Emblematic Paintings from Sweden's Age of Greatness: Nils Bielke and the Neo-Stoic Gallery at Skokloster (IMAGO FIGURATA. STUDIES) [Bilingual ed.] 2503523641, 9782503523644

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EMBLE MATIC PAINTIN GS FROM SWEDE N'S AGE OF GREATN ESS NILS BIELKE AND THE NEO-STO IC GALLERY AT SKOKLOS TER

Imago Figurata: The Emblem and Related Forms

Imago Figurata was the name given to the emblem by the influential Jesuit theoretician Jacob Masen (1606-1681). Besides the emblem this Series also focuses on a diversity of other word-image collocations. Scholars in different disciplines now recognize the importance of such bi-medial forms as the emblem in the cultural life of the Renaissance and Baroque, where they reflect a range of interests, from war to love, from religion to philosophy and politics, from the sciences to the occult, from social mores to encyclopaedic knowledge, and from serious speculation to entertainment. The Series will concentrate on all forms of verbal and visual communication: emblem, impresa, illustrated pamphlets, theatre and festivities, and so on. Editorial Board

Peter M. Daly (McGill University, Montreal, Canada) John Manning (University ofWales, Lampeter, Wales) Karel Porteman (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium). Advisory Board

Michael Bath (University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland) Pedro Campa (University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, U.S.A.) Karl Enenkel (Universiteit Leiden, The Netherlands) Wolfgang Harms (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat, Munich, Germany) Daniel Russell (University of Pittsburgh, U.S.A.) Marc van Vaeck (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium) Ilja M. Veldman (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands). Imago Figurata

The Series will contain editions, studies and reference works. Publication is in major European languages.

Emblematic Paintings from Sweden 's Age of Greatness Nils Bielke and the Neo-Stoic Gallery at Skokloster

Simon McKeown

Imago Figurata Studies Vol. 6

BREPOLS

Already pub!ished: Editions Vol. 1 Antonius a Burgundia, Linguae vitia et remedia (Antwerp, 1631), with an introduction by Toon van Houdt, 1999 Editions Vol. 2 Johann Kreihing, Emblemata ethico-politica (Antwerp, 1661 ), with an introduction by G. Richard Dimler, S.J., 1999 Editions Vol. 3 Hieronymus Ammon, lmitatio Crameriana (Nuremberg, 1649), with an introduction by Sabine MOdersheim, 1999 Editions Vol. 5 Jean Jacques Boissard's Emblematum liber. Emblemes latins (Metz, 1588), with an introduction by Alison Adams, 2005

Studies Vol. lA The Jesuits and the Emblem Tradition, edited by Marc van Vaeck, and John Manning, 1999 Studies Vol. lB The Emblem Tradition and the Law Countries, edited by John Manning, Karel Porteman, and Marc van Vaeck, 1999 Studies Vol. 1C Emblems from Alciato to the Tattoo, edited by Peter M. Daly, John Manning, and Marc van Vaeck, 2001 Studies Vol. 2 The Emblem and Architecture. Studies in Applied Emblematics from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries, edited by Hans J. Baker, and Peter M. Daly, 1999 Studies Vol. 3 Emblematik und Kunst der Jesuiten in Bayern, Einfluj3 und Wirkung, edited by Peter M. Daly, G. Richard Dimler, S.J., and Rita Haub, 2000 Studies Vol. 4 Mundus Emblematicus. Studies in Neo-Latin Emblem Books, edited by Karl A.E. Enenkel and Arnaud S.Q. Visser, 2003 Studies Vol. 5 Emblem Scholarship. Directions and Developments. A Tribute to Gabriel Hornstein, edited by Peter M. Daly, 2005

© 2006, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any forrn or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying , recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

D/2006/0095/83 ISBN 2-503-52364-1 Printed in the E.U. on acid-free paper

Contents Foreword List of Figures

V

Emblematic Paintings /rom Sweden 's Age of Greatness

I.

The Emblem in Applied and Fine Art

IL

The Skokloster Paintings

8

III.

Otto V œnius and the Emblemata Horatiana

12

IV.

The Artist's Use ofVœnius

17

V.

The Origin of the Skokloster Paintings

20

VI.

Nils Bielke

28

VII.

Nils Bielke's Interest in the Emblem

35

VIII. Bielke's Building Project of 1710

40

IX.

