Emblematica : an interdisciplinary journal for emblem studies [13]

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EMBLEMATICA An Interdisciplinary Journal for Emblem Studies Volume 13

Editors Peter M. Daly

Daniel Russell

David G r a h a m

Michael Bath

Editorial Assistants Alison Vort Halasz Agnes Guiderdoni Brusle

AMS Press, Inc. New York

EMBLEMATICA ISSN 0885-968X

Manuscript submissions and other editorial correspondence should be addressed to Daniel Russell. Books for review should be addressed to Michael Bath; however, no obligation is recognized to review or return any book received. Articles and essays should conform to the house style sheet which is available upon request. General guidance may be obtained from the MLA Handbook for Writers and the Chicago Manual of Style. Authors should submit their work in duplicate, and will be expected to provide a computer file of their accepted article and high-quality glossy prints for any illustrations. Any text to be returned to the author should be accompanied by return postage. Subscriptions and remittances should be sent to the publisher: AMS Press, Inc., Brooklyn Navy Yard, Bldg. 292, Suite 417, 63 Flushing Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11205, USA.

Camera-ready copy of this issue of EMBLEMATICA was produced at the University of Pittsburgh.

C o p y r i g h t © AMS Press, Inc., 2003 All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

EMBLEMATICA An Interdisciplinary Journal for Emblem Studies r.mblematica publishes original articles, essays, and specialized bibliographies in all areas of e m b l e m studies. In addition it regularly contains r e v i e w articles, r e v i e w s , research reports (work in progress, including theses, conference reports and abstracts of c o m p l e t e d theses), notes and queries, notices (forthcoming conferences and publications), and various types of documentation. It is n o w published annually.

Editors Peter M. D a l y McGill University Department of German Studies 680 Sherbrooke Street W. Montreal, PQ, НЗА 2M7 Canada

Daniel Russell Department of French and Italian University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh, PA 15260 U.S.A.

David Graham Memorial University of Newfoundland Department of French & Spanish St. John's, NF, A1B3X9 Canada

M i c h a e l Bath Review Editor Department of English Studies University of Strathclyde Glasgow Gl 1XH United Kingdom

Editorial

Board

Barbara C. B o w e n Vanderhilt University

D i e t m a r Peil Ludwig Maximilians Uni., Munich

P e d r o F. C a m p a University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Karel P o r t e m a n Katholieke Universiteit,

Paulette Chone Universite de Bonrgogne

Stephen Rawles University of Glasgow Library

(Dijon)

Leuven

John C u l l College of the Holy Cross

B e r n h a r d F. S c h o l z Rijksuniversiteit Groningen

D e n i s L. D r y s d a l l University ofWaikato

Mary Silcox McMaster University

(New Zealand)

Wolfgang Harms Ludwig Maximilians Uni., Munich

J. B. T r a p p The Warburg Institute,

Karl Josef H o l t g e n Universitat Erlangen-Ntimberg

Egon Verheyen George Mason University

Lubomir Konecny Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic

Florence Vuilleumier Laurens Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, IVe Section, Paris

Jean M i c h e l M a s s i n g University of Cambridge

Alan Young Acadia University

Sabine Modersheim University of Wisconsin at Madison

London

EMBLEMATICA An Interdisciplinary Journal for Emblem Studies Volume 13 Articles Shankar Raman Performing Allegory: Erwin Panofsky and Titian's Allegory of Prudence

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Michael Bath Alciato and the Earl of Arran

39

Denis L. Drysdall Gavino Sambigucio and his Interpretation of Achille Bocchi's "Hermathena ,/

53

Luis Merino and Jesus Urena On the Date of Composition of El Brocense's Commentaria in Alciati Emblemata

73

Monica Calabritto Garzoni's L'Hospedale de' Pazzi incurabili and the Ambiguous Relation between Word and Image in Sixteenth-Century Imprese

97

Charles W. Henebry Wrestling Proteus: Explication as Metaphoric Struggle in Jacob Cats's Silenus Alcibiadis, sive Proteus

131

David Graham A Context for Albert Flamen's Devises et Emblesmes d'Amour Moralisez

173

Simon McKeown The Emblem Paintings at Skokloster: A Philosophical Gallery from Sweden's A g e of Greatness

213

Bernhard F. Scholz Jacob Cats's Silenus Alcibiadis in 1618/1627 a n d in 1862. O b s e r v a t i o n s on a M i d - N i n e t e e n t h - C e n t u r y A t t e m p t at M o d e r n i z i n g an Early-Modern Book of E m b l e m s

267

Peter M. Daly The E u r o p e a n Impresa: From Fifteenth-Century Aristocratic Device to Twenty-First-Century Logo

303

Daniel Russell Icarus in the City: E m b l e m s and P o s t m o d e r n i s m

333

R e v i e w and Criticism Reviews John M a n n i n g , The Emblem, by Robert C u m m i n g s

361

Alison A d a m s , Stephen Rawles, and Alison S a u n d e r s , A Bibliogrpahy of French Emblem Books of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Vol. 2: L-Z, by Daniel Russell

368

The Emblems of Wither and Rollenhagen: A C o m p a c t Disk edited by Peter M. Daly and Alan R. Young, by Michael Bath

372

Johannes S a m b u c u s , Emblemata et aliquot nummi antiqui operis. Altera edilio. A n t w e r p : Plantin, 1566. Facsimile r e p r i n t with an afterword by Wolfgang H a r m s and Ulla-Britta Kuechen, by Peter M. Daly

376

Emblem Studies in Honor of Peter M. Daly, eds. Michael Bath, Pedro F. Campa and Daniel S. Russell, by John T. Cull

381

Victor Minguez, Los reyes solares. Iconografia astral de la monarquia hispdnica, by John T. Cull

386

John Manning and Marc van Vaeck, eds., The Jesuits and the Emblem Tradition: Selected Papers of the Leuven International Emblem Conference, 18-23 August, 1996, by Margit Thofner

394

William E. Engel, Death and Drama in Renaissance England: Shades of Memory, by John Lepage

397

Research Reports, Notes, Queries and Notices Notes Alan R. Young Let the Games Begin

407

Seraina Plotke Visual Poetry in an Edifying German Songbook

411

Simon McKeown More on Quarles and Funerary Art: An Emblematic Tombstone in Cornwall

425

Volume Index

435

Performing Allegory: Erwin Panofsky and Titian's Allegory of Prudence SHANKAR RAMAN Massachusetts Institute of Technology

I. Introduction Modern understanding of Titian's Allegory of Prudence (fig. 1) has been shaped in no small measure by Erwin Panofsky's erudite "postscript" upon the painting, collected in his 1955 Meaning and the Visual Arts.1 Seemingly exhausting the "content" of Titian's intriguing image, that remarkable investigation set the boundaries for further discussion. Perhaps, the relative paucity of critical literature subsequent to Panofsky's careful excavation of the painting's buried signification even lends support to a still-prevalent (if contested) sense of the paucity of allegory itself: once one has identified what an allegory is "really about," there isn't that much more to be said about it.2 This essay, too, responds to the "Postscript." Indeed, the dependence is especially acute in that I am concerned here with how Titian's painting and Panofsky's reading together stage problems of signification and closure focal for understanding sixteenth- and seven1. All subsequent references are indicated in the body of this essay by page number only. 2. To the best of my knowledge, the only substantial post-Panofsky essay on Titian's Allegory of Prudence is Daniel Arasse's 1984 "Titien et son Allegorie de la Prudence : Un Peintre et des Motifs." While I encountered his piece after my own essay had already been drafted, the reading developed below often converges with Arasse's intelligent critique of Panofsky's Postscript. I note the specific overlaps at appropriate junctures.

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Fig. 1. Titian, Allegory of Prudence, (ca. 1570). Courtesy of The National Gallery, London.

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leenlh-century allegory. In recent years these dimensions of the allegorical process have received renewed attention. Post-structuralists have convincingly argued that allegory as an aesthetic form is always also "about" itself as a mode of signification or expression, and that ils self-reflexiveness complicates any simple or definitive identification of content. 3 Nevertheless, accepting such a claim does not obviate the need to address questions of how and what allegorical self-reflexivity means at specific historical junctures. Compare, for instance, the involuted typological structures of medieval allegory with baroque allegory's distinctive modes of fragmentation. Both modes share a complex interest in naming and boundaries. But medieval allegory emphasizes how particularities of reference and location can be overcome. To cite Daniel Russell, "allegory in the early and high middle ages pointed, at least theoretically if not always in fact, to a monolithic and all-encompassing truth, the central truth of Christianity that was the driving force behind the epistemology of the Christian world, even in its most secular manifestations" (Russell 1995, 46). Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century allegory, by contrast, implies a very different relationship to that "central truth"; it tends to stress rather the disruptive function of names, thus thematizing contingency and particularity of reference. My essay suggests that the Allegory of Prudence shows these signs of its historical moment in an especially marked manner. Hence, I shall be reading Panofsky's seemingly definitive iconographical interpretation "against the grain." An observation from Panofsky's "Postscript" serves to signal the Allegory's self-consciousness with regard to its own representational status: "The painting is the only work of Titian's —who usually limited lettering to his own name or that of the sitter in a portrait —to carry a genuine motto or 'titulus'" (184). It is worth recalling that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries titles generally accrued to paintings in the wake of their reception and interpretation. There are, no doubt, numerous exceptions, but these only highlight the default situation: that paintings entered the world unnamed, refusing the fateful subordination to words. Far from being a prior given, the title is generally the deposit or sediment of a critical process. We might therefore see in Titian's deviation from his normal practice the artist's 3.

The pioneering work of Paul de Man and others, for example, has occasioned a rehabilitation of allegory by calling into question any easy separation between allegorical form and content, or vehicle and tenor. See especially de Man, 207ff.

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awareness that mottos or tituli, as the names of the objects being investigated, help construct the very objects they name. Naming Titian's painting, then, already delineates an interpretative limit. This holds, of course, for other works by Titian as well. For instance, the famous painting Sacred and Profane Love owes its title to Panofsky and Edgar Wind, who interpret it as a Neo-Platonic allegory of the conversation between twin Venuses, heavenly and terrestrial. 4 Absent an explicit guarantee, however, Panofsky himself remains open in this case to alternative, non-allegorical readings; in particular, he takes seriously W. Friedlander's claim that the painting straightforwardly illustrates an episode from Francesco Colonna's Hypnerotomachia Polyphili in which Polia converses with Venus (see Friedlander, 320ff.). Yet Panofsky denies the Allegory of Prudence the very possibility he had allowed for the earlier painting. "The conceptual significance of the perceptible data" appears to him here "so obtrusive that it simply does not make sense" unless one focuses exclusively on its allegorical content (183). And precisely the detailed analysis of such content underwrites the name attached to Titian's painting today. For its title does not derive solely from the distinctive titulus inscribed above the figures (and remarked upon by Panofsky): Ex praeterito praesens prudenter agit nifuture actions deturpet [Out of the past, the present acts prudently, lest it spoil future actions]. It equally depends on Panofsky's identification of the two triads within the painting as iconographic representations of Prudence. Indeed, only on the antepenultimate page of his essay, after he has established the iconographic provenance of its motifs, does Panofsky actually declare the painting an Allegory of Prudence. Through Panofsky's interpretation, we might say, a condensed version of the motto becomes a titulus. This essay suggests that the intricate relationship between Titian's painting and Panofsky's interpretation symptomatically uncovers certain crucial dimensions of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century allegory. If Titian's painting may be construed, to modify Michael Ann Holly's phrase, as a "syntactical prefiguration" of the "historiographic response" to it (see Garber, II: 1256), Panofsky's reading allows us to see that process at work; it reveals how Titian's use of alle4. See Wind, 1948, 56ff. This interpretation is not an uncontested one. While agreeing with the identification of Venus, Charles Hope argues that the other female figure is Laura Bagarotto (whose family arms can be seen in the painting), leading him to conclude that the painting is less a Neo-Platonic meditation on types of love than a celebration of Laura's marriage. See Hope, 111-24.

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j;ory already builds into the painting's structure the form of subsequent historical accounts. Further, we can recognize in this self-reflection an historically distinctive mode of allegory and allegoresis that is —as Russell has argued more generally for the aesthetic form of the e m b l e m —a s y m p t o m of a t r a n s i t i o n a l epistemological condition foreshadowing the close of the early modern era in Europe (Russell 1995,10-11 and 241-42).

II. The Limits of Iconography To dispel the enigma of Titian's painting, Panofsky makes two vital contributions, beginning with the identification of the iconographical content of the two triads. Carefully reconstructing their respective histories, he convincingly shows that both images represent the same concept: prudence. The details of the upper, anthropomorphic triad are drawn "from texts and images transmitted to the sixteenth century by a continuous and purely western tradition" (187). The tripartite temporal division of the painting's inscription (praeterito, praesens and futura) functions as a set of labels associated with the individual faces, which in turn typify the three stages of human life (old age, maturity and youth). The central clause of the motto, "praesens prudenter agit," further gives "the impression of summarising the total content after the fashion of a 'headline'." It thereby requires us to connect the three modes of temporality and human existence with the "three psychological faculties in the combined exercise of which this virtue [prudence] consists": memory, intelligence and foresight (184). While the animal triad stands for the same "virtue," its provenance is rather different. This distinctive configuration represents a relatively recent re-activation of an initially non-European image. Panofsky pursues Titian's motif back to an ancient Egyptian source, a tricephalous monster who accompanied the Egyptian god Serapis. Reinterpreted by Macrobius in Latin antiquity as a symbol for time and then forgotten for nine hundred years, the image was finally "rediscovered and set free" by Petrarch, who at the same time transformed the three-headed animal into Apollo's companion. Following the "iconographic emancipation of the Serapis monster" was the rediscovery of Horapollo's Hieroglyphica in 1419 —an event, Panofsky tells us, that "not only gave rise to an enormous enthusiasm for everything Egyptian but also produced . . . that "'emblematic' spirit which is so characteristic of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries" (195). Titian himself would have directly encountered this distinc-

EMBLEMATICA 6 tivc image in Pierio Valeriano's Hieroglyphica of 1556, an augmented version of Horapollo's text, through which "'the Serapis monster en buste'.. . became the modern, 'hieroglyphic' substitute for all the earlier portrayals of 'tripartite Prudence'"(200). 5 While undoubtedly necessary to decipher Titian's elaborate allegory, this double history of the painting's iconography does not, however, constitute a sufficient explanation of the whole. For the superimposition "of an old-fashioned image of Prudence in the guise of three human heads of different a g e s . . . upon the modern image of Prudence in the guise of the 'Serapis monster en buste'" (201) still begs the fact of the superimposition itself. As Panofsky himself points out, his iconographical investigation only raises a further question: what would lead "the greatest of all painters to combine heterogeneous motifs apparently saying the same thing, and thus to complicate complication by what seems to amount, not only to a concession to the fashionable fad of Egypt-inspired emblematics but also to a relapse into scholasticism and, even worse, to redundancy? In other words, what was the purpose of Titian's picture?" (201-02). To answer this question, Panofsky makes a second, crucial, contribution. He reidentifies the human figures as a series of portraits, depicting the aged Titian himself; his younger son and heir apparent, Orazio; and his "adopted" grandson and heir presumptive, Marco Vecelli.6 The biographical identification then motivates the ingenious suggestion that "the Allegory of Prudence — a subject most appropriate for such a purpose —was [designed] to commemorate the legal and financial measures" taken on the occasion of making "a provision for [Titian's] clan." Panofsky's speculation is far from being an ungrounded one. One could supplement his explanation by recalling that the history of Venetian art in particular was an institutional history. It was distinguished by an emphasis on families that was, as Da5. Given that the motif of the three-headed monster wrapped around by a snake was emblematically linked to time, it is surprising that Panofky doesn't make much of the possible connection to that other fearsome three-headed creature, Cerberus, the dog guarding the gates of hell. I shall return to the funebral implications built into Titian's Allegory later in this essay.

6. Vecelli was a distant relative whom Titian "particularly loved" and had taken into his house and instructed in his art (204). Panofsky admits that he is not entirely confident in this identification. But his larger point remains plausible even without precise identification: that the painting represents three generations of Titian's family.

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vkl Kosand has argued, ''both a product and a function of the traditions of institutional conservatism" (Rosand 1982a, 8). More than anywhere else in Italy, art in Venice was essentially a craft, something that one could learn and whose practice could be passed down — the Tintoretto workshop, for example, lasted over three generations, even determining the marriage of Tintoretto's daughter. Under these social conditions, Titian's decision in 1569 to declare Orazio his successor and to extract from the Venetian authorities the transference of his own broker's patent to his younger son, does, indeed, make plausible the intention Panofsky ascribes to the painting, that of commemorating Titian's will or act of willing. 7 "Were it permissible to indulge in romantic speculation, we might even imagine," Panofsky continues, "that it was intended to conceal a little cupboard recessed into a wall (repositiglio) wherein important documents and other valuables were kept" (202). Although Panofsky himself does not use the term, it is not hard to see that this intersection of biographical and iconographical readings in effect transforms Titian's painting into an important figurational relative of the emblem: the impresa. 8 Furthermore, these two strands of the "Postscript" reflect a tension visible in sixteenth-century Italian treatises on the emblem and its related forms. Though closely related, emblem and impresa were often sharply distinguished in contemporary theoretical tracts (for the most part on largely pedantic grounds). William Drummond's A Short Discourse upon Impresa's and Anagrams — indebted (as are all English treatises) to the substantial body of Italian discussion on the subject —articulates their difference, even as it acknowledges the practical difficulty of telling the one from the other:

7. The broker's patent or senseria carried an annual stipend of one hundred ducats as well as sizeable tax exemptions, and was conferred on Orazio, the son who had been, in Panofsky's words, "his father's loyal helper throughout his life" in sharp contrast to "his wretched elder brother, Pomponio" (203). 8. Panofsky does note en passant that Titian's painting has all the characteristics of the emblem (183). Yet, even as his essay posits the conjunction of a renewed obsession with hieroglyphs and emblems as the necessary condition for the "iconographic emancipation" of the tricephalous monster (195), neither contemporary theories of the emblem nor the social energies invested in the emblem form play a substantial part in his reading of the painting's significance.

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Though emblems and impresas sometimes seem like [each] other, what is a perfection in an emblem, is a great fault in an impresa: The words of an emblem are only placed to declare the figures of the emblem; whereas, in an impresa, the figures express and illustrate one part of the author's intention, and the word the other. Emblems serve for demonstration of some general thing, and for a general rule, and teaching precept to every one, as well for the author and inventor as for any other; which is a fault in an impresa: For an impresa is a demonstration and manifestation of some notable and excellent thought of him that conceived it, and useth it; and it belongs only to him, and is is property . . . . (Drummond, 228)

In Drummond's terms, Panofsky's biographical reading rewrites the significance of the anthropomorphic triad: rather than the motto simply "declaring" the emblematic figures, only in their mutual connection does the "meaning" of the painting emerge. That is, identifying the p o r t r a i t s a l l o w s t h e g e n e r a l m a x i m ( p r u d e n c e ) to be particularized in terms of the painter's specific intentions (the commemoration of his prudent planning for the future). Drummond's sharp distinction between the emblem and the impresa reflects the greater currency of the latter in Italy, where the impresa outranked the emblem in the hierarchical ranking of symbolic forms. However, his admission that impresas and emblems "sometimes seem like [each] other" suggests that this demarcation may indeed be misleading in another respect. For the bases upon which Drummond distinguishes the impresa from the emblem — particular versus universal, personal versus impersonal —equally represented a productive internal tension and difference of emphasis within theories of the impresa itself. Discussing the relationship of visual image to written motto in Italian imprese, Robert Klein incisively remarks upon a significant divergence between the logician's and the artist's notions of the impresa that parallels Drummond's formulations. "For a pure 'logician' like Torquato Tasso," says Klein, "the figure and the motto expressed equally well the initial concetto and duplicated each other, as parallel signs of the same idea." In contrast, "[f ]or an 'artist,' like Ercole Tasso, the meaning of the impresa must derive from the mutual connection between figure and motto" (Klein,

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17).1' As regards the logic of the impresa, the expression (whether visual or verbal) was understood as imitating an anterior thought externalized in the expression; figure and motto thus independently pointed towards a single anterior concept (the concetto) associated with the bearer. Thus in the case of Drummond's emblem, this perspective likewise stressed the general concept which figure and motto both illustrated. However, as far as its techne went —which Klein calls the science of the art of impresa —the concetto took material form not in either figure or motto alone, but only through their relationship. The emphasis shifted thereby to the artistic intention and its ingenuity in constructing this relationship, to the technical act of "re-creat[ing] the concept within sensible matter/ 7 The anterior concept took material shape only as an effect of the relationship between word and image, motto and figure (Klein, 12).10 This dual aspect of the impresa in Italian theory and practice maps neatly onto Panofsky's two modes of interpreting Titian's Allegory of Prudence. The narrowly iconographical readings are conceptually equivalent to the logical impresa; the two visual emblems (the triads), along with the verbal motto, are merely parallel signs pointing to the anterior concept of prudence. The introduction of portraiture, on the other hand, evokes the structure of artistic imprese. Ostensibly entering the interpretive narrative as the "solution" to the problem of iconographic redundancy, the identification of the portraits allows Panofsky to posit a relationship between anthropomorphic triad and trichotomous verbal motto. And through this relation the 9. It may seem peculiar to place Torquato Tasso in the camp of the "logicians." But Klein's exposition makes clear that the distinction between "logician" and "artist" is to be understood as a heuristic one, more a matter of emphasis than of spirit: "whether the concept was a pure abstraction or a thought-image it was always the object of a logic, and to turn that logic into art it was enough to stress the structured aspect, the 'architecture' of the means of expression, and the ingenuity of the process" (Klein, 17).

10. The distinction drawn here accords with the shift in emphasis from bearer or user to artist or inventor: the logical impresa tends to associate the concept with the person for whom the impresa is intended, while the artistic impresa brings into the foreground the concept as articulated by the maker of the impresa. That Drummond can easily compress bearer and inventor in his account of the impresa's specificity ("the manifestation of some notable and excellent thought of him that conceiveth it, and useth it") indicates that these two modes of thinking the impresa are not in fact contradictory, representing rather a shift in point of view.

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painting's more particular "meaning" or "purpose" comes to light: its commemoration of the great painter's prudent act of willing. "True," writes Panofsky, "Titian's picture . . . is what the modern beholder is apt to dismiss as an 'abstruse allegory.' But this does not prevent it from being a moving human document; the proudly resigned abdication of a great king who, another Hezekiah, had been bidden 'to set his house in order' and was then told by the Lord: 'I will add unto thy days'"(204). In other words, Panofsky first reduces the two modes of expression to their respective concetti or the unique acts of thought they represent; and then hierarchically orders them by subordinating the former (the general maxim of prudence) to the latter (portraiture as an expression of the painter's will). Reanimating the allegorical images as a "moving human document" that expresses Titian's aesthetic intention, Panofsky's two-fold interpretive strategy thereby repeats and reconciles in the form of a critical allegory the two concurrent strands within impresa theory, the two modes of emblematic expression that Titian's painting so ostentatiously stages. But, ultimately, biography wins out. Indeed, it is worth remembering that during the Renaissance the movement towards particularization and personalization was crucial in arguing the superiority of the impresa to the emblem. Drummond's statement rests, as Michael Bath has indicated, upon the notion that the author's intention constitutes the impresa's unique quality: "the whole concept of authorial intention was specific to the impresa, and the Italian theorists and their followers speak of the emblem . . . as if it had no need of either [author or intention]" (Bath, 20). The earliest Italian treatise on the imprese, Paulo Giovio's 1550 Dialogo dell 'imprese militari e amorose, claimed that the fashion had been introduced in Italy by the French King Charles VIII's captains, and was "imitated by Italian warriors who drew imprese on their weapons and gave them to their men to distinguish them in the fray and to stimulate their courage" (Klein, 3). According to Russell, the French devise — from which the imprese are often said to have been derived —"developed from war cries or signs on military banners and shields," but rapidly extended its range of connotations and uses: Devise and its most closely related cognates, devis and deviser, came into French from the Latin divido, -ere . . . meaning "separate," "distribute," or "distinguish.". . . [The word] devise indicated a separation, a division, a distribution, difference, description, custom, fashion, will or even identifying mark. Through semantic contamination or

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combination, a devise could also be a plan, a design, a prescription, a formula or a testament by which one expressed his last will and provided for the division of his worldly goods upon his death. . . . Somewhat later, it would appear, the verb also came to mean "speak"; during the Renaissance this meaning of deviser became dominant and even influenced the use of the cognate nouns. (Russell 1985, 24)" While sharing the semantic expansiveness of the devise, the Italian impresa acquired an additional complexity during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that would distinguish it from its French counterpart. It gradually evolved from a knightly device expressing the amorous or military aspirations of the bearer to an aesthetic and philosophical device signifying the intentions of its inventor.12 Titian's Allegory of Prudence seems aware of the rich semantic possibilities afforded by the impresa. And indeed, Russell's description above seems almost crafted to describe Titian's appropriation of the impresa tradition. Distinctively combining iconography and portraiture, Titian semantically "contaminates" the general or abstract philosophical denotation, thereby turning the painting into a speaking picture, "a testament by which [he] expresse[s] his last will and provide[s] for the division of his worldly goods upon his death." Panofsky's double reading, we might say (though he does not), establishes Titian's painting as an ideal impresa, one in which bearer and inventor coincide. So intent is Panofsky upon tracing the figures back to a single "intentione dell'autore," though, that he ignores precisely the aspect of artifice, the very staginess of Titian's impresa, of which its iconographic redundancy is the clearest indicator.What escapes his icono11. Unlike Klein, Russell treats the impresa and the device as forms developing in parallel in Italy and France respectively. For the purpose of this essay, the question of whether these forms originated autonomously or the one from the other is not particularly important. What is crucial is the shared semantic range spanned by these two kindred allegorical forms.

12. By the early sixteenth century, to cite Russell, the Italian imprese "betray[ed] a complexity unknown in France at the t i m e , . . . especially among humanists, who were using more intricate symbolic compositions as vehicles for expressing religious beliefs and abstract philosophical positions as well as cherished ideals and self-images 7 ' (Russell 1985, 29). On this shift, also see Klein, 4-5.

12 EMBLEMATICA g r a p h i c m e t h o d is, as Daniel Arasse p u t s it, the question of " c o m m e n t u n m e m e motif change de sens selon la m a n i e r e d o n t il est presente 'en p e i n t u r e " ' (Arasse, 292). 13 For it is a p p a r e n t that the problem of "sup e r i m p o s i t i o n " is n o t identical to the question (noted earlier) which Panofsky d e r i v e s from it, that of w h a t the purpose of the p a i n t i n g is. Certainly, in t h a t it signals a s e m a n t i c excess b e y o n d the scope of the iconographical r e a d i n g , the fact of r e d u n d a n c y justifiably triggers a search that l e a d s to the biographical. But it is no less t r u e that it m o v e s u s in the o p p o s i t e direction as well, redirecting attention from the constative level of the p a i n t i n g ' s s t a t e m e n t to w h a t N o r m a n Bryson calls "the p e r f o r m a t i v e l e v e l . . . of the signifier, the material s u p p o r t w h i c h carries the s t a t e m e n t across s e m a n t i c s p a c e " (Bryson, 119). Focusing on the performative dimension leads us back to the dramatic redundancy so central to Titian's curious Allegory of Prudence. The middle level of Titian's painting—the anthropomorphic triad positioned between written word and animal triad—turns out to be simultaneously the locus of both the union and divergence of the two interpretive modes deployed in the "Postscript." As a mediating level, the triple portrait allows Panofsky to coordinate hierarchically the biographical a n d i c o n o g r a p h i c a l r e a d i n g s , b u t only u n d e r the condition that it is itself radically fractured. On the one h a n d , as i c o n o g r a p h i c a l index to the m e a n i n g m a d e explicit by the titulus, it p a r t a k e s of the semantic m o d e p r o p e r to the z o o m o r p h i c triad, which p r i m a r i l y functions to give visible form to the concept given verbal form in the motto. 1 4 This m o d e of m e a n i n g —to d r a w on Bryson's discussion of the heavily allegorical g e n r e of vanitas paint-

13. "how the same motif changes its sense according to the manner in which it is presented 'in painting'." Translation mine. My emphasis on the performative aspect of Titian's painting parallels Arasse's suggestion that the iconographic paradigm fails to take into account what he calls the "'reseau figuratif de l'image": "Non seulement l'identification du motif et du theme neglige la capacite propre a la figure de suggerer, de condenser, de susciter echos et resonances multiples, mais l'approche iconographique traditionnelle neglige aussi le plus souvent la configuration meme du motif..." (Arasse, 292). ["Not only does the identification of motif and theme neglect the true capacity of the figure to suggest, to condense, to arouse multiple echoes and resonances, but the traditional iconographic approach more often than not also neglects the very configuration of the motif.. .." Translation mine.] 14. Though even here, we could locate a similar tension between the lifelike representation of the animals (their "portraits-like aspect, as it were) and their iconographical function as index to an anterior concept.

SHANKAR RAMAN

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injj;s — pa га l lei s the Cal vinist hierarchization of the word over the im­ age, since it requires that "figuration . . . be subdued and directed by figures of speech" (Bryson, 119). It prioritizes the commonplace maxim towards which the visual image directs attention. For the iconographic reading, then, visual lexicons (specifically, for Panofsky, texts such as Pierio Valeriano's Hieroglyphica and Cesare Ripa's later Iconologia) that identify the three-headed figures with prudence are crucial: "[w]ithout that input from a textual source, nothing can instil the visual form with its destined meaning; in itself the arbitrarily chosen representamen is helpless, semantically null. Distance between image and meaning is the sign of the abjection of images before the word that masters them by supplying their missing raison d'etre" (Bryson, 119). However, simply equating the triads with the motto (as Panofsky does), that is, focusing purely on their constative function, ignores the fact of their performative status as material signifiers. For the equations evoked by iconographic readings of allegorical paintings are, Bryson continues, "also blocked: x may stand for— but cannot oth­ erwise relate to—y, except by way of an abrupt change of gear from performative, to constative and from image to word" (Bryson, 121). From this perspective, the iconographic redundancy of Titian's Alle­ gory marks the place in which the painting's enunciation intersects with a reflection upon its own act of enunciating; constative meaning is "contaminated" by the display of how meaning emerges. And it is to this problem that we must now turn our gaze, a problem that the painting stages as the crossing over of two apparently autonomous genres: of visual allegory in a narrow sense, and portraiture.

III. Portraiture and the Performance of Allegory The condition enabling Titian's two iconographical representa­ tions of Prudence was, to recall Panof sky's phrase, "the simultaneous rise of Egyptomania and emblematics" (195). These two Renaissance phenomena were mutually intertwined in that they grew out of a re­ newed interest —sharply focused upon the emblem and its related forms —in the nature of signification. To understand the status of Titian's painted signifiers therefore requires us to consider more fully the relationship between theories of the impresa and the six­ teenth- and seventeenth-century investment in allegories and hieroglyphs. This endeavor involves more than tracing the contin­ gent history of iconographic transmission; one needs to pursue, too,

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the broader cultural implications of the early modern concern with allegorical representation. For the impresa participated in a crisis of signification to which baroque allegory was a response. This crisis may be described as being consequent upon the transition from a ternary model of the sign to a binary one. 15 Following Walter Benjamin's analysis of German baroque drama, I wish to suggest that one result of this epistemic shift was an unprecedented emphasis on artifice or ostentation as the mode through which the artistic subject staged himself. Allegory —and the impresa as a form of allegory—became an important stage upon which that performance took place. To cite Bettine Menke, "[d]ie K u n s t f e r t i g k e i t / K u n s t l i c h k e i t mit der die Beliebigkeit der allegorischen Bedeutungszuweisung in der Allegorie inszeniert ist, wird zur Selbstbehauptungsgeste des (bedeutungs-) organisierenden Subjekts" (Menke, 184).16 That the relationship between natural and conventional signs was most forcefully raised in the context of emblematic forms was a consequence, according to Bath, "of the fact that the emblem was conceived both as an art of rhetorical invention in which novel connections were suggested between signifier and signified, and at the same time as an art which used inherent meanings already transcribed in the Book of Nature by the finger of God" (Bath, 3).17 The "hieroglyphics" of 15. I share (in a modified form) Arasse's sense that Titian's painting, "ne fonctionnant correctement ni comme embleme, ni comme allegorie,. . . trouble les codes d'elaboration et de lecture courants au XVIe siecle a la suite, precisement, de cette appropriation a des fins privees des systemes allegoriques et emblematiques" (Arasse, 291). [Titian's painting "does not function exactly either as emblem or allegory, . . . [it] troubles the codes of elaboration and reading current in the sixteenth century as a consequence, precisely, of that appropriation of allegorical and emblematic systems to private ends." Translation mine.] While I agree that Titian's painting "troubles" contemporary "codes of elaboration," I would add that by so doing Titian participates in precisely the debates over signification central to emblematics and allegory in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. This historical dimension is one of my larger interests in this essay.

16. "The artistry/artifice with which the arbitrariness of allegorical reference is staged in allegory becomes the self-asserting gesture of the subject carrying out the (referential) arrangement." Translation mine. See also Haverkamp, 70-80. 17. Russell describes how Alciato's followers seized on hieroglyphs to legitimate the mechanics of the emblem: "first an image would stimulate the 'intuition' of a

SHANKAR RAMAN

15

I lora polio Nil us were taken up by Renaissance Neo-Platonism as the model of a universal language, a system of natural signs that was assimilated into received modes of scriptural exegesis and Christian allegory. Michel F o u c a u l t ' s delineation of the early m o d e r n epistemological shift leading to what he terms the Classical episteme provides a useful frame for comprehending this heightened concern with signs. As Foucault points out, up to the end of the sixteenth century "resemblance played a constructive role in the knowledge of Western culture: it was resemblance that largely guided exegesis and the interpretation of texts; it was resemblance that organised the play of symbols, made possible knowledge of things invisible and visible, and controlled the art of representing them" (Foucault, 17). Knowledge of an object required uncovering the form of resemblance or similitude that linked it to another object. However, in order for this buried resemblance to be made visible or known, there had to be an outward sign or "signature" that pointed to and guaranteed the resemblance, a visible mark that revealed the nature of the invisible analogy: "This is why the face of the world is covered with blazons, w i t h c h a r a c t e r s , w i t h c i p h e r s a n d o b s c u r e w o r d s —with 'hieroglyphs'. . ." (Foucault, 27). These legible "signatures" took the form of another resemblance, one different in kind from the buried similitude it pointed to. The semiological system corresponding to this epistemology was thus ternary in its configuration: theories of the sign brought together three autonomous and distinct elements: the object to be known, that to which it bore a resemblance, and, finally, the "signature" which guaranteed recognition of that resemblance and allowed access to knowledge of the object. Impresa theories show quite clearly the persistence of this ternary model through the sixteenth century. As a mode of expression, the impresa was considered qualitatively different from the concept to which it gave material form. Spelling out what may seem to us a fine distinction, Scipione Bargagli stressed that the impresa was "the expression of a concetto" and not "an expressed concetto" (Bargagli, 41). In the same way, for Bartolomeo Taegio, the impresa was "the image of a concept expressed, with suitable brevity, through words or figures or both together." The subject of the impresa was not the concept as such but the "image of the concept," a thought-image or metaphor "prior and alien" to the material realisation or even to "the difmoral truth, and then a discursive explanation of the cosmic analogy would show how this compelling revelation had come about" (Russell 1995, 116ff.).

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EMBLEMATICA

ference between verbal and plastic expression" (cited in Klein, 9). These definitions suggest a three-part structure comprizing an initial concept (the "intentione deirautore," sometimes also called the concetto), a "thought image" or figure of this concept, and finally the impresa itself as a material object which expressed or bodied forth the thought-image. Francesco Caburacci distinguished between three modes of expression: signifying through conventional means, representing by imitation or duplication, and finally showing or figurality, the expression of a concept indirectly through another concept. The impresa, as the highest form of expression, belonged to the last of these categories; it was the figure of a figure, the expression of "an as yet unexpressed" thought-image that "exist[ed] prior to its technical realisation in matter" (cited in Klein, 9). In the impresa, the anterior concept ' m a r k e d ' itself on m a t t e r via the t h i r d t e r m , the thought-image, which guaranteed recognition of this marking. And the guarantee itself took the form of similitude or resemblance: the thought-image became the comparison or the analogy between the concept and its expression. The link between figure and motto could take many forms: the motto could highlight, particularize or color some aspect of the impresa's figure; the artist might establish a syllogistic link between figure and motto; or, more vaguely, figure and motto could simply be complementary. The wide variation in how this relationship —the third term in the system — was conceived, was by no means accidental; it expressed the different modes through which the very notion of resemblance could be thought. The crucial point was less the precise nature of the resemblance in each case than the need to posit resemblance as an independent process deriving its validity from a view of the world as an ordered network of relationships of similitude. Resemblance belonged, ultimately, less to the things themselves than to the nature of the world in which they were to be found. But, as Foucault argues, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries also saw a "suspension" of the "order of things," bringing the ternary model into a crisis and rendering the category of resemblance problematic.18 The consequences of this suspension are clearly visible in 18. This would appear to be a pan-European phenomenon, though its timing and extent differed from region to region. See, for example, Renate Lachmann's discussion of Polish Baroque rhetoric in the context of concetto theories. Rudolf Vierhaus suggests that this transition should be seen less as a generalized crisis than as a linked series of numerous localized crises and critical processes (in

SHANKAR RAMAN

17

how imprese and emblems were treated: the temporal and logical chain linking the initial concept or concetto, the thought-image that was its figure, and the impresa or the figure of the figure, became vulnerable to a curious dialectic. On the one hand, the thought-image or the figure of the concept was "as much as possible reduced to the unity of a single act of intelligence to make it resemble the concept more closely"; on the other, the concetto itself was endowed with "the attributes of artifice" to draw it closer to its material embodiment in the impresa, thus emphasising the thought-image itself as the material work of the concept. As Klein puts it, "the very word concetto, used to describe the initial idea, came to signify a cunning form of expression" (Klein, 12-13 and 16). The assimilation of the mediating link simultaneously to both the elements it connected meant in effect the reduction of a ternary system to a binary one, resulting (in line with Foucault's general argument) in a shift in emphasis from establishing the fact of a correspondence between the concept and its material embodiment through a distinct third term, to how a correspondence between an idea and its material expression (signified and signifier) could be established. Baroque allegory can be understood as an extreme instantiation of this historical development: "Die barocke Allegorie . . . agiert," in Menke's words, "die Binaritat des Zeichens aus als 'Krise der Ahnlichkeit'" Menke, 177).19 In the process, the artist reoccupies the empty space of the third function — the moment of relating. As organizer or arranger, he becomes responsible for establishing the correspondence between idea and image. Whether we look at the logician's impresa or the artist's impresa, the crucial point becomes not to establish the fact that the parts of the impresa (individually or collectively) point to a particular idea (as Caburacci would argue, qua universal figure it would always both hide and reveal an intention), but how the impresa constructs that correspondence, to establish the nature of its inventive performance. To put it another way: if the given order of the world no longer guaranteed a match between thought and its expression, then their connection became radically contingent, and it became incumbent upon the artists to reestablish that

Garber, I: 45-61). 19. "Baroque allegory acts out the binarity of the sign as a 'crisis of resemblance'. Translation mine.

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EMBLEMATICA

connection (however t e ntatively) through their own ef­ forts, by virtue of what impresa ЕМ В LEA! A T A. 21-J theorists would call "ingegno" pameliaRechntc^. or "ingenuity." 20 Furthermore, to the extent that the binary sign emerges upon the site of a crisis affecting the ternary model, the (for us) conventional or arbitrary rela­ tionship between the allegori­ cal sign and its referent, or be­ tween the impresa and its con­ cept, itself begins to function as an expression of that crisis. As Qji pfafentiaconjpkit, P r& vent игл v'tdety praterkiejt manor, Theodor A d o r n o (following Prudentemmeritb vacant О nmes, qui valeat con [tilere opthnh Benjamin) suggests, what T alii conditio mage emerges is a "Sachbeziehung" V rodefi, diuitta quant innumerable. G uttampratulerim bum, (literally, "thing-connection") Solertistfcvmdoliolisopum. F orttmamftqttidempotefi between the allegorical sign P rudens ingenio commoderarier. О J Viand its referent: "das Allegorische ist nicht ein zufalliges Fig. 2. E m b l e m of P r u d e n c e from Zeichen fur einen d a r u n t e r Johannes Sambucus's Emhlemata, Ant­ befafiten I n h a l t ; sondern werp, 1566. Courtesy of The British Li­ zwischen Allegorie und allebrary (BL 12314 bb.7) gorisch G e m e i n t e m besteht eine Sachbeziehung. 'Allegorie sei Ausdruck'. . . [W]as sich ausdruckt, ist nicht anderes als ein geschichtliches Verhaltnis" (Adorno, 1:358).21 Ingenuity thus becomes the allegorical response to a crisis of signification, its artifice express-

20. According to Klein, "If, after the end of the fifteenth century, the impresa was by far the most important and widespread exercise of the 'symbolic faculty/ this was because it was by definition a manifestation of the mind rather than a sym­ bol to be deciphered. The beauty of the work is the beauty of the ingegno . . ." (Klein, 16). 21. "The allegorical is not a contingent sign for a content comprehended by that sign; rather, there exists a material connection between allegory and allegorical meaning. 'Al legory is expression'. .. what expresses itself is nothing other than a historical relationship." Translation mine.

19 SHANKAR RAMAN ing the contingent labor of the subject who arranges objects to establish their connection. The increased emphasis on the human subject's involvement in creating world and meaning is evidenced by two emblems of Prudence, roughly c o n t e m p o r a n e o u s w i t h Titian's painting. 22 The first (fig. 2) is drawn from the 1566 edition of Johannes Sambucus's Emblemata and represents the maxim "prudence acquires or reaches h a p p i n e s s . " Its ins c r i p t i o n r e a d s : "I w o u l d rather have a drop of understanding than a cask-full of fortune." The interpretation runs as follows: "He who perceives the present, sees the future and r e m e m b e r s the p a s t , he is rightly called by all, wise, be- Fig. 3. Emblem of Good Government cause he can give the best coun- from Dirck Pieterszoon Pers's Bellerophon sel. Such an ability is worth op Lust tot Wysheyt (1657 edition). Courtesy of The British Library (BL11556 c.31) more than i m m e a s u r a b l e riches. I would prefer a little from a good and upright man to a cask full of treasures, because the prudent man is able through his understanding to command Fortune." Figure 3, an emblem representing good government, derives from a Dutch collection by Dirck Pieterszoon Pers, first published in Amsterdam in the early seventeenth-century. The verse below the figure opines "Happy [are they], where the lands are protected by such a strong wall. Happy is the condition of the land through true power and wise counsel. Where one strives for the happiness [of the

22. These emblems are taken from Henkel and Schone's important "handbook" of emblems. I rely here on the consensus that the Allegory belongs to Titian's "late" period and was probably executed between 1560 and 1570.

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EMBLEMATICA

people], pays attention to the freedom of the people and preserves the fear of God as a guarantee, there remains peace in the land."23 These emblems signal a distinctive semantic shift from the ones Panofsky cites in that they transform prudence into a quality which the human subject requires to act successfully in the material world. This is precisely what Titian's motto picks out: to act prudently in the present lest future action be spoilt. In other words, these emblems, like Titian's painting, do not merely reproduce inherited representa­ tions of the abstract concept of prudence, but rather undertake what we might call a secularization, emphasizing prudence as the historical and material ability of the subject to control and order history. Sambucus' emblem emphasizes human action by explicitly indicating the power of the human subject over the temporal world (represented by a snake, the traditional emblematic figure for time). Exercizing control over temporal existence allows the prudent man to turn his back upon fortune, to remain upon the land away from the uncer­ tainty of the waves. The second emblem concerns itself even more ex­ plicitly with the problem of government. The snake —while visually outside, protecting the country— is really an effect of prudence itself (as the subscriptio indicates). Indeed, as Edgar Wind notes in passing, the motif of animal heads did not, strictly speaking, indicate the vir­ tue of Prudence but rather that of Good Judgment or Good Counsel (Buon Consiglio), which was understood in the Renaissance as the pragmatic counterpart to the intellectual virtue (see Wind 1967, 259-60). The different approach to the virtue of Prudence exhibited by these instances correlates with Arasse's observation that Titian's painting "menage un surgissement exceptionnel du Present" [achieves an ex­ ceptional surging forth of the Present]. Not only does the motto insist upon action (as noted above) but the central face in the painting repre­ senting the present (i. е., Orazio's) clearly leaps forward out of the pic­ ture plane, taking precedence over the figures representing past and future. As Arasse puts it, "Le Praesens est investi d'un triple privilege — grammatical, graphique et syntaxique —, le texte redoublant ainsi le privilege deja constate pour la figure centrale des deux tricephales; l'ensemble de ces dispositions en arrive a suggerer que le Present (Orazio/Lion) surgit a partir d'un invisible intervalle entre le Passe et le Futur..." (Arasse, 295).24 This investiture remains a paradoxical one

23. Translations mine, from the German in Henkel and Schone's Handbuch.

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since the c o n c e p t u a l f o r e g r o u n d i n g of a r t i s t i c i n g e n u i t y (emphasising the present through Orazio's enhanced visual presence) simultaneously displaces the artistic subject of Titian within the r e p r e s e n t a t i o n . Not only does Titian associate himself iconographically with the past, but the painting also visually stages his withdrawal, drawing him in a profile that leaches into a dark background that is clearly behind and subordinate to the frontal images of Orazio and the Lion. Panofsky's "Postscript" does implicitly draw upon this emergent aspect of the iconographic motif in that it locates in portraiture the mode through which Titian's artistic ingegno asserts itself. As a series of portraits, the anthropomorphic triad provides for Panofsky what we could term a mimetic or naturalist mode of expression that relies upon the presence of its subjects (its "sitters") as the guarantee of meaning. The biographical identification finally resolves the tension between the two modes of signification staged by Titian's painting in favor of the performative commemoration of the painter's act of willing, an act whose guarantee his portrait—as the sign of his presence — provides. The verbal motto effectively becomes that which the artist speaks: the visual image expresses the presence of the artistic subject, announcing his priority over the written sign by appropriating it (even as the painting also enacts an abdication, we might add, in transferring authority from himself to his son). 25 Panofsky's sense of the painting coheres with Titian's reputation as a brilliant —perhaps the greatest —painter of portraits. Here, for example, is Giorgio Vasari on Titian's fame as portraitist: And since the works of Tiziano are without number, and particularly the portraits, it is almost impossible to make mention of them all; wherefore I shall speak only of the most remarkable . . . . Several times . . . he painted the portrait of Charles V, and in the end he was summoned for 24. "The Present is invested with a triple privilege —grammatical, graphic and syntactic—, the text redoubles thus the privilege already constituted by the central figure of the two tricephalous [configurations]; in putting together these tendencies one arrives at the suggestion that the Present (Orazio/Lion) surges out of an invisible interval between the Past and the Future. . . ." Translation mine.

25. Reading as it does from left to right, the motto is indeed in a sense literally spoken by the old man on the left, attached to him much as a speech bubble is to a cartoon figure.

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that purpose to the Court, where he portrayed him as he was in those later years; and the work of Tiziano so pleased that all-conquering Emperor, that after he had once seen it he would not be portrayed by other painters. Each time that he painted him, he received a thousand crowns of gold as a present, and he was made by his Majesty a Chevalier, with a revenue of two hundred crowns on the Chamber of Naples. In like manner when he portrayed Philip, King of Spain, the son of Charles, he received from him an allowance of two hundred crowns more; insomuch that, adding those four hundred to the three hundred that he has on the Fondaco de'Tedeschi from the Signori of Venice, he has without exerting himself a fixed income of seven hundred crowns every year.... He portrayed Ferdinand, King of the Romans . . . and both his sons, Maximilian, now Emperor and his brother. He also portrayed Queen Maria, and.. .the Duke of Saxony. . . . But what a waste of time is this? There has scarce been a single lord of great name, or Prince, or great lady, who has not been portrayed by Tiziano, a painter of truly extraordinary excellence in this field of art. (Vasari, 363-64) Vasari's remarks are intriguing for the way in which his aesthetic judgment seems colored by his fascination with Titian's social and financial acumen. In this scrupulously material account, Titian's genius as a portraitist expresses itself above all in the circumstances of the artist's social milieu and his monetary pragmatism. 26 Titian's unequalled ability to recreate in images the presence and lives of the rich and powerful was intertwined throughout Titian's life, Vasari's description suggests, with the kind of prudent planning for the future that Panofsky recognizes in Titian's late masterpiece. But it remains in doubt whether the genre of the portrait at this stage in Titian's career indeed offers that which Panofsky's biographi26. The terms of praise in all probability disguise a critique of Titian in line with Vasari's preference for Florentine over Venetian art. Given Vasari's subsequent claim that Titian's late paintings were over-hurriedly executed, these lines would seem to imply that Titian was sacrificing art to money. Panofsky, too, would seem a little uncomfortable with Titian's monetary concerns: "With an insistence painful to the sensitive, the aged Titian collected money from all sides" (202-03).

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eal reading demands of it: the presence of the subject as the guarantee of meaning. Panofsky's Problems in Titian claims that Titian's artistic career moves from a middle period (up to about 1551) where portraiture was his dominant mode, to a final period filled with mythographical and allegorical paintings (Panofsky 1969, 23-25). If this is the case, then Titian's introduction of the portrait into the context of emblematic representation would seem to signal a reflection upon the relationship between these aesthetic modes. In other words, by situating the portrait series within the field of baroque allegory, Titian draws portraiture into the crisis of signification to which baroque allegory responds. As part of the emblematic moment, the portrait becomes something other than itself. Rather than simply announcing the identity between the representation and what it depicts, Titian's redirection also points to the gap between the visual image and the meaning which accrues to it, raising the question of whether the "mimetic" act of portraiture is any less conventional than the other forms from which it distinguishes itself, the narrow allegory of the zoomorphic triad and the script or motto above the triads. This reflection upon the conventionality of portraiture is further strengthened by a reverse movement: the portrait-like quality of the iconic animal triad. Unlike its antecedent emblematic forms, Titian's series of animal heads seems far from monstrous. Rather than being conjoined as part of a single unnatural image, the animals appear both realistic and discrete — a set of animal portraits, as it were. This tension between icon and portrait in Titian's Allegory echoes the generational shift remarked upon by Norbert Huse and Wolfgang Wolters with regard to style and taste in Venetian portraiture: a movement away from the "the closed, uniform way in which up to 1500 the ruling class had presented a calm, serious front, thanks to an obligatory portrait type and an obligatory bearing" (Huse and Wolters, 241). In this the Venetian paradigm was responding in part to developments in Florentine art, spurred above all by Leonardo da Vinci's insistence "that portrait painters should observe the principle of decorum and should introduce movement into their compositions indicative of the motions of the mind" (see da Vinci, 58ff; also cited in Anderson, 153). Portraiture gradually relinquished the belief that the sitter could only emerge as he or she really was through symbolic association, or that "true" identity could be revealed only by impersonating exemplary or historical figures. Eschewing traditional iconographies of status and rank, the portrait in this period (so the argu-

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Fig. 4. Titian, Self-Portrait (1562). Courtesy of the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.

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mcMit runs) began to concern itself with the sitter's psychology or character. This historical change concerning what the portrait portrays has left its mark in the well-entrenched art historical practice of c o r r e l a t i n g formal and physiognomic indic a t o r s to p r o duce a description of the sitter's c h a r a c t e r . The assumption that the face serves as an index to the mind underwrites, too, Panofsky's d i s c u s sion of the Alle-

Fig#5 _

gory: it e n a b l e s

tional Gallery, London

25

Titian, La Schiavona (1511-12). Courtesy of The Na-

the correlation between Titian's famous Prado self- portrait (fig. 4) and the self-image in the Allegory that ostensibly expresses the patriarch Titian's feeling that "the time had come to make provision for his clan" (202). But, as Harry Berger Jr. has argued, this kind of "physiognomic" assumption is no less a historical construct than the iconic modelling of the self which it replaces (see Berger 1994, 88; see also Berger 2000,107-36 and 171-228). The act of sitting depicted in and by the image is always a fiction, a pose. The portrait does not merely represent the sitter as he or she is, or what the sitter had in mind, but constructs instead what Jacques Lacan terms an orthopsychic image. It embodies the gaze, that is, "the visual or scopic dimension of the dominant discourses by which a culture constructs its subjects to

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imagine and represent themselves, to give themselves to be seen, and to model themselves on the exemplary or orthopsychic norms of the group" (Berger 1994, 94-95). Thus, rather than treat the face at face value, so to speak —that is, as revealing a self that reflects archival data about the lives, behavior, and practices of sitters and painters—the portrait can more usefully be understood as indexing the sitter's and painter's performance in the act of portrayal. It offers an insight less into the sitter's psychology than into the psychology of self-representation and the visual encounter between the painter and what he paints. In this sense, even the very notion that the face be the index of the mind —which da Vinci is perhaps the first explicitly to articulate —involves a kind of performance, expressing an active relationship between painter and subject portrayed. Though the sixteenth-century portrait shies away from identifying the sitter with an external historical or iconic exemplar, it nonetheless mimetically idealizes him or her in accordance with an internalized, normative identity, encouraging, in Berger's words, "the equation of physiognomic identity with orthopsychic exemplarity." The need to weigh the particularity of the individual against its status as exemplar or ideal is visible even in Panofsky's insistence upon Orazio's singularity. Despite seeing in Orazio's face a reflection of the greater reality of his presence, as a man in the prime of his life —"more real in its vigorous colour and emphatic modelling"—Panofsky revealingly associates that very liveliness with an antecedent textual source, with Macrobius's remark that the present is "stronger and more fervent" (203) than past or future. If Titian's central portrait successfully recreates on canvas the strength and vibrancy of the individual it depicts, its very success makes the portrait of Orazio an icon exemplifying an extended textual and visual tradition. A similar t e n s i o n b e t w e e n n a t u r a l i s t m i m e s i s and iconic exemplarity lies at the heart of another famous Titian portrait hanging in the National Gallery: "La Schiavona" (Fig. 5). This early painting (generally dated to about 1511-12) depicts a buxom lady dressed in sixteenth-century Venetian garments resting her hand upon a marble parapet. An architectural wall partly distancing the woman from the viewer presents a profile of the same woman in bas relief. Among the earliest of Cinquecento portraits to show its subject in frontal pose, "La Schiavona" has generated substantial scholarly discussion (much of it concerned with establishing the identity of the woman and with Titian's borrowing from ancient classical statuary). As Luba Freed-

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man points out, the painting is especially noteworthy in that it reI Iccts "Titian's attitude to the then-popular theme . . . of comparing the two arts of painting and sculpture," proclaiming the superiority of the former through the painter's "ability to reveal... the difference between the 'living' Venetian lady and her 'sculpted' image" (Freedman, 31 and 39).27 But to restrict the opposition between the iconic objectivity of the medal-like profile and the animation of the woman's direct gaze to a querelle between painting and sculpture obscures the extent to which "La Schiavona" also suggests the deeper similarity of these two representations as competing modes of portraiture. For both frontal image and illusionistic bas-relief are engaged in constructing the subject —albeit in different ways. Certainly, the painting indicates, on one level, Titian's interest in visually capturing the subject's "character"; however, it also suggests that this emphasis emerges upon the site of an older, different, but nonetheless important sense of what "character" means. Juxtaposing the two images of "La Schiavona," Titian invokes not only their difference but also their similarity as artistic performances of what constitutes the subject's "truth." As in Titian's Allegory, the "redundant" superimposition of motifs —by calling attention to the artifice involved in portraiture — requires that the portraits not only depict the sitter, but simultaneously perform the way in which they mean. If the edges of the parapet place the woman and her sculpted relief in different spaces, the fingers resting on the parapet still speak to an inner connection between her two representations. "La Schiavona" may well, as Freedman argues, assert painting's superiority (at least in Titian's hands) over sculptors such as the Venetian Tullio Lombardo in capturing the identity of what it depicts, but the implied claim to be a "true" representation of its human subject also functions as a thematic moment within an artistic performance. Playfully alluding to an inherent theatricality or artifice constitutive of the portrait as a genre, "La Schiavona" shows Titian's heightened sense from very early in his career of the kinds of assumptions embedded in early modern portraiture. It gracefully implies that "the accomplished mimesis of a corporeal presence" cannot avoid being a fiction aimed at persuading the beholder that the depicted body is a true index of the represented self. Moreover, accomplishing this task successfully entails concealing that theatrical moment: to 27. On the identification of the sitter, see Cook, 74-81; Gould, 289; and Caroselli, 47-57. On Titian's borrowings from ancient art, see Brendel, 116.

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accept the picture of the subject as the subject, we have to take the portrait "straight," believing it to be what it re-presents. In "La Schiavona" this effect derives not only from the (illusion of the) sheer solidity of the woman, who seems contained and self-sufficient, but also from her seeming to look through or beyond us, rather than directly engaging our gaze. Conspicuously offering the sitter as an object of attention, the image refuses to acknowledge fully the spectator's gaze (which it at the same time solicits). Titian's portrayal of Orazio in the Allegory likewise creates a sense of his presence in part through his avoidance of our gaze. We look at Orazio but his gaze remains shifted to one side, directed away from us: we do not exist for him and the painting makes our nonexistence into the basis of his presence for us. 28 Panofsky's treatment of the portrait as the sign of presence (both of the artist and what he paints) reflects a commonplace about Titian's unequalled ability to capture the living essence of his subjects. This sense of the artist's achievements fulfils Alberti's famous dictum that portraits possess a "divine force" because they represent "the dead to the living many centuries later" (Alberti, 61; see also Freedman, 39). The assertion is also echoed in a 1536 letter from Pietro Aretino, Titian's close friend and confidant: "Tiziano rassemplandovi anullera con la vostra effigie le ragioni che in voi si crede aver la morte" (see Rosand 1982b, 37).29 But the fraught status of the portraits>in Allegory of Prudence demands that we pay closer attention to the darker implications of Alberti's and Aretino's remarks. It is striking, after all, that the praise conferred by these two contemporaries upon Titian's skill at animating the canvas rests upon an implicit connection between portraiture and death. For both Alberti and Aretino, the successful portrait proleptically overcomes time and death. Resurrecting the soon-to-be-deceased individuals through their images, the portrait represents the dead as if they were alive. But if Titian's Allegory overcomes death, it does so only by freezing its subjects in iconic form. Though this painting also evokes the commemorative tradition of the profile in marble reliefs and medals ex28. Numerous portraits of this period project, as Berger argues, a sense of the autonomy of the representation by encouraging its beholders to accept the fiction of their own absence or nonexistence as viewers.

