Emblematics in the early modern age : case studies on the interaction between philosophy, art and literature 9788862274548, 9788833151953, 9788862274555

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EMBLEMATICS IN THE EARLY MODERN AGE CASE STUDIES ON THE INTERACTION BETWEEN PHILOSOPHY, ART AND I 1TFR ATIIRF

PREFACE Eugenio Canone • Leen Spruit emblem is an interdependent combination of a symbolic picture (pictura), pithy motto or title (inscriptio), and a passage of prose or verse (subscripts). The form’s origins are complex, and it is built on assumptions about the natural world, art and language that both precede and mark the Renaissance. Of central importance is the medieval view that depicted nature as a book or a mirror, and invested everything with a corresponding significance. Art as a page in the Book of Nature, or as a pas­ sage from the Bible, is amenable to interpretation on several levels, and poetry and pictures may signify something beyond what they actually are and beyond what they seem to represent. The combination of signs and figures with a few words makes sharp-witted instruction possible. The emblems are a form of reasoning per analogiam, and are often enigmatic. A form of persuasive discourse, emblems may present popular or learned morality, political statements or religious propaganda. They in­ vite a multilayered symbolic distillation of moral and ethical ideas, and eventually urge some ‘right’ course of action or point of view on the readers. As is well-known, Renaissance emblematics arose with Andrea Alciato’s Emblemata (first edition 1531), which elaborated on the tradition of Horapollo’s Hieroglyphs (dis­ covered in 1419. and translated into Latin in 1515). The treatises on imprese are linked to the emblem books, as they share the symbolic principle, but at the same time this tra­ dition is a spin-off with characteristics of its own, such as the early use of vernacular besides Latin. In this case, the ‘grounding’ text is Paolo Giovio’s Dialogo dell’imprese militari et amorose, the first edition of which appeared in 1555. However, Giovio com­ posed this text four years earlier, in 1551, when Claude Paradin published his Devises héroïques, a collection of prints with short commentaries, which had a noteworthy publishing fortune in subsequent decades. The intimate relationship between em­ blems and imprese is also expressed in the title of the Italian version of Alciato’s work, edited by Giovanni Marquale: Diverse imprese accommodate a diverse moralità, con versi che i loro significati dichiarano insieme con moite altre nella lingua italiana non più tradotte. Tratte da gli Emblemi dell’Alciato (Lyon, 1551). The emblematic tradition not only displays an intricate form of interaction be­ tween literature, philosophy and art, but also one between poetry (in particular epigrammatic poetry), discursive treatises, and the apophtegmatic and anecdotic lit­ erature, both erudite and moralizing, which ranges from mythology to morals, and which is so typical of the humanist Renaissance culture. Some emblematic treatises are written in dialogue, as was Giovio’s text. The dialogical form was particularly effective in blending ethics and poetry, erudition and criticism (both moral and reli­ gious), looking to the classical as well as to the contemporary world. Furthermore, the emblematic tradition, as well as the treatises on imprese and those devoted to the issue of love, reveal a contamination between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture, as they repre­ sent a point of encounter between heroic epics and their exempta in a bourgeois and more ‘intimistic’ form. The emblems and the imprese, which are essentially books of he

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images, both mental and imaginary, combine the humanist erudition and the con­ temporary taste for compendia useful for the recording of complex contents. The enormous success of the emblematic tradition is also due to the printing of economic, pocket-size books from the second half of the sixteenth century onwards, which favoured the spread of humanistic culture in larger sections of the literate society. Albeit a product of the later Renaissance culture, the emblematics passed through a period of enormous diffusion in the seventeenth century, in a spiritual cli­ mate that had changed profoundly in political, religious, philosophical and scientific terms. One of the reasons of this success lies without doubt in the essentially ‘ambig­ uous’ nature of the emblematic tradition, i.e. the combination of disciplinary fields, doctrinal strands and literary genres, which consequently made it more adaptable. This volume presents essays on sixteenth and seventeenth-century emblematics and its relations with contemporary Renaissance culture. It focuses on the Dutch situation, as it was open to multifaceted influences and is highly representative in terms of the particular contamination that characterized the emblematic tradition from its rise in the mid-sixteenth century onwards. Karl Enenkel scrutinizes the emblem book of Hadrianus Junius (published in 1565), an outstanding work with regard to the epigrams, their woodcut illustrations, and the harmonious layout of the booklet as a whole. The most intriguing feature of Jun­ ius’ emblem book is its self-exegesis in the form of an attached commentary, a unique document which gives us trustworthy access to the author’s intention and insights into the very process of early modern literary writing. Enenkel convincingly argues that Junius envisaged his commentary as part of the emblematic game, which could be played both alone and by a group. The readers were meant to first look at the em­ blems and then try to decode their meaning. Indeed, Junius considered the enigma as the most important aspect of emblematics, which is equally true for the construc­ tion and the reception of emblems. This is the main reason why he deliberately kept the epigrams short. The epigram was not meant to give away the whole solution. This was given only in the commentary. If both the pictorial, descriptive part of the epigram and its moral, interpretative part had been longer, they would have severely diminished the enigmatic character of the emblem. Armando Maggi’s essay aims at highlighting the complexity of the discussion on the meaning of the human body in an impresa. He analyzes this issue by reading fa­ mous books of imprese, among which Giovio’s Dialogo dell’imprese militari et amorose, Ercole Tasso’s Della realtà eperfettione delle imprese, and Scipione Bargagli’s Dell’imprese. Maggi shows that the often confusing debate over the suitability of the human body in an impresa stems from the unclear nature of the ’sacred’, ‘occult’, or ‘mysterious’ nature of an impresa. He stresses the need of a serious reflection on the subtle mean­ ings and allusions behind the apparently convoluted and often pedantic discussions present in so many treatises on emblems and imprese. In his view, how to represent what is at once deeply personal (the unspeakable pain of a widower, for example, but also a self-portrait) and universal is the key topic of this form of visual expression. In 1590, the Dutch painter and printmaker Hendrick Goltzius created a composi­ tion representing a motif directly borrowed from Terence’s Eunuchus, namely the sentence Sine Cerereet Libero friget Venus («Without Ceres and Bacchus, Venus would freeze». Sixteen years later, Goltzius elaborated his last representation of this theme

PREFACE

in a monumental work, in which he included a self-portrait staring at the viewer and holding in both hands the tools of his metamorphic art : the burins. Ricardo De Mambro Santos interprets Goltzius’s works within their original context of production, in connection with the social, artistic and economic boundaries of their first milieu of reception, the towns of Haarlem and Amsterdam at the turn of the century. He argues that the creation of such a corpus of prints, drawings and paintings is directly associated with the horizon of expectations of a precise circle of patrons, commis­ sioners and art collectors: the wealthy Dutch brewers. Francesca Terrenato’s paper analyzes the discussion and pictorial elaboration of virginity, chastity and the marital bond in a selection of Dutch emblem-books and re­ lated texts, contextualizing the emblems in the social, cultural and religious environ­ ment in which they were produced. The way in which images and words clustered around matters of sexual behaviour explains how issues old and new were made accessible to the reading public, an audience which in the case of this popular genre outnumbered the community of the learned and included subjects previously ex­ cluded from the book market. Terrenato shows that emblematic writings focusing on women, their life, and their problems, did not actually uproot women's subordi­ nated role as daughters and spouses, nor did they change men’s ambivalence toward women - that combination of devilish and angelic powers which is one of the most durable topoi in the history of literature. Els Stronks analyzes the Dutch love emblem through its Italian origins, economic benefits, and its social and religious function. Combination volumes like Hooft’s Emblemata amatoria and Cupido’s lusthof, with emblems and songs, allowed for optimal social use. Dutch emblem poets emphasized the cryptic nature of the emblem and the relation between word and image. They also had an eye for points of contact between the emblematic genre and other artistic disciplines and literary fashions. Equally clear is the fact that the emblematic genre attracted a large number of Dutch poets, and that emblem books were used to emancipate and develop the Dutch lan­ guage as well as to shape the life and morals of the Low Countries. A key character­ istic of the whole of Dutch emblematics was a preference for daily life as a source of motifs and as a possibility for concretizing moralizations. Ordinary objects, scenes, and landscapes provided emblematists like Roemer Visscher, Jacob Cats, Johan de Brune and Jan Luyken with opportunities to teach the reading public a variety of moral lessons. The scientific and philosophical aspects of the emblematic tradition are of various kinds and present themselves on different levels, thus raising several methodological issues. Leen Spruit’s essay first presents an outline of the scientific and philosophical disciplines that determined the spiritual milieu in which emblem books were com­ posed. He then focuses on two specific disciplinary fields, namely natural history and alchemy. Natural history, typically heavily and imaginatively moralised in the medieval bestiaries and lapidaries, contributed to a large proportion of symbols, and in turn it has been defined in some studies as characterized by an ‘emblematic’ view of natural reality. Alchemy too contributed to the composition of many emblem­ atic themes; in turn, later seventeenth-century alchemical works used emblems as illustrations. Spruit finally analyzes some aspects of the transmission of knowledge through emblems, discussing the relation between res significans and res significant as

well as the role of prior knowledge in the (contemporary) interpretation of the sym­ bolic (and thus often veiled) contents of emblems. The case studies offered in this book yield no single, radical thesis. But they do sug­ gest two modest, tentative conclusions. The first is simply that any effort to identify a single, narrowly defined way of reading the emblem books does violence to the richness of this tradition. Radically different styles, inspirations, and approaches com­ peted and coexisted, in the same book and even in the same intellectual. The second conclusion is that humanists of the Renaissance created a particular style of bookish but unblinkered intellectual life that would endure for centuries. Whatever their dif­ ferences, humanists shared the belief that a new culture could be built on classical foundations - a faith in the unique value of their favourite texts and topics. References

i. Bibliographies Emblemata. Handbuch çur Sinnbildkunst des xvi. und xvn. Jahrhunderts, eds. A. Henkel and A. Schône, Stuttgart, Metzler, 1978 (first edition: 1967). The English Emblem. Bibliography of secondary literature, eds. Peter M. Daly and Магу V. Silcox, München, Saur, 1990. Stephen Rawles, Emblem Bibliography, in Companion to Emblem Studies, ed. P. M. Daly, New York, ams Press, 2008; cf. also Selective Bibliography for Further Reading in this volume. 2.Joumals

Emblematica. An InterdisciplinaryJournal for Emblem Studies, New York,

ams

Press, 1986-.

Studies in the Emblem, New York, ams Press, 1988-. Corpus librorum emblematum, München, Saur, 1990-. Glasgow Emblem Studies, Glasgow, University of Glasgow, 1996-. Imagofigurata, eds. P. M. Daly, J. Manning, K. Porteman, Turnhout, Brepols, 1999-. Symbola et Emblemata. Studies in Renaissance and Baroque Symbolism, ed. B. F. Scholz, Leiden, Brill, 1989 .

ams

4. Websites www.unibg.it/cav / emblematica /index.htm www.let.uu.nl / nederlands / nlren / ERG / index.html www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/

THE GAME OF EMBLEMS: THE INVENTION OF JUNIUS’S SELF-EXEGETICAL EMBLEM COMMENTARY Karl Enenkel Dutch scholar, humanist and medical doctor Hadrianus Junius was one of the most creative and influential sixteenth-century pioneers of Neo-Latin emblematics.' His emblem book of 1565 (Emblemata) is a true masterpiece, with regard to both form and content: the epigrams themselves, their woodcut illustrations, and the harmonious layout of the booklet as a whole. In the epigrams, Junius presents himself as a master of Latin verse, by his usage of a spectacular variety of metres,12* his ingenious inventio, his sensible elocutio, and the extremely disciplined, economi­ cal and concise way in which he construed his poems. In marked difference with the early editions of Andrea Alciato’s Emblematum libellus (1531), Junius’s picturae were made by very skilful craftsmen, such as Geoffrey Ballain (designs) and Gerard Jansen van Kampen (woodcuts).’ The fact that a separate page is reserved for each emblem, always organised according to the same formula (one motto, one illustration, one ep­ igram), and that each epigram consists of exactly four verses, makes an extraordinar­ ily consistent impression. Moreover, Junius’s emblem book was extremely successful in terms of copies, print runs, and distribution. Its publisher, Christopher Plantin, issued it approximately seven times between 1565 and 1570, and the Plantin Press re­ issued it in ten-year intervals, in 1575,1585,1595 and 1596. Plantin was an ideal publisher for Junius’s book, because of the concentrated ef­ fort he made, in the earliest years of his enterprise (1561-1570), to establish himself in the market as a publisher of emblem books.4*During this period, he printed and re­ printed not only Junius’ book, but also those of Alciato, Claude Paradin and Joannes Sambucus, flooding the market with a hitherto unrivalled number of copies - accord­ ing to a conservative estimate some seventeen thousand.’ Of Junius’ Latin Emblemata alone, the Plantin Press probably printed about seven thousand or even more copies;6 he

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1 On the Neo-Latin pioneers of emblematics cf. К. A. E. Enenkel. A. S. Q. Visser, eds. Mundus Emblemoticus. Studies in Neo-Latin Emblem Books, Turnhout, 2003; K.A.E. Enenkel. The Neo-Latin Emblem: Humanist Learning, Classical Antiquity, and the Virtual ‘Wunderkammer’, in Companion to Emblem Studies, ed. P. Daly, New York, 2008, pp. 129-153. 2 It is a most spectacular artistic achievement that in Junius’ collection - in marked difference with Alciato’s Emblemata - more than eighty per cent of the epigrams (47 of the 58!) are written in metres different from the normal epigrammatic metre of elegiac distichs. ’ For Junius’ Emblemata, see the seminal study by C. Heesakkers, Hadrian: /unit Medici Emblemata (ij6j), in Enenkel, Visser, eds, Mundus Emblematiciu, pp. 33-69. On the artists, ibidem, p. 43 4 See A. S. Q. Visser, Joannes Sambucus and the Learned Image. The Use of the Emblem in Late-Renaissance Humanism, Leiden and Boston, 2005, chapter 11. pp. 49-83. ’ Ibidem, p. 53. note 17. 6 The print run of the first edition was already 1,250 copies. See Heesakkers, Hadriani lunii Emblemata, p. 43.

if one adds the later editions issued in 1575,1585 (twice), 1595 and 1596 (three times), some five or six thousand copies more. Additionally, the Plantin Press published Ju­ nius’ Emblemata also in French (1567,1568,1570,1575) and Dutch (1575 and 1576) trans­ lations.'

Junius’

authorial commentary

The most intriguing feature of Junius' emblem book, however, is its self-exegesis in the form of a substantial attached commentary. For modern readers, it is not easy to understand the function and meaning of this commentary, which indeed is all but self-evident. First of all, it may seem odd that an author should make a circumstantial effort to explain himself, especially in a literary genre based around enigmatic poems and images. For an author to clarify his riddles ran the risk of eliminating the most at­ tractive aspect of his literary work. Junius and his contemporaries regarded emblems as textual (and pictorial) artifices intended to stimulate the reader’s mind by intel­ lectual guess-work. If there is nothing left to be guessed, the genre loses much of its appeal and sense. This view was shared, among others, by Junius’ colleague Joannes Sambucus, who - just one year before Junius - had his Emblemata printed at the same publisher’s house? Sambucus was convinced that the most important stage in the perception of emblems was the reader’s intellectual labour of decoding the hidden meaning of both the images and the epigrams. In his brief theoretical introduction «De emblemate» he states that emblems should be «veiled, ingenious, and pleasing with a variety of meaning»? Junius was obviously aware of the problems faced by a commentary on emblems. It is a telling detail that he presented his commentary as a separate part of his work, and that he introduced it with a new, cautious and partly defensive preface addressed to the reader? From this preface it is evident that he did not take it for granted that the reader would accept and understand his commentary. Rather, Junius considered it necessary to offer the reader some guidance by setting out a few remarks as to the intended use of the work. Junius expresses concern that the commentary may harm the very ‘nature’ (nakura) and ‘sense’ (ratio) of the emblems, and he admits that «writings of this kind are the more attractive and charming the more they sharpen the reader’s mind, by which is meant, the longer they keep it in suspense and uncer­ tainty»? The urgency of this problem becomes even clearer if one analyses the actual poetic method of Junius as an epigrammatist. It appears that he construed almost all ' For the French editions, see L. Vo er, The Plantin Press (1 vol. z, Amsterdam, 1981. nos. 14841487. pp. 1282-1185; The French translation of 1568 is not mentioned in A. Adams, S. Rawles, A. Saun­ ders, A Bibliography of French Emblem Books, 2 vols, Geneva, 1999-2002, vol. 1, F. 352-354, pp. 658-662. For the Dutch versions, see Vo Er, Plantin Press, vol. 3, nos 1482-1483, pp. 1281-1282. 2 P. Daly, Emblem Theory.- Modern and Early Modern, in Companion to Emblem Studies, ed. Idem, pp. 43-78 (71-73). 1 Ibidem, p. 72: «Itaque tecta, arguta, iucunda et varie significant sint» (my italics). On Sambucus’ theoretical view on emblems see Visser, Joannes Sambucus and the Learned Image, chapter 3 (Sambucus about the Emblem), pp. 85-109. 4 Ad lectorem, in H. Junius, Emblemata ad D. Arnoldum Cobelium. Eiusdem Aenigmatum libellas ad D. Arnoldum Rosenbergum, Antwerp, 1565. p. 65. ’ Ibidem : « Non enim ignoramus, eo plus venustatis et gratiae istiusmodi scriptis accedere, quo ingenium acuunt magis; hoc est, quo suspensum diutius et sollicitum Lectoris animum tenent».

of his epigrams following the poetic device of creating suspense: in the first two lines he usually describes the pictura in a way that makes the reader wonder what its mean­ ing would be, while in the second two he gives a short indication of the meaning, but preferably in a way that some guesswork is left to the reader with respect to the exact connection between the image and its partly revealed sense. Thus, one wonders what advantages made Junius run the risk of diminishing his booklet’s charm and attractiveness. Is it plausible to suppose that he considered his emblems too difficult to understand, at least for part of his readership? Could this be linked with Junius’ tendency toward individual interpretations? Individual interpreta­ tions, ever since the emblem founder Andrea Alciato, constituted a considerable po­ tential of emblematic poetics. If one analyses Junius’ Emblemata, it becomes perfectly clear how inventive he was. He turns out to be anything but a simple imitator of Alciato. Most of his emblems contain new and, in more than a few cases, remarkable inventions. With regard to this background, Junius seems to have been tempted to ‘explain himself’ to his readers in order to reveal his authorial intention, and to dem­ onstrate his originality in detail. The unity of author and commentator gave him the unique opportunity to come up with a clear-cut and convincing exegesis. After all he, better than anyone, knew the author’s mind, what sources had been used, and how they had been interpreted. Thus, as it seems, we have here a unique document which gives us a trustworthy access to the author’s intention and reliable insights into the very process of early modern literary writing. Potential models for Junius’

commentary

Chris Heesakkers, in his seminal article on Junius’ Emblemata, has interpreted the authorial commentary «in the first place as philological achievement».1 In his view, Junius, as a true and «all-devouring philologist», intended in his commentary to pro­ vide his readers with a careful demonstration of antique source-texts. The commen­ tary was meant to display the «vast erudition and knowledge of the ancient Greek and Latin and Renaissance literature».* This supposed philological orientation of the commentary seems to be reinforced by the list of almost a hundred authors which is offered at the end of the booklet.’ Heesakkers’ interpretation of Junius’ commentary is connected with his assumption that it was probably inspired by «the Lyon editions of Alciato’s Emblemata, printed in 1555 and 1561», which «contained large commentar­ ies, although not by the author himself».4 Commented editions of Alciato may indeed have inspired Junius to add a com­ mentary to his own Emblemata. These appeared in Lyons from 1549 on, authored by the French schoolmaster Barthélemy Aneau and the German travelling intellectual Sebastian Stockhamer.’ But it remains to be seen what exactly it was that inspired ' Heesakkers, Hadriani Junii Emblemata, pp. 48-54 (especially 49). * Ibidem. * Junius, Emblemata, fols [Kjjv-fIQJr: «Auctorum nomina e quibus profecimus, et quorum testimonio sumus usi» 4 Heesakkers, Hadriani Junii Emblemata, p. 48. Heesakkers, however, cautiously states that it would be possible as well that Junius 'did not need an example to come up with the idea of adding a commen­ tary to his emblems’. ’ Editiones principes: B. Aneau, Emblèmes d'Alciat, de nouveau translate^ en François vers pourvers iouxte les Latins etc., Lyons, 1549, printed by M. Bonhomme and G. Rouille. And S. Stockhamer. Clarissimi viri

Junius and what he took from these commentaries. First of all, it is necessary to dif­ ferentiate between Aneau’s and Stockhamer’s commentaries. Aneau’s comments accompanied his French translation of Alciato’s emblems (1549). They were, in fact, no more than short, mostly mythological explanations which were meant to help less erudite readers. ' They neither focus on philological questions nor display any remarkable degree of humanist erudition (although Aneau was surely an erudite humanist). Stockhamer’s commentary, on the other hand, is of a totally different kind. It does not address the needs of vernacular or less learned readers. Although the German humanist, who was then active in Portugal’s centre of scholarship, the University of Coimbra, insists on a kind of studied modesty, by calling them ‘succinct’ («succincta commentariola»; «succincte enarravi»),1 they are substantial and display considerable humanist learning. In total, the commentary takes some hundred and twenty pages. Stockhamer unfolds before the eyes of his readers a great number and variety of ancient sources which he identifies with philological precision, mentioning book and paragraph numbers. Especially remarkable is the quantity of Greek works which the commenta­ tor was obviously able to consult in the original language. Among others, he quotes He­ siod, Aelian, Plato, Plutarch,1 Lucian,4 and Diogenes Laertius,’ the Greek Anthology, and even rather remote works, which suggest a more sophisticated erudition, such as Artemidorus’ work On the Interpretation of Dreams.6 Moreover, it appears that Stockhamer was well acquainted with modem humanist encyclopaedias, such as Pietro Crinito’s De honesta disciplina7 and Niccolô Leonico Tomeo’s De varia historia.8 Crinito (1475-1507), a pupil of the famous Greek scholar Angelo Poliziano, and professor at the University of Florence, was admired for his learning even by such critical minds as Erasmus.’ De honesta disciplina, a large collection of knowledge in twenty-four books, in a later Lyons edition comprising no less than 612 pages, is the fruit of his life-long erudition and vast D. And. Alciati Emblematum libri 11, nuperadiectis Scb. Stockhameri Germ, in primum librum succinctis commentariolis, Lyons, 1556, printed by J. de Tournes. See Daniel Russells important study on Claude Mignault's commentaries: D. Russell, Claude Mignault, Erasmus and Simon Bouquet: The Function of the Commentaries on Alciato’s Emblems, in: Enenkel, Visser, eds., Mundus emblematicus, pp. 17-32 (17-18).

' «briefves expositions epimythiques» (Russel, ClaudeMignault, p. 17). 2 «succincta commentariola» is given in the title of the Plantin editions; «succincte enarravi» ap­ pears in the dedicatory preface. See A. Alciato, Emblematum... libri 11, In eademsuccinctacommentariola. .. Sebastiano Stockhamero Germane auctore, Antwerp, 1565 (I used the copy in Leiden University Library, shelfmark 764 G 5). ’ See Stockhamer’s comment on Emblem 24 (Alciato. Emblemala, Stockhamer ed., 1565, p. 41): «Multa etiam de palma et cur victoriae symbolum (...) habeatur apud Plutarchum, lib. vin Symposiacon». 4 Cf. Stockhamer’s comment on Emblem 28 (ibidem, p. 46): «ut scribit Plat, in lib. De natura hominis et Lucian, in suis Dialogis, Dial. 1 ». 5 Ibidem : « Enarrat inter alios Diog. Laert. Lib. 1 De vita philosoph. ». 6 Cf. Stockhamer’s comment on Emblem 56, p. 103: «meminit Artemid. De somn. interpret, u, cap.

7 Editio princeps: P. Crinitus, Commentary de honesta disciplina, Florence, 1504, printed by Filippo Giunta. 8 N. Leonicus Thomaeus. De varia historia libri 1res, nuper in lucem editi. Basle, 1531. ’ Erasmus, Ciceronianus, in Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami, 1,2, eds. J.-C. Margolin and P. Mesnard, Amsterdam, 1971, pp. 667-668. For his biography cf. C. Anceleri, Contribua biografici sull'umanista Pietro Crinito, allievo di Poliziano, «Rivista storica degli archivi toscani», vol. 9,1933, pp. 41-70; Contempora­ ries of Erasmus, eds. P. G. Bictenholz, T. B. Deutscher, 3 vols, Toronto etc., 1985-1987, vol. 1, pp. 358-359.

reading. In Stockhamer’s commentary, it is cited in almost every lemma. No less reveal­ ing is Stockhamer’s acquaintance with Leonico Tomeo (1456-1531), the son of Greek im­ migrants after the Fall of Constantinople, a pupil of Chaicondyles, outstanding Greek scholar, professor at the University of Padua and translator of a number of works of Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Proclus.' As with Crinito’s De honesta disciplina, Leonico Tomeo’s De varia historia was the fruit of his life-long humanist scholarship. If one takes into account the different orientation of the commented editions of Alciato we can exclude the influence on Junius of Aneau’s Briefves expositions epimythiques. Stockhamer’s commentary, however, represents a more interesting case and deserves closer consideration. It is all the more likely that Junius was acquainted with it, since his publisher Christopher Plantin printed it in the very year he issued Junius’ Emblemata. With respect to Claude Mignault’s successful Alciato commentaries which were also printed by the Plantin Press (1573,1574,1581,1584 etc.) Daniel Russell has attempt­ ed to pin down their function as commonplace books, used in schools and by early modern writers.1 In his contribution, Russell describes this important function as Mignault’s achievement: It would appear that Mignault made little use of the other commentaries in his own work: those of Aneau were too short to have much to say and seemed to be aimed at a less erudite audience than the one Mignault was seeking; Mignault expresses a low opinion of Stock­ hamer’s work and his commentaries were fairly well formed before he could have come into contact with those of Sanchez de Las Brozas. '

Furthermore, Russell strongly connects Mignault’s re-functioning of the commented Alciato editions with their re-structuring by Aneau :

[T]he reorganization of the emblems in 1548 was so important for the future history of the emblem genre: the recording made it possible for each emblem to serve as a ‘place’ in which to collect commonplace wisdom on the subject of the emblem. As such, it called for the kind of commentary Claude Mignault was to provide.4

It seems worthwhile to have a closer look at the development as described by Russell. Was the commonplace function of the commented emblem really Mignault’s achieve­ ment? How does it compare to Stockhamer’s and Junius’ methods of commenting emblems? Junius, in any case, would have some experience as a teacher. At several stages of his career, he served as a schoolmaster and tutor of young pupils, for exam­ ple of the son of Count Pepoli in Bologna (1540), of the sons of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (from 1545 on);’ in 1550 he served as rector of the Latin school in Haarlem.6 Junius’ method of commenting

Let us now examine Junius’ method of commenting on emblems. Emblem 9 has the inscription «Invidia integritatis assecla» («Envy accompanies moral integrity»).7 The

1 1 ’ ’ 7

For Leonico's biography cf. Contemporaries of Erasmus, vol. 2, pp. 323-324. Russel, Claude Mignault, esp. 17-18. Ibidem, p. 18. 4 Ibidem, pp. 17-18. See Heesakkers, Hadriani lunii Emblemata, pp. 35 and 38. 6 Ibidem, p. 39. Emblemata, 1365, p. 15.

illustration (Fig. i) shows a palm tree in an impressive mountainous, rather dry and rocky landscape. At the foot of the tree a couple of snakes and frogs are depicted.

Inaidiaintegritatis allée la. nAdCornehnm Suftum Hollands Prsfidem.

Fig. i. H. Junius, Emblanata, Antwerp, 1565, no. 9, p. 15.

The epigram reads as follows: Palma caput tollit caelo ardua, cuius ad ima Rana loquax, stabulantur et hydri. Oppugnant proceres, quorum via consona recto est, Dégénérés atque invida lingua. The high palm tree raises its head into the sky, at its foot lie the loquacious frog and adders. Degenerate and envious people oppose the noblemen [or: tall men], who follow the path of right moral behaviour.

