(Intersections Series) Ralph Dekoninck

Quid est secretum?
Intersections
Interdisciplinary Studies in Early Modern Culture
General Editor
Karl A.E. Enenkel (Chair of Medieval and Neo-Latin Literature

Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster
e-mail: kenen_01@uni_muenster.de)
Editorial Board
W. van Anrooij (University of Leiden)

W. de Boer (Miami University)
Chr. Göttler (University of Bern)
J.L. de Jong (University of Groningen)
W.S. Melion (Emory University)
R. Seidel (Goethe University Frankfurt am Main)
P.J. Smith (University of Leiden)
J. Thompson (Queen’s University Belfast)
A. Traninger (Freie Universität Berlin)
C. Zittel (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice /
University of Stuttgart)
C. Zwierlein (Freie Universität Berlin)
volume 65/2 – 2020
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/inte

Quid est secretum?
Visual Representation of Secrets in
Early Modern Europe, 1500–1700
Edited by
Ralph Dekoninck
Agnès Guiderdoni
Walter S. Melion
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Cover illustrations: (central image) Melchior Lorck, Tortoise and Separate View of a Walled, Coastal Town
in the Veneto (“Festina Lente”). Charcoal, heightened with creamy-white bodycolor, on Venetian blue paper.
189 mm x 208 mm. © The Trustees of the British Museum; (background image) Georg Rem and Peter
Isselburg, “Festina Lente” (“Make haste slowly”), Emblem 21, Emblemata Politica […] (Nürnberg, [n.p.]:
1617). Image courtesy of Emblematica Online, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lovis Corinth Colloquium (8th : 2018 : Emory University), author. |

Dekoninck, Ralph, editor. | Guiderdoni, Agnès, 1966- editor. | Melion,
Walter S., editor.
Title: Quid est secretum? : visual representation of secrets in early modern
Europe, 1500-1700 / edited by Ralph Dekoninck, Agnès Guiderdoni,
Walter S. Melion.
Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2020] | Series: Intersections,
1568-1181 ; volume 65/2 | “Lovis Corinth Colloquium VIII.” | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020023185 (print) | LCCN 2020023186 (ebook) |
ISBN 9789004432253 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004432260 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Symbolism in art—Congresses. | Knowledge, Theory
of—Europe—History—Congresses.
Classification: LCC N7740 .L68 2018 (print) | LCC N7740 (ebook) |
DDC 704.9/46—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020023185
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020023186
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.
ISSN 1568-1181
ISBN 978-90-04-43225-3 (hardback)
ISBN 978-90-04-43226-0 (e-book)
Copyright 2020 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi,
Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without prior written permission from the publisher. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be
addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via brill.com or copyright.com.
This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Lovis Corinth Colloquium VIII
Harriette Anne Melion Helmer (1956–2019)
Tibi soli, in memoriam.
∵
Contents
Acknowledgements XI
Notes on the Editors XII
Notes on the Contributors XV
List of Illustrations XXI
Introduction: What’s in a Secret? 1

Ralph Dekoninck, Agnès Guiderdoni, and Walter S. Melion
part 1
The Spiritual locus of Secret
1 In the Secrecy of the Cell: Late Medieval Carthusian Devotional Imagery

and Meditative Practices in the Low Countries 13
Ingrid Falque
2 Jesus, Mary, and Joseph as Artisans of the Heart and Soul in Manuscript
MPM R 35 Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi of ca. 1600 37
Walter S. Melion
3 Symbols and (Un)concealed Marian Mysteries in the First Litany of

Loreto Illustrated with Emblems: Peter Stoergler’s Asma Poeticum
(Linz, 1636) 145
Carme López Calderón
4 ‘Teach Me, Reveal the Secret to My Heart’: the Role of a Spiritual Guide
in the Meditative Works of Marcin Hińcza 191
Alicja Bielak
part 2
Science and Secrecy
5 Of Grids and Divine Mystery: Gerard Mercator’s Revelation 231

Lee Palmer Wandel
viii Contents
6 What Did They See?: Science and Religion in the Anatomical Theatres of
the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries 260
Peter G.F. Eversmann
part 3
The Secret in Matter
7 The Sienese Goldsmith and the Secrets of Florentine Disegno 287

C. Jean Campbell
8 An Open and Shut Case: On the Dialectic of Secrecy and Access in the
Early-Modern Kunstkammer 316
Mark A. Meadow
9 Mysterious Noises: Orphic Strings, Rough Music, and the Sounds of

Early Modern Ornament Prints 331
Madeleine C. Viljoen
10 ‘Insettinghe’ and ‘yegelijcx conversatie’: Understanding of the Image on

the Eve of Baroque 380
Koenraad Jonckheere
11 Roger de Piles and the Secret of Grace 397

Caecilie Weissert
part 4
Secrecy and Sanctity: Negotiating Secular and Sacred Registers
of the Secret
12 In Abscondito: Visuality and Testimony in Raphael’s

Transfiguration 429
Xavier Vert
13 Secrets of the Dark: Rembrandt’s Entombment (c. 1654) 460

Alexandra Onuf
14 Poussin and Richeome: Mystery and Figurability 492

Ralph Dekoninck
Contents ix
15 Portrait or Parable?: Pierre Mignard and the Mystery of Madame de

Maintenon 511
Eelco Nagelsmit & Lars Cyril Nørgaard
part 5
Secrets of the Ars symbolica: Emblems and Enigmas
16 Secret est à louer: Secrets and Secrecy in French Baroque Cartography,

1580–1640 549
Tom Conley
17 Hidden in Plain Sight: Melchior Lorck’s Emblematized Adages 572

Mara R. Wade
18 To Hide Is to Reveal: the Paradox of Representing Secrets 617

Agnès Guiderdoni
part 6
Challenges of the Secret: Publicity, Performance, and Play
19 Getting to How-To: Chiromancy, Physiognomy, Metoscopy and Prints in

Secrets’ Service 635
Stephanie Leitch
20 The Answer Lies in the Eye of the Beholder: the Emblematic Ceiling
Program in the Town Hall of Gdańsk 660
Monika Biel
21 Convents, Condottieri, and Compulsive Gamblers: Hands-On Secrets of

Lorenzo Spirito’s Libro 683
Suzanne Karr Schmidt
22 Secrecy and the Understanding of Small Things in Early Modern

Italy 708
Bret L. Rothstein
Index Nominum 729

Acknowledgements
The Corinth Endowment, gifted to the Emory Art History Department by Kay
Corinth in honour of her father-in-law, the painter Lovis Corinth, made pos-
sible the colloquium at which the first versions of the essays in this volume
were delivered. In 2016, her sister Mary Sargent substantially increased this
endowment. The annual colloquia provide an interdisciplinary forum for the
study of early modern northern art. The editors are grateful to Claire Sterk,
President of Emory University, Michael Elliott, Dean of Emory College, Carla
Freeman, Senior Associate Dean of Faculty, Lisa Tedesco, Dean of the Laney
Graduate School, and Sarah McPhee, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of
Art History and Departmental Chair, for their lively interest in and support
of the Corinth Colloquia. Richard (Bo) Manly Adams, Jr., Director of Pitts
Theology Library and Margaret A. Pitts Assistant Professor in the Practice of
Theological Bibliography, made his fine collections available to the partici-
pants. Kim Collins, Humanities Librarian, did the same at the Rose Library
of Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books. Linnea Harwell, Academic Degree
Programs Coordinator in Graduate Studies, facilitated the colloquium with
incredible grace and efficiency, and assisted our visitors in ways too numer-
ous to count. Blanche Barnett, Academic Department Administrator, provided
essential administrative support during the planning and implementation of
the colloquium. Christopher Sawula, Visual Resources Librarian, and Becky
Baldwin, Assistant Librarian, supplied both images and technical expertise.
Last but not least, the editors owe a great debt of thanks to Annie McEwen,
whose assistance at every level ensured that this volume saw the light of day.
Notes on the Editors
Ralph Dekoninck
is Professor of early modern art history at the Université catholique de Lou-
vain, co-director of the Centre for Early Modern Cultural Analysis (GEMCA)
and member of the Royal Academy of Belgium. His research focuses on early
modern image theories and practices, specifically in their relation to spiri-
tuality, on Baroque festival culture, on the relationships between art and
liturgy, and on the iconography of martyrdom. Among his publications and co-
editions, we can mention: Ad Imaginem. Statuts, fonctions et usages de l’image
dans la littérature spirituelle jésuite du xviie siècle (Geneva: 2005). L’idole dans
l’imaginaire occidental, with Watthee-Delmotte M. (eds.) (Paris: 2005). Em-
blemata sacra. The Rhetoric and Hermeneutics of Illustrated Sacred Discourse,
with Guiderdoni A. (eds.), (Turnhout: 2007). Aux limites de l’imitation. L’ut
pictura poesis à l’épreuve de la matière, with Guiderdoni A. ‒ Kremer N. (eds.)
(Amsterdam: 2009). Ut pictura meditatio. The Meditative Image in Northern
Art, 1500–1700, with Guiderdoni A. ‒ Melion W.S. (eds.), (Turnhout: 2012). Rela-
tions artistiques entre l’Italie et les anciens Pays-Bas (16e–17e siècles), (Turnhout:
2012). Fictions sacrées. Esthétique et théologie durant le premier âge moderne,
with Guiderdoni A. ‒ Granjon E. (eds.) (Leuven: 2012). Questions d’ornement
(XVe–XVIIIe siècles), with Lefftz M. ‒ Heering C. (ed.) (Turnhout: 2014). Ma-
chinae spirituales. Les retables baroques dans les Pays-Bas méridionaux et en
Europe. Contributions à une histoire formelle du sentiment religieux au XVIIe
siècle, with D’Hainaut-Zveny B. (eds.) (Brussels: 2014). Otto van Veen, Phy-
sicae et theologicae conclusiones d’Otto van Veen (1621), with Smeesters A. ‒
Guiderdoni A. (eds.), translated by Smeesters A. (Turnhout: 2017). Force de fi-
gures. Le travail de la figurabilité entre texte et image, with Guiderdoni A., special
issue of La Part de l’Œil, 31 (2017). Le poète face au tableau, de la Renaissance au
Baroque, with S. Smeesters A. (Rennes: 2018). La vision incarnante et l’image in-
carnée. Santi di Tito et Caravage (Paris: 2016). Horreur sacrée et sacrilège. Image,
violence et religion (XVIe et XXIe siècles) (Brussels: 2018). Cultures du spec-
tacle baroque. Cadres, expériences et représentations des solennités religieuses
entre Italie et anciens Pays-Bas, with Delbeke M. ‒ Delfosse A. ‒ Heering C. ‒
Vermeir K. (eds.) (Leuven: 2019).
Agnès Guiderdoni
is a senior research associate of the Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique
(Belgium) and a professor of early modern literature at the Université catholique
de Louvain, where she is co-director of the Centre for Early Modern Cultural
Notes on the Editors xiii
Analysis (gemca). Originally a specialist of seventeenth-century French lit-

erature, she more particularly studies emblematic literature and the field of
figurative representations (imago figurata). She has published many articles
on these topics and on theoretical aspects of text-image relation. Among her
co-edited publications: Ut pictura meditatio: The Meditative Image in Northern
Art, 1500–1700, with W. Melion and R. Dekoninck (2012); and Fictions sacrées:
Esthétique et théologie durant le premier âge moderne (2012). A monograph on
emblematics and spirituality is in progress.
Walter Melion
is Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Art History at Emory University in Atlanta,
where he has taught since 2004 and currently directs the Fox Center for
Humanistic Inquiry. He chaired the Art History Department in 2011–2014 and
2015–2017. He was previously Professor and Chair of Art History at The Johns
Hopkins University. He has published extensively on Dutch and Flemish art
and art theory of the 16th and 17th centuries, on Jesuit image-theory, on the
relation between theology and aesthetics in the early modern period, and
on the artist Hendrick Goltzius. In addition to monographs on Jerónimo
Nadal’s Adnotationes et meditationes in Evangelia (2003–2007) and on scrip-
tural illustration in the 16th-century Low Countries (2009), his books in-
clude Shaping the Netherlandish Canon: Karel van Mander’s ‘Schilder-Boeck’
(1991) and The Meditative Art: Studies in the Northern Devotional Print, 1550–
1625 (2009). He is co-editor of Image and Imagination of the Religious Self in
Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (2008), Early Modern Eyes (2010),
Meditatio – Refashioning the Self: Theory and Practice in Late Medieval and
Early Modern Intellectual Culture (2010), The Authority of the Word: Reflecting
on Image and Text in Northern Europe, 1400–1700 (2011), Ut pictura meditatio:
The Meditative Image in Northern Art, 1500–1700 (2012), Imago Exegetica: Visual
Images as Exegetical Instruments, 1400–1700 (2014), The Anthropomorphic Lens:
Anthropomorphism, Microcosmism, and Analogy in Early Modern Thought and
Visual Arts (2014), Image and Incarnation (2015), Personification: Embodying
Meaning and Emotion (2016), Jesuit Image Theory (2016), and Ut pictura amor:
The Reflexive Imagery of Love in Artistic Theory and Practice, 1400–1700. His ar-
ticles number more than fifty. He was elected Foreign Member of the Royal
Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2010. Between 2014 and 2015,
he was Chaire Francqui at the Université Catholique de Louvain and the
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Melion was awarded the 2016 Distinguished
Scholar Award from the American Catholic Historical Association, and was
made Scholar in Residence at The Newberry Library in 2017. He is series edi-
tor of Brill’s Studies on Art, Art History, and Intellectual History. Two books
xiv Notes on the Editors
in progress are approaching completion: Imago veridica: The Form, Function,

and Argument of Joannes David, S.J.’s Four Latin Emblem Books and Cubiculum
cordis: Printed Images as Meditative Schemata in Customized Dutch and Flemish
Manuscript Prayerbooks, 1550–1650. Melion recently became President of the
Sixteenth Century Society.
Notes on the Contributors
Monika Biel
is a Ph.D. student at the University of Göttingen. She received a fellowship
from the Bundesinstitut für Kultur und Geschichte der Deutschen im östlichen
Europa (Immanuel-Kant-Stipendium, 2017–2020). Over the past ten years, she
has worked on different projects at the Herzog August Library, Wolfenbüttel,
among others at the project Emblematica Online – Linked Open Emblem Data
(2015–2017). Her research interests include emblem studies, reception aesthet-
ics in early modern art, and digital humanities.
Alicja Bielak
earned her PhD (2019) from University of Warsaw in culture and religion stud-
ies. Her scientific interests focus on intellectual history of the 16th and 17th
centuries, with particular emphasis on: emblematics, early-modern medita-
tion, theories of representation, and philosophical approaches to the category
of nihil in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. She (co-)edited Figura
heretyka w nowożytnych sporach konfesyjnych (The Figure of the Heretic in
Early-Modern Religious Controversies, 2017) and the Polish of the translation
of Louis Coquelet’s L’Éloge de Rien. Éloge de Quelque Chose (J.E. Minasowicz,
Pochwała Niczego przypisana nikomu. Pochwała Czegoś przypisana komuś,
2016), and the Decreta of the Concilia Polonica et Lithuanica 1561–1569
(Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Generaliumque Decreta, vol. 6, 2019) series. She
runs the Polish Emblems / Emblematy Polskie portal. She has participated in
several European Research projects (i.a. ReIReS, Retopea), and currently she is
the PI of research project by National Science Centre entitled Polish Meditative
Emblems in the 16th through 18th Century: Sources, Realizations, and Aims.
C. Jean Campbell
is Professor of Art History at Emory University in Atlanta. Her work focusses
on the art and literature of late medieval and early modern Italy. Research
interests include vernacular poetics and the visual arts in late medieval and
Renaissance Italy; imitative practice and the knowledge cultures of the early
Renaissance; and portraiture and biographical fiction. She is the author of The
Commonwealth of Nature: Art and Poetic Community in the Age of Dante (2008)
and The Game of Courting and the Art of the Commune of San Gimignano (1998)
and is currently completing a book manuscript entitled Pisanello’s Parerga:
Imitative Practice and Pictorial Invention in Fifteenth-Century Italy.
xvi Notes on the Contributors
Tom Conley
is Abbot Lawrence Lowell Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies and of
Romance Languages and Literatures. He studies relations of space and writing
in literature, cartography, and cinema and focuses in theory and interpretation
in visual media. His book-size publications include Film Hieroglyphs (1991),
The Graphic Unconscious in Early Modern Writing (1992), The Self-Made Map:
Cartographic Writing in Early Modern France (1996), L’Inconscient graphique:
Essai sur la lettre à la Renaissance (2000), Cartographic Cinema (2007); An
Errant Eye: Topography and Poetry in Early Modern France (2011) and À fleur de
page: Voir et lire le texte de la Renaissance (2014). His translations include Michel
de Certeau, The Writing of History (1988 and 1992); Capture of Speech (1997) and
Culture in the Plural (1997). He has contributed to The History of Cartography
3: The European Renaissance, Cinema and Modernity, Michael Haneke, The Epic
Film, Film Analysis, Opening André Bazin, Burning Darkness: A Half-Century
of Spanish Cinema, Film, Theory and Philosophy, and European Film Theory. In
2003 he was a seminar leader at the School for Critical Theory (Cornell). He is
a member of the Modern Language Association, The International Association
for the History of Cartography, the Society of Cinema and Media Studies, and
the United States Handball Association. In 2011–12 he was the Walter Jackson
Bate Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute at work on a project titled “Engineering,
Poetry, Mapping: Baroque Literature and Cartography in Early Modern France”.
Peter Eversmann
studied a year at Wittenberg University, Ohio, and after that completed his studies
in history of art and theatre at the University of Amsterdam in 1982. He defended
his dissertation, De ruimte van het theater (The Space of the Theatre), in 1996. He
is currently associate professor in the Theatre Studies department, University of
Amsterdam. He teaches and has published on the theory and history of theatre
architecture as well as on empirical audience and reception research. His current
research interests include the theatrical experience of the spectator as a specific
form of the aesthetic encounter, theatre iconology, and the uses of information
technology in performing arts education. He is editor in chief of the FIRT/IFTR
series Themes in Theatre: Collective Approaches to Theatre and Performance.
Ingrid Falque
Ph.D. (2009) in Art History, University of Liège, is Research associate of the
F.R.S.-FNRS at the Université catholique de Louvain. She is the author of
several articles and edited volumes on the various relationships between
late medieval images and spirituality in journals and edited volumes. Her
book Devotional Portraiture and Spiritual Experience in Early Netherlandish
Painting has been published in 2019.
Notes on the Contributors xvii
Koenraad Jonckheere
is professor in Northern Renaissance and Baroque Art at Ghent University.
He studied History and Art History in Leuven and received his PhD at the
University of Amsterdam in 2005. He has published widely on seventeenth
and eighteenth century art markets and on sixteenth century Antwerp history
and portrait painting. His monographs include the Auction of King William’s
paintings, Adriaen Thomasz. Key and Willem Key, Antwerp Art after Iconoclasm;
furthermore a book on decorum experiments in Netherlandish art after the
beeldenstorm of 1566 and volume XIX of the Corpus Rubenianum. He curated
a major exhibition on the sixteenth-century Romanist Michiel Coxcie (2013).
Koenraad Jonckheere won the Jan van Gelder-prize for art history, was laureate
of the The Royal Academie for Science and the Arts of Belgium, and member
of the Young Academy of arts and Sciences. Currently he is finishing a book
project on The Timanthes Effect, which challenges art-historical interpretative
models, and is preparing Another Story of Art, a sketch of the history of art from
Antiquity until the present day.

is the Newberry Library’s George Amos Poole III Curator of Rare Books and
Manuscripts. Previously, she was the Assistant Curator in the Department of
Prints and Drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago after holding a postdoctoral
Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship there. She has earned a PhD in the history of art
from Yale University and a BA from Brown University, and has attended Rare
Book School. She loves curating exhibitions and writing about unusual forms of
early printmaking, as in her 2011 Altered and Adorned: Using Renaissance Prints in
Daily Life show at the Art Institute. She is the author of a history of the “Renaissance
Pop-Up Book”, Interactive and Sculptural Printmaking in the Renaissance (2017).
Stephanie Leitch
is associate professor of Art History at Florida State University, where she
teaches early modern art and the history of printmaking. She is the author
of Mapping Ethnography in Early Modern Germany: New Worlds in Print
Culture (2010) and many articles about the intersection of printmaking with
knowledge-based pursuits.
Her newest book project, Vernacular Viewing: the Art of Observation in the
Early Modern Print, explores how the visual accompaniments of how-to genres
sharpened visual acuity, cued observation, and calibrated sightings. Currently,
she is running a ACLS-funded collaborative project with Elio Brancaforte and
Lisa Voigt, the Epistemology of the Copy in Early Modern Travel Narratives.
ACLS-funded collaborative project with Elio Brancaforte and Lisa Voigt, the
Epistemology of the Copy in Early Modern Travel Narratives.
xviii Notes on the Contributors

is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Santiago de Compostela and
a member of the Iacobus Research Group (GI-1907). She is currently carrying
out a project entitled “The Management of Knowledge in Digital Humanities:
Iconclass Index and Iconographic Study of a Sample of the Rare Book Collection”
at the University of Santiago de Compostela, funded by the Programa de axudas
á etapa posdoutoral da Xunta de Galicia (Consellería de Cultura, Educación e
Ordenación Universitaria). Her publications deal mostly with the influence of
religious prints on representations rendered in other media, using the former
as the basis to unveil the meaning of the latter. She is the author of Grabados
de Augsburgo para un Ciclo Emblemático Portugués: Los Azulejos de la Iglesia del
Convento de Jesús de Setúbal (2017). She is member of the advisory board of the
Society for Emblem Studies and secretary of the Spanish Society of Emblematics.
Mark A. Meadow
is professor and chair of the Department of History of Art and Architecture,
University of California, Santa Barbara; and was formerly (from 2006–2011) a
professor in the Department of Art History, Leiden University. Meadow is a spe-
cialist in Northern Renaissance art and the history and theory of museums. His
research interests include the relationship of art and rhetoric, early-modern
ritual and spectacle, print culture, the origins of the Kunst- and Wunderkammer
and the history of university collections. He is the author of Pieter Bruegel the
Elder’s Netherlandish Proverbs and the Practice of Rhetoric (2002) and the editor
and translator of Symon Andriessoon’s Duytsche Adagia ofte spreeckwoorden
(2003). He also edited, and with Bruce Robertson translated, The First Treatise
on Museums: Samuel Quiccheberg’s Inscriptiones 1565 (2013).
Eelco Nagelsmit
received his PhD from the universities of Ghent and Leiden and has held the po-
sitions of postdoctoral researcher at the University of Copenhagen and scientific
assistant at ETH Zurich. He is currently affiliated with the University of Groningen,
where he pursues a research project on the exchange of “things” between early
modern princes and theologians (NWO Veni). His research focuses on the historical
functions of art and architecture in their cultural, political and religious contexts,
and is most concerned with the capacity of art to transform the beholder.
Lars Cyril Nørgaard

received his PhD from the University of Copenhagen: he was awarded an inter-
national postdoctoral fellowship from the Independent Research Foundation
Denmark and has most recently been Directeur d’études invité at EPHE,
Section des Sciences Historiques. Currently, he is visiting researcher at the
Notes on the Contributors xix
Centre for Privacy Studies at the University of Copenhagen, where he is con-

cluding a research project on Madame de Maintenon. His research interests
include the tension between religious seclusion and societal engagement, the
relationship between manuscript text, print, paratext and image, and the am-
biguous nature of pre-modern privacy.
Alexandra Onuf
is associate professor and chair of the Art History Department at the University
of Hartford. Her research focuses on landscape prints and print publishing
practices in the Netherlands in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. She is
the author of The Small Landscape Prints in Early Modern Netherlands (2018).
Bret Rothstein
is Ruth N. Halls Professor in the Department of Art History at Indiana
University – Bloomington. He has published articles on material and visual
cultures of play in American Quarterly, Art History, RES: Anthropology and
Aesthetics, and Renaissance Quarterly. His most recent book is The Shape of
Difficulty: A Fan Letter to Unruly Objects (2019).
Xavier Vert
is associate researcher at CETHA/EHESS (Paris) and lecturer at l’École
Supérieure des Beaux Arts de Nantes Métropole. His work focuses on the
Italian Renaissance and modern period. He is the author of L’adresse du por-
trait: Bernini et la caricature (2014). He organized with Giovanni Careri the
exhibition Louis Marin: Le pouvoir dans ses représentations (Galerie Colbert/
INHA, 26 May–26 July 2008). He is coordinator of the edition of Louis Marin:
Événements de contemporanéité et autres écrits sur l’art du XXe siècle (2019).
Madeleine Viljoen
oversees the Spencer Collection of manuscripts, fine illustrated books, and
livres d’artistes as well as the Print Collection. Prior to joining the Library in
September 2010, she served as the director and chief curator of the La Salle
University Art Museum in Philadelphia. Previously, Viljoen was a fellow at the
Philadelphia Museum of Art, a Visiting Scholar at the American Academy in
Rome, and a Visiting Lecturer at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
She received her MA and PhD in Art History from Princeton University and
has published extensively on prints, especially those from 1500 to 1800.
Mara R. Wade
Professor of German, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, focuses on
media theory, cultural studies, digital humanities, and the literature of German-
xx Notes on the Contributors
speaking lands and Northern Europe in her research. She earned her PhD from the
University of Michigan and studied at the Freie Universität Berlin for two years
as a Fulbright fellow. As professor she has served as a faculty member with ap-
pointments at the University of Göttingen and the Hochschule (conservatory) für
Musik, Theater und Medien, Hannover, where she held the Maria Göppert Mayer
chair in women’s studies. She is the incoming President of the Renaissance Society
of America (2020), editor-in-chief of the journal Emblematica, Essays in Word and
Image, and is PI for Emblematica Online. She is a member of the academic advi-
sory board of the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, and of the board of
the American Friends of the HAB. In 2018 the Getty Research Institute supported
sustained research on her monograph The Politics of Culture: Public Humanities
in the Free Imperial City, Nürnberg 1521–1620, while in 2016–2017 she was the
Andrew W. Mellon and National Endowment for the Humanities residential
scholar at the Newberry Library, Chicago. She is currently completing the mono-
graph Early Modern Intellectual Networks: Emblems as Open Sources.
Lee Palmer Wandel

is WARF Michael Baxandall and Linda and Stanley Sher Professor of History
at the University of Wisconsin. She is the author of Always Among Us:
Images of the Poor in Zwingli’s Zurich (1990, 2001, 2003); Voracious Idols and
Violent Hands: Iconoclasm in Reformation Zurich, Strasbourg, and Basel (1995,
1999); The Eucharist in the Reformation: Incarnation and Liturgy (2006); The
Reformation: Towards a New History (2011); and Reading Catechisms, Teaching
Religion (2016). With Walter Melion, she has co-edited Early Modern Eyes,
Image and Incarnation: The Early Modern Doctrine of the Pictorial Image, and
Quid est sacramentum? (Intersections). Currently she is working on a book, ten-
tatively titled The Matter of the Liturgy, exploring the changing understanding
of matter and its relationship to worship.
Caecilie Weissert
is extraordinary professor of art history at the University of Stuttgart. She is
the author of Reproduktionsstichwerke. Vermittlung alter und neuer Kunst im
18. und frühen 19. Jahrhundert (1999), and Die kunstreichste Kunst der Künste.
Niederländische Malerei im 16. Jahrhundert (2011). She is co-editor of the
volumes Zwischen Lust und Frust. Die Kunst in den Niederlanden und am Hof
Philipps II. von Spanien (1527–1598) (2011) and Biblia Docet. Word, Image and
Education in Sixteenth-Century Netherlandish Art and Theatre (forthcoming).
Her current publications include Clément Perret’s Exercitatio alphabetica
(1569). A calligraphic textbook and sample book on eloquence (NKJ 2019) and
Ut pictura musica. Frans Floris and chromatic music (Simiolus 2019).
Illustrations
1 Cornelis Galle after Andries Pauwels, Impresa of Ercole Tasso: Itala sum,
quiesce, in Sylvestro Pietrasanta, S.J., De symbolis heroicis libri ix (Nine Books
of Heroic Symbols) (Antwerp, Ex officina Plantiniana Balthasaris Moreti:
1634), 318. Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library 5
1.1 Anonymous Ghent Master, historiated initial in the Catholicon in opusculis
sancti Augustini (c. 1481–1484). Parchment, 51 × 34.3 cm. Brussels, Royal
Library, ms. 9121, fol. 67r. Image © KBR 17
1.2 Anonymous North Netherlandish Master, Triptych of the Last Supper
with Carthusians in Prayer (c. 1520–1521). Oil on panel, 149.5 × 96.5 cm
(centre panel) and 149.5 cm × 39 cm (wings). Utrecht, Centraal Museum,
inv. no. 31199. Image © Centraal Museum, Utrecht 19
1.3 Jean de Beaumetz, The Crucifixion with a Carthusian Monk in Prayer
(c. 1389–1395). Oil on panel, 63.5 × 52.5 cm. Cleveland, The Cleveland
Museum of Art, Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund 1964.454. Image © The Cleveland
Museum of Art 21
1.4 Attributed to the Master of the Brunswick Diptych, Diptych of the
Virgin and Child with St. Anne and a Monk in Prayer with St. Barbara
(c. 1475–1500). Oil on panel, 35 × 23 cm (each wing). Braunschweig,
Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, inv. no. 13. Image © Herzog Anton
Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig 26
1.5 Petrus Christus, The Exeter Madonna (c. 1450). Oil on panel, 19.5 × 14 cm.
Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, inv. no. 523B.
Image © bpk, Berlin 31
2.1 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “Genealogiae designatio”
(Specification of Genealogy), from Vita S. Ioseph 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), ca. 1601–1633. Engraving,
88 × 53 mm. Antwerp, Plantin Moretus Museum, MPM R 35 42
2.2 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “Cum beatissima Virgine desponsatio”
(Betrothal to the Most Blessed Virgin), from Vita S. Ioseph 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), ca. 1601–1633.
Engraving, 87 × 63 mm. Antwerp, Plantin Moretus Museum, MPM R 35 43
xxii Illustrations
2.3 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “Virginis sponsae Annunciatio”

(Annunciation of the Virgin Bride), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis
2.4 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “Sanctissimae Virginis sponsae visitatio”
(Visitation of the Most Holy Virgin Bride), from Vita S. Ioseph 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), ca. 1601–1633. Engraving, 88
× 53 mm. Antwerp, Plantin Moretus Museum, MPM R 35 45
2.5 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “De coniuge, dolorosa suspicio”
(Doleful Suspicion of the Spouse), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis
2.6 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “Incarnationis revelatio” ([Angelic]
Revelation of the Incarnation), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis
2.7 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “In Bethleem profectio” (Departure for
Bethlehem), from Vita S. Ioseph 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), ca. 1601–1633. Engraving, 87 × 53 mm. Antwerp,
Plantin Moretus Museum, MPM R 35 48
2.8 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “Hospitii perquisitio” (Search for
Lodging), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi patriarcharum
2.9 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “Sponsae Virginis parturitio”
(Parturition of the Virgin Bride), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis
Illustrations xxiii
2.10 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “Angelorum et pastorum exultatio”
(Exultation of the Angels and Shepherds), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae
2.11 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “Pueri Iesu circuncisio” (Circumcision
of the Boy Jesus), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi
patriarcharum maximi iconibus delineata ac versiculis ornata (Life of
St. Joseph, Husband of the Most Blessed Virgin, Greatest of the Patriarchs,
2.12 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “Magorum adoratio” (Adoration of
the Magi), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi patriarcharum
2.13 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “Pueri Iesu oblatio” (Presentation
of Jesus [in the Temple]), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi
2.14 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “De fuga in Aegyptum admonitio”
([Angelic] Admonition to Flee into Egypt), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae
2.15 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “In Aegyptum transmigratio” (Flight
into Egypt), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi patriarcharum
2.16 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle,
“Nocturna hospitatio” (Nocturnal Lodging), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae
xxiv Illustrations

2.17 Antoon II Wierix, Cor Iesu amanti sacrum (Heart of Jesus Sacred to the
Loving Votary or, alternatively, Heart Sacred to the Loving Votary of Jesus)
(Antwerp, Antoon II Wierix: before 1604), title-page. Engraving, 91 × 56 mm.
Antwerp, Plantin Moretus Museum, MPM R 35 87
2.18 Antoon II Wierix, “Fallax mundus ornat vultus” (The false world adorns
her face), from Cor Iesu amanti sacrum (Heart of Jesus Sacred to the Loving
Votary or, alternatively, Heart Sacred to the Loving Votary of Jesus), in
Vita S. Ioseph 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), ca. 1601–1633. Engraving, 91 × 57 mm. Antwerp, Plantin Moretus
Museum, MPM R 35 88
2.19 Antoon II Wierix, “Ultro cordis portam pultat” ([Christ] knocks at the door
of the [shuttered] heart), from Cor Iesu amanti sacrum (Heart of Jesus
Sacred to the Loving Votary or, alternatively, Heart Sacred to the Loving
Votary of Jesus), in Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi patriarcharum
2.20 Antoon II Wierix, “Dum scrutaris in lucernis” (Whilst [Christ] searches
by lamplight), from Cor Iesu amanti sacrum (Heart of Jesus Sacred to the
Loving Votary or, alternatively, Heart Sacred to the Loving Votary of Jesus),
in Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi patriarcharum maximi iconibus
Museum, MPM R 35 90
2.21 Antoon II Wierix, “O beatam cordis aedem” (O blessed dwelling-place
of the heart), from Cor Iesu amanti sacrum (Heart of Jesus Sacred to the
Illustrations xxv

Museum, MPM R 35 91
2.22 Antoon II Wierix, “Bone Iesu, fontes fluant” (O blessed Jesus, let the
fountains flow), from Cor Iesu amanti sacrum (Heart of Jesus Sacred to the
Museum, MPM R 35 92
2.23 Antoon II Wierix, “Eia Iesu tibi notum cor” (Ah, Jesus, the heart if fully
known to you), from Cor Iesu amanti sacrum (Heart of Jesus Sacred to the
Museum, MPM R 35 93
2.24 Antoon II Wierix, “Quis hic vultum non serenet?” (Whose face does he not
make serene?), from Cor Iesu amanti sacrum (Heart of Jesus Sacred to the
Museum, MPM R 35 94
2.25 Antoon II Wierix, “Sunt auscultent qui Platoni” (These are they who give
ear to Plato), from Cor Iesu amanti sacrum (Heart of Jesus Sacred to the
Museum, MPM R 35 95
2.26 Antoon II Wierix, “Sume Iesu penicilla” (Jesus, take up the little brushes),
from Cor Iesu amanti sacrum (Heart of Jesus Sacred to the Loving Votary or,
alternatively, Heart Sacred to the Loving Votary of Jesus), in Vita S. Ioseph
beatissimae Virginis sponsi patriarcharum maximi iconibus delineata ac
versiculis ornata (Life of St. Joseph, Husband of the Most Blessed Virgin,
xxvi Illustrations
Greatest of the Patriarchs, Portrayed in Images and Ornamented with Verses),

ca. 1601–1633. Engraving, 91 × 57 mm. Antwerp, Plantin Moretus Museum,
MPM R 35 96
2.27 Antoon II Wierix, “Bone Iesu conde crucem” (Good Jesus, fashion the cross),
MPM R 35. 97
2.28 Antoon II Wierix, “Euge puer, rosis pinge” (Bravo, boy, embroider with roses),
MPM R 35. 98
2.29 Antoon II Wierix, “Cor exulta, quid moraris?” (Rejoice, heart, why do you
delay?), from Cor Iesu amanti sacrum (Heart of Jesus Sacred to the Loving
Votary or, alternatively, Heart Sacred to the Loving Votary of Jesus), in
Museum, MPM R 35 99
2.30 Antoon II Wierix, “Pulsa chordas, sonet chelys” (Pluck the strings, let the
lyre sound), from Cor Iesu amanti sacrum (Heart of Jesus Sacred to the
Museum, MPM R 35 100
2.31 Antoon II Wierix, “Frustra Boreas minatur” (In vain, Boreas threatens),
Illustrations xxvii
MPM R 35 101
2.32 Antoon II Wierix, “Sat est, Iesu, vulnerasti” (Enough now, Jesus, you have
wounded it), from Cor Iesu amanti sacrum (Heart of Jesus Sacred to the
Museum, MPM R 35 102
2.33 Antoon II Wierix, “En armatas flammis tendit Iesus manus” (Behold,
Jesus extends his hands armed with flames), from Cor Iesu amanti sacrum
(Heart of Jesus Sacred to the Loving Votary or, alternatively, Heart Sacred
to the Loving Votary of Jesus), in Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi
patriarcharum maximi iconibus delineata ac versiculis ornata (Life of St.
Joseph, Husband of the Most Blessed Virgin, Greatest of the Patriarchs,
2.34 Antoon II Wierix, “O beata sors amoris!” (O blessed condition of love),
MPM R 35 104
2.35 Theodoor Galle, Vita S. Ioseph 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) (Antwerp, Theodoor Galle: ca. 1601–1633).
2.36 Theodoor Galle, “Serenissimae Isabellae Clarae Eugeniae Hispaniarum
Infanti” (To the most serene Infanta of the Spaniards, Isabella Clara
Eugenia), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi patriarcharum
xxviii Illustrations

2.37 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “In caelis gloriosa sessio” (Glorious Seat
in Heaven), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi patriarcharum
Ornamented with Verses) (Antwerp, Theodoor Galle: ca. 1601–1633). Engraving,
2.38 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “Aegypti commoratio” (Sojourn
in Egypt), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi patriarcharum
2.39 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “Pueri amorosa attrectatio” (Fond
Touching of the Boy), from Vita S. Ioseph 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) (Antwerp, Theodoor Galle: ca. 1601–1633).
2.40 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “Fructuum refectio” (Refection
of Fruits), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi patriarcharum
2.41 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “Pueri ad patriam sollicitatio” (Eagerness
of the Boy for the Fatherland), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi
2.42 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “Pueri Iesu inventio” (Discovery of
the Boy Jesus), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi patriarcharum
Illustrations xxix
2.43 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “Iesus matris deliciae, Iesus patris
solatium” (Jesus, Delight of his Mother, Jesus, Comfort of his Father), from
Verses) (Antwerp, Theodoor Galle: ca. 1601–1633). Engraving, 89 × 53 mm.
Antwerp, Plantin Moretus Museum, MPM R 35 135
2.44 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “Pueri ad Joseph subiectio” (Subjection
of the Boy to Joseph), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi
2.45 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “Corporalis pia refectio” (Pious Bodily
Refection), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi patriarcharum
2.46 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “Sollicita manuum operatio”
(Precise Labor of the Hands), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis
Portrayed in Images and Ornamented with Verses) (Antwerp, Theodoor Galle:
ca. 1601–1633). Engraving, 88 × 53 mm. Antwerp, Plantin Moretus Museum,
MPM R 35 138
2.47 Front cover of Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi patriarcharum
Ornamented with Verses) (Antwerp, Theodoor Galle: ca. 1601–1633),
in-8vo. Stamped and gilt leather. Antwerp, Plantin Moretus Museum,
MPM R 35 139
2.48 Back cover of Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi patriarcharum
Ornamented with Verses) (Antwerp, Theodoor Galle: ca. 1601–1633),
in-8vo. Stamped and gilt leather. Antwerp, Plantin Moretus Museum,
MPM R 35 140
xxx Illustrations
3.1 Theodore Galle, “Hortus Conclusus”, in Jan David, Pancarpium Marianum

[…] (Antwerp, Ex Officina Plantiniana, Apud Ioannem Moretum: 1607),
plate no. 33. Intaglio. Museum Plantin-Moretus (Print Room collection),
Antwerp – UNESCO, World Heritage, no. R.119 155
3.2 Jean de Loisy, “Hortus Conclusus”, in Jean Terrier, Portraicts des SS. Vertus
de la Vierge Contemplées par Feue S.A.S.M. Isabelle Clere Eugenie Infante
d’Espagne […] (Pin, France, Jean Vernier: 1635). Intaglio. Médiathèque de
l’agglomération du Grand Dole: 17M/138 156
3.3 Anonymous, “Sancta Maria”, in Peter Stoergler, Asma Poeticum Litaniarum
Lauretanarum […] (Linz, Typis Joannis Paltauff: 1636), plate no. 11. Intaglio.
Österreichische Nationalbibliothek: 302276-A Alt Mag 161
3.4 Theodore Galle, “Navis Institoris”, in Jan David, Pancarpium Marianum
[…] (Antwerp, Ex Officina Plantiniana, Apud Ioannem Moretum: 1607),
plate no. 10. Intaglio. Museum Plantin-Moretus (Print Room collection),
Antwerp – UNESCO, World Heritage, no. R.119 163
3.5 Anonymous [Redelius?], “Sancta Maria”, in Isaac Oxoviensis, Elogia
Mariana […] (Augsburg, Apud Joann. Philippum Steudnerum, Typis
Antonii Nepperschmidii: 1700), [p. 5]. Intaglio. Herzog August Bibliothek
Wolfenbüttel: Xb 2952, Image 96 167
3.6 Christoph Thomas Scheffler and Martin Engelbrecht, “Sancta Maria”,
in Augustin Casimir Redelius, Elogia Mariana […] (Augsburg, Martin
Engelbrecht: 1732), plate no. 12. Intaglio. Getty Research Institute, Los
Angeles: 2865–175 168
3.7 Anonymous, “Mater Admirabilis”, in Peter Stoergler, Asma Poeticum
Litaniarum Lauretanarum […] (Linz, Typis Joannis Paltauff: 1636),
plate no. 21. Intaglio. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek: 302276-A
Alt Mag 169
3.8 Anonymous [Redelius?], “Mater Admirabilis”, in Isaac Oxoviensis, Elogia
Antonii Nepperschmidii: 1700), p. 105. Intaglio. Herzog August Bibliothek
3.9 Christoph Thomas Scheffler and Martin Engelbrecht, “Mater Admirabilis”,
Angeles: 2865–175 176
3.10 Anonymous, “Mater Salvatoris”, in Peter Stoergler, Asma Poeticum Litaniarum
Österreichische Nationalbibliothek: 302276-A Alt Mag 178
Illustrations xxxi
3.11 Anonymous [Redelius?], “Mater Salvatoris”, in Isaac Oxoviensis, Elogia

Antonii Nepperschmidii: 1700), p. 123. Intaglio. Herzog August Bibliothek
3.12 Christoph Thomas Scheffler and Martin Engelbrecht, “Mater Salvatoris”,
Angeles: 2865–175 184
4.1a Memling, The Last Judgement, middle part of triptych, 241 × 180.8 cm,
wings 2 × 242 × 90 cm. Gdańsk, Muzeum Narodowe. Image © Muzeum
Narodowe w Gdańsku 193
4.1b Detail of Fig. 4.1a 194
4.2 Egidius van Schoor, copperplate engraving in Marcin Hińcza’s Plęsy
anjołów Jezusowi narodzonemu, naświętszego krzyża tańce (Kraków,
Franciszek Cezary: 1638), title page. Image © Biblioteka Uniwersytecka w
Warszawie 196
4.3 Lucas Emil Vorsterman, copperplate engraving in Cesare Baronius’s Generale
kerckelycke historie Van de gheboorte onses H. Iesu Christi (Antwerp, Jan
Cnobbaert: 1623), title page. Image © Maurits Sabbebibliotheek 197
4.4 Gijsbert van Veen, copperplate engraving in Otto van Veen’s Quinti Horatii
Flacci Emblemata (Antwerp, Philippum Lisaert: 1612), p. 9 (recto).
Image © Maurits Sabbebibliotheek 198
4.5 Bolswert Schelte Adamsz, The Nativity (Antwerp, ca. 1630–45). Copperplate
engraving. Image © Biblioteka Naukowa PAU i PAN w Krakowie 198
4.6 Cornelis Galle, copperplate engraving in Benedictus von Haeften’s Regia
via Crucis (Antwerp, Balthasar Moretus: 1635), title page. Image © Maurits
Sabbebibliotheek 199
4.7 Anonymous engraver, copperplate engraving in Marcin Hińcza’s Chwała z
Krzyża (Kraków, Andrzej Piotrkowczyk: 1641), title page. Image © Biblioteka
Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego 201
Krzyża (Kraków, Andrzej Piotrkowczyk: 1641), between pp. 602–603. Image
© Biblioteka Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego 202
Krzyża (Kraków, Andrzej Piotrkowczyk: 1641), between pp. 372–373.
Image © Biblioteka Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego 203
4.10 Hieronymus Wierix, copperplate engraving in Jerónimo Nadal’s Adnotationes
et meditationes in Evangelia (Antwerp, Martinus Nutius: 1595), between
pp. 38–39. © Getty Research Institute 204
xxxii Illustrations

Krzyża (Kraków, Andrzej Piotrkowczyk: 1641), between pp. 526–527.
Image © Biblioteka Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego 205
4.12 Cornelis Galle, copperplate engraving to Benedictus von Haeften’s Regia
via Crucis (Antwerp, Balthasar Moretus: 1635). Image © Getty Research
Institute 206
4.13 Egidius van Schoor, copperplate engraving in M. Hińcza, Plęsy Jezusa z
aniołami (Kraków, Franciszek Cezary: 1638), pp. between pp. 668–669.
© Biblioteka Narodowa w Warszawie 209
4.14 M. Hińcza, Plęsy Jezusa z aniołami (Kraków, Franciszek Cezary: 1638), pp. 143,
155. © Biblioteka Narodowa w Warszawie 216
5.1 Gerard Mercator, Cartouche from Nova et aucta orbis terrae descriptio
[New and Augmented Description of the World] (1569), in Meer S. de (ed.),
Atlas van de Wereld: De wereldkaart van Gerard Mercator uit 1569 (Zutphen,
Wallburg Pers: 2011) n.p. 232
5.2 Gerard Mercator, Nova et Aucta Orbis Terrae Descriptio ad Usum Navigantium
Emendate Accommodata, 1569. Wikimedia, accessed 26 September 2018:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/Mercator_1569_
world_map_composite.jpg 238
5.3 Gerard Mercator, Atlas sive Cosmographicæ Meditationes de Fabrica Mundi
et Fabricati Figura (Duisburg: 1595) title page. Staats- und Stadtbibliothek
Augsburg 241
et Fabricati Figura (Duisburg: 1595) fol. 3/a2. Staats- und Stadtbibliothek
Augsburg 243
5.5 Gerard Mercator, “Frisia occidentalis”, Atlas sive Cosmographicæ Meditationes
de Fabrica Mundi et Fabricati Figura (Duisburg: 1595). University Library Map
Collection, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam 245
5.6 Gerard Mercator, “Helvetia”, Atlas sive Cosmographicæ Meditationes de
Fabrica Mundi et Fabricati Figura (Duisburg: 1595). University Library Map
5.7 Gerard Mercator, “Argow”, Atlas sive Cosmographicæ Meditationes de
Fabrica Mundi et Fabricati Figura (Duisburg: 1595). University Library Map
et Fabricati Figura (Duisburg: 1595) fol. 9/b1. Staats- und Stadtbibliothek
Augsburg 251
5.9 Rumold Mercator, “Orbis Terrae Compendiosa Descriptio”, in Gerard
Mercator, Atlas sive Cosmographicæ Meditationes de Fabrica Mundi
et Fabricati Figura (Duisburg: 1595). Staats- und Stadtbibliothek
Augsburg 252
Illustrations xxxiii
5.10 Gerard Mercator, “Evropa”, Atlas sive Cosmographicæ Meditationes de Fabrica

Mundi et Fabricati Figura (Duisburg: 1595). Staats- und Stadtbibliothek
Augsburg 253
5.11 Gerard Mercator, “Belgii”, Atlas sive Cosmographicæ Meditationes de Fabrica
Mundi et Fabricati Figura (Duisburg: 1595). Staats- und Stadtbibliothek
Augsburg 254
6.1 Anonymous, frontispiece of Mondino de’ Luzzi (Mundinus), Anathomia
Mundini published by Martin Pollick van Mellerstadt (Leipzig,
Martin Landsberg: 1493). Woodcut. Source: https://nl.pinterest.com/
pin/551339179376115350/?lp=true 265
6.2 Anonymous, anatomy lesson, illustration from Johannes de Ketham’s
Fasciculo de medicina, translation by Sebastiano Manilio of Fasciculus
medicinae (Venice, Zuane & Gregorio di Gregorii: 1493/94) 64.
Woodcut, 32 cm. (folio). Source: https://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/
historicalanatomies/ketham_home.html 267
6.3 Hugo da Carpi, title page of Jacopo Berengario da Carpi’s Isagogae
breues,perlucidae ac uberrimae, in anatomiam humani corporis a communi
medicorum academia usitatam (Bologna, Benedictus Hector: 1523).
Woodcut. Detail, lower middle part of page. Source: https://commons.
wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Isagogae_breves_in_anatomiam_humani_V00114
_00000010.tif 267
6.4 Anonymous, title page of Jacopo Berengario da Carpi’s Anatomia Carpi.
Isagoge breves, perlucide ac uberime, in anatomiam humani corporis,
a, comuni medicorum academia, usitatam, a, Carpo in almo Bononiensi
gymnasio ordinariam chirurgiae publicae docente, ad suorum scholasticorum
preces in lucë date (Venice, Bernardinum De Vitalibus: 1535). Woodcut.
National Library of Austria, Vienna. Source: http://digital.onb.ac.at
/OnbViewer/viewer.faces?doc=ABO_%2BZ184496903 268
6.5 Studio of Titian, title page from Andreas Vesalius’s De humani corporis
fabrica Libri septem (Basel, Johannes Oporinus: 1543). Woodcut, 43 cm.
(folio). Center for the History of Medicine and Public Health, New York.
Source: https://nyamcenterforhistory.org/tag/art-and-the-body-vesalius-500
/page/2/ 270
6.6 Anonymous, title page from Andreas Vesalius’s De humani corporis fabrica
Libri septem (Basel, Johannes Oporinus: 1555). Woodcut, 43 cm. (folio).
Center for the History of Medicine and Public Health, New York. Source:
https://nyamcenterforhistory.org/tag/art-and-the-body-vesalius-500
/page/2/ 272
xxxiv Illustrations
6.7 Lazarus de Soardi, illustration from Plautus, Comoediae XX (Venice, Lazarus

Soardus: 1511). Woodcut. Source: https://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/
resrep00_01/Jahresbericht_2_3_section.html 273
6.8 Anonymous, title page of Isbrand van Diemerbroeck’s Anatome corporis
humani (Lyon, Jean Antoine Huguetan: 1679). Universidad Complutense
de Madrid (Google digitized). Source: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/
Record/009304148 278
6.9 Printer’s device of Jean Antoine Huguetan (1619–1681). Engraving. Source:
http://pitts.emory.edu/dia/image_details.cfm?ID=122092 278
6.10 Willem Isaacsz Swanenburch, the anatomical theatre of Leiden University
(Vera anatomiae Lugduno-Batavae cum sceletis et reliquis quae ibi extant
delineatio – title on object), after Jan Cornelisz. van ’t Woudt (Andries
Clouck: 1610). Engraving, 33 × 39.4 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Source:
http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.181659 279
6.11 Bartholomeus Willemsz Dolendo (possibly), theatrum anatomicum of the
Academy in Leiden (Amphitheatrum Anatomicum Luduno Batavorum – title
on object), after Jan Cornelisz. van ’t Woudt (Jacob Marcus: 1609). Engraving,
46 × 55.3 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Source: http://hdl.handle.net/
10934/RM0001.COLLECT.381385 280
7.1 Ambrogio Lorenzetti, “City Under the Rule of Good Government”, part
of Allegory of Good and Bad Government, fresco, 1338–1339, Sala de’ Nove
(executive council chamber), Palazzo Pubblico, Siena. Image: Scala/Art
Resource, NY 288
7.2 Ambrogio Lorenzetti, “City Under the Rule of Good Government”, detail of
the goldsmith’s shop, part of Allegory of Good and Bad Government, fresco,
1338–1339, Sala de’ Nove (executive council chamber), Palazzo Pubblico, Siena.
Image: Scala/Art Resource, NY 289
7.3 Ambrogio Lorenzetti, “City Under the Rule of Good Government”, detail of
the shoe maker’s shop, part of Allegory of Good and Bad Government, fresco,
1338–1339, Sala de’ Nove (executive council chamber), Palazzo Pubblico,
Siena. Image: Scala/Art Resource, NY 291
8.1 Wenzel Jamnitzer, Silver Writing Box, closed (ca. 1560–1570). Silver,
6 × 22.7 × 10.2 cm. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum (inv. no. KK 1155).
Image © 319
8.2 Wenzel Jamnitzer, Silver Writing Box, open (ca. 1560–1570). Silver,
6 × 22.7 × 10.2 cm. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum (inv. no. KK 1155).
Image © 319
8.3 Anon. (engraver), “Design for a Book Wheel”, in Agostino Ramelli,
Le Diverse et artificiose machine (Paris, A. Ramelli: 1588), Chapter CLXXXVIII,
Illustrations xxxv
p. 317. Chicago, Newberry Library (Call number: Wing folio ZP 539 .R143).
Image © Newberry Library 321
9.1 Master of Balaam, St. Eligius in his Workshop, ca. 1450, engraving.
Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum 332
9.2 Hendrick L. de Weyck, Frontispiece Simplex effigatio omnis generis
quadrupedium, 1626, engraving. Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum 337
9.3 Jean Toutin, “A Goldsmith working at a furnace with his apprentice” from
a series of seven Blackwork ornaments, 1619, engraving. Amsterdam:
Rijksmuseum 339
9.4 Monogrammist AB, A Goldsmith’s Workshop, 1610, punch engraving.
9.5 Virgil Solis, Orpheus Taming the Animals, 1524–1562?, engraving/etching.
9.6 Virgil Solis, Thirteen Wild Animals, mid sixteenth century, engraving Vienna:
Albertina 341
9.7 Albrecht Dürer, The Draftsman drawing a Lute, 1525, woodcut. Dresden:
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen 342
9.8 Jost Amman, Portrait of Wenzel Jamnitzer, ca. 1561–1591, engraving.
9.9 Anonymous German, A Goldsmith’s Workshop, ca. 1540–1580, punched
engraving. London: British Museum 345
9.10 Pieter van der Heyden after Hieronymus Bosch, Shrove Tuesday, 1561,
engraving. Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum 347
9.11 Master of the Vitae Imperatorum, Nero, illuminated manuscript page, fol.
113r, 1433. Princeton University Library, Kane 44 349
9.12 Jean Cossin after Francois Roupert, “Acanthus Ornament attended by
musicians”, 1668, engraving. The Wallach Division of Art, Prints and
Photographs, NYPL 350
9.13 Heinrich Aldegrever, Eight Putti Making Music and Fighting around a Well,
1539, engraving. London: British Museum 353
9.14 Israel van Meckenem, Ornamental Engraving with Morris Dancers, ca. 1480,
engraving. New York: The Met Museum 354
9.15 Jost Amman after Wenzel Jamnitzer, Allegory of Air, 1568, etching. London:
British Museum 356
9.16 Isaac Briot after Pierre Delabarre, Plate 2 from Liure de Toutes Sortes de
Feuilles, 1636, etching and engraving. The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division
of Art, Prints and Photographs. The New York Public Library 358
9.17 Attributed to Erhard Schön, Devil playing the Bagpipes, ca. 1530, hand-
colored woodcut. London: british Museum 359
xxxvi Illustrations
9.18 Christoph Jamnitzer, “Three Consoles” from the Neuw Grotteßkenbuch, 1610,
engraving. Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum 360
9.19 Anonymous German, (printmaker), “Two Musicians plate 5 in Godfridt
Müller (publisher) Schnacken Buchlein, Ander Teil, ca. 1625, etching.
Braunschweig: Herzog Anton-Ulrich Museum 362
9.20 Balthazar Moncornet after François Lefebure, after Jacques Callot,
“Medallion with floral motifs alongside figures after Callot” from Livre de
Fleurs & de feullies pour servir a l’art d’orfeverie, 1635, engraving. The Miriam
and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs. The New York
Public Library 363
9.21 Lucas Kilian, Newes Gradesca Büchlein, plate 1 1607, etching. Amsterdam:
Rijksmuseum 365
9.22 Jean Toutin, “Jewelry Design with a Lion’s Head” from a series of seven
blackwork ornaments, 1619, black work engraving. Washington D.C.: The
National Gallery of Art 366
9.23 Jacques de Gheyn II, A Veiled Woman with Two Musicians playing a Gridiron
and Bellows, 1595/96, engraving. Vienna: MAK 368
9.24 Anonymous German (printmaker), “Bull teaching music to a goat” plate 3
in Godfridt Müller (publisher) Schnacken Büchlein, Erster Teil, 1625, etching.
Berlin: Kunstbibliothek 369
9.25 Christoph Jamnitzer, “Der Fadeskisch Radesco Baum” in Christoph
Jamnitzer, Der Neuw Grotteßken Buch, Nuremberg, 1610, etching. Amsterdam:
Rijksmuseum 371
9.26 Johann Theodor de Bry after Hans Kellerthaler, Cat Concert, 1596. engraving.
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum 373
9.27 Anonymous German (printmaker), “Animals playing music on an organ and
pipe” plate 2 in Godfridt Müller (publisher) Schnacken Büchlein, Erster Teil,
1625, etching. Braunschweig: Anton Ulrich Museum 374
9.28 Christoph Jamnitzer, “Der Schackenmarkt” in Christoph Jamnitzer, Der Neuw
Grotteßken Buch, Nuremberg, 1610, etching. Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum 376
10.1 Anonymous, The Duke of Alba Making Love to the Whore of Babylon
(1572). Engraving, 18,5 mm × 13,5 cm. Amsterdam, Rijksprentenkabinet
(RP-P-OB-79.011) 384
10.2 Peter Paul Rubens, Portrait Bust of Seneca (c. 1613–1616).
Oil on panel, 65 × 50 cm. Antwerp, Museum Plantin-Moretus
(Inv. no. MPM.V.IV.057) 392
10.3 Peter Paul Rubens, Saint Peter (c. 1611). Oil on panel, 107 × 82 cm.
Madrid, Museo del Prado (Inv. no. P001646) 393
11.1 Bernard Picart, Portrait of Roger de Piles, 1709, etching and engraving,
288 mm × 203 mm. © Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 398
Illustrations xxxvii
11.2 Roger de Piles, Abrégé de la vie des peintres, avec des reflexions sur leurs
ouvrages, et un Traité du peintre parfait, de la connoissance des desseins, &
de l’utilité des estampes, Paris, Franc̜ois Muguet: 1699, title page. Bibliothèque
nationale de France, département Littérature et art (V-23908). ©
Bibliothèque nationale de France 399
de l’utilité des estampes, Paris, Franc̜ois Muguet: 1699, page 10. Bibliothèque
nationale de France, département Littérature et art (V-23908). ©
de l’utilité des estampes, Paris, Franc̜ois Muguet: 1699, page 11. Bibliothèque
nationale de France, département Littérature et art (V-23908). c
11.5 Roger de Piles, Cours de peinture par principes, Paris, J. Estienne: 1708, title
page. Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Réserve des livres
rares (V-23913). © Bibliothèque nationale de France 405
11.6 Roger de Piles, Cours de peinture par principes, Paris, J. Estienne: 1708, Balance
des Peintres. Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Réserve des livres
rares (V-23913). © Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France 416
11.7 Jonathan Richardson, Two Discourses. I. An Essay on the whole Art of Criticism
as it relates to Painting. Shewing how to judge I. Of the Goodness of a Picture;
II. Of the Hand of the Master; and III. Whether ’tis an Original, or a Copy. II.
An Argument in behalf of the Science of a Connoisseur; Wherein is shewn the
Dignity, Certainty, Pleasure, and Advantage of it, both by Mr. Richardson,
London, W. Churchill: 1719. © J. Paul Getty Trust 420
12.1 Raphael, Transfiguration (ca. 1516–1520). Oil on panel, 404 × 278 cm. Vatican
Museums, Rome 431
12.2 Detail of Fig. 12.1: presentation of the possessed boy to the disciples 437
12.3 After Raphael, Modello for the Transfiguration (ca. 1516–1517). Pen and brown
wash with white heightening, 40.2 × 27.2 cm. Albertina, Vienna, inv. 193 441
12.4 After Gian Francesco Penni, after Raphael, Modello for the Transfiguration
(after 1516). Pen and brown ink, wash, and black chalk, 41.3 × 27.4 cm. Musée
du Louvre, Département des arts graphiques, Paris, inv. 3954 442
12.5 Raphael, The Vision of Ezekiel (ca. 1518). Oil on panel, 40 × 30 cm. Galleria
Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence 444
12.6 Raphael, Preparatory drawing for the upper part of the Transfiguration
(ca. 1518–1519). Red chalk over stylus, 24.6 × 35 cm. Chatsworth (Derbyshire),
Trustees of the Chatsworth Settlement, inv. 904 447
xxxviii Illustrations
12.7 Author of the Floreffe Bible, Full-page miniature in two registers of the
Transfiguration and the Last Supper (ca. 1156). London, British Library, Add
MS 17738, f4r 450
12.8 Sebastiano del Piombo, Transfiguration (1516–1524). Fresco. Borgherini
Chapel, San Pietro in Montorio, Rome 451
12.9 Sebastiano del Piombo, Flagellation (1516–1524). Mural painting in oil and
fresco. Borgherini Chapel, San Pietro in Montorio, Rome 451
12.10 Raphael, Study for the Resurrection of Christ. Pen and brown ink. Musée
Bonnat, Bayonne, inv. 683 452
12.11 Leonardo da Vinci, Adoration (1481–1482). Tempera mixed with oil on panel,
246 × 243 cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence 453
12.12 Detail of Fig. 12.1: apostles 455
13.1 Rembrandt, The Entombment, state I (c. 1654). Etching and drypoint on
paper, 211 × 160 mm. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 20.46.17 461
13.2 Rembrandt, The Entombment, state II (c. 1654). Etching and drypoint with
burin on paper, 210 × 160 mm. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art,
23.51.7 462
13.3 Rembrandt, The Entombment (1636–1639). Oil on canvas, 689 × 925 mm.
Munich, Alte Pinakothek, Inv. No. 396 465
13.4 Rembrandt, The Entombment (c. 1640–1641). Pen and brown ink on paper,
156 × 201 mm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, RP-T-1930–28(R) 466
13.5 Rembrandt, The Entombment (1657–1658). Ink, wash and body color on
paper, 181 × 284 mm. Haarlem, Teylers Museum 467
13.6 Rembrandt, The Entombment, state I (c. 1654). Etching and drypoint
on paper, 211 × 160 mm. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 20.46.17.
Detail of lower left corner 469
13.7 Rembrandt, The Entombment, state II (c. 1654). Etching and drypoint
with burin on paper, 210 × 160 mm. Detail of lower left corner. New York,
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 23.51.7. 470
burin, printed with surface tone on paper, 210 × 159 mm. Amsterdam,
Rijksmuseum, RP-P-OB-153 471
burin, printed with surface tone on vellum, 205 × 158 mm. Amsterdam,
Rijksmuseum, RP-P-OB-152 472
13.10 Rembrandt, The Entombment, state III (c. 1654). Etching and drypoint with
burin on paper, 212 × 161 mm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, RP-P-OB-155 474
13.11 Rembrandt, The Entombment, state IV (c. 1654). Etching and drypoint with
burin on paper, 209 × 159 mm. Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art,
Rosenwald Collection, 1943.3.7163 475
Illustrations xxxix
13.12 Rembrandt, Saint Jerome in Dark Study (1642). Etching on paper, 152 × 174
mm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, RP-P-OB-187 478
13.13 Rembrandt, Flight into Egypt: A Night Piece, state I (1651). Etching printed
with plate tone on paper, 127 × 110 mm. New York, Metropolitan Museum of
Art, 41.1.52 479
13.14 Rembrandt, The Three Crosses, state III (1653). Drypoint on paper,
389 × 456 mm. New York, Metropolitan Museum, 41.1.32 481
13.15 Rembrandt, The Three Crosses, state IV (1653). Drypoint on Japanese paper,
375 × 450 mm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, RP-P-1962–40 482
13.16 Rembrandt, Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer (1653). Oil on
canvas, 1,435 × 1,365 mm. New York, Metropolitan Museum, 61.198 488
14.1 Claude Mellan after Nicolas Poussin, Frontispiece of the Biblia Sacra (Paris,
Imprimerie Royale, 1642), burin, 41,5 × 26,2 cm, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale
de France, bibliothèque de l’Arsenal 495
14.2 Nicolas Poussin, Flight into Egypt, ca. 1657–1658, oil on canvas, 97 × 133 cm,
Lyon, Musée des Beaux-Arts 500
14.3 Herri met de Bles, Flight into Egypt, oil on panel, 24,5 × 33 cm, Barcelona,
Museu Nacional d’Arte de Catalunya 503
14.4 Francesco Bartoli, Antique Landscape, pen, watercolour, coloured pencil,
Windsor, Eton College Library 505
14.5 Toussaint Largeot, Flight into Egypt, 1666, Grenoble, Chapel of
Sainte-Marie-d’en-haut, Musée Dauphinois 508
15.1 Pierre Mignard, Francoise d’Aubigné, Marquise de Maintenon as Saint Frances
of Rome (1694). Oil on canvas, 128 × 97 cm. Versailles, Châteaux de Versailles
et de Trianon. Photo © RMN-Grand Palais / Jean-Marc Manaï 515
15.2 Pierre Mignard, Francoise d’Aubigné, Marquise de Maintenon as Saint Frances
of Rome (1694). Oil on canvas, 128 × 97 cm. Detail, Book of Hours. Châteaux de
Versailles et de Trianon. Photo © RMN-Grand Palais / Jean-Marc Manaï 516
15.3 Jean-Louis Roullet (engraver) after a lost painting by Pierre Mignard,
Louis XIV as commander in chief (c. 1694). Engraving, 66,0 × 52,5 cm.
Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020 517
15.4 Adam or Nicolas Perelle (engraver and designer), perspective view of La
maison Royale de Saint-Cyr (c. 1690). Engraving, 24,5 × 35,5 cm. Plate 154 from
Jean Mariette, Veuës des plus beaux endroits de Versailles, Recueil de gravures
de la collection de Grossœuvre 140, Versailles, Châteaux de Versailles et de
Trianon. Photo © RMN-Grand Palais / Christophe Fouin 521
15.5 Pierre Simon (engraver) after François Andriot (designer), portrait of
Paul Godet des Marais, bishop of Chartres (1708). Etching and engraving,
46,2 × 38,4 cm. Image © Trustees of the British Museum 524
xl Illustrations
15.6 Raphael Sadeler, St Frances of Rome (1610). Engraving, 7,5 × 5,5 cm.
From Aegidius Albertinus, Himmlisch Frawenzimmer, Darinn das Leben
vier-und-fünffzig der allerheiligisten Junckfrawen und Frawen […], (Munich:
Raphael Sadeler, 1621), p. 389. Private collection © Author 527
15.7 Pierre Mignard, self-portrait of the painter in his studio (c. 1690). Oil on
canvas, 235 × 188 cm. Paris, Musée du Louvre. Photo © RMN-Grand Palais /
Franck Raux 531
16.1 Gilles Corrozet, “Secret est à louer,” in Hecatomgraphie (Paris: Denys Janot,
1540 and 1543) 553
16.2 Pieter Apian, detail of similitude of geography and topography in
Cosmographia (Paris: Vivant Gaultherot, 1551) 555
16.3 Abraham Ortelius, world map in Theatre de l’univers (Antwerp:
Plantin 1581) 558
16.4 Christophe Tassin, introductory map in Cartes generales et particulieres de
toutes les costes de France (Paris: Melchior Tavernier, 1634) 559
16.5 Christophe Tassin, introductory map, detail of cartouche 560
16.6 Christophe Tassin, Cartes generales et particulieres, title-page and cartouche,
first section 564
16.7 Christophe Tassin, Cartes generales et particulieres, title-page and cartouche,
second section 564
16.8 Christophe Tassin, Plans et profils de toutes les principalles Villes et lieux
considerables de France (Paris, 1636) title-page 566
16.9 Christophe Tassin, Plans et profils, map of France 567
16.10 Christophe Tassin, Plans et profils, map of the Boulogne 567
16.11 Nicolas Sanson, “Carte des rivières de la France curieusement recherchée”
(1641) 568
17.1 Melchior Lorck, Self-Portrait in Antique Style, 1575, later used as title
page, from Wolgerissene und geschnittene Figuren zu Ross und zu Fuß
[…] (Hamburg, Gundermann: 1646). Image courtesy of Herzog August
Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel 573
17.2 Andrea Alciato, title page, Emblematum Liber (Augsburg, Steyner:
28 February 1531) book, Stirling Maxwell Collection, SM 18, Glasgow
University Library. Image courtesy of Emblematica Online, Glasgow
University 574
17.3 Melchior Lorck, Maulwurf vor Flusslandschaft [Mole in front of a riverscape]
Engraving, c. 7 x 10.6 cm. Photo courtesy of Kunsthandlung Rumbler,
Frankfurt 578
17.4 Melchior Lorck, Kranich in Rollwerkkartusche [Crane in a decorative
cartouche], Engraving, 5.7 × 4.3 cm. Image courtesy of Museumsberg
Flensburg 581
Illustrations xli
17.5 Alciato, “Qui alta contemplantur cadere” (Those who contemplate the heights
come to grief), Emblematum Liber (Augsburg, Steyner: 28 February 1531) sig.
Eiiv. book, Stirling Maxwell Collection, SM 18, Glasgow University Library.
Image courtesy of Emblematica Online, Glasgow University 583
17.6 Georg Rem and Peter Isselburg, “Pro grege” (For the people), Emblem
21, Emblemata Politica […] (Nürnberg, [n.p.]: 1617). Image courtesy of
Emblematica Online, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 585
17.7 Claude Paradin, “Candor illaesus” (Brightness that cannot be harmed),
Deuises heroíques[…] (Lyon, Jean de Tournes: 1551) 41. Image courtesy of
Emblematica Online, Glasgow University 587
17.8 Claude Paradin, “Monstrant regibus astra viam” (The star shows kings the
way to follow), Deuises heroíques (Lyon, Jean de Tournes: 1551) 16. Image
courtesy of Emblematica Online, Glasgow University 587
17.9 Claude Paradin, “Hoc Caesar me donavit” [Caesar has rewarded me with
this], Deuises heroíques, (Lyon, Jean de Tournes: 1551) 239. Image courtesy of
Emblematica Online, Glasgow University 588
17.10 Ioan Sambucus, “In labore fructus” (Labor brings fruit), Emblemata, cum
aliquot nummis antiqui operis […] (Antwerp, Plantin: 1564) 200. Image
courtesy of Emblematica Online, Glasgow University 590
17.11 Hadrianus Junius, “Eruditionis decor concordia, merces gloria” (The
charm of learning is harmony, its reward is glory), Emblem 21, Emblemata
(Antwerp, Plantin: 1565) 27. Image courtesy of Emblematica Online, Glasgow
University 590
17.12 Melchior Lorck, Tortoise and Separate View of a Walled, Coastal Town in the
Veneto. Charcoal, heightened with creamy-white bodycolor, on Venetian blue
paper. 189 mm × 208 mm. © The Trustees of the British Museum 593
17.13 Aldo Manuzio, printer’s mark (anchor and dolphin). Wikicommons 595
17.14 Andrea Alciato, “Maturandum”, Emblemata … (Leiden, Plantin: 1591) 37.
Image courtesy of Emblematica Online, Glasgow University 601
17.15 Andrea Alciato, “Maturandum”, Emblematum Liber (Augsburg, Steyner:
28 February 1531) sig. C7r. Image courtesy of Emblematica Online, Glasgow
University 601
17.16 Andrzej Maksymilian Fredro, “Festina lente”, Peristromata regum symbolis
expressa […] (Danzig, Förster: 1660) 370. Image courtesy of Emblematica
Online, Duke University 602
17.17 Daniel de la Fueille, “Festina lente”, Devises et Emblemes […] (Augsburg,
Kroniger & Göbel: 1695) 13.5. Image courtesy of Emblematica Online,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 602
xlii Illustrations
17.18 Otto Vaenius, “Festina Lente”, Emblemata aliquot selectiora amatoria.

(Amsterdam, Jansson: 1618) 32. Image courtesy of Emblematica Online,
Utrecht University 603
17.19 Otto Vaenius – Marin le Roy Sieur de Gomberville – Marin le Roy,
“Festina Lente”, La doctrine des moeurs[…] (Paris, Louys Seuestre: 1646)
24. Image courtesy of Emblematica Online, University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign 603
17.20 Daniel de la Fueille, “Festina lente” (Ivy), Devises et Emblemes […] (Augsburg,
Kroniger & Göbel: 1695) 28.15. Image courtesy of Emblematica Online,
17.21 Daniel de la Fueille, “Festina lente” (Remora), Devises et Emblemes […]
(Augsburg, Kroniger & Göbel: 1695) 36.7. Image courtesy of Emblematica
Online, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 604
17.22 Gabriele Simeoni, “Festina lenta”, Le sententiose imprese, et dialogo […]
(Lyon, Roviglio: 1560) 11. Image courtesy of Emblematica Online, Getty
Research Institute 605
17.23 Georg Rem and Peter Isselburg, “Festina Lente”, Emblem 21, Emblemata
Politica […] (Nurnberg, [n.p.]: 1617). Image courtesy of Emblematica Online,
17.24 Camillo Camilli’s tortoise emblem for Antonio Beffa de’Negrini, “Vt tollar
Humo” Imprese illustri di diuersi, coi discorsi [...] (Venice, Ziletti: 1586) 13.
(Venice, Ziletti: 1586) 13. Image courtesy of Emblematica Online, University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 607
17.25 Aldo Manuzio, anchor and dolphin signet on Venetian blue paper, from Libri
de re rustica. M. Catonis lib. I. M. Terentii Varronis lib. III. L. Iunii Moderati
Columellae lib. XII. Eiusdem De arboribus liber separatus ab alijs, quare
autem id factum fuerit ostenditur in epistola ad lectorem. Palladii lib. XIIII. De
duobus di. (Venice, In aedibus Aldi, et Andreae soceri: 1514). © The Morgan
Library & Museum. PML 79276. Bequest Bühler 611
18.1 Corrozet Gilles, Hécatomgraphie (Paris, Denis Janot: 1540), emblem 20.
University of Glasgow Library 618
19.1 Master WR, “Physiognomy and Chiromancy,” illumination, in Benedictus
Rughalm, Liber Quodlibetarius, fols. 80v–81r. Erlangen, Universitätsbibliothek
Erlangen-Nuremberg (inv. no. Ms. B 200). Image © Universitätsbibliothek
Erlangen-Nuremberg 636
19.2 Hans Burgkmair, “self-portrait”, woodcut, in Cocles, In diesem biechlin wirt
erfunden von Complexion der menschen (Augsburg, Schönsperger: 1515)
ca. 14 × 19 cm. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (inv. no. Res. 4 Anthr. 8).
Image © Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München 639
Illustrations xliii
19.3 Hans Wechtlin, “types of noses and mouths”, woodcut, in Johannes

Indagine, Die Kunst der Chiromantzey […] Physiognomey […] Natürlichen
Astrologey […] Complexion eines yegklichen menschens […] (Strasbourg,
Johannes Schott: 1523), 31r. Bethesda, MD, National Library of Medicine (inv.
no. WZ 240 138G 1523). Image © National Library of Medicine 640
19.4 Anon., “pair of foreheads”, woodcut, in Bartolomeo Cocles, Ein kurtzer
Bericht der gantzen Phisionomey unnd Ciromancy (Strasbourg, Johannes
Albrecht: 1534). Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek (inv. no. A.565.2
Quod (1)). Image © Herzog August Bibliothek 644
19.5 Anon., “sets of foreheads”, woodcut, in Bartolomeo Cocles, Physiognomiae
et Chiromantiae Compendium (Strasbourg, Johannes Albertus: 1536)
Bethesda, MD, National Library of Medicine (inv. no. WZ 240 A717pL 1534).
Image © National Library of Medicine 645
19.6 Anon., “sets of foreheads”, woodcut, in Bartolomeo Cocles, Phisionomi
und Chiromanci. Eyn news Complexion buchlein (Strasbourg, Jacob
Cammerlander: 1540), 3v. Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek (inv. no.
N97.4 Helm (7)). Image © Herzog August Bibliothek 646
19.7 Anon., “assorted heads”, woodcut, in Bartolomeo Cocles, Phisionomi
und Chiromanci. Eyn news Complexion buchlein (Strasbourg, Jacob
Cammerlander: 1540), 76r. Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek
(inv. no. N97.4 Helm (7)). Image © Herzog August Bibliothek 647
19.8 Master WR, “section devoted to Physiognomy”, illumination, in
Benedictus Rughalm, Liber Quodlibetarius, fols. 79v–80r. Erlangen,
Universitätsbibliothek Erlangen-Nuremberg (inv. no. Ms. B 200).
Image © Universitätsbibliothek Erlangen-Nuremberg 649
19.9 Anon., “types of foreheads”, in Tadeáš Hájek, Thaddaei Hagecii ab Hagek
doctoris medici Aphorismorum metoposcopicorum libellus vnus (Frankfurt,
Andreas Wechel: 1584), 72–73. London, Wellcome Library (shelfmark
3042/A) Image © Internet Archive 653
19.10 Anon., “drawings of foreheads”, pen and ink, in Achillini and Cocles,
De chiromantie principiis (Bologna, Hieronymus de Benedictis: 1523).
Bethesda, MD, National Library of Medicine (inv. no. WZ 240 C666c 1523)
Image © National Library of Medicine 653
19.11 Anon., “criminal heads,” woodcut, in Thomas Deloney, A Most Joyfull Songe
(London, Richard Jones: 1586), STC 6557.6. (reproduced by kind permission
of The Society of Antiquaries of London) Image © ProQuest commons as a
part of Early English Books Online 655
20.1 The Red Hall. Gdańsk, Main Town Hall. Image © Muzeum Gdańska 664
xliv Illustrations
20.2 Isaak van den Blocke, “Bildschema der Deckenkomposition”

(1604–1608), Gdańsk, Main Town Hall, Red Hall. Image © Agencja
Reklamowo-Wydawnicza A. Grzegorczyk 666
20.3 Isaak van den Blocke, Ceiling programme (1604–1608). View from the
mayor’s seat 667
20.4 Isaak van den Blocke, The Fall of Jericho (1604–1608). Oil on canvas,
193 × 112 cm. Gdańsk, Main Town Hall, Red Hall. Top of the ceiling
programme 668
20.5 Monika Biel, “Visualization of the Red Hall” (2018) 669
20.6 Isaak van den Blocke, Apotheosis of Gdańsk (1604–1608). Oil
on canvas, 331 × 237 cm. Gdańsk, Main Town Hall, Red Hall.
In the centre of the ceiling programme. Image © Agencja
Reklamowo-Wydawnicza A. Grzegorczyk 671
20.7 Detail of Fig. 20.7: top 672
20.8 Isaak van den Blocke, Apotheosis of Gdańsk (1604–1608). Gdańsk, Main Town
Hall, Red Hall. View from the mayor’s seat 673
20.9 Johann Carl Schultz, “RATHAUS / der Rechtstadt”, etching illustration
to Johann Carl Schultz’s Danzig und seine Bauwerke in malerischen
Original-Radirungen mit geometrischen Details und Text von Johann Carl
Schultz, Prof. und Director an der Provinzial-Kunstschule in Danzig (Gdańsk:
1855) 10. Image © PAN Biblioteka Gdańska 675
21.1 Hand-written lottery slip, and ownership inscription on title page, from
Innocenzio Ringhieri, Cento giuochi liberali et d’ingegno […] (Bologna,
Anselmo Giaccarelli: 1551). Newberry Library, Chicago [Case V 16 .747]
(images: author) 685
21.2 Wheel of Fortune and facing page with Kings David, Salomon, Turno, and
Jubba, from Lorenzo Spirito, Libro delle Sorti (Perugia, Stephanus Arndes
Gerardus Thomae, and Paulus Mechter: 1482) Stadtbibliothek Ulm
(Schad 13 281) 1v–2. (images: Creative Commons) 688
21.3 Leone dice and Montone sphere pages, from Lorenzo Spirito, Libro delle
sorti (Perugia, Stephanus Arndes, Gerardus Thomae, and Paulus Mechter:
1482). Stadtbibliothek Ulm (Schad 13 281) 11v and 18v. (images: Creative
Commons) 688
21.4 Heinrich Vogtherr the Elder, front and back of Wheel of Fortune woodcut,
with movable dial replaced by later engravings, from Pambst Paulus,
Looßbuch zu ehren der römischen, vngerischen vnnd böhemischen Künigin
(Strasbourg, Balthasar Beck: 1546) fol. 3r–v. Newberry Library, Chicago [Case
folio BF1850 .P36 1546] (images: author) 691
Illustrations xlv
21.5 Wheel of Fortune, from Laurens L’Esprit, Le passetemps de la fortvne des

dez. Ingenieusement compilé par Maistre Laurens L’Esprit […] (Lyon, Par les
heritiers de F. Didier, 1582) fol. A2r. Newberry Library, Chicago [Wing ZP 539
.D556] (image: author) 692
21.6 Wheel of Fortune title page, from Laurenzo del Spirito, T boec van der
auōturenende van tijt cortīge, van versinnen (Antwerp, J. van Ghele: 1608) fol.
Air. Newberry Library, Chicago [Wing ZP 646 .G345] (image: author) 693
21.7 Title page, from manuscript of Lorenzo Spirito, Libro delle sorte fatto per
spasso (Italy, n.p.: ca. 1600s). Newberry Library, Chicago [VAULT Case
MS 5A 27] np, (image: Newberry) 694
21.8 Kings page and Fleur-de-Lis dice page, from Laurens L’Esprit, Le passetemps
de la fortvne des dez. Ingenieusement compilé par Maistre Laurens L’Esprit […]
(Lyon, Par les heritiers de F. Didier: 1582) fols. A4v–B1r. Newberry Library,
Chicago [Wing ZP 539 .D556] (image: author) 695
21.9 Sagitaire sphere and prophet Adam, from Laurens L’Esprit, Le passetemps de
la fortvne des dez. Ingenieusement compilé par Maistre Laurens L’Esprit […]
(Lyon, Par les heritiers de F. Didier: 1582) fols. F4v–G1r. Newberry Library,
Chicago [Wing ZP 539 .D556] (image: author) 696
21.10 September and de Katte, dice pages, from Laurenzo del Spirito, T boec van
der auōturenende van tijt cortīge, van versinnen (Antwerp, By J. van Ghele:
1608) fols. Avr-Aviv. Newberry Library, Chicago [Wing ZP 646 .G345] (image:
author) 697
21.11 Heinrich Vogtherr the Elder, Kings Salathief and Zorobabel, dice pages,
from Paulus Pambst, Loossbuch zu ehren der römischen, vngerischen vnnd
böhemischen Künigin (Strassbourg, Balthasar Beck: 1546) fols. 42v–43r.
Newberry Library, Chicago [Case folio BF1850 .P36] (image: author) 698
21.12 Question and Answer details, from manuscript of Lorenzo Spirito, Libro delle
sorte fatto per spasso (Italy, n.p.: ca. 1600s) n.p. Newberry Library, Chicago
[VAULT Case MS 5A 27] (images: Newberry) 700
21.13 Leone dice and Montone sphere pages, from manuscript of Lorenzo Spirito,
Libro delle sorte fatto per spasso (Italy, n.p.: ca. 1600s) n.p. Newberry Library,
Chicago [VAULT Case MS 5A 27] (images: Newberry) 700
21.14 Heinrich Vogtherr the Elder, title and dedication pages, from Paulus Pambst
Loossbuch zu ehren der römischen, vngerischen vnnd böhemischen Künigin
(Strassbourg, Balthasar Beck: 1546) fols. 1r & 2r. Newberry Library, Chicago
[Case folio BF1850 .P36 1546] (images: author) 702
21.15 Heinrich Vogtherr the Elder, details of Wheel of Fortune (Fig. 21.4) and
Aegidius Saedeler II, engraved title page, from Oswald Crollius, Osvaldi
Crollii Veterani Hassi Basilica Chymica (Frankfurt, Ulrich Bollinger: 1609;
xlvi Illustrations
reprint ed., 1611). Bayerisches Staatsbibliothek, Munich (4 Alch. 17) (images:

author and Public Domain [Europeana Collections]) 703
21.16 Heinrich Vogtherr the Elder, Wheel of Fortune recto and verso dials,
from Paulus Pambst, Loossbuch zu ehren der römischen, vngerischen
vnnd böhemischen Künigin (Strassbourg, Balthasar Beck: 1546) fol. 3r–v.
Bayerisches Staatsbibliothek, Munich (ESlg/2 Gymn. 31 m). Images © Public
Domain (Europeana Collections) 704
21.17 Woodcut title page and verso with mercenary soldier volvelle, from Thuys d
fortunē met het huys der doot (Rotterdam, By de weduwe ende de kinderen
van Jan van Ghelen: 1610). Newberry Library, Chicago [Wing ZP 646 .G345]
(images: author) 706
22.1 Unknown inventor, Untitled disentanglement problem also known as
Solomon’s Seal. Reconstructed from the description in Luca Pacioli,
De Viribus Quantitatis (ca. 1500). Nylon cord, brass rings, and pine,
3.81 × 8.80 × 1.8 cm (wood block). Image © the author 713
22.2 Unknown inventor, Untitled disentanglement problem also known as the
Victoria puzzle. Reconstructed from the description in Luca Pacioli,
De Viribus Quantitatis (ca. 1500). Nylon cord and cherry plywood,
1.0 × 3.6 × 19.0 cm (plywood). Image © the author 716
22.3 Unknown inventor, Untitled disentanglement problem also known as
the Chinese Rings. Reconstructed from the description in Luca Pacioli,
De Viribus Quantitatis (ca. 1500). Pine, penny nails, brass rings, copper rod,
and a repurposed jigsaw handle, 1.8 × 10.9 × 4.3 cm (wood block);
2.3 × 26.0 × 2.3 cm (wire bar and handle). Image © the author 719
Introduction: What’s in a Secret?
Ralph Dekoninck, Agnès Guiderdoni, and Walter S. Melion
Quid est secretum? Visual Representation of Secrets in Early Modern Europe,

1500–1700 is the companion volume to Intersections 65.1, Quid est sacra-
mentum? Visual Representation of Sacred Mysteries in Early Modern Europe,
1400–1700. Whereas the latter volume focussed on sacramental mysteries, the
current one examines a wider range of secret subjects. Reflecting on the rep-
resentation of secrets (and mysteries) is to reflect on the representation of
knowledge, on access to it, and, ultimately, on the nature of that knowledge.
In the early modern period, discursive and symbolical sites of the representa-
tion of secrets were closely related to epistemic changes that took place during
and after the later middle ages, as both the epistemology – that is, the condi-
tions for the existence of knowledge – and the sum and substance of what
was construed (and coveted) as knowledge underwent a deep transformation.
The most sought-after knowledge consisted of the secrets of divinely created
Nature, combined with the supreme ontological ‘secret’, that is, the mystery
of the Christian God.1 These two epistemic registers were thought to operate
complementarily: divinity informs the order of nature, depositing its poten-
tially extractable secreta, and in turn, nature contains indices of the divine
order and its transcendent, intuitable, but ultimately unreachable secreta.
Franciscus Costerus, S.J., provides a handy formulation of this complex epis-
teme in his account of the relation between the life and deeds of Christ, which
are apprehensible according to the laws of Nature, and the mysteries – his term
for ‘mystery’ is verborgenheyt (hidden thing) – that underlie the vita Christi
and may be partially glimpsed in and through it. Costerus is explaining why
the Holy Spirit chose to inspire Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John to compose
the Gospels:
Den Heyligen Geest verklaert ons door S. Ian, dat de daden Christi soo
groot ende soo ontallick zijn, dat de gantsche wereldt niet en soude kon-
nen begrijpen de boecken diemen daer af schrijven mocht. Waer in wy
twee dinghen te bemercken hebben. Het een is de grootheydt ende uytne-
melickheydt van de daden onses Heeren: het ander is onse kranckheydt
1 On the secrets of Nature (arcana naturae) and various approaches to them throughout his-
tory, see Hadot P., Le Voile d’Isis: essai sur l’histoire de l’idée de nature (Paris: 2004).
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004432260_002

2 DEKONINCK, GUIDERDONI AND MELION
ende swackheydt, de welcke onsen goeden Godt ende Vader aensiende,

ende willende der selver onderstant doen, heeft hem daer mede ver-
noeght ghehouden, dat hy ons een kleyn deelken daer aff soude doen
verkondighen, doch in sulcke volcomenheydt, dat het ons ghenoech zy,
namelick soo veel als ons ter salicheydt profijtelick ende noodich is. Tot
desen eynde heeft hy verkoren vier heylighe mannen, die wy noemen vier
Evangelisten, als Secretarisen van sijn hemelsch Hof; door der welcker
handt hy ghewilt heeft dat de historie van het leven ende daden Christi,
met de geheele verborgenheyt onser verlossinghe, by register ghestelt
soude worden in sijne H. Kercke, voor soo veel als hem ter salicheydt sijn-
der uytverkorene goedt ende oorbaerlick ghedocht heeft.2
Through Saint John [ John 21:25], the Holy Spirit illuminates us concern-
ing the actions of Christ, which were so great and innumerable that the
whole world could hardly contain the books to be written about them.
Whereby two things are to be observed. The one is the greatness and
excellence of our Lord’s deeds; the other is our infirmity and weakness,
seeing which, and wishing to offer support, our good God and Father sat-
isfied himself by promulgating a small part thereof [i.e., the greatness
and excellence of Christ], but in such sufficiency as should be profit-
able and needful for our salvation. To this end, he chose four holy men,
whom we call the four Evangelists, as Secretaries of his heavenly Court;
by whose hand he willed that the history of the life and deeds of Christ,
with the whole mystery (verborgenheyt) of our salvation, be placed on the
record in his Holy Church, as much as seemed good and fitting to him for
the salvation of his chosen ones.
The humanist impulse towards a syncretist philology and its proponents’ ef-
forts to reconcile ancient philosophies and theologies with the Christian tradi-
tion, in particular its exegetical and allegorical operations, heightened the dual
emphasis on parsing Nature and the Divine. According to the most widely held
doxa, still grounded in medieval theology, Nature, or the Creation, contains
indices, or signs, of the Truth of God, which the learned and deserving ‘reader’
must decipher if he wishes to discover the Creator or find his way towards an
encounter with Him. As one may deduce from this premise, the representation
of the secret engages with issues such as the status of Nature and the episte-
mology of the time and manifestation of God in that Nature. Throughout the
2 Costerus Franciscus, S.J., Het nieu Testament onses Heeren Iesu Christi, met korte uytleggingen
(Antwerp, Joachim Trognaesius: 1614) 1.
INTRODUCTION: WHAT ’ S IN A SECRET ? 3
sixteenth century and into the seventeenth, these secrets and mysteries were
construed as forbidden knowledge, whose unveiling or revelation was subject
to strict rules of conduct on the part of the ‘applicant’.3
Understanding these multiple secrets (natural, religious, scientific, etc.) be-
came so important in the early modern period that a new literary genre de-
veloped, resulting in a huge number of ‘books of secrets’.4 William Eamon has
explained the significance of these books of secrets for the scientific revolution,
and how they ‘were bearers of attitudes and values that proved instrumental
in shaping scientific culture in the early modern era’.5 Indeed, even though
there were still supporters of the doctrine of hidden knowledge in the early
seventeenth century, the slow but inexorable upheaval that took place in the
intellectual realm gradually disqualified the many visual and literary devices
designed to represent these secrets, as well as the allegorical and so-called ob-
scure languages used to transmit them.6 One consequence of this transitional
situation, lasting almost two centuries, was that the representation and ma-
nipulation of a secret thing – be it a magical formula, a handcrafted invention,
or a divine mystery – followed multiple, sometimes contradictory paradigms,
which can be observed in the variety of devices, texts, images, and objects pre-
sented in the essays of the present volume.
Secrets, even when they seem interred within impenetrable layers of ob-
scurity, resistant to disclosure and interpretation, must be partially discern-
ible lest they run the risk of remaining altogether unknown or ignored; they
must be seen to be hidden by devices that call, to some extent, in one way or
another, for decipherment. If symbolical and allegorical imagery, both literary
and pictorial, often hinges on the dual task of disguising and revealing secrets,
3 On efforts to impede or prohibit access to hidden or ‘higher’ knowledge and the impact of the
‘new sciences’ on the search for such knowledge, see in Ginzburg C., Myths, Emblems, Clues,
trans. J. Tedeschi – A. Tedeschi (London: 1990), esp. the chapter “High and Low: The Theme
of Forbidden Knowledge in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries”.
4 Courcelles D. de (ed.), D’un principe philosophique à un genre littéraire: les ‘secrets’, actes
du colloque de la Newberry Library de Chicago, 11–14 septembre 2002 (Paris: 2005), esp.
Dagron T., “Secrets de la nature et mystères divins: Corneille Agrippa lecteur de Pic”
105–131; Couzinet M.-D., “Le De Secretis (1562) de Jérôme Cardan, ou l’art des secrets” 133–157;
and Conley T., “Des secrets se créent: À propos des Fables d’Esope Phrygien (1547) traduites
par Gilles Corrozet” 279–295.
5 Eamon W., Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern
Culture (Princeton: 1994) 9. See also Leong E.–Rankin A. (eds.), Secrets and Knowledge in
Medicine and Science, 1500–1800 (London: 2011), which contains an extensive bibliography of
recent scholarship on medical, scientific, and technical secrets.
6 See, among others, Rossi P., The Birth of Modern Science (Oxford: 2001), esp. chapter 2 “The
Secrets”.
allegorical literature provided one of best contexts for the propagation of an

elaborate theoretical discourse on the nature, form, function, and meaning of
secrets. For example, the Jesuit symbolist, Silvestro Pietrasanta, in his great
treatise on the impresa, De symbolis heroïcis, provides one of the fullest ac-
counts of the form and function of visualized secrets. The impresa distils its
bearer’s identity in a way that even while disclosing who that person truly is,
purposefully withholds that person’s true identity from the uninitiated. The
circulation of the impresa tracks the circulation of secret knowledge amongst
the person’s circle of friends and associates. In chapter 3 of Book VII, “Whether
Images whose Properties Are Obscure, Are Fit to be Used as Heroic Figures”,
Pietrasanta focuses on the symbolisation of religious matters and venerable
truths, but his observations turn out to be applicable almost universally to all
heroic symbols. He makes his case by paraphrasing Girolamo Rucellai, who
advised that perpetual symbols, i.e., symbols of enduring certitudes, should be
partly concealed from their viewers, appearing as if half- rather than fully-lit.
Moreover, they should be ‘shamefaced’ (‘verecundas’), not recondite (‘recondi-
tas’): their meaning must be discoverable to anyone willing and able to take up
the challenge of interpreting them. They should be secretive, in other words,
but not impenetrable, unlike the symbols associated with theatres and public
spectacles, which must be brightly spotlit (‘clarissimas’) and instantly know-
able (‘dum videntur, agnoscantur statim’). The notion that symbols should be
neither too clear nor too obscure derives from Paolo Giovio, but Pietrasanta
is more concerned than Giovio to set the threshold at which secrecy shades
into obscurity, and riddling becomes obfuscation: ‘Paolo Giovio desired them
to be neither too clear nor too obscure: otherwise, if they be too clear, any-
one at all will comprehend heroic symbols; yet, if they be too obscure, it will
be necessary to enlist a sybilline interpreter’.7 Images so obscure that they fail
satisfactorily to communicate an author’s intention (‘mentem auctoris’) can
on no account function as the basis of symbols, since they will prove resistant
to interpretation and, as such, empty of significance (‘in his deest significatio,
idcirco symbola censeri non possunt’).8
Consequently, Pietrasanta proscribes the figurae of totally unfamiliar ob-
jects, such as gems or plants from the Indies. Even so, he is quick to qualify
this prohibition: little known European things may be pictured, so long as the
lemma helps somewhat to elucidate them. He approves the heroic symbol of
7 Pietrasanta Silvestro, De symbolis heroïcis libri IX (Antwerp, Ex officina Plantiniana Baltha

saris Moreti: 1634) 316: ‘Paulus Iovius nec admodum claras nec admodum obscuras eas de-
siderat: alioquin quivis e vulgo Heroïca Symbola percipiet, si nimium clara sint; si autem sint
nimium obscura, oportebit interpretem Sibyllam accersire’.
8 Ibid. 317.
Figure 1 Cornelis Galle after Andries Pauwels, Impresa of Ercole Tasso: Itala sum, quiesce,
in Sylvestro Pietrasanta, S.J., De symbolis heroicis libri ix (Nine Books of Heroic
Symbols) (Antwerp, Ex officina Plantiniana Balthasaris Moreti: 1634) 318
Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library
Ercole Tasso, on these grounds: it features a tassus (yew-tree), along with the
lemma, ‘Itala sum, quiesce’ (‘I am Italian; be at rest’), which turns on the dis-
tinction, made by Pliny in book X, chapter 16, of the Natural History, between
the coma-inducing Spanish yew that endangers all who sleep beneath it, and
the Italian yew that threatens noone, being entirely benign [Fig. 1]. The lemma
assures the beholder that he is looking at the benign, not the toxic species of
yew, and the heroic symbol thus avows that Tasso, like this tree, does harm to
noone. Implicit in the impresa is the contrast between benevolent Italians and
duplicitous Spaniards: one may rest at ease in the presence of the former, but
woebetide anyone who seeks to repose in the presence of the latter. Knowledge
of Pliny is the line drawn in the sand, that demarcates between those for whom
this heroic symbol is respectively legible or indecipherable.
Whereas Pietrasanta purports to detect the secretum Tasso himself im-
planted, Johannes Sprengius, in his widely circulated Metamorphoses Ovidii,
argumentis quidem soluta oratione, enarrationibus autem et allegorijs ele-
giaco versu accuratissime expositae, summaque diligentia ac studio illustratae
(Metamorphoses of Ovid, most Accurately Expounded by Arguments in Prose,
and by Narratives and Allegories in Verse, and Illustrated with the Utmost
Diligence and Zeal) of 1563, strongly implies that he himself has perfused the
secreta he claims to uncover in Ovid’s poem. Updating the allegorical program
of the Ovide moralisé for humanist readers, he asserts that the poet’s transmi-
grationes must be received as allegories of the heart: insensate desire, fuelled
by an anachronistic failure of Christian morality, is justly punished when hard-
hearted men, deprived of virtue, find themselves petrified, covered over, or
stupefied as they transform into things of nature. These and other such moral
exempla will be found to lie deeply hidden, concealed within the body of Ovid’s
poem, if the reader-viewer will but pause studiedly to cognize it. Secrets of this
kind, suggests Sprengius, must be located or, better, posited by the Christian
reader intent on justifying Ovid as a source of virtue. In a curious paradox, this
genre of moralizing secretum is as if secreted, that is, inserted into the poem at
the very moment, through the very operation, of its unfolding.
Sunt autem in primis observandae transmigrationes hominum in pecu-

des, in feras, in arbores, in fluvios, in saxa, et in res alias anima privatas,
quibus conditiones et proprietates mortalium luculenter exprimuntur:
Nam omnes qui a virtutis tramite ad viam flagitiorum delabuntur, se
foedis libidinibus polluunt, perniciosis indulgent voluptatibus, aut alijs
vitiorum pestibus laborant, donec in hoc turpissimo et miserrimo vitae
statu perseverant, neque ad sanitatem per gratiam Christi, et morum
emendationem revertuntur: eos, inquam omnes, quia non humanam, sed
beluinam vitam transigunt, certum est coram Deo re vera nihil aliud esse
quam bestias, de sanitate mentis deturbatas, nihil aliud quam truncos et
stipites, quam cautes et scopulos, quorum cor adeo stupefactum, indura-
tum, et callo quasi obductum est, ut nullis neque minis, neque precibus,
neque mandatis, neque commonefactionibus divinis ad obedientiam
flectantur, dum petulanter aures suas ad omnes frugiferos et salutares
Dei monitus et praeceptiones occludunt, et in suis perire delictis potius,
quam ad meliorem vitae frugem redire, concupiscunt.
Haec et alia plura, si quis accuratam de ijs suscipiat cogitationem, in
fabulis Ovidianis in profundo quasi abstrusa et abdita latere animadver-
tet. Hoc igitur modo legendi sunt tam Poetae quam Historici, ut ipsa lec-
tio non solum ad suavitatem et delectationem inde percipiendam, sed ad
virtutes potius exprimendas atque imitandas, et ad turpitudinem procul
obijciendam referatur.9
But first of all, there must be observed the metamorphoses (transmigra-

tiones) of persons into cattle, into wild animals, into trees, into rivers,
into stones, and into other things devoid of a soul, by means of which
the conditions and properties of mortal men are expressed. For all who
fall from the way of virtue into the way of vice, pollute themselves with
foul desires, indulge in pernicious pleasures, or labour under other of-
fensive plagues, while they persevere in this most disgraceful and abject
state of life, nor do they revert to health through the grace of Christ and
the amendment of morals: certain it is, say I, that they all are truly noth-
ing more than beasts in the eyes of God, for they lead a life not human
but bestial, deprived of sanity of mind, being nothing other than stocks
and trunks, rocks and crags, whose hearts are so senseless, hardened, and
covered over by thick skin, that neither by threats nor prayers, or com-
mandments or divine admonitions are they moved to obedience, while
petulantly they shut their ears to the fruitful and salutary counsels and
precepts of God, desiring more to perish by their offences than return to
a better, more virtuous life.
These and many other such matters, a person might apprehend, as
it were, lying deeply hidden and concealed in the Ovidian fables, if one
9 Sprengius Johannes, Metamorphoses Ovidii, argumentis quidem soluta oratione, enarrationi-

bus autem et allegorijs elegiaco versu accuratissime expositae, summaque diligentia ac studio
illustratae […] una cum vivis singularum transformationum iconibus, a Vergilio Solis, eximio
pictore, delineatis (Frankfurt, Georgius Corvinus – Sigismundus Feierabendt – Haered.
Wygandus Gallus: 1563), fol. 7r–v.
were to ponder them with studied thought. Poets and Historians must
therefore be read in this way, so that by this reading one is referred there-
after not only to the perception of sweetness and delectation, but rather
to the imitation and expression of virtues, and, from afar, to the opposi-
tion of turpitude.
By following the thread of a varied corpus of texts, images and objects, the
articles in this volume expound the development of the representation of se-
crets between 1500 and 1700, against the background of epistemic transfor-
mations relating to the status of knowledge and the objective of divulging its
secrets. The kinds of distinction made by authors such as Costerius, Pietrasanta,
and Sprengius, the attention they bestow on the secret and its threshold of
representability, the questions they pose about how and why such secrets
can be known, what is simultaneously discernible and indiscernible about
them, are the issues this volume aims to address. Because the secret, like any
mysterium, is to some extent reserved, it necessarily somehow eludes the
reader-viewer, implying ‘une mise à distance d’un savoir’; both known and
yet not known, secreta are distinguished by their quality of self-contradiction,
which constitutes their alluring difficulty. Thus, the representation of secre-
ta turns on a paradox, which may give rise to an aporia. Louis Marin, in his
Lectures traversières, demonstrates that the secret consists in a dual discourse,
oscillating between ostentation and occultation: for a secret to exist, it must
make known its status as a secret; Marin thus proposes to speak of a ‘secrecy
effect’ (‘effet de secret’), and examines the conditions under which the repre-
sentation of aporetic paradoxa becomes possible.10
This effect pervades a large swath of the religious culture of the time, as is il-
lustrated by several articles in this volume. The secret lies at the heart not only
of the Christian mysteries and thus of the Catholic liturgy, but also, in a more
private sphere, at the core of spiritual exercises that aimed at an introspective
movement towards the locus mysticus where God reveals His deepest secrets
(Melion). This heart or ground of the soul, which designates the interior place
whereto the votary retreats, resonates externally through the interplay with
sacred or devotional spaces, as for example the monk’s cell where a rich imag-
ery and imaginary can be projected onto and into this locus conclusus (Falque,
Lopez-Calderon). The temporal dimension of the typological mysteries (the
field of the allegoria in factis), intermingling different temporalities (Vert),
adds yet another experiential layer to the spatial involvement with secrecy.
10 Marin L., “Logiques du secret”, in Lectures traversières, Bibliothèque du Collège interna-

tional de philosophie (Paris: 1991) 247–258.
There were also instances when artists – Rembrandt, for example – strove to
represent the dark inscrutability of the divine, a darkness resistant to illumina-
tive disclosure (Onuf).
Several contributions explore the complex relation between material and
spiritual concerns, between the workshop environment and the notional place
where secrets are kept, interiorly cultivated: arguing that manual knowledge is
an important vector for the cultivation and transmission of secrets, they show
how secrets are fashioned at the threshold where techne and episteme meet
(Campbell, Leitch, Viljoen). The practical or, more precisely, artisanal element
calls to mind that the terms mysterium and ministerium – the latter referring
etymologically to notions of service and ritual performance – have common
roots, and that secrets can be concealed and/or revealed through bodily pro-
cesses and gestures. Alchemical ideals and workshops were a further source for
notions of the secrets lodged in matter and for the conviction that artifice has
the power both to reveal and conceal privileged knowledge. The Dutch term
insettinghe (insertion), as utilized by artisan-rhetoricians to refer to the signi-
fying properties of duly religious, but also of idolatrous images, likewise func-
tioned to denote what was secret to one party, as well as secret from another
(Jonckheere). The shared but privileged knowledge one brought to bear when
interacting with a sacred image determined whether it was being used for good
or ill, as an instrument of true devotion or misplaced worship.
These beliefs tended to collide with a certain scientific drift that gradually
ingrained a hostility to esoteric knowledge. The secrecy effect came to be sus-
pected of concealing or propagating ignorance, or worse, of fostering dupery
and lies that favour appearance over truth. This development, far from fore-
closing the culture of the secret, led in some instances to an uneasy state of
hybridisation, in which the ‘modern’ sciences were applied to the investigation
of nature, but findings were spectacularly displayed by harnessing discursive
tropes closely associated with the preservation of secret knowledge, as in the
case of the Dutch anatomical theatres (Eversmann). Another kind of civic
space wherein secrets were ensconced for the inquiring viewer capable of ex-
cavating them was the town hall (Biel). Here the discursive process of unrav-
elling entangled allegories becomes a source of corporate identity-formation.
On the other hand, there were other fields of learning – geography, to name
but one – wherein the new science, descriptive and mathematical, was seen
to be compatible with exegetical hermeneutics, in that both procedures were
thought to engage with the secreta of divinely ordained Creation (Wandel).
Other articles investigate the shift from one regime of secret to another, nego-
tiating between the sacred and the secular, public and private, natural and arti-
ficial, God-given and manually fabricated (Dekoninck, Guiderdoni, Nørgaard /
Nagelsmit). The ‘ingenious mystery’, to use Claude-François Ménestrier’s ter-

minology, designates ‘the spirit that makes mystery where there is none’.11
This kind of secret depends not on the nature of the thing – what one might
call an ontological mystery – but on the visibly rhetorical production of
secreta. Grazia (grace), even after it came to be appreciated less as an expres-
sion of divine love and more as an effect of art, continued to be characterised
as a secret, both in its mode of production and reception, in that grace, wheth-
er associated with the spirit of enthusiasm or with the sublime, was thought to
be inexplicable (Weissert).
Emblems and enigmas often turn on a conspicuously hidden meaning –
conveyed allegorically, through figures such as catachresis or paronomasia –
whose presence is encoded for the express purpose of being decoded by the
reader-viewer (Wade). The switch that triggers the process of decipherment
is often a veiled analogy discoverable only to those reader-viewer gifted with
powers of discretion and discernment, and practised in exercising them
(Bielak, Conley). Symbolic devices of this type are closely related to recre-
ational pastimes, such as games and puzzles, that hinge on the discovery of an
obscure modus operandi or the activation of a divinatory method of play (Karr
Schmidt, Rothstein). It is worth remembering, however, that sixteenth- and
seventeenth-century emblems, enigmas, and related artes symbolicae, even
when they operated in tandem with conspicuous feats of rhetorical or arti-
sanal artifice, can still harbour other kinds of mystery, coexisting with that ear-
lier regime of secrecy that encompasses innate rather than factitious secreta.
11 Menestrier Claude-François, La philosophie des images enigmatiques (Lyons, Hilaire

Baritel: 1694) 108.
part 1
The Spiritual locus of Secret
∵
chapter 1
In the Secrecy of the Cell: Late Medieval Carthusian

Devotional Imagery and Meditative Practices in the
Low Countries
Ingrid Falque
Si ab exordio quis rite revolvat atque meminerit, hoc (ni fallor) adspiciet,
omnia pene divina secreta, non in turba sive frequentia, sed in solitudine
atque in abdito, Dei esse amicis ostensa.
Denys the Carthusian, De Vita et fine solitarii (Book I, chapter 30)
∵
Founded in 1084 by St. Bruno, the Carthusian order is well-known for its aus-
tere and simple way of life.* The Carthusians indeed extol solitude, silence, and
simplicity as the only ways to cultivate a perfect contemplative life.1 In the late
Middle Ages, the monks lived a life of seclusion, spending most of the time
alone in their cells, praying, reading, and copying books. The only time they
spent together was during the offices of matins, lauds, and vespers in church,
Sunday mass, as well as mealtimes and the chapter meeting on Sundays. Apart
from the latter, all communal activities were performed in silence. Considered
* This article delivers the first results of an on-going research project dedicated to the idea
and practice of image-making in Northern late medieval spirituality, with a special focus on
the contexts of the Carthusian order and Modern Devotion. Started in 2018, this project is
funded by the F.R.S.-FNRS (Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique, Belgium). I would
like to thank the organizers of this Lovis Corinth Colloquium for giving me the opportunity
to introduce my first thoughts on this project in this volume.
1 For an introduction to the Carthusian order and its history in the Low Countries, see
Nissen P., “De kartuizerorde: een eeuwenoud getuigenis van stille concentratie”, in Pansters K.
(ed.), Het geheim van de stilte. De besloten wereld van de Roermondse Kartuizers, exh. cat.,
Kartuizerklooster ‘O.L. Vrouw van Bethlehem’ Roermond, (Zwolle: 2009) 12–21; and Pansters K.,
“The Carthusians in the Low Countries: Introduction”, in Pansters K. (ed.), The Carthusians
in the Low Countries. Studies in Monastic History and Heritage, Studia Cartusiana 4 (Leuven:
2014) 11–29.

14 Falque
to be ‘hermits living in a communal monastery’,2 the Carthusians praise the

cell as the core of their spiritual life. This article investigates the role of this sol-
itary space as the locus of Carthusian image-based meditative practices during
the late Middle Ages. As we will see, the monks conceived the cell as a solitary
but also a secret place, the only one in which they can achieve their purpose on
life, that is contemplation of God.
1 The Carthusian Cell as a Secret and Sacred Place
In the period under consideration, the purpose of the Carthusian way of life
and daily routine was to preserve silence and solitude, which the monks of
St. Bruno understood as the sole and most perfect way to contemplate and
attain union with God. A triple spatial division aimed at creating silence and
solitude can be observed in the late medieval charterhouse: the desert of the
charterhouse (that is the location of the monastery in a remote space), the
cloistered walls (which creates a separation from the outside world), and
the cell (which is the core of the Carthusian life).3 The inner self of the Carthu-
sian monk (his soul) is located at the centre of this ‘topography of solitude and
introversion’ which ‘reflects a centripetal dynamics, a movement directed in-
ward and towards the centre. It is through prayer in the innermost self, in a cell
in a desert, that the monk seeks Christ and becomes receptive to his Word’.4
The cell and the life of seclusion spent in this secret place are indeed the
distinctive features of the Carthusian order. Since the foundation of the order,
the cell has been the focus of interest of several writers who have endeavoured
to acknowledge its specificity and its essential role in the contemplative life
of the monks of St. Bruno. The fifth prior of the Grande Chartreuse, Guigo I,
notably wrote in Chapter 14 of his Consuetudines that ‘our main application
and our vocation are to attend to the silence and to the solitude of the cell’.5
Written between 1121 and 1128 at the behest of the priors of the first Carthusian
2 Nissen P., “Carthusian Worlds, Carthusian Images: The Fascination of Silence and
Inaccessibility”, Studies in Spirituality 24 (2014) 153.
3 Nabert N., Les larmes, la nourriture, le silence. Essai de spiritualité cartusienne, sources et
continuité (Paris: 2001) 80–82. Also see Rieder B., Deus locum dabit. Studien zur Theologie
des Kartäuserpriors Guigo I. (1083–1136), Veröffentlichungen des Grabmann-Institutes 42
(Paderborn: 1997) 192–205.
4 Pansters, “The Carthusians in the Low Countries” 24.
5 Guigues Ier le chartreux, Coutumes de chartreuse. Introduction, texte critique, traduction et
notes par un chartreux, Sources chrétiennes 313 (Paris: 1984; reprint, Paris: 2001) 196: ‘[…]
quoniam precipue studium et propositum nostrum est, silentio et solitudini celle vacare […]’
(my translation).
In the Secrecy of the Cell 15
foundations, these customs cannot be considered to be proper rules, but they

have nonetheless stabilised and codified the Carthusian way of life and have
played a crucial role in its definition and application over the centuries.6
The last chapter of Guigo’s Consuetudines, “A Commendation of the Solitary
Life” (“De commendatione solitariae vitae”), praises the solitary life of the
Carthusians by referring to models and antecedents from the Old and New
Testaments:
Indeed, you know that in the Old Testament and especially in the New
Testament, almost all the most sublime and deep secrets have been re-
vealed to the Lord’s servants not in the tumult of the crowd, but when
they were alone. And when they wished to meditate more profoundly
on certain truths, to pray with more freedom or to become strangers to
the interests of the earth through a rapture of the spirit, these friends
of God have almost always avoided the embarrassment of the multitude
and searched for the advantages of solitude.7
The same idea can also be found in the modern statutes of the order:
(The cell) is holy ground and a holy place in which the Lord and his ser-
vant often talk together as a man does with his friend; in which the faith-
ful soul frequently has intercourse with the Word of God, the bride is in
the company of the Bridegroom, the heavenly is united to the earthly, the
divine to the human.8
Likewise, in his Golden Epistle (or Epistola ad fratres de Monte Dei), a letter
addressed to the Carthusians of Mont-Dieu written around 1144,9 William of
Saint-Thierry states: ‘For the cell cherishes, nourishes, and enfolds the son of
6 See the introduction of Guigues Ier le chartreux, Coutumes de chartreuse 17–23.

7 Guigues Ier le chartreux, Coutumes de chartreuse 288: ‘Nostis enim in veteri et in novo max-
ime testamento, omnia pene maiora et subtiliora secreta, non in turbis tumultuosis, sed cum
soli essent dei famulis revelata, ipsosque dei famulos, cum vel subtilius aliquid meditari, vel
liberius orare, vel a terrenis per mentis excessum alienari cuperent, fere semper multitudinis
impedimenta vitasse, et solitudinis captasse commoditates’ (my translation).
8 Quoted in Yocum D.S., Petrarch’s Humanist Writing and Carthusian Monasticism. The Secret
Language of the Self (Turnhout: 2013) 59: ‘Praecipue stadium et propositum nostrum est si-
lentio et solitudini cellae vacare. Haec enim terra sancta et locas est in quo Dominus et ser-
vus eius saepe colluquuntur sicut vir ad amicum suum. In quo crebro fidelis anima Verbo Dei
coniungitur, sponsa Sponso sociatur, terrenis caelestia, humanis divina uniuntur’.
9 For the critical edition, see Guillaume de Saint-Thierry, Lettre aux Frères du Mont-Dieu (Lettre
d’or), ed. J.M. Dechanet, Sources chrétiennes 301 (Paris: 1975). On William of Saint-Thierry
16 Falque
grace, the fruit of its womb. It leads him to the fullness of perfection and makes
him worthy to hold converse with God’.10
These ‘official’ and ‘literary’ statements make clear that the individual cell
and the activities performed within this space form the heart of the Carthusian
monk’s life. But what are these activities, and what did a Carthusian cell look
like in the late Middle Ages? The activities pursued by the monks in their
cells were mainly reading, writing, and meditating. Specific times of day were
also dedicated to manual labour, such as gardening. The customs written by
Guigo – and more specifically chapter 28 – prescribe which objects should be
found in the cell for the fostering of the contemplative life. Among them were
the materials needed for writing – such as a pen case, quill, chalk sticks, ink-
well, knife, ruler, board, etc.11 The monks were supposed to copy books intently,
‘because we want the books to be made with the greatest diligence and to be
kept with great care, like perpetual food for our souls, so that we can preach
the word of God with our hands, since we cannot do it with our mouths’, as
Guigo clarifies.12
Each monk was also allowed to keep in his cell two books borrowed from
the communal library.13 As Jessica Brantley states, ‘Carthusian books serve as
instruments of the spiritual imagination for Carthusian hermits; they struc-
ture the experiences of individual contemplation that are the aim and pur-
pose of the order’.14 An historiated initial in a manuscript of the Catholicon
beati Augustini of Nicolaus Craeyverwe, dated c. 1481–1484 and most probably
from the Koningsdal charterhouse near Ghent, illustrates particularly well
the importance of solitary reading and writing as assiduous daily practices of
the charterhouse [Fig. 1.1].15 The initial shows a monk in his cell, writing at a
and this text, see McGinn B., The Growth of Mysticism. Vol. II of the Presence of God: A
History of Western Christian Mysticism (New York: 1994) 225–274.
10 Guillaume de Saint-Thierry, Lettre aux Frères du Mont-Dieu, 170: ‘Filium enim gratiae, fruc-
tum ventris sui cella fovet, nutrit, amplectitur, et ad plenitudinem perfectionis perducit,
et colloquio Dei dignum efficit’. Cf. William of Saint-Thierry, The Golden Epistle, trans.
E. Berkeley, Cistercian Fathers Series 12 (Collegeville: 1971) 21.
11 Guigues Ier le chartreux, Coutumes de chartreuse 222–224.
12 Guigues Ier le chartreux, Coutumes de chartreuse 224: ‘Libros quippe tanquam sempiter-
num animarum nostrarum cibum cautissime custodiri et studiosissime volumus fieri, ut
quia ore non possumus, dei verbum manibus predicemus’ (my translation).
13 On Carthusians and their relation to books, see Brantley J., Reading in the Wilderness:
Private Devotion and Public Performance in Late Medieval England (Chicago – London:
2007) 46–57.
14 Brantley, Reading in the Wilderness 54.
15 Brussels, Royal Library, ms. 9121/23, fol. 67r. This manuscript is the first of two volumes
consisting of the works of St. Augustine, compiled by Nicolaus Craeyverwe († 1498), a
monk from the charterhouse of Koningsdal in Rooigem (near Ghent). The manuscript is
Figure 1.1
Anonymous Ghent Master,
historiated initial in the
Catholicon in opusculis sancti
Augustini (c. 1481–1484).
Parchment, 51 × 34.3 cm
Brussels, Royal Library,
ms. 9121, fol. 67r
Image © KBR
desk; an open book sits on a lectern, and a closed one lies on the floor beside
his bed. Textual and visual evidence thus points to the fact that late medieval
Carthusians relied on texts to enrich their spiritual life. Guigo does not men-
tion other meditative props, but visual evidence, as well as later Carthusian
texts, attest to the presence of religious images serving the same purpose in the
charterhouse, especially in the monks’ cells.
2 Art and Images in the Charterhouse
The degree to which actual images were present in the charterhouse, and how
they functioned there, are still open questions that need to be addressed more
fully.16 According to Guigo, church decorations were to be avoided, and curious
or luxurious objects had no place in the monastery:
richly decorated with historiated initials, marginal decorations, and numerous coats of
arms of Ghent families. The miniatures have been attributed on scant evidence to Jan van
den Moere, a miniaturist active in Ghent in the late fifteenth century. See Gheyn J. van
den, Catalogue des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, 2 vols. (Brussels: 1902)
II 183–185 (no. 1163); and Ampe A. (ed.), Jan van Ruusbroec 1293–1381, exh. cat., The Royal
Library of Belgium (Brussels: 1981) 390–392 (no. 187).
16 On the Carthusian attitudes to art in the late Middle Ages, see Brantley J., Reading in
the Wilderness 27–77; Lindquist S., Agency, Visuality, and Society at the Chartreuse de
Champmol (Aldershot: 2008); Zuidema L., “De functie van kunst in de Nederlandse
18 Falque
We do not have any ornaments of gold or silver in the church, with the
exception of the chalice and the reed by which the blood of the Saviour is
taken up, nor do we have hangings or carpets.17
Despite such an assertion, which is regularly repeated in further statutes of

the order, charterhouses readily displayed religious images and works of art,
especially during the late Middle Ages.18 Until very recently, scholars assumed
that the presence of images in Carthusian monasteries should first and fore-
most be explained by the well-studied phenomenon of the influence of aris-
tocratic benefactors, who required the presence of works of art within the
walls of the monastery.19 The Charterhouse of Champmol, founded in 1383 by
the Duke of Burgundy Philip the Bold, is probably one of the most famous
examples, but the phenomenon also existed in many other monasteries of
the order, notably in the Low Countries. The Triptych of the Last Supper by an
anonymous Northern Netherlandish master, now in the Centraal Museum in
Utrecht, bears witness to this phenomenon [Fig. 1.2]. The picture comes from
the Charterhouse of Nieuwlicht in the vicinity of Utrecht and was probably
destined for the altar of the Martyr Saints in the conventual church. It can
be traced to an influential Utrecht family, several of whose members acted as
patrons of the charterhouse.20 On the right panel appears a nun who has been
kartuizerkloosters”, in Pansters (ed.), Het geheim van de stilte 48–61; and Zuidema L.,
Verbeelding en ontbeelding. Een onderzoek naar de functie van kunst in Nederlandse kartui
zerkloosters (1450–1550), Ph.D. dissertation (Leiden University: 2010).
17 Guigues Ier le chartreux, Coutumes de chartreuse 244: ‘Ornamenta aurea vel argentea,
preter calicem et calamum quo sanguis domini sumitur, in ecclesia non habemus, pal-
lia tapetiaque reliquimus’. Quoted and translated in Brantley, Reading in the Wilderness
59. The reed (calamus in Latin, also known as pipe or fistula in English) was used during
Communion to drink the wine out of the chalice and avoid spilling. See: Lee, F.G. (ed.), A
Glossary of Liturgical and Ecclesiastical Terms (London: 1877) 64.
18 Carbonell-Lamothe Y., “Conclusions”, in Girard A. – Le Blévec D. (eds.), Les chartreux et
l’art. XIV e–XVIIIe siècle. Actes du Xe colloque international d’histoire et de spiritualité car-
tusiennes (Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, 15–18 septembre 1988) (Paris: 1989) 395.
19 Girard – Le Blévec, Les chartreux et l’art; Girard A., “Le décor en Chartreuse: la place de
la chartreuse de Villeneuve-lès-Avignon dans le développement de l’image”, in Le décor
des églises en France méridionale (XIIIe–mi XV e siècle), Cahiers de Fanjeaux 28 (Toulouse:
1993) 363–384; Weijert R. de, “Gift-Giving Practices in the Utrecht Charterhouse: Donating
to be Remembered?”, in Weijert R. de – Ragetli K. – Bijsterveld A.-J. – Arenthals J. van
(eds.), Living Memoria: Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Memorial Culture in Honour
of Truus van Bueren, Middeleeuwse studies en bronnen 137 (Hilversum: 2011) 147–164; and
Excoffon S. (ed.), Les Chartreux et les élites : XIIe–XVIIIe siècles : colloque international du
CERCOR (30–31 août 2012), Analecta Cartusiana 298 (Saint-Etienne: 2013).
20 On this triptych, see Luttervelt R. van, “Twee Utrechtse primitieven (Johannes van
Huemen?)”, Oud Holland 62 (1947) 107–122; Scholtens H.J.J., “Kunstwerken in het Utrechtse
kartuizerklooster. Nogmaals: De kloosterkerk van Nieuwlicht en het drieluik van de
Figure 1.2 Anonymous North Netherlandish Master, Triptych of the Last Supper with Carthusians in
Prayer (c. 1520–1521). Oil on panel, 149.5 × 96.5 cm (centre panel) and 149.5 cm × 39 cm
(wings)
Utrecht, Centraal Museum, inv. no. 31199. Image © Centraal Museum,
Utrecht
identified as Digna Sas. The three monks portrayed on the left panel are Pieter
Sasz., and Jacob and Vincent Pauw, Digna’s nephews. The historical context
surrounding the commissioning of this triptych is well known: Ghijsbert Pauw,
Jacob and Vincent’s father, donated a large amount of money to the monastery
when his son Jacob was professed in 1521. Ghijsbert Pauw died the same year
and was buried in the Nieuwlicht church. Taking into account the fact that
Jacob is depicted as a novice on the triptych, the work can be dated to around
1521. In all likelihood, the triptych served as a memorial to Ghijsbert and his
family within the charterhouse he supported for many years. In exchange for
H.H. Martelaren (1521)”, Oud Holland 67 (1952) 157–166; Defoer H., “The Triptych of the
Pauw-Sas Family from the Utrecht Charterhouse”, in De Weijert – Ragetli – Bijsterveld –
Van Arenthals, Living Memoria 321–332.
20 Falque
their financial support, such benefactors expected the Carthusians21 – who were
then considered to be a spiritual elite – to pray for the salvation of their souls.
Departing from the Carthusian ideal of solitude, these practices implied in-
teractions between the monks and the outside world and are generally consid-
ered to be the main cause of the presence of artworks within charterhouses.
Interestingly, the introduction of donated artworks was not restricted to the
conventual parts of the monastery, but also reached the monks’ cells, as pa-
trons regularly donated books and small images as gifts.22 The most famous
examples of such images are the twenty-six paintings commissioned by Philip
the Bold for the cells of the charterhouse of Champmol. Each of the twenty-
four monks of the Burgundian monastery had a panel in his cell, while the
prior had two. Jean de Beaumetz and his workshop produced these paintings
between 1389 and 1395. Only two of them, both featuring a Carthusian monk
praying before Christ on the cross, and accompanied by St. John, the Virgin,
and the three Maries, have survived [Fig. 1.3].23
Scholars once believed that benefactors like Philip the Bold and Ghijsbert
Pauw were responsible for the introduction of works of art within the walls of
Carthusian monasteries, but this assumption has now been questioned. In fact,
it seems likely that monks were involved in effecting the visual programme
of their monasteries.24 More precisely, the existence of many small paintings,
21 Lindquist, Agency, Visuality and Society 190.

22 See Brantley, Reading in the Wilderness 64 and 350 (n. 156).
23 Paris, Musée du Louvre, no. inv. R.F.1967-3 and Cleveland, Cleveland Museum of Art, no.
inv. 1964.454. On these panels, see Sterling S., “Œuvres retrouvées de Jean de Beaumetz,
peintre de Philippe le Hardi”, Bulletin des Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique 4
(1955) 57–81; Fliegel, S.N. and Jugie, S. (eds.), L’art à la cour de Bourgogne. Le mécénat de
Philippe le Hardi et de Jean sans Peur (1363–1419), exh. cat., Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon
and The Cleveland Museum of Art (Dijon – Cleveland: 2004) 198–202; and Lindquist,
Agency, Visuality, and Society 53.
24 On this point, see Lindquist’s observations regarding the Charterhouse of Champmol,
in Agency, Visuality, and Society esp. 101–104. She shows that the complex and luxurious
art produced for Champmol not only conveyed the wishes and expectations of the Duke
of Burgundy, but also represented a way for the Carthusians to establish their ideology,
reputation, and identity. She also demonstrates that the monks directly intervened in the
development of the artistic programme of the charterhouse. Some case studies have also
been published, especially on the works of art created by Rogier van der Weyden for the
Charterhouse of Scheut; see Jolly P., “Rogier Van Der Weyden’s Escorial and Philadelphia
Crucifixions and their Relation to Fra Angelico at San Marco”, Oud Holland 95 (1981)
113–26; Hedeman A.D., “Roger van der Weyden’s Escorial Crucifixion and Carthusian
Devotional Practices”, in Brubaker L. – Ousterhouse R. (eds.), The Sacred Image East
and West (Urbana: 1995) 191–203; and Wise E.D., “Rogier van der Weyden and Jan van
Ruusbroec: Reading, Rending, and Re-Fashioning the ‘Twice-dyed’ Veil of Blood in the
Escorial Crucifixion”, in Melion W.S. – Weemans M. – Clifton J. (eds.), Imago Exegetica:
Figure 1.3 Jean de Beaumetz, The Crucifixion with a Carthusian Monk in Prayer
(c. 1389–1395). Oil on panel, 63.5 × 52.5 cm
Cleveland, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Leonard C. Hanna, Jr.
Fund 1964.454. Image © The Cleveland Museum of Art
22 Falque
most probably intended for the personal devotion of Carthusian monks, such
as Petrus Christus’ Madonna of Exeter (Berlin, Gemäldegalerie), and illustrated
manuscripts with devotional texts produced in and/or for charterhouses, such
as the British Library MS Add. 37049,25 indicates that the Carthusians actually
used images as potent meditative instruments.
The statutes of the order and other Carthusian texts also point to this
fact by remarking (with some ambivalence) on the presence of artworks in
charterhouses.26 In De origine et veritate perfectae religionis (c. 1313), Guillaume
d’Ivrée (also known as Guillelmus de Yporegia) delivers crucial information on
the private visual environment of the monks. He states that Carthusians were
allowed to have one crucifix and one picture of the Virgin (or of another saint)
in the oratory of their cell. He adds that ‘the Carthusians in their cells neither
refuse nor reject devotional pictures (‘devotas picturas’), but rather, accept
and seek them out freely and eagerly because they excite devotion and imagi-
nation, and augment devotional ideas’.27 Here we find an explicit and crucial
justification of the use of devotional imagery by Carthusian monks: such im-
ages could be used within the privacy of the cell, because of their affective and
meditative power, similar to that of devotional texts.
3 Devotional Images and Meditative Practices within the Cell
In the next part of this essay, I would like to consider the use and function of
such ‘devotional images’ by Carthusian monks in their cells. I will do this in
general terms, before analysing two preserved examples of such images dat-
ing from the late Middle Ages. Both are small paintings that incorporate the
portrait of a Carthusian monk in prayer. They form part of a corpus of twenty-
two religious paintings produced in the Low Countries between 1400 and
Visual Images as Exegetical Instruments, 1400–1700, Intersections 33 (Leiden – Boston:

2014) 886–907.
25 On this manuscript, see Hogg J. (ed.), An Illustrated Yorkshire Carthusian Religious
Miscellany: British Library London Additional Ms. 37049, Analecta cartusiana 95 (Salzburg:
1981); and Brantley, Reading in the Wilderness.
26 For some examples, see: Brantley, Reading in the Wilderness 59.
27 Quoted and translated in Brantley, Reading in the Wilderness 69 and 352 (n. 177):
‘Cartusienses in cellis suis, sicut praedictum est, devotas picturas non renuunt nec recu-
sant, sed ad excitationem devotionis et imaginationis, et augmentum devotae concep-
tionis, easdem libenter et affetuose recipiunt et requirunt’. On this treatise, see Hogg J.,
“Guillelmus de Yporegia: De origine et veritate perfecte religionis”, Analecta cartusiana 82.2
(1980) 84–118.
1550, which contain one or more portrait(s) of Carthusian monks and nuns.28
Among these works, ten can reasonably be considered to be personal devo-
tional paintings because of their (very) small size.29 Such pictures were most
probably used as meditative instruments by their owners.
In the period under consideration, meditative practices appealed to the
imagination and made intense use of images, both mental and material.30 As
Walter Melion perspicaciously explains, meditation was conceived during the
late Middle Ages and the early modern period as:
A self-imposed disciplinary regime, consisting of mental and physical

exercises that allowed the practitioner to engender and evaluate his self-
image and thence to emend and refashion it. In practice, meditation
often consisted of internal exercises that mobilized the sensitive facul-
ties of motion, emotion, and sense (both external and internal) and the
intellective faculties of reason, memory, and will, with a view to reform-
ing the soul. Techniques of visualization were frequently utilized to en-
gage the soul’s mediating function as vinculum mundi, its pivotal position
in the great chain of being between heaven and earth, temporal and spiri-
tual experience. Indeed, it might be right to claim that meditation was
28 On these pictures, see Falque I., Devotional Portraiture and Spiritual Experience in Early
Netherlandish Painting. Catalogue (Leiden: 2019), cat. 9, 33, 42, 82, 123, 138, 145, 150, 169,
192, 195, 212, 217, 226, 275, 282, 298, 462, 532, 607, 695, 740. This catalogue is available at no
costs in e-format: https://brill.com/view/title/55785.
29 These works are: Anonymous Haarlem Master (?) The Crucifixion with a Monk in Prayer
(San Francisco, M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, inv. no. 52-6-8); Anonymous South
Netherlandish Master, Portrait of a Carthusian Monk in Prayer with Two Saints (London,
sale Phillips Son & Neale, 13 December 1999, lot no. 56); Anonymous South Netherlandish
Master, Two Wings. A Monk in Prayer with St. Hubert, The Virgin and Child with St. Elizabeth
of Hungary (Liège, Musée Grand Curtius, inv. no. A11); Anonymous South Netherlandish
Master (workshop of Rogier van der Weyden?), The Crucifixion with a Carthusian Monk
in Prayer (Cleveland, Cleveland Museum of Art, inv. no. 31.449); Anonymous South
Netherlandish Master (or attributed to Jan Provoost), The Nativity with a Carthusian
Monk in Prayer (Philadelphia, Lasalle University Art Museum); Anonymous Tournai
Master, Triptych of the Pietà with a Carthusian Monk in Prayer (Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz
Museum, inv. no. WRM 533); attributed to Dirk Bouts, Portrait of a Monk in Prayer
(Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, inv. no. 253); Petrus Christus, The
Exeter Madonna (Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, inv. no. 523B);
Master of the Brunswick Diptych, Diptych of the Virgin and Child with St. Anne and a Monk
in Prayer with St. Barbara (Brunswick, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, inv. no. 13); Master
of the Legend of the Magdalene and Anonymous French Master, Diptych of Willem van
Bibaut (Amsterdam, private collection – currently on loan to the Rijksmuseum).
30 See: Melion W.S., “Introduction”, in Melion W.S. – Dekoninck R. – Guiderdoni-Bruslé A.
(eds.), Ut pictura meditatio: The Meditative Image in Northern Art, 1500–1700, Proteus 4
(Turnhout: 2012) xxxv.
24 Falque
a process enabling the soul to discern its lineaments, for the purpose of
self-amendment, self-reformation, and self-refashioning.31
The meditative process was indeed thought to lead from visual perception of
material images to the creation of mental images in the votary’s mind, which
were then processed by the faculties of the soul (and notably by the imagi-
nation) in order to guide toward contemplation, that is an advanced spiritual
exercise that focuses on attaining unity with the divinity, whereby the votary
is subsumed into God.
These ideas are well expressed and summarized by Denys the Carthusian, in
De vita et fine solitarii (The Life and End of the Solitary).32 Denys the Carthusian,
also known as Denys van Leeuwen or Dionysius van Rijckel, was born in
1402 or 1403 and entered the Roermond charterhouse in 1425, after spending
a few years studying theology and philosophy at the University of Cologne.
He was the author of a vast corpus of theological, philosophical, and spiritual
treatises.33 Denys’ oeuvre, and above all his spiritual texts, were widely dissem-
inated within the Carthusian order in the second half of the fifteenth century;
their circulation increased in the sixteenth century, notably thanks to the edi-
tion coordinated in the 1530s by Dietrich Loher of the Cologne Carthusians.34
31 Melion W.S., “Introduction: Types and Functions of Meditation in the Transition From
Late Medieval to Early Modern Intellectual Culture”, in Enenkel K. – Melion W.S. (eds.),
Meditatio – Refashioning the Self. Theory and Practice in Late Medieval and Early Modern
Intellectual Culture, Intersections 17 (Leiden – Boston: 2011) 1.
32 For the critical edition of this text, see Doctoris ecstatici D. Dionysii Cartusiani
Opera omnia, vol. 38, eds. Monachi sacri ordinis Cartusiensis (Montreuil-sur-Mer –
Tournai – Parkminster: 1896–1935) 263–326. Cf. Denys le Chartreux, La vie et la fin du soli-
taire. Introduction, traduction et notes par Michel Lemoine. Eloge de la vie en solitude.
Traduction et notes par un chartreux. Avant-propos par Nathalie Nabert (Paris: 2004).
33 On Denys the Carthusian, see Stoelen A., “Denys le Chartreux”, in Dictionnaire de spiri-
tualité ascétique et mystique, vol. 3 (Paris: 1957), 430–449; Wassermann D., Dionysius der
Kartäuser: Einführung in Werk und Gedankenwelt, Analecta Cartusiana 133 (Salzburg: 1996);
Chiti E., “Dionysius Cartusianus”, in Lapidge M. – Garfagnini G.C. – Leonardi C. (eds.),
Compendium Auctorum Latinorum Medii Aevi, vol. 3.1 (Florence: 2009) 88–94; Emery K.,
Jr., “Denys the Carthusian. The World of Thought Comes to Roermond”, in Pansters (ed.),
The Carthusians in the Low Countries 255–304. For an overview of Denys the Carthusian’s
works, see Emery K., Jr., Dionysii Cartusiensis Opera selecta. Prolegomena: Bibliotheca
manuscripta. Dl. 1A & 1B: Studia bibliographica, 2 vols., Corpus christianorum: continuatio
mediaevalis 121 & 121A (Turnhout: 1991).
34 Editions of Denys the Carthusian’s writings appear in Doctoris ecstatici D. Dionysii Cartu
siani, eds. Monachi sacri ordinis Cartusiensis, 44 vols. (vide note 32 supra). This edition of
Denys’ works will henceforth be cited as follows: Denys the Carthusian, Opera omnia, vol.
On the dissemination of Denys’ work, see Emery K. Jr., “Dionysii Cartusiensis bibliotheca
Written c. 1435–1440 at the request of the monk Jacobus van Gruitrode of the
Liège Charterhouse, the De vita et fine solitarii is a species of spiritual text:
Denys’ purpose was to define the life of solitary monks such as the Carthusians,
who strove to attain the vision of God. The treatise is divided into two books
containing thirty-two and nineteen chapters respectively. The first book de-
scribes the life of the solitary as an imitation of the divine life.35 In this frame-
work, Christ and the Passion play a crucial role.36 In the second book, Denys
explains that the end (or purpose) of the solitary life consists in mystical union
with God, which is accessible only through contemplative speculation of the
created world:
The contemplation of the order and of the nature of the things, as Hugh
and Richard (of Saint-Victor) state, is a ladder or ascent to the specula-
tion of divinity. The divine and invisible realities are known through the
created and visible world.37
Denys here quotes Romans 1:20, which, as Jeffrey Hamburger has demonstrat-
ed, forms the basis of the doctrine of speculation.38 This doctrine, which con-
strues the visible world as a mirror of the divine world, was frequently endorsed
et manuscripta. Prologue and Queries”, in Hogg J. (ed.), Kartäusermystik und -mystiker.

Dritter internationaler Kongress über die Kartäusergeschichte und -spiritualität, Vol. 4,
Analecta Cartusiana 55 (Salzburg: 1982) 119–155. On the edition by Loher, see Chaix G.,
Réforme et Contre-réforme catholiques. Recherches sur la chartreuse de Cologne au XVIe
siècle, Analecta Cartusiana 80 (Salzburg: 1981) 211–233.
35 This is notably illustrated by the following passage from chapter 5, Book I of Denys the
Carthusian, Opera omnia, vol. 38, 270: ‘Haec igitur vera est nostra felicitas, summa perfec-
tio ac ultimus finis, devinae nobis concreatae imaginis reformation plena atque perfecta.
Porro, quemadmodum in tribus animae viribus, memoria videlicet, intellectu et volun-
tate, Trinitatis in nobis consistit imago; sic in triformi aeque mentis decore, comtempla-
tione scilicet, dilectione et stabilitate, haec ipsa divinae imagines reformatio sita est.’
36 As emphasised in ibid. 269–270.
37 Denys the Carthusian, Opera omnia, vol. 38, 288: ‘Porro contemplatio ordinis naturaeque

rerum, ut Hugo Richardusque aiunt, ad Divinitatis speculationem scala est sive ascensus.
Invisibilia namque Dei per visibilem mundi facturam noscuntur’ (my translation).
38 Hamburger J.F., “Speculations on Speculation. Vision and Perception in the Theory and
Practice of Mystical Devotion”, in Haug W. – Schneider-Lastin W. (eds.), Deutsche Mystik
im abendländischen Zusammenhang: neu erschlossene Texte, neue methodische Ansätze,
neue theoretische Konzepte: Kolloquium Kloster Fischingen 1998 (Tübingen: 2000) 353–408.
Also see Emery K., Jr., “Denys the Carthusian on the Cognition of Divine Attributes and the
Principal Name of God: A propos the Unity of a Philosophical Experience”, in Pickavé M.
(ed.), Die Logik des Transzendentalen: Festschrift für Jan A. Aertsen zum 65. Geburtstag,
Miscellanea Mediaevalia 30 (Berlin: 2003) 462.
26 Falque
Figure 1.4 Attributed to the Master of the Brunswick Diptych, Diptych of the Virgin and
Child with St. Anne and a Monk in Prayer with St. Barbara (c. 1475–1500). Oil on
panel, 35 × 23 cm (each wing)
Braunschweig, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, inv. no. 13.
Image © Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig
by late medieval mystical authors. It is important for my argument, since the

doctrine of speculation grants to the senses, the body, and the imagination a
central place in the meditative process. Indeed, the process of speculation im-
plies that outer (corporeal) and inner (spiritual) vision are fully complemen-
tary: they complete each other and form part of a continuum leading to the
fullness of contemplative devotion. Therefore, the process of speculation in
general, and its use by Denys in particular, invites us to take a fresh look at the
place and role of images in Carthusian meditative practice.
Denys’ allusion to the process of speculation is particularly noteworthy,
since the Carthusians are usually thought to have been reluctant to centre
their spiritual exercises on imagery. As demonstrated above, visual evidence
contradicts this assumption, and Denys’ works indicate that texts dealing with
the Carthusian way of life and spiritual practices do as well. With this in mind,
I now turn to a devotional diptych produced for a Carthusian context in the
late fifteenth century [Fig. 1.4]. The small size of the work (each panel mea-
sures 35 × 23 cm) indicates that it was most probably intended for personal
devotional use in a monk’s cell. Housed in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum,
Braunschweig, the diptych is attributed to an anonymous North Netherlandish

painter named after this very work – the Master of the Brunswick Diptych.39
The diptych’s two panels portray a continuous pictorial space, in which the
sacred figures appear at left and the monk at right; the heraldic right is there-
fore reserved as a place of honor for the saints. The scene takes place in the
courtyard of a cloister, with an enclosed garden in the foreground and rolling
countryside in the background. The Virgin and Child with St. Anne are seat-
ed on the low brick-wall of the hortus conclusus, while the Carthusian monk
kneels at right, looking intently at them. He is introduced by St. Barbara, who
was particularly venerated within the Carthusian order.40 The reverse of the
right panel shows St. Bavo standing in a niche. Because Bavo was the patron
saint of Haarlem, the Carthusian monk depicted on the inner right panel is
usually identified as Hendrik van Haarlem. Hailing from this city, he was prior
of the charterhouse Sint Andries ter Zalige Haven in Amsterdam from 1484 to
1490, before becoming the prior of the charterhouse Het Hollandse Huis in
Geertruidenberg from 1490 to 1499. According to Van Luttervelt, the diptych
was commissioned during Hendrik’s stay in Amsterdam,41 whereas Sanders,
who carried out an in-depth study of the history of Het Hollandse Huis, ar-
gues that the diptych was commissioned in Geertruidenberg. He also claims
that the tower in the right-hand panel is a depiction of the actual poortgebouw
of the monastery of Geertruidenberg, which was built under the priorship
of Hendrik.42
The theme of the Virgin and Child with St. Anne (or Anna Selbdritt) was
popular in fifteenth-century religious culture in general, but it also enjoyed a
certain success among the Carthusians, as another Flemish painting showing
a monk of St. Bruno in prayer before the Virgin and her Mother indicates.43
39 On this picture, see Friedländer M.J., Early Netherlandish Painting, Vol. 5 (Leiden –
Brussels: 1969) no. 16; Luttervelt R. van, “Schilderijen met karthuizers uit de late 15de en
de vroege 16de eeuw”, Oud Holland 66 (1951) 75–92; Sanders J.G.M., Waterland als woestijn.
Geschiedenis van het kartuizersklooster ‘Het Hollandse Huis’ bij Geertruidenberg. 1336–1595
(Hilversum: 1990) 49–50; and Pansters (ed.), Het geheim van de stilte 53–55.
40 Barbara is portrayed as the patron saint of Jan Vos in the Virgin and Child with St. Barbara,
St. Elizabeth, and Jan Vos, executed by the workshop of Jan van Eyck (New York, Frick
Collection, inv. no. 54.1.161) and in Petrus Christus’ Exeter Madonna (Berlin, Staatliche
Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, inv. no. 523B). She also appears as the patron of Denys
the Carthusian in a woodcut by Anton Woensam that served as the title page of the edi-
tion of his opera omnia, published by the Carthusian Dietrich Loher in the 1530s.
41 Van Luttervelt, “Schilderijen met karthuizers” 77–80.
42 Sanders, Waterland als woestijn 50.
43 Anonymous Brussels Master, The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and a Monk in Prayer with
Patron Saint (c. 1500). Oil on panel, 83 × 67.5 cm. Poznan, Museum Narodowe, inv. no. 211.
28 Falque
Nonetheless, from a devotional point of view, the most interesting aspect of

the Brunswick diptych lies in the nature of the pictorial space: the monk and
the sacred personae are located in an enclosed garden within an isolated clois-
ter. The location of this monastery in rolling countryside can be seen as an allu-
sion to the desert of the charterhouse, the latter possibly the actual monastery
of Geertuidenberg where the monk portrayed lived.
Even more importantly, this location can also be related to the metaphor of
the soul as a cloister, which was popular among monastic orders in the Middle
Ages, as the continuous success of the mid-twelfth century De claustro animae
of Hugh of Fouilloy notably attests.44 Numerous treatises using the metaphor
of conventual places were composed by spiritual authors, who thereby sym-
bolised the different stages of the virtuous or mystical life.45 In these texts,
every component part of the monastic enclosure is allegorised: the convent
becomes for the reader the paradisiacal place of the soul, and its constitutive
elements symbolise the virtues required to attain union with God. The meta-
phor of the spiritual cloister is usually presented schematically, and the struc-
ture of texts having recourse to it is relatively simple, the aim being to favour
the process of memorisation. Interestingly, in light of the image of the soul
as a cloister in late medieval monastic culture, the place of divine encounter
in the Brunswick diptych may be seen as an image of the monk’s soul ‘meta-
phorised’ into a cloister wherein he experiences mystical union with God; in a
similar way, the enclosed garden, the house, and the chamber were regularly
portrayed in early Netherlandish pictures as metaphors of the soul.46
Two central themes of Carthusian texts on the desert of the cell support
this interpretation of the Master of Brunswick’s diptych: on the one hand, the
On this panel, see Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Painting, no. 38; and Martens D., “La
‘Sainte anne trinitaire au chartreux’ de Poznan: primitif hollandais ou primitif flamand?”,
Annales de la Société Royale d’Archéologie de Bruxelles 62 (1998) 65–102.
44 More than five hundred Latin manuscripts of the De claustro have been preserved. See the
entry dedicated to this text on the website Arlima. Archives de littérature du Moyen Âge
(https://www.arlima.net/eh/hugues_de_fouilloy.html#cla).
45 On these texts, see Whitehead C., “Making a Cloister of the Soul in Medieval Religious
Treatises”, Medium Ævum 67 (1998) 1–29; Whitehead C., Castles of the Mind: A Study of
Medieval Architectural Allegory (Cardiff: 2003) 61–86; and Pinder J., “Love and Reason
from Hugh of Fouilloy to the Abbaye du Saint-Esprit: Changes at the Top in the Medieval
Cloister Allegory”, Parergon 27 (2010), 67–83. On vernacular texts using this metaphor, see:
Bauer G., Claustrum animae: Untersuchungen zur geschichte der Metapher vom Herzen als
Kloster (Munich: 1973).
46 See Falkenburg R.L., “The Household of the Soul: Conformity in the Merode Triptych”, in
Ainsworth M.W. (ed.), Early Netherlandish Painting at the Crossroads. A Critical look at
Current Methodologies (New York: 2001) 2–17.
relationship between outer cell and inner cell; on the other, the relationship
between the cell and heaven. Both topics are covered in the writings of William
of Saint-Thierry and Denys the Carthusian, for example. They strongly insist on
the secret and hidden nature of the cell, which they consider the only place
where the monk can sanctify himself through meditation and contemplation.
The two authors highlight the fact that the cell, as the physical space in which
the Carthusian monk retire and to which he belongs, exists in a dynamic re-
lationship to another internal space, that of the cubiculum cordis, the cell of
the monk’s heart. This relationship entails an inner movement, a shift from
the outer to the inner cell. In a passage from the Golden Epistle, William of
Saint-Thierry clearly underlines the affinity between the outer and inner cells,
as well as their crucial importance:
[The outward cell is] the house in which your soul dwells together with
your body; the inner cell is your conscience, and in that it is God who
should dwell with your spirit, he who is more interior to you than all
else that is within you. The door of the outward enclosure is a sign of the
guarded door within you, so that as the bodily senses are prevented from
wandering abroad by the outward enclosure, so the inner senses are kept
always within your domain. Love your inner cell, love your outward cell.
too, and give to each of them the care which belongs to it.47
As Demetrio Yocum explains, ‘in the Carthusian economy and architecture of

silence, the cell represents the heart of Carthusian life. It is here that the monk
learns how solitude creates the silence necessary to articulate, in the cubicu-
lum cordis, the mystical language of his encounter with God’.48 The purpose
of this movement into solitude is the contemplation of and union with God
occurring in the monk’s heart. Turning back to the Brunswick diptych, one can
see that it is replete with pictorial devices that allude to this attainment. By
placing the monk before the Virgin and Child, in a cloistered space alluding to
the Carthusian’s cubiculum cordis, the painter visually articulates the monk’s
solitary movement. As its small size suggests, the diptych was most probably
47 Guillaume de Saint-Thierry, Lettre aux Frères du Mont-Dieu 226–228: ‘[…] domus in qua
habitat anima tua cum corpore tuo; interior est conscientia tua, quam inhabitare debet
omnium interiorum tuorum interior Deus, cum spirit tuo. Ostium clausurae exterioris,
signum est ostia circumstantiae interioris, ut, sicut sensus corporis per exteriorem clau-
suram foris vagari non permittuntur, sic interiores sensus ad suum semper interius co-
hibeantur. Dilige ergo interiorem cellam tuam, dilige et exteriorem, et unicuique suum
impende cultum’. Cf. William of Saint-Thierry, The Golden Epistle 47.
48 Yocum D.S., Petrarch’s Humanist 61.
30 Falque
hung in the oratory of the monk’s cell, thereby facilitating meditation on the
complex interplay between the outer cell and the inner cell in the monk’s spiri-
tual exercises. Indeed, the painting actually materialises and visualises the in-
ternal space of the monk’s heart within the external and physical space of his
cell. The diptych’s placement in the monk’s cell and its visualisation of his cu-
biculum cordis, stimulates and guides the meditative process, which ultimately
leads to the contemplation of God.
Carthusian texts also establish a relationship between the cell and heaven,
thereby fostering the soul’s movement upward. By staying in his cell, sheltered
from the tumult of the world, the monk is able to attain heaven on earth, as
Denys the Carthusian explains:
An evident hint of what we are predestined to is the continuous stay

within the cell: as Bernard states, one rarely or perhaps never goes from
the cell to hell. The distance between the cell and heaven is small. The
cell and heaven present many affinities, in their denomination and in
their reality. And the practice of both is the same: in both of them, God is
hidden, contemplated, kissed.49
Such an idea was not new at the time of Denys the Carthusian; rather, it goes
back to William of Saint-Thierry, who underscored the kinship between the
words cella (cell) and caelum (heaven), which ‘appear to derive from celare,
to hide. The same thing is hidden in cells as in heaven, the same occupation
characterizes both the one and the other. What is this? Leisure devoted to God,
the enjoyment of God’.50
Devotional paintings from Carthusian settings can be related to this inter-
play between the cell and heaven. This is clearly the case in Petrus Christus’
Madonna of Exeter, which depicts Jan Vos, respectively prior of the charter-
houses of Utrecht and Bruges, in prayer before the Virgin and Child [Fig. 1.5].
The scene takes place in a loggia located high above a landscape comprising a
49 enys the Carthusian, Opera omnia, vol. 38, 292: ‘Porro evidens praedestinationis indi-
D
ciumipsa est cellae jugis custodia : quoniam quidem, ut ait Bernardus, aut raro aut nun-
quam ad inferos a cella descenditur. A cella vero ad coelum pauca utique distantia exstat.
Nempe cellae coelique appellationis et rei parilitas multa exsistit: utriusque enim exer-
citium idem est, atque in utroque celatur Deus, contemplator atque complectitur’ (my
translation).
50 Guillaume de Saint-Thierry, Lettre aux Frères du Mont-Dieu 168–170: ‘A calando enim et
caelum et cella nomen habere videntur. Et quod celatur in caelis, hoc et in cellis; quod
geritur in caelis, hoc et in cellis. Quidnam hoc est? Vacare Deo, fruit Deo’. Cf. William of
Saint-Thierry, The Golden Epistle 20.
Figure 1.5 Petrus Christus, The Exeter Madonna (c. 1450). Oil on panel, 19.5 × 14 cm
Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie,
inv. no. 523B. Image © bpk, Berlin
32 Falque
city surrounded by countryside. In a previous publication, I argued that this

very small painting represents the theme of the spiritual ascent, and that the
monk is experiencing union with God.51 In light of William and Denys’ discus-
sion of the cell as the way leading to heaven, the allusion to Jan Vos’ motion
heavenward, underscored by his meeting with Christ, takes on a new dimen-
sion. In the secrecy of his cell, which is to be understood as the safest and sur-
est way to Jesus, the monk prays, meditates, and hopes to achieve his spiritual
goal – eventually to reach Heaven where he may achieve eternal contempla-
tive union with God. The Madonna of Exeter and the Brunswick diptych vari-
ously visualise this spiritual goal. Further research will surely add to the visual
and textual evidence marshalled in this essay to demonstrate how important
imagery was to the meditative life of Carthusian monks.
Selective Bibliography
Ampe A. (ed.), Jan van Ruusbroec 1293–1381, exh. cat., The Royal Library of Belgium
(Brussels: 1981).
Bauer G., Claustrum animae: Untersuchungen zur geschichte der Metapher vom Herzen
als Kloster (Munich: 1973).
Brantley J., Reading in the Wilderness: Private Devotion and Public Performance in Late
Medieval England (Chicago – London: 2007).
Carbonell-Lamothe Y., “Conclusions”, in Girard A. – Le Blévec D. (eds.), Les chartreux et
l’art. XIVe–XVIIIe siècle. Actes du Xe colloque international d’histoire et de spiritualité
cartusiennes (Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, 15–18 septembre 1988) (Paris: 1989) 395–402.
Chaix G., Réforme et Contre-réforme catholiques. Recherches sur la chartreuse de Cologne
au XVIe siècle, Analecta Cartusiana 80 (Salzburg: 1981).
Chiti E., “Dionysius Cartusianus”, in Lapidge M. – Garfagnini G.C. – Leonardi C. (eds.),
Compendium Auctorum Latinorum Medii Aevi, vol. 3.1 (Florence: 2009) 88–94.
Defoer H., “The Triptych of the Pauw-Sas Family from the Utrecht Charterhouse”, in
Weijert R. de – Ragetli K. – Bijsterveld A.-J. – Arenthals J. van (eds.), Living Memoria:
Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Memorial Culture in Honour of Truus van
Bueren, Middeleeuwse studies en bronnen 137 (Hilversum: 2011) 321–332.
Denys le Chartreux, La vie et la fin du solitaire. Introduction, traduction et notes par
Michel Lemoine. Eloge de la vie en solitude. Traduction et notes par un chartreux.
Avant-propos par Nathalie Nabert (Paris: 2004).
51 See Falque I., “The ‘Exeter Madonna’ by Petrus Christus: Devotional Portrait and Spiritual
Ascent in Early Netherlandish Painting”, Ons Geestelijk Erf 86.3 (2015) 219–249.
Doctoris ecstatici D. Dionysii Cartusiani Opera omnia, eds. Monachi sacri ordinis
Cartusiensis 44 vols. (Montreuil-sur-Mer – Tournai – Parkminster: 1896–1935).
Emery K., Jr., “Denys the Carthusian on the Cognition of Divine Attributes and the
Principal Name of God: A propos the Unity of a Philosophical Experience”, in
Pickavé M. (ed.), Die Logik des Transzendentalen. Festschrift für Jan A. Aertsen zum
65. Geburtstag, Miscellanea Mediaevalia 30 (Berlin: 2003) 454–483.
Emery K., Jr., “Denys the Carthusian. The World of Thought Comes to Roermond”, in
Pansters K. (ed.), The Carthusians in the Low Countries. Studies in Monastic History
and Heritage, Studia Cartusiana 4 (Leuven: 2014) 255–304.
Emery K., Jr., “Dionysii Cartusiensis bibliotheca et manuscripta. Prologue and Queries”,
in Hogg J. (ed.), Kartäusermystik und -mystiker. Dritter internationaler Kongress über
die Kartäusergeschichte und -spiritualität, Vol. 4 (Salzburg: 1982) 119–155.
Emery K., Jr., Dionysii Cartusiensis Opera selecta. Prolegomena: Bibliotheca manuscrip-
ta. Dl. 1A & 1B: Studia bibliographica, Corpus christianorum: continuatio mediaeva-
lis 121 & 121A, 2 vols. (Turnhout: 1991).
Excoffon S. (ed.), Les Chartreux et les élites : XIIe–XVIIIe siècles : colloque international
du CERCOR (30–31 août 2012), Analecta Cartusiana 298 (Saint-Etienne: 2013).
Falkenburg R.L., “The Household of the Soul: Conformity in the Merode Triptych,” in
Ainsworth M.W. (ed.), Early Netherlandish Painting at the Crossroads. A Critical look
at Current Methodologies (New York: 2001) 2–17.
Falque I., “The ‘Exeter Madonna’ by Petrus Christus: Devotional Portrait and Spiritual
Ascent in Early Netherlandish Painting”, Ons Geestelijk Erf 86, 3 (2015) 219–249.
Falque I., Devotional Portraiture and Spiritual Experience in Early Netherlandish
Painting. Catalogue (Brill: 2019).
Fliegel S.N. and Jugie S. (eds.), L’art à la cour de Bourgogne. Le mécénat de Philippe le
Hardi et de Jean sans Peur (1363–1419), exh. cat., Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon and
The Cleveland Museum of Art (Dijon – Cleveland: 2004).
Friedländer M.J., Early Netherlandish Painting, Vol. 5 (Leiden and Brussels: 1969).
Gheyn J. van den, Catalogue des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, vol. 2
(Brussels: 1902).
Girard A., “Le décor en Chartreuse : la place de la chartreuse de Villeneuve-lès-Avignon
dans le développement de l’image”, in Le décor des églises en France méridionale
(XIIIe–mi XVe siècle), Cahiers de Fanjeaux 28 (Toulouse: 1993) 363–384.
Girard A. – Le Blévec D. (eds.), Les chartreux et l’art. XIVe–XVIIIe siècle. Actes du Xe col-
loque international d’histoire et de spiritualité cartusiennes (Villeneuve-lès-Avignon,
15–18 septembre 1988) (Paris: 1989).
Guigues Ier le chartreux, Coutumes de chartreuse. Introduction, texte critique, traduc-
tion et notes par un chartreux, Souces chrétiennes 313 (Paris: 1984; reprint, Paris:
2001).
34 Falque
Guillaume de Saint-Thierry, Lettre aux Frères du Mont-Dieu (Lettre d’or), ed. J.M.
Dechanet, Sources chrétiennes 301 (Paris: 1975).
Hamburger J.F., “Speculations on Speculation. Vision and Perception in the Theory and
Practice of Mystical Devotion”, in Haug W. – Schneider-Lastin W. (eds.), Deutsche
Mystik im abendländischen Zusammenhang: neu erschlossene Texte, neue meth-
odische Ansätze, neue theoretische Konzepte: Kolloquium Kloster Fischingen 1998
(Tübingen: 2000) 353–408.
Hedeman A.D., “Roger Van Der Weyden’s Escorial Crucifixion and Carthusian
Devotional Practices”, in Brubaker L. – Ousterhouse R. (eds.), The Sacred Image East
and West (Urbana: 1995) 191–203.
Hogg J. (ed.), An Illustrated Yorkshire Carthusian Religious Miscellany: British Library
London Additional Ms. 37049, Analecta cartusiana 95 (Salzburg: 1981).
Hogg J., “Guillelmus de Yporegia: De origine et veritate perfecte religionis”, Analecta car-
tusiana 82.2 (1980) 84–118.
Jolly P., “Rogier Van Der Weyden’s Escorial and Philadelphia Crucifixions and their
Relation to Fra Angelico at San Marco”, Oud Holland 95 (1981) 113–126.
Lee, F.G. (ed.), A Glossary of Liturgical and Ecclesiastical Terms (London: 1877).
Lindquist S., Agency, Visuality, and Society at the Chartreuse de Champmol (Aldershot:
2008).
Luttervelt R. van, “Twee utrechtse primitieven (Johannes van Huemen?)”, Oud Holland
62 (1947) 107–122.
Luttervelt R. van, “Schilderijen met karthuizers uit de late 15de en de vroege 16de
eeuw”, Oud Holland 66 (1951) 75–92.
Martens D., “La ‘Sainte anne trinitaire au chartreux’ de Poznan: primitif hollandais ou
primitif flamand?”, Annales de la Société Royale d’Archéologie de Bruxelles 62 (1998)
65–102.
McGinn B., The Growth of Mysticism. Vol. II of the Presence of God: A History of Western
Christian Mysticism (New York: 1994).
Melion W.S., “Introduction: Meditating on Pictures”, in Melion W.S. – Dekoninck R. –
Guiderdoni-Bruslé A. (eds.), Ut pictura meditatio: The Meditative Image in Northern
Art, 1500–1700, Proteus 4 (Turnhout: 2012) xxxiii–xxxvii.
Melion W.S., “Introduction: Types and Functions of Meditation in the Transition From
Late Medieval to Early Modern Intellectual Culture”, in Enenkel K. – Melion W.S.
(eds.), Meditatio – Refashioning the Self. Theory and Practice in Late Medieval and
Early Modern Intellectual Culture, Intersections 17 (Leiden – Boston: 2011) 1–23.
Nabert N., Les larmes, la nourriture, le silence. Essai de spiritualité cartusienne, sources
et continuité (Paris: 2001).
Nissen P., “Carthusian Worlds, Carthusian Images: The Fascination of Silence and
Inaccessibility”, Studies in Spirituality 24 (2014) 143–154.
Nissen P., “De kartuizerorde: een eeuwenoud getuigenis van stille concentratie”, in
Pansters K. (ed.), Het geheim van de stilte. De besloten wereld van de Roermondse
Kartuizers, exh. cat., Kartuizerklooster ‘O.L. Vrouw van Bethlehem’ Roermond
(Zwolle: 2009) 12–21.
Pansters K., “The Carthusians in the Low Countries: Introduction”, in Pansters K. (ed.),
The Carthusians in the Low Countries. Studies in Monastic History and Heritage,
Studia Cartusiana 4 (Leuven: 2014) 11–29.
Pinder J., “Love and Reason from Hugh of Fouilloy to the Abbaye du Saint-Esprit:
Changes at the Top in the Medieval Cloister Allegory”, Parergon 27 (2010) 67–83.
Rieder B., Deus locum dabit. Studien zur Theologie des Kartäuserpriors Guigo I. (1083–
1136), Veröffentlichungen des Grabmann-Institutes 42 (Paderborn: 1997).
Sanders J.G.M., Waterland als woestijn. Geschiedenis van het kartuizersklooster ‘Het
Hollandse Huis’ bij Geerttruidenberg. 1336–1595 (Hilversum: 1990).
Scholtens H.J.J., “Kunstwerken in het Utrechtse kartuizerklooster. Nogmaals: De
kloosterkerk van Nieuwlicht en het drieluik van de H.H. Martelaren (1521)”, Oud
Holland 67 (1952) 157–166.
Sterling S., “Œuvres retrouvées de Jean de Beaumetz, peintre de Philippe le Hardi”,
Bulletin des Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique 4 (1955) 57–81.
Stoelen A., “Denys le Chartreux”, in Dictionnaire de spiritualité ascétique et mystique,
vol. 3 (Paris: 1957) 430–449.
Wassermann D., Dionysius der Kartäuser: Einführung in Werk und Gedankenwelt,
Analecta Cartusiana 133 (Salzburg: 1996).
Weijert R. de, “Gift-Giving Practices in the Utrecht Charterhouse. Donating to be
Remembered?”, in Weijert R. de – Ragetli K. – Bijsterveld A.-J. – Arenthals J. van
(eds.), Living Memoria: Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Memorial Culture in
Honour of Truus van Bueren, Middeleeuwse studies en bronnen 137 (Hilversum:
2011) 147–164.
Whitehead C., Castles of the Mind: A Study of Medieval Architectural Allegory (Cardiff:
2003).
Whitehead C., “Making a Cloister of the Soul in Medieval Religious Treatises”, Medium
Ævum 67 (1998) 1–29.
William of Saint-Thierry, The Golden Epistle, trans. E. Berkeley, Cistercian Fathers Series
12 (Collegeville: 1971).
Wise E.D., “Rogier van der Weyden and Jan van Ruusbroec: Reading, Rending, and
Re-Fashioning the ‘Twice-dyed’ Veil of Blood in the Escorial Crucifixion”, in
Melion W.S. – Weemans M. – Clifton J. (eds.), Intersections 33, Imago Exegetica: Visual
Images as Exegetical Instruments, 1400–1700, Intersections 33 (Leiden: 2014) 886–907.
Yocum D.S., Petrarch’s Humanist Writing and Carthusian Monasticism. The Secret lan-
guage of the Self (Turnhout: 2013).
36 Falque
Zuidema L., “De functie van kunst in de Nederlandse kartuizerskloosters”, in Pansters K.

(ed.), Het geheim van de stilte. De besloten wereld van de Roermondse Kartuizers, exh.
cat., Kartuizerklooster ‘O.L. Vrouw van Bethlehem’ Roermond (Zwolle: 2009) 48–61.
Zuidema L., Verbeelding en ontbeelding. Een onderzoek naar de functie van kunst in
Nederlandse kartuizerkloosters (1450–1550), Ph.D. dissertation (Leiden University:
2010).
chapter 2
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph as Artisans of the Heart

and Soul in Manuscript MPM R 35 Vita S. Ioseph
beatissimae Virginis sponsi of ca. 1600
Walter S. Melion
How and why did Catholic votaries in early seventeenth-century Antwerp al-
legorize the relation between the material circumstances and spiritual proper-
ties of the vita Christi? How was this relation bound up with the representation
and transmission of secreta – secrets, mysteries, hidden things, solitary places.
And how was it analogized to the relation between public and private zones of
devotion? These questions prove crucial to manuscript MPM R 35 Vita S. Ioseph
beatissimae Virginis sponsi patriarcharum maximi iconibus delineata ac versic-
ulis 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. 2.1–2.46]. The book consists of forty-six engraved images comprising two
complete print series: the Vita S. Joseph, 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, or again, Heart
Sacred to the Loving Jesus), designed, engraved, and published by Antoon II
Wierix before 1604 [Figs. 2.17 & 2.35].1 The Vita S. Ioseph includes a dedication
1 On the Vita S. Ioseph, see “Theodor Galle, ‘The Life of the Virgin and St. Joseph”, in
Hollstein F.W.H., Etchings, Engravings, and Woodcuts, ca. 1450–1700, Vol. VII (Amsterdam:
n.d.) 84, nos. 85–112 (28 plates). On the Cor Iesu amanti sacrum, see Ruyven-Zeman S.
van – Leesberg M. (comps.), Hollstein’s Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings, and Woodcuts,
1450–1700, Vol. LXI: The Wierix Family, Part 3 (Rotterdam: 2003) 44–54, nos. 445–462. The com-
pilers date the series towards the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, noting that
the ‘sequence of the plates is unknown’, and the ‘order of the plates used as book illustra-
tions is differing’ (44). On the cult of Joseph as father, husband, artisan, and contemplative,
see McGuire B.P., “Becoming a Father and a Husband: St. Joseph in Bernard of Clarivaux
and Jean Gerson”, in Chorpenning J., O.S.F.S. (ed.), Joseph of Nazareth through the Centuries
(Philadelphia: 2011) 49–61; Chorpenning J., “St. Joseph as Guardian Angel, Artisan, and
Contemplative: Christophorus Blancus’s Engravings for the Summary of the Excellencies
of St. Joseph (1597)”, in ibid. 103–136; and Faesen R., S.J., “The Grand Silence of St. Joseph:
Devotion to St. Joseph and the Seventeenth-Century Crisis of Mysticism in the Jesuit Order”,

38 Melion
plate that functions like a frontispiece, addressed to the ‘Most Serene Isabella
Clara Eugenia, Infanta of the Spaniards, Regent of the Belgians, Most Devout
Votaress of the Most Holy Saint Joseph’; the epigraph is signed ‘Theodoor Galle
most willingly offered this most deservéd gift, the Life of the Great Patriarch, il-
lustrated with images’ [Fig. 2.36].2 The Cor Iesu is a first edition, printed before
the addition of numbers at the lower right, and the dedicatory text identifies
the Archduchess, who ruled between 1601 and 1633, abdicating in that latter
year, as still ‘proregina’, sovereign of the Spanish Netherlands [Figs. 2.17–2.34].
These circumstantial details indicate that the manuscript may have been com-
piled between 1601 and 1633, possibly as early as 1601–1604. Since the prints
were neither cut nor pasted in, as was typical of manuscript libri precum and
gebedenboeken organized around printed images, and the bound sheets have
uniformly large margins, on which the texts in Dutch were handwritten, it
seems likely that the two series were acquired with a view to assembly into a
prayerbook with interpolated gebeden. The images were expertly and lavishly
illuminated, with a wide range of colors applied semi-transparently, leaving
the line-work legible and, in places, enhancing it. In addition, numerous de-
tails, such as haloes and the fringes of garments, were gilt. The result is a work
of mixed genre, part print series, part printed book, part manuscript, the whole
resembling an illuminated liber precum or gebedenboek.
The book’s owner was most likely the young man who signed fol. 34r, the
final print in the Cor Iesu sequence, showing the votary’s heart, fully and lov-
ingly consonant with the heart of Jesus, being crowned by the Lord himself,
in the presence of God the Father, as if it were the heart of Sponsa, the bride-
groom’s spiritual bride, or of a triumphant martyr, or of the Virgin Mary, Queen
of Heaven [Fig. 2.34]. Below the two verses in Dutch and the Jesuit motto ‘Ad
in ibid. 137–150. On Jesuit devotion to St. Joseph s patron of the Society’s Casa dei Catecumeni
and Arciconfraternità di S. Giuseppe, see Lazar L.G., “Bringing God to the People: Jesuit
Confraternities in Italy in the Mid-Sixteenth Century”, Confraternitas 7.1 (1996) 11–13; idem,
“The First Jesuit Confraternities and Marginalized Groups in Sixteenth-Century Rome”,
in Terpstra N. (ed.), The Politics of Ritual Kinship: Confraternities and Social Order in Early
Modern Italy (Cambridge – New York – Melbourne: 2000) 132–149; and idem, Working in the
Vineyard of the Lord: Jesuit Confraternities in Early Modern Italy (Toronto – Buffalo – London:
2005) 31, 99–124. On Joseph as chief witness of the mystery of the Incarnation, see Solà F.
de P., S.J., “San José en Francisco Suárez”, Cahiers de Joséphologies 25 (1977) 237–251; idem,
“Josefología del P. Alonso Ezquerra, S.J. (1555–1637)”, Cahiers de Joséphologie 29 (1981) 210–237;
and Gauthier R., C.S.C., “Saint Joseph aux Pays-Bas espagnols au début du XVIIe siècle”, in
ibid. 870–896.
2 Plate 36; “Serenissimae Isabellae Clarae Eugeniae Hispaniarum infanti Belgarum proreginae,
Sanctiss. Ioseph cultrici piisimae, Theodorus Galleus magni patriarchae vitam iconibus il-
lustratam mer. Lib. DD.”
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph as Artisans of the Heart and Soul 39
maiorem dei gloriam’, Marinus van Heule identifies himself as scribe (‘schrip-
sit’) and as ‘sintaxianus’, a middle-school student of letters in the Jesuit fac-
ulty of classical languages, probably at the Antwerp college of Onze Lieve
Vrouw (Our Lady).3 The fine leather covers, gold-stamped front and back with
an image of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception in a mandorla, would
seem to secure a connection to the city’s Jesuit college; enframed by the seven
stars of the Apocalypse and by the supplication ‘Sancta Maria ora pro nobis’,
Mary holds the infant Christ and a sceptre, and stands on a crescent moon
[Figs. 2.47–2.48]. According to the pedagogical sequence codified in the ratio
studiorum of 1599, students of syntax, known as ‘sintaxiani’, were positioned
between students in the lower three classes of grammar, the ‘grammatici’,
and students of the humanities, namely, poetry and rhetoric.4 Van Heule
paraphrases, adapts, and occasionally mistranslates the doubled tercets en-
graved in Latin beneath every image. His Dutch prose ‘translations’, written
in a rounded italic hand, are appended like the epigrammatic amplificationes
found in emblem books, which comment on the relation between a motto and
an image, or between an image and a primary epigram. His inscriptions cluster
in the Vita S. Ioseph, where they enhance the triangular relation amongst the
motto (above), image (center), and paired tercets (below) [Figs. 2.1–2.16]; in
the Cor Iesu, he relies upon the relation between the image (above) and the ter-
cets (below), to make his case about the ambiguous status of the heart (is it the
heart of Jesus or the votary?) [Figs. 2.17–2.34].5 His divergences from the Latin
tend consistently to place a greater emphasis on the devotional function of the
eyes. Throughout the book, exercises in Latin translation double as spiritual
exercises focusing on the heart and the hands as instruments of worship, and
3 ‘Schripsit marinus van heule sintaxianus’.

