Emblem book


An emblem book is a book collecting emblems with accompanying explanatory text, typically morals or poems. This category of books was popular in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries.
Emblem books are collections of sets of three elements: an icon or image, a motto, and text explaining the connection between the image and motto. The text ranged in length from a few lines of verse to pages of prose. Emblem books descended from medieval bestiaries that explained the importance of animals, proverbs, and fables. In fact, writers often drew inspiration from Greek and Roman sources such as Aesop's Fables and Plutarch's Lives.

Definition

Scholars differ on the key question of whether the actual emblems in question are the visual images, the accompanying texts, or the combination of the two. This is understandable, given that first emblem book, the Emblemata of Andrea Alciato, was first issued in an unauthorized edition in which the woodcuts were chosen by the printer without any input from the author, who had circulated the texts in unillustrated manuscript form. It contained around a hundred short verses in Latin. One image it depicted was the lute which symbolized the need for harmony instead of warfare in the city-states of Italy.
Some early emblem books were unillustrated, particularly those issued by the French printer Denis de Harsy. With time, however, the reading public came to expect emblem books to contain picture-text combinations. Each combination consisted of a woodcut or engraving accompanied by one or more short texts, intended to inspire their readers to reflect on a general moral lesson derived from the reading of both picture and text together. The picture was subject to numerous interpretations: only by reading the text could a reader be certain which meaning was intended by the author. Thus the books are closely related to the personal symbolic picture-text combinations called personal devices, known in Italy as imprese and in France as devises. Many of the symbolic images present in emblem books were used in other contexts, on clothes, furniture, street signs, and the facades of buildings. For instance, a sword and scales symbolized death.

Miscellany

Emblem books, both secular and religious, attained enormous popularity throughout continental Europe, though in Britain they did not capture the imagination of readers to quite the same extent. The books were especially numerous in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and France.
Many emblematic works borrowed plates or texts from earlier exemplars, as was the case with Geoffrey Whitney's Choice of Emblemes, a compilation which chiefly used the resources of the Plantin Press in Leyden.
Early European studies of Egyptian hieroglyphs, like that of Athanasius Kircher, assumed that the hieroglyphs were emblems, and imaginatively interpreted them accordingly.
A similar collection of emblems, but not in book form, is Lady Drury's Closet.

Timeline

Author or compilatorTitleEngraver, IllustratorPublisherLoc.Publ.Theme# of Embl.Lang.Notes
Andrea AlciatoEmblemataprobably Hans Schäufelin after Jörg Breu the ElderHeinrich SteynerAugsburg1531104the first and most widely disseminated emblem book.
Guillaume de La PerrièreTheatre de bons engines Paris1539
Achille BocchiSymbolicarum quaestionum de universo genere 1555
Gabriele FaernoCentum Fabulae 1563fables100la
János ZsámbokyEmblemata cum aliquot nummis antiqui operis Vienna1564
Joris HoefnagelPatientia London1569moral
Georgette de MonteneyEmblemes, ou Devises Chrestiennes Jean de Tournes ?Lyon1571
Nicolaus ReusnerEmblemata Frankfurt1581
Geoffrey WhitneyChoice of EmblemesPlantinLeiden1586248
Cesare RipaIconologia Rome1593not properly speaking an emblem book but a collection of erudite allegories.
Nicolaus TaurellusEmblemata Physico Ethica Nuremberg1595
Daniel HeinsiusQuaeris quid sit amorJakob de Gheyn II 1601lovefirst emblem book dedicated to love; later name "Emblemata amatoria"
Jacobus TypotiusSymbola Divina et HumanaAegidius Sadeler II Prague1601
Otto van VeenAmorum EmblemataOtto van VeenHenricus SwingeniusAntwerp1608love124laPublished in more than one multilingual edition, with variants including French, Dutch, English, Italian and Spanish
Pieter Corneliszoon HooftEmblemata Amatoria 1611loveNot to be confused with Quaeris quid sit amor, which was republished under the same name.
Gabriel RollenhagenNucleus emblematum Hildesheim1611
Otto van VeenAmoris divini emblemataOtto van Veen 1615divine love
Daniel HeinsiusHet Ambacht van Cupido Leiden1615
Michael MaierAtalanta FugiensMatthias MerianJohann Theodor de BryOppenheim1617alchemy50la,deAlso contains a fugue for each emblem
Aula Magna Curiae Noribergensis Depicta Nuremberg161732la,de
Daniel Cramer, Emblemata Sacra 161740
1618
Jacob CatsSilenus Alcibiadis, sive Proteus 1618
Jacob CatsSinn’en Minne-beeldenAdriaen van de Venne 1618Two alternative explanations for each emblem, one related to mind, the other to love.
Julius Wilhelm ZincgrefEmblemata Frankfurt1619
Jacob CatsMonita Amoris Virginei Amsterdam1620moral45for women
Raphael CustosEmblemata amoris 1622
Emblemata of Zinne-werckAdriaen van de Venne Amsterdam162451
Herman HugoPia desideriaBoetius à Bolswert Antwerp1624la42 Latin editions; widely translated
Daniel Stolz von StolzenbergViridarium Chymicum Prague?1624alchemy
Zacharias HeynsEmblemata 1625
Lucas JennisMusaeum HermeticumFrankfurt1625alchemyla
Jacob CatsProteus ofte Minne-beelden Rotterdam1627
Benedictus van HaeftenSchola cordis 1629
Daniel CramerEmblemata moralia nova Frankfurt1630
Antonius a BurgundiaLinguae vitia et remediaJacob Neefs, Andries PauwelsJoannes CnobbaertAntwerp163145
Jacob CatsSpiegel van den Ouden ende Nieuwen TijdtAdriaen van de Venne 1632
Henry HawkinsPartheneia Sacra 1633
Etienne LuzvicLe cœur dévot 1634translated into English as The Devout Heart
George WitherA collection of Emblemes, Ancient and Moderne 1635
Francis QuarlesEmblemsWilliam Marshall & al. 1635
Jan Harmenszoon KrulMinne-spiegel ter Deughden Amsterdam1639
Diego de Saavedra FajardoEmpresas Políticas 1640
Devises et emblemes d'amourAlbert Flamen Paris1648
Filippo PicinelliIl mondo simbolico Milan1653encyclopedicit1000 pages
Adrien GambartLa Vie symbolique du bienheureux François de SalesAlbert Flamen Paris1664
Jan LuykenJesus en de ziel 1678
Josep RomagueraAtheneo de Grandesa Barcelona168115ca
Livre curieux et très utile pour les sçavans, et artistesNicolas VerrienDaniel de La FeuilleAmsterdam1691encyclopedic
Jan LuykenHet Menselyk Bedryf
 1694trades
Jacobus BoschiusSymbolographia sive De Arte Symbolica sermones septem Caspar BeucardAugsburg1701encyclopedic3347
Romeyn de HoogheHieroglyphica of Merkbeelden der oude volkeren 1735

Authors and artists famous for emblem books

*
*