Both the illustration and the epigram fulfil the main principle of Junius’ emblem po­ etics, which is to create enigmatic images and texts. Although the second part of the epigram (lines 3-4) offers a kind of solution («Auflôsung» in Lessing’s sense1), while remaining cryptic, the reader’s mind is stimulated to meditate more closely on the exact meaning of the emblem. It is clear that he should identify degenerate and envi­ ous men with the snakes and frogs in the image, and noblemen with the palm tree. Nonetheless, he must have been puzzled by the image and the text. For example, it was somewhat difficult to understand how the frogs and snakes came to stay at the

' G. E. Lessing, AnmerJtungen Uber das Epigramm, in Idem, Werke, 1770-1773, ed. K. Bohnen, Frankfurt am Main, 2000.

foot of the palm tree. Frogs need a very humid environment, while palm trees - as was generally known, for example via Pliny’s Natural History - flourish on dry and sandy soil.' Thus, in a sense, the image even seems to contradict the facts of natural history. Also, it is unclear how frogs and snakes would ‘oppose’ a palm tree. Are they supposed to harm it? If so, how? On closer inspection, the three snakes appear to make an aggressive movement toward the palm tree, as if they were about to attack and bite it. Moreover, it seems that the seven frogs and three snakes even encircle the tree, resembling animals of prey surrounding their victim. From the perspective of natural history, it is hard to understand under which conditions frogs and snakes would behave toward a tree in such a way. Junius’ comment on the emblem hardly has the character of an in-depth philologi­ cal or scholarly commentary.1 First, he reveals the literary source of the emblematic pictura, Plutarch’s dialogue Why the Pythia does not now Give Oracles in Verse (CurPythia nunc non reddat oracula carmine), in a rather imprecise way. In this text, Plutarch de­ scribes the meandering dialogue of a company of philosophers and oracular inter­ preters walking in the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi, discussing works of religious art. When they enter the House of the Corinthians, they are puzzled by a bronze sculpture showing a palm tree with frogs and adders at its foot.' Plutarch dedicates two chapters to their efforts at interpretation. In his commentary, however, Junius renders his source rather carelessly; he does not mention that the philosophers, in fact, engage in the same exegetical activity as the emblem interpreter himself. This part of the context would have been necessary for its understanding and would have been extremely relevant to the very process of emblematic interpretation. Junius’ treatment of Plutarch’s text neither excels in philological scrutiny nor critical or ana­ lytical acumen. He even bluntly misquotes the text in giving the impression that in it, a certain Diogenianus provides a misguided interpretation of the palm tree. In the quoted passage from Plutarch it is not Diogenianus whose reading is questioned, but the dialogue person Serapion. Junius also fails to give the reader any clue as to who Diogenianus was and what kind of interpretation is at stake. Junius’ lack of precision is also evident from the fact that he says that the palm tree was situated in the temple «among the votive gifts» («inter rempli anathemata»). Plutarch emphasizes that the bronze palm tree was by then the only remaining gift. In his comment, Junius puts himself to the fore as the interpretative opponent of the erroneous ‘Diogenianus’. The reader who did not know this little known passage by heart (i.e., almost every­ body) would not recall that Junius here takes the position of Plutarch himself, who - via his main character and narrator Basilocles - ridicules Serapion's interpretation and replaces it with his own. And, interestingly enough, Basilocles’ interpretation - a Platonist’s, to be sure - seems related to Junius’; the palm tree symbolizes man gifted with a higher nature: «Plato called man also "a celestial plant”, as though he were held upright from his head above as from a root».4 ' «Gignitur levi sabulosaque terra, maiore in parte et nitrosa [...] cum amet si tient ia. (Pliny, Natural History, 23.28). See also ibidem, 17. 261. and Palladius, Opus agricultural, 11.12.1-2. * Emblemata, 1565, pp. 81-82. ’ Plutarch, Why the Pythia does not nowgive Oracles in verse (in Moralia, z-ad-^oye), 12-13 (399f-4oof). 4 Plutarch, Why the Pythia does not now give Oracles in verse. 12 (400B); tr. E Cole Babbit, Plutarch’s Moralia, vol. 5, London and Cambridge, ma, 1936 («Loeb Classical Library»), p. 255. See Plato, Timaeus,

Although Junius’ comment lacks philological scrutiny and precision, he neverthe­ less tries to impress the reader with his learning. This appears from his emphasis on antiquarian or linguistic knowledge. For example, he dedicates a line to the irrel­ evant information that the house of the Corinthians had been founded by the tyrant Cypsellus. ' Junius impresses the reader again and again by coming up with remote knowledge, for example by using a strange neologism, which once had been coined by Cato the Elder («vitilitigatoribus»). 2 The same goes for quoting relatively obscure exempta, such as an «Eutropius» who had been chamberlain (praepositus sacri cubiculi) under the Roman Emperors Arcadius and Theodosius (ca. 395 AD) and a «Rufinus» who must be the Flavius Rufinus who had also served under Emperor Theodosius? These aspects suggest that, in a sense, Junius’ commentary serves less as a self-exe­ gesis, than as a means of self-representation. Junius presents himself as a scholar with remote knowledge at his disposal, and, moreover, such knowledge that enables him to correct interpretations of classical authors. The suppression of Basilocles’ (or Plutarch's) correction of Serapion’s interpreta­ tion suggests that Junius aimed to emphasize the individual character of his emblem interpretations. This may be true, but it is certainly not the whole story. Although Junius subscribes to the attractiveness and importance of the play of emblematic in­ terpretation, he is at the same time convinced that only certain interpretations (and preferably only one) are right - that is, «Diogenianus» interpretation of the palm tree is wrong, his own is correct. In this vein, Junius’ commentary tends to explain in de­ tail and unmistakeably the symbolic meaning of his images. For example, in his com­ mentary to Emblem 9 he states that the palm tree symbolizes nobility. He does not emphasize that this is hi$ interpretation, only that it is true one because of its adequacy. To prove this, he tells the reader why the symbolic significance is adequate: because the palm tree is high [the nobility is elevated above the other layers of soci­ ety], because it is able to bear heavy burdens [noble people are able to fulfil political and military duties], and because it is evergreen [referring to the virtuous strength of noblemen].4 In the same way, he gives reasons why snakes and frogs are adequate symbols of calumnious and envious people. «Everybody knows», he says, «that frogs produce an awful noise» [my italics]. Therefore, «there is no doubt» that «they signify calumnious people » [my italics],5 The same goes for adders : they adequately connote

90A. The University Library of Amsterdam keeps Junius' own copy of Plutarch's Moralia. The dialogue on the Pythian oracles is heavily annotated: Plutarchus, Moralia opuscula, multis mendarum milibus expurgata, Basle, 1541. shelf mark III* В 2, pp. 797 808; Plato's quotation appears on p. 801, underscored by Junius.

1 Emblemata, 1565, p. 81. ‘ Pliny, Natural History, praefatio 31: «Ergo securi etiam contra vitilitigatores, quos Cato eleganter ex vitiis et litigatoribus composuit - quid enim illi aliud quam litigant aut litem quaerunt? - exsequemur reliqua propositi*. ’ Emblemata, 1565, p. 82. For Eutropius, see K. Ziegler et al, eds, Der Heine Pauly, 5 vols, Munich. 1979, vol. 2, col. 270, Nr. 4; for Rufinus ibidem, vol. 4, col. 1466, no. 2. Junius drew on Claudian’s Invectives against Rufinus and Eutropius. 4 Emblemata, 1565, p. 82: «Palma ardua primaeque nobilitatis arbor est, onerumque gravium victrix, frondibus nunquam vidua; quae opibus honoribusque pollentes aptissime exprimit*. ’ Ibidem: «quarum [sc. ranarum] rauca ilia et odiosa coaxatio nulli ignota, calumniatorum significationem haud dubiam habet*.

the calumnious and envious because of the quality of their poison. In order to prove this, Junius uses the authority of Pliny. According to Pliny, adders («hydri») figure among the most poisonous snakes.1 ‘Diogenianus’ interpretation (whatever it would have entailed) must be wrong, because it does not agree with the widely known and adequate symbolic meanings of the palm tree, frogs and adders. Thus, it is not Junius’ idiosyncratic interpretation which the commentary brings to the fore ; rather, it tries to reinforce and stabilize symbolic images and their meanings. If Junius quotes sources, they are in the majority of the cases not intended as philo­ logical clarifications or as linguistic parallels, but as authorisations of the meaningjunius attaches to the images. His formal presentation of the sources also points in that direction: whereas Stockhamer always quotes in a precise way, enabling the reader to check the ancient references - which is: book tide; book number; and (if available) chapter number - Junius only rarely gives book number, and even less often chapter numbers.' For example, it would have been difficult for many of his readers to locate the citation of Pliny on the poisonous nature of the ‘hydri’. In the vast majority of cases, Junius hardly envisaged the reader looking up his auctoritates: it was enough for the reader to trust his erudition. One should probably understand his list of authors in the same way : that is, not as a bibliographical checklist, but as an impressive table of auctoritates supporting the authority of his emblems and commentary? Does Junius’ commentary serve to remodel and re-situate the Emblemata as a com­ monplace book? 1 doubt whether Junius had this goal in mind. It can be demonstrat­ ed that in his commentary Junius did not aim at collecting a maximum of parallel sources, stories, examples, myths, images and meanings. On ‘hydri’, for example, he could have quoted a number of classical sources, among others, Vergil, Georgies 4.458, and Ovid, Heroides 9.25. Also, he could have easily linked them with mythology. For example, in classical poetry, the ‘hydri’ appear as the hair on the head of the Fu­ ries (e.g. Vergil, Aeneid 7.447 «tot Erynis sibilat hydris»; Valerius Flaccus, Argonautica, 4 413; vi. 397; Ovid, Metamorphoses, 4.800). This mythological link would have been extremely attractive if Junius had wanted to enlarge his field of interpretation. In poetry, the Furies were closely connected with envy and hatred, which would have dovetailed comfortably with Junius’ interpretation of the snakes as envious people. ' Ibidem: «hydri nullis serpentium veneno inferiores, si Plinio credimus». See Pliny, Natural History,

1 Quotations furnished with book and chapter numbers occur only in ten cases, cf. Emblemata, 1565, p. 71 (Aelian, Deanimantibus [sic]), p. 80 (Pliny, Natural History), p. 89 (Horace, Odes in, 4), p. 9; (Aristotle, De generatione animalium; Leviticus), p. 97 (Pliny. Natural History; Solinus), p. 102 (Aelian, Omnigena historia; De animalibus), p. 103 (Solinus), p. 112 (Pliny, Natural History), p. 120 (Pliny, Natural History), p. 131 (Aelian, Deanimalibus). References to book numbers or single books occur on p. 70 (Aelian, Deanimantibus [sic]), p. 84 (Diodorus Siculus. Bibliotheca), p. 87 (Lucan), pp. 90-91 : Ammianus Marcellinus), 97 (Ammianus Marcellinus, Herodotus, Plutarch, De Iside), p. 101 (Philostratus, De vita Apollonii), p. 106 (Athanasius, Adversus Amanos: Tacitus, lib. xtn ; Gellius), p. 107 (Ammianus Marcellinus, Clement of Alexandria, Aegyptiorum caeremoniae; Plutarch, De Iside), p. 111 (Galen, 'libro primo Therapeutices' ; Cornutus, De natura deorum), 112 (Macrobius, Saturnalia), p. 113 (Lactanrius), p. 114 (Theophrastus. Deplantis; Columella); p. 115 (Plutarch, Liber de Iside), p. 118 (Ovid, Tristia), p. 119 (Tertullian, Advenus Gnosticos), p. 122 (Gregory Nazianzenus, Sermons I), p. 130 (Clement of Alexandria, Stromata), p. 131 (Origen, Contra Celsum), p. 133 (Synesius, De regno), p. 135 (Xenophon, De dictis factisque Socratis ; Cicero, De officiis ; Silius Italiens, Bellum Punicum), p. 137 (Pliny, Natural History), p. 138 (Lucretius), p. 139 (Ammianus Marcellinus, Julianus, Plu­ tarch, Liber de Iside), and p. 146 (Junius, Adagia). ' Emblemata, 1565, fols [Кз]'-[1С,]'.

It is likewise clear that Junius did not construe his commentary as a commonplace lemma on ‘Envy’ or ‘Calumny’. Classical literature offered a large number of exem­ pta which would have been certainly known to Junius, and which were, moreover, easily accessible to him. Moreover, Junius himself collected a couple of ancient pro­ verbial expressions about envy, such as «Matreae helium alit», «Num fratri tuo bene est?», or «Terram continentem incolentes mare desiderant».' In the description of the proverbs, Junius displayed his impressive learning by quoting Greek authors such as Eustathius, Synesius and the epigrammatist Damagetus. Nor is it probable that Junius had an encyclopedic lemma in mind. The pictura of Emblem 9 would have of­ fered an excellent opportunity, for example, to compose a lemma on the spectacular peculiarities of the palm tree, treated by Pliny in great detail - an author with whom Junius was well acquainted.1 2 He could have effortlessly expounded on the regions in which palm trees grow, on their reproduction, fruits, leaves, quality of wood, and so on. But instead of putting together a commonplace or encyclopaedic lemma, it looks as if Junius tried to reduce the sources, by singling out only the relevant ones. Junius was more interested in stabilizing his images and interpretations than in offering a large ragbag of material. This orientation of Junius’ self-exegesis appears even more clearly if one compares his commentary with Stockhamer’s comments on Alciato. In his commentary on Emblem 24 «Obdurandum adversus urgentia», with the pictura showing a palm tree and a boy, Stockhamer gives an encyclopaedic collection of peculiarities of the palm tree derived from Pliny: The palm is a tree which is common in Judea. It is evergreen and never sheds its leaves. Com­ pared to other trees it is extremely firm, in that it rises, countering its weight, and in such a way that the more violently it is pressed down, the higher it lifts the weight, bending itself in opposition. In addition to its outstanding strength come the fruits it bears: very sweet and costly dates, which are considered delicacies.’

Stockhamer furnishes his encyclopaedic lemma on the palm tree with exact references to Pliny and Gellius/ Moreover, he turns his commentary into a commonplace lemma on the palm tree as the symbol of victory, for which he draws on Leonico Tomeo’s commonplace book De varietate historiae (1.68), which he linked to Plutarch’s compre­ hensive remarks on the same topic: «For many details about the palm tree, and why it is regarded as a symbol of victory, are found in Plutarch, Symposiacs, book 8».’ The

emblematic game

Junius’ inclination to stabilize the images and their meaning may be seen simply as part of the potential offered by authorial self-exegesis; another aspect, however, 1 Junius, Adagiorum centuriae vin cum dimidia, Basle. 1558. pp. 510. 593 and 872; Cf. Erasmus, Adagia... in locos cummunes digesta, Frankfurt, 1643, p. 425. 2 Pliny, Natural History, 13.26-50. ’ Alciato, Emblemata, ed. Stockhamer, 1565, p. 40: «Palma arbor est in ludaea frequens, frondibus perpetuo virentibus easque nunquam amittit, et inter ceteras constantissima, eo quod contra pondus in surgat: adeoque ut quanto vehementius prematur, tanto magis sursum sese incurvans onus elevet. Huie praestanti suae virtuti accedunt fructus, quos fert, suavissimi et pretiosi dactyli, qui in deliciis habentur». 2 Ibidem; Pliny, Natural History, 13.4,16.42; Gellius, Attic Nights, 3.6. ’ See above, note 21.

should also be taken into account. Junius envisaged his commentary as part of the emblematic game. This game could be played alone, but also by a group. The readers were supposed first to look at the emblems and try to decode their meaning. Junius hints at this usage in his preface to the commentary:' the symbol of victory, the palm, was put on the table; the winner was to take it. After each player gave his solution of the riddle, one would consult the author's commentary in order to decide, which player won, i.e. gave the right interpretation. This game' may very well reflect the contemporary usage of emblem books. The use of the commentary to regulate this play, however, seems to be Junius’ invention. Moreover, to play' the game in this peculiar way seems to depend on the establishment of one clear meaning in the au­ thorial commentary. To understand this better, it is illuminating to look at an exception, i.e. an emblem which made it difficult for Junius to exert full authorial control. This is the case with Sambucus’ coat of arms which Junius included in his collection (no. 21) to honour his learned colleague (Fig. 2)/

Fig. 2. H. Junius, Emblcmata. Antwerp, 1565. no. 21, p. 27.

' Junius. Emblemata, 1565, p. 65: «(...] et alteram quasi opens partem ipsum lace re commentarium : qui hariolandi coniectandi palma prius in medio posita aut bene iudicantibus deinde succinat, aut minus assequentibus facultatem intelligendi submimstrat |...|». ‘ /bidem, p. 27.

The authoritative knowledge of this pictura came not from Junius, but from its owner Sambucus, who presented it in his own emblem book (Fig. z, no. 173).' In Lbore Cru clue.

Fig. 3. J. Sambucus, Emblemata, 1564, p. 200.

It is telling that Junius’ commentary is in this case construed in a totally different way.2 It does not pretend to offer the solution in order to appoint a winner in the em­ blematic game, but rather engages in emblematic guesswork itself, offering a range of potential meanings. Since he does not want to diminish Sambucus’ authority, he presents the meaning of the coat of arms as a «res obscura» which he does not fully understand, but at which he can guess: «Quando si hariolari in re mihi obscura licebit [...]».’ Small wonder, if in this case Junius does not offer one single meaning, but comes up with a manifold interpretation («multiplex cogitatio»).4 Here Junius takes the part not of the author, but of the emblematic player. It is curious to see how Junius acts as an emblematic player, i.e. how his interpreta­ tions refer to the authoritative interpretation of the owner of the coat of arms. Sam­ bucus' arms, in fact, were not very old. They had been granted to his father Petrus in 1549 by Ferdinand I, as a reward for his services.’ When Junius’ emblem book ap­ peared (1565), the nobility of the Sambuci was only sweet sixteen ; when Sambucus himself composed his emblems, it was still younger. Arnoud Visser has made the plausible suggestion that the ambiguous social position of the young nobility is re­ flected in Sambucus’ interpretation of the family coat of arms («In labore fructus»).6 This interpretation, however, seems not to be supported, as Visser suggests, by the fact that «Sambucus did not interpret the cranes [...] as tokens of vigilance» but as a «reference to the story of Palamedes, who invented [...] the use of the letters».7 In his epigram, however, Sambucus twice states that his family coat of arms is connected with the virtue of vigilance (lines 1-2 and 7): ' Visser, Joannes Sambucus and the Learned Image, pp. 6-7. 2 Junius, Emblemata, 1565. pp. 99-101. ’ Ibidem, p. 100. 4 Ibidem, p. 99. ’ Visser, Joannes Sambucus and the Learned Image, p. 5; for the letter of nobility cf. A. Vantuch, Nové dokumenty k zivotjdna Sambuca, «Historické Stùdie», vol. 13,1968, pp. 230-251. 6 Visser, Joannes Sambucus and the Learned Image, p. 6. This meaning can hardly have been envisaged by Sambucus’ father, who was not particularly well-educated. 7 Ibidem.

Ut Palamedis aves lapis et concordia iungit, Excubiis dignum rostraque munus habent. Hoc gentilitii Sambuco schema dedere, Aeternum ut studiis proférât Orbe decus. |...] Et vigili, et sorti cedet victoria laudem, Quae placidis semper moribus aequa venit.' Just as the stone* and concord unite the birds of Palamedes [i.e. the cranes]. Their beaks hold an adequate reward for their keeping watch at night [vigilance]. The gentry gave Sambucus this coat of arms, So that he would gain with his studies eternal glory in the [whole] world. Victory gives praise, which is always brought forth by good and peaceful behaviour, to both the vigilant and the brave. Vigilance was considered a virtue not only of kings, princes and the nobility, but also of intellectuals? This derives from a long medieval, and especially clerical tradition, according to which the true - i.e. the intellectual and spiritual - life was essentially that of ‘vigilance’ («vita vigilia est»). In practice, the majority of the medieval intel­ lectuals had to interrupt their night’s rest in order to pray the hours. The ideal was to achieve the laus perennis, the uninterrupted praise of God die noctuque which they regarded as the very core of their existence. The prayers at night were called vigiliae. Ever since Petrarch, it was easy to transfer the concept of intellectual and spiritual vigilance to the humanistic life? The humanist scholar should have a brevis somnus. Petrarch himself was proud of the fact that he always interrupted his sleep in order to study, and that he never slept longer than six hours? Likewise, in the emblematic tradition the crane with the stone was interpreted as a symbol of the intellectual, among others by Nicolaus Reusner (Fig. 4).* Cura iapicntiacrcicit. EMBLEM* xxxiv. Chriflophorum Schillmgum FrtMtiJifBibM.

Fig. 4. N. Reusner, Emblemata, partim ethica et physica..., 1581, no. 34.

1 Sambucus, Emblemata, 173 (my italics). * This refers to the stone which the crane drops from its beak when it is sleeping, to wake up. See Pliny, Natural History, 10.30. ’ For the emblem of the crane as a symbol of vigilance («grus vigilans») cf. H. M. von Erffa, Grus vigilatts. Bemerkungen çur Emblematik, «Philobiblion», vol. 1,4,1957, pp. 286-308. * К. A. E. Enenkel, Francesco Pelrarca, De vita soli tana, Buch 1. Kritische Textausgabe und ideengeschichtlicher Kommentar, Leiden and New York, 1990, pp. 227-228. 516*Ibidem, * * p. 227. 6 N. Reusner, Emblemata, Frankfurt a.M., 1580, vol. 2, p. 34: «Cura sapienna crescit».

In his commentary, Junius dedicates the most substantial part of his interpretation to the concept of the crane with the stone as symbol of the vigilance of the intel­ lectual.’ As an emblematic player, he connects this with another peculiarity of the crane, which is that it is able to fly at a great height, «among the clouds».‘Junius in­ terprets this feature as a symbol of the intellectual who deals with spiritual matters: «ita doctissimus quisque non humo assidet, sed mente caelestes etiam sedes adit, imo pénétrât».’ Thus, basically following Sambucus, but with clarifying amplifications and suitable variations, Junius interprets the Hungarian’s coat of arms as a symbol for intellectual vigilance. But it is more revealing to see what the emblematic player Junius does when he comes to that part of Sambucus’ coat of arms which he finds obscure - the meaning and significance of concord’. How does this connect with the concept of intellec­ tual vigilance? Sambucus himself was hardly explicit about it. He only suggests that concordia’ must be important (line i). But in which respect? Junius comes up with a rather daring assertion, namely that the coat of arms must originate in the existence of «two very close brothers» of the Sambucus family who once («olim») carried out some extraordinary deed for the Prince «with the greatest constancy and concord», earning for themselves the known coat of arms.4 The interesting thing is that this interpretation is certainly wrong, and that Junius comes up with it, even though he corresponded with Sambucus, and could easily have asked him whether his assump­ tion was true. As mentioned above, the coat of arms had been given only sixteen years before to Sambucus’ father by Ferdinand I for his personal services which he exerted without the help of a 'close brother’.5 Since the coat of arms stems from 1549, it is also unlikely that it goes back to two ancestors of another age. The puzzling observation that Junius considered it unnecessary to consult Sambucus is probably to be explained by the discourse of praise which prevails in this commentary lemma. Junius’ emblematic guess must indeed have been very flattering for Sambucus, since it attributes his coat of arms to the old nobility, tracing it back to olden days («olim»). This goes closely together with the first part of the commentary lemma, in which Ju­ nius argues that the habit of wearing coats of arms goes back to venerable antiquity, even to the Egyptians? By such arguments he suggestively links Sambucus’ nobility with the oldest nobility of mankind. In this instance, given the panegyric context, the palm might have been given to player Junius, even though his interpretation was certainly wrong. Part of the game Junius offered in his Emblemata, was also that of metre. Junius, in marked difference with Alciato, had a strong preference for metres other than the common epigrammatic form, elegiac distichs. In more than eighty per cent of the emblems, variant metres occur. Some of these are rather extravagant, such as the «carmen Choriambicum Callimachium, constans tetrametro et amphibrachii sive brachio» of Emblem 8, the «Alcmanium dactylicum hypercatalecticum» of Emblem 19. or the «Cyrillium metrum, constans pentimetro hypercatalectico» of Emblem 23. 1 ’ 5 6

Junius, Emblemata, 1565, p. 100. 2 Ibidem, p. 99. Ibidem, p. 99-100. 4 Ibidem, p. 100. Cf. Visser, Joannes Sambucus and the Learned Image, p. 5. Junius, Emblemata, 1565, p. 99.

When trying to interpret the emblems, the players had also the task of discovering which metre was used. After they gave their answers, the commentary would be consulted to find out who had given the correct answer. Accordingly, Junius’ com­ mentary usually starts with an indication of the metre. In only eighteen commentary lemmata is this indication lacking.' Of course, this could be due merely to inconsist­ ency. 1 think, however, that this discrepancy is connected with the function of his commentary. In the majority of these cases (11) elegiac distichs were used.1 Since eve­ rybody was able to recognize this metre, it means that there was nothing to be dis­ covered: thus, «to guess the metre», was here excluded from the emblematic game. Mutatis mutandis, the same goes for the remaining seven lemmata, where Junius had either used metres that were generally known (such as the iambic trimetrum of Em­ blem 17) or ones which had earlier occurred in his emblem book and, therefore, had been described in previous commentary lemmata.

Junius’ descriptions

of the picturae

Another peculiarity of Junius’ commentary is its focus on detailed and clear-cut de­ scriptions of the picturae. In a number of cases, the larger part of the commentary is devoted to a description of the image.’This feature, again, does not fit the concept of a philological or purely scholarly commentary. By contrast, Stockhamer’s commen­ tary hardly ever engages in detailed descriptions of the picturae. In marked difference with Junius, Alciato himself was not interested in illustrations, and, as research into the genesis of his emblem book has shown, in all probability he did not envisage hav­ ing his emblem book published with illustrations.1 Heesakkers has explained Junius’ remarkable descriptions of the images in the commentary in a two fold way. On the one hand, he states that they are expressions of a peculiar and new way of em­ blematic thinking, which puts more emphasis on the pictura than on the epigram.’ This he deduces from the fact that the largest space of the emblem page is devoted to the illustration, whereas the epigrams consist of four lines only: «The decision to write epigrams of only four lines implied a radical restriction of the poetical element [...]. The picture, however, left room for much more imagination».6 From this, Hee­ sakkers deduces that Junius must have had a preference for the pictura. In the title of his chapter, Heesakkers suggests that Junius’ view of the emblem even comes close to Albrecht Schones Idealtypologie which made the so-called «Prioritat des Bildes» («Priority of the pictura») the guiding principle of emblem-theory. While little em­ blem research of the last twenty years has acknowledged Schone s Idealtypologie as an adequate theoretical framework, Peter Daly, in his recent and important Companion to Emblem Studies, has made a brave effort to reevaluate an unjustly rejected scholarly theory.7 In his re-evaluation, Daly uses Heesakkers’ interpretations of Junius’ views on the emblem as a strong support of Schone s theory: ' 1 1 4

Emblems 1,3,5,11.17, 21, 25, zi, 35,37, 43. 44. 50. 54 56. 57. 58. Emblems 1, 5,11, 21. 25.31, 35.37, 44, 57, 58. For example, the commentaries to Emblems 10 (p. 83), 16 (p. 93), and 24 (pp. 107-109). Cf. D. Drysdall, Andrea Alciato, Pater et Princeps, in Daly (ed.), Companion to Emblem Studies, pp.

’ Heesakkers. Hadriani lunii Emblemala, pp. 58-59. 7 Daly. Emblem Theory: Modem and Early Modern, esp. pp. 47-60.

6 Ibidem, p. 58.

This notion of priority of picture’ has gained further support in a recent essay on Hadrianus Junius. Heesakkers suggests that for Junius «the starting point was not so much the motto, nor the epigram, but the picture» (58). Junius’ Emblemata were influential through their many sixteenth-century editions.'

However, Heesakkers himself explains Junius’ detailed descriptions of the picturae in a more earthly and practical way: they are meant «to instruct the designer of the picture, whom Junius could not personally assist because of the distance».2 I am not sure whether these explanations are sufficient to understand Junius’ de­ tailed descriptions of the images. First of all, Heesakkers is of course absolutely right to emphasize Junius’ remarkable interest in the picturae, which probably contributed to the high quality of the images. It is also convincing - as Heesakkers has pointed out - that Junius had a certain preference for antique texts that offered descriptions of images, such as Pausanias’ Description of Greece (second century AD), Philostratus’ Images (second or third century), Plutarch’s On Isis and Osiris (second century),’ and Why the Pythia does not now give Oracles in verse (or On the oracles of the Pythia) whose impact on the commentary on Emblem 9 was demonstrated above.4 It is, however, less convincing that Junius should have composed his descriptions in order to instruct the designer of the picture, who resided in what is now Belgium, whereas Junius lived in northern Holland. Graphic artists, in general, would not have been amused by Latin descriptions. Most were not very erudite, and few were at ease with Latin. Most of all, they would not have been happy to figure out instructions from a sub­ stantial Latin commentary, and it would have contradicted existing practice to expect them to read longer texts when preparing illustrations. Both artists and their clients sought an economical and efficient production process. If instructions were to be used, then, they should be brief and in the vernacular. Thus, if Junius had wished to address the designers, he surely would have sent them instructions in Dutch (which, besides, was his mother tongue). It is likely that the descriptions of the images in the commentary served another purpose. 1 do not want to engage here in a discussion on the sense and applicability of Schones emblem theory nor do 1 want to contradict the importance which Junius at­ tached to the images. But I am rather inclined to understand it within the context of the game of emblem interpretation. As I argued above, Junius considered the enigma the most important aspect of emblematics, which is equally true for the construction and the reception of emblems. In my view, this is the main reason why Junius delib­ erately kept the epigrams short. The epigram belonged to the emblem as such, thus to the enigma the emblem player was supposed to solve. The epigram was not meant to give away the whole solution. This was given only in the commentary. If both the pictorial, descriptive part of the epigram and its moral, interpretative part had been ' Ibidem, p. 51. 2 Heesakkers, Hadriani /unit Emblemata, p. 44. ’ Ibidem, p. 59 63 4 Ibidem, p. 62. Junius gives the Latin title De silentibus Pythiae oraculis. This refers to the Greek title Пер! tou xpâv 1\ц1£rpa vûv -nqv fluSiav, and (as Heesakkers duly points out) not to the dialogue Перс Tüv èxXeXo'.noTwv ург(атг)piwv (Dedefectu oraadorum). The Firmin-Didot edition (F. Düber, ed., Plutarchi Operum volume» tertium, Paris, 1856, p. 481) translates Cur Pythia nunc non reddat oracula earmine, but Babbit gives De Pythiae oraculis (Babbit, tr., Plutarch's Moralia, p. 255).

longer, they would have severely diminished the enigmatic character of the emblem. Thus, it was wise for Junius to restrict himself to four lines only. Junius was also well aware of the fact that the most difficult and fascinating part of emblem interpretation was to discern the meaning of the pictura, usually with the (very limited) help of a short epigram. In this part of the process, the enigmatic character of the emblem and the reader’s guesswork played their greatest roles. Jun­ ius wanted his audience to «read» the picturae, to exercise in the «reading of images» with a maximum effort, which meant, of course, to analyse them as carefully as possible. In order to achieve this goal, two ingredients were indispensable. First, the pictura had to be as clear and concisely designed as possible - which meant that it should not contain superfluous or misleading elements; and second, the pictura had to be stable. Junius’ descriptions, in fact, were meant to stabilize both the picturae and the reader’s perception of the picturae at the same time. Games can only work when they have stable rules and stable counters. If these are flexible, the game falls apart in chaos and destruction. If the illustrations contain incorrect elements, it is hard for the players to succeed. Junius was in all likeliness able to exert an influence on the production of the illustrations in Plantin’s edition; but he was very well aware - not least because of the chaotic state of the Alciato illustrations - that when his emblem book was printed by another publisher, he would lose all control over the images. Take, for example, the illustrations of Alciato’s emblem «Obdurandum adversus urgentia» discussed above. According to the epigram, it should show either a boy climbing on a palm tree and plucking dates, or a palm tree bent somehow by a heavy weight. The illustrator of the Augsburg edition of 1531 depicted a knotted willow, on which somebody had placed a wooden block (Fig. 5).'

