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Arthur Henkel and Albrecht Schöne (editors), Emblemata. Handbuchzur Sinnbildkunst des XVI. und XVII. Jahrhunderts (Im Auftrage der Göttinger Akademie der Wissenschaften), Stuttgart: J. B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung and C. E. Poeschel Verlag, 1967. LXXXI pp.+2,196 cols, more than 4,000 illus. Bound in half leather, printed on art paper throughout, 12″ × 9″, weight: 14 lb. DM 440.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

William S. Heckscher  and
Cameron F. Bunker
William S. Heckscher
Affiliation:
Duke University
Cameron F. Bunker
Affiliation:
Duke University
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Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , Spring 1970 , pp. 59 - 80
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1970

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References

1 I resigned from the Dutch Commission charged with publication of the opera omnia of P.C. Hooft because the responsible editor expected the art historian to edit the pictures only of the Etnblemata amatoria of 1611. See also n. 11 infra.

2 A list of additional bibliographical suggestions will be found in an Appendix at the end of my review. I might select here a few entries in the bibliographies which ought to be questioned: Picinelli is listed in Bibliography n without reference to his Index, which is printed in full in cols. 2115 to end; Barber-Holmes is a straight and funny emblem book but certainly not a ‘kunst- und kulturhistorische Arbeit’ (IV); Covi's valuable study on Quattrocento Inscriptions found in Florentine paintings is essentially unrelated to emblems; Hocke (for reasons unknown the darling of German scholars) should be omitted from scholarly publications once and for all; the work of von Radowitz (Ikonographie der Heiligen and Die Devisen und Motto des späteren Mittelalters published in one volume and as companion-pieces) is listed in two different sections of the Bibliography (III and VI); neither of the two flower books by Behling contributes substantially to emblems; the same holds true of von Blankenburg, Callisen (IV), Chartrou, Haig, and von Bezold (V).

3 1. Macrocosm; II. The Pour Elements; m. Flora; rv. Fauna; V. The World of Man; VI. Personifications; VII. Mythology; VIII. The Bible.

4 For example, the student in quest of ‘feet’ will look in vain under ‘human body.’ By using the indices he will discover that several feet occur in unsuspected sections as well as in die Horapollo.

5 The editors make a halfhearted attempt in their Preface to introduce new ad hoc terminology by speaking ofpictura (instead of Bild or icon), ofinscriptio (instead of motto or lemma), and of subscriptio (instead of epigram)

6 Vienna Nationalbibliothek, Codex 3255 [MS. Ambras. 498]; Mrs. Julie H. Knight, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is preparing a critical edition.

7 It would have been more in keeping with Henkel-Schöne's project to have printed— if Picinelli it had to be—the stimulating and highly instructive Ordo sen dispositio mundi symbolici divisa in sex linguas [Latin, German, Italian, French, Spanish, Dutch /Flemish]. This list closely corresponds to the eight-part schema by which Henkel-Schöne themselves have set up their Emblemata.

8 Ripa's work remains a compendium of sixteenth-century allegory, even in the later editions.

9 The editio optima of the Polyanthea is the novissimarum novissima in libros viginti distributa , [opus] nunc vero titulisplurimis auctum, studio et operajosephi Langii, Caesaremontani, Philosophiae et Mcdicinae doctoris et in Archid. Friburgensium Brisgoiae Academia mathcseos, Graecae linguae, et historiarum professoris ordinary ,Venice, 1622. This work, knowledge of which I owe to my friend Selig, K.L., appeared in its editio princeps in Venice, 1509,Google Scholar but owes its tremendous usefulness to the labors and genius of its learned seventeenth-century editor, Josephus Lange. The 1622 edition contains a total of 918 articles.

10 It does not look as if the editors had made adequate use of the holdings of the Munich Zentralinstitut with Karl-August Wirth's rich files on emblems and also the socalled 'Barockindex’ which endeavors to write a ‘Ripa in reverse’ by digesting the results of diligent search among decorative wall and ceiling paintings in Southern Germany and Austria with the intention of reconstructing iconographic programs among which emblematical materials occur in profusion—materials of a kind which can be found nowhere else. See also, for an attempt to uncover emblematic material in manuscripts of unpublished emblem books, n. 15 infra.

