a word, it is as if the parts of the monstrous body were part of the
armoury of the state. The monster’s spikes embody the state’s physical power
and violence – in this case: the violence of a foreign, invading, hostile state.
The reader may be inclined to think that this interpretation is implausible if the
title page of Leviathan is unique in portraying such an ingeniously hidden monster.

Picture 9. Ulisse Aldrovandi: Monstrorum historia, 1642. Reproduced with permission of

Kungliga biblioteket, Stockholm.
But in a painting by Agnolo Bronzino, an allegory of Venus and Cupid dating from
the 1540s, we find a disconcerting composite body, a little girl probably symbolis-
ing Fraud, with a half-hidden lower body covered with scales.41 And in the
emblematic literature that flourished from the middle of the 16th century, scaly
bodies became a standard way of representing deception.42
We have discovered a monster in the image. We have seen that the body, in
which previous interpretations have detected nothing monstrous, is indeed that of a
water monster. We have four good reasons to believe that this is indeed the case.
First, the Biblical Leviathan is unambiguously an aquatic creature. Second, the
Leviathan in the frontispiece emerges from the water. Third, his torso is covered
with scales just like those of a fish. Fourth, and most importantly, the enigmatic
objects beyond the hills can only be accounted for if we grant that the Leviathan
has the lower body of a fish or dragon, scales and all. In the next section, we will
argue that such monsters and the concomitant iconographical tradition are rele-
vant in Hobbes’s time, life, work – and that the frontispiece alludes to the politics
of Hobbes’s (very early and later) lifetime.
The monsters of Hobbes’s time and life

In this penultimate section, we will make the case for the importance of monsters in
Hobbes’s epoch and works and we will suggest that the monster in the frontispiece
alludes to a certain political event in Hobbes’s life. It could appear strange to wish
to connect Hobbes, the great champion of the new science, to bestiaries, monsters
and superstition. Now, we do not have to assume that Hobbes himself believed
anything particular about the whereabouts of such monsters – what is important

here is, as Bredekamp has pointed out in a different context, what kind of influ-
ential, traditional, fashionable and powerful images Hobbes may have considered
useful tools to employ in his writings.43 And we know that such monsters were a
vital part of the early modern imaginary.
One clue would be Paris. We should not underestimate the visual importance of
such creatures in the kind of Romanesque and Gothic architecture surrounding
Hobbes in his Parisian exile during the composition of Leviathan – such as the
impressive little homines marini on the capital of a column just inside the entrance
of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.44 Wes Williams, in his discussion of early modern mon-
sters in a different context, says in passing that it would be far-fetched to claim that
Hobbes ‘learned to speak Monster during his Parisian exile’.45 But in light of the
interpretation delineated above, we should probably start searching for monsters in
Paris if we wish to understand Hobbes’s monstrous turn. This line of research is, to
be sure, still an undiscovered continent in Hobbes studies.
We have likewise seen that monsters were an integral part in the most influential
16th and 17th century works on medicine, natural history and zoology, such as
Conrad Gesner, Ulisse Aldrovandi and Ambroise Paré.46 We may confidently
assert that a person with broad scientific interests, such as Hobbes, was familiar
with such works – and Hobbes’s images of the monstrous ‘malformations’ and
‘diseases’ of politics in Leviathan are more than reminiscent of teratological works
such as Paré’s.47
Moreover, the language and imagery of monstrosity were widely employed in
political debates in Hobbes’s time. The Eikon basilike attributed to Charles I is one
example.48 In this vein, a few years before the publication of Leviathan, Thomas
Edwards spoke of ‘the monster of Toleration conceived in the wombe of the
sectaries’ when demanding religious uniformity.49 Again, there would have been
good reasons for Hobbes to participate in this kind of language in order to make
his prose, visual messages and arguments more powerful.
Furthermore, the existence of monsters was established in travel accounts and
maps, not only in the Old World but also in relation to the exploration of the New
World. Naval officers such as Walter Raleigh, Francis Drake and Thomas
Cavendish described contacts with exotic reptiles, dragons and other fabulous ani-
mals. In Hobbes’s time, then, these monsters were not considered figments of the
imagination, but real. We do not know exactly what Hobbes read in this regard but
we do have his own words about his early interest in monsters. In Hobbes’ 1672
autobiography in verse, we hear:
Quoque Dracus filo Neptunum, Candisiusque

