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EMBLEMATICA An Interdisciplinary Journal for Emblem Studies V o l u m e 12
Editors Peter M. Daly
Daniel Russell
David G r a h a m
Michael Bath
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.
Copyright © AMS Press, Inc., 2002 All rights re sewed
Manufactured in the United States of America
EMBLEMATICA An Interdisciplinary Journal for Emblem Studies l.mblemalica publishes original articles, essays, and specialized bibliographies in all areas of emblem studies. In addition it regularly contains review articles, reviews, research reports (work in progress, including theses, conference reports and abstracts of completed theses), notes and queries, notices (forthcoming conferences and publications), and various types of documentation. It is now published annually.
Editors Peter M. Daly McGill University Department of German Studies 680 Sherbrooke Street W. Montreal, PQ, НЗА 2М7 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, A1B 3X9 Canada
Michael Bath Review Editor Department of English Studies University of Strathclyde Glasgow Gl 1XH United Kingdom
Editorial Barbara C. Bowen Vanderbilt University Pedro F. Campa University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Paulette Chone Universite de Bourgogne (Dijon) John Cull College of the Holy Cross Denis L. Drysdall University ofWaikato (New Zealand) Wolfgang H a r m s Ludwig Maximiliaiis Uni., Munich Karl Josef Holtgen Universitat Erlangen-Ntirnberg Lubomir Konecny Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic Jean Michel Massing University of Cambridge Sabine Modersheim University of Wisconsin at Madison
Board Dietmar Peil Ludwig Maximilians Uni., Munich Karel Porteman Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven Stephen Rawles University of Glasgow Library Bernhard F. Scholz Rijksuniversiteit Groningen Mary Silcox McMaster University J. B. Trapp The Warburg Institute, London Egon Verheyen George Mason University Florence Vuilleumier Laurens Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, IVe Section, Paris Alan Young Acadia University
EMBLEMATICA An Interdisciplinary Journal for Emblem Studies
Volume 12 Preface Body and Soul: Papers from the 26th Annual Conference of the Association of Art Historians Alison Adams Introduction Donato Mansueto The Impossible Proportion: Body and Soul in Some Theories of the Impresa Judi Loach Body and Soul: A Transfer of Theological Terminology into the Aesthetic Realm Elena de Luca Silent Meanings: Emblems, Lay Culture, and Political Awareness in Sixteenth-Century Bologna
Margit Thefner "Let your desire be to see God": Teresian Mysticism and Otto van Veen's Amoris Divini Emblemata Susan Sire Body and Soul: Caspar David Friedrich's Kreidefelsen aufRugen (ca. 1818), and Baroque Emblems as Models for a Programmatic Polyvalent Romantic "Marriage" Emblem
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Articles Victoria Musvik Word and Image: Alciato's Emblemata as Dietrich Georg Von Brandt's Album Amicorum
141
Bernard Teyssandier La Doctrine des moeurs, un cas limite dans l'histoire de l'embleme?
165
Silke R. Falkner Hens and Snails: Emblematic Representations of Women in Johan Michael Dilherr's Sermons on Matrimony
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JudiLoach Why Menestrier Wrote about Emblems, and What Audience(s) He Had in Mind
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Marc Van Vaeck Printed Emblem Picture in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Leuven University College Notes
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Bibliography Peter M. Daly and Mary Silcox Addenda to The English Emblem: Bibliography of Secondary Literature. Munich, London, New York: K. G. Saur, 1990
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Review and Criticism Review and Criticism Peter M. Daly and G. Richard Dimler, S. J. The New Edition of Hugo's Pia Desideria in Polish and Recent Hugo Schholarship
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Reviews Peter M. Daly and G. Richard Dimler, S. J. Corpus Librorum Emblematum. The Jesuit Series. Part Two, by Mara Wade
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Peter M. Daly and John Manning, eds., Aspects of Renaissance and Baroque Symbol Theory, 1500-1700; and Michael Bath and Daniel Russell, eds., Deviceful Settings: The English Renaissance Emblem and its Contexts, by Peter Davidson 362 Imago Figurata Editions, volumes 1-3, by Michael Bath
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Glasgow Emblem Studies, volumes I-V, by Alastair Fowler
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Alison Adams, Stephen Rawles and Alison Saunders, A Bibliography of French Emblem Books of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries; and Laurence Grove and Daniel Russell, The French Emblem: A Bibliography of Secondary Sources, by David Graham
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Bart Westerweel, ed., Anglo-Dutch Relations in the Field of the Emblem; and John Manning, et al., The Emblem Tradition and the Low Countries: Selected Papers
of the Leuven Intrnational Emblem Conference, by Margit Thofner
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David Graham, ed., An Interregnum of the Sign: The Emblematic Age in France, by Peter Sharratt
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Studiolum 2000/2, by Alan R. Young
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Research Reports, Notes, Queries and Notices Notes Mason Tung Notes on Alciato's Medea Emblem
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Mason Tung A Note on the Influence of Alciato on Aneau's Picta Poesis
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Michael Bath "Broom" or "brome"? Paradin's Plantagenet Device
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Alison Adams The Murder of Osbold von Moshardt and the Emblematic Program of the Hofwirt, Seckau, Styria (Austria)
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Volume Index
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Preface to volume 12 With this volume we welcome David Graham, Professsor of French and Spanish atMemorial University of Newfoundland, to the team of editors. Professor Graham was one of the first to consider the different uses of computers in the study of emblems, and more recently he has worked with us as a member of the editorial board where his intellectual acumen and editorial skills were greatly appreciated. We look forward to a long and fruitful collaboration. Our thanks go out to Alison Adams for her good work as guest editor of a group of papers from the April 2000 conference of the Association of Art Historians. We invite submissions of this sort as well as of individual papers. And of course we are always looking for good monographs that can be published first in Emblematica and then in expanded form as a stand-alone volume in the series "AMS Studies in the Emblem." Continuing a tradition we established long ago, we are publishing one paper in French to capture the sense of its conference presentation in Munich in 1999. In this paper Bernard Teyssandier sorts out the editorial history of Gomberville's Doctrine des moeurs in an exemplary manner, and with a clarity that makes it a pleasure to read. Thanks to the good work of Michael Bath, we are beginning to catch up on the backlog of studies, editions, and collections of papers in need of review in this journal. Please send all volumes for review to Professor Bath. As in the past few years, all other editorial correspondence should be addressed to me at the University of Pittsburgh. Good reading! Daniel Russell for the editors and the board
Body and Soul: Exploring Objects, Making Myths
Papers from the 26th Annual Conference of the Association of Art Historians, Edinburgh, April 2000
Guest editor: Alison Adams
Introduction: A Perfect Emblem, or the Right Proportion of "Body and Soul" "Body a n d S o u l / ' the overriding t h e m e chosen for the a n n u a l meeting of the Association of Art H i s t o r i a n s held in E d i n b u r g h , 6-9 April 2000, w a s obviously a d m i r a b l y suited to a session on e m b l e m s , and so I w a s very pleased w h e n I w a s asked, on behalf of the University of Glasgow's Centre for Emblem Studies, to take over the planning even at a relatively late stage. The precise topic, "A Perfect Emblem: The Right P r o p o r t i o n of 'Body a n d S o u r / ' h a d already been delineated, b u t s p e a k e r s h a d n o t yet been chosen. This was, of course, not only a session for emblem specialists, but one designed to be accessible to non-specialists and to introduce colleagues to the importance of this field of study. In the event, the day was memorable for the way in which the disparate papers combined to form a coherent whole in which, to use an overworked phrase, the whole was perhaps greater than the sum of its parts. The first two papers, by Judi Loach and Donato Mansueto, of which more developed versions form part of this collection, explored different, but complementary aspects of the theoretical vocabulary used by emblem theorists, and the links it has with theological and philosophical arguments. Elena de Luca and Margit Thofner both focused on specific works, and the importance of placing them in their precise historical context: Luca's interpretation of Bocchi's Symbolicae Quaestiones d e p e n d s on defining its relationship with the crisis in lay culture in Bologna in the mid-sixteenth century and more broadly reflects the shift of European culture from an epistemology based on oral communication and auditory learning to one centered on the written text, whereas Thofner throws new light on Van Veen's Amoris Divini Emblemata by establishing its roots not only within the Habsburg court b u t within the view of Divine Love promulgated by the Teresian Carmelites. The next pair of papers, on the use of emblems in decorative arts, are not unfortunately reproduced here: Alison Saunders, in a paper entitled "Who Needs Words? Alciato as a Model for Artists and Craftsmen" brought together evidence of the common reuse of emblematic motifs
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as models for other art forms, in an "applied" context, and Michael Bath looked at some particular examples within Scotland: "Paradin in Proportion: Scottish Application of the Devises heroiques." Material from this paper has appeared in Michael Bath's book, Renaissance Decorative Painting in Scotland (Edinburgh: National Museums of Scotland Press, 2002). The final two papers looked at the links between the emblem tradition and more conventional art-historical concerns. A version of Claire Pace's paper, "'Symbolic images': Allegorical Engravings in G. P. Bellori's Lives of the Painters (1672)," which examined the iconographic sources for the engravings in Bellori's book, will be published in 2002 with Cambridge University Press in Art History in the Age ofBellori, edited by Janis C. Bell and Thomas Willette. Finally Susan Sire's paper, of which a fuller version is included here, proposed a new and provocative emblematic reading of Caspar David Friedrich's Chalk Cliffs on Rilgen (1818-20). The eight papers, enlightening and enriching each other, thus followed an admittedly largely fortuitous line of development from theory into practice and went on to demonstrate that emblems are far from being an isolated phenomenon, but instead are an integral part of a way of thinking which endures at least into the nineteenth century. The five which are presented here, both individually and together, build on the discussion of the day and reflect the valuable focus provided by the theme "Body and Soul." Alison Adams Glasgow
The Impossible Proportion: Body and Soul in Some Theories of the Impresa1 DONATO MANSUETO University ofBari, Italy This paper, part of a wider theoretical work about the influence of the Italian literature of images between the second half of the sixteenth and the first decades of the seventeenth centuries, addresses the question of the use of the body-soul analogy in some theories of the impresa.21 focus on eight Italian treatises, written in a period ranging from 1555 to 1654, that is, from Paolo Giovio's Dialogo delle Imprese to Emanuele Tesauro's II cannocchiale aristotelico. This selection follows a criterion of regular chronological distribution along the century in which that particular genre of prose treatise developed. 3 Ex1. I would like to thank the British Academy for support of my research in 1999, the Centre for Emblem Studies at the of University of Glasgow and in particular Alison Adams, for help and advice, and the staff of the Special Collections Department of the University of Glasgow, for hospitality and access to their resources (all the primary sources quoted below are part of their collections). 2. Some Italian words have not been anglicized. In particular, I shall use both the Italian singular form impresa and the plural imprese. Sometimes, instead of impresa theorists or impresa devisers, I shall use impresisti.
3.
Tesauro's Idea delle perfette imprese was probably written between 1622 and 1629 and II cannocchiale aristotelico, first published in 1654 but revised and modified during the ensuing decade, was presumably conceived in the 1620s (see M. L. Doglio's Introduzione, in Tesauro 1975, 6-8). Given that Giovio's Dialogo delle imprese was composed around 1551 and presented in a manuscript and illustrated version before 1555, the chronological limits I have indicated (1555-1654)
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elusive preference has been given to Italy, as Italian courts and academies were the centers where this conspicuous corpus was collectively produced. I will briefly individuate and compare the different arguments these treatises articulate, and I will draw a line that is intended to make visible not only the elements of continuity, but also the distance between the extreme positions analyzed. The impresisti's arguments were often supported by second-hand ideas and assembled without logical coherence and philosophical awareness. A close analysis, text by text, would result in a barely readable palimpsest, very different from the simplified picture I am going to sketch. Therefore an immediate extension of my conclusions, either to other periods or to different texts, could lead to some inconsistencies. However, this simplification will allow me to connect the intricate inter-textual network produced by impresa theorists to some fundamental theoretical questions implied by the body-soul analogy. The hypothesis underlying the following survey is that, though schematic, such a reconstruction should supply us with useful elements to interpret the strategic meaning of some epistemological shifts —not readable as clear-cut breaks —involving rhetoric and literature from the sixteenth through the seventeenth century. 4 My first, almost obligatory reference, is to Paolo Giovio's Dialogo delle imprese, as the publication of this dialogue —first printed, separately and unillustrated, in 15555 —can be considered the "foundahave a symbolic moaning and a practical function.
4.
At this analytical level, general and highly abstract notions of classical and modern epislcmcs (and also such related distinctions as those between "emblematic thinking" and "rhetorical forms") can still be useful as heuristic instruments; however, one has constantly to confront them with an empirical fragmentation hard to systematize, as well as with a multiplicity of artistic, literary, and philosophical "traditions," which, even when showing striking homologies, rarely change at the same pace.
5. Giovio's dialogue appeared in printed form three years after its author's death, soon followed, in 1556, by two distinct editions issued by Ludovico Domenichi and Girolamo Ruscelli, who joined their respective works, a Ragionamento and a Discorso "on the same subject," to the original Dialogo. After the first illustrated printed version, published by Domenichi in 1559, another important chapter in Giovio's fortunes was the edition by Gabriello Simeoni (1559), with additional imprese and verses. All these additional works substantially contributed to the fortunes of Giovio's treatise. In sum, together with Giovio 1555, from which we quote, it is essential to consider at least all the editions mentioned above (Giovio
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lional act" of the theoretical debate in Italy about the art of devising imprest'. All the following discussions about the impresa, a form al ready widespread, but not yet systematized as an autonomous artis tic or literary genre, will refer to Giovio's dialogue, and in particular to his famous five condizioni [conditions]. Among these conditions, conceived as practical and critical guidelines useful both for the pro duction and the interpretation of imprese, the first is expressed through an analogy that will allow future impresa theorists to borrow terms and concepts from another semantic field, and to outline a common speculative frame. According to Giovio, a good impresa requires, first of all, a "just proportion of body and soul." 6 The soul, the author explains, is the motto, whereas the body is the subject or picture. Neither a soul with out subject, nor a body without motto could constitute a perfect im presa.7 This statement should have a circumstantial, figurative mean ing. Giovio's main concern is one of an aesthetic order: how to find a measure of equilibrium for an expression whose delight, the plea sure of a bella vista [fine show], also relies on whimsical subjects (the third rule prescribes that the impresa "should make especially a fine show, which will be very pleasing, representing stars, suns, moons, fire, water, verdant trees, mechanical instruments, bizarre animals, and fantastic birds"; 8 and the fourth rule, forbidding the introduc tion of the human body in the picture, leaves room for eccentric sub jects).9 The discussion about this aesthetic measure is immediately con nected to the social function of the impresa, which has to be not only beautiful, but also appropriate to its noble owner. The defects of some imprese, lacking the motto or the picture, or showing an obscure 1556a, Giovio 1556b, Giovio 1559, Giovio 1561, Giovio 1574) and the modern ver sion edited by Maria Luisa Doglio (Giovio 1978). For essential bibliographical references, see Praz, 352-54; on editions and circulation of Giovio's writing, see Caldwell 15-16, 27-29. 6. Giovio 1555, 8: " . . . giusta proporzione d'anima et di corpo."
7. Ibid., 9: "si stima che mancando о il suggetto a l'anima, о l'anima al suggetto, l'impresa non riesca perfetta." 8. Ibid., 8-9: "che sopra tutto abbia bella vista, la qual' si fa riuscire molto allegra, entrandovi stelle, soli, Lune, fuoco, acqua, arbori verdeggianti, instrumenti mecanici, animali bizzarri, et uccelli fantastichi." 9. Ibid., 9: "Quarta non ricerca alcuna forma umana."
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relation between the two elements, are examined in relation to the great value of the personal bearer by whom they are inspired; making an impresa, one must avoid the risk of misunderstandings or ridicu lous interpretations (Giovio enumerates and censures imprese with out bodies, pictures without mottoes, imprese where the dispropor tion between motto and subject causes either obscurity or ridiculous effects; 13ff.). It is plain that Giovio's Dialogo, offered to Cosimo de' Medici as a pleasant recreation, aims at a delicate equilibrium which excludes every intentional philosophical or rhetorical complication. A few years later, Scipione Ammirato, 10 in his dialogue II Rota overo delle imprese (1562), repeats Giovio's prescriptions aiming at a bella vista, saying that the body of the perfect impresa is a picture represent ing natural objects (trees, animals, stars, and so on) and the soul is a sentence or motto. 11 The controversy opposing two participants in the dialogue — the former asserting that without a picture a motto is noth ing but a ghost (with an audible voice but invisible), the latter claim ing that a beautiful sentence does not require a body, just as an angel does not —is solved through the analogy between human being and impresa. "The impresa —Ammirato writes — stands for man . . . who has in himself both soul and body." Thus, just as "after death ... that body which remains is called corpse, not man," so "that picture or image or drawing which, whatever it may depict, lacks the motto, will be called painting, not impresa."12 Though a specific artistic dignity distinguishes impresistica from painting and poetry, notable analogies assimilate the art of devising imprese to the two noble "sister arts." Poetry, according to Ammirato, was a "philosophy of the philosopher," as it was charged with protect10. Originating from Lecce, a member of various academies and a versatile intellec tual, Ammirato acted as a mediator between southern and northern Italian cul ture (Ferroni and Quondam, 73-77). For essential biographical information on Ammirato, as well as on the other authors quoted below, see Barocchi, 3:3543-91; Savarese and Gareffi; and Caldwell. 11. Ammirato, 9: "la vera impresa ё quella che ha la sua dipintura di erba, sasso, animale, sole, Stella, luna e simili in vece del corpo, e il detto о sentenza о motto о proverbio in vece dell'anima."
12. Ibid., 9: "l'impresa sta in vece deiruomo; e tanto noi diciamo alcuno esser uomo, quanto ha in se anima e corpo; che dopo morte sapete, secondo voi altri aristotelici, che quel corpo che rimane si chiama cadavero e non uomo. E pero quella pittura о imagine о disegno di qual si voglia cosa che sia, la qual ё senza motto, si chiamera pittura e non impresa/'
9 ing wisdom beneath a veil. Painting, born together with poetry, 13 shares the same function, and the correlative aim of producing meraviglia [wonder]. Given that imprese are a combination of painting and poetry, they should be even more effective in attaining these aims. By witty verbal constructions and rare, but not monstrous, im ages, they should constitute a proper code of noble persons, a "phi losophy of the knight/' just as poetry was a "philosopher's philoso phy." 14 This play between figurative speaking and wonder, is made clearer by Girolamo Ruscelli's Imprese illustri (first ed. 1566). Ruscelli, whose Ragionamento has accompanied Giovio's dialogue since 1556,15 already criticizes, for at least two reasons, the rules about body and soul. First, because they are pleonastic (to speak of just proportion necessarily implies that both motto and picture are needed; Ruscelli 1584, 2). Secondly, and more important, because they do not consider that the very soul of an impresa is its bearer's in tention, not the motto; calling the latter anima [soul] and the picture corpo [body] is a usage, derived from Giovio's definition, that can be accepted only provided that the intention is the operation of the body-soul combination. 16 Ruscelli describes impresa first of all as a means of expression, whose effectiveness depends on the correct transmission of the intention to the addressee. Considered in this reDONATO MANSUETO
13. Ibid., 14: "sorelle tutte nate in un parto." 14. Ibid., 14: "L'impresa ё una filosofia del cavaliere, come la poesia ё una filosofia del filosofo."
15. Girolamo Ruscelli's timeliness in commenting Giovio's dialogue is not surpris ing, as he was a typical example of a poligrafo, working in the employ of a pub lisher as corrector, editor and translator: every poligrafo was in an ideal position to become, in his turn, a prolific and eclectic writer.
16. Ibid., 3: "Tuttavia, poi che questa cosa di chiamare le figure corpo et il motto anima dell'impresa si vede esser passata tant'avanti, che saria come impossibile toglierla in tutto dalle menti о dalle lingue e penne altrui; per questo si puo piu tosto tolerarla con corroborare le sue ragioni, dicendo che in effetto, ancor che ristrettamente la vera e propria anima dell'impresa si debbia dire l'intenzione del significato suo, nientedimeno, poi che estrinsecamente si vede l'impresa far officio di corpo animato, si possa tutta insieme chiamar un corpo solo et attribuire l'anima al motto e le figure al corpo, onde l'intenzione del significato suo venga poi ad essere operazione di tutto il detto composto di corpo e d'anima."
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spect, words have added valuable qualities to human communication, making it easier, more delightful, safer. Hence, Giovio's concern with aesthetic requirements is criticized less in order to be rejected than to be merged into a semiotic problem, since all the improvements allowed by words have to result in the glory and praise of impresisti (clearly foreshadowing later discussions about the exhibition of ingegno [ingenuity]) (5-6). Giovanni Andrea Palazzi too, 17 in his Discorsi sopra Vimprese (1575), a work which already shows a certain crystallization of the theory, dwells upon the semiotic effectiveness of the impresa, following its historical evolution. The analogy with the human being is recalled three times. First, to describe the development of imprese through their different ages, from childhood to maturity. Second, in order to dictate the rules for the composition of the picture, whose parts have to constitute, like the members of a human body, a perfect unity. Third, to demonstrate that the impresa has to be composed of both body and soul. 18 He admits that it is not easy to formulate operative rules to obtain that proportion (in a preceding passage, Palazzi [154-56] just repeats the loose analogy between impresa and syllogism, already proposed by Ammirato); he can but hint at that ideal, by showing and discussing some examples of disproportion. In these cases, he says, the motto is not adequate ("conveniente") to the picture, just as the soul of a horse cannot be assigned to a human body. For instance, the sentence "citius volat" cannot be referred to a tree, because a tree cannot fly.
17. For some new biographical details on Palazzi, previously known only for his Discorsi, see now Caldwell, 181-82. 18. Palazzi, 188ff. It is interesting to observe that Palazzi also recalls analogies other than the human: a wall, whose bricks have to be cemented; a medicine, in which every single ingredient is essential. In this respect, choosing and disposing ("eletione" and "dispositione") in the proper way will be fundamental skills for the impresista: the effect of the single parts, which in any case have to show a bella vista (117), will be increased by their mutual proportion ("uno all'altro da gratia, uno all'altro accresce bellezza, con la proportione, con la misura, co'l modo, & co'l decoro"). It appears that Palazzi's argument is ambiguous, as the shift from the human to the artificial analogy makes his prescriptions more adequate to the composition of the picture than to the equilibrium between the two parts of the impresa. As we will see below, Torquato Tasso will solve such ambiguity by renouncing the idea of proportion between body and soul, and reading Giovio's prescription as one regarding only the picture.
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One can observe in these passages a shift toward the verbal dimen sion, so accentuated that one might say that "just proportion" here means the same as "correct predicate." It is not surprising, then, that in the following pages Palazzi identifies the impresa with a poem, and focuses on wonder, which the impresa, exactly like a poem, must pro duce. 19 As regards the contents, wonder is less the result of a propor tion than a h a r m o n i c combination of c o n t r a s t i n g elements (truth-falseness, light-darkness, humility-arrogance, and so on). As regards the expression, it depends on a rhetorical mechanism: the self-satisfaction deriving from the recognition of a mistake, the cor rection of the potential misunderstanding implied by a figurative ex pression. 20 In sum, in order to obtain the desired effects, one must fol low the rules formulated by Aristotle and Cicero, who prescribe that metaphors should be neither too plain nor too obscure. 21 Scipione Bargagli, in his successful DelVimprese,11 is even more de tailed in discussing the metaphorical nature of the impresa, defined as the expression —not the imitation —of a concetto13 Bargagli's funda mental idea is that the essence of the impresa is neither the concetto nor 19. Ibid., 194: ". . . l'impresa e un poema . . . . Ora vi dim che si come la meraviglia ё nella poesia necessaria, cosi ancora (come dice l'Ammirato) nell'imprese necessariamente si ricerca."
20. Ibid., 195: ". . . non solo con quello ch'e nell'impresa, ma col modo con cui si fa essa impresa debbesi la meraviglia recare, spesso facendo chi la rimira di se stesso restare ingannato, riuscendone altro diverso da quello ch'egli si avea pensato." 21. Like a metaphor, Palazzi says, the impresa has to produce knowledge, and through knowledge, pleasure (196-97: " . . il significato di quelle sia chiaro; ma non chiarissimo, che venga da cose note; ma non volgari, & superficiali di maniera, che non apporti all'auditore per lo discorso la cognitione, & per mezzo della cognition il piacere, che debba"). The soul being the form of the body, and the motto being the form of the impresa, the prominence of the verbal element rests on the idea that beauty is something indefinable, introduced by the motto and exceeding the form (191: 'Tanima [e] la forma del corpo, e t . . . il motto [e] la forma deirimpresa . . . . La bellezza ё un'eccesso nella forma in quell'atto del formare, & il bello, & leggiadro motto posto nell'impresa ё la bellezza dell'impresa").
22. Bargagli's work first appeared in 1578 (Prima parte delVimprese), followed by a second edition in 1589 and by a third, substantially increased version, in 1594 (from which we quote). About the role of Scipione Bargagli and his brother Girolamo within the academic environment of Siena, see Caldwell, 143-80.
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the simple expression of that concetto: it is rather the expression of a concetto by means of both words and figures. 24 Correspondingly, the discussion of the body-soul analogy requires a further complication, and, carefully respecting an Aristotelian terminology, is absorbed in the enumeration of the five causes of the impresa: the body is nothing but the "material cause," and the motto is no more than the "instru mental cause," charged with selecting a few among the many proper ties of the object depicted (it is like a spirit or a voice, making the na ture of the object explicit); more attention is given to the simili tude—which is the "formal cause" (that is, the very soul) —to the ex pression of the particular conceit—which is the "final cause" —and to the faculty of ingegno — which is the "efficient cause" (Bargagli, 80-81). Like Palazzi, Bargagli refers to the Aristotelian relationship between cognition and pleasure in metaphor, and he subordinates the former to the latter even more plainly. 25 In these theories, reflection about the use of the image prepares the re-articulation of the pair prodesse-delectare, which will be more deeply elaborated by the Baroque theorists of style, above all Emanuele Tesauro. Therefore, it is possi ble to say that, with the third edition of Bargagli's treatise, which ap peared in 1594, impresa theory has already attained its highest level of elaboration. In the same year, a mature Torquato Tasso published II Conte, a dialogue not less philosophically informed than, and organi cally connected to, other remarkable dialoghi and discorsi written by the renowned author of the Gerusalemme liberata.26 Claiming that, with reference to its instruments, the art of making imprese is part of painting, not of poetry, Tasso denies that the impresa 23. Bargagli (38) disagrees with Giovio's idea that the impresa is imitation in the Ar istotelian sense: "Non posso io intenderla, dico, in questa maniera, non sapendo per me neirimpresa riconoscer ne vera ne propia imitazione di concetti . . . ma scorgendo io una sola espression d'essi concetti, dall'altre maniere diversa d'esprimergli." 24. Ibid., 41: "l'espression del concetto per via di similitudine e con figure, e con pa role nel modo sopra mostrato, e replicato."
25. Ibid., 45: ". . nelle cose per metafora о per comparazione raccontate, acquistiamo d'esse maggior conoscenza; in contra, che, taraccrescimento di conoscenza in noi, per parerci cosa nostra, come di nostro ingegno uscita, ci rechi piacere, e dilettazione."
26. On the connection with the dialogue II Cataneo overo De le conclusioni amorose (written around 1590), see Rigoni, 34ff.
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13
is a poem. 27 However, this does not imply a decreased interest in met aphor; on the contrary, he extends the discussion to the wider ques tion of likeness. In the imprese, one should choose comparisons by similarity, like a poet who derives his metaphors from such loci as those of antecedent, or consequence (T. Tasso 1594, 65-66), moving, as Aristotle dictates, from species to species or to the closest genus (69-70). But Tasso, in the same pages, adumbrates a much less regu lated space of resemblance, where wonder seems to prevail about proportion. Referring to Pseudo-Dionysius and Saint Thomas, he speaks of comparison by difference, preferable for divine matters, which can be carried out through metaphors derived from the loci of the opposites and contraries, referring without any limitations to in dividuals, species, genera. Though the impresa, following a more moderate ideal, should not be based on this kind of likeness, Tasso, who writes only four decades after Giovio, emphasizes the difference between the founder of impresa theory and the "modern" theorists, saying that the latter have added a new rule to the five prescribed by their forerunner, saying that imprese must be wonderful (meravigliosa), as poems are (66). On this premise, it is clear that he cannot accept Giovio's version of the body-soul relation. According to Tasso, the soul, and, consequently, the essential form of the impresa is rather the comparison, 28 to which motto and picture, both signs or images ("segno о imagine") of a concetto, are subordinated. The motto cannot be the soul, it is more like divine intellect, infusing new life into the material form of the impresa, which is already alive, and making it perfect and immortal. 29 This almost divine nature, participates in the immortality of poetry; hence, between motto, which is almost a soul, and body, mortal and
27. T. Tasso 1594, 22-23: "s'ella fosse poesia, usarebbe gli i n s t r u m e n t de la poesia, che sono il parlare, il ritmo e l'armonia, e non a l t r i . . . l'impresa senza l'immagine figurata ne la carta о in altra cosa materiale non sarebbe impresa. Dunque riporremo l'impresa sotto l'arte de la pittura о del disegno." 28. Tasso (24) reasons: "se la comparazione e la forma essenziale e la forma essenziale ё anima de le cose animate, ne segue che la comparazione sia l'anima."
29. Ibid., 24: "si come al corpo nostro gia vivo, e animato sopraggiunge di fuori la mente immortale a guisa di peregrino, cosi all r impresa gia viva per artificio del pittore, ё dato dal Poeta, quasi da celeste Iddio, nuovo intelletto con le parole, che fa' immortale la vita della pittura, la quale per se stessa havrebbe fine, come l'anima de' bruti, e delle piante."
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perishable, no proportion at all can be found. Strictly speaking, there can be proportion only between the parts of the body. 30 Eighteen years later, in a long treatise structured as a critical and analytical account of the previous theories, Ercole Tasso saw Torquato Tasso's concern with disproportion —a concern with the di minished effectiveness of such classical ideals as proportion, medietas, organic unity-as less urgent than his distant relative. Giovio was cer tainly wrong, he states in his Delia realta e perfezione delle imprese (1612), but Torquato Tasso's complaint is not reasonable: actually, Giovio's "proportion" was nothing but a rule to obtain imprese which are neither too plain nor too obscure, and his reference to the body-soul relationship was a naive analogy.31 This does not mean that Ercole Tasso accepts Giovio's theory, given that, like Bargagli, he de fines the motto as "instrumental form" and the picture as "material form." The principle underlying all his arguments is that the soul is a motto-picture combination in which the two elements cannot be sepa rated; if one considers them singly, he will not be able to infer any thing. 32 As a consequence, the simple comparison is not the essence of the impresa; the kind of relationship Ercole Tasso dictates, can stem from many other rhetorical mechanisms. The area of difference, opened but partially barred by Torquato Tasso, is reexamined by Ercole and subsumed under a strong ratio rhetorica: it will also be possible to deduce an impresa from the loci of opposites and contraries (E. Tasso, 43-44); it will be possible to repre sent the human body (ibid., 235-42); the motto will not be charged with reducing the ambiguity of the picture by selecting some proper ties (248-50,351). All this will not be forbidden, if impresisti respect the
30. Ibid., 68: "L'anima ё infinita, e divina, il corpo caduco, e terminato; fra lei dunque, et il corpo non suol essere proportione; e se il motto ё quasi anima dell'impresa, e partecipa della divinita, e della immortalita del poeta, non puo avere alcuna proportione con la figura; ma la proportione si considera fra le parti del corpo." 31. E. Tasso, 286-87: "se esso Giovio se stesso dichiara d'havere per anima inteso il Motto; et per proportione, una certa convenienza, et rispondenza fra se, et la figura; onde chiaro risulti l'intendimento; a che entrare in questione, et divisione delFanima secondo il vero, et naturale loro senso intese?"
32. Ibid., 24: "Impresa ё Simbolo constante necessariamente di Figura naturale ... et di Parole propie, о semplicemente translate; dalla qual Figura, et Parole tra se disgiunte, nulla inferiscasi."
DONATO MANSUETO 15 fundamental and highly abstract rule prescribing the mutual neces sity of motto and picture. 33 In any case, notwithstanding this shift within a common Aristotelian context, Ercole and Torquato's solu tions equally renounce the simple body-soul analogy and the corre sponding ideal of proportion. It is not surprising, then, that Ercole approves Torquato's ideas on this point, repeating that "the motto in the impresa acts as the spirit, not the soul:" the form is infused by means of the motto, just as "our soul, through those spirits, . . . informs our body"; whereas the soul or essential form of the impresa is the scambievole aiuto [the mutual support] motto and pic ture give one another. 34 Finally, I will present the conception formulated by the Jesuit Emanuele Tesauro in Idea delle perfette imprese, a treatise written in the 1620s but, significantly, left in manuscript form. Subjects and objec tives of this work would have been reabsorbed in the more extensive project of the influential Cannocchiale aristotelico, of 1654 and often re printed. Nevertheless, a high level of theoretical awareness had al ready been achieved in the unpublished writing, structured as the or derly exposition, constantly supported by references to Aristotle's Poetics and Rhetoric, of sixteen elements or particelle defining the idea of the perfect impresa. Tesauro fits the body-soul analogy into the ar gumentative frame of a fourfold analysis of the impresa, which is de scribed as a complex form, hardly reducible to a law of simple pro portionality. An emblematic, not a human figure, now, the mythical three-headed Geryon, is preferred to represent this mixed expres-
33. According to Ercole, Torquato Tasso's idea that motto and picture are both "signs and images" of the concetto was wrong because mottoes are often incom plete sentences, which are not able to have denotation by themselves (E. Tasso, 283-84). With reference to this question, Robert Klein has astutely written that Torquato Tasso, interested in the expression of the concetto through signs (where, from an Aristotelian standpoint, images and words both have to be con sidered notes of thoughts), acts as a "pure logician," whereas Ercole Tasso, pri marily concerned with the technical expedients to produce a perfect word-image mixture, seems more like a "pure artist" (Klein, 17-18). 34. Ibid., 282-83: "Fa ufficio di spirito, non d'anima il Motto nellTmpresa; peroche esso, si come egli attesta; non e forma, ma ben ё mezzo, et vehicolo senza cui detta forma non vi s'introdurrebbe; nella guisa a punto, che l'anima nostra, mediante essi spiriti (terza in noi natura partecipante delle qualita dell'anima, et del corpo) esso corpo informa, seco si ritiene, et ricevene le specie denudate dalla materia."
EMBLEMATICA 16 35 sion (Tesauro 1975, 75). Ammirato's formula, "impresa stands for man/' in its turn resting on the traditional assertion that "man is the measure of all things/' retains no explanatory virtue, once the impresa is assumed to have three formal souls and one body. The exact definitions of soul and body depend on the point of view chosen to analyze the impresa. If this is considered as an argument, the soul will be the comparison or syllogism potentially contained in its parts. 36 If considered as similitude and the base of the syllogism, the soul will be the common form of the objects compared. If considered as a symbol, the soul will be the meaning, while the body will be the subject or the set of properties chosen as signifier (without an intellect connecting them, the body would be just a corpse — not a sign; and, the concept changing, the sign would change too). Finally, the motto is the form of the impresa only as material soul, selecting the relevant properties of the subject represented. For this reason, it is necessary only to obtain a more striking effect (73-75). The change of meaning of the body-soul analogy will become even clearer, if that is possible, in the famous Aristotelian Telescope, in which all the extraordinary virtues of metaphor will be explored, without any of the limitations of genres, modes, arts, operating a transposition of the aesthetic into the ontological dimension. In that work, the impresa, defined as "una metafora dipinta" [a painted metaphor], will keep an important position, and its structural resemblance to metaphor will be explained using that analogy again: the figure and its relevant signifying properties will still be called "body," the subject and the properties which are metaphorically signified, "soul." 37 But,
35. Maria Luisa Doglio, in her notes to this passage, recalls Alciato's emblem XL, "Concordia insuperabilis," whose pictura shows a six-armed Geryon. It is intriguing to observe that concors discordia or discors concordia are instead the definitions used to characterize witty sayings in some Baroque treatises (see Zanardi, 40-42, who quotes the Jesuit Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski).
36. We have to remember that the impresa is able to signify an entire concept "per illazione," that is, by inference; thus, it has an argumentative value, and is not just a conventional character associated with a concept. Impresa is formally like metaphor, because it is obtained through a predicative operation in which the properties of the object represented are assigned to the intention to be expressed; a mere induction or a rhetorical example would be instead directly deduced from the topical loci (Tesauro 1975, 48). 37. Tesauro 1688, 387: "Dunque nella Impresa, la qual'e una Metafora dipinta; la Figura con la proprieta significante, formano il CORPO, la Persona con la
17 while such theorists as Ammirato (32) had motivated the wondrous effects of the picture-motto combination by comparing them to the miracle of the "human knot," Tesauro would write that "the Impresa is a miraculous Compound" because "it has its Soul outside its Body," —its intelligible meaning being in the mind. 38 Loosening the old knot, some possibilities will be scattered, others freed. —But this would be another story, beyond the chronological limits of this pa per. Quoting Mario Praz (57), we might say that the "battles over the definition and properties of . . . the perfect impresa" look "like a storm in a tea-cup." The conceptual instruments impresisti recast may seem to us too sophisticated for such an ephemeral subject. Even the actual impact of their theoretical discussions on the practice of imprese—in the school exercise, in decorative and ceremonial use, in religious propaganda —could be questioned. However, from the point of view assumed in this paper, more than limits, these can be opportunities, opportunities to highlight some changes and r e a r r a n g e m e n t s across s i x t e e n t h - and seven teenth-century culture, both among different disciplines and arts, and among different cultural and social levels or areas. A semiotic hybrid, easily reproducible, with multiple meanings, both for public and for private use, linking court and academy, the impresa was a mal leable subject for the normative and idealizing discussions of the the orists. Impresisti, despite their inexhaustible quarrels, shared a com mon set of categories, notions, figures, which allowed their theories, while retaining an organic unity for more than one hundred years, to "metabolize" different and subsequent questions. My quick survey of some theories was aimed at recalling some of these recurrent ele ments, and making it possible, in the following pages, to propose an overall interpretation, firstly connecting them to the broad context of literary and artistic contemporary theories. Treatises on imprese can be easily situated in a context where de bates about the ut pictura poesis topos and paragoni among arts play a relevant role. In the early stages, the body-soul compound is con nected to the picture-poetry relationship, suggesting a precise hier archy and, at the same time, the necessity of a collaboration. The emDONATO MANSUETO
propriea significata, formano l'ANIMA." 38. Ibid., 387: "Onde la Impresa ё un miracoloso Composito, che ha Г Anima fuor del Corpo: havendo il Significante sensibile nello Scudo, et il Significato intelligibile nella mente."
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EMBLEMATICA
phasis on enargeia and on the narrative character of art, naturally resu l ts in the possibility of a correspondence and exchange of talents between poet and painter, both able to imitate or to idealize nature, though, as Aristotle writes (Poetics, 1447a 13-28), through different technical means. 39 However, the rationale of this combination is not to be found, for the imprese, in a common naturalistic interpretation of the concept of imitation. On one hand, the exclusion of the human body from representation, and the inclusion of artificial objects and imaginary creatures, allude to the fashion of grottesche and to a vast, not yet de-mythicized, mundus symbolicus (Ossola, 214-29); on the other hand, the laconic configuration of mottoes has to fulfil the requirements of an indirect signification. Picture and poetry, whose technical differences are maintained, are linked to a common figurative intention, which does not allow a simple reciprocity. Likewise, the functions of motto and picture are sharply distinguished: both are needed, but not as mutual illustrations. Words have to fix the form of the body-image; they are in no way a description of the picture and, conversely, images do not illustrate the sentence. At this stage, the human analogy simultaneously defines the distinction, the connection, and the hierarchy between the two halves of the impresa. Although never questioning the bimedial nature of imprese, Ruscelli, commentator of Giovio and theorist in his own right, soon corrects that analogy, focusing on the intention to be expressed, toward which the two media converge. With respect to the intention, the motto-picture combination has mainly to satisfy a requirement of organic completeness, according to an ideal derived from Aristotle's 39. On the fundamental importance of the notions of enargeia and evidentia for the classical and sixteenth-century analogies between painting and poetry, see Hagstrum (chaps. I, III, IV, V). However, where, as in emblem books, illustrations not rarely lack vividness, and the meanings often transcend the subjects depicted, further details on the function of enargeia are needed. On this question, see Bath, 53-56, 201-04, 251-54. Bath writes: "insofar as emblems persuade the reader that he has 'seen 7 , not 'read 7 (Erasmus's distinction in defining enargeia) the meaning of an emblem, . . . we are probably not mistaken in believing that concepts of enargeia were a part of what sixteenth-century writers understood when they appealed to classical utpictura concepts in relation to the new genre" (55). This remark, concerning emblems, could be a good starting point for a corresponding analysis of the assumptions of impresa devisers, who chose to renounce even the descriptive resources offered by longer texts (such as the subscriptio of the emblems).
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Poetics (e. g., 1451a, 30-35). The analyses of some excellent examples aim at describing a canon, a set of instructions which can lead to a complete and autonomous artefact: in this sense it is possible to speak of imitation chiefly for the art of making imprese. From an Aris totelian point of view, this operation should result in a work attain ing an ontological dignity which can be compared to that of natural objects. This solution will leave room for a different and more complicated interpretation of the body-soul scheme, resting on the analogy be tween that operational model and divine operations. 40 In such a ver sion, the motto has the function of adding perfection to the impresa, like a divine intellect infused into an already living and animated fig ure. This terminology is clearly influenced by the debate about the immortality of the soul, a debate in which it was very important to de fine the relation between intellect and soul. 41 In 1512, the Church had officially formulated as a dogma the concept of the immortality of the individual soul, rejecting Averroes's thesis of the unity of intellect, that is, that the human soul would just temporarily participate in a universal and immortal intellect (Kristeller, 22-42). The individual soul is divine because it has the idea of God; and to have direct knowledge of this idea —immortal, incorporeal, and incorrupt ible—it must be equally immortal, incorporeal, incorruptible. Along with that terminology, many subtleties and difficulties con cerning these theological and philosophical distinctions appear in a different form, in the aesthetic discussion. As we have seen, Torquato Tasso associates the immortality of the soul with its divinity ("L'anima e infinita, e divina"), and then attributes both these quali ties to poetry ("divinita, e . . . immortalita del poeta"), binding in a single knot the ideal, better accomplished by poetry, of art as imita tion of an intelligible truth, and the proud individuality of the poet. At the same time, conversely, the body-soul analogy is almost com pletely freed from the quest for proportion, once it is assumed that
40. This "operational" analogy needs to be connected to contemporary readings of Aristotle's Poetics, on whose influence on the transformation of the system of genres, see Battistini and Raimondi, 65-144. 41. It is worth noting that Paolo Giovio, the "father" of impresa theory, studied in Padua under Pietro Pomponazzi, whose Tractatus de immortalitate аттзе (1516), claiming that immortality cannot be demonstrated on rational grounds, was fiercely opposed by many theologians and philosophers.
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comparing what is perishable to what is immortal is impossible. Giovio's rule, in Tasso's account, would simply affirm that the human soul cannot be associated with bodies of animals, as could happen with some badly conceived imprese, where the motto seems to be pronounced by an animal represented in the pictura (T. Tasso 1594, 68). And it is not difficult to understand this seemingly trivial interpretation, remembering that it reproduces arguments widely adopted in philosophical discussions about the differentia specified of the human being or in doctrinal discussions about Christ's transubstantiation in the Eucharist. These sets of terms and concepts, circumscribing the specific domain of the art of devising imprese, become the raw materials for later writers of treatises for further theoretical elaborations —elaborations in which, however, the advantages offered by a composite object of analysis seem to decrease. What Torquato Tasso calls a disproportion between divine intellect and body-picture, while underlining the superiority of poetry, demonstrates the inadequacy of a simple dualistic scheme to manage the difficulties arising from the ambiguous definition of the concetto. The concetto is not simple, because it represents a judgement more than a notion, figuratively connected to a particular design of life. If it was considered already to be a figure, the technical specificity of the impresa could disappear (Klein, 3-24; Bath 155-58). Actually, the reversibility of words and images in some crucial passages of Tasso's theory strongly undermines that specificity. Some theorists, until Ercole Tasso and beyond, neutralize this question from the very beginning, that is, from the definition of the impresa, arguing that the soul is "the expression of the concetto" by comparison, not the concetto itself. But it is plain that this technical solution does not clarify at all that equivocal notion. Then, in the passage from Ercole Tasso to Emanuele Tesauro the reduction of the impresa to a rhetorical categorization is completed: the essence of impresa is metaphor; and Tesauro's treatise is mainly an analysis of some metaphorical mechanisms. 42 While the production of imprese is prolonged especially by moral and religious collections (for instance, with the numerous editions of the Jesuit Paolo Aresi's Imprese sacre), the theoretical elaboration, with Tesauro, from Idea delle perfette imprese to 17 cannocchiale aristotelico, is absorbed by a rhetorical theory which is restricted to the elocutio (a rhetorique restreinte, to use 42. For a concise but effective reading of this development, see M. L. Doglio's Introduzione, in Tesauro 1975, 5-27.
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Gerard Genette's definition), but extended to all kinds of signs. In this passage, in which body and soul leave the centre of the stage to mind —that is, to a metaphor which is defined as the "first operation of the mind"— the questions illuminated by the body-soul analogy do not disappear. They are rather relocated in the concetto, which becomes, in literary theory, the element of mediation between the logical and conceptual virtues of metaphor, stressed particularly by sixteenth-century commentaries on Aristotle's Poetics, and the aesthetic and bodily elements used by ingenuity and phantasy, faculties much discussed and in many cases rehabilitated in the debates about imitation and wonder. 43 When Tesauro writes his treatise on metaphor, whose title, Aristotelian Telescope, alludes to the confrontation with the revolutionary instruments and methods of modern science, ingegno [ingenuity] has become the faculty which should distinguish literature and other arts from the intellectual procedures of logic and the new sciences. The specificity of literature, however, cannot yet be conceived as a direct opposition to the truth. Well after the first half of the century, even such philosophers as Spinoza (Ethics, II, prop. XVII, scholium), kept repeating the old view that the images elaborated by the imagination can be deceitful (and, conversely, that one can rely on them only when aware of their fictive nature, for example when the image of an absent object is accompanied by the idea that that object does not exist or is not actually present). In metaphor, the instrument of wit and ingenuity, he combines the argumentative force of the shortened syllogism (sometimes invoked by other impresisti) and the exuberance of an imaginative association. This combination makes metaphor a powerful engine for exploring every part of the world through the horizontal dimension of signification:44 the world still looks like a book, but its authority is not verti-
43. A fundamental reference for understanding the debate about imitation and wonder is-.Tasso's Discorso del poema eroico (1594). Some theorists recalled Plato's statement that there are two species of imitation: the "icastic,"representing things that are truly found to exist, and the "fantastic," which exsists only in the imagination of the creator (The Sophist, 235c,9-236c,7). In the context of my discussion, it is very interesting to recall that, in the pages regarding the distinction between "fantastic" and "icastic" imitation, Tasso defines as genuinely "icastic" the imitation of intelligible truths (e. g., the imitation of an angel, more than that of a sensible object). On these questions, see Hathaway (in particular, pts. I, III, IV). On the rationalistic trend of Cinquecento poetics, see Delia Volpe.
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cally derived, only by transcendent ideas; it is rather produced by the same process of reading. Since this power rests on incomplete syllogisms, supported by imaginative links, from a logical standpoint metaphor must be defined as a paralogism, that is, its logical value is "false." To preserve the argumentative value of metaphor without reducing it to a sophism, Tesauro defines a witty saying as "urbane enthymeme" ("cavillazione urbana"), a paralogism which is not dangerous because it is clearly false. Wonder is not a vehicle of truth; however it has the capacity, by emphasizing falsehood, of preserving truth. On this cautious negative premise, without contrasting the dialectical investigation, it makes the specific metaphorical exploration of the world possible. From an epistemological point of view, what is at stake in these discussions is something that makes a simple opposition less comfortable between aesthetics, seen as the realm of passive images, and logic, concerning the activity of intellect. 45 That opposition had been supported since Aristotle by arguing that, without an adequate distance between concept and image, we could neither think nor distinguish truth. In the Sixth Meditation on First Philosophy, for example, Descartes maintains that we could neither conceive a polygon of one thousand faces, nor would we be able to distinguish the small image of the Sun from the conception of its real dimensions. Correspondingly, as we have seen, an art relying increasingly on ingenutiy or phantasy had to exhibit its own falsehood. At the same time, however, imprese and emblems show that images, functioning as tools that can be used in a wide variety of ways, can be charged with many duties other than that of portraying a natural or ideal model. In the excerpts examined above, we have seen that, after Tasso, impresisti described on a rhetorical basis how images could be linked to ideas even without resorting to figurative resemblance. Of course, the selection of the correct use of the image is operated by the motto, which reduces the vagueness of the picture allowing the intellect to think "in it" (to think, according to Aristotle, is to think "one 44. Conte, 156-59 offers a detailed semiotic analysis of this use of metaphor, though with insufficient attention to the enunciator and to his cognitive import. On this, see instead Raimondi 1982, LI-LII.
45. As regards this question in aesthetics, see Ferraris. From the point of view of the history of ideas, fundamental information and remarks are to be found in Rossi 1991, 59-93 and Rossi 1983.
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thing" 46 ). But reciprocally, the image is supposed to have a sort of predisposition: the motto is a divine intellect, Tasso writes, but the body of the impresa is already animated. It would be tempting to say that what the "impossible proportion" of motto and picture shows is not only the impossibility of non-iconic thought (a pure and autonomous res cogitans), but also of thinking without an image—both active and passive —simultaneously allow ing the inscription of meaning in the body and its idealization in the soul. It would become understandable why the provisional "pact" between imagination and intellect, whose conflictual confrontation had been suspended in the theory of the impresa by means of a techni cal solution —the picture-motto combination —was reexamined in order to find a theoretical solution on the rhetorical grounds of meta phor. However, this argument would lead us outside the limits of our discussion, since further observations on the broader question of imagination and image in the seventeenth century, and on its strictly philosophical implications, would be needed. Our conclusion will be devoted instead to the formulation of fur ther preliminary hypotheses about the implications of such ques tions at the epistemological level, with particular attention to their consequences on the redefinition of the functions and role of rhetoric in that historical context. As far as I can see, the rhetorical strategy I have exposed in a simplified version, needs to be read carefully con sidering the simultaneous and often opposite strategic movements of other disciplines across the same problematic areas. In particular, that strategy seems to answer to the analogous process through which, between the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, after the separation of dialectics from rhetoric, logic assumes cognitive func tions, absorbing some aesthetic categories and instruments. From Ramus to Francis Bacon to Descartes, there are many attempts to ex tend logic, and transform it from an instrument of verification into a cognitive and inventive organ (Rossi 1983). Reciprocally, once inventio has been ascribed to dialectics, rhetoric, forcibly reduced to stylistics and strictly tied to poetics, must find a new equilibrium. The main instruments of elocutio — metaphor in primis — are freed from that system of definitions, based on the opinion of the majority and on verisimilitude, which had assured the relation of rhetoric with truth in the Aristotelian theory (we must rercall that in a meta-
46. See Aristotle, Metaphysics, IV (Г), 4, 1006 a 29-1006 b 12.
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phor, according to Aristotle's Rhetoric, the identification of the genus common to two species should rely on a previous classification and dclintion of such species, that is, on a process of inventio). An inventio which becomes a domain of logic, and a rhetoric which tends to amplify the elocutio, are symptoms of transformations which can be related to a crisis of "topics/' if we read topics, recalling Aristotle, as a common system of loci structuring knowledge and credibility within a society.47 In this respect, humanistic and Renaissance rereading of the symbolic universe, to which emblematic literature contributed greatly, can be seen also as a necessary rereading of this topical texture. The further proliferation of treatises and dialogues —very often based on rhetorical concepts and categories —regarding a great variety of highly specific topics, was supported in Italy by the development of a rhetoric which, focusing on elocutio and subordinating to delectatio the traditional objectives of docere and movere, was becoming a technique applicable to virtually every subject.48 In some cases, and in particular in certain literary and artistic theories where the models of Aristotle's Rhetoric and Poetics could operate together, this led to treatments wherein methodological and technical questions prevailed over the direct discussion and elaboration of the chosen contents. A wide range of different strategies, some of which are not recalled here, are displayed also in the diversified panorama of impresa theory: from an allegorical interpretation of images 49 (this is the path opened by Tasso's remarks about likeness and unlikeness); to a symbolic use of them (through an appreciation of their hermetic and hieroglyphic nature, in such Neo-Platonic treatises as Alessandro Farra's Settenario dell'humana riduzione); to their paradoxically simultaneous exaltation and falsification in Tesauro; to the extreme solution of the philoso47. Related to the question of "credibility" is that of "authority," meant both as the persuasive power that emblems and imprese derive from their sources, and as their own strength, in their capacity as auctoritates able to project their qualities on the bearer or addressee. About these functions of emblematics, see Harms. 48. For a detailed discussion of these questions, see Morpurgo Tagliabue, who analyzes the transformation of rhetoric in Italy between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, connecting the crisis of a shared system of abstract and widely applicable topoi to the proliferation of extremely specifc treatises (which can be considered as "local" topics).
49. About Tasso's solution, see Scarpati and Bellini, 5-34.
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pher Giambattista Vico who, in the eighteenth century, through an analysis of various symbolic languages, was to attempt to formulate the theory of a peculiar and distinct poetic wisdom, a peculiar knowledge with its own truth not reducible to abstract logic.50 In general, the re-use of symbolic images, not necessarily a seculariszation, has to serve a social function, emphasized by the exercise of ingegno, but as the contexts change, the meaning of that re-use does not always remain the same. In a first stage, the symbolic substratum still keeps a certain degree of organic unity, even when theorists make massive use of rhetorical instruments to sound its depth. We have seen that before Torquato Tasso, many impresisti, still close to the Aristotelian theory of metaphor, maintained that imprese must be deduced from the loci of likeness or proximity, operating a cautious figural transposition either from species to species or from the closest genus. In Aristotelian theory, significantly located in the intersection between poetics and rhetoric, the metaphorical transfers have precise correspondences and limits in the system of topoi, that circumscribes the realm of verisimilitude, to which the actions and beliefs of a community can constantly refer.51 Also enargeia, or evidentia, putting something before one's eyes, must contribute to credibility, and, on the argumentative level, to a faster and more pleasant apprehension. 52 Later, in the following stages of impresa theory, the sense of this connection is reversed. The effect of credibility that enargeia should increase, when invoked, ought to reinforce wonder, which becomes the primary task. The figural transposition, Ercole Tasso argues, can now connect notions from different genera and without likeness, and finally Tesauro will invite us to attain the ideal of the perfect impresa through the oddest combinations. The metaphoric transfer prescribed by these theories becomes more and more similar to the fig50. I refer, in particular, to the first version of Vico's Scienza nuova (1725). 51. This'question is discussed in Morpurgo Tagliabue, 118-95. In the context of a discussion not dedicated to the theory alone, it would be useful to study the "practice" of imprese, in order to show its connection to contemporary collections of apophtegmata, adagia, commonplaces, and then to attempt the reconstruction of the intermediate links between "topos," in the technical sense, and "commonplace. " For the relation between emblematics and commonplaces, see Bath, 31-45.
52. On the relation, topos-credibility-ezn'denfza, see Campe, 12-19.
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ure of hyperbole, that is, to a mechanism of combination grounded on the exhibition of a strong tension. 53 Thus, this extreme use of topoi and images, will not recompose an organic continuum, a system of affinities, it will rather give metaphor the ground for its theatrical exhibition, an exhibition which must, at the same time, be intended as a social ceremonial. 54 The Italian theory of imprese, born as a "filosofia del cavaliere," used symbols to compose a sign which, even when directed to a wider audience, had to mark the difference and the social distance between bearer and author on one hand, and the public on the other. The continuity of a strategy aiming at the cohesion, depending on the case, of the courtly, or the academic, or the literary communities, was never interrupted, at the cost of keeping topics, as far as possible, as a "dead possession/' 5 5 The transformations sketched here, all occurring within that "interregnum of the sign" which has been called "aetas emblematica"'(Russell, 242), seem to indicate that a change of rhetorical strategy was at stake, more than the total dismissal of the contents of a system of knowledge, or the simple passage —detectable within the history of impresa theories — from "emblematic thinking" to the superficial realm of a "rhetorical form." 56 The same symbols and topoi lasted until the second half of the seventeenth century, although their use and the function of their credibility changed. And the impossibility of
53. On the inorganic character of the Baroque universe, see Raimondi 1982, LXXI-LXXIII. For the function of deceit and hyperbole in Tesauro's poetics, see also Conte, 181-83 and Frare. For some remarks on hyperbole, distinguished from a coniunctio oppositonim, in late impresa theory, see Papini, 157-68, 275-76. 54. The crucial function of metaphor in this process is analyzed by Raimondi 1994, 5-17.
