Conceived as a supplement to the authors’ magnum opus, Corpus Librorum Emblematum: The Jesuit Series (Part One. Montreal: McGill – Queen’s University Press, 1997; Parts Two to Five. Toronto: The University of Toronto Press, 2000–7), this important book is largely bibliographic in form and function. It derives from that great Jesuit compendium, Augustine and Aloys de Backer, S.J. and Carlos Sommervogel, S.J.’s Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus, issued in nine volumes between 1890 and 1932, and updated by Ernest Rivière, S.J., in 1960. Focusing exclusively on emblematic works, Daly and Dimler have anglicized De Backer and Sommervogel’s French terminology, clarified authorship and place of publication, differentiated amongst first editions, reprints, and revisions, indicated on the basis of first-hand perusal, wherever possible, whether the works in question contain illustrations, and finally, identified books that appear in dbs but are currently untraceable or inaccessible. The six introductory chapters—on the European production of emblems as a context for Jesuit emblem-making, on the Ratio studiorum as a defense of emblematic usage, on Jesuit image theory as it relates to the symbolic forms and functions of the emblem, on the order’s major emblematic publications, on its application of emblems in art, architecture, and pageantry, and on the chief functions of Jesuit emblems and emblem books—constitute well-informed summaries of the scholarly literature on these various topics. The thematic chapters lead to a series of seven superb appendices.
Compiled in late fifteenth-century Brabant, Metropolitan Museum Album 2003.476, known as the Groenendaal Passion, is a customised manuscript prayerbook organised around first-state impressions of the Grosse Passion, a series of twelve prints designed, engraved, and published ca. 1480 by the master engraver-goldsmith Israhel van Meckenem, who was resident in Bocholt (North Rhine-Westphalia) [Figs. 11.1–11.20]. All twelve show evidence of plate tone, and the set as a whole is an early printing, exceptionally fine, probably acquired for the express purpose of illustrating the meditative spiritual exercises on the Passion of Christ that the series currently anchors [Figs. 11.4–11.15]. The book takes the form of a rapiarium, a collection of religious texts in Latin and Middle Dutch gathered from various sources in order to facilitate pious devotion and prayerful edification.
Jan David, S.J.’s Duodecim specula (Antwerp: Jan Moretus, 1610), an innovative emblematic treatise in twelve chapters, focuses on various kinds and degrees of specular image generated by the human soul. Each chapter responds to an opening imago, designed and engraved by Theodoor Galle, that illustrates the operations of the mirror in question. Three of the imagines, v. The Mirror of Others’ Eyes, viii. The Mirror of Created Things, and x. The Mirror of Example, rather than displaying persons, actions, or things that fall under the purview of the respective mirror, instead depict the mirrored image that such a speculum is seen to reflect. Accordingly, as printed imagines that prove upon closer inspection to contain specular imagines or, better, that function as pictorial representations of particular kinds of image, these imagines imaginum (images of images) can be said to produce a trompe-l’oeil effect. They ask the reader-viewer to consider why s/he thinks s/he sees a present image when what is actually seen by the eye is a pictured image, a pictured picture, doubly mediated by the process of representation. My essay examines how and why this deceptive effect was marshaled by David as a figure of thought: by articulating the manner and meaning of these three specula in particular, he offers the reader-viewer a therapeutic antidote wherewith to combat the human propensity for idolatry and self-deception.
The introductory essay examines the principles of Jesuit emblematic usage, as codified by Antonio Possevino, S.J. (1533–1611) in his educational treatise Bibliotheca selecta de ratione studiorum of 1603 and developed by two of the Society’s key emblematists: Jan David, S.J. (1545–1613) in his Duodecim specula of 1610 and Herman Hugo, S.J. (1588–1629) in his Pia desideria of 1624. The essay concludes by summarizing the five articles contained in this issue of the Journal of Jesuit Studies and then, on that basis, offering a brief account of the state of the question in the study of Jesuit emblematics.
This volume of essays by the great emblem scholar and bibliographer Peter Daly centers on questions of emblematic construction and interpretation: simply put, “how emblems were actually read” (3) by their early modern audiences. Concomitantly, he explores the theoretical implications of the various plausible responses provided in the book’s ten chapters. Along the way, Daly astutely summarizes the state of the field on a number of important topics: the historiography of emblem studies in the twentieth century, extending from Mario Praz’s Studies in Seventeenth-Century Imagery (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1939; 2nd ed., London: Warburg Institute, 1964) and William Heckscher and Karl-August Wirth’s Emblem, Emblembuch (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1959) to Rosemary Freeman’s English Emblem Books (London: Chatto & Windus, 1948) and Albrecht Schöne’s introduction of Emblemata: Handbuch zur Sinnbildkunst des XVI. und XVII. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1967); the contested status of the emblem triplex, comprising an inscriptio (either titular or in the form of a motto), a pictura (usually pictorial, though sometimes exclusively verbal), and a subscriptio (often but not always epigrammatic), the tripartite format of which proves anything but prescriptive for the history of the emblem; the argumentative and hermeneutic relation amongst the emblem’s textual and pictorial parts, whose mutual interaction leaves open the issue of semantic priority; and, of special significance to readers of this journal, the pastoral and/or political functions of the various types of emblem book produced by Jesuit authors, both individual and corporate, between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.
Written by the poet-painter Karel van Mander, who finished it in June 1603, the Grondt der edel, vry schilderconst (Foundation of the Noble, Free Art of Painting) was the first systematic treatise on schilderconst (the art of painting / picturing) to be published in Dutch (Haarlem: Paschier van Wes[t]busch, 1604). This English-language edition of the Grondt, accompanied by an introductory monograph and a full critical apparatus, provides unprecedented access to Van Mander’s crucially important art treatise. The book sheds light on key terms and critical categories such as schilder, manier, uyt zijn selven doen, welstandt, leven and gheest, and wel schilderen, and both exemplifies and explicates the author’s distinctive views on the complementary forms and functions of history and landscape.
How and why did Catholic votaries in early seventeenth-century Antwerp allegorise the relation between the material circumstances and spiritual properties of the vita Christi? And how was this relation analogised to that between public and private zones of devotion? These questions prove crucial to our understanding of manuscript MPM R 35 Vita S. Joseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi patriarcharum maximi iconibus delineata ac versiculis ornata (Life of St. Joseph, Husband of the Most Blessed Virgin, Greatest of the Patriarchs, Portrayed in Images and Ornamented with Verses), a small octavo volume housed in the printroom of the Plantin Moretus Museum [Figs. 15.1–15.24]. The book consists of forty-six engraved images comprising two complete print series: the Vita S. Joseph [Figs. 15.1–15.5, 15.19–15.24], published and engraved by Theodoor Galle, perhaps with the assistance of his brother Cornelis and/or his son Jan, and the Cor Iesu amanti sacrum (Heart of Jesus Sacred to the Loving Votary or, alternatively, Heart Sacred to the Loving Votary of Jesus), designed, engraved, and published by Antoon II Wierix before 1604 [Figs. 15.6–15.18].