Cinxerunt medium; quaeque adiere loca
Atque hominum exiguos, si possem, cernere nidos,
Et picta ignotis monstra videre locis.50
(How Drake and Cavendish a girdle made
Quite round the world, what climates they survey’d;
And strive to fond the smaller cells of men
And painted monsters in their unknown den.)51

Long after the conception of Leviathan, then, Hobbes talked about his wish
to look at ‘painted monsters’ (picta [. . .] monstra). In short, whether Hobbes
believed in such monstrous creatures or not, we cannot deny his keen interest
in them.
We have thus seen Hobbes himself include monsters in his intellectual trajectory.
And this is important in one more respect. For his autobiography is also famous
because of a passage in which Hobbes describes his own genesis and, in a way, that
of his temper and his theory.
Fama ferebat enim diffusa per oppida nostra,

Extremum genti classe venire diem
Atque metum tantum concepit tunc mea mater,
Ut pareret geminos, meque metumque simul.52
(For fame had rumour’d that a fleet at sea,
Would cause our nation’s catastrophe.
And hereupon it was my mother dear
Did bring forth twins at once, both me and fear.)53
Relating to the approaching Spanish Armada, the 137 warships sent by Philip II,
these lines intimate how Hobbes wanted – or, rather, wanted his readers –
to understand the psychological sources of his theory. His thinking was based
on fear.
Is this at all important for our purposes? It was Hobbes himself who mytholo-
gised the event in his biography, linking it to the issue of political authority and
fear. The conception of fear and war in the work of Hobbes is thus connected to
foreign threats as well as domestic dangers. And at the beginning of the life of
Hobbes himself, there had been a very real threat. The English navy was not large
enough to counter the force of this gigantic Armada but weather conditions and
other fortunate circumstances led to an English victory.
Is the reference to the Armada relevant in the context of the frontispiece?
Can there be an allusion to it? We have seen that there is a war in the image
and a foreign power attempting to invade the country. We have also seen that
the Leviathan towering over the landscape can be interpreted as a foreign
sovereign if the objects beyond the hills are parts of his monstrous body,
for the domestic forces fire at them. The sovereign represented in the frontis-
piece is thus a foreign, usurping power. Most importantly, for our purposes,
after 1588, images of the Armada as the ‘great dragon’ became popular in
England.54 We have seen that if there is a dragon in the frontispiece, it is the
enormous, only half-human, monstrous sovereign with the lower body of a fish
or a dragon. Curiously, if there is an allusion to the Armada, then sovereignty
is exemplified not by a king whose agenda Hobbes could sympathise with but
by an ardent champion of the Roman Catholicism that he loathed. This would
seem outlandish, but in the final section we will see how this could serve well
as the incorporation, indeed incarnation of Hobbes’s doctrine of political
authority in the image.