' Emblematuni liber. Augsburg. 1531. printed by Heinrich Steyner, Emblem no. 24. fol. Взr. See the fac

mile edition Hildesheim-New York, 1977.

In this rather disturbing image nothing refers to the elasticity of the palm tree, its sweet fruits (the dates), the boy climbing on the palm tree, or a palm tree at all. к goes back to a simple misreading of the artist who obviously was an uneducated German vernacular speaker. «Palmpaum» in Early Modern German was used for the willow. In the illustration of Christian Wechel’s Alciato edition (Paris, 1542; Fig. 6) we can discern a kind of palm tree with dates, but the concept of elasticity and the act of plucking palms has been totally mistaken.

Fig. 6. A. Alciato, Emblèmes, ed. C. Wechel, Paris, 1542, p. 64.

We see instead the obtuse picture of a little boy clinging to the top of palm leaves. In this manner, it is of course impossible to pluck dates. The palm tree’s elasticity is wrongly ascribed to the twigs, instead of to the trunk. One wonders, how the boy was able to reach the leaves at all - by jumping? In the Frankfurt edition, published by Georg Raben and Sigmund Feyerabend in 1566, the plucker of dates, funnily enough, has transformed into a naked putto, elegantly flying through the air on the wings, as it were, of two palm leaves (Fig. 7).1 Maa fbfcxmWfrnctn widrrstandr chu»

Fig. 7. A. Alciato, Liberemblematum, Frankfurt, 1566.

See Peter Daly s facsimile edition in the Imago Figura la Editions, vol. 4, Turnhout. 2007. p. 69.

One wonders how the ethereal naked putto could have caused the effect described injeremias Held’s German epigram: «The palm tree resists with might / the weight [which presses it]» (Der Palmenbaum spert sich mit macht / Wider Buerdin das es kracht).' The nakedness of the putto even offended readers with strong religious feelings. For example in a copy of Joannes Richer’s edition of Alciato’s Emblemata, with the commentary by Claude Mignault, the embarrassed reader has covered the pudenda of a kind of bungee Jumping putto under a thick spot of ink (Fig. 8).1 Need­ less to say, all of these chaotic and misleading illustrations provide less than optimal support for the reader attempting to decipher the sense of the emblem.

Fic. 8. Omnia Andreae Alciati Emblemata, cum commentariis... Adiectae novae appendices nusquam antea editae, ed. C. Minoem, Paris, 1608, p. 231 (private collection).

This is precisely the problem which Junius’ descriptions (or prescriptions) of the im­ ages in the commentary are intended to remedy. On the one hand, they instruct the reader with respect to the content of the picturae, on the other they inform a future publisher how the illustrations should look; the publisher could use them to instruct a new designer or woodcutter. And even if they produced a bad result, the user of the emblem book would always have a description at his hand which would tell him what should be seen on the illustrations. Junius did his very best to stabilize the illustrations in his emblematic commentary to safeguard the success of the game of emblems.* ' Fol. 30V; in Daly’s edition, p. 69. 1 Omnia Andreae Alciati Emblemata, cum commentariis. .. Adiectae novae appendices nusquam antea editae Per Claudium Minoem, Paris, loannes Richer, 1608, p. 231 (private collection).

• For the correction of the English I want to thank Gary Vos.

THE IMAGE OF THE HUMAN BODY IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURY IMPRESE Armando Maggi II Conte overo de le imprese, Tasso’s last philosophical dialogue (1594), the two inter­ locutors, the Count and the Neapolitan Foreigner, openly disagree on whether the image of a human body should be part of the body' of an impresa or not. According to the Count, what distinguishes an impresa from other conceptual expressions, such as hieroglyphic letters or reverses of medals, is that in imprese the image of the hu­ man body is forbidden.’ The Neapolitan Foreigner, who stands for Tasso, replies that in fact the human body is represented in several imprese, such as the one in Ruscelli’s Le imprese illustri, which describes a wild man and a servant who is on the triumphant chariot of the emperor with the motto «curru portatur eodem».2 Rather than a descriptive and complete survey of sixteenth century literature on imprese, my essay simply aims at highlighting the complexity of this seemingly captious discussion on the meaning of the human body in an impresa. We shall touch upon some of the most important facets of his thorny issue by reading some famous books of imprese, primarily Giovio’s Dialogo dell’imprese militari et amorose, along with more philosophi­ cal interpretations of this subject. In a later passage of Tasso’s dialogue, the Count repeats his opposition to the pres­ ence of the human body in an impresa by summarizing the directives spelled out in Giovio’s seminal treatise. The fourth rule of Giovio’s Dialogo, the Count states, is that the human body be banned from any perfect impresa.’ Now assenting to the Count’s opinion, the Neapolitan Foreigner adds that if every successful emblematic image expresses an «occult and mysterious» connotation resulting in a pervasive sense of maraviglia, symbols of ancient civilizations (columns, arches, etc.) are more pow­ erful than those alluding to modern culture.4 Thus, the repudiation of the human form would be due to its implicit historicity, to its intrinsic temporality and instability. An impresa is not a depiction of a historically recognizable event or sentiment, but rather the evocation of a «sacred», a-temporal perception.’ The possible sacredness of an impresa is confirmed by its two most frequent topics, love and war, both linked to spiritual matters, such as the first crusade against the infidels, the theme of the Gerusalemme liberata. Tasso’s П conte, however, makes an implicit distinction between n

I

' T. Tasso, /I come overo de le imprese, in Dialoghi, 2 vol., a cura di G. Baffetti, Milano, Rizzoli, 1998, p. 1128. This edition is based on E. Raimondi's seminal edition of Tasso's dialogues. For a succinct but com­ prehensive introduction to this thematic, see L. Bolzoni, Imroduçione, in «Con parole brieve e con figura». Libri antichi di imprese e emblem i. Lucca, Pacini Fazzi, 2004, pp. 7-10, e A. Torre, Definiçione di un genere: Trattati e raccolte, in «Con parole brieve e con figura». Libri antichi di imprese e emblemi, cit., pp. 33-35. 1 G. Ruscelli, Le imprese illustri, Venezia, 1566, p. 15. ' Tasso, Il come overo de le imprese, p. 1207. P. Giovio, Dialogo dell’imprese militari et amorose, Lyon, Roviglio, 1559, p. 9. 4 Tasso, /I come overo de le imprese, pp. 1144 and 1208. ’ Ibidem, p. 1129.

‘sacred’ and ‘mystical’ when the Neapolitan Foreigner points out that, according to Pseudo-Dionysius’s De divinis nominibus (4.701C-704C) «sacred things» are summoned through «dissimilar similes», whereas «поп-sacred things» are signified by means of «similar similes».' Tasso doesn’t realize that this explanation is in direct contrast with what he writes a few lines earlier when he has the Neapolitan Foreigner mention the image of the pelican, which like Christ feeds its chicks with its own blood. This is a sacred reality alluded to through a similar simile. This lack of coherence is not limited to Tasso’s treatise. Tasso’s problematic em­ phasis on the difference between two connotations of the term ’sacred’ reveals a sub­ tle, albeit unexpressed, distinction between the sacredness of an image that openly recounts a religious event (Christ’s crucifixion, the Annunciation, etc.) and that of an impresa. In the final pages of II conte, the Neapolitan Foreigner specifies that the simi­ lar simile of an impresa must be based on the «species» and not on the «individual», because otherwise it would be either too similar or too dissimilar? It is thus obvious that the depiction of Christ’s body could never be used for an impresa. The power of holy images, a key aspect of Catholic spirituality especially in this historical mo­ ment, lies in its supporting the viewer in an act of contemplation that moves from the literal meaning of history (God’s progressive disclosure of his salvific plan) to the divine, which is at once external to the viewer (an inner pilgrimage that leaves the strictures of the self behind) and internal (a returning to God who lies at the center of man’s heart, in Augustine’s words). The often confusing debate over the suitabil­ ity of the human body in an impresa stems from the unclear nature of the ‘sacred’, ‘occult’, or ‘mysterious’ nature of an impresa. Most sixteenth-century theoreticians seem to agree that, unlike a holy picture, an impresa produces a maraviglia, as Tasso says, that sheds a sudden light over a universal and a-temporal aspect of the psyche, but does not possess the power of taking the viewer away from himself, so to speak, and of accompanying him to a divine revelation. Read in this manner, the presence of a human form in an impresa indeed creates a too ‘similar simile’ and externalizes a concept through the inappropriate allusion to the flesh. But not all thinkers share this view of the intrinsically ‘limited’ sacredness of an impresa, as we shall see later. Does the negation of human forms apply also to the images of the pagan gods, who in reality stand for psychological qualities and not actual deities? The Neapoli­ tan Foreigner mentions an impresa centered on Hercules that he made in honor of Ercole Pio, ruler of Sassuolo? «Non ebbi risguardo a 1’osservazione di molti che non vogliono che ne l’imprese abbia luogo la figura umana », the Neapolitan Foreigner boldly states, «e a репа il concedono a gli dei favolosi»? The image of the ancient god is admissible because the name ‘Hercules,’ and not the image of the pagan god, summons the Italian noble man. It is, however, the image of the god’s human form

Tasso discusses the nature and goal of «dissimili» and «simili similitudini» in other important texts, such as the Giudicio sovra la Gerusalemme riformala. Defending Homer’s use of metaphors based on dissimilar similes, Tasso states that «i segni e le similitudini sono propri de la mistica teologia: come c insegna il divino Areopagita (..., Ma, per mia opinione, non tutte le cose dissimili sono indecenti о inconvenient!». I quote from: T Tasso, Giudicio sovra la Gerusalemme riformata, a cura di C. Gigante. Roma, Salerno Ed., 2000, pp. 47-48. 1 Tasso, Il conte overo de le imprese, p. 1212. ' Ibidem, pp. 1156-11574 Ibidem, p. 1157

that leads to the name Hercules,’ and thus the problem concern­ ing the human body remains even with mythic figures. Ercole Tasso, Torquato’s cousin, creates an em­ blematic self-portrait at the end of his canzoniere Virginia overo la dea de' nostri tempi (Bergamo, 1593), which according to Mario Praz is «one of the most attractive books of the late Renaissance».' In his canzoniere made of sonnets, imprese, and cabalistic mysteries that recalls Maurice Scève’s Délie, Ercole Tasso weaves a fascinating web of visual and verbal allusions between his first name, his belov­ ed’s last name (Ercolani), and the mythic Hercules. The last impresa of the book represents Hercules engulfed in flames after receiving the poisoned tunic from the cen- Fig- »• Hercules engulfed in fire, in Ercole Tasso’s taur Nexus (Fig. 1)? Ercole Tasso Virginia. uses this same autobiographical impresa at the end of the second part of his Poesie, which are also accompanied by the «dichiarazioni» of Cristoforo Corbelli. Corbelli contends that in this impresa «Ercole sia il figurato e Ercole sia la figura»? It is important to bear in mind that Ercole Tasso is the author of Della realtà e peifettione delle imprese, a hefty summa of the Renaissance debate on emblematic ex­ pression? Tasso dedicates an important part of his treatise to the issue of the human figure, which in his view cannot be represented «come tale», that is as the repre­ sentation of an actual person because otherwise «si caderebbe nella identità e per conseguente non ne sorgerebbe né similitudine, né diversità, né contrariété, né accrescimento о diminutione di qualità». Tasso contends, however, that a human form is allowed if used as an indirect allusion, as Torquato Tasso also holds in II conte. Ercole Tasso vehemently attacks Scipione Bargagli who in Dell’imprese states «che l’uomo [...J non puô dall’uomo propia comparazione ritrarre о similitudine, dovendosi questa propriamente solo о da cose levare fra loro di genere о di spezie diverse M. Praz, Studies in Seventeenth-Century Imagery, 2 vol., London, Studies of the Warburg Institute, 1947. P- >6z. On Ercole Tasso’s literary production, see A. M aggi, Una figura роса conosciuta del tarda Rinaseimento: Ercole Tasso ei suoi due cançonieri, «Esperienze letterarie», xxxi, 2006, 2, pp. 3-37. * Cfr. N. Conti, Mythologiae sive explicationum fabula rum, Venezia, 1568, с. 208г. ’ E. Tasso, Poesie composte da lui in sua giovanile età e gid spartatamente stampate in Bologna, in Vinegia et in Bergamo, con brievi dichiarationi annesse con gli indici sopra le più di loro del sig. Cristoforo Corbelli, Berga­ mo, Comin Ventura, 1593. parte seconda, c. 44V. 4 Cf. G. Arbizzoni, «Un nododi parolecdi cose». Storla efortuna delle imprese, Roma, Salerno Ed., 2002,

e non già della spezie medesima».’ Bargagli’s opinion is founded on two important objections. First, an impresa must be based on a comparison between two things be­ longing to two different genres. By viewing an impresa as a comparison. Renaissance theoreticians draw their conclusions in favor or against the presence of the human form from Aristotle’s definition of metaphor: «Metaphor consists in giving the thing a name that belongs to something else : the transference being either from genus to species, or from species to genus, or from species to species» (Poetics 1457^7-9)? If an impresa is «espressione di singolar concetto d’animo per via di similitudine con figura d’alcuna cosa naturale (fuor della spezie dell’uomo) overo artifiziale da brevi ed acute parole necessariamente accompagnata»,' one shouldn’t use images of pagan deities since they are «tutte quante favolose e finie».4 In other words, an impresa shouldn’t be made of things (pagan deities) that do not exist. The definition of an impresa as ‘expression of a concept’ or, as other Renaissance experts say, ‘image of a concept,’ is also an Aristotelian formulation (booh z of De anima). For Aristotle, an image is an in-between stage that goes from the physical perception to the creation of a concept. It is evident, however, that an impresa is much more than the manifestation of a con­ cept. In reality, the Aristotelian jargon serves heavily Neoplatonic purposes. In his reply to Barbagli, Ercole Tasso broaches the first of the two objections (an impresa should be based on two different genres). He holds that «moka più sembianza passa fra la natura, costumi, attioni, passioni ed awenimenti intra quelli della medesima specie, che fra altri di diversa».’ The disagreement between Bargagli and Tasso is reflected in Paolo Giovio’s seminal book, which first dictates that one of the fundamental «cinque condition!» for the creation of a perfect impresa is the exclusion of the «forma humana», but later contradicts this firm statement by examining and at times praising imprese whose ‘body’ is made of human images.6 In the influential Ragionamento sopra la proprietà delle imprese, Luca Contile agrees with Giovio’s view and presents his own version of five «capi» or rules for the composition of a correct impresa.7 Whereas the negation of the human form was only the fourth requirement in Giovio’s list, for Contile it is the first and most important one: «quai si sia figura chimerica, monstruosa, humana et impropria» must be avoided for reasons that are both rhetorical (the success of a metaphorical expression according to Aristotle’s guidelines) and moral. An impresa is meant to conjure up «vertuoso et illustre pensamento», whereas monstrous figures could only reflect depraved feelings. The human body is unsuitable for an impresa not only because it belongs to the same «spetie» of all other men but also, and more importantly, because it cannot help but evoke the image of its author. Its «lineamenti» would make the viewer think or imagine those of the person who created the impresa. An impresa including a human form would be closer to a medallion and would lead to additional serious confusions in regard to the «attitudine» of this human figure (should it stand or sit? What kind of clothes should it wear? Or should it be naked? Should it be young or old?). Mythic figures («figure ' I quote from the following edition: S. Bargagli, Dell'imprese, Venezia, de' Franceschi, 1594, p. 49. 1 Aristotle, Poetics, in The Complete Works, 2 vol., edited by J. Barnes, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1995, p. 2332. 1 Bargagli, Dell’imprese, p. 37. 4 Ibidem, p. 51. P. Giovio, Dialogo dell'imprese, p. 12. ’ Tasso, Della realtd e peifettionc delle imprese, p. 237. 6 Giovio, Dialogo dell'imprese, p. 9. ’ L. Contile, Ragionamento sopra la proprietà delle imprese, Pavia, 1574, с. 31г.

poetiche» in Contile’s words) are exceptions and can be used, but without twisting their traditional representations. For example, it would be inappropriate to depict Hercules with a sword and not with a club, or Cupid holding a big harquebus instead of a bow and arrows. Bargagli’s rejection of pagan deities because of their inexistence is hard to support if we keep in mind that the use of «uccelli fantastichi» is allowed according to Giovio’s treatise.’ One of Giovio’s central rules is indeed that an impresa «habbia bella vista» through the use of «stelle, soli, lune, fuoco, acqua, arbori verdeggianti, instru­ ment! mecanici, animali bizzarri» along with the above mentioned imaginary ani­ mals. In this regard, Giovio’s marvelous collection of impress is certainly consistent with the basic requirements of clarity and ‘marvel’ that an impresa is meant to sum­ mon in the viewer. The blatant inconsistencies even within one book are not signs of a lack of scientific rigor; they result from the subtle complexities of Renaissance emblematic expression? More specifically, they derive from the contrast between a highly theoretical background (sixteenth-century Aristotelian mind-set) and its con­ crete application to the creation of impress. One of Giovio’s most powerful images depicts what at first glance looks like a human chest set on fire, although in reality it represents a robe «fatta di quel lino d’India chiamato da Plinio Asbetino» with the motto «semper PERvicAx» (Fig. 2). This type of Indian linen is resistant to fire, as Marc' Antonio Colonna’s war accomplishments testify to his unwavering heroism? Even more problematic, according to his five basic rules, is the impresa in the shape of a shield made for Andrea Gonzaga, which is in essence the portrait of a prototypical young noble man (Fig. 3)? This image is neither a universal representation, which is what an impresa is supposed to be, nor the portrait of Ferrante Gonzaga’s young son, in that it clearly alludes to a specific person without however making this individual recognizable. We have seen that in his Ragionamento Contile mentions the «confusione» caused by the human form in an impresa? The presence of a human form brings into the pic­ ture indistinct allusions to the author’s biography and physical appearance, ’smudges’ over the clear surface of the emblematic image. An additional negative consequence brought about by the human body is the frequent contamination of two distinct forms of visual representation, as we can see in a subsequent impresa for the Cavalier Castellino of Beccaria, which is in reality the representation of the two sides of a medallion (Fig. 4)? On the right side, one sees the portrait of King David, whom we should recognize through the citation from the Psalms (38.3) that constitute its motto «sagittae tuae infixae sunt MIHI». The reverse of this medallion, represented on the left side of the page, reproduces the image of mount Etna to signify this gentle­ man’s ardor for his lady. We could easily, and correctly, claim that this is simply not an impresa for a number of reasons: it is made of two distinct images; each image has

1 Giovio, Dialogs dell’imprese, p. 9. On Giovio’s book, see J. Manning, The Emblem, London, Reaktion Books, 2003, pp. 73-79. Manning stresses the immense popularity of Giovio’s work whose rules were debated for decades in the Italian academies (p. 77). ‘ Cf. Arbizzoni, « Un nodo di parole e di cose», p. 106. ’ Giovio, Dialogo dell’imprese, pp. 62-63. 14 **Ibidem, 6* pp. 126-127. ’ Contile, Ragionamento sopra la proprietd delle imprese, p. 31г. 6 Giovio, Dialogo dell’imprese, pp. 142-143-

Fig. 2. Linen resistant to fire, in Giovio’s Dialogo dell'imprese.

its own motto; they evoke two different representations of love sorrows (the erupt­ ing volcano and the arrow piercing the lover's body); these two representations of love are conveyed through two different means: one by the body' of the impresa, the other by its 'soul' (the motto). The main problems’ highlighted in these last two images from Giovio’s Dialogo are of fundamental relevance for our analysis of the human body in Renaissance imprese. In particular, both the impresa for the young Andrea Gonzaga and the one for Castellino of Beccaria make an ambiguous use of a human portrait. Whereas Gonzaga is alluded to through a clichéd representation of a young noble man’s face, Castellino of Beccaria is associated with a stereotypical portrait of a wise, old man, who how­ ever thanks to the motto becomes the alleged author of the biblical psalms. Apart from their technical problems, these two imprese remind us of the delicate rapport between history and universality in the impresa, which to be successful must at once echo a specific time and a personal intention, and transcend all temporal strictures. In the two examples from Giovio’s book, neither requirement is fulfilled. The human face always points to its intrinsic temporality, as Girolamo Cardano underscores in the twelfth part of Desubtilitate («De hominis natura et temperamento»).' For Cardano, nothing like the human face embodies his concept of subtilitas, because only in twins ‘ G. Cardano, Desubtililatc, in Opera omnia, in, I. 14. P 583b.

Fig. 3. Impresa for Andrea Gonzaga, in Giovio's Dialogo dell’imprese.

one finds two identical faces. According to Cardano, subtilités is «ratio quaedam. qua sensibilia a sensibus intelligibilia ab intellectu difficile comprehenduntur».' The uniqueness of each human face, says Cardano, is the quintessential manifestation of the 'miraculous’ character of nature. It is thus equally miraculous, not to say impos­ sible, to make a successful use of a face in an impresa. The blank or darkened mirrors present in some of Renaissance imprese are powerful and evocative objects thanks to their silence, to their facing the viewer without reflecting anything. We have seen that Giovio's impresa for Castellino of Beccaria representing the rec­ to and verso of a medallion alludes to Castellino through a conventional depiction of King David’s face. What is the relationship between Castellino’s face and King David’s? How was this face chosen to indicate the Italian noble man? Would the result have been different if instead of the biblical figure’s face the impresa had repro­ duced Castellino’s actual portrait? Isn’t the motto what gives this face a biography? Whereas the ideal portrait of the young Andrea Gonzaga makes the viewer perceive a certain similarity between this beautiful hypothetical face and the young noble Ital­ ian’s, in Castellino’s case the presence of King David's face seems superfluous or even wrong. The fundamental issues resulting from the depiction of the human face in an impresa become apparent in Leonardo’s portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci at the National

Fig. 4. Impresa for Castellino of Beccaria, in Giovio's Dialogo dell’impresc.

Gallery in Washington, which like the impresa tor Castellino of Beccaria is a double­ sided representation that works as a masterful impresa. Its 'body' is made of the por­ trait of Ginevra plus its reverse, which depicts a scroll entwined around a wreath of laurel and palm branches, with a sprig of juniper in the center. Ginepro (Juniper), symbol of chastity, is the symbolic representation of the young lady Ginevra's face portrayed on the recto. The motto reads «virtutem forma decorat».1 The virtu­ ous nature of this noble lady is summoned in the portrait by her stern gaze that dominates the gracious features of her face. Hers is certainly a beauty that at once enchants the viewer and elicits his respect, in the tradition of Renaissance Platonism. Her 'didactic' beauty, so to speak, mirrors the moral teaching present in all successful imprese according to Contile's Ragionamento. What makes this portrait a problematic impresa is that the viewer cannot appropriate the lady’s beauty and turn it into a pri­ vate event, as all imprese are meant to do. The viewer experiences Ginevra's severe but graceful face as the visual memory of someone whose biography was marked by virtue and chastity, and not as the appearance of an internal, private potential. In other words, Ginevra’s body prevents the viewer from appropriating the quality that this unique impresa visualizes so masterfully. ’ My remarks on Leonardo's painting are inspired by Lina Bolzoni's lecture titled A Window into the Heart: Double-sided Portraits and Literary Models, which she gave at the University of Chicago on October 16, 2009

One might detect a contradiction in what I just stated about the ‘problems’ of Leonardo’s impresa-like portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci. Doesn’t Florentine Neoplaton­ ism theorize ad nauseam the ascension from the beauty of the beloved to the idea of beauty as divine good? Isn’t the art of imprese based on similar philosophical founda­ tions? Isn’t the insight, the enlightenment granted by a perfect impresa similar to the insight initiated by the beautiful forms of a real person? These are justified objections that point to unquestionable contradictions within Renaissance Platonic thought. The problematic connection between the body’ of the impresa and the human body lies at the core of Alessandro Farra’s Settenario dell'humana riduttione, a bold and convoluted attempt to explain the insight’ of the impresa from a strictly philosophi­ cal standpoint. Farra’s Settenario is the only sixteenth century text that transcends the trite discussions about the rules of the perfect emblematic picture and places the impresa at the center of Renaissance Platonic and Hermetic thought. In this context, 1 will limit myself to highlighting the points in Farra’s book that are relevant to our present study. As Campanella does in his Apologeticus to justify his astrological prac­ tices, Farra posits a series of correspondences between the number seven and the cre­ ated world.’ In particular, Farra holds that seven is the number that best corresponds to the human nature, since seven are the possible movements of the human body, seven are the fluids it secretes, and seven are its major members.1 But seven are also the steps that lead to the apprehension of what I have defined as the «non-language of the imprese» according to Farra’s interpretation.’ When students of Renaissance imprese mention II settenario, they usually refer to the seventh chapter of his book, as if the previous six parts were about something else. For Farra, the impresa is an act of contemplation, or better yet a crystal-clear sight that only the divine can grant at the end of a process of inner cleansing based on an amalgam of Christian and Platonic theology. The seven chapters of II settenario have the following titles: «Della félicita»; «Dell’ignoranza»; «Del regno di Dio»; «Della cena del Signore»; «Della morte»; «Del poetico furore»; «Della filosofia simbolica». Of particular relevance for our study is the chapter on the Last Supper, which being the fourth section of the book also serves as its fulcrum and turning point. Offering a theologically questionable interpretation of the Eucharist, Farra sees in the Last Supper the moment in which the Son of God let his disciples eat his body («la santissima cena nella quale fu magnate il suo sacro corpo dai santi apostoli») in order to let them, and us when we go to Mass, transform themselves into the flesh and blood of his glorious body («se noi non ci trasformavamo nella carne e nel sangue del suo glorioso corpo»).4 The problem with Farra’s view of the Eucha­ rist is that instead of emphasizing the transubstantiation occurring in the bread and blood on the altar he stresses the annihilation of Christ’s physicality, which in his interpretation leads to the death of the human senses and the subsequent irruption of divine wisdom. Farra’s Gnostic view of Christ as harbinger of divine wisdom («vera ed infirma Sapienza eterna, illustrazione di tutte le menti, vapore della virtù 1 Cf. T. Campanella, Apologeticus, in Opuscoli asirologici. Come evila re il fate astrale. Apologetico. Disputa sulle belle, a cura di G. Ernst, Milano, bur, 2003, p. 152. 1 A. Farra, Settenariodell'humana riduttione, Venezia, Zanetti, 1571, «Ai letton», n.n. ’ A. Magci, Impresa e misticismo in Alessandro Farra, in Identità e impresa rinascimentale, Ravenna, Lon­ go, 1998, pp. 23-45: 26. 4 Farra, Settenario dell'humana riduttione, p. 56V.

di Dio, lucida e sincera emanazione della chiarezza divina [...] specchio limpido della Maestà di Dio») is the pivotal moment of his interpretation of the impresa, which like the Eucharist is the thin veil of visibility separating human intellect from divine disclosure.1 Farra’s heretical reading of the Last Supper as a mise-en-scène mirroring the creation of an impresa (wisdom is the «specchio limpido» of God’s majesty as the impresa is the mirror of an internal disclosure to ‘divine clarity’ in Farra’s words) gives new meanings to the well-known guidelines concerning the perfect impresa. In the last chapter of 11 settenario, Farra agrees with those who accept the human form only if it is «monstruosa», the reason being that per se the human image is already com­ plete and «perfettissima»? What is ‘monstrous’ is intrinsically incomplete and thus dynamic, in that it naturally longs for a deep transformation, which in the impresa is triggered by the motto, the ‘soul’ of the emblematic image. Moreover, ‘monstrous’ does not mean ugly and repulsive, because it is fundamental that the image be «nobile» and «degna di laude».’ Disagreeing with many Renaissance theoreticians, Farra believes that an impresa should contain only one figure. The metamorphosis of the emblematic image from external veil to inner clarity is delayed or jeopardized by a visual space cluttered by several figures. The concept of metamorphosis inevitably brings to mind Giordano Bruno’s use of imprese in the fifth dialogue of the first part and the first dialogue of the second part of De gli eroici furori, with a powerful appendix in the second dialogue of the second part. Since I have already examined the similarities between Farra’s and Bruno’s ap­ proach to imprese in another work, in this context I will only focus on Bruno’s use of the human figure in the hypothetical imprese of the Furori.4 Some of the Nolan philosopher’s most poetic emblematic images are certainly inspired by Alciato's and Giovio’s emblems and imprese. In particular, Bruno takes to heart Giovio’s sugges­ tions about the beautiful effects of imprese representing suns, moons, stars, flames, along with exotic animals and mechanical instruments. Unlike Alciato and Giovio, however, Bruno is very consistent in his construction of emblematic images. Where­ as Alciato stuffs his Emblemata with all sorts of allegorical human figures and Giovio contradicts his own directives about the human form, in De gli eroici furori the only human form recurring throughout the two central sections of the treatise is that of a child, who stands both for Cupid (part r. imprese z, 6,15, plus imprese 10 and 11, which are made with the objects usually associated with Cupid; part 2: impresa 12) and for the «furioso» seen as a «semplice, puro et esposto a tutti gli accident) di natura e for­ tune», the willful victim of Cupid himself.’ The creation of an image that is itself and its opposite is a typical device of Bruno’s writings. The above citation comes from the description of the first impresa centered on the figure of a naked child, the «furioso», who looking up at the sky contemplates «certi edifici de stanze, torri, giardini et orti che son sopra le nuvole» along with a castle made of fire. The young Cupid builds castles in the sky with the power of his intellect. He particularly cherishes the image of a tower whose architect is love, its matter is the fire of love, and the builder is the

’ Ibidem, p. 6ir. 1 Ibidem, p. 273V. ' Ibidem, p. 272V. 4 A. Magci, The Memory Thai Devours the Mind: Giordano Bruno's Eroici furori and the Renaissance Phi­ losophy of Imprese, «Bruniana tr Campanelliana», vi, 2000,1, pp. 115-142. ’ G. Bruno, DialoghiJilosofici italiani, a cura di M. Ciliberto, Milano, Mondadori, 2000, p. 844.