Re-Imagining Bielke's Library Building

45

X.

Salsta's Stoic Gallery

53

XI.

Autobiographical Elements in the Emblem Paintings

68

XII.

Conclusion

80

Figures

83

Plates, Texts & Commentaries A Note on the Order of the Plates and the Textual Apparatus

107

1.

VIRTVS IMMORTALIS

109

2.

VIRTVS IN ACT/ONE CONSISTIT

115

3.

VIRTVS INVIDIA SCOPVS

121

4.

INCIPIENDVM ALIQVANDO

127

5.

VOLVPTATEM VSVRtE, MORE! ET MISERI/E

133

6.

NIHIL SILENTIO VTILIVS

141

7.

A POCVLIS ABSINT SERIA

149

8.

FEST/NA LENTE

155

9.

MEDIIS TRANQVILLVS IN VNDIS

161

10.

SORS SVA QVEMQVE BEAT

168

11.

AGRICVLTVRt E BEATITVDO

175

12.

CVRAE INEVITABILES

181

13.

MVLTIPLEX AVARITI/E PRtETEXTVS

188

14.

PECVNIA DONAT OMNIA

194

15.

AMICITI/E TRVTINA

201

16.

TEMPORA TE TEMPORI

207

17.

TVTE, SI RECTE VIXERIS

213

18.

DE FVTVRIS NE SIS ANXIVS

220

Appendix A

AppendixB A

Appendix C

Thomas Mannington Gibbs 's Translation of Gomberville 's Pre/ace

227

Checklist ofEmblem Books /rom the Bielke Library at Skokloster

230

A List ofInscriptions at Salsta

233

Bibliography

236

Index

275

Foreword

The emblem was a hybrid form that occupied a place between the visual and verbal arts of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, and exercised extensive, if sometimes covert, influence upon all manner of cultural enterprises. Emerging in its definitive form in 1531 from the illustrated collections of humanist epigrams published by the Italian jurist Andrea Alciato (1492-1550), the emblem became naturalized within the national and literary traditions of almost every European country. Peter M. Daly's authoritative estimate of the scale of production of emblem books puts the number of editions of emblemata published throughout the early modem period close to 4,000 books, and year by year researchers are uncovering previously unknown emblematic works. Little wonder, then, that the emblem has drawn the close attention of scholars from all disciplines of the humanities over the past few decades: here stands a corpus of cultural material of both considerable intrinsic interest and substantial value in informing our enquiries into the history of ideas and mentalities in the central centuries of the last millennium. The miscegenous form of the emblem, partly word, partly image, has enforced interdisciplinarity in its study; cultural and literary historians have needed to display sensitivity to the methodologies of theologians and historians of ideas, while iconologists and theorists of fine art and architecture have had to acclimatize to the procedures of bibliographers and philologists. This has been particularly the case since scholars-includ ing Michael Bath, Wolfgang Harms, Cornelia Kemp, Dietmar Peil, John Frederick Stopp, and Marc van Vaeck, among numerous others-started to describe the use of emblems from printed collections in extra-literary contexts, for example, architecture or the applied arts. The problems posed by approaching the material culture of the early modem world-from a cathedra! to a snuffbox-with a monolithic or inflexible modus operandi are self-evident, and it has been one of the unique and exciting features of emblem studies in recent decades that researchers have leamed to explore the contextual history of the object under scrutiny, divining from its circumstances its use, fonction, interpretation, and iconic significance. This !ends the discipline obvious strength since new scholarship must, of necessity, accommodate different ways of conceiving of the emblematic form, not simply seeing it, as earlier generations were sometimes content to,

