** Introduction ** Overview ** Forerunners ** Spread of Emblem Books ** Parallel and Evolving Forms ** Emblematic Influences: Art and Architecture ** Emblematic Influences: Literature and Coins** List of Emblem and Related Books in Special Collections ** Bibliography of Secondary Literature **

Emblematic Influences: Architecture and Art

Emblems were a popular literary form, but they also influenced and inspired other art forms in the Renaissance, including architecture, art, literature, and drama. Despite the fact that most countries stopped producing emblem books in the 18th century, their influence can be seen visually and verbally throughout the past centuries. Emblems have been useful in comparing structural and contextual similarities. For example, a painting on the wall of a castle may garner additional meaning when compared to a similar emblem and its text. Additionally, modern emblem theory describes viewing the world in the same way emblem authors did. This theory looks for hidden mysteries and moralizing truths—thus giving us an emblematic way of interpreting the world, of reading it with our mind’s eye.

As Lubomír Konecný points out, Prague-born architect J.B. Santini (1677-1723) was very aware of emblems and devices when creating his designs. The Church of Our Lady of the Visitation in Obyctov in the Czech Republic was built post-humously according to Santini’s 1722 design. The ground plan and shape of the church is a tortoise. This choice of shape can be explained by the fact that in emblem books, women were often pictured stepping, kneeling, or standing on a tortoise. These emblems signified that the wife should stay at home to look over her husband’s belongings like the turtle who never leaves her shell and remains silent since she has no tongue to speak. The church was built to consecrate the holiday of the Visitation of the Virgin, thus becoming associated with the concept of staying at home (Konecný in Böker, 194-197).

Even before emblems, the tortoise was associated with Venus, demonstrating once again that the emblem was not a unique idea but a compilation of inherent trends from various sources. A statue of Venus kneeling on a turtle was apparently well known from the beginning of the 16th century (Konecný in Böker, 193). Two examples of the many emblematists who use the tortoise image are Guillaume La Perrière (left) and Hadriani Junius (right).

Though images from emblem books and related materials were typically used as patterns for décor and paintings, Englishman George Wither’s book A Collection of Emblemes, Ancient and Moderne was painted by the Dutch painter Edward Collier in 1696 in a vanitas still life—Still Life with a Volume of Wither's 'Emblemes'—housed in the Tate Museum (an image is available in the online collection at www.tate.org.uk). The painting contains objects having to do with the vanity of human life (Bath 127).

In another example of the sharing and overlap of emblems, George Wither (right) used the engravings from Gabriel Rollenhagen’s emblem book (left): Nucleus emblematum selectissimorum, published in 1611. These emblems—originally engraved by the accomplished Dutchman Crispin de Passe—were also used as patterns and appear as stuccoes painted by J.C Hansche inside the Castle of Horst in Belgium (for images and more examples see Marck van Vaeck's article in Böker and Daly, The Emblem and Architecture, 149-176).
** Introduction ** Overview ** Forerunners ** Spread of Emblem Books ** Parallel and Evolving Forms ** Emblematic Influences: Art and Architecture ** Emblematic Influences: Literature and Coins** List of Emblem and Related Books in Special Collections ** Bibliography of Secondary Literature **