Emblematica : an interdisciplinary journal for emblem studies 2016 [22] 9780404647506

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EMBLEMATICA An Interdisciplinary Journal for Emblem Studies Volume 22

Managing Editor Mara R. Wade

Review Editor Valérie Hayaert

Founding Editors Peter M. Daly Daniel Russell

Editores Emeriti David Graham, Managing Editor Emeritus Michael Bath, Review Editor Emeritus

AMS Press, Inc. New York

EMBLEMATICA ISSN 0885-988X Manuscript submissions and other editorial correspondence should be addressed electronically, in a standard word-processing document format, to Mara R. Wade . All submissions will be submitted to blind external peer review; the editors' decision on acceptance will be final. Books for review should be addressed to Valérie Hayaert; however, no obligation is recognized to review or return any books 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 be prepared to submit high-quality electronic images, also in a standard format such as JPEG or TIFF, and to provide evidence of permission to reproduce them. 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 Illinois at Urbana-Champaign by Jeffrey Castle.

Volume 22

ISBN-10 0-404-64772-3 ISBN-13 978-0-404-64772-8 Set ISBN-13: 978-0-40464750-6 Copyright © AMS Press, Inc., 2016 All rights reserved All AMS books are printed on acid-free paper that meets the guidelines for performance and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. AMS Press, Inc. Brooklyn Navy Yard, 63 Flushing Ave – Unit #221 Brooklyn, NY 11205-1073, USA www.amspressinc.com Manufactured in the United States of America

EMBLEMATICA An Interdisciplinary Journal for Emblem Studies Emblematica publishes original articles, essays, and specialized bibliographies in all areas of emblem studies. In addition, it regularly contains review articles, reviews, research reports (including work in progress, theses, conference reports, and completed theses), notes and queries, notices of forthcoming conferences and publications, and various types of documentation. Emblematica is published annually. Editors

Mara R. Wade, Managing Editor Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures 2090 Foreign Languages Building 707 S. Mathews Avenue University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Urbana, IL 61801 USA [email protected]

Valérie Hayaert Vanautgaerden Review Editor 5, rue Merle d'Aubigné 1207, Genève Switzerland [email protected]

Editorial Board

Pedro F. Campa University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Paulette Choné Université de Bourgogne (Dijon) John Cull College of the Holy Cross Denis L. Drysdall University of Waikato, New Zealand Agnès Guiderdoni Université catholique de Louvain Hiroaki Ito Saitama University, Japan Lubomír Konečný Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Prague Donato Mansueto Università di Bari

Jean-Michel Massing University of Cambridge Simon McKeown Marlborough College Sabine Mödersheim University of Wisconsin, Madison Dietmar Peil Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich Stephen Rawles University of Glasgow Library Mary Silcox McMaster University Arnoud S. Q. Visser Universiteit Leiden Alan Young Acadia University

“Ex literarum studiis immortalitatem acquiri” [Immortality acquired through the study of letters], Andrea Alciato, Emblematum Libellus, Paris, 1534. Courtesy of Emblematica Online: University of Glasgow Library Special Collections.

EMBLEMATICA An Interdisciplinary Journal for Emblem Studies Volume 22 Preface to Volume 22 ix David Graham “Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts”: Lessons from the History of Emblem Studies 1 Michael Bath and Theo van Heijnsbergen Paradin Politicized: Some New Sources for Scottish Paintings 43 Alison Saunders More French Emblematic Predecessors, Godly and Amorous 69 Lucy Razzall “Non intus ut extra”: The Emblematic Silenus in Early Modern Literature

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John Mulryan Captioned Images of Venus in Vincenzo Cartari’s Imagini 123 Simon McKeown “Imitation” and “Idea” in Eighteenth-Century English Painting: William Hoare of Bath, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and the Emblematic Inheritance 141 Michael Bath Books and Buildings: Recursive Emblems in the Applied Arts

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EMBLEMATICA REVIEWS AND CRITICISM Anne Rolet and Stéphane Rolet, eds. André Alciat (1492–1550) Un humaniste au confluent des savoirs dans l’Europe de la Renaissance, by Valérie Hayaert 195 Aleksandr Makhov. Emblematika: Makrokosm [Emblematica: Macrocosm], by Tatiana Artemyeva 200 Nicholas J. Crowe. Jeremias Drexel’s ‘Christian Zodiac.’ SeventeenthCentury Publishing Sensation. A Critical Edition, Translated and with an Introduction & Notes, by Peter Daly 208 Hanna Pahl, ed. Emblematic Strategies in Contemporary Art, Selected Papers from the Workshop Emblematic Strategies at the University of Kiel, July 29–31, 2014, by Valérie Hayaert

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Christine McCall Probes and Sabine Mödersheim, eds. The Art of Persuasion. Emblems and Propaganda, by Nathalie Carré

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Francesco Lucioli, Amore punito e disarmato. Parola e immagine da Petrarca all’ Arcadia, by Alexandre Vanautgaerden 218 Valérie Hayaert and Antoine Garapon. Allégories de Justice. La grand’chambre du Parlement de Flandre, by Jean Michel Massing

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Volume Index 225

Preface to Volume 22 With Volume 22 the new editorial board takes full responsibility for Emblematica, An Interdisciplinary Journal for Emblem Studies. Mara R. Wade assumes the role as Managing Editor, and Valérie Hayaert serves as Book Review Editor. To have reached this point is a milestone in which several colleagues have been involved, and both Valérie Hayaert and I wish to thank our immediate predecessors, David Graham and Michael Bath, for their unfailing support and generosity as we adjusted to our new roles and worked to prepare our first volume. Our work on Volume 22, as well as the ease of the transition process, profited greatly from their professional advice and guidance. We also wish to thank the Founding Editors, Daniel Russell and Peter Daly, without whose vision the journal would not have reached volumes numbering in the twenties. We would like to thank the immediate past managing editor, Professor David Graham, Emeritus, Concordia University, Montreal, for crafting a well-paced succession plan and preparing the transition. David’s patience ensured a smooth transfer for the editorship of the present volume, and he continued to advise and help wherever he could as this volume approached publication. Both David Graham and Michael Bath have been stalwart advocates of Emblem Studies since the journal’s inception. As the outgoing book review editor, Professor Michael Bath, Emeritus, University of Strathclyde, and Senior Research Fellow, University of Glasgow, has been, as ever so, the congenial spirit who helps to identify both books to be reviewed and scholars to review them. He has been instrumental every step of the way. Therefore, we consider it a particular honor that both David Graham and Michael Bath have agreed to publish in this volume of Emblematica their keynote lectures from the Tenth International Conference of the Society for Emblem Studies in 2014. Their plenary lectures established in many respects the framework of the conference, much as they form the opening and closing frame of this volume. Earlier versions of the contributions xi Emblematica, Volume 22. Copyright © 2016 by AMS Press, Inc. All rights reserved.

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by Alison Saunders, John Mulryan, and Simon McKeown published here also were first presented at that conference. The cordial environment of the Kiel conference provided all participants the opportunity for scholarly exchange, and allowed the authors featured here to deepen and expand the arguments for presentation in article form. We wish to extend our profuse thanks to Professor Ingrid Höpel, Christian-Albrechts-Universität Kiel, who organized and hosted the conference. It is an honor and a pleasure to have worked with David and Mike over the years, and we are especially pleased that their scholarly contributions comprise the first and final papers in this issue. Both authors have produced insightful new research that builds upon a lifetime of scholarly inquiry, and thus it is appropriate that we honor their efforts here. David Graham’s wide-ranging contribution, “‘Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts’: Lessons from the History of Emblem Studies,” takes stock of the discipline’s accomplishments in the past decades and offers suggestions as the field moves forward. Here he builds on an established trajectory of periodic assessments of the discipline, including, among several others, “Three Phases of Emblem Digitization: The First Twenty Years, The Next Five”1 and “‘Corpus Electronicum Cano’: Some Implications of Very Large Electronic Emblem Corpora.”2 He is well placed to summarize and assess the progress of the discipline, and his advice will no doubt be invaluable as Emblem Studies advance. Michael Bath’s insightful article, “Books and Buildings: Recursive Emblems in the Applied Arts,” examines the emblematic decoration of three spaces in manor houses in Germany, England, and Scotland during the early modern period. This new research builds out from his published books, such as Renaissance Decorative Painting in Scotland, by incorporating a comparative dimension into his interdisciplinary inquiries. Two further books confirm his expertise in emblems and material culture: Emblems for A Queen, The Needle Work of Mary Queen of Scots (2009) and The Four Seasons Tapestries at Hatfield House (2014). In the paper published here Michael Bath offers subtle readings of slight grammatical changes to the emblem mottoes that customize the emblem and the aspirations expressed therein for the person (or family) who designed and occupied the architectural space. 1. 2.

http://www.digicult.info/downloads/dc_emblemsbook_lowres.pdf http://purl.oclc.org/emls/si-20/WADE_Graham_EMLS.htm

Preface xiii To recognize our immediate past editors, I asked David Graham and Michael Bath to select a “front” and a “back” emblem, respectively. The practice of front and back emblems will continue in future issues of the journal, and initiating this practice seems to be an appropriate way to mark the present transition. In a fitting tribute to their professional histories, both David Graham and Michael Bath have selected emblems from books in the Stirling Maxwell collections at the University of Glasgow, with which they have long been associated. The front emblem selected by David Graham is “Ex literarum studiis immortalitatem acquiri” [Immortality acquired through the study of letters], depicting Ouroboros and Triton from Alciato’s Emblematum Libellus.3 In the emblem pictura the trumpet sounds Fame, and the snake biting its own tail symbolizes eternity. As the subscriptio reads in the English translation provided on the Glasgow University Emblem Website: “Triton, Neptune’s trumpeter, whose tail shows him as a sea-monster, his face as a god of the sea, is surrounded by an encircling snake which bites on its own tail, gripped fast in its mouth. Fame follows after men of outstanding intellect and their noble achievements, and bids them be read throughout all the world.”4 In the context of Emblematica, Alciato’s emblem is a most appropriate acknowledgment of the reputation of the scholar. Michael Bath has chosen for the back emblem “Hoc Cæsar me donavit” [Caesar gave me this], from Claude Paradin’s Devises Heroïques. The pictura portrays a winged stag with a crown circling its neck. The subscriptio explains this fabulous image: “Charles, the Sixth of this name, King of France, desiring to perpetuate the memory of the capture he had made in the forest of Senlis of a stag, which had round its neck a chain or collar of gilded bronze on which was written in ancient letters ‘Caesar gave me this,’ took as his device, a winged stag with a crown round its neck.” 5 This emblem has served as a leitmotif for Michael Bath’s research in emblem studies since the publication of his first book, Image of the Stag: Iconographic Themes in Western Art.6 3. http://www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/alciato/facsimile.php?id=sm53_C7r  The Glasgow site translates the motto as “Immortality won through literary pursuits,” but David preferred to translate it as “Immortality acquired through the study of letters,” a motto most fitting for Emblematica. 4. http://www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/alciato/emblem.php?id=A34b041 5. http://www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/french/emblem.php?id=FPAb167 6. Saecvla Spiritalia, Vol. 24. Baden-Baden, 1992.

xiv EMBLEMATICA That both of these emblems address the concept of Memory seems particularly fitting. Both emblems were created in the earliest decades of the genre’s history. David Graham’s Latin emblem is from the 1534 Paris edition of Alciato, who, as readers of this journal know, published his first emblems only three years earlier in 1531, while Michael Bath’s emblem by Claude Paradin is from one of the earliest French emblem books, from 1557. The early origins of these emblems make them fitting choices for the scholars who, together with our founding editors working in an international research cohort, contributed to the organization of Emblem Studies into a scholarly discipline in the twentieth century. In addition to their own publications, they helped, always with strong leadership from Glasgow, to establish a Society for Emblem Studies that held regular conferences and created a venue for the publication of emblem research in this journal, among other noteworthy activities. These emblems aptly commemorate many aspects of the journal and the scholars long associated with it. As we make the transition in editorial leadership, the discipline itself is also experiencing other shifts, whose progressive intent and broadening focus both advance and honor the founding members’ early efforts. Emblem Studies have become more inclusive, that is, more welcoming of scholars who perceive the need for the study of emblems in wider contexts of literary and historical inquiry, without themselves being emblem scholars in the strict sense. During the last decade the Society for Emblem Studies has worked to create many more panels at international conferences to complement the Society’s triennial conference. Emblem Studies are well represented at the Renaissance Society of America and have become an affiliate organization of the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference. The Society still sponsors sessions at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo. The journal profits from this significantly increased activity, all of which, together with the wide spread availability of emblematica on the Web, has heightened scholarly awareness for Emblem Studies. By creating a space for more scholars who employ emblems in their research, Emblem Studies have become integrated into broader interdisciplinary discourses. These developments also signal a larger audience for the journal. Complementing the magisterial contributions that open and close Volume 22, there is a range of articles that both confirm the traditional trajectories of Emblem Studies and suggest new ones. The article by Theo van Heijnsbergen and Michael Bath, “Paradin Politicized,” explores new

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sources for Scottish paintings at the Skelmorlie Aisle in Ayrshire and Castle Ruthven near Perth that reveal new examples of the interplay among emblems and the other arts. This is characterized most notably by the gold coin and Paradin’s emblem with the motto “In utrumque paratus” [Prepared for either] as an expression of Protestantism under the young James VI and his tutor Buchanan. The chronology of the volume then shifts to the period before emblem books proper with Alison Saunder’s investigation of the pre-emblematic landscape with respect to moralizing bestiaries. She expertly treats a number of French collections that portray animals and birds in an emblem-like combination of text and image in Latin and the vernacular. Her particular focus then turns to the early French emblematists Barthélemy Aneau and Guillaume Guéroult, who published both emblem books and illustrated verses about animal behavior that attest to the proximity of these related genres. Her contribution makes visible the simultaneity of both emblematic and emblem-like modes of expression. The articles by Lucy Razzall and John Mulryan each feature a single figure, Silenus and Venus respectively. In her explanation of how the figure of Silenus became known in Europe, Razzall explores readings of both emblematic and emblem-like texts and images along the lines of the scholarly approach taken in Saunders’s study. In its discussion of the emblem “Non intus ut extra” [Within, not without], Razzall’s contribution also aligns with the article by Bath and van Heijnsbergen with respect to the benefits of the close reading of the emblem motto, as well as to the geographical focus on Scotland. In a similar vein, John Mulryan relies on various representations of Venus across sixteenth- and seventeenth-century editions of Cartari in Latin and the vernacular. He illustrates the way that the author’s use of captions, images, and descriptions of the goddess function much like emblems, often drawing on emblems by Nicholas Reusner for comparison. His assertion that Cartari is often much clearer than the emblematists, of course, confirms that Cartari’s encyclopedia of the gods is not an emblem book, even though emblematic strategies can be employed to read its textual and visual collages. Like Saunders, he demonstrates convincingly that it is worthwhile to study these other genres from the perspective of the emblem. Moving from depictions of the goddess to those of her son Cupid and the figure of Hope, Simon McKeown problematizes the discussion of the periodization of the emblem, which was believed to have reached its nadir by the mid-eighteenth century. As evidence to the contrary, his

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discussion of two paintings from the early history of the Royal Academy, William Hoare of Bath’s “A Portrait of a Boy in the Character of Cupid” and Sir Joshua Reynolds’s “Hope Nursing Love,” confirms that emblematic ideas endured in English painting well into the late eighteenth century. McKeown demonstrates the source as the emblematist Otto Vaenius, and characterizes the different approaches to emblematic material by the two painters as that between “idea” and “imitation.” The articles are complemented by the book reviews showcasing research from Emblem Studies and related fields. We want to thank not only the reviewers of books, who are named, but also the anonymous peer reviewers (you know who you are) for their expertise. We are grateful for their contributions to the discipline. The editors wish to thank AMS Press, in particular Gabe Hornstein, and our editor at the press, Albert Rolls, for their good will during the transition. We want to thank particularly the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for providing the critical infrastructure for editing and producing Emblematica. The University contributed computers for Mara R. Wade and her editorial assistant Jeffrey Castle, provided a paid assistantship for him, and purchased a subscription to Adobe InDesign. We want to thank Associate Executive Dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences Martin Camargo for providing this essential support. Early tracking of the project was done by the editorial assistant Lauren Hansen, who had the good fortune to be awarded a dissertation completion fellowship and was therefore required to resign her position. Her replacement Jeffrey Castle has proved a most capable assistant in every respect. I would like to thank them both, and most especially Jeff, for their contributions. A word of thanks is also owed to Peter Kimball, who provided training in Adobe InDesign. Finally, the editors also would like to thank the subscribers and readers of Emblematica for their patience during this process, and we look forward to delivering Volume 23 in a timely fashion. Mara R. Wade, Managing Editor University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

“Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts”:1 Lessons from the History of Emblem Studies DAVID GRAHAM Concordia University

The “deep history” of emblem studies extends back in time to Alciato’s famous preface, but its progress has in recent years been spectacular. The emblem has moved from the margins to the mainstream of early modern scholarship. Emblem scholars have achieved huge advances in making a wealth of digitized emblem books publicly accessible. Great strides have been made in theoretical and methodological sophistication. This “golden age of emblem studies” may also have a darker side, however. This essay explores these issues and offers some thoughts about what may lie ahead.2 Fields, of course, are made. They acquire coherence and integrity in time because scholars devote themselves in different ways to what seems to be a commonly agreed-upon subject matter. Yet it goes without saying that a field of study is rarely as simply defined as even its most committed partisans—usually scholars, professors, experts, and the like—claim it is. (Said, 50) 1. 2.

This quotation from the Prologue to William Shakespeare’s Henry V may be found at http://shakespeare.mit.edu/henryv/henryv.1.0.html. I record here my deep gratitude to the two anonymous reviewers of this article, whose thoroughly constructive engagement with and comments on the original version of this text forced me to confront some shortcomings in it and to revise it accordingly. I believe it has been considerably improved thereby, and I thank them.

1 Emblematica, Volume 22. Copyright © 2016 by AMS Press, Inc. All rights reserved.

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early a century and a half has passed since Henry Green first published Shakespeare and the Emblem Writers, the work that ushered the European emblem from the semi-darkness of the wings into a pool of bright light located center stage in the world of scholarship. Since then, and particularly in more recent time—during the past four or five decades, say—there has been a truly remarkable and accelerating proliferation of scholarly articles and monographs devoted to the emblem. In that light, it now seems opportune to take stock of what has been accomplished to date, to draw from these collective accomplishments the lessons that seem to be latent in them, and to consider the way that lies ahead for the emblem studies community. The word “lesson” has a intellectual dimension in that it refers to things already learned; in what follows, it should thus first be taken to refer to the conclusions that may most advantageously be drawn from an examination of the history of emblem studies. Equally, however, it may refer in a monitory way to observations of gaps in knowledge or practice and to matters and concerns requiring our attention as the field advances. The lessons in this essay thus endeavour to synthesize what has already been achieved, by drawing together threads that while appearing distinct, actually belong together, and to provide modest guidance on the basis of what has already been done about what we may most advantageously achieve in the near future, and how best to achieve it.

Lesson 1: Emblem studies now reaches far beyond the emblem In the prologue to William Shakespeare’s Henry V (appendix 1), as staged by Kenneth Branagh in his 1989 film adaptation of the play, the Chorus delivers his opening speech as he paces through the backstage area of his theater. The Chorus strikes a match as he utters his opening lines, but it soon becomes clear that the theater is a fully modern one: descending a staircase while speaking, he flicks a light switch, brightly illuminating a backstage area where costumes, props, and materials—early modern and contemporary—compete for space: pikes, halberds, and helms sit next to a ship’s crow’s nest and a royal litter, and clusters of unlit tapers are stored next to klieg lights. To drive home the point, Branagh’s staging has the actor cross behind several of these lights, power cords dangling, before he arrives at a point where some lights are lit, and then—after delivering his final lines—exits the backstage area to reveal the play’s first scene, throw-

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ing open the stage doors to transport the audience without warning to a ship crossing the English Channel. It suddenly becomes entirely clear that this is no theater at all, but a cinematographic sound stage, complete with labeled director’s chairs and all the paraphernalia associated with modern film production. Branagh’s staging is of interest for many reasons. The deliberately selfrevealing movement from darkness to light, from past to present, from historical event to representation, from theater to film, from the original “cast of characters” to the actors portraying them: all this quite deliberately and thoroughly punctures any illusions we may have before the show proper gets under way, drawing viewers’ attention to the artificial nature of the spectacle they are about to behold. In this and in other ways, the opening speech is thus highly self-referential, indeed postmodern, in its playful revealing of its own status as depiction rather than as reality; expressions such as “this unworthy scaffold,” “this cockpit,” and “this wooden O” abound, not to mention the Chorus’s explicitly self-referential entreaty to the audience to “[a]dmit me Chorus to this history; / Who prologue-like your humble patience pray” serving to interrupt the illusion. To direct the audience’s attention through these expressions, Shakespeare’s Chorus makes plentiful use of the rhetorical tools of deictics and shifters.3 As Kent Cartwright has written, Shakespeare’s use of visual deixis is strikingly apparent not only in this prologue but in other works by the playwright as well: Shakespeare’s use of the word ‘behold’ suggests that he imagined the proximate working of engagement and detachment in the immediate theatrical response. ‘Behold’ can even cue exactly those effects in the audience. Shakespeare applies ‘behold’ and its variants to distinguish the special experience of dramatic spectatorship: ‘A kingdom for a stage, princes to act, / And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!’ (Henry V, Prologue, 3–4). . . . ‘Behold’ describes an action originating in the senses but also imaginative and intellectual, and connotes an impression retained or lingering. . . . ‘Behold’ in the tragedies arises for divergent purposes: on the one hand, to confirm a deeply affect3.

Deictics—usually simple demonstratives such as “this”—call attention to specific elements selected by the speaker or writer. Shifters, a term popularized by Roman Jakobson and Émile Benveniste, following Otto Jesperson, are words such as “I” and “you”: their function is to shift the frame of reference back and forth between the speaker or writer and the listener or reader.

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EMBLEMATICA ing spectacle and, on the other hand, to suggest symbolic or proleptic meaning. ‘Behold,’ then, announces a mix of inherent psychological and emblematic possibilities, and in practice the deeply affecting spectacle (engagement) calls forth the reflexive intellectual meditation (detachment). (Cartwright, 18)

Used together, deictics and shifters function as a powerful combination to steer viewers’ attention successively to specific elements deliberately selected by the Chorus to underscore the artifice of the play, just as the visual tour of the sound stage subverts the fiction of Henry V by making its imaginary nature apparent for all to see. A final rhetorical element of the prologue is that it is ekphrastic: by speaking about the play of which he is himself a part as well as the historical events that gave rise to Shakespeare’s drama, the Chorus’s speech functions to interpret one work by means of another, to give voice quite literally to events and persons that are necessarily silent, belonging as they do to the dead past. By comparison, he reminds the audience, he and his fellow players are but “flat unraised spirits,” “ciphers to this great accompt,” who are to stand in as placeholders for “the warlike Harry” and his companions “famine, sword and fire.” In the final lines of his speech, he combines all these devices in a rhetorical tour de force before throwing open the stage doors to admit us to the spectacle whose artifice has been so artfully and thoroughly unveiled for the audience: Admit me Chorus to this history; Who prologue-like your humble patience pray, Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play.

Here, the words “me,” “your,” and “this history” combine to form a subtle but powerful captatio benevolentiae intended to ensure that the members of the audience, now that their expectations have been well and truly lowered—thanks to the clever use in the foregoing lines of such terms as “unworthy,” “crooked,” “ciphers,” and “imperfections” to refer to the players and their efforts—are well disposed to what they are about to behold. As Steve Jobs was fond of saying just as his audiences at each Apple event thought he might have emptied his treasure chest of new technological wonders, however, “there’s one more thing.” The rhetorical devices of self-reference, deixis, shifting, and ekphrasis combine to transmute the prologue to Henry V into a vivid and complex allegory, an extended and complex metaphor in which, as seen above, the Chorus specifically terms

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himself “prologue-like.” At the very end of his speech, he thus calls on the audience to accept that he is the incarnation of the text he has just spoken, to which he stands in the same relation as the remaining actors will with regard to the characters they play. Shakespeare thus plainly and deliberately situates his prologue as a bridge spanning the gulf between two worlds— that of the historical personages and events on the one hand and that of their realization by the actors on the other—and thus indirectly positions the entire play as mediating the gap between the historical world and that of the present-day audience. Once again, the Chorus is explicit on this point, calling on the audience to use its own interpretive powers to remedy the painfully obvious misalignment between the historical “warlike Harry” and the actor who plays him, between the confines of the “wooden O” and the expansive battlefield of Agincourt, and to use his words as a springboard for their own imaginations, which will once again make fully real the events depicted in the play: Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts; Into a thousand parts divide one man, And make imaginary puissance; Think when we talk of horses, that you see them Printing their proud hoofs i’ the receiving earth; For ’tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings, Carry them here and there; jumping o’er times, Turning the accomplishment of many years Into an hour-glass. . . .

This “imaginary puissance,” the “willing suspension of disbelief ”—to use Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s term4—forms the very core of allegory, which requires the reader’s, viewer’s, or hearer’s own mental powers to fill in whatever gaps may have been left by author, actor, or director. As Walter Benjamin showed many years ago,5 allegory lies at the heart of the early modern aesthetic mentality. As Bainard Cowan reminds us: 4.

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In chapter 14 of his Biographia Literaria of 1817, Coleridge writes of his need, in his Lyrical Ballads, “to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.” This “poetic faith,” of course, is what allows us to accept as real, at least as we are experiencing them, all literary, theatrical, and cinematic fictions (Bath 1994, 2). I am grateful to Sabine Mödersheim for having reminded me of the importance of Benjamin’s work on allegory to our understanding of its central place in early modern thought.

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EMBLEMATICA In Benjamin’s analysis, allegory is pre-eminently a kind of experience. . . . [It] is more than an outward form of expression; it is also the intuition, the inner experience itself. The form such an experience of the world takes is fragmentary and enigmatic; in it the world ceases to be purely physical and becomes an aggregation of signs. . . . Transform-ing things into signs is both what allegory does—its technique—and what it is about—its content. (Cowan, 110)

Cowan’s choice of expression to describe allegory fully applies to the prologue to Henry V: the Chorus systematically transforms his own surroundings into a series of signs, each of which is pointed out to the audience and its significance suggested. Technique and content fuse to produce a powerful set of signifiers that will frame both the original events and their interpretation as a symbolic and aesthetic whole mediated by text. This combination of deictic, frame-shifting rhetoric and ekphrastic allegory is, of course, entirely typical of how the European emblem functions to produce meaning, as scholars have come to understand during the past half-century or so.6 In a sense, the Chorus’s prolegomenon to Henry V can be read as an emblem of the play: it enacts the play through ekphrasis, directs attention systematically to its own most important elements, breaks its own referential frame to fuse the worlds of history, fiction, and contemporary life and to allow the Chorus to appeal to the audience directly, and leaves viewers with a general lesson about theater and about life and about their own role as spectators in the creation and re-creation of meaning from the interrogation of the past. It is, after all, as the Chorus rightly asserts, our thoughts that must work to make sense of what we are about to see by filling in the gaps necessarily left by an imperfect and incomplete depiction. It is not only the plays of Shakespeare, or even Renaissance literary texts, that modern scholars have come to interpret emblematically. Early modern art in general, and painting in particular, can now be subjected to analysis that takes account of its affinities with and the influence exerted on it by the pervasiveness of emblematic modes of thought, depiction, and reading. A case in point is the second version of Nicolas Poussin’s celebrated painting Les Bergers d’Arcadie (ca. 1647), now housed in the Louvre. Erwin Panofsky’s famous study of the painting in Meaning in the Visual Arts 6.

In particular, the work of Peter M. Daly, Daniel Russell, Michael Bath, and John Manning has been influential in shaping my own thinking; see the list of works cited.



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treats it solely as an elegiac work; for Panofsky, Poussin’s painting is less openly allegorical and more subtle than his first treatment of the subject, and even less so than Guercino’s earlier painting, of which he was presumably aware. Ian Hamilton Finlay, however, clearly seems more recently to have been acutely conscious of the emblematic qualities of Poussin’s work; in his Heroic Emblems (1977), he published a modern emblem with the same text as the inscription that the shepherds seem to be puzzling out on the side of the sarcophagus, “Et in Arcadia ego” [Even in Arcadia [am] I [viz., Death]. Finlay’s emblem is deliberately unsubtle compared to Poussin’s painting: the jarring and brutal Fig. 1. Ian Hamilton Finlay, “Et in Arcadia ” Heroic Emblems (Calais (VT), 1977), presence of a tank in a pastoral land- Ego, 7. (By courtesy of the estate of Ian Hamilton scape makes a strong point about Finlay.) warfare in the modern age (fig. 1). In doing this, however, Finlay takes advantage of a truly emblematic technique deployed by Poussin, namely, the deliberately enigmatic contamination of the image by text. What distinguishes Poussin’s work from that of Guercino—not to mention such other works as Holbein’s The Ambassadors—is not only the more subdued nature of the moralizing lesson, which gradually crystallizes as the viewer makes out the sense of the scene, but the fact that the painting’s memento mori message is carried not only by the image itself but by a short text, which the viewer cannot ignore because the shepherds are quite clearly pointing to it. Because the text is in Latin, because it is not immediately discernible, and because the shepherds are struggling to draw a lesson from it, the painting acquires an emblematic dimension that bears witness to the pervasiveness of emblematic modes of creation and reading in the mid-seventeenth century.

8 EMBLEMATICA The fact that these techniques have come to be associated with the emblem is the result of a powerful confluence of scholarly activity that has taken place over many decades. This work has produced tangible results, and not just in improving understanding of the emblem’s origins and antecedents, its rapid spread during the early modern era, the ways in which it accurately reflects and transmits the mentality of that time, and the techniques it deploys—many of them still in use today—to produce meaning. In short, the emblem has moved within the past several decades from the shadowy and somewhat disreputable margins of scholarship to the very mainstream. It is now routine for scholars of early modernity to make references to emblems and the emblematic when they speak or write not only of Shakespeare, but of Spenser, of Milton, and of a wide spectrum of continental authors. Whole subfields have sprung up, including the analysis of festival culture, of royal entries, of “applied emblematics”—emblems in architecture, tapestry, embroidery, ceramics, glassware, numismatics, tombstones, trenchers, and so forth—in which knowledge of the corpus of printed emblem books is assumed and in which those books are routinely cited in relation to their subsequent manifestations in the applied arts as well as in literature and the high arts.7 Emblem scholars, then, may justifiably take pride in having extended awareness of the European emblem to fields lying well outside the ambit of literary history and criticism. As will be made clear, however, this extension of scholarly awareness brings with it a heightened responsibility for emblem scholars to act in ways intended to ensure that emblematic concepts are not denatured in the process. 7.

For a few pertinent recent examples of studies published by Emblematica in the field of applied emblematics, dealing with tapestry, trenchers, and architecture, see Russell 1985, Russell 1995, Daly 1998, Daly 2014, Graham 1993, Graham 2003, Graham 2005, Mitchell 1994, Schwartz 1987, Mödersheim 2005, Manning 2002. Recent examples of studies relating the emblem to areas in early modern literature include such articles as Turner 2012, Kilroy 2009, Oakes 2013. Many others could be cited. It is striking to note that the most recent conference of the Society for Emblem Studies, held in Kiel, Germany, in 2014, included sessions on such topics as architecture, book history, emblems in everyday life, author-artist relationships, hieroglyphics, art history, religious art, and so forth, in addition to sessions treating the emblem per se. Among the topics treated were internet memes, digital technologies, the use of emblems in evangelism, and many more that frequently strayed very far from printed emblems and emblem books.



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Lesson 2: The “deep history” of emblem studies has led to explosive growth In addition to the “horizontal” spread of emblem studies from studies of the emblem proper to allied or cognate areas, the field also has a deep “vertical” dimension. Historians of emblem studies will be well aware that there is nothing new in the link I drew earlier between Shakespeare’s plays and the emblem, in discussing the prologue to Henry V: nearly 150 years ago, Henry Green devoted an entire monograph to the subject of Shakespeare and the Emblem Writers. And even in 1870, Green could make clear that his work on the emblematic characteristics of Shakespeare’s work was based on that of other scholars: And right glad am I to observe that I have had precursors in my labours, and companions in my researches; and that, in addition to Francis Douce, writers of such repute as Langlois of Rouen, Charles Knight, Noel Humphreys, and Dr. Alfred Woltmann, of Berlin, have, each by an example or two, shown how, with admirable skill and yet with evident appropriation, our great Dramatist has interwoven among his own the materials which he had gathered from Emblem writers as their source. (Green 1870, vii–viii)

Many of the names Green mentions in this passage are now forgotten, though historians of publishing and the applied visual arts may still recall them. Their distinguishing feature from the modern standpoint is that they were not in any sense “emblem scholars,” as the term is used today: what they practiced was not “emblem studies,” at least as modern scholars think of the field. With the exception of Woltmann, a professor of art history, they were not in truth what we now think of as scholars at all: highly knowledgeable, even erudite, they approached the emblem as they did other areas of study, in the guise of that most Victorian of creatures: the insatiably curious antiquarian. Green himself says as much elsewhere, lamenting that the emblem “is studied as a branch of antiquities rather than of learning” (Green 1866, xxiv).8 In other words, for these men, the emblem was primarily an 8.

Douce (1757–1834) was a member of the Society of Antiquaries and from 1799 to 1811 was Keeper of Manuscripts at the British Museum; near the end of his life, he published a treatise on the Dance of Death, appended to which were reproductions of a large number of woodcuts (Olson 2009, Olivares-Zorrilla 2010, Farnsworth 2013). Eustache-Hyacinthe Langlois (1777–1837), an artist

10 EMBLEMATICA object of curiosity, an outdated remnant of some rather crude early modern culture whose main interest, to the extent it had any, lay only secondarily in its rather bizarre aesthetic. Primarily, they believed, the emblem might be profitably studied because of its connections to other, more respectable, genres, including the plays of Shakespeare. The emblem, then, was not a worthy object of study in its own right, but only insofar as it might acquire value through its influence on, its links to, and its survivals in works of high art: in itself, a crude and rather barbarous form at best. This dismissive and indeed almost contemptuous attitude is plainly visible in Green’s own copious writings on the emblem. In the “Introductory Dissertation” to his facsimile edition of Geoffrey Whitney’s A Choice of Emblemes, for example, after first lamenting that the emblem “seems to have passed away from men’s knowledge,” he pens the following by way of explanation: [W]e have not far to seek for a sufficient reason why the old emblem writers have been almost forgotten. The best of them, the founders and early masters in this school of poetry wedded to pictorial embellishments, excelled as Latinists, and sometimes ran wild amidst the conceits which Latin is so fitted to express. Their later imitators in the modern languages, without generally possessing their depth or their brilliancy, have followed them especially in quaint fancies, and thus have repeated and magnified their faults. Hence, as Latin was more and more disused among scholars, and as the modern languages, under skilled and vigorous cultivators, threw aside mere witticisms and affectations, men’s minds grew beyond the pleasures of tracing out resemblances between pictures and mottoes. . . . (Green 1866, xxiv–xxv) and art historian known in his lifetime as the “Norman Callot,” published an illustrated essay on the same subject, while Charles Knight (1791–1873) was a publisher who produced, on behalf of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, a number of works that included the scientific popularizations embodied in the “Library of Useful Knowledge” series. Henry Noel Humphreys (1810–1879) was a polymath who, having studied medieval manuscripts as a young man, went on to write on ancient numismatics, archaeology, entomology, and many other topics, and to illustrate several works of natural history. Green may have been thinking particularly of his History of the Art of Printing (1867). Woltmann (1841–1880) wrote several scholarly books on German art, of which Die deutsche Kunst und die Reformation (1867) was probably the one most frequently consulted by Green in connection with his work on emblems. The polyglot nature of these consultations is entirely in keeping with Green’s own very broad definition of the emblem, as will become clear.



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Written in the now-forgotten languages of classical antiquity, the emblem had become for Green and his contemporaries a quaint and childish pursuit, the naïve and somewhat primitive product of a simpler and rather more innocent age. While this passage and similar ones elsewhere may now evoke a smile, it is worth emphasizing that the characterization of the emblem as a curiosity is by no means confined to the nineteenth century. Rosemary Freeman’s wonderful work on the English emblem stands as a monument of twentieth-century emblem scholarship, one of the first truly scholarly works to be devoted to the nascent field of emblem studies. The opening sentence of her author’s preface, however, is revealing, to say the least: “In the pages which follow I have tried to explore a literary form which had much vitality in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries although little is heard of it, except as a curiosity, to-day” (Freeman 1948, ix). In this, Freeman echoes the thoughts of Mario Praz in the opening lines of Studies in Seventeenth-Century Imagery, which had first appeared nearly a decade earlier: There lies asleep in old European libraries, chiefly in those of ecclesiastical origin, a vast literature of illustrated books which are very seldom and only cursorily consulted nowadays—the emblem literature. Although emblems form a permanent item in all second-hand booksellers’ catalogues, I suppose that most people jump (or jumped, until recently) over it with the same expression of unconcern with which they meet Americana, Erotica, or Occultism. And as for the happy few whose eyes kindle at the sight of the magic word ‘emblems’—alas! their attention might as well be dedicated to collecting stamps or cigarette-cards, for their interest very seldom strays beyond the material possession of a rare thing and the pleasure, at best, of looking at fine plates. . . . Does this literature deserve such oblivion? Is it unworthy of study, were it only as a document of a perversion of taste in bygone ages? And above all, are emblems really such dead things? (Praz, 2: 2)

The answer to these questions, as given by Praz and Freeman, was clearly— and this was their ground-breaking achievement—that the emblem was indeed worthy of study in its own right. In this sense, they, unlike Green (and, a fortiori, the sources he cites), are typical of modern emblem scholarship, as known today. It seems all the more remarkable, then, that these early works of the first truly modern emblem scholars offer many clear and

12 EMBLEMATICA distinct survivals of the value judgments that pervaded the work of Green and his contemporaries three-quarters of a century earlier. It is, for example, routine for mid-twentieth-century emblem scholars to acknowledge the poor quality of the verse in emblem books, and Rosemary Freeman’s assessment of the images is also typical: “they appear curious, if not uncouth, to an unaccustomed eye, and they demand an inspection perhaps too prolonged for so meagre a reward. They rarely, in fact, achieve any great merit as art” (Freeman, 9). In his seminal and comprehensive study The Emblem, John Manning offered a plausible explanation for this repeated dismissal of the emblem, both by mainstream literary scholars and art historians and by such otherwise sympathetic writers as Praz and Freeman: “Academic ground-work that took place for ‘respectable’ literary and art-historical national traditions at the end of the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth failed the emblem and its related kinds, partly because of its bastard and uncanonical status.” As Manning correctly emphasizes in the sentence that immediately follows, the emblem “was neither Literature nor Art, although it was spawned and secretly nourished by both” (Manning 2002, 17). Fortunately, the recent history of emblem studies is largely free of the disparaging value judgments that were formerly so common. Scholarship has become more “scientific,” to use a term commonly employed in languages other than English, which is to say it has become more rigorous in its methods and more resourceful in its use of theoretical paradigms. This, of course, mirrors the shifts in critical approaches that have characterized all humanities and art-historical scholarship during the past half-century. As seen above, concepts from emblem scholarship can be and routinely are applied outside the domain of printed emblem books, and it is now common for scholarship within emblem studies to draw not only on the traditional tools of literary and art history but on philosophy, the history of alchemy, semiotics, the applied arts, sociological, feminist, and ideological perspectives, and so forth. The boundaries of emblem studies have thus become more permeable, and the field seems to have joined the mainstream of scholarship in every way: taken as a legitimate object of study in its own right, incorporated almost casually into the work of literary scholars and others whose specialty it is not, and studied with all the sophistication and verve that advances in critical theory can muster. Documenting this exactly is surprisingly dif-

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ficult, however, because much of the scholarship assessing the relationship between authors of the early modern canon and the printed emblem turns out to have originated from emblem scholars rather than literary specialists. The Spenser Encyclopedia thus contains contributions from Mason Tung and John Manning on “emblematics” and “emblems” (Tung, Manning 1990). Peter M. Daly has published extensively on Shakespeare and the emblem (see, e.g., Daly 1982, Daly 1984, Daly 2002). Daly has also published the authoritative and ground-breaking Literature in the Light of the Emblem (Daly 1998), which, when originally published, drew the attention of many mainstream literary historians to previously undiscovered, hence unstudied, links between authors of the literary canon and the emblem corpus. In the field of French literature, Daniel S. Russell’s two monographs and many of his articles draw clear links along the same lines (see, e.g., Russell 1972, Russell 1981, Russell 1982, Russell 1985, Russell 1995). A host of other, equally appropriate examples could readily be adduced from the other vernacular literatures of Europe. To test the extent to which the parallels originally noted by modern specialists of the emblem corpus have been taken up by scholars whose principal interest lies elsewhere, and to assess the extent to which the frequency with which emblems are being studied may be changing, it is instructive to interrogate some of the available online sources that provide insights into the spread of emblem scholarship over the past couple of decades. The most immediately available tools are crude,9 but they do furnish some revealing glimpses of the evolution of recent scholarship. For example, searching Google Scholar for appearances of the term “emblem book” since 1990 in published scholarship and citations produces some interesting results (fig. 2). It is immediately apparent that the frequency with which the term “emblem book”10 appears has steadily increased over the period searched, rising 9. 10.

I amplify this point in notes 10–12 below. Searching for “emblem” is useless; it returns far too many false positives, in part because some very prolific authors in biomedical fields happen to bear the fam-ily name “Emblem.” “Emblem book” offers the considerable advantage of being unambiguous and of referring to emblems in the strict sense of print culture. Google Scholar is a highly imperfect tool: it does not capture some sources of published work, for example; it does, however, allow a uniform corpus to be searched in a consistent way over time so as to produce useful longitudinal data. Searching for “emblem books” produces similar results to those shown here. Google’s Ngram viewer (https://books.google.com/ngrams) produced an interesting result for the isolated term “emblem”: a substantial decline in appearances

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Fig. 2. Occurrences of the term “emblem scholar” in Google Scholar, 1990–2014.

from some 30 uses each year in the early 1990s to an annual total of about 100 at the present time. Using Google’s Ngram Viewer produces a striking confirmation of this analysis:11 the frequency of the phrase “emblem book,” which is absent from 1850 to 1880 and very low thereafter, increases rapidly beginning in the 1930s and 1940s, the very time when the first “truly modern” studies of Praz, Freeman, and others were being produced, and continues to rise rapidly thereafter through the 1980s before flattening again (fig. 3).

11.

of the word between 1850 and 1940, level usage from 1940 to approximately 1980, and rising use since then through 2008, the final year for which Ngram data are available. I hypothesize that this trend reflects declining use of the word “emblem” generally in English followed by an increase in use since 1980 thanks to its rapidly increasing appearance in the scholarly literature, but more research would be required to confirm or overturn this hypothesis. Initial confirmation, however, is provided by the result for “emblem books” presented in the main body of this essay. I am grateful to one of the reviewers of this essay for suggesting the use of this tool, which, despite its limitations (it searches the Google Books database, so most scholarly articles escape) and the caveats associated with its output (poor OCR, poor signal/noise ratio in early digitized materials) produces highly suggestive initial results.



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Fig. 3. Occurrences of the term “emblem scholar” located by Google Ngram Viewer, 1850– 2008.

Similarly, examining the available published programs of the Renaissance Society of America (RSA) produces some thought-provoking data.12 I note first that although the number of sessions devoted specifically to emblems has fluctuated considerably since the turn of the century (fig. 4), the trend once again is a steady upward one, rising from a single session with three papers at the 2000 conference to 11 sessions with some 35–40 papers in 2010 and 2015; the same trend can (unsurprisingly) be discerned in the number of papers presented in these sessions. Given that these sessions, which are organized in part by the RSA’s own designated representative for the discipline of emblem studies, and in part by the Society for Emblem Studies, almost certainly represent work by emblem specialists, it is even more instructive to search the programs for instances of the inclusion of emblems in other sessions on topics less necessarily springing directly from 12.

It is unfortunate, to say the least, that the number of programs available for online consultation is not greater; while the first online program dates from the 2000 conference, there are significant gaps in the record until recent years. See http://www.rsa.org/default.asp?page=pastmeetings for the list of past meetings of the society, including the available programs.

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Fig. 4. Emblem sessions and papers given, Renaissance Society of America, 2000–2015.

the emblem corpus and its immediate manifestations in the applied arts. A search reveals that mentions of the emblem in other sessions appearing in the RSA program appear to take two forms. The first of these includes papers devoted to emblem studies; when these are added to those given in sessions specifically devoted to emblematic topics, it is clear that the upward trend is maintained, if not reinforced (fig. 5). In addition, however, we see many “casual mentions” of the emblem, that is to say, uses of such terms as “emblem” and “emblematic” in ways much broader than most readers of this journal would use them. Once again, there is a clear trend of increasing use (see fig. 6 for emblematic papers in non-emblem sessions and casual mentions). It is impossible to tell from this analysis, of course, whether the increase in activity in emblem studies or the transfer of knowledge from this comparatively narrow field to the mainstream is increasing more or less rapidly than the entire body of published and oral scholarship; certainly, the size of the RSA program has considerably increased. Although the program formats have varied widely over the years, making extraction of consistent data difficult, it is possible to determine the number of panels at each year’s conference with some accuracy.13 Plotting the number of emblem panels 13.

Accurately determining the number of papers presented is considerably more challenging without actually counting all the titles manually (there does not



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Fig. 5. All papers in emblem studies, Renaissance Society of America, 2000–2015.

against the total number of panels at each year’s conference suggests that the growth rate is approximately the same, and plotting the number of emblem papers delivered against the total number of panels also confirms that work in emblem studies appears to be increasing at the same rate as overall early modern scholarly production (figs. 7, 8). This admittedly somewhat impressionistic analysis may be bolstered by reference to other signs of rapid growth in our field. Peter M. Daly has recently estimated that from 1990 to 2009, “over 1,400 articles, essays, and books were published in Western European languages on emblem studies” (Daly 2014, 2).14 As Daly correctly points out, the number of journals and monograph series devoted to emblem studies has increased very substantially over

14.

seem to be a good way to automate the title count), as there is a high degree of variation in the list of conference attenders (some programs list presenters, while more recent ones tend to list participants, which includes everyone acting in the role of chair or organizer, and some programs do not include a list of participants at all). Daly gives no rationale for this estimate beyond his own involvement in editorial work, but it tallies well with the results I obtained from Google Scholar, which gave a total of 1,383 titles containing the phrase “emblem book” for the period 1990–2014. If anything, Daly’s estimate may be somewhat on the low side.

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Fig. 6. Casual mentions of emblems; emblem papers in non-emblem sessions, Renaissance Society of America, 2000–2015.

the course of that same period of time. Within the next year, by my calculation, Emblematica alone will have published some 10,000 pages of interdisciplinary scholarship on emblem studies in 22 volumes; the seventeen volumes published to date by Glasgow Emblem Studies amount to some 4,000 pages. Additionally, the various monograph series published by AMS Press, Brill, and other publishers, not to mention other journals such as Imago that have recently appeared, and the many volumes of conference proceedings, Festschriften, and the like, combine to reinforce the initial impression of emblem studies as a field of burgeoning and highly productive scholarly activity. Several excellent and very active research groups have also appeared, including the Grupo de investigación de literatura emblemática at Universidade A Coruña led by Sagrario López Posa, the Group for Early Modern Cultural Analysis (GEMCA) directed by Agnès Guiderdoni and Ralph Dekoninck, the group of scholars at Universiteit Utrecht working with Els Stronks, the many activities taking place at the Stirling Maxwell Centre at the University of Glasgow, now directed by Laurence Grove, the team working at the University of Illinois and the Herzog-August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel under the joint leadership of Mara R. Wade and Thomas Stäcker, together with others too numerous to mention separately here.



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Fig. 7. Sessions devoted to emblem studies vs. all sessions, Renaissance Society of America, 2000–2015.

Fig. 8. All emblem papers vs. all sessions, Renaissance Society of America, 2000–2015.

20 EMBLEMATICA In addition to this demonstrably high and increasing level of activity in traditional print scholarship, one cannot help but note the extraordinary growth in the availability of online resources for emblem scholars. Emblem studies now boasts several outstanding and very rich scholarly web sites: the Utrecht and Glasgow Emblem Projects, the digital emblematic resources offered by the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, the Penn State English Emblem Books Project collection, and the overarching Emblematica Online project directed by Mara R. Wade of the University of Illinois and Thomas Stäcker of the Herzog August Bibliothek are simply the most notable.15 The Internet Archive is now a major source of impeccably digitized full volumes of emblematic and para-emblematic material, as are Gallica (Bibliothèque Nationale de France), the British Library, and others. These sources have not gone unnoticed by the online community: for example, the Memorial Alciato site claims a monthly total of 15,000 visitors and over 1.5 million page hits annually (Barker, et al. 1995). Stephen Rawles, both publicly and in personal communication, has recently cited similar and increasing figures for the Glasgow emblem website.16 In short, the use of digital tools and media in emblem studies, the subject of some of my first interactions with the emblem studies community twenty-five years ago,17 is now also a rapidly expanding and unquestioned component of the scholarly mainstream.

15. 16.

17.

URLs for these resources and the repositories cited immediately thereafter are to be found in the list of works cited that is appended to this essay. For 2015, the combined total of unique visitors for the Alciato and French emblem portions of the site was 56,000 through 1 December of that year, and of individual “hits,” 3.9 million; corresponding figures for 2014 and 2013 respectively were 56,300 and 52,600 visitors, and 3.8 and 3.2 million hits. This yields a total of approximately 69, 67.5, and 60 hits per unique visitor. An upward trend is thus apparent in all dimensions (Rawles). The monthly total of 15,000 visitors claimed for the Memorial site may include multiple visits by individual users rather than the number of unique visitors, which would explain the discrepancy between it and the much more developed Glasgow site with regard to annual visitor totals. At the second Glasgow conference in 1990, following a paper at the conference of the Modern Language Association in 1988; for the revised published versions of these talks, see Graham 1991, 1992.