ii

as a bibliographical curiosity, or weedy byway ofliterature, but as belonging to the currencies of material culture, social history, and the evolution of human thought. The limitations of the literary or book-historical approach to applied emblematics were made very evident to me as 1 set about writing this study of the emblem paintings at Skokloster Castle. The challenge was not to identify the source of the paintings-in itself, a question of no great difficulty-but to understand the cultural moment of their inception, particularly set against the background of the macro-history of Sweden in her Age of Greatness [StormaktstidJ, and even more crucially, the microhistory of the aristocratie families they belonged to and the built environments these families created for themselves and posterity. More widely, my discovery of the Skokloster emblem paintings some years ago seemed to provide a valuable opportunity to explore further the uses the emblem was put to in a seventeenth-century superpower whose cultural profile is little known or understood outside her borders. lt seemed evident that a cycle of paintings without direct equivalence recorded in the secondary literature of the emblem was not merely striking in its own right, but hinted at ways in which canonicat emblems could be subjected to highly original and specific regional re-imagining in different cultural climates. To examine this question fully involved an immersion in the precise cultural environment in which the emblems were set. This has resulted in a doser focus upon the temperament and tastes of an emblem patron than is common in such studies. lt remains my hope that the intimacy ofthis approach allows the reader to feel greater sensitivity to the currents of motivation and impetus that led early modern grandees to participate in emblematic commissions. lt should also remind us to place emblems in their full conceptual context: very rarely are emblems on walls or ceilings divorced from broader decorative or ideological schemata. 1 would have quailed before the difficulties of this task had it not been for the encouragement 1 received from many sources, not the least of which came from the scientific and curatorial staff at Skokloster. More or less everyone working at Skokloster over the past seven years has had to endure my regular intrusions into their working time, yet the warmth of their reception has been consistent and sincere: indeed, professional contact has transformed into friendship in several cases. lt is proper for me to begin by thanking Carin Bergstrom, the Director of LSH, the museums collective which includes Skokloster, for welcoming me to the castle on numerous occasions with characteristic informality. 1 am also pleased to acknowledge the help and good advice 1 have received from Maria Perers, Keeper of

iii

Fumiture and Glass up to 2004, and Ann Hallstrom, Skokloster's Conservator. 1 am very much indebted to Bengt Kylsberg, Keeper of Paintings and Weapons, who has taken a close interest in the project from the beginning, and has shared his encyclopaedic knowledge of Skokloster and the period without reserve. Through his good offices he has also provided me with rare access to Salsta great house. Above all, 1 am grateful to Elisabeth Westin Berg, the Librarian at Skokloster, who has shown immense kindness, solicitude, sensitivity, and general good will in all my dealings with the castle and its collections. A fastidious reader of my draft, she has made numerous shrewd suggestions that have improved the accuracy of what follows. In Elisabeth, Bengt, and the wider staff, 1 could not have asked for better guides to Skokloster. Among other Swedish scholars that have assisted me, 1 mention Ingvar Eriksson, biographer of Nils Bielke; Lena Rangstrom of the Livrustkammaren; the historian and cultural commentator Lars O. Lagerqvist; Fred Sandstedt and Lena Engqvist Sandstedt of the Armémuseum; Ian Wiséhn of the Kungliga Myntkabinettet; Fastighetsverket architect Torun Hammar; and independent scholar Cathrine Arvidsson. 1 also thank Sussi Wesstrom of the Nationalmuseum; Emilia Strom of the Svenska Portrattarkivet; Harald Nilsson of the Uppsala University Coin Cabinet; Asa Thorbech of the Nordiska Museet; Margit Soderstrom of Drottningholm Palace; Kajsa Fex-Fritz of Ôrebro Lans Museum; and the postgraduate students Karin Wahlberg Liljestrom of Stockholm University, and Hans Lejdegarde and Helena Lundin of Uppsala University. 1 am grateful to Sture Emilson, owner of Stora Lassana, for his warm welcome and generosity in permitting me to study and photograph his historie property; to Lieutenant-Colonel Hans Bengtsson for conducting me around the military installation at Karlberg Palace, Stockholm; and to Charlotte Radacky for arranging my visit to Lena church. 1 have also received encouragement from the community of emblem scholars, notably from John Manning, Jean Michel Massing, Michael Bath, Mara R. Wade, Daniel S. Russell, Sabine Modersheim, Wim van Dongen, David Graham, Laurence Grove, Arnoud S.Q. Visser, and Judith Dundas. Alison Adams and Stephen Rawles kindly invited me to test my ideas before the Glasgow Emblem Group in 2003. 1 would also like to acknowledge the help with Latin translation 1 received from my colleagues past and present John Carroll, Ben Giles, Chris Jackson, and Matthew Bryan; and with some numismatic issues from Philip Attwood of the Department of Coins and Medals at the British Museum. 1 have also enjoyed full endorsement for this