55. In the parallel spaces of the Court and the Academy, imprese and their theory constituted a closed social code, allowing individuals to refer to the qualities of a selective and idealized community. Structure and meaning of this code are carefully examined in Caldwell, 73-180; but see also Quondam, 842-52 and, in relation to the similar social function of vernacular lyric poetry, Ferroni and Quondam, 14-17. For a reading of these questions in the context of the evolution of the system of rhetoric between the Cinquecento and Seicento, see Battistini and Raimondi, 71-74.
56. See Daly, 49-50, for a discussion of Schone's distinction between "art-form" and "mode of thought/'
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a proportion, finally, was paradoxically transformed from a problem into a deliberate strategy. Works Cited Ammirato, Scipione. II Rota overo dell'imprese. Dialogo . . . nel qual si ragiona di molte imprese di diversi eccellenti autori, e di alcune regole et avertimenti intorno questa materia. Naples, 1562. Bargagli, Scipione. Dell'imprese. . . . Alia prima Parte, la Seconda, e la Terza nuovamente aggiunte: Dove; doppo tutte Vopere cosi scritte a penna, come stampate, ch'egli potuto ha leggendo vedere di coloro, che della materia dell'imprese hanno parlato; della vera natura di quelle si ragiona. Venice, 1594 (1st ed. Siena, 1578). Barocchi, Paola, ed. Scritti d'arte del Cinquecento. 3 vols. Milan-Naples, 1971-77. Bath, Michael. Speaking Pictures: English Emblem Books and Renaissance Culture. London, 1994. Battistini, Andrea and Ezio Raimondi. "Retoriche e poetiche dominanti." In La Letteratura italiana: he forme del testo. I. Teoria e poesia. Ed. Alberto Asor Rosa. Vol. 3 /I. Turin, 1984. Pp. 5-339. Caldwell, Dorigen. "Studies in Sixteenth-Century Italian Imprese." Emblematica 11 (2001): 1-257. Campe, Rudiger. "Questions of Emblematic Evidence: Phaeton's Disaster, with Reference to Pierre Legendre's Theory of Emblems." In New Directions in Emblem Studies. Ed. Amy Wygant. Glasgow, 1999. Pp. 1-24. Conte, Giuseppe. La metafora barocca: Saggio sulle poetiche del Seicento. Milan, 1972. Daly, Peter Maurice. Emblem Theory: Recent German Contributions to the Characterization of the Emblem Genre. Nendeln, 1979. Della Volpe, Galvano. Poetica del Cinquecento. Bari, 1954. Ferraris, Maurizio. L'immaginazione. Bologna, 1996. Ferroni, Giovanni and Amedeo Quondam. La "locuzione artificiosa": Teoria ed esperienza della lirica a Napoli nell'eta del manierismo. Rome, 1973. Frare, Pierantonio. "II vero attraverso il velo. Metafora (di equivoco) e menzogna in Emanuele Tesauro." In Figures a I'italienne: Metaphores, equivoques et pointes dans la litterature manieriste et baroque. Eds. Danielle Boillet and Alain Godard. Paris 1999. Pp. 307-35. Genette, Gerard. "La rhetorique restreinte." Communications 16 (1961): 158-71.
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Giovio, Paolo. Dialogo dell'imprese militari el amorose. Rome, 1555. . Dialogo dell'imprese militariet amorose Con unragionamentodi Messer Lodovico Domenichi, nel medesimo soggetto. Venice, 1556a. . Ragionamento . . . sopra i motti, e disegni d'arme, e d'amore, che communemente chiamano imprese. Con un discorso di GirolamoRuscelli, intorno alio stesso soggetto. Venice, 1556b. . Dialogo dell'imprese militari et amorose Con un ragionamento di Messer Lodovico Domenichi, nel medesimo soggetto. Lyons, 1559. . he sentenziose imprese diMonsignor Paulo Giovio, Etdel Signor Ga briel Symeoni ridotte in Rima per il detto Symeoni. Lyons, 1561. . Dialogo dell'imprese militari et amorose di Monsignor Giovio . . . Et del Signor Gabriel Symeoni . . . Con un ragionamento di M. Lodocvico Domenichi nel medesimo soggetto. Lyons, 1574. . Dialogo dell'imprese militari et amorose. Ed. Maria Luisa Doglio. Rome, 1978. Hagstrum, Jean Howard. The Sister Arts: The Tradition of Literary Pictorialism and English Poetry from Dryden to Gray. Chicago, 1958. Harms, Wolfgang. "The Authority of the Emblem." In Emblematica 5 (1991): 3-21. Hathaway, Baxter. The Age of Criticism: The Late Renaissance in Italy. New York, 1962. Klein, Robert. Form and Meaning: Essays on Renaissance and Modern Art. New York, 1979. Kristeller, Paul Oskar. Renaissance Concepts of Man and other Essays. New York and London, 1972. Morpurgo Tagliabue, Guido. "Aristotelismo e Barocco." In Retorica e Barocco: Atti del III Congresso Internazionale di Studi Xlmanistici, ed. Enrico Castelli. Rome, 1955. Pp. 119-95. Ossola, Carlo. Autunno del Rinascimento: «Idea del Tempio» dell'arte nell'ultimo Cinquecento. Florence, 1971. Palazzi, Giovanni Andrea. I Discorsi . . . sopra Vimprese: Recitati nell'Academia d'Urbino: con la Tavola delle cose piii notabili, che in low si contengono. Bologna, 1575. Papini, Mario. II geroglifico della storia: Significato e funzione della dipintura nella "Scienza nuova" di О. В. Vico. Bologna, 1984. Praz, Mario. Studies in Seventeenth-Century Imagery. 2 vols. London, 1939-1947; 2nd edition: Rome, 1964. Quondam, Amedeo. "L'Accademia." In Letteratura Italiana, ed. Alberto Asor Rosa. Vol. 1. Turin, 1982. Pp. 823-98. Raimondi, Ezio. Letteratura barocca: Studi sul Seicento italiano. Flor ence, 1982 (1st ed. 1961).
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. Rinascimento inquieto. Turin, 1994. Rigoni, Mario Andrea. "Un dialogo del Tasso: dalla parola al geroglifico." Lettere italiane 24 (1972): 30-44. Rossi, Paolo. Clavis universalis: Arti della memoria e logica combinatoria da Lullo a Leibniz. 1960; Bologna, 1983. . II passato, la memoria, Voblio. Bologna, 1991. Ruscelli, Girolamo. Le imprese illustri con espositioni, et discorsi. Ven ice, 1566. . Le imprese illustri.... Aggiuntovi nuovam.te il quarto libro. Ven ice, 1584. Russell, Daniel. Emblematic Structures in Renaissance French Culture. Toronto, 1995. Savarese, Giovanni and Andrea Gareffi, eds. La letteratura delle immagini nel Cinquecento. Rome, 1980. Scarpati, Claudio and Eraldo Bellini. II vero e ilfalso dei poeti. Milan, 1990. Schone, Albrecht. Emblematik und Drama im Zeitalter des Barock. Mu nich, 1964. Tasso, Ercole. Della realta, et perfettione delle imprese . . . . Con Vessamine di tutte le openioni infino a qui scritte sopra tal'Arte. Bergamo, 1612. Tasso, Torquato. Dialogo dell'imprese. Naples, 1594. . Discorsi dell'arte e del poema eroico. Ed. Luigi Poma. Bari, 1964. . Dialoghi. Ed. Ezio Raimondi. 3 vols. Florence, 1958. Tesauro, Emanuele. Idea delle perfette imprese. Ed. Maria Luisa Doglio. Florence, 1975. . II Cannocchiale aristotelico, о sia, Idea dell'arguta et ingegnosa elocutione, cine serve a tutta VArte oratoria, lapidaria, et simbolica. Esaminata со' principi del divino Aristotele Accresciuta dalV Autore di due nuovi Trattati, cioe, de' concetti predicabili, et degli emblemi. Con un nuovo Indice Alfabetico, oltre a quello delle Materie. 1654; Venice, 1688. Zanardi, Mario. "Sulla genesi del 'Cannocchiale aristotelico 7 di Emanuele Tesauro/' Studi secenteschi 24 (1983): 3-50.
Body and Soul: A Transfer of Theological Terminology into the Aesthetic Realm JUDI LOACH University of Cardiff
Introduction
Corpo and anima, body and soul, are terms commonly used in treatises on imprese [devices] and emblems from the very beginning of theorising on these subjects, that is to say right from Paolo Giovio's Dialogo dell'lmprese, the earliest treatise on the device (first published in 1555). Despite the obvious philosophical and theological connotations which these words retain even today, such contemporary significance has rarely been investigated. Yet this no doubt influenced the initial choice of these words as terms by which to express the relationship between image and word, or rather between signifier and signified, in these genres of word-image compounds. The fact that Giovio, the first theoretician to employ these two words as terminology specific to such word-image amalgams was a cleric suggests that their deployment in this context may have been intended to render them bearers of certain theological allusions. Given contemporary education, these could probably have been spontaneously understood by any educated reader of the day, whether cleric or lay. Moreover, clerics continued to play a disproportionately prominent role (in relation to that played by other sectors of society) in the works subsequently published on these genres. In particular, Jesuits were responsible for a large number of works in this field, including many of the most influential, especially throughout the baroque era. Among members of the Company of Jesus acquiring renown in this 31
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field one can cite Nicolas Caussin, Maximilian van der Sandl, Silvestro Pietrasanta, Claude Clement, Andres Mendo, Henry Engelgrave, Pierre Le Moyne, Jakob Masen, Pierre Labbe, and Claude-Frangois Menestrier. The extant evidence demonstrates that theorising on all genres of symbolic imagery— heraldry, emblems, devices, and the like —generated considerable, and often heated, disputes. The nature of disagreements as to the usage of the terms "body" and "soul" in relation to word-image amalgams, both as to the specific meaning implied by either word and also to the validity of applying these terms at all in this field, suggests that philosophical and theological issues were at play, even if today these are not necessarily apparent at first glance; on investigation, these two terms can often be discerned as being central to the variations between theorists. Further research indicates that such disagreements often reflected —at least in part —differences in opinion concerning underlying theological issues. It therefore seems worthwhile investigating whether these clergymen's theological backgrounds affected their theorising in this field, and if so in what way. Furthermore, one might fairly suppose that the disproportionate number of Catholic clerics in general, and Jesuits in particular, involved in theorising upon emblems and devices resulted in affecting the meaning commonly accorded to these terms, "body" and "soul," within the context of such aesthetic theory, and thence the understanding of these terms by theoreticians and readers in general. This paper attempts to recover more of the contemporary understanding of these terms by situating this debate, supposedly about aesthetic terminology, within the context of Roman Catholic theology of the time, in other words, that of the Counter-Reformation. It does so specifically by focusing on the relevant writings of an influential seventeenth-century Lyonese Jesuit, Claude-Frangois Menestrier, who was the most prolific cleric operating in this field (at least in Romance/Latinate culture). Furthermore, since he was writing throughout the second half of the seventeenth century, his work also constitutes the culmination of baroque —or rather, as I shall suggest here, Neo-Thomist —theorizing in the field. By this means one can begin to discern some ways in which Counter-Reformation theology exerted its influence upon device and emblem theory. \
Menestrier's formative experiences of devices and emblems Menestrier grew up in Lyons in the middle of the seventeenth century, a time when the town was still a major European center of pub-
33 lishing, and most notably of illustrated material; such an emphasis may-help to explain the particular concentration of interest in genres of word-image amalgams, such as devices and emblems, in the Lyons region. It is therefore not surprising that Menestrier seems to have had access to a wide range of books on devices or emblems, citing over twenty titles for the former and a dozen for the latter in the book list he compiled in 1658-59 of recommended reading in this field;1 his most likely source for such reading was the well stocked and widely reputed library of the Jesuit-run town college, the College de la Trinite, where he had first been pupil, then novice and teacher. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that in his first published treatise on devices or emblems, his Art des Emblemes of 1662, he explicitly drew all the examples comprising the concluding Recueil [collection] not from emblem books but rather from the relations recording spe cific festivals (Menestrier 1662, 121ff.). Likewise, in his later pub lished treatise on devices, La Philosophie des Images (1682), a large pro portion of the books he cites on devices are quite specifically relations or descriptions of festivals. 2 The earlier treatise clearly indicates that he saw the practice of devising such word : image amalgams as habit ually comprising an integral part of the larger enterprise, that of ar ranging festivals and decorative schemes (Menestrier 1662, 121-22); indeed, in his even earlier, unpublished treatise on festivals (drafted at around the same time as his first treatise on emblems, which he left in manuscript 3 ) he asserted that such genres of symbolic images served as the building blocks from which these larger schemes were constructed. 4 JUDI LOACH
1. Menestrier, MS. 1514, fols. 9v (devices) and Юг (emblems); MS. Baudrier, 7-9 (de vices) and 9-10 (emblems). For further biographical details of Menestrier's early life see the author's forthcoming critical edition of these manuscripts (Droz, 2002b). 2.
A subsection within the first part of the treatise, "Iugement des Autheurs qui ont ecrit des Devises" opens by being defined as "Relations, et descriptions de Festes, de rejouissances, de funerailles, de receptions des Princes, & d'autres pareilles choses" (Menestrier 1682b, 117-25).
3.
Menestrier, MS. Baudrier, 169-98.
4.
"Toutes ces pompes ne concistent qu'en devises, emblemes et inscriptions, et. . . .on a coustume d'y ioindre les armes de ceux qui on les fait" (Menestrier, MS. 1514: "Traite des Pompes scavantes," fol. 52r; MS. Baudrier, 229-30).
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Menestrier's personal experience of such festivals was exceptionally extensive and varied. Yet it should be emphasised that most of those which he would have witnessed in his youth were secular in nature—mainly academic or civic —not ecclesiastical. This was despite the fact that they were invariably devised by Jesuits who, as the teachers at the town colleges in Lyons and other provincial towns where he lived prior to theorising on devices and emblems himself, constituted the scholarly elite habitually called upon to organise such events. Thus it could have been these Jesuits, all trained in philosophy and theology, who first introduced him to the application of the terms "body" and "soul" to devices and emblems, largely of a non-religious character. Throughout the early 1640s, Menestrier would have taken part in the annual academic festivals at the College de la Trinite, in which emblems were the most dominant form of symbolic imagery, their didactic and moralizing character rendering them the genre most suitable for such educational institutions. Most notably, the college's patronal festival was marked by celebrations for which plays and ballets or operas were especially devised, accompanied by complementary decorative schemes, themselves constructed from symbolic imagery. The city also enjoyed a reputation for arranging elaborate festivals, in which emblems and devices similarly comprised a large part of the decorations; although none took place during the years Menestrier was a pupil at the college, he is likely to have been aware of royal entries and other civic celebrations from the recent past, due to their being recorded in detail through published volumes, often sumptuously illustrated. 5 The college habitually joined in all such civic festivals, usually adding a discreet contribution of its own, such as a play or ballet. It also mounted other celebrations of its own, the most notable example of this kind to take place during Menestrier's schooldays being that devised in 1643 to commemorate the passing of the principal minister, Cardinal Richelieu, whose brother was Lyons's own archbishop. Menestrier's first appointment as a festival organiser would take place here, fifteen years later, at the moment when he had reentered the college as a student, this time of theology, in the final phase of his 5. The most notable of these was the relation published for Louis XIII's entry into Lyons in 1622 (Le Soleil au Signe du Lyon). In his Eloge Historique de la Ville de Lyon, Menestrier claimed that this entry had been devised by one of the Jesuit fathers at the College de la Trinite (Part 1, p. 47).
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josuil training. In the intervening years he had taught at Jesuit colleges in the region, first at Chambery, where he became aware of the festivals mounted by the ducal court of Savoy, which were more chiva 1 ric in nature, and in which the device therefore tended to assume a greater role. From there he moved to Grenoble, the capital of impecunious Dauphine but renowned at the time for its exceptionally mondain and culturally sophisticated society. Menestrier's subsequent teaching responsibilities at nearby Vienne included running one of the congregations attached to the college there, effectively an extra-curricular club offering a mixture of spiritual devotions and supplementary courses; the latter covered subjects such as various fashionable genres of symbolic imagery—notably heraldry (for which a pupil's notes on his course remain), devices, emblems, enigmas, and hieroglyphics —antiquities, the writing of inscriptions and poems, training in singing and dancing and extra opportunities for theatrical performance. On his return to Lyons the following year (1657-58), Menestrier was entrusted with devising the ballet for the Trinity Sunday celebrations. That year the ballet also served to commemorate the completion of the first stage in a complex decorative scheme financed by the town, but situated only partly in the Town Hall and equally within the town college; Menestrier would also become responsible for devising the rhetorical programme underlying the later stages of this decorative scheme. Evidently this was all deemed a success, for when it became apparent that Louis XIV would visit Lyons later in 1658 Menestrier was appointed overall organiser for his solemn entry. Although Louis refused a full entry (not, however, until after Menestrier had planned it in considerable detail) certain elements of it—notably a ballet, to be performed by the college pupils, other academic performances, and a firework display— proceeded, and were sufficiently successful to establish Menestrier's reputation in this field. Like his own teachers before him, he was largely operating as a festival organizer and a deviser of symbolic imagery within the secular domain, but doing so whilst living within a Jesuit community, applying its mental categories to his own perception of that secular domain and, conversely, to his articulation of ideas within its public sphere. From Practice to Theory: Menestrier's Philosophy of Images Such high profile experience made him painfully aware of the lack of guidelines for regulating virtually any genre of festivity, hence stimulating him to "les reduire en regies" [reduce them to rules], in
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other words to codify each genre in treatise form.6 It was probably his exactly contemporary introduction to Aquinas's Summa Theologiae, as a student of theology at one of the centers of Neo-Thomism, as the College de la Trinite then was, which inspired his ambition "de faire un corps entier" [to make an entire corpus], conceiving of the solution to this deficiency in terms of a single, all-embracing framework, his "Philosophie des Images/' This proposed a systematic plan for a series of treatises, so as to cover all these genres, which effectively became the outline for his own life's publishing work. Somewhat confusingly, he subsequently reused its title in another context, as that for his treatise on devices, a single treatise within this all-encompassing scheme (Menestrier 1682b). After explaining this "Philosophie des Images" itself, his proposal itemised the genres of "images" constituting the subjects of the respective treatises, arranging them in three categories. Under the heading "Les images des yeux et de l'esprit" [Images of eye and esprit—the last word, having no exact translation in English, denoting mind, spirit or intellect] he intended covering "les figures & les tours ingenieux de l'art de persuader, & les fictions poetiques qui sont des artifices ingenieux de l'imagination" [the art of persuasion's ingenious figures and turns, and the poetic fictions which are imagination's ingenious artifices]; subsequently he rephrases this as "les inventions poetiques, les tours & les vues de l'eloquence" [eloquence's poetic inventions, turns of phrase and views]. This category consists of rhetoric and poetics, as is confirmed in his subsequent elaboration, where he states that he anticipates its being covered in just a couple of treatises, "une poetique & une rhetorique raisonnee" [a poetics and a reasoned rhetoric]. Rhetoric and poetics are thus conceived as operating by means of verbal images, confirmed in his explanation of the "Philosophie des images" itself. For here, rhetoric is portrayed as teaching "l'art de persuader par images, puisqu'elle fait profession de persuader par le vraisemblable" [the art of persuading by images, for it has declared itself to persuade by means of verisimilitude]. In this account Poetics, "dont le propre est de peindre" [whose distinctive feature is painting], "est une faiseuse d'images" [is a maker of images]. This suggests a deliberate allusion to contemporary aesthetic theory, with its simultaneous i n s i s t e n c e u p o n the distinction b e t w e e n , and 6. This is expressed most explicitly in regard to ballets (Menestrier 1682a, Preface, sigs. u3r-v).
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romplementarity of, drawing and painting, of delineation and color«Hion. I;or their roles are now implicitly assumed by rhetoric and poetics respectively, thus imbuing this pair with an equivalent mutual ity; this duplicated current teaching practice, where Rhetoric effectively subsumed poetics. It is therefore useful to conceive of this category, defined by Menestrier as comprising "Des images qui ne sont que pour l'imagination sans servir aux yeux" [images which are only intended for the imagination, without being of use to the eyes], as verbal rhetoric. Such a definition served to emphasize the contrast between this category of images and Menestrier's other two, both of which operate by means of images perceptible to the eye. Of these one is referred to as "Des images symboliques," which he later further qualified as those images "deja fixees & liees a certaines regies" [already fixed and boundto certain rules]. This category was to include treatises on devices and emblems, alongside others on hieroglyphics, symbols, coats of arms, reverses oijetons [tokens] and medals, iconology, enigmas and cyphers. Menestrier's remaining category of imagery concerns "les images des yeux & de l'esprit" [images for the eyes and the esprit], otherwise described as "Des Images Sgavantes pour l'lnstruction et le divertissement des yeux" [Erudite Images for the Instruction and entertainment of the eyes]. 7 The treatises in this category were to cover all manner of festival and entertainment: chivalric entertainments (tourneys, jousts, carrousels and other equestrian spectacles); ballets; theatrical performances, including tragedies and comedies, recitations and opera; receptions of princes; firework displays; funerals; permanent decorative schemes for palaces, churches, galleries and studies; ephemeral decorative schemes in churches for non-recurrent festivals, such as canonisations or solemn processions, including altars of repose. Menestrier has not only defined rhetoric as an art (in the sense of ars, a craft, as opposed to a science, a body of knowledge), one which uses images as its instruments. He has also described its operation in three modes, through verbal images (primarily what is conventionally thought of today as rhetoric, but incorporating poetry), visual images (symbolic imagery) and enacted images (festivals and perfor7. Such a definition evidently refers back to the well known dictum in Horace's Ars Poetica, "Delectare et docere," or "Plaire et instruire" [to (at once) delight and teach].
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mances). Since he regards rhetoric as the art of persuading by images, he sees all three of the categories of imagery which he delineates here as modes of rhetoric. The fundamental concept underlying his "Philosophie des Images" itself was that "notre esprit n'agit que par images" [our esprit only operates through images] (Menestrier 1673, sig. a2r); therefore images alone can enable the communication and generation of knowledge. Menestrier proceeds to explain how human beings have found a means of overcoming this potentially limiting situation: "[notre esprit] a sgu trouver des signes & des figures sensibles pour nous exprimer sa pensee & ses desseins les plus caches, d'une maniere ingenieuse" [our esprit has been able to find perceptible signs and figures in order to express to us its most hidden thinking and projects, in an ingenious way]. In other words, human beings have devised a range of images capable of translating thoughts and ideas locked away inside the minds of individuals into forms perceptible by the external sense organs of fellow human beings, and thence privileged tools for the communication of knowledge within society. These "signs" and "figures" are symbolic images, material images which refer to immaterial realities. Significantly, Menestrier prefers to call them images spirituelles, thus using the adjective derived from the noun esprit. Menestrier has developed his own "philosophy" from a specifically Thomist conception of body and soul, which, while derived from Aristotelian foundations, goes beyond them. For in his attempt to express the Christian concept of the body in terms of Aristotelian categories (notably those of Form and Matter), Aquinas defined the body as the substantial expression of the soul, asserting that the soul can only be realised in concrete Form through the mediation of Matter, and specifically through that of the body; as the soul progressively becomes itself, so the individual human concerned progressively becomes spirit, but equally becomes body. Consequently all communication between humans must be made through the intermediary of the body; conversely, an individual's soul is only able to attain its own fulfilment through that individual's development of his communication with other humans, that is with bodily beings, encountered within a corporeal and sensorial world. Human communication, and thereby knowledge, thus implicitly depends upon translating ideas into images, as the privileged media perceptible to external sense organs.
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This Iheory is to some extent reminiscent of the theories developed by some pro-Aristotelian Humanists, notably Pomponazzi, 8 in order to repudiate their Neo-Platonist contemporaries, in that these claimed that the soul was incapable of attaining knowledge except through data derived from sense perceptions or imagination, in other words from the body. Nevertheless, given Menestrier's situation at that time —as a theological student in a Neo-Thomist Jesuit college — it is more likely that he was developing his own theories directly from Aquinas than from Renaissance Humanists. Furthermore, Menestrier's "Philosophie des Images" includes a detailed description of how images operate in order to enable the communication of ideas among human beings which evokes that model of perception and mental processing which is implicit in Aquinas's philosophy. Since this model was a variant of the model most commonly posited by medieval faculty psychology, it seems hardly coincidental that Menestrier actually refers to the organs responsible for processing images as "faculties," "six facultes de l'homme qui travaillent en images" [six human faculties which work through images] . He then lists these, and implicitly does so in the order in which they perceive and process images: first, there are the eyes, which receive (regoivent) images of any objects which appear before these external sense organs (se presentent a eux). Then there is the imagination, followed by the memory, judgment and u n d e r s t a n d i n g (entendement), and finally the will. Menestrier's effective adoption of Aquinas's model is not at all surprising since it was in fact the model revived by Counter-Reformation theologians launching the Second Scholasticism, a movement of which his own Jesuit community was one of the leading proponents (Kessler, 484-534; Levi). Faculty psychology had developed in the Middle Ages in the attempt to explain how sense data derived from the material world could be rendered accessible to the immaterial world of the esprit, without compromising either domain; in other words, the issue was how knowledge could be transferred between the realms of body and soul. The solution devised posited a sequence in which the material images (called species in Latin, and translated as especes in French) transmitted by physical objects present in the external world to a human being's sense organs underwent a double process of translation. First the imagination (specifically the retentive imagination, known as imaginatio) converted these material images, especes, into more ab8. See Kristeller, chap. 2, "The immortality of the soul/' especially 37-40.
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stracted and durable, but nevertheless intermediary, images, known as phantasmes (from the Greek phantasmata); then the intellect converted these into even more wholly abstracted images, intentions (from intentiones), which alone were apprehensible to the soul. In Neo-Thomism this model was simplified, reducing image conversion to a single process effected by the mind as a whole, different faculties contributing towards this in distinct ways. Menestrier's account of the perceptual and mental process clearly describes how he understood the words "body" and "soul," and how he related them to images; it also reveals how he saw these two entities as interacting. The only bodily parts perceptible to the physical sense which are mentioned here are those most relevant to the particular argument being pursued here, namely the eyes. The eye thus serves as representative of all the external sense organs, mediating between the external, material world common to all members of human society and the internal, incorporeal world of an individual human being's esprit. To describe this function more fully, Menestrier compares the eye with a mirror, or anything polished, because having received images of physical objects in the external world it reflects these inwards into the mind. Menestrier concludes that the eyes thus act as "les miroirs de Tame" [mirrors of the soul], thus inferring that the soul depends upon the body in order to participate in human knowing. In then stating that the imagination "grave des images dans Tame & sur le corps" [engraves images in the soul and on the body] Menestrier is evidently according this faculty the function (traditionally attributed to the imaginatio, or retentive imagination) of translating physical images reflected by the external senses from the material world into immaterial images, which alone are accessible to the mind and thence the soul. Menestrier emphasises the mediating nature of this faculty by comparing its activity with the engraving of copper plates or wood blocks, from which images can subsequently be printed, and within which such intermediary images are therefore immanent. Immaterial images are now potentially available for further processing by the memory, judgment, and understanding, and thence for transmission to the will (volonte), in other words to the soul. To summarize, for Menestrier a gulf separated body, which could only exist in the material world, from soul, whose existence was comparably restricted to an immaterial one. Images alone were capable of mediating between these two worlds, and specifically those images produced by the human mind, images spirituelles.
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The Context of Menestrier's Theorising: Lyons as a Center of Neo-Thomism Lyons was the seat of the primacy —the highest-ranking archbishopric—in France and, at least until well into the 1660s, the Jesuits effectively maintained their national headquarters there, at the College de la Trinite. Thereafter, the college remained the French Jesuits' centre for training missionaries, and one of their major centres of scholarly activity, with a well-endowed library to support it. From mid-century until the 1690s Lyons was effectively governed by its ultra-montane archbishop, Camille de Neufville, since he also held the secular office of Lieutenant of the town and, in the absence of the Governor, his brother, the field marshal Nicolas de Villeroy, at Versailles, effectively exercised the latter's rights as Governor of the Lyonnais as well. The real source of Nicolas's authority was not due to his role/status as field marshal, of which there were several, but as chef du conseil royal des finances. Camille was at once a cultivated and well-educated nobleman and a pious clergyman, intent upon improving the region through a combination of religious reform and physical modernization. He used the Jesuits as his primary agents for devising the official dramatic performances and the publications proclaiming these —for him intrinsically interlinked —spiritual and civic improvements and his bastard brother Antoine, for whom he secured the post of vicar general. Despite its decline as an international trading center since the Renaissance, Lyons remained a publishing center of international importance, particularly for illustrated printing, in which it retained its national preeminence. 9 Via his brother Antoine, Camille seems to have controlled the output of the Lyonese presses to a considerable degree: Even before his arrival in power, however, over two-thirds of the illustrated books printed at Lyons had religious —that is, Roman Catholic —subject matter (as compared with a third in Paris), reflecting the city's leading role in promulgating the Counter-Reformation in France. In terms of theology the Lyonese presses were dominated by exegetical texts written by professors from the Iberian theological 9. Guy Parguez has observed that Therese Moyne's study of illustrated books published in Lyons in the first third of the seventeenth century records half as many such editions as had been found in the comparable study covering all France for nearly twice as long a period, namely 1600-60 (Moyne, back cover).
EMBLEMATICA 42 faculties, primarily those at Alcala and Salamanca, notably Gaspard Sanchez, Louis de Torres, Gabriel Vasquez, Martin del Rio, Frangois Labata and Pierre Hurtado de Mendoza (Moyne, 27). As the century progressed, speculative theology overtook biblical commentaries in the publication stakes, with the key texts coming from the Spanish Jesuits, Francois Suarez and Diego Ruiz de Montoya, both of whom published commercially successful commentaries on Aquinas's Summa (Moyne, 56), thus following the Lyonese editions of Gregorio de Valencia's commentary. Other Jesuits publishing commentaries of the Summa at Lyons in the early seventeenth century were Louis de Torres, Jerome Fasolus, Thomas Sanchez, and Gabriel Vasquez. Lyons thus served as an international publishing center for Neo-Thomism, or the Second Scholasticism, as it was otherwise known, the critical reappraisal of the theology and philosophy by St. Thomas Aquinas. Counter-Reformation theologians turned to this mediaeval theologian specifically because he had best reconciled Christianity with Aristotelianism. They saw this, crucially Aquinas's distinction between Form and Matter, as offering answers to criticisms of Catholic dogma arising from modern science and Protestant theology alike. Neo-Thomism had begun in the Iberian peninsula, at the Jesuit college of Coimbra, in the early seventeenth century, and had subsequently spread across the continent, notably via the Gregorian university in Rome and through the international network inherent in the Company of Jesus. In France two of its leading authors were Jesuits, Denis Petau and Theophile Raynaud. In the late 1650s Raynaud returned to Lyons from Rome in order to teach theology there. Raynaud was evidently a controversial polemicist, but one whose personality proved charismatic to younger members of the Company. Menestrier became particularly closely associated with him, since on becoming a student of theology, and thus one of Raynaud's students, he also became Raynaud's assistant, helping him run the Jesuits' most prestigious congregation in Lyons, the one established for leading merchants, lawyers and government administrators. Consequently Menestrier translated one of Raynaud's devotional works into French (from Latin), the appearance of this translation in print constituting the first of his many publications (Menestrier 1658). On detailed examination, it becomes apparent that Raynaud was also the eminence grise behind Menestrier's program for the major decorative scheme covering the principal public spaces in the town hall and town college. The key concepts in this program are drawn directly from a con-
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temporary theological treatise on various manifestations of the 1 louse of God — on how divine qualities can be expressed in material form, through buildings —written by the novice's eminent teacher, Raynaud. In this, as in festival organization and in publication, the Counter-Reformation was exerting a profound influence on society, precisely by operating within the secular rather than ecclesiastical realm, which it then subtly suffused with its own doctrinal beliefs. Tesauro's Aristotelian use of body and soul in impresa theory It is within this context that Menestrier conceived his plan for a series of treatises on the various genres of festivals and symbolic images, and began to draw up the first of them. In order to develop his own "philosophy" in detail, he now turned to the theoretical work of the leading Savoyard festival organizer of the day, Emmanuele Tesauro. In his Cannocchiale Aristotelico, this Jesuit-turned-courtier had already indicated how Aristotle's Poetics might be used as a basis from which principles could be developed to govern these genres. Given the formative influence exerted on Menestrier by his experience of Savoyard festivals, it is not surprising that he turned to the leading exponent there for inspiration. Nevertheless, in turning to Tesauro's Cannocchiale Aristotelico for his inspiration in compiling guidelines to govern the production of symbolic decorations and entertainments alike, Menestrier was also selecting a theoretical viewpoint derived from Aristotelian principles, Tesauro's title literally meaning "the Aristotelian telescope." Tesauro and the Lyonese Jesuits were waging the same battle to develop a thoroughly modern defence of Aristotle; for although they were engaged in defending an ancient philosophy they utilised the latest science and its epistemology as the means by which to justify that philosophy. Moreover, they shared the means by which they were pursuing this goal, namely rhetoric understood as the art of persuading through images. In developing precepts from Aristotle's Poetics to govern the design of decorations and the devising of entertainments alike, Menestrier was diligently realizing Tesauro's vision for regulating all genres of image according to strictly Aristotelian principles, in the same way that tragedy had been some time earlier, notably through the theory of unities. As its title implies, Tesauro's treatise was largely inspired by Aristotle, in fact by his Rhetoric. The fundamental assumption underlying this modern Aristotelian treatise was that all the arts were products of rhetoric, which should therefore be used as the basis for their regu-
EMBLEMATICA 44 lation. Tesauro focused on the concept of argutezza [esprit, or wit], the rhetorical product to be exercised in court circles, discussing first its verbal forms, but then its visual forms, namely the various genres of symbolic image. At this point his inspiration shifts from Aristotle's Rhetoric to the Poetics, which becomes the basis from which Tesauro then derives his regulation of several representative arts: poetry, sculpture, drama, and finally the device (impresa). He then used the impresa for the example by which to demonstrate how such detailed principles could be developed from the Poetics;10 in doing so he implicitly invited his readers to repeat this exercise so as to develop equivalent principles governing each of the other genres of symbolic imagery and of festival or performance art. At one level, Menestrier's admiration for Tesauro's treatise provides another reason why he drew up his own program for treatises on each genre of festival and symbolic image, namely as the first stage in fulfilling the task impicitly laid out in the Cannocchiale. At another level, it led to his slavish adoption of the precepts Tesauro had derived from Aristotle's Poetics for regulating the impresa (or device); this is evident from Menestrier's almost verbatim quotation of all Tesauro's thirty-one rules for impresa design as his own model, in his first treatise written explicitly to fulfil his mentor's program, his Art des Emblemes of 1662 (24-29). It is therefore worth reviewing Tesauro's impresa t h e o r y in o r d e r b e t t e r to u n d e r s t a n d M e n e s t r i e r ' s "Philosophie des Images," and thence his theorising on each of the genres of (symbolic) imagery. Tesauro uses the terminology of corpo and anima, body and soul, in relation to the device, but does not identify them with figura and motto respectively. Corpo is identified with the figura but, within this context, with the word-image compound, not in the more widespread, but narrower, sense of its image element alone. Tesauro thus uses figura to denote figuration in a wider sense, that is to say all those parts of the compound which are sensible to the external senses, the material elements of the compound, whatever had been in its original (military) context "sensibile nello scudo" [literally "perceptible/tangible from the shield"]. So on the one side we have corpo, figura, materia [Matter], all that which is significante [which signifies]. On the other side we have anima, and moreover a notion of anima which cannot be equated with the verbal element alone, as it is rather to be paralleled with concetto [concept] and forma [Form]; it is whatever within the de-
10. Tesauro, chap. 15: "Idea delle argutezze heroiche, chiamate imprese."
45 vice is "intelligibile nella mente," whatever is intelligible to the internal senses. This glance at Tesauro's theoretical model for the ideal impresa confirms the Aristotelian, and in fact Thomist, roots to Menestrier's understanding of "body" and "soul" in emblem and device alike. As in Menestrier's "Philosophie des Images," "body" belongs to the material world, whereas "soul" belongs to the immaterial one. Hence if part of a device or emblem is referred to as its "body," what is meant by this is all that part of the device or emblem which exists within the material world. Conversely, if part of a device or emblem is referred to as its "soul," what is meant by this is all that part of the device or emblem which exists within the immaterial world. That part which resides within the material world, here called "body," therefore serves to give material expression to that part residing within the immaterial world, the "soul," which would otherwise remain inaccessible to our human senses. JUDI LOACH
Menestrier's use of "body" and "soul" in his manuscript treatises Menestrier's own beliefs as to the correct employment of the terms "body" and "soul" within the context of theorizing on word-image amalgams can be investigated both through his own use of them and through his attitudes towards fellow theorists, as witnessed by his critiques of them and lists of recommended reading on these genres. For the former, the primary evidence must be his treatises on emblems—a manuscript treatise of around 1659-60 and the two versions of L 'Art des Emblemes, published in 1662 and 1684 — and a manuscript treatise on devices (or imprese), also dating from around 1659-60. For the latter, the primary evidence is to be found in his lists of recommended books, in manuscripts of 1658-63, his 1662 VArt des Emblemes and, most notably, his critical bibliography, "Jugement des Autheurs,"in his 1682 treatise on the device which, as was noted earlier, is somewhat confusingly entitled La Philosophie des Images. In my-previous examination of his two published emblem books (Loach), I concluded that, despite major differences in appearance — largely due to the addition of massive quantities of illustrative examples —the latter was effectively an expansion of the former, indicating no radical change of view. I noted, however, that the single area most expanded —through the addition of an entirely new chapter—was that on the "deux parties essentielles des Emblemes" [literally "two essential parts of Emblems" but as we have seen, in this context alluding to those two parts of emblems relating to Essentia]; this
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tacitly concerns the relationship between the emblem's "body" and "soul." The publication of a single treatise on devices rendered it im possible to appraise the extent to which his ideas on that genre under went a comparable development during his career. Since then, however, subsequent access to his earlier manuscript treatises on both genres, both written in the immediate aftermath of his organization of the festivities mounted at Lyons for Louis XIV's visit there in late 1658, has enabled such an appraisal of how he devel oped his theorising on devices, along with a reappraisal of how he de veloped his theorizing on emblems. These two treatises differ radi cally in content from the treatises which he later published on the same subjects, indicating that he originally held significantly differ ent opinions. The precise details of this change of mind suggest his rigorous application of Thomist philosophy to the subject, from 1658 onwards, in other words from shortly after he began his theological training. In his manuscript treatise on the impresa, the "Traite de Г Art des De vises," Menestrier favors that definition of this word-image amalgam which seems to make most sense to him, and which he claims to be the most widely accepted: "la devise est un corps compose de figures naturelles et artificielles et de quelques paroles exprimant quelques unes de nos pensees, ou l'estat oil nous nous trouvons ou celuy d'aultruy par la voye de la ressemblance methaphorique fondee sur la propriete de la figure dessignee par le mot" [the device is a body com posed of natural and artificial figures and of some words expressing certain ideas of ours, or the situation in which we find ourselves, or someone else's, and doing so by means of metaphoric resemblance de rived from the appropriateness of the figure designated by the word]. In continuing, he refers to it simply as a "corps compose de figures et de mot" [a body composed of figures and word; Menestrier, MS. Baudrier, 129]. Thus far it is ambiguous whether Menestrier conceives of the corps as the amalgam of figure and word (as Tesauro had), or as the figure alone. Thereafter he consistently uses the word figure to de note the pictorial element, rarely invoking the term corps, and mot (or mots) to denote the verbal element, without mentioning the term ame at all. The fourth chapter, on the "Corps de la Devise" [Device's Body], then seems to equate corps, or body, with the figure, since it opens, "Le corps de la devise est la figure representee" [The device's body is the figure represented; MS. Baudrier, 134]; this interpretation is rein forced by subsequent comments on the need for this image to be readily identifiable. The word ame, or soul, appears for the first time in
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the sixth chapter, "Du Mot de la Devise" [On the Device's Word]. In its opening sentence the verbal element (mot) is quite unequivocally equated with the ame, or soul, of the impresa: "Le mot que nous appellons ordinairement Tame de la devise est la sentence qui accompagne la figure . . . ." [The word which we usually call the device's soul is the maxim which accompanies the figure; MS. Baudrier, 152]. In other words, in his earliest treatise on the impresa, Menestrier seems to equate body with the pictorial element and soul with the verbal one. Yet in his contemporary manuscript treatise on the emblem, his Traicte des Emblesmes, Menestrier seems to define this genre of what is now considered as a word-image amalgam in terms of its figure alone: "une Representation . . . qui exprime quelque enseignement moral" [a Representation .. . which expresses some moral teaching]. The motto (mot) is now detached from the emblem itself, serving with the accompanying epigram (vers) to "facilite[r] l'explication" [make interpretation easier] of that representation constituting the emblem (MS. Baudrier, 170); this view will be reinforced later, in a chapter devoted to the motto (or sentence, as it is called here), which opens with a statement that an emblem does not necessarily require any verbal element (MS. Baudrier, 187-88). Throughout he tends to refer to the figurative element of the emblem as its corps ox figure, and to its verbal element as mot or sentence. He seems relatively unconcerned with issues of the relations between the emblem's constituent parts, instead being preoccupied with its classification into types: historic, fabulous, natural and allegorical. The manner of his classification is reminiscent of biological taxonomy by genus, as in Aristotle's classification of nature, so that Menestrier implicitly draws a parallel here between natural beings, the subject of Aristotle's taxonomy, and artificial beings, such as the emblems which comprise the subject of his own taxonomy. 11 It is worth noting that in this his first treatise on the emblem, the word ame first appears in the chapter on the motto, where it becomes evident that he is equating ame with sentence or mot, that is, the motto.
11. Aristotle, Historia Animalium, bk. 1, chap. 1: "Of parts, simple and composite; of species and genera; and of differences in form, character and habits/' Such a sense of classification is also to be found in Aristotle's Organon.
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Menestrier's use of body and soul in his first published emblems treatise By the time that Menestrier prepared a treatise on this subject for publication he had radically revised his conception of "body" and "soul" as terms within the context of such word-image amalgams This change must have been effected rapidly, for although his first published treatise on emblems, the L'Art des Emblemes, was not published until 1662, he had completed its text by or in the summer of 1660 —something heretofore unrealized by scholars (Loach 2002a). In the fifth chapter, "Des Parties de l'Embleme," he admits that opinions have varied as to the essential parts constituting the emblem, before stating that it is usually agreed that there are three parts, "la peinture, la sentence et les vers" [painting, maxim and lines of verse]. He then moves away from analysing the emblem in terms purely of these visible elements (those accessible to the external senses), to doing so in a more philosophical way, now defining the emblem's two essential parts as "les figures" and "leur signification." As in his manuscript treatise, both verbal elements, the sentence and verse, are seen merely as supplementary aids to the interpretation of the figure, which is now implicitly equated with the word corps [body]; he had already put forward this idea in the previous chapter, ,2 and he would reiterate it in the later chapter devoted to the image ,13 Significantly, the verbal elements are now described as "parties accidentelles." Simultaneously, the other "essential part," signification, is equated quite explicitly with dme [soul]: " . . . leur signification, ou leur sens moral, qui est Tame de ces corps, & la forme, qui leur donne toute leur beaute" [. .. their signification, or their moral sense, which is the soul of these bodies, and their Form, which (alone) makes them beautiful] (Menestrier 1662, 50). In other words, the two crucial constituents of an emblem are a figure, referred to as its "body," and its inner meaning, referred to as its "soul." Menestrier is actually invoking concepts here which were fundamental to Aristotelian and Thomist philosophy alike. For he is employing words which served as standard terminology in that philo12. "les figures, qui en font les corps" (Menestrier 1662, 30, in chap. 4: "De la Division des Emblemes ou de leurs especes differentes").
13. "Les Images, qui composent les Emblemes" are equated with figures (Menestrier 1662, chap. 6: "Des Figures des Emblemes."
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sophical tradition—forme, essentiel and accidentel — and is doing so in such a way that they carry the particular meanings which they were accorded within it: Form (together with its adjectival derivatives), Essence, and Accident. He is thus signalling his allusion to Aristote lian and Thomist concepts in a way which would have been evident to any reader with a basic knowledge of philosophy such, for in stance, as anyone who had attended the philosophy course delivered by Jesuits in those town colleges they ran. Menestrier's deliberate invocation of concepts at once Aristotelian and Thomist is, however, clearest in his later chapter on "la significa tion de Г Е т Ы е т е , " the chapter implicitly dealing with that part of the emblem to be identified as soul. Here he states that: "II . . . faut ... examiner [les Especes differentes des Emblemes] dans le materiel, & voir de quel fagon les figures procedent au formel" [The different species of emblem must be examined in their material state, and how their figures derive (literally "proceed") from there to reach their for mal state must be looked into] .14 In this context, he is using materiel in the sense of the adjective derived from the noun matiere, and more over as that word is understood in an Aristotelian and Thomist sense; likewise formel is the adjective derived from the noun forme, again as understood in that sense. 15 Awareness of this philosophical context should therefore inform our interpretation of Menestrier's theorizing on symbolic imagery and on word-image amalgams, including the conception of body and soul incorporated into such theories. A key concept, or rather pair of concepts, common to Aristotle and Aquinas, and evidently being al luded to here, was the correlative pair of Matter (hule in Aristotle's Greek, materia in Aquinas's Latin) and Form (morphe and forma re spectively). In this context Matter is any "stuff," what a thing is made of (hule originally meant wood); it is what is immanent. 16 Matter has a physical, concrete reality rather than a spiritual one, so that the Mat14. Menestrier 1662,87 (in chap. 9: "De la Signification de Г Е т Ы е т е , " i. е., the chap ter dealing with the emblem's soul.
15. Another example of Menestrier's Aristotelian and Thomist usage of Matter and Form occurs in his 1684 Art des Emblemes, in an addition to the chapter on the em blem's signification (332), where he criticizes Mignault's classification of em blems.as being embrouillee [confused], on the grounds that "il confond le materiel avec le formel."
16. For example, Aristotle, Physica, bk. 2, chap. 3.
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tor of an object can be perceived through external experience. Matter is, however, indeterminate of itself, and relies upon Form for its determination. Form thus endows Matter with its determined manner of being, its figure or structure. Form is then what distinguishes one creature's manner of being from another's. Yet Form only exists in relation to Matter, as it can only be expressed, made evident, through Matter, as much as Matter cannot exist without Form. Form (morphe literally means form, shape or figure) is defined as the intelligible structure which endows any given being with its particular meaning and significance. The essence of any being is thus composed of its Matter and Form together; the two are identifiably distinct, but they comprise a single substance. In saying that the emblem's "soul" is not only its signification but also its Form, Menestrier is reiterating, this time invoking further philosophical concepts, how the "soul" alone can endow any emblem with its own particular meaning; yet the "soul"/Form remains imperceptible to the external senses until Matter gives it expression, such that this "soul" is entirely dependant upon Matter. Hence the precise character of the tasks he sets when he tells his reader of the need to examine the relationship between the emblem's Matter and Form. Aquinas's concept of body and soul developed from this concept of Matter and Form. He defined soul as the first principle of life in living things. Soul is the Form of a given body; the relationship of soul to body is not quite equivalent, however, to that of Form to Matter. It is soul which makes a body a human body, or an animal body, or a plant body. Like Matter and Form, soul and body together constitute a single substance, and cannot be dissociated in their action upon the person; feeling, for instance, can never be identified as deriving from either the soul or the body alone. But a human being cannot "have" a body, in the same way that a Form can "have" Matter, since the human being is body. The human Form is what makes a human being's soul a human soul. Unlike other Forms, however, soul can continue to exist beyond the loss of its corresponding Matter, namely body. By the seventeenth century this Thomist concept of the soul as the Form of the body had long since been accepted into mainstream Roman Catholicism, having been adopted as dogma by the Council of Vienne (1311-12) (Denzinge, 481). It is within this initially Thomist context that Menestrier's equation of the emblem's "soul" with its signification, sens moral and indeed forme needs to be interpreted.
51 It is within the same context that we need to appreciate the relationship which he inferred to exist between such a "soul" and the emblem's "body," which he equates with the figure. Given the contrast delineated by Aristotle between the immortality of soul and the temporal limitations of body, we might easily assume that Menestrier is implying that while an idea (dme) is timeless and universal, its expression perceptible to human senses (corps), will acquire different figurative expressions according to the specific time and place. Such a reading, however, does not necessarily accord with a Thomist interpretation. For, although the immortality of the soul had been emphasized in Renaissance Humanist circles, it had been effectively evaded by Aquinas, for whom incorruptibility and future beatitude were instead the fundamental characteristics of the soul. A more certain reading of this chapter on "la signification de l'Embleme" is that Menestrier is saying here that we must examine the various types of emblem in their material manifestation — as they appear in festivals, decorative schemes, or publications —and then see how their visible figures render their invisible Forms intelligible. Menestrier's use elsewhere of the same word figure to denote the image of the emblem needs to be read in this context throughout. 17 Menestrier's employment of other terms common to Aristotelian and Thomist schools of philosophy offer further clues to his intended meaning. He is evidently using "essential" and "accidental" here as the adjectives derived from "essence" and "accident," and thus using them in the sense they had for Aristotle and Aquinas. "Essence" (ousia in Greek, essentia in Latin), or being, is paired with "existence," in much the same way as "Form" is paired with "Matter," or "soul" with "body." "Essence" is the essential element in assuring individualised Form, whereas "existence" applies more broadly to the "whatness" (quidditas) of things. Essence affects subsequent existence, but existence cannot affect later essence. It is within this context that Menestrier defines the two essential parts of the emblem as its figures (equated with body) and its signification (equated with soul). In other words, they are not merely essential in the sense of necessary. Instead, they are essential in the sense of assuring the emblem's essence, its individualized Form (as opposed to simply being physically, materially part of it). To understand the Thomist term "accident" one must return to the concept of "substance," since this constitutes the other half of a JUDI LOACH
17. See especially Menestrier 1662, chap. 6:"Des Figures des Emblemes," 57ff.
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Thomist pairing. So, to reiterate, the essence of-any being is coin posed of its Matter and Form together, which, although identifiably distinct, comprise a single substance. The relation of substance to accident is most easily understood through the grammatical analogy of subject to predicate. Accidents can change substances, but unlike substances they cannot exist in their own right; accidents can only be predicated in terms of the substances which they qualify. It is within this context that Menestrier refers to (all) the verbal elements of the emblem as ac cidental, in opposition to both figure and signification as substantial. In other words, the painting contains both the essential parts of the emblem, its figured image and its signification, while the verbal ele ments serve purely to qualify each of them; but although such ele ments do not constitute integral parts of the emblem, they do not merely serve to facilitate the correct interpretation of the emblem but, as accidents, also possess exclusive powers to change the emblem it self. Later on in the 1662 treatise, Menestrier will expand on what he means by the signification, or soul, of the emblem in a chapter where he defines it thus: "La signification est done proprement la pensee, que ГAutheur de l'Embleme veut exprimer par ses figures, & par ses vers" [Therefore, more precisely, the signification is the idea (literally "thought") which the Emblem's Author wants to express through its figures, and through its lines of verse]. Furthermore, "comme la pa role, & le discours sont les interpretes de nos sentimens, la peinture & la Poesie, sont les truchemens des pensees ingenieuses, que nous voulons exprimer pour l'instruction publique des hommes" [just as words, and speech are interpreters of feelings, so painting and Poetry, are the means of expression for ingenious ideas, which we want to ex press in order to teach the public]. 18 At this point it is worth recalling Tesauro's use of body and soul terminology: on the one hand, corpo is identified with figure in the sense of all parts of the device sensible to external senses, that which is materia, and thereby significante. On the other hand, anima is identified with concetto and forma, the parts of the device intelligible to the internal senses, the mind. Menestrier's use of body and soul in his later published treatises In his 1684 UArt des Emblemes Menestrier introduces three new in troductory chapters. Significantly, each of these is concerned in turn 18. Menestrier 1662, chap. 9: "De la signification des Emblemes," 87.
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with formulating emblem theory in terms of a fundamental Aristotelian and Thomist principle, respectively Nature, Matter, and Form. In this he is implicitly referring back to the opening chapters of Aristotle's Physica, so well known to, and indeed absorbed by, Aquinas. Although the first book of the Physica, concerning "Principles of natural things," contains a chapter dedicated to Matter (chapter 9) it is the second book, on "Nature and its causes," which deals with these three principles in relation to each other. This second book deals with these principles in the same order as Menestrier, the first chapter being dedicated to Nature itself and then the third to its four causes ("their species and modalities"), of which the first two are Matter and Form respectively. The first of Menestrier's supplementary chapters concerns the Nature of emblems In Aristotelian philosophy, Nature is the essence of any being, the permanent structure or reality within that being from its origin, in terms of its principle, or pre-established norm of action. When this concept of nature was translated into Christian theology, any creature's Nature was understood as meaning the signification specific to that creature; in particular the creature's Nature came to be seen as being directly related to that creature's proximity to its creator. Within this context Menestrier's chapter title must refer to whatever aspect of emblems is most essential to them, irrespective of particularities of time or place, and to what distinguishes them from other created things. At first sight, however, Menestrier's chapter on the "Nature des Emblemes," seems to have little to do with such a concept of Nature per se. For instead the chapter is devoted to enunciating the role which images alone can play in communicating ideas. Nature 19 is consecrated here to justifying the use of imagery, invoking a Neo-Thomist version of faculty psychology: we can only apprehend by means of images, because nothing enters our esprit except via our senses (which receive images of objects) and our imagination (which presents these images to the esprit, so that it can examine them). Since the soul finds it easier to apprehend by means of sight than by hearing (let alone any of the other senses) the visual image is more effective than the word (parole/discours). It is instructive to read this with an awareness of book two of Aristotle's Physics. The first chapter distinguishes between beings pro19. "la nature des choses, e t . . . [de] leurs proprietez" [the nature of things, and ... on the properties peculiar to them] (Menestrier 1684, 12).
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duced by Nature and all other beings. The former are subject to a ten dency to change, because "Nature is a principle and cause of move ment and rest for the thing in which it immediately resides, and is so by essence and not by accident." 20 Aristotle is affirming here the changeability of natural beings, and not just at the level of accidental changes but also at that of substance. Natural beings are to be consid ered active precisely because they are constantly changing in this way, in other words that they are in the process of "becoming." All true principles of any natural being are subject to this process of be coming. In other words, Menestrier does not conceive of the emblem as an inert object but rather as an organic and active being, itself changing and equally capable of changing other creatures with which it comes into contact. Menestrier concludes this first supplementary chapter with an as sertion that the image constitutes the Matter of the emblem, and the didactic content its Form, while the regie de conduite [rule of conduct] constitutes its End (Menestrier 1684, 15-16). On the one hand this statement serves to integrate these three new chapters into the preexisting text. For just as the triad of Nature, Matter, and Form would have signalled the allusion to Aristotelian and Thomist philos ophy outlined above, so this triad of Form, Matter, and End would have alluded to another Aristotelian classification, underlying Aris totle's biology and logic, but this time perhaps most clearly set out in Horace's Ars Poetica. For in this precedent a fourfold classification is made according to cause: material, formal, final, and efficient. These four categories appear there in the same order as in Menestrier's 1684 treatise where they become the subjects of four consecutive chapters. For Menestrier's next two new chapters, "De la Matiere des Emblemes" and "De la Forme des Emblemes," correspond with Hor ace's categories of material and formal causes. Then two pre-existing chapters which succeed them, "Des diverses Especes d'Emblemes a les considerer selon leur/ш" (my italics) [On the various kinds of Em blems considered according to their End (referring here to final cause)] and, at the end, "De la maniere de faire les Emblemes," corre spond with Horace's categories of final and efficient causes (Epee). On the other hand this statement serves to introduce the two princi ples which are the subjects of his next two chapters, namely Matter and Form. In the chapter devoted to the emblem's Matter, Menestrier expands upon those aspects of the theory he has just enunciated 20. Aristotle, Physica, bk. 2, chap. 1.