Conclusions and implications

We have argued that there is a monster concealed in the famous frontispiece.
In addition, we have shown that the frontispiece depicts a battle between
the armed forces from the country in the image and those of a foreign
power attacking from the sea. Interestingly, the parts of the sovereign’s lower
body that protrude from behind the cliffs appear to be part of the foreign
threat, for artillery is being fired at it from the land. Moreover, we have suggested
that the representation of the foreign, invading sovereign towering over the
landscape may allude to the attempted invasion by the Armada and Philip II
in 1588.
What are the implications of this? Let us indicate two possibilities.
The first is that the monstrous appearance of the Leviathan could serve a very
special purpose, didactic or manipulative, depending on one’s perspective. Why
does Hobbes employ monster images? A clue is given in a 1668 letter: ‘Do Painters,
when they Paint the Face of the Earth, leave a blanck beyond what they know? Do
not they fill up the space with strange Rocks, Monsters, and other Gallantry, to fix
their work in the memory of Men by the delight of fancy? So will your Reader from
this Poem think honourably of their original, which is a kind of Piety.’55 The
purpose is ‘piety’, and piety is, of course, related to awe and fear and thus an
eminently political phenomenon for Hobbes (and the just barely hidden monster
in the frontispiece did serve the purpose of ‘fix[ing]’ the work of Hobbes and the
artist ‘in the memory of Men’ well, for we are all familiar with the title page of
Leviathan). Given the importance of images in Hobbes’s theory, the image of the
sovereign monster can be understood as an arcane or only hinted at source of fear
and trembling – that is, the sea monster serves the purpose of inducing the ‘terror’
that, in Hobbes’s own words, ‘inable[s the sovereign] to conforme the wills of them
all’.56 Hobbes’s words about the importance of ‘terror’ show how fundamental fear
is to the Leviathanic state. Of course, the relation between rational insight into the
principles of Hobbes’s political philosophy on the hand and the non-rational
sources of obedience to Hobbes’s state has been debated – one example would
be Noel Malcolm, who claims that ‘rational obedience’ and ‘passionate obedience’
are ‘interdependent’ in Hobbes’s project.57 Our interpretation of the frontispiece
contributes to the understanding of Hobbes by revealing a hitherto undiscovered
source of such ‘passionate’ obedience, deriving from the passion of fear. Images are
crucial in Hobbes’s theory since they condition the thoughts of the subjects and
readers.58 In accordance with this insight, the aquatic monster in the frontispiece
could serve as the object of a quasi-subliminal perception that conditions citizens’
and readers’ minds so as to make them fear the sovereign and obey the law. For the
hidden monstrous tail of the Leviathan in the frontispiece is more terrifying than a
normal human lower body would ever be. It has been argued that Hobbes’s time,
or his own Leviathan, had neutralised the name and that there is thus nothing
demonic or terrifying in Hobbes’s Leviathan.59 But the discovery of the hidden
monstrous lower body of the sovereign should make us rethink that view: Hobbes
and the artist have in fact created a monster.

The second possibility is that at a time when legitimacy was primarily conceived
of as a dynastic issue, the battle going on between the land forces on the one hand
and the sea forces and the Leviathan on the other hand can be understood as a
perfect embodiment of Hobbes’s theory of legitimacy. The Leviathan can be a
dynastic ruler, a usurping upstart or a foreign sovereign invading a country, for
dynasties are of no great importance to Hobbes – this is the controversial truth,
and the reproach that Hobbes’s royalist adversaries actually made against him after
the publication of Leviathan. Thus even the foreign king who invades the country
in the frontispiece is the legitimate ruler, provided he succeeds. In an eye-opening
book, Jeffrey Collins has argued that Leviathan was a way of showing that Hobbes
wished to accommodate himself with Cromwell and the new régime; according to
Collins, Hobbes’s monarchist credentials are thus a sham.60 The only thing that
matters for Hobbes is de facto sovereignty, whether it be that of Charles I,
Cromwell or even Philip II. Our interpretation shows that the title page provides
the perfect image of this controversial element in Hobbes’s doctrine. If, as we have
suggested, the great dragon that comes from the sea alludes to the envisaged
Spanish invasion, then this is an exuberantly provocative way of showing the
implications of Hobbes’s account of political obligation. It is rational to comply
with the rules enacted by the most powerful sovereign, religious as well as political
rules, even though the mightiest sovereign could be the King of Spain – an abom-
inable prospect according to Hobbes himself, yet perfectly compatible with his
theory of sovereignty. There could not be a more outrageous illustration of this
theory.
Neither the monstrosity of the sovereign nor the exceedingly controversial illus-
tration of the de facto character of Hobbes’s account of political obligation are in
this case conveyed by the means of argument, nor by literary tropes and imagery,
but by the actual, physical images, by the material product that the readers and
spectators hold in their hands. Understanding this kind of visual cue should make
us sensitive to the paramount importance of the visual in political thought.61 This is
surely not the road generally taken in political theory but it is, perhaps, the promise
of a more interesting future. The visual history of political theory remains to be
written.
Acknowledgements
The thesis of this article was first developed in Magnus Kristiansson’s master’s thesis
Sjöodjuret Leviathan – Hobbes skräcksymbol för främmande makt?, Department of
Government, Uppsala University, 2009. The authors would like to thank various audiences
in Madrid, Stockholm and Tokyo, as well as other colleagues. We particularly wish to
mention Ludvig Beckman, Terrell Carver, Naima Chahboun, Sara Danius, Andreas
Gottardis, Jörgen Hermansson, Oscar Larsson, Mats Lindberg, Aaron Maltais, James
Martel, Matoiba Mizuki, Ulf Mörkenstam, Henrik Otterberg, Davide Panagia, Jernej
Pikalo, Sugita Atsushi, Johan Wejryd and two reviewers for this journal, whose critique
and comments have been most helpful. This article is part of Johan Tralau’s project Thomas
Hobbes’s Last Secret. Mythology, Politics, and the Enigmatic Monster Leviathan, funded by
the Swedish Research Council.