iv

project from my colleagues at King's, particularly Tony Evans, Simon Marshall and Anna Vibeke Eilert. 1 am grateful to the staffs of the British Library; the Warburg lnstitute, University of London (particularly Elizabeth McGrath for her help with photographs from the Warburg copy ofVrenius); the Kungliga Biblioteket, Stockholm; Uppsala Universitetsbibliotek; the Nordiska Museet Bildbyra; the Nationalmuseum; the Svenska Portr1ittarkivet; the Kungliga Myntkabinettet; the Landsarkivet, Uppsala; the Stadsarkivet, Uppsala; the Bodleian Library, Oxford; the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin; and the Special Collections Department, Glasgow University Library. The general editors of this series, Peter M. Daly and Karel Porteman, were keen-eyed proof readers of my manuscript and made many helpful and observant suggestions to improve its coherence and clarity. My family, Ruth and Tim Cooke, David and Siobhan McKeown, Florence Mcllwaine, Rosalinde, Heinz, and Kerstin Rogge, have shown customary good will and support throughout my time in writing this study. Above all, 1 wish to express deep gratitude to my wife Sandra who has provided the comfortable space and time for me to develop the scope of this book. Without her generosity, indulgence, love and understanding, it might never have been realized. Finally, special mention should be made of my good friend Allan Ellenius, nulli secundus expert in the emblematic culture of Sweden. In the congenial surroundings of manor houses, historie buildings, and cafes and restaurants in Sweden and England, Allan has listened to my ideas and offered comment upon the theoretical problems presented by the paintings. His interest and belief have been of real value to me, and this work is both inspired by him, and dedicated to him.

Simon McKeown Kingston-upon-Thames January 2006

V

List of Figures 1. Emblem II, Johann Saubert, L1 Y.QL1EL1AI Emblematum sacrorum, Part 4 (Nuremburg: 1630). 2. Giovanni Battista Passeri, "Party in a Garden", c. 1645. 3. Skokloster Castle. 4. The emblematic gallery, Skokloster Castle. 5. Paulus Pontius, Portrait of Otto Vœnius, frontispiece of La Theatre Moral de la Vie Humaine (Brussels, 1702). 6. Andrea Alciato, "In avaros", Emblematum !ibel!us (Lyons, 1550). 7. Otto Vrenius, "Avarvs Qvœsitis Frvi Non Avdet", Emblemata Horatiana (Antwerp, 1607). 8. Unknown artist, detail of Virtus Immortalis, c. 171 O. 9. Andrea Alciato, "Sa/us publica," Emblemata (Lyons, 1550). 10.Unknown artist, detail of Festina Lente, c. 1710. 11.Page from the Skokloster Castle Inventory of 1757. 12.David Richter, Portrait ofAbraham Brahe, 1696. 13.Half-title to Bielke's copy of Marin Le Roy, Sieur de Gomberville's La Doctrine des Moeurs (Paris, 1646). 14.Enlargement grid on plate for "Nihil Silentio Vtilivs", La Doctrine des Moeurs (Paris, 1646). 15 .Enlargement grid on plate for "Qvis dives? qvi ni! cvpit", La Doctrine des Moeurs (Paris, 1646).

VI

16.David Richter, Portrait ofEva Bielke, 1696. 17.Salsta Castle. 18.David Richter, Portrait ofNils Bielke, c. 1695. 19.Raimund Faltz, medal for Nils Bielke, 1690. 20.Funeral hatchment for Nils Bielke, c. 1717. 21.Funeral hatchment for Nils Bielke, c. 1717. 22.Unknown artist, Oldenburgen, c. 1710. 23.Salsta stable and library building today. 24.Motto board from Salsta stable and library building. 25.Motto plaque from Salsta stable and library building. 26.Sketch in Bielke's hand with plan for a gallery at Salsta, c. 1708-171 O. 27.Detail of the frame for Pecvnia Donat Omnia. 28.lnterior of Salsta Castle Chapel. 29.Comelis Galle, after Pieter Paul Rubens, Portrait ofJustus Lipsius. 30.Pierre Daret, frontispiece of Gomberville's La Doctrine des Moeurs (Paris, 1646). 31.Photograph of south side of Salsta stable building, c. 1913. 32.Plate from Olof Rudbeck's Atland eller Manheim, Vol. 1 (Uppsala,

1679). 33.Unknown artist, Coeca Est Temeritas Quœ Petit Casum Ducem, Stara Lassana, Laxa. 34.Unknown artist, Media Tutissimus Ibis, Stora Lassâna, Laxa.

vii

35.Unknown artist, Naturam Minerva Perjicit, Stora Lassana, Laxa. 36.0tto Vrenius, "Naturam Minerva Perficit", Emblemata Horatiana (Antwerp, 1607). 37.Cartouche from the House of the Nobility, Stockholm. 38.Hadrianus Junius, "lnuidia integritatis assecla", Emblemata (Antwerp, 1565).