29. Aretino's remark may be found in the sixteenth letter of his collected correspondence, published as Lettere sull'arte (Milan, 1957-60).

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plicitly t h e m a t i z e d in "La Schiavona," its reflection on the portrait as a genre n o n e t h e l e s s goes beyond the aesthetic intervention foregrounded by the earlier painting. The resemblance between the aging f i g u r e standing for the past in the Allegory — painted when the artist w a s i n his eighties or nineties —and the grander image in the Prado self-portrait dating from the same period (Fig. 4) motivates in part Panof s k y ' s claim that the Allegory too is directed at self-perpetuation ( a l b e i t by the artist's bequeathing his legacy to subsequent generations). Speaking of the Prado painting, Panofsky remarks that in it "the old m aster represented himself in almost pure profile as though he had w i s h e d to perpetuate his appearance after the fashion of a classical m e d a l relief" (Panofsky 1969, 8). But t h e s e two self-portraits are actually very different. The Prado image d o e s indeed convey a sense of Titian as patriarch. Richly dressed a n d embodying the status he has earned through his portraits, t h e artist displays a gold chain presented to him in 1533 by King C h a r l e s V, who conferred upon him the rank of Count Palatine as well as t h e Order of the Golden Spur in recognition of his painterly achievements. By contrast, the Allegory stresses less the successful artist t h a n the old man he has become. Apart from the distinctive red cap — its c o l o r itself perhaps a sign of the artist's identity — the clothing is b a r e l y visible and hardly projects the grandeur evident in the Prado self-portrait. The picture emphasizes neither material success nor social status, stressing instead the weight of time upon the body. The two flanking profiles may, as Panofsky suggests, express a relative lack o f corporeality when compared with Orazio's frontal image—reflecting the greater vibrancy of the present —but the face of the old T i t i a n here is nonetheless almost excessively lined and wrinkled by a g e in relation to the Prado self-portrait. The beard is unkempt, t h e eyebrow furrowed, the gauntness of the face accentuated by the s h a d o w i n g . Rab Hatfield's assertion with regard to early Renaissance portraiture seems apt here: "any real sense of intimacy is defeated b y the profile view and by the remote flatness of the face" (Hatfield, 318). The tendency for the profile to merge with the blackness of t h e background, obscured by the excess of shadow created by the light w h i c h falls from the right-hand side upon the figures, reinforces a s e n s e that the impetus in the Allegory is less the perpetuation of the self than the construction of a fictional objectivity signifying death. N o r does the least detailed portrait, the profile of the young Marco Vecelli, escape the process of mortification: the intensified light s e e m s to find no living echo within but acts upon the face almost

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entirely from outside, and the clarity of his demarcation from the background only serves to make the figure unreal. It thereby accentuates the way its profile parallels that of the old Titian, further effacing what would seem to be the key distinctions of age and identity. My point is that while the anthropomorphic triad insists upon the presence (be it full or attenuated) of its subjects, its place as one element within this impresa's allegorical structure suggests that the painting highlights, as it were, the performative gesture central to portraiture. That is, it enacts the staging of self and artist, bringing into focus the ideological and aesthetic labor of presenting the human subject mimetically, as who he or she "actually" is. The portrait may seem transparently to show the subject it depicts, but, exposed as performance, the image becomes an icon, a placeholder for an absence. The change in valence consequent upon this self-reflection affects even the frontal figure of Orazio, the image which appears unambiguously to present the self as objectively given or natural: the most corporeal of the three figures, Orazio, is paradoxically the one that lacks a body, the unattached face appearing to float parallel to the picture plane. Its coloration, too, functions to establish its structural position as a mediating link between the overly pale figure of Marco and the overly shadowed face of the aging artist, further undermining its allegorical distinction from the other two faces. The shadows lengthen and darken as we move across Orazio's face from right to left, from future to past, from one age of man to another. In refusing to meet the viewer's gaze, furthermore, this central portrait partakes of the distance dividing the human figures from the spectator. Seen from the outside, impartial, impassive, all the three portraits refuse to acknowledge the viewer whose attention they solicit through the very artifice of pictorial arrangement. Rather than merely announcing the artist's survival through those who follow him, then, the painting stages the moment when, as Berger puts it, "the look dies into the gaze, when 'the stuff of life' is evacuated, and the bodily site prepared to receive the orthopsychic objectivity of an icon.... It is as an icon, an other (not a self) that [the sitter] gives himself to be observed, admired, commemorated and venerated" (Berger 1994,105-06). Far from guaranteeing the presence of the subject, and concomitantly the priority of the biographical over the iconographical, of the visual over the script, The Allegory of Prudence expresses the way in which the visual image is itself script-like, the way in which subjective presence is seen within baroque allegory as itself an effect of a mortification, the congealing of the subject as icon.

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If the painting is, as Panofsky suggests, an allegory commemorating the act of willing, it is so only insofar as it visually fixes the act of willing as an act of writing —literally, the motto incised onto the painting's surface —whose necessary condition is a radical absence of the subject at the moment of execution. It is precisely on the basis of Titian's skills as a portraitist of vividly mortal subjects that the Allegory of Prudence calls for a reevaluation of the portrait's function. The ambivalent place of portraiture in this painting becomes especially clear if we revive yet another emblematic representation of Prudence —one that Panofsky cites only to dismiss in favor of Pierio Valeriano's "less poetic but more encouraging" interpretation. The description in question comes from Giordano Bruno's dialogue between a philosopher and a lover in his Eroici Furori (1585). Against the former's optimistic view of time, the lover insists that the three modes of time are simply "as many modes of either suffering or d i s a p p o i n t m e n t " (Panofsky 1955,198). The now-familiar tricephalous Egyptian figure of a wolf, a lion and a dog best captures, the lover continues, his vision of the world, which he elaborates upon in a metaphorically overladen sonetto codato: A wolf, a lion and a dog appear At dawn, at midday, and at dusky eve: . . . Experience past, future present, distant hope Have threatened me, afflict me, and assuage The mind with what is bitter, sour, and sweet. The age which I have lived, live, and shall live Sets me atremble, shakes, and braces me In absence, presence, nullicibity. Sufficiently, too much, enough Has me the 'then', the 'now', and the 'anon' Harassed by fear, by torture, and by hope. (Cited in Panofsky 1955,198) These lines capture a dimension of baroque allegory that seems to me central to Titian's painting. For Bruno, the self that bends time (through its prudent action) to its own demands simultaneously falls prey to time, to the temporality of nature as decay and mutability, to the order of corporality and its loss. Through its engagement in the world, its assertion of presence through human action, the human subject becomes bound to the world, losing its hold on transcendence. It thereby accedes to the natural laws of the material world,

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and above all to death and decay.30 The emergence of the subject as a natural being who has mastered history and time leads, in other words, to a dialectical reversal: the agent becomes, qua natural being, subject to the temporality of nature, the process of decay and death which is historical being. As Arasse has shown, a "thematique funebre" enters Titian's Allegory through the three animal figures. While the conglomeration of animals signifies prudence, it also brings to mind the image of Cerberus, the hound guarding the gates of hell. Moreover, the animals taken individually (as indeed the painting depicts them) open up a range of other associations. For the wolf below the aged Titian was often linked in the Renaissance with the voracity of time and death. 31 Contrasting their respective gazes, Cesare Ripa in turn sees in the lion a "memory" of the terrible, death-giving Medusa. As Arasse puts it, "magnanime, le Lion ne regarde pas ses ennemis pour ne pas les effrayer car son regard terrorise celui que le croise: on pense necessairement aux adversaire petrifies de Meduse" (Arasse, 301-2).32 And Cartari further provides an unexpected association between Prudence and Medusa: "la force du Savoir et de la Prudence .. ., grace a ses ouvrages merveilleux et a ses sages conseils, stupefie autrui et le fait rester comme petrifie de surprise" (cited in Arasse, 301-02).33

30. To cite Panofsky, "in the mind of Giordano Bruno . . . the three headed figure . . . grew into a terrifying apparition, its individual components looming up successively and recurrently so as to picture time as an unending sequence of futile repentance, real suffering and imaginary hopes" (197). 31. Compare, for example, Ulysses 7 image of the all-devouring wolf in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida (ca. 1598-1602): "And appetite, an universal wolf, / So double seconded with will and power, / Must make perforce an universal prey, / And last eat up himself" (1.3.120-23).

32. "magnanimous, the lion does not regard his enemies so as not to frighten them because his gaze terrorizes those it crosses: one thinks necessarily of the petrified adversaries of Medusa." Translation mine.

33. "the force of Knowledge and Prudence, thanks to their marvellous work and their wise counsel, stupefies others and makes them stand as if petrified by surprise." Translation mine. Arasse also notes the device of the "Prudent Medusa" chosen in 1559 by the daughter of Frangois I, Marguerite de France: a shield depicting the Gorgon surrounded by serpents, with the motto "rerum prudentia custos."

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If Medusa is, as Arasse avers, "[le] principe invisible du tricephale familial et funebre," her unseen "presence" also perhaps reminds us that the Allegory correlates the three generations of Titian's "family" with past, present, and future only by suppressing the woman's part. This constitutive gesture seems all the more intriguing given that Titian's emblems reverse the normal pattern of Renaissance representations of Prudence, which either depicted a woman carrying a tricephalous animal bust or showed three female heads arranged as in the Allegory. Seemingly projecting a parthogenetic male lineage as a defence against time's depredations, the painting simultaneously hints at the fragility and artifice of such a desire. And by drawing attention to itself, the artifice asserts the presence of the artistic ingegno, preserved through the act of arranging, on the verge of the artist's extinction. For, confronted by time, baroque allegory's response is simply to endure. Only by clinging to the material object as a form of death, as a self iconically frozen in time, does allegory recreate the shadow of eternity in a world that has lost easy access to transcendence. This dimension of the painting is reinforced by Titian's distinctive omission (also first noted by Arasse) of another feature shared by other early modern visual emblems of Prudence: the snake which traditionally represented both time and eternity. The absence is a marked one, signalling the extent to which Titian radically transforms the emblematic motifs that provide the basis for his painting. The absence is performative in that, as Arasse puts the case, it functions to "manifest absence," to make the lack present in its effects.34 The ostentatiously absent figure of Time paradoxically emphasizes the condition under which the portrait series can assert eternity and the immortality of the artist: death. The painting's black background upon which the motto is scratched echoes this tension on the level of painterly execution, the absence of color playing off against the material layering of paint necessary to create this sense of absence. One might say that Titian's Allegory expresses a situation, both personal and cultural, in which human, historical time no longer seems continuous with di34. To cite Arasse, "Allegorie renvoie a cette absence pour la 'manifester absence/ pour rendre magiquement absente la Mort elle-meme, ultime modalite de la Vie ou l'existence rencontre, au carrefour, l'Eternite" (Arasse, 303). [The Allegory reflects this absence in order to "manifest absence," in order magically to render absent Death itself, the ultimate modality of Life where existence encounters again, at the crossroads, Eternity]. Translation mine.

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vine temporality. The two interlinked aspects of the emblem of the serpent have become radically separated. The painting suggests thereby that the assumption of temporal continuity —which underpinned medieval allegory in its theory if not always in practice —no longer holds; the link to the divine can only be resurrected as an absent echo, adumbrated through citation and performance. Titian thus inscribes death into the painting as the shadow of an absent eternity towards which the painting nonetheless reaches. In this sense, while the emblem of prudence is redirected in the Renaissance towards an assertion of the self as artistic subject, Titian's Allegory reveals the dialectic counterpart to this movement. It voices the profoundly melancholic response of allegory to the loss of transcendence entailed by the emergence of the self as historical being. It edges closer thereby to Giordano Bruno's pessimistic view of history and time, in which the future is sweet only as promise, present in the here and now only as a hope that harasses. As Titian's impresa, the painting stands as the pendant to another impresa he is known to have favored: that of a she-bear licking her cub into shape, exemplifying the motto "natura potentior ars," or art is more powerful than nature. For the Allegory of Prudence suggests that art's power over nature has as its prerequisite a violence contra naturam, a death in, and a death of, nature. As prosopopoeia, the voice from beyond the grave, Titian's willing, the sign of his being-in-life, can only express itself by fixing that willing in death. IV. The Ends and Remains of the Baroque What endures, what exists, finally, is the painting itself: not in the liveliness of auctorial intention, but precisely as its mortification, the subject preserved in and as death. To this process of mortification, criticism itself contributes. Speaking of the German Trauerspiel, Walter Benjamin writes, "what has survived is the extraordinary detail of the allegorical references: an object of knowledge that has settled in the consciously constructed ruins. Criticism means the mortification of the works. By their very essence these works confirm this more readily than others. Mortification of the works: not then —as the romantics have it —the awakening of the consciousness in living works, but the settlement of knowledge in dead ones" (Benjamin, 182). The details of iconological history and transmission add nothing in terms of content to the "meaning" that Titian's Allegory itself drags directly before the picture, inscribing it upon its surface as motto. At most, the iconographic procedure explicates an internal logic governing the

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emergence of the triads as emblems, but this information has very little obvious impact on the basic allegorical connections which the painting quite explicitly establishes, the figures as an allegorical expressions of "prudence/' Furthermore, while the outward form of the emblem changes in response to historical circumstances, its content, the concept to which it points, remains remarkably invariant in Panofsky's reading. 35 Meaning tends to emerge as something fixed and independent of its material representation so that changes in form do not necessarily correlate to semantic transformation: an old motif may certainly be given a new meaning at a given historical moment, but there is no significant connection between the form of the new content and the one which it replaces. And for Titian's painting in particular, the conceptual content remains the same over centuries of intertextual trading. But the iconological reading does nevertheless succeed in doing precisely what the allegorical artifact demands: it sediments knowledge in the work. The content of the allegorical image, which the investigator repeatedly and tirelessly uncovers, completes the image by mortifying it, by shining upon it the bright light of knowledge. There is no question here of transcendence from within. Like the light in the painting, the artificial glare of apotheosis or resurrection, knowledge and tradition accrue to the picture from without; they revive the image, but only in the form of a mask. Crucially, Titian's painting itself participates in the production of such a response: inscribing its "message" upon the surface, the painting encourages us to view its meaning as something it contains, as something engraved upon it. Consequently, though the iconological method takes the form of a Neo-Platonic unveiling of buried signification, it nonetheless responds to the very function of baroque iconography, which, as Benjamin observes, "is not so much to unveil material objects as to strip them naked. The emblematist does not present the essence implicitly, 'behind the image.' He drags the essence of what is depicted out before the image, in writing, as a caption, such as, in the emblem 35. This is due in no small measure to Panofsky's unstated but grounding assumption, that Neo-Platonic thought provides the primary context for uncovering meaning. The valorization of a mode of understanding based on the ideal of the symbol leads to an insistence on the figure as "partaking" of the universal and ideal character of its object, the concept or idea, the latter floating in an heaven of ideas that is itself beyond history and materiality, unchanging and unchangeable.

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books, forms an intimate part of what is depicted" (Benjamin, 185). In its very explicitness Titian's allegory elicits the critical response which shares in the painting's desire to divest itself of mystery, drawing it towards a silence beyond writing that would be the last word on the Allegory, its postscript as it were. However, as Joel Fineman has pointed out, the critical response to allegory necessarily finds in such silence "only the impetus for further speech and further longing." By nature allegorical and thus "never completable, never quite fulfilling its grand design," criticism unendingly rehearses the fracture at the heart of allegory (Fineman, 380, 396). The painting, inscrutably, remains. Works Cited Adorno, Theodor W. "Die Idee der Naturgeschichte." In Gesammelte Schriften. Ed. Rolf Tiedemann. Vol. 1. Frankfurt a. M., 1973. Pp. 345-65. Alberti, Leon Batista. On Painting and on Sculpture: The Latin Texts of De Pictura and De Statua. Ed. and trans. C. Grayson. London, 1972. Anderson, Jaynie. "The Giorgionesque Portrait: From Likeness to Allegory." In Giorgione: Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studio per il 5 Centenario delta Nascita. Venice, 1979. Pp. 153-58. Arasse, Daniel. "Titien et son Allegorie de la Prudence: Un Peintre et des Motifs." In Interpretazioni Veneziane: Studi di Storia dell'arte in Onore di Michelangelo Muraro. Ed. David Rosand. Venice, 1984. Pp. 291-320. Bath, Michael. Speaking Pictures: English Emblem Books and Renaissance Culture. London, 1994. Bargagli, Scipione. DelVimprese. Venice, 1594. Benjamin, Walter. The Origin of German Tragic Drama. Trans. John Osborne. London, 1977. Berger, Harry, Jr. "Fictions of the Pose: Facing the Gaze in Early Modern Portraiture." Representations 46 (1994): 86-120. . Fictions of the Pose: Rembrandt Against the Italian Renaissance. Stanford, 2000. Brendel, O. "Borrowings from Ancient Art in Titian." The Art Bulletin 37 (1955): 114-25. Bryson, Norman. Looking at the Overlooked: Pour Essays on Still Life Painting. Cambridge, MA, 1990. Caburacci, Francesco. Trattoto . . . dove si dimostra il vero e novo modo di fare le imprese. Bologna, 1580.

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Carosdli, S. L. "A Portrait Bust of Caterina Cornaro by Tullio l.ombardo." The Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts 61 (1983): 45-57. Cook, H. Giorgione. London, 1907. de Man, Paul. Allegories of Reading: Figural Language in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust. New Haven, 1979. D r u m m o n d , W i l l i a m . The Works of William Drummond of Hawthornden. Edinburgh, 1711. Fineman, Joel. "The Structure of Allegorical Desire." In October: The First Decade. Ed. Annette Michelson et al. Cambridge, MA, 1987. Pp. 373-93. Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York, 1971. Freedman, Luba. "The 'Schiavona': Titian's Response to the Paragone between Sculpture and Painting." In Arte Veneta: Revista di Storia dell'Arte. XLI (1987): 31-40. Friedlander, W. "La Tintura delle Rose (Sacred and Profane Love)." Art Bulletin 20,3 (1948): 320-24. Garber, Klaus, ed. Europdische Barockrezeption. 2 vols. Wiesbaden, 1991. Gould, C. The Sixteenth-Century Italian Schools. London, 1975. Hatfield, Rab. "Five Early Renaissance Portraits." Art Bulletin 47 (1965):315-34. Haverkamp, Anselm. "Notes on 'the Diacritical Image' (How Deconstructive is it?)." Diacritics 22. 3-4 (1992): 70-80. Henkel, Arthur and Albrecht Schone, eds. Emblemata: Handbuch zur Sinnbildkunst des XVI und XVII Jahrhunderts. Stuttgart, 1967. Holly, Michael Ann. "Wollflin and the Imagining of Baroque." In Europdische Barock-Rezeption. Ed. Klaus Garber. Wiesbaden, 1991. Pp. 1256-64. Hope, Charles. "Problems of Interpretation of Titian's Erotic Paintings." In Tiziano e Venezia: Convegno Internazione de Studi. Venice, 1980. Pp. 111-24. Huse, Norbert, and Wolfgang Wolters. The Art of Renaissance Venice: Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting 1460-1590. Chicago, 1990. Klein, Robert. "The Theory of Figurative Expression in Italian Treatises on the Impresa/'ln Form and Meaning: Writings on the Renaissance and Modern Art. Princeton, 1979. Pp. 3-24. Lachmann, Renate. "Polnische Barockrhetoric: Die 'problematische' Ahnlichkeit in Maciej Sarbiewski's Traktat De Acuto et Arguto

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(1619/23)." In Die Zerstorung der schonen Rede: Rhetorischc Tradition und Konzepte des Poetischen. Munich, 1994. Pp. 101-34. Leonardo da Vinci. Treatise on Painting. Princeton, 1956. Menke, Bettine. Sprachfiguren: Name—Allegory— Bild nach Walter Benjamin. Munich, 1991. Panofsky, Erwin. Problems in Titian: Mostly Iconographic. London, 1969. . "Titian's Allegory of Prudence: A Postscript." In Meaning and the Visual Arts. London, 1955; rpt. London, 1970. Pp.181-205. Rosand, David. Painting in Cinquecento Venice: Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto. New Haven, 1982a. . Titian: His World and His Legacy. New York, 1982b. Russell, Daniel. Emblematic Structures in Renaissance French Culture. Toronto, 1995. . The Emblem and Device in France. Lexington, KY, 1985. Shakespeare, William. Troilus and Cressida. Ed. Kenneth Muir. Oxford, 1981. Taegio, Bartolemeo. 17 Liceo . . . dove si ragiona dell'arte di fabricare le imprese. Milan, 1571. Vasari, Giorgio. The Great Masters: Giotto, Boticelli, Leonardo, Raphael, Michaelangelo, Titian. New York, 1986. Wind, Edgar. Bellini's Feast of Gods: A Study in Venetian Humanism. Cambridge, MA, 1948. . Pagan Mysteries of in the Renaissance. Harmondsworth, 1967.

Alciato and the Earl of Arran MICHAEL BATH University of Strathclyde

One of the curiosities of the already sufficiently curious and complicated bibliography of Alciato's Emblematum Liber is how the French Rouille/Bonhomme editions containing Barthelemy Aneau's translation came to be published with a dedication to a Scottish nobleman, the earl of Arran. Since this is one of the more important and influential editions of Alciato, the circumstances surrounding its publication in 1549 might be expected to tell us something about conditions for the reception and the development of the emblem at this period in France. Indeed the book has already been accorded that status by Alison Saunders in her study of sixteenth-century French emblem books, though neither she nor Daniel Russell have made anything of the significance of—or the circumstances surrounding —this curious dedication. 1 The only substantive comment on it to date appears to be Henry Green's lengthy note in his bibliographical study of Andrea Alciati and his Book of Emblems (158-62), which explains that James Hamilton, earl of Arran, was son of Regent Arran and became a favorite of Henri II who appointed him captain of the Scotch Guard in 1555; this was the Hamilton, Green notes, who on his return to Scotland in 1559 accused the Earl of Bothwell of treason, aspired at various times to marry either Elizabeth I of England or Mary Queen of Scots, but went insane and was confined to Edinburgh Castle, where he died in 1609.

1.

Saunders, esp. pp. 17-18, 105, 107-39; Russell 1985. See also Balavoine; Biot 278-94; Fontaine, 880-83.

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None of this explains why, in 1549, AIKMU should luve dedicated his work to this expatriate Scottish earl; however, 1 lenry Green does point out that Aneau accounts, in his dedicatory Preface, not only for his Arran dedication but also for the very genesis and motivation of the work as resulting from a suggestion made to him by a certain "Florent Volusen," who is described as a very learned, wise, and up­ right Scotsman. Everything he says in his Preface would lead us to suppose that Aneau undertook his ground-breaking new edition of Alciato, with its translation "vers pour vers" into French, and its brief prose commentaries ("declarations epimythiques"), at the suggestion of this learned Scot. So who was "Florent Volusen"? "Volusen" is the French form of Volusenus, the Latin pen name of a Scottish writer whose actual name is presumed to have been Florens (or "Florence" ) Wilson —no known contemporary document actually identifies him in the vernacular. Volusenus/Wilson was a native of Morayshire, contemporary and friend of George Buchanan, author of De Animi Tranquillitate (Gryphius, 1543) and of other Latin works, one of a large number of expatriate scholars who were active in humanist teaching and networks of learning at this period in France. In her book on Barthelemy Aneau, Brigitte Biot brings together what is known about Florens Wilson's work in Lyons at this period, from 1536 to 1547, when he was one of the three or four "regents" appointed to teach pu­ pils in the College de la Trinite, of which Aneau had been principal since 1540 (Biot, 85-86). However Florens Wilson has also attracted the attention of students of Scottish literature intent on establishing more precisely what the intellectual, diplomatic, and academic circles were in which Wilson moved at this period in France. 2 The motivation behind these Scottish studies has largely been to establish the wider European contexts for Scottish humanism at this period, but it would now seem worth asking what these investigations might tell us about this curious dedication and, indeed, about the motivation behind Aneau's translation (indeed, his influential transformation) of Alciato's Emblematum liber, at least if we can believe the claims which Aneau makes in his dedicatory epistle. Aneau's epistre dedicatoire to the 1549 Emblemes d'Alciat, de nouveau Translatez en Francois vers pour vers iouxte les Latins (Lyons: Bonhomme) 3 offers the book to the earl of Arran, "filz du tres noble 2. See Baker-Smith 1984; Baker-Smith 1996; Allan 2000.

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Prince, Iacque Due de Chastel-le-Herault, Prince Gouverneur du Royaumc d'Escosse" as a means of improving the young earl's knowledge of the French language: Pour avoir cogneu le grand desir, iongt au plaisir que vous (Tresillustre Conte) avez, & prenez a la langue Frangoise: quoy qu'elle vous soit a present nouvelle, & estrangiere, tant pour estre encore este ne, & nourry iusqu'a present, en vostre nayve, & patrienne langue d'Escosse, bien diverse de la langue de France. It is perhaps worth remarking that French speakers in this period evidently had sufficient contact with Scots to recognize that the Scots language was not only (as Aneau puts it) "quite different from the language of France," but also different from English. Francisque Michel, writing in 1862 on the long history of Franco-Scottish relations,.notes that the kings of France required a royal translator both for the English and for the Scots tongue and that in 1571, for instance, Charles IX issued letters patent authorizing a pension to a certain Jehan Bernard which describe him as "our translator and interpreter for the English and Scots languages" (Michel, 2:8). However, clearly Aneau is not suggesting that he wrote his translation simply for the use of its dedicatee, and his wider motives for undertaking the work are suggested by the continuation of the letter of dedication, and indeed by the Preface which follows it. The epistle proceeds immediately to acknowledge that, although the initial decision to undertake the work was his own, Aneau was encouraged and confirmed in this decision by the earl's fellow countryman, "M. Florent Volusen," a man of great learning in the arts and sciences with an extensive knowledge of the common languages, Greek and Latin, his own vernacular Scots, as well as French, Italian, and Spanish, which he had acquired, we are told, by visiting various countries. Moreover, it was at Volusen's suggestion, Aneau tells us, that he was encouraged to dedicate and present "this little book of emblems" to the earl. Clearly this is not only accounting for the Scots dedication, but also ascribing a larger role for Volusenus in the initial conception and motivation behind the whole book. It is also confirming —and this may require further interrogation —the status of the book as a 3.

A. Adams, S. Rawles and A. Saunders, no. F.026; there were further editions with the same dedication, F.027, F.039, F.045, in 1549 (another edition), 1558, 1564.

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work which is directly interested in what one might call cross-cultural questions of language, translation, and nationality. The development of Aneau's own interest in emblem books, and particularly in Alciato, has already received sufficient attention in studies by Biot, Balavoine, Saunders and others already cited (n.l above), and need only be briefly summarised here. Born in Bourges, probably in 1505, Aneau is known to have studied at the University of Bourges sometime after 1529 when Alciato was head-hunted from Avignon to lecture there in law, indeed it is almost certain that Aneau studied under Alciato at this period and may have graduated doctor of laws (Biot, 48n2). In his Juris Prudentia (1554) Aneau certainly writes a laudatory poem on how Alciato's crossing of the Alps effected a translatio studii in the field of jurisprudence from Italy to France (30, cit. Biot, 46), and although Aneau had not moved to Lyons by 1529, when Gryphius published Alciato's De Magistratibus Civilibusque et Militaribus Officiis in Lyons, this history of the political and administrative development of ancient Rome has been claimed to have influenced Aneau's own political and legal arguments in his Juris Prudentia (Biot, 49). Students of the emblem, incidentally, have not noticed that this was a work of Alciato's which, at least when it was reprinted by Froben in Basel, 1552, was illustrated with pictures showing the badges of office of the various imperial officials, the only published work by Alciato apart from Emblematum liber to have been supplied with illustrations at this date, and quasi-emblematic illustrations at that. 4 Aneau's initial dealings with Alciato were thus in the field of jurisprudence, but they soon seem to have extended into broader humanistic studies and, specifically, into emblematics. Aneau's 1549 Alciato translation represents his earliest engagement with emblem books, but it was, of course, furthered by his own excursion into emblematic composition in Picta Poesis (Bonhomme, 1552) and Imagination Poetique ( B o n h o m m e , 1552). E m b l e m s and

4. Baker-Smith (1984, 91) remarks that the angelic orders in Volusenus's Commentatio Theologica (Lyons: Gryphius, 1539) take on the titles of Roman magistrates, "principatus, dominationes, virtutes, praefecti, procuratores, diocetes, nuncii." Wilson would certainly have found the offices of Praefectus, Princeps, and Procurator identified in Alciato's De Magistratibus. A fuller list is found in the Notitia Dignitatum, an official listing of civil and military posts of the late Roman Empire, to which Alciato's De Magistratibus was appended in sixteenth-century editions such as Froben's which supply illustrations of the various imperial badges of office.

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quasi-emblematic inventions are to be found in many of his other writings, such as his theatrical compositions for performance by the college students, or the impresa of Mercury holding the Medusa's head which he devised as printer's mark for Mace Bonhomme (Biot, 88-89). Aneau arrived in Lyons in the 1530s to teach at the College de la Trinite, founded as a college in 1527. In 1540 hebecame its principal, a post which he retained until 1551. In 1558, after a seven-year break when he nevertheless remained active in intellectual and printing circles in Lyons, he was reappointed, serving for a second term as principal until his death during the religious disturbances of 1561. Florens Wilson came to Lyons in 1536 to teach in the College and in 1540 Aneau appointed him as one of the three or four regents responsible for delivering an innovative curriculum which Aneau himself drew up, that same year, in the Formulaire et Institution du College, this being one of the requirements of his appointment (Biot, 125, see also 457-61). Aneau and Wilson had thus been working together as teachers at la Trinite for eight or nine years before Aneau produced the translation of Alciato in which he acknowledges Wilson's influence. Indeed, one of the distinctive features of the curriculum which Wilson was appointed to deliver was, as Biot shows, the importance it placed on the teaching of French. Though structured on pedagogic principles which reflect the thinking of Erasmus, Vives, and Sadoleto in their various rationes studiorum, the Lyons curriculum placed importance not only on the teaching of uncorrupted Latin (and Greek), but also —at least in the lower classes —on the speaking and writing of competent French; the curriculum was notable for avoiding any formal instruction in theology or in mathematics. The practice of accurate translation was seen as a method of developing pupils' competence in both classical and vernacular tongues, and it seems likely that this intention lies behind the concern with language, translation, and vernacular French which, as we have seen, inflects the dedication to the earl of Arran in the Emblemes d'Alciat. Undoubtedly some of the same concern for the development of eloquence in the vernacular lies behind Aneau's famous quarrel, in 1550, with Joachim du Bellay in the former's Art Poetique Franqois pour I 'instruction des jeunes . . . en la Poesie frangoise . . . sur la Deffence et Illustration de la Langue Francoyse. Florens Wilson's own engagement with such humanist pedagogy reflects his experience as a student at the new King's College in Aberdeen, where he studied philosophy under Hector Boece, who

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wrote to Erasmus that "the college of Aberdeen is yours, and devoted to your w r i t i n g s before all o t h e r s , " and w h e r e , as Dominic Baker-Smith puts it, "Erasmus was a vital presence on the curriculum" (Baker-Smith 1996,3). In 1526 Wilson is recorded as making a career for himself not in Scotland but in England, as tutor to Cardinal Wolsey's illegitimate son, Thomas Winter, in a circle of courtly influence and patronage that included George Lawson, Thomas Lupset, and the Italian merchant Antonio Bonvisi, who was an intimate friend of Thomas More. In the early 1530s these circles of patronage took Wilson to Paris, where he was active in the English diplomatic moves to win French support for Henry VIIFs divorce from Catherine of Aragon, buying books and reporting on French affairs for Thomas Cromwell, and working on his Psalm commentaries which were published in Paris in 1531 and 1532 under the title Psalmi Quintidecimi Ennarrationes. In 1535 Wilson was involved in Jean du Bellay's diplomatic mission to Rome to try and secure last-minute Papal assent to the royal divorce for which Henry VIII had won French support. Falling sick at Avignon, Wilson apparently acted on a recommendation he had previously received in London, that he should present himself to Cardinal Jacopo Sadoleto at Carpentras, near Avignon, and it appears to have been this spontaneous visit to a complete stranger that initiated his future career as schoolmaster, since Sadoleto records in a letter written only a few days after their meeting that he immediately recognized the exceptional learning and humanity of his unexpected visitor, and appointed him to teach in the school at Carpentras (Baker-Smith 1984, 85). A year later, however, Wilson had apparently moved to Lyons to take up his teaching post in the College de la Trinite, and in 1539 Gryphius published Wilson's Commentatio Quaedam Theologica. In 1540 he certainly met the great Swiss naturalist, Conrad Gesner, who recalls, "In the year 1540 we saw Volusenus in Lyons, still a young man, and we expect much of value to scholars to follow from his learning" (Gesner, fol. 245v). In 1543 Gryphius published Wilson's best known and most important work, De Animi Tranquillitate, a fictional dialogue on the urgent need to find moral, intellectual and doctrinal stability in the face of religious conflict and persecution. The work has been shown to reflect both Neo-Stoic and Neo-Platonist philosophies in a synthesis which is distancing itself at once from Catholic and from Calvinist positions in a middle ground which has been characterized as "evangelical humanism" (Baker-Smith 1996, 2). The philosophy has immediate relevance to the political and religious conflicts in six-

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Iwnth-century Lyons (which were, indeed, eventually to lead to Aneau's murder at the hands of anti-Protestant rioters), but it also has some relevance to Wilson's Scottish links, for it has been noted that despite his exile Florens Wilson never lost a sense of how the wider issues of religious debate and philosophical enquiry which he was involved with in Europe reflected what was going on in his na­ tive Scotland. One of the most notable examples of this domestication of the is­ sues of Christian humanism, which are everywhere in play in his writings, is De Animi Tranquillitate which recalls a walk on the banks of the river at Elgin, during which "Florentius" discusses with his fel­ low countryman John Ogilvie the unsatisfied strivings of the human spirit. Some years prior to writing this we know that Wilson had sent his friend Ogilvie a copy of Erasmus's Apophthegmata, one of those Erasmian works in which humanists found some of the same type of lapidary wisdom which Wilson himself inscribes on the eight pillars of the splendid temple in De Animi Tranquillitate, evoked in a vision by this same conversation near Elgin. The two most compelling in­ scriptions are found on the columns of a second temple, whose custo­ dian is St. Paul, and they read TNQ0I SEATTON [Know thyself] and Г Ш 0 1 TON ©EON [Know thy God]. Though we should not exagger­ ate the conformity of such inscriptions with emblems, we might nev­ ertheless remind ourselves of the common ground which emblems often shared with such lapidary inscriptions —Alciato's emblems, as we now know, almost certainly had their origins in Alciato's youthful collection of ancient inscriptions (see Laurens and Vuilleumier). It will be my contention in the rest of this paper that Aneau's deci­ sion to dedicate the 1549 Emblemes to the earl of Arran was almost cer­ tainly influenced by Florens Wilson's continuing determination to establish the close proximity and relevance of the issues and values which were in discussion in his immediate circle at Lyons to current events, and above all to religious issues, in his native Scotland. More­ over, if questions of belief in France (and Europe) had Scottish impli­ cations, events in his native Scotland also had a European dimension at this date. If France had had a role to play more than ten years previ­ ously, for a humanist such as Wilson, in avoiding the divisions and national conflicts which were likely to follow from Rome's response to Henry VIII's divorce, then equally certainly it must have seemed that France had a role to play in helping the Scots to overcome the bit­ ter rivalries between the Catholic succession to Mary of Guise and the Protestant ambitions which were already beginning to attach

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themselves to the regency of the earl of Arran, "Prince Gouverneur," as Aneau's dedication describes him, "du Royaume d'Escosse." It was, indeed, only the year before that the six-year-old Mary Queen of Scots had arrived in France as the future wife of dauphin Francois II. Though Emblemes is not in any sense a political or a religious work it was almost certainly seen by both Aneau and Wilson as a type of enlightened humanist learning which both men, and others in their circle at this moment, would have regarded as a viable alternative to the growing fanaticism and intolerance of the various Christian sects. Persuading his friend Aneau to dedicate the work to an expatriate Scottish nobleman would make much better sense the moment it became apparent that the succession to the thrones of both Scotland and France was now the same. The education of the son of the current governor of Scotland in competent French and humane letters —even if it remains but a gesture of dedication — then becomes at least a politically significant manoeuvre. The significance of that manoeuvre is only likely to come into focus once we remind ourselves of the status which the governance of Scotland—and specifically Arran's regency —is likely to have held in the minds of Frenchmen (that is to say, to Aneau's potential readers) in the year immediately following Mary's betrothal to the future king of France. In sketching out the historical background to his dedication it needs to be borne in mind, firstly, that these political issues arise out of some of the most significant events in the history of Scotland in this period and, secondly, that the actual developments in Franco-Scottish relations which made such a dedication meaningful were very recent. The marriage of Mary Queen of Scots with the future king of France had only been proposed by Henri II in January 1548, and Arran had been created Duke of Chatelherault (Vienne) as recently as February 1549, the very year Aneau's translation appeared. Henceforth the governor of Scotland assumed his French title of Chatelherault, and his son and heir became the third earl of Arran. The promotion of the Scottish earl to his French dukedom had, in fact, been a means of securing his agreement to the French marriage. Arran was, as it happens, descended from one of the daughters of James II of Scotland and, as such, he and his heirs could claim rights of succession to the Scottish throne should the direct line through James V and Mary of Guise fail. In 1543 the Treaty of Greenwich decided that Mary Queen of Scots, crowned in Stirling in September of that year, should marry Edward (later VI) of England, and as part of his policy of securing Scottish dependence against the "auld" alliance with France,

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Henry VIII of England had let it be known that he would allow Arran's eldest son, the future dedicatee of the 1549 Alciato, to marry his second daughter, whom no one at this date could have predicted would become the future Elizabeth I of England. The Treaty of Greenwich specified that Mary Queen of Scots would move to England to marry Edward when she reached the age of eleven, and Arran would be recognized as lord governor of Scotland. The growing tide of Protestant opinion in Scotland supported the English marriage and Arran himself confessed to the reformed faith at this time, appointing Protestant chaplains to his household. Needless to say Catholics, including Queen dowager Mary of Guise, were less committed to the English marriage but were forced to play a temporising game until Henry lost patience and began that long process of sending English troops, under the Earl of Hertford, to teach the Scots a lesson in keeping their marital promises which Scottish history knows as "the Rough Wooing." It was following Hertford's second invasion that, in 1546, the Protestant lords took their revenge on Cardinal Beaton for his execution of Protestant martyr, George Wishart, by assassinating Beaton and taking possession of St. Andrews Castle. Determined to resist this challenge to her authority, and her Catholic faith, Mary of Guise sent Arran, who had by this time renounced his Protestantism, to besiege the castle, even though his young son James was held hostage inside. The following year saw the deaths of both Henry VIII and of Francois I, and it was only when the new French king, Henri II, sent galleys in July that the castle in St. Andrews was captured from its Protestant defenders and Arran's infant son was freed. Hertford, now Earl of Somerset, met the Scots and French troops at the Battle of Pinkie where, in September 1547, the Scots suffered a crushing defeat and it was in the wake of this disaster that Henri II decided to end English pretensions to the Scottish throne and draw a line under the English marriage claims which went back to the Treaty of Greenwich, gaining Arran's consent to the French betrothal by offering him the dukedom of Chatelherault. In February 1548 news that an English army had again invaded led to the young Mary Queen of Scots's departure from Scotland aboard the royal vessel which the king of France had sent to the west-coast port of Dumbarton (English troops were still besieging Haddington in the east). Mary was accompanied by an entourage of nobles and companions who were to support her in the next thirteen years of her childhood and upbringing at the French court. Among these was the young James Hamilton, third earl

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of Arran, only recently released from St. Andrews as hostage of the Protestant lords, and now travelling — "the perpetual hostage" as Rosalind Marshall describes him 5 —at Henri's insistence on the need for a guarantee of the good faith of his father, the second earl, governor of Scotland and now duke of Chatelherault. The young earl of Arran's subsequent treatment in France, though full of incident, was far from being harsh, however. Aged only ten or eleven, he was given a company of lancers which had previously been under the command of Diane de Poitiers' father, and steps were immediately taken to arrange for a future marriage with a bride of royal blood; Henri proposed various candidates of whom a natural daughter of Diane de Poitiers —Mademoiselle de Bouillon ("the king's bastard") —had emerged by 1553 as the accepted favorite. 6 Arran spent his time in France, when not on active service with his troops, either at Chatelherault or at court. Though neither Aneau nor Florens Wilson would have been able to predict his future career, they would have at least some understanding of the role he was expected to play in the development of Franco-Scottish relations and I am going to suggest that the history of Arran's upbringing in France, which covered the whole of his teenage years, as did that of Mary Queen of Scots, casts at least some light on the circumstances surrounding the dedication of Alciato's emblems. His early education in the military arts might, indeed, be seen as part of the conventional upbringing for a member of the nobility. In 1552 Arran's troops accompanied the French to the siege of Metz and in 1557 he helped in the unsuccessful relief of St. Quentin from imperial siege when Parisian accusations of Protestant weakness and complicity in the siege led to his imprisonment in the Chatelet, from which he was eventually released only after giving a satisfactory account of his religious position (Durkan, 160-61). The need to secure an appropriate dynastic marriage could be seen as a second strand in the French upbringing of this Scottish nobleman whose claims to royal succession might have had serious repercussions both for his native 5.

Marshall, 69; the same author's earlier Mary of Guise, London, 1977, remains the most useful account of the regency.

6.

Durkan, 159; Durkan's article provides important evidence on Arran's missing years and I am grateful to Theo van Heijnsbergen of Glasgow University for alerting me to it following an earlier enquiry in which my research for the present article had its origins.

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and for his adoptive country had anything happened to the young Mary Queen of Scots. The third strand in Arran's continental education must have been the academic, where the desire to secure at least the elements of what Erasmus calls "The Education of a Christian Prince" is most patent, and it is here that Florens Wilson (if not Aneau) might have seemed to have a role to play. The need for a man of Arran's status to acquire a mastery of classical and vernacular languages would easily be recognised; indeed John Durkan suggests, most plausibly, that the prime motive for the Alciato dedication was to recommend Wilson as candidate for the actual job of tutor to Arran, a position for which he would have been well qualified not only in view, as Aneau suggests, of his command of many languages but also of his previous experience as tutor to Wolsey's son in Paris. That the question of appointing a tutor for the newly arrived earl was already exercizing the minds of those responsible for his education is made clear by the evidence Durkan has uncovered that Governor Arran had already fixed upon Patrick Buchanan, brother of the great Scots Neo-Latin poet George Buchanan, for the job of tutoring his son in France. Patrick had already served as tutor, between 1539 and 1545, to James and Robert Stewart, natural sons of James V, both of whom, as it happens, accompanied Mary Queen of Scots on her voyage to France. News that the governor of Scotland was looking for a suitable tutor for his exiled son could easily have reached Wilson in Lyons, at least if he was keeping in touch — as he must have been — with news from home at this moment, and the position of tutor in the household of such a rising figure in the courtly culture of Scotland in France must have had its attractions when compared to the comparative drudgery of teaching Latin at La Trinite. However, though I am wholly persuaded that the prospect of scholarly preferment for his Scottish colleague must have been high among Aneau's ambitions, I am not sure that we need necessarily reduce the motives for this dedication, as Durkan seems to suggest, to a neat but already preempted career move. If we bring together some of the values and aims of Lyons humanism which have already been identified in the scholarly circles in which Aneau and Wilson were working, and place them in the immediate political context of Franco-Scottish relations immediately following the arrival in France both of Mary Queen of Scots, and of the third earl of Arran, it is possible to suggest that the motives behind this dedication included at least some attempt to make the values of the Lyons human-

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ists, or of Wilson's "theologia rhetorica," available to the education of an emerging national figure. It should certainly be borne in mind that the rapidly changing religious position, both in France and in Scotland, at this moment, would influence not only the choice of tutors, but equally the type of curriculum to be studied in such cases; Aneau's experience, and indeed Wilson's, would already have given them enough warning that curricular choices often sent out strong doctrinal signals. Aneau's translation of Alciato was not, as it happens, the only book published in France to carry a dedication to the earl of Arran, for five years later, in 1553, the first French version of Machiavelli's II Principe was dedicated to him. This is, perhaps, less surprising since it was the work of an official, Gaspard d'Avergne, employed on Arran's estate at Chatelherault who was also a friend of the poet Ronsard. It is notable, however, that this dedication, like that in Aneau's Alciato, makes mention of the importance which attached to the education of the young earl, by now aged sixteen, praising his father's decision to allow his sons to be raised in France where they could be "maintained so carefully in the exercise of good letters" (cited in Durkan, 157). As it turned out, Arran's career in France was to result not in some enlightened humanist or Erasmian via media but rather in his unswerving commitment to the Calvinist church (it is, indeed, the actual letters of Calvin, as Durkan shows, that preserve most of the evidence that has survived about Arran's beliefs in these "hidden years"). The conversion to Calvinism, which is Durkan's particular concern, almost certainly predates the year 1559 when a Protestant Scots church was established on his estate at Chatelherault, but it was the evidence of his heresy which led to an action for his arrest in the same year and to his flight across France, through Geneva and Lausanne, back to his native Scotland. Ten years earlier Aneau and his friend Wilson could not have anticipated these outcomes, and the motivation of the Alciato dedication is likely to have involved no more than a concern for an educational agenda that would have offered some hope for a via media between the doctrinal extremes which were already in contest over the education of a potential "Christian prince." Such an agenda has been shown as active in their other writings and that Alciato's emblems should have been coopted to serve a similar agenda should not surprise us. Aneau's radical reformatting of the emblems was to prove highly influential on their subsequent history but emblem studies has, to date, seen this development almost wholly in formal or, at most, rhetorical

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terms. 7 In this essayl have tried to suggest that such developments may also need to be located within the immediate history and politics of their time.

Works Cited Adams, Alison, S. Rawles, and A. Saunders, A Bibliography of French Emblem Books. Vol. 1. Geneva, 1999. Alciat, Andrea. Emblemes d'Alciat, de nouveau Translatez en Francois vers pour vers iouxte les Latins. Lyon, 1549. Allan, David. Philosophy and Politics in Later Stuart Scotland: Neo-Stoicism, Culture and Ideology in an Age of Crisis 1540-1690. East Linton: Tuckwell, 2000. Baker-Smith, Dominic. "Florens Wilson and his Circle: emigres in Lyons, 1539-1543." In Neo-Latin and the Vernacular in Renaissance France. Ed. Grahame Castor and Terence Cave. Oxford 1984. Pp. 83-97. . "Florens Wilson: A Distant Prospect." In Stewart Style 1513-1542: Essays on the Court of James V. Ed. Janet Hadley Williams. East Linton: Tuckwell, 1996. Pp. 1-14. Balavoine, Claudie. "Le classement thematique des emblemes d'Alciat: recherche en paternite." In The Emblem in Renaissance and Baroque Europe: Tradition and Variety. Ed. Alison Adams and A. J. Harper. Leiden, 1992. Pp. 1-21. Biot, Brigitte. Barthelemy Aneau, regent de la Renaissance Lyonnaise. Paris, 1996. Durkan, John. "James, Third Earl of Arran: The Hidden Years." Scottish Historical Review 65 (1986): 154-166. Fontaine, Marie ML, ed. Barthelemy Aneau: Alector ou Le Coq, histoire fabuleuse. Geneva, 1996. Gesner, Conrad. Bibliotheca Universalis. Zurich, 1545. Green, Henry. Andrea Alciati and his Book of Emblems. London, 1872. Laurens, P., and F. Vuilleumier. "De l'archeologie de l'embleme: la genese du Liber Alciati." Revue de Vart 101 (1993): 86-95. 7.

The regrouping of Alciato's emblems under loci communes headings first appeared the previous year; the Bonhomme 1548 edition (Green no.32) signalling this on its title page, Emblemata Andreae Alciati Locorum communem ordine. Green's comment that "it was in his French edition of 1549 Aneau first completely arranged the subjects of the emblems"and that this "useful piece of work is due to Aneau" (Green, 161) therefore needs to be questioned, as it has been by Claudie Balavoine.

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Marshall, Rosalind. Mary of Guise. London, 1977. . Mary of Guise. Edinburgh, 2001. Michel, Francisque. Les Ecossais en France et les Frangais en Ecosse. London, 1862. Russell, Daniel S. The Emblem and Device in France. Lexington, 1985. Saunders, Alison.The Sixteenth-Century French Emblem Book: A Decorative and Useful Genre. Geneva, 1988. Wilson, Florens. De Animi Tranquillitate. Lyons, 1543. . Commentatio Theologica. Lyons, 1539.

Gavino Sambigucio and his Interpretation of Achille Bocchi's "Hermathena"1 DENIS L. DRYSDALL University ofWaikato, New Zealand

Gavino Sambigucio's interpretation of the "Hermathena/' no. 102 in Achille Bocchi's Symbolicae Quaestiones and the emblem of his academy, has received practically no attention in accounts of Bocchi's work. However, this commentary, which followed a year after the Symbolicae Quaestiones themselves in 1556, though not entirely well organized and betraying the inexperience of a young student, does provide an example of a discussion of symbolism in the NeoPlatonist idiom which is clearly Bocchi's own. 2 Information on Sambigucio, apart from what can be gleaned from this work, seems to be nonexistent. He is not mentioned in the early accounts of Bocchi although they often refer to the Hermathena as the device of the academy. Michele Maylender (1:452-54) quotes an extract from Sambigucio, translated into Italian, which had appeared in G. S. Pintor's Storia letteraria di Sardegna in 1844;3 it consists of the condemnation of idleness from the end of the preface. This seems to

1. A short version of this essay was presented at the Sixth International Emblem Conference, La Corufia, Spain, 10-14 September 2002. 2. For general studies of Bocchi's Symbolicae Quaestiones and full bibliography on him, see Rolet and Watson.

3.

Fumagalli (s. v. Sassari) notes only that Sassari is the second city in Sardinia and refers to its importance for the history of printing on the island.

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be the earliest reference to Sambigucio in modern criticism, but he has never been mentioned since as anything but a bibliographical item. The dedication to Salvatore Salapussio, archbishop of Sassari, reveals that Sambigucio was a protege of his and a member of Bocchi's academy. The writer states that he undertook this work, his first, when he was a student, at the request of Bocchi himself and other friends. Sambigucio's family (he mentions his father and brothers) owes a long-standing debt of loyalty and gratitude to Salapussio who has always encouraged his studies. The dedication ends promising further fruits which, if they ever eventuated, remain unknown. The author sets out the elements of a Neo-Platonist symbolism and applies it to this particular symbol. But his epistemology is not purely Neo-Platonist; as is usual in the Renaissance, his basic model and his vocabulary derive from book 3 of Aristotle's De anima and probably reflect a reading, direct or indirect, of Aquinas, though there is some confusion of terms. 4 In Aquinas's account the objects in the outside world are perceived through the bodily senses as "sensible species/' These corporeal or material forms are coordinated in the sensus communis and transmitted, still as sensible species, to the other internal senses: memory, estimative or cogitative power, and imagination or phantasia. The latter converts the sensible species to phantasmata — "intelligible species" which are immaterial forms, the only sort the intellect can receive — and transmits them to the "agent intellect." Insofar as it receives the phantasmata, the agent intellect is a passive power, identified with Aristotle's passive intellect, and is called the "passible" intellect. Up to this point the species, both material and immaterial, have been images of particulars; the agent intellect finally transmits these particulars to the active or "possible" intellect, which relates them to universals and thus performs the ultimate act of cognition, which is to know the quidditas (essence) of the objects. There is little doubt that this is the source of Sambigucio's scheme; but there is

4. For a general account of Renaissance psychology, see the chapters on "The organic soul" by Katherine Park and "The intellective soul" by Eckhard Kessler in Schmitt, 464-534. For a convenient account of Aquinas's theory, see Roberto Pellerey, "Thomas Aquinas: Natural Semiotics and the Epistemological Process," in Eco, 81-105. Aquinas's epistemology is expounded consistently throughout his works; Sambigucio could have read it perhaps in his De imitate intellectus contra Averroistas Parisienses, chaps. 1-4, or the Summa theologiae I, qq.76-86.

DENIS L. DRYSDALL

55

some confusion of the terms "passible," "possible," and "material," and of the notions of active and agent intellect. In his table of contents (Aiii-r) Bocchi had divided his symbols into "theological," "physical," "moral," and "philological" classes, and classified the Hermathena as philological. In 1556 Sambigucio at­ tempts to add to the philological meaning of the symbol —that is, what he includes under "moral" allegory: the defeat of the vices and the academician's calling to study and eloquence —a theological one, and to read it as a symbol of one aspect of the trinity. I shall give a brief account of his interpretation, showing that his reading is care­ fully orthodox and I shall suggest that this may have some relevance to the situation of Bocchi's academy at what may have been a difficult moment. Sambigucio's preface is a eulogy of work and study ("de labore, ac scientiarum studio") attributing all human imperfection to the single vice of otium. As the vice opposed to virtuous labour otium must be understood as idleness, not leisure, as one critic identifies it.5 The preface was almost certainly intended as a compliment to Bocchi, de­ veloping an implication of his personal motto: "Victoria ex labore honesta et utilis"[Victory won by hard work is honest and useful]. 6 It is also certainly an indication that the pursuit of eloquence, the de­ clared purpose of the academy, is regarded as a choice of "active" as opposed to "contemplative" living. Its connection, through the sec­ ond element of the motto "progressio," with the role of "persever­ ance" 7 in the labor of acquiring eloquence and virtue and overcom­ ing vice is also certain, though perhaps less obvious. While it must be admitted that Sambigucio does not speak in this preface specifically

5. Watson, 62: "The theme of ozio, or leisure, does not even arise in Symbol СП but was presumably introduced as an exhortation appropriate to an inaugural lec­ ture opening a new season of academic activity." We may add here that Maylender does not claim that Sambigucio "published" a Discorso at the acad­ emy in 1556 (Watson, 202n92), but that he "recited" it at the opening. It is the preface which is addressed in the published text "ad Academiae studiosos" and it, not the whole of the treatise, probably constituted the "discorso" given at the opening.

6. See his device in Bocchi, [*vii]-r.

7. The terms are treated as equivalent. See p. 160: "nostra progressio, id est firma perseverantia." More exactly perhaps, p. 155: "constantia et perseverantia . . . qua progressio ad virtutem perficitur."

56

EMBLEMATICA

of the symbol he is going to describe, nor refer back to labor and otium later when talking of perseverance and the monster who represents the vices to be overcome, this encomium of hard work and condemna­ tion of idleness are by no means misplaced, as the same critic com­ plains. The preface is followed by the illustration and verse of the symbol (22-23), reproduced from the blocks of the Symbolicae Quaestiones,8 and the interpretation proper which consists of ten chapters. SYMB.

СII:

SAPIENTIAM MODESTIA, PROGRESSIO E L O Q j y E N T I A M FELICITATEM HAEC PERFICIT.

STEPHANO SAVLIO* IN HERMATHENAM BOCCHIAM. SYMB.

СП.

Quis tibifin&epucr, uires аптштф mini/trot, Maximum ut exiguo monfirwn adamantc rcgas, ls/оппе uidcsfummi edaSlam dc ucrticc patris, isfujjuccfacundo Valfada ^AtUntiudc ? Tianc coletoiiusmentis penetratibus ardens, Sic animo poteris quicquidjzr ore uoles. Incipe agcten uiroa tc tarn Deus euocat orco. Me duceperficies-jtu modo progrederc. Jam pater en S T E P H A N V J te SAVUVS ilk bonoru ?>ra>pdtumtatque decus, made ammo eJJeiubtU

Fig. 1. Achille Bocchi, Symbolicae Quaestiones, Symb. 102: "Hermathena."

Sambigucio begins by setting out his plan, which will be to explain firstly Bocchi's intention and motives, secondly the general philo­ sophical considerations necessary for the understanding of the symA. A. Renouard believed this work was published in Venice not Bologna, be­ cause it is, according to him, printed with an unusual italic type unlikely to be provided for a small press such as that at Bologna. However, the only part of the work in italics is the verse of the Hermathena. The whole page is printed from the same block as in the Symbolicae Quaestiones; there is some slight resetting, but the number "Symb. СП" remains.

57 bol, thirdly the figure and its parts according to the proper allegorical reading of certain poetic fables, and finally the text. The second of these four sections will be divided into seven parts corresponding to the next seven chapters. These expound the Christian Neo-Platonic theology (philosophically somewhat rudimentary and betraying perhaps only an indirect knowledge of the sources he mentions: mainly Plato, Aristotle, and Avicenna) which is to be the framework for the understanding of Bocchi's symbol. This seems to leave the third and fourth sections, the interpretation of the symbol itself, for chapters 9 and 10. However, he does not organize his material quite as tidily as this scheme suggests; many important statements about the particular symbol occur in chapters 1 to 8 with the general remarks; as a result chapter 9, describing the image, contains much repetition. Chapter 10, which explains the verse, begins with a whole page devoted to saying that the author intends to be brief. We are told in chapter 1 that the subject of Bocchi's symbol is divine love. The "felicity" referred to in the motto is our true end, the perfection of the soul, achieved in and by divine love —that is, our love for God, or desire for the divine beauty. This tells us that the interpretation is to be a Christian one, though it does not yet rise to the theological level; for the moment Sambigucio is concerned with human felicity. "Progress" or "perseverance" in the study of eloquence is the means to felicity, and the beginning of this process is "moderation" or "temperance." 9 Mortal felicity consists of three things: speaking, understanding, and acting perfectly. Each of these finds its respective beginning and means in the elements of the motto: the first is achieved through Wisdom, whose beginning is Modesty; the second through Eloquence, the means to which is Progress; the third grows from the first two virtues and constitutes that true mortal happiness which enables us to achieve eternal beatitude. This can be summarised in a table which has to be read both vertically and horizontally: 10 DENIS L. DRYSDALL

9. See p. 34: "Modestiam, quam graeci aooOoouviv [sic: aa>Opoai)vr|v, Latin "temperantia"] appellant.. .." Given these equivalents, "moderation" is surely a better translation than "modesty" (Watson, 143-44). See also p. 157: "timor domini" and p. 158 "evocat ab orco," "Christus Iesus."

