Simon said: > Iconography can be of statistical use: how many?, how often?, > compared to ... > A single image is by no means evidence for anything exept that it is > there.
Even the statistics can be questioned. ;-) How many of the guitars shown in the collection have frets? Almost half of them appear to be fretless. I expect there's a fretless Strat out there somewhere, but I'm pretty sure that the frets got left out of the drawings for other reasons than that the artist was envisioning a fretless instrument. Come to that, a majority of the drawings don't show the strings. What should we conclude? > And yes, I think the illustration in question shows an image of a > hurdy gurdy (that does not mean the painter knew it). Exactly. ;-) Alden