4 The Jesuit pedagogical regimen, codified in the Ratio studiorum, stipulates that the humani-
ties track should consist of five stages: introductory syntax formed part of the first of three
courses in grammar, which coincided with the three volumes of Alvarus Emmanuelis, S.J.’s
Grammatica sive institutionum linguae latinae; advanced syntax occupied a fourth stage be-
tween the grammatical sequence and the most advanced stage – metrical rhetoric, i.e., poet-
ics. See Ratio atque institutio studiorum Societatis Iesu, auctoritate septimae congregationis
generalis aucta (Antwerp, Apud Ioannem Meursium: 1635) 106–107. On the humanities cur-
sus, see Bernard M.A., S.J., “The Class of Humanities in the Ratio studiorum”, Jesuit Educational
Quarterly 15 (1953) 197–205, esp. 197–199; and Carlsmith C., “Struggling toward Success: Jesuit
Education in Italy, 1540–1600”, History of Education Quarterly 42 (2002) 215–246. For a list-
ing of students assigned roles as Milites Romani and Milites Parthi in a school play staged at
the Jesuit College of Ghent, and designated Sintaxiani, see Eustachius drama como-tragicum
[….] rhetoribus gymnasii Gandensis Societatis Iesu (Ghent, Ex officina Iudoci Doomsij: 1629),
fols. P verso-P2 verso.
5 Van Heule added no inscriptions to the final ten plates of the Vita S. Ioseph [Figs. 37–46].
40 Melion
on the imitatio Joseph as the true path leading to the imitatio Christi. It is, of
course, possible that Van Heule supplied the Dutch texts for someone else, but
the presence of his signature strongly suggests that he was the book’s owner
and primary user.
Midway through Galle’s Vita S. Ioseph – at the book’s heart, one might
say – Van Heule interpolated Wierix’s Cor Iesu [Figs. 2.17–2.34].6 Embedded
within the Vita’s scenes of the domestic life of the boy Jesus, who learns from
Mary and Joseph how to handle household utensils and the implements of
the workshop, the Cor Iesu describes various stages in the practice of mysti-
cal devotion, showing how Jesus comes gradually to dwell within the human
soul, finally uniting with the votary, whose heart becomes indistinguishable
from his own. Thus situated, the latter series is converted into a serial image of
Joseph’s heart, illustrating the nature and scope of his contemplative devotion
to Jesus. Whereas in the Vita S. Ioseph, Joseph teaches his foster son how to
master the carpenter’s materials and tools, in the Cor Iesu Jesus takes the lead,
teaching his foster father how to conform his heart to that of his Saviour. The
space of the former series is public or semi-public – the streets and temple of
Bethlehem, the stable open to the elements and visited by the shepherds and
Magi, the household cum workshop in Nazareth; the space of the Cor Iesu is
insular, closed to worldly temptations, transported heavenward, transparent
only to angels, and solely accessible to the boy Christ, whose boyhood alludes
to the fact that he is visiting his father’s loving heart.
The two spaces are mutually defining; in and through them, two curren-
cies of secreta are exchanged: privileged information about the cor Iesu is
conferred on Joseph, infusing and transforming the secret, solitary recess-
es of his heart; and artisanal expertise is confidentially transmitted within
the domestic workshop, a familial repository of secret knowledge. The de-
scriptive imagery of the former series leads directly to the allegorical imag-
ery of the Cor Iesu, wherein Jesus is seen to penetrate Joseph’s heart, both
materially and spiritually, in corpore et spiritu. Conversely, the symbolic
allegory of the heart infuses or, better, saturates the scenography of the
Vita S. Ioseph, inviting the reader-viewer to construe its images as allusions
to the heartfelt relation shared by Mary, Jesus, and Joseph, a relation mutu-
ally signified through their familial activities as loving father, mother, and
son. In this scenario, familiarity with material things stands proxy for the
heart’s familiarity with Jesus; the artisan Joseph, in concert with Mary, passes
on his manual skills, and mutatis mutandis, Jesus skillfully fashions his father’s
heart into a spiritual home and workshop within which he comes eternally to
6 The Cor Iesu amanti sacrum is unnumbered, and owners of the series could thus exercise
considerable latitude in how they ordered the prints.
dwell. The events and circumstances narrated in the first series enframe the
embedded allegorical series, which then redounds upon the framing images,
converting them into allegories of a sort, so that two registers of allegory – and
of materiality, that of artisanal things and that of the corporeal heart – can be
thought to interact. Additionally, the inscriptions in Dutch explore the theme
of the sanctification of the material world, exemplified by the workshop inter-
actions amongst Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, just as the images and texts from the
Cor Iesu depict Jesus employing versions of the very tools Joseph teaches him
to master in the Vita S. Ioseph. Underlying this richly allegorical artisanal imag-
ery is the Catholic doctrine of works that grants spiritual agency to the votary,
construing him/her as an artisan of the soul.
In what follows, I endeavor to situate MPM R 35 within four registers of dis-
cursive image-making having to do with Joseph: first, a general shift in the vi-
sualization of the saint, consequent upon his portrayal in Dutch incunabula of
Jacobus da Voragine’s Legenda Aurea and later Latin editions of the Legenda,
especially Claudius à Rota’s indexed and commonplaced Legenda, ut vocant,
seu sanctorum sanctarumque vitae, ex variis historijs quam diligentissime col-
lectae, ac secundum anni progressum […] digestae (Lyon, Jacobus Crozet: 1555);
second, poetry on St. Joseph, as epitomized by Jacopo Sannazzaro’s De partu
Virginis carmen triparitum (Venice, Aldus Manutius: 1533); third, the codifi-
cation of Josephine doctrine as a complement to Marian doctrine in Petrus
Canisius’s, S.J.’s, De Maria Virgine incomparabili et Dei genitrice sacrosancta libri
quinque (Ingolstadt, David Sartorius: 1577); and finally, the definitive summary
of the meaning of Joseph’s life and labor, his dual ministry, active and con-
templative, and his dual vocation as father and artisan in Jerónimo Gracián’s
Summario de las excelencias del glorioso S. Joseph, esposo de la Virgen María
(Rome, Antonio Zannetti: 1597). To begin, however, it behooves us briefly to
examine the composition of MPM R 35.
1 The Ordering of the Vita S. Ioseph and Interpolation of the

Cor Iesu
Neither of the two series comprised by MPM R 35 is numbered, and it was there-
fore incumbent upon Van Heule to organize them in a manner befitting his fa-
vored patron saint, Joseph. Galle’s Vita S. Ioseph consists of twenty-six plates plus
a title-print and dedication page [Figs. 2.1–2.16, 2.35–2.46]. Wierix’s Cor Iesu con-
sists of seventeen plates plus a title-print [Figs. 2.17–2.34]. Van Heule’s gebeden-
boek opens with sixteen plates from the Vita S. Ioseph, starting with “Genealogiae
designatio” (Specification of Genealogy), an image of the Tree of Jesse (‘Radix
Jesse’) from whose topmost three branches lilies bloom [Figs. 2.1–2.16].
42 Melion
Figure 2.1 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “Genealogiae designatio” (Specification
of Genealogy), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi patriarcharum
Ornamented with Verses), ca. 1601–1633. Engraving, 88 × 53 mm.
Antwerp, Plantin Moretus Museum, MPM R 35
Figure 2.2 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “Cum beatissima Virgine desponsatio”
(Betrothal to the Most Blessed Virgin), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis
sponsi patriarcharum maximi iconibus delineata ac versiculis ornata (Life of
Portrayed in Images and Ornamented with Verses), ca. 1601–1633.
Engraving, 87 × 63 mm.
44 Melion
Figure 2.3 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “Virginis sponsae Annunciatio”
(Annunciation of the Virgin Bride), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis
sponsi patriarcharum maximi iconibus delineata ac versiculis ornata (Life of
Figure 2.4 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “Sanctissimae Virginis sponsae visitatio”
(Visitation of the Most Holy Virgin Bride), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae
46 Melion
Figure 2.5 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “De coniuge, dolorosa suspicio” (Doleful
Suspicion of the Spouse), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi
Images and Ornamented with Verses), ca. 1601–1633. Engraving, 88 × 53 mm.
Figure 2.6 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “Incarnationis revelatio” ([Angelic]
Revelation of the Incarnation), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi
48 Melion
Figure 2.7 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “In Bethleem profectio” (Departure for
Bethlehem), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi patriarcharum
Figure 2.8 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “Hospitii perquisitio” (Search for
Lodging), from Vita S. Ioseph 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), ca. 1601–1633. Engraving, 88 × 53 mm.
50 Melion
Figure 2.9 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “Sponsae Virginis parturitio”
(Parturition of the Virgin Bride), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi
Figure 2.10 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “Angelorum et pastorum exultatio”
(Exultation of the Angels and Shepherds), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae
88 × 53 mm.
52 Melion
Figure 2.11 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “Pueri Iesu circuncisio” (Circumcision
of the Boy Jesus), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi patriarcharum
Figure 2.12 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “Magorum adoratio” (Adoration of the
Magi), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi patriarcharum maximi
54 Melion
Figure 2.13 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “Pueri Iesu oblatio” (Presentation
of Jesus [in the Temple]), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi
Figure 2.14 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “De fuga in Aegyptum admonitio”
([Angelic] Admonition to Flee into Egypt), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae
89 × 53 mm.
56 Melion
Figure 2.15 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “In Aegyptum transmigratio” (Flight into
Egypt), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi patriarcharum maximi
Figure 2.16 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle,
“Nocturna hospitatio” (Nocturnal Lodging), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae
58 Melion
The boy Jesus, orb in his left hand, cross in his right, arises from the central
flower; Joseph emerges from the flower at his left, Mary from the flower at his
right [Fig. 21]. Joseph wears a cloak and hat tinted red to signal that his status in
the eyes of Jesus, viz., within his mystical body the Church, is as high as that of
a cardinal. Like the kings of Judah and Israel on the lower branches, he holds a
sceptre: its apex has the form of a crescent moon, an allusion to the Virgin of the
Immaculate Conception, the source of whose reflected radiance is Christ the
Sun of Justice. The implication is that Joseph’s patriarchal authority as an ances-
tor of Christ derives from the service he conferred on Mary during their earthly
lives. The “Genealogiae designatio” launches the life proper of Joseph and the
Holy Family, which begins with “Cum beatissima Virgine desponsatio” (Betrothal
to the Most Blessed Virgin) and continues for fourteen successive plates before
being interrupted by the Cor Iesu series [Fig. 2.2, 2.3–2.16]. The final plate in
the opening subsection is “Nocturna hospitatio” (Nocturnal Lodging), which
portrays Mary and Joseph in a stable reminiscent of the one where Christ was
born (cf. “Sponsae Virginis parturitio” [Parturition of the Virgin Bride] [Fig. 2.9])
[Fig. 2.16]. The first tranche of plates from Galle’s Vita S. Ioseph thus takes the
reader-viewer from the betrothal of Mary and Joseph, the Annunciation, the
Visitation, and related early events pertaining to the mystery of the Incarnation,
to the Nativity and the subsequent events set in Bethlehem – the Adoration of
the Shepherds, Circumcision, and Adoration of the Magi – and then to the three
events connected to the Flight into Egypt – the Dream of Joseph, the Flight it-
self, and Rest on the Flight (i.e., “Nocturna hospitatio”) [Figs. 2.2–2.16].
Next come the title-print and seventeen plates from the Cor Iesu, the order
of which and relation to the Galle prints that precede and follow I discuss
at greater length below [Figs. 2.17–2.34]. After the closing plate of the Cor
Iesu, “Christ Crowns the Loving Heart”, the reader-viewer re-enters Galle’s
Vita S. Ioseph: first come the title-print, the dedication page, and “In caelis
gloriosa sessio” (Glorious Seat in Heaven), an affirmation of Joseph’s heavenly
rank and station [Figs. 2.34–2.37]; the vita then re-commences with the life
of the Holy Family in Egypt, their return to Nazareth at Christ’s behest, and
his tutelage at home and in the workshop (as portrayed here, the two are one
and the same) under the watchful eyes of Mary and Joseph [Figs. 2.38–2.46].
The final subsection, including the title-print and dedication page, numbers
twelve plates [Figs. 2.35–2.46]. Scenes in which Mary and Joseph accede to
the greater spiritual authority of Jesus – as in “Pueri ad patriam sollicitatio”
(Eagerness of the Boy for the Fatherland), where eager to take up his vocation
as Savior, he leads his family back to Nazareth [Fig. 2.41], “Pueri Iesu inventio”
(Discovery of the Boy Jesus), where they find him preaching in the temple, oc-
cupied ‘about [his] Father’s business’ (Luke 2:49) [Fig. 2.42], and “Corporalis pia
refectio” (Pious Bodily Refection), where they submit to his spiritual authority,
allowing him to preside over their mealtime prayer [Fig. 2.45] – alternate with
scenes of him subordinating himself to their parental authority – as in “Pueri
ad Joseph subiectio” (Subjection of the Boy to Joseph), where he assists his
father, using a hammer and chisel to excavate a mortice [Fig. 2.44]. Beside him,
Joseph cuts a plank with a coping saw; his pointing gesture indicates that he
has set the task his son compliantly fulfills. They labor in the presence of Mary,
who herself sweeps the workshop. Here and elsewhere in the gebedenboek the
tools are gilt in silver and gold to indicate the value and sanctity of artisanal
craft. The final plate likewise celebrates skilled manual labor: now it is Joseph
who cuts a mortice, while Jesus performs the more delicate and demanding
task of planing a thin wooden plank. Tools of the carpenter’s trade – a mallet,
awl, square, ax, broad-bladed chisel, saw, and ruler – litter the floor around
his workbench, while behind him, the Virgin sews, her attention to handiwork
complementing theirs.
Van Heule cleaves closely to Galle’s sequential depiction of Christ – first as
an infant, then a child, then a youth – but he alters the order of three events
predating the Nativity – Joseph’s experience of doubt concerning Mary’s preg-
nancy and his giving thought to ‘put[ting] her away privately’ (Matthew 1:18–
19) [Fig. 2.5], his visitation by an angel who assures him that Mary is pregnant
by the Holy Spirit (Matthew 1:20–21) [Fig. 2.6], and the Visitation (Luke 1:39–56)
[Fig. 2.4] – diverging from such texts as Isidoro Isolano, O.P.’s Summa de donis
Sancti Josephi (Pavia, Jacob Paucidrapius: 1522), Bernardino de Laredo, O.F.S.’s
Josephina (Seville, Juan Cromberger: 1535), and Canisius’s De Maria Virgine.
According to Canisius, for example, the Virgin’s modesty is so great and her
trust in the Holy Spirit so absolute that she declines to defend herself after
Joseph discovers her pregnant; even when she sees him troubled by anxiety
and tormented by suspicion, ‘not a little offended’ by her condition, she utters
not a word, keeping from him the great ‘mystery announced by the angel and
solemnized in her womb’.7 She is being divinely observant, says Canisius, of
7 Canisius Petrus, S.J., De Maria Virgine imcomparabili, et Dei genetrice sacrosancta, libri

quinque (Ingolstadt, David Satorius: 1577) 195: ‘Et ne Iosepho quidem sponso mysterium ab
Angelo nunciatum et suo in utero celebratum patefaciat[...]. et sponsum haud leviter of-
fendi cerneret’. On De Maria virgine, see Haub R., “Petrus Canisius: Marientraktat, Mariale”,
in Baumstark R. (ed.), Rom in Bayern: Kunst und Spirtualität der ersten Jesuiten, exh. cat.,
Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich (Munich: 1997) 525–526; eadem, “Petrus Canisius:
Widerlegung der Magdeburger Centurien”, in ibid., 547–548; and Melion W.S., “‘Quae lecta
Canisius offert et spectata diu’: The Pictorial Images in Petrus Canisius’s De Maria Virgine
of 1577,” in Melion – Wandel L.P. (eds.), Early Modern Eyes: Discourses of Vision, 1500–1800,
Intersections: Interdisciplinary Studies in Early Modern Culture 13 (Leiden – Boston: 2009)
207–266.
60 Melion
Psalm 36:5: ‘Commit thy way to the Lord, and trust in him, and he will do it’.
And her trust is entirely well founded:
O living faith in God, which you find not in Israel; o rare and dove-like
simplicity of the Virgin, which conquers all the sagacity of the world, dis-
pelling it; O excellent generosity of the spirit trusting in God, obedient
to the illustrious precept of father David […]. And nor was the Virgin de-
ceived in her holy hope, for God, prospering her cause not long afterward
through the angel sent from the highest heaven, instructed her spouse as
he slept, liberating him from all false suspicion, and rendering his bride
all the more dear, as she was blameless.8
Not until the Visitation, when she responds to Elizabeth’s salutation, does Mary
breaks her silence and acknowledge the mystery of the Incarnation, lauding it
in her prayer of divine praise, the Magnificat.
Van Heule instead places the “Visitation of the Most Holy Virgin Bride”
(“Sanctissimae Virginis sponsae visitatio”) before the “Doleful Suspicion of the
Spouse” (“De coniuge, dolorosa suspicio”) [Figs. 2.4 & 2.5], which is followed
in turn by the “[Angelic] Revelation of the Incarnation” (“Incarnationis rev-
elatio”) [Fig. 2.6]. In the “Visitation”, Joseph and Zechariah bracket Mary and
Elizabeth, greeting one another in imitation of them [Fig. 2.4]. The Latin verses
state that the salutations with which Mary addressed Joseph daily filled him
with a joy equal in kind and degree to the joy felt by Elizabeth and the nascent
John the Baptist when she saluted them. The Dutch verses invite the reader-
viewer to consider the words whereby Mary, speaking daily to Joseph, blessed
him as greatly as her words sanctified Elizabeth and John. As a result, the fol-
lowing print, “Doleful Suspicion”, can be seen to testify not to Joseph’s doubt
but rather to the ease with which he precludes suspicion by dwelling on the
imagery of the Magnificat, in particular, Mary’s affirmation of the Lord who,
having ‘regarded [from on high] the lowliness of his handmaiden’, has now
chosen to magnify her [Fig. 2.5]. As she reads from the prayerbook propped
up beside her, quietly sewing, her presence inspires Joseph to form a mental
picture of God and the archangel Gabriel. God points down at Mary, directing
Gabriel to fly earthward and exalt her. Staff in hand, Joseph is the mirror image
8 Ibid. 196: ‘O vivam in Deum fidem, qualem in Israël non reperias: o raram et columbinam
in Virgine simplicitatem, quae omnem mundi prudentiam vincit ac dissipat: o excellentem
Deo fidentis animi generositatem, qui patris Davidis egregio praecepto pareret: […]. Unde
nec sua quidem spe Virgo sancta frustrata est, Deo causam eius fortunante per Angelum, qui
non multo post e summo coelo missus, dormientem sponsum instruxit, instructum omni
suspicione falsa liberavit, sponsamque illi tanto chariorem, quanto integriorem reddidit’.
of Gabriel; this consonance of pose implies that Joseph, like the archangel, has
been directed to pay homage to the Virgin selected to be mother of Christ.
The imagined conversation between God and Gabriel also resembles the es-
sentially silent exchange between Mary and Joseph, which is thus identified as
a sacra conversazione. The two doves feeding in the foreground allude to the
unity and fidelity of Mary and Joseph, who are thus portrayed as an epitome of
marital concord, the pregnant image fashioned by Joseph and inspired by the
Virgin having banished all ‘dolorosam suspicionem’. The Latin and Dutch vers-
es closely concur, encouraging Joseph to remain ever trustful of his spouse who
confers honor in calling him ‘bridegroom’, even greater honor in calling him
‘parent’.9 In fact, the Dutch text, which concludes by invoking the Holy Name,
infers that the image Joseph visualizes is not only recollectively imagined –
seen as if in retrospect, on the basis of the Virgin’s prayer of praise – but also
prophetic. It predicts the advent of Jesus: ‘She does you great honor in calling
you bridegroom, but [bestows] even greater glory in naming you the father
of Jesus’.10
Joseph’s ability to envisage in nuce the mystery of the Incarnation, pres-
ent but concealed in the person of the Virgin, constitutes a central theme of
Canisius’s De Maria Virgine. Canisius marvels that Joseph, as yet ignorant of
the nature of Jesus, refrained from revealing publicly any misgivings he might
have harboured. Even while considering what the law of Moses enjoined – that
he divorce Mary – he continued to philosophise with himself, living for God
rather than slavishly fulfilling the law’s demands (‘sub lege vivens, supra legem
philosophabatur’).11 His knowledge of the prophets allows him to contemplate
the Messiah even before he has actually seen him:
But this evangelical Joseph is more admirable in this respect – that he

had an angel for a teacher, and more than once: [and] because continent
himself, he guarded the virginity of the mother of his Lord […]; because
before anyone else he happily contemplated and familiarly examined the
Messiah made flesh; because full of affections as tender as they were holy,
he sensed that in fact the prophetic oracles were being miraculously ful-
filled; because he observed personally the first miracles of the Gospel,
9 ‘Magnum tibi fert honorem / Sponsum vocans, sed maiorem / In parentis nomine’.
10 ‘Si doet u een groot eer / Als sij u haren brudegom roemt’.
11 Canisius, De Maria Virgine 192.
62 Melion
and at last beheld clearly with joyful eyes, before the most blessed proph-
ets and kings, the great and manifold grace of the Messiah.12
This praise of Joseph, based in the writings of Origen, Chrysostom, and other
Fathers, moves from his powers of foresight to his privilege of bearing witness
to Christ. The emphasis Van Heule places on the tonic effects of Joseph’s image
of God and Gabriel is best viewed through the lens of Canisius’s conviction
that Joseph was an image-maker.
If the theme of Joseph as image-maker in “De coniuge dolorosa suspicio”
follows from its anomalous position after the Visitation [Figs. 2.4 & 2.5], it
also predictively informs the subsequent scene, “Incarnationis revelatio”
[Fig. 2.6]. The image of the angel being sent by God now appears to adum-
brate, in the sense of leading to, the angelic visitation of Joseph. Furthermore,
the resemblance between “Incarnationis revelatio” and the third plate in the
book, “Virginis sponsae Annunciatio” (Annunciation of the Virgin Bride), in-
timates that Joseph is being given to see, as if in an image, the mystery of the
Annunciation and all it portends [Figs. 2.3 & 2.6]. Through this revelatio (the
uncovering of something previously veiled), he comes to discern the nature of
Mary and learns to embrace the fullness of his vocation as husband and father.
His response echoes that of Mary, as described in the Magnificat: ‘When from
the citizen of heaven he learned to know his bride, was he not filled with joy?
Now is entrusted to him the ministry of so great a queen, of so divine a son’.13
The most conspicuous of Van Heule’s alterations to Galle’s series was his
decision to interrupt it sixteen plates into the cycle of twenty-eight. After
“Nocturna hospitatio”, he inserts the Cor Iesu amanti sacrum [Figs. 2.16 & 2.17].
The point of transition lies in what this plate shows: en route to Egypt, the
Virgin suckles the infant Jesus, holding him close to her heart; Joseph responds
in kind, though more humbly, provisioning their mule, in imitation of Mary
12 Ibid. 192–193: ‘Sed Evangelicus hic Ioseph in eo admirabilio, quod Angelum praeceptorem,
et quidem frequenter habeat: quod Domini sui Matrem continentem, continens et ipse
custodiat […]: quod ante alios Messiam in carne praesentem tam iucunde contempletur
tracteque familiariter: quod plenus itidem piis et sanctis affectibus, prophetica oracula
mirabiliter impleri re ipsa sentiat: quod demum prae aliis Prophetis et Regibus longe
beatissimis tantam tamque multiplicem Messiae gratiam, et prima Evangelij miracula
coram deprehendat, laetisque oculis clarissime intueatur’.
13 ‘Is a cive Spiritali
Quando sponsam novit, quali
Est perfusus gaudio? //
Tantae sibi dum Reginae
Demandatur, et divinae
Prolis ministratio’.
whom he sees feeding their son: ‘Gently as she gives suck to the child, so Joseph
takes the mule in hand, rejoicing in his service’ [Fig. 2.16].14 The title-print of
the Cor Iesu that immediately follows depicts male and female members of
various religious orders, including a Capuchin and a Jesuit, laboring to sus-
tain a heart lovingly aflame [Fig. 2.17]. This is the votary’s heart, ‘sacred to the
loving Jesus’, in one possible reading of the titular text; but, in an alternative
reading, it is also the Lord’s heart, ‘sacred to the lover of Jesus’. The Dutch text,
‘Het herte is heilich dat Godt bemint’, further ambiguates the heart’s identity:
it can equally be read as, ‘The heart that loves God is holy’, or, ‘The heart that
God loves is holy’. The Cor Iesu series, then, purports to tell the story of the
heart of Jesus nourished by the votary, as Jesus was nourished by Mary, or the
story of the votary’s heart nourished by Jesus, as he spiritually nourished his
mother even as she sustained him bodily. More precisely, it tells the story of
the relation between the heart of Jesus and that of Joseph, which, as the se-
ries progresses, become virtually indistinguishable. Underlying this history of
Joseph’s heartful imitatio Christi, is his loving imitation of the Virgin, as exem-
plified in “Nocturna hospitatio”. The hospitatio, the place that offers hospitality,
is by turns Jesus’s heart and Joseph’s. The heart, thus conceived, constitutes a
zone of privacy so personalized, so removed from public discourse and social
exchange, that self and other, ego and ille coalesce, becoming veritably identi-
cal. The implicit presence of Mary suggests that she too is gathered up into this
mystical space of coalescence.
Tellingly, the mid-point of the Cor Iesu, in the order wherein it here appears,
eight plates from the beginning, and eight from the end, is the plate show-
ing Christ as a painter, brush and palette in hand, portraying the Four Last
Things – Death, Judgment, Salvation, and Damnation [Fig. 2.26]. The image
of the heart as a painter’s panel and a workshop becomes the series’ crucial
turning point: the previous plates show Jesus purifying the heart, preparing it
for his arrival; the two prior scenes, “Christ Enshrined as the Heart’s King” and
“Christ Installed as the Heart’s Teacher”, in which he seems fully to occupy the
heart, enthroned in one, reading from an open book in the other, are in fact
merely provisional, as the Latin (and Dutch) texts respectively asking the heart
to open its face to Jesus and to spurn the books of worldly philosophers in
favor of the eternal Father’s words of wisdom, make clear [Figs. 2.24 & 2.25].15
14 ‘Blande natum quando lactat,

Et iumentum Ioseph tractat
Gaudens ministerio’.
15 In locating this print at the crux of the series’ heart, Van Heule, a self-identified sintaxia-
nus, may have been reacting to the syntactical, antithetical play between ‘pijs imaginibus’
(sacred images) and ‘vanis phantasmatibus’ (idle phantasms) in the concluding lines of
64 Melion
After “Christ Paints the Four Last Things”, however, it is the heart variously
transformed in the image of Christ that is portrayed. In the plate after this
one, “Christ Fashions the Arma Christi in the Heart”, the cross, scourge, and
lance confer immunity against every kind of disease, both bodily and spiritual
[Fig. 2.27]. The arma are in process of being erected, as the image reveals, and
their palpable effects are already guaranteed. As the Latin text puts it, ‘No sick-
ness shall prevail inasmuch as you fabricate preservatives’.16 The Dutch text de-
scribes a transfer of the arma from Christ’s heart to the votary’s: ‘O God Jesus,
[you] hold concealed in the innermost recesses of your heart, the cross, the
rod, and the cruel lance. […] There where you strew the medicinal herb, and
with it this packet of myrrh, no sickness shall prevail’.17 The penitential tone
of plates 1–8 quickly modulates into joy and jubilation after plates 9 and 10:
“Christ Singing within the Heart”, for instance, depicts Jesus with an open choir
book on his knees, keeping time with his right hand; the Latin and Dutch texts
invite the reader-viewer to join in, rejoice, and applaud these sacred songs,
mingling one’s voice with Christ’s [Figs. 2.1–2.8, 2.9 & 2.10].
The other difference between the first and second octaves is that in the lat-
ter, the transfer of hearts becomes far more pronounced, leading ultimately to
the elision of the hearts of Jesus and the votary, or rather, of Jesus and Joseph,
who functions as a surrogate for the votary throughout the Cor Iesu. In “Christ
Garlands the Heart, Strewing it with Flowers”, the heart is either Christ’s or
the votary’s; the Latin verses equivocate, simply urging Jesus to augment the
heart’s efflorescence [Fig. 2.28]: ‘Bravo, lad! Embroider with roses now this
side, now that, encompass them. Wreath the little heart, all of it. // Strew it
with the progeny of the springtime dew, with the whole harvest of Chloris:
spread for yourself a [flowery] bed’.18 The Dutch text, extending the imagery
the first and second tercets. The symmetrical positioning of these two lines implies that
Christ at his easel is the axis around which the image-text apparatus, and the opposition
between true and false images, turns. See note 26.
16 ‘Nulla praevalebit lues,
Amuleta quando strues’.
17 ‘O goden iesus aut verborghen u
cruijse de roeij lantie en wreet
verborghet in binenste u herten.
[…]
daer en sal gheen sieckte beter sijn
waner sult ghij stroien medecijn
kruijt met dit paxken van mirre’.
18 ‘Euge puer, rosis pinge,
Latus hoc, et illud cinge,
of “Christ Paints the Four Last Things”, insists that Jesus is painting the images
of roses: ‘Child, paint with roses this side and that, ring round the whole of the
heartlet’.19 In “Christ Slumbers within the Heart”, fourth plate from the last,
the second Latin tercet multiply construes the heart as the bed in which Jesus
sleeps [Fig. 2.31]. It is his bedtime heart, or his bride’s, prepared for him, or, yet
again, his votary’s awaiting him: ‘In vain, Boreas threatens; in vain, lightning
rages; in vain, the sea foams: // Whilst the bridegroom has prepared his bed,
and slept, the little bride smiles in safety’.20 Alternatively: ‘Inasmuch as the
little bride prepared his bed, the bridegroom slept, and she smiles in safety’.
Alternatively, again: ‘Inasmuch as the votary has prepared his bed, and the
bridegroom slept, the watchful little bride [i.e., the heart of Joseph] smiles’.
In Dutch, the heart is the votary’s, but whether Christ or the votary has made
the bed where the bridegroom sleeps is left open.21 In the final plate, “Christ
Crowns the Loving Heart and Adorns It with Palm Fronds”, the heart’s door is
closed, for the heart has become whole and entire [Fig. 2.34]. The ceremony of
crowning is either a kind of self-apotheosis jointly effected by the Son and the
Father (as witness the radiant tetragrammaton hovering above the heart), or
Jesus’s crowning of his sovereign queen, more precisely, of the spousal heart of
his well-loved and loving bride. In the second plate of the series, by contrast,
“Christ Knocks at the Door of the [Shuttered] Heart”, the two hearts are twain
[Fig. 2.19]. The Latin verses state either that he knocks at the door of this heart,
listening to the voice of his own little heart, which moves him to knock; or
alternatively, that he knocks and then listens for the [answering] voice of this
Totum cinge corculum. //

Sparge foetus verni roris,
Sparge totam messem Chloris:
Sternis tibi lectulum’.
19 ‘Kint schildert met rosen die
sijde en dander omsinghelt
ende gheel het hertcken’.
20 ‘Frustra Boreas minatur,
Frustra fulmen debacchatur,
Frustra spumant caerula: //
Dum in corde lectum stravit,
Atque sponsus dormitavit
Tuta ridet sponsula’.
21 ‘Als hij in sijn herte een bedde
ghemaeckt heeft en den bruij[-]
deghom gheschlapen cons
lacht het bruijdeken’.
66 Melion
little heart.22 The Dutch text is less equivocal: it enjoins the heart to unveil
itself to Jesus, to desist from whatever it has been doing, and to ponder the
coming of its bridegroom.23 Howsoever one reads these texts, it remains clear
that there are two hearts in play, and that they are so far apart at present that
no dialogue has commenced between them.
The Cor Iesu amanti sacrum is replete with references to Jesus as an artisan
who labors assiduously to transform the human heart, striving to bring about
its conformation to his own heart. In “Christ Sweeps the Heart Clean”, he uses a
broom to purge the heart of monsters [Fig. 2.21]. He has left his heavenly throne,
avers the first Latin tercet, to work with his hands on the heart’s behalf: ‘O blessed
dwelling-place of the heart! He whom heaven gave a throne cleanses you with
his hands’.24 The Dutch text has him applying his face, hands, and feet to the
task: ‘Courage, child, sweep; with your countenance chase [them] away; crush
them with your feet’.25 In “Christ Paints the Four Last Things”, as we have seen,
the tools which the Latin tercets exhort him to take up are a painter’s pigments
and implements [Fig. 2.26]: “Jesus, grab hold of the little brushes, and dab holy
images onto all of the heart”. His brushstrokes will efface the idle phantasms that
merely stain the heart (‘inquinabit’), having been applied by Desire, compan-
ion to Venus.26 The Dutch text asks him to fill the whole heart with godly little
images applied with small brushes.27 In “Christ Fashions the Arma Christi”, he
22 ‘Ultro cordis portam pultat

Iesus, silet, et auscultat
Vocem sui corculi’.
23 ‘Daren boven clopt hij aende deure
Van u herte iesus swicht ende
Hoort de stemme van sijn herteken
het ij deel
Staet op herte onbint u kleet ende
Daet van node is te doen onkeret
Teghen de kompste van u brudeghomken’.
24 ‘O beatam cordi aedem!
Te cui caelum dedit sedem
Purgat suis manibus’.
25 ‘Corage kint vaecht tocht met
u aenschijn morselt met u voeten’.
26 ‘Sume Iesu penicilla,
Corque totum conscribilla
Pijs imaginibus: //
Sic nec Venus prophanabit,
Nec Voluptas inquinabit
Vanis phantasmatibus’.
27 ‘Nempt toch iesus het pinselen
en beschrift gheel het herte met
puts his carpentry skills to good use; he is commended for using the joiner’s
art to fabricate the instruments of the Passion and for implanting them in the
deepest reaches of the heart [Fig. 2.27].28 In “Christ Garlands the Heart”, he
constructs bowers and ornaments them with floral wreaths, also exercising the
skills of a plantsman [Fig. 2.28].
The many allusions to artisanal skill and manual expertise anticipate the
final section of the prayerbook [Figs. 2.37–2.46]. The coalescence of the two
hearts whose gradual merger the Cor Iesu tracks is replayed in the register of
artisanship when one re-enters Galle’s print series. Joseph and Jesus are recog-
nized as fellows in craft, becoming increasingly the same as the master artisan
/ foster father passes on his skills to his chief apprentice / foster son. What the
Cor Iesu reveals, however, is that Christ, even before he is apprenticed to Joseph,
already qualifies as a master artisan; his workshop is the heart, both his own
and his father’s, which halfway through the series he transforms into a paint-
er’s atelier (“Christ Paints the Four Last Things”), into a builder’s workplace
(“Christ Fashions the Arma Christi”), into a florist’s studio (“Christ Garlands the
Heart”), reversing the relation between master and apprentice [Figs. 2.26, 2.27,
& 2.28]. The mystery of the Incarnation, Christ the Word’s humbling of himself
in the flesh, and conversely, his elevation and sanctification of that flesh, thus
plays out on the level of artisanship, in the shifting relation between Jesus and
Joseph, by turns master and apprentice, apprentice and master.
Galle’s original title-print introduces the third and final subsection, which
focuses on Joseph as a craftsman and pays close attention to his artisanal com-
petencies [Fig. 2.35]. With the exception of the title, none of the Latin texts in
this tranche was translated into Dutch. The title-print was perhaps used here
rather than at the front of the prayerbook, because it features a roundel with a
bust-length portrait of Joseph holding his two main attributes – the flowering
branch that marked his espousal to the Virgin and a hammer, its head resting
on a wooden plank, which signifies his trade as a master carpenter. Both the
title-page and the next page designate Galle a fellow artisan: as publisher of
the print series (‘excudebat’), he oversaw production of the images (‘iconibus
delineata’) and inscription of the texts (‘versiculis exornata’).29 The dedica-
tion plate, in addition to referring once again to the images he caused to be
godtvruchtege beldekens.
het 2 deel
alsoo noch venus prophinasert
noch de wellusten besmet met
Idele ghepeisen’.
28 See note 108 infra.
29 ‘Iconibus delineata ac versiculis exornata. Antverpiae Theodorus Galleus excudebat’.
68 Melion
illustrated (‘vitam iconibus illustratam’), attaches the royal art of good gov-
ernment, exemplified by Isabella Clara Eugenia, to the artisanal theme that
predominates from here on.30 She is described as ‘sanctiss. Joseph cultrici piis-
simae’, ‘a most pious and devout laborer [on behalf] of Joseph’. Plates 2 and 3
of the final subset of ten demonstrate how Joseph, in laboring for his family at
Nazareth, cedes pride of place to the Virgin, whose maternal labors he gladly
emulates [Figs. 2.38 & 2.39]. In “Aegypti commoratio” (Sojourn in Egypt), he
dries the infant’s swaddling (or bed linen) at the fire, intently watching Mary
and Jesus at play [Fig. 2.38]. Even in this seemingly recreational scene, the
emphasis falls on labor: two angels busy themselves nearby, one making the
baby’s bed, the other holding a moneybag and pointing at the door, perhaps
to indicate that he is about to shop for provisions. The Latin tercets empha-
size that Mary and Joseph worked hard to support Christ: ‘Having made the
journey, they let for themselves a house, living by their industry. // While she
fed the infant, Joseph served him with his hands (‘ministrabat’), accompanied
by the celestial court’.31 In “Pueri amorosa attrectatio” (Fond Touching of the
Boy), they switch roles: she diligently sews while he plays with the child, who is
several years older [Fig. 2.39]. As befits his age, Jesus appears more fully aware
and points outside the image, as if to show his concern to travel homeward and
proceed posthaste with the opus salvationis. Accordingly, the crossed ax and
ruler at Joseph’s feet call to mind the Messiah’s sacrificial vocation. The Latin
text, even while saluting the playful relation between father and child, again
places the emphasis on labor: ‘How often did Joseph kiss the boy, embrace him,
carry him in his arms. // And while one parent worked, the other fondled the
child on [her/his] knees’.32
The middle four plates amongst the final set of twelve highlight the theme
of Christ’s vocation adumbrated in “Pueri amorosa attrectatio” [Figs. 2.40–
2.43]. We might put this as follows: the theme of the Lord’s salvific labor is
30 See note 2.
31 ‘Iter ipsi perfecerunt,
Pro se domum locaverunt
Viventes industria. //
Haec infantem dum cibabat,
Simul Ioseph ministrabat
Cum caelesti curia’.
32 ‘Saepe Ioseph osculatus
Est puellum, complexatus
Gestans inter brachia. //
Et dum parens operatur,
Ille tunc blandiebatur
Nato super genua’.
embedded within a sequence of plates focusing on the complementary theme

of his parents’ terrestrial labor in service to their son. The analogical relation
between the two kinds of labor sanctifies the efforts of Mary and Joseph, even
as it insists on the terrestrial or, better, incarnational form and function of the
sacrifice of Christ, who must labor, suffer, and die in the flesh to ensure the re-
demption of humankind. In all four plates – “Fructuum refectio” (Refection of
Fruits) [Fig. 2.40], “Pueri ad patriam sollicitatio” [Fig. 2.41], “Pueri Iesu inven-
tio” [Fig. 2.42], and “Iesu matris deliciae, Iesus patris solatium” (Jesus, Delight
of his Mother, Comfort of his Father) [Fig. 2.43] – Christ appears in variations
of the same pose, gesturing leftward and rightward simultaneously while he
addresses his mother. His attitude, as the Latin tercets explain, signifies his ea-
gerness to serve humankind. In “Fructum refectio”, the fruit plucked by Joseph
and handed to Christ, is compared to Christ himself, whom Joseph hands to
his mother [Fig. 2.40]. The fruit she collects in her lap, seen in this light, must
allude to Jesus, the fruit of her womb, and, since she bends sadly and pen-
sively over the gathered fruit, it must also allude to his fruitful death. In ef-
fect, Mary prophetically enacts the mournful attitude she will assume as the
Pietà. The Latin text bolsters this nexus of allusions: ‘Why, Joseph, do you reach
for mortal fruit, while holding this living fruit [viz., Jesus]; it is [mere] bodily
food. // Verily he passes to the mother him who must die for all to become food
for all’.33 In “Pueri ad patriam sollicitatio”, Jesus holds an apple in one hand
and points towards Israel with the other, thus signifying the fruit of salvation
he wishes to bestow on his people [Fig. 2.41]. ‘Drawing his mother onward, urg-
ing his father forward’, as the Latin text puts it, he insists that his family hasten
back to the Holy Land (‘Patriae proximior’). As they have assisted him earlier,
so now again an angel guides Joseph, making him ‘readier to journey forth’ (‘ut
ad viam sic reddatur Joseph expeditior’).34 In “Pueri Iesu inventio”, Jesus fully
reveals his evangelical mission to his parents: whereas Mary makes the sign of
the cross to demonstrate her understanding and assent, Joseph’s awareness is
33 ‘Fructum tenens hunc vitalem

Ioseph, capis cur mortalem?
Sed est cibus corporum. //
Quin et ille matri praebet,
Qui pro cunctis mori debet
Ut sit cibus omnium’.
34 ‘Laetus Puer trahit Matrem
Pedes vadens, urget Patrem
Patriae proximior. //
Caeli civis famulatur,
Ut ad viam sic reddatur
Ioseph expeditior’.
70 Melion
made visible through the intensity of his gaze [Fig. 2.42]. The Latin inscription
specifies that it was his signal privilege alone to have realised that the three
days during which the boy was lost allude to the three days his body would lie
in the tomb before the Resurrection. Joseph, in other words, is fully aware of
the divinity of Christ: ‘You alone amongst mortal men knew why the child’s
absence lasted no more than three days. // Yet, having found him, you knew to
rejoice in the presence of so great a child’.35
The notion that Joseph was singularly privileged to acknowledge the divin-
ity of his son, and did so quietly, in the stillness of his heart, derives from the
Vita Christi ex evangelijs et scriptoribus orthodoxis concinnata of Ludolphus of
Saxony. In the chapter 15 of the first part, “On the Passage [Luke 2:43], ‘The
boy Jesus remained in Jerusalem’”, Ludolphus states that Mary asked her son
to justify his three-day absence, whereas Joseph, though he could have chosen
to exercise his paternal authority and question Jesus, instead remained silent
because ‘he dared not argue against him whom he firmly believed to be the
son of God’.36 “Iesus matris […] patris solatium” (Jesus, delight of his mother,
Jesus, comfort of his father), in particular, affirms that Mary and Joseph are
co-adjutors of their son’s earthy mission: he leads them by the hand, just as
they extend to him their heartfelt support [Fig. 2.43]. The image recalls the
configuration of “In caelis gloriosa sessio”, since it provides the earthly justifi-
cation for Joseph’s elevation to heavenly glory, where united with his family, he
continues to intercede for humankind [Fig. 2.37]. Jesus stands at the intersec-
tion of two major axes, that of the heavenly Trinity – God the Father on high,
35 ‘Scisti solus hic mortalis,

Quid sit sola tridualis
Istius Pueri absentia. //
Postquam tamen invenisti,
Tantae quid sit prolis scisti
Gaudere praesentia’.
36 Ludolphus de Saxonia, Vita Christi ex evangelijs et scriptoribus orthodoxis concin-

nata (Paris, Vidus Thielmanni Kerver: 1536), fol. lvj r: ‘Joseph autem licet pater eius di-
ceretur not fuit ausus illum arguere cum firmiter crederet ipsum dei filium esse’. On
Ludolphus’s Vita Christi, see Baier W., “Ludophe de Saxe”, in Viller M. (ed.), Dictionnaire
de spiritualité ascétique et mystique: doctrine et histoire, 17 vols. (Paris: 1937–1995), XI:
cols. 1130–1138; Olszewsky H.-J., “Ludolf von Sachsen”, in Bautz F.W. – Bautz T. (eds.),
Biographisch-bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon, 14 vols. (Hamm – Herzberg – Nordhausen:
1975), V: cols. 312–314; Baier W. – Ruh K., “Ludolf von Sachsen”, in Stammler W. – Langosch K.
(eds.), Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon, 14 vols. (Berlin – Leipzig:
1977–2008), V: cols. 967–977; and Shore P., “The Vita Christi of Ludolph of Saxony and
its Influence on the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola”, Studies in the Spirituality
of Jesuits 30.1 (1998) 1–17. On early vernacular editions of the Vita Christi, see Baier W.,
Utersuchungen zu den Passionsbetrachtungen in der Vita Christi des Ludolf von Sachsen,
Analecta Cartusiana 44, 3 vols. (Salzburg: 1977), I:160–164.
the fiery, radiant Holy Spirit, and Christ Jesus – and that of his human family;
the print thus illustrates the doctrine of the two trinities, earthly and heavenly,
first broached by Jean Gerson, formulated more perspicuously by Francisco de
Osuna, O.F.M., and definitively codified by Gracián in the Summario [Fig. 2.43].
Joseph Chorpenning, O.S.F.S., in his brilliant study of the engraved illustrations
to the 1597 edition of the Summario, translates the key passage describing and
justifying this pseudo-doctrine:
Blessed, praised, and glorified by God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one
essence and trinity of persons. All you who dwell in heaven glorify Him
who gave us on earth three such persons, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Mary
resembles the Father in that she is the mother of Jesus, whom she con-
ceived in her womb, just as the eternal Father begot Him before He cre-
ated the light of day. Jesus is the same divine Word who was born as man
from His mother and as God from the eternal Father. Joseph resembles
the Holy Spirit in that he is the spouse of His own spouse Mary, and he is
the one who comforts, strengthens, accompanies, refreshes, and consoles
Mary and Jesus.37
Just as the image aligns with this conception of the two trinities, so the Latin
inscription would seem to paraphrase Gracián’s assertion that ‘in no one is
found the faith, prayer, mortification, devotion and imitation of Christ, and
highest degree of charity that is found in Mary and Joseph’.38 The inscription,
however, ascribes these virtues mainly to Joseph: ‘In Joseph’s family is to be
37 Chorpenning J., “St. Joseph as Guardian Angel, Artisan, and Contemplative”, 111.
38 Gracián Gerónimo, Summario de las excelencias del glorioso S. Ioseph, esposo de la
Virgen Maria (Rome, Antonio Zannetti: 1597) 120–121: ‘[...] y en ninguno se hallo la fee,
oracion, mortificacion, piedad y mitacion de Christo, y charidad en mas alto grado que
en ellos, es cierto que en ninguno se hallaria en mas alto grado la union con Dios que
en Maria, y Ioseph’. On Gracián and the Summario, see Allison Peers A., Studies of the
Spanish Mystics, 3 vols. (London: 1927–1960) II:151–189; Moriones I., “Jérome de la Mère
de Dieu”, in Guibert J. de, S.J. – Viller M. – Cavallera F. (eds.), Dictionnaire de spiritualité,
tome 8 (Paris: 1974), cols. 920–928; Carrasco J.A., “Fray Jerónimo Gracián de la Madre de
Dios y su Summario de las excelencias del glorioso S. Joseph, esposo de la Virgen Maria o
Josefina”, Cahiers de Joséphologie 25 (1977) 295–322; Pacho E., “Jerónimo Gracián de la
Madre de Dios: vida y obra”, in Pacho (ed.), El Padre Gracián: Discípulo, amigo, provincial
de Santa Teresa (Burgos: 1984) 7–57; Lorenz E., “A Carmelite in Slavery: Father Gracián,
Friend of Teresa of Jesus”, Mount Carmel 35 (1987) 51–63; and Chorpenning J., O.S.F.S.,
“Introduction”, in Chorpenning (ed.), Just Man, Husband of Mary, Guardian of Christ: An
Anthology of Readings from Jerónimo Gracián’s Summary of the Excellences of St. Joseph
(1597) (Philadelphia: 1993) 1–64.
72 Melion
found the nexus of the highest love, life, condition, and morals. // Is there any-
one who stands in glory before this virginal husband and legal father of God’?39
In sum, MPM R 35 has three parts: the first, comprising fifteen plates from
Theodoor Galle’s Vita S. Ioseph, focuses on the infancy of Christ and, as we
shall soon see, on the visual discernment of Joseph [Figs. 2.1–2.16]; the second,
comprising the eighteen plates of Antoon II Wierix’s Cor Iesu amanti sacrum,
chronicles the conformation of Joseph’s heart to Christ, in imagery that largely
derives from Gracián, as I shall attempt to make clear in section five of this
article [Figs. 2.17–2.34]; the third, comprising twelve additional plates from
Galle’s Vita S. Ioseph, brings forward the artisanal theme of corporeal and spiri-
tual service rendered to Christ, and unites this theme with the allied topics of
the earthly trinity and of the redemptive vocation of Christ [Figs. 2.35–2.46]. I
want now to examine the four main accounts of Joseph on which Marinus van
Heule drew in assembling and inscribing his prayerbook.
2 The Lineaments of St. Joseph in Later Printed Editions of the

Legenda aurea
Early printed editions of Jacobus da Voragine’s Legenda aurea, such as the

Passionael, Winter- & Somerstuc [Legenda aurea sanctorum, sive Lombardica
historia] (Gouda, Gerard Leeu: 1478–1480), following from Joseph’s portrayal
in Ludolphus’s Vita Christi, emphasise his dignity, above all by reference to his
distinguished lineage, which parallels that of the Virgin. Both were descend-
ed from the house of David, as Leeu points out; amongst the seven reasons
why the Lord wished Joseph for a husband to his mother Mary, the final one is
that Jesus thereby manifested his royal lineage: ‘The seventh reason was that
through this man, [Jesus] should announce his ancestry, for both Mary and
Joseph were from the same stock’.40 Rota’s abbreviated Latin edition of the
39 ‘Summi nexus est amoris,

Vitae, sortis, atque moris
In Ioseph familia. //
Quis hunc Sponsum virginalem,
Patremque Dei legalem
Praecedet in Gloria?’
40 Jacobus de Voragine, Passionael, Winter- & Somerstuc (Gouda, Gerard Leeu: 1478–1480),
fol. Fol. CC li r:
‘Dye sevende sake was datmen biden man cristus geslacht vertellen soude want
maria ende ioseph ware beide van enen geslachte’. Printed by Johann Veldener of
Utrecht, and brought to market on 12 September 1480, the Passionael consists of two
parts: the Winterstuc extends from the first Sunday of Advent to the Last Sunday before
Legenda, one of the first to contain a life of St. Joseph, published by Crozet in
1555, avers that the highest of his many God-given privileges is that of lineage:
For this selfsame Joseph had many privileges, the first of which is said to
be his most noble ancestry, since as the Gospel bears witness, he was of
the house and family of David. Matthew 1[:20–21]. ‘Joseph son of David,
fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife’, for from the house of David
Christ Jesus shall be descended. But if anyone should wish to know about
this after the model of genealogy, he must needs take note of what John
Damacene has to say: Joseph directly descends, four degrees removed,
from Melchi. But Melchi had a brother by the name of Panthera who
begot Barpanthera, and this man begot Joachim, who begot the glorious
Virgin Mary. However, by chain [of descent] from Solomon the natural
son of David descended Natham, who was the grandfather of Joseph.
But this same Natham had a wife, from whom Jacob begot father Joseph.
From all this is made patently visible the nobility both of the blessed
Virgin and of her husband Joseph, since they were relatives.41
Pentecost; the Zomerstuc extends from Pentecost to the last Sunday before Advent. On
the Passionael, see the essays in Berteloot A. – Dijk H. van – Hlatky J. (eds.), ‘Een boec
dat men te Latine heet Aurea Legenda’: Beiträge zur niederländischen Übersetzung der
Legenda aurea (Münster et al.: 2003); in particular, see Williams-Krapp W., “’Mijn wille
en es niet jegen Gods geloeve ocht jegen de heilge kerke te doene’ – Zur Rezeption der
Legenda aurea im deutsch/niederländischen Raum”, 9–17; Gabriel-Kamminga M., “De
Legenda aurea in druk: een vergelijkend onderzoek van de Middelnederlandse incuna-
belen”, 83–128; and Läken C., “Nogmaals de Legenda aurea in druk: de verhouding tussen
handschriften en drukken”, 129–164. Also see Goudriaan K., “Het Passionael op de druk-
pers”, In Mulder-Bakker B. – Carasso-Kok M. (eds.), Gouden legenden: heiligenlevens en
heiligenverering in de Nederlanden (Hilversum: 1997) 73–88. On the Legenda aurea, see
Fleith B., Studien zur Überlieferungsgeschichte der lateinischen Legenda aurea, Sybsudua
hagiographica 72 (Brussels: 1991); Le Goff J., ‘A la recherche du temps sacré’: Jacques de
Voragine et la ‘Légende dorée’ (Paris: 2011): idem, “Preface”, in Boureau A. (ed.), La légende
dorée: le systeme narratie de Jacques de Voragine, +1298 (Paris: 2011) i–vii; and Delarue D.E.,
“Concepts of Solitude in Jacobus de Voragine’s Legenda aurea”, in Enenkel K.A.E. –
Göttler C. (eds.), Solitudo: Spaces, Places, and Times of Solitude in Late Medieval and Early
Medieval Culture, Intersections 56 (2018) 121–139.
41 Voragine Jacobus de, Legenda, ut vocant, seu sanctorum sanctarumque vitae, ex variis his-
torijs quam diligentissime collectae, ac secundum anni progressum opera Claudij a Rota
sacrae Thelogiae professoris ac symmystae ordinis Pradiactorum ordine digestae (Lyons,
Apud Iacobum Crozet: 1555), fol. 172r: ‘Habet enim ipse sanctus Ioseph plurima privile-
gia. Primum dicitur nobilissimae generationis, quoniam erat teste evangelio, de domo &
familia David. Matth. j[: 20–21]. Joseph fili David noti timere accipere Mariam coniugem
tuam, ex qua domo david Christus Iesus descensurus erat. Si autem quis modum genealo-
giae scire vellet, secundum Ioannem Damascenum notandum foret, quod per cathenam
74 Melion
The opening plate of Van Heule’s prayerbook pays homage to Joseph in pre-
cisely these terms, showing that he and Mary are scions of two parallel branch-
es of the house of David; they bifurcate from the uppermost trunk of the same
tree whence springs their son Jesus [Fig. 2.1]. The Latin tercets underscore this
point, calling upon the reader-viewer to pay close attention to the foliage and
fruit that sprout from the tree’s trunk and branches: ‘If you would admire the
plant’s form, then judge singly the foliage of its trunk and branches: // For the
fruit and flowers of life at the apex bear the honor of this plant’.42 Van Heule,
though he gets the gist of the Latin, slightly mistranslates this passage in his
Dutch quatrain, admonishing the reader-viewer who looks at this fine tree to
disregard the branches and gaze only at the fruits it bears on high.43 (His read-
ing of the Latin is clearly contingent on his experience of viewing the image.)
Plate 2, “Cum beatissima Virgine desponsatio” (Betrothal to the Most
Blessed Virgin) takes up the theme of Joseph’s royal lineage, ascribing his
high station to Mary, empress of heaven, whose supereminence he shares
by dint of marriage [Fig. 2.2]: ‘Having been joined by marriage to a maid-
en holier than any other, do you not surpass all men? // She is empress of
heaven, and you, Joseph, are king of this heaven by a husband’s privilege’.44
The Dutch text is, if anything, more emphatic: all that the wife possesses
passes to the husband by the law of marriage. Joseph’s nuptial sover-
eignty is signified by the sceptre he holds, which can also be identified as
Natham prophete filij David descendit Melchi: a quo Melchi quarto gradu descendit &
distat in recta linea ipse Ioseph. ut patet Lu. iij. Et Melchi est ipsi Joseph avus avi. Melchi
vero habuit fratrem nomine Panthera qui genuit Barpanthera, & hic genuit Ioachim, qui
genuit gloriosam virginem Mariam. Per cathenam autem ipsius Salomonis, filij David
naturalis descendit Natham, qui fuit avus sancti Ioseph. Ipse autem Natham habuit uxo-
rem: ex qua genuit Iacob patrem Ioseph. Ex his omnibus aperte monstratur nobilitas tam
beatae virginis, quam eius sponsi Ioseph, quoniam fuerunt propinquae’.
42 ‘Plantae formam si mireris
Solum frondes arbitreris
In ramis et stipite: //
Huius nam ferunt honores,
Vitae fructus atque flores,
Qui sunt in caecumine’.
43 ‘Die desen schonen boom aensiet
En leet soo op de tacken niet:
Maer mirckt waet vruchten inden tsop
Wt Jesse sijn gheschoten op’.
44 ‘Nunquid omnes antecellis,
Sanctiori dum puellis
Iunctus es connubio? //
Imperatrix est caelorum,
Et tu Ioseph Rex es horum
Viri privilegio’.
the flowering branch (‘roede […] soe sprutede’) overtopped by a heavenly dove
(‘een duve vanden hemel ende satter op’), sent by God to make public Joseph’s
election as Mary’s bridegroom.45 The rod / branch / perch is prescribed as one
of his chief attributes in the Passionael, and Rota’s 1555 “Life of Joseph” equates
his saintly status and authority with his privileged vocation as husband to the
Virgin: ‘And since Saint Joseph is one of the more glorious saints in paradise, on
whom the Lord conferred a multitude of grace in giving as bride into his care
his most dear mother, for this reason we are justly moved [to approach] him
with great devotion’.46 Plates 1 and 2 of Van Heule’s gebedenboek thus close-
ly follow the Dutch and Latin editions of the Legenda in confirming that the
sources of Joseph’s sanctity and intercessory power are his kinship, betrothal,
and marriage to Mary [Figs. 2.1 & 2.2]. Moreover, the mitred high priest is the
very image of the bischop who, according to the Passionael, officiated at the
betrothal of Mary and Joseph.47
The next plate, “Virginis sponsae annunciatio” (Annunciation of the
Virgin Bride), takes up the theme of service around which the Legenda’s ac-
count of Joseph turns [Fig. 2.3]. One of the major reasons why Joseph was
divinely elected to be the Virgin’s spouse, argues the Passionael, was to occa-
sion his service of her (‘Ioseph van onser liever vrouwen dienen soude’), an
obligation he more than fulfilled: ‘So, he brought her with him to Bethlehem,
not wishing that the treasure bestowed on him by God be left to any other
hands than his own, but wishing himself to wait on her with diligent care’.48
Plate 3 subscribes to this view of Joseph: the diminutive background fig-
ure of Joseph wielding an adze in his Nazarene workshop, is analogised to
the praying figure of the Virgin Annunciate, who kneels, crosses her arms,
and with head bowed accedes to the will of the Lord. Joseph likewise ac-
cedes to the will of God in laboring to support Mary, and as she agrees to
serve as mother to Christ, so he exercises his nuptial privilege of serving
her. The analogy of service is reiterated in “Nocturna hospitatio” where both
45 ‘Traut ghi des hemels coninghin

Soo moet ghij haren Coninck sijn:
Want het terfdeel dat de vraw aengaet
Door houwlijx recht den man toestaet’.
46 Voragine, Legenda, ut vocant, ed. Rota, fol. 172r: ‘Et quoniam sanctus Ioseph est unus de
gloriosioribus sanctis paradisi, cui dominus tantam gratiam contulit, ut suam dilectissi-
mam matrem ei in custodiam & sponsam daret, ideo ad ipsum merito devotione magna
movemur’. On Joseph’s attribute, the rod, see Passionael, fol. CC v verso.
47 Ibid., fol. CC v recto-verso.
48 Ibid., fol. CC l verso: ‘Soe voerde hijse met hem in betleem . ende hij en woude den
schat niet laten in vreemder hant die hem van gode bevolen was . mer hij wouden selver
wachten met naerster sorgen’.
76 Melion
spouses, again posed similarly, engage in the joint task of offering nourishment
[Fig. 2.16].
The conformation of Joseph to Mary is ultimately an expression of their lov-
ing concord, which Rota’s Legenda describes as Joseph’s ‘privilege of affection
[for] and sacred conversation’ (‘privilegium dilectionis & sanctae conversa-
tionis’) with the Virgin.49 Their similitude is fostered by and expressive of the
‘most holy love and mutual association’ they daily share:
For it is a general rule that they who accompany a saint are themselves
saintly […]. Psalm [17:26–28]. When saint Joseph was in the society of
Mary, he cried when she did, and journeying to Egypt, went as did she
[viz., in step with her]. […] Therefore, whosoever serves [Joseph] devout-
ly, whatsoever he earnestly requests in prayer before the Lord Jesus, he
shall no doubt be heard. […] O Joseph, most happy of men, we ask you,
together with your spouse the blessed Virgin, to pray for us and lead us
into the kingdom of heaven.50
The notion that Joseph’s intercessory efficacy springs from his privileged rela-
tion to Mary is the subject of “In caelis gloriosa sessio”, the plate that opens
the third part of Van Heule’s gebedenboek [Fig. 2.37]. Slightly lower than Mary,
Joseph genuflects, his hands folded in prayer, as he receives the blessing of
Christ in glory. The Virgin’s open-handed espostulary gesture implies that she
has interceded on behalf of Joseph, who as a result is now exalted to kneel
at the left hand of Christ. The Latin tercets affirm that his proximity to Mary
testifies to his closeness to Jesus, for his reward of sitting beside her answers to
Joseph’s title of father, which he carries by right, no less so than God the Father:
‘For a reward, Christ sets you beside [his] mother, on a wondrous throne of
exalted dignity. // If then the Father was called the parent of the supreme son,
so now you are thus named, Joseph’.51 The composition of this plate, with Jesus
49 Voragine, Legenda, ut vocant, ed. Rota, fol. 172r.

50 Ibid.: ‘Generalis enim regula est, quod cum sancto sanctus eris: & cum persona mala &
perversa perverteris. Psalmus [17: 26–28]. Cum autem sanctus Ioseph sanctissimam soci-
etatem habuerit Mariam filium dei, flente enim virgine flebat etiam sanctus Ioseph, eunte
in aegiptum etiam ibat. […] Quisquis ergo ei devote servit, quisquis eius suffragia expos-
cit, absque dubio exaudietur in suis precibus apud dominum nostrum Iesum Christum,
non enim est fas negare, quam petit propter honorem suum: quoniam fuit pater putavi-
mus. O igitur virorum foelicissime & sancte Ioseph rogamus ora pro nobis una cum tua
sponsa virigine benedicta, ut nos perducat ad caelestia regna. Amen’.
51 ‘Christus tibi pro mercede
Iuxta matrem locat sede
Mirandi fastigij //
positioned between Mary and Joseph, provides a template for other scenes
featuring the Holy Family in spiritual conversation, such as “Pueri amorosa at-
trectatio”, “Fructuum refectio”, and, most conspicuously, “Iesus matris deliciae,
Iesu patris solatium” [Figs. 2.39, 2.40, & 2.43]. Van Heule’s division of Galle’s
Vita S. Ioseph into two parts, the first focusing on his privilege of spousal ser-
vitude, the second on his loving conformation to Mary, assimilates the chief
criteria of the saint’s intercessory potency, as distilled in the Dutch and Latin
editions of the Legenda presumably available to Van Heule through his Jesuit
contacts.
3 Joseph as an Epitome of Artisanal Discernment in Jacopo

Sannazzaro’s De partu Virginis
Sannazzaro’s Virgilian poem on the mystery of the Incarnation was often

treated like a doctrinal summa of the cult of the Virgin, as is evident from the
fact that Canisius quotes a large chunk of the poem in De Maria Virgine; it
constitutes much of Book IV, chapter 9, “The Elegant Poem on the Birth of
the Virgin and on the Nativity of the Lord, but especially on the Purification
of Mary, when having Brought Him Forth, She Offered and Redeemed her
First-Born Son in the Temple of Jerusalem”. The stanzas extensively quoted by
Canisius also pertain to Joseph. What Canisius expressly appreciated about
Sannazzaro’s portrayal of Joseph was his emphasis on this master artisan’s use
of his eyes to bear witness to the secretum sacramentale (sacred mystery) of
the Incarnation, and also on Joseph’s recourse to familiar things, in particu-
lar, to epitomes of high craftsmanship as he struggles to find analogies for the
newborn Christ, who is himself implicitly lauded as an inimitable epitome of
divine artifice.52 The attention Van Heule pays to Joseph’s eyes, more specifi-
cally, to his visual attachment to Jesus, along with the strong emphasis placed
on Joseph’s artisanal relation with his son (as well as on the son’s artisanal re-
lation to his foster father’s heart in the Cor Iesu), speak to the young scholar’s
familiarity with Sannazzaro’s poem.
Si tunc Pater dicebaris.

Et nunc Ioseph nominaris
Parens summi filij’.
52 On the notion that Joseph discerns the mystery of the Incarnation not directly, by an
infusion of grace, but rather, indirectly through the exercise of visual cognition, see
W.S. Melion, The Meditative Art: Studies in the Northern Devotional Print, 1550–1625, Early
Modern Catholicism and the Visual Arts 1 (Philadelphia: 2009), 189–239.
78 Melion
As observant as he is silent, Joseph is a creature of the eyes: Sannazaro fre-

quently calls him tacitus (silent), even while emphasizing how observant he is,
how fully and closely he looks at the things he encounters, how pregnant are
the images he recalls or brings to mind, and how affective is his visual relation
to the world. En route to Bethlehem with Mary, he populates his thoughts with
images: ‘having gone to see (“invisens”) his ancient home and ancestral lands’,
‘with a silent heart’ he ‘reviews’ (‘recensebat’) a succession of images – a string
of mighty ancestors, their illustrious deeds, the ancestral beauty of his people.
Before he can complete this family tree, presumably comprising the ancestors
and the descendants of David, he and the Virgin suddenly catch sight (‘aspici-
unt’) of Bethlehem, swollen full with visitors, multitudes flowing in from every
side, some laden with wares transported from distant shores, others, it would
seem, anxious, having fled their war-torn farmlands – all this, ‘every single
thing, he admiringly traverses with the silent faculty of vision’ (‘quae pater ad-
mirans tacito dum singula visu percurrit’).53
Joseph’s experience of the Nativity is likewise mediated by the evidence of
his eyes, and further, it is Mary’s eyes upon which he fixes his gaze, finally dis-
cerning through her the presence of the newborn Christ:
53 Canisius, “Sannazarij elegans carmen de partu Virginis et Christi Domini nativitate.

Potissimum autem de Mariae Purificatione, quando suum primogenitum puerpera
obtulit et redemit in templo Hierosolymitano. Adhaec quomodo Christi pueri, Mariae
puerperae, et aliorum in templo praesentium personae circa eandem historiam rite con-
siderentur”, in De Maria Virgine 404. On Sannazzaro’s De partu Virginis, see Calisti G.,
Il De partu Virginis: saggio sul poema sacro nel Rinascimento (Città del Castello: 1926);
W. Kennedy, Jacopo Sannazaro and the Uses of Pastoral (Hanover: 1983); Quint D., Origin
and Originality in Renaissance Literature: Versions of the Source (New Haven – London:
1983) 69–80; Deramaix M., “Inepta et indecore comparatio: sacris prophana miscere: une
censure ecclésiastique post-tridentine de Jacopo Sannazaro”, Bulletin de l’Association
Guillaume Budé (1991) 172–193; Fantazzi C. – Perosa A., “Introduzione”, in Fantazzi – Perosa
(eds.), Jacopo Sannazaro, De partu Virginis, Istittuto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento,
studi e testi 17 (Florence: 1988) vii–cxxvi; Deramaix M., “La genèse du De partu Virginis
de Jacopo Sannazaro et trois églogues inédites de Giles de Viterbe”, Mélanges de l’École
Française de Rome: Moyen Âge 102.1 (1990) 212–276; Prandi S., “Arcadia sacra: l’ultimo
sogno dell’umanesimo”, in Prandi (ed.), Jacopo Sannazaro, Il parte della Vergine volgar-
izzamento di Giovanni Giolito de’ Ferrari (Rome: 2001) 7–57; Monti S., “La dedica del De
partu Virginis di Iacopo Sannazaro nelle vicende della sua genesi”, Aevum 73.3 (2001)
629–640; Nazzaro A.V., “Il De partu Virginis del Sannazaro come poema parafrastico”, in
Sabbatino P. (ed,), Iacopo Sannazaro: la cultura napolitana nell’Europa del Rinascimento
(convegno internazionale de studi, Napoli 27–28 marzo 2006) (Florence: 2009) 167–209;
and Brazeau B.J., “Emotional Rescue: Heroic Chastity and Devotional Practice in Jacopo
Sannazaro’s De partu Virginis”, California Italian Studies 5.1 (2014) 225–246.
In the meantime, the hero [Joseph], gradually roused by childish

sounds,
Having expelled sleep from his eyes, and put [black] night to flight,
Sees the mother in aspect magnified, radiant with a greater light,
Sublime, neither moving her face nor eyes from the earth [where Christ
lies], encompassed by an angelic throng.54
The light of Christ, his supernal radiance, alerts Joseph to the child’s divinity. As
the heavenly host wonders at the newborn child, states Sannazaro, so Joseph
wonders at the unaccustomed light that moves him so greatly. Overwhelmed,
beside himself, thunderstruck, his spirit unequal to the intense emotions he
feels, he falls to the ground and prostrate lays his head upon both arms, cover-
ing his eyes. In response, Mary helps him to stand and once again to make use
of his eyes:
Near at hand the celestial angels saw him lying here,

The divine parent [Mary] saw him; nor did she long suffer
His aged eyes to be obscured, but rather, gives him to rise,
To support himself on bended knee, then to stand on shaky feet,
And to endure the [child’s] divine countenance, the splendor of super-
nal fire,
And the scintillant light of ethereal flames.55
54 Canisius, De Maria virgine 407:

‘Vocibus interea sensim puerilibus heros
Excitus, somnum expulerat, noctemque fugarat
Ex oculis, iamque infantem videt, et videt ipsam
Maiorem aspectu, maiori et lumine matrem
Fulgentem, nec quoquam oculos, aut ora moventem
Sublimemque solo, superum cingente caterva.
Miratur lucem insolitam, miratur ovanteis
Coelicolum cantu’.
Cf. Jacobi, sive Actii Sinceri Sannazarii, De partu Virginis carmen triparititum. Die Geburt
der Jungfrau, ein Gedicht in drei Gesängen, von Jacobus, oder Actius Sincerus Sannarius,
lateinisch und deutsch, ed. F.L. Becker (Leipzig: 1826) 70.
55 Ibid.: ‘Hic illum Superi juxta videre jacentem,
Vidit dia Parens; nec longum passa seniles
Obduci tenebris oculos, dat surgere, et aegrum
Sustentare genu, tremulisque insistere plantis,
Divinosque pati vultus, superique nitorem
Ignis, et aethereas vibrantia lumina flammas’.
Canisius elides this passage in his abridgement of Sannazzaro.
80 Melion
His vision of the child renewed, Joseph now finds the courage to break his
silence; the poem he extemporizes overflows with vividly evocative images:
‘[…] gazing upon the Lord of earth and sea – O what fear, what piety of mind/
heart! – daring not to touch him, Joseph begins to speak in a quite voice, his
eyes filling with tears’.56 The images he manufactures are generated in a kind
of subjunctive of the imagination, calling to mind all the richly, finely wrought
things a great king should have to hand, which yet are here altogether absent.
He sees them in his mind’s eye because they should be here. Joseph attends to
the material and artisanal indices of Christ’s divine kingship that appear so
puzzlingly, glaringly truant: robes embroidered with Phrygian thread of gold,
tapestries regally ornamented, paneled ceilings, sweet-scented herbs gathered
from distant marshes. Instead, as he gradually discovers, this newborn king
revels in other kinds of image: on the one hand, images of the things of nature,
fashioned by the hand of God – the starry heavens, for instance, that are his
peaceable, as opposed to Neronian, domus aurea – on the other, parabolic im-
ages that presage his evangelical mission to come, such as the exemplary Good
Shepherd:
Ah, you [who] so richly abound! You [who are] a superabundance of

life, who pass through
missiles, through enemies,
Bursting into the dark wood, muzzling the rabid mouths of wolves,
Who bring back to [their] shelter the well-fed flock!
O you who to me are a heavenly pledge! You added, by way of increase, a
glory on earth!57
And finally, Joseph’s vision expands to encompass the whole world, as he imag-
ines votaries converging from east, west, north, and south, from the far western
56 Canisius, De Maria virgine 407:

‘[…] spectans Dominum terraeque marisque,
(O timor, o mentis pietas) puerilia membra
Non ausus tractare manu, sic voce quieta
Incipit, et lachrymis oculos subfundit obortis’.
Cf. Jacobi, sive Actii Sinceri Sannazarii […] De partu Virginis, ed. Becker, 70–72.
57 Ibid. 72: ‘Prodigus ah! Nimium vitae, per tela, per hostes
Obscurum nemus irrumpens, rabida ora luporum
Compesces, saturumque gregem sub tecta reduces!
O mihi certa Fides Superum! Decus addite terries,
Nate deo, deus ipse, aeterno e lumine lumen!’
Canisius elides this passage.
shore of sky-blue Gibraltar, and the eastern shore of the pitch-black Indies,
from northerly Boreas and southerly Auster, to lay eyes on Christ.58
For Joseph, then, visual discernment is the way to Christ, and artisanal
and parabolic image-making a way of sensing his splendor and divine vir-
tue. Van Heule’s conception of Joseph, though it may not directly derive from
Sannazzaro, is readily comparable with the saint’s portrayal in De partu Virginis.
Given Canisius’s endorsement of the poem, it would surely have qualified as
an approved text at the College of Onze Lieve Vrouw. References to Joseph’s
reliance on his eyes as instruments of discernment cluster in the prayerbook’s
first part (plates 1–16: “Genealogiae designatio” to “Nocturna hospitatio”) [Figs.
2.1–2.16]. The thematic of vision was already writ large in Galle’s Vita S. Ioseph,
and Van Heule heightened this leitmotif by the judicious addition of allusions
to sight in “Pueri Iesu circuncisio” (Circumcision of the Boy Jesus) and “In
Aegyptum transmigratio” (Flight into Egypt) [Figs. 2.11 & 2.15]. In “Sponsae vir-
ginis parturitio” (The Virgin Bride Gives Birth [to Christ]), Joseph stares raptly at
Jesus’s face; beams of divine light, perhaps radiating from the star of Bethlehem,
illuminate Joseph, aligning with his downward gaze [Fig. 2.9]. The effect invites
one to construe his act of viewing as divinely inspired. The Latin tercets put the
stress on the casting of his eyes and, more generally, on his visual experience
of the Nativity. Indeed, it is his status as eyewitness that inspires the praise of
Joseph: ‘The great patriarch’s praise is that he saw the day of the Lamb. Saw it
not in a mirror. // You see clearly the birth of this child, and are the first to hear
him cry and to adore him in the stable’.59 In this formulation, past vision (‘vi-
deret’, ‘vidit’) elides into an extended present (‘vides hunc nascentem’), wherein
the worshipful experience of the eyes seems continuously to dilate. The Dutch
text then specifies what the things he saw inspired Joseph to become – both
‘voester’ (nurse, wetnurse) and ‘voeder’ (provider) to Christ, and ever solicitous
towards mother and son (‘als vader sorghe dracht’).60
58 Ibid.
59 ‘Patriarchae laus est magni,
Ut videret diem Agni.
Vidit, sed in speculo. //
Clare vides hunc nascentem,
Primus audis vigientem,
Adoras in stabulo’.
60 ‘Daer en was noch vrau noch voester
Die daer dede enich coster
Aaen het kint oft aen de maecht
Daet ghij ioseph, die den voeder
Sijt van beijde kint en moeder
Die als vadersorghe dracht’.
82 Melion
Next comes the “Angelorum et pastorum exultatio” (Exulation of the Angels

and Shepherds), in which Joseph, standing at the threshold of the stable, ap-
pears simultaneously to view the annunciation to the shepherds and their ar-
rival at the crib [Fig. 2.10]. His gesture of greeting, with right hand raised, recalls
Sannazzaro’s account of the salutation Joseph delivered to the angels, Mary,
and Jesus, before he began his song in praise of the Nativity: ‘Leaning upon his
knotty staff, he first salutes / The singing choirs, and the queen of heaven, as
custom dictates’.61 The Latin tercets rehearse in small what Sannazzaro devel-
ops at greater length – Joseph’s realization that the circumstances of Christ’s
birth are as rich in spirit as costly stuffs are in material and artifice: ‘The birth
poor in external things, you discern by the eyes [‘cernis’] to be abundant in de-
lights. // Renewed by the song of angels, Joseph, you rejoice in the gifts of the
shepherds’.62 The Dutch inscription to “Pueri Iesu circuncisio” (Circumcision
of the Boy Jesus), the plate that follows, makes a point of the fact that visual dis-
cernment can also engender intense empathy and pain. In the image, Joseph
looks away, as if he cannot bear to watch the child suffer. Whereas the Latin in-
sists that Joseph was cut to the quick by the tangible sound of the child’s wail-
ing, the Dutch instead emphasizes that the sight of his suffering is what rent
the hearts of Mary and Joseph: ‘Eight days later, the little child endured bitter
pain: ‘twas unbearable for Joseph to see the child crying mournfully, ‘twas a
wound to his mother’s heart’.63 Seen from this point of view, Joseph’s action of
not looking is a response to what he has just witnessed but can hardly abide,
an experience he has deeply internalized and now meditates.
The theme of vision intensifies in “Magorum adoratio” (Adoration of the
Magi): almost everyone in the print – Joseph, Mary, the three kings, and an
attendant – stares intently at the Christ child (the one exception is the courtier
61 Jacobi, sive Actii Sinceri Sannazarii […] De partu Virginis, ed. Becker, 72.:
‘Nodoso incumbens baculo, modulantia primum
Agmina, reginamque deum de more salutat’.
62 Pauper partus in externis,
Delicijs tamen cernis
Abundare pluribus. //
Angelorum recrearis
Cantu Ioseph, et laetaris
Pastorum muneribus’.
63 ‘Daer kommen veel ingelsgarren
Bidden paeis en welvaren
Den meynsch die godt willich is
Dherderkens kommen ghelopen
Bringhen giften met hopen
Helck gheeft waet met herten bly’.
standing too far away to see) [Fig. 2.12]. Addressed to Joseph, the Latin tercets
enumerate the persons and things he is given to behold: ‘The maiden, Joseph,
bears the fruit [of her womb], whose divinity the star signifies by its miracu-
lous light. // From the train of kings you discern [by your eyes] his power, from
the magnificence of their gifts his majesty’.64 And more than sights seen, these
gifts, the warrants of Jesus’s divinity, will be Joseph’s to handle, adds the Dutch
text, for he is tasked with safekeeping them (‘en gavt u Ioseph inde handt tot
godts onderaut’).65 He continues fixedly to wait on Christ in “Pueri Iesu obla-
tio” (Presentation of Jesus [in the Temple]), his eyes leveled at the child, his hat
doffed in admiration [Fig. 2.13]. He is as awestruck now as he was when he at-
tended the newborn Christ in De partu Virgine, recognizing him as ‘Lord of earth
and sea’ (‘Dominum terraeque, marisque), the pastor of humankind (‘Pastor
[…] missus oveis late’), and the source of ‘boundless mysteries’ (‘longaque […]
orgia’).66 Standing at the altar, here, as there, he is seen to preside over festive
rites (‘fastis’) that honour the Lord; as the first Latin tercet puts it: ‘Joseph offers
the Creator, and with nothing but a pair of turtledoves redeems the Redeemer’.67
The many allusions to Joseph’s visual acuity climax in “In Aegyptum transmi-
gratio” (Flight into Egypt): although ostensibly their guide, Joseph turns back
towards Mary and Jesus; the Latin text explains that Joseph is acknowledging
Christ as his true guide, who shows him the path towards salvation. His back-
ward glance is thus a forward one [Fig. 2.15]: ‘Leading the way, he guides the
mother and child [seated] on the ass. // How could he possibly go astray, when
he bears with him the one who himself is the way, the pellucid sun’?68 The
64 ‘Fructum, Ioseph fert puella,

Deitatem cuius stella
Miro signat lumine. //
Huius cernis postestatem
Tractu Regum, maiestatem
Magnifico munere’.
65 ‘Sijn gaven mildelick mirre wiroock en gaut
U ioseph, inde handt tot godts onderaut’.
66 Canisius, De Maria virgini, 407; Jacobi, sive Actii Sinceri Sannazarii […] De partu Virginis,
ed. Becker, 70.
67 ‘Offert Ioseph Creatorem,
Ac redemit Redemptorem
Solo pari Turturum’.
68 ‘Genitricem cum puello
Ducit Ioseph in asello,
His habens se praevium. //
Iter forsan aberraret,
Secum viam cum portaret
Et Solem perlucidum’?
84 Melion
Dutch text encourages Joseph to keep his eyes fixed on Christ who will light his
path without fail: ‘Yes see, Joseph, holy man, the family that accompanies you,
and fear not the passage of time, for you have in your care the light of [him who
is] the divine will’.69
In part one of Van Heule’s gebedenboek, the attention Joseph bestows on the
material circumstances of Christ goes hand in hand with his readiness humbly
to engage with these same things, to labor over them, in service to Jesus [Figs.
2.1–2.16]. The tasks he performs are for the most part basic: leading the mule in
“In Bethleem profectio” (Departure for Bethlehem) and “In Aegyptum transmi-
gratio” [Figs. 2.7 & 2.15], feeding it in “In Aegyptum transmigratio”, guarding the
family’s shelter in “De fuga in Aegyptum admonitio” ([Angelic] Admonition to
Flee into Egypt) [Fig. 2.14], or cutting with an adze, the simplest of carpenter’s
tools, in “Virginis sponsae annunciatio” [Fig. 2.3]. In part three, on the contrary,
he is portrayed as a master artisan; his manipulation of materials is more com-
plex, and, as we have seen, he also labors to transmit his skills to Jesus [Figs.
2.37–2.46]. It is as if his encounter with the infant Jesus, and the boy Jesus’s visi-
tation of his heart in the Cor Iesu, had elevated his capacities, catapulting him
into a different, higher register of skillful service. In “Pueri ad Joseph subiectio”,
he cuts with a coping saw, a precision instrument, and in “Sollicita manuum
operatio” (Precise Labor of the Hands) he cuts a mortice or dado while over-
seeing Jesus who planes a very fine plank [Figs. 2.44 & 2.46]. Even when he
performs a relatively simple operation, such as plucking fruit in “Fructuum re-
fectio” (Refection of Fruits), it proves upon closer inspection to be quite com-
plicated [Fig. 2.45]. Here he executes a dual maneuver, at once literal and
metaphorical: with one hand he plucks an apple, with the other, in place of
the apple, he hands the boy Jesus to Mary, thereby acknowledging that he
is the fruit of life, the true source of nourishment; and at the same time, he
encodes an allusion to the Passion – the carrying of Christ’s body to Mary –
a prophetic allusion to the Pietà: ‘Verily he passes to the mother him who
must needs die for all, that he may be food all’.70 The Latin verses beneath
the two scenes of Jesus and Joseph laboring side by side in the workshop
construe skilled artisanal labor as an earnest of the difficult, delicate work of
salvation that Christ will execute so inimitably [Figs. 2.44 & 2.46]. Beneath
“Pueri ad Ioseph subiectio” (Subjection of the Boy to Joseph), the tercets
69 ‘Aaensiet toch ioseph ghij heijleghen man

in waet enen staet ghij nu gheselt sijt
en vreest noch niet ten is ghen tijt
want ghij hebt het licht des willers in u brodenis’.
70 ‘Quin et ille matri praebet,
Qui pro cunctis mori debet
Ut sit cibus omnium’.
analogise the creation of the world, effected by Christ the Word, to the mystery
of the Incarnation, by which the Word was made flesh, and also to the actual
and symbolic activity of Joseph, master carpenter, and of Jesus, his apprentice
[Fig. 2.44]: ‘You see that the Creator of the world has this teacher in artisanal
matters. // But already he was renewing the world, while by this example he
signified that one must submit to common things [i.e., things consisting of
base matter]’.71 The reference to base matter is an allusion to the humbling
of the Word made flesh. The verses beneath “Sollicita manuum operatio” re-
mind the reader-viewer that Mary was herself a skilled artisan – a seamstress
or embroideress – who laboured along with her husband and son [Fig. 2.46].
She sits beside the first, earnestly sewing. Manual labour is compared once
again to the godly work of salvation: ‘Happy the workshop of Joseph: for there
the Queen of Heaven seeks with her hands to procure bread [i.e., make a liv-
ing]. // There God labors, and earns the necessaries of life by means of these
mechanical arts’.72
The joint emphasis on seeing and making that permeates Sannazzaro’s
account of Joseph likewise informs Van Heule’s homage to Joseph. In part
one, his experience of Christ is mediated by the attention he pays to mate-
rial things; in word and image, Galle and Van Heule imply that by the mystery
of the Incarnation, God has become perceptible as matter – he may be seen
in the person of Christ Jesus. In part two, Joseph’s relation to Christ is more
complex in that it is more fully artisanal; mediated by the tools and operations
of the workshop, his knowledge of him has matured, having become more sea-
soned. The bridge between parts one and three of Van Heule’s prayerbook is
the Cor Iesu, in which, as I have indicated above, Jesus appears in the guise of a
master artisan whose skills are variously applied to the matter of the heart. To
the extent that the journey of the heart chronicled in the Cor Iesu is identifi-
able as the spiritual transformation of Joseph’s heart, the artisanship on show
becomes a trope for the transforming effect of spiritual exercises. The material
71 ‘Vides Mundi Plasmatorem

Hunc habere Praeceptorem
In rebus fabrilibus. //
Sed iam mundum reparabat,
Hoc exemplo dum signabat
Parendum vel vilibus’.
72 ‘Foelix Ioseph officina:
Ibi caeli nam Regina
Panem quaerit manibus[,]
Ibi Deus operatur,
Atque victum his lucratur
Mechanicis artibus’.
86 Melion
basis of the former is equated with the corporeal basis of the latter, for the
heart’s changes affect the body, mind, and spirit of whoever labors to change
themselves. [Figs. 2.17–2.34] The greater sophistication that Joseph displays
in part three can be seen to reflect his own maturation as a votary of Christ;
his appreciable skills stand for his consciousness of the spiritual valences of
manual labor, a consciousness fostered by Christ himself, who utilises artisanal
tropes to cultivate his father’s heart, and ultimately, to subsume it into his own
[Figs. 2.37–2.46]. This is to say that Jesus, through the contemplative exercises
visualized in the Cor Iesu, and through the images that anchor these exercises –
cordiform and heartfelt images he assists Joseph to engender – exemplifies a
kind of artisanal-spiritual mastery that then, for the reader-viewer, becomes
inseparable from Joseph’s activities in part three. He evinces more skill be-
cause his heart, in its operations, has become more skillful. The ingenious con-
nections amongst the three parts of Van Heule’s gebedenboek show us one way
in which consciousness – in this case, the mindful heart of St. Joseph – can be
portrayed, that is, made visible. In form and function, his prayerbook might
therefore aptly be designated a machina cordis. What was the context for this
skillful manipulation of the two print series? The characterization of Joseph in
Canisius’s De Maria Virgine and Gracián’s Summario provides an answer.
4 Joseph and the Imitatio Virginis in Canisius’s De Maria Virgine
Four chapters of Canisius’s Marian treatise focus in part or in whole on Joseph:

chapter 4 of book II, “The testimony of Divine Scripture defends the [doctrine
of the] virginity of Mary, and the passage in Matthew examined, on the so-
licitude of Joseph mulling over divorce from his spouse”; chapter 9 of book
IV, “Sannazzaro’s elegant poem De partu Virginis & Christi Domini nativitae”
(already discussed above); chapter 13 of book IV, “Joseph the spouse of Mary
commended for [his] singular prudence, justice, sanctity, and chastity; further,
what must be thought about the intimate cohabitation of Joseph and Mary”;
and chapter 16 of book IV, “[Whether] the dignity and perfection of Mary was
rashly called into question, when [the twelve-year old] Christ in the Temple
seemed to address her severely, saying: Did you not know that I must be about
my Father’s business?” Canisius treats Joseph as an extension of Mary, as her
bosom companion and vigilant custodian, and as her ardent votary: with-
out pause, he is lauded for taking notice of her, intently watching her every
move, modeling his behavior on her many virtues. Astutely observant, he is
party, within the limits of human capacity, to the secret mysteries that play in
Figure 2.17 Antoon II Wierix, Cor Iesu amanti sacrum (Heart of Jesus Sacred to the
Loving Votary or, alternatively, Heart Sacred to the Loving Votary of
Jesus) (Antwerp, Antoon II Wierix: before 1604), title-page. Engraving,
91 × 56 mm.
88 Melion
Figure 2.18 Antoon II Wierix, “Fallax mundus ornat vultus” (The false world adorns
her face), from Cor Iesu amanti sacrum (Heart of Jesus Sacred to the
Jesus), in Vita S. Ioseph 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
Figure 2.19 Antoon II Wierix, “Ultro cordis portam pultat” ([Christ] knocks at the door
of the [shuttered] heart), from Cor Iesu amanti sacrum (Heart of Jesus
Sacred to the Loving Votary or, alternatively, Heart Sacred to the Loving
Votary of Jesus), in Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi patriarcharum
and Ornamented with Verses), ca. 1601–1633. Engraving, 91 × 57 mm.
90 Melion
Figure 2.20 Antoon II Wierix, “Dum scrutaris in lucernis” (Whilst [Christ] searches
by lamplight), from Cor Iesu amanti sacrum (Heart of Jesus Sacred to
the Loving Votary or, alternatively, Heart Sacred to the Loving Votary of
Figure 2.21 Antoon II Wierix, “O beatam cordis aedem” (O blessed dwelling-place

of the heart), from Cor Iesu amanti sacrum (Heart of Jesus Sacred to
92 Melion
Figure 2.22 Antoon II Wierix, “Bone Iesu, fontes fluant” (O blessed Jesus, let the
fountains flow), from Cor Iesu amanti sacrum (Heart of Jesus Sacred to
Figure 2.23 Antoon II Wierix, “Eia Iesu tibi notum cor” (Ah, Jesus, the heart if fully
known to you), from Cor Iesu amanti sacrum (Heart of Jesus Sacred to
94 Melion
Figure 2.24 Antoon II Wierix, “Quis hic vultum non serenet?” (Whose face does he
not make serene?), from Cor Iesu amanti sacrum (Heart of Jesus Sacred
to the Loving Votary or, alternatively, Heart Sacred to the Loving Votary of
Figure 2.25 Antoon II Wierix, “Sunt auscultent qui Platoni” (These are they who
give ear to Plato), from Cor Iesu amanti sacrum (Heart of Jesus Sacred to
96 Melion
Figure 2.26 Antoon II Wierix, “Sume Iesu penicilla” (Jesus, take up the little brushes),
from Cor Iesu amanti sacrum (Heart of Jesus Sacred to the Loving
Votary or, alternatively, Heart Sacred to the Loving Votary of Jesus),
in Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi patriarcharum maximi
Figure 2.27 Antoon II Wierix, “Bone Iesu conde crucem” (Good Jesus, fashion the
cross), from Cor Iesu amanti sacrum (Heart of Jesus Sacred to the Loving
98 Melion
Figure 2.28 Antoon II Wierix, “Euge puer, rosis pinge” (Bravo, boy, embroider with
roses), from Cor Iesu amanti sacrum (Heart of Jesus Sacred to the Loving
Figure 2.29 Antoon II Wierix, “Cor exulta, quid moraris?” (Rejoice, heart, why do
you delay?), from Cor Iesu amanti sacrum (Heart of Jesus Sacred to the
100 Melion
Figure 2.30 Antoon II Wierix, “Pulsa chordas, sonet chelys” (Pluck the strings, let
the lyre sound), from Cor Iesu amanti sacrum (Heart of Jesus Sacred to
Figure 2.31 Antoon II Wierix, “Frustra Boreas minatur” (In vain, Boreas threatens),
102 Melion
Figure 2.32 Antoon II Wierix, “Sat est, Iesu, vulnerasti” (Enough now, Jesus, you
have wounded it), from Cor Iesu amanti sacrum (Heart of Jesus Sacred to
Figure 2.33 Antoon II Wierix, “En armatas flammis tendit Iesus manus” (Behold,
Jesus extends his hands armed with flames), from Cor Iesu amanti
sacrum (Heart of Jesus Sacred to the Loving Votary or, alternatively,
Heart Sacred to the Loving Votary of Jesus), in Vita S. Ioseph
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
104 Melion
Figure 2.34 Antoon II Wierix, “O beata sors amoris!” (O blessed condition of love),
and through her. This is the sense in which Canisius, following Jerome, char-
acterizes him more as custos (watcher, watchman) than maritus (husband) of
the Virgin: ‘[…] whom he is reckoned to have cherished, having been more a
watcher/watchman than husband of Mary’.73 Even before he is visited by the
angel who confirms that she has been made pregnant by the Holy Spirit, in
fulfillment of Isaiah 7:14, Joseph discerns in Mary, by the evidence of his eyes,
the presence of a divine mystery and sacrament. For this reason, as Canisius
avows, he ‘was minded to put her away privately’ (Matthew 1:19):
Joseph was just, and she was immaculate, but he wished to dismiss her
for this reason, because he recognized in [the Virgin] the virtue of a mys-
tery and [the presence of] a certain magnificent sacrament (though not
the proper sacrament of Emmanuel, ‘God with us’], and thus considered
himself unworthy to approach her. Therefore, humbling himself before a
thing so great and so ineffable, he sought to distance himself [from her].
[…] He saw and trembled [at the sight of] her who bore a most certain
sign of the presence of God.74
Paraphrasing Bernard, Canisius then states that Joseph, whom he describes

as striving ever to live in imitation of Mary (‘sui ille perpetuo similis utique
vixit’), not only resembles the prophet-king David, but can better be called
‘another David’ (‘alteri David’), in that ‘the Lord on high made visible to him
[as to David] the uncertain and secret things of his Wisdom, and illuminated
him with divine revelations while he discharged the duties of a procurator’.75
By drawing a parallel between Joseph as observer of Mary and as alter David,
73 Canisius, De Maria Virgine 193. Canisius is citing Jerome’s Adversus Helvidium, chapter 19.
74 Canisius, De Maria Virgine 190: ‘Iustus erat Ioseph, et illa immaculata, sed illam ideo
dimittere volebat, quoniam virtutem mysterij, et Sacramentum quoddam magnificum
(licet non proprium illud de Emmanuele) in eadem cognoscebat, cui approximare se in-
dignum existimabat. Ergo humilians se ante tantam et tam ineffabilem rem, quaerebat se
longe facere. […] Videbat et horrebat divinae praesentiae certissimum gestantem insigne’.
75 Ibid. 191: ‘Caeterum sive Ioseph pro sponsa, sive, ut Bernardus existimat, pro domina,
Domini sui Matrem habuerit atque tractarit, sui ille perpetuo similis utique vixit, ut
coram Deo, et hominibus irreprehensibilis, vereque iustus et germanus Davidis esset fi-
lius, non mente minus quam genere nobilis, qui a patre suo David nihil degeneraret, cui
tanquam alteri David, incerta et occulta sapientiae suae summus Deus manifestaret, qui
propterea divinis revelationibus in sua procuratione rebusque gerendis crebro illustraba-
tur’. Canisius is paraphrasing Bernard of Clairvaux’s Super missus est, homilia secunda, on
which, see Hedley J.C. (ed.), Sermons of St. Bernard on Advent and Christmas, Including the
Famous Treatise on the Incarnation, Called “Missus est” (London – New York et al.: 1909)
23–72, esp. 42–46.
106 Melion
Canisius strongly suggests that he learned to apprehend the mysteries of faith

indirectly, by observing the Virgin, training his eyes on her, and then convers-
ing with her about the things he had seen. To the extent that divine mysteries
are visually perceptible, Joseph teaches how to know them by levelling one’s
gaze at their human protagonists, as well as at their material effects and in-
struments. That material effects and instruments are at issue becomes evident
from the artisanal vocabulary Canisius uses to designate the service rendered
to Mary and Jesus by Joseph’s eyes and hands:
[…] how skillful, assured, diligent, and indefatigable he was in that office,
when once he had accepted the duty, divinely imposed, of becoming the
domestic guardian of so great a mother and son, nay rather, the nour-
ishing father of his Saviour? But now, with what eyes did this good and
wise man frequently behold both Mary and Christ? How great was the
admiration that held him, the holy delight that filled him, when as wit-
ness he gave heed to the wondrous mysteries of God, as one in the place
of a thousand. […] And supposing that, as is most probable, he conferred
often and much with that same Virgin about these sacred things, did he
not presently and sweetly exult, like that just old man, Simeon, and exult-
ing burst forth with divine praises?76
Canisius underscores these points about the visual basis of Joseph’s imita-
tion of the Virgin, when he avers that her most pure and chaste way of life
(‘integerrimi castissimique mores’) impelled him to follow her example by
cultivating chastity of body, mind, and spirit (‘lubenti animo sacrae coniu-
gis imitaretur exemplum’).77 His imitation of her, which Canisius, following
Gerson, regards as an expression of conformitas, grants Joseph access to the
mystery of the Incarnation: ‘Thomas [of Aquinas] and Gerson […] contend not
inaptly that Joseph came together with Mary in solemnly making and keeping
the vow of virginity, and manifestly did so by divine providence, such that an
76 Canisius, De Maria Virgine 191: ‘[…] quam ille solers, fidus, impiger ac sedulus in officio
fuerit, quum semel hoc munus divinitus iniunctum suscepisset, ut tantae matris cura-
tor domesticus, tantique filij, imo et Salvatoris sui pater nutritius foret? Quibus autem
oculis vir bonus et sapiens Mariam simul et Christum frequenter aspexit? Quanta illum
non solum invasit admiratio, sed etiam voluptas sancta complevit, quum admirabilium
Dei mysteriorum testis domesticus, et pro mille unus adesset? […] Quid si praterea, ut
est probabile sane, cum eadem Virgine de sacris multum saepeque contulit, et in Spiritu
sancto subinde suaviter, ut senex iustus ille Simeon, exultavit, et exultando in laudes divi-
nas erupit?’
77 Ibid. 194–195.
especial companion to the Virgin Mary, concordant and conformable to her

in chastity as in every aspect of life, might be made party to the great mystery
wherein the world’s salvation was contained’.78 For her part, Mary ‘abstains not
at all’ from sharing her domestic life with Joseph and making herself visible
to him daily (‘ut a quotidiano viri conspectu domesticoque convictu se min-
ime abstineat’). Their common life, consisting of offices and services mutually
given and received, bears fruit in their most perfect rearing of the boy Jesus
(‘ad commodiorem Christi pueri educationem magnum usum & fructum’).79
On this account, Joseph’s familial ministry hinges on his privilege of serving
both as spectator and inseparable companion, who is given to enjoy unhin-
dered access to Mary and Jesus: ‘Certainly one may affirm that this man was
very skillful and prudent, for it was fitting that not just anyone, but rather a man
well prepared and most serviceable be chosen as custodian and steward of this
twofold and doubtless inestimable treasure (I speak of Mary and Christ), such
a one as might be present at home and abroad not only as minister, but also
as lifelong companion, and as observer and eyewitness of their every action’.80
Canisius’s conception of Joseph as preeminent eyewitness to the mystery of
the Incarnation surely informs the many scenes of the Vita S. Ioseph in which
he is shown gazing at Mary or sitting or standing in full view of her, and, by
implication, compliantly following her example. I have already cited several of
them, but it is worth doing so again in this context. In plate 2, “Cum beatissima
Virgine desponsatio” (Betrothal to the Most Blessed Virgin), he looks intently
at Mary, allowing the high priest to guide his hand as she allows hers to be
guided [Fig. 2.2]. The presence of the Holy Spirit indicates that his vision of
her is divinely sanctioned. In plate 4, “Beatissimae Virginis sponsae visitatio”
(Visitation of the Most Holy Virgin Bride), his pose matches hers, as Zachariah’s
matches Elizabeth’s, as if both men were imitating their respective spouses
[Fig. 2.4]. In plate 5, “De coniuge dolorosa suspicio” (Doleful Suspicion of the
78 Ibid. 194: ‘Thomas et Gerson […] qui non temere contendunt, Iosephum una cum sponsa
sua in nuncupando et solvendo virginitatis voto persancte convenisse, divino scilicet id
numine, providente, ut ad grande illud arcanum, quo mundi salus continebatur, virgini
Mariae talis socius adiungeretur, qui ut in omni vita, sic etiam in vera pudicitia illi con-
cors, atque conformis esset’. Canisius is paraphrasing Pars tertia, quaestio 29 of Thomas’s
Summa thelogiae, his Liber de coniugio Mariae, and consideratio 3 of Jean Gerson’s Sermo
de nativitate Mariae.
79 Ibid. 196.
80 Ibid. 189: ‘Illud certo affirmare licet, virum hunc solertem et prudentem admodum fuisse,
quia non qualemcunque sed probe instructum et valde opportunum hominem deligi
conveniebat, duplicis nempe et inaestimabilis thesauri (Mariam et Christum dico) cus-
todem et procuratorem, quique illis non modo minister, sed et individuus vitae socius,
actionumque omnium spectator et testis domi ac foris adesset’.
108 Melion
Spouse), he attends to Mary, whose virtuous presence inspires him to visual-

ise God the Father sending the angel Gabriel to her [Fig. 2.5]. In plate 7, “In
Bethleem profectio” (Departure for Bethlehem), it is Mary not Joseph who pays
the census tax; he approaches the census table in imitation of her [Fig. 2.7].
In plate 9, “Sponsae Virginis parturitio” (Parturition of the Virgin Bride), his
gesture of address indicates that he is closely watching her worship of the new-
born Christ; the heavenly light streaming down towards him signifies his dawn-
ing realization that the child is indeed divine [Fig. 2.9]. In plate 10, “Angelorum
et pastorum exultatio” (Exultation of the Angels and Shepherds), he rejoices
with Mary, saluting both the angel and the shepherds, raising his hand in greet-
ing as she raises Jesus from the crib [Fig. 2.10]. In plate 11, “Pueri Jesu circun-
cisio” (Circumcision of the Boy Jesus), he stands just behind her, beginning
to cross his hands like hers; as the sign of the cross attests her willingness to
suffer with Christ, so the combination of his crossed hands and sidelong glance
reveals how intimately and onerously he feels the child’s suffering [Fig. 2.11].
His need to look away, if seen as a sign of heightened sensitivity, shows how
fully he shares in Mary’s virtue of compassion. In plate 12, “Magorum adoratio”
(Adoration of the Magi), Joseph follows Mary in casting his eyes at Christ and
bowing [Fig. 2.12]. In plate 13, “Pueri Jesu oblatio” (Presentation of Jesus), he
synchronizes his offering of doves with hers of the infant Christ, and gazes
as steadily at Jesus as does she [Fig. 2.13]. In plate 14, “De fuga in Aegyptum
admonitio” ([Angelic] Admonition to Flee into Egypt), the angel’s gesture of
pointing adverts to the fact that even in a state of visionary sleep, Joseph’s gaze
never wavers from Mary and Jesus [Fig. 2.14]. In plate 15, “In Aegyptum trans-
migratio” (Flight into Egypt), Joseph turns back towards the Virgin and child,
even while leading them onward [Fig. 2.15]. In plate 37, “In caelis gloriosa ses-
sio” (Glorious Seat in Heaven), Joseph’s heavenly exaltation is mediated by the
intercession of Mary [Fig. 2.37]. In plate 38, “Aegypti commoratio” (Sojourn in
Egypt), Joseph assists Mary to care for Christ: while watching her cradle and
feed the child, he renders the complementary service of warming the child’s
blanket [Fig. 2.38]. In plate 39, “Pueri amorosa attrectatio” (Fond Touching of
the Boy), their positions, though still complementary, are reversed: Joseph
now holds the boy Jesus and offers him an apple, while Mary sews his tunic
or blanket [Fig. 2.39]. The boy points out of the image, instructing his par-
ents that the time has come to return to Nazareth. In plate 40, “Fructuum
refectio” (Refection of Fruits), Joseph imitates Mary in gathering fruit for the
child’s meal; conversely, the child passes an apple to his mother and there-
by asserts that he is more a source of nourishment than an subject to be
nourished [Fig. 2.40]. Their eyes jointly lowered, Mary and Joseph ponder
this profound truth. In plate 41, “Pueri ad patriam sollicitatio” (Eagerness
of the Boy for the Fatherland), parents and child have exchanged roles:
now Christ leads Mary while Joseph observes and follows his wife and son
[Fig. 2.41]. In plate 42, “Pueri Jesu inventio” (Discovery of the Boy Jesus),
he looks on while Mary inquires why Jesus left them and raptly consid-
ers his response [Fig. 2.42]. In plate 43, “Jesus matris deliciae, Jesus pa-
tris solatium” (Jesus, Delight of his Mother, Jesus, Comfort of his Father),
he takes comfort in Jesus as surely as Mary delights in him, his eyes,
like hers, anchored on the child [Fig. 2.43]. In plate 45, “Corporalis pia
refectio” (Pious Bodily Refection), Joseph imitates Mary in taking spiritual
nourishment from Christ who having grown older now leads their mealtime
prayer [Fig. 2.45]. This litany of episodes exemplifying Joseph’s imitatio Virginis
and imitatio Christi per Virginem aligns with Canisius’s argument that Joseph
was first and foremost a custos of Mary – a spectator and testis of the mira-
cles enacted through her – whose singular privilege it was frequently to have
seen Christ and the Virgin with bodily eyes (‘quibus autem oculis vir bonus
& sapiens Mariam simul & Christum frequenter aspexit’).81 He is greater in
this regard, argues Canisius, than his namesake, the patriarch Joseph, for the
latter-day Joseph was wont to contemplate the Messiah not in figure but in fact
(‘in carne praesentem tam iucunde contempletur’), could thereby discern by
sense that the prophetic oracles of Emmanuel had been fulfilled (‘prophet-
ica oracula mirabiliter impleri re ipsa sentiat’), and rejoiced with joyful eyes
clearly to observe the miracles and multiform grace attendant upon Christ the
Redeemer (‘multiplicem Messiae gratiam, & prima Evangelij miracula coram
deprehendat, laetisque oculis clarissime intueatur’).82 Van Heule viewed
Joseph through the lens of these claims about the saint’s distinctive and dis-
tinguishing spectatorship.
There is another respect in which Canisius appears to have placed his
stamp on the Vita S. Ioseph and Van Heule’s prayerbook. In chapter 13 of
book II, Canisius dwells on the similarities between Joseph and David, em-
phasizing, as was customary, that he belonged to the royal line of David, and
citing Epiphanius to argue that it was for this reason that the priests betrothed
him to the Virgin Mary. Like David, Joseph was party to the inmost thoughts of
God, which Canisius insists were shown to him (‘manifestaret’), i.e., exhibited
in the form of images. As a frequent recipient of divine revelations, he was also
like the patriarch Jacob who in sleep saw a ladder extending heavenward and
touching the throne of God (‘instar longae scalae coelos attingentis’). Canisius
concludes that Joseph should himself be visualized as the last rung of this lad-
der connecting humankind to God, the summit of which is Christ: ‘A most
noble commendation of Joseph is that the origin of Christ, which was shown
81 Ibid. 191.
82 Ibid. 192–193.
110 Melion
to Jacob in the likeness of a tall ladder touching heaven, was so constituted by

the evangelist Matthew that one reaches Christ by way of Joseph, so that the
selfsame Lord of all appears somehow to support himself […] on Joseph as if
he were the final rung of that ladder’.83 Descended from David, and likened
to Jacob, Joseph is compared to a gradus (step, tread), the penultimate step
of a sequence leading to Christ. The Tree of Jesse (Isaiah 11:1) that opens the
Vita S. Ioseph, its branches adapted to the form of a ladder rising towards the
boy Jesus as Salvator Mundi, with Joseph seated at the Savior’s left, dressed
like a cardinal, answers to Canisius’s conception of his high status as the final
rung of the Davidian ladder overtopped by Christ [Fig. 2.1].84 As Canisius asks
his reader to visualise this patriarchal and genealogical image of the dignity of
Joseph, before developing his argument about Joseph as an exemplary imitator
of Mary and Jesus, so too, Van Heule frames his homage to Joseph by visualising
the royal forebears and lordly foster son between whom he serves as a hinge.
For Canisius, as for Van Heule, the opening image prepares the reader-
viewer for the many images that follow of Joseph laboring humbly and
mightily on Jesus’s behalf, not least to educate him how to become a skill-
ful carpenter. Joseph is shown in his workshop in plates 3, “Virginis sponsae
annunciatio” (Annunciation of the Virgin Bride) [Fig. 2.3], 38, “Aegypti com-
moratio” [Fig. 2.38], 44, “Pueri ad Joseph subiectio” (Subjection of the Boy to
Joseph) [Fig. 2.44], and 46, “Sollicita manuum operatio” (Precise Labour of
the Hands) [Fig. 2.46], and he is closely identified with his tools, in plates 7,
“In Bethleem profectio” (Departure for Bethlehem) [Fig. 2.7], 8, “Hospitii per-
quisitio” (Search for Lodging) [Fig. 2.8], 14, “De fuga in Aegyptum admonitio”
[Fig. 2.14], 15, “In Aegyptum transmigratio” [Fig. 2.15], 39, “Pueri amorosa at-
trectatio” [Fig. 2.39], and 41, “Pueri ad patriam sollicitatio” [Fig. 2.41]. And it
goes without saying that he is almost always depicted at work: in plate 16,
“Nocturna hospitatio” (Nocturnal Lodging), for example, en route to Egypt he
is shown feeding the ox and the ass [Fig. 2.16], and in plate 40, “Fructuum re-
fectio”, en route back to Nazareth, he plucks fruit to feed his family [Fig. 2.40].
Even asleep, as in plate 14, he remains entirely focused on protecting and pro-
viding for Mary and Jesus [Fig. 2.14]. Canisius spells out clearly the connection
83 Ibid. 191: ‘Praeclara et illa est Iosephi commendatio, Christi domini generationem, quae
instar longae scalae coelos attingentis dormienti Iacob demonstrabatur, ab Evangelista
Matthaeo ita contexi, ut per Ioseph ad Christum perveniatur, ipseque omnium Dominus
eidem Ioseph tanquam supremo scalae gradui […] inniti quodammodo videatur’.
Canisius is paraphrasing Epiphanius’s “Contra Antidocomar. Haeresim”, chapter 78 of
Contra haereses.
84 The bright red color also anticipates the similarly colored heart imagery to follow in the
Cor Iesu, suggesting that Joseph’s high station is a function of his heartfelt devotion to
Jesus.
between Joseph’s status as a kind of latter-day patriarch and his saintly repu-
tation as an indefatigable laborer: ‘He was therefore a true son of Abraham,
in whom not only faith and justice can be thought to [have existed], but
who also perfected his faith through good deeds and was justified by more
than faith alone’.85 Inasmuch as justice is the perfection of the rational spirit,
so Joseph strove always to fulfill the commandments in word and in deed,
and he was thus righteous not merely by the gracious imputation of Christ
(‘ad iusticiam suam imputativam’) but also in and through his own actions
(‘ab ipso facto’).86 Seen in this light, the opening plate of the Vita S. Ioseph
establishes him as a man sanctified by the grace of lineage – like Jacob, like
David – while the subsequent plates adduce his justification by works, in-
cluding the arduous labour of meditative and contemplative spiritual exer-
cises, as evinced by the Cor Iesu amanti sacrum. That prayer is hard work,
the labour of Jesus sweeping and washing the penitent heart (Figs. 2.21, 2.22,
& 2.23), and painting and plaiting the illluminative heart (Figs. 2.26, 2.28, &
2.34), makes clear. These artisanal-spiritual exercises are bound up with the
surpassing labour of the Passion, as plate 27, which shows Christ depositing
the arma Christi in Joseph’s cavernous heart, and plate 44, in which the boy
Jesus learns to fabricate under Joseph’s guidance what looks like the stem of
the cross (the workbench plays the part of the crossbar), reveal [Figs. 2.27 &
2.44]. Van Heule’s Joseph, then, like Canisius’s, can best be appreciated as an
epitome of the Tridentine doctrine of justification through the cooperation
of faith and works.
Joseph can perhaps also be seen to body forth a central Canisian trope for
the nature of ecclesiastical authority which derives from two sources: on the
one hand, from Scripture; on the other, from traditions sanctioned by the
Church, handed down by unbroken succession, and approved by papal or
conciliar decree: ‘But Basil the Great teaches most clearly, and Hugo Eterianus
confirms, that not all things believed and observed by the Church are con-
tained in Scripture: many have reached us, if you will, by tradition alone, as if
transmitted by the hand (‘veluti per manus transmissa’), and it is fitting that
they be assigned the greatest authority’.87 Since Van Heule’s Joseph, on one
85 Ibid. 192: ‘Verus igitur Abrahae filius fuit, cui non solum fides ad iusticiam reputabatur,
sed qui suam fidem benefactis etiam consummabat, nec sola fide iustificabatur’.
86 Ibid. 192.
87 Canisius, “Caput decimumseptimum: ‘Maria non omnia quidem intellexisse […]’ ”, in De
Maria virgine 448: ‘Docet autem clarissime Basilius Magnus, et confirmat Hugo Eterianus,
non omnia quae credit et observat Ecclesia, scripto contineri, multaque, vel sola tradi-
tione, ad nos, veluti per manus transmissa pervenisse, quibus autoritatem maximam
tribuere par sit’. Canisius is paraphrasing chapter 27 of Basil’s Liber de Spirito Sancto, and
chapter 14 of Hugo Eterianus’s Liber de anima corpore iam exuta.
112 Melion
reading, epitomizes the Canisian doctrine of justification by works, it seems

plausible that the series’ complementary emphasis on the labor of his hands,
and on the traditions of the workshop that he passes on to Christ, may al-
lude to Canisius’s conviction, stated in chapter 17 of book IV, one of the three
chapters on Joseph, that points of doctrine conveyed per manus are no less
important than those licensed by Scripture. Canisius makes this point here to
account for his claim that Joseph, far from being hostage to the carnal imagi-
nation, was knowledgeable, too, about spiritual matters learned at first hand,
from the circumstances of his life with Mary and Jesus. Whereas the Jews,
reading Scripture literally, were awaiting a splendid Messiah, Joseph realised
along with Mary that Jesus was more a learned rabbi than a resplendent king.
He perceived Christ sacredly and sublimely, rather than subscribing to the
expectation that Emmanuel would be a temporal king, and having been ap-
prised by the angel (Matthew 1:21–23) that the child to be born of Mary is the
Messiah, he realised from the low indeed abject circumstances of his birth that
the kingdom of Christ would be spiritual, divine in virtue not in pomp and
circumstance.88 For Canisius, the manual labor that Joseph exercises for and
with Jesus is consequent with the spiritual discernment with which he assesses
the life and circumstances Christ, using them to judge the nature and scope
of his evangelical doctrine.89 In Van Heule’s prayerbook, the complementarity
of physical labor and spiritual discernment is further signaled by the embed-
ment of the Cor Iesu amanti sacrum, which in this context chronicles the spiri-
tual exercises of Joseph and culminates in his unitive love of Jesus, within the
Vita S. Ioseph with its emphasis on manual exertion. As we have seen, artisanal
labor is troped in the Cor Iesu, where it signifies the heart’s strenuous efforts to
know and love Jesus (who is always pictured as a child) no less intensely than
a parent loves his first-born son.
Finally, De Maria Virgine can be marshalled to explain a peculiar feature of
the Vita S. Ioseph – namely, the contingent and variable appearance of Joseph
in several plates. He is relatively young and vigorous in most of the plates, ap-
pears quite muscular in plate 45, “Corporalis pia refectio”, and labors manfully in
the workshop scenes [Fig. 2.45]. But in plates 7, “In Bethleem profectio”, and 8,
88 Canisius, De Maria virgine 448. Canisius further argues that Joseph took the humble mate-
rial circumstances of his household as proof that the kingship of Christ was to be spiritual
not terrestrial.
89 See note 80 supra. Canisius adds that Joseph lacked none of the dotes (talents, skills, gifts,
endowments) that a paterfamilias needs for the maintainance of life and family. Also see
note 90 infra, especially the reference to Joseph’s artisanal labor and his ability to feed
Mary and Jesus by exercising his hands and practising his art.
“Hospitii perquisitio”, he looks much other, and in the latter is even bald-pated
[Figs. 2.7 & 2.8]. This variability in the appearance of Joseph would seem to il-
lustrate a fundamental point raised by Canisius in chapter 13 of book II: there
is no consensus about the age at which he married the Virgin, and even the
Fathers disagree:
Truly the disagreement still continues about whether he was then young
with respect to his proven age, as would seem apposite for the exercise of
carpentry, for the procuring of sustenance by one’s hands and art, for set-
ting out on various and difficult journeys, and finally, for the just admin-
istration of family matters. In which opinion there are some who at this
time abide, whereas older sources reckon on the contrary that this hus-
band of Mary was quite aged, tried and tested, in the fashion that many
painters are wont to depict him, diminished in strength, feeble and even
weakened by old age.90
Picturing Joseph, on this account, is akin to portraying someone the painter

has not actually seen but must plausibly represent. Indeed, Canisius conjec-
tures, showing him as an old man was probably nothing more than an ‘inge-
nious device’ (‘ingeniosa vetustas’) adapted to the eyes of common viewers
who might otherwise be led to doubt his conjugal chastity, were he depicted as
a younger man (‘in tabella spectantium oculis subijceretur’). For more sophis-
ticated viewers, however, he may be pictured in the way Canisius does – by
plausible inference. The phrase he uses for this inferential process of visualiza-
tion that puts forward a plausible image without claiming for it any evidentiary
authority is ‘illud certo affirmare licet’: ‘What one is surely permitted to affirm
is that this man was very skilful and prudent […]’.91 Canisius is signalling that
his presentation of Joseph is rhetorical, conjectural, and strategic, that in its
form and function it may be considered traditional or, better, transmissam per
manus, and that in its lineaments and effects it is comparable to a judiciously
90 Ibid. 189: ‘Verum durat adhuc controversia, fuerit ne ille tunc confirmata aetate iuvenis,
ut ad fabrilem operam exercendam, ad victum manu et arte conquirendum, ad variam et
difficilem profectionem subeundam, ad rem denique familiarem legitime administran-
dam satis idoneus esse posset. In qua sententia nonnulli hac tempestate versantur, alijs
qui sunt vetustiores, contra existimantibus, hunc Mariae sponsum sic satis grandaevum
probatumque senem fuisse, quemadmodum et bona pictorum pars illum senior confec-
tum, & viribus imbecillem adeoque fractum depingere solet’.
91 See note 80 supra.
114 Melion
fashioned, persuasive picture.92 This is tantamount to saying that his image

of Joseph is essentially similar to that put forward by Theodoor Galle in the
Vita S. Ioseph: both accounts of Joseph are visual, self-consciously manu-
facta, and efficacious, geared towards instilling and promoting reverence
for this well deserving saint. That Galle allows his Joseph to vary in appear-
ance reveals the degree to which his serial imagery is conjectural in form
and meditative in function, designed to encourage devotional thoughts
and feelings about this most estimable of fathers and most Christian of ar-
tisans, even while deriving, as is true of meditative images generally, from
plausible inference rather than incontrovertible fact. Within the prayer-
book, Jesus himself is shown licensing this kind of devotional image-making:
in plate 26, midway through the sequence from the Cor Iesu amanti sa-
crum, as mentioned earlier, he paints four conjectural images upon Joseph’s
heart, inviting him to reflect on things he can know only inferentially – heaven,
hell, the Last Judgment, and his own death – through which he shall come to
feel more fully the minatory, but also consolatory presence of Christ his Saviour
[Fig. 2.26]. These images, like all of the Vita S. Ioseph and, comprised by it, the
Cor Iesu amanti sacrum, are as strategic as they are pictorial, fabricated to bring
the heart of the votary closer to Jesus. Their occasional variability declares that
meditative image-making is an exercise responsive to the differing capacities
and circumstances of the votary who endeavors to meditate Christ.
5 The Artisanal and Contemplative Prowess of Joseph in Jerónimo

Gracián’s Summario de las excelencias del glorioso S. Joseph, esposo
de la Virgen María
Gracián’s treatise was largely responsible for cementing Joseph’s reputation as

the saint who, after Mary, most fully harmonized the active and the contem-
plative lives. The Summario lauds him for his dual competencies: a superbly
skilled faber (joiner, forger, carpenter, builder), he met his family’s every mate-
rial need, building the house where they dwelt, forging its nails and locks, and
furnishing it; an equally skilled votary, he daily engaged in prayer and other
spiritual works, striving to build another kind of house for Christ, who thus
took up residence in Joseph’s heart and soul. Jointly exercised, his active and
contemplative abilities prove entirely compatible: he is as much a faber of
the heart, as a worker of wood, and his spiritual exercises fuel his good works.
Gracián compares him initially to Martha, sister of the Magdalene, who was
‘anxious, solicitous, and troubled by many things’ when Christ called upon
them (Luke 10:38–42); so, too, the Virgin’s straitened circumstances and the
92 See note 87 supra.

extreme poverty into which Christ was born, greatly perturbed Joseph. He is
like a courtier who, lacking the means duly to receive his lord, feels his inad-
equacy deeply:
Tell me, who has ever read that a man faithful, discreet, and of noble birth
would desire to do otherwise than provide hospitality if his legitimate
king, with whose great majesty he was acquainted, and from whom he
hoped for every remedy, were to visit his house? What [would he feel] if
he had no bed in which to lay him down, no place of refuge, were such a
king to come calling in great need?93
The first third of Van Heule’s prayerbook, plates 2–16, focusing on the infant
Christ, characterizes Joseph as a man heavily burdened by the cares of father-
hood [Figs. 2.2–2.16]: for example, the Dutch verses below plate 8, “Hospitii
perquisitio”, describe his great sorrow at finding no place to shelter Mary
[Fig. 2.8];94 those below plate 9, “Sponsae Virginis parturitio”, refer to his pater-
nal solicitude (‘Die als vader sorghe dracht’) [Fig. 2.9]; and those below plate 14,
“De fuga in Aegyptum admonitio”, as if spoken by the angel, attempt to as-
suage his worries about the child’s safety [Fig. 2.14]: ‘You who are the child’s
guide, and the mother’s, you shall not lose your way; nay, for the child is your
guardian. Whether near or far, he is the true way, lighting all men like the
morning star’.95
The next third of the prayerbook, comprising the Cor Iesu amanti sacrum,
might best be described as showing how Joseph, formerly likened to Martha,
now becomes more like her sister Mary Magdalene, whose prayerful attention
Christ praises in Luke 10:42 [Figs. 2.17–2.34]: ‘Mary hath chosen the best part,
which shall not be taken away from her’. Like Mary, he retires from saecularia
(worldly things), dwelling instead on the secreta sacra (sacred mysteries) into
which Jesus progressively initiates him. In turn, the dynamic interaction of
the two cordes, and the solitary place wherein they interact, are disclosed to
the attentive reader-viewer. Just as the first third of the prayerbook concludes
93 Gracián, Summario 189–190: ‘Digame quien esto leyere, que sentiria un hombre piadoso,
discrete, y noble de condicion, si viniesse a sus casa su natural Rei, de quien conosciesse
grandeza de Magestad, y esperasse todo su remedio, sino tuviesse con que hospedalle? Ni
cama en que le acostan, y el Rey viniesse tan necessitado, que en otra parte no tuviesse
refugio’.
94 ‘Ghij gaet over al de ronde,
Maer gheen herberghe hebdij vonden,
O waet drovich ongheval’.
95 ‘Ghij die de leijtsman sijt van kint en sijne moder
Ghij en sult niet dolen, neen het kint is u behoder
Hij is den waren wech wer hij bij is oft verre
Verlichtende alle meijnsch als een morghensterre’.
116 Melion
with the journey into Egypt, so plate 18 initiates the spiritual journey to be
undertaken by Joseph: the child Jesus embraces his foster father’s heart, shield-
ing it from the personifications of worldly cares and temptations round about
[Fig. 2.18]. The Latin verses counsel this heart to identify with the heart of
Christ (‘Christi sinus’) wherein it may shelter from the importunate world. The
tercets turn on the term sinus (heart, but also hiding place or place of refuge):
‘The false world adorns [her] face; fraud conceals in order to deceive. Trust not
her blandishments. // If you wish to escape the net, seek the heart of Christ,
far from snares’.96 The subsequent sixteen plates chronicle the steps taken by
Jesus in concert with the heart, as they become increasingly alike and, finally,
inseparable. This point is reached in plate 33, which portrays Christ stand-
ing within Joseph’s fiery, loving heart, and offering him his own heart, equally
aflame [Fig. 2.33]. Fiery with the love of Jesus, Joseph’s heart subsumes Jesus;
conversely, Jesus proffers his heart fiery with the love of Joseph. The Latin vers-
es simultaneously address both hearts, emphasizing that they have become
one and the same: ‘Behold, Jesus extends his hands armed with flames, ignites
the heart with firebrands on this side and on that. // Come! Let the heart be
consumed; let it be reduced to ash by the fires of love’.97
The interior journey extending from plates 19 to 33 closely follows that de-
scribed by Gracián in chapter 3 of book III, “On the perfection of Joseph’s soul,
[in which] is declared that perfection is the union of the soul with Christ; the
differences and component parts of the union are adduced, and how Joseph was
excellent in all these” [Figs. 2.19–2.33].98 Apropos Gracián, the Cor Iesu amanti
sacrum can be said to track the growing perfection of Joseph’s heart as it ap-
proaches the ‘summit of charity’ (‘cumbre de la charidad’), becoming a kind
of living oratory (‘paradero de los exercitios de oracion’, i.e., a dwelling-place
for spiritual exercises), wherein true perfection, which is the ‘union between
96 ‘Fallax mundus ornat vultus,

Dolus latet sed occultus:
Ne crede blanditijs – //
Hoc vitare si vis rete;
Cito Christi sinus pete
Procul ab insidijs’.
97 ‘En armatas flammis tendit
Iesus manus, cor accendit
Hinc et illinc facibus. //
Age, totum comburatur,
In favillam redigatur
Cor amoris ignibus’.
98 Gracián, Summario 117: “De la perfecion del alma de Ioseph: declarase que la perfecion
es union del alma con Christo: ponense las differencias, y partes de la Union, y como en
todas ellas fue aventajado Ioseph”.
God and the soul’ (‘perfection es union entre Dios, y el alma’), may be dis-
cerned.99 The means to perfection, says Gracián, is prayer (‘el principio de toda
la perfection es la oracion’), and the Cor Iesu amanti sacrum demonstrates
how Joseph achieves spiritual perfection through his heart’s contemplative en-
gagement with Jesus.100 Plate 33, the series’ penultimate episode, exemplifies
Gracián’s conviction that ‘unity […] is the aim of all contemplation’, through
which the ‘votary binds his works to Christ, who is their true source, attaching
him interiorly to the soul as its first principle, final end, and the means to that
end’ [Fig. 2.33].101
The prayerbook’s first part, plates 1–16, concludes with “Nocturna hospita-
tio”, in which Joseph sets about the task of feeding the family’s pack animals
[Figs. 2.1–2.16]. Plate 19 answers this plate, both as complement and antith-
esis: posed like Joseph (though turned 180 degrees), and placed like him at the
threshold of a dwelling (though outside), Jesus knocks at the door of his foster
father’s heart, urging him to set aside his many pressing concerns; he should
instead listen to the gentle beating of the cor Iesu [Fig. 2.19]. The Latin tercets
read: ‘Outside, Jesus knocks at the door of the heart, falls silent, and listens to
his little heart’s voice. Arise, heart, undo the bolt: what need is there for action;
[instead] meditate the advent of the little bridegroom’.102 Jesus further resem-
bles Joseph as he appears in plate 8, “Hospitii perquisitio”, poised at the thresh-
old of the inn, and plate 9, “Sponsae Virginis parturitio”, where he bends over
the newborn Christ, one arm raised, the other lowered [Figs. 2.8 & 2.9]. These
similarities illustrate the first of the five kinds of union leading by degrees to
complete oneness with Christ, enumerated by Gracián in chapter 3 of book III:
‘The mystical theologians treating of the union between one and another thing
put forward five constituent parts. The first they call unio similitudinis, which
is to say, union of likeness’.103 Once Christ enters Joseph’s heart, lighting its in-
nermost recesses [Fig. 2.20], emptying them of worldly things [Fig. 2.21], wash-
99 Ibid. 117.
100 Ibid. 118.
101 Ibid. 119: ‘[…] la unidad, por que esta es el fin de toda la contemplacion […] que contemp-
lando llegan a juntar sus obras, con el primer principio, y juntando dentro de su anima el
principio, fin, y medio, hazen de todo una cosa dentro de si’.
102 ‘Ultro cordis portam pultat
Iesus, silet, et auscultat
Vocem sui corculi. //
Cor exsurge, vectem solve:
Quid sit opus factu, volve
In adventum sponsuli’.
103 Gracián, Summario 121: “Los Theologos misticos tratando de la union entre otras ponen
cinco partes della. La primera llaman unio similitudinis, que es dezir union de semejanza,
y es la que ay entre dos cosas que se parecen”.
118 Melion
ing them with his blood [Fig. 2.22], and purifying them [Fig. 2.23], he effects
the second degree of union – unio propinquitatis – the union of propinquity,
when two things are made adjacent and ‘joined, like hands linked’.104 Joseph is
transformed into the living house of God, the throne room from which Christ
reigns [Fig. 2.24]. The Latin tercets aver that Jesus, working from within, effects
a change in the appearance of the votary, whose face becomes as placid the
Lord’s, once the cares of the world have been dispelled: ‘Whose face does he
not make serene? Behold, Jesus holds the sceptre in the palace of the heart.
Throw open your face to Jesus alone; commend to him what you will; give to
him what you commit. We are present in obedience’ (or alternatively: ‘Jesus
only reveal your face; command what you will; bring forth what you command.
We stand ready to obey’).105 The third degree of union – unio inhaesionis –
the union of adhesion, by which the things of Christ are made to stick, cleav-
ing to the heart ‘like wax adhering to a wall’, is illustrated in plates 25 and 26
[Figs. 2.25 & 2.26].106 In the former, these are the words of Holy Writ: Jesus
holds open a gospel book inscribed with the passage, ‘They shall be taught of
God’ ( John 6:45: ‘Erunt omnes dobiciles Dei’, literally, ‘They shall become apt
to learn’) [Fig. 2.25]. In the latter, the doctrina Christi adheres in the form of
images painted onto the heart by Christ himself [Fig. 2.26]. Plates 27–30 encap-
sulate the fourth degree of union – unio conversionis – the union of conversion,
‘when two things are converted into one by virtue of heat or some other qual-
ity, in the manner of sugar and quinces, which are made into marmalade, or
like any other conserves or electuaries’ [Figs. 2.27–2.30].107 In plate 27, for ex-
ample, Jesus implants the arma Christi in the heart, causing it to participate in
his Passion, so that his suffering and the heart’s meld, and his purity evacuates
the sickness of sin [Fig. 2.27]: ‘Good Jesus, fashion the cross, the scourge, the
savage lance, fashion them in the basement of the heart. No sickness shall pre-
vail when you, with this small nosegay of myrrh, devise preservatives against
104 Ibid.: ‘La segunda, unio propinquitatis, union de cercania, quando dos cosas estan juntas
una con otra, como quando dos manos se ayuntan’.
105 ‘Quis hic vultum non serenet?
Iesus ecce sceptra tenet
Cordis in palatio.
Iesu tantum ora pandas
Manda quod vis, dat quod mandas:
Adsumus obsequio’.
106 Ibid.: ‘La tercera, unio inhaesionis, que es dezir de apegamiento, o aferramiento, como
quando la cera se pega a la pared’.
107 Ibid.: ‘La quarta, unio conversionis, quando dos cosas por virtud del calor, o de otra cali-
dad, se convierten en una, de la manera que del açucar, y membrillo, se haze la merme-
lada, o qualesquier otras conservas, o letuarios’.
disease’.108 In plate 28, the roseate presence of Christ causes the heart to ef-
floresce: wreathed with a bridal crown, the fragrant heart is conjoined with
Christ, as his roseate bride. In plate 29, Jesus harmonizes with the heart, beat-
ing time as together they sing from a choirbook: ‘Rejoice, heart, why do you
delay? Rejoice, applaud, the holy songs of Jesus invite you. The angelic lyre,
the trumpets of the saints, resound, intermingled with the words of Christ’.109
In plate 30, the heart dances with Christ, joyfully tripping to the sounds of his
lyre. And in plate 31, the heart soundly sleeps with Christ, made safe by him
from every worldly tempest: ‘In vain, Boreas threatens; in vain, lighting rages;
in vain, the sea foams. Whilst the bridegroom sleeps, having made his bed, the
little bride sleeps securely’.110 The final three plates, 32–34, reveal that Joseph
has achieved the fifth and highest stage of union – unio naturalis – the union
of natures like unto that which ‘exists between the soul and the body whereof
a human being is composed’.111 Plate 32 illustrates how deeply Christ has pen-
etrated Joseph’s soul; he has pierced him so thoroughly, that no further wounds
are possible. The dove of the Holy Spirit hovering above the heart’s valve con-
firms that the heart is now saturated by divine grace: ‘Enough now, Jesus, you
have wounded it; enough now, with fiery arrows you have wholly penetrated
it. Desire, be far, far from here: for this celestial Cupid shall conquer [bodily]
fire with [spiritual] fire’.112 In plate 33, the fiery love of Christ fully consumes
108 ‘Bone Iesu conde crucem,

Virgam, lanceamque trucem,
Conde in imo corculo. //
Nulla praevalebit lues,
Amuleta quando strues
Hoc myrrhae fasciculo’.
109 ‘Cor exulta, quid moraris?
Gaude, plaude, invitaris
Pijs Iesu cantibus. //
Sonat chelys Angelorum,
Sonant tubae Beatorum
Mixtis Iesu vocibus’.
110 ‘Frustra Boreas minatur,
Frustra fulmen debacchatur,
Frustra spumante caerula: //
Dum in corde luctum stravit,
Atque sponsus dormitavit,
Tuta ridet sponsula’.
111 Gracián, Summario 121: ‘La quinta, union natural, que se halla entre el alma, y el cuerpo de
que se compone un hombre’.
112 ‘Sat est, Iesu, vulnerasti,
Sat est, totum penetrasti
Sagittis ardentibus. //
120 Melion
the heart, causing it to burn as brightly as the cor Iesu, so that the heart he
holds and the heart within which he is held become indistinguishable: ‘Behold,
armed with firebrands, Jesus extends his hands, ignites the heart with flames
on this side and on that. Come! Let the heart be consumed; let it be reduced to
ash by the fires of love’.113 In plate 34, God the Father, present in the form of the
tetragrammaton, consecrates the loving union of Jesus and Joseph: surrounded
by angels bearing palms and wreaths, the heart victorious is crowned by Christ,
its royal consort and bridegroom. In effect, a marriage ceremony and corona-
tion are jointly enacted, and the union of Jesus and Joseph is thereby doubly
sanctioned.114
The sequence of five uniones pictured in the Cor Iesu amanti sacrum also
closely correlates to the corollary sequence of four unitive faculties enumer-
ated by Gracián in chapter 3 of book III. In plates 19–21, the heart’s door is
initially closed, the heart’s contents still consist of worldly things which Jesus
must eject; this situation represents how the will, even after it opens to Christ,
must still struggle with the appetites and with the contrary thoughts generated
by a riven understanding (‘el entendimiento ande distraydo, y lleno de pensa-
mientos contrarios, y el appetito este rebelde’).115 Plates 22–30, in which Christ
purifies the heart, teaches it how to imprint his words and visualize his deeds,
installs within it the instruments of the Passion, and encourages it to harmo-
nize with him in song and dance, represent how the will and understanding
gradually unite, so that one’s prayers come wholly to be directed towards
knowing God, and one commences fully to labor in his service (‘del enten-
dimiento, quando despues de unida la voluntad, con el surso de la oracion esta
todo puesto en il conoscimiento de Dios, y de las obras de su servicio’).116 The
Procul, procul hinc libido:

Nam caelestis hic Cupido
Vincet ignes ignibus’.
113 ‘En armatus flammis tendit
Iesus manus, cor accendit
Hinc et illinc facibus. //
Age, totum comburatur,
In favillam redigatur
Cor amoris ignibus’.
114 ‘O beata sors amoris
Post tot lusus, tot honoris
Signa, tot laetitiae, //
Diadema regni datur,
Et cor palmis exornatur
Immortalis gloriae’.
115 Gracián, Summario 123.
116 Ibid.
concordance between Jesus and the heart portrayed in plates 31–34 aligns with
the third configuration of faculties, when distracting thoughts and unquiet
passions entirely cease, and the appetite and the imagination are thoroughly
united with Christ; it is now that all thoughts and all the senses appear solely
to proceed in, through, and for him (‘el appetito, y la imaginacion estan unidos
con Christo, haviendo ya cesado los pensamientos, que suelen distraer, y los
movimientos de las passiones, que inquietan, y todos los gustos, y pensamien-
tos estan puestos en Christo, por Christo, y para Christo’).117 The fourth stage
of facultative union occurs when the body is transformed by the other three
uniones, so that the feet now step in service to God, the hand labors tirelessly
for him, and the heart leaps to walk with Christ (‘que esta de tan buen humor,
que parece, que los mesmos pies se levantan para andar passos en servicio de
Dios, y las manos no reciben cansancio enel obrar, y el coraçon da saltos para
yrse con Christo’).118 This is what the last part of the prayerbook, plates 35–46,
taken from the Vita S. Ioseph, represents.
The final set of twelve plates, as we have seen, opens with an image of Joseph
united body and soul with Jesus in heaven, in confirmation of his privilege of
enjoying the unio naturalis. Plates 38–46 then show him laboring more con-
centratedly to serve and imitate Christ. In plate 39, for instance, “Pueri amo-
rosa attrectatio”, he sits in stillness, entirely focused on holding the boy Jesus
who rests in his lap; in plate 40, “Fructuum refectio”, he offers newly plucked
fruit to Jesus, in the manner that Jesus makes an offering of fruit to Mary; in
plate 41, “Pueri ad patriam sollicitatio”, he follows his son’s lead, bringing up the
rear while Jesus points the way towards Nazareth. In plate 42, “Pueri Iesu in-
ventio”, he is so in sync with Christ amongst the doctors, that he alone rejoices
in the true significance of his three-day absence (an allusion to the three days
he would spend in the tomb): ‘You alone amongst mortal men knew why that
child’s absence lasted but three days. Yet, having found him, you knew how
to rejoice in the presence of so great a son’.119 In plate 43, “Jesus matris deli-
ciae, Jesus patris solatium”, father and son are so closely conjoined that Joseph
is compared to one of the persons of the Holy Trinity. In plates 44, “Pueri
ad Joseph subiectio”, and 46, “Sollicita manuum operatio”, their closeness is
117 Ibid.
118 Ibid.
119 ‘Scisti solus hic mortalis,
Quid sit sola tridualis
Istius Pueri absentia. //
Postquam tamen invenisti,
Tantae quid sit prolis scisti
Gaudere praesentia’.
122 Melion
expressed by the degree to which Joseph’s labours in the workshop coordinate

with those of Christ. And in plate 45, “Corporalis pia refectio”, Joseph is in-
structed in prayer by Christ at table. Together, these plates reveal that Joseph’s
loving soul is united unconditionally with Jesus – in will, understanding, and
appetite (‘mientras mayor fuere la charidad del alma, mas unida esta la volun-
tad, entendimiento, y appetitos’).120
If Joseph is a signal contemplative, he is also an exceptional artisan, as
Gracián asserts in chapter 5 of book II, “On the mystery to be inferred from
Joseph’s having been a carpenter, and from Jesus having exercised the same of-
fice, and on that which we owe this saint for having been instructed by Christ
about the fabric of the Catholic Church; in which [chapter] are advanced
some praises of the art of carpentry”.121 This chapter is directly addressed to
Gracián’s primary audience – the members of the Roman carpenters’ guild, for
whose Confraternity of Saint Joseph, at the urging their advisor, Father Pedro
Juan Saragosa, he wrote his book – whom he invites to see Joseph as their guid-
ing light. As in chapter 3 of Book III, Joseph’s labours prove expressive of his
facultative unio naturalis, so here, his efforts as a carpenter are seen to be in-
extricable from his lifelong efforts to perfect his soul. Gracián, an enthusiastic
supporter of the cult of Loreto, codified the imagery of the one-room domicile
cum workshop that Galle’s plates 44–46 so perfectly illustrate. This is the place,
avers Gracián, where the Holy Family laboured with their hands, and where
they conversed about spiritual matters, serving God with their minds, hearts,
and hands.
Gracián insists that he is portraying Joseph as the Church has long pictured
him – as a carpenter. His book, in other words, is in some measure a defense
of such images, and meant to promote further complementary images of Saint
Joseph: ‘And thus has our mother the Church (which is the faithful secretary of
the Holy Spirit) painted Joseph for us, exercising the office of carpenter rather
than blacksmith’.122 Gracián emphasizes that Joseph, since he was a universal
artisan, also knew the art of metalwork, but first and foremost he was a car-
penter, for this is the high craft favoured even by noblemen of impoverished
means, a trade, moreover, that could be plied in the single room inhabited
by the Holy Family without sullying them (as would the soot of the forge) or
120 Gracián, Summario 123–124.

121 Gracián, “Del misterio que se colige en haver sido S. Ioseph carpintero, y que el mesmo
officio exercito Iesus, y lo que devemos a este Sancto, por haver Christo comunicado con
el la fabrica de la Yglesia Catholica. Ponense algunas alabanças del arte de Carpinteria”.
122 Ibid. 80: ‘Y assi nuestra madre la Yglesia (que es el fiel secretaria del Spiritu sancto) nos
pinta a Ioseph haziendo officio de carpintero, y no de herrero’.
impeding their conversation (as would the blacksmith’s hammer blows).123

Indeed, so worthy is this art that Christ often spoke in the language of a car-
penter, as if fulfilling the proverb, ‘Let carpenters speak of carpentry’ (‘Tractent
fabilia fabri’). For examples he cites Luke 9:62, ‘Jesus said to him: No man put-
ting his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God’,
and Matthew 11:29, ‘Take up my yoke upon you, and learn of me’, along with
Matthew 13:54–55.124 Furthermore, the dignity of carpentry goes back to the
Old Testament: Isaiah 4:6, for instance, is read as a prophecy of Joseph the
carpenter who labours to provide his family with food and shelter: ‘And there
shall be a tabernacle for a shade in the daytime from the heat, and for a secu-
rity and covert from the whirlwind, and from rain’.125 Since this passage refers
to the Lord’s benefactions towards his chosen people, the citation also serves
to introduce a point that Gracián develops throughout chapter 5 – namely, that
God is the inventor of this ‘most excellent art’, and collaterally, that he himself,
as the creator of the world, ‘planed the heavens and plumbed its depths with
the carpenter’s square, rule, and level, when he raised the beams of the ele-
ments on high, and held pendant the fountains of the waters’ (paraphrasis of
Proverbs 8:27–28).126 Put plainly, God is a carpenter:
From Job [26] we gather that the majesty of the eternal God, exercising
the office of fabro, or carpenter, laboured to fashion this great machine
and excellent fabric of the world; and aligned both heaven and earth,
placed the beams of the heavens of the seven planets upon their cor-
bels […]. Above these he set the roof of the eighth heaven (called the
Firmament), and laboured most excellently on the stars, so that there
is no workmanship in the world – of ogees, ovals, dentils, or Moorish
beams – that equals them.127
Gracián’s term for the kind of carpentry Joseph exemplifies – fabro – has a spe-
cific significance. He identifies four kinds of carpentry: obra viva (live work)
123 Ibid. 79.

124 Ibid. 80–81.
125 Ibid. 80.
126 Ibid. 81, 83–84.
127 Ibid. 83: ‘De Iob se colige, que la magestad de Dios eterno usando officio de fabro, o car-
pintero, “labro y fabrico esta gran machina y excelente fabrica del mundo; y estendio a
nivel el cielo, y la tierra: puso las vigas de los cielos” de los siete planetas sobre sus canes
[…]. Sobre ellos assento la techumbre del octavo cielo (llamado Firmamento) labrado con
tan excelentes labores de estrellas, que no ay labor de golas, ovados, dentelos, ni limas
maumeras en el mundo, que se les ygualen’.
124 Melion
refers to carpenters who fabricate instruments designed to move, such as water

wheels, ploughs, and carriages (whence the term carmenta derives, i.e., from
carro); obra muerta (dead work) refers to the manufacture of fixed instru-
ments, such as tables or benches; obra prima (prime work) refers to sculpture
and carvings in wood; and obra fabricando (building work) refers to the con-
struction of houses and the fabrication of their constituent elements, such as
planks, beams, and rafters.128 The term fabro (in Latin, faber) derives from this
last category of obra, which Gracián considers the most ingenious and wide-
ranging. Joseph (and the Lord) is designated a fabro because he is a builder,
has mastered all the other obras, and is ‘ingenious at fashioning every kind of
wooden object, howsoever curious’ (‘le llama faber, y tenia ingenio para labrar
qualquier cosa de madera, por curiosa que fuesse’).129 Most importantly, he
is an architect, capable of designing complex structures and executing them:
A great master, when he wishes to build a sumptuous palace, selects work-

men to assist him, labourers to serve him, and seeks out suitable materi-
als for the fabric: long before he lifts a hand, or orders and commands the
workmen to get to work, he looks for an old and experienced carpenter
(‘carpintero viejo, y experimentado’), and discusses with him the edifice he
is endeavouring to raise: and the two alone delineate the plan, draw up the
design, fabricate the model, and after all this has been prepared, appointed,
and agreed, [only then do] they set their hand to the task.130
Christ followed this procedure, says Gracián, when he established the Church,
selecting the apostles and evangelists as workmen, the martyrs, confessors,
and virgins as labourers, and then, before allowing the cross to be raised, and
nails to be hammered into his hands and feet, choosing Joseph for his carpin-
tero viejo, y experimentado, with whom he and Mary discussed the fabric of the
Church to be built, and the great work of redemption.131
The Vita S. Ioseph emphasizes that Joseph is a faber. The Holy Family’s well-
appointed house in Egypt, the inside of which we see in plate 38, the outside in
128 Ibid. 82–83.

129 Ibid. 83.
130 Ibid. 85: ‘Suele un gran maestro, que quiere labrar un sumptuoso palacio escoger officia-
les, que le ayuden, peones que sirvan, y buscar los materiales convenientes para la fabrica:
mas primero que ponga mano a la obra, ni ordene, ni mande a los officiales lo que han de
labrar, busca un carpintero viejo, y experimentado, y trata con el el edificio que pretende
hazer: y los dos a solas debuxan la planta, hazen el deseño, fabrican el modelo, y despues
de todo prevenido, apuntado, y concertado, se ponen las manos a la labor’.
131 Ibid.
plate 39, is built from the same kinds of boards and planks we see him teaching
Christ to produce in plates 44 and 46. The implication is that Joseph built this
abode for Mary and Jesus. The Cor Iesu amanti sacrum, plate 27 in particular,
which depicts Christ ‘fashioning the cross, scourge, and savage lance’ (‘crucem,
virgam, lanceamque trucem conde’), erecting them in the foundation of the
heart (‘in imo coculo’), and fabricating preservatives against diseases of the
soul (‘nulla praevalebit lues, amuleta quando strues’), takes up the Vita’s imag-
ery of carpentry and amplifies it in precisely the way Gracián does in part two
of chapter 5, “Doctrine of this second book for the confraternal carpenters”.132
Here he argues that the fabrica (builder’s art) practised by Joseph and Jesus
was both material and spiritual. Their efforts in the workshop were an earnest
of the finer art of fabricating human hearts (he uses the term consciencias)
into a place of habitation where divine love, bodied forth by Christ, can take
up residence and flourish.133 It is as if Gracián were describing the relation
between the workshop scenes in the Vita S. Ioseph and the scenes of Christ
refashioning Joseph’s heart into a suitable habitation for himself in the Cor
Iesu amanti sacrum. There is a clever inversion in the two entwined series: in
the Vita S. Ioseph, it is Joseph who teaches carpentry to Christ in the semi-
public sphere of the artisanal home; in the intensely contemplative sphere of
the Cor Iesu amanti sacrum, it is Christ who rebuilds Joseph’s heart in privacy
from within:
In the first book, I put forward five admonitions whereby the soul can
be married to grace by means of penitence; in this second [book], I shall
adduce five others, to teach the art of fashioning a habitation for divine
love in our consciences: wherefore we have declared that Joseph was a
carpenter, and Jesus, the son of the builder of the world, exercised the
office of carpentry, and said that he who loves him shall keep his com-
mandments, and God shall dwell in his heart [ John 14:15 & 14:23]; I wish
to teach in five rules the art of labouring over your conscience, so that it
may be a pleasant and worthy dwelling place of God, and a receptacle
of charity.134
132 “Doctrina deste libro Segundo. Para los hermanos Carpinteros”. Cf. note 108 supra.
133 Gracián, Summario 86–90, esp. 86.
134 Ibid. 86: ‘En el primer libro puse cinco avisos, con que se puede desposar el alma con la
gracia mediante la penitentia, en este segundo pondre otros cinco para enseñar el arte,
con que se fabrica la morada del amor de Dios en nuestras consciencias: que pues hemos
declarado que S. Iospeh fue carpintero, y Iesus hijo del fabricador del mundo uso el officio
de carpinteria, y el dize que “el que le ama guardara sus mandamientos, y Dios morara en
126 Melion
Extending the analogy between carpentry and soul-formation, Gracián in-

vites his readers to mark the board of conscience and the beam of the heart
with the red-chalked cord of knowledge, to make straight the edges of good
propositions, and to square all that one does, justifying it with the plumb,
compass, and ruler. One must make use of the ‘compass of consideration’, the
‘carpenter’s square of rectitude’ and ‘of conformation to the divine law’. With
the saw of the word of God, the soul must be purified, made even and level.
Through the practice of virtue, the heart is set upon the workbench of recti-
tude, fixed in the holdfast of truth, and worked with the plane of prudence,
the rasp of temperance, the graver of fortitude, the gouge of submission, and
other tools for crafting ornaments such as mouldings.135 Gracián’s ingenious
alignment of two species of artisanal imagery – of the workshop and of the
heart – beautifully correlates to the calibration of the Vita S. Ioseph and the Cor
Iesu amanti sacrum in Marinus van Heule’s prayerbook. As Gracián juxtaposes
the secreta of carpentry and self-construction, the semi-public space of the
workshop and the recondite chamber of the heart, so Van Heule characterizes
Joseph as a carpenter whose tools and materials encompass both the body and
the soul, and whose heart gives evidence of the high artifice of that greatest of
spiritual carpenters – Jesus.
su coraçon”; quiero os enseñar con cinco reglas el arte de labrar vuestra consciencia, para
que sea agradable, y digna morada de Dios, y receptaculo de la charidad’.
135 Ibid. 86–87: ‘[…] tome la cartilla, o deprenda donde se enseña, y lleve la guarda de la ley
por regla, y nivel en todas sus actiones, heche el cordel de almagrar del conoscimiento
sobre la tabla de su consciencia, y madero de su coraçon, para hazer derechos los filos de
los buenos propositos, y con el compas de las consideracion, el cartabon de la rectitud, y
la esquadra de la conformidad a la ley divina procure que quadre, y venga al justo a plomo,
a compas, y medida todo lo que hiziere, con lo que Dios le manda.
‘Sabida la ley, procure lo segundo, poner mas pura, mas limpia, y mas ygual el alma
para recibir la charidad, y para esto tome la sierra de la palabra de Dios, oyendo a menudo
sermones, “para que divida, y aparte” (como da a entender S. Pablo) todo lo “que fuere
carne, de lo que es spiritu” [Galatians 5:17 & Hebrews 4:12]: desbaste con la azuela del
arrepentimento, y acepille con el cepillo de la mortifiacion su espiritu, alisandole lo mas
que pudiere con la lima del recato, para que desta suerte limpia de peccados, llana sin
los altos de sobervia, y baxos de la pusilanimida, y lisa de las desordenadas passiones, sin
impedimento alguno que de su alma labrada para el verdadero amor de Dios’.
Figure 2.35 Theodoor Galle, Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi patriarcharum
128 Melion
Figure 2.36 Theodoor Galle, “Serenissimae Isabellae Clarae Eugeniae Hispaniarum

Infanti” (To the most serene Infanta of the Spaniards, Isabella Clara
Eugenia), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi patriarcharum
Figure 2.37 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “In caelis gloriosa sessio”
(Glorious Seat in Heaven), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi
Portrayed in Images and Ornamented with Verses) (Antwerp, Theodoor
Galle: ca. 1601–1633). Engraving, 89 × 53 mm.
130 Melion
Figure 2.38 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “Aegypti commoratio” (Sojourn
in Egypt), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi patriarcharum
Figure 2.39 Theodoor Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “Pueri amorosa attrectatio” (Fond
Touching of the Boy), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi
132 Melion
Figure 2.40 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “Fructuum refectio” (Refection
of Fruits), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi patriarcharum
Figure 2.41 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “Pueri ad patriam sollicitatio”
(Eagerness of the Boy for the Fatherland), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae
ornata (Life of St. Joseph, Husband of the Most Blessed Virgin, Greatest of
the Patriarchs, Portrayed in Images and Ornamented with Verses) (Antwerp,
Theodoor Galle: ca. 1601–1633). Engraving, 89 × 53 mm.
134 Melion
Figure 2.42 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “Pueri Iesu inventio” (Discovery
of the Boy Jesus), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi
Figure 2.43 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “Iesus matris deliciae, Iesus patris
solatium” (Jesus, Delight of his Mother, Jesus, Comfort of his Father),
from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi patriarcharum maximi
Ornamented with Verses) (Antwerp, Theodoor Galle: ca. 1601–1633).
136 Melion
Figure 2.44 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “Pueri ad Joseph subiectio”
(Subjection of the Boy to Joseph), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis
Figure 2.45 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “Corporalis pia refectio” (Pious
Bodily Refection), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi
138 Melion
Figure 2.46 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “Sollicita manuum operatio”
(Precise Labor of the Hands), from Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis
Figure 2.47 Front cover of Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi patriarcharum
and Ornamented with Verses) (Antwerp, Theodoor Galle: ca. 1601–1633),
in-8vo. Stamped and gilt leather.
140 Melion
Figure 2.48 Back cover of Vita S. Ioseph beatissimae Virginis sponsi patriarcharum
and Ornamented with Verses) (Antwerp, Theodoor Galle: ca. 1601–1633),
in-8vo. Stamped and gilt leather.
Selected Bibliography
Allison Peers A., Studies of the Spanish Mystics, 3 vols. (London: 1927–1960).
Baier W., “Ludophe de Saxe”, in Viller M. (ed.), Dictionnaire de spiritualité ascétique et
mystique: doctrine et histoire, 17 vols. (Paris: 1937–1995), XI: cols. 1130–1138.
Baier W., Utersuchungen zu den Passionsbetrachtungen in der Vita Christi des Ludolf
von Sachsen, Analecta Cartusiana 44, 3 vols. (Salzburg: 1977).
Baier W. – Ruh K., “Ludolf von Sachsen”, in Stammler W. – Langosch K. (eds.),
Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon, 14 vols. (Berlin – Leipzig:
1977–2008), V: cols. 967–977.
Bernard M.A., S.J., “The Class of Humanities in the Ratio studiorum”, Jesuit Educational
Quarterly 15 (1953) 197–205.
Berteloot A. – Dijk H. van – Hlatky J. (eds.), ‘Een boec dat men te Latine heet Aurea
Legenda’: Beiträge zur niederländischen Übersetzung der Legenda aurea (Münster
et al.: 2003).
Brazeau B.J., “Emotional Rescue: Heroic Chastity and Devotional Practice in Jacopo
Sannazaro’s De partu Virginis”, California Italian Studies 5.1 (2014) 225–246.
Calisti G., Il De partu Virginis: saggio sul poema sacro nel Rinascimento (Città del
Castello: 1926).
Canisius Petrus, S.J., De Maria virgine imcomparabili, et Dei genetrice sacrosancta, libri
quinque (Ingolstadt, David Satorius: 1577).
Carlsmith C., “Struggling toward Success: Jesuit Education in Italy, 1540–1600”, History
of Education Quarterly 42 (2002) 215–246.
Carrasco J.A., “Fray Jerónimo Gracián de la Madre de Dios y su Summario de las ex-
celencias del glorioso S. Joseph, esposo de la Virgen Maria o Josefina”, Cahiers de
Joséphologie 25 (1977) 295–322.
Chorpenning J., O.S.F.S., “Introduction”, in Chorpenning (ed.), Just Man, Husband
of Mary, Guardian of Christ: An Anthology of Readings from Jerónimo Gracián’s
Summary of the Excellences of St. Joseph (1597) (Philadelphia: 1993) 1–64.
Chorpenning J., O.S.F.S. (ed.), Joseph of Nazareth through the Centuries (Philadelphia:
2011).
Chorpenning J., O.S.F.S., “St. Joseph as Guardian Angel, Artisan, and Contemplative:
Christophorus Blancus’s Engravings for the Summary of the Excellencies of
St. Joseph (1597)”, in Chorpenning (ed.), Joseph of Nazareth through the Centuries
103–136.
Delarue D.E., “Concepts of Solitude in Jacobus de Voragine’s Legenda aurea”, in
Enenkel K.A.E. – Göttler C. (eds.), Solitudo: Spaces, Places, and Times of Solitude in
Late Medieval and Early Medieval Culture, Intersections 56 (2018) 121–139.
142 Melion
Deramaix M., “La genèse du De partu Virginis de Jacopo Sannazaro et trois églogues
inédites de Giles de Viterbe”, Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome: Moyen Âge 102.1
(1990) 212–276.
Deramaix M., “Inepta et indecore comparatio: sacris prophana miscere: une cen-
sure ecclésiastique post-tridentine de Jacopo Sannazaro”, Bulletin de l’Association
Guillaume Budé (1991) 172–193.
Eustachius drama como-tragicum [….] rhetoribus gymnasii Gandensis Societatis Iesu
(Ghent, Ex officina Iudoci Doomsij: 1629).
Faesen R., S.J., “The Grand Silence of St. Joseph: Devotion to St. Joseph and the
Seventeenth-Century Crisis of Mysticism in the Jesuit Order”, in Chorpenning J.,
O.S.F.S. (ed.), Joseph of Nazareth through the Centuries (Philadelphia: 2011) 137–150.
Fantazzi C. – Perosa A., “Introduzione”, in Fantazzi – Perosa (eds.), Jacopo Sannazaro,
De partu Virginis, Istittuto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, studi e testi 17
(Florence: 1988) vii–cxxvi.
Fleith B., Studien zur Überlieferungsgeschichte der lateinischen Legenda aurea,
Sybsudua hagiographica 72 (Brussels: 1991).
Gabriel-Kamminga M., “De Legenda aurea in druk: een vergelijkend onderzoek van
de Middelnederlandse incunabelen”, in Berteloot A. – Dijk H. van – Hlatky J. (eds.),
‘Een boec dat men te Latine heet Aurea Legenda’: Beiträge zur niederländischen
Übersetzung der Legenda aurea (Münster et al.: 2003) 83–128.
Gauthier R., C.S.C., “Saint Joseph aux Pays-Bas espagnols au début du XVIIe siècle”,
Cahiers de Joséphologie 29 (1981) 870–896.
Goudriaan K., “Het Passionael op de drukpers”, In Mulder-Bakker B. – Carasso-Kok M.
(eds.), Gouden legenden: heiligenlevens en heiligenverering in de Nederlanden
(Hilversum: 1997) 73–88.
Gracián Gerónimo, Summario de las excelencias del glorioso S. Ioseph, esposo de la
Virgen Maria (Rome, Antonio Zannetti: 1597).
Haub R., “Petrus Canisius: Marientraktat, Mariale”, in Baumstark R. (ed.), Rom in Bayern:
Kunst und Spirtualität der ersten Jesuiten, exh. cat., Bayerisches Nationalmuseum,
Munich (Munich: 1997) 525–526.
Haub R., “Petrus Canisius: Widerlegung der Magdeburger Centurien”, in ibid., 547–548.
Hedley J.C. (ed.), Sermons of St. Bernard on Advent and Christmas, Including the Famous
Treatise on the Incarnation, Called “Missus est” (London – New York et al.: 1909).
Hollstein F.W.H., Etchings, Engravings, and Woodcuts, ca. 1450–1700, Vol. VII
(Amsterdam: n.d.).
Jacobi, sive Actii Sinceri Sannazarii, De partu Virginis carmen triparititum. Die Geburt der
Jungfrau, ein Gedicht in drei Gesängen, von Jacobus, oder Actius Sincerus Sannarius,
lateinisch und deutsch, ed. F.L. Becker (Leipzig: 1826).
Jacobus de Voragine, Passionael, Winter- & Somerstuc (Gouda, Gerard Leeu: 1478–1480).
Kennedy W., Jacopo Sannazaro and the Uses of Pastoral (Hanover: 1983).
Lazar L.G., “Bringing God to the People: Jesuit Confraternities in Italy in the Mid-
Sixteenth Century”, Confraternitas 7.1 (1996) 11–13.
Lazar L.G., “The First Jesuit Confraternities and Marginalized Groups in Sixteenth-
Century Rome”, in Terpstra N. (ed.), The Politics of Ritual Kinship: Confraternities
and Social Order in Early Modern Italy (Cambridge – New York – Melbourne: 2000)
132–149.
Lazar L.G., Working in the Vineyard of the Lord: Jesuit Confraternities in Early Modern
Italy (Toronto – Buffalo – London: 2005).
Läken C., “Nogmaals de Legenda aurea in druk: de verhouding tussen handschriften en
drukken”, in Berteloot A. – Dijk H. van – Hlatky J. (eds.), ‘Een boec dat men te Latine
heet Aurea Legenda’: Beiträge zur niederländischen Übersetzung der Legenda aurea
(Münster et al.: 2003) 129–164.
Le Goff J., ‘A la recherche du temps sacré’: Jacques de Voragine et la ‘Légende dorée’
(Paris: 2011).
Le Goff J., “Preface”, in Boureau A. (ed.), La légende dorée: le systeme narratie de Jacques
de Voragine, +1298 (Paris: 2011) i–vii.
Lorenz E., “A Carmelite in Slavery: Father Gracián, Friend of Teresa of Jesus”, Mount
Carmel 35 (1987) 51–63.
Ludolphus de Saxonia, Vita Christi ex evangelijs et scriptoribus orthodoxis concinnata
(Paris, Vidus Thielmanni Kerver: 1536).
McGuire B.P., “Becoming a Father and a Husband: St. Joseph in Bernard of Clarivaux
and Jean Gerson”, in Chorpenning J., O.S.F.S. (ed.), Joseph of Nazareth through the
Centuries (Philadelphia: 2011) 49–61.
Melion W.S., “‘Quae lecta Canisius offert et spectata diu’: The Pictorial Images in Petrus
Canisius’s De Maria Virgine of 1577,” in Melion – Wandel L.P. (eds.), Early Modern
Eyes: Discourses of Vision, 1500–1800, Intersections: Interdisciplinary Studies in Early
Modern Culture 13 (Leiden – Boston: 2009) 207–266.
Melion W.S., The Meditative Art: Studies in the Northern Devotional Print, 1550–1625,
Early Modern Catholicism and the Visual Arts 1 (Philadelphia: 2009), 189–239.
Monti S., “La dedica del De partu Virginis di Iacopo Sannazaro nelle vicende della suo
genesi”, Aevum 73.3 (2001) 629–640.
Moriones I., “Jérome de la Mère de Dieu”, in Guibert J. de, S.J. – Viller M. – Cavallera F.
(eds.), Dictionnaire de spiritualité, tome 8 (Paris: 1974), cols. 920–928.
Nazzaro A.V., “Il De partu Virginis del Sannazaro come poema parafrastico”, in
Sabbatino P. (ed,), Iacopo Sannazaro: la cultura napolitana nell’Europa del
Rinascimento (convegno internazionale de studi, Napoli 27–28 marzo 2006) (Florence:
2009) 167–209.
144 Melion
Olszewsky H.-J., “Ludolf von Sachsen”, in Bautz F.W. – Bautz T. (eds.), Biographisch-
bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon, 14 vols. (Hamm – Herzberg – Nordhausen: 1975), V:
cols. 312–314.
Pacho E., “Jerónimo Gracián de la Madre de Dios: vida y obra”, in Pacho (ed.), El Padre
Gracián: Discípulo, amigo, provincial de Santa Teresa (Burgos: 1984) 7–57.
Prandi S., “Arcadia sacra: l’ultimo sogno dell’umanesimo”, in Prandi (ed.), Jacopo
Sannazaro, Il parte della Vergine volgarizzamento di Giovanni Giolito de’ Ferrari
(Rome: 2001).
Quint D., Origin and Originality in Renaissance Literature: Versions of the Source (New
Haven – London: 1983).
Ratio atque institutio studiorum Societatis Iesu, auctoritate septimae congregationis
generalis aucta (Antwerp, Apud Ioannem Meursium: 1635).
Ruyven-Zeman S. van – Leesberg M. (comps.), Hollstein’s Dutch and Flemish Etchings,
Engravings, and Woodcuts, 1450–1700, Vol. LXI: The Wierix Family, Part 3 (Rotterdam:
2003).
Shore P., “The Vita Christi of Ludolph of Saxony and its Influence on the Spiritual
Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola”, Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits 30.1 (1998) 1–17.
Solà F. de P., S.J., “San José en Francisco Suárez”, Cahiers de Joséphologies 25 (1977)
237–251.
Solà F. de P., S.J., “Josefología del P. Alonso Ezquerra, S.J. (1555–1637)”, Cahiers de
Joséphologie 29 (1981) 210–237.
Williams-Krapp W., “‘Mijn wille en es niet jegen Gods geloeve ocht jegen de heilge
kerke te doene’ – Zur Rezeption der Legenda aurea im deutsch/niederländischen
Raum”, in Berteloot A. – Dijk H. van – Hlatky J. (eds.), ‘Een boec dat men te Latine
heet Aurea Legenda’: Beiträge zur niederländischen Übersetzung der Legenda aurea
(Münster et al.: 2003) 9–17.
chapter 3
Symbols and (Un)concealed Marian Mysteries in

the First Litany of Loreto Illustrated with Emblems:
Peter Stoergler’s Asma Poeticum (Linz, 1636)
In 1636, barely two years after the publication of De symbolis heroicis, another
Jesuit author, Peter Stoergler, issues the first Litany of Loreto illustrated with
emblematic compositions: the Asma Poeticum Litaniarum Lauretanarum.
Each one of the fifty-six invocations of this prayer is thus illustrated by a
print that features the tripartite structure of the canonical emblem – pictura,
inscriptio, and subscriptio – and whose meaning goes far beyond the corre-
sponding Marian title: it actually conceals the mysteries – i.e., prerogatives – of
the Virgin extolled by the Catholic Church. Hence, a mystery is used to repre-
sent another mystery. In order to do so, Stoergler puts into practice both the
lessons of the theologia symbolica and the notion of symbols – neither too clear
nor too obscure – defended by authors such as Silvestro Pietrasanta, which
in his case demands a reader/viewer well versed in history and mythology.
However, his proposal gains complexity because his illustrations result from a
juxtaposition of unmarked and naturalistically arranged symbols, whose cor-
rect identification and interpretation are only partially unveiled in the texts
(subscriptiones and carmina) accompanying each picture. Consequently, only
the initiated will be able to perceive every nuance and therefore fully penetrate
the trustworthy and reliable symbols (symbola certa) that reveal the mysteries
of the Virgin Mary.
Symbola quae vitae nostratis certa tulisti,

Evae commutans nomina: Mater Ave
You [Mary] brought symbols that are indisputable/trustworthy to the life

of our people,
by changing the names of Eve: Mater Ave.
Mater Salvatoris, Asma Poeticum1
1 Stoergler Peter, Asma Poeticum Litaniarum Lauretanarum: Dedicatum Rvo: Hilariensium

Praesuli D.D. Georgio (Linz, Typis Joannis Paltauff: 1636).

