First developed in the 16th century, emblems consist of three parts: a symbolic picture (pictura) with a motto or title (inscriptio) and an explanatory poem or epigram (subscriptio). Emblem books proved popular for more than two hundred years and thousands were published across Europe.
The purpose of the emblem is to indirectly convey moral, political or
religious values in forms that need to be decoded by the viewer. The pictura often
juxtapose ordinary objects in an enigmatic way so as to offer a reader
the intellectual challenge of attempting to divine all the allegorical
meanings. In this way, emblem books typified the extraordinary
Renaissance and Baroque aesthetic in which objects were thought to
contain hidden meanings and concealed links between apparently
dissimilar objects were believed to exist. [see The Odd Baroque]
“Emblem books exercised an enormous influence on literature and the
visual arts, and therefore they have long attracted the attention of
scholars interested in painting, decorative arts, literature,
illustrated books, iconography, symbolism, theories of representation,
social and cultural history.” [source]
The esoteric pictura below (from 1617) hew much closer to the symbols of alchemy than they do to the typical visual language of moral or instructional emblems….
Images from Emblemata Nova by Andreas Friedrichen, 1617
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