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Lesson 3: Golden age of emblem studies, or flawed paradise? From the foregoing, it may seem as though we must be living in some kind of magical golden age for emblem studies: with the emblem accepted as part of the mainstream of contemporary scholarship of early modernity, with high and increasing levels of activity at least commensurate with those to be found in early modern scholarship more generally, and with ready access, free of charge, to digital primary resources on a scale that only a few years ago would have seemed like a pipe dream. The term “golden age” of course recalls Poussin’s contaminated Arcadia: Poussin was himself reacting not only to earlier memento mori painters like Guercino, for his work also contains within it implicit references to a lengthy tradition of Golden Age depictions in medieval and early modern art. In the main, these depictions tend to be bucolic, pastoral, and blissful: naked peasants disport themselves in a perfect landscape under a blue and unclouded sky. Poussin’s painting is of course darker: his enigmatic moralizing text contaminates and muddies visual semiosis just as the presence of Death in Arcadia, slowly realized by “reading the painting,” unsettles and discomforts the viewer. In a similar way, looking more closely at the content of today’s early modern scholarship may leave a feeling of uncertainty about what has been accomplished by way of integrating emblem studies into the mainstream. This is true, I believe, whether one examines the work produced by scholars in other areas of early modernity, or the work of emblem scholars in particular. Taking once again the corpus provided by the RSA programs since 2000, and searching the abstracts published therein for material relevant to emblem studies, I distinguish some worrisome trends in the work of the non-specialists who have so enthusiastically adopted the emblem, the first of which is what might be called “casual emblematization.” To understand this term, one need only consult some recent RSA conference programs, which have included assertions such as: “Around 1450 the motif of the triumphal loggia was revived at the princely courts in Rome, Naples, Urbino, and Ferrara, where it became an emblematic instrument of representation” ( Jimborean); “Piero della Francesca’s extraordinary double portrait of Federico da Montefeltro and Battista Sforza (1472) emblematizes [a] corulerly ideal” (Swain); and “Shakespeare’s sonnets invert the conventional immortality of poetry topos that constructs poetry as a monument more lasting than marble, making ruin into a locus of recollection that emblema-

21

22 EMBLEMATICA tizes Shakespeare’s art of memory, both defining and defying expectations of what collection means” (Helfer).18 In each case, what the authors appear to mean is that a physical, concrete work (loggia, portrait, or sonnet) functions in such a way as to make visible and tangible what was previously invisible and intangible.19 The ability to transform the metaphorical into the concrete is, of course, characteristic of the emblem, whose visual image can readily serve to depict all manner of things impossible to observe in real life,20 but its use is not sufficient to make a text “emblematic” in the way that emblem scholars mean. In other words, “emblematize” seems frequently to be used as a kind of learned synonym for more prosaic terms such as “represent,” “symbolize,” or “signify.” Even the record within emblem studies, despite the remarkable progress that has been made, reveals troubling signs of weakness. Before taking fellow early modernists to task for their lack of rigor when it comes to emblems and emblem studies, and to the place and role of emblems in early modern cultural phenomena, then, we would do well to question the extent to which we ourselves speak with one voice. An analysis of our own work is not reassuring in this regard. The most basic question in emblem studies must surely be, “What is an emblem?” Given the terminological looseness among early modernists discussed above, it may be entirely legitimate to expect early modern colleagues to turn to emblem specialists to seek a rigorous definition of the emblem, for example, but even on this most basic of all questions, there is little agreement. As early as 1946, Henri Stegemeier’s irritation was clearly discernible when he wrote that “One may soon hope that the term emblem need not be again and again defined by everyone who today discusses the subject” (Stegemeier, 27). No doubt because so much scholarly ink had already been spilled on the question, Daniel Rus18. 19.

20.

Emphasis added in all three cases. This is least clear in the final example, whose intricately constructed multiple metaphor is somewhat difficult to parse, but the sense of it appears to be that Shakespeare’s sonnets form a deliberately constructed “ruin” that can stand as a symbol of the art of memory. From the printed word, then, arises a metaphorical ruin that calls forth something even more intangible, namely, an ars memorativa. The sonnets thus function allegorically to “emblematize” the art of memory. Many examples of such metaphorical literalization could be adduced, but one of the most strikingly obvious is Gilles Corrozet’s 1540 emblem “La cruaulté d’amour” [The cruelty of love], whose image depicts a man literally consumed by the flames of love. See http://www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/french/facsimile. php?id=sm385_c6v.



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sell suggested thirty years later that “the definition of this word [i.e., emblème] should not pose any particularly difficult problems” (Russell 1975, 76). Even more recently, John Manning has attempted to discredit even the attempt to provide a definition, writing in The Emblem that “What is an emblem? is not even a good question” (Manning 2002, 21). A search of the information most readily available to non-specialists— that is to say, websites devoted to emblems—reveals little consensus and a good deal of confusion about how to define the emblem. In some cases, as on the Memorial University Alciato site, text reigns supreme or nearly so: Alciato’s original book of emblems “is a collection of 212 Latin emblem poems, each consisting of a motto (a proverb or other short enigmatic expression), a picture, and an epigrammatic text.” In other cases, as at Glasgow University, the emblem is presented as primarily pictorial, “a symbolic picture with accompanying text.” Penn State puts picture and text on an equal footing, but manages to discard all specificity in the process (just how, might one ask, does the emblem differ from the fable, or from advertising, or from propaganda?): “An emblem combines a picture and text for the striking presentation of a message.” The Utrecht site devoted to the Dutch love emblem falls back on a structural description rather than on a definition per se: An emblem consists of three characteristic parts . . . Usually, the motto is positioned above or under the pictura; however, sometimes it is draped over the pictura. The meaning of the whole is determined by the combination of the three parts. The curiosity is roused by either the motto or the pictura, and then the subscript complements these . . . and provides a logical explanation of the whole.

Occasionally, this tendency is taken to extremes, as in the case of Minnesota, which gives an entirely erroneous description of Alciato’s original: The original format of the book, established by Andreas Alciato, is such that pages include imagery on the left facing page, accompanied by related text below the image and on the right facing page. Some volumes include images that are quite elaborate, while others maintain a simpler presentation.

The University of Illinois Emblematica Online site, at least until recently, has taken the route of eschewing a definition entirely, at the risk of leaving uninformed users completely in the dark about the exact nature of its subject other than what they may glean from browsing the site.

24 EMBLEMATICA Three competing tendencies are immediately noticeable in these definitions. The first of these is what we may call “emblem as form”: it tends to treat the emblem as being primarily circumscribed and defined by its morphology or structure. The Utrecht site falls into this category with its reliance on the emblema triplex as the canonical form; the same tendency is also discernible, however, in the case of sites that define the emblem primarily as either image or text. The second category emphasizes an “emblematic process” of reading or writing, typically expressed as requiring the deciphering or decoding of an enigmatic picture, text, or combination thereof, as in the case of the Memorial site. A final tendency, which views the emblem primarily as a pan-European cultural phenomenon or mode of thought, is occasionally visible, as, for example, at Memorial (Barker, et al. 1995), which correctly asserts that “Andrea Alciato’s Emblematum liber or Book of Emblems had enormous influence and popularity in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,” and at Glasgow, which—again quite properly—reminds readers that the emblem “enjoyed an enormous vogue for the next 200 years or more” after its creation by Alciato. What is missing here is any sustained attempt to combine these competing and extremely persistent theoretical accounts of the emblem into a single coherent definition that might encompass and recognize the validity of them all. In light of this incoherence, it is hard to see how any member of the public might make sense of the emblem on the basis of these accounts. It would be erroneous to think of such definitional chaos as limited to the world of popularization, however, for even a cursory glance at recent specialist emblem scholarship reveals that the tendencies just noted in emblem websites reflect similarly divergent tendencies pervading the work of the most serious and highly regarded scholars of the emblem. Peter M. Daly has correctly emphasized that emblem studies has “no dearth of excellent scholarship, but there remain areas of substantial disagreement” (Daly 1998, 5). It may well be tempting to claim that the question has been sufficiently answered, indeed to set it aside altogether as unworthy of consideration, as Manning does, but an examination of our own scholarship suggests neither that the matter is by any means closed nor that it does not deserve attention. Printed emblem scholarship tends to fall into one of the three camps discernible in emblem web sites, seeing the emblem primarily as form, primarily as process, or in terms of its cultural impact on early modern Europe. Among scholars for whom the structure and morphology of the emblem are the pri-



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mary clues to its specificity, there are once again those who, like Rosemary Freeman, see the emblem and printed emblem books first and foremost in terms of the visual images they contain: “Emblem books are picture books made up of emblematic pictures and explanatory words” (Freeman, 9). Michael Giordano, in an abstract for a paper presented at the RSA in 2004, also sees the picture as the starting point, writing that, “[a]s understood in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the emblem was a systematic verbal commentary on a picture or ecphrastic image.” Hessel Miedema’s assertion that “[a]n emblem . . . is, as Alciati understands it, a special kind of epigram” (Miedema, 238) goes farther than Giordano’s, and is characteristic of the many scholars who take the view that the text, not the picture, is the essence of the emblem. Since, for Alciato, the text preceded the image, and the image—regardless of its impact on the eventual popularity and spread of the emblem—was in essence a fortuitous and unauthorized addition by a printer who pirated Alciato’s Latin epigrams, they argue, emblems must be interpreted primarily in terms of the texts, with images treated as secondary. Mario Praz’s attempted clarification of the respective roles of image and text and his concomitant desire to separate emblem from epigram in fact leaves readers no farther ahead than before: “Emblems are things (representations of objects) which illustrate a conceit; epigrams are words (a conceit) which illustrate objects (such as a work of art, a votive offering, a tomb)” (Praz, 22). Perhaps the most persistent structural definitions of the emblem are those focusing on the supposedly canonical tripartite structure of inscriptio, pictura, and subscriptio: the emblema triplex. All too frequently, this schema has been taken more or less for granted by emblem scholars, as when Peter M. Daly writes that “As is well known, the emblem is composed of three parts, for which the Latin names seem most useful: inscriptio, pictura, and subscriptio” (Daly 1998, 7). Because it is so often presented as a given, the assumption of a tripartite structure as the natural emblematic norm has naturally made its way into the scholarship of non-specialists; Bérénice Virginie Le Marchand thus writes as follows in a abstract prepared for the RSA in 2006: “Usually composed of three parts (inscriptio, pictura, and subscriptio), emblems became popular in 1531 after the publication of Emblemata, the first emblem book, composed by the Milanese Andrea Alciati.” As other scholars have shown, however, the tripartite structure can by no means be considered the norm even in the sixteenth century (for example, La Perrière’s emblems famously have only two parts, as do those of Georgette de Montenay, who takes the additional step of embedding her Latin mottoes within the image; those of

26 EMBLEMATICA Corrozet appear to have four), while in the seventeenth century, the structural profusion of the emblem corpus makes nonsense of the notion of any canonical structure whatsoever.21 The notion of “emblem as process” is on occasion linked to the structure of the emblem; as Peter M. Daly usefully observes, for Albrecht Schöne, “[the emblem’s] three-part structure corresponds to a dual function of representation and interpretation, description and explanation” (Daly 1998, 43). Increasingly, however, in light of the failure of any structural model to provide a consistent and workable definition that might withstand an examination of the actual emblem corpus, some scholars have concluded that the emblem cannot be a form at all. Daniel Russell, for example, reached this conclusion some thirty years ago, in The Emblem and Device in France, when having described the structural multiplicity of the French emblem, he asked, “If it is not a form, what, then, is an emblem?” and concluded that “[i]nstead of talking about emblems, then, it would be more instructive to explore the idea of an emblematic process” (Russell 1985, 164). More recently, however, Russell appears to contradict his earlier conclusion when he writes that “the emblem is simply the product of a process for assimilating and presenting information” (Russell 1995, 14). It is, of course, entirely possible to combine an underlying set of functions that govern the emblem with a structural overlay, as I did a decade ago in writing that The canonical triparite structure thus provides a convenient but not necessary container for the functions necessary to the distillation of a single meaning from the iterative cross-referential reading of a woodcut or engraving operating in semiotically open space and one or more short texts that collectively work together to circumscribe and constrain that space. (Graham 2005)

Michael Bath, in Speaking Pictures, has cogently summarized a similarly synthetic view that goes back to the work of William Heckscher and August Wirth (1959), who defined the emblem “as a pictorial enigma whose relation to a sententious motto is resolved by the epigram which follows;” Heckscher and Wirth, heavily influenced by the earlier German theorists whose importance Peter Daly has so often emphasized, do assume “a normative three-part structure which can be accounted for in reader-response terms” (Bath 1994, 2). 21.

On this point, see, e.g., Graham 1996. On the abundant evidence supplied by the emblem corpus that the emblema triplex is not a canonical norm, see Graham 2005 and Mödersheim.



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Drawing on poststructuralist theory, Bath himself suggests it may be more useful to think in terms of the emblem’s plausibility (whether it is vraisemblable), and suggests two emblem types: the moralizing and the religious. John Manning, however, offers a devastating rebuke to any such approach aimed at classifying the emblem into different species: These broad kinships show the futility of attempting to establish synchronically viable generic markers that would reconcile different productions at different times under the same broad label. ‘Exceptions’ co-existed at the same date, even within the same volume. Nor can we take refuge in the feeble construction of emblematic subspecies—the love emblem, the Jesuit emblem, the humanist emblem, the alchemical emblem, the heart emblem, the impresa—where different but consistent rules and conventions might apply. Each sub-genre, it will be found, replicates in miniature the contradictions that run through the entire corpus. (Manning 2002, 22)

Manning’s final sentence is particularly telling: if he is correct in his view that no taxonomic classification of the emblem can ever be fine-grained enough to provide an unambiguous definition—and I think he is—then emblem scholarship may very well find itself at a theoretical impasse. One may perhaps take comfort in the fact that Renaissance theorists of the visual genres experienced exactly the same discomfort when facing and attempting to account for the many inconsistencies to be found in the emblem and the related bimedial genres. As Michael Bath has written, “Renaissance writers also themselves produced their own theoretical statements about the emblem and related kinds of speaking picture which are key documents for any historical understanding of these genres” (Bath 1994, 2). There, too, however, we find theoretical formulations spanning the full spectrum of opinion from “emblem as text” to “emblem as image” and from structural to functional niceties. Alciato’s famous preface to Conrad Peutinger stands as a monument of the genre: in it, the creator of the emblem suggests first that they are works “hammered out” as if by the hand of craftsmen: “Artificum illustri signaque facta manu.” Immediately thereafter, though, he contrives to make them a form of writing conveying meaning in a way to the identifying guild badges that those very craftsmen might affix to their clothing, and in the final lines of his text, he tells Peutinger that he will offer him “paper gifts.”22 22.

I have made use here of the Latin text and English translation provided on the Memorial University Alciato website (Barker et al.).

28 EMBLEMATICA That such taxonomic and terminological chaos should characterize attempts to define the emblem is not surprising; quite apart from any hesitations deriving from its morphological complexity, the emblem has long been well known to be related to a host of other types of bimedial text/ image constructions. W. J. T. Mitchell has provided a useful classification of families of images (Mitchell, 10) in which he describes five principal types of image: graphic (e.g., pictures, statues, designs); optical (e.g., images seen in mirrors or projected on surfaces); perceptual (sense data and appearances); mental (dreams, memorials, ideas, and the like); and verbal (e.g., metaphors and descriptions). It is immediately noticeable that the emblem combines two types of images that lie at opposite ends of Mitchell’s taxonomical spectrum: the graphic image, immediately accessible to the eye but entirely nonverbal, and the immaterial verbal images carried by text. This dichotomy was quite familiar to Renaissance theorists such as the Jesuit Claude-François Ménestrier, whose many attempts to define the emblem frequently relied on the body/soul metaphor of material image and immaterial text so cherished by theorists of his day.23 It captures, though it does not explain, the enigmatic pleasures of the emblem, which are aroused as readers gain a progressively greater understanding of the emblem’s meaning through an iterative back-and-forth process of decoding, in which they are obliged to take account of and reconcile the contradictions of both visual and textual material in order to arrive—often quite suddenly—at a clear grasp of the moral lesson they are to apply to themselves. Any attempt to define the emblem must therefore capture an internal contradiction that nestles in its very heart. It must also contrive to encapsulate its structural chaos as well as the emblem’s relationships with allied genres such as the personal device and the Aesopic fable. Finally, it must allow for the ways in which emblems were applied in areas outside, often 23.

On this metaphorical use of originally theological terminology and its implications for emblem theory, see, for example, (Loach 2002, Graham forthcoming 2016a, Graham forthcoming 2016b). I am ashamed to acknowledge that until one of the readers of this essay drew it to my attention, I had been unaware of the foundational 2002 study of the emblem in the context of early modern poetics by Bernhard Scholz, Emblem und Emblempoetik, which treats not only Ménestrier’s contribution to the emblem theory but that of Giovio and Estienne among others. This lack of knowledge on my part reinforces my convinction, stated in the following section, that we desperately need to develop better collaborative tools to guide our research if we are not “to keep reinventing the wheel.”



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far outside, print culture. That combination of constraints, as Henri Stegemeier pointed out more than half a century ago, has repeatedly led scholars of the emblem to fall into the trap of seeing emblems everywhere: It is, actually, difficult to make a definition of the term complete and inclusive; emblem has meant such a variety of things to so many different men, that this at first is confusing. Henry Green in our time added perhaps to the bewilderment when he said that ‘in one sense every book which has a picture in it, or on it, is an emblem-book.’ (Stegemeier, 27)

More recently, John Manning has emphasized a similar perception of potential emblematic pervasiveness in writing that One cannot understate24 the variety as well as the pervasiveness of emblematic modes of thought and expression during this period. Without exaggeration, from Catholic Spain to the Protestant Netherlands and from England to Russia the emblem impinged on every aspect of European Renaissance and Baroque life—and death. (Manning 2002, 16)

For the early creators of emblems, he writes, “There was literally nothing under the sun that was not emblematic—at least potentially” (Manning 2002, 30); for them, he asserts, “everything that was called an emblem 
was indeed an emblem” (Manning 2002, 24). Alison Saunders has neatly summed up what this meant in practice for authors of emblems and devices as follows: Where devices become increasingly used in teaching, didacticising, or moralising contexts, the temptation to add explanatory verses to the device itself is evidently very strong. And when [these verses] move away from the expression of the specific, personal implications of the device to a more general, universal application, such devices become very akin to emblems. (Saunders 1993, 257)

Such easy fluidity and protean mutability can easily overwhelm the theorist, as apparently identical or near-identical forms are variously characterized, with apparent sincerity, not only as devices or emblems, but as enigmas, rebuses, fables, proverbs, sententiae, apothegms, and so forth. Certainly, there can be no doubt that the early modern vogue for emblems—not to mention the accompanying potential for commercial success that prompt24.

It seems clear from the context that “overstate” rather than “understate” is meant.

30 EMBLEMATICA ed printers, publishers, and booksellers to enlist the help of wood-block carvers, engravers, and authors to compose books that might pass muster as emblems—was in part responsible for the tendency to enlarge the definition as much as possible, and thus for the proliferation and diversification of emblematic forms over time. Manning’s assessment of the results of this tendency is devastating: faced with the continual enlargement of the emblematic tent, he concludes that in the end, the emblem “exists only as a convenient subterfuge, the product of hypothetical reasonings, that can be arrived at only by setting aside all the historical facts” (Manning 2002, 21). The consequence of such an assertion is inescapable: we must at all costs avoid the temptation to see the emblematic in every instance of early modern cultural phenomena.

Lesson 4: Emerging collaborative technologies offer good solutions: we need to adopt them One may well ask whether this pessimistic assessment is in fact accurate, or whether the theoretical and analytical progress made in recent years may yet provide the elements of a more rigorous definition of the emblem than has so far been possible. The following points seem clear enough: first, the emblem cannot be purely a formal construct, both because there are so many other bimedial forms and because the emblem is simply too morphologically variable to be categorically described in purely formal terms. Second, it cannot be reduced solely to a set of functions or processes, since other bimedial forms make use of at least some of the same allegorical and moralizing functions and processes, and areas of functional commonality between the emblem and every other bimedial form can be identified. Finally, it cannot be purely a mode of thought, since to define it as such—as opposed to seeing, in this aspect of it, strong evidence of and reasons for its pervasiveness in early modern Europe—is necessarily so vague as to be useless in practical terms, because it had so many different physical manifestations, and because it was and is so frequently taken to have some structural and functional points of differentiation from other bimedial genres. Almost certainly, therefore, if the emblem is to exist at all in theoretical terms, it must be defined as a hybrid arising from all of the above: that is to say, a set of forms generated by a process applied to raw visual and textual materials in the context of a pervasive early modern mode of allegorical thought.



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Applying this basis for a definition to the emblematic corpus generates the following synthesis of definitional principles: the emblem is, first, a unique bimedial (hybrid) moralizing polyform combining (usually more than one) text and (usually one) image into a coherent whole. It is nonetheless primarily best characterized not as a form, or even a set of forms, but as a process in which a superficially enigmatic and fluid visual image is progressively deciphered through iterative reading of a series of cross-references between the textual fragments and the image to create a generally applicable lesson that individual readers then apply to themselves in the context of their own circumstances as a logical conclusion to their reading. The consequence of these first principles is that the emblem is best discovered and analyzed functionally rather than structurally, as embodying a set of functions through which it produces a generalized moral lesson that is then rediscovered (and actively reconstructed) by each new reader/reading. It is therefore reader-centered and culturally variable rather than subjectcentered. Seen in this way, the emblem is thus an initially enigmatic bimedial construction that forcefully conveys a personally applicable general lesson through an iterative allegorical reading process. It is one member of a family of early modern allegorical constructs, the other members of which differ from it in one or more specific and basic ways. Works that are not themselves emblems but that incorporate emblems or depend fundamentally on the same thought process are typically said to be “emblematic.” This conceptual schema may best be visualized as a three-dimensional space within which the emblem is differentiated along each of the axes from its closest taxonomic relatives (fig. 9). Along the horizontal (or syntagmatic) x-axis, the emblem may be viewed as one member of a continuum of genres loosely related by their inherent bimediality, the others of which are differentiated from the emblem by their lack of any intrinsic moralizing function. Such a continuum might, for example, include logos, advertising, badges, coats of arms (with mottoes), seals, medals, and coinage.25 Along the vertical (or paradigmatic) axis, the emblem will find its place among bimedial moralizing genres in which text and image are variously weighted, and whose enigmatic qualities and iterative apprehension through reading of text and image would also vary, as would their strictly 25.

One could of course construct, for each of these and for each item on the other two axes, a unique three-dimensional space in which it, rather than the emblem, would be the central focal point.

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EMBLEMATICA

personal or more general applicability. These genres include such phenomena as the enigma, the rebus, and the moralizing portrait, and also the illustrated proverb, dance of death, bestiary, and so forth. Located closest to the emblem, not surprisingly, would be the illustrated Aesopic fable and the personal device, on the basis of their closeness in both structural and functional terms. The t hird a xis o f t his h ypothetical t hree-dimensional space would serve to situate the secondary genres derived from the emblem and associated with “applied emblematics”: frequently but not invariably bimedial, these genres dislocate the emblem and relocate it, or portions of it, from the printed book to public or private visual space, whether that of architectural emblematic programs, emblematic fragments embedded in tapestry or embroidery, or other kinds of applied emblematic arts including such phenomena as emblematic ceramics, tombstones, trenchers, and the like. From the welter of competing theories of the emblem stated in such a bewilderingly diverse variety of ways over the past four centuries of emblem studies beginning with Alciato, and extending through the seventeenthcentury theorists through the Encyclopedists and the Victorians to the twentieth-century scholars who laid the foundations of modern emblem theory to the present day, it may thus be possible to extract a comprehensive and satisfactory definition of the emblem—and of the emblematic—that allows us to take a full account of the emblem in all its modes. In my view, debate to reach consensus of emblem scholars on such a definition is sorely needed, not only if we ourselves are to make sense of the emblem, but more particularly if we are to assist our colleagues in allied disciplines such as art history, literary history and theory, and the history of mentalities, as well as the general public, to understand what the emblem was and what its central importance is to any accurate account of early modern European culture. A definition alone, however, will not suffice, for the discipline of emblem studies has other pressing needs. John Manning set out to identify them in The Emblem, though he was to my way of thinking only partially correct in writing that “the essential tasks of analytical and descriptive bibliography, textual history, the construction of stemmata on which textual authority might have been firmly established, have not, in the majority of cases, even begun.” This assertion was no doubt more accurate when originally published; in fact, there are now several excellent bibliographies of the emblem and allied phenomena, including Pedro Campa’s Emblemata Hispanica, and, more recently, The French Emblem: Bibliography of Secondary



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Sources (edited by Laurence Grove and Daniel Russell) and A Bibliography of French Emblem Books of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (edited by Alison Adams, Stephen Rawles, and Alison Saunders). As already stated, a variety of high-quality digital sites provide excellent access to primary source materials, and the work of emblem scholars has captured the attention of scholars in al- Fig. 9. Three-dimensional bimedial space, situating the lied disciplines and of the emblem at the point of origin. general public and raised their awareness of the emblem and its importance in the mentality of early modern Europe. What is missing, then, is not only agreement within the field on the object of study—something that, as stated above, may in fact be attainable—but high-quality digital tools to enable scholars and the public to deal sensibly with this enormous volume of material. Poussin’s painting of the shepherds in Arcadia can today be viewed in emblematic terms as a moralizing bimedial artwork in which the golden age of eternal, purely visual, forms (thus immediately accessible but not intrinsically cognitive in nature) is deliberately contaminated by the artist through his introduction of an initially enigmatic text. It is striking to note at this juncture that the emblem corpus per se contains remarkably few emblems of the golden age. I have in fact been able to locate only one, which is to be found in the first century of Joachim Camerarius’s Symbolorum et Emblematum, first published in 1590 (fig. 10). The text of this emblem is revealing: the image of two trees linked by a blank scroll is surmounted by the motto Sperare nefas [Expectation is contrary to divine command]. Below the image is found the following verse couplet: “Aurea in hoc frustra speramus saecula mundo, / Alterius saecli quae dabit ille Pater” [In this world we vainly anticipate a golden age, which the Father of another age will bestow]. The intrinsically moralizing tendency of the emblem rings loud and clear here, as it does in Poussin’s painting: the golden age itself has

34 EMBLEMATICA nothing to offer the emblematist, because there is no lesson to be learned from it. Rather, it is the inevitable contamination and decay of the golden age that provide the lesson. Like this essay, then, like Shakespeare’s prologue, and like Poussin’s painting, the emblem is, above all, a deeply contaminated, self-conscious, and self-referential genre. It is incapable of contenting itself with appearances: every rock must be turned over, every flaw and failing revealed so as to be corrected. Of all the early modern genres, it is thus perhaps the most fundamentally progressive and the most determinedly modern. In my view, emblem scholars can best position themselves as expert interpreters of the emblem for wider publics, including scholarly publics. To do this effectively, it is imperative for us to agree on some basics; this in turn suggests the need to listen to one another much more than is often the tendency, which in turn suggests the need for much better digital secondary source tools in order to heighten awareness of extant and emerging scholarship and facilitate consultation of it. Our conversation, in other words, needs to move from what the emblem is to how it works and what it does; from its characteristics to its specificity and its centrality to any accurate and comprehensive understanding of early modern European culture, without which no account of contemporary culture can be complete. If we are to achieve consensus, then, the most pressing need is to enable more effective collaborative emblem scholarship. Perhaps the most urgent requirement is for a fully open, collaborative, and comprehensive online bibliography of primary and secondary sources, to which anyone could submit a contribution, with subsequent expert editing and review to ensure accuracy, and with comments, annotations, and links built in. Such a site could become a true focal point for emblem scholarship (and the obvious place for anyone to start). The basis for such a bibliography already exists in the form of the raw data on which recent printed bibliographies are based, and in the many bibliographies housed in the personal files of emblem scholars and on websites such as the Biblioteca digital Siglo de Oro of the Grupo de Investigación sobre Literatura Emblemática Hispánica. This searchable bibliography implements most but not all the criteria suggested here, with the most important omissions being the ability to display a full list of the all the titles inventoried and a rigorous set of criteria governing inclusion of suggested material. There may well be a sponsoring or coordinating role for the Society for Emblem Studies to play here, since the Society is by definition the global scholarly body for emblem scholars.



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What is most needed now, I conclude, is ways to “piece out our imperfections with our thoughts”: to make our research fully accessible to the public and to colleagues in cognate disciplines, to achieve consensus on difficult but fundamental issues of definition and method, and to work together to begin supplementing more effectively the marvelous tools that advances in digital technologies have placed in our hands. Doing so can ensure that emblem scholarship becomes and remains an incontrovertible focal point for all those interested in every aspect of early modernity. A similar call to action might well, I think, apply not just to emblem studies but to Fig. 10. Joachim Camerarius, “Sperare nefas,” the humanities in general: failing Symbolorum et emblematum ex re herbaria desumtorum centuria una collecta (Nuremberg, to heed it will simply increase the 1595), 50. (Image courtesy of University of likelihood that our fields of study Glasgow Library Special Collections.) will become a mere footnote in the annals of literary history. To avoid such a fate, then, we must urgently resolve to work together in the same spirit that Shakespeare’s Chorus requests of his audience, while treating our scholarship as a joyful, productive, and ultimately ludic activity; that is to say, we must collectively “[our] humble patience pray, / Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play.”

36 EMBLEMATICA Appendix: Prologue to Henry V Enter Chorus Chorus O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention, A kingdom for a stage, princes to act And monarchs to behold the swelling scene! Then should the warlike Harry, like himself, Assume the port of Mars; and at his heels, Leash’d in like hounds, should famine, sword and fire Crouch for employment. But pardon, gentles all, The flat unraised spirits that have dared On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth So great an object: can this cockpit hold The vasty fields of France? or may we cram Within this wooden O the very casques That did affright the air at Agincourt? O, pardon! since a crooked figure may Attest in little place a million; And let us, ciphers to this great accompt, On your imaginary forces work. Suppose within the girdle of these walls Are now confined two mighty monarchies, Whose high upreared and abutting fronts The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder: Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts; Into a thousand parts divide one man, And make imaginary puissance; Think when we talk of horses, that you see them Printing their proud hoofs i’ the receiving earth; For ‘tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings, Carry them here and there; jumping o’er times, Turning the accomplishment of many years Into an hour-glass: for the which supply, Admit me Chorus to this history; Who prologue-like your humble patience pray, Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play. Exit (Shakespeare)



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Works Cited Adams, Alison, Stephen Rawles, and Alison Saunders. A Bibliography of French Emblem Books of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Travaux d’Humanisme et Renaissance. 2 vols. Geneva, 1999– 2002. Barker, William, Mark Feltham, and Jean Guthrie. “Alciato’s Book of Emblems: The Memorial Web Edition in Latin and English.” Memorial University of Newfoundland. https://http://www.mun.ca/ alciato/. Bath, Michael. Speaking Pictures: English Emblem Books and Renaissance Culture. Longman Medieval and Renaissance Library. London and New York, 1994. Campa, Pedro F. Emblemata Hispanica: An Annotated Bibliography of Spanish Emblem Literature to the Year 1700. Durham (NC) and London, 1990. Cartwright, Kent. Shakespearean Tragedy and Its Double: The Rhythms of Audience Response. University Park, PA, 1991. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Biographia literaria; Or, Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions. Biographia Literaria. 2 vols. London, 1817. Cowan, Bainard. “Walter Benjamin’s Theory of Allegory.” New German Critique, no. 22, Special Issue on Modernism (Winter, 1981) (1981): 109–22. Daly, Peter M. “Emblematic Language and Iconographic Effects in Some Plays of Shakespeare.” Utrecht Renaissance Studies 1 (1982): 37– 56. _____. “Shakespeare and the Emblem. The Use of Evidence and Analogy in Establishing Iconographic and Emblematic Effects.” In Shakespeare and the Emblem. Studies in Renaissance Iconography and Iconology, ed. Tibor Fabiny, 117–87. Szeged, 1984. _____. Literature in the Light of the Emblem: Structural Parallels between the Emblem and Literature in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. 2nd ed. Toronto etc., 1998.

38 EMBLEMATICA _____. “Emblematic Studies of Shakespeare since 1990.” In The Shakespearean International Yearbook. Where are we now in Shakespearean Studies?, edited by W.R. Elton and John M. Mucciolo. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002. _____. The Emblem in Early Modern Europe: Contributions to the Theory of the Emblem. London, 2014. Douce, Francis. The dance of death exhibited in elegant engravings on wood, with a dissertation on the several representations of that subject but more particularly on those ascribed to Macaber and Hans Holbein. London, 1833. “Emblematica Online: Resources for Emblem Studies.” The University of Illinois. http://emblematica.grainger.illinois.edu/otherProjects. html. “Emblematica Online.” University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. http://emblematica.library.illinois.edu/. “Emblem Project Utrecht: Dutch Love Emblems of the Seventeenth Century.” University of Utrecht. http://emblems.let.uu.nl/index. html. “Emblemdatenbank.” Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. http://mdz1.bib-bvb. de/~emblem/emblmaske.html. “The English Emblem Book Project.” The Pennsylvania State University. https://http://www.libraries.psu.edu/psul/digital/emblem.html. Farnsworth, Jane. “Gender, Culture, and Emblematic Practice in E. F.’s The Embleme of a Vertuous Woman [London, 1650?].” Emblematica 20 (2013): 81–109. Finlay, Ian Hamilton, Ron Costley, and Stephen Bann. Heroic emblems. Calais (VT), 1977. Freeman, Rosemary. English Emblem Books. London, 1948. “Glasgow University Emblem Website.” Glasgow University. http://www. emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk. Graham, David. “The Emblematic Hyperbook: Using Hypercard on Emblem Books.” In Hypermedia and Literary Studies, edited by Paul Delany and George Landow. Technical Communications, 273–86. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1991.



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_____. “Putting Old Wine in New Bottles: Emblem Books and Computer Technology.” Emblematica 5:2 (1992): 271–85. _____. “‘Voyez ici en ceste histoire . . .’: Cross-Reference, Self-Reference and Frame-Breaking in Some French Emblems.” Emblematica 7:1 (1993): 1–24. _____. “Récurrence, redondance, rupture: l’emblème français de Gilles Corrozet et son rythme de lecture.” Études littéraires 29 (Le rythme: littérature, cinéma, traduction), no. 1 (1996): 47–57. _____. “Emblems and Advertising as Ways of Seeing and Thinking: Sweet Hereafter or Bridge to Nowhere? A Response to György Szönyi.” eColloquia 1:1 (2003). http://ecolloquia.btk.ppke.hu/index. php/2003/reflections/12-2003/18-reflection2. _____. “Emblema multiplex: Towards a typology of emblematic forms, structures and functions.” In Emblem Scholarship: Directions and Developments. A Tribute to Gabriel Hornstein, ed. Peter M. Daly. Imago Figurata, Studies, 5, 131–58. Turnhout, 2005. _____. “Assembling, Being, Embodying: Early Modern Emblem and Device as Body, Soul, and Metaphor.” In Selected Papers from the Transregional Conference on Iconology (Budapest and Szeged), ed. György Szönyi and Attila Kiss. Szeged, forthcoming 2016a. _____. “Claude-François Ménestrier: The Founder of ‘Early Modern Grounded Theory’.” In Proceedings of the Conference on Jesuit Image Theory, ed. Walter S. Melion, Karl Enenkel and Christan Peters. Universität Münster, forthcoming 2016b. Green, Henry. “Introductory Dissertation.” In Whitney’s “Choice of Emblemes.” A Fac-simile Reprint, ed. Henry Green, ix–lxxxviii. London, 1866. _____. Shakespeare and the Emblem Writers. London, 1870. Grove, Laurence, and Daniel Russell. The French Emblem: Bibliography of Secondary Sources. Travaux d’Humanisme et Renaissance. Geneva, 2000. Helfer, Rebeca. “Collection and the Art of Recollection in Shakespeare’s Sonnets.” In Renaissance Society of America. New York (NY), 2014.

40 EMBLEMATICA Humphreys, Henry Noel. A History of the Art of Printing from Its Invention to its Wide-Spread Development in the Middle of the Sixteenth Century. London, 1868. Jimborean, Ioana. “The Representative Loggia at the Princely Courts of Italy during the Quattrocento and the Policy of Dynastic Continuity.” In Renaissance Society of America. San Diego (CA), 2013. Kilroy, Gerard. “Sir Thomas Tresham: His Emblem.” Emblematica 17 (2009): 149–79. Langlois, E[ustache]-H[yacinthe]. “Essai historique philosophique et pittoresque sur les Danses des morts.” (1852). Loach, Judi. “Body and Soul: A Transfer of Theological Terminology into the Aesthetic Realm.” Emblematica 12 (2002): 31–60. Manning, John. “Emblematics.” In The Spenser Encyclopedia, ed. A.C. Hamilton, Donald Cheney and W.F. Blissett, 247–48. Toronto, 1990. _____. The Emblem. London, 2002. Miedema, Hessel. “The Term Emblema in Alciati.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtault lnstitutes 31 (1968): 234–50. Mitchell, W. J. T. Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology. Chicago & London, 1986. _____. Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation. Chicago, 1994. Mödersheim, Sabine. “The Emblem in the Context of Architecture.” In Emblem Scholarship: Directions and Developments. A Tribute to Gabriel Hornstein, ed. Peter M. Daly, 159–75. Turnhout, 2005. Oakes, Catherine. “Bedtime Stories: the painted emblems formerly in the schoolboys’ dormitory in the Deanery of Bristol Cathedral.” Emblematica 20 (2013): 177–217. Olivares-Zorrilla, Rocío. “The Eye of Imagination: Emblems in the Baroque Poem The Dream, by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.” Emblematica 18 (2010): 111–61. Olson, Kristen L. “Picture—Pattern—Poiesis: Visuality, the Emblem, and Seventeenth-Century English Religious Lyric.” Emblematica 17 (2009): 271–98.



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Panofsky, Erwin. “Et in Arcadia ego: Poussin and the Elegiac Tradition.” In Meaning in the Visual Arts, 295–320. Garden City (NJ), 1955. Poussin, Nicolas. “Les Bergers d’Arcadie.” 1647. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Et_in_Arcadia_ego - /media/ File:Nicolas_Poussin_052.jpg. Praz, Mario. Studies in Seventeenth-Century Imagery. Sussidi Eruditi. 2 vols. Vol. 16. Rome, 1975. Rawles, Stephen. “Query re GU emblem site traffic stats.” Personal email communication, 2 December 2015. Russell, Daniel. “Du Bellay’s Emblematic Vision of Rome.” Yale French Studies 47 (1972): 98–109. _____. “Alciati’s Emblems in Renaissance France.” Renaissance Quarterly 34: 4 (1981): 534–54. _____. “Emblematic Structures in Sixteenth-Century French Poetry.” Jahrbuch für Internationale Germanistik 14:1 (1982): 54–100. _____. The Emblem and Device in France. French Forum Monographs. Vol. 59. Lexington, KY, 1985. _____. Emblematic Structures in Renaissance French Culture. University of Toronto Romance Series. Toronto, Buffalo, London, 1995. Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York (NY), 1978. Saunders, Alison. “When is it a Device and When is it an Emblem: Theory and Practice (but Mainly the Latter) in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century France.” Emblematica 7: 2 (1993): 239–57. Scholz, Bernard F. Emblem und Emblempoetik: Historische und Systematische Studien. Allgemeine Literaturwissenschaft—Wuppertaler Schriften. Berlin, 2002. Schwartz, Jerome. “Emblematic Theory and Practice: The Case of the Sixteenth-Century French Emblem Book.” Emblematica 2:2 (1987): 293–311. Stegemeier, Henri. “Problems in Emblem Literature.” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 45:1 (1946): 26–37. Shakespeare, William. The Life of King Henry the Fifth. “Prologue.” http:// shakespeare.mit.edu/henryv/henryv.1.0.html.

42 EMBLEMATICA Swain, Melissa. “Co-Rulership and Dynastic Continuity in Piero della Francesca’s Montefeltro Diptych.” In Renaissance Society of America. New York (NY), 2014. Tung, Mason. “Emblematics.” In The Spenser Encyclopedia, ed. A.C. Hamilton, Donald Cheney and W.F. Blissett, 245–47. Toronto, 1990. Turner, Hilary L. “A Case of Mistaken Identity: The “Sheldon” Four Seasons Tapestries at Hatfield House Reconsidered.” Emblematica 19 (2012): 1–27. Woltmann, Alfred. Die deutsche Kunst und die Reformation. Berlin, 1867.

Paradin Politicized: Some New Sources for Scottish Paintings MICHAEL BATH AND THEO VAN HEIJNSBERGEN University of Glasgow

Identification of the sources for two emblematic subjects used in decorative painting of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries in Scotland suggests a political context for their interpretation. At two different sites to be discussed in this article—the Skelmorlie Aisle in Ayrshire with its decorative painting on boards, and Castle Ruthven, near Perth, where a fireplace once displayed a sententious inscription—emblems adapted from printed emblem books are shown to refer to issues of their day. Two clearly emblematic details in the Skelmorlie Aisle, showing the figures of Justice and Fortitude, have hitherto remained unsourced but can now be shown to copy prints by Jacob Matham after Hendrik Goltzius. These are represented on the painted ceiling in a way that corresponds closely to two half-panels at the opposite end of the aisle, which are known to copy Whitney’s emblem “In utrumque paratus” [Prepared for either]. The fact that this same emblem, which goes back to Paradin, was used most notably as the dedicatory frontispiece to Beza’s Icones, celebrating the founders of the reformed church, suggests the political context in which this emblem was being used at this period. That context also makes sense of the Latin distich that the Earl of Gowrie painted above his fireplace in Castle Ruthven, which can now be shown to have been extracted from La Perrière’s Morosophie, where it sums up the emblem “Veritas filia temporis” [Truth the daughter of Time]. Well-known studies of this topos in England have established its close association with

43 Emblematica, Volume 22. Copyright © 2016 by AMS Press, Inc. All rights reserved.

44 EMBLEMATICA both the defense of Catholicism by Mary I and its Reformation under Elizabeth, and this suggests a political context for its use in Castle Ruthven, where in 1582 the young King James VI was taken hostage by the “Ruthven Raiders” in an attempt to preserve and control the establishment of the Protestant Reformation in Scotland.

Copious copying: The Skelmorlie Aisle

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he identification of sources for Scottish decorative painting of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries adds to our growing knowledge of the wider circulation of continental prints in Britain, while emblematic examples also suggest the familiarity of Scots with particular emblem books. It is often only after having identified the source of an emblem, however, that it is possible to see any relevance it may have had to the political issues of its day in Scotland, and this article shall examine two different buildings containing emblems that are likely to have had a political point for their owners in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The funerary aisle built onto the old parish church of Largs, Ayrshire, by Sir Robert Montgomery of Skelmorlie to house the tomb of his late wife, Margaret Douglas, in 1636 is notable for its painted ceiling, whose complex trompe-l’oeil false vaulting and rib-work divides it into forty-one different panels filled with a variety of subjects and images, including emblems (Bath 2003, 128–45, 227–28). Sources for a number of these details have been identified in continental prints, of which the non-emblematic examples include subjects based on engravings by Etienne Delaune, whose Adam and Eve and Esau and Jacob from his set of six Old Testament prints (c. 1570) were copied for two of the center panels, while his Arts and Sciences series supplied the pattern for some purely decorative detail, such as an ensemble composed of amorini, animals, and a bearded figure that appears no fewer than six times at various places on the ceiling (see Bath 2003, 133–34). Two of the Four Seasons panels adapt Adriaen Collaert’s engravings after designs by Maarten de Vos of Autumnus (Autumn) and Hiems (Winter).1 The panel showing a woman watching a spirited, unbridled, and galloping horse has been shown to copy an engraving by Hendrik Goltzius, published in 1578, of the Equus liber et incompositus [Wild and Untamed Horse] from 1.

This set of prints by de Vos was also used for the center panels of the Four Seasons tapestries at Hatfield House, see Bath 2013.



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Fig. 1. Largs, Ayrshire, Skelmorlie Aisle, southern end of painted ceiling erected by Sir Robert Montgomery to commemorate his late wife, Margaret Douglas, in 1636. (Photo courtesy of Donald Whannell.)

the set of forty prints illustrating the royal stable of Don John of Austria (Bath 2003, 136–37). This panel is exceptionally important since it is the only known example in Scottish decorative painting of this period that its artist both signed and dated: “J Stalker fecit 1638” (Bath 2003, 128). The only details on the Skelmorlie ceiling that have been sourced to an actual emblem book, however, are two half-panels at the southern end of the aisle, adjoining what was originally—prior to its demolition in 1802— the nave of this parish church. One of these shows a lion rampant with the subscriptio, “That to defende our countrie dear from harme,” while its corresponding semi-oval shows a hand holding a raised sword, “For warre or worke we this hande shoulde arme” (fig. 1). The fact that the two inscriptions, read successively, make up a rhymed pentameter couplet suggests that these two half-panels should be joined together to form a single emblem. It was H. S. Adams, in an unpublished Glasgow University Master’s dissertation (Adams 1999, 47–48), who identified its source as Geffrey Whitney’s

46 EMBLEMATICA emblem “In utrumque paratus” (Whitney 1586, 66), which shows two hands, a raised sword in one and a builder’s trowel in the other, and concludes the verse subscriptio with the couplet: “That to defende, oure countrie deare from harme, / For warre, or worke, wee eyther hande should arme” (fig. 2). In adapting Whitney’s emblem to show a lion rampant where Whitney has a hand holding the trowel, the Scottish artist loses the neat antithesis between “warre” and “worke” that shapes its pictura and Fig. 2. Geffrey Whitney, A Choice of Emblemes, 1586, p. justifies its motto, substi66, “In utrumque paratus.” (Photo courtesy of Univertuting a different image for sity of Glasgow Library Special Collections.) Whitney’s peaceful trowel. The substitution might well have been motivated by Montgomery’s importation of this English emblem—which actually goes back to Paradin (Devises heroïques, 115)— into a northern context, where the lion rampant features most prominently in the royal arms of Scotland. The removal of the hand with a trowel, however, necessitated rewriting the English verses, so that Whitney’s “eyther hande” became a single “this hande.” Once detached from its original setting, the grammar of this concluding couplet also fails to make sense due to the fact that the relative pronoun (“That”) now lacks its antecedent: Whitney’s epigram concludes, “Which doth inferre, this lesson unto all / That to defende, our countrie . . . / . . . wee eyther hande should arme.” As the following instances suggest, the habit of kidnapping couplets to supply the missing mottoes to emblems adopted from printed emblem books became a recurrent practice in Scottish decorative painting of this period, a practice that frequently led to grammatical problems.



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“In utrumque paratus”: A Protestant appropriation Paradin and, following him, Whitney, both give a biblical sanction for this emblem, claiming that it refers to Nehemiah’s rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem and the defense of the city. Paradin’s interpretation gives the Old Testament story a typological interpretation as an anticipation of the establishment of the Christian church (“Histoire mistiquement representant les edificateurs de l’Eglise Chretienne” [History in a veiled fashion representing the builders of the Christian Church]) and the defense of the faith against its enemies with the sword of holy scripture (“tousiours avec le trenchant de l’espee de la parole de Dieu” [always with the cutting edge of the sword of God’s word]) (115). This reading seems to have given the emblem its leading role in the sixteenth century, particularly in Scotland, as a reminder of the need for vigilance in building and defending the reformed church, which is undoubtedly why Théodore de Bèze (lat. Beza) attaches the same motto to his engraved portrait of King James in the frontispiece to his Icones (1580); the royal portrait alters Paradin’s pictura to show the young king holding no trowel, but a sword in one hand and an olive branch in the other, hence ready for either war or peace: “In utrunque [sic] paratus” (fig. 3).2 Thus, like the Skelmorlie Aisle, Beza’s frontispiece does not scruple to vary the alternative object being held in the figure’s left hand when illustrating this motto. One might well ask why this book of engravings identifying the principal persons from different countries who had supported the Protestant Reformation should begin with a portrait of the king of Scots, but in his preface dedicating the whole book to King James, Beza pays tribute to Scotland’s European role in reforming the church, acknowledging the influence of John Knox and Andrew Melville, together with other learned Scots whose reputation was well known overseas, and among whom several 2.

Beza’s profile portrait of the young King James has been shown to copy the gold £20 coin struck in 1575 to commemorate victory over the supporters of Mary Queen of Scots; on the coin he holds the same sword and olive branch as on Beza’s frontispiece with the same “In utrunque [sic.] paratus” motto (see Thomas, 76–77, where both of these are illustrated). The coin was clearly Beza’s source for this emblem. Stewart (455) quotes a poem by Buchanan—James’s renowned tutor and Protestant figurehead—that suggests the latter is responsible for making the ethos of “In utrumque paratus” central to the young king’s policies, which confirms the article’s overall claim regarding this emblem’s status as a key Protestant statement.

48 EMBLEMATICA had found their way to Geneva. These include George Keith, founder of Marischal College, Aberdeen, and Henry Scrimgeour, who studied with Budé and Ramus in Paris before converting and becoming Fugger’s librarian and Calvin’s friend in Geneva; in 1570 Scrimgeour was encouraged by regents Moray and Mar to return to Scotland and assist George Buchanan and Peter Young in the young king’s education, though Scrimgeour declined the offer (Durkan). Fig. 3. Theodore Beza, Icones, Geneva, 1580, Buchanan and Young are themfrontispiece. (Photo courtesy of University of selves both named by Beza and Glasgow Library Special Collections.) credited, as James’s tutors, with instilling in the young king the knowledge of languages, learning, and the liberal arts that had supported his determination to establish the true religion at home and abroad. It was the arrival of the king’s Catholic kinsman, Esmé Stuart, at the Scottish court in 1579 that excited Protestant paranoia about his mission to convert James VI to Catholicism, and this alarm was nowhere greater than in Calvinist Geneva, where Beza’s dealings with Scotland had already involved correspondence with the Scottish chancellor, Lord Glamis, on the evils of episcopacy. The conversion to Presbyterianism of Andrew Melville during this leading Scottish theologian and religious reformer’s studies in Geneva, 1569–1574, was also at Beza’s instigation. In summer 1579, Beza sent the composer Jean Servin to Scotland with musical settings of forty-one of George Buchanan’s Latin Psalm paraphrases, and, as Jamie Reid-Baxter writes, Servin’s job was “at least in part to find out what exactly was going on in Scotland.” 3 One of the peculiarities of this book by Calvin’s successor in Geneva is the way its forty-nine portraits of reformers are followed by forty-four 3.

Reid, 65–76; Porter; Reid-Baxter, personal communication with the authors, who are indebted to him for much of what is said here about Beza and Scotland.