58

EMBLhMATICA

MODESTIA beginning of PROGRESSIO means to

SAPIENTIA means to ELOQUENTIA ;means to

OPTIMK LOQUENDUM OPTTME , INTELLIGENDUM

ULTIMA PERFECTIO end

FELICITAS (humana) end

OPTIME OPERANDUM

The ancients located felicity in the use of the powers or dispositions of the intellectual soul which reduce to five:11 ars (the habitus or dispo­ sition to perform physical actions), prudentia (the disposition to exer­ cise the reason, virtues, love), intellectus (the disposition to perceive principles and axioms), scientia (the disposition to derive conclusions from axioms), and sapientia (these last two and the disposition to per­ ceive those things whose essence cannot be known, i. е., theologia). The "Sapientia" of the motto therefore includes all the rational and intu­ itive powers of the mind, and is the bridge by which Sambigucio will take his interpretation from the philological to the theological level. The felicity formerly desired by ancient philosophers is to be con­ ceived in Christian terms. The philology or eloquence in which the an­ cients labored is the "love of the divine" of Christian doctrine, and the acts and dispositions enumerated here are those for which Bocchi, "noster hie Bocchius vere Platonicus verusque Theologus" [this Bocchi of ours, truly a platonist and true exponent of theology, 32-33], has sought to provide in establishing his academy, and which he has expressed in his chosen motto of Modesty, Perseverance, and Self-Perfection. In his second chapter Sambigucio expounds the Platonic notion of the divine intelligence, from which all other intelligences emanate, and the system of correspondences which relate them. He is careful to state that he finds the correct Christian doctrine of the creation of the immortal soul after the body only in Avicenna. The latter divides the intellect into the practical and the speculative, but distinguishes in the speculative the possible or material, the habitual, the actual, and the adapted or acquired. 12 Sambigucio mentions all these in a rather con10. In this way it is possible to reconcile the statement that the third (i. e. "optime operandum") grows from the first two virtues ("Tertium deinde ex praecedentibus his duabus virtutibus oritur/ 7 34) with the motto, where "haec," feminine singular, would seem to say "this latter/' i. е., / / eloquentia/ , achieves "felicitas." 11. For all this Sambigucio refers to Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, book 6.

59 fused way, several times saying "There is another intellect..." when he seems to mean "There is, according to some, another intellect. . ." However, in what follows he identifies, along with four faculties of a perceptual or nonrational (practical, or instinctive) intellect —the sensus communis, potentia imaginativa, phantasia and memoria — two faculties of a rational (speculative) intellect: the intellectus passibilis (or possibilis),13 and the intellectus agens.14 All these are said to constitute a single "power" (potentia) in man, and it is the last two, of course, which permit the "acts and dispositions" of rational contemplation described in the previous chapter. The goal of this process of knowledge is the highest good, or love of the divine. Sambigucio now describes in Platonic terms (chap. 3) the eternal emanation of love, which flows down through the hierarchy of the universe, producing firstly the divine intellect and the "Chaos of the Ideas," and ultimately the material world. After mentioning Arabic refinements of Platonism and peripatetic reservations concerning these doctrines, he argues that Platonism is essentially right in its perception of the ultimate unity of the source and the end of the process. The chapter ends with a description of love rising in its return from base material through the elements and compounds to plants, animals, and men, in men through the vegetative and sensitive soul to the intellectual, and in the intellectual soul through successive acts of apprehension, from one intelligible to another, to the supreme act of apprehending the divine. DENIS L. DRYSDALL

12. Aristotle also divides the intellect into the practical and the speculative, and considers it as passive and active (De Anima, 3.5). For a brief account of Avicenna's notion of the intellect,'see Morewedge, 254; Afnan, 139; or Weinberg, 100-20. A short account of Aristotle's and Avicenna's view of the intellectus possibilis and the intellectus agens which would be accessible to Sambigucio, is to be found in Rhodiginus, lib. 2, cap. 1, but his terms do not correspond closely enogh for us to assert that this is his immediate source.

13. Sambigucio, or perhaps the printer, confuses these two terms. Cf. p. 92: "intellectum passibilem et materialem"; but p. 110: "in intellectu possibili [sic] seu materiali." ''Passibilis" is a Latin rendering in this context of Aristotle's TraOnTiKcbs. 14. This term is translated here as "agent intellect." Sambigucio speaks of this agent intellect as if it were simply a part of the individual's intellect, avoiding discussion of the Averroist notion of a single cosmic active intellect, and conforming to the orthodox position as set out by Aquinas. See Weinberg, 200-08.

60

LMBLLMAIICA

In chapter 4 he distinguishes the types of love which drive this ascent as natural (the universal propensity to seek perfection), sensitive (instinct, found only in animals), and voluntary or rational (found only in man). 15 The latter is divided in turn into the pleasurable, the useful, and the noble. The first, love of corporeal beauty, is lust, but may be transformed into noble love; the second is love of wealth, possessions, and power. Bocchi's symbol speaks of the third love, love of eternal things, called "divine" because it is situated entirely in the intellect and is therefore entirely separate from everything material, and because through it alone mortals become participants in divine wisdom. At this point, Sambigucio introduces the subject of imagery. In addition to the philosophers' ideas, he says, it is necessary to know what the poets say, how they concealed all these ideas about love in the guise of fables and how they invented figures of gods as allegories of these types of love. His remarks on this subject however are rather scattered and general expressions; bringing them together with those found elsewhere, we find he says only that his interpretation will follow "the true allegory" of certain "poetic fables" (26),16 that the poets "assign" Jove as father to Love (81) or "invented" figures (81, 94), that Bocchi "imitated the ancient poets," and that he "portrays" (34) or "speaks in the poetic manner" (79, 108), that all the ancient writers used a three-level system of literal, moral, and natural or mystical allegory (127-28), and finally that "great mysteries lie hidden in poetic fictions" (146). One might wish for more on the nature of poetic imagery and the different types of allegory, since these expressions allow us to say only that his account does not appear to be inconsistent with the notion of allegory to be derived from Bocchi himself. However it is clear from this and what follows that Sambigucio is thinking only of mythological imagery, not of metaphors derived from comparisons with the real properties of natural or artificial objects. Such mythological imagery is "invented" in the sense that the qualities, relationships, and attributes of the figures are products of poetic imagination. They are transmitted by a tradition which Sambigucio refers to simply as the tradition of the poets, but which is also obviously adapted by "philosophers," in this case probably the followers of pseudo15. Here Sambigucio accepts both the Platonic definition of love as desire for the beautiful, and the Aristotelian as desire for the good.

16. Misnumbered "20."

DENIS L. DRYSDALL

61

17

Dionysius and certainly Boccaccio. However one point which Bocchi seems to emphasize and Sambigucio to take for granted, is that, in its application to Christian theology, this // invention ,/ is not an arbitrary or even a human process, but a divine inspiration: I would not want you to think, dearest reader, that these things which are transmitted figuratively by divine inspiration are propagated from nothing and are to be understood in the sense they indicate directly; rather they are the secret veils of a science which is well-founded and not bandied about of course, so that the wicked and depraved do not pollute the holy and the sacred. 18 It follows that the reader needs to know and adhere to the orthodox, Christian traditions concerning that inspiration. The most cursory glance at Bocchi's symbols shows that mythical and historical figures, and scenes such as the Hermathena, are his preferred vehicles and that he generally eschews the more popular allegories of plants or animals and manufactured objects which are the material of other emblematists. Sambigucio therefore presumably does not feel a need to pursue such distinctions, but continues on the subject of love. The first two types of love were pictured as Cupids: the first, son of Mars and Venus, induces licentious desires, the second, son of Mercury and Diana, ambition and desire for gain. The 17. Later references to the lost treatise of Theodontius (131 and 133) and to the "Demogorgon" (135) show that Sambigucio's principal source for mythography is Boccaccio's Genealogiae deorum (Prohemium, 7 and Liber primus, 8), and through him Cicero's De natura deorum (especially 3.21-23). See Seznec, 220-22. This does not entirely exclude, of course, Ficino's Commentary on Plato's Symposium, especially Oratio secunda, cap. 7 (Ficino, 1326), although Sambigucio's terminology does not echo Ficino's closely. For the "Great Venus" and the twin Amores as her children by Jove, see Boccaccio, lib. 3, cap. 22. Sambigucio is also interested (82-84) in the myth of Amor as son of Porus and Penia, found in Plato's Symposium (203B), and Ficino, Commentary, Oratio sexta, cap. 7 (Ficino, 1345), but does not adopt it as the explanation of Bocchi's Amor. See Wind, Appendix 9, 276-81. For the connection between Bocchi and pseudo-Dionysius, see Drysdall. 18. Bocchi, *viii r-v: "Symbolum symbolorum,"/ Nolim putes carissime / Lector, figurate ista, quae / Divinitus sunt tradita, / Sic prodita esse de nihilo, / Et sensum in ilium, quern indicant, / Exaudienda protinus, / Sed involucra esse abdita / Scientiae haud erraticae, / Nee pervagatae, scilicet / Ne sacra polluant mali, / Et sancta quique perditi.

62

EMBLEMATICA

third is the one portrayed by Bocchi; he is not called Cupid, but simply Amor,19 and is the son of Jove and "the great celestial Venus/' goddess of moderate, honest and spiritual desires. In chapter 5, we are reminded that this love of the divine is the beginning, means, and end of human perfection. The divine gift of our noncorporeal intellect is the instrument by which God enables us to participate in His perfection. In man, the microcosm, intellectual activity takes place on three levels: the sensible soul, the passible intellect, and the agent intellect. On the first level the activity is called intellectio and enables us to acquire through our senses knowledge of divine beauty, wisdom, and goodness; on the second it is called amor and by it we learn to love God and our neighbor by absorbing the divine precepts of our religion; on the third, by usus, we enjoy God himself in a love which becomes one with the divine love for us. The correspondence of these to the wisdom, eloquence, and felicity of the motto seems to follow, although Sambigucio does not draw the parallel explicitly. The love which drives the passible intellect to seek its perfection is not distinct from that which raises the agent intellect to union with the divine love for the creature. The figure of Amor in the symbol is not therefore simply the human love of the second level of the intellect, nor is the image a symbol only of what can be achieved morally on the human level, of philological study and eloquence. Chapter 6 explains how it is also a symbol of the divine and in the final analysis one aspect of that ultimate principle, discovered in some measure by the Platonic philosophers, which is the trinity itself. Our divine Platonic poet, fired by [the Holy Spirit], having considered all these most sacred mysteries, and wishing to describe this divine love with all its true, primary causes, has pictured this Spirit in the form of an Amor, the only form which is appropriate to it in the poetic manner, brought forth by the Wisdom of the Father, which he denotes by Pallas Athene, and shows that this same [Spirit] is one and the same thing as Wisdom, when he describes them as linked in the form of Mercury. By this description he wanted to show the fact that their Essence is one and conjoined. If we were to say that this Amor was born of that 19. He should not therefore be called Eros either; nor does he "mediate" in any way between Minerva and Mercury (Watson, 143-44).

DENIS L. DRYSDALL

63

great and celestial Venus and of Jove, it will appear that the causes [origins of this love] are the same, as is the illustration, in which he has pictured this holy mystery of the Trinity very well according to the Platonic doctrine, which conforms sufficiently with Christian truth. 20 This final suggestion of Sambigucio's reading involves, as we shall see in chapter 9, some difficulties, though we shall avoid some confusion if we are careful to understand "hoc Trinitatis mysterium" (this mystery of the Trinity) as referring to one aspect of the trinity, that is the divine love of the Father for the Son which produces the Spirit, not to the trinity as a whole. In Sambigucio's Platonist epistemology, as we learn in chapter 7, an exemplar or symbol (notitia) of everything exists in the divine intellect before it exists materially. Our intellect, alone in our nature entirely separate from the material, is alone capable of receiving immaterial forms and species, such as the idea of divine love. But the intellect has to be stimulated by a phantasma. This is the process of intellectio or acquisition of knowledge. From here the image is passed 20. Pp. 107-08: "a quo similiter divinus noster Platonicus Poeta accensus, cum sanctissima haec mysteria omnia considerasset, velletque divinum hunc amorem describere cum omnibus suis veris primisque causis, pinxit hunc Spiritum sub Amoris forma, quae illi Poetico more sola convenit, productum ab ipsa Patris Sapientia: quam ipse per Palladem denotat, eundemque unam et eandem rem cum Sapientia esse demonstrat, cum sub Mercurii forma simul connexos describit: qua descriptione nihil aliud quam Essentiam eorum unam et coniunctam esse ostendere voluit Hunc autem Amorem, si a magna ilia et coelesti Venere et love natum dixerimus, apparebit easdem esse causas, eandemque descriptionem, qua ipse Sanctissimum hoc Trinitatis mysterium, secundum Platonicam docttinam [sic: doctrinam] satis Christianae veritati conformem, optime depinxit." The statement, "[Bocchi] shows that this same [Spirit] is one and the same thing as Wisdom, when he describes them as linked in the form of Mercury/' is rather unsatisfactory. In the image it is Minerva and Mercury who are linked, as Sambigucio insists immediately afterwards (107): "cuius verae, primae ac immediatae causae, quemadmodum diximus, nullae sunt aliae quam summa ipsius Dei Sapientia et Verbum, sub una natura, sub una essentia, sub una divinitate coniunctum cum illa"( Its [the Spirit's] true, first and unmediated causes, as we have said, are none other than the supreme Wisdom of God himself and his Word united with it in one nature, in one essence, in one divinity). Cf. chap. 9 (149-52) where he repeats that divine Wisdom and the Word (Mercury as the logos or Christ) are one and the same.

64

EMBLEMATICA

to the passible» intellect, which seeks its perfection through amor. This perfection is said to be that it perceives the forms of universal things intuitively without need of physical perceptions. 21 It is here therefore that the relationship between the idea formed from the external image and the universal exemplar can be perceived in potentia. It is in this sense that the object of physical perception is "abstracted" (113), separated from its physical significance and related to the idea. Finally, by means of the rational thinking of the agent intellect —the "efficient cause" of all the other faculties —the potential understanding is transformed into usus, the active apprehension of the Idea of beauty. 22 His concern for orthodoxy is again demonstrated in that, because he does not treat the agent intellect as a cosmic intellect, his account of human apprehension does not follow Avicenna's exactly, and indeed is indistinguishable on most points from that of Aquinas. 23 In this epistemology, sight and sound have distinct roles, for spiritual beauty is to be considered in two aspects: one as it exists in the universal divine intellect, the second as it exists in the world soul. Material beauty must be correspondingly dual: one aspect, perceived through the sight, is an image {simulacrum) of the intellectual; it consists of light and is apprehended only by the light of the mind. The other is perceived through the hearing, and this is an image {simulacrum) of that beauty which is "infused in the world soul," a music which consists of order, harmony, and concordance. It is perhaps the greatest disappointment of his treatise that Sambigucio fails to seize the opportunity this passage offers to give a distinctively Neo-Platonic account in terms of sight and hearing, light and sound, of the relationship in the emblem between the picture and the words. When he comes to interpret the figure and the verse in detail, in chapters 9 and 10, he likewise does so without referring to the separate roles of sight and hearing distinguished here. In his last chapter of generalities (chap. 8) Sambigucio amplifies his account of the human soul and describes its moral role. He is concerned now with the control which the soul exercises by reason over 21. In Aquinas this takes place in the active intellect which Sambigucio calls the "agent," but in what follows it can be seen that he has another use for the latter.

22. In this paragraph I draw together the three separate passages in which Sambigucio has spoken of the three levels of the intellect and their actions (chap. 2 [546], chap. 5 [90-93], and chap. 7 ([110-14]).

23. See Weinberg, 120 and 200-08.

DENIS L. DRYSDALL

65

I he appetites of the material body, that is, the control which Amor ex­ ercises over the monster. The monster 24 is defined in general terms here as vice, not particularly as the idleness he had attacked as the root of all vice in his preface. The adamantine bit, with which the monster is restrained, is self-discipline, "that constancy and perse­ verance by means of which man persists . . . in good works and most holy actions," (122) though Sambigucio does not say if he is thinking specifically here of the second term of the motto (progressio which he equates in chapter 10 to perseverantia), or of Bocchi's labor. His interpretation of the figure in chapter 9 follows what he de­ scribes as the universal, ancient, three-part notion of allegory (literal, moral and natural or mystical). His account of the literal meanings consists of an enumeration of mythological figures and their attrib­ utes: three Jupiters, six Minervas, six Mercuries and six Amores (of which only three are to be called Cupids —the inconsistency with chapter 4, which spoke of two Cupids and one Amor, is not ex­ plained). The section on moral meanings is very short, and it is appar­ ent that Sambigucio has returned here to his theological meaning and the symbolism of divine love in the trinity. On this level Jove is to be understood as God Almighty and Minerva as divine wisdom, sprung directly from the divine intellect, which raises human understanding to contemplation of the divine. Mercury is the divine word. Linked together as they are, Minerva and Mercury signify the absolute unity of the divine wisdom and the divine word and therefore Christ him­ self, and from the Father and this unity together proceeds Amor, the Holy Spirit. Sambigucio's wording here seems to be carefully devised to reflect orthodox doctrine. In insisting that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son (Mercury and Minerva together) as well as the Father ("pariter cum sanctissimo Iove,"152), he clearly wishes to say in effecl "filioque"; that is, to declare his adherence to the Roman as opposed to the Greek doctrine of the trinity. This point of doctrine, a principle point of difference between the western and easterm churches, was reaffirmed by the Council of Florence (1439-45) and confirmed by the third session (1562-63) of the Council of Trent.25 The associated doc trine of the Spirit—Augustine taught that the Spirit is the love be 24. In the figure this appears to be no more than a lion's head, but Sambigucio (121 gives a fuller description, evoking something like the monster in Bocchi's ш 135. There is nothing in Sambigucio's commentary to support Watson's sugge: tions (144) that the monster also represents eloquence restrained or Orcus.

66

1::МШ ЬМЛПСЛ

tween Father and Son20 —was of great importance both lo pielislic movements and to Neo-Platonists. 27 Sambigucio's interpretation, with its linking of the Amor as the Spirit with the personal moral prog­ ress of the academician, seems to confirm that Bocchi's Neo-Platonism was associated with reforming tendencies (that is, with move­ ments for personal reform, not the sort of institutional reform repre­ sented by Lutheranism). However Sambigucio's attempt to make the emblem a symbol of divine love in the trinity as well as of human per­ severance and felicity involves some difficulties in that he is led to de­ vote a great deal of space to Jupiter, who has no representation in the figure, and in that, on the theological level, no role is ascribed to the monster. It also involves some seeming incongruities: for example, in that he defines the linked figures of Minerva and Mercury as the Wis­ dom and the Word of God, but has talked in chapter 5 of the Great Ve­ nus as the divine wisdom and as the mother of this Amor. The mythol­ ogy here does not provide a satisfactory correspondence with the Christian doctrine; as the Holy Spirit, Amor could not, of course, properly be said to have a mother. It is also at times not clear whether Amor is the love which produces the Spirit or the Spirit itself. In his final chapter Sambigucio explains each couplet of the poem, and here he seems to confine himself to a "moral" interpretation of the emblem as an image of love of the divine in work and achievement; this is still a Christian interpretation, but the notion of the trinity is not invoked. We are told that "vis" is physical strength and is associated with Minerva, and "animus" or "audacity" is a quality of the heart and comes from Mercury. The two together give us the power, the sav­ ing power of Christ, to control the monster. (Sambigucio misses the opportunity to say that this is why Amor points over his shoulder to Minerva and Mercury.) The monster is now named as "cupidity," al­ though from the previous chapter one might expect it to be "vice," or from the preface "idleness." The adamantine bit is "perseverance," the means to "progress," which is presumably this same power to con­ trol. By using the gift of strength of mind to control the monster we may achieve our aim, or attain to the knowledge of divine things

25. See Ferguson, 347-49, s. v. "Filioque."

26. De Trinitate, book 15, para. 27

'7. For some suggestive remarks on this subject, see Collett, especially 32-33 and 36-37.

DENIS L. DRYSDALL

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through the use of the rational faculty. Mercury calling us out of Orcus, the realm of Pluto, is expounded at some length as that beginning of wisdom and divine love alluded to in the motto as moderation or temperance, and now equated to "fear of the Lord," 28 and as Christ's call to sinners. (The discrepancy between the pagan "fable" and Christian doctrine with respect to the immortality of the soul is again carefully pointed out.) The middle is of course progress or perseverance and love of study, and the end is our perfection or union in the divine love. The final couplet is simply the occasion for a brief formal eulogy. *****

Sambigucio shows no sign of being aware of Alciato's Emblemata or of other emblems, or of Giovio and Ruscelli, and he makes no attempt to distinguish, as the latter does precisely in 1556, between imprese and emblems. 2 9 This distinction was perhaps not called for in the circumstances, but it is disappointing that, despite a promising passage on the roles of sight and hearing, he does not discuss the formal relationship of the verse and the motto to the image. His references to memory —again an opportunity for offering a distinctively Neo-Platonist explanation of one recognized function of the emblem—remain tantalisingly undeveloped. It seems fair to say too that he does not set out coherently all the possibilities of the image with respect to his Platonico-Christian account of divine and human intellect. However, if his work leaves something to be desired in its account and use of allegory, and his epistemology is slightly confused, it is nevertheless of some interest as the earliest extended commentary on an academic symbol and as an example of Neo-Platonic symbology. It may however have another interest: as a clue to the situation at this time of Bocchi and his academy. Variations in the liminary material of the known copies of the first edition of the Symbolicae Quaestiones show that it was printed several times in 1555. While some copies are dedicated only to Pope Julius III, and have a papal privilege by him, others, having been printed after his death (23 March 1555), also contain a dedicatory epigram to his successor, Paul 28. Cf. Psalm 111:10 and Proverbs 9:10. But see also Proverbs 1:7: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge."

29. Ruscelli, 212-17. Ruscelli, on the other hand, did know of Bocchi's work (176).

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IV.:ш Sambigucio's attempt in 1556 to add to the "philological" mean­ ing of the symbol —that is, what he includes under "moral" allegory: the defeat of the vices and the academician's calling to study and elo­ quence—a theological reading, and to present it as a symbol of divine love in the trinity, an interpretation apparently not foreseen by Bocchi himself when the table of contents was compiled, may have been occa­ sioned by the adoption of the symbol as the device of the academy, which seems to have occurred some time after the foundation, per­ haps as late as 1555.31 To be precise, I am suggesting that the symbol was first devised as a tribute to Stephano Sauli, to whom it is dedi­ cated in the Symbolicae Quaestiones, and who was a patron of this acad­ emy devoted to philological studies, 32 and that it was adopted in 1555 or 1556 as the device of the academy and reinterpreted theologically because it was thought desirable, in the atmosphere of the Council of

30. The epigram addressed to Paul IV claims that it was Paul III (pope from 1534 to 1549) who originally commissioned Bocchi to compose his work. Some copies have a French imprimatur issued in the name of Francois I, who died in 1547, oth­ ers a privilege from Henri II dated 29 January 1555. The period of preparation for publication therefore goes back to at least 1547. A notice on Bocchi, in Lilio Gregorio Giraldi's Dialogi duo de Poetis nostrorum temporum (1551, 86-87), written between 1548 and 1551, also shows that he was known to be composing the work, with the illustrations, at this time. 31. Watson (59) finds some evidence for the existence of the academy from 1543, but Sambigucio's remark seems to confirm that 1546 (also given by one of the earliest histories: Orlandi, 28-29) was the date recognized by its first members. Watson has other interesting information from Bocchi's correspondence: the symbol of the Hermathena, without reference to the academy, is mentioned in a letter to Romolo Amaseo dated April 1548 (68-69); and as early as 1514, Giovanni Battista Pio, in a letter to Bocchi from Rome, praises the "Domus Bochia" [sic] as a "Hermathena" (146). For other classical and Renaissance references to a Hermathena, see Wind, 203, and Watson, 76-77 and 143-47.

32. In the last line but one of the verse, he is given the epithet "pater . . . ille." The Sauli were an important family of merchants established in Genoa, but origi­ nally of Lucca, whence they were expelled for their Guelph allegiances in 1316. Stephano's presence in Bologna is probably explained by the fact that his brother, Hieronymo Sauli, was at this time archbishop of Bologna and apostolic protonotary; Bocchi's symbol no. 126 is dedicated to him. Of the same family, Filippo di Antonio Sauli is remembered as a patron of humanist scholars and a fellow student of Alciato who dedicated to him in 1515 his first publication, the Anno tat iones in tres posteriores libros codicis Justiniani.

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Trent, to emphasize the political loyalty and religious orthodoxy of the members. In a review of studies on Bocchi's religious and philosophical position, Elizabeth See Watson concludes (chap. 2, 48-49): Bocchi can be placed in the centre of the mythological, Pythagorean, Hermetic, syncretic and playful modes of concealed wisdom current by the early sixteenth century . . . Bocchi can be located at least on the periphery of social, political and religious dissimulation as well . . . but: I cannot justify using this narrower term [Nicodemism] for Bocchi. There is no convincing evidence of heresy arising from his associations in Bologna, and there are no clear expressions of sectarian doctrine in the Symbolicae Quaestiones. We have seen, however, that there is at least the suggestion of Neo-Platonist sympathy with pietistic tendencies, and it seems that Bocchi thought it necessary or useful to have his protege put up this shield against possible charges of sectarianism or even heresy. The choice of dedicatee and a remark in Sambigucio's preface would seem to support this. Archbishop Salapussio was both an imperial counsellor and a member of the Curia who had sat on the Council of Trent since its inception. The preface states that the attempt to establish the academy was rendered almost hopeless by the death of Paul HI (1549) and the subsequent wars in Italy, but that it has, after ten years, that is, in 1556, and thanks to imperial favor, at last come to fruition. I suspect that the undeclared intention of this Interpretatio was neither philological nor theological, but political, a declaration of neutrality and of orthodoxy intended particularly for the ears, not only of Salapussio, but of the second dedicatee of the later copies of the 1555 edition of Bocchi's symbols, the ultra-conservative Gian Pietro Carafa. Works Cited Afnan, Soheil M. Avicenna. His Life and Works. London, 1958. Boccaccio, Giovanni. Genealogiae deorum. [Venice, 1494]; rpt. New York, 1976.

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Bocchi, Achille. Achillis Bocchii Bononicnsis Synibolicuruni Quaeslionum dc univcrso genere qua* serio ludebat libri quinquc. Bononiae, in a e d i b u s N o v a e A c a d e m i a e Bocchianae, JVIDLV [1555]. 1 have used the copy in the British Library, 89 e 23. Collett, Barry. A Long and Troubled Pilgrimage. The Correspondence of Marguerite d' Angouleme and Vittoria Colonna, 1540-1545. Studies in Reformed Theology a n d History, n. s. 6. Princeton, 2000. Drysdall, Denis L. " B u d e on symbols, symbolon (text a n d t r a n s l a t i o n ) / ' Emblematica 8,2 (1994): 339-49. Eco, U m b e r t o , a n d C o s t a n t i n o M a r m o , eds. On the Medieval Theory of Signs. A m s t e r d a m a n d Philadelphia, 1989. Ferguson, Everett, ed. Encyclopedia of Early Christianity. N e w York, 1990. Ficino, Marsilio. Commentarium in Convivium Platonis de amore. In Opera omnia. 2 vols, (consecutive paging). Basle, 1576; rpt., Turin, 1983. Fumagalli, G. Lexicon typographicum Italiae. Florence, 1905. Giovio, Paolo. Dialogo dell'imprese militari et amorose . . . Rome: Ant. Barre, 1555. Maylender, Michele. Storia delle Accademie d'ltalia. 2 vols. Bologna and Trieste, 1926-30. M o r e w e d g e , Parviz. The " Metaphysica" of Avicenna (ibn Sina). L o n d o n , 1973. Orlandi, P. A. Notizie degli Scrittori Bolognesi. Bologna, 1714. Pintor, G. S. Storia letteraria di Sardegna. Cagliari, 1844. R e n o u a r d , A. A. Annates de ITmprimerie des Aide. Paris, 1834. R h o d i g i n u s , Caelius [LodovicoRicchieri]. Sicuti antiquarum lectionum commentarios . . . Venice: A l d u s , 1516. Rolet, A n n e . Les "Symbolicae Quaestiones" d'Achille Bocchi (1555): recherche sur les modeles litteraires, philosophiques et spirituals d'un recueil d'emblemes a Vepoque de la Reforme (edition, traduction et etude d'ensemble) (to be p u b l i s h e d by Brepols). Ruscelli, G i r o l a m o . Ragionamento di Mons. Paolo Giovio . . . Con un Discorso di Girolamo Ruscelli. Venice, 1556. S a m b i g u c i o , G a v i n o . Gavini Sambigucii Sardi Sassarensis in Hermathenam Bocchiam Interpretatio ad illustrissimum & reverendissimum dominum Salvatorem Salapussium archiepiscopum Sassarensem, Sacri Tridentini Concilii Decanum et Caesareae Maiestatis a Conciliis. In qua pertrectantur, & referuntur ea quae sequenti pagina continentur. B o n o n i a e a p u d A n t o n i u m M a n u t i u m Aldi filium MDLVI [1556]. 4°. 164pp. ([2], 3-161, m i s n u m b e r e d 141-[3]). I h a v e used the copy in the British Library, 525.f.5.

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Schmitt, C h a r l e s В., ed. Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy. C a m b r i d g e , 1988. Se/nec, J. The Survival of the Pagan Gods. Trans. Barbara F. Sessions. 1953; rpt. Princeton, 1972. Watson, Elizabeth See. Achille Bocchi and the Emblem Book as Symbolic Form. N e w York, 1993. Weinberg, Julius R. A Short History of Medieval Philosophy. Princeton, 1974. Wind, Edgar. Pagan Mysteries of the Renaissance. L o n d o n , 1958.

On the Date of Composition of El Brocense's Commentaria in Alciati Emblemata LUIS MERINO and JESUS URENA University of Extremadura

Francisco Sanchez de las Brozas (1523-1600), also known as "Sanctius" or "El Brocense," is an important figure of the Spanish Renaissance whose thought was a decisive influence on many aspects of European Renaissance humanism. The human and academic trajectory of El Brocense is intimately bound to the University of Salamanca, where he first studied and later taught as a professor of rhetoric and Greek. In Salamanca he met Fray Luis de Leon and many other Spanish Humanists with whom he shared common passions and concerns. As a good humanist, El Brocense promoted the renovation of university teaching, adapting pedagogical methods and contents to the circumstances of his time; with his treatises on logic and rhetoric, he also facilitated the diffusion of the ideas of Peter Ramus in Spain, until an investigation by the Inquisition resulted in an order to confiscate Ramus's books. Imbued with a deep and modern rationalism, El Brocense sought to discover the causes of things, as he himself indicates in his Minerva, a grammatical treatise of enormous impact, and thanks to which he acquired a great scientific reputation. Due to his disdain for scholasticism and his stubbornness in the defense of truth, El Brocense endured two inquisitorial prosecutions, in 1584 and in 1593, which eventually resulted in his death in 1600, while still under house arrest. El Brocense's deep knowledge of classical civilization can be appreciated in the commentaries that he published, on both ancient as well as modern authors. The former include the commentaries on 73

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I lorace's Ars poetica, Virgil's Bucolics and the Satires of Persius; the latter include, on the one hand, commentaries written on poetic works in Spanish (Juan de Mena and Garcilaso de la Vega); and, on the other hand, commentaries on Latin poems (Politian's Siluae and the Emblems of Alciato). This type of commentary, belonging to a tradition that dates back to Servius and passes through the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, consists generally of scholia and erudite notes that reveal sources, clarify the meaning of texts, and give information on different aspects of antiquity. In 1573, then, the commentaries of El Brocense on Alciato's emblems issued from the presses of Rouille (Rovillius). The nature of these commentaries (consisting basically of a search for sources), their scientific ends, the clear and concise manner in which El Brocense expresses himself, as well as the early date of publication of the work, earn a privileged place for El Brocense's commentaries among the group of commentaries dedicated to the work of Alciato. This is evidenced by the fact that Thuilius, in admiration of the keen wit of El Brocense (Alciato 1621, VIII), included in his Padua edition of 1621 the commentaries of El Brocense along with those of Claude Mignault, Lorenzo Pignoria (already included in the Padua edition of 1618) as well as his own, in order to produce what was, and continues to be, the principal edition of the commentaries on Alciato (cf. Thuilius/Tozzi 1621; Thuilius/Frambotti 1661).] What is more, the repercussions of El Brocense's commentaries on Alciato were much greater than authors such as Sanchez Perez (1974, 66-67) believe, since the commentaries of El Brocense —although perhaps in an indirect way — were disseminated to the Spanish and European public by way of those of his disciple, Diego Lopez, as well as by means of Thuilius's collection. Our understanding of Alciato's Emblems has increased greatly and, fortunately, so too has our awareness of their diffusion among the Spanish humanists of the sixteenth century. 2 Nevertheless, a number

1. And we are perhaps indebted to El Brocense, among other things, for rescuing the emblem Adversus naturam peccantes, which had disappeared since the 1548 edition of Alciato, whose text he included in his commentaries and which Thuilius then recuperated in his 1621 edition, probably following El Brocense. 2. Menendez Pelayo 1953, IV, 202-03; Ledda 1970,40-41; Sanchez Perez 1977, 67-68; Campa 1990, *A12; Selig 1990; Blaya and Ortega 1990, 267-70. See also more recent studies by Infantes (1996); and Talavera (1996a and 1996b).

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of important aspects remain to be clarified to shed some light on problems that scholars are still working to solve. For this reason we wish to call attention to the scholia, or explanatory notes, that Francisco Sanchez, El Brocense, penned for Alciato's Emblems. More specifically, we are interested in examining the date of composition of these scholia in order to establish a terminus ante quern. It is well known that the commentaries of El Brocense were published in Lyon in 1573, and issued from the presses of G. Rouille (Rovillius). It is also well established that these annotations were written some years earlier, as evidenced by the remarks by the printer in his preliminary epistle, in a passage cited and studied previously by other scholars (Alciato 1573, 3; cf. Talavera 1996b, 446). A reading, then, of El Brocense's explanatory notes for Politian's Siluae will allow us to establish a terminus ante quern for the dating of the scholia for Alciato's Emblems, and perhaps a hypothesis as well about the existence of an earlier, first version of the commentary on Alciato. In any case, whether or not this hypothesis is sustainable, we are faced with the first commentary elaborated by El Brocense, the one that inaugurated a long and distinguished career as an annotator, and which includes, after Alciato, such figures as Politian, Garcilaso de la Vega, and Juan de Mena, among his modern contemporaries, and Horace, Virgil, Mela, and Ausonius, among the ancients.

The EmblemataAlciati El Brocense

in the Siluae Politiani (1554) Annotated by

Leaving aside less evident traces that doubtless merit further study, we will limit our current efforts to demonstrating the explicit presence of the Emblemata Alciati in the explanatory notes to the Politiani Siluae, first published in 1554.3 Let us first briefly review those scholia that allude explicitly to the existence of one of El Brocense's commentaries on the Emblemata Alciati. In the process, we will also cite the pertinent emblem, according to the edition of the commentary published by El Brocense in 1573.

3. Angeli Politiani Syluae (Nutricia, Rusticus, Manto, Ambra), poema quidem obscurum sed nouis nunc scholiis illustratum per Franciscum Sanctium Brocensem (Salmanca: Portonaris, 1554). Further references will follow this format: Pol. 1554. On this work, see Merino 1996.

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a) Nutricia, 5: Nondum Caucasea pendens de rape Prometheus |. . . And Prometheus before being bound to the rock of Caucasus.] Under the epigraph Prometheus we read in the commentary (Pol. 1554, 100): Iapeti ex Clymene filius, ut testat Hesiod in Teogonia. Significat "prudentem hominem," nam dicitur a "pro," id est, "ante," et "methos," "consilium." Promethei fabulam, quia trita est et nos de illo multa diximus in Scholiis emblematum, hie consulto praetermittimus breuitati studentes. [Son of Japetus and Clymene, as Hesiod attests in the Theogony. It means "prescient man," since his name is composed of "pro," that is to say, "before," and "methos," "deliberation." I have deliberately omitted here, for the sake of brevity, the fable of Prometheus, because it is very well known and I have already spoken abundantly on Prometheus in the scholia to the Emblems.] The familiar story of the punishment of Prometheus is related extensively in the commentary on emblem 102 {Quae supra nos, nihil ad nos) in the edition that El Brocense published in 1573. We cannot know the extent to which the printed version of 1573 followed the edition utilized by El Brocense in 1554. The most we can do is analyze the way in which the scholia contained in the commentary on Politian's verse of 1554 found expression in the commentary on Alciato in 1573. To this end, then, we should first note that the reference to the Theogony of Hesiod is maintained, although nothing is mentioned with respect to the progenitors of Prometheus. In addition, the evidence of Hesiod is accompanied by other sources that the commentary draws from directly.4 Towards the end of the scholium, El Brocense also relates Prometheus to prudentia, and repeats the etymological analysis in different terms. In so far as the rest 4.

"Promethei fabulam narrat Hesiodus late in Theogonia, tangit in Georgica. Sed illam latius prosequitur Iulius Higynus in Poetico Astronomico" [In the Theogony Hesiod relates in detail the fable of Prometheus; he also touches upon it in The Works and the Days. Nevertheless, Julius Hyginus develops it more amply in his Poeticon Astronomicum] (Alciato 1573, Mayans, 206). He also mentions Lucian, Aristides, Erasmus, Plutarch, Servius, and Pliny.

77 is concerned, the discrepancies observed are not sufficient to con­ clude that the commentary on emblem 102 had two different ver­ sions: rather, the opposite is true. It is logical that in his explication of the verse of Politian he would introduce some notes that were not present in the commentary from which he borrows. This could ex­ plain the reference to Japetus. Nevertheless, the explication of the Greek meaning of the name Prometheus does not seem to be a note that is exclusive to Politian's commentary. Surely it is not an original ob­ servation either. We must, indeed, consider the possibility that El Brocense is imitating what Erasmus stated in his adage Malo accepto stultus sapit [Trouble experienced makes a fool wise]. 5 It is also logi­ cal to assume that in the commentary on the emblems of 1573 he was thinking of this verse by Politian, which doubtless inspired Alciato, as well as of another penned by Martial, which El Brocense omits from his commentary on Politian not, we believe, because he was un­ aware of it, but simply because it was already quoted in other explan­ atory notes to which he alludes. 6 This verse, which no doubt inspired both Politian and Alciato, could not have been unknown to El Brocense, if we recall that Martial is cited with some degree of fre­ quency in the commentary on Politian. 7 In any event, it is incontro­ vertible that prior to 1554, El Brocense had already completed his commentary on Alciato's Emblem 102. Several verses later, also in Nutricia, Politian mentions Prome­ theus once more, evoking another aspect of the myth: MERINO and URENA

. . . tuque, о consulte Prometheu, qui tenuem liquidis ignem furatus ab astris mirantem frustra Satyrum captumque decoro lumine, ne flammae daret oscula blanda, monebas. [. . . You too, prescient Prometheus, who after stealing a fragment of fire from the brilliant stars, on seeing that a sa5. Adagia, I.i.31. The adage quoted is also mentioned by El Brocense in Alciato 1573, 210.

6.

"Caucasia aeternum pendens in rupe Prometheus" [Prometheus chained for­ ever to the rock of Caucasus . . . (Alciato 1573, 308; emblem 102, v. 1). Martial's text reads: "Qualiter in Scythica religatus rupe Prometheus" [Like Prometheus, chained to the Scythian rock] (Alciato 1573, 311).

7.

Pol. 1554: 141, 166, 168, 175, 181 and 199.

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ly г, rapt by the beauty of the light, displayed an absurd ad­ miration through the flames, you advised him not to kiss it.] (Pol. Nutricia, 202-05) El Brocense's scholium contains, in the first place, an exegetical note, 8 followed by a passage from Pomponius Mela (De situ orbis, 3,10; Ma­ yans, 593), which, in the opinion of El Brocense, should be placed in re­ lationship to Politian's text, since it explains the behavior of the Satyr before the fire. He ends the scholium with a passage from Pliny which reminds us that Delus receives the nickname Pyrpile because fire was discovered there (Pol. 1554, 105-06). To all this we must add the evi­ dence cited in the Retractatio quorundam locorum. This Retractatio was composed, in the final analysis, in order to emend errors and to incor­ porate new sources in addition to those already mentioned in the body of the scholium (Merino 1996, 416). As for the scholium that we have been analyzing, El Brocense cites a passage from Plutarch which explains, better than any other, Politian's reference to the Satyr in Nutricia: "Plutharcus, De utilitate capienda ab inimicis: Satyro, inquit, primo ignem conspicanti illumque complecti et deosculari uolenti Prometheus dixit: Hirce, mentum quidem dolebis, urit enim si quis attingat/" [In de utilitate capienda ab inimicis Plutarch related that Prometheus told the satyr who saw fire for the first time and wanted to embrace and kiss it: "satyr, your beard is going to hurt, for all who touch the flame get burned/'] (Pol. 1554, 195). Plutarch's text, from which Politian took direct inspiration, was un­ known to El Brocense initially, that is to say, when he was composing the first set of scholia. Nevertheless, before the work was published he had time to add the text to the Retractatio. In the 1573 commentary on emblem 102 the testimonies of P. Mela and Pliny do not appear; rather, we find the explanatory note enunciated in a slightly different form.9 8.

"Ideo Prometheus dictus est ignem coelestem induxisse terris, quod rhetoricen et poesin docuerit et Assyrios astrologiam, quam in Caucaso speculatus fuerat" [Therefore it is said that Prometheus descended to the land of celestial fire, be­ cause he had taught the Assyrians rhetoric, poetry and astrology, which he had learned by observing the firmament in the Caucasus] (Pol. 1554, 105-06).

9.

"Servius Grammaticus in Sileno Virgili aliam allegoriam huius fabulae affert et quae magis fortasse quadret nostro huic emblemati. Prometeum Assyriis astrologiam indicasse, quam in monte Caucaso diutina obseruatione deprehenderat..." [The grammarian Servius in Virgil's Silenus gives another al­ legorical explication of this fable, which perhaps fits our emblem better: that

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Neither do we find the passage by Plutarch, which is of course logical if we bear in mind that Alciato's epigram does not refer at all to the episode of the satyr. What is more, in his commentary on this emblem, El Brocense does include another reference from Plutarch that is indeed pertinent to an understanding of Alciato's verse (Alciato 1573,310). In the second edition of the Politiani Siluae cum scholiis the explication of verse 5 of the Nutricia disappears. 10 Nevertheless, the explication of this very same verse 202 of the Siluae and those following it is maintained. It is here that Politian refers explicitly to Prometheus. The explication of material relating to Prometheus in this second version of the commentary on Politian is found in the respective scholia for verses 202 and 204 of the Nutricia. Nothing of what was included in the scholium to verse 5 in the 1554 version is kept here, not even the reference to the Emblemata Alciati. On the other hand, everything pertaining to verse 202 and those following it in the first edition, reappears in 1596, though partially modified and augmented. In fact, the explanatory note that opens the scholium is maintained, with its text only minimally retouched (Pol. 1596; Mayans, 424). There follow texts from two other authors, Lucian and the commentator of Apollonius of Rhodes, not mentioned in the first version. Next comes a generic quotation (Sunt qui dicant) and a reference to the Problemata Aphrodisei (Vide etiam . . .), also absent from the first version. Thus ends the scholium to verse 202. The scholium to verse 204 begins with the text of Plutarch previously cited, doubtless because it explains Politian's reference to the Satyr better than any other (Pol. 1596, Mayans, 424 and 425). This is followed by the testimonies of Mela and Pliny, the former repeated verbatim and the latter partially corrected. It is reasonable to speculate that the presence of new sources makes reference to the Emblemata Alciati unnecessary.

Prometheus taught the Assyrians astrology that he had learned on Mount Caucasus thanks to a prolonged observation . . .] (Alciato 1573, 311).

10. Here, he does no more than announce his later opinion: De Themide et Prometheo, postea [On Themis and Prometheus, see below]. We quote from G. Mayans's edition of F. Sanchez, Opera omnia. Tomus secundus, 329-516, Geneva: de Tournes, 1766 (rpt. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1985). The text is found on p. 409, at the end of the scholium to verse 4. (henceforth: Pol. 1596).

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b) Nutricia, 211: moxque Lycaonias Pan carmine lerruit umbras. [And then Pan terrorized the Laconian shadows with his verse.] Under the epigraph Moxque Lycaonias we read in the scholium: De Pane non pauca diximus in scholiis emblematum. Quod Pani fuerunt aliquando uaticinia, ex Pausania liquet in Arcadicis: A p u d Pana, inquit, ignis incenditur, qui n u n q u a m d e l e a t u r . Dicitur idem d e u s olim fuisse uaticinatus et responsa dedisse per Eratonem nympham, quum Areas Calystus filius uxorem duxit. Panem inter uates memorat Statius, ut statim subiiciemus. [I have said not a few things about Pan in the scholia to the emblems. That on some occasion Pan gave oracles is clear from the books on Arcadia by Pausanias: "In the temple of Pan —he says —there burns a flame that is never extin­ guished. It is said that at some time in the past this god was consulted and that he answered through the mouth of the nymph Erato, during her marriage to Areas, son of Callisto," Statius recalls Pan among the prophets, as we will immediately see.] (Pol. 1554, 109) In two of Alciato's emblems El Brocense alludes directly to Pan: number 97 {Vis naturae) and number 122 {In subitum terrorem) (Alciato 1573, 293 and 363, respectively). In emblem 97, which is familiar to us in the version published in 1573, El Brocense utilizes multiple sources to provide abundant information on the god Pan. In emblem 122, on the other hand, the commentary is more rudimentary and derives es­ sentially from Erasmus's explication of the adage Panici casus and from Chapter 28 of Politian's own Miscellanea}1 In any event, there is no explicit reference to the testimonies of Pausanias and Statius in the explication of the two emblems, nor is there any mention of the nymph Erato. This circumstance is easily explained, since what El Brocense wrote in 1554 is pertinent to the explication of Politian's verse, but not to the explication of those by Alciato. However, in the second version of the commentary on Politian, that was published in 1596, the explication of the verse spills over into two scholia. The first, with the epigraph Moxque Lycaonias, reproduces the 11. Adagia, III.vii.3. El Brocense cites it thus: Panici terrores.

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note published in 1554, although with some modifications of both the content and manner of expression. 12 Pausanias is cited again, although the reference to eternal fire, hardly pertinent to the explication of Politian's verse, disappears. Neither do we find the reference to the nymph Erato and her marriage to Areas, grandson of Lycaon, which was adduced previously in order to explain that the expression Lycaonias umbras alludes to Arcadia. Immediately following, with the epigraph terruit umbras, he explains that Politian is alluding to the adage Panici terrores, and he refers the reader back to Alciato's emblem 122 for further information. 13 The existence of two scholia in the second version of the commentary on Politian, or to express it in a different way, the absence in the first version of the explicit reference to Alciato's emblem 122, does not imply that El Brocense had not already annotated this emblem, or that he may have drafted his commentary without being familiar with the adage explained by Erasmus. This hypothesis is quite improbable, since in the commentary on the emblem as we know it from 1573, El Brocense bases himself on two sources that he already seems to know very well in 1554: the Adagia of Erasmus and Politian's Miscellanea.14 Nor is there any reason to speculate that the content of the scholium for emblem 122 was somehow gathered from the commentary on emblem 97, or vice versa. In our opinion, the commentary on both emblems was already finished before 1554, and in the case of number 122, the explication probably did not deviate significantly from what we find published in 1573. The duplication of the scholium that appears in 1596 is easily explained by the lack of haste

12. Pol. 1596; Mayans, 427-28.

13. Pol. 1596; Mayans, 42: "de quo prouerbio diximus in Emblematis, ad illud: Effuso cernens, caet." 14. / / ... Vide adagium Panici casus, et Politianum, in Miscellaneis, cap. 28, ubi multa et pulchra de hac re citantur testimonia" (Pol. 1596; Mayans, 428). Politian's Miscellanea are quoted 12 times in Pol. 1554: pp. 102 (ch. 89), 103 (ch. 14), 109 (ch. 52), 119 (ch. 80), 141 (ch. 11 and 24), 143 (ch. 35), 153 (ch. 17), 172 (ch. 11), 174 (ch. 100) and 193 (ch. 80 and 75). All these loci, except the first (ch. 89), are kept in the version of 1596, which also adds two more (ch. 15, to verse 474 of Nutricia, and ch. 10 to verse 679 of Nutricia). The Adagia of Erasmus are quoted at least 20 times in the commentary on Pol. 1554: 99, 130,135,136,144, 156, 157, 160,174, 175,184,185, 187 and 194.

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in the composition of the work, and, as a consequence, by its being a more rigorous piece of scholarship. c) Nutricia, 238-40: . . . Quisque alto in melle necatum restituit luci, quo nuper uixerat anguis gramine Minoum Dictaeo carcere Glaucum? [. . . Who brought back to life the son of Minos, Glaucus, who had drowned in honey, by giving him the herb which shortly before had resuscitated a serpent in the prison of Crete?] With the epigraph Quisque alto in melle necatum, El Brocense alerts the reader that this fabula had already been explained in the annotations to the Emblems, but that he did not mind repeating it in order to increase the size of the book. 15 Although El Brocense does not say it explicitly, the excuse adduced imitates one of Martial's epigrams, in which the Latin poet makes fun of those who repeat a Homeric expression in order to give their work intellectual density (Martial, Ep. 1,45). El Brocense appropriates Martial's humor by offering an excuse that contradicts what was said in other references to the Emblemata. In effect, El Brocense invites one to read the scholia to Alciato in order to discover in them a more extensive explication. In this respect it is very significant that the first reference to Alciato's commentary should go hand in hand with the explicit desire to be brief in the explanation of the Siluae.u Thus, the humanist's preoccupation with the length of his commentary, and with a fair assessment of the effort undertaken, is evident. However, in this context, with no precedent in the rest of the notes to the Siluae, we cannot take literally the excuse given for repeating the story of Glaucus.

15. "Posueramus hanc fabulam in annotationibus in Emblemata, sed non iniucundum fuerit illam hie iterum inculcare, ne charta inter digitos propter breuitatem delabatur aut, ut inquit ille, dicatur potius ton d'apameibomenos" [I have placed this fable in the annotations to the Emblems, but it will not be burdensome to repeat it here, so that the book does not slip through the fingers due to its brevity, or, as the fomer asserts, let the Homeric expression say itbetter: ton d'apameibomenos] (Pol. 1554, 119-20).

16. Cf. "hie consulto praetermittimus breuitati studentes . . ." [Here, for the sake of brevity, I have deliberately omitted...] (Pol. 1554, 100).

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On Ihr other h a n d , it is n o t e w o r t h y that this is the only case in which I«l Brocense calls his c o m m e n t a r i e s on the e m b l e m s annotal tones and not scholia. The use of the term annotationes instead of scholium is not a coincidence. The h u m a n i s t alerts us to the fact that in t he explication of Alciato's text he has gone b e y o n d w h a t is n o r m a l l y ex pected from a scholiast, in accordance with the c o n t e m p o r a r y docIrine on exegetical genres. 1 7 In our opinion, the m o s t plausible explanation for the repetition of the scholium lies in the established fact that the story of G l a u c u s , son of Minos, is more p e r t i n e n t to the commentary of the Siluae t h a n to that of the Emblemata. In a n o t h e r study we have d e f e n d e d El Brocense's publication of a c o m m e n t a r y on the text of Politian's Siluae, as a proof of the philological labor and of the vast e r u d i t i o n of a y o u n g m a n aspiring to be a professor at the University of Salamanca (Merino 1996, 415-22). Surely, the c o m m e n t a r y on Alciato's Emblems is not u n r e l a t e d to this p u r p o s e because, in truth, the story is necessary for the explication of Politian's text, but not so for the scholium to Alciato. In fact, the text to e m b l e m 26 (Gramen) alludes explicitly to another Glaucus, a fisherman from A n t h e d o n w h o w a s a son of Polybus. 1 8 While c o m p o s i n g the commentary on Alciato, prior to 1554, El Brocense w a s already familiar with the existence of these t w o Glaucuses, the sons of Polybus and of Minos, a n d he w a s certainly also aware of a third, the son of Sisyphus. All three a p p e a r in the c o m m e n t a r y on the Emblems of 1573 (116-17), with the barely e n u n c i a t e d excuse of their h o m o n y m y . But, as we know, Alciato's e p i g r a m alludes only to Glaucus the fisherman, son of Polybus, of w h o m it is said that he w a s t r a n s f o r m e d into a god after eating grass. The digression on the other G l a u c u s e s in the c o m m e n tary on the Emblems can be explained by the h u m a n i s t ' s desire to display eruditely a good k n o w l e d g e of classical mythology. This same p u r p o s e and, above all, the i n d i s p u t a b l e fact t h a t the elucidation of Glaucus, son of Minos, is necessary in Politian's text but not in Alciato's is w h a t explains the inclusion of a story a l r e a d y related elsew h e r e . On the other h a n d , the repetition of the fabula m u s t h a v e also been influenced by the confession that E r a s m u s m a k e s in the adage, Glaucus comesa herba habitat in mari. I n d e e d , this a d a g e includes the

17. For further information, see Merino 1992,187-96, 227-32; and Chaparro and Merino 1994, 529-41. 18. Alciato 1573, 112; emblem 26, vv. 5-6: "Saturno Martique sacrum, quo Glaucus adeso / Polybides, factus creditur esse deus."

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story of Glaucus the fisherman, son of Polybus, and protagonist of a fabula that was so well known that Erasmus admits to repeating it in order to avoid being accused of ignorance. 19 With respect to this last argument, it is true that in the first version of the commentary on the Siluae there is no mention of the adage by Erasmus, not even in the note to verse 231 of the Nutricia, where El Brocense points out the allusion to a fisherman Glaucus who, according to Pausanias, wound up metamorphosed into a sea deity (Pol. 1554,115). It could perhaps be the case that a clear distinction between the three Glaucuses was still not evident to El Brocense, and for that reason he did not relate the Glaucus of Alciato's emblem to that of verse 231 of the Nutricia. Nevertheless, we believe that it is hardly probable that El Brocense was unaware of Erasmus's adage because, among other reasons, the name of Glaucus appears specifically cited in the indices of the work. What is more, Alciato's commentary, published in 1573, alludes not only to Erasmus's adage, but also to Ovid and to the Commentator Apollonii. In contrast, the second version of the commentary on the Siluae repeats the evidence of Pausanias and, among other sources, refers the reader to the commentary on emblem 26, entitled Gramen,20 for further information on the other Glaucuses. In our opinion, the presence in 1596 of the reference to Alciato's emblem in the commentary on verse 231, and its repetition seven lines later, is an effort to correct the haste with which the humanist composed the first version of his commentary on the text of the Siluae. Whatever the case, the repetition of the story of Glaucus offers us important evidence for appreciating the relation between the commentary on Alciato fashioned in 1554 and the one published in 1573. In substance, the two texts are the same, although there are stylistic changes. These changes are of several types: — Alteration of word order in sentences (persequeretur murem I murem persequeretur),21 {cum fieri posse regaret I cum regaret posse fieri). — Additions of propositions (quaererent quibus I quaererent Apollinem sciscitati sunt de puero, quibus), or of words (uociferarentur in monumento I uociferarentur intus in monumento), also with a change in

19. Adagia, IV.L.63.

20. Pol. 1596; Mayans, 438. He cites Philostratus, Ovid, Diodorus, and Apollinius of Rhodes as sources that must be consulted. 21. We quote first from the text of 1554 and then from that of 1573.

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tin* order (Ncc sic ctiam I Sed nee ctiam sic) {uaticinandi artem I artem iinliciriamli illam). — Simple s u p p r e s s i o n s {quo accepto augurio I accepto augurio) {iussit aperiri turn I iussit aperiri). — C h a n g e s in the n o m i n a l m o r p h o l o g y : {cui rei in agris I cui rei in ngro) and in the verbal {cum superuenisset I cum superueniret). — Substitution of one w o r d for another with an equivalent m e a n ing (filium restituet Ifilium reddet); also w i t h a change in the order {primum album existere I primo esse album), {Turn Minos ex Apollinis responso in quit I Tunc Minos ait ex Apollinis responso)) substitution, accompanied by the omission of a n o t h e r w o r d {cui Minos corpori ait inuento nunc I cui Minos corpori inquit inuento)', a n d the use of an equivalent expression {Minos autem ad monstri solutionem I Minos autem ad monstri aenigma soluendum). It is possible that these changes are d u e to the u s e of different editions of Tzetzes or of H y g i n u s which are, at this point, El Brocense's sources (see also Glaucus poto melle resurrexit [Glaucus d r a n k honey and came back to life], E r a s m u s , Adagia, II.vii.32), or they may be d u e to a simple r e r e a d i n g of the passage in its original Greek. However, from the p o i n t of view of the content, it is clear that the story of this Glaucus w a s fixed prior to 1554, in the first version of El Brocense's c o m m e n t a r y on the Emblems. The differences that we have pointed o u t b e t w e e n the text of 1554 {Politiani Siluae) a n d that of 1573 {Emblemata Alciati) could also exist b e t w e e n the text of 1554 and the first version of the c o m m e n t a r y on Alciato. Nevertheless, we think that in 1554 El Brocense faithfully r e p r o d u c e d the c o m m e n t a r y on Alciato that he w a s utilizing at the time, with a story of Glaucus elaborated from the Latin translation by Tzetzes and the text of the fables of H y g i n u s . Surely, prior to publishing the scholia to Alciato in 1573, El Brocense r e t o u c h e d the translation in order to give it a p u r e r and more correct m a n n e r of expression. 2 2

22. This is similar to what he did years later, based on what can be gleaned from the manuscript notes that El Brocense left in a copy of the commentary to the Emblemas of 1573 and which is housed in the Biblioteca General of the University of Salamanca [1/33510]. In this copy we find in manuscript version the unpublished commentary on the emblem Desidia which we reproduce below: Desidia EMBLEMA LXXXI Desidet in Modio Esseus, speculatur et astra Subtus et accensam contegit igne facem

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We can c o n c l u d e , then, I hat in the explication of emblem 26, in the version of the scholia to the e m b l e m s elaborated by El Brocense before 1554, the distinction between the three Glaucuses was clear, at least with regard to the respective sons of Polybus a n d Minos. A l t h o u g h it is not certain, it seems logical to s u p p o s e that El Brocense had identi­ fied the G l a u c u s , son of a fisherman in Nutricia 231, as the Glaucus, son of Polybus, that Alciato m e n t i o n s , a l t h o u g h he does not say so ex­ plicitly, d u e either to his haste or indolence. The second version of the c o m m e n t a r y on Politian e m e n d s this omission several years later, p r o p o s i n g a r e a d i n g of the c o m m e n t a r y on Alciato with reference to the two verses of Politian. d) Nutricia, 342 a n d 343: sic ueterum illustres flagranti obscurat honores / lampade Maeonides [Just as Maeonides with his brilliant torch ob­ scures the m e r i t s of the ancients.] U n d e r the e p i g r a p h Maeonides El Brocense i n t r o d u c e s the follow­ ing c o m m e n t a r y : Homer us, a patria Maeonia sine, quod uerius est, a Maeone, quifratrisfiliam ingrauidauit, ex qua natus est Homerus, ut latins in Emblematum Scholiis diximus [Homer, a native of Maeonia, or w h a t is more certain, the son of Maeon, w h o left his niece p r e g n a n t , from w h o m H o m e r w a s born, as we have related m o r e a m p l y in the scholia to the Emblems; Pol. 1554,128]. El Brocense is a l l u d i n g to the scholium to emblem 4 (In Deo laetandum), w h e r e he explains that the Maeonius senex to w h o m Alciato refers is n o n e other than H o m e r , w h e t h e r it is Segnities specie recti uelata cuculo, Non se, non alios utilitate iuuat. "De Essaeis siue Essenis agit Iosephus in Antiquitati(us) et Philo Iudaeus. Eusebius de praeparat(ione) Euang(elica) lib(ro) 9, cap(itulo) 1. Cael(ius) Rodig(inus) et Solinus. "Subtus et accensam) Nihil inuidiosum magis, quam lumen suum nolle uicinus communicare, contre illud Ennianum: Homo, qui With these additions and other manuscript notes present in the copy, El Brocense corrects the textual errors and adds to the information on sources and other issues, whether for his own use or for some acquaintance, or thinking per­ haps of a subsequent edition (see Ureha 2002). In any event, a second edition never saw the light, due in great measure to the influence that the first edition (1571) of the commentaries of CI. Mignault (Mlnois) had on the tradition of com­ mentaries on the emblems of Alciato. Subsequently the commentaries of El Brocense were spread through the collected editions of Thuillius/Tozzi (1621) and Thuilius/Frambotti (1661).