Notes
1. A fascinating example is the Dipintura Allegorica in the 1730 edition of Giambattista
Vico’s (1994) Scienza Nuova. Milan: Rizzoli, p. 77 and Vico’s explanation of it, pp. 85ff.
cf. Bacon’s (1620) Novum Organum, or Grotius’ De jure belli ac pacis.
2. For Hobbes and political philosophy as geometry, cf. Hobbes’s own account in
‘T. Hobbes malmesburiensis vita’ (the prose version) in Hobbes (1845) W. Molesworth
(ed) Opera Philosophica (pp. xiii–xxi). Vol. I. London: Bohn at p. xiv.
3. Carl Schmitt (1995) Der Leviathan in der Staatslehre des Thomas Hobbes. Sinn und
Fehlschlag eines politischen Symbols. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, p. 32.
4. Raman Selden (1974) ‘Hobbes and late metaphysical poetry’, Journal of the History of
Ideas 35: 197–210; Elizabeth Cook (1981) ‘Thomas Hobbes and the ‘‘Far-Fetched’’’,
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 34: 222–32; Clarence D. Thorpe (1940)
The Aesthetic Theory of Thomas Hobbes. Ann Arbor & London: University of Michigan
Press; George Watson (1955) ‘Hobbes and the metaphysical conceit’, Journal of the
History of Ideas 16: 558–62; T.M. Gang (1956) ‘Hobbes and the metaphysical conceit
– a reply’, Journal of the History of Ideas 17: 418–21.
5. David Johnston (1986) The Rhetoric of Leviathan. Thomas Hobbes and the Politics of
Cultural Transformation. Princeton: Princeton University Press; Raia Prokhovnik (1991)
Rhetoric and Philosophy in Hobbes’ Leviathan. London & New York: Garland; Quentin
Skinner (1996) Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
6. Charles Tarlton (1977) ‘Levitating Leviathan: glosses on a theme in Hobbes’, Ethics 88:
1–19; George Shulman (1989) ‘Metaphor and modernization in the political thought of
Thomas Hobbes’, Political Theory 17: 392–416; Terrell Carver (2004) ‘Hobbes: materi-
alism, mechanism, masculinity’, in Men in Political Theory, ch. 9. Manchester:
Manchester University Press; Gianluca Briguglia (2006) Il corpo vivente dello stato.
Una metafora politica. Milan: Mondadori, pp. 119–54.
7. Patricia Springborg (1995) ‘Hobbes’s Biblical beasts: Leviathan and Behemoth’, Political
Theory 23: 353–75; Johan Tralau ‘Leviathan, the beast of myth. Medusa, Dionysos, and
the riddle of Hobbes’s sovereign monster’, in P. Springborg (ed) (2007) Cambridge
Companion to Hobbes’s Leviathan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 61–81;
Johan Tralau (2010) ‘Om statens undergång, Kristus och krokodilens mage.
Thomas Hobbes Leviathan i ljuset av en reptilallegori’, Svensk Teologisk Kvartalskrift
86: 26–37.
8. Johan Tralau (2013) ‘Deception, politics and aesthetics: the importance of Hobbes’s
concept of metaphor’, Contemporary Political Theory 1–18. doi:10.1057/cpt.2013.18;
Cees Leijenhorst, ‘Sense and nonsense about sense: Hobbes and the Aristotelians on
sense perception and imagination’, in P. Springborg (ed) (2007) Cambridge Companion
to Hobbes’s Leviathan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 82–108; Patricia
Springborg ‘Leviathan, mythic history, and national historiography’, in Donald R
Kelley and David Harris Sacks (eds) (1997) The Historical Imagination in Early
Modern Britain. History, Rhetoric, and Fiction, 1500–1800, pp. 267–97. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press/Woodrow Wilson Press; contrast Jean Bernhardt
‘L’œuvre de Hobbes en optique et en théorie de la vision’, in Andrea Napoli (ed)
(1990) Hobbes oggi, pp. 245–68. Milan: Franco Angeli.
9. William Davenant (1651) ‘The answer of Mr Hobbes to Sr William Davenant’s pref-
ace before Gondibert’, in Gondibert. An Heroick Poem, pp. 71–88. London: John Holden
at p. 88.