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completely original Latin emblems. The relationship between these and the Icones has occasioned some discussion but has never been satisfactorily explained (though see Adams 2003a, 119–53); it may, however, help to explain why Scottish Protestants should so readily have associated the circulation of emblems with the promulgation of reformed doctrines. Although Beza’s book was published more than 50 years before Montgomery painted his ceiling, the emblem “In utrumque paratus” had Fig. 4. Largs, Ayrshire, Skelmorlie Aisle, detail of painted already found its way by ceiling, Justice. (Photo courtesy of T. van Heijnsbergen.) this time into several other decorative schemes, and it seems likely that a primary influence on its circulation might have been its prominent position as the frontispiece to Beza’s Icones, id est verae imagines virorum doctrina simul et pietate illustrium . . . quibus adiectae sunt nonnullae picturae quas Emblemata vocant [Icons, that is to say true portraits of men celebrated for both their teaching and their piety . . . to which are added a few of those pictures which they call Emblems]. The full title itself suggests the possible connection between the reformation of the church and the circulation of emblems. Once the two halves of this curiously bisected emblem on the Skelmorlie Aisle ceiling are joined together, they make up a panel that has a strong conformity with two further details on the same ceiling that also look emblematic. The opposite, northern, end has panels illustrating two of the Cardinal Virtues, Justice and Fortitude, as robed female figures with their conventional attributes—a sword and scales for Justice, and Fortitude shouldering

50 EMBLEMATICA her pillar. Both are painted, just like the emblem “Warre or Worke,” in oval spaces on trompe l’oeil wooden panels that resemble inn-signs, and like the emblem “Warre or Worke” each has a two-line verse subscriptio, though here it is in Latin. Justice declares, “Cuique suum iusto pensans libramine reddo / Concilioque homines concilioque Deos” [I render to each man what is his due, weighing it with true balance, / I find favor with men and with gods] (fig. 4). Fortitude explains, “Fortis in adversis animoFig. 5. Largs, Ayrshire, Skelmorlie Aisle, detail of saque pectora gestans / Inpainted ceiling, Fortitude. (Photo courtesy of T. van fractis animis ardua queque Heijnsbergen.) fero” [Strong in adversity and showing a brave heart, / With unbroken spirit I shoulder every burden] (fig. 5). Although these figures should probably be defined as strictly allegorical representations rather than emblems, their combination of figurative image with moralizing text and their conformity with the emblem adapted from Whitney at the further end of the same ceiling nevertheless justify the description of these two panels as “emblematic.” No source had hitherto been identified for them, however, and the incautious suggestion that, if they were original compositions, their mottoes might have been composed by Sir Robert Montgomery himself can now be discounted (Bath 2003, 143), since it can now be shown that both the images and the Latin subscriptiones copy engravings of the Cardinal Virtues by Jacob Matham after Hendrik Goltzius (figs. 6 & 7). Goltzius was the same Netherlands engraver whose picture of the Equus liber et incompositus [Wild and Untamed Horse] from a set of equine prints was used, as we have noted, for another of the images on this ceiling (illust. Bath 2003, 136–37).



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Fig. 6. Jacob Matham after Hendrik Goltzius, Justice from Cardinal Virtues series. (Photo courtesy of University of Glasgow Library Special Collections.)

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Fig. 7. Jacob Matham after Hendrik Goltzius, Fortitude from Cardinal Virtues series. (Photo courtesy of University of Glasgow Library Special Collections.)

Born the son of a glass painter, Hendrik Goltzius (1558–1617) was taught engraving by the poet and engraver Dirck Coornhert (1522–1590), with whom he worked subsequently in Haarlem, where in 1582 he established his own business, with a monopoly on publishing designs by contemporary artists and a workshop that included Jan Saenredam (1565–1607) and Jacob Matham (1571–1631) as his pupils; it was Matham who engraved Goltzius’s Cardinal Virtues, and who took over his workshop when, at the end of the century, Goltzius devoted himself to painting, having traveled in Germany and Italy in 1590–1591. Goltzius’s prints have been identified as the patterns used, or adapted, for decoration in a number of English houses, including Burton Agnes, Yorkshire, where the Seven Virtues are carved over the opening to the Little Hall (Wells-Cole, 178); the Chapel of Lincoln’s Inn, London, where windows painted in 1623 by Richard Butler show the Apostles flanked by Virtues as seen in prints by Matham after

52 EMBLEMATICA Goltzius (Wells-Cole, 218); and a plaster overmantel at Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire, has the figure of the earth goddess Cybele and copies a print after Goltzius (Wells-Cole, 268–69). The known examples are not that many, however, so that, as Wells-Cole says, “For all his success in his own country, there are no more than a handful of contexts in which his prints were adapted for decoration in England” (121).

Whitney elsewhere in Scotland The extent of Scottish familiarity with the emblems of Whitney, which had been published in Leiden by Plantin in 1586, is suggested by a painted ceiling in the house known as The Palace, which Sir George Bruce built in Culross, Fife, in 1597. The ceiling adapts sixteen of Whitney’s emblems, adding an allegorical figure to all but one of the details it selects from Whitney’s picturae, and abstracting two lines from Whitney’s verse subscriptiones (often, as in the Skelmorlie Aisle, the concluding couplet) to sum up the moral. All but one of these emblems also use Whitney’s motto, suggesting that the emblems were meant to retain their moralizing and sententious function (Bath 2003, 57–79, 249–53). Culross’s sixteen emblems do not include the emblem “In utrumque paratus,” although it is used at three other places in Scotland. The ceiling from Rossend Castle, Burntisland (Fife), now on display in the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, has grotesque motifs interspersed with twelve emblem motifs that go back to Paradin and two that copy the picturae from Wechel editions of Alciato (Bath 2003, 258–60). The emblems from Paradin include the two hands holding a sword and a trowel (Bath 2003, 45) (fig. 8). There are no mottoes or accompanying inscriptions, and it is unclear whether, interspersed as they are with non-symbolic grotesque details, they retain any emblematic function on this ceiling. Claude Paradin’s Devises heroïques (1551, et seq.) also supplied six of the emblems that were recorded by local historian Daniel Wilson in the Edinburgh tenement known as “Mary of Guise’s House” (Wilson 1848, repr. 1891, vol. 1, 190–97). These included what Wilson describes as “two hands out of a cloud, one holding a sword, and the other a trowel: In utrumque paratus” (194). None of these paintings has survived, although watercolor sketches of some of the other—religious—paintings that were made before they disappeared from this site or neighboring tenements are preserved in the Royal Commission on Ancient and Histori-



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cal Monuments collection in Edinburgh (Bath 2007). The tenement containing these was built in 1591 for two merchant burgesses, Robert McNaught and James Rynd, who inscribed the date and their initials on the building, and the local belief that it was once occupied by Mary of Guise, mother of Mary, Queen of Scots, and Queen Regent of Scotland, or that this painting was for her use, lacks documentary evidence and can now almost certainly be discounted (Bath 2007). In 1968 the National Trust Fig. 8. Rossend Castle, Burntisland, Fife, detail for Scotland restored a house from painted ceiling now displayed in Edinburgh, known as “The Bay Horse Inn” National Museum of Scotland. (Photo courtesy near Dysart, Fife, dating from of M. Bath.) 1583. It was built for Henry Sinclair, whose family were hereditary lairds of this burgh on the Forth estuary where, as at Culross, coal was mined and salt panned for export to the Netherlands—accordingly, Dysart was known as “Salt Burgh” and “Little Holland.” The restoration revealed painted decoration under later plaster both on ceilings and on walls, including mural painting on boards in the west gable-end, where it was treated to some false architecture, with Ionic pillars supporting a classical entablature in front of a landscape, and below the structure a detail that elicited the following description in the unpublished conservation report: Within the archway of the classical motif a ribbon which encloses a virtually indecipherable crest contains the motto “In vtrvmqve para…” The ribbon itself is surmounted by detached arms, dexter bearing a sword and sinister a spade-like object, possibly a mason’s trowel. (Historic Scotland, file ref. FIR/12/1, p.6)

Although, unfortunately, no photographs of this detail appear to have been taken, this is clearly another application of the same emblem that

54 EMBLEMATICA was used at Rossend, Skelmorlie Aisle, and Mary of Guise’s House. One may well wonder whether it was Scotland’s close trade connections with the Netherlands that helped familiarize Scottish householders such as Sir George Bruce or Henry Sinclair with continental emblems and emblem books. Paradin’s Devises heroïques was published in the Netherlands from 1561 onwards, when Plantin produced the first edition to have appeared outside France, followed by many subsequent Antwerp editions (Adams, Rawles, and Saunders 2002, F.462–67).

Castle Ruthven and the Ruthven Raid Surviving examples of emblems in actual decoration of historic buildings can occasionally be supplemented, as shown above, by historical records or descriptions of examples that have since disappeared, and this is the case with some further painting that no longer survives in the castle known as Huntingtower, formerly Castle Ruthven, near Perth. This is a building that is known for the significant part it played in Scottish history, as the place where in 1582 the “Ruthven Raiders,” led by William, 4th Lord Ruthven and 1st Earl of Gowrie, took the young King James hostage in a coup designed to secure the Presbyterian and anglophile basis of the reformed church in Scotland. That explains, perhaps, why the only historical record of this piece of hitherto unrecognized emblematic decoration should be preserved in a mid-seventeenth-century History of the Kirk in Scotland written by David Calderwood, who terminates his account of the “Ruthven Raid” by describing a motto that could then be seen painted on a chimney piece. The motto read, “Vera diu latitant, sed longo temporis usu / Emergunt tandem, quae latuere prius” [The truth which was once hidden remains hidden for a long time, but after a long time emerges] (Calderwood, 75). The fact that in 1600 the Gowrie Conspiracy (another, even more serious contretemps between the then Earl of Gowrie and James VI, on which see below) led to extensive and historically significant legal proceedings is what persuaded Robert Pitcairn to include Calderwood’s account of the Huntingtower inscription in his Criminal Trials in Scotland (Pitcairn, vol. 1, pt. 1, p. [xxvii]): The noted distich, which Calderwood, in his MS. Church History, states to have existed in his times, and which, he says, was painted above an ancient Chimney-piece in the Castle of Ruthven, (now called Hunting Tower), may perhaps be considered as worthy of memory.



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Vera diu latitant, sed, longo temporis usu, emergunt tandem quae latuere diu.

What Pitcairn describes as Calderwood’s “noted distich” had indeed already been noted a few years earlier in the nineteenth century by James Scott, in a biography of the 3rd Earl of Gowrie (son of the 1st Earl), published in a limited edition of 150 copies by William Blackwood (Edinburgh, 1818). Scott includes the distich not only in his account of Calderwood’s History (7–8, 339–40), but also on his title page, with the following verse translation: “Truths which were long conceal’d emerge to light; / And controverted facts are render’d bright.” This hitherto unsourced inscription, which is not proverbial, can now be shown to go back to Guillaume de la Perrière’s Morosophie, in which it comments on La Perrière’s emblem showing Time drawing Truth out of a well (fig. 9). La Perrière’s motto supplies the distich inscribed above Lord Gowrie’s fireplace: Hoc latuit puteo iam filia Temporis alma, Quam patri ridens indicat ille senex: Vera diu latitant, sed longo temporis usu Emergunt tandem, quae latuere priùs. [The kind daughter of Time has long lain hidden in this well; this old man, laughing, points her out to her father. The truth which was previously hidden remains hidden for a long time, but after a long time emerges.]

The woodcut shows Time being instructed to draw his daughter out of obscurity by the “laughing old man” (“ridens . . . senex”) who is shown standing above the pulley, and whose identity as Democritus is clarified by La Perrière’s French translation: Le Temps cherchoit sa fille Verité, Qui se cachoit pour n’avoir grandz appuys, Democritus homme d’authorité La luy montra cachée dans un puys. [Time was seeking his daughter Truth, who was hiding because she had no supporters. Democritus, a man of authority, showed her hiding down a well.]

56 EMBLEMATICA The unexpected appearance of Democritus, the “laughing philosopher” noted for his cheerful optimism, at this point in La Perrière’s Morosophie is almost certainly intended to vindicate the book’s Erasmian title, since it was assumed that he laughed at the follies of men. Furthermore, “morosophie” means, of course, “the wisdom of folly,” making this an emblematic Moriae Encomium that illustrates the book’s paradoxical title.4 As James Scott recognized in 1818, La Fig. 9. Guillaume de la Perrière, Morosophie, 1553, Perrière’s emblem is also a verno. 48. (Photo courtesy of University of Glasgow sion of that well-known topic Library Special Collections.) “Veritas filia temporis” [Truth the Daughter of Time], which normally shows Truth not down a well, but hidden in a cave, within which she has been confined by Envy, Strife, and Slander (or some combination of these); Father Time is normally shown dragging her out of that obscurity.5 4.

5.

In his prefatory letter to Antoine de Bourbon, La Perrière comments on his book’s title, “J’ay nommé mon dit oeuvre, MOROSOPHIE, par diction Grecque composée, signifiant en Grec comme fole sagesse en Françoys. Je suys asseuré que plusieurs me noteront de temerité, de ce que je vous ay fait present de ma folie, chose fort repugnante à votre sagesse” [I have called my work Morosophie, made out of Greek words, meaning in Greek what we would call mad wisdom in French. I have been assured that many would accuse me of temerity in what I have brought to pass by my folly, something strongly repugnant to your wisdom] (fol. A4v). James Scott inserts ‘Veritas Temporis Filia.—ERASMI ADAGIUM. / Truth the Daughter of Time’ immediately above the “Vera diu” quotation on his title page, thus suggestively linking the two. As Vice-President of the Literary and Antiquarian Society of Perth and Senior Minister of that town, Scott would have been well acquainted with Ruthven Castle and Gowrie House and their histories, and although he evidently had independent knowledge of Erasmus’s



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“Veritas filia temporis”: Religion emblematically restored Calderwood makes no mention of any image accompanying this inscription on the Earl of Gowrie’s fireplace, though the fact that painted ceilings and fragments of mural painting can still be seen in what remains of the castle now known as Huntingtower suggests that the decoration may well have originally included the emblematic pictura. The conventional iconography of the “Veritas filia temporis” topos is illustrated in an influential engraving by Enea Vico of c. 1540 (fig. Fig. 10. Enea Vico, Veritas, from series of forty-two 10), which had considerable Imagines engravings by François Salviati of c. 1540 posterity, having been copied showing iconological figures, Bartsch: Vico, “Sujets emblématiques,” no. 91. (Photo courtesy of Universias the device of printer Mar- ty of Glasgow Library Special Collections, SM 1076.) colini in Venice, who used it in Anton Francesco Doni’s Filosophia morale (Venice, 1552), a collection of fables translated by Sir Thomas North in 1570 as The Morall Philosophie of Doni, using close copies of Marcolini’s illustrations.6 “Veritas filia temporis” also found its way into Whitney’s Emblemes (1586, 4), and it is Whitney’s emblem that has been commonly used to document its wider circulation in northern Renaissance contexts in classic essays by Fritz Saxl (1936), Donald Gordon (1940), and Soji Iwasaki (1973) (fig. 11). These studies establish a context for its usage in England, which surely clarifies Gowrie’s likely motives for including a

6.

Adagia, his title page might suggest that these two Latin texts were both in evidence in Ruthven Castle. For these illustrations, and an illuminating discussion of the relation of these fables, which go back to oriental sources known as The Fables of Bidpai, to emblems, see North, The Morall Philosophie of Doni, ed. Donald Beecher et al., 2003, 75–98.

58 EMBLEMATICA version of it in the decoration of his house in late sixteenthcentury Scotland, for that context was precisely parallel to the contested arguments between Catholic and Protestant adherents that occasioned the kidnapping of the young King James and his confinement in Ruthven Castle in 1582. It was Saxl who, as Gordon says, first “traced the various uses to which the motto ‘Veritas Filia Temporis’ was put by English monarchs from Henry VIII to Elizabeth, showing how it was made to serve the causes of Protestantism and Catholicism in turn” (Gordon, 228). Whitney’s version reuses a woodcut commisFig. 11. Geffrey Whitney, A Choice of Emblemes. 1586, p. 4, “Veritas filia temporis.” (Photo courtesy of sioned by Plantin for previUniversity of Glasgow Library Special Collections.) ous use in Hadrianus Junius’s Emblemata (1565, 59)— though this has a different motto—and employs the motto by which this politically active topic was known and circulated throughout the sixteenth century in the woodcuts by Vico or Marcolini. La Perrière made no use of mottoes either in Morosophie or in his much better known Theatre des bons engins, which is why the Earl of Gowrie, like Sir Robert Montgomery at Skelmorlie, was obliged to deploy a couplet abstracted from the verse subscriptio to supply its motto. As Soji Iwasaki writes, “the motto ‘Veritas filia temporis’ was frequently used as a rallying cry of Protestantism at the time of the Reformation on the Continent and in England” (250). Mary Tudor adopted it in 1553 as her personal device to signify Truth rescued by Time after a period of Catholic sufferings: the motto appears on her crest, on her seal, and on coins.



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Her sister Elizabeth used it in the pageant preceding her own coronation in 1558, when Time rescuing her daughter Truth was shown with labels for each. There, Truth holds the English Bible that was later handed to the new queen, to give Mary’s motto a new Protestant significance. Iwasaki suggests that “the emblem ‘Veritas filia temporis’ was thus frequently used by both Catholics and Protestants for almost every political change, especially when they could take advantage of the image of the redeemed daughter Truth as fitting with either Mary or Elizabeth, each in her turn newly vindicated by Time” (251–52).7 The Ruthven Raiders’ kidnapping of the king of Scots in order to isolate him, as it is often thought, from the influence of his Catholic kinsman, Esmé Stuart, and secure the Protestant reformation in Scotland conforms so closely to this context that it is surely inconceivable that the Earl of Gowrie’s use of the inscription in his Perthshire castle did not have the same significance. The documents do not, unfortunately, supply a precise date for this painting, but Calderwood’s description was made closely enough to the time of the actual Raid, in precisely this context, to support the assumption that it was painted for William Ruthven during his ownership of the building. Sixteen-year-old King James did not spend much of his ten months’ captivity in the Castle, although his movements and policies were effectively controlled by the conspirators. It is therefore not certain whether the fireplace was already painted before he arrived or whether, if that were so, he would have seen it. There are, however, contemporary descriptions that testify to the Earl’s interest in painting, and it has been established that in 1579 he built the large extension to one of his other houses, the town house known as Gowrie House in Perth. In 1584, when Gowrie was arrested as he was about to sail into exile from Dundee, David Hume of Godscroft made a visit to Gowrie House, shortly before this arrest, where he found the Earl “looking very pitifullie upon his gallery where we were walking at that time (which he had but newly built and decored with pictures) he brake out into these words, having first fetched a deep sigh, ‘Cousin (says he) is there no remedie? Et impius haec tam culta novalia miles habebit? Barbarus has segetes?’” [And is a godless soldier to hold these well-tilled lands? A barbarian these fields?] (Hume of Godscroft, 377). 7.

This is also the context that is identified for its use in England by Donald Beecher et al., in their “Introduction” to North, The Moral Philosophy of Doni, 84–85.

60 EMBLEMATICA If this anecdote recalling the Earl of Gowrie’s melancholy citation of Vergil’s Eclogue I, 70–71, in which Meliboeus contemplates his impending exile to distant lands, “penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos” [Britain cut off far from the whole world] (I, 66) is to be taken as credible, then it surely suggests something of the classical spirit in which he evidently viewed his paintings, a mentality by which, with its easy resort to classical apophthegm, he would be ideally attuned to emblems and ready to apply them to his contemporary situation. That the motto on his fireplace at nearby Castle Ruthven, together with any emblematic pictura that may have accompanied it, would have held the same political significance in Scotland at this critical time as it had long held for the fortunes of the national church in England can hardly be doubted.

The Wisdom of Folly: Scottish readers’ knowledge of Morosophie Morosophie has not been identified as the pattern book used for any other known example of Renaissance decorative painting in Scotland during this period, but the fact that La Perrière’s emblem book was known to other Scottish readers is evident from a Latin citation in an undated funeral sermon preached by Andrew Boyd in which, as Bishop of Argyll, he objects to pompous and elaborate funeral ceremonies, insisting rather on what might be described as a democracy of death in which all men are equal. It ill behooves us to turn a funeral into a theatrical performance, argues Boyd, for if the play-maister send into the scene a king with his rob, and begger with his rags, a philosophe with his stole, and a foole with his hoode; since the begger cannot make himselfe the king, nor the foole make himselfe a philosophe, let thame onlie in thaire owne given habite do the thing requyred of thame; that is, whatever be thy persone, play the part weill; for so soone as they go behind the vaile, the habite is shakine off, the persone is changd and both becume alyke. Quos fors distinguit, mors facit esse pares.

Jamie Reid-Baxter has astutely identified La Perrière’s penultimate emblem (Morosophie no. 99) as the source of the Latin adage “Quos fors distinguit, mors facit esse pares” [Those whom chance distinguishes, death makes equal] (Reid-Baxter, 412). La Perrière’s picture shows the skeletal figure of death holding scales in which a royal scepter and crown are balanced against humble agricultural implements, “Pour demontrer,” as the French



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quatrain puts it, “que quand la mort s’auance, / De mesme poix sont les Roys & vassaux” [To show that when death advances, / kings and vassals have the same importance] (fig. 12). The Scottish sermon moralizes the emblem as follows: To make a short redditione of this similitude. Blissed is that man, wha, whatever place he be put into in this world, is first content thairwith, and then dischargis it in such a forme, as may please that great playmaister, the liveing God, and procure applause off the spectators who hes seene the actis of his lyfe, and thairby may be moved to follow his exemple.8

By describing this Latin phrase as a “similitude,” Boyd is identifying its rhetorical status as an Erasmian figure of the type that so many emblems utilized, and the shadow of La Perrière’s paradoxical encomium on the wisdom of folly can also be witnessed in Boyd’s reference to kings, fools, and philosophers (“the begger cannot make himselfe the king, nor the foole make himselfe a philosophe”). Just as the Earl of Gowrie was obliged, in need of a motto, to abstract a sententious cutting from the emblem subscriptio for his purposes, so likewise Andrew Boyd has evidently inserted this cutting from his commonplace-book into his funeral sermon. Though these two quotations from Morosophie occur in quite different media—decorative painting on the one hand and a funeral oration on the other—both share the fundamental basis in rhetoric that characterizes the emblem in all of its many applications during this period. The Ruthven estates were forfeited on Gowrie’s death in 1584, only to be restored the following year. In 1588 Fig. 12. Guillaume de la Perrière, Morosothe title passed to Gowrie’s second son, phie, Lyons, 1553, no. 99. (Photo courtesy University of Glasgow Library Special John, who inherited his father’s reli- of Collections.) 8.

Reid-Baxter, 412, citing National Library of Scotland, Wodrow Quarto, Boyd MSS, Vol. XX, fols. 146v–147.

62 EMBLEMATICA gious and humanist principles and tastes, traveling widely in Europe, studying at Padua, and visiting the French court of Henri IV before lodging for nearly three months with Beza in Geneva—this was another traveling Scot who thus found his way to Geneva (Davies 2010, 132–35). On his return to Scotland he met his fate in the 1600 “Gowrie Conspiracy” when King James and his hunting party made an unexpected visit to Perth in pursuit, the king alleged, of a rumored pot of gold, only to be led up into the tower of Gowrie House, where another plot to imprison the king was foiled. John and his brother, Alexander Ruthven, were both killed in the mêlée and the name of Ruthven abolished, which is why Castle Ruthven acquired its present name of Huntingtower. The implications of the emblem “Veritas filia temporis” would have been as acceptable to John as they were to his father, William, and its classical basis equally in sympathy with his humanist education and tastes. The strength of his religious convictions is attested to by Beza, who said that, following Gowrie’s visit to Geneva, he could not think of the death of this young man without tears in his eyes (Calderwood, 67). On his arrival back in Edinburgh in 1600, Gowrie was confronted with hostility from the royalist faction, and a tense encounter followed in the corridors of Holyrood Abbey with Captain William Stewart and his servants. Stewart was the man who had arrested Gowrie’s father in 1584, thus sealing the latter’s fate by execution a few months later. Gowrie is said to have restrained his own servants at this edgy moment in the Abbey, avoiding violent conflict. His subsequent comment on the event was: “‘Aquila non captat muscas’” [An eagle does not catch flies].9 This classical proverb had also been turned into an emblem by La Perrière (Theatre des bons engins, 1540, no. 32), but none of the many editions of this emblem book uses Latin mottoes, and Gowrie is merely quoting a familiar Latin proverb (Erasmus, Adagia no. 3.2.65, 1703, p. 761). Gowrie’s readiness to resort to such classical and potentially emblematic topics underlines what might be called the emblematic mindset of this militant Protestant family, and although it is not possible to say for certain that the “Vera diu latitant” inscription on the Castle Ruthven fireplace was carved by William, 1st Earl of Gowrie, at the time of the “Ruthven Raid” in 1582–1583, and not by his son, John, 3rd Earl, who may have attempted to murder the king in the “Gowrie Conspiracy” of 1600, it 9.

Pitcairn, vol. 2, pt. 1, 293, 297; Davies, 135.



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seems likely that the inscription was already in place before the end of the sixteenth century. Calderwood, who recorded the distich in Ruthven Castle c. 1624, noted that it had been there “manie yeeres since” (Calderwood, 75; Scott, 339). John would have had little time to add such details to the castle before he met his untimely death in 1600, after which the estates were seized by the crown. The historian David Calderwood, who had graduated with Gowrie from the University of Edinburgh in 1594, notes that after the “Gowrie Conspiracy” Beza invited Gowrie’s two younger brothers to come to Geneva (Calderwood, 27, 67). Instead, one fled to America and the other (Patrick) lived in exile in England; the latter’s daughter, Mary, married the famous painter Sir Anthony van Dyck in 1640. Both of these emblems in the Skelmorlie Aisle and in Castle Ruthven, whose sources we have identified, share a Scottish context in which emblems are being used to refer to the establishment of a reformed national church and the king’s role in that reformation. This is not to say that emblems in Scotland were the exclusive property of Presbyterians; on the contrary, some of the most important and striking schemes of emblematic decoration—at Pinkie House, Musselburgh, for example—were commissioned by Catholics. And even the Skelmorlie Aisle has one detail, a burning heart in a chalice, that looks more Catholic than Protestant (Bath 2003, 134–36; cf. Bath 2010). However, the doctrinal context of the whole ceiling has received some further examination in a recent doctoral thesis (Callaghan 2013), whose conclusions tend to support this article’s claim that both of the locations using emblems, for which the above discussion has presented new sources, draw on examples that have a precise relevance to particular issues concerning the Reformation of the church in Scotland. As a final piece of evidence for this may be cited the “curious emblem or impresa” that the 3rd Earl of Gowrie had left behind in Padua, where it was found hanging in a dancing academy (Brydall, 64–65). It was said to be “‘a strange relique,’ an emblematic figure emblazoned,” representing “a blackamoor reaching at a crown with a sword, in a stretched posture” (Lang 1902a, 127). Such a figure was actually attached to the Ruthven coat of arms, with the motto Tibi soli [For thee alone] placed above the crown, but without the sword. From the early seventeenth century onwards, much was made of this mysterious figure’s potentially sinister political significance. On closer analysis, however, the curious addition to the Ruthven coat of arms as instanced elsewhere appears to be “an armoured man, praying in

64 EMBLEMATICA supplication to an imperial crown above his head”, with the Tibi soli motto clearly echoing Psalm 51:6, beginning “Tibi soli peccavi” [To thee only have I sinned].10 The latter was one of the seven penitential psalms that “lay at the heart of Reformation-age debates over the nature of repentance” and which were particularly championed by fervent Protestants (King’oo, 1). Moreover, this “emblematic figure” had already “been adopted by William, 1st Earl of Gowrie, in the early 1580s, and had appeared on a fireplace installed at Ruthven Castle” (Davies, 259). This is not only another indication that the motto “Vera diu latitant” was inscribed on the chimney brace at Ruthven Castle at a relatively early date, but also neatly underlines its Protestant context and instances the contemporary cultural practice in Scotland of combining religious zeal with visual and textual representation in public as well as domestic contexts.11

Works Cited Adams, Alison. Webs of Allusion: French Protestant Emblem Books of the Sixteenth Century. Geneva, 2003a. _____. “The Emblemata of Théodore de Bèze (1580).” In Mundus Emblematicus: Studies in Neo-Latin Emblem Books, ed. Karl A. E. Enenkel and Arnoud S. Q. Visser. Turnhout, 2003b. Pp. 71–99. Adams, Alison, Stephen Rawles, and Alison Saunders. A Bibliography of French Emblem Books of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Vol.2: L–Z. Geneva, 2002. Adams, H. S. “The Construction and Form, Sources and Importance of the Early Scottish Ceilings 1550–1650.” M.Phil diss., University of Glasgow, 1999. Bath, Michael. Renaissance Decorative Painting in Scotland. Edinburgh, 2003. 10. 11.

Davies, 259, and see plate between pp. 60–61. Lang 1902a, frontispiece, provides a modernized image of this coat of arms. Lang 1902b, surmises that the sword was added to the “strange relique” in Padua by John, 3rd Earl of Gowrie. A further political use of Paradin’s emblems in Scotland was on the “Mermaid and Hare” placards that were displayed in Edinburgh following the murder of Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, in 1567; for a fuller discussion of these see Bath and Jones 2015.



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_____. “Was There a Guise Palace in Edinburgh?” In All Manner of Murals: The History, Techniques and Conservation of Secular Wall Paintings, ed. Robert Gowing and Robyn Pender. London, 2007. Pp. 11–22. _____. “Painting in Reformation Scotland.” In Emblematic Images and Religious Texts: Studies in Honor of G. Richard Dimler, S.J., ed. Pedro F. Campa and Peter M. Daly. Philadelphia, 2010. Pp. 89–102. _____. The Four Seasons Tapestries at Hatfield House. London, 2013. Bath, Michael, and Malcolm Jones, “‘Placardes and billis and ticquettis of defamatioun’: Queen Mary and the ‘Mermaid and Hare’.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 78 (2015): 223–46. Bèze [Beza], Théodore de. Icones, id est, Verae imagines virorum doctrina simul et pietate illustrium, : quorum praecipuè ministerio partim bonarum literarum studia sunt restituta, partim vera religio in variis orbis Christiani regionibus, nostra patrúmque memoria fuit instaurata: additis eorundem vitae & operae descriptionibus, quibus adiectae sunt nonnullae picturae quas Emblemata vocant. Geneva 1580. Brydall, Robert. Art in Scotland. Its Origin and Progress. Edinburgh and London, 1889. Calderwood David. The History of the Kirk in Scotland. Vol. 6. Ed. Thomas Thomson. Printed for the Wodrow Society. Edinburgh, 1845. Callaghan, Angela. “The Ceiling of Skelmorlie Aisle: A Narrative Articulated in Paint.” PhD diss., University of Glasgow, 2013. Davidson, Peter. “The Flaming Heart of St Edmund Campion.” In Emblematic Images and Religious Texts: Studies in Honor of G. Richard Dimler, S.J., ed. Pedro F. Campa and Peter M. Daly. Philadelphia, 2010. Pp. 47–50. Davies, J. D. Blood of Kings: The Stuarts, the Ruthvens and the Gowrie Conspiracy. Hersham (Surrey), 2010. Durkan, John. “Henry Scrimgeour, Renaissance Bookman.” Edinburgh Bibliographical Society Transactions 5 (1971–74): 1–31. Erasmus, Desiderius. Opera Omnia. Leiden, 1709.

66 EMBLEMATICA Gordon, Donald. “‘Veritas Filia Temporis’: Hadrianus Junius and Geoffrey Whitney.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 3 (1940): 228–40. Hume of Godscroft, David. History of Scotland. London, 1657. Iwasaki, Soji. “Veritas Filia Temporis and Shakespeare.” English Literary Renaissance 3 (1973): 249–63. Junius, Hadrianus. Emblemata. Antwerp, 1565. King’oo, Clare Costley. Miserere Mei. The Penitential Psalms in Late Medieval and Early Modern England. Notre Dame (IN), 2012. La Perrière, Guillaume de. Theatre des bons engins. Lyons, [1540]. La Perrière, Guillaume de. Morosophie. Lyons, 1553. Lang, Andrew. James VI and the Gowrie Conspiracy. London, 1902a. Lang, Andrew. ‘The Gowrie Conspiracy and the Gowrie Arms’. In The Ancestor. A Quarterly Review of County and Family History, Heraldry and Antiquities 2 (1902b): 54-57. North, Sir Thomas. The Moral Philosophy of Doni, ed. D. Beecher, J. Butler, and C. Di Biase (Barnabe Riche Society Publications 14). Ottawa, 2003. Paradin, Claude. Devises heroïques. Lyons, 1557 (1st edn. 1551). Pitcairn, Robert. Criminal Trials in Scotland. 3 vols. in 7 parts, Edinburgh, 1833. Porter, James. “‘Beatus ille qui misertus pauperis’: The historical importance of Jean Servin’s settings of Buchanan’s Psalm Paraphrases.” In George Buchanan: Poet and Dramatist, ed. Philip Ford and Roger P. H. Green, Swansea, 2009. Pp. 113–35. Reid, Steven J. Humanism and Calvinism. Andrew Melville and the Universities of Scotland, 1560–1625. Farnham (Surrey), 2011. Reid-Baxter, Jamie. “Mr. Andrew Boyd (1567–1636): A Neo-Stoic Bishop of Argyll and his Writings.” In Sixteenth-Century Scotland: Essays in Honour of Michael Lynch, ed. J. Goodare and Alasdair A. MacDonald. Leiden, 2008. Pp. 395–425.



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Saxl, Fritz. “Veritas Filia Temporis.” In Philosophy and History: Essays Presented to Ernst Cassirer, ed. R. Klibansky and H. J. Paton. Oxford, 1936. Pp. 197–222. Scott, James. A History of the Life and Death of John, Earl of Gowrie. Edinburgh, 1818. Stewart, Ian. “Coinage and Propaganda: An interpretation of the cointypes of James VI.” In From the Stone-Age to the ‘Forty-Five, ed. Anne O’Connor and D. V. Clarke. Edinburgh, 1983. Pp. 450–62. Thomas, Andrea. Glory and Honour: The Renaissance in Scotland. Edinburgh, 2013. Wells-Cole, Anthony. Art and Decoration in Elizabethan and Jacobean England. New Haven, 1997. Whitney, Geffrey. A Choice of Emblemes. Leiden, 1586. Wilson, Daniel. Memorials of Edinburgh in the Olden Time. Edinburgh, 1891.

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More French Emblematic Predecessors, Godly and Amorous1 ALISON SAUNDERS University of Aberdeen

The animal world in particular provided a rich source of material for emblem writers—materials that could be used to reflect on the human condition in general, or could be more specifically angled toward a religious message. Indeed, as has been seen in the case of Aneau’s and Guéroult’s Decades de la description des animaux and Blason des oyseaux, the original text could be revamped in later versions to offer a religious interpretation quite different from the intent of the original authors. The purpose of this article is to take these instances as a starting point, from which to look backward and trace the ways in which earlier emblematic predecessors also exploited the world of birds and animals, not only for generally moralistic purposes, but also more specifically for religious purposes, and—particularly interestingly— for amorous purposes as well. The works discussed will include early sixteenth-century editions of the anonymous Dictz des bestes & aussi des oyseaulx and a section of Pierre Gringore’s 1521 Menus propos that deals specifically with the world of animals and birds.

1.

This article is based on a paper originally presented at the Tenth International Conference of the Society for Emblem Studies held at the Christian-AlbrechtsUniversität, Kiel in 2014.

69 Emblematica, Volume 22. Copyright © 2016 by AMS Press, Inc. All rights reserved.

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T

he animal world provided a very rich source of material for emblem writers, as indeed it did for their predecessors, avid as they were for sources of meaningful symbolism. From the second-century AD Greek Physiologus onwards, through the various twelfth- and thirteenthcentury Latin and vernacular bestiaries, the real or perceived behavior of individual animals was described and then interpreted allegorically in religious as well as human moralizing terms.2 And coming from a rather different perspective, there is the Hieroglyphica of Horapollo, which originally dates from the fourth century and was introduced into France in the early sixteenth century, and popularized, if one can use such a term, by the 1543 publication of a French vernacular version in which each animal was illustrated and described, and the symbolic meaning attributed to it by the ancient Egyptians explained (Horapollo 1505; Horapollo 1543). But a particularly interesting aspect of these early works—specifically devoted to the allegorical interpretation of animal behavior for the edification and benefit of mankind—as also of the exploitation of many of the same animals for symbolic expression by various emblem writers, is the richness and diversity of interpretation that can be given to the real or perceived behavior of any one given animal. Within the field of emblems, different writers may well interpret the characteristics and behavior of a particular animal differently, but even the same emblem writer may derive quite different lessons from the behavior of the same animal according to the context. Barthélemy Aneau and Guillaume Guéroult offer particularly good examples of this, since both produced emblem books in which animals feature commonly. Although many of the emblems in Aneau’s Imagination poetique are based on woodcut figures designed originally to illustrate Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the collection nevertheless also contains a number of animal-based emblems, and even more so does Guéroult’s Premier livre des emblemes, in which the vast majority of emblems are based on Aesop’s Fables (Aneau, Picta poesis, 1552; Aneau, Imagination poetique, 1552; Guéroult, Le premier livre des emblemes, 1550). But at much the same time as they produced these formal emblem books, both writers also produced smaller collections of illustrated emblematic verses, all of which are based specifically on the behavior of animals (Aneau) and birds (Guéroult), and in the case of both writers the behaviors or characteristics of individual animals 2.

For online examples of manuscripts of the Physiologus and of medieval bestiaries see The Medieval Bestiary. Animals in the Middle Ages. http://bestiary.ca.



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are interpreted quite differently from the way in which they are interpreted in their formal emblem books (Aneau, 1549; Guéroult, Second livre de la description des animaux, contenant le blason des oyseaux 1550). In the opening lines of both his Imagination poetique and Decades, Aneau describes the fecundity of the hare as its chief characteristic in very similar terms, but in the latter halves of the two verses he offers a quite different moral interpretation of the hare. In the Imagination poetique he uses the traditional theme of the fecundity of the hare, who obsessively produces large numbers of offspring, to make the rather ingenious, and certainly non-traditional moral lesson, expressed also in the title to the emblem, that big spenders must make sure that they also have big incomes to cover their heavy outgoings: Despense, et gain Le Lievre est beste ayant double Nature Multiplier aimant sa geniture, En mesme temps porte, allaicte, & conçoit, Met sur le faix: & le masle reçoit. Ne souffrant point son ventre sans semence, Qu’en le vuydant, l’emplir ne recommence. EXEMPLE à tous, que qui veult bien despendre: Il doibt aussi à bien gaigner entendre. Tant que jamais ne s’espuise la source. Mais qu’en vuydant il emplisse la bourse. Et que tousjours en pourvoyant, pourpense Par plus grand guain recouvrer la despense. (Imagination poetique, I3v) (fig. 1) [Expenditure, and gain The Hare is an animal with dual Nature Which likes to multiply its offspring, Simultaneously it carries, nurses and conceives, Gives birth and receives the male. Not allowing its womb to be without seed, So that while emptying it, it begins to fill it again. EXAMPLE to all that he who wishes to make great expenditure, Must also ensure to make great gain. So that he never exhausts the source. But rather while emptying the purse he refills it. And always when paying out takes care By greater gain to recover the expenditure.]3 3.

All translations from the French in this article are my own, AMS.

72 EMBLEMATICA But in the verse from the Decades he moves on from his opening description of the fecundity of the hare to describe another of its traditional bestiary characteristics, namely its timidity due to its defenseless nature. He uses this aspect to make the quite different moral reflection that those who show weakness by fleeing will inevitably find themselves being pursued: Le lievre Le legier Lievre animal tresfecond, De concevoir ou d’engendrer ne cesse, Le premier fruict n’attendant le Fig. 1. Despense, et gain. Aneau, Imagination second: poetique 1552, I3v. Image courtesy of BiblioCar Androgine ha l’un & l’autre thèque nationale de France (Res Ye 1659) sexe. Defense il n’ha (parquoy chescun le vexe) Ongles, ne dens, ne cornes: peu heureux, Dont se sentant sans armes est paoureux: Car de sa chair savoureuse font chasse, Oyseaux, & chiens, ou pour l’homme, ou pour eux. Quiconque fuit: il trouve qui le chasse. (Decades, C4v) (fig. 2) [The hare The sprightly Hare is a very fecund animal, Which never ceases to conceive and engender, Its second fruit not waiting for the first: For, as an Androgyne, it has one and the other gender. It has no defenses (for which reason it is tormented by all) Neither claws, nor teeth, nor horns: it is unhappy, Since, aware of its lack of arms, it is fearful: For on account of its tasty flesh it is pursued by Birds, and hounds, whether for man or for themselves. Whoever flees; will find someone to pursue him.]



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Like Aneau, Guéroult also uses the behavior and characteristics of the cockerel quite differently in his Second livre de la description des animaux contenant le Blason des oyseaux from the way in which he uses it in his Premier livre des emblemes. In the Premier livre des emblemes he simply re-narrates the Aesop fable of The Fox, the Cockerel, and the Dog (Aesop’s Fables, 2.15) in order to point in conclusion to the ingenuity of the cockerel in turning the tables on the fox, who is trying to persuade the cockerel to come down from the safety of his tree so that he can eat him—a moral lesson again spelled out, as was Aneau’s, in the title of Fig. 2. Le Lievre. Aneau 1549, C4v. Image courtesy of Bibliothèque nationale de France his emblem: A trompeur trompeur & demy Ainsi feust par un plus fin Mise à fin Du subtil regnard la ruse. Qui ne veut estre deceu A son sceu: D’un tel engin faut qu’il use. (Premier livre des emblemes, A4v)

(Res Ye 3468 [1])

[To the deceiver a deceiver and a half Thus by one more cunning than himself Was brought to nought The subtle fox’s ploy. He who does not wish to be deceived Unwittingly: Must use such ingenuity.]4 4.

Guéroult was not alone at this time in exploiting Aesop’s Fables emblematically. Only a few years earlier in 1542, Denis Janot, the Paris printer responsible for the publication of the first two French emblem books, Guillaume de la Perrière’s Theatre des bons engins and Gilles Corrozet’s Hecatomgraphie, both in 1540 (La Perrière 1540; Corrozet 1540), followed these with an edition of a French ver-

74 EMBLEMATICA Quite different is the way in which Guéroult interprets the behavior of the cockerel in his Blason des oyseaux, where he is no longer constrained by following Aesop’s fable. Here, although several of the cockerel’s traditional bestiary characteristics and attributes are noted (including its habit of crowing at dawn to wake the populace to a new day of work, the fact that both the lion and the basilisk are afraid of it, and that it is a fierce fighter), the universally relevant moral lesson for mankind derived from the cockerel at the end of the verse relates to only the last of these attributes—that even a small body can contain a brave heart: Le Coq Par son clair chant le franc Coq nous annonce Le brief retour du soleil gracieux: Lors tous humains entendants sa semonce, De travailler se monstrent soucieux: Le Coq hardy, chaut, & luxurieux Est du Lyon grandement redoubté Le Basilic qui l’aura escouté Tremble de craincte au seul son de sa voix: A dure guerre il s’esmeut quelque foys, Du bec pointu se combat à oultrance, Et s’il advient que par sa grand vaillance De l’ennemy il demeure vainqueur: Haulse le chef, s’enfle d’orgueil & gloire, Monstrant par l’heur de sa belle victoire: Qu’en petit corps est logé un grand coeur. (Blason des oyseaux, b4v)

nacular version of Aesop’s Fables with the text supplied by Corrozet, in which the work is arranged emblematically, following exactly the same structure and format as that used in the Hecatomgraphie two years previously. In both works the title, figure, and quatrain appear on one page, while a complementary longer verse passage of narrative and commentary follows on the facing page. Thus there is no difference at all, effectively, between an emblem in the Hecatomgraphie, which derives its moral lesson from a fabulous narrative of the relationship between two animals (such as Amour faincte on the wolf and the lamb [H2v–H3r] or Deffiance non moins utile que prudence on the fox and the lion [H5v–H6r]) and an actual Aesopic fable as contained in the Fables du tresancien Esope phrigien premierement escriptes en Graec, et depuis mises en rithme Françoise (Corrozet 1542).



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[With its clear song the open-hearted Cockerel announces The imminent return of the gracious sun: Then all humans hearing his call Show themselves ready for work: The brave, hot-blooded and lusty Cockerel Is much feared by the Lion The Basilisk, on hearing it, Trembles with fear at the mere sound of its voice: At times it rouses itself to fierce combat, It fights savagely with its pointed beak, And if it so happens that through its great valor It emerges victorious over the enemy: It raises its head high, puffs itself up with pride and glory, Showing through its joy in its splendid victory: That within a small body is housed a great heart.]5

It has commonly been thought that, like Corrozet’s Hecatomgraphie and La Perrière’s Theatre des bons engins—which obviously had lasting popular appeal and continued to be republished in successively less elegant form and under modified titles by popular French printers throughout the sixteenth and even into the seventeenth century6—Aneau’s and Guéroult’s much more narrowly unified collections of moralizing emblematic verses devoted exclusively to the animal world and the bird world also enjoyed an enduring popularity. This notion is reinforced by the fact that numerous editions of illustrated verse treatises on the nature of animals and birds, clearly related to those of Aneau and Guéroult, were subsequently published and republished in both Paris and Lyons beginning in 1561, continuing even as late as 1641 (in Rouen), under variant forms of the modified title La description philosophale de la nature et condition des animaux…avec le sens moral… ensemble plusieurs augmentations . . . or Description philosophale des oyseaux . . . le tout moralisé de nouveau . . . and were illustrated either by the same or by similar, but rather cruder, woodcut figures.7 However, although it does 5. 6. 7.

For more detailed discussion of the ways in which the behavior of animals could be interpreted emblematically in different ways see Saunders: “Les animaux emblématiques” 2007. Corrozet 1540; La Perrière 1540. For details of subsequent editions, see entries for Corrozet and La Perrière in Adams, Rawles, and Saunders 1999–2002. For details see Saunders 1976. See also David Graham’s more recent study in which he identifies the location of a number of hitherto lost editions of these later reworkings of the original versions by Aneau and Guéroult, and also dis-

76 EMBLEMATICA retain some echoes of the original version, the text of these later versions is actually significantly different from that of Aneau and Guéroult, giving much greater emphasis to the intended moral interpretation. Indeed, each woodcut figure of an animal or bird is accompanied by not just one, but two verses, the second of which is explicitly entitled “Moral,” as this text is called in the work itself. See, for example, the treatment of the hare in the revised version of the Description philosophale de la nature et condition des animaux tant raisonnables que brutz, avec le sens moral comprins sus le naturel & condition d’iceux: ensemble plusieurs augmentations de diverses & estranges bestes, outre la precedente edition, published by Benoist Rigaud in Lyons in 1561:8 Du Lievre Lorsque les blez sont beaux & vers Le Lievre de chaulde nature Dort dedans, les deux yeulx ouvers Apres qu’il a pris sa pasture. Il porte & conçoit tout ainsi Que la femelle en sa gesine: Pource qu’il tient de l’androgine. Car femelle est & masle aussi. Moral Le Lievre figure un pauvre homme Qui est de soucy si troublé, Qu’il ne dort que demy son somme En mangeant en vert tout son blé. Masle il est, & aussi femelle D’autant qu’est contraint pour la faim De porter contre sa mamelle Ses enfans en cherchant du pain. (Description philosophale…des animaux, 1561, D4r) [On the Hare When the wheat is beautiful and green The hot blooded Hare

8.

cusses further the modifications to which the original versions were subjected and possible reasons why such changes were made (Graham 2011). A copy of this edition in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (P o Gall 578) is available online at their website.



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Sleeps in it with both eyes open After it has finished grazing. It bears and conceives just like A female in childbirth For it is androgyne in nature, Being both female and male. Moral The Hare represents a poor man Who is so troubled by care That he only half sleeps Eating his wheat while it is still green. It is male and also female, So it is constrained through hunger To carry at its breast Its young while seeking its bread.]

But interesting though the much greater emphasis on spelling out the moral lesson in these later reworked versions is, it is even more intriguing how they also introduce a very specific Christian emphasis, such as was not present in the original versions by Aneau and Guéroult. This is shown clearly, for example, by a comparison of the very different treatment of the stag and the unicorn in the earlier and the later versions. In Aneau’s original version, the stag is used to reflect on betrayal by a friend or lover: Le Cerf Le Cerf legier est de cornes armé, Piedz secz forchus: mais courant grande alleure: Bel est de corps, & beau de chef ramé, Doulx & amy de l’homme. Et pource à l’heure Qu’il se voit prins par l’homme, larmes pleure: Avant sa mort. Comme celluy qui sent Un grand regret de mourir innocent: Crier mercy par gemir s’esvertue, Gectant pour voix des souspirs plus de cent. C’est double mort quand l’aimé l’Amy tue. (Decades, 1549, C5v) [The Stag The nimble Stag is armed with horns, And hard cloven hooves: but runs very swiftly: Its body is beautiful and handsome its horned head,

78 EMBLEMATICA It is gentle and friendly to mankind. And thus when It sees itself being taken by man, it sheds tears: Before its death. Like one who feels Great regret at dying innocent: With sighs it strives to cry for mercy, Its voice uttering more than a hundred sighs. It is a double death when the loved one kills the Lover.]

But in the 1561 Rigaud edition the betrayed stag is raised to a higher plane, being specifically glossed in the newly introduced additional “Moral” that follows the descriptive verse as a signifier of Jesus descending from Heaven to save mankind, only to be rejected and persecuted: Du Cerf Le Cerf est une doulce beste Qui lhomme ayme amiablement: Deux cornes porte sur la teste, Qui le decorent grandement. Il saulte merveilleusement Et a plorer il s’esvertue, Quand il void que d’un ferrement Celuy quil ayme le tue. Moral Le Cerf est Jesus humble & doulx, Qui est du hault ciel souverain, Sailly jusque icy bas pour tous Au grand salut de l’homme humain, Lequel homme impudique & vain Le pourchasse injustement Et occis de sa propre main Dont il a ploré tendrement. (Description philosophale…des animaux, 1561, E1r) [On the Stag The Stag is a gentle beast Who loves mankind tenderly: It bears two horns on its head, Which adorn it greatly. It leaps marvelously And is reduced to tears When it sees that with an iron implement The one whom it loves is killing it.



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Moral The Stag is humble and gentle Jesus Who from the sovereign, lofty sky Came down here below for all For the great salvation of mankind, But shameless, vain man pursues it unjustly And kills it with his own hand, For which it weeps tenderly.]

Similarly, Aneau’s original treatment of the unicorn focuses on its submission to the virgin because of her beauty: La Licorne La Licorne ha du Lyon le courage, Voix de Toreau: corps, & crin de Cheval, Teste de Cerf: queue de porc sauvage, Piedz d’Elephant, prompte, & legiere à mal. Jamais n’est prins tout vif cest Animal. Dessus son front une grande corne excelle, Longue de deux coudees, & icelle Mortelle en coup est contraire au venin, Si grand fierté se rend à la pucelle: Tant ha doulx traict visage feminin. (Decades, 1549, B5v) [The Unicorn The Unicorn has the courage of the Lion, The voice of a Bull, body and mane of a Horse, Head of a Stag: tail of a wild pig, Feet of an Elephant, swift, and nimble to do ill, This Animal is never taken alive. On its forehead it is adorned with a large horn, Two cubits in length, a blow from this Is mortal and it is an antidote to poison, Such great pride submits to a virgin, So gentle an appearance has the female countenance.]