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which are relevant to Matter: "les images [qui peuvent nous instmire] . . . font la matiere des Emblemes, puisque les Emblemes sont des instructions qui doivent frapper les yeux, pour passer de-la jusqu'a Tame" [images (which can teach us) .. . comprise the Matter of Emblems, for Emblems are teachings which should strike the eyes, in order to pass beyond them right to the soul] (Menestrier 1684, 19-20). To fully appreciate Menestrier's meaning here, it is necessary to refer back to Aristotle's concept of Matter, as outlined in the third chapter of Book 2 in his Physics (where Matter is defined as what a thing is made of). From this it would seem that Menestrier intends the word // image ,/ to cover whatever parts of the emblem might be perceptible to the physical senses, such as the sense of sight. In this context it would therefore seem that the word "image" is intended here to also encompass any verbal element. The omission of specific reference to such an element should be taken as implying the lesser efficacity of the verbal, as opposed to figurative, element in reaching and touching the soul. In the next chapter, which comprises a comparable peroration on the emblem's Form, he likewise expands upon that aspect: "Les Emblemes ne sont f aits que pour enseigner. Ainsi tout ce qui sert a les tourner en matiere d'instruction, en est comme la forme" [Emblems are only made for teaching. Thus everything which is used to turn them into the Matter of teaching is, as it were, their Form] (Menestrier 1684, 31). Further on he reiterates this reading, by stating that, "La maniere d'enseigner par images est done la forme des Emblemes" [The way of teaching through images is thus the Form of Emblems] (Menestrier 1684, 41). Again a full understanding of Menestrier's intended meaning here requires reference back to the correlative concepts of Matter and Form as outlined in Aristotle's Physics, and in turn adopted by Aquinas. Within this context Menestrier's statements here and earlier identifying the emblem's Form with its didactic purpose serve firstly to emphasise how it is the emblem's function, rather than its appearance, which distinguishes it from other "creatures," including other genres of symbolic imagery. Secondly, they not only reiterate, yet again, how this function can only be rendered perceptible to human senses through images, but furthermore assert that visual images are more effective than any others in fulfilling their didactic function. 21 21. Menestrier has elaborated upon this point in the chapter on the two essential parts of the emblem: "L'esprit estbien plus vivement touche par ces images, qu'il
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Menestrier introduces a further supplementary chapter into his 1684 text; it is entitled "Des Deux Parties Essentielles des Emblemes," the same title as he had previously applied to that chapter in his 1662 treatise which had introduced the terms "body" and "soul." The new chapter leads up to a statement about the constituent parts of an em blem, with a reference to the terms corps and ame at its conclusion. Menestrier, a teacher of rhetoric and by now a court preacher, is thus arranging his material with the express intent that this statement ap pears at the climax of his argument. Here the parts of the emblem are tellingly itemized: "[les] Figures qui en font la peinture & le corps" [Figures which constitute its painting and body], "[le] Sens mystique qui en est Tame" [the mystical Meaning which is its soul], "[le] Mot qui sert a determiner ce Sens" [the Word used to determine this Mean ing precisely], and "[le] Titre des Vers, & des Discours d'application qui font le meme effet, & qui expliquent en meme temps & la peinture & le sens de ces figures" [the Title of the lines of Verse, and any Argu ments which have the same result, and which explain at one and the same time the painting and the meaning of these figures] (Menestrier 1684, 224-25). As before, the corps/body is thus defined in terms of the emblem's visual and visible image (a concept which will be reiterated later), 22 whilst the ame/soul is defined in terms of its invisible signifi cation (a concept reiterated in the later chapter dedicated entirely to signification, where the relevant section from the 1662 treatise is re peated verbatim). 23 As before, the motto serves to reveal or clarify this sense as it is being communicated through the image. The chief purpose of this new chapter seems to be to enlarge upon the two essential parts of the emblem — its figure and its signification, ne seroit par un simple discours, & l'impression que ces figures font sur Tame est bien plus efficace que celles des paroles; parce que Tame a ordinairement plus d'attention a ce qu'elle void, au lieu qu'elle semble attendre ce qu'on luy dit. Ainsi estant comme en mouvement pour aller au devant de ce qu'elle void, elle en est plus touchee, que de ce qui doit Taller chercher, lors qu'elle est souvent d'ailleurs occupee dans elle meme, ou distraite au dehors par quelque objet." (211). This reflects contemporary (i. е., Aristotelian) physiological theory, as is proven by Menestrier's use of technical vocabulary here. The eye, and the visual, have priority over the ear, and the aural, because the esprit is touched, and in deed moved, in a more vivid way by visual imagery than by sounds: figures are therefore more effective than words in making impressions upon the soul.
22. Menestrier 1684, "Des Figures qui font le Corps des Emblemes/' 225ff.
23. Menestrier 1684, 333ff. (cf. Menestrier 1662, 87ff.).
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or its body and soul —but without using this terminology, or at least without doing so before reaching the conclusion. This suggests that the use of these terms might have become controversial, and was therefore being avoided until the philosophical arguments associated with them in this context had been made with sufficient conviction. The two "essential parts" are thus distinguished now as one addressing the eyes and the other addressing the esprit, the first consisting of a "peinture pour le plaisir des yeux" [painting to please the eyes] (external senses), the second "un sens mystique pour I n s t r u c t i o n " [a mystical meaning for the purpose of teaching] (internal senses; Menestrier 1684, 207). Conclusion From this examination of Menestrier's writings on device and emblem, situated within their geo-historical context, it is apparent that his particular usage of the words "body" and "soul" was indeed heavily influenced by the Aristotelian and Neo-Thomist atmosphere of the Jesuit communities of the Province du Lyonnais, in which he was educated and in which he first used these terms in his own writing. By investigating how knowledge of such philosophical traditions can inform one's reading of Menestrier's usage of these terms, a deeper understanding has in turn been attained as to how a contemporary reader is likely to have understood his treatises. Several questions remain unanswered and constitute fields worthy of future research. First, was Menestrier's particular transfer of Aristotelian or Neo-Thomist significations of the words "body" and "soul" into aesthetic theory unique to him? Given the dominance of Neo-Thomism in the seventeenth century, and not just throughout the Jesuit Province du Lyonnais, this seems unlikely. An investigation of the extent to which it was accepted outside this circle would be useful, not least in order to enable a more accurate contextualisation of other theoreticians, and thereby regain a contemporary reading of their works. Second, and related to this, to what degree was Menestrier's application of Aristotelian and Neo-Thomist theory original, how far simply codifying common practice in the circles within which he moved? Without disputing his claims to be a pioneer in his systematic devising of treatises to cover all genres of festival and symbolic imagery, one should note his striking lack of originality not only in this enterprise—where he pedantically translated Tesauro's model codification of the impresa into that required for the emblem—but also in oth-
EMBLEMATICA 58 CMS. I lis lirsl published work had actually been a literal translation of a work previously published by his mentor, Raynaud, while other works —notably his rhetorical program underlying the decorative schemes for the principal public spaces in the town hall and town college at Lyons —turn out to be unacknowledged translations of the same mentor's theological work into a three-dimensional arrangement of images. Given, on the one hand, how entirely orthodox, even conventional, his usage of the terms "body" and "soul" seems within the context of the Neo-Thomist Jesuit communities in which he lived and worked all his adult life and, on the other, the preoccupation with word-image amalgams in the Lyonese region, it seems unlikely that he was unique in effecting this transfer of terminology from philosophy and theology to aesthetic theory. Yet, until further research is pursued in this field, it is dangerous to extrapolate those subtle readings obtained above for treatises written by Menestrier and apply them to works by his contemporaries. Third, how far was such a signification of the terms "body" and "soul" understood within the context of device and emblem theory and practice by others outside such circles of Counter-Reformation clerics? Certainly others also used this terminology, but certain criticisms made in various treatises demonstrate that these Jesuits' theologically derived signification was an issue of dispute. The degree to which even devices and emblems devised by the Jesuits themselves were understood in the Aristotelian and Neo-Thomist way outlined here deserves further investigation. Anecdotal evidence suggests that they were less successful than they would have hoped in this respect. For instance, in describing numerous emblems in its account of the decorations devised by the Jesuits for the opening of Conde's mausoleum in their Parisian college, the Gazette de France uses the word ame interchangeably with the words mot(s), paroles, inscription, chiffres, devise, termes and expression. Perhaps, however, it was precisely such casual usage (in this case in 1647) which drove Menestrier and his colleagues to clarify how these terms should be applied. Nevertheless, despite the research still required, this study already opens up an awareness of Menestrier's transfer from philosophical to aesthetic domains of the meaning attached to two terms, and in so doing modifies our understanding of what they meant within certain circles, starting with those in which Menestrier was trained. This is already an advance of greater significance than might at first be apparent. Since, within this interpretation, "soul" (idea) can only be manifested in word through "body" (image), this implies that any devout
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С 'a t hoi ic has a pious duty to make ideas manifest in this way. Hence it was not sufficient to simply devise such didactic or moralising im ages for private consumption; they had to be made as public as possi ble. Hence also the emphasis on types of image which are innately public in character: the device and emblem stand alongside other genres of symbolic imagery, while this category of symbolic imagery is flanked by those of public speaking and public festivals. The preoccupation of Lyonese Jesuits in general and Menestrier in particular with symbolic images, the basic building blocks of decorative schemes and of the festivals acted out in front of them, was due to their understanding of these media as a means of making their mes sage incarnate within the world in which they served. As such these media offered privileged ways of "doing" theology, of delivering their message in ways which would touch not only the physical senses but equally the soul. Faced with moralising images spirituelles such as emblems, individuals could be moved to take the action which the Church of Rome deemed necessary to secure their salva tion. Works Cited Denzinge, Heinrich. Enchiridion symbolorum et definitionum. 1st ed. Wurzburg, 1854. Epee, Francois. "L'Art des Emblemes, 1684: Edition critique," thesis for the doctorat du troisieme cycle, Universite de Lyon II, 1981. Gazette de France 1 August 1647: 578-98. Giovio, Paolo, Dialogo dell'Imprese Militari et Amorose. Rome, 1555. Kessler, Eckhard. "The Intellective Soul." In The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy. Ed. Charles Schmitt and Quentin Skinner. Cambridge, 1988. Kristeller, Paul Oskar. Renaissance Concepts of Man. New York, 1972. Levi, Anthony, S.J. French Moralists. The Theory of the Passions,1585-1649. Oxford, 1964. Loach, Judi. "Menestrier's Emblem Theory." Emblematica 2 (1987): 317-36. . "Why Menestrier Wrote about Emblems, and What Audi ence^) He Had in Mind." Emblematica 12 (2002): 223-83. Menestrier, Claude-Frangois, S. J. "L'ldee de l'Estude d'un honeste homme," MS. 1514, Bibliotheque Municipale de Lyon, and MS. Baudrier (private collection). . Les Devoirs de la Ville de Lyon, envers ses saints. Tire du Latin du R. P. Theophile Raynaud de la Compagnie de Jesus. Lyons, 1658.
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. I/Art (les Lmblcnies. Lyons, 1662. . Eloge Historique de la Ville de Lyon. Lyons, 1669. . Recherches du Blason. Paris, 1673. . Des Ballets Anciens etModernes, selon les regies du theatre. Paris, 1682a. . La Philosophie des Images. Paris, 1682b. . L'Art des Emblemes. Paris, 1684. Moyne, Therese. Les livres illustres a Lyon dans le premier tiers du XVIIe siecle. Grenoble, 1987. Pomponazzi, Pietro. Tractatus de immortalitateanimae. Bologna, 1516. Raynaud, Theophile, S. J. "Oratio Triplex de S. Ignatio a Loyola aedificante Dei Domum, Templo S. Sophiae, Basiliadi Iustinianeae & Domui Charitatis Lugdunense, proportionalem." In Hagiologium Lugdunense. Lyons, 1662. Pp. 423-74. Le Soleil au Signe du Lyon. Lyons, 1623. Tesauro, Emmanuele. II Cannocchiale Aristotelico. Venice, 1655.
Silent Meanings: Emblems, Lay Culture, and Political Awareness in SixteenthCentury Bologna ELENA de LUCA University of East Anglia
Contextualizing the Problem This paper discusses one of the earliest emblem books published in Italy, the Symbolicae Quaestiones de Universo Geneve quas Serio Ludebat, libri quinque, written by the humanist and scholar Achille Bocchi and published in Bologna in 1555 (Fig. I). 1 The starting point is the assumption that, since a way of describing implies a way of thinking, there are specific reasons that led Bocchi to discuss notions such as Labor, Effort, and Experience. These notions appear to be bound by a twofold common denominator which will provide evidence of the way Bocchi vindicates the legitimacy and citizenship of a lay, flexible, and investigative approach to culture and of a specific intellectual role and attitude. The temptation is to consider them as typical of Renaissance culture at large, so much so that they can easily be taken as stereotypes. On the contrary, what is going to be argued here is that Achille Bocchi's use of language, symbols, and contents must be understood 1. On Achille Bocchi, Watson offers a wide survey of the biographic and bibliographic references to him and his activity. Among the most recent investigations on the Symbolicae Quaestiones, the studies by Colonna (1995), Rolet and Damanti are also relevant. All illustrations are taken from Achille Bocchi, Symbolicae quaestiones, Bologna, 1555; Glasgow University Library, SM 183; with permission.
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in close relation with the specific cultural context and chronological contingency within which he developed his own, original intellectual attitude. The setting is Bologna, and the timing is the complex mid-sixteenth century. Religious destabilization was rife and crucial cultural issues became entangled with a redefinition of leadership. In brief, a new life style was pressed home and monitored from above. People had to live, write, and pray in a new fashion. 2 However, within all this, the secular attitude of Italian high culture or, more precisely, a lay attitude among intellecFig. 1. Portrait, sig. Alv. tuals and scholars, has hardly been recognized. This is precisely the concern of the present paper. The use of the words "secular" or "lay" does not imply the recognition of an anti-religious inclination. Rather, it means the awareness of the existence of different categories of subjects that require different approaches. What we would call today "lay culture" remained in an impasse for a long period. This determined a loss of cultural horizons, a sort of disorientation detectable in a variety of domains. 3 On policy of the Catholic Church that affected Italian culture and practices, the literature encompasses various fields that have been investigated mainly by Camporesi with regard to popular literature and customs, by Ginzburg and Seidel Menchi on religious issues and social historical implications. On the issue of language, Vitale offers an effective insight, while more related to the role of intellectuals are the studies of Pastore. About the deliberations on the productions of visual material, music and literature, I rely on the studies by Prodi and Scavizzi. On the printed productions and changes, see Grendler and Eisenstein. Although since the studies of Dionisotti and Romano, this subject has been treated as "obvious" in its importance, it has received little systematic attention in recent times. The consequences of this are twofold. Either the secular attitude among intellectuals during the sixteenth century is mentioned, but in very contradictory terms, or the subject is not considered at all. The history of intellectuals in Italy was always parallel to the history of the relationship between politics and culture in society more generally. This is true especially in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and it is still true today
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The Status of Intellectuals The role of the intellectual in Italian society was diminished if not reshaped and fragmented altogether. These dynamics became especially evident in Bologna, where the most persistent institution was the Studium, the University. This had a consistent activity from the twelfth century and enjoyed great leadership, independence, and influence through centuries of historical changes. 4 Crucially, the cita(Romano,132). Concerning the relations between culture and politics, it is also important to emphasise that in Italy religion and religious life had strong political connections, not least because of the proximity of the Papacy to the rest of Italy, which made it easier for papal policies to intrude and interfere in the culture of the whole peninsula. This generally affected the process of emancipation of Italian intellectuals, since there was an inevitable proximity between culture and politics, secular life and religious life. Moreover, during the Counter-Reformation, due to the particular historical situation of the peninsula, secular/civic issues and religious issues overlapped. Seidel Menchi has highlighted the intersection between two issues related to the liberta cristiane [Christian liberties] and liberta civili [civic liberties] pointing out how: "Church historians tell us that the Christian liberties must not be confused with civil liberties of a political or legal nature or other historical origins. And y e t . . . it cannot be ignored that the documentation of the Italian Inquisition demonstrates the existence of these two types of aspiration within the same circles, with a difference of about twenty years" (Seidel Menchi 1987,121-22). These considerations highlight how little is known of secular culture in Italy, despite the well-known resistence of some religious and lay fringes to the repressive policy of the Council of Trent (1545-63). Thus the history of secular culture in Italy needs to be considered as a subject in its own right and deserves further investigation.
4. According to some evidence, the first step in the formation of the university in Bologna was taken in 1194, making it perhaps the first city in Europe, and definitely the first in southern Europe, to have the school which was the first stage in the establishment of a Studium. The organization of universities in the northern part of Europe occurred during the twelfth century in big cities like Paris and smaller cities like Oxford. Bologna, however, represents a different typology. This wtas for the simple reason that the university was not created under the aegis of a prince or a king, nor was it connected to a cathedral school as in the case of Paris and Oxford. Another characteristic of Italian universities compared to other Studia in Europe was the lay character of both their personnel and their administrative structure (Hyde, 19 and Brucker, 48). Important contributions on the University of Bologna have been made by Calcaterra and Capitani, and more specifically on the history of Law in Bologna by Grossi. In the early stage of the Comune, the Governo del Popolo and the Universitates, for instance, had many points in common in their reasons for asserting themselves as legal entities, while they also shared a similar matrix of ideas and cus-
EMBLEMATICA 64 del of culture was deeply entwined with the political and economic structure of the city. But Bologna was the city that, in 1506, with the expulsion of the Bentivoglio family, became the second city of the Papal State. The status of the doctores no longer had the connotation connected with the role of government as consiliarii (De Benedictis 1990). In the past, this encapsulated the synergy which occurred between doctores of the Studium and the government of the city, for instance in writing Statutes, and also in the role played by the doctores among the merchant guilds and in the law court of the Foro della Mercanzia as advisers and Magistrato [judge]. 5 Most importantly, the scholar was seen mainly as "virus bonus dicendi peritus" [the man well-versed in speaking well], that is to say in the role of the ambassador as orator. 6 With this change of policy in Bologna, the reasons for conflict between scholars and politicians were not only formal problems of precedenza as was the case later. Rather, they concerned the defence of specific privileges and rights, and of a specific role in society. Filippo Beroaldo the Elder affirmed in 1497 the indispensability of the autonomy of the so-called consiliarii prudentes —the scholar-orator who took part in the administration of public affairs, often acting in the background in the capacity of adviser or judge (De Benedictis 1990,419). In the Symbolicae Quaestiones there are several symbols focused on the role of judge and adviser. In symbol CXIIII (Fig. 2) the motto is specifically addressed to the role of consiliares and in the epigram the impor-
toms. Gradually a very complex structure developed with a dual organization of trade-based guilds called "Societa delle Arti," and territorially designated military companies called "Societa delle Armi." The origins of both organizations, the university, later Studium, and the Popolo, later Comune, brought with them a collective consciousness and perception of authority. The authority of the Emperor, or the authority of the Pope, were entities that could be discussed and could be interpreted locally in a very personal and subjective way. Authority as a notion was less a matter of dogma than a product of a collective agreement legitimizing a particular decision. Bearing in mind these historical and cultural circumstances, the connection between the development of the Bolognese Studium and the social role of the Doctores, along with the emergence of a concept of law can be better understood. 5. The research carried out by Fasoli has offered a useful insight into the structure of the "Compagnia delle Arti" in Bologna, a fidld that has been expanded particularly by Ghezza Fabbri. The interaction between the merchant guilds and the scholars has been investigated by De Benedictis 1987a and 1989, and Boris.
6. For references, see De Benedictis 1987b, 13-14; Prandi, 65-71; Weinrich (chap. 10). It is important to mention also the relevant role played by Jurisprudence rhetoric (Graziosi).
65 ELENA deLUCA tance of the correct use of language is CCXXXVIIT LIB. QJVART, d i s c u s s e d . 7 The m o t t o r e a d s "Consultum M a l e consultori / CONSVWVM MALE CONSVLTORI PESblMA RES EST. Pessima res est" [Bad advice for an SYMB. СХШ1. adviser is a dreadful thing] and the epigram: "There is no better or fairer law than the law that stipulates that bearers of death will die of their own art. Let all prejudiced men denigrat ing the Roman language burn slowly; having despised proper speech, let them express themselves with simple lowing." 8 Bocchi stressed both the concept of "correct language," like bene dicere, as well as the responsibil ity of not giving inappropriate ad vice as consiliares. The articulation of the symbol suggests that for Bocchi, as for Beroaldo, rhetoric was con Fig. 2. f/ Consultum male , sig. ceived as interconnected with the GG3v. role of consiliares and never regained, in real terms, a role in the officium nobile of actual government. A con solidated system of values was disrupted, and because it was strictly connected with rhetoric, one consequence, among others, was the elaboration of a different rhetoric. Emblematic rhetoric too was brought into this process. In fact, Bocchi expressed in Symbol CXIX (Fig. 3) his deep disap pointment with the situation of his time, saying: "The activites of lei sure which are proper to men have disappeared, the labours of life are full of mortal dangers and only the most infamous characters are
7. The subject of the symbol is focused on the role of the Consiliares and is repre sented through the legend of Perillus, an Athenian sculptor, ca. 570 ВС, who built a throne of bronze for the tyrant Falaris inside which the monarch burnt his victims—including the throne-maker. 8. "Non etenim melior lex est, neque iustior ulla / Quam necis artifices arte perire sua. / Leniter 6 utinam sic comburatur iniquus / Romano quisquis detrahit eloquio." The motto is from M. T. Varro's "Malum Consilium Consultori Est Pessimo" (Rust. Ill, 2,1; Ross, 93).
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EMBLEMATICA XXLVIII
LIB. Q^VART.
FORT ША NOSTIU SECVLI, FERENDA QVANVIS PESSIMA*
LID. QJV'INT.
CCXCV
QVAM SE Si; CVNQ^ IN PARTFM SAPIENS DEDERIT,
STAT.
S ' I ' M J . CXXXII.
OO
Fig. 3. "Fortuna nostri seculi, . ., Sig. HH4v.
Fig. 4. "Quam se se c u n q — Sig. 002r.
able to survive." 9 Furthermore, some symbols are focused on both the notion of rhetoric and the issue of language. In the epigram of Symbol CXXXII (Fig. 4) Bocchi describes a device, the Greek weapon murex, but in reality he is stating the role of elo quence: "They open their mouths as if to speak, hence (we can see that) wisdom is expressed through eloquence, that it does not harm any body, and it is an advantage for everybody." 10 The binomial wis dom-eloquence is clearly affirmed in this symbol, while in other sym bols eloquence is considered as being potentially able to do anything. For instance, in Symbol XCII (Fig. 5), the motto reads "Vis eloquentiae potest una omnia" [The power of eloquence can do anything]. Again in Symbol СП (Fig. 6) eloquence is considered as determined by Prog ress and as the bearer of prosperity.
9. "Otia digna viris periere, negotia vitae / Plena periclis sunt exitiabilibus / Fex postrema hominum superest."
10. 'Tars alia, ore hiscunt, inde ut sapientia sese/ Efferat eloquio, noceat nulli, omni bus adsit."
ELENA de LUCA CCX CXCUtl VlS
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« ^ V » N T , A H POT E S T
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67 LIB. QVART.
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№4 Fig. 5. "Vis eloquentiae . . ." Sig. BBlv.
Fig. 6. "Sapientiam modestia, . . ." Sig. DDlv.
Lay culture in Bologna was also influenced by the special relation ship that the city had with authority, either imperial or clerical. Most important for the present concern is therefore to highlight the crucial role of Aristotelianism. With its wide spectrum of variations and de velopments, Aristotelianism was the forerunner of new disciplines and methodologies, rather than the repository of an out-of-date cul tural background usually connected to Scholasticism. 11 11 In Bologna, by the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, the basic struc ture of philosophy teaching was (and was to remain so until the seventeenth cen tury ar\d beyond) a foundation stone in the field of the arts, logic, rhetoric, science, zoology, medicine and theology. One explanation for this continuing in fluence was the comprehensive system of "natural truth" which had been founded in Aristotelianism. From that starting point a variety of different cogni tive structures could be built. This particular aspect was also significant during the sixteenth century, because the fields covered by Aristotelianism were so ex tensive that the answers given by scholars about different Aristotelian issues were extremely diverse. This was not because such scholars were superficial in their applications of Aristotle's thought, but because the "true" Aristotelian thought was constantly being discovered and rediscovered. Moreover, in the pe-
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The wider primary issues in Aristotelianism were approached on the basis that sensory, empirical experience was the best vehicle for gaining knowledge. This foundation provoked a variety of responses and reactions that were triggered not only by intellectual factors, but also by social, institutional, and economic considerations. Bologna was strongly Aristotelian in outlook, and this informed both scholarship and, more generally, the cultural ethos of the Bolognese intelligentsia. 12 Achille Bocchi chose to use emblematic language, and more specifically what I wish to call emblematic rhetoric, to discuss notions such as Effort, Labor, Experience, etc., precisely at the time when in Italy the issue of language was under strong scrutiny, and the new ecclesiastical policy was extremely diffident towards lack of clarity in language. 13 Furthermore, at that point in history, the specific process of objectification of language in the physical form of the printed page, together with the process of the increased fixation on words and the legibility of text, was very advanced (Ong). The Church's attitude toriod under consideration, the humanists came up with a myriad of different approaches, so that in their interpretations of Aristotelian thought there were many divergent tendencies, even though the dominant trend of thought was generally referred to as Aristotelian. The Corpus Aristotelicus was to be put to a very wide range of uses and Aristotle could serve as a starting point for many investigations and diverging results in varied approaches to both the arts and the sciences. This picture is in complete contrast to traditional opinion, which views Aristotelianism as a phenomenon which is monolithic, uniform, and resistent to change in relation to Neoplatonism. Schmitt's thorough research has set the tone for a new approach. He pointed to the different perceptions of these issues presented in Aristotelian scholarship from 1941 onwards. The starting point of Schmitt's research is a close examination of the dissemination of Aristotelian ideas and their further development under the influence of external factors (Schmitt 1983; 1988).
12. The development of Aristotelianism was especially associated with the names of Alessandro Achillini, Pietro Pomponazzi, and Agostino Nifo, who all taught in Bologna, but it was also very well known and discussed by intellectuals outside the walls of the Studium, as in the case of the notary Benedetto Morandi (Kessler, 494-95). As far as we know, Achille Bocchi did not have a personal relationship with Alessandro Achillini or Benedetto Morandi or his contemporary Pietro Pomponazzi. He was however, a close friend of Alessandro Achillini's brother, Giovanni Filoteo, and he was also close to the young generation of Aristotelians like Ludovico Boccadiferro, Antonio Bernardi (Zambelli 1978, 148; 1979), Luigi Camozzi (Schreiner), and Cesare Cattaneo (Colombero). To the latter three he dedicated symbols LXII, CXXXII, CXXXV, CXXXVIII.
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wards such issues was especially prominent in Bologna, the second major power center of the Papal State. Bologna, where scholars of all fields were keen on discussing the hierarchy of knowledge and the pertinence of the use of specific methods of enquiry, quickly embraced the use of printing. At the same time intellectuals became aware that the printing press could become yet another pretext for the renewed turn of the screw by the Papal government. In the middle of the century, the printing press halted linguistic drifts, but the problem of a standard of language was still being debated. Printing was already diffused and quickly accepted but the question remained: how could intellectuals "honor" the Church's policy requesting that great emphasis should be given to religious and linguistic conformity without losing their freedom of linguistic investigation? Carlo Gualtierruzzi poignantly expressed his discouragement after the publication of the Index of Forbidden Books by Pope Paul IV. He said: "... this blessed index has turned us upside down in this matter of books, so that we do not know what to read anymore." 14
13. Around the middle of the sixteenth century the Papal State favored the development of a strong state and the reaffirmation of religious leadership through a very legalistic approach. The difficulty of the relationship between the so-called Civic and Church government was exacerbated by an increasing number of elements of conflict, as in the case of language and in the use of the printing press. The requirement of correctness and of the stardardization of language in Italy was specifically addressed by the deliberations of the Counter-Reformation establishment and by the policy of the Papal State. The question of "didactic legibility" had a paramount role in all the Council of Trent deliberations concerning language and its content, music, and indeed any other cultural expression. In music poliphony was forbidden in favor of monodic music, because in poliphony the words of the text could not be followed easily by the listener. This sort of semantic policy always favored clarity against any complexity or sophistication, so much so that even the popular cantastorie [storytellers] were forced into a policy of self-censorship in their way of singing and telling stories (Romano,112). Still on this matter, the Papal State was against the translation of the Holy Scripture: to read the Bible translated into Volgare required special permission. For a whole century the Catholic Church was extremely cautious about all sorts of literary production and particularly translations of sacred texts. The first "Index Librorum Prohibitorum" was published in 1557-59, followed by a stricter one in 1559, with the Index being reconfirmed in 1564, when the Congregazione deir Indice was set up (to be abolished only in 1757). (Scavizzi; Gendler) The Church attitude was manifested especially in Bologna. On the Counter-Reformation and the language issue, see Garin, 124-49; Segre, 355-82; Sozzi, 49-78; and Fumaroli.
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In spite of this, the literature of emblems —quintessentially enig matic and intentionally open to a va V I C T O R I A EX L A B O R E riety of interpretations —not only Н О N E S T A E T VI' I LIS. emerged, but had an extraordinary success. What are the reasons for this? The peculiarity of emblems and their expressive potential were soon perceived by humanists like Stefano G u a z z o . He was w o r r i e d about plates which seemed to him so per plexing as to require further glosses, like a bad and uncommunicative painting (Clements, 234). Guazzo was writing in 1590, at a time when Renaissance treatises and dialogues on technical aspects of emblemata were being published since at least 1556. Consequently, we can see that Achille Bocchi was not involved in Fig. 7. "Victoria ex labore . . the process of the codification of what we may call "the grammatology of emblems/' Bocchi was well aware of the difficulty, however. In Symbol I (Fig. 7) he declares that the meaning of what is seen is not easy to understand —and he dutifully warns the reader. Thus, Bocchi chooses a different way to communicate to readers, encouraging them to read beyond the information given. 15 What I think is possible to argue here is that Achille Bocchi's choice of emblematic rhetoric conceals an intellectual statement related to two major issues, crucial to his intellectual program. These are the is sue of language on the one hand, and the role of intellectuals and the proper way for them to act on the other. Ultimately I wish to argue that Bocchi's use of emblematic rhetoric was a way to act.
14. ". . . questo benedetto indice ci ha messi/tutti sottosopra in questa materia libraria, di sorte che noi non sappiamo che ci leggere" (Frangito, 87).
15. On the process of reading beyond the information given, see Goody.
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The issue of language: Bocchi's approach The issue of language in sixteenth-century Italy could be summarized as the contrast between the two metaphors of language seen as a "living body" and language seen as a "dead body" (Vitale, 43; Tavoni 1985, 493-505). These metaphors emphasize the discrepancy between the spoken language with its associated oral culture, and the written academic language, with its intellectual supporters. With regard to the latter, it is crucial to note that the introduction of the printing press made the divergence among different theoretical and political approaches to language more evident by the very fact of formalizing them. It also made more public and urgent the decision of which standard of language should be chosen. What was required was a suitable substitute for Latin and its flexibility.16 On the occasion of the coronation of Charles V by Pope Clement VII (1529-30), the two courts, imperial and papal, sat in Bologna. Associated with the event, what we might call "a court of intellectuals" was also created. Significantly, Claudio Tolomei called this particular occasion "II Concilio per il Volgare." 17 It is also important to bear in mind that the requirement of correctness and of the standardization of language was also addressed in the deliberations of the establishment of the Counter-Reformation and by the policies of the Papal State. While this semantic policy was implemented through a very legalistic approach, at the same time, intellectuals became aware that expression through the printing press could become yet another pretext for a renewed turn of the screw by the Papal government. It was inevitable that the codification of a printed literature highlighted the discrepancies among the different regional contexts and identities, where the local idioms were not yet "Italian." Achille Bocchi took a specific position on this issue. In 1536, the Bolognese humanist Giovanni Filoteo Achillini published Le Annotazioni della 16. The form of the Italian language that was later to win had its champion in Pietro Bembo, who established Dante as the perfect model, and his imitation as the ruling canon. 17. Pietro Bembo and his opponent, Sperone Speroni, leader of the opposite faction, were guests of Cardinal Gaspare Contarini. Giulio Camillo, Giovanni Filoteo Achillini and the Flaminio, father and son—all friends of Bocchi—were also present in Bologna both for the grand celebrations and to participate in the animated discussions of language. See Giordani, Sorgato, Pozzi, and Anselmi.
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Volgar Lingua. Significantly, in this work he chose as protagonist and al cxr.vni ter ego Achille Bocchi himself. Bocchi ЛССОММОПЛХПЛ VERBA. REBVS ESSE,NCC spoke on behalf of Achillini, con VIM VLLAM AI'i'ERENDAM INVENTIBVS. fronting both Romolo Amaseo, who S T MB. LXX. was in favor of Latin, and Leandro Alberti, who had no sympathy for experimental attempts and was in favor of the Tuscan language. F r o m t h e b e g i n n i n g of t h e Annotazioni, three important con cepts are expressed: first, a deep awareness of the possibilities of fered by the Volgare for investigating language; secondly, the notion of freedom as deeply linked with the possibility of using a new language, and, finally, a sense of the double ori gin of the "gift of language," coming from both God and Nature to hu mankind, who received it "liberamente e benignamente." In sum mary, the recurrent discussion of the Fig. 8. "Accommodanda verba importance of categories such as en sig. T2v. richment, enlargement, and innova tion in language appear to be supported by an attitude that was keen on trial and experiment. In Symbol LXX (Fig. 8), addressed to Baldassarre Rustichiello, it is asserted that words have to be adapted to things without limiting in vention in language. Moreover, in the same symbol, the excess of so phistication in language is strongly rejected: "Accommodanda Verba Rebus Esse, Nee Vim Ullam Afferendam Inventibus" [Words must be adapted to things, nor must any violence be performed against inven tions]. This stance is consistent with what Bocchi states in the Annotazioni against the sophistication of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili by Francesco Colonna (1499).18 In fact, even if Bocchi used Latin as the LIB.
T U T .
18. "non gia voglio che troppo affettato si pronunci о scriva, come fanno molti, che per mostrar о parer dotti, anzi per f arsi adorare, scrivono о pronunciano un tanto affettato volgare come nel Polifilo ё detto." [I do not want a way of writing or speaking to be affected, as it is when used by many people who, in order to show off their knowledge, or rather to be adored, write and speak such an affected vul-
73 ELENA de LUCA language of his book, for he could not avoid writing in Latin if he wished to be respected at all within scholarly circles, still his Latin is different. He strongly faIIB, PRIM. vr voured a kind of construction influenced PICTVRA GRAVIVM OSTENDVN by the constructions of spoken language. TVR PONDERA RERVM. QJfAEQ^ LATENT MAQtS, HAEC PER For instance, he often deploys in his MAGE APERTA PATENT, texts the rhetorical figure of poliptoto, the repetition of a word many times within the same period. 19 The irregularity of Bocchi's Latin was not due to clumsiness, as it has been argued, nor —worse —to ignorance, but was rather related to his det e r m i n a t i o n to r e o r g a n i z e l a n g u a g e through experimentation. This was to be obtained by using Latin and Volgare, as well as by transforming proverbs into mottoes, using subject matter derivied from a c c o u n t s of e v e r y d a y e v e n t s , exempla or other such rhetorical tools. Achillini and Bocchi expressed clearly the will to choose the best side of any lan- Fig. 9. "Pictura gravium . guage, and this statement is connected to sig. A2v. the metaphor related to the image of a bee who flies from flower to flower.20 gar language as in the Poliphilo] (Achillini, fol. 42v). 19. With regard to the vocabulary used by Bocchi, we can state that he does not use the classical form, but prefers to choose some vulgarisms: scopus instead of finis; pastore instead of pastor and so on. Bocchi's personal use of Latin suggests that he favoured constructions influenced by constructions characteristic of the spoken language. Bocchi basically did not follow the Ciceronian path recommended by Bembo, but neither did he conform to the high Renaissance Latin tradition represented by figures such as Petrarch and Bracciolini, even if his deep knowledge of classical literature is always evident.
20. "Naturam Imitari / Constitui, et varias sensis inducere formas / Nil ut iners, nil non aliquid sit agensve, loquensve / Me sane impediunt nullius vincula sectae. / Sed quocunque trahit species pulcherrima veri, / Deferor hospes, apisque Matinae more, modoque / Lilia per multum libantis grata laborem / Fingo itidem tenui, ast operosa carmina musa, / Aurea depascens veterum decreta Sophorum." [I have decided to imitate nature, to present my thoughts in images of various types, so that the whole is effective, stimulating, and eloquent. I am
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The same metaphor is used by Bocchi in Symbol III (Fig. 9). Bocchi's comparison to the bee can be interpreted in different ways and at different levels. If we consider the Latin which he used in the Symbolicae Quacstiones from a traditional point of view, his statement can be seen as in favour of eclecticism, as in Lucretius's poetic strategy of "miscere utile dulce" [mixing the useful with the sweet]. However, Bocchi mentions several times the effort involved in the writing of the text, an effort mainly concerned with the wish to give vitality to all forms, to lend words and eloquence to everything: "Nil ut iners, nil non aliquid sit agensve, loquensve" [So that nothing would remain inactive, and nothing that does not act or speak exists]. When then, at the end of the epigram, he refers to his "invention"' he shows that he is completely aware about the choice he is making. His approach to ancient sources and language is consistent with a specific way of considering the issue of language. His emphasis on freedom highlights a specific position as well. Bocchi's freedom was focused on the importance of using classical knowledge and contemporary knowledge without constraint or excess of reverence, because only on these terms could he make any subject come "alive," using adequate words and adequate eloquence. In Bocchi's time the issue of language was part of the process of the reorganization of the political and social fields. Intellectuals had to fill the gap between increasingly enforced standards and their own expectations. This they did by reconsidering the use of rhetoric. What intellectuals needed was a new rhetoric, one able to reflect the diversity of their intellectual attitudes and cultural contingencies. In this light, the images of emblematic rhetoric can be seen as guaranteeing the flexibility of discourse that humanists wished to preserve. Through this, they could easily express their local background and their interests, besides pursuing a new fluency of language. Bocchi's Rhetoric: Action in Words and Images Two main factors characterize emblematic rhetoric. One is what might be called the hypervisuality presented through the figurative element. The second aspect is the opacity of the meaning contained within the symbol, which requires an active reading. The first element not constrained by the prejudices of any sect. And in whichever direction the beautiful face of truth leads me, thither l a m drawn; like the morning bee that laboriously sucks the desired nectar of lilies, similarly I compose poems in a simple but laborious style, feeding from the golden sentences of the ancient sages.]
ELENA de LUCA 75 captures the attention of the reader, but does not provide him or her with content. The second depends on the meaning not being confined within a single sentence or figurative element, so that the reader has to act first by coordinating, then by selecting the information and subsequently extrapolating the meaning. In other words, the reader is encouraged to interpret and to make a decision. These observations bring us to the concept of rhetoric in the Renaissance and to the principles on which it was founded. In recent times the debate between pragmatism and deconstruction has renewed the interest in rhetoric. According to Victoria Kahn, the humanists' pragmatic conception of rhetoric anticipates contemporary notions of pragmatism. Rhetoric is considered as "the study of the different conventions of interpretations, the different forms of consensus that are available at a particular historical moment" (Kahn, 23). The attitude snared by intellectuals at the end of the fourteenth century and the beginning of the fifteenth, by Lorenzo Valla in Rome, Francesco Barbaro in Venice, Guarino in Ferrara and Colluccio Salutati in Florence, was powerfully associated with the notion of rhetoric which could legitimate their actions, their writings, their interest in, and engagement with, political matters and, most importantly, their elaboration of culture. In short, in the beginning humanist rhetoric functioned above all in relation to the active life. This was because the practice of literature and rhetoric was at that time often influenced by practical, that is, political, motivations. This, most noticeably, was pursued without any association with "lying" or with purely aesthetic preoccupations. Most importantly, Renaissance rhetorical practice evolved out of the renewed interest in the Aristotelian ethics of prudence. But because within that philosophy both Rhetoric and Prudence are concerned with the contingent realm of human affairs and because both involve deliberation, their aim is a kind of "truth" that is practical and is concerned with action. 21 This connection between the rhetorical activity of scholars and their practical motivation is a crucially important element to bear in mind because, around the middle of the sixteenth century, the cultural context changed so much that such a connection ceased to exist.
21. Phronesis has been connected not with an idea of knowledge concerned with transcendence, but rather with a knowledge that is possible to attain in human life (Aubenque, Dini and Stabile).
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This deep interaction, central to the very life of the city, is testified by a Bolognese goverment document of 1321, which declares that "Without rhetoric, the art of speaking eloquently, the city and other human organisations cannot exist" (Banker, 158). In this respect, the Aristotelian tradition assumes that the notions of rhetoric and prudence involved an act of interpretation, and that this could be seen as an expression of judgement or an opinion. 22 In any case the "actor" had to make a decision. To both prudence and rhetoric was attributed the capacity to mediate between theory and practice, between interpretation and active decision. As a result, it is possible to say that humanists considered writing to be action —and as their own, specific way to act—because activity involved deliberation, selection, and judgment. Furthermore, for them reading was ultimately conducive to action, because it implied selection and interpretation. It was therefore considered as parallel to the exercise of prudence, or, rather, as a form of prudence itself. Assuming that for humanists rhetoric and prudence were analogous, and inseparable, literature was conceived as a particular form of prudence. 23 The hypervisuality of emblematic rhetoric can be interpreted as a further development of the coupling of prudence and rhetoric. This is illustrated by two complementary intellectual quests: firstly, the search for a language that could be an alternative to excessively learned forms and, secondly, the possibility of using a language which emphasizes the primary status of rhetoric as a pragmatic field. Pragmatism in emblematic rhetoric may be embodied either in the content which involves human action, or in its "form," such as the use of figurative features, which, in some way, objectify the content of emblems. However, if rhetoric "is" action and calls for action, nevertheless, the use of a more objectifying rhetoric —an emblematic one —implies a deeper symbolic content. The symbolic element of emblematic rheto-
22. Aristotle's definition of prudence reads: "It is the faculty of judgment which provides an internal rule of decorum or authoritative standard of intepretations, one that is not logical but pragmatic, and that enables us to act appropriately within a social and political context" (Nichomachean Ethics, 6,1357a).
23. Victoria Kahn, 21-29. In my view, Kahn's observation about the connection between the early humanists 7 debates on the nature of prudence and the existence of free will correlated with the activity of reading and interpreting in the Renaissance, is very perceptive. On the problem of human freedom and the notions of prudence and providence, more elements are found in the essays by Antonino Poppi (161).
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ric increases the "potential reversibility" of the text. In Frederic Jameson's formulation: "each can be read as serious or ironic, as simply contradictory or profoundly paradoxical, as undecidable or the occasion for a decision" (Kahn, 22). Moreover, Jameson's definition of the implications of the symbolic states: "[It is] at one and the same time the accomplishment of an act and the latter's substitute, a way of acting on the world and of compensating for the possibility of such action all at o n c e . . . . Much depends, indeed, on whether you think of art as a symbolic act or an act which is merely symbolic"(Jameson, 68). In the context being discussed here, rhetoric was definitely conceived as an act, and so was writing, in the views of the early humanists. Their main concern was and remained active praxis as it related to their specific activities. After the time of Valla, Salutati, and others, while the previous integration became fragmented, yet these ideas and convictions persisted in the humanists' cultural background. Although the belief persisted that writing and rhetoric were actions that can also encourage other actions, in Bocchi's time this connection became even more contradictory in relation to the reality within which it was meant to act. The symbolic element of emblematic rhetoric can thus rightly be seen as "the accomplishment of an act, and the latter's substitute." If this is so, emblematic rhetoric—crucially—is a rhetoric which embodies, in this early stage, a sort of compensation for the non-act, or for the impossibility of acting. It embodies, in other words, a form of cultural resistance to the process of standardization of culture and language —and ultimately the defence of the intellectual's role and identity. Works Cited Achillini, Giovanni Filoteo. Annotazioni della Volgar Lingua. Bologna, 1536. Anselmi, Gian Mario, Luisa Avellini and Ezio Raimondi. "II Rinascimento Padano." In L'Eta Moderna. Letteratura Italiana, Storia e Geografia. Ed. Alberto Asor Rosa. Turin, 1988. Vol. II, 521-91. Aristotle. The Basic Works of Aristotle. Ed. and trans. Richard Mckeon. New York, 1941. Aubenque, Pierre. La Prudence chez Aristote. Paris, 1963. Avellini, Luisa, Andrea Cristiani and Angela De Benedictis, ed(s). Sapere ele Potere. Discipline, Dispute e Professioni nelVUniversita
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Medioevalc с Moderna. И Caso Bolognese a Confronto. 3 vols. Bologna, 1990. Banker, James. "The Ars Dictaminis and Rhetorical Textbooks at the Bolognese University in the Fourtheenth Century." Medievalia et Humanistica 15 (1974): 153-68. Barthes, Roland. La Retorica Antica: Alle Origini del Linguaggio Letterario. Trans. Paolo Fabbri. Milan, 1998. Beroaldo, Filippo, the Elder. Declamatio an Orator sit Philosopho et Med ico Anteponendus. Bologna, 1497. Bocchi, Achille. Symbolicarum Quaestionum de Universo Genere Quas Serio Ludebat Libri Quinque Bologna: In Aedis Novae Academiae Bocchianae, 1555. Copy consulted, British Library, 89. e 23. Boris, Francesca. "Lo Studio della Mercanzia." In Sapere ele Potere, Dis cipline, Dispute e Professioni nelVUniversita Medioevale. II caso Bolognese a Confronto. Ed. Angela De Benedictis. Vol. 2. Bologna, 1990. Pp. 179-90. Brucker, Gene. "Renaissance Florence: Who Needs a University?" In The University and the City: From Medieval Origins to the Present Day. Ed. Thomas Bender. New York and Oxford, 1988. Pp. 47-58. Calcaterra, Carlo. Alma Mater Studiorum: L'Universita di Bologna nella Storia della Cultura e della Civilta. Bologna, 1948. Camporesi, Piero. "Cultura Popolare e Cultura d'Elite fra Medioevo e Rinascimento." In Storia dfItalia, Intellettuali e Potere. Ed. Corrado Vivanti. Vol. 4. Turin, 1981. Pp. 81-157. . La Maschera di Bertoldo: Le metamorfosi del Villano Mostruoso e Sapiente. Aspetti e Forme del Carnevale ai Tempi di Giulio Cesare Croce. Milan, 1993. Capitani, Ovidio. "Introduzione." In Cultura Universitaria e Pubblici Poteri a Bologna dal XII al XV Secolo. Ed. Ovidio Capitani. Bologna, 1990. Clements, Robert J. Picta Poesis: Literary and Humanistic Theory in Re naissance Emblem Books. Rome, 1960. Colombero, Carlo. Uomo e Natura nella Filosofia del Rinascimento. Tu rin, 1978. Colonna, Francesco. Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. Venice, 1499. Colonna, Stefano. "Arte e Letteratura. La Civilta dell'Emblema in emilia nel cinquecento." In La Pittura in Emilia Romagna, II Cinquecento. Ed. Vera Fortunati. Turin, 1995. Pp. 102-28. Damanti, Alfredo. Achille Bocchi (1488-1562) e le Symbolicae Quaestiones: Ricerche per una Biografia e Traduzione del Testo. Tesi di Laurea in Storia del Cristianesimo, University of Bologna, 1994-95.
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De Benedictis, Angela. "Luoghi del Potere e dello Studio fra Quattro e Cinquecento." In L'Universita di Bologna: Personaggi, Momenti e Luoghi dalle Origini al XV7 Secolo. Ed. Ovidio Capitani. Bologna, 1987a. Pp. 205-27. /'Dalle Discipline ai Ruoli Sociali. Proposte per un Percorso di Lettura." Schede Umanistiche l(1987b): 8-14. ."Retorica e Political dall'Orator di Beroaldo all'Ambasciatore Bolognese nel Rapporto tra Respublica Cittadina e Governo Pontificio." In Sapere ele Potere, Discipline, Dispute e Professioni nell'Universita Medioevale. II caso Bolognese a Confronto. Ed. Angela De Benedictis. Vol. 3. Bologna, 1990. Pp. 411-38. Dini, Vittorio and Giorgio Stabile. Saggezza e Prudenza. Studi per la Ricostruzione di un' Antropologia delV Eta Moderna. Naples, 1983. Dionisotti, Carlo. Geografia e Storia della Letteratura Italiana. Turin, 1967. Eisenstein, Elizabeth L. The Printing Press Revolution in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge, 1993. Fasoli, Gina. "Le Compagnie delle Arti a Bologna fino al Principio del Secolo XV/' UArchiginnasio 13-14 (1935): 237-80; and 31 (1936): 56-80. Frangito, Gigliola. In Museo e in Villa. Saggi sul Rinascimento Perduto. Venice, 1988. Fumaroli, Marc. LTLge de VEloquence: Rhetorique et 'Res Literariar de la Renaissance au seuil de VEpoque Classique. Geneva, 1980. Garin, Eugenio. Medioevo e Rinascimento, Studi e Ricerche. Bari, 1954. Ghezza Fabbri, Lia. L'Organizzazione del Lavoro in una Economia Urbana: Le Societa delle Arti a Bologna nei Secoli XVI e XVIL Bologna, 1988. Giordani, Gaetano. Della Venuta e Dimora a Bologna del Sommo Pontefice Clemente VII per la Coronazione di Carlo VImperatore. Bologna, 1842. Ginzburg, Carlo. / Benandanti. Stregoneria e Culti Agrari tra Cinquecento e Seicento. Turin, 1966. . Nicodemismo. Simulazione e Dissimulazione Religiosa nelVEuropa del Cinquecento. Turin,1970. . "Aristotele, la Storia la Prova." Quaderni Storici 1(1994): 5-15. Goody, Jack. The Interface Between the Written and the Oral, Cambridge, 1987; Italian translation, J/ Suono e I Segni. Milan, 1989. Graziosi, Elisabetta. "Fra Retorica e Giurisprudenza." Studi e Memorie per VUniversita di Bologna, n. s. 3 (1983): 3-38.
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Grendler, Paul I;. The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press: 1540-1605. Princeton, 1977. Grossi, Paolo. U Or dine Giuridico Medioevale. Bari, 1995 Hyde, J. K. "Universities and the Cities in Medieval Italy." In The University and the City: From Medieval Origins to the Present. Ed. Thomas Bender. New York and Oxford, 1988. Pp. 13-21. Jameson, Fredric R. "The Symbolic Inference, or Kenneth Burke and Ideological Analysis." In Representing Kenneth Burke. Eds. Hayden White and Margaret Brose. Selected Papers from The English Institute, n. s. 6. Baltimore, 1982. Pp.68-91. Kahn, Victoria. Prudence and Skepticism in the Renaissance Ithaca, NY and London, 1985. Kessler, Eckhard. "The Intellective Soul." In The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy. Ed. Charles Schmitt. Cambridge, 1988. Pp. 485-638. Ong, Walter. Orality and Literacy. London, 1995. Pastore, Alessandro. Marcantonio Flaminio: Fortune e Sfortune di un Chierico nellTtalia del '500. Milan, 1981. Poppi, Antonino. Saggi sulPensiero Inedito diPietroPomponazzi. Padua, 1970. Pozzi, Mario. Discussioni Linguistiche del Cinquecento. Turin, 1988. Prandi, Stefano. "II Capitano Sapiente: la Precedenza tra le Armi e le Lettere e la Crisi della Funzione Sociale del Letterato nel Cinquecento." In Sapere ele Potere, Discipline, Dispute e Professioni nelVUniversita Medioevale. II caso Bolognese a Confronto. Ed. Angela De Benedictis. Vol. 3. Bologna, 1990. Pp. 65-71. Prodi, Paolo. Ricerca sulla Teorica delle Arti Figurative nella Riforma Cattolica. Bologna, 1984. Rolet, Anne. "De YHypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499) de Francesco Colonna au Symbolon 147 des Symbolicae Quaestiones d'Achille Bocchi (1555): Le detournement d'une suite hieroglyphique." La Licorne 1 (1999): 221-55. Romano, Ruggero. Tra Due Crisi: ITtalia del Rinascimento. Turin, 1971. Ross, Paolo. Sentenza e Proverbio nell' Antichita e I Distici di Catone. Volgarizzamenti Italiani. Brescia, 1984. Scavizzi, Giuseppe. Arte e Architettura Sacra, Cronache e Documenti sulla Controversia tra Riformati e Cattolici (1500-1550). Rome, 1984. Schmitt, Charles. B. Aristotle and the Renaissance. London, 1983. , ed. The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy. Cambridge, 1988.
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Schreiner, Peter, and Giovanni Battista Camozzi. Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani. Vol. 17. Rome, 1974. Pp. 297-98. Segre, Cesare. Lingua, Stile e Societa: Studi sulla Storia della Prosa Ualiana. Milan, 1963. Seidel Menchi, Silvana. Erasmo in Italia. Turin, 1987. . "Italy, Preliminary Consideration." In The Reformation in the National Context. Ed. Bob Scribner. Cambridge, 1994. Pp. 181-201. Sorgato, Chiara. "Cinque Mesi di Feste per Carlo V a Bologna." II Carmbbio 6 (1980): 336-43. Soz/.i, Lionello. "Retorica e Umanesimo." In Storia d' Italia, hitellettuali e Potere. Ed. Corrado Vivanti. Vol. 4. Turin, 1981. Pp. 47-78. Та voni, Mirko. "The 15th-century Controversy on the Language Spo ken by the Romans: An Inquiry into Italian Humanist Concepts of 'Latin', 'Grammar' and 'Vernacular'." Historiographia Linguistica, International Journal of the History of Linguistics 9 (1982): 237-64. . "Sulle difese del Latino nel Cinquecento/'In Renaissance Studies in Honor of Craig Hugh Smith. Ed. Andrew Marrow and Fiorella Superbi. Florence, 1985. Vitale, Maurizio. La Questione della Lingua. Palermo, 1984. Watson, Elizabeth See. Achille Bocchi and the Emblem Book as Symbolic Form. Cambridge, 1993. Weinrich, Harold. Metafora eMenzogna: la Serenita dell'Arte. Bologna, 1976. Zambelli, Paola. "Aut Diabolus Aut Achillinus. Fisionomia, Astrologia, Demologia nel Metodo Scientifico di un Aristotelico." Rinascimento, 18 (1978): 59-86. , and Antonio Bernardi. Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani. Istituto della Enciclopedia italiane. Rome, 1967, vol. 9.
"Let your desire be to see God": Teresian Mysticism and Otto van Veen's Amoris Divini Emblemata MARGIT TH0FNER University of East Anglia This article presents three distinct yet closely related arguments. 1 The first is that the well-known seventeenth-century emblem-maker and painter Otto van Veen (ca. 1556-1629) was profoundly committed to the pictorial as a means of communicating the abstract. Secondly, that in his Amoris Divini Emblemata of 1615 Van Veen elaborated this commitment by drawing on the theistic mysticism of St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) and that his book gave visual form to a series of concepts central to Teresian mysticism. Finally, that in his emblem book of 1615 Van Veen formulated a specifically feminine mode of viewing entirely appropriate to this type of mysticism. ***** The Amoris Divini Emblemata is a very complex book. 2 It consists of sixty emblems on the theme of Divine Love, each of which includes an elaborately composed engraving. The textual part of each emblem is equally intricate; each consisting of a heading or lemma set above a Latin florilegium of quotations on divine love drawn from the Bible and the Church Fathers, especially from St. Augustine (Fig. la). This 1. I would like to express my warmest gratitude to the numerous friends and colleagues who read, listened to, and commented upon earlier presentations of the material discussed in this article. It is dedicated to Simon who in the last eleven years has taught me all I know about love.
83
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K?rtfcac! amor en tu pecho, Que ii con Dios fe alimenta, Tu vcras como fe aumenta» Gout* lic/Уефгесскс tor svac» t h e n гкЬ^ Sracc op mijn Hef en com* met my, O p d-лх v t'mrweer nkt vcrnidc, En tbt ghy ^a*rr v.m {ovtjhevrv, Den foewn tiji is nu vooi ogben, Dei louden hr*tt itorm omvlict> Dcr graticn bfomkens пел vcrcogheu. Die plucki, en tor cicract glitter.