146 López Calderón
Since Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho,2 the antithetical relationship

between the Virgin Mary and Eve has developed profusely over time, favour-
ing the understanding of human redemption as a process of recapitulation
and recirculation3 and even supporting some of the Catholic Church’s claims
concerning Mary’s most controversial prerogatives, such as her immaculate
conception4 or her active mediation and queenship.5 The opposite features
and actions of both women have been traditionally summarised in the word-
play Eva–Ave, which in turn has led to descriptions of the Virgin’s positive
effects as the result of mutans Evae nomen (‘changing the name of Eve’), an
expression that is usually connected with the hymn “Ave Stella Maris”6 but
2 J ustin Martyr, “Dialogue with Trypho, a Jew”, trans. G. Reith, in The Writings of Justin Martyr
and Athenagoras (Edinburgh – London – Dublin: 1870) 225: ‘He became man by the Virgin, in
order that the disobedience which proceeded from the serpent might receive its destruction
in the same manner in which it derived its origin. For Eve, who was a virgin and undefiled,
having conceived the word of the serpent, brought forth disobedience and death. But the
Virgin Mary received faith and joy, when the angel Gabriel announced the good tidings to
her that the Spirit of the Lord would come upon her, and the power of the Highest would
overshadow her: wherefore also the Holy Thing begotten of her is the Son of God; and she
replied, “Be it done unto me according to thy word”’.
3 Both principles are already found in Irenaeus, who assumes the Mary–Eve analogy formu-
lated by Justin and develops it in light of his theological thinking. See Burghardt W.J., “Mary
in Western Patristic Thought”, in Carol J. (ed.), Mariology, 3 vols. (Milwaukee: 1954–60), vol. 1,
109–155, especially 110–117.
4 This antithesis is used by Nicolás de la Iglesia in several of the hieroglyphs written to support
the Virgin’s conception without sin and gathered in the book Flores de Miraflores: Hieroglificos
Sagrados, Verdades Figuradas, Sombras Verdaderas del Mysterio de la Immaculada Concepcion
de la Virgen, y Madre de Dios, Maria Señora Nuestra (Burgos, Diego de Nieva y Murillo:
1659); for instance, in hieroglyph 27, Maria Hortus Conclusus, he argues that the serpent, or
at least its whisper, entered the first paradise to trick Eve, but could not repeat that with
Mary because, as Enclosed Garden, she remained closed and thus unblemished. It must be
noted, however, that such immaculist usage of the Eve–Mary parallel was not new to the
Iberian Peninsula, for it can already be found in some fifteenth-century Hispanic writings
(Twomey L.K., The Serpent and the Rose: The Immaculate Conception and Hispanic Poetry in
the Late Medieval Period [Leiden – Boston: 2008] 217–240).
5 Pius XII’s encyclical Ad Caeli Reginam, issued on 11 October 1954, demonstrates the topical-
ity of this theme. It is available from http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/encyclicals/
documents/hf_p-xii_enc_11101954_ad-caeli-reginam.html; see especially paragraph no. 38
(accessed: 30.12.2018).
6 Verses 4–8 of this hymn read:
Sumens illud Ave
Gabrielis ore,
funda nos in pace,
mutans Evae nomen.
(Receiving that Ave [‘hail’]
From the mouth of Gabriel,
SYMBOLS & MARIAN MYSTERIES IN LORETO ’ S 1ST LITANY WITH EMBLEMS 147
can also be found, both verbatim and with slight variations, in other medieval
hymns.7
Nevertheless, the second verse placed at the beginning of this essay, taken
from Stoergler’s Asma Poeticum, does not read nomen (‘name’) but nomina
(‘names’), and thus requires one to find out which are those names, titles, or
epithets accorded to Eve that Mary commutans (‘changes entirely’). Augustine,
for instance, refers to the former as Auctrix peccati (‘Authoress of sin’) and
to the latter as Auctrix meriti (‘Authoress of merit’);8 for his part, Albert the
Great names them, respectively, Mater carnalis, Principium mortalitatis
(‘Mother of flesh, Beginning of mortality’) and Mater misericordiae, Principium
Establish us in peace,
Changing the name of Eva [‘Eve’]).
7 It is the case, for instance, of the hymns no. 138, De Partu Beatae Mariae V., and no. 183, De X
Gaudiis B.M.V., gathered in Dreves G.M. – Blume C. (eds.), Analecta Hymnica Medii Aevi, 55
vols. (Leipzig: 1886–1922), vol. 31, Pia dictamina, 139, 186.:
Qui te mundat, te obumbrat,
Obumbrando te fecundat,
O Iesu gignitio,
Nostrum vae per ave tollis,
Nomen Evae dum revolves
Gabriele nuntio.
(He who cleanses you, overshadows you,
By overshadowing you, he impregnates you,
O conception of Jesus
You remove our vae [‘woe’] through your ave [hail],
While you reverse the name of Eva [‘Eve’]
with Gabriel as messenger.)
Gaude, virgo mater Christi,
Verbum verbo concepisti,
Dum hoc Ave suscepisti,
Quod nos solvit a Vae tristi;
Per hoc Ave tam suave
Nos absolve mortis a Vae
Iugum grave tollens, leve
Confer, mutans nomen Evae.
(Rejoice, Virgin Mother of God.
You conceived the Word through the word,
When you received that Ave [‘Hail’],
Which released us from that sorrowful Vae [‘Woe’];
Through this so pleasant Ave [‘Hail’],
Free us from the Vae [‘Woe’] of death
Lifting the heavy yoke,
make it light,
changing the name of Eva [‘Eve’]).
8 Augustine, Sermo 194 De Annuntiatione Dominica II, PL 39, col. 2105, no. 2.

regenerationis (‘Mother of mercy, Beginning of regeneration’);9 and Cornelius

à Lapide recalls the opposition between Eve as Mater morientium (‘Mother of
the dying’) and Mary as Mater viventium (‘Mother of the living’).10 Therefore,
in view of these examples, one could argue that the antithetical names given
to both women are an explicit and extended version of the implications encap-
sulated in the palindrome Ave–Eva.
On the other hand, names like those mentioned above that can be termed
‘descriptive’ – inasmuch as they clearly describe one or several attributes of the
person to whom they are given – coexist, in the case of the Virgin, with other
‘symbolic’ names, which are no other but an alternative, poetic way to express
her prerogatives: puteus aquarum viventium, rosa sine spinas, porta coeli, and a
long et cetera. The fact that these sorts of metaphors, usually rooted in the Holy
Scriptures and not infrequently already found in the writings of the Fathers of
the Church,11 are indeed understood as names or titles of the Mother of God is
made clear by several encyclopaedic works where these expressions are gath-
ered as Mary’s nomina or tituli; Marracci’s Polyanthea mariana,12 Raynaud’s
9 lbert the Great, Super Missus, cap. 53 (also found as quaestio 29, pars 3); see, for instance,
A
Mariale Alberti Magni in Eua[n]gelium super Missus est Gabriel Angelus (n.p. [Venice?],
Lazarus de Soardis: 1504) 22v. When quoting this passage, some authors read Mater mise-
riae instead of Mater carnalis, thus favouring the contrast with Mary as Mater miseri-
cordiae; see, for instance, Martin C., Mois de Marie des Prédicateurs ou Cours Complet de
Sermons, Conférences, Instructions pour tous les Jours du Mois de Marie, pour Totes les Fêtes
et sur Tous les Sujets se Rapportant à la Très-Sainte Vierge (Paris: 1881) 126.
10 Cornelius à Lapide, Commentaria in Ecclesiasticum (Antwerp, Apud Ioannem Meursium:
1643) 356. Actually, considering that according to the Scriptures ‘Eve’ means ‘the mother
of all the living’ (Genesis 3:20), some authors turn to its etymology to, on one hand, draw a
parallel between both women and thus reinforce the notion of recirculation, and, on the
other, proclaim Mary’s superiority, for she brought life where Eve had caused death. To es-
tablish such differentiation between causa mortis and causa vitae, Epiphanius’s writings
Adversus Haereses (namely Haeresis 78, PG 42, cols. 728–729, no. 18) are frequently quot-
ed; see, for instance, Isidore de Saint-Gilles, Corona Stellarum Duodecim Cuius Quaeque
Stella Pluribus Corusca Radiis, Mariae […] (Antwerp, Apud Henricum van Dunwalt: 1685)
801. For his part, Isidore of Seville adds the wordplay Eva–Vae and thus discovers the an-
tithesis in the name itself: ‘Heva interpretatur vita, sive calamitas, sive vae’. – ‘Eve means
life, or misfortune, or woe’. Etymologiarum lib. VII, cap. 6, no. 5, PL 82, col. 275; such play
on words is recurring in medieval hymns, as those in note 7 exemplify.
11 A large selection of Marian texts written by the Fathers of the Church can be found
in Gharib G. – Nola G. di – Gambero L. – Toniolo E.M. (eds.), Testi Mariani del Primo
Millennio, 4 vols. (Roma: 1988–91); Gambero L., Mary and the Fathers of the Church: The
Blessed Virgin Mary in Patristic Thought (San Francisco: 1999); Cunningham M.B. (trans.),
Wider Than Heaven: Eighth-Century Homilies on the Mother of God (Crestwood, NY: 2008);
Pons G., Textos Marianos de los Primeros Siglos: Antología Patrística (Madrid: 1994).
12 Marracci Ippolito, Polyanthea Mariana, in Libros XVIII Distributa, in Qua Deiparae Virginis
Maria Nomina et Selectiora Encomia ex SS. Patrum, Aliorumque Sacrorum Scriptorum,
Nomenclator marianus,13 and the Saeculum Marianum linked to the Jesuit

College in Grodno are good cases in point.14 It is also demonstrated by some
Marian litanies such as the litaniae lauretanae, whose titles or invocations –
i.e., the first and mutable part, used to make an appeal to and thus to name the
person to whom the prayer is addressed15 – turn to both descriptive (e.g., Mater
Castissima, Regina Angelorum) and symbolic wording (e.g., Urbs fortitudinis,
Foederis arca) to ask for the Virgin’s favour.
Consequently, if these kinds of symbols can be employed to name Mary be-
cause they harmonize with her unique characteristics, and if Mary’s character-
istics oppose Eve’s, one could state that Marian symbols change Eve’s names.
And what is more: read in this way, Marian symbola prove to be certa for a
Catholic not only because they are ‘indisputable’ – i.e., because the truths they
hide are unquestionable – but because they are ‘trustworthy’ – i.e., because
they imply the life that, turned into death by Eve’s actions, Mary brought back
to mankind. Or as Stoergler puts it: ‘Symbola quae vitae nostratis certa tulisti,/
Evae commutans nomina: Mater Ave’.
Specifically, these verses belong to the poem accompanying the title Mater
Salvatoris, and thus the idea of symbols that are reliable in order to achieve
eternal life seems especially suitable. However, it must be noted that Catholics
believe that Mary plays an active role in their redemption because, in addition
to willingly accepting the Ave and so becoming the Mother of the Saviour, she
mediates between the faithful and God and provides them with her own vir-
tues as a model to emulate so as to behave correctly. Hence, if all these Marian
prerogatives help the devout access Heaven and if all of them feature symbolic
counterparts, one should conclude that every symbolum marianum might be
considered as trustworthy.
As observed before, these types of metaphors and typological readings
were already in use in the early centuries of Christianity, and the number
kept increasing as Marian devotion grew in the Middle Ages. In early modern
Europe theologians and ecclesiastical authors not only took over this tradition
Praesertim Veterum, Monumentis Collecta, juxta Alphabeti Seriem, & Temporis, Quo Iidem
Vixerunt, Ordinem Disposita, Lectorum Oculis Exhibentur (Cologne, Sumptibus Petri
Ketteler: 1683).
13 Raynaud Théophile, Nomenclator Marianus, e Titulis Selectioribys, Quibus B. Virgo a SS.
Patribus Honestatur (Lyon, Apud Haeredes Gabr. Boissat, & Laurentium Anisson: 1639).
14 Collegium Groednensi Societatis Iesu, Saeculum Marianum Sivè Centum Tituli

Augustissimae dei Matris Virginis Mariae è Sacris Paginis & Sanctorum Patrum Monumentis
Deprompti (Vilnius, Typis S.R.M. Academicis Societatis Jesu: 1764).
15 Martins M., “Ladainhas de Nossa Senhora em Portugal (Idade-Média e séc. XVI)”, Lusitania
Sacra 5 (1960–61) 121–220, at 122.
but actively revitalized it – as one might expect from a period that was pre-
disposed both to make extensive use of images and to transform reality into
symbols – and thus provided the perfect breeding ground for the development
of emblems and other related symbolic forms. In this context, and keeping
in mind the Catholic defence of the Virgin after the Reformation schism, the
symbolic possibilities of Mary spread dramatically, as if her power – called
into question by the reformers – was enough to sanction such usages and thus
to offer symbola certa. Given that the Society of Jesus was one of the driving
forces of emblematics and an active public supporter of the Virgin through
the sodalitas,16 it comes as no surprise that a Jesuit emblem book, Stoergler’s
Asma Poeticum, stands out as one of the most elaborated and complex works
in terms of Marian symbolism.
1 Peter Stoergler, the Asma Poeticum, and Marian Titles Turned into
Emblems
According to the book’s title page and colophon, the Asma Poeticum Litaniarum
Lauretanarum was issued in Linz (Upper Austria), typis Joannis Paltauff, in
1636.17 Although neither the first nor the last page reveals the author’s name,
it was brought to light barely seven years after the publication of the work
when the Bibliotheca Scriptorum Societatis Jesu attributed it to Peter Stoergler
(‘Petrus Sterglerus’).18
There is scant information about this Jesuit author: he was born on
29 June 1595 in Bichoff’s Lack, in the historical region of Carniola – mostly
16 The sodalitates were associations promoted by the Jesuits and placed under the patron-
age of Mary. On these Marian congregations, the role that they played in terms of Catholic
apostleship, and the influence that they exerted on early modern society, see Châtellier L.,
The Europe of the Devout: The Catholic Reformation and the Formation of a New Society
(Cambridge: 2009).
17 This information can be found in the copy held at the Austrian National Library
(302276-A.Alt.Mag., available from http://digital.onb.ac.at/OnbViewer/viewer.faces?doc
=ABO_%2BZ24425406); the one at the Getty Research Institute (available from https://
archive.org/details/asmapoeticumlita00stoe) lacks texts, except those engraved on the
same plates as the illustrations, as well as the ornamental frames added to the plates that
can be seen in the Austrian copy.
18 Alegambe Philippe, Bibliotheca Scriptorum Societatis Iesu. Post Excusum Anno MDCVIII
Catalogum R.P. Petri Ribadeneirae Societatis Eiusdem Theologi; Nunc Hoc Novo Apparatu
Librorum ad Annum Reparatae Salutis MDCXLII Editorum Concinnata, & Illustrium
Virorum Elogiis Adornata (Antwerp, Apud Ioannem Meursium: 1643) 401. Nevertheless,
the authorship of the intaglios is omitted and still remains unknown.
present-day Slovenia – and died on 8 August 1642 in Laibach (present-day

Ljubljana), capital of the region. At the age of twenty-three, he was admitted to
the novitiate and for some years taught grammar, humanities, and rhetoric.19
He was also said to be a teacher of poetry in Laibach when he published
the Asma Poeticum,20 which, as already noted by Kemp, is the first Litany of
Loreto illustrated with emblematic compositions.21 It is not, however, the
first Marian litany conceived as an emblem book: at least to my knowledge,
such honour goes to Terrier’s Portraicts des SS. Vertus de la Vierge Contemplées
par Feue S.A.S.M. Isabelle Clere Eugenie Infante d’Espagne (Pin, France – Jean
Vernier: 1635), in which each invocation of the so-called Litaniae Ex Sacra
Scriptura depromptae receives a symbolic scene witnessed by the archduchess
Isabella Clara Eugenia.22
The publication of the Asma Poeticum only one year after Terrier’s book
calls into question the theory according to which the choice of the scrip-
tural litany for the Portraicts could be due to ‘its superior suitability for vi-
sual representation’.23 Nevertheless, selecting this litany rather than the
19 Sommervogel C., Bibliothèque des Écrivains de la Compagnie de Jésus, Nouvelle édition,

9 vols. (Brussels – Paris: 1890–1900; reprint, Leuven: 1960), vol. 7, 1594.
20 Backer Augustin de – Backer Alois de – Sommervogel C., Bibliothèque des Écrivains de la
Compagnie de Jésus, 3 vols. (Leuven – Lyon: 1869–1886), vol. 3, 952.
21 Kemp C., “Emblem”, in Bäumer R – Scheffczyk L. (eds.), Marienlexikon, 6 vols. (St. Ottilien:
1988–1994), vol. 2, 331–334. The Litany of Loreto is a Marian litany, that is, a prayer ad-
dressed to the Virgin to praise and supplicate her by means of a fixed set of invocations.
If the first Marian litanies were composed in the late Middle Ages in imitation of the lita-
nies of the saints, the earliest preserved copy of the litaniae lauretanae dates from 1558;
see Santi A. de, “Le litanie Lauretane: Studio Storico crittico”, La civiltà cattolica, series 16,
vol. 8, part 1111 (September 1896) 542–557.
22 This biblical or scriptural litany was composed and set to music in Loreto in 1575, proba-
bly as a result of the bull Superni Omnipotentis, which, issued motu proprio by Pope Pius V
in 1571, approved the new Officium Beatae Mariae Virginis that substituted the previous
Horae Beatissimae Virginis Mariae and implied, among other changes, the suppression
of litanies. Therefore, most likely in order to keep the habit of singing a Marian litany on
Saturdays, a new litany was written by drawing inspiration from a reliable source: except
for the first three titles (Sancta Maria, Sancta Dei Genitrix, and Sancta Virgo Virginum),
the remaining thirty-one were directly taken from the Holy Scriptures (ex sacrae scriptu-
rae depromptae). On this litany, see Santi A. de, “Le litanie Lauretane: Studio Storico crit-
tico. Articolo II”, La civiltà cattolica, series 16, vol. 9, part 1117 (December 1896) 161–178; for
the bull, Cherubini Laerzio, Magnum Bullarium Romanun, Pio Quarto usque ad Inno-
centium IX, 4 vols. (Lyon, Sumptibus Philippo Borde, Laur. Arnaud, & Cl. Rigaud: 1655),
vol. 2, 330–332.
23 Wyhe C. van, “Introduction”, in Terrier Jean, Portraicts des SS. Vertus de la Vierge contem-
plées par feue S.A.S.M. Isabelle Clere Eugenie Infante d’Espagne: A Facsimile Edition with
Critical Introduction, Glasgow Emblem Studies 7 (Glasgow: 2002) xv. However, before
drawing this conclusion, this author (x–xii) establishes a really interesting comparison
lauretanae – which actually would happen to be much more successful, both

as a prayer24 and as the source for emblem books25 – might have been directly
conditioned by David’s Pancarpium Marianum, a devotional book that en-
courages the faithful to meditate on Mary’s titles – i.e., prerogatives – so as to
imitate her virtues, attain spiritual growth, and eventually become God’s
dwelling place.26
between Terrier’s Portraicts and David’s Pancarpium Marianum, a book that, as I will
argue below, might have actually been the key to choosing the scriptural litany.
24 While the attempt of Giulio Candiotti, archdeacon of Loreto, to introduce the scriptural
litany into Rome in 1578 did not succeed, the usage of the litaniae lauretanae was defi-
nitely sanctioned on 6 September 1601, when Pope Clement VIII issued a decree that,
intending to control the increasing number of litanies, upheld the ones either contained
in the liturgical books or sung in the Holy House of Loreto (i.e., the litaniae lauretanae)
and prohibited those lacking the approbation of the Congregation of Rites. See Santi,
“Le litanie Lauretane” 167–169, 175; Caravale G., Forbidden Prayer: Church Censorship and
Devotional Literature in Renaissance Italy (Farnham: 2012) 177–178.
25 The Litany of Loreto was again ‘emblematized’ in Theophilo Mariophilo, Stella ex Jacob
Orta, Maria, cuius Sacrae Litaniae Lauretanae Tot Symbolis, Quot Tituli, Tot Elogiis,
Quot Literae in Quovis Titulo Numerantur (Vienna, Typis Leopoldi Voight, Sumptibus &
Impensis Francisci Andreae Groneri: 1680); Insignia Mariano-Encomiastica, seu Litaniae
Lauretanae, Figuris Veteris, Novique Testamenti Elogia Virginis Intemeratae, Iisdem
Inserta Praenotantibus Exornatae (Augsburg, Tobias Lobeck: 1743); Dornn Franz Xavier,
Litaniae Lauretanae ad Beatae Virginis, Caelique Reginae Mariae, Honorem, et Gloriam
[…] Symbolicis ac Biblicis Figuris in Quinquaginta Septem Iconismis Aeneis Expressae, &
secundum Ordinem Titulorum Exhibitae, Pia Meditatione (Augsburg, Sumptibus Joannis
Baptistae Burckhart: 1750).
On the other hand, the set of images published in the Asma Poeticum was reused,
drawn, and engraved anew in two subsequent emblem books: Oxoviensis Isaac, Elogia
Mariana ex Lytaniis Lauretanis Deprompta […] Cum Variis Figuris Aereis, iam Olim
Ingeniosè Inventis, Nunc Denuò cum Additione Novorum Versuum Excusis, & ad Singula
Elogia Concinnè Accommodatis (Augsburg, Apud Joann. Philippum Steudnerum, Typis
Antonii Nepperschmidii: 1700), available from http://diglib.hab.de/drucke/xb-2952/
start.htm, and Redelius Augustin Casimir, Elogia Mariana Olim A.C. Redelio Belg: Mechl:
S.C.M.L.P Concepta Nunc […] Inventa et Delineata per Thomam Scheffler et Aeri Incisa à
Martino Engelbrecht Chalcographo Augustano Cum Priv[ilegio] Sac[era] Caes[areae]
Maj[estatis] (Augsburg, Martin Engelbrecht: 1732), available from https://archive.org/
details/elogiamarianaoli00enge. For the relation among these three books, see López
Calderón C., “Las fuentes de la fuente: Precedentes grabados y textuales de la Elogia
Mariana de A.C. Redelius (1732)”, in Grabados de Augsburgo para un Ciclo Emblemático
Portugués: Los Azulejos de la Iglesia del Convento de Jesús de Setúbal (Valencia: 2017) 19–38.
26 It is actually the second volume of the book Paradisus Sponsi et Sponsae (Antwerp, Ex
Officina Plantiniana, Apud Ioannem Moretum: 1607), whose full title reads Pancarpium
Marianum Septemplici Titulorum Serie Distinctum, ut in B. Virginis Odorem Curramus et
Christus Formetur in Nobis. The first volume, addressed to Christ, is entitled Messis Myrrhae
et Aromatum ex Instrumentis ac Misterijs Passionis Christi Colligenda, ut ei Commoriamur.
For the more recent and complete bibliographic description of this edition, see Imhof D.,
The Pancarpium comprises fifty scriptural titles that not only match and
expand the invocations of the biblical litany but are also illustrated with fifty
emblematic compositions engraved by Theodore Galle.27 Therefore, consider-
ing the good reception of this book (a second edition was published in 1618,
and the intaglios were the model for paintings displayed in different Marian
chapels),28 the impact that it might have exerted on the pilgrimage site of
Scherpenheuvel (greatly expanded by Archduke Albert VII and Isabella Clara
Eugenia, turning it into a princely foundation and the national shrine of the
Spanish Netherlands),29 and the dedication of the Pancarpium to the arch-
duchess herself, it might be reasonable to think that Terrier and/or his advis-
ers preferred to stick to this notable and meaningful iconographic precedent
rather than creating an entirely new repertoire.
As a matter of fact, leaving aside the iconographic coincidences determined
by the titles themselves (e.g., the enclosed garden in Hortus Conclusus, the
honeycomb in Favus Distillans, or the nativity of Christ in Sancta Dei Genitrix),
the general layout of each plate in the Portraicts, designed and engraved by
the Flemish-trained artist Jean de Loisy and his father (or brother) Pierre,30
certainly resembles Theodore Galle’s pattern, which in turn relates to the em-
blema triplex: the scriptural title acting as the inscriptio is placed above the pic-
tura; the subscriptio, placed below, corresponds to a Latin couplet; plus, in the
Pancarpium, its French and Dutch translations appear; and, in the Portraicts,
another Marian epithet capitalised and related to the title in question is shown.
Jan Moretus and the Continuation of the Plantin Press: A Bibliography of the Works Published
and Printed by Jan Moretus I in Antwerp (1589–1610), 2 vols. ([Leiden]: 2014), vol. 1, 227–229.
27 Imhof, Jan Moretus, vol. 1, 229.
28 At least three Marian cycles include examples painted after Theodore Galle’s intaglios:
the Basilica of Santa Maria delle Grazie (Italy, Brescia), the Church of Nossa Senhora da
Tocha (Portugal, Coimbra, Cantanhede), and the Chapel of Nuestra Señora de los Ojos
Grandes (Spain, Lugo). See Loda A., “Il sangue del Redentore: Testimonianze figurative
eucarístico-sacramentali nella diocesi di Brescia”, Brixia Sacra: Memorie Storiche della
Diocesi di Brescia 1–2 (1999) 52–70, at 59; López Calderón C., “Emblemática aplicada en
el distrito de Coimbra: La Iglesia de Nossa Senhora da Tocha (Cantanhede) y sus fuen-
tes impresas”, in Ballester Morell B. – Bernat Vistarini A. – Cull J.T. (eds.), Encrucijada
de la Palabra y la Imagen Simbólicas: Estudios de Emblemática (Palma de Mallorca: 2017)
433–442; López Calderón C., “El Pancarpium Marianum de Jan David: Grabados y con-
ceptos para la Capilla de Nuestra Señora de los Ojos Grandes (Lugo)”, Imago: Revista de
emblemática y cultura visual 4 (2012) 41–54.
29 Duerloo L. – Wingens M., Scherpenheuvel: Het Jeruzalem van de Lage Landen (Leuven:
2002).
30 Wyhe, “Introduction” v–vi.
However, as Van Wyhe already pointed out,31 there is a significant difference

in the way the picturae are understood: while in David’s book each picture re-
sults from a juxtaposition of several scenes and motifs that are identified by
letters and can quite easily be connected with the corresponding biblical title,
in the style of Nadal’s Evangelicae Historiae Imagines, in Terrier’s collection
each image basically corresponds to one scene that features the archduchess
kneeling in front of Mary. The title Hortus Conclusus, for instance, is illustrated
in the Pancarpium [Fig. 3.1] through four episodes that authors have tradi-
tionally used to exemplify Mary’s virginal motherhood and virtues, for these
interpretations also derive from the epithet Enclosed Garden: the Nativity of
Christ (letter A), Susanna and the elders (letter B), the Resurrection of the Lord
(letter D), and the Noli me tangere (letter E). On the contrary, the Portraicts
[Fig. 3.2] depicts an enclosed garden in whose interior Isabella and some court
ladies kneel before the Virgin with child and whose protection against exterior
threats, embodied by demons with bows and arrows, is provided by a group of
angels holding hands surrounding it.
The conception of the illustrations also differentiates the Asma Poeticum
from these two predecessors: if the basic structure of the plate is only slightly
rearranged by placing the title/inscriptio between the pictura and the subscrip-
tio, images are certainly taken one step further by aggregating a sundry assort-
ment of unmarked symbols in one scene and thus creating a new, multilayered
iconographic model to praise the Virgin. In other words: in Stoergler’s book,
mythological figures and accounts, historical characters and events, biblical
episodes, allegories, and a wide variety of corpora naturalia and artificialia
are brought together, deprived of identification letters, and naturalistically ar-
ranged (e.g., the earthly and heavenly realms correspond, respectively, to the
lower and upper parts of the composition, as in Christe Exaudi Nos; flowers
grow on the ground, as the lilies in Sancta Virgo Virginum; and birds fly in the
sky, as the manucodiata in Mater Admirabilis).
As a result, the whole composition becomes a mystery inasmuch as every-
thing is open to symbolic interpretation, not unlike what happens in reality
when the idea of ‘finding God in all things’ is brought into play – which Jesuits
often do, encouraged by Ignatian spirituality and founded on the lessons of
the theologia symbolica.32 Unlike reality, however, illustrations can blend signa
31 Ibidem xii.
32 For the image theory and, particularly, the symbolic theology developed by the
Jesuits, see Dekoninck R., Ad Imaginem: Status, Fonctions et Usages de l’Image dans la
Littérature Spirituelle Jésuite du XVIIe Siècle (Geneva: 2005), especially 19–99; Boer W.
de – Enenkel K.A.E. – Melion W.S. (eds.), Jesuit Image Theory, Intersections 45 (Leiden –
Boston: 2016); Porteman K., “Introductory Study”, in Emblematic Exhibitions (Affixiones)
Figure 3.1 Theodore Galle, “Hortus Conclusus”, in Jan David, Pancarpium

Marianum […] (Antwerp, Ex Officina Plantiniana, Apud Ioannem
Moretum: 1607), plate no. 33. Intaglio.
Museum Plantin-Moretus (Print Room collection),
Antwerp – UNESCO, World Heritage, no. R.119
Figure 3.2 Jean de Loisy, “Hortus Conclusus”, in Jean Terrier, Portraicts des SS. Vertus de la
Vierge Contemplées par Feue S.A.S.M. Isabelle Clere Eugenie Infante d’Espagne
[…] (Pin, France – Jean Vernier: 1635). Intaglio.
Médiathèque de l’agglomération du Grand Dole: 17M/138
taken from multiple sources, a possibility that, as the above list shows, the
Asma Poeticum pushes to the limit in order to gather symbola certa.
2 Reading and Contextualizing the Asma Poeticum
As is frequently emphasized, the mnemonic power of images and the intel-

lectual effort needed to decode image-based enigmas leads an emblem reader/
viewer to apprehend better and/or reflect deeper on the contents hidden in
it.33 Nevertheless, considering what has been hitherto said, how can one iden-
tify and interpret properly the symbols employed by Stoergler?
In terms of interpretation, the ‘decoder’ counts on a reliable starting point,
which is none other than the list of Mary’s prerogatives and mysteries, formed
of both dogmas and pious beliefs, defended by the Catholic Church of the
Counter Reformation; to wit, Mary is created ab aeterno for the purpose of be-
coming the mother of God, with her divine motherhood explaining and de-
manding all the graces that she possesses to the most sublime degree. Two of
them clearly differentiate her from the rest of God’s creatures: her immacu-
late conception and her fecund virginity. Precisely since her soul and body are
stainless, they remain incorruptible and allow her assumption body and soul
into Heaven, where she becomes Queen of Heaven and Earth. Such a title, to-
gether with, first, her role as co-redemptrix from the very first moment she
accepted to be the mother of the Redeemer and, second, her superiority im-
plied by all her prerogatives, allows her to actively mediate between God and
mankind, mediation that comprises not only the co-redemption but also the
distribution of all graces thanks to her power of intercession.34
at the Brussels Jesuit College (1630–1685): A Study of the Commemorative Manuscripts

(Royal Library, Brussels) (Turnhout: 1996) 9–46; Loach J., “The Teaching of Emblematics
and Other Symbolic Imagery by Jesuits within Town Colleges in Seventeenth- and
Eighteenth-Century France”, in Manning J. – Van Vaeck M. (eds.), The Jesuits and the
Emblem Tradition: Selected Papers of the Leuven International Emblem Conference,
18–23 August 1996, Imago Figurata Studies 1a (Turnhout: 1999) 161–186.
33 See, for instance, Manning J., The Emblem (London: 2003) 78; Porteman, “Introductory
Study” 22–23.
34 For the elucidation and historical development of Mary’s privileges, see Carol J. (ed.),
Mariology, 3 vols. (Milwaukee: 1954–60); Alastruey G., The Blessed Virgin Mary, trans.
M. Janet la Giglia, 2 vols. (St. Louis, MO: 1963–64); Miravalle M. (ed.), Mariology: A Guide
for Priests, Deacons, Seminarians, and Consecrated Persons (Goleta, CA: 2007), Fiores S.
de – Meo S. (eds.), Nuevo Diccionario de Mariología (Madrid: 2001). On the stance taken
by the reformers concerning the figure of Mary, see Kreitzer B., Reforming Mary: Changing
Images of the Virgin Mary in Lutheran Sermons of the Sixteenth Century (Oxford: 2004);
In fact, the invocations of the Litany of Loreto are a direct result of, as well
as reminders of, all these privileges: for example, calling Mary Mater castis-
sima refers to her virginal motherhood, Refugium Peccatorum indicates her
mediation, and Regina Angelorum proclaims her superiority over all creatures
and queenship.
Therefore, given that these ideas are the basis of Marian texts and images
created within the Catholic realm from at least the early modern period
onwards, they should also be the truths somehow concealed in the Asma
Poeticum. But how can viewers pick out the symbols that Stoergler brought to
bear? Together with those ‘books on theology and mythology’ that should help
them fill in the gaps in their own cultural equipment,35 some clues were pro-
vided by the author himself in the subscriptiones and, above all, in the poems
accompanying each illustration.
Actually, each emblem is followed by three different texts: a carmen, an
oraculum, and a suspirium, in such a way that the first praises the Virgin by
elaborating on the title and thus gives some hints concerning the symbols em-
ployed in the image, the second is an excerpt taken from a Church Father or
an ecclesiastical author – mostly and not surprisingly from Saint Bernard, as
the book was dedicated to Georg II Grill, abbot of the Cistercian Wilhering
Abbey – and the third corresponds to a stanza directly addressed to the Virgin
so as to laud her and ask for her help. Therefore, these suspiria (‘sighs’) only
appear, strictly speaking, in the Marian invocations, not in the first nine and
last three titles of the litany that concern God the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit. It is exactly after one of these titles, the first Kyrie Eleison, where the au-
thor interpolates a section entitled Lectori (to the reader) in which he explains
the general purpose of his work and the raison d’être of the suspiria.
I want you to know, benevolent reader, that our sole intention has been
to sing with both silent and speaking poetry in the lauretan titles of Mary,
in order that we may show the power of praising Mary with the soul or
mouth that recite verses, or with the eyes that just read them, when the
sighs [suspiriis] of various ones are directed towards her. But, more pru-
dently, we thought that the litanies addressed to others had to be put
in their entirety, so that we, kneeling before Mary, may praise the Son
Heal B., “Images of the Virgin Mary and Marian Devotion in Protestant Nuremberg”,
in Parish H. – Naphy W.G. (eds.), Religion and Superstition in Reformation Europe
(Manchester: 2002) 25–46; Heal B., The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Early Modern Germany:
Protestant and Catholic Piety, 1500–1648 (Cambridge: 2007).
35 Panofsky E., Meaning in the Visual Arts (Garden City, NY: 1955) 16–17.
through the Mother, the Father through him [the Son], and the Spouse
through both [Father and Son]. Therefore we began the supplication out-
side and inside the Marian sanctuary of Loreto: you will be taught the
rest either by the History upon the strength of memory or by our verses,
which you would know how to pronounce if you read them not like the
poems spoken on the Alban Mount, but like sighs [suspiria] (with them,
like pauses, we intercalated this our singing) from this vale of tears due to
the desire of the everlasting hills. If you aspire to heaven, you too will sigh
for these hills as long as you live with us in this same vale of the mourning
and weeping ones.36
When the Asma Poeticum was commissioned in Linz by the Virginis

Annunciatae Sodalitas – which, incidentally, might explain why there are so
many scenes of the Annunciation or references to the words of Gabriel’s greet-
ing included in the book – the region of Upper Austria could be rightly de-
scribed as a fateful vale of tears, for, in the context of the ongoing Thirty Years
War, the Peasants’ War triggered by the re-Catholicization measures led to the
Protestant siege of the capital in 1626 and provoked subsequent revolts in the
next decade.37 Therefore, in view of the power attributed by Catholics to Mary,
it is not surprising that the sodales mariani decided to commend themselves to
the Virgin, praise her, and ask for her aid to successfully and eventually achieve
the ‘everlasting hills’.38 And what is more, they did so following the traditional
‘procedure’, criticized by the Reformation, to beg for saintly intercession in
36 Stoergler, Asma Poeticum n.p.: ‘Unum te scire cupio L.B. propositum scilicet nobis fuisse

in Lauretanis duntaxat Mariae titulis, & tacitâ, & loquenti ludere Pöesi; ut versus mente,
aut ore volventibus vel oculis tantùm legentibus, Mariae laudandae copiam, suspiriis ad
eandem variorum directis, exhiberemus; sed consulti9 aliorum ductu Litanias integrè
ponendas duximus, ut Matre Filium, in hoc Patrem, & per utrumque Sponsum Mariae
adgeniculantes laudaremus. Quare initium supplicationi Extra, & Intra Marianam Laureti
cellam dedimus: reliqua te vel memoriae beneficio Historia, vel metra docebunt nostra;
quae si legeris, ea non tàm Musas Albano in monte locutas, quā ex hac lachrymarū valle,
ob desiderium Collium aeternorum suspiria (his enim veluti pausis concentum hunc nos-
trum intercalavimus) edidisse scias. Ad quos colles & Tu, si caelos aspiras utpote eandem
nobiscum gementium & flentium vallem incolens, suspirabis’.
37 On the Upper Austrian Peasants’ rebellion (Oberösterreichischer Bauernkrieg), see
Wilson P.H., The Thirty Years War: Europe’s Tragedy (Cambridge, MA: 2009) 411–413;
Helfferich T., The Essential Thirty Years War: A Documentary History (Indianapolis: 2015)
38–41; Stieve F., Der Oberösterreichische Bauernaufstand des Jahres 1626, 2 vols. (Linz:
1904–05); Heilingsetzer G., Der Oberösterreichische Bauernkrieg 1626 (Vienna: 1976).
38 The desiderium collium aeternorum (‘desire of everlasting hills’) is a reference to Genesis
49:26 and, coincidentally or not, is counted among the titles applied to the Virgin Mary in
the scriptural litany.
times of need: singing the litaniae, this time accompanied by ‘silent and speak-
ing poetry’ (tacitâ & loquenti Pöesi).
Although it would be tempting to consider the intaglios illustrating the
book as a form of silent poetry, the explanation provided by Stoergler shows
that, at least, this was not his intention. He refers to the possibility of reading
his verses aloud or in silence, which, as he also states, may help readers learn
‘the rest’ (reliqua). Indeed, as mentioned before, his carmina prove key to prop-
erly identifying some of the symbols that, otherwise, only a deep knowledge of
history (and mythology) could reveal.39
As a matter of fact, the complexity of these images is demonstrated by the
two books that reused them: the 1700 and 1732 Elogia Mariana,40 in which the
lack of awareness of the initial meanings led their authors – especially those
of the latter edition – to misinterpret some of the compositions, reducing their
original contents and even creating some iconographic oddities.
Next I will discuss three engravings that exemplify what has been hitherto
said: the illustrations corresponding to the invocations Sancta Maria, Mater
Admirabilis, and Mater Salvatoris.
3 Sancta Maria
The picture [Fig. 3.3] that lends visual form to the first Marian title of the lita
niae lauretanae represents the Annunciation in a puzzling setting: a vessel that
is sailing towards a sunny harbour while the remains of a wrecked boat are
about to sink. The flag of the former reads Sodalitas B.V.M. Annunciatae, and
thus the people depicted under Mary’s outspread cloak are presumably mem-
bers of this congregation, not by chance the one that commissioned the Asma
Poeticum. In the sky a star whose points bear the name ‘Maria’ is identified
with the inscription Hac Cynosura (‘this is the pole/sea star’); in the sea, Scylla,
the monster that features a woman’s head and torso together with several dogs’
39 Just to name two examples that would require, respectively, a broad historical and mytho-
logical knowledge, the invocation Christe Exaudi Nos features the procession celebrated in
1133 in Constantinople by the emperor John II Comnenus after reconquering Castamon,
and the number of virgins represented in Sancta Virgo Virginum – five – are an allusion
to the five maidens of Croton that Zeuxis needed to re-create the beauty of Helen of Troy.
For a detailed analysis of these emblematic compositions, see López Calderón, Grabados
de Augsburgo 38–47, 82–88.
40 See note 25.
Figure 3.3 Anonymous, “Sancta Maria”, in Peter Stoergler, Asma Poeticum

plate no. 11. Intaglio.
Österreichische Nationalbibliothek: 302276-A Alt Mag
heads sprouting from her flanks and is used to devouring those sailing by the
strait where she and the whirlpool Charybdis live,41 stares quietly at the vessel.
The foundation of this image is the recurring comparison between human life
and a stormy sea, given that people are continuously beset by waves, winds,
rocks, and creatures of different kinds that threaten their everlasting salva-
tion. Therefore, in order to avoid getting shipwrecked, they must choose the
right vessel: Mary, who becomes the Navis institoris (‘The merchant’s ship’)42
at the moment of the Annunciation/Incarnation: at the moment in which she
accepts Gabriel’s message, the Holy Ghost comes upon her and she becomes
the Mother of God. As David argues in his Pancarpium, the Virgin can be
compared to this ship, among other reasons, because she brings mankind the
angelic bread that provides eternal life.
You, Christ, bread of angels, you merchant of this ship that causes admi-
ration […] And she who bore you in her virginal womb from the heavens
on high and from the bosom of the Father truly brought us bread from
afar […] With you we unite, O Mary, who brought us the bread of angels,
true and very substantial, the genuine fruit of your womb: he who par-
takes of it will possess eternal life.43
However, the illustration of the Asma Poeticum, unlike that of the Pancarpium
[Fig. 3.4] and despite their similarities, does not focus on the bread brought
by Mary – i.e., on her divine motherhood – but on the help – i.e., on the
mediation – that, thanks to being the Mother of God, she offers to her faithful.
Therefore, in addition to the subscriptio that reads
The Angel will stand in the stern and will take the helm
if you have the Mother of God in the prow,44
41 Smith W. (ed.), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, 3 vols.
(London: 1876), vol. 3, 762.
42 Proverbs 31:14 is the source for the Marian epithet Navis institoris de longe portat panem
suum (‘[She is like] the merchant’s ship, she brings her bread from afar’) that both the
scriptural litany and the Pancarpium Marianum employ.
43 David, Pancarpium Marianum 46–47: ‘Tu Christe, panis Hîc Angelorum, tu institor navis

huius admirandae […] Vereque de longè te nobis panem apportavit, quae te de summis
caelorum, & sinu Patris, in virgineum suum sinum accepit […] Tibi adhaeremus, ô Maria,
quae panem Angelorum verum ac supersubstantialem, uteri tui genuinum fructu, nobis
protulisti: quem qui manducat, vitam aeternam possidebit’.
44 Stoergler, Asma Poeticum n.p.:

Angelus in puppi stabit, clavumq3 tenebit,

Numinis, in prora, si tibi Mater erit.
Figure 3.4 Theodore Galle, “Navis Institoris”, in Jan David, Pancarpium

Marianum […] (Antwerp, Ex Officina Plantiniana, Apud Ioannem
Moretum: 1607), plate no. 10. Intaglio.
Museum Plantin-Moretus (Print Room collection),
Antwerp – UNESCO, World Heritage, no. R.119
the Virgin’s iconography speaks for itself: she is the Virgin of Mercy who pro-
tects all her sodales under her outspread mantle.45
Mary’s aid is also stressed in Stoergler’s poem, in which he refers not only to
the vessel and troubled waters but also to the star or cynosura:
O my sails, go through the immense waves of the sea,

Go, Zephyr drives the sails, the Star shines.
How safely the Star Mary removes the Scyllae and Charybdes of the
world
for him whom she supports in both sea and heaven.
Thrice happy he who overcomes this sea with the suitable ship;
unhappy he who does not know how to plough through this sea.
[…]
The Argo can go more smoothly when the Twins shine,
but better when the Virginal Star guides.46
This last mention of the ship Argo is completely in tune with the other meta-
phors employed in this title: first, because the Argonauts could also avoid the
Scylla and Charybdis, in their case, thanks to the guidance of Thetis.47 Second,
because the Dioscuri – Castor and Pollux – were found among them: the twins
on whose heads stars appeared when a storm that had detained the Argonauts’
45 On the iconography of the Virgin of Mercy, see Wollesen-Wisch B. – Solway S., “The
Madonna of Mercy”, Art Bulletin 68, 4 (1986) 674–676; Trens M., María: Iconografía de la
Virgen en el Arte Español (Madrid: 1946) 322–328. The fact that Luther turns to this ico-
nography as an example to argue his rejection of saintly intercession proves the topicality
of this image in early modern Europe: ‘The devil is very assiduous in trying to divert us
from Christ. To invoke the Virgin Mary and the saints may make a beautiful show of holi-
ness; but we must stay together under the Head, or we are eternally damned. What will
become of those who rely on St. Barbara and St. George, or those who crawl for shelter
under Mary’s cloak?’ (Luther Martin, Sermons on the Gospel of St. John, chapters 1–4, ed.
J. Pelikan, in Luther’s Works, 55 vols. [St. Louis – Philadelphia: 1957], vol. 22, 490).

Ite per immensas undas, mea vela, Maris

Ite, vocat Zephyrus lintea, Stella micat.
Quam tutè Scyllas mundi, verritque Charybdes,
Cûi mare, cûi caelo Stella Maria, favet.
Ter foelix quisquis dignâ hoc mare puppe fatigat;
Infelix hoc, qui nescit arare, mare.
[…]
Mollius ire potest Geminis lucentibus Argo,
Sidere ducente ast Virgineo melius.
47 Smith, A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. 1, 280–282.
voyage subsided.48 Thus, Stoergler’s reference to Geminis lucentibus (‘when the

Twins shine’) probably follows this episode, although it might also evoke their
transformation into the constellation Gemini;49 either way, these twins are as-
sociated with stars and thus foster a new allusion to the Virginal Star – i.e.,
to Mary – who therefore not only is the ship that takes her clients to the safe
harbour of eternal life but also the Pole Star that better guides them.
In keeping with this idea, the Oraculum added after the poem reads:
Not a single Argonaut observed his Cynosura as Bernard taught us to

observe Mary when we waver in this sea of the world: ‘O you who find
yourself tossed about by the storms of life, turn not your eyes from the
brightness of this Star, if you would not be overwhelmed by its boister-
ous waves. If the winds of temptations rise, if you fall among the rocks of
tribulations, look up at the Star, call on Mary’.50
In a nutshell, both the ship and the cynosura represented in this image serve to
emphasize the mediation undertaken by the Mother of God so as to help the
faithful overcome all dangers and attain salvation. However, of the two sym-
bols, the star proves especially suitable for this title: Sancta Maria, since, ac-
cording to many authors, ‘Mary’ in Hebrew means Star of the Sea.
As a matter of fact, the sermons and devotional texts that reflect on the dif-
ferent meanings given to the name Maria, when dealing with its interpretation
as Stella Maris, usually expound on two commonplaces: the world as a tempes-
tuous sea and the Virgin as the Pole Star – i.e., the two subjects that, as shown
above, the Asma Poeticum complicates by adding new symbolic references.51
The first etymology, and known for everybody, is that the name of Mary
means Stella Maris, Star of the Sea. The Sea is this world, full of so many
48 Ibidem 1052–1054.
49 Some sources argue that their brotherly love was rewarded by Zeus by turning them into
the constellation Gemini, and by Poseidon by giving them power over wind and waves,
thus becoming protectors of sea travellers (ibidem 1053).
50 Stoergler, Asma Poeticum n.p.: ‘Nullus ita Cynosuram observavit suam Argonauta, ut

Mariam nos in hoc mundi pelago fluctuantes observare docuit Bernardus. O quisquis, in-
quit, intelligis in huius seculi profluvio, magis inter procellas & tempestates fluctuare, quam
per terram ambulare, ne avertas oculos ab huius Sideris fulgore. Si insurgant venti tentatio-
num, si incurras scopulos tribulationum, respice stellam, voca Mariam’.
51 On the sundry interpretations given to the name Maria, their theological implica-
tions, and their symbolic rendering, see López Calderón C., “El dulce nombre de María:
Etimología, anatomía, efectos y plástica de los siglos XVII–XVIII”, Norba: Revista de Arte
32–33 (2012–2013) 63–84.
dangers, battled by winds, exposed to frequent storms, and in a such long,

frightening, and obscure sailing, who would arrive at the harbour of heav-
en if that merciful Star did not guide him?52
Mary in Hebrew is interpreted as Stella maris, Star of the Sea. […] Just
like this star attracts the sailors and makes them arrive at the desired
harbour, so too does the Virgin guide us, and give us light, in order that
we may arrive at the harbour of salvation. […] O, so many have drowned
in the Charybdis of their vainglory, because they did not invoke Mary.
So many have been in danger in the Scylla of their avarice, because they
did not commend themselves to Mary. So many have got shipwrecked in
the Malea of their dishonesty, because they did not put their eyes on the
chastity of Mary.53
Hence, considering the pervasiveness of these topics, it is not surprising that

the two subsequent Elogia Mariana [Figs. 3.5–3.6] understood and respected
quite well the initial composition, although keeping the flag with the name
of the sodalitas that promoted the Asma Poeticum might have been a bit
unnecessary – did the drawers and engravers of the new images know what
it meant and why it was there? On the other hand, it must be noted that the
cloak of the Virgin shrank in the 1732 edition [Fig. 3.6], and so it does not shel-
ter all the people anymore; the subject of the Virgin of Mercy was thus lost in
this series.
52 ieyra Antonio, “Sermón del Santíssimo Nombre de María, en la ocasión en que su san-
V
tidad instituyó la fiesta del mismo Santíssimo Nombre”, Todos Sus Sermones y Obras
Diferentes, Que de Su Original Portugués se han Traducido en Castellano, 4 vols. (Barcelona,
En la imprenta de Maria Marti Viuda: 1734), vol. 2, 222: ‘La primera etymologìa, y sabida
de todos, es, que el Nombre de María significa Stella Maris, Estrella del Mar. El Mar es este
Mundo, lleno de tantos peligros, combatido de todos los vientos, expuesto à tan frequen-
tes tempestades, y en una tan larga, temerosa, y obscura navegación, quien podrà llegar al
Puerto del Cielo, sino fuesse guiado por aquella benignissima Estrella?’
53 Navarro Antonio, Abecedario Virginal de Excelencias del Santíssimo Nombre de María
(Madrid, En casa de Pedro Madrigal: 1604) fols. 16r.–18r.: ‘Maria en lengua Hebrea se in-
terpreta: Stella maris: Estrella del mar […] Assi como esta estrella atrae, y haze llegar a los
navegantes al puerto desseado; tambien la Virgen nos guía, y da la luz, para que lleguemos
al puerto de la salvación […] O quantos se han anegado en el Carides de su vanagloria, por
no aver invocado a Maria. Quantos han peligrado en el Scyla de su avaricia, por no averse
encomendado a Maria. Quantos han padecido naufragio en la Malea de su deshonesti-
dad, por no aver puesto los ojos en la castidad de María’.
Figure 3.5 Anonymous [Redelius?], “Sancta Maria”, in Isaac Oxoviensis, Elogia

Antonii Nepperschmidii: 1700), [p. 5]. Intaglio.
Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel: Xb 2952, Image 96
Figure 3.6
Christoph Thomas Scheffler and
Martin Engelbrecht, “Sancta Maria”,
in Augustin Casimir Redelius, Elogia
Mariana […] (Augsburg, Martin
Engelbrecht: 1732), plate no. 12.
Intaglio.
Getty Research Institute, Los
Angeles: 2865–175
4 Mater Admirabilis
The Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth is the scene chosen to illustrate this title
[Fig. 3.7], and since this encounter brought together two admirable mothers –
a virgin and a barren woman, respectively – the connection between the in-
vocation and the main topic depicted is certainly more obvious in this image
than in the previous one. As the subscriptio states:
The admirable mother admired the admirable mother,

when the Virgin stood on one side and the barren mother on the other.54

Mirandam miranda parens mirata Parentem est,

Cum Virgo hinc, sterilis Mater et inde stetit.
Figure 3.7 Anonymous, “Mater Admirabilis”, in Peter Stoergler, Asma Poeticum

plate no. 21. Intaglio.
In the same vein, and as the following verses exemplify, Stoergler’s poem
insists on the wonder of Mary’s virginal motherhood or fecund virginity:
I would have thought that stars could be united to the Styx more easily
than the Virgin could be mother and wife at once.
The earth will turn into heaven before I try to say
that the Virgin cannot be mother and wife at once.
Although these wonders are very much admirable, he
for whom these admirable [wonders] are not much is more admirable.55
However, as Marian apologetics explain, the Visitation not only helps Mary
verify the message of the angel – i.e., the fact that she would become a moth-
er while remaining a virgin56 – but it also bears witness to two outstanding
virtues: humility, because she goes to serve her cousin despite knowing that
she would be the Mother of God, and charity, because in addition to assisting
Elizabeth she brings the sanctifying grace to John, still in his mother’s womb.57
Both virtues seem to be implicit in the words with which Elizabeth greets Mary,
partially recorded on the pictura coming out of her mouth: Unde hoc mihi?
(‘And whence is this to me’) – and the gospel continues – ‘that the mother of
my Lord should come to me? For behold as soon as the voice of your saluta-
tion sounded in my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy’.58 Likewise, the

Astra Stygi citius cōiungi posse putasse,

Virgo, Marita simul, quam queat esse Parēs.
Terra prius coelum fiet, quam dicere tentem;
Virgo, Marita simul, quod nequit esse Parēs.
Sint mirāda nimis licet haec portenta; sed ille
Mirandus magis est, mira cui ista minus.
56 Luke 1:34–37: ‘And Mary said to the Angel: How shall this be done, because I know not
man? And the Angel answering, said to her: […] And behold thy cousin Elizabeth, she
also hath conceived a son in her old age; and this is the sixth month with her that is called
barren; because no word shall be impossible with God’.
57 Arias Francisco, Aprovechamiento Espiritual (Seville, En casa de Juan de León: 1596) 291:
‘Desta caridad y amor fraterno nos dio clarissimo testimonio la Virgen en la visitación
que hizo a santa Helisabeth. Como descubrio su humildad en yr a visitar a la que era
su inferior, assi manifesto su perfectissima caridad, en que la fue a consolar y alegrar cō
su presencia, y en que la fue a ayudar y servir en su preñez: y en que le llevò al salvador
de las almas, para que le santificasse al hijo, y a ella la llenasse de Espiritu santo’ – ‘The
Virgin gave very clear evidence of this charity and fraternal love in the visit she paid to
St Elizabeth. Just as she revealed her humility in visiting she who was her inferior, so too
she showed her most perfect charity in going to console her and give her cheer with her
presence, and in going to help and serve her in her pregnant state: and in bringing her the
saviour of souls in order that he might sanctify her son and fill her with the holy Spirit’.
58 Luke 1:43–44.
suspirium refers directly to her humility, linking it to Mary’s self-description as

the handmaid of the Lord:59
He created you admirable

and regarded you as a humble handmaid.
Make God desirable for us,
appeased at the end of life.60
Hence, first and foremost her virginal motherhood, but her virtues too, deter-
mine Mary to be an ‘Abyss of miracles’ – as John Damascene calls her in the
prayer echoed in the oraculum61 – and consequently to be worthy of admira-
tion. The symbols represented in the upper part of the composition highlight
her admirable nature and conceal some of the reasons on which it is grounded.
Let us read them from left to right, beginning with the sun: it could be seen
as a symbol of Christ or the Virgin, and either way it is connected with Marian
prerogatives that would justify its presence in this illustration. On one hand,
the title Electa ut sol accorded to Mary is interpreted by David in terms of
divine motherhood:
[…] of all creatures the blessed Virgin Mary is compared to it [the sun],
she who has only God above her. And so observe, I beg you, O faithful
souls devoted to Mary, does not the same sun of justice, Christ, call her
sun when, through his prophet as the chosen paranymph, he thus says,
“He hath set his tabernacle in the sun: and he as a bridegroom coming out
of his bride chamber?” […] Truly, O Mary, comfort of the world in your
birth, you came in the form of light to adorn the Church: but much more,
59 Luke 1:30: ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done to me according to thy word’.
Cf. Bernard of Clairvaux, Homilia 4 Super Missus est, trans. at St. Mary’s Convent, York,
Sermons of St. Bernard on Advent & Christmas Including the Famous Treatise on the
Incarnation Called “Missus Est” (London: 1909) 70: ‘She is the chosen Mother of God, and
she calls herself His handmaid. Truly, it is no small sign of humility to preserve even the
remembrance of the virtue in presence of so great glory’. Mary herself acknowledges that
‘he [God] hath regarded the humility of his handmaid’ (Luke 1:48), which statement gives
rise to the second verse of the suspirium.

Qui te creavit mirabilem,

Et respexit ancillam humilem:
Fac nobis Deum optabilem,
In vitae fine placabilem.
61 Ibidem: ‘Brevi versiculo, grandi elogio, hunc laudis Marianae titulum Damascenus clausit,
dicens: Virgo Beata, miraculorum abyssus & officina’ – ‘With a short verse, great compli-
ment, Damascene finished this title of Marian praise, by saying: “Blessed Virgin, abyss and
workshop of miracles”’.
when you announced and produced Christ the sun of Justice in a shining
appearance, you were really an admirable vessel, a most sublime work.62
On the other hand, Christ as the Sun of Justice is recalled by Dornn to elucidate
Mary’s virginal motherhood in the title Mater Inviolata:
When Christ was conceived in the womb of Mary, then sol in virgine – the
Sun was in the Virgin; and, in a certain sense, also, virgo in sole fuit – the
virgin was in the sun; for, as the ray beams from the sun, without injury or
violation of the sun, so Christ, as the light of the world, was born of the
Virgin Mary without impairing her virginity.63
Beneath the sun there appears the inscription rara avis: although this name is
frequently applied to the phoenix – the phoenix being a Marian symbol that
expresses her virginity64 – in this case it probably refers to the bird of paradise
depicted to the right; the fact of representing this manucodiata surrounded
by other smaller birds leaves no doubt that it is a ‘rare bird’. The choice of
this bird rather than the phoenix might have been triggered by the natural-
istic criterion mentioned above, for placing a phoenix amidst flames in the
sky would have certainly undermined it. At the same time, the manucodiata –
which is also linked by Hueber’s Ornithologiae Moralis to Juvenal’s rara avis in
62 David, Pancarpium Marianum 85: ‘[…] prae omnibus creaturis beata virgo Maria ei as-

similatur; quae solum Deum supra se habet. Atque adeò, videte obsecro, fideles animae
Mariae devotae, Numquid ipsemet sol iustitiae Christus, solem eam appellat, dum per
suum Prophetam ut electum paranymphum, sic ait; In sole posuit tabernaculum suum; &
ipse tamquam sponsus procedens de thalamo suo [Ps. 18]? […] Verè, ô Maria, mundi sola-
tium in ortu tuo, in ornamentum Ecclesiae venisti in lucem: sed multò magis, in adspectu
praefulgido solem iustitiae Christum annuntians & producens, vas verè fuisti admirabile,
opus excelsi’.
63 Dornn F.X., The Illustrated Litany of Loreto in Fifty-Six Titles; Each Title Elucidated in a

Pious Meditation, and Illuminated by an Emblematical Scriptural Picture, trans. Thomas

Canon Pope (Dublin: 1878) n.p.
64 See, for instance, the emblems ‘Ex Virgine Virgo’ (Masen Jakob, Speculum Imaginum
Veritatis Occultae, Exhibens Symbola, Emblemata, Hieroglyphica, Aenigmata, Omni, Tam
Materiae, Quam Formae Varietate, Exemplis Simul, ac Praeceptis Illustratum [Cologne,
Sumptibus Viduae & Haeredum Joannis Antonii Kinchii: 1681] 615), ‘Unica Semper Avis’
(Picinelli Filippo – Erath Augustin de, Mundus Symbolicus, in Emblematum Universitate
Formatus, Explicatus, et Tam Sacris, Quam Eruditionibus ac Sententiis Illustratus, 2 vols.
[Cologne, Sumptibus Hermanni Demen: 1681], vol. 1, 322–323), or ‘Virgo Singularis’
(Ménestrier Claude-François, Philosophia Imaginum Id Est Sylloge Symbolorum Amplis
sima [Amsterdam – Danzig, Apud Janssonio-Waesbergios: 1695] 681).
terris65 – is employed in Marian emblematics to signify her assumption into

Heaven: another admirable feature that, as stated before, was made possible
by her unblemished soul and body, that is, by her immaculate conception
and virginity.66
On the other hand, it could also be argued that both elements – i.e., the
rara avis inscription and the bird of paradise – might be functioning as two
independent symbols, each one with a different, although related, meaning.
Nevertheless, a similar arrangement of image plus text – which, incidentally,
seems to evoke an emblem’s picture and motto, helping the latter to narrow
down the meaning of the former – appears at the right side of the composition,
and this time they are definitely to be read as an ensemble: the rainbow and the
inscription filia Thaumantis (‘daughter of Thaumas’, that is, Iris). As Oxoviensis
states in the last annotation of this title in his own Elogia Mariana: ‘Iris, who is
said to be the daughter of Thaumas and Electra, is called Thaumantis filia; and
it is the same as daughter of admiration’.67
In effect, given that Iris is the goddess of the rainbow and since thauma
(θαυμα) means ‘wonder’, authors justify Iris’s nickname, Thaumantias, on the
basis of both her father and the admiration provoked by her colours.68 This
notion of wonder and admiration was most likely the main reason to include
a reference to Iris in this illustration – for, let us not forget, it corresponds to
Mater Admirabilis – and so the insertion of the inscription Filia Thaumantis
proved key in drawing the viewer’s attention to this particular meaning of the
rainbow. This does not impede, however, the fact that other Marian readings
of this phenomenon might have also played their part, particularly, the idea of
conciliation: if the rainbow seems to unite heaven and earth and if Iris connects
65 Hueber Fortunatus, Ornithologiae Moralis, 2 vols. (Munich, Typis & Impensis Joannis
Jaecklini: 1678), vol. 2, 238: ‘et die 10, Martii, Montillae, celeberrimâ civitate in Andalusia,
ex utero materno, velut Avis Paradisiaca ex ovo prodiit […] Potuit hîc Solanus in ortu suo
dicere […] E Paradiso venio, rara avis in terris, ut vobis ad Paradisi iucunditatem demon-
strem semitas’ – ‘And he [Franciscus Solanus] came out of his mother’s womb, like a
bird of paradise out of the egg, on 10 March in Montilla, celebrated city in Andalusia […]
Solanus could say in his birth […] I come from paradise, a rare bird on earth, in order to
show you the path towards the delights of Paradise’.
66 Namely such meaning is given to the emblem ‘Innixa ascendit’, which was recorded
first by Aresi Paolo, Delle Sacre Imprese […] Libro Quinto (Tortona, Per Pietro Giovanni
Calenzano et Eliseo Viola Compagni: 1630) 193.
67 Oxoviensis, Elogia Mariana 212: ‘Thaumantis filia dicitur Iris, quae fingitur esse

Thaumantis & Electrae filiae; & idem est, quod filia admirationis’.
68 Forcellini Egidio, Totius Latinitatis Lexicon, 4 vols. (Padua, Typis Seminarii: 1771), vol. 4,
360; Gesner Johann Matthias, Novus Linguae Latinae Thesaurus, 4 vols. (Leipzig, Impensis
Casp. Fritschii Viduae et Bernh. Chr. Breitkopfii: 1749), vol. 4, 780.
gods with men because she acts as their messenger, so too does the Virgin link
both realms by becoming the carrier of the Saviour and by helping men to ac-
cess God.69 This interpretation is precisely what explains Oxoviensis’s verses
corresponding to the annotation quoted above:
What great wonders

You contain, wonderful Virgin!
May the daughter of Thaumas withdraw,
she whom insane people create:
you are the true winged one
of paradise, whom I shall only
adumbrate while living here.
I shall follow you when I die.70
Last but not least, the cloud placed between the rainbow and the sun, next to
a hill and above what seems to be a bay, could be a reference to either the little
cloud that Elijah’s servant saw from a mountain, arising out of the sea,71 or to
the swift cloud upon which, according to Isaiah’s prophecy, the Lord would
enter Egypt.72 As De la Iglesia states before providing their Marian interpre-
tation, both clouds provoke admiration due to, respectively, their size and
rarity,73 and therefore their presence in this image would be perfectly justi-
fied. In addition, the readings suggested for these clouds are also in tune with
the other contents of this illustration: the nubecula parva symbolizes Mary’s
humility and the abundance of graces that she showers upon men, and the
nubes levis deals with the Incarnation because it represents the Virgin’s womb,
inasmuch as Christ entered the world through it.74
69 In fact, the name Iris (Ιρις), which is the Greek for ‘rainbow’, is frequently derived from
eiris (‘messenger’). On this goddess, see Smith, A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography
and Mythology, vol. 2, 621–622.
70 Oxoviensis, Elogia Mariana 107:

Quàm magna mirabilia

Includis Virgo mira!
Cedat Thaumantis filia,
Quam fingit gens delira:
Tu vera paradisi
Es ales, quam non nisi
Hic vivens adumbravero.
Sequar, dum exspiravero.
71 3 Kings 18:41–45.
72 Isaiah 19:1.
73 Iglesia, Flores de Miraflores 96: ‘dos nubes, una pequeña, otra rara, y entrambas por lo raro,

y lo pequeño, causaràn admiración’.

74 Ibidem 97, 99, quotations from Albert the Great and Denis the Carthusian.
Finally, in order to demonstrate once again the pervasiveness of these sym-

bols, it might be interesting to transcribe one excerpt taken from a 1722 book
that brings together the sun, the cloud, and the rainbow while presenting the
Virgin of Urticeto as Iris Divinae Propitiationis: ‘She [Mary] is this little beauti-
ful cloud of Elijah broken by the transparency of the everlasting sun into the
beautiful colours of heavenly graces’.75 Nevertheless, it must be noted that the
visual rendition of Elijah’s or Isaiah’s cloud is less frequent than other Marian
symbols, which may explain why the two subsequent Elogia Mariana seem not
to identify it: the 1700 edition [Fig. 3.8] multiplies the clouds, the 1732 [Fig. 3.9]
simply sketches it, and both prints omit the hill and the sea.
Figure 3.8
Anonymous [Redelius?], “Mater
Admirabilis”, in Isaac Oxoviensis,
Elogia Mariana […] (Augsburg, Apud
Joann. Philippum Steudnerum, Typis
Antonii Nepperschmidii: 1700),
p. 105. Intaglio.
Herzog August Bibliothek
Wolfenbüttel: Xb 2952,
Image 217
75 Speculum Parthenio-Fidele in Parvis Ingentia Orbi Portenta Referens: h.e. Insignia Dei-
Potentiae Mirabilia in Urticeto Heilbrunnensi Patrocinio Deiparae Virginis Thaumaturgae
Copiose Patrata, in Ecclesia Carmeli Straubingani Crebris Beneficiis, et Gratiis Aucta
(Straubing, Typis Joannis Theophili Raedlmayr: [1722]) n.p.: ‘Haec illa pulcherrima Eliae
nubecula est ab aeterni Solis transparentia in pulcherrimos gratiarum coelestium colores
circinata’.
Figure 3.9 Christoph Thomas Scheffler and Martin Engelbrecht, “Mater

Admirabilis”, in Augustin Casimir Redelius, Elogia Mariana
[…] (Augsburg, Martin Engelbrecht: 1732), plate no. 22.
Intaglio.
Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles: 2865–175
5 Mater Salvatoris
The differences among the three engraved series are more significant in the
illustration corresponding to this title [Fig. 3.10], although oddly enough it is
the poem of the 1700 Elogia Mariana that provides us with the hints to easily
identify the male character represented in the lower right-hand corner.
If Joshua was called Saviour,

because, triumphant,
with the outstanding trumpets
sounding, he tore down
the walls of Jericho,
he killed five kings,
when leading his people
to the land flowing with honey,
why is not Jesus called
Saviour with more right,
He who willingly deigned to die,
to save us?
Like Joshua he destroyed
the walls of the lower world,
put the kings of darkness to flight
and watched over his flock.76
In effect, Joshua ( Josue) means ‘Saviour’,77 and thus his choice for the invoca-
tion Mater Salvatoris is certainly appropriate. Furthermore, as the verses re-
call, he took the city of Jericho – perhaps personified by the woman wearing a
crown in the shape of a wall and riding a chariot78 – after the priests sounded
76 Oxoviensis, Elogia Mariana 123:

Si Josue salvator Salvatori potiori

Insignis audiebat, Jure quidni dicatur
Tubis, quod Triumphator, Jesus, qui lubens mori,
Sonantibus sternebat Ut salvet nos, dignatur?
Muros Jerichuntinos, Ceu Josue prostravit
Reges c[a]edebat quinos, Orci muros, fugavit
Suam deducens gentem Et tenebrarum Reges,
In terram mel Fluentem. Suos servavit greges.
77 Ibidem 126: ‘Josue interpretatur, Dominus Salvator’.
78 Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia (Venice, Presso Cristoforo Tomasini: 1645) 81, 304, 338 describes
a woman wearing a similar crown in three different allegories, in all of which this motif
is associated with cities: Carro de Terra (‘Chariot of Earth’, being this chariot square and
pulled by two lions), Italia con le sue provincie (‘Italy with part of its provinces’), and
Figure 3.10 Anonymous, “Mater Salvatoris”, in Peter Stoergler, Asma Poeticum Litaniarum
the trumpets used in the jubilee,79 a gesture that was not without reason: if in
the year of the jubilee (i.e., every fiftieth year) ‘every man shall return to his
possession’,80 when entering Jericho the Israelites began to take possession of
the Promised Land.
In point of fact, the presence of Joshua in this title might have been deter-
mined by both the etymology of his name and the idea of joy connected to his
actions. A quick glance at the illustration catches several Aves (‘hail’, ‘rejoice’),
whose number keeps on increasing in Stoergler’s poem:
Therefore, when the earth composes its greeting to the Son,

you will equally have, Mother, your sweet HAIL.
Hurry up, Parthenii, celebrate with me the beginning
of our salvation and say: hail Mother.
Tell her who the new celestial messenger sent from Olympus
proclaimed full of God: hail Mother.
Tell her who the world acknowledges as Lady, the underworld as
conqueror,
the stars as supreme queen: hail Mother.
You who, preserving virginal chastity in soul,
Brought forth new pledges to earth: hail Mother.81
Immediately after these verses, Stoergler reveals the reason for such an insis-
tence, which was actually already disclosed at the beginning of this essay: the
play on words Ave–Eva–Vae–A vae.
Marca Trivisana (‘March of Treviso’). Consequently, this attribute would seem appropri-
ate to create the allegory of Jericho, even more considering the importance of this city’s
walls in the triumph of Joshua.
79 Joshua 6:4, 20.
80 Leviticus 25:10.
Ergo suam Nato cum scribet terra salute,
Dulce tuum pariter, Mater habebis AVE.
Pergite Parhenii mecum celebrate, salutis
Principium nostrae, & dicite: Mater ave.
Quam novus empyreo miss9 legat9 Olympo
Prędixit plenam Numine: Mater ave.
Quam tellus dominam, victricem Tartara: summam
Reginam noscunt sidera: Mater ave.
Quae nova, Virgineum servans in mente pudorem,
Terris enixa es pignora: Mater ave.
You brought symbols that are indisputable/trustworthy to the life of our

people,
by changing the names of Eve [Eva]: Hail [Ave] Mother.
The multitude of children offer this to you, Mother, HAIL [AVE];
the clients, with the mind subject to you, Patroness, offer this.
They beg that these vows shall not be broken; separate them
from the eternal woe [a vae] and thus you will be the true mother of
salvation.82
Therefore, considering all the implications of the antithetical relationship be-

tween Mary and Eve synthesized in these verses and explained in detail before,
it comes as no surprise that the angel Gabriel greeted the Virgin with a joyful
Ave, a greeting that according to Stoergler expressed more joy than the one
received by Joshua. Such a difference is stressed by the illustration, where the
‘Hail’ dedicated to Joshua is not the Latin Ave but the Greek Jaire (Χαιρε), and is
not pronounced by an angel but by a crow. The subscriptio reads:
May the crows tell others jaire,

the Angel brought you, beautiful mother, a more pleasant AVE from
Heaven.83
Actually, the Latin couplet does not read Angelus (‘Angel’) but Ales, which
means ‘winged’ – so it can be applied to angelic figures – ‘bird’, and a bird that
gives omens by its flight. Consequently, the word chosen seems to encourage
the readers to compare both ‘winged’ messengers – i.e., Gabriel and the crow –
in terms of the omen that they imply and, since crows are traditionally con-
sidered a token of bad luck,84 they should conclude that the angel brings a
82 Ibidem:
Symbola quae vitae nostratis certa tulisti,
Evae commutans nomina: Mater ave.
Hoc tibi Mater, AVE, gnatorū turba; clientes
Hoc tibi subiecta mente Patrona, ferunt.
Non haec vota petunt solvi; dissolve perenni
A vae: sic Mater vera salutis eris.
83 Ibidem:
Χαιρε aliis corvi dicant; tibi, candida Mater,
Suavius è coelo detulit Ales AVE
84 Ripa, Iconologia 280: ‘Infortunio. Huomo […] nella sinistra un Corvo. L’Infortunio, come

si raccoglie d’Aristotele, è un evento contrario al bene, & ogni contento: & il Corvo non
per essere uccello di male augurio, mà per essere celebrato per tale da’ Poeti, ci può ser-
vire per segno dell’Infortunio: si come spesse volte, un tristo avvenimento è presagio di
favourable, joyful message. But why would Joshua receive a bad omen if he suc-
ceeded in taking Jericho? Probably because of the tragic events derived from
this victory: Achan, disobeying God’s command, stole from Jericho silver, gold,
and a scarlet garment, thus provoking his wrath and causing the defeat of the
Israelites sent by Joshua to destroy the city of Hai, thirty-six of whom died.85
This episode may also explain the hanged man found in the background
of the illustration: although he could be one of the kings that Joshua ordered
hanged,86 the crow on top of the gibbet would make more sense if the man
were an Israelite, that is, if he belonged to the people to whom the unfortunate
Jaire had been spoken. It is true that, according to the Scriptures, Achan was
stoned to death,87 but depicting him as a hanged man could be an up-to-date
way to represent his punishment, given that in early modern Europe common
thieves were usually hanged88 and the dead bodies of some capital offend-
ers were left hanging until they rotted to serve as a warning to the living.89 In
fact, in Jacques Callot’s Les Grandes Misères de la Guerre, a series of eighteen
etchings connected to the miseries of the Thirty Years’ War and accompanied
with verses added by Michel de Marolles in the second state (dated 1633),90 the
famous scene of the hanging is inscribed with the following couplets:
qualche maggior male soprastante, & si deve credere, che vengano gl’infelici successi,
& le ruine per Divina permissione, come gli Auguri antichi credevano, che i loro augurii
fussero inditio della volōtà di Giove. Quindi siamo ammoniti a rivolgerci dal torto sen-
tiero dell’attioni cattive, al sicuro della virtù, con la quale si placa l’ira di Dio, & cessano
gl’infotunii’ – ‘Misfortune. Man […] [holding] a Crow in the left [hand]. Misfortune, as
received from Aristotle, is an event contrary to the good, and to every contentment; the
Crow, not because it is a bird of bad omen, but because it is considered as such by Poets,
can be used as a sign of misfortune: if, as oftentimes, a sad incident is an omen of greater
misfortune to follow, so too it is to be believed that unhappy events and ruin come by di-
vine permission, just like ancient augurs believed that their omens were a sign of Jupiter’s
will. Thus, we are warned to turn from the crooked path of evil actions to the safe one of
virtue, with which the wrath of God is appeased and misfortunes cease’.
85 Joshua 6:1–22.
86 Namely, the king of Hai (Joshua 8:29) and the five kings mentioned by Oxoviensis’s poem,
to wit: the king of Jerusalem, the king of Hebron, the king of Jerimoth, the king of Lachis,
and the king of Eglon (Joshua 10:3, 26).
87 Joshua 6:25.
88 Goosens A., “Wars of Religion: The Examples of France, Spain and the Low Countries in
the Sixteenth Century”, in Hartmann A.V. – Heuser B. (eds.), War, Peace and World Orders
in European History (London – New York: 2002) 160–173, at 168.
89 Spierenburg P., “The Body and the State: Early Modern Europe”, in Morris N. – Rothman D.J.
(eds.), The Oxford History of Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society (New
York – Oxford: 1998) 44–70, at 50–51.
90 Wolfthal D., “Jacques Callot’s Miseries of War”, Art Bulletin 59, 2 (1977) 222–233.
Finally these infamous and abandoned thieves,

hanging from this tree like wretched fruit,
show that crime (horrible and black species)
is itself the instrument of shame and vengeance,
and that it is the fate of corrupt men
to experience the justice of Heaven sooner or later.91
Similarly, the corrupt Achab experienced the justice of Heaven and was the au-
thor of his own misfortune due to, turning to Ripa’s description of ‘Infortunio’,92
his ‘evil actions’ and ‘divine permission’. Because of him, and despite the tri-
umph over Jericho, Joshua experienced adverse fortune and could not rejoice
like the Virgin Mary, who gave birth to the true Saviour and thus changed the
names of Eve.
The comparison between the fates and joys of Mary and Joshua disap-
pears in the 1700 Elogia Mariana, for the illustration [Fig. 3.11] is deprived of
the Ave–Χαιρε inscriptions and the subscriptio mentions neither the crows
nor the Jaire; consequently, the epigram’s last verse, dum e caelo detulit ales
AVE (‘when the angel brought you the Ave from heaven’), lacks a significant
part of its original meaning.93 The 1732 print [Fig. 3.12] intensifies the misun-
derstanding, because, in addition to removing the crow from the gibbet, it
turns the crow held by the allegory into a white bird that has completely lost its
symbolic power.
91 Translation taken from Callot Jacques, “The Hanging (La Pendaison), from The Miseries
and the Misfortunes of War (Les Grandes Misères de la Guerre)”, Michael C. Carlos Museum
Collections Online, http://carlos.digitalscholarship.emory.edu/items/show/8609. The
original French reads:
A la fin ces Voleurs infâmes et perdus,
Comme fruits malheureux à cet arbre pendus
Monstrent bien que le crime (horrible et noire engeance)
Est luy mesme instrument de honte et de vengeance,
Et que cest le Destin des hommes vicieux
D’esprouver tost ou tard la justice des Cieux.
92 See note 84.
93 As it happens with this title, Oxoviensis’s epigrams sometimes borrow verses from
Stoergler’s couplets and carmina and even rework inscriptions initially added to the il-
lustrations. For other examples, see López Calderón, Grabados de Augsburgo 33.
Figure 3.11 Anonymous [Redelius?], “Mater Salvatoris”, in Isaac Oxoviensis, Elogia

Antonii Nepperschmidii: 1700), p. 123. Intaglio.
Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel: Xb 2952, Image 238
Figure 3.12 Christoph Thomas Scheffler and Martin Engelbrecht, “Mater

Salvatoris”, in Augustin Casimir Redelius, Elogia Mariana […]
(Augsburg, Martin Engelbrecht: 1732), plate no. 24. Intaglio.
Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles: 2865–175
6 Conclusion
Stoergler’s proposal requires educated beholders to decipher his illustrations,

but despite their knowledge and acquaintance with symbolic theology, their
learning might not be enough to recognize all the symbols merged in each
pictura. Therefore, as emblematics dictate, his subscriptiones and carmina
are essential to unveil the rich contents of the images, although his texts do
not disclose all the symbola. It seems that Stoergler’s words aim at laying the
foundations to know which path to take and thus read the pictures correctly,
but their specific nuances are left to the reader/viewer’s interpretation. As a
result, the Asma Poeticum is full of mysteries that are used, paradoxically, to
shed some light on other mysteries: those concerning the Virgin Mary. Hence,
sundry metaphors interact naturally to conceal and at the same time reveal
her prerogatives, giving rise to symbola certa, that is, indisputable and trust-
worthy symbols, at least from a Catholic point of view. Nevertheless, there
are not records showing whether these symbols were fully understood by the
book’s likely immediate audience – for instance, the members of the sodalitas
that commissioned it – or not. There is, however, proof of a progressive loss
of meanings in the subsequent reissues of this set of images, which provoke
some iconographic and textual oddities – not a riddle this time, but simply
a misinterpretation.
Bibliography
Alastruey G., The Blessed Virgin Mary, trans. M. Janet la Giglia, 2 vols. (St Louis, MO:
1963–64).
Albert the Great, Mariale Alberti Magni in Eua[n]gelium super Missus est Gabriel
Angelus (n.p. [Venice?], Lazarus de Soardis: 1504).
Alegambe Philippe, Bibliotheca Scriptorum Societatis Iesu. Post Excusum Anno MDCVIII
Catalogum R.P. Petri Ribadeneirae Societatis Eiusdem Theologi; Nunc Hoc Novo
Apparatu Librorum ad Annum Reparatae Salutis MDCXLII Editorum Concinnata,
& Illustrium Virorum Elogiis Adornata (Antwerp, Apud Ioannem Meursium: 1643).
Aresi Paolo, Delle Sacre Imprese […] Libro Quinto (Tortona, Per Pietro Giovanni
Calenzano et Eliseo Viola Compagni: 1630).
Arias Francisco, Aprovechamiento Espiritual (Seville, En casa de Juan de León: 1596).
Backer Augustin de – Backer Alois de – Sommervogel C., Bibliothèque des Écrivains de
la Compagnie de Jésus, 3 vols. (Leuven – Lyon: 1869–86).
Bernard of Clairvaux, Homilia 4 Super Missus est, trans. at St. Mary’s Convent, York,
Sermons of St. Bernard on Advent & Christmas Including the Famous Treatise on the
Incarnation Called “Missus Est” (London: 1909).
Boer W. de – Enenkel K.A.E. – Melion W.S. (eds.), Jesuit Image Theory, Intersections 45
(Leiden – Boston: 2016).
Burghardt W.J., “Mary in Western Patristic Thought”, in Carol J. (ed.), Mariology, 3 vols.
(Milwaukee: 1954–60), vol. 1, 109–155.
Callot Jacques, “The Hanging (La Pendaison), from The Miseries and the Misfortunes
of War (Les Grandes Misères de la Guerre)”, Michael C. Carlos Museum Collections
Online, http://carlos.digitalscholarship.emory.edu/items/show/8609.
Caravale G., Forbidden Prayer: Church Censorship and Devotional Literature in
Renaissance Italy (Farnham: 2012).
Carol J. (ed.), Mariology, 3 vols. (Milwaukee: 1954–60).
Châtellier L., The Europe of the Devout: The Catholic Reformation and the Formation of a
New Society (Cambridge: 2009).
Cherubini Laerzio, Magnum Bullarium Romanun, Pio Quarto usque ad Innocentium
IX, 4 vols. (Lyon, Sumptibus Philippo Borde, Laur. Arnaud, & Cl. Rigaud: 1655).
Collegium Groednensi Societatis Iesu, Saeculum Marianum Sivè Centum Tituli
Augustissimae dei Matris Virginis Mariae è Sacris Paginis & Sanctorum Patrum
Monumentis Deprompti (Vilnius, Typis S.R.M. Academicis Societatis Jesu: 1764).
Cornelius à Lapide, Commentaria in Ecclesiasticum (Antwerp, Apud Ioannem
Meursium: 1643).
Cunningham M.B. (trans.), Wider Than Heaven: Eighth-Century Homilies on the Mother
of God (Crestwood, NY: 2008).
David Jan, Pancarpium Marianum Septemplici Titulorum Serie Distinctum, ut in
B. Virginis Odorem Curramus et Christus Formetur in Nobis (Antwerp, Ex Officina
Plantiniana, Apud Ioannem Moretum: 1607).
David Jan, Paradisus Sponsi et Sponsae (Antwerp, Ex Officina Plantiniana, Apud
Ioannem Moretum: 1607).
Dekoninck R., Ad Imaginem: Status, Fonctions et Usages de l’Image dans la Littérature
Spirituelle Jésuite du XVIIe Siècle (Geneva: 2005).
Dornn Franciscus Xavier, Litaniae Lauretanae ad Beatae Virginis, Caelique Reginae
Mariae, Honorem, et Gloriam […] Symbolicis ac Biblicis Figuris in Quinquaginta
Septem Iconismis Aeneis Expressae, & secundum Ordinem Titulorum Exhibitae, Pia
Meditatione (Augsburg, Sumptibus Joannis Baptistae Burckhart: 1750).
Dornn Franciscus Xavier, The Illustrated Litany of Loreto in Fifty-Six Titles; Each Title
Elucidated in a Pious Meditation, and Illuminated by an Emblematical Scriptural
Picture, trans. Thomas Canon Pope (Dublin: 1878).
Dreves G.M. – Blume C. (eds.), Analecta Hymnica Medii Aevi, 55 vols. (Leipzig:
1886–1922).
Duerloo L. – Wingens M., Scherpenheuvel: Het Jeruzalem van de Lage Landen (Leuven:
2002).
Fiores S. de – Meo S. (eds.), Nuevo Diccionario de Mariología (Madrid: 2001).

Forcellini Egidio, Totius Latinitatis Lexicon, 4 vols. (Padua, Typis Seminarii: 1771).
Gambero L., Mary and the Fathers of the Church: The Blessed Virgin Mary in Patristic
Thought (San Francisco: 1999).
Gesner Johann Matthias, Novus Linguae Latinae Thesaurus, 4 vols. (Leipzig, Impensis
Casp. Fritschii Viduae et Bernh. Chr. Breitkopfii: 1749).
Gharib G. – Nola G. Di – Gambero L. – Toniolo E.M. (eds.), Testi Mariani del Primo
Millennio, 4 vols. (Roma: 1988–91).
Goosens A., “Wars of Religion: The Examples of France, Spain and the Low Countries
in the Sixteenth Century”, in Hartmann A.V. – Heuser B. (eds.), War, Peace and World
Orders in European History (London – New York: 2002) 160–173.
Heal B., “Images of the Virgin Mary and Marian Devotion in Protestant Nuremberg”,
in Parish H. – Naphy W.G. (eds.), Religion and Superstition in Reformation Europe
(Manchester: 2002) 25–46.
Heal B., The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Early Modern Germany: Protestant and Catholic
Piety, 1500–1648 (Cambridge: 2007).
Heilingsetzer G., Der Oberösterreichische Bauernkrieg 1626 (Vienna: 1976).
Helfferich T., The Essential Thirty Years War: A Documentary History (Indianapolis:
2015).
Hueber Fortunatus, Ornithologiae Moralis, 2 vols. (Munich, Typis & Impensis Joannis
Jaecklini: 1678).
Iglesia Nicolás de la, Flores de Miraflores: Hieroglificos Sagrados, Verdades Figuradas,
Sombras Verdaderas del Mysterio de la Immaculada Concepción de la Virgen, y Madre
de Dios, Maria Señora Nuestra (Burgos, Diego de Nieva y Murillo: 1659).
Imhof D., Jan Moretus and the Continuation of the Plantin Press: A Bibliography of
the Works Published and Printed by Jan Moretus I in Antwerp (1589–1610), 2 vols.
([Leiden]: 2014).
Insignia Mariano-Encomiastica, seu Litaniae Lauretanae, Figuris Veteris, Novique
Testamenti Elogia Virginis Intemeratae, Iisdem Inserta Praenotantibus Exornatae
(Augsburg, Tobias Lobeck: 1743).
Isidore de Saint-Gilles, Corona Stellarum Duodecim Cuius Quaeque Stella Pluribus
Corusca Radiis, Mariae […] (Antwerp, Apud Henricum van Dunwalt: 1685).
Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, a Jew, trans. G. Reith, in The Writings of Justin
Martyr and Athenagoras (Edinburgh – London – Dublin: 1870).
Kemp C., “Emblem”, in Bäumer R. – Scheffczyk L. (eds.), Marienlexikon, 6 vols.
(St. Ottilien: 1988–94), vol. 2, 331–334.
Kreitzer B., Reforming Mary: Changing Images of the Virgin Mary in Lutheran Sermons
of the Sixteenth Century (Oxford: 2004).
Loach J., “The Teaching of Emblematics and Other Symbolic Imagery by Jesuits within
Town Colleges in Seventeenth- And Eighteenth-Century France”, in Manning J. –
Van Vaeck M. (eds.), The Jesuits and the Emblem Tradition: Selected Papers of the
Leuven International Emblem Conference, 18–23 August 1996, Imago Figurata Studies
1a (Turnhout: 1999).
Loda A., “Il sangue del Redentore: Testimonianze figurative eucarístico-sacramentali
nella diocesi di Brescia”, Brixia Sacra: Memorie Storiche della Diocesi di Brescia 1–2
(1999) 52–70.
López Calderón C., “El Pancarpium Marianum de Jan David: Grabados y conceptos
para la Capilla de Nuestra Señora de los Ojos Grandes (Lugo)”, Imago: Revista de
emblemática y cultura visual 4 (2012) 41–54.
López Calderón C., “El dulce nombre de María: etimología, anatomía, efectos y plástica
de los siglos XVII – XVIII”, Norba: Revista de Arte 32–33 (2012–13) 63–84.
López Calderón C., Grabados de Augsburgo para un Ciclo Emblemático Portugués: Los
Azulejos de la Iglesia del Convento de Jesús de Setúbal (Valencia: 2017).
López Calderón C., “Emblemática aplicada en el distrito de Coimbra: La Iglesia de Nossa
Senhora da Tocha (Cantanhede) y sus fuentes impresas”, in Ballester Morell B. –
Bernat Vistarini A. – Cull J.T. (eds.), Encrucijada de la Palabra y la Imagen Simbólicas:
Estudios de Emblemática (Palma de Mallorca: 2017) 433–442.
Luther Martin, Sermons on the Gospel of St. John, chapters 1–4, in Pelikan J. (ed.), Luther’s
Works, 55 vols. (St. Louis – Philadelphia: 1957).
Manning J., The Emblem (London: 2003).
Marracci Ippolito, Polyanthea Mariana, in Libros XVIII Distributa, in Qua Deiparae
Virginis Maria Nomina et Selectiora Encomia ex SS. Patrum, Aliorumque Sacrorum
Scriptorum, Praesertim Veterum, Monumentis Collecta, juxta Alphabeti Seriem,
& Temporis, Quo Iidem Vixerunt, Ordinem Disposita, Lectorum Oculis Exhibentur
(Cologne, Sumptibus Petri Ketteler: 1683).
Martin C., Mois de Marie des Prédicateurs ou Cours Complet de Sermons, Conférences,
Instructions pour tous les Jours du Mois de Marie, pour Totes les Fêtes et sur Tous les
Sujets se Rapportant à la Très-Sainte Vierge (Paris: 1881).
Martins M., “Ladainhas de Nossa Senhora em Portugal (Idade-Média e séc. XVI)”,
Lusitania Sacra 5 (1960–61) 121–220.
Masen Jakob, Speculum Imaginum Veritatis Occultae, Exhibens Symbola, Emblemata,
Hieroglyphica, Aenigmata, Omni, Tam Materiae, Quam Formae Varietate, Exemplis
Simul, ac Praeceptis Illustratum (Cologne, Sumptibus Viduae & Haeredum Joannis
Antonii Kinchii: 1681).
Ménestrier Claude-François, Philosophia Imaginum Id Est Sylloge Symbolorum
Amplissima (Amsterdam – Danzig, Apud Janssonio-Waesbergios: 1695).
Miravalle M. (ed.), Mariology: A Guide for Priests, Deacons, Seminarians, and Consecrated
Persons (Goleta, CA: 2007).
Navarro Antonio, Abecedario Virginal de Excelencias del Santíssimo Nombre de María

(Madrid, En casa de Pedro Madrigal: 1604).
Oxoviensis Isaac, Elogia Mariana ex Lytaniis Lauretanis Deprompta […] cum Variis
Figuris Aereis, iam Olim Ingeniosè Inventis, Nunc Denuò cum Additione Novorum
Versuum Excusis, & ad Singula Elogia Concinnè Accommodatis (Augsburg, Apud
Joann. Philippum Steudnerum, Typis Antonii Nepperschmidii: 1700), http://diglib
.hab.de/drucke/xb-2952/start.htm.
Panofsky E., Meaning in the Visual Arts (Garden City, NY: 1955).
Picinelli Filippo – Erath Augustin de, Mundus Symbolicus, in Emblematum Universitate
Formatus, Explicatus, et Tam Sacris, Quam Eruditionibus ac Sententiis Illustratus,
2 vols. (Cologne, Sumptibus Hermanni Demen: 1681).
Pons G., Textos Marianos de los Primeros Siglos: Antología Patrística (Madrid: 1994).
Porteman K., Emblematic Exhibitions (Affixiones) at the Brussels Jesuit College
(1630–1685): A Study of the Commemorative Manuscripts (Royal Library, Brussels)
(Turnhout: 1996).
Raynaud Théophile, Nomenclator Marianus, e Titulis Selectioribys, Quibus B. Virgo a
SS. Patribus Honestatur (Lyon, Apud Haeredes Gabr. Boissat, & Laurentium
Anisson: 1639).
Redelius Augustin Casimir, Elogia Mariana Olim A.C. Redelio Belg: Mechl: S.C.M.L.P
Concepta Nunc […] Inventa et Delineata per Thomam Scheffler et Aeri Incisa à
Martino Engelbrecht Chalcographo Augustano Cum Priv[ilegio] Sac[era] Caes[areae]
Maj[estatis] (Augsburg, Martin Engelbrecht: 1732), https://archive.org/details
/elogiamarianaoli00enge.
Ripa Cesare, Iconologia (Venice, Presso Cristoforo Tomasini: 1645).
Santi A. de, “Le litanie Lauretane: Studio Storico crittico”, La civiltà cattolica, series 16,
vol. 8, part 1111 (September 1896) 542–557.
Santi A. de, “Le litanie Lauretane: Studio Storico crittico. Articolo II”, La civiltà cattolica,
series 16, vol. 9, part 1117 (December 1896) 161–178.
Smith W. (ed.), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, 3 vols.
(London: 1876).
Sommervogel C., Bibliothèque des Écrivains de la Compagnie de Jésus, Nouvelle édition,
9 vols. (Brussels – Paris: 1890–1900; reprint, Leuven: 1960).
Speculum Parthenio-Fidele in Parvis Ingentia Orbi Portenta Referens: h.e. Insignia
Dei-Potentiae Mirabilia in Urticeto Heilbrunnensi Patrocinio Deiparae Virginis
Thaumaturgae Copiose Patrata, in Ecclesia Carmeli Straubingani Crebris Beneficiis,
et Gratiis Aucta (Straubing, Typis Joannis Theophili Raedlmayr: [1722]).
Spierenburg P., “The Body and the State: Early Modern Europe”, in Morris N. –
Rothman D.J. (eds.), The Oxford History of Prison: The Practice of Punishment in
Western Society (New York – Oxford: 1998) 44–70.
Stieve F., Der Oberösterreichische Bauernaufstand des Jahres 1626, 2 vols. (Linz: 1904–05).
Stoergler Peter, Asma Poeticum Litaniarum Lauretanarum: Dedicatum Rvo: Hilariensium
Praesuli D.D. Georgio (Linz, Typis Joannis Paltauff: 1636), http://digital.onb.ac.at
/OnbViewer/viewer.faces?doc=ABO_%2BZ24425406.
Terrier Jean, Portraicts des SS. Vertus de la Vierge Contemplées par Feue S.A.S.M. Isabelle
Clere Eugenie Infante d’Espagne (Pin, France, Jean Vernier: 1635).
Theophilo Mariophilo, Stella ex Jacob Orta, Maria, cuius Sacrae Litaniae Lauretanae Tot
Symbolis, Quot Tituli, Tot Elogiis, Quot Literae in Quovis Titulo Numerantur (Vienna,
Typis Leopoldi Voight, Sumptibus & Impensis Francisci Andreae Groneri: 1680).
Trens M., María: Iconografía de la Virgen en el Arte Español (Madrid: 1946).
Twomey L.K., The Serpent and the Rose: The Immaculate Conception and Hispanic
Poetry in the Late Medieval Period (Leiden – Boston: 2008).
Vieyra Antonio, Todos sus Sermones y Obras Diferentes, Que de Su Original Portugués
se han Traducido en Castellano, 4 vols. (Barcelona, En la imprenta de Maria Marti
Viuda: 1734).
Wilson P.H., The Thirty Years War: Europe’s Tragedy (Cambridge, MA: 2009).
Wolfthal D., “Jacques Callot’s Miseries of War”, Art Bulletin 59, 2 (1977) 222–233.
Wollesen-Wisch B. – Solway S., “The Madonna of Mercy”, Art Bulletin 68, 4 (1986)
674–676.
Wyhe C. van, “Introduction”, in Terrier Jean, Portraicts des SS. Vertus de la Vierge contem-
plées par feue S.A.S.M. Isabelle Clere Eugenie Infante d’Espagne. A Facsimile Edition
with Critical Introduction, Glasgow Emblem Studies 7 (Glasgow: 2002).
chapter 4
‘Teach Me, Reveal the Secret to My Heart’:

the Role of a Spiritual Guide in the Meditative
Works of Marcin Hińcza
Alicja Bielak
Devotional* books written in national languages in the seventeenth century

provided an opportunity for priests to reach a wider audience. The type of edu-
cation and the cultural competencies of the expected virtual reader influenced
the rhetorical tactics of writers. Marcin Hińcza’s works were intended to be
extremely persuasive, because their aim was to teach the methods of person-
al piety (previously available only to monks) to a secular audience for whose
habits and expectations Hińcza deliberately adapted his subject matter. The
starting point of his meditations were emblematic icons printed with textual
ekphrases whose aim was twofold: to affect the reader’s emotions and thereby
to impart moral instruction. In the textual component of the emblems, each
meditation contains two contradictory ekphrases – one provided by the con-
fused Soul (a porte parole of the reader) and another by angelic spiritual guides
who point to Catholic dogmas as their source of joy. Both ekphrases center on
the secrets to be discovered in the pictured scenes, which the reader-viewer
seeks to know, and the spiritual guide gradually reveals. The secret that gradu-
ally takes shape in the mind’s eye is not based on erudite intellectual games
or intertextual references couched in humanist language, but from the jointly
sensory and cognitive experience of dissonance stemming from the paradoxes
depicted in emblematic icons and articulated by the associated texts, wherein
episodes from the birth of Christ are juxtaposed to episodes from the cruci-
fixion. This type of emblematic text aims strongly to influence the reader’s
emotions by stimulating his or her powers of knowledge and discernment, and
provoking astonishment at the mysteries encountered. By reference to the text,
the reader comes to recognize the riddle contained in the emblematic pictura,
and gradually realizes that the solution may be found by consulting Catholic
* This paper is the result of a research project financed by state funds for science (2014–2018),
under the auspices of the Diamentowy Grant program.

192 Bielak
dogmas. As the secret is revealed, the reader-viewer is supposed to experience

the emotions described by Hińcza, and to undergo an affective and efficacious
recollectio.
1 The Visual Element in Hińcza’s Writings
All of Marcin Hińcza’s (1592–1668) works were heavily influenced by the

Ignatian requirement of compositio loci – a directive to imagine in the minut-
est scenographic detail the subject to be meditated.1 The Polish Jesuit met this
requirement by populating his meditative collections with literary devices
such as enargeia or ekphrasis and with illustrative elements borrowed from
engravings. In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth of that time, the produc-
tion of prints by specialist engravers was still in its infancy. However, Hińcza’s
high position in the order’s hierarchy (he was named provincial of the Jesuit
province of Poland twice) enabled him to order copperplates from abroad. He
was extraordinarily interested in visuality, both in the theological sense (the
figure of sight as an epistemological medium that transfers per visibilia ad
invisibilia is crucially featured in all his works) and in the practical sense –
he had a great understanding of ‘the power of images’ to forcefully influence
the beholder.
In his private correspondence, Hińcza reveals his attention to the ‘icono-
sphere’ of the Jesuit colleges where he held the position of superior (he was
rector of colleges in Gdańsk, Jarosław, Kraków, and Toruń). He also sat on
tribunals tasked with examining the orthodoxy of sacred images. He com-
posed a highly detailed description of a weeping image of Stanislaus Kostka,
which he had seen in a village near Lublin, Poland, emphasising the morally
constructive character of such objects (‘iuvenes nobiles uti debent’).2 In one of
1 On Hińcza, see Grzebień L., “Hińcza Martin”, in Słownik polskich teologów katolickich. Lexicon
theologorum catholicorum Poloniae, Wyczawski H.E. (ed.) (Warsaw: 1982) 215; Niesiecki K.,
Herbarz polski […] powiększony dodatkami z późniejszych autorów, rękopismów, dowodów
urzędowych, 10 vols. (Leipzig: 1839), vol. 4, 357–358.
2 Ms. Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, Fondo Gesuitico 682/4/E, f. 50 recto–verso: ‘31. julii
preteriti sudare coepit et lachrymari, per interstitia quidem, sed satis frequenter et prof use:
visis lachrymis puella 13 annorum innocens exclamat, sentit in collum suum decidentes
guttas hospes: proripit se: videt lachrymas ex oculis defluentes in manus Beati et postmo-
dum in scamnum. Egreditur domo, convocat vicinos, confluunt millia hominum tam ami-
corum quam inimicorum nostrorum, tam catholicorum, quam hæreticorum, secularium et
ecclesiast<i>corum, quorum aliqui strophiis guttas decidentes excipiebant, aliqui imaginem
detergebunt. Sudavit imago per aliquot dies: postmodum a nostris, qui etiam imaginem lach-
rymantem viderunt, translata cum magna frequentia hominum ad nostrum templum’.
THE ROLE OF A SPIRITUAL GUIDE IN THE MEDITATIVE WORKS OF HIŃCZA 193
Figure 4.1A Memling, The Last Judgement, middle part of triptych, 241 × 180.8 cm, wings 2 × 242 × 90 cm.
Gdańsk, Muzeum Narodowe
Image © Muzeum Narodowe w Gdańsku
his sermons, he speaks of having seen the altar by Hans Memling in Gdańsk,
Poland [Fig. 4.1a]. He says that he paid particular attention to Archangel
Michael’s armour, in which viewers could see the world and themselves re-
flected, awaiting the just punishments of Christ the judge at the end of days
[Fig. 4.1b]: ‘Indeed, the beautiful mastery of the image is such that the holy
Michael’s shield shows and expresses as though in a mirror that which happens
on Earth, and delivers it through the reflexion to the world held in the hands of
Father God’.3 Hińcza also discloses his thoughts on the visual arts as aids in fight-
ing heresy. While praising the Protestant city of Gdańsk for its organization, he
expressed hope that before long it would accede to the true faith, particularly
thanks to the conducive effect of Catholic art: ‘God willing, [Gdańsk] will soon
unite with the Catholic faith, to which it can today be motivated through inner
3 Martin Hińcza, Głos Pański z Ewangelii adwentowych (Vilnius, W drukarni Ojców Bazylianów
Unitów: 1643), 2nd recto: ‘Piękny zaiste kunszt tego obrazu, że tarcza Michała świętego po-
kazuje i wyraża, jak we źwierciedle, co się na ziemi dzieje i zaś do świata, w ręce Boga Ojca
będącego, te-ż dzieła odbiciem puszcza’.
194 Bielak
Figure 4.1b Detail of Fig. 4.1a
signs as well as outward, visible graces of paintings in old Catholic churches, of

altars and of edifices’.4
Hińcza’s interest in emblematics is bound up with the extraordinary at-
tention he pays to the visual arts. His two emblematic works, Plęsy Jezusa z
aniołami ( Jesus’s Frolics with Angels) and Chwała z Krzyża (Glory of the Cross),
distinguish themselves from contemporary Polish emblem books for the supe-
rior execution of the copperplates and for their sustained project of arguing
for the usefulness of these images to the process of meditative prayer. Jesus’s
Frolics consists of fourteen meditations that closely expound the gifts brought
by angels to the Divine Infant. The Glory of the Cross is composed of thirty-
three meditations that interpret the symbolic meaning of the Cross. Each
prose meditation, comprising anywhere from four to three hundred pages, is
accompanied by an emblematic pictura.
The engraver of Jesus’s Frolics is identifiable thanks to the signature he
placed on the book’s title page: Egidius van Schoor (Aegidius van Schoor or
4 Ibidem: ‘Daj, Boże, aby <w> starożytnej wierze katolickiej [miasto Gdańsk – AB] było zjed-
noczone, do której i tych naszych czasów ma wewnętrzne i powierzchowne znaków jasnych
pobudki i starych kościołów katolickich obrazów, ołtarzów, fundacyjej widome powaby’.
Gillis Verschoren, 1596–after 1617).5 He was a lesser-known student of Theodore

Galle, son of Philip Galle.6 The operations of Galle’s workshop and his col-
laboration with Plantiniana coincide with a period particularly significant for
the development of book illustration. Van Schoor’s emblems in Jesus’s Frolics
were compiled and adapted from prints the engraver likely encountered in his
master’s workshop. The title page of Jesus’s Frolics [Fig. 4.2] is a compilation
of graphic motifs from two publications by Christopher Plantin as well as an
engraving by Boëtius Bolswert. The angels sounding trumpets and presenting
a cartouche, and the putto holding a cross, have their source in the engraved
title page of the Dutch translation of Cesare Baronio’s annals of the Catholic
Church, Generale Kerckelycke historie van de gheboorte onses H. Iesu Christi
(Antwerp, Jan Cnobbaert: 1623) [Fig. 4.3]. The three putti carrying instruments
of Passion at the left side of the titular cartouche derive from the angels in the
engraving Virtus Inconcussa [Fig. 4.4], which opens Otto van Veen’s popular
and widely circulated Horatiana emblemata (Antwerp, Phillipus Lisaert: 1612).
The Holy Family accompanied by three angels and the perennial ox and ass
were adapted from the print engraved by Boëtius Bolswert after a lost design by
Peter Paul Rubens [Fig. 4.5]. The engraver reassembled elements of the origi-
nal engravings into a new whole while also subtly modifying minor details in
5 Treiderowa A., “Ze studiów nad ilustracją wydawnictw krakowskich w wieku XVII (z drukarń:
Piotrkowczyków, Cezarych, Szedlów i Kupiszów”, Rocznik Biblioteki PAN w Krakowie (1959)
37–38.
6 See Bowen K.L. – Imhof D., “Reputation and Wage: The Case of Engravers Who Worked
for the Plantin-Moretus Press”, Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art 30,
3–4 (2003) 172; Saunders A., The Seventeenth-century French Emblem: A Study in Diversity
(Geneva, Brepols: 2000) 188; Seyn E.M.H. de, Dessinateurs, graveurs et peintres des anciens
Pays-Bas: Écoles flamande et hollandaise (Turnhout, Brepols: 1950) 91; Kramm C. (ed.), De
Levens en werken der hollandsche en vlaamsche Kunstschilders, beeldhouwer, graveurs en
bouwmeesters, Gebroeders diederichs, 6 vols. (Amsterdam, Gebroeders Diederichs: 1861), vol.
5, 532; Hollstein F.W., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, ca. 1450–1700,
vol. 26, Samuel de Swaef to Jan Thesing, Hoop-Scheffer D. de (ed.) (Amsterdam: 1982) 47–49.
However, Hollstein does not note Jesus’s Frolics as a book illustrated by van Schoor. Similarly,
he does not mention the work De naer-volginge des doodts ons heeren Iesu Christi Nicolausa
Georgiusa (Brussels, Ian Mommaert, 1650) nor the collection by Nicolaus Jansen entitled
Vita S. P. Dominici ordinis praedicatorum fundatoris (Antwerp: Hendrik Aerts, 1622), where
van Schoor’s signature can also be found on the frontispiece: ‘G.V. Schoor f[ecit]’. The most
likely explanation for the presence of a set of fourteen copperplates used in Jesus’s Frolics in a
Kraków printing house is that Hińcza acted as the middleman. Whereas the Polish publisher,
Franciszek Cezary, had no contact with the Netherlands, the Jesuit had a connection with
the Belgians thanks to his role as the provincial, among other things. He is also known to
have cooperated with the Bollandists, who founded the centre of hagiographical research
in Antwerp. Hińcza was one of the Polish correspondents of Jean Bolland. Bolland, in turn,
collaborated closely with Plantiniana.
196 Bielak
Figure 4.2 Egidius van Schoor, copperplate engraving in Marcin Hińcza’s Plęsy
anjołów Jezusowi narodzonemu, naświętszego krzyża tańce (Kraków,
Franciszek Cezary: 1638), title page
Image © Biblioteka Uniwersytecka w Warszawie
Figure 4.3 Lucas Emil Vorsterman, copperplate engraving in Cesare Baronius’s Generale
kerckelycke historie Van de gheboorte onses H. Iesu Christi (Antwerp, Jan
Cnobbaert: 1623), title page
Image © Maurits Sabbebibliotheek
198 Bielak
Figure 4.4
Gijsbert van Veen, copperplate
engraving in Otto van Veen’s
Quinti Horatii Flacci Emblemata
(Antwerp, Philippum Lisaert:
1612), p. 9 (recto)
Image © Maurits
Sabbebibliotheek
Figure 4.5
Bolswert Schelte Adamsz, The
Nativity (Antwerp, ca. 1630–45).
Copperplate engraving
Image © Biblioteka
Naukowa PAU i PAN w
Krakowie
Figure 4.6
Cornelis Galle, copperplate engraving in Benedictus
von Haeften’s Regia via Crucis (Antwerp, Balthasar
Moretus: 1635), title page
Image © Maurits Sabbebibliotheek
accordance with the religious subject of the engraved cycle: the two angels at
the right side of the cartouche, for instance, now hold the arma Passionis (the
sponge, the cane, and the cross), objects that correlate to the topic of Hińcza’s
work, whereas on the title page of the Generale Kerckelycke historie they hold
lit candles..
In his following collection, The Glory of the Cross, Hińcza continued the
subject of Jesus’s Frolics while changing the publisher and the engraver. The
contact between Hińcza’s second publisher, Andrzej Piotrkowczyk, and Dutch
publishing houses is well documented.7 Clearly, Piotrkowczyk was well versed
in the newest publishing trends and could have collected foreign models
for the engravers employed in his workshop. However, the graphic work in
Hińcza’s collections diverged from its inspiration. This is already evident on
the title page of Glory of the Cross [Fig. 4.6], which is an adaptation of the fron-
7 The printer had personally travelled to the Netherlands as the preceptor of Polish nobles
Nicolaus Christoph and Albrycht Radziwiłł. He collaborated with outstanding figures of the
literary and publishing scene of that time. In Leuven, he had studied in the rhetorical school
of Erycius Puteanus, who praised him extraordinarily in his personal correspondence with
Daniel Heinsius. See Czerenkiewicz M., Belgijska sarmacja, staropolska Belgia, Muzeum Pałac
w Wilamowie (Warsaw: 2013) 61; Ptak-Korbel W., Piotrkowczyk Andrzej II, w: Drukarze dawnej
Polski od XV do XVIII wieku: praca zbiorowa, vol. 1: Małopolska, p. 2: Wiek XVII–XVIII, issue
2: L–Ż i drukarnie żydowskie, Pirożyński J. (ed.) (Kraków: 2000) 493–514. Anna Treiderowa,
having analysed seventeenth-century woodcut blocks, has proposed that Polish publish-
ing houses possessed a set of blocks from Christoffel Plantin’s workshop. The blocks were
brought to Poland as early as 1596 (Treiderowa A., “Ze studiów nad ilustracją” 12–13).
200 Bielak
tispiece of Regia via Crucis, by Benedictus van Haeften (published in Antwerp

at Plantin-Moretus in 1635), designed by Rubens and executed by Cornelis I
Galle [Fig. 4.7].8 In the Polish edition, changes were made first and foremost
to the image of Christ. In Hińcza’s collection, Jesus was transformed from
the Cross-bearer into the Christ child upon his throne. The unknown Polish
printmaker of Hińcza’s Glory of the Cross modelled his work on two emblem
collections: the aforementioned Regia via Crucis and Amoris divini et humani
antipathia, by Lodovicus van Leuven (Philippe de Villers). Nonetheless, other
models for the Polish collection can also be found. The figure of the young
Christ on the throne in emblem 19 (Cross-Pulpit) and emblem 25 (Cross-Sceptre)
[Figs. 4.8–4.9] has its original in the figure of Jesus in the ninth engraving of
the collection Evangelicae historiae imagines, by Jerónimo Nadal [Fig. 4.10],
illustrating Jesus teaching in the temple (N.B. this is the only emblem from
Nadal’s collection where Jesus is shown as a youth). Moreover, in emblem 15,
entitled Cross-Mill, the eponymous motive is a graphic rendering of an image
frequently found in Dutch emblematics and ceramics, for example in emblem
9 (Ni spirat immota) from Emblemata amatoria, by Daniel Heinsius.
All emblems used in the Glory of the Cross are adaptations of graphics pub-
lished in the aforementioned collections. For example, the engraving in em-
blem 22, entitled Krzyż ratunkiem świata (The Cross as the World’s Salvation)
[Fig. 4.11], is based on emblem 12 in the collection Regia via Crucis [Fig. 4.12]. As
can be seen in Hińcza’s collection, the figure of the meditans (personification
of the Soul – ‘Dusza’) from the Dutch collection was replaced by a Polish artist
with a sphere – an image of the world – lying at the bottom of the sea. With
the help of the Cross, used as a fishing rod of sorts, Christ child ‘fishes out’ the
world drowning in sin. In van Haeften, the idea is entirely different. The cross
constitutes support for the soul, which climbs to heaven with Christ’s help as
though walking up stairs. Alterations made to the background are consider-
able. It is evident that Polish publishers lacked engraving blocks. Consequently,
the local engraver had to copy the elements by sight. The consistent changes
and the cohesion of subscriptions and icons suggest that Hińcza could have
already been working with the engraver at this stage of the design.
Now that we have outlined the main graphic sources of Hińcza’s work, it
is important to ask the question of why the Jesuit supplemented his medita-
tions with engravings. Notably, the author does not treat them merely as il-
lustrations of the described subjects but rather makes them a medium meant
to interact with the reader alongside the text. Hińcza uses emblematics and
other literary practices of setting the religious matter under discussion ante
oculos, in the meditative mode of ‘seeing with the sight of the imagination’,
8 Praz M., Studies in Seventeenth Century Imagery (Rome: 1964) 361.

Figure 4.7 Anonymous engraver, copperplate engraving in Marcin Hińcza’s

Chwała z Krzyża (Kraków, Andrzej Piotrkowczyk: 1641), title page
Image © Biblioteka Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
202 Bielak
Figure 4.8 Anonymous engraver, copperplate engraving in Marcin Hińcza’s Chwała z

Krzyża (Kraków, Andrzej Piotrkowczyk: 1641), between pp. 602–603

204 Bielak
Figure 4.10 Hieronymus Wierix, copperplate engraving in Jerónimo Nadal’s

Adnotationes et meditationes in Evangelia (Antwerp, Martinus
Nutius: 1595), between pp. 38–39
© Getty Research Institute

206 Bielak
Figure 4.12 Cornelis Galle, copperplate engraving to Benedictus von Haeften’s

Regia via Crucis (Antwerp, Balthasar Moretus: 1635)
Image © Getty Research Institute
as Ignatius of Loyola famously put it.9 Emblematic icons served the author as
a tool of persuasion and as a visualization of mental images, which perfectly
fit the poetics of meditation as a process of seeing the truths hidden from the
corporeal eye with the eyes of the soul. The multiplicity of strange uses of the
Cross in Hińcza’s work can be observed in the tradition of emblems that teach
moral truths per aenigmate. The riddles Hińcza organizes around the figure of
the Cross and arma Christi reveal – after first obscuring – the Cross’s place in
the plan of salvation.
2 Designing the Reader-Viewer Experience
Hińcza combined organizational activities for the benefit of the order with
authoring works that promoted meditative piety. In the instructional fore-
words that he left his readers, Hińcza explained that his books should be read
in such a way that images of the content are produced in the reader’s mind:
‘Experience my work here to the advantage of your soul, trying to see in your
soul what you are reading in the book’.10 The call to interlock the experience
of reading with the sense of sight appeared in Hińcza’s illustrated meditations
instead of in the traditional call ‘to the reader’. For example, another Jesuit
author of several emblematic collections, Jan David, chose a similar strategy,
replacing the traditional formula ad lectorem with an apostrophe, ‘ad speculo-
rum inspectorem’,11 thereby indicating the equal significance of the two levels
of writing and image as well as the fact that engravings accompanying the text
serve the contemplative act to the same extent the text does, rather than being
reduced to an illustrative function.
Notably, almost all of Hińcza’s works were addressed to noble laywomen, who
were unaccustomed to meditative techniques. At times, he would refer directly
to his female readers, suggesting that they might identify with Mary, the moth-
er of Jesus, through shared maternal instincts. But the reading of his book, he
made clear, was intended to replace potentially challenging independent reflec-
tion. The reader was to take the author’s suggestions as his or her own thoughts:
‘although you do not know how to meditate, read carefully and apply it both
to yourself and your social estate and degree of knowledge, and you can learn
9 Ignatius of Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises, trans. E. Mullan (New York: 1914) 35.

10 Martin Hińcza, Głos Pański, 3rd verso: ‘[…] zażywając tej pracy mojej z pożytkiem duszy
swojej, starając się o to, abyś to widział w niej, co w księdze czytasz’.
11 Jan David, Duodecim specula Deum aliquando videre desideranti concinnata (Antwerp,
Ioannes Moretus: 1610) 3rd verso.
208 Bielak
by reading how near or far you are from knowledge’.12 The fact that Hińcza
chose as his audience laypeople uneducated in the field of Catholic dogmat-
ics most likely determined the powerfully persuasive character of his texts,
consciously chosen to use performative tricks that ‘drew in’ readers, whom
he doubly relieved from their duties. First, readers were not forced to strain
their imagination (an essential element of Jesuit meditation), because they
were provided with visual input in the form of emblematic icons. Second, the
ekphrases offered explanations of the meanings of emblems consistent with
Catholic dogmatics, thanks to which the readers avoided needing to recognize
erudite codes, usually understood only by educated elites. Hińcza deliberately
presented to his readers shocking images that strongly stimulated their senses,
and he did so by exploiting the mechanics of human affects. Engaging strong
emotions through images and their ekphrases can be best observed in his em-
blematic collection entitled Jesus’s Frolics.
The fourteen emblematic icons of Jesus’s Frolics depict angels dancing cheer-
fully, while bestowing Christ with arma passionis – ropes, chains, whips, canes,
a crown of thorns, and a cross [Fig. 4.13]. Each meditation is composed of the
title, which refers to one function of the Cross (e.g., Frolic IX: Steadfastness of the
Cross), an emblematic icon, and a subscription divided into two parts. Hińcza
strove to program reader experience with great precision, providing him or her
with instructions, explaining the chosen structure of the meditations:
In order that the length not discourage you and you easily understand
how things are bound to the spiritual teachings, I have provided a num-
ber to indicate the connection between the question and the answer in
each frolic. For example, when I describe the joy of the Christ child at an
angel’s leap with a vessel in hand, I ask what a leap with a vessel could
mean. Do know that questions are ordered by numbers, for example 1, 2,
3, 4, etc. etc. The set of answers follow the set of questions, and they, too,
are ordered by numbers, 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. etc. Question 1 finds its answer, in
the fragment next to which you see a drawing of the right hand (☜) after
all the other numbered questions as well as points marked with the num-
ber 1 with a drawing of the left hand (☞); the answer to number 2 is found
at the [parallel] number 2 etc. etc.13
12 Martin Hińcza, Dziecię Pan Jezus to jest Nabożne rozmyślania o dzieciństwie Pana
Jezusowym (Kraków, Franciszek Cezary: 1636) [7] ‘I chociaż rozmyślać nie umiesz, czytać
jednak uważnie i do siebie, i stanu swego stosować, jakoś bliski albo daleki do nauki,
czytając, poznać możesz’.
13 Martin Hińcza, Plęsy Jezusa z aniołami (Kraków: Franciszek Cezary, 1638) [29]: ‘Długość
żeby cię w czytaniu nie odrażała i żebyś łacniej mógł zrozumieć, jako się rzeczy i nauki
duchowne powiązały, przydałem ci liczbę, którać pokaże, jako się pytanie z odpowiedzią
Figure 4.13 Egidius van Schoor, copperplate engraving in M. Hińcza, Plęsy Jezusa z
aniołami (Kraków, Franciszek Cezary: 1638), pp. between pp. 668–669
© Biblioteka Narodowa w Warszawie
210 Bielak
The division of each chapter into a series of questions and two series of par-
allel points enabled the reader unaccustomed to meditation to maximize the
benefits of reading emblematic icons, an activity designed as a kind of interac-
tive ekphrasis. The reader was expected to identify with remarks and questions
formulated in the first-person singular written in the first ekphrasis marked
by the symbol of the left hand. The Jesuit emphasized in his foreword that he
had only represented the reader’s own spiritual experiences: ‘Seeing from afar
your caresses with the beautiful Infant Jesus, I endeavoured to describe the
sweetest Infant’s swift leaps towards the Cross […] and your thoughts on the
occasion of this joy’.14 The author thus limited his role to that of a stenographer
of the reader’s (or ‘Soul’s’) ponderings, positioning himself as a commentator
who explains the recipient’s own thoughts to him- or herself. The aim of the
first-person narration was to performatise the epistemological processes of the
reader, who should identify with the “Soul” asking questions to the illustration
next to the text. Therefore, emblematic icons simply reflected the visions aris-
ing in the meditating mind.
The second series of ekphrastic descriptions of the icon was also structured
into points parallel to the questions preceding them. Each was marked with
the ‘right hand’. In the second series, ‘spiritual guides’ (the angels and Jesus)
respond to the meditans’s doubts and explain to him or her the true meaning
of the situations depicted in the emblems.
Remarkably, the design of reader experience relies on the provision of prob-
lems to consider, the suggestion of solutions to which the reader can relate, and
a final step of challenging the reader’s intuitions and commenting on them. Such
a dynamic structure employs an intensely didactic and persuasive technique, de-
scribed in early classical theories of rhetoric. The Roman rhetorician Quintilian,
respected by Jesuits as a brilliant educator, outlined such rhetorical devices in his
Institutio oratoria (IV, 2.92) under the name of scholasticae controversiae. In order
to set in motion the fictional dialectical process, two elements are necessary.
First, a frightening subject matter must be selected, one capable of incit-
ing a strongly affective reaction (affectus). In our case, Hińcza juxtaposes
wiąże w każdym plęsie. Na przykład gdy opisuję radość Dzieciątka przy skokach aniels-
kich z jednym naczyniem, pytam się, co by skok z naczyniem znaczył. Wiedz, że się kładą
rozłożone na liczbę, na przykład 1, 2, 3, 4 etc., etc. pytania. Kładą się też potym na wszytkie
liczby odpowiedzi porządkiem 1, 2, 3, 4 etc., etc., i liczbie 1, przy której masz znak rączki
prawej (☜), odpowiedź się daje po pytaniach wszytkich liczbą i znakiem takowym, że 1 z
rączką lewą (☞); liczbie 2 odpowiedź się kładzie przy liczbie 2 etc., etc.’.
14 Ibidem [27]: ‘z daleka bacząc twoje, które masz z śliczną Dzieciną pieszczoty, zawiodłem
się opisać namilszego Dziecięcia chyże do krzyża skoki […] i twoje, które masz przy tym
weselu myśli’.
the image of the newborn Christ with whips, chains, the cross, and so on.
Quintilian understood adfectus (or Greek pathos) as ‘violent emotions’,15 offer-
ing ‘anger, dislike, fear, hatred, and pity’ as examples.16 Furthermore, according
to Quintilian’s theory, to achieve the desired effect, the speaker must feel the
same emotions that he or she wishes to incite in the listener. The best way
to do this is to create sensations called fantasiai by the Greeks and ‘visions’
by Quintilian: ‘visions, whereby things absent are presented to our imagina-
tion with such extreme vividness that they seem actually to be before our
very eyes’.17 For this purpose, Hińcza provides the reader with engravings of the
joyous dance on Calvary while also evocatively and vividly commenting on the
events depicted in the emblematic icon.
Second, according to Quintilian, a speech is persuasive if it presents argu-
ments as a series of contradictory viewpoints (controversiae), being in fact an
intellectual analysis of the subject matter. Controversy is used for reflecting
on a topic from two perspectives: the accuser’s and the defender’s. The speak-
er poses as both (in the act of sermocinatio), speaking in their names.18 Such
an experience is dramatized by Hińcza in his meditations. In Jesus’s Frolics,
the accuser is the Soul, while the defenders are spiritual guides, privy to the
secrets of God’s plan. Meanwhile, emblems illustrate the rhetorical mental
image (visiones), upon which controversy is then described by Hińcza who
asks the reader to identify with the Soul, which expresses doubts about the
scenes watched.
3 The First Ekphrasis: the Reader Confronted with the Paradox

of Incarnation
It was the meditans’ task to interpret the visions correctly; as Hińcza put it,
to ‘represent God’s Salvation to yourself and always take advantage of this
vision’.19 Therefore, the first stage of the reader experience as designed by
Hińcza in his collection is to physically look at the emblematic icons, which
must be taken as visualisations of the inner images of the Soul, created during
15 Quintilian, Institutio oratoria (London – New York: 1920), vol. 2, VI, 2, 10, 422–423. See

Lausberg H., Handbook of Literary Rhetoric: A Foundation for Literary Study, Bliss M.T. –
Jansen A. – Orton D.E. – Anderson R.D. (eds.) (Leiden – Boston – Köln: 1988) §257.2a, §257.3.
16 Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, vol. 2, VI, 2, 20, 429.
17 Idem, vol. 2, VI, 2, 29, 434–435.
18 See Lausberg H., Handbook of Literary Rhetoric 441–464.
19 Martin Hińcza, Głos Pański 290: ‘Stawiaj sobie zbawienie Boże przed oczy, a zawsze szukaj
pożytku z tego widzenia’.
212 Bielak
meditation. The first part of the meditation begins with a variety of doubts
expressed by the reader-soul in the form of numbered questions in reaction
to an engraving. The depicted event proves to be unfathomable to the human
mind, which results in the Soul’s emotional protest to the scene: (‘I feel sincere
anger looking at you, angels’).20 The meditans, empathizing with Jesus and
fearing for him, would even start scolding the angels and Virgin Mary. This was
of course a sign of distrust and pride towards God’s plan:
You [angels] were assigned by the eternal Father to guard the Infant, but
you yourselves will whip him – you who should protect the Infant from
any harm? Fair Maiden, cover your Darling, do not let your only Son be
whipped. Although the Child eagerly awaits the blows, cover His back
with your own body. As befits a mother, you should, Maiden, shield the
sweetest Child!21
Contemplating the situations and events depicted on the emblems ultimately

leads the Soul to oppose and threaten the angels and Mary: ‘you will soon pay
for this; your joy will turn to wailing!’22 The emotions designed for the reader
to feel at the sight of Jesus’s pain in the emblems are surprise, outrage, sadness,
pity, and anger. Such feelings find their place in Quintilian’s rhetorical device
of genus iudiciale (judicial speech). According to Aristotle, persuasive speech
is supposed to evoke such emotions as indignation, outrage, lamentation, and
grief.23 Hińcza, well versed in Aristotelian psychology as a professor of moral
philosophy at a Jesuit collegium, dramatized affects that the reader was sup-
posed to experience while reading the meditations and looking at the em-
blematic icons. The Soul, empathizing with Christ and fearing for him, would
even start to instruct the angels and Mary: ‘What are you jumping with whips
for? Get out of the Baby’s sight!’24
The main subject of Jesus’s Frolics – the angels’ joyous dance with the tools
of the Passion and the newborn Christ on Calvary – was meant to surprise the
reader and encourage him or her to guess the secret meaning of the events.
20 Hińcza Martin, Plęsy Jezusa z aniołami 151: ‘szczerze wzbudzam się gniewem na was

Anjołowie!’
21 Ibidem 150–151: ‘Wyście do straży tego Dzieciątka są naznaczeni od Ojca przedwiecz-
nego, a wy sami macie biczować, którzy byście bronić mieli, żeby nic do Dzieciny nie
przystąpiło? Kryj, Panno śliczna, Twoję pociechę, nie daj na bicze jedynaczka, a lubo się
Dziecię samo nadstawia, zasłaniaj grzbiecik sama sobą, przystoi bowiem, abyś Ty, Panno
namilsze Dziecię zastąpiła!’
22 Ibidem 656: ‘wierzcie mi, doigracie się […] obróci się wam to wesele w lament!’
23 Aristotle, On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse, ed. and trans. Kennedy G.A. (New York:
2007) II, 9, 142–144.
24 Ibidem 151: ‘Po co z biczami tu skaczecie? Ustąpcie z oczu Dziecineczki!’
It is at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that a spike in the
interest in Jesus’s childhood as it relates to his future death on the Cross was
observed in arts and sculpture. The origin of this particular interest in the
Infant can be found in the era’s predilection for paradox.25 Emanuel Tesauro
in his Cannochiale Aristotelico was one theorist of this concept who deemed
the vision of the crucified Infant Jesus to be an ideal figure of paradox in that
it encompassed absolute opposites: the Infant is a king as well as child, human
as well as God. Similarly, Baltasar Gracián, while explaining the conclusion
of Lope de Vega’s sonnet in which God, through self-humiliation, reveals his
greatness, clarified that the Divine Infant must be seen simultaneously at the
moment of his birth and death.26 Luis de Góngora began his sonnet “On the
Birth of Christ, Our Lord” (Al nacimiento del Cristo Nuestro Señor) with a vision
of Christ’s death on the Cross: with a pierced side and a crown of thorns.27
A close collaborator of Hińcza’s, Kasper Drużbicki, devoted an entire trea-
tise to the paradox of the God-Child. In his introduction to the work entitled
Paradoxa Verbi Incarnati (The Paradoxes of the Incarnated Word), he stressed
the fact that a bigger aporia than the Word Incarnate – deified man and humil-
iated God – cannot be imagined. Drużbicki also proposed that the Incarnation
is an especially illuminating example that enables the faithful to practice vir-
tue. Although the human being is unable to fully understand God’s essence,
he or she can see behaviours, affects, and deeds in Christ incarnation and fol-
low them.28 This concept assumed the necessity of an effect of surprise for the
deciphering of the riddle, the conclusion of a conceptual poem, the tertium
comparationis of intriguing comparisons. Hińcza took full advantage of the
25 See Colie R.L., Paradoxia epidemica: The Renaissance Tradition of Paradox (Princeton:
1966); Gostyńska D., Retoryka iluzji: koncept w poezji barokowej (Warsaw: 1991) 5–21.
26 Loskoutoff Y., La sainte et la Fée: dévotion à l’Enfant Jésus et mode des contes merveilleux à
la fin du règne de Louis XIV (Geneva [Paris]: 1987) 24.
27 Luis de Góngora, Selected Poems of Luis de Góngora: A Bilingual Edition, ed. and trans.
Dent-Young J. (Chicago: 2008) 70, v. 1–2: ‘Pender de un leño, traspasado el pecho, / Y de
espinas clavadas ambas sienes’. See Gracián B., Agudeza y arte de ingenio (Madrid: 1957)
104–105.
28 See Caspar Drużbicki, Paradoxa Verbi Incarnati continuata et piis affectionibus, vol. 2
(Prague, Typis Universitatis Carol: Ferdin: in collegio Societ. Jesu ad S. Clementem: 1712),
1 recto: ‘Paradoxa Verbi Incarnati […] prorsum reddimus, ut scilicet quae admirari co-
episti, admireris amplius, atque amplius in Eius, qui Divina humanis Tui amore conjuxit
(hinc enim omnis Paradoxorum est scaturigo) admirationem, iuxta et amorem rapiaris. A
nimia Dei in nos charitate Initium facimus; Tu a temet ipso secreto exige: an forte Divino
huic paradoxo opponas alterum, sane inhumanum! Nempe: minimam in Deum charita-
tem? Nescio enim, quid paradoxum magis fit? An quod Is, qui bonorum nostrorum non
indiget, nimia Erga nos charitate flagratis; an quod ille, qui totum Creatori ac Redempteri
suo se debet, nimiae minimam redhibeat charitatem. Tolle in Te paradoxum hoc et ex
adjectis piis affectionibus, nimiae charitati pro viribus respondere disce’.
214 Bielak
paradox, simultaneously showing the moment of Christ’s birth and the mo-
ment of his death by projecting allusions to the Passion and Crucifixion onto
scenes from Jesus’s early infancy, conjoining ideas that shocked the reader,
such as the whipping of a little child. One reaction to the unfathomable mys-
tery was described by him as ‘laughter, I say, astounded laughter and incredible
farce, for God to be a child!’29
Apart from the mystery of the Incarnation, the Soul attempts to guess the
incomprehensible meaning of the various arma Christi that are bestowed on
him. The meditans analyses each symbol by revealing all associations that he
or she has with it, which is characteristic of the meditative process based on
the meticulous mental dissection of the subject of reflection.
It is worth observing this peculiar exercise in ingenuity with a concrete ex-
ample. In Frolic III, the Soul wonders about the meaning of the angels’ dance
with chains [Fig. 4.12]. Hińcza proposes a series of ideas and hypotheses at-
tributed to the reader: (1) the ropes correspond to swaddling bands and are
meant to ensure the proper development of the Infant Jesus; (2) the chain is a
decorative necklace for Jesus; (3) the ropes could be used for hunting, and the
angels have confused Christ with wild game; (4) perhaps the angels want to tie
the ox and the ass in the stable, so that they will stop running around and in-
stead lie down next to the Infant and warm him; (5) the rope could be used as a
means to demarcate the area for the newborn King’s palace; (6) the chains and
ropes represent the discipline of human nature, through which Jesus will draw
people to himself; (7) the angels are dancing a traditional Polish dance called
goniony, and instead of the standard props, scarves, they are using ropes; or
(8) the angels’ accessories might belong to the ritual of ciągniony, which marks
the beginning of Lent. In this ritual, unmarried women were punished for
maidenhood by being forced to drag an oak stump through their village. In this
interpretation, the angels must have mistaken the Infant for a tree stump. The
meditans’ associations as imagined by Hińcza all involve the reader’s famil-
iar reality and everyday customs: the stable in Bethlehem becomes a farmer’s
stable, the ox and ass are regular livestock, the angels’ dances are now Polish
dances and customs. This results in surprising connections and concepts.
In the first ekphrasis (indicated by the left-hand mark), Hińcza profits from
the structure of the mind’s epistemic powers, for which surprise plays the key
role as the origin of all cognition, which was used in all mnemonic devices.30
The Jesuit purposefully chooses the moment of Christ’s birth as the subject of
most of his writings. The figure of the defenceless child who is simultaneously
29 Martin Hińcza, Dziecię Pan Jezus 2.

30 See Carruters M., The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images
(Cambridge: 2000) 119ff.
God is in its essence a paradox unfathomable to man, provoking a series of ques-

tions as well as sheer astonishment. Hińcza’s conceptual analogies, metaphors,
and comparisons place him in the tradition of the emblematical teaching of
moral truths per aenigmate; by concentrating on the possible (but peculiar) asso-
ciations with the figure of the Cross, he clarifies its place in the plan of salvation.
Consequently, emblematic icons conceal a certain mystery, which the medi-
tans is unable to understand on his or her own. The reader, as he or she is imagined
in the subscription, admits to this by calling the mystery unseen, and thus impos-
sible to be seen: ‘Oh ’tis a mystery unseen! The great monarch so diminished’.31
Recognizing one’s own ignorance is a necessary stage of contact with enigmatic
symbols and images of biblical scenes (as referring to something more than the
literal narrative) for self-improvement. The meditans in Jesus’s Frolics recognized
the nativity scene as a mystery in order to proceed to asking about the meaning
of the Incarnation and the arma Christi (especially the Cross).
4 The Second Ekphrasis: Remarks of the Spiritual Guide
Having incited surprise and outrage in the reader and awakened his or her cog-
nitive powers, Hińcza begins the process of the reformation of the Soul. It is
time to teach the Soul how to look properly and how to see meaning hidden
behind the enigma of each figure depicted in the engravings. Each time, after
the emotional reaction to the observed and read scenes, the reader was in-
structed by the spiritual guides (i.e., angels, Jesus, and a third figure that can be
identified as a Catholic theologian) about the erroneousness of his or her reac-
tion and the need to redirect his or her reasoning. In a significantly longer text
denoted by the same number (and a hand symbol to the right of the roman
numeral) in the book [Fig. 4.14], spiritual guides explain the secrets shown
in the emblems to the Soul. In Hińcza’s work, angels had been acquainted
with Jesus’s mysteries so that they could gradually pass them on to people: ‘It
was only then that the Heavenly Courtiers, having guarded the mystery and
revealed it only to those who could know, began to announce it with pleas-
ant music and invited people to the celebration’,32 which refers to the nativity
scene with the singing angels (Luke 2:14) as well as the adoration of God by the
angels in heaven (Isaiah 6:3).
However, first the spiritual guide criticizes the cognitive skills of the human,
unable to understand God’s plan and logic: ‘But where have you roamed with
31 Martin Hińcza, Plęsy aniołów 178: ‘O, niedojrzanaż to tajemnica! Tak zmalał wielki
monarcha’.
32 Martin Hińcza, Plęsy Jezusa z aniołami, 2nd recto-verso: ‘i’.
216 Bielak
Figure 4.14 M. Hińcza, Plęsy Jezusa z aniołami (Kraków, Franciszek Cezary: 1638),
pp. 143, 155
© Biblioteka Narodowa w Warszawie
your thought, stupid man?’;33 ‘How far God’s thoughts are from man’s thoughts!
So is your human understanding of this whip, this cane. Though in themselves,
these things are disagreeable, they are most pleasing to the Infant’s eyes’;34
‘O, stupid Soul, do you not know the way of the Cross?’35 In some cases, guides
also praise the Soul’s logical skills: ‘It is good that you came up with this
problem in your question’.36 Furthermore, they underline it in such way that it
is a riddle of sorts to be solved: ‘You hit the mark properly – Angels brought this
crown to the Infant! But you missed [the mark by thinking] that this crown of
thorns will be the cause of his ugliness and an eyesore’.37
33 Ibidem: ‘Ale dokądeś zaszedł głupi człowiecze myślą twoją?’

34 Ibidem 155: ‘Jako dalekie myśli są Boskie od myśli ludzkich, tak i to twoje, człowiecze, o
tym biczu, o tej rózdze rozumienie!’.
35 Ibidem 664.: ‘O, głupia Duszo, aza ty nie wiesz, jaki tryb krzyża?’.
36 Ibidem 304: ‘Dobrze się i to namieniło w pytaniu’.
37 Ibidem 320–321: ‘Właśnieś potrafił, że ci duchowie […] wieniec przynieśli narodzonemu
Jezusowi, aleś nie trafił, że tenże wieniec będzie przyczyną szpetności i szkaradności’.
The emissaries from heaven tell the meditans to gaze into the depicted
scene more carefully and emphasise the symbolic character of the objects,
which do not mean what they seem to at first glance. The spiritual guides refer
to 1 Corinthians 3:8–25, where what is taken as wisdom on earth proves to be
stupidity in heaven, and vice versa, in order to explain that human rationality
is useless – which in Hińcza’s work is already dramatized by the very logic of
presentation. The wrong interpretation of the events depicted in the emblem-
atic icons is caused by faults in the reader’s sense of sight. A man governed by
sin (bad affects) is a blind man:
[T]he whole world is full of blind men […] they see the wrong things and
touch them with their hands, and yet they do not see them nor recognize
them, because their passions have blinded them so that they are unfit to
accept enlightenment, and thus: improvement.38
The spiritual guides help the reader exercise his or her inner sense of sight,
because only it enables the reader to truly learn the observed mysteries: ‘You
must not have bodily eyes, but instead the eyes of the soul which would see
Jesus with genuine faith’.39 This is reflected in the structure of the meditation,
which initially relies on the recollection of sensory experience only to silence
it in favour of intellectual cognition.40
In the meditated vision, one of the spiritual guides explains the meaning of
the observed spectacle to the reader-viewer: ‘they dare to dance with torches
close to the Baby, showing signs of joy’.41 Returning to the Soul’s ‘training in
invention’ and the six ideas about the chains presented above, let us now turn
to the answers of the spiritual guides. Hińcza provides the reader with the ‘cor-
rect’ ekphrasis in a point parallel to the question, which was asked according
to rhetorical principles (quis, quid, ubi, quibus auxiliis, cur, quomodo, quan-
do). Confronting the questions and answers from the parallel points in third
chapter results in the following comparison on the usefulness of ropes for the
Infant Christ:
38 Idem, Matka Bolesna 106: ‘cały świat pełen jest ślepych […] widzą złe rzeczy i onych się
rękami dotykają, jednak ich przecię nie widzą, ni poznawają, gdyż ich pasyje zaślepiły tak,
że nie są sposobni do przyjęcia oświecenia, a co za tym idzie – do poprawy’.
39 Idem, Głos Pański 52: ‘Nie masz mieć oczu cielesnych, ale masz mieć oczy duszne, które by
wiarą patrzyły żywą na Jezusa’.
40 Upon the structure of meditation described in early-modern treatises and the place of
reason in the process of recollection, see Martz L.O., The Poetry of Meditation: A Study of
Meditation of the Seventeenth Century (New Haven – London: 1962) 112–117.
41 Martin Hińcza, Plęsy Jezusa z aniołami 26: ‘Dla czego śmieją blisko tańcować z pochod-
niami przy Dziecinie, znak pokazując wesela’.
218 Bielak
☞ ☜
The soul The spiritual guides
1. Are the ropes an equivalent Christ does not need swaddling for development,
to swaddling clothes? but rather to show man how to be led by
spiritual guides, just as He surrenders Himself
to the ropes: ‘so that souls take his example,
although it may be disagreeable, and receive the
teachings of their [spiritual father]’.a
2. Is the chain Jesus’s Indeed, the chain decorates Jesus – with
necklace? submission rather than beauty.
3. Are the angels hunting The angels are hunting Christ not because they
Christ because they have think He is an animal, but because the perfect
mistaken him for wild game? ones are often tried by God with greater suffering
in order to prove their innocence.
4. Are the angels trying to tie It is not animals that will be tied to Christ, but
the ox and the ass to Christ the Soul, which keeps escaping from Him.
for warmth?
5. Is the rope helping to All of Jesus’s deeds have been ‘measured’
measure land for Jesus’s (rozmierzone), meaning that he has learnt
palace? his fate. Man cannot ‘measure’, that is judge
(mierzyć), anything himself. He must receive the
spiritual guide’s recommendations.
6. Will Christ ‘discipline’ man Jesus will use ‘the rope of love’.b He will not
with the ropes? torture man, but will pull him towards Himself
with his love.
7. Are the angels dancing Through his Incarnation, Christ surrendered
goniony with the ropes or Himself to future suffering during his march to
trying to reconstruct the Calvary on the day of Crucifixion: ‘And being in
ritual of ciągniony? the stable, Christ surrendered Himself to pulling
[ciągnienie]’.c
a Ibidem 77: ‘aby też dusze wzorem jego, choć czasem przykro, przyjmowały ojca duchownego
prostowanie’.
b Ibidem 81: ‘sznur miłości’.
c Ibidem 82: ‘w stajni będąc, oddał się Jezus na ciągnienie’.
The compilation of the parallel question-and-answer points reveals a struc-

ture of logical reasoning or, more precisely, an enthymeme. The tradition of
the paradox surrounding the Infant Christ found its lengthy overview in the
Jesuit theologian Jacob Masen’s book Ars nova argutiarum (1649), where he
described the logical structure of epigrams devoted to Jesus’s birth (De Christo
nato). Although Hińcza put his reflection into prose, he followed the same
logic. The enthymematic logical structure is based on the omission of one
premise (out of the two in which classic logical reasoning consists) and the im-
mediate shift from the antecedent (protasis) to the consequent (epitasis) as a
conclusion instead of another premise. The matter of the work is thus divided
into the presentation of the issue at hand (propositio) and an immediate con-
clusion (conclusio). Here is Masen’s example:
Proposition one: The innocent Christ was punished instead of the

culprits.
Proposition two and a conclusion of sorts: Thus the culprits have nothing
to fear.42
The omitted premise is the obvious statement that a culprit should be pun-
ished. In Hińcza’s text, spiritual guides negate the Soul’s ideas, relying instead
on the ideas implied by the questions, which would be – according to the the-
ory of enthymeme – ‘proposition two and a conclusion of sorts’ of a syllogism.
The first proposition is the situation shown on the engraving: the angels bring
the Christ child gifts in the form of ropes and chains. The Soul and spiritual
guides arrive at contrary (or remaining in a kind of metonymic connection)
conclusions because they understand the situation depicted in the engraving
differently. Therefore, Hińcza constructs a jammed machine of logical reason-
ing that forces the correction of conclusions from guessing the meanings of
the situation shown in the emblematic icon. Using Masen’s terminology, the
third point of the third chapter of the Frolics can be transcribed thus:
Proposition one: The angels bring chains to the Infant Christ.

Proposition two and a conclusion of sorts: The chain could be the Child’s
necklace.
42 Jacob Masen, Ars nova argutiarum honestae et eruditae recreationis (Cologne, H.

Rommerskirchen: 1711) 154: ‘Propositio I: Christus insons luit pro sontibus. Propositio II et
quasi illatio est: Ergo sontibus iam nihil est timendum’.
220 Bielak
This was the first ekphrasis of the image proposed by the Soul. The second,
omitted premise was that the chain was equated to a pendant worn on the
neck. Such reasoning already seems erroneous to its very author since a con-
tradiction follows at once: ‘Yet iron does not embellish – it is but a weight.
God forbid such a burden were put on the Infant’s neck! It would soon rub
the skin raw!’43 In the parallel third point, the angels correct the enthymeme
by reviewing the omitted premise, expressed by the Soul only later: that the
chain constitutes potential harm. The angels agree that the chain can decorate
Jesus not through its ornate properties but through its being an expression of
the Christ child’s total submission to God’s plan: ‘Jesus’s greatest decoration in
heaven is his Passion’.44 The spiritual guides, following the Soul’s association,
prompt the Soul on how the chain should be understood, transforming the
omission into an overt premise. In the Soul’s version, the chain/necklace deco-
rates but hurts; in the angels’ version, the chain decorates because it hurts (and
expresses Jesus’s readiness to die). During the correctio of the enthymemes,
Hińcza uses rhetorical paronomasia: he reaches for homonyms or similar-
sounding words and plays with their meanings. For example, in point 7 the
Soul associates the angels’ actions with the dance ciągniony, and the angels
confirm that Christ surrendered Himself to ciągnienie, which in middle Polish
literally means ‘pulling towards oneself with hands or tools’ or ‘pulling bones
out of joints’, clearly referring to the Passion of Christ and, at the same time, to
the ciągniony custom via a paronomasia: the name of the custom of ciągniony
differs from the ciągnienie only in the last few letters – the root word is the
same but the meaning differs.
‘The way of the Cross’ entails the change of meaning of any phenomenon
into its antithesis. Suffering proves to be glory; discipline, pleasure. The an-
gels consider the eight thoughts of the soul quoted above to be partially ac-
curate: indeed, the chain will serve Jesus as a ‘necklace’, yet it will not be the
source of humiliation but rather glory. The chain binds and twists his arms,
but ‘it makes the deeds of the soul ascend directly to God’.45 The activities of
the angels and Jesus are therefore signs to be properly decoded by man. This
observation reveals Hińcza’s purely persuasive approach to the sign. A similar
intuition can be found in Claude-François Ménestrier’s treatise Les Recherches
du blason (1673), in which he observes that reality, apart from constantly
43 M. Hińcza, Plęsy Jezusa z aniołami 68: ‘Ale żelazo nie ozdobi, ciężar to tylko. Strzeż, Boże,
włożyć takie jarzmo na szyjkę Dziecineczki! Wnet byś obaczył przetarcie do żywego!’.
44 Ibidem 78: ‘Jezusa największa w niebie dla męki Jego ozdoba’.
45 Ibidem 77: ‘Opak krępuje ręce, ale uczynki duszy czyni prosto do Boga wstępujące’.
referring to the transcendent sphere as its reflection, is also a spectacle.46 The

human being lives in the theatrum mundi where each gesture, image, and sign
not only means something and refers to something else than itself but also ac-
tually influences its spectators. Hińcza was strongly disposed to making reality
into a collection of signs – almost everything in his text ‘signifies something’
(znaczy coś), ‘signals’ (oznacza), ‘gives a sign’ (daje znak), ‘is a sign’ ( jest
znakiem). Spiritual guides remind the Soul that what he or she sees means
something else: ‘this cane does not signify Jesus’s poverty but that he is the
master and the king’.47 According to Hińcza, Christ became incarnate to attract
more people to himself and make himself into a figure that persuasively ap-
peals to the faithful: ‘Jesus was more sublime in the eyes of the world and lured
more people to himself than when resting in the bosom of the Father’,48 where
he was not seen for human eyes. On earth, he set himself in front of human
eyes so that they could know him by looking at his bodily form and his actions.
The spiritual guides in Hińcza’s work also explain Jesus’s cheerful reaction
to the arma Christi. It is the way to humiliate his human nature as a stage of
the plan of salvation. Christ must redeem man from original sin by exposing
himself to humiliation. Whips, ropes, and nails are in fact the tools for per-
fecting oneself in virtue. The humiliation, pain, and insults that they bring
are merely tests of Christ’s virtues and evidence that he plays the role of the
Redeemer perfectly. Whipping leaves marks on his body, which are signs of his
virtues: love, courage, sacrifice, and so on. Such an interpretation of Christ’s
wounds emerges in the spectrum of the imagined space of meditation, which
sets the observed engravings into motion. The Soul only sees the result of the
whips being brought to the stable by the angels: ‘Each soul that looks at Jesus
whipped will soon see that he is marked for its sake and indeed itself had cut
Christ so, as it will clearly see’.49 The spectator, having rejected the tools of
torture brought by the angels, which he or she recognized as a source of suf-
fering, has in fact rejected the opportunity for self-discipline and betterment.
This also reveals the imbalance in the hierarchy of the soul by letting emotions
assume control of his or her mind, which – according to Plato’s theory of the
46 See Dekoninck R., “The Jesuit Ars and Scientia Symbolica. From Richeome and Sandaeus
to Masen and Ménestrier”, in Boer W. de – Enenkel K.A.E. – Melion W.S. (eds.), Jesuit
Image Theory (Leiden – Boston: 2016) 74–88.
47 Hińcza, Plęsy Jezusa z aniołami 637: ‘ta trzcina nie znaczy tego aby był Jezus gołotą ale to

znaczy że on jest Panem, że On jest królem’

48 Ibidem 30: ‘Jezus na krzyżu będąc, świetniejszym był w oczach świata i więcej dusz do
siebie zwabił, aniżeli na łonie Ojca odpoczywając’.
49 Ibidem 240: ‘Każda dusza, która spojrzy na Jezusa ubiczowanego, zaraz obaczy, że dla niej
Jezus porysowany i owszem, że ona sama Jezusa porzezała, jaśnie obaczy’.
222 Bielak
soul’s architecture (inherited later by Christians) – entails that the soul’s sense
of judgement is corrupted.
The act of looking or seeing and the sense of sight itself (both external and
internal) are key themes in Hińcza’s work. The Jesuit points to their role in the
process of cognition and unification with God. Above all, the angels explain
that Christ voluntarily and joyously sacrifices himself to suffering, because he
‘sees something delightful’ in the tools of the Passion, and therefore he deci-
phers them correctly. The spiritual guides insist that the reader look at Jesus
depicted in the accompanying engravings and follow the direction of his gaze:
‘Just look how […] he turns his cheerful eyes, what joy appears upon his face’;50
‘It is not for nothing that Jesus jumps out from his mother’s womb onto the
cross, seeing that such an advantage will come of this’.51 Remarkably, Jesus’s
sense of sight itself is mentioned, because he can perceive the real significance
of the observed things, unlike a human:
It is the earthly tricking – your eyes are flooded with turbid humour, and
because of that your reason cannot properly evaluate these worthy in-
struments [of the Passion], which we [angels] are bringing to the Infant.
Jesus measures them with the healthy eye and sees in them great joy.52
Christ’s sagacity is proven precisely by his gaze and his reaction to what he
sees. He is looking forward to the Passion: ‘Your eyes [Jesus], which delight all
heavens with their sight, are fixed on this robe of humiliation, as though there
were beauty in it worthy of such fixation’.53
The reader is outraged seeing angels hurrying towards the Infant Christ with
bridles and ropes, so he or she interprets the signs literally. On the other hand,
at the sight of the tools of the Passion, Jesus understands their transcendent
reference – their role in the order of Salvation. It seems that Hińcza’s connect-
ing of everyday, regular objects with God’s affairs in the first ekphrasis, when the
Soul casually admits to all its associations with the viewed scenes, was based on
50 Ibidem 155: ‘Patrz tylko jako […] wesołe oczki obraca, jaka radość na twarzy Jego się
wydaje’.
51 Martin Hińcza, Chwała z Krzyża, której i sobie, i nam nabył Jezus ukrzyżowany (Kraków,
Andrzej Piotrkowczyk: 1641) 389: ‘Nie darmo Jezus zeskakuje z łona matki do krzyża,
widząc, że z tego taki ma uróść pożytek’.
52 M. Hińcza, Plęsy Jezusa z aniołami 199–200: ‘to ziemskie oszukanie i oko grubym humor-
em nabiegłe, taki rozsądek czynić każe o tych zacnych naczyniach, które my Dziecineczce
przynosimy. Zdrowym ta okiem wszytkie uważa i widząc w nich pełno uciechy […]’.
53 Ibidem 132–133: ‘Oczki Twe pojźrzeniem swoim niebiosa wszytkie cieszące w tej nieczci
szacie trzymasz wlepione, jakby w niej była taka piękność, która by godna była takiego
zapatrzenia’.
the assumption that the human mind must be taught to make associations –
relying on the rules of sympathy, similarity, analogy – of all worldly affairs with
the Cross and arma Christi, which gather within themselves the entire sense
of the history of Salvation. Such a type of association is illustrated well with
a scene from the emblematic collection Regia via Crucis, which Hińcza knew
and from which he borrowed the emblematic icons for his Glory of the Cross.
Chapter 3.3, entitled “The Cross Opens the Eyes and the Mind” (Crux oculos
mentemque aperit), begins with the heroine of the collection, Staurofila (Greek
for ‘female lover of the Cross’), walking with Jesus through a field. Staurofila
notices a group of working farmers and ‘stares at them for a moment’.54 Christ,
seeing her curiosity, praises the fact that this ‘caught her eye’.55 He uses the
image of the plough to compare it with the Cross: ‘from this external image
smoothly leading her to the internal one’.56
Human trust in external sight makes it impossible for the reader to under-
stand Jesus’s teaching, because whenever the occasion arises, the Soul averts
its eyes from macabre scenes: ‘and as soon as I see even the littlest affront,
I turn my eyes away’.57 But once the angels have convinced the Soul that inter-
nal sight must be trained by observing scenes from Christ’s life, it asks to watch
Christ tortured on the Cross:
My Jesus, when you are raised upon Mount Calvary, look at pitiful me in
the depth of grave sin. You, seeing me this way, I will put before my heart,
before my soul, and I will not dare to do one thing against you.58
Meditation usually ends with the Soul’s request for Christ to materialize before
the eyes of its heart (‘Present yourself to me, perfect Jesus’),59 which should
lead to learning the mystery: ‘Teach me, reveal the secret to my heart’.60 The
phrase ‘to put before the heart’ relates meditation to the epistemological tra-
54 Benedictus van Haeften, Regia via Crucis (Antwerp, Balthasar Moretus: 1635) 313: ‘Hic ocu-
lorum curiositati nonnihil indulgens Staurophila’.
55 Ibidem: ‘Christus […] ut, inquit, placet tibi haec aratio, quam non indiligenter videris
attendere?’
56 Ibidem: ‘ab hoc spectaculo ad interiora eam suauiter reuocans’.
57 M. Hińcza, Plęsy Jezusa z aniołami 133: ‘a ja jak zoczę choć odrobinę despektu, na stronę
oczy odwracam’.
58 M. Hińcza, Chwała z krzyża 613–614: ‘Jezu mój, gdy będziesz wyniesiony na górze
Kalwaryjej, wejrzy na mię mizernego w głębiźnie grzechu ponurzonego. Tak widzącego
stawiać Cię będę przed serce moje, przed duszę moję, żadnej się rzeczy przeciwko Tobie
nie dopuszczę’.
59 M. Hińcza, Głos Pański 38: ‘Staw mi się, Jezu, doskonałym’.
60 M. Hińcza, Plęsy Jezusa z aniołami 381: ‘Naucz mię, […] powiedz ten sekret do serca mego’.
224 Bielak
dition that considers the heart to be the centre of cognitive powers. Greek
thought, led by Aristotle, placed in the heart the source both of perception and
vital forces. The biblical concept of man, displayed particularly in the Psalms,
identified the heart as the focal point for memory, reason, and will. What is
more, Hińcza’s word choice, “present in front of” (stawiać przed), is equivalent
to the Latin re-praesentatio, strictly connected with reflection as making the
subject of thought present in the mind.61
The secret is revealed by the spiritual guides, but it is not the end of the
reformatio of the Soul. At the end of each meditation, the Soul asks for the true
understanding of the secret that can be fulfilled only through the imitation of
Jesus in his joyful reaction to the arma Christi, i.e., the pain and humiliation.
The dance in front of the Cross is a metaphor for Christ’s Passion as well as
cosmic harmony. The victory of the Cross (the new law represented by Christ)
over the chaos of the world resulted from original sin. The secret of the titular
‘dance’ on Calvary is deciphered in the mottos to Hińcza’s work taken from
Philo of Alexandria, Gregory the Great, and the Song of Songs – exactly the
same ones that are present in the Breviarium Romanum ex decreto Sacrosancti
Concilii Tridentini.62 The angelic dance around the Cross reflects the cosmic
dance of the stars around the Sun, i.e., God – a new harmony has its centre in
the Cross on Calvary.63
61 See Melion W.S., “The Art of Vision in Jerome Nadal’s Adnotationes et Meditationes in
Evangelia,” in Annotations and Meditations on the Gospels, 4 vols. (Philadelphia: 2003),
vol. 1, The Infancy Narratives, ed. and trans. F. Homman, 1–96.
62 Breviarium Romanum ex decreto Sacrosancti Concilii Tridentini restitutum, Venetiis: Ex
typographia balleoniana, 1799, s. 380–381: ‘Veniendo quippe ad redemptionem nostram,
quosdam, ut ita dicam, saltus dedit. Vultis fratres ipsos eius salt agnoscere? De coelo venit
in uterum, de utero venit in praesepe, de paesepi venit in crucem, de cruce venit in sepul-
chrum, de sepulchro rediit in coelum. Ecce ut nos post se currere daceret, quosdam pro
nobis saltus manifestata per carnem Veritas dedit: quia exultavit ut Gigas at currendam
viam, ut nos ei dicerem ex corde: « Trahe nos post te curremus un odorem unguentorum
tuorum »’ (Gregory the Great); ‘Verbum Divinum, inquit, choreas in orbem ducit, quod
vulgus hominum Fortunam vocat et omnes gentes circumlustrando, nunc his, nunc illis,
imperia vel tribuit, vel admit’ (Philo of Alexandria); ‘Ecce iste venit faliens in montibus
transiliens colles!’ (Song of Songs 2.8).
63 On the concept of the cosmic dance in Christian rites, see Miller J., Measures of Wisdom:
The Cosmic Dance in Classical and Christian Antiquity (Toronto: 1986).
5 Conclusion
The role of engravings used in literature of this kind transcends their illustra-
tive function. As theoretical considerations of the authors of emblematic-
meditative collections show, the actual engraving was merely an image of the
projected internal stirring that the authors strove to cause within the reader,
acting as an equivalent of the visions appearing in the mind during reflection.
Hińcza, who prioritized persuasion, purposefully sets shocking images before
his readers’ eyes – ones that touch the senses and emotions, using the mechan-
ics of human affects and cognitive powers. The Jesuit opens each meditation
upon a subject with a notion expressed by the Soul, supposedly representing
the opinio communis. The Soul’s remarks comprise either instinctive, emotion-
al reactions to the harm of the Infant Jesus observed on the engraving – asso-
ciations connecting the image of the Cross as a tool used in everyday life – or
the dance on Calvary to Polish customs and everyday activities known to the
lay reader from his or her experience. Having created a community of world-
views, the Jesuit then surprises the reader by negating all earlier assumptions
with a longer parallel point marked by the same number, which contain a
statement by the spiritual guides explaining the mysteries hidden in the medi-
tative visions.
Engaging strong emotions through images and their ekphrases was achieved
to enable the Soul to recognize itself (which led to humility), arrange itself
anew, and in effect improve morally (in the act of reformatio). In the Ignatian
prayer, sensory perception joined with rational thinking (memory, imagina-
tion, and will) to control and direct the capacities of imagination towards
moral education. Mental images created in the mind revealed themselves be-
fore the eyes of the meditans’ soul in the form of a riddle to be solved, causing
stirring within. Yet human perception, strictly tied to the body, is imperfect
and prevents the total control of the mind over it. This ability could be trained,
and Hińcza proposed a training regime: meditation upon images. He proposed
a form of controversiae that is based on the parallel questioning of the Soul and
the answers of the spiritual guides. The structure of the book is intended to
strongly involve not only the reader’s emotions and senses but also epistemic
powers such as logical thinking and the ability of making associations, to en-
sure a complete understanding of the scenes represented in the emblematic
icons. Each meditation upon emblems is a double ekphrasis: the first one rep-
resents the thoughts of the meditans and leads the reader to the wrong conclu-
sions; the second one is an explanation of the meditated scene guaranteed by
the spiritual guide who uses the association of the Soul to explain Christian
226 Bielak
dogmatics. Such a structure was strongly persuasive, and Hińcza deliberately

applied the rhetorical and psychological theories to the affects and used them
for the moral perfection of his readers.
Bibliography
ARSI: Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, Fondo Gesuitico.

Aristotle, On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse, ed. and trans. G.A. Kennedy (New
York: 2007).
Bowen K.L. – Imhof D., “Reputation and Wage: The Case of Engravers Who Worked
for the Plantin-Moretus Press”, Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of
Art 30, 3–4 (2003).
Breviarium Romanum ex decreto Sacrosancti Concilii Tridentini restitutum (Venice, Ex
typographia balleoniana: 1799).
Carruters M., The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images
(Cambridge: 2000).
Colie, R.L., Paradoxia epidemica: The Renaissance Tradition of Paradox (Princeton:
1966).
Czerenkiewicz M., Belgijska sarmacja, staropolska Belgia, Muzeum Pałac w Wilamowie
(Warsaw: 2013).
Dekoninck R., Ad imaginem: status, fonctions et usages de l’image dans la littérature
spirituelle jésuite du XVIIe siècle (Geneva: 2005).
Dekoninck R., “The Jesuit Ars and Scientia Symbolica: From Richeome and Sandaeus
to Masen and Ménestrier”, in Boer W. de – Enenkel K.A.E. – Melion W.S. (eds.),
Jesuit Image Theory (Leiden – Boston: 2016).
Drużbicki Caspar, Paradoxa Verbi Incarnati continuata et piis affectionibus (Prague,
Typis Universitatis Carol: Ferdin: in collegio Societ. Jesu ad S. Clementem: 1712).
Georgius Nicolaus, De naer-volginge des doodts ons heeren Iesu Christi Nicolausa
Georgiusa (Brussels, Ian Mommaert: 1650).
Góngora Luis de, Selected Poems of Luis de Góngora: A Bilingual Edition, ed. and trans.
J. Dent-Young (Chicago: 2008).
Gostyńska D., Retoryka iluzji: koncept w poezji barokowej (Warsaw: 1991).
Gracián B., Agudeza y arte de ingenio (Madrid: 1957).
Grzebień L., “Hińcza Marcin”, in Słownik polskich teologów katolickich: Lexicon theo
logorum catholicorum Poloniae, Wyczawski H.E. (ed.) (Warsaw: 1982).
Haeften Benedictus van, Regia via Crucis (Antwerp, Balthasar Moretus: 1635).
Hińcza Marcin, Król Bolesny Chrystus Jezus (Lublin, Paweł Konrad: 1631).
Hińcza Marcin, Dziecię Pan Jezus, to jest Nabożne rozmyślania o dzieciństwie Pana
Jezusowym (Kraków, Franciszek Cezary: 1636).
Hińcza Marcin, Plęsy aniołów Jezusowi narodzonemu, najświętszego Krzyża tańce
(Kraków, Franciszek Cezary: 1638).
Hińcza Marcin, Chwała z Krzyża, której i sobie, i nam nabył Jezus ukrzyżowany (Kraków,
Andrzej Piotrkowczyk: 1641).
Hińcza Marcin, Głos Pański z Ewangelii adwentowych z naukami i stosowaniem do
Naświętszego Sakramentu (Vilnius, W drukarni Ojców Bazylianów Unitów w mon-
asterze Świętej Trójcy: 1643).
Hollstein F.W., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, ca. 1450–1700,
vol. 26, Samuel de Swaef to Jan Thesing, Hoop-Scheffer D. de (ed.) (Amsterdam: 1982).
Jan David, Duodecim specula Deum aliquando videre desideranti concinnata (Antwerp,
Ioannes Moretus: 1610).
Janssenius Nicolaas, Vita S. P. Dominici ordinis praedicatorum fundatoris (Antwerp,
Hendrik Aerts: 1622).
Kramm C. (ed.), De Levens en werken der hollandsche en vlaamsche Kunstschilders,
beeldhouwer, graveurs en bouwmeesters, Gebroeders diederichs, 6 vols. (Amsterdam,
Gebroeders Diederichs: 1861), vol. 5.
Lausberg H., Handbook of Literary Rhetoric: A Foundation for Literary Study, Orton
D.E. – Anderson R.D. (eds.), Bliss M.T. – Jansen A. – Orton D.E. (trans.) (Leiden –
Boston – Köln: 1988).
Loskoutoff Y., La sainte et la Fée: dévotion à l’Enfant Jésus et mode des contes merveilleux
à la fin du règne de Louis XIV (Geneva [Paris]: 1987).
Loyola Ignatius of, The Spiritual Exercises, trans. E. Mullan (New York: 1914).
Martz L.O., The Poetry of Meditation: A Study of Meditation of the Seventeenth Century
(New Haven: 1962).
Masenius Iacobus, Ars nova argutiarum honestae et eruditae recreationis (Cologne,
H. Rommerskirchen: 1711).
Melion W.S., “The Art of Vision in Jerome Nadal’s Adnotationes et Meditationes in
Evangelia”, in Annotations and Meditations on the Gospels, by Jerome Nadal, 4 vols.
(Philadelphia: 2003), vol. 1, The Infancy Narratives, ed. and trans. F. Homman.
Miller J.L., Measures of Wisdom: The Cosmic Dance in Classical and Christian Antiquity
(Toronto: 1986).
Nadal Jerónimo, Evangelicae historiae imagines (Antwerp, Martinus Nutius: 1595).
Niesiecki K., Herbarz polski […] powiększony dodatkami z późniejszych autorów,
rękopismów, dowodów urzędowych, 10 vols. (Leipzig: 1839).
Praz M., Studies in Seventeenth Century Imagery (Rome: 1964).
228 Bielak
Ptak-Korbel W., “Piotrkowczyk Andrzej II”, in Drukarze dawnej Polski od XV do XVIII

wieku: praca zbiorowa, vol. 1: Małopolska, p. 2: Wiek XVII–XVIII, issue 2: L–Ż i dru-
karnie żydowskie, Pirożyński J. (ed.) (Kraków: 2000).
Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, 4 vols. (London – New York: 1920).
Saunders A., The Seventeenth-century French Emblem: A Study in Diversity (Geneva:
2000).
Seyn E.M.H. de, Dessinateurs, graveurs et peintres des anciens Pays-Bas: Écoles flamande
et hollandaise (Turnhout: 1950).
Treiderowa A., “Ze studiów nad ilustracją wydawnictw krakowskich w wieku XVII
(z drukarń: Piotrkowczyków, Cezarych, Szedlów i Kupiszów”, Rocznik Biblioteki
PAN w Krakowie (1959).
part 2
Science and Secrecy
∵
chapter 5
Of Grids and Divine Mystery: Gerard Mercator’s

Revelation
Lee Palmer Wandel
Construed within the history of cartography as a major step in the develop-

ment of mathematical calculation,1 Gerard Mercator’s maps have been viewed
through the lens of modern notions of cartographic ‘accuracy’, foremost calcu-
lations of longitude and latitude and the representation of land and sea those
calculations engender. In this, their fate is not unlike the images of Samuel
Dirksz van Hoogstraten, Pieter Janz. Saenredam, and Johannes Vermeer, long
judged according to the norm of linear perspective, which Celeste Brusati has
so illumined.2 Mercator shared with their work not least, Brusati’s formulation,
‘additive composites of aspects’. His maps have also been severed from their
own material context. Mercator offered glosses for the beholders of his maps,
that they might, with eyes informed, discern what uninformed eyes could
not. To read his maps in this way, let us begin first with an archeology of three
terms – descriptio,3 projection, and atlas – the first and last of which Mercator
himself used to name what he was seeking to do.
1 The best general study of Mercator remains Averdunck H. – Müller-Reinhard J., Gerhard
Mercator und die Geographen unter seinen Nachkommen, Ergänzungsheft Nr. 182 zu
“Petermann’s Mitteilungen” (Gotha: 1914). For a list of all his maps and their relevant bibli-
ographies, see Karrow, Jr. R.W., “Gerard Mercator”, Mapmakers of the Sixteenth Century and
Their Maps (Chicago: 1993) 376–406. On Mercator’s place in the history of projection, see
Snyder J.P., Flattening the Earth: Two Thousand Years of Map Projections (Chicago: 1993), es-
pecially Ch. 1; idem, “Map Projections in the Renaissance”, in Woodward D. (ed.), The History
of Cartography vol. III: Cartography in the Renaissance, Part I (Chicago and London: 2007)
365–381.
2 ‘[…] the traditions of perspective theory and practice favoured in the Netherlands accom-
modate an understanding of pictures as additive composites of aspects; they neither pre-
clude nor presuppose the unified prospect usually associated with Renaissance models of
linear perspective and pictorial composition’, Brusati C., “Perspectives in Flux: Viewing Dutch
Pictures in Real Time”, Art History 5 (2012) 912.
3 In preserving the Latin, I wish here, as throughout this essay, to recover connotations, reso-
nances of meaning, that are lost when translated into modern English.

232 Wandel
Figure 5.1 Gerard Mercator, Cartouche from Nova et aucta orbis terrae descriptio [New
and Augmented Description of the World] (1569), in Meer S. de (ed.), Atlas
van de Wereld: De wereldkaart van Gerard Mercator uit 1569 (Zutphen, Wallburg
Pers: 2011) n.p.
1 Descriptio
In 1569, in one of the larger of the cartouches [Fig. 5.1], on what has come to be
called his world map, Mercator set forth what had guided its making:
In making this [orbis descriptione] we have had three cares.

First, to extend the surface of the sphere on a plane, so that the sit-
ing of locations corresponds as much in true direction and distance as in
longitude and latitude as in relationship to one another; as well that the
[ figurae] of regions appearing on the sphere, insofar as it is possible, be
preserved. Towards this [end] this work sets meridians to parallels in a
new relationship.4
4 ‘[…] in hac orbis descriptione tria nobis curae fuerunt. Primum sphaerae superficiem ita
in planum extendere ut situs locorum tam secundum directionem distantiamque veram
quam secundum longitudinem latitudinumque debitam undequaque inter se correspon-
deant, ac regionum figurae in sphera apparentes, quatenus fieri potest, serventur, ad quod
Of Grids and Divine Mystery: Gerard Mercator ‚ s Revelation 233
Mercator himself called the object a descriptio: ‘Nova et aucta orbis terrae
descriptio ad usum na[vigatorem]’. In the legend, Mercator set forth what
descriptio encompassed for him: ‘true direction and distance’; the preservation
of the figurae of regions; proportion of parts to the whole, as well as proportion
within a single figura; a constant scale in which those figurae retained their
form and their spatial relationship to one another.
In that cartouche, Mercator brought to descriptio connotations it had not had
before. A century before Mercator, in his dedication to Pope Alexander V, the
first Latin translator of Ptolemy, Jacopo d’Angelo da Scarperia, chose to define
geography as descriptio, ‘Ceterum Geographiam, hoc est Terrae descriptionem’.5
Modern translators of Ptolemy’s Geography have rendered the Greek:
World cartography is an imitation through drawing of the entire known

part of the world together with the things that are, broadly speaking, con-
nected with it. It differs from regional cartography in that regional car-
tography, as an independent discipline, sets out the individual localities,
each one independently and by itself, registering practically everything
down to the least thing therein (for example, harbors, towns, districts,
branches of principle rivers, and so on), while the essence of world car-
tography is to show the known world as a single and continuous entity, its
nature and how it is situated, [taking account] only of the things that are
associated with it in its broader, general outlines (such as gulfs, great cit-
ies, the more notable peoples and rivers, and the more noteworthy things
of each kind).6
Scarperia’s choice, of descriptio for what modern English translators render as

‘an imitation through drawing’, was unproblematic for the sixteenth century.
Indeed, geographia, and not descriptio, was the focus of their efforts to define.
Joachim Vadian, for example, in his influential edition of Pomponius Mela, de-
fined geographia as the act of describing:
nova meridianorum ad parallelos habitudine et situ opus fuit’, Gerard Mercator’s Map of the
World (1569) In the Form of an Atlas in the Maritime Museum “Prins Hendrik” at Rotterdam,
Rotterdam: Supplement No. 2 to Imago Mundi (1961) 46.
5 Besse J.-M., “Cosmography and Geography in the Sixteenth Century: the Position of Oronce
Fine between Mathematics and History”, in Marr A. (ed.), The Worlds of Oronce Fine:
Mathematics, Instruments and Print in Renaissance France (Donington: 2009) 100–1.
6 Berggren J.L. – Jones A., Ptolemy’s Geography: An Annotated Translation of the Theoretical
Chapters (Princeton: 2000) 57. O.A.W. Dilke, also, renders the opening “‘geographia is an imi-
tation (mimesis), by drawing, of the whole known world and its features’”, Greek and Roman
Maps (Baltimore – London: 1985) 77.
234 Wandel
Geographia tamen, si Etymon vocabuli sequimur, propriè ea est quae

terrae situm, ut extra intraque ad oceanum nostrumque mare se habet,
cum locorum passim iacentium enumeration describit […]
Geography, if one follows the Etymology of the word, is the description of

the position of lands in relation to the ocean and the Mediterranean Sea,
with the enumeration of all the places found therein […]7
So, too, in addressing the Reader of the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, Abraham
Ortelius began with geographia, not descriptio. It was a visual practice that
served history: geographia, he wrote to the Reader, ‘some justly call the eye of
history’.8 One learned geographia from maps. Maps, ‘descriptions and delinea-
tions of a region’, enabled readers to ‘look upon things done, or places where
they were done, as if they were at this time present’.9 ‘Descriptiones’ required
no explication.
Jacopo d’Angelo da Scarperia had named Ptolemy’s work Cosmographia,
a word familiar to him, but neither widely used nor precisely defined.10 That
substitution engendered foremost extensive discussions of the relationship of
cosmography to geography in the sixteenth century.11 These, in turn, brought
new valences to descriptio. Vadian held the act of describing geography to be
verbal, but the tools of the cosmographer, whose scope included the earth,
were mathematical:
7 Besse, “Cosmography and Geography in the Sixteenth Century”, 109.

8 ‘Geographiæ (quæ meritò à quibusdam Historiæ oculis appellata est)’, Ortelius Abraham,
THEA // TRVM // ORBIS // TERRA //RVM (Antwerp, Apud Aegidius Coppenium
Diesth: 1570), Aiiij, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/98687183/ accessed
26 August 2016. On Ortelius, see foremost, Van den Broecke M., Ortelius Atlas Maps:
An Illustrated Guide, 2nd edition (Houten: 2011); and Van den Broecke M. – Van der
Krogt P. – Meurer P. (eds.), Abraham Ortelius and the First Atlas: Essays Commemorating
the Quadricentennial of his Death 1598–1998 (Houten: 1998).
9 ‘si Tabulis ob oculos propositis liceat quasi præsentem, res gestas, aut loca in quibus
gestæ sunt, intueri…. Tabulis, quæ de Regionum descriptionibus delineationibusque’,
Abraham Ortelius, THEA // TRVM // ORBIS // TERRA //RVM (Antwerp: Apud Aegidius
Coppenium Diesth, 1570), Aiiij, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/98687183/
accessed 26 August 2016.
10 Mosley A., “Early Modern Cosmography: Fine’s Sphaera Mundi in Context and Content”,
in Marr, The Worlds of Oronce Fine, 114–115.
11 On differing conceptions of cosmography in the sixteenth century, see Mosley, “Early
Modern Cosmography”, 114–136. On the relation of geography to cosmography, see Besse,
“Cosmography and Geography in the Sixteenth Century”.
The study of the instruments intended to conduct measures of this sort

and to represent the earth according to meridians and parallels is the
concern of the Cosmographer. The greatest of which […] is Ptolemy. […] I
dare therefore say that the Geographer is closer to the poet and the histo-
rian, in that their processes of description are alike…. The Cosmographer,
on the contrary, is turned towards Geometry and Astonomy.12
In distinguishing between cosmographia and geographia, Sebastian Münster

offered an extended list of what geographia encompassed – the subjects of the
act of describing:
[…] the description of the earth, region by region, and of the things inside
and outside of it, of the seas, the mountains, the rivers, and then of the
histories, and of all things wherever they be found that are admirable
examples of nature and worthy of our notice.13
For Münster, descriptio could be a verbal as well as a visual practice, as his

Cosmographia materializes.14
12 ‘Addo quod instrumentum ad illusmodi dimensiones attinendum, et picturarum

similiter terrae cum debita meridianorum parallelorumque descriptio, tota ratio ad
Cosmographiam attinet, quam primus proper omnium, post multiplicem veterum di-
ligentiam, absoluisse existimatur Cl. Ptolemaeus, Aegyptus natione, qui Antonini tem-
poribus floruit, Mathematices universae citra controversiam princeps. Constat autem
Geographiae cum poëtica, cumque historia convenire, vel ea causa quod non dissimili
in reddendis locis describendi modo utitur, unde magna Straboni, Plinio, caeterisque, si
diligentius Paulo perpenderimus, ex Poëtis et Historicis in locorum terrae descriptione,
auxilla fuerunt, ut Plinius li. 1 Strabo ubique (nam eius opus Homeri doctrine illustre fac-
tum est) indicat. Cosmographus ad Geometricam Astonomicamque inclinans, aliorum,
praeter ea quae retulimus, propè secures est’, Mela, (ed. Vadian), Libri de situ orbis tres,
aiiiv, cited in Besse, “Cosmography and Geography in the Sixteenth Century”, 110–111.
13 “Geographia communis est terrae, eorumque quae intra eam et extra sunt, marium, mon-
tium, fluviorumque per regions descriptio, tum historiarum et earum rerum quae à natu-
ra in singulis locis admirandae relictae sunt et annotatione dignae,” Münster Sebastian,
Appendix Geographica to his edition of Ptolemy, Geographia universalis (Basel: 1540),
cited in Besse, “Cosmography and Geography in the Sixteenth Century”, 111–112.
14 Munster Sebastian, COSMOGRAPHIA. // Beschriebūg // aller lender (Basel: Henricus
Petrus, 1545); COSMO//GRAPHIAE // uniuersalis Lib. VI. in // quibus, iuxta certioris
fidei scriptorium // traditionem describuntur, // Omniū habitabilis orbis partiū situs,
p[ro]priæ qz dotes. // Regionum Topographicæ effigies. // Terræ ingenia, quibus sit ut
tam differētes & uarias // specie res, & animatas & inanimatas, ferat. // Animalium pereg-
rinorum naturæ & picturæ. // Nobiliorum ciuitatum icones & descriptiones. // Regnorum
initia, incrementa & translations. // Omnium gentiū mores, leges, religio, res gestæ,
236 Wandel
Peter Apian first defined cosmography as encompassing the earth, as well

as the other three elements, water, air, and fire, in the Cosmographicus Liber.15
In that work, he distinguished cosmography from geography, but then later, in
the Cosmographiae introductio of 1551, posited a different relationship between
cosmography and geography, which anchored the descriptio of geography to
the practices of the descriptio of cosmography:
Here it should be noted in passing that by the designation cosmography

is understood the method [ratio] of geography; though cosmography
tends rather to geometry and astronomy. For shapes, climates, magni-
tudes, and other things of this kind belonging to it cannot be understood
without knowledge of those. However, the two subjects combine, and are
so connected to one another, that for those causing one to be taught in
whatever way without the other, there could easily be a danger of making
it lame. But cosmography would seem to be more exact, because since it
uses certain axioms it remains consistent within itself. Geography, both
through the passing of centuries, and the variable teachings of illustri-
ous writers, changes with time, as all mortal works do, and is not always
consistent with itself and not certain. Since besides enumeration and his-
tory of places it also adds many things about what the origin of cities,
races, nations, and peoples was and thence the names given to things,
then sometimes also indicates something of nature or amazing works,
it tends to be much broader regarding the description of the Earth. But
cosmography, although it has regard for each side, that is for heaven and
earth, and combines the earthly with the celestial into one, cares more to
show what the measure of heaven is, according to longitude and latitude,
for those parts which are of the earth. And it does not enumerate regions,
towns, rivers, seas, and mountains, other than to do so as to establish re-
gional boundaries, and enumerate what the beginnings and the limits
are, or to show that all those things are beneath part of the heavenly sur-
face: in this exercise caring almost solely that it be understood that places
are located beneath this heaven, what the latitude is, what the longitude,
and in addition what the difference of the gnomon and shadows is for
mu-//tationes: Item regum & principum genealogiæ. // Autore Sebast. Munstero (Basel:
Henricus Petrus, 1550).
15 Apian Peter, COSMOGRA//phicus Liber Petri Apiani Ma=//thematici studiose collectus.

(Landshut: n.p., 1524), A; COSMOGRAPHI= // CVS LIBER (Antwerp, Grapheus: 1533)

Aii. This underwent more editions than any other cosmographical text in the first half of
the sixteenth century.
different places (whence arises the theory of the length and shortness
of days).16
In the Cosmographiae introductio, Apian rooted what others were naming

as the practice or method of geography in the ratio of cosmography. In his
work, foremost the Atlas sive Cosmographicæ Meditationes de Fabrica Mundi et
Fabricati Figura, Mercator would bring to descriptio the ratio of cosmography.
As the Atlas made most explicit, descriptio was to be understood within and
practiced through the conceptual tools of cosmography.
2 Projection
The 1569 world map is the first articulation of what would come to be called
the Mercator projection [Fig. 5.2],17 the term that swept his maps up in a
separate narrative, of the development of the mathematical tools for ‘more
accurate’ cartography. In 1982, John Snyder offered the definition in use by the
U.S. Geological Survey:
16 ‘Hic obiter notandum quod Cosmographiae ratio Geographiae vocabulo intelligatur:

Cosmographia potius ad Geometriam Astonomiamque sese inclinat. Nam figurae cli-
mata, magnitudines, & alia hiusmodi propria, sine illarum scientia deprehendi nequeunt,
coeunt tamen, suntque adeo interse connexae, ut alteram sine altera utcunque traditam,
mancam esse facile constare possit periculum facientibus: sed acutior videtur esse ipsa
Cosmographiae, quod cum certis quibusdam axiomatibus utatur, certa sibique constans
manet. Geographia cum saeculorum decursu, tum vero multifaria illustrium scriptorum
traditione, ut omnia mortalium opera, tempus mutat, nec semper consona sibi, nec certa
est: quum praeter locorum enumerationem, & historiam, addat & plerunque quae civi-
tatum, quae gentium, nationum, populorum origi fuerit, atque unde data rebus nomina,
tum & illustria nonnunquam naturae sive miranda opera indicans, in terrae situ multo
unberior esse solet: Cosmographia vero quamquam utriusque, coeli inquam & terrae
rationem habet, & terrena cum coelestibus in unum coniungit, magis tamen id curat,
ut quibus terrae extantis partibus, quod caeli secundum longitudinem latitudinemque
spacium adsit, ostendat. Nec aliter regiones, oppida, amnes, maria, montesque enumerat,
quam ut vel terminos statuat regionum: quaeque exordia, & qui fines sunt, enumeret,
vel sub coelestis superficiei parte illa universa sint demonstret: hoc prope unice curans,
ut sub quo coelo sita loca, quae latitudo, quae longitudo, praeterea quae gnomonis um-
brarumque pro locorum latitudine differentium (unde brevitatis longitudinisque dierum
ratio manat) diversitas sit, intelligatur’, Apian Peter, Cosmographiae introductio (Paris,
Viuantium Gaultherot: 1551), 3r–v/3v–4r, cited in Mosley, “Early Modern Cosmography”,
120–121; the edition exists in two variant states, for which Mosley provides both citations.
17 Snyder, “Map Projections in the Renaissance”, 376.
238 Wandel
Figure 5.2 Gerard Mercator, Nova et Aucta Orbis Terrae Descriptio ad Usum Navigantium
Emendate Accommodata, 1569
Wikimedia, accessed 26 September 2018: https://upload.wikimedia
.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/Mercator_1569_world_map_
composite.jpg
A map projection is a device for producing all or part of a round body on

a flat sheet. Since this cannot be done without distortion, the cartogra-
pher must choose the characteristic which is to be shown accurately at
the expense of others, or a compromise of several characteristics.18
In its modern usage, the term ‘projection’, entails the imposition of a logic ex-
ternal to and, equally important, never fully in alignment with the object of
that logic. For Snyder and modern cartographers, that object is ‘a round body’.
For Snyder, as for modern historians of cartography, Mercator’s problem was
strictly mathematical, to take Mercator’s own words, to square the circle.
But Mercator did not claim, in 1569, to be projecting onto the earth. He
called it a descriptio, ‘In hac orbis descriptione tria nobis curae fuerunt’. Those
three cares, ‘tria […] curae’, the same word as accompanied animarum for pas-
toral responsibilities, he set forth in careful detail:
18 Snyder J., Map Projections Used by the U.S. Geological Survey (Washington, D.C.: 1982) 5.
Primum sphaerae superficiem ita in planum extendere, ut situs locorum

tam secundem directionem distantiamque veram quam secundum longi-
tudinem latitudinemque debitam undequaque inter se correspondeant,
ac regionum figurae in sphera apparentes, quatenus fieri potest, serven-
tur, ad quod nova meridianorum ad parallelos habitudine et situs opus
fuit, […] Alterum quod intendimus fuit, ut terrarum situs magnitudines
locorumque distantias juxta ipsam veritatem quantum assequi licet exhi-
beremus,[…] Tertium quod tractandum suscepimus fuit: ostendere quae
partes orbis et quousque veteribus innotuerint, quo antquae geographiae
limites non ignorentur, et priscis saeculis suus honos deferatur.
Firstly, to spread out on a plane the surface of the sphere in such a way
that the positions [sites] of places shall correspond on all sides with
each other both in so far as true direction and distance are concerned
and as concerns correct longitudes and latitudes; then, that the forms of
the parts [regionum figurae] be retained, so far as it is possible, such as
they appear on the sphere. With this intention we have had to employ a
new proportion and a new arrangement of the meridians with reference
to the parallels. […] The second object at which we aimed was to repre-
sent the positions and dimensions of the lands, as well as the distances
of places, as much in conformity with very truth as it is possible so to do.
[…] The third of our aims was to show which are the parts of the universe
which were known to the ancients and to what extent they knew them, in
order that the limitations of ancient geography be not unknown and that
the honour which is due to past centuries is given to them.19
The 1569 descriptio was for navigators, but Mercator’s practice of descriptio was
guided by a conceptualization of the earth fundamentally different from that
of modern cartographers – as he made explicit in the Atlas sive Cosmographicæ
Meditationes de Fabrica Mundi et Fabricati Figura, published posthumously
in 1595.20
19 Gerard Mercator’s Map of the World (1569), 46.

20 R.A. Skelton provides a detailed history of the Atlas and its component parts, “Bibliographic
Note”, Mercator – Hondius – Janssonius Atlas or A Geographicke Description of the World
Amsterdam 1636 (Amsterdam: 1968) v–viii. See also, Keuning J., “The History of an Atlas.
Mercator – Hondius”, Imago Mundi 4(1947) 37–62; Van der Krogt P., “Mercators Atlas:
Geschichte, Editionen, Inhalt”, in Blotevogel H.H. – Vermij R. (eds.), Gerhard Mercator
und die geistigen Strömungen des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts, Duisburger Mercator-Studien 3
(1995) 49–64.
240 Wandel
3 Atlas
The word, Atlas [Fig. 5.3], that Mercator chose for the volume containing all
the maps he had been able to engrave himself, as well as maps his heirs com-
pleted following his principles, has shifted in modern usage.21 It has, foremost,
become detached from the full content of the object that first bore its name –
Atlas was never for Mercator simply ‘a collection of maps in a volume’, as mod-
ern usage has it.22 The word did not appear alone. Mercator set it as a part
of a longer name, Atlas sive Cosmographicæ Meditationes de Fabrica Mundi
et Fabricati Figura, that is, Atlas connected in some way by the ambivalent
word, ‘sive’, to Cosmographic Meditations on the Making of the World and the
Madeness of Figures [usual modern translation: Regions]’. Depending on how
one chooses to translate ‘sive’, ‘Atlas’ is either an addition to ‘Cosmographic
Meditations’, or an alternative name for them.
Modern usage also severs the object from its place in Mercator’s cosmog-
raphy. In 1569, in the Preface to his Chronologia,23 Mercator outlined the
components of that cosmography: the Creation of the world, which his heirs
published in the Atlas in 1595 as “De Mundi Creatione ac Fabrica”; the descrip-
tio of the heavens, never completed; the descriptio of the earth and sea, which
were the maps he published, beginning in 1585 and including those bound in
the Atlas; historiae, that is, the genealogy and political history of specific re-
gions, printed on the obverse of the maps; and the Chronology.24 Mercator’s
Atlas thus brought together in a single material object three components of
Mercator’s cosmography: a textual commentary on the Creation of the world,
“De Mundi Creatione ac Fabrica”, primarily as set forth in Genesis; historiae of
specific places in the world; and visual descriptiones of the earth and seas. The
last two of these were incomplete at his death: not every place had its historia
published with its map; and he had not completed all the maps he intended for
21 On ‘atlas’, its earliest iterations, and the kinds of codices encompassed, see Wolter J.A. –
Grim R.E. (eds.), Images of the World: The Atlas Through History (Washington, DC: 1997).
On Mercator’s choice of the word, see Ackerman J.R., “Atlas: Birth of a Title”, in Watelet M.,
(ed.), The Mercator Atlas of Europe (Pleasant Hill: 1998) 15–29.
22 “This use of the word is said to be derived from a representation of Atlas supporting the
heavens placed as a frontispiece to early works of this kind, and to have been first used by
Mercator in the 16th cent.,” Oxford English Dictionary online, accessed 28 May 2016.
23 C HRONOLOGIA. // HOC EST, // TEMPORVM DE= // MONSTRATIO EXACTISSIMA,
AB // INITIO MVNDI, VSQVE AD ANNVM DOMI- // NI M. D. XLVIII. (Cologne:
Apud Haeredes Arnoldi Birckmanni, 1569), 3r–4v.
24 Skelton, “Bibliographic Note” v; Van der Krogt, “Mercators Atlas: Geschichte, Editionen,
Inhalt” 50.
Figure 5.3 Gerard Mercator, Atlas sive Cosmographicæ Meditationes de Fabrica Mundi
et Fabricati Figura (Duisburg: 1595) title page
Staats- und Stadtbibliothek Augsburg
242 Wandel
his geography. But the Atlas as designed by Mercator encompassed “De Mundi
Creatione ac Fabrica”.
4 De Mundi Creatione
Mercator’s heirs published “De Mundi Creatione ac Fabrica” [Fig. 5.4], along
with a number of different paratexts, with the descriptiones – what have come
to be called the maps – in 1595; for them, as for Mercator, it was neither mate-
rially nor conceptually a thing apart. For them, as for Mercator, and for those
who continued to publish the Atlas into the seventeenth century, “De Mundi
Creatione ac Fabrica” belonged with the maps. In the spatial logic of the Atlas,
it precedes the maps; it prefaces them materially.25 As text, it offers a gloss, a
lens, through which the Atlas’s viewers can behold the descriptiones not simply
as refinements of Ptolemaic principles, but a priori, from the first words of the
exegesis, within a Christian ontology:
Axioma est omni menti opificium huius mundanæ machinæ aliquomo-

do inspicienti, Deum ipsius autorem immensæ potentiæ, sapientiæ &
bonitatis esse, ac de potentia quidem d[u]bitare est impossibile, ei qui ex
nihilo conditum, non æternam eius materiam crediderit.26
For any mind considering the construction of this earthly machine, it is

axiomatic that God, its author, is of immeasurable power, wisdom, and
goodness; and that to doubt his power is impossible for whoever believes
that he created all from nothing and that its material is not eternal.27
The making of the world was set forth in Scripture:
[…] ac proinde gratias agamus vni soli Deo, qui & principium, & creator,
& animator, & conseruator, & finis opificij mundani est, quod mundi
25 On the spatial logic of the codex, see Wandel L.P., Reading Catechisms, Teaching Religion,
Brill’s Studies on Art, Art History and Intellectual History 11 (Leiden – Boston: 2016) 43.
On the form of the codex, see Chartier R., Forms and Meanings: Texts, Performances, and
Audiences from Codex to Computer (Philadelphia: 1995) 6–24.
26 Mercator Gerard, Atlas sive Cosmographicæ meditationes de fabrica mvndi et fabricati

figvra (Duisburg: Mercator, 1595), p. 3, fol. a2; https://www.loc.gov/item/map55000728/

Accessed 3 September 2018, pdf 14.
27 English Translation, Gerardus Mercator, Atlas sive Cosmographicæ Meditationes de Fabrica
Mundi et Fabricati Figura, (Octavo CD: Library of Congress), Adobe file, p. 26.
et Fabricati Figura (Duisburg: 1595) fol. 3/a2
244 Wandel
veram fabricam, principium & fontem vniuersæ philosophiæ ac veritatis,

nobis dignatus sit per Mosen & Prophetas alios reuelare.28
Therefore let us give thanks to the one sole God, who is the beginning and
creator and life-giver and preserver and the end of the work of the world,
that he deigned to reveal to us the true fabric of the world, its beginning
and the source of all philosophy and all truth, through Moses and the
other Prophets.29
Creation as gestae, as acts in time, was also, as he then detailed in “De Mundi
Creatione ac Fabrica”, to be read on the surface of the earth itself:
Ita collidentibus vndis, & terram ab aquis segregatam, & per medias regio-
nes in montes collectam altissimos intelliges. Sic per African mons Atlas,
& montes lunæ, per Asiam mons Imaus & montes Caspij, cæteriq[ue]
passim montes, haud dubié nati sunt.30
So, in the clash of the waves, you can understand both the division of the
land from the waters and its being gathered in the middle regions into the
highest mountains. Throughout Africa Mount Atlas and the Mountains
of the Moon, throughout Asia Mount Imaus and the Mountains of the
Caspian, and the rest of the mountains everywhere, were doubtless thus
born.31
Mountains and coastlines, rivers and forests, those physical traces of specific
acts of creation, were legible [Figs. 5.5 and 5.6]. As God had inscribed them
on the surface of the earth, so they in turn could be engraved on paper. So,
too, they could be engraved in the same manner and matter as those names
humankind had given specific mountains, rivers, oceans, as well as their own
settlements – names all recorded in the italic Mercator also developed to
28 Mercator, Atlas sive Cosmographicæ meditationes de fabrica mvndi et fabricati figvra p. 4,

fol. a2v; https://www.loc.gov/item/map55000728/ Accessed 3 September 2018, pdf 15.


fol. c3; https://www.loc.gov/item/map55000728/ Accessed 3 September 2018, pdf 23.

Mundi et Fabricati Figura, (Octavo CD: Library of Congress), p. 72.
Figure 5.5 Gerard Mercator, “Frisia occidentalis”, Atlas sive Cosmographicæ Meditationes
de Fabrica Mundi et Fabricati Figura (Duisburg: 1595)
University Library Map Collection, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
inscribe the world in letters that would themselves be legible in all human lan-
guages and in all places.32
5 ac Fabrica
The made world offered for contemplation not simply the effects of the mak-
ing, but evidence of the making itself:
32 Mercator Gerard, Literarum latinarum, quas Italicas, cursoriasque vocat, scribendaru[m]

ratio. (Louvain, Rutgerius Rescius: 1540); Osley A.S., Mercator: A Monograph on the
Lettering of Maps, etc., in the Sixteenth-Century Netherlands with a Facsimile and a
Translation of Ghym’s Vita Mercatoris (London: 1969).
246 Wandel
Figure 5.6 Gerard Mercator, “Helvetia”, Atlas sive Cosmographicæ Meditationes de Fabrica
Mundi et Fabricati Figura (Duisburg: 1595)
University Library Map Collection, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
COSMOgraphiam tandem beneuole Lector aggressurus, vt tam diuinam

& grauem speculationem decet, omnes animi vires impendere necessa-
rium fuit, vt rerum creatorum omnium species & ordinem ob oculos po-
nerem, quo ad contemplationem vniuersi & sapientiam fabricæ mundi
lectorem adducerem. Scriptum est enim psalmo 103. & 24. Omnia in
sapientia fecisti. Est autem sapientia, causas & fines rerum cognoscere,
quæ nusquam melius quam ex mundi fabrica ordinatissima, & secun-
dum causas ordine annotatis sapientissimo architecto deducta, cognosci
potest.33
33 Mercator, Atlas sive Cosmographicæ meditationes de fabrica mvndi et fabricati figvra p. 6;

https://www.loc.gov/item/map55000728/ Accessed 3 September 2018, pdf 16.

As I begin to approach cosmography, gentle reader, it is necessary to

apply all my strength of spirit, as befitting so divine and grave a specula-
tion, in order to put before your eyes the species and order of all created
things. By this means, I may lead the reader to the contemplation of the
universe and the knowledge of the fabric of the world. For it is written,
“In wisdom you have made all things” (Psalms 104:24). Wisdom it is to
know the causes and ends of things, which can be known no better than
from the fabric of the world, most splendidly furnished and drawn out by
the wisest architect according to the causes noted in their order.34
The fabric of the world, its made-ness, was also evidence of the causes, which,
in turn, led one to the architect. That architect ‘conceived from eternity a kind
of determinate model of the world to be’.35 The telos of contemplation for
Mercator was the discernment of that model.
“De Mundi Creatione ac Fabrica” invites the beholders of Mercator’s maps
to see not simply the made world, but the world as made, as bearing the trac-
es, the visible traces, of the parting of the water from land, the gathering up
of land, the fabrication of forests [Fig. 5.7]; to discern in those traces their
cause; and, thus, to read them as traces of the model. Mercator had earlier
called attention to the use of mathematical calculation to situate the traces
of gestae in their ‘accurate’ spatial relationship to one another. In “De Mundi
Creatione ac Fabrica”, he suggested how mathematics enabled one to discern
invisible causes.
The forming of the ‘orb’, the sphere, was not caused by a choice of perfect
form, but itself the consequence of processes one could observe elsewhere:
Ex crasso quod subtilius est, euaporare, vnde in centrum colligi grauia,

mundum sphæricum esse, & omnium partium eius ordinem, & subtilita-
tis ac nobilitatis differentiam colligimus.36

Mundi et Fabricati Figura, (Octavo CD: Library of Congress), Adobe file, p. 34; ‘ipsum ab
æterno exemplar quoddam determinatum futuri mundi, […] concepisse’, Mercator, Atlas
sive Cosmographicæ meditationes de fabrica mvndi et fabricati figvra p. 6; https://www.loc
.gov/item/map55000728/ Accessed 3 September 2018, pdf 16.