The reworked version of 1561 contrasts sharply, although the initial descriptive verse echoes the content of Aneau’s original version:

80 EMBLEMATICA De la Licorne Quant à parler de la Licorne Elle a le poil fort blanc & fin Dessus son chef porte une corne Qui est fort contraire au venin. Le beau visage feminin Ayme la si tresardant zelle: Qu’elle s’endort de cueur benin Dans le giron d’une pucelle. [On the Unicorn As for speaking of the Unicorn It has very white, fine hair On its head it bears a horn Which is a strong antidote to poison The beautiful female countenance Is so beloved by its ardent zeal: That it falls asleep with happy heart In the lap of a virgin.]

The following moralizing verse interprets the significance of the unicorn, again clearly identifying it with Jesus Christ descending to earth for the salvation of mankind: Moral Par la licorne est entendu Le filz de Dieu Roy souverain Qui en ce monde est descendu Pour racheter le genre humain Du venin puant & vilain L’a gardé en ce mortel monde Et s’est reposé sur le seing De la pucelle saincte et munde. (Description philosophale…des animaux, 1561, C2v) [Moral By the Unicorn is signified The Son of God, sovereign King, Who came down to this earth To rescue the human race From evil stinking poison. It protected it in this mortal world And reposed on the breast Of the pure and blessed virgin.]



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However, not only are several of the animals in this version given a clearly Christian interpretation, but furthermore in some cases it is a specifically Catholic and distinctly anti-Protestant interpretation. In the “Moral” to De la Martre zebeline, for example, the modest and virtuous sable represents the good, faithful Catholic: Moral Par ladicte Martre qui a Le poil beau & aromaticque Nous est figuré par cela Le bon fidele catholique Qui d’une affection pudicque S’entretient avec le trouppeau D’un pasteur ecclesiastique, Sans point changer sa belle peau. (Description philosophale…des animaux, 1561, D1r) [Moral By the said Sable which has Beautiful aromatic fur Is signified to us The good, faithful catholic Who with modest affection Communes with the flock Of the shepherd of the church Without ever changing its beautiful coat.]

In contrast, in La Taulpe [the blind mole], living its destructive earthbound life, is interpreted in the Moral in very forceful terms as representing a heretical devil, blindly intent on destroying no longer just the actual physical environment, but rather the “beaux labourages/des sainctz docteurs, scavans & sages/ Contre la verité qu’il doubte.”: Moral La Taulpe est un homme aveuglé Noir comme un diable d’heresie Et suyt sa folle fantasie, Tant est à la foy dereglé. Terrestre il est, & ne void goute, Et gaste les beaux labourages Des sainctz docteurs, scavans & sages Contre la verité qu’il doubte. (Description philosophale . . . des animaux, 1561, D3v)

82 EMBLEMATICA [Moral The Mole is a blind man Black as a heretical devil Who follows his own foolish fantasy, So strongly is he ungoverned by faith. He is earthbound, and sees nothing, And destroys the beautiful cultivated ground Of saintly doctors, scholars and wise men, Against the truth which he rejects.]

Even more strikingly in an entry on the viper, which appears for the first time in an edition published by Jean Ruelle in Paris in 1571, the cruel behavior of young vipers killing their own mother is used for a forceful, specifically anti-Lutheran diatribe: Par la Vipere veneneuse Qui faict mourir sa mere propre S’entend la secte malheureuse De Luther plain de grand opprobre: Par une grosse tyrannise Ses faulx suppostz veulent manger, Le ventre de leur mere eglise A leur grand peril & danger. (Description philosophale…des bestes, 1571, f.28r) [By the venomous Viper Which kills its own mother Is understood the wretched sect Of Luther full of great opprobrium: By gross tyranny His false followers seek to devour The belly of their mother church To their great peril and danger.]

The printing history of these reworkings of Aneau’s and Guéroult’s original Decades de la description des animaux and Second livre de la description des animaux contenant le Blason des oyseaux is complicated and difficult to reconstruct accurately since—although many editions, formerly presumed lost, have now come to light again thanks in large part to the advent of digitized library catalogues, and in particular to the Catalogue collectif de France and WorldCat—a significant number remain lost. But nevertheless,



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extant evidence shows clearly that it was not actually, as formerly thought, the original versions by Aneau and Guéroult that were so enduringly popular, but rather the significantly reworked versions, with their much heavier moralizing—and in particular Christianizing—emphasis, which continued to be produced in variant forms by various publishers well into the seventeenth century, in some cases indeed including the further addition of a prose commentary. Space does not allow for a full discussion here of these editions and of the complicated ways in which the text was modified. My earlier article (1976) does discuss this subject in greater depth, while David Graham’s much more recent article (2011) incorporates evidence from recently discovered editions, and reflects on the shrewd commercial judgment of printers of the second half of the sixteenth century, who ensured that these works in their significantly modified form took account of changing cultural and social preoccupations. In this manner they continued to satisfy the tastes and preoccupations of later sixteenth- and indeed seventeenth-century readerships, even while continuing to exploit at this later date, as did Aneau and Guéroult in the mid-sixteenth century, basic didactic material that harks back essentially to fifteenth- and very early sixteenth-century didacticism. The identity of the writer responsible for these systematic reworkings of Aneau’s and Guéroult’s works, which offer the moral interpretations in their quite different, specifically Catholic and anti-Lutheran slant, is not known for certain. His name never appears on the title page or colophon of any of the extant editions, nor in any of the prefaces that replace the original ones of Aneau and Guéroult from 1561 onwards, but various pieces of circumstantial evidence suggest that they may well be the work of the prolific and violently anti-Lutheran Catholic polemicist Artus Desiré. The 1561 Benoist Rigaud edition of the Description philosophale de la nature et condition des oyseaux includes in the preliminaries a verse “Aux Lecteurs” apparently written by Rigaud himself, in which he makes sustained play on the word “desiré” and implies that this is the name of the person providing the text for him to publish: Benins Lecteurs qui avez desiré Et desirez voir quelque cas de beau, Par passetemps un nommé Desiré M’a faict (pour vous) imprimer de nouveau, Le naturel de maint plaisant oyseau. (verso of title page)

84 EMBLEMATICA [Gentle Readers who have desired And desire to see something beautiful, As a pastime a certain Desiré Has asked me to print again (for you) The nature of many a pleasant bird.]

The emphatic and inflated style of the new prefaces that accompany the reworked versions of both the birds and the animals, replacing the more moderately expressed ones of Aneau and Guéroult, is reminiscent of Artus Desiré’s characteristically bombastic language as seen in his numerous other polemical works. The following extract from his preface to the Description philosophale de la nature et condition des oyseaux serves as an example: Quant il t’envoye à l’heure matutine la belle Aurora, qui se presente à toy en ce faisant ouverture des beaux rayons du clair Phoebus, qui enlumine toute la machine ronde pour ton saufconduit, quelle graces luy rends tu? Helas injures, opprobres, vilennies, & blasphemes, en le prenant par la teste, par le ventre, & par le sang. O miserable ennemy de Dieu & des Anges, Considere quelle sera la fin de toy, en pleurs & grinsement de dens tomberas au feu d’eternelle damnation, ou grosses peines, & tourmens te sont preparez pour le salaire, & retribution de tes grands pechez, & demerites . . . Dont affin que tu puisses corriger tes fautes trop apparentes, j’ay faict une description du naturel, & proprieté des oyseaux: avec le sens moral, qui te servira d’exemple pour cognoistre qui tu es. (Description philosophale de la nature et condition des oyseaux, preface, 6–7) [When he sends you in the morning hour the beautiful Aurora, who presents herself to you while opening up to the beautiful rays of bright Phoebus, who lights up the entire round machine for your safe passage, what thanks do you give him? Alas insults, opprobrium, villainy, and blasphemy, taking him by the head, the stomach, and by the blood. O wretched enemy of God and of the Angels. Consider what your end will be, in tears and grinding of teeth you will fall into the fire of eternal damnation, where great suffering and torment are prepared for you as wages and retribution for your great sins and demerits . . . For which in order that you may correct your very evident faults I have made a description of the nature and property of birds: with the moral significance, which will serve as an example for you to recognize who you are.]



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It is perhaps not coincidental that several of the printers who produced editions of these reworked versions of Aneau’s and Guéroult’s originals were clearly connected with Artus Desiré, since they were also responsible for the publication of various other of the latter’s works.9 These two works, which are highly emblematic without being emblems per se, confirm the flexibility of the genre. They are based on the perceived behavior of animals and birds and composed in their original version by two writers who were at much the same time also composing their own actual emblem books, although thereafter these were significantly reworked into a quite different form. The behavior of one individual animal can, on the one hand, be interpreted as offering a general moral lesson or reflection on human behavior, but, on the other hand, be interpreted quite differently, offering a specifically Christian, or indeed, even more narrowly, a specifically Catholic and anti-Lutheran reading. Against this background, which demonstrates the flexibility in the ways that the mid-sixteenth-century emblematic animal image can be interpreted, it is pertinent to consider some earlier works on the nature of animals and birds that also exploit the word/image combination. These volumes are very interesting for their affinities with emblem books, and have until now hardly been considered by emblem scholars. These are first, an anonymous late fifteenth-century collection of epigrammatic verses entitled Dictz des bestes & aussi des oyseaulx; second, a slightly later collection of illustrated verses on the behavior of animals and birds included in the 1521 Menus propos by the Rhétoriqueur poet Pierre Gringore; and last, a work entitled Sensuyt le bestiaire damours: moralisé sur les bestes & oyseaulx. Le tout par figure et histoire, which connects both with the Dictz des bestes & aussi des oyseaulx and with Gringore’s work. All are interesting because they link 9.

Jean Ruelle, for example, who produced editions of the reworked versions of both the birds and the animals in 1571, had earlier also published Desiré’s Les batailles et victoires du chevalier celeste, contre le chevalier terrestre (1560); Le contre-poison des cinquante-deux chansons de Clement Marot, faulsement intitulées par luy Psalmes de David (1567); Le deffensaire de la foy chrestienne, avec le miroer des francs taupins autrement nommés Lutheriens (1567), among other works. Likewise, Robert and Jean Du Gort in Rouen and Magdeleine Boursette in Paris, who produced editions of the reworked versions of both the birds and the animals in 1553/54 and 1554 respectively, also produced editions of works by Desiré, as did Nicolas Bonfons (edition of the birds in 1584) and Pierre Ménier (edition of the animals in 1605) in Paris.

86 EMBLEMATICA both back to the bestiary and forward to the emblem, but in very different ways. Most significantly they also serve to demonstrate that the flexibility with which the sixteenth-century emblematic form proper can be exploited was already present in earlier pre-emblematic works. The Dictz des bestes & aussi des oyseaulx, which in the edition used here (published without date, but probably in the 1520s, in Paris by Alain Lotrian)10 comprises a series of twenty-two rather crude woodcut figures, each depicting an animal, and accompanied by a four-line verse describing the behavior of that animal, followed by a similar series of seventeen woodcut figures and verses about birds. In both series the behavior of the animal or bird is used to make a moral reflection on human life in the last line, which is sometimes purely general, but in other instances offers a specifically religious-moral lesson, thus linking the work closely not only back to original bestiary sources, which usually offers both a general and a religious interpretation, but also forward to the reworked version of Aneau’s and Guéroult’s works discussed above, in which the religious aspect become much more emphasized. Among the twenty-two verses using animal behavior to make a general reflection on human life, several examples are provided below, including the wolf, the hound, and the familiar self-mutilating bestiary figure of the beaver: Le loup Pour ma pasture avoir Jay plusieurs debatz aux chiens Quant homme meurt qui a avoir Du corps ne chault tant que des biens. (Dictz des bestes, A3v) Le levrier A courir je suis diligent Traversant montaignes et vaulx Lhom avaricieux pour largent Se donne cinq cens mille maulx. (Dictz des bestes, A5v) (fig. 3) Le bievre Pour plus complaire aux creatures 10.

A copy of this edition in the Bibliothèque nationale de France is available online via BnF Gallica. A copy of a facsimile edition in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, is also available online.



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Qui me serchent pour mettre a mort Jarrache o les dens ma nature Trop pleure qui na reconfort. (Dictz des bestes, A5r) [The wolf In order to have my food I have many battles with dogs When a man dies who has property His body is of less interest than his wealth. The hound I run assiduously Crossing mountains and valleys The man who is avaricious for money Gives himself five hundred thousand ills. The beaver In order better to placate the creatures Which seek me out in order to kill me I bite off with my teeth my nature He who has no comfort weeps greatly.]

Fig. 3. Le levrier and Le mastin. Dictz des bestes & aussi des oyseaulx, A5v. Image courtesy of Bibliothèque nationale de France (Res Ye 1279)

Similarly among the seventeen birds, examples of general moralizing lessons or reflections on mankind could be the cheery nightingale singing itself to death, the caring crane, or the hoopoe with its unlovely personal habits: Le rossignol Chanter scay bien en ma vie Chant qui est moult delicieux Quant je meurs point ne loublie Qui bien vit doit mourir joyeulx. (Dictz des oyseaulx, A8v) (fig. 4) La grue Ma compaignie ay moult cher Doulce luy suis et debonnaire Pour la bien garder vueil veiller Le bon pasteur ainsi doit faire. (Dictz des oyseaulx, B2r)

88 EMBLEMATICA La huppe Manger si ne veulx quordure Car en punaisie me tiens Si je suis de belle figure Beaulte sans bonte ne vault riens. (Dictz des oyseaulx, B3r) [The nightingale I know well how to sing in my lifetime A song which is very delightful When I die I do not forget this He who lives well must die joyfully. The crane My companion is very dear to me I am gentle and gracious to her. In order to guard her well I keep careful watch The good shepherd should do like- Fig. 4. Laigle and Le rossignol. Dictz des bestes & aussi des oyseaulx, A8v. Image wise. courtesy of Bibliothèque nationale de

The hoopoe France (Res Ye 1279) I desire only to eat filth For I keep myself in stench Yet I have a beautiful appearance Beauty without goodness is worth nothing.]

But already in the Dictz des bestes some animals are used to give a specifically religious lesson, as, for example, the alert and faithful guard dog: Le mastin La nuict pour mon maistre je veille Pour les larrons mieulx espier Jay sur le guet tousjours loreille Servi[r] dieu ne fault oublier. (Dictz des bestes, A5v) (fig. 3) [The guard dog At night I keep watch for my master In order to spot thieves more readily I have my ears always alert One should never forget to serve God.]



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Likewise, the Dictz des oyseaulx features, for example, the traditional bestiary pelican, representing Christ, and the high-flying eagle: Le pellican Je suis dune telle nature Que je vueil mourir pour les miens Vie je leur rens par morsure Ainsi fist jesucrist pour les siens. (Dictz des oyseaulx, A8r) Laigle De tous oyseaulx je suis le roy Voller je puis en si hault lieu Que le soleil de pres je voy Benoist sont ceulx qui voyent dieu. (Dictz des oyseaulx, A8v) (fig. 4) [The pelican I am of such nature That I am ready to die for my own I give them life through self-injury Thus did Jesus Christ for his own. The eagle Of all the birds I am king I can fly to such a high place That I can see the sun closely Blessed are those who see God.]

Like the various editions of the reworkings of Aneau’s and Guéroiult’s emblematic collections of animal and bird verses, the printing histories of the Dictz des bestes and the Dictz des oyseaulx are also complicated, and copies of all editions are very rare. The Lotrian edition used here includes both the animals and the birds together, but more commonly the Dictz des bestes and the Dictz des oyseaulx were published separately, with the earliest known editions of each appearing in Lyons between 1485 and 1490 (printed by Jean du Pré), and in Paris c.1490 (printed by Jean Trepperel).11 While editions of the Dictz des bestes did not apparently continue to be published after the 1520s, the Dictz des oyseaulx enjoyed a much longer life, 11.

For a detailed discussion of the various editions, see the excellent study by MarieDominique Leclerc (Leclerc 2003).

90 EMBLEMATICA since the text, though not the woodcut illustrations, became incorporated into a number of editions of the immensely popular Kalendrier des bergers from Guyon Marchand’s 1493 Paris edition onwards. However, just as in the case of Aneau’s and Guéroult’s emblematic collections of animal and bird verses, the text of the Dictz des oyseaulx was also significantly modified in later editions. Most notably, the original modest collection of seventeen birds was successively expanded. Already in Marchand’s 1493 edition it had grown to thirty-six, while in the edition produced in Lyons in 1508 by Claude Nourry it reached a total of ninety-one.12 However, it is not just the case of an increase in the number of birds in the collection. The character of the work is also modified, since a significant number of the newly introduced birds fall into the category of those given a specifically religious interpretation. Seventeen of the birds in the 1508 Nourry edition of the Kalendrier do so.13 Thus, for example, among the newly introduced birds, the affectionate nature of the falcon is used to demonstrate the love of God for mankind: Le faulcon Lon mapelle faulcon gentil Aucunesfoys je suis ramaige Jayme les grans & les petis Ainsi fist dieu lhumain lignaige. (1508 Nourry Kalendrier, k7r) [The falcon They call me the gentle falcon Sometimes I sing I love both great and small Thus did God for human kind.]

In contrast, the malevolent cormorant is used to demonstrate how a just God will punish evil behavior: 12. 13.

Copies of both these editions of the Kalendrier des bergers, in the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon respectively, are available online via Bnf Gallica. Le faulcon, Le rossignol saulvaige, Le cormourant, Larondelle, Le loriol, Le chardonnerel en caige, Lalouete, Le merle, Le gay en caige, Le mezange, Le heron blanc, La bergeronnette, La frezaye, La grosse ostarde, La petite ostarde, Lostruche, La rabienne.



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Le cormourant Saige nest pas la creature Qui vit au dommaige daultruy Dieu fera a chascun droicture Nul mal ne demeure impugny. (1508 Nourry Kalendrier, k7v) [The cormorant The creature is not wise Who lives by harming others God will give justice to everyone No evil will remain unpunished.]

The oriole teaches an unusually doctrinal lesson: Le loriol Quant serises sont en saison Je dis confiteor deo Mais rien ne vault confession Qui ne fait satisfactio. (1508 Nourry Kalendrier, k8r) [The oriole When cherries are in season I make my confession to God. But confession is worth nothing To him who does not make atonement.]

The strong religious emphasis of the lessons conveyed by the newly introduced birds is amplified in the changes made to the text of already existing birds, which further stress the religious and moral lessons derived from behavior. For example, the verse describing the behavior of the partridge is rewritten to strengthen its religious message. In its original form the text was not overtly religious in nature, although there were implicit allusions in what seem to be indirect references to passages from the Bible:14

14.

“The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26: 41); “For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin. For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not… For the good that I would I do not: but the evil, which I would not, that I do . . .” (Romans 7: 14–21). I am grateful to the anonymous Emblematica reader for drawing these allusions to my attention.

92 EMBLEMATICA La perdrix Charnalité est tant en moy Que je ne me puis abstenir Je fais ce que faire ne dois Luxurieux bien doit cremir. (Dictz des oyseaulx, B1r) [The partridge Fleshliness is so strongly in me That I am unable to abstain I do that which I should not do The sensuous should well be fearful.]

The specific mention of God appears in the revised version in the 1508 Nourry Kalendrier, rendering the religious message quite explicit: La perdrix Je me metz souvent en danger Pour garantir ma compagnie Jen laisse a boyre & a menger Qui bien vit dieu ne loblie mye. (1508 Nourry Kalendrier, k8v) [The partridge I frequently place myself in danger In order to protect my companion For her I omit to eat and drink He who leads a good life is not forgotten by God.]

Even more striking is the treatment of the eagle. As observed in the original verse, the description of the eagle’s traditional ability to fly high and look straight at the sun without being dazzled had been given a religious interpretation, reflecting the happy state of those who can see God. But the religious significance to be read into the behavior of the eagle is further emphasized in the later version by the introduction of another—longer and quite different—verse on the behavior of the eagle on the last page of the collection. And interestingly this new, eight-line verse is given greater emphasis by virtue of being accompanied by its own woodcut figure, whereas none of the preceding verses on the individual birds are illustrated:



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La grant aigle Je suis loyseau du roy celeste Qui me perche sur ma poictrine Et des secretz de mon cher maistre Je vis par puissance divine Damour si me monstra grant signe Quant il me voulut declarer Sa grant vertu puissante & digne A jamais le doys honnorer. (1508 Nourry Kalendrier, l2r) [The great eagle I am the bird of the heavenly king And I perch on my stomach And the secrets of my beloved master I saw through divine power And he showed me such great sign of love When he wished to declare to me His powerful and worthy great virtue Forever I must honor him.]

The strongly religious message conveyed by the Grant aigle at the end of the collection is supported by that of another new addition, also on the last page. This twelve-line verse, which, like the Grant aigle, is also illustrated, focuses on two of the traditional bestiary attributes of the ostrich, namely its strong digestion enabling it to eat iron and steel without getting stomach ache and its ability to hatch its eggs by simply looking at them: Lostruche Je digere acier & fer Sans me douloir de la poictrine Qui vouldra eschever enfer Si ensuyve bonne doctrine Je fais encores chose digne Quant par mon regart seulement De mes oeufz fais yssir ligne Sans les toucher aulcunement Il ny a soubz le firmament Oyseau de ma condition Mais dieu qui ne fault nullement Moy & les miens le gration. (1508 Nourry Kalendrier, l2r)

94 EMBLEMATICA [The ostrich I digest iron and steel Without suffering stomach ache He who would avoid hell Should follow good doctrine I also do a worthy thing When by my gaze alone I hatch out my eggs Without touching them at all There is beneath the firmament No bird of my condition But to God who never fails Myself and my own give thanks.]

Thus, in the same way that Aneau’s and Guéroult’s mid-sixteenth-century animal and bird emblematic verses could be subsequently modified and exploited in significantly more strongly religious terms, so also this same phenomenon was already happening with this much earlier collection of pre-emblematic Dictz des bestes & aussi des oyseaulx. Another very interesting set of early sixteenth-century illustrated verses also focuses on the behavior of birds and animals, but exploits it in a quite different manner. Although these, too, have clear affinities with the emblematic mode, they also have until now been largely overlooked by emblem scholars, tucked away as they are within a much longer work: Pierre Gringore’s Menus propos.15 But here a quite different gloss is put upon the behavior of the animals and birds. No longer are they used to offer general moral reflections, or specifically religious reflections on human life and behavior, as seen thus far, but rather—as the title to this subsection of the Menus propos suggests (Les menus propos des amoureux qui ne ont la grace joyr de leurs dames: figurez sur les hommes, bestes & oyseaulx selon leur nature & complexion)—Gringore gives a quite different twist to the traditional bestiary form, transforming it effectively into a series of what could almost be called love emblems (if the term had by then been invented) by associating the behavior of the particular animal or bird with the emotions of the unhappy lover. His collection comprises twenty-five such menus pro15.

Gringore 1521. Only in the course of the Eleventh International Conference of the Society for Emblem Studies held in Kiel in July–August 2014 was this work discussed by Paulette Choné in “Les Menus propos de Pierre Gringore (1521): le ‘livre parfait’ avant Alciat.”



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pos, each following the same carefully elaborated format. Each begins with a menu propos de l’amant addressed to his lady in which he reflects on his unhappy love. This is then followed by a rondeau echoing the same theme, and then by what could be considered to be the emblematic section, relating the behavior of the particular animal or bird to what the lover has just been describing. The heading (Exemple du coq, Exemple de l’asne sauvaige, Exemple du loup, Exemple du grillon, etc.) is followed by a very detailed and decorative woodcut of the particular animal or bird; then an interpretative verse describing its characteristic behavior, relating it specifically to the lover’s unhappy love; and finally by another rondeau, again relating to the lover’s unhappiness in the context of the behavior of the animal. This complex symmetrical framework is rigorously observed throughout the collection. These Exemples in Gringore’s collection of Menus propos des amoureux . . . figurez sur les hommes, bestes & oyseaulx open with the emblem-like composition, the Exemple du coq. The woodcut figure depicts a lustily singing cockerel together with a hen, accompanied by a verse that first explains the traditional bestiary habit of the cockerel crowing late at night or at crack of dawn, and then relates this to the feelings and behavior of the lover himself: Exemple du coq Quant le coq est pres du soir approchant Ou pres du jour plus souvent fait son chant Et vers minuyt il met toute sa force Plus fort chanter engrossit & efforce Sa voix alors faisant assez grant bruyt Soir et matin tiennent de jour et nuyt Et nuyt et jour estans meslez ensemble Monstrent lamour ainsi comme il me semble Ou il ya amertume et puis goust Ne bon espoir ne desespoir du tout Par la minuyt nous peult estre inferee Lamour qui est du tout desesperee Ainsi je puis bien dire devant tous Lamy nuyt suis, quant nay espoir en vous Et sil advient que amour trop me importune Pensant a vous en esperance aucune Le vespre suis et matin sans doubter Qui me contrainct de plus souvent chanter Comme le coq qui est plain de franchise

96 EMBLEMATICA Gay, liberal, joyeulx cest sa devise Mais quelque bruyt de liberalite Qui soit en moy vostre crudelite Me demonstrez, tant quil fault que par raige Face mon cry comme lasne sauvaige. (Menus propos, f7v) (fig. 5) [Example of the cockerel When the cockerel is near the approaching evening Or near the dawn of day it most often begins to sing And towards midnight it exerts all its strength To sing more lustily it puffs itself up and forces Its voice, thereby making a great noise Evening and morning are like day and night And night and day being mixed together Demonstrate love as it seems to me Where there is bitterness and then pleasure Neither good hope nor despair altogether By midnight we can understand Love which is totally despairing Thus I can say before all I am the night lover, when I have no hope in you And if it happens that love importunes me too greatly Thinking of you with any hope I am the evening and morning without doubt Which constrains me more often to sing Like the cockerel who is full of sincerity Gay, liberal joyous is his device But whatever sound of liberality There may be in me, your cruelty You show me, to such extent that with rage I have To shriek like the wild ass.]

The reference in the final line of this verse to the asne sauvaige leads naturally on to the second emblem-like composition, which relates the incessant shrieking of the hungry wild ass (or onager) to the poet’s condition, starved of love. The heading Exemple de l’asne sauvaige is followed by a woodcut figure of a furiously braying wild ass, and then by the accompanying gloss relating it to the lover’s condition:



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Exemple de l’asne sauvaige Asne sauvaige a cryer ne se mect Se el na grant fain, nature luy permect Mais quant la fain luy est par trop contraint Elle se rompt par grant force de braire Cryer me fault ainsi quant je ne puis Trouver en vous mercy dont dolent suis Et toutesfois vraye amour veult permettre Que de rechief je vueille peine mettre Me retirer vers vous et supplyer Non par chanter ou braire ne cryer Mais vous mander par escript Fig. 5. Exemple du coq. Gringore 1521, f7v. quelque chose Qui en mon cueur est fermee et Image courtesy of Bibliothèque nationale de France (Res Ye 293) enclose Car le chanter et braire je doy bien Avoir perdu de ce ne sen fault rien Et sil vous plaist a lyre mon blazon Vous congnoistrez par effect la raison. (Menus propos, g1v) (fig.6) [Example of the wild ass The wild ass does not begin to cry Unless it is very hungry, nature permitting this But when it is too constrained by hunger It harms itself with excessively forceful braying I must likewise cry when I cannot Find pity in you which makes me sad And nevertheless true love would permit That henceforth I may take pains To turn towards you and supplicate Not by singing or braying or crying But to convey to you in writing something Which is enclosed and locked away in my heart

98 EMBLEMATICA For singing and braying I must surely Have lost without doubt And if it pleases you to read my blazon You will indeed recognize the reason.]

Thereafter the collection of twenty-five such emblem-like compositions continues,16 exploiting visual representations of traditional bestiary behavior in order to produce what, in a slightly whimsical mode, could almost be described as a Scevian canzoniere, in which the poet laments his unhappy love affair. The Scevian connection is actually quite interesting, and not entirely whimsical, since, although he does not do so as systematically as Gringore, Scève nevertheless also exploits animal imagery to a quite considerable degree in his canzoniere. In the course of the 449 dizains that make up his Délie (1544) he includes some fifty allusions to animals, birds, reptiles, and insects, relating these to his hapless love affair. And indeed a significant number of the emblematic woodcut figures that appear at regular intervals throughout the Délie actually depict these creatures visually, as noted in the list of “Figures & Emblemes” included at the end of the work.17 In Gringore’s work, the flexibility of the form again becomes visible and the perceived behavior of the animal world is exploited in yet another quite different manner—in this case neither for general moralizing for the benefit of mankind, nor for religious moralizing, but instead for a much more subjective explication of the lover’s unrequited love. A few years ago, I argued that Guillaume de la Perrière’s Cent considerations d’amour (1543) could 16.

17.

The twenty-five examples are: Exemple du coq; Exemple de l’asne sauvaige; Exemple du loup; Exemple du griffon; Exemple du cygne; Exemple du chien; Exemple du loup; Exemple de la couleuvre; Exemple du singe; Exemple du corbeau; Autre exemple du corbeau; Exemple du lyon; Exemple de la mustelle; Exemple de la kalendre; Exemple des seraines; Exemple du serpent qui garde le basme; Exemple du merle; Exemple de la taulpe, du vaultour, du linx, du singe et de lyraigne; Exemple du tigre; Exemple de la panthere; Exemple de la licorne; Exemple des grues et du paon; Exemple du lyon; Exemple de larondelle & du pyvert; Exemple de larondelle, du herisson et de lydre. (Menus propos, f7v–n6r). Scève 1544. See for example La femme & la Lycorne; L’Homme & le Boeuf; Deux Boeufz à la Charue; Le Phoenix; L’oyseau au glus; Le Cerf; La Lycorne qui se void; La Vipere qui se tue; Le Papillon & la Chandelle; Le Muletier; Le Chat & la ratiere; Le Paon; L’Asne au Moulin; Le Coq qui se brusle; Le Vespertilion, ou Chaulve-soury; L’Yraigne; La Mousche; Le Chamoys & les chiens. (“Lordre des Figures & Emblemes,” n7r–n8v). Again I am grateful to the Emblematica reader for drawing my attention to this.



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well be considered the first collection of love emblems, predating, as it does, by many decades those of Vaenius and other Dutch emblematists.18 But perhaps the clock goes back still further, with the suggestion that that honor should go to Gringore in 1521. Although Gringore had the idea of assembling his collection of bestiary-inspired Menus propos des amoureux qui ne ont la grace joyr de leurs dames, figurez sur les hommes bestes & oyseaulx selon leur nature et condition—all relating specifically to the theme of love—in this particular emblematic verse form, he was not actually the first to ex- Fig. 6. Exemple de l’asne sauvaige, Gringore ploit traditional bestiary material 1521, g1v. Image courtesy of Bibliothèque nationale de France (Res Ye 293) for the purpose of relating to love. That honor goes to the much earlier Richard de Fournival, whose mid-thirteenth-century “Bestiaire d’amour” already does precisely what Gringore was to do two and a half centuries later in 1521, relating a series of bestiary animals—which include several that Gringore leaves out, although others are replicated—to the theme of unrequited love. Gringore’s originality, however, lies in the fact that his material is presented in verse form, and follows a regular, symmetrical structure, very clearly anticipating that which can be seen a decade or two later in emblem books proper, whereas Richard de Fournival’s “Bestiaire d’amour,” in its original thirteenth-century version, at least, was composed in prose.19 18. 19.

Saunders: “Creator of the Earliest Collection of French Emblems” 2007. See, for example, BnF Ms.fr.25566, f.83r (available online via BnF Gallica); See also Bodleian Ms Douce 308, illustrations from which are available online in The Medieval Bestiary. Animals in the Middle Ages. For discussion of Fournival’s “Bestiaire d’amour,” see Beer 2003. For a discussion of Fournival’s “Bestiaire d’amour” and Gringore’s Menus propos, see McCulloch 1968.

100 EMBLEMATICA However, a work that appeared originally in prose could very easily be adapted into verse, and Gringore was not the only person to make such a transformation to Richard de Fournival’s original prose work. And thus the third emblematic predecessor to be considered here also exploits the behavior of animals and birds, and again uses the combination of verse and woodcut figure to convey its message. Furthermore it links in a very interesting manner both with the Dictz des bestes & aussi des oyseaulx and with Gringore’s Menus propos des amoureux. An edition of a modified version of Fournival’s work under the new title Sensuyt le bestiaire damours: moralisé sur les bestes & oyseaulx. Le tout par figure et histoire was published in Paris c.1527 by Alain Lotrian.20 This work resembles quite closely the format seen earlier in the emblematic works of Aneau and Guéroult and in the reworked versions most probably by Artus Desiré, as likewise in the editions of the Dictz des bestes & aussi des oyseaulx. In this reconstructed version of Fournival’s text, each descriptive title identifying the characteristic behavior of the animal or bird is followed by a woodcut figure depicting it, and then by a passage of verse describing this behavior in greater detail and relating it to the situation of the suffering lover, as in Fournival’s original prose version. Take, for example, “La calendre qui demonstre la mort de lhomme ou la guarison par sa veue” [The Caladrius which indicates the death of a man or his recovery by its gaze] (B2v). In this context, two issues present themselves for further discussion. First, the question arises of how this anonymous emblematic adapted version of Fournival’s work, which retains Fournival’s emphasis on love, relates to the Dictz des bestes & aussi des oyseaulx, which more conventionally exploits animal behavior in an emblematic manner for religious moralizing lessons, rather than for a discussion of love. The second question asks how Fournival simultaneously relates to Gringore’s Menus propos des amoureux, which also exploits the behavior of the animal world in a similarly emblematic manner for reflections on love, inspired, as shown earlier, by Fournival’s original work. The links between Sensuyt le bestaire d’amours: moralisé sur les bestes & oyseaulx and the Dictz des bestes & aussi des oyseaulx are primarily structural, in that both texts exploit the combination of title, figure, and text in a similar emblematic way, although, of course, using the behavior 20.

A copy of this edition in the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Rés Ye 227) is available online via BnF Gallica.



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of the animal to convey very different messages in each. But there are also other links. Alain Lotrian published both works in Paris in the 1520s, and, perhaps not surprisingly, many of the same woodcut figures were used in both. In addition to the common set of woodcut figures appearing within the text itself, the title page to Sensuyt le bestiaire damours: moralisé sur les bestes & oyseaulx also includes between the title at the top of the page and the printer’s address at the bottom a little montage of six woodcut figures of birds and animals, each with an identifying label, most of which also figured in the Dictz des bestes & aussi des oyseaulx (Le singe; la taulpe; le pellican; larondelle; le scorpion; le basilicque) (fig. 7).21 The links between Sensuyt le bestaire damours: moralisé sur les bestes & oyseaulx and Gringore’s Menus propos des amoureux are, not surprisingly, more textual, given the strong probability that Gringore drew inspiration for his work from Fournival. It can hardly be coincidence that in the early part of Sensuyt le bestiaire damours: moralisé sur les bestes & oyseaulx there is a pair of linked emblem-like verses relating the behavior of the cockerel, followed by that of the wild ass, to the lover’s situation—in the same way that that same pair are used at the beginning of the Menus propos des amoureux . . . figurez sur les hommes bestes & oyseaulx (Le coq qui chante plus voullentiers a minuit qua nulle heure; Lasne saulvage qui rechine quant il a fain, A3v–A4r). Aesthetically, there is no comparison between the elegant and realistic woodcut figures used to illustrate the animals and birds in Gringore’s Menus propos, published in 1521 by Gilles Couteau, and the very crude figures used by Lotrian probably a few years later (around 1527) to illustrate the animals and birds in both the Dictz des bestes & aussi des oyseaulx and Sensuyt le bestaire damours; moralisé sur les bestes & oyseaulx. The style of the two sets of figures is totally different. Yet there is nevertheless a curious printing connection that provides a further link between the two works. 21.

The woodcut figures used by Lotrian are all very crude, in striking contrast to the elegant and much more refined and realistic woodcut figures used by Couteau for his edition of Gringore’s Menus propos. Reflecting the crudity and only approximate realism of his woodcut figures is the fact that Lotrian identifies rather unconvincingly a woodcut figure as “La taulpe” on the title page of Sensuit le bestiaire damours: moralisé, and uses it also in the body of the text to illustrate the mole (B4r), whereas in the Dictz des bestes & aussi des oyseaulx (A4r–A4v) he uses this same woodcut figure more appropriately to represent “le sanglier” [the boar] and “Le porc” [the pig].

102 EMBLEMATICA Couteau’s edition of the Menus propos includes in the preliminaries to the work a woodcut figure entitled Raison dessus la figure de Aristote, which depicts a naked woman bearing geometric instruments standing on the shoulders of a scholar in his study. It is accompanied by two explanatory verses, one above the figure and the other below, relating to the connection between Raison and philosophy: Philosophie avoit en soy moralle En exposant aussi sa naturalle Parquoy lon doit mettre sur luy raison Fig. 7. Sensuyt le bestiaire damours, title page. Comme voyez car cest son pro- Image courtesy of Bibliothèque nationale de France (Res Ye 227) pre blason. Raison suis subtille et argute Qui du faulx et du vray dispute Affin de bien et clerement Explicquer tout predicament. (Menus propos, a4v) [He had in him moral philosophy Expounding also natural philosophy For which reason we should place reason above him As you see for it is his own blazon. I am Reason subtle and acute Who can dispute the false and the true In order clearly and well To explain any predicament.]

Curiously this same woodcut figure appears, though without title or accompanying verses, on the verso of the title page to Lotrian’s edition of Sensuyt le bestiaire damours; moralisé sur les bestes & oyseaulx (A1v). It has no



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apparent function there, since it does not relate to the text in the way that it does in Gringore’s work, where a fuller version of his motto “Tout par Raison. Raison par tout. Par tout Raison” [Everything by reason. Reason everywhere. Reason by everything] also appears on his title page. This odd correspondence serves as just one more indication of the way in which these various early emblematic predecessors, all of which exploit the behavior of the animal world in their different ways, reflect variously on moral, godly, or amorous aspects of human life. This series of very different but nevertheless clearly connected works that all relate to the behavior of the animal world must be deemed to be a form of emblematic predecessors from their form alone. Although none of them have until now attracted significant study by emblem scholars, the richness and diversity of these much neglected works makes them worthy of scholarly attention. Emblem scholars have for many years recognized the diversity of interpretation to which any one emblematic image can be subjected. Extending beyond the domain of emblems proper, the works studied here demonstrate how the same also holds true for other genres contemporary to emblem books. These precursor texts also exploit the combination of illustrative figure and verse to demonstrate a range of different interpretations. But emblematic predecessors have been studied more narrowly, with a focus on single specific works or types of work. Scholars have been too little aware of the extent to which the flexibility of interpretation seen in emblem books proper, and in other analogous contemporary illustrated works, was already manifesting itself in emblematic predecessors. This case study focuses specifically on the animal world and demonstrates how animal behavior was already being exploited emblematically to convey messages relating not only to general moral and religious codes, but also to the codes of love. Other works from the rich and diverse corpus of emblematic predecessors deserve further scrutiny to see the extent to which they also follow this pattern.

104 EMBLEMATICA Works Cited Adams, Alison, Stephen Rawles, and Alison Saunders. A Bibliography of French Emblem Books. 2 vols. Geneva, 1999–2002. Aneau, Barthélemy. Decades de la description, forme, et vertu naturelle des animaulx, tant raisonnables que brutz. Lyons, 1549. _____. Picta poesis. Ut picture poesis erit. Lyons, 1552. _____. Imagination poetique, traduicte en vers françois, des latins et grecz, par l’auteur mesme d’iceux. Lyons, 1552. Anonymous. La description philosophale de la nature et condition des animaux tant raisonnables que brutz, avec le sens moral comprins sus le naturel & condition d’iceux: ensemble plusieurs augmentations de diverses & estranges bestes, outre la precedente edition. Lyons, 1561. _____. La description philosophale, forme & nature des bestes, tant privees que sauvages, avec le sens moral comprins sus le naturel & condition d’iceux. Nouvellement imprimée. Paris, 1571. _____. La description philosophale forme, et maniere des bestes, & des oyseaux, tant privez que sauvages. Avec le sens moral comprins sus le naturel & condition d’iceux. Rouen, 1641. _____. Description philosophale de la nature et condition des oyseaux. Ensemble linclination & proprieté d’iceux. Avec la figure & pourtraict au naturel, le tout moralisé de nouveau. Lyons, 1561. _____. La description philosophale de la nature et condition des oyseaux, & de linclination & proprieté d’iceux. Avec le sens moral comprins sus le naturel & condition d’iceux. Rouen, 1641. _____. Dictz des bestes & aussi des oyseaulx. Paris, n.d. [1520s]. _____. Le kalendrier des bergers. Paris, 1493. _____. Le kalendrier des bergers. Lyons, 1508. _____. Sensuyt le bestiaire damours: moralise sur les bestes & oyseaulx. Le tout par figure et histoire. n.d. [c.1527]. Beer, Jeanette. Beasts of Love. Richard de Fournival’s Bestiaire d’amour and a Woman’s Response. Toronto, 2003.



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Corrozet, Gilles. Hecatomgraphie. C’est à dire les descriptions de cent figures & hystoires, contenantes plusieurs appophtegme proverbes, sentences & dictz tant des anciens que des modernes. Paris, 1540. _____. Les fables du tresancien Esope phrigien premierement escriptes en Graec, et depuis mises en rithme Françoise. Paris, 1542. Desiré, Artus. Les batailles et victoires du chevalier celeste, contre le chevalier terrestre. Paris, 1560 _____. Le contre-poison des cinquante-deux chansons de Clement Marot faulsement intitulées par luy Psalmes de David. Paris, 1567. _____. Le deffensaire de la foy chrestienne, avec le miroer des francs taupins autrement nommés Lutheriens. Paris, 1567. Graham, David. “Theory of Evolution, Evolution of Theory. Aneau, Guéroult and Emblematic Natural History.” In Le livre demeure. Studies in Book History in Honour of Alison Saunders, ed. Alison Adams and Philip Ford. Geneva, 2011, 93–109. Gringore, Pierre. Les menus propos. Paris, 1521. Guéroult, Guillaume. Le premier livre des emblemes. Composé par Guillaume Gueroult. Lyons, 1550. _____. Second livre de la description des animaux, contenant le blason des oyseaux, composé par Guillaume Gueroult. Lyons, 1550. Horapollo. Habentur hoc volumine haec, videlicet: vita et fabellae Aesopi . . . Ori Apollinis Niliaci hieroglyphica. Venice, 1505. _____. Orus Apollo de Aegypte de la signification des notes hieroglyphiques des Aegyptiens, par lesquelles ilz escripvoient leurs mysteres secretz, et les choses sainctes et divines. Paris, 1543. La Perrière, Guillaume de. Le theatre des bons engins, auquel sont contenus cent emblemes. Paris, n.d. [1540]. _____. Les cent considerations d’amour, composees par Guillaume de la Perriere Tholosan. DMXLIII. Lyons, 1543. _____. Les cent considerations damour composees par Guillaume de la Perriere Tholosain. Avec une satire contre fol amour. Lyons, 1548.

106 EMBLEMATICA Leclerc, Marie-Dominique. “Les dits des oyseaux.” Le Moyen Age 109 (2003): 59–78. McCulloch, Florence. “Pierre Gringore’s Menus propos des Amoureux and Richard de Fournival’s Bestiaire d’amour.” Romance Notes 10 (1968): 150–59. The Medieval Bestiary. Animals in the Middle Ages. http://bestiary.ca. Richard de Fournival. “Le bestiaire d’amour.” [13th century]. Bibliothèque nationale de France Gallica. http://gallica.bnf.fr. Saunders, Alison. “The Evolution of a Sixteenth-Century Emblem Book: the Decades de la description des animaulx and Second livre de la description des animaux, contenant le blason des oyseaux.” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 38 (1976): 437–57. _____. “Les animaux emblématiques: porteurs d’un seul message ou de plusieurs messages différents?” In L’animal sauvage à la Renaissance: Colloque international organisé par la Société Française d’Etude du XVIe Siècle et Cambridge French Colloquia, Cambridge 3–6 Septembre 2004, ed. Philip Ford. Cambridge, 2007, 101–23. _____. “Creator of the Earliest Collection of French Emblems, but now also Creator of the Earliest Collection of Love Emblems? Evidence from a Newly Discovered Emblem Book by Guillaume de la Perrière.” In Learned Love: Proceedings of the Emblem Project Utrecht Conference on Dutch Love Emblems and the Internet (November 2006), ed. Els Stronks and Peter Boot. The Hague, 2007, 1–32.

“Non intus ut extra”:1 The Emblematic Silenus in Early Modern Literature LUCY RAZZALL

Queen Mary, University of London

I

This article explores the emblematic identity of the Silenus figure, a statue concealing beautiful images inside an ugly exterior, to which Alcibiades compares Socrates in Plato’s Symposium. In a letter to a fellow poet in the early seventeenth century, William Drummond refers to the Silenus as if it were an emblem, yet it has a curiously limited presence in emblem literature and is rarely illustrated, despite its usefulness as a literary archetype for the hiddenness of virtue. I trace depictions of the Silenus statue in Italian, English, and French sources, and offer some suggestions as to why it resists visual depiction in early modern literature.

n a letter of 12 July 1637, William Drummond encouraged his friend Henry Adamson to overcome his reticence about publishing his history of Perth, written in memory of a friend from the town. The work was eventually published (after Adamson’s death a year later) as The Muses Threnodie, and a “just copie” of Drummond’s letter to his “worthie Friend” was included among the prefatory pages.2 Drummond wrote: 1. 2.

“Non intus ut extra” [Within, not without]. Adamson composed the work in memory of John Gall, who died around 1620 from consumption. It is a verse elegy consisting of several thousand lines of rhyming couplets, divided into nine parts, or “muses.” The verse is arranged as a dialogue between Gall and George Ruthven, a Perth physician, and as well as elegizing Gall, it chronicles the history of their city and its environs, linking local

107 Emblematica, Volume 22. Copyright © 2016 by AMS Press, Inc. All rights reserved.

108 EMBLEMATICA These papers of your mournings on Master Gall appeare unto me as Alcibiadis Sileni, which ridiculously look, with the faces of Sphinges, Chimeraes, Centaures on their outsides, but inwardlie containe rare artifice, and rich jewels of al sorts, for the delight and well of Man. They may deservedlie beare the word, Non intus ut extra. Your two Champions, noble Zannies, discover to us many of the Antiquities of this Countrey more of your auncient towne of Perth, setting downe her situation, founders, her hudge colosse, or bridge, walls, fousies, aqueducts, fortifications, temples, monasteries, and many other singularities. Happie hath Perth beene in such a Citizen: not so other townes of this kingdome, by want of so diligent a searcher and preserver of their fame from oblivion. Some Muses neither to themselves, nor to others do good; nor delighting, nor instructing; yours performe both . . . (Adamson, 3).

Adamson must have been encouraged to receive praise from his country’s most eminent poet, who shared his interest in historiography and was at that time working on his own history of Scotland. Although Drummond evidently thought that Adamson’s writings would make valuable literary and historiographical contributions, the rhetorical gesture with which he begins his letter is initially surprising. Comparing Adamson’s papers to “Sileni,” which “ridiculously look . . . but inwardlie containe rare artifice,” Drummond employs the imagery with which the drunken politician Alcibiades controversially praises Socrates in one of Plato’s most well-known dialogues, the Symposium. After bursting in uninvited, Alcibiades delivers a speech in which he compares Socrates to “the Silenus-figures that sit in the statuaries’ shops,” which appear ludicrously rustic from the outside, but which open to reveal images of the gods (Plato, 215a–b, 216e).3 To un-

3.

figures and events with stories from antiquity. The elegy to Gall is preceded by an “Inventarie of the Gabions, in M. George his Cabinet”—a curious poem written in rhyming octosyllables—and there are also several shorter elegies in Latin and English by others on the death of Adamson himself. Thanks to Adamson’s brother John, it was posthumously published as The Muses Threnodie, or, Mirthfull mournings on the death of Master Gall. Containing varietie of pleasant poëticall descriptions, morall instructions, historiall narrations, and divine observations, with the most remarkable antiquities of Scotland, especially at Perth (Edinburgh, 1638). According to Greek myth Silenus was a god of drunkenness, said to be the mentor of Dionysus. He is usually depicted as a jovial, bearded old man with the ears and tail of an ass, and his followers are referred to as the Silenes.



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derstand Socrates, Alcibiades argues, one must look inside his off-putting appearance and behavior, and his crude language: “when these are opened, and you obtain a fresh view of them by getting inside, first of all you will discover that they are the only speeches which have any sense in them; and secondly, that none are so divine, so rich in images of virtue, so largely—nay, so completely—intent on all things proper for the study of such as would attain both grace and worth” (Plato, 221d–222a). The method by which Alcibiades praises Socrates in the Symposium is unconventional, contrasting dramatically with the speeches by other guests in praise of love that precede it, but it is this deliberate subversiveness that makes it so effective. In a condensed version of Alcibiades’s rhetorical move, the Sileni to which Drummond compares Adamson’s work have the “faces” of multiple mythical beasts on the outside, and, more vaguely, “rare artifice, and rich jewels of al sorts” (rather than Plato’s “divine and golden” images of gods) inside. Drummond’s vocabulary echoes some of the phrases in Adamson’s opening “Inventarie” poem, which features hundreds of “uncouth formes, and wondrous shapes,” like “Satyrs, dragons, flying fowles . . . winged-horses, strange Chimaraes” (Adamson, *r). These images belong to the sphere of the grotesque, from which the Silenus also comes. In his invocation of Alcibiades, Drummond says something about the literary quality of Adamson’s work, and also about his experience of reading it: the first poetic images with which he was confronted were indeed those which “ridiculously look,” but he found “rich jewels of al sorts” hidden deeper within the pages. Like Plato’s Symposium, The Muses Threnodie is a text concerned with praise, and the art of praising. While Adamson elegizes Gall, and the city of Perth, the printed edition of his project is literally wrapped in Drummond’s praise for his work and for Perth: “it hath beene no little glory that she hath brought forth, such a citizen, so eminent in love to her” (3). Drummond also praises Adamson’s “two Champions,” Gall and Ruthven, as “noble Zannies”—they are clownish figures (like Socrates, or Alcibiades) but their entertaining dialogue serves to instruct, as well as to delight. In his version of this method of praising, however, Drummond adds something significantly transformative to the Sileni. The papers Adamson sent “may deservedlie beare the word, Non intus ut extra” [Within, not without] he says, imagining the Sileni not on a shelf in the Platonic statue shop, but in the format of an emblem, where the problem of how to interpret their external visual appearance is spelled out by an accompanying motto: “Within, not without.”