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because he was born in Maeonia or because he w a s a son of Maeon (Alciato 1573, 27). The t w o h y p o t h e s e s a p p e a r in the s a m e order and are given equal credit, since the expression quod uerius est has been omitted. In the second version of the c o m m e n t a r y on the Siluae we find a similar declaration, again w i t h o u t leaning m o r e t o w a r d s either one of the t w o i n t e r p r e t a t i o n s (Pol. 1596; M a y a n s , 451). It seems clear that in 1596 El Brocense modified the note c o m p o s e d in 1554 very little, limiting himself to s u p p r e s s i n g the expression quod uerius est. In any event, it is not at all risky to p r e s u m e that the first version of the c o m m e n t a r y on Alciato, prior to 1554, h a d a content similar to that printed in 1573, a n d to that of the t w o versions of Politian, coinciding in the first of these in the greater authority c o n c e d e d to the testimony of Plutarch, according to w h o m H o m e r o w e s his s u r n a m e of M a e o n i u s to the n a m e of Maeon, his father. e) Nutricia, 351 a n d 3 5 2 : . . . Liuor tandem et Sandalion ausus carpere, cum dominam asseruit sua forma Dionen [... Finally, Envy h a d to criticize the sandal of Dione, because her b e a u t y spoke in defense of him w h o placed it on her foot]. Once again, the scholium is brief, since it s e n d s the r e a d e r back to the Emblems of Alciato: Vide hoc latissime in p r o u e r b i o Momo satisfacere. Dionen, id est, Venerem, q u a e filia fuit Diones, sed a l i q u a n d o Dione capitur p r o Venere, ut latius in Scholiis Emblematum demostrauimus. [Look at this mo,re extensively in t h e p r o v e r b Momo satisfacere. To Dione, that is to say, to Venus, w h o w a s the d a u g h t e r of Dione, nevertheless at times she is m i s t a k e n for Venus, as we have d e m o n s t r a t e d m o r e a m p l y in the scholia to the Emblems]. (Pol. 1554, 128 a n d 129) The emblem that El Brocense alludes to is n u m b e r 9 in the 1573 edition (Fidei symbolum). Here it is explained that Venus w a s the third d a u g h t e r of Jupiter a n d Dione, and m a n y e x a m p l e s are a d d u c e d of poets w h o recall Venus with the n a m e of her mother. A m o n g the verses q u o t e d to this effect, the c o m m e n t a r y of Alciato includes those of Nutricia 351 a n d 352 (Alciato 1573, 49).

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On the other hand, in the 1596 commentary on the Siluae, El Brocense substantially reduces this part of the note, directing the reader to the commentary on the emblems. 23 Instead, the reference to Momus merits a greater development here, which includes several sources: Hesiod, Ovid, the adage Momo satisfacere, and a text by Philostratus which, according to El Brocense, directly inspired Politian.24 As is logical, none of this appears in the 1573 Alciato, since it bears no relation to the text of the emblem. In conclusion, the commentary on the Siluae of 1554 demonstrates that the reference to Venus in emblem 9 had been noticed and commented on prior to 1554, in a first version of the commentary on the Emblems which must have been similar to, if not identical with, that published in 1573. The novelties of the 1596 Politian have nothing to do with an improved knowledge of Alciato's text, but rather with a deeper study of the sources of the Nutricia, although we cannot assert that such a study was concluded after 1573. f) Nutricia, 384: . . . laurumque uiro uocemque dedere [. . . and they conceded to him the laurel and the gift of eloquence.]. The scholium reads: Multa diximus de lauro in Scholiis Emblematum. Hie tantum illud repeto, poetas uocari solitos "daphnephagous," id est, lauro uescentes, quia laurus uaticinii prae se fert symbolum et ideo Apollini sacra est. Vnde dixit Iuuenalis: Laurumque momordit. [I have said much about the laurel in the scholium to the Emblems. Here I will only repeat this: that poets tend to be called daphnephagoi, that is to say, that they eat laurel, since laurel by itself symbolizes the ability to prophesy and

23. "Dione fuit Veneris mater sed pro ipsa Venere saepius accipitur. Vide Scholia ad Emblemata" [Dione was the mother of Venus, but she is often confused with Venus herself. See the scholia to the emblems] (Pol. 1596; Mayans, 452). 24. As we have shown, under the epigraph Momo satisfacere, et similia [To satisfy Momus, and the like], the Collected Works of Erasmus. 31: 448-50 (I. v.74), gathers the sources utilized by El Brocense.

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therefore it is consecrated to Apollo. For this reason Juvenal said: "and he chewed laurel," ]. (Pol. 1554, 134) In fact, El Brocense speaks of the laurel in emblem 210, the penultimate of those published in 1573. In reality, he does not say as much as the expression multa diximus would seem to give hope for, but in general, what is said here coincides with the text from 1554, including Juvenal's testimony (Alciato 1573, 557). In the second version of the commentary on the Siluae, El Brocense reproduces the note of 1554 practically in its entirety. He modifies the composition of some expressions and he adds only one conclusion about the meaning of Politian's verses (Pol. 1596; Mayans, 456). All of this indicates that the scholium to emblem 210 elaborated before 1554 coincided in great measure, if it was not identical, with that published in 1573. Had an important change been introduced from one version to the other, it would have been somehow reflected in the scholium to the Silvae of 1596. g) Nutricia, 451: indulgens tamen usque sibi, nampraeditusacrinimirum ingenio, aciem putat esse decoram carminis . . . [Nevertheless, always indulgent with himself because he was endowed with an extraordinarily acute talent, he considers the composition of his verses to be elegant.] After the epigraph Indulgens tamen we read: "Hoc sumpsit ex Seneca in libro 2 Delcamationum, quod in nostris schholiis atigimus" [He took it from the second book of Seneca's Declamationes, as we have indicated in our scholia] (Pol. 1554,142).This is the only case in which the term scholium is not linked to an emblem in El Brocense's allusion. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that here too he is quoting from his commentary on Alciato's Emblems, as we will soon see. This circumstance makes it quite evident that the scholia to Alciato are the only ones that El Brocense had elaborated at the time that he was annotating Politian's verses. In the commentary on emblem 12 (Non uulganda consilia), El Brocense introduces a passage from Seneca the Elder, which explains Alciato's text and which also served to inspire Politian (Alciato 1573, 61). The brevity of the note does not allow us to draw any conclusion other than the certainty that by 1554 El Brocense had already elaborated the commentary on Alciato's emblem 12.

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In 1596 Ml Brocense again alludes to Alciato's commentary, with the explicit mention of the title of the emblem, and he succinctly reproduces the text by Seneca that inspired Politian. Now, as before, it seems logical to assume that the content and expression of the scholium to emblem 12, at least in so far as this source is concerned, probably did not vary substantially, if at all, between the two versions, the one prior to 1554 and that published in 1573. Had it not been thus, this circumstance would not have been reflected in the commentary on the Siluae of 1596. h) Nutricia, 656 and 657: Pluraque Palladiae quondam impendistis Athenae, dum scena Oedipoden pauidumque agitatis Orestem. [With your representations of Oedipus and of horrified Orestes you have aggrandized immensely the prestige of Athens, city of Pallas.] On this occasion El Brocense's note could not be more concise: "Oedipodis historiam copiose in Scholiis Emblematum narrauimus" [We dealt abundantly with the fable of Oedipus in the scholia to the Emblems]. This is followed by an allusion to the two tragedies by Euripides translated into Latin by Diego Fernando, surely the brother of El Brocense and, at the time, also a professor at Salamanca. 25 But at the end, in the retractatio, he emends the note indicating that the works translated are not those of Euripides, but rather by Sophocles (Pol. 1554, 200). This circumstance, so surprising in another context, manifests the haste of the humanist in the preparation of the commentary on the Siluae. The story of Oedipus is gathered extensively in the scholium to emblem 187 (Submovendam ignorantiam; Alciato 1573, 516). Nevertheless, nothing is said about it in the second version of the commentary on the Siluae. Nor is there any mention of an emblem to which the interested reader can refer. The explanation for this absence should not be sought in a lapse by the commentator, but rather in the commonplace nature of the story itself.26 25. Pol. 1554,161-62. This Diego Fernando could well have been the author of a brief encomiastic poem that precedes the first edition of De arte dicendi liber unus (Salmanca, 1556).

26. Cf. Pol. 1596, Mayans, 488. El Brocense then affirms: "Orestis furiis nihil est magis tritum. Atrei et Thyestis fratrum epulas nullus est qui non legerit" [There is nothing more commonplace than the madnesses of Orestes. Everybody has

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i) Ambra, 229: Vosque, Etheoclea, —ni mendax fama— sorores misistis let us llorarum afonte corollas [You, too, sisters, if legend does not lie, gave to Eteocles wreaths gathered from the fountain of the I lours]. This is the last scholium in which El Brocense refers the reader to t he emblems of Alciato. It reads thus: Tres Gratiae siue Charites intelligit. Dicuntur autem Eteocleae, quia, ut ait Pausanias in Baeoticis, Eteocles primus Gratiis sacrificauit tresque illas esse constituit et nomina illis imposuit. De Gratiis multa diximus in Scholiis in Emblemata. [He speaks of the three Graces or Charities. He also calls them Eteoclean because, as Pausanias says in his books on Boeotia, Eteocles was the first to make a sacrifice to the Graces, and he who established their number, three; and he who gave them a name. We have dealt abundantly with the Graces in the scholia to the Emblems.] (Pol. 1554, 192) Doubtless, El Brocense is recalling the scholium to emblem 162 (Gratiae), where he speaks extensively of the three Graces. Nevertheless, he does not cite the earlier text of Pausanias in any of his annotations to the emblem in order to explain how Eteocles established the number and names of the Graces. The reference to Pausanias remains relegated to a final note, without explicit development. 27 This circumstance might be due to the fact that the testimony of Pausanias is the one that best explains Politian's verse, and more concretely, the term "Etheoclea" employed in Nutricia. Obligated to explain the surname of the Graces, El Brocense seems to linger on the testimony of Pausanias, which was not relevant in Alciato's text. In the second version of the commentary on the Siluae we find an almost literal repetition of the 1554 scholium. 28 In addition, the scholia to a verse from the Man to, in which Politian alludes to the Graces, coincide almost exactly.29 In 1554 El Brocense read about the banquets of the brothers Atreus and Thyestes].

27. "Multa de Gratiis Pausanias et Seneca . . . et multi alii" [Pausanias, Seneca anc many other authors have much on the Graces; Alciato 1573, 461].

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explains that Politian said "triplici d e x t r a " because the Graces are three in n u m b e r . H e then refers back to the c o m m e n t a r y on Ambra and e n d s by e x p l a i n i n g that iuuenalis and iuueniiis are practically the same (Pol. 1554, 182). In 1596 he repeats the entire scholium, b u t instead of citing Ambra he refers back to the e m b l e m s of Alciato. This does not m e a n that the c o m m e n t a r y on Alciato's e m b l e m 162 utilized in 1554 does not i n c l u d e the p e r t i n e n t explanation of the verse from Manto. Rather, w e m u s t r e m e m b e r the circumstances u n d e r which this first version of the c o m m e n t a r y on Politian w a s c o m p o s e d . Let us recall that the note to Ambra to which El Brocense a l l u d e s in 1554 includes a direct invitation to consult the c o m m e n t a r y on e m b l e m 162 a n d that it contains n o t h i n g that m i g h t directly allow u s to explain the verse from Manto. It a p p e a r s , then, that El Brocense, p r e s s e d by deadlines and eager to p u b l i s h the c o m m e n t a r y on Politian as soon as possible, w a s not a w a r e of h a v i n g referred directly back to the c o m m e n t a r y on the emblem, w i t h o u t h a v i n g to a l l u d e first to a r e a d i n g of the scholium to Ambra. In 1596 he confines himself to correcting this situa­ tion. CONCLUSIONS on the terminus

ante quern

1. In the first version of the c o m m e n t a r y on Politian's Siluae, elabo­ rated and p u b l i s h e d in 1554, El Brocense h a d at h a n d a c o m m e n t a r y on Alciato's emblems. 3 0 The scholia to the Politiani Siluae of 1554 dem­ onstrate that El Brocense h a d already a n n o t a t e d , at least, those em­ blems that w e r e p u b l i s h e d in 1573 w i t h the following n u m b e r s : 4, 9, 12, 26, 102, 122, 162, 187 a n d 210. 2. This c o m m e n t a r y p r o b a b l y did not differ m u c h from the one we find p u b l i s h e d in 1573, except for an expansion of the n u m b e r of sources b r o u g h t to bear a n d corrections in editing. O n this point the

28. The only difference is that "seu" is substituted for sine at the beginning of the note (Pol. 1596; Mayans, 509).

29. ". . . unde inclyta nectat/ serta comis triplici Iuuenalis gratia dextra" [From where the young Grace with her triple right hand weaves the illustrious crown] (Pol. Manto, 349 and 350; 1554, 182; and 1596, Mayans, 503).

30. We cannot pretend to know much about its nature. Naturally, we do not believe that it is the 1563 edition that Nicolas Antonio speaks of (Bibliotheca Hispana Noua siue Hispanorum Scriptorum ... tomus Primus (Madrid, 1783), 474), since it is prob­ ably a case of an erratum.

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comparison between what was said about Glaucus (emblem 26) in 1554 and 1573 is revealing. NOTE on the terminus post quern As a complement to the disquisition on the terminus ante quern, we offer here a brief reflection on the terminus post quern, based on the data at our disposal: 1. Andrea Alciato died in January of 1550. We believe that any ef­ fort to comment on the sources of the emblems must begin after Alciato's death since, alternately, the author of the emblems could have refuted the interpretations or denied that the texts mentioned by El Brocense were the sources of his compositions. Perhaps the news of the death of Alciato awakened in El Brocense a greater inter­ est in the character and work of the creator of the emblematic genre. We should not forget either that during the years in question El Brocense was beginning his professional career at the University of Salamanca and that this circumstance is not unrelated to the com­ mentary on Politian's Siluae and on Alciato's Emblems, texts which, for different reasons, and especially because there were no anteced­ ents to them, constitute an ideal tour de force for a young humanist aspiring to be a professor in the lecture halls of Salamanca. 2. As is well known, the definitive presentation of Alciato's corpus took place in the years 1550-51, with the editions of Rouille and Bonhomme, which are the first authorized and complete editions (211 emblems). 31 The order of the emblems in El Brocense's commentary of 1573 corresponds to that of these editions, except in the case of the emblems Amygdalus and Morus (In El Brocense's edition, emblems 208 and 209, respectively), which have their order reversed with re­ spect to the other editions, a circumstance that El Brocense explains in his scholium to Amygdalus: Hoc emblema praeposui того, пес sequutus sum ordinem pristinum [I placed this emblem before that ded­ icated to the morus without following the original order; Alciato 1573, 555).32 This suggests that El Brocense's commentary was based on an account of the emblems whose order coincided with that estab31. Emblemata D. A. Alciati denuo ab ipso Autore recognita . . . (Lyons: Guillaume Rouille, 1550;\DC 0-112); Emblemata D. A. Alciati denuo ab ipso Autore recognita . .. (Lyons: Mace Bonhomme, 1551).

32. Perhaps El Brocense considered Amygdalus thematically closer to Buxus, since the commentary to both speak of youths.

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lished in 1550-51, and, as is logical, not before. But in addition, among the emblems explained by El Brocense and cited in his commentaries on the Siluae Politiani of 1554, we have emblem 26 (Gramen), where we find the story of Glaucus related. This emblem appears for the first time, although in translation, in Daza's edition (1549), while the Latin text is found for the first time in Rouille's 1550 edition. 33 We can conclude, then, that the commentary on the emblems cited in Politian's Siluae (1554) was fashioned utilizing an edition of the emblems later than 1549. What is more, if we bear in mind everything that has been argued in this study of the very likely coincidence of the two versions of El Brocense's commentary on the emblems (1554 and 1573), both regarding the contents as well as the relationship of the emblems annotated, the hypothesis that in both cases the text of reference was the edition of 1550 or that of 1551 must be considered. This hypothesis cannot ignore the possible use of subsequent editions, or even earlier ones. In fact, in 1573 El Brocense included the emblem Aduersus naturam peccantes (without pictura), omitted in the 1550 and 1551 editions, taking it, possibly, from an earlier Rouille edition, that of 1548, or from another edition close to this date. In any event, we should remember that this emblem does not reappear until the edition of Thuilius/Tozzi in 1621. It is quite probable that El Brocense took the Rouille edition of 1550 as his guide, and that he also consulted the 1548 edition, 34 at least when he decided to publish them, since it is no coincidence that Rouille was the editor to whom he was going to send his commentaries. All signs indicate that the commentary on Alciato's emblems published by El Brocense in 1573 was drafted, in its majority, between 1550 and 1554. Translated from the Spanish by John T. Cull College of the Holy Cross 33. On this see Tung 1986. 34. Naturally, El Brocense utilized other editions, as evidenced by the distinct readings suggested for the Latin text of the epigrams of some emblems. And, although hardly probable, there exists perhaps some edition that presents the same emblems in the same order and with the same text that we see in that of El Brocense in 1573, that is to say, without Desidia but with Aduersus naturam peccantes. Until such a time as this supposed edition is uncovered, we must continue to believe that El Brocense used primarily the editions mentioned in order to elaborate his commentaries.

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Works Cited

Л Ida to, Andrea. Francisci Sanctii Brocensis... Comment, in And. Alciati V.mblemata, Nunc denuo multis in locis accurate recognita et quamplurimis figuris illustrata. Cum Indice copiosissimo. Lyons: Rouille, 1573. Blaya, R., and J. Ortega. "El Brocense comentarista de los Emblemas de Alciato." In Los Humanistas espanoles у el Humanismo europeo (IV Simposio de Filologia Clasica). Universidad de Murcia, 1990. Pp. 267-70. Campa, P. F. "Diego Lopez's Declaracion Magistral sobre las Emblemas de Alciato: The View of A Seventeenth-Century Spanish Human­ ist. " In Andrea Alciato and the Emblem Tradition, Essays in Honor of Virginia Woods Callahan. Ed. P. M. Daly. New York, 1989. Pp. 223-48. Campa, P. F. Emblemata Hispanica. An annotated Bibliography of Spanish Emblem Literature to the Year 1700, Durham, NC, 1990. Chaparro, C , and L. Merino, "Notas sobre el escolio у el comentario de Isidoro de Sevilla a Luis Vives." Helmantica 45 (1994): 529-41. Infantes, V. "La presencia de una ausencia. La emblematica sin emblemas." In Literatura emblematica hispanica. Ed. S. Lopez Poza. La Coruna, 1996. Pp. 93-109. Erasmus. Collected Works of Erasmus. Adages HI To IvlOO. Vol. 31. Trans. Margaret Mann Phillips. Annot. R. A. B. Mynors. Toronto, 1982. . Collected Works of Erasmus. Adages Iiviil To IlliiilOO. Vol. 34. Trans, and Annot. R. A. B. Mynors. Toronto, 1982. Ledda, G. Contributo alio studio della letteratura emblematica in Spagna (1549-1613). Pisa, 1970. Liano, J. Sanctius. El Brocense. Madrid, 1971 Mayans, G., ed. F. Sanchez, Opera omnia. Tomus secundus. Geneva: de Tournes, 1766; rpt. Hildesheim, 1985. Pp 329-516. Menendez Pelayo, M. Biblioteca de traductores espanoles. IV Santander, 1953. Pp. 202-03. Merino, L. La pedagogia en la retorica de El Brocense. Caceres, 1992 . "Las Siluae de Poliziano comentadas por El Brocense." Humanistica Lovaniensia 45 (1996): 406-29. Politian. Angeli Politiani Syluae (Nutricia, Rusticus, Manto, Ambra), poema quidem obscurum sed nouis nunc scholiis illustratum per Franciscum Sanctium Brocensem. Salmanca: Portonaris, 1554 Politian. G. Mayans, F. Sanchez, Opera omnia. Tomus secundus. Geneva, 1766; reprint, Hildesheim, 1985. Pp. 329-516.

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Sanchez Perez, Л. La literatura emblematica espanola (siglos XVI i/ XVII). Madrid, 1977. Selig, K. L. Studies on Alciato in Spain. New York, 1990. Talavera, F. J. "Los comentarios humanisticos espanoles a los Emblemas de Alciato en el siglo XVI." In La reception de las artes clasicas en el siglo XVI. Ed. E. Sanchez Salor, L. Merino and S. Lopez Moreda. Universidad de Extremadura. 1996a. Pp. 679-86. . "Los Commentaria del Brocense a los Emblemata de Alciato у los Scholia de Juan de Valencia." In Humanismo у pervivencia del mundo cldsico, II. Homenaje al profesor Luis Gil. Cadiz, 1996b. Pp. 445-52. Thuilius/Tozzi. Andreae Alciati Emblemata cum Commentariis Claudii Minois, Francisci Sanctii Brocensis et notis Laurentii Pignorii Patavini. Novissima hac editione in continuam unius commentarii seriem congestis, incertas quasdam quasi classes dispositis et plusquam dimidia parte aucta opera et vigiliis Joannis Thuilii. Patavii: apud Petrum Paulum Tozzium, 1621; ed. facsimil, Emblemata cum commentariis: Padua, 16211 Andrea Alciati. New York, 1976. T h u i l i u s / F r a m b o t t i (1661), Andreae Alciati Emblemata cum commentariis Claudii Minois I. C, Francisci Sanctii Brocensis, et notis Laurentii Pignorii Patavini. . . Opera et vigiliis Joannis Thuilii Mariaemontani Tirol. Phil. Et Med. D. Atqueolim in Archiduc. Friburg. Brisgovaie Vniversitate Human. Liter. Professoris ordinarii. Opus Copiosa Sententiarum, Apophthegmatum, Adagiorum, Fabularum Mythologiarum, Hieroglyphicorum, Nummorum, Picturarum et Lingarum varietate instructum et exornatum: Proinde omnibus Antiquitatis et bonarum litterarum studiosis cum primis utile. . . Cum indice triplici. Patavii: typis Pauli Frambotti Bibliopolae, 1661 (IDC EO-117/1 microfiche). Tung, M., "A Concordance to the Fifteen Principal Editions of Alciati," Emblematica 1 (1986): 319-39. Urena, J. "Estudio de las notas manuscritas de El Brocense en sus Commentaria in Alciati Emblemata (Lugduni, 1573; B. U. Salamanca 1/33510)." In Los dias del alcion. Emblemas, Literatura у Arte del Siglo de Oro. Ed. A. Bernat Vistarini and J. Cull. Univ. de les Illes Balears and College of the Holy Cross, 2002. Pp. 559-79.

Garzoni's L'Hospedale de' Pazzi incurabili and the Ambiguous Relation between Word and Image in Sixteenth-Century Imprese1 MONICA CALABRITTO Hunter College, CUNY

1. Introduction

Tomaso Garzoni was a priest of the Lateran Canon, an order active during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in northern Italy. According to Bartolomeo Garzoni, brother of Tomaso and himself a priest of the Lateran Canon, Garzoni took religious vows in 1566, at the age of seventeen, at the church of S. Maria in Porto, near Ravenna (Garzoni 1613). The Laterans were an offshoot of the canonici regolari [regular canons]. The members of this congregation led a communal life, modeled after the Rule of St. Augustine. In 1114, thepnorePietro provided the community of the Church of S. Maria in Porto with a vita cano.nica, a set of rules for the communal life of the congregation. In the fifteenth century the canonical order experienced a period of decline. It was followed by a renewed vigor in which the members of the order aspired to observe closely the original regulations of the order. 2 1. This study is a revised version of a paper presented at the 2001 Renaissance Society of America conference in Chicago. 2. See Garzoni 1996, discorso III entitled "De' religiosi in genere, e in particolare de' prelati e subditi, de' cerimonieri, de' superstiziosi, de' canonici, monaci e frati, de' cavalieri, e finalmente de' predicatori"; Pelliccia and Rocca, 2:46-158; Simonini, 9-25 and Lo Schiavo, 27-34.

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In 1586 Garzoni published an encyclopedic pseudomedical treatise entitled L'hospedale de' pazzi incurabili. The treatise is built on a complex relationship between the commonplace and the medical traditions on the one hand, and the official medical discourse on madness and the pseudo-medical, popularized talk about it on the other. 3 Paolo Cherchi has associated several of Garzoni's texts, including L'hospedale, to the genre of the theatrum which was very popular in sixteenth-century Europe. Ann Blair observes two metaphorical meanings for the term theatrum in the sixteenth century. On the one hand, natural philosophers considered nature as a theatrum, where humankind is viewed as the spectator who watches the world as on a stage "[wjhere God displays his skill and providence as author and producer" (153). On the other hand, many intellectuals wrote encyclopedic works on various topics of vast breadth, with the ambition of organizing their material in a systematic way. In these writings, theatrum stood for a vast work of an encyclopedic nature. 4 Garzoni divides the imaginary space of L'hospedale in two sections according to gender, one for madmen and the other for madwomen. Before beginning to catalogue masculine madness, Garzoni dedicates a discorso to "universal madness." He announces to the readers that 3.

Several genres are connected to the medical tradition and the commonplace rhetorical tradition. These genres include the medical treatise, which in the sixteenth century often took the form of a commentary on classical Greek texts usually in Latin translation, and the encyclopedia. The medical treatise and the encyclopedia incorporate short narratives, but for different functions and with different results. Narrative sections are used in both the medical treatise and the encyclopedic tradition. In the medical tradition the narrative section serves a double purpose. It emphasizes the doctor's activity by narrating eventful episodes related to his research and treatment of patients, while it links the contemporary treatise to the ancient texts, where the same ''case-history 7 ' has been told, though in a different context. For an analysis of the narrative component in the medical tradition, see Siraisi, 1-30, and Crisciani, 1-32. For a discussion of the use of the narrative sections in Garzoni's work, see Cherchi 1996, introduction to La Piazza di tutte le professioni del mondo, XLI-XLIII. Cherchi defines the narrative sections with the term " anecdote." See Eamon, for a study that investigates the importance of popular medical culture in the early modern period. Eamon argues that the fascination with the "secrets of nature" had its origins in the Middle Ages and then developed with the rising of an empirical attitude in the scientific and medical world.

4. Cherchi 1980; Blair, 153-79. For a discussion of sixteenth-century "memory theaters," see Yates, 129-72, and Bolzoni, 178-249.

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"since one knows better the universals when one discusses the spe­ cies, let's slowly approach mad people one by one, so that one will have the entire and perfect knowledge of madness that one searches lor.""1 This passage recalls Aristotle's method of dividing a general notion into its specie, thus emphasizing the rhetorical nature of the space in which the author encloses and catalogues masculine mad­ ness. After the introductory discorso, Garzoni subdivides masculine madness into twenty-nine discourses, each portraying a different ty pe of mental alienation, to which corresponds a much shorter ragio­ namento for feminine madness, organized in twenty-nine descriptive vignettes. 6 While many examples crowd each category of masculine madness, women are secluded in the remotest part of the imaginary building, along an endless corridor which opens onto twenty-nine cells in which only one woman, portrayed as naked, is confined: I believe it is not beside the point to show you this other part of the hospital where the women l i v e . . . . Please, turn your eyes toward that part that I am pointing out to you and direct your gaze here, on your left, where you see that long line of rooms, which have small pieces of paper with information to give to the public, or titles and arms on the top: those are the cells suitable to the mad women. It is no small privilege that you can watch them at your pleasure, 5. Garzoni 1993, 260: "perche meglio si conosce Г universale quando si discorre sopra le specie, veniamo pian piano a' pazzi particolari, che cosi della pazzia s' avra quella compita e perfetta cognizione che si ricerca." The pagination refers to the modern edition of most of Garzoni's works by Paolo Cherchi, published in 1993. Unless otherwise specified, all the translations are mine.

6. Garzoni uses the term discorso as a synonym for chapter in L'hospedale and in other texts: Л teatro del vari e diversi cervelli mondani, La Piazza universale di tutte le professioni del mondo and La Sinagoga degli ignoranti. Curiously, he uses the word ragionamento only in L'hospedale. In contemporary Italian usage, both discorso and ragionamento meant conversation or dialogue, but they also defined fullfledged treatises. Both terms appeared in the titles of several sixteenth-century treatises on imprese . For sixteenth-century examples of the use of the two terms in the sense of treatise, see Niccolo Machiavelli's Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio (1531), Ludovico Domenichi's Ragionamento sidle imprese (1556), Luca Contile's Ragionamento sopra le propriety delle imprese, and Giovanni Andrea Palazzi's / discorsi sopra I'imprese (1575). For the meaning of these terms in six­ teenth-century Italian see Dizionario Etimologico Italiano, s. v. "discorso'' and "ragionamento."

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since in general they appear to very few people and very seldom, because they are ashamed of their sex, mostly na­ ked, as you can see. 7 In this passage Garzoni alludes to the presence of "bollettini о titoli ed arme" above the entrances of the cells. A few lines later he calls the same images and their mottoes imprese. For the rest of the text he uses the two terms interchangeably, even though the function and the qual­ ities he attributes to the image and the words above each cell are closer to those of the impresa than to those of the arma. If Garzoni relies on medical and commonplace traditions to define masculine madness, he creates mostly original imprese, which he does not represent pictorially in his text, as tools to catalogue feminine madness. In this paper I will investigate Garzoni's treatment of imprese as classificatory tools to define and contain feminine madness in L'hospedale in light of his treatment of masculine madness and his use of the theoretical treatises on imprese composed in the late sixteenth century. Garzoni's interpretation of the relationship between word and image in the impresa, his elaboration of traditional images, and the function of the device for the bearer are of particular interest. I will also analyze the link between Garzoni's manipulation of the structure and the content of the imprese and his role as a priest of the newly re­ formed Catholic Church. During the Council of Trent, and especially after its conclusion, the Church tried to control the visual and verbal production of the period. Gabriele Paleotti, cardinal of Bologna, claimed the superiority of the visual medium over the verbal for the indoctrination of a large public. 8 The section dedicated to the writers of emblems and imprese in the Jesuit Antonio Possevino's Bibliotheca Selecta offers an interesting insight into how sixteenth-century reli-

7. Garzoni 1993,357-58: "parmi che non sia fuori di proposito mostrarvi quest'altra parte deirospidale dove dimorano le donne. . . . State di grazia con gli occhi impiegati verso quella parte ch' io v' accenno, e drizzate lo sguardo qua da man sinistra, dove si vede quella tirata lunga di camere c' hanno tanti bollettini о titoli ed arme di sopra che quelle sono le celle appropriate alle femine pazze. Le quali non ё poco favore a potere con bell' agio rimirare, essendo il solito che a rari e di raro si mostrano, per la vergogna del sesso, la piu parte ignudo, come vedete." 8. Gabriele Paleotti, Discorso intornoalle immagini sacre e profane (Bologna, 1582), in­ troduction by Barocchi, 117-509. Sections of the text are mentioned and dis­ cussed in Savarese-Gareffi, 36-37 and Prosperi, 239-41. See also Caldwell, 189.

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^ious intellectuals perceived and interpreted these rhetorical de­ vices.{)

2. Masculine madness and feminine madness in L'hospedale At the beginning of L'hospedale Garzoni describes madness as a dangerous deviance to be condemned and enclosed within the walls of an imaginary hospital, where the patients are shown to a titillated public, so that the sane people will become "wiser" by observing a complete lack of reason in the mad people: Then, you will see little by little the palace of the sorceress Alcina, room by room, filled with people bewitched in their brain and transformed by beastly metamorphosis into irrational and stupid people, w h e r e . . . [the] a u t h o r . . . will represent for you with new magic the castle of Atlas full of foolish people, and will try to lead you to safety with Logistilla by handing you Angelica's ring. Thanks to this ring, by unveiling someone else's madness, you will show yourselves even wiser.10 Garzoni evokes two literary spaces, which he borrows from Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, that is, the palace of the sorceress Alcina, where she transforms her old lovers into animals, and the castle of the wizard Atlas, where knights and damsels seek in vain the object of their de­ sire. By alluding to the two spaces one might think that Garzoni is creating a magical dimension for his investigation of madness. In fact, by alluding to the two spaces, he is positioning his text within the rhetorical tradition of the theatra mundi, the mnemonic and rhe-

9. Antonii Possevini Mantuani Societatis jesu Biblioteca Selecta (Colone, 1607). See also Savarese-Gareffi, 22-23 and 49, where the editors state that Possevino's Bibliotheca was considered "the more or less official model of the culture of the Counter Reformation."

10. Garzoni 1993, 254: "E poi, di mano in mano, si fara vedere il palazzo della fata Alcina a camera per camera, pieno di gente incantata nel cervello e trasmutata con bestiale metamorfosi in gente stupida ed irrazionale; dove che . . . (Г) autor con nuova magia vi rappresentara il castello d'Atlante pieno di balordi, e cercara di condurvi a salvamento da Logistilla, dandovi in mano l'anello d'Angelica, per lo cui mezzo, scoprendo le pazzie degli altri, tanto piu saggi vi dimostriate."

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lorical devices structured as architectural places that helped individuals store their knowledge. The following section of L'hospedale dedicated to masculine madness is representative of the author's interest in encyclopedic and medical traditions. Here Garzoni privileges a narrative and analytical style, coupled with the exhortative mood of the prayers at the end of each discorso which allude to the possibility of a recovery for the mad men, while mad women are not offered such an option. In the next section, dedicated to feminine madness, Garzoni favors a style that is more visual through the constant use of deictic adjectives that indicate each mad woman and the space around her through a range of words that constantly bring to mind the visual dimension of which the woman is the object. While the male patients live in the rhetorical and abstract space of the medical and commonplace tradition, the female patients are located in the concrete space of the cell, where they live separate one from the other. Garzoni puts aside the medical and the commonplace tradition here and stresses the importance of the visual act as a means of control and containment, which he expresses through the rhetorical device of the impresa created specifically for each woman. The representation of feminine madness in L'hospedale is made problematic by two major factors. The first is constituted by the tension existing between the narrative sections, which describe the events that led each mad woman to the hospital or the actions that characterize her behavior in the institution, and the description of the impresa as a whole. The second factor is constituted by the tension between the description of the image and the motto within the impresa. Some of the imprese avoid an easy correspondence between image and motto. Caldwell (229) argues that imprese characteristically "engender many different interpretations" and that, without their creator's or the bearer's explicit interpretation, "most imprese did not have fixed meanings." I argue that in Garzoni, the difficulty in interpreting the link between image and words produces a sense of ambiguity in the reader that also depends on the nature of madness and on the gender represented in the section where imprese appear. 3. Garzoni's imprese

The imprese of L'hospedale portray twenty-eight out of twenty-nine categories of feminine madness in a mocking or disparaging way. Ostilia Mutinense, who exemplifies the last and worst category of "devilish madness," does not have an impresa. Garzoni's description

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ol' mildness is only generically connected to the existence of demonic powers, since it does not specify the extent to which demons are beI ieved to possess human beings and make them act according to their w i 11. Garzoni writes about the power of the devil in relation to melancholy in L'uomo astratto, a discourse with which the author was supposed to introduce himself as a new member to the Accademia degli Informi in Ravenna. However, he died before pronouncing the discourse, which his brother posthumously published in 1604. In this discourse he describes various degrees of '''astrattione," that is, of detachment of the soul from the body and the senses and argues that the devil can insinuate himself in one of the stages that mark the detachment of the soul from the body by imitating the heavenly powers. He affects those individuals who suffer from "black bile" and "melancholic humor" and produces in them "visions and revelations of marvelous new things never heard before" (15). Garzoni implies that even though the devil does not produce madness, he uses it to his advantage. 11 Garzoni and his fictional persona, the Messere who is the director of the hospital and the creator of most of the twenty-eight imprese, join efforts in representing each mad woman as frozen in time and space. 12 Each woman appears to be controlled by the gaze of the observer, whether it be the public in the hospital or the reader of the text. The gazing viewers are asked not to identify with either the woman or her impresa, but to perceive themselves as different from both of them. Garzoni constructs a viewer who is a censor and a mocking judge of the various metaphors of madness represented in each impresa. 11. For a thorough study of the notion that witchcraft is caused by demonic possession, see Stuart Clark. Clark organizes his analysis of the notion of witchcraft around five major topics, which also form the social and cultural dimension of the period: language, science, history, religion, and politics. Garzoni broaches the subject of the devil and witchcraft several times in II Serraglio de gli stupori del mondo, which was posthumously published by his brother in 1613.

12. Garzoni defines the Messere as a man of ingegno, that is, gifted with a quality that makers of imprese assimilated to creative freedom. In La Piazza Garzoni states that the makers of imprese should be intelligent and have wit— // spirito ,, (228). Paolo Giovio talks about capriccio [whim, fancy], while Torquato Tasso and Emanuele Tesauro write about the notions of meraviglia [wonder] and arguzia [sharpness]. See Tasso, 1084 and Tesauro, 81-89.

EMBLEMATICA 104 The image and the motto of the impresa that accompany the first cat­ egory of madness, Claudia Marcella's "frenzied and delirious mad­ ness" are a bush of stinging nettles and the words "in puncto vulnus." The impresa visualizes the moment of the woman's fall from wisdom rather than a quality or an aspect of her present madness. Marcella has hit her forehead against a stone, which caused her madness. The impresa portrays a specific moment of her life, which functions as a watershed between sanity and madness. There is a correspondence between image and motto, and the two parts complement each other even though the motto seems simply to paraphrase the image. The motto "in puncto vulnus" [the wound is made in a moment] comple­ ments the image of the stinging nettles by emphasizing one of the qualities of this plant, that is, its ability to sting. However, how does the image convey the plant's stinging quality? And how does the im­ age express the sudden nature of the stinging? There is no indication in this section of any element that might help the reader to make the connection between the image, the motto, and the case history. In the description of the impresa Garzoni asks the viewers in the text to be­ come readers, that is, he eliminates the visual dimension to rely com­ pletely on the verbal, descriptive dimension. Indeed, everybody knows the nettles sting and the reaction they provoke is sudden, but this is certainly not conveyed through the description of the image of the impresa. The image is dissolved in words. Since there is no image to interpret for the reader/viewer, there are no multiple meanings to dis­ entangle. Everything is explained through the words of the author. Garzoni introduces the reader to Teronia Elvezia, an example of "drunkard madness." The impresa that the Messere has invented for her reproduces a magpie holding a spoonful of soup in her mouth, with the motto "On this side [now] silent, on that side [now] loqua­ cious." 13 In the impresa dedicated to Orbilia Beneventana's "scat­ ter-brained madness," Garzoni uses the image of a blind mole accom­ panied by the motto "Haec oculis haec mente" [This (mole is blind) in her eyes, this (woman is blind) in her mind; Garzoni 1993,360]. Pierio Valeriano interprets the mole's blindness as a metaphor for ignorance and heresy:

13. Garzoni 1993, 360: "E per questo gli ё stato formato un'arma con un motto rispondente alia sua ebrieta, che поп ё altro che una gaza con un bocon di suppa in bocca, e queste parole sotto: 'Hinc silens, hinc Ioquax'."

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On the m o l e . . . . In Hesychius the mole is therefore the image of this kind of blindness and ignorance, while sight itself is a sign of knowledge and intelligence. Eucherius interprets heretics in the sacred scriptures through [the image of] the mole, since, even though they seem to perceive something, they do not discern at all the light itself of certain truth. 14 Indeed, both meanings imply an irreparable intellectual and moral lack of vision. Garzoni uses the mole's blindness to express the mental blindness that has overcome the mad woman, but he also implies the received meanings that Valeriano has attributed to it, thus charging the madness of Orbilia Beneventana with intellectual and moral connotations. Garzoni describes Orbilia as a woman who wants to light a lantern in her cell in plain daylight. He seems to imply that Orbilia cannot see either with her eyes or with her mind. Yet, is not mental blindness a characteristic common to all mad women in the hospital? Lucietta da Sutri exemplifies the category of ''stupid, wasted, and lifeless madness." Her impresa represents a "rabbit that digs the earth, with the motto that says 'For this [woman] escape means salvation' because, like the rabbit, she does not feel safe unless she hides herself the way you see her."15 Unfortunately, Garzoni does not describe Lucietta's frightened position to the reader. In his dialogue dedicated to imprese Torquato Tasso reminds the reader that the hare covers her traces out of fear, while La Perriere represents a guilty man as a hare or a rabbit followed by dogs. 16 Menega da Valtolina is an example of demented madness, whose impresa is "a bull with a hook in its nose and the motto 'I am carried 14. Valeriano, fols. 98v-99r: "De talpa . . . . Apud Hesychium talpa huiscemodi caecitatis ergo hieroglyphicum est et ignorantiae, cum oculos sua pollens vi, cognitionis et intelligentiae signum habeatur. Eucherius haereticos per talpam in divinis Uteris accipit, utpote qui, licet aliquid cernere videantur, ipsum liquidae veritatis lumen minime discernunt."

15. Garzoni 1993, 360: "un coniglio che cava la terra, col motto che dice: 'Huic fuga salus', perche a guisa del coniglio non si tien sicura se non col nascondersi alia foggia che vedete."

16. Tasso, 1079; La Perriere, emblem LXI.

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off anywhere [one desires to bring me]'." 17 This image recalls Giovio's description of an impresa that a man, in love with a rather coarse woman married to a very stingy man, had the men of his company wear on their surcoat. It depicted a woman with abundant hair all over her body, except her face, who was dragging a bull by his nose and was followed by a hairy man holding a wand. The image was ac­ companied by the motto "Menatemi e non temete," to signify that the man in love would go wherever the unfortunate couple brought him (Giovio, 120). Orsolina Capoana exemplifies the category of "idiot" madness. She is unable to perform the simplest action without making a mess, and for this reason the Messere created an impresa where a moth [farfalla] flies around a light, with the motto in Spanish: "Neither more, nor less" [Ni mas, ni menos]. The narrator states that "as there is no sillier animal than the moth around a light, since she goes around the light so much that she ends up burning her wings, so there is no stupidity that can be compared to [Orsolina's]." 18 The image of a moth flying around a light is among the imprese described by Scipione Bargagli, accompa­ nied by the motto gioire spera [she hopes to rejoice]. 19 Tadia da Pozzuolo is an example of "slow-witted madness," and her impresa is that of a goose on the top of a hedge with the motto "Frustra nitor" [I strive in vain to rise; Garzoni 1993, 361-62.]. Tadia's case history stresses her dumbness — she was asked to bring drinking water to the table, and instead she brings the water in which cabbage has just been cooked. Garzoni explains that Tadia, who cannot perform any of the actions she is asked to accomplish, is as dumb as the goose that cannot get over the hedge. Valeriano attributes a wide range of meanings to the goose, from protection to damage; he also identifies it with an in­ dividual who cares only about his own friends. Palazzi and Bargagli 17. Garzoni 1993, 361: "un buffalo со' l'uncino al naso e il motto: 'Quocumque rapior'." The verb rapio connotes violence and is generally used to indicate sex­ ual violence. 18. Garzoni 1993, 361: "si come non ё il piu scempio animale della farfalla, che tanto s'aggira che s'abbrugia da se stessa Tali, cosi non ё scempieta che possa a quella di costei paragonarsi."

19. Praz writes that Gabriele Simeoni has an impresa representing a moth that burns itself at a candle and the motto "cosi vivo piacer conduce a morte." Praz, 93. The same image can be found in Hadrianus Junius's Emblemata, printed in Antwerp in 1565.

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describe imprese that have a goose in their image, but in neither case do they interpret the animal as a symbol of witlessness. 20 After Tadia's room, the narrator introduces the reader to Margherita from Bologna, an example of clumsy and foolish madness. Margherita used to do the opposite of what her mistress ordered her to do. Therefore, the Messere created an impresa with a gufo [owl] and the motto "That same person is me and I am that same person"(Garzoni 1993, 362). In the section dedicated to "vicious mad­ ness" Garzoni represents Lucilla da Camerino, who goes around the hospital naked, her body painted black to scare and annoy "tutta la casa" [the entire house]. The narrator compares her to a lupa, a she-wolf, and gives her this impresa: "the tail of a fox that sweeps a room with the French motto 'On my word, how well it cleans'." 21 In Aesop's fables and Alciato's emblems the fox represents the power of intelligence over empty ignorance. Valeriano links the fox to cunning shrewdness and reasoning power. 22 The Messere and the audience next encounter Flavia Drusilla, an example of "mischievous madness." Flavia is violent towards herself and the objects that belong to her —a dog and the laundry. For this reason the Messere "had a painter friend of his put that impresa above the cell, which is a beaver that tears away his own genitals, with the motto 'it is impossible to have a better vengeance,' which clearly shows the mischievous madness of that beast." 23 The beaver's self-emasculation is an extremely popular image in the tradition of emblems and imprese,24 and Garzoni is conscious of displaying his er­ udition and wit to those who are able to detect the origin of this fig­ ure. 20. See Valeriano, fol. 174v, Palazzi, discorso III, 130 and Bargagli, 270. 21. Ibid., 363: "una coda di volpe che scova una camera col motto francese: T a r ma foy que liet tant bien''." I accept Paolo Cherchi's emendation of the corrupted word liet as niet.

22. See De Angelis, 196-97 and Valeriano, fols. 97-98.

23. Garzoni 1993, 363: "fece da un pittore suo amico metter la quell'arma su la cella di lei, che ё un castorre che si strappa i genitali da se stesso col motto: 'Ulcisci haud melius/ che chiaramente dimostrano la dispettosa pazzia di questa bestia." See Calabritto, 36-40, for a detailed analysis of this device. See Russell, 117, for a detailed list of texts, composed before and after Garzoni, that em­ ployed the image of the beaver's self-emasculation. For a more detailed analysis of this impresa in relation to gender and medical issues, see Calabritto, 40-42.

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Garzoni deprives Domicilia Feronia, an example of "ridiculous madness," of her humanity by comparing her to a giraffe: "Look at that other giraffe at the door, who does nothing but laugh and sneer, and opens wide that mouth, which looks like that of an oven, for each little thing that she sees or hears." 25 Domicilia's madness is identified with her uncontrollable laughter, and the Messere has decided to cre­ ate an impresa representing a civetta [owl], a "ridiculous animal," with the motto "Haec aliis et mihi alii" [This [owl is a laughing matter] to others and the others [are a laughing matter] to me]. The owl, tradi­ tionally attributed to Athena, the goddess of wisdom, is not a laugh­ ing matter to either Alciato or Valeriano. Alciato considers the owl the symbol of silent prudence, while Valeriano lists an impressive num­ ber of meanings, going from wisdom to victory, and from hypocrisy to Christ's humility. 26 Domicilia Feronia and her madness seem to escape the interpretive cage that Garzoni gives both of them through the impresa. If Domicilia's madness has already reduced her to a peculiar animal —the giraffe —it does not completely imprison her in the frame of Garzoni's impresa. Women who make people laugh are dangerous, Garzoni seems to say; the impresa helps the author distance himself and the audience from the madness of the patients. For the laughter of mad women, Garzoni substitutes a scornful grin of superiority over their ridiculous and deviant nature which is the perception he intends to convey to the fictional audience visiting the hospital and to the reader. Later, Garzoni introduces the reader to Tarquinia Venerea, an ex­ ample of "glorious madness." She sits on a high chair and she is con­ vinced that she is the descendent of the queen of Sheba. She seems to be more prosperous than other patients, since she possesses a pearl 24. See Calabritto, 37-38 for a list of the sources that Garzoni might have consulted for the composition of this device and for bibliographical reference.

25. Garzoni 1993, 363: "Mirate quell'altra giraffa su la porta, che non fa altro che ridere e sgrignare, e per ogni picciola cosa che vede о sente spalanca quella bocca che par quella d' un forno."

26. In the 1546 Latin edition of Alciato's Emblemata the owl is accompanied by the motto "prudens sed infacundus," which becomes in the 1551 Italian edition "ch'al prudente non convengono molte parole/' The other meanings that Valeriano attributes to the image of the owl are an inclination (or desire) for fruit­ less wisdom, money, death, enemies' mutual defeat, moderation in drinking and protection invoked in vain. See Alciato 1551 and Valeriano, fol. 146v.

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L\nd a diamond. The Messere relates that in the past she had received a visit from some ladies whom she tried to convince that a pair of breeches in her house had belonged to the husband of the queen of Sheba: "Therefore the Messere, having observed the madness of that idiot and fitting the arma to her nature, above the cell has put as L' hospedale the image of Time the way poets describe it, that is a dragon that devours its own tail, and above a suitable motto, which says '[I can be] won only by eternity'." 27 The dragon —or snake —that eats its own tail is a classical image that Renaissance authors had used before Garzoni: it symbolizes the notion of time or of the world. 28 Modern scholars point out that the difficulty of representing abstract notions such as time or the universe through elements derived from the sensible world —whether they be animals, plants or manufactured objects—leads the viewer to embrace the image on the intuitive level.29 In fact, Garzoni reduces the mystical nature of this image to the dimensions of a visual and verbal joke, since he uses the image to underline Tarquinia's pathological grandiosity which according to the motto only eternity can overcome. In this impresa, Garzoni does not completely reject the original meaning of the figure. In fact, he wants the readers/viewers to connect this impresa with its models, so that they will realize the tension that exists between the tradition of this image and the petty nature of Tarquinia's case history, and will ultimately deem it laughable. The mystical dimension of the impresa does not ennoble Tarquinia's madness; the link between the outside

27. Garzoni 1993, 364: "Talche Messere, notata la pazzia di questa scempia, accomodando l'arma al genio di quella, gli ha posto per arma sopra la cella Timmagine del Tempo in quella foggia che lo descrivono i poeti, ch'e un dragone che si devora la coda, e cosi sopra un motto proporzionato che dice 'Sola aeternitate victa'." 28. In Garzoni 1993, 364n46, Cherchi writes that the fourth-century poet, Claudianus, was the first who envisioned Time as a snake that eats its tail in In primo consulatu Stilichonis (2:248-30). Alciato made this image into an emblem with the motto "ex litterarum studiis immortalitatem acquiri," while Valeriano interprets the figure as the symbol of the universe (mundum universum, fol. 102v).

29. Gombrich, 160, argues that "the serpent biting its own tail is not a 'representation' of time, for time is not a part of the sensible world and so it cannot appear to our bodily senses. The essence of time is accessible only to intuition and it is this intutition which is symbolized in our response to the image which both demands contemplation and spurs us to transcend it."

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world and the metaphorical categorization of the device is so tenuous that the written comment of the author becomes indispensable. In the impresa of Livia Veletri, an example of "moody madness" (pazzia lunatica) Garzoni (1993, 365) includes two elements that appear several times in other imprese and emblems, namely, a crab that looks upward toward the moon, with the motto "Nunc in pleno, nunc in vacuo" [Now full, now empty]. Authors have often used the image of the moon, alone or together with the crab. The main meaning of the moon is inconstancy, but it can also allude to a project that has not yet been accomplished or a quality that will fade away with time.30 Most importantly, the moon signifies folly, and as such can be also seen in Bosch's painting "The Ship of Fools." According to Valeriano, the crab also expresses inconstancy (fol. 201 v). Together, they represent the relationship of dependence that the bearer of the impresa, symbolized by the crab, has toward the object of his desire, identified with the moon.31 Garzoni might not have known the impresa that contained both the moon and the crab but was certainly aware of the significance that they had separately. This is the only impresa in L'hospedale that contains elements linked to the subject of madness. In the case of Marzia Sempronia, an example of "love madness," Garzoni resorts to images that ignore the medical aspect of the woman's illness 32 and stress the abstract, a-temporal dimension of madness. Her brothers and her parents confined Marzia Sempronia within the walls of the hospital after they found out that she had extracted a pound of her blood to send as a gift to Quinzio Rutilio, the object of her desire. Marzia's family considered her behavior unacceptable and decided that the best remedy against this type of deviant behavior was to seclude the young woman in a hospital for mad people: "thus, among rebukes and insults she reduced herself to a desperate state of love madness, and when she reached it, her family, showing little charity, confined her to the place that you see." 33 Marzia's impresa has "that winged Cupid with a torch in his hands and the motto 'hope30. Valeriano interprets the moon as a symbol of human nature (fol. 328) and folly (fol. 329v). See also Giovio, 51; Tasso, 1065, and Bargagli, 182. 31. Bargagli mentions Girolamo Corti as the bearer of such an impresa in a joust (185).

32. See Mary Frances Wack, 35-139, and Ciavolella, 75-85, for an analysis of the subject of love sickness in the Middle Ages and of the medical tradition connected to it.

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less salvation'." Cupid is the focus of many amatory emblems, which were very popular during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In this tradition, Cupid is the agent of love while individuals, both men and women, are the passive recipients of such a passion. If the image of the impresa portrays only the agent of Marzia's madness but not its subject, the case history seems in fact to depict a character who plays an active role in pursuit of her loved one. By extracting a pound of her blood to send as a gift to the heartless and unapproachable object of her desire, Quinzio Rutilio, Marzia reverses the roles that Petrarchan love poetry had established between the (male) hopeless pursuer and his cruel lady, object of idolatry. Opposite images of the same character stem from the case history and the impresa, with the result that one erases the other. The motto is the mediator and the inter­ preter between the inner and the outer dimension of the impresa. The impresa of Mansueta Britannia has the trunk of a cypress with the motto "Semel mortua quiescam" [Once dead, I will rest; Garzoni 1993, 366]. Alciato, La Perriere (LXV), Valeriano (379V), and Tomaso Porcacchi use and variously interpret the figure of the cypress to in­ dicate a place of eternity or one polluted by death, or sterility. Porcacchi comments on stanza 47 of canto XXXII of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, where Bradamante, affected by love madness and in search of Ruggiero, wears an overgarment with a cut cypress woven into it to signify her love pain and jealousy. Garzoni, who elaborates on many characters of the Orlando Furioso in Uhospedale, alludes to Ariosto's description and interpretation of the image of the cypress, but charges it with a less personal meaning. The motto "once dead, I will rest" seems to project the correspondence outside the impresa, to the suicidal conditions of Mansueta. However, the term mortua can refer to the bearer of the impresa and to the plant, since both are of feminine gender. The image and the motto of the impresa repeat well-known models, but the content is Garzoni's original invention. However, the authorial control exercised over the mad woman and her madness through the impresa — its internal correspondence be­ tween "body" and "soul," and its metaphorical link with the bearer of the device —seems to lose its power against the concrete nature of the mad woman's behavior.

33. Garzoni 1993, 365-66: "onde, tra le rampogne e tra Г ingiurie si ridusse a un disperato grado di pazzia amorosa, al quale essendo giunta, e stata con роса carita da'parenti confinata in quel luogo che vedete."

EMBLEMATICA 112 Following Mansueta Britannia, the impresa dedicated to Ortensia Qunitilia's "queer madness" represents an unripe pear tree stricken by a thunder bolt with the motto Actum est [It is past, it has been lived; Garzoni 1993, 367]. In this section Garzoni gives a very careful explanation of the reason why Ortensia finds herself in the hospital. Her behavior is eteroclito, that is, unpredictable and violent: this is the reason why Ortensia is considered mad. For Terenzia Sannite's "clownish madness" Garzoni uses the masque of Zani, a character of the Cornmedia dell'Arte, with a pair of breeches hanging from its nose and the motto, in a language that Garzoni (1993, 367) calls tedesco italianato [italianized German] which says "Chesta stare bona compagne" [This one feels good, friends]. Masques were found in emblems; however, the choice of the clownish Zani, or Zanni, underlines Garzoni's intention to expose Terenzia as a laughable object to the public, and to strip her of her individuality and corporeality by reducing her to a masque, that is, an empty head. As it happens in other imprese, the gender of the mad woman is erased. Erminia Boemia, an example of bizarre and furious madness, has above the entrance of her cell "a big rooster of India that gets ruffled all of a sudden and then immediately stops, with the motto: 'Light [or gentle] as much as quick'." 34 Calidonia da Eppi, whose bothersome madness brings her slaps and kicks from other people, has an impresa with a plucked hen and the motto: "What good do our things bring?" (Garzoni 1993, 369). Cecilia Venusia, a matta sperticata [exaggerated madwoman] "who always says jokes" has as an impresa a "vulgar crown [or garland] at the top of a spear and the motto: 'Everywhere [there is] laughter'." 35 Armolia Falisca is a "madwoman as unbridled as a horse." According to Garzoni, she dares to speak badly of women of a social status higher than hers; therefore, her impresa is "a horse's big halter with the motto 'Nothing preferable'." 36 Laurenzia Giglia is the last madwoman who has an impresa above the entrance of her cell. She is "a madwoman as stubborn as a mule," and has for her impresa "a hammered anvil, with the motto: 'cracked not even by blows'." 37 The image of the anvil, alone or with the hammer, was common among authors of imprese, and in general signified persistence among difficulties.38 Ostilia Mutinense, an example of "devilish madness," does not have a device.39

34. Ibid., 368: "un gallone d'India, che s'arruffa in un tratto, e subito poi s'arresta, col motto: T a n t o lenis quanto propera'."