Лих фЗч, d'vnfifmn^it^mp % Vmcy юх VIDIT. St. Teresa did in her writings). -^-.^ First, the very theme of Van Veen's Amoris Divini Emblemata m a y be r e l a t e d to T e r e s i a n t h o u g h t . For St. Teresa, loving God was an in dispensable means of reach ing spiritual perfection. For example, in the Interior Castle she asserts bluntly (2:233) that "the important thing is not to think much, but to love much; Fig. 4. Cornells Boel after Otto van Veen, do t h en, whatever most "Deus ante omnia a m a n d u s " (pictorial arouses you to love/ 7 This em part of emblem 1), Amoris Divini Emble mata, Antwerp, 1615, p. 9 (Photograph and phatic commitment to love is copyright: The British Library; call-mark echoed in the very first em C104.dd.26). blem of the Amoris Divini Emblemata. The pictorial part of this emblem shows a sun-drenched glory of clouds, at the center of which appears the following Pauline passage (1 Cor 2:9): "Oculus non vidit nee auris audivit" [Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard] (Fig. 4). An apostolic statement denying sensory perception occludes the view into the heavens. Yet this authoritative denial is qualified once one considers the textual part of the emblem. It is entitled "Deus ante omnia amandus" [Above all love God], a statement redolent of the First Commandment which is indeed included amongst the quota tions below the title (1615, 8). The benefits of loving God are then elaborated in the accompanying poems. For example, the Dutch poem by Van Veen states: "Listen humanity, / Only one must you love, / With your soul, and all your might, / From the depths of your heart and your senses, / That is God alone: if in this you persevere / In MARGITTH0FNER
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pure love, he shall bestow on you / That which ear, and eye, sense, or heart, / Never heard, saw nor could suppose." 20 In this poem, Van Veen first articulates and then neatly brackets the inherent abstraction of the Godhead. He suggests that love is the fundamental means of overcoming the apparent incompatibility of sensory perception and Divine truth, since God will reveal Himself to those who love Him. In itself, this is very much in keeping with Teresa's privileging of love over thought. Moreover, Van Veen's bracketing of the abstraction of the Divine also corresponds with Teresa's insistence on the imFig. 5. Cornells Boel after Otto van Veen, portance of the human and the "Ex amore adoptio" (pictorial part of em- corporeal. For example, in the blem 3), Amoris Divini Emblemata, Ant- Interior Castle Teresa admonw e r p , 1615, p . 13 ( P h o t o g r a p h a n d ishes her n u n s (2:308) that copyright: The British Library; call-mark "however spiritual you are, C104.dd.26). you must not flee so completely from corporeal things as to think that meditation on the most sacred Humanity [of Christ] can actually harm you." Like Van Veen, Teresa was also strongly committed to embodiment, because she considered the embodied, Incarnate Christ to be the most important meditational focus for the mystic. Indeed, in her writings Teresa consistently argues that mystic contemplation of the Incarnate Christ is an essential element of spiritual perfection.21
20. "Aenhoort ghy menschelijck gheslacht, / Dat ghy maer een en moet beminnen, / Met u ghemoet, en al u cracht, / Met 't diepste van u hert en sinnen, / Dats Godt alleen: soo ghy volhert / In liefde reyn, hy sal u schencken, / Dat oor, en ooghe, sin, of hert, / Noyt hoorde, sagh, of kost bedencken." Ibid., 8.
95 The Teresian commitment to the Incarnation of Christ is echoed within the remaining fifty-nine images in the Amoris Divini Emblemata. For within these images, Van Veen gave new theological weight to his favorite pictorial device of embodiment, and he did this precisely by reference to the Incarnate Christ. This reference is made by means of one of the main protagonists of the book: Amor Divinus [Divine Love], the male amorino [little love] embodying Divine Love, who appears in each of the remaining images (Fig. lb). Van Veen clearly adapted this figure from that of Eros [Love], which he had first deployed in his Amorum Emblemata (PorFig. 6. Cornells Boel after Otto van Veen, teman, 103). Nevertheless, "Sternit iter Deo" (pictorial part of emblem Amor Divinus may also be un33), Amoris Divini Emblemata, Antwerp, 1615, p. 73 (Photograph and copyright: derstood as an allegorised verThe British Library; c a l l - m a r k sion of the Christ Child, someC104.dd.26). thing already pointed out by John Knipping (1:54). This interpretation of Amor Divinus draws on the Gospel of St. John where it is proclaimed that the Christ Child was given to the world because of God's great love for humanity. 22 Within this logic, the Christ Child becomesthe physical and visible manifestation of Divine Love, its embodiment. Yet, according to Christian doctrine, the Christ Child was also the Incarnate Deity; the person in whom God was born as man. On this basis it should be clear that Van Veen's embodied Amor Divinus carries great theological authority: this figure embodies and MARGITTH0FNER
21. Teresa's most outspoken defence of this point of view appears in chapter VII of the Interior Castle (2:302-09). See also Green, 48-50 and 67.
22. 'Tor God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." John 3:16.
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renders visible two key as pects of Teresian mysticism, namely the Incarnate Deity and the boundless love of God. Obviously, in the two images where Amor Divinus appears alongside Christ, these two as pects of Teresian mysticism are separated pictorially if not conceptually (Figs. 5 and 6). But this is not the case in fifty-seven of the sixty engrav ings where Amor Divinus is the only representative of Christ (Figs, l b and 7). In these en gravings the figure of Amor Divinus is more than just a pic torial device. If interpreted as the Christ Child, he becomes more than an embodiment: he is the manifestation and incar nation of Divine Love. As Fig. 7. Cornells Boel after Otto van Veen, such, he comes to stand for the "Conscientia testis" (pictorial part of em Incarnate and Epiphanic Deity blem 52), Amoris Divini Emblemata, Ant w e r p , 1615, p . I l l ( P h o t o g r a p h and so beloved of St. Teresa. In one copyright: The British Library; call-mark of her poems she addressed C.104.dd.26). Christ as follows: "He Who came a child to be, / Veil'd in our humanity, / Burns in love eternally . . . " (3:298). So, in fifty-seven of his sixty emblems of Divine Love, Van Уееп af firmed his attachment to the pictorial device of embodiment by link ing it to the Incarnate Christ. Obviously, this was also a reaffirmation of—and a theological justification for —his wider commitment to the pictorial as the best means of imagining and communicating the su pra-natural. This too is very much in keeping with Teresian thought, because St. Teresa was profoundly committed to the pictorial as a de votional aid and also to sensory perception as a means of furthering the love of God. For example, in her autobiography she underscores her enjoyment in looking at pictures of Christ: "Especially when tak ing communion, I could wish I had His portrait and image always be fore my eyes, since I could not have it as deeply engraved on my soul
97 as I should like" (1:138). For Teresa, the pictorial is a valuable adjunct to spiritual perfection; it is a means of visualizing and cherishing the Incarnate Godhead. This obviously fits very closely with Van Veen's own engagement with the pictorial as a means of c o m m u n i c a t i n g the supra-natural.
MARGITTH0FNER
***** In h i s Amoris Divini Emblemata Van Veen did not simply give visual form to the theistic mysticism of Teresa of Avila. By pictorial means, he also formulated a specifically feminine mode of viewing apFig. 8. Cornelis Boel after Otto van Veen, propriate to Teresian mysti"Nee vidisse sat est" (pictorial part of em- cism. This argument hinges on blem 47), Amoris Divini Emblemata, Ant- the other main protagonist of w e r p , 1615, p . 101 ( P h o t o g r a p h and the book, the figure of Anima copyright: The British Library; call-mark [the Soul], the female amorino C104.dd.26). w h o e m b o d i e s the h u m a n soul. She, too, a p p e a r s in fifty-nine of the engravings in the book. The usual scholarly interpretation of this figure is that she is an adaptation of Anteros [reciprocal love], the amorino which was frequently paired with Eros in Van Veen's Amorum Emblemata (Porteman, 103). However, this glosses over the fact that Van Veen always depicts Anteros as a naked male child while Anima is consistently figured as female and dressed. Clearly, she is better understood as deriving from the venerable Christian tradition of conceiving of the soul as feminine, a tradition rooted in medieval meditations on the Song of Songs.23 Surely it is not a coincidence that this was one of St. Teresa's favorite books of the Bi23. For example, the soul was feminine in the commentaries on the Song of Songs written by St. Bernard of Clairvaux, one of the most important medieval mystics in the Christian tradition (McGinn 1995,165-68).
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ble, on which she wrote an impassioned commentary. 24 Within this tradition, the human soul is the mystic bride of Christ, and in keeping with this Teresa frequently addresses Christ as her "Spouse" (e. g., 1:21; 2:54; 2:96; 2:297; 2:361; 3:307). Although she is childlike and hence pre-sexual, Anima is nevertheless explicitly feminine, and this in turn genders the viewer of Van Veen's book as feminine as well. For it is her figure that one should identify with: Anima is obviously the viewer's representative within the pictorial world of Van Veen's devotional emblem book. This is made quite explicit in the engraving for emblem fifty-two (Fig. 7). In the foreground sits Anima testing the tip of an arrow with her finger, an elegant visualization of the title of the emblem entitled Conscientia Testis [Conscience is the witness]. The background presents one with a visual choice: should one opt for Amor Divinus or instead for Profane Love, for the heavenly Jerusalem on the hill or sinful Babylon in the valley? One is, quite literally, to imagine oneself in Anima's place, choosing between sacred and profane love. In emblem forty-seven, Van Veen develops this point further by associating the sense of sight very closely with Divine Love (Fig. 8). This emblem is entitled "Nee vidisse sat est" [It is not enough to have seen], and the corresponding engraving shows Amor Divinus and Anima staring deeply into each other's eyes. The accompanying Dutch poem by Van Veen asserts that: "For he who loves it is not enough / To look but once at his beloved, / The power of love bids him, / That he cannot stop looking. / Love makes unsatisfied / The spirit and soul of human beings, / And thus [one gets] a great desirous heart / Which cannot but help wish for more." 25 Here bodily sight informed by love is presented as insatiable, as always desiring. And this in turn figures the ideal relationship between the loving Christian soul and God: one should always desire to see Him. This again has clear Teresian overtones: one of St. Teresa's maxims written for the nuns of her order contains the following injunction: "Let your desire be to see God . . . "(3:260). So, in emblem forty-seven, Van Veen formulates and presents a mode of viewing clearly based on Teresian mysticism: one should 24. This is the Conceptions of the Love of God. Teresa of Avila, 2:352-99. On Teresa's profound engagement with the Song of Songs, see Green, 112-18.
25. "Die lief heeft en ghenoecht hem niet / Om eens sijn liefste te aenschouwen, / De kracht der liefden hem ghebiet, / Dat hy van sien niet kan ophouwen. / Door liefde onversadich wert / t'Ghemoet, en ziele vande menschen, / Mits dien en groot begheerigh hert / Niet laten kan van meer te wenschen" (Van Veen 1615, 100).
99 look in the manner of Anima, one should be a feminised (yet not necessarily female) viewer in a s t a t e of c o n s t a n t l y aroused visual desire. This point is not contradicted by the fact that the Dutch poem in emblem forty-seven contains several masculine pronouns, precisely because Anima is figured as feminine in the corres p o n d i n g e n g r a v i n g . The poem probably uses the generalizing masculine pronoun to appeal to both male and female readers, while the engraving gives a generalizing feminine embodiment of the human soul with which viewers of either sex are to identify. Of course, this is entirely in Fig. 9. Cornells Boel after Otto van Veen, keeping with the Christian "Finis amoris ut duo unum fiant" (picto- tradition of conceiving of the rial part of emblem 59), Amoris Divini soul as feminine, which probEmblemata, Antwerp, 1615, p. 125 (Photo- ably has its origins in the fact graph and copyright: The British Library; that Anima is a feminine noun call-mark C104.dd.26). in Latin. Thus the mode of v i e w i n g p r e s e n t e d in Van Veen's e n g r a v i n g s for the Amoris Divini Emblemata is consistently feminine even if the mode of reading may vary. Moreover, this interpretation of the emblem book tallies with the fact that its dedicatee —and therefore primary intended reader —was a woman. In turn, all of Van Veen's engravings provide a means of exercising the feminine and constantly desiring mode of viewing set up within emblem forty-seven: they present an opportunity to contemplate—literally and figuratively —the incarnate Amor Divinus. In other words they function exactly as Teresa would have religious images function. They help the devout viewer visualize and cherish the celestial bridegroom of his or her soul, the Incarnate Deity. MARGITTH0FNER
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The two final emblems of the Amoris Divini Emblemata are dedicated to mystical union, to the satisfaction of the desiring soul. These are also in keeping with Teresian mysticism. For they do most emphatically not present mystical union as a dissolution of the self into the absolute and abstract Divinity. Rather, they articulate Teresa's definition of the highest mystical state as a spiritual marriage in which the mystic remains distinct from the Godhead yet also entirely united with him in love.26 For example, the penultimate emblem is entitled "Finis amoris ut duo unum f iant" [The end of love is that two may become one]. This oneness is not articFig. 10. Cornells Boel after Otto van Veen, ulated visually as a complete "Finis amoris ut duo unum fiant" (pictoassimilation of Anima into rial part of emblem 60), Amoris Divini Emblemata, Antwerp, 1615, p. 127 (Photo- Amor Divinus (Fig. 9). Rather, graph and copyright: The British Library; the two protagonists remain distinct even though they are call-mark C.104.dd.26). joined at the waist into the stem of a herm. Their separate identities are then reiterated in the engraving which forms part of the final emblem (Fig. 10). There, Anima and Amor Divinus are shown as two entirely distinct beings seated on either side of a small plinth in front of three metae [posts], alluding to the conical structures which used to mark the end or winning post of an ancient Roman race-course. This in itself marks the end of the book, and, as a means of underscoring this point, Anima and Amor Divinus both rest their elbows on a closed book lying on the plinth. They are both shown in the pose which in the early modern period was normally representative of melancholy, meditation, or contemplation. 27 26. The most explicit articulation of this may be found in Teresa's "Seventh Mansion," the final section of her Interior Castle (2:329-50). See also Green, 48-50.
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In this manner, the entire image gives visual form to the title of the emblem, another Pauline passage, this time from the letter to the Romans: "Plenitudo legis est" [It is the fulfilling of the law]. 28 In keeping with the original context of the quotation, reflecting upon love is shown as being the central goal and duty of the Christian life. In a knowing gesture of reflexivity, the closed book suggests that this is also the end or goal behind reading, looking at, and reflecting upon Van Veen's devotional emblem book. The book instructs the reader in how to attain the perfect love of God by means of reading and looking. That, of course, was also the driving aim behind most of St. Teresa's writings and her instructions to the strictly enclosed nuns of her Discalced Carmelite order. * * * * *
Given the above discussion, it seems likely that Van Veen's Amoris Divini Emblemata was part of the campaign for the canonization of Teresa of Avila mounted by the Brussels court in the early seventeenth century. Certainly, it was published one year after her beatification and seven years before her canonization, the promotion of which was an important issue at the Brussels court. If it formed part of this campaign, Van Veen's book would have added theological credence to St. Teresa's absorbed meditations on the love of God by amassing a series of biblical and patristic quotations on this subject. Moreover, the book also gave visual form to certain concepts central to Teresian mysticism, most notably those of Divine Love, the Incarnate Deity and a form of spiritual marriage in which the Christian soul and the Godhead are united yet retain their distinct identities. And Van Veen also formulated a mode of viewing pertinent to Teresian mysticism in which the viewer is both feminized and in a state of constant desire to see her beloved bridegroom, the Incarnate Christ. Finally, I would propose that this mode of viewing is of considerable significance for our understanding of the visual culture of early modern Europe. As Karel Porteman has noted (103-17), the Amoris Divini Emblemata was the literary ancestor of a whole sub-genre of 27. The main work on the allegorical representation of melancholy remains Panofsky and Saxl. 28. Van Veen 1615, 126. The full quotation is "Love is the fulfilling of the law" (Romans 13:10).
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emblem books on Divine Love; and these books almost invariably repeat the visual device of the twin embodiments, Anima and Amor Divinus first employed by Van Veen. In the course of the seventeenth century this sub-genre spread across most of Europe and drew contributions from both Catholic and Protestant authors. Thus the Amoris Divini Emblemata did not just give visual form and structure to central aspects of St. Teresa's theistic mysticism. It also popularized and disseminated elements of this mysticism across early modern Europe. Works Cited A r b l a s t e r , P a u l . "The A r c h d u k e s and the N o r t h e r n Counter-Reformation/' In Albert and Isabella 1598-1621. Essays. Eds. Werner Thomans and Luc Duerloo. Turnhout, 1998. Pp. 87-92. Bath, Michael. "Vaenius Abroad: English and Scottish Reception of the Emblemata Horatiana." In Anglo-Dutch Relations in the Field of the Emblem. Ed. Bart Westerweel. Symbola et Emblemata: Studies in Renaissance and Baroque Symbolism, vol. 8. Leiden and New York, 1997. Pp. 87-106. Buschhoff, Anne. "Zur gedanklichen Struktur der Amoris Divini Emblemata des Otto van Veen (Antwerpen, 1615)." In The Emblem Tradition and the Low Countries: Selected Papers of the Leuven International Emblem Conference, 18-23 August, 1996. Eds. John Manning, Karel Porteman and Marc van Vaeck. Imago Figurata Studies, vol. IB. Turnhout, 1999. Pp. 39-76. De Maeyer, Marcel. Albrecht en Isabella en de schilderkunst. Bijdrage tot de geschiedenis van de XVIP-eeuwse schilderkunst in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden. V e r h a n d e l i n g e n van de Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie voor wetenschappen, letteren en schone kunsten van Belgie, Klasse der schone kunsten, Verhandeling 9. Brussels, 1955. Emond, Cecile. LTcono graphic Carmelitaine dans les anciens Pays-Bas meridionaux. Brussels, 1961. Gerards-Nelissen, Inemie. "Otto van Veen's Emblemata Horatiana/' Simiolus 5 (1971): 20-63. Green, Deirdre. Gold in the Crucible: Teresa of Avila and the Western Mystical Tradition. Shaftesbury, 1989. Hodgson, Phyllis, ed. The Cloud of Unknowing and the Book of Privy Counselling. London, 1958. Horace. Samtliche werke: Lateinisch und Deutsch. Munich, 1957. John of the Cross, St. The Dark Night of the Soul. Trans. David Lewis. London, 1924.
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Knipping, J. В. Iconography of the Counter-Reformation in the Nether lands: Heaven on Earth. 2 vols. Nieuwkoop and Leiden, 1974. Manrique, Angel. La Venerable Madre Ana de Jesus, Discipula у Companera de la S. M. Teresa de Jesus. Brussels, 1632. McGinn, Bernard. The Foundations of Mysticism. The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism. Vol. 1. London, 1991. . The Growth of Mysticism. The Presence of God: A History of West ern Christian Mysticism. Vol. 2. London, 1995. Meister Eckhart. The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises and Defense. Trans. Edmund Colledge and Bernard McGinn. London, 1981. Muller-Hofstede, Justus. Otto van Veen: Der Lehrer des P.P. Rubens. Un published Ph.D. dissertation. Universitat Freiburg im Breisgau, 1959. . "lit pictura poesis: Rubens und die humanistische Kunsttheorie." GentseBijdragen totdeKunstgeschiedenis 24 (1976-78): 171-89. Panofsky, Erwin, and Fritz Saxl. Diirers Melencolia I: Eine quellen- und typengeschichtliche Untersuchung. Studien der Bibliothek Warburg, vol. 2. Leipzig, 1923. Peeters-Fontainas, Jean. Bibliographic des Impressions Espagnoles des Pay-Bas Meridionaux. 2 vols. Nieuwkoop, 1965. Porteman, Karel. Inleiding tot de Nederlandse emblemataliteratuur. Groningen, 1977. Put, Eddy. "Les archiducs et la reforme catholique: Champs d'action et limites politiques/ / In Albert and Isabella 1598-1621. Essays, eds. Werner Thomans and Luc Duerloo. Turnhout, 1998. Pp. 255-265. Sebastian Lopez, Santiago. "La Vision Emblematica del Amor Divino segun Vaenius." Cuadernos de Arte de la Fundacion Univer sit aria 2 (1985): 3-49. Teresa of Avila, St. Complete Works. 3 vols. Trans. E. Allison Peers. London, 1946. Thofner, Margit. The Bearing of Images: Religion, Femininity and Sover eignty in the Spanish Netherlands 1599-1635. Unpublished D. Phil, dissertation. University of Sussex, 1996. Van Dijk, Aurelio, ed. Bibliotheca Catholic Neerlandica Impressa, 1500-1727. The Hague, 1954. Van de Velde, Carl. "Veen, Otto van/ 7 In The Dictionary of Art. Ed. Jane Turner. 34 vols. Basingstoke, 1996, 32:114-16. Van Veen, Otto. Q. Horati Flacci Emblemata. Antwerp, 1607. (also known as the Emblemata Horatiana.) . Amoris Divini Emblemata. Antwerp, 1615.
Body and Soul: Caspar David Friedrich's Kreidefelsen aufRugen (ca. 1818), and Baroque Emblems as Models for a Programatic Polyvalent Romantic "Marriage" Emblem SUSAN SIRC University of Glasgow
Aesthetic and Religious Context The focus of this paper is a perceived relationship between the complex and ambiguous landscape by Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) entitled Kreidefelsen aufRugen [Chalk Cliffs on Rugen], ca. 1818 (Fig. 1), and Baroque emblems. The underlying assumption of my analysis is that Friedrich was predisposed to an emblematic mentality or tendency due to certain well-established features of the religious and cultural environment in which he grew up, studied, and worked. It is highly probable that Friedrich was familiar with a wide variety of emblem books and emblematic material such as frontispieces and illustrations, including material from the mystical and hermetic tradition, or to put the situation in its correct perspective, it is not an exaggeration to say that it would have been difficult for him to avoid seeing them, and it is probable that he was profoundly influenced by them. The basic question as to whether Friedrich's work (in general or in a particular painting) is indebted to the Baroque emblem tradition as opposed to other forms of symbolism is certainly one of more than casual or historical interest —not least because it
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Fig. 1. Caspar David Friedrich, Kreidefelsen aufRugen. By permission of Museum Oskar Reinhart am Stadtgarten, Winterthur. 90x70 cm.
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opens up further layers of polyvalence, indeed of intentional poly valence, in the interpretation of the paintings involved. It is possible to argue on a broader level that—despite the helpful contributions of scholars such as Liselotte Dieckmann and Bengt Algot Sorensen —emblematic sources of all types are a missing link, u n til recently largely overlooked in the accepted body of cultural material which helps to shape both the theory and practice of Romanticism in England and Germany, in what were by then viewed as the "twin" (rather than just // sister ,/ ) arts of literature and visual forms. 1 Through intensive reengagement with traditions of the Renaissance and Baroque, writers, artists, and theorists in the late eighteenth century in Germany recognised the porous nature of the barriers erected between the arts. This is shown partly in their interest in ekphrastic description in fictional writing, in p r o d u c i n g new types of Gesamtkunstwerk [a work combining all art forms] echoing the earlier undertakings of Michael Maier,2 in their related activity in the illustration of the classics of literature, and especially in the reinvigoration of the general, close relationship between word and image which existed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the use of a "visual language" which, as Josua Bruyn aptly describes it in the context of a discussion of Dutch landscapes, "found its point of departure partly in the spoken word" (Bruyn, 85).3 He goes on: "Proverbs, sayings, and quotations from the classical writers and espe1. Liselotte Dieckmann's article makes the connection between the German Romantics, Horapollo's Hieroglyphica and Baroque emblems very clear; she furthermore juxtaposes Runge and Blake, highlighting the overlap in their ideas and, without going into details, the emblematic sources of their inspiration (Dieckmann, 306-07). Sorensen's work on symbolism in eighteenth-century German aesthetics and literary practice refers regularly to the preoccupation with emblems as well as the Bohme-Renaissance, with its French and English parallels in Saint-Martin, Blake, and Coleridge. It is useful to bear in mind the parallel developments in England: William Blake, seventeen years older than Caspar David Friedrich, clearly draws on alchemical emblem sources such as Fludd and on the waitings of Agrippa, Paracelsus, and Bohme and the Christian Kabbalist tradition, as Kathleen Raine argued years ago (Raine, 51,56,91). Karl Josef Holtgen has also drawn attention to Blake's probable awareness of Quarles's emblems—he was a recorded prepublication subscriber to the Rev. Thomas's new, adapted edition of Quarles, alongside Fuseli and Flaxman (Holtgen, 314). 2. Maier's Atalanta Fugiens of 1618 has musical notation as well as images and text.
3.
I am grateful to Claire Pace for bringing Bruyn's article to my attention.
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daily from the Bible were not only suitable for expressing a chiefly religious and always moralistically colored maxim but could also, either literally or allegorically conceived, give rise to the creation of images, which could in turn bring to mind the proverb or the edifying quotation/' This usefully sums up the sort of circular complexities we can encounter when analyzing images, and tells us why we ignore texts at our peril. The additional complication when considering painters of the later, Romantic, period, like Friedrich, is that they are responding to the explicit theoretical position of writers in their circle stating that material nature in landscape is regarded as a text to be read, or as hieroglyphs to be decoded—but this too is to be found in the poets of the seventeenth century. 4 While frequently depicted for its striking decorative appeal on book-covers, posters, and as a large plate inside scholarly works, Kreidefelsen aufRUgen (ca. 1818) has received surprisingly little serious attention; it tends instead to be treated biographically as an "occasional" painting, though a rather enigmatic example, from Friedrich's honeymoon, or in terms of a rather unusual nature-study as suggested by the bland title. Jens Christian Jensen is an early exception with an analysis focused on telling detail (182-87); Roger Cardinal also singles the painting out as a work of great depth (74-76); Joseph Koerner, while devoting a mere sentence to this work (113), states generally that "Friedrich himself submits landscape to an allegorization that looks more Baroque than Romantic" (142). Charles Sala (163-65)continues the discussion by identifying subtle incongruities disturbing the apparent idyll, and the latest study of Friedrich by Werner Hofmann gives it prominence, seeing it as "formally and conceptually, the culmination of the paintings in which women have a central role" but without specifying the underlying conception (119-28, here 119). Kreidefelsen aufRUgen has never been examined in an emblematic or hermetic context. Yet to the eye familiar with Baroque illustrations, the "hieratic solemnity" noted by Hofmann as a characteristic of Friedrich's sacralised landscapes in general (20) seems to be achieved here by the use of subtly modulated emblematic iconography, conflated from various sources, with the addition of visual references to 4. Lyndy Abraham has an interesting section on these matters in her analysis of Marvell (Abraham 1990). See especially chap. 8, "The Secret Code in Nature's Mystick Book" (165-80).
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emblematic texts and those belonging to the devotional, mystical or alchemical traditions. In genre terms, alchemical emblems are clearly related to spiritual or meditative emblems as Michael Bath defines them (163-64); they are frequently of a revelatory nature. 5 Other works by Friedrich have however already been shown to have emblematic links, such as the paintings discussed by Herbert von Einem in his i m p o r t a n t article on Friedrich's use of a "Ruckenfigur" [rear-view figure] in the foreground of landscapes, which he finds particularly evocative of Dutch emblematic literature, and especially the illustrations of the Baroque artist Jan Luyken (1649-1712) made for J. C. Weigel's emblem book, Ethica Naturalis [natural ethics], singling out five for discussion (Einem 1940).6 He points out that the device of the "Ruckenfigur" belongs to a long art-historical tradition and was frequently used, in particular by Northern artists, in the Renaissance / Baroque period (e. g., Jan van Eyck), extending into emblematic illustrations. Although von Einem clearly feels that he is dealing with highly significant material for the evolution of Friedrich's deeply mystical landscapes, he notes the differences between the two artists reflecting the gulf between the Baroque and Romantic periods and comes to the cautious conclusion that Luyken's Ruckenfigur placed in an allegorical landscape may be related in form, but not in spirit, to Friedrich's use of the device, which is essentially Romantic and subjective, a finding with which more recent critics such as Koerner (164) and Hofmann (256) readily concur, although they restrict their discussion of evidence to the consideration of the rainbow landscapes of the two artists. 7 Neither
5. This aspect is explored by Gyorgy E. Szonyi, Lyndy Abraham (1998b), and Susan Sire (1998).
6. Von Einem gives the date of the first edition of Weigel's publication as "about 1700/' whereas Landwehr states it to be 1690. The Weigel edition I have consulted in the University of Glasgow Library's Special Collection (SM1507) dates from about 1700. Von Einem focuses on the following five emblems and paintings: Luyken's "Iris" [rainbow], "Nubes" [clouds], "Montes" [mountains], "Valles" [valleys], "Nebulae" [fog], and respectively, Friedrich's Riigener Landschaft mit Regenbogen [Rugen Landscape with Rainbow], Zwei Manner in Betrachtung des Mondes [Two Men Contemplating the Moon], Monch am Meer [A Monk by the Sea], Rast bei der Heuernte [A Rest during the Hay Reaping], and Die Nebelschwaden [Billowing Fog].
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chooses to explore and extend von Einem's findings into emblematic images and their texts, though the rainbow image in Luyken (and in Friedrich) may arguably be connected historically with the concept behind the iconography of cosmograms to be found in the alchemical hieroglyph of Edward Kelly,8 or with the almost contemporary sche matic illustration by an unnamed artist for the treatise De Signatura Rerum [On the Signature of Natural Things] (written ca. 1622) for the 1682 Amsterdam edition of Bohme's works. 9 According to the con temporary Dutch emblematist Arnold Houbraken, 10 after intensive study of the theosophic works of Jacob Bohme 11 and Antoinette Bourignon (Houbraken, 394), Luyken became a fervent Pietist;12 these 7.
Koerner does not in fact compare like with like in the appropriate section: whereas Von Einem discusses a known, but lost or destroyed, flat landscape with rainbow (1810) from the Weimar collection, Koerner describes a similar but mountainous scene from the same date (164), but turns his attention to the former Weimar landscape in a discussion of it as an illustration of a poem by Goethe where the rainbow is simultaneously a natural object and "an emblem in an alle gory" (HO).
8. This hieroglyph, recently discussed by Lyndy Abraham, depicts two symbolic rainbows (1998b, esp. 100-01). 9. The illustration is reproduced by Roob with the explanation that the heart of God is like a whole rainbow conceived as a complete circle, which appears divided up in the form of a cross within a circle (646-47).
10. References to Houbraken are taken from the later German translation of the Dutch original. 11. "Theosophy," a term first used in English in 1650, is defined in the О. Е. D. as: "Any system of speculation which bases the knowledge of nature on that of the divine nature: often with reference to Boehme." Jacob Bohme (1575-1624) was a Silesian mystic who was treated as a heretic by orthodox Lutherans despite his profound theosophic insights and his emphasis on Christian Rebirth in the Ger man mystical tradition. He acquired a great following in Protestant Germany, Holland, and England.
12. A most useful account of Pietism is to be found in the work of Carl August Auberlen, published in German in 1861 and in English in 1867. Pietism was a movement of widespread spiritual awakening established by the mystic Lu theran pastor Philip Jakob Spener (1635-1705), founder of the University of Halle, which proved to be the most influential in post-Reformation Germany, and was based on the inspirational works of Jacob Bohme and Johann Arndt (d. 1621), who were treated as heretics in their day by orthodox Lutherans.
111 mystical interests link him with the German Romantics in a way von I'linem (1940, 166) rightly finds significant. The RiJckenfigur is one of the main features of Friedrich's later landscapes, including Kreidefelsen aufRugen, which does not in other formal respects appear to have been inspired by any of Luyken's images for Weigel and is consequently not mentioned by von Einem. There are nevertheless certain features of Friedrich's painting which may echo or parallel the text of Luyken's "Rainbow" emblem, as we shall see later. Furthermore, it seems possible that Luyken, a competent poet, is also the author of the Latin verses of the emblems he illustrates. 13 Von Einem does not cast his net wider to examine other works by Luyken, which appear to be of further considerable interest in relation to Friedrich's output. 1 4 The title page emblem of Beschouwing der wereld [View of the World] is of interest in the present discussion because it is almost identical to that used by Weigel in 1707 for a commercially much more viable edition of the same Luyken emblems, with the Latin text alongside a German translation and a (Catholic) religious commentary, both by Abraham a Sancta Clara, newly entitled, "Huy! und Pfuy! der Welt [Ooh! and Boo! to the SUSAN SIRC
13. No name is given for the author in the edition I have consulted. Weigel appears to have been a fine art dealer and publisher and would surely have put his own name on the title-page if he had been the poet responsible for 100 ten-line Latin poems; Luyken himself, on the other hand, was a successful love-poet in his youth; Houbraken mentions that Luyken later bought back and destroyed copies of the "sinful" love-poetry of his youth, but went on to write (as well as illustrate) religious emblem books (394). Admittedly, these are in Dutch, not Latin. 14. I have consulted the following works in the University of Glasgow Special Collections: Het menschelyk bedryf [Human Occupation(s)] (SM 712), Het overvloeijend herte [The Overflowing Heart] (SM Add 43), Jesus en de ziel [Jesus and the Soul] (SM714), Beschouwing der wereld [View of the World] (SM 718), a German'edition of the above Jesus und die Seele [Jesus and the Soul] (SM 716), De onwaardige wereld [The Unworthy World] (SM 720), De bykorf des gemoeds [The Beehive of the Spirit] (SM 722). Friedrich's woodcut Frau mit Spinnennetz [Woman with a Cob-web] (1801), and compositions of crosses on triangular rocks, e. g. Kreuz an der Ostsee [Cross by the Baltic] (1815) seem to be related to, Luyken's emblems. William Vaughan has also observed in an aside that a small woodcut engraved by Friedrich's brother Christian after a drawing by Friedrich, Boy sleeping on a Grave, ca.1803-04, is "like a design from an emblem book" (1980, 82), but without suggesting a source—it could well be Luyken.
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world!]. 1 5 The titlepage engraving, part of which I have reproduced (Fig. 2) is connected to the text of Luyken's "Rainbow" emblem and arguably to Friedrich's painting by the use of a significant "heart" image. In the course of my analysis of Kreidefelsen aufRugen, I shall be considering the above titlepage and an emblem by Luyken; emblems from the Flemish Jesuit H e r m a n Hugo's Pia Desideria [Pious Desires] (1624); versions of the same spiritual emblems recycled with some significant alterations to the pictures and quite divergent poetic texts by the Anglican FranFig. 2. Abraham a Sancta Clara,. cis Quarles in his Emblemes (1st edition Huy! und Pfuy! der Welt, 1635), as well as a very popular edition N u r e m b e r g , 1707. Title page of Quarles published in 1808, which in(Glasgow University Library SM cludes Quarles's Hieroglyphicks of the 1810). life of man and Christopher Harvey's emblem book The School of the Heart as if it were authored by Quarles. I shall also discuss a hermetic emblem by Michelspacher from Cabala. Spiegel der Kunst und Natur in Alchymia [Kabbalah. Mirror of Art and Nature in Alchemy] (1690). In view of the present lack of definitive evidence such as documented ownership, annotation or direct reference, say in a letter, linking Friedrich to any of these, my case (like that of Von Einem) is based on iconographic and circumstantial evidence. 16 Bearing in mind the comments by Bruyn on the bewildering interrelationship between the visual and 15.1 have looked at several copies of this work, complete with the stamp of the Imperial Censor and a dedication to the Hapsburg Emperor Joseph I (SM 1810; SM 1811; SM 956) in Glasgow University Library. Abraham a Sancta Clara (the pseudonym used by Johann Ulrich Megerle, 1644-1709) was an Augustinian monk and a famous preacher, extremely popular across the sectarian divide; Schiller modelled a character on him and exchanged enthusiastic comments with Goethe on his sermons in 1798.
16. Friedrich's letters, to judge by those edited by Sigrid Hinz, give unpretentious evidence of his pious approach to life and his views on art, but are singularly unburdened with specific references to his reading, apart from the Bible.
SUSAN SIRC 113 textual languages in the seventeenth century, one should not insist on the idea of a single visual source (or a single text) but rather focus on the mode of composition —a common emblematic tendency or habit of mind which leads to the forming of an aggregate, transform ing the received materials into a new entity, analogous with the al chemical process: the Romantics, like the Baroque poets before them, continuously used the analogy of the creative artist as alchemist. 17 Friedrich is traditionally regarded as a highly "original" and pro vocative painter, whose work received both adulation and scorn in his lifetime due to certain unique features which did not appear to conform to any known tradition. His friend and doctor, Carus, also a painter, who based his famous later essay on landscape art mainly on Friedrich (Sorensen, 137-41), said of him in his obituary that he worked "auf absolut originale Weise" [in a totally original way] but, as von Einem emphasises, while Friedrich represents a new begin ning in landscape rather than a simple continuation of an evolving realistic trend, what we may regard as "new" or "original" art never arises totally out of the blue, but is connected in some way with what has gone before (1940,156). For him, Friedrich clearly draws on em blems. This "new-old" quality in Friedrich is recognized too by G. F. Hartlaub, as the result of his reviving what Hartlaub (who has else where written on Paracelsus) cryptically refers to as "gewisse mehr verborgene, heimliche Uberlieferungen" [certain more hidden, se cret traditions] (265) by which we may understand revived strands of Christian Kabbalistic thought and spiritual alchemy, all-pervasive in the Romantic Period. More recently, William Vaughan refers to the "strangeness" of many of Friedrich's works when viewed out of the context of his time and culture (1972, 9ff.). Hofmann, in a discussion of Das Kreuz aufder Felsspitze [The Cross on the Mountain-top] (also known as the Tetschen Altar), remarks that "Friedrich's innovation covertly in volved a return to an earlier tradition . . ." adopting ". . . structures taken from medieval pictures and icons . . ." which at the same time come close to the "complex, polyfocal reality of a modern picture, a characteristic also shared by the structure of medieval pictures" (46). This polyfocal character would also of course be part of the structure of щапу Baroque emblems, and is, I believe, a feature of our present consideration, Kreidefelsen aufRugen. Friedrich is described by Rob-
17. S0rensen provides a concise summary of this aspect (137-41).
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ert Rosenblum in Modern Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition as a pivotal Romantic figure "in the translation of sacred experience to secular domains" (15) and in the art-historical continuum, he sees him as pointing forward to the mysteriously intense emblematic, heraldic or even Kabbalistic (my emphasis) abstracts of modern painters seeking to "penetrate beneath the material surfaces of things and extract a religious essence" (173, 209-10), and at the same time as standing, in terms of earlier categories, in the tradition of genre or marine painting produced by Dutch seventeenth-century masters such as Ruisdael (12,32). It has indeed been established that Friedrich was indebted to Ruisdael's Jewish Cemetery which he knew from the Dresden gallery, in his painting Winter (1808) (Einem 1938; 3rd. ed. 1950, 32). Rosenblum, who is of course primarily concerned here with Friedrich's influence on modern painting, does not draw the reader's attention to a circular pattern emerging from the above observations, though research on the Dutch Golden Age masters like Ruisdael, for example by Eddy de Jongh, suggests links between an active interest in emblems on the part of Dutch artists and a tendency to hide deeper spiritual meanings behind the convincing depiction of the material world. 18 The nearest Rosenblum comes to identifying the influence of emblems is in a comment on the clarity and symmetry of Friedrich and Blake, who "often share this penchant for compositions frozen in the emblems of a pure geometry" (45) —suggestive perhaps of a line of thought not pursued in his book, namely in the direction of the more esoteric hermetic or "hieroglyphic" images, such as those of Robert Fludd, Michael Maier, or the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher, which formed part of the Neoplatonic mundus subterraneus [subterranean world] derived from the Renaissance-Baroque in the culture of the eighteenth century in Germany, to be noted in the works of Herder, Goethe, Friedrich Schlegel and others. 19
18. De Jongh's views, initially controversial, surely now prevail. Goethe's essay "Ruisdael als Dichter" [Ruisdael as a Poet] published in 1816, shows his early grasp of the symbolism beneath the realism of the }ewish Cemetery (even if he gives it the wrong title, despite having a print of it) and other paintings, and as I have argued elsewhere (1994, 442-43), he slyly deconstructs Wille's print of Ter Borch's so-called "Paternal Admonition" (now "Brothel Scene") to reveal the symbolism of the gestic language in his 1809 novel Die Wahlverwandtschaften [Elective Affinities].
SUSAN SIRC 115 Where could Caspar David Friedrich himself have seen emblem books or related material and how do these relate to more esoteric preoccupations? To attempt to answer this question we have first to examine his cultural background. Friedrich was born into a large, modest, deeply religious Protestant family in the university town of Greifswald, then part of Swedish Pomerania, at a time when the in fluence of Pietism (outlined above) based on Bohme was undergoing a revival after being opposed in the rationalist Enlightenment. Bohme's theosophy has a complex and interwoven background; 20 1 shall briefly outline some of his main ideas which are particularly rel evant to this discussion, and it should be noted that Bohme articu lates his mystical doctrine in consistently alchemical terminology, to the extent that God is the supreme Alchemist, and Christ is also an al chemist, who came down to earth to purify the dross. His emphasis on a doctrine of spiritual rebirth, a transformation renewing the whole of one's nature reflects the stages of the alchemical process. 21 Fundamental to Bohme's thought and possibly derived from a fu sion of Kabbalist and Gnostic sources is the idea of the androgynous unity of God (which corresponds to the undivided hermaphroditic unity of Mercurius and the philosopher's stone in alchemy), which reveals itself through its feminine aspect, "die Jungfrau Sophia" [the maiden Sophia]. 22 Bohme also believed in a holistic system of parallels and corre spondences between the macrocosm of the universe and the micro cosm of humankind, a correspondence so close that to know oneself is to know the whole world. In his first work, Aurora oder Morgenrote im Aufgang [Aurora or the Red of Dawn Rising] (1612-16), he relates how with the help of divine illumination he is going to attempt to re19. See Gustav Rene Носке, especially 176-77, where he manages to bring together Kircher, F. Schlegel, Runge, Tesauro, and Quarles.
20. He draws on the mystical tradition as well as that of Neoplatonism; his sources can be traced through Plotinus, and the Neoplatonism of the Italian Renaissance, through the tangled web of the alchemical and Christian Kabbalist tradition of Paracelsus, Reuchlin, and (Valentin) Weigel. 21. My comments on Bohme are partly derived from reading his works, but mainly relying on secondary sources such as Desiree Hirst, Evelyn Underhill, Sorensen and the unpublished Ph. D. thesis of R. T. Llewelyn.
22. Llewelyn describes (179) a work by Leo Hebraeus, De Amove Dialogi Tres [Three Dialogues on Love], as a possible source for this.
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veal the roots of the tree of knowledge in a way which involves clarity of vision to perceive the fundamental connectedness of all things; his view of perception is that all knowledge of the world is in the subject. In another treatise, VierzigFragen von der Seek [Forty Questions on the Soul], he describes the two eyes of the soul: "you have two eyes in your s o u l . . . one looks ahead to Eternity, and the other back towards temporal Nature/' 2 3 Behme's view of the world around us as described in his treatise De Signature. Rerum [Concerning the Signature of All Things] of 1622 is in the Christian Kabbalist tradition that all outward manifestations of nature become ciphers or letters of the alphabet in the open Book of Nature written by God, which can only be deciphered by the spiritually enlightened. Prelapsarian Adam was the original natural philosopher, able to speak and read the language or h i e r o g l y p h s of N a t u r e —the lingua adamica [language of Adam] —and to acquire knowledge of these secrets now, we have to read the text of the Book of Nature with the Inner Eye of mystical insight. Bohme's view of Adam was that there had been a double Fall: Adam was originally an androgynous angel who fell into a state divided into male and female, then fell a second time through Eve and disobedience. To regain Paradise is to be brought back to Divine Wisdom or the maiden Sophia (also a name among many for the Philosopher's Stone in alchemy), which Man achieves through the aid of Woman. The unio mystica [mystical union] with God is thus conceived by analogy with earthly marriage. It was due to the efforts of the Lutheran clergyman Oetinger and his circle that there was a strong revival of Bohme's theosophy in Germany in Friedrich's time. Oetinger was a major influence on the t h o u g h t of his fellow-Swabians, the p h i l o s o p h e r s Hegel and Schelling, the latter absorbing and transmitting his mystical and hermetic ideas to the Romantic writers and artists. 24 Of particular interest to us here is a remark by Sorensen that Oetinger writes about what he terms "theologia emblematica" [emblematic theology] (!) which can
23. "Du hast in deiner Seele zwei Augen . . . eins sieht in die Ewigkeit, und das Andere hinter sich in die Natur." 24. Friedrich-Christoph Oetinger (1702-82), Swabian philosopher, student of alchemy, Lutheran clergyman, and Kabbalah scholar, studied the most important Kabbalistic writings in the original texts with Jewish rabbis rather than relying on second-hand sources as was the norm, and transmitted his fresher reading to Schelling and Hegel.
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be seen as a more veiled Christian (i. е., more acceptable to orthodox Lutherans) variant of Bohme's mystical "symbolism" above —all outward manifestations of nature become ciphers of the Divine, forming a language or alphabet (Sorensen, 143). The links are evident with the ideas of the Book of God and the Book of Nature —the exter nal world becomes a text which we can read. Two of Friedrich's siblings married into the families of Lutheran clergy, and there were thus opportunities for the discussion of these religious developments as well as the perusal of the sort of books that were read in Pietist circles. The reading material probably included such standard works as Comenius's illustrated primer, the Orbis Pictus [The World in Pictures], with its emblematic and hermetic as sociations; 25 Johann Arndt's edifying, illustrated Pietist work Vier Bucher vom Wahren Christentum [Four Books on True Christianity] (first published 1605-10) which was extremely influential well into the nineteenth century; the much-loved mystical collection of epi grams, the Cherubinischer Wandersmann [The Wandering Cherub] (1675) by the Bohme enthusiast and later Catholic convert known as Angelus Silesius. 26 This work, with its belief that Redemption only comes from turning inward and searching the depths of one's own heart, has been shown by Louise Gnadinger to draw on various em blem books across the sectarian divide —Georgette de Montenay (Protestant), Camerarius (Protestant), Cramer (Protestant), Hugo (Catholic), van Haeften (Catholic) —and was particularly valued for its bold mystical flights of the imagination (rather than for its in tended use as an aid to meditation) by Leibnitz, Baader, Friedrich Schlegel, Schopenhauer, and Hegel (Gnadinger, 527). According to Held, Friedrich Schlegel was responsible for reviving interest in the work through anonymous essays about it in 1819 (84). Epigrams from Angelus Silesius were used as the text of the subscriptio for striking emblems in an edition of Arndt of 1679, which Gnadinger repro duces; one of these (523) seems to be related conceptually to Friedrich's painting. 27
25. The Orbis Pictus (first published 1658) was important for Goethe; see Sire 1998.
26. This was published by Angelus Silesius (Johannes Scheffler) in 1675, though parts were written and published under a different title earlier. Silesius was strongly influenced by mystics such as Eckhart and Bohme, but also by the Paracelsan tradition and alchemical-kabbalistic works such as Andreae's Chemi cal Wedding of Christian Rosencreutz.
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Other emblematic material was surely known to Friedrich. His first art teacher, Professor Johann Gottfried Quistorp at Greifswald University, taught him to draw by the traditional academy method, by copying old engravings from his own large collection of prints and paintings or from model books. According to Jensen, he would have had to copy figures and landscapes, in particular those by artists most admired at the time—Jacob van Ruisdael, van der Neer, van Goyen or Claude Lorrain (37). Professor Carl Schildener (1767-1843) of Greifswald, an academic lawyer and University Librarian, with whom Friedrich was friendly and who bought some of his early work, is said also to have possessed a collection of unidentified Dutch emblem books and related prints (192).28 Friedrich mentions in a letter that Schildener has Durer woodcuts which he lends out for study (Hinz, 25). It is interesting to note that Durer, in whose work there was now great interest, illustrated Pirkheimer's translation of the Hieroglyphica of Horapollo into German —thus the vogue for Durer's work reinforces the g r o w i n g fascination with emblems and hieroglyphs. 29 Through Quistorp, Friedrich came under the lasting influence of the theologian and poet G. L. T. Kosegarten (also influential for the development of the painter Philip Otto Runge) who moved to Rugen in 1792, often giving services on the beach which fostered Friedrich's belief that God manifested himself in nature (Krieger, 7). Sigrid Hinz tells us that Kosegarten was one of the most important figures for the dissemination of ideas about aesthetics, literature, and other arts coming from England; he translated English poetry and treatises (9). With Friedrich he discussed the works of Herder and Goethe and he would have learned in 1797 of the aesthetic theories of the writers about to form the new school of German Romanticism. Friedrich studied at the Danish Royal Academy in Copenhagen 1794-98, where the students also followed an academic training in drawing by copying old engravings. He sketched Danish country churches, where he may have come across Cramer's emblems, of 27. This Arndt edition is not available to me at the time of writing, but is in the holdings of the Herzog August-Bibliothek, Wolfenbiittel. 28. Jensen does not give a source for this, but probably had some information from the auction catalogue of Schildener's collection after his death, which is mentioned by von Einem (1940, 156).
29. There is a description and some examples of the Durer work in Ludwig Volkmann's work on hieroglyphs.
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which there are numerous examples painted in churches, as Sabine Modersheim reports (243). But Cramer also came from Friedrich's native Pomerania, and his emblems were very familiar in that region both in printed form and from their use in sermons (Modersheim, 241). Hugo's Via Desideria was translated and published across Europe and happily used by both Catholics and Protestants for over 200 years. In Northern Germany his emblems were, like Cramer's, to be found depicted in Protestant churches and on furniture (Holtgen, 205). Furthermore, Friedrich is, I believe, likely to have seen the large decorative Danish edition of Hugo (Copenhagen, 1738) when he was a student. The Royal Library in Copenhagen has among other editions acquired later a copy of Via Desideria (Isenaci: Typis & Sumptibus Ioannis Aldophi Boetii, 1727) as well as Quarles's Emblemes and Hieroglyphikes of the Life of Man (Cambridge, 1643), both of which appear in the handwritten catalgoue and are safely assumed to have been acquired before 1800.30 When he moved to Dresden in 1798, Friedrich was surrounded by leading figures of German Romanticism who were either living in or regularly visiting the city from other places such as Jena, Weimar, and Berlin —philosophers, theorists, creative writers and artists, with most of whom he had direct or indirect personal contact, and most of whom had a proven interest in the emblematic tradition: in the timespan roughly between 1796 and 1806 the Schlegel brothers, Novalis, Tieck, Wackenroder, Kleist, Carus, G. H. von Schubert, Schelling, Fichte, Hegel, Runge, Brentano were all living in Dresden or visiting on a regular basis. 31 Herder, the inspirational forerunner of the Romantics (much admired by Runge), was still only 54 in 1798, though living on the sidelines in Weimar. Goethe (who exchanged visits with Friedrich in 1810 and 1811) and Schiller were coming and going, at the height of their influence, and Schiller's publication of 30. I am indebted to Susanne Budde of the Department of Rare Books, The Royal Library., Copenhagen, for this information. 31. Many members of this circle were Freemasons themselves or closely associated with others who were, and thus acquainted with the hermetic symbolism of the movement. In the older generation around them: Herder, a figure of enormous cultural influence, was a Mason from his days in Riga; Goethe was a leading Masonic figure; the brothers Humboldt, Matthias Claudius, minor poet and Runge's friend in Hamburg, were all Masons. In Friedrich's inner circle, Friedrich Schlegel, Fichte, and possibly Hegel were Lodge members. The Pietist sect to which Novalis belonged is also known to have had Masonic connections.
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his Aslhclische Brief с [Aesthetic Letters] in 1795 reflecting their joint views was of enormous significance: this work emphasises the holis tic concept of inner form of any work of art, defines art as by definition "Schein" [semblance] and "ernstes Spiel" [a serious game]. 32 Within it there are references indicating the influence of spiritual alchemy and the mysticism of Oetinger as well as a familiarity with emblems: Goe the had copies of Alciato and Sambucus, and was also very familiar with hermetic emblems from his youth, the impact of which I have dis cussed elsewhere (Sire 1992,1994,1998). The publication of Goethe's Farbenlehre [Theory of Color] in 1810 —yet another work with traces of alchemical theory—had an immediate impact on the artists Runge and Friedrich, with its poetic emphasis on the spiritual aspects of col our. Schelling had a great influence on both writers and artists with his new doctrine of Naturphilosophie in his Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Nature which states that the human mind is part of nature and all phe nomena are connected. His later greatly influential System des transcendentalen Idcalismus [System of Transcendental Idealism] (1800) examines the psychology of art, formulating a coherent dialec tical theory of artistic creativity whereby the concept of the imagina tion bridges a gap in reconciling the opposites of natural, unconscious aesthetic invention and conscious shaping of the material. The em phasis on the unconscious aspect of creativity connects with other Ro mantic preoccupations, such as the general interest derived from Piet ism in acquiring knowledge of the self by exploring the deeper re cesses of the human mind, expressed with great mystical intensity in the aphorisms of the Pietist poet Novalis (1798), who knew Caspar Da vid Friedrich; in many ways these form the textual equivalent of Friedrich's later paintings. Schelling's development of a theory of the combination of opposites (with echoes of the alchemically tinged dis course of the hermetic tradition and Bohme) promotes a Romantic tendency to emphasise polarities present throughout nature —life and death, day and night, male and female; the universe or macro cosm is seen as God's work of art, and following the Neoplatonic anal ogy, the artist creates his own cosmos or microcosm. Wackenroder's novel reviving the Renaissance, also published in 1797, Herzensergieflungen eines kunstliebenden Klosterbruders [The Effusions of the Heart of an art-loving Monk] extends the natural mystical symbolism of the language of nature to art forms, in that the main chapter focuses 32. For a comprehensive analysis of Schiller's Aesthetic Letters with full notes, see the bi-lingual edition cited.
121 on both the "magical language of nature" and the "magical language of art"; it also eulogises the art of Durer. It is around this time that aesthetic criticism noticeably expresses the parallel or interchangeable characteristics of Nature and Art: if one can decipher the hieroglyphics of Nature, one can do the same with the code of Art. The consensus among these artists and writers is that Art must depart from simple mimetic imitation of Nature in order to be Art; as Schelling gave their views more precise formulation, he urged them to avoid sterile imitation of the surface of nature and grasp inner spirituality through symbolic forms. A self-reflexive form of art becomes dominant which stresses a radical artificiality; the young artists and creative writers tended to abandon openly all disputes over "originality" in borrowings which undergo transformation in new contexts. There were precedents for this "positive" copying of which the Romantics were aware: in the Kabbalah and in the instructions for alchemy, nothing is invented, only repeated as instructed in a reconstruction of what has gone before, which may yet be perfected. In emblems too, there is constant circulation of visual motifs and texts. Emblematic forms —often u n d e r the guise of the term "Hieroglyph" —were of great significance to the Romantic theorists such as the Schlegel brothers, who were striving to break down the barriers between the arts. Sorensen tells us that in his Berlin lectures on literature (1801-04), A. W. Schlegel advises poets to give new vigor to their verse by the use of word-play and metaphors from "sinnreiche Hieroglyphik" [meaningful hieroglyphics]—emblems —and heraldic images (S0rensen,175-76). As an example of daring combinations of opposites, Schlegel gives the use of stars and flowers in the imagery of Calderon and the Baroque poet Hofmannswaldau and in emblems (Sorensen, 173). Schlegel does not appear to cite specific emblematists, but the allusions he makes are useful: Hofmannswaldau was an admirer of Quarles and mentions him in a work published in 1679.33 SUSAN SIRC
33. Hofmann von Hofmannswaldau (1617-79), an influential polyglot poet, epigramist, and early historian of European poetry, who studied in Leyden and travelled widely, mentions Quarles in the introduction to his Deutsche Ubersetzungen und Gedichte [German Translations and Poems] (1679), rating him with Spenser, Donne, and Jonson over Chaucer for his sophistication and charm. I have not seen the original of this work; the reference is to be found in Robert S. Mayo, 74-75, where the reference in Hofmannswaldau is given as p. 11.
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This indicates that German poets were alerted to Quarles, as well as being very aware of contemporary Continental emblematists. 34 Proof that copies of Quarles's Emblemes also existed in Germany at a later date comes unexpectedly from the Glasgow University Library copy of the first edition (1635) which is inscribed as having been purchased by William Stirling at Weigel's in Leipzig in 1854.35 The reference to Quarles in Hofmannswaldau would also have brought him to the attention of Herder and the German Romantics in the context of their interest in comparative literature and particularly in poets from England, such as the more recent Edward Young, whose Night Thoughts was greatly admired. Coleridge, who was in Germany for ten months in 1798 (but apparently did not meet any of the German Romantics), thought very highly of Quarles, whose emblems he read in the 1736 edition, and probably in 1819 he made the comparisons between Quarles and Young to which Holtgen refers.36 Holtgen recently discovered a German translation of Joseph Thomas's Religious Emblems (London, 1809), published in Leipzig in 1818. It adapts Quarles; I have not seen this work, but the original Thurston and Thomas emblems and text which I have examined have no apparent bearing on my present discussion. The theoretical question also arises as to which German Romantic poets, writers, or artists of those in Friedrich/s Dresden circle took up Schlegel's advice to use the imagery of emblems, which Goethe was already doing (Sirc,1992). Kleist, who was in Dresden 1807-09, and who also knew Friedrich personally and wrote a review of his work, used emblematic imagery in his dramas. 37 Later (around 1835) Brentano wrote a poem which Elisabeth Stopp has argued is emblematic, possi34. I have not yet established the route by which Hofmannswaldau acquired knowledge of Quarles's texts, but he had obvious possible channels: for example, he knew the older poet Opitz personally, who was influenced by the emblematist Zincgref (1591-1635) when studying in Heidelberg, but Zincgref died in the same year as Quarles published his emblems. Zincgref was 22 when Quarles accompanied Princess Elizabeth to Heidelberg for her marriage in 1613 and the two men could have met then, thus creating an ongoing interest in Quarles on the part of German Protestant poets, at least. Opitz later visited Holland and met Daniel Heinsius in 1620, indicating his continuing close contact with emblematists.
