An emblem book is a book collecting emblems (allegorical illustrations) 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 and in France as . Many of the symbolic images present in emblem books were used in other contexts, on clothes, furniture, street signs, and the façades of buildings. For instance, a sword and scales symbolized death.
Miscellany Emblem books 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. Emblem books first became popular in the sixteenth century with Andrea Alciato's Emblemata and remained popular until the eighteenth century.
Many emblematic works borrowed plates or texts (or both) 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.Original language, using ISO 639-1NotesAndrea AlciatoEmblemataprobably Hans Schäufelin after Jörg Breu the ElderHeinrich SteynerAugsburg1531104 the first and most widely disseminated emblem book. Guillaume de La PerrièreLe théâtre des bons engins, auquel sont contenuz cent emblèmes moraulx Denis JanotParis1539Achille BocchiSymbolicarum quaestionum de universo genere 1555Gabriele FaernoCentum Fabulae 1563fables100laJános ZsámbokyEmblemata cum aliquot nummis antiqui operis Vienna1564Joris HoefnagelPatientia London1569moralGeorgette de MonteneyEmblemes, ou Devises Chrestiennes Jean de Tournes ?Lyon1571Nicolaus ReusnerEmblemata Frankfurt1581Geoffrey WhitneyChoice of Emblemes(various)PlantinLeiden1586248Cesare RipaIconologia Rome1593not properly speaking an emblem book but a collection of erudite allegories. Nicolaus TaurellusEmblemata Physico Ethica Nuremberg1595Daniel HeinsiusQuaeris quid sit amorJakob de Gheyn II (Netherlands)1601lovefirst emblem book dedicated to love; later name "Emblemata amatoria"Jacobus TypotiusSymbola Divina et HumanaAegidius Sadeler II Prague1601Otto van VeenAmorum EmblemataOtto van VeenHenricus SwingeniusAntwerp1608love124laPublished in more than one multilingual edition, with variants including French, Dutch, English, Italian and SpanishPieter Corneliszoon HooftEmblemata Amatoria (Netherlands)1611loveNot to be confused with Quaeris quid sit amor, which was republished under the same name. Gabriel Rollenhagen Nucleus emblematum Hildesheim1611Otto van VeenAmoris divini emblemataOtto van Veen (Netherlands)1615divine loveDaniel HeinsiusHet Ambacht van Cupido Leiden1615Michael MaierAtalanta FugiensMatthias MerianJohann Theodor de BryOppenheim1617alchemy50la,deAlso contains a fugue for each emblemAula Magna Curiae Noribergensis Depicta Nuremberg161732la,deDaniel Cramer, Emblemata Sacra 161740(various) (Netherlands)1618Jacob CatsSilenus Alcibiadis, sive Proteus (Netherlands?)1618Jacob CatsSinn’en Minne-beeldenAdriaen van de Venne (Netherlands)1618Two alternative explanations for each emblem, one related to mind (Sinnn), the other to love (Minne).Julius Wilhelm ZincgrefEmblemata Frankfurt1619Jacob CatsMonita Amoris Virginei Amsterdam1620moral45for womenRaphael CustosEmblemata amoris 1622Emblemata of Zinne-werckAdriaen van de Venne Amsterdam162451Herman HugoPia desideriaBoetius à Bolswert Antwerp1624la42 Latin editions; widely translatedDaniel Stolz von StolzenbergViridarium Chymicum Prague?1624alchemyZacharias HeynsEmblemata (Netherlands?)1625Lucas JennisMusaeum Hermeticum Frankfurt1625alchemylaJacob CatsProteus ofte Minne-beelden Rotterdam1627Benedictus van HaeftenSchola cordis 1629Daniel CramerEmblemata moralia nova Frankfurt1630Antonius a BurgundiaLinguae vitia et remediaJacob Neefs, Andries PauwelsJoannes CnobbaertAntwerp163145Jacob CatsSpiegel van den Ouden ende Nieuwen TijdtAdriaen van