35. Ibid., 369: 'una corona dabettola in cima d'un'asta, e il motto: 'Undique risus'."

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She represents the worst category of madness, so bad that it cannot be contained and framed in an impresa. One of the effects of framing women's madness within the impresa is their loss of bodily dimension which Garzoni has emphatically underlined at the beginning of L 'hospedale by stating that most of the patients in the hospital are naked. If the bodies of the mad women are exposed to the audience's prurient observation outside of the impresa, inside the images avoid the crude depiction of naked bodies and transform the fleshy corpo [body] of the mad women into the abstract corpo of the device. In the impresa the Messere of the hospital avoids as much as possible the representation of human bodies and of physical attributes that could remind the reader of the nakedness of the mad women. 40 Garzoni manipulates the naked bodies of the women and the corpo of the impresa to fit his notion of madness. His gaze transforms the naked, excessive body of the patient in the cell into a rhetorical "body" of knowledge. While Garzoni never introduces a nude body in his devices, he represents whole human figures six times. The first human figure is the knight in the cocoon of Marzia Cornelia's impresa accompanied by the motto "Et mihi vitam, et aliis decus" [and life to me, while honor to others; Garzoni 1993, 359].The second is an old man trying to catch butterflies, which exemplifies Marina de' Volsci's "slothful and careless madness" accompanied by the motto "Quo gravior eo segnior" [the more serious, the lazier; ibid., 359]. The third is the allegorical figure of Fraud with a broken scale in her hands, which represents Andronica Rodiana's "simulated madness." This image is accompanied by the motto "Ars fortunae salus" [The art of 36. Ibid., 370: "un capezzone da cavallo, col motto: 'Nil satius'." 37. Garzoni 1993, 370: "una incudine martellata, col motto: 'Nee ictibus scissa'." 38. See Valeriano fols. 353r-353v; Ruscelli, 39; Palazzi, 167.

39. For a discussion of Garzoni's decision not to provide the representative of the worst category of madness with an impresa, see Calabritto, 42-43.

40. Paolo Giovio was the first in a long list of experts and makers of imprese who objected to the use of human figures within the image, unless they represent mythological or historical characters. Torquato Tasso defends the presence of human figures in the composition of imprese. See Tasso, 1121. Caldwell, 194, mentions Giulio Cesare Capaccio as in favor "of allowing the representation of the human body in the \mprese."

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fortune is salvation; ibid., 365]. The fourth is the mythological figure of Jupiter sitting on a golden chair with the motto "Iovis omnia plena" [everything is filled with Jupiter] exemplifying Quinzia Emilia's "joyful madness/' The fifth is the mythological figure of the Megaera, one of the furies, to represent Giacoma da Pianzipane's "bestial madness," together with the motto "Accensa nil dirius" [Nothing is more terrible than her, furious; ibid., 368]. The last figure is a "monstrous Medusa," which exemplifies Lavinia Etolia's "extreme and extravagant madness," accompanied by the motto "Extrema peto" [I seek extreme things]. 41 In the impresa of Marina de' Volsci, the figure of an old man creates a certain degree of ambiguity. Marina de' Volsci, an example of "slothful and careless madness," is supposed to sew; instead, she chases insects with a needle, the tool with which she should industriously perform her work and progress towards redemption: "That woman's name is Marina de' Volsci, [who is] so absentminded and shabby that she looks after trifles and whims all day instead of serious matters. Thus Messere has assigned her as impresa that old man who chases butterflies with the motto that says 'The more serious [or the more venerable?] the lazier'." 42 As Marina goes after flies and spiders with a needle instead of sewing, so the old man chases butterflies instead of performing actions suitable to his age. The correspondence between the bearer of the impresa and the image represented in it, the old man pursuing butterflies, is superficial and conceals tension. In the section of the Hieroglyphica that discusses the parts of the human body and its symbolic meanings, Pierio Valeriano connects the image of a white-haired head with old age but does not link it to any form of foolishness. 43 Garzoni does not depict Marina as an old woman —in fact, he carefully avoids attributing any particular age to any woman in the 41. Ibid., 369. According to Valeriano, the head of the Medusa can signify terror, stupor, admiration or prudence (fol. 121v). Torquato Tasso reports that the head of the Medusa could also be used to signify an "amorous thought" (1107).

42. Ibid., 359: "Quella si dimanda Marina de' Volsci, tanto svaporata e trascurata che tutto il giorno invece delle gravi faccende attende a bagatelle e frascherie: pero Messere gli ha assegnato per arma quel vecchio attempato che da la fuga a7 parpaglioni col motto che a proposito dice: 'Quo gravior, eo segnior'."

43. Valeriano, fol. 231r. As a commentary on the hieroglyph of the white-haired head, Valeriano writes that the sudden passage from youth to old age and vice versa should be interpreted as a bad sign.

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hospital. Moreover, the seriousness expected from an elderly man is hardly justifiable if applied to Marina's madness. It seems that Garzoni focuses on the seriousness of work as such rather than on the former seriousness of the mad woman. The impresa does not illustrate Marina de' Volsci, but a particular moment of her daily life, an action frozen in an impresa. The woman's identity is erased, and that of an old man is substituted for it, probably signifying venerable old age gone awry. The motto reinforces the distance between the woman's case history and the impresa because it fits the image —the old man —but not the bearer, a mad woman. On the basis of Garzoni's stress on the visual dimension as a privileged expression to represent feminine madness, one can assume that the author is more interested in containing and secluding feminine madness than masculine madness.

4. Garzoni and the theoretical discourse on imprese Garzoni was aware of the theoretical debate on the nature and function of the impresa that had been going on in Italy during the second half of the sixteenth century. In La Piazza universale di tutte le professioni del mondo, printed in 1585, Garzoni summarizes the main ideas that sixteenth-century experts had elaborated on the origin and function of the impresa in a discorso dedicated to the "professors of imprese and emblems." 44 In La Sinagoga degli ignoranti, published in 1589, Garzoni adopts the hieroglyphic tradition, which some scholars believed to be the ancestor of the much improved and perfected impresa, as an erudite tool to define ignorance. He verbally describes many hieroglyphs from Pierio Valeriano's Hieroglyphica to portray ignorance as a willful and therefore perverted resistance against knowledge. 45 He does not discuss the hieroglyphic tradition from a theoretical point of view, but uses it to validate his condemnation of ignorance and to give further dignity to his subject. The function that imprese assume in L'hospedale sets this device apart from Garzoni's

44. Garzoni 1996, 225-28.

45. In La Piazza, discorso XXVIII, Garzoni defines hieroglyphs as images that represent "with the nature of the painted thing the concept of the writer" (421). Pages 417-22 of La Piazza are dedicated to the subject of hieroglyphs, their origin, their nature and their function.

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Iheorolkal definition of the impresa in La Piazza and his erudite description oi hieroglyphs in La Sinagoga. Garzoni's own contribution to the debate on imprese is minimal, since he repeats what others have argued more persuasively before him. Nevertheless, Garzoni's discorso is a rather exhaustive catalogue of the basic notions on imprese that the author has gathered from several sixteenth-century scholars, such as Farra, Caburacci, Ruscelli, Giovio and Scipione Bargagli, and this could have satisfied the curiosity of the readers of the encyclopedic La Piazza. Garzoni appears to favor Farra and Caburacci, although he ignores the mystical and Neo-Platonic elements of Farra's Settenario.*6 Garzoni quotes Farra when he describes the three categories of figures that can be represented in the impresa — fabulous, historical and natural —but the tripartite division is common to several other treatises on imprese (Farra, 273). Garzoni adopts Caburacci's definition of the impresa and of its purpose, and lists some of the rhetorical figures, such as comparison, proportion, allusion, and metaphor, that Caburacci and Farra suggest should be used for the composition of the motto (Caburacci, 72-73; Farra, 275r-77r). For Garzoni, the main goal of the impresa is to express a resolution that is virtuous and honorable and deals with deeds that the individual aspires to accomplish or has already accomplished. Another goal of the impresa is to become a monumentum to "virtuous and honest actions," a sort of mnemonic device that reminds oneself and others of the noble deeds performed in the past (Garzoni 1996, 226). Garzoni insists on a correspondence between the resolution of the impresa and its image, which must be "noble and virtuous" and arouse admiration rather than "contempt and laughter" for the bearer (Ibid., 227). In fact, "dispregio et riso" [contempt and laughter] are exactly the emotions that the imprese in L 'hospedale provoke in the viewer gazing at the devices hanging over the cells of the mad women. Through ignorance in the Sinagoga and madness in L'hospedale Garzoni attacks what is deemed different. In the Sinagoga Garzoni establishes a congregazione [congregation] of "cucchi, allocchi e grilli," [simpletons, fools and bird-brained], a place from which "wisdom is excluded, intelligence is banished, truth is rejected, virtue is confined, and where vice, which should stay in the den, sits at the stern and reigns and orders with absolute authority over all the powers of the 46. See Garzoni 1996, 227. For a brief and insightful discussion of Farra's definition of impresa , see Klein, 339. For a more recent analysis of Farra's text, see Maggi, 23-45 and Caldwell, 121-31.

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soul." 17 For Garzoni, ignorance is not only a lack of intelligence, but also and especially a moral sin, a vice that needs to be extirpated through erudition and scientia. Within the multiple meanings associa ted with each hieroglyph he isolates the one he needs, thus reducing the polysemic nature of each hieroglyphic image to a univocal figure that only denotes. In La Sinagoga hieroglyphs qualify an abstract no­ tion of ignorance and are not related in any way to an individual per­ son. In describing the imprese of L 'hospedale, Garzoni uses elements that were well known to an audience acquainted with the tradition of em­ blems, imprese and hieroglyphs, but he changes their original mean­ ing. In many imprese he manipulates the meaning of well-known im­ ages to fit a specific category of madness. His habit of attributing new significance to traditional images is characteristic of authors of imprese. Scipione Bargagli states that he admires the author "who will know how to find new qualities about the same subject, after oth­ ers have already made their comments, so that he can unfold new concepts rather than [the author] who produces a new body, which nobody has touched or seen, in order to create such an effect."48 Bargagli recognizes that the multiple meanings stemming from a sin­ gle device are an enhancement, not a limitation, of the expressive value of each image. Somewhat like Bargagli, Emanuele Tesauro states in 1654 that the metaphor is like the mythological figure of the Chimera, because it "connects things distant from each other, and has its meaning outside itself" (Tesauro 2000, 649). By using the met­ aphorical potential of imprese Garzoni seeks the complicity of readers who know the tradition of imprese and are able to recognize the new meaning that he attributes to the known image. In the treatises of Giovio, Scipione Bargagli, Palazzi, Tasso, and Tesauro only a few of the imprese these authors discussed were visu­ ally represented in the text. Sometimes words surround imprese that appear visually in the treatise, as there is no clear typographic dis47. Garzoni 1993, 382: "la sapienza ё esclusa, l'intelligenza sbandita, la verita ё ripulsa, la virtu ё relegata; e dove il vizio, che devrebbe stare in sentina, siede in poppa e regge e comanda con assoluto impero a tutte le potenze delГanima/ , See Cherchi 1980,10.8. 48. Bargagli 1594, 195: '"havra saputo intorno ad una medesima materia doppo le considerazioni statevi gia mosse da altri, trovar nuove qualita, da poter distendervi nuovi concetti, che поп fa colui, che mette accampo un corpo nuovo, поп istato piu da altri tocco ne veduto, a produrre un tale effetto."

1 IB

I Mill I МЛ1 1СЛ

I i net ion between the written word and Ми* mu)' ( c. I he ,il>:,пне of the visual representation of imprese was a not u n c o m m o n I r a l u r e of con­ temporary treatises on the subject. Many a u t h o r s simply described the image of the impresa a n d reported the motto; then, they gave a de­ tailed e x p l a n a t i o n of the link b e t w e e n the t w o p a r t s of the device and of the c o r r e s p o n d e n c e —or lack of it — b e t w e e n the image, the m o t t o and the bearer of the impresa (See Caldwell, 225, 230-32). The decision not to include all the imprese in the treatise m i g h t h a v e derived from the fact that b o t h a u t h o r a n d reader k n e w the i m a g e s that were being examined. The m a i n goal of these texts w a s to investigate and theorize the relationship b e t w e e n the verbal a n d the visual d i m e n s i o n of the impresa. Moreover, m a n y texts w e r e concerned with w e i g h i n g the suitability of the visual d i m e n s i o n to a verbal description, m a k i n g the text and its subject an e x a m p l e of "rhetorical o r a t i o n / ' 4 9 Many a u t h o r s of treatises on imprese forbid the r e p r e s e n t a t i o n of whole h u m a n b o d i e s in the device, unless they p o r t r a y mythological, allegorical or historical figures but accept the p o r t r a y a l of p a r t s of the body, such as h a n d s , stretched out or in fists, a r m s or eyes. 5 0 Bargagli claims that the h u m a n figure is perfect a n d that the m o t t o , w h i c h is coupled with the figure to enhance the perfection of the impresa, w o u l d be s u p e r f l u o u s if a u t h o r s used h u m a n b o d i e s in their devices: "The h u m a n figure is perfect in itself. The m o t t o is given to the figures in order to reach m o r e perfection in the impresa. This is not necessary with the h u m a n figure." 5 1 Farra likens the impresa to the "ideal m a n , " therefore i m p l y i n g t h a t the addition of a h u m a n b o d y in the image would be r e d u n d a n t : " T h r o u g h the likeness that it has with its o w n maker, the impresa is a real operation a n d enterprise of the h u m a n in­ tellect." 5 2 G a r z o n i a p p e a r s to obey these rules in the imprese of Andronica R o d i a n a a n d Q u i n z i a Emilia.

49. Another explanation consists in taking into account the printing process, which would be more expensive if it included images on the same page as the printed words.

50. Alessandro Farra states that mythological and historical images can include hu­ man figures, "like images of gods, or of some ancient heroes" (273). Pierio Valeriano dedicates a section of Hieroglyphica to discussing the symbolic mean­ ing of bodily parts (Valeriano, fols. 225-278r).

51. Bargagli 52: "La figura umana ё in se perfetta. II motto si da alle figure per raggiungere maggiore perfezione nell' impresa. Con la figura umana, cio поп ё necessario."

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In the imprest! tradition feminine figures were sometimes used as decorative frames. In several imprese discussed by Ruscelli in Le imprese ill ust ri these figures played the function of caryatids, their bodies constricted in the most deformed and unnatural positions, mutilated and forced to fit the shape of hollow columns or decorative motifs. This is the only example that I have found so far of naked feminine bodies in an impresa. In fact, they are not in the impresa, they are at its margins and excluded from the figure, delimiting the space created for the image with their twisted bodies. The images of the emblem tradition, on the other hand, include a fairly large number of feminine bodies, clothed and unclothed; for example, the figures of Fortune, Chastity, Virtue and the three Graces are usually represented by naked female figures. Once these bodies are inside the frame of the image, they become cultural objects to be gazed at. Lynda Nead (11) argues that art and medicine have the power to regulate the feminine body according to specific norms and to make it into an image that contains sexuality and gender. Nead adopts the opposition naked/nude that Kenneth Clark expounded in his The Nude; a Study in Ideal Form (1956, 3-29). For Clark, nakedness represents particular bodies stripped of their clothes, while nude represents ideal bodies // clothed ,/ in art.53 Nead considers Clark's opposition nude/naked as the aesthetic paradigm of Western culture and as the basis of the form/matter opposition, which she acknowledges as the foundation of "Kant's distinction between contemplative and sensory pleasure." Such a distinction supports a "hierarchy of aesthetic experience" which constitutes the staple of Western artistic perception (Nead, 10). Nead (20-22) argues that a "naked" body is obscene, because it emphasizes excess and lack of limits; in order to become an object of culture, it needs to have its individuality eliminated. The audience shares with the artist a specific set of rules, which delimit the feminine nude body within the artistic frame. When the bodies compose the frame, as it happens in Ruscelli's imprese, they become external decoration. However, they still maintain a certain degree of gendered identity, so that the viewer per52. Farra, 268: ". . . per la simiglianza, che tiene con l'huomo autore, et opefice suo, [l'impresa] puo' dirsi huomo ideale, et vera et propria operatione, et impresa dell' intelletto humano."

53. Nead, 14. For a discussion of Clark's definition in the context of subsequent elaborations of the female nude in art by feminist criticism, see McDonald, 7-30.

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ceives the manipulation to which their bodies are subjected as physical violation and not simply as artistic elaboration. Garzoni's control of feminine madness through imprese is not always smooth and therefore produces ambiguity. McDonald argues that ambiguity "can occur in the mind or body of the artist, or in the way the artist is positioned as a 'subject' in discourse. It can be found in the artwork or in the spectator, in public or in private space, or in the relationship between the artist's body and that of the spectator. If art is to be seen as an extension of the body, and as a point of mediation between the artist's body and that of the spectator, ambiguity is an effect of its being both an object for erotic display and an object of erotic, visual pleasure"(McDonald, 14). The tensions in Garzoni's imprese go beyond the generic characteristics of the device. In Garzoni's imprese ambiguity appears to be the by-product of the author's intent to control the nature of the patients' madness and their bodies. Garzoni's goal is to reduce the lives and the stories of each mad woman to something that is immutable, fixed in time and space. Garzoni intends to lead the viewer's attention away from the concrete dimension of the woman's history and body, towards the abstract nature of the impresa.5* 5. The Post-Tridentine position on imprese From sixteenth-century treatises on imprese Garzoni has learned that the highly structured nature of this device allows him to control the polysemic dimension of the image through the words of L 'hospedale. On the other hand, the post-Tridentine production of religious propaganda and the systematization of knowledge shares with Garzoni the belief that the image is an effective tool for diffusing a message to the masses but also for cataloguing reality. During and after the Council of Trent (1545-1563), the Catholic Church showed great determination in monitoring, censoring, and directing the way the production of culture, broadly speaking, affected the mind and the habits of various social groups, from the volgo to the aristocratic classes. The leaders of the Catholic Church immediately realized how extremely important printed books and their diffusion were and made sure they saturated the market with a widespread dis54. It is also worth considering that nakedness was one of the features with which the explorers of the Americas and of the New World qualified the people whom they encountered as "savage/' I thank Nancy Siraisi for this observation.

121 Iribution of texts that conformed to the ideological values of the Church. Very soon, the Church also realized the power of the image, and developed a series of attitudes meant to address a different group of consumers and different types of visual representations. The Church took a strong stance against the "obscene" nudity with which Renaissance painters and sculptors provided their artworks and remedied by censoring the "scandalous" parts of the body exposed to the eye of the viewer. This censorship occurred especially in public spaces, such as churches, where a large number of people periodically gathered. 55 However, if used correctly, images had the potential to become a powerful educational tool for the illiterate people who were affected by the immediacy of the visual representation. Gabriele Paleotti, the cardinal archbishop of Bologna, states: "paintings are like an open book for everyone's [intellectual] ability, because they are made of a language common to all sorts of people: men, women, children, adults, learned and ignorant persons." 56 Paleotti is convinced that people use their minds less when they try to capture the meaning of an image than when they read a book. Moreover, images are of immediate consumption and are a very useful instrument for rapid and massive indoctrination. However, if Paleotti praises the use of images in churches and in other public spaces as a pervasive tool that touches as many people as possible, he condemns the use of imprese because they exalt the subject's individuality. The cardinal considers the imprese objectionable and dangerous to the notion of cultural and religious conformity reinforced by the Catholic Church. In their unabashed praise of individual qualities, the imprese MONICA CALABRITTO

55.

For a general introduction to the art and architecture sanctioned by the Post-Tridentine Catholic Church, see Po-Chia Hsia, 152-64, and Prosperi, 240-44. For an analysis of the antecedents that brought about the convening of the Council of Trent and of the first two years of this council, see Hubert Jedin. For a recent appraisal of the period following the Council of Trent, see R. Po-Chia Hsia, and John O'Malley. For an invesstigation of the relationship beteween intellectuals and the Church, see Adriano Prosperi, 159-252. For an analysis of Italian Catholic culture after the Council of Trent, see Albano Biondi, 253-302. Finally, for a study of the use that post-Tridentine religion made of Italian humnanism, see Delio Cantimori, 259-98.

56. Paleotti, 221: " .. le pitture servono come libro aperto alia capacita d'ognuno, per essere composte di linguaggio comune a tutte le sorti di persone, huomini, donne, piccioli, grandi, dotti, ignoranti." See also Caldwell, 189 for a brief discussion of Paleotti's text.

LMBLEMATICA 122 convey a "pagan" message. Symbols, instead, are useful to everybody and they are actually created for the common good:

Symbols represent for us that royal majesty and generosity the purpose of which is to be of common service and com­ mon good to others, while it seems that in the imprese, on the contrary, one discovers almost a tyrannical instinct to direct everything for one's advantage and to use others for private interest. 57 Paleotti (471) does not condemn the entire genre of imprese, but the abuse that people have made of such devices for selfish purposes. The imprese that show decorum and dignity, like those that "great men and of great worth" carry, are not to be condemned. The danger derives not from the nature of the image itself but from the function associ­ ated with it in the impresa. Paleotti was willing to accept only imprese that belonged to members of the aristocracy or of the upper classes, re­ jecting any others as arrogance. Emblems, in contrast, became one of the favorite instruments for diffusing knowledge of Sacred Scripture. Many collections of reli­ gious emblems centered on the representation of divine love, using the models established by the Neo-Platonic tradition and transform­ ing them into messages of spiritual love rather than of earthly pas­ sion. The seventeenth-century collection of emblems, Amoris Divini et Humani Effectus, is an example of the spiritual conversion that the de­ vice had gone through since the end of the sixteenth century. In this text the images, some of which are very sensual, represent for the most part a boyish Jesus, at other times a winged Cupid or an adult Christ, always accompanied by a female figure symbolizing the believer. The motto is made up of phrases in Latin taken from Scripture, and is fol­ lowed by two verses in French that paraphrase the content of the motto. In Paleotti's theoretical definition of emblems and imprese and in the religious representation of spiritual love, the emblem appears as a convincing instrument of religious propaganda and conversion.

57. Paleotti, 467: "si come i simboli ci rappresentano quella maesta e liberalita regia, che ad altro поп ё intenta che al servizio comune et al far bene ad altri, cosi nelle imprese, per il contrario, pare che si scuopra quasi che un certo tirannico istinto di dirizzare ogni cosa a commodo proprio e a valersi dell'altrui per interesse particolare."

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ll can adapt to the exigencies of Catholic dogma because it appeals to universal and moral values, unlike the impresa. The Jesuit Antonio Possevino wrote on imprese, emblems, and hieroglyphs in his encyclopedic work entitled Bibliotheca selecta, which was printed in 1593.58 He wrote the Bibliotheca in Latin for the Catholic aristocracy, and he catalogued the culture of his period according to the ideological principles established after the Council of Trent. The Jesuit priest was convinced that the world could be informed by the knowledge expressed and inspired by the Catholic re1 igion.59 He imposed an orthodox view on every aspect of culture, including the tradition of imprese and emblems. Possevino cautions the reader consulting the collections of hieroglyphs by Horus Apollo and Pierio Valeriano to see "whether any advantage could be gathered from there to honor God." Throughout this section, he does not seem to make distinctions between emblems and imprese. The only difference he can find is the fact that sometimes emblems can exist without a motto {inscriptio), while the impresa must have it at all times. Possevino mentions many authors who have written on emblems and imprese: Alciato, Ruscelli, Tasso, Contile, Giovio, Bocchi, Taegio and Ammirato. 60 He is aware of the debate among the experts on the relationship between the visual and the verbal dimensions and he offers the viewer a double perspective on this subject, following Ruscelli closely but elaborating an argument of his own. Indeed, the Jesuit agrees with Girolamo Ruscelli in establishing that the anima of an emblem —or the impresa —is the combined result of "painting and poetry, so that one interprets the other." 61 For Possevino (481), the two sections of the impresa are no longer image and motto, but become metaphors for painting and poetry, which interpret and influence each other. However, when he writes about the rule of proportion between the visual and the verbal dimensions, he reverts to the traditional distinction body/soul. He then lists a series of restrictions 58. For biographical information about Antonio Possevino, see Biondi, 296. Possevino was a very influential member of the Company of Jesus, and worked on the monumental text of the Bibliotheca for more than twenty years.

59. See Biondi, 297-300, and Prosperi, 166.

60. See Caldwell, 13-27; 29-47 and 67-71; 52-67; 94-99; 131-41; 197-205. 61. Possevino, 480: "picturam & poesim, ut altera sit alterius interpretes."

EMBLEMATICA 124 that apply exclusively to the image, the symbolum, thus showing that he believed the image much more dangerous than the motto, which he calls inscriptio:

And indeed the images should not be ambiguous, [as the images] of undetermined plants, or of animals and birds greatly similar one to the other. Now, anything that tastes of disdain, hatred, abusive words, infamy and flattery should be absent from them, while that which could excite the souls to devotion, virtues, and honor should be present.62 Possevino wants to banish ambiguity from the image, thus recommending that the makers of the imprese avoid figures that are not immediately recognizable and can mislead the mind of the viewer towards unwanted connections. He is also determined to uproot from the image negative passions that can taint the bearer and corrupt the mind of the viewer. Imprese should express only uplifting feelings for the soul. Possevino is not original in his evaluation of the nature, the function and the goal of the impresa. He elaborates these traditional arguments within his own evaluation of visual art and as part of the ideological structure of his monumental categorization of human knowledge. For Possevino, images have a didactic goal and as such should teach individuals to conform to high moral standards. Anything that is even slightly ambiguous has to be rejected. Images and even imprese and emblems are a decisive method of propagating orthodoxy among the common people. If many of these devices are made for and addressed to a select public, many others serve as propagandistic tools for a Church eager to direct and even to control the cultural behavior of its believers. Scholars like Praz have attributed the elitist tendency to the impresa and the propagandistic purpose to the emblem. It is also true that Possevino alludes mostly to authors of treatises on imprese when he writes his set of rules for the ideal image. Because of its more indefinite features, the impresa is more subject to manipulations of its 62. Ibid., 481: "Neque vero symbola sint ambigua, veluti herbarum dubiarum, aut animalium, vel avium maxime inter sese similium. Caeterum, absit ab iis quidquid indignationem, odium, maledicta, turpitudinem, assentationem sapiat, adsit autem quod ad pietatem, ad virtutes, ad honestatem animos possit accendere."

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original structure and content. This seems why Tomaso Garzoni chooses the impresa in L'hospedale. 6. Conclusion Garzoni, Paleotti and Possevino represent three different ways in which the Catholic Church diffused specific ideological and social values after the Council of Trent. They were concerned with the visual representation of faith and religious dogmas, the connection between words and images and the censorship of the ambiguous and the deviant, whether it be an image, a mad woman, or an impresa exemplifying a certain type of madness. The way in which Garzoni, a priest of the Lateranense order and an active member of this congregation, conceived of the notion of the impresa and created his own original version, was probably influenced, even if only in an indirect manner, by the Church's perspective on the subject. Garzoni was also a preacher, even though none of his sermons are known to survive, and he must have known very well how to attract the attention of an audience and to persuade it of the goodness and the validity of the Catholic creed. 63 It is true that L'hospedale is not a text of religious propaganda. However, one can certainly recognize in it the same principles of uniformity and control that also inform the canonical texts of Catholic propaganda of Possevino's L'hospedale or Paleotti's reflections on art in his L'hospedale. Garzoni uses the impresa to catalogue and define feminine madness. In the imprese where he manipulates traditional visual material, Garzoni attempts to establish his authoritative interpretation, justified and validated by the model, over the reader's perception. The women are immediately trapped in recognizable structures, images and sentences that the reader perceives as part of detecting madness. Multiple layers of meanings are still attached to the images that Garzoni uses to determine and catalogue feminine madness, and, in fact, the subject of madness becomes domesticated by the presence of traditional elements. However, even if the body and the soul of the impresa sometimes reach a sort of metaphorical correspondence, at other times the "body" remains enigmatically silent because the words are disconnected from the image and the concrete nature of feminine madness. Through this series of tensions, the author ap63. See Collina, 1.

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pears ultimately to lose control over the madness that he has so care­ fully catalogued. The nature of the impresa seems in part to resist Garzoni's attempt to censor feminine madness and to reduce the mad women to objects of exhibition. Works Cited Alciato, Andrea. Andreae Alciati Emblematum libellus nuper in lucem editus. Venice, 1546. . Diverse imprese accomodate e diverse moralita, con versi che i loro significati dichiarano insieme con molti altri nella lingua italiana поп piu tradotte. Tratte dagli emblemi dell'Alciato. Lyons, 1551. Amoris Divini et Humani Effectus Varii Sacrae Scripturae Sanctorumque PP. Sententiis ac Gallicis versibus illustrati. Antwerp, 1626. Ariosto, Ludovico. Orlando Furioso di M. Ludovico Ariosto. Nuovamente ristampato e ricorretto. Con nuovi argomenti di M. Ludovico Dolce. Con la vita dell'autore di M. Simone Fornari: II Vocabolario delle voci piu oscure: le imitationi cavate dal Dolce: le nuove Allegorie et Annot. Di M. Tomaso Porcacchi. Venice, 1619. Bargagli, Scipione. DelVimprese di Scipion Bargagli gentiVhuomo sanese alia prima parte, la seconda e la terza nuovamente aggiunte: dove, doppo tutte Vopere cosl scritte a penna, come stampate, ch'egli potuto ha leggendo vedere di coloro, che delta vera natura di quelle si ragiona alia regia, e cesarea maesta del savissimo, ed ottimo imperadore Ridolfo il Secondo, dedicate. Venice, 1594. Biondi, Albano. "Aspetti della cultura cattolica post-tridentina. Religione e controllo sociale." In Storia d'ltalia. Annali4. Intellettuali e potere. Ed. Corrado Vivanti. Turin, 1981 Pp. 253-302. Blair, Ann. The Theater of Nature: Jean Bodin and Renaissance Science. Princeton, NJ, 1997. Bolzoni, Lina. La stanza della memoria. Modelli letterari e iconografici nell'eta della stampa. Turin, 1995. Caburacci, Francesco. Trattato di M. Francesco Caburacci da Imola. Dove si dimostra il vero, et novo modo difare le Imprese, con un breve discorso in difesa dell'Orlando Furioso di M. Ludovico Ariosto. Bologna, 1580. Calabritto, Monica. "Medical and Moral Dimensions of Feminine Madness: Representing Mad Women in the Renaissance." Forum Italicum 36 (Spring 2002): 26-52. Caldwell, Dorigen. "Studies in the Sixteenth-Century Italian Impresa." Emblematica 11 (2001): 1-257. Camerarius, Georgius. Emblemata amatoria. Venice, 1627.

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Cantimori, Delio. "Umanesimo e religione nel Rinascimento." In Umanesimo e religione nel Rinascimento. Turin, 1975. Pp. 259-98. Cherchi, Paolo. Enciclopedismo e politica della riscrittura. Tomaso Garzoni. Pisa, 1980. . Introduction to La Piazza di tutte le professioni del mondo, by Tomaso Garzoni. Ed. P. Cherchi and B. Collina. Turin, 1996. Ciavolella, Massimo. "Eros and the Phantasms of Heroes/' In Eros and Anteros: The Medical Tradition of Love in the Renaissance. To­ ronto, 1992. Pp. 75-85 Clark, Stuart. Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe. New York, 1997. Clark, Kenneth. The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form. New York, 1956. Collina, Beatrice. Introduction to Le vite delle donne illustri della sacra scrittura. Con Vaggionta delle vite delle donne oscure e laide dell'uno e deWaltro Testamento. E un Discorso in fine sopra la nobilta delle donne, by Tomaso Garzoni. Ed. B. Collina. Ravenna, 1994. Crisciani, Chiara. "L'individuale nella medicina tra Medio Evo e Umanesimo: i 'consilia'." In Umanesimo e medicina. II problema delVindividuale. Ed. R. Cardini and M. Rigolosi. Rome, 1996. Pp. 1-32. De Angelis, Maria Antonietta. Gli emblemi di Andrea Alciati nella edizione Steyner del 1531. Fonti e simbologie. Salerno, 1984. Eamon, William. Science and the Secrets of Nature. Princeton, 1994. Farra, Alessandro. Settenario dell'humana riduttione, d'Alessandro Farra, Giureconsulto alessandrino dal Castellaccio. Andrea Rondadinus Vicarius, vidit, et permisit imprimi. Pavia, 1571. Garzoni, Bartolomeo, and Tomaso Garzoni. Gli due Garzoni, cioe V huomo astratto del molto rever. P. D. Tomaso Garzoni da Bagnacavallo; & la stella de' magi del molto rever. P. D. Bartolomeo Garzoni da Bagnacavallo, amendue fratelli per natura, per studio, per religione, per titolo di predicatore о teologo, et per nominatione d' academici, in varie citta d'ltalia. Venice, 1604. . // laconismo vitale circa V autore (Tomaso Garzoni). Venice, 1613. Garzoni, Tomaso. L' hospedale de' pazzi incurabili. Venice, 1586. . La Piazza di tutte le professioni del mondo. Ed. Paolo Cherchi and Beatrice Collina. Turin, 1996. . Opere. II teatro dei vari e diversi cervelli mondani. II mirabile cor­ nucopia consolatorio. L'ospidale dei pazzi incurabili. La sinagoga degli ignoranti e una scelta di brani da La piazza universale. Ed. Paolo Cherchi. Ravenna, 1993.

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. // Scrraglio rlc gli slupori del nwndo, di Tomaso Garzoni da Bagnacavallo. Diviso in diece appartamenti. . . . Opera поп meno dotta che curiosa, cost per i theologi, predicatori, scritturisti, e legisti: come per filosofi, academici, astrologi, historici, poeti, & altri. Arricchita di varie annotiationi dal M. R. P. D. Bartolomeo Garzoni suo fratello, prelato di Santo Ubaldo d'Uguhbio, e teologo privilegiato della congregatione lateranense. . . . Venice, 1613. Giovio, Paolo. Dialogo delVimprese militari e amorose. Ed. M. L. Doglio. Rome, 1978. Gombrich, E. H. "Icones Symbolicae: Philosophies of Symbolism and their Bearing on Art." In On the Renaissance: Vol. II: Symbolic Images. London, 1993. Pp. 123-91. Haig Gaisser, Julia. Pierio Valeriano on the III Fortune of Learned Men: a Renaissance Humanist and his World. Ann Arbor, 1999. Jedin, Hubert. A History of the Council of Trent. Trans. Ernest Graf. 2 vols. London; Edinburg, 1957-61. Klein, Robert. "La theorie de l'expression figuree dans les traites italiens sur les Imprese, 1555-1612." In La forme et Vintelligible. Paris, 1970. Pp. 125-51. La Perriere, Guillaume de. Le Theatre des bons engins, auquel sont contenuz cent emblemes moraulx. Compose par Guillaume de La Perriere Tolosain: et nouvellement par iceluy lime, reveu, etcorrige. Paris, [1540]. Lo Schiavo, D. Luigi. "Tomaso Garzoni C.R.L. e la sua congregazione (1549-1589)." In Tomaso Garzoni. lino zingaro in convento Celebrazioni garzoniane, IV centenario 1589-1989 RavennaBagnacavallo 1989-1990. Ravenna, 1990. Pp. 27-34. Maggi, Armando. Identita e impresa rinascimentale. Ravenna, 1998. McDonald, Helen. Erotic Ambiguities. The Female Nude in Art. New York, 2001. Nead, Lynda. Art, Obscenity and Sexuality. The Female Nude. London; New York, 1992. O'Malley, John. Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era. Cambridge, MA, 2000. Palazzi, Giovanni Andrea. I discorsi... sopraV imprese. Bologna, 1575, Paleotti, Gabriele. Discorso intorno alle immagini sacre e profane diviso in cinque libri, dove si scuoprono varii abusi low e si dichiara il vero modo che christianamente si doveria osservara le porle nelle chiese, nelle case et in ogni altro luogo. Raccolto e posto insieme ad utile delle anime per commissione di Monsignore Illustrissimo e Reverendissimo Card. Paleotti Vescovo di Bologna al popolo della citta e diocese sua. In Trattati

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il'arle del Cinquecento fra Manierismo e Controriforma. Ed. Paola Barocchi. Vol.2. Bari, 1961. Pp. 117-509. Pelliccia, Guerrino, and Giancarlo Rocca, eds. Dizionario degli Istituti di perfezione. Vol. 2. Rome, 1974-. Pp. 46-158. Po-Chia Hsia, R. The World of Catholic Renewal. 1540-1770. Cambridge, 1998. Possevino, Antonio. Antonii Possevini Mantuani Societatis lesu Bibliotheca Selecta de ratione studiorum, ad disciplinas & ad salutem omniu gentium procurandam. Recognita novissime, ab eodem, et aucta, & in duos tomos distributa. Triplex additus index. Alter librorum, alter capitum, tertius verborum, et rerum. Quid autem in quolibet tomo contineatur, vide post epistola dedicatoria. Permissu auctoris nunc primum in Germania edita. Cologne, 1607. Praz, Mario. Studies in Seventeenth-Century Imagery. 2nd ed. Rome, 1964. Prodi, Paolo, and Wolfang Reinhard, eds. II concilio di Trento ed il moderno. Bologna, 1996. Prosperi, A d r i a n o . "Intellettuali e Chiesa all'inizio dell'eta moderna." In Storia dTtalia. Annali 4. Intellettuali e potere. Ed. Corrado Vivanti. Turin, 1981.Pp. 159-252. Ruscelli, Girolamo. Le imprese illustri con espositioni, et discorsi del Sor leronimo Ruscelli. Al Serenissimo et sempre Felicissimo Re Catolico, Filippo d'Austria. Venice, 1566. Russell, Daniel. "The Needs of the Literary Historian/' In The Index of Emblem Symposium. Ed. Peter M. Daly. New York, 1990. Pp. 107-17. Savarese, Gennaro, and Andrea Gareffi, eds. La letteratura nelle immagini del Cinquecento. Rome, 1980. Simonini, Ivan. "Tomaso Garzoni, uno zingaro in convento/' In Tomaso Garzoni. Pp. 9-25 Siraisi, Nancy. "Anatomizing the Past: Physicians and History in Renaissance Culture." Renaissance Quarterly. 1 (2000): 1-30. Tasso, Torquato. "II Conte overo de l'imprese." In Dialoghi. Ed. Ezio Raimondi. Vol. 2, T. 2. Florence, 1958. Pp. 1027-1124. Tesauro, Emanuele. Idea delle perfette imprese. Ed. M. L. Doglio. Florence, 1975. . II cannocchiale aristotelico . . . . Anastatic reprint of the original published in Turin in 1620. Savigliano (CU): Ed. Artistica Piemontese, 2000. Tomaso Garzoni, uno zingaro in convento. Celebrazioni garzoniane, IV centenario 1589-1989. Ravenna-Bagnacavallo, 1989-1990.

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Toscanella, Orazio. Bellezze del Furioso di M. Lodovico Arioslo; sceltc da Oratio Toscanella: cogli argomenti et allegorie dei canti: con Г Allegoria de i nomi propri principali delV opera: et со i luochi communi dell' autore, per ordine di alfabeto, del medesimo. Venice, 1574. Valeriano, Bolzano Pierio. Hieroglyphica sive de sacris Aegyptiorum Uteris commentarii. Basel, 1556. Wack, Mary Frances. Lovesickness in the Middle Ages. The Viaticum and Its Commentaries. Philadelphia, 1990. Yates, Frances. The Art of Memory. London. 1966; rpt. Chicago, 1984 .

Wrestling Proteus: Explication as Metamorphic Struggle in Jacob Cats's Silenus Alcibiadis, sive Proteus CHARLES W. HENEBRY Harvard University Thanks to a fellowship from the Newberry Library, I recently had the good fortune to become acquainted with a most unusual emblem book, one little studied outside its native land, but most rich in implications for anyone interested in the didactic function of emblems. I refer to the Silenus Alcibiadis, sive Proteus,1 the first of many emblem-books published in the course of the seventeenth century by the Dutch author Jacob Cats. It went through multiple editions and a number of significant changes in format, but I want to focus on the relatively rare first edition of 1618, printed in Middelburg, instead of the more commonly cited Rotterdam 1627 edition bearing a Dutch title, Proteus ofte Minne-Beelden verandert in Sinne-beelden.2 For the curious format of 1618 makes more plainly evident the extraordinary novelty of Cats's project. It is plainly an ambitious book —ambitious in size, scope, and quality, featuring original poems in Dutch, Latin, and French, finely detailed engravings, and numerous authoritative 1. In full, Silenus Alcibiadis, sive Proteus, Vitae humanae, Emblemate trifariam variato, oculis subjiciens. "Deus nobis haec otiafecit." In English, The Silenus ofAlcibiades, or Proteus. The Archetype of Human Life Exposed to the Eyes by Emblems that Vary Under Three Headings. "God made these games for us." 2.

Proteus, or Images of Love Transformed into Images of Wisdom.

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quotations from a wide variety of sources. Ambitious also, though, for its radical vision of what can be done with emblems. The Silenus consists of three volumes, the first admittedly conventional except for the quality and size of the engravings: 51 emblems depicting the pains and pleasures of love. Cats borrowed the concept and some of the emblems themselves from best-selling collections of love emblems written by Otto Van Veen (1608) and Daniel Heinsius (1608, under the pseudonym Theocritus a Ganda). Cats's second and third volumes, however, do something rather odd: each one presents the same sequence of 51 engravings over again under a new interpretive regime. 3 Thus images used in volume 1 in the manufacture of love emblems—many of which explicitly depict the sports of lovers or the god of love himself—are reused in volumes 2 and 3, becoming through reinterpretation emblems of moral reflection and religious devotion. To be sure, emblematists frequently borrowed visual motifs from other authors' collections, often reinterpreting them to new ends. Cats, however, makes reinterpretation the central and defining technique of his emblem book, a strategy which he highlights in the title's double reference to revelation accomplished through metamorphosis: according to Alcibiades in Plato's Symposium, statuettes of the ugly demigod Silenus could be opened to reveal a beautiful god hidden inside; so, too, in the Odyssey Menelaus had to wrestle the sea god Proteus through a series of terrifying shape-changes to make him assume his true form and reveal his boundless knowledge. In just this man3. The 1627 edition arranges the same material rather differently, interleaving the three parallel emblem collections of the 1618 edition to form a single collection in which each engraving is displayed once, but emblematically interpreted three times. (In addition Cats added a new emblem at the beginning of the sequence, bringing the total number of emblems to 51). This change of format necessitated a change of title page design. Whereas 1618 contains three separate but closely analogous illustrated title papges depicting the reigns of love, justice and religion (figs. 1-3), 1627 has a single title page, depicting the reign of Love on earth with Justice and Religion looking down from above. An edition of 1620 (Amsterdam) anticipates the page format of 1627, printing each engraving only once and using the extra space in the second and third iteration of each emblem to present additional authorities. Yet in other respects this edition mirrors the plan of 1618, containing three parallel collections of emblems, each with its own title page; the second and third volumes are simply rendered as collections of "naked" emblems. 1618 and 1620 appear to have been printed from the same plates; 1627 features new plates, apparently traced from a printed copy of 1618 or 1620, for they are all mirror-reversed.

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nor, the love emblems of volume 1 are reworked in each succeeding volume to reveal higher forms of wisdom. In the Latin preface to the first volume, 4 Cats recommends this odd project —reinterpreting love emblems —as a therapeutic cure for love. He portrays his love emblems, written under the influence of passion, not simply as poetic expressions but as symptoms of the mental disease which is love. Cats sets out to cure this mental disorder, however, not by opposing but rather by indulging it in such a way as to transform it. By means of reinterpretation he aims to redirect the signifiers of love to ends more salutary because less self-involved. Readers, drawn in by familiar and enticing images, take an active role in their cure: the work of puzzling through three different treatments of each visual motif strengthens the intellect and reduces images, once all-powerful, to the status of mnemonic counters in the firm control of reason. Cats's claim that the Silenus works beneficial changes of character is closely tied up in the notion that his three volumes present distinct portraits of the stages of human life —the "whirling" restlessness of youth, the sociable fellowship of maturity, and the grave spirituality of old age: [I]n a threefold book I display humankind in threefold measure,... depicting in the first volume my own youth in its native hue, the very effigy of Homo naturalis, inclined to sexual propagation— The effigy of Homo civilis, living sociably in mutual fellowship with other people, I display in the second volume. In the third, I trace at last some outline of Homo Christianus, steeped in true faith. (*3v-*4r) The recurring reference herein to draftsmanship and the visual arts —display, depict, trace, effigy, outline —is curious because it must be taken to refer primarily to the text of the emblems, not the engravings. After all, the emblem illustrations remain the same from

4. This Latin preface is followed by a preface in Dutch. They are not identical, though they share considerable material. The Dutch preface is longer, explicating in detail the iconography of the book's three illustrated title pages, something the Latin preface does not do. On the other hand, the Latin preface, written for an audience of educated humanists, appears to offer a fuller account of the book's method and theoretical grounding, as it contains key passages which are missing from the Dutch. For this reason I focus in this essay on the Latin.

EMBLEMATICA 134 one volume to the next. Thus, whereas some engravings graphically depict lovers in the midst of folly (in their "native hue," as it were) neither Homo civilis nor Homo Christianus receives similar treatment. Cats's claim to "display humanity in threefold measure" (*3v) is therefore an ekphrastic metaphor. This effectively undercuts the authority of the detailed realism of the engravings: despite their fine craftsmanship, they depict merely the physical appearance of things, whereas the poems display inward truth:

All three sketches are accomplished by means of the same images, retained not only from the first to the second volume, but also in the third one. I do this to persuade myself and others that men and women must change the interior faculties of their souls even though they retain their bodies' outward shape. (*4r) In asserting that his book of emblems enacts the nexus of flesh and spirit which is the essence of human life, Cats seems to be taking advantage of terminology introduced by Paulo Giovio, who distinguished the picture and motto of an impresa as its body and soul. 5 In this key passage Cats lays out, not simply the didactic lesson of his book, but as well the means through which he hopes to achieve it. Seeing the book's "soul" pass through three iterations, the reader will be inspired to undergo a similar metamorphosis. This scenario, in which the reader learns by seeing, takes for granted the persuasive and instructive value of the rhetorical technique characterized by Aristotle as "pro ommaton poiein," "bringing-before-the-eyes" (3.10-11). Cats's subtitle would seem to confirm the reference: "The Archetype of Human Life Exposed to the Eyes by Emblems that Vary Under Three Headings." Greek orators termed visual distinctiveness of speech enargeia, a rhetorical figure which Quintilian rendered in Latin as evidential not the sort of proof we would consider evidence, but rather a narrative of palpable immediacy (Institutes, 4.2.63). In Aristotle's account, abstractions as well as events should be set vividly before the eyes of an audience, but this requires the use of metaphor. Such, in fact, was the practice of Christian

5. Giovio's treatise, Dialogo dell'Imprese Militari etAmorose, was widely read and exerted a considerable influence on the development of the emblem, as Cats's Latin preface testifies.

135 as well as pagan orators, and Cats points to this as precedent for his emblems: CHARLES W. HENEBRY

This saw He who sees all, the one begotten Son of God, Christ Savior, nor was it invisible to the Saints, nor did it escape the Learned: all of whom, artfully disguising their art whenever they had to speak to the people and excite or, even, reclaim their listeners' attention, possessed the skill as speakers to transform their elementary lessons into things everyday and trivial. Do we not often in the Gospels see Christ undertake weighty matters by means of some childish simile —a grain of mustard, say —and culminate in a heavenly peroration? (**r) The parable of the mustard seed is a telling example, for it recalls Aristotle's advice that, to produce the effect of enargeia,6 metaphors must be lively, a quality he terms energeia: "to say that a good man is 'foursquare' is a metaphor . but it does not signify activity [energeia]. But the phrase 'having his prime of life in full bloom' is energeia, as is ... 'now then the Greeks darting forward on their feet' " (3.11). The aim, evidently, is to endow an abstraction (the prime of life, the Greek army) with the "energy" of a living creature (a flower) or an object in motion (a javelin) and by this means to "excite" (as Cats puts it) the attention of readers or listeners. Considered as a metaphor, the mustard seed contains a hidden energy which is directly analogous to the potential of the real seed, tiny as it is, for rapid growth. All this chimes suggestively with Cats's claim to have endowed his book with a "soul" that develops and matures according to the pattern of human life. Yet, if so, the energeia of the Silenus arises not simply from the activity of lively metaphors, but as well the activity of reinterpreting these emblems. According to Hans Luijten, Cats designed each of his portraits of life's stages to appeal to a different segment of his reading audience:

6. Perhaps to avoid confusion with energeia, Aristotle in this key passage does not actually use the word enargeia, but speaks rather of " pro ommaton poiein, bringing-before-the-eyes." But since enargeia describes the visualization of events and ideas, it is evident that energeia gives rise to enargeia. See Eden, 71-75, and Kennedy, tr., 249nl33.

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Cats aimed at a relatively wide audience. Different age categories can be distinguished: the young adolescent lovers in their premarital lives, the sensible, middle-aged in their family and social lives, as well as the serious elderly, who primarily concerned themselves with good advice and religious contemplation. (Ill, 427) In an important sense this account of the work's relationship to its audience runs contrary to the one outlined in the Latin preface. Luijten characterizes Cats's book as a cornucopia —a plentiful variety offering something to the taste of everyone. Or, rather, in his model the book is a marvelous mirror, for young readers, attracted to the erotic trifles of the first volume, will find therein a portrait of their character; so, too, will the middle-aged and elderly find sketches of their own inward nature in the volumes to which they are naturally attracted. This recalls a commonplace of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century didactic literature: the mirror held up to the reader for the purpose of self-edification (e. g., the Speculum principum). But, as we have seen, Cats conceives his work not as a multifaceted mirror but rather as a dynamic model of the soul, one that inspires readers to undergo the process of maturation which it enacts. This can only happen if the youths who read volume 1 go on to read and ponder the emblems of volumes 2 and 3. And yet how might readers be impelled to do so? For Luijten is correct to point out that each of Cats's portraits appeals primarily to persons who have reached the particular stage in life which it depicts. Cats describes the first volume as a lovely child, one who allures young readers by reflecting for them an image of their inward nature: "I hope to attract youths by means of a comely face — a title page alluring to immature eyes" (*4v). Here the title page particular to volume V (fig. 1: literally a portrait of young couples assembled around an idol to Cupid; figuratively a portrait of youth) provides the volume with a

7. As noted in the footnotes to the appended translation, each volume contains two title pages: one, common to all three, which is unillustrated and bears the full title of the book in Latin; the other, particular to each, which consists of a lavish engraving and descriptive title for that volume ("Emblems Touching on Love and Mores"; "Emblems, Once Amatory, Now in Truth Transferred into More Serious Consciousness of Moral Doctrine"; "Emblems, Once Amatory, Now in Truth Transformed into Sacred Mediations."

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with a "face" which young people will find attractive and in which they can see themselves reflected. Again, the volume is filled with poems on the subject of love, and this serves both to entice young readers and to mirror their mental state, for "tender ears carry the dainty verses of many a frolicking poet" (*4r). In short, if Cats is right to characterize youth in terms of erotic desire, his portrait of youth and youthful pastimes is one which young people will find naturally desirable. And we might well expect, with Luijten, to find a similar correspondence between the audience and the subject matter of the second and third volumes. For, just as youth is dominated by eros, so maturity and old age are dominated by corresponding forms of desire: respectively philautia (self-love) and agape (spiritual love). 8 Passion, then, is the central focus of all three volumes. In the symbolic structure of the emblem Cats perceived a model for how the soul functions under the influence of desire. This idea seems to have arisen out of a critique of the love emblems he wrote in his youth: I frankly confess that the first part of these Emblems of mine emanated from the whirling surge of my youth. Whenever I was swept off course towards poetic Sirens and their allurements, in a mood typical of that age I sketched in writing amatory Emblems—juvenile trifles. These I was forced to put aside, however, along with other exercises of the same kind, by pressing business matters. Then, recently, after taking brief refuge from the troubles of my previous life by the singular grace of the highest, best God, these emblems fell into my hands as I was going through some few old papers, and it struck me that by collecting them together I could see —graphically depicted therein—myself as I once was: a mere boy tossed miserably up and down by juvenile desires. Yet meanwhile I felt I know not what little fires of those more pleasing devo8. Knowledge of the four Greek loves, together with Cats's description in the Latin preface of Homo civilis, "living sociably in mutual fellowship with other people/ 7 might lead one to expect storge (familial love) or philia (brotherly love) to be the subject of volume 2. But, as we will shortly see, the portrait of middle-age which we find in the emblems of volume 2 is no less critical than the sketch of youth in volume 1, and centers on the ambitious courtier in precise analogy to the passionate lover.

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tions being rekindled within me. As the poet said: . . . I felt embers in the ashes of old passions. (*3v) This passage is strongly reminiscent of the Confessions of Saint Augustine, particularly in the way it equates the temptations of profane literature with those of human sexuality.9 In this account poetry is a kind of self-replicating parasite; reading verse induces a mindset conducive to falling in love and, thus, to writing verses which will in turn infect other youths. Cats alleges that his love emblems, in their original form, were not so much a portrait as a symptom of youth. Far from being a considered means for setting lessons before the eyes of readers, they reveal the perspective of youth on life simply by virtue of having been created by a young man suffering from the mental disorder of love. The brooding, melancholic lover, according to the commonplace, perceives the world in all its diversity but thinks always upon the beloved. 10 To him (or, less frequently, to her) the world is a system of signs all pointing to this cynosure. For instance, when Romeo in the famous balcony scene sees a light approach the window of Juliet's room, he imagines that his beloved is herself the source —indeed that she will outshine the moon and bring about the dawn: "But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks? / It is the east, and Juliet is the sun!" (2.2.2-3). Such is the tyranny of a supremely beautiful vision over both reason and the will: here metaphor is not a technique of speech but rather a symptom of Romeo's dissociation from reality. In De anima Aristotle describes the mind as a theater, mental images playing an instrumental role in the operation of both reason and the will (Eden, 78). An image which moves the soul to the highest pitch of emotion (whether terror or desire) is, then, capable of interfering with the orderly operation of the mind, becoming an idee fixe, a cynosure 9. See esp. book 1, chap. 13.

10. As noted by Lina Bolzoni, this tradition arose in the practice of medicine, not poetic fancy: 'These cruel practices [for curing lovesickness] are based on a classical tradition that was revived by medieval medicine and then merged with sixteenth-century mainstream culture. This tradition widely feeds into literature, into poetry especially It is commonly believed that the intensity of amorous desire causes the phantasma — that is, the image of the beloved —to concentrate within itself all the vital forces of the lover; it occupies the entire vis imaginativa, it feeds upon incessant recollection, and it gathers the vital spirits together around it. The result is a grave alteration of the virtus aestimativa, and the zones of memory and imagination become hard and dry" (145).

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of thought. This understanding of the psyche underlies the claim of the Petrarchan conceit to something approaching verisimilitude. For Petrarch and his followers (including Cats himself) do not admit to practicing a poetic craft, but claim rather to write from inspiration alone, recording in their verse the mental experience of love: love's brief ecstasies of hope, its long hours of despair, above all its strange patterns of association, through which everything serves to call just one thing to mind. In a late development, van Veen and Heinsius discovered in the emblem a means of portraying this habit of mind with a much greater degree of immediacy. This change of medium is strikingly similar in effect to the change from the novel (the characteristic medium of narrative in the nineteenth century) to the motion picture: for the love emblem borrows many of its conventions from erotic verse, but is, by contrast to verse, a high-tech, corporate production, less intimate but more fully actualized. If I may invoke the terminology of Marshall McLuhan, the love emblem is a "hot medium," n projecting upon its passive readership the tyranny of vision which is characteristic of love: the love emblem places the world in all its variety literally before readers' eyes in the form of pictures, then enacts within their minds the chain of association through which everything—from monkeys to fishmongers to dead bodies —sets the lover brooding upon the beloved and the predicament of love. In their original form, Cats claims, the emblems of volume 1 displayed the inner workings of his passionate, youthful soul not by self-conscious signification but in the manner of a demonstration. Encountering them years later, he possessed sufficient presence of mind to read them objectively, perceiving in them a graphic portrait of his former self, "tossed miserably up and down" at the mercy of desire. But even so he felt renewed heat from the ashes of old passion; imagine, then, the influence that these "poetic Sirens" would have on younger readers. To read love emblems is —dangerously— to participate in the passionate mindset of youth.

11. McLuhan's bimodal classification of the media as "hot" and "cold" has recently come under attack from scholars of cultural studies for being reductive and insufficiently rigorous. In the present instance, however, I find McLuhan's terminology valuable because his conception of "hot" media —vivid, actualized, reducing the audience to a state of passivity —neatly matches the classical concept of the passions as passive states of mind brought into being by the impact of vivid images (whether imagined or perceived).

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Hence Cats's insecurity about how the first volume will be received by "persons of grave and austere brow" (*4v). He justifies it as "bait" to capture the interest of young readers, reassuring us that, through revision, the volume now possesses a hidden, didactic function: Though, on account of its outermost skin, some may condemn this volume out of hand for containing nothing but juvenile nonsense, yet I very much hope that they, looking closer, encounter in their eyes a different work, dedicated to the highest possible character. As the fair-minded reader will note, the first volume is permissible because, while it treats lovingly the love charms which I uttered in my unbridled youth, it sprinkles them with the seasoning of moral doctrine, and this in a manner neither brutish nor insipid but lightly throughout, especially if the reader does not decline to consult those blossoms of the learned which I added as garnishes and explanations. (*4v) And even so Cats begins and ends the Latin preface with a warning to his readers not to busy themselves with the follies of volume 1 when serious matters beckon: If in jesting you would not merit jests, then look for more than childishness from the child I here present. (*3r) I will now cease once I have whispered the same moral, in the form of a simile, in the ear of those who, with quick eye and stretched forehead, have already unfolded the first part of this little work: afterward things become sluggish, just like bees when their stings are released. If you listen to me, reader, and you love yourself, keep this example in mind as a source of anxiety that the tail not become separated from the head, but remain in the company of those exalted by the Baptist.12 Fare you well. (**r-**v) Read in conjunction, these passages distinguish between two types of play: one that rushes in eagerly but remains focused on childish things for their own sake, and so results in mental torpor; another that 12. This final sentence is admittedly obscure in meaning. For a fuller explication, see the note appended to the translation below.