«furioso» himself.' The motto of this impresa is «митио fulcimur» (we support each other), which means that the builder, Cupid, sus­ tains these buildings with his in­ tellect and they support him with the hope he has in them.' Cupid is a double-layered figure in the sense that his intrinsic weakness, his nakedness vis-à-vis his desire for knowledge is also his inner strength, since his fantasy conjures up the images hidden within the surface of the sky (the castle at once built and set on fire by love). In Alciato’s Emblemata, Cupid first appears in the ninth emblem «Fidei Symbolum», where the little child (chaste love) stands between two tall women, Honor and Truth (Fig. 5).’ Like the child in the Furori, Alciato’s «Amor |...| castus» does not have wings, which are missing from a few other emblems, such as emblem nz «In statuam amoris» created against the conventional depiction of the young god, whom Alciato here presents standing next to a large shield with a pomegran­ ate in the center, but with no bow and no arrows (Fig. 6).4 The last verses of the Latin poem accom­ panying the image explain the full meaning of this depiction: «lucundus labor est, lasciva per otia: sig­ num/ Illius est nigro punica glans clypeo».' If now we move to Bruno’s last impresa on the «furioso» child, which is also one of the final imprese of the Furori, we find a much less optimistic vision of that simple and pure Cupid who had abandoned himself to a daydreaming inspired by his intel­ lect and supported by his hope. In this last impresa, the child is alone in a boat tossed around by stormy waves. Maintaining his receptive stance toward the overwhelming

' Ibidem, pp. 844-845 ' Ibidem, p. 845. ' I quote from: A. Alciato, Emblemata, Lugduni. apud J-laercdes Gulielmi Rouillij, 1614, p. 55. 4 Ibidem, p. 395. ’ Ibidem, p. 396.

power of love, the «languido e lasso» Cupid has stopped rowing.' The first dialogue of the second part of the Furori ends on this desolate note, on the realization that Love is a «betrayer» (traditore).2 The despair of the «furioso», which Bruno expresses with powerful eloquence («non si sa d’onde e dove debba voltarsi, non si mostra luogo di fuga о di rifugio»), is reflected in the very last impresa that has neither an

image nor a motto? The blank, empty surface of an image of despair (the «furioso» has lost the hope that helped him build castles in the sky) is a visual rhetorical device used in more than one book of imprese and emblems, but in Bruno it signifies the erasure of that very body (the child Cupid) that stood for the locus where imagination, intellect, and desire blend together (the child is Cupid and the subject wounded by Cupid). More than any figure symbolizing the inner disposition of its creator, the human body ei­ ther alone (as Barra prefers it) or placed in dialogue with other figures can’t help but allude to the actual physical presence behind the image itself. In the Furori, the child Cupid indicates an identity in motion, and not just the mischievous god of love. As a consequence, the pause created by a final void, by an erased picture at the end of the dialogue dedicated to the imprese, has the additional powerful effect of bringing to a full stop that intellectual and physical metamorphosis that the philosopher debates throughout his text, and especially through his reflections on the myth of Actaeon. Bruno summons up a truly baroque marvel at the beginning of the following second dialogue of the second part, which opens with a final impresa on a «giogo fiammeggiante» with the motto «levius aura» that suddenly reverses the blindness of the last impresa of the previous chapter and, with an indirect reference to Jesus’s words (cf. Matthew 11.30), extols the ‘light’ yoke imposed by divine love.4 The mar­ velous effect of this final impresa hinges upon the void' of the previous one. Renais­ sance Imprese often allude to a physical and/or intellectual emptiness through the fig­ ure of a mirror reflecting nothing. Giovio’s seminal book evokes the signifier ‘empty mirror’ in the second impresa dedicated to Alessandro Farnese, which represents a «cartiglio bianco» whose blank surface means that Alessandro has not yet defined his own impresa (Fig. 7)? This is the representation of an intellectual pause, similar to the empty impresa of the Furori. Giovio explains that this temporary impresa later will be replaced by another one «prosperandolo Dio e la fortuna negli occulti desiderii suoi». Farnese’s ‘occult’ desires will appear on the canvas on a future impresa, as the «furioso» manifests the irruption of divine love in the image of a golden and ‘light’ yoke after the erased image of the child Cupid. The picture of a mirror reflecting nothing can also symbolize the mirror’s refusal or impossibility to reproduce the face, the body of its owner, which would also stand for his ‘occult’ desires or thoughts. In other words, the face that cannot be reflected is itself a reminder of an intellectual impasse. This is the objective of a moving im­ presa in Scipione Ammirato’s II Rota overo delle imprese. Reminiscent of a Renaissance ‘teatro della memoria,’ Il Rota narrates the dialogue among four friends who walk through the house of the poet Bernardino Rota and admire the forty-six imprese that

G. Bruno, Dialpghifilosofici italiani, p. 906. ’ Ibidem, p. 908. ’ Giovio, Dialogo dell'imprese, p. 120.

2 Ibidem, p. 907. 4 Ibidem, p. 911.

Fig. 7. Impresa for Alessandro Farnese, in Giovio's Dialogo deU’imprese.

he has created in memory of his deceased wife: «Io ho fatto [...] di moke imprese sopra questo mio soggetto di morte [...] Come vedrete le sono andato compartendo secondo la capacità dei luoghi. Qui nella loggia ce ne son sei. La sala ne ha otto. Per le camere, che sono otto, ne vanno quattro per ciascuna».' In one room, Rota’s guests see a mysterious impresa that represents a «specchio пего et mezzo chiuso che ha del hello assai con quell'anima gentilissima “terror aspectu domini”, quasi dica: "Io non mi apro tutto, perché mi spavento di veder il signor mio, tale è egli cangiato d’aspetto’’».1 The death of the poet’s wife is so remarkably «chiara», one of the guests points out, thanks to the ’clear’ depictions of Rota’s overwhelming sorrow. ' In this impresa, the darkened surface of the mirror reflects a darkened self-portrait that cannot be depicted because its inner features, so to speak, have been disfigured. The science’ of Renaissance imprese still awaits a comprehensive analysis. Consid­ erable work has been done about the historical evolution of this important cultural phenomenon. What is still missing, in my view, is a serious reflection on the subtle meanings and allusions behind the apparently convoluted and often pedantic discus-

' S. Ammirato, ll Rota overo (idle imprese. Firenze, Filippo Giunti. 1598, p. 55- See also Ammirato's com­ mentary on Rota's poems for his wife: S. Ammirato, Soneni del S. Berardino Rota in morte della S. Portia Capecesua moglie. Napoli, Mattia Cancer, 1560. ' Ammirato, Il Rota overo dclle imprese. p. St. ' Ibidem, p. 57.

sions present in so many treatises on emblems and imprese. How to represent what is at once deeply personal (the unspeakable pain of a widower, for example, but also a self-portrait) and universal is the key topic of this form of visual expression. Whether the human figure is appropriate for an impresa or not is one of the basic aspects of this ‘science’ that fully reveals its intrinsic philosophical connotations in the hands of a philosopher like Giordano Bruno.

THE BEER OF BACCHUS VISUAL STRATEGIES AND MORAL VALUES IN HENDRICK GOLTZIUS’ REPRESENTATIONS OF SINE CERERE ET LIBERO FRIGET VENUS

Ricardo De Mambro Santos 1590, the Dutch painter and printmaker Hendrick Goltzius (Fig. 1) created a sim­ ple yet refined composition representing a motif directly borrowed from Terence’s Eunuchus, namely the sentence Sine Cerere et Libero friget Venus («Without Ceres and Bacchus, Venus would freeze»).' Sixteen years later, around 1606, after having depicted several times the same subject in very different compositions, the master elaborated his last representation of this theme in a most monumental pen werck ( pen work’), in which he included a self-portrait staring at the viewer and holding in both hands the tools of his metamorphic art: the burins.1 2*Many scholarly publications have correctly identified the textual source of these works and, therefore, analysed Goltzius’ visual constructions in strict relation to Terence's play, stressing that the sentence was used «to describe wine and food as precondition for love».’ In spite of such a systematic attention, however, no research has been undertaken in the attempt to historically interpret Goltzius' works within their original context of production, in connection with the social, artistic and economic boundaries of their first ambient of reception, the towns of Haarlem and Amsterdam at the turn of the century. As 1 shall demonstrate in this paper, the creation of such a coherent corpus of prints, drawings and paintings is directly associated with the horizon of expecta­ tions of a precise circle of patrons, commissioners and art collectors: the wealthy Dutch brewers.4 Such a circumscribed net of relations can provide, in fact, important n

I

1 «The words are spoken by the tipsy youth Chremes. who after a bout of drinking, returned to the maid Pythias, embraced her and with little regard for the passage of time declared, "Bless me, how much more lovely you look than you did just now." Pythias responded, “Lord! Sir, and you are certainly much merrier," to which Chromes retorted, "Jove! That'll be a true saying that without Ceres and Bac­ chus, Venus would freeze." The adage derived its significance from the realms of jurisdiction associated with the three Roman gods, agriculture (Ceres), wine (Bacchus) and love (Venus), and its meaning was clear - without food and wine, love would grow cold», in H. Leeflanc, G. Luijten, Hendrick Goltzius (1558-1617). Drawings, Prints and Paintings, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum), Zwolle, Waanders Uitgevers, 2003, pp. 275-277. About this particular iconography see also Goltzius-Studies: Hendrick Goltzius (1558-1617), Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 1991-1992, Zwolle, Waanders Uitgevers, 1993. For Ter­ ence's Eunuchus see Terence, The Comedies, edited by P. Bovie, Baltimore London, The Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 153-225. 2 The most analytical study on Goltzius pen wercken has been undertaken by L. W. Nichols, The 'Pen Works’of Hendrick Goltzius, exh. cat. Philadelphia (Philadelphia Museum of Art), «Bulletin of Philadel­ phia Museum of Art», 88,1991. > H. Leeflanc, G. Luijten, op. cit., p. 248. 4 The present essay is part of a larger study on the art practices and theories in Haarlem around 1600, discussed as a Post-Doctoral research in Art History at the Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane (Palazzo Strozzi), on June 2007. My most grateful thanks go to David Freedberg for reading so attentively the manuscript and discussing with me many of its central issues before the publication.

Fig. i. Hendrick Goltzius, Self-portrait. Vienna,

Albertina.

elements to explain the diffusion in Holland around 1600 of this pecu­ liar iconography - only tangential­ ly explored by emblem books and quite rarely represented by artists belonging to other contexts - in direct connection with a cultural horizon of references in which an exquisitely Northern interpretation of Bacchus as the «first producer of beer» has significantly emerged. The work of art, thus conceived as a system of culturally and his­ torically determined signs, will be­ come the territory of convergence of stylistic, cultural and social components. The construction of the 'meaning' - or the articulation of multilayered ‘meanings' - con­ veyed by the artwork will there­ fore assume the form of a ceaseless dialogue, a continual negotiation between individual projections and collective expectations.’

Spaces Beyond Words

The most important biography devoted to Hendrick Goltzius has been written by Karel van Mander in Het Schilder-Boeck. «The Book of Painting».2 Published in Hol­ land in 1604, Van Mander s volume provides a quite impressive set of biographies of painters and engravers from the North of the Alps. Following the example of Gior­ gio Vasari, Van Mander s Lives’ are introduced by a dense theoretical frame of refer­ ence, the so-called Didactic Poem, «The Foundations of the Liberal and Noble Art of Painting» (Den Grondt derEdel Vry Sc/ii!cier-(7onsk). ' Within the biographical section, the « Life of the Henricus Goltzius, illustrious painter, engraver and glass painter from Mulbracht» (T’leven van Henricus Goltzius, uytnemende Schilder, Plaet-snijder en Glaes-

' For further explorations on the stimulating field of art historical methodologies see K. Moxey. The Practice of Theory. Poststructuralism, Cultural Politics, and Art History. New York. Cornell University. 1994. especially pp. 29-40. 2 On Van Mander see W. Melion, Shaping the Netherlandish Canon. Karel van Manders ‘Schilder-Boeck". Chicago-London, Chicago University Press. 1991; also R. Du Mambro Santos, Il canone metamorfico. Saggio sulla pittura del maniensmofiammingo c olandese, Roma-Sant’Oreste. Apeiron, 1998. 1 K. van Mander, Den grondt der edel vry schildcr-const, uitgegeven en van vertaling en commentaar voorzien door H. Miedema, Utrecht, Haentjens Dekker & Gumbert. 1973; and, more recently. Idem, Principe cl fondement de Tart noble et libre de ta peinture, traduit et présenté par J. W. Noldus. Paris. Les Belles Lettres, 2008.

schrijver van Mulbracht)' plays a fun­ damental role in Van Mander s def­ inition of the cultural boundaries of the Northern pictorial tradition, the Schilder-const, programmatical­ ly distinguished from the ancient Pictura and the modern Italian Pitlura.* In these pages, Goltzius is celebrated for his unique technical dexterity and outstanding stylistic polymorphism, thanks to which he was able to emulate faithfully the manner of Bartholomeus Spranger. the rendering of Albre­ cht Dürer or the style of any Italian Renaissance master such as Rap­ hael, Titian or even the ‘inimita­ ble’ Michelangelo.' Moreover, Van Mander is the first source to explic­ itly mention Ceres, Bacchus and Venus as protagonists of some of Goltzius' compositions: «He made various pieces on parchment, small Fig. 2. Hendrick Goltzius, Venus and Cupid. Rot­ terdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. and large; among others a Bacchus, Ceres and Venus, in which a Cupid, by stoking the fire, causes a reflection on the figures».4 The earliest pen work’ by Goltzius representing the theme of Sine Cerere et Libero fiiget Venus could be identified with the small, delicate yet sensual Venus and Cupid now at the Museum Boijmans-Van Beuningen in Rotterdam (Fig. 2).' Although nei­ ther Ceres nor Bacchus are physically represented in the composition, unlike the in­ tertwined bodies of Venus and Cupid, their attributes - i. e. bunches of cereals, grain and grapes - are clearly displayed in the foreground, next to two pigeons, represented as companions of the goddess of Love to reinforce the atmosphere of peaceful union that permeates the image. The physical absence of Bacchus and Ceres convey even ' For an English translation see K. van Mander, The Lives of the Illustrious Netherlandish and German Painters, with an introduction and translation by H. Miedema. Doornspijk. Davaco. 1994, pp. 383-407. 1 On the contextual division of the art of painting’ see R. De Mambro Santos, Roma fiamminga. I maestri nordici alia scoperta dell’antico e dell'Italia. Roma. Edilazio. root. ’ K. van Mander, The Lives of the Illustrious Netherlandish and German Painters, cit., pp. 398-399. In another eloquent paragraph of Goltzius’ biography, the author claims: «All these things mentioned together prove that Goltzius is a rare Proteus or Vertumnus in art. because he can transform himself to all forms of working methods», ibidem, p. 398. 4 K. van Mander, op. cit.. p. 398 In some other paragraphs. Van Mander names only Venus and Cu­ pid as protagonists of compositions whose subject-matter appears to be seemingly related to Terence’s dictum. This could be the case, for instance, of Goltzius’ work now at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. For a synthesis regarding this last work see H. Leeflanc, G. Luijten. op. cit.. pp. 275 277. In my opinion, however, this piece should be more properly interpreted in connection to the broader theme of Venus and Satyr,’ instead of Terence’s aphorism. ' H. Leeflanc. G. Luijten, op. cit.. p. 239.

Fig. 3. Sine C'crcre et Libero friget Venus, printed in 13 Aneau, Picta Poesis. L.yon. 1552.

more subtly the idea, implicit in Terence’s aphorism, that these two divinities con­ stitute the fundamental premise for any successful love enterprise: without them, as the Roman author claims, Venus would get inevitably ‘frozen.’ From a technical point of view, the composition is a remarkable example of Goltzius’ emulative capacities. In fact, what appears to be a print is, instead, a me­ ticulously outlined drawing in which the master captures the characteristic render­ ing of the etching needle, with its variable curvilinear shapes. By wisely calibrating the contrast between enlightened areas and shadowy zones. Goltzius emulates the typical circular contours of the burin, thus ’drawing’ an ‘engraving’. Probably no one would have noticed, at first, such a technical disguise, not even the most refined art lovers’ or const-liefedighen. Master of unpredictable stylistic metamorphosis, ren­ dered in a mirror-like game of metalinguistic reflections. Goltzius created in this work a meaningful image en travesti: a theme, one should bear in mind, that consti­ tutes the subterranean leitmotiv of Terence’s unforgettable comédie des mœurs, the Eunuchus. On the other hand, it is important to remark that Goltzius was by no means the first master to offer a visual translation of Terence’s sentence. As a matter of fact, the theme had been previously depicted in many sixteenth century emblem books such as Bar­ thélemy Aneau’s Picta Poesis, published in Lyon in 1552 (Fig. 3). In this emblem book, the three divinities stand on a high stage-like ground, along with Cupid, without

really interacting.' A text, written in Latin and Greek, accompanies the image stating that «Demeter has for sustenance the horn of the Amaltheia goat and Bacchus Bromius the bunch of vine». The image presents a quite rigid illus­ tration of Terence's theme and the artist who carved it does not seem to pay much attention to any stylis­ tic concerns. All that matters here is to provide an almost taxonomical, immediate and clear illustration of the four characters mentioned in the aphorism. In Goltzius’ more refined crea­ tion, on the contrary, the image has been carefully rendered in the attempt to deceive the spectator’s eye, to make him or her believe to be looking at an actual etching instead of contemplating a highly elaborated drawing. Any textual reference to Ter­ ence is missing. No captions or explanatory verses accompany the image. Therefore, the drawing stands as an autonomous visual construction and not as a simple illus­ tration subordinated to the aphorism. Departing from the mere illustrative purposes shared by the prints published in previous emblem books, Goltzius provides a much more sophisticated interpretation of the subject, offering so subtle a treatment of it that the viewer could not even grasp immediately its subject, depending on his or her ability in establishing extra-visual as well as literary connections. The same subject appears in another small work by Goltzius (Fig. 4) in which Ve­ nus and Cupid are once again depicted alone, holding the attributes of their physically (but not metaphorically) absent companions, Bacchus and Ceres: grain and grapes.1 The work, generally dated around 1590, is an engraving - an authentic engraving this time - presenting close stylistic connections with Spranger’s sinuous female models.’ Some years later, this delicate tondo would be used by Agostino Carracci as a model for an etching (Fig. 5).4 In this small piece, Goltzius includes for the first time Terence's sentence (with a little change: 'Baccho' instead of 'Libero') within the figurative space, thus creat-

' B. Aneau, Picta Poes is: Vt Pictvra Poesis Erit, Lugduni. M. Bonhomme. 1551. On Barthélemy Aneau see J. Spangler, A. Adams, French Emblems at Glasgow, Glasgow, Faculty of Arts. University of Glasgow, 2006. 4 H. Leeflanc, G. Luijten, op. cit., p. 219. ' For the most detailed and accurate account on Spranger see T. DaCosta Kaufmann, The School of Prague. Painting al the Court of Rudolf II, Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press, 1988. in particular p. 26s. 4 On Agostino Carracci's print see D. De Grazia Bohlin. Prints and Related Drawings by the Carracci Family. A Catalogue Raisonné, London Blomington. Indiana University Press. 1979. especially pp. 542-343.

ing as a verbal frame for the whole composition: Sine Cerere et Baccho friget Venus. Staring amiably at the viewer, a charming naked Venus stands acrobatically on the trunk of a tree holding, in one hand, some grapes and, in the other, a bunch of grain and wheat. Next to her, a winged little Cupid sits on the ground, close to his bowls and arrows, trying to reach the bunch of cereals held in her compan­ ion’s hand. Without touching each other, the two figures are visually engaged in a well-balanced compo­ sitional relation, with their bodies arranged in calculatedly contrast­ ing attitudes. While Venus raises her right hand forward, project­ ing her figure outside the graphic surface, in a Spranger-like serpentinata, Cupid echoes, on the oppo­ site, the dynamic position used by •л ISE Сек ЕНЕ ET В.АССИО IK INET \’fSV( Michelangelo in one of his nudes Fig. 5. Agostino Carracci, Sine Cerere et Bacchofri- of the Sistine chapel. The major difference between get Venus. London, The British Museum. the two compositions elaborated by Goltzius in 1590 lies in the explicit reference to Terence’s text in the etching, which is not present in the 'pen work’. The inscription unmistakably links Goltzius’ image to the ancient source, helping the spectator to recognize the subject represented in the print, whereas in the pen werck the absence of any verbal indication makes it harder for the viewer to identify the theme depicted by the artist. In order to avoid any unneces­ sary ambivalence regarding the subject of the print, Goltzius decide to quote the sen­ tence from the Roman text, thus shaping a space in which word and image are deeply intertwined and equally involved in the process of signification. Their mutual support, in spite of any linguistic diversity, creates the potential space for an endless process of semiosis, locating the meaning in the threshold of an image and word relation. In this rather simple composition Goltzius creates a particular type of space, in which the representation assumes the distinctive features of the emblems, dealing simultaneously with verbal as well as iconic signs in the attempt to shape a visual­ ly-based grid of semantic associations. In other words, Goltzius’ engraving appears as an emblem in disguise, whose dilatable horizon of meanings is the result of the dynamic interaction between verbal and figurative systems. The convergence of all elements present on the surface will in fact lead the spectator to the construction of a unified yet inevitably ambiguous message, opened to continuous semantic negotia­ tions between work and beholder, structures and interpreter.

This is, undoubtedly, one of the most intriguing aspects of the dia­ logue between words and images in the particular space of represen­ tation named emblems’. In spite of their displaying well-defined forms, characters and attributes, not to mention words, captions and even ’explanatory’ verses, the emblems form a territory of signi­ fication in which all components, once set together, become some­ how other than themselves due to the flexible nature of their structural as well as semantic liaisons. Goltzius’ work echoes brilliantly the articu­ lated space of emblems, superbly Fig. 6. Hendrick Goltzius, Sine Caere et LiberoJriconciliating the sensual immediacy get Venus. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum. of the image with the extra-visual allusiveness of the words. The verbal signs, strategically distributed outside the line circumscribing the repre­ sentation, invite the spectator to consider the image as a system of visual metaphors related to the sentence borrowed from Terence. Acting like a title or, more precisely, like a hermeneutic guideline, the sentence makes it possible to the beholder to rec­ ognize, in the elements held by Venus, the evocative depictions of Ceres (grain) and Bacchus (grapes), reinforcing in this way their symbolic value in the composition, notwithstanding their physical absence. As a matter of fact, one could argue that it is thanks to the absence of the gods that the word ‘Sine’ - i.e. ‘without’ - can really perform its semantic functions. Not by accident, both letters and figures are carefully carved by the master and attentively distributed all over the surface: consequently, what is depicted here is not simply an accurate illustration of a specific textual source, but a calculated construction in which words and images are equally important for the sake of the interpretation. Even the abstract patterns used to decorate the sen­ tence, dividing it into four symmetric portions, have been positioned in the outer side of the framing-line as though to create four cardinal points, thus helping the viewer to read the sentence without getting lost. Immediacy and mystery are, not by accident, central features of any emblems. Even though they usually represent very well-known notions or ideas, emblems have nonetheless the capacity to endlessly dilate the semantic horizons of such a patrimo­ ny of shared values, subtracting, adding and challenging any sedimentation of mean­ ing in order to build up, over and over, new spaces of sense: a goal magnificently achieved by Goltzius in the organization of his suggestive ‘emblematic spaces’. It is not surprising, then, to find out that the master would have once again repre­ sented this theme five years later, adopting one more time the ‘emblem-like’ construc­ tion of the space (Fig. 6-7): in a silver plate engraved as a night piece, Goltzius depicts the michelangiolesque body of a sensual Venus laying on a bed, while turning her

eyes toward a young good-looking Bacchus, crowned by a rich bunch of grapes.' The god, whose geni­ tals are conveniently covered by the same fruits, holds a half filled glass in his right hand, ready to toast to the goddess of Love. On the op­ posite side of the bed, Cupid tries to keep alive the fire, from which comes the curvy form of a dense smoke. In the foreground, Ceres, crowned by an elegant decoration of grain and wheat, is shown from behind, holding in her left hand a cornucopia filled with cereals. The sophisticated effects of light as well as the emphatic chiaroscuro Fig. 7. Hendrick Goltzius, Sine Ccrere el Libero produced by the burning flame fnget Venus. Paris, Collection Frits Lugt, Fondation accentuate the voluptuous atmos­ Custodia. phere of the scene, transforming this gathering of divinities in an intimate, almost luxurious, entr’acte d'amour. Like the engraving created five years earlier, also this work is accompanied by verses writ­ ten by Schonaeus paraphrasing, in a more elaborated way, Terence’s aphorism: Cum Bacchi, et Cereris magnum mihi numine numen, mihi languenti rénovant in pectore vires («The great power of Bacchus with that of Ceres, they renew my strength when I weaken»). The image is sealed with Goltzius’ distinctive monogram, HG, although the date of its creation, 1595, appears only outside’ the nocturnal scene, consequently dilating the frontiers of the representation. Thanks to this interplay of signature and date, in fact, the ’representation’ ends up encompassing all elements 'presented' on the sur­ face, in spite of their heterogeneous nature: iconic or verbal, figurative or ornamen­ tal. The space of the ’representation’ literally coincides with the locus in which the forms are presented,’ leaving in this way enough room to the viewer to evoke mul­ tiple allusions and grasp any sort of extra-visual recalls. The tension between ’pres­ entation’ and ’representation’ will generate Goltzius’ peculiar ‘emblematic space,’ in which the articulation of all components physically displayed on the sheet will ultimately determine the potential meanings of the work. Not surprisingly, the master consecrates, in the same year, another series of engrav­ ings to Terence’s theme (Fig. 8-10).2 In these images, however, Goltzius represents each God in a single composition, instead of setting them together. To inaugurate the series - friendly dedicated to the painter Cornelis van Haarlem' - Goltzius choos­ es to represent a young, muscular and statuesque figure of Bacchus (Fig. 9) in the act 1 H. L.eeh.ang, G. I.uijten. op. at., pp. 219-220. ' Ibidem, p. 204. ' On Goltzius friendship with Cornelis van Haarlem and other artists sec J. P. Fii.edt Kok. Artists Portrayed by Their Friends: Goltzius and His Circle. «Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art». 65. 1996. pp. 161-181.

of raising up a cup, in a quite ritualistic gesture, reminiscent of the god s attitude in a sculpture by Jacopo Sansovino (Fig. 11), now at the Museo del Bargello in Flor­ ence. In Goltzius’ engraving. Bacchus is accompanied by a little satyr playing with grapes, half hidden under a dark shadow. Significantly, the frame surrounding the composition no longer recalls the meta­ phorical space of emblems but focuses ex­ clusively on the immediacy of the image, further emphasizing its sense of concrete tangibility thanks to the projection of the god’s hand on the edge of the frame. The semantic role played by the text is almost neglected in this work and appears re­ duced to little more than a caption. The verses, composed once again by Schonaeus, perform like small ’moralizing’ sub­ titles for the visual representation, while the frame seems to act like a showcase in which images connected to the cult of Bacchus are programmatically displayed: on the upper part, two grotesque heads are represented on each corner and, on the opposite side, four glasses are carved with remarkable mastery in an astonish­ ing trompe-l’œil. These elements are relat­ ed with both past and present times: the glasses portrayed’ by Goltzius (Fig. 12). for instance, repeat quite accurately the shapes of actual sixteenth-century glasses used for the consumption of beer in Hol­ land (Fig. 13-14), whereas the grotesque heads recall the pagan era when the cult of Bacchus had first started. Goltzius’s devotional mythology’ implicitly sug­ gests, therefore, that the god has been venerated both in past and present days. Such a sense of sacrality will be fur­ ther explored by the artist one year later, in 1596, in the creation of another series dedicated to Venus, Ceres and Bacchus. Carved by Jan Saenredam, this series is commonly referred to as The Worship of Bacchus, Venus, and Ceres, for it presents

Fig. 8. Hendrick Goltzius, Ceres from the series Sine Cerere et Libero friget Venus. Amster­ dam. Rijksmuseum, Rijksprentenkabinet.

Fig. 9. Hendrick Goltzius. Bacchus from the series Sine Cerere et Libero friget Venus. Am­ sterdam. Rijksmuseum, Rijksprentenkabinet.

Fig. io. Hendrick Goltzius, Venus from the series Sine Cererc el Libero friget Venus. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Rijksprentenkabinet.

Fig. и. Jacopo Sansovino, Bacchus.