Photographie Acknowledgements

1 am grateful to those institutions and individuals who have supplied photographs of artworks in their collections or care and granted permission for them to be reproduced here. Details of provenances and permissions are given after each picture. The plates from V renius in the second part of the book are taken from a copy in the Warburg lnstitute at the University of London, with the exception of plates 1 and 6 which are from a copy in the Stirling Maxwell Collection at Glasgow University Library. All other photographs are by the author.

Emblematic Paintings from Sweden's Age of Greatness Nils Bielke and the Neo-Stoic Gallery at Skokloster

1.

The Emblem in Applied and Fine Art

The satisfying verbal and visual concision of emblems appealed to an age that admired the terse wit and wisdom of classical epigraphy, and regarded latter-day manifestations of the axiom and apophthegm, such as Erasmus's Adagia, to be part of the required mental fumiture of the educated elite. Emblems and epigrams operated on an intimate scale; both were microforms valued for their brevity and neatness. They collapsed complex ideas into condensed space, and succeeded in being, at once, concise yet compendious, succinct yet substantial. Within the tidy confines of the emblem, wider principles of ethics and religion could be marked out with pictura and scriptura combining to form a discourse in digest of social codes, philosophical precepts, and political counsel. More importantly, they could be pressed to moral use, liberally stocking the mind-and commonplace book-with spurs to virtue and prompts to conscience. In formulating mnemonic devices that were both artful and ethical, the epigrammatic and emblematic traditions answered St Paul's injunction to the Philippians: "whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just ... if there be any virtue ... think on th ose things". 1 Love of epigrammatic brevity and the imperative to keep virtue before one's thoughts found material expression in the long-lived fashion of inscribing maxims, adages, and emblems on all manner of physical objects and surfaces. Marcus Gillis, Dutch translator of Joannes Sambucus's Emblemata, recommended that educated men should use emblems and sentences "for the embellishment of their rooms, halls, porches, gates, windows, doors and all those other places where one usually puts up devices". 2 Enigmatic signs had been edified on buildings since time immemorial, as evidenced by the Egyptian hieroglyphs carved The Epistle to the Philippians 4, v. 8. See Jansen, p. 234.

2

Emblematic Paintings from Sweden 's Age of Greatness

onto obelisks and other monuments; the resort to encryption had been prompted, according to Erasmus, because "[they] thought it wrong to exhibit the mysteries of wisdom to the vulgar in open writing as we do; but they expressed what they thought worthy to be known by various symbols, things or animals, so that not everyone could readily interpret them". 3 Such practices of public display were provided for in the etymology of the word "emblem": in its original form, the Greek term "emblema" [t:µfJh;µa] implied an insertion of something omamental into a workaday setting; or, as Geffrey Whitney expressed it, "such figures, or workes, as are wroughte in plate, or stones in the pauementes or on waules, or such like, for the adoming of the place". 4 And the plastic world of the early modem period was extensively adomed with superscribed wisdom in epitome, concetti, and sententiœ. These decorative practices did not stem from horror vacui: they devolved rather from a determinatio n to narrow attention upon moral purpose. The habit of rhetoricizing built environment s is vividly illustrated in an emblematic meditation by the Nuremberg preacher Johann Saubert published in 1630 [Fig. 1]. 5 The motto of the engraving accompanyin g Saubert' s text reads "EXTERNA INCITET ACTIO MENTEM' [Extemal things incite the mind to action], while the pictura shows a man confronted with biblical texts as he rises from bed and dresses. While washing, he reflects on the words of Isaiah set into the wall above his basin: "Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil". 6 Through such moral decorations, and the creation of local memory places, the walls became animated mirrors of conscience and incentives to virtue. Such practices enjoyed the highest sanction of Scripture: the Old Testament told how the Lord judged Belshazzar through words inscribed onto his palace wall. 7 Like an emblematic lemma of the seventeenth century, the portentous words "Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin" expressed a terse moral imperative. 8