248 Wandel
Figure 5.7 Gerard Mercator, “Argow”, Atlas sive Cosmographicæ Meditationes de Fabrica
University Library Map Collection, Vrije Universiteit
Amsterdam
From a solid body what is subtler evaporates, whence, the heavier parts
being gathered in the center, we comprehend that the world is spherical,
and understand the order of all its parts and the difference of subtlety
and nobility.37
It was not enough, Mercator argued in the next chapter, simply to observe that
the earth is spherical:
[…] Ioannes de Sacrobusco & cæteri mathematici terræ sphæricam fi-

guram, ex apparentibus quibusdam accidentibus comprobant, sed

præclarius multo est ex ipso fonte, ex causis, inquam, vnum quodque de-
monstrare, hoc enim tramite solida scientia incedit.38
[…] John of Sacrobosco and others confirm the spherical figure of the
earth from certain evident accidents, but it is far nobler to demonstrate
each thing from the source itself, I mean from first causes, for thus
science proceeds on a firm path.39
It was not sufficient to note the sphere, to state its perfection as form. The
sphere was itself the evidence of a process:
Hinc certissima ordinis ratio in vniuerso nascitur, vt quæ leuiora sunt ac

subtiliora, superiorum locorum obtineat. Neque hoc solum, veram etiam
chai totiusque mundi sphærica figura inde ortum habet, quippe cum chai
materia fluxilis esset, & ibi per omnia similis, æquali vndequaque virtu-
te & facilitate, ad punctum illum quietus pondere suo ferebatur, ita vt
extrema eius omnia æqualiter à centro distarent, & ex omni parte centri
in æquilibrio consisteret.40
Hence arises a most certain reason of order in the universe, so that those
things that are lighter and more subtle occupy the upper position. Not
only this, but also the spherical figure of chaos and of the whole world
takes its origin from this, for since the matter of chaos was fluid and
thence similar throughout all things, by equal virtue and faculty on all
sides, it was borne by its own weight to that resting point, so that its ex-
tremities were all equally distant from the center, and it came to rest in
equilibrium from all sides of the center.41

fol. b1; https://www.loc.gov/item/map55000728/ Accessed 3 September 2018, pdf 17.

39 “This point being found from the previous demonstrations, all agree that it should be
called the center of the world and of heaviness, or of the resting place of heavy things,”
English Translation, Gerardus Mercator, Atlas sive Cosmographicæ Meditationes de Fabrica


250 Wandel
That process could be discerned mathematically [Fig. 5.8]:
[…] si in cubo a sit centrum, b.c.d.e. sint extrema. ex a autem spectes b.

aut d. angulum &. c. in medio latere, longior multo est linea d.a. quam
linea c.a. aut e.a. multo plus itaque ponderis habet materia quæ secun-
dum a.b. aut d.a. lineam centro incumbit, quam quæ secundum c.a. aut
e.a. Vincit igitur d.a. pondus, & c.a. atque e.a. sursum protrudet cadendo
donec c.d.e. simul in æquilibrio, hoc est æqualiter à centro consistant,
materia existente liquida & fluxili. Necessario igitur chaos in æquilibrio
sub figura sphærica consistit.42
Thus, let A be the center of a cube, and B, C, D, and E its extremities;

should you look at B from A, or the angle DC in the middle of the side, the
line DA is much longer than the line CA or EA, and so the matter press-
ing on the center along the line AB or DA will have much more weight
than that along the line CA or EA. The weight DA will therefore prevail,
and CA and EA will thrust forward, falling from above until CDE are in
equilibrium, that is, come to rest at equal distances from the center, since
the matter is liquid and fluid. So chaos will necessarily come to rest in
equilibrium in the form of a sphere.43
6 Descriptio and Creation
If, for Mercator, descriptio was rooted in the knowledge, recorded in Scripture,
that God made the world, it was also to manifest the instrument that enabled
eyes informed by Genesis narratives to discern causes. Two sets of lines traverse
Mercator’s most famous map [Fig. 5.2]. The roses and the rhumb lines, for the
use of navigators to sail the surface of the earth and to keep their bearings, are
for the orientation of human beings on the surface of the earth. The lines of
longitude and latitude, engraved to lie upon the surface of both land and water,
have long been read as signing the same relationship among image, beholder,
and earth – as a means of orientation as one traversed the surface. But they
were something more for Mercator, as he made clear some thirty years later.


et Fabricati Figura (Duisburg: 1595) fol. 9/b1
252 Wandel
Figure 5.9 Rumold Mercator, “Orbis Terrae Compendiosa Descriptio”, in Gerard Mercator,
Atlas sive Cosmographicæ Meditationes de Fabrica Mundi et Fabricati Figura
(Duisburg: 1595)
They were not, as they have come to be construed, ‘projected’ onto the surface
of the earth, merely an imperfect system for squaring the circle. Their role,
if we follow Mercator’s argument in “De Mundi Creatione ac Fabrica”, was to
serve as visual prompts, reasserting the fact of the sphere on the surface of a
plane, reminding each viewer of Mercator’s maps that this surface conceptu-
ally is spherical, not flat. They were not an assertion, so beloved in fictions
about the Middle Ages, of a round earth against some consensus of flatness.
That the earth was a sphere was not the primary argument of these lines. Like
the eighteen discrete sheets [Fig. 5.2], those lines affirm materially the made-
ness of the world, its fabric.
In the Atlas, the lines are most visible in the image of the world Mercator’s
son Rumold engraved following his father’s direction, and still visible in the
scale of continents [Fig. 5.9]. As one enters the Atlas, from the opening pages,
the first images assert the sphericality of the earth: hemispheres, spaces tra-
versed by longitude and latitude, lines whose very curvature calls forth con-
ceptually a sphere [Fig. 5.10].
Figure 5.10 Gerard Mercator, “Evropa”, Atlas sive Cosmographicæ Meditationes de Fabrica
Those same lines have become invisible in the maps of figurae, in which
human settlements are more legible, and the names that humans have given
the places of Creation occupy more of the plane surface [Fig. 5.11]. But each
of the figurae is framed, set within markers of those lines, the marks evok-
ing what modern geographers call the grid.44 The markers of those lines form
44 ercator first indicated how to read the frame of each image as evoking the system of
M

latitude and longitude in “IN VSVM TABVLARVM ADMONITIO”, one of the paratexts
for the maps published in GALLIAE // tabulę geogra//phicæ (Duisburg: 1585) vr-v. On
perceiving longitudinal and latitudinal lines as a grid, see, for example, Short J.R., “The
Grid”, The World Through Maps: A History of Cartography (Oxford: 2003) 20–23; Snyder,
“Map Projections in the Renaissance”. See also Krücken W., “Der gerade Weg – Die
Mercator-Weltkarte AD USUM NAVIGANTIUM 1569”, Gerhard Mercator: Europa und
die Welt (Duisburg: Kultur- und Stadthhistorisches Museum, 1994) 211–19.
254 Wandel
Figure 5.11 Gerard Mercator, “Belgii”, Atlas sive Cosmographicæ Meditationes de Fabrica
STAATS- UND STADTBIBLIOTHEK AUGSBURG
the border, within which Mercator’s viewer contemplates the image of a seg-
ment of the earth. Within that border are not only human settlements and the
human names for those settlements in diverse languages, as well as for differ-
ent forms of water and land, but also systems of human measurement, ‘miles’.45
They all exist within the frame of the making of the earth. Those frames, like
the lines of longitude and latitude, following Mercator’s guide, materialize for
contemplation the fabric of the earth, the process of Creation, that precedes in
time everything recorded on the surface.
7 Time and Creation
If mathematics enabled the eye to discern the origin of the earth in chaos,
and the lines evoked for informed eyes the process of creation, they also, in
45 ‘[…] Sic Germanica communia miliaria (quæ 15 sunt in vno gradu) quadrupla inuenies
Italicis communibus, & subdupla ferè quibusdam Sucuicis ac Westfalicis’. Mercator G.,
GALLIAE tabulę geographicæ (Duisburg: [1585]) n.p.
evoking the sphere, invited meditation on the origin, the very beginnings of
all Creation.
[…] IN PRINCIPIO inquit, hoc est, cum nihil adhuc creaturæ esset, sed
iam primum creationem inchoare statuisset diuina maiestas, determina-
tis consilijs & legibus, in primo inquam puncot aut momento existentiæ
rerum, qui nihil adhuc rei est, sed nitium tantum rerum, omni rei aut
existentiæ conditione carens, in illo, inqua[m], momento temporis cœpit
creare, & deinceps CREAVIT DEVS, nulla præhabita materia, ex immen-
sa & incomprehensibilissima potentia sua, informen, rudem, & indiges-
tam massam, ex qua omnia deinceps mundi membra & partes deduxit.
[…] Sic vnus idemque Deus omnipotens in triplicitatis suæ vigore ex nihi-
lo, sine vllo assumpto subiecto, materiam omnium creandorum concepit,
formauit & in lucem protulit […]46
[…] In the beginning he says, that is, when there was as yet nothing cre-
ated, but when the divine majesty had long since decided to begin the
creation according to definite plans and laws; in the first instant, I say, or
moment of the existence of things, which was not yet real, but only the
beginning of things, without there being any one thing soever, or the con-
dition of existence. In that moment of time, I say, he began to create, and
then God created, with no supplied matter, from his immeasurable and
most incomprehensible power, an unformed, rude, and unordered mass,
from which he then drew off all the members and parts of the world.
[…] So God, one, self-same, and omnipotent in the strength of his triple
nature conceived, formed, and brought into light the matter of all things
to be created, from nothing and without the assumption of any subject.47
The sphere is not simply a perfect form. It is the material evidence of a process
that God set in motion, a kind of devotional object inviting the contempla-
tion of divine wisdom, divine intent, divine design. Its very form, for Mercator,
leads the mind back, following the plan of the Creator, not simply to chaos or
formlessness, but further back, to the very beginning of all matter. The sphere
figures process and in so figuring that process, leads the mind to the origin of
all matter.


Mundi et Fabricati Figura, (Octavo CD: Library of Congress), Adobe file, pp. 36–37.
256 Wandel
8 Conclusion
Informed by “De Mundi Creatione ac Fabrica” and its reading of Genesis, the
eyes of the beholder of Mercator’s descriptiones could thus discern in the en-
graved plane not simply human history – marked in the signs of settlement,
the names calligraphically rendered, the differing miles, German, Italian,
Westphalian, Gallic – the historiae often narrated on the preceding page. With
“De Mundi Creatione ac Fabrica”, Mercator invited the beholders of his descrip-
tiones to see Creation in those engraved surfaces.
Placing his exegesis of Genesis before the engraved descriptiones, Mercator
offered the beholder a gloss on the lines that formed coastlines, the shapes
that signed mountains and forests. Eyes informed could then discern in those
engraved lines the separation of land and water, the gathering up of land into
mountains – and by extension, see in the natural world the abiding physical
traces of that sequence of gestae of Creation recorded in Genesis. At one level,
then, the beholder might discern Creation as gestae materialized in the natural
world.
In his exegesis, however, Mercator invited the beholder of his descriptiones
into a deeper meditation on Creation, to see in the engraved surface – and by
extension, in the world around – something more than those discrete acts nar-
rated in Genesis. He invited the beholder to contemplate the Creator as ‘divine
architect’: to consider Creation not merely as made, but as designed. The be-
holder was invited to see in the physical signs of the gestae the divine hand and
in so doing, to look beyond – in parallel to reading the signs on a map, the lines
and shapes, s/he was to see coastlines and mountains as signs consciously en-
graved on the surface of the earth to communicate more than the mark itself.
In “De Mundi Creatione ac Fabrica” Mercator invited the beholder of his de-
scriptiones to contemplate Creation in terms of time and matter. Through that
lens, the very lines on the descriptiones – the coastlines, the forms of moun-
tains and forests – come to read as marking the process of Creation, point-
ing towards the separating and the gathering. In contemplating the gestae as
themselves steps of a process, the beholder is in turn led to ‘the beginning’.
In the spatial logic of the codex, Mercator and his heirs placed his exegesis of
Genesis before his descriptiones, thus placing the full narrative of Creation, in-
cluding the formation of light and the marking of day and night, before the im-
ages of the separation of land from the water and the gathering up of the land.
He placed the creation of time – day and night marked by the sun, months
marked by the moon – before the descriptiones, locating them in a spatial as
well as a temporal sequence.
That same lens transforms how the beholder construes the frame of each
descriptio. The markings of longitude and latitude continued to evoke the per-
fect sphere of the earth, which so many images of the world had done since the
fifteenth-century rediscovery of Ptolemaic geometry.48 But Mercator sought
to teach the eyes to see beyond the sphere’s perfect form, to discern in it the
deeper design of all Creation – the laws that lead the matter of chaos to form
a sphere. The beholder thus discerns in the perfect form a yet more ancient
process, which precedes in time the formation of coastlines and mountains, let
alone human history. The divine architect created that far more ancient pro-
cess in the very nature of matter itself – designed matter to behave in this way.
Thus the beholder was to see in the curvature of the earth a process governed
by laws God had set in motion and which the cosmographer rendered through
the instrument of mathematics.
Through that lens, human names, human settlements, human mea-
surements become visible as fragmentary, local, scattered. They are, in
Mercator’s rendering, both graphically and conceptually framed by traces
pointing towards the divine architect’s design. They exist within the plane
defined by those marks. When read with the gloss he provided, Mercator’s
descriptiones teach eyes to see in the fabric its processes, its causes, with the
aid of the instrument of mathematics, to contemplate the model that informs
all Creation, both past and present. They invite their beholder to see Creation
not as completed, but as ongoing, as engraved in the very fabric of the world.
Bibliography
Ackerman J.R., “Atlas: Birth of a Title”, in Watelet M., (ed.), The Mercator Atlas of Europe
(Pleasant Hill: 1998) 15–29.
Apian Peter, COSMOGRA//phicus Liber Petri Apiani Ma=//thematici studiose collec-
tus. (Landshut: n.p., 1524), A.
Apian Peter, COSMOGRAPHI= // CVS LIBER (Antwerp, Grapheus: 1533), Aii.
Averdunck H. – Müller-Reinhard J., Gerhard Mercator und die Geographen unter seinen
Nachkommen, Ergänzungsheft Nr. 182 zu “Petermann’s Mitteilungen” (Gotha: 1914).
Berggren J.L. – Jones A., Ptolemy’s Geography: An Annotated Translation of the Theoreti-
cal Chapters (Princeton: 2000).
48 Shirley R.W., The Mapping of the World: Early Printed World Maps (London: 1984, Revised
edition, Riverside, CT: 2001).
258 Wandel
Brusati C., “Perspectives in Flux: Viewing Dutch Pictures in Real Time”, Art History 5
(2012) 908–933.
Chartier R., Forms and Meanings: Texts, Performances, and Audiences from Codex to
Computer (Philadelphia: 1995).
Dilke O.A.W., Greek and Roman Maps (Baltimore – London: 1985).
Gerard Mercator’s Map of the World (1569) In the Form of an Atlas in the Maritime
Museum “Prins Hendrik” at Rotterdam, Rotterdam: Supplement No. 2 to Imago
Mundi (1961).
Karrow, Jr. R.W., “Gerard Mercator”, Mapmakers of the Sixteenth Century and Their
Maps (Chicago: 1993) 376–406.
Keuning J., “The History of an Atlas. Mercator – Hondius”, Imago Mundi 4 (1947) 37–62.
Marr A. (ed.), The Worlds of Oronce Fine: Mathematics, Instruments and Print in
Renaissance France (Donington: 2009).
Mercator Gerard, Atlas sive Cosmographicæ meditationes de fabrica mvndi et fabricati
figvra (Duisburg: Mercator, 1595) https://www.loc.gov/item/map55000728/.
Mercator Gerard, CHRONOLOGIA. // HOC EST, // TEMPORVM DE= //
MONSTRATIO EXACTISSIMA, AB // INITIO MVNDI, VSQVE AD ANNVM
DOMI- // NI M.D. XLVIII. (Cologne: Apud Haeredes Arnoldi Birckmanni, 1569).
Mercator Gerard, Literarum latinarum, quas Italicas, cursoriasque vocat, scribendaru[m]
ratio. (Louvain, Rutgerius Rescius: 1540).
Munster Sebastian, COSMOGRAPHIA. // Beschriebūg // aller lender (Basel: Henricus
Petrus, 1545).
Osley A.S., Mercator: A Monograph on the Lettering of Maps, etc., in the Sixteenth-Century
Netherlands with a Facsimile and a Translation of Ghym’s Vita Mercatoris (London:
1969).
Shirley R.W., The Mapping of the World: Early Printed World Maps (London: 1984,
Revised edition, Riverside, CT: 2001).
Skelton R.A., “Bibliographic Note”, Mercator – Hondius – Janssonius Atlas or A
Geographicke Description of the World Amsterdam 1636 (Amsterdam: 1968).
Snyder J.P., Flattening the Earth: Two Thousand Years of Map Projections (Chicago: 1993).
Van den Broecke M., Ortelius Atlas Maps: An Illustrated Guide, 2nd edition (Houten:
2011).
Van den Broecke M. – Van der Krogt P. – Meurer P. (eds.), Abraham Ortelius and the
First Atlas: Essays Commemorating the Quadricentennial of his Death 1598–1998
(Houten: 1998).
Van der Krogt P., “Mercators Atlas: Geschichte, Editionen, Inhalt”, in Blotevogel
H.H. – Vermij R. (eds.), Gerhard Mercator und die geistigen Strömungen des 16. und
17. Jahrhunderts, Duisburger Mercator-Studien 3 (1995) 49–64.
Wandel L.P., Reading Catechisms, Teaching Religion, Brill’s Studies on Art, Art History
and Intellectual History 11 (Leiden – Boston: 2016).
Wolter J.A. – Grim R.E. (eds.), Images of the World: The Atlas Through History
(Washington, DC: 1997).
Woodward D. (ed.), The History of Cartography vol. III: Cartography in the Renaissance,
Part I (Chicago and London: 2007).
chapter 6
What Did They See?: Science and Religion in

the Anatomical Theatres of the Sixteenth and
Seventeenth Centuries
Peter G.F. Eversmann
In the anatomical theatres of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and in the
public dissections that took place there, the secrets of nature were revealed. The
workings of the inner body are in a sense the epitome of mystery and secrecy;
hidden from sight but sensed through feeling and propioception. When in early
modern times one sought to get direct visual access to the processes going on
inside the body, this could only be done by cutting into the outer shell, meaning
also that the life itself – the object of investigation one was so curious about – was
destroyed or had to be inferred from bodies already dead. No wonder that in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, at a time when modern scientific enquiry
began to flourish, public anatomy lessons were enjoying enormous popularity.
But the structure of these theatres begs the question of what people actually
saw and heard at these events. What was revealed to them? To begin answering
that question, this essay will take a closer look at the development of anatomi-
cal theatres and the procedures that went on there.
In 1595 a permanent anatomical theatre was inaugurated at the university
in Padua, where it still exists as part of the Palazzo del Bò.1 Although it is often
called the first permanent anatomical theatre, it was preceded by anoth-
er permanent structure built twelve years earlier that was announced as a
theatrum publicum et perpetuum – a public space destined forever for anatom-
ic purposes.2 However, the second theatre is the oldest anatomical theatre that
is still preserved, and it should certainly be considered a landmark in so far
as it served as a model for anatomical theatres that were built throughout
Europe in the three centuries afterwards.3 Around the same time, in 1594,
1 Zampieri F. – et al., “Origin and Development of Modern Medicine at the University of Padua
and the Role of the ‘Serenissima’ Republic of Venice”, Global Cardiology Science and Practice
(2013) 149–162.
2 Klestinec C., “A History of Anatomy Theaters in Sixteenth-Century Padua”, Journal of the
History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 59, 3 (2004) 389.
3 Del Negro P. – Ongaro G., The University of Padua: Eight Centuries of History (Padua:
2003) 169.

SCIENCE AND RELIGION IN THE ANATOMICAL THEATRES ( 16TH & 17TH C. ) 261
the city of Leiden followed suit and also erected a permanent theatrum
anatomicum – again within an academic context.4 I will discuss this theatre
later, but for now it suffices to remark that it was not the only structure of its
kind in the Low Countries. Rupp counts as many as twelve cities in the sev-
enteenth century that housed anatomical theatres, with Leiden, Delft, and
Amsterdam as the most important ones.5 And this is only the Netherlands –
for Europe and later on the New World, the list goes on almost endlessly, with
anatomical theatres (or plans for them) in every city that saw itself as respect-
able. Some of these remain more or less intact and can still be visited. Besides
the one in Padua, the theatre in Leiden has been reconstructed in the Museum
Boerhave, and a rather beautiful example has survived in Uppsala where it
was built on top of the main university building, the Gustavianum, in 1663.
From these, but even more so from other visual evidence – drawings, prints,
sketches, architectural plans, and the like – it becomes clear that with very
few exceptions, these anatomical theatres are all following more or less the
same structural principles. They are theatres-in-the-round with the audience
almost fully encircling the cutting table. The circular, octagonal, or elliptical
auditorium is raked very steeply and only broken by a relatively small entrance
by which one gains access to the middle ground where the cutting slab stands,
often encircled by a balustrade. Quite commonly, steps on either side of the en-
trance lead to the upper rows, but in Padua steps at the outside of the structure
provide access – emphasizing even more the total surrounding of the body by
the audience. As a rule, benches are provided only in the first circle; the rest
of the auditorium usually provides only standing places. There are hardly any
exceptions to this general pattern – only Bologna is somewhat different. Here,
the lavishly decorated anatomical theatre, dating from 1637 to 1649, is rectan-
gular rather than circular – although the audience is still seated and standing
along all four sides of the room – and much emphasis has been put upon the
cathedra of the anatomy professor, serving as a second focal point next to the
slab.6 But Bologna does stand out as the exception confirming the standard
rule that was established in Padua.
4 H uisman T., The Finger of God: Anatomical Practice in 17th-Century Leiden, Ph.D. dissertation
(University of Leiden: 2008) 25–26, gives as the building dates of the Leiden Anatomical
Theatre, erected in the Faliedebagijnekerk, December 1591 to the end of 1594 – most probably
after the designs of Pieter Pauw.
5 Rupp J.C., “Het theatrum anatomicum: publiekscommunicatief fossiel of ‘archetype’”, Gewina
25, 4 (2002) 191.
6 Ferrari F., “Public Anatomy Lessons and the Carnival: The Anatomy Theatre of Bologna”, Past
and Present 117 (1987) 74–82.
262 Eversmann
It is well known how these structures functioned, and their architectural

pattern has been explained from the requirements of the public dissections
that took place in principle once a year – but often less frequently, depending
on the availability of corpses of criminals or ‘strangers’ and on the willingness
of the anatomical professor to stage the event.7 The public lesson in anatomy
was put on during winter – when the corpses would last longer – and lasted
several days, during which the body was anatomized according to a more or
less fixed protocol, starting with the abdomen and the entrails that were most
prone to decay, then thorax, head and neck, the brains, and the extremities.
The whole affair could stretch as long as ten or fifteen consecutive days, and
there are instances where it is known that fresh bodies replaced the ones that
had been worked on before. Also, it could happen that during this cram course,
vivisection was performed on animals – usually dogs or pigs.8
The audience often comprised hundreds of people; the theatre in Padua
held as many as two hundred persons, and the second theatre in Amsterdam
even more. The spectators came from all social strata, and their seating ar-
rangements were highly stratified. On the first row, closest to the body and
with seating facilities, magistrates, nobles, the governing body of the surgeons’
guild, the collegium medicum, the rector of the school, and members of the
medical college. The second row was reserved for the surgeons, learned doc-
tors, and apothecaries while the third and fourth rows were reserved for the
students. The rest of the rows were open to the paying public.9 The space di-
rectly around the body – the inner sanctum, so to speak – was reserved for
the surgeon and his helpers that were overseen by the professor in his cathe-
dra. When the professor himself carried out the dissection, this chair could
be omitted.
7 Ibidem 50–53, cf. also the general descriptions of the unfolding of public dissections and the
regulations involved in Rupp, “Het theatrum anatomicum” 195–198, and Rupp J.C., “Matters
of Life and Death: The Social and Cultural Conditions of the Rise of Anatomical Theatres,
with Special Reference to Seventeenth Century Holland”, History of Science 28 (1990) 265–
269. The protocols of the anatomical lessons in Padua are described in Klestinec, “A History
of Anatomy Theaters” 389–394.
8 Cf. for example Klestinec, “A History of Anatomy Theaters” 375; and Wilson L., “William
Harvey’s Prelectiones: The Performance of the Body in the Renaissance Theater of Anatomy”,
Representations 17, special issue: The Cultural Display of the Body (1987) 71.
9 On the stratification of the audiences in the anatomical theatres, cf. for example Klestinec,
“A History of Anatomy Theaters” 392–393; and Baljet B., “The Painted Amsterdam Anatomy
Lessons: Anatomy Performances in Dissecting Rooms?”, Annals of Anatomy – Anatomischer
Anzeiger 182, 1 (2000) 4.
Although women were not explicitly excluded, and there is evidence that
they indeed sometimes attended the public lessons,10 it appears from the vi-
sual sources that the overwhelming majority of the audience consisted of men.
The spectators had to behave in an orderly fashion, and questions should be
put in a regular manner. The anatomist was allowed to answer the questions
the next day, so the sometimes very heated debates between surgeons and
learned doctors could be somewhat regulated. Also, in Amsterdam at least,
there was a rule that one could incur a high fine for stealing dissected body
parts during the anatomical lesson: these parts were passed around so that the
audience members in the upper rows could also inspect them, and apparently
some of these parts were much sought after.11
When the theatres were not in use for public anatomy lessons, the audito-
rium and adjoining rooms could serve as a cabinet or a kind of museum where
skeletons, anatomical preparations, rarities, and paintings were put on display.
In Amsterdam, for example, next to anatomical instruments and preparations
of inner organs, one could admire such things as the skin of a criminal that
had been dissected in 1550, the skeleton of an English pirate (anatomized in
1615), the skull of a pygmy and stuffed animals such as a snake from the West
Indies, a mouse with wings, a swan, several cats and dogs and – after 1663 – a
lion.12 Also, the theatres were used for private anatomical lessons to smaller
groups of students. For example, the famous Dr. Frederik Ruisch (1638–1731)
was known to give his obligatory anatomical lessons to midwives in the same
Amsterdam theatre.13
The above sketches a more or less general image of these theatres and what
they were designed for. The structures have been described as funnels or wells
with the flattened, outstretched body at the bottom, and the very steep en-
circling galleries can be explained by their function – providing a maximum
number of spectators with a rather unobstructed view of the dissection.14
However, if one takes into consideration the considerable distance from the
top rows, the often poor lighting conditions – in Amsterdam the shutters in
10 Ferrari, “Public Anatomy Lessons” 99.

11 Rupp, “Matters of Life and Death” 268. See also Thijssen E.H.M., Nicolaas Tulp als ge-
neeskundige geschetst: eene bijdrage tot de geschiedenis der geneeskunde in de XVIIde
eeuw, Ph.D. dissertation (Amsterdam: 1881) 31.
12 Thijssen, Nicolaas Tulp 21; and Rupp, “Matters of Life and Death” 277–278.
13 For Ruysch, see http://ruysch.dpc.uba.uva.nl/cgi/t/text/text-idx?page=home;lang=en;c=
ruysch;cc=ruysch (20.12.2018).
14 Sawday J., The Body Emblazoned: Dissection and the Human Body in Renaissance Culture
(London – New York, 1995) 67.
264 Eversmann
front of the windows were closed and the candles lighted during public anat-
omy lessons15 – and the crowding around the body of the anatomist and his
helpers, one nevertheless wonders what actually could have been perceived
and whether the public anatomical lesson could indeed have served to show
the finer details of human anatomy to the whole audience. Undoubtedly, me-
ticulous medical investigation and instruction required much closer inspec-
tion than these theatres could have provided to most of their attendees – even
if some parts of the bodies were passed around. Besides, one might also won-
der, Why were these structures called theatres? Granted, within the ritualistic
proceedings that characterized the event of a public dissection, there are cer-
tainly tendencies that can be described as theatrical, but the spatial arrange-
ments are a far cry from the regular theatres, and the interaction between the
audience and ‘actors’ (if one can call them that) operating on the body is of a
completely different nature. Also, the concept of ‘play’ – in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries so closely linked to theatrical activity – does not readily
come to mind in connection with dissecting bodies.
In order to delve a little deeper into what people actually might have expe-
rienced in these anatomical theatres and into the question of what made the
public anatomy lessons so attractive to a general audience, I will now take a
closer look at the genesis of these structures – examining some of the visual
evidence and confronting it with some of the written sources.
One of the earliest pictures of a dissection is given on the title page of
Mondino’s Anathomia from a woodcut of 1493 [Fig. 6.1]. The scene presumably
depicts the famous doctor Mondino de’ Luzzi (ca. 1270–1326), who lived around
180 years before this woodcut was made. He was a professor of anatomy in
Bologna from the late 1290s to his death in 1326 and published his Anathomia
corporis humani in 1316. It was to become the most important and commonly
used text on anatomy for the next 250 years.16 In this woodcut we are present-
ed with the two main persons – or actors if you prefer – who are at the heart of
the dissection practice: the learned professor of anatomy or praelector in his
elaborate chair, holding a book that was used as guidance in the proceedings
and that was commented upon, in this case probably the Anathomia itself. The
dirty handiwork of the dissection is done by the demonstrator – usually a sur-
geon belonging to the barbers’ guild – who has cut the body and, following the
instructions of the professor, is showing the inner parts.
15 Glazenburg J., “Rembrandt’s Anatomy of Dr. Nicolaas Tulp”, Archivum chirurgicum

Neerlandicum 29, 2 (1977) 84.
16 Wilson, William Harvey’s Praelectiones 63–64.
Figure 6.1 Anonymous, frontispiece of Mondino de’ Luzzi (Mundinus), Anathomia

Mundini, published by Martin Pollick van Mellerstadt (Leipzig, Martin
Landsberg: 1493). Woodcut
Source: https://nl.pinterest.com/pin/551339179376115350/
?lp=true
266 Eversmann
Although the scene presents us with the teamwork that lay at the heart of
the anatomical practice, it cannot be said to reflect what actually happened at
anatomy lessons: it is set outside, and there are no further spectators present.
This is a little bit different when we look at another picture from the same
year – 1493 – that comes from an Italian translation of Johannes de Ketham’s
Fasciculus Medicinae published in Venice [Fig. 6.2].
Here the division of labour has progressed, and next to the praelector and
the workmanlike surgeon/demonstrator there is a third figure: the so-called
ostensor, who indicated with a wand the precise parts of the body that the
professor referred to and sometimes is said to have functioned as a translator –
repeating the Latin phrases and comments in vernacular that could be un-
derstood by everybody present.17 This was probably unnecessary in the actual
scene depicted here because the audience consists of learned people from the
university, as their caps and long gowns attest. The two persons next to the
cathedra without a headdress are probably two senior medical students – the
so-called massarii – who were responsible for the practical arrangements of
the anatomy demonstration: setting up the location, taking care of the in-
struments, procuring the specimens, etcetera.18 So, the scene clearly depicts
an anatomy lesson within an academic context and not necessarily a depic-
tion of a public dissection. There are more such scenes – as illustrations from
Berengario da Carpi’s Isagoge Breves published in Bologna 1523 [Fig. 6.3] and in
Venice 1535 [Fig. 6.4] attest.
Again, the attendants are clearly academics, so we cannot say that we are
witnessing an event for the public at large. However, although the visual evi-
dence does not show it, it is known from other sources that public anatomy
spectacles attracting a rather broad spectrum of scholars, artists, and civil ser-
vants were surely held and used temporary theatrical structures to accommo-
date the audience.
Alessandro Benedetti (1450?–1512) has left an interesting firsthand account
of such a public lesson in his treatise on anatomy that was published in Venice
in 1502.19 In this work one finds a description of the rules and the progression
of public anatomy lessons as they were practised at the beginning of the six-
teenth century. As Ferrari writes,
Benedetti proceeds […] by supplying precise indications as to the time

and place most suitable to the performance of anatomical investigations.
17 Ibidem 64.
18 Klestinec, “A History of Anatomy Theaters” 382.
19 Ferrari, “Public Anatomy Lessons” 56–61.
Figure 6.2
Anonymous, anatomy
lesson, illustration from
Johannes de Ketham’s
Fasciculo de medicina,
translation by Sebastiano
Manilio of Fasciculus
medicinae (Venice, Zuane
& Gregorio di Gregorii:
1493/94) 64. Woodcut,
32 cm. (folio)
Source: https://
www.nlm.nih.
gov/exhibition/
historical
anatomies/ketham_
home.html
Figure 6.3 Hugo da Carpi, title page of Jacopo Berengario da Carpi’s Isagogae breues,
perlucidae ac uberrimae, in anatomiam humani corporis a communi medicorum
academia usitatam (Bologna, Benedictus Hector: 1523). Woodcut. Detail, lower
middle part of page
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Isagogae_
breves_in_anatomiam_humani_V00114_00000010.tif
268 Eversmann
Figure 6.4 Anonymous, title page of Jacopo Berengario da Carpi’s Anatomia Carpi.
Isagoge breves, perlucide ac uberime, in anatomiam humani corporis, a,
comuni medicorum academia, usitatam, a, Carpo in almo Bononiensi gymnasio
ordinariam chirurgiae publicae docente, ad suorum scholasticorum preces in
lucë date (Venice, Bernardinum De Vitalibus: 1535). Woodcut. National Library
of Austria, Vienna
Source: http://digital.onb.ac.at/OnbViewer/viewer.
faces?doc=ABO_%2BZ184496903
Lessons, he states, should be held at the coldest time of year, so that the
bodies can be kept over a long period, in a large and well-ventilated room.
Inside this room, Benedetti recommends the construction of a ‘tempo-
rary theatre … with seats arranged in a circle, of the kind that are seen
in Rome or Verona’ [Benedetti refers here to the elliptical amphithe-
atres that were preserved from Roman times – PE]. The cadaver was to
be placed on a high well-lit table in the centre of the room. The seat-
ing arrangement of the audience is not left to chance: ‘the seats must
be allocated according to rank’ (sedendi ordo pro dignitate distribuendus
est), and this task is entrusted to a praefectus. The custodes, on the other
hand, have the job of keeping the importunam plebem away, while two
quaestores collect the money to cover the necessary expenses.20
The first actual depiction of such a temporary anatomical theatre as described

by Benedetti and holding a large audience is to be found on the well-known
frontispiece of Andreas Vesalius’s De humani corporis fabrica, printed in Basle
in 1543 [Fig. 6.5]. This print has been analysed almost to death, but let me nev-
ertheless point out a few things with regard to architecture and audience that
can help one understand the place of this anatomical theatre within the de-
velopment towards the Padua and Leiden models.21 But first one should note a
rather remarkable difference of this scene with the previous ones. Here there
is no longer a division of labour – no longer a learned physician reading from
a book and a surgeon working on the body. It is Vesalius (1514–1564) himself
who takes on the role of dissecting and demonstrating – actually touching the
opened body – as well as that of lecturing. The surgeon is still there, but he has
been demoted to the figure under the table, trying – no doubt in vain – to pro-
tect his instruments from one of Vesalius’s helpers. What can also be discerned
is a shift away from books as the main source of authority in favour of hands-
on experience and empirical perception. To be sure, books are not completely
discarded: there is an open one, but it’s not in the hands of Vesalius, and it’s
being studied by two young men in the second rank of spectators. The other
book that can be discerned is ostentatiously closed while its owner is pointing
to the arm of a young man that – as for example Sawday has pointed out –
with its open sleeve is clearly reminiscent of anatomical pictures of muscles
and sinews.22 As such this little scene can possibly be regarded as an echo of
20 Ibidem 61.
21 For discussions of the scene on the frontispiece, cf. for example Wilson, “William Harvey’s
Prelectiones” 69–74; Carlino A., “The Book, the Body, the Scalpel: Six Engraved Title Pages
for Anatomical Treatises of the First Half of the Sixteenth Century”, Anthropology and
Aesthetics 16 (1988)41–45; and Sawday, The Body Emblazoned 66–72.
22 Sawday, The Body Emblazoned 68.
270 Eversmann
Figure 6.5 Studio of Titian, title page from Andreas Vesalius’s De humani corporis fabrica
Libri septem (Basel, Johannes Oporinus: 1543). Woodcut, 43 cm. (folio). Center
for the History of Medicine and Public Health, New York
Source: https://nyamcenterforhistory.org/tag/
art-and-the-body-vesalius-500/page/2/
Vesalius’s own portrait from inside the book, where he is demonstrating the
anatomy of a flayed arm.23 So again, the importance of direct observation is
stressed here.
A lot has been said also about the skeleton, which, with its central place in
the picture, is commonly seen as an allegory of Death who, with his pointing
wand, is either reminiscent of the ostensor or who even, to quote the words
of Sawday, ‘rises pictorially out of the womb’ – indicating that we are born to
die.24 This all might be very well, but one should not forget that this image is
not only allegorical or symbolical; its fascination lies in the curious mix be-
tween symbolism and reality and the openness of the sign language that en-
sues from this – allowing for double and triple meanings. Seen from such an
angle, the skeleton might equally well have been a real exemplum that was
displayed during the dissection, and in that case the wand is probably just a
structural device necessary to uphold the bones. It is only on the frontispiece
of a later edition of Vesalius’s Fabrica (1555) that the duality is resolved through
a telling change: now the skeleton holds a scythe and is clearly an allegory of
death [Fig. 6.6].
As to the architectural features of this scene: it has been remarked, and
rightly so, that we deal here with a cross section of a circular theatre of the
kind described by Benedetti: rows of temporary benches constructed around
the cutting table.25 What is interesting, though, is that this temporary scaffold-
ing has been set within a classical structure. In his analysis, Sawday links this
structure to Bramantes Tempietto in Rome – stressing the basilical, temple-
like associations of this circular building.26 However, the argument is not
very convincing – linking the imagery of the frontispiece to the outside of the
Tempietto, rather than to the inside. There is, however, a much more strik-
ing parallel of the depicted architectural surroundings – also mentioned by
Sawday but more or less discarded. This parallel can be found in illustrations
from printed editions of Plautus – such as the one from Venice (1511) [Fig. 6.7].
The indebtedness of Vesalius’s frontispiece to this reconstruction of a Roman
coliseum or theatre becomes clearly apparent when one looks at the posture
of the naked man clasping a pillar. This figure has been identified by some as
Adam and by others as an allegory of surface anatomy. Its meaning is not exact-
ly clear, and it doesn’t help much that in the already mentioned second edition
the man is clothed. However, the pictorial parallel with the two figures from
23 Ibidem.
24 Ibidem 71.
26 Sawday, The Body Emblazoned 69–70.
272 Eversmann
Figure 6.6 Anonymous, title page from Andreas Vesalius’s De humani corporis fabrica
Libri septem (Basel, Johannes Oporinus: 1555). Woodcut, 43 cm. (folio).
Center for the History of Medicine and Public Health, New York
Source: https://nyamcenterforhistory.org/tag/
art-and-the-body-vesalius-500/page/2/
Figure 6.7 Lazarus de Soardi, illustration from Plautus, Comoediae XX (Venice, Lazarus
Soardus: 1511). Woodcut
Source: https://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/resrep00_01/
Jahresbericht_2_3_section.html
274 Eversmann
the Plautus engraving is too striking to be a coincidence.27 So, this Vesalian

theatre positions itself within the tradition of scholarship dealing with circular
theatres from antiquity and with interpreting Vitruvius.
It is an interesting coincidence that at about the same time Charles Estienne
(1504–1564), the famous Parisian professor of anatomy, proposed an alternative
model for an ideal Vitruvian style anatomy theatre – not round but semicircu-
lar. In his 1545 textbook of anatomy, De dissectione partium corporis humani
libri tres, he speaks of the importance of arranging a suitable ‘anatomical site’
for the public lessons.28 He goes on to say that anatomy is like any other the-
atrical show and will appear more beautiful and ‘pleasing to the spectators if
they are able to see it clearly, from equally good vantage points and without
getting in each other’s way’.29 With regard to the placement of the dissecting
table, he states that it should be arranged ‘in front of the theatre, in the place
where the ancients placed the stage’.30 His treatise refers to Vitruvian terms
connected with theatre architecture such as cavea, hemicyclus, and scena, and
he calculated the measurements of the seats and the location for the entrances
and exits. All this leads Ferrari to conclude that Estienne either had firsthand
knowledge of Vitruvius’s De Architectura or that he collaborated with someone
who did.31 It is tempting to think that Sebastiano Serlio (1475–ca. 1554) – who
was in Paris at the time, working on his Architettura containing instructions for
a temporary court theatre and reconstructive drawings of Vitruvian scenery –
might have played a role here, but one cannot be sure.32 However, Estienne’s
work does show that by the middle of the sixteenth century there were at least
two rival models for the setting up of anatomical theatres: a completely sur-
rounding amphitheatre or a more frontal, semicircular structure.
Why exactly the Vesalian model won is unclear; it was probably an amalgam
of practical, aesthetic, and philosophical/architectural reasons. But before
continuing to discuss how the permanent anatomical theatres relate to such
27 Cf. figures 6.5, 6.6 and 6.7.

29 Estienne as quoted in Ferrari, “Public Anatomy Lessons” 85.

30 Ibidem.
32 Sebastiano Serlio published the second book of his Regole generali di architettura con-
taining the instructions for setting up a ‘Vitruvian’ theatre and depictions of settings for
tragedy, comedy, and pastoral plays in 1545 (Paris, Jean Barbé). In the same year Charles
Estienne published his De dissectione partium corporis humani libri tres (Paris, Simonem
Colinaeum). Serlio was in the service of King François I, and this was also the case for
Charles Estienne’s brother Robert, who owned a printshop and was ‘Printer in Greek to
the King’. Therefore it seems likely that Charles Estienne at least must have had knowl-
edge of Serlio’s work.
temporary ones as depicted in the Vesalius frontispiece, it is important to note

one more aspect of the latter. This has to do with the audience. What becomes
apparent when studying the image closely is that there are actually two audi-
ence groups. In the outer circle almost no one is looking at Vesalius or the ana-
tomical subject on the table (with the possible exception of one or two figures;
the already mentioned young man with the ‘anatomy arm’ and the hooded
figure that Sawday designates as Dantesque – but the latter could also be gaz-
ing at the book).33 This is not to say that these attendees do not belong there
or are completely inattentive – rather, they seem to reflect on the proceedings
or to discuss them among one another. This is in stark contrast to the persons
depicted in the inner circle who are really involved in the dissection that is
going on – straining to see what is happening, leaning on each other, pushing
one another out of the way, even to the point where they seem to touch the
body Vesalius is working on.
That this hustle and bustle so very close to the subject might not be very
far away from what was going on in reality can be glimpsed from the diary of
Baldasar Heseler, a Silesian student of medicine who studied in Bologna and
watched Andreas Vesalius performing a vivisection on a dog in 1540. He wrote:
“I myself saw how the heart of the dog bounded upwards; and when it
no longer moved and the dog instantly died. Those mad Italian students
pulled the dog back and forth so that nobody could truly feel those two
movements.” When the students asked Vesalius what he thought about
these movements he replied: “I do not want to give you my opinion, you
yourselves should feel with your own hands, and trust them.”34
This is of course good medical and surgical training, but it is more of a work-
shop than a theatre, and one can imagine that the rather unruly behaviour of
the students that Heseler describes was somewhat detrimental to the needs of
the onlookers that were watching from a bit more of a distance.
It is exactly this tension between the need for very practical medical train-
ing and hands-on structural anatomy, on one hand, versus orderly, solemn
procedures and a more philosophical discourse, on the other, that is traced
by Cynthia Klestinec in her article on the history of anatomy theatres in
sixteenth-century Padua. From the records of the university and especially
from the acta of the students’ ‘nazione’, she convincingly shows how under

34 Baldasar Heseler as quoted in Klestinec, “A History of Anatomy Theaters” 375–376 (trans.
Ruben Eriksson, 1959).
276 Eversmann
Hieronymus Fabricius of Aquapendente (1537–1619), who as one of the suc-

cessors of Vesalius was professor of anatomy from 1565 to 1613, there evolves a
marked split between practical anatomy lessons for the students and the much
more regulated public events. The development of the latter is also described
as a transition from Galenic to Aristotelian teaching of anatomy, whereby
Fabricius is searching for universal principles rather than instructing how
to dissect the particularities of individual bodies and show their anatomical
structure. It is a shift from focusing on the technical skills of the dissection of
the whole body towards the philosophical contemplations on anatomy and
towards an essentially Aristotelian discourse that seeks to reveal the ‘secrets of
nature’ – extrapolating general notions from specific anatomical parts in order
to lay bare the hidden principles that unite or distinguish various species.
The architectural development towards the structure of the permanent the-
atres fits within this shift in anatomical style. Already in the records pertaining
to the first Paduan theatre from 1584, it is clear that its structure, the formalized
seating arrangements, and the increasing regulations of the procedures were
more or less consciously used to diminish the interactive participation and dis-
turbances from the students. For example, in this theatre the students were not
allowed in the proximity of the central slab but were relegated to benches fur-
ther away from the corpse – the first row now being reserved for the rectors and
doctors of the university.35 The finer, experimental knowledge and instruction
in dissection techniques were reserved for ‘private lessons’ that from 1582–83
onwards became an official part of the curriculum and were given elsewhere.
In the second permanent theatre from 1595 that is still intact, the transition is
really completed. However, in this theatre the students no longer scorned the
lengthy philosophical digressions of Fabricius and the lack of technical educa-
tion in structural anatomy as they had done before. Instead, in the new the-
atre with its formal atmosphere, the public anatomy lessons relied on orations
and music for their effectiveness and not so much on the progressive stages of
human dissection – as is also attested by the fact that most of the actual cut-
ting was done in an adjoining preparation room.36 It is suggested that hearing
the learned discourse of the professor and the sound of the playing musicians
was more important than seeing the corpse, and it is in this way that the public
anatomy demonstration becomes closer to the regular dramatic theatre than
it had ever been before. In the words of Klestinec:
35 Klestinec, “A History of Anatomy Theaters” 389.

36 Ibidem 406–407.
In the second permanent anatomy theater students no longer com-

plained about Fabricius’s teaching. The theater thus served to mediate
the students’ potential critical responses, providing a space in which
Fabricius created a rhetorically powerful performance of anatomy that
emphasized the natural extensions of anatomy and illuminated the se-
crets of nature.37
This change towards favouring the more philosophically oriented aspects of

the anatomical lesson also affected the dominant mode of spectatorship – from
seeing the opened body and meticulously inspecting its inner parts to hearing
the exposition of the praelector and to contemplating the ‘(initial anatomical)
causes of human nature’.38 And it is precisely this shift (and the ensuing theat-
ricality of the proceedings) that enabled the anatomy lessons to become such
popular events that attracted large audiences. A report from 1595 by one of the
students in Padua illustrates this shift by explicitly noting that not only mem-
bers of the academy visited the anatomy lesson but also a cross section from
the population: ‘Jews, teachers, tailors, shoemakers, sandal-makers, butchers,
salted fish dealers and, lower than these, porters and basket-bearers’.39
The philosophical attitude towards anatomy might also provide a further
clue to the structure of the theatre in Padua if one realizes that the body is here
presented at the centre of the universe of the galleries. It might not be a coin-
cidence that there are seven rows of spectators. Could it be that the spheres
of the heavens, musical theory, and the planetary ellipses of the solar system
are symbolically reflected in the architectural structure – pointing towards a
sacred union of macro- and microcosm?
It’s possibly too early to tell for sure – and more research is needed – but let
me at least point towards some more interesting coincidences that connect
anatomy and anatomical theatres to the universe at large. For example, the
golden ball on top of the anatomical theatre in Uppsala is in fact identified as
a sundial/sun globe, and the ceiling of the anatomical theatre in Bologna was
adorned by ‘symbolic representations of fourteen constellations gravitating
around the figure of Phoebus, the god of medicine’.40 And on the frontispiece
of Van Diemerbroeck’s Anatome corporis humani published in 1679 [Figs. 6.8
and 6.9], instead of a cut body we see the hand of God holding up the universe.41
37 Ibidem 411.
38 Ibidem 400.
39 Ibidem 401.
41 The picture, being the printer’s device of Jean Antoine Huguetan (1619–1681), is not
exclusive to this edition of Diemerbroeck’s Anatome corporis humani. However, with
278 Eversmann
Figure 6.8
Anonymous,
title page of
Isbrand van
Diemerbroeck’s
Anatome corporis
humani (Lyon,
Jean Antoine
Huguetan: 1679).
Universidad
Complutense de
Madrid (Google
digitized)
Source:
https://
catalog.hat
hitrust.org/
Record/00930
4148
Figure 6.9 Printer’s device of Jean Antoine Huguetan (1619–1681). Engraving

Source: http://pitts.emory.edu/dia/image_details.
cfm?ID=122092
Figure 6.10 Willem Isaacsz Swanenburch, the anatomical theatre of Leiden University
(Vera anatomiae Lugduno-Batavae cum sceletis et reliquis quae ibi extant
delineatio – title on object), after Jan Cornelisz. van ’t Woudt (Andries Clouck:
1610). Engraving, 33 × 39.4 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Source: http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.181659
In Leiden the direct successor of the Paduan anatomical theatre in the Low
Countries had seven rows of spectators as well. [Fig. 6.10]. The picture dates
from 1610 and apparently functioned as a kind of souvenir that could be ac-
quired after a visit to the premises: the caption explicitly states that the skel-
etons and relics of the Leiden anatomical theatre are depicted as they truly stand
here.42 As with the Vesalius frontispiece, the picture has been subject to quite
its inscription alluding to the vanitas theme (UNIVERSITAS RERUM UT PULVIS IN

MANU JEHOVAE; all things are dust in the hand of Jehovah) and the armillary sphere re-
ferring to the universe at large, the imagery is particularly apt to illustrate the Aristotelian
attitude towards anatomy – linking micro- and macrocosmos.
42 The truthfulness of the print is contested – amongst others by Delft L. van, Littérature
et anthropologie: nature humaine et caractère à l’âge classique (Paris: 1993) 213–215.
However, it seems that the architectural elements are depicted quite accurately and
that the assemblages of skeletons of humans and animals were indeed present in the
280 Eversmann
Figure 6.11 Bartholomeus Willemsz Dolendo (possibly), theatrum anatomicum of the

Academy in Leiden (Amphitheatrum Anatomicum Luduno Batavorum – title
on object), after Jan Cornelisz. van ’t Woudt (Jacob Marcus: 1609). Engraving,
46 × 55.3 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Source: http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.381385
a lot of analysis – amongst others by Sawday who treats it in conjunction

with a second picture of the same theatre [Fig. 6.11] that dates from a year
earlier.43 Here the structure is peopled, depicting the professor Pieter Pauw
(1564–1617) in the course of a public anatomy lecture. In accordance with
what has been discussed above – the shift from practical instruction to a more
theatre that, when not in use for dissections, functioned as a kind of museum of natural
history. Cf. Lunsing Scheurleer T., “Un amphithéâtre d’anatomie moralisée”, in Lunsing
Scheurleer T. – Posthumus Meyjes G.H.M. (eds.), Leiden University in the Seventeenth
Century: An Exchange of Learning. (Leiden: 1975) 222.
43 Sawday, The Body Emblazoned 72–75. The two prints are also extensively discussed in
Delft, Littérature et anthropologie 209–216; and Lunsing Scheurleer, “Un amphithéâtre
d’anatomie moralisée” 216–222.
philosophical-religious attitude – it is interesting to note that the book is back

and the scene around the cutting table is much less crowded and rowdy than
with Vesalius.
Equally interesting are the allusions and the symbolic references in the
other picture. Of course, it has been recognised that two of the themes pervad-
ing this scene are that of ‘memento mori’ and, closely related to it, the ‘vani-
tas’ theme. The skull and the hourglass upheld by a putto above the cabinet
with anatomical instruments are a clear example of the former – as are some
of the texts on the banners such as NASCENTES MORIMUR (we are born
to die), PRINCIPIUM MORIENDI NATALIS EST (birth is the beginning of
death), and MORS ULTIMA LINEA RERUM (death is the line that marks the
end of all). Other texts are rather exemplifying the vanitas theme: PULVIS ET
UMBRA SUMIS (we are dust and shadow) and MORS SCEPTRA LIGONIBUS
AEQUAT (death wrenches from the hand the sceptre as well as the spade). Yet
a third theme is that of NOSCE TE IPSUM: know thyself.44 These themes are
also apparent in the two groups that involve women – the one on the right con-
templating a human skin while clutching an expensive handkerchief and the
one on the left with a woman holding a looking glass adorned with peacock(?)
feathers. According to Sawday, these represent ‘not so much a vanitas sym-
bol as a reminder of self-knowledge gained through the reflective discipline
of anatomy’.45
One of the most striking features of the image is of course given by the
Adam and Eve skeletons, arranged around the tree of knowledge with the ser-
pent. Such montage groups where skeletons were positioned in a kind of the-
atrical scene were not uncommon at the time. For Sawday it is this group that
really holds the key to the moral interpretation of the picture and indeed to the
theatre as a whole:
Adam and Eve are poised at the moment of the fall, when death entered
the world. At once the complete meaning of the theatre becomes appar-
ent. The collection of animal skeletons, symbolizing the dominion over
creation once held by Adam and Eve, the moralizing instructions borne
44 In the other picture, some of the texts on the banners are marginally different: MEMENTO
MORI (remember you will die), HOMO BULLA (man is a bubble), MORS ULTIMUM.
VITA BREVIS (death is the end, life is short), and OMNES EODEM COGIMUR AEQUA
LEGE NECESSITAS SORTITUR INSIGNES ET IMOS (we are all going the same way;
by necessity the [natural] law equal to all takes both the insignificant as well as the im-
portant ones). According to Delft, Littérature et anthropologie 212–213, the texts on both
engravings function as active moral appeals to the onlooker.
282 Eversmann
by the human skeletons in the theatre, all are expressive of the triumph
of death, frozen as it were, at the very moment of its first appearance.46
This is indeed quite a grim picture, then, a veritable ‘cabinet of death’. However,
when one considers a second montage in the theatre – the human skeleton
with sword, hammer, and helmet riding the skeleton of a horse – another
interpretation is also possible. This group is of course easily recognized as one
of the horsemen of the Apocalypse, but in conjunction with the montage of
the Adam and Eve skeletons the thrust of the picture becomes a little bit differ-
ent than just death – both the beginning and the end of time are included in
the imagery of the picture. One discerns not only a scene from the beginning
of the Bible but also one from the very end, reminiscent of the return of Christ
and the last judgement. So, in fact what one looks at presents the whole of
God’s creation, all the universe with all the animalistic wonders of nature in
it. Seen from this angle, the anatomy lessons that took place in this environ-
ment must really not have been just medical explorations – rather, in Leiden
they became sermons in which Aristotle, the anatomical handbooks, and the
Bible, the macrocosmos and the microcosmos, the world and eternity, man
and nature all became connected in the glory of the Lord. Hence, it is of course
not surprising to find that the anatomical theatre in Leiden was erected in a
chapel – as was often the case also in other cities.
I come back to the question this essay started with: What did they see?
After our explorations in architecture and imagery of the anatomical theatres,
it’s probably safe to say that most of the attendees at the public anatomy les-
sons didn’t really see that much – but they heard quite a lot. Medical training
and scientific discoveries of the secrets of the body were relegated to private
events, but the audience at large was presented with sermonlike digressions
of a religious-philosophical nature. It is the rhetorical power of the word that
more than anything else might have accounted for the popularity of the ana-
tomical events. Hence the reason for a nonacademic audience to attend the
anatomical lessons in great numbers might have consisted more in their fas-
cination with the secrets of nature, in general, rather than with a craving for
expert and detailed knowledge of the physicality of the body.
46 Ibidem 73–74.
Bibliography
Baljet B., “The Painted Amsterdam Anatomy Lessons: Anatomy Performances in

Dissecting Rooms?” Annals of Anatomy – Anatomischer Anzeiger 182, 1 (2000) 3–11.
Berengario da Carpi J., Isagogae breues, perlucidae ac uberrimae, in anatomiam hu-
mani corporis a communi medicorum academia usitatam (Bologna, Benedictus
Hector: 1523).
Berengario da Carpi J., Anatomia Carpi. Isagoge breves, perlucide ac uberime, in anato-
miam humani corporis, a, comuni medicorum academia, usitatam, a, Carpo in almo
Bononiensi gymnasio ordinariam chirurgiae publicae docente, ad suorum scholasti-
corum preces in lucë date (Venice, Bernardinum De Vitalibus: 1535).
Carlino A., “The Book, the Body, the Scalpel: Six Engraved Title Pages for Anatomical
Treatises of the First Half of the Sixteenth Century”, Anthropology and Aesthetics 16
(1988) 33–50.
Del Negro P. – Ongaro G., The University of Padua: Eight Centuries of History (Padua:
2003).
Delft L. van, Littérature et anthropologie: nature humaine et caractère à l’âge classique
(Paris: 1993).
Diemerbroeck I. van, Anatome corporis humani; plurimis novis inventis instructa vari-
isque observationibus, [et] paradoxis, cum medicis, tum physiologicis adornata. Editio
nova cum multis figuris (Lyon, Jean Antoine Huguetan: 1679).
Ferrari F., “Public Anatomy Lessons and the Carnival: The Anatomy Theatre of
Bologna”, Past and Present 117 (1987) 50–106.
Glazenburg J., “Rembrandt’s Anatomy of Dr. Nicolaas Tulp”, Archivum chirurgicum
Neerlandicum 29, 2 (1977) 83–91.
Heckscher W.S., Rembrandt’s Anatomy of Dr. Nicolaas Tulp: An Iconological Study
(New York: 1958).
Huisman T., The Finger of God: Anatomical Practice in 17th-Century Leiden, Ph.D. dis-
sertation (University of Leiden: 2008).
Ketham, Johannes de, Fasciculo de medicina, trans. Sebastiano Manilio (Venice, Zuane
& Gregorio di Gregorii: 1493/94).
Klestinec C., “A History of Anatomy Theaters in Sixteenth-Century Padua”, Journal of
the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 59, 3 (2004) 375–412.
Lunsingh Scheurleer T., “Un amphithéâtre d’anatomie moralisée”, in Lunsingh
Scheurleer T. – Posthumus Meyjes G.H.M. (eds.), Leiden University in the Seventeenth
Century: An Exchange of Learning (Leiden: 1975) 216–277.
Mondino de’ Luzzi (Mundinus), Anathomia Mundini (Leipzig, Martin Landsberg: 1493).
284 Eversmann
Rupp J.C., “Matters of Life and Death: The Social and Cultural Conditions of the Rise
of Anatomical Theatres, with Special Reference to Seventeenth Century Holland”,
History of Science 28 (1990) 263–287.
Rupp J.C., “Het theatrum anatomicum: publiekscommunicatief fossiel of ‘archetype’”,
Gewina 25, 4 (2002) 191–209.
Sawday J., The Body Emblazoned: Dissection and the Human Body in Renaissance Culture
(London – New York, 1995).
Thijssen E.H.M., Nicolaas Tulp als geneeskundige geschetst: eene bijdrage tot de geschie-
denis der geneeskunde in de XVIIde eeuw, Ph.D. dissertation (Amsterdam: 1881).
Vesalius A., De humani corporis fabrica Libri septem (Basel, Johannes Oporinus: 1543).
Vesalius A., De humani corporis fabrica Libri septem (Basel, Johannes Oporinus, 1555).
Wilson L., “William Harvey’s Prelectiones: The Performance of the Body in the
Renaissance Theater of Anatomy”, Representations 17, special issue: The Cultural
Display of the Body (1987) 62–95.
Zampieri F. – et al., “Origin and Development of Modern Medicine at the University
of Padua and the Role of the ‘Serenissima’ Republic of Venice”, Global Cardiology
Science and Practice (2013) 149–162.
part 3
The Secret in Matter
∵
chapter 7
The Sienese Goldsmith and the Secrets of

Florentine Disegno
C. Jean Campbell
1 Finding the Goldsmith’s Shop
Year after year, as I introduce students to Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s panoramic

fresco of the city under the rule of good government, painted in 1328–9 for the
executive council chamber of Siena’s city hall, I prepare to demonstrate how
the fresco invites the consideration of the relation between justice, as an active
principle, and the city. In the process I find myself looking for the one thing I
cannot readily find. Rehearsing a familiar narrative about the efforts that were
made to cultivate craft traditions in late medieval cities, I turn for evidence
to Ambrogio’s depiction of shoemakers, schoolmasters, grocers, weavers, and
so on, as inhabitants of the city that might be if justice were upheld, but I in-
evitably stumble when I attempt to point out the goldsmith’s shop [Fig. 7.1].
While I know it is there (and can unfailingly locate it in my understanding
of the fresco) it always takes an inordinate amount of time to find it in the
actual picture. Unlike the prominently featured shop of the shoemaker, the
shop of the orafo is difficult to find because it is hidden. It is tucked away in
one of the deeper recesses of Ambrogio’s city, partially obscured by a line of
drying clothes [Fig. 7.2]. For those uninitiated into late-medieval discourses of
secrecy, my difficulty in locating the goldsmith’s shop, which is increased by its
ignoble position behind the laundry, might seem to undermine the claim that
goldsmiths and their shops had a special importance in cities like Siena.
When the discourses of secrecy are brought to bear on the question, how-
ever, the protracted time involved in the search for the goldsmith’s shop in
Ambrogio’s city emerges as an indicator of its importance as a place where
treasures (literal and metaphorical) are made and held, ready to be found by
those prepared to engage in the imaginative process of discovery. This process
of discovery is here offered as a way of thinking about invention, not simply as
a rhetorical exercise properly belonging to writers, but in three dimensions, as
a governing process involving all of the artes in the search for knowledge.
The finding or invention of the secrets paradigmatically associated with
the goldsmith’s shop was a trope for the ongoing and recursive search for

288 Campbell
Figure 7.1 Ambrogio Lorenzetti, “City Under the Rule of Good Government”, part
of Allegory of Good and Bad Government, fresco, 1338–1339, Sala de’ Nove
(executive council chamber), Palazzo Pubblico, Siena.
IMAGE: SCALA/ART RESOURCE, NY
knowledge that underpinned discussions of justice in late medieval Europe.1

As such, it was closely tied to the problem of judgment, and therefore to the
administration of those kinds of justice available in the world, before time’s
end. Ambrogio’s occlusion of the goldsmith’s shop is related, on this level,
to the function of the larger painting as an admonition to uphold justice.
1 The literature on this topic is vast. On secrecy and scientific discourse in medieval and
early modern Europe see, Eamon W., Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets
in Early Modern Culture (Princeton: 1994). On uses of secrecy in medieval society see
Lochrie K. Covert Operations: The Medieval Uses of Secrecy (Philadelphia: 2011). On the dy-
namics of secrecy and openness, especially as they relate to the authorship of technical trea-
tises in the early Renaissance, see Long P.O., Openness, Secrecy, Authorship: Technical Arts and
the Culture of Knowledge from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Baltimore: 2001). On secrecy as it
pertains to the visual cultures of early modern Europe, see the essays collected in McCall T. –
Roberts S. – Fiorenza G. (eds.), Visual Cultures of Secrecy in Early Modern Europe (Kirksville,
MO: 2013).
THE SIENESE GOLDSMITH AND THE SECRETS OF FLORENTINE DISEGNO 289
Figure 7.2 Ambrogio Lorenzetti, “City Under the Rule of Good Government”, detail of
the goldsmith’s shop, part of Allegory of Good and Bad Government, fresco,
290 Campbell
The contingent operations of judgment and their relation to divine knowledge

are the overarching themes of Ambrogio’s imagery. They are its raison d’être as
the decoration of the executive council hall of the city of Siena.
As I have argued elsewhere, however, Ambrogio’s fresco does much more
than prompt reflection on the official goals of civic government; it also depicts
the unofficial makeup of social bonds in various imitative activities.2 In details
like the cobbler gnawing on a piece of leather to render it supple, Ambrogio
reveals the profoundly carnal side of the arts that make up and sustain the
city [Fig. 7.3]. At the other end of the spectrum of refinement is the motif of
the festive dancers. Through their costumes and actions, which point to the
craft of weavers, Ambrogio stages a life-and death moment of origination.3 It
was on such grounds, with a view to the habits of judgment cultivated (often
unknowingly) within practice, that stories about the relation between political
foundations and the technical knowledge of artisans were built.
Both in fact and as a fictional locus, the goldsmith’s shop was special. It was
a place where the overt economies of the city and the covert economies of its
arts commingled. This was certainly true of Siena, which, from the thirteenth
century onward, was an important center of goldwork, producing objects des-
tined for church treasuries in and around Siena, in papal cities like Perugia,
Orvieto, and Rome, and further afield, in places like Bohemia.4 Goldsmiths
also produced the matrices for the seals that guaranteed the official correspon-
dence of the Sienese government and its officials.5 Finally, as evidenced by the
works of the pre-eminent Sienese painters of the first half of the fourteenth
century, Simone Martini and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, the goldsmith’s shop was
a font of technical knowledge about working precious metals. It also supplied
the instruments – punches, gravers, and burnishers – that were adapted in
painters’ workshops to the production of gold grounds, painted fabrics, and
applied ornaments.
Given Ambrogio’s interest in goldsmiths and their techniques, it is not
surprising to find that, despite the cramped space allotted to it within the
cityscape, the goldsmith’s shop in his fresco is fabricated with careful attention
to identifiable objects and activities. The wares displayed in the shop are eas-
ily recognizable. They are rendered in gold leaf and thus distinguished from
2 Campbell C.J., The Commonwealth of Nature: Art and Poetic Community in the Age of Dante
(University Park, PA: 2008), esp. chap. 3.
3 Campbell, Commonwealth 103–110.
4 See Cioni Liserani E., Scultura e smalto nell’oreficeria senese dei secoli XIII e XIV (Florence:
1998).
5 See Cioni Liserani E. (ed.), Sigilli medioevali senesi, exh. cat., Museo Nazionale del Bargello
(Florence: 1981).
Figure 7.3 Ambrogio Lorenzetti, “City Under the Rule of Good Government”, detail of
the shoe maker’s shop, part of Allegory of Good and Bad Government, fresco,
292 Campbell
the other objects on display in the city. The items include a chalice, a censer,
and a candlestick, objects that otherwise belonged in a church sacristy or trea-
sury. Beneath the displayed wares, two men are shown busy at work. While
one applies an instrument to a hidden surface, the other is shown staring in-
tently at a lump of gold. Together, they act out the interrelated functions of the
goldsmith: working the precious material into costly objects; and assaying, or
evaluating the material itself, determining, among other things, whether it is
the real thing or the product of a false alchemist’s trickery.
The relation of the goldsmith to the alchemist needs to be taken into consid-
eration, in order to grasp the complex symbolic significance of the goldsmith’s
shop as part of a well-governed city. The art of the goldsmith was, of course,
not the same as that of the alchemist. While the goldsmith measured, evalu-
ated and worked precious metals, the alchemist was involved, notionally, in
the production of gold or, more generally, in the transmutation of base materi-
als into precious ones.6 Yet, as Richard Sennett rightly observes, ‘the goldsmith
and the alchemist were often two faces […] of the same coin, engaged in the
same quest for purity’.7 In the discourses describing their practices goldsmiths
and alchemists are often linked in ways that speak to the crucial, but vulner-
able position of the goldsmith as a judge. The link is perhaps best illustrated in
the familiar figure of the false alchemist.
One of the tales recounted by the early thirteenth-century Arabic writer
Al-Jawbari neatly sums up the potentially tricky relation between the alche-
mist and the goldsmith. The story appears in a book entitled The Revelation of
Secrets, in which its author aims to disclose the “secrets” or deceptive ruses of
the various charlatans he had met in his wanderings. Al-Jawbari’s tale, as re-
layed by Harold J. Abrahams, involves a self-styled alchemist who approaches
a goldsmith to sell a silver ingot, thus initiating a friendship that he cultivates
by sharing his ostensible wealth in convivial relations with his unsuspecting
mark.8 Predictably, the “alchemist’s” wealth soon appears to dwindle. When the
goldsmith asks why, his new “friend” explains that the elixir he used to make
silver has run out and that, having fallen on hard times, he is unable to produce
more because he lacks both the materials and the place required to make more.
6 For a synthetic introduction to the history of alchemy see Principe L., The Secrets of Alchemy
(Chicago: 2013).
7 Sennett, R., The Craftsman (New Haven – London: 2008) 62. Sennett (55–65) provides a sum-
mary of the social importance of the craftsman’s workshop, with special reference to the
goldsmith.
8 Abrahams H., “Al-Jawbari on False Alchemists”, Ambix: the Journal of the Society for the Study
of Alchemy and Early Chemistry 31.2 (1984) 84–88. The tale is also summarized in Principe,
Secrets 49.
The goldsmith then invites the man into a building that houses his workshop,
explaining that he owns the whole building, that there were no women in the
place, and that he only uses it to entertain friends and guests. The space offered
up for the production of the magical elixir is thus characterized as a secret loca-
tion of male friendship, a place that is attached to the commercial function of
the shop, but also distinct from it. Drawing a line between the secret location
of friendship and the open face of the shop, the goldsmith explains that he will
act as the “alchemist’s” assistant while his son manages the shop. Accepting the
goldsmith’s hospitality, the “alchemist” starts the process, but soon becomes a
malingerer. After much nagging from the goldsmith, who takes on a role more
commonly assigned to the wife in such stories, the two men finally come to an
agreement whereby the goldsmith, hoping to learn the secret of how to make
the elixir, is to receive a portion of it upon completion. The “alchemist” and
his goldsmith assistant then begin the process in earnest, acquiring and pul-
verizing the basic materials, which the “alchemist” makes a show of purchas-
ing from his own pocket. Presently, the goldsmith is asked to provide the gold
and silver necessary to the process. Before the goldsmith’s eyes, the “alchemist”
bundles each precious material into a different handkerchief, setting the two
bundles to soak in separate vessels of water. Finally, he directs the goldsmith
to go in search of a substance called moon saliva, one of the many names of
the philosopher’s stone. The legendary substance is here described as a type of
pebble that could be found on a certain mountain. The goldsmith completes
the assigned errand by climbing the mountain and returning to the “alchemist”
with the moon saliva, only to be told that it needed to be reduced overnight
in a glass kiln. At this point the “alchemist” declares that he must go to Friday
prayers. He thus leaves the company of the goldsmith, taking the goldsmith’s
treasures of silver and gold with him, never to be heard from again.
Al-Jawbari’s tale, which turns simultaneously on the falsification of friend-
ship and the sharing of false knowledge under the veil of secrecy, speaks not
only of the cleverness of the “alchemist” but also of the vulnerable position of
the goldsmith, whose greed finally compromises his judgment. It also paints
a picture of a place, within the goldsmith’s shop but apart from its commer-
cial function, where secrets – which may be fraudulent – are shared among
friends – who may likewise be false.
That such anecdotes and their component parts were well known in Western
Europe from the thirteenth century onward is attested by several of the tales col-
lected in Boccaccio’s Decameron (1348) and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1387).
In the Decameron, the role of the false alchemist is taken on, indirectly, by ar-
tisans of different sorts, including painters. In the third novella of the eighth
day, the wily painter Buffalmacco and his side-kick Bruno dupe the hopelessly
294 Campbell
witless Calandrino (also a painter) into believing in the existence of a magic

stone, called heliotrope, that is to be found along the banks of the Mugnone
river on the outskirts of Florence.9 According to the information conveyed in a
conversation that Calandrino “accidentally” overhears, this heliotrope has the
special power of making its bearer invisible.
The magic stone of Boccaccio’s tale is easily recognizable as a version of the
legendary lapis philosophorum or philosopher’s stone of the hermetic tradi-
tion. Invisibility, it should be noted, was one of the kinds of transmutation that
alchemists could reputedly effect through the use of the legendary lapis. The
search for this primary material, which would supposedly allow the alchemist
to produce an elixir that would turn base metals into silver and gold, became
a general metaphor for the great quest of the philosopher. In Boccaccio’s tale
Calandrino becomes an upside-down version of the alchemist/philosopher
through the machinations of Buffalmacco and Bruno. Having been led on his
adventure by his two friends, Calandrino is soon misled into thinking that he
has found the magical heliotrope when his friends pretend they can no longer
see him. Making great play of their anger at being abandoned in their quest
by Calandrino, Buffalmacco and Bruno start throwing stones. As Calandrino
heads back to Florence they follow their hapless associate, who is now heavily
burdened with a shirt full of possible heliotrope. Keeping up the pretense of
their own anger and Calandrino’s invisibility, Buffamacco and Bruno pelt their
companion with stones all the way home.
As Ronald Martinez has demonstrated, the broadly comical story has a seri-
ous, sacramental import.10 In Boccaccio’s tale the legendary substance known
as heliotrope (literally, that which changes with the sun) is the quarry of an
adventure that takes place on a Sunday (Domenica), when the story’s protag-
onists ought to be in church. In the received lore of Boccaccio’s time helio-
trope is both the name of a stone, described by Pliny, which changes colour
from deep black to red with exposure to the sun, and the name of a flower
that turns its face to the sun as it follows its daily path across the heavens from
dawn to dusk.11 By naming the magical stone of Calandrino’s quest heliotrope,
Boccaccio elicits a cluster of associations that resonate with the themes of rhe-
torical troping (the author’s own stock and trade) and physical transmutation
(the goal of the alchemist’s activities). Like other Christian interpretations of
9 B
occaccio G., Decameron, 2nd ed. Branca V. (Milan: 1992), day 8, nov. 3.

10 artinez R.L., “Calandrino and the Powers of Stone: Rhetoric, Belief and the Progress of
M
Ingegno in Decameron VIII.3”, Heliotropia 1.1 (2003) 1–32, http://www.heliotropia.org/01
-01/martinez.pdf.
11 Pliny, Historia Naturalis, vol. 10, books 36–37, trans. Eichholz D.E. (Cambridge MA –

London: 1962), book 37, chap. 60.

the alchemist’s quest for knowledge, Boccaccio’s tale points to transubstantia-

tion as the central mystery of the mass.
Having translated the figure of the alchemist into the middle of a city as the
figure subtending its various trades (for better or worse), Boccaccio established
a potent figure for the elaboration of foundation myths that revolved, as do
Boccaccio’s own writings, around the relation between technè and episteme.12
In Boccaccio’s text, as in Ambrogio’s painting, the complex and mutable figure
is attached to the general theme of knowledge and to the problem of judgment
within the social world of the city.
2 Giorgio Vasari, Cennino Cennini, and the Sienese Goldsmith
At this early moment in my story, the goldsmith/alchemist figure is not yet

identified with the judgment of artistic merit per se, although it includes
the painter among its guises. A couple of centuries later, when prominent
Florentine artists, courtiers, and writers were engaged, along with their Medici
patrons, in a conscious effort to invent and articulate the merits of Tuscan lan-
guage, verbal and pictorial, the goldsmith emerges as a father figure in discus-
sions of the arts of painting, sculpture and architecture. It is in this context,
and specifically in the 1568 edition of Giorgio Vasari’s Vite dei piu eccellenti
pittore, scultori ed architettori, that the mysterious evaluative/generative func-
tion of the goldsmith/alchemist becomes tied to the arts of disegno, and espe-
cially to the intertwined themes of judgment, remembrance and resurrection.13
Vasari did not fabricate the connection of the goldsmith to the arts of
disegno out of whole cloth. It was latent in the materials he used in composing
the Vita. These materials included not only the writings of the great Tuscan au-
thors Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio but also written works by Tuscan “painters”
such as Cennino Cennini’s Il libro dell’arte (c. 1400) and Lorenzo Ghiberti’s
Commentarii (c. 1447). While the status of both works as sources of information
12 See Andrei F., Boccaccio the Philosopher: An Epistemology of the Decameron (Cham: 2017);
and Stone G.B., The Ethics of Nature in the Middle Ages: On Boccaccio’s Poetaphysics (New
York: 1998).
13 Vasari G., Le vite di’ più eccelenti pittori, scultori e architettori (1550 and 1568), ed.

Bettarini R. – Barrocchi P., 6 vols. (Florence: 1966) vol. 2, pt. 1, 248–249. On the thematics
of judgment and resurrection in the framework of Vasari’s Vite see Didi-Huberman G.,
Confronting Images: Questioning the Ends of a Certain History of Art, trans. Goodman J.
(University Park, PA: 2005) 62–67. On the development of the theme of artistic judgment
as it relates to artists’ genealogies in the first part of the Vite see Campbell C.J., “Vasari in
Practice, or How to Build a Tomb and Make it Work”, in Pericolo L. – Richardson J. (eds.),
Remembering the Middle Ages in Early Modern Italy (London – Turnhout: 2015) 51–57.
296 Campbell
for the Vite is well known, it is not generally recognized that Vasari used them as
something more than sources in this limited sense. For Vasari, both books were
material artifacts. As such, they were witnesses to a Tuscan past that needed to
be unearthed so that that memory of the arts, which Vasari limited to the arts of
disegno (painting, sculpture, and architecture), could be secured for the future.
Finally, both books were models for Vasari’s project in recognizable ways.
In the vastly expanded 1568 edition of his Vite, Vasari added Cennini’s name
to the list of disciples of the fourteenth-century Florentine painter Agnolo
Gaddi. The addition of Cennini’s name to Agnolo’s life was a result of the dis-
covery by Vasari (or one of his agents) of a manuscript of Cennini’s Il libro
dell’arte, a technical treatise composed in the first decade of the fifteenth cen-
tury by an otherwise little-known notary’s son and painter from Colle di val
d’Elsa. Vasari’s comment is, in fact, the first clear record of a treatise that only
survives today in four manuscript copies.14
The earliest of these manuscripts is now in the Biblioteca Medicea
Laurenziana in Florence. It is dated in a scribal colophon reading: ‘This book
[was] brought to completion, by the grace of Christ, on July 31, 1437, in the
Stinche’.15 The colophon, which was first recorded in the seventeenth cen-
tury by Filippo Baldinucci, indicates that the manuscript was transcribed
in the central Florentine prison complex commonly known as Le stinche. It
was once thought to reflect Cennini’s own circumstances at the end of his
life, but this turns not to be so. The Laurenziana manuscript, which was pro-
duced about a decade after the author’s death, is a scribal copy of a lost man-
uscript made by an anonymous inmate of the Stinche. While a few notable
works, including Giovanni Cavalcanti’s Istorie fiorentine (1440–47) and a pair
of sonnets by the political theorist and humanist author Niccolò Machiavelli
were, in fact, composed in the Stinche, Cennini’s Libro was, in all likelihood,
composed elsewhere.
The circumstances of production of the Laurenziana manuscript of
Cennini’s book nevertheless supply much-needed context for the reception of
the Libro dell’arte in the first half of the fifteenth century. Beyond its official
function as a place of confinement for political prisoners, debtors, and others
14 For a full review of what is known about the production and reception of the Libro
dell’arte see Fabio Frezzato’s introduction to his edition of Cennini C., Il libro dell’arte, ed.
F. Frezzato (Vicenza: 2003) 11–54; and, more recently and briefly, Lara Broeke’s introduc-
tion to her new Cennini C., Il libro dell’arte: A New English Translation, trans. Broeke L.
(London: 2013) 9–10.
15 My translation of the colophon in Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Ms.
Plut.78.23: ‘Finito libro referamus gratia χρι 1437 / Adì 31 luglio Ex stincharum’.
convicted of offenses against the common law,16 the Stinche served unoffi-
cially as a scriptorium. As Marco Cursi has revealed, some of the inmates pro-
duced manuscript copies of existing texts on commission.17 The texts copied
by these inmates were mostly written in the vernacular. They include several
works by Boccaccio, and a few by Petrarch and Dante. Beyond this core group
there were also practical manuals, like Cennini’s, on topics ranging from prayer
to painting. Most of the books were written on paper with minimal decoration,
in either a mixed chancellery-mercantile script or a straightforward mercantile
hand.18 They all have the familiar format of a zibaldone, or vernacular note-
book of the sort produced and used, in a variety of ways, by the Florentine
mercantile class of the time.
Franco Sacchetti (d.1400), a Florentine merchant of the ruling class and
prolific writer of songs and novelle, characterized the zibaldone as a portable
repository of newly acquired knowledge in one of his comic songs:
I left behind the inkwell and pen,

which transcribed all that you said,
that I did not already know in my mind [cerbacone]
taking it with me as my notebook [zibaldone].19
An English translation of the general sense of Sacchetti’s ditty does it little jus-
tice as an artifact of Florentine merchant culture at the turn of the fourteenth
century. As Letterio di Francia noted long ago, Sacchetti’s little song makes fun
of the strange, often coarse words that were part of the everyday vocabulary
of Florentines in his time.20 With cerbacone, which could be translated in
similarly colloquial English usage as ‘cranium’ or ‘knowledge box’, Sacchetti
roughly designates the storehouse of the mind. The colourful term cerbacone
is set off as the rhyme-word for zibaldone, here portrayed as a manufactured
object, external to the mind, which serves as its “rhyming” counterpart. In this
16 On the Stinche, its colourful name, and its function as a new type of prison, see
Wolfgang M.E., “A Florentine Prison: Le Carceri delle Stinche,” Studies in the Renaissance
7 (1960) 148–66; and Wolfgang M.E., “Crime and Punishment in Renaissance Florence,”
Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 81.3 (1990) 567–584.
17 Cursi M., “‘Con molte sue fatiche’: copisti in carcere alle Stinche alla fine del medioe-
vo (secoli XIV–XV)”, in Papini L. (ed.), In uno volumine: studi in onore di Cesare Scanlon
(Udine: 2009) 151–191.
18 Cursi M., “Con molte sue fatiche” 157–63.
19 My translation. In Di Francia L., Franco Sacchetti novelliere (Pisa: 1902) 265, n. 1: ‘Lasciai
il calamaio e la penna, / che scrisse / insino a ciò che vi si disse, / che non sapea nel mio
cerbacone, / recando meco cotal zibaldone’.
20 Di Francia, Franco Sacchetti 265, n. 1.
298 Campbell
instance, the zibaldone is a sort of overflow or staging area for things that have
not yet been consigned to memory.
The fact that the Laurenziana manuscript of Cennini’s book was transcribed
in the Florentine prison, in the form of a zibaldone, helps settle one aspect of
the question of whether the Libro dell’arte should be considered as a practi-
cal record of Florentine artists’ culture, or as a quasi-theoretical product of
Paduan court culture.21 While Cennini may have composed parts of his Libro
during his time in Padua, where he lived in the orbit of the Carrara court, by
1437 it was being copied in Florence. In all likelihood the Laurenziana manu-
script, which must have been copied from a locally available model, was made
at the behest of a Florentine patron. All this is to say that it had been assumed,
through a levelling process of manuscript production, into the heterogeneous
body of knowledge shared by Florentine merchants and citizens (who were
not necessarily artists), and collected on the shelves of their libraries.
Franco Sacchetti is a prime example of a Florentine citizen who not only
collected knowledge of various sorts in his books but also redeployed this
knowledge in the form of novels and multi-media theatrical productions,
which provided a mobile framework through which the citizenry could imag-
ine a public sphere.22 Sacchetti’s activities as a composer of songs, compiler
of stories, and deviser of pictorial ensembles, are closely tied to the ritual life
21 The argument for Padua as the place of production is based largely on linguistic evidence
and was taken up as part of a claim for Cennini’s place in the history of Renaissance
theories of imitation in Bolland A., “Art and Humanism in Early Renaissance Padua:
Cennini, Vergerio and Petrarch on Imitation”, Renaissance Quarterly 49.3 (1996) 469–487.
The case for its status as a Florentine book is given forcefully (with notes to the relevant
literature) in Frosinini C. – Bellucci R., “Working Together: Technique and Innovation
in Masolino and Masaccio’s Panel Paintings”, in Strehlke C. – Frosinini C., The Panel
Paintings of Masolino and Masaccio: The Role of Technique (Milan: 2002) 31. For the state
of the question in Cennini scholarship outside Italy, see the essays collected in Löhr
W-D. – Weppelmann S. (eds.), Fantasie und Handwerk. Cennino Cennini und die Tradition
der toskanischen Malerei von Giotto bis Lorenzo Monaco (Munich: 2008).
22 There is an emerging literature on Sacchetti, his multi-media productions, and their fic-
tional renditions in his novelle. At the moment of my writing very little of this discussion
had appeared in print. I am indebted to Wolf-Dietrich Löhr for the insights he provided in
Löhr W.-D., “‘Verace maestro’: Artistic Techniques between Fraud and Fiction in Trecento
Chronicles and Novels”, conference paper, Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of
America (Chicago: 2017). See also Löhr W.-D. “Schöpfung und Schminke bei Francesco
Sacchetti” forthcoming in the long-awaited Wolf, G. (ed.), Kunstgeschichten – Parlare del
arte nel Trecento (Munich – Berlin, in press). Also relevant to this discussion is Brennan, R.
“Painting as a ‘Modern Art’: The era of Giotto”, Ph.D. dissertation (New York University:
2016), forthcoming as Painting as a Modern Art in Early Renaissance Italy (London –
Turnhout: 2019).
of sites like the grain market and Marian shrine of Orsanmichele.23 Even out-
side Orsanmichele, many of these activities took Marian devotion and its civic
manifestations as their pretext. Although they predate both Cennini’s writ-
ing of the Libro and its transcription by an inmate of the Stinche by at least a
couple of decades, the outlines of Sacchetti’s civic persona offer a means of
imagining a plausible early reader of Cennini’s book. Importantly for the pres-
ent context, this reader was someone who had little investment in its strict
categorization, either as a theoretical treatise, or as a technical manual.
Even if there is no direct relation between Sacchetti’s activities and Cennini’s
book, they share substantial common ground. Cennini’s book, which reveals
its sacramental crux in the chapter where Cennini describes the materials and
processes of colouring or incarnazione as it applies to painting a youthful face.
This face, he suggests, may belong to the head of a youthful saint (male or fe-
male) or of a Madonna.24 Here, the broader implications of Cecilia Frosinini
and Roberto Bellucci’s suggestion that the Libro dell’ arte should be consid-
ered not as a practical workshop book but rather as a ‘sort of rule book for
the Medici e Speziali in which Cennini attempted to codify traditions threat-
ened by signs of independence among the guild’s own members as well as by
experiments with new materials and techniques’ might be brought to bear.25
One of the functions of Cennini’s book may have been to assemble and curtail,
under a rule, the materials and techniques that had been put to use by men like
Sacchetti, not only in experimental ways but also in socially unruly contexts,
for instance, in the staging of Marian devotions at Orsanmichele.
None of this is to say that knowledge of Cennini’s book was widespread
in the early fifteenth century. There is little evidence that the text was wide-
ly circulated in fifteenth-century Florence, and none that it circulated in
Padua. Cennino’s Libro only emerges into view, as an object of study, in the
sixteenth century. It is mentioned not only by Vasari but also by his associ-
ate, Vincenzo Borghini. In this case, as in many others, Borghini likely played
the role of go-between, transmitting the knowledge of Cennini’s book for use
23 On Sacchetti’s activities at Orsanmichele, which included composing Marian lauds and
devising a pictorial program for the ground-floor vaults, see Cohn W., “Franco Sacchetti
und das ikonographische Programm der Gewölbemalereien von Orsanmichele”,
Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz 8.2 (1958) 65–77; and Zervas D.F. (ed.),
Orsanmichele a Firenze/Orsanmichele in Florence, 2 vols. (Modena: 1996) 1:44, 165–174.
24 Cennini, Libro, chap. 67. On Cennini and colouring as incarnation see Kruse C., “Fleisch

Werden – Fleisch Malen: Malerei als ‘incarnazione’. Mediale Verfahren des Bildwerdens
im Libro dell’arte von Cennino Cennini”, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 63.3 (2000)
305–325.
25 Frosinini – Bellucci, “Working Together” 31.
300 Campbell
in Vasari’s Vite.26 For Borghini himself, as for Filippo Baldinucci in the later
seventeenth century, Cennini’s book was a precious early source for the tech-
nical vocabulary of Tuscan art.27 Even then, however, knowledge of Cennini’s
book remained restricted to circles of acquaintances who, like Borghini and
Baldinucci, were associated with the Florentine academies. The Libro dell’arte
was not made widely available until the early nineteenth century, when it was
published by Giuseppe Tambroni.28
Whatever the facts of its early circulation, Vasari suggests that, before
his time, the Libro dell’arte was available in small circles of acquaintances.
In the relevant passage of the Giuntina edition of the Vite, Vasari explains that
the book, which he says was composed by the hand of one intimate friend of
the arts (Cennino), was held, a century and a half later, in the hands of another
(Giovanni orefice Senese):
Cennino di Drea Cennini da Colle di Valdelsa learned the art of painting

from the same Agnolo. He wrote as one with great affection for the arts,
and by his own hand, a book on the modes of working in fresco, in tem-
pera, with glue and gum, and beyond this, on how one paints miniatures
and of the many ways of applying gold. This book is in the hands of the
Sienese goldsmith Giuliano, excellent master and ardent friend of these
arts. And in the beginning of his book he deals with the nature of those
colours that are drawn as minerals from the earth, just as he learned from
his master Agnolo, hoping perhaps, since he never succeeded in learn-
ing how to paint perfectly, to understand at least the manner of colours,
of binders (tempere), of glues and the manner of applying gesso, and of
those colours that should be guarded against as dangerous to mix, and in
26 On the discovery of the Libro dell’arte by Borghini and Vasari see Frezzato’s introduction
to Cennini, Libro, ed. Frezzato, 28–29; and Cerasuolo, A., “Appunti di Vincenzio Borghini
sul Libro dell’arte di Cennino Cennini”, Mitteilungen Des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in
Florenz 58.1 (2016) 117–125.
27 On Borghini’s linguistic interest in the text see Frezzato’s notes in Cennini, Libro, ed.
Frezzato – 28. Baldinucci, who is the first to mention the Laurenziana manuscript of
Cennini’s Libro extracts some information from Vasari’s vita of Agnolo Gaddi. He expands
Vasari’s account to give Cennini his own vita in Baldinucci F., Notizie dei professori dal
disegno da Cimabue in qua, ed. Ranalli F., 7 vols. (Florence: 1845) 1:308–313, devoting a
passage to the terms Cennini uses for certain materials (13). Cennini’s Libro is also one of
the sources Baldinucci used in compiling his dictionary of Tuscan terminology for the art
of disegno: Baldinucci F., Vocabulario toscano del arte del disegno (Florence, Accademici
della Crusca, per Santi Franchi: 1681).
28 Cennino C., Trattato della pittura (messo in luce per la prima volta), ed. Tambroni G.
(Rome: 1821).
summary of many other instructions that I need not relay, because these
days we have free knowledge of all those matters that, in his day, were
considered most rare and held in great secrecy.29
Despite this last stipulation, Vasari goes on to summarize the contents of

Cennini’s book, providing a remarkably full index, with one notable omission.
He makes no mention at all of the sequence of chapters in which Cennini care-
fully lays out the procedures and materials involved in learning how to draw,
except, perhaps, when he refers to those instructions that he ‘need not relay’
because they are freely known in his day.
It is possible that these chapters were missing from the manuscript Vasari
saw, but it is more likely that their absence from his account is part of a subtle
but deliberate reframing of Cennini’s book that took place when Vasari trans-
lated it into the pages of the Vite. As it appears in the latter context, it is far
more thoroughly framed as a book of secrets than the original book had been.
In fact, one of the notable discontinuities between Cennini’s Libro and the
tradition of medieval technical manuals to which it belongs is the absence
of the invocation of secrecy. In the centuries before Cennini wrote his book,
the claim to be sharing secret knowledge had become a conventional element
of the framing apparatus. It appears, for example, in the De diversis artibus, a
monastic book of secrets compiled/composed by Theophilus Presbyter (and
centered on the practice of goldwork), which was widely disseminated in the
monastic communities of Europe from the twelfth century onward.30 That
Vasari recognized the place of Cennini’s book in the latter tradition is evident
in his placement of Cennini’s book in the hands of a goldsmith, even though,
as has been noted often enough, Cennini does not include goldwork per se
29 My translation, here and below, of Vasari, Vite – vol. 2, pt. 1, 248–249: ‘Imparò dal medesi-
mo Agnolo la pittura Cennino di Drea Cennini da Colle di Valdelsa, il quale, come affezi-
onatissimo de l’arte, scrisse in un libro di sua mano i modi del lavorare a fresco, a tempera,
a colla et a gomma, et inoltre come si minia e come in tutti i modi si mette d’oro; il qual
libro è nelle mani di Giuliano orefice sanese, ecc[ellente] maestro e amico di quest’arti. E
nel principio di questo suo libro trattò della natura de’ colori così minerali come di cave,
secondo che imparò da Agnolo suo maestro volendo, poiché forse non gli riuscì imparare
a perfettamente dipignere, sapere almeno le maniere de’ colori, delle tempere, delle colle
e dello ingessare, e da quali colori dovemo guardarci come dannosi nel mescolargli, et
insomma molti altri avvertimenti de’ quali non fa bisogno ragionare, essendo oggi notis-
sime tutte quelle cose che costui ebbe per gran secreti e rarissime in que’ tempi’.
30 On Theophilus and his book see, most recently, Gearhart, H.C., Theophilus and the Theory
and Practice of Medieval Art (University Park PA: 2017). On the book’s place in the broad
category of medieval technical treatises that purport to share secret knowledge, see
Eamon, Science 15–37; and Long, Openness 16–72.
302 Campbell
among his topics, beyond its applications in painting. In effect, Vasari emphati-
cally represents Cennini’s book as belonging to the tradition of technical man-
uals associated with goldsmiths. At the same time, he turns a blind eye to the
one part of the treatise we might expect him to celebrate, namely the chapters
treating the materials, instruments and methods of drawing. The question is:
why does he do this?
The foregrounding of discourses of secrecy, the institution of a circuitry of
friendship that links the figure of the draftsman with that of the goldsmith,
and the burying of the chapters on drawing, are all aspects of the foundation-
building project that occupies Vasari in the first part of the Vite.31 They are
all pieces of the process whereby, as George Didi-Huberman puts it, Vasari
‘subsumes drawing as a practice into drawing as a concept’. It is worth quoting
the relevant passage of Didi-Huberman’s Confronting Images by way of indi-
cating what might be gained from an extended consideration of the relation
between Cennini’s discussion of the practice of drawing and Vasari’s use of the
term disegno.
What was a material practice capable of occupying the painter’s whole

head in Cennini becomes in Vasari an ideal concept that takes shape in
the intellect to invest sensibly, under an apparente expressione, the sub-
jectile of the painter [or, that which the painter projects onto the sup-
port]. Vasari, a craftsman himself, never sought to obscure the technical
meaning of disegno…. But he reversed the order of inference, proceeding
from the subject to the subjectile and not from the subjectile to the sub-
ject, subsuming drawing as a practice into drawing as a concept … never
saying clearly where, when and why he did so.32
Even if Didi-Huberman is correct in saying that Vasari never openly states the
where, when, and why of his reversal of Cennini’s understanding of drawing
as an informing practice, we can nevertheless find evidence of the process by
considering his representation of Cennini’s Libro in the vita of Agnolo Gaddi.
Vasari’s introduction of Cennini’s book into Agnolo’s vita is related to the
larger project of the Vite in several ways, only two of which I will mention
31 On the emergence of the notion of art lover in Cennini see Pfisterer U., “Cennino Cennini
und die Idee des Kunstliebhabers”, in Locher H. – Schneemann P.J. (eds.), Grammatik der
Kunstgeschichte: Sprachproblem und Regelwerk im ‘Bild-Diskurs’. Oskar Bätschmann zum
65. Geburtstag (Zürich – Emmsdetten – Berlin: 2008) 95–117.
32 Didi-Huberman, Confronting Images 81. As explained in the translator’s note to Didi-
Huberman’s text the author’s distinctive use of the term ‘subjectile’ is fully developed in
theoretical terms in Didi-Huberman G., Le peinture incarnée (Paris: 1985).
here.33 In the first place, as Vasari recognizes, Cennini’s treatise opens with two
genealogies: the scriptural account of creation from Genesis, and Cennini’s
own account of his genealogy as a painter/creator. By means of the latter gene-
alogy, Cennini constructs a family tree rooted in Giotto’s workshop. Vasari’s in-
troduction of Cennini and his artistic genealogy into the vita of Agnolo Gaddi
is important to the project of the Vite, in no small part because it helps him
build a bridge allowing for the retrospective connection of Giotto’s example
to the genealogy of Florentine disegno.34 In the second place, and more to the
point of the present paper, Vasari’s account of the transmission of Cennini’s
book from its author’s hands to the hands of a goldsmith reverses the familiar
pattern to be found in any number of Vasari’s vite, in which a painter or sculp-
tor is said to have been fathered and/or trained by a goldsmith. By situating a
goldsmith at a point of transmission, where knowledge can travel either way,
Vasari establishes the genealogical pattern as a sort of reciprocal and renew-
able relation in practice.
The fact that such genealogies can sometimes be confirmed by appeal to
external sources does not diminish the necessity of understanding their func-
tion as part of the fictional structure of Vasari’s Vite. The vita of Francesco
Francia of Bologna, which is governed by a particularly well developed in-
stance of the goldsmith-painter pattern, is a prime example of its use within
the Vite. According to Vasari, the young Francesco is given over by his father
to be trained in the shop of a goldsmith. There he not only learns the art of
the metalworker but also initiates himself into the art of disegno. As Vasari ex-
plains: ‘While practicing the art of the goldsmith he devoted great attention to
disegno, and he loved it so much that, awakening his ingegno to better things,
he profited greatly’.35 As portrayed by Vasari in Francia’s life, the self-reflexive
moment at which the would-be painter recognizes the capacity of his own
ingegno emerges by means of drawing/disegno, but within the practice of the
goldsmith.
33 For a fuller commentary on the vita of Agnolo Gaddi see Vasari G., Das Leben des Taddeo
Gaddi, Agnolo Gaddi, Buffalmacco, Orcagna, Spinello Aretino und Lorenzo Monaco, trans.
Lorini V., intro. Jonietz F. – Löhr, W.-D. – Tripps J. (Berlin: 2015) 31–38.
34 On the artists’ lineages established in the first part of Vasari’s Vite see Maginnis, H.B.J.,
Painting in the Age of Giotto: A Historical Reevaluation (University Park: 1997) 14–17.
35 Vasari, Vite – vol. 3, pt. 1, 582: ‘Attendendo dunque mentre stava all’orefice al disegno, in

quello tanto si compiacque, che svegliando l’ingegno a maggior’ cose fece in quello gran-
dissimo profitto’.
304 Campbell
3 Buried Treasure and the Invention of Disegno
Before concluding, two final pieces of the material that Vasari deployed in
building a goldsmith’s shop into the foundation of the Vite must be brought
into focus. Cennini’s Libro is not the only book that Vasari picks up and actively
rewrites in the pages of Agnolo’s vita. There is good reason to think that Vasari’s
presentation of Cennini’s Libro as evidence of cultural foundations is informed
by his reading of Lorenzo Ghiberti’s Commentarii, a collection of memories
composed by the sculptor and passed down through his family workshop. For
reasons that will become apparent shortly, it is significant that Vasari, who
was certainly aware of Ghiberti’s primary vocation as a sculptor, nevertheless
names him as a painter in the pages of the Vite. In the 1568 edition of the Vite,
the heading of the vita dedicated to the great Florentine sculptor reads ‘Vita di
Lorenzo Ghiberti, pittore’. It may well be true, as Lorenzo Bartoli has argued,
that Vasari named Ghiberti as ‘pittore’ in order to bolster the argument that
established Brunelleschi as the pre-eminent ‘scultore’ and ‘architetto’ of the
second age, but this isn’t the whole story.36
In fact, the vita of Agnolo Gaddi, and the story of how Vasari came to know
Cennini’s book, shed new light on this question. It is likely that Vasari, who
frequently calls himself pittore, identified his own project in writing the Vite
with Ghiberti’s example as pittore, which is to say as an inheritor of the kinds of
knowledge that were held and cultivated in the goldsmith’s shop, and a collec-
tor of drawings.37 A typical reference to Vasari’s Libro de’ disegni from the pages
of the Vite helps to make the point. As he nears the end of the vita of Ambrogio
Lorenzetti, Vasari refers his readers to his own collection of drawings: ‘And if
you look in our libro, where there are a few very good things by his hand, you
can judge for yourself how accomplished he was in the art of disegno’.38 As
Vasari suggests, the book of drawings served an important function as evidence
for the claims he puts forward in the Vite. While the text of the Vite was openly
available (or published) as a book, the Libro de’ disegni remained secreted, as
a sort of treasure, in Vasari’s home. As described by Vasari, this book is the
place readers can go to see for themselves and evaluate something that is not
36 Bartoli L., “Rewriting History: Vasari’s Life of Lorenzo Ghiberti”, Word & Image 13.3 (1997)
245–252.
37 The key work on Vasari’s drawing collection is Ragghianti Collobi L., Il Libro dei’ disegni del
Vasari (Florence: 1974).
38 Vasari, Vite – vol. 2, pt. 1, 183: ‘E quanto valesse nel disegno si vede nel nostro libro, dove

sono alcune cose di sua mano assai buone’.

otherwise available. In making the book available on intimate terms for those
who come to his house, Vasari is, in a certain sense, assuming the role that he
assigns to the Sienese goldsmith in the vita of Agnolo Gaddi. The goldsmith is
the one who preserves Cennini’s book among his treasures, making it possible
for Vasari to know it long after Cennini’s death.
All this suggests that Cennini’s book stands, in Vasari’s estimation, for
something larger than any single historical artifact. Certainly, the thing that
he came to “know” in the encounter with it wasn’t simply the content of the
book, the importance of which he discounts when he says ‘these days we have
free knowledge of all those matters that, in his day, were considered most rare
and held in great secrecy’. In reading Vasari’s words it is useful to recall that
the actual contents of a book of secrets are generally not the same thing as the
secret it purports to convey. So, what value or system of values did Vasari come
to recognize when he saw the goldsmith’s copy of Cennini’s book?
The answer lies in Vasari’s understanding of disegno, not just as a practice
but also as guiding concept that could, somehow, be seen and represented
outside its practice. The notion of drawing as something one can see outside
practice helps resolve the question that arises from my claim that Vasari’s
Libro de’ disegni replaces the function of Cennini’s book. If Cennini’s Libro
dell’ arte is the prototype and model for Vasari’s Libro de’ disegni, it is neces-
sary to account for the fact that Cennini’s Libro – which is, after all, a book
of techniques – has been replaced in Vasari’s enterprise by a book of draw-
ings. At the same time, as noted earlier, Cennini’s chapters on the practice
of drawing vanish from sight. The logic of the replacement is clear. Whereas
Cennini sought to demonstrate the materials, instruments, and techniques of
drawing to his readers, Vasari sought to show his readers disegno by showing
them drawings. They are the evidence of the working knowledge he hopes to
pass down.
The writing and collecting practices through which Vasari makes disegno
“visible”, and therefore “knowable”, are built on a foundation that he finds
ready-made in Ghiberti’s Commentarii, in a story that features a goldsmith in
the role of go-between. Before introducing the story, Ghiberti’s book needs to
be brought into relief, not just as a source but as a piece of Vasari’s inheritance.
Knowledge of Ghiberti’s Commentarii came to Vasari through his connections
with Ghiberti’s heirs, specifically Lorenzo’s grandson Vittorio di Buonacorso
Ghiberti, for whom Vasari worked as an apprentice. The evidence for Vasari’s
connection to Ghiberti’s lineage comes from Vasari’s own writings, including a
short passage of his Ricordanze, where he says: ‘I remember how, on the 6th of
May 1529, I went to stay in the house of Vittorio Ghiberti, to attend to the study
306 Campbell
of the art of painting, at the rate of two scudi per month, [and] how well we got
along together. I remained in his house for two months’.39
Beyond what he inherited through practice in Vittorio’s workshop, Vasari
also had access to the Ghiberti family books, including Lorenzo’s Commentarii
and the Zibaldone compiled by his son, Buonacorso. Lorenzo’s vita incorpo-
rates many of the elements that are to be expected in a tale having to do with
the transmission of secret knowledge: a lineage of artists descending from a
goldsmith, the youthful workshop apprentice, a relation of friendship between
master and student. It also features some new elements, including a small col-
lection of drawings:
Lorenzo’s drawings were most excellent and rendered with great relief,
as can be seen in our libro de’ disegni in an Evangelist by his hand and a
few others which are beautiful examples of chiaroscuro. Bertoluccio, his
father, was also an accomplished draftsman, as demonstrated by another
Evangelist by the latter’s hand, also in the above mentioned libro, [which
is] a little less good than Lorenzo’s. I acquired these drawings, along with
some by Giotto and others, from Vittorio Ghiberti in 1528 when I was a
youth. I have always held these and still hold them in reverence, both
for their beauty and for [their service in] the memory of so many men.
And if I knew what I know now when I enjoyed the close friendship and
company of Vittorio, I would gladly have devised to acquire many other
beautiful things that were Lorenzo’s.40
Although Vasari may well have purchased some of the drawings after the
fact, when Vittorio was liquidating the assets of the Ghiberti shop, in the
39 Vasari G., Il libro delle Ricordanze, ed. del Vita A. (Rome: 1938) 12: ‘Ricordo come a dì 6

di maggio 1529 io andai a stare in casa di Vettorio Ghiberti cittadino fiorentino per at-
endere a studiar l’arte del dipigniere, per prezzo di scudi dua il mese, che tanti fummo
d’acordo insieme. Stetti in casa sua mesi dua’. The evidence for Vasari’s relation to Vittorio
di Buonacorso Ghiberti was first published in Krautheimer-Hess T., “More Ghibertiana,”
Art Bulletin 46 (1964) 312.
40 Vasari, Vite – vol. 3, pt. 1, 104: ‘Furono i disegni di Lorenzo eccellentissimi e fatti con gran
rilievo, come si vede nel nostro libro de’ disegni in uno Evangelista di sua mano et in alcu-
ni altri di chiaro scuro bellissimi. Disegnò anco ragionevolmente Bartoluccio suo padre,
come mostra una altro Vangelista di sua mano in sul detto libro, assai men buono che
quello di Lorenzo. I quali disegni con alcuni di Giotto e d’altri ebbi, essendo giovanetto,
da Vettorio Ghiberti l’anno 1528, e gl’ho sempre tenuti e tengo in venerazione e perché
sono belli e per memoria di tanti uomini. E se quando io aveva stretta amicizia e pratica
con Vettorio io avessi quello conosciuto che ora conosco, mi sarebbe agevolmente venuto
fatto d’avere avuto molte altre cose che furono di Lorenzo, veramente bellissime’.
above-quoted passage he prevaricates on this question. He suggests, without

actually saying, that they came to him as a gift, noting that the moment of
transmission was one in which he ‘enjoyed the close friendship and company
of Vittorio’. What matters here is that the exchange in which Vasari retrospec-
tively claims the drawings, and thereby inherits the role of the goldsmith, is
framed as taking place within an intimate workshop relationship.
Vasari’s story depends, in turn, on Ghiberti’s positioning of the goldsmith as
a conduit of the memories that he himself sought to inherit as a practitioner,
lover, and arbiter of the arts. The general outlines of Ghiberti’s story, which tells
of the discovery, celebration, and destruction of an antique statue of Venus in
the city of Siena, are well known in the history of European art, having entered
into the scholarly literature via Erwin Panofsky’s description of what he sees
as the Renaissance achievement of objective perspective. More recently, the
tale of the Sienese Venus became part of Michael Camille’s de-constructive ac-
count of idols and idolatry.41 Whereas Ghiberti’s story appears in Panofsky pri-
marily as evidence of the priority of painting in establishing the “perspective”
that would allow for the objective assessment of ancient statuary as the cultur-
al inheritance of the Renaissance, it appears in Camille, predictably enough,
as evidence of the ‘“demonic” side of the Renaissance imagination’.42 Neither
author considers the immediate context of the tale of the Sienese Venus in
Ghiberti’s book. Nor do they recognize the role accorded to the goldsmith
as the custodian of the evidence by means of which Ghiberti was able to “see”
the lost statue.
The story is recounted in the first part of the third book of the Commentarii.43
It is relayed as part of an extended introduction to the book wherein Ghiberti
compiles and comments upon theories of vision and perspective. As a whole,
this introductory matter deals with the relation between seeing and judgment.
It is here that Ghiberti describes the discovery, or literal unearthing, of three
ancient statues, all of marvelous workmanship, and all bearing the wounds
of iconoclasm. The first of these is a statue that Ghiberti claims to have seen
in Rome. He describes the statue as ‘a hermaphrodite the size of a thirteen-
year-old girl, which was wrought with wonderful skill’ and explains that ‘it had
been discovered in a sewer about eight braccia below the ground’ and that it
was rescued rather brutally and as a matter of course by a passing sculptor
41 Panofsky E., Renaissance and Renaissances in Western Art (Uppsala: 1960) 151. Camille M.,
The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art (Cambridge UK – New York:
1989) 342–343.
42 Camille, Gothic Idol 343.
43 Ghiberti L., I commentarii, ed. L. Bartoli (Florence: 1998) 107–109.

308 Campbell
who, having removed some of the marble to make it more transportable, took
it to his shop. Ghiberti claims to have seen a second ancient statue in Padua,
after it had been transported to that city from Florence by Lombardo della
Seta. According to Ghiberti, this statue was discovered under the houses of
the Brunelleschi in Florence. He explains that, unlike the Roman hermaph-
rodite (which was found in a sewer), this statue had been carefully entombed
by some ancient lover of the arts, after it had been decapitated. Evidently,
Filippo Brunelleschi’s family house was built on fertile ground. In this case
Ghiberti does not identify the subject of the sculpture. Instead he provides
a remarkable description of its beauty, saying that it had within it ‘so many
dolcezze that these could not be comprehended by sight alone, but only with
the hand through touch’.44 Finally, Ghiberti moves on to what is probably
the best known part of his account of discovery of works of antique statuary,
namely, the paragraphs in which he describes the unearthing of an ancient
statue in Siena. He relates that the statue was discovered in the process of lay-
ing the foundations for one of the houses of the Malavolti, and that it was iden-
tified by inscription as a work of Lysippos. Once again, Ghiberti does not name
the subject of the statue, at least not directly. He only suggests that it is a statue
of Venus, noting that a dolphin rests against the figure’s leg.
Ghiberti’s account of the discovery, celebration, and destruction of the
Sienese Venus merits a new translation:
Another [statue], similar to these two, was found in the city of Siena. It
was much celebrated and was considered a marvelous work by those
with understanding. Written on its base was the name Lysippos, an ex-
cellent master. On [this base] was a leg upon which rested a dolphin. I
could not have seen this had it not been drawn by the hand of a very great
painter from the city of Siena, by the name of Ambrogio Lorenzetti. This
[drawing] was preserved, with great care, by a very ancient brother of the
Certosan order. This monk, who was called by the name Jacopo, was, like
his father before him, a goldsmith. He was also an accomplished mas-
ter of drawing and took great delight in the art of sculpture. [In showing
me the drawing] he began to tell me how the said statue was discovered
when a foundation was being laid where the houses of the Malavolti are
now located [and] how all those who were learned and educated in the
44 Ghiberti, Commentarii 108.

art of sculpture, and goldsmiths and painters alike, ran to see this statue,
a great marvel and of great art.45
According to Ghiberti’s account, the celebrated statue was set up as a foun-

tainhead to crown the city’s most recent engineering marvel: the fountain
that delivered water to the center of the city and came to be known as the
Fonte Gaia.46 As the story unfolds we learn that, soon thereafter, when the city
was suffering great damages in its ongoing war with Florence, the statue be-
came the target of blame. As a result it was condemned as an idol, dismem-
bered, and finally buried in enemy Florentine territory.
The point that Panofsky takes away from Ghiberti’s account of the fate of
the Sienese Venus is that, in order to be reborn free from the irrational (me-
dieval) fears summed up in the claim of idolatry, ancient sculpture had to be
viewed objectively, through the distancing lens of a kind of analytical drawing
that Panofsky, setting the pattern for many modern historians of Renaissance
art, associates with perspective drawing. While Ghiberti’s interests extended
to the understanding of sight as represented by theories of vision and perspec-
tive, the book has a wider purview than Panofsky’s summary understanding
suggests. Panofsky’s reduction of the tale of the Sienese Venus, in the interest
of finding the symbolic form that he associates with the beginnings a mod-
ern objectifying perspective, collapses our view of the other aspects of the
story. Although the recognition of drawing as the medium of transmission is
fundamental, Panofsky does little with that insight beyond attaching it to the
figure of the painter and to the story of the emergence of Renaissance per-
spective. Neither Panofsky nor Camille recognize the location of the goldsmith
in Ghiberti’s account. While Ghiberti assigns Ambrogio the important role
45 My translation. Ghiberti, Commentarii 108–109: ‘Una ancora fu trovato, simile a queste
due, fu trovato nella città di Siena, della quale ne feciono grandissima festa e dagli inten-
denti fu tenuta maravigliosa opera, e nella basa era scripto el nome del maestro, el quale
era Lisippo, ecellente maestro, e nome suo fu Lisippo, e aveva in sulla gamba in sulla quale
ella si posava una alfino. Questa non vidi se non disegnata di mano d’uno grandissimo
pictore della città di Siena, il quale ebbe nome Ambruogio Lorenzetti; la quale teneva
con grandissima diligentia un frate antichissimo dell’ordine de’ frati di Certosa; el frate
fu orefice et ancora el padre, chiamato per nome frate Jacopo e fu disegnatore e forte si
dilettava dell’arte della scultura e cominciommi a narrare come essa statua fu trovata,
gaccendo uno fondamento, ove sono le case de’ Malavolti, come tutti gli intendenti e dotti
dell’arte della scultura et orefici e pictori corsono a vedere questa statua di tanta mara
vigla e di tanta arte’.
46 The early fountain gave its name to its fifteenth-century re-incarnation by Jacopo della
Quercia. See Hanson A.C., Jacopo della Quercia’s Fonte Gaia (Oxford: 1951) 4–9; and Beck J.,
Jacopo della Quercia (New York: 1991) 164.
310 Campbell
of recording the statue in a drawing, it is a goldsmith who makes the Sienese

Venus “visible” to Ghiberti by showing him Ambrogio’s drawing.
In fact, there is more to Ghiberti’s story than meets the eye when it is mined
for the information it relays. When considered as an instance of foundation-
building, and as an early and distinctive moment in the ongoing process of
Florentine cultural foundation, Ghiberti’s story appears to do a great deal of
work. Not only is there is a goldsmith involved in Ghiberti’s account of the
finding of the Sienese Venus, but that goldsmith is given a specific profile.
The profile allows him to play an exemplary role in the story, one that relates
to Ghiberti’s position as an artist in fifteenth century Florence. According to
Ghiberti, Ambrogio’s drawing was preserved and shown to him by a very old
Sienese monk, who was a goldsmith and the son of a father who had been a
draftsman and a great lover of sculpture. There are several threads to be drawn
out of this small piece of the story. The first is that the goldsmith who transmit-
ted the knowledge of the Sienese statue to Ghiberti is identified as a monk. On
the most basic level, and not surprisingly, the relation of amicable exchange
that Ghiberti draws between the old monk and himself situates his story in a
much larger one about the transmission of craft knowledge from the monas-
tery to the city. But Ghiberti’s monk is not just a goldsmith. He is a repository
of memory and, like his father before him, a draftsman and lover of the arts.
Finally, on the most abstract level, Ghiberti’s goldsmith is the curator of po-
tentially volatile secrets. That potential is represented by Ghiberti in his ac-
count of the Sienese people’s quixotic encounter with the newly excavated
statue of Venus. His tale gives a narrative trajectory to what we might other-
wise view as the hinge that inevitably links judgment and misjudgment. While
Panofsky focuses our attention on the ways in which the irrational moment of
idolatry was overcome, Ghiberti’s tale also speaks of the fallible human sub-
stance of which judgment is “made”. For Ghiberti, this substance is preserved
partially in Ambrogio’s drawing and partially in the affectively charged circuit-
ry through which technical knowledge is shared.
As remembered by Ghiberti, the Sienese Venus, which had first come to
light in the process of laying a foundation for a new edifice, was raised up in
part by the judgment of wise men and in part by the idolatrous impulse of the
people. It thus became a literal fountainhead for the life-giving source at the
center of the city. But its moment in the light was short-lived. When the peo-
ple turned against it they acted according to an apotropaic logic that saw the
statue dismembered and buried in enemy territory as a means of warding off
the evil that had befallen them. In recording the tale in his memoire, Ghiberti
not only recognizes the explosive potential of the statue/idol, he also points
the way to the Sienese Venus as a buried treasure, waiting to be rediscovered
and reassembled in the process of pictorial invention. In Ghiberti’s hands the

Venus became a new source for the kind of Florentine art represented and
hopefully perpetuated by his own lineage. Ghiberti can be viewed, in this last
sense, as the maker of the complex figure of the goldsmith-draftman that un-
derlies Vasari’s translation of Cennini’s Libro into the vita of Agnolo Gaddi.
When Ambrogio’s drawing is understood as the precursor of Vasari’s own col-
lection of drawings, moreover, the reason that Vasari omitted any mention of
Cennini’s chapters on drawing becomes apparent.
In some ways the goldsmith’s shop that runs through Vasari’s Vite as a leit-
motif is akin to the one that Ambrogio Lorenzetti pictured two centuries ear-
lier. While the new setting is not identical, it certainly partakes of the old image
of the goldsmith’s shop as the place where the evaluative function of the gold-
smith operated alongside the practices that connected the goldsmith to the
other arts of the city, and thereby to the administration of justice. In fact, if we
read Vasari’s vita of Francesco Francia with the goldsmith’s shop in our “mind’s
eye” its new lineaments as a place within a painter’s life become visible. The
goldsmith’s shop, which is described as the external place of the painter’s for-
mation at the beginning of Francia’s vita, re-emerges at the end as an internal-
ized habit of self-reflexive judgment.
According to Vasari’s much-disputed account of Francia’s death, the paint-
er, who by then had gained significant acclaim in the city of Bologna, was
brought to the brink of death when he finally encountered Raphael’s paint-
ing of Santa Cecilia.47 Unlike the anecdote in which Vasari describes the mur-
der of Domenico Veneziano by Andrea Castagno, the tale of Francia’s death is
presented as an example of flawed but nevertheless civilized behavior. In the
former story, Andrea is said to have beaten Domenico to death with a handful
of piombi (lead weights or plumb bobs). His actions constitute a dramatic il-
lustration of envy and the violent misuse of the painter’s instruments.48 The
story of Francia’s death, which also takes envy as its theme, does not entail
an act of violence. Moreover, as Charles Dempsey observes, the introductory
paragraph of the 1550 version of Francia’s vita, in which the Bolognese painter
47 As Charles Dempsey notes in his consideration of Carlo Cesare Malvasia’s reaction to
Vasari’s claim, his story of Francia’s death was first refuted in 1584 by Giovanni Paolo
Lomazzo. Dempsey C., “Malvasia and the Problem of the Early Raphael and Bologna”,
in Raphael Before Rome, Studies in the History of Art, vol. 17, Symposium Papers V
(Washington DC: 1986) 66.
48 Vasari, Vite – vol. 3, pt. 1, 360–361. For a recent consideration of the anecdote in which

Vasari describes Castagno’s murder of Domenico Veneziano see Dunlop A., Andrea del
Castagno and the Limits of Painting (London – Turnhout: 2015) 34–38.
312 Campbell
is explicitly presented as an example of ‘invidious presumption’, is removed in

the 1568 edition.
While it is true, as Dempsey notes, that the moral of the story remains es-
sentially the same, it is also true that Francia’s example is not entirely negative
in either edition of the Vite. In both versions, the dying Francia redeems him-
self by realizing his own error and giving Raphael’s painting its due. In both
versions, the awestruck and duly chastised painter ultimately does the right
thing.49 The scene in which Francia encounters his would-be rival, in the form
of Raphael’s Santa Cecilia, unfolds as follows:
Wherefore, Francia, half dead from terror and from the beauty of the
painting that was before his eyes (comparing it to those by his own
hand that were to be seen around it) all bewildered had it placed in
San Giovanni in Monte, in the chapel where it rightfully belonged. And
within the space of a few days he took himself to bed, completely beside
himself – since it appeared that by comparison there was almost nothing
left to him in the art, that he believed in and had cultivated – he died of
sorrow and melancholy, so intensely had he contemplated the extraordi-
nary liveliness of Raphael’s painting.50
Here, as in the vita of Andrea Castagno and Domenico Venenziano, the story of
the untimely death of a painter is made up, and bears little relationship to the
accepted facts of the painter’s life. Vasari’s story is nevertheless compelling as
an image of a painter recognizing his own limit. According to Vasari Francia’s
life was forfeit at the moment he recognized the liveliness that Raphael had
given to his painting.
Yet, even in the depths of terror and despair brought on by the sight of the
astounding beauty of Raphael’s Santa Cecilia, the Bolognese painter acts as the
very “human” counterpart of the “inhuman” example represented by Castagno.
With his life in the balance, and profoundly disoriented, the Bolognese painter
manages to exercise the judgment required to see that the painting was con-
veyed to its proper destination in the Church of San Giovanni. At the end of
49 Dempsey C., “Malvasia” 66.

50 Vasari, Vite – vol. 3, pt. 1, 527–528: ‘Laonde il Francia mez[z]o morto per il terrore e per

la bellezza della pittura che era presente agl’occhi et a paragone di quelle che intorno di
sua mano si vedevano, tutto smarrito la fece con diligenzia porre in S. Giovanni in Monte
a quella cappella dove doveva stare; et entratosene fra pochi dì nel letto tutto fuori di se
stesso, parendoli esser rimasto quasi nulla nell’arte appetto a quello che egli credeva e che
egli era tenuto, di dolore e malinconia, come alcuni credono, si morì, essendoli advenuto,
nel troppo fisamente contemplare la vivissima pittura di Raffaello’.
his life Francia – who in the revised 1568 edition is designated orefice e pittore
from the very beginning – is able to reach back into the “goldsmith’s shop” of
his memory and draw on the secret knowledge that underpinned his capacity
for good judgment.
Bibliography
Abrahams H., “Al-Jawbari on False Alchemists”, Ambix: the Journal of the Society for the
Study of Alchemy and Early Chemistry 31.2 (1984) 84–88.
Andrei F., Boccaccio the Philosopher: An Epistemology of the Decameron (Cham,
Switzerland: 2017).
Baldinucci F., Notizie dei professori dal disegno da Cimabue in qua, ed. Ranalli F., 7 vols.
(Florence: 1845).
Baldinucci F., Vocabulario toscano del arte del disegno (Florence, Accademici della
Crusca, per Santi Franchi: 1681).
Bartoli L., “Rewriting History: Vasari’s Life of Lorenzo Ghiberti”, Word & Image 13.3
(1997) 245–252.
Beck J., Jacopo della Quercia (New York: 1991).
Boccaccio G., Decameron, 2nd ed. Branca V. (Milan: 1992).
Bolland A., “Art and Humanism in Early Renaissance Padua: Cennini, Vergerio and
Petrarch on Imitation”, Renaissance Quarterly 49.3 (1996) 469–487.
Brennan R., “Painting as a ‘Modern Art’: The Era of Giotto”, Ph.D. dissertation (New
York University: 2016), forthcoming as Painting as a Modern Art in Early Renaissance
Italy (London – Turnhout: 2019).
Camille M., The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art (Cambridge
UK – New York: 1989).
Campbell C.J., The Commonwealth of Nature: Art and Poetic Community in the Age of
Dante (University Park, PA: 2008).
Campbell C.J., “Vasari in Practice, or How to Build a Tomb and Make it Work”, in
Pericolo L. – Richardson J. (eds.), Remembering the Middle Ages in Early Modern
Italy (London – Turnhout: 2015) 43–65.
Cennini C., Il libro dell’arte, ed. F. Frezzato (Vicenza: 2003).
Cennini C., Il libro dell’arte: A New English Translation, trans. Broeke L. (London: 2013).
Cennino C., Trattato della pittura (messo in luce per la prima volta), ed. Tambroni G.
(Rome: 1821).
Cerasuolo A., “Appunti di Vincenzio Borghini sul Libro dell’arte di Cennino Cennini”,
Mitteilungen Des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 58.1 (2016) 117–125.
Cioni Liserani E., Scultura e smalto nell’oreficeria senese dei secoli XIII e XIV (Florence:
1998).
314 Campbell
Cioni Liserani E. (ed.), Sigilli medioevali senesi, ex. cat., Museo nazionale del Bargello
(Florence: 1981).
Cohn W., “Franco Sacchetti und das ikonographische Programm der Gewölbemalereien
von Orsanmichele”, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz 8.2 (1958)
65–77.
Cursi M., “‘Con molte sue fatiche’: copisti in carcere alle Stinche alla fine del medioevo
(secoli XIV–XV)”, in Papini L. (ed.), In uno volumine: studi in onore di Cesare Scanlon
(Udine: 2009) 151–191.
Dempsey C., “Malvasia and the Problem of the Early Raphael and Bologna”, in Raphael
Before Rome, Studies in the History of Art, vol. 17, Symposium Papers V (Washington
DC: 1986) 57–70.
Didi-Huberman G., Confronting Images: Questioning the Ends of a Certain History of
Art, trans. Goodman J. (University Park, PA: 2005).
Didi-Huberman G., La peinture incarnée (Paris: 1985).
Di Francia L., Franco Sacchetti novelliere (Pisa: 1902).
Dunlop A., Andrea del Castagno and the Limits of Painting (London – Turnhout: 2015).
Eamon W., Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Early Modern Culture
(Princeton: 1994).
Frosinini C. – Bellucci R., “Working Together: Technique and Innovation in Masolino
and Masaccio’s Panel Paintings”, in Strehlke C. – Frosinini C. (eds.), The Panel
Paintings of Masolino and Masaccio: The Role of Technique (Milan: 2002).
Gearhart H.C., Theophilus and the Theory and Practice of Medieval Art (University Park:
2017).
Ghiberti L., I commentarii, ed. Bartoli L. (Florence: 1998).
Hanson A.C., Jacopo della Quercia’s Fonte Gaia (Oxford: 1951).
Krautheimer-Hess T., “More Ghibertiana”, Art Bulletin 46 (1964) 307–321.
Kruse C., “Fleisch Werden – Fleisch Malen: Malerei als ‘incarnazione’. Mediale
Verfahren des Bildwerdens im Libro dell’arte von Cennino Cennini”, Zeitschrift für
Kunstgeschichte 63.3 (2000) 305–325.
Lochrie K., Covert Operations: The Medieval Uses of Secrecy (Philadelphia: 2011).
Löhr W-D., “Schöpfung und Schminke bei Francesco Sacchetti”, in Wolf G. (ed.),
Kunstgeschichten – Parlare del arte nel Trecento (Munich – Berlin, in press).
Löhr W-D., “‘Verace maestro’: Artistic Techniques between Fraud and Fiction in
Trecento Chronicles and Novels”, conference paper, Annual Meeting of the Renais-
sance Society of America (Chicago: 2017).
Löhr W-D. – Weppelmann S. (eds.), Fantasie und Handwerk. Cennino Cennini und die
Tradition der toskanischen Malerei von Giotto bis Lorenzo Monaco (Munich: 2008).
Long P.O., Openness, Secrecy, Authorship: Technical Arts and the Culture of Knowledge
from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Baltimore: 2001).
Maginnis, H.B.J., Painting in the Age of Giotto: A Historical Reevaluation (University

Park, PA: 1997).
Martinez R.L., “Calandrino and the Powers of Stone: Rhetoric, Belief and the Progress
of Ingegno in Decameron VIII.3”, Heliotropia 1.1 (2003) 1–32, http://www.heliotropia
.org/01-01/martinez.pdf.
McCall T. – Roberts S. – Fiorenza G. (eds.), Visual Cultures of Secrecy in Early Modern
Europe, (Kirksville: 2013).
Panofsky E., Renaissance and Renaissances in Western Art (Uppsala: 1960).
Pfisterer U., “Cennino Cennini und die Idee des Kunstliebhabers”, in Locher H. –
Schneemann P.J. (eds.), Grammatik der Kunstgeschichte: Sprachproblem und
Regelwerk im ‘Bild-Diskurs’. Oskar Bätschmann zum 65. Geburtstag (Zürich –
Emmsdetten – Berlin: 2008) 95–117.
Pliny the Elder, Historia Naturalis, vol. 10, books 36–37, trans. Eichholz D.E. (Cambridge
MA – London: 1962).
Principe L., The Secrets of Alchemy (Chicago: 2013).
Ragghianti Collobi L., Il Libro dei’ disegni del Vasari (Florence: 1974).
Sennett, R., The Craftsman (New Haven – London: 2008).
Stone G.B., The Ethics of Nature in the Middle Ages: On Boccaccio’s Poetaphysics (New
York: 1998).
Vasari G., Das Leben des Taddeo Gaddi, Agnolo Gaddi, Buffalmacco, Orcagna, Spinello
Aretino und Lorenzo Monaco, trans. Lorini V., intro. Jonietz F. – Löhr, W.-D. – Tripps J.
(Berlin: 2015) 31–38.
Vasari G., Il libro delle Ricordanze, ed. del Vita A. (Rome: 1938).
Vasari G., Le vite di’ più eccelenti pittori, scultori e architettori (1550 and 1568), eds.
Bettarini R. – Barrocchi P., 6 vols. (Florence: 1966).
Wolfgang M.E., “Crime and Punishment in Renaissance Florence,” Journal of Criminal
Law and Criminology 81.3 (1990) 567–584.
Wolfgang M.E., “A Florentine Prison: Le Carceri delle Stinche”, Studies in the Renais-
sance 7 (1960) 148–166.
Zervas D.F. (ed.), Orsanmichele a Firenze/Orsanmichele in Florence, 2 vols. (Modena:
1996).
chapter 8
An Open and Shut Case: On the Dialectic of Secrecy

and Access in the Early-Modern Kunstkammer
Mark A. Meadow
In 1565, the Flemish physician Samuel Quiccheberg published the earliest

known treatise on museums and collecting, the Inscriptiones vel tituli Theatri
Amplissimi.1 In this essay, I shall focus on what at first might seem one of the
most trivial aspects of Quiccheberg’s treatise: his concern with storage con-
tainers, with boxes, baskets, caskets and cabinets. I will trace one lineage for
the Wunderkammer and its furniture and storage devices, from fifteenth-
century Italian bedrooms, to the first private studioli, and on to the sixteenth-
century German collections that Quiccheberg describes. This history traces a
set of themes that include privacy and secrecy, seclusion and exclusion, order
and access, and the degree to which all of these might be seen as preconditions
for utilizing a collection for purposes of scholarship.
In thinking about Quiccheberg’s cases and caskets, I want to focus pri-
marily on one small passage in his treatise, which I believe particularly rel-
evant to understanding the conceptual implications of the furnishings of the
Wunderkammer. The treatise begins with a list of collectible items organized
into five classes, each of which is further divided into ten or eleven ‘inscrip-
tions’ or subclasses. Quiccheberg’s cycle of classes and inscriptions begins with
the founder of the collection and his territories, the world of crafted objects,
the world of nature, the tools and instruments by which nature is studied
and turned into artifacts, and finally, the world of representations (paintings,
maps, diagrams) as a form of enacted knowledge produced from the rest of
the collection.
The end of this fifth and final class of objects presents several recapitula-
tions of the collection as a whole or what we would today call meta-collections.
1 Quiccheberg Samuel, Inscriptiones vel tituli theatri amplissimi, complectentis rerum univer-

sitatis singulas materias et imagines eximias. Ut idem recte quoque dici possit: Promptuarium
artificiosarum miraculosarumque rerum, ac omnia rari thesauri et pretiosæ supellectilis, struc-
turæ atque picturæ[…] (Munich, Adam Berg: 1565). Cf. Quiccheberg S., The First Treatise
on Museums: Samuel Quiccheberg’s Inscriptiones 1565, trans. and eds. M.A. Meadow –
B. Robertson (Los Angeles: 2013).

DIALECTIC OF SECRECY & ACCESS IN THE EARLY-MODERN KUNSTKAMMER 317
Two of these are fairly straightforward. One is a collection of proverbs, apho-

risms and other words of wisdom to be written on boards or the walls and
distributed throughout the Kunstkammer, resonating with and textually reiter-
ating the material collections. The other is a collection of printed images, stored
in a special cabinet of drawers, matching the topics of the larger collection and
filling in missing or incomplete examples. It is a third form of meta-collection
that concerns me in this essay, however, which is the final entry of the
entire system.
Class V. Inscriptio Decima

Repositoria undique in promptu, ad singulas res in se recipiendum aut
recludendum; ut armariola, arcæ, scrinia, thecæ, fiscellæ, cophini, ca-
latisci, gradata pulpita, alveoli, cistæ, et in parietibus obvelati fortè risci.
& per certa theatri spacia mensæ; itemque arcus, turricula, pyramids ipsa
armariola imitata.
Containers that can be viewed from all sides, so that single objects can be
stored or hidden in them; such as caskets, chests, letter-cases, cabinets,
[woven] baskets, wicker-baskets, platforms with steps, trays and chests;
against the walls perhaps covered chests, and tables throughout some
parts of the theater; also caskets imitating arches, turrets and pyramids.2
While we can certainly map each object and its box on a one to one basis
throughout the entire collection, this is a very different way of recapitulating
the collection than either prints or witty sayings. At first blush, Quiccheberg’s
interest in containers and tables is unsurprising. He is, after all, writing a prac-
tical text about collecting, a kind of how-to manual. If you assemble the myri-
ad things that it takes to fill his system of inscriptions you certainly need ample
furniture and furnishings both to store and display them.
Nonetheless, there is something quite peculiar about including these con-
tainers under an inscription of their own. In so doing, Quiccheberg raises, for
example, the leather-covered case that holds the virtuosic table ornament by
Wenzel Jamnitzer in the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum, to the same epistemologi-
cal level as the masterpiece of the goldsmith’s art itself.3 Certainly, containers
could be precious and even wondrous objects in their own right, as for instance,
2 Q uiccheberg, Inscriptiones, fol. C iii v. Cf. Quiccheberg, First Treatise on Museums 70–71.
3 Wenzel Jamnitzer, Merkelsche Tafelaufsatz, 1549. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, BK-17040-A
(Table Ornament) and BK-17040-B (Case). Pechstein K., Die Merkelsche Tafelaufsatz von
Wenzel Jamnitzer (Nuremberg: 1974).
318 Meadow
another of Wenzel Jamnitzer’s works, the silver box from Ferdinand II’s
Wunderkammer at Ambras, where the various small insects and animals are
molded and cast from life, but which contains a set of writing tools [Figs. 8.1
and 8.2].4 But these are not primarily the kind of containers Quiccheberg
here discusses, which are in fact quite mundane and utilitarian. Later in the
treatise, for example, he discusses ‘larger containers, into which the smaller
ones are readily stored’, and describes how one can store seeds or other tiny
things in ‘small trays, which seem almost to imitate the trays of beekeepers’.5
Quiccheberg’s containers are the apparatus by which the founder of the
Wunderkammer can both hide and protect the collected objects and the means
by which they can be revealed to visitors. The notion of boxes within boxes is
of prime importance here, since the collection itself has to be understood as
a container writ large, one that contains a microcosm, a model of the world,
just as a wooden case might contain a terrestrial or celestial globe. Within the
collection-as-container are found rooms, cabinets, credenzas, chests and ta-
bles, which themselves might contain drawers, niches, boxes and cubby-holes
that enclose the objects of the collection.
One of the Latin terms that occurs most frequently in Quiccheberg’s text
in this regard is conclavium, which appears to refer variously to a piece of fur-
niture, to what we would today call a closet, to a small room, or to an entire
suite of rooms accessible through a single entrance, in all cases being distin-
guished by having a locked door. Thomas Elyot, in 1538, defines a conclave as a
‘privy or secrete chambre’,6 and Angel Day, in his 1586 treatise on letter writing,
The English Secretary, writes that:
We doe call the most secret place in the house appropriate unto our
owne private studies […] a Closet, in true intendment and meaning, a
place where our dealings of importance are shut up, a roome proper and
peculiar to our selves. […] Thus […] it appeareth that unto everie secrete
there is required a Closet, and the proper use of that Closet, is onelie for
the covertnesse, saftie and assurance of the secrete […] To a Closet , there
belongeth properlie, a doore, a locke, and a key […].7
4 Meadow M.A., “Quiccheberg and the Copious Object: Wenzel Jamnitzer’s Silver Writing Box”,
in Melville, S. (ed.), The Lure of the Object (Williamstown: 2005) 40–58.
5 Quiccheberg, Inscriptiones, fol. F ii v. Cf. Quiccheberg, First Treatise on Museums 89.

6 Elyot Thomas, The Dictionary of syr Thomas Eliot knyght (London, Thomas Berthelet: 1538),

fol. XXIII v.
7 Day Angel, The English Secretary or Methods of Writing of Epistles and Letters, Second Part […]

(London, Robert Walde-grave: 1586) 103.

Figure 8.1 Wenzel Jamnitzer, Silver Writing Box, closed (ca. 1560–1570). Silver, 6 × 22.7 ×
10.2 cm
Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum (inv. no. KK 1155). Image ©
Figure 8.2 Wenzel Jamnitzer, Silver Writing Box, open (ca. 1560–1570). Silver, 6 × 22.7 × 10.2 cm
Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum (inv. no. KK 1155). Image ©
320 Meadow
Quiccheberg’s conclavium, Elyot’s conclave and Angel Day’s closet are thus
secure and deeply private spaces, inextricably binding together the social self
with practices of knowledge production.
The closet famously mentioned in the epitaph of John Tradescant, gardener
to the king and founder of the collection that eventually formed the core of
the Ashmolean museum at Oxford, again exemplifies the relationship among
containedness, collecting and display:
As by their choice Collections may appear,

Of what is rare, in land, in seas, in air:
Whilst they (as Homer’s Iliad in a nut)
A world of wonders in one closet shut.8
What I wish to attend to here is the coincidence of architecture, collecting,

scholarship and an apparently inseparable and ineluctable imperative in
spaces of early-modern knowledge production towards secrecy, seclusion, and
security. In an illustration from Agostino Ramelli’s 1588 treatise on artful ma-
chinery, Le Diverse et artificiose machine, our attention first goes to the rotary
reading machine, which allows the user to move rapidly from one text to an-
other, designed particularly to facilitate translation and comparative scholar-
ship [Fig. 8.3]. But more significant for the present discussion is the carefully
locked and heavily bolted door in the background, the sign that this is a place
of serious scholarship.9 The room this man inhabits is his conclavium or clos-
et, and we should see both the reading machine and the very secure door as
pieces of furniture integral to the room’s function as a study.
The origin of this confluence of architectural space and furniture, collecting
and scholarship, containers and contained-ness, and secrecy and writing, and
the antecedent of the German Kunstkammer as a site of knowledge produc-
tion, is, of all places, the bedroom of the fifteenth-century Italian merchant. In
Book V, Chapter VII of Leon Battista Alberti’s treatise on architecture, written
ca. 1450 and first published in 1485, he proposes that the formerly commu-
nal bedroom of husband and wife should be divided, each getting a room of
his or her own.10 As Mark Wigley has pointed out, this separation has much
8 The epitaph is inscribed upon the Tradescant monument, in the churchyard of St. Mary
in South Lambeth, London (now the London Garden Museum).
9 Ramelli Agostino, Le Diverse et artificiose machine (Paris, A. Ramelli: 1588), 317,

Figure CLXXXVIII.
10 Alberti Leon Battista, De re ædificatoria (Florence, Nicolò di Lorenzo Alemanno: 1485),

fol. miii r-miiiv. Cf. Alberti L.B., On the Art of Building in Ten Books, trans. J. Rykwert –
N. Leach – R. Tavenor (Cambridge: 1988) 149.
Figure 8.3 Anon. (engraver), “Design for a Book Wheel”, in Agostino Ramelli,
Le Diverse et artificiose machine (Paris, A. Ramelli: 1588),
Chapter CLXXXVIII, p. 317
Chicago, Newberry Library (Call number: Wing folio ZP
539 .R143). Image © Newberry Library
322 Meadow
to do with the formation of gender roles and gendered spaces, with sexual
privacy.11 It also very much concerns the related issue of access to information.
In Alberti’s words,
Viro atque uxori dormitio singulis singula debetur; non id modo ut par-
turiens aut malfata mulier molesta viro non sit, verum et æstivos etiam
somnos illesiores peragat, cui lubuerit. Sua cuique aderit ianua, et præter
id commune aderit posticulum, quo mutuo se possit petere sine inter-
prete. Sub uxuris conclave vestiaria, sub viri libraria cella comparabitur.
The husband and wife must have separate bedrooms, not only to ensure
that the husband be not disturbed by his wife, when she is about to give
birth or is ill, but also to allow them, even in summer, an uninterrupted
night’s sleep, whenever they wish. Each room should have its own door,
and in addition a common side door, to enable them to seek each other’s
company unnoticed. Off the wife’s bedroom should be a dressing room,
and off the husband’s a library.12
What Alberti has in mind becomes much clearer if we turn to his earlier trea-
tise Della Famiglia or On the Family, written in 1434. In the third book of Della
Famiglia, Alberti discusses household management, which includes the de-
scription of the training process for a new wife, during which she is shown
the furnishings of the house, given instructions as to where everything belongs
when not in use, and provided with a set of keys:
[…]I wanted none of my precious things to be hidden from my wife. I

opened to her all my household treasures, unfolded them, and showed
them to her.
There is, however, a single key that she does not receive:
Only my books and records and those of my ancestors did I determine to

keep well sealed both then and thereafter. These my wife not only could
not read, she could not even lay hands on them. I kept my records at all
times […] locked up and arranged in order in my study, almost like sacred
11 Wigley M., “Untitled: The Housing of Gender”, in Colomina, B. – J. Bloomer (eds.),

Sexuality and Space, Princeton Papers on Architecture 1 (New York: 1992) 327–389.
12 Alberti, On the Art of Building 149.

or religious objects. I never gave my wife permission to enter that place,

with me or alone.13
The library that lies just off the husband’s bedroom is, of course, the
Renaissance Italian study or studiolo, and, as Alberti makes clear, from its in-
ception the studiolo functioned as a private household archive.14 This is a space
that had as its primary functions financial management on the one hand and
reflection, study and writing on the other. The kind of documents stored there
included accounts and inventories, both current and historical, through which
both the business and the household economy were managed. But there were
also chronicles, diaries and genealogies, narratives of the family and its mem-
bers, and personal mementi. On the basis of these, the head of the household
composed historical accounts of the family and compiled his own memoirs.
Moreover, studioli were repositories for much more than just family docu-
ments: they also held precious artifacts, including (again quoting from Alberti)
‘silver, tapestry, garments, [and] jewels’; these were kept hidden away so that
the owner might ‘look over them whenever [he] wished without witnesses’.15
The fact that the studiolo housed materials pertinent to the financial over-
sight of the household, to personal and family history, and was simultaneously
the locus for rare and valuable artifacts that merited quiet, even solitary con-
templation, helps highlight the function of early-modern collections in general
as sites of knowledge production. This distinguishes them from earlier forms
of collecting among the nobility and in the church, which can be defined as
almost exclusively dedicated to the hoarding of precious materials, in other
words Schatzkammern or treasuries as opposed to Wunderkammern or curios-
ity cabinets. The treasury must, by definition, also be a form of conclavium, a
storage space that is securely locked in order to prevent theft of the precious
metals and gems hoarded there. In Quiccheberg’s conclavium, and Alberti’s
studiolo, material is still hoarded, although now it is precious knowledge rather
than gold and jewels. We can see this as a symptom of an emerging informa-
tion economy.
Thinking of the studiolo conceptually, there is not a clear separation among
furnishings and furniture, the room in question and the collections overall,
including both account books and artifacts. The immediate precursor of the
13 Alberti L.B., The Family in Renaissance Florence, trans. R.N. Watkins (Columbia, University

of South Carolina Press: 1969) 209.

14 See especially Liebenwein W., Studiolo: Die Entsehung eines Raumtyps und seine
Entwicklung bis um 1600 (Berlin: 1977); and Thornton D., The Scholar in His Study:
Ownership and Experience in Renaissance Italy (New Haven – London: 1997).
15 Alberti, The Family 208–209; emphasis mine.

324 Meadow
Italian study, and often the first piece of furniture in it, was a kind of locked
writing desk, which may itself have been termed a studiolo. This is the specific
place where the husband’s private business and family documents were safe-
guarded, first in his bedroom and then in an adjacent room dedicated to the
tasks of management and study. In a drawing of a writing desk designed for
King Philip II of Spain around 1595, the desk is shown in both open and closed
states. The open state reveals the many compartments and drawers in which
documents would archivally be ‘locked up and arranged in order’, as well as
the slanted lectern and writing surface, and even an early version of the now
ubiquitous flexible desk lamp, all to be used in converting old documents into
new ones.16 The room and its furniture could actually be one and the same,
as is illustrated in a woodcut of Le blason de l’estude from Gilles Corrozet’s Les
Blasons domestique, which shows a wooden box just large enough for the owner
to enter and work, which would have been located in the private quarters of
the house.17 A wall has been cut away to reveal a lectern with a book, a desk, a
shelf with books and a lockable chest. To the right, we see a stout wooden door,
the only distinguishing feature of which is, predictably, a large lock.
Alberti’s prescriptions for studiolo architecture, furniture and household
management were directed toward members of the urban merchant/scholar
class, and these as such served directly pragmatic functions. Finances of the
home and business were managed in the studiolo, valuables kept safe, fam-
ily and social memory inscribed, and scholarly history written. The identifica-
tion of the studiolo with learned retreat from the world became so absolute
in the course of the fifteenth century that it could be used as an attribute
for scholarly hermits like St. Jerome, as in the famous painting by Antonello
da Messina in the National Gallery in London. The nobility also took up the
studiolo, of course, but still in a form in which Alberti’s prescriptions can be
easily discerned. In the hands of nobles like Duke Federico Montefeltro of
Urbino, Duchess Isabella d’Este and the Medici Archdukes, these studies be-
come repositories for precious artifacts, natural curiosities, tools, instruments
and rare texts in a manner analogous to what Quiccheberg proposes for his
princely Wunderkammer.18
16 Philip II’s writing desk is illustrated in Thornton, The Scholar in His Study, figs. 44a
and 44b.
17 Corrozet Gilles, Les Blasons domestiques contenantz la decoration d’une maison honneste,

et du mesnage estant en icelle: Invention joyeuse et moderne (Paris, Denis Janot: 1539),
fol. 33 r.
18 On Italian studioli, see Liebenwein W. Studiolo; Campbell S. The Cabinet of Eros: Renais-
sance Mythological Painting and the Studiolo of Isabella d’Este (New Haven – London:
2004); and Cheles L. The Studiolo of Urbina: An Iconographic Investigation (University
Park: 1986).
As a room fully paneled in wood, Federico’s study in Urbino is another ex-

ample of the studiolo as habitable furniture, comparable to the wooden box-
like room shown in the crude woodcut. The wooden walls of the studio are
richly decorated in intarsia; the theme of the inlaid panels is that of cabinets
and cupboards, reinforcing the notion of the study as a box, and in this case,
of the box as a collectible work of art. The studiolo was a quite small room
located, as we would expect, immediately adjacent to the duke’s bedroom.
This was the most private area of the palace, a secret place of refuge and reflec-
tion. The duchess had her quarters well away from the duke, but there was a
secret passageway hidden in the wall that allowed Federico to travel back and
forth unobserved.
The humanist and mercantile culture that produced the conditions and
need for private studies, and for the formation of collections related to them,
was not restricted to Italy. We find the same phenomenon in Germany, no-
tably with the merchants of Augsburg, and thus in the immediate context
of Quiccheberg. As befits the study of a mere merchant prince, the interior
of a studiolo that was built in 1546 for Anton Fugger, then head of the great
Augsburg merchant-banking family business, is plainer in décor than that
of Federico but the room is effectively identical in scale and function. This is
again a piece of furniture raised to the scale of a small room, a wooden box
situated within the architectural space of Anton’s private quarters.
By the time this cabinet was built, the Fuggers were already well established
as one of the wealthiest families in all of Europe. Using their enormous finan-
cial resources, the Fugger family appears to have been instrumental in intro-
ducing the Kunstkammer as a new form of collecting into transalpine Europe,
one which centered on acquiring information and producing practical knowl-
edge. The Fuggers ran the equivalent of a modern multinational corporation,
with offices or factors in every almost place of economic importance, not just
throughout Europe, but also in India, North Africa, the Levant, the Caribbean,
coastal Brazil and Peru, among others.
Already in the 1520s and 30s, Anton’s nephew Raimund assembled a large
collection of antiquities, scientific instruments, naturalia and other rare mate-
rials. The earliest known use of the word ‘Kunstkammer’ is found in a descrip-
tion of Raimund’s collection in 1546.19 The apparatus that housed the Fugger
19 Jäger Clemens, Hernach volget das gehaim Eernbuch Mans Stammens und Namens, des
Eerlichen und altloblichen Fuggerischen geschlechts. Aufgericht Anno 1546, Germanisches
Nationalmuseum Nürnberg, Ms. 1668 (Bg. 3731) Fugger, fol 27r. This manuscript is transcri-
bed in Rohmann G., Das Ehrenbuch der Fugger: Darstellung – Transkription – Kommentar,
Veröffentlichungen der Schwäbischen Forschungsgemeinschaft, series 4, vol. 30/1; Studi-
en der Fuggergeschichte, vol. 39/1, 183.
326 Meadow
collections bears a strong familial relationship to what we have seen in Italy.

The most valued core of Raimund’s collections were housed in the upper,
and thus most private, floor of the house, in two rooms that were named the
coenaculum, or attic, and the secretarium, which is a term that emphasises
both the privacy and security of the conclavium and the study functions of
the studiolo. We know that the family actively sponsored humanist scholar-
ship, but also participated as authors in their own right. Significantly, given the
functions assigned by Alberti to the study, they wrote family histories, memoirs
and even participated in works devoted to the collecting antique coins. The ac-
count of Raimund’s collections just mentioned, for example, came from a fam-
ily chronicle commissioned, and presumably informed by Hans Jacob Fugger,
who succeeded Anton as head of the firm.
The Fuggers, and Quiccheberg, were a direct and important contributing fac-
tor to the transformation of princely collections north of the Alps, particularly
in terms of converting their functions from treasure houses to active research
centers.20 Following a business reversal, Quiccheberg and his employer Hans
Jacob Fugger (Raimund’s son) both moved to Munich to work on the ducal
collections. Their arrival signaled an enormous expansion of the Bavarian col-
lections and a transformation of their nature into a pragmatic research facility
for the court.
In 1565, the year that Quiccheberg published his treatise, Duke Albrecht V
issued a decree formally establishing the Bavarian Kunstkammer as a state in-
stitution. He also instituted a new building campaign, which resulted in the
first purpose-built museum architecture in Europe. With many rooms, open
lighting, and a separate building of its own this is quite a change from the inti-
mate and enclosed studioli of Italy. Quiccheberg makes clear, however, that the
building housing the collection is still to be thought of as a unified container
and that it is both an extension of the private ducal household and an appara-
tus of use in administering the state. The study in which the fifteenth-century
Italian merchant managed his household accounts has here become a working
laboratory, a site of study and scholarship, craftsmanship and technology, at
the service of the larger economy of the Bavarian state.
The Albertian studiolo stood in specific relationship to the household, a cen-
ter of paternal control. The accounts, histories and memoirs there produced
negotiated the status and prestige of the family relative to the outer economic
20 Meadow M.A. “Merchants and Marvels: Hans Jacob Fugger and the Origins of the
Wunderkammer”, in P. Smith – P. Findlen (eds.), Merchants and Marvels: Commerce,
Science, and Art in Early Modern Europe (New York – London: 2002) 182–200.
and political world. The Wunderkammer in Munich also stands in specific re-
lationship to the ducal household, but that household, the oikos, is now un-
derstood as inseparably that of both the family and the state, and the task of
management is of the Bavarian territories and their economy.
One result of this is that the walls that contained the collection became con-
siderably more permeable. Not only might visiting nobility, traveling scholars,
and the entire family, wives included, view the collections, but it was also fre-
quented by craftsmen, artists, engineers and other practitioners related to the
industries and trades of the state economy. We can understand access to col-
lections like that of Albrecht V to operate at multiple levels. At the highest so-
cial scale – princes, popes, dukes and ambassadors – access was paradoxically
the most controlled, since such visitors would have been personal guests of the
duke and the viewing of the collections would be a question of diplomacy and
politics. Humanists and other scholars presumably received access through
such court employees as Quiccheberg, but needed to secure advance permis-
sion to visit through presentation of their bona fides. We know least about how
craftspeople, engineers and others with technical purposes gained entry. They
were part of a larger set of ‘invisible’ visitors, a group that also included women
even of the highest class, who seldom were invited to inscribe their names in
the registers and did not leave us written accounts of their experiences.21
Once in the collection, visitors encountered a dizzying array not only of ob-
jects, but also of innovative storage and display furnishings, such as those I
listed from Quiccheberg at the start of this essay. We get some sense of just
how innovative these furnishings could be, and the degree to which they were
conceived in terms of the dramatic access they provided to the collection, in
another passage in Quiccheberg’s treatise:
Theatro vero aut promptuaria […] in suis parietibus poterint ad tabulas

omnis generis extendendas habere circum circa iustæ magnitudinis val-
vas, quæ hic ut solet in altaribus plerisque fieri, aperiatur, ut bis terve fa-
ciem novam ostendat. Intererius ergo fuerit aliqua rerum clasis: ut effigies,
& picturæ oleaginis coloribus; in medio forte genealogiæ spectaculaque
aliqua; demum exterius forte mappæ, urbes, animali, &c. […] Ut quoti-
escunque inspector aliquis, picturas externas circumeundo perlustrarit,
21 The very useful concept of the ‘invisible visitor’ was first introduced in Findlen, P.,
Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy
(Berkeley – Los Angeles – London, University of California Press: 1994), 143. Findlen con-
ceived the term in relation to Shapin, S., “The Invisible Technician”, American Scientist 77
(1989) 554–563.
328 Meadow
reversus ad principium, faciem inveniat novam, famulo aliquo interim

parietum valvas obvertente.
But the theaters or collections […] will be able to have on their walls
double doors of the right size so that panels of all kinds can be extended;
these doors may be opened, as is customary in the case of altarpieces, so
that they reveal two or three new facets. Thus, in the interior there will be
some class of objects such as statues and oil paintings; in the middle, per-
haps genealogies and some spectacles; finally, on the outside there will be
maps, cities, animals and the like […]. In that way, any viewer, at any time,
might wander around and view the outer paintings and then, returning
to his starting point, find a new facet, with some attendant meanwhile
having shifted the doors on the walls.22
As Quiccheberg explicitly notes, this is akin to complex altarpieces with mul-

tiple states, such as Matthias Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece. The notion is of
visitors wandering through the collection, admiring images and objects, and
then returning to a room only to discover that what had been on display is now
hidden, and what was hidden is now revealed. What this and similar passages
in Quiccheberg make clear is that both the containers in the collection and
the collections as a whole were conceived as embodying a dialectic of conceal-
ing and revealing, of secrecy and access. What it also suggests is an emerging
technology of increasingly complex storage and display furniture, which re-
quired its own kind of technical knowledge to work secret latches and open
hidden compartments, in order both to hide and then discover the precious
objects within.
The semi-openness of the Bavarian collections had its downside, though.
By the start of the seventeenth century, so many objects had been pilfered
from the Munich Kunstkammer by unscrupulous visitors that Albrecht V’s
grandson Maximilian removed the most prized and precious objects from the
Kunstkammer and took them back into the ducal residence, where they were
installed in a small, lockable room off the duke’s bedroom, to which he and
he alone had access. Almost two hundred years after Alberti, the secure and
secretive studiolo he proposed continued to exist in parallel to the increasingly
accessible Kunstkammer.
22 Quiccheberg, Inscriptiones, fol. F iii r. Quiccheberg First Treatise on Museums 89.

Bibliography
Alberti Leon Battista, De re ædificatoria. (Florence, Nicolò di Lorenzo Alemanno: 1485).

Alberti L.B., On the Art of Building in Ten Books, trans. J. Rykwert – N. Leach – R. Tavenor
(Cambridge: 1988).
Alberti L.B., The Family in Renaissance Florence, trans. R.N. Watkins (Columbia: 1969).
Campbell S., The Cabinet of Eros: Renaissance Mythological Painting and the Studiolo of
Isabella d’Este (New Haven – London: 2004).
Cheles L., The Studiolo of Urbino: An Iconographic Investigation (University Park: 1986).
Corrozet Gilles, Les Blasons domestiques contenantz la decoration d’une maison
honneste, et du mesnage estant en icelle: Invention joyeuse et moderne (Paris, Denis
Janot: 1539).
Day Angel, The English Secretary or Methods of Writing of Epistles and Letters, Second
Part […] (London, Robert Walde-grave: 1586).
Elyot Thomas, The Dictionary of syr Thomas Eliot knyght (London, Thomas Berthelet:
1538).
Findlen P., Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early
Modern Italy (Berkeley – Los Angeles – London: 1994).
Jäger Clemens, Hernach volget das gehaim Eernbuch Mans Stammens und Namens,
des Eerlichen und altloblichen Fuggerischen geschlechts. Aufgericht Anno 1546,
Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nürnberg, Ms. 1668 (Bg. 3731) Fugger.
Liebenwein W., Studiolo: Die Entsehung eines Raumtyps und seine Entwicklung bis um
1600 (Berlin: 1977).
Meadow M.A., “Merchants and Marvels: Hans Jacob Fugger and the Origins of the
Wunderkammer”, in P. Smith – P. Findlen (eds.), Merchants and Marvels: Commerce,
Science, and Art in Early Modern Europe (New York – London: 2002).
Meadow M.A., “Quiccheberg and the Copious Object: Wenzel Jamnitzer’s Silver
Writing Box”, in Melville, S. (ed.), The Lure of the Object (Williamstown: 2005) 40–58.
Pechstein K., Die Merkelsche Tafelaufsatz von Wenzel Jamnitzer (Nuremberg: 1974).
Quiccheberg Samuel, Inscriptiones vel tituli theatri amplissimi, complectentis rerum
universitatis singulas materias et imagines eximias. Ut idem recte quoque dici pos-
sit: Promptuarium artificiosarum miraculosarumque rerum, ac omnia rari thesauri et
pretiosæ supellectilis, structuræ atque picturæ[…] (Munich, Adam Berg: 1565).
Quiccheberg S., The First Treatise on Museums: Samuel Quiccheberg’s Inscriptiones 1565,
trans. and eds. M.A. Meadow – B. Robertson (Los Angeles: 2013).
Ramelli Agostino, Le diverse et artificiose machine (Paris, A. Ramelli: 1588).
Rohmann G., Das Ehrenbuch der Fugger: Darstellung – Transkription – Kommentar,
Veröffentlichungen der Schwäbischen Forschungsgemeinschaft, series 4, vol. 30/1;
Studien der Fuggergeschichte, vol. 39/1 (Augsburg: 2004).
330 Meadow
Shapin S., “The Invisible Technician”, American Scientist 77 (1989) 554–563.

Thornton D., The Scholar in His Study: Ownership and Experience in Renaissance Italy
(New Haven – London: 1997).
Wigley M., “Untitled: The Housing of Gender”, in Colomina, B. – J. Bloomer (eds.),
Sexuality and Space, Princeton Papers on Architecture 1 (New York: 1992) 327–389.
chapter 9
Mysterious Noises: Orphic Strings, Rough Music,

and the Sounds of Early Modern Ornament Prints
Madeleine C. Viljoen
A snug chamber with wooden beams supporting a low ceiling provides work
space for four artisans [Fig. 9.1]. At far left a youth pulls metal through a die to
create wire strands, while at right a young adult seated at a long table placed
at right angles to the window employs a small pair of tongs to handle a piece
of delicate metalwork. Near him a standing figure with long flowing tresses, a
woman or boy perhaps, energetically hammers metal on an anvil. An older man
in the middle of the image, seated on a cathedra and wearing a miter and long
clerical robes, uses a small hammer to fashion the cup of a chalice. His incon-
gruous ecclesiastical attire and stately pew set him apart from his co-workers,
cuing the viewer that this is no run-of-the-mill goldsmith shop, but the one leg-
endarily operated by St. Eligius, a gifted seventh-century goldsmith who was
named bishop of Noyon-Tournai in 642 AD.
The rare late fifteenth-century print by Master of Balaam, which survives
in a single impression at the Rijksmuseum, is regularly illustrated to explain
the emergence of intaglio printmaking out of knowledge about how to work
metal.1 A scene of the early modern goldsmith’s place of work, the engraving
features a die for pulling wire, a furnace for heating, an anvil for beating, and
rows of instruments neatly hung on the wall for tasks that included chasing,
filing, pouncing, incising, polishing and more. Just visible in the jumble of dis-
carded implements at the workbench is the sort of burin the Master of Balaam
would have employed to incise the print the engraving illustrates, testimony
both to the historical overlap between the professions of the goldsmith and the
engraver and to the conditions for the rise of the goldsmith-engraver during
the early modern period.
In light of the pivotal role this work has played in documenting the rise of
engraving out of goldsmithing, it is surprising that the other goings on in the
1 P
arshall P. – Landau D., The Renaissance Print: 1470–1550 (New Haven: 1994) 1–2; and
Stijnman A. Engraving and Etching 1400–2000: A History of the Development of Manual
Intaglio Printmaking Processes (Houten: 2012) 30.

332 Viljoen
Figure 9.1 Master of Balaam, St. Eligius in his Workshop (ca. 1450). Engraving, 115 × 185mm
Amsterdam, Rijksprentenkabinet (inv. no. RP-P-OB-963).
Image © Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
shop have hitherto received little to no attention.2 Witness the artisans ab-
sorbed in their tasks, seemingly insensible to the small menagerie of animals
that threatens to overrun their workspace. Without parallel in comparable
illustrations of fifteenth and sixteenth-century shops, the image shows eight
animals – two dogs, three birds, a cat, a mouse and a monkey – all crowded
into the room’s narrow confines.3 The hound closest to us has tilted its head
back and appears to be howling, and the other is now cowering on the floor,
possibly as a result of a recent act of mischief, an idea that receives support
from the nearby three-legged stool, which is overturned and now lies on its
side next to a shoe that has lost its partner. In the left foreground a pair of birds
copulates, oblivious to the adjacent cat, whose apparent inattentiveness could
well be masking a plan to pounce on them unawares. Temporarily hidden from
2 Cherry J.F., Goldsmiths (London: 1992) 26, is the only scholar to note the presence of a large
number of animals in the shop, which he connects with folly: ‘Everything around him is
marked by disorder caused by the intrusion of folly. Birds copulate, dogs howl, a stool and
shoe are upside down, a monkey sits on the window and a young girl wields a hammer with
mighty force’.
3 Enea Vico’s depiction of Baccio Bandinelli’s Academy, for example, shows a single sleeping
dog and cat, while Étienne Delaune’s Allegorical Goldsmith’s Shop depicts just one slumber-
ing hound.
Mysterious Noises: The Sounds of Early Modern Ornament Prints 333
view by the die on which the young metalsmith stands as well as by a pair of
formidable tongs, a mouse has just entered the space at bottom left, presenting
the prospect of further high jinks. An ape on the left-hand windowsill, finally, is
momentarily engaged with something in its palm, but unfettered, as pet mon-
keys are not wont to be – comparable apes by Albrecht Dürer, Pieter Bruegel,
and Hendrick Goltzius are all chained – Master of Balaam’s could at any mo-
ment descend from its perch, jump on the worktable and toss over precious
items. Whether momentarily lulled, about to spring into action or already the
cause of the clamor within the workshop, the group of animals collectively
conveys a sense of the noise and the prospect for unruliness that defines the
experience of labor in the early modern goldsmith shop.4
It is tempting to connect the animals’ presence with Eligius, and one legend
does tell of the saint’s special facility with horses. Accordingly, he solved the
problem of a horse reluctant to be shod by cutting off the animal’s foreleg, re-
shoeing the hoof, and then miraculously re-attaching the leg.5 For this super-
natural feat, Eligius is celebrated as the patron saint of horses, veterinarians,
jockeys, and blacksmiths.6 Existing images show him as a blacksmith, often in
the process of re-shoeing the amputated phalanx, but none portrays him in
his workshop with this assortment of animals. The absence of images of St.
Eligius featuring a similar profusion of creatures encourages a more figurative
and less literal interpretation for their place here. Master of Balaam, I argue,
shows us a shop thick with sound and vulnerable if not prone to the atten-
dant turmoil. He asks us not just to observe the workmen’s varied tasks or the
animals’ antics, but also to hear the sounds reverberating within: of hammers
beating, metals screeching, a dog barking, a monkey gibbering, birds cooing,
and more. Functioning as a point of departure for a sweeping investigation
of the sonic bedrock out of which the early modern goldsmith-engraver de-
veloped his art, the Master of Balaam’s engraving signals sound (or noise) as
the condition that was not only a constant accompaniment to but also a vital
ingredient of what he did and how he did it.7 The earliest print of a goldsmith
4 See my argument in “Diligent Labor in Stradanus’s Engraving Shop” in Renaissance Invention:

Stradanus’s Nova Reperta (Northwestern University Press, 2020) 61–73.
5 Curth L.H., ‘A plaine and easie way to remedie a horse’: Equine Medicine in Early Modern
England (Leiden: 2013) 48.
6 Burns P., Favourite Patron Saints (London: 2004) 54–55.
7 Cockayne, E., “Cacophany, or vile scraper on vile instruments: bad music in early modern
English towns”, Urban History 29.1 (2002) 36: “In the early modern period, the word ‘noise’
connoted a variety of imprecise and often contradictory meanings. ‘Noise’ was used to de-
scribe sounds that were musical or unmusical, pleasant or unpleasant, and could also be
applied to quarrelling, strife or the spreading of rumours. Indeed ‘noise’ was often regarded
as being synonymous with sound.”
334 Viljoen
in his shop, Master of Balaam’s engraving sets the stage for an understand-
ing of the acoustic ambiance and sonic expertise that define the work of the
goldsmith-engraver, central features of which would remain intact for at least
the next two hundred years.
1 Mystery and Mastery
The artistic practices of early modern craftsmen are veiled in mystery.8

Originating in the Latin mysterium meaning “secret rite”, mystery is linked in
post-classical times to the secrets of the Eucharist and the Christian faith. As
the Oxford English Dictionary points out, the term also occurs in medieval and
early modern Latin in the form of misterium, referring to ‘ecclesiastical ser-
vice,’ a sense that is more usually associated with the Latin term ministerium.9
A confusion that likely originated in the words’ phonetic and semantic simi-
larities, mystery came as a result to assume a secondary association, one that
was synonymous with duty, office, service, occupation, trade, and the guild.
Further compounding the term’s density of reference, mystery was conflated
in the fourteenth century with the French maestrie, such that the word by this
time was also linked with ‘mastery’. The occupation of the goldsmith, among
the most prestigious Renaissance trades, perfectly embodied the term’s rich
and varied associations. Purveyors of artifacts created with clandestine meth-
ods and with strange and exotic ingredients –including delicacies like lizard’s
tails and the blood of menstruating women –, goldsmiths were the custodi-
ans of early modern artisanal secrets.10 Through experiment and observation
they developed methods to vouchsafe the successful outcome of their works,
achieving a mastery over nature that they flaunted in their virtuoso metalwork.
Utilizing elements ranging from minerals to metals, plants, animals, insects,
and more, whose independent workings and interactions were themselves
cause for wonder and surprise, goldsmiths were intimately acquainted with all
aspects of early modern mysterium.11
8 Eamon W., Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern
Culture (Princeton, 1994) 89, has posited that craft knowledge “constituted a form of in-
tangible property developed in the late-medieval guilds. Craft secrecy was the instrument
by which the guilds maintained the integrity of such intellectual property”.
9 ‘Mystery, n.1’. OED Online, Oxford University Press, July 2018, www.oed.com/view/
Entry/124644. Accessed 23 October 2018.
10 Smith P.H., “Vermilion, Mercury, Blood, and Lizards: Matter and Meaning in Metalworking”,
in Klein U. – Spary E.C. (eds.), Materials and Expertise in Early Modern Europe: Between
Market and Laboratory (Chicago: 2010) 30–48.
11 Cited in Smith P.H., The Body of the Artisan (Chicago: 2004) 143–144. Vannoccio
Biringuccio describes how humans first started building houses, noting that they reacted
The preponderance of early textual accounts of artisanal labor were written

in Latin, a circumstance that contributed toward limiting access to the knowl-
edge they contained and adding to the secrecy that already surrounded the
operations they described.12 Focused on making or creating, medieval artisans
rarely wrote about what they did – how-to knowledge was handed down orally
from master to apprentice and was generally not committed to paper.13 With
the advent of printing, the situation changed quite dramatically with signifi-
cant numbers of books being published in the vernacular. Interested in ex-
panding the audiences for their texts beyond a Latin-educated elite, publishers
found a receptive clientele not just among craftsmen but among large num-
bers of lay people too.14 Drawing on numerous disciplines, books of secrets
touched on subjects as diverse as botany, mining, pharmacopeia, and anatomy,
pointing to the extraordinary demands placed on craftsmen and the variety
of skills in which they were expected to be proficient. This was particularly
true for the gold- and silversmiths, who in addition to producing a broad range
of decorative metal works were involved in engraving copper plates, as well
as pouring and chasing dies for coins, seals, and metal type. They were also
deeply knowledgeable about aspects of cartography, alchemy, cosmography,
astronomy, mathematics, perspective, and more.15
with ‘astonishment’ when they discovered that burned clay had the consistency of stone,
wonder being the appropriate response to nature’s mysterious workings: ‘[…] these men
in order to make stone and to soften them, or to return them to their first principles,
burned them as do the said alchemists. When they found them then to be a dry earth,
they made a paste of it with water in order to build. And trying to do the same with pure
earth [clay], they found, to their astonishment, that instead of drying up it became hard
[…] and became a thing that greatly resembled stones’.
12 Eamon W., “How to Read a Book of Secrets”, in Secrets and Knowledge in Medicine and
Science, 1500–1800 (Farnham: 2011) 23–46; and Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature
93–94.
13 Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature 86: ‘Medieval craftsmanship was guided primar-
ily by experience and the unwritten rules of oral tradition’.
14 Smith P.H., “In the Workshop of History: Making, Writing, and Meaning”, West 86th: A
Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture 19.1 (2012) 4–31; and
Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern
Culture 122–123.
15 Johann Philipp Walch (1587–1631), for example, was active both as a goldsmith and map-
maker. Another leading goldsmith/printmaker, Antonius Eisenhoit executed celestial
globes, engraved prints and created a perspective machine. See Christoph Stiegemann
(ed.), Wunderwerk: Göttliche Ordnung und Vermessene Welt, exh.cat., Erzbischöfliches
Diözesanmuseum, Paderborn (Mainz am Rhein: 2003), 101–115. For additional examples,
see entries in Dackerman S., Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe
(London and New Haven, 2011) 46–47, 90–91, 232–233, 236–245, 248–249, 250–255, 292–
293, 296–297, 310–313, 332–333, 346–347, 354–355, 366–367.
336 Viljoen
The goldsmith had to be quite literally on his mettle, relying on his five
senses to execute the varied operations his art demanded of him.16 Particularly
pertinent to this investigation was his dependence on hearing. An early
sixteenth-century anonymous goldsmith’s book states, for example: ‘If the tin
cries very much, it means you added enough lead and not too much; if the
tin cries softly, it means you added too much lead’.17 Theophilus, the twelfth-
century goldsmith and author of De diversis artibus, in his account of how to
cast bells, counsels the caster to ‘lie down close to the mouth of the mold’ as
the metal is poured into the bell mold, ‘and listen carefully to find out how
things are progressing inside. If you hear a light thunder-like rumbling, tell
them to stop for a moment and then pour again; and have it done like this, now
stopping, now pouring, so that the bell metal settles evenly, until that pot is
empty’.18 Harkening to ‘cries’, ‘rumbles’, and ‘bott, bott, botts’, goldsmiths were
not only acutely attuned to the sounds that emanated from the materials with
which they worked, but were also cued to interpret them to ensure their proj-
ects turned out well.19 Arguably, one of the goldsmith-engraver’s best-kept se-
crets was both his conversance with and skill at construing a broad spectrum
of sound. Honed in the shop, the goldsmith-engraver’s unusual sensitivity to
a wide array of noises finds expression both in the personae he inhabited and
in the musical subjects with which he chose to convey what set his craft apart.
2 Orphic Strings
A rare and little-known 1626 title-page by Hendrick van de Weyck begins to

build a case for such an understanding [Fig. 9.2]. Belonging to a series of de-
signs its maker claims are most useful for beginning goldsmiths, the set il-
lustrates all manner of four-legged animals. Above the inscription framed
by a cartouche resembling a gaping mouth from which burins dangle at left
and goldsmith tools at right – designating this as a work both of and for a
goldsmith-engraver – a dapper male figure is rendered in the company of a
16 Smith P.H., “The Matter of Ideas in the Working of Metals in Early Modern Europe”,
in Anderson C. – Dunlop A. – Smith P.H. (eds.), The Matter of Art: Materials, Practices,
Cultural Logics, c. 1250–1750 (Manchester: 2015) 53–57.
17 Smith, P.H. “Vermilion, Mercury, Blood and Lizards: Matter and Meaning in Metalworking”
in Klein, Ursula – Spray, E.C. (eds.), Materials and Expertise in Early Modern Europe
(Chicago: 2010) 33.
18 Smith P.H., “Itineraries of Materials and Knowledge in the Early Modern World”, in
Gerritsen A. – Riello G. (eds.), The Global Lives of Things (London and New York: 2016) 32.
19 Ibid. 33.
Figure 9.2 Hendrick L. de Weyck, Frontispiece Simplex effigatio omnis generis

quadrupedium (1626). Engraving, 63 × 77mm
Amsterdam, Rijksprentenkabinet (inv. no. RP-P-1895-A-18830).
large number of quadrupeds, including a wolf, bull, horse, wild boar, stag, goat,
rabbits, and a mouse, creatures that rarely associate voluntarily, being more
likely to view each other as a delicious snack or the chance for rowdy play than
as the occasion for a friendly social gathering. Wreathed in laurels, the man
plays a lira da braccio, a Renaissance bowed string instrument that was used in
the early modern era for the chordal accompaniment of songs and recitations
and which contemporaries regarded as the equivalent of the lyre of Apollo and
Orpheus.20 The conjunction of an individual crowned with laurels, equipped
with a lira da braccio and pictured with animals peaceably communing around
20 Walker D.P., Spiritual and Demonic Magic: From Ficino to Campanella (University Park:
2000) 19.
338 Viljoen
him suggests that we identify him as Orpheus, the hero of classical Greek and
Roman legend who bewitched wild animals and made trees and rocks move
to his hypnotic refrain.21 Deviating from traditional representations of the an-
cient musician who is usually shown nude or clad in Romanizing garments,
however, this character carries a sword and wears baggy pantaloons gathered
at the knee, tights, and a swanky doublet with modishly slashed sleeves. Among
the most refined and prosperous craftsmen, early modern goldsmiths are regu-
larly rendered in similar getups with sword or daggers at their sides (likely to
convey that they are craftsmen, who have attained the status of journeymen),
as shown in engravings by Jean Toutin [Fig. 9.3] and the Monogrammist AB
[Fig. 9.4].22 What we see in van de Weyck’s frontispiece in other words is a
representation of the goldsmith-engraver as a sort of latter-day Orpheus. The
conflation of the two figures may seem unlikely, but it actually makes quite a
lot of sense. Like Orpheus, the goldsmith was thought to enjoy extraordinary
sway over the cosmos (κόσμος), the ancient Greek term used to refer equally to
the universe – including its flora and fauna – and to ornament, the subject and
medium of the goldsmith-engraver’s mastery.23
Not alone in drawing attention to the goldsmith-engraver’s Orphic powers,
de Weyck’s engraving numbers among others that take their subject on the
one hand to be the depiction of the mythological hero taming animals and on
the other the congress of diverse and often unrelated animals. The former is
apparent in prints by goldsmith-engravers Virgil Solis, Jost Amman, Michael
Grundler, Etienne Delaune, the Monogrammist HD, Antoine Jacquard, and
more. The latter is evident in sheets by Virgil Solis, Matthias Beutler, Daniel
Hopfer, Paulus Flindt, Claude Rivard, Michel le Blon, Corvinianus Saur, Martin
Pleginck, Jean Duvet, and others. The visual connection between the two cat-
egories is suggestive. Comparing Virgil Solis’s image of Orpheus Taming the
Animals of 1540 [Fig. 9.5] with his Scene of Thirteen Wild Animals [Fig. 9.6], it
is apparent that absent Orpheus, the engravings are virtually interchangeable:
each is rendered in an oblong format and features an assortment of animals,
21 Winternitz E., Musician Instruments and Their Symbolism in Western Art: Studies in
Musical Iconology (New Haven: 1979) 30–31; and Anderson W.S., “The Orpheus of Virgil
and Ovid: flebile nescio quid”, in Warden J (ed.) Orpheus: The Metamorphoses of a Myth
(Toronto: 1982) 31–32.
22 Tlusty B.A., The Martial Ethic in Early Modern Germany: Civic Duty and the Right of Arms
(Basingstoke: 2011), 154–155.
23 For the correlation of ornament and cosmos, see Viljoen M., “The Winds of Early Modern
Ornament Prints”, Oxford Art Journal 37,1 (2014) 122; and eadem, “Christoph Jamnitzer’s
Grotteßken Buch, Cosmography and Early Modern Ornament”, Art Bulletin 98.2 (2016)
217–218.
Figure 9.3 Jean Toutin, “A Goldsmith working at a furnace with his apprentice” from a
series of seven Blackwork ornaments (1619). Engraving, 106 × 81mm
Amsterdam, Rijksprentenkabinet (inv. no. RP-P-1894-A-18419).
340 Viljoen
Figure 9.4 Monogrammist AB, A Goldsmith’s Workshop (1610). Punch engraving,

160 × 133mm
Amsterdam, Rijksprentenkabinet (inv. no. RP-P-2008-520).
including a monkey, goat, stag, dog, tortoise, and even an imaginary griffin.24
The same might be said for countless ornaments that bring unrelated ani-
mals together on the same page, but which lack Orpheus as their raison d’être.
Present in the form of the hand of the engraver, the goldsmith-printmaker
channels his inner Orpheus by construing his artistic task to be the act of sum-
moning collections of miscellaneous and often inimical beasts to assemble as
subjects for his art.
24 O’dell Franke I. Kupferstiche und Radierungen aus der Werkstatt des Virgil Solis (Wiesbaden:
1977), cat. d65 and g48, respectively.
Figure 9.5 Virgil Solis, Orpheus Taming the Animals (1524–1562?). Engraving, 53 × 242mm
Amsterdam, Rijksprentenkabinet (Inv. no. RP-P-OB-54.651).
Figure 9.6 Virgil Solis, Thirteen Wild Animals (mid sixteenth century). Engraving,
34 × 164mm
Vienna, Albertina. https://library.artstor.org/asset/
BARTSCH_2950065
The musician Orpheus possessed special powers to control the cosmos

by virtue of his unusual skill with the lute or lyre, an expertise that closely
matches that of the early modern goldsmith. The quest to render and mas-
ter the natural world as convincingly in two dimensions as if one were see-
ing it in three preoccupied Renaissance artists for the better part of two
centuries; the invention of a machine by goldsmith-engraver Albrecht Dürer
was an important milestone in this ongoing effort.25 In the Unterweisung der
Messung of 1525, Dürer unveiled a mechanism that used ‘Fehden’ to transfer a
three-dimensional object to a two-dimensional tablet [Fig. 9.7]. ‘You can ren-
der anything within reach in correct perspective by means of three threads
[Fehden], and draw it on a table’, he writes and proceeds to instruct the reader
on the steps needed to transfer the object to the panel.26 Requiring two artisans
to work with one another, the first draftsmen uses a weighted string to point to
various sites on an item laid flat on a table, while the second draftsman plots
the intersection of the pointer with the two strings attached to the perspective
25 he literature on this topic is vast. Among more recent studies, see Edgerton S. The Mirror,
T
the Window and the Telescope (New York/London: 2009) and Summers D. Vision, Reflection
and Desire in Western Painting (Chapel Hill, 2007).
26 Massey L., Picturing Space, Displacing Bodies: Anamorphosis in Early Modern Theories of
Perspective (College Park: 2007) 85–96; and Maynard P., Drawing Distinctions: The Varieties
of Graphic Expression (Ithaca: 2005) 33–35.
342 Viljoen
Figure 9.7 Albrecht Dürer, The Draftsman drawing a Lute (1525). Woodcut, 129 × 181mm.
Dresden, Kupferstichkabinett (Inv. no. A996)
Image © Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden
frame. Repeating this method while moving from point to point, Dürer
illustrates how it is possible to scan the thing in its entirety and to recreate it
in perfect perspective on a flat surface. Any sort of item is suitable he says, yet
quite tellingly, his choice is a lute. Rhyming with the stringed machine used to
transfer the instrument to the two-dimensional picture plane, the lute consists
of a wooden frame that is activated through play with strings or threads. The
perspective machine fellow goldsmith Wenzel Jamnitzer introduced a little over
twenty-five years later builds on Dürer’s musical analogy. In an etching of c. 1552–
55, Jost Amman shows Jamnitzer fingering a thread suspended between two
uprights as he aims to render the polyhedral form before him [Fig. 9.8].27 A 1599
account of Jamnitzer’s instrument by Paulus Pfinzing eulogizes Jamnitzer’s
improvement as a method that had again brought “to light Albrecht Dürers
27 For more about Wenzel Jamnitzer’s machine, see Bedini S.A., “The Perspective Machine
of Wenzel Jamnitzer”, Technology and Culture 9.2 (1968) 197–202; Elkar, R.S., “Feder, Tinte
und Papier – ungebrauchte Werkzeuge im alten Handwerk”, in Gerhard H.J. (ed.), Struktur
und Dimension: Festschrift für Karl Heinrich Kaufhold zum 65. Geburtstag (Stuttgart: 1997)
278–279; and Anderson, K. The Geometry of an Art: The History of the Mathematical Theory
of Perspective from Alberti to Monge (New York and London: 2007) 224–229.
Figure 9.8 Jost Amman, Portrait of Wenzel Jamnitzer (ca. 1561–1591). Engraving,
178 × 261mm
Image © RijksmuseUm, AmsterdamAnonymous
perspective with strings.”28 Whereas Dürer employed the word ‘Fehden’, more
literally a thread, to describe the line he spans between the lute and the tab-
let, Pfinzing uses the word ‘Saiten’ to refer to Jamnitzer’s strings. The substitu-
tion is meaningful, for the term ‘Saite’ refers specifically to cords made from
sheep gut for instruments like lutes and violins, making it clear that Pfinzing
was cognizant of the musical, not to say Orphic, proficiency out of which the
goldsmith’s perspective machine evolved. Hans Hayden (1536–1613) was next in
line to offer an upgrade to Jamnitzer’s perspective machine, but, unlike Dürer or
Jamnitzer, he was not a goldsmith by profession but an instrumentalist. Credited
both with proposing further refinements to Jamnitzer’s machine and with in-
venting a stringed musical instrument, the so-called ‘Nürnbergisch Geigenwerk’
28 Pfinzing P., Ein schöner kurtzer Extract der Geometriae vnd Perspectiva (Nuremberg,

durch Valentin Fuhrman: 1598) states: ‘Wenzel Jamnitzer der bringt des Albrecht Dürers
Perspective met der Saiten wider an Tag’ [Wenzel Jamnitzer, who brings, Albrecht
Dürer’s Perspective with strings to light again] as cited in May P., “Die Kunstfertigkeit
der Perspektive zu Nürnberg”, in Bott G. (ed.), Wenzel Jamnitzer und die Nürnberger
Goldshmiedekunst 1500–1700, exh. cat., Germanisches Museum (Nuremberg: 1985) 162.
344 Viljoen
(Nuremberg violin machine), Hayden’s expertise is further evidence for the

musical knowhow that propelled Dürer’s original invention.29
3 The Goldsmith-Musician
The acoustic intelligence the goldsmith rehearsed in the creative process of

developing designs in metal was further enhanced through a range of musical
performance. More than the stuff of myth or metaphor, there is much to sug-
gest that late sixteenth-century goldsmiths possessed not just aural acuity but
also real melodic flair. Leonhard Lechner’s 1582 songbook Newe Teutsche Lieder
is dedicated, for example, to the celebrated Nuremberg goldsmith Wenzel
Jamnitzer. Fellow goldsmith Paul Dulner wrote the lyrics to the Lieder as well
as its dedication, which reads: ‘I have often experienced that your Honor shows
great love and favor for all laudable arts and artisans, especially for the lovely
art of Music, as I have happily heard and seen you making music’.30 The address
makes it clear that Jamnitzer enjoyed both listening to and making music, a
fact that is further supported by his and Dulner’s participation in the so-called
Krentzleins Gesellschaft, Nuremberg’s first musical society founded in 1568.31
Goldsmiths played a role in other musical organizations too, including the
sixteenth-century Meistersinger, or master singers, a group that developed
out of the traditions of the medieval Minnesinger and to which large numbers
of the artisan and trading classes of early modern German towns belonged.
Varied in subject matter with topics drawn from both secular and religious
themes, the lyrics of at least one of these songs connect a silversmith with
Orpheus. Penned by Michel Beheim (1416–1472), the so-called Erzgräberbispel
figures the poet as a silversmith quarrying for ore in an underground mine and
29 Pfinzing, Extract der Geometriae vnd Perspectiva, as cited in May,“Die Kunstfertigkeit der

Perspektive zu Nürnberg” 164: ‚Ist ein geschwinder Weg/der nit besser noch geschwind-
er mit weniger mühe mag erfunden werden […]‘ The artist’s Geigenwerk is described
by German musicologist Michael Praetorius in his Syntagma Musicum (Wittenberg:
Wittebergae Richter, 1618).
30 Martin U., “Der Nürnberger Paul Dulner als Dichter geistlicher und weltlicher Lieder
Leonhard Lechners” Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 11.4. (1954) 315–322.
31 Finscher L., “Lied und Madrigal”, in Kmetz J. (ed.) Music in the German Renaissance:
Sources, Styles, and Contexts (Cambridge: 2006) 189: “Nachdem ich offtmals inn erfarung
kommen/ daß Euer Ehrbarer Weiser große lieb und gunst zu allen löblichen Kunsten/
unnd Kunstversanten tragen /furnemlich aber ein sonder neigung zu der lieblichen
Kunst Musica haben/… wie ich dan Euer Ehrbarer Weiser selber bey der Music mehr als
einmal froelich gehoert und gesehen.”
Figure 9.9
Anonymous German, A Goldsmith’s
Workshop (ca. 1540–1580). Punched
engraving, 122mm diameter
London, British Museum
(inv. no. 1853,0312.241).
Image © Trustees of the
British Museum, London
shaping the metal he finds into precious coins, a metaphor for the poet-bard’s
effort to transform the raw substance of his poetry into sublime Orphic song.32
Visual support for the role music played in the life and work of the early
modern goldsmith is lent, meanwhile, by an extraordinary mid to late
sixteenth-century anonymous German punched engraving [Fig. 9.9]. Picturing
the sort of shop featured in prints by Master of Balaam, the Monogrammist
AB, Etienne Delaune, Hans Brosamer, and Jost Amman, the image portrays
artisans managing a hot furnace, and other men beating metal and chasing,
filing and decorating objects at a long table. Novel, however, is the addition
of a standing figure toward center right playing the very sort of lira da brac-
cio we have already seen in De Weyck’s print [Fig. 9.2]. One of the very first
images to represent the performance of music in the context of the creation
of art, the anonymous print is all the more exceptional in that it portrays not
a painter’s studio, but a goldsmith’s workshop. It was after all not the gold-
smith’s but the painter’s access to music that was the topic of Leonardo’s
well-known paragone written around 1508–1510. Asserting the superiority
of painting over sculpture on the basis of the deafening din emitted by the
activity of chiseling rock, Leonardo argued for the refinement of painting
on the basis of the quiet it afforded the painter to work at his canvas while
32 McDonald W.C., “Michel Beheim Reconsidered: On Imagery in His Erzgräberbispel”,

The German Quarterly 48.4 (1975) 451–471.
346 Viljoen
simultaneously paying attention to music.33 According to this logic, music

elevated the painter by calming and uplifting his mind, a circumstance
that was not open to the sculptor, whose creative process canceled music’s
bettering effects – Leonardo specifically singles out the “strepito di martelli
od altri rumori” [uproar compounded of hammers and other noises] to which
sculptors were exposed. Leonardo’s paragone has nothing to say about gold-
smithing. It is nonetheless worth reflecting on the print’s portrayal of the mu-
sician playing the lira da braccio against that backdrop. One cannot help but
notice the artisan on the left-hand side, for example, who is occupied with
the task of beating metal, an undertaking no less deafening than that of cut-
ting marble and identical in fact with the “strepito di martelli” about which
Leonardo groused. Unfazed by the competing clangor, and very possibly even
invigorated by it, the goldsmith-musician plays his instrument, an effort that
is rewarded by the attention of at least two of the artisans, one of whom has
momentarily ceased his labor and has turned around to listen to his friend’s
song. A second artist closest to the musician likewise reacts to the tune, though
this fellow has stopped working and has chosen to respond with merriment to
the lira’s strains, raising a goblet doubtless filled with alcohol in his right hand.
Reacting similarly to the sounds within, a young woman peeps in through the
door at right, her curiosity a prelude to augmented festivities, perhaps. The
motif of an overturned three-legged stool near the carousers, very similar to
the one we already saw in the Master of Balaam’s print and which is also prom-
inent in an engraving of Shrove Tuesday (c. 1567) by Pieter van der Heyden after
Hieronymus Bosch [Fig. 9.10], hints at the turmoil the artisans and merrymak-
ers have injected into the space. Where Master of Balaam’s print uses the stool
in combination with dueling animal and workshop noises, van der Heyden’s
employs it with competing sorts of music or sound: the engraving shows a mu-
sician strumming a lyre nearby others playing non-traditional “instruments”,
including the griddle and bellows. The dissonances resulting from this mash-
up, known in English as “rough music”, reflects the wide-spread early modern
European custom of utilizing bellows, pots, pans, spoons, tongs, bells, whistles,
horns, clappers, and other household odds and ends to generate an infernal din
33 See Farago C., Leonardo da Vinci’s Paragone (Leiden, 1992), 256–257: “Just the opposite
happens to the painter (speaking of excellent sculptors and painters), because the painter
sits in front of his work at great ease, well-dressed, and wielding the lights brush with
charming colors. His clothing is ornamented according to his pleasure, and his house
if filled with charming paintings, and clean, and he is often accompanied by music or
readers of varied and beautiful works that are heard with great pleasure without the
uproar compounded of hammers and other noises”; and Goffen R., Renaissance Rivals:
Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, Titian (New Haven: 2002) 65.
Figure 9.10 Pieter van der Heyden after Hieronymus Bosch, Shrove Tuesday (1561).
Engraving, 229 × 292mm
Amsterdam, Rijksprentenkabinett (inv. no. RP-P-1906-2367).
during Carnival and other moments of planned civic disturbance.34 Evidence

of the chaos that has been unleashed within each, the German punch print
and the engravings by Master of Balaam and Pieter van der Heyden employ
the overturned stool to signal disorder as a corollary to cacophony. If the pres-
ence of calming and melodious music in the studio improves the intellect, en-
abling the artist to create high-brow and erudite art, the ongoing experience of
wild and abrasive noise would seem to portend something more ominous, the
abasement of the mind and with it the exploration of degraded and “disorder-
ly” pictorial subject matter. The notion finds support not only in the prints’ in-
clusion of vulgar, uncouth and debased conduct, including birds copulating in
Master of Balaam’s engraving and tipsy exuberance in the anonymous punch
print, but also in the goldsmith-engraver’s ornaments to which the aforemen-
tioned behavior is likened.
34 Wyckoff E. – Bass M. (eds.), Beyond Bosch: The Afterlife of a Renaissance Master in Print,
exh. cat. St. Louis Art Museum – Harvard Art Museums (Saint Louis: 2015) 180–187.
348 Viljoen
4 The Sound of Hammers
Recent scholarship on the sound environments of early modern towns has re-
vealed the extent to which artisans and town folk were exposed to a range of
sound, from bells chiming to horse hooves clip-copping, iron-rimmed wheels
screeching, dogs barking, cattle lowing, street sellers hawking their wares,
street minstrels playing their instruments and much more.35 Even in the ab-
sence of a sharp distinction between sound and noise in the early modern
era, it is clear that town dwellers were exposed to volumes that they registered
as agreeable as well as ones they experienced as aggravating.36 Inasmuch as
Leonardo singled out the “strepito” of beating hammers as a reason to prefer
the profession of painting over sculpture, it is tempting to infer that occupa-
tions that relied on hammers and mallets were looked down upon because of
their clangor and disruptive effects. The matter is not so straightforward.
Mum on the topic of the hammer’s sounds, Alexander van Neckham, for ex-
ample, limits himself to observing the necessity for the goldsmith to own sev-
eral kinds: “There should be a hammer for making gold leaf, as well as sheets of
silver, tin, brass, iron, or copper. […] he must be as skilled in engraving as well as
in bas relief, in casting and in hammering”.37 Neckham’s silence on the subject,
notwithstanding, the topic is prevalent from at least the second century AD
onwards and has an important bearing on the goldsmith’s relationship to
what amounts to the principle tool of his trade. Accordingly, Pythagoras
happened one day upon a blacksmith’s shop, where he discovered through
a great variety of experiments that what stood in direct relation to the vari-
ance in sound was the weight of the hammers, not the force of the strik-
ers or the shapes of the hammer heads or the alteration of the iron which
was being beaten.38 The tale is repeated in 1492 by Italian music theorist
Francesco Gaffurio, who replaces Pythagoras with Jubal, the biblical in-
ventor of music, and gives the shop to Tubalcain, Jubal’s half-brother.39
Two important German musical treatises of the sixteenth century, Sebastian
35 Cockayne, E. Hubbub. Filth, Noise & Stench in England 1600–1770 (New Haven and London:
2007) 106–130; Garrioch, D. “Sounds of the city: The soundscape of early modern European
towns” in Urban History 30 (1), 2003, 5–25.
36 Cockayne, E., “Cacophany, or vile scraper on vile instruments: bad music in early modern
English towns”, Urban History 29.1 (2002) 36.
37 Cherry, Goldsmiths 24.
38 Orden K. van, Music, Discipline, and Arms in Early Modern France (Chicago: 2005) 54–55;
Summers D., The Judgment of Sense (Cambridge: 1987) 52; and Vergo P., That Divine Order:
Music and the Visual Arts from Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century (London: 2005) 75–79.
39 Ibid. 76.
Figure 9.11
Master of the Vitae Imperatorum, Nero (1433).
Illuminated manuscript page, fol. 113r, 160 × 110mm
Princeton, University Library (Kane 44).
Image © Princeton University Library,
Princeton
Virdung’s Musica Getutscht of 1511 (Basel: Priester von Amberg verdruckt, 1511)
and Martin Agricola’s Musica Instrumentalis Deudsch of 1532 (Wittenberg: Georg
Rhaw, 1529), finally, illustrate the ‘Ampos und hemmer’ or anvil and hammer as
examples of that category of musical instruments which sets itself apart by the
sound of resounding or reverberating metal.40 The reception of these ideas in
the visual arts is neatly illustrated in a Lombard manuscript of 1433, though simi-
lar images hint at their wide-spread circulation throughout Europe. The image
features Nero in a lower register wearing a wreath and grasping in his right hand
a scepter and in his raised left a psaltery, a wing-shaped stringed instrument that
was plucked either with the fingers or a plectrum [Fig. 9.11]. In the tier above, a
woman personifying Music supports a lute in her lap and clasps a second in her
right hand, tuning it with her left. Seated on the ground in front of her, Tubalcain
is shown striking hammers on an anvil with both hands. The arrangement of the
two figures compares the musical strains of the lute to the beating of an anvil
with hammers as well as to Nero’s plucking the psaltery.
The relevance of the anvil and hammer’s “music” to the production of the
goldsmith-engraver’s ornaments, meanwhile, is suggested by an image from
the series Die Goldschmid-Kunst, und Vornehmsten operationen Derselben …
in goldschmid dienlich, artigen Kindl-figuren, benebst, Kunstreichen Zierd-
einfassungen vorgstellt. Created by Lucas Kilian in 1606, the set includes
eight engravings of putti engaged in a variety of goldsmith-related tasks.
40 Bullard B. (ed. – trans.), Musica getutscht: A Treatise on Musical Instruments (1511) by

Sebastian Virdung (Cambridge: 1993) 110–111.
350 Viljoen
Figure 9.12 Jean Cossin after Francois Roupert, “Acanthus Ornament attended by
musicians.” Engraving, 1668
New York Public Library, Wallach Division of Art, Prints and
Photographs. Image © The New York Public Library
The images are framed by borders that serve both as examples of the goldsmith-
engraver’s ornaments and as points of reference for the activities happening
within. One of these images shows a group of three putti, who are involved in
tasks that include filing a beaker and beating metal with a hammer. The or-
namental edge that encloses the scene includes festoons of lutes, pipes and a
bagpipe, suggesting a relationship between the sounds of the workshop and the
production of music, an analogy that finds deposit in the artist’s ornament print.
The equivalence between music, the anvil and ornament finds clearer expres-
sion still in a 1688 engraving by Louis Cossin after designs by the goldsmith Louis
Roupert [Fig. 9.12]. It features an imaginary goldsmith at center bottom seated at
an anvil on which a sheet of music rests. Raising his “baton” in the air, this figure
directs the activities of the musician playing a viola da gamba at right and the
person holding a booklet (a sheaf of ornament prints?) at left. Gazing up at the
composition of acanthus and anthropomorphized leaves above, the left-hand
figure connects the ornaments in the top register to the events unfolding on the
figural plain below, locating the origins of the goldsmith’s decorative designs in
the anvil’s “song.” The effects of that “music” on the ornament is a little unclear,
though the presence of a grimacing acanthus-leaf mask above the central con-
ductor figure, may suggest that it was responsible for making the leaves that are
otherwise perfectly regimented in straight lines to left and right, to become dis-
ordered, or rather perhaps rudely reordered in a disorderly manner.
If Virdung and Agricola both viewed the principle tool of metalworkers as

a musical instrument, it seems to go without saying not only that goldsmiths
were musicians, but also that the works they created were the products of
music. A slightly later passage in Virdung’s treatise upsets this position,
however, suggesting a more complicated attitude towards the hammer and
anvil as instruments of agreeable song. Composed as a dialogue, Virdung’s
Musica Getuscht features two protagonists in conversation: Silvanus asks
his companion Sebastianus what the tympana mentioned in the Bible are.
Sebastianus, Virdung’s Latinate first name and a stand-in for the author, re-
sponds that he has no knowledge of that instrument because what in his day
was referred to as a tympanum was a large military kettle drum made from a
copper cauldron with calfskin drawn over it that was beaten with drumsticks.
The instrument mentioned in the Bible, he states, must be ‘entirely different
from our drums that are made today’, and he adds that ‘the name [i.e., tympa-
num] was given undeservedly to the devilish instrument [i.e., drums] which
is surely not worthy of being used for Music, much less worthy of even being
admitted as an instrument of this noble art’. Drums or Paucken are unwor-
thy, he continues, because they: ‘[…] greatly disturb the peace of honorable,
virtuous, old people; of the sick and ailing; of the religious in cloisters who
have need to read, study, and pray. […] They cause a smothering or drown-
ing of all sweet melodies and of the whole of music’. He concludes: ‘If beat-
ing or making a loud noise is supposed to be Music, then the hoopmakers
or the coppersmiths or the coopers must be musicians as well. But that is
pure nonsense’.41 Flouting the time-worn understanding of the hammer and
anvil set forth in the story of Pythagoras in the blacksmith’s shop, Virdung
conflates the activities of hammering metal with the beating of drums and
concludes that the sounds emanating from the metalsmith’s shop belong
to the devil. The view owes much to late medieval and early modern atti-
tudes towards the trade that are exemplified by a well-known mid fifteenth-
century English poem, known as the Blacksmiths. Heavy on onomatopeia the
verses describe the men working in a smith’s shop as “swarte-smeked and
smattered with smoke,” the noise emanating from their workplace as a se-
ries of progressively earsplitting clangs and bashes (“Tik, tak, hic, hac, tiket,
taket, tik, tak, lus, bus, las, das”) and the sounds of their exertions (they “spit-
ten”, “sprawlen”, “gnawen” and “gnacchen”) as more befitting a band of rabid
41 Bullard (ed. – trans.), Musica getutscht […] by Sebastian Virdung 115.