110 EMBLEMATICA As Michael Bath has noted (17), Drummond expressed approval for emblematic devices in a 1619 letter to Ben Jonson, in which he describes the set of bed hangings “on a Bed of State, wrought and embroidered all with Gold and Silk by the late Queen Mary, Mother to our sacred Sovereign, which will embellish greatly some Pages of your Book, and is worthy your remembrance.” He lists over thirty emblems and impresas, remarking that “the Workmanship is curiously done, and above all Value, and truly it may be of this Piece said, Materiam superabat opus” (Drummond, 137). Drummond also revealed some of his thoughts about emblems in A short Discourse upon Impresa’s and Anagrams, written in response to a device he had received from the Earl of Perth. Here, Drummond is anxious to distinguish between the impresa and the emblem as different devices with their own distinct form and purpose: “Emblems serve for Demonstration of some general Thing, and for a general Rule, and teaching Precept to every one, as well for the Author and Inventer, as for any other; which is a Fault in an Impresa: For an Impresa is a Demonstration and Manifestation of some notable and excellent Thought of him that conceived it, and useth it; and it belongs only to him, and is his properly” (Drummond, 228). In his letter to Henry Adamson, Drummond’s imaginary Silenus is clearly emblematic, offering one such “teaching Precept to every one,” and demonstrating how Alcibiades’s image, as it is transformed into an emblem, offers a commonplace literary shorthand for explaining the hiddenness of valuable things. Setting his emblematic framing aside for a moment, Drummond’s decision to praise The Muses Threnodie by comparing it to the Sileni illustrates how this universally useful simile was generally employed in early modern literature. The location (in the prefatory matter of a printed work) and the purpose (to praise the text that follows by emphasizing the need to look beyond its initially unpromising exterior) are very typical. In the epistle dedicatory to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, in Robert Peterson’s late sixteenth-century translation of Giovanni della Casa’s popular manual of social conduct, for instance, the author praises the dedicatee for his “so singular demeanour,” for being “so ciuil, so courteous, as maketh you renouned abrode, and honored at home: coueted of the Noblest, & wonderful of the learnedst” (Peterson, Aiiv). Peterson follows his unequivocal praise of his famous dedicatee with a reminder of Alcibiades’s less conventional approach. The readers of his translation “shal herein see no lesse commoditie, then was in Alcibiades Sileni (wherevnto Socrates was compared)



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whiche though they bare not, in the front, any shewe of singularitie: yet within, bare they pictures of excellent wit & delight”(Peterson, Aiiv–Aiiir). Although Peterson is vague about what “Alcibiades Sileni” actually were, or what they looked like, his emphasis on their pictorial “wit & delight” clearly hints at their emblematic potential. One of the most well-known sources in which the Sileni featured in early modern England was Francis Meres’s Palladis Tamia, a popular book of similes and commonplaces for the ornamentation of speech. Describing them as “vnpolished without, but curiously and with great Art wrought within,” Meres includes the Sileni as an illustration of virtue, which “outwardly seemeth rough, when inwardly it is full of beautie” (159). Other English authors employed the Silenus for more specific purposes: “the wordes of the law may be compared to certaine Images called Sileni Alcibiadis, whose outward feature was deformed & ouglie, but within they were full of iewels & precious stones,” wrote William Fulbecke in his 1600 handbook on the study of law, “so the wordes of the Law, though they be rude in sound, yet are they preignant in sense” (D5v). Fulbecke likens the terms of the law to Sileni that are imagined, as in Drummond’s letter to Adamson, to have contained not divine images, but rather more mercenary treasures of “iewels & precious stones.” The speeches of the lawyer may be “rude in sound” (like those of Socrates), but Fulbecke establishes this as only the “outward feature,” the phrase “preignant in sense” underlining his insistence that the lawyer’s words contain something of true and lively virtue hidden within, which is but waiting to emerge. These texts offer just a few English instances of how the Silenus is invoked as a model of praise in early modern literature. However, while Plato’s image evidently offered rich inspiration for early modern writers, it is extremely rare that the Silenus statues are actually illustrated. Although there are plenty of visual depictions—in all kinds of media—of Socrates, as well as the god Silenus and his drunken followers surviving from ancient times onwards, pictorial representations of the Silenus statue described in the Symposium are surprisingly few and far between. This article began with Drummond’s use of the trope because his particular variation explicitly draws attention to the inherently emblematic qualities of the Silenus: it could well exist, by Drummond’s account, as an image accompanied by an explanatory motto in an emblem book. As a concise conceit with an instructive message about the hiddenness of virtue, it is ideal emblem mate-

112 EMBLEMATICA rial. This image provides a universally useful simile, and yet it is scarcely represented visually, and hardly at all in emblem culture, despite the fact that, as Drummond suggests, it has evident emblematic potential. The resistance of the Silenus statue to visual illustration in early modern print culture is surprising. In light of Drummond’s emblematic slant on the Silenus, this essay surveys the verbal and visual treatments of the Silenus figure in early modern Italian, French, and English texts, and in concluding, offers some suggestions as to why its presence in emblem literature is so limited. How did “Alcibiadis Sileni,” to use Drummond’s shorthand, come to be known in Renaissance Europe? The earliest extant allusion to this passage from the Symposium is in a letter of 1485 from the great humanist Giovanni Pico della Mirandola to Ermolao Barbaro, in which he defends the writing style of the scholastics, whose “barbaric” words contain hidden wisdom (I, 354). In her discussion of this passage, Edith Wyss draws attention to a visual representation of the Silenus figure, found in a mid-sixteenth-century Italian volume that sets out an elaborate method for fortune-telling with cards (130–31; 139–40). Throughout Francesco Marcolini’s Le Ingeniose Sorti, rhyming verses and diagrams of cards are accompanied by fifty interspersed woodcut images of allegorical personifications, one centered at the top of each recto page, and fifty images of ancient philosophers, one in the top left-hand corner of each verso page. Among the latter sits Socrates, slumped under a tree, while an immobile-looking figurine with a beard stands in the dark background (fig. 1). While Wyss points out the crack that is just about visible in the side of this Silenus statue, by which it may presumably be opened for its glorious contents to be revealed, others have ignored the figure entirely, focusing on the idea that this scene shows Socrates drinking hemlock, in the act of ending his life.4 In the foreground of the picture, Socrates’s stone-cutting tools are visible, but they have been set aside, perhaps illustrating his decision to leave the stonemasonry trade in favor of philosophy. The image is revelatory in many possible ways, and the shadowy Silenus statue is easily overlooked. The Silenus appears in a more obviously emblematic format in other sixteenth-century Italian works. In Achille Bocchi’s Symbolicarum Quaes4.

Anon., “Francesco Marcolini: Le Sorti . . . intitolate giardino di pensieri (The Fates . . . Entitled Garden of Ideas): Garden of Ideas (37.37.23),” Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-ofart/37.37.23.



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Fig. 1. Franceso Marcolini, Le Ingeniose Sorti: Giardino di Pensieri (Venice, 1550), “Socrate,” E3v. Image courtesy of Cambridge University Library.

tionum (1574), the forty-fifth emblem depicts a satyr-like figure, who carries musical pipes in his left hand, and touches his head with his pointing right forefinger (fig. 2). His gesture is explained by the emblem’s inscription: “Non extra, at intus audio” [I hear not outside, but inside]. With the horns and cloven hooves of a goat and the torso of a man, as well as a beard and a billowing cloak, this figure looks like a typical follower of Dionysus. This is definitely not one of the “Silenus-figures” that Plato describes in the Symposium, however. While the distinction between exterior and interior in Alcibiades’s speech emphasizes the external distractions of Socrates’s offputting appearance and confusing way of talking, here the satyr’s music is the key to defining a distinction between interior and exterior spheres. The set of pipes works as an external visual token of worldly music, in contrast to the divine harmonies hidden inside the satyr’s head, as the accompanying poem explains. Given the iconographic potential of sound and music in the Silenus tradition, it is surprising that verbal punning or other play on “Silenus” and “silence” is largely absent in early modern literature. The potentially emblematic relationship between silence and the Silenus is also given minimal attention in the secondary literature; in Picturing Silence, for example, Karen Pinkus includes only passing mention of the Silenus (78, 171), despite her discussion of the Symposium and the serious playfulness of Socratic language.

114 EMBLEMATICA An image of something more like the object Plato describes was adopted by the Academy of the Occulti in Brescia, who in 1568 issued a treatise containing the personal device of each member of the group. The Academy’s name means “hidden,” and each member was also assigned a related code name, such as “covered” or “submerged.” At the center of the frontispiece of the Rime de gli Academici Occulti: con le loro imprese et discorsi is a Silenus figure, accompanied by the motto “Intus non extra” [Within, not without]. This Silenus has cloven hooves and horns, and his human torso is divided into what appear Fig. 2. Achille Bocchi, Symbolicarum quaestioto be two hinged doors, firmly num (Bologna, 1574), emblem 45, “Non Extra, At Intus Audio,” Nv. Image courtesy of Cam- shut. The opening “Discorso inbridge University Library. torno al Sileno Impresa de gli Accademici Occulti,” explains that: Beneath the veil of the body of this artificial Silenus we hide the soul of the Device, which is the primary intention to keep the best part of ourselves in its native form and purest light. We therefore add to the device our aim, in the literary clothing of the Motto, WITHIN, NOT WITHOUT. That is, just as the ancients gazed into the Silenus, and not at it, so too we will seek to put all our study into the internal and not the external form (translation: Gaylard, 234).

There are multiple concealments at work in this passage, and in the Academy’s use of the Silenus as a device. Their Silenus is “artificial,” and everything about it is described in terms of something else that is also a covering: its body is a “veil” and the motto is “literary clothing.” Academic discourse is portrayed as elite and exclusive, although it remains unclear exactly what they are hiding: there is just a “general academic economy of ob-



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fuscation” (Pinkus, 78; see also Gaylard, chapter 5). The frontispiece of the Rime de gli Academici Occulti emphasizes secrecy and concealment, even as the reader opens the book to discover more about the Academy. This Silenus is at the heart of an ostentatious performance of exclusivity in print, making sure that readers know their place outside the Academy even as they are reminded of the Academy’s elevated ambitions to see beyond “external form[s],” and focus on “study into the internal.” Although the Brescians adopted the Silenus as an institutional impresa, as a literary simile it had a more generalized humanist appeal in early modern Europe. The most sustained textual engagement with the Silenus figure in the sixteenth century came from Erasmus. While he frequently refers to the Sileni as useful images, it is in the Adages (Adagia), his monumental handbook of classical wisdom containing commentaries on thousands of Greek and Latin quotations, that he dwells upon them at greatest length. Plato’s memorable Silenus figure has an obvious place in this compendium of numerous discrete rhetorical exercises, each of which is concerned with revealing the wisdom hidden in ancient literature, and which inspired many emblematists, including Andrea Alciato. Erasmus continually expanded the Adages until his death, and Sileni Alcibiades is one of his longest entries; consisting in 1508 of just a few sentences, by 1515 it had been reworked and extended to hundreds of times its original length, with a few more additions in 1517/8 and 1528. Claiming that the Silenus “seems to have passed into a proverb among educated people,” Erasmus’s description of these objects confirms that they have a place in the common memory, and summarizes several of their key material properties: [they are] said to have been a kind of small figure of carved wood, so made that they could be divided and opened. Thus, though when closed they looked like a caricature of a hideous flute-player, when opened they suddenly displayed a deity, so that this humorous surprise made the carver’s skill all the more admirable.5

These objects exist as a kind of rumor—we know only what they are “said to have been,” and so they are mysterious things of the distant past. Erasmus 5.

Desiderius Erasmus, Collected Works. 78 vols. Toronto, 1974–2011, vol. 34 (262). Further citations will be made parenthetically in the main text as CWE followed by the volume and page numbers.

116 EMBLEMATICA claims that they were made of “carved wood,” a detail that is not given by Plato, who specifies only that they are found in “statuaries’ shops,” which might well suggest other materials such as clay or stone. Erasmus’s reference to “carved wood” gives particularity to these half-forgotten antique objects, bringing them more sharply into focus. Finally, this passage draws attention to these objects as things of “humorous surprise,” which show off the “skill” of their maker when they “suddenly” reveal an inside that contrasts dramatically with their “hideous” external appearance. Again, Plato’s description does not explicitly mention the suddenness of the Silenus’s revelation, and so this is another elaboration from Erasmus, who turns the Silenus into something that is surprising and entertaining, like a sort of magic trick, as well as instructive. While Alcibiades emphasizes that Socrates had a laughable exterior but a serious interior, for Erasmus it is, crucially, the act of revealing what is inside that prompts the most enjoyment. The Silenus figure originally offered a model for explaining the person and discourses of Socrates, but in Sileni Alcibiades, having explained the basic principles of the object, Erasmus argues for its universality. Most importantly, the pagan Silenus lends itself as an illustrative figure for understanding the protagonists in the history of the Christian faith. Old Testament prophets, New Testament apostles, and the early leaders of the church can all be thought of in terms of the Silenus, as individuals whose humble way of life contrasts with their spiritual richness. Among these is John the Baptist, a humble man of the desert “clothed in camelhair with a leather girdle round his loins,” who in his actions “far surpassed kings with their purple and their precious stones” (CWE 34, 265–66). The ultimate example is of course Christ, “a marvellous Silenus.” “Observe the outside surface of this Silenus,” Erasmus urges, “to judge by ordinary standards, what could be more humbler or more worthy of disdain?” (CWE 34, 263–64). Originally a simile for Socrates, the Silenus can now be transformed into an illustration of Christ. This association between Christ and potentially emblematic forms endured: Francis Quarles similarly alludes to the divine capacity of emblems at the beginning of his famous emblem book. Explaining that “an emblem is but a silent parable,” he encourages the reader to see the “allusion to our blessed Saviour figured in these types” (A3r). For Erasmus, the Silenus figure presents an object infinitely more flexible than the statue on the shelf in Plato’s imagined shop (Lepage, passim). It can even be turned inside out when people have the appearance of wisdom



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or humility, but their behavior reveals the opposite. Across all his writings, it is the paradoxical Praise of Folly that most epitomizes the slipperiness of the Erasmian Silenus. Presented as a learned but entertaining joke, it is an endlessly elusive work of multiple layers, which continually hide and reveal wisdom. The figure of Folly, the wise fool, is like Christ and Socrates in her speech, explaining both Christian and pagan truths even as she seems completely elusive. Thus the pagan Silenus is assimilated into Erasmian thought as a neat way to synthesize Christian and humanist moral codes, by which earthly poverty is linked to heavenly riches, and true virtue comes from learning, as opposed to, for example, nobility or birth. For Erasmus, as for Plato, the Silenus is something that consistently applies to the interpretation of both people and texts. The additional irony of the Erasmian Silenus is that this rough, pagan metaphor turns out to contain the wisdom necessary for scriptural exegesis, and through this ancient object, the faithful are brought closer to true Christian understanding. The ever-shifting identity of the Silenus in Erasmus’s writing means that it remains unclear what exactly the reader is supposed to imagine when told to think of this object. Erasmus’s Sileni Alcibiades was printed separately by Johann Froben in 1517, and was followed in the next few decades by English, Dutch, French, German, and Spanish translations. In one of these early versions, published in London in 1543 by John Goughe, the first page announces “a scorneful image or monstrus shape of a maruelous stra[n]ge fygure called, Sileni alcibiadis,” and features a woodcut depicting a headless man, with a smiling face on his torso. Evidently the printer selected this illustration from his stock because it shows a suitably “scorneful image or monstrus shape,” but it bears no resemblance to the classical god Silenus, or to typical representations of Socrates, or, indeed, to the objects Erasmus describes in the text. It looks more like the monstrous creatures in Hartmann Schedel’s Nürnberg Chronicle,6 or the figures illustrated in woodcuts in printed editions of the travels of John Mandeville—the “men that haue no hedes & theyr eyen are in theyr sholders & theyr mouth is on theyr brest” (fig. 3). Goughe’s use of this illustration encapsulates the early modern response to the Silenus: nobody is quite sure what this object looks like, but all are aware that it is definitely something “maruelous” and “stra[n]ge.” 6.

Hartmann Schedel, Register des buchs der Croniken vnd geschichten, mit figurenn vnd pildnussen von anbeginn der welt bis auf dise vnnsere Zeit. Nürnberg, 1493.

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Fig. 3. John Mandeville, Here begynneth a lytell treatyse or booke named Johan Mau[n]deuyll knyght born in Englonde in the towne of saynt Albone (London, 1499), Niir. (Image courtesy of Cambridge University Library.)

It is difficult to say for certain which sources for “Alcibiades Sileni” would have been known by William Drummond, and what exactly inspired his emblematic vision of the simile. It is quite possible that he would have been familiar with what remains today the most well-known sixteenth-century literary appearance of the Platonic Silenus. The “Author’s Prologue” to the first book of François Rabelais’s Gargantua (1534/5), addressed to the “Most Noble and Illustrious Drinkers,” begins with a reminder of Alcibiades’s entrance to the drinking party. In elaborating on this moment, the narrator Alcofribas explains that:

Silenes of old were little boxes, like those we now may see in the shops of Apothecaries, painted on the outside with wanton toyish figures, as Harpyes, Satyrs, bridled Geese, horned Hares, saddled Ducks, flying Goats, Thiller Harts [i.e., bridled, like work-horses], and other such like counterfeted pictures at discretion, to excite people unto laughter, as Silenus himself, who was the foster-father of good Bacchus, was wont to do; but within those capricious caskets were carefully preserved and kept many rich jewels, and fine drugs, such as Balme, Ambergreece, Amamon, Musk, Civet, with several kindes of precious stones, and other things of great price (19).

The narrator depicts the Sileni as things from an unspecific past—“of old”—likening the artifacts Plato said were found in “statuaries’ shops” to the “little boxes” that can now be seen in “the shops of Apothecaries.” While Plato’s Sileni were anthropomorphic in shape, similar to the ugly, ill-kempt Socrates, they are here transformed into “little boxes” which have



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all manner of fantastical creatures “painted on the outside.” These “wanton toyish figures” (like Silenus and his drunken followers) make up a riotous array of mythical beings and animals rendered tame by bridles and saddles, like something from a painting by Hieronymus Bosch or Pieter Breughel, perhaps. Designed “to excite people to laughter,” they form a pleasurably distracting wild goose chase on the outside of the box, replicated in the text as a list. The chase or hunt is a classic motif of desire, and thus the box’s exterior imbricates the entire object in a whimsical quest. These painted boxes share the festive, erotic, and Bacchic pleasures explored in many individual emblems, discussed by John Manning (228), which are also inherent in emblems more generally, as forms intended to provoke inquisitive responses. The second list in this passage reveals the contents of “those capricious caskets,” which include many exotic, luxurious substances: “rich jewels,” “fine drugs,” “precious stones,” and “other things of great price.” The list form is an important characteristic of Rabelaisian satire; there are a great many lists in Gargantua and Pantagruel, where they are essential to the selfconsciously carnivalesque atmosphere of the text. With their abundant lists of painted images on the outside and treasures inside, these “little boxes” appear like miniature cornucopia, or miniaturized motifs of the work as a whole. Drummond’s depiction of the Sileni in his letter to Adamson— “with the faces of Sphinges, Chimeraes, Centaures on their outsides”—resonates with these Rabelaisian evocations of the grotesque, and the eventual reproduction of his letter as an external wrapping for Adamson’s project mirrors the prefatory function of this Rabelaisian prologue. Although they do not depict the Silenus pictorially, printed paratextual elements such as these, and the others discussed in this essay, work a bit like emblematic frontispieces (Daly, 180–84), attempting to shape the reader’s response to the book’s content from their very first encounter with its literal and intellectual “outside.” In the Symposium, Plato embodies the problem of interpretation in a material object apparently found in “the statuaries’ shops.” The great irony of the Silenus statue as material object, however, is that it exists only in textual form. Although there are plenty of visual representations of the rustic, drunken, lecherous figure of Silenus surviving from ancient times onwards, there are no extant examples of the objects Plato describes. Scholars have speculated that it may well be the case that he does not refer to real objects, but invents them for the purposes of Alcibiades’s speech, perhaps

120 EMBLEMATICA influenced by statues used for drinking games, which contained hidden intricate mechanisms (Lissarrague, 55). Plato’s reader must think through something tangible in order to understand the intangible, but this object, the “Silenus-figure,” is in the end something that exists only in the imaginary realm. Ultimately it is this absence of the material artifact, however, that licenses the freedom of the imagination in response to the Silenus in early modern literature. The Dutch poet Jacob Cats gave the title Silenus Alcibiadi, sive Proteus to what would become one of his most popular emblem books. While this title embraces the emblematic potency of the Silenus, none of the emblems therein are explicitly based on it, and there are no visual representations of Silenus Alcibiadi in the volume. One clue to this surprising absence is also found, ironically, in the title, and its additional allusion to the Greek figure of Proteus, the sea god who could assume any shape. With this unexpected link between two ancient figures, Cats reminds the reader of the protean nature of the Silenus, as an object whose identity is enigmatic: as long as the crucial distinction between inside and outside is maintained, no one is quite sure how it should be represented in visual terms. It is acceptable to admit to the metamorphic possibilities of the Silenus, to the extent that it might not be depicted visually at all. The limited visual presence of Plato’s “Silenus-figure” in early modern literature may be attributed also, in part, to the fact that the artifact described in the Symposium is not an inert object. It derives most of its force from the very act of being opened to reveal its inner glories, and so the flat, static nature of the page does not allow the Silenus figure to work to its full potential. As early modern writers realized, and Erasmus in particular demonstrated at length, it is the textual, narrative form that provides the temporal dimension necessary for the Silenus figure to operate to best effect. Plato’s “Silenus-figure” exists as a curious combination of the material and the imaginary, and as Alcibiades first demonstrated, words alone are sufficient for it to illustrate a particular model of thinking. Nonetheless, the Silenus described by Alcibiades embodies the essence of every emblematic device—that what is initially perceived must be carefully negotiated for its hidden meaning to be revealed. To read an emblematic device correctly is to recognize that things are not necessarily what they first appear to be, to know how to get beyond distracting superficialities. The motto attributed to the imaginary Silenus emblem by William Drum-



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mond in his letter to Henry Adamson—“Within, not without”—can be read as a universal formula for emblematic ways of reading: frequently, truth must be opened, unveiled, or uncovered. Even when it is not employed in explicitly emblematic terms in early modern literature, the Silenus offers an inherently emblematic way of thinking.

Works Cited Anonymous. “Francesco Marcolini: Le Sorti . . . intitolate giardino di pensieri (The Fates . . . Entitled Garden of Ideas): Garden of Ideas (37.37.23),” Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/37.37.23. Anonymous. Rime de gli Academici Occulti: con le loro imprese et discorsi. Brescia, 1568. Adamson, Henry. The Muses threnodie, or, mirthfull mournings, on the death of Master Gall. Edinburgh, 1638. Bath, Michael. Speaking Pictures: English Emblem Books and Renaissance Culture. London, 1994. Bocchi, Achille. Symbolicarum Quaestionum. Bologna, 1574. Cats, Jacob. Silenus Alcibiades, sive Proteus, Vitae humanae ideam, Emblemate trifariam variato, oculis subijciens. Middelburg, 1618. Craik, Katharine A. “Adamson, Henry (bap. 1581, d. 1637),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford, 2004. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/142. Daly, Peter. Literature in the Light of the Emblem: Structural Parallels between the Emblem and Literature in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Toronto, 1979. Drummond, William. Works. Edinburgh, 1711. Erasmus, Desiderius. Collected Works. 78 vols. Toronto, 1974–2011. Erasmus, Desiderius. Here folowith a scorneful image or monstrus shape of a maruelous stra[n]ge fygure called, Sileni alcibiadis presentyng ye state [and] condicio[n] of this present world. London, 1543.

122 EMBLEMATICA Fulbecke, William. A direction or preparatiue to the study of the lawe. London, 1600. Gaylard, Susan. Hollow Men: Writing, Objects, and the Public Image in Renaissance Italy. New York, 2013. Lepage, John L. The Revival of Antique Philosophy in the Renaissance. New York, 2012. Lissarrague, François. The Aesthetics of the Greek Banquet: Images of Wine and Ritual. Trans. Andrew Szegedy-Maszak. Princeton, 1990. Mandeville, John. Here begynneth a lytell treatyse or booke named Johan Mau[n]deuyll knyght born in Englonde in the towne of saynt Albone. London, 1499. Manning, John. The Emblem. London, 2002. Marcolini, Franceso. Le Ingeniose Sorti: Giardino di Pensieri. Venice, 1550. Meres, Francis. Palladis tamia, Wits Treasury being the second part of Wits common wealth. London, 1598. Peterson, Robert. Galateo of Maister Iohn Della Casa, Archebishop of Beneuenta. Or rather, A treatise of the ma[n]ners and behauiours, it behoueth a man to vse and eschewe, in his familiar conuersation. London, 1576. Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni. Opera Omnia. 2 vols. Hildesheim, 1969. Pinkus, Karen. Picturing Silence: Emblem, Language, Counter-Reformation Materiality. Ann Arbor, 1996. Plato. Symposium. Trans. W.R.M. Lamb. London, 1967. Quarles, Francis. Emblemes. London, 1635. Rabelais, François. Gargantua and Pantagruel. Trans. Sir Thomas Urquhart and Pierre Le Motteux; Intro. Terence Cave. London, 1994. Schedel, Hartmann. Register des buchs der Croniken vnd geschichten, mit figurenn vnd pildnussen von anbeginn der welt bis auf dise vnnsere Zeit. Nuremberg, 1493. Wyss, Edith. The Myth of Apollo and Marsyas in the Art of the Italian Renaissance: An Enquiry into the Meaning of Images. Cranbury (NJ), 1996.

Captioned Images of Venus in Vincenzo Cartari’s Imagini JOHN MULRYAN

St. Bonaventure University Vincenzo Cartari’s Imagini was the first Italian mythography composed in the vernacular. While not an emblem book per se, the Imagini shares many features of the emblem books, including images, captions, material in foreign tongues, and references to proverbial literature. Six of the Cartari editions contain captions framing the images, editions that create a more user-friendly and comprehensive synthesis of word and image than ordinarily found in the emblem books. Unlike many of the emblem books, the Cartari images (drawn from Bolignino Zaltieri and Filippo Ferroverde) are very much in dialogue with Cartari’s text. In fact, Cartari himself praised Zaltieri’s images and commented on their significant illumination of the text of the Imagini. The eleven captioned images of Venus presented here (her birth, her androgyny, her associations with Cupid, her militaristic nature, her relationship with Amonian Jupiter, and her connection with childbirth and marriage) are intimately fused with Cartari’s text, with the captions acting as pointers toward those portions of the text explored in the images (analogues with emblem books by a variety of authors are also provided). The result is a marvelous synthesis of text, image, and caption, creating a synchrony of the visual and written traditions unmatched in other visual forms.

123 Emblematica, Volume 22. Copyright © 2016 by AMS Press, Inc. All rights reserved.

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V

incenzo Cartari’s Imagini was the first Italian mythography to be composed in the vernacular and to be profusely illustrated with captioned images of the pagan gods. Cartari specialized in physical descriptions of the pagan gods and their symbolic meanings. To make his descriptions come alive, some editions had up to 100 images of these deities, with captions identifying each of them. The layout and structure of Cartari’s work with its texts and images suggests an emblematic format, and while not an emblem book per se, the Imagini shares many features with the emblem books, including images, captions elaborating on the images, material in foreign tongues (in his case, Latin, Greek, and German), and proverbial literature. For example, there are a significant number of citations that parallel material in Erasmus’s Adages. In my translation of Cartari’s Imagini I cite some twenty-one parallel passages from Erasmus’s Adages.1 Cartari also cites Alciato himself on several occasions.2 This paper demonstrates that, despite the work’s seemingly emblematic nature, the format of Cartari’s Imagini (particularly the editions containing captions) differed considerably from the format of most emblem books, offering the reader a more user-friendly and comprehensive synthesis of word and image. This article first explores the particularities of Cartari’s formatting decisions in the Imagini, before turning to a focused analysis of method as it pertains to the narrative of the myth of Venus that extends through the work’s various editions, with special attention devoted to the captioned images of the goddess. The first edition of Cartari, 1556 (rpt. 1566), was not illustrated, nor was the incomplete English paraphrase by Richard Lynche, The Fountaine of Ancient Fiction, which appeared in 1599. All other editions, beginning with the Giordano Ziletti and Vincenzo Valgrisi editions of Venice 1571, were illustrated. Cartari’s first illustrator was Bolignino Zaltieri, who worked in copper plates; Filippo Ferroverde succeeded him in 1615, but his woodcuts are inferior in workmanship to Zaltieri’s efforts. Ferroverde’s illustrations are accompanied by Lorenzo Pignoria’s learned commentary, which Robert L. McGrath feels falsifies the text even more than Ferroverde’s amateurish 1. 2.

All subsequent references to my translation are provided in the text as Mulryan, Imagini, page number(s). For images of Apollo and Bacchus that draw upon Alciato, see Mulryan, Imagini, 44; for Alciato’s image of honor, see Mulryan, Imagini, “Bacchus,” 292.



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drawings.3 It should be noted, however, that these illustrators were artists in their own right, and seldom presented an exact imagistic version of the printed text. Thus, the interplay of text and image is particularly rich. Since Cartari apparently died in 1570, the year before the publication of the 1571 edition, some scholars question whether he knew or approved of the illustrations to his text. Cartari himself answers this question through a preface to the Imagini that he wrote in 1569 (first printed in the Venice 1571 edition), extolling Zaltieri’s efforts and referring to the images as an essential supplement to his printed work. According to Cartari himself, the author spent some leisurely hours in Venice adding new images to his work and examining pertinent artifacts to improve the quality of the work. For Cartari, “there can be no doubt that my work is now more attractive when one looks at the beautiful and eminently suitable figures with which Bolignino Zaltieri has enhanced the Imagini.”4 All of the images reproduced here (with the exception of figure 6, taken from Konrad Bote’s Cronecken der Sassen) are derived from the illustrations produced by Zaltieri and Ferroverde. A highly significant innovation on the illustrators’ part was the addition of captions that frame each illustration in six of the seventeen Italian editions that I have examined: Padua 1608 (the copy text for my translation), Venice 1624, Venice 1625, Venice 1626, Venice 1647, and Venice 1674.5 The Venice 1626 and the Venice 1674 editions, unlike the other four, attach the captions to the inferior images by Ferroverde rather than to those by Zaltieri. These captions allow the reader to focus on individual images, and provide a bridge between the images and the text of the Imagini. This extra layer of commentary creates an inner dialogue between text and image that goes beyond the abbreviated type of commentary normally found in emblem books. 3.

4. 5.

McGrath’s reference to “paper archaeology” reflects his claim that the illustrations are almost exclusively based on the printed text of Cartari and not on actual artifacts. He also claims that Zaltieri created his images from three other “paper” sources: Pietro Apiano’s Incriptiones (1534), Gullaume Du Choul’s Discours (1556), and Piero Valeriano’s Hieroglyphica (1556). “. . . come senza dubbio alcuno lo faranno piu bello da vedere le belle, e bene accommodate figure, dellequali l’adorna M. Bologno Zaltieri” (Venice 1571, A2v). The author of these captions is unknown, but Lorenzo Pignoria (1571–1631), who is credited in the 1674 edition with seeking out bronze and marble objects, jewels, medals, and other memorials to complement Cartari’s text, is a possible candidate.

126 EMBLEMATICA The second part of this article focuses on the images of Venus, primarily because they are central to an understanding of the Renaissance conception of the twin themes of love and beauty, and because they are so complexly intertwined with the companion myths of Cupid, the Graces, the Hours, and Adonis. Besides love and beauty, they also encompass the related themes of sexual violence, birth, death, and gender ambiguity. Twelve images serve as the basis of the present discussion, all of which are ilFig. 1. Title page, Cartari, Padua 1608. Image cour- lustrated below. Some are taken from copper plates in the tesy of the author. Padua 1608 edition of Cartari’s Imagini, others from the woodcuts in the Venice 1674 edition, and one from Konrad Bote’s Cronecken der Sassen. Images reproduced from my book, Vincenzo Cartari’s Images of the Gods of the Ancients: The First Italian Mythography (2012), already include translations of the 1608 captions; untranslated captions are taken from the original texts. When appropriate, I contrast Cartari’s captioned images with examples from the emblem tradition. The title page of the Padua 1608 edition is supplied here simply to record the printer Pietro Paolo Tozzi’s boast in the last lines that this is an “Opera Utilissima,” “a work most useful for historians, poets, painters, sculptors, and professors of polite literature” (fig. 1).6 The Venus image from the Venice 1674 edition of the Imagini (Q8) offers a more traditional interpretation of the birth of the goddess: Venus on the half shell, so to speak (fig. 2). According to Boccaccio’s Genealogia, one of Cartari’s sources, the conch shell or mollusk that Venus holds in her left 6. “Opera utilissima a historici, Poeti, Pittori, Scultori, & professori di belle lettere,” (Padua 1608, *1)



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hand symbolizes the female pudenda, and of course her reputed birth from the sea foam.7 The caption from the Imagini reads: “Image of Venus born from the sea foam, Goddess of beauty and lechery, mother of Love, symbol of sensuousness. She was also supposed to be the Goddess of marriage and the rites of marriage. She was taken for the planet Venus, also called Lucifero or the morning star, and Hespero the evening star, a planet that provides the power of generation to created things” (translation mine).8 Thus she embraces the earth, the sea, and the stars. The proximity of Cartari’s depiction to emblems is confirmed in Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft’s emFig. 2. Venus and the seashell, Cartari, Venice blem book, Emblematum Amatoria 1674. Image courtesy of the author. (emblem 1, p.13), where Venus is shown rising from the sea, with a flaming heart in her left hand, and standing firmly on a conch shell. The motto is Iamais n’enfonce [She never sinks], which refers to the sea foam that surrounds her, but there is no further comment on the significance of the image. The next image from Catari, as the caption from the Venice 1674 edition explains, is the “image of Venus in a chariot drawn by swans, which are controlled by little Cupids, indicating that the harmony and peacefulness 7. 8.

“She holds a seashell in her hands to show the allurement of Venus, for when its whole body is open, Juba reports, a mollusk has coitus with itself.” See Boccaccio, Genealogy of the Pagan Gods (3.25), 405–7, Solomon translation. The entire caption (found in both Padua 1608 and Venice 1674) reads as follows: “Imagine di Venere nata dalla spuma del mare, della bellezza Dea, & della libidine, madre d’Amore, simbolo della lascivia, qual fu anco tenuta Dea delle nozze & del matrimonio, intesa per il pianeta di Venere, detta ancor Lucifero, & Hespero, che induce la virtu generative nelle cose” (Padua 1608, 3p4v; 1 Venice 1674, Q8).

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of nature fits right in with Love’s pleasures” (fig. 3).9 Th e te xt from the Imagini elaborates on this concept, noting that the swan is known for the sweetness of its song, which promotes love’s lustful and amorous pleasures. The emphasis is on the feminine aspects of love, a theme repeated in the very last image to be discussed below. In Nicolaus Reusner’s emblem, Coniugij sit castus Amor [May conjugal love be chaste] (Reusner, [Civ]), Venus is shown in a chariot drawn by doves accompanied by Cupid. According to the description (like all the Reusner emblems cited here, the texts are in both Latin and German), she is the goddess of marriage, and travels without a rudder. She joins Fig. 3. Venus in a chariot drawn by swans, couples together in chaste love. Cartari, Venice 1674. Image courtesy of the Here the emblem rivals the Cartari author. caption cited above in the iconographic detail it provides. The Paphian Venus, accompanied by the three Graces, is shown in a chariot drawn by doves and swans (fig. 4, Padua 1608, 3Q1v; fig. 5, Venice 1674, Q8v). She is holding a ball in one hand and three golden apples in the other. As the caption explains,10 the golden apples send humans on the lustful route to love, and encourage the natural, physical desire to pro9. 10.

“Imagine di Venere tirata in carro da Cigni, retti da gl’Amorini, per mostrare, che il canto, & la placidita della natura hanno molto confacimento co’ piaceri d’Amore” (R1). “Tempio di Venere in Pafo Citta di Cipro con gieroglifico lei & sua natura dimostrante Carro di Venere tirato da Cigni & da Colombe a lei sacrate, con la sua imagine sopra detto carro nuda con le tre Gratie seco, come li Sassoni la dipingevano, con tre pomi d’oro in una mano, & una palla nell’altra, & dimostra l’oro farci via alla lascivia, & dinota il tutto il natural desiderio carnale per generare.”

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Fig. 4. The Paphian Venus, Cartari, Padua 1608. Image courtesy of the author.

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Fig. 5. The Paphian Venus, Cartari, Venice 1674. Image courtesy of the author.

duce offspring. Although the caption does not mention it, the apples also recall the golden apple tossed among the gods by Strife, which led to the Judgment of Paris, the bribe of Paris by Venus, and the resulting destruction of the Trojan War. These images are rich in iconographical symbolism. In both, a torch is emblazoned on Venus’s chest (see also the Saxon Venus, below), which is supported in the linguistic tradition by both Propertius (4.3.49–50) and Statius (Theb 3.701–02). Similarly, Venus also holds a torch toward her chest in an early nineteenth-century neoclassical painting (Le Flambeau de Vénus, dit hommage à la beauté [The torch of Venus, known as a tribute to beauty])11 by the French artist Pierre-Paul Prud’hon (1758–1823). The torch may also be connected to the many paintings of St. Teresa with the flaming heart (cf. the poetry of the seventeenth-century writer, Richard Crashaw).12 More significant is the conical stone resting on an altar, which is attributed to Amonian Jupiter (figs. 4 & 5). This aniconic image of Venus actu11. 12.

Located in the Condé Museum, Chantilly, France. Cf. the comprehensive website of French artists sponsored by the French government. Cf. The English Poems of Richard Crashaw, lxxix, Fig. 10, “Ecstasy of St. Teresa.”

130 EMBLEMATICA ally existed and the original artifact can be seen today at the Sanctuary of Aphrodite and Palipaphos Museum, Cyprus. (It does not, however, bear much resemblance to the stone depicted in Cartari.) The Roman historian Tacitus also testifies to the image’s existence at Paphos: “The representation of the goddess is not in human form, but it is a circular mass that is broader at the base and rises like a turning-post to a small circumference at the top.”13 The insert with a conical figure Fig. 6. Venus in a chariot drawn by doves and swans, at its center was also a comfrom Konrad Bote’s Cronecken der Sassen, Mainz, mon feature in Roman coins: 1492. Image Courtesy of The Rare Book & Manuscript Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana- “Coins of the Roman imperial era (Augustus through Champaign. Septimius Severus) . . . [display] a cone-like object under what has been interpreted either as a tripartite structure or, more likely, a single one in front of a hall meant to be understood as being in the background” (Young, 25). As M. D’Orazio notes, “A large cone-shaped black stone was worshipped in the ancient temple of Aphrodite at Paphos, Cyprus. This temple, and the stone it contained, was celebrated on many Roman coins” (220). An emblematic equivalent can be found in Nicholas Reusner’s “Venus” (Miiij). The description simply states that “nourishing” Venus is the mother of Love. Although lacking the conical configuration, Reusner’s pictura shows her chariot drawn by doves since they are also bound together through the power of love. Building on this pictorial motif, the caption in Cartari also explains that this particular image of Venus imitates her depic13.

Cited in Philip H. Young, “The Cypriot Aphrodite Cult: Paphos, Rantidi, and Satin Barnabas,” 25.



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Fig. 7. Armed Venus, Cartari, Padua, 1608. Image courtesy of the author.

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Fig. 8. Armed Venus, Cartari, Venice 1674. Image courtesy of the author.

tion by the Saxons. This is not a reference to the Anglo-Saxons, and the actual source is shown in Konrad Bote’s Cronecken der Sassen [History of Saxony] (Mainz, 1492) (fig. 6), a work that is sometimes attributed to his kinsman Hermann (Hermen) Bote. In this portrayal, the swans appear to be having a conversation with the doves, and Venus seems to be transported in a farm wagon rather than a chariot. The figure also appears in Johann Herold’s Heydenwelt (Basel, 1554), which was derived from L. G. Giraldi’s Latin De deis gentium [History of the Gods] (Basel, 1548), Cartari’s immediate predecessor (see Bull 2005). This image is rich in visual iconography, and reappears in many later accounts of the goddess. The next two images depict a Venus of power (fig. 7, Padua 1608, 3R3; fig. 8, Venice 1674, R3v). The caption reads: “Image of the Armed Venus, Venus the Victorious, and Venus in chains, the last denoting the stability that should prevail in love and marriage, the armed Venus recalling the courage of the Spartan women, who battled against the Messenians to protect their city and courageously defeated them.”14 The central position of 14.

“Imagine di Venere armata, & di Venere vittrice, & di Venere in ceppi dinotante la fermezza, che deve essere nelli maritati & amanti, dinota ancora questa imagine il valore delle Donne Lacedemonie contro i Messenii, che andavano a sac-

132 EMBLEMATICA the victorious Venus suggests that Stability and Courage work together to ensure Victory. However, the image ignores a touch of wickedness in the text: according to Cartari, the Spartan men mistook the valiant Spartan women for the enemy, and each Spartan man ended up having sex with the Spartan woman whom he encountered on the battlefield. Cartari interpreted this indiscriminate sexual play as a reward for the Spartan women’s valor. In this image, the violent aspects of love supplement conventional notions of love and beauty. In Nicholas Reusner’s emblem “In picturam Veneris” [On a picture of Fig. 9. Androgynous Venus, Padua, 1608. Venus] a nude Venus stands beside CuImage courtesy of the author. pid leaning on a spear (hence armed) and observing a fleeing, helmeted figure—probably Athena, whom she bested without arms in a struggle for supremacy (Gv). In his portrayal of a similar Venus, Cartari inserts Ausonius’ epigram 6, into his text: “‘Foolish woman, where do you think you’ll get the courage to defeat me now that I’m armed, when I’ve already defeated you when I was naked and unarmed?’” (Mulryan, Imagini, 418). The image continues to evolve in a depiction with two Venus figures. The androgynous Venus is signified in Padua 1608 by the bearded figure in feminine dress offering a comb, the traditional symbol of female vanity (Mulryan, Imagini, 423) (fig. 9). This odd, but inviting, figure is contrasted with the shrouded Venus mourning the death of Adonis, the prone figure between the two Venuses, who had been killed by a boar, a symbol of irrational, animalistic power as well as of the bitter winter cold. This Venus is simultaneously a creative and a destructive power almost unprecedented in Venus iconography—without any indication of the beauty with which she is normally associated. This depiction suggests the manlike and destructive cheggiar la loro Citta, da esse valorosamente difesa.”



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Venus in Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis. As far as I can determine, it is the only image of Venus mourning the dead Adonis that appears in the same illustration as the androgynous Venus. The two images are discussed separately in Cartari’s apparent source, Giraldi’s De deis gentium [History of the Gods], but are united in the caption to the illustration: “Images of Venus as both male and female, signifying that she is in charge of the generation of all creation, since she is equated with the atmosphere. Unlike mortals, there is no difference in sex among the gods. There is also an image of Venus mourning for the death of Adonis who was killed by a boar. The boar represents the bitter cold of the winter season” (Mulryan, Imagini, 423).15 The theme of androgyny continues in Michael Maier’s Atalanta Fugiens, emblem 38, which displays a heavily muscled Aphrodite clasping an enervated Hermes in a sexual embrace, in order to produce the two-headed Hermaphrodite. Maier’s commentary suggests that evil things happen to those who spurn sexuality. There is nothing here about love, only a hint that blurring sexual differences is dangerous. The next images from Cartari depict Venus as goddess of love and marriage (Padua, 1608, 3Q4) and is duplicated in the Venice 1674 edition of the Imagini (R2) (figs. 10 & 11). Here, Venus appears at the center of a crowded canvas of supporting figures from the amorous tradition. The caption reads: “Images of Venus, goddess of pleasures, mother of love, accompanied by the little loves [the Amorini], the Hours, and the Three Graces, signifying amorous delights and good augury. For the ancients used such images to indicate to the newly married that there is harmony in marriage, as well as passionate love.”16 The little loves with burning torches would appear at the head of wedding processions in ancient times, as can be observed in Catullus’s Epithalamion. Here, Venus rivals Juno for the title of goddess of marriage. All of these figures associated with the amorous tradition appear in Sandro Botticcelli’s famous Primavera (ca. 1482). Many of them also ap15.

16.

“Imagini di Venere maschio è femina significante questa esser sopra l’universal generatione delle cose essendo tolta per l’aria, & nelli dei non esser differenza di sesso come ne mortali, & imagine di Venere adolorata per la morte d’Adone morte dal cingiale, intesa per la stagione hiemale & fredda.” “Imagine di Venere Dea de piaceri, madre a’Amore, accompagnata da gli’Amorini, dalle Hore, & dalle tre gratie significanti le delicie amorose, & il buono augurio, che facevano gl’antichi con tale imagini alle novelle spose, di concorde matrimonio, & di ardente amore.”

134 EMBLEMATICA

Fig. 10. Venus, goddess of love and marriage, Cartari, Padua, 1608. Image courtesy of the author.

Fig. 11. Venus, goddess of love and marriage, Cartari, Venice, 1674. Image courtesy of the author.

pear in a drawing by Joachim von Sandrart, the “Toilette der Venus,” in the three-volume publication Teutsche Academie der Edlen Bau-, Bild-und Mahlerey-Künst [German Academy of the Noble Arts of Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting] (1675–1679).17 Sandrart also published a German translation (with new illustrations) of Cartari’s Imagini in 1680. Finally, although the caption suggests that the theme of all the figures is generation or birth, the real focus of the final image (fig. 12, Padua 1608, 3R) is on the role of the female in matters of love and sexuality. (Mulryan, Imagini, 423). The point is made in miniature in Reusner’s emblem “Custos domus uxor” [The guardian of the wife at home], which shows Venus with her foot firmly placed on a tortoise, who is always at home—the place where women should also remain so that they can “take care of their families and bring up children” ([Cx]). In his Emblematum libellus (1534), Andrea Alciato notes in emblem 196 that Phidias is the source, and, by depicting the tortoise as mute, adds the element of silence to the description.

17.

This image is available at: http://ta.sandrart.net/en/text/1552#figure-1551.1



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The figure of a fully clothed Venus lurks in the background of Cartari’s image, although the focus of his discussion is female sexuality. The Fool (Iocus) as a figure of love also downplays the belief in love’s sacredness. The goat, which is the symbol of unbridled lust, is held in check by the goddess’s hand. Her left foot also presses firmly on the shell of a tortoise, a symbol that is only partially explained in the caption. The tortoise’s inability to speak sends a message to women that Silence is their most essential quality. The image of Venus and the tortoise actually precedes the emblem tradition, having first appeared in St. John Fisher’s AsFig. 12. Venus and Tortoise, Cartari, sertionis Luthernae Confutatio (Ant- Padua, 1608. Image courtesy of the werp, 1523).18 It is worth noting that author. in this earlier image Venus plants both feet firmly on the tortoise, but no caption or description is provided. The most interesting comment in the caption is the reference to “the danger that married women experience in giving birth.”19 Given the number of deaths in childbirth during the Renaissance, it is surprising that Cartari stands alone among mythographers in remarking on this grim truth. As the text explains, the male tortoise turns the female tortoise on her back in order to enjoy her sexually. However, like many an indifferent male partner, he neglects to turn her right side up again after taking his pleasure from her, thus exposing her to her many enemies in the animal kingdom. She is therefore reluctant to accept his sexual favors. However, Nature must prevail, and thus gives her a taste for a toxic root that ignites her sexuality, causing her to throw caution to the winds and submit to the ministrations of the 18. 19.

Reproduced in Adrien Jean Joseph Delen, Histoire de la gravure dans les anciens Pay-Bas et dans les provinces belges (Paris, 1924–, Part II, plate xvi). “Il pericolo delle donne maritate, è parturienti.” (Q8).

136 EMBLEMATICA male tortoise.20 Thus, generation must take place for the world to preserve itself, but at terrible cost to women. The image serves as a reminder that for all of the beauty and charm contained in the myth of Venus, the sexuality she represents is both bestial and dangerous, especially to women. Contemporary legitimate concern with overpopulation masks the grim reality of past ages: that sex was a vulgar necessity needed to keep the world going, but at terrible expense to the women involved. Here, the images of the gods of the ancients have indeed revealed their true natures.

Conclusion In sum, editions of Cartari’s Imagini did not so much replace the emblem tradition as enhance it, by combining, in many of the editions, text, image, and caption. Captions made it possible for busy readers to connect the part of the text that was pertinent to their immediate needs, and return to the whole text at their leisure. Unlike many illustrations, those provided by Zaltieri and Ferroverde are directly related to the text, and as Cartari himself remarked, Zaltieri’s illustrations form an essential supplement to his text. The enormous number of illustrated editions of Cartari’s text (fifteen Italian, five French, four Latin, one German) amply testify to the popularity of both texts and images. Indeed, the images span more than a century of iconographic activity from 1571 to 1674. Turning to the image of Venus, Cartari and his illustrators (particularly Zaltieri) outdo themselves in their iconographic analysis of the goddess of love and beauty. In the Padua 1608 edition, Venus grasping a conch shell and rising from the sea is a symbol of coitus, because its shell is open and exposed (Padua 1608 3P4v–3Q1). The coitus symbol is not mentioned in the caption but follows afterward in the text. The Paphian Venus is accompanied by the three Graces, bearing three golden apples in one hand and a ball in the other (Padua 1608, 3Q1v–3Q2 ff.). Not much is said about symbolism in the caption, but the text explains that this occult imagery is really concealing the “secrets of religion” (3Q2). Venus as goddess of pleasure and mother of love appears on a crowded canvas surrounded by the “little loves” (the amorini, eros, and anteros), the three Graces, and the Hours, all contributing to the delights of passionate love and matrimonial 20. Cf. John Mulryan, “The Tortoise and the Lady,” Notes and Queries, n. s. 38 (1991): 78–79.



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bliss (Padua 1608, 3Q4). The text elaborates on wedding customs, including the gorgeous wreaths woven by the Graces and the Hours to adorn the goddess (3Q4). The armed Venus (Padua 1608, 3R3) also includes images of Venus the Victorious and Venus in chains. The armed Venus celebrates the attack launched by the Trojan women against the Messenians, Venus the Victorious the women’s part in the victory, and Venus enchained the firmness and stability that women should display in love and marriage. The text emphasizes that some statues of the gods were placed in chains so that they could not leave their loyal subjects (3R4v). The final image and caption in the Padua 1608 edition (3R1) is the richest of all, celebrating female domesticity and the dangers of pregnancy through the stationary turtle, Venus’s passion and lust through the goat she leans upon, and the triviality and superficiality of some love relationships through the image of the Fool (Iocus). All of these concepts are elaborated upon in the text, as noted above. The image of Venus being drawn by swans ridden by Cupids or Amorini [little loves] appears only in the Venice 1674 edition (R1). The caption explains that the placid nature of the swan makes it an ideal bird to symbolize love’s pleasures. The text itself suggests an ironic contrast between this innocentissmo [most innocent] of birds and the lustful pleasures its nature attracts (R1). It is clear, then, that there is a marvelous synchrony between Cartari’s text and the images provided by the illustrators. When captions are added to the illustrations, they enrich the symbiosis of text and image, creating an emblem-like dialogic relation between the two by serving as pointers to the most pertinent portion of the text alluded to in the image.