35. This copy is SM 882. The fine-art dealer Weigel of Leipzig, also used by Goethe for purchases, was a reputable source of rare items.
36. See Holtgen, 325-31. It seems that Coleridge read Quarles after having read Young.
SUSAN SIRC 123 Ыу based on Hugo or Quarles, noting that when part of his library was auctioned in 1853 it contained broadsheets and emblem-books (Stopp 1972,44-45). Later still (1838) Brentano shows a brilliant grasp of the general principle of emblematic borrowing as a mode of com position in the illustrations he himself designed, according to Schuster, for his fairytale Gockel, Hinkel und Gackeleia [Gockel, Hinkel and Gackeleia], using collage to incorporate elements from Runge, Bosch and Durer. 38 In a further article on Friedrich's close friend Carl Gustav Carus, Elisabeth Stopp describes his "emblematic" thinking (Stopp, 1989). The painter Runge, the most significant figure in this context due to his common background with Friedrich, is clearly, as Sorensen states, to be regarded as standing in the emblem tradition by tending to fuse word and image (Sorensen, 221), and Sorensen also describes how Brentano showed Runge an unnamed emblem book to encourage him to create similar images (Ibid.). Volkmann, quoted by Sorensen, describes an illustration by Runge which ap pears to me to be modelled on a heart emblem by van Haeften or Harvey (Ibid., 222).39 There are indeed many examples of borrowings from emblem-related material in his work, culminating in his famous Tageszeiten [Times of the Day] cycle of engravings executed in 1802, followed by the paintings of Morgen [morning] in 1808 and 1809. Schuster describes how his "hermetic hieroglyphics elucidate arcane images of alchemical and mystical wisdom" (Schuster, 65). 40
37. Franz M. Eybl delivered a paper on Kleist at the 5th International Emblem Con gress, Munich, 1999, showing how he moves beyond simple use of standard em blems in his dramas into a more radical engagement with "signs" in the post-Kant epistemological crisis: "Die Evidenz des Emblematischen im Werk Heinrich von Kleists" [Evidence of Emblems in the work of Heinrich von Kleist]. 38. Brentano's illustrations are reproduced by Schuster (63).
39. The front page of Runge's illustration depicts a burst heart being whipped by an "angel."
40. There are many less well-known examples in Runge's work: an engraving for Ludwig Tieck's Minnelieder [courtly love-songs] (1803) has been demonstrated to be based on the titleplate for the 1682 Amsterdam edition of Jakob Bohme (Schuster, 64). An image also of 1803, probably an illustration from the same work, depicts two children divided by the Uroboros snake-ring of Eternity, also appears to be inspired by the Bohme edition (reproduced in Roob, 436 and 427). His 1805 painting of the Hulsenbeck children is thought by Roob to be modelled on Trismosin's Splendor Solis from the sixteenth century (Roob, 395).
EMBLEMATICA 124 Fried rich and Runge were by then acquainted, having met in Greifswald around 1802, and according to von Einem it was through Runge that Friedrich was introduced to Tieck himself (Einem, 32). There must therefore have been a high degree of awareness of these combinatory collections in Friedrich's immediate environment, yet there is little concrete evidence identifying precise examples. Perhaps the degree of intimacy was in many cases so obvious and casual that special mention of such works and their creators was hardly thought necessary.
Kreidefelsen auf Rugen Let us now turn to Friedrich's painting (Fig. 1). There are many contradictory interpretations of this scene which can be viewed on one level as a playfully programmatic work about poly valence in art. To call it "playful" is not to render it in any way trivial, but to suggest on the one hand associations with the Goethe-Schiller concept of "Play" as an essential component of true art even when dealing with serious matters, and to underline its status as a semblance, and on the other hand to link his work with the playfully enigmatic encoded forms of a more radical Romanticism which leaves the public to decipher its message. As Friedrich himself pronounced in one of his recorded aphoristic comments on art: "A painting must immediately present itself as a painting, an artefact, and not try to pretend to be Nature." 41 A painter building an image in accordance with the new Romantic aesthetic of simultaneously imposing a vision on the subject which indicates its status as artefact, or even emblem, and preserving the semblance of reality faces a difficult task; Friedrich's working methods lend support to the view that he approaches a painting by a process of aggregation, which is not mechanical but arises from a holistic grasp of the composition. His detailed surface realism in the description of atmospheric landscape perhaps suggests a plein-air procedure, but his paintings are actually painstakingly arranged compositions carefully built up in his studio with the aid of previous sketches made over long periods and assembled according to the vision of what he calls his "inner" or "spiritual eye," which embodies his highly subjective emotional response to unusual natural phenomena: "Close your physical eye so that you first view your picture with your spiritual eye. Then 41. "Ein Bild mufi sich als Bild, als Menschenwerk gleich darstellen, nicht aber als Natur tauschen wollen" (Hinz, 115).
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bring out into the light of day what you have seen in the darkness for it to have an effect on others from the outside inwards." 42 In the true Romantic spirit of open-ended polyvalence rather than a unitary meaning, Friedrich was not concerned that the "effect on others" had to be predetermined —the interpretation of a work was a matter for the response of the individual: "it is a real merit and perhaps the greatest for an artist to stimulate and arouse thoughts in the viewer, even if they are not the same as his own." 43 The l o c a t i o n of the d e p i c t e d scene is w e l l - k n o w n : the Stubbenkammer, chalk cliffs in a ravine on the north-eastern side of the Baltic island of Rtigen, which Friedrich seems to have visited often and sketched more than once, allowing us to compare versions of the natural elements. Jensen reveals the interesting detail that the spot, which Friedrich depicts with considerable exaggeration of the existing vertical peaks of chalk, is called locally the Feuerregenfelsen [Fire-rain Rock] (Jensen, 182) presumably due to the phenomenon that naturally white chalk reflects the colour of the sun. He also emphasises the heart-shaped frame formed by the trees in the dark foreground, where the three rear-view figures are situated, through which the extraordinary chalk cliffs loom in a transitional middle ground, with the calm sea and blurred horizon beyond. The sea is not uniformly blue, but striped horizontally with pink flecked with gold towards the high pink-tinged horizon and sky. From the vantage point of the viewer, it is as if we are viewing from the shadows a dazzling and colourful theatrical performance, something on a stage, viewed as it were from a window, which is how Jensen sees it (183), or a tableau vivant which carries an encoded meaning for which we are compelled to search. The three people are not local peasants, but urban visitors who have come to observe Nature. The elegant young woman on the left, wearing a red dress, is holding precariously on to a (significantly) bare bush as she points down over the edge of the awesome chasm where there is a patch of small red flowers silhouetted against the chalk. This deictic gesture is clearly directed at the 42. "Schliefie dein leibliches Auge, damit du mit dem geistigen Auge zuerst siehest dein Bild. Dann fordere zutage, was du im Dunkeln gesehen, dafi es zuruckwirke auf andere von aufien nach innen" (Hinz, 92).
43. ". . . so ist es doch schon ein grofies Verdienst und vielleicht das grofite eines Kunstlers, geistig anzuregen und in dem Beschauer Gedanken zu erwecken, und waren sie nicht die seinen" (Hinz, 114).
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prone man dressed in deep blue at the center of the picture. His gaze is likewise directed downwards to the grass near his face and the abyss beyond, and his top-hat and walking stick lie on the ground beside him. The third figure, dressed in "altdeutsch" [old German] manner in a dark green jacket and soft hat, distances himself from the other two and, leaning against the rock and exposed roots of the larger tree and balanced with no apparent concern for his safety on a verdant bush over the abyss, gazes out towards Eternity as the two boats, symbols here (as elsewhere in Friedrich's work) of the progress of man's soul, sail towards the calm of a mystical after-life. How are we to view this scene? What time of day does it show? The presence of so much color on the water and in the sky raises the question—which nobody appears to have debated —as to whether we are looking at a depiction of a sunset or the rosy tints of dawn. If the natural setting is indeed in the north-east of Rugen, while the rays of the sun are striking the chalk cliff on the lefthand side, then it must, I think, be morning, with all the symbolism of a new beginning, a new life. A biographical reading would connect this with the framing device of the heart as a sentimental gesture: Friedrich's marriage, at the age of 44, to a much younger woman. For this is where Friedrich and his bride came on their honeymoon, and his wife is usually identified in the pretty young woman dressed in red, the symbolic color of passion, depicted on the left of the painting, at the edge of the framing heart, her red dress functioning almost as a drop of blood from the "wounded" heart. Against such a reading it has to be said that there is no hint of sensuality present in the depiction of the honeymoon couple and the existence of the second male figure proves difficult to reconcile with an "idyllic" scene straightforwardly symbolising marriage. A broader interpretation of the painting representing a new beginning of a different kind, religious or aesthetic, brings important theosophic, literary, and emblematic parallels to mind: firstly Bohme's treatise mentioned above, Aurora oder Morgenrote [Aurora or the Dawn] and Herder's long work, Alteste Urkunde des Menschengeschlechts [The oldest Document of Humanity], in which a significant chapter is entitled Die Morgenrote [Dawn]. Herder's work, which is in a Neoplatonic vein about the entire ancient culture of the known world, emphasizing the Hebrews and the Egyptians, the Book of Genesis, the Kabbalah and much else, was reviewed in glowing terms by Runge's old Hamburg friend, Matthias Claudius, and was an influence on Friedrich Schlegel, Schelling, and Friedrich's close friend G.
SUSAN SIRC 127 H. Schubert. In the plan for the "Dawn" chapter, Herder first invokes Apollo, then refers to the Christian God as the Divine Painter paint ing the dawn in glorious color each day, and proceeds to discuss how mortal painters go about the depiction of all these colors which arouse an ecstatic response in the writer's heart (Herder, 238-46). The other parallel which comes to mind is Luyken's "Rainbow" emblem text: "Phoebus the painter is approaching . . . / our heart is also a can vas and God paints His image on it / and then colour is virtue and light is Grace." 44 This is, I think, the concep tion behind the "Catholic" version of the Luyken title-page (Fig. 2), de scribed earlier as having been recy cled by Weigel — the heart image with the eye has been made more appro priate by being placed on a canvas, whereas previously it was not. But in Friedrich's painting, the heartshaped frame contains most of the f%KC artist's microcosm or little world, and in this manner it evokes the symmet rical iconography of the titlepage of Quarles's Emblemes (Fig. 3). Although Fig. 3 . F r a n c i s Q u a r l e s , the heart is also the main element in Emblemes, London, 1635. Title page (Glasgow University Li the titlepage of Hugo's Via Desideria [Pious Desires], it does not appear to brary SM 882). have any connection with Friedrich's work. In Quarles, we see a large heart inscribed with the title and the word Trinitas — the importance of which will emerge later —poised over the East-Anglian seascape with boats. One of the supporting cherubs glances up towards the in visible God the King in Heaven. There are many other elements in Friedrich's painting which might make us feel we are being intro duced to an emblematic landscape. Jensen takes the view, with which I would agree (but many art his torians have different opinions), that both male figures represent as pects of Friedrich himself: the prone figure close to the grass might arguably be viewed as one absorbed in the earthly pleasures and puritlohn
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suits of marital life with what in such an interpretation would clearly appear to be a dominant, imperious spouse, with the other male figure representing the same person turning perhaps in relief, in a different mood, to spiritual contemplation. This was in fact my own initial reading of the scene which I believed was s u p p o r t e d by an affinity w i t h Quarles's emblem 14 from Book 3 (Fig. 4) depicting the colorful sensual distractions of the worldly life which are preventing Anima [the soul] from reaching the spiritual goal of the true pilgrim in a unio mystica [mystical union] with Divine
Fig. 4. Francis Quarles, Emblems Divine and Moral, together with Hieroglyphics of the Life of Man, Bristol, 1808. Book 3, Emblem 14 (Glasgow University Library SM 887).
Love. The fire behind the image of death in Quarles would find a parallel in the barrier of the chalk cliffs interrupting the smooth passage towards Eternity. My revised interpretation locates a different source of tension in the scene and an alternative explanation as to the significance of the chalk cliffs and abyss and offers a more satisfactory explanation as to why the second male figure should be viewed framed in the heart together with the newlywedded couple. The onlooker is by no means certain where to start
Pfalm 120,
Fig. 5. Francis Quarles, Emblems Divine and Moral, together with Hieroglyphics of the Life of Man and The School of the Heart, Bristol, 1808. Book 5, Emblem 7 (Glasgow University Library SM 887).
SUSAN SIRC 129 a "reading" of the polyfocal picture. If we move from the left fore ground to the right, we immediately become aware of the dominant central vertical axis as we follow with the mind's eye the deictic fin ger of the woman guiding us over the edge to contemplate the un known depths of the labyrinthine abyss. The prone male figure has momentarily lost his way, and in deed is perhaps fearful of another Adamic Fall from this precarious position, but he is being helped by the woman to find it again and to make progress in the pilgrimage of life. He has laid down his pilgrim's hat and stick beside him in the same manner as the lamenting questing soul in Quarles's Em blem 7 from Book 5 (Fig. 5), reveal ing his veiled affinity. It is not de s p i t e the i n t e r f e r e n c e of the woman in her new role, but on the contrary by means of her active help and guidance that the man will pass from the first stage of vir tual paralysis on to greater spiri tual strength and the prospect of Paradise regained; she assumes the role of Bohme's Virgin Sophia Vtmatn dmgantur vur mtx al cufwdutuUs TUsTjftcatwus bias f Ъа1. us. or Divine Wisdom. VIf we look at another emblem, Fig. 6. Herman Hugo, Via Desideria. this time from Hugo because the Antwerp, 1624. Emblem 17 (Glasgow Quarles version has reversed the University Library SM 619). plate (Fig. 6), we see Divine Love showing the soul how to thread a way through the labyrinth which seems otherwise impassible. Friedrich modifies the logistics of this spiritual journey, in that the pilgrim has to descend into the labyrinth of the psyche and gain self-knowledge before he can ascend again, reborn. There are echoes here of the emblem texts of Quarles and Harvey, with their emphasis on examining the recesses of the heart, as well as of Novalis's Frag ments: "Renunciation of the self is the source of all humiliation and also the reason for all genuine elevation. The first step is the inward gaze, contemplation of the inner self. To stop here is only to go
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half-way. The second step has to be an effective gaze outwards, a self-sustaining contemplation of the external world." 4 5 As the viewer then follows the gaze of the upright person, we recognise that he has reached a more ad vanced stage, that of the contem plation of the prospect of Heaven in a moment of illumination, all thoughts of worldly desires and ambitions cast aside. The pres ence of the verdant tree behind, contrasting with the bare bush behind the woman (symbol of transience a n d t h e vanity of earthly goods), and the concen 3)ura. Cccliou afpicio Solum, delpicio. trated gaze bears a resemblance Jt>7u/mvlti»ucetum> AX Aequmuwfum т&шфШт: ЩтШтейо i rtunmnp>iheuditurorbe, й ыл С '' ttMtcfuMWttw ore tenet, i лай vtt ss ur.anо mil >m pr . / v t \ «ф
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are quotations from Ovid, Vergil, Seneca, Juvenal, Isocrates, St. Au gustine, Boeutius and from the Gesta Romanorum and the Digest title De origine iuris (D.I.2.), along with Bible quotations. The scope of quo tations in Von Brandt's album amicorum reflects a typical humanist repertoire and in fact shows that Von Brandt and his friends were well-educated, but perhaps not very scholarly. In fact in other albums
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there often are more learned long quotations, not only in Latin but in Greek, Hebrew and other languages. However there are some cases in Von Brandt's album where his friends quote slightly less typical texts. A rather interesting means of quotation in alba amicorum is "quoting by abbreviation," when only the first letters of a certain commonplace or well-known proverb would be given in the entry, as for example in the abbreviation, frequently repeated in friendship albums "M.U.S.I.C.A." (standing for "Mea ultima spes in Christo, Amen"). This way of quoting was very common in sixteenth-century alba amicorum; such abbreviations can be often found in Von Brandt's Stammbuch. However, these abbreviations and their connection with a "normal" type of quotation and with signed dedications require a special study. In many cases the question of how the passage is quoted is at least as important as what is quoted, because it brings into focus the question of context and the functioning of a quotation in Renaissance culture. In alba amicorum any quotation is taken out of its original context; and is often turned into a comment on an emblem it faces or follows. In many cases such quotations interact with the emblems, agreeing with or polemicizing against them. There is an interesting example of this in Von Brandt's album amicorum. Entry C3/C4 (Fig. 1) gives the quotation from Cicero's Pro Sulla (45, XVI); it reads "Litterae posteritatis causa repertae sint, quae oblivioni subsidio esse possent." The whole passage in Cicero deals with the accusations of Torquatus who said that Cicero had deliberately falsified public records. Cicero justifies himself by stating that he took pains to appoint special senators to take down all the words of the informers and also to make them publicly known —so he could not have tampered with the evidence and information. Here the quoted passage occurs —Cicero, Pro Sulla (359), says that his private notes cannot refute the fresh recollections of all the senate, because "written records [litterae] have been invented for the benifit of posterity as an aid against forgetfulness." Did the entry's author intend Von Brandt to remember and recognize the quotation's context? It is impossible to generalize here about the principle of quoting classical authors in alba amicorum; however, in this particular case, as indeed in some other cases, it does not seem likely that the entry's author wanted his reader to know the context. The quotation is meant rather to be a comment on one of the most famous of Alciato's emblems, the one on the immortality which is at-
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tained by literary studies, than as a reference to Cicero's text; the entry's author plays with the meaning of the word litterae which can at the same time mean a "document/record" and a "written monument/literature." We can not even be sure that the author himself remembered the actual text, because he might have just taken it from his handy commonplace book. This raises the question about the similarities and the differences among commonplace books, proverb collections, alba amicorum and emblem books —both in their interaction, influence on one another (alba a m i c o r u m b r i n g into m u t u a l i n t e r a c t i o n several sixteenth-century genres), and in their structural and typological parallelism. There were many sources for quotations in friendship albums. There were, first of all, a variety of printed collections of proverbs, moral maxims and commonplaces, the most famous of those being Erasmus's Adagia. Such maxims tended to be repeated from one album to another. One of the most interesting examples in Von Brandt's album is the entry on the interleaf between signatures C8 and D " Virtute duce, comite fortuna." This quotation from Cicero's Epistulae ad familiares (X.III) became well known through Erasmus's Adagia (Engels, no. 3947). In its Renaissance context the quotation is often translated as "Where virtue leads, fortune follows," or "Guided by virtue, accompanied by fortune" (though there might be a slightly different translation if the quotation is taken in its original context). 11 Along with other commonplaces elaborating on the theme of virtue (Vivit postfunera virtus, Auro nobilior virtus, Virtus preciosor auro, etc.) this was one of the most popular quotations to be included in alba amicorum, and it could be repeated in the same album more than once. Indeed, such quotations, along with the frequent use of the adjective "virtuous" in the signed dedications, are evidence of the popularity of the complex humanist notion of virtue. It is also interesting to note in this context that this adage became part of the emblematic tradition very early on: Andrea Alciato's Emblemata includes an emblem
11. "Omnia summa consecutus es virtu te duce, comite fortuna: eaque es adeptus adulescens, multis invidentibus, quos ingenio industriaque fregisti" [You have gained all the highest distinctions —virtue your guide, fortune your comrade—and you have gained them in early youth, despite the jealousy of many, all of whom you have crushed by your ability and your application]. Cicero, The Letters to his Friends, II, 296-99.
VICTORIA MUSVIK
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with the motto Virtute Fortuna comes [Fortune follows Virtue] which might be derived from the same source. Later we meet the same maxim in the Italian printer's mark used by Domenico and Pietro de' Francesci in the 1570s, where it is often accompanied by the personification of Virtue sitting at the tiller with the inscription "Regina Virtus/' 12 More interesting still, the same quotation from Cicero would often be mixed with the quotation from another classical author, Ovid, "Rara quidem virtus quam non fortuna gubernet," in spite of its slightly different meaning. 13 Michael Bath has shown how the same mottoes and images of Virtue and Fortune (Fortuna or Occasio), in different versions, were often accompanied by the image of a ship, as in Ruscelli's Imprese Illustre (1566) or on the painted ceiling of Pinkie house in Scotland (1613).14 Another possible source for an album amicorum quotation was a manuscript commonplace-book which each of Von Brandt's friends would most certainly have kept. 15 Into that book they would have written useful quotations which would come in handy on certain occasions—as, for example, when one was asked to write something in one's friend's album amicorum. As Ann Moss points out, in the sixteenth-century "every Latin-literate individual started to compose a commonplace-book as soon as he could read and write reasonably accurately," because "commonplace-books were the principal support of humanist pedagogy" (Moss, v-viii). In such books quotations were arranged according to subject-matter under the appropriate headings. This manner of material arrangement is reminiscent of the organization of material in some emblem books, for example in the 1548 Rouille edition of Alciato which had all the emblems divided into separate sections under subject headings. In both cases there is the Renaissance idea of a commonplace at work which, as has been demonstrated in several studies, goes back to the classical idea of loci 12. G. Zappella, I, 393, and II, fig. 1204-06. About the images of Virtue and Fortune see also pp. 7-8.
13. Tristia V.14.29: " rara quidem virtus, quam non Fortuna gubernet,/ quae maneat stabili, cum fugit ilia, pede." 14. Bath 1995; 2001; I am grateful to Michael Bath for letting me use the examples from his unpublished book (2002).
15. On the Renaissance concept of commonplaces and the differences between the written and printed commonplace-books, see Moss, Lechner.
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Fig. 22b. One of Henricus Johannes van Cantelbeeck's college dictation note books (vol. VII) from 1669, "De Causa Finali," [on the final cause] n. p. Photo: K. U. Leuven, Central Library (Leuven University college dictata, list C).
MARC VAN VAECK
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Fig. 22c. One of Henricus Johannes van Cantelbeeck's college dictation notebooks (vol. V) from 1669, "De potentia generativa," [on generative power] n. p. Photo: K. U. Leuven, Central Library (Leuven University college dictata, list C).
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MARC VAN VAECK
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Fig. 24a. One of Henricus Johannes van Cantelbeeck's college dictation notebooks (vol. VI) from 1669, Quaestio Decima Septima. Quid Sit Enuntiatio Modalis etc.," [what modal proposition is] n. p. Photo: K. U. Leuven, Central Library (Leuven University college dictata, list C).
320
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Fig. 24b. One of Henricus Johannes van Cantelbeeck's college dictation notebooks (vol. V) from 1669, "De Visu," [on vision] n. p. Photo: K. U. Leuven, Central Library (Leuven University college dictata, list C).
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Fig. 25. One of Henricus Johannes van Cantelbeeck's college dictation notebooks (vol. II) from 1669, "De Argumentatione," [on the whole of argument] n. p. Photo: K. U. Leuven, Central Library (Leuven University college dictata, list C).
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Fig. 26a. One of Henricus Johannes van Cantelbeeck's college dictation notebooks (vol. VI) from 1669, "Quflestio Vigesima Quarta Quid Sit Enuntiationes Reduplicativae Et Quomodo Exponentur," [what reduplicative propositions are and how they shall be expounded] n. p. Photo: K. U. Leuven, Central Library (Leuven University college dictata, list C).
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Fig. 26b. Dialectica dictation notebook, written down by L. J. Beauvois in 1736, fol. 25r. Photo: K. U. Leuven, Central Library (Leuven University college dictata, list С 36).
324
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Fig. 27a. Physica et Metaphysica dictation notebook, written down by Michiel van den Biessemen in 1676, fol. 417v. Photo: K. U. Leuven, Central Library (Leuven University college dictata, list C).
Fig. 27b. Logica dictation notebook written d o w n by Balthasar Cox in 1686-87, fol. 345r. Photo: K. U. Leuven, Central Library (Leuven University college dictata, list C).
MARC VAN VAECK
Fig. 28a. Physica et Metaphysica dictation notebook, written down by Michiel van den Biessemen in 1676, fol. 190r. Photo: K. U. Leuven, Central Library (Leuven University college dictata, list C).
325
326
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Fig. 28b. Physica dictation notebook written down by Franciscus Josephus Gonzalez in 1739, fol. 6r. Photo: K. U. Leuven, Central Library (Leuven University college dictata, list C).
Fig. 28c. Physica dictation notebook written d o w n by Franciscus Josephus Gonzalez in 1739, fol. 23v. Photo: K. U. Leuven, Central Library (Leuven University college dictata, HstC).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Addenda to The English Emblem: Bibliography of Secondary Literature. Munich, London, New York, Paris: K. G. Saur, 1990 PETER M. DALY and MARY V. SILCOX McGill University
McMaster University
A decade has passed since we published the first comprehensive bibliography of secondary writings on the subject of English emblems. It is in the very nature of a bibliography that it becomes dated almost upon appearance. Consequently, it seemed desirable to provide an update with a list of the more important books and articles that have been published from 1991 to 2000. General Studies Adams, Alison, ed. Emblems in Glasgow: A Collection of Essays Drawing on the Stirling Maxwell Collection in Glasgow University Library. Glasgow: University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 1992. , and Laurence Grove, eds. Emblems and Art History. Glasgow: Department of French, University of Glasgow, 1996. Arranz, Jose Julio Garcia. "Image and Moral Teaching in Emblematic Animals." In Aspects of Renaissance and Baroque Symbol Theory 1500-1700. Ed. Peter M. Daly and John Manning. New York: AMS Press, 1999. Pp. 93-108. Austern, Linda Phyllis. "The Siren, the Muse, and the God of Love: Music and Gender in Seventeenth-Century English Emblem Books." Journal of Musicological Research 18 (1999): 95-138. 329
330
EMBLEMATICA
Bagley, Ayers, Edward Griffin, and Austin McLean, eds. The Telling Image: Explorations in the Emblem. New York: AMS Press, 1996. Bath, Michael. "Anglo-Dutch Relations in the Field of the Emblem." In Emblems in Glasgow: A Collection of Essays Drawing on the Stirling Maxwell Collection in Glasgow University Library. Ed. Alison Adams. Glasgow: University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 1992. Pp. 25-46. . The Image of the Stag. Sonographic Themes in Western Art. "Saecvla spiritalia" vol. 24. Baden-Baden: Valentin Koerner, 1992. , John Manning and Alan R. Young, eds. The Art of the Emblem: Essays in Honor of Karl Josef Holtgen. New York: AMS Press, 1993. . Speaking Pictures: English Emblem Books and Renaissance Culture. London & New York: Longmans, 1994. , and Daniel Russell, eds. Deviceful Settings: The English Renaissance Emblem and Its Contexts. Selected Papers From the Third International Emblem Conference, Pittsburgh, 1993. New York: AMS Press, 1999. Beeler, Stanley W. "The Authority of Hearsay: The Evolution of Rosicrucian Symbols from Andreae to Bulwer-Lytton." In Aspects of Renaissance and Baroque Symbol Theory 1500-1700. Ed. Peter M. Daly and John Manning. New York: AMS Press, 1999. Pp. 229-38. Chyo, Kwang Soon. "A Study on Recent Emblem Theories." Shakespeare Review (Seoul, Korea) 29 (1996): 211-45. Daly, Peter M., ed. The Index of Emblem Art Symposium. New York: AMS Press, 1990. . "The Bibliographic Basis for Emblem Studies." Emblematica 8 (1994): 151-75. . "What Happened to English Emblems During the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries?" In The Telling Image. Ed. Ayers Bagley, Edward Griffin, and Austin McLean. New York: AMS Press, 1996. Pp. 227-72. . "The Place of the English Emblem Book in the Context of Continental Emblem Book Production." In Anglo-Dutch Relations in the Field of the Emblem. Ed. Bart Westerweel. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997. Pp. 1-33. . Literature in the Light of the Emblem: Structural Parallels between Literature and the Emblem in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. 2nd revised and expanded ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998. , and John Manning, eds. Aspects of Renaissance and Baroque Symbol Theory 1500-1700. New York: AMS Press, 1999.
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Davidson, Clifford. "Repentance and the Fountain: The Transformation of Symbols in English Emblem Books." In The Art of the Emblem: Essays in Honor of Karl Josef Holtgen. Ed. Michael Bath, John Manning and Alan R. Young. New York: AMS Press, 1993. Pp. 5-37. DeLong, Marilyn R., and Patricia A. Hemmis. "Historic Costume and Image: A Factor in Emblem Analysis." In The Telling Image: Explorations in the Emblem. Eds. Ayers Bagley, Edward M. Griffin, and Austin J. McLean. New York: AMS Press, 1996. Pp. 117-38. Diehl, Huston. "Discovering the Old World: The Renaissance Emblem Book as Cultural Artifact." In Approaches to Teaching the Metaphysical Poets. Ed. Sidney Gottlieb. New York: MLA, 1990. Pp. 68-74. Drysdall, Denis L. "Authorities for Symbolism in the Sixteenth Century." In Aspects of Renaissance and Baroque Symbol Theory 1500-1700. Ed. Peter M. Daly and John Manning. New York: AMS Press, 1999. Pp. 111-24. Dundas, Judith. "De morte et amore: A Story-Telling Emblem and Its Dimensions." In The Art of the Emblem: Essays in Honor of Karl Josef Holtgen. Ed. Michael Bath, John Manning and Alan R. Young. New York: AMS Press, 1993. Pp. 39-70. . "The Masks of Cupid and Death." Comparative Drama 29 (1995): 38-60. Engel, William E. Mapping Mortality: The Persistence of Memory and Melancholy In Early Modern England. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995. . "Mnemonic Emblems and the Humanist Discourse of Knowledge." In Aspects of Renaissance and Baroque Symbol Theory 1500-1700. Ed. Peter M. Daly and John Manning. New York: AMS Press, 1999. Pp. 125-42. Fowler, Alastair. "The Emblem as a Literary Genre." In Deviceful Settings: The English Renaissance Emblem and Its Contexts. Selected Papers From the Third International Emblem Conference, Pittsburgh, 1993. Ed. Michael Bath and Daniel Russell. New York: AMS Press, 1999. Pp. 1-31. Gilman, Ernest B. Iconoclasm and Poetry in the English Reformation: Down Went Dagon. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. Graham, David. "The Emblematic Hyperbook: Using HyperCard on Emblem Books." In Hypermedia and Literary Studies. Ed. Paul Delany and George P. Landow. Cambridge: MIT, 1991. Pp. 273-86. . "Putting Old Wine in New Bottles: Emblem Books and Com; puter Technology." Emblematica 5 (1991): 271-85.
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Grove, Laurence, ed. Emblems and the Manuscript Tradition. Glasgow: Department of French, University of Glasgow, 1997. Harms, Wolfgang. "The Authority of the Emblem." Emblematica 5 (1991): 3-29. Heckscher, William S. The Princeton Alciati Companion: A Glossary of Neo-Latin Words & Phrases Used by Andrea Alciati and Emblem Book Writers of His Time, Including a Bibliography of Secondary Sources Relevant to Study of Alciati's Emblems. New York: Garland, 1989. . Emblematic Variants: Literary Echoes of Alciati's Term Emblema: A Vocabulary Drawn Prom the Title Pages of Emblem Books. New York: AMS Press, 1995. Heffernan, Thomas. Art and Emblem: Early Seventeenth-Century English Poetry of Devotion. Tokyo: The Renaissance Institute, 1991. Henebry, Charles W. M. "Writing with Dumb Signs: Emblems, Memory and Rhetoric." Emblematica 10/2 (1999): 211-44. Horden, John. "The Connotation of Symbols." In The Art of the Emblem: Essays in Honor of Karl Josef Holtgen. Ed. Michael Bath, John Manning and Alan R. Young. New York: AMS Press, 1993. Pp. 71-101. . "Renaissance Emblem Books: A Comment on Terminology." In Literature and the Art of Creation. Ed. Robert Welch and Suheil Badi Bushrui. Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble, 1988. Pp. 61-70. Hulse, Clark. The Rule of Art: Literature and Painting in the Renaissance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Katz, Wendy R. "The Emblem Collection of William Bragge." Emblematica 6 (1992): 357-64. Loach, J. D. "The Influence of the Counter-Reformation Defence of Images on the Contemporary Concept of the Emblem." In Aspects of Renaissance and Baroque Symbol Theory 1500-1700. Ed. Peter M. Daly and John Manning. New York: AMS Press, 1999. Pp. 155-200. Leslie, Michael. "The Dialogue between Bodies and Souls: Pictures and Poesy in the English Renaissance," Word and Image 1 (1985): 16-30. Manning, John. The Emblem. London: Reaction, 2002. McGeary, Thomas, and Frederick N. Nash. Emblem Books at the University of Illinois: A Bibliographic Catalogue. Boston: Hall, 1993. McKee, Francis. "Bernard Mandeville's Anatomy of the Emblem." In Emblems in Glasgow: A Collection of Essays Drawing on the Stirling Maxwell Collection in Glasgow University Library. Ed. Alison Adams. Glasgow: University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 1992. Pp. 59-77.
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Nicholson, Eirwen E. C. "The Oak v. the Orange Tree: Emblematizing Dynastic Union and Conflict, 1600-1796." In Anglo-Dutch Relations in the Field of the Emblem. Ed. Bart Westerweel. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997. Pp. 227-252. Pinkus, Karen. Picturing Silence: Emblem, Language, Counter Reformation Materiality. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1996. Porteman, Karel. "Emblem Theory and Cultural Specificity." In Aspects of Renaissance and Baroque Symbol Theory 1500-1700. Ed. Peter M. Daly and John Manning. New York: AMS Press, 1999. Pp. 3-12. Potter, Lois. Secret Rites and Secret Writing: Royalist Literature 1641-1660. Cambridge: University Press, 1989. Russell, Daniel. "Looking at the Emblem in a European Context." Revue de Litterature Comparee 64 (1990): 625-44. . "Perceiving, Seeing and Meaning: Emblems and Some Approaches to Reading Early Modern Culture." In Aspects of Renaissance and Baroque Symbol Theory-1500-1700. Ed. Peter M. Daly and John Manning. New York: AMS Press, 1999. Pp. 77-92. . "The Genres of Epigram and Emblem." In The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, III: The Renaissance. Ed. Glyn P. Norton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Pp. 278-83. Scholz, Bernhard F. "From Illustrated Epigram to Emblem: The Canonization of a Typological Arrangement." In New Ways of Looking at Old Texts. Ed. W. Speed Hill. Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1993. Pp. 149-57. . "The Brevity of Pictures: Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Views on Counting the Figures in Impresas and Emblems." In Renaissance-Poetik I Renaissance Poetics. Ed. Heinrich F. Plett. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1994. Pp. 315-37. . "Learning from the Soldier's Helmet and the Windmill: Artifacts in Emblematic Pictures." In The Telling Image: Explorations in the Emblem. Ed. Ayers Bagley, Edward M. Griffin, Austin J. McLean. New York: AMS Press, 1996. Pp. 97-116. Sider, Sandra. "New Resources for Emblem Studies." Renaissance Quarterly 54 (2001): 1574-80. Simonds, Peggy Mufioz. Iconographic Research in English Renaissance Literature: A Critical Guide. New York: Garland, 1995. Vicari, Patricia. "Renaissance Emblematica." Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 8 (1993): 153-68. Young, Alan R. "Wenceslaus Hollar, the London Book Trade, and Two Unidentified English Emblem Books." In The English Emblem
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and the Continental Tradition. Ed. Peter M. Daly. New York: AMS Press, 1988. Pp. 151-202. INDIVIDUAL AUTHORS AND PRINTED WORKS TO 1700 ALCIATO, ANDREA Studies Bath, Michael. "Some Early English Translations of Alciato: Edward Topsell's Beastes and Serpents/' Emblematica 11 (2001): 393-402. AYRES, PHILIP Studies Westerweel, Bart. "Philip Ayres and the Love Emblem Tradition." In Anglo-Dutch Relations in the Field of the Emblem. Ed. Bart Westerweel. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997. Pp. 189-212. BLOUNT, THOMAS Studies Bath, Michael. "'Emblem' as Rhetorical Figure: John Hoskins and Thomas Blount." In Aspects of Renaissance and Baroque Symbol Theory 1500-1700. Ed. Peter M. Daly and John Manning. New York: AMS Press, 1999. Pp. 51-61. Young, Alan R. "Thomas Blount's The Art of Making Devises and the Translation of Authority." In Aspects of Renaissance and Baroque Symbol Theory 1500-1700. Ed. Peter M. Daly and John Manning. New York: AMS Press, 1999. Pp. 201-28. BOSSEWELL,JOHN Studies Tung, Mason. "A Note on the Additional Possible Borrowings from Paradin by Bossewell in The Workes of Armor ie (1572)." Emblematica 10 (1996): 175-81. CAMDEN, WILLIAM Modern Editions and Reprints Camden, William. Remaines of a Greater Work Concerning Britaine. Ed. Peter M. Daly with Mary V. Silcox, in collaboration with Leslie T.
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Duer, Beert Verstraete, and assisted by Rudiger Meyer. The English Tradition. Volume Four. Index Emblematicus. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998. Includes an Introductory Note. COMBE, THOMAS Modern Editions and Reprints Combe, Thomas. The Theatre of Fine Devices. Ed. Peter M. Daly, with Mary V. Silcox, in collaboration with Leslie T. Duer, Beert Verstraete, and assisted by Rudiger Meyer. The English Tradition. Volume Two. Index Emblematicus. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993. Includes an Introductory Note. Studies Bath, Michael and Malcolm Jones. "Emblems from Thomas Combe in Wall Paintings at Bury St. Edmunds." Emblematica 10 (1996): 195-203. Doebler, John. "Thomas Combe's The Theater of Tine Devices: A Renaissance English Emblem Book." Early Drama, Art, and Music Review 12 (1990): 34-44. Doloff, Steven. "Patience's Song in King Lear and Thomas Combe's The Theater of Fine Devices." Huntington Library Quarterly 57 (1994): 311-13. Luborsky, Ruth Samson. "Further Evidence for the 1593 Edition of Combe's E m b l e m s : The Title Page of Greene's Arbasto." Emblematica 8 (1994): 179-180. Saunders, Alison. "The Theatre des bons engins through English Eyes (La Perriere, Combe and Whitney)." Revue de Litterature Comparee 64 (1990): 653-73. Silcox, Mary V "Three (?) Editions of Combe's Theater of Fine Devices/' Emblematica 9 (1995): 217-19. DANIEL, SAMUEL Studies Drysdall, Denis L. "Samuel Daniel and Abraham Fraunce on the Device and the Emblem." In The Art of the Emblem: Essays in Honor of Karl Josef Holtgen. Ed. Michael Bath, John Manning, and Alan R. Young. New York: AMS Press, 1993. Pp. 143-60.
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DREXEL, JEREMIAS Studies Young, Alan. "Jeremias Drexel's The Christians Zodiake (1647) and Protestant Meditation." In Emblematik und Kunst der Jesuiten in Bayern: Einflufi und Wirkung. Ed. Peter M. Daly, G. Richard Dimler, S. J., and Rita Haub. "Imago Figurata" Studies Vol. 3. Turnhout: Brepols, 2000. Pp. 251-68. FARLEY, ROBERT Studies Farnsworth, Jane. "Robert Farley's Kalendarium Humanae Vitae: A Study in Emblematic Strategies." Emblematica 7 (1993): 79-96. G., H. {Mirrour of Maiestie) Modern Editions and Reprints G., H. The Mirrour ofMaiestie. Ed. Peter M. Daly, with Mary V. Silcox, in collaboration with Leslie T. Duer, Beert Verstraete, and assisted by Rudiger Meyer. The English Tradition. Volume Four. Index Emblematicus. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998. Includes an Introductory Note. HALL, JOHN Studies Mantz, D. C., S. E. Gardner and E. M. Ramsden. "'The Benefit of an Image, Without the Offence': Anglo-Dutch Emblematics and Hall's Liberation of the Lyric Soul." In Anglo-Dutch Relations in the Field of the Emblem. Ed. Bart Westerweel. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997. Pp. 253-76. HARVEY, CHRISTOPHER Studies Scholz, B e r n h a r d F. " E m b l e m a t i c W o r d - I m a g e Relations in Benedictus van Haeften's Schola cordis (Antwerpen, 1629) and Christopher Harvey's School of the Heart (London, 1647/1664)." In Anglo-Dutch Relations in the Field of the Emblem. Ed. Bart Westerweel. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997. Pp. 149-76.
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HAWKINS, HENRY Modern Editions and Reprints Hawkins, Henry. Partheneia sacra 1633. Ed. Karl Josef Holtgen. Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1993. Studies Heltgen, Karl Josef. "Introduction" to Partheneia sacra 1633. Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1993. Pp. 1-14. . "Emblem and Meditation: Some English Emblem Books and their Jesuit Models." Explorations in Renaissance Culture 18 (1992): 55-91. . "The Emblematic Theory and Practice of the English Jesuit Henry Hawkins (1577-1646)." In Renaissance-Poetik I Renaissance Poetics. Ed. Heinrich F. Plett. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1994. Pp. 338-61. K o p p e n f e l s , W e r n e r v o n . "Miroirs flottants: Barocke Naturreflexionen im anglo-franzosischen Dialog-Die 'poetes libertins/ Etienne Binet, Henry Hawkins und Andrew Marvell." Poetica 24 (1992): 1-31. M., E. Ashrea Studies Astington, John H. "The Illustrations to Ashrea, 1665." In Deviceful Settings: The English Renaissance Emblem and Its Contexts. Selected Papers From the Third International Emblem Conference, Pittsburgh, 1993. Ed. Michael Bath and Daniel Russell. New York: AMS Press, 1999. Pp. 207-28. MARSHALL, WILLIAM Studies Bath, Michael, and Malcolm Jones. "Emblems and Trencher Decorations: Further Examples." Emblematica 10 (1996): 205-10. MONTENAY, GEORGETTE DE Studies Grieco, Sara F. Matthews. "Georgette de Montenay: A Different Voice in Sixteenth-Century Emblematics." Renaissance Quarterly 47 (1994): 793-871.
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NOOT, JAN VAN DER Studies Gilman, Ernest B. "Spenser's 'Painted Forgery'." In Iconoclasm and Poetry in the English Reformation: Down Went Dagon. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. Pp. 61-83. PEACHAM, HENRY Studies Baird-Lange, Lorrayne Y. "Victim Criminalized: Iconographic Traditions and Peacham's Ganymede." In Traditions and Innovations: Essays on British Literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Ed. David G. Allen and Robert A. White. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1990. Pp. 231-50. Dundas, Judith. "Unriddling the Antique: Peacham's Emblematic Art." In Deviceful Settings: The English Renaissance Emblem and Its Contexts. Selected Papers From the Third International Emblem Conference, Pittsburgh, 1993. Ed. Michael Bath and Daniel Russell. New York: AMS Press, 1999. Pp. 55-81. . "Imitation and Originality in Peacham's Emblems." In Anglo-Dutch Relations in the Field of the Emblem. Ed. Bart Westerweel. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997. Pp. 107-21. Madhok, Punam. "The Drawing Books of Henry Peacham and Jan de Bisschop and the Place of Drawing in the Education of a Renaissance Gentleman." Diss. University of Illinois, Urbana, 1993. R a a s v e l d , Paul Peter. " M u s i c a l N o t a t i o n s in E m b l e m s . " Emblematica 5 (1991): 31-56. Tung, Mason. "Fables in Emblems: A Study of Peacham's Use of Aesop and Aesopics in Minerva Britanna." Studies in Iconography 12 (1988): 43-60. . "A Reference Index to Peacham's Manuscript Emblem Books and Minerva Britanna." Emblematica 6 (1992): 105-46. . "From Theory to Practice: A Study of the Theoretical Bases of Peacham's Emblematic Art." Studies in Iconography 18 (1997): 187-219. Young, Alan R. "Jacobean Authority and Peacham's Manuscript Emblems." In Deviceful Settings: The English Renaissance Emblem and Its Contexts. Selected Papers From the Third International Em-
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blem Conference, Pittsburgh, 1993. Ed. Michael Bath and Daniel Russell. New York: AMS Press, 1999. Pp. 33-53. QUARLES, FRANCIS Modern Editions and Reprints Quarles, Francis. Emblemes (1635) by Francis Quarles. Ed. A. D. Cousins. Delmar, New York: Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints, 1991. . Francis Quarles: "Fmblemes" (1635) and "Hieroglyphikes of the Life of Man" (1638). Ed. Karl Josef Holtgen and John Horden. Hildesheim, Zurich, New York: Olms Verlag, 1993. Studies Cousins, A. D. "Introduction" to Emblemes (1635) by Francis Quarles. Delmar, New York: Scholars 7 Facsimiles & Reprints, 1991. Gilman, Ernest B. "Quarles's Emblematic Agon: 'Break That Fond Glasse'." In Iconoclasm and Poetry in the English Reformation: Down Went Dagon. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. Pp. 85-116. Heffernan, Thomas. "The Book of Scripture and of Nature and Early Seventeenth-Century English Emblem Poetry." Yearbook of Interdisciplinary Studies in the Fine Arts 3 (1992): 531-81. Hill, Elizabeth K. "The Parable of the Absent Lover: Joy and Anguish in Quarles' Emblemes/' Greyfriar 30 (1989-90): 13-34. . "Quarles as Dramatist." Comparative Drama 29 (1995): 168-82. Holtgen, Karl Josef. "Emblem and Meditation: Some English Emblem Books and their Jesuit Models." Explorations in Renaissance Culture 18 (1992): 55-91. . "Catholic Pictures versus Protestant Words? The Adaptation of the Jesuit Sources in Quarles's Emblemes/' Emblematica 9 (1995): 221-38. . "Religious Emblems (1809) by John Thurston and Joseph Thomas and its Links with Francis Quarles and William Blake." Emblematica 10 (1996): 107-43. ."Two Francis Quarleses: The Emblem Poet and the Suffolk Pastor." English Manuscript Studies 1100-1700 7 (199?): 131-61. . "Francis Quarles and the Low Countries." In Anglo-Dutch Relations in the Field of the Emblem. Ed. Bart Westerweel. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997. Pp. 123-48.
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. "New Verse by Francis Quarles: The Portland Manuscripts, Metrical Psalms and the Bay Psalm Book." English Literary Renaissance 28 (1998): 118-41. Horden, John. "The Christian Pilgrim, 1652, and Francis Quarles's Emblemes and Hieroglyphikes, 1643/' Emblematica 4 (1989): 63-90. Randall, Dale B. J. "Phosphore Redde Diem: Ancient Starlight in Quarles 7 Emblemes 1.14.22." John Donne Journal 6 (1987): 91-103. Wilcher, Robert. "Francis Quarles and the Crisis of Royalism." Critical Survey 5 (1993): 252-62. S., P. (translation of Paradin) Modern Editions and Reprints S., P. The Heroicall Devises of M. Claudius Paradin. Ed. Peter M. Daly, with Mary V. Silcox, in collaboration with Leslie T. Duer, Beert Verstraete, and assisted by Rudiger Meyer. The English Tradition. Volume Two. Index Emblematicus. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993. Includes an Introductory Note. Studies Daly, Peter M. "Paradin in Sixteenth-Century England: An Aspect of the Reception of Continental Imprese." In Emblematic Perceptions: Festschrift for William S. Heckscher. Ed. Peter M. Daly and Daniel S. Russell. Baden-Baden: Valentin Koerner Verlag, 1997. Pp. 61-91. TOPSELL EDWARD Studies Bath, Michael. "Some Early English Translations of Alciato; Edward Topsell's Beastes and Serpents." Emblematica 11 (2001): 393-402. VEEN, OTTO VAN Modern Editions and Reprints Veen, Otto van. Amorum Emblemata. Ed. Karel Porteman. Aldershot, England: Scolar, 1996. Veen, Otto van. Amorum Emblemata. Ed. Peter M. Daly, with Mary V. Silcox, in collaboration with Leslie T. Duer, Beert Verstraete, and assisted by Rudiger Meyer. The English Tradition. Volume Four. Index Emblematicus. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998. Includes an Introductory Note.
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Studies Bath, Michael. "Vaenius Abroad: English and Scottish Reception of the Emblemata Horatiana." In Anglo-Dutch Relations in the Field of the Emblem. Ed. Bart Westerweel. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997. Pp. 87-106. Porteman, Karel. "Introduction" to Amorum Emblemata. Aldershot, England: Scolar, 1996. Simonds, Peggy Munoz. "The Herculean Lover in the Emblems of Cranach and Vaenius." In Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Torontonensis. Ed. Alexander Dalzell, Charles Fantazzi, and Richard Schoeck. Binghamton, NY: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1991. Pp. 697-710. WHITEHALL, ROBERT Studies Manning, Gillian. "Hexastichon Hieron: A Hitherto Unrecorded English Emblem Book of the Restoration Period." Emblematica 6 (1992): 307-22. WHITNEY, GEFFREY Studies Borris, Kenneth, and M. Morgan Holmes. "Whitney's Choice of Emblemes: Anglo-Dutch Politics and the Order of Ideal Repatriation." Emblematica 8 (1994): 81-132. Manning, John. "Whitney's Choice of Emblemes: A Reassessment." Renaissance Studies 4 (1990): 155-200. Jones, Malcolm. "The Hangman's Stone and the Unwonted Fruit: Two Emblems of Folkloric Origin." Emblematica 5 (1991): 287-99. Silcox, Mary V. "'Gleaninges out of other mens harvestes': Alciato in Whitney's A Choice of Emblemes/' In The Art of the Emblem: Essays in Honor of Karl Josef Holtgen. Ed. Michael Bath, John Manning and Alan R. Young. New York: AMS Press, 1993. Pp. 161-200. Tung, Mason. "Whitney's Marginal References: Corrections and Addenda to the Index Emblematicus." Emblematica 5 (1991): 379-89. Tuskes, Gabor. "Imitation and Adaptation in Late Humanist Emb l e m a t i c P o e t r y : Z s a m b o k y ( S a m b u c u s ) and W h i t n e y . " Emblematica 11 (2001): 261-92.
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WILLET, ANDREW Modern Editions and Reprints Willet, Andrew. Sacrorum Emblematum Centuria Una. Ed. Peter M. Daly, with Mary V. Silcox, in collaboration with Leslie T. Duer, Beert Verstraete, and assisted by Rudiger Meyer. The English Tradition. Volume Two. Index Emblematicus. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993. Includes an Introductory Note. Studies Moseley, C. W. R. D. "Andrew Willet's Emblem Book: A Reconsideration." Yearbook of English Studies 20 (1990): 182-207. WITHER, GEORGE Studies Bath, Michael. "The Sources of John Abbott's Pattern Book." Architectural History 41 (1998): 49-66. Daly, Peter M. "The Arbitrariness of George Wither's Emblems: Reconsidered." In The Art of the Emblem. Studies in Honour of Karl Josef Holtgen. Ed. Michael Bath, John Manning and Alan R. Young. New York: AMS Press, 1993. Pp. 201-34. . "George Wither's Use of Emblem Terminology." In Aspects of Renaissance and Baroque Symbol Theory. Ed. Peter M. Daly and John Manning. New York: AMS Press, 1999. Pp. 27-38. Farnsworth, Jane. "'An equall, and a mutuall flame': George Wither's A Collection of Emblemes 1635 and Caroline Court Culture." In Deviceful Settings: The English Renaissance Emblem and Its Contexts. Selected Papers From the Third International Emblem Conference, Pittsburgh, 1993. Ed. Michael Bath and Daniel Russell. New York: AMS Press, 1999. Pp. 83-96. Young, Alan R. "George Wither, the Netherlands, and an Emblem of Two Pots." In Anglo-Dutch Relations in the Field of the Emblem. Ed. Bart Westerweel. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997. Pp. 177-87. . "Wither's Second Emblem Book: Divine Poems/' Emblematica 7 (1993): 189-99. MANUSCRIPT COLLECTIONS AND MANUSCRIPT VERSIONS OF PRINTED BOOKS Manning, John. "An Unedited and Unpublished Manuscript Translation of Les Emblemes d'Othon Vaenius." Emblematica 6 (1992): 325-55.
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"An Uncditrd and Unpublished Sixteenth-Century English Translation of Some Alciato Emblems: British Library Additional MS. 61822." Emblematica 7 (1993): 181-88. Tung, Mason. "A Reference Index to Peacham's Manuscript Emblem Books and Minerva Britanna." Emblematica 6 (1992): 105-46. Young, Alan R., assisted by Beert Verstraete. Henry Peacham's Manuscript Emblem Books. The English Tradition. Volume Five. Index Emblematicus. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998. . "Jacobean Authority and Peacham's Manuscript Emblems." In Deviceful Settings: The English Renaissance Emblem and Its Contexts. Selected Papers From the Third International Emblem Conference, Pittsburgh, 1993. Ed. Michael Bath and Daniel Russell. New York: AMS Press, 1999. Pp. 33-53. BOOK-MAKING: Title-Pages, Frontispieces, Printers' Devices, Illustrations and Broadsides Evans, Robert C. "Jonson and the Emblematic Tradition: Ralegh, Brant, the Poems, The Alchemist, and Volpone." Comparative Literature 29 (1995): 108-32. Linden, Stanton J. "Alchemical Art and the Renaissance Emblem." In Secret Texts: The Literature of Secret Societies. Ed. Marie Mulvey Roberts and Hugh Ormsby-Lennon. New York: AMS Press, 1995. Pp. 7-23. Nicholson, Eirwen E. C. "English Political Prints ca.1640 - ca.1830: The Potential for Emblematic Research and the Failures of Prints Scholarship." In Deviceful Settings: The English Renaissance Emblem and Its Contexts. Selected Papers From the Third International Emblem Conference, Pittsburgh, 1993. Ed. Michael Bath and Daniel Russell. New York: AMS Press, 1999. Pp. 139-65. Pickering, Samuel Jr. "Emblems and Children's Books in the Eighteenth Century." In A History of Book Illustration: 29 Points of View. Ed. Bill Katz. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1994. Pp. 603-17. "APPLIED" FORMS: EDUCATION AND SOCIAL ENTERTAINMENT Education Bagley, Ayers. "Chiron the Educator." In Emblems in Glasgow: A Collection of Essays Drawing on the Stirling Maxwell Collection in Glas-
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gow University Library. Ed. Alison Adams. Glasgow: University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 1992. Pp. 1-24. . "Some Pedagogical Uses of the Emblem in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England." Emblematica 7 (1993): 39-60. . "Childhood Education in Emblem Books of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries." Emblematica 7 (1993): 321-44. Black, Lynette C. "Practical Reason and Action: The Teaching of Prudence through Renaissance Emblem Books." Discoveries: South Central Renaissance News and Notes 17 (2000):l-2, 9-13. Burnett, Mark Thornton. "The 'Trusty Servant': A Sixteenth-Century English Emblem." Emblematica 6 (1992): 237-53. Social Entertainment Davidson, Peter. "Continental Shadows in Renaissance Scotland: The Opening Pageant of the University (Leiden, 1575) and The Entertainment of the High and Mighty Monarch Charles (Edinburgh, 1633)." In Anglo-Dutch Relations in the Field of the Emblem. Ed. Bart Westerweel. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997. Pp. 213-26. Farnsworth, Jane. " T h e springing hopes of Armes and Arts': Imprese in The King and Queenes Enter tainement at Richmond." EmblematicalO (1996): 75-84. Knowles, James. "A 1621 Tilt and Its Imprese: Huntington MS. EL 7972." Huntington Library Quarterly 62 (2001): 390-400. Limon, Jerzy. "The Masque of Stuart Culture." In The Mental World of the Jacobean Court. Ed. Linda Levy Peck. Cambridge: University Press, 1991. Pp. 209-29. "EXTRA-LITERARY" FORMS General Studies Morgan, Victor. "Perambulating and Consumable Emblems: The Norwich Evidence." In Deviceful Settings: The English Renaissance Emblem and Its Contexts. Selected Papers From the Third International Emblem Conference, Pittsburgh, 1993. Ed. Michael Bath and Daniel Russell. New York: AMS Press, 1999. Pp. 167-206. Architecture Bath, Michael. "The Sources of John Abbott's Pattern Book." Architectural History 41 (1998): 49-66. Daly, Peter M., and Hans J. Boker, eds. The Emblem and Architecture: Studies in Applied Emblematics from the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries. Turnhout: Brepols, 1999.