352 Viljoen
beasts than members of the human race.42 Understandings like these nuance
our sense of the goldsmith’s intonations offering a rather different perspective
on the tones he produced and the subjects he consequently fashioned.
5 Listening to Ornament
A condition of the goldsmith-engraver’s work, music, sound and noise are the
subject and subtext of countless ornament prints. We have already noted the
presence of figures playing lutes surrounded by groups of animals as signs of
their makers’ capacity to bend the cosmos to their will. We have likewise ob-
served the role the anvil and hammer play in communicating the sounds and
related rowdiness that motivated the goldsmith’s ornaments. In the following,
I will explore ornament-engravings’ inclusion of a range of additional musical
instruments in an effort to come to terms with what their associated timbres
seek to convey about their creators’ art.
42 Sisam K. Fourteenth Century Verse and Prose (Oxford: 1921) 169–170. The poem reads in its
entirety:
Swarte smekyd smeþes smatyd with smoke
Dryue me to deth wyth den of here dyntes
Swech noys on nyghtes ne herd men neuer
What knauene cry and clateryng of knockes!
Þe cammede kongons cryen after ‘col, col!’
And blowen here bellewys þat al here brayn brests
“Huf, puf!” seith þat on; ‘haf paf’ þat oþer
Þei spytten and spraulyn and spellyn many spelles
Þei gnawen and gnacchen, þei gronys togydere
And holdyn hem hote wyth her hard hamers
Of a bole-hyde ben her barm-fellys;
Here schankes ben schakeled for the fere flunderys
Heuy hamerys þei han, þat hard ben handled
Stark strokes þei stryken on a stelyd stokke
Lus, bus! las, das! rowton be rowe.
Swech dolful a dreme þe deuyl it todryue!
Þe mayster longith a lityl, and lascheth a lesse,
Twyneth hem tweyn, and towchith a treble,
Tik, tak! hic, hac! tiket, taket! tyk, tak!
Lus, bus! lus, das! swych lyf thei ledyn
Alle cloþmerys: Cryst hem gyue sorwe!
May no man for brenwaterys on nyght han hys rest!
Figure 9.13 Heinrich Aldegrever, Eight Putti Making Music and Fighting around a Well
(1539). Engraving, 36 × 92mm
London, British Museum (inv. no. 1881,0409.19). Image © The
Trustees of the British Museum
5.1 Ardent and Belligerent

Particularly plentiful within ornament engravings are instruments that rank
low in the established hierarchy of musical instruments, often in combination
with one another.43 Groupings of percussion and wind are pervasive, includ-
ing tabors, drums, and kettledrums together with fifes, flutes, pipes, and horns.
Heinrich Aldegrever’s diminutive ornament engraving of 1539, which shows a
pair of putti playing a fife and drum, offers a good example of this sort of in-
strumental arrangement [Fig. 9.13]. Mirror images of each other, pairs of putti
to either side of a well seem intent upon raising and dropping the third putto
in their groups into the void at center. Flailing against their captors, the infant
prisoners use their sturdy little baby legs to push away from the chasm, but it is
uncertain which way it will go. Aldegrever’s choice to enact this violent bit of
fun to the strains of a fife and drum is apt, for they were the preferred instru-
ments on the battlefield and associated with hostility. Virdung writes:
Ander fürsten zu den felt trumeten/wan man zu tisch plaset oder wan ein
fürst in ein stat reitet/ oder außzeucht/oder in dz felt zeucht. Das synd gar
ungeheur Kumpeifesser/Man hat sunst noch ander Paucken die schlecht
man gemeinlich zu den zwerch pfeiffen/als die Kriegsknecht haben sunst
ist noch ein klein paucklin.
43 See Margaret J. Kartomi, On Concepts and Classifications of Musical Instruments (Chicago:

1990) Chapter 10.
354 Viljoen
Figure 9.14 Israel van Meckenem, Ornamental Engraving with Morris Dancers (ca. 1480).
New York: The Met (inv. no. 1984.1201.54). Image © The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
[When the court summons soldiers to the battlefield with trumpets, or

when a Prince rides into the city or musters for war, or marches into the
battlefield, these drums are huge tubs of noise. Besides these drums there
are also other drums that are generally beaten to the music of fifes like
the soldiers have.]44
Either the cause or symptom of the putti’s pugnaciousness, the combination

of instruments, far from calming the fighters, appears to agitate and incline
them toward ever greater violence. The musical arrangement is repeated in
goldsmith-engraver Israel van Meckenem’s Morris Dance, an engraving which
shows six men twirling in the limbs of an acanthus tree to the strains of a fife
and tabor below [Fig. 9.14]. At pains to gain the favor of a lovely maiden at
center around whom they pivot, the figures exert themselves in a comically
exaggerated fashion. The dance, which possibly originated in Spain, was a be-
loved entertainment at court and carnivals. Very likely a highly ritualized pre-
sentation of courtship, the Morris Dance has a forcefully erotic dimension, and
the fife and drum or pipe and tabor were their favored accompaniments.45 As
in Aldegrever’s engraving, the music appears to have the effect of egging on
the figures to ever more extravagant displays of ardor. Reflecting back on the
Master of Balaam’s print, where, I noted earlier, the dogs have been in a tussle

45 Sponsler C., “Writing the Unwritten: Morris Dance and Theatre History”, in Postlewait T.
(ed.), Representing the Past: Studies in Theatre History and Historiography (Iowa City: 2010)
97; and Kidson F. – Neal M., English Folk-song and Dance (Totowa: 1972) 132–133.
and a pair of birds are making out, it is worth considering whether the percus-
sion of competing hammers and the shriek of metal being pulled through the
die, a mixture of sounds not dissimilar to the piercing tones of the fife and
thuds of the drum, was not the occasion for the animals to become just a little
impassioned too [Fig. 9.1]. Corollaries to the racket within the early modern
metalworker’s shop, the combination of instruments within the prints has the
effect of animating the goldsmith- engraver’s subjects, causing them to behave
in overexcited ways.
5.2 Airy
Wind, air, steam, breath, or smoke, propelled by bellows or tobacco pipes,
expelled from the body as flatulence and steam (rising from excreta), or ex-
haled from the mouth as breath or smoke (in the case of dragons) are variously
depicted in ornament prints as both the source and medium of ornament.46
Activated by air, wind instruments are not just compatible with such ideas
but are arguably one of the most visible and omnipresent embodiments of
the goldsmith-engraver’s windy art, appearing in countless ornament prints.
About wind instruments, Virdung has the following to say:
Der roren synd etliche/welchen der mensch winds genug mag geben/ oder
die in mensch erplasen mag/ Etliche aber mage kein mensch erplasen/ Zu
denselben muß man plaspelge haben. Der ersen art von den holen roren/
die der mensch erplasen mag synd ouch zweyerley/Etlich roren die haben
löcher die rut man mit den fingern uff und zu/und so vil sye der löcher
haben/ so vil dester beser and gewisser mag man sye regulieren. Doch hat
selten eyn pfeiff über acht löcher. Etlich synd aber nur von dryer löchern/
Etlich von fiern/etlich von fünffen/etlich von sechsen/etlich von sibnen/
etliche von achten. Die ander art des zweite geschlechts ist in den holen
roren die nit gelöchert syndt die doch der mensch erplasen mag.
[There are some tubes for which a person can provide sufficient air,
that is, which a person can play by blowing. [There are] some, howev-
er, [that] no one is able to sound by blowing. For these, one must have
bellows. Hollow tubes of the first kind – those that a person can sound
by blowing – are likewise of two types. Some tubes have holes that one
opens and closes with the fingers, and the more holds they have, the bet-
ter and with more certainty one can formulate rules for them, though a
pipe seldom has more than eight holes. But there are some that have only
three holes, some four, some five, some six, some seven, some eight. The
46 Viljoen, “The Airs of Early Modern Ornament Prints” 117–133.

356 Viljoen
Figure 9.15 Jost Amman after Wenzel Jamnitzer, Allegory of Air (1568). Etching,
259 × 180mm
London, British Museum (inv. no. 1904,1022.3). Image © The
second type [of the first division] in the second category includes the hol-
low tubes that have no holes, but which a person can play by blowing.]47
Instruments like the tabor pipe, recorders, and the shawm belong to the first
grouping of instruments that are blown and have holes, while the trombone
(Basaunen), the military trumpet (Felttrummet) and the bagpipe (Sackpfeif )
are part of the second grouping of instruments that have no holes. Instruments
that require bellows to fill them with air, meanwhile, include the organ, the
positive, and the regal. Featuring imagery related to the theme of Lufft, it is
appropriate that Jost Amman’s title page after a design by Wenzel Jamnitzer
depicts a veritable laundry list of Virdung’s Blasinstrumente [Fig. 9.15]. A car-
touche whose inner border forms the outline of a pair of bellows expelling air
into a crucible from which flames and smoke rise below, the frame displays
putti either exhaling breath from puffed cheeks or blowing into pipes. At the
very top, a pair of putti wears plumed headdresses – apt because feathers be-
long to aerial creatures – and hold long-stemmed pinwheels, also known as
scopperels, diminutive versions of the large windmill blades that can just be
seen rising from behind the top of the frame. The left-hand putto cushioned
from the rear by a bagpipe, rests his knee on bellows and an assortment of
horns and trumpets. The putto at the right, meanwhile, dangles his legs over a
positive, an organ-like instrument operated with bellows, a military trumpet,
and tuba.
We have already noted the diabolic connotations Virdung attached to
drums, but other instruments, including ones belonging to air, possessed cor-
respondingly demonic associations. The notion that bellows – which we have
already seen generating whooshing exhalations within Pieter van der Heyden’s
Shrove Tuesday festivity [Fig. 9.10] – channeled silly nonsense is already the
subject of a woodcut in Sebastian Brant’s Stultifera Navis or Ship of Fools.48
An important source for ideas about the Devil’s management of air, Albrecht
Dürer’s well-known 1498 Temptation of the Idler equally renders a winged
demon employing bellows to propel windy visions into the head of a slum-
bering scholar. The erotic and hence foolish imaginings prompted by all that
air on the scholar’s brain is indicated by the print’s inclusion of a voluptuous
Venus below who indicates towards a Kachelofen or tile stove as if to imply how
“hot” she is. Bellows are common in ornament prints, and countless instances
could be mentioned, though an engraving by Isaac Briot after a goldsmith de-
sign by Pierre Delabarre, offers a particularly pithy example [Fig. 9.16]. Briot il-
lustrates a youth pointing his bellows not, as in Dürer’s engraving, at a person’s
47 Bullard (ed. – trans.), Musica getutscht […] by Sebastian Virdung 106–107.

48 Brant S., “The Treasure-burying Fool” in Stultifera Navis (Basel: Bergmande de Olpe: 1497).

358 Viljoen
Figure 9.16 Isaac Briot after Pierre Delabarre, Plate 2 from Liure de Toutes Sortes de Feuilles,
1636, etching and engraving
Print Collection, The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art,
Prints and Photographs. The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox
and Tilden Foundations
Figure 9.17 Attributed to Erhard Schön, Devil playing the Bagpipes (ca. 1530).
Hand-colored woodcut, 320 × 240mm
London, The British Museum (inv. no. 1972, U. 1097). Image © The
360 Viljoen
Figure 9.18 Christoph Jamnitzer, “Three Consoles” from the Neuw Grotteßken Buch (1610).
head but at his bottom. A voluminous bouquet of peapod-style ornaments

blooms from the stout figure’s derriere. A well-known character of the popular
Commedia dell’Arte called Captain Fracasa, the figure was known for his literal
and figurative windiness. An exhalation either of the bellows or of the body’s
nether regions (and probably both!), the generation of ornament is linked to
the bellows’ breeze and/or the figure’s flatulence.49
Akin to bellows, bagpipes – an instrument that because of its likeness to
the male sex organ had sexual associations – were employed by sixteenth-
century artists to convey how the devil diffused his evil agenda through air.50
49 Viljoen, M. “The Airs of Early Modern Ornament Prints”.

50 Winternitz E., “Bagpipes and Hurdy-Gurdies in Their Social Setting”, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art Bulletin 1 (1943); Colantuono A., “The Penis Possessed: Phallic Birds, Erotic
Magic, and Sins of the Body, c1470–1500” in Stephens W. – Hairston J.L. (eds.) The Body
in Early Modern Italy (Baltimore: 2010) 106; and Leppe S., “Demonic Music”, in Seigneuret
J-C (ed.) Dictionary of Literary Themes and Motifs, Volume 1 (Westport – London: 1988)
A well-known Counter-Reformation woodcut attributed to Erhard Schön, for

example, depicts a fearsome monster blowing wind through a mouthpiece
into the ear of a plump tonsured cleric to convey Satan’s control over members
of the Church illustrates this conceit [Fig. 9.17]. The woodcut transforms the
monk’s bulging head into the Dudelsack’s bag, the figure’s nose, now preternat-
urally stretched and replete with holes, into its chanter – the friar has become
quite literally the devil’s instrument. Well-known in Germany and beyond,
Schön’s witty image is very likely the source for the fantastic animals sport-
ing proboscis-chanters in Christoph Jamnitzer’s book of ornaments, the Neuw
Grotteßkenbuch of 1610 [Fig. 9.18]. Missing Schön’s demon-musician as the
source for the airs coursing through these creatures, Christoph pictures clouds
of animated winged organisms exiting their schnozzles. Demonic winds are
not just blown into these ornaments but also suffuse them: Christoph’s orna-
ments are literally puffed with diabolical air.
5.3 Lowlife
Hanging from a cord tied to a metal circular door knocker in Jost Amman’s
Allegory of Air are a hurdy-gurdy, a string instrument that is played using a
crank, and a rebec, a type of medieval fiddle of Arab origin distinguished by
a shallow pear-shaped body, suggesting how string instruments could be as-
similated to ideas of wind [Fig. 9.15]. With the capacity for tuneful melody as
well as for a humming and mournful drone, the two instruments were consid-
ered particularly appropriate to humble street performers. The German music
theorist and musician Michael Praetorius thus describes the hurdy-gurdy as
an instrument that is played by ‘peasants and traipsing women’, a notion that
jibes well with images featuring vagrants, often blind or otherwise disabled, in
whose hands the instrument is shown [Fig. 9.19].51 And while an anonymous
mid-sixteenth century treatise from Poitiers places the rebec slightly higher in
the hierarchy of strings than the hurdy-gurdy, by the end of the sixteenth cen-
tury the rebec was also viewed as thoroughly plebian, suitable only for public
streets and taverns. The parallels between the generation of ornament and the
music of street performers, including ones belonging to the Commedia dell’Arte,
is suggested, among others, by engravings for the Livre de Fleurs & de Feullies
pour servir a l’art d’orfeverie by Balthazar Moncornet, which was published in
1636 and which shows a peapod-style medallion suspended above Jacques
Callot-inspired actors, one of whom plays a long-necked colascione close to
351; and Hammerstein R. Diabolus in Musica: Studien zur Ikonographie der Musik im
Mittelalter (Bern and Munich: 1974).
51 Zecher C., Sounding Objects: Musical Instruments, Poetry and Art in Renaissance France
(Toronto: 2007) 29–32.
362 Viljoen
Figure 9.19 Anonymous German (printmaker), “Two Musicians” plate 5 in

Godfridt Müller (publisher) Schnacken Buchlein, Ander Teil
(ca. 1625). Etching, 75 × 102mm
Herzog Anton-Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig
a group of drifters [Fig. 9.20].52 The scene appears beneath the pendant, not
simply as amusing but irrelevant play for the eye, but because the musicians,
their instruments and the common company they kept were appropriate fig-
ural metaphors for the rowdy and lowlife qualities of the peapod-style orna-
ments they attended.53
5.4 Useless and Unteachable

Virdung’s discussion of the rebec hints towards its reception in the late six-
teenth and early seventeenth centuries. Classed among other ‘clein geigen’
52 Zecher, Sounding Objects: Musical Instruments, Poetry and Art in Renaissance France,
29–33. The colascione was popular in Southern Italy, but soon found its way into France
and Germany. It had just two or three strings, which were tuned a fifth apart. The instru-
ment was known for its twanging sound. For more on the place of the colascione with the
Commedia dell’Arte, see Heck, T. “Incidental Music in Commedia dell’Arte performances”
in J. Chaffee and O. Crick (eds.) Routledge Companion to Commedia dell’ Arte (Oxon and
New York: 2015) 261–264.
53 I take issue here with Antony Griffiths’ recent characterization of these additions as
“whimsical and fantastical creatures or pretty landscapes whose only purpose was to at-
tract the eye of the purchaser.” See Griffiths, A., The Print before Photography (London,
2016) 402. For ideas about the role figural additions play in ‘explaining’ the ornamental
genre, see Viljoen “The Airs of Early Modern Ornament Print”.
Figure 9.20 Balthazar Moncornet after François Lefebure, after Jacques Callot, “Medallion
with floral motifs alongside figures after Callot” from Livre de Fleurs & de
feullies pour servir a l’art d’orfeverie, engraving, 1635
Print Collection, The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art,
Prints and Photographs. The New York Public Library, Astor,
Lenox and Tilden Foundations
364 Viljoen
or small violins, rebecs are fretless, meaning their necks are not divided into
fixed segments that relate to a musical framework, a quality that Virdung states
makes them unsuited to the formulation of rules.
Dan das muß vil mere durch grosse übung/ und durch den verstand des
gesangs zu gan dann man das durch regeln beschryben mag/ Darum ich
von denselben instrumenten an dem aller mynsten wirt schryben/ dann
ich sie für onnütze instrumenta achte und halte.
[For [with these instruments, learning] has to come about much more from
a great deal of practice and from the understanding of song than it does
by means of rules [that are] written out. Therefore, I shall write the very
least about these instruments; because, in addition [to this pedagogical dif-
ficulty], I consider them and deem them as unprofitable instruments].54
Similar pronouncements throughout the treatise show Virdung privileging in-

struments that can be taught over ones that relied on an innate feeling for
music, a position that is consonant both with the volume’s didactic aims and
the author’s sense of a strict hierarchy of melodic instruments. Extrapolating
from this, it is possible to see how instruments like the bagpipe, trombone, or
hunting horn, which have no holes and which can likewise only be learned
through an intuitive sense of song, fall into the category of being ‘onnütz’ and
participate in the lesser stature of instruments that defy or frustrate learning
by means of written rules. The observation is a matter of importance, for more
often than not ornament prints either focus on the ‘unprofitable’ instruments
or feature teachable ones in arrangements with those deemed ‘onnütz’ and dis-
orderly, an association that has the effect of degrading the former. Such is the
case, for example, with the instruments in the ornamental frontispiece of a
volume published in 1580 by Sigmund Feyerabend, which shows a putto play-
ing a large viola da gamba, together with instruments of lesser stature, includ-
ing a pipe, a hammered dulcimer (Hackbrett) and a Pritschen auf dem Hafen or
“beater in a pot.” A plate in Lucas Kilian’s Newes Gradesca Büchlein, meanwhile
shows a lute, a viola da gamba, a positive and a harp together with smoking
pots (read air) surrounding an image of a figure riding a donkey backwards,
an early modern ritual reserved for those deemed to have offended popular
ethics and thrown societal norms into disorder [Fig. 9.21].55 When the creators
of ornament feature instruments in these sorts of arrangements and together

55 Melinkoff R., “Riding Backwards: Themes of Humiliation and Symbol of Evil”, Viator 4 (1973)
163; Edward Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: 2005), 146; and Terry Fritsch,
Figure 9.21 Lucas Kilian, Newes Gradesca Büchlein, plate 1 (1607). Etching,
186 × 137 mm
AMSTERDAM, RIJKSPRENTENKABINET (INV. NO. RP-P-
OB-8223), IMAGE © RIJKSMUSEUM, AMSTERDAM
with these sorts of images, they are making important statements about their
own art. In addition to hinting at their humble pedigrees – a circumstance they
seem to revel in – they aim to give expression to ornament’s unruliness and re-
sistance to rote learning.56 Indeed, much as Virdung suggests that proficiency
“Animal Trials, Humiliation Rituals” in Visualizing Sensuous Suffering and Affective Pain in
Early Modern Europe and the Spanish Americas (Leiden and Boston, 2018) 73.
56 Viljoen, “Christoph Jamnitzer’s Neuw Grotteßken Buch” 215 discusses the anti-academic
and scatological dimension of early modern ornament.
366 Viljoen
Figure 9.22 Jean Toutin, “Jewelry Design with a Lion’s Head” from a series of seven
blackwork ornaments (1619). Black work engraving, 109 × 87mm
Washington D.C., The National Gallery of Art (inv. no. 2007.45.6).
Image © The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
in certain kinds of (useless) instruments can only be acquired through an in-

nate sensitivity to melody that is honed through repeated exercise, a sense for
ornamental design is grounded in intuition that is perfected through practice,
methods that are compatible with processes by which artisanal secrets were
developed and deposited into early modern books of secrets.57
Given the ubiquity of early modern title pages with claims to the utility of
their inventions for a range of artisans and scholarly studies devoted to tracing
the translation of and use of ornament prints into the decorative arts, the no-
tion that instruction in the art of making ornament was undesirable, because
the techniques by which proficiency in them was achieved was something that
was unlearnable, may seem shocking if not downright treasonous. The belief is
manifest, nonetheless, in prints that render the folly of training in certain kinds
of musical instruments as a corollary to the foolhardiness of instruction in
how to design ornaments. An ornamental blackwork engraving by the French
goldsmith-engraver Jean Toutin [Fig. 9.22], dating to the early seventeenth
century, offers an excellent illustration of this idea and hints at its wide-scale
acceptance among goldsmith-engravers. Toutin’s image features a figure hold-
ing a musical score and a student by his side ‘playing’ a griddle with a pair of
tongs. Sporting a fool’s cap and wearing spectacles that are comically perched
on the end of his nose, the figure at left combines qualities of a fool and scholar.
With a fierce, even angry mien and a finger raised menacingly in the air, he ap-
pears intent on, if perhaps slightly annoyed with, coaching his student to wring
music from the bizarre contraption. And how, indeed, would one play let alone
teach someone to make music on such an instrument? The minstrel grasps the
tongs as one would a bow, places the griddle against his chest as one would a fid-
dle and grips its handle as one would the fingerboard of a violin suggesting that
what we are in fact seeing is a hybrid string instrument. The contrast with how
the same domestic utensils were used in engravings by Pieter van der Heyden
[Fig. 9.10] and Jacques de Gheyn II [Fig. 9.23] is instructive: in de Gheyn’s the
griddle is strummed, while in van der Heyden’s it is beaten. The griddle could
be an imaginary violin, a drum or a lute, suggesting the role invention plays
in how the individual choses to “play” his improvised instrument. The idea
of tutoring a musician to play a griddle with a pair of tongs is absurd of
course, for the items not only transcend categorization into the simplest
grouping of strings versus percussion but were also never intended for the
57 For the artisanal emphasis on making, see Smith, “In the Workshop of History” 83–100.
For additional ideas about the uselessness of certain kinds of ornament see also Viljoen,
“The Airs of Early Modern Ornament Prints” 120–121.
368 Viljoen
Figure 9.23 Jacques de Gheyn II, A Veiled Woman with Two Musicians playing a Gridiron
and Bellows (1595/96). Engraving, 248 × 180mm
Vienna, Österreichisches Museum für Angewandte Kunst,
Bibliothek und Kunstblättersammlung (inv. no. KI 1726-3).
Image © MAK, Vienna
Figure 9.24 Anonymous German (printmaker), “Bull teaching

music to a goat” plate 3 in Godfridt Müller
(publisher) Schnacken Büchlein, Erster Teil (1625).
Etching, 75 × 102mm
Berlin, Kunstbibliothek
production of pleasant-sounding melody. The presence of the scene beneath

a blackwork ornament encircled by a decidedly grumpy-looking lion – as if
the animal too is taking offense at all this noise and nonsense – suggests that
much as the scholar is ridiculous for endeavoring to teach the musician how
to play his madcap, made-up instrument, so the goldsmith-engraver is daft for
attempting to offer instruction in an art form in which artists can only become
skilled by freeing themselves from rules, giving rein to their fantasies and tak-
ing delight in the folly, not to say racket, of their own artistic endeavors: note
here the untrained musician’s grinning or smirking expression, which offers a
striking contrast to his teacher’s aggravated countenance.
In a similar vein, an anonymous early seventeenth-century German print
published by Godfridt Müller shows an ox standing on its hind legs attempting
to train a goat, an animal known for its capriciousness – from the word capra
or goat – to play a lute [Fig. 9.24]. Like the scholar shown in Toutin’s blackwork
engraving, the ox wears glasses and appears to be exasperated as he bullyingly
beats with his conductor’s baton on the bookrest holding the music in front
of him in a vain attempt to get his student to play music.58 As in the case of
58 The idea likely has its origins in Pieter Bruegel’s Ass at School, a subject that treats the
adage “Although the ass goes to school in order to learn, it is an ass, it will not return as a
370 Viljoen
the engraving by Toutin, a series of impossibilities converge in Müller’s print

to suggest the scenario’s impracticality: the student has hooves that cannot
readily strum a lute, and the music-stand bearing the score faces away from
the goat, making it impossible for him either to follow the music or to satisfy
his teacher’s efforts to teach him. The student’s disdain for the entire process is
accentuated both by the animal’s averted head and protruding tongue.
5.5 Foolish
Articles like cowbells, whistles, xylophones reinforce the association of folly
with the goldsmith-engraver’s work. About those instruments, Virdung has the
following to say:
Man findet auch sunst noch vil mer dorlicher instrumenta die man
auch für musicalia achtet oder heltet. Als da stett Trumpeln/Schellen/
Jeger horn/Acher horn/Kuschellen Britschen auff dem hafen/Auch an-
dere mere/ als pfeifflein auß federkilen/ lockpfeifflein der fogler/Wachtel
beinlein/Lerchen pfeifflein/ Maisen beinlein/ Pfeiffen von Strohelmen
gmacht. Pfeiffen von den safftigen rinden der bom/von den pletern der
bom/ das man geplatet heisset. Schwegeln mit dem mundt oder den leff-
tzen/ in die hand als in dye schüssell zu pfeiffen/ das hültzig gelechter/
und ander der gleichen vil mere. Dise instrumenta alle/wye genennet
synd/oder namen gewinnen möchten/dye acht ich alle für göckel spill.
Darumb verdrust mich dye zu nennen/vil mer zu malen/ und aller maist
zu beschreiben/ Darumb will ich hye zugegen ganz von den ablassen/
und alleyn von den instrumenten sagen/Dye eyn etlicher paur mag ken-
nen und nennen mit namen/dye zu der süssen melodey dyenen.
[[…] one also finds many more instrumenta [that are] foolish, which
are also considered or regarded as musicalia like these: Jew’s Harp, bells,
hunting horn, field horn, cowbells, beater(s) on the pot, and clapper with
bell. There are also many others such as little whistles made from quill
feathers; the fowler’s bird calls [like] quail calls, lark whistles, titmouse
call; whistles made from blades of straws; whistles [made] from the juicy
bark of a tree, which when blown one calls mouth or lip flutes (‘Schwegeln
horse.” Engraved by Pieter van der Heyden in 1557, the print shows a donkey on its hind
legs leaning on an elevated desk that is equipped with a pair of glasses and a candle to
read by and a musical score from which to sing. Like the naughty children in front of the
donkey, however, who are too dimwitted to get anything out of the books with which the
teacher attempts to instruct them, the print conveys the idea that the effort to educate the
beast is both futile and misguided.
Figure 9.25 Christoph Jamnitzer, “Der Fadeskisch Radesco Baum” in Christoph Jamnitzer,
Der Neuw Grotteßken Buch (Nuremberg, 1610). Etching, 148 × 189mm
mit dem mund oder mit den lefftzen’); blowing in the hands as well as on
keys; the xylophone (‘hölzernes gelächter’); and many other similar ones.
All these instruments, whatever they are named or whatever names they
might acquire, I consider tomfoolery (‘göckel spill’). Therefore it irks me
to name them, even more to illustrate them, and above all to describe
them. Thus at the present time, I will take leave of all of them altogether
and speak only of those instruments that a peasant might know by name
[and] those that are serviceable to sweet melody.]59
Bells dangle tantalizingly from the appendages of flora and fauna in numerous
sheets of Christoph Jamnitzer’s Neuw Grotteßken Buch. Particularly notewor-
thy in this regard is his Fadeskisch Radesco Baum [Fig. 9.25], which features
gadgets like a candle snuffer, hammer, scales, borax container, and bellows, as
59 Bullard (ed. – trans.), Musica getutscht […] by Sebastian Virdung 119–120.

372 Viljoen
well as several fool’s bells and a regular bell, all hanging like so many Christmas
ornaments from the Baum’s limbs. Suspended prominently from one of the
tree’s left-hand branches, a large bell is attached by means of a long snaking
string that a one-handed snail-like form tugs to make it ring. Not merely con-
tent with picturing musical instruments, Christoph is intent on communicat-
ing that his bells are alive and that his image reverberates with their sound.
The idea is repeated in other sheets, including one that shows bells threaded
like fashionable chandelier earrings through an animal’s earlobes or sway-
ing gently swaying from the an African spiritello’s wing, making them tinkle.
Though Virdung does not explain why he thinks the instruments are ‘dorlich’
(or ‘törricht’, stupid), or why he links them to ‘göckel spill’, or ‘tomfoolery’, a
preponderance of them is associated with moments of civic rowdiness or gen-
eral silliness, including Carnival, Charivari, and the Moresque dance.60 Like
Master of Balaam, Bosch asks us not just to observe the eccentric behavior of
the kitchen’s denizens, but to hear the cacophony within [Fig. 9.10]. Carnival,
a period that is in continual celebration within ornament, is a period of
time when we hear the dulcet tones of the lute attended by the reedy drone
of bagpipes, the clangor of tongs hitting a griddle, with the airs whooshing
from bellows.
5.6 Yowling and Beastly

A term that compares the reveler’s noise to the ‘music’ of cats, ‘Katzenmusik’
is the German word for “rough music”. Related etymologically to the appalling
custom of pulling the fur of cats to make them screech during carnival, the
name finds a literal manifestation in the early modern invention of the so-called
Katzenklavier.61 Described by Jean-Baptiste Weckerlin in his 1877 Musiciana,
extraits d’ouvrages rare et bizarres, the author reports that a cat piano figured
in a 1549 procession in Brussels. ‘The most curious thing’, he writes, ‘was a char-
iot that carried the most singular music that can be imagined. It held a bear
that played the organ, but instead of pipes there were sixteen cat heads each
60 Forest J., History of Morris Dancing (Toronto:1999) 87–88, supplies evidence for their role
in morescha dancing. The letter from Bernadino Prosperi to Marcesana Isabella d’Este,
dated February 1509, states that the first performance of Aristo’s I Suppositi included
morisk dancers with bells on their legs beating time with hammers and other performers
working their bellows.
61 Burke P., Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (Farnham: 2009) 279; Davis N.Z.,
“Women on Top”, in eadem, Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford: 1975),
139; and Muir E., Ritual in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: 1997) 107. Hankins T.L. “The
Ocular Harpsichord of Louis-Bertrand Castel; Or, The Instrument That Wasn’t”, Osiris 9
(1994) 142–143; and Vechten C. van, “The Cat in Music”, The Musical Quarterly 6.4 (1920)
573–585.
Figure 9.26 Johann Theodor de Bry after Hans Kellerthaler, Cat Concert (1596).
Amsterdam, Rijksprentenkabinet (inv. no. RP-P-BI-5234).
with its body confined; the tails were sticking out and were held to be played
like the strings on a piano […]; the corresponding tail would be pulled, and it
would produce a lamentable meow’.62 The belated reportage might give rea-
son to question the story’s veracity, yet a print by Johann Theodor de Bry sug-
gests that such a contraption may have been a reality as early as the sixteenth
century [Fig. 9.26]. Titled ‘AURICULIS MIDAE NON MUSICA GRATIOR
ULLA ESTA’ [To the ears of Midas no music is more pleasant’], referring to
62 Weckerlin J.B., Musiciana, extraits d’ouvrages rare ou bizarre (Paris: 1877) 349.

374 Viljoen
Figure 9.27
Anonymous German
(printmaker), “Animals
playing music on an
organ and pipe” plate 2 in
Godfridt Müller (publisher)
Schnacken Büchlein, Erster
Teil (1625). Etching,
82 × 106mm
Braunschweig, Anton
Ulrich Museum (Inv. no.
GMüllerVerlag AB 3.61).
Image © Anton Ulrich
Museum, Braunschweig
King Midas’s preference for Pan’s rustic pipes over Apollo’s lofty lyre, it shows a
row of four cats and one dog being ‘played’ by a man in front who tweaks their
paws and one at the rear who pulls their tails. The yowls of the dog and cats
are accompanied by the chords of a lutenist, the song of two vocalists dressed
as fools, and several more animals, including a goat, a boar, and another cat
wearing bells.63 De Bry was not a goldsmith, but he specialized in develop-
ing designs for goldsmiths and is known to have engraved several silver tazze
63 This instrument was described by Kircher, A. Musurgia Universalis (Rome : Francesco

Corbelleti, 1650), Book 6, Part 4, Chapter 1 under “Corollaria” : “Constructum non ita pri-
dem ad melancholiam magni cuiusdam Principis depellendam abinsigni ingeniosoque
Histrione tale quodpiam instrumentum. Feles vivas accepit omnes differentis magni-
tudinis, quas cistae cuidam huic negotio dedita opera fabricatae ita inclusit ut caudae
perforamina extentae, certis quibusdam cana, libus insererentur affixae, hisce subdidit
palmulas subtilissimis ac uleis loco malleolorum instructas; Feles vero iuxta differen-
tem magnitudinem tonatim ita disposuit; ut singulae palmulae singulis responderent
felium caudis, instrumentumque ad relaxationem Principis praeparatum oportuno
loco condidit, quod deinde pulsatum eam harmoniam redditit, qualem Felium voces
reddere possunt. Nam palmulae digitis Organoe di depressae aculeis suis dum caudas
pungunt cattorum hi in rabiem acti miserabili voce, nunc gravem, modò acutam in-
tonantes, eam ex felium vocibus compositam reddiderunt harmoniam, quae et moveret
homines ad risum, et vel sorices ipsos ad saltum concitare posset.” [In order to raise the
spirits of an Italian prince burdened by the cares of his position, a musician created for
him a cat piano. The musician selected cats whose natural voices were at different pitches
and arranged them in cages side by side, so that when a key on the piano was depressed,
a mechanism drove a sharp spike into the appropriate cat’s tail … Who could not help
but laugh at such music? Thus was the prince raised from his melancholy.] The idea is
repeated by Kircher’s student Schott G., Magia Naturalis naturae et artis, Part 2, Book 6,
Pragmatia 2, titled “Felium Musicam exhibere.”
himself.64 This and other prints suggest that certain kinds of rough music were
quite literally ‘Katzenmusik’, cat’s and other animals’ music, a notion that jibes
with Charivari and carnival-related activities, which included chasing animals
through the streets to make them bleat, moo, bark, crow, and yowl, and the
designs they document participated in the same sensibility. The notion that
animals were quite literally musicians is prevalent in medieval illuminated man-
uscripts but it also finds deposit in ornament engravings, such as 1534 print by
the Monogrammist CG.65 A roundel with a diameter of 70mm suitable for the
decoration of metalware, the engraving pictures a bear blowing on a bagpipe
framed by lush vegetal motifs and four medallions. A page from the Schnacken
published by Godfridt Müller in 1626, meanwhile, portrays an animal orchestra
comprising a sow seated on the ground playing an organ with its hooves, a dog
or bear blowing a pipe, and a cat operating the positive’s bellows [Fig. 9.27]. The
engraver’s identity is unknown, but its title and date suggest that it was made
around the time of goldsmith-engraver Christoph Jamnitzer and by an artist
with a similar background. Strung through the sow’s ear, indeed, is a bell, not
dissimilar to the sorts of chimes that sway from the limbs and appendages of
creatures in Jamnitzer’s Neuw Grotteßken Buch marking the occasion as one
associated with folly. Prominently displayed on a moveable arm attached to
the organ is a set of sheet music, the notation of which shows three lines of
polyphonic music appropriate for the three ‘musicians.’ Developed during the
fourteenth century, polyphony, the style of combining a number of parts, each
forming an individual melody, was not universally loved, however, and was
banned from the Catholic Church for its lewd, secular, and devilish connota-
tions.66 With its dissonant clashes of discordant notes, polyphonic music was
even compared to sounds made by animals. About one concert a Wittenberg
pamphleteer of 1522 writes: ‘Anon after one beginneth to crow as it were a
hen which would lay eggs […] they do howl piteously, much like the howling
of [March] cats’.67 Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, meanwhile,
64 Hayward, J.F. “Four Prints from engraved silver standing dishes attributed to J.T. de Bry”,
Burlington Magazine 95 (1953) 124–128.
65 Clouzot, M. Animal musicians in illuminated manuscripts (1300–1450). Renaissance Society
of America / session “Music in Art”, Mar 2014, New York, United States.
66 Wegman R.C., The Crisis of Music in Early Modern Europe, 1470–1530 (New York –London:
2005) 57–59.
67 The Wittenberg pamphlet was translated from Latin into English by Turner W., A Worke
entitled Of ye Olde God [and] the New of the Olde Faythe [and] the Newe (London: 1534),
sig. M iii. The transcription is cited by Leaver R.A., “The Reformation and Music” in James
Haar (ed.), European Music 1520–1640 (Woodbridge, 2006), 397, as well as in Bertoglio C.,
Reforming Music: Music and the Religious Reformations of the Sixteenth Century (Berlin –
Boston: 2017) 142.
376 Viljoen
Figure 9.28 Christoph Jamnitzer, “Der Schackenmarkt” in Christoph Jamnitzer, Der Neuw
Grotteßken Buch (Nuremberg, 1610). Etching, 145 × 185mm
describes a polyphonic concert, in which a choir sings ‘not with human voices
but with the cries of beasts: boys whinny the descant, some bellow the tenor,
others bark the counterpoint, others moo the alto, others gnash the bass’.68
Thinking back to the Master of Balaam’s print, it is worth revisiting the artist’s
inclusion within the shop of such a large group of animals, who now can be
seen as embodiments of the goldsmith-engraver’s Katzenmusik [Fig. 9.1].
5.7 Derisive and Derisible

Astonishingly, even the xylophone, which Virdung mentions together with
whistles and bells as examples of foolish instruments, finds expression in
engraved ornament [Fig. 9.28]. Performed by hitting wooden bars of varying
lengths with a little mallet, not dissimilar to one of the goldsmith’s smaller
hammers, a xylophone is rendered on the title page of Christoph Jamnitzer’s
well-known Shnackenmarkt. Only very rarely depicted in the sixteenth centu-
ry, the instrument’s appearance atop the winding cartilaginous branches from
68 Ibid. 143.
which a fool’s bell and a sausage (a reference to the folly of carnival) dangle
deserves particular attention. ‘Hültzig Gelechter’ or ‘hölzernes Gelächter’ is
Virdung’s sixteenth-century term for the instrument. Current in the early mod-
ern period, but now obsolete, the word connoted ‘empty’ or ‘hollow laughter’
and was linked to the xylophone’s sound, which was compared to the rattle of
bones, an association that explains its inclusion in Allaert Claesz’s 1562 Dance
of Death, an image that shows a finely garbed young couple dancing to the tune
of an improbably energized skeleton-xylophonist.69 A leitmotif of the Neuw
Grotteßken Buch’s prologue, laughter finds its literal embodiment in the form of
the ‘hölzernes Gelächter’ within the Schnackenmarkt. In the prologue, Jamnitzer
describes how Christopher Columbus, Christoph’s namesake, retaliated against
a group of arrogant Spanish noblemen, who intended to ridicule him by finding
a clever way to mock them instead. Accordingly, when Columbus returned from
his sea voyage that resulted in the discovery of the Americas, a group of courtiers
sought to put him down by claiming that they could just as easily have accom-
plished the task of finding the new world as he. Christopher responded to this ri-
diculous assertion with a wager, asking them to show how an egg could be made
to stand on its head. When all attempted the task and failed, he tapped the egg
on its head, demonstrating that it was only easy to follow in someone else’s foot-
steps once that person had shown the way.70 Parallels between Christopher and
Christoph run deep.71 Suffice it to state here that in as much as Christopher se-
cured his credibility through the stunt of making an egg stand upright, Christoph
proved his through a range of trifling and often intentionally outrageous inven-
tions. The goldsmith-engraver has the last laugh as he basks in the knowledge
that any laughter pointed at him was ultimately itself worthy of derision, proof
not of his, but of his assailers’ pathetic lack of imagination.
Tools of fine metalwork and vexing noise, the hammer, anvil, tongs, bellows
(and even the act of beating pots, with parallels in the instrument known
as the Pritschen auf dem Hafen), the goldsmith’s instrumenta, all produced
‘rough music’. How does this circumstance impact our understanding of the
goldsmith-engraver and his work? Sound and noise have recently become
areas of concerted scholarly inquiry, an interest we owe to Mikhail Bakhtin’s
groundbreaking Rabelais and His World, which opened our ears to the sounds
of the market place, laughter, and rough music.72 As Emma Dillon has cogently
69 Abbate C., In Search of Opera (Princeton: 2001) 78.

70 See Viljoen, “Christoph Jamnitzer’s Neuw Grotteßken Buch” 215–216.
71 Eadem, “Christoph Jamnitzer’s Neuw Grotteßken Buch” 213–236.
72 Bakhtin M., Rabelais and his World trans. H. Iswolsky (Cambridge, 1968) refers repeatedly
to Charivari throughout his seminal work. Contributions to the early modern history of
sound as it pertains to art and architecture include Howard D. – Moretti L., Sound and
378 Viljoen
written: ‘Bakhtin rehearses sounds that press not only at the limits of the ac-
ceptable in language but also hover at the fringes of the singing voice. Neither
speech nor song, voices taunt the official categories of verbal and musical
communication’.73 Hovering between figuration and abstraction, and largely de-
void of clear narrative, ornament prints participate in a comparable representa-
tional shadow world to the early modern world of sound.74 By turns melodious,
ebullient, and downright raucous, ornament prints have long held their sonic
secrets: attending to them with our mind’s ear it is just possible to hear their
meanings.
Bibliography
Alford, V., “Rough Music or Charivari”, Folklore 70.4 (1959) 505–518.

Bakhtin M., Rabelais and his World (Bloomington: 2009).
Camille M., Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art (London: 1992).
Cherry J.F., Goldsmiths (London: 1992).
Davis N.Z., “The Reason for a Misrule, Youth Groups, and Charivari in 16th-Century
France”, Past and Present 50 (1971) 41–75.
Dillon E., The Sense of Sound: Musical Meaning in France 1260–1330 (Oxford: 2012).
Eamon W., Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early
Modern Culture (Princeton: 1994).
Eamon W., “How to Read a Book of Secrets”, in Rankin A. (ed.), Secrets and Knowledge
in Medicine and Science, 1500–1800 (Farnham: 2011) 23–46.
Forest, J., History of Morris Dancing (Toronto: 1999).
Fuhring P. – Bimbenet-Privat M., « Le style ‘cosses de pois’: L’orfèvrerie et la gravure à
Paris sous Louis XIII », Gazette des Beaux-Arts 139 (2002).
Hammerstein R., Diabolus in Musica: Studien zur Ikonographie der Musik im Mittelalter
(Bern – Munich: 1974).
Ingram M., “Ridings, Rough Music and Mocking Rhymes in Early Modern England”
in Reay B. (ed.) Popular Culture in Seventeenth-Century England, (New York, 1985),
166–97.
Leach E.E., “‘The Little Pipe Sings Sweetly while the Fowler Deceives the Bird’: Sirens in
the Later Middle Ages”, Music and Letters 87.2 (2006) 187–211.
Space in Renaissance Venice (New Haven: 2009); and Atkinson N., The Noisy Renaissance:
Sound, Architecture and Florentine Urban Life (University Park: 2016).
73 Dillon E., The Sense of Sound: Musical Meaning in France 1260–1330 (Oxford: 2012) 95.
74 Viljoen, “Christoph Jamnitzer’s Neuw Grotteßken Buch” 231 and eadem, “The Airs of Early
Modern Ornament Prints” 119–121.
Leach E.E., Sung Birds: Music, Nature, and Poetry in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca: 2007).
Martin U., “Der Nürnberger Paul Dulner als Dichter geistlicher und weltlicher Lieder
Leonhard Lechners”, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 11.4. (1954) 315–322.
May P., “Die Kunstfertigkeit der Perspektive zu Nürnberg” in Wenzel Jamnitzer und
die Nürnberger Goldshmiedekunst 1500–1700, exh. cat. Germanisches Museum
(Nuremberg: 1985), 161–165.
McDonald W.C., “Michel Beheim Reconsidered: On Imagery in His Erzgräberbispel”,
The German Quarterly 48.4 (1975) 451–471.
Smith P.H., The Body of the Artisan (Chicago: 2004).
Smith, P.H. – Schmidt, B., “Introduction: Knowledge and its Making in Early Modern
Europe”, in Smith P.H. – Schmidt B. (eds.), Making Knowledge in Early Modern
Europe: Practices, Objects, and Texts, 1400–1800 (Chicago: 2007) 1–16.
Smith, P.H., “Vermilion, Mercury, Blood, and Lizards: Matter and Meaning in Metal-
working”, in Klein U. – Spary E.C. (eds.), Materials and Expertise in Early Modern
Europe: Between Market and Laboratory (Chicago: 2010) 30–48.
Smith P.H., “In the Workshop of History: Making, Writing, and Meaning,” West 86th:
A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture 19.1 (2012) 4–31.
Smith P.H., “The Matter of Ideas in the Working of Metals in Early Modern Europe”, in
Anderson C. – Dunlop A. – Smith P.H. (eds.), The Matter of Art: Materials, Practices,
Cultural Logics, c. 1250–1750 (Manchester: 2015) 53–57.
Smith P.H., “Itineraries of Materials and Knowledge in the Early Modern World”, in
Gerritsen A. – Riello G. (eds.), The Global Lives of Things (London – New York: 2016)
31–62.
Thompson E.P., “Rough Music Reconsidered” Folklore 103.1 (1992) 3–26.
Viljoen M., “The Winds of Early Modern Ornament Prints”, Oxford Art Journal 37.1
(2014) 117–133.
Viljoen M., “Christoph Jamnitzer’s Neuw Grotteßken Buch, Cosmography and Early
Modern Ornament”, Art Bulletin 98.2 (2016) 213–236.
Virdung S., Musica getutscht: a treatise on musical instruments (1511) by Sebastian
Virdung, trans. – ed. B. Bullard (Cambridge: 1993).
Walker D.P., Spiritual and Demonic Magic: From Ficino to Campanella (University Park:
2000).
Winternitz E., Musical Instruments and Their Symbolism in Western Art: Studies in
Musical Iconology (New Haven: 1979) 30–31.
Winternitz E., “Bagpipes and Hurdy-Gurdies in Their Social Setting”, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art Bulletin 1 (1943) 56–83.
Wyckoff E. – Bass M. (eds.), Beyond Bosch: The Afterlife of a Renaissance Master in Print,
exh. cat., St. Louis Art Museum – Harvard Art Museums (Saint Louis: 2015).
Zecher C., Sounding Objects: Musical Instruments, Poetry and Art in Renaissance France
(Toronto: 2007) 29–32.
chapter 10
‘Insettinghe’ and ‘yegelijcx conversatie’:

Understanding of the Image on the Eve of Baroque
Koenraad Jonckheere
When on 25 September 1581, a Schoon boecxken rolled off the presses of the
printer Ian van Brecht, Brussels was a Calvinist Republic.1 After a couple of
tumultuous decades, The Netherlands was a divided country, riven by religious
clashes and political unrest. Like Antwerp, Ghent and Bruges, the city of Brussels
decided to sail its own course around 1577 and sided with the Calvinist-inspired
uprising under the leadership of William prince of Nassau-Orange. In 1580, the
government of the court city was taken over by Calvinists who tried to turn it
into another reformed Geneva.
It is within this context that the publication of the Schoon boecxken should
be situated. The reformed city government created new opportunities for the
expression of unorthodox (i.e., non-Catholic) religious views, and provided
the context and conditions under which Refreynen competitions such as the
ones printed in the Schoon boecxken became possible. Published in this anti-
Catholic climate, the rhetoricians’ poetry gives lively testimony of the impact
that three decades of intense Calvinist preaching and publishing had on the
minds and souls of the literate bourgeois elite. Indeed, before and after the
iconoclastic summer of 1566, preachers and polemicists had tirelessly lectured
and published on the religious controversies, taking aim at the Catholic Church
or ‘Babels hoere’, as she was perennially called.2 Catholic theologians in turn
tried their best to defend the old verities, which had been reaffirmed by the
Council of Trent in its acts and decrees. Moreover, when the Refreynen compe-
tition was held and the booklet published, the Roman Catholic Mass had been
more or less eradicated in the Calvinist Republics, such as Brussels. Churches
were being cleansed of idolatrous objects in order to serve as Calvinist temples.
The same was true for several other major cities in the Low Countries, from
1 On the one surviving copy and its place in rhetorician’s culture see: Coigneau D., “‘Tot Babels
Schande’. Een Refreinfeestbundel in Het Calvinistische Brussel (1581)”, in Spiegel der Letteren
43.3 (2001) 205–223.
2 Arnade P.J., Beggars, Iconoclasts, and Civic Patriots. The Political Culture of the Dutch Revolt
(Ithaca – London: 2008); and Horst, D., De Opstand in Zwart Wit. Propagandaprenten Uit De
Nederlandse Opstand 1566–1584 (Zutphen: 2003).

Understanding of the Image on the Eve of Baroque 381
where the competing Chambers of Rhetoric that took part in the Refereynen
contest hailed.
The Schoon Boecxken is a rare example of a publication of poems written
in the context of a sixteenth-century rhetoricians’ contest, as Coigneau has
observed.3 There had been many other contests, but their proceedings were
seldom published, as such publications had proven too controversial.
As was common in such rhetoricians’ contests, the poems were written on
one (or in this case two) topics, formulated as questions, ‘vraghe’.4 The Schoon
boecxken contained ‘schoone ende stichtelijke Reffereynen’, written by rheto-
ricians on two questions: ‘Wat is de Misse ende hoe veelderhande?’ (What is
Mass and how manifold?) and ‘Wie die gene sijn die hen aldermeest op smen-
schen hantvverck sijn betrouvvende?’ (Who are those who trust the most in
human handicraft?). These ‘vraghe’, or ‘questye’ were remnants of the rhetori-
cal/dialectical principle of the Quaestio disputata and defined the issues under
debate, often societal issues. The two questions for the Refereynen competition
in Brussels were indeed topical, but at first sight, seem to have little to nothing
in common. The first question simply addressed the issue of the Holy Mass, the
highly contested sacrament of the Roman Catholics on which innumerable de-
bates had been issued since the early sixteenth century.5 How many different
sorts of Mass are there, the organizers of this rhetoricians’ contest wondered,
phrasing the issue at stake as, indeed, a rhetorical question. The second vraghe
tapped into another old debate related to the equally controversial issue of
image devotion and idolatry, namely, the status of human-made objects and
their ritual use. Needless to say, in the Low Countries in the second half of
the sixteenth century, with its waves of iconoclasm, this issue was highly rel-
evant as well.
The poems, written as answers to these questions, thus reflected stances
in a controversial societal debate in an era of passionate turmoil. However,
3 Coigneau, D., “‘Tot Babels Schande’. Een Refreinfeestbundel in Het Calvinistische Brussel
(1581)”, in Spiegel der Letteren 43, 3 (2001) 205–223.
4 See on this, esp. Spies M., “‘Op de questye …’: Over de structuur van 16e–eeuwse zinne-
spele”, in De nieuwe taalgids, 83 (1990) 139–150; Spies, M. – Duits H. – Strien A. van, Rhetoric,
Rhetoricians, and Poets: Studies in Renaissance Poetry and Poetics (Amsterdam: 1999) 16; and
Ramakers B.A.M., “Tonen en betogen: De dramaturgie van de Rotterdamse spelen van 1561”,
in Spiegel der Letteren 43.2 (2001) 176–204.
5
On the controversies centering on the Mass, see: Wandel L.P., The Eucharist in the
Reformation. Incarnation and Liturgy (Cambridge: 2006). On the impact of these contro-
versies on the visual arts, see: Jonckheere, K., “Classical Architecture and the Communion
Debate: The Iconography of Suggestion”, in Understanding Art in Antwerp. Classicizing the
Popular, Popularizing the Classic (1540–1580), ed. B.A.M. Ramakers, Groningen Studies in
Cultural Change. 45 (Leuven: 2011) 75–92.
382 Jonckheere
since none of the Refreynen defended the Catholic stance in the debates, it is
safe to say that the Schoon boecxken fully reflected Protestant opinions on both
issues.6 Some poems were fiercer than others, but all in all they were highly
critical of both the Mass and smenschen hantwerk. Moreover, all poems dis-
missed the validity of the Catholic sacrament and image devotion. Since the
driving force behind the contest and publication was a convinced reformer,
Adriaen van Conincxloo, the preoccupation with the more Calvinist-inclined
arguments should not surprise.7
This Schoon boecxken is an interesting case study that pointedly addresses a
problem with which art historians have had to cope when studying the diffu-
sion of religious image-theory in the sixteenth-century Netherlands – namely
the fact that little is known about how common folk of that time and place
understood the heated debates about the place of art in society.8
This article aims to supplement Coigneau’s assessment of the Schoon
boecxken as a unique example of the rhetoricians’ outspoken political-religious
affinities, with a more thorough analysis of the actual arguments raised in the
poems. These texts offer a unique insight into the impact of polemical writ-
ings and preaching in the wake of iconoclasm. The Schoon boecxken strongly
criticizes the Catholic Church, not from the perspective of theologians and re-
formed preachers but from that of laymen who, after years of exposure to their
learned arguments, here responded in their own voice to key questions about
the nature of the Mass and of idolatry. If one is to understand both religion and
religious art in this era, it is vital to explain the fixation on these issues, not only
by elite theologians but also by the authors of these refereynen. In analyzing the
poems, I shall pay close attention to the word ‘insettinghe’, as it testifies to a so-
phisticated understanding of the tension between spirituality and materiality.
‘Insettinghe’, as we will see, functions like a shibboleth: for those who share in
the knowledge of the veridical source and content of what is being connoted –
i.e., Roman Catholic congregants and viewers – insettinghe has truth value.
6 Coigneau, D., “‘Tot Babels Schande’. Een Refreinfeestbundel in Het Calvinistische Brussel
(1581)”, in Spiegel der Letteren 43.3 (2001) 205–223.
7 Ibid.
8 See on the image debates in that era in the Netherlands: Freedberg, D., Iconoclasm and
Painting in the Revolt of the Netherlands, 1566–1609, Outstanding Theses in the Fine Arts from
British Universities (New York – London: 1988); Jonckheere, K., Antwerp Art after Iconoclasm.
Experiments in Decorum 1566–1585 (Brussels – New Haven – London: 2013). See on the early
modern image debates more generally: Scavizzi G., The Controversy on Images from Calvin to
Baronius. Toronto Studies in Religion 14 (New York: 1992); Eire C.M.N., War against the Idols.
The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin (Cambridge: 1986); Hecht, C., Katholische
Bildertheologie im Zeitalter von Gegenreformation und Barock. Studien Zu Traktaten Von
Johannes Molanus, Gabriele Paleotti und anderen Autoren (Berlin: 2012).
For those not party to this knowledge, either by choice or circumstance – i.e.,
the Reformed in their reading of the Mass and sacred images – the insettinghe
is both factitious and adventitious, entirely lacking in truth.
1 Insettinghe and smenschen handwerk
Reading the poems on the two questions, one notices the preoccupation of
the competing rhetoricians with specific issues and the repeated use of spe-
cific metaphors to identify these topics. ‘Idolatry’, of course, and ‘blasphemy’
are two words that pop up time and again and the epithet ‘Babels hoere’ is
so omnipresent in the refereynen that she was depicted on the frontispiece.
‘Babels hoere’ is a reference to the caricatural term of abuse used by staunch
Protestants to attack the Catholic Church in this era; it often appears in the
satirical prints that proliferated in the Netherlands during the second half of
the sixteenth century [Fig. 10.1].9 It refers, of course, to the apocalyptic vision
of St. John. According to the Book of Revelation, on the evil creature’s forehead
was written the words ‘mystery, Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and
abominations of the earth’.10
However, the whore of Babylon functions as a merely propagandistic refer-
ent. More important in this context is the continuous attention paid to the
tension between materiality and spirituality, which reveals a surprisingly nu-
anced understanding of the theological debates on the Mass and on idolatry,
and points to a conceptual link between both controversies. The holy sacra-
ment of the Mass was construed as idolatrous by the reform-minded authors
of the refereynen; they compared the Mass, thus conceived and practised, to
the veneration of man-made objects, ‘smenschen handwerk’ (human handi-
work), i.e., art made by human hands.
Without being worded as such, it is clear that the doctrine of transubstan-
tiation was one of the prime concerns of the rhetoricians when addressing the
first question on the multiplicity of Mass. While the first vraghe actually refers
to the various sorts and types of Mass that Catholicism had installed in the
course of time, nearly all authors take the occasion to question the underlying
dogma as well. ‘Dattet Broot Vleesch worde, ende bloet den wijne’ (that the
bread turns into flesh and wine into blood) is already condemned in the very
9 H
orst D., De Opstand in zwart Wit. Propagandaprenten Uit De Nederlandse Opstand 1566–
1584 (Zutphen: 2003), p. 115, 118 en 324.
10 Revelation 17:5.
384 Jonckheere
Figure 10.1 Anonymous, The Duke of Alba Making Love to the Whore of Babylon (1572).
Engraving, 18,5 mm × 13,5 cm
Amsterdam, Rijksprentenkabinet (RP-P-OB-79.011)
first poem of the volume, a refereyn written by the chamber of Breda.11 And the
criticism continues in all following poems. The ‘brootGodt’ (breadgod) was a
topos, comparable to ‘vleesch eten’ (eating meat) and other terms that reflect
the reformed authors’ problematic assessment of Catholic dogma.12 Indeed, all
these remarks are telling examples of the frequency with which the reformers
harped on these pressing issues in the preceding decades. Influential publica-
tions such as Petrus Bloccius’s highly offensive Twee hondert ketteryen,13 but
also the numerous pamphlets on the Last Supper and Mass apparently had a
profound effect.14 Yet, they do not necessarily testify to a thorough understand-
ing of the problems either. Such condemnations of the Mass often merely re-
peat the more cursory arguments made by contemporary polemicists.
Yet there are a couple of instances when the rhetoricians’ poems do attest
to a thorough comprehension of the theological problems underlying both the
holy sacrament of the Mass and image devotion. It is on these passing, ostensi-
bly meaningless remarks that I would like to focus in what follows.
The first phrase referring to the complexity of the debates in the sixteenth
century is to be found in the second refereyn.
Dat de mis / eenen grouwel is / moechdy mercken

Dwelck ic bewijsen sal voer leeke(n) en clercken
Want sy op smenschen insettinge / is gebout
Sy wort op eenen steen gedaen inder kercke(n)
Met vier cruyskens / om bewaert te zijn (dit onthout).15
11 E en schoon boecxken vol schoone refferynen, ghedicht op zekere twee vraghen by den re-
thorisijnen van Bruessel uuyt ghegeven (Brussels, Ian van Brecht: 1581), first question, first
refrain.
12 Ibid., passim.
13 Bloccius Petrus, Meer dan tvvee hondert ketteryen, blasphemien en nieuwe leeringen, vvelck

vvt de Misse zyn ghecomen / Eerst van Petro Bloccio school-Meester te Leyden in Latyn
ghemaeckt, daer aae in Duytsch voor slechte menschen ouerghesett […] (Wesel, Augustijn
van Hasselt: 1567), passim.
14 For a selection of the many treatises on the Mass in the Netherlands in this era, see
Jonckheere K., “Classical Architecture and the Communion Debate: The Iconography
of Suggestion”, in Understanding Art in Antwerp. Classicizing the Popular, Popularizing
the Classic (1540–1580), ed. B.A.M. Ramakers, Groningen Studies in Cultural Change 45
(Leuven: 2011) 75–92.
15 Een schoon boecxken vol schoone refferynen, ghedicht op zekere twee vraghen by den retho-
risijnen van Bruessel uuyt ghegeven (Brussels: Ian van Brecht, 1581), first question, second
refreyn.
386 Jonckheere
That Mass is horror, you could notice

Which I shall prove for laymen and clerks
For on human insertion she is built,
She is done a stone in church
With four crosses, to be preserved (remind).
The phrase ‘smenschen insettinge’ is crucial in that it repeats an argument that

was often used to discuss both image devotion and idolatry, and refers to a very
old but crucial concept in the debate on image devotion, called prototypum.
It relates to stances that were typically taken by Catholic theologians, such as
Martinus Duncanus, who characterised the difference between ‘valsche’ (false)
and ‘oprechte beelden’ (genuine images) precisely on this point:
Een oprecht en(de) waerachtich beelt is een figure oft teecken van eenich
dinck, welck teecken en(de) beteekende dink also in der natueren is, alst
behoort en(de) schijnt te zijn na die insettinghe des teeckens.16
A genuine and true image is a figure or sign of some thing, which signified
and meaningful thing is also in nature, as it should and seems to be after
the insertion of signs.
Terminology such as ‘affgoderije’ (idolatry), which pops up all over the Schoon
boecxken, was closely linked to this understanding of ‘insettinghe des teeckens’.
This is also why, in the poems on ‘smenschen hantwerk’, the term insettinghe
pops up as well. For instance, in the poem sent in by the Brussels chamber,
the ‘insettinghe van menschen’ (human insertions) in the ‘affgoden’ or idols,
are discussed.17
The awareness of this concept, implicit in the term ‘insettinghe’, which regu-
larly occurs in the image debates of the sixteenth century, actually goes as far
back as St. Basil the Great and is related to his famous comparison of a king
and his image.18 When kneeling before the portrait of a king, one does not
pay his or her respects to the object itself, St. Basil argued, but to what the
16 Duncanus Martinus, Een cort onderscheyt tusschen Godlyke ende afgodissche beelden. Het

Tweede boecxken van de heyligen in den hemel dwelck zijn levendige beelden Gods (Antwerp,
Peeter van Keerbergen: 1567), chapter VIII.
17 Een schoon boecxken vol schoone refferynen, ghedicht op zekere twee vraghen by den re-
thorisijnen van Bruessel uuyt ghegeven (Brussels: Ian van Brecht, 1581), second question,
fourth refreyn.
18 On these debates in the Western tradition see Noble T.F.X. Images, Iconoclasm, and the
Carolingians. The Middle Ages Series (Philadelphia: 2009) 153–154; Mitalaité K. Philosophie
image represents, in this case the king himself. Or stated otherwise, as Thomas
Aquinas does when he reinterprets St. Basil’s idea in his discussion of latria
and dulia: ‘Regard for an image as image is really regard for what it reflects;
but since not every reaction to an image is one to it as image, there are times
when the response to an image and to its exemplar are specifically different’.19
St. Basil had used the anecdote to explain the consubstantiality of the Father
and the Son, and further, to explain the double nature of the image – the natu-
ral image and the fabricated image. In early Christianity, this discourse was
intrinsically linked to wide-ranging debates on the Holy Trinity and on how to
understand the relation between God, his Son and the Holy Spirit. However,
during the Byzantine Iconoclasm and the Carolingian response to it in the
Libri Carolini, the issue raised by St. Basil became a key element in treatises on
images.20 In the sixteenth century, the whole debate was brought once again
to the forefront. Highbrow scholarly Catholic publications on images, such
as Johannes Molanus’s De picturis et imaginibus sacris or Gabriele Paleotti’s
Discorso intorno alle imagine sacre et profane, and highly polemic Reformed
treatises such as Petrus Bloccius’s Tvvee hondert ketteryen and Christelycke
antvvoorde, all used St. Basil’s idea of prototypum to address the nature of the
image.21 Catholic believers to defend it; reformers to trash it.
Without going into the theological complexities, it is safe to state that the
concept aims to bridge the complicated relationship between the spiritual
and the material world. St. Basil’s example of the king and his portrait and the
questions it engendered are still an excellent example to illustrate the basic
problem. The idea comes down to the fact that there is a difference between an
actual image and what it stands for (prototypum).22 The image itself is merely a
material object, but when it resembles something or somebody it can become
et théologie de l’image dans les ‘Libri Carolini’, Collection des Études Augustiniennes, Série
Moyen Âge Et Temps Modernes (Paris: 2007), esp. 104–105.
19 O’Brian T.C., Summa Theologiae: Volume 41, Virtues of Justice in the Human Community
(Cambridge: 2006) 41.
20 Mitalaité, Philosophie et théologie de l’image, 104–105.
21 Molanus J., Traité des saintes images, Patrimoines Christianisme, eds. F. Boespflug –

O. Christin – B. Tassel, 2 vols., (Paris: 1996) II 324–328; and Paleotti G., Discourse on Sacred
and Profane Images, Texts & Documents, eds. and trans. W. McCuaig – P. Prodi (Los
Angeles: 2012). See also Florianus Joannes, Christelycke antvvoorde op den eersten boeck
der lasteringhen en vernieude valscheden van twee apostaten Mattheeus de Launoy, priester,
ende Hendrick Pennetier, die eertijdts ministers gheweest hebben, ende nv wederom tot hare
vuytghespogen vuylicheyt, ghekeert zijn […] Nu eerst vvt het Francoys getrouvvelijck ouerge-
set door Ioanne[m] Florianu[m] […] Midtsgaders een stichtelijcken brief Thomae Tilij […]
(Antwerp, Niclaes Soolmans: 1583) 112–114.
22 On the theological background, see Mitalaité, Philosophie et théologie de l’image, 112–124.
388 Jonckheere
some sort of substitute for it. For instance, a portrait of a king might indeed
evoke, to some extent, his presence, much as a photo of a recently deceased
loved one can trigger a strange awareness of that person’s presence. Therefore,
it was argued by Catholic theologians throughout history, that when you ven-
erate the image of Jesus, you do not adore or even worship the image itself, as
an object. No, you glorify the prototypum for which it stands, namely, Christ.
When it came to God and the Holy Spirit, however, there was a problem
as there was no clear-cut visible, tangible prototype to rely on, as there was
or had been for Christ and the saints. In the case of the other persons of the
Holy Trinity, visual resemblance was altogether impossible.23 Hence the proto-
type remained in place even while it had to be visualized and / or materialized
through something other, apropos an ‘insettinghe’.
The crux of the reasoning was exactly what lay behind what authors such as
Ducanus called the ‘insettinghe des teeckens’, or the meaning you give to some-
thing. Martinus Duncanus explains what he means, by analyzing the example
of the lions on Salomon’s throne.24 He argues that if the artists had used their
own phantasy to make these lions, and shaped them with the body of birds
and with pig’s heads, they would have been false – unless God had ordered
them to make them in this way – because such creatures do not appear in na-
ture (there is no actual prototypum). Moreover, ‘Een valsch ende loghenachtich
beelt is een teecken, dwelck het beteeckende dinck (i.e., prototypum) also in
de nature(n) niet en is, alst nae die afgodissche insettinghe schijnt te zijn’.25
‘A false and mendacious image is a sign, which signified thing does not exist in
nature, even if it appears as such after the idolatrous insertion’, as he rephrased
his earlier statement. Duncanus then moves on to argue why the image of
Jupiter is false, constructing a similar argument.
While often this insettinghe is placed under the same heading as prototy-
pum, Duncanus actually distinguished between both. He makes clear that a
prototypum (an existing visual, tangible exemplum) can be enriched by what
he designates an insettinghe. For instance, a dove is just a dove, but with a cor-
rect insettinghe, it is the representation of the Holy Spirit. Untranslatable, the
word thus means something like ‘idea’, ‘concept’, ‘issue’, ‘narrative’, etc. inserted
into the image.
Let’s take a contemporary example to explain this reasoning. Imagine a pho-
tograph of man. The picture is made after a living human being somewhere.
The image would remain nothing more than the image of a man without any
23 Ibid., 164–179.
24 Duncanus, Een cort onderscheyt, chapter VIII.

25 Ibid.
affinity with the prototype of the image, the actual person, for everybody who
did or does not know him. Yet, if I were to specify that it is the image of a mass-
murder, it would instantly have completely different connotations, even if one
were unfamiliar with the actual person. This connotation is the insettinghe.
Duncanus’s awareness of the insettinghe would appear to grow out of his
familiarity with the prototypum concept with which he pairs it. However, it was
already addressed in Byzantine and Carolingian image theories in the eighth
and ninth century A.D. The author of the Libri Carolini, for instance, adduced
another example to explain it. Thomas Noble, who studied the Libri, astutely
summarizes the anecdote as follows: ‘Suppose he says, you have two pictures
of beautiful woman. One is thought to be Mary, and the other Venus. Now you
put a titulus on one to identify is as Mary. Where he asks was this image’s holi-
ness, its power to refer prayers to the Mother of God, before it got a titulus’.26
The anecdote forms the basis of a series of questions raised by the author of
the Libri Carolini, including questions on beauty in art. But first and foremost,
the anecdote testifies to a strong awareness of the necessary context for an
image, any image. Moreover, it shows that the weaker the beholder’s relation
to the prototype of an image is, the more powerful the insettinghe becomes,
or, more precisely, the belief in the insettinghe. To return to the contemporary
example: what if I lied? What if the man in the image is in fact the portrait of
a war hero? If the beholder of an image has no empirical knowledge of the
relation between the image and its prototype, the insettinghe and the belief
in it are the crux of matter. In Duncanus’s reasoning, which was based on an-
cient image theologies such as the ones described in the Libri Carolini (which
were published in 1549 by Jean du Tillet27), the perception of the image is thus
not solely related to the image itself (the material component, if you will) and
its prototypum (the factual object, person, idea whereon it was). According to
Duncanus, it is vitally important that one take note of the insettinghe precisely
because it can be either false or genuine – a mass-murder and a war hero are
two completely different insettinghe. A good image, according to this Catholic
doctrine, is an image that represents someone or something existent, of which
the connotation, being God-given and genuine, is true. Thus, the insettinghe
lays bare the highly complex relationship between a physical, material object
and the religious, spiritual experience it calls forth.
26 Noble T.F.X. Images, Iconoclasm and the Carolingians, The Middle Ages Series (Philadel-
phia: 2009) 204.
27 Tillet J. du, Opus illustrissimi Caroli Magni […] contra Synodum, quae in partibus Graeciae

pro adorandis imaginibus […] gesta est, cur. E. Philira (Paris, n.p.: 1549). See on this pub-
lication and its impact: Payton J.R., “Calvin and the Libri Carolini”, in Sixteenth Century
Journal 28.2 (1997) 467–480.
390 Jonckheere
Interestingly, in this age of intense debate on images and the holy Mass,
the word insettinghe was also used to explain one of the controversial issues
bound up with the Holy Sacrament, in a way that redounds upon the poem
from the Schoon boecxken, discussed above. In Een clare bevvijs, va(n) het
recht ghebruyck des Nachtmaels of 1560, for instance, the Catholic dogma of
transubstantiation was defended with the argument that in the Eucharist,
the ‘insettinghe’ is divine, not human.28 Hence the link between the two vra-
ghe in the Schoon boecxken is also explained. To reformers, the Eucharist and
idols had much in common, as the Holy Sacrament to them was just like any
other human-made artifact. There was no divine insettinghe; and nor did im-
ages convey divinity. Bread and art: both were merely smenschen hantwerk. To
Catholics, ‘the Eucharist possesses the spirit of God, the image only the skill
of the painter’, as the Libri Carolini put it.29 To reformers in the late sixteenth
century, this was not the case. They argued that the bread used in the Eucharist
itself was just like man-made imagery and thus was not to be venerated, let
alone worshiped.
Yet, the Catholic notion that the meaning of an image or any object is not
simply due to its relation to a discernible prototype, but just as much to the
idea(s) attached to them is a valuable approach for a better understanding
of the impact of faith on the use and perception of art. Respectful use and
emotional reception were not due to the material or artistic qualities of an
image or object, but rather, to the status of the prototypum and the nature of
the insettinghe. ‘Why don’t you destroy the portraits of your ancestors?’, was a
common Catholic phrase to counter the Reformed condemnation of Christian
imagery.30 Of course, this line of defense brings to the fore the fact that strong
affects associated with a specific prototype can be transmitted or projected
onto the image. However, much more difficult was the defense of those images
of Christ and the saints which had no discernibly direct visible references to
their prototypa, but were instead artist’s fantasies supplemented with an inset-
tinghe. Whether one accepted the mimetic image of a man with long hair and
a beard or the symbolic image of a wooden cross as a portrayal of Christ was,
so to speak, a matter of faith in the insettinghe, of conviction (or lack there-
of) that the depicted person or symbol does indeed represent Christ. Since
no contemporary painter had actually seen the Saviour, he or she could never
28 Mikron, M., Een clear bewijs van het recht ghebruyck des Nachtmaelse Christi, ende watmen
van de misse houden sal (Emden: 1560), Chapter II.
29 Noble, Iconoclasm and the Carolingians 194.
30 See on this, Jonckheere, K. Rubens. Portraits After Existing Prototypes, Corpus Rubenianum
Ludwig Burchard XIX, 4 (London – Turnhout: 2016), introduction.
depict him completely faithfully. However, if faith in the insettinghe was strong
enough, the actual mimetic or symbolic qualities of the image as they relate
to the prototypum could be seen to matter less than the connotative value of
the insettinghe.
Johannes A Porta, another polemicist, analyzes the problem extensively in
his D’Net der beeltstormers of 1591.31 Accordingly, this theologian argues that
images are to be used for two reasons, one being to honor someone, the second
being to procure ‘ghedachtenisse’ (remembrance) and provide ‘ghestichticheit’
(edification).32 It is this second reason which, according to A Porta, justifies the
fact that a direct relation between the image and its prototype (‘natuerlijcke
aenschijne’) is not an absolute necessity. In the fourth chapter of his volumi-
nous book, he states that ‘authentic discourse’ is far more relevant than actual
physical resemblance (which could not at any event be guaranteed by artists).
In a sort of Platonic leap, he ends up arguing that the qualities of saints, as
described in their images, could simply be distilled from humankind at large,
as these saints and we share a common humanity. Christ and the saints, being
human, suffered humanly for our welfare. A good understanding of this suffer-
ing and human nature ought to be enough to fashion their images convincingly,
not necessarily after the ‘yegenlijcke aenschijn’ (authentic resemblance), but
certainly ‘nae yegelijcx conversatie’ (authentic discourse).33 Or, as Martinus
Duncanus phrased it in his discussion on the second commandment in his
Catholijcke Catechismus (1594), ‘Godt heeft bycans alle zijn verborgentheden
ende onse salicheden / met bedechtheydt ende met Beeldinge int gheloof
ons voorgeset’ (‘God has presented to us in faith almost all of His secrets and
our salvations, with caution and with imagination’).34 Visual history in other
words, is God’s narrative, and as long as one is faithful to the divine account in
depicting something, one is faithful to the Christian faith itself.
Linking concepts in polemical or theoretical treatises to works of art is
always complicated, since the readership of the such writings is hard to as-
sess. Yet, the fact that such concepts as insettinghe pop up, even in rhetori-
cians’ poetry, testifies to the pervasiveness of such ideas. They were much more
31 E.g. Porta Johannes A, D’net der beeltstormers, verclarende dat wettelijck ghebruyck der
kerckelijcker beelden ende d’onrecht bestormen der seluer, in dry tractaten oft stucken
ghedeylt (Antwerp, Jan van Keerberghen: 1591), part III, chapter VII.
32 Ibid., part I, chapter III.
33 Ibid., part I, chapter IV.
34 Duncanus Martinus, Catholijcke Catechismus, met wederlegginghe van der Heydelbergsche

oft ghereformeerde Catechismus met vraghe ende antwoort (Antwerp, Hieronymus

Verdussen: 1594), s.p.
392 Jonckheere
Figure 10.2 Peter Paul Rubens, Portrait Bust of Seneca (c. 1613–1616). Oil on panel,
65 × 50 cm
Antwerp, Museum Plantin-Moretus (Inv. no. MPM.V.IV.057)
Figure 10.3 Peter Paul Rubens, Saint Peter (c. 1611). Oil on panel, 107 × 82 cm
Madrid, Museo del Prado (Inv. no. P001646)
394 Jonckheere
common than one might expect. Moreover, since the image was the core busi-
ness of artists, it is quite reasonable to argue that they were even more atten-
tive to the debate on the nature of the image than other fellow rhetoricians.
The categorical terms prototypum and insettinghe were fundamental as they
have to do with invention and artistic creativity in the depiction of Christian
saints and biblical scenes. Catholic painters in particular could now double
down on ‘yegelijcx conversatie’ (authentic or attestable discourse), a challenge
Peter Paul Rubens and his contemporaries took up with verve. In much of
their work, they replaced centuries of ‘yegenlijcke aenschijn’ with everything
‘yegelijcx conversatie’ had to offer.
Not only did Rubens, for instance, stress divinely sanctioned insettinghe in
his depiction of the Last Supper – something sixteenth-century painters did
not do at all. He took the possibilities of ‘yegelijcx conversatie’ to another level
altogether. When puzzling about the faces of the apostles, he used his (pre-
sumed) bust of Seneca to shape the face of St. Peter, stretching the notions of
‘insettinghe’ and ‘yegelijcx conversatie’ [Figs. 10.2 and 10.3].
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Een schoon boecxken vol schoone refferynen, ghedicht op zekere twee vraghen by den re-
thorisijnen van Bruessel uuyt ghegeven (Brussels, Ian van Brecht: 1581).
A Porta, Johannes, D’net der beeltstormers, verclarende dat wettelijck ghebruyck der
kerckelijcker beelden ende d’onrecht bestormen der seluer, in dry tractaten oft stucken
ghedeylt (Antwerp, Jan van Keerberghen: 1591).
Bloccius Petrus, Meer dan tvvee hondert ketteryen, blasphemien en nieuwe leeringen,
vvelck vvt de Misse zyn ghecomen / Eerst van Petro Bloccio school-Meester te Leyden in
Latyn ghemaeckt, daer aae in Duytsch voor slechte menschen ouerghesett […] (Wesel,
Augustijn van Hasselt: 1567).
Duncanus Martinus, Een cort onderscheyt tusschen Godlyke ende afgodissche beelden.
Het Tweede boecxken van de heyligen in den hemel dwelck zijn levendige beelden Gods
(Antwerp, Peeter van Keerbergen: 1567).
Duncanus Martinus, Catholijcke Catechismus, met wederlegginghe van der Heydelberg-
sche oft ghereformeerde Catechismus met vraghe ende antwoort (Antwerp, Hierony-
mus Verdussen: 1594).
Florianus Joannes, Christelycke antvvoorde op den eersten boeck der lasteringhen en ver-
nieude valscheden van twee apostaten Mattheeus de Launoy, priester, ende Hendrick
Pennetier, die eertijdts ministers gheweest hebben, ende nv wederom tot hare vuytghe-
spogen vuylicheyt, ghekeert zijn […] Nu eerst vvt het Francoys getrouvvelijck ouergeset
door Ioanne[m] Florianu[m] […] Midtsgaders een stichtelijcken brief Thomae Tilij
[…] (Antwerp, Niclaes Soolmans: 1583).
Mikron, M., Een clear bewijs van het recht ghebruyck des Nachtmaelse Christi, ende wat-
men van de misse houden sal (Emden: 1560).
Tillet J. du, Opus illustrissimi Caroli Magni […] contra Synodum, quae in partibus
Graeciae pro adorandis imaginibus […] gesta est, cur. E. Philira (Paris, n.p.: 1549).
Secondary Sources
Arnade P.J., Beggars, Iconoclasts, and Civic Patriots. The Political Culture of the Dutch
Revolt (Ithaca – London: 2008).
Coigneau D., “‘Tot Babels Schande’. Een Refreinfeestbundel in Het Calvinistische
Brussel (1581)”, in Spiegel der Letteren 43.3 (2001) 205–223.
Eire C.M.N., War against the Idols. The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin
(Cambridge: 1986).
Freedberg, D., Iconoclasm and Painting in the Revolt of the Netherlands, 1566–1609,
Outstanding Theses in the Fine Arts from British Universities (New York – London:
1988).
Hecht, C., Katholische Bildertheologie im Zeitalter von Gegenreformation und Barock.
Studien Zu Traktaten Von Johannes Molanus, Gabriele Paleotti und anderen Autoren
(Berlin: 2012).
Horst, D., De Opstand in Zwart Wit. Propagandaprenten Uit De Nederlandse Opstand
1566–1584 (Zutphen: 2003).
Jonckheere, K., “Classical Architecture and the Communion Debate: The Iconography of
Suggestion”, in Understanding Art in Antwerp. Classicizing the Popular, Popularizing
the Classic (1540–1580), ed. B.A.M. Ramakers, Groningen Studies in Cultural Change.
45 (Leuven: 2011) 75–92.
Jonckheere, K., Antwerp Art after Iconoclasm. Experiments in Decorum 1566–1585
(Brussels – New Haven – London: 2013).
Jonckheere, K., Rubens. Portraits After Existing Prototypes, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig
Burchard XIX, 4 (London – Turnhout: 2016).
Mitalaité K., Philosophie et théologie de l’image dans les ‘Libri Carolini’, Collection des
Études Augustiniennes, Série Moyen Âge Et Temps Modernes (Paris: 2007).
Molanus J., Traité des saintes images, Patrimoines Christianisme, eds. F. Boespflug –
O. Christin – B. Tassel, 2 vols., (Paris: 1996).
Noble T.F.X., Images, Iconoclasm, and the Carolingians. The Middle Ages Series
(Philadelphia: 2009).
O’Brian T.C., Summa Theologiae: Volume 41, Virtues of Justice in the Human Community
(Cambridge: 2006).
396 Jonckheere
Paleotti G., Discourse on Sacred and Profane Images, Texts & Documents, eds. and
trans. W. McCuaig – P. Prodi (Los Angeles: 2012).
Payton J.R., “Calvin and the Libri Carolini”, in Sixteenth Century Journal 28.2 (1997)
467–480.
Ramakers B.A.M., “Tonen en betogen: De dramaturgie van de Rotterdamse spelen van
1561”, in Spiegel der Letteren 43.2 (2001) 176–204.
Scavizzi G., The Controversy on Images from Calvin to Baronius. Toronto Studies in
Religion 14 (New York: 1992).
Spies M., “‘Op de questye …’: Over de structuur van 16e–eeuwse zinnespele”, in De
nieuwe taalgids, 83 (1990) 139–150; Spies, M. – Duits H. – Strien A. van, Rhetoric,
Rhetoricians, and Poets: Studies in Renaissance poetry and Poetics (Amsterdam:
1999).
Wandel L.P., The Eucharist in the Reformation. Incarnation and Liturgy (Cambridge:
2006).
chapter 11
Roger de Piles and the Secret of Grace

Caecilie Weissert
Roger de Piles (1635–1709), a French amateur painter, engraver, theorist, critic,

and diplomat living and working in Paris after 1651, was appointed conseiller
honoraire to the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1699 [Fig. 11.1].
He was one of the most eminent figures in the world of art and best known as
one of the most important defenders of the art of Peter Paul Rubens and his
handling of colour.1 In his books on art, which he wrote for art lovers and ama-
teurs he not only defined the reasons for his preference for Rubens but also
established criteria for judging paintings. Translated into several languages, his
views were actively consulted throughout Europe. The main concerns of his
writings are the education of good taste (bon goût), the methods of judging
art, and the sensitisation and refinement of aesthetic sensation while viewing
art: the pleasure of the eyes (plaisir des yeux). By declaring pleasure (plaisir)
the objective of art viewing, Roger de Piles emphasises aesthetic experience.
In this he follows René Descartes, who had formulated something comparable
for the reception of music: the goal of all music is ‘de plaire et d’exciter en nous
diverses passions’ (to please and excite in us various passions).2 The task of
every painting is – as Roger de Piles puts it – ‘d’appeller & de plaire’ (to call
and please).3 The turn to the appeal to the viewer and his pleasure changes the
criteria of art evaluation and also has effects on the concept of grace, as will be
shown in the following.
1 On Roger de Piles, see e.g. Mirot L., Roger de Piles Peintre, Amateur, Critique, membre de
l’Académie de Peinture (1635–1709) (Paris: 1927); Teyssèdre B., Roger de Piles et les débats sur
le coloris au siècle de Louis XIV (Paris: 1957); Puttfarken T., Roger de Piles’ Theory of Art (New
Haven – London: 1986); Folesani G.P., “A proposito di Roger de Piles”, in Roger de Piles, Dialogo
sul colorito (Florence: 2016) 1–135.
2 Descartes René, “Abrégé de la Musique”, in Œuvres de Descartes, ed. V. Cousin, 11 vols. (Paris:

F.G. Levrault: 1824), vol. 5, 444–503, 444. Descartes composed this treaty in 1618, during his
stay in Breda. It was not printed until after his death: Descartes René, Compendium musicæ
(Trajectum ad Rhenum, Zijll: 1650). See on Descartes: Favier T. – Couvreur M. (eds.), Le plaisir
musical en France au XVIIe siècle (Sprimont: 2006).
3 Piles Roger de, Cours de peinture par principes (Paris, Jacques Estienne: 1708) 20. A little later

it is said that the task of painting is to stop the viewer in order to please his eyes – and thus
his mind – and if possible to deceive him. Ibidem 40–41, repeated again ibidem 314.

398 Weissert
Figure 11.1 Bernard Picart, Portrait of Roger de Piles, 1709, etching and engraving,
288 mm × 203 mm
© Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Roger de Piles and the Secret of Grace 399
Figure 11.2 Roger de Piles, Abrégé de la vie des peintres, avec des reflexions sur
leurs ouvrages, et un Traité du peintre parfait, de la connoissance
des desseins, & de l’utilité des estampes, Paris, Franc̜ois Muguet:
1699, title page. Bibliothèque nationale de France, département
Littérature et art (V-23908)
© Bibliothèque nationale de France
400 Weissert
1 Roger de Piles and the Meaning of Grace
When it comes to his concept of grace, de Piles’s treatise Abrégé de la Vie des
Peintres: Avec des reflexions sur leurs ouvrages (1699) is particularly interesting
[Fig. 11.2]. Within the framework of the question ‘Quid est secretum?’, it is re-
vealing to ask whether the concept of grace that Roger de Piles presents in this
work also includes a concept of secrets.
In the chapter entitled ‘L’idée du peintre parfait’ (The Idea of a Perfect
Painter), Roger de Piles described grace: a piece of art is only perfect if it also
has grace [Figs. 11.3–11.4].
Un Peintre qui possède son Art dans tous les détails que l’on vient de
représenter, peut à la vérité s’assurer d’être habile, & de faire infaillible-
ment de belles choses: mais ses Tableaux ne pourront être parfaits si la
Beauté qui s’y trouve n’est accompagnée de la Grace.4
Whatever Painter is Master of his Art in all the parts we have mention’d,
he may depend upon it, he is arriv’d to a great degree of Perfection, and
his Pictures will infallibly be fine, yet not entirely perfect, if beauty be not
accompany’d with Grace.
Grace is not merely a synonym for beauty; both can be present separately in a
work of art. But, exclusively through the combination of beauty and grace, a
work of art reaches its perfection.
La Grace & la Beauté, sont deux choses différentes: la Beauté ne plaît que
par les règles, & la Grace plaît sans les règles. Ce qui est beau n’est pas
toûjours gracieux, & ce qui est gracieux n’est pas toûjours beau; mais la
Grace jointe à la Beauté, est le comble de la Perfection.5
Grace and Beauty are two different things, Beauty pleases by the Rules
only, and Grace without them. What is Beautiful, is not always Graceful;
but Grace join’d with Beauty is the height of Perfection.
4 P iles Roger de, Abrégé de la vie des peintres, avec des reflexions sur leurs ouvrages, et un Traité

du peintre parfait, de la connoissance des desseins, & de l’utilité des estampes (Paris, François
Muguet: 1699) 10–11. For the English translation, see Piles Roger de, The Art of Painting, and
the Lives of Painters: Containing, a Compleat Treatise of Painting, Designing, and the Use of
Prints (London: J. Nutt 1706) 8.
5 Piles, Abrégé 11. For the English translation, see Piles, The Art of Painting 8.

Grace is connected to the genius of the artist, and like genius, grace cannot
be learned by the rules of art; it is a gift of nature, and its real effects cannot be
explained rationally:
La Grace doit assaisonner toutes les parties dont on vient de parler, elle
doit suivre le Génie; c’est elle qui le soutien & qui le perfectionne: mais
elle ne peut, ni s’acquérir à fond, ni démontrer. Un Peintre ne la tient que
de la Nature, il ne scait pas même si elle est en luy, ni à quel degré il la
possède, ni comment il la communique à ses Ouvrages.6
Grace must season the parts we have spoken of, and every where follow
Genius. Grace supports and perfects it, but it is not to be so thoroughly
acquir’d as by any Rules to be demonstrated. A Painter has it from Nature
only, and does not know that he has it, nor in what degree, nor how he
communicates it to his Works.
The viewer who encounters a work that possesses grace will react with surprise
to it according to his own disposition without being able to rationally explain
the reasons for his reaction. Therefore, a work of art that possesses grace pleas-
es and conquers the heart without any previous rational explanation:
Elle [la grâce] surprend le Spectateur qui en sent l’effet sans en pénétrer
la véritable cause: mais cette Grace ne touche son cœur que selon la dis-
position qu’il y rencontre. On peut la définir, ce qui plaît, & ce qui gagne
le cœur sans passer par l’esprit.7
It [grace] surprises the Spectator, who feels the effect without penetrat-
ing into the true Cause of it; but this Grace does not touch him otherwise,
than according to the Disposition wherein he finds it. We may define it
thus, ’Tis what pleases, and gains the Heart, without concerning it self with
the Understanding.
Samuel Holt Monk summarised, in his essay on grace, Roger de Piles’s position
in seven statements: Roger de Piles says that grace is a distinct aesthetic qual-
ity, a gift of nature, that it is be distinguished from those beauties that rules
make possible, that its effect is sudden and surprising, that it defies analysis,
that it appeals rather to the heart than to the head, that it is especially the
6 P
iles, Abrégé 10. For the English translation, see Piles, The Art of Painting 8.

7 P iles, Abrégé 11. For the English translation, see Piles, The Art of Painting 8.

402 Weissert
Figure 11.3 Roger de Piles, Abrégé de la vie des peintres, avec des
reflexions sur leurs ouvrages, et un Traité du peintre
parfait, de la connoissance des desseins, & de l’utilité
des estampes, Paris, Franc̜ois Muguet: 1699, page 10.
Bibliothèque nationale de France, département
Figure 11.4 Roger de Piles, Abrégé de la vie des peintres, avec des
reflexions sur leurs ouvrages, et un Traité du peintre
parfait, de la connoissance des desseins, & de l’utilité
des estampes, Paris, Franc̜ois Muguet: 1699, page
11. Bibliothèque nationale de France, département
404 Weissert
mark of a genius.8 We can expand this list with the further conclusion that the
painter does not know that he possesses grace, and that he also cannot explain
how he imparts grace to his works.9
2 The Secret of Grace
The perfect painting is therefore the one that, as Roger de Piles wrote in his
Cours de peinture par principes [Fig. 11.5], appeals to the viewer by surprising
him because of its beauty and grace: ‘La véritable Peinture est donc celle qui
nous appelle (pour ainsi dire) en nous surprenant’ (the true Painting is there-
fore the one that calls us [so to speak] by surprising us).10 Roger de Piles’s pos-
tulate that a painting can immediately elicit a perceived reaction in the viewer
through its appeal probably goes back to his reading of René Descartes, one of
the few authors that de Piles explicitly mentions in his texts. In La Dioptrique,
Descartes describes, on one hand, the perception and, on the other, the
transformation of an external image into a mental movement rationally and
8 Monk S.H., “A Grace beyond the Reach of Art”, Journal of the History of Ideas 5, 2 (1944)
131–150. For a critique of Monk and the different approaches to deriving the concept of
grace, see Zeuch U., Umkehr der Sinneshierarchie: Herder und die Aufwertung des Tastsinns
seit der frühen Neuzeit (Tübingen: 2000) 228.
9 Important sources on the subject include a few passages in Charles-Alphonse Dufresnoy,
De Arte Graphica: “sit Nobilitas, Charitumque Venustas. (Rarum homini munus, Coelo,
non Arte petendum)”, in L’art de peinture, traduit en françois (Paris, N. L’Anglois: 1668)
22. De Piles translated: “Que l’on Remarque dans tout ce qui vous faites de la Noblesse
& de la Grace: mais, à dire la vray, c’est une chose très-difficile, & un present très-rare
que l’homme reçoit plûtost du Ciel que de ses Etudes”. Ibidem 23–24. De Piles presented
here an earlier attempt to determine grace in the commentary of his translation to this
paragraph: ‘ll est assez difficile de dire ce que c’est que cette Grace de la Peinture: on la
conçoit & on la sent bien mieux qu’on ne la peut expliquer. Elle vient des Lumieres d’une
excellente Nature, qui ne se peuvent acquérir, par lesquelles nous donnons un certain
tour aux choses qui les rendent agreables. […] [P]our cela ne sera pas agreable, si toutes
ces Parties ne sont mises ensemble d’une certaine maniere qui attire les yeux, & qui les
tienne comme immobile. C’est pourquoy il y a difference entre la Beauté & la Grace’ (it is
difficult enough to say what this Grace of Painting is: ’tis to be conceiv’d and understood
much more easily than to be explain’d by words. It proceeds from the illumination of
an excellent Mind, which cannot be acquir’d, by which we give a certain turn to things
which makes them pleasing, […] [I]f all these parts are not put together in a certain man-
ner, which attracts the Eye to them, and holds it fix’t upon them: For which reason there
is a difference to be made between Grace and Beauty). For the English translation, see
Allen C. – Haskell Y. – Muecke F. (eds. – trans.), Charles-Alphonse Du Fresnoy, De Arte
Graphica (Paris, 1668) (Geneva: 2005) 149.
10 Piles, Cours 4.

Figure 11.5 Roger de Piles, Cours de peinture par principes, Paris, J.

Estienne: 1708, title page. Bibliothèque nationale de France,
département Réserve des livres rares (V-23913)
406 Weissert
seemingly consistently.11 The process of perception is basically based on the

assumption that something hits the periphery of the body and excites a certain
place, a sensory organ. This excited spot leaves an impression, which is then
led from the periphery of the body through the nerves to the inside, where it
is processed by the brain.12 According to this theory, the external image cre-
ates an imprint on the retina and leaves an image there. This retinal image is
not transmitted to the brain as a visible image but with the help of the nerves
as a perceptible movement. This movement in the brain is understood as a
movement of the body. It becomes a movement (sentiment) of the soul imme-
diately, thanks to the unity of body and soul.13 This immediacy of effect is also
very important for Roger de Piles, as the assumption of the viewer’s surprise by
the appeal the painting addresses to him clearly shows. The vision is excited
especially by light, colour, position, distance, size, and figure, i.e., initially by
formal aspects of the external object (e.g., the representation on the painting).
In other words, the spectator reacts first to the painted surface when viewing
paintings.14 Comparable to the reaction to the awareness of grace, these re-
sponses can evoke pleasant emotions in the viewer.15
One special quality of grace is that it is found in the artist, the piece of art,
and in the recipient. It thus binds all three of them together and manifests
11 escartes René, “La Dioptrique”, in Descartes René, Discours de la méthode pour bien con-
D

duire sa raison et chercher la vérité dans les sciences. Plus la Dioptrique. Les Meteores. Et
la Geometrie qui sont des essais de cette Methode (Leyden, Ian Maire: 1637). For decon-
struction and breaks within the Descartes chain of representation, see Borgards R., “Die
Wissenschaft vom Auge und die Kunst des Sehens: Von Descartes zu Soemmerring, von
Lessing zu A.W. Schlegel”, in Lange T. – Neumeyer H. (eds.), Kunst und Wissenschaft um
1800 (Würzburg: 2000) 39–61, esp. 40–44.
12 See Métraux A., “Die Mikrophysik der Wahrnehmung und des Gedächtnisses in der fran-
zösischen Aufklärung”, in Florey E. – Breidbach O. (eds.), Das Gehirn – Organ der Seele?
Zur Ideengeschichte der Neurobiologie (Berlin: 1993) 129–150, esp. 130.
13 As Descartes writes in La Dioptrique (51): ‘ce sont les mouvements par lesquels elle [la
représentation] est composée, qui agissans immediatement contre nostre ame, tant
qu’elle est unie à nostre cors, sont institués de la Nature pour lui faire avoir de tels sen-
timens’ (these are the movements by which it [representation] is composed, which act
immediately against our soul, as long as it is united to our body, instituted from Nature to
make it have such feelings).
14 Descartes, La Dioptrique 51. When explaining the tout ensemble, Roger de Piles explicitly

refers to the needs of the eye. See de Piles, Cours 106–108.

15 The claim formulated by Roger de Piles that a painting must have a calling effect (appeler)
is primarily linked to his definition of the painting and is not related to the concept of
grace, as discussed by Bartha-Kovács, for example. Bartha-Kovács K., “Figures de la grâce
chez Watteau et dans les discours sur l’art de l’époque”, in Toutain-Quittelier V. – Rauseo C.
(eds.), Watteau au confluent des arts: Esthétiques de la grâce (Rennes: 2014) 19–30.
itself in the effect that the artwork has on the observer.16 This form of psy-
chic energy between artist, artwork, and observer is also seen in other areas as
well: de Piles sees the possibility of creating such a connection between art-
ist, artwork, and spectator through the depiction of passions and emotions (in
the affects), for instance.17 Passions are – and here again de Piles follows René
Descartes – movements of the soul, which can be enravished to certain feel-
ings when looking at an object, without waiting for the judgement of reason.18
Therefore, the viewer reacts directly to the representation of passions.19 In
order to be able to represent passions pictorially in such a way that they touch
the viewer, the artist must create them within himself and bring them to the
outside through the ‘action’, i.e., through drawing or painting, because ‘il faut
que nous soyons touchés les premiers d’une passion avant que d’essayer d’en
toucher les autres’ (we must first be touched ourselves with a passion, before
we can affect others with it).20 This emotion, which then penetrates the artist,
manifests itself not only in the drawing or painting of a certain emotion (such
as anger or joy) but also in the way they are drawn (‘la manière dont ils [les
objets] sont dessinés’).21
The extraordinarily strong feeling of enthusiasm, and the feeling of the
sublime it creates, also has this potential too: ‘Or comme celui qui considere
un Ouvrage fuit le degré d’élévation qu’il y trouve, le transport d’esprit qui est
dans l’Enthousiasme est commun au Peintre & au Spectateur’ (now as he who
considers a work, is raised to that degree of elevation, which he finds in it, so
the transport of mind, which comes up to enthusiasm, is common both to the
painter, and the spectator).22 By placing himself in the given emotional state,
the artist imparts the energy he has generated onto his work of art.23 However,
16 E.g. Du Fresnoy, De Arte Graphica 24.

17 Kirchner T., “De l’usage des passions: Die Emotion bei Künstler, Kunstwerk und Betrachter”,
in Herding K. – Stumpfhaus B. (eds.), Pathos, Affekt, Gefühl: Die Emotionen in den Künsten
(Berlin – Boston: 2004) 357–377.
18 Piles, Cours 161–176.

19 On this process of transference from the artist to the picture and from the latter to the
observer, see ibidem 166.
20 De Piles argues here with a quotation from Quintilian. Ibidem 174.
21 Ibidem 161.
22 Ibidem 114; for the English translation see Piles Roger de, The Principles of Painting
(London, J. Osborn: 1743) 70–71.
23 Piles, Cours 119–120. In 1674 Nicolas Boileau introduced the concept of the sublime into
literary aesthetics through the French translation of the work On the Sublime written by
Pseudo-Longinus. See e.g. Gilby E., Sublime Worlds: Early Modern French Literature (Leeds:
2006). Roger de Piles’s discussion of enthusiasm and the sublime in Cours played a deci-
sive role in reappraising this concept for the visual arts as well. See Soreil A., Introduction à
l’histoire de l’esthétique française, Académie Royale de Langue et de Littérature Françaises
408 Weissert
the difference between painter and viewer lies in the fact that the artist has to
deliberately put himself and thus his work into a state of enthusiasm, while
the recipient is immediately, unprepared, and even against his will captured
by it.24 The viewer reacts with a mixed passion, composed of admiration and
wonder (étonnement, i.e., surprise, astonishment), which sets in him a violent
movement (‘ravit avec violence’).25 De Piles even provides a list of ways to ac-
tivate the spirit of enthusiasm. In order to elate the mind, he recommends –
quoting the On the Sublime treatise of Pseudo-Longinus – studying the works
of the best masters (painters and poets) of the past.26 Like the effect of grace,
this feeling reaches the hearts of the viewer.27 Still, grace is different. In con-
trast, grace is understood as a quality that is specific to certain people (e.g., the
artist) and the works created by them and is perceived by sensitive recipients,
but it eludes conscious control and definition.28
(ed.). 3 ed. (Brussels: 1966) 84–86; Körner H., Auf der Suche nach der “wahren Einheit”:
Ganzheitsvorstellungen in der französischen Malerei und Kunstliteratur vom mittleren 17.
bis zum mittleren 18. Jahrhundert (München: 1988) 80.
24 ‘[…] avec cette difference neanmoins, que bien que le Peintre ait travaillé à plusieurs
reprises pour échauffer son imagination, & pour monter son Ouvrage au degré que de-
mande d’Enthousiasme, le Spectateur au contraire sans entrer dans aucun détail se laisse
enlever tout à coup, & comme malgré lui, au degré d’Enthousiasme où le Peintre l’a attiré’
(yet, with this difference, that it has cost the painter a course of labour, and repeated ef-
forts, to heat his imagination, and bring his work to the perfection of enthusiasm; whereas
the spectator, without having the trouble to examine particulars, finds himself transport-
ed at once, without his knowledge, and, as it were, without his consent, to that degree of
enthusiasm, which the painter inspires). Piles, Cours 114–115; for the English translation,
see Piles, The Principles 71.
25 Piles, Cours 115.

26 ‘Pour disposer l’esprit à l’Enthousiasme, généralement parlant, rien n’est meilleur que la
vûe des Ouvrages des grands Maîtres, &: la lecture des bons Auteurs Historiens ou Poëtes,
à cause de l’élévation de leurs pensées, de la noblesse de leurs expressions, & du pouvoir
que les exemples ont sur l’esprit des hommes’ (to dispose the mind to enthusiasm, gener-
ally speaking, nothing is better, than to view the works of great masters, and to read good
authors, either historians or poets, because of the elevation of their thoughts, the noble-
ness of their expressions, and the power which examples have over the human mind).
Piles, Cours 119–120. For the English translation see Piles, The Principles 74.
27 Piles, Cours 117. For an introduction to the concepts of enthusiasm and the sublime in the
writings of Roger de Piles, see Puttfarken, Roger de Piles’ Theory of Art 107.
28 Grace has the effect that the entire painting or individual parts of it are pleasant for the
viewer. It is not bound to a particular subject, shape, or form. Like Descartes, Roger de
Piles takes the view that the beautiful and the ugly can be equally pleasing. Even the nasty
and repulsive can have grace. Roger de Piles also knows degrees of grace. On Descartes, see
Passions de l’âme, article 148; see Van Wymeersch B., Descartes et l’Évolution de l’Esthétique
Musicale (Sprimont: 1999) 130–138.
For the observer who feels the effects without being able to assign or name
them exactly, a certain similarity of effect between the perception of grace,
enthusiasm, and the sublime may be assumed.29 From the artist’s point of
view, however, a clear distinction is made here between the states and effects
that can be created (i.e., learned and controlled) by the artist and the effect
of grace, over which the artist has no control. On both sides (production and
reception), the quality of grace remains unexplained and secret.
Grace thus belongs among the arcana mundi, the riddles of the world. Such
riddles deal with the mysterious and point to the epistemic boundaries of our
understanding of the world.30 The secret of grace is that it is inexpressible.
Instead, it can only be experienced, in the sense of being felt. It leads us to the
limits of what is humanly knowable and thus into the realm of mystery. The
French Jesuit René Rapin, poet, teacher of rhetoric, and author of an important
treatise on the French Baroque garden, formulated exactly this point in 1674,
which makes clear that Roger de Piles, with his concept of grace, moved within
a social and cultural network: ‘Il y a encore dans la Poesie, comme dans les au-
tres arts, de certaines choses ineffables, & qu’on ne peut expliquer: ces choses
en sont comme les mysteres. Il n’y a point de preceptes, pour enseigner ces
graces secretes, ces charmes imperceptibles, & tous ces agrémens cachez de
la Poesie qui vont au cœur’ (there are yet in poetry, as in the other arts, certain
ineffable qualities which cannot be explained: those things are like myster-
ies. There is no precept at all to teach those secret graces, those imperceptible
charms, and all those hidden and agreeable qualities of poetry which move
the heart).31
In his comprehensive study on Roger de Piles, Thomas Puttfarken states
that the concept of grace in de Piles’s system is unsound and incongruous.
Instead, Puttfarken claims, de Piles ultimately discarded grace in favour of en-
thusiasm and the sublime.32 And his observations were supported by the fact
that the term “grace,” which de Piles prominently introduces in Abrégé, never
appears in the same form again. But does that mean that Roger de Piles com-
pletely abandoned the concept? Presumably the mystery that surrounded the
term “grace” had no place in his further writings and he thus chose to remain
29 Other artistic principles also cause pleasant feelings in the viewer. Variety, the correct
distribution of the objects on the surface, the skilful chiaroscuro, or the planned composi-
tion of the tout ensemble are to be mentioned here. See Piles, Cours 33, 66, 98.
30 Monk describes it as a “mysterious quality”. Monk, “A Grace” 132.
31 Rapin René, Réflexions sur la poétique d’Aristote et sur les ouvrages des poètes anciens et

modernes (Paris, François Muguet: 1674) 93; the English translation is taken from Monk,
“A Grace” 147.
32 Puttfarken, Roger de Piles’ Theory of Art 107–115, esp. 113.
410 Weissert
silent about it. In order to delve into this theory in a bit more detail, it is worth
addressing first the question of de Piles’s target audience and then the purpose
of his writing.
3 Roger de Piles’s Readers
De Piles himself made a distinction between four different target audiences:

the unknowing (ignorans), the amateurs (amateurs), the knowers (connais-
seurs), and the artists. And he wrote that his primary audience was those ‘qui
sont nés avec de l’inclination pour ce bel Art, & qui l’auront cultivé au moins
dans la conversation des habiles connoisseurs & des savans Peintres’ (who are
born with an inclination to this fine art, and may at least have improved it by
conversing with able judges and learned painters).33 Thus the target audience
for his texts were those who had an awareness for aesthetic experiences as
well as enough theoretical knowledge to be able to have a qualified knowledge
about good and bad art. De Piles writes less for connoisseurs than for ama-
teurs. His criticism of connoisseurs disputes their ability to trust their common
sense when judging art. By concentrating too much on individual criteria, such
as drawing, they are no longer able to perceive and appreciate the work of art
as a whole.34
De Piles also distinguished between meanings of art, which he called ideas:
‘l’idée generale qui convient à tous les hommes’ (the general idea which is com-
mon to all men), and ‘l’idée particuliere qui convient au Peintre seulement’
(a particular idea unique to painters).35 The first idea deals with the direct and
sensory effect of a painting: ‘Cette idée generale frappe & attire tout le monde,
les ignorans, les amateurs de Peinture, les connoisseurs, & les Peintres mêmes’
(The general idea above-mentioned strikes and attracts every one, the igno-
rant, the lovers of painting, judges, and even painters themselves).36 The feel-
ing caused by grace also falls in this area.
33 Piles, Cours 26; for the English translation see Piles, The Principles 15. The clear naming of

his readership also shows his embeddedness in the discourse of social distinction, which
in the analysis of the writings and the terms used therein, such as grace, should in future
be given even more attention than before. See also Scholar, The Je-Ne-Sais-Quoi 199.
34 Piles Roger de, Conversations sur la connoissance de la peinture, et sur le jugement qu’on
doit faire des tableaux: Où par occasion il est parlé de la vie de Rubens, & de quelques-uns de
ses plus beaux ouvrages (Paris, Nicolas Langlois: 1677) 93–95.
35 Piles, Cours 2; for the English translation, see Piles, The Principles 1–2.
36 Piles, Cours 3–4; for the English translation, see Piles, The Principles 2.
The particular idea of painting, however, involves the theory of art in a nar-
rower sense. The goal of such a theory is the rational and balanced judgement
of an artwork’s beauty and whether it is good or bad. In order to make such
a judgement, the observer needs to have some knowledge of the rules of art.
Even the amateur who wants to judge the quality of a painting must have some
knowledge of art through lessons. He must penetrate the spirit (esprit) of art
and refine it in order to understand invention, the general expression of the
subject, its passions, allegories, decorum, and poetics. It is only his knowledge
of or insights into the principles of art that enable him to explain the causes
of the effects that create wonder. Such causes might be the correction or the
elegance of drawing, the arrangement of objects, or the relationship of color
and shadow and light.37 It is in this sense that Roger de Piles described the
entrance of an amateur into the world of art like someone setting foot in a
sanctuary.38 The explanations given under the heading ‘idée particulaire’ help
the taste (goût) – i.e., the individual reaction of the observer to a work of art,
in this case to the painting – to make a critical decision through control by
objective rules.39
4 The Palace of Art and the Painting Machine
De Piles was constantly looking for illustrative pictures in order to better ex-
plain the interplay between different aspects of painting and to make the re-
lationships between these elements more understandable for his audience.40
37 Piles, Abrégé 94. Before that, ibidem 93–94.

38 Ibidem 94–95: ‘Ce n’est pas que les Amateurs de ce bel Art, qui auroient assez de Génie &
d’inclination ne pûssent entrer, pour ainsi dire, dans le Sanctuaire, & acquérir la connois-
sance de tous ces détails, par les lumières que des réflexions sérieuses leur procureroient
insensiblement’ (the Lovers of this beautiful Art only, who have Genius and Inclination,
are permitted, if we may so say, to enter into the Sanctuary, and acquire the knowledge
of this whole detail by the lights which they insensibly gain by serious reflection). For the
English translation, see Piles, The Art 68.
39 On the interaction of taste and criticism, see e.g. Baeumler A., Das Irrationalitätsproblem
in der Ästhetik und Logik des 18. Jahrhunderts bis zur Kritik der Urteilskraft (Darmstadt:
1975).
40 Another relevant image is that of a flower garden: ‘L’on peut considerer la Peinture
comme un beau parterre; le Genie comme le fond, les Principes comme les semences, &
le bon esprit comme le Jardinier qui prepare la terre pour y jetter les semences dans leurs
saisons, & pour en faire naître toutes sortes de fleurs qui ne regardent pas moins l’utilité
que l’agrément’ (painting may be considered as a fine parterre, genius as the ground for
soil, principles as the seeds, and good understanding as the gardener who prepares the
earth for receiving the seeds in their seasons, and raises all sorts of flowers both for profit
412 Weissert
In one example, he compares paintings to a palace or a fortress, a safe haven

for painters and lovers of art. Invention, disposition, design, and colouring are
the architects, master builders, and interior decorators of the palace.
Je vais tâcher d’en établir qui puissent servir de pierres solides, pour bâtir
un rempart & élever un Palais à la Peinture, où les grands Peintres, les
veritables curieux, les amateurs de la Peinture, & les gens de bon goût
puissent se retirer en sûreté. L’Invention donnera la pensée de l’édifice,
elle en choisira la situation pittoresque, bizarre à la vérité, & quelquefois
sauvage; mais agréable au dernier point. Elle ordonnera les materiaux,
qui doivent entrer dans la structure de ce Palais. Et la Disposition distri-
buera les appartemens pour les rendre susceptibles de toutes les solides
beautés, & de tous les agrémens qu’on voudra leur donner.
Après l’Invention & la Disposition, le Dessein & le Coloris suivis de
toutes les parties qui en dépendent, se presentent pour l’execution
de ce bâtiment. Le Coloris prendra le soin de visiter toutes choses, &
de leur distribuer une partie de ses dons, chacune selon ses besoins & ses
convenances. Il ordonnera conjointement avec le Dessein du choix des
meubles qui doivent orner l’édifice. Le Dessein aura seul par préference
l’intendance de l’Architecture, & le Coloris de choix des Tableaux. Mais
tous deux travailleront de concert, & mettre la derniere main à l’ouvrage,
& à n’y laisser rien à desirer.41
Such principles I will endeavour to establish, as may serve to build a ram-

part and palace for painting, where great painters, true criticks, lovers of
painting, and all persons of good taste, may safely retire. Invention will
furnish the thought of the structure, and chuse its painter-like situation,
which, though fanciful, and sometimes even wild, will, nevertheless, be
extremely agreeable. Invention will also prepare the materials, and dis-
position compart the rooms, for receiving all the solid beauties and orna-
ments we would place in them.
After invention and disposition, design and colouring, and their de-
pendencies, are ready to perform their parts in executing the building.
Colouring will visit every thing, and everywhere distribute its gifts, ac-
cording to the exigence and propriety of the place; and, jointly with
and delight). Piles, Cours 387–388. For the English translation, see Piles, The Principles
234. Shortly after that comes the metaphor of a traveller through the land of painting who
eventually finds a place to settle down and build a house. Piles, Cours 390.

design, will chuse the furniture of the palace. Design also will, by way of
pre-eminence, have alone the charge of overseeing the architecture, as
colouring will have that of chusing the pictures; and both will co-operate
to put the finishing hand to the structure.42
Here, everything has its place, and where things go can be consciously and
purposely influenced by an artist with knowledge and training.43 Within the
palace there is also space for the qualities that have been seen by research-
ers as the most innovative: the effect of the whole together (‘l’effet du tout-
ensemble’), the enthusiasm and the sublime, which are discussed in the sixth
part of the chapter on disposition.44 Like the question of the passions and the
emotions (discussed under the heading of drawing), they belong to the ele-
ments of art that can be explained and learned by a gifted artist.45
Similar to René Descartes, de Piles compares the painting itself to a
machine – how individual parts are interlinked with one another in order to
create a functional whole:
J’ai tâché de la faire concevoir comme une machine dont les roues
se prêtent un mutuel secours, comme un corps dont les membres dé-
pendent l’un de l’autre, & enfin comme une oeconomie harmonieuse qui
42 Piles, The Principles 13–14.

43 De Piles believes that even the greatest genius must be trained by rules, reflection, and
practice: ‘Il faut donc du Génie, mais un Génie exercé par les règles, par les réfléxions, &
par l’assiduité du travail. Il faut avoir beaucoup vû, beaucoup lû & beaucoup étudié pour
diriger ce Génie, & pour le rendre capable de produire des choses dignes de la postérité’
(a Painter, in the first place, should have Genius, but that Genius must be corrected by
rules, reflection and industry. He must have seen much, read much, and study’d much, to
direct his Genius, that it may produce things worthy of posterity). Piles, Abrégé 14. For the
English translation, see Piles, The Art of Painting 10.

45 As part of the discussion of passions and emotions, Roger de Piles criticizes Charles
Le Brun’s account of passions. On Le Brun and the discussion of the representation of
passions in the French Academy, see Montague J., The ‘Expression of the Passions’: The
Origin and Influence of Charles Le Brun’s ‘Conférence sur l’expression générale et par-
ticulière’ (New Haven – London: 1994); Kirchner T.: L’expression des passions: Ausdruck
als Darstellungsproblem in der französischen Kunst und Kunsttheorie des 17. und 18.
Jahrhunderts (Mainz: 1991); Weissert C., “Charles Le Bruns Expression des passions und die
Têtes d’expression im Kontext physiologischer Betrachtungen”, in Pawlak A. – Zieke L. –
Augart I. (eds.), Ars – Visus – Affectus: Visuelle Kulturen des Affektiven in der Frühen Neuzeit
(Berlin – Boston: 2016) 251–272.
414 Weissert
arrête le Spectateur, qui l’entretien, & qui le convie à jouir des beautés
particulieres qui se trouve dans le Tableau.46
This is the idea I have conceived of what is called, in painting, the whole
together: And I have endeavoured to make it understood as a machine,
whose wheels give each other mutual assistance; as a body, whose mem-
bers have a mutual dependence; and, in short, as an harmonious oecon-
omy, which stops and entertains the spectator, and invites him to please
himself with contemplating the particular beauties of the picture.
The origin of the machine metaphor is probably to be found in Du Fresnoy’s

De Arte Graphica and de Piles’s commentary on this passage: ‘Enfin j’entre en
matiere, & je trouve d’abord une toile nüe: oû il faut disposer toute la Machine
(pour ainsi dire) de vostre Tableau’ (finally I get into the matter, & first I find a
nude canvas: where you have to place the whole Machine (so to speak) of your
Painting).47 These comparisons help order an artist’s skills and assign each part
to a specific place in the picture, while they help the amateur find and remem-
ber the individual parts of a painting, as in a memory palace.48 They help the
artist and the observer to render account of the achieved beauty of a painting.
But both models don’t include grace, because grace is understood as a natural
gift that cannot be learned or intentionally created.
46 Piles, Cours 113. For the English translation, see Piles, The Principles 69–70. The compari-

son appears later in more detail in connection with the tout-ensemble. Piles, Cours 375.
Problems arise when the individual parts do not work together smoothly: ‘Mais comme
dans une machine la mauvaise disposition des roues en retarde le mouvement, de même
aussi les parties de la Peinture mal arrangées par rapport à l’étude qu’on en doit faire,
jettent de la confusion dans l’esprit & dans la mémoire, & deviennent par ce moyen dif-
ficiles à concevoir & à retenir’ (but, as in a machine, the bad disposition of the wheels
retards the motion, for the parts of paintings, disorderly studied, confuse the understand-
ing and memory, and make things difficult either to be understood or remembered). Piles,
Cours 419. For the English translation, see Piles, The Principles 251–252.
47 Fresnoy, De Arte Graphica 11. The Piles commentary is as follows: ‘Ce n’est pas sans rai-
son n’y par hasard que nostre Autheur se sert du mot de Machine. Une Machine est un
juste assemblage de plusieurs pièces pour produire un mesme effet. Et la disposition dans
un Tableau n’est autre chose qu’un assemblage de plusieurs Parties, dont on doit prévoir
l’accord et la justesse, pour produire un bel effet’ (it is not without reason or by chance
that our Author uses the word Machine. A Machine is a right assembly of several parts
to produce the same effect. And the arrangement in a Painting is nothing more than an
assembly of several Parts, whose agreement and accuracy must be foreseen, to produce a
beautiful effect). Ibidem, 77. For further development of the metaphor by Denis Diderot,
see Körner, Auf der Suche 118–121.
48 To this topic in general see Yates F., The Art of Memory (Chicago: 1966).
5 Inside and Outside Rational Evaluation
Roger de Piles also introduces two processes of judgement that were very mod-
ern for his time. On one hand, he illustrates a qualitative-relational comparison
by juxtaposing styles and schools, while on the other, he makes a qualitative-
competitive comparison: he generates a ranking of the best painters based on
the criteria he has introduced – a list of winners and losers. The point of such
valorisation is not just to define and understand rules but also to scale them
as well. He thus does not evaluate pictures but rather individual artists.49 This
is simply consistent, because Roger de Piles follows the Renaissance view that
every painter paints himself (ogni pittore dipinge sé): ‘On ne peut donner que
ce que l’on a; & c’est par le caractere de ce Genie qu’on reconnoist le Peintre, &
qu’il fait son Portrait dans tous ses Ouvrages’ (we can only give what we have;
& it is by the character of this Genius that we recognise the Painter, & that he
makes his Portrait in all his Works).50 The idea to valorise and scale paintings
is the origin of Roger de Piles’s often criticized table of the Balance of Painters
(Balance des Peintres) [Fig. 11.6].51 The categories that he evaluates the artists
on (with a maximum of twenty points per category) are: composition (e.g.,
‘l’invention et de la Disposition’), design (‘goût & la correction’), colouring, and
expression (‘la pensée du cœur humaine’).52 He compares fifty-seven painters
from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in alphabetical order – suggesting
49 The most important is the judgement of what is good and what is bad: the “veritable con-
noissance” (real knowledge) of paintings consists in ‘a scavoir si un Tableau est bon, ou
mauvaise’ (to know whether a Table is good, or bad). See also Piles, Conversations 7. In the
Abrégé it says: ‘Il y a trois sortes de Connoissances sur le fait des Tableaux. La première
consiste à découvrir ce qui est bon & de mauvais dans un même Tableau. La seconde
regarde le nom de l’Auteur. Et la troisième, va à savoir, s’il est Original ou Copie’ (there
are three sorts of Knowledge relating to Pictures. The first consists in discovering what
is good, and what is bad in the same Picture. The second has respect to the name of the
Author. And the third is to know whether ’tis an Original or a Copy). Piles, Abrégé 93. For
the English translation, see Piles, The Art of Painting 66.
50 Piles, Conversations 74. For this view, which has been common since the fifteenth century,

see Kemp M., “Ogni dipintore dipinge sé: A Neoplatonic Echo in Leonardo’s Art Theory?”
in Clough C.H. (ed.), Cultural Aspects of the Italian Renaissance: Essays in Honour of Paul
Oskar Kristeller (New York: 1976) 311–323; Zöllner F. “Ogni Pittore Dipinge Sé: Leonardo Da
Vinci und Automimesis”, in Winner M. (ed.), Der Künstler über sich selbst in seinem Werk
(Weinheim: 1992) 137–160.
51 Teyssèdre B., L’Histoire de l’art vue du Grand Siècle: Recherches sur l’Abrégé de la Vie des
Peintres, par Roger de Piles (1699), et ses sources (Paris: 1964); Rosenberg J., On Quality in
Art: Criteria of Excellence, Past and Present, Bollingen Series XXXV, 13 (Princeton: 1967).
For an economic perspective, see Studdert-Kennedy W.G. – Davenport M., “The Balance
of Roger de Piles: A Statistical Analysis”, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 32, 4 (1974)
493–502.

416 Weissert
Figure 11.6 Roger de Piles, Cours de peinture par principes, Paris,

J. Estienne: 1708, Balance des Peintres. Bibliothèque
nationale de France, département Réserve des livres rares
(V-23913)
© Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France
a measure of neutrality. Although twenty points are possible, the highest

point total he gives for any individual category is eighteen: only Guercino and
Rubens earn eighteen points in composition, while Raphael leads the draw-
ing category with eighteen points. Giorgione and Titian lead the category of
colouring, and Raphael again wins the category of expression. Across all cat-
egories taken together, Raphael and Rubens are tied for the lead with sixty-
five points.
Grace doesn’t appear in the Balance of Painters table. As mentioned ear-
lier, grace does not belong to the particular idea of painting but rather to the
more general idea of the effect that a painting has on the observer, and this
effect largely eludes rational evaluation. Grace belongs in the same semantic
field as concepts such as je ne sais quoi, sentiment, esprit, goût, or génie, terms
that were still new around 1670 and which finally gathered around the concept
of délicatesse.53 What they have in common is that they wanted to remain
unexplained. At the time, all these terms were considered unfathomable and
were associated with the irrational and emotional.54
The concept of grace has a long tradition, however, and connects Roger
de Piles’s concept of art with older sources. The history of the term has often
been traced, so a short sketch may be sufficient here.55 The origin of this con-
cept of grace can be traced to Plinius’s account of Apelles. Although the very
greatest painters were living at that time, the grace of Apelles’s art remained
quite unrivalled. Plinius admires the works of the other painters, praising every
beauty and yet observing that they failed in the grace (venustas) called χάρις
in Greek, which was distinctively Apelles’s own.56 When Quintilian referred
to Pliny’s account of Apelles, he used the word gratia: thus the word-cluster
χάρις, venustas, gratia was established in ancient criticism.57 The Neopla
tonic aesthetic, courtesy books of manners like Baldassare Castiglione’s Libro
53 On the concept of délicatesse and its meaning for Roger de Piles, see Puttfarken, Roger de
Piles’ Theory of Art 109.
54 Monk, “A Grace” 131–150. For irrationalism in the eighteenth century, see Baeumler, Das
Irrationalitätsproblem.
55 For the notion of grace, see Bayer R., L’Esthétique de la Grâce, 2 vols. (Paris: 1933); Monk, “A
Grace”; Tonelli G. – Abeler H., “Grazia, Anmut”, in Ritter J. (ed.), Historisches Wörterbuch
der Philosophie, vol. 2 (Basel: 1974) 866–871; Emison P., “Grazia”, Renaissance Studies 5
(1981) 427–454; Kleiner G. “Anmut/Grazie”, in Barck K. (ed.), Ästhetische Grundbegriffe:
Historisches Wörterbuch in sieben Bänden, vol. 1 (Stuttgart – Weimar 2000) 193–208;
Krüger K., Grazia: Religiöse Erfahrung und ästhetische Evidenz (Göttingen: 2016) (for the
meaning of the notion during the Italian renaissance).
56 Pliny the Elder, The Elder Pliny’s Chapters on the History of Art, ed. E. Sellers – trans.
K. Jex-Blake (London: 1896) 121.
57 “ingenio et gratia, quam in se ipse maxime iactat, Apelles est praestantissimus”. Quintilian,
Institutio XII, 10, 6, cited by Monk, “A Grace” 133, note 4.
418 Weissert
del Cortegiano (1508–16) and art theoretical treatises like Lodovico Dolce’s
L’Aretino (1557), developed the idea (which would become a commonplace in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) that the ancient painter Apelles
and, in modern times, Raphael were the masters of ease and grace, a qual-
ity that Lodovico Dolce identified with the non so che (later the French je ne
sais quoi).58 Grazia is a quality that can be observed in people and things,
because it is nature-given and can manifest itself in every person and every
human activity as well as in nature. In regard to fine arts, these ideas were
given a more thorough analysis by Vasari, who developed the theory of grace
in his book Le Vite de’ piu eccellenti Architetti, Pittori, et Scultori Italiani, first
published in 1550 and much expanded in the second edition of 1568.59 Grazia
and bellezza are often used as analogous terms, whereas Vasari, like Benedetto
Varchi, distinguishes between physical beauty (bellezza corporale) and the
beauty of the soul (bellezza spirituale).60 Vasari connects grazia above all with
the third period of art, which presupposed the perfect mastery of the rules of
art (including rules/regola, order/ordine, proportion/misura, drawing/disegno,
and style/maniera).61 In this epoch, art is characterized by lightness, virtuosity,
and freedom from rules (licenzia), qualities that Vasari associates with the con-
cept of grazia. To reach the highest level, disegno and connoisseurship must
be unified, allowing the artist to refine his creations artistically.62 The per-
fection of art and the highest grace lie in the refinement of the surface treat-
ment, i.e., in the artistic realisation.63 The greatest bloom of art is introduced
58 Dolce L., L’Aretino: Dialogo della Pittura (Lanciano: 1913) 7. On the je-ne-sais-quoi:

Jankélévitch V., Le Je-ne-sais-quoi et le Presque-rien, 2nd ed., 3 vols. (Paris: 1980); Scholar R.,
The Je-Ne-Sais-Quoi in Early Modern Europe: Encounters with a Certain Something (New
York: 2005).
59 Blunt A., Artistic Theory in Italy, 1450–1600 (Oxford: 1940) 86–98; Monk, “A Grace” 141;
Krüger, Grazia.
60 See Lorini V. – Burioni M. – Feser S. (eds. – trans.), Giorgio Vasari: Kunsttheorie und
Kunstgeschichte. Eine Einführung in die Lebensbeschreibungen berühmter Künstler anhand
der Proemien (Berlin: 2004) 187.
61 On the meaning of grazia during the first and second epochs, see Krüger, Grazia 37–47.
62 So Vasari says with regard to the representation of women and children: ‘una leggiadria di
fare svelte e graziose tutte le figure, e massimamente le femmine ed i putti con le membra
naturali come agli uomini, ma ricoperte di quelle grassezze e carnosità, che non siano
grosse come le naturali, ma artificiate del disegno e dal giudizio’ (lightness in touch in
making all their figures slender and graceful, especially those of women and children,
whose bodies should be as natural as those of men but yet possess a volume and soft-
ness which are produced by design and good judgement rather than by the awkward ex-
ample of real bodies). Vasari Giorgio, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori,
ed. G. Milanesi, 9 vols. (Florence: 1906), vol. 4, 9. For the English translation, see Vasari
Giorgio, The Lives of the Artists, trans. J.C. and Peter Bondanella (Oxford: 1991) 278.
63 ‘Che s’eglino avessino avuto quelle minuzie dei fini, che sono la perfezione ed il fiore
dell’arte, arebbono avuto ancora una gagliardezza risoluta nelle opere loro; e ne sarebbe
by Leonardo da Vinci, who ‘besides his bold and powerful design and his ex-
tremely subtle imitation of all the details of Nature, exactly as they are, his
work displayed a good understanding of rule, better order, correct proportion,
perfect design, and divine grace. Abounding in resources and most knowledge-
able in the arts, Leonardo truly made his figures move and breathe’.64 In the
sense of enhancement and perfection, Michelangelo also possesses this qual-
ity. He triumphs over all artists and over nature thanks to ‘the power of his
most divine genius, through his diligence, sense of design, artistry, judgement,
and grace’.65 For Vasari, Michelangelo’s works manifest ‘a grace that could not
be more graceful, and a more than perfect perfection’.66 For Vasari, “grace” is
one of the terms that can be used to praise the highest quality of a work or an
artistic part (e.g., colour). Grazia refers thus to an aesthetic experience, in the
sense of an originary, inherent quality of the work. It names a characteristic
trait or personality-specific characteristic of the artists creating these works.
Finally, Vasari links grazia to the category of perfection.67
Roger de Piles’s concept of grace clearly follows here. More consistently
than Vasari, he separates beauty from grace and makes its combination a pre-
requisite for perfection. If Vasari sees perfection achieved in Michelangelo’s
work, then for Roger de Piles perfection cannot be objectively and bindingly
assigned to any artist. No artist – not even Rubens – achieved a perfect score in
the Balance of Painters. This is only logical because, in Roger de Piles’s view, the
presence of grace is, on one hand, a precondition for achieving perfection, but,
on the other hand, its presence eludes rational comprehension and can only
be recognized in the individual reaction (by a sensitive beholder).
conseguito la leggiadria ed una pulitezza e somma grazia’ (if these artisans had mastered
the details of refinement which constitute the perfection and the flower of art, they would
have created a robust boldness in their works and would have achieved the delicacy,
polish, and extreme grace). Vasari, Le vite 10. For the English translation, see Vasari, The
Lives 279.
64 Vasari, The Lives 280. ‘oltra la gagliardezza e bravezza del disegno, ed oltra il contraffare

sottilissimamente tutte le minuzie della natura, così a punto come elle sono, con buona
regola, miglior ordine, retta misura, disegno perfetto, e grazia divina, abbondantissimo di
copie, e profondissimo di arte, dette veramente alle sue figure il moto ed il fiato.’ Vasari,
Le Vite 11.
65 Vasari, The Lives 282. ‘con la virtù del divinissimo ingegno suo, mediante l’industria, il
disegno, l’arte, il giudizio e la grazia, di gran lunga non la trapassi.’ Vasari, Le Vite 13.
66 ‘una grazia più interamente graziosa, ed una molto assoluta perfezione’ (a grace more
entirely graceful, and a very absolute perfection). Vasari, Le Vite 14.
67 As with Roger de Piles later, grazia shows different aspects and facets of the writings of
Vasari. On Vasari, see Krüger, Grazia 41–42.
420 Weissert
Figure 11.7
Jonathan Richardson, Two
Discourses. I. An Essay on
the whole Art of Criticism
as it relates to Painting.
Shewing how to judge I. Of the
Goodness of a Picture; II. Of
the Hand of the Master; and
III. Whether ’tis an Original,
or a Copy. II. An Argument
in behalf of the Science of a
Connoisseur; Wherein is shewn
the Dignity, Certainty, Pleasure,
and Advantage of it, both
by Mr. Richardson, London,
W. Churchill: 1719
© J. Paul Getty Trust
The eighteenth century classified grace as belonging to the class of ideas that
create an aesthetic feeling and experience.68 Yet for Jonathan Richardson,
grace became a measurable category, just like all the other art theoretical terms
[Fig. 11.7]. In the seventeenth century, however, the concept of grace belonged
just as much to the field of aesthetics as it did to the area of religious experi-
ence. Although, as Klaus Krüger has shown, religious experience was closely
68 The different levels in the concept of grace in the eighteenth century are presented in
excellent detail in the volume Toutain-Quittelier V. – Chris Rauseo C. (eds.), Watteau au
confluent des arts: Esthétiques de la grâce (Rennes: 2014).
linked to aesthetic evidence and became tangible in the concept of grazia in

the sixteenth century,69 the connection between the notion of quality of artis-
tic grace and the concept of divine grace was problematic in France in the sev-
enteenth century. Grace was a critical concept in the mid-seventeenth-century
debate in France between the Jesuits and the Jansenites about the meaning
and scope of divine mercy in the works of Augustine. “Grace” is a key term
in the work of Cornelius Jansen. The Dutch theologian reflected and system-
atized the doctrine of divine grace in his work Augustinus.70 Roger de Piles, a
student at the Jesuit Collège de Clermont, was surely well aware of such de-
bates. In the Abrégé, he plays Gregory of Nyssa against Augustine, who, unlike
the latter, recognized that painting was capable of raising the hearts of the
faithful to the love of God.71
But does Roger de Piles name artists to whom he attributes grace? Following
traditional appraisals, he characterized Apelles, Raphael, Guido Reni, and
Correggio as artists that were endowed with grace.72 According to de Piles,
only these few artists possessed the ‘grace particulière’. The distinction be-
tween the ‘grace particulière’, which is capable of reaching the hearts of ob-
servers and represents the highest level of grace (e.g., Raphael and Correggio);
the ‘grace generale’, which certainly pleases all observers – even the uneducat-
ed and those little receptive to art – and is thus merely a superficial form (e.g.,
Parmigianino); and the idea of painters that are only able to impart grace on
certain aspects of their art points to yet another area where a ranking of artists
could be done, although in this case it would also have little to do with learned
talents and more to do with having receptive audiences.
Even more interesting is what he writes about Rubens, because Rubens rep-
resented the epitome of genius for him but did not belong to the canon of art-
ists that were famous for their grace. With regard to Rubens, de Piles does not
69 See Krüger, Grazia.

70 Jansenius Cornelius, Augustinus, sive doctrina Sti. Augustini de humanae naturae sani-
tate, aegritudine, medicina adversus pelagianos et massilienses, 3 vols. (Lovanii, Zeger:
1640). For the situation in France in respect to art and on the conflict between Jesuits
and Jansenists about grace, see e.g. Moriarty M., Early Modern French Thought: The Age of
Suspicion (Oxford: 2003) 23–31; Duchêne R., L’ imposture littéraire dans les Provinciales de
Pascal (Aix-en-Provence: 1985); Parish R., Pascal’s Lettres provinciales: A Study in Polemic
(Oxford: 1989).
71 Piles, Abrégé 32–34. The different opinions towards art were also the subject of dis-

cussion at the French Academy of the Arts. See Kirchner T., “Religion als Thema der
Historienmalerei”, in Laufhütte H. (ed.), Künste und Natur in Diskursen der Frühen Neuzeit,
Wolfenbütteler Arbeiten zur Barockforschung 35 (Wiesbaden: 2000) 535–548.
72 Apelles was said to have grace by Plinius, Raphael by Dolce and Vasari, Guido Reni and
Correggio by Bellori and Malvasia.
422 Weissert
explicitly speak of grace. But Rubens is so excellent in everything that he has

opened the way to perfection, and, if one takes de Piles’s definition seriously,
grace is part of it. For Rubens the connection to the same semantic field goes
through a different route – his phenomenal genius was given to him by nature
alone, and thus his habit (habitude) of drawing was given to him by the pure
grace of nature:73 ‘C’est l’esprit tout seul qui a travaillé à ses tableaux; & l’on
peut dire qu’à l’imitation de Dieu il a soufflé ce mesme esprit dans ses Ouvrages
plustost qu’il ne les a peints’ (it is the spirit alone that has worked on his paint-
ings; & it can be said that in imitation of God he has blown this same spirit
into his Works more than he has painted them).74 And a bit later: ‘on diroit que
l’habitude qu’il avoit de dessiner, luy avoit esté plustost donnée de la Nature en
pure grace, qu’il ne l’avoit receuë de la regle & du compas’ (it is said that, of the
habit he had of drawing, he had been given more of Nature in pure grace, than
he had received it from the rule & compass).75 Here we see both the intrinsic
lightness of grace as well as its connection to the divine sphere.
In principle, this was not new, since Vasari already postulated that the sym-
biosis of a devout way of life and artistic grace led to a fusion of religious and
aesthetic grace.76 But a special prerequisite of the French discussion was the
fact that the old component of (divine) grace in the term grâce encountered
the contemporary discussion of the actual doctrine of grace as it was expressed
in Jansenism. The French Jesuit and philologist Dominique Bouhours took up
this analogy again in 1671: his discussion of je-ne-sais-quoi ends with the inter-
esting suggestion that there is a relationship between grace in art and nature
and grace in theology, itself an inexplicable mystery that triumphs over the
heart and which may be described as the je-ne-sais-quoi of the supernatural
and the divine.77
‘Ainsi donc’, interrompit Eugene, ‘le je ne sçay quoi est de la grace aussi
bien que de la nature et de l’art’. – [‘Puis’], repartit Ariste, ‘la grace elle-
mesme, cette divine grace, qui a fait tant de bruit dans les écoles, et qui
fait des effets si admirable dans les ames; cette grace si forte et si douce
tout ensemble, qui triomphe de la dureté du cœur, sans blesser la liberté
du franc arbitre; qui s’assujétit la nature en s’y accommodant; qui se rend
maistresse de la volonté, en la laissant maistresse d’elle-mesme; cette

74 Piles, Conversation 227.

75 Piles, Conversation 255–256.

76 Krüger, Grazia 39.
77 On the je-ne-sais-quoi, see Jankélévitch, Le Je-ne-sais-quoi et le Presque-rien; Scholar, The
Je-Ne-Sais-Quoi.
grace, dis-je, qu’est-ce autre chose qu’un je ne sçay quoy surnaturel, qu’on
ne peut ni expliquer, ni comprendre?’78
‘So then,’ Eugène interrupted, ‘the je-ne-sais-quoi belongs to the realm of

grace as well as to art and nature.’ ‘Is it not the case, then,’ Ariste replied,
‘that grace itself, that divine grace which has caused such a fuss in the
schools and which has such admirable effects in the human soul, that
grace, so strong and yet so sweet, which overcomes the heart’s hardness
without damaging free will, which subjugates nature by conforming to it,
and which commands the will by leaving it to command itself – what is
this grace, I ask you, other than a supernatural je-ne-sais-quoi that can be
neither explained nor understood?’79
Roger de Piles also wrote about the mysterious effects of grace on the heart
of the observer. As Bouhours recommends in the fourth edition of his book
(1673), he remains silent about the phenomenon, the mystery of grace.80 Thus,
in Roger de Piles’s writings, grace experiences a different justification and thus
a different status than all other aesthetic concepts, such as the sublime. But
why does de Piles need this concept? Is grace something that is objective, or is
it radically subjective? Does it protect the work of art from being completely
demystified, even though de Piles is concerned with rational and predictable
evaluations of artists by amateurs? For viewers of images, grace is a first-person
experience and is dependent of each individual work. The experience of grace
raises doubts and uncertainty about its nature and about how it is to be put in
words.81 It thus leads us to the boundaries of our understanding and knowl-
edge and allows us to experience such boundaries themselves. Accordingly,
then, the painting as a whole represents this dilemma. Roger de Piles intro-
duces the concept of grace – following older sources – within his remarks on
the perfect painter but never said anything else about it. Although he never
followed the idea of grace – or of je-ne-sais-quoi – further, his discussion of
the concept in his programmatic text L’idée du peintre parfait outlines the field
in which it moves, thus producing a ‘secret effect’. As seen, de Piles does not
follow a rational explanation when it comes to the aesthetic quality of grace.
Grace embodies, as has been shown, something mysterious and beyond ratio-
78 Quoted in Scholar, The Je-Ne-Sais-Quoi 61.

79 Ibidem.
80 Bouhour’s text was a scandal and led to fierce countertexts. The main problem was that
of illegitimately applying a profane word – the je-ne-sais-quoi – to a divine topic, and
through crossing the border between the profane and the sacred. For this and for the revi-
sion of the text passage by Bouhour, see ibidem 65–68.
81 Ibidem 70.
424 Weissert
nal explanation. From this point of view, Roger de Piles has a double justifica-
tion for aesthetic experience, which follows the ideas of Descartes’s model of
representation, on one hand, and is traced back to the absolute category of
the divine on the other. In all his efforts to explain the painting machine in a
rational and mechanistic way, the concept of grace merely outlined in Roger de
Piles’s writings reveals a freedom that places his conception of art in a longue
durée with the past as well as with the thoughts of emerging Romanticism.
Bibliography
Allen C. – Haskell Y. – Muecke F. (eds. – trans.), Charles-Alphonse Du Fresnoy, De Arte

Graphica (Paris, 1668) (Geneva: 2005).
Baeumler A., Das Irrationalitätsproblem in der Ästhetik und Logik des 18. Jahrhunderts
bis zur Kritik der Urteilskraft (Darmstadt: 1975).
Bartha-Kovács K., “Figures de la grâce chez Watteau et dans les discours sur l’art de
l’époque”, in Toutain-Quittelier V. – Chris Rauseo C. (eds.), Watteau au confluent
des arts: Esthétiques de la grâce (Rennes: 2014) 19–30.
Bayer R., L’Esthétique de la Grâce, 2 vols. (Paris: 1933).
Blunt A., Artistic Theory in Italy, 1450–1600 (Oxford: 1940).
Borgards R., “Die Wissenschaft vom Auge und die Kunst des Sehens: Von Descartes
zu Soemmerring, von Lessing zu A.W. Schlegel”, in Lange T. – Neumeyer H. (eds.),
Kunst und Wissenschaft um 1800 (Würzburg: 2000) 39–61.
Descartes René, “La Dioptrique”, in Discours de la méthode pour bien conduire sa raison
et chercher la vérité dans les sciences. Plus la Dioptrique. Les Meteores. Et la Geometrie
qui sont des essais de cette Methode (Leyden, Ian Maire: 1637).
Descartes René, “Abrégé de la Musique”, in Cousin V. (ed.), Œuvres de Descartes, 11 vols.
(Paris: F.G. Levrault: 1824), vol. 5, 444–503.
Dolce L., L’Aretino: Dialogo della Pittura (Lanciano: 1913).
Duchêne R., L’ imposture littéraire dans les Provinciales de Pascal (Aix-en-Provence:
1985).
Emison P., “Grazia”, Renaissance Studies 5 (1981) 427–454.
Favier T. – Couvreur M. (eds.), Le plaisir musical en France au XVIIe siècle (Sprimont:
2006).
Folesani G.P., “A proposito di Roger de Piles”, in Roger de Piles: Dialogo sul colorito
(Florence: 2016) 1–135.
Fresnoy Charles-Alphonse du, L’art de peinture, traduit en françois, trans. Roger de
Piles (Paris, N. L’Anglois: 1668).
Gilby E., Sublime Worlds: Early Modern French Literature (Leeds: 2006).
Jankélévitch V., Le Je-ne-sais-quoi et le Presque-rien, 2nd ed., 3 vols. (Paris: 1980).

Jansenius Cornelius, Augustinus, sive doctrina Sti. Augustini de humanae naturae
sanitate, aegritudine, medicina adversus pelagianos et massilienses, 3 vols. (Lovanii,
Zeger: 1640).
Kemp M., “Ogni dipintore dipinge sé: A Neoplatonic Echo in Leonardo’s Art Theory?”
in Clough C.H. (ed.), Cultural Aspects of the Italian Renaissance: Essays in Honour
of Paul Oskar Kristeller (New York: 1976) 311–323.
Kirchner T., L’expression des passions: Ausdruck als Darstellungsproblem in der franzö-
sischen Kunst und Kunsttheorie des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts (Mainz: 1991).
Kirchner T., “Religion als Thema der Historienmalerei”, in Laufhütte H. (ed.),
Künste und Natur in Diskursen der Frühen Neuzeit, Wolfenbütteler Arbeiten zur
Barockforschung 35 (Wiesbaden: 2000) 535–548.
Kirchner T., “De l’usage des passions: Die Emotion bei Künstler, Kunstwerk und
Betrachter”, in Herding K. – Stumpfhaus B. (eds.), Pathos, Affekt, Gefühl: Die
Emotionen in den Künsten (Berlin – Boston: 2004) 357–377.
Kleiner G., “Anmut/Grazie”, in Barck K. (ed.), Ästhetische Grundbegriffe: Historisches
Wörterbuch in sieben Bänden, vol. 1 (Stuttgart – Weimar 2000) 193–208.
Körner H., Auf der Suche nach der “wahren Einheit”: Ganzheitsvorstellungen in der
französischen Malerei und Kunstliteratur vom mittleren 17. bis zum mittleren 18.
Jahrhundert (München: 1988).
Krüger K., Grazia: Religiöse Erfahrung und ästhetische Evidenz (Göttingen: 2016).
Lorini V. – Burioni M. – Feser S. (eds. – trans.), Giorgio Vasari: Kunsttheorie und Kunst-
geschichte. Eine Einführung in die Lebensbeschreibungen berühmter Künstler anhand
der Proemien (Berlin: 2004).
Métraux A., “Die Mikrophysik der Wahrnehmung und des Gedächtnisses in der fran-
zösischen Aufklärung”, in Florey E. – Breidbach O. (eds.), Das Gehirn – Organ der
Seele? Zur Ideengeschichte der Neurobiologie (Berlin: 1993) 129–150.
Mirot L., Roger de Piles: Peintre, Amateur, Critique, membre de l’Académie de Peinture
(1635–1709) (Paris: 1927).
Monk S.H., “A Grace beyond the Reach of Art”, Journal of the History of Ideas 5, 2 (1944)
131–150.
Montague J., The ‘Expression of the Passions’: The Origin and Influence of Charles
Le Brun’s ‘Conférence sur l’expression générale et particulière’ (New Haven –
London: 1994).
Moriarty M., Early Modern French Thought: The Age of Suspicion (Oxford: 2003).
Parish R., Pascal’s Lettres provinciales: A Study in Polemic (Oxford: 1989).
Piles Roger de, Conversations sur la connoissance de la peinture, et sur le jugement qu’on
doit faire des tableaux: Où par occasion il est parlé de la vie de Rubens, & de quelques-
uns de ses plus beaux ouvrages (Paris, Nicolas Langlois: 1677).
426 Weissert
Piles Roger de, Abrégé de la vie des peintres, avec des reflexions sur leurs ouvrages, et un
Traité du peintre parfait, de la connoissance des desseins, & de l’utilité des estampes
(Paris, François Muguet: 1699).
Piles Roger de, The Art of Painting, and the Lives of Painters: Containing, a Compleat
Treatise of Painting, Designing, and the Use of Prints (London: J. Nutt 1706).
Piles Roger de, Cours de peinture par principes (Paris, Jacques Estienne: 1708).
Piles Roger de, The Principles of Painting (London, J. Osborn: 1743).
Pliny the Elder, The Elder Pliny’s Chapters on the History of Art, ed. E. Sellers – trans.
K. Jex-Blake (London: 1896).
Puttfarken T., Roger de Piles’ Theory of Art (New Haven – London: 1986).
Rapin René, Réflexions sur la poétique d’Aristote et sur les ouvrages des poètes anciens et
modernes (Paris, François Muguet: 1674).
Rosenberg J., On Quality in Art: Criteria of Excellence, Past and Present, Bollingen
Series XXXV, 13 (Princeton: 1967).
Scholar R., The Je-Ne-Sais-Quoi in Early Modern Europe: Encounters with a Certain
Something (New York: 2005).
Soreil A., Introduction à l’histoire de l’esthétique française, Académie Royale de Langue
et de Littérature Françaises (ed.), 3rd ed. (Brussels: 1966).
Studdert-Kennedy W.G. – Davenport M., “The Balance of Roger de Piles: A Statistical
Analysis”, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 32, 4 (1974) 493–502.
Teyssèdre B., Roger de Piles et les débats sur le coloris au siècle de Louis XIV (Paris: 1957).
Teyssèdre B., L’Histoire de l’art vue du Grand Siècle: Recherches sur l’Abrégé de la Vie des
Peintres, par Roger de Piles (1699), et ses sources (Paris: 1964).
Tonelli G. – Abeler H., “Grazia, Anmut”, in Ritter J. (ed.), Historisches Wörterbuch der
Philosophie, vol. 2 (Basel: 1974) 866–871.
Toutain-Quittelier V. – Rauseo C. (eds.), Watteau au confluent des arts: Esthétiques de la
grâce (Rennes: 2014).
Van Wymeersch B., Descartes et l’Évolution de l’Esthétique Musicale (Sprimont: 1999).
Vasari Giorgio, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed archittettori, ed. G. Milanesi, 9
vols. (Florence: 1906), vol. 4.
Vasari Giorgio, The Lives of the Artists, trans. J.C. and Peter Bondanella (Oxford: 1991).
Weissert C., “Charles Le Bruns Expression des passions und die Têtes d’expression im
Kontext physiologischer Betrachtungen”, in Pawlak A. – Zieke L. – Augart I. (eds.),
Ars – Visus – Affectus: Visuelle Kulturen des Affektiven in der Frühen Neuzeit (Berlin –
Boston: 2016) 251–272.
Yates F., The Art of Memory (Chicago: 1966).
Zeuch U., Umkehr der Sinneshierarchie: Herder und die Aufwertung des Tastsinns seit
der frühen Neuzeit (Tübingen: 2000).
Zöllner F., “Ogni Pittore Dipinge Sé: Leonardo Da Vinci und Automimesis”, in Winner M.
(ed.), Der Künstler über sich selbst in seinem Werk (Weinheim: 1992) 137–160.
part 4
Secrecy and Sanctity: Negotiating Secular and
Sacred Registers of the Secret
∵
chapter 12
In Abscondito: Visuality and Testimony in Raphael’s

Transfiguration
Xavier Vert
When* dealing with Christian history, painting is confronted with the duplicity
of places, things, and events, what Erich Auerbach and Jean Daniélou taught
us to recognize as figure.1 Whether it be a question of flowers in a meadow, a
feat, or a miraculous healing, large or small, these things, gestures, or events,
situated in time, take on certain aspects, present themselves in a certain way:
they are disguised and driven by a dynamic that turns them into temporary
enigmas. This figurative duplicity, also recognizable as the very process of
history, brings together what has happened with what has not yet happened
and, by the anteriority of a future, looks at what is from the horizon of what
will be, as its sign or testimony. A figure in the Christian sense of the word
is an enigma that inverts and contracts time but also an enigma dispelled at
the moment of its fulfilment. Such a secret disposition is deduced from the
visual structure enunciated by Paul, and often, if not always, recalled within
the exegetical tradition of the divine mysteries, as in 1 Cor. 13:12: ‘For now we
see only a reflection as in a mirror [per speculum in enigmate]; then we shall
see face to face’. Thanks to its singular plasticity, the figure allows us to settle
the mystery into the visible. In other words, the infinite network of figures
woven into the Christian vision of history organises the visible according to the
economy of mystery. It thus follows that a mystery, a mysterium-sacramentum,
is figuratively adduced – if not accessible only by figures – and implies that
the representation of its historical manifestation depends on the enigmatic
arrangement or distribution of the visible;2 in that respect, both visual and
exegetical, the image – the pictorial mimesis – may be considered as a place
* F or their generous insights and feedback on earlier drafts of this essay, I would like to thank
warmly Walter S. Melion, Michel Weemans, and Giovanni Careri. My gratitude for their as-
sistance to Véronique Eme-Martinez and Peter Briggs.
1 E. Auerbach, Mimesis: Dargestellte Wirklichkeit in der abendländischen Literatur (Bern: 1946);
J. Daniélou, Sacramentum futuri: essai sur les origines de la typologie biblique (Paris: 1950).
2 On the difficulty of determining in the patristic and exegetical tradition, after Paul, a
stable semantic distinction between mystery-mysterium and mystery-sacramentum, cf.
E. Schillebeeckx, L’économie sacramentelle du salut (De sacramentele Heilseconomie), trans.

430 Vert
of passage for figures, a polarised field, or a medium.3 Following on from this

approach, this essay attempts to provide a comparative perspective on mys-
tery and visuality, secrecy and temporality, through the last and most famous
painting of Raphael Urbino: The Transfiguration (1516–1520) [Fig. 12.1]. Indeed,
since Vasari’s time, the altarpiece commissioned by Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici
for Narbonne Cathedral – neither the tavola nor the copy made on purpose
by Raphael’s workshop has been sent to France4 – is considered as Raphael’s
artistic and spiritual testament, albeit no single interpretation has received
general recognition.5
Y. van der Have (Fribourg: 2004); R. Stefaniak, “Replicating Mysteries of the Passion: Rosso’s
Dead Christ with Angels”, Renaissance Quarterly 45, 4 (1992) 677–738.
3 On this conception of medium, mediality, and image, see H. Belting, “Image, Medium, Body:
A New Approach to Iconology”, Critical Inquiry 31, 2 (2005) 302–319. In an essay close to the
questions discussed here, Marsha Libina presents and examines the medial status of the
image in a theological and political context where images have been specifically involved
in the debate on biblical hermeneutics: ‘In the early decades of the 1500s, religious images
entered into a way of thinking that was fundamental to how Catholic exegetes at this mo-
ment conceived of the biblical text: as figurative and referential in nature, in other words, as
a “mediated truth.” Image-makers thus took to their own pictorial medium to reflect on the
unresolved questions of prophecy and scriptural exegesis. The theological debate and the
[Lateran] council’s conflicted position on the mediation of scripture, in particular, prompted
new ways of thinking about the figuration of divinity that were specific to questions concern-
ing the hermeneutics of the man-made image and the medial status of art when representing
the divine’. “‘False Prophecies,’ Scripture, and the Crisis of Mediation in Early Modern Rome:
Sebastiano del Piombo’s Borgherini Chapel in San Pietro in Montorio”, I Tatti Studies in the
Italian Renaissance 11, 1 (2018) 67–104, 78.
4 The panel of almost equal size (396 × 263 cm), dated ca. 1520–28, later became part of the
collections of the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. See T. Henry and P. Joannides, Raphaël:
Les dernières années (Paris: 2012) 174–177.
5 The modern literature on Raphael’s Transfiguration is endless; only the studies cited through-
out the text are indicated here. With respect to the incompleteness of the painting, upon the
artist’s death, cf. F. Mancinelli, “La Trasfigurazione e la Pala di Monteluce: Considerazioni
sulla loro tecnica esecutiva alla luce dei recenti restauri”, in Shearman J. – Hall M.B. (eds.),
The Princeton Raphael Symposium: Science in the Service of Art History (Princeton: 1990)
149–160. For a genetic and interpretive approach, cf. K. Oberhuber, “Vorzeichnungen zu
Raffaels ‘Transfiguration’”, Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen 4 (1962) 116–149; H. Von Einem,
Die “Verklärung Christi” und die “Heilung des Besessenen” von Raffael (Wiesbaden: 1966). On
the figure of christus medicus, the discussion between Posner and Shearman remains essen-
tial: K.W.G. Posner, “Raphael’s Transfiguration and the Legacy of Leonardo”, Art Quarterly
35, 4 (1972) 343–374; idem, Leonardo and Central Italian Art (1515–1550) (New York: 1974);
J. Shearman, Raphael’s Cartoons in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen and the Tapestries
for the Sistine Chapel (London: 1972); idem, “Raphael’s Clouds, and Correggio’s”, in Sambucco
Hamoud M. – Strocchi M.L. (eds.), Studi su Raffaello: Atti del congresso internazionale di
studi. Urbino-Firenze, 6–14 avril 1984 (Urbino: 1987) 657–668; idem, Raphael in Early Modern
Sources, 1483–1602 (New Haven – London: 2003). Also see E.H. Gombrich, “The Ecclesiastical
VISUALITY AND TESTIMONY IN RAPHAEL ‚ S TRANSFIGURATION 431
Figure 12.1 Raphael, Transfiguration (ca. 1516–1520). Oil on panel, 404 × 278 cm
Vatican Museums, Rome
432 Vert
1 Mystery and Figurability
Presented in the Gospels as aiming to demonstrate the majesty of Christ and to

prevent the scandal of his humiliation, the mystery of the Transfiguration par-
adoxically highlights the secrecy of Christ in Jesus, his hidden dignity and fu-
ture glory; what indeed comes to light is the procession (processio) of the Son.
Such a theophany is both proclaimed beneath the veil of mystery (velamine
mysteriorum), accessible only by faith, and chronicled in the Synoptics – the
pericope of the Transfiguration – as a sudden and dazzling appearance eyewit-
nessed by three disciples, James, John, and Peter. Therefore, what was hidden
or opaque – reserved in the opacity of the flesh – becomes manifest, in view of
its revelation. The mystery of glory (doxa, gloria) is both the act of visibility –
its vision-audition – and the act of potency in the transformed body of Christ.
Mystery of figurability on one hand, of a phenomenal presence in which the
splendour of the parousiac body of Christ is implied by mode of transitory
Significance of Raphael’s Transfiguration”, in Ars auro prior: Studia Ioanni Bialostocki

sexagenario dicata (Warsaw: 1981) 241–243; idem, New Light on Old Masters: Studies in the
Art of the Renaissance IV (Oxford: 1986); C. King, “The Liturgical and Commemorative
Allusions in Raphael’s Transfiguration and Failure to Heal”, Journal of the Warburg and
Courtauld Institutes 45 (1982) 148–159; J.C. Forte, “Fictive Truths and Absent Presence in
Raphael’s ‘Transfiguration’”, Notes in the History of Art 3, 4 (1984), 45–56; R. Preimesberger,
“Tragische Motive in Raffaels Transfiguration”, in Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 50 (1987)
88–115; G. Bendersky, “Remarks on Raphael’s ‘Transfiguration’”, Notes in the History of Art 14,
4 (1995) 18–25; J. Cranston, “Tropes of Revelation in Raphael’s Transfiguration”, Renaissance
Quarterly 56, 1 (2003) 1–25. The seminal pages that Daniel Arasse devoted to the theme of
vision in Raphael’s painting are still decisive: “Extases et visions béatifiques à l’apogée de la
Renaissance: quatre images de Raphaël”, in Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Moyen-Age,
Temps modernes 84, 2 (1972) 403–492, idem., Les visions de Raphaël (Paris: 2003). More re-
cently, see J. Meyer Zur Capellen, Raphael: A Critical Catalogue of His Painting (Landshut:
2005), vol. 2, The Roman Religious Paintings, ca. 1508–1520, 195–209; C.K. Kleinbub, “Raphael’s
Transfiguration as Visio-Devotional Programme”, Art Bulletin 90 (2008) 367–93, idem, Vision
and Visionary in Raphael (University Park, PA: 2011). In 1516 another artist present in Rome,
Sebastiano del Piombo, worked on the decoration of the Borgherini chapel in San Pietro
in Montorio. In a very competitive artistic context, Giulio de’ Medici entrusted Sebastiano,
assisted by Michelangelo, with a second altarpiece of equal dimensions, The Resurrection
of Lazarus. For a comparative analysis of both paintings, see J. Pope-Hennessy, Raphael:
The Wrightsman Lectures (London: 1970), esp. 71f.; C. Barbieri, “The Competition between
Raphael and Michelangelo and Sebastiano’s Role in It”, in Hall M.B. (ed.), The Cambridge
Companion to Raphael (Cambridge: 2005) 141–164. On the siting of the painting in San Pietro
in Montorio, cf. Alexander Linke, “Vasari and The Transfiguration of Christ: Converting the
Testaments and Competing with Predecessors”, in Melion W.S. – Clifton J. – Weemans M.
(eds.), Imago Exegetica: Visual Images as Exegetical Instruments, 1400–1700 (Leiden – Boston:
2014), 923–958.
passion, ‘per modum passionis transeuntis’, says Thomas Aquinas.6 Figurability

of the mystery, on the other hand, in the narrative of its testimony – the
Synoptics – as represented in the altarpiece painted by Raphael.7 More than
figures, elements of history, or contents of meaning, what text and image es-
sentially share is the absconditus, the character of what is hidden or concealed,
that is to say reserved. Leo the Great asserts the Christological significance of
this character in his homily on the Transfiguration, a significance that is in fact
enshrined in the secret of the sovereign glory of Christ.8 The Latin patristic
exegesis, the homily of Leo the Great in particular, assumes the visual relation-
ship between secrecy and glory: the ‘regia claritate’ (kingly brilliance) of the
transfigured Christ, penetrating the visible for a short time, is only the prefigu-
ration of the parousiac light, and the vision of this transitory brightness, made
visible to the three disciples, becomes in itself a figure of the ‘inefabilem et
inaccessibilem visionem’ (ineffable and unapproachable vision) reserved to the
chosen in eternal life.9 This indicates that the secret represented in the vision
possesses a fundamental anagogical and soteriological value, underlined and
transmitted by Thomas Aquinas, whose significance is evident during the first
quarter of the sixteenth century.10
The spiritual or mystical meaning associated with the vision of the trans-
figured Christ is in line with a political and religious context marked by an
aspiration for the internal renewal of the Church and the strengthening of the
institution of faith up to the limits of its states as well as in the principle of
their unity. The liturgical celebration of the Transfiguration was officially es-
tablished in 1457, in commemoration of the victory over the Turks following
6 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, 3a, q. 45, art. 2 co.

