Note on the Use of ‘Plate’, ‘Figure’, and Related Terminology
By ‘plate’ I mean the visual contents appearing in their final form in books as prints from single sheets of copper or other materials used for printing. In the course of the book, therefore, I will refer to plates intended as sheets of copper (in this case, when needed, I also more expressly mention them as ‘copperplates’, even at the cost of some redundancy, and, less frequently, ‘engravings’), or sheets of paper: in the latter case, plates will be intended in the form of hand drawings (after which copperplates were engraved), or of the prints from copperplates, or mixed materials (hand drawn and printed).
By ‘drawing’, in turn, I always mean hand drawn visual content.
By ‘figure’ I usually mean the visual representation of a single object (regardless of its being on paper or on copper, hand drawn or printed); plates usually contain more than one figure: in the case that a plate contains one figure only, ‘plate’ and ‘figure’ become synonymous, but the relevant context of discussion is expected to orient the reader on the correct way of understanding it: either as a piece of copper, paper, a drawing, a print, or a mix of both. Moreover, I use the term ‘Figure’, followed by a cardinal number and the indication of the source, to refer to the visual contents provided in the book itself.
In some cases, literal translations of non-English terms meaning visual contents which are slightly at odds with the aforementioned uses have been provided, for the sake of the adherence to the original sources—which in themselves are often not very specific. In the events I reconstruct, there was not always a clear grasp of the materials used: the people involved just knew that there were ‘visual materials’ at stake. In such cases, the context of discussion is expected to make clear how to understand them.
The use of terms such as ‘illustration’, ‘image’, ‘picture’, and ‘diagram’ has been avoided.