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I'm ploys toys (such as the metaphor of the bee) to sharpen the intellect, enabling it to focus on abstruse subjects. As we shall see, these correspond to different modes of reading emblems: passive and active. For, having acknowledged the temptation which his love emblems represent to the passive reader, Cats expresses considerable confidence in using emblems as a counter-measure to love's blandishments: 13 "Such sports will prod groggy minds from languor, while at the same time clearing the path to better things, and so will lead the juvenile intellect, gropingly, through places it would otherwise have feared to tread" (*4v). By yoking two dissimilar things through an unsuspected affinity, emblems hold the potential to engage readers on an intellectual level. This is to reconceptualize the emblem as a "cool medium," in the sense of calling forth an active, participatory response from its audience. The "hot" power of love emblems to enact within the reader the mindset of passion presents a danger only insofar as the reader acquiesces passively in the emblem's chain of association. If instead the strangeness of this mindset is made manifest, intellectual curiosity is engaged and readers become self-critical, entering upon the road to better things. To this end Cats rewrote the emblems of the first volume, "sprinkling them with the seasoning of moral doctrine" (*4v). As we turn to examine the emblems themselves, therefore, we should be attentive to how they intellectually engage readers, impelling them onward to the next volume and, thus, the next stage in life. Cats's emblems represent the action of desire upon the soul in two distinct respects. 14 First, as already noted in respect to volume 1, in 13. Inl627 Cats settled on a more radical solution to the temptation of love emblems, interleaving the emblems of all three volumes so that the civic and religious interpretations of each motif follow hard upon the erotic one. This solved the problem of the young reader who finds only the first volume engaging, but it probably contributed to the confusion of later scholarship as to Cats's didactic program. For the process of maturation, dramatically enacted in 1618 and 1620 by printing the collections separately, is considerably muted when it is repeated 51 times on a small scale. Indeed, the composite collection of 1627 is easily confused with a cornucopia that offers something for everyone. 14. The following analysis is based upon the Latin poems of 1618, supplemented slightly by the French and Dutch. The French poems are only about half the length and are much less specific than the Latin. The Dutch poems are the same length as the Latin, but use a more jocular tone and focus on colloquial and quo-

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the very act of representation each emblem enacts love's melancholic mindset, which turns everything into an occasion for musing upon the object of desire. Likewise, the reader of the second volume participates in the mindset of the ambitious worldling, courting power and thinking always on preferment, while volume 3 enacts the pious discipline of the Christian mystic, for whom everything serves as occasion for prayerful meditation. By this means the power in malo of the love emblem to enact a pattern of thought becomes in the third volume a power in bono. Yet this does not explain how readers are wakened in the earlier volumes from passive participation to active intellectual engagement. This is accomplished by setting the effects of passion vividly before the eyes of readers in the form of a lively image, the second respect in which Cats's emblems "represent" the action of desire upon the soul. In the Latin poems of Cats's three tobacco emblems, 15 for instance, the engraving shows a smoker sitting in a room almost bare of furnishings; his plate is empty; in his craving for tobacco he has, evidently, almost smoked himself out of house and home. Yet he has just sent out for more —you can see Cupid here (Fig. 4) in the role of an errand-boy bringing it to him. Simon Schama reads this motif in the context of later seventeenth-century paintings by Jan Steen which associate smoking with sexual intemperance (204). But by contrast to Steen's smokers, who blow smoke in the faces of serving-wenches, or stare at them while busily stuffing their pipes with their fingers, there is no bawdy innuendo in the way Cats's smoker sits staring into middle space, or Cupid carries new supplies to him. Rather, in the Latin poems which variously interpret this picture, Cats caricatures smokers as neither eating nor drinking but subsisting solely upon the fumes of burning tobacco: in this sense they are like the salamander or the cicada, animals thought to consume nothing except (respectively) air tidian detail. Note that Cats rewrote the Dutch poems for the 1627 edition, but left the Latin and French unchanged. Unfortunately, my grasp of seventeenth-century Dutch isn't sufficient to enable me to characterize this massive revision, involving some 150 poems. The 1627 edition also contains, in an appendix, a translation into English of the Dutch poems of the first volume. It is, however, riddled with minor errors and, furthermore, misnumbered, so that the tobacco emblem (discussed below: #12 in 1618, #13 in 1627) is listed in the appendix as emblem #14.

15. 1.12,11.12 and III.12 in the edition of 1618, these emblems are combined tobecome emblem #13 in 1627 and succeeding editions.

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iind dew. This plays upon the power of tobacco to suppress hunger— a phenomenon emphasized as early as 1557 by Frere Andre Thevet (Walton, 19-20) and thought by some historians to be an important factor in the rapid spread of tobacco through Europe (Goodman, 42, 59: unlike coffee, tea, or sugar, tobacco was taken up not only by the rich but the often undernourished poor). But Cats's treatment of tobacco also implies a state of dependency: even as smoking has freed the pictured man from the need to eat, it has enchained him to another, more urgent desire. The seventeenth century lacked our terminology of chemical addiction, but in another Dutch author from the period we find a close parallel: "I cannot refrain from a few words of protest against the astounding fashion lately introduced from America — a sort of smoke-tippling, one might call it, which enslaves its victims more completely than any other form of intoxication, old or new" (J. Joachim von Rusdorff, Metamorphosis Europae, 1627, qtd. Walton, 44). In the tobacco emblem of volume 1, Cats moralizes the smoker as the embodiment of frustrated desire, reasoning that love's promises are no more substantial than smoke: "Loving is smoke and love is smoke, and the mind of a mistress is smoke, / And whatever we love has the splendor of smoke" (lines 7-8). In volume 2 we find a similar meditation on the insubstantiality of princely favor. Both applications make implicit reference to familiar conceptions of courtship/courtiership: the lover who spends all his worldly wealth in a vain effort to win the heart of his beloved; the courtier who spends all in a vain effort to win preferment from his lord. In fact, the peculiar analogy comparing the unsuccessful courtier to the salamander has a close parallel in Hamlet: King. How fares our cousin Hamlet? Ham. Excellent, i' faith; of the chameleon's dish: I eat the air, promise-crammed; you cannot feed capons so. (3.2.92-95) Characteristically, the critique of desire in 1.12 and 11.12 becomes, in volume 3, an encomium of spiritual longing. The reader is exhorted to live frugally, subsisting on faith alone. For (unlike either the brooding lover or the scheming courtier) the Christian mystic lives a joyful existence: so, too, the cicada sings despite its lean diet, the salamander leaps about, and the smoking sailor reels —not from wine but (as the pun would have it) "inspiration." In short, the verbal images and engravings used to mock the folly of eros and philautia are made to serve as grounds for praising the divine folly which is agape.

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Rather than simply participating subjectively in these modes of desire, the reader achieves an objective understanding of each of them. In the Latin preface Cats credits newfound sobriety with enabling him to profit, rather than suffer, from exposure to his love emblems: "after taking brief refuge from the troubles of my previous life by the singular grace of... God, these emblems fell into my hands . . . , and it struck me that by collecting them together I could see — graphically depicted therein —myself as I once was: a mere boy tossed miserably up and down by juvenile desires" (*3v). The mark of maturity here is that he perceives the storm surge of passion as if from a distance. Far from being swept up by these scattered verses, Cats is able to collect them together and impose order upon a disordered frame of mind. The mental associations recorded by these emblems no longer seem natural to him; seeing their strangeness, he sees how he used to be driven about the world, misled at every turn by an associative process which was focused obsessively by raw desire. In revising these emblems for publication, Cats endeavored to set his young readers at a corresponding distance through the use of satirical humor. Within each volume successive emblems offer successive psychological insights: like a monkey with her baby, lovers dote even if the object of devotion is ugly (1.3); like a turtle, lovers carry their burden everywhere (1.13); like a smoking wick, hearts that have loved once are easily relit (1.16). These combine to form a composite portrait of Homo naturalis (and, similarly, of Homo civilis and Homo Christianus) that is plainly didactic in character: by means of analogies Cats makes visible the manifold ways that desire affects the soul, and cajoles the reader to abandon lower passions in favor of the highest one. But, far more than to the "distance" afforded by humor, Cats attributes didactic value to the activity of reworking emblems: I began, for the sake of mental training, to introduce those Emblems, juvenile and Amatory as matters stood, into my intellect so that I might change them by poetic games into meditations of greater maturity, ever the more Moral and Sacred the more I infused them with full-grown vigor. (*3v) In the opening lines of the Latin preface, Cats describes his emblems as mere jests or games — though indeed he goes on to warn that players will be left looking foolish if they play them only for the sake of fun. In the present passage, though, we discover how Cats's deprecatory characterization of his work as mere lusus fits with his ambitious claims for its therapeutic power. For the game of reinterpreting em-

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Moms is a way of practicing control over the mental faculty which sets images in association with ideas. By this means the imagination is subjected to the power of reason, and desire made to serve an end other than itself. In a manner reminiscent of the art of memory, Cats treats his love emblems rather like imagines agentes, assigning new values to images which once served as foci for erotic rumination. Practitioners of the art of memory sought through the manipulation of images to acquire conscious control over the largely subconscious processes of storing and recalling memories. 16 In an analogous manner, Cats seeks through the manipulation of images to attain control over desire and the will. The similarity of methodology results from the close kinship of memory and desire, both faculties dependent upon the imagination. Indeed, as Lina Bolzoni has shown, many early modern treatises on artificial memory advocated harnessing erotic imagines, just as Cats does in the Silenus: [E]ros and memory are deeply related. With a much greater and more dangerous force than the images of memory, the phantasmata of eros occupy a space that opens up between body and psyche. . . . If memory, by nature, plays an essential role in affixing and feeding the amorous phantasma, the art of memory proves to be keenly interested in reversing the process, in using it for its own ends. (146) The use of images of beautiful women in techniques of memory must have been common practice if, at the height of the Counter-Reformation, even an observant Minorite friar, the Calabrian Girolamo Marafioto, recommends in his Ars memoriae (Frankfurt: Matthaeus Becker, 1603) that you walk the streets and carefully watch the most attrac16. Frances Yates's ground-breaking account of the art of memory has in recent years been revised and greatly refined by the work of Mary Carruthers (whose focus is on Antiquity and the Middle Ages) and that of Lina Bolzoni, a specialist in the Italian Renaissance. Scholars have long mooted a connection between emblems and the art of memory, but it has never been characterized in detail. I endeavored to do this for the particular case of Alciato in an article published in Emblematica 10:2. In regard to the Silenus, however, the intimate connection between love and memory is at least as vital to understanding Cats's emblematic practice as the more general similarity between the art of coding memories and that of creating emblems.

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live» women, fixing in your mind their gestures and the movements of their bodies, and using them as imagines agentes (19). (Bolzoni, 149) Because these trifles once meant the world to Cats —and indeed still make his heart beat faster —they possess a special power to motivate. He is, admittedly, more squeamish than Marafioto, choosing to employ not images of women but rather images of other subjects, linked to desire by youthful fancy. But in another sense he is more daring: the effort to rework love emblems into emblems of wisdom and piety is a massive project, wholly reconfiguring the network of erotic associations developed in adolescence. Cats also differs from Marafioto in his aim: ethical and spiritual rather than mnemotechnical in any narrow sense. But the ethical and spiritual significance of the art of memory was commonplace from Antiquity: the Psychomachia of Prudentius, the Confessions of Augustine, the meditative sermons of Bernard on the Song of Songs, and the Divine Comedy of Dante all engage in this sort of "mental training"( as Cats terms it) as a means of ordering the mind and perfecting the soul. The reader is encouraged to participate in this process of mental training. Each emblem is laid out as an image surrounded by texts which cluster on three sides (fig. 4): above, a Latin motto; below, biblical and classical authorities; to the left, on the facing page, poems in Dutch, Latin, and French. Especially in the case of the first volume, these poems are not translations of one another but rather independent meditations on the pictured motif. Thus the Dutch poem in the tobacco emblem of volume 1 fancifully describes Love setting up shop to sell smoke to customers; the Latin poem compares lovers to smokers, and smokers to the salamander and cicada; and the French poem apostrophizes the lover as a fool for grounding happiness on the insubstantial favor of a lady. In later volumes, the Dutch, Latin, and French poems run much more closely in parallel. Nonetheless the differences noted in volume 1 suggest that Cats's principal aim in providing texts in several languages was not to attract an international audience, but rather to deepen the experience of readers whose mother tongue was Dutch. The Latin poems employ simpler grammar and vocabulary than either the Dutch poems or the Latin preface, while the French poems are shorter and simpler still. Dutch youths, trained in Latin and with a smattering of French, practiced important language skills in the course of reading these emblems, thereby building a network of associated phrases, images and concepts. The Latin poems are themselves collocations of synonyms and commonplaces: the Latin

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poem in each of the tobacco emblems, for instance, employs several synonyms for vapor, for food, and for the ingestion of food (see Appendix 1), while linking (as we have seen already) the diet of smokers to commonplace lore from the bestiary tradition. In this way, each of the emblems of volume 1 coordinates a cluster of images (verbal and visual) to express an idea about love in several ways and in several different languages. Confronted by this variety, readers naturally make choices, constructing unities of their own from the plentitude available to them on the printed page. In this sense Cats's emblems are, notably, a cool medium, calling forth an active response from their audience. In subsequent volumes, readers transform these associative clusters "by poetic games into meditations of greater maturity/' Cats means this literally: the Latin poems of volumes 2 and 3, to a considerable degree, recycle the vocabulary of the corresponding poems of volume 1. Cats changes the declension of nouns, interchanges adjectives between nouns, alters the tense, mood, and voice of verbs, and (occasionally) substitutes a synonym—even as he changes the subject of each poem from eros to philautia to agape (see Appendix 1). This was a familiar exercise in the Humanist classroom, as also were the practices of extemporaneous translation and (though less widely recognized in scholarship today) the extemporaneous composition of emblems (for this last, see Bagley, 43-46). Thus, Cats employs well-established techniques of education and persuasion: translation, poetic transformation, mnemotechnical association, and energic representation. But he combines them in a new format to accomplish an ambitious new end: I do this to teach that, up from whirling and restless youth we must carry ourselves by a praiseworthy volatility toward the better and the higher: through the calm strength of character of maturity, thereafter arriving in weighty old age to shine as examples to posterity. Until that moment when genuine and innate gravity obtains the same place within our intellects which was previously occupied by the empty levity and vanity of the juvenile soul, the conscious mind, constituted by comparison of previous and existing ways of life, will dictate to each person. But at the end of each of our lives, reason will no longer be given over to corrupt human inclinations, but rather wholly to divine desires. (Mr)

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In I he final sentence of this passage, Cats imagines a time when reason will no longer be necessary, when love for God will control the soul as surely as erotic desire held sway in youth. Until then, however, reason plays a key role: not the enforcer of abstinence but the analyst of desire. Cats here conceptualizes reason as that power of analogy which enabled him to revise the love emblems of his youth, and which, furthermore, will enable his reader to accomplish a corresponding reformation of character. For, he says, reason is "constituted by comparison of previous and existing ways of life/' seeking through analysis of youthful folly to gain insight into things divine. 17 In this way reason makes desire serve as motive for right action, harnessing the soul for flight. We may readily think of the image of the charioteer in Plato's Phaedrus, but the metaphor Cats chooses is that of Proteus. He explains his choice in the Dutch, but not the Latin, preface: Ende also een yder van ons dese drievoudighe genegentheden in sich bespeurt, so poogen wy dit jeghenwoordich boeexken daer toe te doen strecken dat wy in den natuerlijcken mensche matelijk, in den burgherlijcken mensche rechtveerdelijck, in den Christelijcken mensche Godsalichlijck mettern Apostel mochten leven. Welcke drie veranderende genegentheden wy den leser willen by dit boeck voorstellen, hebben daerom 'tselve mede den naem van Proteus ghegheven. (lines 219-26) Since we all detect these three inclinations in ourselves, I devised this work to enable us to live as the Apostle said we should: in natural man moderately, in political man righteously, and in Christian man devoutly. Because I wished by means of this work to introduce these changing inclinations to the reader, I have given it the name Proteus.18

17. Maturity, the middle term between youth and old age, is the stage in life to which reason most properly belongs. Hence, though volume 2 focuses internally on philautia, its title page depicts a statue of Justice carrying her scales, connoting notjustlegalbut rational judgment generally (fig. 2). On either side stand figures of authority, learning, and reason: to her right a king and a clerk or magistrate, signifying the rule of law; to her left, a scholar teaching a youth, with a young boy reading happily at his feet.

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The book, as I said at the beginning, is itself Protean, and the reader must, like Menelaus, wrestle with its emblems through several changes in order to force it to reveal its deep wisdom. But in doing so the reader also changes. Cats repeatedly identifies his book with its readers, its threefold portrait of human life a reflection of the human capacity to change for the better. The reader is thus Menelaus and Proteus both; in struggling with Cats's emblems, each reader wrestles with his or her own inward character —his or her own mental matrix of images and ideas —reconfiguring the whole so as to reshape it in the image of Christ and the Apostles. Such, then, is the ambitious project of the Silenus Alcihiadis, sive Proteus: Cats makes of emblems a dynamic means of effecting self-reformation through the labor of giving to allegorical images new allegorical significance. Karel Porteman in his several articles on Cats does not acknowledge the sophistication of the therapeutic program of the Silenus: "the emblem still remains in this rather sensational volume first and foremost a didactic method, a bimedial genus scribendi with moral intentions" (Porteman 1992, 67).19 Porteman argues that Cats's later emblem books are, by contrast to the Silenus, the organic expression of "an emblematic world-view in the sense of a spirituality" (67). In my analysis, however, even in his first published work Cats thought of emblems as reflecting the mental habits of their author and, therefore, influencing those of their readers. According to the program advanced in the Latin preface, careful readers of the Silenus acquire the habit of interrogating the pleasures of this world, reinterpreting them to higher ends. In Cats's later works the world itself becomes a book of emblems, one seen by all but comprehended only by those who, seeking God, find Him written there. But already in the Silenus Alcihiadis, sive Proteus Cats considered the emblem to be not just a mode of writing, but a way of thinking about the world —one to be practiced by the reader as well as by the author. Despite the beauty of its illustrations and the elaborate, multilingual apparatus of poems and supporting quotations from sources classical and modern, the

18.1 am indebted to Wijnie de Groot of Columbia University for providing me with a rough translation of this passage. Any errors introduced in the process of making the English flow lucidly are mine, however. 19. Porteman elaborates upon this estimate of the Silenus in "The Emblem as 'Genus Jocosum'."

EMBLEMATICA 150 real ambition of the Silenus, its Protean character, is accomplished not on the printed page, but in the mind of the reader.

Works Cited Aristotle. On Rhetoric. Trans. George A. Kennedy. Oxford, 1991. Bagley, Ayers. "Some Pedagogical Uses of the Emblem in Sixteenthand Seventeenth-Century England." Emblematica 7 (1993): 39-60. Bolzoni, Lina. The Gallery of Memory: Literary and Iconographic Models in the Age of the Printing Press. Trans. Jeremy Parzen. Toronto, 2001. A translation of La stanza della memoria (Turin: Einaudi, 1995). Carruthers, Mary J. The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture. Cambridge, 1990. . The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400-1200. Cambridge, 1998. Cats, Jacob. Proteus ofte Minne-Beelden verandert in Sinne-beelden. Rotterdam: Pieter van Maesberge, 1627. Rpt., ed. Hans Luijten: Jacob Cats. Sinne- en minnebeelden. Studie-uitgave met inleiding en commentaar, verzorgd door Hans Luijten. The Hague: Constantijn Huygens Instituut, 1996. . Silenus Alcibiadis, sive Proteus, Vitae humanae ideam, Emblemate trifariam variato, oculis subjiciens. Middelburg: Iohannis Hellenij, 1618. Eden, Kathy. Poetic and Legal Fiction in the Aristotelian Tradition. Princeton, NJ, 1986. Giovio, Paulo. Dialogo delVImprese Militari et Amorose. Rome: Antonio Barre, 1555. Rpt. ed. Maria Doglio, Rome: Bulzoni, 1978. See also The Worthy Tract ofPaulus Giovius, Contayning a Discourse of rare inventions, both Militarie and Amorous called Imprese. Trans. Samuel Daniel. London: Simon Waterson, 1585. Rpt. NewYork: Garland, 1979. Goodman, Jordan. Tobacco in History: The Cultures of Dependence. London: Routledge, 1993. Luijten, Hans. "Jacob Cats, Sinne- en minnebeelden. A scholarly edition," an English-language summary, trans. Bertram Mourtis. In the 1996 reprint of Cats's Proteus ofte Minne-Beelden listed above, vol. 3, 427-29. Porteman, Karel. "Cats's Concept of the Emblem and the Role of Occasional Meditation." Emblematica 6 (1992): 65-82. . "The Emblem as 'Genus Jocosum': Theory and Praxis (Jacob Cats and Roemer Visscher)." Emblematica 8:2 (1994): 243-60.

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Schama, Simon. The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age. New York: Knopf, 1987. Schleier, Reinhart. Tabula Cebetis, oder ''Spiegel des Menschlichen Lebens darin Tugent und untugent abgemalet ist." Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 1973. Walton, James. The Faber Book of Smoking. New York: Faber and Faber, 2000. Yates, Frances. The Art of Memory. Chicago, 1966. Illustrations:

Fig. 1. Title page to volume 1 of Jacob Cats, Silenus Alcibiadis, sive Proteus, M i d d e l b u r g i : Ex Officina t y p o g r a p h i c a I o h a n n i s Hellenij, 1618. Тур 632.18.263, Department of Printing and Graphic Arts, Houghton Li­ brary, Harvard College Library.

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£e igle raenf de«rMoeura

• f:

Fig. 2. Title page to volume 2 of Jacob Cats, Silenus Alcibiadis, sive Proteus, M i d d e l b u r g i : Ex Officina t y p o g r a p h i c a l o h a n n i s Hellenij, 1618. Тур 632.18.263, Department of Printing and Graphic Arts, Houghton Li­ brary, Harvard College Library.

CHARLES W. HENEBRY

Fig. 3. Title page to volume 3 of Jacob Cats, Silenus Alcibiadis, sive Proteus, M i d d e l b u r g i : Ex Officina t y p o g r a p h i c a l o h a n n i s Hellenij, 1618. Тур 632.18.263, Department of Printing and Graphic Arts, Houghton Li­ brary, Harvard College Library.

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24

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En hout dat Venus kint coop-handel gaet aengrijpen, Sijn waren zijn taback, dan t'gaec meeft om'roet pijpen^ Sij-n cramery is roock, roock is fijn befte vont, Ну blaeft roock uytfijnneus , hy fpout roock uycfijnrnonc: К.ООСК is inn HICK, vol- roocx is gans hechot der minnen%

£#.r 41W0 Tabaci bwit ore n , levi fumo л ре Йога nutrit*. r Veneris njaslo prowittit rfj)icias jingtda y fumus erit ^ш*У (dfr fumus amory mens ft 1 fumi у quidquid amarnus

oAmant ton heur 3 neB que рошг

Fig. 1. A. Flamen, "Invito funere vivet." Devises et emblesmes d'amour moralisez, 1648.(GULSM462)

by Augustin Lubin (Chesneau 1667) and that he engraved the fifty-two emblematic plates found in Adrien Gambart's 1664 work, La Vie symbolique du bienheureux Frangois de Sales.5 What has gone essen­ tially unmentioned in our field, however, is that like any number of other successful sixteenth- and seventeenth-century engravers, Flamen was far more active outside the emblem field than in it, and The copy of Flamen 1650 in the Bibliotheque Nationale de France has a manu­ script note on the title page indicating that it came from the collection of the Augustins dechausses in Paris: it is tempting to speculate that Chesneau may have learned of Flamen's work from seeing this copy of the Devises et emblesmes d'amour. For the 1688 Spanish translation by Francisco Cubillas and Pedro de Goyon (Gambart 1688), a series of coarse woodcuts based on Flamen's plates was pro­ duced, presumably in Spain, but the carver is not named (fig. 3-4, cf. fig. 1).

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EMBLEM A LflL ELEPHAS FVRIBVNDV-S. A P A G N I [C O N S P E C T V M, I1AKSVESCENS,

ft

Jriidet',

hoc pr~a? Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim. "Abhandlungen liber die Fabel." In Lessings Werke. Ed. Kurt Wolfel. Vol. 2. Frankfurt am Main, 1967. Luijten, Hans, ed. Jacob Cats. Sinne- en minnebeelden. Study edition with an introduction and commenary. 3 vols. Den Haag 1996. Porteman, Karel. Inleiding tot de Nederlandse emblemataliteratuur. Groningen, 1977. Rothacker, Erich. Das "Buch der Natur." Materialien und Grundsatzliches zur Metapherngeschichte. Ed. W. Perpeet. Bonn, 1979. Ruskin, John. Works. Ed. E. T. Cook and A. Wedderburn. Vol. XI. London, 1918-19. Scholz, Bernhard F. "Emblematisches Abbilden als Notation. Uberlegungen zur Hermeneutik und Semiotik des emblematischen Bildes." Poetica. Zeitschrift fur Sprach-und Literaturwissenschaft 16 (1984): 61-90.

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. "On Foucault's Idea of an Epistemic Shift in the 17th Century and its Significance for Baroque Scholarship/' In Literator. Tydskrif vir besondere en vergelykende taal- en literatuurstudie (South Africa) 11,3 (1990): 12-28. . "'Ownerless Legs or Arms Stretching from the Sky': Notes on an Emblematic Motif." In Andrea Alciato and the Emblem Tradition: Essays in Honor of Virginia Woods Callahan. Ed. Peter M. Daly. New York, 1989. Pp. 249-83. . Emblem und Emblempoetik. Historische und systematische Studien. Berlin, 2002. Vloten, Johannes van. Beknopte Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Letteren, van de vroegste tijden tot op heden. Tiel, 1871.

The European Impresa: From Fifteenth-Century Aristocratic Device to Twenty-First-Century Logo PETER M. DALY McGill University Most readers of Emblematica will have a fairly good idea what an impresa is, and they will know something of the theoretical discussion about imprese. 1 The idea that some modern logos may be related to the impresa may be less well known. I shall therefore spend more time reviewing examples of logos than early-modern imprese. A picture is supposedly worth a thousand words. What then is a picture worth when accompanied by a handful of well chosen words? Imprese like emblems are a mode of symbolic communication, combining images, in fact, symbolic graphics, with brief texts. However, unlike the emblem, which normally has three parts, we all know that the impresa has only two parts, a picture and a motto. Images communicate, whether in this case in the form of emblems or imprese. As W. J. T. Mitchell reminds us:

1. For a general survey, see Praz, chapter 2; Heckscher and Wirth; AlbrechtSchone, 42-45; Jons, 18-22; and Daly 1998, 27-30. Russell (1985) discusses the impresa in many places: 17-18, 28-31, 35, 39, 44, 65-66, 74-74, 142, 144, 150, 161, and in several notes. In his most recent book, Russell (1995) revisits the impresa: 62, 151, 164,191-93, 209, 235. Since "device" is a frequent synonym for impresa, readers should also consult discussions of device.

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Images are not just a particular kind of sign, but something like an actor on the historical stage, a presence or character endowed with a legendary status, a history that parallels and participates in the stories we tell ourselves about our own evolution from creatures "made in the image" of a creator, to creatures who make themselves and their world in their own image (9) Whereas the impresa was always part of the material culture, the book form of the impresa was a later development. The origins of the impresa are somewhat obscure, but they may date back to the court of Burgundy in the late fourteenth century. Historically, imprese are related to heraldry, but unlike inherited heraldic arms, the impresa was specially designed for an individual, whether a prince of the state or church, and only later for a group of scholars such as an academy. The dividing line separating impresa and emblem is tenuous, if one considers the symbolic motif, which is central to both. Emblems and imprese share such motifs as the phoenix, salamander, and lion. But the distinction is clear when one considers the purpose of the construction. The word impresa comes from the Italian and means an "undertaking," thereby indicating something of the individualistic and even esoteric nature of the device. The motto was supposed to be in a language different from that spoken by the bearer. Imprese were designed to glorify the individual, while emblems were intended to have a more general application. Originally, imprese were, then, a part of the material rather than the print culture. Often worn by aristocrats on their clothing, as in the "Portrait of a Courtier" by Bartolomeo Veneto (reproduced in Praz, facing p. 8), imprese could take many forms, jewelry and broaches being the more obvious. Elizabeth I possessed several pieces that we know of. Her phoenix jewel has her profile on one side, while the obverse depicts the mythical bird in the flames, which had always signified uniqueness and solitariness. Elizabeth's pelican jewel is now only known from the famous pelican portrait, 2 but the pelican-inher-piety, as the motif is known to students of art history in English, associated the queen not only with the divine right of kings, but also with Christ. The good monarch lives something of an imitatio Christi.

2. See Daly 1988b, Figure 23: the pelican jewel; a detail from the Pelican Portrait.

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Imprese also often adorned armor worn by man and horse, playing a symbolically significant role in jousts and tournaments. 2 We are not surprised to find imprese in Shakespeare's latter play Pericles where six knights appear at the lists, each presenting the Princess with a shield bearing an impresa (II.ii). Shakespeare is here drawing upon a common practice in his real world. We know that in 1613 Shakespeare was paid forty-four shillings in gold to create a tournament impresa for the earl of Rutland. The Accession Day tilts in Elizabeth I's England were an important spectacle and an aspect of what we would today call public relations. Alan R. Young has shown that over 800 tournament imprese are known to have been created for royal entertainments in England alone up to the year 1611. A famous impresa portrait by Nicolas Hilliard shows the earl of Cumberland, dressed for a tournament, and holding a tournament lance. Behind him on a tree hangs his impresa shield depicting sun, moon and earth, and accompanied by the motto "Hasta quan[do]" [The spear until such time as]. 3 The somewhat riddling motto, which, as was often the case in an impresa, makes an incomplete statement, is explained by the shield with its visual motifs. As the Queen's champion Cumberland pledges to carry his lance (hasta) into the lists as long as sun, moon and earth exist. In addition to Sir Roy Strong's perceptive accounts of the role of art in Elizabeth's court, 4 we now have a major contribution to impresa studies in Alan R. Young's edition of 521 English tournament imprese, 5 which draws upon a little known German manuscript. It is little wonder that the high and mighty often chose to have their portraits rendered the more significant through the addition of imprese, and occasionally complete tripartite emblems. Frequently, the addition of a Latin motto suffices to make a special claim. Elizabeth's portrait with the famous phrase "Non sine sole Iris" is only one such instance. 6 2. See Young 1988a, figure 4: Knights jousting. The heraldic signs on the horse bards identify the knights as Robert and Ambrose Dudley (ragged staff), William Howard (lion), and possibly the earl of Sussex (star). Each knight's impresa shield is depicted above him.

3. The portrait is reproduced in Young 1988a, as figure 8. 4. See Strong 1969. 5. See Young 1988a and 1988b. See also Young 1987.

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Imprese will also be discovered, or perhaps one should say rediscovered, on some of the flags and cornets created during the English Civil Wars. Mention should be made here of the important work done by Alan R. Young (1995), which takes the form of a large documentation of emblematic flags created during the Civil Wars in England (1642-1660). This will show again that far from being merely a symbolic device for jousting gentlemen and lovers, imprese were being designed as part of the propaganda war in England between the parliamentarians and royalists. The propagandistic use of symbolic images and brief texts also played a role in both World Wars of the twentieth century, 8 and in Quebec's attempt at secession from Canada at the end of the twentieth century. The material culture was far more influential than literary historians are wont to admit. In terms of the reception of emblems and imprese, buildings may have been more influential than books .9 As an example one could cite seventeenth-century Nuremberg. The council room of the townhall was decorated with a series of emblematic paintings, and these were recorded in a book entitled Emblematica politica, printed in Nuremberg in 1617 and 1640. Whereas the book was probably issued in only 200 or 300 copies, many hundreds, perhaps thousands of persons visited the Nuremberg townhall where these political emblems adorned the walls of the council room. As people waited there for appointments with officials and judges, they doubtless pondered the emblematic decorations, which represented the social and political program of the governing oligarchy. Probably more persons contemplated the decorations in the building than ever read the book. In the early modern period, imprese and impresa-like structures also frequently adorned buildings, and could express a territorial claim, or make a statement of importance to the patron. One example must suffice: the salamander of Francois I of France (1515-1547).10 It should perhaps be stressed that a royal impresa, such as the salamander, could appear alone, that is, without any motto or text, and still be recognizable as an impresa. Architecture tended to be embellished 7. For a brief account of painting and portraiture, see Daly 1988b, 6-11. For a fuller discussion, see the various studies of Roy Strong. 8. See Daly 2002. 9. See Boker and Daly 1999.

10. In the ensuing discussion I follow the argumentation of Annemarie Sawkins.

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emblematically with two-part structures, that is, lacking the third part of the emblem, the subscriptio or epigram, and buildings could also be adorned with reference to imprese by motif alone, that is, dispensing with the textual component. It was also not uncommon in France for architectural reference to the king to be made by means of the initial letter of the king's name. In her essay "Royal and Imperial Emblematics in the Architecture of Francois I" Annemarie Sawkins discusses some of the building projects of Francois I, which also served to define his territory. This is true of a number of smaller chateaux, as well as such major royal residences as Chambord, Blois, and Fontainebleau. The king also supported the rebuilding of the cathedrals of Beauvais, Troyes, and Senlis. In Paris, Francois I contributed to the construction of a new Hotel de Ville and initiated the rebuilding of several parish churches. Both secular and ecclesiastical buildings reflect the incorporation of royal symbolism that characterized the reign of Francois I. By the end of the Middle Ages, members of the royal family and certain nobles had their own devices and mottoes. The device of Louis XII (1462-1515) was the porcupine with the motto "Cominus ac Eminus" or "De pres et de loin" [From near and from far]. Even before becoming king of France, Francois d'Angouleme had the salamander as his device. The medal struck to commemorate Francois's tenth birthday shows on one side the salamander amidst flames with the motto "Notrisco al buono, stingo el reo" [I feed on the good and extinguish the bad]. According to a tradition that goes back to Aristotle the salamander was believed to extinguish fire while also able to live in it. Once adopted as a device, the attributes of the salamander, which included wisdom, sincerity and endurance, were claimed by its bearer. The salamander became the most recognizable device of Francois d'Angouleme, later king of France. This device was not newly created, but inherited from his father Charles, count of Angouleme. It is also thought to have been used during festivities in 1461 by Jean d'Angouleme, Francois's grandfather (Knecht, 11). After Francois's ascendancy to the throne, the salamander appears on royal residences and churches throughout his domain. 11 The north 11. According to Anne-Marie Lecoq: "Lanimal s'est repandu par tout le royaume, et il n'est pas un chateau, pas une maison bourgeoise, pas une eglise batie sous le regne de ce Roi qui n'en comporte au moins un exemplaire." Sawkins finds Lecoq's inclusion of bourgeois residences doubtful since the appearance of royal devices was restricted to royalty and prominent members of the nobility includ-

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transept of the cathedral of Notre-Dame at Senlis was decorated with the salamander, the royal initial and imperial crown. These latter, while no longer present, are still visible in outline. Such unmistakable references to the monarch reappear in the interior. The exterior and interior of the chateau at Chambord (1519-1547) contain the royal initial and the salamander. The alternate coffers of the ceiling bear the salamander, which can be read as an impresa without its motto. The crown above the salamander indicates the monarch. At Beauvais cathedral, the "F" of Francois I can be seen flanking the north transept portal together with the salamander. Imprese entered the print culture only later. Especially the Italians devoted considerable energy to the description of imprese and, perhaps less usefully, to the Vnica Temper auis. rules" for creating the perfect impresa. It was supposed to contain one or two motifs, and its motto should not contain more than three words, unless, as Paulo Govio observes, it is a line of v e r s e . The i m p r e s a would typically depict such things as the salaComme le Phenix eft a UmdUfeulet unique Olfedu Tbcophrafte. mander in the fire, the eaau monde de [on ejpece. j[ulli font les tresbonnes chogle gazing into the sun, fes de merucilleu/e rdrite, &• bien clerfemecs. Deuife or the phoenix arising que forte Maddme ^Alienor d'sAuftriche?Royne doudjfrom the flames (fig. 1). riere de Jrdnce. Although the picture s h o u l d be n o b l e a n d Fig. 1. Claude Paradin, Devises hero'iques, Lyons, s t r a n g e , but true (see 1557, p. 89. Praz, 62), there was room for such hyperboles as ing the king's ministers of finance. The chateaux, Azay-le-Rideau (1518-1527) and Chenonceau (1513-1521), which display the impresa of the king were commissioned, respectively, by Gilles Berthelot and Thomas Bohier both conseillers des finances. Similarly, the salamander is a sign of fealty to the king on the chateau at Nantouillet (1515-1535) built for Antoine Duprat, chancellor of France and first councilor of the king, and on the chateau at Sarcus, Oise, rebuilt 1520-1523, for Jean de Sarcus, maitre d'hotel, uncle of Anne de Pisseleu, duchess of Estampes and mistress of Francois I.

309 the winged stag. There was no room, however, for errors or mere fictions, unless hyperbolically intended (see Praz, 69). With his collection of imprese in mind, Giovio defined rules for the perfect impresa, which should: 1. reveal a just proportion between body (picture) and soul (motto), 2. not be so obscure as to require a Sybil to interpret it, 3. make a fine show representing things pleasant to the eye, 4. not contain the human body, 5. have a brief motto in a different language from that of the author, so that the sentiments should be somewhat concealed, but not obscure and misleading. 12 The impresa was to convey a noble thought, but not directly, so that every plebeian would understand it. Hence the frequent requirement that the motto be in a language different from that of the bearer, and therefore different from that of his local contemporary. An exclusive and even esoteric intention speaks from Govio's instructions. Should the human body appear? What was to be the relationship of word to image? How many words could be used? These and similar concerns exercised Italian theorists, who often failed to agree on many of the issues. 13 The most important impresa books, not all of which are illustrated, were published in Italy.14 Modern readers of the erudite historical fiction of Umberto Eco will know that Eco has written of emblem and impresa in his novel The Island of the Day Before. In the early seventeenth century, the hero, Roberto, finds himself marooned on an abandoned ship in the antipodes. Chapter 26 is entitled "Delights for the Ingenious: A Collection of Emblems." The chapter title "Delights for the Ingenious" is culled, without attribution, from the title of an English emblem book, collected by R. B. and published in London in 1684. Eco clearly knows early modern theories of emblem and impresa, which he calls "device," although he treats them with a certain lightness, at times bordering on flippant humor. It is Roberto's interest in the orange dove that prompts Eco's discourse on early modern emblems and devices: PETER M. DALY

12. See Praz, 63, and Young 1988b, 2. Albrecht Schone quotes Giovio's rules in both Italian and German translation, 44.

13. For a thorough recent discussion of these matters, see Caldwell. 14. These are listed, together with an indication of which titles have been, or will be, available shortly in digitized form, in Daly 2002, 175-249.

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"We must remember that his [Roberto's] was a time when people invented or reinvented images of every sort to discover in them recondite and revelatory meaning" (Eco, 345-46). "This is hardly the place to discuss the difference between a Device and an Emblem/' Eco observes, and then proceeds to offer a precise distinction: ". . . the Emblem, from the description of a particular deed, not necessarily illustrated, derived a universal concept, whereas the Device went from the concrete image of a particular object to a quality or proposition of a single individual . . ." (Eco, 346). Eco rightly says that people of that time translated the whole world into a "forest of Symbols" (Eco, 346). "And every good Device had to be metaphoric, composed, true . . . noble, admirable, new but knowable, evident but effective, singular, proportionate to its space, acute and brief, ambiguous but frank, popularly enigmatic, appropriate, ingenious, unique, and heroic" (Eco, 346). Composed "of a silent figure and a motto" (Eco, 347), the impresa "concealed more than it revealed" (Eco, 347). This is an appropriate if condensed historical account. It would be churlish to take the master of semiotics to task for his occasional ahistorical lapses, as when he appears to fault the semantics of the emblem and impresa for depicting "an image rich in meanings" whereas the meanings "conflicted with" each other (Eco, 347). We would tend to see different "meanings" as deriving from different aspects of the thing or story emblematized, or recognise that a given motif could be interpreted in bonam partem or in malam partem. At this juncture Eco unpacks a wealth of historical information about the dove, the object of Roberto's fascination. Deciding to proceed no further with the "Explication of the Dove" (Eco, 256), Eco returns to the story. Eco's is the most recent "popular" account of the emblem and impresa. Imprese and impresa-like structures were important both before and after the early modern period. In the twentieth century images such as the Christian fish, Nazi swastika, and Jewish menorah, have not only identified religious, national or cultural groups, they have also emphasized a sense of belonging, the identification of an individual with the group. One Christian example may illustrate the point: the centuries-old symbolic image of the fish.15 The early persecuted Christians used the diagrammatic sign of a fish to show that they belonged to Christ and the new religion. For the largely illiterate first Christians the fish was a reminder of Christ, the Galilean fishermen, 15. "Evolution of the Jesus fish" is the title of a recent short article published in Canada's National Post, February 15, 2003. See review section B2.

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and of the miracle of the loves and fishes. Three interlocking fish drawn in the sand outside of a house indicated that the sacrament would be celebrated secretly in that early Christian home. The same fish decorated Christian burial places in the Roman catacombs, as did the swastika. 16 For educated speakers of Greek, however, the Greek word for "fish," transliterated into English as "ichthus," could produce an acrostic meaning "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior." Here the visual sign called up a word, the individual Greek letters of which were used to mean something quite different from "fish." Is this history, perhaps a form of cultural archaeology, or does this diagrammatic fish also belong to o u r c o n t e m p o r a r y world?

Fig. 2. Diagrammatic fish, symbol of Christ and some Christian groups, as a carsticker.

This fish is not simply archaeology. The same diagrammatic fish will be observed on the back of some cars in the United States, and although less frequently, also in Canada and in Germany (fig. 2). The cars that display this fish are never the oldest and rustiest, but seldom the most expensive either, although I have seen in Florida a new Camaro and a new Hummer embellished with the Christian fish. In Munich I have seen a new Jetta, in Montreal a new white Ford sporting such a fish. In March, 2001, I saw the chromium-plated diagrammatic fish, with a small cross instead of an eye, on the back of a red Volvo 740 parked at the Countryside Country Club in Clearwater, Florida. As the driver was entering his car, it was an irresistible opportunity to find out about his fish. I had always wondered precisely which Christian church-goers were placing the fish on the back of their cars as a kind of impresa or visiting card. The Volvo 740 is not a cheap car, and the Country Club is also not for the indigent. The somewhat surprised driver, who was also the owner, informed me that he had indeed affixed the fish to his car, and that he attended an Episcopalian church in Tarpon Springs, north of Clearwater.

16. Fish symbol and Christian swastika in the Roman catacombs are documented, for example, in slides at the Department of Art History, McGill University.

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Very occasionally one will see this same diagrammatic fish surrounding the word "JESUS." In the fall of 2002 in Florida I saw a gray Honda Odyssey, not the cheapest minivan, sporting a chromium fish encircling "JESUS." Here word and image combine as in the traditional impresa. The car owner is clearly making a statement. Such bumper stickers, or chromium embellishments, are a kind of impresa. I have even seen in Florida the Christian fish with an inset star of David. Decoding bumper stickers, which is hardly an intellectual challenge, can be a diverting pastime on long drives through the States. I have seen a family sedan sport the following: a Christian fish, a Bush and Cheney sticker, and the Stars and Stripes. The car owner was making a public statement to the effect that he or she is a Christian, Republican patriot, or a Republican patriotic Christian. One cannot know in which order to read the stickers. In the United States the use of such Christian symbols by secular and public institutions does not always pass without controversy. The small American town of Republic in Missouri, west of Springfield, has had the Christian fish in its town seal only since 1990, and in 1998 the fish became the subject of dispute. The Montreal Gazette of October 19, 1998, ran a short piece on the clash of symbols in that township under the title "ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] vs. Ichthus. Witch vows to fight town's Christian fish symbol." A mother of two teenage daughters, Jean Webb, who had earlier joined the pagan cu 11 of Wicca, was allegedly being persecuted by the Christian majority in Republic, Missouri. The woman demanded that the town remove the Christian fish from its seal, which in her view was a violation of the separation of church and state. Her cause was taken up by the American Civil Liberties Union. Context is always important. The diagrammatic Christian fish in the States has a decidedly Christian meaning. But what does it mean in Mexico today? It has appeared in Mexico since the success of Vicente Fox Quesada and his center-right political party, the National Action Party (PAN), in the elections that brought Vicente Fox to the presidency of Mexico on December 1, 2000. Christianity is now "politically correct" in Mexico. The Christian fish is displayed on the backs of cars combined with the initials of the successful political party PAN.17

17. I am indebted to Professor Jorge Alcazar of Mexico City for this information.

313 PETER M. DALY Today the word "emblem" often denotes badges of schools and universities, regiments and nations, although the term "impresa" comes closer to designating the form and purpose of these badges. Such badges are also related to heraldry. Heraldry is, of course, an ancient and highly structured system of motifs, colors and also shapes. It is virtually incomprehensible to the uninitiated, and yet its images have always been in the public domain. I shall use the term "heraldry" somewhat loosely to include the ancient creation of the badges of royal families as well as the more modern invention of badges of schools and universities, especially when these are approved by some heraldic authority or other. It would be difficult to find a university in the English-speaking world that does not have a badge or coat of arms, which uses both a brief motto and a symbolic picture. The pictorial motifs usually reflect something of the history of the institution, and its mission. That is true of the University of Bristol in England, the University of Tenn e s s e e at C h a t t a n o o g a in the United States, and McGill University in Canada, just to take three examples in different countries. The University of Bristol is not an ancient foundation. Its grant of arms (fig. 3) dates from 1909 and is found on university mementos, blazer badges, and official letterhead. Centered are the arms of the City of Bristol, being a sailing ship issuing from a castle on a mound. Above is the sun in splendor from ^MOVET; the arms of the Wills family, imporFig. 3. The coat of arms of The tant benefactors. The open book at University of Bristol, England. the bottom of the shield bears the motto "Nisi quia dominus" [If not because the Lord], which derives from verse 1 of Psalm 124. Flanking the arms of Bristol are a dolphin for Colston and a horse for the Fry family, patrons of the University. The University motto is "Vim promovet insitam" which is a contraction of a line in Ode 4 of Horace (Book 3): "Doctrina sed vim promovet insitam." Irreverent students chose to mistranslate the University motto as "Cleanliness promotes insanity," which would be more appropriately translated as "Learning promotes one's inner power."

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Fig. 4. The "Faciemus" seal of The University of Chattanooga. Reproduced from The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. A Pictorial Review. Chattanooga, The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, 1986.

The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga has undergone dramatic changes over the years, which are reflected in its seal and badge. The earliest seal depicted the Old Main, Chattanooga University's original structure, which was completed in 1886. The Chattanooga Times described the building literally and figuratively as "a light upon a hill." After only three years, Chattanooga University merged with another Methodist institution in Athens, Tennessee. These were difficult times, with the discontinuance of the liberal arts college at Chattanooga and the removal of administrative offices to Athens. The school was recognized in 1907 as the University of Chattanooga, and its new seal featured a scene dominated by the river's Moccasin Bend. At the ground-breaking ceremonies in 1915 for a program of campus expansion, President Hixson unveiled the new college shield with the motto "Faciemus" (Let's do it), reflecting that forward-looking vision («g. 4). In 1969 when the University of Chattanooga joined the state university system and became known as The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC), it adopted the logo of the University of Tennessee (fig. 5), which still adorns UTC letterhead. The text of the university badge is dominated by the words "Agriculture" and "Commerce" indicating the priorities for a land grant institution dating back to the end of the nineteenth century. The visual symbols express the same theme: a ship, and to the left, a sextant for commerce, here the transportation of goods; a plough and stalks of corn for agriculture. The notion of the university as a universitas of knowledge is embodied at the top in the globe of the world surmounted by an open book. The alliance of commerce, or perhaps of university-acquired knowledge and Christianity, is stated in the Latin quotation from the New Testament:

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"Veritatem cognoscetis et Veritas vos liberabit" meaning "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." McGill University's coat-ofarms (fig. 6) derives from those of its founder James McGill, a successful businessman. The shield bears three red martlets on a silver field. In heraldry, the martlet Fig. 5. The coat of arms of The Univer- indicates that the bearer came sity of Tennessee at Chattanooga. into his fortune by effort rather than by inheritance, which applies well to James McGill. In the university coat of arms, however, another meaning of the martlet becomes relevant. The mythological martlet is a bird with no feet and hence is in constant flight, which can be interpreted as the intellectual and spiritual mission of the university, its faculty and students. Since McGill is situated in Montreal, the top of the shield represents the city. The three triangular points stand for the three hills of Montreal, and the two crowns translate the notion of "royal" in the original French name "Mont real." It will also be noted that each of the crowns displays a prominent fleur-de-lys representing the French heritage. The crowns also indicate that as Fig. 6. The coat of arms of McGill Univeran i n s t i t u t i o n of l e a r n i n g sity. McGill University was established by royal charter. The open book, which is centered at the top, stands for knowledge. It bears James McGill's personal motto: "In domino confido" meaning "I trust in the Lord." The second motto, "Grandescunt aucta labore" (All things grow by work) suggests that the flourishing of knowledge is a result of effort. When I needed to create a logo for a new publication series called "McGill European Studies" I combined, with the approval of McGill

EMBLEMATICA 316 University, the coatof arms of the university with the logo of the European Community, which consists of a ring of silver stars on a blue field. I centered McGill's arms within a ring of silver stars on a blue field. Canadian provinces, American states, and British towns and cities all identify themselves and something of their history through a coat of arms, sometimes through a symbolic creature, and a symbolic plant. Referendum campaigns in Quebec, dealing with the question of secession, have reminded all Canadians that four fleur-de-lys are the official badge of Quebec. Far from being a dead art, heraldry is called upon each time a university is founded, or the emblem of a nation, state, province, or business is updated. Since 1989 the Canadian chief herald and the Canadian Heraldic Authority have issued more than 800 grants of arms. The Canadian chief herald and his staff are attached to the chancellery of the governor-general's office. The governor-general of Canada is the official representative of the Queen in Canada, and with each new governor-general a new official coat of arms has to be produced. The creation of new heraldic devices is a thriving enterprise in Canada. The National Post of March 16, 2000, ran a short piece entitled "Monarchist League can now use royal crown in rare grant of arms." The Monarchist League of Canada was founded in 1970, incorporated in 1976, and in the first year of the new millennium received from the Canadian Heraldic Authority a grant of arms which centers the royal crown. The crown may be monochrome gold or silver. It is, indeed, rare that any organization is granted the right to use the royal crown in its badge, crest and flag. Consent was obtained from both the governor-general of Canada and the Queen. Schools, as distinct from universities and colleges, often sport a heraldic badge. Upper Canada College is no exception. Its armorial bearings (fig. 7) bespeak a long tradition. Like most educational institutions, Upper Canada College takes p r i d e in its m o t t o , "Palmam qui meruit ferat" [Whoever deserves it, bears the palm], which is taken from a piece of patriotic English verse written in 1790 by the reverend Fig. 7. The armorial bearings of John Jortin. Somewhat later the same Upper Canada College. line of verse was taken by Lord Nelson

PETER M. DALY 317 for his own motto. Nelson's arms featured a sword crossing an anchor, entwined with a wreath. In 1833 the phrase was adopted by Upper Canada College, but it was initially used as a book plate for prizes. The official school brochure explains the shield as bearing motifs that represent the founder, Lord Seaton, the first chairman of the Board, Bishop Strachan, and the first old boy, Henry Scadding. The two deer heads refer to Lord Seaton and Bishop Strachan. The centered motif of a sword, crossed with an anchor and surmounted by a crown derives from the design made by Henry Scadding who was later principal of the school. The presence of a royal crown was a matter of dispute, since the school was not established by royal charter, but Queen Elizabeth approved the inclusion of a royal crown. Scadding's original design also included an open book, symbol of an institution of learning, and two cornucopias, representing the fullness of life's gifts. These have disappeared from the official arms of Upper Canada College. The school's badge, which also adorns Christmas cards these days, is a simplified version of the armorial bearings. It features two palm branches, the inset royal crown and the date 1829, all surmounting the motto "Palmam qui meruit ferat." Sometimes the flags or seals of countries, provinces or states draw on imprese, although most citizens may not realize this. Some of these devices were recently discussed by James R. Tanis. Presumably, Americans living in the Southern states with some sense of their history will already know that the state of Louisiana displays the pelican-in-her-piety as the symbol on its state seal.18 It was adopted in the year 1902. The same motif, accompanied by the motto, "Union, Justice, Confidence" flies on Louisiana's state flag, which was adopted in 1912. One is not surprised to find that the state bird is the brown pelican. It is not difficult to guess which was a chicken and which the egg in this pelican story.19 Emblems and imprese have a continued existence in the material culture. From the late Middle Ages to the present day, shop signs, and signs for inns and pubs often combine an image and a brief text.

18. See Basa. There are, of course, many books dealing with the iconography of American federal and state seals as well as flags and coats of arms. See also Berg; Shearer 1987 and 1989.

19. The state seal of Louisiana displaying the pelican-in-her-piety is reproduced in Shearer 1987.

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And then there is the pervasive use of images and brief texts in all kinds of modern advertising and propaganda. Not that all pub signs are emblematic and heraldic. But some are. In addition to the ubiquitous bear, greyhound and falcon, the keys, bells and swords, the aristocratic coats of arms, and king's heads, there are certain motifs that also inform books of emblems and imprese. The griffin is such a motif (see Heale, 43, 47). The griffin appears at Danby for an inn,20 and as a heraldic sign for the earls of Fizwilliam, barons Wentworth and the dukes of Marlborough, also as an inn sign (Larwood and Hotten, 94). Eagles may also appear as double eagles, often called spread eagle as in the Post House at Ingatston (Larwood and Hotten, plate 3). The double eagle was also a shop sign for goldsmiths and silversmiths (Heal, 81,126,159), and in modern times for vodka distillers, notably those in countries other than Russia and Poland. Imprese also live on in perhaps unexpected ways. They will be found in some modern logos and advertising. Rather than rely on illustrations from individual books in the emblem and impresa tradition, I shall try to refer to the Henkel and Schone Handbuch, a compendium, which will be available at most libraries. One common form of logo will not concern us since it dispenses with a symbolic image. Many firms advertise themselves simply by their name. Ford, CocaCola, Tommy Hilfiger and McDonalds do not bother with a picture. Other firms use the initials of the owner or initiator. The letters

Fig. 8. Alfa Romeo logo.

Fig. 9. Alciato's emblem of the arms of the d u k e s of M i l a n : Emblem at um liber. Augsburg, 1531, sig. Ar.

20. See Larwood and Hotten 1951, plate 12. See also plate 33 for a griffin in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London

319 C'K will always indicate a product of Calvin Klein. But many companies and business firms identify themselves by means of symbolic logos, which are sometimes related to the older art of heraldry and im prose, although company logos are usually simpler. Some companies also identify themselves in a logo or trademark by reference to a visual motif known from heraldry, emblems or imprese. Often the choice is dictated by place of origin. Car manufacturers come quickly to mind. Porsche places the badges of Stuttgart within the arms of Land Wurttemberg. BMW (Bayerische Motorwerke), at home in Munich, Bavaria, uses the white and blue of Bavaria in its logo. Alfa Romeo (fig. 8) combines the arms of the town of Milan with that of the duchy of Milan, a stylized coiled snake with a human being in its mouth, known to students of the emblem from Alciato's emblems (fig- 9). Such logos are, indeed, related to the imprese of the early modern period where the combination of symbolic image and brief motto created a real or mental image which announced some purpose, virtue or enterprise with which individuals or groups associated themselves. As we know, such imprese could be formed into badges or pieces of jewelry and affixed to clothing, or they could adorn buildings. The impresa would also fix the individual in the memory of others. Logos and trademarks are intended be memorable, to become fixed in the mind of the consumer, and as Charles Henebry has commented "to assume an independent existence there as images around which a network of (hopefully positive) associations could gather, so reinforcing the good reputation of the tradesman or business . . . " (221). Occasionally, an advertising slogan can identify a company and product as directly as a trademark, and as Nike discovered not always with longer-term positive results. "Just do it" identified Nike and served the company well until its business practices in the Far East, where it exploited cheap labor markets, became widely known in North America. "Just do it" sounded to consumers like a clarion call to individual effort, but it must have sounded hollow to the poorly paid workers on the other side of the world. The similarities between modern advertising, modern logos and trademarks and Renaissance imprese are often closer than Henebry would seem to allow. He suggests that ". . . today there is little or no ' c o n t e n t ' to the icons of companies such as Coca-Cola and McDonalds" (221n8). He is correct in so far as such companies, to which could be added Volkswagen, Ford, Calvin Klein and many PETER M. DALY

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others, use either o n l y their name or i n i h . i l . in M i n i lor.o. Hut many c o m p a n i e s use some sort of s y m b o l i c image, w l n ' t h e r il he a star (Mercedes), a l e a p i n g j a g u a r (Jaguar), a lion l a c i n g a globe o\ the

Fig. 10. The Prudential Insurance Company of America.

Fig. 11. 1984 Prudential's geometrical symbol.

world surmounted with a crown (Canada's Royal Bank), or a shell (Shell Oil). Insurance companies will typically employ public images in their logos which relate either to the name of the company or to such no­ tions as strength, permanence and dependability. The Prudential In­ surance Company of America (fig. 10), founded in 1875 as a Friendly Society in New Jersey, has used since 1896 the Rock of Gibraltar as a trademark. The proverbial strength and reliability of the Rock is identified in the text on the logo: "The Prudential has the strength of Gibraltar." The Prudential Rock of Gibraltar remained unchanged for the best part of a century. It was only in 1984 (fig. 11) that the natural-looking Rock became a geometrical symbol. But not all Prudential advertisements use this modernized logo. Some television commercials still use the natural looking Rock of Gi-

Prudential (ф Financial Growing and Protecting Your Wealth" Fig. 12 The logo of Prudential Financial. Reproduced from St. Petersburg Times, "Parade/' December 23, 2001.

321 PETER M. DALY bmltar as the logo for Prudential, as do print commercials for Prudential Financial (fig. 12). Other companies have claimed mountains and hills for their logo. The National Life Insurance Company of Montpelier, Vermont, combines the picture of a mountain with the text: "Solid as the Granite Hills of Vermont." Britain's Perpetual, a mutual fund company, combines the word "Perpetual" with a snow-covered mountain that looks suspiciously like the Swiss Matterhorn. Fire insurance companies are particularly interesting, and fire insurance has a fascinating social, as well as commercial history. The logos of many contemporary fire insurance companies date back to the original eighteenth- or nineteenth-century fire marks, signs affixed to houses and properties, which owners had insured against fire. These signs in fact identified houses to be served by the small commercially operated fire brigades, the precursors of municipally operated and tax-funded fire departments. Let us imagine that in the eighteenth century we were forming such a fire company. What sign or symbol would we choose to identify our fire company and the houses that had contracted for our services of protection? Fire is our business. We have enjoyed a typical m i d d l e class school education, which included Latin. Which motifs of classical and perhaps Christian provenance associated with fire suggest themselves? The phoenix and salamander would quickly come to the educated eighteenth-century mind. The phoenix rises from its own ashes, and the salamander lives unscathed in Fig. 13. General Insurance C o m p a n y of I r e l a n d : flames, which it extinguishes. 21 In 1779 the General Insurance Company leaden fire mark of the phoenix. Reproduced of Ireland (fig. 13) was formed. Its fire mark from A l w i n E. Bulau, was a leaden square 7" by 7" showing a Foot-prints of Assurance. phoenix rising from the fire. A few years N e w York, M c M i l l a n , later in 1782 a company was established in 1953, no. 665. London that actually called itself The Phoe21. The Henkel-Schone Handlmch contains many examples. See cols 794-96. There is no intention on my part to suggest any source relationship between logos and such emblems and imprese, rather these early-modern books indicate the prevalence of such traditions, and they may at the very least indicate parallels.