Florence, Museo Nazionale del Bargello.

each god, individually represented in a single composition, in front of a group of kneeling people acting like feverish worshippers (Fig. 1517).' In The Worship of Bac­ chus (Fig. 16), for example, three men of different ages are depicted while drinking or humbly paying tribute to the god, accompanied as usual by a satyr carrying bunches of grapes. The marble like body of Bacchus, carved with smoothness and delicacy, retrieves the paradigm of classical beauty of Apollo Belvedere, while its position seems to paraphrase the sensual ambiguity of Michelangelo’s Bacchus (Fig. 18). If properly’ dressed, one could have even exchanged the figure of the pagan god for a Christian character, given the intensely devotional atmosphere of the scene. As for the back­ ground, it shows, on the right side, a group of peasants dynamically working on the cultivation of grapes and, on the centre, people engaged in producing wine, the most celebrated among Bacchus’ inventions. A similar sense of spiritual suspension pervades also another outstanding ‘pen work’ by Goltzius, datable between 1596 and 1600: Bacchus and a Young Satyr (Fig. 19).* Stylistically, the piece reminds the image of Bacchus represented in the etching dedi­ cated to Cornells van Haarlem. Particularly relevant, in both works, is the decoration of the frame, with attributes related to the cult of the god. Unlike the former engrav1 H. Leeflang, G. Luijten, op. ciI., pp. 205-206.

‘ Ibidem, p. 240.

Fig. 12. Hendrick Goltzius. Bacchus (part, glasses)

Fig. iz Dutch glass. Amsterdam,

from the series Sine Cererc et Libero friget Venus. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum. Rijksprentenkabinet.

Rijksmuseum.

ing, however, the pen werck displays only motifs associated with the present ven­ eration of Bacchus, neglecting any reference to his pagan past: only modern Dutch glasses and jars are depicted in the four corners of the composition with incredible sense of volume, as if they were concrete objects hanging on an imaginary wall. From a compositional point of view, this pen work appears quite different from any other work previously made by Goltzius. For the first time, the master represents Bacchus and the satyr in a strong close-up, like devotional icons performing a most sacred action: the little satyr, with an extremely gracious gesture, offers a grape to Bacchus, unmistakably mimicking the Christian ritual of the holy host. Androgynous yet highly idealized in its ancient features, Bacchus looks like a living figure and at the same time like a timeless sculpture, his mouth carefully rendered in the attempt to create an ambiguous effect of motion, as if the lips were ready to open or close. Even the eyes of the god, full of indescribable sweetness, reinforce the idea that a mystic ritual, a ceremony of acceptance is being represented. Besides presenting itself as an excellent example of Goltzius’s ability to create pen wercken, this work also represents, from an iconographie standpoint, a remarkable sample of 'devotional mythology,’ as one can easily understand just looking at the touching gesture of the baby-satyr offering the grape to the god, in a tender slowmotion action echoing the Eucharistic act. The beardless face of Bacchus - young, handsome yet venerable - appears quite reassuring in his peaceful physiognomy

Fig. 14. Dutch glass. Amsterdam, Rijksmuse-

Fig. 15. Hendrick Goltzius, The Wor­ ship of Ceres from the series The Worship of Ceres, Bacchus and Venus. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Rijksprentenkabinet.

and transmits a sense of profound serenity. The resemblance between Bacchus and Christ, on the other hand, can be hardly considered accidental.' As a matter of fact, the pagan god has been often evoked in sixteenth-century texts and images in relation to the Christian metaphor of wine-blood, in virtue of his association with grapes. Clearly thus, the image of Bacchus carved by Goltzius, with its celebrative allusions to wine, convey more than positive’ connotations. Finally, from a structural point of view, it is important to note that, in this work, Goltzius definitively abandons any attempt to organize the scene according to the parameters of the ‘emblematic spaces’ pursued in his previous representations of the aphorism. As for the words, they are totally absent from this ‘pen work’ and, therefore, any connection with the theme of Sine Cerere el Libero friget Venus could be evoked only by inference, depending on the spectator’s cultural background. In fact, one could not even be sure that this image really represents Terence’s sentence. What one should immediately grasp, however, is the almost religious atmosphere of the scene, in which the pagan god is celebrated as a peaceful divinity. Reversing Nietzsche’s well-known dichotomy between Apollo and Bacchus, this particular ico­ nography shows a religious like depiction of an Apollinean Bacchus’2 in which the ' Suggestive parallels between Christ and Bacchus have been explored by M. Calvesi, lx realui del Caravaggio, Torino, Einaudi, 1990. 2 For the ’Apollinian connotations of Bacchus see !.. Koneôny, Augustine Kasenbrot of Olomouc, His Golden Bowl in Dresden, and the Renaissance Revival of •Poetic' Bacchus. « Artibus et Historiae ». xxiv, 1003. PP 185-197-

Fig. 16. Hendrick Goltzius. The Worship of Bacchus from the series The Worship of Ceres, Bacchus and Venus. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Rijksprentenkabinet.

Fig. 17. Hendrick Goltzius, The Worship of Venus from the series The Worship of Ceres, Bacchus and Venus. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Rijksprentenkabinet.

god assumes unmistakably moral and even metaphysical implications. Significantly, on the other hand, in works such as this Goltzius refrains from using any composi­ tional device related to his former ’emblematic’ solutions. The image, from now on, will be conceived by the artist as the only vessel of sense in compositions - directly or intertextually - depicting Bacchus, Ceres or Venus as paradigmatic exempla of ‘posi­ tive’ values. In Praise of Sobriety The handsome appearance of Bacchus in the works so far described reveals quite unambiguously positive’ aspects associated with the god in sixteenth-century Dutch art. By extension, also the act of drinking is depicted, in these images, as a most ‘posi­ tive’ social habit. It is not surprisingly, then, to find that Bacchus often appears also in Van Mander’s Schilder-Boeck in episodes related to the diffused (and some times exces­ sive) habit of drinking, especially among Northern artists. In many paragraphs, Van Mander narrates different stories in which drinking is recorded either as a blameful’ or a ‘praiseful’ event, following the rhetoric distinction between vituperatio and enco­ mium/ One could in fact divide all these episodes in two well-separated groups: on

' Very insightful interpretations concerning these two categories, in relation to different periods and contexts of Flemish and Dutch art. can be found in E. M. Kavali-r. Picler Bruegel. Parables of Order and

Fig. 18. Michelangelo,Bacchus.Flor­

Fig. 19. Hendrick Goltzius, Bacchus and a Young

ence, Museo Nazionale del Bargello.

Satyr. Vienna, Albertina.

the one hand, scenes in which the protagonists, mostly artists, are harshly punished by Fortune due to their uncontrolled way of drinking and, on the other, sequences in which masters are highly celebrated for their impeccable social conduct, even when savouring a good glass of beer. In the biography of Joachim patenter, for example, Van Mander does not refrain from blaming the master's behaviour under the effect of alcohol, in spite of his excel­ lency in art: «patenter», he bitterly comments, «was someone who, in contradiction to his noble art, led a rowdy life; he was much inclined to drink (seer tot den dranckgheneghen) so that he spent entire days at the inn and wasted his earnings in excess until, forced by necessity, he had to devote himself to the money-making brushes».' much to the desperation of his brilliant apprentice, Jan Mostaert, who, unlike his seldom sober master, had a wise disposition to work hard in order to improve his own artistic skills, avoiding thus any alcoholic temptation. Not by accident, he will be remembered by Van Mander as a particularly elegant artist, able to socialize even with noblemen: «Jan Mostaert was not only an art-full painter but also noble in his habits, friendly in his manner, well-formed physically, well-spoken, magnanimous and courteous, came Enterprise, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1999, and T. Todorov, Eloge du Quotidien. Essai sur la peinture hollandaise du xviè siècle, Paris, Denoel, 1996.

' К.

van

Mander, op. at., p. 134.

to be held in high regard and esteem and well thought of and loved by most of the nobility in the country».’ Once, Van Mander remembers, a certain count came to visit the artist in his workshop and, since it was almost lunch time, Mostaert «ordered the assistants, his pupils, to help him set something before the lords for breakfast, but the count went himself to the cupboard or sideboard, cut off and breakfasted upon what he found, and the other lords did the same, and they drank from a jug of beer which they passed around among themselves (en droncken een can bier onder malcander от)».1 Sealed by an unequivocal sign of familiarity - drinking from the same jug - the encounter between the 'noble' painter and the ‘nobleman’ repeats a social leitmotif in Renaissance art literature: the promising exchanges among artists and illustrious patrons. In addition to this topos, it is also worth outlining the fact that a specific kind of drink has been mentioned in this sentence, namely the beer: a drink, we shall see, that played a central role in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Dutch economy. If an artist like Mostaert was always able to control himself while drinking, the opposite seemed to have occurred with Marten van Heemskerck’s disciples. In spite of the master’s most exemplary behaviour, many of his pupils have lost themselves in the labyrinth of excessive drinking as Van Mander profusely tells us: a young man named Lomelis, for instance, who was originally from Gouda, although praised as «a most art-full, distinguished portraitist » and for being « in his youth (...) very averse to drink (in çijnjeught heel dronck-hatigh)», once he started working in the courts, ended up finding himself «in the company of the great» and, then, «changed dramatically, so that even great drinkers were in awe of him, and thus he fell completely into decline and became a bungler. Therefore», Van Mander severely concludes, «youth must avoid following such examples».’ Far from being an isolated case, Lomelis' addiction to alcohol was only one of the many examples available among Northern painters. Another case is described in the life of Hans Bamesbier, a German pupil of the most celebrated master of Liège, Lambert Lombard. Presented as a «fine painter and portraitist,» Bamesbier is mainly remembered by Van Mander for having «turned very bad through drink (door den dranck)» in his old age.4 Quite remarkably, in this short biographical note, the author seems so worried about the moral implications of the tale that he does not comment on any of Bamesbier’s artistic achievements, providing only a concrete example of ‘a-model-that-should-not-be-followed’ by the reader. Also in other biographies, much longer and more detailed than Bamesbier’s, Van Mander eagerly emphasizes that certain masters, such as Joos van Winghen, have produced so «few and yet good paintings (weynich doch goede schilderije)»’ for their uncontrollable, shameful drinking habits. Surprisingly though, in the case of Wing­ hen, Van Mander argues that, notwithstanding his ethylic problems, he should not be pointed out as a wine-addicted for, in his opinion, he «did not make many [paintings] because he enjoyed company, though he was no drunkard (doch geen dronckaert), but just used to take pleasure in passing the time chatting over a jug of wine (een kan Wijns)».6 Eloquently, the product of such a potential temptation - the wine - is ex­ plicitly mentioned by the author.

’ Ibidem, p. 174. 4 Ibidem, pp. 169-170.

1 Ibidem, p. 174. 5 Ibidem, p. 317.

’ Ibidem, p. 169. ° Ibidem, p. 317.

However, the most striking example of the contrast between supreme artistic incli­ nations and extreme alcoholic addiction is provided by Van Mander in his long, caus­ tic and extraordinarily detailed account on sixteenth-century Antwerp master, Frans Floris. Described as a superlative artist in the representation of human figures, able to depict any muscle, nerve or articulation thanks to his incredible manual virtuosity, Floris is nevertheless the target of one of Van Mander s most violent attacks against the Northern tendency to excessive drinking. In phrases that seemed written out of rage and fury, the author expresses his deep concerns about the habit of uncontrolled alcohol consumption. Like the parable of a fallen-angel, the life of Floris is presented as an example of moral failure, in spite of its most remarkable artistic contributions. According to Van Mander, the starting point of Fioris' decline coincides with his re­ turn from Italy, where he had spent several months studying ancient as well as mod­ ern artworks. «When Frans had returned to these Netherlands», Van Mander says, «he quickly showed himself to be a great master through his art».' Unfortunately, short afterwards he started squandering his time and eventually «began to lapse into our customary Netherlandish malaise of dipsomania so that, to the detriment of his art and his noble talent, he was held to be as great a drunkard as a painter (een also groot Dronckaert als Schilder)».2 To convince the reader of the seriousness of problems related to the « most common vice among us, Netherlander »J - namely, excessive drinking - Van Mander describes in detail how this shameful custom had affected and almost destroyed Floris’ life. Adopting a bitter moralistic tone, he recalls, in a paragraph particularly emphatic, an episode that had occurred just after Frans’ return to Antwerp. Although the episode is quite evident in itself as an exemplum of alcoholic addiction, what makes it even more significant is the fact that Van Mander addresses directly the reader, explaining that, if he is paying so much attention to such a sad motif - i.e. the description of the artist’s «vices» - it is exclusively for the sake of his pedagogical aims, in the hope that any future artist, patron or collector, after reading these sentences, would know what not to do, following therefore Floris’ lesson a contrario. As Van Mander puts it:

I shall now reluctantly relate here some of Floris’ excesses, but I do hope that they might lead more to disapproval and horror than that they should be imitated and praised among the practitioners of our art and that youth, however well it can take it, will not try to attain fame in this way ; for among us Netherlander^ (by ons Duytschen) excessive, intemperate drink­ ing (t'onmaetlijck overdadigh drincken) is wrongly generally tolerated and is not considered as shameful, worthless and sinful abuse - yes, in some circles the ability to withstand a lot of drink is even praised and celebrated - other sensible populations regard this undeserving art to be the most appalling, worthless shame in the world, yes as a more than bestial, unreason­ able and unnatural sin, and it is rejected as a truly poisonous mother of all malevolence and intemperance, looked upon and avoided as horrible.4 Captured in the trap of addiction, Floris was no longer able to stop drinking and ul­ timately involved also his pupils in these rituals of alcoholic aberration. However, as Van Mander recalls with relief, the master did recognize, by the end of his life, how intolerably low he had fallen due to his uncontrolled drinking performances: ' Ibidem, p. 217. ’ Ibidem, p. 218.

1 Ibidem, p. 218. 4 Ibidem, p. 218.

he was too far gone in these habits and could not easily leave his drink-loving hangers-on (çÿnen dranck-lievenden) or send them away; for all servants of Bacchus inclined to excessive drinking delighted to be in his company (allé veel suypghesinde Bacchus Dienaren geem by hem waren). Since his immunity to alcohol was famous, some great boozers or drinkers were envi­ ous of his great celebrity ; among others six big, tough gorgers, bass players from Brussels, once came to Antwerp simply to test in reality the art of holding drink which they had heard that Floris possessed, and in order to enter into a contest or competition with him. Floris was able to acquit himself so well that he left three laid-out halfway through the meal. The other three held on for a long time, but because of the long duration of the struggle two of them began to splutter, on which account Frans’ courage increased and with a large hand held glass, or capacious Frankfoorder, he drank them under the table. The last, who held out the longest, was forced eventually to acknowledge Frans his master, for when bidding farewell at the inn, when he accompanied Frans to the place where his horse stood ready with five or six bare-headed pupils, Floris had another pitcher of Rhenish red wine (Rijnschen Baey) pulled which he held in his hand in order to display his great art of resisting to drink, for while stand­ ing on one leg he toasted his defeated champion and drained the whole pitcher of wine at one draught, and when he had done that he mounted his white horse and rode home into the night as a victorious champion. '

As great a drinker as a painter, the example of Frans Floris could exercise very bad influences on the youngest generations for its most reproachful lack of control. For this reason, after having patiently described the alcoholic tendencies of the master, Van Mander names one of the greatest philosophers of sixteenth-century Holland, Dirk Volckertsz Coornhert (Fig. 20),1 who unambiguously condemns Frans’ wild behaviour: Floris was reprimanded by some, among others by the poet (...] Coornhert, who sent him a letter with an invented dream set in rhyme, namely how Albert Dürer appeared to him as a distinguished old man who praised Frans’ art highly but severely attacked his way of life (die Fransen Const hoogh loofde maerçijn leven hardt bestraftede). Eventually, at the end of the text, he says to Frans: If what I have dreamt is not true, consider it certainly to be true that you have been severely reprimanded.’ The master’s many ‘virtues’ in the art of painting were, therefore, dangerously men­ aced by his unforgivable ‘vices’ in the «undeserving art (brooloose Const)» of excessive drinking, as Van Mander calls it. It is important to outline however that, even though Van Mander clearly despises the behaviour of the six contenders from Brussels, he stresses, with paradoxical pleasure, that they had been beaten by a still sober Floris, who, in spite of all wine, had never lost his temper nor control. Quite the opposite: assisted by his «great art of resisting to drink (çijn g root teughsche Const),» Floris was not only sober enough to keep holding in his hand «another pitcher of Rhenish red wine,» but could also stand on «one leg» and toast «his defeated champion», draining «the whole pitcher of wine at one draught», unlike the six poor Flemish fellows. The ’ Ibidem, pp. 221-222. 2 For further analysis on Coornhert’s philosophical as well as theatrical works see G. Voogt, Con­ straint on Trial: Dirk Volckertsç Coornhert and Religious Freedom, Kirksville. Mo, Truman State University Press, 2000. On the relation between Coornhert and Goltzius see W. L. Strauss, Hendrik Goltçius, i%81617. The Complete Engravings and Woodcuts, New York, Abaris Books, 1977. ’ K. van Mander, op. cit., p. 218.

most blatant difference between Floris and his Bruxelles contenders seems to lie, then, not so much in the former’s astonishing perform­ ance as a drinker as in his remark­ able sobriety after having been drinking excessively: symptom, one may infer, of an outstanding capacity of self-control. In other words, the artist is described as someone whose behaviour, al­ though criticisable, is paradoxically close to that of a stoic philosopher, able to face any adversity without loosing his fortress-like control: notwithstanding his ethylic vices,’ Floris deserves to be praised on ac count of his most virtuous’ self­ control. It is also worth pointing out two other elements related to this episode: first, the notion of self-control appears very close, in Fig. 20. Hendrick Goltzius, Portrait of Dirck Volckertsç Coornhert. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Rijks- Van Manders textual strategies, to prentenkabinet. the calculated mention of Coorn­ hert s name, a man who, at that time, was one of the most influential Dutch thinkers in matters of social codes and moral values; second, the fact that the product that had led Floris to perform such an exhibitionist drinking mise-en-scène was (once again) wine and not beer. The connection between artistic dexterity, moral self-control and beer reappears quite programmatically in the biography of Hendrick Goltzius, in which the master is described as an authentic neo stoic mind and a distinguished «philosopher of na­ ture» (natuerlijek Philosooph).' Van Mander proudly underlines Goltzius’ impeccable lifestyle stating that he «is someone who does not concern himself in any way with worldly events and general gossips for he is someone who, because of outstanding love of art, likes to have peace of mind, be quiet and solitary, while art has claimed the whole person for herself».1 While in Rome, where he stayed from January to August 1591, Goltzius did not waste his time in useless activities such as drinking in company of other Northern travellers but «dedicated himself, as ordinary students do, steadily and diligently to drawing after the best and most important antiques».’ Conducting a nearly monastic existence during this trip, Goltzius avoided any sort of sensual or alcoholic temptation, notwithstanding his closest companion Jan Mathijsz Ban - were a rich and prominent brewer from Haarlem. Along with Ibidem, p. 405. 1 Ibidem, pp. 402-3. For a Stoic-based interpretation of Goltzius’ works, see R. De Mambro Santos, Le vinù romane. Terni c motive dello stoieismo ncll'arie nordica del Cinquccento. Roma. Edilazio, 2005. Van Mander, op. cit.. p. 390.

another gentleman, Philips van Winghen, Goltzius spent several weeks with Ban, exploring different places in Italy, from Naples to Bologna, from Venice to Gaeta. Once returned to Holland, the friendship between Goltzius and Ban became even stronger, as suggested by documents found in the archives of Haarlem and published by Bredius, Hirschmann and, more recently, by Nichols.'Just to mention one exam­ ple: on December 21, 1613, the names of Goltzius and Ban appear, side by side, in a note regarding Frederick de Vries, in which both artist and brewer are mentioned as the executors of Frederick’s will.* Ban is also frequently remembered in the pages of Het Schilder-Boeck as a prestig­ ious art collector and a most generous commissioner of paintings. Not surprisingly, Van Mander dedicates the central part of his book - the «Lives of the Illustrious Flemish, Dutch and German Painters» (Het Leven der Doorluchtighe Nederlandtsche en hoogduytsche Schilders) - to Jan Mathijsz Ban and Cornelis Gerritsz Vlasman, local producers of beer fervently praised as «good friends» who were «doubly related by marriage, and lovers of the art of painting».’ In a sentence referring to Ban's profes­ sion, Van Mander proposes a most suggestive connection between Bacchus and beer making, asserting that both Ban and Vlasman should be indicated as honorable heirs of «the first producer of beer, Bacchus or Dyonisius (den eerstn Bier-Brower Baccho oft Dionysio)».* Such a mention, so far neglected by scholars, provides an insightful infor­ mation concerning the historical context in which Goltzius’ representations of Sine Libero et Cerere friget Venus have been created. In fact, in the period between 1583 and 1604 - i.e. the years in which, respectively, Van Mander moved to Holland and published Het Schilder-Boeck - the economic life of Haarlem was mainly based on the production of beer. As extensively investigated by Pieter Biesboer and Richard Unger among other scholars,’ beer was by far the most common and consumed drink among Flemish, Dutch and German people in the sixteenth-century and, surprisingly as it may sound nowadays, the long list of consumers includes also children of any age. The water was mostly undrinkable and, for this reason, it was not very used in the daily life as an ordinary drink. The quality of the milk was likewise unsatisfactory and consequently its diffusion was primarily related to the process of cheese making. Drinks such as coffee or tea were still quite unusual among the larger social strata. As for the consumption of wine, according to the data examined by Biesboer and Unger, it will start being widely consumed in Holland only throughout the eighteenth century, although its diffusion among the richest social circles is documented as early as the fifteenth-century. On the other hand, beer was largely consumed not only in reason of its capacity ' For documents regarding Goltzius see A. Bredius, Künstler-Inventare. Urkunde çur Geschichte der hoiIdndischen Kunst des xviten, xvnten, und xvtttten Jahrhunderls, The Hague, Nijhoff, 1915-1922; O. Hir­ schmann, Hendrick Goltzius, Leipzig (1920]; L. W. Nichols, Hendrick Goltzius. Documents and Printed Literature Concerning his Life, in Goltzius Studies. Hendrick Goltzius (1558-1617), cit. (cf. supra, p. 35, footnote 1), deel 42-43, pp. 77-120. " L. W. Nichols, Hendrick Goltzius, cit. p. 106. ’ K. van Mander, op. cit., pp. 46-49. 4 Ibidem, p. 49. ’ P. Biesboer, C. Tocneri, Collections of Paintings in Haarlem, 1572-1745. Los Angeles, Getty Research Institute, 2001; R. W. Uncer, A History of Brewing in Holland, 900-1900. Economy, Technology and the State, Leiden, Brill, 2001 ; and also R. W. Unger, Beer in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Philadelphia, Uni­ versity of Pennsylvania Press, 2007.

to sedating thirsty but mainly for its nutritious qualities, as a significant complement for the daily nourishing diet, thanks also to its variable quantity of alcohol. In this context, beer became «a necessity, a part of everyday life, a drink for everyone of any age or status, and a beverage for all times of the day», as Unger claims.' «Drinking was a social activity looked on by people of the day with neither suspicion nor awe. [...] Excessive drinking did exist and was frowned on [...]. Among alcoholic drinks beer was the standard beverage for breakfast. People drank at home and in public places, from morning throughout the day until well into the evening. In fact, alcohol consumption was so normal that society depended on it to maintain cohesion».2 In regard to the production of beer in sixteenth-century Dutch territories, the available data demonstrate that the town of Haarlem was, before 1570, responsible for 15 % of the production in the whole region of Holland and became just a few dec­ ades later, the primary economic source of prosperity and earnings for local people. Right after the terrible siege of 1573, Haarlem used to possess approximately fifty beer factories; around 1620, there were more then one hundred fully operating factories. «The brewing industry,» Unger justly concludes, «was a significant contributor, as well as participant, in the emergence of Holland as the most important province in the northern Netherlands and in the rising income of the region».’ The producers of beer constituted, therefore, one of the most prominent and in­ fluential groups in the Haarlem society of the time, progressively imposing its eco­ nomic power over the other social layers. The old nobility was reduced to just a few representatives who had already lost, from the beginning of the fifteenth-century, almost all their former properties and feudal privileges, as well as their effectiveness as a ruling force. The most relevant group in Haarlem - from both an economical and political point of view - was formed by the producers of beer, who, by the end of the eighth decade of the sixteenth century, had definitely assumed the role previ­ ously played by the nobility as a leading group in the administration of the town. As Richard Unger remarks, «the common interest in the gains from brewing generated close links between the government and the brewing industry. In many cases brewers were part of government, or at least of civic government».4 In fact, «brewers’ critical role in supplying tax income to governments not only made them popular with pub­ lic authorities but also made them into a part of public authorities. The cooperation between government and brewers to increase public income [...] led to a merging of the profession and public power».’ Significantly, in the years between the first work devoted by Goltzius to the theme of Sine Caere et Libaofriget Venus and his last composition on this subject, the city councillors of Haarlem have been almost exclusively taken from the members of this particular social group - the brewers - although their election was done not in accordance with any democratic kind of selection, based on votes, but by means of a public nomination promoted by men who had been previously appointed as councillors-to-life and occupied, inevitably, a privileged position within the local scale of power. Even mayors and other civic representatives of the town were usually elected

‘ R. W. Unger, Beer in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, cit., p. xni. 2 Ibidem, pp. 2-3. ’ Ibidem, p. 86. 4 Ibidem, p. 10. ’ Ibidem, p. 182.

among these councillors-to-life and have been several times chosen among beer pro-

Furthermore, Van Mander mentions several examples of astonishing Wunderkammern and rich art collections gathered by Dutch brewers, listing also a large number of paintings directly commissioned by them. To mention but one example: one of Van Mander s first masters, Pieter Vlerick, is remembered for having painted a scene in which youngjoseph desperately tries to avoid the voluptuous flirtations of Potiphar’s wife; this painting, Van Mander recalls, was made «for a brewer called lan Bonte (voor eenen Brouwer gheheeten Ian Bonte)».' Generous supporters of the Dutch art market throughout the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, the producers of beer are praised in Het Schilder-Boeck as 'art lovers’ (constliefhebbers) as well as ‘knowledgeable people in matters of art’ (const-verstandighen).‘ In other words, they were ‘connois­ seurs’ able to evaluate the pictorial qualities of a work in accordance with strictly «artistic» (constighe) criteria, instead of basing their judgment on merely mimetic pa­ rameters. In Van Mander s distinction between ‘ordinary’ viewers (ghemeenen volcke) and learned’ spectators of art (gheleerden en const-verstandighe), the brewers undoubt­ edly belonged to the second category and were also celebrated for their indefatigably supporting the development of the schilder-const. The Wine

of

Wisdom

Hendrick Goltzius’ close and long-lasting relationship with Dutch brewer Jan Mathijsz Ban provides an important note regarding the context in which his works rep­ resenting Sine Cerere et Libero friget Venus have been elaborated and first purchased. Thanks to this horizon of social, cultural and artistic references it is possible to un­ dertake a micro-historical analysis of this iconography in order to understand its cap­ illary diffusion in such a particular context. Both Van Mander s text and Goltzius’ images present Bacchus as a sober, elegant divinity, a gentle and polite god not as­ sociated at all with excessive consumption of alcoholic beverages. Far from assum­ ing the frantic attitudes often associated with his being "Lord of the Wine,’ Bacchus appears in these images as an impeccable exemplum of ‘positive’ behavior: calm, se­ rene, even detached. Moreover, his peculiar relation with brewing, in an exquisitely Northern sense, as Van Mander proposes, beyond his notorious link with wine mak­ ing, reinforces the hypothesis that the diffusion of the iconography of Sine Cerere et Libero friget Venus in Haarlem at the end of the sixteenth century could be related to Goltzius’ association with brewers, such as Ban and Vlasman. Although Terence’s sentence had been already adopted by authors of emblem books, thanks to Goltzius’ remarkable skills and his new approach to the subject, it will become a much more popular theme, at least among the members of this specific audience. By inventing a strikingly new working method - the pen wercken so attentively described by Van Mander - and by abandoning gradually compositional devices related to the wordand-image-space typical of the emblematic devices, Goltzius has further reinforced

' K. van Mander, op. at., p. 262. 1 Van Manders significant distinction between the different audiences is a topic I have addressed in R. De M ambro Santos, La civil conversalione pittorica. Riflessione estetica e teoria artistica in Karel van Mander, Roma Sant Oreste, Apeiron, 1997.

the role of the image as a vehicle of ideas, thus transforming schematic illustrations of a text in powerful visual interpretations of it. On the other hand, Bacchus’ unexpected association with beer opens up a new chain of questions concerning the social, intellectual and economic environment of late sixteenth-century Haarlem. The explicit liaison between Bacchus and brewing could explain why the god has been so systematically represented by Goltzius and other contemporary masters as a handsome, gentle and somehow aristocratic be­ ing, always displaying a most commendable behavior. His intimate relationship with Ceres and Venus could be equally read in the light of the brewing metaphor pro­ posed by Van Mander, since the attributes of the first (grain and wheat) were directly related, as ingredients, to the actual process of beer making, whereas the symbolic allusion of love and union, sensually evoked by the figures of Venus and Cupid, could be easily assimilated to the process of boiling, through which all primary ingredients of the beer were transformed into a new product, thanks to a metamorphosis com­ parable to an alchemical experiment. Surrounded by Venus, Ceres and Cupid, Bacchus becomes therefore the meta­ phorical defender of a genuinely Northern product, socially diffused and financially indispensable for the maintenance of an increasingly expansionist economy. As Biesboer and Unger have demonstrated in their studies, the consumption of beer was so widely spread in Holland among the population that the act of drinking could not be object of moralistic condemnations. The problem, in other words, was not whether to drink or not, but how (and how much) to drink. «The society did not know about alcoholism», Unger states. «The concept simply did not exist. People thought alcohol therapeutic and a normal part of life».' The visual evidences of drinking practices in sixteenth-century Holland as well as the verbal descriptions of it convey, however, the idea that a dual system of evalua­ tion might have existed at the time : depending on whether a person was able or not to drink in accordance with certain rules of decorum, such an act could become either an object of enthusiastic encomium or disgusted vituperatio. A good visual sample of the first case is provided by Lomelis van Haarlem’s composition portraying, in quite vivid poses, various members of a local civic militia (Fig. 21). Van Mander punctually describes the painting, remarking that «all sitters communicate their habits or incli­ nations by their gesture: those who are accustomed to trade slap each other’s hand; those who like a drink hold a jug or a glass (die geern drincken, hebben de Can of t’Glas), and so forth: to each his own»? Far from being regarded as a nefarious habit, drink­ ing appears, in this scene, as a socially reinvigorating practice, conferming that the ‘moral’ implications of the act of drinking were not linked to the product perse, but rather to the way, place and occasion in which it was consumed. As a matter of fact, Van Mander does not neglect to mention many episodes in which the act of drinking appears as a perfect opportunity to undertake fruitful ex­ changes and, thereby, he almost encourages the organization of such ‘banquets of decorum.’ What is important is to distinguish, according to Van Mander, between a ‘proper’ and an 'immoral' way of drinking. Reading these pages, one notices how­ ever that, in most occasions in which a master is criticized for having performed an ’ R. W. Unger, op. at., pp. 2 3.