138 EMBLEMATICA Works Cited Alciato, Andrea. Emblematum Libellus. 1534. Boccaccio, Giovanni. Genealogy of the Pagan Gods, vol. 1. Ed. and trans. Jon Solomon. Cambridge, MA: 2011. Bote, Konrad. Cronecken der Sassen. Mainz, 1492. Bull, Malcolm. Mirror of the Gods. Oxford, 2005. Cartari, Vincenzo. Le Imagini De gli Dei de gli Antichi, del signor Vincenzo Cartari Regiano [sic]. Padua, 1608. _____. Le Imagini De I Dei De Gli Antichi. Venice, 1571. _____. Imagini delli dei de gl’antichi di Vincenzo Cartari Reggiano. Venice, 1674. _____. Images of the Gods of the Ancients: The First Italian Mythography, [Venice, 1571] Trans. John Mulryan. Tempe, Arizona; 2012. Catullus. Trans. F. W. Cornish. Loeb Classical Library, Vol. 6. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1913. Crashaw, Richard. The English Poems of Richard Crashaw, ed. Richard Rambuss. Minneapolis, 2013. Delen, John Joseph. Histoire de la gravure dans les anciens Pay-bas et dans les provinces belges. Paris, 1924. D’Orazio, Massimo. “Meteorite records in the ancient Greek and Latin literature: between history and myth.” Geological Society, London, Special Publications 273 (2007): 215–25. Fisher, St. John. Assertionis Luthernae confutatio. Antwerp, 1523. Giraldi, L. G. De deis gentium [History of the Gods]. Basel, 1548. Herold, Johann. Heydenwelt. Basel, 1544. Hooft, Pieter Corneliszoon. Emblemata Amatoria. Amsterdam, 1611. See http://emblems.let.uu.nl/h1611.html McGrath, Robert L. “The ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Illustrations for Cartari’s Imagini de i dei degli Antichi: A Study of ‘Paper Archaeology’ in the Italian Renaissance.” Gazette des beaux-arts 59 (1962): 13–26. Maier, Michael. Atalanta Fugiens. Oppenheim, 1618.



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Mulryan, John. “The Tortoise and the Lady in Vincenzo Cartari’s Imagini and John Webster’s The White Devil,” Notes and Queries, n.s. 38 (1991): 78–79. Propertius. Translated H. E. Butler. London 1929. Prud’hon, Pierre. Le Flambeau de Vénus, dit hommage à la beauté [The torch of Venus, known as a tribute to beauty]. Located in the Condé Museum, Chantilly, France. Cf. www.culture.gouv.fr. Date accessed 28 December 2015. Reusner, Nicholas. Aureolorum emblematum. Strassburg, 1591. See http://emblematica.library.illinois.edu/localbooksuiuc/22222010/ Sandrart, Joachim von, trans. Iconologia Deorum, oder Abbildung der Götter welche von den Alten verehret worden. By Vincenzo Cartari. Nuremberg, 1680. Sandrart, Joachim von. Teutsche Academie der Edlen Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste. 3 vols. Nuremberg, 1675–1680. _____.

Toilette der Venus. http://ta.sandrart.net/en/ text/1552#figure-1551.1 Date accessed 29 December 2015.

Statius. Thebaid. Translated J. H. Mosley. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1928. Wainwright, G. A. “The Relationship of Amün to Zeus and His Connexion with Meterorites,” The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 16 (May 1930): 35–58. Young, Philip H. “The Cypriot Aphrodite Cult: Paphos, Rantidi, and Saint Barnabas,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 64:1 (2005): 23–44.

“Imitation” and “Idea” in EighteenthCentury English Painting: William Hoare of Bath, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and the Emblematic Inheritance SIMON MCKEOWN Marlborough College

Studies of the English emblem have often regarded the eighteenth century as an era in which the emblem lost cultural status and was acknowledged only as a vehicle for low-church piety or children’s literature. This article presents two paintings from the latter part of the century that problematize such a view. These pictures, by leading figures of England’s fledgling Royal Academy, are seemingly indebted to emblems by the Flemish master Otto Vaenius, and present evidence of the form and “idea” of his emblems being carried through both conspicuous and concealed channels of imitation to the highest social milieux of their age.

T

his article concerns the shadowy presence of a Renaissance and Baroque cultural form, the emblem, in the context of late eighteenthcentury English painting, the world of the fledgling Royal Academy, and the foundation of a vigorous national style. This is the century, of course, when the emblem was supposed by older scholarship to be in full retreat, with Rosemary Freeman notoriously declaring that after 1700 emblems “had . . . ceased to be a serious literary form”—a view that has wilted under the scholarly scrutiny of Höltgen, Katz, Daly, and Bath, among others.1 James Boswell’s humorous anecdote about the “little Miss [who] on 1.

Freeman, 240. For rebuttals of this claim, see Höltgen, 141–96; Katz, 1–130; Daly, 227–57; and Bath, 255–81.

141 Emblematica, Volume 22. Copyright © 2016 by AMS Press, Inc. All rights reserved.

142 EMBLEMATICA seeing a picture of Justice with the scales . . . exclaimed to me, ‘See, there’s a woman selling sweetmeats,’” only argues for the artlessness of his subject, not the wider ignorance of the emblematical figure (Boswell, 1162). But if Freeman was too confident in her assertion of the emblem’s enervation by the turn of the new century, she was right to detect hostility to symbolic forms in a climate where philosophical discourse on aesthetics expressed suspicion about the emblem’s essential abstruseness, a sentiment exemplified by the Earl of Shaftesbury’s well-known diatribe against “Egyptian hieroglyphs . . . magical, mystical, monkish and Gothic emblems” in his Second Characters of 1713. Fundamental to his argument was the differentiation between two types of symbolism active in these modes: personification, which he conceded was fit and proper for art, and what he called “enigmatical, preposterous, disproportional” representation, which he condemned as “false, barbarous and mixed” (Shaftesbury, 91).2 In his Anecdotes of Painting, Horace Walpole shared Shaftesbury’s aversion to overt and arbitrary allegorical expression, and, surveying the contemporary London scene, alighted upon perceived certainties in William Hogarth’s pictorial manner, asserting that an “instance of his genius is his not condescending to explain his moral lessons by the trite poverty of allegory. If he had an emblematic thought, he expressed it with wit, rather than by a symbol” (Walpole, IV, 73). Even allowing for the shift in semantic meaning surrounding the term “wit” between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—one that arcs between “ingenuity” and “brilliance” or “drollery”— it is difficult to agree with Walpole’s estimation of Hogarth: the sheer preponderance of readable signs and symbols in “The Rake’s Progress,” for example, formed a major part of the series’s success as moralizing discourse. But Walpole’s pronouncement seems to be suspect, too, in the face of evidence presented by Hogarth’s Portrait of the Mackinen Children in Dublin.3 No educated viewer of the 1740s could fail to ponder on the significance of the overtly emblematic sunflower and butterfly that comprise the symbol-nexus at the heart of this composition. For the centuries before and during the aetis emblematica, the heliotrope and the butterfly had carried associations of piety, devotion, instinctive virtue, the brevity of life, the hope of resurrec2. 3.

For a discussion of Shaftesbury’s views, see Bath, 256–58; Nicholson, 159–66; and Paulson, 38–47. William Hogarth, Portrait of the Mackinen Children (1747), National Gallery of Ireland, cat. no. NGI.791. For discussions of the painting’s emblematic elements, see Wendorf, 182–83.



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tion, and other such moralistic themes. Place such symbols of piety and metamorphosis proximate to children, and it becomes clear that Hogarth was using the full scope of the emblematic lexicon to paint the proleptic hopes the Mackinen family cherished for their darlings. It seems improbable to suggest that such rich inherited significances, older habits of mind, or cognitive associations could be collectively shed, forgotten, or unlearned. Therefore, while it is on one level possible to accept the thrust of Walpole’s admiring claim that Hogarth “drew all his stores from nature and the force of his own genius, and was indebted neither to models nor books for his style” (Walpole, IV, 71), such a statement also raises questions about what constitutes artistic inspiration in eighteenth-century painting, and through what channels the “ideas” of older practitioners might have found their way into new repertoires of visual creativity. A case in point is a painting by one of the finest society painters of eighteenth-century England, which can be shown to be almost wholly reliant upon a printed source in an emblem book. The painting was displayed at the fourth Exhibition of the Royal Academy in 1772, its creator being one of the founding academicians of that august body. It was described in the Royal Academy catalog as A Portrait of a Boy in the Character of Cupid, and its artist was William Hoare of Bath, who was included in Zoffany’s famous painting of the Royal Academicians, which dates back to the same year.4 But before turning to this tantalizing image of Cupid, it is necessary to provide a brief sketch of its creator, because his reputation, though in his own time very high, has not been sustained. William Hoare of Bath (1707–1792) was one of Britain’s leading portrait painters of the eighteenth century, in the slipstream of Reynolds and Gainsborough perhaps, but with a prestigious clientele of his own.5 While being a master of oil portraits, who executed individual likenesses and family groups with grace and animation, his real facility lay in that modish form of the eighteenth century, the pastel portrait. Hoare’s long life (he died aged 84) afforded him the opportunity to capture the likeness of some of the great men of the age, including Alexander Pope, Henry Fielding, Tobias Smollett, and Horace Walpole. Originally from Suffolk, Hoare trained in 4.

5.

Hoare’s position at the extreme left of Zoffany’s ensemble is thought to be an allusion to his residence in westerly Bath. He was rarely in London, so did little to inform the conversation or the policy of the Academy of which he had been a founding signatory. For a life of Hoare of Bath, see Newby, 9–15.

144 EMBLEMATICA London and Italy, notably in Rome under Francesco Imperiali, where he perfected the then highly fashionable pastel technique. On his return to England in 1739, Hoare established himself as a society portrait painter in Bath, which was just then emerging as the pre-eminent spa-resort for the British elite, and Bath’s two seasons became confirmed as absolute fixtures in the social calendar for every well-heeled family. Having one’s likeness taken was one of many diversions available to the city’s wealthy patrons, and Hoare’s business flourished.6 The deep-pocketed clients who flocked to his studio at Number 4 Edgar Buildings—a central and elegant parade of shops and houses—during the leisurely weeks of their cures provided an ample stream of high patronage, and insulated him from the competition in London. In addition to his flair and sensitivity with brush and crayon, Hoare enjoyed a reputation for his erudition, and Richard Graves, a clergyman, remembered him as “one of the best classical scholars both in Greek and Latin with whom I was ever acquainted” (Newby, 8). There is no doubt that the ennui of sitting for a portrait was much relieved by Hoare’s learning, good conversation, and discreet, amiable nature—social graces that recommended him as an agreeable companion. Accordingly, he enjoyed excellent relations with a wide circle of patrons and dilettanti. Probably his greatest friend and patron was Henry Hoare the Magnificent (1705–1785), who was no relation to William. Henry Hoare, called “the Magnificent” because of his prodigious cultivation of the arts, was grandson of the founder of Charles Hoare and Company, today the oldest private bank in London, and the establishment once favored by Pepys, Byron, and Jane Austen. This Henry Hoare resided at the great Palladian mansion of Stourhead in Wiltshire, built by his father, Henry Hoare I, and the painter William Hoare was a regular guest there over several decades. Indeed, so close were William Hoare’s associations with his patron that his daughter Mary, herself a talented painter, married into the Stourhead dynasty on the Kentish side of the family.7 William Hoare, then, must be seen as more than a painter associated with a great dynasty through pecuniary obligation. He was integrated into the family by blood, and his learning and conversation dissolved any lingering sense of mere clientship. 6. 7.

According to Newby, Hoare’s studio was the most successful in Bath, maintaining its primacy even after Gainsborough’s move to the city in 1759. Mary married Henry Hoare of Beckenham (1744–1785): see Dodd and Woodbridge, 15.



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Sometime around 1770 or 1771, William Hoare painted likenesses of his patron’s children, and, not unusually for the time, presented them in the form of the historiated portrait—that is, wrapped in a mantle of mythological disguise. Today at Stourhead in “the Little Dining Room,” the room for which they were originally intended, there hang charming oval portraits of Henry Hoare’s progeny masquerading as a pantheon of pagan gods.8 William Hoare’s discerning pastel has delineated their characterful features with subtlety and wit, robing, for example, Charles as the Infant Hercules in his Nemean lion-skin.9 The series playfully deifies Henry Hoare’s other children, depicting Henry Hugh as the Infant Apollo, Henrietta Anne as a Bacchante, and Richard Colt Hoare as the Infant Mercury.10 But on an adjacent wall to these ovals hangs in a rectangular frame another family member portrayed in mythological guise. It is Henry Hoare’s third son by his second marriage, Henry Merrick Hoare (1770–1856), shown at the age of two in what the National Trust inventory describes as a Portrait of Henry Merrick Hoare as Cupid rowing with his bow on his quiver (fig. 1).11 To a reader familiar with Otto Vaenius’s Amorum emblemata of 1608, Hoare’s representation of Henry Merrick Hoare calls to mind the emblem “Via nvlla est invia amori” [There is no path closed to Love] (fig. 2).12 The imagery is certainly witty, as Amor launches himself onto the waves with nothing but his narrow quiver for a vessel, resourcefully using his blindfold as a sail and his bow as an oar. In his emblem, Vaenius alludes to the story of Leander crossing the Hellespont, and his pictura depicts a type for Hero awaiting Amor on the farther shore.13 The iconography has been stressed by eminent emblem scholars—notably Praz and Porteman—as an instance 8.

In his description of Stourhead, Richard Colt Hoare writes “in this room we are gratified with the sight of some very fine specimens of crayon painting, a style now quite unfashionable . . . executed by William Hoare of Bath, Esq. and Mary his daughter”: see Hoare 1822–1843, 73. 9. Charles Hoare as the Infant Hercules, National Trust Inventory No. 730771. The catalog description mistakes the lion-skin for “a hair shirt across his shoulders.” 10. Henry Hugh Hoare as the Infant Apollo (possibly Henry Merrick Hoare as the Infant Apollo), National Trust Inventory No. 730772; Henrietta Anne Hoare as an Infant Bacchante, National Trust Inventory No. 730775; Richard Colt Hoare as the Infant Mercury, National Trust Inventory No. 730777. 11. Stourhead, National Trust Inventory No. 730779. This work, unlike the ovalframed works in pastel, is executed in gouache on paper. 12. Vaenius 1608, 92–93. 13. Ovid, Heroides 18–19.

146 EMBLEMATICA

Fig. 1. William Hoare of Bath: Portrait of Henry Merrick Hoare as Cupid rowing with his Bow on his Quiver (c.1771), gouache on paper, Stourhead, Wiltshire. (Photo courtesy of The National Trust.)

of Vaenius’s inventive genius, adapting either a conceit from Maurice Scève or the Plinian notion of the squirrel’s incorrigibility in reaching its goal as indicative of the lover’s dauntlessness.14 Porteman is certainly correct in tracing the iconographic line back through Vaenius to an emblem by Corrozet (Corrozet, 134–35). But it might well be that Vaenius was inspired by neither Pliny nor Corrozet, but a greater figure still, because around 1515, none other than Raphael of Urbino furnished a disegno for an engraving by Marco Dente da Ravenna, a pupil of Marcantonio Raimundo.15 With its motto “Sic fuga violenta monet” [Fleeing thus, he warns of violent things], Raphael’s concetto in engraved form shows Cupid battling the elements on a hostile sea, his attributes pressed to emergency use.16 14. Praz, 112; Vaenius 1996, 15, 20. 15. See Huber, cat. no. 3918. 16. For this engraving, see www.warburg.sas.ac.uk/vpc/VPC_search/record. php?record=18473. A bronze plaquette based upon Da Ravenna’s engraving was made by Andrea Riccio in the early sixteenth century: see British Museum Inv. 1915, 1216.94.



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Fig. 2. Otto Vaenius: “Via Nvlla Est Invia Amori” (1608), engraving. The handwritten inscription below the pictura reads: “Il ny a aucun chemin inaccessible l’amour” [There is no path which is inaccessible to love]. (Photo courtesy of the Emblem Project Utrecht.)

The notion of Cupid as sea-borne is ubiquitous in the visual arts—dictated by his pelagic inheritance through Venus. We find him everywhere: from riding upon dolphins like Arion to sporting in the spume, to floating upon cockleshells, frolicking in the shallows, and flying above windwhipped Venuses. But the iconography of Cupid sitting on his quiver as a kind of raft is absolutely specific to Raphael, although it was undoubtedly Vaenius who popularized it and gave it impetus in succeeding centuries. It formed part of the repertoire of the Amoris divini emblemata of 1615— though it was Anima who took to the waves here—and Raphael Custos’s Emblemata amoris of 1622.17 It was taken over into other emblem collections as well, memorably Nicolaus Person’s Symbolica in thermas et acidulas reflexio of 1690.18 The emblem had some currency in material culture, too, and it is interesting to note that this is the only emblematic motif from Vae17. 18.

See Vaenius 1660, 102–3; and Henkel and Schöne, col. 1763. Van Dongen 2002, 240–41; Van Dongen 2012, 294–95.

148 EMBLEMATICA nius that persisted in jewellery design of the mid-Victorian period.19 An older instance of its use on an enamelled lady’s watchcase dating from around 1690 by the Huguenot watchmaker Nicholas Massy was noticed some years ago. Perhaps compositional considerations persuaded Massy to choose this emblem for the circular form of a watchcase; Cupid’s curved back and billowing bandage lend themselves to the self-enclosing demands of the tondospace (fig. 3). The watchcase lacks a scriptura—evidently another concession to the reFig. 3. Nicholas Massy: Lady’s enamelled watchcase strictions of space. However, it (c.1690). (Photo courtesy of the Department of is perhaps possible to surmise Western Art, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.) that the expository disquisition on love was articulated by the lover upon presenting his gift to the beloved (McKeown 2002, 9–10). Against such a rich heritage of symbolic signification, what conclusions can be drawn regarding Hoare’s use of this image’s iconography in his portrait of his patron’s son? Some of the overtly amorous intentions discernible in Massy’s deployment of the emblem cannot apply here: the tender age of the sitter, and the fact that Henry Hoare was not pursuing dynastic marriage negotiations on his son’s behalf, argue against such a reading. Iconographically, too, the excision of the beloved lady awaiting Amor on the distant shore closes off the possibility further. Yet, systematic stylistic analysis of the painting clearly shows that Hoare made direct use of Vaenius’s rendering of the theme. The ties of the blindfold around Amor’s waist, the relationship between the billowing blindfold and the tips of Amor’s wings, the recurve type of bow Amor uses as his oar, and the configuration of the feet all point to a direct link between the two depictions. But while it is 19.

The motif appears on a number of cameo brooch designs of the middle decades of the 1800s.



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clear that Hoare has followed in Vaenius’s visual footsteps, it is far from certain that the meaning, or “idea,” intended by the iconography is equally reliant upon the source. With an erotic context unlikely, is it appropriate to conjecture that the analogy of Henry Merrick Hoare with Cupid more concerned the lad’s mischievous and endearing character? Was his minority status within the family a reason why he was assigned the role of the infant god within the pantheon? Is it even possible to say for sure whether Henry Hoare was the instigator of his son’s Cupid-persona? Did the master of Stourhead know Vaenius’s book? Certainly, the house once had a large library, amassed chiefly by Richard Colt Hoare, famous in his own right as a pioneering antiquarian and archaeologist. This library was substantially broken up in 1883 as the result of a cash crisis at Stourhead; but its contents were recorded in a catalog dating from 1840.20 With only nine titles appearing (none of which are the Amorum emblemata, although there are three other emblem titles by Vaenius), it is clear that emblem books were not plentiful at Stourhead.21 But perhaps the patron’s role was less involved, and the boy’s turn as Amor was allotted by William Hoare. Perhaps the artist turned to Vaenius simply as a storehouse of amusing Cupid-models he could plunder for the task of apotheosizing his friend and patron’s child. There is no catalog of his library at Edgar Buildings, so it is unknown whether or not he owned a copy of the Amorum emblemata; and it should be stressed that nowhere else in his known oeuvre is there another explicitly emblematic image. It is true that Stourhead holds two allegorical pictures by Hoare that may be loosely characterized as “emblematical,” although the preferred term of the age was “fancy pictures.”22 One is entitled Spring, the other Summer, parts of an oft-repeated series of the Four Seasons that can be found across several English country houses; but Hoare’s allegorical convictions cannot be described as strong in either, and, indeed, his obliging 20. See Hoare 1840. 21. An Amsterdam 1684 edition of Emblemata Horatiana, the luxury Florence 1777 Mulinari edition of the same, and the para-emblematic Vita D. Thomae Aquinatis of 1610. Other emblematic books listed in the catalog include Baudoin’s Receuil d’Emblemes divers, Camilli’s Imprese, a 1727 edition of Horapollo, the 1764–1767 Perugia edition of Ripa in 5 volumes, and a 1625 edition of Valeriano. 22. The catalog from 1840 (see below) described these pictures as “two fancy subjects of Nymphs”: they are cataloged today as A Nymph: Spring, Stourhead, National Trust Inventory No. 730784; A Nymph: Summer, Stourhead; National Trust Inventory No. 730787.

150 EMBLEMATICA models, if they truly existed, uncomplainingly adjusted their dress accordingly for pictures like Woman at her Toilet and Woman at the Bath.23 All of these uncertainties mean that it is necessary to keep an open mind about whether the idea of using Vaenius’s emblem as the compositional source for the portrait originated with painter or patron. While this question remains unresolved, and is perhaps simply insoluble, we may observe that the exhibition of Hoare’s portrait at the Royal Academy in 1772 seems to have had some impact on other painters. Consider Richard Cosway’s 1778 historiated portrait of Richard Barry, 7th Earl of Barrymore, as Cupid, now known only through a mezzotint by Isaac Jehner (fig. 4).24 Floating Cupid may have run aground in Cosway’s image, but there is no mistaking the compositional indebtedness to Vaenius and stylistic obligation to Hoare. Yet a further instance of the reach of the emblematic Cupid afloat on his quiver is an anonymous painting that was sold at auction by Dreweatt Neate of Newbury, Berkshire on 3 March 1993.25 According to the catalog, Lot 128 that day was a picture of “Winged Cupid, sailing [a] boat with [a] quiver hull and [an] arrow mast.” It was thought to be “French school” and dating from c.1800. The question remains, however, whether this intriguing painting—current whereabouts unknown—was intended as a general, silent emblem of love’s resourcefulness, or if it is possible as well to detect the individuated features of an infant sitter. The case of the Stourhead picture takes on further significance when viewed against efforts to locate emblematical practices within the painting of eighteenth-century England, undertakings pursued most famously by Ronald Paulson in his 1975 book Emblem and Expression, and more recently by Amal Asfour and Paul Williamson in their provocative study from 1999, Gainsborough’s Vision (Paulson, passim; Asfour and Williamson, 23. 24. 25.

William Hoare of Bath, A Woman at her Toilet, Arlington Court, Devon; National Trust Inventory No. 988011; William Hoare of Bath, Woman at the Bath, Arlington Court, Devon; National Trust Inventory No. 988012. Isaac Jehner, Richard Barry, 7th Earl of Barrymore, after Richard Cosway, 1778; National Portrait Gallery, cat. no. NPG D21480. The sitter later acquired the epithet “Hellgate Barry.” See http://artsaleindex.artinfo.com/asi/lots/1970757 where there is an image of the painting. Dreweatt Neate (now called Dreweatt Bloomsbury) holds no records of its buyers stretching back before 2002.



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54–94; 226–75). In the latter book, the authors contend that Thomas Gainsborough was influenced by emblems that he might have encountered through family books from his Nonconformist upbringing (Asfour and Williamson, 79–94). These books included Quarles’s Emblemes and Bunyan’s Book for Boys and Girls, and the authors make a compelling case for urging the conceptual rapport between Gainsborough’s The Painter’s Daughters chasing a Butterfly and Bunyan’s emblem “Of Fig. 4. Isaac Jehner, after Richard Cosway, Portrait of Richard the Boy and the Butter- Barry, 7th Earl of Barrymore, as Cupid (1778), mezzotint. Fly,” down to the prox- (Photo courtesy of The National Portrait Gallery, London.) imity of the insect to the thorns and thistles of Bunyan’s text (Asfour and Williamson, 88–93). It might also be that Gainsborough was acquainted with Vaenius’s emblems, particularly his Amorum emblemata.26 If this is so, it would appear that Gainsborough was not unique among the artists of the age in borrowing unacknowledged compositional devices from printed sources, and the authors present the name of Sir Joshua Reynolds as representative of such 26.

Asfour and Williamson present a series of examples of Gainsborough’s work in which they see formalistic rapport with the compositions of Vaenius’s emblems; some of their pairings are more persuasive than others. See Asfour and Williamson, 93–94; 261–68.

152 EMBLEMATICA practices.27 That some of these borrowings should be of an emblematical nature is unsurprising, because late eighteenth-century painting was still haunted by allegorical and emblematic presences. A glance at works like Reynolds’s Portrait of James Beattie: The Triumph of Truth (1773) and Cupid as a Link Boy of around the same year suggests continuing apprehension and exploitation of two of the emblem’s dominant characteristics—its didacticism and its ambiguity.28 One authority convinced of the vitality of allegorized forms in the eighteenth century was the Scottish architect George Richardson, whose English version of Cesare Ripa was published as Iconology, or A Collection of Emblematical Figures in 1779. In his preface, Richardson justifies the role of the “emblematical” in the art of his day, arguing that the painter should “present to the understanding and judgement of the spectator, something more than is offered to the external eye; and in this attempt he will succeed perfectly, if he knows the right use of allegory, and is dexterous enough, to employ it as a transparent veil which rather covers than conceals his thoughts” (Ripa 1779, Preface). Richardson envisions an enriching role played by the symbolic form in contemporary painting, though he advises that it must not become the dominant note: such presences should instead lend color to the characterization of a portrait, for example, offering the judicious viewer a higher insight without obscuring the general painterly effect. Something of this method may be discerned in The Exercise of SeeSaw, a work by Francis Hayman of c.1742 (fig. 5).29 This example of English Rococo shows young men and women at play on a see-saw surrounded by dilapidated buildings. It was one of fifty panels painted by Hayman and others (possibly including Hogarth) for the backs of supper booths at the open-air pleasure grounds at Vauxhall.30 The theme of youthful play fits 27. 28.

29. 30.

The suggestion that Reynolds’s John Parker and his sister Theresa devolves from Vaenius’s “Amoris Securitas” from the Amoris divini emblemata (Asfour and Williamson, 269–71) is not wholly persuasive. Sir Joshua Reynolds, Portrait of James Beattie: The Triumph of Truth (1773), University of Aberdeen, cat. no. ABDUA 30003; Sir Joshua Reynolds, Cupid as a Link Boy (c.1773), Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, cat. no. 1945:2.2. Reynolds’s Cupid as a Link Boy evokes to this viewer something of the spirit of Vaenius’s shape-shifting Amor. Tate Britain, cat. no. T00524. These scenes hung at the back of a roofed structure that was open at the front to allow the occupants to watch the promenading haute monde. In the early stages



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Fig. 5. Louis Truchy, after Francis Hayman, The Exercise of See-Saw (1744), engraving. (Photo courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum, London.)

with other scenes in the series, which emphasizes a holiday atmosphere and blithe pastime in accordance with the pleasure ground setting; but when the image came to be engraved in 1744, its publisher, Louis Truchy, appended verses to the image that converts its generic character into a fully realized emblem:

Where at the top of her adventr’ous Flight The frolick Damsel tumbles from her Height: Tho her Warm Blush bespeaks a present Pain It soon goes Off – she falls to rise again; But when the Nymph with Prudence unprepar’d, By pleasure sway’d – forsakes her Honours Guard: That slip once made, no Wisdom can restore She falls indeed! – and falls to rise no more.31

of the evening, the panels were raised from view, and then later dropped to close off the back of the booth. Concerning the series, see Gowing. 31. http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hayman-see-saw-t00524/text-catalogueentry.

154 EMBLEMATICA Since Truchy offers his interpretation in an engraving—a cultural form both commercial and demotic—one may posit that his verses articulated what he considered to be a normative reading of Hayman’s imagery. In this, he exemplifies Richardson’s precept on exercising the “understanding and judgement” of the viewer. But even without Truchy’s helping hand, the image seems to intimate moralizing tendencies, which prompts consideration of the relationship Hayman invited his Vauxhall viewers to see between the moral dereliction of the frolicking damsel and the perilously eroded fabric of the buildings around her. Another way in which the “emblematical” could become manifest in the painting of the eighteenth century is through the vehicle of “imitation.” It is necessary, however, to differentiate between “imitation” and “mechanical copying” in the discourse of the age. Dr. Johnson famously defined “imitation” as a “kind of middle composition between translation and original design” ( Johnson, III, 176). This suggests a large measure of interpretative freedom on the part of the artist following the template of earlier lights, whereas “mechanical copying” carries with it notions of slavish dependence upon a source. However much admired, “imitation” seems closer to the “emulation” allowed by Walpole as a form of just imitatio in the Augustan mode. It was indeed Walpole who first noticed the extent to which Reynolds borrowed motifs and attitudes from other artists, and subsequent scholars have enjoyed spotting his sources, which include emblems by both Cats and George Wither (Walpole, I, 17; Paulson, 80–82). But Reynolds was often subtle in his visual quotations, choosing obscure and unobvious models for his inspiration, prompting Edgar Wind to suspect that Reynolds intended his borrowings to go unobserved (Wind, 182). But Reynolds was not hypocritical in his use of older visual and conceptual sources, and encouraged among his pupils the practice of infusing their compositions with gleanings from the greats, even to the extent of intermingling modern dress with allegorical figurations in their portraiture (Reynolds, 12–24). In 1774, Reynolds devoted his Sixth Discourse on Painting to the subject of “Imitation,” characterizing the practice of art as “intrinsically imitative” (Reynolds, 76). He goes on to describe how the artist through “the borrowing of a particular thought” must “enter into a competition with his original”; this he



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considers to be “that friendly intercourse which ought to exist between artists, of receiving from the dead and giving to the living” (Reynolds, 90, 91). Such imitation of a “thought,” according to Reynolds, is not theft, given the artful re-imagining the “idea” undergoes in the hands of the adept. For Reynolds, the crime lies less in the “borrowing” of the “idea” than in “the want of artifice to conceal” (Reynolds, 91). If it was a policy to “conceal” sources, perhaps one would be better served to consider rather the “idea,” the conceptual content of the original, when tracing the influence of such sources, tropes, or traditions. A painting by Reynolds serves to illustrate this point. Hope Nursing Love is one of the four paintings Reynolds displayed at the inaugural exhibition of the Royal Academy in 1769 (fig. 6).32 It was entered in the catalog as a “subject” picture, that is, a work of an allegorical character, and Reynolds seems to have intended to offer a contemporary representation of a somewhat old-fashioned theme. As the vehicle for this theme, Reynolds chose a young woman who had been exposed to public scrutiny in a different context just a few months earlier. His sitter was the daughter of a certain Valentine Morris who had reduced his family to ruin through rash improvements to his country estate in Wales. Miss Morris, financially embarrassed and with little but her beauty to recommend her, was persuaded to take to the London stage.33 Her début at Covent Garden in the role of Juliet on 29 November 1768 had been promoted some weeks in advance by the impresario George Colman, who stressed that the “Young Gentlewoman” had “never appeared on any Stage.” The element of risk in promoting an unproven talent before a London audience was positively pedalled by Colman as part of his pre-publicity; so, too was the actress’s delicacy and youth. In an “Occasional Prologue” penned by Colman, the settling audience was informed that: To-night a trembling Juliet fills the Scene, Fearful as young, and really not Eighteen; Cold Icy Fear, like an untimely frost, Lies on her mind, and all her powers are lost. 32. Sir Joshua Reynolds, Hope Nursing Love (1769), Port Eliot, Plymouth City Council Museum and Art Gallery, cat. no. A14. 33. Concerning Miss Morris, see Hallett, 42–48.

156 EMBLEMATICA ‘Tis your’s alone to dissipate her fears, To calm her troubled soul, and dry her tears. But with the cank’ring East, the infant rose Its full-blown honours never can disclose: Oh, may no envious Blast, no Critick Blight, Fall on the Tender Plant we rear tonight! So shall it thrive, and in some genial hour, The opening Bud may prove a beauteous Flower. (Colman, 181)

In the event, Colman’s gamble on his protégé did not pay off. James Northcote describes how through “the exceeding delicacy, of both her mind and body, she was overpowered by her timidity, to such a degree, that she fainted away on her first entrance on the stage, and with much difficulty was prevailed on to go through the part.”34 Miss Morris lasted only six performances, before a nervous collapse forced her to retire. Some three weeks later, Reynolds persuaded her into his studio for three sittings. She was evidently not in good health. The painting was hung at the Royal Academy in April 1769: on 3 May, four days after her likeness had gone on show, Miss Morris died at semi-rural Kensington, where she had retreated for its wholesome air. One may perhaps detect the spirit of the “sentimental” strain of eighteenthcentury anecdotalism here, but the career of Reynolds’s “Hope” was nonetheless piteously abbreviated. Reynolds’s painting of Miss Morris is particularly difficult to categorize generically. The 1769 catalog of the Royal Academy listed the painting as a “subject” picture because its theme is an allegorical abstraction. But the Fig. 6. Sir Joshua Reynolds, Hope Nursing Love (1769), oil on canvas. (Photo courtesy of Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery.)

34.

This performance was watched by Reynolds, Dr. Johnson, and Oliver Goldsmith, among others. See Northcote, 185.



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work can also be seen as a kind of disguised portrait, since Miss Morris had been something of a tragic sensation on the London theatrical scene in the last months of 1768. Visitors to the Royal Academy acquainted with Miss Morris’s history are most likely to have imposed their own ideas of what species of Hope was being shown in the picture. In a recent essay, Mark Hallett suggests that the picture allowed “Morris’s admirers to interpret the artist’s genteel subject as someone who, despite or because of her recent travails, still continued to embody and maintain Hope, and to stimulate Love—or, more particularly, to stimulate the odd fusion of paternal sympathy and erotic possessiveness with which she seems to have been regarded by her clutch of male supporters” (Hallett, 44–45). Once news of her sudden demise swept around town, Reynolds’s personification of Hope through the ill-starred actress must have seemed both poignant and darkly ironical. But the painting is ambiguous in other senses, too, and despite Reynolds’s moralizing title, his essentially emblematic theme is far from semiotically stable. There is no mistaking the erotic undercurrent to Reynolds’s image of Hope. Her ready identification with a beautiful actress who had been emphatically marketed as tender, blushing, and defenceless dissolves any pretence of an abstracted emblematic cipher. Despite its presentation as a “subject” painting, it comes close to the terms of the historiated portrait—this is Reynolds painting one of the celebrity beauties of the moment. But he also takes liberties with her posture that set the work apart from his regular portrait production. For example, Miss Morris has been asked to stretch herself backwards and raise her thighs in a manner contrary to all conventions of decorous portraiture. Indeed, the bodily abandon this bestows upon her frame recalls the reckless girl on the see-saw in Hayman’s painting for Vauxhall, whose posture, in conjunction with Truchy’s moralizing verses, provoke easy emblematic interpretation. Miss Morris is the central object of the viewer’s gaze, and the avid and urgent figure of Cupid at her bosom perhaps figures masculine agency in an erotic register, enacting the desires of the male imagination upon Hope’s passive form. Any sense of disquiet we may feel at Cupid’s physical intensity is relieved by Hope’s compliant hands, which tightly encourage his curly head to her bosom. Her dipping head, averted eyes, and parted lips reflect her breathlessness and red-cheeked modesty—the trembling passions of a heroine of the literature of Sensibility. It is true that Reynolds participated in, and helped to shape, a

158 EMBLEMATICA fashion in portraits of the 1770s that showed society ladies with their children in attitudes that sometimes alluded to the figure of Caritas or to the iconography of the Madonna and Child.35 But however these celebrations of the tendresses of motherhood might have played with such compositional conventions, they stopped short of presenting young mothers in the guise of Maria lactans. Retford has described shifts in attitude towards maternal breastfeeding at this precise historical moment in England, but there was no corresponding fashion for portraits of ladies demonstrating these progressive ideas (Retford, 12, 86–93).36 Of course, many of the painting’s early viewers would have seen the incongruity inherent in an image of a nursing infant and the virginal persona of Miss Morris. The young lady’s status as an actress explains at a stroke why Reynolds was able to depict his sitter in such a frank and extraordinary pose. Her compromised standing, in spite of all gallantries of address in her theatrical publicity, obviated the need for ordinary delicacy or discretion: as an actress, Miss Morris was not a society lady, and her ambiguous and liminal status afforded Reynolds the justification to pose her in a way that would never become part of the compositional repertoire of his society portraits. But the compositional liberties Reynolds exercises in his painting could be justified by his theme, the allegorical subject of Hope Nursing Love. Neither subject nor object in this painting was to be seen as stemming from the real world of The Strand or Covent Garden. The binary composition of a young lady entwined around a suckling winged infant was intended to convey the abstract notion that all projects of love must be founded upon hope of success. Ingenious as this formulation was, it was not Reynolds’s original conception. Such an iconographical pairing was already established by Cesare Ripa (fig. 7). In the first, unillustrated, edition of his Iconologia from 1593, Ripa observed that “Love without hope cannot come to the end of its desires,” and when his great work was first graced with woodcut plates in 1603, the image of Hope with a flying Cupid hovering at her bosom was chosen to illustrate the type for “Speranza,” even though Ripa’s main figura35. 36.

In this, he was following in the tradition of Peter Lely. One painting that does show a noblewoman suckling her infant, Lady Mary Boyle and her Son Charles by Godfrey Kneller and School, is considerably earlier and determinedly idiosyncratic. See www.historicalportraits.com/Gallery.asp? Page=Item&ItemID=231&Desc=Lady-Mary-Boyle-and-her-son-Sir-GodfreyKneller-Bt,-Studio-of



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tion of Hope deployed different iconography.37 Ripa’s text appeared in England in two notable editions, the first, Pierce Tempest’s Iconologia, or Moral Emblems of 1709, and the second, Richardson’s Iconology, or a Collection of Emblematical Figures of 1779; both included visual exempla of Hope as nursing mother.38 Unlike other images and concepts in Ripa, however, the notion of “Hope Nursing Love” did not foster wide imitation or adaptation, and when Reynolds exhibited his picture with this title in 1769, only the most alert of connoisseurs would have known that the French sculptor Jean-Jacques Caffieri had attempted the theme of “Hope Nourishes Love” in the very same year. Reynolds was therefore picking up on an “idea” or figuration that had few antecedents. One rare example was Vaenius’s emblem “Spes amoris nvtrix optima” [Hope is the greatest nursemaid of Love] (fig. 8).39 This emblem, which Vaenius may well have developed from the iconography in Ripa, depicts a bosky landscape with a plowed field and a sower; in the foreground a young woman leans over to offer her bosom to an upward reaching Amor.40 It is reductive to be doctrinaire over the question of whether Reynolds encountered the concept of “Hope Nursing Love” in Ripa, or in Vaenius, or in another place, but it is permissible to say that his Royal Academy painting reconfigures an “idea” very much conformable with the emblematic tradition. Reynolds is known to have had a liking for emblems, and indeed as a child drew pictures based on plates 37.

“. . . l’amore senza la speranza, non può venire à fine de desiderij”: Ripa 1593, 470. The woodcut image of Hope first appeared in Ripa 1603, 469; it was not until 1611 and the first Tozzi edition of Ripa that a discrete heading for “Speranza d’amore” appears. 38. Tempest’s text observes that Hope should be represented as “A young Woman dressed in green, crown’d with a Garland of Flowers; holding a little Cupid in her Arms, to whom she gives Suck. The Flowers denote Hope, they never appearing without some Hope of Fruit. The Cupid, that Love without some Hope, grows languid, and is not lasting; as on the contrary ‘tis desperate and soon at an End”: Ripa 1709, 72. 39. Concerning the French marble figure, see Jean-Jacques Caffieri, L’Esperance Nourrit L’Amour (1769) in the J. Paul Getty Museum, cat. no. 86.SA.703. The emblem is found in Vaenius 1608, 58–59. 40. That Vaenius knew the roots of the personification in Ripa is suggested by the figure of Spes holding the flower of a lily: in Ripa’s characterization of Speranza, the fully-flowered giglia is a symbol of the fulfilment of hopes: see Ripa 1593, 470. The sower, trusting the furrows to yield future crops, is a secondary symbolic detail typical of Vaenius’s emblematic picturæ.

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from a family copy of Jacob Cats’s complete works.41 Did his Dutch great-grandmother also own a copy of Vaenius’s love emblems that he might have known? Which emblem books sat on the substantial shelves of his father, a Devon schoolmaster, or the even larger library of his uncle, John Reynolds, Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, and Eton College?42 How well did Reynolds know the emblems books owned by his close friend, David Garrick, an avowed Fig. 7. Cesare Ripa, “Speranza” (1603), wood- collector of emblemata?43 Certaincut. (Photo courtesy of Sigismondo Nastri.) ly, there is no evidence of “Hope Nursing Love” constituting a topos in English painting before Reynolds; pertinently, in the wake of the picture’s exhibition at the Royal Academy, other artists did take it on, notably, Angelica Kauffmann and, improbably, George Stubbs.44 41.

As Northcote relates, “[Reynolds’s] first essays were made in copying several little sketches done by [his sisters]; he afterwards copied various prints he met with among his father’s books, such as those in Dryden’s edition of Plutarch’s Lives, and became particularly fond of the amusement. But Jacob Catts’ book of Emblems was his great resource, a book which his great grandmother, by the father’s side, a Dutchwoman, had brought with her when she quitted Holland”: see Northcote, 12. 42. No copy of Vaenius is found today among the Reynolds bequest at Eton College, although the librarian advises that not all books from John Reynolds’s library were transferred to College ownership. 43. Peter Thomson, “Garrick, David (1717–1779),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edition accessed 27 December 2014. Emblem books carrying Garrick’s Ex Libris can now be found dotted around the world, sometimes in university library holdings. 44. Angelica Kauffman, Hope Feeding Love (c.1773), private collection, United Kingdom; George Stubbs, Hope Nursing Love (1774), Victoria and Albert Museum, cat. no. P.3-1952.



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Fig. 8. Otto Vaenius, “Spes Amoris Nvtrix Optima” (1608), engraving. The handwritten inscription below the pictura reads: “L’esperance est la meillure nourice de l’amour” [Hope is the best nurse of love]. (Photo courtesy of the Emblem Project Utrecht.)

In the examples given above, the allegorical garb of both Miss Morris and Henry Merrick Hoare is lightly worn, and the didactic intentions expressed so intently in the images’ emblematic sources much muted. The conceptual debt William Hoare owes to Vaenius is transparent indeed; his adoption of Vaenius’s Cupid is wholesale and unmediated. With Reynolds, the indebtedness to earlier visual formulations seems to have been more successfully concealed; his borrowing is conceptual, the source obscured, and the compositional treatment of the theme substantially re-constituted. Hoare, in contrast, fully incorporates the emblematic conceit into his work, grafting the features of his sitter onto the essential template laid out in his source. For Reynolds, the approach was to internalize the concept of the emblem, its “idea,” and carry it over into a composition of his own devising. He dispenses with the expected emblematic signifiers in his figure of Hope: Miss Morris is not asked to pose with anchor, green gown, or spring shoot. Nothing betrays her identity as an allegorical type except for the title offered in

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162 EMBLEMATICA the catalog. The risqué and compromising nature of the young lady’s posture is thus adroitly explained away as the kind of imagery permissible to allegory and the emblem: no affront is made upon public decency because the young lady has been spirited from the social world to the insubstantial realm of the “idea.” The visual presentation is thoroughly rethought, that practice of disguise, concealment, and representation of which Reynolds spoke in addresses to his students. It might well be that the hunt for overt emblematic pictures in the art of eighteenth-century England is rarely going to present a case like that of Hoare’s portrait at Stourhead. But it would also be inappropriate to conclude that the emblem had been discarded early in the century: the force, if not the form of its “idea,” continued to find purchase in creative imaginations; and it is impossible to imagine an audience for Gillray or Rowlandson if something of the “emblematical” did not securely underpin the visual culture of the Georgian age.45

Works Cited Asfour, Amal, and Paul Williamson. Gainsborough’s Vision. Liverpool, 1999. Bath, Michael. Speaking Pictures: English Emblem Books and Renaissance Culture. London, 1994. Boswell, James. The Life of Samuel Johnson, ed. Claude Rawson. London, 1992. Colman, George. Prose on Several Occasions: Accompanied with Some Pieces in Verse. London, 1787. Corrozet, Gilles. Hécatomgraphie. Paris, 1540. Daly, Peter M. “What Happened to English Emblems during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries?” The Telling Image: Explorations in the Emblem, ed. Ayers L. Bagley, Edward M. Griffin and Austin J. McLean, AMS Studies in the Emblem 12. New York, 1996. Pp. 227–72. 45.

Concerning the emblem and the Georgian cartoon, see Manning, 210–19; and Nicholson. My thanks are due to Emily Blanshard of the National Trust at Stourhead, Wiltshire for allowing me access to the Hoare library’s books and papers; to Stephanie Coane, College Librarian at Eton College; to the staff at Dreweatts and Bloomsbury Auctions, Newbury, Berkshire; and to Sandra McKeown and Ben Giles.



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Dodd, Dudley, and Kenneth Woodbridge. Stourhead House. 2nd ed. London, 1997. Dongen, Wim van. “The Case of the Curious Cure: Vices and Virtues depicted in Hot Water Emblems.” Polyvalenz und Multifunktionalität der Emblematik. Acten des 5. Internationalen Kongresses der Society for Emblem Studies/Multivalence and Multifunctionality of the Emblem: Proceedings of the 5th International Conference of the Society for Emblem Studies, ed. Wolfgang Harms and Dietmar Piel, vol. 1, Mikrokosmos 65. Frankfurt-am-Main, 2002. Pp. 231–54. _____. “In the Bath with Otto: Otto Vaenius’s Emblems in Nicolaus Person’s Marketing Strategy.” Otto Vaenius and his Emblem Books, ed. Simon McKeown, Glasgow Emblem Studies 15. Glasgow, 2012. Pp. 275–306. Freeman, Rosemary. English Emblem Books. London, 1948. Gowing, Lawrence. “Hogarth, Hayman, and the Vauxhall Decorations.” The Burlington Magazine 95.598 (1953), 4–17, 19. Hallett, Mark. “The Academy Quartet: Joshua Reynolds in 1769.” Living with the Royal Academy: Artistic Ideals and Experiences in England, 1768–1848, ed. Sarah Monks, John Barrell and Mark Hallett. Farnham, 2013. Pp. 25–52. Henkel, Arthur, and Albrecht Schöne. Emblemata. Hnadbuch zur Sinnbildkunst des XVI. und XVII. Jahrhunderts. Stuttgart, 1967. Hoare, Sir Richard Colt. Catalogue of the Hoare Library at Stourhead, Co. Wilts. To which are added An Account of the Museum of British Antiquities: A Catalogue of the Paintings and Drawings and a Description of the Mansion by the late Sir Richard Colt Hoare, Bart. London, 1840. _____. A History of Modern Wiltshire. 11 vols. London, 1822–1843. Höltgen, Karl Josef. Aspects of the Emblem: Studies in the English Emblem Tradition and the European Context, Problemata Semiotica 2. Kassel, 1986. Huber, Michel. Catalogue Raisonné du Cabinet D’Estampes de feu Monsieur Winckler . . . contenant une Collection des Pieces Anciennes et Modernes de L’Ecole Italienne. . . . Leipzig, 1803.

164 EMBLEMATICA Johnson, Samuel. The Lives of the English Poets, ed. George Birkbeck Hill, 3 vols. Oxford, 1905. Katz, Wendy R. The Emblems of Margaret Gatty: A Study of Allegory in Nineteenth-Century Children’s Literature, AMS Studies in the Emblem 8. New York, 1993. Manning, John. The Emblem. London, 2002. McKeown, Simon. “An Emblematic Watchcase in Oxford.” The Society for Emblem Studies Newsletter 30 (2002): 6–11. McKeown, Simon, ed. Otto Vaenius and his Emblem Books. Glasgow Emblem Studies 15. Glasgow, 2012. Newby, Evelyn. William Hoare of Bath R.A., 1707–1792. Exhibition catalog, Victoria Art Gallery, Bath, 3 November–8 December 1990. Bath, 1990. Nicholson, Eirwen E.C. “Emblem v. Caricature: A Tenacious Conceptual Framework.” Emblems and Art History: Nine Essays, ed. Alison Adams and Laurence Grove, Glasgow Emblem Studies 1. Glasgow, 1996. Pp. 141–67. Northcote, James. The Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Late President of the Royal Academy. Comprising Original Anecdotes . . . and a Brief Analysis of his Discourses, 2nd ed. London, 1819. Paulson, Ronald. Emblem and Expression: Meaning in English Art of the Eighteenth Century. London, 1975. Porteman, Karel, introduction to Amorum emblemata (1608), by Otto Vaenius. Aldershot, 1996. Praz, Mario. Studies in Seventeenth-Century Imagery, 2nd ed., Sussidi Eruditi 16. Rome, 1964. Retford, Kate. The Art of Domestic Life: Family Portraiture in EighteenthCentury England. New Haven and London, 2006. Reynolds, Sir Joshua. Sir Joshua Reynolds’ Discourses, ed. Helen Zimmern. London, 1887. Ripa, Cesare. Iconologia, overo, descrittione dell’imagini vniversali cavate dall’antichita et da altri Lvoghi. Rome, 1593.



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_____. Iconologia, overo descrittione di diverse imagini cauate dall’antichità, & di propria inuentione. Rome, 1603. _____. Iconologia, overo, descrittione d’imagini delle virtù, vitij, affetti, passioni humane, corpi celesti, mondo e sue parti. Padua, 1611. _____. Iconologia, or Moral Emblems by Caesar Ripa . . ., ed. Pierce Tempest. London, 1709. _____. Iconology, or, a Collection of Emblematical Figures, moral and instructive . . ., ed. George Richardson. London, 1779. Shaftesbury, Anthony, Earl of. Second Characteristics or the Language of Forms, ed. Benjamin Rand. Cambridge, 1914. Vaenius, Otto. Amoris divini emblemata. Antwerp, 1660. _____. Amorum emblemata. Antwerp, 1608. _____. Amorum emblemata, with an Introduction by Karel Porteman. Aldershot, 1996. Walpole, Horace. Anecdotes of Painting in England: with Some Account of the Principal Artists, and Incidental Notes on Other Arts. 4 vols. Strawberry Hill, 1771. Wendorf, Richard. The Elements of Life: Biography and Portrait-Painting in Stuart and Georgian England. Oxford, 1990. Wind, Edgar. “‘Borrowed Attitudes’ in Reynolds and Hogarth.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 2 (1938–1939): 182–85.