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nix Assurance Company and its fire mark, of course, displays a phoenix with outspread wings rising from the flames.22 It comes as no surprise to find a Fidelity-Phenix Fire Insurance Company in New York in 1910 with the obligatory phoenix, which resembles the American eagle. And the Swiss, too, borrowed the phoenix, which, bearing the Swiss emblem of a shield with a white cross on a red field, also rises from the flames.23 Insurance in pre-communist Russia knew of the salamander. 24 The salamander, looking like a ferocious snake, sits in the flames in a fire mark of the company appropriately called the Salamander Fire Insurance Company of St. Petersburg in Russia(see Bulau). The company and its salamander served St. Petersburg from 1846 to 1921. And since St. Petersburg has risen phoenix-like from the ashes of communist Leningrad, we can perhaps expect that a privately operated Salamander fire insurance company will soon re-open its doors. But there are many other telling images of classical origin which have been used to identify fire insurance companies in many different countries. The god Hermes with winged hat, winged sandals and caduceus, that winged staff entwined with two snakes, has been pressed into service by Italians, Spaniards and Norwegians. On the island of Madeira a company was established in 1906 named the Companhia de Seguros Garantia Funchalense (Funchal, Madeira) which has as its fire mark and logo the god Hermes in full flight, presumably to bring help to the scene of a fire. In the colder north of Norway as late as 1918 the same scantily clad god, Hermes, hurries to a Norwegian fire. This is the logo of Oslo's Norse Merkantile Forsikrings Aktieselskap. The text asks "Har de Brand forsikret Nok? . . . teyn brand form'7 [Have you enough fire insurance? . . . Take out a fire form].25 But why Hermes? An illegitimate offspring of Zeus, Hermes was something of a trouble-shooter for the gods: freeing Zeus from captivity, helping him in his amorous adventures by putting to sleep the giant Argus with the hundred eyes who was guarding the woman Io 22. The logo of Phoenix of London is reproduced in Bulau.

23. The logo of Schweizerische Mobiliar-Versicherung is reproduced in Bulau. 24. For the salamander in the fire, see Henkel and Schone Handbuch, cols 739-40.

25. The logo of the Norse Merkantile Forsikrings Aktieselskap in Oslo is reproduced in Bulau.

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323

who had excited Zeus's interest. More importantly, he was a benefactor of mankind: protecting flocks, guiding sailors, presiding over business affairs, and generally helping in times of difficulty. Another classical motif is Argus, already mentioned. Argus was the giant with 100 eyes, fifty of which were always open; it was his task to protect Io, on whom Zeus had amorous designs. The very word "Argus" therefore means all-sighted protection, a fitting symbol for a fire insurance company. The Portuguese Companhia de Seguros, established in Lisbon in 1884, used this symbol. 26 The essence of insurance is shared risk and shared cost. Many thousands of individuals pay relatively small premiums for large protection. The sign of clasped hands has often been used to denote this cooperation. Another symbol of that shared strength is the fasces or bundle of arrows tied tightly together (see Henkel and Schone, cols. 1270-71, 1521-13). Separated the individual arrows can be broken, whereas the bundle cannot be broken. To this day, we speak of divide and conquer. Strength comes from union. The Brussels company Belgische Vereeniging or Union Beige, dating back to 1824, illustrates this notion of union with a picture of clasped hands and a bundle of arrows. 27 Christian symbolism has also served. Hope with her anchor (see Henkel and Schone, col. 1559) is the emblem of the appropriately entitled Hope Fire and Life Assurance Company of London (1807-26).28 Another company stressing the idea of equity and equality incorporates the figure of Justice (see Henkel and Schone, cols. 1555-57). Leaning on her sword, which as an instrument of punishment is less relevant here, we observe a seeing Justice, not blindfolded, looking at the scale. The Norwich Union Fire Insurance Society in England has used variations of this telling image since 1797.29 There are also insurance companies which have, as it were, taken out double symbol insurance in their logos and fire marks by doubling and even tripling the symbols. Thus a Spanish company, La 26. The logo of the Companhia de Seguros, Lisbon is reproduced in Bulau. 27. The logo of the Belgische Vereeniging or Union Beige is reproduced in Bulau. 28. The logo of the Hope Fire and Life Assurance Company, London (1807-26) is reproduced in Bulau.

29. The Justice logo of the Norwich Union Fire Insurance Society is reproduced in Bulau.

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Commercial Companhia de Seguros (1891), has both an anchor and a phoenix. The Italian company, Milano Compagnia di Assicurazione (1825-), combines the Christian symbol of the anchor with the classical caduceus, the sign of Hermes, which flank a vertical column, itself the symbol of strength. 30 The phoenix and salamander remind us that mythology has played an important role in the creation of the imprese used in company logos. The fact that no one believes that either the phoenix or salamander is at home in fiery habitats does not prevent them from being used in connection with fire insurance. But why the Boston Amateur Athletic Association (BAA) should have chosen the equally mythical unicorn31 (fig. 14) for its logo, remains a mystery, at least to this observer. Boston's unicorn is, of course, well known to all marathon runners, and over the last couple of decades, literally tens of thousands of BAA unicorns have graced the shirts and shorts of runners, and have thus made their way back to many corners of the globe. Boston's unicorn is a particularly fierce looking beast, and as such differs from the typical representations in the early modern period where it is often shown with its head in the lap of the Virgin Mary. However, it is possible that the notion of strength and freedom, with which Fig. 14. The unicorn logo of the the mythical unicorn was often assoBoston Amateur Athletic Associa-

ciated/

lies

behind the choice of the

Boston Amateur Athletic Association. As I noted above when discussing the logo of the Prudential company, logos often undergo a kind of face-lift to make them appear newer, younger, and more up-to-date. But logos also change as the purposes of a company change. A dramatic example in the Canadian context is the Royal Bank of Canada. Until recently its well known logo (fig. 15) was the lion with its paw on a globe surmounted by a 30. The logo of Milano Compagnia di Assicurasione (1825-) is reproduced in Bulau. 31. See Henkel and Schone , cols. 420-423.

PETER M. DALY

325

royal crown. It looked down on citizens as they passed by the bank's many branches. The Royal Bank recently removed the crown from its logo, presumably because it was thought to be a throw-back to imperial times. But Florida has a Crown Bank with, of course, a logo of a crown, and the Tampa Bay area has a Crown automobile dealership, which specialises in British, German and Japanese imports. It may come as a surprise to some to learn that Canada's largest bank, the Royal Bank of Canada, to- Fig. 15. The logo of The day minus its crown, started out modestly Royal Bank of Canada: the lion with its paw on a globe as private merchant bank in Halifax, Nova s u r m o u n t e d by a royal Scotia, in 1846 (McDowall). After confed- crown. eration in 1869, the bank changed its name to the Merchants' Bank of Halifax, and its federal charter allowed it to open branches in other provinces, but fishing and lumber remained its focus. Since it was a modern bank, and since William Cunard played a role in founding the bank, it is understandable that the mid nineteenth-century logo featured a three masted ship with an auxiliary engine. In 1887 the Royal Bank moved to the heartland of Canada's financial world, Montreal. In the years that followed the name appeared too regional, and the bank's future was clearly elsewhere. Consequently, in 1901 the name was changed to The Royal Bank of Canada, and a new logo was needed to represent the bank's new sense of purpose, which now transcended maritime industry. The logo first incorporated the coat of arms of the Royal family complete with motto, crest, shield and supporters. Having survived the crises of the 1930s and surging ahead in the 1960s with the introduction of charge cards, electronic banking and modern forms of advertising, a new logo was needed in the post-colonial period. Hence the lion, globe and crown. The lion was often related to notions of royalty, and the crown continues to symbolize monarchy. However, if anyone remembers the old nursery rhyme about the lion chasing the unicorn all around town for the crown, then for The Royal Bank of Canada, at least, the lion won the contest. We recall that both lion and unicorn are supporters of the royal coat of arms, as they appeared on the first logo of The Royal Bank of Canada.

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EMBLEMATICA

Before leaving the corporate logos of commercial institutions, I will mention one of the many surprises awaiting the a f i c i o n a d o of s y m b o l s in L o n d o n . Walking down Fleet Street, you will find a bank called Child's Bank, and since money is a bank's business not meditation, you may be surprised to see hanging outside the bank the sign of a sunflower (Fig. 16). A sunflower turns towards a sun emerging from dark clouds. The caption reads: "Ainsi mon ame" [Thus my soul]. Fig. 16. The logo of Child's You probably think there is some mistake Bank, London: A sunflower here, and you enter the bank to enquire. turning towards the sun. In the hall you observe framed a larger version of the same picture. It is no mistake. This is an age-old Christian emblem for the relation of the soul to God—just as the heliotrope, sunflower, or marigold turns towards the sun, so does the soul seek God. But on Child's Bank in Fleet Street? It seems the Bank stands on the site of a former goldsmith's shop, 32 which for whatever reason chose this spiritual emblem. One possible link for the goldsmith was the golden sunflower, or marigold, following the golden sun. The goldmith's shop and later Child's Bank used a book emblem as a shop sign, and this bank sign was used by Margaret Gatty in a Victorian emblem book. 33 The emblem has come full circle: from print to material to print culture. If manufacturers have their trademarks and corporations their logos, so also do trade unions on both sides of the Atlantic. The American Federation of Labor (fig. 17) organized in 1881; in the 1890s it already had its distinctive device with a highly emblematic, even hieroglyphic, picture accompanied by a Latin motto, "Labor omnia vincit" 32. The emblem is reproduced on the title pages of two publications by Child's Bank, which numbers among the over 900 branches of The Royal Bank of Scotland group. See The First House in the City, London 1973, which marked the 300th anniversary of the bank in London, and Child's 1584-1984 [London, 1984], which marked 400 traceable years of banking business in London.

33. Margaret Gatty used the same image in one of her emblems, acknowledging the Bank source. See Wendy R. Katz, 135, figure 14.

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(Labour conquers all) which is a modification of the more famous motto "Amor vincit omnia" (Love conquers all). By 1900 some individual member unions were using the same motto. The United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America have an emblem featuring a hinged ruler and a pair of compasses with a small pocket knife. The motto "Labor omnia vincit" is written across these inFig. 17. The logo of the struments. American Federation of Some modern advertising uses the name Labor accompanied by the or logo of the firm as a brand symbol. Some Latin motto, "Labor omnia like Lacoste have a picture, in this case the vincit" (Labor conquers crocodile. Others literally trade on their all). n a m e , like Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger. But whether or not the combination of image and word defines the form of the logo, the purpose of the logo is similar to that of the impresa. If the impresa became one way of signifying a sense of belonging, the wearing of a branded and logo-bearing t-shirt is a modern way in which some consumers seem to want to demonstrate their status. Whether a GAP, a Tommy Hilfiger or a Roots t-shirt is really any better quality than a no-name variety is hardly the point. Wearing a named shirt, or sweater, or socks, or shorts, or whatever, establishes that the wearer can afford the difference, that he or she has joined the club. For school children and young people the brand is more important than adults and parents might wish. Wearing the right brand of clothing at school may make the difference between social acceptance and rejection. For me the issue is not whether one finds this vanity, stupidity, or group individualism, which may appear a contradiction in terms, but was known to medieval crusaders and contemporary U.S. marines. A cultural critic may approach the phenomenon differently. Naomi Klein has written a devastating critique of contemporary branding in her book No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies (Toronto: Random House, 2000). For my purposes, it is significant that a mode of symbolic communication has survived from the fifteenth to the twenty-first century. Works Cited or Consulted Barthes, Roland. "The Advertising Message." Originally published in 1963 in Les Cahiers de la Publicite; quoted from The Semiotic Chal-

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der Society for Emblem Studies. Ed. Wolfgang Harms and Dietmar Peil, with Michael Waltenberger. New York, 2002. Pp. 47-69. . "Telling Images in Emblems, Advertisements and Logos." In Telling Images: The Ages of Life and Learning. Ed. Ayers Bagley and Alison M. Saunders. Minneapolis, 1996. Pp. 109-20, 151-55. Dieckmann, Liselotte. Hieroglyphics. The History of a Literary Symbol. St. Louis, Missouri, 1970. Dorte, Deans. In the Mind's Eye. Mississauga, 1992. Eco, Umberto. "Interpretation and History." In Interpretation and Over-interpretation. Ed. Stefan Collini. Cambridge, 1992. . The Island of the Day Before. English translation by William Weaver. London, 1995. Ferguson, George. Signs and Symbols in Christian Art. Oxford and New York, 1963. Fox-Davies, A. C. The Complete Guide to Heraldry. New York, 1978. Freedberg, David. The Power of Images. Chicago and London, 1989. Giehlow, Karl. Die Hieroglyphenkunde des Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissance, besonders der Ehrenpforte Kaisers Maximilian I, Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des allerhochsten Kaiserhauses, xxxii, Heft i. Vienna/Leipzig, 1915. Gombrich. Ernst. "Tcones Symbolicae/ The Visual Image in Neoplatonic Thought." Journal of the Warburg and Cortauld Institutes 11 (1948): 163-92; rpt., "much amplified," as "Icones Symbolical. Philosophies of Symbolism and their Bearing on Art." In Symbolic Images: Studies in the Art of the Renaissance. London, 1972. Pp. 123-95. Harris, Richard Jackson. A Cognitive Psychology of Mass Communication. London, 1999. Heale, Sir Ambrose. The Sign Boards of Old London Shops. London, 1988. Heckscher, William S. and Karl August Wirth, "Emblem, Emblembuch." In Reallexikon zur Deutschen Kunstgeschichte V, cols. 98ff., Stuttgart, 1967. Henebry, Charles W. M. "Writing with Dumb Signs: Memory, Rhetoric, and Alciato's Emblemata." Emblematica 10 (1996): 211-44. Henkel, Arthur, and Albrecht Schone, Emblemata. Handbuch zur Sinnbildkunst des XVI. und XVII. Jahrhunderts. Stuttgart, 1967. Jons, Dietrich Walter. Das "Sinnen-Bild." Studien zur allegorischen Bildlichkeit bei Andreas Gryphius. Stuttgart, 1966. Katz, Wendy R. The Emblems of Margaret Gatty. New York, 1993. Knecht, R. J. Renaissance Warrior and Patron: The Reign of Francis I. Cambridge, 1994.

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Klein, Naomi. No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies. Toronto, 2000. Klein, Robert. "La Theorie de l'expression figuree dans les traites italiens sur les Imprese, 1555-1612." BHR 19 (1957): 320-42; and in La Forme et Vintelligible. Paris, 1970. Pp. 125-50. Translated by Madeline Jay and Leon Wieseltier as "The Theory of Figurative Expression in Italian Treatises on the Impresa." In Form and Meaning: Essays on the Renaissance and Modern Art. New York, 1970. Pp. 3-24. Larwood, Jacob, and John Camden Hotten. English Inn Signs. London, 1951. Lecoq, Anne-Marie, "La Salamandre royale dans les entrees de Francois Ier." In Les Fetes de la Renaissance III, CNRS. Paris, 1975. Pp. 93-104. Lury, Celia. Consumer Culture. New Brunswick, N. J., 1996. Marchand, Roland. Advertising the American Dream. Los Angeles, 1985. Marcusian, Marcel. Christian Symbolism. Boston, 1985. McDowall, Duncan. Quick to the Frontier. Canada's Royal Bank. Toronto, 1993. Messaris, Paul. Visual Persuasion: The Role of Images in Advertising. London, 1997. Mitchell, W. J. T. Iconology. Image, Text, Ideology. Chicago and London, 1986. Morgan, David. "The politics of art." The Month (July 1999). Moore, Albert. Iconography of Religions. London, 1977. Myers, Greg. Ad World: Brands, Media, Audiences. London, 1999. Nachbar, Jack, and Kevin Lause. Popular Culture. Bowling Green, OH., 1992. Neubecker. Ottfried. Heraldry: Sources, Symbols and Meaning. New York, 1976. Translated from German into English by Robert Tobler. French edition, Le grand livre de Vheraldique. L'histoire, Vart et la science du blason. Brussels, 1977. O'Barr, William M. Culture and the Ad. Exploring Otherness in the World of Advertising. Boulder, CO, 1994. Orr, David Gerald. "The Icon in the Time Tunnel." In Icons of America. Ed. Ray B. Brown and Marshall Fishwick. Bowling Green, OH, 1978. Pp. 12-23. Panofsky, Ernst. Studies in Iconology. New York and Oxford, 1939. Postman, Neil. Technopoly. New York, 1992. Praz, Mario. Studies in Seventeenth-Century Imagery, 2nd edition considerably increased. Rome, 1964. Russell, Daniel S. The Emblem and Device in France. Lexington, 1985.

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. Emblematic Structures in Renaissance French Culture. Toronto, 1995. Sawkins, Annemarie. "Royal and Imperial Emblematics in the Archi­ tecture of Francois I." In The Emblem and Architecture: Studies in Ap­ plied Emblematics from the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries. Ed. Hans J. Boker, and Peter M. Daly. Turnhout, 1999. Pp. 179-89. Schiller, Herbert. The Mind Managers. Boston, 1973. Schone, Albrecht. Emblematik und Drama im Zeitalter des Barock. 3rd edition Munich, 1993. Scott-Giles, С Wilfred. The Romance of Heraldry. London and To­ ronto, 1929. Schudson, Michael. Advertising: The Uneasy Persuasion. Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1991. Shankle, George Earlie. State Names, Flags, Seals, Songs, Birds, Flowers, and Other Symbols. New York, 1934. Shearer, Benjamin F. The Flag of the United States and State Flags, Seals and Mottoes. Washington, D.C., 1989. . State Names, Seals, Flags, and Symbols: A Historical Guide. New York, 1987. Singer, Benjamin D. Advertising and Society. Don Mills, ONT (Can­ ada), 1931. Strong, Roy. The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pag­ eantry. London, 1986. . The English Icon: Elizabethan and Jacobean Portraiture. London, 1969. Tanis, James R. "Arms of the States: A Political Emblem Books by John Warner Barber." Emblematica 11 (2001): 403-18. Tressider, Jack. The Hutchinson Dictionary of Symbols. Oxford, 1997. Vinken, Pierre J. "The Modern Advertisement as an Emblem." Ga­ zette 5 (1959): 234-43, reprinted in German translation as "Die moderne Anzeige als Emblem." In Emblem und Emblematikrezeption. Ed. Sybille Penkert. Darmstadt, 1978. Pp. 57-71. Volkmann, Ludwig. Bilderschriften der Renaissance, Hieroglyphik und Emblematik in ihren Beziehungen und Fortwirkungen. Leipzig, 1923. Wind, Edgar. Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance. London, 1968. Woodcock, Thomas, and John Martin Robinson. The Oxford Guide to Heraldry. Oxford, 1990. Wurfel, Bodo. "Emblematik und Werbung." Sprache im technischen Zeitalter 21 (1981): 158-78.

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Yamashita, Miyo. United Controversies of Benetton. Rethinking Race in Light of French Poststructuralist Theory and Postmodernism. Montreal, 1993. Young, Alan R. Emblematic Flag Devices of the English Civil Wars 1642-1600, Volume Three of The English Emblem Tradition. Toronto, 1995. . The English Tournament Imprese. New York, 1988a. . "The English Tournament Imprese." In The English Emblem and the Continental Tradition. Ed. Peter M. Daly. New York, 1988b. Pp. 61-81. . Tudor and Jacobean Tournaments. London, 1987 Newspapers The Montreal Gazette, October 19,1998. National Post, March 16, 2000. St. Petersburg Times, "Parade" December 23, 2001. Websites Benetton Corporate Profile, company website: www.benetton.com/ wws/aboutus/business/index.html Tommy Hilfiger webpage: http/www./tommy.com Unofficial Tommy Hilfiger webpage: http/www./taimur.net/interest.htm Mishroy, Alec. "The Flag and the Emblem" http://www.mfa.gov.il/ mfa.go.asp?MFAHOcphO. The State of Israel, 1999. US Department of the Treasury: http/www.treas.gov/opc0034.html US Bureau of Engraving and Printing: http/www.moneyfactory .com/facts.htm http://ad-ragt.com/sections.php3?op'viewarticle&artid'76.html http://hss.cmu.edu/departments/history/79420/GregBlank.html http://scriptorium.lib.duke.du/adaccess/warbonds.html

Icarus in the City: Emblems and Postmodernism DANIEL RUSSELL University of Pittsburgh

This title is somewhat playful—just as postmodernism is, in many respects, a playful aesthetic. In a sense, Icarus represents the field of emblem studies for me because I have so often used Henry Peacham's In Astrologos emblem of 1612 as my explanatory example in grant proposals and fellowship applications. 1 However, Icarus, in the cul­ ture of the emblem, falls, not into the sea, but into the contentious arena of rhetoric and debate. Is he the astrologer searching for forbid­ den knowledge? Or the man who doesn't follow the golden mean? Or even the poor lost soul in Andre Gide's Thesee of 1947 (Henkel/ Schone, col. 1617). The emblem image is the site of borrowing and stealing, but also of interpretation, and sometimes even struggle over meaning. Not surprisingly, then, the emblem originated at the same time as the reformation was initiating another struggle over meaning. As such, the emblem is a social form, a rhetorical form, and one that is closer to postmodern construction than to modernist cre­ ation. The arena of this debate is an urban arena. This became clear to me as I searched for an appropriate subject for Paulette Chone's journee d'etude sur Vembleme at the Universite de Bourgogne in April 1999. The general theme she had chosen was "La ville et Г е т Ы ё т е , " and it was this stimulating topic that led me to consider the relations 1. An earlier version of this paper was presented in French at the Journee d'etudes sur Vembleme at the Universite de Bourgogne on 23 April 1999 on the subject, "La ville et Г е т Ы ё т е / ' organized by Paulette Chone. An expanded English version was presented as a plenary lecture at the Sixth International Conference on Em­ blem Studies at the University of La Corufia on 12 September 2002.

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between emblems and postmodernism. The city is bourgeois, and the emblem is bourgeois, unlike the other emblematic form, the impresa, or in French, the devise, which was used to communicaate for and among the nobility and academicians. During the second half of the nineteenth century, the emblem went so definitively out of fashion as a vehicle of communication that it virtually disappeared from the map of high culture in many areas of western culture, especially in France and Germany. Of course, there was the continuing interest of the Dutch in emblems, and the equally well known Victorian revival when standard works from the canon, including those of Jacob Cats, Francis Quarles, and Jeremias Drexel, were reworked, updated, and reissued. Certain Pennsylvania Dutch collections of emblems like Johannes Gossner's The Heart of Man, or German emblem books like that of Johannes Arndt continued to be reprinted in the United States, especially in the Pennsylvania Dutch country, until the end of the century. The same is true for the omnipresent Religious Emblems and Religious Allegories of William Holmes and John Barber, which were published and sold in American cities as farflung as Boston and San Francisco, Cincinnati and Philadelphia, in multiple editions, from the late 1840s until the end of the century. 2 There were even English editions of Drexel's Heliotropium published in the United States in the early twentieth century. 3 But by and large, the emblem was increasingly abandoned to the bibliophiles, school children, and devout American protestants, and the most important printings of emblems were more likely scholarly editions issuing from the Holbein Society, usually at the instigation of its famous president, Henry Green. 4 Paradoxically, scholars abandoned emblems at the same time as a subject of academic study, as they could find no 2.

Johann Evangelist Gossner, The Heart of Man (Reading, PA: Henry Sage, 1822); William Holmes and John Warner Barber, Religious Emblems and Allegories (New Haven CT: John W. Barber, 1849). Johann Arndt's Vier Biicher vom Wahren Christenthum was published in 1706; Benjamin Franklin published an edition in 1751, and other editions were published in Philadelphia and Allentown, Pennsylvania, in the 1830s and 1850s. Copies of these editions may be found in The Pennsylvania State University Library.

3. See Daly and Dimler, The Jesuit Series, Part Two, nos. J. 335-49. 4.

See for example his edition of Whitney's A Choice of Emblems (London, 1866), in addition to his well-known editions of Alciato's emblems. See as well W. Stirling Maxwell's edition of Van Veen's Horatian emblems (1875).

335 place for emblems in the newly formed configuration of the academic disciplines. Over the last thirty-five or forty years, however, the emblem has made a certain comeback, and if it is not exactly in fashion, it has, at least, generated a renewed interest among artists and poets, as well as teachers and scholars of the literary and artistic forms. How and why did this surprising turn of events come about? The way I have deliberately phrased this question, and described the situation it evokes, intentionally conceals a problem of vocabulary that will provide the point of departure in the search for an answer, and eventually, perhaps, the key to the entire problem. For it is not actually poets or artists according to the now traditional understanding of these words who compose "modern" emblems—or rather "postmodern" emblems, as will become clear in what follows. The process of composition of these contemporary emblems usually consists today in a complex collaboration between different kinds of artisans, technicians and scholars, as was common in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century production of emblems. As a result, these emblems have no "style." The reason is that they do not have an author in the Romantic sense, no originating "genius" whose self emanates a personal style that is projected in the work (Jameson, 15). Earlier emblems may have participated in the baroque style generally, but had no personal, individual style of the kind the Romantics required. This situation may be explained in some measure by contrasting the aaesthetics of high modernism with the postmodernism of the last thirty-five years. If the philosophcs of the eighteenth century, beginning around 1750, began to prepare the modern age through their conception of time and progress, the age of high modernism may be defined as reaching from about 1848 until around 1950. For the purposes of my argument, two things in particular characterize the aaesthetics of modernism. First, it is the period in which, following Lessing and his Laocoon of 1766, the text wages an ever-fiercer battle with the pictured image and the sculpted form to capture the imagination of the time. The two ends of this period are marked in an exemplary fashion by Flaubert's letter to Ernest Duplan in 1862, at the beginning, where Flaubert proclaims that his novels will never by illustrated during his lifetime, and on the other end —to take but one example from among many — by the illustrations Salvador Dali made for Montaigne's Essais in 1947. DANIEL RUSSELL

EMBLEMATICA 336 For Flaubert, the problem was that "la plus belle description litteraire est devoree par le plus pietre dessin.... Une femme dessinee ressemble a une femme, voila tout. L'idee est des lors fermee, complete, et toutes les phrases sont inutiles, tandis qu'une femme ecrite fait rever a mille femmes" [the most beautiful l i t e r a r y d e s c r i p t i o n is devoured by the most trivial picture. . . . A pictured woman looks like a woman, that's all. The idea is henceforth closed, complete . . . while a written woman inspires dreams of a thousand women, XIV: 110f.]. The separation between text and picture is henceforth canonical and absolute for the n e x t h u n d r e d y e a r s , at least —at least in the aesthetic theory of modernism. In practice of course there were exceptions: Le Voyage d'Urien was a collaboration between Andre Gide and the artist-poet Fig. 1. Salvador Dali, illustration for Maurice Denis, while Andre Montaigne's "De la phisionomie." 1947. Breton combined his text with images in diverse media to create the experience of Nadja, and Max Ernst attempted the feat of making a novel with no words, with nothing but images generated by collage-like constructions, Une semaine de bonte of 1934. But these were nothing other than more or less successful experiments which, in the end, remain on the margins of modernism, or else — at least in the case of Ernst —stand as a forerunner of postmodern forms of creation. It is no surprise then to find that illustrations end by becoming a simple pretext for the reveries and meditations of the artist, a pretext that inspires so-called "illustrations" like those of Dali for Montaigne. What one notices in Dali's illustration of "De la phisionomie" (fig. 1), for example, as everywhere under the reign of the modern aesthetic, is a considerable degree of detachment, not only from the text, but also from everyday reality, both social and political, in an effort at abstrac-

337 tion which obliges the reader to make a great leap of imagination and intelligence. No argument is possible. The age of modernism is the age of art for art's sake, where the creator withdraws from society to take refuge in his ivory tower. The model for the artist is the Romantic hero, brilliant, misunderstood, and solitary, while the work of art takes its distance from life and contents itself with simply existing. It takes refuge in its unity and it is at the borders of this unity that American New Criticism stopped in its consideration of the poem. The poem then is conceived as an object sufficient unto itself. Here's the way the American poet Archibald MacLeish put it in his "Ars poetica" of 1926 where he begins: DANIEL RUSSELL

A poem should be palpable and mute As a globed fruit Dumb As old medallions to the thumb Silent as the sleeve-worn stone Of casement ledges where the moss has grown — A poem should be wordless As the flight of birds A poem should be motionless in time As the moon climbs Leaving, as the moon releases Twig by twig the night entangled trees, Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves, Memory by memory the mind — A poem should be motionless in time As the moon climbs A poem should be equal to: Not true For all the history of grief An empty doorway and a maple leaf

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For love The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea — A poem should not mean But be. The circle closes at the end, and the impression of opening created by the negation in the penultimate line is only an illusion, for it is simply another way of saying the same thing that the poet had said at the beginning. Nothing could be farther from the functioning and raison d'etre of the emblem which signifies, or does not exist as an emblem at all. The emblem is a vehicle for the conveyance of meaning. At the same time, every emblem functions in relation to what has come before, and it prepares what will come in its wake, emblematically speaking. It is not a closed system, and any census of emblem writers will show that they did not remain aloof in ivory towers. They were book sellers, or teachers, or preachers, or alchemists. The emblem, furthermore, did not traffic in original ideas; in fact, the emblem could not exist if the criterion of its success were its originality. The emblem works variations on traditional themes and motifs, or reinterpretations of them.The same is true of its use and function. Instead of cloistering itself in an ivory tower, the emblem is resolutely in and of the city, embedded in the activity of everyday life, as Roemer Visscher emphasized in his immensely popular and paradigammatic emblem book, the Sinnepoppen of 1614. The producer of emblems cannot exist alone: he or she needs other craftsmen and booksellers to prepare and bankroll the production of these often pricey volumes. The emblem also needs a public who will use his or her work; nobody "uses" a poem by Archibald MacLeish. MacLeish's poem is typical of an art cut off from everyday life, the bourgeois life of the city. High modernist art has been characterized as anti-middle class, even though it was prized by the bourgeoisie who often supported it. Nevertheless, it remained an art cut off from the city (Jameson, 57). It is not surprising, then, that the age of modernism is also the time when the emblem goes into eclipse and disappears from the cultural horizon of Europe. The emblem is not a "work of art" as the modernists from Baudelaire to Heidigger conceived it, and it is a form that is open in all directions. The traditional emblem turned toward daily life where it was intended to play a useful role in practical communi-

DANIEL RUSSELL 339 cation as in the case, for examde la Religion. ZJ ple, of the emblems and devices composed to decorate the hall ONS ALTISSIMUS, where the Jesuit Pere Quartier < V * m Sol ad M" edit, pronounced his panegyric on totuspoenc • •' ! •-•-v the triumph of religion under Louis XIV for the opening of the school year at the College de Louis le Grand in December 1686. The hall was decorated with portraits, devices (fig. 2) and inscriptions. These pictures and inscriptions were designed to serve as illustrations and guide-posts for the sermon, illustrations the preacher could refer to during his presentation, as if they were illustrating his sermon. A description of the entire affair was published by Gabriel Le Jay with appropriate explanations for the entire decorative scheme. His program of the Fig. 2. Piu s'inalza, piu m'illustra. Gaceremonies takes the form of an briel Le Jay, Le Triomphe de la Religion emblem book which resembles sous Louis le Grand. 1687. the published pamphlets that accompanied, and helped decipher, the pageantry and symbolism of the royal entries (Grove, Loach). One of the devices was intended to summarize part of the message: Piu s'inalza, piu m'illustra [the higher he gets, the more he illuminates me], meaning, according to Le Jay, that the greater the Sun King became through his virtues and his conquests, the more he honored/illuminated religion.

Or in a more private sphere, the emblem could serve as a meditational aid. As in Hugo's Pia desideria, the emblem is, then, a focusing lens, a kind of prosthesis for the meditating subject, but the important word here is "serve." The emblem never exists for itself alone. Another example of this kind of emblematic engagement in the life of the world might be La maniere de se bien preparer a la mort par des considerations sur la Cene, la Passion & la Mort de Jesus-Christ. The original Dutch text is the work of the Flemish Jesuit, David de la

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Fig. 3. M. Chertablon, La Maniere de se bien preparer a la mort. 1700 (facing p. 48).

Vigne and dates from around 1670. The emblematic plates are the work of Romein de Hooghe, and in the French version of 1700, there are supplementary explanations by a certain M. Chertablon, to whom the work is often attributed. One typical scene (fig. 3) is set in society and the bedroom window of the dying man looks out on an urban setting. This paterfamilias, as he approaches death, is surrounded by his family and his retainers, while angels are showing him a scene from the Passion of Christ. Romein de Hooghe's plates are justly famous, but their combination with the text turns them into utilitarian compositions simply intended to carry a message or stimulate a meditation, and seventeenth-century viewers would never have the idea of characterizing such compositions as "works of art" in the modernist conception of Archibald MacLeish, for example. Indeed, they are em-

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blems only to the extent that Chertablon characterizes them as such in his front material; in a sense, they are simply illustrations of a text. The emblem in general is composed of borrowings, fragments, quotations, and can enter into the life of society in a variety of ways. To produce an emblem, one does not need creative genius, one does not need to be a poet or an artist: all one needs is to be a "bricoleur" of some sort (Russell 1985,174-76), for it is as difficult to know what else to call the maker of emblems today as it was for those who made them in the sixteenth century. As we are about to see, emblems today are made by landscape architects, historians, photographers, or print makers. But there are no "artists" in the traditional sense of the term among those who, over the last thirty years, have made postmodern emblems. One reason is that emblems are almost always made by more then one artisan, or even a team. Emblems then are anchored in the culture that produces them, unlike a poem by MacLeish. Sometimes that culture is broadly international as with Herman Hugo's emblems, and sometimes it is very local as in festival art, marriage emblematics, and the castra dolorum. Emblems recycle images, and in doing so give them different messages to carry. All this reminds us of some of the traits of postmodernism. And not surprisingly, for as John McGowan says, "Every distinguishing feature of postmodernism can be located in an era prior to our own." He goes on to venture that "what is distinctive about postmodernism is not something new but our attention to and interest in features of the past that until recently were most often ignored." The mechanics of the emblem, with its reliance on traditional motifs, have actually given us a way to set parameters for the postmodern style and pose. No wonder, then, that over the past thirty years or so a number of works have been produced that present themselves as emblems. During this time people have begun to take a renewed interest in the emblem form, and in a new way. Not only historians of culture or book collectors, but also "artists" —and henceforth that term will be in quotes because it will refer to a kind of "artist" much different from the modernist image evoked by MacLeish's poem. The first, to my knowledge, was Edward Lucie- Smith, a poet, historian, anthologist, and organizer of exhibitions. His Borrowed Emblems of 1967 are composed (or would constructed be a better word?) around images borrowed from emblems by Theodore de Beze in their French version of 1581. What he made from these images are new emblems that would be unrecognizable to the Calvinist theologian. In his emblem

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IV, for e x a m p l e (fig. 4), we see a medieval city with its towers and fortress walls hanging from a thread held by a hand emerging from a cloud, following a pictorial convention from the end of the Middle Ages. LuThe thread frays that holds cie-Smith moralThe city. Little Is needed to plunge izes the thread to All these towers to Nothing. Block a pipe, recall the precariSever a cable, Loosen a nut. Dark o u s s t a t e of the And desert return. modern city where g a s m a i n s can break, and sewer lines become blocked with little notice and great inFig. 4. Edward Lucie-Smith, Borrowed Emblems. 1967. Emconvenience: blem 4. The thread frays that holds The city. Little Is needed to plunge All these towers to Nothing. Block a pipe, Sever a cable, Loosen a nut. Dark And desert return. The compositional method here would characterize this emblem as postmodern for a number of reasons: 1) it is made, as the title indicates, of "borrowed" materials, 2) its subject is hot rather than cool — that is, it is highly engaged in the problems of everyday life, and 3) it exists in a playful relationship with its model. But if Lucie-Smith was a real "bricoleur" and the first of the postmoderns to venture into the domain of the emblem, the most fa-

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mous of these "artists" is perhaps Ian Hamilton Finlay, a Scottish landscape architect and the principal representative of concrete poetry in Great Britain. Finlay's Heroic Emblems date from 1977, and taken with the rest of his production, they provide the best entry into the world of the post-modern emblem. These are emblems in every sense of the word. They are the work of multiple artists (Finlay and Ron Costley), with commentaries by Stephen Bann, commentaries as eclectic and erudite as those of Claude Mignault, the great French commentator of Alciato's emblems. Finally, they are collages of reinterpreted fragments. But above all, they are compositions that enter into the life of the period of their composition with all sorts of reflections on militarism. What may be the most remarkable thing about these compositions is the shock between the new —the tanks that form the body of most of these emblems —and the ancient —the Latin mottoes which often form their text. But there is also the shock of the collision between the detached and the engaged. In the second emblem for example, we see a tank (fig. 5) coupled with Semper festina lente, a variant of the famous motto that served famously in Aldus's printer's mark. Stephen Bann notes the allusion to ancient devices in the choice of the tank, for this one is called a "Sherman crab" and in the sixteenth century, he tells us, the motto festina lente and its variations were often found coupled with a crab and a butterfly. 5 We note that these emblems borrow fragments of motifs and quotations from the past to make them into something completely new and totally detached from their original context, to become engaged i n t h e a m b i e n t l i f e of t h e

^ig. 5. Ian Hamilton Finlay, Heroic Emblems.

twentieth century.

1 9 7 7 (p 3)

5.

* '

Actually, this motto is seldom linked with the crab and the butterfly, but more often with the turtle and the arrow or the dolphin and anchor. See for example, Henkel and Schone, cols. 615-16, 728. Perhaps Bann was thinking of the device of Augustus Caesar that Gabriello Symeoni (11) reported to have been composed this way.

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Following a medieval tradition that seems to go back at least to Augustine, people did the same thing with the Psalms at the court of Francis I in the period just preceding the age of the emblem. 6 That is, they took fragments of the Psalms, whether full verses or not, and used these fragments to express a totally different, and totally contemporary, message, about a victory perhaps, like that of Francis I at Marignan in 1515, or some other event worthy of note. So this is a typical technique of both the emblem and postmodern art and architecture. As Stephen Bann points out in his introduction to Heroic Emblems, Finlay "mobilises the gap between the modern period and that of the Renaissance," just as earlier emblems did between the Renaissance and classical antiquity. Finlay's emblems are frequently enigmatic, and therefore seem to require the commentaries of Stephen Bann. "However, this is not the modernistic art of being difficult," says Bann, "associated with abstruse metaphysics or the desire for perpetual renewal. The commentaries which have increasingly become part of Finlay's works themselves are not so much explication as documentation" (Abrioux, 192). Finlay continued to play with the idea of the emblem into the 1980s. There is an addition to Heroic Emblems in the "Rhymes for Lemons" series, where a German destroyer is made to recall a Greek temple, thus evoking the German nostalgia for the southern origins of western civilization: "For the Temples of the Greeks our Homesickness lasts forever," as the motto has it. The commentary links the two through Goethe's "Kennst du das Land wo die Zitronen Bluhn . . ." (Abrioux, 191-93). Finlay takes a daringly different tack in a booklet published in 1980 by his own Wild Hawthorne Press under the title Romances, Emblems, Enigmas. This surprising booklet is comprised exclusively of blank or nearly blank pages. At the bottom of each verso, set in very small type, is a phrase with a red hand pointing to the facing blank recto. This hand, called a "manicule" in manuscript culture, and a "fist" in typographical jargon, 7 serves as a cue to the reader to imagine a picture to fill the challenging white space on the facing recto. That "reader" is also, perhaps, expected to add a commentary explaining the relationship between his imagined picture and the text in the large blank 6. See Russell 1995, 89-92, discussing BNF ms. fr. 2088.

7.

My thanks to Claire Sherman, the art-historical authority on hands, for this terminology.

DANIEL RUSSELL

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space above the emblem text. But imagining a picture is not always easy. The first text reads "A wheelbarrow, containing an anchor." That is easy enough to imagine, but the next "A sundial by moonlight" is more difficult. The third reads "A sun setting in a teacup which stands on a kitchen table." By this time, the reader is beginning to wonder how his imagination is supposed to link these fragmentary glimpses together. With the guidance of the title, can we piece together a narrative "romance," or are they individual, discrete "emblems." The whole process evokes an "enigma," certainly, and perhaps the individual fragments of text are enigmas, each in its own right.Whatever our solution to these riddles, it is important to notice that they are allegories of what the emblem was supposed to inspire in terms of the reading experience: every emblem can be made into other emblems at the desire of the reader. Whatever we make of it, the title guides our reading activity. In 1994, Hugh Buchanan and Peter Davidson, one of Finlay's collaborators, published a more traditional emblem book entitled The Eloquence of Shadows.8 Davidson did the texts to accompany and comment on Buchanan's elegantly colored garden scenes, making them into "moralized gardens." The opening text, in a postmodern mode, explains the "genesis and nature," as Alastair Fowler puts it, of the collection, and the fragmentation that provides material for commenting on contemporary issues is also typically postmodern. These commentaries are political or moralizing, but in an indirect way that stimulates meditation: the postmodern reader has a lot of work to do! We also find many of the same characteristics in the contemporary prints brought together at the Yale University Art Gallery in 1994 in the exhibition "Reinventing the Emblem." Those prints, in widely diverse media, take their inspiration from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century emblems. The exhibition originated in discussions between the two organizers, Richard Field and Alison Leader, about the influence of new techniques of reproduction on artistic production, and the example they focussed on was the emblem, one of the earliest forms to take full advantage of the reproductive possibilities of the new print culture. From these discussions there emerged the outlines of an experiment to see if the emblem phenomenon could be reproduced at the end of the twentieth century. They sent invitations to several hundred American print artists explaining their project,

8. See Alastair Fowler's review of this brochure in Emblematica 9,1 (1997): 201-03.

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and the response was enthusi­ astic. The ensuing exhibition juxtaposed 23 early-modern emblem books from the Yale library collection with 66 p o s t m o d e r n emblems sub­ mitted in response to the Yale invitation. The striking combinations that go into the making of these "emblems" recall the ones we find in the emblems and other art of Ian Hamilton Finlay. These prints usually contain some kind of frag­ Standvostig in myn wiUoosheid mentary text, and when they wend IN т у Д wenden тттег тое. Щ smaalT mijn wispelturigheid? do not, the unnatural and Dus is mijn took, mijn trouw,zie toe! enigmatic combinations of objects and people force the Fig. 6. M. C. Escher, XXIV Emblemata. 1931, reader to some textual accom­ Officium тент stabile agitari. modation resembling an em­ blem text or a commentary on one. Their involvement in the preoccupations of everyday life, down to the level of the fait divers,9 explains why these really are "emblems in the city" rather than emblems in an ivory tower like those of Escher and Drijhout from the 1930s, and why the modernist aesthetic, with its conception of an idealized work of art, of the chef d'oeuvre, as the unique production of a solitary genius detached from the world could not in any way accommodate emblems, nor indeed even understand them as an art form. To get a sense of what an "modernist emblem" might be, we need to look at Escher and Drijhout's XXIV Emblemata of 1932, the only example I know of what might be called a modernist emblem book, as strange as that expression must now appear. The im­ ages show a cool withdrawal from everyday life as the artist stylizes them into starkly simple, pure forms (fig. 6). The texts reinforce this impression of withdrawal by being stylized inscriptions on the same

See, for example, number 37, Brad McCallum's "Right in the middle of the side­ walk, directly in front of St. Mary's was a young man lying spread-eagled on his back with his head toward Grove Street. . ." from 1994.

DANIEL RUSSELL

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plate, rather than venturing into the more open space of the letter-press page. The Yale exhibition shows why the postmodern upheaval w h i c h followed the modernist aesthetic contains a clear view of what the emblem really was, and why it was a vehicle of choice for urban communication in the age of the baroque. One example in this collection that we can really call emblematic is Ronald Jones's c o m p o s i t i o n (fig. 7) where he presents a stolen broadsheet, as he explains it, because of the irony implicit in the place of its posting. Fig. 7. Reinventing the Emblem, no. 26: Ronald Nothing could show Jones, 1954 Hague Convenion emblem. more clearly the importance of context in emblems and in postmodern art of any kind. Among the emblematists, Jacob Cats was the first to underline this chameleon-like character of the emblem in his Silenus Alcibiades of 1618, where he used the same plates to illustrate three different sets of texts (religious, moral, and amorous). This art is not closed to the outside the way a modernist work is. The text of this emblem consists, as with the prefatory material to The Eloquence of Shadows, in the narrative of its origin and its composition by the artist —if one can call the person who imagined this composition an "artist." The text, like those of Finlay's Heroic Emblems, is documentary rather than explanatory. And we could say the same, as I have attempted to do elsewhere, for Claude Mignault's commentaries on Alciato (Russell 2003).

48

EMBLEMATICA

Erika Rothenberg (fig. 8) translates a quotation from Valery into an image (54), but that quotation is so com­ pletely detached from its context that one does not even need to know its source to understand the composi­ tion. Martin Kippenberger (27), on the other hand (fig. 9), uses objets trouves, in this instance hotel stationery, to draw a mysterious emblem, but one which recalls by its form at least a classic em­ blem. Leonid Lamm's com­ position (31) recalls another sort of emblematic collage which combines traditional and well known signifiers to mean something different from the usual expectations. This example recalls the sixFig. 8. Reinventing the Emblem, no. 54: Erika Rothenberg, "God Created Everyhing."

tv^enth-

century closed S or S ferme of Nouis Papon by which he meant to sig­ nal "fermesse" or faithfulness, as it had Лпсе at least the late Middle Ages 4igs.l0-12). K Another recent example of the re­ newal of the emblem comes from the |Vork of Megan Jenkinson, a New Zea^nd photo artist whose 40 virtues of \] 996 shows still other aspects of the reAtions between postmodernism and Fig. 9. Reinventing the Emblem, rie art of the emblem. 10 First of all, pho- no. 27. M. Kippenberger, Unti­ tled.

\ 0. See my review of Megan Jenkinson's Under the Aegis in Emblematica 11 (2001): 442-47.

349

DANIEL RUSSELL LA. FERMESSE

D'AMOVR

Fermeffe dond Toimour peint vn ehiffre fhonneur, Comune en Tefcritwre.b rare dans le cueur, Tes liens en verms, Us fidelles affeurent: {Mais ainfi que ta forme eft ttvn are mis en deux, Le dejir inconftant froijfe 6» bri\e tes neudy Ce pendant que Us mains ta fermeffe figurent.

Fig. 11. Louis Papon, "La fermesse d'amour/ ca. 1580.

Fig. 10. Reinventing the Emblem, no. 31: Leonid Lamm, "Welcome to Capitalism!"

tography is an art of collaboration par excellence: one needs, or at least Megan Jenkinson needed, actors, photographic technicians, and historians in order to realize her ideas. Each composition consists in part of an "aegis/ 7 or shield, which f u n c t i o n s as a h e r a l d i c blason, and it is accompanied on the facing recto by a three-part emblem. The inFig. 12. Portrait of Francoise d'Orleans. Ca. scription of this emblem, all 1580. Photo BNF. in capital letters, describes

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the action from a contemporary perspective which orients the compositions according to the d i l e m m a presented by the virtue in q u e s t i o n . The subscriptio — a technical term coined by Henkel and Schone that I bring up here only because Megan J e n k i n s o n herself uses it —is a quotation, generally from a classical author. But J e n k i n s o n is more interested in words than in the voice, and so the source of the quotation is relegated to the end of the volu m e . The context matters little or not Fig. 13. Megan Jenkinson, Under the Aegis. The Virtues. at all h e r e . Still, No.15: Fecunditas. m o s t of the "virtues'' are tradition350 al, like Chastity and Concord, or Fame, Fortitude and Fortune —they are mostly in indexical alphabetical order— but some like Academia are not. The woman who plays the role of the virtues in these tableaux is often Megan Jenkinson herself. And as she says in her introduction, she is interested in the virtues in a dramatic situation. The technique of photo-collage that she uses helps express the complexity of the situations she presents. For example, Fecunditas (fig. 13) is repeated ad infinitum, that is, by the superposition of several images of the face of the actress-artist, and that repetition represents perhaps the tension between the virtue of giving life and the vice, if one wishes, of trying to recreate onself in one's children. These situations complicate the vir• ' • .

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DANIEL RUSSELL

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Fig. 14a. Megan Jenkinson, Under the Aegis. The Virtues. Academia (aegis).

351

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EMBLEMATICA

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Fig. 14b. Megan Jenkinson, Under the Aegis. The Virtues. Academia (emblem).

DANIEL RUSSELL

Fig. 15a. Megan Jenkinson, Under the Aegis. The Virtues. Temperantia (aegis).

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1

Fig. 15b. Megan Jenkinson, Under the Aegis. The Virtues. Temperantia (emblem).

355 DANIEL RUSSELL tue under consideration and contrilbute to destroying, or at least to problematizing, the human type in question. The shield of the Academy (figs. 14a-b) takes the form of a book, an appropriate frame for the subject—exactly as the emblem theorist Menestrier advised the maker of emblems to do in his Art des emblemes of 1662 (84). That of Temperance recalls one of the tradi­ tional attributes of Temperance (figs. 15a-b) who pours water into the wine, while the emblem on the same subject situates this virtue in the modern drama of ecology. In the "aegis," disembodied hands are pouring water from a shell into a pitcher, presumably containing wine. The emblem picture with its little pyramid of used plastic bot­ tles against the background of a garbage dump illustrates the in­ scription which reads: TEMPERANTIA BUILDS A FOLLY OF OB­ SOLESCENCE IN THE WASTE LANDS OF EXCESS. One last example comes from The Phoenix Peter Gauld w h o p r i n t e d and I bear within my beak a seed of fire: bound his Book of Emblems at his A ruby, whole and entire. Basement Press in Ipswich in the I t is as young as I am old, And in a heart grown cold spring of 1998. The alphabet pro­ vides the organizing scheme for Will burn more fierce than flame When it in fire is sown, these compositions of wood-en­ Though none can say its name — gravings and rhyming text just as This seed, this burning stone. it did in Jeremias Drexel's Orbis Phaeton of 1629. While there are Fig. 16. Peter G a u l d , Л Book of Em­ some traditional symbols like the blems. T h e P h o e n i x . Phoenix (fig. 16) in this collection, many more are not period-specific, like the fisherman, the shell, the dreamer, bookshelves, and the like. Generally, there is no explicit moral as in "The Phoenix" where we read: I bear within my beak a seed of fire: A ruby, whole and entire. It is as young as I am old,

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And in a heart grown cold Will burn more fierce than flame When it in fire is sown, Though none can say its name — This seed, this burning stone. The volume begins and ends with a whimsical fable: why there are no unicorns in England begins the volume, while "The Fifth Fable of the Sage" concludes it in a way that must be characterized as postmodern. There, a young man "in a state of spiritual confusion," the text tells us, consults a sage, who advises him to "bathe yourself in pure water and let the clear light shine through you." Some time later, the youth returns to thank the sage and report on his progress. He had taken a bath and bought an ultra violet ray lamp, and while he was still confused, his pimples had gone away. As he leaves, the sage, at a loss for words, sadly concludes that "The days of parable are over, I fear." Now, I could make a parable out of this "fable" in an instant, and I am sure you, dear reader, could too. Indeed, the author suggests that that is what we should do by choosing to call it a fable. But the parables we postmoderns might draw from this "fable" are different from those a seventeenth-century Jesuit might expect.

Are these constructions we have been looking at really emblems. If our response to this question is affirmative, we must recalibrate our definition of what an emblem is. We notice how much the emblem detaches itself from the past, and differs from the revers de medaille that freezes time and history, and the emblem enters easily (even necessarily?) into the life of its environment, unlike the modernist work of art which keeps its distance from life, the emblem is in time and of place. The two periods of the baroque and postmodernism are no longer nostalgic for grand explanations, or at least not very much so, but rather look for appropriate solutions to precise problems in specific situations. Today as in the age of the emblem, following the model of the sixteenth-century "bricoleur" Gilles Corrozet, we take whatever fragments from the past we may find on our path and use them in any way that seems to fit our present needs —no matter how provisionally, like all the bricoleurs who made the first emblems (Russell 1985, 174-76). In short, we live in a period which gives a particularly interesting perspective on another period, that of the baroque emblem. But if the

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postmodern mentality explains our curiosity for emblems, the differ­ ences between the postmodern and the so-called modernist culture also seem to explain why the period of modernity no longer took any interest in emblems. So in comparing two mentalities, we hope then to have arrived at a little better understanding of what the classical emblem was and in understanding its place in the elaboration of the urban culture in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Works Cited Abrioux, Yves, with introductory notes and commentaries by Ste­ phen Bann. Ian Hamilton Finlay. A Visual Primer. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992. Bann, Stephen. "Le Serieux de Г е т Ы ё т е . " In Figures du baroque. Ed. Jean-Marie Benoist. Colloque de Cerisy-la-Salle. Paris: PUF, 1983. Pp. 109-25. Beze, Theodore de. Les Vrais Portraits des hommes illustres. Trans. Si­ mon Goulart. Geneva: J. de Laon, 1581; rpt. Geneva: Slatkine, 1986. Buchanan, Hugh, and Peter Davidson. The Eloquence of Shadows: A Book of Emblems: Emblemata Nova. Thirdpart, Crail: Thirdpart Pub­ lications, 1994. Chertablon, M. de. La Maniere de se bien preparer a la mort par des consid­ erations sur la Cene, la Passion & la Mort de Jesus-Christ. 1700. Daly, Peter M., and G. Richard Dimler. The Jesuit Series, Part Two. To­ ronto, 2000. Drexel, Jeremias. The Heliotropium, or, Conformity of the Human will to the Divine. Trans. Ferdinand E. Bogner. New York: Devin-Adair, 1912. Escher, M. C , and A. E. Drijfhout. XXIV Emblemata, dat Zijn Zinne Beelden. Bussum: C. A. J. van Dishoeck N. V., 1932. Reproduced in M. C. Escher: His Life and Complete Graphic Work. Ed. J. L. Locher. New York: Abradale Press/Harry N. Abrams, 1982. Finlay, Ian Hamilton. Romances, Emblems, Enigmas. Wild Hawthorne Press, 1980. , Ron Costley, and Stephen Bann. Heroic Emblems. Calais, VT: Z Press, 1977. Flaubert, Gustave. Oeuvres completes. Vol. 14: Correspondance 1859-1871. Paris, 1975. Gauld, Peter. A Book of Emblems. Ipswich: The Basement Press, 1998. Grove, Laurence F. R. "A Note on Use and Re-Use of Jesuit Devices in the Seventeenth-Century" Emblematica 10 (1996): 185-93.

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Ilarvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity. Oxford: Blackwell, 1990. Heidigger, Martin. "The Origin of the Work of Art." 1950; in Poetry, Language, Thought. Ed. and trans. Albert Hofstadter. Harper Torch Books. New York, 1975. Pp. 17-87. Henkel, Arthur and Albrecht Schone, Emblemata. Handbuch zur Sinnbildkunst des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts. Munich: Metzlersche, 1967. Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991. Jenkinson, Megan. Under the Aegis. The Virtues. Auckland, NZ: Fortuna Press, 1997. Leader, Alison B. Reinventing the Emblem. Contemporary Artists Recreate a Renaissance Idea. New Haven, CT: Yale University Art Gallery, 1995. Le Jay, Gabriel, S. J. Le Triomphe de la religion sous Louis le Grand represente par les inscriptions et les devises, avec une explication en vers latins & frangois. Paris: Gabriel Martin, 1687. Loach, Judi D. "Jesuit Emblematics and the Opening of the School Year at the College Louis-le-Grand" Emblematica 9 (1996): 133-76. Lucie-Smith, Edward. Borrowed Emblems. London: Turret Books, 1967. MacLeish, Archibald. Collected Poems 1917-1952.Boston, 1952 McGowan, John. "Postmodernism." In The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism. Ed. Michael G r o d e n and Martin Kreiswirth. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1994. Pp. 585-87. Menestrier, Claude-Frangois, S. J. L'Art des emblemes. Lyons: Benoist Coral, 1662. Montaigne, Michel de. Essays of. . . Trans. Charles Cotton. Selected and illustrated by Salvador Dali. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1947. Russell, Daniel. "Claude Mignault, Erasmus and Simon Bouquet: The Function of the Commentaries on Alciato's Emblems." In Mundus Emblematicus. Ed. Karl Enenkel and A. S. Q. Visscher. Turnhout, 2003 (in press). . The Emblem and Device in France. Lexington, KY: French Forum Publishers, 1985. . Emblematic Structures in Renaissance French Culture. Toronto: University of Toronto Prress, 1995. Symeoni, Gabriello, and Paolo Giovio. Le Sententiose Imprese. Lyons: G. Rouille, 1562.