1 K. van Mander, op. at., p. 429.

Fig. 21. Cornei is van Haarlem. Banquet of the Officers of the Company of St. George. Haarlem.

Frans 1 lais Museum.

unbridled behavior, the cause of such a lost of control is quite systematically con­ nected to the consumption of wine, whereas in the descriptions of elegant meetings or cordial social gatherings beer will be most certainly mentioned as the product of sober toasts. Such a moral as well as material distinction perform like an invisible yet continuous narrative device throughout Van Manders pages, where it assumes a function that could be assimilated to Roland Barthes’ «effet du réel».' In the cases of Patenier. Bamesbier. Floris and Heemskerck’s pupils, the uncontrolled drinking was explicitly related to the consumption of wine, while in the exemplary cases of «balanced» toasts, undertaken by masters such as Mostaert or the civic guardians portrayed by Van I laarlem, the glasses were filled with the Northern nectar of Bac­ chus, the wine of wisdom: beer. From an iconographie standpoint, the most diffused depictions representing morally ambiguous acts of drinking, in a Flemish or Dutch context of the six­ teenth century. were scenes of frantic peasants, jumping, dancing or even vom­ iting around a table (Fig. 22). On the opposite side of such a moralistic’ coin, Goltzius' more and more sophisticated visual translations of Terence’s aphorism would have provided excellent examples of positive’ representations of the art’ of drinking.

' R. Barthes. I.'effet du Keel in Literature et Réalité. Paris. Editions du Seuil. 198».

l ie. 22. Karel van Mander. Peasants. St Petersburg. State Hermitage Museum.

Elegant, hieratic poses and a refined sense of «equilibrium are. not by accident, pre­ dominant characteristics of one of Goltzius' most striking pen works:' the depiction of Sine Cererc ct LiberoJrigel Venus now at the British Museum in London (Fig. 23).' Such a magnificent drawing engraving.' signed and dated 1593. represents Bacchus, accompanied as usual by a little satyr, and Ceres, standing on the opposite side of a tree, clearly displaying their attributes while staring al Venus, whose sinuous Antique­ like body is smoothly caressed by the light coming from the burning fire, kept alive thanks to Cupid's blow. Such an exquisite image would have most certainly appealed to the aesthetic expectations as well as to the moral coordinates of brewers art-lovers, for its capacity to recall processes, techniques and components directly involved with the production of beer. From the burning fire (allusive of the process of distillation) to the presence of wheat, malt and grain (adopted by brewers as ingredients for their product), Goltzius' image could be understood by such a category of beholders as an implicit allegory in which Bacchus, symbolically posing as «the first producer of beer», in spite of his consuetudinary holding grapes, waits for Venus' signal, along with Ceres, to unite their attributes ingredients in the metamorphic fire. Any brewer would have immediately recognized, among Ceres' different attributes, important components of the beer, especially grain. ’ I I. I.EEH.ANG. G. I.VIJTEN, l>/>. СП., p. 24H.

Miniftra Zytopœia. Ftflt rqrni, nttt Irabu, Ул[л rtptrp, Dai tirti Ctrtru Ги mibi («fit ttJu.

Fig. 23. Hendrick Goltzius, SineCcrereet Libe­

ro friget Venus. London. The British Museum.

Fig. 24. The Beer Maiden, printed in Der Da neiger Frawen und Jungfrawn gebreuchliche Zierheit und Tracht, 1601.

Furthermore, Bacchus is not the only god who has been metaphorically associated with the beer, but also Ceres, as demonstrated by a xylography carved in Germany around 1601, from a series of prints entitled Der Dançiger Frawen und Jungfrawn gebreuchliche Zierheit und Tracht («The customary decoration and dress of the women and maiden of Danzig»: Fig. 24).' In this image, a woman is depicted in the unusual task of carrying a chariot charged with empty barrels of beer, running back to a place where she could fill them up once again, as indicated in the Latin sentences below the composition, in which the figure of Ceres is explicitly indicated: Ministra Zytopoeia. Facta equa, Nytnpha, rotas traho, vasa repurgo. Dat vires Cereris vis mihi cocta vadis. In the conclusive verses, the energetic female carrier is named - not without irony - Brawer Magd, i.e. 'Beer Maiden’. In the case of Goltzius’ outstanding pen werck, the visual as well as the semantic centrality of Venus emphasized the role of Love as the unifying linkage of the whole group. Such a conceptual premise - Love as the best way to obtain a promising union among different beings and elements - is also present in another representation by Goltzius dedicated to Terence’s phrase: a synthetic yet refined drawing now at the Koninklijke Museum voor Schone Kunsten in Bruxelles (Fig. 25), later rearranged by the master in a more detailed grisaille, signed and dated, «HGoltzius fecit A0 1599» 1 For further comments on the German xylography see R. W. Unger, op. at., pp. 222-224. I would like to thanks Ortwin Knorr, from Willamette University, for his most friendly help with the translation of the title into English.

Fig. 25. Hendrick Goltzius, SineCercrcet Libero friget Venus. Bruxelles, Koninklijke Musea voor Schonc Kunsten van België.

Fig. 26. Hendrick Goltzius, Sine Ccrerc et Libero friget Venus. London, The British Mu-

(Fig. 26).' This last oil cartoon would be eventually translated by Jan Saenredam in an etching dated 1600 (Fig. 27). Once again, the three gods appear reunited in quite intertwined poses and attitudes. Framed by an elegant bed with baldachin, the di­ vinities’ gestures remind the iconography of the Three Graces. Along with the gods, Cupid is depicted in the act of playing with Bacchus’ attributes in the foreground, while Venus nonchalantly stretches her arms around the other divinities, creating a sensual link between them. The arrangement of the three characters in this work would later on be used by Goltzius as the starting point for his last and most impressive representation of Ter­ ence's theme: a 'pen work’ dated around 1606, now in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg (Fig. 28).2 After having sketched the major elements of this composition with red chalk, the master displayed all his astonishing dexterity in emulating the rendering of etchings by means of swelling lines and various intersecting patterns, proving, as Van Mander claimed, that he was indeed «a rare Proteus or Vertumnus in art» able to «transform himself to all forms of working methods».' However, the ' H. Leeelang, G. Luijten, op. cit., pp. 230-233. 2 Ibidem, pp. 277 279 In this paper I will not be considering Goltzius’ pen work' datable around 15991602, now at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, usually referred to as Sine Cerere et Libero friget Venus. This work will be the central subject of a further publication in which 1 shall demonstrate why it does not belong to the series of images done by Goltzius in strict reference to Terence’s aphorism, but should be. instead, related to the more sexually-oriented iconography of Venus with .Satvr. ' К van Mander, op. cit., p. 398.

Fig. 27. Jan Saenredam after Hendrick Goltzius, Sine Ccrere et Libero friget Venus. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Rijksprentenkabinet.

Fig. 28. Hendrick Goltzius, Sine Cerere et Libero friget Venus. St Petersburg. State Her­

mitage Museum.

most unexpected element within this sophisticated work is the presence, in the mid­ dle ground at the left, of the artist’s self-portrait next to the figure of an adolescent Cupid standing before a burning altar. Goltzius, staring directly at the viewer, holds in each one of his hands the tools of his prodigious art: the burins, whose distinctive features are perfectly emulated by this very pen werck. Given Goltzius’ deep personal involvement with alchemical investigations, the image could also convey other mean­ ings: the fire, for instance, could have simultaneously recalled three different - but interrelatable - processes of transformation, namely brewing, alchemy, and art.' For an audience mainly composed by wealthy brewers, a theme such as Terence’s and images such as Goltzius’ different versions of Sine Cerere et Libero friget Venus could have responded quite appropriately not only to specific aesthetic expectations but also to certain ‘moral’ issues, thanks to their extremely ‘positive,’ and some times even encomiastic, depictions of Bacchus and the act of drinking. In Northern Europe, and more precisely in Haarlem and Amsterdam around 1600, the figures of Bacchus and Ceres were commonly associated with the production and consumption of beer. Also Venus and Cupid were indirectly associated with brewing, without losing their notorious connections with the concept of Love, especially in compositions in which they appear next to the ‘fire:’ an element that could have been easily interpreted, as ' The profound interest that Goltzius has demonstrated toward the alchemy, already explored in my Post-Doctoral dissertation, is the topic of my current research on the master's career.

we have seen, at least from the particular perspective of brewers art-lovers, as a visual translation of the ‘fire’ effectively used during the laborious, alchemical-like process of distillation, during which all ingredients involved in the production of beer were finally mixed and transformed into the Dutch ‘wine of wisdom’. Van Manders peculiar description of Bacchus as «the first producer of beer» pro­ vides, on the other hand, an important key of interpretation for Goltzius’ works, opening up a series of questions regarding the primary ambient of reception of such a complex net of images, texts and emblem-like compositions. Without denying that these representations could have also conveyed other meanings and assumed differ­ ent connotations in their original context of production, the interpretation proposed here, far from attempting to establish any mechanic social determinism, connects the extraordinary diffusion of a rather unusual iconography, in the years between 1590 and 1606, with the cultural context in which it has been first formulated in autono­ mous works of art, outside the frontiers of emblems. Thanks to such a historicallybased analysis, it becomes possible to examine the connections between Goltzius’ visual strategies, deeply intertwined with the reference to Terence’s sentence, and the horizon of expectations shaped and shared by a particular class of patrons and art collectors living in Haarlem in the turning of the century: the wealthy and welleducated «heirs of Bacchus», the Dutch brewers.

THE DUTCH LOVE EMBLEM Els Stronks r the beginning of the Dutch Golden Age, around 1600, beautifully illustrated books on the topic of love appeared on the Dutch book market. These books contained collections of emblems, combinations of provocative texts and intrigu­ ing images - motti [= mottoes], picturae [= pictures] and subscriptions [= epigrams] - that educated young readers in the subject of love, dealing with issues such as choosing one’s partner, marital fidelity and the possible pangs of love.1 Usually, the motto was positioned above or under the pictura ; it could, however, also sometimes be draped over the pictura. The meaning of the whole is determined by the combi­ nation of the three parts. The curiosity is roused by either the motto or the pictura, and then the subscripts complements these to parts and provides a logical explana­ tion on the whole.

A

The Italian Origins

of the

Dutch Love Emblem

The Dutch love emblem derived its specific form from a genre that had been around for a while in 1600. The influence of the very first emblem book, Emblematum liber by Andrea Alciato, originating in Italy in 1531, was enormous. Since Alciato’s emblems first appeared in Latin, their influence extended over the whole of Europe. By the 1620s, over a hundred more editions of Alciato’s Emblematum liber were printed, not only in Latin but in French, German, Italian and Spanish. Alciato’s corpus of em­ blems would eventually stretch to 212 emblems, but early editions of the Emblematum liber had little over a hundred. In the 1531-edition of Alciato’s Emblematum liber, the subject of love was already given some attention. This becomes apparent when taking into account that in Al­ ciato’s picturae, Cupid appeared in emblem number 7,10,13, 72, 73, 76, 78, 80, 88, 94, and 96? On the pictura of this particular emblem, number 88, Cupid is complaining to his mother, Venus, about being stung by bees: ' The term "Dutch’ will henceforth be used to indicate volumes with Dutch texts published in what was then the Southern and Northern Netherlands. During the Eighty Year’s War against Spain (15681648), the Northern Netherlands united themselves into the Republic of the United Provinces (the Dutch Republic). The Southern Netherlands, on the other hand, remained loyal to Spain and hence­ forth were named the Spanish Netherlands, resulting in the separation of the Southern and Northern Netherlands. 1 The 1531-edition of Alciato’s Emblemalum liber is reproduced on the site of the "French Emblem in Glasgow project, see: http://www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/alciato/. This site also contains many of the later Alciato editions

Sweetness turns at times to bitterness A Lydian babe had strayed some way off, leaving his mother at a distance, but you made away with him, you dreadful bees. He had come to you, thinking you harmless winged creatures, yet a merciless viper would not be as savage as you. Instead of the sweet gift of honey, ah me, you give stings. Ah pain, without you, alas, no delight is granted.’

The playful, sometimes ironic tone of the emblematic genre is apparent in both the visual and textual component of this emblem. The fact that Cupid, the little god of love who is used to sting others with his arrows, is stung himself, is meant to be ironic. The emblem is charged with moral overtones, and was meant to engage the viewer as interpreter.1 Alciato based this particular emblem on a epigram of the Anthologia Graeca, a collection of poems (mostly epigrams) that span the classical and Byzantine periods of Greek literature. In general, during the time the emblematic genre flourished, literature was imitative in nature. In the sixteenth and seventeenth century, the highest ideal was that of imitatio: it was self-evident - as well as honor­ able - that literary works would imitate renowned examples. It was then about who knew enough literature to be able to recognize certain literary fragments when com­ bined and portrayed in the emblems. Where as in Alciato’s Emblematum liber Cupid was just one of the many personi­ fications used to teach and delight the reader, in the first Dutch love emblem book, Quaeris quid sit amor (Do you seek/ask what love is) (1601), Cupid played a leading role, dominating 21 out of the 24 picturae in the collection. ' Quoted from http:/ / www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/alciato/emblem.php?id=Ajiao88 . The original quote in Latin: » vulcia quandoque amara fieri / /Matre procul licta paulum secesserat in fans / /Lydius, hunc dirae sed rapuistis apes. / Venerat hic ad vos placidas ratus esse volucres //Lum nee ita imitis vipera saeva foret./Que I-Quae1 datis ah dulci stimulos pro munere mellis/ /Proh dolor, heu sine te gratia nulla datur. » * See Pablo Pérez d’Ors, A Lutheran idyll: Lucas Cranach the Elder’s Cupid Complaining to Venus. « Renais­ sance Studies», xxi, 2007. pp. 85-98.

Depicted here is the pictura of emblem no. 9. To the right, Cupid is playing his role as a matchmaker. The couple on the left shows a man, who is leaning over a fence in his despair, as the woman is watching him. The man finds himself biding his time; the woman, fickle and indecisive, leaves her suitor guessing as to where he stands with her. Another outstanding feature is the windmill: it gave the whole look a typi­ cal Dutch feel, because in the seventeenth century, windmills were omnipresent in the Dutch landscape, for instance successfully deployed in the battle against the ad­ vancing sea. Together with the pictura of the windmill, a motto and a subscripts were present on the emblem: Without wind there is no movement

That which pleases me, I must fetch from outside; that which moves me, must come from another, or else I am at a standstill. I need to stand still. Oh, if only the wind would come; then I could go once more. That her breath (the essence of my existence) would merely from her merry mouth, a breeze allow onto my heavy heart, at least from the side. Now I am without her, now I am without me.' The male-female relation depicted in the pictura, and described in the subscripts by the comparison between the windmill and the male lover - who both suffer from a force they can not control, but which is vital to them - derived from the Petrarcan tradition, a literary movement taking its name from the fourteenth century sonnets Petrarch wrote to Laura, the unattainable (married) women whom he worshipped. ' Original quote: «Ni spiral immota/Het gheen dat my verheught/ moet ick van buyten haelen/ Het gheen dat my beweeght/ moet van een ander daelen/ Oft anders ben ick still’/ ick moet wel stille staen./ О dat de wint eens quaem soo moght ick wedergaen/ Dat haren adem slechts (den oorspronck van mijn leven) / Wt haren blyden mondt een windeken wou gheven’./ Op mijn beladen hen/ ten minsten van ter zy/ Nu ben ick sonder haer/ nu ben ick sonder my.» See: http://emblems.let.uu.nl/ he1601009.html

In Quaeris quid sit amor, the suffering of the lover caused by the whimsical hard-heart­ edness of the beloved is expressed in clever Petrarcan antitheses and paradoxes. The perspective of the male lover is dominant, although his role is that of victim. She plays the tempting enchantress, the dolce nemica (sweet enemy), who can, just by looking at her suitor, cause him bittersweet pains. Moreover, the woman, in all her beauty and attraction, remains unaffected by the power of love. She carelessly throws away her suitor as a wounded creature, who then finds himself being trapped be­ tween pleasure and pain.1 Alciato and Petrarch were not the only Italian artists who influenced the Dutch emblematists. A painting by Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus (ca. 1485), clearly in­ spired the engraver of Pieter Cornelisz. Hooft’s Emblemata amatoria (1611) to use the birth of Venus as a means to crystallize the concept of divine beauty:2

The Dutch and the Art

of

Loving

Initially, the creator of Quaeris quid sit amor kept his identity hidden. Moreover, he did not give his book a clear title, most probably to avoid drawing attention to himself. The reason for the author’s mysteriousness was apparent: the emblems were created by Daniel Heinsius, a respectable professor from Leiden, who presumably wished to remain anonymous to keep his reputation as a serious scholar intact. The subject matter of the volume, as well as the choice for the vernacular may have played a role in this secretiveness. Around 1600 it was taken for granted that Heinsius, as poeta doctus, would choose to express himself in (Neo ) Latin. By then opting for Dutch he became the emancipator of the Dutch language. In this preface of Quaeris quid sit amor, in addressing the ‘Maidens of Holland’, Heinsius describes how Venus came to prosperous Holland in order to ask the poet to teach her son Dutch:

Venus herself this year (not long ago this was) Came full of glad good cheer to Holland’s prosperous towns.

' See for more information on this subject K. Porteman’s introduction to a re edition of P.C. Hoofts Emblemata amatoria (1611), issued in Leiden 1983. Also see K. Porteman en M. Smits-Veldt, Een nieuw vaderland voorde mu^en, Amsterdam 2008. 2 See http://emblems.let.uu.nl/h161101.html.

Where'er she walked or stood, her lovely golden hair Left scatterings of silver dewdrops here and there. She came with a request, she said: that her young son Could spend some time with me to learn our Holland tongue.'

Heinsius justified the existence of Dutch-language poetry by revealing this scene to his readers. His text can be seen as the first, cautious attempt to promote the Dutch language as the ultimate language to use when writing poetry. By 1613, Heinsius had lost his timidity. In his second volume of love emblems, en­ titled Het ambacht van Cupido (The trade of Cupid), he did no longer felt the need to justify the existence of Dutch love emblems. Instead, he claimed the Dutch language and the Dutch culture to be the perfect surroundings for love and love poetry to grow and flourish. The emblem «In lubrico» shows Cupid on ice-skates, with the following text as the subscriptio:2

Cupido Icert het fpeldat Hollande heeft gevonden, Hy proefttegacn optys.hy hcefttweefcliactfen aen. Hy heeft twee yfers fcherp aen zijne voetgebonden, Daer medcdat hy meynt op’t water vaft teftaen. Het ys van felfs is glat, de y fers glat daer tegen, Mcnvalt leer lichtelick daer op, ofoock daer in. Het vryen gaet alfoo. die nice en is te degen Geflepen op het wcrdt.dic duyfelt in de min.

Cupid learns the game invented here in Holland, He tries to walk on ice. he wears a pair of skates. He’s tied onto his feet the two sharp iron blades -

' «Self Venus van dit jaer (het is niet langh' gheleden)/Quam vroyelick en bly naer Hollandts rycke steden / / Den silvercn dau quam / /ghedruppelt hier en daer/Waer zy gingh ofte stondt /van haer schoon gouden haer'Zy wou dat haren zoon / /by my wat zou Vcrkeeren / /Op dat hy onse spraeck van Hollandt mochte leeren. » See : http : / / emblems.let.uu.nl ' hei6oifrontooi.html 1 For our purposes here the motto, pictura. and subscriptio are presented as a visual unity. In the original each page shows at the top two pictures plus molles side by side, with beneath them the two subscriptioncs (under each other) belonging to the two picturae. The motto of this emblem contains an allusion to Psalm 71 of the Vulgate, which declares that the rich’ find themselves in 'slippery places and in imminent danger of destruction.

They’ll keep him firm, he thinks, and steady on the water. The ice is slippery, the blade against it, too, It ’s easy to fall down, or even right straight through. With wooing it's the same: those lacking well-honed skill Will lose their footing fast, their love will come to nil. Heinsius now claims that Cupid, during his stay in Holland, learned more than just the Dutch language. In passing, the god of love also mastered the skill of ice-skating. The Netherlanders - inventors of the ‘skating game’ - taught him how to skate on their frozen canals. In the pictura we see a Dutch winter landscape and the typical wooden skates of the Low Countries. In gaining mastery over the slippery ice, this emblem suggests, Cupid also learned the fine points of the art of love. The situation in love is no different from that on the ice. Like skating, the game of love seems de­ ceptively simple, but can only be learned by trial and error - by falling, getting up and trying again. Now that Cupid has learned from the Dutch experts how to stay on his feet on the ice, he can be considered truly accomplished in the art of love. Heinsius may have employed this positive image of the energetic, skilled Dutchman to counter the idea current elsewhere in Europe that in the cold, wet climate of the Netherlands only people of a crude, unrefined sort could thrive. The point here would then be that only in the Netherlands did Cupid truly learn the fine art of loving. In centuries before Heinsius’ Ambacht van Cupido was published, debates on the «natural disposi­ tion of races» were a hot topic in Western Europe. On the basis of the Bible and an ancient theory on climates and their corresponding humours’ of man, ideas on the nature and degree of civilization of countries were formed. True to the tradition that people can be stereotyped, the Dutch scholar Erasmus claimed that bluntness was an important characteristic of the Dutch. Remarkable was that Erasmus, a Dutchman himself, associated himself with the southern feeling of superiority. It can be argued that Heinsius took up arms against this prejudice, most likely find­ ing a good response for his ideas amongst his (young) Dutch readers. By traveling to the sophisticated south (Italy, France), the Dutch youth were broadening their horizons, to learn better manners and social skills, and, more specifically, to educate themselves in the field of love. When it came to the subject of love, the Italians and the French were already advanced with their refined poetry. The Dutch could learn a great deal from their southern neighbors, not only by trying to catch up on their techniques, but more importantly by using the new ideas as inspiration for their own tradition by making use of the emblematic genre. For the ones who stayed at home, but also for those who prepared to go on such a journey or recently came home from one, the love emblem books played an significant role in the improvement of the (image) of the Dutch lover. A playing factor could be that in the seventeenth century, most Dutch people were of the opinion that southerners often lost themselves in the affairs of love ; in particu­ lar in the excesses of love, such as adultery and violating virgins. Such subject matters were touched upon in southern literature, which was probably why the northerners came to their conclusion about their southern neighbors. The Dutch gave a civilized twist to their view on love and the literature on love by focusing their attention on the virtuous (Christian) marriage: its preparations, the choosing of one’s partner, procreation as a noble goal of love, marital fidelity, and so on.

Economic Benefits

of

Emblematic Literature

In publishing Quaeris quid sit amor, Heinsius combined the efforts of several of his friends (among them the engraver J. de Gheyn and jurist/historian/statesman H. Grotius), which proved a resounding success. Reprints of appeared in rapid succes­ sion, and the new title given to the volume with the third printing - Emblemata amatoria - would grow into the label for a subgenre in international emblematics.' A male buyer could request a specially made copy of the love emblem book, with colored piclurae and/or a unique cover, offering it as a gift to his ladylove during courtship. Heinsius' Quaeris quid sit amor even included a blank space intended for the coat of arms of the person to whom the book was given. In a sense the innovative stimulus of Heinsius' Quaeris quid sit amor was a limited one: Alciato’s Emblematum liber had already included Cupid-emblems, and after Alciato many volumes appeared with emblems devoted to the theme of love. The new­ ness consisted in the emphasis Heinsius and his followers placed on the emotional dimension of love: the human feelings and reactions to the love god Cupid - though often expressed in literary clichés - occupy a central place in love emblematics. Char­ acteristic for this first flourishing of Dutch love emblems is the light-hearted way in which they deal with the caprices of love, in series of emblems that display a high degree of coherence thanks to their clear thematic grouping and use of common sources. The many guises assumed by Cupid in the emblems lightened the tone of the genre. It was part of the game to make variations on Cupid's appearances. Cupid was ice-skating, spinning yarn, playing with a hoop, making handstands and joking about his nudity in Heinsius s emblems.

Cupid's different personalities were constantly made use of: the almighty, capricious God who has full control over who will fall in love with whom versus the playful child who acts funny on occasion. The Dutch love emblematics benefited from favorable economic and social circum­ stances, finding a wide audience with great purchasing power among the youth in the Dutch Republic. Research has shown that the flourishing of the genre coincided - at least in the well-to-do provinces, like Holland - with a relatively long period of stable prosperity. In Amsterdam it appears that a large number of marriages took place in the period 1600-1620, partly perhaps as a consequence of that prosperity. There ' Around iboo. the concept of the love emblem originated in Leiden and gradually spread to the Southern Netherlands. There, the genre often adopted a more religious view. In this contribution, only the northern Dutch variants of the love emblem will be discussed.

were publishers behind the great success of the genre. Dirk P. Pers, who edited the Dutch version of Ripa’s Iconologia (1644) and introduced the term çinnebeeld (emblem - literally image of meaning’) into the Dutch language, and his fellow Amsterdam publisher Willem J. Blaeu entered a fierce competition. The heyday of love emblems also brought the publication of several volumes containing both emblems and songs. Hooft’s Emblemata amatoria is one example (with 71 pages devoted to emblems and 73 to songs and sonnets), but also the less ambitiously published Cupido’s lusthof (Cu­ pid’s Garden of Delight) of 1613. A question worth asking is whether the quantity of volumes on the market might not have been considerably less if the publishers had not dealt so creatively with the material. It is important to note here, however, that a large number of authors in the Netherlands composed emblems. And among them were the great names from Dutch literature. The genre, in other words, was no less appreciated by poets than by the general public. The advent of the love emblem genre saw to it that emblems that until then only circulated in elite circles now also fulfilled a broader social function. Combination volumes like Hooft’s Emblemata amatoria and Cupido’s lusthof, with emblems and songs, allowed for optimal social use. In being this successful, the Dutch love em­ blems played an important role in establishing and forming cultural identities in Dutch society. Characteristic for the whole of the Dutch emblematics was a prefer­ ence for daily life as a source of motifs and as a possibility for concretizing moralizations. Ordinary objects, scenes, and landscapes provided emblematise like Roemer Visscher, Jacob Cats, Johan de Brune and Jan Luyken with occasions to teach the reading public a variety of moral lessons. The aim of the realistic representations was to give visual form to the underlying constants of human life. They heightened the awareness that sin and transience can reveal themselves in many guises. The profane love emblems were, more in particular, instrumentalised as new and modern forms of instruction, proffering guidelines on communication between the sexes, especially regarding marriage. They were used to steer and organise a social change. In the end of the sixteenth century, a need for a new morality on matters of love and marriage arose in the northern Netherlands. When the Dutch provinces united themselves against Spain in 1568, the Eighty Year’s War became a fact. During that war, the Ro­ man Catholic beliefs of the Spanish ruler became synonymous with oppression. As a consequence of this, the rebellious provinces preferred the Protestant alternative. When it came to matters of love and marriage, the Protestant church made use of emblems to spread its views. Emblems taught youngsters the meaning of falling in love and the various stages in the development of an emotional relationship. These instructions were also needed because of socio-economic developments at the time: «Now that wealth was on the rise, young men went away from home for longer periods, studying at universities or traveling south on a Grand Tour. No longer in their parents’ immediate surroundings, meeting new and often exciting people, how were they to control their emotions if they were hit by Cupid’s arrow?».1 The love emblems supported the individual in organizing his/her emotions along socially ac­ cepted lines, making sure, for instance, that a wrong choice did not endanger the prosperity of whole families. 1 See A.J. Gelderblom, investing in Your Relationship, in Learned Love, eds. E. Stronks and P. Boot, The Hague 2007, p. 135.

Although authors mentioned that all lovers would want to read emblem books on love, there was still the question of who actually owned one? That question is difficult to answer. Hardly any numbers on sales and ownership exist. However, we can, with a certain degree of confidence, say a little about a seventeenth century best seller: of Maechden-plicht (1618), another emblem book on love written by Jacob Cats in 1618, about 55.000 copies were sold around 1650. That is a lot, especially when tak­ ing into account that the Dutch population at the time was only 1,5 to 2 million in number. The most reliable fact might be the appearance of quite a few reprints of love emblems. Although in the beginning there was a limited edition, the many reprints indicated its popularity. In a preface of a songbook from 1636, it was confirmed that emblem books were often carried in one’s trousers pocket. The author mentioned that the smaller formats of songbooks and books of love emblems were extremely convenient for amorous encounters:

Which [= the small format of emblem books] were not aimed at saving on printing costs; I believe the format was convenient and suited for keeping in one's pocket. And to carry it with them to pleasant meetings where sometimes more was being discussed than thought proper by one’s parents.’ He furthermore mentioned that girls, when surprised by their parents, could easily hide the small book in their aprons. Moreover, the font-size was way too small for nosy aunts and grandmothers to read.

