El fénix, el basilisco y el dragón: trascendencia de la animalia fabulosa y su simbolismo en los libros de emblemas

RESUMEN: Entre los materiales que los Libros de Emblemas utilizaron para llevar a cabo el propósito de instruir a sus receptores, están los discursos sobre animales fabulosos que los autores recopilaron y adaptaron de diversas fuentes literarias pertenecientes a la Antigüedad clásica y a la Edad Media. Por esta razón la emblemática también es el producto de la asimilación del conocimiento anterior que se tiene sobre animales reales o no. En este tenor, el objetivo de este artículo es comprobar, a través de ejemplos que provienen de la animalia fabulosa, que las representaciones emblemáticas de estos libros asimilan la información proveniente de los antiguos doctos para otorgarles renovada continuidad en cuanto a la función y simbología de las descripciones zoológicas. Para lo anterior, recurriré al análisis del ave fénix, el basilisco y el dragón en el contexto antes mencionado. ABSTRACT: Among the materials that the Emblem Books used to carry out the purpose of instructing their recipients are the discourses on fabulous animals that the authors compiled and adapted from various literary sources belonging to classical antiquity and the Middle Ages. For this reason, emblematic is also the product of the assimilation of previous knowledge about real or not real animals. In this sense, the aim of this article is to prove that the emblematic representations of these books assimilate the information coming from the ancient scholars to give them renewed continuity in terms of the function and symbolism of zoological descriptions. For the above, I will resort to the analysis of the phoenix, the basilisk and the dragon in the aforementioned context.

STOICISM AND ITS METAPHORS IN EARLY MODERN EMBLEM BOOKS

The moral and social doctrine of Stoicism, well known among Early Modern humanists, was popularized in the emblem books of the time. The tool of this popularization was the visual metaphor capable of conveying abstract ideas through concrete images. The main stoic notions (such as virtue, apatheia as a complete freedom from passions, constancy, patience, etc.) have found extremely diverse metaphorical equivalents in the visual language of emblems, where inanimate objects (e.g. rock, flint, anvil, tongs, cube, scales) as well as living creatures (kingfisher, turtledove, bear) could equally function as metaphors. Emblematics, being a kind of ars inveniendi, acted as a mechanism for inventing new metaphors to express old meanings. However, some traditional metaphors dating back to antiquity (for example, Plato’s comparison of the human soul to a chariot pulled by two horses – “reason” and “emotion”) were also rethought in the spirit of the Stoic doctrine.

"Because No One Can Seize me from Behind": Sir Christopher Hatton's Double Portrait and Elizabethan Textual Paintings

Many researchers have emphasised the special use of inscriptions and texts in Tudor paintings. Especially in Elizabethan times, emblematic images emerge and contain texts which present riddles to their audience, address an implicit or explicit beholder, and also give information about their own function. The enigmatic double-sided portrait of Christopher Hatton serves as an outstanding example of the various relations that texts and images form in this era. Two elements of its composition will be discussed here: the inscription and the depiction of Father Time, both on the verso-side. One, a textual element, forms a unit with the other, a pictorial element. On their own and in combination, both built up a reference to emblem books and sources outside the picture and contextualise themselves in humanistic discourses about opportunity and time. Thus, their exclusive presentation forms a dialogue with the beholder and opens up a meta-level of artistic expression. The ancient pictorial tradition of the God Kairos is addressed in the combination, while it labels itself as a depiction of time. Overall, the object briefly examined in this study is an outstanding example of Elizabethan artistic culture and remains a desideratum in art history.