10. Horst Bredekamp (2006) Thomas Hobbes Der Leviathan. Das Urbild des modernen
Staates und seine Gegenbilder 1651–2001. Berlin: Akademie, pp. 39–52.
11. Corbett M and Lightbown RW (1979) The Comely Frontispiece: The Emblematic
Title-Page in England, 1550-1660. London: Routledge, pp. 218–30, at p. 229f;
Martinich AP (1992) The Two Gods of Leviathan. Thomas Hobbes on Religion and
Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 363; Keith Brown (1978) ‘The
artist of the Leviathan title page’, British Library Journal 4: 24–36, at 32–4; also
Brown (1980) ‘Thomas Hobbes and the title-page of Leviathan’, Philosophy 55: 410–1,
at 410.
12. Francesca Falk (2011) ‘Hobbes’ Leviathan und die aus dem Blick gefallenen
Schnabelmasken’, Leviathan Zeitschrift für Sozialwissenschaft 39: 247–66 (reprinted in
P. Manow, D. Simon and F. Rüb (eds)) (2012) Die Bilder des Leviathan. Eine
Deutungsgeschichte. Baden-Baden: Nomos, pp. 221–46).
13. Keith Brown (1978, no. 11), p. 26; (1980, no. 11) p. 411.
14. Marco Bertozzi (1983) Thomas Hobbes. L’enigma del Leviatano. Un’ analisi della storia
delle immagini del Leviathan. Bologna: Pugillaria, p. 22; Tralau (2007, no. 7), p. 74.
15. Goldsmith MM (1981) ‘Picturing Hobbes’s politics? The illustrations to Philosophicall
Rudiments’, Journal of Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 44: 232–9, at 234. cf. Noel
Malcolm (2002) ‘The title page of Leviathan, seen in a curious perspective’, in
Aspects of Hobbes, pp. 200–29. Oxford: Oxford University Press, at p. 201, 225;
Bredekamp (no. 10), p. 15.
16. Reinhard Brandt (1987) ‘Das Titelblatt des Leviathan’, Leviathan. Zeitschrift für
Sozialwissenschaft 15: 164–86, at 171 (reprinted in P. Manow, D. Simon and F. Rüb
(eds)) (2012) Die Bilder des Leviathan. Eine Deutungsgeschichte. Baden-Baden: Nomos,
pp. 13–44).
17. Philip Manow (2007) ‘Sexualität und Souveränität – Neue Nachrichten vom Vor- und
Nachleben des Leviathan-Frontispizes’, Leviathan Zeitschrift für Sozialwissenschaft 35:
470–94, at 483ff (reprinted in P. Manow, D. Simon and F. Rüb (eds) (2012) Die Bilder
des Leviathan. Eine Deutungsgeschichte, pp. 125–56. Baden-Baden: Nomos). For some
reason, Manow then speculates that the lower body may instead be that of a woman
(486).
18. cf., though not in the context of the frontispiece, Noel Malcolm (2007) ‘The name and
nature of Leviathan: political symbolism and Biblical exegesis’, Intellectual History
Review 17: 21–39; Patricia Springborg ‘Hobbes and Schmitt on the name and nature
of Leviathan revisited’, in J. Tralau (ed) (2011) Thomas Hobbes and Carl Schmitt. The
Politics of Order and Myth pp. 39–57. London: Routledge; also in Critical Review of
International Social and Political Philosophy 13: 297–315.
19. Brandt (no. 16), p. 173.
20. Bredekamp (no. 10), p. 16; cf. Bredekamp (2009) ‘Behemoth als Partner und Feind des
Leviathan. Zur politischen Ikonologie eines Monstrums’, Leviathan. Zeitschrift für
Sozialwissenschaft 37: 429–75, at 455f; (reprinted in P. Manow, D. Simon and F. Rüb
(eds) (2012) Die Bilder des Leviathan. Eine Deutungsgeschichte, pp. 157–220. Baden-
Baden: Nomos).
21. Roberto Farneti (2001) ‘The ‘‘mythical foundation’’ of the state: Leviathan in emblem-
atic context’, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 82: 362–82.
22. Paolo Pasqualucci (1999) Commento al Leviathan. La filosofia del diritto e dello stato di
Thomas Hobbes. Perugia: Margiacchi Galeno editore, p. 85.
23. Thomas Hobbes (2005) Leviathan, G.A.J. Rogers and K. Schuhmann (eds) London:
Continuum, xxviii, p. 166 and 252. (Roman indicates chapter, the first Arabic page