Books and Buildings: Recursive Emblems in the Applied Arts MICHAEL BATH University of Glasgow

Emblems and epigraphic inscriptions both have an inherent capacity to sum up the mentality, ideology, or values of the building itself and its owner. The ways they do this in three particular buildings are analysed in the present article. In the decoration of the bunte Kammer at Ludwigsburg, Schleswig, several of the emblem picturæ borrowed from printed emblem books are adapted to represent the building itself, and, in one case, the actual room that contains them. Equally self-referential are several of the inscriptions painted above groups of related emblems in the painted closet of Anne Drury at Hardwick, Suffolk, where “Parva sed apta mihi” [Small but fit for me] sums up the modest pretensions of the room, while “Nunquam minus sola quam cum sola” [Never less alone than when alone] has been shown to change the gender of the adjectives to correspond to that of its female owner. A similarly self-reflective grammatical change to a borrowed emblem motto is that which accompanies the Horatian emblem, “Nihil amplius opto” [I choose nothing more], in Alexander Seton’s neo-Stoic long gallery at Pinkie House, Musselburgh, where the ending of Vaenius’s verb optat is changed from third- to first-person singular, thus attributing its utterance to the figure beneath it, in which Vaenius’s pictura has been altered to show a portrait of Seton himself. Such recursive moments of self-reflection may be rare, but they nevertheless underline the fundamental role that applied emblems tend to play in defining the functions of the buildings that contain them.

167 Emblematica, Volume 22. Copyright © 2016 by AMS Press, Inc. All rights reserved.

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he connection between emblems and the applied arts has always been rather close; indeed we know that before he produced his Emblematum liber in 1531, Alciato had been collecting—in his youthful “Monumentum veterumque inscriptionum Mediolani”—the inscriptions from ancient monuments in Milan. Pierre Laurens and Florence Vuilleumier showed us what role this collection of antique inscriptions had played in the invention of the emblem (Laurens and Vuilleumier-Laurens, 89–112). In copying not only inscriptions that he found on ancient Milanese stelae but also their symbolic reliefs, the young Alciato drew on his knowledge of the hieroglyphica. Because the Egyptian hieroglyphs were an ancient and ideographic sign system used primarily for writing on buildings, once that connection between emblematica and the hieroglyphica was accepted, the relationship between emblems and the applied arts was always going to be close. It is therefore not surprising that all the earliest statements of the availability of emblems for use in the applied arts appear to go back, as Pierre Laurens noted (Alciato 1997, 20), to Fasanini’s introduction to his influential Latin translation of Horapollo: Ex eodem, dicta brevia, aut notas quas in gladiis, annulis, reticulis, baltheis, cythara, lecticulis, tricliniis, laquearibus, stragulis, foribus, musaeo, mensa, speculis, cubiculo, conopeis, fictilibus, argenteisque vasculis affigant, plerique mutuari poterunt. Nec non quibus figuris cum pictis tum sculptis, secreta animi sui involucris quibusdam occludere, parietesque domesticos oblinere possint. (Drysdall 2013, 83) [From this same work many will be able to borrow short sayings or signs which they can inscribe on swords, rings, hairnets, belts, a cithara, on beds, couches, ceiling panels, carpets, doors, in the study, on a table, on mirrors, in the bedroom, [on canopies] on earthenware and silver vases. Indeed they could, with these signs both painted and carved, wrap their secret thoughts in veils and put them all over the walls of their houses.] (trans. Drysdall 2013, 83)

It was this copious listing of the variety of applications available to users of hieroglyphics that influenced the very similar descriptions that Alciato’s editors made as some kind of sales pitch for his emblems. Thus Rouille and Bonhomme, in the preface to their Lyons editions of the Emblemata, specify the range of applied arts that the book will serve:



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Etiam ille (inquam) usus est, ut quoties rebus vacuis complementum, nudis ornamentum, mutis sermonem, alogis rationem tribuere, aut certè affingere velit quispiam, is ex Emblematum libello, tanquam ex promptuario instructissimo habeat quod domesticis parietibus, vitreis fenestris, aulaeis, peristromatis, tabulis, vasis, signis, anulis sigillaribus, vestimentis, mensae, fulcro, armis, gladio, supellectili denique omni, nusquam non, inscribere, & impingere possit. (Alciato 1551, 4) [Indeed, I say, its use is that whenever the reader wants to add any kind of finish to empty things, decoration to something that is bare, speech to silent things, or assign an argument to the wordless, he will get these from the little book of emblems, as from a most instructive guidebook, which he can inscribe and insert on domestic furnishings, glass windows, in courtyards, hangings, on boards, vases, signs, signetrings, clothing, tables, supports, weapons, a sword, and in sum any kind of furniture.]

These are indeed among the documents that have provided justification for modern research into the historical use of emblems in the applied arts. Not all of these uses are strictly architectural, however, and we may well want to distinguish what Fasanini calls wall panels (parietes) or ceiling panels (laqueaeres) from movable furnishings or dress ornaments. Historical evidence that can tell us much about the architecture and use of a building will often also include its furnishings, which is why it is so important to know as much as possible about the provenance of decorative artifacts that have been removed from their original settings, either as a result of architectural conservation and salvage or in the relentless commodification of the art market by modern collectors and museums. In a key essay on the emblem and architecture, Wolfgang Harms is quite correct when he writes: “I advise against differentiating too stringently between emblematics of fixed architectural components and emblematics on movable components” (Harms, 9). Any consideration of the function of applied emblems used in or on historic buildings raises issues concerning the relationship between emblem books and architectural spaces, and the different ways that emblems function in each. Judi Loach cautions us about the tendency of emblem scholars to study buildings as though they were books: “The interface between two intellectual disciplines [i.e., emblem studies and architecture]” she writes, “must necessarily—if paradoxically—begin with a comparative

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examination of the two classes of material objects which they produced (books and buildings)” (Loach, 1). Books are not buildings and buildings are not books, and the key difference that Loach insists scholars need to allow for has to do with the three-dimensional nature of architectural spaces: one moves through a building in rather different ways from those which a reader takes through a book. Moreover, as she concludes: If one accepts that buildings are integrally linked with their physical and social locations, one will want to begin by conceptually reconstructing not only those locations as they physically existed, but also the civic community’s understanding of them (moulded above all by their common memory). It follows that any image or inscription carried by a building, whether by being affixed to the building, or by being represented by a building in its entirety, including through its (usually painted) representation, is necessarily anchored into a larger, and more complex, context than is the page in any book. (20)

That said, however, researchers surely need to bear in mind some of those received ideas that helped to support the close association between books and buildings in early-modern semiotics. These include not only the use of architectural loci in the memory arts (e.g., Bath 1994, 48–51; Bath 2003, 169–183; Gabriele 2013), but also the widespread use of architectural forms in the frontispieces of printed books (see Fowler 1999, 18–21). Something of the nature and complexity of this relationship emerges more clearly when we look at particular examples of the way buildings accommodate the emblems they have actually borrowed or adapted from emblem books. The emblematic decorations to be discussed in the remainder of this article survive in three different buildings, all of which have been the subject of recent emblem studies whose methodology and findings constitute the body of my evidence. The emblematic decoration of a building in Germany has attracted more scholarly study than almost any other. The 175 emblems that filled the wooden paneling in the bunte Kammer [decorated chamber] of the Ludwigsburg manor house near Eckernförde, in Schleswig, have been well documented in studies by Michael Schilling (1975), by Hartmut Freytag (1975 and 1994), and by Freytag, Harms, and Schilling (2001). The decorative painting has a somewhat exceptional importance for the understanding of the architecture of the building in this case because one of the emblems

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shows the actual building that originally contained it—the only surviving representation, as it happens, of the house as it was in the late seventeenth century, when it was still known by its original name, Kohöved (fig. 1). Some of the other emblems also use pictures of different parts of the building, external and internal, including the bunte Kammer itself. Clearly these pictures could not have been copied from any printed emblem book; however, it was Michael Schilling’s identifi1. “Semper prima, nunquam ultima,” emblem cation of one of the emblem Fig. L108 in the bunte Kammer, Ludwigsburg, showing books used as sources for this the frontage of the house as it appeared in the late decoration that first estab- seventeenth century. (Photo courtesy of Friedhelm Landesamt für Denkmalpflege Schleswiglished 1671 as a terminus post Schneider, Holstein.) quem for its painting, and this was confirmed when the date 1673 was identified on one of the emblems (Freytag, Harms, and Schilling 2001, 12). That date not only clarifies the wider historical—which means the political, doctrinal, and cultural—context of the original building and its emblems, but also allows us to identify the owner and patron who commissioned them. Friedrich Christian Kielmann von Kielmannseck (1639–1714) acquired the house in 1672 and made it his principal dwelling. He had travelled widely in Germany and Italy, where he became well read in politics, jurisprudence, and history before returning to play an important role at the court of Herzog Christian Albrecht at Gottorf (1641–1695). Freytag, Harms, and Schilling have shown in some detail just how closely the moral and political content of these emblems, once decoded, illustrates the values and principles of the house’s late seventeenth-century owner. Scholars are also extremely fortunate in having auction sale catalogues of Kielmann’s library. In these catalogues are listed no fewer than twenty-three of the em-

172 EMBLEMATICA blem books that provided sources for a majority of the emblems than can still be seen in the bunte Kammer (as well as for the twenty-five further panels now relocated to a different room).1 The contents of the original owner’s library are, of course, invaluable evidence of his (or her) education and tastes, but it is only rarely that they include copies of the actual emblem books used in its decoration. Ownership of such books suggests that, in these cases, the owner must have played a major role in designing the house’s decorative schemes, whatever the actual division of labor between the designer and the painter may have been. Equally rarely does one find any independent evidence of the house owner’s motivation in selecting particular emblems. However, we happen to know that when Friedrich Christian sent his three sons on their European travels in 1685 he gave them paternal instructions identifying not only the foreign languages they should acquire and the books they should read—from French, Italian, and Spanish literature—but also advice on good behavior, which he summed up by warning them to avoid the three “W”s, namely “Weiber, Wein, und Würfel” [Women, Wine, and Winnings, i.e., gambling]. As Freytag et al. point out (2001, 13), this advice echoes one of the emblems that their father included in his painted gallery: “Drey gefährliche W.” [Three Dangerous Ws] (fig. 2) is based on Harsdörffer’s emblem with this motto: “Die drey W.” (fig. 3). Harsdörffer illustrates the adage by showing a scantily clothed woman holding her glass of wine above three dice. The Kohöved emblem locates her in a richly decorated bedchamber whose wooden coffered ceiling is rather similar to the type of wooden paneling we can still see in the painted chamber itself. The adjoining panel to the left (Freytag et al. 2001) also shows what looks like a different view of the same chamber.2 1.

2.

Bibliothecae Kielmanns-Eggianae auction catalogues, Hamburg 1718–1721 and Hanover 1724, include emblem books by Johann Wilhelm Baur, Jakob Bornitz, Johan de Brune, Johann Theodore de Bry, Joachim Camerarius, Jacob Cats, Heinrich Engelgrave, Albert Flamen, Georg Philipp Harsdörffer, Daniel Heinsius, Peter Isselburg, Hadrianus Junius, Denis Lebey de Batilly, Johann Mannich, Matthäus Merian, Gabriel Rollenhagen, Diego Saavedra Fajardo, Florentius Schoonhovius, Jacob Typotius, Otto van Veen, and Julius Wilhelm Zincgref. Full details of these books and the panels at Kohöved for which they were the source can be found in Freytag, Harms, and Schilling 2001, 15–17. All references to individual emblems at Ludwigsburg will be cited hereafter parenthetically in the text according to the catalog by Freytag et al, here L39.



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Fig. 2. “Dreÿ gefährliche W.,” emblem L40 in the bunte Kammer, Ludwigsburg, bedchamber with nude woman holding a cup behind a gaming table with dice. (Photo courtesy of Friedhelm Schneider, Landesamt für Denkmalpflege Schleswig-Holstein.)

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Fig. 3. “Die drey W.” emblem from Georg Philip Harsdörffer, Geschichtspiegel: Vorweisend Hundert Denckwürdige Begebenheiten. Nuremberg 1654, p. 294. (Photo courtesy of Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel.)

Neither of these interior views copies Harsdörffer, and it is difficult not to associate them with other panels in the bunte Kammer, which represent actual rooms in Kohöved, the house that contained them (fig. 4). These include, most notably, a third emblem, “Non omnia possumus omnes” [We cannot all do everything] (Freytag et al., LB 6), showing a similarly schematic image that goes back to Zincgref, but which the Kohöved artist has placed in a room that is undoubtedly a representation of the painted chamber itself. And it is that reflexivity, that recursive self-reference, that characterizes this picture of the very room in which we, or at least in which the original viewers, would be standing to view these emblems. This, then, is not just a house that uses emblems for decorative purposes, but one where at least some of those emblems seem to be interested in turning the house itself into an emblem.

174 EMBLEMATICA The iconography of this particular emblem and the significance of the hand holding a bunch of keys over an open chest have been well explicated as keys to the whole emblem program of the bunte Kammer and the building that contains it (Freytag et al., 24–25). Zincgref justifies the “Non omnia possumus omnes” motto in his subscriptio, explaining that just as one key cannot open every lock, so different people need different skills to find their way in life—one may become a wise counFig. 4. “Non omnia possumus omnes,” emblem LB6 selor, another a fine orator, in the bunte Kammer, Ludwigsburg, showing the as the French epigram puts painted chamber itself with a hand-of-God holding a bunch of keys over the table on which is an open trea- it, or one may be skilled in art sure chest. (Photo courtesy of Friedhelm Schneider, (Kunst) and another in arms Landesamt für Denkmalpflege Schleswig-Holstein.) (Waffen), as the German subscriptio has it (fig. 5). We may well wonder whether it was this emblem’s application to what one would call vocational education that recommended it to Friedrich Christian Kielmann, for reasons very similar to those that led him to include the emblem of the “Three Dangerous Ws” in his gallery. Highly speculative though this suggestion is, it gains plausibility from the way this emblem has been altered, adapted, and redoubled in the bunte Kammer, for Zincgref ’s bunch of keys was originally painted on another panel, no. L71, where they hung in the sky above a landscape with buildings, one of which was arcaded (fig. 6). This panel copied Zincgref ’s original picture very closely, but modern conservation has revealed that the keys and the original “Non omnia possumus omnes” motto have both been painted over, presumably when the decision was taken to include them instead on panel no. LB6, which shows the painted chamber. It can only have been Kielmann who decided to re-



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Fig. 5. “Non omnia possumus omnes,” J. W. Zincgref, Emblematum Ethico-politicorum Centuria. Heidelberg 1619, repr. 1666, No. 80. (Photo courtesy of Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel.)

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Fig. 6. “Ni laxes rumpitur,” emblem L71 in the bunte Kammer, Ludwigsburg, showing a crossbow; the bunch of keys in the sky above it had been overpainted but was revealed during modern conservation, which also revealed behind the present motto the original, overpainted motto: Non omnia possumes omnes. (Photo courtesy of Friedhelm Schneider, Landesamt für Denkmalpflege Schleswig-Holstein.)

place the bunch of keys with a different motif in panel no. L71 and to give it a different motto, both of which are drawn from another emblem by Zincgref that shows a drawn crossbow with the motto “Ni laxes rumpitur” [If you don’t loosen it, it will break] (fig. 7). This intervention presumably meant redesigning and repainting the emblem while decoration of the room was in progress, and Kielmann’s motives for doing so are surely not beyond recovery. Placing these keys, with their original motto, in a representation of the bunte Kammer itself must have been a deliberate attempt to sum up the meaning and purpose of the room that now contains them. They have thus been brought indoors, where, one might think, they seem to be hanging from the ceiling. However, if we look more closely at the picture, we see that they are held by a celestial hand emerging from some curiously misplaced clouds. Although this might

176 EMBLEMATICA well be dismissed as merely an inappropriate relic of their original outdoor setting in Zincgref ’s landscape, there is no such hand-ofGod holding the keys in his pictura, and this addition surely has to be interpreted in context as suggesting that the choice of which door will open in this painted chamber, which profession will be found, or which treasure will be drawn from the treasure chest resting open-lidded on the table below the keys, is in God’s own hand. These choices might also lead to the discovery of which emblem or emblems address Fig. 7. “Ni laxes rumpitur,” J. W. Zincgref, Em- particular issues that concern us as blematum Ethico-politicorum Centuria. Heidel- individuals standing in this chamberg 1619, repr. 1666, No. 69. (Photo courtesy of Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel.) ber, a choice that would be equally appropriate, and equally recursive.3 Since there is so little eyewitness evidence of how early viewers used, read, or regarded the emblems they saw in a room such as this, we can only speculate. However, the fact that occupants and visitors to the bunte Kammer would inevitably be challenged to make sense of the 175 emblems surrounding them in this remarkable chamber persuaded Freytag, Harms, and Schilling to entitle their book Gesprächskultur des Barock. The term Gesprächskultur implies a culture of conversation (Gespräch) and recalls the title of Georg Philipp Harsdörffer’s Frauenzimmer Gesprächspiele (Nuremberg 1643–1649), volumes Kielmann owned (Freytag et al. 2001, 15). It is surely right to assume that such complex and learned schemes of interior design as this were intended to function as conversation pieces, in a similar type of social intercourse to that which characterized a French salon. This implies something about the type of chamber the decoration filled, since conversation is an activity that 3.

Such an invitation to readers to choose the particular emblem that speaks to their own condition might recall the lottery verses and lottery wheel that George Wither included in his Emblemes, 1635, see Bath 1994, 124–26.



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can only be carried out in more public rooms, open to educated members of the family and their friends or visitors. In Britain, the most public and sociable of apartments designed specifically for such physical and intellectual exercise are known as Long Galleries, chambers which, indeed, gave their name to, or shared it with, the spaces we now use uniquely for the display of pictures. Emblems also found their way into more private chambers, such as an “oratory,” in which one often performed private acts of devotion or spiritual exercises with the assistance of religious emblems. Equally private and rather more commonplace in buildings of this period was the room known as a “closet” and perhaps the best known example of such a room to have been decorated with emblems is that which used to be called “Lady Drury’s Oratory.” More recently, however, it has been recognized that this chamber is more accurately described as a “painted closet,” that is to say, a private apartment adjoining or leading into a bedroom. Like the bunte Kammer at Ludwigsburg, the painted closet of Lady Anne Bacon Drury can no longer be seen in its original setting, which was Hawstead House, Suffolk. In the early seventeenth century, the painted panels were moved to nearby Hardwick House (not to be confused with the better known Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire), and they are now displayed in the local museum—Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich—in what, as far as we can tell, is an accurate reconstruction of their original order. Rather like the bunte Kammer, this is a scheme whose meaning and purpose become easier to understand the more we know about its original owner, whose name is very appropriately identified with the closet itself in the title of the best and most recent study of it, The Painted Closet of Anne Bacon Drury (Meakin 2013). We know quite a lot about Anne Drury and her family, since she was related to leading members of the Elizabethan hierarchy. Her grandfather, Sir Nicholas Bacon, was Lord Keeper of the Seal to Elizabeth I, and his neo-Stoic and strongly emblematic Long Gallery (imitating Montaigne’s) at Gorhambury, Hertfordshire, was almost certainly some kind of model or precedent for his granddaughter’s emblematic decoration of her closet. Her interest in the visual arts is also likely to have been encouraged by her brother Nathaniel Bacon, reputedly the most accomplished amateur painter of his time in England, while her uncle was Francis Bacon, philosopher, author, and Lord Chancellor under James I. On account of her membership in such elite and highly educated circles, we should not be surprised to

178 EMBLEMATICA find her closet decorated with a series of emblems that do not copy existing models from the emblem books, but instead are original inventions whose iconography and mottoes show their designer’s familiarity with both classical and contemporary literature. This is a scheme in which the emblems are, and always were, grouped under Latin headers, or independent mottoes with no associated image. The close relations between emblems and inscriptions that we witnessed in Alciato’s collection of inscriptiones Milanesi would thus seem to persist, for this kind of inscription recalls classical epigraphy on buildings. The Latin motto that heads one group of panels, “Nunquam minus sola quam cum sola” [Never less alone than when alone] (fig. 8) is drawn from Cicero’s comment on the tranquil solitude to be enjoyed on one’s country estate with one’s library for company. The motto, in this case, is clearly referring to the very room itself, and to the fact that the closet was a room to which one retired from company: closets are less public rooms than galleries, and they were commonly treated as private, with outside access tightly controlled. Cicero’s self-referential comment nevertheless sums up the neo-Stoic spirit in which ancient domestic buildings so often appealed to their owners: Renaissance architects, and their Humanist clients, loved to put such inscriptions on their buildings. So, rather like those two emblems which, at Ludwigsburg, show images of the house itself, as well as the actual room, this is a motto that the reader who has read his (or in this case certainly her) Cicero would recognize as similarly recursive and self-referring. In addition, as I noted when reviewing Meakin’s book in the previous issue of this journal (Bath 2014), perhaps the most interesting aspect of this motto at Hawstead is the way in which the adjective solus is changed to reflect the gender of the house’s owner: Cicero wrote “Nunquam minus solus, quam cum solus,” whereas Anne Drury’s version reads “Nunquam minus sola, quam cum sola” (feminine instead of masculine gender). Drury’s decision to do so is compelling evidence that this chamber was intended for her use and no one else’s. As Meakin puts it: “her adaptation is, as it were, a kind of self-authorization: never less alone than when a woman alone” (2013, 107). The gender issues raised by this adaptation might extend to wider functional differences between public and private apartments in secular buildings, since it would be some time before women would normally be encouraged or permitted to join in the kinds of debate and discussion that characterize the “culture of conversation” even if, as Harsdörffer’s title insists, the type



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Fig. 8. “Nunquam minus sola quam cum sola” [Never less alone than when alone], inscription above grouped panels of emblems from Lady Drury’s painted closet, Hardwick House, Suffolk. (Photo courtesy of Colchester and Ipswich Museum Service.)

of conversation games (Gesprächspiele) facilitated by his particular emblems were already open to women (Frauenzimmer). That educated women already had an active or growing interest in such inscriptions in galleries is also suggested by the fact that it was Lady Jane Lumley who visited the Long Gallery of Sir Nicholas Bacon and requested a copy of the sentences it contained, a copy that remains our major source of information on its decoration and design.4 Equally self-referential is the governing sentence above another set of emblems at Hardwick, which has to be read as referring to the room of 4.

Meakin 2013, 8. British Library, MS Royal 17 A. XXIII is the illuminated manuscript containing the inscriptions made by Sir Nicholas Bacon for his friend Lady Jane Lumley “At her desire.”

180 EMBLEMATICA which it is a part—not only in the closet itself but also in the source from which Lady Drury borrowed it, since, as Meakin shows, “Parva sed apta mihi. . .” quotes Sir John Harington’s record of the verses that Ariosto carved above the door to his house in Ferrara, an inscription designed to stress the modesty of his dwelling: “Parva, sed apta mihi, sed nulli obnoxia, sed non / Sordida. . . . That is to say ‘This house is small, but fit for me, but hurtful Fig. 9. “Parva sed apta mihi: nec tamen hic requies” unto none’” (fig. 9) As Mea[Small, but fit for me, and yet I find no rest here], kin says, “Ariosto’s words . . . panels from Lady Drury’s painted closet, Hardwick House, Suffolk. (Photo courtesy of Colchester and recall the famous anecdote of Ipswich Museum Service.) Sir Nicholas Bacon’s response to the Queen’s comment that his house (Gorhambury) was too small for him: ‘Madam, it is you who have made me too large for my house’” (Meakin, 209). Harington was, of course, the Elizabethan translator of Orlando furioso and Sir Nicholas Bacon was Lady Drury’s grandfather. Another self-referential and definitive epigraph is the governing sentence to the fifth group of panels at Hardwick, “Amplior in cœlo domus est” [A larger home is in heaven], which has biblical echoes though no direct biblical source. What such identification of sources reveals is, of course, the relationship between books and buildings. We know from the 1624 inventory that Lady Drury had a “library” in her closet, and although there is no record of any emblem books, Meakin’s research succeeds in showing very precisely how the invention of the emblems that decorated her closet has its origins in books that she must have owned or read. Their design follows the same processes of recognition and recycling of loci communes used in commonplace rhetoric. Meakin is therefore right to characterize the closet itself as primarily a “rhetorical space” in which its owner invented, memo-



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rized, and reflected on these sententiae and emblems of her own devising which spoke to her own circumstances and values in a type of Renaissance self-fashioning (Meakin 115). The characterization of the closet as a kind of three-dimensional commonplace book narrows somewhat that distinction between books and buildings that we found Judi Loach insisting on. Even if, as Meakin shows, these self-referential texts at Hardwick often seem to have some relevance to the particular emblems grouped beneath them, the fact that all three take the form of epigraphic inscriptions—with no accompanying picturæ of their own—confirms the close connections between epigraphy and emblem noted earlier. While they might also reflect the values of a building’s owner or inhabitants, one of the most common functions of such inscriptions was to define the status or function of the building itself. That may be why we find emblems interspersed with unillustrated moralizing inscriptions in the third of the great houses I want to examine in this paper, a house whose decoration has some claim to be regarded as the most self-conscious of all three of these examples. The decorated Long Gallery built in 1613 by Alexander Seton, first Earl of Dunfermline, in Pinkie House, Musselburgh (Lothian) uses Roman majuscule lettering in a trompe l’oeil setting of false architecture, whose columns, lanterns, and ribwork accentuate the monumentality of the inscriptions (fig. 10). The emblem picturæ help to confirm that this extraordinary apartment is a deliberate renovatio of the ancient Athenian stoa poikile (painted gallery) in which Zeno did his philosophical teaching and from which Stoicism got its name. For this reason, such a space was always described as a picture gallery whose paintings were used as teaching aids. Emblems and inscriptions alike in Pinkie House define a strongly neo-Stoic philosophy, and the trompe-l’oeil inscriptions in the gallery are indistinguishable in epigraphic point and neo-Stoic morality from those that Seton carved on the building’s exterior (Bath 2003, 96–103). These are notably concerned with defining the nature of the building itself: “Dominus Alexander Setonius hanc domum ædificavit, non ad animi, sed fortunarum et agelli modum,” [Master Alexander Seton built this house, not as he wished but according to his means and as the site allowed] (1613) is the modest claim that originally confronted visitors approaching

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Fig. 10. Part of arcaded long gallery painted with emblems and inscriptions, Pinkie House, Musselburgh (Lothian). (Photo courtesy of Historic Scotland.)

the house.5 Much more definitive is the inscription Seton had carved over the gateway to his garden, which defines his house as a Plinian villa suburbana to which he escapes from the turmoil of the city to cultivate the peaceful and humane arts of civilization (Bath 2013, par. 16). Of a piece with these is the inscription in the Long Gallery itself, which advises that “We should care more about living in happy than in spacious dwellings: often travail and sorrow dwell in palaces, peace and joy in cottages” [Curandum magis ut lætequam ut late habitemus. sæpe in palatiis labor et dolor in tiguriis quies et gaudium habitant] (fig. 11). This is, in fact, a quotation from Petrarch, De remediis utriusque fortunae (I. 34), and, like the other inscrip5.

Though no longer visible, the inscription is recorded in George Seton’s Memoir of Alexander Seton, 1882, p. 176.



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tions interspersed among the emblems in the Long Gallery,6 would probably have been drawn from Seton’s commonplace book, using the familiar techniques of commonplace rhetoric that Seton learned as part of his Jesuit education in Rome. It is, however, the self-reflexive nature of these inscriptions, as they comment on the building of which they are a part, or on the values and pretensions of its owner, that highlight their strictly architectural value; their self-conscious Fig. 11. “Curandum magis ut læte quam ut late habiteneo-classicism is, of course, mus sæpe in palatiis labor et dolor in tuguriis quies et habitant” [We should care more about living fundamental to this. Such gaudium in happy than in spacious dwellings: often travail and introvertive tendencies are sorrow dwell in palaces, peace and joy in cottages], inreflected particularly clear- scription from Pinkie House, Long Gallery, quoting De remediis utriusque fortunae, I. 34. (Photo ly in what is undoubtedly Petrarch, courtesy of author.) among the most fascinating and remarkable alterations Seton makes to one of his neo-Stoic emblems in the gallery, where, as I discovered some years ago (see Bath 2003, 81–83), Otto van Veen’s Horatian emblem showing the wise man who drinks only 6.

Few of these have yet been sourced, and some certainly appear to be original, though one (Seton 1887, no.5), “Natura necessaria docuit quæ sunt pauca et parabilia, stultitia superflua excogitavit quæ sunt innumera et difficilia” [Nature has taught us what things are necessary, which are few and easily obtained; folly has devised superfluities, which are innumerable and difficult to obtain], quotes Juan Luis Vives, Introductio ad sapientiam, adage no. 102. Another (Seton no. 11), “Utile est ad usum secundorum per adversa venisse” [It is valuable to have come into good fortune through adversity] quotes Pliny the Younger, Panegyricus Traiani, XLIV. Seton no. 37, “Placeat homini quicquid Deo placuit hoc suadet ratio quam qui amat contra durissima armatus est” [Whatever pleases God should also be pleasing to man; reason argues thus and whoever loves reason is armed against the hardest things], quotes Seneca, Epistolæ ad Lucilium, LXXVI.

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Fig. 12. “Nihil amplius opto” [I choose noth- Fig. 13. “Quod satis est cui contingit niing more], Pinkie House, Long Gallery detail. hil amplius optat” [He who has enough (Photo courtesy of author.) within reach chooses nothing more], Otto van Veen, Emblemata Horatiana. Antwerp, 1512, p.113. (Photo courtesy of Emblematica Online: Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign.)

in moderation, while his greedy companion drowns in the river of excess, is adapted to show Vaenius’s man of moderation as a portrait of Alexander Seton himself (figs. 12– 14). Although it is extremely rare, if not unique, to find a patron’s portrait in decorative painting of this period in Britain, this self-referring emblem is clearly not dissimilar in its motivation and architectural function to the way Christian Friedrich Kiehlmann’s picture of the Fig. 14. Marcus Gheeraerts, Alexander Seton, First Earl of Dunfermline, 1610. Edinburgh, bunte Kammer worked within the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. painted Gesprächskultur of his house

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at Kohöved. And it is certainly very similar to the inscriptions in Anne Bacon Drury’s closet, which speak so eloquently, if teasingly, about the closet’s function as such. All of these self-referring decorative details define the building’s relation to its owner, or its owner’s relation to the building, and the motto change to Alexander Seton’s Horatian emblem of neo-Stoic moderation bears an almost uncanny resemblance to the change we have seen Anne Drury making to the motto she borrowed from Cicero, where she changed the Latin case ending solus to sola—masculine to feminine gender—in order to insist on the identification of her closet with herself, “Nunquam minus sola quam cum sola.” So likewise Seton’s motto “Nihil amplius opto” [I choose nothing more] changes the person of the verb, for Horace wrote: “nihil amplius optat” [he chooses nothing more], referring to the moderate drinker by the fountain in the third person, while Seton’s change to the motto, which encircles the head of his self-portrait in his long gallery, reinforces his own identification with the adage, which he now voices in propria persona. The coincidence of two very slight yet momentously significant changes to a sourced motto in decorative painting is remarkable. We therefore need to ask whether Seton could have known anything of Anne Drury’s painted closet at Hardwick House. Anne Drury was certainly never in Scotland. Seton, however, spent time in England following the Union of the Crowns in 1603. Indeed, in 1604–1605 Seton served in London on the Commission set up by King James to secure a closer union of the two kingdoms, that deeper statutory union, which, as things turned out, only came about in 1707 and which the recent 2014 Scottish referendum on independence has challenged. It was King James’s earnest desire for political union that led him to raise Alexander Seton to the Earldom of Dunfermline and to give him a key role on the Commission, where, as Chancellor of Scotland, his job was to represent Scottish interests. On the English side it was Sir Francis Bacon who had long been a leading advocate of such a union, serving on the same Commission and writing his Preparation Toward the Union of the Laws of England and Scotland to show the king how practical it would be to adapt English law to Scots jurisprudence.7 Bacon was knighted in 1603 and became Solicitor General in 1607. Moreover, he had grown up with his elder brother Anthony in his father’s house at Gorhambury near St Al7.

See Bacon 1753, 137–45.

186 EMBLEMATICA bans (Lat. Verulam), Hertfordshire, taking possession of it in 1601 upon his brother’s death. In the following years, he restored and improved the decayed building and created an elaborate water garden on the estate: his associated essay “Of Gardens” remains one of the key documents for our understanding of garden history during this period (Henderson 1992). Alexander Seton must have been in contact with Francis Bacon at this time in London, and indeed, his subsequent restorations and improvements at Pinkie, including its once celebrated garden, certainly resemble Bacon’s. The association between these two activities—planning the future of the kingdom and building one’s own estate—may well have been closer than it seems to us, and not simply a matter earning enough through public service to pay for prestigious buildings. Built on the site of the last battle—the battle of Pinkie Cleugh—ever to be fought between the two nations, there is now good reason to believe that Seton’s building at Pinkie was designed above all to celebrate precisely that closer union of the two kingdoms after centuries of competition and conflict (see Bath 2013). The possibility that Pinkie House owes much of its architectural idealism to the Bacons’ house at Gorhambury is perhaps suggested by the fact that the neo-Stoic Long Gallery—which Sir Nicholas built to impress Queen Elizabeth on her second visit in 1577—happens to be the only other such gallery that has so far been claimed to imitate or recreate the ancient Athenian painted gallery in which Stoicism originated and from which it took its name (McCutcheon 1977; Bath 2003, 96–99). John Aubrey tells us that Gorhambury had inscriptions not only in or on the building, but also in its garden: “The garden is large, which was (no doubt) rarely [i.e., excellently] planted and kept in his Lordship’s [i.e., Sir Francis’s] time. Here is a handsome Dore, which opens into Oake-wood; over this dore in golden letters on blew are six verses” (Aubrey 1962, 123). Similarly, we know from Sir John Lauder’s description of the garden at Pinkie, which Lauder visited in 1668, that the previously quoted inscription describing his house as a Plinian villa suburbana was originally inscribed “in golden letters” above the outer gate to the garden.8 8.

For the Pinkie garden and its inscriptions, see Marilyn Brown, Scotland’s Lost Gardens: From the Garden of Eden to the Stewart Palaces, Edinburgh 2012. Also David Allen, “‘A Commendation of the Private Countrey Life’: Philosophy and the Garden in Seventeenth-century Scotland,” Garden History 25 (1997): 59–



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There is, moreover, one emblematic detail—hitherto unnoticed—in both of these neo-Stoical galleries that strengthens the likelihood that Seton’s gallery copied Bacon’s. The only surviving historical record of the Gorhambury gallery and its emblems apart from the manuscript (London, British Library, MS Royal 17 A. XXIII) that Sir Nicholas Bacon made for his friend Lady Jane Lumley is John Aubrey’s. In his biographical sketch of Sir Francis Bacon, Aubrey describes “a noble Portico” that Sir Francis added to his father’s house after he had inherited it from his brother Anthony in 1601: The Lord Chancellor [i.e., Sir Francis] made an addition of a noble Portico, which fronts the Garden to the South; opposite to every arch of this Portico, and as big as the arch, are drawn by an excellent hand (but the mischief of it is, in water-colours) curious pictures, all Emblematicall, with Motto’s under each. For example, one I remember is a ship tossed in a storm, the Motto, Alter erit tum Tiphys (‘There will then be another Tiphys’)” (Aubrey 1962, 123).

The only other place where an emblem with a motto naming the pilot of the classical Argonauts is to be found in Britain is, as it happens, in Seton’s Long Gallery, where “Sit Virtus Tiphys” [Let Tiphys be Virtue] shows Occasio standing with her sail on a ship that is being steered by the seated figure of Virtus (fig. 15). The emblem goes back to Cicero’s adage “Virtute duce comite Fortuna” [Where Virtue leads, Fortune follows]. In the emblem books, a version of this can be found in Ruscelli’s Imprese Illustri (Venice, 1566, 517) with the motto Utrivsque Auxilio [Each a helper for the other], but it was also used as the mark of the de’Francesci printers in Venice (Bath 2003, 92), and among the books that they printed was Palladio’s I Quattro libri dell’Architettura (Venice, 1570), where it lacks any motto. We now know that the remarkable number of books on architecture that Seton owned at Pinkie included a copy of “Architectura di Palladio folio” (Davidson 2015, 336), and it seems likely, if this was a copy of the Franceschi edition, that it would have been Seton’s source for the “Sit Virtus Tiphys” emblem in his gallery (fig. 16). Since he had to find his own motto for this emblem, he drew on the legend of the Argonauts in their quest to find the Golden Fleece. Neither Ruscelli’s version of this emblem nor any 80; Allen makes a case for neo-Stoicism as the philosophical basis for gardening more generally at this period in Scotland.

188 EMBLEMATICA other that I have so far identified makes any mention of the helmsman, Tiphys, but as we have seen, Aubrey affirms that the Gorhambury motto also named Tiphys, meaning that it too associated this emblem with the Argonauts’ expedition. Hence we have another remarkable coincidence between these two galleries, and the idea that Seton was familiar with Bacon’s gallery and may have been inspired by it seems all the more likely. Aubrey describes the Gorhambury ship as “tossed in a storm,” which is not quite Fig. 15. “Sit Virtus Tiphys” [Let Tiphys be Vir- what we see in Seton’s painting tue]. Pinkie House, Long Gallery detail. (Photo at Pinkie, though there are cerby author.) tainly waves breaking on the hull of the ship. The relationship between Virtus (human power and/or virtue) and Fortuna was a commonplace topic in classical rhetoric, with examples from Ovid as well as Cicero influencing further emblems such as Alciato’s “Virtute fortuna comes” [Fortune the companion of Virtue] (fig. 17). It often had political applications in relation to the governance of the state, which would have appealed to Seton and Bacon alike in their common endeavor to achieve that union of the two kingdoms for which they had both worked as members of the royal Commission of 1604–1605. Anne Bacon Drury’s painted closet certainly also reflects the emblematic decoration of her grandfather’s gallery at Gorhambury, but whether Seton knew anything of it when painting his own gallery some time after 1613 can only be speculation.9 9.

Sir John Cullum affirms that Anne Drury’s painted closet was painted before the Druries moved, in 1609, from their ancestral home, Hawstead, to Hardwick; it therefore almost certainly antedates Seton’s gallery at Pinkie (see Meakin 2013, 2). We should also bear in mind that, if Aubrey is to be trusted, the emblem “Alter erit tum Tiphys” at Gorhambury was not in Sir Nicholas Bacon’s Long Gallery of 1577 but in Sir Francis’s arcaded portico, below the gallery, which must have been added after 1601.



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Fig. 16. Andrea Palladio, I Quattro Libri Fig. 17. “Virtute fortuna comes” [Fortune dell’Architetura, Venice, 1570, engraved title the companion of Virtue], Alciato, Empage. (Photo courtesy of Glasgow Univer- blematum libellus, Paris, 1534, p. 22. sity Library.)

The relationship between books and buildings that use emblems is therefore often more complex and subtle than one might think. While it is certainly true that the way emblems are displayed or deployed in architectural spaces is fundamentally different from the way (or ways?) they are ordered in books, we should not underestimate the extent to which the owners or architects of “Renaissance” buildings drew on their reading of ancient and modern literature in their attempts to define the ethos of the building itself or the values of its owner. Owners of houses have always been anxious to keep up with their friends and neighbors, which explains why we sometimes find decorative schemes that share particular details with no common source, as far as one can tell, in prints or pattern-books. Nevertheless, clearly the first thing we have to do in uncovering, conserving, or interpreting emblems that decorate a building is to identify any sources or analogues they may have in the emblem books—iconography is essentially interdisciplinary since inherited visual motifs are so often based on literary, proverbial, or historical models. Hence, in the early modern period especially, decorative schemes are always likely to have affinities with school rhetoric, and when they use emblems, they are likely to draw on the rhetorical training that

190 EMBLEMATICA accustomed educated owners and their architects to recognize, recycle, and redeploy classical adagia and the loci communes; inscriptions declaring the modest pretensions of the building, such as those we have seen at Hardwick and at Pinkie are, of course, not only conventional but highly rhetorical. The close affinity between emblems and epigraphic inscriptions plays a key role since both have an inherent capacity to sum up the mentality, ideology, or values of the building itself and its owner. Such recursive moments of self-reflection as those identified in the three buildings discussed in this paper are certainly rare and exceptional. They are, I suggest however, only taking to its logical conclusion one of the fundamental relations between books and buildings when the latter use emblems.

Works Cited Alciato, Andrea. Emblematum libellus. Paris, 1534. See http://www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/alciato/books.php?id=A34b&o= _____. Emblemata. Lyons, 1551. See http://www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/ alciato/books.php?id=A51a&o=. _____. Les Emblèmes, ed. Pierre Laurens. Paris, 1997. _____. “Monumentorum veterumque inscriptionum quae cum Mediolani tum in eius agro adhuc extant collectanea.” Dresden, Sächsische Landesbibliothek, ms. F 892 b. Allen, David. “‘A Commendation of the Private Countrey Life’: Philosophy and the Garden in Seventeenth-century Scotland.” Garden History 25 (1997): 59–80. Aubrey, John. Aubrey’s Brief Lives, ed. Oliver Dick. Harmondsworth, 1962. Bacon, Francis. The Works of Sir Francis Bacon. London, 1753. Bath, Michael. Speaking Pictures: English Emblem Books and Renaissance Culture. London, 1994. _____. Renaissance Decorative Painting in Scotland. Edinburgh, 2003. _____. “Philostratus Comes To Scotland: A New Source for the Pictures at Pinkie.” Journal of the Northern Renaissance 5 (2013). See http:// www.northernrenaissance.org/philostratus-comes-to-scotland-anew-source-for-the-pictures-at-pinkie/.



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_____. “H. L. Meakin. The Painted Closet of Lady Anne Bacon Drury.” Review article, Emblematica 21 (2014): 399–407. Brown, Marilyn. Scotland’s Lost Gardens: From the Garden of Eden to the Stewart Palaces. Edinburgh, 2012. Davidson, Peter. “Alexander Seton, First Earl of Dunfermline: His House, his Library, his World.” British Catholic History 32 (2015): 315– 42. Drysdall, Denis L. “Filipo Fasanini and his ‘Explanation of Sacred Letters.’” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 13 (1983): 127–55. Repr. Drysdall, Hierloglyphics, Speaking Pictures, and the Law: The Context of Alciato’s Emblems, Glasgow Emblem Studies 16. Glasgow, 2013. Pp. 75–94. Fowler, Alastair. “The Emblem as a Literary Genre.” In Deviceful Settings: The English Emblem and its Contexts (Proc. 3rd International Emblem Conference, Pittsburgh, 1993), ed. Michael Bath and Daniel Russell. New York, 1999. Pp. 1–31. Freytag, Hartmut. “Die Embleme in Ludwigsburg und Gaarz vor dem Hintergrund zeitgenössischer Emblemtheorie.” In Ausserliterarische Wirkungen barocker Emblembücher, ed. Wolfgang Harms, Hartmut Freytag, and Michael Schilling. Munich, 1975. Pp. 19–39. Freytag, Hartmut, Wolfgang Harms, Heiko K. L. Schulze. Die Embleme der “Bunten Kammer” im Herrenhaus Ludwigsburg (Kreis Rendsburg-Eckernförde). Munich/Berlin, 1994. Freytag, Hartmut, Wolfgang Harms, and Michael Schilling. Gesprächskultur des Barock: Die Embleme der Bunte Kammer im Herrenhaus Ludwigsburg bei Eckernförde. Kiel, 2001. Gabriele, Mino. “Visualizzazione Mnemonica negli Emblemi di Alciato.” In André Alciat (1492–1550) un humanist au confluent des savoirs dans l’Europe de la Renassance, ed. Anne Rolet and Stephane Rolet. Turnhout, 2013. Pp. 401–10. Harms, Wolfgang. “The Investigation of Emblem Programmes in Buildings: Assumptions and Tasks.” In The Emblem and Architecture, ed. Hans J. Böker and Peter M. Daly. Turnhout, 1999. Pp. 3–16.

192 EMBLEMATICA Harsdörffer, Georg Philipp. Frauenzimmer Gesprächspiele. Nuremberg, 1643–1649. _____. Geschichtspiegel: Vorweisend Hundert Denckwürdige Begebenheiten. Nuremberg, 1654. See http://diglib.hab.de/drucke/qun-487-1s/ start.htm. Henderson, Paula. “Sir Francis Bacon’s Water Gardens at Gorhambury.” Garden History 20 (1992): 116–31. Laurens, Pierre and Florence Vuilleumier-Laurens. “L’invention de l’emblême par André Alciat et le modèle epigraphique.” In L’age de l’inscription. Paris, 2010. Pp. 89–112. Loach. Judi. “Architecture and Emblematics.” In Emblems and Art History, ed. A. Adams. Glasgow Emblem Studies 1. Glasgow, 1996. Pp. 1–21. McCutcheon, Elizabeth. Sir Nicholas Bacon’s Great House Sententiae. Amhurst, 1977. Meakin, Heather L. The Painted Closet of Anne Bacon Drury. London, 2013. Palladio, Andrea. I Quattro libri dell’Architettura (Venice, 1570), Ruscelli, Girolamo. Le imprese illustri. Venice: F. Rampazetto, 1566. Schilling, Michael. “Die literarischen Vorbilder der Ludwigsburger und Gaarzer Embleme.” In Ausserliterarische Wirkungen barocker Emblembücher, ed. Harms, Freytag, and Schilling. Munich, 1975. Pp. 41–71. Seton, George. Memoir of Alexander Seton, Earl of Dunfermline. Edinburgh, 1882. _____. “Notice of the Ceiling of the ‘Painted Gallery’ at Pinkie House.” Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 22 (1887– 1888): 10–22. Veen, Otto van. Emblemata Horatiana. Antwerp, 1512. Zincgref, Julius W. Emblematum Ethico-politicorum Centuria. Heidelberg, 1666. See http://diglib.hab.de/drucke/qun-202-1-1/start.htm.

REVIEWS AND CRITICISM

Reviews

ANNE ROLET and STÉPHANE ROLET, eds. André Alciat (1492– 1550) Un humaniste au confluent des savoirs dans l’Europe de la Renaissance. Turnhout: Brepols, 2013. Pp. 494. ISBN 978-2-503-55021-3. €110. This impressive volume provides through the careful examination of the large scope of his opera omnia an important reassessment of Alciato’s place as a humanist scholar. Each of the works studied here is set in the political, intellectual, religious, social, and economic context of the time. The g reat w ealth a nd e xtent of t he c ontributions a im t o cover all the domains investigated by Alciato throughout his lifetime, casting a wide net to include his many talents beyond authoring emblems and stressing the coherence of his historical, juridical, and philological work. Not since Paul-Émile Viard’s major study, André Alciat (1492–1550) (Paris: Sirey, 1926), has such an extensive account of Alciato’s œuvre been undertaken. A volume such as this new work edited by Anne Rolet and Stéphane Rolet is therefore welcome. The present book brings together twenty-four studies that are integrated here in a sustained narrative and supported by a brief outline of Alciato’s biography (35–47). The volume is organized according to five general themes. The first part, entitled “The early works: permanence and adaptation of the antique models,” is devoted to Alciato’s earliest works. Denis Drysdall analyzes Alciato’s contribution to a miscellany of Latin satirical verses against his former master, Giovanni Biffi (1464–1516), accused of pederasty. The budding humanist composed a poem of 151 lines with the title “Bifiloedoria” [A Rebuke to Biffi], which was accompanied by thirteen short epigrams. Drysdall shows that underneath the adolescent satire, one can already distinguish Alciato’s first experiences of Greek literature

195 Emblematica, Volume 22. Copyright © 2016 by AMS Press, Inc. All rights reserved.

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(the Suda and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics). The text also shows an acquaintance with Lucian, as well as his principal Latin models, Catullus and Martial. In the following essay Stéphane Rolet analyzes Biffi’s response and the convoluted ways he uses to retaliate on his former student. Ian Maclean then studies the first juridical works of Alciato, the Annotationes in tres posteriores Codicis Justiniani and the Opusculum quo graecae dictiones fere ubique in Digestis restituuntur, and analyzes how Alciato’s acute sense of the meaning of words and his focus on philological methods as applied to the interpretation of Roman law texts lead him to innovative interpretations. Lucie Claire investigates the publishing history in 1517 of Alciato’s In Cornelium Tacitum annotationes and shows that Alciato was the first legal humanist to assess Tacitus’s commentary favorably and that his concept of history had a profound coherence. Even if the commentary is rather short, it shows a sound interpretation of Tacitus’s text; moreover, most of the notes provide perspectives on legal issues. At times, Alciato explains juridical concepts of Roman law in detail. In the last contribution to this section Jean-Louis Charlet, following Alison Saunders’s pioneering work, returns to the Latin translation that Alciato made of epigrams drawn from the Planudean Anthology in the Cornarius edition (Basel: Bebel, 1529). After an in-depth examination of the entire corpus, Jean-Louis Charlet discusses how these “translations” are best understood as the products of imitatio and transposition. Sources, metrics, developments or reductions, and contemporary allusions are analyzed in full detail. The second part, “The continent of Law: methods, practices, genres,” discusses how Alciato combines legal method and philological forma mentis to produce new interpretations. Nicolas Warembourg shows that Alciato remains a Bartolist practician in many ways, since he often praises the originality and irreplaceable nature of the glossators and commentators, such as Bartolus and his followers, confirming that the Bartolist method is definitely best adapted to current circumstances. Next, Bruno Méniel examines Alciato’s commentary on words and meanings, the De verborum significatione, which is a treatise on legal linguistic theory complemented by a practical guide to the resolution of problems of interpretating legal texts. Méniel emphasizes that Alciato’s work is a continuous polemical dialogue

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with Lorenzo Valla. In the following essay Giovanni Rossi analyzes Alciato’s Parerga (i.e., the twelve books of what he called “Asides from the law”). During the preparation of his lectures Alciato said that in legal texts he regularly encountered obscure words or expressions misunderstood by his predecessors, which could be explained by reference to works outside the usual sphere of legal studies. His accumulated notes gave rise to the Parerga, published in three collections, the last posthumously. After an analysis of Alciato’s method, which was drawn from the articulation of humanae litterae and law, Rossi demonstrates that some of Alciato’s annotations are directly linked to contemporary matters and show his capacity to cast a critical eye on some of his colleagues, including Alessandro Tartagni, Pietro Paolo Parisio, Filippo Decio, Bartolomeo Socini, and Carlo Ruini. Rossi’s contribution is paired with one by Olivier Guerrier, who also studies the same work with regard to the theme of legal fictions. Alciato defined legal fictions as a disposition of the law as though of a real thing which is contrary to truth although possible, and made for the purposes of equity. Legal fictions differ from certain poetic fictions in that they are known to be false and do not need to be plausible. Guerrier shows the proximity of the legal fictions to poetic fictions and discusses their authenticity. In the following article Juan Carlos d’Amico chooses to focus on a rarely studied work, the De formula Romani Imperii Libellus, in which Alciato reflects on the permanence of the imperial concept and its historical mutations as translatio or restauratio. Though Alciato never completed the project as planned—he had intended to write a constitutional history of the Roman empire—his little work surveys briefly the forms of the Empire from Augustus down to his own sovereign. The Roman model is seen as a just Empire, and Alciato attempts to define the relationship among the Pope, the Emperor, and Christendom. Lastly, Anne Rolet undertakes a detailed analysis of Alciato’s emblem Nupta contagioso, dedicated to the King Mezentius, which Alciato employed as an emblem for venereal disease (gallica scabies) to describe the cruel union of a faithful wife with her infected husband. Anne Rolet shows how the antique motif serves to develop a contemporary legal and medical issue.