Becoming an Antwerp Humanist: The Culture of Friendship and Patronage in the Circles of Benito Arias Montano (1568–1598)

When the Spanish humanist Benito Arias Montano (c.1525-1598) arrived in Antwerp in1568 to work as editor of the new Polyglot Bible printed by Christophe Plantin, he was introduced to some of the leading members of the Republic of Letters of his time (such as Abraham Ortelius and Carolus Clusius), with whom he exchanged letters, books, portraits, and other tangible tokens of friendship until his dying day. From this hub of intellectual and typographical activity, Montano circulated devotional emblem books across a vast network of Catholic and Protestant scholars, politicians and ecclesiastics. These “instruments of friendship” established his reputation as a man of letters while serving the interests of both king Philip II and Plantin that ranged from cultural diplomacy to editorial and commercial strategy. This study highlights how, in addition to correspondence, the circulation of books, images and objects were essential tools of early modern scholarly practices and learned sociability.

Zbiory emblematyczne w kolekcji Gabinetu Starych Druków Biblioteki Uniwersyteckiej w Warszawie. Przegląd bibliograficzny i proweniencyjny

Collection of Emblems in the Early Printed Books Department of the University of Warsaw Library: An Overview of Bibliography and Provenance Traits This paper presents synthetic information on the exhibition of early printed books from the collection of the Early Printed Books Department of the University of Warsaw Library, organized for the participants of the Seminar on emblems on 23–24 May 2019, at the Artes Liberales Faculty. The goal of this paper is to discuss a selection of emblem books being part of the library collection, with special focus on their provenance. The books are divided into four main thematic groups: 1. Meditative emblems devoted to religion; 2. Emblem literature of formative function 3. Emblems for specific occasions; 4. Emblematic compendia. It is pointed out that a large number of the emblem books under discussion originate from libraries of religious orders.

Wybrane passusy z czternastowiecznego traktatu Summa de exemplis et rerum similitudinibus Giovanniego z San Gimignano. Możliwe źrodło inspiracji dla ośmiu emblematow z cyklu Symbolica vitae Christi meditatio (Braniewo: Jerzy Schonfels, 1612) Tomasza Tretera

Chosen Passages from the 14th-Century Treatise Summa de exemplis et rerum similitudinibus by Giovanni da San Gimignano: A Possible Source of Inspiration for Eight Emblems from the Cycle Symbolica vitae Christi meditatio (Braniewo: Jerzy Schönfels, 1612) by Tomasz Treter In 1612, the Jerzy Schonfels’ printing house in Braniewo published Tomasz Treter’s posthumous work titled Symbolica vitae Christi meditatio. This cycle of ascetic and mystical reflections was considered by Janusz Pelc to be one of the most interesting emblem books written in the Polish Commonwealth. Also Tadeusz Chrzanowski, an art historian, referred to Treter’s work as quite a unique work of Polish emblem art. The same researcher quoted the originality of some of the concepts and ingenuity of many icons (lacking direct correlates among contemporary emblem collections). In 2018, Alicja Bielak wrote an article in which she identified the three 16th-century emblem works (i.e. Hadrianus Junius’ Emblemata, Claude Paradin’s Devises heroiques and Aneau Barthelemy’s Picta poesis) as graphic sources of Treter’s cycle. The main goal of this paper is to identify another, non-emblematic source of inspiration for the Polish author, namely the 14th-century encyclopaedia Summa de exemplis et rerum similitudinibus by the Italian Dominican Giovanni da San Gimignano. It is argued here that Treter might have come into contact with Giovanni’s treatise during his first stay in Rome (1569–1584) and transposed it into the language of emblems. The first section of the paper shortly discusses the life and work of the Italian Dominican, with the particular emphasis on his encyclopaedia. The core of the article consists of the comparison of Treter’s eight emblems with selected passages from Summa de exemplis and setting these emblems against the background of the European tradition. The following emblems are discussed in detail: Fides, Conversatio sancta, Spiritualis profectus, Humilitas, Poenitentia, Correctio fraterna, Fortitudo and Mansuetudo. The study concludes with the claim that even though Treter uses symbols rooted in contemporary emblem art, he interprets them in a different way than other creators did. On the other hand, one can observe a striking accordance between Treter’s interpretations and the ones by Giovanni da San Gimignano. Unlike other 16th and 17th century emblematists, the Polish priest provides a religious rather than a moral interpretation.