11 It is deeply to be regretted that the work of some seven years, undertaken by Drs. P.J. Meertens and J. B. Knipping, seems to have bogged down for good in 1958. They had been commissioned by the Netherlands Ministry of Onderwijs Kunsten en Wctenschappen to compile a study similar to that of Henkel-Schöne, a survey of the entirety of Dutch emblems. I understand that Dr. Meertens's work was practically completed.

12 See the Bibliography B in my Appendix under ‘de Jong.'

13 I mention Alexander VII (Balde), Anette von Droste Hülshoff (Bissel), Garrick (Hadrianus Junius), Edward Gibbon (Saavedra), Goethe (Alciati, Sambucus), Vincent van Gogh (nephew?) (de Montenay), Wenzeslas Hollar (Altorf), ‘Abme Lincolne' (Camerarius, res herbaria).

14 Praz only lists libraries whose holdings were consulted by or for him. I mention Chicago, Newberry Library (substantial); Durham, N.C., Duke University, Rare Book Room of the William R. Perkins Library (Catalog of some 215 titles in preparation by John Sharpe m); University of Glasgow (formerly the coll. of Sir William Stirling- Maxwell; manuscript lists, 1966,1,039 titles); Ottema-Kingma Foundation, Leeuwarden (Friesland) (manuscript, 1963, lists 147 titles); New York, Public Library (223 titles in three departments: Rare Book Division, the Spencer Coll., Prints Division; to be cataloged); Pennsylvania State University, Rare Books chief Charles W. Mann (several stenciled lists; 1969, 246 items); Princeton University Library, Rare Book Room, chief Howard C. Rice, Jr. (important exhibition, 1953-1954; extensive catalog in manuscript); Utrecht University, Iconological Institute (holdings published in part by the University Library as accessions; 1969 close to 400 titles).

15 I mention a few chance finds, here and abroad: Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery Library, MSS. W. 451, 464, 476, 495 (kindness of Dorothy Miner); Budapest, Musèe des Beaux-Arts, Joris Hoefhaghel, ca. 1590 (to be published by Mrs. Therès Gerszi); Cambridge, Mass., The Houghton Library (Philip Hofer; several important items); Chicago, Newberry Library: Daniel F. Pastorius (an early German settler), ‘Emblematic Recreations'; Florence, Laurentiana, Anon. ‘Raccolta delle Imprese'; Florence, Bibl. Nazionale, Doni, ‘Imprese amorose’ (published in the nineteenth century); New York, Hispanic Society, manuscript B 2417; New York, J. Pierpont Morgan Library; several manuscripts; one written in gold lettering in Hebrew and Latin and given to a Pope by the Jews of Rome; Washington, D.C., the Folger Library, Henry Peacham, an important manuscript with the author's own drawings. See also Rosemary Freeman (1948), pp. 234-238.

16 The Lexicon mediae et infimae Latinitatis Polonorum (vol. 1 completed 1958: A-B), the impressive Neo-Latin Dictionary of the Polish Academy in Warsaw is, for all practical purposes, unavailable and, of course, somewhat restricted in its scope. In order to compile such a reference work, it would be desirable to begin by getting together a comprehensive collection (not just a bibliography!) of Renaissance Latin dictionaries as well as encyclopedias (ranging from Bersuire's Repertorium morale to Mirabellio-Lange's Polyanthea) and philological discourses in all fields of humanist interest. The excerpting of the great Renaissance Latinists would be the second step. It seems incredible that, so far as can be ascertained, there exists in the world not one academic chair for Renaissance Latin Philology.

17 Available in ed. Migne, P.L. ,ccx, cols. 621f.; quoted in part but slightly mis-cited by Ernst Robert Curtius. Alanus here compares the rules of Theology to those governing the other artes: ‘ Supercoelestis vero scientia (i.e. Theologia) … habet enim regulas … praeeminentes; et cum caeterarum regularum tota necessitas nutet, quia in consuetudine sola est consistens penes consuetum naturae decursum; necessitas theologicarum maximarum absoluta est, et irrefragabilis, quia de his fidem faciunt quae actu, vel natura mutari non possunt. Unde propter sui immutabilem necessitatem, et gloriosam sui subtilitatem a philosophis paradoxae dicuntur, quasi gloriosae rectae; propter sui obscuritatem aenigmata; propter internum intelligentiae splendorem dicuntur emblemata ,quia puriore mentis acumine comprehenduntur… .'