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The third part of the volume is devoted to Alciato and his contemporaries with the subtitle “admiratio, aemulatio, invidia,” showing the diverse facets of these relationships. In this section Christine Bénévent comes back to Alciato’s letter to his friend Bernardus Mattius, entitled Contra vitam monasticam, well known for the author’s worries about its circulation. She discusses its Erasmian character and shows that this qualification needs to be carefully reconsidered. Next Richard Cooper studies Alciato’s place within and between Italy and France. Unlike most of his colleagues, Alciato was never able to secure stable employment. Each of his moves reflects the changing fortunes of Italy and France, as periods of war gave way to fragile peace. This contribution also offers a wider view of the famous historical figures and humanists whom Alciato encountered during his trials and tribulations. Raphaële Mouren next offers an account of the noteworthy tribute of Lyon publishers to Alciato’s works. Even though Alciato demonstrated his great admiration for his main Basel publisher Andreas Cratander very clearly in his correspondence, he knew that the Lyon fairs ensured a better distribution of his works. Appended to this article is an addendum tracing the sixteenth-century Lyon editions of Alciato. Olivier Millet explores Alciato’s and Geoffroy Tory’s common interests, and their shared reflections about epigraphic culture, epigrammatic and enigmatic poetics, and symbolic figuration. To conclude this section Georges Hugo Tucker analyzes Alciato’s career as law professor and homo viator, according to two posthumous portraits by Giovanni Matteo Toscano and François le Douaren, respectively. The fourth part, “Alciato and the arts,” lends a symbolic and aesthetic perspective to the volume. Stéphane Rolet investigates new iconographical sources for the genesis, the invention, and the several illustrations of the emblem “Virtuti Fortuna comes.” Paulette Choné examines the role of colors in Alciato’s emblems, namely in his emblem In colores, and studies, among many other sources, the chapter Alciato devoted to the subject in his Parerga. Michael Bath gives a detailed account of the persistence of Alciato’s emblems in the decorative arts and highlights the issues raised by these interpretations. The last and fifth part of this volume, under the title “Alciatus tralatus: the European journey of the Emblemata,” is devoted to the editorial evolution of the Emblemata as well as to their circulation and translation



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in a European context. Mino Gabriele questions the emblem’s visualization and considers its mnemonic valences and the influence on them of the art of memory. David Graham pays tribute to Daniel Russell’s compelling thesis about the emblematic process. Analyzing the figure of the Gallic Hercules, he investigates the complex mutations of the emblem genre, in search of a typology of emblematic forms that avoids a rigid taxonomy. In the following essay Alison Adams returns the volume’s focus to Alciato’s emblem Nupta contagioso, presented earlier in this publication, to analyze here its translations into vernacular languages. While the translations do not always preserve the wealth of intertextual allusion, they sometimes give way to new interpretations. Alison Saunders then examines a highly interesting manuscript containing English translations of ninety-two emblems by Alciato, almost all of which are illustrated. As the only known systematic early modern translation of Alciato, this case study offers new insights into the circulation of his emblems in England. Lastly, Gloria BosséTruche studies the last commented Spanish translation of the Emblemata by Diego Lopez de Valencia. These commentaries use Alciato’s emblems in the ideological and spiritual context of seventeenth-century Spain in support of the strictest Catholic orthodoxy. These emblems are used within sermons, and thus this case illustrates how an emblem book is written for the teaching of rhetoric at a Spanish Catholic university. On the whole, this thought-provoking volume is an important contribution to emblem scholarship. VALÉRIE HAYAERT Institut des Hautes Études sur la Justice

200 EMBLEMATICA ALEKSANDR MAKHOV. Emblematika: Makrokosm [Emblematica: Macrocosm]. Moscow: Intrada, 2014. Pp. 600. ISBN 978-5-8125-2030-4. RUB 600. This book, intended for a Russian audience, focuses on printed book emblems as a special, almost forgotten, genre popular from the sixteenth through the eighteenth century. The book is divided into two unequal parts. In the first the author attempts to represent the epistemological status of emblems and to describe hermeneutical tools based on methods of analogy and combinatorial games which make it possible to investigate the emblem as both a text and a work of art. The second part presents an encyclopaedia of 500 emblems selected from thirty-seven emblem books by twenty-eight authors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Because the book is written for Russian readers, the emblem texts are translated into Russian, while visual parallels from antique, medieval, Renaissance, and baroque art accompany the emblem picturæ. The value of the book to scholars is further enhanced by indices of emblem subscriptiones and mottoes, as well as of subjects, names, book titles, and secondary literature on the topic. Aleksandr Makhov is a well-known expert in visual and emblem studies in Russia. He has published books on Medieval Christian demonology1 and reissued Nestor Maksimovich-Ambodic’s Эмблемы и символы [Symbols and Emblems], one of the first Russian emblem books, published in 1788 (second edition: 1809–1811).2 In the first part, “The Phenomenon of the Book Emblem (Prolegomena to its Understanding),” Makhov tries to situate the emblem in the center 1.

2.

А.Е. Махов Hostis antiquus. Категории и образы средневековой христианской демонологии. Oпыт словаря / - Москва: Intrada, 2006. [Hostis antiquus. Concepts and Images of Medieval Christian Demonology. A Dictionary]; А. Е Махов. Средневековый образ: между теологией и риторикой. Опыт толкования визуальной демонологии. - Москва: Intrada, 2011. [A.E. Makhov The Medieval Image: Between Theology and Rhetoric. Essay of Interpretation of Visual Demonology. Moscow, Intrada, 2011]. N.M. Ambodik-Maksimovich Эмблемы и символы/ Авторская вступительная статья и комментарии А.Е. Махов - М.: Интрада, 1995 (2-е издание 2000) [N.M. Ambodik-Maksimovich Emblems and Symbols. Introduction and comments by A.E. Makhow. Moscow, Intrada, 1995 (2nd edition 2000)].



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of semantic fields and visual metaphors in early modern Europe.3 He notes that, in some cases, textual or visual parts of emblems might be either more or less important. The starting point of emblematic history—the publication the first emblem book, Andrea Alciato’s Emblematum Liber (Augsburg, 1531)—becomes for Makhov an opportunity to understand the nature of the emblem as a descriptive and cognitive unit. According to Makhov, Alciato believed that visual and textual parts of the emblem were of different importance. He notes that the engravings in the first Alciato edition probably were inserted without his knowledge, which supports the argument that the textual part of an emblem is principal for understanding its meaning. Furthermore, the pictura might also be read as a text. Makhov describes the history of emblems and emblem books in detail. He studies dissemination, circulation, and various forms of emblems in everyday culture. He notes that emblems were not only printed but also were used, as so-called applied emblems, in the architectural details and interior decoration of private and public spaces. Emblems adorning living spaces later also functioned as “mnemonic tools” (16). The author exaggerates the significance of emblem books in comparison with applied emblems, because interiors and exteriors of civic buildings and churches were, in the first instance, derived from emblem books. Of course, following the media revolution in the aftermath of Gutenberg, these printed and applied forms interacted intensively. It is doubtful, however, that books can ever contain something not already contained in the material culture. Makhov provides detailed examples of how the cultural space of the European city became increasingly emblematic. Emblems were used for communication between friends and as a way to reflect a political position. The author refers to many rare editions, and analyzes some theoretical essays from the early modern period. He notes that political and sacred themes were the most popular for seventeenth-century emblems. The popularity of sacred themes resulted above all from the Counter-Reformation and the Jesuits, who accepted emblems as an important form for meditation. They popularized emblems and attentively studied their composition in their rhetorical instruction. 3.

All further references to parts of this book will be made in English translation in parentheses.

202 EMBLEMATICA Political emblems based on Alciato’s Optimus Civis were published in the Netherlands and Germany,4 as well as in other European countries. Makhov stresses that the character of political ideas depended on particular political regimes. On the one hand, in the Netherlands and in some German lands with their republican traditions, emblems represented “the perfect citizen,” or optimus civis. On the other hand, monarchical cultures like Spain and France created an image of “the ideal monarch” in such emblem books as Diego de Saavedra Fajardo’s Idea de un principe politico christiano, representada en cien empresas (1640), Marin Le Roy de Gomberville’s La Doctrine des mœurs. Tirée de la philosophie des stoïques (1646), and others Makhov also writes about the epistemological status of emblems. He describes how the emblem became a concept, or a form, that reflected a system of ideas. Moreover, he writes about the possibility of “thinking with emblems” (19). Citing the history of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, Annales Rerum Angliae et Hiberniæ Regnante Elizabetha (1615 and 1625) by W. Camden,5 Makhov directs the reader’s attention to an episode in which the deeply conflicted Elizabeth confronted the difficult decision of whether or not to execute Mary Stuart: Amongst these pensive and perplexed thoughts, which troubled and staggered the Queene in such sorte that she gave herselfe over to solitarynesse, sate many times melancholly and mute, and often sighing muttered to herselfe, Aut fer, aut feri, that, is Either beare strokes, or stryke, and out of I know what Embleme, Ne feriare, feri, that is, Strike, least thou be stricken.”6

The author of this review is not at all certain that the above episode proves the emblematic character of thinking or even an emotional level of Elizabeth’s feelings, as Makhov asserts. The Queen thinks as all people do, by using notions: This reviewer does not see any visual images here. That is 4. 5.

6.

For example, Peter Isselburg Emblematica Politica. Nuremberg, 1617; Jacob Bruck Emblematica Politica. Strasbourg, 1618; Julius Wilhelm Zincgref Emblematum ethico-politicorum centuria. Heidelberg 1619 and others W. Camden Annales Rerum Angliae et Hiberniae Regnante Elizabetha (1615 and 1625) with the annotations of Sir Francis Bacon// A hypertext critical edition by Dana F. Sutton The University of California, Irvine http://www.philological.bham.ac.uk/camden/ Ibid http://www.philological.bham.ac.uk/camden/1587e.html



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why the Queen does not “think with emblems,” but uses emblems to express her thoughts accurately, precisely, and directly. Possibly, she ponders how her decision will be represented by future historians and tries to find an appropriate expression to explain her decision. Apparently, she does not take a visual representation of her ideas into consideration. In the chapter “Hermeneutics: Emblem as an Interpretation of the Universe” the author analyzes historical traditions for the interpretation of symbols. He envisions two ways to do so: either a Platonic or an Aristotelian approach. The Platonic tradition reveals a doctrine of two worlds, whereby symbols indicate the higher reality, the world of ideas. The Aristotelian tradition promotes the classification of things in the world, but does not divide it. Relations between the word and the image constitute an important part of Makhov’s book. He analyzes the theory of two paths leading to memory and knowledge: the visual and the verbal. In doing so he draws heavily on opinions of the medieval philosopher Richard de Fournival, best known for Le Bestiaire d’Amour, and Pierre Sala, whom Makhov calls a “protoemblematist.” Various sixteenth- and seventeenth-century treatises about symbols, images, and emblems discuss that problem in detail. Emblematika: Makrokosm assembles many views on this issue, and the author investigates the different meanings of binary significance in emblems. Considering what promotes unity and difference between the word and the image, he indicates that this notional pair was interpreted as the body and the soul (Paolo Giovio), where the body is the visual and the soul is the verbal component of the emblem. Another metaphor to describe the relation between text and image is the interplay between form and matter (Pierre Le Moyne), whereby matter is the visual part of the emblem, however the form is the unity of both visual and verbal elements, and meaning results from their interaction. The binary concept of the emblem as the union of the body and the soul presupposes an analogy with the human being as well as with the universe. This offers a key to the book’s title, and the author finds support for that analogy in emblems, for example, in the emblem “Microcosmus homo” from Nicolas Reusner’s Emblemata.7 7.

Emblemata Nicolai Reusneri ic. partim ethica, et physica : partim vero historica, ac hieroglyphica, sed ad virtutis, morumque doctrinam omnia ingeniose traducta,

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Makhov scrupulously treats cognitive aspects of emblems and their symbolic elements. Based on the popular metaphor of the world as a book that may be read, he includes metaphors of the world as a mirror and as an image, or pictura. Thus one can read the world just as well as look at it. The visual leads to the super-visual and the super-sensual. Reflection and vision are very closely related, and Makhov explains the possibility of looking at the transcendental reality and seeing it not in the mirror, but through the mirror. He recalls the Apostle Paul’s expression “videmus nunc per speculum in enigmate tunc autem facie ad faciem nunc cognosco ex parte tunc autem cognoscam sicut et cognitus sum” [For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face: now I know in part, but then shall I know even as I am known] (I Corinthians 13:12). Looking at the emblem readers can see “through a glass, darkly,” but later, perhaps, they will receive grace to see the real construction of the universe “face to face.” Makhov refers to Kessler’s analysis of “speculum,”8 which demonstrates how images could be represented as mirrors in which the highest realities are reflected. I would like to add here a reference to Dionysius the Areopagite, particularly to the Celestial Hierarchy and his discourses of the symbolism of sensual images. Dionysius the Areopagite was an important agent for the spread of apophaticism as direct knowledge that did not require evidence and definition. This approach was oriented toward the contemplation and mystical immersion underlying symbolic and emblematic perceptions of the world. Makhov analyzes the emblem not only as a hermeneutical tool for interpreting and understanding the universe, but also as a work of art. In the chapter “A Poetics of the Emblem” he remarks on the self-sufficiency of emblems and compares them with Leibnitz’s monad, thereby allowing the emblem to move from one cultural space to another. The author maintains that the emblem can be “independent” in its visual as well as in textual meanings. He indicates two opposing tendencies: 1) the process of generalization, synthesis, and creation of “big texts”— pictures, architectural and sculptural complexes, and 2) the process of 8.

Frankfurt 1581. Herbert Kessler, “Speculum,” Speculum. A Journal of Medieval Studies 86 (2011): 1–41.



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fragmentation, isolation, and disintegration into small parts and details. The second process does not mean death, stagnation, or decay, but rather refers to another type of existence in a monad status. Makhov indicates that many ideas of ancient thinkers acquired a new life in proverbs, and the adages of authors such as Erasmus appeared later in emblem books and started their life in new contexts. “New classics,” that is, works by Petrarch and Montaigne, were taken apart and their elements used as emblem mottoes. “The strategy of isolating fragmentation” (87) was also applied to the Bible to create religious emblems. According to Makhov, a textual fragment might be endowed with new significance, as happened in a well-known episode from Rabelais’s famous novel when Pantagruel’s lady sends him a ring with the last words of Christ: “Deus meus ut quid dereliquisti me” [My God, why have you forsaken me?].9 The religious drama is transferred into a space for courtly love and changes its transcendental sense while still keeping its direct meaning. Makhov shows how emblem studies give us many examples of such transformations from one context to another. As a result, a fragment becomes ambiguous, and its connections form a more complex structure. It is not uncommon for emblem picturæ to have long histories in various spheres of the visual arts, something that Mahkov terms “techniques of visual isolation” (90). The unity of several polysemantic components of an emblem, or the combinatorial game with meanings, gives rise to an incredibly complex system of meanings. This makes the process of “reading” and understanding the emblematic text very difficult. Makhov speaks about the gradual building of an emblematic meaning as the result of the combination of elements and their interactions. Finally, emblems in all varieties of their meanings can be used again and again in new environments. Makhov offers many detailed examples in his book, and commendably compares and juxtaposes various cultural contexts to make the interpretations of emblems multifaceted and mutable. He attempts to conceptualize the nature of the emblem in its duality as a hermeneutic tool and as a work of art.

9.

Matthew 27:46

206 EMBLEMATICA The author represents culture as an emblematic space. This offers a novel understanding of intellectual culture and creates a new combination of linguistic and visual turns. Many ideas in this book will be useful for further study of the history of emblems as well as the history of ideas. The author demonstrates a high level of erudition using modern historical methodologies. While this book leaves a generally positive impression, it must also be pointed out that sometimes the “emblematic discourse” is taken out of its historical context and social and political background. As presented by Makhov, all emblematic processes happen according to their own logic. Readers might get the impression that emblems develop and multiply their forms and meanings according to an inherent set of qualities. In contrast, it would also be interesting to learn more about the milieu of the people who both produced and consumed emblems and their symbolism. Why was this particular combinatory form of texts and images necessary? How were emblems used by various social and educational groups? Of course, these desiderata in no way reduce the positive impression of the theoretical part of the book. The second part of the book, subtitled “Emblemata,” is significantly larger than the first. It includes a set of 500 emblems representing the emblematic macrocosm through images of chaos, geometric shapes, orbits of planets, God, elements of nature, plants, animals (including mythical ones), and many others. Their presentation itself also creates some moral and political allusions. Thus, it can be said that Emblematika: Makrokosm offers two books in a single volume: a book about emblems and an emblem book. Makhov’s emblem book is the result of scrupulous research. Its indisputable advantage is the wealth of its comparisons and analogies, which are the fruit of the author’s erudition. The author carefully selects the emblems contained in the volume to give readers the most complete picture of the emblematist’s vision. He supplies all emblems with references to sources, visual analogies in painting, and detailed comments. This part of the book, which offers an overview of the emblem universe and its culture, could be further enhanced by the development of an electronic version that capitalizes on the wealth of resources available on the Internet. A number



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of additions to the text, such as verbal and visual sources, analogues, and annotations, could be hyperlinked, while the emblems themselves could link to electronic editions of the sources. Since almost all emblem books used by the author have already been digitized, and readers would then be able to see the emblems in their historical contexts. In short, a digital edition of the second part, with its richer possibilities for scholarly communication and comparative studies, would align the book with current research trends. Unfortunately, at the present time the publisher Intrada does not sell even an electronic version of the book. All in all, Makhov’s study with its extremely broad coverage deepens readers’ understanding of emblematic texts. Although written in Russian for Russian readers, it can be recommended to everyone interested in the topic. Ideally, Makhov’s compendium should be translated into other languages for an international public: the first part as a printed book and the second part on the Internet. TATIANA ARTEMYEVA Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia

208 EMBLEMATICA NICHOLAS J. CROWE. Jeremias Drexel’s ‘Christian Zodiac.’ SeventeenthCentury Publishing Sensation. A Critical Edition, Translated and with an Introduction & Notes. (Farnham, England: Ashgate, 2013). viii + 153 pp. + 16 illus. ISBN: 9781409452126. US$ 149.95. Jeremias Drexel was the most published writer in his age, bar none. With the exception of the Bible, Drexel’s works may well have been the most published books until the age of popular pulp fiction. In his translation of the Zodiacus Christianus, Nicholas Crowe is an admirable advocate for the German Jesuit Drexel. Crowe’s translation as the Christian Zodiac constitutes the only critical edition of any of Drexel’s works, although Drexel’s Heliotrope was often reprinted in English.10 It would be difficult to exaggerate Drexel’s importance; Richard Dimler and I know of some 336 editions of his individual and collected works. We estimate that there must have been about 1,600 emblematic books printed for the Society of Jesus, which means at least 21% were authored by Drexel alone. Impressive as the raw numbers may seem, they are still conservative. One Munich publisher, Cornelius Leysser, even published some statistics indicating that in Munich alone about one and a half million copies of his works had been printed. That is a staggering number even allowing for errors and exaggerations. During the seventeenth century there were eleven Munich editions, seven in Cologne, and others in Würzburg, Frankfurt, Rotterdam, Vienna, Cracow, Douai, Rouen, Rome, Prague, and London. Drexel’s works were also printed in Amsterdam, Antwerp, Louvain, Paris, Lyons, Cambridge, Oxford, Edinburgh, Poznan, Rome, Bratislava, and Warsaw, just to name some other places. The Christian Zodiac is not only a “quintessential Drexel production” (23), but was also widely translated and reissued. The canonical emblem dates its appearance to 1531, so by the time Drexel’s first emblematically illustrated book left the press in Munich, things emblematic had been around for about eighty years. The Jesuits were late to recognize the usefulness of the emblem, but once they did, they used it for purposes that Alciato could not have foreseen. This may be a quibble, but I would never characterize Drexel’s books as emblem books, but rather as 10.

See Peter M. Daly and G. Richard Dimler, S.J., The Jesuit Series, here especially, J.335–49.



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emblematic books, composed as lengthy prose texts with emblematic plates by Sadeler included. Drexel’s books are not emblem books in the sense of Alciato, but emblematic books—that is, books with emblems. For emblem scholars there is an important distinction to be made between emblem books and emblematic books. The twelve signs of predestination in the Christian Zodiac include a lighted candle in a candle-stick (no. 1), a skull (no. 2), a goblet and host (no. 3), a bare altar (no. 4), a rose bush with thorns (no. 5), a fig tree (no. 6), a tobacco plant (no. 7), a cypress tree (no. 8), crossed pikes and a laurel wreath (no. 9), two scourges (no. 10), an anchor (no. 11), and a lute (no. 12). The visual motifs in Sadeler’s emblematic plates derive from Drexel’s texts, and while they may often appear learned, they are never recondite. The texts that accompany these illustrations always indicate the intended meaning. Often the origins of the motifs themselves can be traced to the Bible and liturgical practice. From its title Drexel’s Christian Zodiac may appear to have appropriated the “apparatus of astrology” but Drexel “signally does not use its content” (25). The text is devoid of any reference to the conventional zodiac signs. As was his practice Drexel makes great use of biblical and classical allusion, citing authors with whom few could have been familiar. Drexel’s aim was to better the lives of all who heard and read him. Crowe suggests that these authorial voices “reinforce and complement Drexel’s own contentions” (29). They are the right books to know, the right classical and ecclesiastical authorities to read. Among the many vices that Drexel castigates were sinfulness, pride, and vanity, while the virtues that he praises are humility, personal virtue, and love of God. Drexel’s Christian Zodiac deals with the issue of predestination, and as such is likely to remain something of a theological conundrum for many people. Priest and parishioner will likely have some difficulty reconciling notions of divine omniscience, predestination, and the freedom of human will. Some five years after the appearance of Zodiacus Christianus there appeared the first edition of the Heliotropium, in which Drexel uses the sunflower or marigold that follows the path of the sun to demonstrate what should be the coincidence of human and divine will. Ignoring for the moment the many English editions that appeared even during the Victorian period, it is perhaps noteworthy that no fewer than six English translations were published in New

210 EMBLEMATICA York during the years 1912–1924 (i.e., before, during, and just after World War I).11 For every soldier who died, many were left behind to grieve, and parents, grandparents, relatives, friends, and the believers in God’s goodness, justice, and mercy, were left asking “why?” The resonance of Drexel’s works centuries after its appearance is striking. Drexel was appointed court preacher in Munich in 1615, and he continued to preach while writing his many works, which satisfied a need among Catholics and Protestants alike. He never left Munich and died in office in 1638. For Drexel Catholic spirituality and political absolutism were compatible. As a Jesuit, he knew the importance of obedience that can become loyalty to superiors, whether secular or ecclesiastic, or both. For Drexel and Maximilian I in Munich it was a two-way street; in a sense each needed the other. Crowe is correct in observing that Bavarian Jesuits were at the “interstices of religion and politics.” At this time Bavaria was indeed the “political bulwark and spiritual epicentre of Catholicism” in the German lands (9). Crowe’s “Introduction” to Drexel’s life, works, and times is thorough and scholarly. He appears to have read everything that seems relevant. But the author, Crowe, is also forthcoming with his criticism of certain present-day tendencies, such as “vicious complacency” (2). He questions how accurate modern perceptions of the so-called “real world” actually are. Much of the value of Crowe’s book derives from the simple fact that he makes Drexel’s popularity as preacher and writer not only credible, but insists that the daily grind of living was something that Drexel also took seriously, relating the here and now with the spiritual and literally with the other-worldly dimension. This is something that those who heard his sermons and read his books recognized. Drexel could and did relate their often hard lives in this world to the hereafter. Crowe’s immense reading is reflected in his footnotes, which today’s reader should inspect with care. Notions of repentance, confession, even fasting and theatricality are treated with seriousness. Crowe is right that Drexel was unconcerned with the theological niceties that not only separated Catholicism from Protestantism, but also finally divided Protestantism. 11.

See Peter M. Daly and G. Richard Dimler, S.J., The Jesuit Series, Parts 1–5, Corpus Librorum Emblematum. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, and Toronto: the University of Toronto Press, 1997–2007, here especially, J.343–48.



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One can wonder what Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order, knew about emblems. Nonetheless the fact remains that emblematics played an important role in Jesuit education (this is documented in the Ratio studiorum that ultimately became the blueprint for Jesuit education) and at the very least Ignatius was a person who placed stress on the importance of “seeing.” It is little wonder that the visual potential of the emblem became so important to so many Jesuit teachers and writers, among them Drexel. His practice is perhaps a little unusual insofar as most of his Latin texts derived from his German sermons, and thus the German translations of the Latin works complete the circle. The emblematic plates served a number of functions, as Crowe points out: “as pictorial complements to the text, focal points of devotional meditation and mnemonic aids” (8). Ars memorativa and its assumed relevance to emblematics are broad and difficult topics, and Crowe argues that Drexel’s use of the emblematic relates to the practice of excerpting and commonplacing (12). He may well be right. Readers interested in this particular issue should pay careful attention to what Crowe has to say, especially his footnote 43 with its rich bibliography. Drexel is a unique historical phenomenon, and Crowe is also aware that the coming Enlightenment would have no place for the Jesuit’s verities of heaven and hell. But the Society of Jesus continues to exist, and to teach and care for Catholic believers. Crowe knows that Drexel is again being taken seriously, at least by scholars. His introduction and the many notes bear this out. In sum, this is a fine introduction to the author and his work. If Crowe reads French and German with the ease with which he refers to and quotes his sources, he is a linguistically formidable scholar. This is in addition to his excellent translation of the Latin texts. His translation of the Drexel text is much more readable than the English translation made in the early seventeenth century. The bibliography is also excellent, reflecting what Crowe found most useful. In conclusion this is an important publication. Crowe’s book deserved to be published, and Ashgate can be proud to have published it. It belongs on the shelves of every large university and institutional library. PETER DALY McGill University

212 EMBLEMATICA HANNA PAHL (ed.) Emblematic Strategies in Contemporary Art, Selected Papers from the Workshop Emblematic Strategies at the University of Kiel, July 29–31, 2014, Schriften aus dem Kunsthistorischen Institut der ChristianAlbrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Vol. 7. Berlin 2014. Pp. 129. ISBN 978-3643-90610-6. US$ 44.95 / € 29.90. This volume is devoted to the study of emblematic strategies in contemporary artworks of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It aims to provide new conceptual clarity to an ongoing debate within emblem studies about what constitutes an emblem in the first place. The first contribution by Hanna Pahl attempts to set out the specificities of the processes involved in contemporary emblematic approaches to art and culture. Starting with one of the etymological meanings of the Greek word “emblema” (mosaic), the author stresses the composite visual and verbal form of the emblem, the process of encoding and combination, and the formal tripartite structure of the so-called canonical emblem, conceptualized as a figura, an inscriptio, and a subscriptio. The composite nature of emblematic creations, which consist of borrowings, quotations, and fragments, triggers new ways of reappropriation, recalling Dadaist and Surrealist practice of montage and photomontage. Digital media artists, along with software artists and video game artists, use these strategies to produce artifacts that reappropriate dominant culture. These processes of quotation, transformation, and appropriation, according to the author, bear a striking resemblance to the emblematic processes of past centuries. The concept of framing and Derrida’s definition of a parergon as a flexible frame, an addition to the ergon, offer additional possibilities for the formal definitions of these emblematic processes. One may ask whether the specific characteristics described here are merely formal and conceptual by nature, leaving aside the humanistic context of emblems of the past, as well as their religious, political, and moral intents. More comparisons and distinctions vis-à-vis emblematic tradition would have been helpful to characterize the new epistemological foundation of contemporary emblematic strategies. Bettina Dunker examines the emblematic strategies involved in contemporary installations. The example of Aby Warburg’s Mnemonysne Atlas, whose last version dates from 1929, serves to demonstrate how practices of combination and correlation create a “series of a series” tracing the reappearance of the “Pathosformeln” in pictures of the Renaissance and



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the twentieth century. She evidences the necessity of the viewer’s active role to interpret several installations by Wolfgang Tillmans and Peter Piller. By concluding that in the majority of contemporary installations  there is no conscious reference of the artist to the emblem, Bettina Dunker seems to point out the limits of her study: the analysis of emblematic strategies within installations is mainly based on formalistic and conceptual features derived from contemporary creative processes. The lack of humanistic culture and the absence of symbolic codes show that contemporary installations are part of a wide process of “desymbolization.” Johannes Fröhlich explores the world of digital emblematica, namely the case of Murray Krieger’s Ekphrasis: The Illusion of the Natural Sign, adorned with eight tripartite emblems and, in particular, his unusual version of the Ouroboros, which symbolizes conceptual debates about ekphasis and thus acts as a meta-emblem for the entire book. Christine Korte-Beuckers analyzes emblematic aspects in Object Art of the 1960s through the creations of Hans Peter Alvermann and Timm Ulrichs, whose works point to social and political criticism. A formalistic understanding of the tripartite structure of the emblem is applied to these works. In her conclusion, the author questions whether “an expanded definition of what constitutes an emblematic structure is desirable” and advocates for more structural analysis (75). The contribution by Suzanne Schwertfeger offers an interesting examination of Taryn Simon’s An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar (2007), considered here as a contemporary emblem book. Simon’s work shares the “moralistic-didactic tendencies” that pertain to the emblematic tradition (93). Moving from the printed work depicting art objects to the plastic arts, Laura Weber studies the serial structures of several artworks by the ZERO Group, focusing in particular on their language structure. The parallel with emblematic structures is drawn on a syntactic level, and the paper analyzes formal elements in both “systems” (100). This formalistic understanding of an emblem, elevated here to a “system,” is debatable: one may argue that an emblematic structure is, in its essence, anti-systematic. The last contribution by Maren Wienigk reflects on four selected works displayed in the exhibition “Nets: Weaving Webs in Art” held in the Kunsthalle of Kiel to show the creative potential of diagrammatic tools in contemporary art. The process of reading diagrams is compared to the ways emblems were read.

214 EMBLEMATICA This volume exhibits great merit in its interrogation of how contemporary art uses emblematic strategies, an avenue of inquiry that has, until recently, remained largely unexplored. It shows that the juxtaposition of textual and pictorial elements, well represented in photography, interactive and digital art, performative arts, and installations have invented new emblematic strategies to create meaning. VALÉRIE HAYAERT Institut des Hautes Études sur la Justice

CHRISTINE McCALL PROBES and SABINE MÖDERSHEIM, eds. The Art of Persuasion. Emblems and Propaganda. Glasgow Emblem Studies 17. Glasgow, 2014. Pp. 207. ISBN: 978-0-85261-940-7. US$ 54.00 / € 41.71 The Art of Persuasion. Emblems and Propaganda, volume 17 of the series Glasgow Emblem Studies, offers a selection of papers from the Ninth International Conference of the Society for Emblem Studies held at the University of Glasgow in 2011. This attractive volume provides readers with a wide range of comparative and transdisciplinary essays focusing on different times and places, which is the hallmark of the collection. Ranging from the Renaissance to recent events (e.g., the so-called Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia), the contributions examine diverse materials—printed images, paintings, flags, Facebook profiles—all of them illustrating the emblem’s role in visual culture. As indicated by the title, the volume’s main point is to present observations and analyses as to how these “speaking pictures” (picturæ loquentes), initially designed to instruct and moralize, have also developed a propagandistic role over the centuries. If today the word ‘propaganda’ has a largely negative connotation, the editors remind readers that this has not necessary always been so and that it can be quite challenging to reshape thinking on the subject. In accordance with an exhibit at the British Library, Propaganda: Power and Persuasion, the editors focus on the pragmatics of propaganda and to ponder how it uses a wide range of media to achieve its aims through persuasion and seduction. In this they rely on David Welch’s definition: “Propaganda is the manipulation of collective attitudes by the use of significant symbols



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(words, pictures, tunes) rather than violence, bribery or boycott.” (David Welch, Propaganda: Power and Persuasion. London, British Library, 2013, as quoted by McCall Probes and Mödersheim, viii). This approach examines how instances of persuasion use visual culture, asking, for example, what relationship is established with the audience and how propaganda achieves its goals. The editors raise these issues in a short, yet thorough, introduction. The different techniques of visual persuasion are analyzed in four different thematic and (roughly) chronological sections of the volume. The first section, “The Art of War,” emphasizes the importance of the visual component of this particular art that appeals to both force and guile. As there is a “phrase of war” (Henry V, iii, 6), whose rhetoric has been studied by, among others, Ernst Kantorowicz in his Mourir pour la patrie [To die for one’s country], there are “images of war” that also require analysis. The two contributions in this section accomplish this with considerable insight, stressing the importance of deciphering the multilevel communication of emblems, imprese, and flags. In his paper, “Ars Gemina. On Emblems, Flags and Political Communication,” Donato Mansueto sheds light on the complex relationship between conceptions and representations of political power in sixteenth-century Europe, a time when political duplicity was much debated. According to Mansueto’s emblematic reading, Erasmus’s Christian Prince is not the same as Machiavelli’s Prince, since the lion and the fox must be read separately as military and political qualities, with the lion embodying force and the fox guile. By analyzing closely two emblems—one by Aneau and one by Alciato—that illustrate this opposition, Mansueto also draws on Aneau’s Latin text with its opposition between tecta and aperta, or hidden and shown: “Tecta quasi vulpis fraus. Vis quasi aperta Leonis.” [Guile is hidden like the fox’s. Force is open like the lion’s.] This particular opposition casts light on the importance of silence in politics, revealing perspectives on the close relationship between the Reason of State and dissimulation.. Continuing into the seventeenth century, Simon McKeown studies trophies seized by the Swedish army after the Battle of Saladen in March 1703, an impressive war treasure that exemplifies the paramount importance of trophies to propaganda. The second section, “Religious Persuasion,” considers the importance of images in religious guidance and the propagation of faith. Here Christine

216 EMBLEMATICA McCall Probes analyzes Georgette de Montenay’s Emblèmes, focusing on two key elements, the hand and the cloud, which both symbolize divine attributes. The confessional aspects of emblems continue the focus in Alison Saunders’s essay, which provides a captivating investigation of a French manuscript collection of 102 devotional emblematic miniatures. These originate from diverse sources and are all accompanied by  a religious motto in French or Latin. Analyzing her corpus very precisely, Saunders reaches the compelling hypothesis that the miniatures were probably the work of Visitandine nuns, involved in the campaign that led to the canonization in 1665 of Saint Francis de Sales . The third section, “Propaganda, Advertising, Disseminations,” focuses on how ideas circulate in different geographical and intellectual spheres as visual media. Emblems and images play a significant role in what might be called ‘knowledge migration.’ But as they transmit knowledge, they are directed at a select audience, because readers must be able to decipher their message. Justyna Kiliańczyk-Zięba’s essay, “ ‘Mens immota manet’: A Polish Application of an Emblematic Commonplace,” demonstrates how the Polish printer, Franciszek Cezary, chose an emblematic woodcut with the motto “Mens immota manet” [The mind remains unmoved] (in reference to to Virgil’s Aeneid) as a way to communicate with educated readers. Similarly, Sabine Mödersheim highlights that the laterna magica, a hugely successful means of projecting images that became widely employed for entertainment during the nineteenth century, was not identical to the laterna masonica. While the first was a powerful means of reaching and educating a large public through emblematic motifs (such as, for example the Rock of Ages), only a rather small number of happy few shared its more esoteric, even masonic meanings, thus elucidating the “dilemma between secrecy and propaganda” (63). Zsuzsa Barbarics-Hermanik’s “The Visual in Transcultural Exchange: Emblems, Propaganda, and the Ottomans” offers the example of the printer Ibrahim Müteferrika, who was born and educated in Transylvania, converted to Islam, and established the first printing press in Istanbul, where he served as an intermediary for cultural exchange. Analyzing his case, BarbaricsHermanik illustrates the dynamics of hybridization that often occurs as a result of cultural transfer and has been increasingly studied in recent decades, for example, by Michel Espagne and Michael Werner. Living and acting in the



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“Third Space,” as defined by Homi Bhabha, Müteferrika adapted European emblematic style to Islamic traditions. The last section of the volume, “Modern Propaganda,” is dedicated to more recent historical events with Pierre-Paul Gregorio’s contribution on post-civil war Spain and Valérie Hayaert’s on the Jasmine Revolution, as the revolution in Tunisia has also been called. In this last section, readers can learn firsthand that “the emblem is as ancient as Antiquity and as modern as today’s logos and brands” (vi). This holds especially true for Valérie Hayaert’s paper, which “question[s] definitions of early modern emblematic structures by examining contemporary emblematic modes of thinking” (187). Her contribution is challenging, observing the shifts that occurred between early modern emblems and their modern counterparts. She also traces the impact of today’s technology on the way these emblematic features are used: “. . . while Alciato’s emblems were esoteric, inspired by erudite syncretisms, dignified by humanists [sic] wits, contemporary Tunisian emblematic modes of self-fashioning are mainly used as means of signaling, devices for rallying and exoteric objects meant to be copied by the widest possible audience to attract attention” (200). This brief overview shows that the volume gathers essays from a number of fields without diluting the quality of the scholarship. Covering a wide range of subjects from different times and cultural spaces, the contributions nevertheless constitute a coherent volume. The numerous well-reprinted illustrations are an asset, as they allow readers to follow every step of the analysis in the various essays, thereby demonstrating their own persuasive power. This holds especially true for Alison Saunders’s essay that can almost be read as a true detective-story and where keen analysis is part of the reading pleasure. This volume offers sophisticated, clearly written essays that are nevertheless accessible even to the non-specialist reader. NATHALIE CARRÉ Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales

218 EMBLEMATICA FRANCESCO LUCIOLI, Amore punito e disarmato. Parola e immagine da Petrarca all’ Arcadia, Roma: Sapienza Università Editrice, 2013, 348 pp. Studi e Ricerche, 9. ISBN 978-88-98533-09-1. €22. This book investigates literary and iconographical variations on topoi of the punishment and chastisement of the God Eros. The survey spans from the fourteenth century through the eighteenth century The author chooses to focus on the topos of Cupid disarmed by women and analyzes its role within the context of the specific literary genre of narrative poetry. The volume is divided in six chapters, followed by an iconographical section. The first chapter, entitled “Mito e allegoria: le fonti classiche e la loro ricezione” [Myth and Allegory: Classical Sources and their Reception] is devoted to the origins of the theme of Cupid’s defeat, and combines both his imprisonment and his punishment. The author lists a wide range of texts from Petrarch’s Triumphus Pudicitie to antique sources, such as Ausonius’ Cupido Cruciatus, the Anthologia Graeca, Anachreon, the Elegies of Tibullus and Propertius, Lucian’s Dialogue of the Gods, Apuleius’s Metamorphosis, and, more pertinently, Ovid’s major contributions to this theme. Of particular relevance to the readers of this journal is the second part of the third chapter “Imprese ed emblemi d’amore” [Impresas and Emblems of Love], which is dedicated to the treatment of this topos in sixteenth-century emblems. The theme of Cupid defeated enjoyed enormous popularity as attested by the descriptions of contemporary suits of armor and the production of medals. One of the most famous examples of the latter is the medal chiseled for Lucrezia Borgia in 1505, whose reverse shows an image of the so-called Amore bendato, in which Cupid is disarmed, blindfolded, and tied to a laurel tree. The author explains how the theme was used in emblematic pageants and coats of arms for Medici tournaments and jousts. Even though the volume is primarily devoted to literary expressions of the theme, and even though emblems and devices are not comprehensively presented in this work, the author gives a solid textual background for the exploration of this typical emblem topos. ALEXANDRE VANAUTGAERDEN Bibliothèque de Genève



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VALÉRIE HAYAERT AND ANTOINE GARAPON. Allégories de Justice. La grand’chambre du Parlement de Flandre. Abbeville: A. Paillart, 2014. Pp. 111, with 46 color ills. €20. With an introduction by Robert Badinter, human rights activist and Minister of Justice in François Mitterand’s first socialist government, Allégories de Justice focuses on the paintings by Nicolas-Guy Brenet completed in 1768– 1769 for the grand’chambre, the court of justice, of the Parlement de Flandre in the French town of Douai. Brenet uses the allegorical language of personification, first devised by the ancient Greeks, to give a visual form to abstract ideas. It was the Roman writer Aulus Gellius who produced perhaps the most memorable account of Justice in his Noctes atticae (XIV.4), describing her as “of maidenly form and bearing, with a stern and fearsome countenance, a keen glance of the eye, and a dignity and solemnity which was neither mean nor cruel, but awe inspiring . . . She has the title of a virgin as a symbol of her purity and an indication that she has never given way to evil-doers, that she has never yielded to soothing words, to prayers and entreaties, to flattery, nor to anything of that kind. Therefore she is properly represented too as stern and dignified, with a serious expression and a keen, steadfast glance, in order that she may inspire fear in the wicked and courage in the good; to the latter, as her friends, she presents a friendly aspect, to the former a stern face.” Her physical aspect clearly reflects the desirable characteristics of justice itself. The representation of Justice as an allegorical figure is discussed in the first chapter of Allégories de Justice: de l’Antiquité classique au Moyen Âge [Allegories of Justice: from Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages], through the influence of Prudentius’s Psychomachia, and in the Renaissance, for example through the ‘reconstructions’ of the Calumny of Apelles, leading to the attempted codification of allegorical language in Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia (first published in 1593, and popularized in the illustrated edition of 1603). A distinguished emblematist, Valérie Hayaert follows Justice in various guises, emphasizing throughout both her feminine character (most personifications are women because their Latin gender is feminine) and her nudity—the classical notion of nuda veritas. The third chapter deals with the decorative program by Brenet and its background. It was in 1714 that King Louis XIV asked for the Parliament of Flanders to settle in Douai, which led to the remodeling of the courthouse in the Parliament in 1762 and to the

220 EMBLEMATICA commission of paintings of six personifications. At this point Hayaert and Garapon provide an account of Brenet’s life (1728–1792), including his Allégorie de la Justice romaine à qui on apporte une supplique (1760) in grisaille, in imitation of a classical relief. Of the Douai paintings Justice and Étude were exhibited at the Salon in 1769. The cycle seems to have been painted between April 1768 and 1769. On 19 April 1768 Brenet accepted “envers Messeigneurs du Parlement de Douai, de faire six tableaux représentant différentes vertus avec leurs attributs” [(a request) to execute six paintings representing different virtues with their attributes for his Lordships of the Parliament of Douai]; he also painted for the grand’chambre of the Parliament a full size copy of the famous portrait of Louis XIV by Hyacinthe Rigaud, adding painted reliefs of Justice and Religion behind the king. In a letter to M. de Francqueville d’Abancourt, Procureur général, Brenet described a variant of Le temps découvrant la Vérité that had been commissioned from him by the magistrate: “Monsieur, j’ai fini le petit tableau que vous avez désiré de moi; c’est la même figure que la vérité que vous avez dans la salle du Parlement. J’ai taché d’embellir la tête; le sujet général est le temps qui découvre la vérité. Derrière lui, on voit un génie qui tient sa faux et son sablier; au pied, sur la gauche, est un enfant qui tient un serpent qui se mord la queue, symbole de l’éternité, de l’autre main des palmes, symbole de la victoire qu’elle remporte dès qu’elle paraît. Jointe à ces palmes, il y a une branche d’olivier, symbole de la paix qu’elle procure; à ces pieds est une guirlande de fleur avec laquelle la vérité nous enchaîne. Aux pieds de la vérité, à droite, on voit l’ignorance renversée qui se couvre les yeux pour ne point la voir. Du même côté, derrière l’ignorance, on voit parmi les brouillards épais, fuir l’envie et la fraude frémissant de rage. De la vérité sort la lumière qui éclaire tout le tableau” [Sir, I have finished the small painting you ask from me; it is the same composition as the one of Truth in the main room of the Parliament. I have striven to embellish her head; the general theme is Time revealing Truth. Behind Time, one can see a genie holding its scythe and hourglass; at his feet, on the left side, a child holds a snake biting its tail, symbol of eternity, in the other hand, he holds palms, symbol of the victory she achieves when she appears. Together with these palms, there is an olive branch, symbolizing the peace she brings; at her feet, a flower garland with which Truth chains us. At Truth’s feet, on the right, one can see Ignorance, knocked over, covering her eyes to avoid seeing her. On the same side, behind Ignorance, one can distinguish, within thick



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fogs, Envy running away and Fraud quivering with rage. The light comes from Truth, illuminating the whole painting]. In regard to the decoration of the grand’chambre, Justice and Religion (perhaps this can be understood as a kind of Human and Divine Justice?) are said to have been hung originally on the north wall on either side of the portrait of Louis XIV, while the other four, Prudence, Force, Étude, and Vérité [Prudence, Fortitude, Study, and Truth] were hung on the west wall. In regard to the iconography, it would have been useful to stress here that Justice, Prudence, Fortitude, and Temperance are the four cardinal virtues and that, to complete the iconography, the artist added a putto with a horse’s bit, the traditional attribute of Temperance, next to this personification of Force—this also explains the pensive manner in which Force symbolizes the seriousness of a judgment. Finally, instead of being a modern Étude, the last personification probably stands for Instruction, the instruction in a legal affair carried out in France by a procureur, or prosecutor (while the formula of a woman holding an oil lamp over a putto to discover its nature recalls the story of Amor and Psyche). Another legal implication is given by the Euclidian diagram held by a putto pointing at Vérité, which, as we learn here, comes from the parallelism often stressed between geometry and the logic of law. The book is enriched by archival work and subtle interpretation, as in the case of the analysis of the shearing scissors held by a putto in the allegory of Prudence. These are seen here, via a French translation of Diego Saavedra Fajardo, as a witty development of the overall sense of the allegory; ingenious too is the recourse in Force to another possible emblematic implication, as the horse’s bit may recall that “Les Loix sont les règles du bon Gouvernement . . . ce sont les murs de la Magistrature, les yeux et l’âme des Villes, les chaînes du Peuple et, comme le montre cette Devise, un frein qui le régit et le corrige” [Laws are the rules of good governance… they are the walls of magistracy, the eyes and souls of towns, the chains of the people and, as this device shows, a horse’s bit that presides over and corrects it]; in the same composition the fasces, a bundle of rods as a symbol of a magistrate’s power, may allude to the fact that “Il faut élever dès le bas âge des sujets pour la Magistrature, parce que c’est de leur capacité . . . que le maintien ou la ruine des États dépendent, puisque c’est cette Magistrature qui en est l’âme.” [We ought to raise as early as possible subjects for the magistracy, because it is from their ability . . . that the conservation or the ruin of states depend, since it is this magistracy which

222 EMBLEMATICA is its soul]. Such emblematic interpretations could have enriched the meaning of the paintings for the most learned viewers, as they enhance the scope of this book. There follows a chapter (unfortunately not well illustrated) on the allegories of Justice in Besançon—sculptures of Justice and Fortitude by Hughes Sambin were found on the Renaissance façade of the Palais de Justice. The focus, however, is on the painted ceiling by Paul Gervais in the Chambre des audiences solennelles [official audiences], which combines historical and allegorical implications and leads into a discussion of the allegorical genre in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The final chapter, “Le devenir de l’allégorie de justice en démocratie” [The future of the allegory of justice within democracy] focuses on the personification of the République. Altogether, this is a learned, most welcome study of a décor, which deserves a wider audience. JEAN MICHEL MASSING King’s College, Cambridge

“Hoc Cæsar me donavit” [Caesar has rewarded me with this], Claude Paradin, Devises Heroïques, Lyons, 1557. Courtesy of Emblematica Online: University of Glasgow Library Special Collections.

Volume Index Articles by Author Bath, Michael. Books and Buildings: Recursive Emblems in the Applied Arts

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Bath, Michael, and Theo van Heijnsbergen. Paradin Politicized: Some New Sources for Scottish Paintings 43 Graham, David. “Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts”: Lessons from the History of Emblem Studies 1 McKeown, Simon. “Imitation” and “Idea” in Eighteenth-Century English Painting: William Hoare of Bath, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and the Emblematic Inheritance 141 Mulryan, John. Captioned Images of Venus in Vincenzo Cartari’s Imagini 123 Razzall, Lucy. “Non intus ut extra”: The Emblematic Silenus in Early Modern Literature 107 Saunders, Alison. More French Emblematic Predecessors, Godly and Amorous 69

Articles by Title Books and Buildings: Recursive Emblems in the Applied Arts, Michael Bath

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Captioned Images of Venus in Vincenzo Cartari’s Imagini, John Mulryan

123

225 Emblematica, Volume 22. Copyright © 2016 by AMS Press, Inc. All rights reserved.

226 EMBLEMATICA “Imitation” and “Idea” in Eighteenth-Century English Painting: William Hoare of Bath, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and the Emblematic Inheritance, Simon McKeown 141 More French Emblematic Predecessors, Godly and Amorous, Alison Saunders 69 “Non intus ut extra”: The Emblematic Silenus in Early Modern Literature, Lucy Razzall 107 Paradin Politicized: Some New Sources for Scottish Paintings, Michael Bath and Theo van Heijnsbergen 43 “Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts”: Lessons from the History of Emblem Studies, David Graham 1

Reviews Crowe, Nicholas J. Jeremias Drexel’s “Christian Zodiac.” Seventeenth-Century Publishing Sensation. A Critical Edition, Translated and with an Introduction & Notes, by Peter Daly 208 Hayaert, Valérie, and Antoine Garapon. Allégories de Justice. La grand’chambre du Parlement de Flandre, by Jean Michel Massing

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Lucioli, Francesco. Amore punito e disarmato. Parola e immagine da Petrarca all’ Arcadia, by Alexandre Vanautgaerden 218 Makhov, Aleksandr. Emblematika: Makrokosm [Emblematica: Macrocosm], by Tatiana Artemyeva 200 McCall Probes, Christine, and Sabine Mödersheim, eds. The Art of Persuasion. Emblems and Propaganda, by Nathalie Carré 214 Pahl, Hanna, ed. Emblematic Strategies in Contemporary Art, Selected Papers from the Workshop Emblematic Strategies at the University of Kiel, July 29–31, 2014, by Valérie Hayaert 212



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Rolet, Anne, and Stéphane Rolet, eds. André Alciat (1492– 1550) Un humaniste au confluent des savoirs dans l’Europe de la Renaissance, by Valérie Hayaert 195