“Zum Bild, das Wort” (A. WARBURG): The Orbis sensualium pictus by John Amos Comenius

The Orbis sensualium pictus (1658) is the first illustrated school textbook. It is the result of a lengthy and articulated philosophical and linguistic reflection, and it is conceived by its author as a small encyclopaedia of basic knowledge of the world where pictures function as a learning aid by virtue of their logical pairing with words. The image in Orbis is not servile to the text, but rather acts in a complementary and integrated semiotic system and becoming in Comenius’s vision, a revolutionary, ludic, didactic instrument to help children learn about the world through “lusum & iocum”. The paper reconstructs, in the light of Comenius’s complex body of treatises, the process of philosophical thought that led him to elaborate the concept of “visible” and reflects upon the role of the intellect in the elaboration of information acquisition through sensory perception.