‘Global Emblems’ and ‘Transmission and Intermediality: the impact of the emblematic culture on the early Americas’

This white paper briefly outlines two co-dependent research initiatives: ‘Global Emblems’ and ‘Transmission and Intermediality: the impact of the emblematic culture in Ibero-America’. Both projects are in their initial stage of development, at Brown University. ▪ ‘Global Emblems’ is set to map, document and study the presence of emblems in material culture, around the world, and cross-link these occurrences with pre-existing digital collections of emblem books. The database will be fed by an international network of specialists, which is already active, with members in over ten countries and the support of the Society for Emblem Studies. The platform will allow searches by concepts (using Iconclass classification system) and a number of locations will allow users to ‘visit’ them through Virtual Reality (360 annotated photos). The database will be systematically studied through ‘thematic clusters’. Although at first glance the focus on emblems may seem narrow, emblems have a broad geographical and historical spread, which can be traced, and that provides the necessary data for the kind of analytical and interpretative study required in the second research initiative, which illustrates the importance of emblems within the wider frame of Latin American cultural history. ▪ ‘Transmission and Intermediality: the impact of the emblematic culture on the Early Americas’ will analyse the data from ‘Global Emblems’ in order to understand the role of emblems in the colonial process in the Americas. More specifically, this project will look at the ‘pictorial dispute’ in the New World, by examining the ‘pictorial turn’ from the ‘catecismos jeroglíficos’ to the displayed emblems in the 17th-century (many of them resulting from the remediation of European prints), and the ideological, political and sociological implications around the presence of these emblems in buildings and early-modern festivals.

Panegyric Emblem Books, Jesuits and the Habsburg Emperors: Some Examples Related to 17th-Century Croatia

This article presents several printed collections of panegyric emblems related to the Croatian cultural milieu as specific media intended to promote the Habsburg imperial house in the 17th century. Emblem books were not printed in Croatia, but many of them were used, especially by Jesuits, as is documented in an 18th-century book inventory of the Zagreb Jesuit College’s library (preserved in Budapest). Some of these emblem books are dedicated to the Habsburg emperors Ferdinand III and Leopold I. The only author of an emblem book from Croatia in the 17th century was Sebastian Glavinić (1632–1697), Bishop of Senj, who was educated at the Jesuit academies in Graz, Vienna, and Trnava. In Vienna, he published an epithalamic panegyric emblem book in honour of the wedding of Leopold I and Margaret of Spain in 1666, under the title Deplua charitum aurora augustissimi Phoebi Leopoldi augusto rore in Margaritam resoluta. By glorifying the imperial wedding in a medium that was accessible to the wider public, Glavinić could himself partake in the imperial glory, which also brought him certain benefits.

Emblems

The early modern tradition of the emblem book offers a fertile ground to uncover the renewal of legal ethics during the Renaissance. Andrea Alciato was first and foremost a lawyer, and juridical themes abound in his Emblematum libellus. Later emblematists forged visible figures of norm and law, which stage and enact the rites and harmony of a living legal visual tradition. Inserted into the body of law reference texts or used as ingenious mnemonic devices, emblems played a role in the ars memorativa deployed by legal educators. In the case of Johannes Buno, visual images were designed especially to help fix the order of titles in the Digest and their contents. Emblems and symbolic places would serve as topical frameworks, headings for the reference texts, and notable visual commonplaces to highlight important issues. The emblematic quality of memory images was valuable for the jurist, who could reconstruct an entire legal text, speech, or case. The importance of emblems in transmitting law and the imaginary representation of legality was key to building a professional ethos in the humanist respublica jurisconsultorum. Emblem books provided shared judicial values, norms of conduct, and signs of office. The early history of legal emblems requires being attentive to the profound multivalence of their form and structure: their prolixity of applications and the variegated ways in which images and texts illuminate each other and provide numerous examples of making, seeing, and saying judicial ethics.