In the March 30, 1665, issue of the Journal des Scavans, the editor took notice of a new English enterprise: the Philosophical Transactions. This marked the first in a series of references to the journal that at the time was affiliated with, but not officially produced by, the Royal Society of London. This paper examines the cross-pollination between the Philosophical Transactions and the Journal des Scavnas with a specific focus on the role of the visual as an open form of communication, which overcomes the linguistic barriers implied by journals published in vernacular languages, rather than technical Latin. While scholars, such as Anthony Turner, have written on the attempts made to translate the Philosophical Transactions, little work has been done on the transmission of images between the two journals. Studying how these articles were illustrated and how the illustrations related to the texts lends insight into the powers of visual images within the larger missions of these societies. This paper studies visual astronomy in order to examine how the powers of the printed image respond to the specific communicative demands necessitated by these active societies.