Erasmus, p. 175. Whitney, sig. ***4R. Saubert, no. 42. Isaiah 1, v. 16. Saubert's German poem elaborates on the pictura: "Wann du frü aujJ dem Betth erhebest deine Glider I Vnd den gereinigten Leib bekleidest hin vnd wider I Nimbst Wasser für die Hand I vnd richtest deine Haar I So übe dich zugleich wider die Seelen gfahr" [When you lift your limbs out of bed early in the moming I And the body is now cleansed and then clothed, I Take water for your hand and fix your hair, ! So at the same time prepare for the dangers facing your soul]. 7 Daniel 6, vs. 24-30. "God hath numbered thy kingdom and finished it; thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting; thy kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians".

The Emblem in Applied and Fine Art

3

Over the past forty years, the efforts of many scholars have combined to decipher the meanings of walls from the early modem period, and at the same time determine the extent of the emblem's penetration into European material culture. The study of angewandte Emblematik, or applied emblematics, has developed into a major strand of enquiry within the discipline and is founded upon a wealth of evidence and exempla. As Peter M. Daly reminds us, "emblematic designs appeared in almost every form, from stained-glass windows through jewellery, tapestry, needlework and painting to architecture". 9 More recently, John Manning, surveying the fruits of many scholars' researches, has offered an expansive taxonomy of the emblem's applicability, noting its presence in bedrooms, halls, libraries, and gardens; on ceilings, fireplaces, over-mantles, curtains, cabinets, bedhangings, and windows; on vases, statues, pillars, rings, table ornaments, trenchers, glassware, furniture, and mosaic floors; in plays, masques, grand entrances, weddings, and funerals; on swords, armour, flags, standards, triumphal arches, medals, and tombs. 10 Scholarly articles, documentation, and research notes are adding to this growing inventory, with emblems appearing widely cast on harnesses, altars, weathervanes, timepieces, enamelware, nautilus-shells, powder-horns, jewellery-boxes, book-clasps, inn-signs, tankards, silverware, scientific instruments, staircases, charts, carriages, ships, and even commodes. 11 The sheer variety and miscellaneous character of these emblematic settings illustrates how potentially any material object of value or utility could be moralized or rhetoricized by the addition of an emblematic charge. Naturally, the emblem also intruded into the fine arts, including painting, although it is strange to observe that its scope and scale of Daly 1979, pp. 11-12. Conceming emblematic tapestries, see Daly 1987; Daly 2005; and McKeown 2005a; for needlework, see Strong 1977, pp. 76-77; and Bath 2005. IO Manning, pp. 25-29. For studies of emblem ceilings, see Kemp; Freytag, Harms et al; and Konecny 2000; concerning fireplaces, see Daly and Hooper; for cabinets, see Fabri; Hope! 1999; and Hope! 2004; for windows, see Bitterli; for glassware, see Kiers and Tissink, pp. 56-57; for standards, see Young 1995; and McKeown 2003b; for entries, see Porteman 1996; Van Vaeck 1996; and Wade 2002; for weddings, see Wade 1996; for funerals, see McKeown 2005b; for medals, see Cunally; Harms, HeB and Pei!; McKeown 2004; Manning, pp. 114-118; and Daly 1998, pp. 30-33; and for tombs, see Bath 1996; Bath and Willsher; McKeown 2003c; and Konecny 2005. 11 Concerning shields and weapons, see Rangstrom 1974; and Rangstrom 1992, p. 93; for weathervanes, McKeown 200lb; timepieces, McKeown 2002a; enamelware, Konecny 2003; nautilus shells and jewellery boxes, Kuurne; bookclasps, Rangstrom 1995, p. 63; inn-signs, Massing, pp. 293-295; silverware, Aurea Porta, pp. 123 and 404; staircases, Knapp and Tüskés 2003, pp. 215-243; ships, Heywood; and commodes, Wallin 1935, p. 201.