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. "Introduction." In The Emblem and Architecture: Studies in Applied Emblematics from the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries. Ed. Peter M. Daly and Hans J. Boker. Turnhout: Brepols, 1999. Pp. xv-xxii. , with Andrea MacElwee, "A Selective Bibliography." In The Emblem and Architecture: Studies in Applied Emblematics from the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries. Ed. Peter M. Daly and Hans J. Boker. Turnhout: Brepols, 1999. Pp. 247-308. Carving Hunwicke, John. "Robert Maxwell of Caerlaverock and His Fashionable Windows." Transactions of the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society 68 (1993): 107-21. Household and Table Ware Bath, Michael. "Emblems from Alciato in Jacobean Trencher Decorations." Emblematica 8 (1994): 359-70. Bath, Michael and Malcolm Jones. "Emblems and Trencher Decorations: Further Examples." Emblematica 10 (1996): 205-10. Funerary Monuments Simonds, Peggy Mufioz, and Roger T. Simonds. "The Aesthetics of Speaking Stones: Multi-Lingual Emblems on a 17th-century English Transi Tomb." In European Iconography — East and West. Selected Papers of the Szeged International Conference. June 9-12, 1993. Ed. Gyorgy E. Szonyi. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995. Pp. 49-62. Imprese Abraham, Lyndy. "Arthur Dee's Hieroglyph." In Deviceful Settings: The English Renaissance Emblem and Its Contexts. Selected Papers From the Third International Emblem Conference, Pittsburgh, 1993. Ed. Michael Bath and Daniel Russell. New York: AMS Press, 1999. Pp. 97-111. Farnsworth, Jane. "'The springing hopes of Armes and Arts': Imprese in The King and Queenes Entertainement at Richmond/' Emblematica 10 (1996): 75-84. Knowles, James. "A 1621 Tilt and Its Imprese: Huntington MS. EL 7972." Huntington Libraary Quarterly 62 (2001): 390-400. Silcox, Mary V. "The Device in Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie." In Aspects of Renaissance and Baroque Symbol Theory 1500-1700. Ed. Peter M. Daly and John Manning. New York: AMS Press, 1999. Pp. 39-49.
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Young, Alan R. assisted by Beert Verstraete. Emblematic Flag Devices of the English Civil Wars 1642-1660. The English Tradition. Volume Three. Index Emblematicus. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995. . "The English Civil War Flags: Emblematic Devices and Propaganda." Emblematica 5 (1991): 341-56. Painting and Portraiture Lawson, Bruce. "The Body as a Political Construct: Oliver Cromwell's Image in William Faithorne's 1658 Emblematic Engraving." In Deviceful Settings: The English Renaissance Emblem and Its Contexts. Selected Papers From the Third International Emblem Conference, Pittsburgh, 1993. Ed. Michael Bath and Daniel Russell. New York: AMS Press, 1999. Pp. 113-38. Robinson, Robert Gibson. "The Rainbow Portrait and the Faery Queen: Emblem, Imagination and the Arthurian Gentleman." Diss. Louisiana State University, 1997. Simonds, Peggy Munoz. "The Aesthetics of Magic and Meaning in Edward Collier's 'Still Life with a Volume of Wither's Emblemes'." In Deviceful Settings: The English Renaissance Emblem and Its Contexts. Selected Papers From the Third International Emblem Conference, Pittsburgh, 1993. Ed. Michael Bath and Daniel Russell. New York: AMS Press, 1999. Pp. 225-47. Strong, Roy. "'My weepinge Stagg I crowne': The Persian Lady Reconsidered." In The Art of the Emblem: Essays in Honor of Karl Josef I lot I gen. Ed. Michael Bath, John Manning, and Alan R. Young. New York: AMS Press, 1993. Pp. 103-41. Tapestry Saunders, Alison. "Emblems to Tapestries and Tapestries to Emblems: Contrasting Practice in England and France." Seventeenth Century French Studies 21 (1999):247-59. Wall and Ceiling Painting Bath, Michael. "Applied Emblematics in Scotland: Painted Ceilings, 1550-1650." Emblematica 7 (1993): 259-305. . "Alexander Seton's Painted Gallery." In Albion's Classicism: The Visual Arts in Britain, 1550-1660. Ed. Lucy Gent. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. Pp. 79-108. , and Malcolm Jones. "Emblems from Thomas Combe in Wall Paintings at Bury St. Edmunds." Emblematica 10 (1996): 195-203. Truax, Elizabeth. "Emblematic Pictures for the Less Privileged in Shakespeare's England." Comparative Drama 29 (1995): 147-67.
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INDIVIDUAL AUTHORS AND WORKS AFTER 1700 General Studies Cope, Kevin L. "Directions to Signify: Exploring the Emblems of Enlightenment Allegory/' In Enlightening Allegory: Theory, Practice, and Contexts of Allegory in the Late Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Ed. Kevin L. Cope. New York: AMS Press, 1993. Pp. 171-218. Daly, Peter M. "What Happened to English Emblems During the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries?" In The Telling Image. Ed. Ayers Bagley, Edward Griffin, and Austin McLean. New York: AMS Press, 1996. Pp. 227-72. Eur, Do-seon. "Reading Anne Bradstreet's 'Contemplations' in the Light of the Emblematic Structure." In Literary Calvinism and Nineteenth-Century American Women Authors. Ed. Michael Schuldiner. Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 1997. Pp. 45-69. Olson, Lester C. Emblems of American Community in the Revolutionary Era: A Study in Rhetorical Iconology. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991. AIKEN, JOHN Studies Katz, Wendy. "John Aiken's 'On Emblems': The Source of an Emblematic Dialogue." Emblematica 7 (1993): 145-55. BARBER, JOHN WARNER Studies Monteiro, George and Barton Levi St. Armand. "Dickinson's 'Hope' is the thing with feathers." Explicator 47 (1989): 34-37. Tanis, James. "Arms of the States: A Political Emblem Book by John Warner Barber." Emblematica 11 (2001): 403-18. GATTY, MARGARET Studies Katz, Wendy R. "Emblematic Form and Reading Strategy in the Emblems of Margaret Gatty." In The Art of the Emblem: Essays in Honor of Karl ]osefH6ltgen. Ed. Michael Bath, John Manning, and Alan R. Young. New York: AMS, 1993. Pp. 235-49.
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. The Emblems of Margaret Gatty: A Study of Allegory in Nineteenth-Century Children's Literature. New York: AMS Press, 1993. THOMAS, JOSEPH Studies Bath, Michael. "Joseph Thomas and John Thurston's Religious Emblems (1809)." Emblematica 7 (1993): 201-04. Holtgen, Karl Josef. "Religious Emblems (1809) by John Thurston and Joseph Thomas and its Links with Francis Quarles and William Blake." Emblematica 10 (1996): 107-43. THURSTON, JOHN Studies Bath, Michael. "Joseph Thomas and John Thurston's Religious Emblems (1809)." Emblematica 7 (1993): 201-04. Holtgen, Karl Josef. "Religious Emblems (1809) by John Thurston and Joseph Thomas and its Links with Francis Quarles and William Blake." Emblematica 10 (1996): 107-43. WYNNE, JOHN HUDDLESTONE Studies Katz, Wendy. "John Aiken's 'On Emblems': The Source of an Emblematic Dialogue." Emblematica 7 (1993): 145-55.
REVIEW AND CRITICISM
The New Edition of Herman Hugo's Via Desideria in Polish and Recent Hugo Scholarship PETER M. DALY and G. RICHARD DIMLER, S. J. McGill University and Fordham University KRZYSZTOF MROWCEWICZ, ed. Aleksander Teodor Lacki, Pobozne pragnienia. Warsaw, 1997. This is a new Polish edition of the important Polish translation of Herman Hugo's Pia desideria, Pobozne pragnienia (Warsaw, 1673), by Aleksander Teodor Lacki. The texts are newly set and the picturse are facsimiles of the original. The editor provides an introduction of just over eight pages, and a commentary of 47 pages. The commentary includes variants, the original Latin quotations from the Bible used by Hugo, and a glossary of terms with locations in Pobozne pragnienia, and modern Polish equivalents. Scholars appreciate any inexpensive reproduction of emblematic books. And Herman Hugo is one of the more important practitioners of the genre. His Pia desideria was the most published spiritual emblem book in the history of the genre. There were at least 49 Latin editions published between 1624 and 1779.l Nearly twice as many vernacular versions were published. There were at least 90 vernacular versions written by Catholics and non-Catholics alike. From our work on the Union Catalogue of Emblem Books database, 2 and the as1. SeePeterM. Daly and G. Richard Dimler, S. J., The Jesuit Series, Part Three, "Corpus Librorum Emblematum" (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), J. 628 to J. 677. Part I was published by McGill-Queens University Press in 1998 and Part II by UTP in 2000. References to this work will henceforth be included in the text and indicated by the J. number only.
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sociated illustrated bibliographic catalogues, we know of one Danish version published in 1738 (J. 678), ten Dutch versions with different titles, five English versions (J. 679-J. 688), eighteen French versions with different titles (J. 694-J. 711), thirty-eight German versions with different titles (J. 712-J. 749), three Italian versions (J. 750-J. 752), nine Polish versions (J. 753-J. 761), three Portuguese versions (J. 762-J. 764), three Russian versions (J. 765-J. 767), and three Spanish versions (J. 768-J. 770). Given Hugo's importance it may seem odd that so few reproductions are available. Only one Latin edition has ever been reproduced in facsimile. It is the 1632 Antwerp edition, put out by Olms as volume one of the series "Emblematisches Cabinet" (Hildesheim / New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 1971). The facsimile is accompanied by a twenty-page introduction which, among other things, stresses "emblematic mysticism." Herman Hugo does not appear in the influential Emblemata by Henkel and Schone. Only one vernacular edition has appeared: Wencel Scherffer von Scheffenstein's Gottsdliger Verlangen Drey Bucher (1662), edited with an afterword by Michael Schilling (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1995). As far as microforms are concerned, IDC has reproduced a total of eleven editions: two Latin and the rest vernacular. There is no internet or CD-ROM version available of any Latin edition, although we may expect vernacular versions soon. Three translations are, or will become, available as internet editions. The project headed by Antonio Bernat and John Cull will include Pedro de Sala, Affectos divinos con emblemas sagradas (Valladolid, 1658). The same title is being digitized by the team at La Corufia. The project headed by Dietmar Peil ( U n i v e r s i t a t Mtinchen) and H e r m a n n Leskien (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munchen) will also include Michele Cicogna, Fiame d'Amor divino (Venice, 1678). The English Emblem Book Project of the Pennsylvania State University Libraries contains the English translation by Edmund Arwaker, Via desideria, or Divine Addresses (London, 1690). Even though there is a dearth of available reprints, in any form, critics and historians have long recognized the importance of the Belgian Jesuit and his book of emblems. However, since little of this insight has informed Krzysztof Mrowcewicz's introduction, we take the liberty of providing a brief summary of some of the relevant literature. 2. See Peter M. Daly, ' T h e Union Catalogue of Emblem Books Project and the Corpus Librorum Emblematum," Emblematica 3 (1988): 121-33.
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In his influential Studies in Seventeenth-Century Imagery, 2nd ed. (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1964), Mario Praz devoted space to Hugo (pp. 143-47), and to his influence especially on Francis Quarles (pp. 158-63). Rosemary Freeman discussed Hugo as one of Quarles's sources in English Emblem Books, first published 1948. The Via desideria has also received its due of attention from more recent scholars. In "Pia desideria illustres par Boece de Bolswert" (Gutenberg-)ahrbuch [1966]: 291-99) M. Chevre discusses the quality of Bolswert's engravings. Some critics hold that working with religious themes cramps artistic style. In Chevre's view, Bolswert had a good sense for the scriptural text and exercised delicacy in the use of imagery which is missing in Vaenius. In addition, Bolswert traced with sensitivity the love story and emotions displayed by Anima and Christus. Thus, dealing with religious subjects allowed Bolswert to expand his art, treating interior themes against the theater of the world. Thirty-six of the 46 engravings by Bolswert represent exterior scenes. Chevre concludes: "Son originalite consiste dans la sensibilite religieuse qui lui a permis de comprendre que, pour correspondre a la valeur mystique du texte, la representation symbolique devait se faire elle-meme espace et mouvement" (299). Mark Carter Leach points out in his 1979 Delaware dissertation "The Literary and Emblematic Activity of Hermann Hugo, S. J. (1588-1629)," available from Dissertation Abstracts, Ann Arbor University of Michigan, that the text of the Pia desideria preceded Bolswert's pictures (128). He likewise discusses Otto van Veen's influence through his Amorum emblemata, written in 1608 for which van Veen wrote a spiritual counterpart, the Amoris divini emblemata in 1615. Here he transformed Cupid and Psyche into pious figures. Hugo expands van Veen's short poems and adds to his elegies a concluding meditation in prose. Hugo uses strictly biblical inscriptiones: 22 from Psalms, 13 from Canticles, 5 from Job. Leach regards Hugo's poems as academic and learned. The prose sections bring the devotional climax (121). Leach maintains that the Pia desideria is firmly rooted in the meditative tradition, whereas he sees van Veen as coming from Alciato's tradition. The Pia desideria most resembles van Veen's work in its illustrations. However, the content of the Pia desideria is different. Leach holds that Jan David's emblematic books (J. 141-J. 155), among them the Duodecim specula Deum (1610; J. 141-J. 143) could have been an influence in the creation of the Pia desideria. Their structures are similar. Did Hugo actively seek out Bolswert for his illustra-
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lions or was it the publisher Aertssens? Leach opts for the latter possibility. Moreover, we would add that it could well have been Sucquet's Via vitae aeternae of 1620 which inspired Hugo to write. This book likewise has the triple meditational progression and structurally the books are similar, although Hugo's text is shorter than Sucquet's. Leach considers the Ignatian tradition of meditation as the structure which most influenced the Pia desideria. Ignatius was well aware of the significance of the pictorial image for purposes of meditation, and the Jesuit Hugo stands in this tradition. In 1988 G. Richard Dimler published a study of Arwaker's version of the Pia desideria in The English Emblem and the Continental Tradition (New York: AMS Press, pp. 203-24). Emblematica itself published three articles in the 1990s.1 In " 4 Der rechte Teutsche Hugo. Deutschsprachige Ubersetzungen und Bearbeitungen der Pia Desideria Hermann Hugos SJ" (GRM 70 [1989]: 283-300), Michael Schilling emphasizes Antwerp's role as a center of a counter-reformation "Propaganda Fidei." Schilling describes two processes at work in Bolswert's engravings, what he terms "situative und attributive Inszenierung" (284). An example of the "attributive" is found in Book I, 7 where Anima tries to pull Amor Divinus's hands away from his eyes so that she can be gazed upon. Amor hiding his eyes is mirrored against the background phenomenon of the two figures beneath a solar eclipse. In this engraving nature is independent of the two allegorical figures. The opposite process takes place in Book II, 20 where Amor Divinus is holding his hands over the eyes of Anima to keep her from seeing Vanity. In this instance Bolswert has cleverly integrated the two figures into the scene. This is an example of "situative Inszenierung." A combination of the "attributive" and "situative" occurs in Book II, 2. In this scene Anima holds a pilgrim's staff and hat in the midst of a labyrinth; Ariadne's thread leads her out of the maze. The scene is supported in an attributive way by Amor Divinus who is seen in the distance atop a light tower which guides ships to port. According to Schilling the elegiac distichs of the subscriptions help to lead the viewer from the pictured scenes to a spiritual contemplation as the soul grows in realization of a higher spiritual reality. If the picture speaks above all to the eye of the viewer, the elegies speak to the heart. Thus the picture and the verses correspond to the two first steps of Christian meditational practice: "videre" or external percep1. By John Manning in 6 (1992): 147-79; by Lynette C. Black in 9 (1995): 1-20; and by Karl Josef Holtgen in 9 (1995): 221-38.
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tion and "meditari" or inner devotion (pp. 284-85). The prose section following the elegy corresponds to the level of understanding. Having moved from the picture and verses to the prose sections is an indication that the reader no longer needs the sensual and emotional aids provided by the picture and the rhythmic language of the elegy. In Schilling's view, Book I focusses for the most part on themes of conversion and repentance. Book II describes the way of the soul to God, and Book III is devoted to the union of man with God. For Schilling the importance of Hugo's work is that it lies at the crossroads of literary and historical traditions: Jesuit meditation, commentaries on the Song of Songs and uses of the psalms. Its popularity stems from its combination of the various elements corresponding to the different interests of the public. In part III Schilling lists three hypotheses for the many German versions of the Pia desideria. First, there is the geographical complexity and divisions in Germany with many centers of printing. Second, reformed Protestants, humanists, and pietists were open to Catholic emblems, but not Calvinists, and Lutherans were hesitant until the 1660s. Third, there were attempts to improve on previous translations from a literary standpoint. In her book, Via piae animae. Grundlagenuntersuchung zur emblematischen Verknupfung von Bild und Wort in den "Via desideria" (1624) des Herman Hugo S. J. (1588-1629) (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1992), Gabriele Dorothea Rodter analyzes five chapters from the Pia desideria.1 She holds that Book III: 4 "Ego dilecto meo, & ad me conversio ejus" provides an exemplary analysis of Jesuit devotion in the seventeenth century by reason of the presence of two of the most prominent res pictae of the Baroque: the sunflower and compass. Book II: 14 "Sub umbra illius, quern desideraveram, sedi" centers on the Cross, which is the center of Christian belief. In Book 1:1 "Anima mea desideravit te in nocte" the question is posed "From Whence?" Here Rodter discusses the night-motif and the distress of humanity at the parousia. Book II, 11: "Surgam, & circuibo civitatem . . ." asks the question "Whereto?" on the basis of the soul's thirst for Zion and for the presence of God. Rodter chose as her fifth emblem the introductory chapter of the Pia desideria "Domine ante te omne desiderium meum . . . ." asking the question "How?" against the background of man's self-revelation in the presence of God. According to Rodter the arrow and bow motifs of the introductory emblem 1. For a fuller review, see G. Richard Dimler, S. J., in Emblematica 7 (1993): 169-77.
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reveal programmatically Hugo's two basic themes: the soul's mysti cal way to salvation and the contemporary understanding of man's self and world as the interplay between substance and appearance. Thus Rodter in her analysis of the Pia desideria and Anima's goal in her search for God poses three fundamental questions: "Whence," "Whither" and "How?" Rodter maintains that these five chapters help reveal Hugo's specific emblematic narrative form within the con text of the souls mystical journey to salvation, i. e. the so-called three fold mystical progression of the soul towards ultimate union with God through the purgative, illuminative, and unitive ways. Rodter at tempts to analyze the Pia desideria within the context of the history of ideas, considering its devotional aspects as a mirror of the seven teenth-century cultural image of God. Rodter successively investi gates the pictorial and written elements of the Pia desideria against the background of their historical contexts. Rodter discusses the origins of the spiritual emblem in general (20-21) and rightly attributes its sudden rise to the many emblems produced by the Belgian and Flemish Jesuits and the Benedictines, and here it is well once again to keep in mind the impetus from the Council of Trent. The Jesuits in the sixteenth century contributed to the appearance of the Flemish Jesuit emblem under the influence of St. Bernard's commentaries on the Song of Songs together with the classi cal Amor-Psyche myths. These latter elements eventually found their way to Hugo through van Veen's Amoris divini emblemata of 1615. One could, however, disagree with her statement (21) that Hugo's Jesuit colleagues did not produce anything new in the way of theoretical works on the emblem. The influence of Emmanuale Tesauro, Baltasar Gracian and Jakob Masen on European mannerism and the rise of the "argutia" movement is well documented in the studies by Miguel Battlori, K.-R Lange, Wilfried Barner and Barbara Bauer.1 Masen's in fluence on such fellow Jesuits as Athanasius Kircher, Caspar Knittel, Ignaz Weitenauer, Bohuslas Balbinus and on the Protestant Christian Weise is beyond dispute. The French Jesuit contribution to the field of 1. See Wilfried Barner, Barockrhetorik. Untersuchungen zu ihren geschichtlichen Grundlagen (Tubingen, 1970); Miguel Batllori, Gracian у el Barocco (Rome, 1958); Barbara Bauer, Jesuitische "ars rhetorica" im Zeitalter der Glauhenskdmpi (Frank furt, 1986); K.-P. Lange, Theoretiker des literarischen Manierismus. Tesauros und Pellegrinis Lehre von der acutezza oder von derMacht der Sprache (Munich, 1968); G. R. Dimler, "Humanism and the Rise of the Jesuit Emblem."In Emblematic Percep tions. Essays in Honor of William S. Heckscher. Ed. Peter M. Daly and Daniel S. Rus sell. Saecvla Spiritalia 36. Baden-Baden, 1997. Pp. 93-109.
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emblem theory through Menestrier, Bouhours, and others is extraordinary. One might also take issue with Rodter's statement that Hugo's elegies are an expression of the missionary goal of the Jesuit order and of Hugo's attempt to establish a "spiritual knighthood" (25). On the contrary, Hugo's elegies are intimate, personal considerations and colloquies arising from the individual soul much like the psalms of the Old Testament. Hugo's elegies are unlike the structured and stylized Ignatian meditation on the Kingdom as found in the Spiritual Exercises. Questionable also is Rodter's statement that the structure of the Pia desideria is based in detail on Sucquet's Via vitx aeternx (27). It is true that they both seem to follow the structure of the classical threefold "mystical" way {via purgativa, via illuminativa, and via unitiva), but their pictures, subscriptiones and content are quite different. It is questionable whether this threefold structure holds true for Hugo. Certainly Book 11,10 seems more suited to the so-called unitive way and Book 11:4 belongs more to the purgative way. The threefold division is not a rigid one, but it does offer a general approach to Hugo. Rodter has a uniform approach in her analysis of each of the five emblems by Hugo. First, she begins with a formal description of the pictura followed by an explanation of the traditional meaning of the pictorial elements in the context of Christian symbolism and iconography (wings, compass, sun, sunflower, cross, lamp, milky-way, fountain, deer, masks, and so forth). She then offers an interpretation of the pictura and its elements followed by the inscriptio and its historical and theological context; an analysis of the metrics, prosody, and rhetorical structure of the subscriptio and a final interpretation. A final summation is given at the end of each analysis. Of particular interest is Rodter's interpretation of Hugo's subscriptiones or elegies. She sees an "ordo naturalis" progression within each elegy based on the rhetorical principle of dispositio, which is one of the five classical rhetorical canons: invert tio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria and pronunciatio. Rodter correctly maintains that the first three rhetorical canons are interwoven. It is the organizing pinciple, dispositio, which, according to Rodter, can be found in each of Hugo's elegies with the following sequence: exordium, narratio, argumentatio, and peroratio. In fact, classical rhetoric would add confirmatio and confutatio. Rodter sees a close parallel between the rhetorical "ordo naturalis" and Hugo's meditative structure. Hugo wants to move the reader to the love of God through imitation of the
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soul, whom he addresses in the first person. The structure of each el egy is based on this rhetorical principle of "ordo naturalis." Further more, Rodter sees the considerable influence of Ignatius Loyola's Spiritual Exercises on Hugo and in particular the Ignatian practice of employing the three powers of the soul: memory, intellect, and will. She maintains that Ignatius used this procedure in each of his medita tions. Rodter also asserts that Ignatius derived this principle of the three powers of the soul directly or indirectly from Johann Wessel Gansford's Scala meditationis (published in the early fourteenth cen tury and placed on the Index in 1592) by way of Johann Mauburnus's Rosetum (1494). Rodter sees significant parallels between the struc ture of Gansford's Scala and Hugo elegies (86f.). According to Rodter, Hugo follows the six progressive steps found in Gansford's Scala: I. Modus recolligendi (memory); II. Gradus Praeparatorii (memory); III. Gradus Processor! et mentis (intellect); IV. Gradus Processorii, & judicii (intellect); V. Gradus Processorii amoris voluntatis (will); VI. Gradus terminatorii (will) in each subscriptio. Thus, Rodter uses two interpretative methods for an understanding of the subscriptiones of the Pia desideria: the three rhetorical canons of inventio, dispositio, and elocutio, in particular dispositio, through the "ordo naturalis" progression of exordium, narratio, argumentatio and peroratio, and in addition Gansford's Scala. Rodter's analyses and interpretations are for the most part enlight ening and could serve as a commendable model for one approach to Hugo. However, one may entertain reservations. Does Rodter's choice of emblems for analysis disrupt Hugo's threefold "mystical" progression? The subtitles for each of the three books of the Pia desideria make this mystical progression somewhat probable. Rodter has chosen a progression seemingly different from Hugo's, but has she really succeeded? The rationale for her choice of five emblems is to show Hugo's emblematic narrative form within the context of the mystical path to salvation. But in doing so does she run the danger of disrupting the logical flow and continuity of Hugo's book as a whole? Can Hugo be telling us something through his particular triple struc ture? In "Popular Devotional Emblematics: A Comparison of Sucquet's Le Chemin de la Vie Eternele and Hugo's Les Pieux Desirs (Emblematica 9/1 [1995]: 1-20), Lynette С Black argues that the content of Hugo's work is more emotional and affective and therefore less analytic and doctrinal than similar books by the Jesuits Antoine Sucquet and Jan David. Black discusses the French versions of Sucquet's Via vitae
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aeternae (1620) together with Herman Hugo's Pia desideria (1624). Although Gabriele Rodter (see above) asserts that Hugo's Pia desideria adopts the structure of Sucquet's work with respect to the tripartite way of purgation, illumination, and union, Black holds that this comparison remains problematic since the two works share little structural similarity apart from their common tripartite division (3). The pattern of development in Hugo's emblems is better accounted for by what Black terms the "specific triple-way motifs described in the outline for the triple way of meditation in the middle of book two of the Via vitae aeternae..." (4). Moreover, according to Black, Hugo emphasizes the three emotions associated with the triple way rather than the goals themselves. Whereas there is a high degree of interdependence of text and picture in Sucquet, Black asserts that Hugo takes the picture as the starting point for his poetic descriptions (which accords ill with Leach's view). Black concludes that in general Hugo "exploits the features of meditation that address life in the world of the senses." (19) Hugo's emblems also reappear in the material culture. Praz reports that they will be found adorning confessionals at Banz near Lichtenfels (54). W. J. Miiller has discussed the presence of 14 of Hugo's emblems in "Die Emporenbilder von Katharinenheerd. Ein Beitrag £ur Bildwelt des 17. Jahrhunderts in Schleswig-Holstein"(Nordelbingen 40 [197]: 91-109). Perhaps initially more surprisingly, Hugo's emblems will also be found in Protestant chuches in Scandinavia. 1 But one should not be surprised, since many of the vernacular versions, whether in Dutch, English, French or German, are the work of Protestant writers, which bears witness to the popularity of Hugo's Pia desideria among non-Catholics. Michael Schilling lists many citations from the Pia desideria in other works and what he calls "buchexterne Emblematik" in his footnote 13. To produce any edition of Hugo's text is a valuable addition. The present Lacki translation uses copperplate engravings done by Boetius a Bolswert for the Antwerp editions. How that should have come about is not explained in the new introduction. But in this new edition the picturse are larger than in the original Antwerp editions. Whether that was a decision made by the new publisher, or whether the larger-sized illustrations were already a feature of the original Lacki edition, we cannot tell. The Polish edition shows some small, 1. See Lisbet Juul Nicolaisen, "Emblemmalerei i danske Kirker. Et bidgrag til belysning af emnet," Kirkehistorike Samlinger (1969): 126-51.
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but interesting divergences from the original Latin editions. In the Latin editions the plate is accompanied by a Latin quotation from the Bible, printed beneath, which is repeated above the verse subscriptio. In the Polish edition, the equivalent Polish Bible verse is printed above, not below, the pictura, and it is not repeated above the subscriptio. The Polish version omits the long prose statements from Church fathers, with which Herman Hugo had concluded each of the fifteen emblems in each of the three books that make up the Pia desideria. The question arises, how useful and reliable is this new edition? Our knowledge of Polish does not allow us to comment on the accuracy of the newly set texts. We are indebted to the translation of the introduction provided to us by Father Mitros, S. J., of the Fordham Jesuit community in New York. The introduction to this new edition of Lacki's Polish translation is, on the whole, a valuable if limited overview. Western scholars likely wish to know which earlier critics and historians were used by the present e d i t o r Krzysztof Mrowcewicz. The e d i t o r ' s view of emblematics is largely formed from his reading of the reputable Polish literary historians Janusz Pelc and Paulina Buchwald-Pelcowa. Oddly enough, Mario Praz is cited only with regard to Samuel Johnson's much quoted words about metaphysical wit. The reference is not to Praz's seminal work on emblematics, but to his 1925 study of Donne and Crashaw. No writer on emblematics is cited apart from the two Polish colleagues. None of the critical discussions cited above is mentioned, and none seems to have informed the editorial introduction. For an edition of any text by Hugo, and an edition of any emblematic work, this represents a weakness. It is perhaps characteristic of the state of much scholarship produced behind what used to be called the iron curtain.
Reviews PETER M. DALY and G. RICHARD DIMLER, S. J., Corpus Librorum Emblematum. The Jesuit Series. Part Two (D-E). Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. The present volume is second in a series of what will most likely be several volumes of an exhaustive undertaking providing a bibliographic catalogue of Jesuit emblem books. The series, when completed, will constitute a very significant contribution to the fields of both emblem studies and the history of the literature produced by the Jesuits. Owing to the present bibliography, emblem scholars will have to adjust their current thinking about the significant number of emblem books produced in the early modern period and about the noteworthy contribution by Jesuits to emblematics. The "Jesuit Series" will do for Jesuits and emblematics what Dunnhaupt in his Personalbibliographien zu den Drucken des Barock (6 vols., Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1990-1993) has done for German Baroque literature. Since Part II consists largely of works by Drexel (items J. 239-J. 500), a comparison to Dunnhaupt is appropriate. Dunnhaupt focuses on German Baroque literature in Latin and German; thus many of the later editions of Drexel's works and translations into Polish and Russian — which are included in the present volume are not contained in Dunnhaupt. Dimnhaupt's bibliography offers a point of comparison for the layout and presentation of the material, too. While the layout and typeface of the Dunnhaupt volumes are exemplary, Dunnhaupt is not illustrated and does not use a "fingerprint," relying only on the collation. This added information, particularly for the illustrated emblem book, is especially useful. This reviewer misses David Paisey's five-volume Catalogue of Books Printed in the German-Speaking Countries ... now in the British Library (1994) which should have been consulted and listed in the bibliographic section. Paisey includes a very thorough subject heading of "emblems," and, for example, he also lists Drexel's Zodiacus Christianus ... (1618) as in the British Library, which is not reflected in the list of press marks (J. 440). To the delight of this reviewer, the authors include in their "Classification of Jesuit Emblem Books" two sections dealing with civic (I. E. 361
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1 -9 and II. E. 1-9) and religious (I. D. 1-3 and II. D. 1-3) rulers and occasions, thus providing a crucial point of access for scholars of court festivals. It is hoped that the volume of indices to be published at the conclusion of the series will include a cross-referencing index to the classification system. With the burgeoning interest in court studies, for example, an index listing all those works under this rubric would provide another point of access for another interested group of users. The primary audience will certainly be emblem scholars; however, owing to the broad range of fields which emblem studies encompasses, the series will appeal to a much larger group of scholarly researchers as well. The primary audience will be scholars of early modern Latin and vernacular European and Slavic languages and literatures, and art, cultural, religious, and educational historians. Bibliographers, librarians, and persons studying the history of the book and printing will all find this an invaluable research tool. Clearly, all major research libraries will want to own a copy of the series, as it will be a great aid in both reference and acquisitions. We can only wish that the remaining volumes are published in a timely fashion. MARA R. WADE University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign PETER M. DALY and JOHN MANNING, eds., Aspects of Renaissance and Baroque Symbol Theory, 1500-1700. New York: AMS Press, 1999. Pp. xxii + 296; ISBN 0 404 63714 0; $78.00. MICHAEL BATH and DANIEL RUSSELL, eds., Deviceful Settings: The English Renaissance Emblem and its Contexts. New York: AMS Press, 1999. Pp. xii + 247; ISBN 0 404 63713 2; $78.00. Peter Daly and John Manning's volume Aspects of Renaissance and Baroque Symbol Theory, 1500-1700, brings together a set of reflections on the place of the modes of visual communication (generically identifiable as "emblematic") within the worlds of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The volume is organised carefully so as to develop a thesis that emblem terminology is culturally specific, that there are apprehensible patterns of perceiving visually-encoded meaning and that signs in themselves have (in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries at least) the authority of securely encoded and readable meanings. To an extent, this approach is successful, although I must admit a
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personal scepticism, even a reservation, that some of the contributions, excellent as they are in themselves, sit uneasily within this structure. Indeed, I am not absolutely convinced that "theory" (particularly as it is now understood) is the most illuminating heading under which to discuss the very rich and diverse range of texts on the practise of emblematics and visual languages which are discussed in this collection. John Manning's introduction covers much ground, perhaps most interestingly in the closing assertion that emblem writers of the Renaissance were claiming an implicit authority from the hieroglyphics of the ancients as they were then understood (Professor Manning also contributes an exemplary bibliography, drawing together the primary and secondary sources for the whole volume). The first section of the book, containing outstanding contributions from Karel Porteman and Michael Bath, considers the vocabulary which was used to identify the various kinds of visual signification now studied by emblem scholars. It is highly instructive to compare Porteman's itemization of Netherlandic terms for the emblematises art with the veritable flood of identifying terms identified by Pedro F. Campa's essay on Spanish emblem terminology. Peter Daly's essay on George Wither's use of terminology offers many illuminations: not least Wither's conceptualisation of his Royal Patrons themselves as constituting in their public lives and personx a "four-fold Emblem," a perception complemented by Michael Bath's thoughtful exploration of the idea of the emblem as constituting a rhetorical figure in itself. Here too he finds, particularly in the poetry of John Donne, a given, that the objects of the poetic world (ships, waters, tears) as it were, carry their emblematic implications patently within them to the instructed early-modern mind. Ingrid Hepel offers a consideration of the relationship between proverbs and the emblems of Justus Georg Schottelius. In the second section, Daniel S. Russell offers a detailed investigation of the phenomena of visual perception relating to the Renaissance emblem, focusing on the potential disjunction between "seeing" and "perceiving." He offers many useful parallel instances of this disjunction, illuminating his central consideration of "natural" visual signification and emblem "language." There is a particularly i l l u m i n a t i n g d i s c u s s i o n of f o r e g r o u n d and b a c k g r o u n d in early-modern emblems, distinguishing those instances where the backgrounds (or background events) cease to be a conventional filling of space without particular signification and become a working
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part of the emblematic process. Perhaps the most memorable part of this contribution is the conjectural (but, to this reader, compelling) reconstruction of early-modern "ways of seeing/' whereby the emblem can be considered as "one of the principal keys to a large sector of the epistemology of early modern Europe." Denis L. Drysdall's "Authorities for Symbolism in the Sixteenth Century" contains a focused consideration of the extent to which we can reasonably assume that early-modern authorities subscribed to "something like the neo-platonist concept of the mystical power of the image," and from this consideration goes on to consider the intense interest generated by the impresa in Renaissance Italy as perhaps deriving from the very fact that the expressive combination of image and motto offered a new possibility for expression. William E. Engel offers a reminder of the extent to which memory-training remained a part of the (literal) disposition of the Renaissance mind in his detailed study of mnemonic emblems. This essay contains particularly illuminating examples, not least Thomas Fuller's opening comparison in his Worthies of England of the country itself to a house with the counties imagined as its rooms. Alan R. Young continues his series of studies of the emblematic dimension of the Civil Wars of Britain with a fascinating study of the Recusant Thomas Blount's translation and adaptation of Estienne's L'art defaire les devises and the civil war "Coronet Devices" which he included in his translation. Incidentally his article offers an important reminder in its mention of Blount's inclusion of the "Devices of the Irish Rebells" in his work, that the native Irish elite were full participants in the international culture of Latinate Europe, however convenient it may be for English historians to forget (or suppress) the fact. Not least among the essays in this volume to increase our understanding of its subject is J. D. Loach's remarkable study of "The Influence of the Counter-Reformation Defence of Images on the Contemporary Concept of Emblem," a part of her compelling and (to this reader at least) exciting investigation of the visual and intellectual life of the city of Lyons in the the seventeenth century. Once again, her signal gift for finding the early-modern treatise or document which articulates precisely the theoretical area of interest, has operated at full stretch, and her study (and edition) of the Jesuit Theophile Raynaud's Symbola Antoniana is a model of its kind and an exposition which puts the community of emblem scholars once more in Dr Loach's debt. The volume edited by Daniel Russell and Michael Bath represents selected papers from the Third International Emblem Conference at
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Pittsburgh, held in 1993, and contains many valuable and interesting reflections on the contexts of the Renaissance emblem in England, emphasising, by its informed diversity, just how inextricable the emblem is from the wider cultural continuum. Lindy Abraham offers a meditated study of one significant personal relation to the arts of visual symbolism in her study of Arthur Dee's arcane personal alchemical device and its relation to his father's own hieroglyphic. Bruce Lawson's study of the body as political construct offers a reading of Faithorne's emblematic engraving of Oliver Cromwell, relating it widely to contemporary conventions of encoded meaning within depictions. He also has a most informative aside as to the portrait painter's practise of preparing costume, drapery and background ready to receive the faces and hand once a patron was found. This anecdote, related specifically here to Medina's practise in Scotland, would certainly furnish a full explanation for some of the more unlikely backgrounds of late seventeenth-century elite portraiture in Scotland. Three valuable (and complementary accounts of Emblems in relation to the evolution of contemporary court culture are offered by Alan Young in his discussion of "Jacobean Authority and Peacham's Manuscript Emblems"; in Judith Dundas's wide-ranging study of "Peacham's Emblematic Art"; and in Jane Farnsworth's study of Wither's 1635 collection in relation to Caroline Court culture. Eirwen Nicholson offers a timely reminder of the persistence of emblematic habits of mind and emblematic conventions of visual representation in the political prints of the eighteenth and early nineteen centuries. A persuasive account of the extent to which emblems were a part of the texture of quotidian life is offered in Victor Morgan's study of festal visual culture in Norwich, which provides what seems to me clear and sufficient evidence that early-modern systems of representation were indeed understood by a surprisingly wide range of early-modern citizens. (This may serve to counter the kind of scarcely-credible assertions still being made by such writers as David Starkey that the visual language of the Renaissance was barely intelligible to the Renaissance elite itself.) Two able readings of the visual language of meditation are offered by John H. Astington and Peggy Munoz Simons. For many, the chief pleasure of this volume will be the extended consideration of the literary context of the emblem as a genre in itself offered by Alastair Fowler. This is a remarkable piece, and one which deserves the widest circulation; it ranges over the whole field of literary uses of the emblem in the Renaissance and early-modern worlds
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(it has a particularly valuable bibliography) and refines the definitions of genres and boundaries with what can only be described as a scrupulous virtuosity. PETER DAVIDSON University of Aberdeen ANTONIUS a BURGUNDIA, Linguae Vitia et Remedia (Antwerp, 1631), with an Introduction by Toon van Houdt. Imago Figurata Editions, 1. Turnhout (Belgium): Brepols, 1999. Pp. 166. ISBN 2 503 50774 3.2300 BEF. JOHANNES KREIHING, Emblemata Ethico-Politica (Antwerp, 1661), with an Introduction by G. Richard Dimler, S. J. Imago Figurata Editions, 2. Turnhout (Belgium): Brepols, 1998. Pp. 250. ISBN 2 503 50775 1.3000 BEF. HIEROMYMUS AMMON, Imitation Crameriana (Nuremberg 1649), with an Introduction by Sabine Modersheim. Imago Figurata Editions, 3. Turnhout (Belgium): Brepols, 1998. Pp. 166. ISBN 2 503 50780 8.2250 BEF. These are the first three emblem books to appear from the Belgian publisher Brepols in their new "Imago Figurata" series. Compared with other reprint series such as the well established "Emblematisches Cabinet" from Olms (Hildesheim) or the facsimile series from Scolar Press (Ashgate Publishing) which have, to a greater or lesser extent, chosen to concentrate on some of the better known or more influential emblem books, this new series from Brepols earns our respect and gratitude for its determination, manifested in these first three volumes, to concentrate on a number of lesser known but nevertheless interesting and significant emblem books. All three are books which have not hitherto appeared in modern facsimile reprints and on which the secondary literature is either meagre or nonexistent. Each is here provided with a substantial introduction (written in English) by a scholar with a unique knowledge of his or her subject, in which the work is placed in context and treated to an illuminating analysis of its content, sources, and generic characteristics. It is perhaps a sign of the confidence of the new series that these three volumes are all, as their titles may suggest, Latin emblem books (though Ammon's Imitatio
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Crameriana is bilingual, offering German translations or paraphrases of both the inscriptio and subscriptio to each emblem). The new editions end with an index of mottoes (with translations) and of picture motifs. At a time when English-speaking students and specialists have an ever-decreasing competence in Latin, we may need to ask exactly what kind of reader is assumed for these new editions, and what kinds of help such readers really need in order to access the emblems. Provision of motif indexes may be taken as a sign that the editors recognise how often modern readers turn to available reprints simply for specific iconological searches —searches which necessarily take the picturx as their starting point and may need little further information on the more extensive profile of the book in question. The introductions to these editions, however, necessarily spend more time addressing issues of meaning and content, to which only readers with a sufficient competence in reading their neo-Latin scriptura are likely to have access. Kreihing's long(ish) verse-epigrams require close-reading if their conformity with the seven-part dispositio of classical rhetoric, which Dimler claims for them, is to be recognised, and Antonio a Burgundia's much shorter quatrains show "a predilection for rare poetical and post-classical words" (van Houdt, 18) which may challenge even reasonably competent readers. Modern reprints intended primarily to facilitate access to the iconological content of emblem books, such as the Toronto "Index Emblematicus" series, have either offered English translations (the Alciato volumes) or have avoided the problem by reprinting only English emblem books (the "English Tradition"). But this is not a solution which can reasonably be expected of a scholarly reprint series. The primary motivation of such facsimile reprints as these has to be to make the books available to those of us who are already competent to read the originals. Assuming some such competence, the editorial matter to these editions has some success in placing each of them in contexts which are likely to be familiar to, or recognized as important by, students and scholars working in the field. Antonius a Burgundia's Lingua Vitia et Remedia is the work of a member of an illegitimate branch of the family of the dukes of Burgundy who studied at the Jesuit college at Bruges, entered the Society, and subsequently became archdeacon in Bruges and dean of the chapter of St. Donation. Focussing on the vices and virtues of the tongue —detraction, abuse, garrulity, perjury, blasphemy, lying —the work is shown to issue from a long tradition on the ethics of language
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which goes back to the ars loquendi of antiquity through medieval and patristic sources. Its immediate context is shown to be the Jesuit preoccupation with language and ethics as laid down in the Ratio Studiorum, a context in which, as we are all now aware, the composition of emblems also held a significant place. In 1952 a previous scholar, C. G. N. de Vooys, suggested that Antonius's emblem book drew heavily on an essay written by Erasmus in 1525 entitled Lingua, which itself belongs in this long tradition of teaching on vices of the tongue. Erasmus is using the tradition to characterize what he saw as the polemical vices of his opponents in the religious controversy surr o u n d i n g his own w r i t i n g s . In t u r n i n g E r a s m u s ' s rhetorical similitudes for such vices into emblems, Antonius is following a pattern of influence which has won growing recognition in emblem studies, w h e r e t h e a n a l o g i e s b e t w e e n E r a s m i a n Adagia and Apophthegmata, and the whole system of topical composition in school rhetoric, have been acknowledged (see, for instance, Bath, Speaking Pictures, 1994, chap. 2). Both the title page and a significant number of the picture to these emblems are shown to derive directly from the anecdotes and comparisons which Erasmus uses in his diatribe against the vices of the tongue, and the dispute between Erasmus and his clerical, not to say Jesuit, detractors provides the final, determinative context within which van Houdt persuasively situates the work of Antonius a Burgundia, arguing that the final motivation of the book is to be recognised as a neo-Stoic discipline of that most unruly bodily member, the tongue (32). We might add that this neo-Stoic control contrasts with the Erasmian copia of his source, and perhaps accounts for the greater conciseness of Linguae Vitia et Remedia compared to what van Houdt calls Erasmus's "highly rhetorical, albeit rather long-winded, piece of writing" (23). And in addition to this immediate, historical context van Houdt is able to suggest the relevance of this emblem book to wider ranging, theoretically engaged studies of the body and the early modern "somatization" of writing (Carla Mazzio's phrase, cit. p. 17), to the communication theory of Jiirgen Habermas, and to "The Social History of Silence" explored in a recent essay by Peter Burke (cit. p. 36nl00). We should, thus, not underestimate the interest and relevance of this book to issues in current scholarly debate either in emblem studies or in the wider domain of intellectual history, and Brepols are to be congratulated on finding an editor who can identify all these contexts with such authority and assurance.