REVIEW and CRITICISM

Reviews JOHN MANNING, The Emblem. London: Reaktion Books, 2002. Pp. 398. ISBN 1 86189 110 5. £25 or $35. When he was a child, the hero of Turgenev's House of Gen tlefolk was allowed to play after mass on Sundays. He was given a mysterious book, consisting of about a thousand enigmatical pictures, often of a naked and puffy Cupid, with enigmatical interpretations of them in five languages. His only amusement on these Sunday afternoons was to ponder these pictures minutely; some of them would set him dreaming. John Manning does not mention this scene, but he devotes the center of this beautifully produced book to children and "childish gazers," and its never wholly explicit argument is that the publication and reception of emblems is a childish business. Manning, who has written learnedly on sixteenth-century emblems and emblem theory, edited sixteenth-century books of emblems and emblem theory, and knows as much as anyone about the transmission of emblematic material or emblematic habits in early modern literature, has not written a childish book. But all his learning is worn lightly in an essay conceived to illuminate the childishly difficult pragmatics of reading images and words together. Alciato is the father of the emblem, but he is valued here for the "serious silliness" that characterizes the Stevenson of the Moral Emblems. Stevenson's partner in that enterprise was his twelve-year old stepson. Manning would have it that the silliness is partly conditional on the involvement of children, and though he is sometimes too prone to literalize the importance of such an audience, it is a liberating way of looking at the emblem enterprise. Flocks of children fill the pages of the emblem-books, schoolboys as well as amoretii, and the account of them supplies some of the most engaging pages in the book. And it is the high valuation of childishness that rescues the emblematic tradition from crude dogma to which it is otherwise prone, and encourages a sense of its open-endedness. There is an analogy between the free energy of children and the random energy of emblematic combinations of word and image. The attraction of emblems is that they do not quite come to an end: they make up a space where the game of reading is more obviously played than in genres con361

EMBLEMATICA 362 strained by their beginnings and middles and ends. The meaning may even be altogether turned over to chance, as in the lotteries appended to Wither or Jan David. Adults are admitted to this world of play by suspending their sense of what seriousness is. Alciato refers to his emblems composed in a holiday break ("festivis horis" in the poem to Peutinger, "'his saturnalibus" in a letter to Calvi). They belong to time of alternative possibilities, a time indeed that Lucian (a strong presence in the book) describes as a second childhood. Alciato's own emblems were a gift to Peutinger, an ungrown-up alternative to the kind of gifts that emperors give. The emblem is aligned with a tradition of polite or impolite triviality, with nugae which it would be low to make much of. Like the sileni of Socrates, these may offer more than they seem to; they may also rely on a more genuinely childish notion that dissipation or desipience represents a greater wisdom. Some, like La Perriere's Morosophie and Jan de Leenheer's Theatrum stultorum, advertise it. Wither's is content "to seeme Foolish (yea, and perhaps more foolish than I am." Alciato celebrates drunkenness as a kind of frenzied wisdom; he elides the distinction between rape and rapture. It has to be said that Alciato himself seems more committed to ingenuity than holy foolishness — so that the ostentatious triviality of what he writes comes across as the response of a cultivated gentleman to surrounding barbarism, but it is probably true that a culture that values one may without embarrassment value the other. It is certainly true that the Enlightenment culture which disvalued Christian foolishness equally disvalued the "peaceful province in acrostic land." It is also true that the academy on holiday indulges features of popular carnivalism, which in its turn opens its products to reappropriation by foolish if not holy popular culture. Manning views the emblem as generated by specific cultural moments. These moments are not easy to define for, more commonly with emblem writing than other species of writing, they are complicated by contradictory historical and geographical and ideological patterns, even patterns of feeling. The very earliest English emblem books—by Palmer and Whitney — are products of their authors' Dutch experience, but patched together mainly from Italian sources; and the most famous, by Quarles, is a lightly protestantized Jesuit book written by a poet who spent his formative twenties in Germany. The emblem often has strictly seasonal origins, as in affixiones and other banners, in the apparatus of court pageant, in collections directed like Whitney's to particular ends, like Montenay's or Zincgref's revived to

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particular ends as well. But they often survive their origins. True perennials like Alciato's Emblemata have problematically unpredictable fortunes. This makes it hard to pin anything down. The book tells a number of competing stories, one of which is that the "emblem" mutates with extraordinary rapidity, adapting to the interests and purposes of various groups. Sometimes the motives are similar or even the same, sometimes the structures are similar or even the same, sometimes the repertory of images is similar or even the same, sometimes the repertory of epigrams, or of "authorities." But all its manifestations are sui generis. It is striking then, allowed the debt of the one to the other, that Whitney should be so different from Alciato. Even different editions of the "same" book are hardly the same: arguably, there is no generic resemblance between the books produced as Alciato's in 1531 by Steyner and 1621 by Tozzi. Manning refuses to admit generic or programmatic prescriptions for the emblem. The introduction includes a list of questions about what emblems are —whether or not they are tripartite, whether or not they must be illustrated — in practice or principle, whether brevity is a principle with it or whether obscurity is. Such questions, says Manning, are beside the point. The properties and proprieties of what we call emblems are all contingent. There's a lot to be said for this. Historically, there has been no agreement about what emblems are or what they should look like. The terminology has been from the beginning thoroughly confused, and often contested. A panicky obsession with rules attaches to discussions of the impresa, but the emblem is advertised as precisely what breaks the rules. So, though the history of writing about emblems is infected by a search for regularity or a search for origins, it is all misplaced effort. It is more than misplaced; though Manning doesn't quite say it, it is misleading. In an aside in a treatise on legal terms, Alciato appeals to a hieroglyphic precedent and tells us that he has put together a collection of epigrams where "things too may sometimes signify." But since his understanding of hieroglyphs rests on imaginative misreading, any project to connect the emblem with a viable code system is doomed. Though Manning partly allows this he nonetheless credits Alciato with the discovery of a syntax of symbolic forms. This syntax is however so weak it amounts to no more than juxtaposition (it makes Augustine an "emblematic" writer). The release of symbolic potential is altogether a more opportunist business than Manning allows for. Another association that Alciato makes explicit—by way of alluding to hat-badges and printer's marks —is with the impresa — which impor-

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tantly has no conventional syntax —and which importantly promotes its own mystery. The account of humanist Egyptomania in the Hypnerotomachia or in Valeriano's systematizing Hieroglyphica, engaging as it is, is in any case only flimsily related to the practice of any emblem book. Alciato belonged to a culture intrigued by Horapollo and the like, and his commentators from the beginning invoke the Egyptians; but his book invokes them only twice —in Emblem 11 with Harpocrates (images of whom litter Italy), and in Emblem 145 with a story from Plutarch about Theban judges. Manning designs his book around divided motivations and intentions, not the manipulations of a code. The first part of the book argues for an emblematic rhetoric of contradiction, paradox, repetition. The book itself indulges precisely those features it isolates as recurrent in emblem writing. Throughout the book Manning prefers an idiosyncratic essayistic mode. The fact that the operations of the symbolic imagination are private — as much in the northern world of occasional meditation as in the world of the Italian impresa — makes it almost inevitably so. To be at home with symbolic writing is to be habituated to reading against the grain, to witty resituations and surprises, to the juxtaposition of heterogeneous ideas. The emblematic lexicon is always eccentric, not just when it is surreal, but also when it appeals to random and unclassifiable everyday experience. Despite its apparent centrality in early modern educational programs, the emblem is on the edge of any literary system it inhabits. There is nothing that cannot be the occasion of meditation, of appropriation by more or less passionate allegorism. The emblematic mode licenses readers to carry the sense where they will, and it encourages writers such as Browne to "hieroglyphical fancies," or Whitney to "aggregations of compositions assembled throughout a lifetime of emblematic extemporisation." Preferences so inclusive are necessarily indulgent of paradox and contradiction. Manning's observation of paradox is indeed often of high quality, in noting the promotion of opposed characteristics, the arrangement of emblems in pairs, the display of opposed points of view. In this Manning detects a taste for contrariness, a heads-and-tails mentality, a heels-over-head mentality, the pull of Martial's apophoreta, argument in utramque partem, competitive debate and much else. None of this manner is exclusive to the emblem, but in its heyday in the early modern period the emblem participates as it never could again (though Manning makes it true of Blake) in what is perverse and distinctive in the "metaphysical" strain of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century poetry. It exaggerates to the

REVIEWS 365 point of parody the properties of what was currently fashionable. And being parodic, and so liberated from propriety, it can be hospitable to almost anything and accessible to almost anyone. As they come across in Manning, neither the emblematists themselves not their the theorists have an agenda. Tesauro, who makes fewer appearances in this book than he might, is invoked for his acknowledgment that the mind is very accommodating; Menestrier is relegated to the status of anthologist. Not only is Alciato unclear about what he is doing, his heritage is worked out in contradictory ways. Later emblematists adapt to specific occasions and with differing emphases the general tripartite formula met in Alciato. Notably, the balance of word and image is variable. Here Manning seems to abandon his own refusal of commitment. He is anxious, if I understand aright, that emblems not be simply invitations to dream up possible meaning, but that they actually produce it. This is something that hieroglyphs do very well, but that pictures (or indeed "things") do not. Manning acknowledges that sometimes the pictures have a charm and distinction, beyond the text's, as in the case of Bocchi, or Cats, or Rollenhagen. Their books have ambitions to be beautiful. I have argued that Alciato wanted his own Emblemata, and in principle other people's, put into such a category. In the event he was disappointed, for the book of emblems, as we have it, is illustrated after the event, and badly. The illustration of Alciato never really recovers from its botched beginning with Steyner and a line of illustrators working with iconographical traditions alien to the book's origins. But so little does Manning think of the principle that the pictures might matter, he suggests that the errors of Alciato's illustrators are in the right spirit, because getting things wrong is what emblems are all about. In any case he denies any point to an ambition to produce beautiful books. He infers from such facts as that later publishers of Alciato didn't trust the pictures supplied in earlier editions, or that these are redeployed by Whitney, or that Aneau reuses woodcuts from Ovid, or that Cats's pictures migrate from one epigram to another to serve whatever different ends the verses dictate, that the image is not itself "emblematic," except in the sense, trivial for him, that they are "detachable ornaments." The picture, that is, produces meaning only along with the words, and the text is where the work of meaning is done and where it is fixed. He takes the "emblem" to be delivered in the disambiguation of the image by the epigram. And he takes it that his position is validated by the seventeenth-century history of the

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emblem book, in which the pictures are progressively overwhelmed by an apparatus of essays and citations of patristic and other authori­ ties, or in which some abstract fore-conceit is prioritized by alphabeti­ cal indexes or by thematic organization of the material into assem­ blies of motifs —of love, or loss, or death. This puts too much trust in an accident of publishing history, and in the disambiguating role of commentary. And when he argues this way, Manning betrays what I had taken to be the informing spirit of his own book, to suggest not that emblems produce meaning, but supply occasions for it. In Quarles or in Wither, to take the two major English examples, the picture may have no more than decorative value. No one supposes that Quarles's "Why dost thou shade thy lovely face? О why" gains anything from its accompanying illustration; even though the picture is in fact its starting point; its rather complicated inspiration is in the broad sense literary. Pictures may satisfy Alice's requirement that the only books of any value and those with pictures or conversations, though quite what Alice is getting out of the pictures is unclear: she may want an alternative to thinking and understanding. Manning plays up the weak-mindedness of the preference for pictures: Wither is quoted maintaining that he addresses himself to "vulgar capaci­ ties" and to "children and childish gazers," "the masses," —here he quotes Spinoza —"whose wits are not strong enough to perceive things clearly." This position does not square well with Aristotle's, also quoted (or tendentiously misquoted), that "the soul never thinks without an image." But that hardly matters. What is truer is that framed images such as confront us in emblem books will provoke thought—the words in however many languages, without our neces­ sarily understanding them at all, are encouraging evidence that some­ one has thought before us. It is not true, as Abraham Fraunce would have it, that "children can readily understand pictures"; truer, what Giovio says of imprese, that they regularly court obscurity. Manning in other places actually identifies "emblem" not with a format, but with "mystery." What the pages of commentary assure us of is that we con­ front pictures that can carry commentary. The trick is not in pictorializing the well-known phrase or saying, but in addressing in­ geniously a visually teasing given. Manning believes that Alciato's inspiration is "essentially verbal," that his remarkable influence is despite himself, that his emblems are ideally unillustrated, that Steyner's inventive vulgarization of Alciato's achievement was, by a lucky accident, a publishing coup. Whether or not it is credible that Alciato could have conceived his em-

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blems as offered ideally without pictures, it is quite incredible that he could have conceived them as unlemmatized —a humanist epigram announces itself as a response to an advertized topic. The Planudean anthology and epigrams derived from it, such as those in the selection by Cornarius to which Alciato contributed, are organised around lemmata. Alciato's epigrams, contrary to what Manning asserts, always declare a subject outside the body of the text. The implication of this is, that while the presence of a picture is not required, there is always an invitation to imagine one and the possibility of imagining one. That is why, at least in Alciato, there is an identif iably "emblematic" rhetoric even when the emblems are unillustrated. The rhetoric is an effect of engagement with a notional picture. Manning argues that Alciato's Graces (Emblem 163) are "emblematically noticed" by Alciato only in his memory of Seneca's De Beneficiis, that he has pictorialized an allegory of benefits. But its closest analogue is a famous epigram on a medal of the Graces owned by Prospero Colonna, and Alciato's novelty— his wit —is his perhaps bitterly informed addition of wings to their feet. For Manning, images are as fleeting as benefits (at one point, he describes them as "emblematic clutter). But Alciato's epigram offers itself as a poem about an art object, and invites us to be alert to the detail of an artistic original. The surprise is in the picture. So with the emblem on Aristomenes (Emblem 33). The point is not that eagles and Aristomenes are both valorous, but the surprise that the eagle should appear on his tomb and so contradict the expected the expected association of the two: a friendly specimen rescued Aristomenes when he was thrown into the pit at Sparta. Again, the point of the epigram on the anchor and dolphin (Emblem 144), to humanists of Alciato's generation an image more familiar than the back of their hands, is the absurdity of the explanation of it as an allegory of the good prince, that the dolphin should guide the anchor to its resting place. They knew it meant something else. The point of the complementary emblem of the arrow and remora (Emblem 20), which appropriates the anchor and dolphin's familiar sense of hastening slowly, is precisely the surprise of the breach with the conventional association, aggravated by Erasmus's dismissal of the remora in the famous essay "Festina lente" as inadequate to carry the sense of slowness, as not being "significant enough." The history of accommodating the image to Alciato's text —the drive to hieroglyphic transcription of the epigram—is a betrayal of the uneasy dialogue between word and image that was presumably part of the original point. Any sense of this dia-

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logue is c o m p r o m i s e d by the s u p p o s i t i o n that A l c i a t o ' s is re-imagining literary conceits, pictorializing his text. But if we sup­ pose him to be describing material objects so as to release an unex­ pected symbolic potential, the case is altered. In later emblems the il­ lustration is likely to lead us to the right semantic field. But it is likely to be surprising and enigmatic, in earlier emblems, to suggest a wrong semantic field. The turn of thought may be on the edge of the obvi­ ous—Ganymede's rape (Emblem 4) is not too surprisingly an allegory of God's love, or it may stretch the connexion beyond the powers of in­ tuition—a peach tree (Emblem 143) carries an invitation to emigrate to France. There are a few misprints, a few dubious translations, a few illus­ trations whose absence is regrettable. These are easily corrected. There are even a few opinions that are more than contestable, a few readings that seem to me overheated. At least they make us think twice, even if we decline them in the end. The book is full of things, of­ ten delivered as asides, that had not occurred to me, and are unlikely to have occurred to most people. More irksome is the fact thai neither the epigraphs nor the illustrations are captioned: for the one we have to refer to endnotes (not footnotes), for the other to an appended list. The bibliography is capriciously selective. I doubt if the handsome­ ness of the book —and it is very handsome —would have been much compromised by captions for the pictures, or footnotes on the page. And while their spareness is in many ways admirable, they err a little on the mean side. There has been a decision somewhere to promote fine design over usefulness, but I am not sure I regret it. The writing often has charm as well as wit, and even when dealing with the nitty-gritty of publishing history, it is written in a buoyant and grace­ ful way. ROBERT CUMMINGS University of Glasgow ALISON ADAMS, STEPHEN RAWLES, and ALISON SAUNDERS, Л Bibliogrpahy of French Emblem Books of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Cen­ turies. Vol. 2: L-Z. Travaux d'Humanisme et Renaissance, CCCLXII. Geneva: Droz, 2002. Pp. xxii + 761. ISBN: 2-600-00676-1. This monumental work virtually remaps the field of the French em­ blem and French emblem studies. The map most of us have followed

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ovrr the years has been that of Mario Praz in his remarkable foundational bibliography of the field1 and, to a lesser extent, that of John Land wehr. 2 Merely leafing through this work and noting how many of the titles and editions cited there have not been listed in either of these earlier bibliographies shows how the field has changed, and it will change more, once scholars begin using this bibliography as a guide in their own work. Indeed, it will almost certainly prompt a new definition of the French emblem, and perhaps the emblem in general. The first volume has already been reviewed, and the project described, by David Graham in Emblematica, vol. 12 (376-82). In that and other reviews, the work has received much richly deserved praise. The second volume continues the good work of the first. This volume concludes with some 55 pages of "Additions and Corrections," a number of indexes of authors, titles, printers, publishers and places of publication, as well as lists of secondary bibliographies and modern reprints and editions of the French emblem books catalogued. Modern editions are listed by "running number," the standard listing number for each work and edition that fits this work into the scheme of bibliographies in the Corpus Librorum Emblematum, and this causes minor practical problems since a relatively small number of books has been reprinted and because, as the authors admit, it is difficult sometimes to know which edition has been reissued: an author's name together with the "running number" would have been helpful. The additions include some newly discovered emblem books, like Charonier's he Temple de la Gratitude, and ones like Pierre Dinet's Cinq livres des hieroglyphiques that are fairly well known, in this case through the recent Garland reprint, and appear to have been discarded as emblem books, and then reconsidered. Along with the location of further copies of books and editions already described, this section also includes newly discovered editions of books previously noted. One particularly interesting example is the 1635 Reims edition of Hugo's Via desideria (F.335.5). Greatly abridged and poorly produced, this edition was obviously prepared as a simple meditational manual for a provincial French audience; it would surely repay care1.

Studies in Seventeenth-Century

2.

French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese Books of Devices and Emblems, 1534-1827. Utrecht, 1976.

Imagery, 2nd ed. Rome, 1964.

EMBLEMATICA 370 ful study. This section also includes other kinds of interesting information missed on the first pass. The authors note, for example, that the copy of F.033 at Douai was destroyed during WWII. That piece of information shows how deeply the authors have dug into nineteenth-century printed catalogues of French provincial libraries, and how they have followed up on that information. They did not, however, notice that a copy of the 1551 Paradin has disappeared from the nearby municipal library in Arras. The work is full of good descriptions coupled with reproductions of title pages and sample emblems. These descriptions permit the more accurate identification of copies not described in the bibliography. For example, in an undescribed copy of F.015, one of Jacques Moderne's editions of Alciato's emblems, the printer's device shown in the Glasgow copy of the 1544 is coupled with the publication date of 1545, whereas the Glasgow copy of the 1545 has a different printer's device. The reproduction of title pages also permits the reader to spot the very occasional flaw of transcription. In the bibliographic description of this edition the title reads "Emblematum liber" instead of "Emblematum libellus" as is clearly shown in the title on the illustrated title-page. This example demonstrates the usefulness of these illustrations, if indeed anyone still needed to be convinced of their value. Equally valuable are the careful bibliographic studies of these editions. In studying Wechel's important 1542 edition of Alciato's emblems, which contains two new emblems (F.012), the authors have determined that what looks like a slightly different issue with the same date is in fact a new edition not printed before 1545. This determination was made by studying the condition of the woodcuts in copies from different printings (F.017-018). The 1545 illustrations have breaks in the frame that were not there in Wechel's 1544 edition (F.014). My reference copy of this Wechel edition is dated 1542 (F.018), but from the condition of the blocks it was clearly printed after the Wechel edition of 1544, and the careful description of these editions makes this clear. Likewise, the authors have determined through careful bibliographic study that there were two distinct editions of Chertablon's La Maniere de se bien preparer a mourir in 1700 (F.179, F.180). What these studies tell us then, among other things, is that there were probably more editions and issues than we have come to expect. In copies of the 1655 edition of Jean Martin's Paradis terrestre (F.413) the engraved and letterpress title pages are not always bound in the

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Si)mo order. A remark by the authors suggests that quires a, g, and R wc»re probably printed together at the end, thus providing a poten­ tially confusing situation for bookbinders. Hence, my reference copy of this volume reverses the order of engraved and letter-press title-pages found in the Glasgow copy. This kind of information is precious for our understanding of the physical history of individual books, and if the bibliography is indispensable for scholars, it is no less valuable for any serious collector of, or dealer in, French emblem books. As has already been noted by other reviewers, the parameters cho­ sen to define the French emblem corpus are not without their prob­ lems. There are, unfortunately, no entries for Plantin's editions of Paradin in Latin, following the rule that Antwerp publications in Latin fall outside the corpus: the authors recognize this problem in their introduction. And David Graham has already noted too that Cats is included because of the little French contained in his collec­ tions of emblems, although there is no other apparent reason to do so. It also seems a little artificial to me to include, for example, Nunez de Cepeda's Idea del buen pastor or Lorenzo Ortiz's Ver, oir, oler of 1686-87 just because they were published in Lyons, while omitting the Span­ ish translation of Adrien Gambart's Vie symbolique du bienheureux Frangois de Sales, published in Madrid in 1688. Other similar prob­ lems arise with the French emblematists, Jean-Jacques Boissard and Denis Lebey de Batilly, whose works find no place in the BFEB when they are in Latin and published outside France. I, for one, would also find it helpful for some indication of the four editions of Blount's English translation of Henry Estienne's L'art de faire des devises (F.239). Likewise, if Patin's work on medals (F.471) is going to be included, an even stronger case can, I think, be made for also including Jacques de Bie's La France metallique that Jean Camusat published in 1636. Along the same lines, if Audin's Fables heroiques can find a place, we might also wish to find one for Jean Baudoin's "moralized" versions of Aesop's fables and the Metamorphoses d'Ovide en rondeaux by Isaac Benserrade (1676). To conclude, I will list a few additional details that have remained unnoted. Such additions form part of a process that should continue, and it should do so with no presumption of correcting, but only of adding to, this work. At least one of the copies of F.116, Les Devises de M. de Boissiere, at the BNF contains Pt. 1 only. There is also an un­ noted copy of this work at the Bibliotheque de Г Arsenal that contains

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both parts and has on the title page the signature of M. deMontplaisir, a prccieux poet who composed a manuscript collection of emblems about which I have written in the past. 1 All these comments, however, are mere quibbles with a monumen­ tal piece of scholarship. I, for one, am only too happy to have all the er­ udite descriptions these intrepid bibliographers have provided, and can only wish they had included more, whatever the parameters of their project. This is a great contribution to emblem studies. Daniel Russell University of Pittsburgh The Emblems of Wither and Rollenhagen: A Compact Disk edited by Peter M. Daly and Alan R. Young. Studiolum Series, edited by Antonio Bernat Vistarini and Tamas Sajo. 39 €/USD from: www.studiolum.com. This, the second CDRom in the new Studiolum series, differs some­ what from its predecessor, reviewed in Emblematica 12 (2002): 393-400, insofar as it concentrates on a single emblem book and its immediate posterity, whereas the first CD included the work of no fewer than fourteen different emblematic (and non-emblematic) authors, rang­ ing from Alciato and Paradin, through Cartari and Ripa, to Erasmus, Anacreon and Pierre Bayle. The present CD offers us both the Latin, and the French versions of Rollenhagen, along with Wither's Collec­ tion ofEmblemes, and a substantial editorial essay on the life and work of Wither with a full bibliography of Wither's other, non-emblematic, writings, allowing readers for the first time to study Wither's em­ blems alongside their immediate continental sources. The software is user friendly, allowing us to call up either of the other two texts whilst browsing the first, and also a window offering a verbal description of the on-page pictura together with a motto-translation (though Rollenhagen's Latin subscriptio is not freshly translated). The picture descriptions closely resemble those one finds in the Toronto Index Emblematicus volumes, essentially descriptions rather than interpre­ tations of the pictorial detail, on which the reader's iconographic searches are based. A mouse-click allows us to call up the scriptura to the same emblem as it appears in the other Rollenhagen edition and in 1.

"M. de Montplaisir and his Emblems," Neophilologus 67 (1983): 503-16.

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cither Wither's main text or his "Lottery" verses. A further icon allows us to click up references to the particular emblem's source or s o u r c e s , w h e r e t h e s e are k n o w n , a n d l i n k s to the a c t u a l source-emblems— ranging from Alciato, Corrozet and Paradin to Covarrubias —on other Studiolum discs will be available if required. A mouse click calls up thumbnails of the complete series of illustrations at any point. It will be clear from this (and from the CD's title) that there is rather more editorial matter relating to Wither than to Rollenhagen (or engraver Crispijn de Passe the Elder) in this edition, whose appearance presumably means that Wither will not now appear in the Toronto Index Emblematicus "English Tradition" series. In many ways this looks, indeed, like the digitized version of what would otherwise have ended up in that series, with which, of course, both the present editors have close connections. The advantages of the Studiolum format over the printed volumes are obvious enough, allowing on-screen comparison of variant texts and pictures, and facilitating digital searches rather than the endlessly proliferating indexes of the Toronto volumes. It might be regretted that this edition uses the same Glasgow University copy of Wither (SM 1903) as the two previous facsimile reprints from Scolar Press which appeared in 1968 and 1989 respectively, though it is a good copy and the few variant details in different copies of Wither's emblems are probably of no great significance. Since iconographic searches of the picturae are necessarily wordled, they depend on accuracy of the verbal description. This is generally reliable, though the description of emblem 1.28, "Victrix patientia duri," glosses the tree whose branches are weighed down by a heavy block of stone as "An oak (?)." This is clearly a version of the familiar c o m m o n p l a c e of the o p p r e s s e d palm tree, as Rollenhagen's subscriptio makes clear: "ab imposito pondere PALMA perit' —and the capitalization is Rollenhagen's not mine. However, as the editors note, there is another version of this emblem at III.38, "Veritas premitur non opprimitur," which shows a much more conventional palm tree, oppressed with a very similar stone but with the elongated, pinnate leaves of the date palm. Wither does have an oak tree at 1.29, facing —as it happens —the oppressed tree of his "Victrix patientia duri" emblem. This does not resemble the tree on the opposite page and it is unclear quite what species engraver Crispijn de Passe thought he was using to illustrate Rollenhagen's "palma" here, though it seems doubtful that he meant it for an oak. The fact that

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Wither's epigram, unlike Rollenhagen's, does not specify a palm tree for the earlier emblem suggests that he too had his doubts, and the editors are therefore probably justified in hesitating to call it a palm, even though readers conducting an iconographic search are more likely to want to find this emblem when hunting for palm trees than when searching for anything else, and I cannot help feeling that it would have been more accurate to gloss it: "A palm (?)" than: "An oak (?)." But these are minor quibbles. The bibliography of secondary literature is largely confined to work on Wither, whose "Life and Works" are accorded major treatment in a substantial bio-bibliographical section which comprises a major addition to the contents of this CD and deserves to stand as the standard reference and starting point for all future work on this increasingly important English seventeenth-century poet. Whilst there has been less s c h o l a r l y w o r k on the G e r m a n e m b l e m a t i s t Rollenhagen, or on the important De Passe family of Dutch engravers, whose role in the composition of this emblem collection remains unclear but may well have been as great as its nominal author's, it might have been wiser to offer readers a fuller account of both the primary and secondary materials relating to these. As it stands, readers wanting help and essential information on Rollenhagen and/or the de Passe family will have to find copies of Carsten-Peter Warncke's essay in his 1983, Dortmund, edition of Rollenhagen, or the Hollstein Dutch and Flemish Engravings, vol. 15, on De Passe; Ilya M. Veldman's recent article "Love Emblems by Crispijn De Passe the Elder: Rollenhagen's Emblemata . . ." certainly needs to be added to this bibliography. 1 Even on Wither, users might well expect to find details of any research on the wider reception and application of A Collection of Emblemes in seventeenth-century England, and here Peggy M. Simonds's article on the painting in the Tate Gallery, London, which depicts Wither's Emblemes open at the title page, surrounded by vanitas symbols, surely deserves a mention. A few years ago I myself discovered that quite a few of Wither's emblems had been copied into the pattern book of the Devonshire plasterer George Abbott —unique evidence for the use of emblem books as decorative pattern-books by practising craftsmen in a British context —and I wrote this up for the journal Architec-

1. In The Emblem Tradition in the Low Countries: Selected Papers from the Leuven International Emblem Conference. Ed. John Manning, K. Porteman and M. van Vaeck.Imago Figurata Studies, vol.lb, Turnhout: Brepols, 1999. Pp. 111-56.

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Iunil History.1 One might expect it to be included in any bibliography of Wither that was directed at students of his emblems. Much the same reasons could be adduced for including a digitized version of another emblem book, Nathaniel Crouch's Delights for the Ingenious (London, 1684, reprinted 1721 and 1732) in this CD. As the editors note, this adapts fifty of Wither's emblems along with a ver­ sion of William Marshall's frontispiece and a simplified Lottery. Copies are not easy to find and, unlike Wither, it has never been re­ printed in a modern edition; it might therefore be thought to consti­ tute a potentially valuable addition to the primary materials which this Studiolum CD so usefully brings together. Whilst the advantages of digitized versions of emblem books over traditional facsimile reprints are rightly winning growing recogni­ tion, Wither's Collection ofEmblemes is a book which, because of its pe­ culiar structure and format, might be seen as illustrating particularly well some of the less-obvious disadvantages of digitization. As I ar­ gued in my Introduction to the 1989 Scolar Press facsimile, Wither's emblems are a case where the peculiar properties of the printed book as physical object have an important relationship with its meaning and purpose. Divided as it is into four books of fifty emblems each, Wither himself alerts the reader to its structure as an analogue to the four points of the compass which are signalled in his lottery, and the placement of his statuesque dedications to each of the books, in posi­ tions which we are invited to see as analogues to statues placed on all four sides of a building, invokes those familiar correspondences be­ tween books and buildings, or between microcosm and macrocosm, which are such a recurrent feature of seventeenth-century epistemologies. None of this is lost in the present digitized version —when browsing the Wither file the reader encounters all the book's con­ tents—including Marshall's frontispiece, his four dedications and other liminary materials —that do so much to define the structure of the book, in their proper places. But any sense of the book as a whole, and as a physical object in its own right, is necessarily missing. We cannot turn the concluding lottery dial to find our personal emblem, as seventeenth-century readers would have done, and we cannot flick the leaves to use this book for those purposes of divination which Wither planned for its original users. We hear quite a lot these days about the continuities between post-Gutenberg and modernist 1. "The Sources of John Abbott's Pattern Book." Architectural History 11 (1(>(Ж): 49-66.

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information technologies —the so-called "Renaissance Computer." 1 Maybe it is time to start insisting on some of the discontinuities. None of this detracts greatly from the real usefulness and value of this newest version of Rollenhagen/De Passe/Wither, or from the undeniable importance to emblem studies of the ongoing Studiolum series as a whole. However the issues and problems raised by the various current projects for the digitization of the emblematic corpus, which were so hotly debated at the recent Emblem Studies conference at La Corufia, are likely to emerge most clearly as editions such as the present CD appear. MICHAEL BATH University of Strathclyde JOHANNES SAMBUCUS, Emblemata et aliquot nummi antiqui operis. Altera editio. Antwerp: Plantin, 1566. Facsimile reprint with an afterword by Wolfgang Harms and Ulla-Britta Kuechen. "Emblematisches Cabinet." Hildesheim, Zurich, New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 2002. In 1982 a facsimile reprint of the first edition (Antwerp, 1564) of the emblems of Johannes Sambucus appeared. The title of the first edition of Sambucus's emblems is Emblemata, cum aliquot nummis antiqui operis. It contained 166 unnumbered emblems and 23 medals. It was reprinted in 1982 in Budapest with an introduction by August Buck as volume 11 in the series "Bibliotheca Hungarica Antiqua" by the Akademiai Kiado. Exactly 20 years later we have a facsimile reprint of the second edition of Sambucus's emblems (Antwerp, 1566), with the slightly altered title: Emblemata, et aliquot nummi antiqui operis. This second edition reprints the original 166 emblems in their original sequence but with slightly altered texts, and an additional 56 new emblems, for a total of 222 emblems. There are also 22 additional medals, and a group of 47 epigrams, which are related to the subscriptiones of the emblems. This facsimile reprint is provided with an excellent afterword ("Nachwort") by Wolfgang Harms and Ulla-Britta Kuechen, who have both distinguished themselves with publications on the emblem tradition. Libraries and individuals, fortunate enough 1. See, for instance, The Renaissance Computer: Knowledge Technology in the First Age of Print Ed. Neil Rhodes and Jonathan Sawday. London: Routledge, 2000.

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to possess either the originals or copies of both reprints, now have the complete collection of the Latin emblems of the great Hungarian humanist. Subsequent Latin editions contain few and insignificant changes. The vernacular transmission of these Latin emblems is another story. The first edition of 1564 has picturae set in slightly larger borders and the texts are printed in larger fonts. The second edition of 1566, reproduced in this Olms volume, has the same picturae, now set in smaller borders, and the texts are printed in smaller fonts. The result is to produce something approaching emblematic closure on the printed page. Most of Sambucus's tripartite emblems now appear on a single page. As was the case with the emblems of Andrea Alciato, the emblems of Johannes Sambucus were a considerable success, which could not have been known in advance to either the author or the publisher. Five new editions of the Latin emblems (Antwerp, 1569, Antwerp, 1576, Antwerp, 1584, Leiden 1591 and Leiden 1599), and translations into Dutch (1566) and French (1567) became necessary. In fact, as Harms and Kuechen argue (280) Sambucus's emblems were the most successful of all his published works. Readers of Emblematica will wish to know how these emblems are introduced. Twenty years have elapsed since August Buck published his introduction to the first edition. Some things change and some things remain the same, also in scholarship. Both Buck and now Harms and Kuechen treat the question of Sambucus's life and the wider context for his emblems. But scholars who write introductions to earlier works always wear eye glasses and look in the rear view mirror. We are all children of an age with its concerns, its values and its questions. In the early 1980s August Buck was indebted to a view of the emblem that may no longer guide all current research. That is not so say that we in the twenty-first century have necessarily got it right, because we are more "modern." However, comparing the introduction of Buck with that of Harms and Kuechen, we notice a different accentuation. Harms and Kuechen are certainly concerned with the historical contextualizing of Sambucus's emblems, and the network of humanists, but unlike Buck they are also concerned with questions of authority, though they may not use that term, with the relation of these emblems to Sambucus's larger oeuvre, with questions of amicitia, and with word-image relations. A particularly teasing question, which will continue to haunt modern scholarship has to do with the relation of writer to graphic

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artist and publisher. This will impinge on emblem theory, whether inferred by modern scholars or contained in early-modern writings. Who was really responsible for what was printed and thereafter read? Did the artist "merely" illustrate the texts he received either from the writer or the publisher? Did he have a free hand to create picturae? Or did the writer or publisher provide oral or written instructions to guide the artist? In most cases of the 6,000 or so printed books of emblems and imprese known to scholarship we simply do not know, and we will never know. Of course, there are exceptions. We know that Geoffrey Whitney took most of his picturae from Plantin's stock. In this case it can be assumed that Whitney proceeded from the pictures. It is also k n o w n that George Wither took over from Gabriel Rollenhagen the 200 engraved picturae with their engraved mottoes largely in Latin, but some in French, Greek and Italian. Wither only changed one picture. Wither makes it sometimes painfully clear that he is working from the graphic images of someone else. But what hand, if any, did Rollenhagen have in the creation of the pictures in his emblem book? Rollenhagen's brief subscriptiones never explicate the background scenes, which were evidently the initiative of Crispin de Passe, who could certainly read the Latin texts of Rollenhagen. Harms and Kuechen inform us that Sambucus was involved in considerable costs for the graphic work (279). They discuss in some detail the collaboration between Sambucus and the artists Lucas D'Heere and Peter Huys, as well as the decisive role played by the publisher Plantin (281 -82). The editors note that the initial verses of Sambucus's epigrams follow closely ("eng . . . anschliefien" [282]) the preceding picturae. This leads the editors to assume oral agreements between author and graphic artist ("mundliche Verstandigungen zwischen Textautor und Zeichner" [282]), all the more so as both were living in Ghent at the time. This is a reasonable enough inference, although one must still assume that the texts were written first, and the pictures were produced later to "illustrate" them. Sambucus p r e s u m a b l y wrote in Ghent his short tract "De Emblemate" which precedes all the Latin editions of his emblems. It is a short theoretical work that is so rich in Latin allusions and Greek elements that it could only have been understood by a small circle of highly l e a r n e d i n d i v i d u a l s . S a m b u c u s never m e n t i o n s the inscriptiones that he wrote for nearly all his emblems, and which had been an integral part of Alciato's emblems. This leads Harms and Kuechen to suggest (284) that Sambucus's conception of the emblem is closer to the motto-less emblems of Guillaume de La Perriere (1540).

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The editors also show how, in his theoretical reflections, Sambucus concentrates on the tension ("Spannung") between picture, and subscriptio, which both conceals and makes accessible the moral leaching of the emblem (284). Sambucus stresses the intellectual labor of discovery on the part of the learned reader ("die gedankliche Entdecker- oder Enthullungsarbeit des gelehrten Lesers" [284]). I stress this aspect because the question of tension and concealing were central to the earlier modern conception of the emblem as a genre (Heckscher and Wirth). Harms and Kuechen recognize that the emblem theory of Sambucus did not influence the further history of emblem theory, while Sambucus's own emblems through their many printings and translations had a convincing impact. This is again the important distinction that must always be made between theory and practice. Sambucus's emblems are serious, allowing no serene frivolity ("keine heitere Leichtigkeit" [285]). They deal with appropriate human conduct in the world, which will include relations with ruler, subject and fellow human beings. Although religion or religiosity is never the topic, all of Sambucus's emblems are based in Christianity, even where the theme or motif may derive from classical antiquity. Adding the bibliography of Buck (42-43) to the bibliographic notes provided by Harms and Kuechen will provide readers with a full bibliography of works dealing with Sambucus that appeared up to 2001. The vernacular transmission of Sambucus's Latin emblems started almost immediately with translations into Dutch (1566) and French (1567). Harms and Kuechen mention the use made by Geoffrey Whitney (1586) of 50 emblems of Sambucus. Whitney used the picture that were among Plantin's blocks. Among the little known uses of Sambucus's emblems in the material culture of England are the "Four Seasons" tapestries, assumed to have been designed by Francis Hyckes, which hang at Hatfield House. 1 Each tapestry has a wide border containing an unbroken rope of loops, nine inches in diameter, which enclose the emblems, each separated from the next by a flower. The emblems comprise a picture and Latin motto. There is no subscriptio, and hence the mottoes are often altered or enlarged to make the relationship of picture to brief text more accessible. The Latin mottoes of the 170 emblems in 1. See 'The T o u r Seasons' Tapestries made for Sir John Tracy of Toddington," in The Sudeleys —Lords of Toddington, ed. Robert Smith (London: The Manorial Society of Great Britain, 1987), pp. 169-189.

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the borders of the four tapestries were evidently intended to be understood by the educated reader. With perhaps one or two exceptions, they posed no intellectual riddles. Comparing the tapestry emblems with various emblem books, there are three apparent sources for the 42 emblems that frame the "Spring" panel. These are: Geffrey Whitney A Choice of Emblemes (Leiden 1586), but even more importantly, Johannes Sambucus's Emblemata, the Antwerp edition of 1566,1 and Andrea Alciato's Emblemata, in all likelihood a Plantin edition. 2 There is some doubt whether Whitney was a source at all since all of the fifteen Whitney emblems that have been regarded as sources derive either from Alciato or Sambucus. In addition, I have discovered that Hyckes included in the tapestry borders a further ten Alciato emblems not to be found in Whitney's collection, and a further sixteen Sambucus emblems that do not feature in Whitney at all. The emblems regarded as not in Whitney are emblems that are either totally absent from Whitney's collection, or are used by Whitney in a different way. In such cases the motto on the tapestry represents a return to the wording in the original emblem book, which Whitney had altered. Sambucus was evidently important to the design of the emblem borders in the "Four Seasons" tapestries. Emblems can also do service as printers' devices, and even re-appear on title-pages. A case in point is Sambucus's complicated pictura to "Quibus respublica conservetur" (1564, pp. 114f., 1566, pp. 97f.). Adam Islip used it in England as a printer's device. He also used it as a title-page illustration in a series of political and historial works. 3 We are always happy when a facsimile reprint makes an emblem book accessible to us. We have reason to be grateful when an impor1. A comparison of the motto of Spring emblem no. 35 " Animi sub vulpe laetentes" with Sambucus texts shows that the source is not the first edition of 1564, where the same emblem (124) bears the motto "Fictus amicus 7 ' but the edition of 1566, or perhaps one of even later date, with the identical motto "Animi sub vulpe laetentes" (171). Whitney could not have been the source since he modified the 1564 motto to read "Amicitia fucata vitanda" (124). 2. Spring emblem no. 10 may be taken as evidence of Hyckes's use of the Plantin edition of Alciato. Whereas the earlier Wechel Paris editions (emblem 5), and the Rouille/Bonhomme Lyons printings (emblem 30) had depicted a stork in flight carrying another on its back, the Plantin editions and the tapestry depict a stork flying with food in its beak to its nest where three young birds are waiting.

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lanl emblem book comes with such a sound and scholarly "introduction" even if it is called a "Nachwort." PETER M.DALY McGill University Emblem Studies in Honor of Peter M. Daly. Eds. Michael Bath, Pedro F. Campa and Daniel S. Russell. Baden-Baden: Verlag Valentin Koerner, 2002. ISBN 3-87320-441-X. This long overdue Festschrift in recognition of Peter M. Daly's enormous contributions to the development and advancement of the field of emblem studies is unusual in a volume of this kind, in that it offers a manageable collection of ten essays by established scholars in the discipline. Too often volumes of homage are cluttered melanges with no internal logic, and they overwhelm the reader with their sheer magnitude and highly variable quality. However, the editors of this volume, Michael Bath, Pedro F. Campa, and Daniel S. Russell, have taken great pains to gather together a highly select group of ten relevant studies by the top scholars in the international community of emblem studies. Their compendious Preface puts in perspective the significance of Peter M. Daly's distinguished and brilliant career with admiration, due respect, and sincere friendship. In the volume's opening essay, "Inserts and Suppressions: Seventeenth-Century Poetic Usage of the Term "Emblem'," Michael Bath examines the unenunciated presence of the term "emblem" in its etymological sense of graft, inlay or mosaic, in some "speaking pictures" of English poets such as Jonson, Donne, Marvell, and Milton. The notion of the emblematic art as one of a grafting is particularly rich and complex, in view of the parallel Renaissance tradition of alluding to poetic imitatio with the same metaphor. Although it is quite a daring tour de force to argue the "emblematic register" of an unarticulated absence, Bath pulls it off successfully.

3. The Sambucus emblem as well as the Islip printer's device and the title page illustrations are reproduced and discussed in: Peter M. Daly, "Emblem und Enigma: Erkennen und Verkennen im Emblem/' in Erkennen und Erinnern in Kunst und Literatur, ed. Dietmar Peil, Michael Schilling and Peter Strohschneider (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1998), pp. 325-49.

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Pedro F. C a m p a explores the r a t h e r late i n t r o d u c t i o n of emblematics in Russia in "Insignia, Heraldry and Decoration: The Rise of the Russian Emblem." Although original emblem books in Russian were absent prior to the works of Simeon Polotsky in the middle of the seventeenth century, and although a number of important Jesuit emblem books were translated into Russian in the eighteenth century, Campa points out that a primitive emblematic tradition was in existence at an earlier date, primarily in the form of heraldic devices and insignia. Less abstract than their European counterparts, the earliest devices of this type in Russia depicted city insignia, or gerbs. Campa notes the influence of Jesuit emblematics on early Russian poets such as Polotsky and Karion Istomin. By the late seventeenth century, Russian emblems were appropriated in the service of political propaganda by the Tsars and Tsarevnas. The Golden Age of emblematics in Russia, according to Campa, coincides with the reign of Tsar Peter I (1682-1725), whose interest in emblems and symbols led to the design of new gerbs and state insignia, the emblematic decoration of architecture, naval ships, royal entries and even fireworks displays, as well as the striking of emblematic medals. Campa then describes the first Russian emblem book, Symbola et Emblemata (Amsterdam, 1705). The reedition of this work in 1788 with the title Emblemy i Simvoly was a decisive influence on the development of Russian decorative arts. The next important development observed by Campa in the evolution of an emblem tradition in Russia is the popular eighteenth-century vogue of the lubok, a colored print hawked on the streets by itinerant peddlers. Campa next considers Emblemat Dukhovnyi (1743), a Russian adaptation of a German emblem book. The explanation that Campa finds for this and other religious emblem books in Russia is Rome's desire to unify its Church with that of Eastern Orthodox Christians, and that these books served as texts in Jesuit schools. Campa also comments on the manifestations of the emblematic arts during the reigns of Elizabeth Petrovna (1741-61) and Catherine the Great (1762-96), the most fascinating of which are the emblematic carved ivories coveted by the Russian nobility. Campa ends his comprehensive review of the emblem tradition in Russia with a reminder to scholars that much work remains to be done in this area and some tantalizing hints as to where to find the appropriate research materials to carry it out. The next article in the collection, Peter Davidson's "The Inscribed House," is concerned with the emblematic architecture of a number of real buildings, a practice that may have originated in Colonna's

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Ih/pitcroloniticliiu Poliphili (1545).[ Davidson first considers Christ Church, Ipswich, a house whose interior and exterior Latin inscriptions are mostly maxims on prudence and what constitutes the good life. The next buildings studied by Davidson are Uraniborg and Stjerneborg, a castle and underground observatory owned by the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, on the island of Hven. Brahe embellished the buildings of his complex with inscriptions and emblematic sculptures. Books published by Brahe on his own presses reveal that at least some of the sculptural reliefs were accompanied by mottoes. The inscriptions of the Long Gallery at Gorhambury, preserved in an illuminated manuscript, are the subject of the next part of the study. Many are meditations on political life derived from Seneca. The remainder of Davidson's article concerns the Greek and Latin inscriptions on the fugacity of life that adorned Montaigne's library, and the inscriptions that adorn some of the buildings of the English estate of Sir Thomas Tresham, in Northamptonshire, an emblematic profession of their owner's Catholicism. Davidson speculates, in concluding, that Tresham's emblematic program may have been inspired by a direct knowledge of Colonna's Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. Rev. G. Richard Dimler's "Jesuit Emblem Books: An Overview" examines in great detail the state of scholarship on the Jesuit emblem, beginning with Mario Praz's pioneering Studies in Seventeenth Century Imagery (1964).2 Dimler devotes substantial attention to studies on one of the most popular of all books in the seventeenth century, Hugo's seminal emblem book, Pia Desideria (1624). Among the many Jesuit emblem books included in this review, Dimler also pays special attention to the influence of several of Jeremias Drexel's emblematic works, and to the importance of Henry Hawkins's Parthenia Sacra (1631). Other sections of this bibliographic overview concern themselves with important Jesuit emblem theorists such as Claude Menestrier and Jakob Masen, and with the influence of rhetoric and humanism on the Jesuit emblem. The final section of the article describes the contents of two recent collections of articles primarily or totally dedicated to questions on Jesuit emblematics: The Jesuits and the Emblem Tradition (eds. Manning and Van Vaeck, 1999) and Emblematik und Kunst derjesuiten in Bayern: Einfluss und Wirkung (eds. 1. Davidson asserts that it was first published in 1545 (p. 41), aparently unaware of the 1499 edition. 2. Firstedition, 1939. Dimler cites from theexpanded second edition, Rome, I'Kvl,

EMBLEMATICA 384 Daly, Dimler, and Haub, 2000). In his conclusion, Dimler notes the significant advances that have been made in the location and cataloguing of Jesuit emblem books, and in research on the major authors. He invites further research in a number of areas: the role of rhetoric in the emblem structure; the impact of the Enlightenment on Jesuit emblems; reasons for the demise of the vogue of Jesuit emblematics; the use of applied emblems in ephemeral architecture; the place of emblems in Jesuit pedagogy; the changes in Jesuit emblems by the eighteenth century; the relation of Jesuit emblem theory to other writings on this topic, etc. The concluding sentence bears repeating: "The harvest is great but the laborers few" (112). Wolfgang Harms draws our attention to the way a little-known manuscript, Emblemata secreta (ca. 1620-30) in Strasbourg, reworks Zincgref's "ethico-political" emblems to produce expanded forms which raise wider issues of what Harms calls the "hybridisation" of forms. He recommends this term to refer to the way the standard three-part emblem type expands to assimilate a variety of new materials and allusive references not just in this particular manuscript, but in the many expanded forms or types of emblem, all of which extended appreciably the possibilities of strictly emblematic variation in the seventeenth century. Both the particular manuscript and the theoretical issues it raises are full of interest. "The Ruler Between Two Columns: Imperial Aspirations and Political Iconography from the Emperor Charles V to William of Orange" is the title of Karl Josef Holtgen's richly illustrated contribution. The popular device of the columns of Hercules, often accompanied by the motto Plus ultra or some variation on it, first embodied the political accomplishments and aspirations of Emperor Charles V. For Spain, this impresa symbolized a holy cause: the providential expansionism that brought the lost souls of the New World into the Catholic fold. However, Holtgen finds that this symbol of dynastic power is also present in depictions of other rulers. In the case of Elizabeth I of England, part of the explanation may be due to the fact that some of the most prominent engravers were from the Spanish Netherlands. In other occurrences in England, the ruler between the pillars is associated with fame, honor, and fortitude. The article concludes with a fascinating reading of the political intent behind a broadside print of Oliver Cromwell standing between two pillars, and a more cursory treatment of a similar print featuring William of Orange. Sabine Modersheim's piece, "Text als Bild: Figurengedicht und Emblematik im Barock," examines some of the practical and theoreti-

KLVILWS 385 c.il issues ol aligning emblematics with figure-poems, using examp l e s of c e l e b r a t o r y c u p - s h a p e d p o e m s ( ' P o k a l g e d i c h t ' ) from N u r e m b e r g a n d figure p o e m s from Stettin in a m a n u s c r i p t of 1609, M.irlin Marstaller's Emblematum Liber Philippi II. M a r s t a l l e r ' s "emb l e m s " are notable e x a m p l e s of t w o t y p e s of G e r m a n figure p o e m which M o d e r s h e i m identifies as conventional, the O u t l i n e - p o e m ( " U m r i s s g e d i c h t " ) a n d the C u b u s - or L a b y r i n t h - p o e m ("Labyrinthgedicht"). In "The O r n a m e n t a l Image: Memory, Decoration, a n d E m b l e m s , " I )aniel Russell posits t h a t the early history of the role of the e m b l e m i n Western culture can best be u n d e r s t o o d in the context of the o p p o s ing Catholic v i e w s of image as idolatry a n d i m a g e as a pedagogical tool. He is m o s t c o n c e r n e d in this s t u d y w i t h w h a t he d e e m s the ornamental e m b l e m a t i c image, one that can be d e t a c h e d from its surr o u n d i n g context a n d p u t to n e w a n d different u s e s . This kind of nominalistic i m a g e b e c a m e popular, according to Russell, in the late fourteenth a n d fifteenth centuries. The s e p a r a t i o n of the o r n a m e n t a l image from its original m e a n i n g enabled it to b e c o m e a rhetorical tool or s i m p l y an aid to m e m o r y and u n d e r s t a n d i n g . Russell m a k e s it clear that the r e l a t i o n s h i p b e t w e e n the decorative, u n e s s e n t i a l image, a n d the t h i n g or idea with which it w a s associated, w a s ambivalent a n d plastic over the course of time. A n d yet, for Russell, w h a t is constant a b o u t the e m b l e m a t i c image is its detachability. It is, as he calls it, an " e m p t y vessel" that can always be i n s e r t e d into a n e w context for different p u r p o s e s . D e a t h is a n a l y z e d as the unifying motif of one of the best k n o w n of the English e m b l e m b o o k s in Mary V. Silcox's " D e a t h a n d Identity in Geffrey W h i t n e y ' s Emblemes." Rejecting recent a r g u m e n t s that have p o s i t e d p i l g r i m a g e as the u n d e r l y i n g s t r u c t u r e of the collection, or that h a v e refused to g r a n t it any s t r u c t u r e at all, Silcox has identified m o r e t h a n seventy e m b l e m s in which d e a t h p l a y s a significant role. Whitney's p u r p o s e in e m p h a s i z i n g the t h e m e of d e a t h , according to Silcox, is to h e l p u s to u n d e r s t a n d and cope w i t h it, especially in view of the i m p a c t t h a t the Reformation h a d in d e - e m p h a s i z i n g the importance of i n d i v i d u a l life. W h i t n e y frames his v i e w s on d e a t h from a P r o t e s t a n t perspective, a n d focuses on the "social construction and function of d e a t h . " This is especially e v i d e n t in the o p e n i n g a n d closing e m b l e m s of the collection. Specifically, Silcox identifies Whitney's r e p e a t e d e m p h a s i s on a p p r o p r i a t e or good d e a t h , the collective r e m e m b r a n c e of certain individuals, a n d the i n d i s c r i m i n a t e n a t u r e of death, all of which lend comfort to the living. A l t h o u g h Silcox

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mentions in passing the ars moriendi tradition in England, it is a point that might have deserved a fuller treatment. Nevertheless, this is a fascinating and insightful article that is an important contribution to Whitney studies. The volume draws to a close with Alan R. Young's "Ophelia in the Eighteenth-Century Visual Arts/ 7 After passing in review the nineteenth-century's often prurient depiction of Ophelia's madness, Young takes u p the main thread of his analysis: those eighteenth-century representations of Ophelia that prefigure the better-known artistic renderings of the following century. He analyzes drawings, engravings and paintings of three aspects of Ophelia's iconography: her madness scenes; her standing alongside a brook and Ophelia recumbent in the water, drowned, in order to prove that there were eighteenth-century precursors to the more famous works of the following century. As is the case with so many emblem books, this volume of homage contains something to appeal to every taste. The studies include musings on e m b l e m theory, t h e m a t i c s t u d i e s , the influence of emblematics in architecture and the visual arts, bibliographical inquiry, the development of the genre in Russia, the appropriation of emblems for political propaganda, etc. I am certain that Peter will be pleased to see these fruits of the seeds that he sowed and toiled over for so many years. And in conclusion, I say to Peter, borrowing from the adages of Erasmus, may you always stay Cucurbita sanior [Healthier than a pumpkin]. JOHN T. CULL Holy Cross College VICTOR MINGUEZ, Los reyes solares. Iconografia astral de la monarquia hispdnica. [The Sun Kings. Astral Iconography of the Hispanic Monarchy]. Colleccio Humanitats 7. Castello de la Plana: Publicacions de la Universitat Jaume I, 2001. Pp. 345. Los reyes solares is another important contribution by Victor Minguez to the field of emblem studies. Devoted to a single theme, the identification of Spanish kings with the sun for political, religious and propagandistic ends, it is an exhaustive study lavishly illustrated with many emblems and hieroglyphs that will be unfamiliar to many critics. Since the book is in Spanish and perhaps therefore not accessi-

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a brief s y n o p s i s of the contents in

The book begins with a prologue authored by the eminent Mexican art historian, Jaime Cuadriello. In his Introduction, Minguez explains the genesis of his study. While working on his doctoral thesis on the emblematic virtues associated with the last rulers of the house of Austria, he noticed a recurring utilization of solar images in the iconography of Hispanic monarchs developed by painters, engravers, emblemists and those in charge of the symbolic programs for ephemeral public celebrations. His book seeks, in part then, to disabuse critics of the long-held notion that solar imagery is a phenomenon exclusive to the French monarchy. Chapter 1, El sol, imagen universal del poder [The Sun, Universal Image of Power], establishes the universality of the symbol of the sun which illuminates the day. It is a symbol adopted throughout history by all civilizations as positive and beneficial, and reigns supreme over other competitors due to the simplicity of its representation. It is a symbol that connotes the creation of life, energy, power, light and warmth, and as such it has been appropriated by numerous religions as an image of divinity. It is natural then, that rulers of many civilizations in many periods would select the sun as a reflection of and the projection of themselves and their role in their respective societies. Kings and emperors assumed the iconographical attributes associated with the classical sun deities Apollo and Helios. The association of solar imagery with the monarchy in the Americas was facilitated by an extensive panoply of solar cults in pre-Columbian times, as manifested in city street planning, the orientation of the great pyramids, their sculpture and painting, etc. The second chapter, De Augusto al Renacimiento [From Augustus to the Renaissance], situates the critical moment at which solar images changed from being religious symbolism to political symbolism during the reign of Octavius Augustus (27 b. c-14 a. d.). In order to contrast himself with his rival Mark Anthony, a devotee of Dionysius, Augustus opted to follow the cult of Apollo, the incarnation of morality and discipline. Augustus helped spread the rumor that Apollo was his father, and he built an important temple to him near his home. Other Roman rulers who helped to establish the cult of Apollo were Aurelianus and Constantine. A decisive moment in the Christian evolution of solar imagery was the decision in the fourth century to fix Christ's birthday as December 25 th , the day of the birth of the sun in the pagan religion. The Middle Ages did not exploit the associ-

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ation of monarchs and the sun, but the evolution of heraldry and bla­ zons to depict the aristocracy of the thirteenth century reintroduced this form of metaphorical representation, which continued to evolve until the introduction of the emblematic culture of the Renaissance. The title of chapter 3 is an apt summary of its contents: El siglo XVI: Las teorias heliocentricas у el nuevo pensamiento politico [The Sixteenth Century: Heliocentric Theories and the New Political Thought]. Minguez posits that the rediscovery of classical civilization during the Renaissance prompted the adaptation of the political symbolism of the Roman emperors, which was disseminated by means of coins and medallions, poems, inscriptions and other texts. The scientific discoveries of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and others added to the prestige of the sun, debunking previous geocentric theories. Magi­ cians, astrologers, astronomers, and other hermetic writers also did their part to defend the heliocentric universe. They affirmed the prin­ ciple of universal harmony, in which the sun governed an ordered cos­ mos. Machiavelli and his staunch defenders and detractors, with their endless treatises, were also crucial in advancing the ties between rul­ ers and solar imagery. The debate was quite fertile in Spain. The analo­ gies that provide the basis for the identification between monarch and sun include: a certain distancing and aloofness; a permanent presence and an insistence on equitable justice and liberality. Both the sun and the king are the source of life, light and heat. They are at once accessi­ ble and distant. They are singular (dynastic), but even in the event of an eclipse (death) they regenerate with a successor. They both exude ostentatiousness and power. The fourth chapter, El sol jranees. Nee pluribus impar [The French Sun. Nee pluribus impar], examines the early adoption by the French monarchy of the sun as its defining symbol. Although it was utilized by many of his predecessors, Minguez points out that the identifica­ tion of king and sun reached its apogee with Louis XIV (1639-1715), the Sun King. The long reign of this monarch and the consolidation of French political, military, and cultural influence in Europe, allowed for the fruition of all aspects of the solar iconology. Minguez also dedi­ cates part of this chapter to a description of how solar imagery per­ vaded public festivals and ceremonies, as well as the architecture as­ sociated with Louis XIV, particularly the palace and gardens at Ver­ sailles. This vogue started to fade around 1680, with the advent of new scientific discoveries and the increasing secularization of the world. Los soles "metalicos" de Menestrier [Menestrier's "Metallic" Suns] is the title of chapter five. As court emblemist for Louis XlVth, the Jesuit

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