number given is for the Head edition, the second for Rogers’ and Schuhmann’s critical
edition).
24. Bertozzi (no. 14), p. 13.
25. Bredekamp (no. 10), p. 76.
26. Carolyn Springer (2010) Armour and Masculinity in the Italian Renaissance. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, pp. 6f, 27.
27. Martinich (no. 11), pp. 365f.
28. Brandt (no. 16), p. 173.
29. Bredekamp (no. 19), pp. 20ff. However, there is open sea to the right on this picture as
well and it is quite possible that there is a bay or a fiord in front of the rocks behind the
Leviathan.
30. Corbett and Lightbown (no. 11), p. 220.
31. One would expect cypresses in a Mediterranean landscape – such as Calypso’s island in
the Odyssey, where there was, according to Homer, euod es
kyparissos, ‘fragrant cypress’
(Odyssey, 5:64). Could, as suggested to us by Horst Bredekamp, the objects in the
frontispiece be cypresses as part of an idealised ‘world landscape’ that combines elem-
ents from different parts of the world? The fact that they are only found on the cliffs on
the horizon makes this interpretation implausible – moreover, this interpretation would
raise the question how we are to make sense of the similar objects in Picture 3, label 2.
32. Holger Strassheim has suggested to us that the objects are gallows. If they were, they
would however likewise be tall beyond proportion; moreover, the shape would be
strange since they would all be asymmetric and turned away from the spectator so as
to make them unidentifiable.
33. We would like to thank Andreas Gottardis for this suggestion.
34. Ambroise Paré (2003) Des Monstres & Prodiges. Paris: Oeil d’Or, p. 180. The image
reproduced is from the edition Opera Ambrosii Parei regis primarii et Parisiensis chirvrgi.
Paris: Du Puys, 1582.
35. On Paré’s scepticism, cf. Jonnie Eriksson (2010) Monstret & människan. Pare´, Deleuze
och teratologiska traditioner i fransk filosofi, från renässanshumanism till posthumanism.
Lund: Sekel, pp. 174–83.
36. (1491) Hortus sanitatis, pisc. 105. Mainz: Jacob Meydenbach.
37. Conrad Gesner (1620) Historiæ animalium liber IV. Qui est de piscium & aquatilium
animalium natura, pp. 438ff. Frankfurt: Bibliopolio Henrici Laurentii.
38. Pliny, Naturalis historia IX:2.
39. Reprinted in (1983) The Hastings Hours: A 15th-Century Flemish Book of Hours Made
for William, Lord Hastings, Now in the British library, London. London: Thames and
Hudson, p. 87.
40. Ulisse Aldrovandi (1642) Monstrorum Historia cum Paralipomenis Historiae Omnium
Animalium. Bologna: Nicolò Tebaldini, p. 27.
41. Now at the National Gallery, London. See Leatrice Mendelsohn ‘L’Allegoria di Londra
del Bronzino e la retorica di carnevale’, in M. Cämmerer (ed) (1992) Kunst des
Cinquecento in der Toskana, pp. 152–67. Munich: Bruckmann.
42. Cesare Ripa (1992) Iconologia, pp. 150f, 189f. Milan: TEA (the sections ‘Inganno’ and
’Fraude’).
43. Bredekamp (no. 10), p. 67; cf. Karl Schuhmann (1985) ‘Rapidità del pensiero e
ascensione al cielo: alcuni motivi ermetici in Hobbes’, Rivista di storia della filosofia
40: 203–27.
44. Reproduced in Anne and Robert Blanc (2006) Monstres, Sire`nes et Centaures. Symboles
de l’art Roman. Paris: Editions du Rocher, p. 140.