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Kreihing's Emblemata Ethico-politica is the work of a Dutch Jesuit working in Germany. The book is dedicated to Leopold William, archduke of Austria, who became not only an eminent churchman and bishop, but also commander of the imperial army against Gustavus Adolphus in the Thirty Years' War and, in 1647, governor of the Spanish Netherlands. Although the book has at least some of the characteristics of a Furstenspiegel, its 160 emblems are addressed as much to broader moral and middle-class themes of gambling, gluttony, modesty, bribery, bathing, suicide, and satires on women as to any more specific advice on princely conduct: these emblems are ethica as much as politica. Given the relevance of such moral themes to Jesuit teaching, and specifically to Kreihing's role as professor of moral theology at the Universities of Bamberg and Erfurt, it is more than likely that their argument should be structured on the formal principles of classical, and specifically Jesuit, rhetoric, though their conformity with the seven parts which made up the traditional dispositio of an argument seems to me often less close than Dimler's extended analysis of a single emblem, CXLIII (18-19), seems to suggest—Dimler has already published an article on the rhetorical principles of these emblems (see n42). I need further convincing of the grounds for assimilating the pictura of an emblem to the traditional expositio of an argument, and it remains somewhat unclear from this analysis how far, or how often, the received rhetorical schema should be applied to all three parts of the emblem unit rather than to the verse subscriptio alone. On the whole, Dimler's analysis is directed more to the text of the emblems, though it is their richly detailed and quite finely drawn engravings that are likely to attract the reader's immediate attention; they receive little notice in this analysis, however. The artist and engraver are unknown, and it would be useful to discover more about Kreihing's control over their content—a closer analysis of the relation of text to picture in some of the emblems might be instructive. Did Kreihing commission the engravings before he departed this life, or was it left to publisher Jacob Meurs? The question needs to be addressed, even if it cannot be confidently answered. And, given the interest of the picturx, it is somewhat regrettable that the reproduction should not be clearer: the decision to reproduce a full double-page opening on each page of this facsimile results in a reduction which makes much of the detail —some of it significant—very difficult to make out, and I have to confess that I read this edition only with the help of a magnifying glass. Given the wide variation in size and format of emblem books, all reprint series will
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face such difficulties the moment they opt for a standardised page size for their facsimiles. Hieronimus Ammon's Imitation Crameriana is a book of Protestant, and specifically L u t h e r a n , m e d i t a t i v e e m b l e m s on biblical texts — Exercitum pietatis domesticum as Ammon's subtitle puts it —many using the image of the human heart and imitating Daniel C r a m e r ' s Emblemata Sacra (1622-24), a b o o k w h i c h Sabine Modersheim herself edited in 1994 for the "Emblematisches Cabinet" series. (This facsimile reprint, together with Modersheim's monog r a p h s t u d y of Cramer, were reviewed by K. J. Holtgen in Emblematica, 10 [1996]:158-62). Both Ammon's and Cramer's work is the product of the Nuremberg circle of poets, one of a number of formative Sprachgesellschaften or literary academies in which the conditions for a poetics for high literature in the vernacular were being developed at this time in Germany. The circle also included such emblematists as Philip Harsdorfer, Johann Michael Dilherr and Johann Mannich. Ammon himself studied at the Altdorf Academy in Nuremberg, whose emblematic medals and medal orations were brought to our attention by F. J. Stopp in 1974 (n36). It thus constitutes one of the most important and influential locations for the development of an emblem tradition in Germany, and the fact that this Nuremberg school of rhetoric and poetics was active in the wider development of a vernacular literature means that it has attracted the attention of a number of Germanist literary historians. The imitation of models was, of course, fundamental to all such historical developments in the early-modern period, and the fact that Ammon's title flags the status of his work as an Imitatio of Cramer indicates its interest and relevance to all such studies —Modersheim offers an exemplary analysis of this in her Introduction. Her claim that Ammon's is the only known example of an emblem book where the concept of literary imitation is employed explicitly (1) is almost certainly justified, although we might want to insist that the imitation of models through the reworking of commonplace loci and pictorial motifs is fundamental to emblematics: undeclared imitation is universal. Her copious documentation of recent work on theories of imitation is largely restricted to German sources, and could easily be supplemented by such fundamental anglophone studies as Thomas M. Greene's The Light in Troy (1981), but this is only to suggest that the interest of Ammon's modest little emblem book, and the issues that it raises, extend into some pretty fundamental areas for the development of modern literatures. That, finally, may be some indication of
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Ihe likely value1 and wider interest of this and the other two books so far included in this important and promising new series. MICHAEL BATH University of Strathclyde ALISON ADAMS, ed., Emblems and Art History. Glasgow: Glasgow Emblem Studies 1,1996. Pp. 201, 77 illustrations. ISBN 0 85261 574 4. £15. LAURENCE GROVE, ed., Emblems and the Manuscript Tradition. Glasgow: Glasgow Emblem Studies II, 1997. Pp. 192, 52 illustrations. ISBN 0 85261 630 9. £16.50. ALISON ADAMS and STANTON J. LINDEN, eds., Emblems and Alchemy. Glasgow: Glasgow Emblem Studies III, 1998. Pp. 215,61 illustrations. ISBN 0 85261 680 5. £15. AMY WYGANT, ed., New Directions in Emblem Studies. Glasgow: Glasgow Emblem Studies IV, 1999. Pp. 151, 34 illustrations. ISBN 0 85261 692 9. £15. ANTHONY J. HARPER and INGRID HOPEL (eds.), The German-Language Emblem in Its European Context: Exchange and Transmission. Glasgow: Glasgow Emblem Studies V, 2000. Pp. 182, 46 illustrations. ISBN 0 85261 730 5. £15. These first five volumes of Glasgow Emblem Studies establish a series with a clear identity, quite distinct from, say, that of Emblematica. The impression they give, indeed, is of an almost continuously self-conscious policy. Published by the French Department of the University of Glasgow, the series is international and interdisciplinary in scope, as is necessary for any serious treatment of emblems. Emblematica tends to offer studies, often in depth, of individual emblematists; but Glasgow Emblem Studies, while not neglecting this approach, tends to relate the emblem more broadly to its original contexts, and to explore its place in the history of ideas. Locating the emblem more precisely on the cultural map requires a communal effort informed by a strategic purpose. In this, the series generally makes a valuable contribution. The papers are almost too planned, too com-
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plementary and mutually supportive-lacking, if anything, the critical abrasiveness needed to raise the position of emblem scholarship among the disciplines. The first volume, Emblems and Art History, addresses a potential weakness, the boundary with art history. For, in view of the poor quality of most emblems as art objects, art historians have tended to ignore them, or relegate them to the status of convenient iconographical evidence. Here, a wide variety of papers, from scholars local and international, junior and eminent, takes stock of an abundance of possible directions of study; exploring sorts of significance besides the aesthetic. Judi Loach's "Architecture and Emblematics" tentatively but interestingly considers how the fixed sequence of architectural experience makes for more direct manipulation of the viewer than in other visual arts. She refers emblems to their political context in the structured space of monumental buildings, but also in temporary festival applications, which could exert lasting effects of communal memory. Loach's concentration on Menestrier and France is intelligible, particularly in view of Dan Russell's pervasive presence in emblem studies (seldom directly acknowledged here, yet informing much of the volume). It needed to be supplemented, however, by Italian examples of architectural application such as Achille Bocchi's. Claire Pace's study of Gomberville is not only useful for any student of early landscape, but widens the enquiry to take in the place of emblems in the history of illustration. But the most wide-ranging contribution is Judith Dundas's ambitious survey of emblems of authorship. She shows, for example, how Alciato turned the familiar symbol of Occasio (forelock and bald occiput) into an emblem of the art of painting; from the start, the genre pursued the wit of novel application. And she acutely observes the frequency of emblems concerned with attributes-relating them, however, to Ripa rather than the Greek Anthology. The doctrine of ut pictura poesis she takes to have a moral implication: namely, that painting carries as much responsibility as a u t h o r s h i p . This view receives i n a d e q u a t e s u p p o r t : Robert Clements's Picta Poesis is ignored, to say nothing of Rensselaer Lee's "Ut Pictura Poesis/' The second volume turns to manuscript emblems, a part of literature largely neglected, except for Thomas Palmer's, Henry Peacham's, Abraham Fraunce's and a few other collections. A magisterial paper by Dan Russell centres on a bibliographical study of a manuscript version of Gomberville's Doctrine des Moeurs (1646) that he himself has discovered. He traces the history of a family of works, printed and
373 manuscript, that take their origin from Otto van Veen's Q. HoratI FlaccI Emblemata (1607), using new states of its illustrations and varying in content and format more than editions of any single work normally do. Prose descriptions introduced by Gomberville progressively displaced some of the original quotations. Russell's account has implications for the study of emblems and for the History of the Book. It suggests a model of manuscript emblem collections as starting with pictures and subsequently adding prose commentaries, ultimately issuing in a printed emblem book. Unfortunately Russell does not consider the many other cases (including Alciato's collections) where pictures were added or substituted by printers, which might suggest a different model. In general, Renaissance printers often treated illustrations in a somewhat careless, opportunistic way-as Sydney Anglo's Martial Arts, for example, explores for a different genre of publication. The printers seem sometimes to have thought of illustrations as a purely commercial element, much as modern publishers regard new cover designs. Russell rightly draws attention to the importance of the copperplate technique, which made illustrations more detachable and independent. Five of the papers are concerned, in various ways, with a newly discovered poetic manuscript, now in Glasgow University Library, of Tristan l'Hermite, interleaved in a copy of van Veen's 1608 Amorum Emblemata. This work in progress will be of the greatest interest to bibliographers, students of the emblem and historians of the book. But it may be quite atypical. More significant, at least for emblem studies, is Alison Saunders's account of the Liber Fortunae Centum Emblemata, dated 1568, which has seldom been noticed, and previously published only in part. Saunders discusses its authorship, and distinguishes herself by thinking to discuss its ornate framing devices. (Cartouches, a frequent and important feature of emblem books and authorial manuscripts like Mildmay Fane's, are usually ignored by literary scholars.) And she carefully analyses the highly unified content, a sustained meditation focussed on Fortune and Occasion. Wright's account of another Palmer manuscript, Ash. 767, throws interesting light on the manuscript tradition. For it is a draft of the mutilated BL Add MS. 18040, the model for William Browne's emblem collection. Further studies in this direction may clarify what practices underlie the manuscript collections. How often were they drafts aimed at immediate printed publication, and how often independent collections, perhaps for presentation or exchange? REVIEWS
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Volume III, Emblems and Alchemy, is structured a good deal less tidily-as the "and" in its title perhaps indicates. Many ends are left loose, many questions unanswered. Why are there so many alchemic emblems? How does their chronology relate to that of the emblem? Were they felt, in the seventeenth century, as constituting a distinct category separate from philosophical and moral emblems? They certainly elicit a different sort of scholarship now. Alchemy tends to draw its students into a heterocosm that eludes location with respect to other intellectual disciplines. It has also a centrifugal or holistic tendency: Stanton Linden's paper, for example, scarcely touches on emblems at all, although it is nonetheless valuable. He gives a fascinating account of the Ripley scrolls and their relation to The Compound of Alchymy. Lyndy Abraham's suggestive discussion of Edward Kelly ambitiously attempts to relate alchemic emblems to the Renaissance emblem in general. She treats the opus itself as an emblematic performance in the "tiny glass theatre" (Nicholl's phrase) of the Hermetic vessel. Verbal performance or process is thus replaced by chemical, or chymic, process. But even in this fine paper, emblem blurs into symbol, and chronology is forgotten. (The "emblematic" figures of alchemy go back at least to the fourteenth century.) For the rest, Bernhard Scholz studies the interesting transitional figure Goossen van Vreeswijck, an alchemist realistic enough to abandon the attempt to produce gold. Van Vreeswijck used illustrations from Cats's Silenus Alcibiades (with modifications) for his treatises. M. E. Warlick turns to domestic scenes in representations of alchemy in mainstream emblems, while Gyorgy Szonyi by contrast expounds emblematic features in various esoteric works. And Paul Cheshire shows that esoteric (rather than strictly alchemic) symbols can usefully be applied in interpreting the astronomic imagery of Paradise Lost. The fourth volume, edited by Amy Wygant, seems to me to lose its way in attempting to reduce emblem studies to a subdepartment of Theory. The guest editor's Introduction may suggest the volume's tone: A direction is a work of passage, a passage through. "Direction" is related to "dirigible," "Directoire," and "dirge," and so to revolutions, funeral songs, and blimps, all instruments of passage. By such frail bricolage anything can very easily be related to everything else, and scholarship made kin to nonsense. This is not to deny
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that the volume contains passages of interest-for example in Warlick's paper on Prospero's, and Wygant's own relation of L'lncoronazione di Poppea to Alciato's Fortuna emblems. But the problematizing of emblem studies mostly consists of returning to the structuralist and deconstructive jargons fashionable thirty years ago. Most of the contributors seem less interested in emblem studies than in "the b r o a d theoretical and c o n c e p t u a l concerns of post-disciplinarity," whatever these may be, exactly. Emblems are complex enough without adding the unnecessary problems of aporia or the imbricated jargon of structuralism. The topic of the fifth volume is potentially most important of all, since German-language emblems are probably less well known than any other national corpus except Spanish. But peripheral specialisms are given too much play here, so that the chance of arriving at a broad view is missed, or the forelock not firmly grasped. Sambucus and Rollenhagen are not altogether absent, indeed, but the main lines of their great achievements are never indicated. How did religious tensions in the imperial territories affect emblem production? How far were Rosicrucian emblems politically inspired? What part did Rudolf IFs eirenic policies and patronage play? How did the emblematic abstractions of his court painter Arcimboldo relate (if at all) to the emblem itself? Such questions are hardly asked, except briefly in Anthony Harper's paper on Zincgref's emblem book of 1619. Here, at least, the book's lion and sun emblems are convincingly related to the political iconography of the Palatinate. Volumes on the French and Dutch emblem traditions are promised, and will surely be welcome. What topics will this excellent series turn to then? Perhaps it will be time for consideration of emblem picturae, and of the printers who were often chiefly responsible for their insertion or renewal. ALASTAIR FOWLER Edinburgh
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ALISONADAMS, STEPHEN RAWLES, and ALISON SAUNDERS. A Bibliography of French Emblem Books of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Travaux d ' H u m a n i s m e et Renaissance. Vol. CCCXXXL. Geneva: Droz, 1999. Pp. xxxii + 670 LAURENCE GROVE and DANIEL RUSSELL. The French Emblem: Bibliography of Secondary Sources. Travaux d'Humanisme et Renaissance. Vol. CCCXLII. Geneva: Droz, 2000. Pp. xx + 239. These two works, one indispensable, the other useful, provide a fascinating contrast in approach; this is to a large extent both natural and normal given the very different corpora dealt with. Despite their intimate connection with the body of French emblematic works (including proto- and para-emblematic printed material), they are in the end so very different as to require separate treatment, and so they will be discussed separately in the order of their publication. Both, however, call forth some general remarks about the very practice of producing a printed bibliography in this increasingly electronic age. The Adams, Rawles, and Saunders bibliography is by any standard an extraordinary accomplishment both in its scope and in the minutely detailed information provided for the corpus treated. The authors sensibly begin by asking —and answering —the fundamental question: what constitutes a "French emblem book" in the period under review. Their response, as they immediately admit, is "to some extent pragmatic." Thus, the "France" of this volume has essentially the same geography as our contemporary France, but with some key exceptions (Strasbourg is excluded, for example, because of the "distinctly German orientation" of the printing done there at the time). Few will argue with their decision to include both Brussels and Geneva. The exclusion of Antwerp, however, with the exception of works written in French or including French texts, is more problematic: as they freely admit, it cuts deeply into the section on Alciato and also affects the treatment of Paradin. The definition of "French" may at first blush appear less satisfactory, as it takes in not only works written in that language, but "all books in whatever language, printed or sold within the confines" of their defined "France." This does, however, have the significant advantage of including a large number of works not in French by authors of interest for their true French emblem books more narrowly defined. As for "emblem book" — clearly the most potentially vexing part of the corpus definition —the authors have chosen to lay considerable
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stress not only on emblematic content per se but on what they call "permanence" and "substance." They thus include not only complete works clearly intended as collections of emblems or devices, but a large number of works "whose modus operandi is emblematic in the sense of juxtaposing visual and textual material to express a message." They systematically exclude some allied genres, however: for example, collections of blasons are not included. An emblematic work dealing with a single occasion will be included if its substance (in terms of the number, quality and interest of its illustrations, for example) is sufficient; similarly, a work of descriptive substance may appear even if the actual number of emblems in it is not large. Insubstantial ephemera are uniformly excluded. Quite clearly, one can argue with all these selection criteria, and in practice, most scholars are likely to feel a mixture of delight and irritation at the inclusion of some works and the exclusion of others. The decision to exclude blasons, for example, means that Corrozet's Blasons domestiques has no place in the bibliography: this is one work that some of us might well have wished to see included. Similarly, some important work by other authors falls outside the criteria: I am thinking for example of Aneau's and Gueroult's collections of material from natural history, which offer such a useful comparison with their own emblematic work and with other emblem books, where these and similar motifs are widely found. As far as inclusiveness is concerned, the decision to include all emblematic works with a French text has meant that a not inconsiderable portion of the volume treats polyglot works which, while frequently important in their own right, are not really "French emblem books" at all except in the sense that they include some words in French. I am thinking, for example, of the more than 25 entries and 60 pages devoted to the emblematic works of Jacob Cats: while in some cases the French is as substantial as the Dutch and Latin texts, it is more frequently ancillary, and in a number of cases (e. g., F. 156) a tiny part of the whole. The inclusion of some important works written in French but only marginally emblematic in any real sense may also seem like "overkill" at times. For example, there are eleven entries for seventeenth-century editions of the Entretiens d'Ariste et d'Eugene: despite the interest of the well-known sixth entretien on the device, such a work cannot have anything like the same appeal, from a bibliographic or scholarly point or view, as the actual emblem books discussed here. I have no wish to quibble before such a feast, however: by and large, one is extremely grateful to the authors for their ex-
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haustive approach to this material, and in the end it is frequently useful to be reminded of such details as the existence of a manuscript note by Huet in one of the three Bibliotheque Nationale copies of one of the six 1671 editions (F. 118) of the Entretiens. As far as the purely bibliographic information provided here, it seems truly exhaustive. Each entry begins with a unique "running number" which should provide an invaluable shorthand for all future references to works treated here. It then gives more bibliographic detail than all but a few of us will ever need, including encyclopaedic information on the features of collation of each edition and its "fingerprint," contents and layout. The section on collation includes details of format, a list of signatures (as they might appear in an "ideal copy"), a statement of signature numbering, an indication of pagination or foliation, details of any anomalies identified in these areas, and a statement of variants identified to date. Though the authors are at pains to give clear and detailed explanations of the meaning of each of these subsections in their introduction (xxvi-xxix), much of this information may be of more interest to bibliographers than to emblem scholars as such, and many of us may turn more eagerly to the descriptive information which follows. Three extremely helpful sections are included for each entry wherever possible. The first of these includes remarks on the relative status of the various states of an edition or on a given work's derivation in comparison to other emblem books. The second gives a summary indication of earlier mentions of the edition, for example in previous bibliographies, lists of emblem books and catalogues such as those of Green, Praz and many colleagues recently or currently active in the field. Finally, an invaluable list of copies so far located of each edition is given: for many scholars, this book will be worth owning for that feature alone; the authors say quite correctly that the value of a bibliography such as this not only "increase[s] exponentially from the systematic examination of as many copies of the relevant books as possible," but from the inclusion of information regarding the copies consulted or identified from other sources. Pressmarks are not given for individual copies, on the grounds that they are too subject to variation and to error to be truly useful. In short, then, this is a wonderful achievement despite any quibbles one may have about the inclusion or exclusion of individual works. While there may well be errors in the bibliographic information (given the density of the information provided, it would be truly astonishing were there not), I found only a negligible number of minor
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typographical errors: the authors seem to have taken great pains to present the information accurately. The volume is copiously illustrated, with almost all title pages and many typical emblems being reproduced. As a result, the book is a real joy simply to leaf through. One does at times wish that an index nominum had been provided for this first volume: the decision to postpone all indexing until the completion of the second volume means that it is not yet possible to locate with any facility references to persons not appearing as primary authors. The second volume treated here provides a very useful complement to the Adams, Rawles, and Saunders bibliography. Daniel Russell and Laurence Grove have undertaken to provide, in a single volume, a comprehensive bibliographic treatment of secondary source material related to the French emblem corpus: they write that their "primary purpose is to provide a bibliography of the critical reception of the French emblem" (xvi). In support of this goal, they have divided their bibliography into five main sections, each with several parts: research tools, general studies of the emblem, precursors including Alciato and proto-emblematic forms, French emblem writers (both printed and in manuscript form), and applied emblematics including royal entries. The authors are well aware of the potential for considerable overlap with Adams, Rawles, and Saunders, and have been at some pains to avoid needless duplication of detail better left to a bibliography of primary sources. They do, however, include a useful list of first editions of French emblem books published before 1801 which is in two parts: an alphabetical list by author, and a chronological list. The former is especially welcome for quickly checking the sequence of publication of works by a given author; the latter, for a rapid comparison of the sequence of appearance of works by different authors in a given period. The fact that the selection criteria for the two lists are slightly different —the authors include in the chronological list "some works that are not emblem books in the strict sense, but had an important effect on the genre," leads inevitably to some oddities, however. For example, while Gueroult's Second livre de la description des animaux appears in the chronological list (presumably on the grounds just mentioned, as it is excluded from the alphabetical list), Aneau's very similar Premier livre de la nature des animaux tant raisonnables, que brutes does not. The question of selection criteria is of course one that arises each time a work such as this is contemplated, and like Adams, Rawles,
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and Saunders, the authors are careful to explain and justify their criteria in the preface (xv). They have essentially adopted the broad criteria established by Daly and Silcox in The English Emblem: Bibliography of Secondary Literature, including material dealing with theoretical treatments by authors such as Menestrier and Bouhours but not general works on European (as opposed to French) emblematics. This approach seems eminently satisfactory. The authors have also included a usefully clear description of each section and subsection of the bibliography, outlining the sorts of works typically to be found there. The entries themselves are listed in MLA format, and the authors have accordingly made some conscious decisions concerning punctuation and capitalization, including a decision to adapt capitalization of entries to make them conform to the MLA style but not to alter original spelling. In the case of non-English entries, however, the authors say they have followed normal practice for the language in question. In some cases, one notes inconsistencies that do not seem to follow these guidelines. For example, the subtitle of Giovanni Cairo's Dizionario ragionato dei simboli is listed both as "Con 150 Disegni" (2) and "disegni (71) originali" (on the question of multiple listings, see the next paragraph). Other instances of odd capitalization include such listings as Gisele Mathieu-Castellani's article "Le Nombre et la lettre: Pour Une Lecture du sonnet XCVI de L'Hecatombe a Diane d'Aubigne" (109), where the capitalization of "Une" can be described only as bizarre, and the contrast between "lettre" and "Lecture" leaps off the page at the reader. As far as the bibliography itself is concerned, it seems very complete, but there are a number of points of detail that leave something to be desired. The first of these concerns the lack of any unique "running number" or other designation for a given entry. This is especially problematic as the authors have chosen to repeat in their entirety a number of entries that are legitimate candidates for inclusion in more than one section of the bibliography. Robert Brun's Le livre illustre en France, for example, appears four times, on pp. 2,22,57, and 61, constituting four of the five indexed entries for this author. Barbara Tiemann's Fabel und Emblem is cited in its entirety no fewer than six times. Amethodological decision to give each title a unique serial designation would have simplified the authors' task and that of the reader: rather than repeating entries in their entirety, the authors could then have simply included the serial reference, as is done, for example, in the annual Otto Klapp Bibliographic der franzosischen Liter at urwissenschaft and in Alexandre Cioranescu's now thoroughly
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outdated bibliographies. A further complication is that while the repeated entries are normally identical, this is not always so. Marc van Vaeck's article (Emblematica 8.2) on "The Openhertige Herten in Europe: Remarkable Specimen's (sic) of Heart Emblematics": this entry is correctly given without the misspelling elsewhere on the same page! A small subsection devoted to the work itself, incidentally, lists it as Openhertighe Herten, though it appears in the index nominum as Openhertige herten. Unfortunately, similar inconsistencies and minor but embarrassing errors plague the volume throughout. Frequently, these involve m i s s p e l l i n g s a n d e r r o r s in F r e n c h a n d o t h e r l a n g u a g e s : "characteristiques," "sacreees," "Danse Macabre," "Les Trois Premier Livres," " h i e o g l y p h i q u e , " " L ' A u t u m n e de la R e n a i s s a n c e / 7 "traditionales" (in a Spanish title, for tradicionales), "Citta del Vatican," and so forth. But there are too many mistakes in English titles as well: "Facsimilies," "translation," "Poetic" where "Poetics" should appear, "Mytnographer's". . . . The name of Jean Lafond seems to have given particular difficulty, appearing more than once as "La Fond," though it is correctly spelled more often than not, and appears correctly in the index. To harp on these and other such errors may seem unfair: after all, most are minor and easily corrected. But surely that is just the point: more than anything else, we look to bibliographies to provide us with complete and accurate information, and surely it is the bibliographer's task to do this work for us, especially in an age where computerized correction of spelling has made it so easy. The question of computerization brings me to a final point. Though I very much enjoyed consulting these bibliographies (the Adams, Rawles, and Saunders is especially appealing to the eye as well as to the mind because of the very large amount of primary material reproduced in it), I frequently found myself wondering whether a computerized bibliography, whether on-line or on CD-ROM, might not be preferable. How wonderful it would be to be able to import the hundreds of titles given here into my own bibliographic database! How much easier to search for all editions published by Janot or by Rouille, how simple to locate all titles held in the Bibliotheque Mazarine! And how easy it would be for the authors to correct the minor but irritating errors that despite best intentions do creep in. In short, it may be that the time has come for authors and publishers to give serious consideration to providing such works as these either on CD-ROM or for on-line consultation over the web, or both.
EMBLEMATICA 382 For one thing, the cost of production would be far less, and presumably the bibliographies could be made available at less cost (and cost will certainly be a factor: the price of these volumes makes them more attractive to institutions than to individuals). But how much more useful they could be, especially if some thought were given to designing a good user interface. If it is the case that printed volumes rather than computerized bibliographies are produced primarily to satisfy promotion and tenure committees, or external research assessors, then the time has come to make it clear that the work of scholarship, and not the medium of publication, is what counts. Even in their current printed form, however, these two volumes will surely belong in the essential libraries of all scholars for whom the French emblem corpus holds any interest.
DAVID GRAHAM Memorial University of Newfoundland
BART WESTERWEEL, ed., Anglo-Dutch Relations in the Field of the Emblem. Symbola et Emblemata: Studies in Renaissance and Baroque Symbolism, vol. 8. Leiden, New York, Cologne: Brill, 1997. Pp. xxv + 310. ISBN 9 004 10868 8. US $120. JOHN MANNING, KAREL PORTEMAN, and MARC VAN VAECK, eds., The Emblem Tradition and the Low Countries: Selected Papers of the Leuven International Emblem Conference, 18-23 August, 1996. Turnhout (Belgium): Brepols, 1999. Pp. x + 425. ISBN 2 503 50946 0. Imago Figurata Studies, vol. IB. EUR 97. These anthologies of conference papers both testify to the liveliness of Netherlandish and Anglo-Netherlandish emblem studies. Both contain a diverse and stimulating set of essays culled from two important international conferences, and in both cases the editors have made a prudent selection of the available material so as to ensure consistent academic quality. The eighteen essays brought together by Manning, Porteman, and Van Vaeck are helpfully grouped under four headings: "The Emblem Tradition in the Southern Netherlands" (Wesseling, Geirnaert/Smith, Buschhoff, Van Houdt, De Smedt); "The Emblem Tradition in the Northern Netherlands" (Veldman, Daemen-de Gelder, Enenkel, Jansen, Grootes, Van Der Coelen); "The European Reception of the
383 Low-Countries Emblem Tradition" (Smith, Wade, Astington, Teyssander); and "The Low-Countries Emblem Tradition and Applied Emblematics" (Fabri, H5pel). This, together with the succinct preface by Porteman and Van Vaeck, makes it a very user-friendly book. Indeed, the preface is exemplary. It consists of a short status quaestionis, a summary of the main issues arising from the volume as a whole, and helpful indications of topics not covered. Most remarkably, Porteman and Van Vaeck achieve all of this in four pages. Westerweel takes a much less active editorial role: the fourteen essays published under his editorship are simply arranged in chronological order. Despite the high quality of virtually all the papers, this chronological arrangement makes it harder to see exactly where the main contributions of the volume lie. Westerweel's introduction does not remedy this situation. His main interest clearly lies in presenting "a series of inventive microhistories" (p. xix) rather than in providing an overview. This is not to say that the microhistorical approach is unhelpful in itself. Both volumes under review amply prove the fruitfulness of careful intertextual and contextual research within emblem studies. However, if attempts at drawing larger conclusions are studiously avoided, the microhistorical approach can very easily degenerate into an inability to see the wood for the trees. Westerweel only narrowly escapes this. It would have been more helpful had he too presented his material under thematic headings. In fact, the contents of the volume fall into three distinct categories. First, there are five essays dedicated to comparative research documenting the close relationship between English and Netherlandish emblem practices (Daly, Smith, Bath, Dundas, Westerweel). Then there are six more contextual essays exploring Anglo-Netherlandish relations on the level of religious emblems (Waterschoot, Bostoen, Holtgen, Scholtz, Manz/Gardner/Ramsden, Raasveld). Finally, there are two similarly contextual discussions focusing on the political aspects of the field in question (Young, Davidson). Had the essays been grouped in this manner it would have been easier to comprehend the precise nature of Anglo-Netherlandish emblematic relations. Both the volumes under review raise a number of important issues pertaining to emblem studies as a whole. Manning, Porteman, and Van Vaeck's Leuven anthology bears witness to the blossoming of emblem studies following the abandonment of the arid search for one neat definition of the emblem. For example, Wesseling demonstrates that two early emblematists, Sambucus and Gillis, used the term "emblem" in ways simply not congruent with most twentiREVIEWS
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eth-century emblem theories. Similarly, the essays by Veldman, Smith, Fabri and Hopel indicate that much greater attention should be paid to "applied emblematics"; that is, to how emblematic imagery and texts migrated into other media like painting, engraving and furniture decoration. These authors demonstrate convincingly that applied emblematics did not at all represent a vitiation of the rich registers of meaning one associates with emblems proper. In turn, this begins to address the currently somewhat uneasy relationship between emblem studies and art history, an issue also raised by the Leuven anthology. The editors note rather sharply "the overall lack of interest shown by art historians for 'literary' conferences on emblematics" (ix). However, essays such as the one by De Smedt offer a tantalising glimpse of just how fruitful such academic exchanges might be. For De Smedt discusses the extremely interesting emblematic poetry written by Father Godefridus Bouvaert in response to both paintings and prints. Moreover, Veldman's essay on Crispin de Passe as a print and emblem maker offers a sensible and timely intervention in the debate on emblematics and art history. From her lead a very important point may be deduced: the art -historical search for a coherent model of interpretation applicable to the entire corpus of Dutch seventeenth-century painting is every bit as arid as the now all but abandoned search for a neat definition of the emblem. As if all of these intellectual riches were not enough, the editors of the Leuven volume also confirm the great and hitherto mostly underestimated importance of Neo-Latin emblems in the Low Countries. These emblems were mostly, but not exclusively, produced in the Southern Netherlands. Their study has developed immensely in the past decade, a development in part due to the late Professor Ijsewijn of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, as many of the excellent Neo-Latin scholars now making an impact within emblems studies emerged under his tutelage. In itself this is one indication of what is perhaps the most significant aspect of the Leuven papers: the manner in which they cover emblem production within all of the Netherlands, including both the Dutch Republic and the Spanish Netherlands. The papers also investigate the complex and multiple links between this area and the rest of Europe. This means that the volume does not fall prey to the anachronistic definition of "Dutch" and "Flemish" emblematics as discrete fields, a problem that has so marred the older literature. Yet, because of the highly effective subdivisions within the volume, these two fields are not simply merged into one discrete cultural domain. Thus the volume traces the emergent cultural differ-
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ences between the north and the south without treating these as if they were absolute or given. This latter point is of some importance, both within and beyond the field of emblem studies, as debates on whether one should maintain the traditionally rigid distinction between "Dutch" and "Flemish" cultural spheres are only now beginning to take shape in the fields of early modern history and art history. The volume edited by Westerweel has many of the good qualities present in the Leuven volume. But, as its title suggests, the most important contribution here is the consistent interrogation of the role played by national and cultural boundaries in relation to emblem studies. In his introduction, Westerweel wisely reiterates Daly's questioning of the validity of national "labels" within emblem studies (xi). The very p r o b l e m of concentrating simply on Anglo-Netherlandish relations in emblematics is then raised more insistently in Smith's essay. This is an intertextual tour de force tracing the visual and verbal migrations and transformations of one emblematic fable. Smith's pursuit of this fable takes him from Flanders to Imperial Prague, and then from Holland to England via the famous maze at Versailles. Moreover, this is only the most developed example of a general tendency within Anglo-Dutch Relations in the Field of the Emblem. Though mainly focusing on exchanges across one particular national and linguistic boundary, the volume as a whole gives a clear and convincing impression of the permeability of such boundaries in early modern Europe. Moreover, several essays within the volume demonstrate unequivocally that this permeability also pertained to confessional boundaries. Protestant emblem books were often adapted from Catholic sources, especially when the pictorial elements of these were sufficiently allegorical so as not to disturb Protestant visual sensibilities. For example, Holtgen shows how Francis Quarles adapted Jesuit emblems for Protestant usage and Scholtz provides a highly intelligent comparison of word-image relations in Van Haef ten's Schola Cordis and Harvey's Protestant adaptation entitled School of the Heart. Mantz/Gardner/Ramsden give a moving account of how Bishop Hall's theories of Protestant meditation were conceived after foraging for books in Catholic, but cosmopolitan Antwerp. All of these excellent articles indicate that in the early modern period moderate Catholics and Protestants could and did share certain areas of devotional literature. This level of cultural exchange extended to political matters in spite of-or perhaps because of—the very complexity of
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Anglo-Netherlandish relations. Young discusses how the writer George Wither adapted an emblem from Alciato to comment on the Anglo-Dutch w a r s , while Nicholson shows how the applied emblematics of the oak and the orange tree played an important role in the elite material culture of both England and Holland. In short, the volume as a whole is of considerable scholarly importance because of the light it casts on the sheer scale and labyrinthine complexity of Anglo-Netherlandish emblematic relations. On occasion, certain problems of nomenclature add unnecessary confusion to this complexity. Not all of the scholars contributing to Westerweel's volume are sufficiently sensitive to the different resonances of "English," "British," "Dutch," and "Flemish." For example, Young uses "British" and "English" as if they were synonymous (p. 178), a conflation not generally accepted north of the Tweed. Similarly, both Daly and Bath consistently use the term "Dutch" when referring to emblem books of Flemish origins. Although national identity was not as rigidly demarcated in the early modern period as it is now, it is nevertheless important to indicate the specific contexts in which emblematists worked. Making emblems in Catholic and Habsburg-governed Flanders was surely different from making emblems in the Calvinist-dominated Dutch Republic, although, as both volumes demonstrate, there were also a great many similarities. The point is to use a system of nomenclature permitting the exploration of these differences and similarities rather than obscuring them. Pedantic though this may seem, it is in fact an issue of some importance. Scholars who simply subsume the rich emblematic production of Flanders under the adjective "Dutch" become complicit in the relative marginalization which this area has suffered until quite recently—precisely because its predominantly Neo-Latin output was viewed as a bastardized subset of Dutch literature (see Porteman/Van Vaeck's preface, vii-viii). In fact, both of the volumes under review show that, with regard to emblems, the printing houses of Catholic Antwerp were easily as influential in the early modern period as those of Protestant Amsterdam, Leiden, and London. But the very title of Anglo-Dutch Relations in the Field of the Emblem conceals this important point, as do certain of its contributors. It would be helpful, then, if all future editors of volumes such as this would follow the perfectly efficient model used by Manning, Porteman, and Van Vaeck. There the "Northern Netherlands" is used to cover the area variously known as "Holland," "Dutch Republic," and "United Provinces," and the adjective proper to this area is "Dutch." Similarly, the "Southern Nether-
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lands" or "Flanders" refer to the ten provinces called either the "Habsburg," the "Catholic," or the "Spanish Netherlands" ; the adjective pertaining to this area is "Flemish." In addition to this, emblem scholars may also consider adapting the art-historical convention of reserving "Netherlands" and "Netherlandish" for reference to the seventeen provinces as a whole. It is only with sensible yet flexible definitions of the proto-national and linguistic boundaries of early modern Europe that one can begin to appreciate just how fluid those boundaries were culturally. Such problems do not detract from the fact that both volumes under review present a set of interesting and significant points of departure for emblem studies as a whole. First, there is an obvious need for a coherent study of the phenomenon of multi-linguistic emblem books. This might involve considering the interpretation of images as a universal language voiced by art theoreticians such as Franciscus Junius. Secondly, the art-historical aspects of emblematics are still sadly under-researched, although scholars such as Veldman are making new contributions. Finally, as indicated by a study in each volume (Wade in Manning et al.; Davidson in Westerweel), a thorough assessment of the relationship between emblems and the public ritual of early modern Europe is long overdue.
MARGIT TH0FNER University of East Anglia DAVID GRAHAM, ed., An Interregnum of the Sign: The Emblematic Age in France. Essays in Honour of Daniel S. Russell. Glasgow: Glasgow Emblem Studies VI, 2001. Pp. 251. ISBN 0 85261 748 8. £17.50. There can be no need in these pages for me to justify the existence of this book. David Graham makes it plain, both by the warmth and incisiveness of his introduction and the several pages he devotes to the selected list of the achievements of Daniel S. Russell in the field of emblem studies, how highly the dedicatee is esteemed by his colleagues around the world. The period covered, which Russell has made his own, the aetas emblematica, running from the early Renaissance to the late seventeenth century, is here covered in a well balanced way. Gisele Mathieu-Castellani opens the volume with an essay entitled "Les Emblemes du celer dans Delie." Sceve wrote in the first flush of the emblem movement in France, and in Lyons where so many of these
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early works were published, and although this is not an emblem book it shares many of their characteristics. The author draws attention to the role of the fifty woodcuts in structuring Sceve's canzoniere, showing how they represent a scene or incident with symbolic intent, the meaning of which is made clear by a built-in motto, and the whole of which relates to one or more of the dizains which it accompanies. She also emphasises their importance for carrying the hidden meanings of Sceve's allusive writing according to a dialectic of revealing and concealing, and relates this to the theme of desire and the confusion which jealousy brings with it. There are further illuminating remarks about the role of metaphor and mythology (Europa, Leda) and the status of the poet-lover which is in turn subjective and objective. Alison Adams writes on "Reading Georgette de Montenay." Since her recent discovery in Copenhagen of a copy of the hitherto unknown edition of 1567, Adams has been able to provide a different context for the Emblemes, ou devises chrestiennes. Here, using the polyglot Frankfurt edition of 1619, she concentrates on the Protestant aspects of these emblems and tracks down the biblical allusions, bringing out well the different approaches adopted by the translators into various languages, the versions of the Bible which they make use of, and their relation to the liturgy in the sacrament of baptism. It is fascinating to see how the Vulgate phrases of the original captions or titles give way, in the later version, to a text with strong Virgilian echoes. Adams explains the resonances in Emblem 83 "Resistite fortes," with its source in 1 Peter 5:9, and its presence in the rite of Baptism, which Montenay must have assumed her readers would recognize. (I wonder if for some of them there would be echoes of the opening plain chant rhythms of Sunday Compline: "Fratres, sobrii estote et vigilate . . . Cui resitite fortes in fide," especially as the accompanying Psalm 90 [Vulgate] is relevant: "Quoniam ipse liberavit me de laqueo venantium . . . Scuto circumdabit te Veritas ejus . . . A sagitta volante in die" which complements the reference to Ephesians which Adams gives.) Adams also studies the relation between Montenay's text and the intriguing engravings by Pierre Woeiriot. Alison Saunders's article "'Quis, quid, ubi, quibus auxiliis, cur, quomodo, quando?' or: The curious case of Pierre Coustau's Pegma" deals mainly with the who, the what and the why of this fascinating early book of emblems, in the original Latin version and the very different French translation by Lanteaume de Romieu, published by Mace Bonhomme in 1555. Coustau is responsible for an important innovation, the two or three pages of narrationes philosophicae which ac-
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company each emblem, although these are omitted in the first French version. Saunders notes that these are not commentaries but autonomous essays by the writer of the emblems, providing further exposition, and reflection, anticipating the spiritual meditations of seventeenth-century Jesuits and other religious o r d e r s , and even Montaigne's Essais in the 1580s. For the second French edition of 1560 the verses are retranslated and expanded, and the narrationes are included, adapted for a vernacular readership. Stephen Rawles provides a detailed account of the "Layout, Typography and Chronology in Chretien Wechel's Editions of Alciato," discussing typesettings, the relative expense of woodcuts, type, paper and labor, and the dating of editions by the state of the block from which the woodcut was printed. The increasing degree of breakage helps to pinpoint the order in which the cuts appeared, a technique which could be applied with profit to any series of woodcuts. Rawles concludes, for example, that bibliographical evidence confirms the order of two 1536 editions and shows that Wechel falsely dated some of his editions, notably the 1542 edition, some copies of which cannot have been published before 1545. He goes on to show the importance of his findings for the history and reception of emblem books in France: Wechel's coordination of Latin-only and Latin/French editions corresponds to a clearly perceived commercial demand and to the economic viability of his press. In a stimulating and far-reaching article, "Topical Political and Religious Content in French Emblem Books," David Graham emphasizes the "internal self-reference" of emblem books and argues against the identification of particular external events. In the light of the theories of Greimas and Courtes, and applying what he calls "localisers" (Combet's anthroponyms, chrononyms and toponyms), he examines some examples in La Perriere, Corrozet, and Montenay which scholars have identified as real events, only to conclude that what we have there is rather allusion to, or reminiscence of, events and rarely a direct reference. The article is open-ended, raising several questions which go well beyond the initial one about identification. Laurence Grove's contribution " T o u r faire tapisserie'? Moveable Woodcuts: Print/manuscript, text/image at the birth of the emblem" discusses the eight manuscripts of Henri Baude's fifteenth-century Ditz moraulx, their "proto-emblematic" aspect, their later application to wall-paintings and to some tapestries, a use for which they had been designed. The author notes that few of these tapestries have sur-
EMBLEMATICA 390 vived, a fact which is usually attributed to their bourgeois destination, but which he proposes to explain otherwise by means of a study of the production of manuscripts in the early days of print. There follows a lengthy account of some manuscripts of Petrarch's Triomphes, which imitate the lay-out and typographic techniques of printed books, as does Jean Cousin's emblem-book Liber Fortunae, recently studied by Alison Saunders. At this point Grove turns to an examination of woodcuts in printed books (the only link being that he starts with one of Janot's Petrarchs), suggesting that the novelty of printing from moveable type is present also in woodcut production and that the reuse of blocks in the same and in different texts may be deliberately playful, rather than for reasons of economy. This interesting article concludes, rather weakly and unconvincingly it seems to me, that the manuscripts described at the beginning of the article were beautiful in their own right and did not need to serve as a model for tapestry. Michael J. Giordano's article covers a broad canvas: "The Blason Anatomique and Related Fields: Emblematics, Nominalism, Mannerism, and Descriptive Anatomy as Illustrated by Maurice Sceve's Blason de la Gorge/' The blason is not here discussed for its own sake but as a "matrix of interrelated developments and intersection of mutually illuminating cultural expressions" (121). The author notes that the first of these, nominalism, had been treated by Daniel Russell from a semiotic point of view whereas his own approach is ontological (notions of individuality and singularity, and of the partial whole which is nevertheless part of the whole being). He goes on to discuss some of the metaphors Sceve applies to the neck: pillar or column (of a temple), armour, chess-board, and then relates this to "the tensions one finds between part and whole in mannerist art and literature" (133) and to contemporary works of anatomy such as Vesalius's De Humani Corporis Fabrica (1543) and Charles Estienne's De dissectione partium corporis humani (1545) which appear very like emblems as well as depicting alternately the parts and the whole. Judi Loach's piece "On Words and Walls," grounded in her training as an architectural historian, is also far-reaching, going beyond the presence of emblems in the printed book in order to assess "how emblematic modes of thinking affected both conception and perception of buildings" (149) in seventeenth-century France. Her subject is the brief didactic inscriptions on walls of buildings and on monuments which turn them into emblems, with the building as the figura (as Menestrier claimed). Loach illustrates this from an analysis of the decorative schema in the Jesuit College de la Trinite in Lyons, a true "Tern-
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pie de la Sagesse," with its itinerary to wisdom picked out in painted al legories and inscriptions. She links this with Deleuze's explanation of the role of allegory in baroque art and concludes by comparing the dynamic emblematic mode in architecture with a nineteenth-century example, Henri Labrouste's Bibliotheque Sainte-Genevieve, with its walls covered with words, exemplifying the static "representative mode/' evoking a book and projecting outwards the riches within the library through the names of hundreds of authors. Paulette Chone's article, "Pierre Woeiriot ou la pensee du simulacre," admirably complements Adams's account of the Emblemes, ou devises chrestiennes, examining in detail Emblem 37 (Propterea captivus ductus est populus) in its relation to other works of art which represent feasting, and include works of art in the picture. She also situates the collection in Woeriot's oeuvre, using Philippe de Castellas's preface, as well as Woeriot's own preface to Pinax Iconicus to establish the nature of the collaboration between writer and artist, suggesting that this engraver's active participation in the printing process needs further study, and showing his connections with Protestant printers in Lorraine. She analyses the complexity of these images in which the artist manipulates space and perspective, and plays with the conventions of representation; the result is a surreal sort of humor, which underlines the artificial, fictitious, lying world in its contrast with the real. The last two contributions deal with Catholic devotional use of emblems, in relation to signs and the rhetoric of imagery. Firstly, Ann-Elisabeth Spica talks of "L'emblematique catholique de devotion en France au XVIIе siecle: Quelques propositions de lec ture," demonstrating how closely emblematics and devotion were linked, especially under the influence of the Jesuits, a movement which was international rather than specific to a country. The au thor's aim is not to attempt to define the originality of French spiritu ality, but rather to relate it more generally to the emblematics of the sacred, and provide an overview of the use of imagery in postTridentine spirituality in France, analysing it in terms of sign and symbol. She discusses visual metaphors in Frangois de Sales's Intro duction a la Vie devote and the recognition of God's perfection in His works. She further illustrates this from the defence of the Eucharist ir the Tableaux sacrez of Louis Richeome (sacrament as sign) and the mystery of the cross in Augustin Chesneau's Orpheus Eucharisticm and several other works of spirituality including two French transla tions of Herman Hugo's Pia Desideria (1627 and 1684), and in the
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Delices de I'Esprit of Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin. The concluding section begins with the statement "L'emblematique de devotion deploie ses propres rhetorique et stylistique, tant verbales qu'iconiques" (222) and concludes that this gives it a particularly French flavour which represents people in their context and does not just rely on a traditional iconological system. Secondly, Agnes Guiderdoni Brusle's contribution, "Les formes emblematiques de Thumanisme devot': Une lecture du Catechisme royal (1607) de Louis Richeome, S. J." ties in well with the previous article. After a few words of caution about the value of the term "humanisme devot" the author goes on to discuss "tableaux graves" which contain "la representation litterale d'une image figuree, la mise en image de l'image" (228). She then analyses the complex network of signs and meanings, which invite a multiple reading, in Richeome's little-studied Catechisme Royal of 1607, which was presented to the dauphin, and in some of his earlier works. (This constitutes a pioneering study of the thirteen engraved plates which are the greatest originality in this book.) Two important aspects are flagged here: "la dramatisation de la legon, qui englobe la pratique repetitive de Yekphrasis d'un 'tableau', et le 'miroir du Prince' dans le miroir des dauphins, les deux precedes ouvrant un espace proprement spirituel, par dela la scene theatrale" (234). To this is added the presence of a disconcerting "mise en abyme" on several levels which presents real people in a real place in the fictitious context of the dialogue and underlines the spirituality of the message. She notes that the resulting literary work and meditation prefigure his Peinture spirituelle and that the three-fold aim of classical rhetoric {probare, delectare, fleeter e) is evident in the Catechisme as it is in the Tableaux Sacrez. In his introduction David Graham explains the meaning of the sub-title by referring to Russell's Emblematic Structures in Renaissance French Culture where the emblem is situated between the "reign of the natural sign and the coming dominance of the arbitrariness of language" and the neglect of metaphor. The coherence of this volume results from the explicit, or sometimes implicit, attention which many of the authors give to the "emblematic process" and the "emblematic mentality" which Russell identified. Further cohesiveness is provided by a recurrent awareness of rhetorical concerns, covering problems of sign and symbol, metaphor, ekphrasis (central to all discussion of emblems), "art-emblems" (the image within the image) —a vast topic of study, still in its infancy, and the close analysis of the mechanisms of persuasion, especially with reference to meditation.
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The1 volume is well-produced, is illustrated with a good number of aptly chosen illustrations in good reproductions and is a fitting tribute to the scholar whom it honors. PETER SHARRATT Edinburgh Studiolum 200012: A Compact Disk Compiled by Tamas Sajo. $192 U. S. or 211 Euro (for individuals); $336 U. S. or 369 Euro (for institutions). The past few decades have seen a remarkable resurgence of scholarly interest in emblematic genres of all kinds, particularly the emblem and impresa, whether manifested in print or in some other type of material culture, such as architecture, tournament shields, military flags, tapestries, jewelry, ceramics, or the engraved decoration of armour. Emblem studies are now a small but very visible part of the landscape of contemporary Renaissance scholarship. That presence is marked by the burgeoning of academic articles and monographs, serial publications and journals, the formation of scholarly organizations, and the regular holding of academic conferences, all concerned with furthering emblem studies. A notable part of this scholarly activity continues to be the efforts of a number of scholars to identify the corpus of emblem books published during the Renaissance and Baroque periods and beyond. It is now a commonplace to acknowledge that the pioneering bibliographies of emblem books compiled by such scholars as Rosemary Freeman, Mario Praz, Augustine and Aloys De Backer (with Carlos Sommervogel), and John Landwehr frequently provide only a minimal (and sometimes inaccurate) record of the large amount of material actually awaiting the scrutiny of emblem scholars. The ongoing attempts to identify emblem books and manuscripts, emblematically illustrated works, and works dealing with the theory and practice of emblematics are now beginning to provide an essential tool for future emblem scholarship. Also needed, once this rich body of material has been identified, is, of course, access to the primary works themselves. Attempts to assist scholars in this all-important requirement have given rise to a number of individual and series publications of printed facsimiles of both books and manuscripts. The media of microfilm and microfiche (one thinks particularly of the InterDocumentation Company's placing of
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several hundred emblem books on microfiche) have encouraged the dream that in time a degree of access to all identified emblematic works will be possible without the scholar having to travel the world from library to library. That dream has now derived new impetus from digital technology, and, as most readers of this review will be aware, there are currently a number of ongoing projects to produce digital editions of emblematic works. 1 These will all offer scholars some level of access to the originals. Certain of the projects may offer little more than electronically scanned images of the original pages, while others may provide powerful search engines and scholarly annotation. Some projects will be published on compact disks, while others will be available on the world wide web. Considerable duplication is a strong possibility, 2 and common agreement seems unlikely concerning the employment of a common template that would ensure that every project recorded the same kinds of information about each scanned item in a standard pattern of database fields. It is within this broad context just outlined that one should consider the publication of Tamas Sajo's compact disk Studiolum, a work that includes a number of valuable electronic editions of emblem books, but a work that, at the same time, takes a revolutionary step in a fresh direction. To date, Studiolum consists of a single CD, the space of about a third of which (approximately 200 mb) holds the material so far published. Subsequent versions will contain additional material that may presumably require more than one disk. Studiolum is very much a work in progress, but what makes it of such interest is that its goals are radically different from those of the projects to digitize emblem books referred to above. Studiolum plans over time to publish a collection of works that were the day-to-day companions of humanists during the early modern period (approximately 1450 to 1650). As already noted, the collection includes a number of emblem books, but these will stand beside other works that were to be found upon the shelves of humanist libraries —editions of the classics and their com1. These projects are discussed in Peter M. Daly's Digitizing the European Emblem: Issues and Prospects, AMS Studies in the Emblem, No. 15 (New York: AMS Press, 2002). I am grateful to Peter Daly for permitting me to see a copy of this work before it went to press. 2. Writing in early 2002, Daly estimates that various ongoing projects will result in the digitization of some 574 emblem books (including different editions and translations). Of these, 55 will be digitized twice, 27 three times, and 7 four times (Digitizing the European Emblem, p. x).
395 menlaries, herbaries, Icxiconsof animal lore, collections of proverbs, handbooks of mythography, historical dictionaries, and illustrated works on ancient medals and coins. As the introduction to the CD explains, the studiolum was a celebrated emblem of the humanist period, "a private library, where one could, in intimacy, consult with the great spirits of past and present." The aim of the CD is "to recreate this unique place [the studiolum] by gradually collecting those works that once stood on the bookshelves of humanist scholars, and that served for them as principal sources of learning and of inspiration. With a rich tapestry . . . of carefully selected and interlinked texts and images, it offers a generous background to the understanding of the thought and creation of the period." That modern scholars may have access through their computers to such an important body of texts is highly desirable. For emblem scholars, whose work often entails the search for sources and analogues among commonplaces, proverb lore, Classical texts, a n d v a r i o u s c o m p e n d i a of scientific, my thographical, numismatic, and emblematic materials, the value of such an interlinked and electronically-searchable collection of texts is obvious. Emblematic texts did not issue from a vacuum. They belonged to a rich fabric of interrelated texts. To understand emblem texts and their place within early modern culture, one must somehow perceive them within the complex context that Tamas Sajo's Studiolum will attempt to reconstruct and make available in digital form. The version of the CD that I received (in March 2002) is but a first step in Tamas Sajo's ambitious plan. It offers an exciting initial body of texts, and I list them here to indicate not only the titles of the emblem books that have been included but the choice of other texts, the relevance of which will be immediately apparent: REVIEWS
Alciato, Emblemata (Augsburg, 1531); (Padua, 1618); (Padua, 1621) [this last includes only those 45 emblems cited by Ripa. The full text will follow in later versions of the CD, accompanied by all previous commentaries from which Thuilius compiled his own]; and (Padua, 1626) Anacreon, Odae (Paris, 1554); and (Paris, 1556) Baccio Baldini, Discorso sopra la mascherata (Florence, 1565) Pierre Bayle, Dictionnaire historique et critique (Amsterdam, 1740) [at present this contains only those articles connected with the authors included to date in Studiolum] Vincenzo Cartari, Le Imagini De I Dei De Gli Antichi (Venice, 1571) Anton Francesco Doni, Le Pitture del Doni (Padua, 1564)
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D e s i d e r i u s E r a s m u s , Opera Omnia (Leiden, 1703) [contains Epigrammata, Adagia, De Termino suo, and Index expurgatorius] Desiderius Erasmus, Man muss entwer ein konig oder aber ein narr geborn werden (s. 1. by Georgius Spalatinus) [a separate publication in Ger man of Adage 1.З.1.] Desiderius Erasmus, Proverbes or Adagies... gathered out of the Chiliades of Erasmus by Richard Taverner (London, 1539); and an enlarged edition (London, 1545) [both are loose and selective translations] Desiderius Erasmus, Adagiorum graecolatinoungaricarum chiliades quinque by Joannes Decius Baronius (Bartfa, 1598) Sebastiano Erizzo, Discorso Sopra Le Medaglie Antiche (Venice, 1559) Paolo Giovio, Dialogo dell'imprese (Lyon, 1574) [this edition contains Gabriel Symeoni's Le imprese heroiche and Lodovico Domenichi's Ragionamente]; (Rome, 1555) [contains only the two introductory dedications and Imprese 125 and 129, which figure in the 1555 and 1556 editions]; and The Worthy Tract (London, 1585) [translation by Samuel Daniel of Dialogo] Horapollon, Hieroglyphica (Bologna, 1517); (Venice, 1547); (Paris, 1574) Claude Paradin, Devises heroiques (Lyon, 1557); and Heroicall Devises (London, 1591) [translation by P. S. of Devises heroiques] Pausanias, Graeciae Descriptio (Hanau, 1613) [contains only those 18 chapters, complete with their notes, that are referred to in annota tions of Ripa's Iconologia. Complete edition to follow in subsequent version of Studiolum]; and Descrittione delta Grecia (Mantua, 1593) [this last contains only those 18 chapters, complete with their notes, that are referred to in annotations of Ripa's Iconologia. Complete edition to follow in subsequent version of Studiolum] Plutarch, Moralia (Basle, 1570) Plutarch, De solertia animalium (Basle, 1570) Plutarch, Les Oeuvres morales (Paris, 1612) [translation of Moralia] Plutarch, Quels animaux sont les plus advisez (Paris, 1612) [translation of De solertia animalium] Cesare Ripa, Iconologia (Rome, 1603); (London, 1709); (Budapest, 1997)1 1. The inclusion of a modern edition of Ripa's works may seem out of place; how ever, this is a corrected and revised version of Tamas Sajo's 1997 annotated edi tion of the 1603 Ripa. The annotations remain extremely useful, and the user of Studiolum will surely not object to having access to so useful an aid, even if at first sight its inclusion is unexpected.
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As Та mas Sajo's web site for Studiolum (www.studiolum.com) makes clear, this rich offering will be followed by further issues con taining such works as Pliny's Naturalis historia, and Bocaccio's Gcnealogia deorum. Of particular interest to emblem scholars are the planned additions of Pierio Valeriano's Hieroglyphica, emblem books by Joachim Camerarius, Johannes Sambucus, and Hadrianus Junius, Natale Conti's Mythologia, and Giglio Gregorio Giraldi's De deis gentium. The plan is that ultimately the project will include a large collection of additional emblem books. These will include all the important versions, translations, and commentaries of Alciato, all the comtemporary editions of Ripa's Iconologia, emblem books by Covarrubias, Rollenhagen, Bocchi, and Corrozet, and the Jesuit em blem books and related works on image meditation by Nadal, Sucquet, Albin, Binet, Drexel, Engelgrave, Hugo, Menestrier, and Stengel. There will also be an attempt to include Eastern European emblem books and emblematic publications. The collections and commentaries on imprese will also be augmented. Having begun with texts by Giovio, Simeoni, and Paradin, Studiolum will gradually add the influential texts by Ruscelli, Tasso, Bargagli, Capaccio, Camilli, Fraunce, Tesauro, and Picinelli. However, as already noted above, the value of having such material available in digital form will be immeasurably enhanced by their being part of a much broader interlinked library of works that will include collections of common places, mirrors of princes, works on war, mythographical treatises, Classical poetry and commentaries upon it, and works concerned with animal symbolism, ancient coins and medals, and Egyptology. Studiolum, as already mentioned, comes at present on a single CD. Designed for use on a PC with a Windows operating system, it is easy to load. The main body of material consists of a run-time file that em ploys a commercial database software program called Folio Views. Users also have to download an elegant Greek font, Grecs du roi, originally designed by Claude Garamond (ca. 1490-1561) and cre ated in digital form especially for Studiolum by the classical font de signer Mindaugas Strockis. Another font is required to display He brew texts, the Gaon font, a Sephardic script imitating the typeface used for Jewish texts in sixteenth-century Europe. Once the program has been installed, users are provided with a tri partite screen display, each section of which can be closed to suit us ers' different needs. To the left, operating like a frame on a web page, is a list of all the texts contained on the CD, including an Introduction
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that outlines the principles of the edition and provides important information to help users take maximum advantage of the materials provided. The list of texts is constructed in a hierarchical fashion. A click on the name Alciato reveals a list of all the Alciato texts included, a click on any one of these reveals a table of contents, and a click at this level takes one (in the case of this author) to the individual emblem. As each click occurs, the main screen window displays the text in question. A third window placed at the bottom of the computer screen is used to display hits following a search. A click on any of the hits displays the full text in the main window above. Button commands above permit users to vary the number of windows displayed on the screen at any one time. Further buttons allow users to magnify the screen display, navigate among multiple texts to follow cross links, and conduct searches for single words and text strings. Curiously, the Help button is inactive and there are no context help buttons to provide quick answers to queries that may arise as users get acquainted with Studiolum; however, most users will quickly find their way around since most features are fairly intuitive. As users quickly discover, Studiolum does not provide scanned images of the pages of the original texts. Any images that appear in the originals have been scanned, but the texts themselves consist of transcriptions. Much debate has recently occurred among emblem scholars interested in digitizing emblem books concerning this issue. Generally, it has been assumed that users will be offered page scans of the original texts, and it has also been recognized that in order to permit text searches, it is necessary to have transcriptions of those texts. In some projects, both scanned originals and transcriptions will be visible, but in some projects only the scanned text appears on users' screens. There may also be a distinction between projects that employ exact transcriptions of the original with regard to spelling and punctuation and those which employ modernized transcriptions. 1 Whether the transcriptions employ the precise orthography and punctuation of the original texts, whether some kind of lemmatized key is provided, especially for languages such as Latin that have variable case endings, or whether a transcription in modern spelling is used are among the key issues of the current debate. The solution offered by Studiolum is to use faithful transcriptions of the original texts 1. The use of modernized transcriptions ensures uniformity in orthography. This in turn allows users to conduct searches without having to worry about the vagaries of early modern spelling.
REVIEWS 399 which then provide the basis for long, concordance-like word lists that provide in turn the basis for searches. A search on reuerentia, for example, provides thirteen hits, most of them within various edi tions of Alciato, with one in Baldini's Mascherata and one in Erizzo's Mcdaglie. However, a search on reverentia produces four hits, all in Erasmus. The use of consistent modernized transcriptions would have found all these references in a single search; the use of lemmatized lists (involving all the uses of reverentia, whatever the case ending, would have found even more. Studiolum permits Boolean searches (i. е., searches using AND, OR, NOT), and searches for text strings are possible, if the string is typed inside quotation marks. For Greek and Hebrew, searches are conducted using Latin alphabet equivalents, all listed in the word lists. Thus a search on apollon in the Greek list produces six hits, two in Erasmus's Adagia and two in Pausanias's Graeciae descriptio, while a search on yetze in the Hebrew list produces two hits, both in Erasmus's Adagia. Given the complexi ties involved in the search process, it is fortunate that the Introduc tion to Studiolum provides some crucial help on how to conduct que ries, but some users may still find the process a little difficult to mas ter.1 Although some may question the lack of scanned page images in Studiolum, something that forces the user to trust to the accuracy of the compiler's transcriptions, no one will deny the great advantage that accrues from their absence. Whereas scanned images (particu larly those of a high enough resolution to permit the reading of texts) would quickly eat up the available space on a CD, their absence per mits extensive text files to be placed together on the same disk, some thing that then allows for intertextual links and searches. To facilitate comparisons of different editions of the same text, for example, inter links are lightly highlighted. Thus, when reading Giovio's 1574 text on Lorenzo de Medici's Ita et virtus impresa, with its laurel tree be tween two lions, one click of the highlighted text allows users to open additional screen windows containing the English 1585 translation of the same passage and a textual note comparing the use of the word hoggi in the 1555 edition and hoggidi in the 1574 text. In similar fash ion, while reading the text of Emblem 4 in the 1626 Padua edition of Alciato, one can quickly bring up windows displaying the equivalent
1. Apparently, Tamas Sajo plans to improve the search mechanism , and my con cerns voiced here may well be redundant by the time this review appears in print.
EMBLEMATICA 400 text as presented in the 1531 and 1618 texts, together with a philological note pointing out that the word egregium as used in the 1531 text refers to puerum-, however, in the 1618,1621, and 1626 texts, the word is egregius and it refers to pictor.1 Supplementing such material are notes providing brief biographical introductions to each author and each translator, together with brief introductions to the works themselves, select bibliographies, and some explanatory commentaries. Some users, familiar with the technique of copying images and texts from web documents will perhaps be disappointed that Studiolum deliberately prevents this kind of convenient means of acquiring material that can then be stored on one's computer hard drive. No doubt this should be understood as a reasonable protection of both the compiler's intellectual copyright and the rights of the owners (chiefly libraries) of the texts and images that appear in Studiolum. Even so, it would be very helpful to know precisely what copies of books were used in Studiolum, something that could be easily indicated by the inclusion of the library location and shelf numbers for each book. Other desiderata would probably include the wish to see the level of all annotations match the usefulness and richness of those that accompany the Studiolum texts of Ripa and Alciato. One would also like to see the inclusion of some key religious texts (some Bibles and biblical commentaries come to mind) that one might expect to find in many a humanist's library. But these are mere quibbles, given that Sajo's project has only just begun its life. Meanwhile, one can only wonder at the amount of work that has already been achieved and note that a great deal more material will probably be available by the time this review is in print. All emblem scholars are likely to find Sajo's Studiolum to be a research tool of immense value. It is a project that will lead them back to the riches of an imaginary humanist's library; it will provide access to a considerable number of emblem books; and, even more significant in my view, it will help in any attempt to understand more fully the context from which emblematic genres emerged in the early modern era.
ALAN R. YOUNG Acadia University
1. Typical of such intertextual linking is the manner in which material on those coins discussed in Vico's Imagini (1548 and 1554 editions) is linked where relevant to corresponding chapters in Erizzo's Medaglie (1559).
RESEARCH REPORTS, NOTES, QUERIES AND NOTICES
Notes on Alciato's Medea Emblem Mason Tung University of Idaho
1. Medea, the sorceress, daughter of King Aeetes of Colchis, and wife of Jason, murdered her two sons to take revenge on Jason for divorcing her and marrying Glauce, daughter of King Creon of Corinth (Grant and Hazel). Her act of infanticide is the subject of Alciato's emblem 54 (Daly et al). As a serial killer she has committed other less heinous crimes. To name but a few: she chopped up her brother Apsyrtus's body in order to escape her father's pursuit, tricked Pelias's daughters into stabbing their father's body so as to prepare him for "rejuvenation" (she did rejuvenate Aeson, Jason's father, and Bacchus's nurse, however), and with a magic robe burned both Glauce and Creon to death. To be fair, she had helped Jason in stealing the golden fleece and protected him whenever his life was in danger; consequently, her vengeful acts against his betrayal were not entirely unjustified. Even the killing of her sons, as related in Euripides' play, was done to prevent her enemies from laying their hands on them (Green and Lattimore, 109, vv. 1060f.). No such sympathetic treatment is given her in Alciato's Medea emblem, which is based on two epigrams from The Greek Anthology (Paton). In their poems both authors ask a swallow why she has built her nest on the statue of Medea killing her sons. The first poet wants to know, "After flying, swallow, across the whole earth and the islands, thou dost rear thy brood on the picture of Medea. Dost thou believe that the Colchian woman who did not spare even her own children will keep her faith to thy young?" (9.246), and the second, revealing more of Medea's motive and demeanor, urges the bird to flee, "How, twittering swallow, didst thou suffer to have as nurse of thy children the Colchian woman, the vengeful destroyer of her babes, from whose bloodshot eye still flashes murderous fire, from whose jaws white foam still drips, whose sword is freshly bathed in blood? Fly from the fatal 403
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mother, who even in the wax is still slaying her children" (16.141). In translating the Greek poems into Latin, Alciato combines elements from both in his epigram: "Why do you build your nest in the bosom of the Colchian woman? Alas, О ignorant bird (auis), why do you entrust your chicks so badly? Most savage Medea, a wicked parent, killed her own children, and do you hope that she would spare yours?" The ig norance and misplaced trust of his swallow are derived from the first Greek epigram's "after flying . . . across the whole earth and the is lands, thou dost rear they brood . . . " and "Dost thou believe that the Colchian woman . . . will keep her faith?" while his "Most savage Medea, a wicked parent" is from the second epigram's description of Medea's frenetic behavior during the murder. Unlike his sources, where the exact location of the nest is left vague —"on the picture of Medea" or "to have as nurse of thy children the Colchian woman," Alciato specifies it "in the bosom" (gremio), perhaps making explicit what is implied in the phrase "as nurse." 1 Moreover, to his epigram Alciato adds the all-important and genre-defining motto, "Ei qui semel sua prodegerit, aliena credi non oportere" [He who has once squandered his own should not be trusted with what belongs to oth ers], thereby transforming the aggregate—motto, picture, and epi gram—into a bona fide emblem. Although the picture does not quite match all the details in the text (see below), it still fulfills its role, with the indispensable complement from the epigram, of realizing the gen eral truth of the moral.