7 According to the chiasmus to which Louis Marin has drawn our attention in his analysis of
the Italian Annunciations of the Quattrocento, here it is essential: Opacité de la peinture,
rev. ed. (Paris: 2006), chapter 5, “Annonciations toscanes”, 159–201, esp. 173–181. When it
comes to the theophanic mystery of the Transfiguration more specifically, the issue be-
comes, in Marin’s words, that of the very process of figurability, and even ‘trans-figurability’,
as transcendental conditions of possibility for the visible, visuality, and the figure as such:
L. Marin, Pouvoirs de l’image: gloses (Paris: 1993), “Glose 8. La Transfiguration”, 233–249.
For a review of Marin’s gloss on The Transfiguration, see D. Guastini, “Transfiguration,
figure, figurabilité chez Louis Marin”, La part de l’œil 31 (2017–18) 49–59.
8 Leo the Great, Sermons, 38 (LI), “A Homily Delivered on the Saturday before the Second

Sunday in Lent – On the Transfiguration”, 1–8; Léon le Grand, Sermons, III (38–64), ed.
A. Chavasse, trans. D.R. Dolle (Paris: 2004) 38 (LI), 1–8, 21–35.
9 Ibidem, 38 (LI), 2, 26–27. On the soteriological value of Leo the Great’s interpretation
of the Transfiguration, see B. Green, The Soteriology of Leo the Great (New York: 2008),
esp. 184–186.
10 See J.M. Greenstein, “‘How Glorious the Second Coming of Christ’: Michelangelo’s Last
Judgment and the Transfiguration”, Artibus et Historiae 10, 20 (1989) 33–57.
434 Vert
the Battle of Belgrade (July 1456).11 This mystical regeneration of the power
of the Church’s influence finds a new relevance under the pontificate of Leo X
(1513–1521).12 The reformist pressure, from the Council of Pisa until the closing
of the Lateran Council in 1517, also emphasised the redemptive value of the
Transfiguration and its prophetic content.13 On this point, recent historiogra-
phy has highlighted the role of a Joachimist-inspired text widely diffused in
the circles of the Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, commissioner of the painting. The
manuscript of the Apocalypsis Nova attributed to the Franciscan friar Amedeo
Menes da Silva was purported to have been rediscovered in 1502 under mys-
terious conditions in San Pietro in Montorio and handed to the Franciscan
theologian Giorgio Benigno Salviati for opening.14 The text strongly empha-
sises the understanding of the Transfiguration sacramentum within a mystic
of salvation, predicting the reformation of the Church and the imminence of a
bright kingdom.15 We should add that Menes da Silva was the re-founder of the
Roman church of San Pietro in Montorio, where the cardinal Giulio de’ Medici
decided that Raphael’s painting should be transported shortly after the artist’s
death, in 1522, instead of being sent to Narbonne Cathedral in France.
As far as the figurative space of the painting is concerned, the absconditus
(the character of what is reserved) seems to be displayed in two apparently
antagonistic places or states. First, in the luminous emanation of the trans-
figured Christ: ‘His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as
light’ (Matt. 17:2); and second in a state of opacity (opacitas), what is literally
11 Cf. P. Lamarche, “Transfiguration du Seigneur”, Dictionnaire de Spiritualité: ascétique et

mystique, doctrine et histoire, 17 vols. (Paris: 1991), vol. 15, 1148–1151.
12 L. von Pastor, The History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages, 40 vols., 5th ed.
(London: 1923), vol. 7, chapters 3–5, 114–254.
13 The urgency of a spiritual renewal and its importance in the choice of the commission,
as well as the role at various levels of personalities such as Denis Briçonnet and Egidio da
Viterbo are studied by Arasse, “Extases et visions béatifiques à l’apogée de la Renaissance:
quatre images de Raphaël”. On the more peculiar influence, in the Franciscan circle of San
Pietro in Montorio, of Bernardino Carvajal and Giorgio Benigno, cf. J. Jungic, “Joachimist
Prophecies in Sebastiano del Piombo’s Borgherini’s Chapel and Raphael’s Transfiguration”,
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 51 (1988), 66–83.
14 On the manuscript itself and the conditions of its reception, see A. Morisi, Apocalypsis
Nova: Ricerche sull’origine e la formazione del testo dello pseudo-Amadeo (Rome: 1970).
15 Ibidem, esp. 29f.; see also Jungic, “Joachimist Prophecies”, esp. 70–79; M. Reeves (ed.),
Prophetic Rome in the High Renaissance Period (Oxford: 1992); and the recent contribution
of S. Pasti, “L’Apocalypsis Nova: Giulio dei Medici e i quadri per la Cattedrale di Narbone”,
Konsthistorisk Tidskrift 81, 4 (2012) 231–237. The argument is taken up by Henry and
Joannides, Raphaël, 164f.
opposed to light: the shadow.16 At the heart of the painting of the luminous
vision, Raphael leaves an undefined, blank, or opaque space, more precisely
an interval between two places. Such a contrast between transparency and
opacity, enlightenment and shadow, refers to a double problem, both aspects
of which are interwoven, a problem well known to scholars. The first one is
aesthetic, referring to the dark tonality promoted by Leonardo da Vinci, this
certa oscurità, which becomes the maniera nera (dark manner) that Raphaël
inexplicably abused, says Vasari, in the lower half of the Transfiguration.17 This
textual addition to the second edition of Le Vite, attributing the obscuring of
the background, place, and figures to the effects of time on an unstable picto-
rial material, masks a negative aesthetic judgement. It is hardly possible to pro-
duce here the discussion on the deliberate or, on the contrary, the accidental
nature of the violence of the shadows in the lower part of the painting and, in
particular, on the balance established between the opacity and diaphanous-
ness in the overall configuration, but we should at least mention Sebastiano
del Piombo’s earlier and direct testimony, in the context of the open competi-
tion with Raphael. In a letter to Michelangelo dated July 1518, Sebastiano de-
nounced in even harsher terms the fuliginous manner of The Holy Family of
Francis I, dating from that same year, with its figures so strongly contrasted
that they ‘seem to have gone through smoke’.18
16 All Latin quotations from the Bible and the Gospels are from the Vulgate; references to the
modern Bible are from the New International Version (NIV).
17 “E se non avesse in questa opera, quasi per capriccio, adoperato il nero di fumo da stam-
patori, il quale, come più volte si è detto, di sua natura diventa sempre col tempo più
scuro ed offende gl’altri colori, coi quali e mescolato; credo che quell’opera sarebbe ancor
fresca come quando egli la fece, dove oggi pare piuttosto tinta che altrimenti”, G. Vasari,
Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architetti (Florence: 1568), part 3, vol. 1, 86. Vasari
also criticizes Fra Bartolomeo for the same reasons. From a technical point of view, the
restoration of the painting (1972–76) revealed the use of black pigment in shaded areas,
a use that is by no means unprecedented. Cf. Mancinelli, “La Trasfigurazione e la Pala
di Monteluce: Considerazioni sulla loro tecnica esecutiva alla luce dei recenti restauri”.
On the issue of chiaroscuro, see among others M.B. Hall, Color and Meaning: Practice
and Theory in Renaissance Painting (Cambridge: 1992), 131f.; K.W.G. Posner, “Raphael’s
Transfiguration and the Legacy of Leonardo”; L. Caron, “Choice concerning modes of
modelling during the high Renaissance and after”, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 48 (1985)
476–89. Margriet van Eikema Hommes provides an overview of the discussion while at-
tempting to restore the validity of Vasari’s interpretation: “Discoloration or Chiaroscuro?
An Interpretation of the Dark Areas in Raphael’s ‘Transfiguration of Christ’”, Simiolus:
Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art 28, 1/2 (2000–2001) 4–43.
18 “Io non vi dirò altro che pareno figure che siano state al fumo, o vero figure de ferro che
luceno, tutte chiare e tutte nere, et desegnate al modo ve dirà Leonardo”, in Poggi G. –
Barocchi P. – Ristori R. (eds.), Il Carteggio di Michelangelo, 5 vols. (Florence: 1965–83),
vol. 2, 32; see also V. Golzio, Raffaello nei documenti, nelle testimonianze dei contemporanei
436 Vert
The second problem, of an interpretive nature, is caused by the associa-

tion in the painting of two episodes of the Gospels, separate from each other:
Christ’s Transfiguration, as represented in the upper half of the picture, and
the presentation of the so-called lunatic (the possessed boy) to the disciples
who are unable to heal him, which is depicted in the lower part and in the
foreground of the painting. In the Synoptics, this latter episode does not con-
stitute a pericope as such; it is only mentioned as being contemporary with the
Transfiguration, when Christ, who descended from Mount Tabor, encountered
the family of the lunatic. In the testamentary narrative there is already a rela-
tion of absence or delayed presence, a connection between delay and distance,
of power manifested, on one hand, and manifest powerlessness on the other.
The split nature of the scene on which all the commentators have focused in
order to legitimize its coherence or, on the contrary, to contest it, may well be
the reflection of the historical structure of the evangelical narrative and the
principle of its messianic economy. The inscription of the narrative-testimony
of the Transfiguration in the painting, which is what perhaps the painting re-
flects, would be determined by what is formulated there in abscondito: not the
expression of a truth stolen at the heart of a secretum but, of the mystery itself,
what takes place in the secrecy of its manifestation, in the signs of the an-
nouncement and the testimony.
2 Economy of Vision
In front of the imposing painting (405 × 278 cm), which was for a long pe-
riod visible above the high altar of San Pietro in Montorio, in Rome, and
which is now displayed in the Vatican galleries, the viewer is placed in the
position of grasping in an overall vision what is above and what is below,
of beholding what is separated in one single glance – a same telos. At first,
the viewer is exposed to the pathos of disjunction whose particular drama
is simultaneously given to be seen and read in the lower part of the painting
[Fig. 12.2]. Appearing from the right edge of the frame, surrounded by the people
who designate him and present him to the disciples – strictly speaking, an
“apostrophe” – the lunatic son of the Gospels embodies here, through the
difficoltà of his posture and even the ecstatic detail of his divergent gaze, the
mimic forces of dissociation. In other words, his twisted body and blind gaze
e nella letteratura del suo secolo (1936; reprint, Gregg International – Farnborough, Hants:
1971) 70–71.
Figure 12.2 Detail of Fig. 12.1: presentation of the possessed boy to the disciples
438 Vert
are not only a somatic and paroxysmal expression of illness or possession,19

they also operate in the phatic and metapictorial dimensions of the painting.20
The dramatic emphasis of the action – of which the boy is the eccentric
focus – has been stressed as a counterpoint to the radiance and royalty of
Christ, such a polarization legitimating the dual structure of the painting.21
Underlining the coherence of the composition, then contested, Goethe, during
his stay in Rome, gave the best account of this tension:
How can one sever what is above from what is below? The two are one.
Below, there is suffering and neediness, and above, active mercy, the one
reflecting upon the other in mutual interchange. Is it then possible to
express the meaning of this painting in a different way, to separate from
the real its ideal relevance?22
According to Goethe, what the painting discloses – but isn’t it precisely

what sets it apart? – lies in the reciprocal involvement of its top and bottom
parts, and the scenes of the Gospel to which these parts refer, as well as in
the unity achieved between immanence and transcendence. This allegori-
cal reading of the aesthetic completeness – of a painting that represents its
meaning – provides a major interpretive axis. It suggests that the unity of such
an antithetical configuration is objective or ideal and not fundamentally de-
pendent on the nature of the effects on the viewer and on his imaginative or
devotional participation. This other possibility draws a second axis: the tavola
of the Transfiguration, seen in the liturgical and institutional context of its
19 On the diagnostic approach, see M. Brock responding to epileptologists: “Le possédé dans
la Transfiguration de Raphaël: un détail?” in Daniel Arasse: Historien de l’art (Paris: 2010)
153–164.
20 In agreement on this point with the remarks of James D. Herbert, “The Son That Does
Not Shine in Raphael’s Transfiguration”, World and Image 24, 2 (2008) 167–198, 192. See
above all Preimesberger, “Tragische Motive in Raffaels Transfiguration” 106f. Kleinbub
convincingly associates the boy’s visual infirmity and the opposing forces that run
through it with the theme of natural and spiritual vision. He also points to the particu-
lar connection that this opposition has with Raphael’s own Blinding of Elymas, ‘wherein
spiritual and physical blindness is figured in the confrontation of Elymas with the pro-
phetic Paul’, Vision and Visionary in Raphael, chapter 5, “Raphael’s Transfiguration as
Visio-Devotional Program”, 122–145, 130. On the role played by the kneeling woman in the
foreground, decisive in the rhetorical configuration, see J. Cranston, “Tropes of Revelation
in Raphael’s Transfiguration”; J.C. Forte, “Fictive Truths and Absent Presence in Raphael’s
‘Transfiguration’”.
21 See Preimesberger, “Tragische Motive in Raffaels Transfiguration” 106f.
22 J.W. von Goethe, Italiensische Reise, December 1787, I, 152; Italian Journey, trans. W.H.
Auden – E. Mayer (London: 1970), 433.
commission, belongs to the devotional imagination and contributes to defin-

ing or remodelling its practices. In this respect, Raphael’s invention is far from
isolated but rather collects and crystallizes features that are part of the evo-
lution of altar painting and its devotional or liturgical physiognomy around
1500 in Italy.23
The long-standing tendency to literalize the field of the devotional image,
the verticalization of the format, and the division of the functional registers of
altar painting are all elements on which the composition of the Transfiguration
is based. Two phenomena are particularly relevant. On one hand, the assimila-
tion and contamination of narrative patterns of theophanic themes, such as the
Assumption, the Transfiguration, and the Resurrection, to which we will return
later. On the other hand, the splitting of the representation into a worldly reg-
ister and a register of supraworldly apparition – The Madonna of Foligno and
The Ecstasy of St Cecilia, also by Raphael, are major examples – increases the
metapictural conditions for shaping the visionary experience and the theme
of the vision as such. Internal vision and pictorial image interpenetrate each
other. However, since the Transfiguration is not a beatific vision but a historical
one, the ascensional motive and the imaginary solution are combined within
the dimension of the narrative. The polarization of the pictorial space of the
Transfiguration is articulated by elements of iconic presentation and narrative
presentation: the register of the manifestation in itself (the phainein) and the
historical register that the apparition reconfigures as scene, even as drama, ac-
cording to the place, the protagonists, and the pattern of action. The medita-
tive modality of the devotional image, whose iconic stability, in terms of model
and balance, seemed to be the guarantee, is therefore recomposed in the com-
plex relationship between history and contemplation of figures, the effect of
presence, and aspects according to which the representation either leads the
gaze, directs it, or retains it. The vision of Christ is indeed ambiguous; internal
as well as external, both presented to the viewer as a vision and represented
as a diegetic image or a mediating device. In addition, the principle of ‘ampli-
fication’ is not sufficient to account for the multiplication and interaction of
23 See H. Damisch, Théorie du nuage: Pour une histoire de la peinture (Paris: 1972);

J. Burckhardt – P. Humphrey, The Altarpiece in Renaissance Italy (New York: 1988);
H. Belting, Bild und Kult: Eine Geschichte des Bildes vor dem Zeitalter der Kunst (Munich:
1990); P. Humphrey – M. Kemp (eds.), The Altarpiece in Renaissance Venice (Cambridge –
New York: 1991); A. Nagel, Michelangelo and the Reform of Art (Cambridge: 2000), part 1,
25–135; V. Stoichita, Visionary Experience in the Golden Age of Spanish Art (London: 1995);
and more recently, G. Cassegrain, Représenter la vision: Figuration des apparitions miracu-
leuses dans la peinture italienne de la Renaissance (Arles: 2017).
440 Vert
figures in a situation that is extended to history painting.24 By overdetermining

the temporal aspect of the miracle – the moment of vision – through the un-
resolved action of the combined scene – the apostrophe – Raphael’s altarpiece
calls for the hermeneutical cooperation as well as the imaginative involvement
of the Christian viewer.
At the heart of the mystery – the very moment of the Transfiguration –
is the secrecy of its proclamation: while Peter was still speaking to Christ, ‘a
bright cloud covered them [Peter, James, and John], and a voice from the cloud
said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!”’
(Matt. 17:5). The ‘nubis lucida’ (bright cloud) that, in Matthew’s text, surrounds
the disciples like a shadow (obumbrabit eos), is closely connected with the
mystery of the Incarnation and, more specifically, with the secrecy of its an-
nouncement, the ‘overshadowing’, the obumbrare, of the Divine Verb.25 It is
in the principle of light and by the phenomenalization of the Verb under the
sensitive modes, both visual and vocal, that the mysterium tremendum of the
divine might and power is manifested: ‘When the disciples heard this, they
fell facedown to the ground, terrified’ (Matt. 17:6). If we focus on the upper
part of Raphael’s painting, we can grasp the manifestation of God’s power in
the form of an enunciation-secretion that carries within it the double event or
phenomenon of the light without shadow in which the Christ is shrouded and
an umbratile envelopment of the luminous cloud. Of the brightness, source
of the vision and sign of the Transfiguration, one is tempted to say that it se-
cretes the royalty of Christ, of the numinous cloud, that it hides and reveals
at one and the same time the Father. If we refer to the modello for the first
version [Fig. 12.3], which does not yet include the episode of the lunatic, we
realize that the vision has been originally thought in accordance with the nar-
rative and figurative economy of the mystery; it is based on the appearance of
the Father within a cherubic and modulated cloud that combines the incor-
poreal light and the nebulous shadow of his virtus, on one hand, and on the
vision of the Son transfigured in the brightness of his transcendent glory on
the other. The transition to the bipartite structure, as planned by the second
modello (after 1516) [Fig. 12.4], did not only have the effect, if not the purpose,
24 As proposed by Erwin Panofsky, then taken up by S. Ringbom, Icon to Narrative: The Rise of
the Dramatic Close-up in Fifteenth-Century Devotional Painting, Acta Academiae Aboensis,
ser. A XXXI, no. 2 (Åbo: 1965).
25 The Latin obumbrare, translating the Greek verb episkiasein, is also the expression con-
tained in Luke 1:35 for the announcement of the incarnation: ‘The Holy Spirit will come
on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you’. I refer to the valuable com-
ments of V. Stoichita, Brève histoire de l’ombre (Geneva: 2000), 68; see also Marin, Opacité
de la peinture 166; “Glose 8. La Tranfiguration”, in Pouvoirs de l’image: gloses, 233–249, 246.
Figure 12.3 After Raphael, Modello for the Transfiguration (ca. 1516–17). Pen and
brown wash with white heightening, 40.2 × 27.2 cm
Albertina, Vienna, inv. 193
442 Vert
Figure 12.4 After Gian Francesco Penni, after Raphael, Modello for the
Transfiguration (after 1516). Pen and brown ink, wash, and black
chalk, 41.3 × 27.4 cm
Musée du Louvre, Département des arts graphiques,
Paris, inv. 3954
of emphasizing the dramatic forces of disjunction and the tension between

the iconic regime and the narrative regime of the image; it also modified the
very economy of the vision, making the Son appear in the Father, the dazzling
brightness of Christ’s transformation in the cloudiness – the numinous cloud –
of his dynamis. What the vision thus formed literally brings to light is the pro-
cession of the son as the image or reflection of the father. In doing so, it also
assumes the eschatological aim that underlies the miraculous appearance of
Christ – the relation between historical glory and eschatological glory – pre-
dicted by Christ himself just before he was transfigured: ‘Filius enim hominis
venturus est in gloria Patris’ (for the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s
glory) (Matt. 16:27).26 This luministic exegesis depends on a logic of conver-
sion of the qualities into refracted luminous intensities in the chromatic plan
of the painting. The radiant Christocentrism of the Transfiguration, as well as
the atmospheric deflagration of the small painting The Vision of Ezekiel, real-
ized by Raphael in 1518 [Fig. 12.5], testify, as Vasari already emphasized, to the
luministic strength of Raphael’s last paintings and their close relations with
the spiritual significance of light in the biblical and evangelic exegesis. John
Shearman highlighted in the painting of Ezekiel’s vision the fusion between
the clarity and sparkling characteristics of the glow of the vermeil in Ezekiel’s
text (Ez. 10, Ap. 4);27 Gregory the Great’s commentary on the prophetic vision,
which is equally essential, can be read in close connection with the luminis-
tic subtlety of the Transfiguration. Gregory the Great interprets the electrum
(the vermeil) of divine glory as the best image of the union of the human and
the divine achieved in Christ: that something which ‘exceeds gold in claritas (the
quality of silver), and exceeds silver in fulgor (the quality of gold)’.28 Raphael’s
modal luminism, his dark manner that is by no means a negation or a simple
reversal, is indeed an expression of the revealed glory on the mountain, but it
also depends on the dynamic process of vision and its imprint on the viewer.
In that regard, we may assume the influence of the Neoplatonic metaphysics of
light, observable in the annular cloud on which Christ appears – whose shape
is clearly underlined in the workshop’s replica of the painting29 – and more-
over perceptible through the anagogical progression that the distribution of
colours and lights enables within the painting. Marsilio Ficino establishes this
26 Jesus is transfigured ‘about eight days after [he] said this’, according to Luke 9:28; ‘six days
after’, according to Matthew (17).
27 Shearman, “Raphael’s Clouds, and Correggio’s” 661.
28 Ibidem; Sancti Gregorii Homiliae in Hiezechihelem prophetam [Hom. in Ezech.], ed.
M. Adriaen, CCSL 142 (Turnholti: 1971), II, 14.
29 Whereas many engravers, like Cornelis Cort, for instance, restore the more immediately
intelligible mandorla’s shape; see Shearman, “Raphael’s Clouds, and Correggio’s” 666.
444 Vert
Figure 12.5 Raphael, The Vision of Ezekiel (ca. 1518). Oil on panel, 40 × 30 cm
Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence
progression in his Essays on Light (1476–1494),30 from the black and brown,
very opaque colours of the lowest regions up to the degrees that surpass white
(albus) in the bright whiteness (candore), brilliance ( fulgor), and splendour
(splendor) of the invisible and spiritual light. This scale of intensities alluding
to the elevation of the soul as a spiritual progress placed in man is, however,
30 M. Ficino, Liber de sole et lumine (Florence, Antonio Miscomini: 1493), “De lumine”, VI;
idem, “De lumine” (VI), in Métaphysique de la lumière (opuscules, 1476–1492), Reynaud J. –
Galland S. (trans.) (Paris: 2008) 134–135.
linked to the process of metamorphosis described by Paul, to which Ficino ex-

plicitly refers in the De Lumine:
Therefore, it is worth separating the sublunar light from darkness and

the celestial light from matter, then from there rising to the supernatural
light, and from rational light to intellectual light, and from it […] to divine
light, so that, guided by the revealed face, […] we may gradually trans-
form ourselves from clarity to clarity, into the same image.31
Together with the figuration of the vision in its historical and iconic dimen-
sions, Raphael proposes a vertical reading that calls for an ascending gaze.
The shift from instrumental, direct, and punctual light, which engenders pen-
umbral shadows, to diffuse and universal or substantial light, to take on the
language of Leonardo da Vinci, the diaphanous lightening of colours from
earthly matter to supernatural clarity – all evoke the analogy developed by the
metaphysics of splendour.32 However, the tension already involved in Ficino’s
text animates the visual field of the picture even more. Could this other trans-
figuration to which the Christian aspires, his transformation and homologa-
tion in the glorious body of Christ, – major echo of the historical theme of
the Transfiguration – be obtained from the progressive journey towards the
uncreated light? The dramatic strength of the vision depicted also lies in the
logic of the visual ruptures (transversal and diagonal) that the mystery pro-
duces on the pictorial surface, expressing a more directly fideistic aspiration.33
The contemplative imagination probably no longer offers a solution of conti-
nuity with faith.
31 Ibidem, “De lumine”, VI (the translation is mine): ‘Quamobrem operae pretium est, et hoc
sub luna lumen a caligine, et coeleste illud a materia segregare, et illinc ad lumen su-
percoeleste conscendere, illinc rursus a rationali luce ad intellectualem, ab hac ad intel-
ligibilem, ab hac pro viribus ad divinam, ut revelata facie ducti videlicet a domini spiritu
a claritate gradatim in claritatem in eamdem imaginem transformemur’. Ficino follows
Paul in 2 Cor. 3:18: ‘And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are
being transformed (metamorphoumetha) into his image (eikona) with ever-increasing
glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit’. This contemplation carries the dou-
ble implication of a metamorphosis (metamorphein) and a conformation or conformity
(summorphon), according to the formula proposed in Phil. 3:21: ‘The Lord Jesus Christ,
who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform
(summorphon) our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body’.
32 See A. Chastel, Marsile Ficin et l’art (Geneva: 1996), 91f.
33 On the tension and exchanges between the fideistic approach, spiritual devotion, and
Neoplatonism in the first decades of the sixteenth century, see Arasse, Les visions de
Raphaël 82f.
446 Vert
3 Secrecy and Testimony
Not enough attention has been paid to the testimonial and messianic mean-
ings of Raphael’s Transfiguration. The mystery indeed takes place, and this
place, from the messianic point of view, is what happens between the two an-
nouncements of the Passion of Christ recorded in the Synoptics: an interval
of time (a few days) that also includes the episode of the lunatic’s healing. In
that respect the division of Raphael’s composition could also be considered as
a figure of the messianic interval. Framed by the two announcements of the
Passion, the picture of the transfiguration represents a messianic unity where-
as the testimony, a messianic expression par excellence, operates by separat-
ing (in space) and connecting (in time). This structure, both conjunctive and
disjunctive, is essential to the figurative logic of the painting.
In the first place, the Transfiguration, as Jesus’s identification with the
Christ of the Parousia, rests on the aside of the vision: ‘And after six days Jesus
took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain by
themselves’ (Matt. 17:2). The vision therefore depends on the figure and num-
ber of witnesses: ‘in the presence of those five men might most truly be ful-
filled what was said: “In two or three witnesses stands every word” [Deut. 19:15]’,
comments Leo the Great.34 Because he gathers a large congregation – all the
apostles – and then distinguishes them according to register, place, and pose,
Raphael manifests the separation of the witness’s speech-vision like none
other before him. At the top, Christ and the two prophets hover (Moses and
Elijah); at the bottom or at the front, the three separate disciples (Peter, James,
and John) are lying on the ground. To the scene thus structured, Raphael adds
a second visionary instance in a subsidiary and elliptical place, on the left edge
of the painting: two characters in deacons’ clothes, identified as Justus and
Pastor, patron saints of the cathedral of Narbonne – for which the painting was
commissioned – or Felicissimus and Agapitus, their saint’s day celebrated on
the same day as the Transfiguration.35 In both cases, two witnesses of Christ, in
the full and philological sense of the word: two Christian martyrs. They are the
only ones attending the colloquium of glory who are not dazzled by the lumi-
nous effusion. Are they, however, characterised by what they see rather than by
the function they perform? I believe this is what Cardinal Zurla pointed out in
34 Leo the Great, Sermons, 38 (LI), 4, 28–29.

35 Just and Pasteur according to Von Einem, Die “Verklärung Christi” und die “Heilung des
Besessenen” von Raffael 323. Felicissimus and Agapitus according to G. Mellini, “In mar-
gine alla Trasfigurazione di Raffaello”, Critica d’Arte 10, 59–60 (1963), 39–53, 30. For a dif-
ferent identification, see King, “Liturgical and Commemorative Allusions”.
Figure 12.6 Raphael, Preparatory drawing for the upper part of the Transfiguration
(ca. 1518–1519). Red chalk over stylus, 24.6 × 35 cm
Chatsworth (Derbyshire), Trustees of the Chatsworth
Settlement, inv. 904
1835 in his description of the painting: he saw represented, in three places and
under three species, the triple demonstration of the truth of Christ: prophetic
(in the upper half), thaumaturgical (in the lower half), and finally that truth
‘deduced from martyrdom’, he says, in the figures of the two deacons.36 This de-
duction is made possible by the phatic and even admonitorial function that the
two figures are in a position to fulfil in the margins of the painting. Witnesses
of Christ and semiotic agents in the economy of the vision, they manifest the
attitude of devotional reception to which the viewer may conform. The liminal
place or the threshold they are assigned to – without prejudging the impera-
tives of the commission – is particularly highlighted by the various studies that
prepare the painting. Both characters appear from the very first version of the
painting, in the foreground and on the right [Fig. 12.3]. They are also integrat-
ed in a subsequent study for the upper part of the Transfiguration [Fig. 12.6].
In that regard, their migration from the position traditionally assumed in the
36 issertazione del Cardinale Zurla sull’unità del soggetto nel quadro della Trasfigurazione di
D
Raffaello (Rome: 1835) 104, quoted by Arasse, Les visions de Raphaël 450.
448 Vert
devotional painting by the Holy Intercessors contributes to a certain disloca-

tion of the figurative space.
Second, it is indeed for its testimony, but a reserved or suspended testimony,
that the glory of Christ is manifested: ‘As they were coming down the moun-
tain, Jesus instructed them, “don’t tell anyone what you have seen, until the Son
of Man has been raised from the dead”’ (Matt. 17:9). It is already as witnesses
that Elijah and Moses are involved in the vision of the transfigured Christ; ac-
cording to St Augustine, the colloquium of the vision is structured by the two
testimonies, that of the prophetic word (Elijah) and that of the law (Moses).37
This draws attention to Peter’s second epistle in which, precisely, the double
condition of the testimony, the aside and the secrecy, is made explicit by an
image. Peter introduces himself as testis, eyewitness of the revealed glory on
the mountain (2 Peter 1:16). The testimony he can now deliver – the word guar-
anteed by the vision – is also for Peter the fulfilment of the prophetic word
grasped in an image whose intimacy with Raphael’s painting has been high-
lighted by Posner.38 The prophetic message is, according to Peter, ‘like a lamp
shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your
hearts’ (2 Peter 1:19). The opening to the horizon on the right and the luminous
and messianic moment of the dawn is in fact a figure introduced by Raphael,
which will be particularly studied and notably taken up by Veronese, in the
Transfiguration he painted for the Cathedral of Santa Maria de Montagnana
(1556). Posner’s reading may seem very literal: ‘Raphael’s painting illustrates
this passage with remarkable fidelity, from the dawn which in fact points to
the transfigured Christ who shines in [heavenly] glory above the darkness’.39
In any case, we perceive the conditions of figurability that these light sources,
‘dark place’, and ‘sunrise’ fulfil, and specifically the close connection between
visuality and expectation from which the testimony operates, according to
Peter. So that the dawn, between light and darkness, forms the sensitive image
of time unfolded by the messianic meaning of the testimony.
37 ‘Quod testimonium habet a lege et prophetis’, Augustinus, Enarrationes in psalmos, in

psalmum 110, 1. 19 (Paris: 2013) 210. On the theme of vision and its corporeal or spiritual
nature according to St Augustine (sermons 78 and 79), see J. Pintard, “Remarques sur la
Transfiguration dans l’oeuvre de Saint Augustin”, Studia patristica 11 (Berlin: 1972) 335–
340; and Kleinbub, Vision and Visionary in Raphael, who bases his analysis of Raphael’s
Transfiguration on the distinctions made by Augustine.
38 Posner, “Luministic Imagery in the Iconography of the Transfiguration”, in Leonardo and
Central Italian Art 43–47. Posner also relies on Luke 9:30–32 to see in the tangent light
of the landscape in the background the dawn following the night of the Transfiguration
rather than a twilight (ibidem, note 4, 83).
39 Ibidem, 44.
We may thus look at the gap between the place of the transfiguration and the
place of the presentation of the lunatic son, this empty distance that does not
stop acting as conditioned by the visual and temporal montage of the mystery.
4 In Absentia
The association of the theophanic vision with another scene is usual in the tra-
dition of typological pairings, moralized Bibles, and books of hours, however,
more rarely with a second episode of the life of Christ. Here is a distant but
suggestive example [Fig. 12.7]: the illustration of the Floreffe Bible, combining
the Transfiguration and the Last Supper, that is to say, the proclamation of the
Eucharistic mystery. Both scenes are isolated by a central margin, an aniconic
interval into which the feet of the apostles James and John encroach. In this
picture, the temporal relationship implied by the figurative conception of his-
tory is expressed as the visual modality of a split.
In a more complex way, the Transfiguration of Sebastiano del Piombo paint-
ed in the half-dome of the Borgherini Chapel in San Pietro in Montorio, com-
pleted by the Flagellation on the wall above the altar [Figs. 12.8–12.9], organizes
in the architectural and spatial order a figurative tension between glory and
humiliation, sovereignty and humility, a tension also expressed in the contrast-
ing modes of the chiaroscuro in the lower part and a certain cangiantismo in
the upper part.40 The association of the two moments in history and the two
modes of being of Christ, here derived from the architecture of the chapel as
a framing apparatus, however painted or feigned, requires nonetheless to be
assumed in the protensive dimension of the gaze. If the column Christ is tied
to upholds the gaze in the vertical axis and makes it possible to pass from the
man of sorrow to the glorified Christ, the spacing it invites us to cross presup-
poses that the viewer assimilates it as an oriented expectation.
Although it is known that Sebastiano suspended his work in the Borgherini
Chapel between 1517 and 1518 and only returned to the Flagellation at some
point before May 1519, the chronological details are difficult to establish;
what was the state of progress of Sebastiano’s Transfiguration when it was
adjourned?41 In March 1524, when Sebastiano’s Transfiguration was pub-
licly unveiled, Raphael’s altarpiece was already displayed above the main
altar. Many elements argue for a closer comparison between Raphael’s and
Sebastiano’s Transfigurations, in the context of a famous rivalry. They were not
40 On this point, see Hall, Color and Meaning 138f.

41 See M. Hirst, Sebastiano del Piombo (Oxford: 1984) 49–65.
450 Vert
Figure 12.7 Author of the Floreffe Bible, Full-page miniature in two registers of the
Transfiguration and the Last Supper (ca. 1156)
London, British Library, Add MS 17738, f4r
Figure 12.8 Sebastiano del Piombo, Transfiguration (1516–1524)

Fresco. Borgherini Chapel, San Pietro in Montorio, Rome
Figure 12.9 Sebastiano del Piombo, Flagellation (1516–1524). Mural painting in oil
and fresco
Borgherini Chapel, San Pietro in Montorio, Rome
452 Vert
Figure 12.10
Raphael, Study for the Resurrection of Christ.
Pen and brown ink
Musée Bonnat, Bayonne, inv. 683
only contiguous and contemporary, they may both refer to the ideas Amedeo
Menes da Silva expressed in his Apocalypsis Nova, although to varying degrees,
as Jungic convincingly argues.42
In any case, judging by Raphael’s radical transformations since the first
modello, by a certain lightening of the iconographic apparatus in favour of the
dynamic relations that finally animate the field of vision, we are led to note the
attraction that the resurrection pattern exerted, and especially the assimila-
tion of the ideas that Raphael had projected for an altarpiece he never painted
[Fig. 12.10].43 What is therefore most relevant is the inclusion of the typologi-
cal interval or prefigurative tension as an immanent limit to place, space, and
history, limits that the Transfiguration event unveils. The light without shade
that Christ takes on does not only correspond with the chiaroscuro enveloping
the lower scene of the painting. Here, the power of the origin as an act – the
theophany – is doubled and reversed into the potency of the image itself, from
its blind background and a certain lack in the place. More precisely, it is the
42 Jungic, ‘Joachimist Prophecies’.

43 P. Joannides, The Drawings of Raphael with a Complete Catalogue (Los Angeles: 1983). On
the altarpiece that was supposed to be the Resurrection and on its presumed location, see
C. Gould, “Raphaël at S. Maria della Pace”, Gazette des Beaux-Arts 120, 1484 (1992) 78–88, in
contradiction to M. Hirst’s hypothesis, “The Chigi Chapel in S. Maria della Pace”, Journal of
the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 24, 3/4 (July–Dec. 1961) 161–185.
Figure 12.11 Leonardo da Vinci, Adoration (1481–1482). Tempera mixed with oil on panel,
246 × 243 cm
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
lack of the body – the absence of Christ – that makes the condition of the epi-
sode of the foreground comprehensible and designates it as a drama of faith
and dissimilitude.
The pages that Posner devoted to Raphael’s painting next to another paint-
ing, Leonardo da Vinci’s Adoration of the Magi (1480), although unfinished
[Fig. 12.11], offer a decisive insight.44 Raphael would have found in the new
structure of the Adoration of the Magi the means to correlate a human event
with what goes beyond the limits of time and human space. From one painting
44 Posner, “Leonardo in Rome: The Genesis of Raphael’s Transfiguration”, in Leonardo and

Central Italian Art: 1515–1550, 3–10, 8. Raphael’s debt to Leonardo is also the subject of
D.A. Brown, “Leonardo and Raphael’s Transfiguration”, in Frommel C.L. – Winner M.
(eds.), Raffaello a Roma (Rome: 1986) 237–243.
454 Vert
to the other, the issue is not so much of changing appearance but of discover-
ing limits through the temporality inherent in the epi-theo-phanic event. This
would be the challenge of transposing Leonardo’s figurative schema and reor-
ganizing his conjunctive and disjunctive elements into a system of ‘simultane-
ous contrasts’.45 In Leonardo’s Adoration as in Raphael’s Transfiguration, the
horizon is positioned high up, the foreground deeply curved, blocked in the
centre by a flattened mound, opening to the right onto a distant landscape.
In both paintings, there is, in fact, a conjunction of two types of spaces set at
different heights of points of view, a foreground and a background organized
by autonomous contents of meanings, distinct from each other, without any
space figured between them. In both paintings, the chiaroscuro – the certà
oscurità – shrouds the foreground and organizes its surface like a relief, while
the clarity of the background is associated with depth. However, the leonardian
model remains synthetic, subordinating one plane and one scene to the other
by maintaining the structure of the linear and atmospheric perspective; it of-
fers a coherent optical experience. In short, Raphael accentuates the disjunc-
tive forces of the leonardian visual structure and breaks the subsidiarity of the
plans. The subordination of the whole to the epiphanic nucleus in Leonardo’s
Adoration gives way in the Transfiguration to a dissociation, and the epiphanic
centre itself to an absence that is the fundamental motif of the episode in the
foreground: the disciples’ impotency to heal the lunatic. But this effective ab-
sence has a peculiar place in the figurative scheme of Raphael’s painting: the
diagonal obscure spacing that separates the two groups of figures in the lower
half of The Transfiguration. This absence acts so that the viewer, caught up
in the trap of the disjunction, is tempted to perceive – in the contours of the
lack – a potential figure. The historian Von Einem first made this suggestion;46
Posner goes further, comparing Raphael’s altarpiece with Leonardo’s Adoration
of the Magi, and Louis Marin built on this ‘syncopation’ a metapictorial hypoth-
esis, ‘discerning beside the sister’s face, […] an empty face figuring absence: the
terrifying mask of the neutral’.47 The figurative absence of Christ thus becomes
the very ultimate object of the viewer’s gaze.48
45 Posner, Leonardo and Central Italian Art 9.

46 Von Einem, Die “Verklärung Christi” und die “Heilung des Besessenen” von Raffael 325.
Posner stressed: ‘Von Einem senses this absence so powerfully that he hypothesizes a
missing Christ figure at the center of Raphael’s “original” composition’, Leonardo and
Central Italian Art, note 37, 53.
47 Marin, “Entreglose 6: Transfiguration – Défiguration”, in Pouvoirs de l’image: gloses,
250–259, 259.
48 ‘Il se pourrait bien que l’extraordinaire puissance, la toute-puissante violence imaginale
de la Transfiguration de Raphaël se situe là, dans la fascination que le tableau exerce par
Figure 12.12 Detail of Fig. 12.1: apostles
Finally, the pictorial enigma of the opacity within Raphael’s altarpiece oper-
ates on the basis of latency, as Erich Auerbach asserts, assumed by the evan-
gelical narrative. It is rather a matter of time than of space. The empty dark
distance between the two halves of Raphael’s altarpiece is just underlined by
the deictic gestures of the protagonists of the istoria, and significantly of the
apostle who designates an “over there”, the “elsewhere” of the Tabor, but can
neither be aware of nor see what is happening there [Fig. 12.12]. This gesture,
which emphasises the drama of powerlessness and lack of faith, condenses
the semiotic economy of the painting. While ensuring the heterotopy of its
high and low halves, it assumes for the viewer the double temporal modality
of the spacing from which it is cut out: both “suspense” and “expectation”. The
intense darkness offers, I would say, the conditions of figurability for a deep
connection, if not coextensiveness, between the “here” of immanence and the
temporality of imminence, in the dimension of the istoria, the healing of the
lunatic, as also in the register of hoped-for salvation, the imminence of a pres-
ence made partially known through the transitory signs of a plenary or beatific
vision. From the messianic perspective, as adduced in the epistles of Pauls and
Peter, imminence is the very temporality of secrecy, or put differently, secrecy
is time made imminent.
ce lieu entrouvert entre deux groupes de figures et entre deux registres de son espace, ce
lieu où il n’y a, à proprement parler, rien à lire ni à voir, sinon le regard ou l’objet même du
désir que le fantasme met en scène.’ Ibidem, 259.
456 Vert
Bibliography
Arasse D., “Extases et visions béatifiques à l’apogée de la Renaissance: quatre images

de Raphaël,” in Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Moyen-Age, Temps modernes
84, 2 (1972) 403–492.
Auerbach E., Mimesis: Dargestellte Wirklichkeit in der abendländischen Literatur
(Bern: 1946).
Augustinus, Enarrationes in psalmos, in psalmum 110, 1.19 (Paris: 2013).
Barbieri C., “The Competition between Raphael and Michelangelo and Sebastiano’s
Role in It”, in Hall M.B. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Raphael (Cambridge:
2005) 141–164.
Belting H., Bild und Kult: Eine Geschichte des Bildes vor dem Zeitalter der Kunst (Munich:
1990).
Belting H., “Image, Medium, Body: A New Approach to Iconology”, Critical Inquiry 31,
2 (2005) 302–319.
Bendersky G., “Remarks on Raphael’s ‘Transfiguration’”, Notes in the History of Art 14, 4
(1995) 18–25.
Brock M., “Le possédé dans la Transfiguration de Raphaël: un détail?” in Daniel Arasse:
Historien de l’art (Paris: 2010) 153–164.
Brown D., “Leonardo and Raphael’s Transfiguration”, in Frommel C.L. – Winner M.
(eds.), Raffaello a Roma (Rome: 1986) 237–243.
Brown D., “The Ascension and Transfigured Bodies”, in Hart T.A. – Guthrie S.R. (eds.),
Faithful Performances: Enacting Christian Tradition (Aldershot: 2007) 257–272.
Burckhardt J. – Humphrey P., The Altarpiece in Renaissance Italy (New York: 1988).
Caron L., “Choice Concerning Modes of Modelling During the High Renaissance and
After”, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 48 (1985) 476–89.
Cassegrain G., Représenter la vision: Figuration des apparitions miraculeuses dans la
peinture italienne de la Renaissance (Arles: 2017).
Chastel A., Marsile Ficin et l’art (Geneva: 1996).
Cranston J., “Tropes of Revelation in Raphael’s Transfiguration”, Renaissance Quarterly
56, 1 (2003) 1–25.
Damisch H., Théorie du nuage: Pour une histoire de la peinture (Paris: 1972).
Daniélou J., Sacramentum futuri: essai sur les origines de la typologie biblique
(Paris: 1950).
Eikema Hommes M. van, “Discoloration or Chiaroscuro? An Interpretation of the
Dark Areas in Raphael’s ‘Transfiguration of Christ’”, Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly
for the History of Art 28, 1/2 (2000–2001) 4–43.
Einem H. Von, Die “Verklärung Christi” and die “Heilung des Besessenen” von Raffael
(Wiesbaden: 1966).
Ficino Marsilio, Liber de sole et lumine (Antonio Miscomini – Florence: 1493).

Ficino Marsilio, Métaphysique de la lumière (opuscules, 1476–1492), trans. J. Reynaud –
S. Galland (Paris: 2008).
Forte J.C., “Fictive Truths and Absent Presence in Raphael’s ‘Transfiguration’”, Notes in
the History of Art 3, 4 (1984) 45–56.
Goethe J.W. von, Italian Journey, trans. W.H. Auden and E. Mayer (London: 1970).
Golzio V., Raffaello nei documenti, nelle testimonianze dei contemporanei e nella lettera-
tura del suo secolo (1936; reprint, Gregg International – Farnborough, Hants: 1971).
Gombrich E.H., “The Ecclesiastical Significance of Raphael’s Transfiguration”, in
Ars auro prior: Studia Ioanni Bialostocki sexagenario dicata (Warsaw: 1981) 241–243.
Gombrich E.H., New Light on Old Masters: Studies in the Art of the Renaissance IV
(Oxford: 1986).
Gould C., “Raphaël at S. Maria della Pace”, Gazette des Beaux-Arts 120, 1484 (1992) 78–88.
Green B., The Soteriology of Leo the Great (New York: 2008).
Greenstein J.M., “‘How Glorious the Second Coming of Christ’: Michelangelo’s Last
Judgment and the Transfiguration”, Artibus et Historiae 10, 20 (1989) 33–57.
Guastini D., “Transfiguration, figure, figurabilité chez Louis Marin”, La part de l’œil 31
(2017–18) 49–59.
Hall M.B., Color and Meaning: Practice and Theory in Renaissance Painting (Cambridge:
1992).
Henry T. – Joannides P., Raphaël: Les dernières années (Paris: 2012).
Herbert J.D., “The Son That Does Not Shine in Raphael’s Transfiguration”, World and
Image 24, 2 (2008) 167–198.
Hirst M., “The Chigi Chapel in S. Maria della Pace”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld
Institutes 24, 3/4 (Jul.–Dec. 1961) 161–185.
Hirst M., Sebastiano del Piombo (Oxford: 1984) 49–65.
Humphrey P. – Kemp M. (eds.), The Altarpiece in the Renaissance (Cambridge –
New York: 1991).
Joannides P., The Drawings of Raphael with a Complete Catalogue (Los Angeles: 1983).
Jungic J., “Joachimist Prophecies in Sebastiano del Piombo’s Borgherini’s Chapel and
Raphael’s Transfiguration”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 51 (1988)
66–83.
King C., “The Liturgical and Commemorative Allusions in Raphael’s Transfiguration
and Failure to Heal”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 45 (1982)
148–159.
Kleinbub K., “Raphael’s Transfiguration as Visio-Devotional Programme”, Art Bulletin
90 (2008) 367–93.
Kleinbub K., Vision and Visionary in Raphael (University Park, PA: 2011).
458 Vert
Lamarche P., “Transfiguration du Seigneur”, Dictionnaire de Spiritualité: ascétique et

mystique, doctrine et histoire, 17 vols. (Paris: 1991), vol. 15, 1148–1151.
Leo the Great, “A Homily Delivered on the Saturday before the Second Sunday in
Lent – On the Transfiguration”, 38 (LI), in Freeland J.P. – Conway A.J. (trans.),
Sermons (Washington, DC: 1995) 1–8.
Léon le Grand, Sermons, ed. A. Chavasse – trans. D.R. Dolle, 3 vols. (Paris: 2004),
vol. 3, 38–64.
Libina M., “ ‘False Prophecies,’ Scripture, and the Crisis of Mediation in Early Modern
Rome: Sebastiano del Piombo’s Borgherini Chapel in San Pietro in Montorio”, I Tatti
Studies in the Italian Renaissance 11, 1 (2018) 67–104, 78.
Linke A., “Vasari and The Transfiguration of Christ: Converting the Testaments and
Competing with Predecessors”, in Melion W.S. – Clifton J. – Weemans M. (eds.),
Imago Exegetica: Visual Images as Exegetical Instruments, 1400–1700 (Leiden –
Boston: 2014) 923–958.
Loerke W.C., “Observations on the Representation of Doxa in the Mosaics of Santa
Maria Maggiore, and Saint Catherine’s, Sinaï”, Gesta 20, 1 (1981) 15–22.
Mancinelli F., “La Trasfigurazione e la Pala di Monteluce: Considerazioni sulla loro
tecnica esecutiva alla luce dei recenti restauri”, in Shearman J. – Hall M.B. (eds.),
The Princeton Raphael Symposium: Science in the Service of Art History (Princeton:
1990) 149–60.
Marin L., Pouvoirs de l’image: gloses (Paris: 1993).
Marin L., Opacité de la peinture, rev. ed. (Paris: 2006).
Mellini G., “In margine alla Trasfigurazione di Raffaello”, Critica d’Arte 10, 59–60 (1963)
39–53.
Meyer Zur Capellen J., Raphael: A Critical Catalogue of His Painting, 3 vols. (Landshut:
2005), vol. 2, The Roman Religious Paintings, ca. 1508–1520, 195–209.
Morisi A.M., Apocalypsis Nova: Ricerche sull’origine e la formazione del testo dello
pseudo-Amadeo (Rome: 1970).
Muir Wright R., “Created and Uncreated Light: The Transfiguration in Western Art”, in
Hart T.A. – Guthrie S.R. (eds.), Faithful Performances: Enacting Christian Tradition
(Aldershot: 2007) 241–256.
Nagel A., Michelangelo and the Reform of Art (Cambridge: 2000) 25–135.
Oberhuber K., “Vorzeichnungen zu Raffaels ‘Transfiguration’”, Jahrbuch der Berliner
Museen 4 (1962) 116–149.
Pardo di Figuera B., Examen analytique du tableau de la Transfiguration de Raphaël,
trans. S.C. Croze-Magnan (Paris: 1805).
Pasti S., “L’Apocalypsis Nova, Giulio dei Medici e i quadri per la Cattedrale di Narbone”,
Konsthistorisk Tidskrift 81, 4 (2012) 231–237.
Pastor L. von, The History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages, 40 vols., 5th ed.
(London: 1923–30).
Pintard J., “Remarques sur la Transfiguration dans l’oeuvre de Saint Augustin”, Studia
patristica 11 (1972) 335–340.
Poggi G. – Barocchi P. – Ristori R. (eds.), Il Carteggio di Michelangelo (Florence: 1965–83).
Pope-Hennessy J., Raphael: The Wrightsman Lectures (London: 1970).
Posner K.W.G., “Raphael’s Transfiguration and the Legacy of Leonardo”, Art Quarterly
35, 4 (1972) 343–374.
Posner K.W.G., Leonardo and Central Italian Art (1515–1550) (New York: 1974).
Preimesberger R., “Tragische Motive in Raffaels Transfiguration”, in Zeitschrift für
Kunstgeschichte 50 (1987) 88–115.
Reeves M. (ed.), Prophetic Rome in the High Renaissance Period (Oxford: 1992).
Ringbom S., Icon to Narrative: The Rise of the Dramatic Close-up in Fifteenth-Century
Devotional Painting (Åbo: 1965).
Sancti Gregorii Homiliae in Hiezechihelem prophetam [Hom. in Ezech.], ed. M. Adriaen,
CCSL 142 (Turnholti: 1971).
Schillebeeckx E., L’économie sacramentelle du salut (De sacramentele Heilseconomie),
trans. Y. van der Have (Fribourg: 2004).
Shearman J., Raphael’s Cartoons in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen and the
Tapestries for the Sistine Chapel (London: 1972).
Shearman J., “Raphael’s Clouds, and Correggio’s”, in Sambucco Hamoud M. – Strocchi
M.L. (eds.), Studi su Raffaello: Atti del congresso internazionale di studi. Urbino-
Firenze, 6–14 avril 1984 (Urbino: 1987), 657–668.
Shearman J., Raphael in Early Modern Sources, 1483–1602, 2 vols. (New Haven – London:
2003).
Stefaniak R., “Replicating Mysteries of the Passion: Rosso’s Dead Christ with Angels”,
Renaissance Quarterly 45, 4 (1992) 677–738.
Stoichita V., Visionary Experience in the Golden Age of Spanish Art (London: 1995).
Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, ed. P. Caramello, 3 vols. (Turin: 1952).
Vasari Giorgio, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architetti (Florence: 1568).
Vasoli C., “Notizie su Giorgio Benigno Salviati”, in Profezia e ragione: Studi sulla cultura
del Cinquecento e del Seicento (Naples: 1974), 15–127.
chapter 13
Secrets of the Dark: Rembrandt’s Entombment

(c. 1654)
Alexandra Onuf
In about 1654, Rembrandt etched a print of the Entombment [Fig. 13.1].1 He set
the burial scene deep inside a cavernous, arched, rock-cut tomb with several
mourners gathered around the prone body of Christ to witness the event. The
tall bearded man leaning on his cane at left is likely Joseph of Arimathea and
a grieving Virgin Mary slumps before him at his feet, surrounded by her atten-
dants. Five other figures lower the body of Christ into the grave at the bottom-
most edge of the image. The scene is hushed and solemn. There is no visible
source of light inside the tomb, but a strong radiance, perhaps from an unseen
lantern, seems to emanate directly from Christ to illuminate the vaulted inte-
rior. Two skulls, placed on the back ledge of the crypt and shrouded in shad-
ows, appear to preside over the figures below and in front of them. Executed
in swift, fluid lines with broad parallel and cross-hatching, the print appears
almost sketch-like, suggesting Rembrandt’s rapid, free hand at work.
And then, the scene disappears into darkness [Fig. 13.2]. Only the faint-
est light still glimmers from the deep shadows, just barely revealing the arc
of somber, downturned faces hovering motionless and silent above Christ’s
body. Their quiet vigil is all but eclipsed by the impenetrable blackness that
descends over them. This is the second state of Rembrandt’s print, after he had
gone back over the entire surface of the plate with heavy drypoint line work.
Set side by side, the first and second states appear almost as inverted images.
In the first state, we join the figures mourning Christ as he is lowered into his
tomb within the towering vault of the crypt (there is even a space reserved for
us in the immediate foreground); in the second, we are plunged into an almost
complete darkness into which we and those figures sink, some to disappear en-
tirely. Where in the first state we could discern the deeper space and contours
1 Hinterding E.– Rutgers J. (eds.), The New Hollstein Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings
and Woodcuts 1450–1700. Rembrandt, 5 vols. (Ouderkerk aan den IJssel: 2013) 2:241–243,
no. 284. The event is described in all four of the Gospel accounts: Matthew 27:58–60;
Mark 15:43–47; Luke 23:50–56; and John 19:38–42. These accounts are very brief, requiring
Rembrandt to extrapolate many of the details of the tomb and the gathered company.

SECRETS OF THE DARK: REMBRANDT ‚ S ENTOMBMENT ( C. 1654 ) 461
Figure 13.1 Rembrandt, The Entombment, state I (c. 1654). Etching and drypoint on paper,
211 × 160 mm
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 20.46.17
462 Onuf
Figure 13.2 Rembrandt, The Entombment, state II (c. 1654). Etching and drypoint with
burin on paper, 210 × 160 mm
of the tomb, punctuated by the memento mori of the skulls at the back wall,
now we are confronted with an opaque veil of obscurity. What had been a light
and airy scene, hastily rendered, is transformed into a densely worked, unfath-
omable one. Unable to get our bearings in the darkness, the scene is imbued
with a profound if disorienting intimacy. What prompted Rembrandt to re-
work this plate so radically, to transform a legible scene into an illegible one?
What secret did he seek to hide within this inky blackness?
1 States of Darkness
In 1654 Rembrandt seems to have been particularly preoccupied with repre-

senting scenes from the life of Christ.2 The Entombment was one of four related
prints done that year that share roughly the same vertical format and dimen-
sions; the others depict the Presentation in the Temple, the Descent from the
Cross by Torchlight, and the Supper at Emmaus.3 Some scholars have surmised
that these four etchings might initially have been intended as part of a larger
cycle dedicated to the Passion.4 Such a series would have represented a re-
turn to themes that had first occupied the artist earlier in his career when he
had painted the monumental Passion series for stadhouder Frederik Hendrik.5
Around that same time, he had also produced a number of grisaille sketches
that he may have hoped to transform into a printed Passion cycle, a project that
never came to fruition.6 Unlike traditional Passion cycles however, the 1654
‘set’ includes the Presentation scene from Christ’s infancy and the Supper at
Emmaus, a post-Passion event, suggesting that Rembrandt took a flexible and
2 There is a large literature devoted to Rembrandt’s own religious faith. While his religious
beliefs must have informed his artistic production, there is no clear evidence that he used
his art simply or solely to reflect his own personal beliefs. In many instances, on the contrary,
his paintings and prints seem to cross confessional lines, often in order to accommodate par-
ticular patrons, or to transcend any straightforward confessional alignment. See Perlove S. –
Silver L., Rembrandt’s Faith: Church and Temple in the Dutch Golden Age (University Park,
Penn.: 2009), with further literature.
3 In the same year, he also etched six prints depicting scenes from Christ’s infancy and child-
hood. These are smaller, horizontally oriented compositions that generally do not employ
chiaroscuro effects with anything like the sort of intensity found in the larger prints of
Passion scenes done in the same year. See Hinterding E. – Luijten G. – Royalton-Kisch M.
(eds.), Rembrandt the Printmaker, exh. cat., Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; The British Museum,
London (Chicago: 2000) 304, cat. no. 74.
4 Hinterding – Luijten – Royalton-Kisch, Rembrandt the Printmaker 309, cat. no. 76.
5 McNamara S., Rembrandt’s Passion Series (Newcastle upon Tyne: 2015).
6 van der Wetering E. “Remarks on Rembrandt’s oil-sketches for etchings”, in Hinterding –
Luijten – Royalton-Kisch, Rembrandt the Printmaker 39–50.
464 Onuf
inclusive approach to his presumed series.7 Rembrandt employed a complex

technique of etching overlaid with drypoint and burin work in all four prints,
resulting in richly dark printed images.8 Thus, these four prints are unified not
only in scale and format, but also in technical execution, suggesting that he did
conceive of them as a group of some sort, even if not as a formal series. The
Supper at Emmaus is the only one of the four that is not a nocturnal or heavily
darkened scene, though even here Christ’s blinding radiance is contrasted with
deep shadows in the corners. The Entombment is, however, exceptional in the
degree to which Rembrandt allows black ink to obscure the very iconographic
content of the image.
Rembrandt had previously considered the representational possibilities
of the Entombment scene several times. In his earlier painting for Frederik
Hendrik’s cycle, a related oil sketch now in Glasgow, and in a drawing in the
Rijksmuseum [Figs. 13.3 and 13.4], Rembrandt sought to capture the great
physical exertion of the burial.9 The figures strain with effort as they lower the
limp body of Christ into the tomb, the diagonal compositional and graphic
emphases underscoring the active drama of the moment. By contrast, in his
1654 print Rembrandt chose a more contemplative moment that emphasizes
the still, meditative grief of the mourners around Christ. While the first state
of the print clearly shows Christ’s body still in the process of being lowered
into the grave, the mourners who hold him at the knees and the shoulders
are upright, caught motionless in a moment of reflective quiet. Rembrandt
may have conceived the composition in response to a drawing attributed to
7 The painted cycle for Frederik Hendrik, executed between 1632 and 1646, included five pan-
els, but in the 1640s Frederik Hendrik ordered two additional panels to complement the
original five Passion scenes. These depicted the Adoration of the Shepherds, now in the Alte
Pinakothek, Munich, and the Presentation in the Temple, a copy of which in the Herzog Anton
Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig. See McNamara, Rembrandt’s Passion 131–137. The Northern
tradition of printed Passion cycles had been solidified in the previous century in the many se-
ries by Albrecht Dürer and Lucas van Leyden, with whose prints Rembrandt was surely famil-
iar. For a survey of Passion iconography in Northern art, see Marrow J., Passion Iconography
in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance: A Study of the
Transformation of Sacred Metaphor into Descriptive Narrative (Kortrijk: 1979). On Dürer’s
Passion cycles in particular, see Kantor J., Dürer’s Passions, exh. cat., Harvard University Art
Museums, Boston, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA: 2000).
8 White C., Rembrandt as an Etcher: A Study of the Artist at Work, 2nd ed. (New Haven: 1999)
90–97.
9 For an excellent survey of Rembrandt’s treatment of the Entombment, with particular em-
phasis on the painted Passion cycle and the Glasgow oil sketch, see Black P., with the assis-
tance of Hermens E., Rembrandt and the Passion (Munich: 2012).
Figure 13.3 Rembrandt, The Entombment (1636–1639). Oil on canvas, 689 × 925 mm
Munich, Alte Pinakothek, Inv. No. 396
466 Onuf
Figure 13.4 Rembrandt, The Entombment (c. 1640–1641). Pen and brown ink on paper,
156 × 201 mm
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, RP-T-1930-28(R)
Polidoro da Caravaggio in his own collection, of which he later made a copy.10

In his later drawing, Rembrandt records the original drawing’s horizontal com-
position and balanced, symmetrical disposition of figures within the classical,
arched interior of the tomb [Fig. 13.5]. While rather artfully staged, the draw-
ing conveys a similar restrained but expressive grief in its figures; the standing
figure to the right bears especially close resemblance to the upright Joseph of
Arimathea in Rembrandt’s print. Ultimately, however, the 1654 Entombment di-
verges substantially from the Italian composition, its figures and spatial design
recast into a scene of both greater intimacy and a much stronger downward
compositional gravity.
While Rembrandt’s approach to the composition of this scene is inventive,
even within his own previous oeuvre, it is perhaps most exceptional for the
particular way he manipulated the progression of states. He produced four
10 olidoro da Caravaggio’s drawing was previously attributed to Perino del Vaga. It is now in
P

the Fogg Museum, Boston (1932.348).

Figure 13.5 Rembrandt, The Entombment (1657–1658). Ink, wash and body color on paper,
181 × 284 mm
Haarlem, Teylers Museum
states of this print in all. As we have already seen, he reworked the light, clear
first state into an exceptionally dark image in the second state, and only gradu-
ally returned some measure of legibility to the print as a result of later burnish-
ing and inevitable plate wear in the third and fourth states. Eric Hinterding’s
watermark research has confirmed that these four states were all executed and
printed in relatively quick succession and in roughly equal numbers.11 Most
impressions of the first state were printed on expensive imported Chinese and
Japanese papers, and Rembrandt printed the later states variously on European
papers, Japanese paper and even vellum.12 On this evidence, both Hinterding
and Robert Fucci have argued convincingly that each of these states was con-
ceived as an independent work and not as an intermediary proof. In other
11 Hinterding E., Rembrandt as an Etcher: The Practice of Production and Distribution, 3 vols
(Ouderkerk aan den Ijssel: 2006) 2:271; Hinterding – Rutgers, New Hollstein Rembrandt 284
lists 23 known impressions of the first state, 21 of the second state, 23 of the third state,
and 41 of the fourth state.
12 For a thorough technical analysis of the papers Rembrandt used for his prints, see
Stijnman A., Rembrandt’s Etchings and Japanese Echizen Paper, exh. cat., Rembrandt
House Museum (Amsterdam: 2015).
468 Onuf
words, Rembrandt deliberately created a new ‘finished’ or complete version of

the print with each new state.13
Rembrandt accomplished these remarkable revisions of the image by over-
laying the surface of the copper plate with a dense web of drypoint and burin
lines. Even figures whose initial forms he left largely unaltered have been
scored over so heavily that they have virtually disappeared [Figs. 13.6 and 13.7].
In describing Rembrandt’s idiosyncratic or ‘most bizarre’ etching technique in
1686, Filippo Baldinucci stressed his use of ‘certain scribbles and scratches and
irregular, isolated strokes, the result of the whole, however, being a deep and
powerful chiaroscuro, and a thoroughly pictorial sensibility; covering the plate
in some places with an intense black, and leaving in others the white of the
paper.’14 In the second state of the Entombment we are left with a thick, opaque
skein of black inky lines across the surface that only partially, selectively, and
contingently reveal the image they are ostensibly deployed to depict.
Beginning with the second state, Rembrandt further manipulated each im-
pression of the print by selectively wiping the plate before printing it in order
to deliberately retain residual surface ink, and selecting different types paper
and vellum for their warm color and the particular ways they interact with
the thick printer’s ink. An impression of the second state in the Rijksmuseum
demonstrates this heavy plate tone as well as the way that Rembrandt wiped
away more ink around the figure of Christ to create the sort of chiaroscuro to
which Baldinucci referred [Fig. 13.8]. He also manipulated the ink on the plate
to suggest a set of Gothic windows on the back wall, further enhancing and
altering this particular impression. Another impression on vellum is suffused
with the warm glowing tone of the parchment from beneath, while the ink
takes on a soft almost fuzzy quality as it sits atop the surface [Fig. 13.9]. Indeed,
beginning with the second state, almost every impression is subtly distinct,
emphasizing particular areas or details while blacking out others, suggesting a
series of momentary glimpses caught in the flickering, dwindling lantern light
of the tomb. In the subsequent third and fourth states of the print, Rembrandt
continued to work the surface of the plate in more modest ways, clarifying the
13 Fucci R., Rembrandt’s Changing Impressions, exh. cat., The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art
Gallery (New York: 2015) 104. Catherine Scallen coins the phrase ‘provisional finish’ to
describe how Rembrandt explored and manipulated the open-ended possibilities of pub-
lishing multiple versions of a single print. See Scallen C., “Rembrandt’s Etching ‘Saint
Jerome Reading in an Italian Landscape.’ The Question of Finish Reconsidered”, Delineavit
et Sculpsit 8 (1992) 4.
14 Filippo Baldinucci as quoted in Robinson W., “‘This Passion for Prints’: Collecting and
Connoisseurship in Northern Europe during the Seventeenth Century”, in Ackley C. (ed.),
Printmaking in the Age of Rembrandt, exh. cat., Museum of Fine Arts (Boston: 1981) xlv.
Figure 13.6 Rembrandt, The Entombment, state I (c. 1654). Etching and drypoint
on paper, 211 × 160 mm
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 20.46.17. Detail
of lower left corner
470 Onuf
Figure 13.7 Rembrandt, The Entombment, state II (c. 1654). Etching and drypoint with burin on
paper, 210 × 160 mm. Detail of lower left corner
burin, printed with surface tone on paper, 210 × 159 mm
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, RP-P-OB-153
472 Onuf
burin, printed with surface tone on vellum, 205 × 158 mm
architectural structure of the interior space by burnishing the form of the arch
into the back wall behind the skulls and adding new diagonal hatching at the
sides [Figs. 13.10 and 13.11]. As a result of this additional work and the overall
wear to the plate, many impressions of these later states appear to move back
toward greater visual and spatial clarity. However, many impressions of the
third state are just as dark, sometimes even darker than impressions of the
second state due to the heavy surface tone Rembrandt left on the matrix.15
This heavy, opaque surface tone in the later states of the Entombment is
comparable to Rembrandt’s ‘rough’ style of painting with thick impasto. In his
biography of Rembrandt written in 1718, Arnold Houbraken observes that in
Rembrandt’s paintings ‘individual elements were diligently executed to the ut-
most possible degree, but the rest was smeared on as if with a crude tar brush
without consideration of the drawing … Indeed he went so far as to paint over a
beautiful Cleopatra with a dark color just to make a single pearl stand out more
intensely’ (‘Tot in het kleinste detail waren uitgewerkt, en andere alsof ze met
een grove teerkwast zonder enig oog voor finesses waren bestreken … Hij ging
hierin zo ver, dat hij een fraaie Cleopatra met een donkere kleur zou hebben
overgeschilderd, alleen om één enkele parel glans te verlenen.’)16 Houbraken
could have been writing about the Entombment here, with ink ‘smeared’ across
its surface, obscuring the clarity of his previously etched forms, and selectively
wiped to highlight specific, powerful elements within the pervasive dark.
Clearly, Rembrandt’s interventions exceeded simply correcting or perfect-
ing the print from state to state. Indeed, Robert Fucci has proposed that the
quick succession of states printed in roughly equal numbers often on expen-
sive papers with highly variable inking and wiping suggests ‘carefully planned
editioning rather than pure experiment or continually reflexive attempts to
“improve” the image. In other words, variation was probably the objective from
the outset.’17 Already in 1752 Edme-François Gersaint observed that ‘this print
is more remarkable than any other for the variety of its impressions’, a fact
which led Christopher White to comment that ‘each impression [is] as unique
15 See for example an impression of the third state now in the British Museum (1848,0911.45).
16 Houbraken Arnold, De grote schouwburg: Schildersbiografieën, ed. J. Konst – M. Sellink

(Amsterdam: 1995) 37. Translation in Suthor N., Rembrandt’s Roughness (Princeton, NJ:
2018) 27.
17 Fucci, Rembrandt’s Changing Impressions 104. Catherine Scallen writes that ‘the medium
of etching allowed him to create ongoing works of art – ones which could be modified
time and again, often radically, in a way that paintings and drawings could not be’. See
Scallen, “The Question of Finish” 4.
474 Onuf
Figure 13.10 Rembrandt, The Entombment, state III (c. 1654). Etching and drypoint with
Figure 13.11 Rembrandt, The Entombment, state IV (c. 1654). Etching and drypoint with
Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art, Rosenwald
Collection, 1943.3.7163
476 Onuf
as a monotype.’18 More than anything, Rembrandt seems to use each individu-

al impression of this print as an opportunity to test the limits of chiaroscuro to
see just how far he could push his use of darkness and obscurity as a pictorial
and expressive tool.
Rembrandt had long been fascinated with chiaroscuro effects, an interest
that could have been sparked by the work an earlier generation of Dutch print-
makers.19 Rembrandt’s substantial print collection likely included so-called
‘dark manner’ engravings by printmakers such as Hendrik Goudt and Jan van
de Velde.20 Indeed, Rembrandt made an etching of a pancake woman in 1635
based on Jan van de Velde’s dark-manner Pancake Woman from about 1626, so
he was certainly familiar with this manner of engraving. Rembrandt may also
have been aware of the new technique of mezzotint, which Ludwig von Siegen
first invented in the 1640s in Amsterdam, but which only came to be widely
used there somewhat later in the 1660s.21 Indeed, both Houbraken and Roger
de Piles compared Rembrandt’s chiaroscuro effects to mezzotint, which was
known for its subtle tonal range and therefore was deemed particular suitable
for portraits and night scenes.22
18 Gersaint Edme-François, A catalogue and description of the etchings of Rembrandt

Van-Rhyn: with some account of his life. To which is added, a list of the best pieces of this
master for the use of those who would make a select collection of his works (London: 1752)
51. See White, Rembrandt as an Etcher 95. This idea is reiterated in Hinterding – Luijten –
Royalton-Kisch, Rembrandt the Printmaker 313.
19 For a summary of commentators on Rembrandt’s use of chiaroscuro, see Hinterding E.,
“Light”, in Bikker J. – Weber G. – Wieseman M. – Hinterding E. (eds.), Rembrandt: The Late
Works (London: 2014) 173–191.
20 On Rembrandt’s print collection, see Luijten G., “Rembrandt the Printmaker: The Shaping
of an Oeuvre”, in Hinterding – Luijten – Royalton-Kisch (eds.), Rembrandt the Printmaker
11–12. For a transcription of Rembrandt’s inventory of 1656, see van den Boogert B. –
Broos B. – van Gelder R. – van der Veen J. (eds), Rembrandts schatkamer (Amsterdam and
Zwolle: 1999). Describing the ideal print collection in 1699, Florent le Comte included a
volume of ‘representations of night scenes’ and ‘black pieces.’ He mentioned Goudt, van
de Velde, Uyttenbroeck, Rembrandt, and van Vliet by name as worthy of collecting in this
category. See Ackley C., “Printmaking in the Age of Rembrandt: The Quest for Printed
Tone”, in Ackley C. (ed.), Printmaking in the Age of Rembrandt xxv.
21 In her history of the medium, Carol Wax states that mezzotint was reintroduced in
Holland by the French portrait painter and etcher Wallerant Vaillant, who had learned
the technique in Germany before moving to Amsterdam in 1662. There he became a suc-
cessful and prolific mezzotint engraver and publisher. See Wax C., The Mezzotint: The
Development of an Art Form; History and Technique (New York: 1990) 18–20. For a more
specific account of Dutch mezzotints, see also Wuestman G., “The mezzotint in Holland:
‘easily learned, neat and convenient’”, Simiolus 23.1 (1995) 63–89.
22 Roger De Piles wrote of Rembrandt that ‘there is in his etching a manner of working which,
as far as I know, is not yet known. It has something of the black manner [mezzotint],
Rembrandt began producing chiaroscuro-rich nocturne prints in earnest in

the 1640s.23 Two prints in particular, St. Jerome in a Dark Chamber (1642) and A
Student by Candlelight (c. 1642), take as their very subject the interplay between
dark and light, or the manner in which enveloping darkness focuses attention
on pinpoints of light.24 In the Jerome print, as in the Entombment, the dense
network of Rembrandt’s drypoint cross-hatching obscures key objects within
the image – indeed, precisely those iconographic elements that might help us
to identify the main protagonist [Fig. 13.12]. In impressions of the later third
state, printed after Rembrandt’s lifetime, the worn plate began to reveal its
secrets – the cardinal’s hat and the skull on the back wall become more plainly
visible, the crucifix leaned up against the window frame more prominent, and
Jerome’s lion can be glimpsed tucked in under the table. An early cataloguer,
presumably looking at a fresher impression of the print, was at a loss to identi-
fy its subject without being able to see these elements and resorted to calling it
Het Wendeltrapje, or the Winding Stair.25 Notably, the darkened surface of this
image is not simply an undifferentiated field of ink; in other words, it is not an
abstraction. Rather this darkness deliberately veils the distinct and identifiable
figures and objects beneath its surface of ink, reserving them from our vision
like a secret enigma the presence of which we can sense but cannot quite see.
A decade later, in 1651, Rembrandt produced a Biblical nocturne, The Flight
into Egypt: A Night Piece. Here he experimented with state changes, of which
he made six, as well surface tone and variable wiping, to amplify and con-
trol the chiaroscuro effects of the scene and to vary individual impressions.
but the latter did not come until afterwards’. Houbraken described Rembrandt’s chiar-
oscuro as ‘tender, twinkling darks, rendered as finely and softly as can be done in the
art of mezzotinting. This brought his great fame and no less advantage’. Both quoted
in Hinterding E., “Nocturnes in Print: Rembrandt and the Quest for Dark Tonalities”, in
Rembrandt: The Quest for Chiaroscuro, exh. cat., The National Museum of Western Art,
Tokyo and Nagoya City Art Museum (Tokyo: 2011) 312–313.
23 For a sensitive analysis of all of Rembrandt’s nocturne prints, see Scallen C., “Rembrandt’s
Nocturne Prints”, On Paper 1.3 (1997) 13–17. She traces the sources for Rembrandt’s engage-
ment with chiaroscuro prints, noting that Rembrandt’s first nocturne is the large-scale
Annunciation to the Shepherds (1634). By the 1650s, she argues, Rembrandt had ‘developed
the nocturne into an emotionally multivalent subject’ (p. 15).
24 Rembrandt’s dark prints and nocturnes also include: Annunciation to the Shepherds
(1634); Woman at the Door (1641); Rest on the Flight into Egypt: A Night Piece (c. 1644); Star
of Kings: A Night Piece (c. 1651); and Adoration of the Shepherds: A Night Piece (c. 1657).
25 Hinterding E., Rembrandt Etchings from the Fritz Lugt Collection (Bussum – Paris: 2008)
227. See also Fucci, Rembrandt’s Changing Impressions 59–62. A winding stair, or scala
meditationis, was a symbol commonly associated with philosophers and had been illus-
trated as such in Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia (1603). See Carroll M. “Rembrandt’s ‘Aristotle’:
Exemplary Beholder”, Artibus et Historiae 5.10 (1984) 39, esp. note 7.
478 Onuf
Figure 13.12 Rembrandt, Saint Jerome in Dark Study (1642). Etching on paper,
152 × 174 mm
In an impression of the first state in the Metropolitan Museum, for instance,

Rembrandt fastidiously wiped the ink from the plate around the lantern and
the area of Joseph’s robes immediately adjacent in order to create a striking
spotlight and powerful cast shadows that emphasize the shadowy darkness
that presses in around the traveling family [Fig. 13.13]. If the black ink conceals
St. Jerome entirely, here Rembrandt uses chiaroscuro for a slightly different
purpose. The darkness wraps around the lantern-lit figures like a protective if
somewhat eerie buffer, seeming to push them forward from behind, while the
lantern light illuminating their path beckons them onward.
Rembrandt’s heavily inked nocturnal scenes are rich in narrative and spiri-
tual resonances that he further manipulates through state changes and dis-
tinctive patterns of selective wiping. However, the darkest impressions of
the Entombment are different from these earlier uses of chiaroscuro in that
that these later impressions can only make meaningful sense when they are
Figure 13.13 Rembrandt, Flight into Egypt: A Night Piece, state I (1651). Etching printed with
plate tone on paper, 127 × 110 mm
understood in relation to the early lighter, more legible impressions of the

first state. If we are to believe Houbraken, contemporary connoisseurs knew
and collected Rembrandt’s prints in many different impressions.26 Houbraken
26 Later inventories from the eighteenth century indicate that at least by then, collectors
and cataloguers definitely did seek out multiple states of this print. The collector Valerius
Röver was the first to make note of different states of the Entombment in 1731, when he
480 Onuf
complains that Rembrandt often made ‘slight’ or ‘trifling’ changes to his plates
in order to induce collectors to purchase multiple impressions of a print. He
writes that ‘the zeal was so great in those days that people would not be taken
for true connoisseurs who did not have the Juno with and without the crown,
the Joseph with the white and dark face’ (‘De verzameldrift was in die dagen
zo groot, dat men alleen voor rechtgeaard liefhebber kon doorgaan, wanneer
men bij voorbeeld het Junootje mét en zonder kroontje in eigendom had,
of het Jozejje uitgevoerd met zowel het witte als het bruine gezichtje …’).27
Houbraken imputes a strictly mercenary motive to Rembrandt in making these
‘trifling’ state changes. However, in the case of the Entombment, the alterations
and variations among states and individual impressions are by no means slight
or trifling. Even if explicitly intended to appeal to a burgeoning collector mar-
ket, these state changes clearly present a more complex pictorial problem. If
contemporary audiences viewed these states together or compared different
impressions, as they may well have done, they would have encountered by
turns a legible printed image and a print of an image that enacts its own con-
cealment, in whole or in part. Such radical alterations from state to state and
from impression to impression beg the question: what deeper purpose might
such visual antipodes have served?
2 The Spiritual Poetics of the Tomb
There is one comparable print in which Rembrandt developed progressive

states to create a sequence of distinctive images in a similar manner. In 1653,
just prior to making the Entombment, Rembrandt produced the Three Crosses,
a sort of summa of his engagement with printmaking [Fig. 13.14]. Quite ex-
ceptionally, Rembrandt executed the print entirely in drypoint, which wears
down very quickly under the pressure of the printing press and yields relative-
ly few good, dark impressions. There are four states of the print made during
Rembrandt’s lifetime,28 and many scholars have viewed the artist’s aggres-
distinguished his four impressions of the print as having ‘changes in light and dark.’
In 1752, Edme-François Gersaint likewise noted the variety of impressions. See Fucci,
Rembrandt’s Changing Impressions 104.
27 Houbraken, De grote schouwburg 44. Translation in Fucci, Rembrandt’s Changing

Impressions 32.
28 There are forty-five known impressions of the print through the third state, many of
which were printed on vellum with varying amounts of plate tone. There are seventy-
four known impressions of the fourth state, along with three counterproofs. Watermarks
found on the papers used for these four states are identical, indicating that Rembrandt
Figure 13.14 Rembrandt, The Three Crosses, state III (1653). Drypoint on paper,
389 × 456 mm
New York, Metropolitan Museum, 41.1.32
sive reworkings of the plate as efforts to ‘refresh’ the fading drypoint lines.29
Rembrandt made particularly drastic alterations to the plate between the third
and fourth states, at which juncture at least fifty-three impressions had al-
ready been pulled from the plate [Fig. 13.15]. His interventions radically darken
the scene at Golgotha, concealing some figures, including the good thief on
the right, beneath a heavy veil of ink. But in addition to darkening the scene,
Rembrandt thoroughly transformed the figural groupings, the compositional
framework, the biblical narrative, and the spiritual tenor of the scene.
produced them all within a short time span, likely in the same year. Some impressions
of the fourth state include a different watermark, indicating that some of these many
impressions may have been pulled later. A fifth state includes the address of Frans Carelse
added in the foreground and was made later. See Hinterding E. – Rutgers J., New Hollstein
Rembrandt, 2:222–24, no. 274.
29 Most recently, Hinterding E., “Experimental Technique: Etchings”, in Bikker J. – Weber G. –
Wieseman M. – Hinterding E. (eds.), Rembrandt: The Late Works 160.
482 Onuf
Figure 13.15 Rembrandt, The Three Crosses, state IV (1653). Drypoint on Japanese paper,
375 × 450 mm
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, RP-P-1962-40
Margaret Carroll correlates the consecutive states of this print and Rembrandt’s
slightly later Christ Presented to the People (1655) with contemporary spiritual
poetry and the stages of devotional meditation, which move from exposition
of a biblical narrative through deliberation on its significance to a deeper, more
intimate contemplation of the Lord and the divine.30 Carroll finds a close par-
allel in the poetry of Constantijn Huygens, specifically The Passover sonnet and
his Good Friday cycle, both written in 1645.31 She suggests that the successive
30 Carroll M. “Rembrandt as Meditational Printmaker”, Art Bulletin 63.4 (December 1981)

585–610. Drawing upon Louis Martz’ framework for English meditational poetry, Carroll
identifies three stages in the sequence as: composition, or exposition and clarification of
the narrative; deliberation on the implications and significance of the narrative; and col-
loquy, or close, personal, intimate confrontation with Christ or the divine.
31 For additional background on Huygens’ poetry, see Ten Harmsel H., “The Metaphysical
Poets of Holland’s Golden Age”, in Holland (New York: 1977) 78–83.
states of Rembrandt’s prints align with the successive steps of meditational

prayer enacted in the stanzas of Huygens’ poem, writing that:
to describe them in common terms, both the print sequence and the
poem follow a progression from straightforward typological narrative,
making the story contemporary yet unthreatening to the viewing or read-
ing audience; to a revision of that narrative, provoking deliberation over
its significance and an awareness of guilt and spiritual jeopardy; to a
final stage of confrontation with Christ, in which humanity’s need for
redemption and the possibility of receiving it are dramatically and emo-
tionally exposed.
This interpretation suggests that even as he may have sought pragmatic means
to extend the productive lifespan of these delicate plates or to reformulate
compositional and formal aspects of the images, Rembrandt was also think-
ing carefully about the sequential potential of the different states of his prints
to direct visual and spiritual experience. One could make a similar case for
the Entombment. The first state of the print presents a lucid depiction of the
interior of the tomb as Christ is lowered into the grave, providing the kind of
‘straightforward’ visual exposition necessary to comprehend the narrative. The
darkened scene presented in the second state and many impressions of the
third state demands an entirely personal, internal contemplation of the event
in order to arrive, finally, in the more legible impressions of the fourth state
at an intimate and somber contemplation of the redemptive outcome of this
Biblical moment.
More recently, Gary Schwartz has contended that Rembrandt’s work is even
more closely connected to the poetry of Jeremias De Decker.32 He builds on
Willem Visser ‘t Hooft’s earlier analysis of the close relationship between the
two men; Rembrandt painted the poet’s portrait on two occasions (one por-
trait of 1655 is now in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg), and De Decker wrote
a poem about being in Rembrandt’s studio, looking over the artist’s shoul-
der as he painted his panel of The Risen Christ Appearing to Mary Magdalen
in 1638.33 Schwartz has identified specific iconographic parallels between
32 Schwartz G., The Rembrandt Book (New York: 2006) 331–334; Visser ‘t Hooft W., Rembrandt
and the Gospel (London: 1957) 74–77. See also Ten Harmsel, “Metaphysical Poets” 83–89.
Carroll also acknowledges Rembrandt’s relationship with De Decker, though she does not
discuss his poetry specifically. Carroll, “Meditational Printmaker” 586, n. 9.
33 The lines of De Decker’s poem, which was first published as part of the anthology
De Hollantsche Parnas in 1660, are inscribed on the verso of this panel, now in the Royal
Collection of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, London.
484 Onuf
De Decker’s own Good Friday, or the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, written
1651, and Rembrandt’s Christ Presented to the People.34 To this we might also
add the close connections between the eighth section in De Decker’s Good
Friday cycle, “Christ Buried”, and Rembrandt’s Entombment print.35 De Decker’s
poem begins:
Though death is vanquished now and seems to yield,

He still may hold the field,
The hopes of Christ’s companions now grow dim –
Locked in the tomb with him.
From there, however, the poet enjoins his Christian readers not to lament,
reminding them of the imminent resurrection. The poem then ends on a tri-
umphant and deeply personal note:
And now, my tender flesh, you may be brave

Before the gloomy tomb;
No matter how it yawns, fear it no more:
Your Head has gone before.36
De Decker’s imagery of a ‘gloomy tomb’ in which Christ and his mourners

are enclosed finds direct parallel in Rembrandt’s configuration of the scene.
Likewise, the poet’s insertion of himself among their number and his very per-
sonal and direct reaction to this moment aligns with the intimate inclusion of
the viewer in Rembrandt’s composition of the Entombment scene.37 Over the
34 Schwartz, Rembrandt Book 331.

35 Henrietta Ten Harmsel posits an explicit connection between De Decker’s “Good Friday”
and Rembrandt’s prints of scenes from the Passion, arguing that ‘analyzing De Decker’s
Good Friday with intermittent references to the appropriate Rembrandt etchings will
help to illumine the work of both artists and their interpretation of the biblical accounts
of Christ’s suffering and death. It will also demonstrate that the etchings suggest what
the words of the poem state overtly: the central biblical point of Christ as human and
divine.’ Ten Harmsel H. “De Decker, Rembrandt, and the Bible”, introduction to Jeremias
De Decker, Good Friday, trans. H. Ten Harmsel (Jordan Station, Ontario: 1984) 11.
36 De Decker, Good Friday 60.

37 In her analysis of the characteristics of Dutch metaphysical poetry, Ten Harmsel singles
out the emphasis on the paradoxes of religious truth, the intimate, conversational tone,
and the efforts create a unified religious experience. She discusses De Decker’s Good
Friday specifically, noting that the nine sections of the poem align with a sequence of
events in the Passion cycle, beginning with the Last Supper and ending with a poem en-
titled “Christ Arisen.” She notes that the poem as a whole ‘unifies the Passion events with
the poet’s personal reaction to them’, noting its tone of measured sobriety and fervent
course of the five stanzas of the poem, De Decker undergoes a spiritual trans-
formation, moving from sorrow and fear as he first contemplates the scene to
courage and renewed faith as he anticipates Christ’s imminent resurrection.
This roughly aligns with Rembrandt’s sequence of states, which together sug-
gest steps in an evolving visual, emotional and spiritual response to the event.
This correlation between the poetic and visual meditations on the Passion that
De Decker and Rembrandt produced within just a few years of each other sug-
gests a mutual understanding of both the significance of the Passion events
and the direct, personal method of confronting and processing those events.
3 Vision in the Dark
Given this poetic meditational context, Rembrandt’s state changes in the

Entombment take on a significance that extends far beyond efforts to simply
renew a worn plate, or correct or improve details within the composition.
Nor do his changes simply constitute a reconsideration of the mood inside
the tomb, though that certainly does occur. The Entombment is also not a
formal experiment in chiaroscuro in any traditional sense, given how many
impressions essentially extinguish or obliterate all light, and with it the con-
trast necessary for focal concentration that had been a key feature of many of
Rembrandt’s previous ‘dark manner’ prints. In the Three Crosses, for instance,
Rembrandt maintains a strong ray of light illuminating the central figure of
Christ crucified even as he submerges the figures and topography around him
into utter darkness, more akin to the way the lantern light struggles against
the darkness in his 1651 Flight into Egypt: A Night Piece. The way Rembrandt
manipulates the plate of the Entombment is perhaps even more radical than
any of these earlier experiments. He deliberately obscures in later impressions
what had been clear and visible in the first iteration of the image. Rather than
working to progressively reveal or focus the image or to reinterpret its subject,
the drastically darkened and heavily inked impressions of Rembrandt’s second
and third states occlude the composition and its content almost completely. If
one did not already know the subject of this print, one would never be able to
determine it from the very dark later impressions where only isolated, dimmed
details emerge to the surface – a face here, the outline of a torso there.
Likewise, the comparison of Rembrandt’s Entombment print and De Decker’s
contemporary “Christ Buried” may help to explain the meditative potential of
simplicity which she compares to ‘Rembrandt’s later Biblical style’. See Ten Harmsel,
“Metaphysical Poets” 70–96, esp. 83–84.
486 Onuf
the print’s sequence of states, but it does not reckon with precisely the quality
that makes Rembrandt’s image so exceptional: its sudden and almost complete
plunge into darkness. There is no corollary in De Decker’s poem to the sort of
blacking out of vision that Rembrandt’s print achieves. De Decker never falls
silent in the course of his poem; on the contrary, he remonstrates with ever
greater intensity. For example, in third stanza he almost shouts: ‘His flesh and
bones, however, will not rot - / Oh, surely, surely not!’ Thus, from both a visual
and meditational perspective, Rembrandt’s radical and unprecedented deci-
sion to occlude the entire scene demands further interpretation. What is the
visual or spiritual function of removing the image from sight, of blinding the
viewer to the scene, of transforming clear exposition into occult secret?
In his 1926 essay, “The Return from Holland”, Paul Valéry’s reflected on
Rembrandt’s paintings and precisely this confounding aspect of their execution:
while consciousness is rediscovering and giving names to things which

are clearly defined, to the significant data of the picture, we are subjected
at the same time to the subterranean and, as it were, contingent action of
the darker patches and the areas of chiaroscuro. This geography of light
and shade is meaningless for the intellect … but the eye perceives what
the mind cannot define; and the artist, who is in the secret of this incom-
plete perception, can speculate on it, give to the ensemble of light and
shadow a countenance that serves some purpose, some hidden function
in the effect produced by the work.38
Valéry’s text provides two especially important insights; first, that the ‘darker
patches’ in Rembrandt’s work, which in the Entombment spread to encompass
its entire surface, affect our perception at a level below the threshold of our
conscious apprehension of ‘significant data’, namely those parts of the picture,
or those impressions of the print that are more clearly defined. In other words,
he suggests that a dark image or dark portion of an image can shape our expe-
rience, can work upon us, even when we cannot make out its contents clearly.
Second, Valéry suggests that Rembrandt uses that darkness purposefully for
‘some hidden function’ – it is a ‘secret’ through which he is able to shape visual
effects and meanings. The kind of encounter Valéry describes here is distinctly
phenomenological, determined by the viewer’s sustained engagement with
the image on levels beneath and beyond those of the strictly visible and deci-
pherable iconographic content.
38 Valéry P., Masters and Friends, trans. M. Turnell, Collected Works of Paul Valéry, Vol. 9
(Princeton: 1968) 82–3. The essay first appeared in La Revue de France, March 1, 1926.
Nicola Suthor takes up this phenomenological approach in her recent dis-

cussion of Rembrandt’s heavy impasto, which she describes as the ‘surplus
material residue’ of his paintings. She argues that this thick paint ‘generates
opacity and prevents a direct view of what is being represented through the
paint medium.’ She goes on to suggest that ‘the paint’s thickness, its material
weight, impedes the immediate discernment of the depiction, and thus pro-
longs perception by rendering the activity of identification cognizable.’ This
extension of the process of viewing and perceiving the picture can ‘challenge
and go beyond textual and pictorial tradition’ by offering the potential of ‘in-
sight into what lies beyond the visible.’39 While Suthor is primarily focused
on Rembrandt’s paintings, we can discern a similar process in Rembrandt’s
chiaroscuro prints, and in the Entombment especially. The build-up of ink on
the surface of the later impressions draws attention to itself in its conspicuous
thickness and opacity. In striving the uncover the figures and the scene within
the print, the viewer is forced to attend to the materiality of the physical print
itself in a way that slows or even thwarts discernment of the image it contains.
The very darkest late impressions hide precisely what the first state of the
print so clearly and legibly presents. We therefore struggle to reconcile what
we know to be in the picture, or what we know the picture to be, with what
we see – or don’t see – in these dark impressions, prolonging our engagement
with the image and its rich surface. It is as though Rembrandt seeks to replace
vision with blindness as he moves from the legible first state to the thick black
obscurity of the second.
Rembrandt regularly took up the theme of blindness in his paintings and
prints.40 He often depicted blind or blinded figures, especially the elderly Tobit,
and figures who appear unseeing, as in his Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of
Homer from 1653 [Fig. 13.16]. Lost in thought, Aristotle rests his right hand on
a bust of the blind Homer while his left fingers his golden chain. Rather than
attending to the bust with his gaze, Svetlana Alpers argues that Aristotle is here
‘taken up with touch’ as his means of apprehending the world. More generally,
she claims, Rembrandt investigated blindness ‘in order to heighten our sense
of the activity of perception’, foregrounding the alternative path to knowledge,
experience, and insight offered through the haptic sense of touch – ‘seeing’,
as she puts it, ‘done through the hands’.41 The almost impasto-like application
39 Suthor, Rembrandt’s Roughness 21, 13, 24.

40 See especially Held J., “Rembrandt and the Book of Tobit”, in Rembrandt Studies, revised
and expanded edition (Princeton: 1991), esp. 138–143.
41 Svetlana Alpers connects Rembrandt’s fascination with the themes of blindness and
touch to his rough impasto application of paint and the increasingly evident ‘touch’ of
his style. This certainly resonates with Rembrandt’s very physical engagement with his
488 Onuf
Figure 13.16 Rembrandt, Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer (1653). Oil on canvas,
1,435 × 1,365 mm.
New York, Metropolitan Museum, 61.198
of the ink in Rembrandt’s Entombment print, together with the textural rich-
ness that results from the drypoint line work, likewise invites a sort of haptic
engagement with its surface as a physical route to insight.
copper plates, especially in the bodily effort required to engrave and etch lines into the
surface of the metal. But Rembrandt does not work the plate of the Entombment so thor-
oughly solely to call attention to his own manual activity and artistic craft. See Alpers S.,
Rembrandt’s Enterprise: The Studio and the Market (Chicago: 1988), esp. chapter 1, “The
Master’s Touch” 18–25.
Alternatively, Margaret Carroll has suggested that Rembrandt’s painting of

Aristotle is one of several works done in this period that ‘probe the limits of
what human philosophy and imagination could attain. Perhaps Rembrandt
meant to demonstrate thereby his belief that the power of the visual art
lies less in its ability to unveil the divine, than to disclose to us our human
limitations.’42 Indeed, Rembrandt clearly represents Aristotle as a figure con-
fronting the limits of vision as a means to complete understanding.
If Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer represents this conundrum,
then Rembrandt’s Entombment print enacts it. Here, it is not only the figures
within the scene who can no longer see when confronted with the inscrutabil-
ity of the divine. We, the viewers, share in their blindness. Our ongoing efforts
to ‘see’ the image in the Entombment and to recognize or ‘read’ its contents
only brings into focus, as it were, our inability to see in the dark. Taken to
its extreme limits, the deep black of the print challenges the very efficacy of
sight. We are forced to acknowledge the limits of vision in the way Rembrandt
withholds his image from us. We are in a sense made blind where once we
could see.43 In forfeiting our sight, however, we experience the biblical event
of Christ’s burial on a completely different level – a more immediate, inter-
nal, intimate, and profound one. Ultimately, Rembrandt seems to suggest, the
real meaning of this event cannot actually be represented or seen at all. In the
darkest impressions we are invited to grapple with the significance of Christ’s
interment not through external vision or rational cognition but through inter-
nal contemplation and spiritual meditation. The print thus proffers a secret,
hidden, contingent knowledge that mere physical sight cannot supply.
In conclusion, we might best consider the Entombment as a palimpsest of
sorts; the original figural composition of the first state remains embedded in
the image, a secret hovering within and beneath the heavy layers of line work
and ink in later impressions and below the threshold of our visual perception.
Rembrandt employs and experiments with the very methods and materials of
printmaking to show us the Entombment but also to cast a shadow that reserves
42 Carroll, “Rembrandt’s Aristotle” 55. Earlier in this article, Carroll proposes that Aristotle’s
unfocused gaze ‘suggests that he may be passing, in a familiar meditational progression,
from an initial stage of sensory observation to one of intellectual deliberation, which
leads, in principles, to a final stage of spiritual insight’ (p. 38). This interpretation aligns
with her reading of the devotional sequence in Rembrandt’s religious prints of the same
period as well.
43 This relates of John 9:25 “I was blind but now I see.” In verse 9, John tells of the miracle of
Jesus healing the man born blind, and the Pharisees’ spiritual blindness in denying the
divinity of the miracle.
490 Onuf
it from us. In an important sense, this suggest the artist’s recognition that a
picture of a sacred event – a discursive narrative image – and indeed vision
itself can never truly render the mysteries of Christ’s life and passion know-
able. Having allowed the viewer to see the image, Rembrandt withdraws it,
occluding visual discernment in order to facilitate this deeper, more personal
and internal, more isolated and spiritual confrontation with a divine mystery.
Select Bibliography
Ackley C. (ed.), Printmaking in the Age of Rembrandt, exh. cat., Museum of Fine Arts
(Boston: 1981).
Alpers S., Rembrandt’s Enterprise: The Studio and the Market (Chicago: 1988).
Bikker J. – Weber G. – Wieseman M. – Hinterding E. (eds.), Rembrandt: The Late Works
(London: 2014).
Black P., with the assistance of Hermens E., Rembrandt and the Passion (Munich: 2012).
Carroll M., “Rembrandt as Meditational Printmaker,” Art Bulletin 63,4 (December 1981)
585–610.
Carroll M., “Rembrandt’s ‘Aristotle’: Exemplary Beholder,” Artibus et Historiae 5,10
(1984) 35–56.
De Decker Jeremias, Good Friday, trans. H. Ten Harmsel (Jordan Station, Ontario: 1984).
Fucci R., Rembrandt’s Changing Impressions, exh. cat., The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach
Art Gallery (New York: 2015).
Gersaint Edme-François, A catalogue and description of the etchings of Rembrandt
Van-Rhyn: with some account of his life. To which is added, a list of the best pieces
of this master for the use of those who would make a select collection of his works
(London: 1752).
Held J., “Rembrandt and the Book of Tobit,” in Rembrandt Studies, revised and expand-
ed edition (Princeton, NJ: 1991) 118–143.
Hinterding E. – Luijten G. – Royalton-Kisch M. (eds.), Rembrandt the Printmaker,
exh. cat. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; The British Museum, London (Chicago: 2000).
Hinterding E., Rembrandt as an Etcher: The Practice of Production and Distribution.
3 vols (Ouderkerk aan den Ijssel: 2006).
Hinterding E., Rembrandt Etchings from the Fritz Lugt Collection (Bussum – Paris: 2008).
Hinterding E.– Rutgers J. (eds.), The New Hollstein Dutch and Flemish Etchings,
Engravings and Woodcuts 1450–1700. Rembrandt. 5 vols. (Ouderkerk aan den IJssel:
2013).
Houbraken Arnold, De grote schouwburg: Schildersbiografieën, ed. J. Konst – M. Sellink
(Amsterdam: 1995).
Kantor J., Dürer’s Passions, exh. cat. Harvard University Art Museums, Boston, 2 vols.
(Cambridge, MA: 2000).
Marrow J., Passion Iconography in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages and
Early Renaissance: A Study of the Transformation of Sacred Metaphor into Descriptive
Narrative (Kortrijk: 1979).
McNamara S., Rembrandt’s Passion Series (Newcastle upon Tyne: 2015).
Perlove S. – Silver L., Rembrandt’s Faith: Church and Temple in the Dutch Golden Age
(University Park, Penn.: 2009).
Rembrandt: The Quest for Chiaroscuro, exh. cat. The National Museum of Western Art,
Tokyo and Nagoya City Art Museum (Tokyo: 2011).
Scallen C., “Rembrandt’s Etching ‘Saint Jerome Reading in an Italian Landscape.’ The
Question of Finish Reconsidered,” Delineavit et Sculpsit 8 (1992) 1–11.
Scallen C., “Rembrandt’s Nocturne Prints,” On Paper 1,3 (1997) 13–17.
Schwartz G., The Rembrandt Book (New York: 2006).
Stijnman A., Rembrandt’s Etchings and Japanese Echizen Paper, exh. cat., Rembrandt
House Museum (Amsterdam: 2015).
Suthor N., Rembrandt’s Roughness (Princeton, NJ: 2018).
Ten Harmsel H., “The Metaphysical Poets of Holland’s Golden Age,” in Holland (New
York: 1977) 70–96.
Valéry P., Masters and Friends, trans. Martin Turnell, Collected Works of Paul Valéry,
vol. 9 (Princeton, NJ: 1968).
van den Boogert B. – Broos B. – van Gelder R. – van der Veen J. (eds), Rembrandts schat-
kamer (Amsterdam and Zwolle: 1999).
Visser ‘t Hooft W., Rembrandt and the Gospel (London: 1957).
Wax C., The Mezzotint: The Development of an Art Form; History and Technique (New
York: 1990).
White C., Rembrandt as an Etcher: A Study of the Artist at Work, 2nd ed. (New Haven,
Conn.: 1999).
Wuestman G., “The mezzotint in Holland: ‘easily learned, neat and convenient’,”
Simiolus 23,1 (1995) 63–89.
chapter 14
Poussin and Richeome: Mystery and Figurability

Ralph Dekoninck
In 1960 Jacques Vanuxem, taking further some research by Anthony Blunt,1

published an article on the inspiration Poussin might have drawn from the
French Jesuit Louis Richeome’s Tableaux sacrés.2 This work of spirituality ap-
peared in 1601 and, as we read in the preface, was devoted to the discovery
‘in the law of nature and of Moses’ of prefigurations of the sacrament of the
Eucharist, ‘mystery of the law of grace’ and the ‘biggest mystery of our Religion’.3
Beyond the iconographical borrowings from the engravings that illustrate this
book, Vanuxem sees in Richeome and Poussin the same desire to unite Holy
Scripture to antiquity. The Jesuit, presented as a Christian Philostratus, would
have prepared the way for Blaise de Vigenère,4 whose Christian reinterpreta-
tion of the Eikones is said to have influenced this symbiosis between sacred
and profane antiquity. However, Vanuxem emphasises that Poussin takes from
the biblical episodes none of the allegorical meanings that Richeome makes
much of.5 We must also exclude, he says, all typological readings of a painting
such as the one of the Manna (Musée du Louvre, Paris). And he takes as proof
of this Le Brun’s commentary, which makes not the slightest reference to a hid-
den meaning or a disguised symbolism. This commentary, he adds – pursuing
a somewhat specious, or at the very least shaky, line of argument – must be au-
thoritative in interpreting Poussin’s thought, since before reporting it Félibien
does not fail to remind us that Le Brun has had the advantage of frequently
conversing with the ‘great man’.6 If this proof were not sufficient, Vanuxem
quotes the statements Poussin himself made in 1647 about the painting of The
1 Blunt A., “The Triclinium in Religious Art Since the Renaissance”, Journal of the Warburg
and Courtauld Institutes 2 (1939) 271–276; Vanuxem J., “Les Tableaux sacrés de Richeome et
l’iconographie de l’eucharistie chez Poussin”, in Chastel A. (ed.), Nicolas Poussin, 2 vols. (Paris:
1960), vol. 1, 151–165.
2 Richeome L., Tableaux Sacrez des Figures mystiques, du Tres Auguste Sacrifice et Sacrement de

l’Eucharistie (Paris, Laurent Sonnius: 1609 [1601]).

3 ‘Item pourquoy Dieu a voulu qu’en la loy de nature & de Moyse, fussent couchées les figures
des mysteres de la loy de grace’. Richeome, Tableaux Sacrez 2.
4 Philostrate, Les Images ou tableaux de platte peinture … mise en françois par Blaise de Vigenère,
avec des argumens et annotations sur chacun d’iceux (Paris, N. Chesneau: 1578).
5 Vanuxem, “Les Tableaux sacrés” 157.
6 Vanuxem, “Les Tableaux sacrés” 158.

Poussin and Richeome: Mystery and Figurability 493
Sacrament of Penance (Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh): ‘I will give you

no preparatory remarks about it, for the subject is represented in such a way
that it seems to me it has no need of an interpreter, provided one has read the
Gospels’.7 This recalls the famous words he also addressed to Chantelou, eight
years before, regarding the Manna painting: ‘Read history and the painting to
learn if each thing is appropriate to the subject’.8
Must we therefore conclude with Vanuxem that the only thing that counts
in Poussin’s view is the historical meaning, the ancient truth of the biblical
story, hence excluding any other kind of exegesis? This conclusion is of course
somewhat hasty since the recommendation to read the Gospels certainly does
not mean that one must stick to the historical meaning alone. We could here
refer to Bernini’s statement on the painting of the Extreme Unction (Scottish
National Gallery, Edinburgh) from the same series of the Sacrements, a state-
ment reported by Chantelou: ‘it makes the same effect than that of a beautiful
predication that we listen to with great attention and from which we go with-
out saying anything […] but the effect is felt inside’.9 So, according to Bernini,
the muta praedicatio reveals less a mystery to be understood than a mystery to
be felt inside. This does not mean that the effect is simply emotional or mean-
ingless. On the contrary, it gives the profound meaning of the mystery, which
is nevertheless anchored in the historical meaning. This meaning is indeed the
basis of the other meanings, as Richeome himself prudently recalls, aware of
the dangers of a baseless allegorical reading. Abandoning the literal amounts
to losing sight of the historical reality of the facts through an extreme ‘spiritu-
alising’ of biblical figures:
If someone wished so much to spiritualise these stories, that he denied

their literal truth, and said, that the earthy Paradise is none other than
the Church, the Red Sea, Baptism, Samson’s foxes, heretics, Goliath the
enemy of the human race; David, Jesus Christ, and that for all the rest
there was nothing at all, truly he would make a spiritual meaning, but
7 ‘Je ne vous ferai là dessus aucun prologue car le subiec est représenté en manière qu’il me
semble qu’il n’a pas besoin d’interprête pourveu seullement que l’on aye leu l’evangile’. Letter
to Chantelou, 3 June 1647, in Poussin N., Correspondance, ed. C. Jouanny (Paris: 1911) 356.
8 ‘Lisés l’istoire et le tableau, afin de cognoistre si chaque chose est appropriée au subjet’. Letter
to Chantelou, 28 April 1639, in Poussin, Correspondance 21.
9 ‘A la fin il [Bernin] s’est relevé en disant que cela faisait le même [effet] qu’une belle prédica-
tion qu’on écoute avec une attention fort grande et dont on sort sans rien dire, […] mais que
l’effet s’en ressent au-dedans’. Fréart de Chantelou P., Journal de voyage du Cavalier Bernin en
France, ed. M. Stanic (Paris: 2001) 89.
494 Dekoninck
he would overturn the basis of the story and would commit a sacrilege
against the Scriptures.10
As we see, an allegorical exegesis that is not based on the literal meaning is ex-
posed to the danger of making a fable out of the Bible story. Conversely, holding
to the historical meaning alone amounts to losing sight of the plan of divine
Providence. One must not therefore choose between the letter and the spirit
but keep them closely linked, a link guaranteed by God himself. Richeome ex-
pressly uses the term “economy” to give an account of this link,11 a link, as we
shall see, that is the particularity of the mystical figure in the sense he defines
it: God grants, he writes, ‘the past with present, and the present with the past’,
he joins ‘the figure to the body, and the body to the figure, the shadow to the
truth, and the truth to the shadow’.12 We should give some thought to this re-
versibility, which proves that the shadow counts as much as the truth, the body
as much as the figure, the letter as much as the spirit.
This is precisely what Poussin highlights in the frontispiece of the Biblia
sacra of 1642 [Fig. 14.1].13 In the painter’s own words, ‘The winged figure repre-
sents History […] the other veiled figure represents prophecy […] the Sphinx
represents none other than the obscurity of enigmatic things. The one in the
middle represents the Eternal Father, author and mover [moteur] of all good
things’.14 Although the two personifications ignore his presence, it is clearly
10 ‘Si quelqu’un vouloit tellement spiritualiser ces histoires, qu’il en niast la verité literale,
& dict, que le Paradis terrestre n’est autre chose que l’Eglise, la mer Rouge, le Baptesme,
les renards de Samson, les herétiques, Goliath l’ennemy du genre humain, David,
Iesus-Christ, & que du reste il n’en a esté rien du tout, il feroit un sens spirituel voirement,
mais il renverseroit le fonds de l’histoire, & commetteroit un sacrilège contre l’Escriture’.
Richeome, Tableaux Sacrez 403.
11 On the importance of this concept in the Byzantine image theology, see Mondzain M.-J.,
Image, icône, économie: les sources byzantines de l’imaginaire contemporain (Paris: 1996).
See also for a broader reflexion: Alloa E. – Falk F. (eds.), BildÖkonomie: Haushalten mit
Sichtbarkeiten (Munich: 2013).
12 ‘Dieu s’est divinement faict paroistre Dieu, en ceste œconomie, & rapport des choses pas-
sees aux futures. […] Qui donc eust sçeu tirer ces traicts si divins […]? Et qui eust peu
accorder le passé avec present, & le présent avec passé, qui eust peu joindre la figure au
corps, & le corps à la figure, l’ombre à la verité, & la verité à l’ombre, & avec une si belle
symmétrie, parfaire l’ouvrage de point en point, selon le vieil dessein, sinon celuy qui peut
tout ce qu’il veut’. Richeome, Tableaux Sacrez 12–14.
13 See Szanto M., “Biblia Sacra”, in Milovanovic N. – Szanto M. (eds.), Poussin et Dieu (Paris:
2015) 176–179.
14 ‘[…] la figure ailée représente l’Histoire […], l’autre figure voilée représente la prophé-
tie […]. Le Sphinx qui est dessus ne représente autre que l’obscurité des choses énigma-
tiques. Celle qui est au milieu représente le père Éternel auteur et moteur de toutes les
choses bonnes’. Letter to Chantelou, 3 August 1641. Poussin, Correspondance 87. Here is
Figure 14.1 Claude Mellan after Nicolas Poussin, Frontispiece of the Biblia Sacra
(Paris, Imprimerie Royale, 1642), burin, 41,5 × 26,2 cm
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, bibliothèque de
l’Arsenal
496 Dekoninck
this one that presides over the union of History and Prophecy, or could we say
Mystery, in the sense of something that can only be revealed by Grace.
With the term “economy,” of which the moteur is God himself, there is thus at
play a certain kind of thinking about and by the figures employed by Richeome
and that, much more so than simple and occasional borrowings from his writ-
ings or from his illustrators, seems to be characteristic also of Poussin’s paint-
ing, or rather seems to be at work in it. The operator of this play – in the double
meaning of what displaces and of what connects – is the figura. This is to be
understood, as I will attempt to show, as simultaneously both sign and process,
the process of figurability. To use Richeome’s terms, the figure is by nature re-
lational, as is the mystery: it makes the link between the past and the present,
between the body and the soul, between the appearance and the truth.
Before presenting this process of figurability in one of Poussin’s paintings,
The Flight into Egypt of the Fine Arts Museum in Lyon, I would first like to
outline Richeome’s development of this thinking about/by the figure in order
to show how illuminating it can be in the context of the analysis of Poussin’s
works.15 In Richeome’s typology of figures, I will just highlight the third type,
which concerns directly the process of figurability: it is what Richeome calls
‘mystical figures’, with the adjective “mystical” to be understood in its etymo-
logical sense of what is hidden and partakes of the mysterious. It’s no longer
a question here of distinction in terms of medium, as in the two other types
of figures (the mute ones and the speaking ones, which are images and texts),
but of a process of figurability that works in/through these two media or even
operates at their intersection. Here is the definition Richeome supplies: ‘The
third kind of figure is a thing or an action established in order to represent a
mystery’.16 Mystical figures thus reference the world not of plastic or linguis-
tic representations but that of actions and things instituted by God himself
the description by Giovanni-Pietro Bellori in Le Vite de pittori, scultori et architetti mod-

erni (Roma, per il success. al Mascardi: 1672) 430: ‘Figurò un’Angelo, che scrive sopra
il ginocchio, e tiene lo stilo sopra il foglio, guardando in dietro, cioè al tempo passato.
Allato l’Angelo, vi è la Religione in nobil manto con la faccia velata, tenendo in mano una
sfinge, che sono gli oscuri misteri della Sapienza, e delle cose sacre; ma in alta sfera di luce
risplende il Padre Eterno, con le braccia aperte, illuminando con la sede e con la verità le
menti humani’.
15 See Siguret F., “La triple peinture des Tableaux sacrés du Père Richeome”, in Martel J. –
Melançon B. (eds.), Inventaire, lecture, invention: Mélanges de critique et d’histoire littérai-
res offerts à Bernard Beugnot (Montréal: 1999) 195–208; Guiderdoni A., “‘Ce que c’est que
la figure’ selon Louis Richeome: De la figure à la figurabilité au XVIIe siècle”, in Marin L. –
Baicoianu A. (eds.), Nouveaux régimes de la figure (Bucharest: 2018) 29–41.
16 ‘La troisiesme sorte de figures est une chose ou une action instituee pour representer un
mystere’. Richeome, Tableaux Sacrez 5.
in order to express a mysterious truth. As the continuation of the extract

makes clear,17 we are here within the field of what medieval exegesis called
allegoria in factis, each biblical episode being underpinned by a typological
meaning, as is clearly the case with the examples quoted by Richeome: the
manna as figure of the Eucharist, or the circumcision as figure of the baptism.
To use the Augustinian terminology,18 we may speak of signa translata, a cat-
egory of signs that Augustine distinguishes from signa naturalia (such as a
footprint) and from signa propria. While these latter correspond to the signs
created by man that signify by convention, ‘translated signs’ are those given by
God, signs where the quality of the thing matters as much as that of the sign.
It was in reference to this last category of translated signs that all medieval
and, to a certain extent, Renaissance symbolism was to think of the world of
so-called “figured images”, imagines figuratae. Of course, the adjective “figured”
must not be understood as designating the visual nature of the image, that of
being figurative, but the hermeneutic process that it both unleashes and is the
product of. The idea of signa translata or of imagines translatae, a synonym
of figuratae, underlines the importance of the displacement of meaning that
characterises the work of invention and even more, in a biblical context, of
the interpretation of the image. Thus since the Middle Ages there had existed
a theologia symbolica or translata, also called mystica or figurata, that several
seventeenth-century Jesuits, such as Jacob Masen and Maximilian van der
Sandt, alias Sandaeus, continued to theorise.19 Sandaeus subdivided this theol-
ogy into in figurationem rei and in translationem verbi. The first category refers
to all corporeal, that is to say, visible, symbols such as the manna as figure of
the Eucharist; the second category relates to spiritual, that is to say, invisible,
symbols such as the drunkenness of God.20
Now, throughout the seventeenth century we witness a constant transfer
between these categories of figures, and even a slippage from the exegetical
17 ‘[S]i c’est un mystere civil ou profane, c’est une figure civile ou profane, comme estoient les
hieroglifes des vieux Egyptiens, consistans en certaines figures de bestes ou d’instrumens,
mises pour signifier quelque chose cachee; ainsi un Crocodile estoit la figure d’un trais-
tre, l’aigle la figure de l’ame. Si c’est mystere de religion, c’est une figure sacree. Ainsi la
manne estoit une sacree peinture, non de couleurs ou de paroles, mais de signification.
Ainsi la Circoncision estoit une action signifiant & figurant le Baptesme. Ceste figure est
autrement nommee Allegorie, peinture & exposition mystique, contenant en soy un sens
spirituel, cogneu aux gens spirituels, & caché aux grossiers’. Richeome, Tableaux Sacrez 5.
18 Augustin, De Doctrina Christiana, II, I, 2; De Genesi ad litteram, XII, VI, 15.
19 Masen Jacob, Speculum imaginum veritatis occultae (Cologne, J.A. Kinckius: 1650);

Van der Sandt Maximilian, Theologia symbolica, ex omni antiquitate sacra ac profana
(Munich, J.T. Schönwetter: 1626).
20 Van der Sandt, Theologia symbolica 12.

498 Dekoninck
figure towards the rhetorical figure, whose ultimate goal is to persuade at

the same time as pleasing. This can clearly be seen in Masen, for whom ‘the
image, like discourse, is sometimes literal, sometimes metaphorical or figured
(alia propria alia translata seu figurata)’,21 this last category now relating only
to the art of persuasion. This art using different genres of humanist symbol-
ism is rooted in the art of hieroglyphics, an art that Richeome takes for an ex-
ample of profane mystical figures, while others at the same period continued
to see in them a sacred language that was testimony of the prisca theologia.
For Richeome, these signs are no longer divinely inspired but humanly moti-
vated. Thus, for example, ‘certain figures of beasts [are] given to signify some-
thing hidden’,22 like the eagle that becomes the figure of the soul. As we can
see, we have left the field of the allegoria in factis – that is to say, the field of
sacred historical figures – to enter the field of the allegoria in verbis, the field
of profane allegorical figures. Now these two fields continued to be placed,
by Richeome and by many other authors at the time, under the sign of mys-
tery, proof of the survival of a certain syncretism that did not fail to inspire
Poussin himself.
In his Discours sur les images, which predates by a dozen years or so his
Tableaux sacrez, Richeome explicitly used the adjective “mystically” to desig-
nate a specific way to paint in order to reveal or sound mysteries no longer but
to create them:
The third [way] is when one paints something, not in its naïf resemblance,
as in the first way [to paint naturally], nor in imitation of what had hap-
pened and was related by history, as in the second [to paint historically];
but through mystical figures wisely found, to signify some qualities of the
thing; although such figures cannot be found in it really, but only by anal-
ogy and similarity.23
21 Masen, Speculum imaginum, ‘Synopsis’.

22 Richeome, Tableaux Sacrez 5.

23 ‘La troisieme est quand on peinct quelque chose, non en sa naif ressemblance, comme en
la premiere facon, ny à l’imitation de ce qui sera advenu & raconté par l’histoire, comme
en la seconde; mais par figures mystiques sagement controuvées, pour signifier quelques
qualitez de la chose; bien que telles figures ne se trouvent en elle realment, mais seule-
ment par analogie & semblance’. Richeome L., Trois discours pour la religion catholique:
des miracles, des saincts et des images (Bordeaux, S. Millange: 1597) 412.
May we now apply this thinking about figures to the thinking through fig-
ures implemented by Poussin, ‘la pensée des figures’ as he called it himself?24
Or, more precisely, and still using Richeome’s terms, may we suggest that
Poussin paints conjointly ‘naturally’, ‘historically’, and ‘mystically’? No one po-
sition excludes the two others, just as the literal does not kill the spirit or the
symbolic does not eclipse the literal, since the figure operates precisely at the
articulation of these dimensions, as the frontispiece of the Biblia sacra shows,
or even demonstrates [Fig. 14.1]. More specifically, we will need to show how
the presence of the signa propria or allegoria in verbis – which I understand
here in the sense of symbolic invention born of artistic/poetic ingenuity – re-
veals the allegoria in factis or signa translata, consubstantial with the biblical
events that are represented. This will allow us to answer the question another
Jesuit, Claude-François Ménestrier, asked himself a few years after Poussin:
if I see a painting of Moses exposed on the waters, of Job lying on a dung

heap, of a Virgin holding the infant Jesus, of the Transfiguration […], how
can I recognise that it is an enigma, there being nothing enigmatic in it,
and nothing which is not proper to represent a story, a sacred mystery,
a fable, or an event in history, as we have been accustomed to represent
them.25
Let us now explore the way Poussin pictorially gives an account of the mysteri-
ous, be it the object or the means of the quest. The example chosen is the Flight
into Egypt [Fig. 14.2], one of the last paintings of the French painter’s career
(1657–58). It is of great interest not because of its trials and tribulations and
the debates over its attribution,26 but rather because it offers a fine example
of the exploitation of the mystical figure and of the way of painting mystically,
so far as to show in the painting a certain working of figurability.27 Several au-
24 Letter to Chantelou, 3 August 1641, in Poussin, Correspondance 87. This expression is re-
lated to the frontispiece of the Biblia Sacra.
25 ‘Si je vois un Tableau de Moïse exposé sur les eaux, de Job couché sur un fumier, d’une
Vierge qui tient un Enfant Jesus, de la Transfiguration […], comment puis-je reconnoître
que c’est une Enigme, n’y aïant rien d’énigmatique, & qui ne soit propre à representer
[…] un mystere sacré […]’. Ménestrier Claude-François, La Philosophie des images énig-
matiques (Lyon, H. Baritel: 1694) 160.
26 See Lahire B., Ceci n’est pas qu’un tableau: Essai sur l’art, la domination, la magie et le sacré
(Paris: 2015).
27 For a recent state of the art and bibliography, see Milovanovic N., “La Fuite en
Égypte”, in Milovanovic N. – Szanto M. (eds.), Poussin et Dieu (Paris: 2015) 384–386;
Dubois-Brinkmann I. and Laveissière S. (eds.), Nicolas Poussin: La Fuite en Égypte, 1657
(Paris: 2010).
500 Dekoninck
Figure 14.2 Nicolas Poussin, Flight into Egypt, ca. 1657–1658, oil on canvas, 97 × 133 cm
Lyon, Musée des Beaux-Arts
thors have in fact noted that it seems to be ‘a more symbolic than historical
representation’.28 For my part, I would like to put forward the idea that if the
theme of the Flight into Egypt clearly fascinated Poussin, it is because it is lo-
cated precisely at the point of articulation between different times and spaces.
As a tale of translatio, it is potentially rich in imagines translatae or figuratae.
To return to Ménestrier’s question: if I see a Flight into Egypt, how can
I recognise the mystery through the history? In leaving to one side ‘natu-
ral painting’ – even if we must acknowledge that the landscape of the flight
could be interpreted mystically29 – we must first pause at ‘historical painting’.
If we read the history and the painting together, as Poussin invites us, we are
forced to recognise that the only passage in the Gospels (Matthew 2:13–15) is
very imprecise on the circumstances of the journey. We should emphasise,
however, that it is clearly placed under the sign of prophecy, that of Hosea 11:1:
28 Dubois-Brinkmann I., “La Fuite en Égypte de Nicolas Poussin: sources et interprétations”,

in Dubois-Brinkmann and Laveissière, Nicolas Poussin 149.
29 See Unglaub J.W., Poussin’s Sacrament of Ordination: History, Faith, and the Sacred
Landscape (New Haven – London: 2013).
‘When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt’. We
know that the iconographical tradition drew its inspiration above all from the
apocrypha – mainly from Pseudo-Matthew – formed from the start by typologi-
cal allusions, but also by a series of narrative details foregrounding the early
miracles of Christ.30
What then remains of this tradition in the Lyon painting? And what free-
dom does Poussin give himself, or how does he reinvent it? It is easy to see in
the painting the elements that constitute the nucleus of the Gospel story, at
first sight free of any apocryphal accretions: the Holy Family on their journey,
with that special feature that has been emphasised many times, namely, the
direction of the gazes, with the Virgin turned to the left, Christ facing us, the
focal point of the composition, and Joseph staring at the finger of the angel
who is pointing the way to follow to the right.31 As has also already been noted,
these multidirectional gazes very clearly enter into a meditation on the spatio-
temporal articulation between past, present, and future. Whether it’s the Flight
(Worcester Art Museum), the Rest (St Petersburg, Hermitage museum), or the
Return (London, Dulwich Picture Gallery), Poussin explores different dimen-
sions of this journey located between two times, that of the Law and that of
Grace, but also between two worlds, Egypt and Judea.
But which are the elements of the painting that make it possible to reveal
the mystical meaning of the scene, or at the very least to suggest that there re-
ally is a mystical meaning? To answer this question, we must be attentive to the
discreet symbolic markers that contribute to metamorphose the ‘dumb figure’
(the painting itself) and ‘speaking figure’ (the Gospel) into a mystical figure.
The symbolic element embedded in the most obvious way and which there-
fore inevitably attracts the gaze is the motif of the eagle bringing down the
snake. This is a mystical figure of the hieroglyphic type, inserted like a herme-
neutic key whose message is pretty clear: the Good slaying the Evil.32 But with
30 See Camille M., The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art (Cambridge:
1989) 1–9; Valensi L., La Fuite en Égypte: Histoires d’Orient et d’Occident. Essai d’histoire
comparée (Paris: 2002); Falkenburg R., Joachim Patinir: Landscape as an Image of the
Pilgrimage of Life (Amsterdam – Philadelphia: 1988); Dekoninck R., “Falling Idols, Rising
Icons: Bruegel’s Flight into Egypt and the Embeddedness of Sacred Images in Nature”, in
Kaschek B. – Müller J. – Buskirk J. (eds.), Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Religion (Leiden –
Boston: 2018) 226–244. Boespflug F. – Fogliadini E., La Fuite en Egypte dans l’art d’Orident
et d’Occident (Paris: 2018).
31 The presence of the angel recalls Joseph’s dream vision, thus conferring on the painting a
visionary dimension, even if we should note that the presence of the angel became in the
seventeenth century almost a constitutive element of Flights into Egypt.
32 Wittkower R., “Eagle and Serpent: A Study in the Migration of Symbols”, Journal of the
Warburg Institute 2 (1939) 293–325; Blunt A., Nicolas Poussin (Washington, DC: 1967)
502 Dekoninck
the exception of this sort of emblem, the other elements impose no obvious
reading. On the contrary, they are notable for their allusive and elusive nature,
placed as they are under the sign of the mysterious veil. Thus the portico may
symbolise the passage between the two worlds and the two times, but in an
indirect fashion since one can easily see that the road passes by the side and
not through what, moreover, is not a door, as is proved by the continued base.
Other elements may constitute allusions to what is not visible but which evoke
other moments in the history of this journey: thus the lance, a sort of hapax in
the iconography of the Flight into Egypt, may evoke the dangers related in the
Arabic Infancy Gospel. The same holds true for the bending tree, which appears
precisely in front of the aedicule: it could be interpreted as a fairly convoluted
allusion to the tree that bends as the Holy Family passes. But the narrative
meaning is completed by a figural one, the meaning that consists in marking
the bifurcation between two spaces-times.
May we say the same of the reclining man laying precisely in the same
place and whose identity (shepherd, traveller, peasant, thief …) and, above
all, meaning still remain obscure, interpreters hesitating between allusion to
the apocrypha or ‘simple chance addition with which the old painter liked to
enrich his compositions and that he took pains to explain to amateurs, know-
ing that probably the uninformed viewer would not pay attention or would
interpret them incorrectly’.33 Another hypothesis that seems rather attractive
consists in placing the scene under the sign of dream or of vision. This is what
Michel Weemans has maintained for another painting of the Flight into Egypt
(Barcelona, Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya) [Fig. 14.3], the one created by
Herri met de Bles a century earlier and in which there appears this same figure,
but here central, of the reclining man. This vision, as he shows, is linked to that
of the choice between two paths.34 Moreover, the interest of this comparison is
that it allows to draw attention to the rocky feature in the Lyon painting that is
worthy of as much attention as the famous rocky massif of The Manna’s paint-
ing. Its singular nature, clearly separating the before and the after by cutting the
painting in two diagonally, has not been sufficiently highlighted. Furthermore,
it is on this rocky promontory that the eagle with serpent pointedly appears.
In the De Bles painting, the rock assumes a clearly anthropomorphic aspect,
symbolising the fallen idol that has disappeared from the scene, and which at
184. This iconographical clue could orientate the interpretation towards the return from
Egypt: the snakes could indeed symbolize the death of Herod. This hesitation seems to
me characteristic of a kind of indeterminacy intended by Poussin.
33 Thuillier J., Nicolas Poussin (Paris: 2001).
34 Weemans M., Herri Met de Bles: Les ruses du paysage au temps de Bruegel et d’Erasme
(Paris: 2013) 249–267.
Figure 14.3 Herri met de Bles, Flight into Egypt, oil on panel, 24,5 × 33 cm
Barcelona, Museu Nacional d’Arte de Catalunya
this time took the form of a small sculpture falling from its pedestal. Could we
recognize something similar in the Lyon painting? With some imagination we
can nearly recognize a face.
But let this issue of the double image remain open, and let’s go back to the
typological issue with one of the prefigurations of the Flight into Egypt that
remained well known in the seventeenth century: alongside Moses breaking
Pharaoh’s crown,35 the Biblia pauperum and the Speculum humanae salvationis
place Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream, as it is recounted in the Book of Daniel. Invited
to interpret the King of Babylon’s dream, Daniel sees in the fall of the rock and
the subsequent destruction of the statue the premonition of the coming of
the kingdom of God. This typological link is also found in the Meditations
on the Life of Christ, by Ludolph of Saxony, a work that remained a classic
35 This episode has been painted by Poussin (Paris, Musée du Louvre), a painting that has
nearly the same dimensions (99 × 142 cm) as the Lyon painting. The eagle bringing down
the snake can be interpreted as a typological allusion to Moses breaking Pharaoh’s crown.
504 Dekoninck
until the seventeenth century, as proved by its multiple editions.36 Here is the
Christic interpretation Ludolph of Saxony offers of the fall of the idol, after
having mentioned the prefiguration of Moses breaking Pharaoh’s crown:
This ruin of the idols was figured by the statue that King Nebuchadnezzar
saw in a dream: a stone detaches itself from the mountain and crashes
into the feet of this statue, image or idol; it breaks the statue, reduces it
to dust, and then itself becomes a great mountain. This stone is the fig-
ure of Jesus Christ; He is torn from the mountain without aid of human
arm, that is to say that He is born of Mary without the intervention of
man. This stone, that is, Jesus Christ, smashes all the idols in Egypt, what-
ever they are made of. It is then slowly transformed into a great moun-
tain; for the religion of Christ is raised up on the ruins of idolatry, and
spreads throughout the whole world; and Jesus Christ becomes a moun-
tain so great that He fills the heaven and the earth with His immeasurable
greatness.37
36 For an edition contemporaneous to the Lyon painting, see Ludolph of Saxony,

Vita D. N. Jesu Christi, e sacris quatuor Evangeliorum sanctorumque Patrum fontibus …
derivate (Lyon, J. Caffin – F. Plaignard: 1641). Many passages from the French transla-
tion seem to indicate that Poussin could have drawn a part of his inspiration in this text,
as for example in the treatment of the relationships between the Virgin and Child: ‘re-
garde celuy qui est par dessus toutes creatures pendant au col de sa mere, en l’accollant
de ses petits bras […]. Et le portait sa douce mere, tendre et delicate pucelle, et le bon
sainct homme Ioseph alloit devant par la voye du bois qui estoit obscure, ombreuse et
inhabitable’. Ludolph of Saxony, La vie de Jesus Christ, nostre sauveur (Paris, G. de la Nouë:
1599) 216.
37 ‘Hanc ruinam idolorum, illa statua praetendebat, quam rex Nabuchodonosor in somno
videbat. De monte autem sine manibus quidam lapis est abscisus, & in pedes ilius stat-
uae, seu imaginis & idoli, est illisus. Contriuitque eam, & in pulverem redegit, & postea
idem lapis in montem magnum excreuit. Lapis iste significat Christum, qui abscisus est
de monte sine minibus, quia natus de Maria sine tactibus maritalibus. Lapis iste, scili-
cet Christus, contriuit in Aegypto omnia idola, de quacunque erant materia. Et confracta
statua, lapis ille in montem magnum excreuit, quia destructa idololatria, fides Christi per
totum mundum inoleuit. Et Christus creuit in montem talem & tantum, quod summa
immensitate repleuit tam caelum quam mundum’. Ludolph of Saxony, Vita Iesu Christi
e quatuor evangeliis et scriptoribus orthodoxis concinnata (Antwerp, J. Keerbergen: 1618)
68. ‘Cest ruine & destruction des idoles fut figuree en la statuë que Nabuchodonozor veit
en dormant. Il luy sembloit qu’il voyoit une statue, & que d’une montagne sans maillet,
sans marteau & sans mains, fust tiree une pierre, laquelle descendit de force iusques aux
pieds de la statuë & la rompit & froissa & mist en poudre, & la pierre apres creut en une
grande montagne. Ceste pierre signifie Iesus Christ qui a esté tiré de la montagne, c’est
de la vierge née, sans mains, c’est sans aucuns embrassemens d’homme, ne sensualité: &
rompit & froissa toutes les idoles d’Egypte, de quelque matiere qu’elles fussent, & creut en
une grande montagne. Car apres que l’idolatrie fust destruicte, la foy de Iesus Christ a esté
Figure 14.4 Francesco Bartoli, Antique Landscape, pen, watercolour, coloured pencil
WINDSOR, Eton College Library
The rocky relief in Poussin’s painting may be understood as a figura Christi

triumphing over all the rock carved by impious hands. For the fall of the
idols is nothing less than one of the shock waves following the end of the old
world. This interpretation, without wishing to overlay it on the Lyon paint-
ing, allows one at least to question the absence of a much-expected figure
in all representations of the Flight into Egypt: the idol. It’s true that this
motif tended to disappear in the seventeenth century, although until then
it had been one of the distinctive features of the theme, enabling the op-
position of the fall of the idol to the coming of the true Image, an important
moment of transition from one world to another. Can we, however, speak
of a figure in the negative? We expect it, but it isn’t there. We are tempted
to look for it. Could we expect it on the top of the mountain, on this kind
of promontory? Or could its placement have been the double-columned
aedicule, as it is shown in one of the probable visual sources of the motif
for Poussin, the ancient landscape drawn by Francesco Bartoli (Windsor,
Eton College Library) [Fig. 14.4]? What clearly appears is that this architec-
ture responds to the rock so as to frame the central group, whose sculptural
dimension has been noted on several occasions. To quote Jacques Thuillier:
‘Their gestures calm down, their silhouettes become still, weighed down by
fort augmentee. Et encores est creu si grand et si haut, que sa grandeur il a remply le ciel
& la terre’. Ludolph of Saxony, La vie de Jesus Christ 163.
506 Dekoninck
thick veils, their faces are hidden or become impassive masks: they express
themselves now through the tragic weight of statues’.38 Can we thus speak
of a kind of transfer of an absent idolatrous figure to figures who are living,
but who seem to be outside time, to have become statues themselves? It’s
here that we can speak of a process of figurability that invites us to take
into consideration the presence-absence of sculpture in the whole work of
Poussin: many of these paintings feature pedestals or niches that frame an
absence, transferring this sculptural value to the living figures themselves.
I would like now to return to Ménestrier’s question, adapted to the Lyon paint-
ing: if I see a Flight into Egypt, how can I recognise that it is an enigma, there
being nothing in it which is enigmatic and which is not fitting to represent a
sacred mystery? So as to clarify his answer, let’s recall his concept of the “enig-
matic”, a concept that does not fail to resonate with the visual creation of the
enigmatic in Poussin. Ménestrier writes that
all that is in itself obscure, impenetrable, mysterious, above our under-

standing, cannot be the matter of Enigmas: like Prophecies, Oracles, the
Mysteries of our Religion, abstruse questions of Theology, and which are
certainly enigmatic questions, but which are not Enigmas, except insofar
as they are impenetrable. This is why I have put in my definition inge-
nious mystery, to make it understood that it is the spirit that makes mys-
tery where there is none, while the other does not depend on the spirit
but lies in the very nature of the thing.39
Ménestrier distinguishes two dimensions that are still coextensive in Poussin’s

painting: what I would call the ontological mystery and, on the other hand, the
ingenious mystery, the former being mysterious in itself while the latter creates
mystery. This links to the old division between allegoria in factis and allegoria
in verbis, two modalities of allegorical exegesis that function rather in con-
joined fashion in Poussin, who thus unites two universes that have a tendency
38 Thuillier, Nicolas Poussin 274.

39 ‘[T]out ce qui de soi-même est obscur, impenetrable, misterieux, au-dessus de nos con-
noissances, ne peut être matiere des Enigmes: comme les Prophéties, les Oracles, les
Mysteres de nôtre Religion, les questions abstruses de Theologie, &c qui sont bien ques-
tions énigmatiques, mais qui ne sont pas Enigmes, si ce n’est en tant qu’elles sont im-
penetrables. C’est pour cela que j’ai mis dans la définition mystere ingenieux, pour faire
entendre que c’est l’esprit qui fait du mystere où il n’y en a pas, au lieu que l’autre ne
dépend pas de l’esprit, mais se tient du côté de la nature même de la chose’. Ménestrier,
La Philosophie des images énigmatiques 106–107.
to pull apart in the seventeenth century. The proof of this is Ménestrier’s solu-
tion to the question posed earlier:
But you will say to me that one is sometimes obliged to make use of
Paintings which are not made expressly for Enigmas, and on which we
do not want to allow the addition of Symbols that would disfigure these
Historical subjects painted by able Painters; to which I reply that one may
add Enigmatic Symbols with chalk, or in distemper on oil Paintings, be-
cause afterwards we need only wash the Painting in those places with
clean water and all these Symbols are erased.40
As we see, symbols are added to the representation and become these ‘signs
through which we can understand that a painting is enigmatic’.41 There is, of
course, nothing of the kind in Poussin, even if certain details clearly play the
role of a key that is both enigmatic and hermeneutic, such as the eagle catch-
ing the serpent in the Lyon Flight into Egypt.
It is interesting to note that one of the copies of this painting can be found
on the ceiling of the church of Sainte-Marie-d’en-Haut, in Grenoble [Fig. 14.5].
This is the church of the convent of the Visitandines, whose iconographic pro-
gramme was conceived by Ménestrier himself and carried out by the Grenoble
painter Toussaint Largeot on the occasion of the celebration of the canonisation
of Saint Francis de Sales in 1665, thus seven years after the Lyon painting.42
This medallion is framed by a series of allegories (Charity and Hope) and em-
blems (the vase of the miracle), the details of whose meaning I will not go into
here. But we can say that they contribute to offering a visual exegesis of the
Flight into Egypt so as to make clear the meaning of this mystery, symbolising
the Visitandines’ retirement. The gloss now comes from the margins of the rep-
resentation, a symptom of this visual and hermeneutic disentanglement of the
40 ‘Mais on me dira que l’on est quelquefois obligé de se servir de Tableaux qui ne sont pas
faits expressement pour des Enigmes, & sur lesquels on ne veut pas permettre que l’on
ajoute des Symboles qui défigureroient ces sujets d’Histoire peints par d’habiles Peintres;
à quoi je répons que l’on peut y faire ajouter les Symboles Enigmatiques avec de la craye,
ou en detrempe sur des Tableaux à l’huile, parce qu’apres il ne faut que laver le Tableau en
ces endroits avec de l’eau claire & tous ces Symboles s’éfacent’. Ménestrier, La Philosophie
des images énigmatiques 160–161.
41 Ménestrier, La Philosophie des images énigmatiques 160–161.

42 Sabatier G., “Du dessein au décor. Les peintures de la chapelle de Sainte-Marie-d’en-haut

à Grenoble”, in Sabatier G. (ed.), Claude-François Ménestrier, les jésuites et le monde des
images (Grenoble: 2009), 289–320. Dekoninck R., “Le sens du décor. Claude-François
Ménestrier et la chapelle Sainte-Marie-d’en-Haut à Grenoble”, in Dompnier B. (ed.), Les
langages du culte aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Clermont-Ferrand: 2020), 251–263.
508 Dekoninck
Figure 14.5 Toussaint Largeot, Flight into Egypt, 1666, Grenoble, Chapel of
Sainte-Marie-d’en-haut
Musée Dauphinois
sacred and profane mysteries that Poussin kept closely linked to one another,
in such a way that the economy of the figure unites History and Prophecy. How,
then, can we not be tempted to conclude with a figural comparison between
the image of the Virgin and Child of the Lyon painting on the one end, and the
personification of History in the frontispiece of the Biblia sacra on the other
(the angel’s wings being inscribed in the prolongation of the mother and her
son); as far as Christ is concerned, he is fulfilling History. As for the figure of
Joseph, he is placed beneath the shadow of the prophetic sign.
Bibliography
Alloa E. – Falk F. (eds.), BildÖkonomie: Haushalten mit Sichtbarkeiten (Munich: 2013).

Bellori Giovanni-Pietro, Le Vite de pittori, scultori et architetti moderni (Roma, per il
success. al Mascardi: 1672).
Blunt A., “The Triclinium in Religious Art Since the Renaissance”, Journal of the Warburg
and Courtauld Institutes 2 (1939) 271–276.
Blunt A., Nicolas Poussin (Washington, DC: 1967).
Boespflug F. – Fogliadini E., La Fuite en Egypte dans l’art d’Orident et d’Occident (Paris:
2018).
Camille M., The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art (Cambridge:
1989).
Crescenzo R., Peintures d’instruction: La postérité littéraire des Images de Philostrate en
France de Blaise de Vigenère à l’époque classique (Geneva: 1999).
Dekoninck R., “Falling Idols, Rising Icons: Bruegel’s Flight into Egypt and the
Embeddedness of Sacred Images in Nature”, in Kaschek B. – Müller J. – Buskirk J.
(eds.), Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Religion (Leiden – Boston: 2018) 226–244.
Dekoninck R., “Le sens du décor. Claude-François Ménestrier et la chapelle Sainte-
Marie-d’en-Haut à Grenoble”, in Dompnier B. (ed.), Les langages du culte aux XVIIe
et XVIIIe siècles (Clermont – Ferrand: 2020), 251–263.
Dubois-Brinkmann I. – Laveissière S. (eds.), Nicolas Poussin: La Fuite en Égypte, 1657
(Paris: 2010).
Falkenburg R., Joachim Patinir: Landscape as an Image of the Pilgrimage of Life
(Amsterdam – Philadelphia: 1988).
Fréart de Chantelou Paul, Journal de voyage du Cavalier Bernin en France, ed. M. Stanic
(Paris: 2001).
Guiderdoni A., “‘Ce que c’est que la figure’ selon Louis Richeome: De la figure à la figu-
rabilité au XVIIe siècle”, in Marin L. – Baicoianu A. (eds.), Nouveaux régimes de la
figure (Bucharest: 2018) 29–41.
Lahire B., Ceci n’est pas qu’un tableau: Essai sur l’art, la domination, la magie et le sacré
(Paris: 2015).
Ludolph of Saxony, La vie de Jesus Christ, nostre sauveur (Paris, G. de la Nouë: 1599).
Ludolph of Saxony, Vita Iesu Christi e quatuor evangeliis et scriptoribus orthodoxis con-
cinnata (Antwerp, J. Keerbergen: 1618).
Ludolph of Saxony, Vita D. N. Jesu Christi, e sacris quatuor Evangeliorum sanctorumque
Patrum fontibus … derivata (Lyon, J. Caffin – F. Plaignard: 1641).
Masen Jacob, Speculum imaginum veritatis occultae (Cologne, J.A. Kinckius: 1650).
Ménestrier Claude-François, La Philosophie des images énigmatiques (Lyon, H. Baritel:
1694).
Milovanovic N. – Szanto M. (eds.), Poussin et Dieu (Paris: 2015).
Mondzain M.-J., Image, icône, économie: les sources byzantines de l’imaginaire contem-
porain (Paris: 1996).
Philostrate, Les Images ou tableaux de platte peinture … mise en françois par Blaise de
Vigenère, avec des argumens et annotations sur chacun d’iceux (Paris, N. Chesneau:
1578).
Poussin Nicolas, Correspondance, ed. C. Jouanny (Paris: 1911).
Richeome Louis, Trois discours pour la religion catholique: des miracles, des saincts et
des images (Bordeaux, S. Millange: 1597).
510 Dekoninck
Richeome Louis, Tableaux Sacrez des Figures mystiques, du tres Auguste Sacrifice et
Sacrement de l’Eucharistie (Paris, L. Sonnius: 1609 [1601]).
Sabatier G., “Du dessein au décor. Les peintures de la chapelle de Sainte-Marie-d’en-haut
à Grenoble”, in Sabatier G. (ed.), Claude-François Ménestrier, les jésuites et le monde
des images (Grenoble: 2009), 289–320.
Siguret F., “La triple peinture des Tableaux sacrés du Père Richeome”, in Martel J. –
Melançon B. (eds.), Inventaire, lecture, invention: Mélanges de critique et d’histoire
littéraires offerts à Bernard Beugnot (Montréal: 1999) 195–208.
Thuillier J., Nicolas Poussin (Paris: 2001).
Unglaub J.W., Poussin’s Sacrament of Ordination: History, Faith, and the Sacred
Landscape (New Haven – London: 2013).
Valensi L., La Fuite en Égypte: Histoires d’Orient et d’Occident. Essai d’histoire comparée
(Paris: 2002).
Van der Sandt Maximilian, Theologia symbolica (Munich, J.T. Schönwetter: 1626).
Vanuxem J., “Les Tableaux sacrés de Richeome et l’iconographie de l’eucharistie chez
Poussin”, in Chastel A. (ed.), Nicolas Poussin, 2 vols. (Paris: 1960), vol. 1, 151–165.
Weemans M., Herri Met de Bles: Les ruses du paysage au temps de Bruegel et d’Erasme
(Paris: 2013).
Wittkower R., “Eagle and Serpent: A Study in the Migration of Symbols”, Journal of the
Warburg Institute 2 (1939) 293–325.
chapter 15
Portrait or Parable?: Pierre Mignard and

the Mystery of Madame de Maintenon
Eelco Nagelsmit & Lars Cyril Nørgaard
One of the best kept ‘secrets’ at the court of Louis XIV was the precise nature
of the king’s relationship to the woman with whom he spent the last thirty-five
years of his life: Françoise d’Aubigné (1635–1719), the Marquise de Maintenon.*,1
Historians agree that the unlikely couple was probably joined in marriage.
This would have taken place after the period of mourning that followed the
death of Queen Marie Thérèse (1638–1683). However, no evidence of this union
survives. A few individuals must have been present as witnesses, but appar-
ently they took their secret to the grave.2 Indeed, a royal mésalliance would
have complicated political matters: it was thus never publicly acknowledged
and thereby remained a secret. This presented the court – especially the royal
family – with insurmountable problems of precedence and protocol. If asked
about it, the ‘secret wife’ persistently dodged the question. Nevertheless, all the
world seems to have been aware of Madame de Maintenon’s unique status, and
courtiers responded with various degrees of bemusement. This is illustrated
in an epigram by playwright and poetess Catherine Bernard (1662–1712),3 who
frequented the salons of her time:
* This work draws from interdisciplinary research at the Danish National Research Foundation
Centre for Privacy Studies (DNRF 138), based at the University of Copenhagen and directed
by Mette Birkedal Bruun. We would like to thank prof. Bruun and the organizers of the Lovis
Corinth Colloquium VIII Quid est Secretum, Agnès Guiderdoni, Ralph Dekoninck, and espe-
cially Walter Melion.
1 Francoise d’Aubigné became affiliated to court as governess of Louis XIV’s illegitimate chil-
dren with his mistress, Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart, the Marquise de Montespan
(1640–1707). This charge was undertaken in 1668, and when the children were finally recog-
nized in 1673 as the offspring of the king, their governess followed them to court. By 1680,
Madame de Maintenon had built a personal relationship with the king: with Montespan’s fall
from royal grace, Maintenon, increasingly, became the new favourite.
2 Though modern historians agree that the secret marriage must have taken place, even today,
they disagree as to when and under what circumstances this happened. It most likely took
place on the eve of 9–10 October 1683. At her death in 1719, Maintenon reportedly burned
every document that might provide evidence of the marriage.
3 Catherine Bernard (1663?–1712) is best known for her two plays Laodamie, reine d’Epire (1689)
and Brutus (1690). Both tragedies were performed by the Comédiens du Roi at the Théâtre

512 NAGELSMIT AND NØRGAARD
À Madame de Maintenon, epigramme:

On ne sait si vous êtes reine,
Incomparable Maintenon;
Mais que vous le soyez ou non,
C’est une chose fort certaine,
Qu’il est beau d’en faire douter,
D’en fuir le rang, l’honneur, et de le mériter.4
To Madame de Maintenon, epigram:

No one knows if you are queen,
Incomparable Maintenon;
But whether you are or not,
It is most certainly the case
That to cast doubt about it is beautiful,
[That] to flee the rank, the honour, and [instead] to be worthy of it
[is beautiful].
Dwelling on the mystery of Madame de Maintenon’s position, Bernard pres-

ents ‘queenship’ as a station about which doubt must be cast: this blurring of
identity derives from humility and demonstrates nobility of the soul. In this
paper, we argue that Maintenon cultivated the ambiguity of her position,
even while relying upon artistic intervention to manifest it and shape her
public image.
In 1694, the eighty-two-year-old Peintre du Roi Pierre Mignard (1612–1695)
painted two portraits of Louis XIV and his wife. An old acquaintance,5 Mignard
Français. During the 18th century, these plays were suggested to be the work of Bernard’s
cousin, the philosopher Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle (or Corneille, who was related to
Fontenelle’s mother). Bernard’s contemporaries knew and admired her especially for her
poetry. She won the prize of the Académie Française in 1691, 1693 and 1697, which earned
her a royal pension from Louis XIV. During her public life, she frequented the salons of the
duchesse de Monthausier, the duchesse de Bouillon and Madame de Coulanges. Bernard
stopped publishing in 1698 and died virtually unknown in 1712. See Barbafieri C., “Le
théâtre de Catherine Bernard, ou comment être moderne dans le genre tragique à la fin du
XVIIe siècle”, in Bahier-Porte C. – Poulouin C. (eds.), Écrire et penser en Moderne (1687–1750)
(Paris: 2015) 321–336.
4 The French original and an English translation is cited in Shapiro N., French Women Poets
of Nine Centuries: The Distaff and the Pen (Baltimore: 2008) 386–387. Also see Bernard
Catherine, Piva F. (ed.), Oeuvres complètes, 2 vols. (Paris – Fasano: 1999) 408–409.
5 Mignard had been a friend of the poet Paul Scarron (1610–1650), who Françoise had first met

in late 1651 and married on 4 April 1652. To the friendship between Scarron and Mignard,
see De Boislisle A., Paul Scarron et Françoise d’Aubigné. D’après des documents nouveaux
(Paris: 1894) 133–143.
Pierre Mignard and the Mystery of Madame de Maintenon 513
depicted Madame de Maintenon in the guise of her namesake, the fifteenth-

century saint Frances of Rome (1384–1440). In its time, this portrait was
frequently copied and abundantly praised, yet it has been all but neglected by
art historical inquiry.6 Our paper places Mignard’s portrait squarely in the spe-
cific political and religious context of the late Ludovician court, where worldly
splendour was out of fashion, and Christian virtue à la mode. We do so by com-
bining art historical and church historical approaches and by taking account
of little known sources on Maintenon’s devotional practices, i.e., the letters of
spiritual direction written by Paul Godet des Marais (1648–1709), her ‘directeur
de conscience’.7 In addition to exploring the portrait’s iconography, we ques-
tion the conventions and culturally encoded practices of viewing portraiture
in the context of Louis XIV’s court.8 Building on the analogy between secret
spouse and the saint – les deux Françoises – Mignard not only produced a his-
toriated portrait, but also a ‘visual parable’. He designed a portrait that could
perform multiple functions on different interpretative levels and for various
audiences. In other words, the portrait dissimulates. The parabolic level has
hitherto gone unnoticed, because fully understanding it requires a religiously
informed mode of viewing. Thus, the painter masterfully played with the se-
crecy and mystery that surrounded Maintenon’s impossible position as ‘Queen
without a Crown’.
6 In her monograph on the painter, Lada Nikolenko limits herself to listing early sources:
Nikolenko L., Pierre Mignard: Portrait Painter of the Grand Siècle (Munich: 1983) 95–96.
Thierry Bajou mentions the various extant versions: Bajou T., “À propos de quelques tableaux
de Mignard à Versailles”, in Boyer J.-C. (ed.), Pierre Mignard “le Romain” (Paris: 1997) 195–224
(203–205). In his collection catalogue, Bajou connects the gilded letters with a miracle from
the saint’s vita, but fails to elaborate this connection: Bajou T., Les Peintures à Versailles:
XVIIe Siècle (Paris: 1998) 266–267. Fumaroli briefly touches upon Mignard’s portrait in his
study of Poussin’s rediscovered altarpiece in the Louvre: Fumaroli M., De Rome à Paris: pein-
ture et pouvoirs aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Dijon: 2007) 106–163 (116–117).
7 To Godet des Marais’ role as spiritual director, see Nørgaard L.C., Sources of Spiritual direction
(Ph.D. dissertation, University of Copenhagen: 2017).
8 See Coquery E. (ed.), Visages du Grand Siècle: Le portrait français sous le règne de Louis XIV,
1660–1715, exh. cat. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes – Musée des Augustins, Toulouse (Paris:
1997), especially Brême D., “Portrait historié et morale du Grand Siècle” 91–104. On histo-
riated portraits, see also Schneider M., Bildnis – Maske – Galanterie: das “portrait historié”
zwischen Grand Siècle und Zeitalter der Aufklärung (Berlin – Munich, 2019).
1 A Decorous Affair
The three-quarter length portrait depicts the richly dressed sitter in a red vel-
vet armless chair at a table with an hourglass, a commonplace attribute de-
noting consciousness of the brevity of life and the vanity of worldly matters
[Fig. 15.1].9 Her hair is largely covered with a transparent silk veil, a sign of
humility. Fondling the fur trim of her cloak, she gently strikes her breast with
the right hand, a gesture of contrite humility.10 At the same time, the ermine-
trimmed dark blue velvet mantle seems to suggest royal status. One attribute
stands out in the composition: in her lap, the sitter conspicuously holds a book
of hours, showing a text in partly gilded letters [Fig. 15.2].11 These are clearly
legible, and read: ‘Ant. In odorem unguentorum tuorum currimus: adolescen-
tulae dilexerunt te nimis’ (Ant.: into the odor of thy ointments we run: young
maidens have loved thee exceedingly). This antiphon, drawn from the Canticle
of Canticles, has a variety of connotations to which we shall turn below.
Pierre Mignard’s first biographer Simon-Philippe Mazière de Monville
(†1777), who claims to have based his biography on the notes of Mignard’s
daughter, Catherine-Marguerite Mignard (1652–1742), suggests that the portrait
of Madame de Maintenon formed part of a pair. The portrait of Louis XIV is now
presumably lost, but known from an engraving [Fig. 15.3].12 Monville renders
9 The portrait exists in various copies; one is in the collection of the Louvre (inv. 6657), and
the Château de Versailles holds two versions, one original (inv. MV3637) and a later ver-
sion en pied (inv. MV4268). To the two paintings at Versailles, see Da Vinha M. – Maral A.
(eds.), Madame de Maintenon. Dans les allées du pouvoir, exh. cat., Château de Versailles
(Versailles: 2019) 74–75. One further copy exists in Burghley House (PIC465). To the differ-
ent versions, see also Nikolenko, Pierre Mignard 95–96.
10 This gesture finds its origin in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector from
the Gospel of Luke: ‘everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles
himself will be exalted’ (Luke 18:9–14) and constitutes a liturgical act prescribed for the
Confiteor as well as for the Eucharist.
11 Excerpt from Canticle 1:1–3 in Little Office of Our Lady: ‘osculetur me osculo oris sui quia
meliora sunt ubera tua vino fragrantia unguentis optimis. Oleum effusum nomen tuum;
ideo adolescentulae dilexerunt te trahe me, post te curremus in odorem uguentorum tuo-
rum. Introduxit me rex in cellaria sua; exsultabimus et laetabimur in te, memores uberum
tuorum super vinum recti diligunt te’ (Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth for your
breast are better than wine, fragrant with the finest ointments your name is oil poured
out, that is why the girls have loved you, draw me after you, in your ointments we will
run, the king led me into his cellars, we will rejoice and be glad in you remembering your
breasts better than wine the righteous love you). As an antiphon from the Little Office, the
specific excerpt seen in Mignard’s painting comes from the canonical hours of Lauds and
Sext, that is, the Morning and Noon Offices.
12 De Lastic G., “Contribution à l’oeuvre de Pierre Mignard, portraitiste”, Bulletin de la Société
de l’Histoire de l’Art français (1980) 167–176 (173).
Figure 15.1 Pierre Mignard, Francoise d’Aubigné, Marquise de Maintenon as Saint Frances
of Rome (1694). Oil on canvas, 128 × 97 cm. Versailles, Châteaux de Versailles et
de Trianon
Photo © RMN-Grand Palais / Jean-Marc Manaï
Figure 15.2 Pierre Mignard, Francoise d’Aubigné, Marquise de Maintenon as Saint Frances
of Rome (1694). Oil on canvas, 128 × 97 cm. Detail, Book of Hours. Châteaux de
Versailles et de Trianon
Photo © RMN-Grand Palais / Jean-Marc Manaï
Figure 15.3 Jean-Louis Roullet (engraver) after a lost painting by Pierre Mignard, Louis XIV
as commander in chief (c. 1694). Engraving, 66,0 × 52,5 cm
Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020
a rather detailed account of how these two portraits came into being, and es-
pecially praises the portrait of Madame de Maintenon as ‘sublime’ and as one
of Mignard’s best works.13
Ce portrait où le Peintre a représenté Madame de Maintenon en Sainte

Françoise, Dame Romaine dont elle portoit le nom, est d’un genre sub-
lime. L’esprit et l’âme de celle qui en est l’objet s’y reconnoissent. L’auteur
qui l’avoit vûë dans sa jeunesse, en avoit sçû rappeller les agrémens, sans
alterer le caractere de l’âge qu’elle avoit alors. Il a tiré de l’habillement
tout ce qui pouvoit être avantageux à sa peinture & à son sujet. C’est un
des plus beaux morceaux qui soient sortis de sa main, & qui fasse plus
d’honneur à son esprit.14
This portrait where the painter has represented Madame de Maintenon

as saint Frances, Roman lady of which she bears the name, is of sublime
style. The spirit and the soul of the sitter are recognised [in it]. The author
who had known her in her youth, knew how to recall the charms, with-
out altering the character of the age she had then. He drew from the gar-
ments all that could be advantageous to his painting and to his subject:
it is one of the most beautiful pieces by his hand, and which does most
honour to his wit.
It may not be immediately apparent to a modern-day viewer why this portrait

of a middle-aged woman, dressed up as a pious and demure matron saint, was
considered sublime or keen-witted. What does Monville mean when he sug-
gests that the greatness of spirit and the soul of the sitter, as well as the wit of
the painter, may be recognized in this portrait? Sources on the portrait’s con-
temporary reception eulogize the artist as well, precisely for striking the right
13 According to Monville, Maintenon was initially disinclined to having her portrait made,
but eventually succumbed to external pressure, Mazière de Monville Simon-Philippe,
La Vie de Pierre Mignard, premier peintre du roy, par l’abbé de Monville, avec le poème de
Molière sur les peintures du Val-de-Grâce et deux dialogues de M. de Fénelon, Archevêque de
Cambray, sur la peinture (Paris, Jean Boudot – Jacques Guérin: 1730) 173. It should be noted
that portraits of her and the king as founders of the religious community at Saint-Cyr had
already been made for its ‘salle de communauté’ in 1688–1689 by Nicolas René Jollain the
Elder and Louis Ferdinand Elle the Elder, an ensemble which was complemented in 1690
by Mignard’s chimneypiece Christ between soldiers; to this ensemble, see Bruun M.B –
Havsteen S.R. – Mejrup K. – Nagelsmit E. – Nørgaard L.C., “Withdrawal and Engagement
in the Long Seventeenth Century: Four Case Studies”, Journal of Early Modern Christianity
1 (2015) 249–343 (277–297).
14 Monville, La Vie de Pierre Mignard 173–174.
chord in the way he represented the sitter. For instance, we read in a letter from
Madame de Coulanges (1641–1713) to Madame de Sévigné (1626–1696):
Au reste, madame, j’ai vu la plus belle chose qu’on puisse jamais imaginer ;
c’est un portrait de madame de Maintenon, fait par Mignard : elle est ha-
billée en Sainte Françoise Romaine. Mignard l’a embellie ; mais, c’est sans
fadeur, sans incarnat, sans blanc, sans l’air de la jeunesse ; et sans toutes
ces perfections, il nous fait voir un visage et une physionomie au-dessus
de tout ce que l’on peut dire ; des yeux animés, une grâce parfaite, point
d’atours ; et avec tout cela aucun portrait ne tient devant celui-là.15
Furthermore, Madame, I have seen the most beautiful thing that one could
ever have imagined: a portrait of Madame de Maintenon by Mignard. She
is dressed as saint Frances of Rome, and Mignard has made her beautiful
but without insipidity, without rouge, without powder, without the air
of youth. In the absence of all these perfections, he instead presents us
with a face and a physiognomy beyond what words can express: eyes ani-
mated, a perfect elegance, and no additional attire. With all this, no other
portrait lives up to this one.
Madame de Coulanges also sent Sevigné a madrigal, which the aforementioned

Catherine Bernard allegedly composed impromptu upon seeing the portraits
of Maintenon and the king.
À Mignard, sur les portraits de Louis XIV et de Madame de Maintenon.

Oui, votre Art, je l’avoüe, est au-dessus du mien
J’ai loué mille fois notre invincible Maître,
Mais vous, en deux portraits, vous le faites connoître :
L’on voit aisément dans le sien
Sa bonté, son cœur magnanime :
Dans l’autre on voit son goût à placer son estime.
Ah ! Mignard que vous louez bien!16
15 Letter from Madame de Coulanges to Madame de Sévigné, 29 October 1694: Sévigné

Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Lettres de Madame de Sévigné, de sa famille et ses amis, ed.
Monmerqué L.-J.-N., 14 vols. (Paris: 1862–1868) vol. 10 (1862), 207–209 (208).
16 Sévigné, Lettres 209. Also cited in Monville, La Vie de Pierre Mignard 174. For a discussion,

see Bernard Catherine, Piva F. (ed.), Oeuvres 404–405.

To Mignard, on the portraits of Louis XIV and Madame de Maintenon.

Yes, your Art, I confess, is above mine
I have praised a thousand times our invincible Master [the king],
But you, in two portraits, you make him known:
It is easy to see in his own [portrait]
His worth, his noble heart:
In the other [portrait of Maintenon], one sees his taste in the placing of his
esteem.
Ah! Mignard how well you praise!
This time Bernard takes as her point of departure the contest or paragone be-
tween painting and poetry, a recurrent topic of salon conversation, praising
the artist’s capacity to praise. She closely relates the portrayal of Madame de
Maintenon as saint Frances to the royal portrait, which makes it a token of the
king’s good judgement.
Yet, the identity of the depicted double-subject – somewhere between ‘saint-
liness’ and ‘queenship’ – remains elusive. Robes of state she could never wear,
but the laws of decorum did not forbid an ermine-trimmed mantle, playing
with the ambiguity of the sitter’s supposed marital status and her saintliness.17
It is to the specific nature of this equivocal position that we shall now turn.
2 Controversy
At Madame de Maintenon’s instigation, the king founded, in 1686, an edu-

cational institution of unprecedented nature and scale. La Maison Royale de
Saint Louis at Saint-Cyr near Versailles targeted girls from impoverished noble
families, and it would become Maintenon’s life work as ‘foundatrice’ and ‘in-
stitutrice’ [Fig. 15.4]. In more general terms, the institution served the political
purpose of reproducing social customs and transmitting them to future gen-
erations of wives and mothers in households of the lesser nobility. The king’s
wife closely supervised their education, which put great emphasis on cultural
activities and systematically divested the girls of worldly preoccupations.
The school at Saint-Cyr and its community of teachers, Les Dames de Saint
Louis, initially did not adhere to any established monastic rule, but professed
revocable vows of obedience, chastity, poverty and education. In January 1690,
17 Collections of partly or completely fictitious anecdotes de cour published in the nine-

teenth century dwell on this ambiguity, e.g. Dubois Guillaume, Mémoires du cardinal
Dubois, ed. Lacroix P., 4 vols. (Paris: 1829), vol. 2, 113–114.
Figure 15.4 Adam or Nicolas Perelle (engraver and designer), perspective view of
La maison Royale de Saint-Cyr (c. 1690). Engraving, 24,5 × 35,5 cm. Plate 154
from Jean Mariette, Veuës des plus beaux endroits de Versailles, Recueil de
gravures de la collection de Grossœuvre 140, Versailles, Châteaux de Versailles
et de Trianon
Photo © RMN-Grand Palais / Christophe Fouin
internal tensions and exterior pressure from the Holy See set a process in mo-
tion which culminated in December 1692, when the Ladies of Saint Louis offi-
cially adopted the Rule of saint Augustine. One year later, on 11 December 1693,
the first solemn vows were professed, and in January 1694 the first superior was
appointed. Although the Ladies were admonished to take religious vows, they
could not be coerced to do so, since such a decision, legally and theologically,
required free will. We should thus observe that Madame de Maintenon, when
Mignard portrayed her in the guise of saint Frances, had just recently become
the ‘foundatrice’ of a monastery and ‘institutrice’ of its religious community.
Before the process of regulation, the controversial Madame Guyon
(1648–1717) had frequented the community at Saint-Cyr.18 In various ways and
18 On the grounds of her teachings, Madame Guyon was imprisoned at la Visitation de la
Rue Saint-Antoine in Paris from late January until early September 1688. On her release,
she joined with the group of filles de Sainte Geneviève housed at the Hôtel de Miramion,
for various reasons, she was suspected of entertaining unorthodox views on

prayer as the road to complete self-abnegation and a wholly disinterested love
of the divine. Already in 1689, Guyon’s publications had come under suspicion
of entertaining heterodox ideas redolent of the so-called ‘Quietists’. During
1692 and 1693, the circulation of Guyon’s texts and ideals became increasingly
problematic. Initially, this was an offshoot of the regulation of the royal foun-
dation. Tasked with overseeing the Ladies’ religious praxis, male ecclesiastics
recorded the influx of Guyon’s writings and found their message impossible
to reconcile with a regulated life. In March 1693, Mme Guyon was officially
barred from entering the site at Saint-Cyr, and the subsequent Conférences
d’Issy, lasting from July 1694 until March 1695, established her position as
heretical.19 At Versailles, fears of ‘Quietism’ exploded as François Fenelon
(1651–1715), Archbishop of Cambrai, refrained from cutting ties with Madame
Guyon. Since August 1689, Fénelon had been preceptor to the Dauphin’s oldest
son, the Duke of Burgundy. For theological reasons, he maintained, initially,
that Madame Guyon’s position could not straightforwardly be equated with
heresy, because it corresponded to a specific part of Christian tradition. Facing
down Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627–1704), Louis-Antoine de Noailles (1651–
1729) and Louis Tronson (1622–1700), Fénelon refused to back down, and an
article was included in the proceedings of the Conférences d’Issy, which would
fan the flames of the ensuing debate between Bossuet and Fénelon.
Madame de Maintenon’s role in this theological controversy is important
but also difficult to determine. Clearly, she could not afford to be enmeshed
in irregularities. However, Fénelon was a close ally. At Saint-Cyr, he actively
participated in the process of regulation, acting as spiritual director to the
Ladies of Saint Louis and coauthoring the new Constitutions and Regulations.
where her daughter was married on 26 August 1689. Madame Guyon followed the new-
lyweds to their living space, where she stayed ‘deux ans et demi’ – that is, until around
February 1692, cf. Guyon Jeanne-Marie, La Vie par elle-même et autres écrits par elle-
même, ed. Dominique Tronc, 2 vols, (Paris: 2014) vol. 2, 771. During this period, Guyon
entered Saint-Cyr for the first time. She could here visit Françoise-Silvine Le Maistre de
La Maisonfort (1663–1729), who was her cousin and, in 1688, had argued Guyon’s case
before Madame de Maintenon. Initially, the king’s wife thus supported Madame Guyon
and granted her access to Saint-Cyr.
19 Initially, the conferences at Issy were supposed to be held in secret. Especially, Maintenon
had no interest in making the accusations against Guyon public. However, the Archbishop
of Paris, François de Harlay de Champvallon (1625–1695), published a surprise Ordonnance
in late 1694, which formulated a rather vulgar line of critique: the attempt to keep the pro-
cess a secret hereby turned out to have been a pipe dream. Now, the conferences had to be
finished and Bossuet together with his fellow bishop Noailles had to speak out in public,
cf. Le Brun J., La spiritualité de Bossuet (Paris: 1972) 554–562.
Furthermore, Maintenon was closely linked to a courtly network that gravitated

towards both Guyon and Fénelon. From 1690 until early 1693, she participated
in weekly conferences carried out in the personal lodgings of the Duchess of
Chevreuse and others.20 During these sessions, she and fellow courtiers would
voice personal queries and, in response, Fénelon drafted spiritual texts that,
subsequently, circulated amongst members of this ‘secret’ society. Indeed, the
king’s wife seems to have disseminated written material to individuals who
had not attended the spiritual conferences: letters and spiritual texts were for-
warded to the community at Saint-Cyr.
During the early stages of the process against Madame Guyon, a compila-
tion of Fénelon’s spiritual texts also found its way to one of the men charged
with carrying out the examinations. In June 1694, Louis Tronson, the superior
of Saint-Sulpice, was thus contacted by the bishop of Chartres, Paul de Godet
des Marais, who was also Maintenon’s spiritual director [Fig. 15.5].21 A former
Sulpician, Godet made Tronson aware of a number of problematic expressions
that Fénelon had used in letters and texts addressed to Maintenon. In total,
he transmitted four volumes, referred to as the ‘livres rouges’, where he had
highlighted certain passages. Tronson shared Godet des Marais’ worries with
Fénelon in the fall of 1694,22 when the examination of Guyon was entering its
final and crucial stages. In November 1694, Fénelon drafted a written response
and thereby reaffirmed what he had already expressed in letters: he deemed
the process against Madame Guyon nothing but a veiled attack against him.23
On a variety of levels, ‘Quietism’ thus posed a serious threat to Madame de
20 To these weekly sessions, see Ledieu François, “Mémoires de l’abbé Ledieu sur le quié-
tisme” [1699], ed. Levesque E., Revue Bossuet 7 (1907) 19–56 (24); Phélypeaux Jean, Relation
de l’origine du progrès et de la condamnation du quiétisme répandu en France, 2 vols.
(s.l, s.n: 1732) vol. 1, 43.
21 As bishop of Chartres, Godet was vested with episcopal authority over the royal foun-
dation at Saint-Cyr. He was the driving force behind the regulation of the site, carrying
out official visits and numerous conferences with the Ladies of Saint Louis. Furthermore,
Godet had also acted, since late 1689 or early 1690, as the unofficial director of Madame
de Maintenon’s conscience. This title became official in March 1691, and in the capacity of
spiritual direction he wrote a large body of letters and small texts, which engage with the
precarious position of his eminent charge. We should notice that Madame de Maintenon,
by securing Godet the vacant See of Chartres, consolidated her influence over the royal
foundation: the same man was head of her private conscience and her public project of
charity.
22 Cf. Masson M., ‘La correspondance spirituelle de Fénelon avec Madame de Maintenon’
Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France 13 (1906) 51–72.
23 Letter from Fénelon to Tronson, 6 Novembre 1694, in Fénelon François, Correspondance,
ed. Orcibal J., with the collaboration of Le Brun J. – Noye I. – Neveu B., 18 vols. (Paris/
Geneva: 1972–2007) vol. 2 (1972) 301–302, cf. Fénelon, “Explication de quelques
Figure 15.5 Pierre Simon (engraver) after François Andriot (designer), portrait of
Paul Godet des Marais, bishop of Chartres (1708). Etching and engraving,
46,2 × 38,4 cm
Image © Trustees of the British Museum
Maintenon. Both as founder of a religious community and as someone with

unprecedented access to the king, she would be guilty by mere association to
heretical teachings. As the process against Guyon developed, and the bishop
of Cambrai continued to voice his claims, we can imagine Maintenon’s fears
steadily growing stronger. Indeed, Mignard’s portrait can be seen as engaging
with these fears of heresy.
3 Miraculous Letters
By painting the king’s secret wife in the guise of a saint, Mignard casts the sitter
in an ideal mould and thereby represents her as more than a historical indi-
vidual; she is seen to embody specific aspects of saintliness. Francesca Bussa
dei Ponziani (1384–1440) was a noble roman matrone, known as a charitable
wife, miraculous healer, and mystic. As widow she had founded a community
of Benedictine oblates in the convent of Tor de’ Specchi in Rome. As the first
woman canonized since the Reformation (1608), saint Frances of Rome held
a special place in Counter-Reformation hagiography.24 Her cult was promoted
by saint François de Sales (1567–1622) and saint Jeanne de Chantal (1572–1641),
who, in 1609, founded the Order of the Visitation. Indeed, they saw her as
an epitome of female sanctity when creating this charitable order.25 When
Madame de Maintenon launched her project of reforming Saint-Cyr, she called
upon a number of Visitandines, who from 1692 until 1694 assisted in the regula-
tion of its religious praxis.
The principal virtue of saint Frances was a perfect conformity of her will to
the will of God. As an example of female piety, she struck the perfect balance
between devotion to God and prompt obedience to her husband. According
to the saint’s Vita, Frances of Rome was married for forty years but without
ever having any marital disagreement.26 With the consent of her husband, she
expressions tirées des lettres de Fénelon à Madame de Maintenon” [Novembre 1694], in

Fénelon, Correspondance vol. 2, 302–312.
24 Barone G., “Francesca Romana santa della Riforma cattolica”, in Bartolomei Romagnoli
A. – Picasso G. (eds.), La canonizzazione di Santa Francesca Romana. Santità, Cultura
e Istituzioni a Roma tra Medioevo ed Età Moderna, La mistica cristiana tra Oriente e
Occidente 20 (Florence: 2013) 125–138.
25 See Mezzadri L., “San Francesco di Sales e santa Francesca Romana alle origini della
Visitazione”, in Bartolomei Romagnoli – Picasso (eds.), La canonizzazione di Santa
Francesca Romana 215–230.
26 Acta Sanctorum, 53 vols. (Antwerp, Jacobus Meursius: 1643–1794) vol. 7, Martii II/III
(1668) 88–216. The first vita of the saint was based on notes by her confessor Giovanni
Matteotti and Maria Magdalena Anguillaria, prioress of Tor de’ Specchi. The Jesuit Virgilio
practiced continence and spent days in retreat and prayer in her private orato-
ry. The hagiographic accounts also describe how promptly she would lay aside
her book of hours and attended to domestic duties, whenever her husband
called her away from devotional exercises. On one occasion, as she prepared to
recite a particular verse from the Office of Our Lady, he interrupted four times
in a row, but on her fifth attempt a miracle occurred: she found, miraculously,
that the letters in her book of hours had become gilded. This book is still kept
as a relic in the monastery of Tor de’ Specchi.27
It is hard to determine how well-known this particular episode from the
life of the saint was in late seventeenth-century France. Within the hundred-
thirty pages on the saint in the Acta Sanctorum, it comprises but one short
paragraph.28 The printed Vita conveys an equally short mention.29 In the ico-
nography of saint Frances of Rome, she is often depicted with a book and an
angel [Fig. 15.6], yet these attributes have little or no narrative connection to
the miracle cited above.30 Occasionally, if incidentally, the miracle featured in
writing, notably in the works of François de Sales. Thus, it figures prominently
in the twelfth book of the Traité sur l’amour de Dieu (1616).31 In this final book,
the ‘I’ shares with his interlocutor, Théotime, ‘quelques avis pour le progrès
de l’âme au saint amour’ (certain counsels for the progress of the soul in
holy love).32 The first piece of advice returns to a central feature of De Sales’
theoretical framework:
Cepari (1564–1631) subsequently published it for a wide audience: Cepari Virgilio, Vita di
santa Francesca Romana, fondatrice dell’Oblate di Torre de Specchi cavata da vari mano-
scritti antichi, dalli processi fatti per la sua canonizazione ed alter istorie, data nuovamente
in luce dalla Madre Presidente, ed Oblate di Torre de’Specchi (Rome, s.n: 1675).
27 For a contemporary visit to the monastery and mentioning of the precious book
turned relic and therefore on display but not to be opened, see De Coulanges Philippe
Emmanuel, “Mémoires de M. de Coulanges. Conclaves d’Alexandre VIII et d’Innocent
XII” in Mémoires de M. de Coulanges, Suivis de Lettres Inédites de Madame de Sévigné,
de son fils, de l’abbé de Coulanges, d’Arnauld d’Andilly, d’Arnauld de Pomponne, de Jean de
La Fontaine, et d’autres personnages du même siècle, ed. Monmerqué J.-L.-N. (Paris: 1820)
77–325 (299–300).
28 Acta Sanctorum vol. 7, Martii II/III, 184.
29 Cepari, Vita di santa Francesca Romana 72.
30 See Brizzi G., “Contributo all’iconografia di Francesca Romana,” in Picasso G. (ed.), Una
Santa tutta Romana. Saggi e ricerche nel VI centenario della nascita di Francesca Bussa
dei Ponziani (1384–1984) (Siena: 1984) 265–355. See also Toscano B., “Iconografia e sto-
ria dell’arte. Riflessioni su un libro di Giovanni Brizzi”, in Bartolomei Romagnoli A. –
Picasso G. (eds.), La canonizzazione di Santa Francesca Romana 363–370.
31 De Sales François, “Traité de l’Amour de Dieu”, in Œuvres, ed. A. Ravier (Paris: 1969) 333–
972 (947–972).
32 De Sales, “Traité de l’Amour de Dieu” 947.
Figure 15.6 Raphael Sadeler, St Frances of Rome (1610). Engraving, 7,5 × 5,5 cm.
From Aegidius Albertinus, Himmlisch Frawenzimmer, Darinn das Leben
vier-und-fünffzig der allerheiligisten Junckfrawen und Frawen […], (Munich:
Raphael Sadeler, 1621), p. 389
Private collection © Author
Pour moi, je parle en ce Traité, de l’amour surnaturel que Dieu répand en

nos cœurs par sa bonté, et duquel la résidence est en la suprême pointe
de l’esprit ; pointe qui est au-dessus de tout le reste de notre âme, et qui
est indépendante de toute complexion naturelle.33
For my part, I speak in this treatise of the supernatural love with which
God, out of his goodness, transfuses our hearts, and which resides in the
highest point of the spirit; a point that lies beyond all the rest of our soul,
and which is independent of all natural disposition.
Following Mino Bergamo’s analysis, this ‘suprême pointe de l’esprit’ lies at

the heart of the entire work and of the entire Salesian model of the soul. It
is a point that is located within the soul, but it points beyond the soul’s realm.
However, it is not a hidden essence, which reveals itself as the violent intrusion
of the divine. Furthermore, it is no stable part of the soul’s rational capacities
as these are distinguished from its vegetative and sensory capabilities. Instead,
De Sales offers a much more fragmented image of the rational soul and its
different faculties; these faculties or, better, forces operate complementarily
when a person turns towards the divine.34 Positing such a structure in the first
chapter, book twelve then examines human desire in chapters two and three:
in the progress of holy love, the soul should desire, continually, to love God and
thereby free itself of worldly passions and desires; the illumination of the soul –
its supernatural love of God – constitutes a continuous process that requires
the abnegation of terrestrial things and ‘les niaises, vaines et superflues occu-
pations, desquelles nous nous chargeons, qui nous divertissent de l’amour de
Dieu, et non pas les vrais et légitimes exercices de nos vocations’ (the silly, vain
and superfluous activities whereto we incline: they distract us from the love of
God and are not the true and fitting exercises of our vocations).35 Indeed, the
fourth chapter proceeds to outline how the desire for the divine, seated in the
complex workings of the rational faculties of the soul, does not contradict an
active engagement with the world. Saint Bernard, for one, continued to prog-
ress in holy love, although, as a Cistercian monk, he was dragged back into the
world and its affairs, and was compelled to serve great princes; ‘il changeait de
lieu, mais il ne changeait point de cœur, ni son cœur d’amour, ni son amour
d’objet’ (he changed location, but his heart did not change, his heart did not
change its love, his love did not change its object). Unlike the chameleon, the
33 Ibid. 949.
34 Bergamo M., L’anatomie de l’âme. De François de Sales à Fénelon (Paris: 1994) 23–136.
saint’s devotional attitude was not coloured by his surroundings: instead, he re-
mained ‘toujours tout uni à Dieu, toujours blanc de pureté, toujours vermeil de
charité, et toujours plein d’humilité’ (always wholly united with God, ever white
in purity, bright-red with charity, and ever full of humility).36 If corresponding
with the necessity of one’s duty, engaging with the world ‘à la cour, au palais, à
la guerre’ (at court, in public office, in war) does not contradict the will of God.
The fifth chapter of the twelfth book of De Sales’ treatise is simply entitled
“Exemple très-amiable sur ce sujet” (A very beautiful example of this topic).
It argues that legitimate occupations do not at all preclude the practice and
progress of holy love:
Le rossignol n’aime pas moins sa mélodie quand il fait ses pauses, que
quand il chante, le cœur dévot n’aime pas moins l’amour quand il se di-
vertit pour les nécessitez extérieures, que quand il prie, leur silence &
leur voix, leur action & leur contemplation, leur occupation & leur repos,
chantent également en eux le Cantique de leur dilection.37
The nightingale loves his melody no less when he makes his pauses than
when he sings, [and so] the devout heart does not cherish love less when
it is diverted by exterior necessities, than when it prays: their silence and
voice, action and contemplation, occupation and repose, equally sing
within them the hymn of their love.
It is within this context, where withdrawal from the world and engagement
in the world are reciprocated in a measured way, that De Sales evokes saint
Frances:
Un jour sainte Françoise, disait l’office de nostre Dame, & comme il ad-
vient ordinairement, que s’il n’y a qu’une affaire en toute la journée, c’est
au temps de l’oraison, que la presse en arrive, cette sainte Dame fut ap-
pelée de la part de son mary pour un service domestique, & par quatre
diverses fois pensant reprendre le fils de son office, elle fut rappelée &
contrainte de couper un même verset, jusques à ce que cette bénite af-
faire, pour laquelle on avait si empressement diverti sa prière, étant en
fin achevé revenant à son office, elle trouva ce verset si souvent laissé par
obéissance, & si souvent recommencé par dévotion, tout écrit en beaux
caractères d’or, que sa dévote compagne Madame Vannocie jura d’avoir
36 Ibid. 955.
37 Ibid. 956.
vue écrire, par le cher Ange gardien de la sainte, à laquelle par après
sainte Paul aussi le révéla.38
One day, saint Frances was reciting the Office of Our Lady, and as often
happens, if there is but one item of business during the whole day, it falls
during the time of prayer; the message arrived that this lady was being
summoned by her husband for some domestic duty, and four different
times, thinking [afterward] to continue her office where she had left
it, she was called back, forced to interrupt the same verse. The blessed
duty, for which she had so willingly deferred her prayer, having finally
been achieved, upon returning to her Office, she found that this verse, so
often left in obedience, and so often recommenced in devotion, had been
wholly written in beautiful letters of gold, which her devote companion
Madame Vannozza swore to have seen written by the dear Guardian
Angel of the saint, to whom later saint Paul also revealed this.
Clearly, the gilded letters in Mignard’s painting are meant to evoke this exact
miracle. Hence, the text seems less important than its materiality; the gold-
en letters are key to reading the painting as a ‘visual parable’. They draw at-
tention not only to the saint’s married state – and by implication to that of
Maintenon – but also to her marital commitment as a moral exemplum. The
sitter’s equivocal station at court is represented as the univocal balance be-
tween contemplative withdrawal and charitable engagement: the portrait
communicates Maintenon’s marital status, but also puts her interior on dis-
play; her union with the divine in devotional contemplation does not circum-
vent the obligations that follow from her position ‘auprès du Roi’.
4 The Celestial Bride
It may be asked with whom the idea to depict Maintenon in this particular fash-
ion could have originated? From the moment Mignard was appointed Peintre
du Roi, Louis XIV was his only patron, and his works were by default royal com-
missions [Fig. 15.7]. The poem by Catherine Bernard suggests that the painter
came up with the invention; and his long roman sojourn may account for a
detailed familiarity with saint Frances of Rome and the specifics of her life.39

39 Pierre Mignard was known as ‘le Romain’, because he had spent an extensive period in
Rome (1636 to 1657) before being called back to France by the king.
Figure 15.7 Pierre Mignard, self-portrait of the painter in his studio (c. 1690). Oil on
canvas, 235 × 188 cm. Paris, Musée du Louvre
Photo © RMN-Grand Palais / Franck Raux
Yet given the extent of control exerted by Maintenon e.g. in building matters at
Saint-Cyr, we can be certain that she had a say in how she was immortalized.40
Indeed, it seems that Maintenon sent various copies of the painting to friends,
relatives and her network: for a considerable period of time, the king’s secret
wife was content with broadcasting this image of herself. Moreover, after her
death a copy of the portrait in some form was found in every classroom at
Saint-Cyr.41 It is important to note that besides referencing a specific hagio-
graphic episode, Mignard’s gilded letters also carry meaning on the textual
level. Indeed, the hagiography only mentions that words from the Little Office
were miraculously transformed, but it makes no mention of the specific words.
As a relic, the book of hours remains closed, it is not to be opened, and no story
informs us what specific verse had changed nature as a testimony to the saint’s
obedience. The choice to show this specific antiphon, gilded and conspicu-
ously evoking nuptial imagery, is thus a deliberate act of artistic licence. While
Mignard may have brought the Roman saint to Maintenon’s attention, some
level of agency in the conception of the portrait may also be sought on the
part of other actors involved in the shaping of her public and private persona,
particularly her spiritual director. In an undated letter,42 Godet states:
Le portrait que vous avez eu la bonté de m’envoyer, Madame, par rap-

port à votre état me paraît bien véritable et m’effrayerait si je ne savais
que Dieu vous y a introduit d’une manière qui paraît miraculeuse et si
40 See Manseau Pierre, Taphanel A. (ed.), Mémoires de Manseau, Intendant de la maison

royale de Saint-Cyr pub. d’après le manuscrit autographe (Versailles: 1902).
41 As noted by Horace Walpole, who visited the school in 1769. Horace Walpole, Letters of
Horace Walpole, ed. Charles Duke Yonge, vol. 2 (New York, 1890) 112–113. This observation
is corroborated by, e.g., the inventories made during the French Revolution, cf. Archives
Départementales des Yvelines, Mss. D 112–118.
42 Exceeding three hundred in number and spanning twenty years, Godet’s letters of spir-
itual direction survive in copy. The principal compilations date to the first half of the
18th century: Lettres spirituelles de M. l’abbé des Marais, évêque de Chartres, à Mme de
Maintenon vol. 1, Médiathèque Michel-Crepeau, La Rochelle (hereafter: BmR), Ms. 1759;
Lettres spirituelles de M. l’abbé des Marais, évêque de Chartres, à Mme de Maintenon vol 2,
Société Archéologique et historique de l’Orléanais (hereafter: SAHO), Ms. G 14; Les Lettres
Edifiantes, Bibliothèque municipale de Versailles (hereafter: BmV) Mss. 63–67. All of
these compilations originate from Saint-Cyr. We should also mention that Madame de
Maintenon, as part of her devotional praxis, copied Godet’s letters into small booklets.
Today, nine booklets survive containing an excess of seventy copies of letters from Godet:
Les Petits Livres Secrets BmV Mss. P 36–42; P 98; Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms.
Fr. 13249. The relationship between Maintenon’s copies, created from 1689 until Godet’s
death in 1709, and the later compilations of copies poses a number of fascinating ques-
tions that we disregard in the following.
je ne voyais sensiblement qu’il est avec vous, vous soutenant de sa main

toute-puissante et vous dirigeant en tout.43
The portrait which you have had the kindness to send me, Madame, with
regard to your particular condition seems to me very true and would
frighten me if I did not know that God introduced it to you in a man-
ner that appears miraculous, and if I did not see appreciably that he is
with you, sustaining you with his all-powerful hand and directing you in
everything.
This letter, undated but possibly from the 1690s, shows Maintenon taking per-
sonal pride in, if not ownership of, the iconography, while Godet des Marais
hints at a certain unease with the way she is represented. Yet, the bishop and
director condones it by reference to the divine and miraculous origin of this
method of portrayal.
As mentioned above, the book of hours depicted in the portrait shows
the text of an antiphon from the Office of Our Lady. This antiphon combines
Canticle 1:3 and Canticle 1:2: ‘In odorem unguentorum tuorum currimus: ado-
lescentulae dilexerunt te nimis’ (Into the odor of thy ointments we run: young
maidens have loved thee exceedingly). Both as signifiers of textual meaning
and as a hagiographical prompt, the gilded antiphon is crucial for the inter-
pretation of Mignard’s portrait. It should be noted that the interpretation of
these lines was highly controversial in late seventeenth-century France, as
they were associated with the ‘Quietists’ and used in the polemic against their
‘false’ mysticism.44 The aforementioned Madame Guyon dwelt on these verses
in her controversial commentary on the Canticle of Canticles. In her reading
of Canticle 1:3,45 Guyon interprets the first sentence as an utterance that the
bride addresses to the bridegroom from the centre of her soul: the ‘trahe me’
(draw me in) is an utterance voiced by the soul in its most intimate recess. In
the second part of the verse, the plural (‘post te curremus’/ we will run after
you) relates to the forces of the bride’s soul (‘mes puissances’) and her senses
(‘mes sens’). By the more profound union of essences, explicated in the desire
to be drawn in, Guyon argues that the cognitive capabilities can also run after
the bridegroom. To be drawn (‘tirer’) is thus equal to an essential union and
43 L ettres spirituelles de M. l’abbé des Marais, évêque de Chartres, à Mme de Maintenon vol. 1,
BmR, 454.
44 Bell D.N., A Saint in the Sun. Praising Saint Bernard in the France of Louis XIV (Collegeville
MN: 2017) 26–50.
45 Guyon Jeanne-Marie, Le Cantique des Cantiques de Salomon, interpreté selon le sens mis-

tique & la vraie representation des états interieurs (Lyon, Antoine Briasson: 1688) 12–13.
circumscribes this state that is accomplished by the forces of the soul and al-
lows it to engage with (‘attirer’) the divine.
In Godet’s episcopal response to Guyon’s writings, he accused her of
positing that the soul, already in this life, was able to unite itself with God
without any external mediation (‘immédiatement’) or method of procedure
(‘sans moyen’).46 However, Godet des Marais, in his role as spiritual director,
often engaged with the same nuptial imagery. In one of his letters, dated to
14 August 1708,47 Madame de Maintenon’s ‘directeur de conscience’ thus ex-
horts her to say the following prayer:
Priez-le [Dieu] donc humblement et avec confiance qu’il nous relève

après nous avoir humiliés et qu’il rende la France plus chrétienne que ja-
mais. Dites, Madame, demain à l’époux de votre âme ce que l’épouse par
excellence lui dit dans le Cantique des Cantiques: ‘tirez-moi après vous,
nous courrons après l’odeur de vos parfums’, c’est le langage de Marie.48
Therefore, pray to him [God] in a humble manner and with the convic-
tion that he, after having humiliated us, will lift us up and make France
more Christian than ever before. Madame, say tomorrow to the spouse
of your soul that which the ultimate bride says to him in the Canticle
of Canticles: ‘Draw me after you; we will run after the odour of thy
ointments’ – this is the language of Mary.
In this letter, the bishop is not merely referring Madame de Maintenon to the
words of Canticle 1:3, as they appear on the printed page. Rather, the letter re-
fers these words to the language of Mary – that is, to the Office of Our Lady:
[…] courez, dans cette Sainte Octave, à l’odeur céleste de l’époux, cou-
rez après l’épouse et avec la Sainte vierge, la plus excellente de toutes
les épouses, faites courir avec vous les âmes faibles qui sont avec vous à
46 odet des Marais Paul, Ordonnance et instruction pastorale de Monseigneur L’Evêque de

G
Chartres pour la condamnation des Livres intitulés Analysis orationis mentalis &c. Moien
court & très-facile de faire oraison &c. Règle des Associes à l’Enfance de Jésus &c. Le
Cantique des Cantiques de Salomon, interprété selon le sens mistique &c. & d’un Manuscrit
qui a pour titre Les Torrens (Paris, Louis Josse: 1695) 37. The text was signed at Saint-Cyr on
Monday 28 November 1695, while the royal privilege dates to 24 November 1695.
47 Letter from Godet des Marais to Madame de Maintenon, 14 August 1708; BmV Ms. P 40,
f. 50–59v.
f. 50v–51.
Saint-Cyr et pour faire courir ces jeunes filles que vous avez gagnées aux
divin époux.49
[…] on this holy Sunday, run toward the odour of the heavenly bride-
groom, run after the bride and alongside the Holy Virgin, that most excel-
lent of all brides; cause the weak souls who are with you at Saint-Cyr, to
race alongside you, making these young girls run, whom you have won for
the divine bridegroom.
Simultaneously, Madame de Maintenon is to run (‘courir’) and to make run

(‘faire courir’). Her relation to the divine is an interior state, and in her prayers
she is to address the bridegroom of her soul, thereby running in the footsteps
of Mary. However, this interior experience does not stand alone: it is circum-
scribed by a commitment to make the ‘demoiselles’ at Saint-Cyr run after their
‘foundatrice’. As the king’s wife follows the model of the Virgin, the young
virgins are to follow her. Returning to Mignard’s portrait, the ‘adolescentulae’
(Canticle 1:2) thus translate to the ‘demoiselles’, educated at Saint-Cyr and thus
running after Maintenon: the portrait communicates how these girls have
loved the king’s wife and followed her example; to its courtly and cloistered
viewers, the painting communicates a charitable engagement.
Focusing on the painted letters, Godet’s spiritual letter also integrates
various excerpts from saint Bernard’s Sermones in Cantica Canticorum. In
the letter quoted above, the bishop engages with § 4, § 5, § 10 and § 12 from
“Sermo XXI”.50 First, Godet samples § 4 and makes an incremental change
to its wording. In the saint’s exegesis, the act of being drawn is interpreted
as something needed ‘quoniam refriguit paulisper in nobis ignis amoris tui’
(because ‘the fire of your love has somewhat cooled in us). This makes it im-
possible for ‘us’ to run after the bridegroom in the same way as ‘we’ did just re-
cently. Finally, ‘curremus autem postea, cum reddideris laetitiam salutaris tui,
cum redierit melior temperies gratiae, cum Sol iustitiae iterum incaluerit’ (we
will be able to run, when you will have restored the joy of your salvation, when
the warmth of grace will have returned, when the Sun of Righteousness, again,
f. 59–59v.
50 Bernard of Clairvaux, “Sermo XXI”, in Sancti Bernardi abbatis primi Claravallensis.