45. Wes Williams (2011) Monsters & their Meanings in Early Modern Culture. Mighty
Magic. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 24.
46. See the dauntingly enormous inventory of the tradition in Bernd Roling (2011) Drachen
und Sirenen. Die Rationalisierung und Abwicklung der Mythologie an den europäischen
Universitäten. Leiden & Boston: Brill, pp. 17–199.
47. cf., e.g. Hobbes (no. 23), xxix, pp. 172f and 261.
48. cf. Charles I (2006) Eikon basilike. The Portraiture of His Sacred Majesty in His
Solitudes and Sufferings. Peterborough: Broadview editions, p. 81.
49. Thomas Edwards (1646) Gangræna 1:I. London, p. 56.
50. Thomas Hobbes. ‘Hobbes malmesburiensis vita (in verse)’, in W. Molesworth (ed)
Hobbes (1845) Opera Philosophica. Vol. 1. London: Bohn, pp. lxxx–xcix, at p. lxxxvii.
51. A contemporaneous translation reprinted as Hobbes’s Verse Autobiography. In Hobbes
(1994) Leviathan. E. Curley (ed) Indianapolis: Hacket, pp. liv–lxiv, at p. lv.
52. Hobbes (no. 50), p. lxxxvi.
53. Hobbes (no. 51), p. liv.
54. Pasqualucci (no. 22), p. 92n29; one of them is reproduced in Felipe Fernandez-Armesto
(1988) The Spanish Armada. The Experience of War in 1588. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, p. 264.
55. See Hobbes’s letter to the Hon. Edward Howard, from Chatsworth, 24 October
(3 November) 1668. In: Thomas Hobbes (2005) The Correspondence, II, 1660–1679.
N. Malcolm (ed) Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 704–6, at p. 706. According to
Malcolm’s commentary, the lines quoted here are not found in the manuscript but in the
version printed in Howard’s The Brittish Princes.
56. Hobbes (no. 23), xvii, p. 88 and 137.
57. Malcolm (no. 15), p. 228.
58. Bredekamp (no. 10), Passim; Patricia Springborg (2000) ‘Hobbes and historiography:
why the future, he says, does not exist’, in G.A.J Rogers and T. Sorrell (eds) Hobbes and
History, pp. 44–72. London: Routledge; Tralau (no. 8), at p. 58.
59. Schmitt (no. 3), p. 42, Bertozzi (no. 14), p. 20, Malcolm (18), p. 34.
60. Jeffrey Collins (2005) The Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes, passim. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
61. This means that political theory will have to incorporate the insights into political
iconography on the part of art history, cf. particularly the work of Martin Warnke;
see Uwe Fleckner, Martin Warnke, Hendrik Ziegler (eds) (2011) Handbuch der
Politischen Ikonographie, 2 vols. Munich: Beck.

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Hobbes's hidden monster: A new interpretation of the frontispiece of

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Magnus Kristiansson and Johan Tralau

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Hobbes’s images: back to the frontispiece

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Picture 1. Hobbes: Leviathan, 1651. Reproduced with permission of Uppsala University

This revival of interest in Hobbes’s images is not a case of scholarly aestheticism

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The war in the image

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Picture 4. Hobbes: Leviathan, 1651. Reproduced with permission of Uppsala University

The unidentified objects behind the hills: the hidden

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Picture 5. Hobbes: Leviathan, 1651. Reproduced with permission of Uppsala University

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Picture 6. Hobbes: Leviathan, 1651. Reproduced with permission of Uppsala University

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Picture 9. Ulisse Aldrovandi: Monstrorum historia, 1642. Reproduced with permission of

The monsters of Hobbes’s time and life

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Quoque Dracus ﬁlo Neptunum, Candisiusque

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Fama ferebat enim diﬀusa per oppida nostra,

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Conclusions and implications

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