de Venne (Netherlands?)1632Henry HawkinsPartheneia Sacra 1633Etienne LuzvicLe cœur dévot 1634translated into English as The Devout HeartGeorge Wither A collection of Emblemes, Ancient and Moderne 1635Francis QuarlesEmblemsWilliam Marshall & al. 1635Jan Harmenszoon KrulMinne-spiegel ter Deughden Amsterdam1639Jean Bolland, Sidronius HosschiusImago primi saeculi Societatis Iesu a provincia Flandro-Belgica ejusdem Societatis repraesentataCornelis Galle the ElderPlantin PressAntwerp 1640A Jesuit emblem book illustrating the history of the Jesuit order in the Southern NetherlandsDiego de Saavedra FajardoEmpresas Políticas 1640Francesco PonaCardiomorphoseos, sive ex corde desumpta emblemata sacra Verona1645101(anonymous)Devises et emblemes d'amourAlbert Flamen Paris1648Filippo PicinelliIl mondo simbolico Milan1653encyclopedicit1000 pagesAdrien GambartLa Vie symbolique du bienheureux François de SalesAlbert Flamen Paris1664Jan LuykenJesus en de ziel (Netherlands)1678Josep RomagueraAtheneo de Grandesa(anonymous) Barcelona168115ca Livre curieux et très utile pour les sçavans, et artistesNicolas VerrienDaniel de La FeuilleAmsterdam1691encyclopedicJan LuykenHet Menselyk Bedryf("The Book of Trades") (Netherlands?)1694tradesJacobus BoschiusSymbolographia sive De Arte Symbolica sermones septem Caspar BeucardAugsburg1701encyclopedic3347Romeyn de HoogheHieroglyphica of Merkbeelden der oude volkeren (Netherlands?)1735
Authors and artists famous for emblem books Andrea Alciato (1492–1550) Guillaume de La Perrière (1499/1503 – 1565) Georgette de Montenay (1540–1581) Otto van Veen ( – 1629) Jacob Cats (1577–1660) Albert Flamen ( – after 1669)
Further reading Dunn, R. (2015). Breaking a tradition: Hester Pulter and the English emblem book. The Seventeenth Century, 30:1, 55–73. Saunders, A. (2008). French emblematic studies. French Studies: A Quarterly Review. 62(4), 455–463. Oxford University Press. Stronks, E. (2009). Dutch religious love emblems: Reflections of faith and toleration in the later 17th century. Literature & Theology, 23(2), 142–164. Peter Maurice Daly, Leslie T. Duer, Alan R. Young, Anthony Raspa. (1995). The English Emblem Tradition: Emblematic flag devices of the English civil wars, 1642–1660. University of Toronto Press Peter Maurice Daly (1998). Literature in the Light of the Emblem: Structural Parallels Between the Emblem and Literature in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries .University of Toronto Press The English Emblem Tradition. Volumes 1-5 .University of Toronto Press Peter Maurice Daly, G. Richard Dimler (1997–2006). Corpus Librorum Emblematum (CLE): Primary literature - The Jesuit Series. Parts 1 - 5.University of Toronto Press
References
Arthur Henkel & Albrecht Schöne, Emblemata, Handbuch zur Sinnbildkunst des XVI. und XVII. Jahrhunderts, Verlag J.B. Metzler, Stuttgart - Weimar 1996, . Massive catalog reproducing emblems with texts from all known 16th and 17th century emblem books. Daniel Russell, The Emblem and Device in France, French Forum, Lexington, KY, 1985.
External links
the OpenEmblem Project - housed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Mnemosyne Emblem Project - a dozen digitized emblem books Cumulative catalogue by IDC Society for Emblem Studies The Symbolic Literature of the Renaissance
Regional The English Emblem Book Project Emblem Project Utrecht - "27 Dutch love emblem books, religious as well as profane" Glasgow University Emblem Website including French and Italian emblem books Literatura Emblemática Hispánica