Genuina sancti doctoris Opera quatuor prioribus tomis complectens. Post Horstium denuo
recognita, aucta, & in meliorem digesta ordinem, necnon novis præfationibus, admonitioni-
bus, notis & observationibus, indicibusque copiosissimis locupletata & illustrata, secundis
curis domni Johannis Mabillon, presbyteri & monachi benedictini è congregatione S. Mauri,
ed. Mabillon J., 2 vols. (Paris, Jean-Baptiste Coignard: 1690) vol. 1, 1330–1334.
will have grown warm).51 Godet cites these words in translation,52 but displaces
saint Bernard’s addressee from the first-person plural (‘in nobis’, ‘nec valemus’,
‘curremus’) to the first-person singular (‘en moi’, ‘cette froideur m’empêche de
courir comme je faisais hier et ces jours passés’, ‘Mais je courrai […] lorsque
le soleil de justice répandra sa chaleur sur moi’). These incremental displace-
ments centre saint Bernard’s words on Madame de Maintenon and her interior
state of distress. This strategy of presentation continues as the spiritual letter
jumps to the following passage: ‘[…] curremus, quoniam abscedet torpor qui
nunc est, et revertetur devotio’ (We will run, because the present indolence
will recede, and devotion shall return).53 Again, the bishop’s translation focus-
es the words on Maintenon by changing the grammatical number: ‘[…] parce
que l’engourdissement où je suis maintenant se retirera de moi, la dévotion
reprendra sa place, tellement je courrai alors sans peine’ (because the lethargy,
in which I am now, will withdraw from me, devotion will reclaim its place, and
thus I will run without troubles).54 The spiritual letter thus changes past words
and makes them speak, directly, to the state of its specific addressee: the wish
to be drawn towards Christ as bridegroom is inscribed into a spiritual predica-
ment; past words portray present predicaments.55
5 Imitation
We should here return to the verses from the Canticle, whose sequence is con-
flated because their material support in Mignard’s painting is no Bible but rath-
er a book of hours. Restoring the first verse to its biblical original (Canticle 1:3),
we read: ‘Trahe me, post te curremus in odorem unguentorum tuorum’ (Draw
51 Bernard of Clairvaux, “Sermo XXI” 1331.

52 The bishop is not simply quoting a translation but actively engaging with the saint’s for-
mulations. His French version, however, seems close to: Bernard of Clairvaux, “Sermo
XXI” in Bernard of Clairvaux, Les Sermons de Saint Bernard sur le Cantique des cantiques.
Nouvelle édition revue & corrigée en François, trans. Pierre Lombert (Paris, A. Dezallier/
Lyon, L. Plaignard: 1686 [1663]) 218–232.
f. 51–51v.

55 Within this space of interpretation, we might also recall the Sun of Righteousness
(Malachi 4:2), whose return saint Bernard anticipates: the present impasse shall be over-
come, when the joyous light of salvation shines forth and melts the icy hearts; this divine
act is the act of drawing in, which will again enable the brides to run after their bride-
groom. In the portrait, the light breaking through in the upper left corner of an interior
setting – quite unusual in portraits by Mignard– might be an allusion to this.
me in: we will run after you into the odour of Your ointments). This utterance
is ascribed to ‘Chorus Adolescentularum’ (the choir of the young maidens),
who collectively address ‘sponsa’ (the bride). However, saint Bernard notes an
apparent inconsistency: why ‘draw me’ and not ‘draw us’, which would match
the grammatical number of ‘curremus’ (we will run)? Resolving this tension,
Bernard begins by posing the following question:
Quid enim? fortene sponsa indiget trahi, et adolescentulae non indigent?

O pulchra, o felix, o beata! edissere nobis huius distinctionis rationem.
Trahe me, ais. Quare, me; et non, Nos? An hoc bonum invides nobis? Absit.
What does this mean? Could it be that the bride has need of being
drawn in, whereas the young maidens have no such need? O beautiful,
O happy, O blessed, explain to us the meaning behind this distinction.
Draw me, you say. Why ‘me’, and not rather ‘us’. Do you envy us this favor?
Surely not.56
In the letter of August 1708, Godet des Marais refers to this exegetical problem,57
which is also developed at length in an earlier letter,58 wherein he engages with
saint Bernard’s “Sermo XXI”.59 Here, the bishop is not addressing a state of
distress but rather ‘un nouveau désir d’avancer dans les vertus de votre état et
un nouvel amour pour notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ’ (a new desire to advance in
the virtues of your state and a new love for our Lord, Jesus Christ).60 The new-
found fascination is a means ‘pour vous faire courir’ (to make you run [after
him]).61 This is an important point, because the desire to be like Christ is to
imitate him – that is, to desire to become the living image of him, who, him-
self, is ‘the image of the invisible God’ (Colossians 1:15).62 According to Godet,
Christ as the imago Dei entails that everything in the invisible, heavenly realm
and everything in the visible, earthly realm have been created by Christ and for
Christ (cf. Colossians 1:16–17). The blood that he poured out on the cross has

f. 51v.
58 Letter from Godet des Marais to Madame de Maintenon, 2 May 1707; SAHO Ms. G 14,
317–352.
59 Letter from Godet des Marais to Madame de Maintenon, 2 May 1707; SAHO Ms. G 14, 319.
62 Cf. Letter from Godet des Marais to Madame de Maintenon, 2 May 1707; SAHO
Ms. G 14, 321.
therefore reconciled everything in heaven and on earth; by his bodily death,

Madame de Maintenon has become holy, without fault and irreprehensible as
long as she remains firm in the faith and the hope of the Gospel.63 Moreover,
the glorious descent of Christ, the mystery of his Incarnation, is described as
an excess of charity (cf. Ephesians 2:4), which, as foretold and promised by
the prophets, converts humankind into the children of God and the future in-
heritors of divine glory. After the Resurrection, the human condition radically
changed: it can now be seen by the light of what is to come; this is the divine
wisdom of things.
With explicit reference to Philippians 3:7–14,64 Godet engages with ‘cette
haute connaissance de Jésus-Christ’ (this supreme knowledge of Jesus Christ)
that saint Paul localizes in the Passion and Resurrection, and which makes
individuals conform to Christ’s suffering and death and thereby attain their
own future resurrection (cf. Philippians 3:10–11). Importantly, Paul explicitly
states that he has not yet obtained such a knowledge but is in pursuit of it: the
Apostle has not already reached the goal but is pressing towards his prize in
Christ, towards whom God calls him from above (cf. Philippians 3:14).65
Within the context of a spiritual letter wherein the director addresses
Madame de Maintenon’s newfound desire to follow Christ, this displacement
is important: Godet exhorts Maintenon to be of the same opinion as Paul by
often meditating upon these sacred words. The distinction between ‘courir’ (to
run) and ‘faire courir’ (to make to run) again applies, but in a slightly different
manner: the love of Christ and the desire to follow him cannot be fixed on a
stable image; it rather sets in motion a process of imitation. This same point
is further elaborated by reference to Ephesians 3, according to which the vo-
cation of all the saints on earth is to understand the breadth, length, height
and depth of ‘ce mystère’ – that is, the love Christ has for us, a love surpass-
ing all human knowledge (Ephesians 3:18–19).66 In turn, the mystery of the
love of Christ – a divine excess of charity towards the whole of Creation – is
connected to 2 Corinthians 3, where the Apostle speaks about Moses as hav-
ing put a veil upon his face and thereby preventing a certain kind of vision
(2 Corinthians 3:13). Whereas Moses was veiled, the followers of Christ all be-
hold the glory of the Lord with open face (2 Corinthians 3:18), and if the Gospel
that they share remains hidden and unclear, if its message has not yet been
322–323.
327–329.
unveiled, this is because its listeners have not yet been illuminated by the light
of the Gospel and by the glory of Jesus Christ, who is the living image of God
(2 Corinthians 4:3–4). More specifically, the world has still to be transformed
into the likeness of this same image, whereby humanity, illuminated by the
Spirit of the Lord, advances from clarity to clarity (cf. 2 Corinthians 3:18).67
In the perspective of such imaginary transformation, Godet praises Madame
de Maintenon on account of her ‘yeux du cœur’ (eyes of the heart). These eyes
have been illuminated by the Spirit of God, and ‘le dieu du monde’ (the god of
the world) has not blinded her, making her unable to see ‘cette sublime splen-
deur de l’Évangile’ (the sublime splendour of the Gospel). She is therefore dif-
ferent from the ‘chrétiens grossiers’ (crude Christians), whose eyes have been
blinded by ‘la fausse gloire du siècle’ (the false glory of the world), and to whom
holiness and virtues therefore remain hidden truths. Such ‘gens du siècle’ are
accustomed to praise only what speaks directly to ‘leur sensualité, leur orgueil,
leur avarice et leur vaine curiosité’ (their senses, their pride, their greed and
their vain curiosity).68
Outlining these different modes of seeing, Godet’s letter supports a con-
templation of the glory of the Gospel in ‘sa bassesse apparente’ (its apparent
baseness).69 The bishop also states that God wants certain souls as his brides,
and with these souls He entertains a special kind of relationship: as brides of
Christ, souls enter into a special kind of community with the divine; this ex-
clusive relationship, however, does not deprive them of an obligation towards
the world. The brides are not alone but rather destined for others.70 Mystical in
nature, the intimate relationship to the divine thus entails no complete with-
drawal from the world: the brides ‘qui sont fécondes pour leur époux’ (that are
fertile towards their bridegroom) cannot remain ‘seules’ (alone), because their
salvation hinges upon an engagement in the world.71 As such a bride of Christ,
Madame de Maintenon ‘ne va pas seule à son époux, elle voudrait lui procurer
une gloire abondante, elle court à l’odeur de ses parfums et elle en fait courir
beaucoup d’autres après elle’ (does not go alone to her bridegroom; he wants to
obtain for him an abundance of glory; she runs into the odour of his ointments,
and she makes many others run after her).72 The difference between singular
332–333.
and plural – between ‘Trahe me’ and ‘Trahe nos’ – can thus be explained as
the difference between following a model and being a model. First, Maintenon
is to imitate Christ by taking the Virgin as her model: this modelling unfolds
in her intimate space and is, as such, a private affair. This intimacy is circum-
scribed, however, by the fact that Maintenon herself serves as a model: from
otherworldliness (following a divine model) springs the desire to reform the
world (being a model of the divine). In the singular, a desire to be drawn to-
ward Christ is always already a desire to draw others in and to have them, in the
plural, run after you, following you as their model.
According to the spiritual director, this is the ‘état’ (state) in which Madame
de Maintenon finds herself, and accordingly, she is every day to ruminate on
the words: ‘Draw me after you, we will run’.73 In her prayers, she is to give voice,
from the bottom of her heart, to the desire to be drawn closer to her divine
bridegroom. Following Ephesians 3:20, this interior mode of speaking is stron-
ger than anything the self could piece together in elegant words or imagine
with its mental powers. In response, Madame de Maintenon will receive an in-
creasing amount of grace that will allow her ‘de courir et d’en faire courir beau-
coup d’autres avec vous’ (to run and, thereby, make many others run after her).
This description is also designed to help the king’s wife approach him that
‘vous aimez et pour lequel Dieu vous a mise où vous êtes’ (you love and for
whom God has placed you where you are). The terrestrial mode of seeing is
here linked to the king, who ‘a les yeux encore faibles, son cœur néanmoins est
religieux et il veut se sauver’ (has eyes still weak, although his heart is religious
and he wants to save himself). Godet invites Madame de Maintenon, together
with Louis XIV, contemplatively to consider:
[…] cette sublimité d’un Dieu anéanti et souffrant expirer sur la croix
pour nous rendre saints et pour nous faire un peuple agréable à son
père; je sais de vous qu’il est choqué d’entendre lire dans l’Évangile que
Jésus-Christ parle toujours le langage des pauvres, mais il faut aider à son
infirmité ; montrez-lui la hauteur des mystères de Jésus-Christ dans ce
qui paraît bas et faible aux yeux des gens, car ce qui paraît une folie en lui
est sagesse de Dieu, et ce qui semble une faiblesse en lui est la force du
salut, de la sainteté et de la gloire éternelle des chrétiens.
[…] this sublimity of an annihilated and suffering God, who expires

on the cross in order to make us holy and create a people agreeable to
their Father. From you I have learnt that he is shocked, when hearing the
Gospel read, that Jesus always speaks the language of the poor, but it is
necessary to relieve his weakness; in what appears base and weak in the
eyes of men, show him the summit of the mysteries of Jesus Christ, be-
cause what in Him appears a foolishness is the wisdom of God, and what
in Him seems a weakness is the force of Salvation, of saintliness and of
the eternal glory of Christians.
If Maintenon’s ultimate goal was to save the king’s soul, and to make France
more Christian than ever, she must thus fashion herself into a saintly model.
6 Conclusion
At first sight, Mignard’s painting presents itself as an open book. We may, how-
ever, read something between the lines. Depending on the viewer, the painting
could disclose a secret – Maintenon’s marriage to the king – or constitute a
mystery. It dissimulates, concealing and revealing different intentions to view-
ers with different ‘patterns of attention’. By casting Maintenon in the historical
attire of a saint, Mignard bypasses issues of decorum that would have arisen
due to the sitter’s equivocal station. Yet, he consciously puts the viewer on the
wrong track by playing with the way we are conditioned to look at portraiture:
that is, in a psychological way and by recourse to socio-political rather than
religious conventions.
Mignard portrays Madame de Maintenon as the founder of a religious con-
gregation that, like the Visitandines of François de Sales and the Oblates of
Francesca Romana, was actively engaged in the world. The gilded letters from
Canticle 1:2–3 refer to the royal foundation of Saint-Cyr and its ‘adolescentulae’.
To those who were familiar with the life of saint Frances of Rome, such as (one
may surmise) the members of Maintenon’s devout network and the Dames
de Saint Louis, the gilded verse also evoked the moral lesson that God prefers
prompt obedience to worldly duties over any complete abandonment to a life
of devotion. Such duties, when they are exercised in accordance with one’s
social position, do not contradict God’s will: neglect of worldly obligations is
rather a dangerous attitude, at best prideful and potentially heretical. The li-
turgical text of the Little Office / Canticle of Canticles, with its controversial
overtones, is thus ‘reframed’ in an entirely orthodox way: the divine miracle
is bestowed upon a Roman Catholic saint precisely because she did not lose
herself in devotion, but stayed firmly grounded in the world and its marital
obligations. The controversy around Quietism would only break out in its full
intensity sometime after the portrait was made. Nevertheless, we believe that
it must be seen as a (preemptive) response to the potential scandal of quietist
tendencies being fostered at the royal foundation. This urgency helps to explain
why Maintenon is presented in this particular way, and why the portrait was so
actively disseminated: it cleverly modulated the perception of Maintenon at a
time when her proximity to the king was potentially compromised.
Viewed in conjunction with the spiritual letters of the bishop of Chartres,
Mignard’s portrait sheds light on how Maintenon’s position and her agency in
the world was understood. By playing with the conventional ways of viewing
portraits historiés, Mignard challenged the beholder to look beyond superfi-
cial appearances and worldly status, and instead to apply (gendered) religious
knowledge in recognizing that the portrait (obliquely) addressed the status of
Madame de Maintenon as secret royal consort. It thus offered the viewer a
visual parable that could only be understood fully by those with the faculty of
spiritual discernment. Those who grasped this meaning were also made aware
of her humble and obedient attitude towards religion, marriage and politics,
and that she did not pose a threat to the Crown.
Pierre Mignard was praised for having singlehandedly elevated the status
of portrait painting to the level of history painting. It may very well be his wit
or ‘esprit’, reflecting that of the soul of the sitter, which Monville praised as
‘sublime’, and which led Catherine Bernard to exclaim: ‘Ah, Mignard, que vous
louez bien!’
Bibliography
Acta Sanctorum, 53 vols. (Antwerp, Jacobus Meursius: 1643–1794).

Bajou T., “À propos de quelques tableaux de Mignard à Versailles”, in Boyer J.-C. (ed),
Pierre Mignard “le Romain” (Paris: 1997) 195–224.
Bajou T., Les Peintures à Versailles : XVIIe Siècle (Paris : 1998).
Barbafieri C., “Le théâtre de Catherine Bernard, ou comment être moderne dans le
genre tragique à la fin du XVIIe siècle”, in Bahier-Porte C. – Poulouin C. (eds.), Écrire
et penser en Moderne (1687–1750) (Paris: 2015) 321–336.
Barone G., “Francesca Romana santa della Riforma cattolica”, in Romagnoli B.A. –
Picasso G. (eds.), La canonizzazione di Santa Francesca Romana. Santità, Cultura e
Istituzioni a Roma tra Medioevo ed Età Moderna, La Mistica cristiana tra Oriente e
Occidente 20 (Florence: 2013) 125–138.
Bell D.N., A Saint in the Sun. Praising Saint Bernard in the France of Louis XIV
(Collegeville MN: 2017).
Bergamo M., L’anatomie de l’âme. De François de Sales à Fénelon (Paris: 1994).
Bernard of Clairvaux, “Sermo XXI”, in Sancti Bernardi abbatis primi Claravallensis.
Genuina sancti doctoris Opera quatuor prioribus tomis complectens. Post Horstium
denuo recognita, aucta, & in meliorem digesta ordinem, necnon novis præfationibus,
admonitionibus, notis & observationibus, indicibusque copiosissimis locupletata & il-
lustrata, secundis curis domni Johannis Mabillon, presbyteri & monachi benedictini è
congregatione S. Mauri, ed. Mabillon J., 2 vols. (Paris, Jean-Baptiste Coignard: 1690).
Bernard Catherine, Piva F. (ed.), Oeuvres complètes, 2 vols. (Paris – Fasano: 1999).
Bernard of Clairvaux, Les Sermons de Saint Bernard sur le Cantique des cantiques.
Nouvelle édition revue & corrigée en François, trans. Pierre Lombert (Paris,
A. Dezallier – Lyon, L. Plaignard: 1686).
Brizzi G., “Contributo all’iconografia di Francesca Romana”, in Picasso G. (ed.), Una
Santa tutta Romana. Saggi e ricerche nel VI centenario della nascita di Francesca
Bussa dei Ponziani (1384–1984) (Siena: 1984) 265–355.
Bruun M.B – Havsteen S.R. – Mejrup K. – Nagelsmit E. – Nørgaard L.C., “Withdrawal
and Engagement in the Long Seventeenth Century: Four Case Studies”, Journal of
Early Modern Christianity 1 (2015) 249–343.
Cepari Virgilio, Vita di santa Francesca Romana, fondatrice dell’Oblate di Torre de
Specchi cavata da vari manoscritti antichi, dalli processi fatti per la sua canonizazione
ed alter istorie, data nuovamente in luce dalla Madre Presidente, ed Oblate di Torre
de’Specchi (Rome, s.n: 1675).
Coquery E. (ed.), Visages du Grand Siècle: Le portrait français sous le règne de Louis XIV,
1660–1715, exh. cat. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes – Musée des Augustins, Toulouse
(Paris: 1997).
De Boislisle A., Paul Scarron et Françoise d’Aubigné. D’après des documents nouveaux
(Paris: 1894).
De Coulanges Philippe Emmanuel, “Mémoires de M. de Coulanges. Conclaves
d’Alexandre VIII et d’Innocent XII” in Mémoires de M. de Coulanges, Suivis de Lettres
Inédites de Madame de Sévigné, de son fils, de l’abbé de Coulanges, d’Arnauld d’Andil-
ly, d’Arnauld de Pomponne, de Jean de La Fontaine, et d’autres personnages du même
siècle, ed. Monmerqué J.-L.-N. (Paris: 1820) 77–325.
De Lastic G., “Contribution à l’oeuvre de Pierre Mignard, portraitiste”, Bulletin de la
Société de l’Histoire de l’Art français (1980) 167–176.
De Sales François, “Traité de l’Amour de Dieu”, in Œuvres, ed. Ravier A. (Paris: 1969).
Fénelon François, Correspondance, ed. Orcibal J., with the collaboration of
Le Brun J. – Noye I. – Neveu B., 18 vols. (Paris/Geneva: 1972–2007).
Fumaroli M., De Rome à Paris: peinture et pouvoirs aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles
(Dijon: 2007).
Godet des Marais Paul, Ordonnance et instruction pastorale de Monseigneur L’Evêque
de Chartres pour la condamnation des Livres intitules Analysis orationis mentalis &c.
Moien court & très-facile de faire oraison &c. Règle des Associes à l’Enfance de Jésus
&c. Le Cantique des Cantiques de Salomon, interprété selon le sens mistique &c. &
d’un Manuscrit qui a pour titre Les Torrens (Paris, Louis Josse: 1695).
Guyon Jeanne-Marie, La Vie par elle-même et autres écrits par elle-même, ed.
Dominique Tronc, 2 vols, (Paris: 2014).
Guyon Jeanne-Marie, Le Cantique des Cantiques de Salomon, interpreté selon le sens
mistique & la vraie representation des états interieurs (Lyon, Antoine Briasson: 1688).
Le Brun J., La spiritualité de Bossuet (Paris: 1972).
Ledieu François, “Mémoires de l’abbé Ledieu sur le quiétisme” [1699], ed. Levesque E.,
Revue Bossuet 7 (1907) 19–56.
Manseau Pierre, Taphanel A. (ed.), Mémoires de Manseau, Intendant de la maison
royale de Saint-Cyr pub. d’après le manuscrit autographe (Versailles: 1902).
Masson M., “La correspondance spirituelle de Fénelon avec Madame de Maintenon”,
Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France 13 (1906) 51–72.
Mazière de Monville Simon-Philippe, La Vie de Pierre Mignard, premier peintre du roy,
par l’abbé de Monville, avec le poème de Molière sur les peintures du Val-de-Grâce et
deux dialogues de M. de Fénelon, Archevêque de Cambray, sur la peinture (Paris, Jean
Boudot – Jacques Guérin: 1730).
Mezzadri L., “San Francesco di Sales e santa Francesca Romana alle origini della
Visitazione”, in Bartolomei Romagnoli A. – Picasso G. (eds.), La canonizzazione di
Santa Francesca Romana. Santità, Cultura e Istituzioni a Roma tra Medioevo ed Età
Moderna, La mistica cristiana tra Oriente e Occidente 20 (Florence: 2013) 215–230.
Nikolenko L., Pierre Mignard: Portrait Painter of the Grand Siècle (Munich: 1983).
Nørgaard L.C., Sources of Spiritual direction (Ph.D. dissertation, University of
Copenhagen: 2017).
Phélypeaux Jean, Relation de l’origine du progrès et de la condamnation du quiétisme
répandu en France, 2 vols. (s.l, s.n: 1732).
Schneider M., Bildnis – Maske – Galanterie: das “portrait historié” zwischen Grand Siècle
und Zeitalter der Aufklärung (Berlin – Munich, 2019).
Sévigné Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Lettres de Madame de Sévigné, de sa famille et ses
amis, ed. Monmerqué L.-J.-N., 14 vols. (Paris: 1862–1868).
Shapiro N., French Women Poets of Nine Centuries: The Distaff and the Pen (Baltimore
MD: 2008).
Toscano B., “Iconografia e storia dell’arte. Riflessioni su un libro di Giovanni Brizzi”, in

Romagnoli – Picasso (eds.), La canonizzazione di Santa Francesca Romana. Santità,
Cultura e Istituzioni a Roma tra Medioevo ed Età Moderna, La mistica cristiana tra
Oriente e Occidente 20 (Florence: 2013) 363–370.
Vinha M. da – Maral A. (eds.), Madame de Maintenon. Dans les allées du pouvoir, exh.
cat., Château de Versailles (Versailles: 2019).
Walpole Horace, Letters of Horace Walpole, ed. Charles Duke Yonge, vol. 2 (New York,
1890).
part 5
Secrets of the Ars symbolica: Emblems and Enigmas
∵
chapter 16
Secret est à louer: Secrets and Secrecy in French

Baroque Cartography, 1580–1640
Tom Conley
Three decades ago cartographic historian J. Brian Harley contended that se-
crets and secret agendas are ubiquitous in early modern maps and mapping.
Containing classified information vital for diplomacy and war, maps were
even falsified in order to fool enemies who would acquire them. Classified op-
erations, cartographic programs contained signs and figures discernible only
among those who deployed them for specific ends.1 Or too, in a different sense,
like the unconscious, exerting uncommon or strange forces of attraction, maps
were made (or happened) to ‘work on’ viewers and readers in ways that could
not be easily stated or revealed. Especially salient in the Age of Discovery and
oceanic travel are areas where maps designate regions unknown, places that
today invoke what analyst Guy Rosolato has called a relation d’inconnu. Not a
relation ‘with’ what would be ‘the’ unknown, but of, a relation of impenetrable
secrets at the core of life itself.2
In what follows I would like to see how a relation d’inconnu finds expres-
sion in the decorative matter of scientific maps in the early middle years of
seventeenth-century France, where otherwise the relation would be attenu-
ated or repressed.3 The motivation for the inquiry stems from dialogue with
1 Harley, J. Brian, “Silences and Secrecy: The Hidden Agenda of Cartography in Early Modern
Europe”, reprinted in Laxton P. (ed.), The New Nature of Maps: Essays in the History of
Cartography, introd. J.H. Andrews (Baltimore: 2001) 84–107. On willful falsification see
Jacob C., The Sovereign Map: Theoretical Approaches in Cartography Throughout History
(Chicago: 2006) 274.
2 Rosolato G., La Relation d’inconnu (Paris: 1978).
3 Michel de Certeau, in L’Invention du quotidien: Arts de faire, ed. L. Giard (Paris: 1990) 178–179,
noted that in its development from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century maps rid them-
selves of the narrative figures that ‘mark […] the historical operations of which they are a
product. Hence the sailing vessel painted on the sea makes clear the maritime expedition
that prompted the representation of the coastlines. (…). But the map progressively wins over
these figures, colonizing its space, slowly eliminating the pictorial figurations of the practices
that produced it. […] The map, a total scene in which the elements of disparate origin are
assembled together to form the picture [tableau] of a ‘state’ of geographic knowledge, setting
aside, as if in the wings (…) the operations of which it is the effect or possibility’.

550 Conley
Michel Foucault’s heuristic that located an ‘epistemological rupture’ around

the year 1600, a moment when knowledge, until then informed by study of re-
semblance and dissemblance among things and the languages that described
them, gives way to a ‘science’ of representation. Signs that had been part and
parcel of what they had signified now stand at a distance from their referents
or simply vanish.4 Correlatively, in cartography much of the decorative mate-
rial integral to maps in the early and middle years of the sixteenth century
becomes – after 1600 – increasingly superfluous, commonplace or, for the prac-
tical cartographer, cosmetic. In the Baroque Age (say, 1580–1640), not entirely
repressed or expunged in favor of science, signs that had been indicative of the
secret force or power of the map become commonplace. Or do they? Despite
figuring within a frame of representation, do they nonetheless belong to the
process of analogy that marked the Renaissance? To consider the question,
the paragraphs that follow reach back, first, to the relation of emblems and
anamorphosis to cartography in the sixteenth century before, second, engag-
ing scientific maps by Nicolas Tassin, an royal engineer employed by Richelieu
and Louis XIII, and others by Nicolas Sanson, the géographe ordinaire du roy,
drawn and published at the same moment. By way of conclusion it will be ar-
gued that new modes of mapping retain ‘secret’ dimensions in what they do
with material that would otherwise be decorative or ineffably conventional.
1 Discretion: Gilles Corrozet
In 1540, responding to the popularity of the book of emblems that legist

Andreas Alciati had launched nine years earlier, enterprising publisher, poet
and bookmaker Gilles Corrozet proposed for printer Denys Janot a collec-
tion of 100 monolingual emblems. Titled Hecatomgraphie: C’est à dire les de-
scriptions de cent figures & hystoires, contenantes Plusieurs Appophthegmes
Proverbes, Sentences & dictz tant des Anciens que des modernes, the book was
designed to afford visual and tactile pleasure. Over the course of the work four
different frames and borders, set in an alternating pattern, enclose mottoes (in
superscriptio) above small but meticulously carved woodcuts in the center (in
inscriptio). The latter are graced by illustrative quatrains below (in subscriptio)
that give way on the following folio (recto) to a poem in octosyllables that ‘ex-
plains’ or mediates the relation established between the motto, the woodcut
4 Foucault M., Les Mots et les choses (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1966). Surely the beginning of
Montaigne’s essay on “Experience” (Essais, III, xiii) would be at the cusp of the older and new
epistemologies.
Secrets and Secrecy in French Baroque Cartography 551
image, and the quatrain on the adjacent page. An emblem book for begin-
ners, the Hecatomgraphie sets store by its lavish surrounds, its finely incised
woodcuts, and an innovative typeface. Instead of putting its mottoes in Greek
or Latin, in tension with the vernacular idiom below, the Hecatomgraphie is
composed entirely in a vernacular idiom. Coupled with the woodcut images
of persons in classical garb that quite possibly Jean Cousin had drawn, the an-
tique style of the grotesque surrounds signals a new mode, the ‘invention’ of
a classical style.5 That the work witnesses three editions from 1540 to 1543 is
indicative of its popularity, its design making it an object anyone of means
would wish to own and, today, a valuable item in any collection of rare and
sumptuous books.6
In the dedicatory poem he addresses to his inventive readers (aux bons es-
pritz & amateurs des lettres) Corrozet contends that his work deploys disguise
and dissimulation to enhance its visibility and lend a sense of space and vol-
ume to the emblems. A year earlier, in the Blasons domestiques (1539), he had
commingled verse and woodcut images to sanctify the inner space of house-
hold places.7 Elsewhere, in his illustrated translation of Aesop’s Fables, the de-
sign and disposition of images and poetry are prototypically emblematic.8 At
this moment in his career, no doubt in conjunction with printer Denys Janot,
he crafted his emblems as critical or even enigmatic objects. Much in line with
Rabelais’s art of ambivalence announced in the prologue to Gargantua (1535
and 1542), the Hecatomgraphie claims to lay stress on a sense of discretion tied
to secrecy. Corrozet declares,
Qu’on ne mect riens maintenant en lumiere

Qui naict esté ou veu ou deguisé.
Mais en voyant que n’est poinct desprisé
5 Z erner H., L’Art français de la Renaissance: L’Invention du classicisme (Paris, 1996) 278–279.
6 For this essay reference is made to the 1540 edition in Glasgow, elegantly digitized and on
line: http://www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/french/facsimile.php?id=sm385–a3v; to the 1541
edition in the Harvard Houghton Library <GEN Typ 515.41.299>, one emblem of which
(« Lymage doccasion ») is online : https://ids.lib.harvard.edu/ids/view/26004033; the 1543
edition in the Douglas H. Gordon Collection of French Books at the University of Virginia,
on line: http://search.lib.virginia.edu/catalog/uva-lib:777169#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=11&xywh
=-565%2C-218%2C3525%2C4342.
7 Les Blasons domestiques contenantz la decoration d’une maison honneste, & du mesnage en
icelle: invention joyeuse, & moderne ([Paris], On les vend en la grand salle du Palais, pres la
Chappelle des messieurs, en la boutique de Gilles Corrozet libraire: 1539). The collection was
printed by Denys Janot (Harvard Houghton Library Typ 515.39.299).
8 Corrozet Gilles, Les fables du très ancien Esope, mises en rithme françoise (Paris, Denys

Janot: 1542).
552 Conley
Le bon ouvrier qui l’ouvrage varie,

Comme ung orfevre en son orfaverie.
Qui d’un argent faict ung pot, une image
Puis en changeant & desguisant l’ouvrage
Il en faict tout ce qui luy vient à gré.
Ainsi suyvant celluy en mon degré
Ie ne doibs pas aulcun blame encourir,
Si i’ay voulu encercher & querir
Ce qui fut dict des gens de bon scavoir
Le deguisant, pour mieulx le faire veoir
Plus richement, comme on faict par raison
De vieulx mesrien une neufve maison.9
[May nothing be put into light that has not been either seen or disguised. But
by seeing how the good worker who varies his labor is forever esteemed, much
like a silversmith in his trade, he who from silver turns a vase into an image, then
by changing and disguising the work he does with it whatever he wishes. Thus
following him in my work I ought not be blamed if I have sought to look after
and question what was said of learned people, disguising it in order to make it
more richly visible, just as, with reason, we turn old boards into a new house
(stress added)]. Corrozet’s emblem aspires to be a ‘hieroglyph’ that as decora-
tive enigma can yield untold meaning and intellectual reward.10
Titled “Secret est à louer” [Secret is praiseworthy], the twentieth emblem
may well be a point of reference for the operation [Fig. 16.1]. Below the motto, in
a rectangular surround (of one line) within an equilateral frame (of two lines),
a snail emerges from under the arch of a handsomely vaulted grotto. Its head
and proboscis erect, its antennae set high in the air, the gastropod makes its
way into a landscape that extends to the horizon in the far background while,
on the right, the edge of the cave is flanked by a tree trunk that extends beyond
the limits of the frame. A scion on the left is a pruned stock, erect and alert,
out of which push four suckers that resemble the snail’s antennae that feel the
environs and atmosphere. The snail advances, it seems, by virtue of secreting
fluid on the ground. It carries its shell, a ‘home’, in its egress from the dark back-
ground defined by the woodcutter’s close and tight parallel hatching. A few
tufts or clumps of grass on the top of the cavern imply that the snail will find
what it needs to sustain itself. As if reading a book of natural history, we are
9 Corrozet Gilles, Hécatomgraphie (Paris, Denys Janot: 1540), fol. Aiii ro.

10 See Céard J. – Margolin J.-C., “Rébus et hiéroglyphes,” in Rébus à la Renaissance: Des im-
ages qui parlent, vol. 1 (Paris: 1984) 72–73.
Figure 16.1
Gilles Corrozet, “Secret est à louer,” in
Hecatomgraphie
Paris: Denys Janot, 1540 and 1543
quick to identify the snail – an escargot – and leave ourselves to wonder what
in heaven’s name it has to do with a secret. Given the presence of ‘secret’ in
‘esc-a-r-go-t’, would the art of the anagram suggest that one word or thing is
in the other, and vice-versa? Or perhaps, would the device be an anthropo-
morphic image? The spiral of the snail’s shell (dashed hatching depicting its
crusty upper side) becomes the pupil of a human eye in a socket defined by
the outline of the grotto.
If so, what does the relation of the (blind but highly sensitive) snail have to
do with vision and visibility? Would the image be a riddle, a work of wit, or per-
haps a joke or fable? Or perhaps a fragment taken from the legacy of Ptolemy’s
Geographia, in which, at the outset, the Alexandrian stated flatly that ‘cosmog-
raphy’, the study of the world in the greater expanse of the heavens, could be
likened to a painter’s portrait of a human sitter, while ‘topography’, would re-
semble the depiction of a bodily part, notably an eye or an ear, like a view of
an agglomeration on an island, without respect to or any connection with a
greater whole.11 In its disguise “Secret est à louer” would be a topographical
emblem, an eye analogous to the strange shape with which Pieter Apian had
illustrated the distinction of geography and topography in his Cosmographia,
a work witnessing thirty editions from 1524 to 1600, one of the most common
11 Nuti L., “Le Langage de la peinture dans la cartographie topographique,” in Bousquet-

Bressolier C., L’Œil du cartographe et la représentation géographique du Moyen Âge à nos
jours (Paris : 1995) 53–70, esp. 54–55.
554 Conley
and best known pedagogical manuals of the sixteenth century.12 In marked

contrast with the editions printed in Antwerp and northern cities, close in-
spection of the 1551 copy (Paris, Vivant Gaultherot, printed in both French and
Latin, for which illustrations were redrawn) reveals that the cross hatching of
the pupil of the exemplary eye traces lines of longitude and latitude of what
would be a minuscule version of the polar projection of the earth displayed on
a full page elsewhere in the same volume [Fig. 16.2].
Directly related to the illustrators of Ptolemy’s Geographia, Corrozet’s ‘se-
cret’ would be a whispered praise of the complicated relation of wholes and
parts and of the limits of analogy. A work of disguise and dissimulation, the
subscriptive poem deviates from the relation of the eye and the snail to geog-
raphy and cartography while telling us that in silence, with aplomb and discre-
tion, we do well to cast a careful and studied ‘gaze’ upon our ambient world.
The secret or secrecy would be understood both as a withholding of knowledge
for diplomatic ends, but also, in nominative form, a concealed space or area of
meditative retreat, which, adjacent to the image, the quatrain affirms:
Ainsi que le Lymas se tient

En sa coquille en grand secret,
Tout ainsi l’homme se maintient
Clos & couvert comme discret.
[Just as the snail lives in its shell in a great secret, so also humans contain and
cover themselves in discretion.] The longer explanation further confirms the
point. A prudent subject does well to
Se tenir quoy & ferme en sa pensée,

Fuyr le mal, quand il est evident,
Prendre Fortune alors qu’ est advancée:
Saillir en temps quand la peur est passée,
Se declairer en temps & en saison,
Et se celer (toute crainte cessée)
Comme tu fais dans ta coque & maison.
[Stay coy and firm in their thoughts, avoid evil when it is evident, capture
Fortune when it avails, jump ahead when fear subsides, come forward at
12 Karrow R., Mapmakers of the Sixteenth Century: Bio-Bibliography of the Cartographers of

Abraham Ortelius, 1570 (Chicago: 1993) 52.
Figure 16.2 Pieter Apian, detail of similitude of geography and topography in

Cosmographia
Paris: Vivant Gaultherot, 1551
the proper moment, and remain secret (when dread is done) as do you in your
shell and home.]
2 Anamorphosis: Béroalde de Verville and Ortelius
As Corrozet had also described his household in his Blasons domestiques

(1539), the home becomes (thanks to the parenthesis in the penultimate line)
an enclosure, a secret space à part soy, where the greater world, barely vis-
ible through narrow windows, is better contemplated than visualized. In the
twentieth emblem of the Hecatomgraphie Corrozet appeals to what later, in his
“Avis aux beaux esprits”, the preface to his Voyage des princes fortunez (1610),
polymath Béroalde de Verville relates to anamorphosis, an art of concealing
one figure in another. Béroalde proclaims,
je dis que la Steganographie est l’ art de representer naïvement ce

qui est d’aisé conception, & qui toutefois sous les traits espoissis de son
apparence cache des suiets tout autres, que ce qui semble estre proposé :
ce qui est practiqué en peinture quand on met en veuë quelque païsage,
ou port, ou autre pourtrait qui cependant musse sous soy [ ʃoy] quelque
autre figure que l’on discerne quand on regarde par un certain endroit ce
que le maistre a designé. Et aussi s’exerce par escrit, quand on discourt
amplement de suiets [ ʃuiets] plausibles, lesquels envelopent quelque
autres excellences qui ne sont cognues que lors qu’on lit par le secret en-
droit qui descouvre les magnificences occultes à l’apparence commune ;
556 Conley
mais claires & manifestes à l’œil & à l’entendement qui areceu la lumiere
qui fait penetrer dans ces discours proprement [ã.v.ro] impenetrables, &
non autrement intelligibles.13
[I declare that Steganography is the art of representing innocuously what

is conceived with ease, and that always in the broader lines of its ap-
pearance conceals subjects entirely other than what is apparent : what
is practiced in painting when a landscape, a port, or another portrait is
displayed, that nonetheless conceals [musse14] beneath it some other fig-
ure that can be discerned when ample discourse is made on plausible
subjects, which envelops other excellent things, recognized however only
when they are read from the secret place that unveils [descouvre] mag-
nificence hidden under common appearance; but they are clear and dis-
tinct to the ear and ear that receive the light and that can penetrate these
seemingly impenetrable and otherwise unintelligible discourses.]
Adjacent to Béroalde’s preface is a fold-out map of a fictive archipelago with

which readers can follow the voyages the princely characters take throughout
a novel that qualifies, much like L’Astrée, Honoré d’Urfé’s better known novel of
the same moment, as a cartographic fiction. The Histoire veritable unveils itself
as an exploration and encounter with unknown and often secret spaces. An al-
chemical novel fashioned from what its author calls a ‘figured discourse’, a writ-
ing in which images are tipped into its graphic form, it implies that everywhere
it invites close reading of its enigmas. Not unlike Corrozet’s hieroglyphic em-
blem of the snail-as-eye in the context of the relation of geography to topogra-
phy, Béroalde’s voluminous fiction builds on the arts of analogy and mapping.15
Characters move from one place to another as if they were in Borges’s “Garden
13 éroalde de Verville François, L’Histoire veritable ou le voyage des princes fortunez, divi-
B
see en iiii. entreprises (Paris, Chez Pierre Chevalier: 1610), fol. aiiij vo [Harvard Houghton
Library *FC5 B4589 610h].
14 In his French and English dictionary of 1611, Randle Cotgrave translates musser in a sense
related to anamorphosis and even the anal design of Schön’s engraving: ‘Musser: to hide,
conceale, keep close, lay out of the way; also, to lurke, skowke, or squat in a corner’ (stress
added); and: ‘Musse: A secret corner, a privie hoord, hiding hole; an odd nooke to lay a
thing out of the way in’ (stress added). See A Dictionairie of the French & English Tongues
(London, Adam Inslip: 1611).
15 The Corrozet-Béroalde connection is not far-fetched. Jean Cousin may well have drawn
the images for the Hécatomgraphie and, soon, the images that accompany the French
translation of Le Songe de Poliphile (Paris, Jacques Kerver: 1546). The depiction of flora and
vegetation in both works is strikingly similar.
of Forking Paths”. In doing so they beg a nagging question about how secrets
and secrecy affect maps and mapping at the moment, in view of new modes
of survey and, generally, the impact of the Copernican Revolution, when car-
tography abandons analogy in favor of a science of representation.16 Any art of
doubling or dissimulating objects in and through one another – like Corrozet’s
creatures or Béroalde’s anamorphic landscapes – would vanish. Hence the
conundrum of Jean de Gourmont’s famous “Fool’s Cap Map” (1575), which
prints (for the first time in France) an epitome version of Abraham Ortelius’
world map in the place of a jester’s face: contrary to what Apian had set for-
ward in his similitude of Geography and a painted portrait, Gourmont’s ‘bouf-
fonnerie’ implied that it would be inane to venture any analogy between the
physiognomy of a fool and a cartographic representation of the world.17 Or
would it? If the fool’s cap map is a piece of wit or a fable, the image could in-
vite a contrary reading by which the analogy of face and map is nonetheless
latent or implicitly present.18 The inspiration is evident in the oval projection,
the world map that introduces every edition of the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum
(from 1570 to 1606), which invites viewers to discern a physiognomy [Fig. 16.3].
Asia/Europe and North America, two northern continents, in white, could be
construed as a pair of eye sockets; the northern and southern Atlantic as the
site of a nose and lips; above all, the long and jagged trait tracing the shoreline
of Antarctica: from the narrows between the edge itself and ‘Magellanica’ from
the western edge eastward, up and down and at the sluice by the Terra del
Fuego, past the Cape Bona Spes and all the way to the Moluccas, the line moves
nervously and jaggedly, which the neighboring orthogonal defining the circu-
lus antarcticus does not.
Although offering a unique view of the entire world in a rectangular frame,
the oval projection displays in its spandrels billowing masses of clouds, engraved
16 See above n. 3 in which cartography in the seventeenth century is shown endowed with
power because its conditions of possibility and modes of production are excluded from
the representation.
17 See Hoffman C., “Publishing and the Map Trade in France, 1470–1670,” in Woodward D
(ed.), The History of Cartography, Volume 3: Cartography in the European Renaissance
(Chicago: 2007) 1575, fig. 53.4. She notes astutely that Christophe Tassin, taken up in the
paragraphs below, was an ingénieur et géographe du roi, working with publishers, who
“helped popularize the work of his engineering colleagues for a public whose cartograph-
ic curiosity increased gradually throughout the Thirty Years’ War” (1580).
18 ‘Fable: f. A fable, fib, lie, leasing, false tale, unlikelie thing reported; also, a comedie or an in-
terlude’, notes Randle Cotgrave, in A Dictionairie of the French & English Tongues (London,
Adam Inslip: 1611).
558 Conley
Figure 16.3 Abraham Ortelius, world map in Theatre de l’univers

Antwerp: Plantin 1581
in arced hatching as if to resemble inflated intestines.19 The huge portion in

white, named Terra australis nondum cognita, stretching roughly from the
Tropic of Capricorn to the lower edge, offsets the stippled oceans and con-
tinental masses marked by rivers, molehills, and place-names. The unknown
lands in the southern hemisphere seem to stare back at the viewer. Calling in
question the limits of the known world, the line that separates Antarctica from
terræ cognitæ, curling upward at the eastern and western edges, bears the form
of a faint smile, at once inviting and refusing allegorical reading by which, if the
flesh-colored continents of Asia and North America are fancied as eye-sockets,
would imply that the map is staring wryly at the viewer. The corners contain
billowing masses of clouds that resemble bowels, suggesting how the image
could be construed as an anatomy or autopsy of the world at large. In earlier
projections (in Gastaldi’s famous world map of 1544) wind heads had occupied
spaces that are now indiscernible shapes. A representation of the world made
19 The legacy of Ortelian oval projection is taken up in Synder J.P., Flattening the Earth: Two
Thousand Years of Map Projections (Chicago: 1993) 38–39.
to be seen in a single gaze, the map recalls the logic of analogy it would seem
to reject. Its secret, if a secret there is, is invoked in what the viewer is invited at
once to imagine and reject as a misprision or misperception.
3 Nicolas Tassin and His Survey of the Coast of France
Along a similar line of reasoning it may be that scientific mapping and surveys
that appear in the early seventeenth century relegate analogy, hieroglyphic
or ‘steganographic’ fantasy and duplicity to ornamentation. Cartouches, bor-
der designs, elaborate parergons, strapwork, festoons, title-pages and the like
imply that despite its scientific, informative, or illustrative function, the map
might possess unknown powers or be of a secret agency or mystical charac-
ter. Published topographical surveys are no exception. In 1634, working under
Louis XII and the Cardinal Richelieu, Nicolas Tassin, a royal engineer, publishes
with the help of engraver Melchior Tavernier a thorough and carefully drawn
survey of the coastlines of the France titled Cartes generales et particulieres de
toutes les costes de France.20 Depicting the coastline along the English Channel,
the Atlantic, the Bay of Biscaye, and the Mediterranean, thirty maps are set in
conjunction with a master plan displaying how they are disposed and set in
sequence [Fig. 16.4]. The initial folio page, a point of reference for the maps
Figure 16.4
Christophe Tassin,
introductory map in Cartes
generales et particulieres de
toutes les costes de France
Paris: Melchior
Tavernier, 1634
20 In Les Atlas français XVIe–XVIIe siècles (Paris: 1984) 447, Mireille Pastoureau notes the orna-
mental cartouche on the preceding folio but makes no mention of the relation of the map and
image on this page, implying that the map and those that follow are the matter in question.
560 Conley
Figure 16.5
Christophe Tassin,
introductory map, detail
of cartouche
that follow, invites the viewer to consider three areas of interest: (1) the outline
of the shoreline of France from the Pas-de-Calais to the north at the top and
middle of the map; the Pyrenées, an impressive chain of mountains extending
from the Bay of Biscaye to the Mediterranean; the maritime border stretching
and turning from Perpignan to Nice. Then (2), to the left, the empty or blank area
of the Atlantic dotted with items of different size (an ocean-going vessel firing its
cannons, four small ships equipped with lateen-sails, a massive compass-rose,
a scaly sea-monster); and (3), two cartouches: to the lower left, a piece of or-
nate strapwork, replete with consoles bearing a plume and an olive branch, that
extends a fabric displaying a scale of leagues; massively, dominating the right
side of the map and covering much of the interior of the nation, a cartouche,
bearing the title of the collection, shaped as an immense griffon or sea-monster.
Wearing a crown displaying the coats-of-arms of France and Navarre, the horned
animal extends palmate claws through strapwork supporting an ornate surround
to the title. At the bottom a subsidiary cartouche, held by talons on either side,
contains the user’s guide or mode d’emploi to the collection [‘the squares drawn
along these coasts denote the separations of the contents on each individual
map’]. Not to be overlooked are the details, including the two arms, set between
the upper and lower cartouche, ending in spirals that resemble eyes over the
frame that would be a gaping mouth (that ‘speaks’ the words written inside). The
face of the griffon below the crown of the upper cartouche has a flat and wide
nose, above which a tongue emerges from the support sustaining the crown, as
if doubling the tongue that hangs from the mouth of the griffon who stares at
the viewer [Fig. 16.5]. Its tip almost touches the title in upper-case roman letters
(C a r t e. g e n e r a l e / de toutes les costes de France …), as if to lick the let-
ter G of ‘general’). Does the image contain a fable or some kind of a secret? What
is the langue – the ‘tongue’ or ‘idiom’ – spoken that is so prominently on display?
The scientific material on the left side, shown in fine detail, is rivaled or even
overdone by the monstrous cartouche to the left. An efficient explanation of the
juxtaposition of the survey with the decorous matter would contend that because
the inland areas of France have nothing to do with the project of delineating the
coastlines, the cartouche papers over a horror vacui of blank or unfilled space.
Another would speculate that the finely crafted lines of the maps, coupled with
the careful shading defining the anfractuosity of the coastlines, find an unset-
tling but entirely ‘baroque’ counterpart in the design of the cartouche. Because
its left (or western) side is designed to be roughly equivalent to the coast, its right
side is of a mass that confers an elegant balance upon the picture as a whole.
Or else: a monster, the griffon could be a visual analogy of the virtual power of
the collection of maps born of the engineer’s craft. In this way the griffon’s gaze
would tell us that a secret or unspoken figure is staring at us, and that, inspired
by hieroglyphics, if only for the sake of selling the map to a broader public, the
relation of the decoration to the survey attests to the arcane powers of the map
and to what it can do in the marine world, be it in survey or war.
Similar effects abound in the collection. Published by Melchior Tavernier,
the title indicates that within are ‘represented all the Islands, Gulfs, Ports,
Havens, Roadsteads, Bays, Shoals, Reefs, Rocks and Outcroppings, with anchor-
ings and necessary depths’. Textual descriptions (in two columns, in Latin and
French (as notes Mireille Pastoureau, possibly written for a foreign public) per-
taining to each of the maps comprise the first half of the book. Depth sound-
ings and descriptions of the coast refer to the signs on the maps. In tandem
with the overlapped outlines of the maps shown on the reference-map, the
descriptions are conveyed as an implicit travel narrative (and, given the adja-
cent Latin text), with the bonus of a language lesson:
D E S C R I P T I O G E S S O R I A C I,
sive Picardici littoris
Portus Caletensis, Itius primigenia voce appellatus, inter antiquissimos
totius Europa recenseur. Situ suo è regione respondet Dubrensi ditionis
Anglicaæ littori, trajectu bravissimo, hoc est, leucarum circiter septem.
Sub suius medium occurrit moles quædam arenaria sex, septem & octo
orgyis profundal, quæ ad tres leucas protenditur littori Gallico proior
quàm Anglico: utroque latere quà Orientem & Occidentem spectat, or-
gyis viginti alta.
562 Conley
Caleto meridieum versus tendenti occurri vadosum littus S. Joannis, in

quo subset aquæ iaciendis ancoris orgyarum 15. Aut 16. altitudo.
Secundum hoc littus velificandi apparet Turris quæ appellatur Ordinis,
cui transversim iacet arenarià mole, opportunus ancoris navium sinus, &
à ventis borealibus tutus.
A Turri illa Ordinis terram appetenti surgit Bolonia; portus confluo
mari satis celebris, quo abundante naves subintrant, desiciente ad ari-
dam subsidunt.
A Boloniensi flumine non procul abest Canceia, ad quam sita sunt op-
pida Monstrolium & Stapulæ. Sinuatur portu non adeò celebri, ad quem
nisi aquæ copia adsit, non patet additur.
Sequuntur ordine suo flumina quedam Antium & Somma, ad cuius
ostium visuntur oppida S. Gualarici & Crotesium, portu satis commodo
& facili, nisi salebræ arenariæ mole sua flumini & portus aditus obstar-
ent. Anterior portus tres aquæ orgyias, interior duas altus est. Ad Somma
ripam & in ulteriori sensim continentus recessu sita visitur Abbatis-
villa urbs.
DESCRIPTIONDELACOSTE
de Picardie
Le Havre de Cali, jadis appellé Itius portus, est un des plus anciens de l’Eu-
rope. Il est scitué vis à vis de Douvre, son territoire & celuy d’Angleterre
forment le détroit ou pas de Calais, qui a de largeur 7. Lieuës ou environ.
Dans le milieu de ce détroit y a un banc qui a de profondeur 6. 7. & 8.
Brasses, & s’étend en longueur 3. Lieuës ou environ, ainsi que la coste de
France, plus proche d’elle que de l’Angleterre, & aux deux costez tant vers
l’Est que l’Oüest, y a bien 2o. brasses de profondeur.
De Calais tirant vers le sud se trouve la radde de Sainct Jean, sur la-
quelle on peut ancrer à 15. & 16. brasses.
Suivant ladite coste se voit la Tour d’Ordre, le travers de laquelle y a
une belle baye de sable, où l’on ancre pour se mettre à l’abri du vent du
Nord.
De la Tour d’Ordre, allant vers terre de Boulongne qui est un Havre à
marée où il faut entrer à haute eau, & en basse demeure sec.
Apres la riviere de Boulongne vous allez rencontrer celle de Canche,
sur laquelle sont assises les villes de Montreuil & Estaples. A ce dernier y
a un Havre peu remarquable, auquel on ne peut entrer que de haute eau.
Suivant les rivieres d’Anty, puis celle de la Somme, à l’entrée de laquelle
sont Sainct Valery & le Crotroy: y auroit un assez bon Havre, sans un banc
de sable qui s’estend à travers de ladite riviere & devant ledit Havre. A
l’entrée duquel y a trois brasses d’eau, & dedans deux. Sur ladite riviere &
plus avant dans la terre est scituée la ville d’Abbeville. (1–2)
[Formerly called itius portus, the port of Cali is one of the oldest of
Europe. It is situated facing Dover, its territory and that of England form
the narrows or Pas-de-Calais, whose width is about seven leagues or so.
In the middle of this narrows extends a shoal of about thirty, thirty-five or
forty feet that extends in length for about three leagues, just as the coast
of France, nearer to it than that of England, and to the two coasts both to
the East and West, the depth for dropping anchor is about 75 or 80 feet.
[¶] Going along the coast we catch sight of the Tower of Order, across
which there is a beautiful bay of sand, where ships can be anchored and
protected from the North Wind.[¶] From the Tower of Order. going to-
ward the land of Boulogne there is a port where entry can only be made
at high tide; at low tide it remains dry. [¶] After the Boulogne River you’re
going to meet the Canche, on which the cities of Montreuil and Étaples
are settled. At the latter there is a rather unremarkable port that can be
entered only at high tide. [¶] Following the rivers of Anty, then that of the
Somme, at the entry of which are Saint Valéry and the Crotroy: were it not
for a shoal of sand stretching across the river just noted there would be a
good port, at the entry of which the depth is fifteen feet, but inside only
ten. On the noted river and upward we find the city of Abbeville.]
Composed for mariners, armchair navigators but also students of geography,

the textual matter (in coordination with the map of Boulogne in the second
section), noting landmarks that lend themselves to survey and navigation,
leads readers along the coastline. Then comes the description of north-
ern Normandy, the navigable parts of the River Seine, followed by western
Normandy, then around the Armorican peninsula, and southward all the way
to the Spanish border at Saint-Jean-de-Luz. A second section describes the
areas surveyed along the Mediterranean coast. Limpidly drawn, in synchrony
with the minimal style of the maps, the description moves between sightings,
depth soundings, and profiles of the coastlines. The atlas could be sailor’s nar-
rative of a cruise along the maritime ports of the French kingdom.
Placed before the fold out map making clear the order of the topographi-
cal views, a full-page cartouche encloses the title of the work and its author
(fol. 1 ro) [Fig. 16.6]. On the top two winged cherubs hold a posy of six roses
arched above the head of a benign sea-monster bearing resemblance to a
monkfish. Banderoles spiked with teeth waft on either side, descending (not
symmetrically) and morphing into a scaly frame garnished with peapods and
564 Conley
Figure 16.6
Christophe Tassin, Cartes
generales et particulieres,
title-page and cartouche, first
section
Figure 16.7
Christophe Tassin, Cartes
generale et particulieres,
title-page and cartouche,
second section
strings of bizarre objects containing caricatures of human faces, at whose bot-

tom intricate coils of strapwork are set atop a squinting mascaron whose pen-
dant tongue resembles that of the griffin-cartouche on the fold out that map
that follows. As in an emblem, the face is a ‘mute speaker’ of words unknown,
or signs of what might be shared secrets. In turn, the cartouche invites us to
lose ourselves in the fantasy of things morphing into forms both familiar and
utterly strange. A second cartouche, inserted between the maps of the north-
ern and western shorelines (fol. 26 ro), prefaces the six maps of the coast from
the eastern Pyrenees to Nice [Fig. 16.7]. Somewhat less oneiric or fantaisiste
than the others, at the top the head of a bull-like she-lion, staring at the viewer,
is placed between two coiled festoons upheld by a female (to the left), who
faces the viewer, her legs touching the spiral of a console, her left arm bracing
the frame of the cartouche; and a man (to the right), in contrapposto, his left
arm pressing on the inner border of the cartouche while his right extends to
hold a ring of cloth attached to an extended piece of bent strapwork. The she-
lion’s claws hold the panel of the cartouche on which the title is shown. Below,
what seem to be the animal’s bulbous knees support the curved border of the
inner panel. The scalloped edge of the cartouche extends downward, between
the beast’s clawed paws that touch a soft floor decorated by symmetrical rows
of peapods.
However abbreviated or incomplete, the description of the cartouches sug-
gests that their design is intended to stand in strong and startling contrast
with the maps they herald. In view of how cartouches figure in other surveys,
Tassin’s collection is remarkably binary: spare and clear depictions of bor-
ders and ambient waters are entirely other than the baroque design of the
title pages. If, as Victor Hugo had noted, antithesis is the ‘supreme faculty of
seeing the two sides of things’, an unknown relation would be found between
the map and the cartouche.21 Of a diurnal order, pellucid observation, care-
ful survey and meticulous description have their nocturnal counterparts in
decorous fantasy. How the two are related might be the indiscernible secret
the design is asking us to consider. Would the plan be attributed to Tassin, the
royal engineer and fieldworker who both surveyed French territories and re-
drew inherited maps in simplified form? Or perhaps to Melchior Tavernier, son
of Gabriel Tavernier (engraver affiliated with Ortelius, who drew the maps for
Maurice Bouguereau’s Théâtre françoys in 1594), to whom many Baroque maps
can be attributed? Or perhaps to a collaboration? Tavernier printed the Carte
generale in 1636, two years after publishing Tassin’s Plans et profils de toutes
les prinipales villes et lieux considerables de France, a compendious work in
two volumes, which offers ‘governmental’, ichnographic, profile and bird’s eye
views of all the cities of France.22 The maps comprising each of the regions are
prefaced by a title-page featuring an ornate cartouche containing the name of
a region that is set within a formula: Plans et profils des principales villes de la
province de [the name follows], avec la carte generale & particulieres de chacun
gouvernement d’icelles [Maps and profiles of the major cities of the province
of […], with a general and with detailed maps of each government within].
A spare table follows, which lists the jurisdiction of each city and province,
their profile, sometimes a city-view, and at others a series of topographical
maps of adjacent rivers or estuaries – but invariably with reference to the car-
touche itself. Despite being inserted to distinguish one region from another,
21 Shakespeare W., Œuvres complètes, Philosophie, v. II (Paris: [1866]) 212.

22 Tassin, Nicolas, Les plans et profilz de toutes les principalles Villes et lieux considerables de

France. Ensemble les Cartes Generalles de Chascune Province et les particuliéres de Chasque
gouvernement d’icelles Faictes par le S[ieur] Tassin [...], 2 vols. (Paris, Chez Melchior
Tavernier: 1634) [Harvard Houghton Library GEN (Fr 2040.20)], available on line:
v. 1 http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:FHCL.Hough:10658348;
v. 2 http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:FHCL.Hough:10658349
566 Conley
Figure 16.8
Christophe Tassin, Plans
et profils de toutes les
principalles Villes et lieux
considerables de France
(Paris, 1636) title-page
the cartouche generates a sense of fantasy that gives way to visual description
from different angles. A boon for commercial development and for logistics of
defense and civic administration, when seen in the context of their decorative
program, the maps become both objects of science and of uncanny graphic
imagination. The title-page stresses the point: three winged putti extend a fab-
ric with a scalloped lower border from the cleft of a tree to the right to an-
other, on the left, on which the title is printed [Fig. 16.8]. Below, a nude female
sleeps on her right side, her left arm draped over tuft of grass on the top of a
globe adjacent to a compass and a surveyor’s tools. Perhaps the personification
of Geographia, she appears to be dreaming. If so, would the maps that follow
would be realizations of reverie or of science? Would they be endowed with
power that emanates from the psyche? Mixing animal and vegetal forms, the
two cartouches that follow are no less equivocal. They give way to a table and
then a clearly drawn map of France, laying emphasis on its hydrography, that
places a decorous cartouche (crowned by the escutcheon of France) in the Bay
of Biscaye, that in fact seems to be held in the profile of a gaping mouth defined
on the upper side by the southern coast of the Breton peninsula and, below, by
the extended view of the northern coast of Spain [Fig. 16.9]. All of the maps
contain smaller, sometimes highly wrought, sometimes classical cartouches
that play with and against the views. Such is a first plan of Calais, executed in
a double perspective of ichnographic and bird’s eye view whose difference is
enhanced by the cartouche squeezed into the upper right corner [Fig. 16.10].
Asking the viewer to ‘read’ and to ‘see’ it at once, the cartouche leads the eye
into areas where writing and graphic forms comprise landscapes that are both
evidence of what they represent and, in the way their clarity is juxtaposed with
the decorative matter, given to enigma.
Figure 16.9 Christophe Tassin, Plans et profils, map of France
Figure 16.10 Christophe Tassin, Plans et profils, map of the Boulogne

568 Conley
Figure 16.11 Nicolas Sanson, “Carte des rivières de la France curieusement recherchée” (1641)
By way of conclusion, Melchior Tavernier’s creations might further confirm the

stakes of the secret in maps of scientific and practical orientation. in crafting an
elegant and aptly titled Carte des rivières de la France curieusement recherchée
(1634 and 1641), Nicolas Sanson builds on François de la Guillotière’s woodcut
Charte de France (begun in 1580, published only in 1615 and in two editions in the
1630s).23 Sanson’s map delineates the nation’s six major river valleys with boldly
drawn colored lines [Fig. 16.11].24 Unlike the Charte de France, the map lacks
toponyms or place-names of any kind. In their stead, all of the carefully drawn
rivers and their tributaries are identified by names written in parallel with their
flow and passage. A minor tour-de-force, the map presents an image of France
that is everywhere equally irrigated and nourished by its waterways. In the
northeast the Rhine receives the Sambre, Meuse, and Moselle as it flows from
Switzerland to its mouth beyond the bounds of the map. Fed by the Oise, Marne,
Yonne, Aube and other rivers, the Seine makes its way to the ‘Mer Britannique’.
23 Pelletier M., “National and Regional Mapping in France to about 1650”, in History of
Cartography, Vol. 3 1502. A CD-Rom of Guillotière’s Charte de France is included in
Pelletier, De Ptolémée à La Guillotière (XV e–XVIe siècle): Des cartes pour la France, pour-
quoi, comment?, Géographie 6 (Paris: 2009).
24 Reference is made to the 1641 copy in the Harvard Pusey Map Library (G5831 C3 1641).
Finding its origins deep in Auvergne, the Loire flows north, turns west, gathers
waters from a panoply of rivers, and empties into the ‘Mer Oceanne’. Further
south, so also the Dordorgne and the Garonne that meet below the estuary of
the Gironde that opens onto the Bay of Biscaye. In the south and eastern cen-
ter, originating in Switzerland, the Rhone flows west, meets the Saone at Lyon
(not indicated on the map), soon acquires the waters of the Isère and Durance,
takes a direct and rapid course to the Mediterranean. To the east, the Tanaro, the
Doria and the Po travel east to regions beyond the calling of the map.
Whether large or small, every river carries a name incised on the copperplate
that turns with the bending line it identifies. When seen from a distance, becom-
ing indistinct, the names acquire effects of relief, of shading, which implies how
waters gathered from rain and various sources flow into the rivers and outward
to the Atlantic and Mediterranean. An orography of sorts, the Carte des rivières
suggests that the vital fluids of nature serve the French nation are equally distrib-
uted, and that as a consequence it is graced with a healthy circulatory system. So
complete is the picture that later in the seventeenth century it served as a visual
referent for Henri Coulon’s two-volume narrative survey, Les Rivières de France
ou description geographique et historique du cours & debordement des Fleuves, riv-
ieres, Fontaines, Lacs & Estangs qui arrousent les Provinces de France.25
Drawn with reverse curves and of a less saturated style than those of Tassin’s
Carte Générale, the lower and upper cartouches seem almost attached or drawn
parallel to the outlines of the map. On the upper right corner, the text of the
dedication to the reader is held within a cartouche, graced with tight hatching
shading the multiple curves of the upper and lower sections, whose left side is
cut away by the surrounding frame. The descriptive text held within outlines
what it does while praising Tavernier for his craftmanship. No less, the turn of
the reverse curves of the frame – from the spiral on the upper right, to the gentle
bend leading to the lower cartouche that twists inward (drawing attention to
‘France’ and ‘Adieu’), and the bulbous bottom in which the site of origin (Paris)
and Tavernier’s name are printed – leads to reverse curves and spirals on the
bottom, which fill out the space that southwestern Germany would otherwise
occupy. Of similar design, the cartouche at the lower left corner of the map con-
tains both the title and Sanson’s name and position (‘Ingénieur & Géographe
ordinaire du Roy’) set over the privilege that stands atop a scale of common
leagues supported by a plinth and base. Capped by a pinnacle attached to a
25 With a subtitle: Avec un Denombrement des Villes, Ponts, Passages, Batailles, qui ont esté
données sur leurs rivages, & autres curiosités remarquables dans chaque Province, in 2 vol-
umes, dedicated to the Duke of Orléans (Paris, François Clousier: 1644). In Le Langage des
gégraphes (Paris: 1964) 133, Pére François de Dainville observes that Coulon plagiarizes
Papire Masson’s Descriptio fluminum Galliæ (1618) and that, in view of the date of publica-
tion, his work “constitutes a true commentary” of Sanson’s map.
570 Conley
flesh-like heart to which the two curved arms of the frame are attached, and
below them two legs drawn as scalloped reverse curves, the lower right side of
the cartouche marks the southwestern limit of the map that extends (perhaps as
it should, in memory of Henry iV) into the Basque region and Navarre. Inviting
different scansions (or readings of the spaces between the letters), the pin-
nacle cuts between Mer and de Gascogne, adjacent to which, in smaller case,
‘Garonne’ emerges from the mouth of the Gironde. A flippant – but possibly
valid – reading of the relation of the name to the mouth of the Garonne would
have the river, poised like a mouth seen in profile, uttering its name, which by
contiguity, forces a reading of ‘Mer/de Gascogne’, that in fact is precious or ‘cu-
rious’ in being implicitly suggestive of what it would wish not to be.
In view of the hydrography, emphasis on fluvial pathways lends an impres-
sion of a national body fed by its arteries and veins of rivers. In turn, the two
cartouches lend a highly feminine – and delicately erotic – connotation to the
map as a whole. At its ‘mouth’ (embouchure) of the Garonne, like an emblem,
the Garonne ‘speaks’ its name. In correlation with the bodily form of the car-
touche in the upper right corner, the description and dedication are patterned
to flow with the bends of the Rhine along the left side of the cartouche. From
this standpoint a map announced as being ‘curieusement recherchée’ would be
carefully composed but also of a precious, decorous, quaint and even ‘dainty’
manner.26 At the same time, because it is a potamography, it might also be af-
filiating its feminine character in anticipation of the project to build the Canal
du Midi (realized later in the century), shown possible in the area of the map,
in the southwestern area, where the Garonne reaches the lower Pyrenees in
proximity with the Rivers Tarn and Aude. The projection implies that a water-
way could be engineered by digging a passage and managing rivers that appear
almost to touch one another. The ‘secret’ of Sanson’s map would be its femi-
nine or generative virtue and, in a practical vein, its sense of what can be done
to make use of the waters that flow and circulate throughout France.27 Not far
from the mode of speaking and writing ‘doubly’ that had been championed in
books of emblems of the earlier century, Sanson’s ‘curiously researched’ map
makes much of what might be secret, unknown and perhaps unconscious agen-
das. They are felt where the scientific or descriptive project is in concert with
the earlier craft of analogy and play of resemblance located in the cartouches
and style of description. Although harbingers of new modes of investigation
26 Cotgrave: ‘Curieusement: Curiously, precisely, nicely, quaintly, daintily scrupulously; care-

fully, heedfully, busily, too too diligently’.
27 In Impossible Engineering: Technology and Territoriality on the Canal du Midi (Princeton:
2009) 135–136, Chandra Mukerji notes how the hydraulic technology of the canal was de-
scribed in ‘female imagery’.
and representation, like Tassin’s plans and profiles, Sanson’s map and others of
his signature might also share secrets with their viewers and readers.
Bibliography
Béroalde de Verville François, L’Histoire veritable ou le voyage des princes fortunez, divi-
see en iiii. entreprises (Paris, Chez Pierre Chevalier: 1610).
Céard J. – Margolin J.-C., “Rébus et hiéroglyphes,” in Rébus à la Renaissance: Des images
qui parlent, vol. 1 (Paris: 1984) 72–73.
Certeau, Michel de, L’Invention du quotidien: Arts de faire, ed. L. Giard (Paris: 1990).
Corrozet Gilles, Les Blasons domestiques contenantz la decoration d’une maison honneste,
& du mesnage en icelle invention joyeuse, & moderne ([Paris], Gilles Corrozet: 1539).
Corrozet Gilles, Hécatomgraphie (Paris, Denys Janot: 1540).
Corrozet Gilles, Les fables du très ancien Esope, mises en rithme françoise (Paris, Denys
Janot: 1542).
Cotgrave Randle, A Dictionairie of the French & English Tongues (London, Adam Inslip:
1611).
Foucault M., Les Mots et les choses (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1966).
Harley J. Brian, “Silences and Secrecy: The Hidden Agenda of Cartography in Early
Modern Europe”, in Laxton P. (ed.), The New Nature of Maps: Essays in the History of
Cartography (Baltimore: 2001) 84–107.
Jacob C., The Sovereign Map: Theoretical Approaches in Cartography Throughout History
(Chicago: 2006).
Karrow R., Mapmakers of the Sixteenth Century: Bio-Bibliography of the Cartographers
of Abraham Ortelius, 1570 (Chicago: 1993).
Mukerji, C., Impossible Engineering: Technology and Territoriality on the Canal du Midi
(Princeton, 2009).
Nuti L., “Le Langage de la peinture dans la cartographie topographique,” in Bousquet-
Bressolier C., L’Œil du cartographe et la représentation géographique du Moyen Âge à
nos jours (Paris : 1995) 53–70.
Pastoureau M., Les Atlas français XVIe–XVIIe siècles (Paris: 1984).
Rosolato G., La Relation d’inconnu (Paris: 1978).
Synder J.P., Flattening the Earth: Two Thousand Years of Map Projections (Chicago: 1993).
Tassin Nicolas, Les plans et profils de toutes les principales villes et lieux considerables
de France; ensemble les cartes generales de chacune province: & les particulieres
de chaque gouvernement d’icelles, par le Sieur Tassin, 2 vols. (Paris, Chez Melchior
Tavernier: 1634).
Woodward D (ed.), The History of Cartography, Volume 3: Cartography in the European
Renaissance (Chicago: 2007).
Zerner H., L’Art français de la Renaissance: L’Invention du classicisme (Paris, 1996).
chapter 17
Hidden in Plain Sight: Melchior Lorck’s

Emblematized Adages
Mara R. Wade
Melchior Lorck (also Lorichs, ca. 1526–after 1580) was a bold maker of emblem-
atic images in the early decades of the genre. The first Danish artist of inter-
national renown, Lorck was born in Flensburg, apprenticed with a goldsmith
possibly from Lübeck, and visited Augsburg and Nürnberg in 15471 [Fig. 17.1].
Upon returning to Flensburg, he received from the Danish king generous fund-
ing for four years to travel and advance his art in the Netherlands and Italy.2
Therewith the monarchy subsidized one of the most promising graphic artists
of the age. Lorck travelled to Italy and the Netherlands as well as to Vienna
and again to Southern Germany during the early 1550s. In 1550–1551 he was
certainly in Nürnberg, the centre of German Renaissance humanism, art, com-
merce, and printing; this sojourn had a significant impact on Lorck, as an art-
ist and cosmopolitan. Both Nürnberg and Augsburg, the latter referred to as
the picture factory, Bilderfabrik, of Europe, were key centres of publishing in
general, and in particular of woodcuts and engravings, having developed ad-
vanced technologies for printing in these media.3 It is also worth noting that
the first emblem book, Andrea Alciato’s Emblematum Liber, was published in
Augsburg in 1531,4 and both cities were centres of early emblem publication
in German-speaking lands [Fig. 17.2]. Moreover, Lorck particularly revered
Albrecht Dürer and his journey to Nürnberg can be considered an artistic pil-
grimage. Lorck developed his distinctive block-letter artist’s monogram “MLF”,
with the “F” nestled into the dip in the “M”, presumably in imitation of Dürer’s
immediately recognizable signature “AD”. Lorck’s exposure to mass-produced
1 F ischer E. with Bencard E.J. and Bøgh Rasmussen M. (eds.), Melchior Lorck, Biography and
Primary Sources, vol. 1 (Copenhagen: 2009) 72–80.
2 On 22 March 1549 Lorck signed for the first installment of the stipend. See Fischer – Bencard –
Bøgh Rasmussen, Lorck, vol. 1, 72 and document 1549, 22 March and 24 March.
3 Paas J.R., Augsburg, die Bilderfabrik Europas: Essays zur Augsburger Druckgrafik der Frühen
Neuzeit (Augsburg: 2001).
4 The first three editions of Alciato (and many subsequent ones) are freely available in Emblem-
atica Online: http://emblematica.library.illinois.edu/search/books?query.keywords=Alciato
+1531. Accessed 18 July 2018.

HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT: MELCHIOR LORCK ‚ S EMBLEMATIZED ADAGES 573
Figure 17.1 Melchior Lorck, Self-Portrait in Antique Style, 1575, later used as title page,
from Wolgerissene und geschnittene Figuren zu Ross und zu Fuß […] (Hamburg,
Gundermann: 1646)
Image courtesy of Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel
574 Wade
Figure 17.2
Andrea Alciato, title page,
Emblematum Liber (Augsburg,
Steyner: 28 February 1531) book,
Stirling Maxwell Collection, SM 18,
Glasgow University Library
Image courtesy of
Emblematica Online, Glasgow
University
graphic art surely influenced his later plans for dissemination of his own, never
realized, volumes on antiquities, court festivities, the Ottoman Turks, and tra-
ditional costumes of German-speaking and foreign lands. Perhaps the best-
known aspect of Lorck’s career is his journey to the Ottoman Empire as part
of the entourage of Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq (1522–1592) in the second half
of the 1550s.5 Together with his eleven-meter-long Prospect of Constantinople,
5 Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, Itinera Constantinopolitanum et Amasianum (1581, later pub-

lished as A.G. Busbequii D. legationis Turcicae epistolae quattor). An early twentieth-century
English translation exists with a new introduction; see The Turkish Letters of Ogier Ghiselin de
Busbecq: Imperial Ambassador at Constantinople, 1554–1562, intro. K. Roider, trans. E.S. Forster
(Baton Rouge: 2005). A Danish translation of the letters with an excellent scholarly appa-
ratus and introductory essay is also available: Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq, Tyrkiske Breve,
trans. C. Asbjørn Andersen, intro. C.-P. Hansen and M. Bøgh Rasmussen (Copenhagen:
2010). See also Wade M.R., “The Artist as Cosmopolitan: Melchior Lorck from Flensburg
to Constantinople”, in Cholcman T. – Pinkus A. (eds.), The Sides of the North (Cambridge:
2015) 20–41.
preserved at the University of Leiden,6 Lorck’s many woodcuts, drawings, and

engravings of the Ottoman Turks established his reputation.7
Precisely because he was not the author of an emblem book, Melchior Lorck
offers an excellent case study to investigate emblematic strategies as they
evolved. Present-day scholarship has focused primarily on emblem books, col-
lections of emblems published as coherent works, usually by humanists who
worked with engravers or woodcutters to realize the images for their poetry.
Lorck, however, compels scholars to approach emblematica from an entirely
new vantage point: that of the humanist artist with a well-furbished mind.
Because the genre of the emblem seeks both to reveal and conceal hidden
meanings, the emblem provides insights into the interplay of textual and pic-
torial topoi in creating new knowledge. The audiences whom Lorck addressed
could be assumed to understand commonplaces, the texts that every school-
boy had collected in a notebook through the humanist educational activities
of reading, excerpting, and compiling. Often these common places derived
from classical and biblical sources, and also from Erasmus’s adages. Lorck’s
three emblematic images discussed here serve as a good lens through which
to study a European humanist artist working at the nexus of such learned
practices. As a humanist artist Melchior Lorck was not only iconographically
and textually sophisticated but also proficient in current technologies of art
production, particularly in the creation of graphic prints from woodcuts and
engraved plates. He was aware of the advanced technologies of image making
that rapidly proliferated during his time: new production methods for medals,
paper, and prints and refined technologies for painting and drawing. Moreover,
his own experiments with the emblem align especially with innovations in
6 Melchior Lorck, The Prospect of Constantinople, Part I, Leiden University Library. The
entire prospect is available online starting here: https://catalogue.leidenuniv.nl/primo
-explore/search?query=creator,exact,Lorck,%20Melchior%201526~2F27-1583,AND&sortby
=date&vid=UBL_V1&facet=frbrgroupid,include,2142541611&lang=en_US&mode=advanced
&offset=0. Accessed 17 October 2018.
7 There are three seventeenth-century editions of Lorck’s Turkish figures: see Melchior
Lorichs, Deß Weitberühmbten/ Kunstreichen und Wolerfahrnen Herrn Melchior Lorichs/
Flensburgensis, Wolgerissene und Geschnittene Figuren/ zu Roß und Fuß/ sampt schönen
Türckischen Gebäwden/ und allerhand was in der Türckey zu sehen: Alles nach dem Leben
und der perspectivae Jederman vor Augen gestellet. Jetzo aber zum Erstenmahl … an den Tag
gegeben (Hamburg, Hering: 1626). There are two more editions with variant titles from 1641
and 1646; see Wade, “From Flensburg to Constantinople” and Wade, Triumphus Nuptialis
Danicus, German Court Culture and Denmark. The Great Wedding of 1634, Wolfenbütteler
Arbeiten zur Barockforschung 27 (Wiesbaden: 1996) 25–29, 202–203, and items
134–136.
576 Wade
paper production and print technologies, particularly with respect to the mass
production of texts and images. He experimented to great effect with the ma-
terial underlying his images, as discussed below. Additionally, the content of
his works reflected his engagement with the classical past. The media he em-
ployed confirm a vibrant artistic sensibility at work – woodcuts, drawings, and
engravings. He drew, painted, and designed; he worked in cartography and map
making. He also compiled texts to his Turkish images, creating an early eth-
nography based on first-hand observations. These milestones of information
and scholarly communication achieved such significance among his European
audiences that Eberhard Werner Happel used them a century later to illustrate
his Türkischer Estaats- und Krieges- Bericht …, published in Hamburg.8
While the Turkish texts and pictures are not – strictly speaking – emblems,
their creator certainly participated in emblematic strategies of connection and
adaptation across word and image to create additional meaning. In this early
phase in the development of the genre, Lorck’s use of the emblem in individual
graphics, portraits and a self-portrait [Fig. 17.1]9 festival architecture,10 and an
album amicorum (as his signature entry)11 illuminate his radical experimenta-
tion with emblems and the social strategies involved in inventing and circulat-
ing them.12 Lorck created emblems for a number of purposes that illustrate the
broad intellectual, geographical, and cultural purview of the genre in this period.
1 Lorck and the Emblem
In the preface to his Horatian emblems Otto Vaenius characterizes proverbial

wisdom as ‘Damus hic vobis lector seu Spectator beneuole, Sententias, quas
8 Eberhard Werner Happel, Türkischer Estaats- und Krieges- Bericht oder, Eine kurtze und
gründliche Beschreibung des türckischen Käysers, Grosz- und anderer Veziers, Militz, Land
und Leuten, Gewonheiten, Krieges- und Lebens-Arth, Gewehr, Kleydung, and was davon
ferner zu berichten nötig (Hamburg, Thomas von Wiering: 1683–1684). Illustrations by
Melchior Lorck. Library of the Getty Research Institute: https://archive.org/details
/gri_33125012661118/page/n3. Accessed 10 October 2018.
9 Wade, “From Flensburg to Constantinople”, 20–41.
10 Wade, Triumphus Nuptialis Danicus, 25–29.
11 See Lorck’s entry, “Et Ivvante Et Conservante Deo”, on scan page 47 of Adam Ortelius,
album amicorum, https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-LC-00002-00113/1.
12 I am currently completing the monograph Early Modern Intellectual Networks: Emblems
as Open Sources and have chosen this versatile Dane to establish the opening framework
of emblematic experimentation in my study of the social history of the emblem and its
cultural practices. Research presented here is part of a larger chapter examining Lorck’s
emblematic productions. See Wade M.R. (forthcoming).
emblemas vulgo vocant …’ – that is, ‘adages, known as emblems’.13 The follow-
ing study positions Melchior Lorck at the forefront of making emblems based
on adages, an aspect of his oeuvre that has heretofore entirely escaped scholar-
ly attention. With their intensely personal and universal import,14 Lorck’s three
emblematic images based on Erasmus’s adages comprise the following inves-
tigation of hiding and revealing as practiced in this genre. Erasmus’s compen-
dium of ancient wisdom opened the classical world to the Renaissance scholar.
The adages reflect the web of classical learning as metaphors and proverbs,
and they offer a treasure chest of the traditional wisdom, not only for writers
and orators, but also for artists, who drew on the adages for their conceits. Like
emblems themselves, Erasmus’s adages provide a telescope from the present
into the past, first into the sixteenth-century social imaginary and then into
that of the ancients. While there is to date no information concerning Lorck’s
schooling and apprenticeship,15 the Dane was indubitably well acquainted
with the proverbial wisdom of Erasmian adages, as confirmed by three images
from his oeuvre: that of the mole, that of the crane, and that of the tortoise. In
the visualizations discussed below, Lorck transforms the proverbial wisdom of
the Erasmian adages into the compact visual genre of the emblem.
2 The Mole
The young artist’s first known emblem is an engraving depicting a gigantic mole,
facing the left, splayed out on the bank of a river16 [Fig. 17.3]. The odd propor-
tions in this engraving are intended; the perspective is otherwise correct. The
artist has made an accomplished engraving with a calligraphic flourish and
stippling. The natural impossibility of the proportionally enormous mole and
its intrusion into the otherwise correct portrayal of the landscape is indicative
of a deeper meaning. Its oversized dimensions signal that it is an emblem; the
disruptions in scale serve as an indicator of an emblematic enigma. A river
13 Otto Vaenius, Qvinti Horatii Flacci Emblemata: Imaginibus in æs incisis, Notisq[ue] illustra-
ta … (Antwerp, Lisaert: 1612) first line of preface.
14 M. Warner explores the concept of the intensely personal with respect to the aerial
view in various images by Lorck; see “Intimate Communiqués. Melchior Lorck’s Flying
Tortoise”, in Dorian M. – Pousin F. (eds.), Seeing From Above The Aerial View in Visual
Culture (London: 2013) 11–24.
15 See especially the introduction “Close and Extensive Reading among Artists in the Early
Modern Period”, in Damm H. – Thimann M. – Zittel C. (eds.), The Artist as Reader: On
Education and Non-Education of Early Modern Artists (Leiden: 2012) 1–68.
16 Maulwurf vor Flusslandschaft [Mole in front of a landscape with a river]. http://www
.museen-sh.de/Objekt/DE-MUS-045414/lido/10176. Accessed 18 July 2018.
578 Wade
Figure 17.3 Melchior Lorck, Maulwurf vor Flusslandschaft [Mole in front of a landscape
with a river]. Engraving, 7 × 10.6 cm
PHOTO COURTESY OF KUNSTHANDLUNG RUMBLER, FRANKFURT
separates the proportionally huge creature from a comparatively small town on

the opposite bank, with a windmill and a church in the distance. On nearby hills
scaffolding surrounds a castle and other buildings under construction, or pos-
sibly in disrepair. A sculpted block on the bottom left of the print is signed ‘ML’,
with the date 1548. Melchior Lorck signed and dated this work, indicating his
ownership of the ideas presented here and signalling a completed work. His sig-
nature sculpture is also part of the composition, balancing the chunk of stone on
a pedestal opposite it, the shapes echoing each other in variation. It is unclear
whether the item on the right hand of the viewer is an incomplete or ruined
sculpture, or perhaps a tree stump. If the artificial, perhaps broken, object is in
fact meant to represent a tree stump, it is clearly juxtaposed to the large, living
tree behind it. The flourishing tree vanishes beyond the frame of the engraving.
The bottom edge of the print bears the subscriptio: ‘Vt cita vescenti venivnt
oblivia talpae, sic precibvs svbevnt, impie, vana tvis’ [Just like the mole, who,
once he has eaten, quickly forgets, so, too, you ungrateful creature, after your
pleas, all is quickly forgotten].17 The sense of the subscriptio is that once a
17 I would like to thank Dr. Thomas Stäcker, Darmstadt, and Dr. Christian Heitzmann,
Wolfenbüttel, for their help in translating this difficult Latin text. Email from Thomas
person has asked for and received something, the favour is soon forgotten
and there are no thanks or anything in return.18 Possibly the image is self-
reflective – perhaps the young artist had somehow been slighted.
Coupled with the enigmatic subscriptio, the disjuncture between the
huge mole and the comparatively tiny background landscape demands that
this image be read as an emblem. The mole image, of course, refers to blind-
ness. As with all of Lorck’s emblematized animal images, the mole is found in
Erasmus’s Adages – here I, iii, ‘Talpa caecior’ [As blind as a mole], which could
be understood as the pictura’s unwritten motto.19 Beyond the obvious mean-
ing, the adage alludes to those with poor judgment, ‘referring to people whose
sight is exceptionally poor, or who have no judgment, for the metaphor [of
blindness] will be more pleasing if it is transferred to the mind’.20 According to
Erasmus it was also an insult characterizing a man who talked incessantly and
was dumb.21 The man-made sculpture on the pedestal behind the mole’s field
of vision could possibly signify the mole’s blunt mind, incapable of perceiving
Stäcker, 27 April 2017.

18 Lorck’s mole emblem resonates with Aesop’s fable concerning ingratitude with a crane

and a wolf.
19 Cited from the edition Basel: Hieronymus Froben, 1559, 55; see Arkyves: http://www
.arkyves.org/view/adag_froben1559_nr0255/?q=mole. Accessed 18 July 2018.
20 Adagium, I iii 55 (ASD): Refertur à Suida ac Diogeniano, τυφλότερος ὰσπάλακος, id est,
Caecior talpa: de iis qui supra modum caecutiunt, aut qui minime iudicant. Nam iocun-
dior fiet metaphora, si quidem ad animum transferatur. Plinius undecimo libro scribit,
ex quadrupedum genere, talpae visum deesse, oculorum tamen inesse effigiem, si quis
praetentam detra- hat membranam. Atque hinc ortum adagium. (CW31). τυφλότερος ὰσπά-
λακος, As blind as a mole. Suidas and Diogenianus record this, referring to people whose
sight is exceptionally poor, or who have no judgment, for the metaphor will be more pleasing
if it is transferred to the mind. Pliny, book 11, [Chapter 52], writes that among quadrupeds,
‘the mole is without sight, and yet the shape of the eyes is there, if the covering membrane is
drawn back.’ From this arose the adage. Cited from the Arkyves website: http://arkyves.org/
view/adag_froben1559_nr0255/?q=erasmus%20and%20talpa. Accessed 18 July 2018.
21 Adagium IV vi 71. Homo nullius iudicii, sed tamen impendio verbosus, loquax talpa dictus
est populari convicio. Quod primum dictum est in Iulianum Capellam, posteaquam ven-
erat in publicum odium: nam talpae nostri, ut caeci sunt, ita sunt aeque muti. Idem dictus
est πίθηκος ἐν πορφύρᾳ, id est, simia purpurata, cuius alibi meminimus. Refert Ammianus
libro 17.
It was a common insult to call a man who had no judgment but who talked interminably
a mole who never stopped talking. It was first said of Julianus Capella when he had incurred
the hatred of all his citizens. The point of the insult is that the moles we are familiar with are
not only blind but are also quite dumb. The same kind of person was also called [greek] ‘An
ape in purple,’ which we have mentioned elsewhere. Ammianus gives us the proverb in book
seventeen. Cited from the Arkyves website: http://arkyves.org/view/adag_froben1559_nr
3571/?q=erasmus%20and%20talpa. Accessed 18 July 2018.
580 Wade
subtlety. Furthermore, the trees, providing the stone pedestal represents a tree
stump, align the arboreal imagery from fore- to background on the right-hand
side of the image, perhaps further commenting on the relationship between the
artificial and the natural environment as a metaphor for the crass difference be-
tween the blunt mind and the flourishing imagination. In the second half of the
seventeenth century Johann Michael Dilherr shifts the emphasis in his emblem
to refer to moral blindness, using a trio of moles in a devotional image to indicate
humans’ lack of self-knowledge and their admission of sin that comes far too
late.22 His emblematic pictura depicts the three aimless moles beneath a tree in
a natural setting along a riverbank. It seems noteworthy that Dilherr was active
in Nürnberg, where Lorck likely had his first encounters with emblems and re-
ceived his first impulses to create them. While the visual perspective in Dillherr’s
work is consistent and accurate, the general similarity of pictorial motifs – the
mole, the tree, the riverbank – if not their proportions, poses the question of
whether the Dane’s early image was later known in Nürnberg. In the context of
Lorck’s engraving, the mole suggests blindness in social matters, lack of gratitude
and reciprocity, insincere requests, and the inability to understand metaphors –
that is, to engage in higher-level thinking. Thus, for Lorck the mole offered a com-
ment on the intellectual and moral faculties of humans who lacked ethical and
imaginative qualities.
As might be expected of a young itinerant artist, Lorck’s early emblem sug-
gests that he was experimenting independently and working from a mind re-
plete with humanistic commonplaces. The mole engraving confirms that Lorck
began his forays into emblematica by rehearsing Erasmus’s adages, testing how
to articulate and expand on proverbial wisdom in a pictorial idiom. Here he
combined a classical adage with a compelling image, working with variation,
analogy, and parallels to create new meaning, elevating the metaphor beyond
physical blindness to encompass social and intellectual shortcomings. Lorck’s
handling of the mole shows how he treats proverbial wisdom as a kind of
open-source code that he could adapt to his own needs.23 His manner of picto-
22 ‘Wer hier nicht emsig siehet drauf: Thut dort zu spat die augen auf’ [Whosoever does not dil-
igently pay attention here (i.e., in this life), opens there their eyes too late (i.e., in the next)],
Johann Michael Dilherr, Augen- und Hertzens-Lust. Das ist/ Emblematische Fürstellung der
Sonn- und Festtäglichen Evangelien (Nürnberg, Endter: 1661) 156. The epigram, with its allu-
sion to coarse or rough people (‘rohe Leute’), is telling: ‘Wann der Maulwuff gehet darauf,
Thut er erst die Augen auf. Also rohe Leute sehen, Allzuspat ihr Untergehen’. http://em-
blematica.library.illinois.edu/detail/emblem/E017280. Accessed 18 July 2018.
23 Early Modern Intellectual Networks: Emblems as Open Sources treats this topic in detail,
see Wade (forthcoming).
Figure 17.4
Melchior Lorck, Kranich in
Rollwerkkartusche [Crane in a
decorative cartouche], Engraving,
5.7 × 4.3 cm
Image courtesy of
Museumsberg Flensburg
rially re-working the adage becomes even more evident in the crane emblem,
discussed next.
3 The Crane
Lorck’s crane emblem from 1549 offers a strikingly innovative pictorial render-
ing of a well-known text from Erasmus’s adages: ‘Grues lapidem de glutientes’
[Cranes that swallow a stone] (Adagium, 3.6.68).24 Lorck’s pictura, positioned
in an elaborate scrollwork cartouche, depicts, with glittering lodestars to its left
and right, a crane with a diamond ring around its graceful neck25 [Fig. 17.4].
24 http://www.arkyves.org/view/adag_froben1559_nr2568/?q=Grues. Accessed 18 July 2018.

25 Kranich in Rollwerkkartusche [Crane in a decorative cartouche]. http://www.museen-sh
.de/Objekt/DE-MUS-045414/lido/10177. Accessed 18 July 2018.
582 Wade
Its slender beak nearly touches the left-hand star, as if the great bird were sip-
ping inspiration from its luminous rays. Outside the cartouche, inscriptions on
the lower left and right balance the composition. The lower right is inscribed
with the adage from Erasmus, and Lorck signed the lower left of the engrav-
ing with his stylized initials, ML, and the cipher ‘I. C. H’. The picture is closely
cropped, although the letters can be decoded. The cipher after Lorck’s initials
conforms to the contemporary practice of signing one’s name with an abbrevi-
ated personal motto. For example, princely women were known to sign their
names into friendship albums, or alba amicorum, together with abbreviations
such as ‘M.H.Z.G.A.’ (‘Meine Hoffnung zu Gott allein’ [my hope is in God alone,
or I trust in God alone]).26 Because of the strong humanist context and the
precedent of the mole emblem with its Latin motto, Lorck’s cipher likely re-
fers to a Latin abbreviation. Readers should also keep in mind that the letters
might represent not I.C.H. but J.C.H., because in the early modern period j
and i were interchangeable, the first a consonant, the other a vowel. For ex-
ample, the letter i could initiate a motto beginning with something like ‘Juste
et Constanter …’ or ‘Justitia et Concordia …’. The abbreviation likely refers to a
Latin saying of Lorck’s own invention, which has yet to be decoded and which
he did not use again.
This avian symbol of vigilance is a popular emblematic motif,27 and Lorck’s
expansion of parallels and analogies in this particular image are striking. Of
particular interest, however, is that Lorck seems to have provided the first in-
stance of the crane with a diamond ring, here as a collar. In the earliest emblem
book Alciato depicts a crane, but in a hunting scene: a hunter looks upward
and prepares to shoot the bird flying above, unaware that a snake about to sink
its fangs into his leg28 [Fig. 17.5].There seems to be no direct emblem source
for Lorck’s portrayal of the crane with a diamond ring encircling its neck. The
artist gave his imagination free flight, and instead of issuing an admonition
26 For women’s practices of the album amicorum, see Wade M.R., “Dorothea of Anhalt. Fürstin
von Braunschweig-Lüneburg. The Emblem Book as Stammbuch”, in Bauer V – Harding
E – Wade M.R. –Williams G.S. (eds.), Women – Books – Courts: Knowledge and Collecting
before 1800. Frauen – Bücher – Höfe: Wissen und Sammeln vor 1800. Essays in Honor of Jill
Bepler, Wolfenbütteler Arbeiten zur Barockforschung 151 (Wiesbaden: 2018) 297–312,
and Wade M.R., “Women’s Networks of Knowledge: The Emblembuch as Stammbuch”, in
Schneider C. – Williams G.S. (eds.), Knowledge in Motion, Daphnis 45, 1–2 (2017) 492–509.
27 A search in Emblematica Online under the keyword ‘crane’ provides yields 124 hits. http://
emblematica.library.illinois.edu/search/emblems?Query.Keywords=crane&Skip=108&Ta
ke=18. Accessed 3 August 2018.
28 See the 1531 edition, emblem ‘Qui alta contemplantur cadere’ (sig. E2v) in Emblem-
atica Online, http://emblematica.library.illinois.edu/detail/emblem/A31a082. Accessed
3 August 2018.
Figure 17.5
Alciato, “Qui alta contemplantur cadere”
(Those who contemplate the heights come to
grief), Emblematum Liber (Augsburg, Steyner:
28 February 1531) sig. Eiiv. book, Stirling Maxwell
Collection, SM 18, Glasgow University Library
Image courtesy of Emblematica Online,
Glasgow University
not to aim for high goals, as in the Alciato emblem, he suggests the opposite
meaning – that one should in fact aspire to lofty things.
Cranes are high fliers and soar through the heavens. They also are believed
to protect their flocks diligently, selecting leaders and posting birds at the back,
who use echo-location to detect stragglers. Erasmus states,
Cranes that swallow stones. Suidas quotes this from Aristophanes stat-
ing that it was said of those who conduct their business with the great-
est forethought, and that it entered into popular speech because cranes,
since they fly at a great height and at great speed and cannot look down-
wards, have the habit of carrying stones which they drop, if they begin to
get tired as they fly; by this means apparently they can tell from the noise
of the falling stones whether they are flying over land or over the sea. If
the stone falls into the sea they carry on their way, but if on land they
stop to rest. Pliny relates things very like this in book 10 chapter 23. He
says: ‘They agree when they will set out. They fly at a great height so that
they can see far ahead; they choose a leader whom they can follow. At
the end of the line they post birds by turns, who utter cries and keep the
flock together. At night time they have sentries who hold a stone in their
claw; this betrays their inattention by the noise of its fall if they relax in
sleep. The others sleep with their heads under their wings and standing
584 Wade
first on one foot then on the other. The leader, with head raised, keeps
watch and gives warning.’ Shortly after Pliny says: ‘It is known that when
they are about to cross the Black Sea they seek first of all the narrowest
point, between the two promontories of Criumetopon [Cape Sarich] and
Carambis [Cape Inca], then take on a ballast of sand. When they have
passed the mid-point of the sea, they drop the stones, and when they
reach the continent the sand from their throats as well.’ This is what Pliny
says. The passage which Suidas quotes is in Aristophanes’s Birds:
There came some thirty thousand cranes
From the shores of Africa, having swallowed huge
Stones … The scholiast has the same to say on this passage as Suidas.29
While emblems often portray the crane standing with a rock in its claw, as a
sign of watchfulness, such as the much later emblem 21 in Rem’s and Isselburg’s
Emblemata Politica30 [Fig. 17.6]. Lorck depicts the crane standing on both legs
on a clump of grass. His crane has no stone to drop or to swallow, as suggested
in Erasmus’s adage. Nevertheless, Lorck’s motto makes the adage its starting
point, developing the interpretive trajectory in accordance with the emblemat-
ic demand for nuanced changes that shape new meanings. By citing Erasmus’s
adage, Lorck signals his knowledge of natural lore and proverbial meanings. By
embellishing the pictorial elements known from antiquity with the diamond
ring and the lodestars, he indicates new interpretative paths.
Lorck’s crane can be read as a fully realized emblem. The text accompanying
the emblem can be understood as its motto – ‘Grues lapidem de glutientes’ –
and the implied subscriptio is the antique lore that this text and this image
call to mind in the competent viewer, who, like the artist, enjoyed a human-
ist education. For the humanist reader, the variation from the expected image
of the crane holding a stone, as suggested by Erasmus’s adage, creates ten-
sion between the words and the picture. The act of trying to understand the
disconnect between antique lore and Renaissance image creates an implied
expanded subscriptio, in which one’s expectations are compared with what
one actually sees: this bird has both feet planted firmly on the ground, a dia-
mond ring adorns its neck, and two stars shine at its sides. Lorck’s cluster of
pictorial elements creates new layers of meaning and directs the interpreta-
tion he desires by the addition of the ring and the stars. The stone is no longer
just any stone, but a diamond. Furthermore, the diamond is not in the bird’s
29 Quoted from Arkyves; see the original Latin text: http://arkyves.org/r/view/adag_fro

ben1559_nr0822/all. Accessed 30 November 2018.
30 http://emblematica.library.illinois.edu/detail/emblem/E000932. Accessed 30 July 2018.
Figure 17.6 Georg Rem and Peter Isselburg, “Pro grege” (For the people), Emblem 21,
Emblemata Politica […] (Nürnberg, [n.p.]: 1617)
Image courtesy of Emblematica Online, University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
beak or claw but is set in a ring around its slender neck. The brilliance of the
gemstone together with that of the stars surrounding the head and neck of this
graceful bird underscore the concept of flashing intelligence, shining creativity.
No longer merely a tool for keeping awake, the stone is now a jewel, a distinction.
586 Wade
Cranes are the birds of Palamedes, who is said to have first discerned some of
the letters of the Greek alphabet while watching cranes in flight. Thus, Lorck’s
emblem strongly associates flight and keen powers of observation with excep-
tional intellectual achievement: the invention of writing and the beginnings of
the alphabet. The legend confirms that Palamedes was adept at seeing mean-
ing in patterns, decoding hidden meanings, and seeing letters in the cranes’
flight, all activities suggestive of the work of the emblematist. Palamedes is an
artificer – he provided letters to create words and make meaning. Perhaps in
the motto Lorck even played with ‘lapidem’ as an anagram of ‘palimed’ (that
is, Palamedes).31 That Lorck would have chosen a version of the crane lore
steeped in classical legend – Palamedes was one of the warriors at Troy – aligns
with his own self-fashioning as a humanist artist who situated himself among
intellectual elites.
Emblematic texts and iconography allow for variation, and, in fact, demand
fugue-like associations in order to create new knowledge. The introduction of
the lodestars and the ring is particularly significant, since they consistently
recur in the artist’s oeuvre: in his emblematized portraits of the Hapsburg
ambassadors, his self-portrait, and his entry in an album amicorum.32 Some
sample emblems, all of which postdate Lorck’s crane emblem, can be cited
here merely to suggest the rich context of images, metaphors, and concepts
circulating at the time that then later found emblematic articulation. For ex-
ample, Paradin (1551) has several stellar emblems with the mottos ‘Candor il-
laesus’ [Brightness that cannot be harmed] [Fig. 17.7]33 and ‘Monstrant regibus
astra viam’ [The star shows kings the way to follow] [Fig. 17.8].34 The latter,
of course, refers to the biblical example of the three magi following the star
of Bethlehem. Melchior Lorck and two of his three brothers, Balthasar and
Caspar, were named for the magi, and it may be that the author was playing
upon his own given name. In Lorck’s emblem the crane’s beak is almost touch-
ing the one star, indicating that this bird is oriented to new paths and poised to
follow lofty artistic goals. Like the crane, the artist will lift to the heavens and
fly. Melchior Lorck is following his star.
31 I would like to thank Dr. Peter Eversmann, University of Amsterdam, for making this sug-
gestion during the discussion of my paper at the Corinth Colloquium.
32 See the discussion in the chapter on Lorck in Emblems as Open Sources; see Wade
(forthcoming).
33 Claude Paradin, Devises heroïques (Lyons, Jean de Tournes and Guillaume Gazeau: 1551).
http://emblematica.library.illinois.edu/detail/emblem/FPAa033. Accessed 31 July 2018.
34 Paradin, Devises heroïques. http://emblematica.library.illinois.edu/detail/emblem/FPAa

008. Accessed 31 July 2018.

Figure 17.7
Claude Paradin, “Candor illaesus” (Brightness
that cannot be harmed), Deuises heroíques […]
(Lyon, Jean de Tournes: 1551) 41
Glasgow University
Figure 17.8
Claude Paradin, “Monstrant regibus astra viam”
(The star shows kings the way to follow), Deuises
heroíques (Lyon, Jean de Tournes: 1551) 16
Glasgow University
588 Wade
Figure 17.9
Claude Paradin, “Hoc Caesar me donavit”
[Caesar has rewarded me with this],
Deuises heroíques, (Lyon, Jean de Tournes:
1551) 239
Image courtesy of Emblematica
Online, Glasgow University
Paradin also depicts a winged stag rampant, reaching upward, wearing around
its slender neck a golden chain given him by King Charles VI of France.35
The stag rampant seems pertinent here, even if it postdates the crane emblem.
The emblem ‘Hoc Caesar me donavit’ [Caesar has rewarded me with this]
depicts the winged stag from Paradin’s Devises heroiques, leaping for a crown
with a golden chain around its neck [Fig. 17.9].36 Gracing an animal with a
particular sign of royal favour distinguishes it from all others and protects it. In
Lorck’s case the crane with the diamond ring alludes to the generosity of the
Danish monarch who supported his travel and study. This symbolic act creates
a strong message of the individual’s select status, his elevation above others.
35 Bath M., “Noli me tangere: The Legend of Caesar’s Deer”, chapter 1 of The Image of the Stag.
Iconographic Themes in Western Art, Saecula Spiritalia 24 (Baden-Baden: 1992) 23–60,
with special mention of King Christian IV of Denmark’s collared deer from the early sev-
enteenth century (44 and 48), and thus too late for Lorck.
36 http://www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/french/emblem.php?id=FPAb167. Accessed 31 July 2018.
Lorck’s crane extends Erasmus’s adage, setting the ring encircling the
crane’s neck with a precious stone. This waterfowl has the diamond perma-
nently around its neck – neither will the stone fall nor will he drop it – thereby
awakening himself once again to stand watch. Nor has the bird swallowed the
gemstone; instead, he proudly displays it around his neck, as a distinction, sig-
nalling highest honours. The crane has earned the jewel through vigilance, and
having received such distinction represents the highest aspirations to strive for
and to fulfil. The unending circle of the ring is typically a symbol of eternity.
Thus, the ring can be seen as a reward for the bearer’s diligence and persever-
ance, while the unbreakable diamond symbolizes his adamantine intent. The
diamond ring attests to immortality through artistic and scholarly fame, and
the crane to circumspection and vigilance. The diamond ring encircling his
neck signifies the reward and favour of princes. Lorck’s crane is only momen-
tarily earthbound.
As early as 1549 Lorck makes with this emblem a compelling visual argu-
ment for the ‘elevation of his profession from the ranks of an artisanal craft
to the status of a liberal art’.37 Owing to the direct citation of Erasmus’s adage,
Lorck’s source of inspiration for the emblem is unambiguous, yet its picto-
rial elements locate it within trajectories first taken more than twenty-five
years later, in the emblems published by Johannes Sambucus [Fig. 17.10]38
and Hadrianus Junius [Fig. 17.11]39 who both depict cranes holding diamond
rings. Lorck was part of the networks surrounding Sambucus, Wolfgang
Lazius, and Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq, in Vienna, and Christophe Plantin and
Abraham Ortelius, in Antwerp.40 Sambucus’s later use of the emblem with the
crane and the diamond ring as a visualization of the rewards of humanistic
study would seem to confirm his knowledge of Lorck’s engraving. Like these
two noted humanist emblematists, who later employed similar crane im-
ages as their personal emblems, Lorck aimed for glory through the study of
antiquities.
37 Damm 5.
38 See ‘In labore fructus’, Johannes Sambucus, Emblemata, cum aliquot nummis antiqui
operis … (Antwerp, Plantin: 1564) 202. http://emblematica.library.illinois.edu/detail/em
blem/FSAb145. Accessed 2 August 2018.
39 See ‘Eruditionis decor concordia, merces gloria’, emblem 21, Hadrianus Junius, Emblemata
(Antwerp, Plantin: 1565). http://emblematica.library.illinois.edu/detail/emblem/FJUb021.
Accessed 2 August 2018. Emblematic networks are explored at greater length in Emblems
as Open Sources; see Wade (forthcoming).
40 See Haase – Bøgh Rasmussen 31.
590 Wade
Figure 17.10
Ioan Sambucus, “In labore fructus” (Labor brings
fruit), Emblemata, cum aliquot nummis antiqui
operis […] (Antwerp, Plantin: 1564) 200
Glasgow University
Figure 17.11
Hadrianus Junius, “Eruditionis decor concordia,
merces gloria” (The charm of learning is
harmony,
its reward is glory), Emblem 21, Emblemata
(Antwerp, Plantin: 1565) 27
Glasgow University
In the crane emblem, the young Danish artist created a powerful state-
ment for himself as he embarked on his first extended journeys into the
larger world. In 1549 Lorck was twenty-two or twenty-three years old, had
finished his training as a goldsmith, and was travelling to advance his art,
as part of a four-year study tour funded by the Danish king. He was poised
to embark on a career as a major artist. The diamond ring signifies Lorck’s
achievements to date; he had passed all the tests and was ready to follow
his star, as symbolized by the lodestars in this picture. By placing the crane
emblem on a cartouche resembling a tournament shield for a festival pag-
eant, Lorck indicates that this emblem is also his personal badge. In lieu of
a coat of arms, the daring young artist created an emblem as his personal
insignia, testifying to his abilities, his abundant skills, and his interests in
classical leaning. As confirmed by Sambucus’s and Junius’s later variations
on Lorck’s crane, the emblem can be seen to have more universal meaning
for the role in society of the pictor doctus, the humanist artist: the aspira-
tions, the patronage, and the recognition. Lorck signed the crane emblem
with his initials, his personal claim to this bold statement. His crane emblem
is highly self-referential, while retaining the universal application of fame
through learning. The combination of pictorial elements in this emblem is
significant: the crane, the stars, and the ring are all expressions of Lorck’s
lofty artistic aspirations, and position him among cultural elites. By employ-
ing a humanist language of texts and images, Lorck signals his desire to be
counted as an ‘antiquitatis studiosissimus’.41 He desired recognition in the
ranks of international humanism. The crane emblem attests to Lorck’s artis-
tic ambitions and intellectual trajectory, allegorically stating that he aims for
the heavens.
4 The Two Early Emblems: the Crane and the Mole
Circumstances strongly suggest that the artistic environment of Southern

Germany, most particularly impulses emanating from Augsburg and Nürnberg,
had a role in Lorck’s formulation of his early emblems. These contemporary
artistic hubs gave impetus to the emblematic in Lorck’s oeuvre. The genre as a
whole was likely new to the Danish artist when he reached Southern Germany,
yet he quickly grasped the expressive potentialities of the emblem. His bold
experimentation with the form positions Lorck at the forefront of emblematic
41
Fischer – Bencard – Bøgh Rasmussen, vol. 1, 102–103 and 108; Wade, “North” 20.
592 Wade
thinking during its earliest development. Travel and geography can also
be seen to have played a particularly important role in his next emblem, dis-
cussed below.
The emblems of the mole and the crane, completed only a year apart, can
further be interpreted as intermedial explorations of paired themes, seeing and
soaring juxtaposed to blindness and being slow and earthbound, even subter-
ranean. Lorck’s mole is so immovable that one might wonder whether the poor
creature has recently expired, whereas the crane’s implied mobility suggests
vibrant life and creativity. The blindness of the mole has the literal meaning of
being physically unable to use one’s eyes, but Lorck extends the metaphor to
include ingratitude, limited imagination, and the silly loquaciousness of a man
incapable of higher-level thinking. Conversely, the crane’s vigilance depends
on seeing and observing, activities of mind that Lorck extrapolates metaphori-
cally to signify a soaring imagination and its princely rewards. Lorck seeks new
spaces for meaning in these emblems and articulates new metaphors of sight
and blindness, of flying above others in intellect, creativity, and recognition, as
opposed to being sluggish, stupid, and very low to the ground. Like Erasmus’s
adages in general, these two images have social connotations with respect to
communal behaviour and social mobility. The juxtaposition of two related, yet
contrary, phenomena, speed and slowness, provides the focus of Lorck’s em-
blem to be discussed next. While the emblems of the crane and the mole are
independent expressions of sluggishness and of nimble flight, the next em-
blem explores contrary themes in a single motif.
5 The Tortoise: ‘Festina Lente’, or the Flight of Imagination
Lorck’s drawing of a tortoise sailing over the Venetian lagoon is striking be-
cause of its internal contradiction: an enormous turtle soars high in the air
over a comparatively small land- and seascape. [Fig. 17.12].42 Although it has
yet to be interpreted as a deliberately composed, unified work, the drawing
presents Lorck’s bold interpretation of the famous adage ‘Festina lente’ – speed
tempered by slowness – and I propose here that this spectacular drawing is an
emblem. The image is a fully integrated composition, employing key elements
of the mens emblematica: effective use of contrasts and neatness of allegory.
42 http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details
.aspx?objectId=720412&partId=1&searchText=Melchior+Lorck&page=2. Accessed
8 August 2018.
Figure 17.12 Melchior Lorck, Tortoise and Separate View of a Walled, Coastal Town in the
Veneto. Charcoal, heightened with creamy-white bodycolor, on Venetian blue
paper. 189 mm × 208 mm
© The Trustees of the British Museum
Emblem scholars are accustomed to emblems without pictures and even

have a term for them, emblemata nuda, or ‘naked emblems’ – that is, emblems
without the clothing of the pictura. An image described in a literary text is an
example of ekphrasis. Emblem scholars, however, have no term for emblem
picturae without words. In his book on emblems in the material culture of
early modern Scotland, Michael Bath calls emblems without epigrams ‘realised
ekphrasis’ – that is, ‘the visual realisation of a verbal description’.43 To speak
43 Bath M., Emblems in Scotland. Motifs and Meanings, SCROLL Scottish Cultural Review of
Language and Literature 28 (Leiden: 2018) 148.
594 Wade
with Simon McKeown, these are ‘mute emblems’.44 Such images are nonethe-
less immediately recognizable as emblems, and they include Lorck’s compel-
ling portrayal of a mole (1548), a crane (1549), and a tortoise (1555), which have
respectively no motto, no subscriptio, and no text that could reasonably be
called either a motto or a subscriptio. In spite of their non-conformity to the
modern demand for tripartite emblems – with motto, pictura, and subscriptio –
I argue that they fully participate in emblematic strategies of knowledge cre-
ation. By emblematizing the adages, Lorck rendered the need for a written
text superfluous; the well-stocked mind carried the text within. In a moment
of bold artistic and personal experimentation, Lorck created an emblem with-
out words.
With no text whatsoever, Lorck offers a stunning variation on a classi-
cal topos. Like the crane emblem, Lorck’s image of a tortoise sailing over the
Venetian lagoon – a drawing on Venetian blue paper – also concerns flight and
the soaring artistic imagination. Like the mole emblem, the disproportionate
scale of Lorck’s drawing of the tortoise demands special interpretation as an
emblem. The drawing presents a visual oxymoron, a natural impossibility: an
aquatic creature both thoroughly earthbound and submarine has taken flight.
Its unusual theme and composition invite an emblematic interpretation, and
one can readily be found.
This emblem boldly reworks the famous adage ‘Festina lente’, or ‘make haste
slowly’. As Erasmus writes in his Adages, II, i, 1,
It is clear then that this saying, Make haste slowly, arose in the secret heart
of ancient philosophy; whence it was called into their service by two of
the most highly esteemed of all Roman emperors, one of whom used it as
a device and the other as an emblem, so well did it agree with the char-
acter and disposition of both. And now it has passed to Aldo Manuzio,
citizen of Rome, as a kind of heir in the third generation, ‘for so methinks
heaven’s power and purpose held.’ It is he that gives fresh celebrity to the
same device that was once approved by Vespasian. And it is not only most
familiar, it is also highly popular among all those everywhere in the world
to whom sound learning is either familiar or dear.45
44 I would like to thank Simon McKeown for allowing me to use this term, which he has
applied to similar emblems. See also Davidson P., “Mute Emblems and a Lost Room:
Gardyne’s House, Dundee”, in Saunders A. and Davidson P. (eds.), Visual Words and Verbal
Pictures (Glasgow: 2005) 51–67.
45 http://www.arkyves.org/r/view/adag_froben1559_nr1001/all. Accessed 6 August 2018.
Figure 17.13
Aldo Manuzio, printer’s mark (anchor and dolphin).
Wikicommons
In a dazzling display of humanistic learning and artistic accomplishment,

Lorck ‘realised’ the motto in this drawing. Reconfiguring the Aldine signet of
the anchor and the dolphin [Fig. 17.13], Lorck presents his own vision of mak-
ing haste slowly with the ‘testudo i alta’ (the turtle up above / in the air). As I
argue, Lorck’s emblem literally represents both the flight of the imagination
and a physical journey.
The drawing’s subject is so unlikely that the British Museum catalogues
this work as two separate studies on a single page: ‘Tortoise, and separate view
of a walled, coastal town in the Veneto. Charcoal, heightened with creamy-
white body colour, on blue paper’.46 Marina Warner, in her insightful paper
about Lorck’s aerial views, does not do justice to this image when she refers
to it as a ‘sketch’.47 I argue here that Lorck’s tortoise is a complete image as he
intended it.48 The drawing bears Lorck’s manuscript inscription in black ink,
‘zu Venedig dem Lebend nach gemacht’ [created in Venice according to life],
on the lower right. On the upper right the drawing is dated 1555, in white chalk,
and signed with the artist’s trademark signature, the ‘F’ above the conjoined
46 http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.as
px?objectId=720412&partId=1&searchText=Melchior+Lorck&page=2. Accessed 8 August
2018. This assessment echoes Fischer’s statement from many years earlier: ‘Probably this
remark [“ad vivum”] only refers to the tortoise which apparently was drawn before the
addition of the town below it’. See Fischer E., Melchior Lorck. Drawings from the Evelyn
Collection at Stonor Park, England, and from the Department of Prints and Drawings, The
Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Copenhagen, exh. cat. (Copenhagen: 1962) 20.
47 Warner 13. I would like to thank C. Jean Campbell, Emory University, for an insightful
conversation during the Corinth Colloquium.
48 I would like to thank Dr. Tamar Cholcman, Tel Aviv University, for reading a draft of this
argument during the final stages of writing.
596 Wade
‘ML’, denoting Melchior Lorck Flensburgensis. This is his full artist’s signature,
which he employed throughout his life. Lorck used his block monogram to
indicate the authenticity and exceptional aesthetic quality of his drawing as
well as to signal his identity. The addition of the artist’s signature, place, and
date indicates completeness. The silvery date and signature complement the
tortoise’s creamy chalk highlights, and the black ink of the words along the
bottom, the cursive line running in the same direction as the flight of the huge
reptile, to the right-hand edge of the page, indicates an interpretive trajectory.
As discussed in detail below, Lorck’s finished drawing is strikingly innovative in
conceptualization, execution, and magisterial use of materials.
The British Museum provided additional curator’s comments with the la-
belling for the 2016–2018 exhibition Lines of Thought:
In this associative drawing the tortoise and the fortified town share one
another’s armoured appearance. Lorck uses the same combination of
black charcoal and white heightening for both, as well as the same light
source, lending them a visual unity. While they may have been conceived
as separate enquiries, it is possible that the detailed study of the tortoise,
which according to the inscription was drawn from life, sparked the idea
for the fancifully embattled town.49
While the curator was coming to perceive a certain alignment between the
tortoise and the town from the point of view of technical execution, when in-
terpreted as an emblem, the drawing’s content argues unequivocally for a uni-
fied thought.
The two images on this single sheet of Venetian blue paper are not at all
‘separate’. The drawing depicting the tortoise and the view of Venice from the
lagoon is, in its completion, a fully coherent statement of ‘making haste, slow-
ly’. My reading of Lorck’s emblematic drawing demonstrates that the work is,
in fact, a carefully integrated composition with a specifically Venetian point of
view. Erasmus further explores the adage’s meaning, stating,
I must now return to the exposition of the adage. It will be possible to

use the proverb in three ways. The first is when we wish to point out that
one should give prolonged thought to a piece of business before starting
on it, but when one’s mind is made up one should finish it with speed, so
49 http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.as
px?objectId=720412&partId=1&searchText=Melchior+Lorck&page=2. Click ‘read more’.
Accessed 8 August 2018. See also Lines of Thought, item 59, 102.
that the anchor symbolizes delay in considering and the dolphin speed in
finishing. That remark in Sallust comes in here: ‘You should take counsel
before you start; and when you have thought, then act quickly and have
done.’ The same opinion is reviewed by Aristotle in book 6 of the Ethics
as one widely held: ‘They say’ he remarks ‘that what you have thought
about should be despatched quickly, but you should take time to con-
sider things’.50
Lorck created the image in 1555, as he was preparing to embark on a Hapsburg

embassy to Constantinople. The opportunity to travel through Byzantium and
see ancient sites and monuments makes the universal adage ‘Festina lente’ im-
mediately personal. The dating and the inscription on the drawing confirm his
presence in Venice, while the adage strongly reflects the context of his deci-
sion to journey to the Ottoman Empire. While Erik Fischer had the tortoise
drawing studied by a marine biologist, who identified the reptile as belong-
ing to the species testudo graeca, common to the Adriatic,51 the inscription
applies not just to the tortoise but to the entire picture, having been drawn
from life in Venice. Conceptually, the drawing derives its full coherence from
the life of Melchior Lorck: the town and the tortoise are ‘according to’ Lorck’s
own life decisions and aspirations. The drawing as a whole was ‘dem Lebend
nach gemacht’.
Lorck’s drawing of the tortoise demonstrates that the artist was thinking
with his hand, bringing the Laguna’s cityscape and the huge reptile into the
concision of thought that is the emblem. The emblem exudes confidence,
documenting his artistic maturation in the years since the mole and crane
emblems. It also anticipates further artistic opportunities and accomplish-
ments as he embarked on his foreign travels as an emissary of the Archduke
Ferdinand of Austria, later Emperor Ferdinand I, to the Ottoman Turks. The
image can be read as an admonishment to himself to ‘make haste slowly’ as he
embarks on the most important journey of his life. The tortoise, already aloft,
signals the decision made, and the reptilian flight Lorck’s motion toward his
goal. His striking representation of ‘Festina lente’ shows that he considered his
journey most carefully; he appears to have heeded the proverbial wisdom con-
cerning prolonged deliberation of his independent path and then embarked
on it with alacrity.
The imperial embassy travelled the so-called ambassador’s route over-
land from Vienna through Transylvania and Bulgaria. Drawing on his vast

51 Fischer, “Drawings from the Evelyn Collection”, 20–22.
598 Wade
knowledge of the Danish artist, Erik Fischer suggested that Lorck, who arrived
in Constantinople before the lead ambassador, Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq,
could have taken another route via Venice.52 My interpretation of the emblem
and the materials of its making, discussed below, strengthens Fischer’s hypoth-
esis. The drawing can be understood to confirm that the artist travelled first
to Venice, then crossed the Adriatic, and from there followed the Via Egnatia,
the old Roman road from Venice to Dürres via Thessalonika, finally proceeding
to Constantinople. The road runs from the Adriatic coast through present-day
Albania, Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey. Once decided on a course
that took him through the ancient world, Lorck travelled to Constantinople,
thereby expanding his antiquarian studies through first-hand experience.
Melchior Lorck made haste slowly.
The airborne tortoise represents an eruption of creative energy made visible
in the unexpected mobility of the gigantic creature sailing effortlessly above
the watery lagoon. Moving outward, the enormous reptile dwarfs the city
in the near background with its low walls, whose creamy highlights echo those
of the turtle’s shell. On the left the mountains in the far background merge
with the heavy clouds and become distinct only owing to the white highlights,
suggesting a sunset. The marshy waters, the low solid architecture, and the
broad mountains in the background provide visual counterpoint to this unusu-
al flight. The steady horizontal pull of the city- and waterscape stands in sharp
juxtaposition to the intense vertical pull of the imagination, so vigorous that
even this weighty creature takes flight. The tension in the portrayal reflects
the competing notions of haste and slowness. The armoured tortoise gliding
leisurely across the sky is out of his usual element, freed from his ponderous
earthly and aquatic motion. In the air this animal overcomes all hindrances –
its motion is unimpeded. In the imagination we all can fly.
The tortoise is not only aloft, but it appears to be leaving the city, moving out
over the shallow water of the lagoon, with its marshes and wetlands. Focused
on something outside of the picture’s frame, the reptile appears to see far into
the future, across both water and land, away from the known city to an un-
known opposite shore. The tortoise is on a quest. When studied in terms of
Venetian topography and the general cartographic practice of situating due
North at the top of the page, this drawing must be interpreted with a specific
geographical orientation: reading from left to right, from west to east. Lorck’s
emblem of ‘Festina lente’ literally represents his journey east, across ancient
lands to Constantinople.
52
Fischer – Bencard – Bøgh Rasmussen, vol. 1, 91–92. See also Haase – Bøgh Rasmussen 18.
The tortoise swimming in the air above a town in the Veneto would seem
to offer further material confirmation of Lorck’s travel through Venice to
Constantinople. Its material, thematic content, inscription, and topos of
‘Festina lente’ position the drawing in Venice. In this manner Lorck signals his
physical presence in Venice, in this place of exchange between east and west.
The drawing places him in a liminal space, on the brink of a new worldview
beyond the confines of Europe. The sense of unboundedness is further un-
derscored by the tortoise’s flight. The line of the turtle’s trajectory suggests it
is moving away from the shore. The Venetian littoral not only separates from
but also connects to the opposite shore, the one we cannot see. The view from
above suggests the gliding animal sees a far-off goal, from an entirely unac-
customed perspective. Its wizened face reveals great age and wisdom, knowl-
edge of the ancients, perhaps even omniscience. The volant tortoise serves as
a metaphor for the artist about to embark on travel to unknown worlds, where
he will see new things and literally develop new perspectives. The reptile, pad-
dling through the air along the coast, is heading out over the Adriatic to the
eastern shore of the sea, to Byzantium, with its ancient monuments and the
world of the Ottoman Turks.
Flight is a metonym for creativity, for the imagination. Read as an emblem,
the image of the flying tortoise embodies both Lorck’s creative impulses and
his impending trip as part of a Hapsburg embassy to the court of Suleiman the
Magnificent. Melchior Lorck and his tortoise are heading East.
6 The Tortoise and the Emblematic Game
Lorck’s picture has long occupied viewers for its unusual imagery.53 Interpreting
it as an emblem reveals important new insights about Lorck himself as an art-
ist. This approach also offers new perspectives on the earliest days of emblem
making, especially of emblems not compiled into books. The following sec-
tions lay out the emblematic context of Lorck’s tortoise and then that of the
journey to Constantinople (as Lorck himself referred to Istanbul in his eleven-
meter-long Prospect of Constantinople).54 I conclude with a discussion of the
drawing’s extraordinary materiality.
53 Fischer, Drawings from the Evelyn Collection 20–22. See Ward-Jackson P., “Some Rare
Drawings by Melchior Lorichs in the Collection of Mr John Evelyn of Wotton, now at
Stonor Park, Oxfordshire”, Connoisseur 134 (1955) 83–93; see also Warner 11–25.
54 Fischer – Bencard – Bøgh Rasmussen, Melchior Lorck, vol. 4, The Constantinople Prospect
(Copenhagen: 2009).
600 Wade
7 The Tortoise
Many pictorial variations have been used to express the enantiosis of mak-
ing haste slowly, to visualize the concept of the careful consideration of
a momentous plan and its timely accomplishment: an arrow and an eel
[Fig. 17.14], an arrow flying through the air with a slug on its shaft [Fig. 17.15],
a winged foot on a turtle’s back [Fig. 17.16], a turtle with a sail [Fig. 17.17; see
also Fig. 17.23], the tortoise and the hare [Fig. 17.18], a bolting horse whose tail
is firmly gripped [Fig. 17.19], ivy climbing up a column [Fig. 17.20], the lethar-
gic remora entwined around an arrow [Fig. 17.21], and the butterfly and the
crab [Fig. 17.22]. These pictorial commonplaces are all expressions of ‘making
haste slowly’. In Emblematica Online, emblems with the motto ‘Festina lente’,
like the ones just mentioned, all have the Iconclass notation for ‘efficiency’
and ‘slowness’ (51M).55 A search for both of these notations reveals a number
of emblems with similar meanings, yet with different mottos, most frequently
‘Maturandum’ [all in good time], indicating the right moment to do things.56
These images juxtapose the physical tensions inherent in snails, fleet-footed
stags, tortoises, anchors and dolphins, arrows and eels, a figure poised to fly
but held back, and the remora with wings. One sees not only the wealth of
enigmatic associations for the concepts of swiftness (Iconclass 51M11) and tar-
diness (Iconclass 51MM11) but also the frequency with which the tortoise fig-
ures in such emblematic imaginings. Key examples are Alciato’s ‘Maturandum’,
from 1556, which articulates the proverb’s meaning as everything in its time,57
and Georg Rem’s emblem 5, ‘Festina lente’, from 1617, which portrays an ambu-
latory turtle making its slow way along the ground, assisted in its speed by a sail
on its back58 [Fig. 17.23].
The most widely recognized depiction of ‘Festina lente’ is the device of
the anchor and dolphin used by the Venetian printer Aldo Manuzio (Aldus
Manutius, 1449–1515; Fig. 17.13). While the accepted translation of the motto
55 http://emblematica.library.illinois.edu/. Accessed 6 August 2018.

56 See also Erasmus’s detailed explanation, Adages, II, i: https://www.arkyves.org/r/view
/adag_froben1559_nr1001/proverb. Accessed 6 August 2018.
57 http://emblematica.library.illinois.edu/detail/emblem/A56a052. Accessed 8 August 2018.
Andrea Alciato, emblem LII (52), Emblematum libri II, with commentaries by Sebastian
Stockhammer (Lyon, Jean de Tournes and Guillaume Gazeau: 1556). The translation of
Alciato’s subscriptio is available through this link on the Glasgow Alciato site: ‘Everyone
tells us to deal with things quickly, but they also tell us to hold back – not to be impetuous,
nor yet to wait too long. A missile linked with a sucking-fish can demonstrate this for you:
the fish is slow, but arrows fly fast when they leave the shooter’s hand’.
58 Georg Rem and Peter Isselburg, emblem 5, Emblemata Politica … (Nürnberg, n.p.: 1617).
http://emblematica.library.illinois.edu/detail/emblem/E000919. Accessed 19 July 2018.
Figure 17.14
Andrea Alciato, “Maturandum” (All in
good time), Emblemata … (Leiden,
Plantin: 1591) 37
Figure 17.15
Andrea Alciato, “Maturandum” (All
in good time), Emblematum Liber
(Augsburg, Steyner: 28 February 1531)
sig. C7r
602 Wade
Figure 17.16
Andrzej Maksymilian Fredro,
“Festina lente” (Hasten slowly),
Peristromata regum symbolis
expressa […] (Danzig, Förster:
1660) 370
Image courtesy of
Emblematica Online, Duke
University
Figure 17.17
Daniel de la Fueille, “Festina
lente”(Hasten slowly), Devises
et Emblemes […] (Augsburg,
Kroniger & Göbel: 1695) 13.5 http://
emblematica.library.illinois.edu/
detail/emblem/E015466
Image courtesy of
Emblematica Online,
University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign
Figure 17.18
Otto Vaenius, “Festina Lente” (Hasten
slowly), Emblemata aliquot selectiora
amatoria. (Amsterdam, Jansson: 1618) 32
Online, Utrecht University
Figure 17.19 Otto Vaenius – Marin le Roy Sieur de Gomberville, “Festina

Lente”, La doctrine des moeurs […] (Paris, Louys Seuestre:
1646) 24
Image courtesy of Emblematica Online, University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
604 Wade
Figure 17.20
Daniel de la Fueille,
“Festina lente” (Hasten
slowly; Ivy), Devises et
Emblemes […] (Augsburg,
Kroniger & Göbel: 1695)
28.15 http://emblematica.
library.illinois.edu/detail/
emblem/E025716
Image courtesy of
Emblematica Online,
University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign
Figure 17.21 Daniel de la Fueille, “Festina lente” (Hasten slowly; Remora), Devises et Emblemes […]
(Augsburg, Kroniger & Göbel: 1695) 36.7. http://emblematica.library.illinois.edu/detail/
emblem/E016506
Image courtesy of Emblematica Online, University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign
Figure 17.22
Gabriele Simeoni, “Festina lenta”
(Hasten slowly), Le sententiose
imprese, et dialogo […] (Lyon,
Roviglio: 1560) 11
Image courtesy of
Emblematica Online, Getty
Research Institute
is to ‘make haste slowly’, its nuanced meaning recognizes timeliness in the ex-
ecution of a grand plan: treading the fine line between the correct balance
between the auspicious completion of a project and undue haste. In addi-
tion to the widely recognized anchor and dolphin of the Aldine signet, the
printer’s mark of Cinzio Achillini of Bologna (active 1525–1527), who used
this device from 1525 to 1529, depicts a winged turtle over a banner bear-
ing the word ‘Matura’, which itself is above a fire burning on an altar.59
The motto ‘Matura’ both situates this printer’s device among the emblematic
representations of ‘Festina lente’ and provides a key to its interpretation. The
Italian printer’s devices, which Lorck could have known through his studies
and travels, anticipate his vision of the airborne tortoise.60 It seems to be no
coincidence that these printer’s devices come from regions of Italy, in particu-
lar the Veneto, that Lorck was known to have visited. While Achillini’s turtle
appears about to fly, as indicated by its stretched-out pose and its wings, it
is not yet airborne. Similarly, Camillo Camilli’s emblem for Antonio Beffa
de’Negrini, ‘Vt tollar Humo’ [even when raised from the earth], with its turtle
sprouting a pair of wings from its head, is strangely static. [Fig. 17.24].61 These
59 For information on Cinzio Achillini, see the CERL thesaurus (https://thesaurus.cerl.org/

record/cni00019957) with a link to the printer’s device (http://edit16.iccu.sbn.it/scripts/
iccu_ext2.dll?fn=63&i=1486&i=2405). Accessed 19 July 2018.
60 The relationship of emblems and printers’ devices has been thoroughly studied in
Wolkenhauer A., Zu schwer für Apoll: die Antike in humanistischen Druckerzeichen des 16.
Jahrhunderts, Wolfenbütteler Schriften zur Geschichten des Buchwesens 35 (Wiesbaden:
2002); see also Wolkenhauer A. – Scholz B., Typographorum Emblemata: The Printer’s
Mark in the Context of Early Modern Culture (Berlin – Boston: 2018).
61 Camillo Camilli, Imprese illustri di diversi, coi discorsi […] (Venice, Francesco Ziletti: 1586) 13.
606 Wade
Figure 17.23 Georg Rem and Peter Isselburg, “Festina Lente” (Hasten slowly), Emblem 21,
Emblemata Politica […] (Nürnberg, [n.p.]: 1617)
Image courtesy of Emblematica Online, University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign
representations can be considered one aspect of the web of emblematic asso-

ciations surrounding Lorck’s compelling image. The Dane’s tortoise, however,
is most striking in that there is no indication of wings, or a sail, or any other
flying mechanism. Dispensing with the machinery of flight, Lorck positioned
Figure 17.24
Camillo Camilli’s tortoise
emblem for Antonio
Beffa de’Negrini, “Vt
tollar Humo” Imprese
illustri di diuersi, coi
discorsi […] (Venice,
Ziletti: 1586) 13
Image courtesy
of Emblematica
Online, University
of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign
his turtle in the air. Rather than depicting the potential to fly, he depicts flight
itself. Elevated by the power of his own imagination, his tortoise flies. Lorck’s
tortoise has already attained altitude.
Lorck would have known well the central adage of making haste slowly,
an assertion strengthened especially by his knowledge of the adages of the
mole and the crane. He would have been aware of the Aldine press and its
successors, at the latest while in Venice, a suggestion that resonates deeply
with Lorck’s desire to be seen as a humanist and an antiquarian. Lorck would
have been aware of Aldo’s efforts to preserve classical literature, particularly
the Greek classics. He would have likely also known about Aldo’s introduction
of the italic typeface and reasonably priced small books, as well as his inno-
vations in book-binding and the standardization of punctuation. These were
Aldo’s ambitious projects, all completed in due time.
Aldo adopted his printer’s device from Roman coins and medals, confirming
the nexus of printing, numismatics, and philology in humanistic endeavours.
Erasmus cites the use of the anchor and dolphin by two emperors, calling Aldo
the ‘third heir’ of this venerable signet.62 Following this reasoning, Melchior
Lorck could be seen as a possible ‘fourth heir’ to this potent emblem. In con-
nection with the historical fact of Lorck’s impending journey across Europe to
the Sublime Porte, the tortoise in flight can be interpreted as a symbol of his
resolve to undertake the journey at this time, his preparedness for it, and his
aspirations to soar as an ‘antiquitatis studiosissimus’.63

63 Fischer – Bencard – Bøgh Rasmussen, vol. 1, 108 and 112.
608 Wade
8 From Venice to Constantinople
The emblematic parallels and analogies extrapolated across the concepts of

speed and slowness to signify a new project at the appropriate time are at-
tached to Lorck’s emblematic image of the flying tortoise. The biographical
document that Lorck wrote in 1563 explains that he intended to travel through
‘Greece’ – that is, through the physical geographies of antiquity – to study and
draw ruins and monuments from classical times.64 This aligns precisely with
his aspirations as set forth in the crane and tortoise emblems and is consis-
tent with the archival record. It is significant to the present argument that
Lorck had already visited Italy, specifically Venice, before becoming a mem-
ber of Busbecq’s Habsburg embassy to the Ottoman Turks, a journey that
lasted from 1555 probably until autumn of 1560.65 Lorck’s biographer Erik
Fischer rightly suggests that from this point forward Lorck increasingly des-
ignated himself as ‘antiquitatis studiosissimus’.66 Among the many images for
his Turkish volume were also ones of Turkish monuments. Lorck’s pictures of
classical monuments were never systematically collected and published, how-
ever, which has skewed most modern assessments of his work. For example,
his drawings record ancient monuments, such as a statue of Pomona, the re-
liefs on the Arcadius Column, and the pedestals of Constantine’s Column and
Thutomosis III’s Obelisk.67 The statue of Pomona and the Arcadius Column
no longer exist; thus, Lorck’s drawings provide critical attestations for these
monuments. The artist had planned to publish an illustrated volume about
classical monuments, along the lines of his planned Turkish volume, the latter
of which was only published posthumously. No work on classical monuments
ever appeared. Nevertheless, Lorck’s planned publications were central to his
self-identification as a humanist artist.68 The choice of the route from Venice
across the Via Egnatia to Constantinople makes logical sense, given Lorck’s
cosmopolitanism, humanist education, aspirations, and temperament. Lorck’s
oeuvre, including written statements, suggests that the most compelling rea-
son for the artist to have joined the embassy was his passionate interest in ex-
periencing classical antiquities first hand. What Lorck would have seen along
the route was as important as his destination.69
64 See Lorck’s letter to King Frederik II dated Vienna, 1 January 1563, in Fischer – Bencard –
Bøgh Rasmussen, vol. 1, 183–189. See also Haase – Bøgh Rasmussen, Tyrkiske Breve 23.
65 Fischer – Bencard – Bøgh Rasmussen, vol. 1, 91–106.
66 Fischer – Bencard – Bøgh Rasmussen, vol. 1, 102, 108, and 112.
67 Fischer – Bencard – Bøgh Rasmussen, vol. 1, 102.
68 Haase – Bøgh Rasmussen 22–24.
69 Fischer – Bencard – Bøgh Rasmussen, vol. 1, 102.
Scholars have stated that Lorck clearly engaged his unusually fertile imagi-
nation in several of his works,70 particularly in the pictures of the mole and
the tortoise, and that in spite of their strong documentary qualities, they also
represented huge flights of fantasy. The curator’s comments from the British
Museum continue this line of argumentation, stating, ‘To what extent the
artist’s fancy has modified the scene that he had seen is uncertain, but the
drawings’ character suggests that he had indulged his powers in this respect’.71
I argue that this is precisely the point: Lorck’s capacious mind and impres-
sive powers of imagination were at work in the emblem of testudinal flight.
The town along the lagoon is clearly a scene from the Veneto, although the
precise location has not been identified. It could represent composite impres-
sions Lorck gained while traveling in Italy, but it nevertheless strongly suggests
a Venetian scene. Presumably Lorck never actually saw a huge tortoise flying
over the lagoon. And yet the exact biological detail with which he drew the
creature suggests that it is a portrait of a tortoise that he did, in fact, observe
in the Veneto. The precise topography and anatomy authenticate the picture’s
verisimilitude, while standing at odds with the highly improbable notion of a
huge flying tortoise. The careful drawing of the towers and walls, the opening
in the thick wall offering ingress to the city, the watery passageway along the
walls, and the reedy shallows all juxtapose geographic reality with the surreal
airborne tortoise. The natural landscape makes this unnatural flight all the
more striking. Lorck’s creative powers combined physical and metaphorical
evidence of his own present location with the bizarre flying tortoise to express
both a personal and a universal application of the entirely Venetian emblem
‘Festina lente’. With his tortoise Lorck has fulfilled the first requirement of an
emblematic pictura: that it is memorable.
9 The Material of the Emblem
Both Lorck’s choice of paper and his medium signal the radical experimenta-
tion that he engaged in his emblem ‘Festina lente’.72 When creating emblems,
Lorck worked within a fluid lexicon and immersed himself in the latest ideas
70 Ward Jackson 83–93, and Warner 11–25.

71 http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_
details.aspx?objectId=720412&partId=1&searchText=Melchior+Lorck&page=2. Accessed
19 July 2018.
72 I want to thank my siblings, artist Laurie Wade, Alpena Community College, and photog-
rapher Tim Wade, University of Michigan, for their informed discussions with me about
art on blue paper.
610 Wade
and technologies available to the humanist artist. He pushed intellectual and

artistic boundaries in all of his emblematic creations, but most particularly
with respect to the emblematic tortoise. As far as is presently known, this
is his first and only emblematic drawing: the emblems of the mole and the
crane, discussed above, are both engravings and, thus, involve entirely differ-
ent methods of artistic production. The decision to render the mole and crane
as engravings, whether he incised them himself or not, reflects Lorck’s training
as a goldsmith. Engraving the mole and the crane with a burin onto a hard, flat
surface is fundamentally different from drawing with one’s hand. The act of
engraving implies a temporal removal – it is a long process. There was possibly
another removal if Lorck designed, but did not himself produce, the engraving.
The interpretation I offer here suggests that the monumental tortoise had to be
a drawing, because this form of linear depiction is immediate and unmediated.
Drawing is exploratory and involves problem solving. A drawing is often based
on detailed observation (‘Dem Lebend nach gemacht’), and it involves deci-
sions of composition taken in the moment. With his hand Lorck was working
out both his composition and his journey. His abundant creative powers, also
in terms of the material and the medium, are nowhere more evident than in
his drawing of the tortoise.
The materiality of this emblem signals its genesis: Lorck’s drawing is in char-
coal on Venetian blue paper – that is, carta azzurra – with white chalk high-
lights. This aesthetic choice enhances the appeal of such an unusual image.
Complementing the drawing’s striking content, the medium fulfils the de-
mand of the emblematic by emphasizing its exceptional qualities: the sensual
allure of the blue paper attracts the viewer’s gaze and demands further atten-
tion, understanding, and interpretation. Lorck employs the materiality of the
memorable blue paper to imbue the image with intrinsic meaning. The paper
is not just the underlying support for the compelling drawing; it also concep-
tually structures this enigmatic picture. The carta azzurra suffuses the work
with geographical and material significance that enhances its meaning and ex-
pands its interpretive range.73 While blue paper was first mentioned in Venice
in 1389, at the turn of the fifteenth century Venetian painters interested in the
rendering of atmospheric phenomena and colour discovered the suitability of
blue paper for drawing.
73 Irene Brückle, “Historical Manufacture and Use of Blue Paper”, The Book and Paper Group
Annual 12 (1993). http://cool.conservation-us.org/coolaic/sg/bpg/annual/v12/bp12-02
.html. Accessed 8 August 2018.
Figure 17.25
Aldo Manuzio, anchor and
dolphin signet on Venetian
blue paper, from Libri de
re rustica. M. Catonis lib.
I. M. Terentii Varronis lib.
III. L. Iunii Moderati Columellae
lib. XII. Eiusdem De arboribus
liber separatus ab alijs, quare
autem id factum fuerit ostenditur
in epistola ad lectorem. Palladii lib.
XIIII. De duobus di. (Venice, In
aedibus Aldi, et Andreae soceri:
1514)
© The Morgan Library &
Museum. PML 79276. Bequest
Bühler
Blue paper codes Venetian. Blue paper was used also for printing, the azure
colour providing striking contrast for the black ink.74 Lorck’s personal ac-
quaintance Hendrik Goltzius’s earliest woodcuts were printed only on blue
paper, while Aldo Manuzio was the first to print a book, a compendium of
agronomic works by Cato the Elder, Varro, and Columella, entirely on Venetian
blue paper75 [Fig. 17.25]. The unique copy of this book, Libri de re rustica
(1514),76 is held at the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York.77 An exemplar
held at the Harry Ransom Center, at the University of Texas, Austin, is printed
partially on blue paper. The aesthetic of black printing on a blue support is
reflected in Lorck’s employment of charcoal with white highlights on carta az-
zura. Lorck was indubitably aware of the impact of blue paper, and his ‘Festina
74 At an early stage I discussed this research with Sophia McCabe, Jakub Koguciuk, and
John Witte at the Centro Giorgio Cini, Venice. My thanks to the Renaissance Society of
America for awarding me a Patricia La Balme Fellowship for study in Venice.
75 Brückle; see note 73.
76 Venice Aldus Manutius and Andrea Torresano, 1514, 4°. Libri de re rustica. M. Catonis lib.
I. M. Terentii Varronis lib. III. L. Iunii Moderati Columellae lib. XII. Eiusdem De arboribus
liber separatus ab alijs, quare autem id factum fuerit ostenditur in epistola ad lectorem.
Palladii lib. XIIII. De duobus di. Venetiis : In aedibus Aldi, et Andreae soceri, mense Maio
1514 Book. The Morgan Library & Museum. PML 79276. Bequest; Bühler. See Paolo Sachet:
http://www.mostraaldomanuzio.it/catalogo/66?lang=en. Accessed 19 July 2018. See
also the exhibition catalog with Sachet’s description, “Libri de re rustica”, Aldo Manuzio,
Renaissance in Venice (Treviso: 2016) 289–293, item 66.
77 I want to thank the Morgan Library for their kind help during my visit on 12 October 2018.
612 Wade
lente’ is an important attestation of his receptivity to the culture of antiquity

and its expression in the Renaissance as Emblem. He demonstrates that he is
working within a repertoire of classical texts and images, while engaging state-
of-the-art methods and materials. At every possible level of interpretation this
emblem, rich in its meanings, is wholly a work of Venetian provenance.
Lorck would have also been well aware of the practices that Albrecht Dürer
employed in his oeuvre, as the Dane travelled in his footsteps, both literally
and figuratively. In Venice, Dürer executed drawings on blue paper for his Feast
of the Rose Garlands, which he painted for the German community at San
Bartolomeo, near the Fondaco dei Tedeschi. As Caroline Fowler has argued,
the carta azzurra allowed Dürer, who was working with black ink and white
highlights, ‘to utilize tonalities of the blue ground for new chiaroscuro effects
in his draftsmanship’.78 Dürer made drawings on Venetian blue paper whereby
he incorporated the physical aspects of the paper, the bumps and nubs in its
surface, into the drawing to model his subject. Because the artist did not have
to prepare the ground of the paper when using carta azzurra, there were fun-
damental differences in drawings made on this type of paper. While the paint-
ing Feast of the Rose Garlands remained in Venice, at least until it was sold to
Emperor Rudolf II, the preparatory drawings returned with Dürer to Nürnberg,
highlighting the mobility as well as the materiality of his art. Dürer literally car-
ried back qualities of the lagoon with him to Nürnberg. The patterns of trade
and exchange between the two regions is physically embedded in his art.
In his version of ‘Festina lente’ Lorck technically employs precisely the em-
blematic strategies of parallels and analogies in his rendering of the walled
town and the carapace of the reptile. He deftly exploits the multimodal ap-
proach of emblematic thinking to emblem making. While in Venice, in 1555,
Lorck fully integrated Venetian geography and its environment into his drawing.
Yet in addition to the material of production, the medium is also meaningful
with respect to the interpretation of Lorck’s emblem. The online introduction
to the exhibition Lines of Thought at the British Museum stresses features of
the medium of drawing important to my argument, exploring ‘drawing as one
of the most effective mediums for expressing and representing an artist’s ideas.
Its immediacy allows artists to act almost at the speed of thought, their choices
legible in every line’.79 With his tortoise flying over the Venetian lagoon Lorck
78 This quotation and the following insights are based on the scholarly paper “Albrecht
Dürer and the Geographic Specificity of Paper”, by Caroline Fowler presented at the
2017 annual meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, in Chicago. I want to thank
Caroline Fowler for a follow-up email from 25 September 2018.
79 http://www.britishmuseum.org/about_us/tours_and_loans/uk_loans_and_tours/
archive_tours/lines_of_thought.aspx. Accessed 3 September 2018.
is showing us the vitality of his thoughts – he is visibly engaging in emblem-

atic thought patterns as he creates this astonishing image. He is thinking with
his hand.
The tortoise represents the artist’s flight of creativity as Lorck’s genius soars
in this carefully integrated composition. It is neither haphazard nor coinci-
dental. With this drawing the artist was building out from the broad humanist
tradition of emblematic thinking, whereby he made a textual commonplace
into a picture. Lorck was also boldly experimenting with the physical mak-
ing of emblems. The drawing is a deliberate and striking contribution to the
emblematic repertoire of ‘Festina lente’, speed tempered by slowness. Lorck
deliberately planned his composition,80 and it reflects audacious experimen-
tation not only in the striking contents of the image but also in the materials
and technologies of its production.
10 The Adage as an Open Secret
Melchior Lorck’s three emblems analysed here represent an experimental

form of visual humanism. At a fundamental level Lorck understood that the
emblem both concealed and revealed. While conceptually associated with the
hidden knowledge of hieroglyphics, the emblem’s revealing consists of a per-
formative act of viewers bringing their own knowledge to the task of decoding
and expanding the bimedial emblematic construct. His work implies well-
educated viewers beyond German-speaking audiences. Lorck’s method builds
out from well-documented early modern practices that rehearsed knowledge
through commonplaces, such as Erasmus’s adages. While the crane engraving
quotes the adage as its starting point, the mole and tortoise images indicate
their emblematic nature by their outsized dimensions. Through scale Lorck
signalled that these were no ordinary images, and therewith set the humanistic
mind into motion. Relying on a thorough grounding in classical knowledge,
and assuming comparable skills in his viewers, Lorck clothed the loci com-
munes, bodying forth the adages in his emblematic productions. To speak with
Michael Bath, Lorck’s animal emblems are ‘visual realisations’ that creatively
adapt verbal descriptions from Erasmus. Not conforming to the tripartite con-
struction typically found in emblem books, Lorck’s exceptional configurations,
particularly his portrayal of ‘Festina lente’, incorporate textual knowledge into
80 Fischer records another study, now lost, where Lorck drew a tortoise from the front and
rear, capturing the anatomical detail of this reptile exactly. See Fischer, “Drawings from
the Evelyn Collection” 20.
614 Wade
the fabric of their pictorial design. Without written texts, these mute emblems,
as Simon McKeown characterizes them, give voice to the adages. Lorck’s em-
blems arose at the nexus of Renaissance artistic visual and textual practices.
He expanded and adapted the adage, while simultaneously bringing it into
sharp, inventive focus.
One approach to looking at these three images is to consider them as meta-
phorical variations on the theme of mobility: fast, slow, at the proper time, not
too fast, not too sluggish, soaring high, ponderously earthbound. His images
are all highly personal, yet unlike the imprese of Giovio, for example, his enig-
matic animals also have a universal application. Physical mobility becomes
extrapolated to swiftness of mind, mercurial thought, and lofty aspirations, all
revealed to those with well-stocked minds capable of decoding the enigmas.
Lorck inventively reconfigured knowledge, offering viewers insights into his
complex ways of seeing the world. These images were likely more accessible
to his contemporaries than to modern viewers. His intermedial allusions attest
to an abundantly rich mind, capable of expanding the Renaissance practices
surrounding loci communes. The erudite knew how to advance these conceits,
as both Junius and Sambucus confirm forty years later, in their crane emblems
as allegories of eternal fame through humanistic learning. Lorck’s radical em-
blem experimentation constitutes a major contribution to the development of
the genre.
Emblems are more than small puzzles; they are simultaneously capacious
and concise. In these early emblematic images, the cosmopolitan and erudite
Lorck made clear his allegiance to learning and knowledge. The republic of
letters accompanied him wherever he travelled, showing that emblems built
and maintained communities of knowledge, and fostered sociability. Some
fifty years before Vaenius, Lorck grasped the visual potentialities of the em-
blematized adage. Working from a fluid lexicon, he literally gave shape to the
Erasmian adage. To his contemporary viewer, these compelling images were
open secrets.
Works Cited
Web Sources
Emblematica Online http://emblematica.library.illinois.edu/
Arkyves https://brill.com/view/db/arko
Print Sources
Alciato Andrea, Emblematum libri II (Lyon, Jean de Tournes & Guillaum Gazeau: 1556).
Bath M., The Image of the Stag: Iconographic Themes in Western Art (Baden-Baden:
1992).
Bath M., Emblems in Scotland. Motifs and Meanings, SCROLL Scottish Cultural Review
of Language and Literature 28 (Leiden: 2018).
Beltramini G. – Gasparotto D. – Manieri G.E., Aldo Manuzio: Renaissance in Venice
(Venice: 2016).
Brückle I., “Historical Manufacture and Use of Blue Paper”, The Book and Paper Group
Annual 12 (1993), accessed 8 August 2018. http://cool.conservation-us.org/coolaic
/sg/bpg/annual/v12/bp12-02.html.
Busbecq, Ogier Ghiselin de, Itinera Constantinopolitanum et Amasianum (Antwerp,
Plantin: 1582).
Busbecq, Ogier Ghiselin de, Tyrkiske Breve, trans. C. Asbjørn Andersen – intro.
C.-P. Haase – M. Bøgh Rasmussen (Copenhagen: 2010).
Busbequius Augerius Gislenius, The Turkish Letters of Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq,
Imperial Ambassador at Constantinople, 1554–1562: Translated from the Latin of the
Elzevir Edition of 1663, intro. K. Roider – trans. E.S. Forster (Baton Rouge: 2013).
Camilli Camillo. Imprese illustri di diversi, coi discorsi […] (Venice, Francesco Ziletti: 1586).
Damm H. – Thimann M. – Zittel C. (eds.), The Artist as Reader: On Education and
Non-Education of Early Modern Artists (Leiden – Boston: 2012).
Davidson P., “Mute Emblems and a Lost Room: Gardyne’s House, Dundee”, in
Saunders A. – Davidson P. (eds.), Visual Words and Verbal Pictures (Glasgow: 2005)
51–67.
Dilherr Johann Michael, Augen- und Hertzens-Lust: Das ist Emblematische Fürstellung
der Sonn- und Festtäglichen Evangelien (Nürnberg, Endter: 1661).
Erasmus Desiderius, Adagiorum chiliades (Basel, Hieronymus Froben: 1559).
Fischer E. – Bencard E.J. – Bøgh Rasmussen M., Melchior Lorck (Copenhagen: 2009).
Fischer E., Lorck: Drawings from the Evelyn Collection at Stonor Park, England, and from
the Department of Prints and Drawings, the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Copenhagen
(Copenhagen: 1962).
Fowler, C., “Albrecht Dürer and the Geographic Specificity of Paper,” paper presented
at annual meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, Chicago, March 2017.
Haase C.-P. – Bøgh Rasmussen M. – intro., Busbecq, Ogier Ghislain de, Tyrkiske Breve,
trans. C.A. Andersen (Copenhagen: 2010).
Happel E.W., Türkischer Estaats- und Krieges- Bericht oder, Eine kurtze und gründliche
Beschreibung des türckischen Käysers, Grosz- und anderer Veziers, Militz, Land und
Leuten, Gewonheiten, Krieges- und Lebens-Arth, Gewehr, Kleydung, and was davon
ferner zu berichten nötig (Hamburg, Thomas von Wiering: 1683–1684).
Junius Hadrianus, Emblemata (Antwerp, Plantin: 1565).
Lorck Melchior [Lorichs Melchior], Deß Weitberühmbten: Alles nach dem Leben und der
perspectivae Jederman vor Augen gestellet (Hamburg, Hering: 1626).
616 Wade
Paas J.R., Augsburg, Die Bilderfabrik Europas: Essays zur Augsburger Druckgraphik der
frühen Neuzeit (Augsburg: 2001).
Paradin Claude, Devises heroïques (Lyon, Jean de Tournes: 1551).
Pousin F. (ed.), Seeing from above: The Aerial View in Visual Culture (London: 2013) 11–25.
Rem[us] Georg – Isselburg Peter, Emblemata politica: in aula magna Curiae
Noribergensis depicta, quae sacra viritutum suggerunt monita prudenter adminis-
trandi fortiterque defendendi rempublicam (Nürnberg, [n.p.]: 1617).
Sambucus Johannes [Zsámboki, János], Emblemata cvm aliqvot nvmmis antiqvi operis
(Antwerp, Plantin: 1564).
Vaenius Otto, Qvinti Horatii Flacci Emblemata: Imaginibus in æs incisis, notisq[ue] il-
lustrata … (Antwerp, Lisaert: 1612).
Wade M.R., “The Artist as Cosmopolitan: Melchior Lorck from Flensburg to
Constantinople”, in Cholcman T. – Pinkus A. (eds.), The Sides of the North: An
Anthology in Honor of Professor Yona Pinson (Cambridge: 2015) 20–41.
Wade M.R., Triumphus Nuptialis Danicus: German Court Culture and Denmark:
The Great Wedding of 1634, Wolfenbütteler Arbeiten zur Barockforschung 27
(Wiesbaden: 1996).
Wade M.R., “Dorothea of Anhalt. Fürstin von Braunschweig-Lüneburg. The Emblem
Book as Stammbuch,” in Bauer V. – Harding E. –Wade M.R. – Williams G.S. (eds.),
Women – Books – Courts: Knowledge and Collecting before 1800. Frauen – Bücher –
Höfe: Wissen und Sammeln vor 1800. Essays in Honor of Jill Bepler, Wolfenbütteler
Arbeiten zur Barockforschung 151 (Wiesbaden: 2018) 297–312.
Wade M.R., “Women’s Networks of Knowledge: The Emblembuch as Stammbuch”, in
Schneider C. – Williams G.S. (eds.), Knowledge in Motion, special issue of Daphnis:
Zeitschrift für Mittlere Deutsche Literatur und Kultur der Frühen Neuzeit 45.1–2 (2017)
492–509.
Wade M.R., Early Modern Intellectual Networks: Emblems as Open Sources (forthcoming).
Ward-Jackson P., “Some Rare Drawings by Melchior Lorichs in the Collection of
Mr John Evelyn of Wotton, Now at Stonor Park, Oxfordshire”, Connoisseur 135
(1955) 83–93.
Wolkenhauer A. – Scholz B., Typographorum Emblemata: The Printer’s Mark in the
Context of Early Modern Culture (Berlin – Boston: 2018).
chapter 18
To Hide Is to Reveal: the Paradox of Representing

Secrets
Agnès Guiderdoni
By following the thread of specific and selected texts, I would like to show the
kind of development the representation of secrets undergoes in the 16th and
17th centuries, against the background of epistemic transformations presented
in the introduction of this volume, and relating to the status of knowledge and
the objective of uncovering its secret.
1 Starting with a Paradox
A mystery should be kept secret: a mystery is either something that cannot

be understood or something that cannot be revealed to anyone. Reasons for
keeping the secret are dependent on these two facets of the mystery: in order
to avoid misunderstanding and to preserve the integrity of the mystery, cer-
tain strategies (for example, discursive strategies or devices) must be imagined
and implemented. But at the same time, these mysteries, precisely in order to
be preserved, must be transmitted, and then represented, in one way or an-
other. So, how does one represent something that should be kept in secrecy
and/or that is not even understood, but that nonetheless should somehow be
disseminated? These are the preliminary terms of the paradox of representing
the secret.
Emblem 20 of Gilles Corrozet’s Hécatomgraphie [Fig. 18.1] could very well
stand as the emblem of the paradox of representing the secret as well as of
the line of thought that underpins this paradox as it presents itself in the early
modern period; namely, the veiling and unveiling of the secret of Nature. It
encapsulates the paradoxical figurability of the secret. This emblem, entitled
‘Secret est à louer’, is accompanied by the following quatrain:

618 Guiderdoni
Figure 18.1
Corrozet Gilles,
Hécatomgraphie (Paris, Denis
Janot: 1540), emblem 20
University of Glasgow
Library
Ainsi que le Lymas se tient

En sa coquille en grand secret,
Tout ainsi l’homme se maintient,
Clos et couvert comme discret.1
Just as the snail keeps himself

In its shell, in great secrecy:
So then man is born
Closed and concealed in discretion.2
1 C orrozet Gilles, Hecatomgraphie, c’est-à-dire les descriptions de cent figures & hystoires, con-
tenantes plusieurs apophtegmes, proverbes, sentences & dicts tant des Anciens que des mod-
ernes (Paris, Denis Janot: 1540). For a slightly different interpretation of this engraving,
revealing another secret contained in the image, see Conley T., “A Topographer’s Eye: From
Gilles Corrozet to Pieter Apian”, in Melion W.S. – Palmer Wandel L. (eds.), Early Modern Eyes
(Leiden: 2010) 55–79.
2 Conley, “A Topographer’s Eye” 55.
To Hide Is to Reveal: the Paradox of Representing Secrets 619
The snail represented in the engraving is indeed very shy and very secre-
tive: not content with getting out of its shell, it also emerges very cautiously
from a rocky cavity. It seems to be on the lookout for any possible danger on
the horizon. The gastropod, which has emerged from its shell and is leaving
its dark cave, seems to reveal the unfathomable void of its shell’s interior,
its secret, but a secret in the manner precisely of the unfigurable or, even,
figurable only through the impossibility of the gaze penetrating it. It offers a
representation in the lack of figuration, in its interstices and boundaries, its
borders, and hence here, in the black-hatched area between the outside of
the shell and the outside of the little cave’s rocks, at the point of noncontact
or of contact that is at the very least problematic, between the figure and its
interior – which is exteriorised, turned inside out, and displayed. However,
the game does not stop there, for if we now zoom out we can discern other
forms hidden in the engraving, the emergence of another possible configura-
tion of the image in which the snail is found at the heart, in the cavity, hid-
den, in the secret of its enveloping double: the rocks of the cave and the plant
at the far left of the engraving form the other snail, in which the ‘natural’
snail is forclos (‘shut out’), as the poem says, concealed from the first snail,
a concealment revealed by the engraving – surreptitiously, unbeknownst to
the animal that is looking elsewhere, a look hidden from the reader – and
that indicates through this nested construction an infinite horizon of the
secret, since the secret revealed is precisely another secret, an idea again sug-
gested by the spiral convolutions of the shell, which are clearly emphasised
in this relatively sober play of lines. It is a question here of the only possible
figurability of the secret, but in asymptotic manner, in the naming of its ab-
sence: the secret hidden in the image is always as much a matter of image-
making as of secret-making.
The representation of a secret, be it thematized or embedded in the act
of representing, implements evanescent, spectral, or phantasmal devices,
more or less conspicuous to the viewer and reader. It always engages with
processes of figurability specifically based on the paradox of the ‘secrecy ef-
fect’ described by Louis Marin, an effect based on the construction of spe-
cific devices to make the secret not known but guessed at, or intuited, by the
reader-viewer.
In the early modern period, one of the many topoï used to express this kind
of device is the image of the veil. Two intertwined traditions were revivified at
that time, namely the Neoplatonist arguments stated by the Pseudo-Dionysius
and the arguments of the mythographers. Taking their cue from both traditions,
prefaces, and addresses to the readers of treatises about ars symbolica and
imago figurata explain ad infinitum why and how it is necessary to hide, veil,
and adumbrate the secrets of Truth. However, on close reading, one cannot help
620 Guiderdoni
but notice the ambivalence of such recommendations and practices, in

which the veil is designated as such – as a way to hide – while becoming at
the same time the index of the secret to unveil. The veil is conceived more
as a fabric of indices to decipher than as a genuine covering to protect the
mystical truth.
I would like to examine this paradox, its presentation and evolution,
through the course of the seventeenth century in France. To do so, I will con-
centrate on a series of theoretical texts dealing with the ars symbolica and with
mythography. These are the end point of a long tradition that I will also briefly
present. These texts are the preface by Jean Martin to his translation of the
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, published in Paris in 1546; the two long prelimi-
nary texts by Béroalde de Verville to his edition of the same book, published
in 1600 under the title Le Tableau des riches inventions couvertes du voile des
feintes Amoureuses, qui sont representées dans le Songe de Poliphile Desvoilées
des ombres du Songe et subtilement exposées par Beroalde; and the Cinq livres
de Hiéroglyphiques, by Pierre Dinet, of 1614.3 I will also use some passages
from several of Claude-François Ménestrier’s books. Finally, I will also draw on
Les Entretiens d’Ariste et Eugène, by the Jesuit Dominique Bouhours, published
in 1671.
The paradox is actually very simple. It consists in the fact that the implemen-
tation of a mysterious representation, of a form that is supposed to transmit or
represent a mystery, contains its own revealing. If it does not, then the secret
of the mystery cannot be known and remains ineffective. Somehow anticipat-
ing Louis Marin, Ménestrier explains this issue very well in his Philosophie des
images énigmatiques, on at least two different occasions.
First, in the preface, he invokes what he calls ‘the ingenious mystery’, ‘in
order,’ he says, ‘to make us understand that the mind makes up mystery where
there is in fact none’; he then contrasts this ‘ingenious mystery’ with the
3 This list of titles is a selection among many other similar books or prefaces, developing the
same argumentation about the reasons for hiding and revealing truth. Among these other
books, one finds the translation that Jean Baudoin made of Francis Bacon’s The Wisdom of
the Ancients (1609) under the title La Sagesse Mysterieuse des Anciens: Ombragee du Voile des
Fables, appliquees moralement aus secrets de l’Estat, & de la Nature (1619). Indeed, what Bacon
expounds in his preface is in every respect similar to the argumentation developed in the
other aforementioned books. But the aim of Bacon is not so much to perpetuate this tradi-
tion than to pave the way of a new epistemology. Studying Bacon’s thought largely exceeds
the scope of this article, even though he certainly represents a reference point in the evolu-
tion I am sketching here.
religious (that is, Christian) mystery, which ‘does not depend on the mind but
is in the nature of the thing itself’.4
But later on in the book, Ménestrier is more ambivalent:
[S]i je vois un Tableau de Moïse exposé sur les eaux, de Job couché sur
un fumier, d’une Vierge qui tient l’Enfant Jesus, de la Transfiguration,
[…] comment puis-je connoître que c’est une Enigme, n’y aïant rien
d’énigmatique […]?
[I]f I see a painting of Moses in his basket on the river, of Job lying on a
dunghill, of a Virgin holding the child Jesus, of the Transfiguration […],
how can I recognise that it is an enigma, since there is nothing of the
enigmatic in it […]?5
If one follows the logic of this line of argument, one is led to understand that
these representations, as Christian as they are, also need some kind of ingenu-
ity that will be the index of their mysterious feature, the clue that there is a
secret to uncover. So it seems that whatever the topic, the representation of
mystery is always something built in order to produce a secrecy effect.
In the chapter ‘Logique du secret’ of his book Lectures traversières, Louis
Marin comes up with the idea of the ‘secrecy effect’. He explains that the se-
crecy effect is a kind of game played by three people (A, B, and C). It’s a game
of the ‘included-excluded middle’, and it proceeds like this:
A sait quelque chose de B que celui-ci ignore […]. Pour que le jeu du se-
cret s’engage, il faut qu’en quelque façon A transmette cette histoire à
un tiers […] qui n’a pas le même intérêt que B à savoir […]. La partie
alors commence: A partage sa connaissance de B avec C, un savoir que B
devrait posséder, qu’il voudrait même acquérir parce qu’il y va de son in-
térêt et dont il reste pour le moment à l’écart. […] C’est donc au moment
où A partage avec C ce que B devrait savoir et qui l’assigne comme son
destinataire propre que l’effet de secret commence à opérer.6
4 ‘pour faire entendre, dit-il, que c’est l’esprit qui fait du mystère où il n’y en a pas, au lieu que
l’autre [le mystère de la religion] ne dépend pas de l’esprit, mais se tient du côté de la na-
ture même de la chose’, Ménestrier Claude-François, La Philosophie des images énigmatiques
(Lyon, Hilaire Battitel: 1694) n.p.
5 Ménestrier Claude-François, La Philosophie des images énigmatiques (Lyon, Hilaire Baritel:

1694) 160.
6 Marin L., Lectures traversières (Paris: 1992) 253.
622 Guiderdoni
A knows something about B that B is unaware of […]. In order for the

secrecy game to begin it is necessary that in some way A tells this story to
a third party […] who does not have the same interest as B in knowing it
[…]. Then the game starts: A shares his knowledge of B with C, a knowl-
edge that B ought to have, that he would even like to acquire since it is in
his interests but that for the time being remains distant from him […]. It
is therefore at the point when A shares with C what B ought to know and
assigns this knowledge to B as its appropriate recipient that the secrecy
effect begins to work.
This paradox of the secret as being there to be revealed, as existing only at

the very moment when it is shared, at the moment when it includes someone
while also excluding someone else, fits exactly with what we find in our early
modern texts when they describe why there is a mystery to be kept secret and
how it is hidden, that is, how it is fabricated.
2 Pseudo-Dionysius and Mythographical Traditions
As already mentioned, two intertwined traditions developed these arguments:

one stemming from Pseudo-Dionysius and one belonging to mythographical
writings, both of which pertain to and prompt allegorical and exegetical is-
sues. Pseudo-Dionysius was one of the main theological authorities in the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries, in the foreground once again thanks to new
translations and editions of his works, and thanks to the Neoplatonic trend
that emerged at the end of the fifteenth century in Italy and France. As far as
mythographical works are concerned, the Renaissance was certainly the most
productive time in mythographical readings and new writing.7 New compila-
tions were published in the years 1550–1560, among which the most widely
disseminated and reprinted were those by Giraldi, Cartari, and Conti. Their
common feature is to claim a double function for their work: a function of
preservation (of ancient myths) and of interpretation. This latter function, as
we will see, is in line with the Dionysian arguments. At any rate, both traditions
assign to fables and fictions the function of veiling Truth, and notably divine
7 Z
ucker A. – Fabre-Serris J. – Tilliette J.-Y. – Besson G. (eds.), Lire les mythes: formes, usages
et visées des pratiques mythographiques de l’Antiquité à la Renaissance (Villeneuve-d’Ascq:
2016) 21.
Truth; they assign to fables and fictions the status of figures, rhetorical and
poetical figures with either a religious or a philosophical reference.
The main reason adduced by Pseudo-Dionysius for hiding divine Truth and
for literally making mysteries is the need to protect Truth from being sullied
by the profane, by people who are not initiated and not worthy of or ready to
receive and understand it. He explains this at length at the beginning of the
Ecclesiastical Hierarchy:
The first leaders of our hierarchy received their fill of the sacred gift from
the transcendent Deity. Then divine goodness sent them to lead others to
this same gift. Like gods, they had a burning and generous urge to secure
uplifting and divinization for their subordinates. And so, using images
derived from the sense they spoke of the transcendent. […] As they had
been commanded to they did this for us, not simply because of the pro-
fane from whom the symbols were to be kept out of reach, but because,
as I have already stated, our own hierarchy is itself symbolical and adapt-
ed to what we are. In a divine fashion it needs perceptible things to lift up
into the domain of conceptions.
Now the reasons for such symbolism were revealed to the divine
sacred-initiators, and it would have been wrong of them to explain them
fully to those still on the road to initiation.8
These arguments developed by Pseudo-Dionysius belong to a very long tradi-

tion, going back at least to Plato’s Phaedrus and Republic, in which Socrates
explains on several occasions why and how to use myths for educating
youth, for transmitting philosophical teachings, and also for shaping social
morality.9
Thus this discourse is applied to Truth contained in ancient myths by hu-
manists, mythographers, and also by poets, who indeed become in a way
mythographers, especially when it comes to justifying and explaining Ovid’s
Metamorphoses. This is the case, for example, in the Bible des poètes published
by Vérard in 1493, or in the preface to the Grand Olympe of 1532, and later in
several of Barthélémy Aneau’s writings in the second half of the sixteenth
century. By that time, reflection on the use of allegorical and symbolical devices
8 P seudo-Dionysius, The Complete Works, trans. Colm Luibheid (New York, NY – Mahwah, NJ:
1987) 199.
9 See Hadot, Le Voile d’Isis, and Lecompte S., La Chaîne d’or des poètes: Présence de Macrobe
dans l’Europe humaniste (Genève: 2009).
624 Guiderdoni
to convey hidden knowledge had greatly benefited from the development of

emblematic literature and had focused attention on the use and significance
of hieroglyphs as the secretive signs or objects par excellence.
This is plainly explained by Claude Mignault in his preface to the edition of
Alciato’s emblems in 1571:
The Egyptians were the first to use these symbols which they called
Hieroglyphs, and with which they sought to insure that their remarkable
and truly obscure knowledge was understood only by themselves. Because
they deliberately and wisely alienated the common people from this
knowledge by way of these ingenious and clever symbols, as I already
said, by these means, they wanted the secrets of their most difficult
and important teaching to be heard only by chaste and honest ears,
and well-prepared minds. […] For this reason, it is obvious, the sacred
oracles were formerly given through enigmas, and the true mysteries
were not revealed to those who approached them brutally or impru-
dently, but to those who had first been purified and who had care-
fully prepared themselves. […] All those who have written in ancient
times about something divine, both Barbarians and Greeks, wanted
the fundamental principles of these [divine] things to remain hidden
and confided Truth itself to enigmas, signs, symbols and other allegorical
figures […].10
The hieroglyph is thus presented as being at the origin of all symbolical

forms, but more precisely as the element that gives these forms and these
representations their mysterious quality, the one that indicates there is a se-
cret to be penetrated, especially the secret of origins. This veil is therefore a
double-edged protection that appears as a rhetorical device to arouse curios-
ity and to kindle the desire to unveil. Indeed, the idea of arousing curiosity
and giving the reader the opportunity to have the pleasure of understanding
what was at first sight obscure comes up very soon in the topical discourse
about veiling and unveiling. It was to take on different roles that correspond
to the traditional scope of rhetoric: to instruct, to aid memorization, and
to move.
10 Alciat Andrea, Omnia Andreae Alciati Emblemata, cum commentariis … per Claudium
Minoem, Syntagma de Symbolis (Anvers, Plantin: 1577) 31 (my italics).
3 The Secret as a Representation
Thus a similar argument to the one developed by Mignault can be found in

an earlier example, the preface of Jean Martin, the French translator of the
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili in 1546, except that he introduces a new element
that changes it significantly: these ‘good things’ are hidden in order to give the
reader the pleasure of discovering them:
Vous pouvez croire Messeigneurs que dessoubz ceste fiction il y a beau-

coup de bonnes choses cachees, qu’il n’est licite de reveler, et aussi
n’auriez vous point de plaisir si l’on vous les specifioit particulierement:
car jamais ne gousteriez la saveur du fruit qui se peust cueuillir [sic] en
ceste lecture: parquoy ne vous en diray autre chose, ains remettray le tout
a l’exercice de voz estudes.11
You may believe, Gentlemen, that beneath this fiction there are many
good things hidden, which it is not permitted to reveal, and also you
would have no pleasure in it if they were specifically pointed out: for
never would you taste the flavour of the fruit that may be picked in this
reading: and so I will tell you no more of it, but rather put everything back
to the practice of your studies.
This statement, placed at the opening of the book, establishes a pact with the
reader, who is encouraged to embark on a quest for signs, to literally inves-
tigate the text and the images. It also designates or identifies explicitly and
somewhat tautologically the representation as a built mystery and the mystery
itself as an artefact, hence as a representation. The text offers at the same time
its enigma (that is, its symbolic encoding) and its secret (the solution to the
enigma). This key feature was to gradually take on more prominence, until it
became the only raison d’être of mysterious representations.
The hiding processes or tricks are indices, not so much of a hidden truth or of
a higher and divine truth, but rather indices to decipher, to interpret, and then
to help memorization and instruct the reader: this is the idea that underpins
the French translation and edition of Natale Conti’s Mythologiae published by
Jean Baudoin in 1627 in Paris. For Baudoin, the fabula is a demonstration, and
therefore it is a device that shows things rather than a device that hides or
veils. As Céline Bohnert has shown, it differs from the idea that Conti himself
11 Jean Martin, preface to Hypnerotomachie ou Discours du Songe de Poliphile, by [Colonna

Francesco] (Paris, Jacques Kerver: 1546) n.p.
626 Guiderdoni
had about the nature and functions of the fabula.12 As an heir of the early hu-
manists (and in accordance with the other main Italian mythographers such as
Cartari and Giraldi, and Boccaccio before them), Conti conceived of the fabula
as a philosophy that embraces a universal knowledge about the Creation. It
therefore follows that reading of the fables and study of the myths give access
to a universal, atemporal, and divine knowledge and lead to the contempla-
tion of divine mysteries. It thus requires some kind of initiation so that the
reader-exegete becomes able to participate in this revelation. The difference
of conception between Baudoin and Conti is striking and anticipates by nearly
fifty years a development that I had previously thought took place much later,
namely, the rhetoricisation of symbolical thought, even though many forerun-
ners can be found from the beginning of the seventeenth century onwards.
The very long preface that Béroalde de Verville wrote to his edition of the
Poliphile in 1600, and in which he invents a new framing fiction for Colonna’s
story together with an alchemical interpretation of the book, extensively ex-
ploits the Dionysian and mythographical arguments through the paradigm of
the veil:
[C]et Autheur [Colonna] suit la façon des Anciens, qui voiloient toute
sorte de verité philosophique de certaines figures aggreables qui at-
tiroient les cœurs. […] Proprement son ouvrage Italien n’est qu’une
peinture nüe à ceux qui n’ont point esté nourris és lieux ou s’acquiert la
science, si qu’Italien il escrivoit aux Italiens, mais pour n’estre receu que
des plus delicats en intelligence.13
This Author [Colonna] follows the manner of the Ancients, who veiled
every kind of philosophical truth with certain pleasing figures that at-
tracted the heart. […] His Italian work is really nothing other than a
naked painting to those who have not been brought up in places where
knowledge is acquired, and as an Italian he wrote for Italians, but to be
understood only by the most refined in intelligence.
12 Bohnert C., “Mythologiae / Mythologie: mythologie et allégorie selon Natale Conti et Jean
Baudoin”, in Pioffet M.-C. – Spica A.-É. (eds.), S’exprimer autrement: Théorie et enjeux de
l’allégorie à l’époque classique (Tübingen: 2016) 111–124.
13 [Colonna, Francesco], preface to Le Tableau des riches inventions couvertes du voile des
feintes Amoureuses, qui sont representées dans le Songe de Poliphile Desvoilées des ombres
du Songe et subtilement exposées par Beroalde [de Verville] (Paris, Mathieu Guillemot:
1600) n.p.
If fictions contained in the book were imagined on purpose in order to pro-

tect Truth from the common people, these pleasant figures should nonethe-
less function also as a lure in order to stimulate the will (‘attiraient les cœurs’)
and the desire to acquire this knowledge, to discover what is under the cover,
and which was designated as being hidden under what he calls somewhere
else ‘simulacres ineptes’ (‘inept simulacra’), ‘frivoles nuées’ (‘frivolous clouds’),
and ‘imaginations’: ‘toutesfois il ne laisse de jeter infinis appasts aux cœurs
philosophes, pour les espoinçonner à lever les voiles, et considerer ce qui est
dessous’ (‘Nevertheless, he does not cease to cast infinite lures to philosophical
hearts so as to prick them to lift the veils, and to consider what is beneath’).14
So what gives their value to these imaginary and apparently vain creations is
their ability to ‘espoinçonner’, literally to ‘prick’ the desire of knowledge in the
reader, and more generally in the happy few who participate in the quest. But
the argument again swallows its own tail since, in fact, only those who already
know can elucidate the mystery of the representation, which was in any event
put in place on purpose. For Béroalde, it all depends on the deciphering sight,
which he strikingly expressed in the following sentence: ‘Nous allions toujours
en avant, devorans avec les yeux gloutons tout ce qui avoit apparence de beau-
té ou similitude, cachant les secrets […]’ (‘We always went forwards, eating up
with greedy eyes everything which had the appearance of beauty or similitude,
hiding secrets […]’).15 And the nymph Oloclirée does not say anything different
when she finally exhorts them: ‘Sçachez, voyez, et entendez, et vous remarque
rez prudemment que les plus specieux, magnifiques et bons mysteres, ont esté
cachez et retracez soubs les beautez d’amour’ (‘Know, see, and hear, and you
will wisely notice that the most illusory, magnificent, and fine mysteries have
been hidden and delineated beneath the beauties of love’).16
However, in spite of this pleasing feature, the main objective of such a strat-
egy remains knowledge, as the narrator of the preface clearly affirms: ‘Son in-
tention est de faire paroistre que soubs le sombre des mysteres differens ou
chacun s’arreste selon l’intherest [sic] de son cœur, on cherche la science’ (‘Its
intention is to show that beneath the darkness of the different mysteries where
each stops according to the interests of his heart, we seek knowledge’).17
A notable change was to occur over the course of the seventeenth century
to end in an inversion of the priorities between pleasure and knowledge. Still,
in 1614, in the preface to his Cinq livres hiéroglyphiques, Pierre Dinet explains
14 Ibidem.
15 Ibidem.
16 Ibidem.
17 Ibidem.
628 Guiderdoni
that there are two different kinds of writing, the ordinary way to write and the
secret one:
[L]’occulte secrette [écriture], qu’on déguise d’infinies sortes, cha-

cun selon sa fantasie, pour ne la rendre intelligible qu’entre soy, et ses
consçachans, inventee au surplus jadis les premiers, et plus heureux sie-
cles, souz l’ombre et nuage des plantes, animaux, et autres telles choses,
par les Prestres et Sages des Hebrieux, Chaldees, Egyptiens, Ethiopiens,
Indiens, pour voiler les sacrez secrets de leur Theologie et Philosophie:
afin de les garantir et soustraire du prophanement de la multitude, et en
laisser la cognoissance aux gens dignes.18
The occult secret [writing], which is disguised in an infinity of ways, ac-

cording to each one’s imagination, so as to make it intelligible only to
themselves, and to their fellow savants, and furthermore invented long
ago in early and happier centuries, beneath the shade and cloud of
plants, animals, and other similar things, by the Priests and Sages of the
Hebrews, Chaldeans, Egyptians, Ethiopians, Indians, in order to veil the
sacred secrets of their Theology and Philosophy: so as to safeguard them
and remove them from the profanity of the multitude, and to leave their
knowledge to worthy people.
However, in his 1662 Art des emblèmes, Ménestrier praised the charms of the
veil in a slightly different way, while summing up the tradition that I have just
presented:
La Vérité mesme que les anciens ont représentée toute nue a de si doux
charmes sous ces voiles, qu’elle instruit en divertissant […] et depuis les
Egyptiens qui commencèrent les premiers à couvrir leurs mystères sous
des hiéroglyphes, toutes les autres nations ont fait gloire de les imiter.
C’est de cet art merveilleux que sont sortis les Emblemes, les devises, les
enigmes, les chiffres, les blasons, et les empreintes des médailles et des
monnaies, qui font partie des belles-lettres.19
The Truth itself that the Ancients represented quite nakedly has such
sweet charms beneath these veils, that it teaches while it entertains […] and
18 Dinet Pierre, Cinq livres de Hiéroglyphiques, où sont contenus les plus rares secrets de la

Nature, et proprietez de toutes choses (Paris, J. de Heuqueville: 1614) n.p.