2. By locating the nest in Medea's bosom, Alciato creates a problem for the illustrators of this emblem among the principal editions of his emblem book (Tung 1987, 321-23). In the 1531 edition, the Augsburg artist Jorg Breu (Praz, 249) ignores Alciato's text by drawing Medea in the flesh, holding one son by his hair with her right hand and a dagger in her left, while the other son standing on her left is trying to sneak away (Henkel and Schone, col. 1640). M e r c u r e Jollat, "the wood-engraver, using the drawing by an artist of Bale influenced by Holbein" (Praz, 249), executes for the 1534 edition the woodcut in which Medea's statue is seen standing in a niche on the outside corner of a building. The Colchian woman is holding one son in her left arm while stabbing his heart with a dagger in her right hand; the other son, already dead, is lying at her feet. A swallow, with its forked tail, is seen 1. The translators in Daly's edition render gremio as "arms.
MASON TUNG 405 flying in from the left and going to land in the nest located above Medea's head, but under the arched dome of the niche. The nest is made of mud and straws, typical of how swallows construct their nests. Evidently the law professor had failed to persuade the artist to put the nest "in the bosom," which task, for graphic reasons, must have been a mission impossible. In the 1547 edition, Bernard Salomon followed the 1534 design in general, but decided to adhere to the word auis (bird) in Alciato's text, and depicted the nest made of twigs, a large structure covering the entire arched dome. The second son has been omitted. Among subsequent editions, some follow 1534 in drawing a swal low's nest (e. g., the 1577 edition), whereas others follow 1547 in hav ing a bird's nest (e. g., the ЕЦ}ш ftmeliuaprodegetitsalkna с 1548 edition and the 1583 edi non.oportero*. tion which reuses the 1547 IMBLE'MA. LMII. * woodcut). In the 1566 Frank fort Feyerabend edition, Vir gil Solis c i r c u m v e n t s the problem by simply omitting the nest altogether. All fol low 1547 in leaving out the second child. However, in the editio optima of 1621, the nest is f i n a l l y p l a c e d w h e r e Alciato's text has called for since 1531, nearly eightyseven years earlier. The sec ond child is also restored. 2 Fig. 1. Andrea Alciato, Emblemata, Padua, 1621, p. 258 (detail). Glasgow University Did the artist who drew this Library, SM 1226 (with permission). picture overcome the diffi culty which all the others had avoided for so long? Not en tirely. It is difficult to see the nest in Medea's bosom, because it is blocked by the sword and the bird at the center (Fig. 1). By situating one bird this close to the sword and another bird nearby flying in from below, the artist succeeded in creating at least the illusion of a nest where the first bird is. Pictorial difficulty aside, the bosom is the
2. This edition has restored other long-missing elements from previous editions, see Tung 1994,40f. For the cause of this disconnect between author and artist, see Russell 1988, 84.
EMBLEMATICA 406 right location; it is where nursing ("rear thy brood" and "as nurse") takes place; the bosom is also where the heart, the motherly love, should be. By killing her own sons, Medea has proved herself to be a truly heartless mother, and her bosom, a bloody sepulcher. It was logical indeed for Alciato to locate the nest in the only place where it is truly meaningful, resultant graphical difficulties notwithstanding.
3. Bernard Salomon, aka Le petit Bernard, created within a short span of fifteen years (1546-1561) a large corpus of engravings (Brun, passim) that have become models for subsequent artists and engravers, particularly working on emblem books and illustrations of Ovid's Metamorphoses. His 113 woodblocks for A l c i a t o ' s 1547 e d i t i o n of Emblematum libri duo were reprinted over and over again until 1639 (Tung 1989, no. 117). They were also copied by Virgil Solis and Jost Amman for the Frankfort Feyerabend editions from 1566 on (Praz, 251), and by Pieter van der Borcht (Tung 1976, 47nl6) for the Antwerp Plantin editions from 1573 on (Tung 1989, no. 65). Moreover, the 178 woodcuts he designed for the 1557 Lyons de Tournes edition of La Metamorphose d'Ovide figuree (Ovid 1557) exerted an even greater influence over other illustrations of Ovid's fables (M. D. Henkel, 76-94). Two Fig. 2. La Metamorphose d'Ovide figuree, years later, in La Vita e Metamorp. 101. Glasgow University Library, SM foseo d'Ovidio (Ovid 1559), Salo1016 (with permission). mon added fifteen new woodcuts to the 1557 edition, and removed six cuts from it, making a total of 187 engravings. The fact that he made these changes might indicate that he had not been totally satisfied with some of the original 178 woodcuts. This was especially true of one of the two cuts from the 1547 Alciato which he had reused in the 1557 Ovid. One is the Medea emblem, and the other is emblem 195,
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Aeneas carrying his father out of burning Troy. 3 The reason for leaving the two smaller woodcuts in the 1557 Ovid is u n c e r t a i n , b u t the smaller Aeneas woodcut is again left in the 1559 Ovid, suggesting that it is not the size but the content that matters. Aeneas carrying his father out of burning Troy fits both Alciato's epigram and Ovid's text. On the other hand, the M e d e a w o o d c u t is replaced in the 1559 Ovid with a new design because the old one did not fit Medea's action as described in the huitain by Barthelemy Aneau in the 1557 Ovid (Fig. 2). The new woodcut not only fits Aneau's description, b u t also t h a t of Gabriele Simeoni in the 1559 edition (Fig. 3). Nowhere is the Fig. 3. La Vita eMetamorfoseo d'Ovidio, sig. generic difference b e t w e e n an
F 4 r - Glasgow University Library, BD1 927
emblem and an illustration of (with permission). Ovid's fable more clearly highlighted than y in this instance, thanks to Salomon's redesigning of an Alciato woodblock for the 1559 edition of Metamorphoses.
4. In her essay on the illustration of Vergil's Aeneid, Ruth Mortimer writes, " . . . Salomon's selection of 12 Vergil blocks coincides with his design of 178 blocks for the 1557 Ovid, La metamorphose d'Ovide jiguree, in which Ovid is turned into an emblem book with summary verse legends" (217). The statement concerning Ovid is true only in 3.
I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Mrs. Julie Gardham, Assistant Librarian of Special Collections of the Glasgow University Library, who discovered this unusual presence of two 1547 emblem woodcuts in the 1557 Ovid. They are of a different dimension (36 x 50 mm) from those among the 178 Ovid blocks (42-43 x 53-55 mm).
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so far as the appearance of an emblem book and Salomon's Ovid is concerned. There is no doubt that the translators, Aneau and Simeoni (both emblematists in their own right), modeled their respective editions after the tripartite format of motto, picture, and epigram of Alciato's Emblemata. For instance, Aneau titles Medea's bloody deeds as "Medee se venge de Iason" [Medea takes revenge on Jason], and Simeoni uses the caption of "Medea si vendica della ingratitudine di Giasone" [Medea takes revenge for Jason's ingratitude]. Below the title is the woodcut, and below the woodcut is Aneau's or Simeoni's epigram. Furthermore, Simeoni's ottava rima verse moves away from simply describing the scene in the woodcut and towards expressing a moral truth, no doubt under Alciato's influence (Guthmuller, 175). So, even the didactic goals appear to be the same. Are Aneau's French version and Simeoni's Italian adaptation, although both look very much like emblems, really emblems? No. First of all, on the question of moral teaching as an ingredient that qualifies an illustration of Ovid to be an emblem, it should be remembered that moral lessons have always been a common feature of such protoemblematics as hieroglyphics, herbals, heraldry, Aesop's fables, and Ovid moralise (Russell 1995, 39, 45, 55f.). Didacticism is scarcely the exclusive attribute of the emblem. On the contrary, it is the very thing that had attracted emblem writers to the protoemblematics in the first place. Secondly, as Karl Holtgen has recently reminded emblem students, just because illustrated literature looks like emblem book does not make it one. The three component parts must meet certain minimum requirements: " . . . in a normal, well-constructed emblem," writes Holtgen, "the user should be able to 'read' the semantic messages of the three separate parts —picture, motto and epigram—and, by combining them and excluding a host of other possibilities, arrive at a specific meaning, which should express a general truth or a remarkable insight" (136). Alciato's Medea emblem is well-constructed in that its motto neither names the object or the person nor refers to what transpires in the picture, yet its propriety becomes at once apparent (a token of Alciato's genius) when the reader recognizes the metaphors, first of Medea as a wicked mother and the swallow as an innocent parent, and then of Medea as any profligate who squanders his resources and is thus not to be trusted. The motto warns the reader to be more discerning than the swallow and not to trust a profligate. In contrast, the title in the Ovid illustration reveals both the characters and the event and, in the case of Simeoni's caption, even includes the motive, ingratitude. The redesigned picture of 1559
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depicts what happened in Ovid (Met.7.391-97). Escaping through the air in her dragon-drawn chariot, Medea turns around to look at the corpses of her sons on the ground, and in the left background is a burning palace in which an old man, presumably King Creon, is seen lying in a flaming bed (Fig. 3). In the iconography of this illustration, what is in the background occurs before what is in the foreground, thus specifying the sequence of events in Ovid's narration, which is rehearsed in the epigram below. The three parts repeat one another, carrying the same message three times. Accordingly, they serve no other purpose than to illustrate an episode from Ovid's story of the continuing escapades of Medea. The picture of the Medea emblem is different. The swallow's nesting on Medea's statue is a one-time, ex traordinary event (normally swallows build their nests under some eaves, parce Alciate), and the onlooker, who chances upon this sight, reacts and makes a comment, which is recorded in the epigram. With out that particular comment (i. е., without the benefit of the epi gram), the picture of a swallow flying towards its nest in the bosom of Medea killing her sons may elicit different reactions from other on lookers. Indeed, with the nest misplaced for so long on the arched dome of the niche (see above), viewer reactions would have to be dif ferent. The most obvious reason is that the swallows would have been out of harm's way. That possibility of different reactions has to exist in order for a reader (as another onlooker) of this epigram with its emphasis on the bosom of Medea to be persuaded of the inescap able logic of its conclusion as stated in the motto. Thus, the key ele ments that cause the picture of the Medea emblem to be so different, and so out of place when reused in the Ovid edition, are the swallow and the statue of Medea — neither is found in Ovid. It is true that both are present in the Greek epigrams, yet Alciato's motto, moralizing on the unique encounter between the swallow and Medea's statue, is what makes this emblem both genuine and exceptional. To emphasize the generic difference between an emblem and an il lustration of Ovid's fable is in no way to deny the existence of a close and intricate relationship between the two in the larger context of the history of book illustration. Not only did the emblematic form influ ence the illustrations of Ovid, but the woodblocks of Ovid's fables were subsequently reused by emblematists (Aneau and Reusner among others). This fascinating reciprocal relationship, recurring as well between emblem and its other protoemblematic sources, is a subject that requires further research and study.
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Works Cited Brim, Robert. Le livre frangais illustre de la Renaissance. 2nd ed. Paris, 1969. Daly, Peter M. et al, Andreas Alciatus, 1 The Latin Emblems: Facsimiles and Translations. Toronto, 1985. All English quotations of mottoes and epigrams cited in the text are taken from this reprint and translation of the 1621 edition. Grant, Michael, and John Hazel. Gods and Mortals in Classical Mythology. Springfield, Massachusetts, 1973. Green, David, and Richmond Lattimore, eds. The Complete Greek Tragedies: Euripides I. New York, 1955. Guthmtiller, Bodo. "Picta Poesis Ovidiana." In Renatae litterae: Studien z. Nachleben d. Antike u. z. europ. Renaissance; August Buck z. 60. Geburtstag am 3.12.1971 dargebracht von Freunden u. Schulern. Ed. Klaus Heitmann and Eckhart Schroeder. Frankfurt (a. M.), 1973. Pp.171-92. Henkel, Arthur, and Albrecht Schone. Emblemata. Handbuch zur Sinnbildkunst des XVI. und XVII. Jahrhunderts. Stuttgart, 1967; Supplement, 1976; reduced format edition, 1996. Henkel, M. D. Illustrierte Ausgaben von Ovids Metamorphosen im XV., XVI. und XVII Jahrhunderts. "Vortrage der Bibliothek Warburg, 1926-1927." Leipzig, 1930. Pp. 58-144. Holtgen, Karl-Joseph. "Religious Emblems (1809) by John Thurston and Joseph Thomas and its Links with Francis Quarles and William Blake." Emblematica 10,1 (1996): 107-43. Landwehr, John. Romantic Emblem Books: A Bibliography. Utrecht, 1976. Mortimer, Ruth. "Vergil in the Rosenwald Collection," Part Three, "The Illustration of Vergil in Printed Books." In The Early Illustrated Book: Essays in Honor of Lessing }. Rosenwald. Ed. Sandra Hindman. Washington DC, 1982. Pp. 211-30. Ovid, Publius Naso. La Metamorphose d'Ovide figuree. Lyon, 1557. (Anonymous translation by Barthelemy Aneau). M. D. Henkel, 76; Brun, 264; copy from Glasgow University Library, shelf-mark BDl-g27. Ovid, Publius Naso. La Vita et Metamorphoseo d'Ovidio, Figurato & abbreuiato in forma d'Epigrammi da M. Gabriello Symeoni. Con altre Stanzesopragl'effettidella Luna: il ritratto d'unaFontana d'Ouernia: & un Apologia generale nellafine del libro . . . A Lione per Giovanni di Tornes nella via Resina. 1559. M. D. Henkel, 76; Brun, 264; copy from Glasgow University Library, shelf-mark SM1016.
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Paton, W. R., tr. The Greek Anthology. 5 Vols. "The Loeb Classical Library." Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, 1916-1926. Praz, Mario. Studies in Seventeenth-Century Imagery. 2nd ed. Rome, 1964. Rpt. St. Clare Shores, Michigan: Scholarly Press, 1979. Russell, Daniel. "The Emblem and Authority." W& 14 (1988): 81-87. . Emblematic Structures in Renaissance French Culture.Toronto, 1995. Tung, Mason. "Whitney's A Choice ofEmblemes Revisited: A Comparative Study of the Manuscript and the Printed Versions." SB 29 (1976): 32-101. . "A Concordance to the Fifteen Principal Editions of Alciati." Emblematica 1,2 (1987): 319-39. . "Towards a New Census of Alciati's Editions." Emblematica 4,1 (1989) 135-76. . "More on the Woodcuts of Alciato's Death Emblems." Emblematica 8,1 (1994), 29-41.
A Note on the Influence of Alciato on Aneau's Picta Poesis Mason Tung University of Idaho
In "The Influence of Ovid on a Sixteenth-Century Emblem Book: Barthelemy Aneau's Imagination poetique" Alison Saunders observes that "there are remarkably few emblems borrowed from Alciati, who would have seemed an obvious source, the more so in view of the fact that Aneau had published a translation of the Emblemata in 1549, only three years before the appearance of the Imagination poetique"(12f.; cf. Russell, 84). The one source from which Aneau borrowed most frequently is Ovid's Metamorphoses. The total number of emblems influenced by Ovid, according to Saunders, is 52. This number is arrived at from two of her statements. "A simple arithmetical process will of course show that these 41 woodcuts borrowed from the first three books of the Metamorphoses do not—together with the 17 which Aneau says he himself devised —add up to the full complement of the 103 woodblocks used to illustrate the Imagination poetique. A further 45 emblems remain to be accounted for..." (12); and, "In addition to the 41 which we have already seen to be based on the first three books of the Metamorphoses a further 11 are also based on the later books of the Metamorphoses . . . " (13). The number of non-Ovidian emblems is therefore 51. In trying to find the sources for these, Saunders was unsuccessful: "I have tried to find these remaining woodcuts being used to illustrate other works printed by Bonhomme or by Roville, or by any other printers with whom they had known connections, but I have not succeeded in finding them used anywhere else other than in the Imagination poetique" (12). It is in this context that Saunders expressed her incredulity that "there are remarkably few emblems borrowed from Alciati." More incredible still is the fact that in 1548, a year before his translation, Aneau had reorganized Alciato's Latin emblems, no doubt with their author's approval, into loci communes, 413
EMBLEMATICA 414 commonplaces of virtue and vice, love and marriage, life and death, prince and republic, etc. 1 Such an editing feat could not but have enchained Aneau to the Italian master's influence, which would, of necessity, have been further reinforced by the act of translation a year later. Thus redoubled, Alciato's influence is pervasive in Picta Poesis; it is noticeable even among those emblems that are based on Ovid as will now be set forth below. 2 It should come as no surprise that in his emblem book Alciato, like all other Renaissance authors who could not escape Ovid's prevalent influence, utilized Ovidian fables and references. Among the three dozen or so Ovidian emblems, many are based on entire fables from the Metamorphoses while the rest contain incidental references to Ovid's mythical characters. Those fables in Alciato that have no parallels in Aneau deal with Ganymede (4), Harpocrates (11), Zetes and Calais (32), Niobe (67), Circe and Ulysses' men (76), Icarus (104), Snake devouring swallow and chicks as an omen to the Greeks (132), Aesculapius worshipped as a snake (150), Proteus changing shapes (no. 183), and Aeneas carrying father out of burning Troy (195).3 Aneau did however choose Actaeon (p. 41, which is also in Alciato, 52), Phaethon (pp. 25, 66, 56), Narcissus (p. 48, 69), Envy (p. 39, 71), and Cadmus (pp. 11-12,186). Not among the first three but belonging to the later books of the Metamorphoses are Judgment of Paris (p. 65,
1. Henry Green mentions Aneau's French translation and reordering of the emblems ( 64). However, he notes later, in the bibliography section under edition No. 31, that "A new arrangement of the emblems has here been introduced; it seems probable that it was first formed by Aneau for this 1548 edition; but in his French version of 1549, No. 38, it will be seen completely developed . . ." (150). The fact is that the order both of the subjects and of the emblems grouped under them had been established in 1548 and was followed in the French version. When the list of subjects under No. 31 is compared with that under No. 38, the only difference seems to be that the subject of "insignia," consisting of three dedicatory emblems, in No. 31 is moved from before "Arbores" at the end of the list to the very beginning of the French list and is titled "Dedication" in No. 38. More on this change later. 2.
I choose to compare Alciato's Emblemata (in editions of 1548,1550,1551 by Bonhomme and Rouille) with Aneau's Latin emblems (1552, Bonhomme).
3. The emblem numbers follow those in the editio optima of Padua 1621, reprinted with English translation, which will often be cited hereinafter, and edited by Peter M. Daly, et al.
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109), Medea (р. 73, 54), Scylla (pp. 82-83, 68), Tantalus (p. 108, 85), and the non-Ovidian Prometheus (p. 90, 103). The illustrations of Actaeon in Aneau and Alciato differ in that the former is faithful to Ovid's text with Diana, surrounded by her bath ing companions, splashing the peeping Actaeon with water which is turning him to a stag, while the latter shows him alone wearing a stag's head and being attacked by his own hounds. Aneau's text and theme, however, bear definite marks of Alciato's influence. Textually, Alciato's "Cornibus . . . sumptis," "praeda . . . canum," and "Se suggerit" are echoed in Aneau's "cornua sumpsit," "In praedam canibus," and "se dedit," whereas Ovid uses "dat . . . cornua," and "cupidine praedae." Thematically, Alciato's Scaeva, the leader of a gang of evil-doers, becoming their prey by his generous provision for them is mirrored in Aneau's gullible master whose flattering ser vants devour him inspite of his generosity. 4 Like Alciato, Aneau ig nores the Ovidian dramatic irony in the hounds' inability to recog nize their own master and the sentiment that Actaeon should be pit ied. On the contrary, both the leader of the evil-doers in Alciato and the master of flattering servants in Aneau deserve their misfortune. By echoing Alciato's moral, Aneau also had to disregard Diana's part in the borrowed woodblock. It is almost as though he had Alciato's woodcut in mind when he composed his epigram. Despite of the fact that Aneau borrows Alciato's Greek motto, (JuAaima, for his own Narcissus emblem and echoes a few Latin phrases here and there in the epigram (his "forma" for Alciato's "formam," "arsit" for "placebat," "stuporis" for "stupore," "florem" for "flos," "Philautia" for "(JuAauTia,") and the fact that the two woodcuts are quite similar (Aneau's is modeled after Alciato's) 5 , the morals are drawn differently. Alciato uses the stupor effect of the flower, into which Narcissus has changed, to chastize those "learned men, who . . . seek new doctrines and wish to hand down nothing but their own fantasies" (69). In contrast, Aneau simply urges young men to flee the folly of self-love. Divergent applications argue for stronger rather than weaker influence of one author upon another,
4. It is interesting to note here that Alexander Ross (7) has the same idea: "They who suffer themselves to be abused, and their estates wasted by Parasites and Flatteres, not unfitly may be said to be a prey to their own dogs/ 7 5. See figure reproduced in Henkel and Schone, col. 1627.
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who necessarily strives to establish, whenever possible, his own identity and independence by drawing new morals and by making new applications out of old fables. This is true of the next example as well. In dealing with the Cadmus story, Aneau and Alciato, although both follow in the main Ovid's account, draw different morals and apply them in divergent ways and for dissimilar purposes. Aneau uses two separate woodblocks he found among Bonhomme's stock: one deals with Cadmus slaying the dragon; the other, with his sowing the dragon's teeth and its aftermath. Composing an epigram under each woodcut, Aneau affixes a single motto, CHALCOGRAPHI/E LVGDVN. M T 6 0 E [Legend of the Lyonnais Art of Copperplate Engraving], to this unique emblem. In contrast, Alciato chooses to dwell on the second fable, giving it the motto of "Litera occidit, spiritus uiuificat" [The letter kills, the spirit gives life]. Although the epigram deals only with the sowing of the teeth, the artist who designed the woodcut decided, for unknown reasons, to use the slaying of the dragon as the main scene and add the sowing scene in the background of the same woodcut (Henkel/Schone, col. 1620). The result was a mismatch between text and picture, and the error was not corrected until the 1573 Antwerp edition by Plantin in which the woodcut returned to depicting exclusively the sowing and its aftermath as the text had called for. After narrating the story of how the soldiers rising from the sown teeth begin to kill one another until only five survive and how Athena orders them to make peace, Alciato states in his epigram that "Cadmus . . . was the first to hand down the letters of the alphabet to teachers, and to these he joined sweet harmony" (186). As a concluding thought, he adds, "Subsequent scholars are troubled by many disagreements, which are not solved without the help of Athena." Alciato seems to aim his satirical barb at the scholars who, like the fighting soldiers, rather argue among themselves than recognize Cadmus's true contributions. The letters of the alphabet kill, so goes the motto, without the understanding of the spirit which alone gives life. Aneau, on the other hand, has a practical end in mind. His emblem exalts the art of copperplate engraving in Lyons (pp. 11-12) and compares it to Cadmus's contributions and the founding of the new Thebes, "Thebas nouas." Although he uses the woodcut showing the slaying of the dragon, he refers in the ten-line epigram to Cadmus's courageous feat only briefly, "iaculum penetrans" [javelin penetrating]. Not once does he mention the dragon. Instead, he dwells on the lion skin that Cadmus is wearing and the magnanimous quality of the
417 king of I hi» beasts, "Leoninum exuuium" and "leo magnanimus" (l lenkel/Schonc, col. 1621). By exalting the lion, he clearly intends to praise Lyons and its art of copperplate engraving and, by inference, the Lyons printer Mace Bonhomme, his friend. The bulk of the epigram is given over to relating how Cadmus brought European languages and culture to the Phoenician shores, grafted their spirit and arts on the lands, and "Ciuiles homines fecit & ex rudibus" [(out of savages made civil races of men]. The slaying of the dragon is an excu se to bring in the lion skin, thus Lyons. For the second woodcut, the twelve-line epigram narrates the full story, as did Alciato, of how the armed hordes rose from the sown teeth and began to kill one another until only five were left and how, through these five, a propagated race inhabited the new Thebes. This is a type of men, the second half of the epigram continues, who, having the name, power, and the pedigree of Lyons spread letters in the city and perfect wisdom through books. As if the Lyons printer could very well say, "SEMINO SERPENTIS DENTES IN PELLE L/EONIS" [In lion skin I sow the teeth of serpent]. An elaborate piece of flattery? certainly. Aneau is but following the Renaissance adulatory tradition, and Alciato may be his model. In the first emblem, "To the most illustrious Maximilian, duke of Milan," Alciato claims on the basis of the ducal family arms, an infant issuing out of the mouth of a snake, that the duke is of divine seed like King Alexander, and perhaps even like Athena, leaping out of the head of Jupiter? Or, in the second emblem, "Milan," where excavation dug up a relic of a fleecy pig, symbol of the city, because it is a hybrid of a sheep, symbol of the Bituriges and of a piglet, that of the Aedui, two original races that made up the Milanese. Like Alciato, Aneau has several emblems at the beginning of Picta poesis that are dedicatory. Again, like Alciato's family crest of an elk (3), Aneau devises for himself a rose inside a serpent-ring (p. 9). This impresa follows the dedication to Bishop Philip Babo (p. 8) just as Alciato's crest follows his dedication to the duke of Milan. It is true that Aneau has an invocation emblem (p. 7) and Bonhomme's printer's device (p. 10), which find no parallel in Alciato. But for these, the dedicatory emblems in both emblem books do resemble each other, a resemblance that is more than mere coincidence. This is so in view especially of Aneau's having reordered Alciato's emblems and moved the emblems of dedication from the end to the beginning of Emblemata (see a b o v e , a n d B a l a v o i n e w h o q u e s t i o n s A n e a u ' s role in the reorganization). It is not overstating the case then to suggest that MASON TUNG
EMBLEMATICA 418 Alciato's dedication emblems do have some influence on those of Aneau. Such an influence is more telling of the organization of Picta poesis as well as of the mindset of Aneau himself, as we shall see, than of simply how much he has borrowed from Alciato's individual emblems, even though that debt is not inconsiderable. Prometheus and Tantalus are two of Alciato's emblems after which Aneau no doubt models his own both pictorally and textually. A simple reason why Aneau did not use the same woodblock of Prometheus from Alciato is that his emblems have a different shape. Alciato's emblems (in the 1548-1551 editions) are nearly square (60 x 63 mm), whereas Aneau's are rectangular (37 x 50 mm). This divergence of shapes may also explain Saunders's failure to find Alciato's woodblocks ever having been used to print Aneau's emblem book (see above). Thus, it is likely that Aneau asked his artist to model the Prometheus woodcut after the one used to print Alciato's. Textually, Aneau states the moral first in his Prometheus, "Stop inquiring after God's heaven and what may be hidden / Nor may you know more than is destined for man to know" (p. 90), whereas Alciato states his last, "The hearts of the wise, are gnawed by various cares / Who aspire to know the changes of heaven and the gods" (103). Aneau's moral, CVRIOSITAS FVGIENDA [Curiosity should be shunned], is more forceful than Alciato's "Quae supra nos, nihil ad nos" [What is above us is of no concern to us], which Aneau repeats in another of his emblems (p. 113). On the other hand, the heavy dependence of Aneau's epigram upon that of Alciato in the Tantalus emblem conclusively affirms the depth of the latter's influence, in this case to the former's discredit. To demonstrate this unfortunate debt, the two epigrams, along with Ovid's references to Tantalus, must be quoted in full. First, Alciato's "Avaritia" (85; Henkel/Schone, col. 1655):
Heu miser in medijs sittens stat Tantalus vndis Et poma esuriens proxima habere nequit. Nomine mutate de te id dicetur auare, Qui, quasi non habeas, non frueris quod habes. In the Metamorphoses Ovid mentions Tantalus twice briefly: "tibi, Tantale, nullae depreduntur aquae, quaeque imminet, effugit arbor" [Thy lips can catch no water, Tantalus, and the tree that overhangs ever eludes thee; 4.458-59], and "nee Tantalus undam captavit refugam" [Tantalus did not catch at the fleeing wave; 10.41-42; Frank Justus Miller trans.]. Aneau does borrow Ovid's words and phrases
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( " i m m i n e l , " "cmf'f"nj;il a r b o r , " " c a p l a v i t , " and " u i u l a m r e l i i g a m " ) as seen b e l o w in his e x p a n s i o n of A l c i a t o ' s verses:
TANTAI.VS a labris sitiens fugientia captat Flumina: & esuriens carpere poma nequit. Fructus plena labris naquae imminet, effugit arbos. Ft refuga est mento quae fluit vnda tenus. Sic miser in liquidis sitibundus Tantalus vndis, Frugibus in medijs esurit atque sitit NOMINE mutato de te narratur Auare, Fabularqui multas pauper esinter opes. Quas non attingis, nee scis quern praebeat vsum Nummus: at in censu diuite, viuis inops. Thus Alciato's "Heu miser in medijs sittens stat Tantalus vndis" be comes Aneau's "Sic miser in liquidis sitibundus Tantalus vndis"; "Et poma esuriens proxima habere nequit" becomes " . . . esuriens carpere poma nequit"; and, "Nomine mutate de te id dicetur auare" becomes "NOMINE mutato de te narratur Auare." Although the ex pansion lengthens the epigram from Alciato's tetrastich to ten verses, the result is repetition and verbosity. The first four lines are again summarized in the next two. The comparison of Tantalus with a mi ser and its applicable moral, introduced by the verse repeating that of Alciato, are ineffectual. Alciato's concluding verse, addressed to Tantalus, "who, as if you did not have it, do not enjoy what you pos sess," is more effective because of its brevity and succinctness. Its sentiment is echoed in Aneau's, "But in wealth as the rich, you live destitute"; however, the two intervening verses, "who are a pauper among much wealth which you cannot touch, nor do you know who supplies the use of money," detract from the intended impact of the conclusion. Fortunately, lapses like this are rare among the epigrams composed by the schoolmaster at the Trinity College in Lyons. An innovative way of conbining the fables of Medea and Procne into one emblem, IMPOTENTIS VINDICTAE FOEMINA [Woman of powerless revenge], redeems Aneau from his lapse, although his debt to Alciato goes beyond mere borrowing. Among illustrated edi tions of Ovid's Metamorphoses these two vengeful women are sepa rately presented by virtue of the fact that their murderous deeds oc cur in different books, the sixth and seventh respectively. It is thus doubtful that Aneau could have found among Bonhomme's leftover stocks a woodblock that would depict Medea and Ргоше together.
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Accordingly, it is highly likely that Aneau had this woodcut specially made for his emblem book (Henkel/Schone, col. 1597), probably one of the seventeen devised by himself as he claimed in the letter to the reader. Where did he get the idea of putting Medea and Procne together in one emblem? It may be from one of Alciato's emblems on birds. In emblem no. 194, "Amor filiorum" [Love of one's children], Alciato, after describing how the ring-dove plucks its own feathers to warm its chicks and dies in the winter frost, asks the two cruel mothers, "Are you not ashamed, Medea, or you, wicked Procne, when a bird submits to death out of love for its own offspring?" Rather than shaming the two women with a positive example as Alciato did, Aneau tries in his emblem to belittle them. After relating how a hyrcanian tiger with impatient fury mangles its own flesh (p. 73), he compares this behavior to what Medea and Procne had done and explains, "quia non potuere patres" [because they had no power over the fathers]. To reinforce the motto, "Woman of powerless revenge," he goes on to expose their bloody deeds, "This one cut the throats of two infants before their father's face; that one boiled Ithys for the terrible lunch of his father," and concludes with "O SEX, desirous of revenge, but no master of men. Woman more cruel than Hyrcanian tiger!" Much has been made of Aneau's anti-feminism. Greta Dexter (55) lists a number of emblems from Imagination poetique that are unfavorable to women: "leur immoralite (p. 122), leur variabilite (p. 79), leur cruaute et leur soif de vengeance (p. 97), leur curiosite (p. 115); les putains(p.H6),... passion avillissanteetpurement physique (p. 153), qui fausse le jugement de l'homme (p. 87), sape sa vitalite et le ruine financierement (p. 73), le detourne de ses etudes (p. 27), le consume s'il est inexperimente (p. 37)." Although Saunders rightly states that Aneau's moral fervor is no different from that in any other emblem books, she goes on to iterate that "the marked anti-feminism, the insistence on the sanctity of marriage, and the disapproval of prostitution and adultery . . . are views which emerge rather more forcibly here than in most emblem books" (15). However, anti-feminism, or more properly misogyny, be it remembered, is a Renaissance inheritance of an ancient and medieval mindset. Alciato's emblems contain just as much, if not more, vehement, misogynous sentiment, while both he and Aneau (both warn students against harlots) respect and exalt true womanhood and marriage. Abrief survey of "anti-feminist" emblems from Emblemata will make it difficult to rule out the possibility that Alciato might as well have encouraged Aneau in revealing this
421 mindset. I alse religion is symbolized by Circe, the harlot, and whore of Babylon (6), the bird Porphyrio dies if a wife commits adultery (47), jealous young brides use newt-soaked wine to keep their husbands from having mistresses in the future (49), Medea is a wicked woman who killed her own children (54), a cuckoo putting eggs into other's nest is like a man for whom another's wife commits adultery (60), Niobe's pride, a feminine vice, results in a stony countenance (67), Scylla's impudence is like a woman of shameless countenance (68), Invidia is a dirty woman chewing on viper's flesh (no. 71), colewort is a symbol of immoderate love of Venus (72), parasites and harlots enjoy the wealth of stupid men like birds eating unripe fruits (73), the tomb of a harlot who like a lioness holds her lovers captive (74), like a bream caught with she-goat bait, the lover of harlots perishes by indecent love (75), Circe is a symbol of the harlot whose love causes loss of reason (76), an amulet protects one from any woman tearing his mind to shreds (78), the ermine, a symbol of wantonness, adorns Roman matrons (79),the remora is a symbol of passion for harlots which draws youths away from their stud ies (83), Ocnus is a symbol of those who give to harlots, and the she-goat, a symbol of woman, a lazy animal who grabs the gain piled up by a compliant husband (92), sirens are a symbol of women of seduction; scholars should have nothing to do with harlots (116), Arch i ppe a former harlot is compared to a night owl or horned owl and Sophocles to a corpse (117), the she-goat is a symbol of those who are degenerate (141), Phrixus, the symbol of a dull man, is manipulated by the whims of his wife or servant (190). Thanks, once more, to Aneau's reordering of Alciato's emblems, the "anti-feminist" sentiments are "forcibly," because aggregately, expressed and can be easily savored among the dozen or so collected under the sin of pride, SVPIvRBIA (67-79, see above). Is the aggregation caused by Aneau's hatred for women or is his hatred aggravated and intensified by the accumulation, the result of his reordering? Although Aneau does not organize his own emblem book into commonplaces, as he did Alciato's, he nevertheless treats similar subjects, and sometimes some of the emblems happen to be grouped together. Again, to use Dexter's list, emblems on the subject of the prince and his government are to be found in Ima^innlioti poetiqitc on pages 62, 63, 92, 93, 95, 96 (paralleling Alciato's PRINCPPS and RESPVBLICA, 144-51). Scattered throughout Pictn porsis are emblems on love and marriage, beginning with MATRIMONII TYPUS (p. 14), the first emblem with a unique vertical rectangular woodcut MASON TUNG
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designed by Aneau himself. Alciato's love emblems are grouped under AMOR (nos. 106-18), whereas his marriage emblems under MATRIMONIVM (191-98) are placed before the fourteen trees at the end. Was it by design that Aneau should keep Alciato's marriage emblems last and should begin his own book with one on ideal wedlock? There are other parallels in the subjects of virtue and vice, but these are common properties of all emblem books. However, enough evidence has been shown in this note to conclude that in terms of organization, misogynous mindset, and individual emblems, Alciato's influence on the Picta poesis, if not as pervasive as Ovid's, is certainly not as negligible as the statement that "there are remarkably few emblems borrowed from Alciati" would suggest. Works Cited Aneau, Barthelemy. Picta poesis. Ut pictura poesis exit. Lyons, 1552.; rpt. IDCKO-544/1. Balavoine, Claudie. "Le classement thematique des emblemes d'Alciat: recherche en paternite." In The Emblem in Renaissance and Baroque Europe. Eds. Alison Adams and Anthony J. Haarper. Leiden, 1992. Pp. 1-21. Daly, Peter M. et al, Andreas Alciatus, 1 The Latin Emblems: Facsimiles and Translations. Toronto, 1985. Dexter, Greta. /JUImagination poetique (a propos de B. Aneau)." BHR 37 (1975): 49-62. Green, Henry. Andrea Alciati and his Books of Emblems. London, 1872; rpt. New York: Burt Franklin, n. d. Henkel, Arthur and Albrecht Schone. Emblemata Handbuch zur Sinnbildkunst des XVI und XVII. Jahrhunderts, Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1967. Ovidius Naso. Metamorphoses. Translation by Frank Justus Miller, "Loeb Classical Library," Cambridge, Mass., 1976. Ross, Alexander. Mystagogus poeticus. London, 1648; rpt. New York: Garland, 1976. Russell, Daniel. "The Emblem and Authority." W & 14 (1988): 81-87. Saunders, Alison. "The Influence of Ovid on a Sixteenth-Century Emblem Book: Barthelemy Aneau's Imagination poetique." Nottingham French Studies 16 (1977): 1-18.
"Broom" or "brome"? Paradin's Plantagenet Device Michael Bath University of Strathclyde
In volume 2 of Index Emblematicus: The English Emblem Tradition (Toronto University Press, 1993, p. 132), Peter Daly glosses the picture to Paradin's Sans autre guide device (1591, p. 204) as "Brome, an oat-like grass, tied in knots and set up in a pile of rocks," and the plant concerned is indexed as "brome/' I believe this is a mistake, and the plant concerned is the broom plant, Lat. genista, Fr. plant a genet, the plant which gave its name, among other things, to a whole dynasty of English kings. The mistake seems worth correcting because the broom plant has a long and interesting iconographic history, whereas the oat-like grass which became known as "brome" only in the eighteenth century is quite unknown to iconography (see OED, brome2, which gives the date 1759 as its first recorded usage). Although Paradin's translator, the mysterious "P. S.," spells the word "brome," we should not be misled by the instabilities of sixteenth-century spelling, for P. S.'s "brome" translates Paradin's "Geneste," and Paradin's commentary identifies this pilgrim-cairn surmounted with broom branches as a picture of the traditional way-marker for pilgims, which had been known in French throughout the middle ages as a "montgoie" (Fig. 1). As I remarked in my book on The Image of the Stag (Baden-Baden: Koerner, 1992, pp. 89-90) "Mountjoy," "Montjoie" or "Montegioia" was the name given to the hill near Jerusalem from which pilgrims first caught sight of the holy city, and the name was thence given to the heaps of stones which became way-markers on popular pilgrim routes. This is what Paradin's device is representing. Backpacking tourists still erect such stone cairns on popular hiking trails, at least in Britain. Medieval pilgrims were in the habit of leaving branches of genista —the broomplant—on top of these cairns, and the popularity which the genista 423
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Ld Montioye des Pelcrim, en branches nouees dc Genefte, ou autre arbre, оиреш moncelets de Pierres, pour remerquer & adrejfer leurs chemins , reprcfente ci, que fettle Verm eft la guide ,pour juiuir les brifecs defelicite.
Fig. 1. Claude Paradin, Devises heroiques, Lyons, de Tournes, 1557, p. 160.
motif attained in the royal i c o n o g r a p h y of b o t h France and England must be attributed to this prac tice. French kings —nota bly Charles VI —wore the broom-collar as their per sonal device; the royal coronation route between Saint-Denis and Notre Dame was marked with nine stone montjoies; and a traditional battle-cry of the French was "Montjoie St Denis!" (On the connec tion between war-cries, devices, and emblems, see Mrs. Bury Palliser, Historic Devices, Badges, and War-Cries, London: Sampson Low, 1870; vari ous versions of the "mont
joie war-cry are given on pp. 392-93). In offering this correction, it is not my intention to imply any wider criticism of the accuracy of the Index Emblematicus in its mammoth task. On the whole Professor Daly's editors are commendably alert to the need to consult the original French of Paradin and of La Perriere (or Simeoni's Italian or Andrew Willett's Latin) before reaching con clusions concerning the identity of the motifs they are indexing. But there is clearly a danger that the anglophone basis which the Index Emblematicus declares in its series title will lead to indexing errors in the case of books whose motifs and terms were primarily conceived and defined in languages other than English.
The Murder of Osbold von Moshardt and the Emblematic Program of the Hofwirt, Seckau, Styria (Austria) Alison Adams Glasgow The Benedictine Abbey of Seckau, in the Austrian Steiermark (Styria) has had a long and checkered history. Set in the mountains, its inn (the "Hofwirt") has long played an important role, but the emblematic program of its early eighteenth-century stucco ceilings has yet to be analysed. The Dehio volume on Steiermark, a reliable source, confirms the local dating of 1720.l Tradition focusses not on the presence of what are clearly emblems but on one particular relief which depicts "die durch Eifersucht ausgeloste Familientragodie des Osbold von Moshardt, eines bekannten Diplomaten des Dreifiigjahrigenkrieges" [the family tagedy, motivated by jealousy, of Osbold von Moshardt, a well-known diplomat during the Thirty Yeaars War]. Moritz von Moshardt married the daughter of the Stiftsanwalt, Dr Johann Tholl von Tholeggs in 1665, and the inn still has the arms of the Moshardt-Tholegg family over the door. 2 The Stiftsanwalt lived in the Hofwirt, at the same time as it functioned as an inn. The murder
1. Eberhard Hempel/Eduard Andorfer, Steiermark, revised by Eberhard Hempel, Eduard Andorfer, Maria Schaffler, 3rd ed. Vienna/Munich: Schroll, 1956 (Dehio-Handbuch, Die Kunstdenkmtiler Osterreichs), p. 275. 2. Benno Roth, Seckau: Der Dom im Gebirge. Kunsttopographie vom 12.-20. Jahrhundert (Graz,Vienna, Cologne: Verlag Styria, [1983]), pp. 477- 83. Many people have offered help in unravelling, at least in part, the mysteries of Seckau's stucco ceilings; for assistance in various ways, I am most grateful to Harald Berger, Verwaltungsleiter of the abbey, to colleagues Michael Bath, Betty Knott- Sharpe, Ronald Knox, Daniel Russell, Susan Sire, and to Richard Rawles.
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scene, presumably an important and painful part of the family's history, and relating to events ca. 1624/1625, is integrated into what seems to be a logically ordered emblematic programme. In my investigation, I have deliberately concentrated on the ceilings themselves, rather than the details of the story which is fascinating but difficult to establish and document fully. To analyse the ceilings, only the outline preserved by legend is essential. The stucco is found on the ceilings of the first and second floors and over the stairs leading from the ground floor up. What has traditionally been regarded as the central scene is on the first floor: the victim of the murder is surprised in bed by a figure whom tradition would identify as Osbald's alchemist, Meister Silvio (Fig. I). 3 The movement of the scene is admirably caught, with the look of shock on the victim's face and triumph on that of the murderer. This is not an emblem, although the prominent yellow flowers to which the murderer seems possibly to be pointing must have their traditional significance of jealousy.4 It should be noted that there are several potential sources of jealousy in the traditional story: on the one hand, Klara's affections lie not with her husband but with a younger man, Ludovico Savedro, whose frequent visits to the nearby town of Knittelfeld arouse her suspicions. (All three characters had first met in Prague, after the Battle of the White Hill in 1620, before the flight of the Winter Queen, when the wounded Savedro, having saved Osbold's life, had been tended in Klara's family's home; Savedro had recently saved Osbald's life again in another battle and thus was a welcome member of his household.) On the other hand, the alchemist, Silvio, contrives to arouse jealousy in Klara by suggesting that her husband had been unfaithful to her, while accompanying to Spain the Archduke Karl, Bishop of Breslau and Brixen, and "Grossmeister des deutschen Ordens"; in Madrid Osbold had again seen an earlier object of his love, but apparently in
3.
Benno Roth considers the murderer here to be a "Zauberer" (magician), identified by his ruff. All information about the legend comes from Adolph Bacherer, "Ansbald von Mooshart. Steiermarkische Volkssage," (Das Veilchen 27 [1844]: 71-97) where the murder is carried out by an alchemist, a profession often viewed as a kind of magician.
4. Cf. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Deutsches Worterbuch (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1854-1954), vol. 4,1, 2, cols. 2881-82, s. v. gelb; Theodor Volbehr, " Die Neidfarbe Gelb," Zeitschrift fur Asthetik und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft 1 (1906): 355-65. Benno Roth considers the flowers to have armorial significance.
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fact remained faithful to his wife, contrary to the message sent back by Silvio. The scheming of the alchemist, motivated by his own greed, cleverly exploits his awareness of the clandestine relationship between Klara and Savedro. This large relief is set among further reliefs, the whole, over the two floors, linked by elaborate fronds with leaves and fruits. It would seem helpful and logical to consider the emblems in the order in which they are encountered. On the stairs leading from the ground to the first floor is a large figure of Fortuna, to be viewed however from above (Fig. 2). It is, incidentally, quite impossible to photograph the larger figures and scenes, and the illustrations here are, of necessity, concocted from an amalgam of different frames. Fortuna has her traditional attributes: she is balanced on a winged sphere and holds a sail above her head —a warning about the mutability of the world. Almost at the top, on a kind of half-landing where the stairs turn, there is another figure which must have some kind of emblematic significance: a child/putto, possibly meant to represent Cupid, blowing bubbles from a pipe (Fig. 3).5 Bubbles point to the transience of things of this world, and so suggest a further warning. The object in the putto's right hand is difficult to identify; it could be a snowball, a further image of transience. In the foreground can be seen the same yellow flowers as we find in the murder scene, submerged in water, maybe the melting snow (?), suggesting a link between the transience of things, and jealousy, the supposed motivation for the murder. Once on the first floor, the murder scene is immediately apparent, but around it are smaller roundels: a pair of musicians, with fiddle and bagpipes; then, on either side of the large murder scene, a lady playing a fiddle, with a stag beside her, which represents Hearing, and a lady with a fruit in her hand and more apples (?) on the ground beside her, which in turn can be associated with the sense of Taste. Whether these three should be linked to the overall thematic or whether they serve a purely decorative purpose is uncertain. At the far end of the murder scene is a particularly puzzling roundel (Fig. 4): a man with a sword, his left hand raised, perhaps in greeting, and a
5.
Cf Arthur Henkel/Albrecht Schone, Emblemata. Handbuch zur Sinnbildkiinst des XVI. und XVII. ]ahrhunderts (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1967), col. 1317. This could be related to Boissard's "Homo bulla/ 7 in his Emblematum liber/Emblemes latins... (Metz: Jean Aubry, 1584 and 1588), pp. 16 in 1584 and 23 in 1588. In that case, the object in the putto's right hand might be a bowl with soapsuds in it.
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woman carrying objects which cannot be identified with absolute certainty. In her left hand, she carries what I take to be a lantern, or at least the cover which was put over a torch, and in her right is the torch itself (?). If my interpretation is correct, this roundel would relate to the theme of jealousy, or rather to the love which presumably provoked the jealousy. The torch would be the flame of love which should have been kept hidden, under the lantern cover but instead is being brandished openly. The man's greeting of the woman would then be a similar failure to hide their relationship. There is a further relief depicting a murder scene which I did not see. It is situated in a room on the first floor, and here the murder, of a possibly younger man by a woman, takes place outside: beside the woman is Cupid, with a quiver full of arrows and what looks like a torch lying on the ground (Benno Roth, 480). Here again love seems to be being associated with murder, but the link with the traditional story is not clear. So far there have been no texts and any interpratations we have been able to suggest have been based on knowledge of the traditional topoi. But the next large oval relief has a motto which points to its meaning: "Eventus stultorum magister" [Outcome is the teacher of the foolish] (Fig. 5). This emblem is a very close copy of the engraving to Emblem 23 in Jean Jacques Boissard's Emblemata, the Latin and German editions which de Bry published in Frankfurt in 1593. The Latin verse allows us to identify th« figure as Milo of Crotona, an athlete of incredible strength who, however, tried unsuccessfully to split a tree, with the result that his arm became caught in the tree and he was devoured by wild animals, here a lion, a dragon, and a snake. 6 The tomb (which in the engraving bears an inscription in Greek which can be translated as "and in his suffering he knew himself to be a fool")7 indicates that Milon will die. Boissard uses the story to illustrate the warning that we should be able to learn wisdom before we make mistakes
6. Haec docuit primae tentare in flore juventae, / Cum tibi tot palmas detulit alta Croton. / Quae doceat sero, turpi discenda pudore, / Stultorum euentus multa magister habet. [Lofty Croton taught you to attempt things like this in the flower of your first youth, when it bestowed so many palms on you. The outcome, the teacher of the foolish, has many things to teach later on, which have to be learned with shaming disgrace].
7. The Greek is a quotation from Hesiod, Works and Days, line 218, but expresses a sentiment, that fools learn by experience, which can be seen as proverbial.
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rather than after, but that the foolish wait until it is too late. In the words of the German verse: Jetzt mustu nun mit Schand erfahren Dafi du hast sollen Lehrn vor Jahren. [Now you must experience in shame what you should have learnt years ago] This moral could well be applied to both Osbald and Savedro whose careers have reached a stage where they should certainly have known better than to give in to jealousy in the way they do. The moralizing tone continues as we work our way upstairs. I have been unable to establish particular emblematic sources for the remaining emblems, and would be grateful for any information which readers are able to give me. Over the stairs is first another large relief, to be read from the top down, of a female figure, scantily clothed, in what might well be a nightgown (Fig. 6). From her mouth issue the words "Clamo. Amo" [I shout. I love.], almost as if in speech bubbles, and at the bottom of the relief is the motto: "Hie clamor non est a mor" [That shouting is not love]. This would immediately seem to be a rejection of a certain kind of love, love which shouts its existence to the world, perhaps the kind of love which caused the jealousy motivating the murder. This reading would fit with my interpretation of Fig. 4. The following emblem, a smaller roundel towards the top of the stairs, can be seen as providing a contrast (Fig. 7). The heart at the centre of the roundel is kept in balance by the winds surrounding it. The motto, "Statimotum corde votum"is difficult to translate (statimotum is not attested) but clearly impies a desire for balance and stability within love. This could be interpreted as the marriage vow, although the red heart here could also be seen as suggestive of divine rather than human love. At any rate it suggests a moral dimension beyond the practical advisability of keeping love hidden. The final emblem, on the ceiling of the second floor, is again very elaborate (Fig. 8). A central figure is seated beneath a palm tree, his hand resting on a bag, as if he had sat down to rest from a journey. The motto reinforces the idea of a rest: "Sub hac palma Qvies alma" [Beneath this palm, refreshing peace]. The palm traditionally signifies virtue, sometimes specifically aspiring to the divine, as the palm grows up towards the sky (cf. Henkel/Schone cols. 191-99). In this relief, as in the one of Eventus, birds are prominent. A swallow sits at
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the foot of the palm tree, and on the far right-hand side a bird which looks like a chaffinch perches on the hillside. In this context, I find it difficult to see the birds having any more specific significance than to convey the harmony of the scene. We have then an elaborate emblematic program. The starting point is presumably the historical event which has entered the folklore of Styria. Around this, the series of emblems is constructed to give not only a warning (Figs. 2,3,4,5), but also a moral: attention is directed to the importance of different priorities, particularly to religious faith (Fig. 8), and we are invited to reject the passionate love which can result in jealousy (Fig. 6) in favor of a more stable kind of love, possibly of divine origin (Fig. 7). There is surely much more to be deduced from this fascinating program of stucco reliefs, which may enliven the visit of passing scholars to a corner of Austria still able to generate the "Quies alma" [refreshing peace] of the emblem.
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EMBLEMATICA An Interdisciplinary Journal for Emblem Studies Volume 12
Volume Index
Volume Index Articles by Author Adams,Alison. Introduction Falkner, Silke R. Hens and Snails: Emblematic Representations of Women in Johan Michael Dilherr's Sermons on Matrimony Loach, Judi. Body and Soul: A Transfer of Theological Terminology into the Aesthetic Realm Loach, Judi. Why Menestrier Wrote about Emblems, and What Audience(s) He Had in Mind Luca, Elena de. Silent Meanings: Emblems, Lay Culture, and Political Awareness in Sixteenth-Century Bologna Mansueto, Donato. The Impossible Proportion: Body and Soul in Some Theories of the Impresa Musvik,Victoria.Word and Image: Alciato's Emblemata as Dietrich Georg Von Brandt's album amicorum Sire, Susan. Body and Soul: Caspar David Friedrich's Kreidefelsen aufRugen (ca. 1818), and Baroque Emblems as Models for a Programmatic Polyvalent Romantic "marriage" Emblem Teyssandier, Bernard. La Doctrine des moeurs, un cas limite dans l'histoire de l'embleme? Th0fner, Margit/'Let our desire be to see God": Teresian Mysticism and Otto van Veen's Amoris Divini Emblemata Van Vaeck, Marc. Printed Emblem Picture in Seventeenthand Eighteenth-Century Leuven University College Notes
3 185 31 223 61 5 141
105 165 83 285
Articles by Title B o d y and S o u l : Caspar D a v i d Friedrich's Kreidefelsen auf Ri't^cn (ca. 1818), and Baroque E m b l e m s as M o d e l s for a P r o g r a m m a t i c P o l y v a l e n t R o m a n t i c " m a r r i a g e " E m b l e m , by Susan Sire B o d y and S o u l : A Transfer of T h e o l o g i c a l T e r m i n o l o g y i n t o the Aesthetic Realm, by J u d i L o a c h 439
105 31
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Ddctrine (La) des moeurs, un cas limite dans l'histoire de l'embleme? by Bernard Teyssandier Hens and Snails: Emblematic Representations of Women in Johan Michael Dilherr's Sermons on Matrimony, bySilkeR.Falkner The Impossible Proportion: Body and Soul in Some Theories of the Impresa, by Donato Mansueto Introduction, by Alison Adams "Let our desire be to see God": Teresian Mysticism and Otto van Veen's Amoris Divini Emblemata, byMargitThofner Printed Emblem Picturx in Seventeenth- and EighteenthCentury Leuven University College Notes, by Marc Van Vaeck Silent Meanings:Emblems, Lay Culture, and Political Awareness in Sixteenth-Century Bologna, by Elena deLuca Why Menestrier Wrote about Emblems, and What Audience(s) He Had in Mind, by Judi Loach Word and Image: Alciato's Emblemata as Dietrich Georg Von Brandt's album amicorum, by Victoria Musvik
165 185 5 3 83 285 61 223 141
Bibliography Daly, Peter M., and Mary Silcox. Addenda to The English Emblem: Bibliography of Secondary Literature. Munich, London, New York: K. G. Saur, 1990
329
Review and Criticism Review and Criticism Daly, Peter M., and G. Richard Dimler, S. J., The New Edition of Hugo's Pia Desideria in Polish and Recent Hugo Scholarship Reviews Adams, Alison, Stephen Rawles and Alison Saunders, A Bibliography of French Emblem Books of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries; and Laurence Grove and
351
INDEX
Daniel Kussell, The French Emblem: A Bibliography of Secondary Sources, by David Graham Daly, Peter M., and G. Richard Dimler, S. J. Corpus Librorum Emblematum. The Jesuit Series. Part Two, by Mara Wade Daly, Peter M., and John Manning, eds., Aspects of Renaissance and Baroque Symbol Theory, 1500-1700} and Michael Bath and Daniel Russell, eds., Deviceful Settings: The English Renaissance Emblem and its Contexts, by Peter Davidson Glasgow Emblem Studies, volumes I-V, by Alastair Fowler Graham, David, ed., An Interregnum of the Sign: The Emblematic Age in France, by Peter Sharratt Imago Figurata Editions, volumes 1-3, by Michael Bath Studiolum 2000/2, by Alan R. Young Westerweel, Bart, ed., Anglo-Dutch Relations in the Field of the Emblem} and John Manning, et al., The Emblem Tradition and the Low Countries: Selected Papers of the Leuven International Emblem Conference, byMargitTh0fner
441 376 361
362 371 387 366 393
382
Research Reports, Notes, Queries and Notices Notes Adams,Alison.The Murder of Osbold von Moshardt and the Emblematic Program of the Hofwirt, Seckau, Styria (Austria) Bath, Michael. "Broom" or "brome"? Paradin's Plantagenet Device
Tung, Mason. Noleson Alciato's Medea Emblem Tung, Mason. A Noli» on the Influence of Alciato on Aneau's I'ichil'ocahi
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403 413
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