The emblem was big business in early-modern Europe, used extensively not only in printed books and broadsheets, but also to decorate pottery, metalware, furniture, glass and windows and numerous other domestic, devotional and political objects. At its most basic level simply a combination of symbolic visual image and texts, an emblem is a hybrid composed of words and picture. However, as this book demonstrates, understanding the precise and often multiple meaning, intention and message emblems conveyed can prove a remarkably slippery process. In this book, Peter Daly draws upon many years’ research to reflect upon the recent upsurge in scholarly interest in, and rediscovery of, emblems following years of relative neglect. Beginning by considering some of the seldom asked, but important, questions that the study of emblems raises, including the importance of the emblem, the truth value of emblems, and the transmission of knowledge through emblems, the book then moves on to investigate more closely-focussed aspects such as the role of mnemonics, mottoes and visual rhetoric. The volume concludes with a review of some perhaps inadequately considered issues such as the role of Jesuits (who had a role in the publication of about a quarter of all known emblem books), and questions such as how these hybrid constructs were actually read and interpreted. Drawing upon a database containing records of 6,514 books of emblems and imprese, this study suggests new ways for scholars to approach important questions that have not yet been satisfactorily broached in the standard works on emblems.

The literature of the 16th and 17th centuries was informed by the symbolic thought embodied in the mixed art form of emblems. This study explores the relationship between the emblem and the literature of England and Germany during the period.

This study reexamines the invention of the emblem book and discusses the novel textual and pictorial means that applied to the task of transmitting knowledge. It offers a fresh analysis of Alciato’s Emblematum liber, focusing on his poetics of the emblem, and on how he actually construed emblems. It demonstrates that the “father of emblematics” had vernacular forebears, most importantly Johann von Schwarzenberg who composed two illustrated emblem books between 1510 and 1520. The study sheds light on the early development of the Latin emblem book 1531–1610, with special emphasis on the invention of the emblematic commentary, on natural history, and on advanced methods of conveying emblematic knowledge, from Junius to Vaenius.

The emblem is one of the most remarkable literary inventions of Renaissance humanism. The symbolic imagery presented in these Neo-Latin emblem books constituted an important influence on many areas in early modern literature and art. This volume provides the first comprehensive study of Sambucus’ influential Emblemata (first published by Christopher Plantin, Antwerp, 1564). It reconstructs the cultural-historical contexts in which it was produced, thus reconsidering the social and commercial functions of the humanist emblem. Accompanied by a detailed analysis of individual emblems, it takes into account the emblems’ classical intertextuality and the relationship between word and image. This study shows how the emblematic practice can differ from contemporary symbol and emblem theories, which have often coloured modern interpretations of the genre.

This publication is the first of its kind. It approaches Anglo-Dutch relations from the angle of the production of the highly popular emblem book and its influence on important cultural and political events, mainly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.