Male

and

Female Role Models

A key factor of the growing popularity of love emblems was the game element. As mentioned earlier, on most love emblems, the male-female relations were turned upside down, portraying the stereotype of a complaining, helpless man and a power­ ful, heartless woman. Often it is the male feelings that predominate. Nevertheless, female readers were also actively recruited for the genre : Heinsius, for example, ex­ plicitly addresses ’maidens’ in the prefaces to his volume. This raised the question of whether the female readers were as amused by them as their partners were. The Petrarcan image, as portrayed in Heinsius’s love emblems, contrasts with the reality of the time. In Dutch society, the women were to bide their time and follow their men. On the love emblems, on the other hand, this particular role was acted out by the men. Among other things, this meant that it was socially unacceptable for a woman to initiate a relationship (which is somewhat different than having her parents deciding on a suitable husband for her. In the end, she was able to choose her own husband, as long as the rules of courtship were obeyed). When the woman finally did enter into a relationship, she was to obey her man. And when mar­ ried, she was to fulfill the mother role. People found evidence in the Bible for these specific male-female relations. After all, Eve was found responsible for the expulsion

’ «Welke [=het kleine formaat van embleembundels] niet gedaan is omdat de kosten des drukkers mochten zijn gespaard; maar ik denk dat het formaat handig was, en geschikt om in de zak hier en daar mede te dragen als u aangename bijeenkomsten en vergaderingen houdt, alwaar soms wel wat meer wordt besproken dan ouders mogen weten.»

of man from paradise, which resulted in a punishment affecting all women: they were to obey men. Medical evidence was also put forth at the time; apparently, men played the significant role in the process of procreation by supplying the seamen; women simply received the seamen and had no further participation in the concep­ tion. This made her role subordinate to that of her man. In addition, it was believed that women were disposed with an inferior combination of bodily fluids, which, in turn, determined her inferior character. Hugo de Groot, known for his successful es­ cape from the castle of Loevestein on March 22,1621, and a renowned scholar, in his Inleidinge tot de Hollandsche Rechts-geleerdheid (1631 ; Introduction to the jurisprudence of Holland) concluded the medical evidence as follows: Because women are colder and clammier by nature, they are less adept at handling matters of the mind than men. For that reason, men are born superior to women. That is, the wise lead the not so wise. In a marriage, a woman should be kept under tutelage, while the man acts as head and guardian. Thus, a woman owes her husband obedience. Yet, a man should never be allowed to hit his wife or act cruelly towards her.'

According to De Groot, women are «kouder en vochtiger» [= cooler and more clam­ my], because they suffer from an excess of the elements ‘earth’ and ‘water’. Accord­ ing to the aforementioned theory of the four cardinal humours, people consisted of combinations of the four elements earth, water, air and fire. These elements cor­ responded with the four bodily fluids black bile, phlegm, blood and yellow bile, re­ spectively. Therefore, as maintained by this theory, an excess of black bile and phlegm caused women to look pale and dull and be slow of comprehension. The discrepancy between literature and reality raises a few questions. How inter­ esting was it for women to see the tables turned? Did they appreciate this literary jest? Or should we assume that the humorous emblems were directed at the male audience, who, at the end of the day, had their own say in their future partners and relationships? When, in light of these questions, you look at the picture from Heinsius’ Ambacht van Cupido, what role is the male Cupid performing here?

' Original quote in Dutch: «Bovendien heeft het vrouwelijke geslacht, omdat vrouwen van nature kouder en vochtiger zijn, minder aanleg voor zaken die verstand vereisen dan het mannelijke geslacht. Daarom is manner, superioriteit over vrouwen aangeboren. Want de wijste gebiedt altijd de minder wijze. In een huwelijk is de vrouw voor onmondig te houden, en heeft de man de rol van man en voogd. Daarom is de vrouw haar man gehoorzaamheid schuldig. Maar hij mag zijn vrouw niet slaan. of anderszins wreed handelen. »

How far could the exchange of roles between men and women go? Together with this pictura from Heinsius’ book Ambacht van Cupido, the following text was given: By honouring a women, I shall become one

My wisdom, my mind acts as two eyes, guiding me: my heart, my feelings great, my male strength cannot manifest, if thou, oh fair maid, engage into battle. I start to resemble you. I acquire thine body and senses, 1 follow thine example. Goddess, because I depend on thee, 1 come so close that I begin to spin yarn. When once I was a man, now I am woman.’ Apparently, the discrepancy between the literary world and reality did not hinder the acceptance and popularity of the love emblem in the Netherlands. It can even be argued that the game played in emblems like the above, made by Heinsius, helped to break down the traditional patterns of male and female roles in early modern society.

The Spread

of the

Dutch Love Emblem

The example Heinsius had set in 1601 with Quaeris quid sit amor had been followed on a large scale, both at home and abroad, and both within the literary traditions as well as outside these traditions in other art disciplines. In the Low Countries and far beyond their borders, Otto Vaenius, teacher of Rubens, set the tone with his polyglot Amorum emblemata. Many would follow this example, in the Netherlands and else­ where. As the genre evolved, the playful and often Petrarcan tone of the first volumes made way for greater seriousness. The Sinne- en minnebeelden (Images of Meaning and Love) by Jacob Cats of 1618 approaches the choosing of a spouse almost as a business transaction: the religion and family background of the future partner, as well as a few other practical issues, should be given careful consideration before entering into a marriage. New in the genre of the love emblem is the addition of subscriptiones for married couples and the elderly. In a suitable tone these readers are admonished to practice different virtues from those recommended to the young; they thus learn a different lesson from the same pictura. Owing to the quality of the engravings and the ‘invention’ of the love emblem, the influence of Dutch emblematics extended beyond the borders of the Northern and Southern Netherlands. Dutch emblems also left traces in European art via a different route. In the Low Countries there was a lively interaction between emblematics and ' Original quote : « Dum colo foeminam, hoc fio. / Mijn wijshey t, mijn verstandt, is minder als twee oogen, Daer werd’ ick vangeleyt : mijn hert, mijn groot gemoet //Mijn mannelickgewelt, en кап sich niet vert00g en//Als ghy my, о lonckvrou, de swaeren strijdt aendoet. / Ick worde als ghy sijt. ick geef u lijf en sinnen, Ick volge naer u doen. Godin, daer ick op bou / / Ick kom u soo na by, dat ick begin te spinnen / / En daer ick was een man. daer ben ick nu een vrou.» See: http://emblems.let.uu.nl/he16t6003.html . See L.P. Austem, The Siren, The Muse and The God of Love: Music and Gender in Seventeenth-Century English Emblem Books, in «Journal of Musicological Research», xviu, 1999, pp. 95-138, for more information on the gen­ der bound roles in early modem society and the role literature played in establishing and preserving these roles.

painting. First indications of this can be found in emblem books on paintings and in the quotation of picturae in paintings (as in Johannes Vermeer s Woman Standing at a Virginal (1672-1673) with its recognizable reference to emblem 2 from Vaenius’s Amorum emblemata). Less obvious but more common were their shared concretizations of abstract themes and motifs. In many cases borrowings from Dutch emblematics were a mat­ ter of hidden erotica. To give just one example: vogelen (bird catching) was in the seventeenth century a term frequently used for «sexual intercourse», with a caged bird representing the preservation or protection of virginity. In Cats's Sinne- en ntinnebeelden we see in emblem 21 how the young female reader is warned to keep the bird safely confined:

It dies away if given air

In her young years Els asked her nurse quite frequently Where her virginity was kept - said she'd ask Dick If no one else would say. At last the nurse declared, Child, keep this box well closed, it has virginity Inside (the box contained a finch). The nurse had hardly Left when open went the box, the bird flew out. Ah! tender thing, virginity, so quickly gone! It vanishes with searching, gets lost when it is found.' Exactly the same image carries the message in the painting Romping couple by Jan

' Original quote : » t Vkichl. krijghet het lucht / Els in haer eerste jcucht quam veel haer tninne vraghen Waer dat haer maegdom was; ja woudet Ritsaert klagen, Indien men t haer versweegh: ten lesten sprack de min, Kint houdt dit doosjen toe, hier is de maeghdom in; tint kistjen sat een vinck) de min is паи vertoghen. De doos is opghedaen. de voghel uytghevlogen; Ach! maeghdom. leer gewas, dat ons soo licht ontglijt! Met soecken raecktet wech. met vinden isset quijt. »

Fig. 8. Jan Stee.n. Stoeicnd paar. Leiden. Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal.

The

religious turn of the

Dutch

love emblem

In 1615 the love emblem acquired a new dimension with the publication of Vaenius's Atnoris divini emblemala, a free adaptation of his previously published Amorum emblemata. The similarity Vaenius saw between secular and spiritual love was an important motivating factor behind this adaptation: The emblems about secular love that I wrote a good many years ago in my youth I published as a favor to a friend; I have understood that they were very well received by all educated peo­ ple. When Your Highness.’ as friends have told me. saw them and asked whether the emblems could easily be adapted for a religious or divine meaning, because divine and human love have approximately the same effect on the object of love. I did not want to disappoint the express wish of the Duchess or to neglect my own duty.

Thus the concept 'love,’ according to Vaenuis. has approximately the same meaning in the religious and secular sense, because the person toward whom love is directed will in both cases experience the same feelings. A key word here for Vaenius seems to «approximately» («репе» in the Latin original); the feelings of love are not com­ pletely interchangeable. Just where they overlap or are mutually exclusive remains to be seen. Religious love cmblematics was to a large extent influenced by Cats’s Sinne- and minnebeelden. The Counter Reformation anthology Amons divini et humant anlipathia (1628/29) initiated and published by M. Snijders, for example, contains many borrow­ ings from Cats. His Sinne- and minnebeelden served as the point of departure for the engravings of Amons divini el humani antipathia, and a good many of the l atin texts were taken over as well. Here, as in Vaenius. divine love (Amor divinus) in most cases takes the place of Cupid. The Amons divini el humani antipathia in addition shows in­ fluences of Heinsius and of the ha desideria by Herman Hugo. This Jesuit-produced volume is therefore serve a prime example of love emblematics as a melting-pot genre. In many cases, in the religious love emblems, the realia are to be seen and read I he archduchess Isabella, on whose request Vaenius claims to have produced this volume

in keeping with the idea that God’s second book, nature, can be read like the Bible. Pictures from daily life then serve as images of transience. They remind mortal hu­ man beings of divine judgment, which is inextricably bound up with earthly life. Especially in Jan Luyken’s emblems the realistic representations invite the reader to use reality as a reflection of the eternal, the divine. Earthly beauty, in this view, offers a glimpse of God’s eternal beauty. The emblems encourage the reader to use the vis­ ible world as a stimulus for this spiritual flight. It is precisely the tension between appearance (semblance) and reality that is ex­ ploited in Dutch emblematics in order to intrigue readers. Dutch emblem poets chal­ lenged them to see in the emblems more than they depicted, and to read in them messages that they might possibly contain. In summary, it can be said that Dutch emblem poets emphasized the cryptic nature of the emblem and the relation be­ tween word and image ; in addition they had an eye for points of contact between the emblematic genre and other artistic disciplines and literary fashions. Also clear is that the emblematic genre attracted a large number of Dutch poets, and that emblem books were used to emancipate and develop the Dutch language, as well as to shape the life and morals of the Low Countries.

NUDA MOVET LACHRIMAS: WOMEN’S CHASTITY AND VIRGINITY IN DUTCH EMBLEMATIC DISCOURSE Francesca Terrenato

Introduction

«^Taked it causes tears», says the Latin motto on top of emblem 28 of a popuL N lar emblem-book from the Dutch Golden Age, Jacob Cats’ Sinne- and minne■beelden (Emblems and Love Emblems). The presence of onions in this typical Dutch setting comes as no surprise: ajuyn (as the onion was called then) played a funda­ mental role in local cuisine: in the form of traditional onion soup, as well as in salads and sauces. It is mentioned dozens of times in seventeenth-century cookbooks. But this emblem has nothing to do with food, rather it is about virginity and how to pre­ serve it. The correspondence is made clear in the appended text: the integrity of the onion skin guarantees that no eyes are going to shed tears. The admonition here is that a woman must not expose her nudity to the eyes of men; she should, above all, preserve her integrity and virginity. This metaphorical correspondence between the onion and a woman’s virginity resonated with the reading public due to the popular ancient belief in the aphrodisiac effect of onions (Fig. 1). The author of a moralizing emblem-book did not have to believe in the secret qualities of the vegetable’ to create this equation: onion and virginity were assimilat­ ed by virtue of their importance in the culture of the time. The onion, present in all kitchens of the country, serves a higher purpose here as signifier for the preservation of virginity. Together with innumerable other items - objects, figures, animals - the onion emblematically represents what was deemed to be the most precious quality of a future bride. Virginity, chastity and the marital bond are crucial issues in religious and moral discourse in the late i6'h- and i/h-century Dutch Republic. This paper analyzes the discussion and pictorial elaboration of these issues in a selection of Dutch emblem­ books and related texts. It is not my intention to use emblems as evidence for deduc­ tions on contemporary views of female virginity and chastity; rather, this study is meant to contextualize the emblems in the social, cultural and religious environ­ ment in which they were produced. The way in which images and words clustered around matters of sexual behaviour will help us see how old and new issues were made accessible to the reading public, an audience which in the case of this popular 1 In the Cruydt-boeck (Antwerp, 1554) by Rembert Dodoens (or Dodonaeus. 1517-1585), a text devoted to the qualities and properties of plants, the sharp taste, the peculiar multilayered form, and the effect the onion causes when peeled, are described in the first lines. It is in an appendix to the lemma that we find mention of the aphrodisiac power which the raw onion was traditionally believed to have, since the ancient times. See: Rembert Dodoens, Cruydt-botck, Antwerp, Plantijn, 1644, p. 1075.

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genre outnumbered the commu­ nity of the learned and comprised subjects previously excluded from the book market. The majority of texts involved were meant to reach a broad public, and to contribute to the moral upbringing of women and the youth. Needless to say, the potential readers belonged to the middle and upper classes, who had some time and money to spend on books. The edifying and educational aim of many collections printed in those days is no surprise. A new element in this context was the at­ tention given by a number of au­ thors to topics explicitly connected Fig. i. Emblem 28 in Cats’ Sinnc and minnebeelden. with women's education. Women of the Dutch Golden Age apparently had to be taught how to behave before, during and after marriage (widows were legion): chastity, measure, sobriety, tenderness and the amount of knowledge required to be a pleasant companion for the man, were among the qualities preachers, theologians, literary and moralizing authors attributed to the ideal woman. Emblems give us a vivid example of how these issues were treated in a genre which combined education and entertainment, titillating the readers’ sight with often outstanding engravings, stimulating the readers’ interpreta­ tive capacities through associations of image and text, enlarging their knowledge and consolidating their morality through pleasant verse, examples, quotes from ancient or contemporary classics. However tempting it seems, plunging directly into the em­ blematic corpus in search of images and texts related to women’s sexual behaviour would produce a rich but disorderly harvest. Indeed, as Manning has stated, the em­ blem is not to be used «as a peep-hole into the cultural assumptions of the period», but it should be analyzed «in terms of the broad cultural assumptions that produced This paper aims thus in first instance at defining the ideological and cultural con­ text in which views on virginity and chastity were retained, abandoned or newly cre­ ated. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Northern Low Countries went through deep changes, as independence from Spain led to the subsequent reor­ ganization of the political and religious establishment. The shift from the dominant habits and rules before the struggle against Catholic Spain to the habits and rules of the Calvinist Dutch Republic is multifaceted and involves several levels. This is con­ firmed by the way in which virginity and chastity (in its two different meanings of honest sexual behaviour and total abstinence) are treated in these best sellers of their times. For example, while virginity remains advisable before the bond, the exaltation ' ) Manning, The Emblem. London. Reaktion Books, 2002, p. 9.

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of lifelong abstinence is no longer an issue for moralising authors. Moreover, mar­ riage is no longer seen as a second choice, that is to say the only way for the weaker to avoid sinful lust, but becomes instead the foundation of Protestant society.’ Domes­ ticity acquires a prominent importance: home is where a bond of love and respect unites the couple and their children, and where the finest virtues of women find their expression. The context once outlined, some considerations on the emblematic genre and the specifically Dutch sub-genre of the love emblem-book will serve as an introduction to the central part of the paper. Here emblems (and related texts) about virginity and chastity, mostly from collections dating from 1600 to 1650, are analysed and discussed. The selected emblems are divided in two large groups according to their general scope: emblems encouraging pairing and emblems admonishing against unchaste sexual behaviour. Both aspects can be traced back to the exaltation of marriage which is the underlying thread in most collections. The results will be discussed in the light of intertextuality, individuating a number of striking resonances in contemporary literature, and, finally, also in a gender perspective. 1. Cultural

context

From a general point of view, scholars see this preoccupation with sexual morality and marriage as a typical feature of the civic morality which characterizes some Eu­ ropean urban societies in the Renaissance. Ruggiero states that across the period, the perceived importance of marriage played a central role in the develop­ ment of a civic discourse that relied heavily on the public and social nature of what might be labelled "civic morality". This discourse served both to legitimate and define the city-state and to provide a set of ideal goals for the latter’s use of power.’ In this context two different ways of interpreting the past come into play. On the one hand we must take into account the long term evolution of the family pattern in early modern Europe, from the large, communal, open lineage family to the nuclear modern family. In this view the evolution of marriage laws and habits is not isolated but part of that larger socio-economical transformation from the local, kinship-based agrarian community to the impersonal capitalist society of Western countries. The role of the Reformation in such a picture is drastically reduced. But change in society happens in both evolutionary and revolutionary ways. The broader view of a long­ term European process must give way also to local differences and to rather abrupt political and religious change, in which leaders and thinkers do play a role. ' As Schama states: «The Dutch were not the first culture to make a fetish of domesticity, but they did perhaps refine it more comprehensively than any previous urban society since the Romans. That they could do so without incurring the odium of wallowing in the world's vanity was partly because "home" was also invested with formidable moral connotations. A microcosm of the Fatherland itself, the "fountain and source of republics’ as Dr. Johan van Beverwijk described it, the family household was regarded as the irreducible primary cell from which the community of the town, and ultimately the whole commonwealth, were constructed». S. Schama, Wives and Wantons. Versions of Womanhood in 17” Century Dutch Art, «Oxford Art Journal», in, 1980.1, pp. 5-13: p.8. ’ G. Ruggiero, Marriage, love, sex and renaissance civic morality, in Sexuality and gender in early modem Europe. Institutions, texts, images, ed. by J. Grantham Turner, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993. PP- 10-30: p. 11.

The Low Countries in the period 1550-1700 were undergoing a period of dramatic change and seem to have been particularly interested in matters regarding sex, mar­ riage, and family: a closer look at the popular culture, literature, laws and ethics in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic will help us define a shared attitude towards sexual morality. The central role given to marriage as foundation of the society, and the subsequent need for a Decalogue of womanly domestic virtue, cannot be ex­ plained without referring to the crisis of Catholic faith and the strong, if not all-per­ vasive, influence of Calvinism on political and social life, combined with the effort of determining the identity of a new state, i.e., the Dutch Republic at the turn of the seventeenth century. To see what changes sexual morality undergoes in the passage from Catholic to Reformed faith we shall briefly review some important steps as defined by Kloek.1 On a large scale, we witness a shift from the amplification of celibacy as superior to marriage in the writings of the Church Fathers (relying on St. Paul’s reflections on the subject) to the amplification of marriage as superior to celibacy in Protestant texts and practice. In between we can place the mixed attitude shown by Erasmus (and other humanists): he dedicated various writings to the subject and underlined the quality of the mutual feelings uniting the couple.1 Although he personally con­ sidered abstinence as preferable to marriage, he condemned compulsory celibacy, which led to sinful behaviour among the clerics. This train of humanist thought anticipates the development of a new vision on sex, marriage and family among the Protestant leaders. Kloek identifies four common as­ sumptions from the writings of reformers such as Luther, Zwingli, Calvin and Bucer, which, notwithstanding theological differences among them, may be regarded as key points in Protestant sexual morality. First of all, the idea that leading a fully Christian life is possible for everyone; second, the rejection of marriage as a sacrament; third, the principle of the general priesthood of the believers, which entitles each of them to his or her own relationship with God; fourth, the emphasis placed on the author­ ity of the Bible, which became accessible in translation for virtually everybody who could read, without the intermediation of Catholic thinkers or hierarchies. Marriage, already sanctified by God in the union of Adam and Eve, was no longer dependent on a sacrament received from the priest; instead it was seen as part of God’s creation. Those who insisted on abstinence could even be suspected of sinful pride. This explains why so many friends and colleagues reproached a 'learned maid­ en’ of the Dutch Golden Age, Anna Roemers Visscher, for her temporary refusal to marry. On the one hand, her achievements in poetry and glass engraving were cer­ tainly connected to her unmarried status in the general opinion; on the other hand. * E. Kloek, Seksualiteit, huwelijk en geçinsleven tijdens de lange çestiende eeuw, 1450-1650, in Fam Hie, huwelijk en gepn in West-Europa, van Middeleeuwen tot modeme tijd, ed. by T Zwaan, Heerlen, Boom. 1993, pp. 107-138: p. no and f. 1 Erasmus' attitude is thus resumed by Leushuis: «[...] for Erasmus the sacrament was foremost a sign of amicitia, and the marital bond a mystical joining of two souls in one reminiscent of the classical male philia, an aspect that no theologian before him had stressed so vigorously. Throughout the Insritutio the image of marriage as a bond of harmonious friendship (amicitia, benevolentia, and concordia) occurs frequently; in the Praise of marriage he considers wedlock superior to friendship». R. Leushuis, The Mimesis of Marriage: Dialogue and Intimacy in Erasmus’s Matrimonial Writings, «Renaissance Quar­ terly», LVII, 2004. 4. PP- 1278-1307: p. 1286.

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frequent reference was made to her incompleteness, for she lacked that experience which is most fitting for a woman. Poems in de Zeeusche Nachtegael (The Zeelandic Nightingale, 1623),' containing contributions of different authors written on the oc­ casion of Anna’s visit to Zeeland in 1622, point to this contrast. So Johanna Coomans, to be considered with Jacob Cats as one of the organizers of Anna’s visit, says, in her welcome poem: «But this talented Maiden still has a fault / That is, that she that name of Maiden holds for too long».1 In response to an anonymous poet who wrote ironically on virginity, Anna defends in the same collection her highly desirable way of life: «Love, which consumes flesh and blood / I have long ago averted from me»? However sincere her words may have been, Anna married in 1624 at the age of forty, became a Catholic as was her husband, and had two sons: she very seldom wrote poetry after her marriage. A maiden for her whole life, the younger Anna Maria van Schurman, a renowned scholar of classical and oriental languages, and later on a member of the pietistic sect of Jean de Labadie, is well known in gender studies for her apology of women’s edu­ cation (Dissertatio de ingenii muliebris ad doctrinam et tneliores litteras aptitudine, 1638). The first female student to follow a course at the Utrecht university, she was hailed as a prodigy by Anna Visscher, Cats, and the theologian Voetius. She chose as her motto «O ep.oç epwç еатаирытаи», «Му love is crucified» (a saying of Ignatius of Antioquia). In a poem in which she comments this motto she makes clear that her choice for abstinence coincides with her marriage with Christ: «Strive for Him, wise girl with a virginal mind, / And be brilliant for this bridegroom, and do not believe in yourself. Believe!»? It certainly was an unpopular argument, in the learned Calvinist circles, but she did not deserve her mentors' criticism until she decided to change her life, renounce academic learning, and follow, still unmarried, the unfrocked priest Labadie in his vagrant life. As a learned maiden, in her youth, Van Schurman was chosen by Johan van Beverwyck as the ultimate proof of women’s superiority to men in his tract Van de Wtnementheyt des vrouwelicken geslachts (On the excellence of the female sex, 1639). Van Beverwyck’s opinion on women, as it can be deduced from his writings, displays a certain degree of ambiguity, probably shared by most educated men of his time. He was not only the author of this apologia for women, connected to an issue which was disputed since the high Renaissance in the community of the learned in Europe, that is to say, the merits or faults of women as opposed to men’s; being a physician, he also

1 The consulted edition is a facsimile of the pnnceps : Zeeusche Nachtegael en bijgevoegd A. vande Venue Tafereel van Sinne-mal, ed. by PJ. Meertens and PJ. Verkruijsse, Middelburg, Drukkerij Verhage & Zoon, ‘ «Maer noch ontbreeckter wat aen dees begaefde Maecht/Dat is dat sy die naem van Maecht te lange draecht», Zeeusche Nachtegael, cit., p. 44. ' «De min, die vleesch en bloet verteert./Die heb ick lang van my ghevveert». Zeeusche Nachtegael, cit.. p. 494 « Hunc igitur sapiens casta pete mente puella, / Nitereque hoc sponso, nec tibi fide. Fide ». The poem is contained in the commented edition with Dutch translation: Anna Maria van Schurman. Klein werh: de Opuscula Hebraea Graeca Latina et Gallica, prosaica el melrica van Anna Maria van Schurman (16071678), a doctoral thesis by P. van keek, downloaded from www.dbnl.nl on 25-10-2009, p. 192, comment on p. Z09.

wrote a series of three popular medicine manuals which had great success. ’ In On the excellence Van Beverwyck insisted on women’s physical and mental qualities, ascribing their scarce achievements in science and learning to the lack of education, and offer­ ing hundreds of examples of strong, brave, virtuous and learned female characters from ancient and contemporary history. In his medical treatises, by contrast, he em­ phasises such topics as women’s weakness, hypersensitivity, lust and predisposition to hysteria - an illness which, according to common belief, arose in women deprived of sex, and could be cured accordingly. These contrasting views coexisted in Van Beverwyck’s work, and, as Van Gemert underlines, are just another example of how seventeenth-century culture did not even try to reconcile opposites, but saw them as a manifestation of a prismatic reality.1 Moreover, sexual appetite in itself did not lead to sin: the problem was just how and when to slake that appetite. Calvin considered physical intercourse between woman and man a honest and sa­ cred action as long as sexual desire was tempered with measure and remained within the bounds of marriage. This prevented the corrupt nature of humanity from indulg­ ing in sinful physical intercourse. All impura libido (unchaste desire) was condemned as adultery in the seventh commandment, according to Calvin’s interpretation? Chastity was meant to be a lifelong effort for every member of the Calvinist Church. The theologian Amesius4 defined three different kinds of chastity as applied to the different stages of a woman’s life : virginity, married state and widowhood. Absolute chastity is impossible after the Fall, but shame and temperance are the tools God of­ fers to those who strive for control over sexual desire. This kind of control was also required in honest courting and marriage : love had to be ethicized to prevent it from becoming passion. Mutual consent between the two parties was the fundament of marriage, but one should not undertake the marital bond without listening to the sensible advice of parents and authorities. Along with the prohibition against marry­ ing a close relative, other kinds of mismatches were frowned upon as well : a big gap in education, wealth, age, or different religions between bride and groom were to be avoided because they would undermine the marital relationship. Procreation was still considered a desirable outcome of marriage, but a new stress was placed on mutual love, help and respect between husband and wife, and on the observance of their complementary duties. The man should not treat the woman as a slave or as a child; explaining and persuading had to be the tools of his authority. He also had to recognize her guiding role in domestic life. In the woman lay the centre of the hearth and home. With tidiness, sobriety and chastity the wife had to manage and tend her home and family. If her education allowed, she also had to be her hus­ band’s interlocutor on cultural, religious, social and even political matters? The high expectations thus projected on the couple can explain the success that marriage and

‘ Johan van Beverwyck, Wcrcken dergenees-konste: bestacnde in den Schat der gesontheyl, Schal derongesontheyt, Heel-konste, Amsterdam, Schipper, 1671-1672, 2 vols. 1 L. van Gemert, The power of weaker vessels: Simon Schama and Johan van Beverwyck on women, in Women of the Golden Age. An International debate on women in seventeenth century Holland, England and Italy, ed. by E. Kloek, N. Teeuwen, M. Huisman, Hi!versum, Verloren, 1994, pp. 39-50: p. 49 and f. ' See W. Geesink, Gereformeerde ethiek, Kampen, Kok, 1931, 2 vols., vol. 11, p. 1. 4 Alias William Ames, English theologian who spent most of his life in the Netherlands, quoted in W. Geesink. Gereformeerde ethiek, cit., p. 3. ’ See W. Geesink, Gere/ôrmeerde ethiek, cit., p. 13.