4

Emblematic Paintings /rom Sweden 's Age of Greatness

influence in this area remains a problematical and under-researched subject. Much of our current uncertainty lies in the difficulty of establishing adequate parameters of study; another dilemma concems arriving at acceptable terminology and definitions. 12 At the most basic level, this involves posing the question, what stands for an emblem in the fine arts? The term seems to have been used with some freedom by authorities in the past, not all of which concurred with twentieth-century scholars in insisting that emblems ought to display the emblema triplex of motto, picture, and epigram. 13 Should we delimit our use of the word "emblem" in the context of paintings to instances when an image manifests the tripartite structure that we find in some, but by no means all, emblem books? Should we differentiate between images in paintings which are accompanied by texts, and emblematic motifs which are divorced from verbal elements? Is it even reasonable to demand that an emblematic image should conform to literary conventions when it appears in the context of fine art? Such are the typological and tropological questions that hamper the investigation of the emblem in painting, difficulties that illustrate the disparity between "norm and form" long since anatomized by Sir Ernst Gombrich. 14 But it is not only questions of form and theory that problematize the identification and categorization of emblems in the painted and plastic arts: the issue also relates to an established controversy conceming the way in which early modem painting was read, scanned, or assimilated by its first audience. Determining just how paintings were understood by contemporaries has provoked the so-called "iconographical debate" in the historiography of Dutch painting of the Golden Age. In the 1960s, Eddy de Jongh alerted viewers to the interpretative insights emblem books offered into Dutch genre paintings, an approach that seemed to clarify long-standing ambiguities, and suggested that objects long thought to be symbolically neutral were imbued with meaning. In general, emblematic references were elliptical or oblique, smuggled before the viewer through "details that surreptitiously explain", as Samuel van Hoogstraeten phrased it. 15 Thus, a hand in a portrait casually resting on the carved orb

of a balustrade introduced the sitter's conquest of earthly passions; the idle broom in the corner represented Acedia; and the discarded oyster shell in a tavem scene implied the harlot's concupiscence. But a school of critics sceptical of this methodology, centred on Eric J. Sluijter and 12 Useful accounts of these problems can be found in Dai y 1979; Daly 1998, pp. 3-9, and 42-72; and Knapp and Tüskés 2003, pp. 1-15. 13 David Graham has considered an alternative taxonomy in the emblema multiplex: see Graham 2005. 14 See Gombrich 1966, pp. 81-98. 15 Cited in De Jongh 1995, p. 18.

The Emblem in Applied and Fine Art

5

Svetlana Alpers, responded with concems that such approaches led to indulgently subjective misreadings of motifs innocent of metaphorical encoding. 16 Persuasive disquisitions have been written on both sides of this debate, and seventeenth-century witnesses marshalled in support of each position. Yet in some ways, what has never been under question, or attracted much scrutiny from any quarter, is that disparate category of work in which words are explicitly conjoined to pictures in a mutually enlightening or enriching manner, engaging in a symbiotic interchange of significance and elucidation. Works that fall within this broad ambit include paintings with verbal inscriptions; pictures compositionally dependant on emblematic sources; still lifes; and emblematic portraits. It is a fool's errand to seek for goveming principles in so essential a formula as the interplay of word and image: even silent visual communications in, for example, a religious vein, convey verbal associations present before the mind of the beholder. Yet even if we discount the innumerable paintings where text and image are crucially interrelated-de pictions of Biblical, historical, and mythological scenes intelligible only by appeal to, or knowledge of, text-there remains a significant number which convey their didaxis bimedially. One such is Bartholomeus Spranger' s "Memento Mo ri" in Wawel Castle, Cracow: there, the putto reclining upon a death' s head points out at the viewer and to words on a tablet beside him: "HODIE MIHI, CRAS TIBI" [Today me, tomorrow you]. There is also little ambiguity about the emblematic spirit of many representations of the Immaculate Conception, for example, "The Immaculate Conception with Doctors of the Church" by Il Garofalo in the Pinacoteca di Brera. in Milan. In common with many such images, the painter places twelve emblematic devices encircling the Blessed Virgin which allude to her mystical identities as "Lily among Thorns", "Enclosed Garden'', "Gate of Paradise'', etc, converting the panel to a devotional aid parallel to printed emblematic missals. More subtle is a painting from the School of Annibale Carracci in the Palazzo di Montecittorio in Rome entitled "An Allegory of the Theological Virtues", which shows Charity accompanied by her familiar cipher, the pelican-in-its-piety. The witty emblematic application is made by a putto positioned beneath the bleeding bird, who, by lifting up a small inscribed cartouche, moralizes the scene to read "HORVM, AVTEM MAJOR EST CHARITAS" [The greatest of these is love]. The Flemish painter Otto V