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sexual behaviour handbooks met with on the market. This was paralleled by a similar focus in figurative art. Salomon underlines the connection between sexual issues and Reformation in relation to the Dutch genre painting of the time: «The energetic in­ terest in sexual imagery in this period must surely be ‘linked’ to changes in the official Christian views on sexual relationships as a result of the Protestant Reformation».' If marriage was no longer a sacrament it had to find a legislative context in so­ ciety. In the Dutch Republic, where Calvinist faith exerted its influence on general matters of civic morality, in 1580 the states of Holland enforced a so-called politieke ordonnance (political ordinance) which established that members of the Reformed Church could tie the bond of marriage in front of the preacher, after informing the local magistrate, whereas all citizens who did not follow the Calvinist doctrine had to do this in the town hall. In the same period other provinces adopted similar rules. Marriage rules combined new elements with aspects inherited from Catholic canoni­ cal laws? the marriage promise, or engagement (sponsalia defuturo), was still con­ sidered an important step. It could be broken only for very special reasons and with mutual consent. Engagement was followed by the act known as ondertrouw, in which the future bride and groom officially declared their will to marry before the local magistrate ; the marriage could then be announced, but before being completed the preacher (for the reformed) or the magistrate (for other confessions) had to confirm the closing of the contract. This clearly represents a new form of involvement of the secular authorities in marital matters. The old canonical laws left to the couple who engaged in the sponsalia deJuturo the opportunity of transforming their union into an actual marriage if the promise was followed by sexual intercourse: according to Roodenburg and Haks,’ this led to a widely shared, although not official, consent towards pre marital sex for the engaged couple. A more relaxed attitude towards pre marital sex can even be traced back to the heritage of a popular culture which was probably rooted in pre-Christian habits. A set of ancient rules for courting and engagement, which granted the suitor the right to visit the girl at home, at night, in a separate room, still survived especially in agrar­ ian communities until the eighteenth and in some cases (in places like Texel island) until the beginning of the twentieth century. There is some evidence that these cus­ toms also penetrated early modern urban communities, among which Amsterdam is included. The old-time habit of nacht vrijen (making love at night) was officially not meant to include complete sexual intercourse, but just talking, or maybe kissing: the presence of the girl’s family under the same roof served as barrier between the two lovers, who stayed together until dawn. Be it as it may, there was a certain frequency of shotgun weddings. The Council of Trent tried to put and end to this kind of praxis for the Catholics in 1563. The Protestant authorities also strongly condemned sexual intercourse before

1 N. Salomon, Early Netherlandish Bordeeltjes and the Construction of Social ‘Realities', in Public and Pri­ vate in Dutch Culture of the Golden Age, ed. by A. K. Wheelock and A. Sees. Cranbury-London-Mississau ­ ga, Associated University Presses, 2000, pp. 141-163: p.146. * See H. Roodenburg. Ondercensuur: de kerkelijke tucht in degereformeerdegemeente van Amsterdam 157«■ 1700, Hilversum, Verloren, 1990, p. 238 and f. ' See H. Roodenburg, Onder censuur, cit., p. 239 and ff.. and D. H aks, Huwelijk en geçin in Holland in de tydeen tSdeecuw, Utrecht, hes Uitgevers, 1985, p. 71 and f.

the contract was concluded, but the habit of considering all things settled after the marriage promise survived among middle and lower classes. And for many it was unclear what could and could not be done in the engagement period. Women who were accused before the Calvinist Consistory of having had intercourse with men outside marriage often advocated a previous marriage promise as partial excuse for their offence. The Consistory could consider this element as consistent, and push the involved man to marry the dishonoured woman, without further punishment. In some cases emblem-books seem to assume a role of moral guidance in this confu­ sion, contributing to the campaign against pre marital sexuality made by Calvinist preachers, who in fact suggested that engagement should not last too long in order to avoid the risk of indulging in sinful intercourse. All illicit sex, if the man and the woman involved could not prove to have acted in presence of a marriage promise, was susceptible to being condemned as hoererij, prostitution. The Calvinist church in the Northern Provinces was particularly active in stigmatizing the love-for money exchange. This could at times happen inside the bond of marriage, when a girl chose to marry an old, rich man; but the main concern of religious and civic authorities was the vast and uncontrolled love-market in the streets and taverns of seventeenth century Amsterdam. Schama points out that there was a dualistic image of the woman linked to the two worlds in which she dwelled: the tidy, honest, reassuring homely environment where the wife reigns, on the one hand, and the dirty and risky, but so appealing outside world of prostitutes, on the other. This duality is evident in the arguments of preachers as well as in contem­ porary genre painting (in which we find the so-called bordeeltjes, brothel scenes, as counterparts of the scenes of happy familial life). Emblems, some of which will be discussed in the following pages, confirm an ambiguous feeling towards women as potential objects of respect, as well as potential vessels of sin and ruin ' Images of female virtue acquire thus particular relevance thanks to the presence of negative examples of female vice, ranging from minor to major offences against decency. The unruly girl who wants to marry against her parents' will, or the married or unmarried woman who is too often seen in the streets, are admonished by means of holding in front of them the deformed mirror of the harlot who bargains her body for money. The man is also offered a negative example in the same context: he is the foolish and/or old man who falls prey of the procuress and her protégée. In general the Dutch Republic represents no exception in early modem Europe where the notions of honour and shame were so important. Roodenburg labels it as a shame culture’ in which the preoccupation with what the people shall think about you is stronger than the preoccupation with your own sense of guilt? A good or a bad reputation made all the difference at a social level. Shame helps to protect one’s honour; in the case of a young, unmarried woman this means refraining from

1 Schama describes in his typical style this ambiguity as follows: «This uncompartmentalised world, fraught with confusion, disguise, ambiguities and stratagems was, by definition, riddled with anxiety (even if Calvin had not added his own brand). In keeping with its undifferentiated components, women were rarely seen as exclusively given to either vice or virtue; to the purified world of the conjugal home, or the soiling world of vanity and lust. It was precisely the daunting suspicion that the two identities - paragon and hussy - might cohabit within the same frame that, literally, bedevilled Dutch men». See S. Schama. Wives and Wantons. cit., p. tz ' See H. Roodenburg, Onder censuur, cit.. p. 244.

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shameful behaviour which can lead to the loss of virginity and reputation. This con­ sideration takes us closer to the subject on which our emblems focus: virginity and chastity as elements which (should) characterize women. Before turning to the discussion of the pertinent engravings and texts, a last point needs to be addressed. Virginity and chastity were not only important as the quali­ ties of the ideal bride in the Calvinist vision of marriage, they were also involved in the creation of a suitable symbol for Dutch national and local civic virtue. Protestant iconoclasm had effaced from Dutch figurative and religious culture the images of the Holy Mother and other sanctified virgins. But new images of womanly integrity and power crowd paintings, engravings and books. Women stood for home and family by virtue of their role in preserving the integrity of this cell, which was the fundament of society. As this idea spread throughout Dutch society, there are many cases where celebrated towns and provinces, and the state adopted the personification of a maagd (a maiden), at once fecund and honest; this association is also evoked in the many paintings from the time in which a young woman and a geographical map appear. Moreover, the woman-homeland connection comes into play also when women do not represent virtue, but its opposite. As Helgerson states:

(...) these women are not passive symbols. As actors and agents in the narrative vignettes that are Dutch genre paintings, they exercise an extraordinary power to maintain or subvert the home they represent. On their virtue or vice depends the fate of the nation.1 In consequence, women’s sexual behaviour involved far more than the single fam­ ily unit; both religious and civic moralists projected onto the figure of the young woman all future expectations of prosperity and salvation. 2. Emblems on virginity

and chastity

2.1. Introductory remark Emblem books became very fashionable in the seventeenth-century Netherlands. In the wide range of subjects utilised in constructing renaissance emblems, a special­ ized sector - love emblems - seems to have met the particular requirements of the Dutch reading public. The seminal emblematic text, Alciato’s Emblematum Liber, does contain a section on love (Amor); other early authors such as Paolo Giovio underline the role images such as emblems and imprese can play in the ‘social amatory game’, but among all countries in which emblematic writing flourished, love emblem-books became a very successful sub-genre only in the Dutch Republic. Gelderblom sum­ marises the possible explanations of this success, already formulated in previous em­ blematic studies, in three points: Firstly, Dutch society, which had recently become protestant, needed new and modem in­ structions for the communication between the sexes, especially regarding marriage. Calvin­ ism had introduced a rather rational concept of matrimony, and traditional Roman-Catholic 1 See A. J. Gelderblom, De maagd en de mannen. Psychohritieh van de stadsuitbeelding in de çevenriende en achttiende eeuw, in Idem, Mannen en maagden in Hollands tuin. Interpretatieve studies van Nederlandse letterkunde 1575-1781, Amsterdam, doctoral thesis Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht, 1991, p. 78-93 and R. Helgerson, Soldiers and Enigmatic Girls: the Politics of Dutch Domestic Realism, 1650-1672. «Representations*, lviii, 1997, PP- 49-87, p. 64.

didactics in this field were no longer adequate. Secondly, Dutch poets and engravers wanted to demonstrate that they too belonged to the refined European culture that celebrated love as the cause of elegance. [...] Thirdly, the jolly amusement of love emblems was a welcome form of recreation that could relieve the generally felt political and military strain of the war against Spain.’

He then adds a fourth aspect which seems at least as important as the other three :

1 tend to see them [emblems] as serving the organisation of desire. Love, lust, desire, disap­ pointment are not just individual experiences. On the contrary, they fit into a time-honoured format of amorous discourse and can thus be managed. Thus the individual is supported in organizing his/her emotions along socially accepted lines.1 The production of love emblem-books all through the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries shows an internal development. Initially, certain learned authors indulged in the production of booklets which may appear as a form of divertissement, without really engaging readers at the level of prescriptive attitudes. It is the case of Heinsius’ Quaeris quid sit amor, which will be also discussed later. In the academic circles of Leiden, the interest in love poetry from antiquity inspired the production of series of prints accompanied by epigrams from classical sources on the same subject. Later, in a more moralistic and religious environment, this blooming sub-genre is brought in line with the ethos of the time : love emblem-books become manuals of moral behaviour as applied to the different aspects involved in sentimental life? Yearning for love, courting, looking for the right match, building a balanced and steady man-wife relationship, with the aim of always preserving one’s virtue are the focal points of these later moralizing collections. Manning argues that the audience to which this kind of books are offered is, «at least at first, conceived as predomi­ nantly female».4Jacob Cats’ emblem-books are the best example of this, and some of them will be the object of a detailed analysis in the present study. On the other hand, the repertory of images and topoi offered by the first specimens were easily adapted to the new spiritual climate: prints and texts dealing with profane love were recycled for sacred love. This development is visible in the emblematic pro­ duction in both the Calvinist Northern provinces and the Catholic Southern prov­ inces. Cupid becomes the agent of amor divinus, and his feminine counterpart is the soul. Emblem-books of sacred love form an important group in Dutch emblematic production, sometimes exploiting existing picturae or referring to previous models, sometimes being original creations. An example of this shift from Amorum emblemata to Arnoris divinis emblemata is illustrated in Otto Vaenius’ production. There is yet another group of Dutch emblem-books which illustrates another ‘ A. J. Gelderblom, Investing in your relationship, in Learned Love. Proceedings of the Emblem Project Utrecht Conference on Dutch Love Emblems and the Internet (November 2006), ed. by E. Stronks and P. Boot, The Hague, dans Symposium Publications 1, 2007, pp. 131-142, p 131 1 A. J. Gelderblom, Investing in your relationship, cit., p. 135. ’ See this development as described in A. C. G. de Vries, De Nederlandsche emblemata. Geschiedcnis en bibliographie tot de iS4' eeuw, Amsterdam, Ten Brink and De Vries, 1899, p. 101, and f. De Vries considers this development as a negative one, for it destroys the initial purely aesthetical and learned stretch­ ing of the first specimens. In the Introduction to the edition of Pieter Cornelisz. Hooft, Emblemata Amatoria, ed. by K. Porteman, Leiden, Nijhoff, 1983, p. 6 and ff., Porteman describes this process with a balanced historical approach. 4 J. Manning, The Emblem, cit., p. 166.

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characteristic feature: the so-called realistic emblems. These emblems in particular have attracted the attention of modern scholars. This group is defined by the vivid and detailed depiction of objects and scenes from everyday life. Roemer Visscher’s Sinnepoppen, a fine specimen of the category, is a collection which De Vries labels as «emblems with a general content»,' that is to say not focused on love or any specific aspect of human life. Scenes from real life also abound in Cats’ productions, in which premarital and marital matters are often particularly highlighted. Whether included in a collection focused on love or not, the emblems dealing with sexual behaviour show a marked iconographie variety. A large group consists of emblems in which Cupid, alone or together with other winged putti, is the main character, and is involved in his specific as well as in all sorts of human activities. Less frequent but nonetheless very interesting are other classical and mythological subjects, which usually focus on some renowned female characters the public might be acquainted with through collections of tales in mulieribus Claris style. Depictions of common women and men, in a domestic or urban setting or a natural landscape, form the main subject of another large group. It is at this point that we can detect a high degree of consonance between emblems and genre painting from the same period. There are also emblems where the human figure is totally absent. In this last group the depiction of objects, most often plants and animals represents features and behaviours that signified some moral truth which was applicable in the human sphere. These are strongly indebted to the tradition of heraldry, possibly to that of medieval bestiaries, and surely to that of the ancient animal tales such as Aesop’s fables.2 Single emblems can obviously also combine elements from two or more of these iconographie categories. A high degree of diversification is also shown in the complementary textual com­ ponent of the emblems. A single verse or sentence as scriptura, and a single short poem as subscriptio, often both in Latin and other European languages, are usually a common feature of the early collections. In later periods there was a hypertrophic growth of the subscriptio, which came to include a prose explanation and a myriad of excerpts from authorative classical, biblical or contemporary sources. In some other cases the pictura serves as an illustration appended to a text which cannot be labelled as emblematic in its structure : this applies to some very interesting specimens such as Cats’ books of female etiquette (as Maechden-plicht), which will be discussed below. 2. 2. Emblems encouraging pairing

The first set of emblems analysed focuses on unassailable virginity. By advocating the joys and the positive outcomes of a (legitimate) union between the sexes, these em­ blems were meant to imbue young women with a positive disposition towards possi­ ble suitors, and can therefore be labelled as ‘emblems encouraging pairing’. In the se­ lected emblem books the theme shows different nuances, which can be explained also

' A. C. G. de Vries, De Nederlandsche emblemata, cit., pp. 17-18. 2 A subgenre in the emblematic family, which undergoes a revival in the same period. For a study devoted to this subject see P. J. Smith, The viper and the file: Metamorphoses of an Emblematic Fable (from Corroda to Barlow), in Anglo-Dutch Relations in the Field of the Emblem, ed. by B. Westerweel, Leiden, Brill, •997. pp- 6, 86.

in the light of the development of the genre from being less to being more morally engaged. Emblem 19 from the collection Quaeris quid sit amor is a good starting point. The collection, published in 1601 by Daniel Heinsius, classicist and poet of Flemish origin, a key-figure in the lively humanistic circle of Lei­ den academics, is the first specimen of the subgenre of love emblem­ books in the Low Countries.’ The pictura of emblem 19 (F4V), in the form of a medallion, shows a Cu­ pid grafting a branch, bearing fruit, on a tree (Fig. 2). On the frame of the medallion we read the motto Fig. 2. Emblem 19 in Heinsius' Quaeris quid sit «Les deux sont un» (The two are amor. one). Love brings the tree to bear fruit, thanks to the joining of an­ other plant to it. The Dutch lines accompanying the pictura on the left-hand page (Gir) make this statement, and its relevance for young women, even more explicit. It has to be noted that here the author plays with the semantic ambiguity of the term maecht (maagd in modern Dutch), also shared by its English correspondent maiden, meaning both ‘virgin’ and ‘young girl’. The plural ‘maidens’ has to be interpreted in the poem as ‘children: The tree that rose very high and wide with its top Seems not to be far from the dome of Heaven Covered with beautiful fruits, that one thinks Are of itself alone, whereas they were borrowed. Maidenhood is like this: who wants to have maidens Cannot be a virgin anymore, but has to lose virginity And to be incorporated by Venus in the man Who can make many maidens out of a single maiden.1 1 The booklet, containing twenty-four emblems, is probably the result of the collaboration of a group of Leiden humanists. The contributors are mostly unidentified except the curator of the collection, who signs the dedication to the Young Dames of Holland (Aen deJonckvrouwen) with the name Theocritus à Ganda, a riddle that his learned friends would easily solve. Quaeris as a collection features a fixed scheme for each emblem : the pictura framed with the motto and a subscriptio (a Latin couplet) on the right page, the same motto and a poem in Dutch on the left. Jacques de Gheyn, artist of Flemish origin who later served the statholder family in The Hague, was the engraver of the picturae. wherein a Cupid is often present. The consulted edition, digitalised on the site of the Emblem Project Utrecht (http:/ /emblems. let.uu.nl., referred to as epu site from now onward), is one of the few first editions: Daniël Heinsius, Quaeris quid sit amor, n.p.n.d. (Amsterdam, H. de Buck for J. Matthijsz, 1601). ' «Den boom die met zijn top zeer hoogh en wijt gheresen/Niet verre vant ghebou des Hemels schijnt te wesen/Met vruchten schoon becleet/ de Vruchten diemen meent/Van hem alleen te zijn/ en heeft hy maer ontleent./De maechdom is alzoo/ die maechden wilt beerven/En mach gheen maecht meer zijn/ maer haeren maechdom derven./En worden inghelijft door venvs inden man/Die van een

Heinsius’ emblem does not con­ tain any reference to the honest behaviour of women: it is just a general remark in favour of a less rigid countenance on their part. The same argument, but this time pointing to a development in the attitude of the courted woman, is contained in an emblem from Otto Vaenius’ Atnorutn Emblemata:' nr. 90 (p. 179), under the motto «Ne­ gate iussi pernegare non iussi» (I ordered to refuse, but not to keep Fig. z. Emblem 90 in Vaenius' Amorum Emblemata. refusing).2 One Cupid walks away with a gesture of denial and a second Cupid follows, carrying a basket containing two hands holding (Fig. 3). The polyglot subscripts of this emblem admonishes the girl who is too eager in refusing love: although her attitude is justified in the beginning, she should abandon it soon, for she might repent when it is too late. I quote here the English subscriptio (p. 178): the Latin, Italian, Dutch and French verses, with minor divergences, run along the same lines.

Profited seruice past the date, Is wished when it is to late. Loues о fifed seruice may for fassion bee refused, If yeilding at the first vnseemly shall bee thoght, But oft rejecting it, may make it to bee soght, And wisht agayn to late, with follie vnexcused. An example from mythology also pushing the reluctant maiden towards love is given in emblem 25 (p. 26b) of the anonymous collection Thronus Cupidinis of 1618.1 The

maecht allecn Veel macchden maecken кап». A Cupid involved in agricultural activity, a connection with the fertility love grants to humanity, is also present in the Ambacht win Cupido (the Job of Cupid), a love emblem-book Heinsius published in 1616 in his volume Nederduytsche paemata (Netherlandish po­ ems): the pictura shows a Cupid throwing seed on a field. The crop, in the form of many babies' heads, is already visible on the ground. Also readable on the epu site. ' Otto Vaenius. humanist and painter, and master of Rubens, was born in Leiden but moved to the Southern Netherlands in his youth. Emblem books were produced by him in the last decades of his activity. Heinsius' influence on his emblematic work is strong, although Vaenius was the first to make Cupids the only actors of his emblems, and in opposition to Heinsius, he focused his profane love em­ blematic on the issue of marriage. Amorum Emblemata, a polyglot collection, came out in different com­ binations: Latin Dutch French, Latin Italian French, Latin English Italian. Vaenius himself produced most of the engravings and probably also the Dutch poems. The author of the English epigrams was the Anglo-Dutch Catholic polemicist and scholar Richard Verstegen. Consulted edition in the epu site: Otto Vaenius, Amorum emblemata, figuris irneis incisrt studio Otliouis VamI BatauoLugdunensis, Antwerp.

2 Last verse of an epigram by Martial. .See Martial, Epigrams, book 4, 81. ' In 1617 the engraver and printer Crispijn van de Passe sr. published a Tronus Cupidinis (without h') largely indebted to Vaenius’ Amorum emblemata ; of the author of the texts in this edition only the initials

motto is: «Ipse sibi medicina Cupido» (Cupid is his very own medicine). In the pic­ ture a girl is trying to flee from Neptune’s embrace. Further along the shore a satyr is running away, and above the heads of the god and the girl an armed Cupid is flying. The girl, Amymone (her name appears in the subscriptio), was one of the Danaids. The sources report her being one of the two sisters, out of fifty, who refused to kill their husbands at their father’s command. Escaped from Egypt with her father and other sisters, Amymone settled in Argos. Sent in the woods in search of water, the girl woke up a sleeping satyr who tried to rape her. Neptune’s intervention saved her from the lustful embrace of the satyr. The sea-god then convinced her to accept him as a lover and she bore him a son. In her honour the god created a spring to quench the thirst of the inhabitants of Argos.’ The Latin lines address Amymone directly, and her attitude is taken as an example of chastity («Sic vitat Venerem casta Pudicities», «In that way prude Chastity evades Venus»). However, she is destined to fall in love soon. Moreover, although this is not explicitly stated, she also represents respect for marriage: her refusal to take part in the Danaids' slaughter of men is present in the background. The Dutch lines (p. аба), which are attributed to G. A. Bredero, differ from the Latin text and form a short dialogue between the maid and the god:

Why do you flee, little Nymph, seeing that you are not followed By a vagrant or relative,' but by the God of the sea? My chastity flees, Neptune, offended by your desire, Before being also cheated by the sweet evil? Images and verse convey, in these emblems, the idea that the pursuit of chastity should not be taken to its extremes, consequently hindering the union between man and woman. Pairing is seen as a natural and fruitful choice (the grafting emblem from Quaeris); a woman should not waste the chance of being loved (the Cupids’ emblem from Emblemata Amatoria); the bittersweet power of love will in the end pre­ vail (Amymone’s emblem from Thronus). That marriage is the issue of all this, can be read in the symbol of the united hands in the basket and in the past of Amymone. To find a really explicit and detailed apology of marriage we have to turn to the work of Jacob Cats. In his Maechden-plicht (The Task of Maidens, 1618)/ which com-

P.T.L. are known. The printer Jansz. Blaeu took advantage of this publication without privilege to com­ pete with the rival, and split the content in two. producing a new edition of Vaenius amorous emblems and a Thronus Cupidinis in 1618: he was helped by a number of scholars and writers of the time among which the playwright G.A. Bredero who is considered the author of the Dutch subscriptions in the Thro­ nus; new etchings were made on purpose by Crispijn van de Passe jr. and Michel Le Bion. Consulted edition in the epu site: Anonymous, Thronus cupidinis, Amsterdam, Willem Jansz Blaeu, 1620. ' The mythological subject of the pictura was used in painting, and possible sources for the story are Philostratus’ Imagines and Lucian's Dialogues. * The reference to a «relative» is probably connected to the strict rules about interfamilial marriage enforced by the politieke ordonnantie. > «Wat vlucht ghy Nymphelijn, daarghy u ziet vervolghen/Van Lantloopernoch bloedt, maer vande God der zee’/Mijn kuysheyt vlucht, Neptun, voor u wellust verbolgen,/Eer zy door t zoete quaat oock vvert bedroghen mee». 4 The Maechden-plicht came out in 1618. It represents, together with the emblem book Silenus Alcibiadis. Cats’ debut on the literary scene. Although the Maechden-plicht cannot be identified as a pure emblem-book, for the weigh and the form of the text in it, the image-text reciprocity which character ­ izes the emblem as a genre is somehow respected: the picturae condense one of the aspects discussed

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bines a number of emblems with a non-emblematic text, the subject of marriage is debated by two young women. Phyllis and Anna defend two different ways of approaching marriage in the form of a dialogue. Phyllis feels the urge to rush into courting and marriage; Anna (an homage to Anna Roemers Visscher, the dedicatee of the book) warns her friend against the risks that might arise: the anticipation of physical intercourse upon marriage resulting in shame for the woman and disgust on the part of the man; a mismatch which will cast a shadow on the chance for a happy life ; dissent with the parents, who should represent the rational mind guiding the girl through the perils of the outside world. Although Anna is the wisest and most reasonable of the two, and the reader is forced to agree with her opinion, Phyllis’ arguments are strong and varied and they give us an insight into the girl’s frame of mind and into the problematic relation­ ship between parents and daughters. Some of the emblems related to Phyllis’ dis­ course show resemblances with previously treated emblems in either subject-matter or meaning. In emblem i (p. 3) two palm-trees unite their tops, and the female plant, adorned with a flower chain, bears fruit; two emblems, 10 and 11, both contribute to the underlining idea that in love you have to seize the opportunity when it comes, thus avoiding the risk of becoming an old maid. The first (p. 21) depicts a sea-gull who is about to plunge for fish in the sea, the second (p. 23) shows an elegant young man treading upon a faded rose, while a rose-bush nearby carries still beautiful, intact flowers. The most original contribution to the pro-marriage argument is to be found in the emblems connected to the inner feelings and growing yearning for a husband in Phyllis’ heart. Emblem 3 (p. 8) bears the motto «Familia innupti manca est» (The family of the unmarried is lacking);’ the pictura makes us think of an engraved little postcard from seventeenth-century Holland. It shows a ditch in a garden, where a flock of ducks welcomes the arrival of an exemplar coming down to join them. On the verge of the ditch stand a young dame and a peasant: the old man is showing something to her (Fig. 4). In the text Phyllis tells Anna how the farmer explained the animals’ behaviour. The she-ducks, that where quietly swimming in the ditch, sud­ denly got all excited and happy at the arrival of the male. This is confirmed by Phyllis' own experience at home: when her father is away, her mother, herself and the whole house are deprived of enthusiasm and happiness. Using a double metaphor for the husband and the wife she concludes: «So I am convinced that on the trousers» (hus­ band), «depends all the happiness of the cloth» (wife).1 The father, who stands here as a model for the future husband, is also criticized in the dialogue, the dialogue focuses the attention of the reader on the pieturae. It is obviously a work meant to be easy to understand, and misses the enigmatic quality that often characterizes emblem­ books. According to Henkel and Schône the engravings were probably made by Jan Gerritsz Swelinck (born around 1601) after drawings of Adriaen van de Venne (1589-1662). see Arthur Henkel. Albrecht Schône, Emblemata. Handbuch derSinnbildkunst, Stuttgart,). В. Metzler. 1967. pp. xl-xli. I consulted the digitalised edition made available by the University of Bergamo (Italy) site (www.unibg.it/cav/emblematica, referred to as Biblioteca Emblematica from now onward): Jacob Cats, Maeehden-plieht ofte ampt da ionckvrovwen, in eabaer liefde, aen-ghewesen door sinne-beelden = Officium puellarum, in castis Amoribus, Emblemate expression, Middelburgh, Hans vander Hellen, 1618.

’ A quote from the work of the Greek neoplatonist philosopher Hierocles. * -Ous houd'ick vast dat aen den broeck/Hangt al de vreuchde vanden doeck».

in the book for his unwillingness to help the daughter accomplish her dream: the girl who is kept locked in is not going to find a suitor, or she is going to act foolishly in her attempt to escape parental control. Of the various emblems connected with the topic in the Maechden-plicht, nr. 35 (p. 70) is one of the most in­ teresting. The motto reads «Difficilis servatu, tumida virginitas» (It is difficult to maintain tumid virgin­ ity); in the pictura a maid is sitting by the fireplace absorbed in cutting chestnuts’ shells in order to roast them. Some chestnuts, already in the fire, are exploding, wasting Fig. 4. Emblem 3 in Cats’ Maechden-plicht. their precious inner flesh (Fig. 5). The text points to a similitude embodied not in the maid, but in the fruit: if the girl is allowed some liberty (the cut in the chestnut shell), she will be able to wait patiently until she is spoken for by a suitor, otherwise she will burst. There are a number of sexual signifiers detectable in the scene: the pile of chestnuts lies in the maiden’s lap; she is sitting close to the fire with her legs spread; the cut in the round shell evokes female genitals. It is surprising to find this kind of quasi explicit imagery in the work of Cats, who is considered the champion of sober Calvinist morality. It is also the only case in which Anna admits that Phyllis is right, although she tempers the argu­ ment with her sense of measure:

The captivity of women I consider an evil And I know that locking up is useless Because if a woman is honest and good locking her up is exaggeration; And if she is maybe a loose girl what is being locked up will be lost soon. We live in a country (thanks God) Where women’s captivity does not exist So, let us refrain from being too free In order to maintain this privilege.'

2. 3. Emblems admonishing against unchaste behaviour Marriage requires a limitation of one’s freedom but the period of time when sexual liberties present the greatest risks occurs in the pre marital phase. The abundance of

zijn niei al le vry/Dat ons dit voor-recht blijve by». Jacob Cats, Maechden-plicht. cit., p. 72.

emblems depicting prescriptions for abstinence in anticipation of marriage is significant. Drawing on different points of view, a number of issues are discussed in this con­ text: the maiden, as well as her fa­ ther and her suitor are all involved in the protection of her virginity; youth needs guidance in the pre­ marital period; in general, models are needed to replace the surviving loose courting habits. In an em­ blem from Heinsius' Ambacht van Cupido (Cupid’s Profession), ’ nr. 19, the attention is focused on the risk of damaging the girl's reputation. Here a shy Cupid covers his crotch with both hands, under the motto Fig. 5. Emblem 35 in Cats' Maechdenplicht. «Caelari vuk sua furta Venus» (Venus wants to hide her thefts). Cupid’s gesture is explained in the Dutch lines of the subscriptio: You who are lucky, who Venus has chosen, Putting your beloved's heart in your hands. Be wise and be alert if you do not want to get lost, Constrain your joy, in order to protect her from damage/

Among the five senses, it is sight and touch which must be the most carefully control­ led: seeing too much, as well as touching too much, can have tragic consequences. The grave risks involved here are focused on in two emblems: nr. 28 (p. 30b) from the anonymous Thronus Cupidinis and nr. 28 (p. 164) from Cats’ Sinne- and Minne-beelden.1 Notwithstanding the iconographie divergence between the two (mythological vs. realistic imagery) they point in the same direction: disgrace falls upon the beholder

' Ambacht va» Cupido is also contained in Daniel Heinsius, Nederduytsche Poemata, Amsterdam. Wil Jem Janssen. 1616. but it was first published under a different title in 1613. and it was intended as a sequel to the Quaeris collection. The maker of the picturac is unknown. The consulted edition in the EPt! site is: Daniel Heinsius. AJ'beeldingen van Minnc-EniMcmata | Emblèmes Amatoria |