19 Ménestrier Claude-François, L’Art des emblèmes (Lyon, Benoist Coral: 1662) 4 (my italics).
since the Egyptians who were the first to begin to conceal their myster-
ies beneath hieroglyphs, all other nations have gloried in imitating them.
From this marvellous art have issued Emblems, imprese, enigmas, fig-
ures, coats of arms, and the imprints of medals and coins, which are a
part of belles lettres.
The widespread early modern instruction of ‘teaching while entertaining’ is

applied to the veiling/unveiling process; it organizes a general aesthetic of
surprise that seems to have become the dominant paradigm around the time
Ménestrier was active, in the second half of the century, even though it had
been well prepared from the beginning of the century. This surprise, supported
by a strong sense of wonder, brings about pleasure and satisfaction – first the
pleasure of acquiring knowledge and elucidating the mysteries of divine Truth
or Wisdom, and then the pleasure of deciphering ingenious artefacts, reserved
for certain ‘savants délicats que le Collège n’a point gâtés, et que le monde a
polis’ (‘fine savants whom college has not spoiled and the world has polished’),
according to the Jesuit Dominique Bouhours in his 1671 Entretiens d’Ariste et
Eugène. It is also in these Entretiens that Bouhours fully articulates the notion
of ‘je-ne-sais-quoi’, which is certainly the final point of transformation of the
veiling/unveiling process. It is very clear for Bouhours that the ‘je-ne-sais-quoi’
is but a curious or ingenious artifice for the mystery of things, of everything
and anything:
[…] il est du je ne sçay quoy comme de ces beautez couvertes d’un voile,
qui sont d’autant plus estimées, qu’elles sont moins exposées à la veuë;
et ausquelles l’imagination ajoûte toûjours quelque chose. De sorte que
si par hazard on venoit à appercevoir ce je ne sçay quoy qui surprend, et
qui emporte le cœur à une première veuë, on ne seroit peut-estre pas si
touché, ni si enchanté qu’on est: mais on ne l’a point encore découvert,
and on ne le découvrira jamais apparemment: puisque si l’on pouvait le
découvrir, il cesserait d’estre ce qu’il est, comme je vous l’ay déjà dit.20
[…] there is a je ne sais quoi of these beauties as if covered by a veil, which

are all the more esteemed the less they are revealed to the sight: and to
which the imagination always adds something. So that if by chance we
were to understand this je ne sais quoi, which surprises and carries away
the heart on first sight, we would perhaps not be so moved or enchanted
20 Bouhours Dominique, Les Entretiens d’Ariste et d’Eugène (Paris, Sébastien Mabre-Cramoisy:

1671) 254–255.
630 Guiderdoni
as we are: but we have not discovered it yet, and it seems we never will
discover it: for if we were able to discover it, it would cease to be what it
is, as I have already said.
It seems that with Bouhours, the sense of wonder is reduced to a playful ges-
ture to unveil, in place of the learned and wise quest for wonderful mysteries.
It seems to boil down to an artful pleasure in unveiling, much like a mundane
game, rather than discovering some hidden knowledge of the kind so strongly
coveted by Béroalde.21
To conclude, I would like to dwell a moment on the translation that Jean
Baudoin gave in 1619 of Bacon’s De sapientia veterum (1609), under the slightly
unfaithful title La Sagesse mystérieuse des Anciens (The Mysterious Wisdom of
the Ancients). Even though he does not mention it, Bacon drew a lot on Natale
Conti’s Mythologia,22 which Baudoin had translated into French in 1627. As al-
ready mentioned, Baudoin’s understanding of mythography was markedly dif-
ferent from that of Conti. What he did with Conti’s book, so he did with Bacon’s:
not only did he translate it in 1619, but he also profusely and very explicitly
drew from it to compile his Recueil d’emblèmes divers, published in two vol-
umes in 1638 and 1639, respectively, alongside Alciat, Jacob Bruck, Covarrubias,
and others. As he wrote, he considered Bacon’s work as an emblem book – one
of the most learned emblem books of his time. If it is difficult to define Bacon’s
De sapientia veterum as an emblem book, it is likewise difficult to take it just
as an adaptation of Conti’s compilation, as Baudoin would have first made us
thought in his translation and as some later critics would reinforce. To be sure,
the underlying common thread of these three books, borrowing content from
one another and, chronologically, one after the other, is the idea that ancient
wisdom had been hidden under the veil of pagan fables and symbols (or em-
blems, which are equated in Baudoin’s). Pagan fables, symbols, and emblems
are all representations of secrets. However, all three books invoke this principle
for different reasons, and this is what is of interest to us. Conti’s mythography
is more or less in alignment with the allegorical Neoplatonist understanding
of mythology, which should yield true spiritual wisdom to the worthy exegete.
From this basis, Bacon and Baudoin drew two distinct lines. Baudoin was
quick to integrate mythography in the rhetorical arsenal of witty ornaments,
21 Even in book III of his Entretiens, entirely devoted to the notion of the secret, Bouhours
seems to ignore the esoteric and hermetic traditions of his predecessors, dealing only
with secrets in friendship and politics.
22 Bacon Francis, La sagesse des Anciens, ed. J.-P. Cavaillé (Paris: 1997) 14, 20; Carman

Gardner B., “Francis Bacon, Natalis Comes and the Mythological Tradition”, Journal of the
Warburg and Courtauld Institute 33 (1970) 264–290.
following the massive trend of rhetoricisation of emblematic and symbolic lit-

erature that took place throughout the seventeenth century. As far as Bacon
is concerned, ancient fables have, unsurprisingly, two opposite functions: to
cover and to illustrate or to encrypt and to transmit [knowledge] (adumbrare
in Latin, like ‘adumbrate’ in English, with their double ambivalent meaning).
The English philosopher does not expand much on the first function. Rather,
he focuses on the second function, which interests him most because he sees it
as an innovative way of transmitting and also demonstrating new knowledge.23
Paradoxically, his argumentation for this epistemological innovation is based
on the traditional and humanist linguistic ideal of accessing the true nature
of things through the use of parabolic poetry and symbolic images. This ‘enig-
matic method’ using ‘figures’ is thus a ratio docendi, which appropriates the
language of the first philosophers who were able to express themselves only
through this fabulist language because they lacked argumentative tools and
examples. The subsequent tradition (mythographers but also Greek philoso-
phers) made a secret (or secrets) out of these fables. Thus, taking very different
paths, Baudoin and Bacon manage to demystify the ‘secrecy effect’ of the alle-
gorical narratives they are interpreting, turning them respectively into rhetori-
cal ornaments and heuristic tools for new knowledge.
Bibliography
Alciat Andrea, Omnia Andreae Alciati Emblemata, cum commentariis … per Claudium
Minoem, Syntagma de Symbolis (Anvers, Plantin: 1577).
Bacon Francis, La Sagesse Mysterieuse des Anciens: Ombragee du Voile des Fables, ap-
pliquees moralement aus secrets de l’Estat, & de la Nature, trans. Jean Baudoin (Paris,
Chez Francois Julliot: 1619).
Bacon Francis, La sagesse des Anciens, ed. J.-P. Cavaillé (Paris: 1997).
Bohnert C., “Mythologiae / Mythologie: mythologie et allégorie selon Natale Conti et
Jean Baudoin”, in Pioffet M.-C. – Spica A.-É. (eds.), S’exprimer autrement: Théorie et
enjeux de l’allégorie à l’époque classique (Tübingen: 2016).
Bouhours Dominique, Les Entretiens d’Ariste et d’Eugène (Paris, Sébastien Mabre-
Cramoisy: 1671).
Carman Gardner B., “Francis Bacon, Natalis Comes and the Mythological Tradition”,
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute 33 (1970) 264–290.
[Colonna Francesco], Hypnerotomachie ou Discours du Songe de Poliphile (Paris,
Jacques Kerver: 1546).
23 Bacon, La sagesse des Anciens 42.

632 Guiderdoni
[Colonna Francesco], Le Tableau des riches inventions couvertes du voile des feintes
Amoureuses, qui sont representées dans le Songe de Poliphile Desvoilées des ombres du
Songe et subtilement exposées par Beroalde [de Verville] (Paris, Mathieu Guillemot:
1600).
Conley T., “A Topographer’s Eye: From Gilles Corrozet to Pieter Apian”, in Melion W.S. –
Palmer Wandel L. (eds.), Early Modern Eyes (Leiden: 2010) 55–79.
Corrozet Gilles, Hecatomgraphie, c’est-à-dire les descriptions de cent figures & hystoires,
contenantes plusieurs apophtegmes, proverbes, sentences & dicts tant des Anciens que
des modernes (Paris, Denis Janot: 1540).
Courcelles D. de (ed.), D’un principe philosophique à un genre littéraire: les ‘secrets’, actes
du colloque de la Newberry Library de Chicago, 11–14 septembre 2002 (Paris: 2005).
Dinet Pierre, Cinq livres de Hiéroglyphiques, où sont contenus les plus rares secrets de la
Nature, et proprietez de toutes choses (Paris, J. de Heuqueville: 1614).
Eamon W., Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early
Modern Culture (Princeton: 1994).
Ginzburg C., Myths, Emblems, Clues, trans. John and Anne C. Tedeschi (London: 1990).
Hadot P., Le Voile d’Isis: essai sur l’histoire de l’idée de nature (Paris: 2004).
Lecompte S., La Chaîne d’or des poètes: Présence de Macrobe dans l’Europe humaniste
(Genève: 2009).
Leong E. – Rankin A. (eds.), Secrets and Knowledge in Medicine and Science, 1500–1800
(London: 2011).
Marin L., Lectures traversières (Paris: 1992).
Ménestrier Claude-François, L’Art des emblèmes (Lyon, Benoist Coral: 1662).
Ménestrier Claude-François, La Philosophie des images énigmatiques (Lyon, Hilaire
Battitel: 1694).
Pseudo-Dionysius, The Complete Works, trans. Colm Luibheid (New York, NY –
Mahwah, NJ: 1987).
Zucker A. – Fabre-Serris J. – Tilliette J.-Y. – Besson G. (eds.), Lire les mythes: formes,
usages et visées des pratiques mythographiques de l’Antiquité à la Renaissance
(Villeneuve-d’Ascq: 2016).
part 6
Challenges of the Secret: Publicity,
Performance, and Play
∵
chapter 19
Getting to How-To: Chiromancy, Physiognomy,

Metoscopy and Prints in Secrets’ Service
Stephanie Leitch
Information about how to distinguish friend from foe, determine the direction
of one’s life, and to weigh the movements of the mind had a venerable history
in the Books of Secrets tradition where it was enshrined in a doctrine of signs.
In the age of print, this information emerged from its classical packaging and
was newly marketed in inexpensive vernacular editions with profuse picto-
rial formats. Once in popular circulation, secrets gave way to the new printed
genres of palm reading (chiromancy), forehead reading (metoscopy), and de-
termining character traits from facial features (physiognomy). This essay will
argue that the pictorial schemes devised by early modern printers rewired the
viewer’s encounter with these texts. Those visual formulae transformed data
from the Books of Secrets from their pre-eminence in decoding signatures bur-
ied in the text into manuals that taught visual engagement with the world by
way of pictorial prompts. The evolution of images in secrets’ service can shed
light on an epistemological approach to the Secreti tradition.
In the pages of a manuscript preserved today in the University Library
in Erlangen, we find a succession of heads, hands, and feet that by the mid-
16th century had formed the repertoire of physiognomic knowledge as it
was represented in complexion books1 [Fig. 19.1]. With these images, the
manuscript compiler epitomized various character traits exhibited by bodily
features via images pirated from the contemporary circulating complexion
literature. These manuals were indebted to several textual traditions with
origins in Books of Secrets, but, by the end of the 15th century, they ceased
to be called Secreti and were referred to instead as either chiromancies
1 Eberhard Lutze, Die Bilderhandschriften der Universitätsbibliothek Erlangen (Wiesbaden:

Otto Harrassowitz, 1971), 58–70. Liber Quodlibetarius, MS. B 200 (Universitätsbibliothek
Erlangen-Nuremberg) was produced over a period of time probably beginning c. 1524. We
don’t know much about the manuscript’s probable compiler, Benedictus Rughalm, except
that he is noted as a cleric within the book. The bibliographer of Erlangen’s illustrated manu-
scripts, Lutze, notes the designation of Rughalm throughout the Ms. and as a priest on f.164r;
a second hand appears in 1543 with the name G. Scheck. Lutze identifies the two hands as
Frankish, probably from around Nuremberg; the primary draftsman is noted as WR on f. 86v.

636 Leitch
Figure 19.1 Master WR, “Physiognomy and Chiromancy,” illumination, in Benedictus

Rughalm, Liber Quodlibetarius, fols. 80v–81r.
Erlangen, Universitätsbibliothek Erlangen-Nuremberg
(inv. no. Ms. B 200). Image © Universitätsbibliothek
Erlangen-Nuremberg
or physiognomies, sometimes interchangeably. Such fields of inquiry were

among the diverse information found in the Erlangen Ms., a book called the
Liber Quodlibetarius, or ‘whatever pleases.’
In the long durée of their manuscript tradition, texts about physiognomy
and complexion were lofty, concept driven, and explained in dense, narra-
tive passages. By comparison, early modern physiognomies were concise and
popular iterations of a genre begun in antiquity that had by the sixteenth cen-
tury picked up several medieval fragments, abridgments, and glosses. Most
were derived from Arabic treatises, largely based on the pseudo-Aristotelian
Secretum secretorum which became known to the Latin West in the mid-12th
century.2 The Secretum secretorum was derived from fragments of the Arabic
2 For the history of the Secretum Secretorum, see William Eamon, Science and the Secrets of
Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1994), 45–53, 134. See also W.F. Ryan and Charles B. Schmitt, Pseudo-Aristotle,
the Secret of Secrets: Sources and Influences (London: Warburg Institute, University of
London, 1982); and Stephen J. Williams, The Secret of Secrets: the Scholarly Career of a
Pseudo-Aristotelian Text in the Late Middle Ages (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
2003), esp. chp. 6.
GETTING TO HOW-TO: PRINTS IN SECRETS ‚ SERVICE 637
manuscript Kitab-Sirr al-Asrar (1209) that included letters purported to be

written by Aristotle for Alexander the Great on the subject of government.
Passages on physiognomy and chiromancy functioned in the context of a mir-
ror for princes. The outward manifestations of human nature legible in physi-
cal features served as handy guidelines for Alexander when he needed to size
up people quickly. Recognizing auspicious profiles or complexions could facili-
tate choosing reliable advisors or avoiding nefarious characters. The ability to
detect these tendencies is what classified this information as ‘secrets.’
Secreti had an extended shelf-life and they took on new additions over the
years. Renaissance physiognomies also incorporated glosses by natural phi-
losophers, such as Albertus Magnus and Michel Scotus, the thirteenth-century
mathematician and astrologer at Frederick II’s court.3 When first printed in
Bologna and Venice c. 1500, secrets sought to interpret signs to unlock the
meanings of storms, winds, water, and minerals; they also included Aristotelian
passages on physiognomy. By 1515, printed Secreti began to carry the author-
ship of local physicians and natural philosophers. In large format unillustrated
folio editions, such as the Infinita natura secreta (Pavia, Garaldis: 1515),4 the
physiognomic material inherited from Aristotle leads the narrative, but they
also consider the research of more recent physiognomic authorities such as
Michael Scotus, the astrologer at Frederick II’s court; the Bolognese polymath
Bartolomeo Cocles; as well as his contemporary, the philosopher and physician
Alessandro Achillini. This first generation of printed physiognomies followed
older principles of organization, ordering by symptoms. Paragraphs were orga-
nized by external behavior exhibited; such as courage, insolence, mercy, lust,
and anger, and then the text discussed the complexions associated with those
traits. Such books provided guides for diagnosing character via the symptoms’
external manifestations; the links to physical traits would be concretized later.
Later still, facial features would become the index of character traits and would
come to dominate the format of those books.
The valences of secrets in the classical tradition, according to Martin Porter,
shifted as they merged with Renaissance Neoplatonism’s attempts to synthe-
size Christian precepts with Egyptian hermetics. The Neoplatonists sought to
inscribe text onto the pre-text world. As Porter argues, the ‘audio-visual scientia
3 See Ziegeler, ‘Validity,’ 297 and Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature, 49. For medieval
glossing by Magnus and Scotus, see Porter, Windows of the Soul, 69 ff.
4 Alessandro Achillini et al., eds., Infinita nature secreta quibuslibet hominibus contingentia pre-
videnda cavenda ac prosequenda declarant in hoc libro contenta (Pavia, Bernard de Garaldis,
1515). (NLM WZ 240 143 1515).
638 Leitch
of physiognomy’5 was a result of these operations, prompting analyses of visu-

al experience that built cognitive potential in the viewer. Readers’ encounters
with these printed texts also prompted new kinds of empirical engagement
between the world and the senses. We can perhaps trace incipient awareness
of the connection between the physiognomy’s visual program and the viewer’s
actual experience of faces to southern Germany, where, after two decades of
unillustrated physiognomies published primarily in northern Italy, the locus of
visualized physiognomy begins to collect around the face.
In an edition of Cocles printed in Augsburg in 1515, we witness a loosen-
ing of the complexion book’s debt to ancient sources.6 This move was perhaps
the initiative of the publisher who wished to update it. Cocles’s In diesem
biechlin wirt erfunden von Complexion der menschen (Augsburg, Johannes
Schönsperger: 1515) invokes Aristotle, but does so without mentioning Secreti
proper. The publisher also put a contemporary spin on the volume with a new
packaging initiative: a title page bust portrait that helped bridge the reader to
the content within [Fig. 19.2]. The roundel image on its title page believed to
be a self-portrait of the local artist Hans Burgkmair may not have been origi-
nally developed with the Cocles material in mind. Rather, it has been identi-
fied as a profile that responds to a local trend of coin collecting and humanist
portraiture.7 In fact, within the volume, it was unique; the Cocles pamphlet
included no further images. Nevertheless, this act of attaching such a likeness
in profile provided an early initiative to cultivate the physiognomy’s contem-
porary relevance. Schönsperger’s choice to illustrate the manual with a profile
anticipates the later trajectory of the genre’s tenacious pictorial program.
When presented to German speaking audiences for the first time in ex-
pressly pictorialized form c. 1523, the physiognomic material appeared in rich
visual formats, and shortly afterwards, in handier-sized octavo and quarto
5 Martin Porter, Windows of the Soul Physiognomy in European Culture 1470–1780 (Oxford; New
York: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press, 2005), 17, http://site.ebrary.com/id/10271552.
6 Bartolommeo della Rocca (Cocles), In disem biechlein wirt erfunden von Complexion der
menschen (Augsburg, Schönsperger: 1515), woodcut, sheet, 14 cm × 19 cm. Bayerische
Staatsbibliothek, Munich, Res. 4 Anthr. 8).
7 Print scholars believe it to be a self-portrait of an Augsburg artist in the circle of Maximilian,
Hans Burgkmair. See Rolf Biedermann and Isolde Hausberger, eds., Hans Burgkmair: 1473–
1973: Das Graphische Werk (Augsburg: Städt. Kunstsammlungen, 1973), cat. no. 72. For the me-
dallion, see also Ernst Rebel, Die Modellierung der Person: Studien zu Dürers Bildnis des Hans
Kleberger (Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 1990) 89, fig. 61. Jeffrey Chipps Smith thinks that Burgkmair’s
self-portrait may have inspired Hans Schwarz’s medal of the humanist Conrad Peutinger
produced in 1518, see “A Creative Moment: Thoughts on the Genesis of the German Portrait
Medal,” in Stephen Scher, ed., Perspectives on the Renaissance Medal (New York: Garland
Press, 2000), 180, also note 17.
Figure 19.2 Hans Burgkmair, “self-portrait”, woodcut, in Cocles, In diesem biechlin wirt
erfunden von Complexion der menschen (Augsburg, Schönsperger: 1515)
ca. 14 × 19 cm
Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (inv. no. Res. 4 Anthr. 8).
Image © Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München
640 Leitch
Figure 19.3 Hans Wechtlin, “types of noses and mouths”, woodcut, in Johannes Indagine,
Die Kunst der Chiromantzey […] Physiognomey […] Natürlichen Astrologey […]
Complexion eines yegklichen menschens […] (Strasbourg, Johannes Schott:
1523), 31r
Bethesda, MD, National Library of Medicine (inv. no. WZ 240 138G
1523). Image © National Library of Medicine
packaging.8 Part of this new branding was also the intense visualization of the
data, as can be seen in this image that juxtaposes two different types of noses
[Fig. 19.3]. As the information also began to be organized by pictorial accom-
paniments, physiognomy’s emphasis shifted from diagnoses to searchable ex-
ternal features. I have argued elsewhere that the increased pictorialization of
16th century printed editions, especially those published in German-speaking
regions, turned the physiognomic literature into searchable field guides for
8 For the printing history of the Latin Secreti, see Steven J. Williams, The Secret of Secrets, 294–
7, n. 465. While print editions of the Secretum Secretorum had largely run their course by
1550, the physiognomic section of this work had a longer active career in print.
distinguishing among faces.9 This new visual emphasis effectively rewired the
genre’s historic presentation of long narrative passages about symptoms into
technical tools that assisted in visual analysis of actual traits. The practical re-
sult of this robust visualization redirected these books’ emphasis to the types
of judgments that could be made on the basis of observable facial features.
The structure of complexion books began with fragments from treatises by
Galen on humors, the distribution of which in humans comprised their com-
plexion, before moving on to external manifestations associated with them.10
While physiognomies recommended making moral assessments based only
on the sum of a subject’s external traits, and typically warned against placing
excess emphasis on singular features, they provided a de facto checklist that
promoted thinking about the body in an atomized fashion. In their printed it-
erations, images of individual body parts, profiles and palms came to dominate
the books’ layout. Printers distilled the data into visual formats more useful
to searches for practical information, such as can be seen in the physiogno-
mies attributed to Bartolomeo Cocles and Johannes ab Indagine circulating in
northern Europe beginning in the 1520s.
Johannes ab Indagine (1467–1537), known also as Johannes Rosenbach, was
a reformist priest from Steinheim near Hanau, and the Dean of St. Leonhardt.
In 1514, he accompanied Albrecht of Brandenburg to Rome, and advised
Albrecht later in his role as Elector, Cardinal, and Archbishop of Mainz by pin-
pointing an auspicious date for the imperial election of Charles V.11 Rosenbach
published his work under the latinized name ab Indagine (Latin for ‘inves-
tigation’ or ‘sign’) to invoke the idea of his book aiding in the discovery of
‘signs.’12 Indagine’s first edition was a folio-sized Latin edition Introductiones
apotelesmaticae (Strasbourg, Johannes Schott: 1522); a vernacular German
edition appeared the following year, Die Kunst der chiromantzey (Strasbourg,
Schott: 1523).
As illustrations started to dominate the texts, we see a commitant shift from
symptoms presented from head to toe to books in which facial features direct-
ed the character readings: foreheads, noses, and chins. The paired set of noses
attributed to the artist Hans Wechtlin, for instance, from the 1523 edition [see
9 Stephanie Leitch, ‘Visual Acuity and the Physiognomer’s Art of Observation,’ Oxford Art
Journal 38, no. 2 (2015): 187–206, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxartj/kcv010.
10 See Valentin Groebner, in Daston and Vidal, The Moral Authority of Nature, esp. 372ff.
11 F. Herrmann, ‘Der Astrolog Johannes Indagine, Pfarrer Zu Steinheim a.M., und die Frank-
furter Kaiserwahl des Jahres 1519,’ Archiv Für Hessische Geschichte Und Alterthumskunde
18 (n.d.): 274–91.
12 Porter, Windows of the Soul: Physiognomy in European Culture 1470–1780, 11.
642 Leitch
Fig. 19.3] marks the character differences between men with long and bulbous
noses; once visually noted, readers could strategically steer between long-
nosed people with upright constitutions, and bulbous-nosed characters prone
to drink and leprosy.
Indagine challenged the incontrovertibility of secrets by adding his own ob-
servations to the mix of received data. For instance, he expressed some skepti-
cism about certain judgments made by nose-reading and cast aspersions on
the diagnostic usefulness of the chin. Despite the author’s professed skepti-
cism about the chin, however, the printer Johannes Schott commissioned
Wechtlin to concoct a pair of character heads with differing chins. The book’s
formatting into image pairs underwrote its structure and thus, overrode even
the text’s doubts about the feature’s significance. Images became placeholders
for signs in the Secrets’ tradition and stabilized interpretations between two
poles of visual meaning – even as the text was amended, corrected, abbrevi-
ated and sometimes almost emptied of meaning.
We can witness the ambivalence about the fixity of signs and the meaning of
features in a later vernacular edition of Indagine printed in Utrecht (Utrecht,
Jan Berntsz: 1536).13 Here, the nose functioned as a site shaped by specific his-
torical figures mentioned in the text. For these, Berntsz ordered new images:
small portrait insets of the Persian king Xerxes and the Emperor Maximilian.
But this addition of portraits of Xerxes and Maximilian to illustrate a contrast
proved to be a false start – printers of physiognomies recognized when heads
grew too specific for the comparisons being staged. In fact, the point of adding
these two heads was to parse the fine points of a distinction between where on
the slope of the nose a hump could occur. The gesture to illustrate this detail
was perhaps too nuanced for the epistemic process that the repertoire of il-
lustrations for this book had been staging for the decade prior. Visual authority
would only accrue to certain character heads. This was the authority to mark
differences and to signpost only the most significant textual information. In
the next generation of physiognomic literature, we see stereotypical images
beginning to carry the bulk of the text’s meaning.
Physiognomy’s developing trend would lean towards starker organization
around generalized character heads and faces. Ultimately, some of Wechtlin’s
heads for Indagine’s physiognomy likely seemed either too particular, or not
13 Joannes ab Indagine and Jan Berntsz, Chyromantia […] Enn Dit Boec Leert van Drie
Naturlike Consten Als Phisiognomia, Astrologia Naturalis, Chiromantia (Utrecht, Jan
Berntsz: 1536). See Newberry Library, Wing Folio ZP 546.B45.
distinct enough, to mark the stark differentiation that the genre’s readers came
to expect. In fact, some other woodcuts simply did not work: such as the pair
that Wechtlin used to represent types of ears, or the two figures he used to
indicate different shapes of arms which appear to be sourced from other ear-
lier printed material.14 Or perhaps the designs did not appear homogenous,
distinct, or balanced enough to be the flagship images for later physiognomies.
One of the most authoritative designs were woodcuts originally developed
for a series of small octavo-sized physiognomy/ chiromancy compendia print-
ed throughout the 1530s by Schott’s Strasbourg colleague Johannes Albrecht
in the 1530s. These editions attributed to Bartolomeo Cocles were issued first
in Latin under the title Physiognomiae et chiromantiae compendium in 1533,
and then in the German Ein kurtzer Bericht der Gantzen Phisionomey Vnnd
Ciromancy beginning in 153415 [Fig. 19.4]. The German title also gestures at the
fact that this slight volume encompasses a compendia but its title page also an-
nounces it as a handy report, or ‘a short summary of the complete physiogno-
my and chiromancy.’16 Indeed, unlike Indagine’s large format folio volume, the
layout of Albrecht’s pocket-sized octavo editions are more starkly organized by
images: heads are grouped together in thirteen pairs. Text wraps around the
heads to frame them. Examples of hot, cold, and temperate complexions are
shown, mostly as paired sets. After seeing complexions explained in terms of
pictorial profiles, the reader-viewer grew accustomed to thinking about these
images as signaling types. ‘Types’ are then explored through specific features,
such as the consistency of hair, the height of foreheads, and the shapes of
noses. Hair, for example, spanned the range from straight and thin, which sig-
naled timidity; to coarse and spikey like a hedgehog, which pointed to a strong,
impatient, and deceitful person; while frizzy hair betrayed simpletons.
Following this, a series of four profiles mark various types of foreheads.
Depending on where the type was set in relation to the image, it is difficult
sometimes to know which description pertains to which head. A page fea-
turing a pair of foreheads shows a laurel-crowned head opposite a man with
14 Perhaps these were leftover materials from his illustrations for Hans von Gersdorff’s
Feldbuch der Wundarzney (Strasbourg, Schott: 1517).
15 Bartolommeo della Rocca Cocles, Physiognomiae et Chiromantiae Compendium (Albrecht,
Johann, 1533), http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb00080044-6. Ulrich Reißer
classifies this volume as a Scotus-Corvus variant, 58.
16 Bartolommeo della Rocca Cocles, Ein Kurtzer Bericht Der Gantzen Phisionomey Vnnd
Ciromancy (Strasbourg: Albrecht, 1534), http://diglib.hab.de/drucke/565-2-quod-1/start
.htm. A character head in this volume can be overlaid with Cranach’s prototype for Luther
after 1540.
644 Leitch
Figure 19.4 Anon., “pair of foreheads”, woodcut, in Bartolomeo

Cocles, Ein kurtzer Bericht der gantzen Phisionomey
unnd Ciromancy (Strasbourg, Johannes Albrecht:
1534)
Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek
(inv. no. A.565.2 Quod (1)). Image © Herzog
August Bibliothek
exposed temples. Perhaps this wreathed head corresponds to the 1534 text’s
description of a man with a narrow forehead: ‘the man with a low fore-
head is simple, angry, evil, and desirous of beautiful things’?17 Is the image
17 ‘Der ein cleyne stirn hat/ ist einfeltig zornig grausam/ hübscher ding girig.’ Bartholomeus
Cocles, Ein Kurtzer Bericht Der Gantzen Phisionomey Vnnd Ciromancy (Strasbourg,
Albrecht: 1534), http://diglib.hab.de/drucke/565-2-quod-1/start.htm.
Figure 19.5 Anon., “sets of foreheads”, woodcut, in Bartolomeo

Cocles, Physiognomiae et Chiromantiae Compendium
(Strasbourg, Johannes Albertus: 1536)
Bethesda, MD, National Library of
Medicine
(inv. no. WZ 240 A717pL 1534). Image ©
National Library of Medicine
meant to signal a tyrant? Or does this wreath represent the corona radiata, a
victorious laurel, such as those worn by Trajan or Marcus Aurelius?
Two years later, Albertus published the same text in Latin but placed the
four heads from the 1534 edition together on a single page [Fig. 19.5]. In the
Latin edition, the text is abridged to just a few short lines: ‘Whose forehead is
flat, skin and bone, and without wrinkles, that man is quick to quarrel, vain,
and more simple than wise. He whose forehead is very small in all parts, that
646 Leitch
Figure 19.6
Anon., “sets of foreheads”,
woodcut, in Bartolomeo Cocles,
Phisionomi und Chiromanci.
Eyn news Complexion
buchlein (Strasbourg, Jacob
Cammerlander: 1540), 3v
Wolfenbüttel, Herzog
August Bibliothek (inv.
no. N97.4 Helm (7)).
Image © Herzog August
Bibliothek
signifies a simpleton, someone who is quick to anger who is greedy for beau-
tiful things.’18 The third head with the curly hair and receding hairline likely
corresponds to a description on the following page: ‘He whose head is well-
rounded in the corner of the temples, such as bones appear, and bald, those
things signify a man of good character, and of clear understanding, of great
boldness, magnanimous in conflict, desirous of the beauties of the world and
of honor.’19 This description appears on the verso of the page with the four
18 Barptolomaeus Cocles, Barptolomaei Coclitis Bononiensis, Naturalis Philosophiæ Ac

Medicinæ Doctoris, Physiognomiæ et Chiromantiæ Compendium. (Argentorati: Albertus,
1536). http://digital.onb.ac.at/OnbViewer/viewer.faces?doc=ABO_%2BZ186286900 ‘Cuius
frons est plana pelle & osso, & non continens rugas, significat hominem de facilitigantem,
uanum, fallacem, plus simplicem quam sapientem. Cuius frons est nimis parva ex omni
parte, significat hominem simplicem, cito irascibilem, facilis crudelitatis, cupidum rerum
pulchrarum, curialum.’
19 ‘Cuius frons est bene rotunda in angulis temporum, ut ossa quasi appareant, & nuda pilis,
significant hominem boni ingenii, & clari intellectus, multae audaciae, in mala magnan-
imu, cupidu pulchroru mundanorum & honoris’ (Strasbourg, Albertus: 1536) Many warm
thanks to Richard Emmerson for assistance with the translation.
Figure 19.7
Anon., “assorted heads”,
woodcut, in Bartolomeo
Cocles, Phisionomi und
Chiromanci. Eyn news
Complexion buchlein
(Strasbourg, Jacob
Cammerlander: 1540), 76r
Wolfenbüttel, Herzog
August Bibliothek (inv.
no. N97.4 Helm (7)).
Image © Herzog August
Bibliothek
illustrations, making it difficult to forge a clear connection with a particular

image. The reader needed to hunt around for correspondence between the im-
ages and the text. Such formatting choices challenged the reader attempting to
cue particular illustrations to specific symptoms.
The fixity of meaning attached to the images was further diluted in
later printings that shuffled the positions of the images [Fig. 19.6]. For the
Strasbourg edition printed by Jacob Cammerlander in 1540 for instance, cop-
ies of the woodblocks were made, but their orientation was reversed in the
printing. Even though the identical prescriptions are outlined, the correspon-
dence of the diagnoses with the feature was not always precise. This edition
also used the by now popular ‘diagnostic’ heads as decorative motifs on pages
that introduce and conclude the volume20 [Fig. 19.7]. When the heads are used
20 Bartolommeo della Rocca Cocles, Phisionomi Vnd || Chiromanci.|| Eyn Newß Complexion
Büch=||lein/ Der Menschen Geburt/ Sitten/ Geberden Vnd Neyg=||ligkeyten/ Auß Der
Phisionomi/ Chiromanci/ Den Siben || Planeten/ Zwölff Zeichen/ Vnnd Den XXXvj. Bildern ||
Deß Himels/ Auch Nach Den Zwölff Monaten/ Leichtlich || Vnd Grundtlich Zulernen/ Auß
648 Leitch
decoratively as Cammerlander does, most correspondence to precise diagno-

ses has collapsed – instead, the heads stand in for the art of physiognomy in
general. On a more fundamental level, we can say that these heads formed
the repertoire of images used for physiognomic comparisons. Even though
these images are fungible, or perhaps precisely because they were, they be-
come the ones from which the later repertoire draws. So, despite the reorder-
ing and maybe even because of the shuffling apparent in the Phisionomi und
Chiromanci compendia attributed to Cocles and published in Strasbourg in the
1530–1540, we see sets of heads whose specific meanings are loose, and whose
more important function seems to be to stage comparative examinations of
human features. In the Erlangen Quodlibetarius manuscript, we see evidence of
several genres that belonged to the Books of Secrets tradition simply abridged
by images that appeared in circulating printed texts on the subjects of physi-
ognomy and chiromancy. Images appeared in the Erlangen manuscript with
little narrative context save pithy captions that explained their significance,
typically in terms of how the images represented were to be used [Fig. 19.8].
For example, the reader is reminded that the art of physiognomy determines
peoples’ nature from examining their faces:
This section is devoted to physiognomy, or how to read character from the

face. Long straight hair signals timidity, as does soft and dry hair, which
can also point to docility. Very frizzy hair indicates ignorance and naïvité.
Thin and small teeth portend a short life, whereas thick and strong teeth
predict a long one. A quick tongue exhibits naivité, while broad teeth indi-
cate phoniness.21
Rather than cuing diagnoses to particular images, the caption woven through
these three pages epitomizes the printed physiognomy’s themes. The images
of character heads were likely familiar to the reader through several genera-
tions of printed Strasbourg Cocles editions that standardized the repertoire.
Platone/ Aristotele/ Pto||lomeo/ Hali/ Albumasar/ Vnnd Johanne Künigsper=||ger #c. in

Fünff Büchlin Kurtzlich Gezogen/ Vnd Im Sech||sten Werden Erzelt Wunder Gestalt Lewt Mit
Jren Siten.|| (Strasbourg, Cammerlander, 1540), esp. 76r, http://diglib.hab.de/drucke/n-97
-4f-helmst-7s/start.htm.
21 Da hebt sich an die phisonomey. Zu seh[e]n am angesicht was aigenschaft ainer sey. Lang
schlecht har sint forchtsam auch
die lint vn[d] feucht sin. aber gelurnig
vast Kraüs har ist vnv[er]stendig. ai[n]faltig
welch zent dunn vn[d] klai[n] sint bedeit
ein kuertz leb[e]n. aber dick stark la[n]g leb[en]
schnel züng ist ainfaltig[.] prait ze[n]t v[er]logen
Figure 19.8 Master WR, “section devoted to Physiognomy”, illumination, in Benedictus

Rughalm, Liber Quodlibetarius, fols. 79v–80r
Erlangen, Universitätsbibliothek Erlangen-Nuremberg (inv. no.
Ms. B 200). Image © Universitätsbibliothek Erlangen-Nuremberg
[See Figs. 19.4-19.6] Those images helped to jog the reader’s memory about the
kinds of comparisons they emblematized. In a special way, they sent remind-
ers about praxis to the reader. These were arguably more important than re-
membering the precise symptom – and perhaps even functioned as notes to
self or to other readers. In fact, the Erlangen manuscript exhibits the common-
placing of information throughout.
The notion that the surface of the body could serve as a map of decipher-
able information, for both empirical pursuits like measuring, and also as a clue
to human nature, was popular in the epistemic literature. The idea of a per-
son’s nature (or complexion) gradually shifted in early modernity, according
to Valentin Groebner, from the interiority of humoral disposition to externally
searchable traits that gave rise to a number of genres, such as chiromancy and
physiognomy, that dealt with identity politics.22 Chiromancy, or the art of
22 Lorraine Daston and Fernando Vidal, The Moral Authority of Nature (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2010). For the new emphasis on external signs in sixteenth-century com-
plexion literature, see Valentin Groebner’s essay, 361–383, esp. 372ff.
650 Leitch
deciphering marks on the palm, seems to have become a contemporary ob-

session, as evidenced by the circulation of multiple 16th century editions that
inspired the palms in Ms. B 200. [See Fig. 19.1] The popularity of reading marks
on the hands and fingers gained ground as the pictorialized texts assisted the
project of self-knowledge.
Associations of mediums in dark rooms with crystal balls might cloud our
view of palm reading today, but in early modernity, this ‘dark art’ was a DIY skill.
In fact, Paracelsus shows us in the Liber de Imaginibus (penned in the 1530s?)
that chiromancy enjoyed popularity among lay practitioners. By this time, chi-
romancy was invoked in vernacular applications beyond divination that took
body parts as its subject and could refer to the kind of expertise that an arti-
san exercised over his craft. Michael Baxandall, in The Limewood Sculptors of
Renaissance Germany, argues that Paracelsus’s use of the term offers a ‘provi-
sional license to broaden physiognomic investigation and chiromantic analy-
sis to other fields of empirical practice as diverse as botany, woodworking, and
mining’.23 Chiromantia was a metaphor for recognizing the underlying signs
and procedures of one’s trade.24
Paracelsus also considered chiromancy a form of self-knowledge that made
reading the body both a decipherable art and epistemic act: ‘there are four
things through which Nature makes Man manifest […] Chiromancy, which
comprises the extremities of men, hands and feet […] Physiognomy […] this
comprises the form of the face and the whole head […] Third is substantia,
which takes in the form of the body as a whole […] Fourthly, there is mos and
usus, that is manner and bearing …[together] they make up a complete per-
ception of the hidden inner man.’25
23 Michael Baxandall, The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1980), 163.
24 See Paracelsus, Liber de Imaginibus, chapter 7, in Karl Möseneder, Paracelsus und die
Bilder: Über Glauben, Magie und Astrologie im Reformationszeitalter (Tübingen: Max
Niemeyer Verlag, 2011), 202, https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110973525. ‘also ein bergman sol
das bergwerk an seiner chiromantia erkennen, was für erz und metal da zu suchen und
wie tief oder hoch es lige. Also ein cosmographus die chiromantiam der lantschaften, und
lender und wasserflüss erkennen sol. Dan ir solt wissen, das die chiromantia ein anfang ist
der magica. Und keener kan volkeommen magiam lernen, er wisse und lerne dan zuvor
die chiromantiam, dan die chiromantia ist der magica ABC […] und chiromantia ist ein
geringe, leichte Kunst zu lernen, doch aber hoch nüzlich und löblich und mags ein iegli-
cher grober bauer lernen […]
25 Paracelsus, AUREOLI Philippi Theophrasti Bombasts von Hohenheim Paracelsi, deß Edlen,

Hochgelehrten, Fürtrefflichsten, Weitberümbtesten Philosophi vnd Medici OPERA: Bücher

vnnd Schrifften, so viel deren zur Hand gebracht: vnd vorwenig Jahren, mit vnd auß ihren
Sixteenth-century readers of marks on hands were also epistemic practitio-

ners of self-diagnosis; deciphering one’s palm was to learn about oneself. The
manuals that attempted to coach it typically used one iteration of hand and
then varied the different lines on its surface. The Erlangen Ms. substantially
abridges the forty-four pages of a popular printed contemporary edition into
just ten pages, omitting the individual diagnoses that were spelled out by the
printed text, stressing instead how those images could visually cue the read-
ing. The captions that snake around the succeeding pages again hint at how
the original manuals should be used: ‘With Ciromantia you can tell a person’s
nature by reading the hands’ (81r), including brief synopsis of the major palm
axes (life lines, etc.), or that ‘in men, judgments are made on the right hand; for
females, the left hand is used (81v and 82r).’ Thus, the images point to practical
applications to the art of chiromancy.
The Erlangen manuscript reveals how quickly the secrets literature, once
transferred to printing, became venues for the common placing of familiar
images. The compiler’s modus operandi seems to be to collect all of the re-
lated images from these circulating texts. This perhaps also helps to explain
the shadowy appearance of a face with a marked forehead in the lower left of
the physiognomy page added to the manuscript by a later hand. [See Fig. 19.8]
The reader would have recognized just such heads from manuals devoted
to the art of reading lines in the forehead. By including this drawing, the
scribe evokes the related diagnostic art of metoscopy. With this pictorial foot-
note, the compiler added another type of empirical inquiry concerning the
human face.
According to metoscopy, the lines of the forehead were traces left by plan-
etary influence. The printed mid-sixteenth century editions on forehead read-
ing associated with Thaddeus Hajek, a physician at the court of Rudolf II, tried
to reconcile the planetary residue in the brow lines with the idea that they were
vestigal impressions of God’s intent for mankind.26 The titles of the Latin edi-
glaubwürdigen eygener Handgeschriebenen Originalien collacioniert, verglichen vnd ver-

bessert. Darinnen die Magischen vnd Astrologischen Bücher, sampt ihren Anhängen vnd
Stücken, auch von dem Philosophischen Stein handlende Tractatus, begriffen, [etc.] Fornen
mit einem kurtzen Begriff vnd Ordnung dieses Theyls Bücher, vnd derselben Innhalt: Hinden
aber mmit einem durchhauß vollkommenen Register vermehret. Ander Theyl (Strasbourg,
heirs of Zetzner: 1616), vol 1, 393, https://books.google.com/books?id=R55U_mde6-EC
&lpg=PA394&ots=2e1AymdqeO&dq=vier%20ding%20seind%2C%20durch%20die%20
natur%20den%20menschen%20offenbar%20macht&pg=PA393#v=onepage&q=mensc
hen%20offenbar%20macht&f=false. I take the translation from Baxandall, The Limewood
Sculptors of Renaissance Germany, 161–2.
26 Porter, Windows of the Soul: Physiognomy in European Culture 1470–1780, 14.
652 Leitch
tions of the text, such as Aphorismorum Metoposcopicorum (Frankfurt, Andreas

Wechel: 1584), preserve the conceptual knowledge being epitomized within.27
Meanwhile, the titles of the vernacular editions emphasize the practical ben-
efit to the reader and point directly to the praxis: ‘A new invention with which
to readily evaluate the nature of each person by means of the inspection of
foreheads.’28 Title-page woodcuts sometimes show laurel-wreathed foreheads
whose lines were governed by the planets. Each line connects the planetary
symbol to its domain of influence: Saturn governing the top line, then in de-
scending order, Jupiter, Mars, the sun and the moon.
The images in the book’s interior follow the format and searchable set-up of
contemporary printed physiognomies, cueing images to traits, but the larger
emphasis seems to be to index the diagnoses (such as deceptive, cheating,
rough, cruel, seditious, quick, wholesome, or ingenious) via the images [Fig.
19.9]. These images became the sine qua non of the metoscopy literature. In
cases of diagnostic literature without images, bibliophiles often took the job
of illustration into their own hands. At the close of two volumes of diagnos-
tic astrology preserved today at the National Library of Medicine, we find a
later binding of 20 leaves of illustrated manuscript hand relating to another
diagnostic art, Metoscopia: De chiroscopia seu chiromantia – de Metoscopia, in
which pages of drawn foreheads epitomize the art of metoscopy [Fig. 19.10].
The printed texts preceding the collection of drawn heads are two unillustrat-
ed chiromantic volumes printed in Bologna, attributed to Bartolommeo Cocles
and Alessandro Achillini.29 This addition of manuscript heads, I would argue,
was exactly the kind of do-it-yourself effort that exposure to such diagnostic
texts prompted. The hand-drawn heads serve as evidence and shorthand of
the kind of epistemic acts with which these manuals’ readers were engaged.
After several generations of physiognomies and metoscopies epitomized by
printed images, readers began to demand illustrations for texts where none
otherwise appeared. The owner of this Bolognese edition took considerable
27 Tadeáš Hájek, Thaddaei Hagecii ab Hagek, […] Aphorismorum metoposcopicorum libellus

unus. Editio secunda […] (Francofurti: Apud haeredes A. Wechelii, 1584).
28 See, for example, Tadeas Hajek z Hajku, Nouvelle invention pour incontinent juger du na-
turel d’un chacun par l’inspection du front et de ses parties (Paris, Guillaume Chaudière:
1564).
29 Bartolommeo della Rocca (Cocles) and Alessandro Achillini, Bartholomei Coclitis
Chyromantie ac physionomie anastasis: cum approbatio[n]e magistri Alexa[n]dri Achillinis
(Impressum Bononie: Per Hieronymum de Benedictis Calcographum Bononiensem,
1523). (NLM WZ 240 C666c 1523) Bound with Cocles and Achillini, Chyromantie ac physi-
onomie anastasis(Bologna, Joannem Antonium Platonidem Benedictorum, 1504) (NLM
WZ 240 C666c 1504).
Figure 19.9
Anon., “types of
foreheads”, in Tadeáš
Hájek, Thaddaei
Hagecii ab Hagek
doctoris medici
Aphorismorum
metoposcopicorum
libellus vnus
(Frankfurt, Andreas
Wechel: 1584), 72–73
London,
Wellcome
Library
(shelfmark
3042/A).
Image © Internet
Archive
Figure 19.10 Anon., “drawings of foreheads”, pen and ink, in Achillini and Cocles,
De chiromantie principiis (Bologna, Hieronymus de Benedictis: 1523). Bethesda,
MD, National Library of Medicine (inv. no. WZ 240 C666c 1523)
Image © National Library of Medicine
654 Leitch
pains to supplement the book with pictures: twenty pages of foreheads along
with brief inscriptions.30 The extent to which these obsessive combinations
and re-combinations were illustrated suggests that images became the logical
way to search and synopsize the literature. They certainly served as the book’s
distinguishing mark. Bound at the end of the volume, the heads can be thought
of as a type of index for the book.
While they began life as diagnostic images, printed character heads, in the
era of cheap illustrative desiderata, simply became physiognomic heads with
loose attachments to character readings. Perhaps it was their easy availabil-
ity or diffuse meaning, but when detached from their original moorings, they
began to float freely into new pastures of literature. Given that they gestured
vaguely at character traits and connected loosely to moral flaws, they were
given a wide berth in the early modern press. By the 1550s, such images from
metoscopies and physiognomies had made their way from the continent to
England where they occasioned the creation of more woodblocks for insular
copies of physiognomic literature. Thomas Hill’s edition of A Brief and most
pleasant epitome of the whole art of physiognomie (London, Waylande: 1556)31
and the Contemplation of Mankinde (London, Henry Denham for William
Seres: 1571) used copies of continental woodblocks.32 Showing the many re-
combinations to which such de-racinated images were subjected, Taylor
Clement demonstrates how these character heads wandered beyond the strict
confines of physiognomy and metoscopy into popular printed ballads such as
Thomas Deloney’s broadside A Most joyfull Songe, made in the behalfe of all
her Majesties’ faithful and loving subjects; of the great joy, which was made in
London at the taking of the late trayterous Conspirators, which sought opportu-
30 Alessandro Achillini and Girolamo Benedetti, Alexa[n]der Achillinus Bononiensis De chy-

romantie principiis [et] physionomie (Bologna: a Hieronymi de Benedictis, 1523).
31 Bartolommeo della Rocca Cocles and Thomas Hill, A Brief and Most Pleasau[n]t Epitomye
of the Whole Art of Phisiognomie, Gathered out of Aristotle, Rasis, Formica, Loxius,
Phylemo[n], Palemo[n], Consiliator, Morbeth the Cardinal and Others Many Moe, by That
Learned Chyrurgian Cocles: And Englished by Thomas Hyll Londoner (London, Waylande:
1556), http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_
val_fmt=&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:13894.
32 Thomas Hill, Bartolommeo della Rocca Cocles, and Malampus, The Contemplation
of Mankinde (London: By [Henry Denham for] William Seres, dwelling at the west
ende of Paules Church, at the signe of the Hedgehogge, 1571), http://gateway.pro-
quest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_val_fmt=&rft_
id=xri:eebo:image:4287.
Figure 19.11 Anon., “criminal heads,” woodcut, in Thomas Deloney, A Most Joyfull Songe
(London, Richard Jones: 1586), STC 6557.6. (reproduced by kind permission
of The Society of Antiquaries of London)
Image © ProQuest commons as a part of Early English Books
Online
656 Leitch
nity to kyll her Magesty and spoil the citye […] (London, Richard Jones: 1586)33
[Fig. 19.11]. In this broadside cobbled together from, per Clement, the ‘dias-
pora’ of physiognomic images, they illustrate the conspirators of Anthony
Babington’s plot to overthrow Queen Elizabeth. While these physiognomic
and metoscopic manuals encouraged the practice of visual comparison and
contrast, they also served as conduits for reading evil into the picture. Their
images were fair game as touchstones of bad character.
As they strayed from the doctrine of signs and natural writing in which they
were previously embedded, physiognomic data gave rise to new pictorial for-
mats that became tenacious. Even as the late sixteenth-century natural phi-
losopher Giambattista Della Porta delved deeper into natural magic, he relied
on the early physiognomic manuals discussed here to set up the graphic de-
sign of his text De Humana Physiognomonia (Naples, Tarquinio Longo: 1602).34
In the paired comparisons of animals to human faces, such as brows of men
juxtaposed with those of lions, monkeys, bulls, and sharp-billed birds, readers
forged innovative connections as new compare and contrast exercises were
demanded of them. Bronwen Wilson’s studies of portrait books and physiog-
nomies argue that the comparative function of images in those visual pairings
promoted a sharpening of optical authority, an authority which established a
new cognitive role for images.35 In fact, even as he aimed to deal with the doc-
trine of signatures, re-invoking the old literature and Aristotle throughout his
text, one of the important leftovers of Della Porta’s physiognomic studies also
provided the reader with a new way to make visual assessments about pictures,
many of which were themselves recycled copies of already circulating imag-
es.36 These processes of visual comparisons are, perhaps not coincidentally,
33 Taylor Clement, ‘Moveable Types: The de-Individuated Portrait in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction,’ Renaissance Studies: Journal of the Society for Renaissance Studies 31.3
(2017) 1–24.
34 Giambattista della Porta, Io. Batis. Portae Neap. De Humana Physiognomia Li. VI :In Quibus
Docetur Quom[Odo] Animi Propentes Naturalibus Remediis Compesci Possint. (Naples:
Tarquinio Longo, 1602), http://hdl.handle.net/2027/gri.ark:/13960/t7np2x95w.
35 Bronwen Wilson, The World in Venice Print, the City and Early Modern Identity (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2005), 208; Bronwen Wilson, “Learning How to Read:
Giovanni Battista Della Porta, Physiognomy, and Printed Portrait-Books,” paper presented
at Visual Knowledges Conference, University of Edinburgh, 17–20 September 2003.
36 Stephanie Leitch, “Dürer’s ‘Rhinoceros’ Underway: The Epistemology of the Copy in the
Early Modern Print,” in Debra Taylor Cashion, Henry Luttikhuizen, and Ashley D. West,
eds., The Primacy of the Image in Northern European Art, 1400–1700 (Boston/Leiden: Brill,
2017), 251ff.
similar to the epistemic prompts by which even the modern discipline of art
history teaches the business of learning to look.
New cognitive practices emerged as a result of sixteenth century physi-
ognomic prompts; these empirical practices were arguably the more lasting
exercise to emerge from physiognomy and chiromancy. When chiromantic
and physiognomic secrets were published between 1520–1550 in the German
press, a repertoire of images accrued around these fragments of Secreti and
assumed sovereign duty for textual descriptions. Rather than diagnosing
conditions, these books became how-to guides to predict inclinations, in
line with other prognosticative literature, such as Practica, with which they
were contemporary. As these images became unhinged from their original
contexts, we see several venerable branches of Secreti cede to searches for
visual data.
Bibliography
Achillini Alessandro – Aristotle Bartolomeo da Messina – Cocles Bartolommeo della

Rocca – Scot Michael (eds.), Infinita nature secreta quibuslibet hominibus contin-
gentia previdenda cavenda ac prosequenda declarant in hoc libro contenta. (Pavia,
Bernardinum de Garaldis: 1515).
Achillini Alessandro – Benedetti Girolamo. Alexa[n]der Achillinus Bononiensis De
chyromantie principiis [et] physionomie. (Bologna, Hieronymi de Benedictis: 1523).
Baxandall M., The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany (New Haven: 1980).
Clement T., “Moveable Types: The de-Individuated Portrait in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction”, Renaissance Studies: Journal of the Society for Renaissance Studies
31.3 (2017) 1–24.
Cocles Barptolomaeus, Barptolomaei Coclitis Bononiensis, Naturalis Philosophiæ
Ac Medicinæ Doctoris, Physiognomiæ et Chiromantiæ Compendium (Strasbourg,
Albrecht: 1536).
Cocles Barptolomaeus, Ein Kurtzer Bericht Der Gantzen Phisionomey Vnnd Ciromancy
(Strasbourg, Albrecht: 1534).
Cocles Bartolommeo della Rocca, Ein Kurtzer Bericht Der Gantzen Phisionomey Vnnd
Ciromancy (Strasbourg, Albrecht: 1534).
Cocles Bartolommeo della Rocca, Phisionomi Vnd || Chiromanci.|| Eyn Newß Complexion
Büch=||lein/ Der Menschen Geburt/ Sitten/ Geberden Vnd Neyg=||ligkeyten/ Auß Der
Phisionomi/ Chiromanci/ Den Siben || Planeten/ Zwölff Zeichen/ Vnnd Den XXXvj.
Bildern || Deß Himels/ Auch Nach Den Zwölff Monaten/ Leichtlich || Vnd Grundtlich
Zulernen/ Auß Platone/ Aristotele/ Pto||lomeo/ Hali/ Albumasar/ Vnnd Johanne
658 Leitch
Künigsper=||ger #c. in Fünff Büchlin Kurtzlich Gezogen/ Vnd Im Sech||sten Werden

Erzelt Wunder Gestalt Lewt Mit Jren Siten.|| (Strasbourg, Cammerlander: 1540).
Cocles Bartolommeo della Rocca. Physiognomiae et Chiromantiae Compendium
(Strasbourg, Albrecht, 1533).
Cocles Bartolommeo della Rocca, and Alessandro Achillini. Bartholomei Coclitis
Chyromantie ac physionomie anastasis: cum approbatio[n]e magistri Alexa[n]dri
Achillinis (Bologna, Hieronymus de Benedictis: 1523).
Cocles Bartolommeo della Rocca, and Thomas Hill. A Brief and Most Pleasau[n]t
Epitomye of the Whole Art of Phisiognomie, Gathered out of Aristotle, Rasis, Formica,
Loxius, Phylemo[n], Palemo[n], Consiliator, Morbeth the Cardinal and Others Many
Moe, by That Learned Chyrurgian Cocles: And Englished by Thomas Hyll Londoner
(London, Waylande: 1556).
Daston L. – Vidal F., The Moral Authority of Nature (Chicago: 2010).
Hájek Tadeáš, Thaddaei Hagecii ab Hagek, […] Aphorismorum metoposcopicorum libel-
lus unus. Editio secunda (Frankfurt, Andreas Wechel: 1584).
Herrmann F., “Der Astrolog Johannes Indagine, Pfarrer Zu Steinheim a.M., Und Die
Frankfurter Kaiserwahl Des Jahres 1519.” Archiv Für Hessische Geschichte Und
Alterthumskunde 18 (1934): 274–291.
Hill Thomas – Cocles Bartolommeo della Rocca – Malampus, The Contemplation of
Mankinde (London, Henry Denham for William Seres: 1571).
Indagine Joannes ab – Berntsz Jan, Chyromantia […] Enn Dit Boec Leert van Drie
Naturlike Consten Als Phisiognomia, Astrologia Naturalis, Chiromantia (Utrecht, Jan
Berntsz: 1536).
Leitch S., “Dürer’s ‘Rhinoceros’ Underway: The Epistemology of the Copy in the Early
Modern Print”, in Cashion D.T. – Luttikhuizen H. – West A.D. (eds.), The Primacy of
the Image in Northern European Art, 1400–1700 (Boston – Leiden: 2017).
Leitch S., “Visual Acuity and the Physiognomer’s Art of Observation”, Oxford Art Journal
38.2 (2015) 187–206. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxartj/kcv010.
Lutze E., Die Bilderhandschriften der Universitätsbibliothek Erlangen (Wiesbaden: 1971).
Möseneder K., Paracelsus und die Bilder: Über Glauben, Magie und Astrologie im
Reformationszeitalter (Tübingen: 2011).
Paracelsus, AUREOLI Philippi Theophrasti Bombasts von Hohenheim Paracelsi, deß
Edlen, Hochgelehrten, Fürtrefflichsten, Weitberümbtesten Philosophi vnd Medici
OPERA: Bücher vnnd Schrifften, so viel deren zur Hand gebracht: vnd vorwenig
Jahren, mit vnd auß ihren glaubwürdigen eygener Handgeschriebenen Originalien
collacioniert, verglichen vnd verbessert. Darinnen die Magischen vnd Astrologischen
Bücher, sampt ihren Anhängen vnd Stücken, auch von dem Philosophischen Stein
handlende Tractatus, begriffen, [etc.] Fornen mit einem kurtzen Begriff vnd Ordnung
dieses Theyls Bücher, vnd derselben Innhalt: Hinden aber mmit einem durchhauß
vollkommenen Register vermehret. Ander Theyl (Strasbourg, Lazari Zetzners Heirs:

1616).
Porta Giambattista della, Io. Batis. Portae Neap. De Humana Physiognomia Li. VI:In
Quibus Docetur Quom[Odo] Animi Propentes Naturalibus Remediis Compesci Possint
(Naples, Tarquinio Longo: 1602).
Porter M., Windows of the Soul Physiognomy in European Culture 1470–1780 (New York:
2005).
Wilson B., The World in Venice: Print, the City and Early Modern Identity (Toronto: 2005).
chapter 20
The Answer Lies in the Eye of the Beholder:

the Emblematic Ceiling Program in the
Town Hall of Gdańsk
Monika Biel
1 Introduction
Since the beginning of the early modern period, emblematic programmes have
adorned the town halls of economically strong municipalities and confirmed
them as representative spaces for the staging of faith, politics, and propaganda.
However different their contents might have been, they communicated in the
same way: they interacted via their own sign system, the structure, arrange-
ment, and positioning of which were not arbitrary. They unfolded in space in
the form of a symbiosis that required a position-oriented view for understand-
ing or decoding them. This single point of view was directed at a certain circle
of addressees.
The viewer’s spatial orientation when looking at a decorative architectural
programme provides the focus of the present contribution and thus repre-
sents a desideratum in today’s research landscape for the emblematic ceiling
programme in the Red Hall of Gdańsk Main Town Hall.1 Although, from the
1960s onwards, there has been increased scholarly interest in this space, nei-
ther the position-oriented view nor the recipient were taken into account.2 A
reception-aesthetic approach, which, according to Kemp, deals primarily with
the ‘implicit beholder’ and the viewer’s function in the work of art, is a prereq-
uisite for understanding such complex programmes.3 Kemp orients his idea of
1 This article is an excerpt from the author’s PhD project, begun in 2017, entitled “Der Raum
des Betrachters: Das emblematische Deckenprogramm im Roten Saal des Rechtsstädtischen
Rathauses in Danzig” (The Space of the Beholder: The Emblematic Ceiling Program in the
Red Hall of the Main Town Hall in Gdańsk).
2 Thus far, research has focused in particular on the central painting of the programme. As a
pioneering work, the only one that deals with all the existing elements, Iwanoyko’s Apoteoza
Gdańska (Gdańsk: 1976) is an important study.
3 This approach is based on Wolfang Kemp’s reception-aesthetic approach, which reformulated
the methodology for art studies already known in literary studies. See Kemp W., “Kunstwerk
und Betrachter: Der Rezeptionsästhetische Ansatz”, in Belting H. (ed.), Kunstgeschichte eine
Einführung (Berlin: 1988) 247–265; idem, Der Betrachter ist im Bild, Kunstwissenschaft und

the Emblematic Ceiling Program in the Town Hall of Gdańsk 661
the ‘implicit beholder’ with reference to Iser’s interpretation of the ‘implicit

reader’:
The object of the method practiced here is the place of the recipient in
the work, the viewer reference composed into the work, with all the con-
sequences that arise from it for the other dimensions of the work’s effect.
Wolfgang Iser has introduced the concept of the ‘implicit reader’ to liter-
ary studies at this point. I quote him by replacing ‘Text’ with a work and
‘reader’ with a viewer. The implicit viewer embodies the totality of the
pre-orientations that a work offers to its potential viewers as conditions
of reception. Consequently, the implicit viewer is not anchored in an em-
pirical substrate, but in the structure of the works themselves.4
The starting point of this investigation is the basic premise that the ceiling
programme addresses a specific viewer and thereby shapes him. It reveals two
pieces of information: ‘By communicating with us, it talks about its place and
impact in society, and it talks about itself’.5 The presence of the viewer is deci-
sive for the process of constructive communication between the program and
its beholder. The lines of communication unfold within the quadrilateral rela-
tionship of ‘artist – program – beholder – space’ and can be perceived through
the conditions of access and the internal pathways of reception.6 These two
approaches can be distinguished, but not in the sense of two distinct units.
The way in which these are expressed in the Red Hall and, above all, in the
emblematic ceiling programme is discussed below. Which secrets are revealed
Rezeptionsästhetik (Cologne: 1985); and idem, Der Anteil des Betrachters: Rezeptionsästhetische
Studien zur Malerei des 19. Jahrhunderts (Munich: 1983). On the literary theory, see Link H.,
Rezeptionsforschung: Eine Einführung in Methoden und Probleme (Stuttgart: 1976); Iser W., Der
implizite Leser (Munich: 1972).
4 Kemp, Der Anteil des Betrachters 32: ‘Gegenstand der hier praktizierten Methode ist der
Ort des Rezipienten im Werk, ist der ins Werk einkomponierte Betrachterbezug, mit allen
Konsequenzen, die sich aus ihm für die anderen Wirkungsdimensionen des Werkes erge-
ben. Wolfgang Iser hat für die Literaturwissenschaft an dieser Stelle das Konzept des “im-
pliziten Lesers” eingeführt. Ich zitiere ihn, indem ich “Text” durch Werk und “Leser” durch
Betrachter sinngemäß ersetze. Der implizite Betrachter verkörpert die Gesamtheit der
Vororientierungen, die ein Werk seinen möglichen Betrachtern als Rezeptionsbedingungen
anbietet. Folglich ist der implizite Betrachter nicht in einem empirischen Substrat verankert,
sondern in der Struktur der Werke selbst fundiert’.
5 Kemp, Der Betrachter ist im Bild 22: ‘Jedes Kunstwerk ist adressiert, es entwirft seinen
Betrachter, und es gibt dabei zwei Informationen preis, die vielleicht, von einer sehr hohen
Warte betrachtet, identisch sind: Indem es mit uns kommuniziert, spricht es über seinen
Platz und seine Wirkungsmöglichkeiten in der Gesellschaft, spricht es über sich selbst’.
6 See Kemp, Zeitgenössische Kunst und ihre Betrachter 13–14.
662 Biel
through the eyes of the beholder is demonstrated in using the example of the
following two aspects:
On one hand, the focus is on the ‘conditions of external access’,7 which re-
late to the effect of the communication structure between space, ceiling pro-
gramme, and observer: Only one’s physical presence in the room can reveal the
path of observation, and the beholder can only read the hidden content by the
manner in which he positions himself. On the other hand, the focus is also on
the ‘internal pathways of reception’,8 by which the program enters into contact
with the observer via its appearance and involves the beholder in the internal
image communication at the moment of viewing: the emblems play a special
role in the communicative overall structure. Their messages are difficult to
decipher due to the two-part structure of motto and pictura and only reveal
the res significans through the integration of all its components. Artists and
initiators of applied emblems oriented themselves towards literary models,
namely, the emblem books that were known to educated observers and could
also be deciphered without the explanatory element of the epigram. Their lit-
erary orientation was often not limited to a single source. When adapting the
motifs for the picturae or motti, various models were used, such as the Bible,
imprese, and heraldic devices, in order to assemble them into a new whole
and adapt it to the given environment (room, addressee, etc.). In the Gdańsk
ceiling programme, the emblems open these intermedial connections both to
other objects and to their physical environment via the recipient. This process
is illustrated below in more detail using the example of the top emblem on the
central painting, The Apotheosis of Gdańsk.9
7 See Kemp, “Kunstwerk und Betrachter” 252: ‘Das Werk reagiert auf seinen räumlichen und
funktionalen Kontext durch die Eigenheiten seines Mediums, durch seine Größe, durch
seine Objektform, durch die Gestaltung des Übergangs oder der Grenze zwischen “Außen”
und “Innen”, durch seinen inneren Maßstab, durch den Grad seiner Ausführung und durch
seine räumliche Einrichtung.’
8 Ibidem 253. Among the internal pathways of reception are: the diegese or the way in which a
viewer is included or excluded in the communication of things and persons in the work; the
perspective of the person or the extent to which an identification figure is made available to
the viewer in the picture; the detail of the picture and the resulting addition of the viewer;
the perspectives through which the viewer is placed to the picture and the Leerstelle (that
which is absent) or Unbestimmtheitsstellen (the point of ambiguity) that the viewer is sup-
posed to fill in in order to complete the work.
9 First named by Iwanoyko, Apoteoza Gdańska.
2 The Red Hall and Its Ceiling Program
The fourteenth-century town hall has been extended and redesigned sever-
al times over the decades. After the modernization and enlargement of the
building in 1593–96, the interior was refurbished between 1594 and 1609 on
behalf of the council.10 The thematic diversity and orientation of the deco-
ration goes hand in hand with the function of the space as well as with the
religious-political orientation of the city government. On one hand, the town
hall and the Red Hall no longer served multiple functions around 1600; quite
the opposite: commercial, social, legal, and military activities were removed
from the premises. The Red Hall became the centre of power and represen-
tation and, above all, only accessible to the city’s elite. It served exclusively
to hold closed council meetings and was therefore only accessible to coun-
cil members.11 During this time, Gdańsk’s government consisted of fourteen
councillors and four mayors, with the first mayor holding the post of the so-
called president of the council for one year.12 On the other hand, the city of
Gdańsk had a special religious-political position in the period around 1600.
The Hanseatic city also enjoyed political and religious freedom, with numer-
ous trade privileges that had led to wealth and prosperity.13 Although the three
most important Christian denominations were represented in this area, the
municipal government elite consisted almost exclusively of Protestant and
Reformed members.14 The decoration of the Red Hall or Sommerratsstube, as
it was also known, which still exists today, is a testimony to its time and reflects
the power and self-confidence of the Gdańsk Council.
10 See Tipton S., Res publica bene ordinata: Regentenspiegel und Bilder vom guten Regiment.
Rathausdekorationen in der Frühen Neuzeit (Hildesheim – Zurich – New York: 1996) 239–
240; Bartetzky A., “Rzeczpospolita und res publica: Danzigs Verhältnis zur polnischen
Krone in seiner städtischen Selbstdarstellung 1585–1626”, in Beckmann S. – Garber K. (eds.),
Kulturgeschichte Preußens königlich polnischen Anteils in der Frühen Neuzeit (Tübingen:
2005) 609–635.
11 See Iwanoyko E., Sala Czerwona ratusza gdańskiego (Wroclaw: 1986) 16.
12 See Curicke Georg Reinhold, Der Stadt Dantzig historische Beschreibung, worinnen von dero
Uhrsprung, Situation, Regierungs-Art, geführten Kriegen, Religions- und Kirchen-Wesen aus-
sführlich gehandelt wird (Amsterdam – Dantzig, Johan und Gillis Janssons von Waesberge:
1687) 99, 118–119.
13 For the historical situation of Gdańsk see, in particular, Cieślak E. – Biernat C., Dzieje
Gdańska (Gdańsk: 1987); Bartetzky, “Rzeczpospolita und res publica” 609–635.
14 See Cieślak K., Między Rzymem, Wittenbergą a Genewą (Wroclaw: 2000) 142–144.
664 Biel
Figure 20.1 The Red Hall. Gdańsk, Main Town Hall

Image © Muzeum Gdańska
2.1 The Red Hall

The colour designation results from the wall covering of red velvet. All areas of
the hall decoration belonged to the new decoration of the Sommerratsstube,
which was carried out in the years 1592–1608 by several artists in two phases.15
The room [Fig. 20.1] can be subdivided into different parts: first, the lower
area, which contains the intarsia-worked benches. These are separated from
the upper carved cornices by the red velvet covering on the walls. The lead art-
ist of these elements was Simon Herle. The upper part comprises the six mural
paintings by Vredeman de Vries. The connecting piece between floor and ceil-
ing is the fireplace, which was completed by Willem van den Meer in 1593. The
first ceiling painting, designed by De Vries and his son, was made between 1594
and 1595 but no longer exists. The second ceiling painting, which was painted
between 1604 and 1608, still exists today. It is the work of Isaak van den Blocke.
These elements complete the room decoration. The carvings were done in the
same period by Simon Herle.16
15 See Hoburg K., Geschichte und Beschreibung des Rathauses der Rechtsstadt Danzig
(Danzig: 1857) 35–36.
16 Ibidem.
2.2 The Emblematic Ceiling Program

The composition of twenty-five elements mirrors the rectangular spatial struc-
ture (dimensions: 8 × 11.5m) and occupies the entire ceiling [Fig. 20.2]. The
centre forms the largest oval: the ‘Apotheosis of Gdańsk’. At the same time, it
intersects two straight lines, a vertical and a horizontal one. On the longitudi-
nal axis, the shape of the oval is oriented towards the central element and is
thus additionally emphasised by the circles lying across it. Together they form
a cross. All twenty-five representations have Latin inscriptions and can be the-
matically divided into three groups: biblical and allegorical, emblematic, and
historical. The first group consists of biblical, mythological, and allegorical sec-
tions, which include the five pictures in circular and oval format. The second
group is emblematic, consisting of sixteen emblems in a two-part structure:
pictura and Latin motto, most of which are in biblical context. The third and
last section constitutes the four rectangles with historical motifs.17
3 The Space of the Beholder: the Path of Observation
What happens as we enter this room and look at its decoration?18 We enter
the rectangular room laterally through the main door. Our view is directed di-
rectly to the fireplace opposite. The only natural light comes from the windows
on the left. We see the murals, the ceiling paintings – we let them guide us.
We seek the perfect point of view and automatically move to the left, towards
the windows. Our orientation is based on the orientation of the ceiling pic-
tures and the cross formation of the program, which we follow along the lon-
gitudinal axis to the top. Here we are steering quite unconsciously towards a
certain position where we have the impression that we have reached the best
viewing angle for the overall view of the central painting. We remain directly
centred under the top oval, The Fall of Jericho, from which the figure of the
high priest bearing the Ark of the Covenant looks directly at us. Our gaze is
17 For a more detailed description of the overall approach of the programme, see Biel M.,
“Das emblematische Deckenprogramm (1604–1608) von Isaak van de Blocke im Roten
Saal des Danziger Rathauses: Das Zusammenspiel der kompositorischen Elemente
im Gesamtkomplex und der Einfluss des reformatorischen Gedankenguts – ein neues
Zuordnungsschema”, in Höpel I. – Olof Larsson L. (eds.), Emblematik im Ostseeraum (Kiel:
2016) 111–123.
18 For visual support, a video file can be retrieved by scanning the QR code
or via the following link: https://youtu.be/QDUYl9Je-F4. I would like to thank
Dr. Pedro Germano Leal for familiarizing me with this method of visualization.
666 Biel
Figure 20.2 Isaak van den Blocke, “Bildschema der Deckenkomposition” (1604–1608),
Gdańsk, Main Town Hall, Red Hall
Image © Agencja Reklamowo-Wydawnicza A. Grzegorczyk
Figure 20.3 Isaak van den Blocke, Ceiling programme (1604–1608). View from the mayor’s seat
guided by the natural axis of view [Fig. 20.3] – from top to bottom – and ends
on the wall painting of The Last Judgement directly opposite.
This brief description of the entrance situation and the effect of the space
on the viewer clearly illustrates the principles of reception aesthetics: the
function of the beholder and the communication of the programme. If the
beholder wants to analyse the ceiling program and above all the central image,
he must enter the room in order to approach it. At the same time, the pro-
gramme sends impulses to the viewer to ensure his correct orientation. This
first manifests itself in the orientation of the ceiling paintings and continues
in the next step through the focus on the central and largest painting, The
Apotheosis of Gdańsk. This then directs the viewer through his perspective or
his spatial arrangement to the position intended for him under the uppermost
oval. Here the figure observing him from The Fall of Jericho [Fig. 20.4] fulfils
important functions: on one hand, the figure’s gaze directly addresses the be-
holder, thus confirming his correct positioning in the room. On the other hand,
668 Biel
Figure 20.4 Isaak van den Blocke, The Fall of Jericho (1604–1608). Oil on canvas, 193 × 112 cm. Gdańsk,
Main Town Hall, Red Hall. Top of the ceiling programme
these internal orientations in the ceiling programme confirm the thesis that
the observer is intended as an implicit beholder.
As already mentioned, the Red Hall was used exclusively for meetings by
council members. Consequently, it can be assumed that the decorations were
directed at this particular group of addressees and, based on the orientation of
the ceiling programme, even at a specific person beneath it. According to pre-
vious research, there is no written evidence of the initiator of the programme
or of the seating arrangements of the council members.19 The only position
mentioned in the written records is the seat of the governing mayor of the
19 Information about the payment of the artists from Hoburg, Geschichte und Beschreibung
16–17. Iwanoyko and Michalski assume that the mayor Johann Speymann might have
been the initiator of the programme; see Iwanoyko, Sala Czerwona ratusza gdańskiego
78–79; Michalski S., “Gdańsk als auserwählte Christengemeinschaft”, in Dyczek-Gwiżdż
A., Ars auro prior: Festschrift zur Ehren von Jan Bialostocki (Warsaw: 1981) 514.
Figure 20.5 Monika Biel, “Visualization of the Red Hall” (2018)
council. According to Hoburg, it was located directly below the highest oval:
The Fall of Jericho.20 (The illustration of the room reconstruction [Fig. 20.5]
shows the view exactly from this perspective.)
Thus, the archival record establishes de facto the fundamental findings
of the present investigation. First, this observer’s point of view is taken by
the recipient even without knowledge of this source and directly provided by
the programme in the observer function. Second, the implicit beholder of the
central painting is the president of the council, the same addressee named by
Hoburg.21 Since this position was filled annually, the contents of the ceiling
decoration were not aimed at a specific person but directly at the most im-
portant function. From this position, the central painting – The Apotheosis of
20 See Hoburg, Geschichte und Beschreibung 38.

21 Ibidem.
670 Biel
Gdańsk – established direct contact with every ruling mayor. This was accom-
plished by internal pathways of reception, such as ‘perspective, composition,
and content-related elements such as carriers of identification’.22 This will be
illustrated in more detail below.
4 The Contemplation of the Heavenly Sphere of the Apotheosis
In the centre of The Apotheosis of Gdańsk [Fig. 20.6] is an oversized trium-

phal arch, depicting a model of the city, which is slightly staggered in depth.
It is a replica of Gdańsk. From the clouds, under the Tetragrammaton, a hand
seizes the spire of the town hall, on which sits a large white bird with its wings
spread. The inscriptio ‘Ista servat sub his alis’ (This preserves/protects under
these wings) surrounds this scenery. The triumphal arch itself is also equipped
with motti: the phrase ‘His fulcris’ (Through these columns) is written on the
archivolt, and the two prefixed Corinthian columns feature the words ‘cordato
consilio’ (unanimous advice) and ‘aequo iure’ (the same right). A rainbow can
be seen behind it, which is additionally emphasized by the inscriptio ‘Coelesti
iungimur arcu’ (the celestial arch connects us). The background is formed by a
watery landscape, which stretches to the horizon. An avenue crosses through
its centre, and a fountain and sailboat, visible through the archway, are floating
on the sea. The lower foreground, directly in front of the so-called Arthur Court
(Artushof), which at that time was the seat of the court of the elders, and the
Neptune fountain in front of it presents a genrelike scene of Gdańsk’s urban
life. The painting can generally be divided into two spheres: a heavenly or alle-
gorical sphere above and an earthly or real sphere below. This division extends
to the entire longitudinal axis and consequentially to the two oval images: the
first above The Fall of Jericho and the other below Ceres, Neptune, and Mercury,
which symbolizes the trade relations of Gdańsk.
As one can see from the short description of the pictures, The Apotheosis
of Gdańsk contains a complex and rich ensemble of allegories and emblems,
which cannot be discussed in their entirety in the context of this contribution.
Therefore the focus here is on the highest and most important emblem in the
celestial sphere of the painting: the replica of the city of Gdańsk [Fig. 20.7]
placed on the triumphal arch and directly above the representation of the City
Hall, above which a bird floats and whose tower is grasped by the hand of God.
22 Kemp, Der Anteil des Betrachters 34.

Figure 20.6 Isaak van den Blocke, Apotheosis of Gdańsk (1604–1608). Oil on canvas,
331 × 237 cm. Gdańsk, Main Town Hall, Red Hall. In the centre of the ceiling programme
Image © Agencja Reklamowo-Wydawnicza A. Grzegorczyk
672 Biel
Figure 20.7 Detail of Fig. 20.6: top
To date, research has assumed that this section allegorises two alliances: on
one hand the union of Gdańsk with the Kingdom of Poland, and on the other
the divine covenant. This derives from the two possible interpretations of the
motto ‘Ista servat sub his alis’.23 Current research provides the following gen-
eral interpretation of The Apotheosis of Gdańsk. The bird with its wings spread
over the town hall is generally interpreted as a white eagle. In one sense it can
be seen as the heraldic animal of the Kingdom of Poland: it can be seen as
a symbol that the Polish king protects the city.24 The bird can also be seen
as the symbol of divine providence in the sense of predestination.25 God’s
hand touching the town hall tower further symbolizes Gdańsk as a chosen
Christian community.26
The question must be posed, however, as to what the recipient sees and
what previous knowledge is expected of the ruling mayor of Gdańsk or the im-
plicit beholder in order to complete the interpretation of the city’s Apotheosis.
23 New insights into Latin translation and corrections in the older research literature were
found in the article Ryś A., “Problemy z antykiem w Sali Czerwonej ratusza Głównego
Miasta”, Rocznik Gdański 66 (2006) 35–61.
24 Tipton, Res publica bene ordinata 250; see also Ryś, “Problemy z antykiem” 57–59.
25 Iwanoyko, Sala Czerwona ratusza gdańskiego 120; Cieślak, Między Rzymem, Wittenbergą a
Genewą 198–199; Kaleciński M., Mity Gdańska: Antyk w publicznej sztuce protestanckiej res
publiki (Gdańsk: 2011) 193.
26 Michalski, “Gdańsk als auserwählte Christengemeinschaft” 514; Kaleciński, Mity Gdańska
193.
Figure 20.8 Isaak van den Blocke, Apotheosis of Gdańsk (1604–1608). Gdańsk, Main Town
Hall, Red Hall. View from the mayor’s seat
From the mayor’s seat [Fig. 20.8], this section of Apotheosis is clearly recog-
nizable owing to its spatial proximity and the convergence of perspective to
create meaning. Certain components of the composition are depicted much
larger than others and therefore demand the viewer’s attention. These are the
three image and two text elements located at the centre of the composition.
Their differences in size and positioning additionally signal a ranking and
unity of content. The hand of God and the motto ‘Ista servat’ are larger than
the hovering bird and the motto ‘sub his allis’, and in the city view of Gdańsk
the town hall building is higher than the Marienkirche (St. Mary’s Church)
and the Stockturm (jail tower). These first indications of pictorial orientation
underline the necessity of a differentiated examination of these elements in
order to make its contents accessible to the viewer.
From this point forward, the beholder must participate in the act of inter-
pretation to apprehend the res significans of the emblem and to read them
meaningfully. The basic prerequisite, however, is foreknowledge of the poten-
tial contents addressed to the educated recipient. The implicit beholder, or
the addressee to whom the programme’s artist has oriented the programme,
was – as the mayor – very familiar with traditional and regional historical
674 Biel
pictorial themes as well as with the most important humanistic writings.27

However, unlike in emblem books, in which the emblem usually communi-
cates via its three components – motto, pictura, and subscriptio – the recipient
can initially only access the motto and the pictura. An important approach that
will be applied here in the following is the Leerstelle (that which is absent)
or Unbestimmtheitsstelle (the point of ambiguity) that Kemp introduces in his
analyses as a fundamental aspect of reception aesthetics.28 Since all missing
parts of a work of art, which are to be supplemented by the viewer, are re-
garded as Leerstellen (that which is absent), this term can also be used for the
present emblems. Here the missing subscriptio is understood in the sense of a
Leerstelle (that which is absent) that the beholder must complete in order to
preserve the overall sense intended by the artist and laid out in the picture.
The visual and textual elements of the emblem release intermedial connec-
tions that, in the form of paraphrases and quotations, refer to other objects
both outside of and within the programme. The manner of representation and
composition are closely related to their presentation.29
4.1 Manus Dei

As already mentioned, the uppermost emblem is depicted much larger than
the rest and therefore easier for the viewer to read: the presence of God is di-
rectly revealed in the clouds by the illuminated tetragram Yahweh [Fig. 20.7].
The strong right hand of God is legitimized as manus dei and is a direct com-
ponent of the inscriptio, by its central position, which the viewer is supposed
to complete. Thus the motto is: ‘This HAND [the word hand is missing here
but is illustrated] preserved or guarded’.30 However, this emblem also contains
another important hint that has until now remained unnoticed by researchers.
In 1556 the top of the actual town hall of Gdańsk was decorated with a figure of
the Polish king Sigismund II August holding Gdańsk’s flag, which is crowed by
a ship [Fig. 20.9].31 In the Apotheosis the ship is the same, but the figure is not
visible. The hand of God covers the king, that is, God holds the monarch in his
27 The position of mayor always arose from the circle of council members who belonged
to the leading academic upper class of Gdańsk society. See Cieślak, Między Rzymem,
Wittenbergą a Genewą 190; Kaleciński, Mity Gdańska 42–44.
28 See Kemp, Kunstwerk und Betrachter 254–255; and idem, Der Betrachter ist im Bild 313–316.
29 See Kemp, Der Anteil des Betrachters 35: The representation here means the form ‘the art-
ist gives to the object in order to establish the relationship between its elements’, and the
presentation means the form ‘the artist gives to the representation in order to establish
the relationship with the beholder’.
30 This reference to the completion of the motto was given by Ryś, Problemy z antykiem
57–59.
31 Hoburg, Geschichte und Beschreibung 10–11.
Figure 20.9 Johann Carl Schultz, “RATHAUS / der Rechtstadt”, etching illustration
to Johann Carl Schultz’s Danzig und seine Bauwerke in malerischen
Original-Radirungen mit geometrischen Details und Text von Johann Carl
Schultz, Prof. und Director an der Provinzial-Kunstschule in Danzig
(Gdańsk: 1855) 10
Image © PAN Biblioteka Gdańska
676 Biel
hand. This gesture does not refer to any particular king but symbolizes a Bible
quotation frequently used in emblematics: ‘The king’s heart is in the hand of
the Lord’ (Proverbs 21:1). The recipient of the allegorical programme familiar
with Gdańsk’s history is thus fully prepared to complete the emblem with the
motif of the absent king and to read it in a meaningful way.
A direct example for the pictura is not known from either printed emblems
or from the Gdańsk area. However, the entire emblematic construct could also
have been based on a written source that was widespread at the time: the fol-
lowing section of the Magnificat:
He hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the
imagination of their hearts.
He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of
low degree.
He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent
empty away.
He hath helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy;
As he spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed for ever.
Luke 1:51–55; King James Version32
The Magnificat became especially popular in the German translation by Martin

Luther, which was dedicated to the elector Johann Friedrich of Saxony in 1521
and was considered a Fürstenspiegel, a ‘mirror for princes’.33 At the beginning
of his dedication letter to the duke, Luther cites the Bible quotation with the
motif of the king in the hand of God and explains it as follows:
For while the hearts of all men are in God’s almighty hand, it is not with-
out reason said of the kings and princes alone, ‘The king’s heart is in the
hand of the Lord: he turneth it whithersoever he will’ (Proverbs 21:1).
Whereby God would instil His fear in the mighty lords and teach them
that all their thoughts and intentions are naught without His special
inspiration.34
32 L uther Bibel 1545, Luke 1:51–55: ‘Er vollbringt mit seinem Arm machtvolle Taten: Er zer-

streut, die im Herzen voll Hochmut sind. Er stürzt die Mächtigen vom Thron und erhöht
die Niedrigen. Die Hungernden beschenkt er mit seinen Gaben und lässt die Reichen leer
ausgehen. Er nimmt sich seines Knechtes Israel an und denkt an sein Erbarmen, das er
unseren Vätern verheißen hat, Abraham und seinen Nachkommen auf ewig’.
33 See Burger C., Marias Lied in Luthers Deutung (Tübingen: 2007) 9, 184–185.
34 Ibidem 23–24: ‘Denn obwohl aller Menschen Herzen in der allmächtigen Hand Gottes
sind, ist’s doch nicht umsonst allein von den Königen und Fürsten gesagt: “Das Herz des
The allegorical programs of northern European town halls of this period

often turned to works like Fürstenspiegel and other treatises on good rule.35
Above all, their purpose was to recall certain royal virtues demanded of the
holders of high office. The emblem’s message to the governing mayor is made
very clear in the reference to the Magnificat. Verse 51 describes that God does
‘powerful deeds’ with his arm, signalling that ‘God exerts his power without
mediation’ and that ‘only faith can understand and recognize this work of God’s
power, his arm’.36 The king’s secular reign is in the hands of God. Only a godly
and wise ruler will be rewarded with his benevolence. The emblem reveals a
further point of reference for this interpretation in terms of content with its
connections within the ceiling programme. For example, the uppermost oval,
The Fall of Jericho, continues the theme of ‘fear of God’ and the ‘power of God’
and explains it to the viewer in an exemplary way.
4.2 The Bird

The avian emblem is located directly under the hand of God and is smaller
than the one above [Fig. 20.9]. The white bird floating behind the town hall
tower stretches its large wings far beyond the town hall building. Its head is
directed to the lower right. This attitude is further emphasized by its long neck.
The motto ‘sub his alis’ is directly related to the pictura: while the word ‘sub’
is separated at the left of the bird, the two words ‘his alis’ are located directly
under its wings. In this way, the beholder can connect the two components and
supplement them with the paraphrased passage from the Bible: ‘He will cover
you with his wings and under his wings you will have hope’ (Psalm 90 [91];
King James Version). The city, symbolized by the town hall, is under supreme
protection: Gdańsk, as a Christian community, flourishes under the ‘wings of
Christ’ and is ‘covered’ and ‘protected’ by them.
This creates a potential ambiguity in the interpretation of the bird: on one
hand, the bird should not be understood in the heraldic sense as the white
Polish eagle but superficially as a religious-political symbol. On the other
hand, its depiction leads to an ambivalent attitude on the part of the beholder
with regard to the genus of the bird and consequently to its classification as
Königs ist in Gottes Hand, der kann es wenden, wohin er will” (Sprüche 21, 1) Damit will
Gott seine Furcht den großen Herren einprägen, dass sie lernen sollen, wie sie gar nichts
denken können, was Gott ihnen nicht auf besondere Weise eingibt’.
35 See Tipton, Res publica bene ordinata 139–140: ‘Die protestantische Regentenliteratur der
Zeit, Traktate und Predigten, stehen deutlich in der Nachfolge Luthers, seiner Auslegung
des sogenannten “Regentenpsalms” (Psalm 101), des Buches Daniel und des Römerbriefs
(Kapitel 13).’
36 Burger, Marias Lied 132–133.
678 Biel
an eagle. The reason for this is both the overall pose and form of the bird and
the reference to Psalm 90 (91):4, which evokes the connotation of protection
rather than predation. It could therefore be a bird other than an eagle, such as
a swan, especially since the swan had an important symbolic meaning during
the Reformation.37
Unlike the crosses and sometimes weathercocks on the spires of Catholic
churches and weather vanes or ships on Protestant Reformed churches, the
swan symbolizes the reformer Martin Luther.38 From the beginning of the sev-
enteenth century, swans were frequently represented in churches, especially
in northern Germany and the Netherlands. Legend has it that the prophecy
of the reformer Johannes Hus (1369–1415), ‘after me a snow-white swan will
come’, was interpreted as being Luther himself, and so the swan became the
symbol of the Lutheran faith.39 From the seventeenth century onwards, nu-
merous portraits were published showing Luther with a swan. The sermon of
the reformer Johannes Bugenhagen, which he delivered at Luther’s funeral in
Wittenberg and which took up precisely this motif, was important for the es-
tablishment and dissemination of this pictorial tradition. This funeral sermon,
first printed in 1546, was widely circulated and probably contributed decisively
to the frequent portrayal of Luther as a swan.40
Luther himself later described the nature of the swan in one of his table
talks (Tischreden) and understood it as a symbol for the church:
I don’t know a more exact image of the church. The Church rests upon
strong feet, so that the power of hell may not overthrow her. She is sur-
rounded by lakes and marshes, that is, she aspires not to earthly domin-
ion. […] She attacks not tyrants, but she repels their assaults by means of
her two powerful wings, the ministry of the Word and fervent prayer.41
37 I would like to thank Prof. Carsten Bach-Nielsen for the reference to the swan (Society
for Emblem Studies Conference, 2017) and Prof. David Graham for the intensive email
exchange (Oct. 2017) regarding the genus of the bird.
38 See Goethe F., “Schwäne als Wetterfahnen auf lutherischen Kirchen in Ostfriesland,
Oldenburg und anderswo”, in Seib G. (ed.), Luther mit dem Schwan: Tod und Verklärung
eines großen Mannes, exh. cat., Lutherhalle Wittenberg (Berlin: 1996) 75–76.
39 Ibidem.
40 See Bugenhagen Johannes, Eine Christliche Predigt uber der Leich und begrebnis, des
Ehrwirdigen D. Martini Luthers (Wittenberg, Pauls Helwig: 1546) 5v.
41 Luther M., D. Martini Lutheri Colloquia: meditationes, consolationes, iudica, sententiae,

narrationes, responsa, facetiae, e codice ms. Bibliothecae orphanotrophei Halensis, cum

perpetua collatione editionis Rebenstockianae edita, et prologenis indicibusque instructa
ab Henrico Ernesto Bindseil …, 3 vols. (Detmold: 1863–1866), vol. 2, 169–170: “Haus scio,
an ulla res propius ad imaginem Ecclesiae accedat, quam haec cygnorum natura. Nam
The church, like the swan, is ‘web-footed’ and stands on solid ground with-
out sinking. For Luther, the two wings symbolize the ministry of the word
and prayer.42 Luther arrives at this conclusion from Aristotle’s description of
the nature of the swan: ‘Aristotle reckons swans among the birds which have
strong web-feet, so as they may dwell about lakes and marshes. […] They do
not attack the eagle, but they successfully defend themselves against his ag-
gressions’.43 Both passages of Luther’s table talks contain important starting
points that can be used to interpret the Gdańsk swan. He uses it in the religious
sense in relation to the Reformed church and also in the political sense as the
nature of the bird.
According to Aristotle, it is not in the nature of the swan to attack the
eagle and argue with it, but in the ‘inevitable defence against the eagle’s in-
justice he emerges as victor’.44 For the government of Gdańsk, the protection
of urban privileges was of key importance. These rights ensured the city of
Gdańsk economic and religious independence from the Kingdom of Poland
and at the same time led to tensions between the city and the crown in their
negotiations.45 If one considers the nature of the swan against this back-
ground, the characteristics of the bird appear to show the ruling mayor the
way and exemplify Gdańsk’s political attitude towards the Kingdom of Poland.
Although the swan is benevolent to the eagle (the heraldic device of the king-
dom of Poland), it will defend itself against the eagle in case of need. Together
with the motto based on Psalm 90 (91):4, the swan can thus serve as a kind of
mirror image for the ruling mayor. The bird’s protective posture reflects both
Ecclesia vere est [greek], nititur in firmo et stabili fundamento, quod ne quidem a portis
inferorum everti potest. Vivit autem circa lacus et paludes, id est, non appetit imperia et
superbos regum aditus, duras sortes expers somni colit. […] Etsi autem Tyrannos nulla
iniuria afficit aut lacessit, tamen freta duabus alis, in quibus praecipuum Ecclesiae robur
est, videlicet, ministerio verbi, et ardenti precatione, hostes cruentos de gradu deijcit”.
For the English translation, see Luther M., The Table Talk of Martin Luther, ed. W. Hazlitt
(London: 1872) 368–369.
42 See Goethe F., “So wurde der Schwan zum Luther-Emblem”, in Seib G. (ed.), Luther mit
dem Schwan: Tod und Verklärung eines großen Mannes, exh. cat., Lutherhalle Wittenberg
(Berlin: 1996) 63–64.
43 Luther, D. Martini Lutheri Colloquia 2, 169–170: ‘Aristoteles de Cygnis. Cygni sunt in nu-

mero earum auium, quae latos et firmos pedes habent, circa lacus et paludes, et uiuunt
circa lacus et paludes. […] Quanquam uero aquilam non lacessunt, nec pugnae initium
faciunt, tamen in defensione necessaria adversus aquilae iniurias victores evadunt’. For
the English translation, see Luther, The Table Talk of Martin Luther 368.
44 Ibidem 169: ‘Quanquam uero aquilam non lacessunt, nec pugnae initium faciunt, tamen
in defensione necessaria adversus aquilae iniurias victores evadunt’.
45 See Curicke, Der Stadt Dantzig historische Beschreibung 76–78; Bartetzky, “Rzeczpospolita
und res publica” 623–628.
680 Biel
the mayor’s duty to care for his community and the protection of the city and
its privileges.
5 Conclusion
Ceiling painting always unfolds in space and places its contextual references
positionally. In the case of the Gdańsk town hall, a structure of communication
unfolds between the ‘artist – artwork – beholder – institution’ that researchers
must take into account when interpreting ceiling programmes.46
The example of the Gdańsk ceiling clearly shows that the artist, the pro-
gramme, the viewer, and the Red Hall should not be understood as isolated
objects of investigation. Quite the opposite: they are interdependent and can
only together reveal the overall context. The presence of the beholder in the
room is critical for the revelation of the secret. This is initially due to external
conditions of access: The beholder must enter the Red Hall in order to make
contact with the ceiling programme. At the beginning of the seventeenth cen-
tury, this was only possible for the members of the council, who thus belonged
to the addressees of the room furnishings. However, Gdańsk’s ceiling program,
or the Apotheosis, is directed at a specific addressee whom the artist consid-
ered and integrated as the implicit beholder (i.e., the governing president of
Gdańsk) during the creative process. The ceiling programme guides the viewer
through the room in a targeted manner in order to take up the position intend-
ed for him and to comprehend, finally, the contents addressed to him.
At the same time, the communicative structure between the ruling presi-
dent and the Apotheosis concentrates on the internal pathways of reception
that are sent directly from the picture to the viewer. The emblems release
intermedial connections to other resources both outside and inside the pro-
gramme through the motto and the pictura. In this sense, the missing subscrip-
tio is understood as a Leerstelle (that which is absent) that has to be completed
by the beholder in order to complete the overall sense intended by the artist
and applied in the image. However, it is incumbent upon the recipient and
his active participation to connect and supplement the information provided
in the allegory with his own knowledge. The ambivalent forms of representa-
tion, such as the king in the hand of God and the white bird, open up a certain
scope of action for the annually changing position holder and addressee in his
interpretation. Ultimately, it rests in the eyes of the beholder whether the king
46 Kemp, Zeitgenössische Kunst und ihre Betrachter 13–15.

should remain hidden in the hand of God and whether the protection of the
city should be under the wing of an eagle or a swan.
Bibliography
Bartetzky A., “Rzeczpospolita und res publica: Danzigs Verhältnis zur polnischen Krone
in seiner städtischen Selbstdarstellung, 1585–1626”, in Beckmann S. – Garber K.
(eds.), Kulturgeschichte Preußens königlich polnischen Anteils in der Frühen Neuzeit
(Tübingen: 2005) 609–635.
Biel M., “Das emblematische Deckenprogramm (1604–1608) von Isaak van de
Blocke im Roten Saal des Danziger Rathauses: Das Zusammenspiel der komposi-
torischen Elemente im Gesamtkomplex und der Einfluss des reformatorischen
Gedankenguts – ein neues Zuordnungsschema”, in Höpel I. – Olof Larsson L. (eds.),
Emblematik im Ostseeraum (Kiel: 2016) 111–123.
Bugenhagen Johannes, Eine Christliche Predigt uber der Leich und begrebnis, des
Ehrwirdigen D. Martini Luthers (Wittenberg, Pauls Helwig: 1546).
Burger C., Marias Lied in Luthers Deutung (Tübingen: 2007).
Cieślak E. – Biernat C., Dzieje Gdańska (Gdańsk: 1987).
Cieślak K., Między Rzymem, Wittenbergą a Genewą (Wrocław: 2000).
Curicke Georg Reinhold, Der Stadt Dantzig historische Beschreibung, worinnen von dero
Uhrsprung, Situation, Regierungs-Art, geführten Kriegen, Religions- und Kirchen-
Wesen aussführlich gehandelt wird (Amsterdam – Dantzig, Johan und Gillis Janssons
von Waesberge: 1687).
Goethe F., “Schwäne als Wetterfahnen auf lutherischen Kirchen in Ostfriesland,
Oldenburg und anderswo”, in Seib G. (ed.), Luther mit dem Schwan: Tod und
Verklärung eines großen Mannes, exh. cat., Lutherhalle Wittenberg (Berlin: 1996)
70–79.
Goethe F., “So wurde der Schwan zum Luther-Emblem”, in Seib G. (ed.), Luther mit dem
Schwan: Tod und Verklärung eines großen Mannes, exh. cat., Lutherhalle Wittenberg
(Berlin: 1996) 62–65.
Hoburg K., Geschichte und Beschreibung des Rathauses der Rechtsstadt Danzig (Gdańsk:
1857).
Iser W., Der implizite Leser (Munich: 1972).
Iwanoyko E., Apoteoza Gdańska (Gdańsk: 1976).
Iwanoyko E., Sala Czerwona ratusza gdańskiego (Wroclaw: 1986).
Kaleciński M., Mity Gdańska: Antyk w publicznej sztuce protestanckiej res publiki
(Gdańsk: 2011).
Kemp W., Der Anteil des Betrachters: Rezeptionsästhetische Studien zur Malerei des 19.
Jahrhunderts (Munich: 1983).
682 Biel
Kemp W., Der Betrachter ist im Bild, Kunstwissenschaft und Rezeptionsästhetik (Cologne:
1985).
Kemp W., “Kunstwerk und Betrachter: Der Rezeptionsästhetische Ansatz”, in Belting H.
(ed.), Kunstgeschichte eine Einführung (Berlin: 1988) 247–265.
Link H., Rezeptionsforschung: Eine Einführung in Methoden und Probleme (Stuttgart:
1976).
Luther M., D. Martini Lutheri Colloquia: meditationes, consolationes, iudica, sententiae,
narrationes, responsa, facetiae, e codice ms. Bibliothecae orphanotrophei Halensis,
cum perpetua collatione editionis Rebenstockianae edita, et prologenis indicibusque
instructa ab Henrico Ernesto Bindseil …, 3 vols. (Detmold: 1863–66) vol. 2.
Luther M., The Table Talk of Martin Luther, ed. W. Hazlitt (London: 1872).
Michalski S., “Gdańsk als auserwählte Christengemeinschaft”, in Dyczek-Gwiżdż A.,
Ars auro prior: Festschrift zur Ehren von Jan Bialostocki (Warsaw: 1981) 509–516.
Ryś A., “Problemy z antykiem w Sali Czerwonej ratusza Głównego Miasta”, Rocznik
Gdański 66 (2006) 35–61.
Tipton S., Res publica bene ordinata: Regentenspiegel und Bilder vom guten Regiment.
Rathausdekorationen in der Frühen Neuzeit (Hildesheim – Zurich – New York: 1996).
chapter 21
Convents, Condottieri, and Compulsive Gamblers:

Hands-On Secrets of Lorenzo Spirito’s Libro
Was everyone playing by the book in the Renaissance? While the book of for-
tune or lottery book (Libro delle Sorti; Lossbuch) is relatively well known in
Italian and German literature, fewer discussions of the secret specifics of its
daily use have been published in English.1 It achieved incredible popularity,
which would have been impossible had the book not attracted both male and
female audiences. These books were interactive parlour games that titillated
and amused, offered a gambling surrogate through the use of dice, and includ-
ed several elaborate steps intentionally to delay the gratification of the final
answer, whether fortunate or unfortunate. By looking at various printings and
physical evidence in several Renaissance editions of Lorenzo Spirito’s Libro
delle Sorti (or Libro della Fortuna) from Chicago’s Newberry Library, this article
will demonstrate the longstanding, international fascination of these books to
players of both genders.
1 Female Audiences: Convivial Convents
Before discussing the intricacies of Spirito, another text should set the stage
for a broader understanding of both the public and the secretive, private au-
diences for games and gaming manuals in the Renaissance. An idiosyncratic
manual first published in Bologna in 1551, this was the rather immodestly titled
Cento giuochi liberali et d’ingegno, or One Hundred Liberal and Ingenious Games
1 Most recently published on the topic is Kelly J.L., “Predictive Play: Wheels of Fortune
in the Early Modern Lottery Book”, in Levy A. (ed.), Playthings in Early Modernity: Party
Games, Word Games, Mind Games (Kalamazoo: 2017) 145–166; and previously, her disserta-
tion, Renaissance Futures: Chance, Prediction, and Play in Northern European Visual Culture,
c. 1480–1550 (University of California, Berkeley, 2011). Also see Palmer A.L., “Lorenzo ‘Spirito’
Gualtieri’s Libro delle Sorti in Renaissance Perugia”, Sixteenth Century Journal 47.3 (2016) 557–
578; and Karr Schmidt S., Interactive and Sculptural Printmaking in the Renaissance (Leiden –
Boston: 2017).

684 Karr Schmidt
[Fig. 21.1].2 Self-described Bolognese nobleman Innocenzio Ringhieri (d. 1570s)

dedicated the book to Catherine de Medici, the Queen of France, and the sub-
sequent 1553 and 1580 editions, issued by different publishers, all maintained
the dedication without alteration.3 Although she remained Queen, in the slim-
mer French 1555 translation of fifty of the hundred games, the dedicatee was
summarily changed to Princess Marguerite de Bourbon, Duchesse de Nevers,
while the publisher pleaded in-text with Catherine’s spouse Henri II for a
printing privilege.4 There was at least one precedent for this ostentatious dedi-
cation of a game book to a female member of the nobility, although it may well
have been unknown to Ringhieri. This is a German loose adaptation of Spirito,
published in 1546, which is also dedicated, perhaps without her knowledge
or consent, to Queen Anna of Bohemia and Hungary, and will be discussed
further below [Fig. 21.14)]. For Ringhieri, the best-known female enthusiast of
games of chance may have been Isabella d’Este, who used a fistful of lottery
slips as one of her imprese, and surrounded herself with this device, incorpo-
rating it into mythological paintings and inlaid panels.5
Even more curious than his attempt to court female patronage, is Ringhieri’s
dedication of his book to more than one prominent woman. He addressed all
100 separate games to unnamed women bearing various superlative descrip-
tions: most adventurous, amorous, benevolent, eloquent, gracious, noble, rare,
et cetera, often combining several epithets at once. While Bologna offered
more social freedom than Florence, Rome, or Venice, dedicating an entire
2 Many thanks to Rebecca Carnevali for bringing this book to my attention in her article:
Carnevali R., “Iconographies and Material Culture of Illustrated Cheap Print from Post-
Tridentine Bologna”, in Rospocher M. – Salman J. – Salmi H. (eds.), Crossing Borders,
Crossing Cultures. Popular Print in Europe (1450–1900), Studies in Early Modern and
Contemporary European History (Berlin, 2019).
3 Ringhieri Innocenzio, Cento Givochi Liberali et D’Ingegno, Novellamente da M. Innocentio

Ringhieri Gentilhuomo Bolgnefe ritrouvati, & in dieci Libri defcritti (Bologna, Anselmo
Giaccarelli: 1551); idem, Cento Givochi Liberali et D’Ingegno, Nvovamente da M. Innocentio
Ringhieri Gentil’huomo Bolgnefe ritrvovati, & in dieci Libri defcritti (Venice, Bonelli: 1553); and
idem, Cento Givochi Liberali et D’Ingegno, Ritrouvati Novellamente da M. Innocentio Ringhieri
gentilhuomo Bolgnefei, & in dieci Libri defcritti. Nouamenti pofti in luce per honesto tratteni-
mento de’fpiriti gentilis. (Bologna, Giouanni Rofsi: 1580).
4 There is a French (partial) translation by Hubert-Philippe de Villiers: Villiers, H.-P. de,
Cinqvante Ievs Divers d’Honnete Entretien, indvstrievsement inuentes par Meand surrousser
Innocent Rhinghier, gentilhomme Boloignoys. Et Fais Francoys par Hubert Philippe de Villiers.
(Lyon, Charles Pesnot: 1555). Printed ‘Auec Priuilege du Roy’, it was reprinted in 1558 and 1565.
5 Mumford Ivy L., “Some Decorative Aspects of the Imprese of Isabella d’Este,” Italian Studies
34 (1979): 60–70.
Convents, Condottieri, and Compulsive Gamblers 685
Figure 21.1 Hand-written lottery slip, and ownership inscription on title page, from
Innocenzio Ringhieri, Cento giuochi liberali et d’ingegno […] (Bologna,
Anselmo Giaccarelli: 1551)
Newberry Library, Chicago [Case V 16 .747] (Images: author)
686 Karr Schmidt
book of games to women still makes an extraordinary statement.6 Though the

secret answers to fortune-telling questions in Spirito’s text could be applicable
to men or women, the latter are often an afterthought. Here in Ringhieri’s book,
however, men inhabit an equal, if not subservient category, as in a scheme with
lottery slips deposited in two vases (“Gioco della Sorti”, LI). All the names were
held in one, with male and female virtues in the other. To keep the male vir-
tues from being plucked by the women, the handwritten lottery slips were sup-
posed to be tied with a distinctly coloured ribbon.7
Ringhieri refers to the female players of both his Fate and Fortune games as
‘aventurosa’ or adventurous, suggesting these are again the closest to gambling.
While the book does not mention the dice-based Spirito text explicitly, either
in its “Sorte”, “Fortuna”, or even “tres Dadi” sections, its title and introduction
do make a careful distinction between games for the ‘ingenious’ and gambling.
The section on dice games in particular balances them very carefully, and sug-
gests that the following section, on chess, might offer a slightly more appropri-
ate pastime.
The Newberry copy of the 1551 Ringhieri offers additional evidence due to its
early, perhaps earliest, provenance. The frontispiece includes ownership nota-
tion reading ‘Ad Usum Dmñi Clementis de Prato’. This annotation tantalizingly
suggests the volume was inscribed for the use of the newly-founded convent
of San Clemente of Prato (1518), which educated middle-class lay women and
illegitimate daughters of the wealthy, as well as housing nuns.8 While there
are no other internal annotations, a slip of paper that, like the inscription, ap-
pears to contain sixteenth-century handwriting, is still secreted inside the gut-
ter [Fig. 21.1]. Though difficult to read, the numbers 2 and 24 flanking the words
‘ruberor(?) Ronchin’ likely refer to an unknown player of one of Ringhieri’s
100 games, although seemingly not 36, (dell’Hortolano), in the middle of which
it was deposited. (That game requires no names to be written down or select-
ed.) From the hand-drawn line at the top, it appears that the bit of paper was
taken from a sheet ruled to make a number of lottery slips, as demanded by
several games throughout the book.
Although the writer has not yet been identified through her family name,
Ronchin, the book may have been played secretly by a woman who was part
of the convent. Elissa Weaver, among other authors, has studied the role of
drama and musical productions by and for nuns (as well as monks). Still,
6 M urphy C.P., Lavinia Fontana: A Painter and Her Patrons in Sixteenth-Century Bologna (New
Haven: 2003).
7 Many thanks to Isabella Magni for her help in interpreting the Ringhieri text.
8 Strocchia S.T., Nuns and Nunneries in Renaissance Florence (Baltimore: 2009) 199.
parlour games mentioning, or worse, actually involving the opposite sex, were
hardly part of a convent education. But at San Clemente, Ringhieri’s book still
seems to have found its users. The fact that someone at the convent, founded a
mere 23 years earlier, added Ringhieri’s first edition to its fledgling library, and
tantalizingly inscribed it as for the use of the convent itself, suggests it offered
a substantial amount of mild entertainment of a not-too-sacrilegious nature.
Quarto-sized and unassuming, perhaps it arrived, hot-off-the-press, with one
of the transient residents (or was brought to her by visitors), who donated it to
the library once a suitable marriage had been arranged, and she could afford to
buy the newest edition.
2 Male Audiences: Condottieri or Courtiers?
While Ringhieri’s Cento giuochi went into at least two additional printings and
one partial translation, it was Lorenzo Spirito’s book with only a single type of
game that was an unquestionable hit throughout Europe. Bestselling since it
first appeared as a commissioned manuscript and a printed volume in Perugia
in 1482, Spirito’s Libro delle sorti, or Book of Fate, was an interactive tome waiting
to reveal the reader’s secrets [Fig. 21.2].9 Poised somewhere between a moral-
izing emblem book and a game of dice aimed at male, female, and even mixed
audiences, it was translated into many languages and resplendently illustrated
into the seventeenth century. The Newberry Library possesses printed editions
in Dutch, French, and German, and an Italian manuscript variant [Figs. 21.4–
21.7]. There are important visual and verbal variations between these editions,
and they exhibit subtly changing game structures. Yet they converge in their
ultimate goal of at long last divulging the hidden knowledge these tempting
volumes concealed. The book’s fifty printed editions appeared in Italy between
1482 and 1557, and in France, Germany, and the Netherlands into the late seven-
teenth century.10 English, Spanish, and, rarely, Polish examples are also known,
all adhering more or less closely to the first Italian incunable with its densely
illustrated woodcut pages showing the questions, the subsequent dice rolls,
and a set of sequential authorities to interpret them [Figs. 21.2–21.3]. The re-
mainder of this article will demonstrate the similarities among the four Spirito
variants at the Newberry, show some examples of how to use these books, and
9 Rosenstock A., Das Losbuch des Lorenzo Spirito von 1482: Eine Spurensuche, Veröffentli-
chungen der Stadtbibliothek Ulm 23 (Weisshorn: 2010).
10 Zollinger M., Bibliographie der Spielbücher des 15. bis 18 . Jahrhunderts: Erster Band: 1473–
1700. (Stuttgart: 1996) 197–267.
688 Karr Schmidt
Figure 21.2 Wheel of Fortune and facing page with Kings David, Salomon, Turno, and
Jubba, from Lorenzo Spirito, Libro delle Sorti (Perugia, Stephanus Arndes
Gerardus Thomae, and Paulus Mechter: 1482)
Stadtbibliothek Ulm (Schad 13 281) 1v–2 (Images: Creative
Commons)
Figure 21.3 Leone dice and Montone sphere pages, from Lorenzo Spirito, Libro delle sorti
(Perugia, Stephanus Arndes, Gerardus Thomae, and Paulus Mechter: 1482)
Stadtbibliothek Ulm (Schad 13 281) 11v and 18v (Images: Creative
Commons)
end with a look at the very personalized and material ways in which some
readers used them to uncover the secrets of their future.
2.1 From Manuscript to Printed Sorti

Games like Twenty Questions are still being played, although few would have
asked Spirito if something was bigger than a breadbox. All of the related
books contain at least twenty questions, and start with the same one: ‘Will I
be happy’? It was first posed in the 1482 edition printed in Perugia that is now
known in only one copy. There it is phrased ‘Will a life be happy or stolen’?
The other nineteen questions involve affairs of the heart, family, business, and
warfare: ‘Will I vanquish my enemy’?; ‘Will I succeed in my endeavour’?; ‘Will I
heal from my illness’?; ‘Should I build a house’?; ‘Will someone be a good hus-
band or wife’?; ‘Will it be a boy or a girl’? Most curiously, the last question in
the early Italian version is the ambiguous ‘Will a thought have an effect’? One
might interpret this as a particularly secretive way to answer a private ques-
tion without stating that question aloud, i.e., ‘Will what I am thinking come
to pass’? As these books often include gender-specific answers, here a mixed
audience is strongly implied. Depending on that audience, readers might have
felt the need for their true desires to remain shielded. But by leaving this ques-
tion so open-ended, one could privately ask the book virtually anything, even
in public.
Allison Lee Palmer has convincingly discussed some of the reasons for the
international success of these eternal questions through her research on the
commissioning of the Spirito manuscript, now in the Biblioteca Nazionale
Marziano.11 She paints a picture of Lorenzo Gualtieri, called Spirito, who lived
from 1426–1496, as a quattrocento writer and condottiere, or soldier of fortune.
He aimed for a Dantesque or Petrarchan poetic style, but settled for a less eru-
dite, but no less popular, blockbuster text. His nickname comes from his ap-
parently sparkling wit in a developing genre of Renaissance games and jokes.
Spirito’s likely manuscript patron, from a prominent family of condottieri in his
native Perugia, was Braccio Baglioni, whose family and famous uncle, Braccio
Fortebraccio, or Braccio da Montone (Braccio the Ram), would influence sev-
eral aspects of the publication. As a result, the astrological spheres of influ-
ence of the 1482 printing, as well as many editions that followed, include Aries
and Capricorno, but also Montone [Figs. 21.3 & 21.13]. While the French version
features Mouton and Capricorne, and the Dutch Aries and Capricornus, no
subsequent edition retains all three.
11 See Palmer, “Lorenzo ‘Spirito’ Gualtieri’s Libro delle Sorti” 557–578.

690 Karr Schmidt
While sortilegia and games of chance using dice – or choosing a passage at

random from Virgil or the Bible – had been practiced since antiquity, Spirito
was innovative in publishing a hybrid volume that in fact required dice.
Although many of the books survive in only a single copy, as does the Ulm
Stadtsbibliothek 1482 first edition, with some 50 editions in total, they remain
much more plentiful than later manuscript copies. The manuscripts are known
in only a handful of surviving Italian examples from the seventeenth century,
all of which were likely based on sixteenth-century printings.
Spirito’s original manuscript includes a Wheel of Fortune that has effectively
been recreated for the first surviving printed edition. Not a title page per se, it
is printed on the verso of the prologue. Four classical kings are depicted on the
facing page at the right, the first of twenty [Fig. 21.2]. Three Renaissance-era
would-be kings cling to the Wheel opposite, which turns clockwise. One falling
from favour consoles himself by saying, ‘I have ruled’; the one hanging upside
down with loose hair laments, ‘I have no kingdom’, and the courtier climbing
on the top left ambitiously states, ‘I will rule’. Variations on this image recur
into the seventeenth-century editions, placing emphasis on the classical idea
of the fickleness of Fate.
While the Wheel of Fortune became a common feature of the Spirito text,
where it was often used as a frontispiece, the 1482 printed edition also estab-
lished its normal gameplay. The book required five steps for the player to prog-
ress from the initial question to the final answer. First, the reader picks one of
the twenty questions surrounding the precarious Wheel of Fortune, and sec-
ond, consults one of twenty rulers (specified by the question) on the following
pages. The king’s subsequent advice moves the reader through the remaining
three sections. The third stage also comprises twenty pages, each showing all
the possible results of rolling three dice, and the path for each result, which
brings the reader to the fourth section, ruled by another twenty astrological
spheres of influence. Following one of the mystic rivers in the centre of the
correct sphere is the next step in the quest for the ever-evasive answer. It fi-
nally arrives in the fifth and last section of moralizing answers from twenty
patriarchs and prophets.
2.2 Secrets of the Newberry Spiritos

Several versions of Spirito’s text have accumulated over the years at the
Newberry Library, though none are incunables. The library’s recently-acquired
copy of a sixteenth-century German Lossbuch, or lottery book based on Spirito,
is a unique copy that raises more questions than it answers [Fig. 21.4]. Printed
German dice books are nearly contemporary with the Italian ones, going back
Figure 21.4 Heinrich Vogtherr the Elder, front and back of Wheel of Fortune woodcut,
with movable dial replaced by later engravings, from Pambst Paulus, Looßbuch
zu ehren der römischen, vngerischen vnnd böhemischen Künigin (Strasbourg,
Balthasar Beck: 1546) fol. 3r–v
Newberry Library, Chicago [Case folio BF1850 .P36 1546]
(Images: author)
to 1483, though usually smaller than the Spirito.12 This one, however, is on the
same grand scale. A mysterious and suspiciously alliterative Premonstratensian
priest named Paulus Pambst published this augmented German translation
of the Libro della ventura in Strassburg in 1546, replete with dozens of wood-
cuts, some of which are by Heinrich Vogtherr the Elder. While ‘Werd ich
Gluck haben’? or ‘Will I be happy’? still appears at the top, the artist sneaks
in a twenty-first banderole to the left of the uppermost king, which allows the
reader to ask about their astrological sign: ‘What planet was I born under?’ As
a result, the artist is free to sequester all the astrological imagery near the an-
swers at the end of the book, rather than interspersing the woodcuts with the
dice and sphere of influence pages as the other editions do. But as in the 1482
12 Zollinger, Bibliographie der Spielbücher 197–267. For more on the German variation on
Spirito, see Karr Schmidt, Interactive and Sculptural Printmaking, chapter 11.
692 Karr Schmidt
Figure 21.5
Wheel of Fortune, from Laurens
L’Esprit, Le passetemps de la fortvne
des dez. Ingenieusement compilé par
Maistre Laurens L’Esprit […] (Lyon,
Par les heritiers de F. Didier, 1582)
fol. A2r
Newberry Library, Chicago
[Wing ZP 539 .D556] (Image:
author)
Spirito, the kings continue to grasp madly at the Wheel, and the lowest one
loses his crown in the process. A fairly standard interpretation of the Wheel of
Fortune, it originally had one more moralizing and interactive twist, as will be
discussed below.
The French translation of Spirito was first published in 1490, but this seem-
ingly unique copy of the 1582 edition, entitled Le Passetemps de la fortune des
dez, the Pastime of the Fortune of Dice, still retains the initial translator Anthitus
Faure’s take on Spirito (here called Laurens L’Esprit) [Fig. 21.5]. Visual changes
from the Italian incunable include an aquatic Lady Fortune within a cross-like
opening, in mid sail rather than on a wheel. The questions, their prominent loca-
tion, and the structure of the book, however, remain constant.
The third book, the 1608 T boec van der auōnturenende van tijt cortīge, van
versinnen may be the first Dutch translation of Spirito [Fig. 21.6]. It initially
appeared in 1606, decorated with Fortune’s Wheel, but relegated the questions
to the next page to make way for the title in red.13 The kings, ever desperately
13 Zollinger, Bibliographie der Spielbücher no. 498, 239, lists the Newberry copy as unique,
though notes that there are 1650 and 1661 Rotterdam copies.
Figure 21.6 Wheel of Fortune title page, from

Laurenzo del Spirito, T boec van der auōturenende van
tijt cortīge, van versinnen (Antwerp, J. van Ghele: 1608)
fol. Air
Newberry Library, Chicago [Wing ZP 646
.G345] (Image: author)
holding the Wheel, wear slightly updated clothing. Fortune’s gown is halved
in black and white, making for a dramatic, heraldic effect. This book is bound
with another very rare text partially dedicated to the topic of Fortune, which
was published in Rotterdam slightly later.
The final Newberry Spirito is a seventeenth-century Italian manuscript that
entirely avoids the decorative title page and image of the Wheel of Fortune
[Fig. 21.7]. Instead it quotes from the prologue that this ‘Libro delle sorte’ was
‘Fatto per spasso,’ or ‘done for fun’. The three dice sketched in ink below the title
refer back to the functionality of the text, which would indeed offer little fun
without them. More heavily illustrated pages further into the manuscript suggest
that the copyist was looking at a sixteenth-century edition of the book. As these
appeared in Italy no later than 1557, the creation of a hand-written and drawn
manuscript perhaps a century later represents an unusual choice.
694 Karr Schmidt
Figure 21.7 Title page, from manuscript of Lorenzo Spirito, Libro delle
sorte fatto per spasso (Italy, n.p.: ca. 1600s)
Newberry Library, Chicago [VAULT Case MS 5A 27]
np (Image: Newberry)
2.3 Adapting Spirito for International Audiences

Revealing the secrets of the way Spirito’s text was used and adapted to multiple
audiences may help explain his continuing popularity. After choosing a ques-
tion on the first page of the French 1582 edition, one would receive the name
of an ancient French king who lived between 430 and 1006 AD [Fig. 21.5]. On
the next page, Charlemagne, or Charles, is the most famous among the twen-
ty options [Fig. 21.8]. Opposite appears the first page of dice roll outcomes,
surrounding the royal Fleur-de-Lis. The French Spirito is unique in using the
theme of flowers for this sequence of pages, though the dice chart is laid out
Figure 21.8 Kings page and Fleur-de-Lis dice page, from Laurens L’Esprit, Le passetemps
de la fortvne des dez. Ingenieusement compilé par Maistre Laurens L’Esprit […]
(Lyon, Par les heritiers de F. Didier: 1582) fols. A4v–B1r
Newberry Library, Chicago [Wing ZP 539 .D556] (Image: author)
as in Italian editions. After rolling three dice, or one die thrice, the reader finds
the corresponding combinations on the page, then and moves on to the twenty
spheres of influence section. In this case, the final sphere, Sagitaire, abuts the
first prophet, Adam [Fig. 21.9]. The dice pages provide the name of a mysti-
cal river, and locating that name on the Sagitaire sphere supplies the name of
the prophet and verse at the very end that contains the answer to the original
question. With the outcome ultimately depending on the roll of the dice, users
would have a truly randomized experience, even if they tried to cheat the sys-
tem by repeatedly attempting to answer the same question.
As the depictions of the Wheel of Fortune interrelate closely, so too does
the structure of each book. Indeed, they offer a relatively standardized format,
and operate similarly. For the German version of Spirito, the extra question
about planetary influence adds slightly to the overall length, but it is the exten-
sive use of narrative woodcuts and the extra paragraphs of text interspersed
throughout the book that make it 56 pages longer than the 1482 Spirito. By
contrast, the Newberry’s Italian manuscript has the fewest illustrations, copy-
ing a sixteenth-century source as it does. Although the kings are reduced
to squares of text, and no vignettes depict the prophets at the end, the dice
and the spheres pages integral to the book’s function remain. Adding to the
696 Karr Schmidt
Figure 21.9 Sagitaire sphere and prophet Adam, from Laurens L’Esprit, Le passetemps de la
fortvne des dez. Ingenieusement compilé par Maistre Laurens L’Esprit […] (Lyon,
Par les heritiers de F. Didier: 1582) fols. F4v–G1r
Newberry Library, Chicago [Wing ZP 539 .D556] (Image: author)
manuscript’s visual appeal, they have also been lavishly and illusionistically
painted in delicate grisaille.
The French and the Dutch versions of Spirito are closer in length and for-
mat, offering portrait heads of the kings at the beginning (oval for the French
kings, round or rectangular for the Dutch). They differ from the German ver-
sion with its fuller sense of the back story laid out in each square woodcut. The
Dutch spheres have become more angular, and decorative type is used in lieu
of an elaborate woodcut border, but the same attention has been paid to the
detail of the dice and to the astrological ‘squares of influence’, here rendered
more as rectangles than as circles.
The alternately round and rectangular portraits of kings in the Dutch version
then lead into a varying set of figures with the normal array of dice [Fig. 21.10].
Unlike the bed of French flowers, the Dutch approach to illustrating the dice
pages is to depict a scattering of months, with a September sower and a cat
actively grooming itself. Other months are interspersed with farm animals like
oxen, donkeys, dogs, geese, and even a fox. These subjects seem to originate in
manuscript calendar details found in medieval Books of Hours. The gendered
aspects of play are described in detail, opposite the first sphere of influence,
capped with a portrait of a man and a woman. At the end, the roundels that are
Figure 21.10 September and de Katte, dice pages, from Laurenzo del Spirito, T boec van der
auōturenende van tijt cortīge, van versinnen (Antwerp, By J. van Ghele: 1608)
fols. Avr-Aviv
Newberry Library, Chicago [Wing ZP 646 .G345] (Image: author)
reused for the kings and the prophets have the implicit feel of game pieces as
well, solid when held in one’s palm.
2.4 Shaping Printed Dice

Yet dice are the main playthings here, with their relatively objectionable con-
nection to gambling for money [Fig. 21.7]. Most dice would have been carved
of lightly-coloured bone or ivory, but of the works at the Newberry, white dice
are only depicted in the manuscript. Drawing in the dots (or pips) on paper in
this way is simplest [Fig. 21.3]. But in woodcut the most straightforward method
is to cut white dots into black squares; cutting away the woodblock matrix to
depict black pips on a white ground is far more laborious [Fig. 21.3]. Rendering
them that way requires cutting around the raised dots, and leaving each of the
white squares housing them with a fragile woodcut border. Whereas the 1482
Spirito does make the effort to carve out all the matrices with white dice con-
taining black pips, most sixteenth-century copies take the production shortcut
and invert them [Fig. 21.11]. None of these editions appear to reuse woodblock
dice or cast metal ones as movable type. Instead, the dice and sphere pages usu-
ally consist of one or more woodblocks with hollowed-out space to position
698 Karr Schmidt
Figure 21.11 Heinrich Vogtherr the Elder, Kings Salathief and Zorobabel, dice pages,
böhemischen Künigin (Strassbourg, Balthasar Beck: 1546) fols. 42v–43r
Newberry Library, Chicago [Case folio BF1850 .P36] (Image:
author)
the central images and the letterpress around the dice, or inside the compart-
ments of the spherical dials [Fig. 21.10].
The Dutch edition varies the order of each group of three dice horizontally,
but the vertical order of the dice in their respective grids remains nearly the
same in all four Newberry books. This suggests that maintaining the order of
the answers was almost as important as cleaving closely to Spirito’s original
text. Perhaps this was because the publishers wished to replicate the original
ease of finding specific combinations on the page. The dice grid is indeed laid
out very similarly in the Italian manuscript, and French and Dutch editions,
with the all three numbers increasing in sequence down each column from 111
to 222, 333, etc. starting in the upper left corner [Figs. 21.8 & 21.10]. The German
edition simply reverses this, and counts up from 111 at the bottom [Fig. 21.11].
One final change in this Loossbuch added a run of doubles at the end of the last
page of dice rolls. It offers a more restricted, gendered group of answers for an
intrepid female astrologer. The customary 56 distinct rolls using three dice ap-
pear on every other page, which leads to the same total of 56 answers. On the
contrary, on the astrology page, female users could only employ the answers
linked to the twenty-one distinct rolls achievable with two dice. This limitation
was considered hardly problematic by the author, for, as the text notes, ‘Two
dice will be enough for her’.
2.5 Clues in Manuscript

Although the Newberry Spirito manuscript does not offer separate answers for
women, it is personalized by users in other ways. It is one of at least three
surviving seventeenth-century Italian manuscripts after Spirito that have been
recently in the trade, one other of which is more densely illustrated in the style
of Stefano della Bella. Considering that it would have required significant ef-
fort to make a copy a century or more after the last Italian edition was printed
in 1557, the existence of these hand-drawn variants is fascinating. It seems to
have been so for its owners as well. There is visible proof of the way at least
one user interacted with the Newberry manuscript. One has to work backward
from the smudged final page to figure out what the original question was. But
though many of the lower-right hand corners were dirtied by use, there is no
doubt that the last query on the page was the one most consulted [Fig. 21.12].
As mentioned earlier, this open-ended query, ‘Whether my thought will have
an effect’, could cover a lot of ground, and do so in absolute secrecy. And due to
this anonymity, the book will never reveal exactly what its users were hiding.
It is quite clear, however, that they thumbed the question on the first page
thoroughly, and left black marks by their preferred answer at the end. Here is
how the process to get from one to the other might have gone. After deciding
to consult the book with a mixed group of readers, one of them chooses the
‘thought’ question [Fig. 21.12]. Following its instructions, he or she then pro-
ceeds to the box for King Ninus, an amalgam of ancient Assyrian kings. Ninus,
or here Nino, then sends the unknown reader to the sign of Leone, the lion
[Fig. 21.13]. At this point, dice are needed, and a roll of a four, a five, and a six
offer the next step, leading to the Sphere of Montone (Ram), specifically to the
river of Valenso. There the sphere assigns the reader a patriarch (in the case
of this question, that patriarch is Isaiah), and a verse number, 48, to complete
their quest. The river just above, matching a three, five, and six roll, would also
send the reader to the sphere of Montone, but would then veer off in an entire-
ly different direction to the Nilo (Nile) river, and another final answer under
Jacob [Fig. 21.12]. While the page with the Jacob answer bears comparatively
little evidence of use, the one that runs through the Valenso river appears well
traversed, as the deeply ingrained dirt in the nearby margins indicates. The
answer to the question about the unnamed thought, finally, is ‘You will have
700 Karr Schmidt
Figure 21.12 Question and Answer details, from manuscript of Lorenzo Spirito, Libro delle
sorte fatto per spasso (Italy, n.p.: ca. 1600s) n.p
Newberry Library, Chicago [VAULT Case MS 5A 27] (Images:
Newberry)
Figure 21.13 Leone dice and Montone sphere pages, from manuscript of Lorenzo Spirito,
Libro delle sorte fatto per spasso (Italy, n.p.: ca. 1600s) n.p.
Newberry Library, Chicago [VAULT Case MS 5A 27]
(Images: Newberry)
good favour and help, so much that your thought will end well, and will have
happened according to your will.’
But what if the reader’s hand slipped and rolled that three instead of a four?
That verse would then cast doubt on the enterprise, whatever it might be:
‘Don’t wait for your thought to succeed, because the fruit of your tree is stolen,
you won’t need it anymore, though it re-grows.’14 Both these answers to the
most complicated question come through the sphere of Montone. As noted
earlier, there were up to three different rams in the 1482 edition commissioned
by Braccio Baglione, and at least two of the three in subsequent editions.
The seventeenth-century manuscript includes only Capricorn, and Montone
[Fig. 21.13]. The memory of the most famous Braccio, Braccio da Montone, ap-
pears to be alive and well in this edition, but also in Perugia proper as a famous
condottiere. He was also the subject of a modern-day board game that speaks
to the continued fame of his military exploits.15 The fact that his name came
from his place of origin, Montone, a small area very near Perugia, also empha-
sizes the localizing subtext of the Spirito illustrations. Without explicitly men-
tioning the condottieri family, they nonetheless remained an integrated part of
the book well into the seventeenth century. This edition was not the only one
produced in an attempt to curry favour, however, and the charms of Spirito’s
text would continue to appeal well past the Renaissance.
3 Gambling Away the Hungarian Empire
The full title of the German lottery book is the Lottery Book in Honour of the
Roman, Hungarian, and Bohemian Queen. Queen Anna, the wife of the later
Emperor Ferdinand, may never have seen the 1546 book, though she is purport-
edly shown receiving it in a small woodcut opposite the prologue [Fig. 21.14].
The owner of at least one polyhedral sundial, she perhaps tried her hand at the
astrological question number twenty one to reconfirm her birth planet and
resulting characteristics. Even more suggestive of the work’s important place
in Hungarian history and literature is the later provenance of the Newberry
volume. Sold as a duplicate from the Hungarian library system in the 1950s or
14 Many thanks to Isabella Magni for helping me work through the ambiguous wording,
both for this text and the Ringhieri.
15 Braccio da Montone has been the subject of several twentieth-century card and board
games, including an eponymous board game issued by Acies Edizione http://www
.aciesedizioni.it/Giochi/braccio-eng.htm) and a card game called Fortebraccio designed
by Andrea Sfiligoi of Ganesha Games (http://www.ganeshagames.net/product_info.
php?products_id=306&).
702 Karr Schmidt
Figure 21.14 Heinrich Vogtherr the Elder, title and dedication pages, from Paulus Pambst
Loossbuch zu ehren der römischen, vngerischen vnnd böhemischen Künigin
(Strassbourg, Balthasar Beck: 1546) fols. 1r & 2r
Newberry Library, Chicago [Case folio BF1850 .P36 1546]
(Images: author)
60s, it was previously owned by Ferenc Kazinczy (1759–1831), the most impor-
tant eighteenth-early nineteenth-century poet, literary critic, and Magyar lan-
guage champion of Hungary. According to István Margócsy of Eötvös Loránd
University, ‘even though his mathematician friends warned him, he believed
in the chance of winning the lottery, and played it frequently’16 [Fig. 21.14].
Perhaps this very book offered an alternative to his obsession with the public
lottery, a hobby which he discussed with friends in published letters.17 Though
perhaps an enthused collector, Kazinczy may not have been responsible for
the most curious personalization of his copy of the book, an alteration more
likely to have been carried out before he acquired it [Fig. 21.15]. In most copies
16 Cited in email correspondence with Daniel Margócsy, 06/17/17. For biography in English,
see Reményi, Joseph, “Ferenc Kazinczy, Hungarian Critic and Neologist (1759–1831)”, The
Slavonic and East European Review 29, 72 (1950) 233–243.
17 Letter of Ferenc Kazinczy to Mihály Dulházy (30 June, 1825), 362; F.K. to Count József
Dessewfy (2 July, 1825), 363, in: Váczy, J., ed. Kazinczy Ferenc levelezése, 19. (Budapest:
Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, 1909).
Figure 21.15 Heinrich Vogtherr the Elder, details of Wheel of Fortune (Fig. 21.4) and
Aegidius Saedeler II, engraved title page, from Oswald Crollius, Osvaldi
Crollii Veterani Hassi Basilica Chymica (Frankfurt, Ulrich Bollinger: 1609;
reprint ed., 1611)
Bayerisches Staatsbibliothek, Munich (4 Alch. 17)
(Images: author and Public Domain [EUROPEANA COLLECTIONS])
of the book, as in the one in the Bayerisches Staatsbibliothek, Munich, there

is a double-sided volvelle attached to a core placed in a hole cut through the
page to help users select their initial question and start the journey toward the
answer [Fig. 21.16] It is variously inserted, but the Christ Child is supposed to be
on the recto, the Angel on the verso. Some copies, such as one at Bibliothèque
nationale et universitaire, Strasbourg, have nothing there, possibly due to rough
play, or the dial may have been removed by a user frustrated with their fate.
The Newberry copy, however, has something else present [Fig. 21.15]. On the
recto, a small engraved sunburst with a tetragrammaton and a disembodied
banderole have been nestled into the hole to align with the decorative details
on the rarely-uncovered woodcut border. On the verso, a large engraved roun-
del diagram on alchemy slides seamlessly into a group of concentric circles. A
backlit view shows that the roundel and the sunburst are separate slips of en-
graving pasted in back-to back, with a shadowed rhomboid shape around the
704 Karr Schmidt
Figure 21.16 Heinrich Vogtherr the Elder, Wheel of Fortune recto and verso dials,
böhemischen Künigin (Strassbourg, Balthasar Beck: 1546) fol. 3r–v
Bayerisches Staatsbibliothek, Munich (ESlg/2 Gymn. 31 m)
Images © Public Domain (Europeana Collections)
hole in the page. The backward ‘de’ in the roundel is off-printing from the oppo-
site page, having likely occurred when the volvelle was changed. Considering
the astrological nature of question twenty one, the thematic choice of repair
material is not entirely surprising. But where did it come from? A reverse
Google Images source furnished a little more information about the roun-
del, leading to the 1609 title page by Aegidius Saedler II of Oswald Crollius’s
Basilica Chymica, which was reused in several subsequent editions. Also appar-
ent was the fact that the tiny sunburst on the left of the diagram matches the
recto engraving exactly as well. An early owner clearly had a leftover copy of
the title-page of the Crollius book and used it very cleverly to patch the lottery
book. This is not to say that playing the game would have been impaired by the
lack of the dial; the questions on the recto are numbered, allowing the viewer
to confirm whether their path to enlightenment is the right one. The idea of
a movable (or in this case, removable) volvelle dial to mimic the movement
of the Wheel of Fortune is one that would continue to prove appealing into
the seventeenth century. Whether Ferenc Kazinczy noticed the lacking part
remains unknown, and no other annotations are present in the book, which
later came to the Hungarian National Library, from which it was deaccessioned
in the 1960s.
4 Soldiers of Fortune
While Pambst’s Loossbuch Wheel of Fortune features an eternal cycle of

German kings, there is no implied judgment on whether any of them deserves
to stay on top of the world. Bound at the beginning of the composite volume
containing the Dutch 1608 Spirito translation, there is another book with a
striking title-page woodcut, this one explicitly contrasting good and bad for-
tune [Fig. 21.17].18 Not only will things either go well or poorly, one may be
quite literally showered with gold, or showered with turds. There is no middle
ground. The soldier of fortune volvelle in the following opening (on the title
page verso) represents a more personal and astrological Wheel of Fortune than
the one commenting on the downfall of kings. Yet its placement so near the
frontispiece speaks volumes.19 The figure’s ostentatious and slightly puffy dress
resembles that of the German Landsknechte, mercenary soldiers first assem-
bled by the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian, Ferdinand’s predecessor and
grandfather. While it may not be as moralizing as the Christ Child and Angel
now missing from the Newberry Loossbuch, this ever-moving figure eloquent-
ly revisits the role of Spirito and Braccio da Montone’s peripatetic condot-
tiere. With his successful campaigns and perseverance in regaining his home,
Braccio da Montone was the spiritual precursor to this little soldier of fortune.
And as the inspiration for Spirito’s Libro della ventura, Braccio demonstrated
18 The Newberry’s 1610 copy of this rare book, Thuys d fortunē met het huys der doot, is in
much better condition than other survivors, and is bound with the Dutch translation
of Spirito. Another copy of Thuys d fortunē is discussed in this Koninklijke Bibliotheek
blogpost mainly about the complete Rotterdam Erasmus Centre copy: https://www.kb.nl/
themas/gedrukte-boeken-tot-1800/lustich-om-melancolie-te-verdrijven-het-huys-der-
fortunen. The Rotterdam copy has a dial, but like the Newberry copy, it is stuck in place.
Another reference to the Thuys appears in Vervliet H.d.L. (ed.), Post-Incunabula and Their
Publishers in the Low Countries: A Selection Based on Wouter Nijhoff’s L’Art typographique
Published in Commemoration of the 125th anniversary of Martinus Nijhoff on January I, 1978
(Boston: 1978) 198–199.
Most copies are now incomplete (1518, Plantin Moretus, R 47.1 (lacks title page);
ca. 1531, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, KB KW 227 E 55, also cited in Vervliet; ca. 1540 or later,
Koninklijke Bibliotheek, KW 234 M 14 (missing several gatherings); 1606, Rotterdam,
Gemeentebibliotheek, 22 F 49; 1610 Newberry Wing ZP 646 .G345; 1611, Den Haag, KB 767
C 50 (lacks title page)).
19 Kelly, Renaissance Futures, 60–63.
706 Karr Schmidt
Figure 21.17 Woodcut title page and verso with mercenary soldier volvelle, from Thuys d
fortunē met het huys der doot (Rotterdam, By de weduwe ende de kinderen van
Jan van Ghelen: 1610)
Newberry Library, Chicago [Wing ZP 646 .G345] (Images: author)
the need for playfulness as well as decisive action. The fact that these books
proved equally irresistible to nuns and their charges in sixteenth-century
Bologna, and literary gamblers in eighteenth-century Hungary, demonstrates
both the creativity and the longevity of Spirito’s books. Anyone literate in
Italy, England, France, Germany, Poland, and Spain might have encountered
his proto-‘Choose Your Own Adventure,’ and in looking to a book rather than
the stars, could have taken action toward realizing their most closely-guarded
thoughts, and deepest secrets.
Selected Bibliography
Carnevali R., “Iconographies and Material Culture of Illustrated Cheap Print from
Post-Tridentine Bologna”, in Rospocher M. – Salman J. – Salmi H. (eds.), Crossing
Borders, Crossing Cultures. Popular Print in Europe (1450–1900), Studies in Early
Modern and Contemporary European History, (Berlin: 2019).
Crane T.F., Italian Social Customs of the Sixteenth Century and their Influence on the
Literatures of Europe (New Haven: 1920).
Karr S., “Constructions Both Sacred and Profane: Serpents, Angels and Pointing Fingers
in Renaissance Books with Moving Parts”, Yale University Library Gazette 78.3–4
(2004) 101–127.
Karr Schmidt S., Interactive and Sculptural Printmaking in the Renaissance (Leiden –
Boston: 2017).
Kelly J.L., “Predictive Play: Wheels of Fortune in the Early Modern Lottery Book”, in
Levy A. (ed.), Playthings in Early Modernity: Party Games, Word Games, Mind Games
(Kalamazoo: 2017) 145–166.
Kelly J.L., Renaissance Futures: Chance, Prediction, and Play in Northern European Visual
Culture, c. 1480–1550 (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley: 2011).
Palmer A.L., “Lorenzo ‘Spirito’ Gualtieri’s Libro delle Sorti in Renaissance Perugia”,
Sixteenth Century Journal 47.3 (2016) 557–578.
Pambst Paulus, Loossbuch zu ehren der römischen, vngerischen vnnd böhemischen
Künigin (Strassbourg, Balthasar Beck: 1546).
Ringhieri Innocenzio, Cento giuochi liberali et d’ingegno da M. Innocentio Ringhieri
gentilhumo Bolognese ritrouati in dieci libri descritti (Bologna, Anselmo Giaccarelli:
1551 – Venice, Giovan Maria Bonelli: 1553 – Bologna, Giouanni Rofsi: 1580).
Rosenstock A., Das Losbuch des Lorenzo Spirito von 1482: Eine Spurensuche. Veröffentli-
chungen der Stadtbibliothek Ulm 23 (Weisshorn: 2010).
Spirito Lorenzo Gualtieri, Libro delle sorti (Perugia, Stephanus Arndes, Gerardus
Thomae, and Paulus Mechter: 1482).
Spirito Lorenzo Gualtieri, Le passetemps de la fortvne des dez. Ingenieusement compilé
par Maistre Laurens L’Esprit […] (Lyon, Par les heritiers de F. Didier: 1582).
Spirito Lorenzo Gualtieri, T boec van der auōturenende van tijt cortīge, van versinnen
(Antwerp, By J. van Ghele: 1608).
Spirito Lorenzo Gualtieri, Libro delle sorte fatto per spasso (Italy, n.p.: ca. 1600s).
Thuys d fortunē met het huys der doot (Rotterdam, By de weduwe ende de kinderen van
Jan van Ghelen: 1610).
Weaver E., Convent Theatre in Early Modern Italy: Spiritual Fun and Learning for Women,
Cambridge Studies in Italian History and Culture (Cambridge: 2002).
Zollinger M., Bibliographie der Spielbücher des 15. bis 18. Jahrhunderts: Erster Band: 1473–
1700 (Stuttgart: 1996).
Zollinger M., “Giocare il libro. I libri delle ‘Sorti’ nell’editoria dei secoli XV–XVIII”, in
idem, Studi per le “sorti” gioco, immagini, poesia oracolare a Venezia nel Cinquecento
(Rome: 2007) 175–187.
chapter 22
Secrecy and the Understanding of Small Things

in Early Modern Italy
Bret L. Rothstein
What can I say? Ostentation and occultation intertwine in ways that are
not just complex, not just interpersonal, but contradictory – or at least
counterintuitive – as well. Consider, for instance, an episode that took place a
few years ago. I ran into a friend who was helping to judge a puzzle design com-
petition. This person asked me what I thought of a particularly clever entry,
a pretty wooden box with an ingenious locking mechanism. I loved that box
and I had solved it, so the question was exciting. Here was an eminent figure
in the subculture of enigmatology, or mechanical puzzles, asking my opinion.
In response, I did what any self-respecting art historian would. I launched
into a focused, argument-driven account of the puzzle. I praised its materials,
I admired how the maker had deployed them, and I waxed poetic about the
ingenuity of that mechanism. It was a beautiful moment, the humanist dem-
onstrating how he and a mathematician could occupy a shared position in the
knowledge hierarchy of their subculture. My interlocutor’s response could not
have been more devastating. His eyes narrowed, his expression went flat, and
he shook his head slowly, pityingly, from side to side. It turns out that, for puz-
zlers, the first rule of talking knowledgably about solutions is ‘you do not talk
about solutions’.1
In this essay, I would like to discuss what seems to be one possible origin for
that rule: an instructively low-level and elementary sort of secrecy that can also
tell us something useful about knowledge production in early modern Italy.
Between the fifteenth and the eighteenth centuries, Europe entertained vari-
ous sorts of occultation. One thinks, for instance, not only of matters of state
but also of daily life, from topics religious to those economic.2 Likewise, voca-
tions often depended on the ability to keep one’s mouth shut about technical
1 Or, to be more precise, you do not talk about solutions until you have verified that your inter-
locutor has already solved the puzzle in question.
2 Jütte D., The Age of Secrecy: Jews, Christians, and the Economy of Secrets, 1400–1800 (New
Haven: 2015).

Secrecy and the Understanding of Small Things 709
questions, workshop practices, and the like.3 Whether economic, professional,

political, or confessional, all of these circumstances involve at least an element
of competition. Accordingly, all engage with what economists would call ‘sub-
stitutable strategies’, or approaches to a problem that are designed to supplant
or displace those of a rival. Such strategies belong to so-called non-cooperative
games, and as a result the importance of secrecy makes an intuitive kind of
sense. But what of cooperative games and other shared endeavors, which gen-
erally rely on complementary strategies, or approaches that are meant to be
mutually reinforcing?4 What possible place could secrecy have in that sort of
context? My contention is that there was (and in many ways still is) a construc-
tive sort of secrecy, a form of occultation not meant to separate the elect from
hoi polloi or to vanquish a rival, but rather to advance understanding and more
firmly knit people into a given community. The dynamic at work was not one
of hiding information in order to preserve a competitive edge or safeguard a
vulnerable community. It was, rather, a dynamic of hiding information specifi-
cally in order to convey it as fully and durably as possible by requiring that one
actively produce, not merely receive, knowledge.
1 Some Useful Technical Terms
The subculture of enigmatology is relatively new, having coalesced as such only

in the past 150 years or so, but it has deep historical roots. Those roots occa-
sionally intersect with the history of art and its aesthetic entanglements. Often
as not, though, they run in directions that have little to do with the opinions
of Vasari or van Mander, let alone Hegel or Lessing. As a result, any attempt
to trace those roots necessitates bringing into play concepts and thus terms
that may be unfamiliar to some readers. It might therefore be worth clarifying
a couple of points before we proceed to discuss the social and ethical life of
minor secrets in early modern Italy. First off, I take as my focus a small group
of perceptual challenges that pose a logical or logistical question in material
form – what we now call mechanical puzzles. Readers may be familiar with
some of these, such as jigsaw puzzles or the Rubik’s Cube. But objects of this
3 L ong P., Openness, Secrecy, Authorship. Technical Arts and the Culture of Knowledge from
Antiquity to the Renaissance (Baltimore: 2001).
4 For a good overview of complementary and substitutable strategies, see Camerer C.F. –
Fehr E., “When Does ‘Economic Man’ Dominate Social Behavior?”, Science 311.5757 (2006)
47–52.
710 Rothstein
sort boast rich and lengthy histories from Antiquity onward.5 In early mod-
ern Europe, such objects turn up remarkably often. One finds, for instance,
evidence of so-called ‘impossible objects’, or items the construction of which
defied common sense, cropping up with at least some frequency in courtly
contexts.6 And in other realms, we also find examples of both polyhedral dis-
sections and, of more immediate relevance, topological puzzles or ‘disentan-
glement’ problems. Examples of the latter tend to involve segments of wire or
string that one must separate from each other or from other objects such as
sticks, rings, beads, or blocks.
Second, although I speak of interpretation in this essay, this is not to
imply that mechanical puzzles are art, in some absolute sense of that term,
or even that they possess the same interpretive depth as painting, prints,
sculptures, manuscripts, or tapestries. Rather, it is to suggest that puzzles
cultivate behaviors that are interpretive, if in a degenerate (in the sense of
radically simple) and peculiar way.7 The character of enigmatological inter-
pretation should become legible soon enough. For now, it is worth saying a
bit more about the peculiarity of how we experience a mechanical puzzle.
That experience differs markedly from the sorts associated with more famil-
iar forms of visual and material expression. People who faced an early mod-
ern mechanical puzzle found themselves in a situation where eyes, ears,
hands, and mind all converged on that object, which often could metamor-
phose in response. One such object, now commonly called the Chinese Rings
[Fig. 22.3] affords us the opportunity to perform certain kinds of actions, the
most plausible of which involve trying to free a slender shuttle from the rings
with which it is intertwined. That is to say, it scans as something we should
pick up, handle, and perhaps try to take apart.8 Consequently, the early mod-
ern person who grappled with this challenge was not merely an observer or
viewer. Neither were they a reader or even a performer. Their engagement
with the object was directly physical and involved a process not of extracting
5 One thinks, for instance, of the Ostomachion, a planar dissection of the square associated
with Archimedes.
6 On puzzles and the disruption of common sense, see Rothstein B.L., The Shape of Difficulty: A
Fan Letter to Unruly Objects (University Park: 2019), esp. chapter 1.
7 For more on ‘degenerate’ forms of interpretation, see ibid., chapter 5.
8 My argument about how objects constrain interpretation draws on, among oth-
ers, Henare A. – Holbraad M. – Wastell S., “Introduction: Thinking through Things”, in
Henare A. – Holbraad M. – Wastell S. Thinking through Things: Theorising Artefacts Ethno-
graphically (London – New York: 2007), esp. 3–7; and, more generally, Hodder I., Entangled:
An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things (London: 2012), which ex-
pands on the argument of Thomas N., Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture, and
Colonialism in the Pacific (Cambridge, MA: 1991).
or decoding textual content but of active physical interaction with an object

that conformed to some kind of perceptible, if not immediately comprehen-
sible, order.9 Furthermore, attempts to solve any mechanical puzzle tend to in-
volve consciousness narrowing down to an almost pinpoint focus, as one tries
to wrestle expectation and the obstreperous object into conformity.10 Thus, the
early modern experience of a mechanical puzzle would have been by and large
inwardly directed, even when others were present. A different term of art is in
order if we are to describe this person in an informative manner.
But what term to use? The answer lies in the intellectual labor that solving a
puzzle involves. For the early modern individual, no less than for the contem-
porary one, that labor pertained to a problem they initially could not count
on solving, since there were (and still are) very few sure things in cultures of
puzzling. It is easy enough to pick up or, as my crude copies presumably dem-
onstrate, even to make the challenges at issue in this essay. It is, however, not
always so easy to solve them, at least not right away. To pick up such an object is
thus to express a hope, however faint, that you might meet its challenge. With
this in mind, I will therefore refer to the would-be solver of a puzzle using a
term first deployed by a nineteenth-century puzzle historian who wrote under
the pen name of ‘Professor Hoffmann’. Specifically, I will refer to that person as
an aspirant, forever contending with and seeking to understand the concepts
at issue in a given challenge, but never assured of success.11
This term is more than just a technical nicety. It also makes legible the sorts
of effort, emotional as well as intellectual, that a puzzle would have triggered
in the Renaissance no less than it does now. The early modern aspirants I
have in mind were young boys, and struggling was just something they had
to do before anything like interpretive success could be theirs. It seems only
9 Cf. the sorts of engagement discussed by Galloway A., Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic
Culture (Minneapolis: 2006), e.g., 3–4 and 95.
10 The idea of conformitas I have in mind here comes from Falkenburg R.L., “The Household
of the Soul: Conformity in the Merode Triptych”, in Ainsworth M.W. (ed.), Early
Netherlandish Painting at the Crossroads: A Critical Look at Current Methodologies (New
York – New Haven: 2001) 2–17. As shall become apparently shortly, however, while the
conformity of a depicted figure or object or scene is, in Falkenburg’s essay, a kind of idea
awaiting discernment, in the case of a mechanical puzzle it is an entity at which one ar-
rives only with combined physical and mental labor. One might solve a puzzle and there-
by internalize its relationship to the order of creation, but doing so would have required
considerable effort, both to operate the puzzle and to understand how best to do so. To
put it another way, conformity would never have been a given with Pacioli’s puzzles, but
rather the seemingly elusive object of dedicated pursuit.
11 Lewis A.J. (‘Professor Hoffmann’), Puzzles Old and New (London: 1893).
712 Rothstein
reasonable to foreground that struggle, since it depended on a cluster of little

secrets that would have been dangled just out of intellectual reach.
2 The Problem
Sometime around 1500, the polymath Luca Pacioli dictated a treatise he called
De Viribus Quantitatis, or ‘On the Powers of Numbers’. Pacioli is perhaps most
widely known for inventing double-entry bookkeeping and for his remarks
on proportion, but this relatively obscure text can teach us a great deal about
an early modern ethics of cooperative or amicable secrecy, from its torments
and its pleasures to its uses and abuses.12 The first section of the book lays out
roughly 130 numerical games, algebraic challenges, and logic problems. Pacioli
explains, for instance, how to correctly identify the shares of a pile of coins two
people have divided in private.13 Elsewhere, he discusses a problem called De
3 mariti et 3 mogli gelosi (‘Of Three Husbands and the Three Jealous Wives’),
in which three couples arrive at a river, which they must cross by means of a
boat that can carry only two of them at a time.14 The aspirant must figure out
how to shift all six from one bank to the other within the constraints set by the
so-called jealousy of the wives, which restricts how we can group these indi-
viduals. This section of the book also includes several polyhedral dissections
as well as a number of mechanical puzzles, three of which form the core of
my essay.
The first of these puzzles is now known as the Wedding Vows or Solomon’s
Seal puzzle. In this puzzle, the aspirant faces two objects (usually rings or
beads), one on each of two loops that are anchored to a small wooden block.
The loops are formed from a single piece of string that is anchored to the block
at each of its ends [Fig. 22.1]. The aspirant’s task is to move one of those ob-
jects so that it shares a loop with its neighbor without detaching the string
from its two anchor points. Recognizing the trickiness of such a task, Pacioli
12 For more on Pacioli, see Taylor R.E., No Royal Road. Luca Pacioli and His Times (Chapel
Hill: 1942); and Taylor R.E., “Luca Pacioli”, in Littleton A.C. – Yamey B.S., Studies in the
History of Accounting (Homewood, IL: 1956) 175–184.
13 Pacioli L., De Viribus Quantitatis, ed. M. Garlaschi Peirani with A. Marinoni (Milan: 1997)

25–26.
14 Pacioli, De Viribus Quantitatis 146. This edition has its flaws, and though none is fatal, in-

terested readers without access to the library of the University of Bologna are advised to
consult the facsimile of generously provided online by Dario Uri (http://www.uriland.it/
matematica/DeViribus/Presentazione.html). Unless otherwise specified, all translations
in this essay are my own.
Figure 22.1 Unknown inventor, Untitled disentanglement problem also known as

Solomon’s Seal. Reconstructed from the description in Luca Pacioli,
De Viribus Quantitatis (ca. 1500). Nylon cord, brass rings, and pine,
3.81 × 8.80 × 1.8 cm (wood block)
Image © the author
714 Rothstein
engages in an exhaustive description of how to solve this puzzle, his account

proving as dull and ostensive as the challenge is interesting and, in its way,
occult. Indeed, Pacioli spares no effort in his attempt to describe the puzzle’s
surprisingly elegant behavior. But then he does something peculiar. Having ac-
counted fully for the mechanics of the puzzle, he declares ‘ma el precedente con
questo se vogliano far coperti, aciò li costanti facilmente non aprendano, peroché
la cosa tanto sia bella quanto sia occulta: divulgata non dilecta’. (‘But the pre-
ceding [explanation] should be concealed so that [youths] do not easily learn
the constants [i.e., the rules governing the puzzle], because the thing is more
beautiful the more it is hidden; revealed it does not delight’).15 In other words,
Pacioli gives away the solution to the Solomon’s Seal puzzle and then tells his
reader not to give away the solution. One might reasonably wonder why.
Though sometimes reasonably described as the first recreational mathe-
matics text, De Viribus Quantitatis was laid out first and foremost as a pedagog-
ical guide.16 Pacioli was addressing an audience of teachers, and the problems
he provided were essentially lesson plans, albeit for lessons that might apply
in circumstances that combined elements of both work and play.17 Thus, he
modeled his text on libri d’abbaci, or abacus books, named for the European
accounting instrument for which they were meant to help train young boys.18
The training pertained not to the instrument itself, but rather to the rudimen-
tary arithmetic one needed to comprehend in order to employ it. Books of this
sort tend to follow the same basic format, laying out each mathematical prob-
lem as if part of a conversation between teacher and pupil – Truovami uno
numero…. (‘Find a number for me….’) – and then plowing through a detailed
explanation of the method involved.19
Though its strong mathematical bent and this explanatory strategy demon-
strate a kind of shared intellectual lineage, De Viribus Quantitatis departs from
its pedagogical counterparts in an important way. Libri d’abbaci rarely if ever
segregate solutions from problems. The historian of mathematics Warren van
Egmond once attributed this characteristic to an expectation that the reader,
15 Pacioli, De Viribus Quantitatis 284.

16 Singmaster D., “De Viribus Quantitatis by Luca Pacioli: The First Recreational Mathematics
Book”, in Demaine E.D. – Demaine M.L. – Rodgers T. (eds.), A Lifetime of Puzzles. Honoring
Martin Gardner (Natick: 2008) 77–122.
17 On the difficulty of distinguishing among these interests in Pacioli’s text, see Rothstein
B.L., “Early Modern Play: Three Perspectives”, Renaissance Quarterly 71.3 (2018) 1043–1045.
18 See, among others, Egmond W. van, The Commercial Revolution and the Beginnings of
Western Mathematics in Renaissance Florence, 1300–1500, Ph.D. dissertation (Indiana
University: 1976); and Høyrup J., Jacopo da Firenze’s Tractatus Algorismi and Early Italian
Abbacus Culture, Science Networks: Historical Studies, 34 (Basel – Boston – Berlin: 2000).
19 Van Egmond, Commercial Revolution, e.g., 193–194; 231–232.
who was also the instructor, would set the problem and then wait for proposed
solutions before trotting out his own for purposes of either correction or verifi-
cation. The impulse to secrete answers, van Egmond has suggested elsewhere,
developed later and largely in response to the increasing prevalence of private
reading, combined with a growing tendency to approach texts in a recreational
rather than educational manner.20 Pacioli’s request suggests a different mo-
tive, though, one driven less by an interest in best instructional practices than
by an inchoate ethics of secrecy. Such is the novelty, or at least peculiarity, of
that ethics that it merited special attention and explanation.
Now, some may question my decision to attribute the call for secrecy to an
ethics, at least in the context of pedagogy. By definition, an interpretive com-
munity depends on shared responses, without which it will cease to be a com-
munity at all. Keeping secrets from aspiring constituents seems, at least on
first examination, antithetical to the long-term survival of a group. But not all
knowledge hierarchies dedicate themselves to exclusion. Indeed, the promise
of mobility within a given hierarchy is what lends that hierarchy meaning.
Education is, in principle, a case in point. It does involve a degree of selection,
for want of a better term, which supposedly serves to match students with the
subjects and venues for which they are best suited. But education relies above
all on the notion that to teach someone something is to afford them the chance
to migrate within a knowledge hierarchy. The question, then, is how best to
propel someone, what is the most effective way to initiate that migration?
3 The Promise of Frustration
In the context of De Viribus Quantitatis, the strategic withholding of informa-

tion was important for the health of an interpretive community, which Pacioli’s
text was laid out expressly to help train. The knowledge hierarchy Pacioli had in
mind depended on occultation, but not because it traded in dangerous or even
esoteric knowledge. On the contrary, abbacus schools and the texts associated
with them purveyed a fairly rudimentary skill set, one primarily arithmetical
and largely rote. (De Viribus Quantitatis presumes a set of students who had, at
the very least, completed abbacus training.) As a result, the knowledge at issue
was just about the furthest thing possible from matters truly and robustly oc-
cult. And yet, where someone might feel compelled to help his pupils along –
especially where such highly legible tasks were involved – tradition seems to
20 Egmond W. van, Practical Mathematics in the Italian Renaissance: A Catalogue of Italian

Abbacus Manuscripts and Printed Books to 1600 (Florence: 1980) 17–18.

716 Rothstein
Figure 22.2 Unknown inventor, Untitled disentanglement problem also known as the
Victoria puzzle. Reconstructed from the description in Luca Pacioli, De Viribus
Quantitatis (ca. 1500). Nylon cord and cherry plywood, 1.0 × 3.6 × 19.0 cm
(plywood)
Image © the author
have held fast, with instructors setting problems and students struggling to
solve them with little, and late, intervention. Libri d’abbaci were so thoroughly
governed by two centuries of pedagogical tradition that knowing when to hold
your tongue was almost certainly a matter of common sense for the accom-
plished instructor.
Be that as it may, though, puzzles and other sorts of logic problems pre-
sented a different sort of challenge for Pacioli. Not that they were of obviously
great import; on the contrary, they seem to have enjoyed something less than
the highest esteem. Consider Pacioli’s introductory remarks about another dis-
entanglement puzzle, now known as the Victoria [Fig. 22.2]. After stating the
basic challenge set by this design, he remarks that, ‘sonno alcune operationi
facte per dar dilecto alla brigata, quali sonno de grande speculatione’ (‘some op-
erations, which are extremely insightful, are done to give delight (dilecto) to
the group’) before delving into the solution.21 We shall return to insightfulness

in a moment. First, though, it is worth noting that Pacioli has made something
of a concession here. Having discussed geometry and algebra, having gone
through a number of baffling mathematical and logic problems, he feels com-
pelled to defend this puzzle, and well he should. Mechanical puzzles are, one
must admit, trivial. They do not save lives; they do not feed or clothe or care for
people; and they absolutely do not offer edifying narratives or advanced theo-
logical precepts. In the larger scheme of things, then, they seem at best use-
less. That is almost certainly one reason why Pacioli felt compelled to defend
the Victoria puzzle. He was tacitly addressing a commonsensical presumption
about the relative value of a length of cord that has been run through a pair of
objects and tied to a piece of wood solely in order to be run through those ob-
jects and tied to that wood. At the same time, though, the mention of ‘delight’
tells us that he understood how objects, cord, and wood could be bundled to-
gether in such a way as to take on surprising conceptual density.
That density derives at least partly from the fact that puzzles express a rare
combination of insistent materiality with robust difficulty and undeniable in-
tellectual rigor. Objects such as Solomon’s Seal were not just illustrations for
lessons. They instantiated the seemingly mysterious orderliness of creation
itself, an orderliness that seemed obscure but, upon closer inspection, could
prove deceptively conspicuous. Physically simple objects that concealed noth-
ing, the puzzles laid out in De Viribus Quantitatis suggested a particularly ready
sort of interpretability that they simultaneously, and seemingly inexplicably,
confounded. How hard could it possibly be, on the one hand, to move a ring
or a bead from one point to another on a continuous length of string? And
yet, on the other hand, how could an aspirant possibly hope to pass that ring
or bead through a solid block of wood? For the teacher working from Pacioli’s
text, objects such as Solomon’s Seal were direct and unambiguous challenges
that nonetheless would initially rebuff the efforts of an inquisitive youth.
And spare a thought for that youth. An aspirant’s initial efforts to solve a
mechanical puzzle usually produce a peculiar sort of mental conflict. What
one sees (and feels) with these objects is what one gets – a characteristic that
suggests their solutions must be equally obvious. Indeed, the blunt directness
of simple puzzles makes their problems seem like matters of common sense,
since they appear to express what Clifford Geertz called ‘the really important
facts of life [that] lie scattered openly along its surface’.22 Surely anyone who
has held a block of wood or tied a knot or run string through a ring merely
22 Geertz C., “Common Sense as a Cultural System”, Antioch Review 33.1 (1975) 5–26. Cf. the

account provided in Shibutani T., Society and Personality: An Interactionist Approach to

Social Psychology (Englewood Cliffs: 1961) 5–11.
718 Rothstein
knows what such things can and cannot do, just as they know how to breathe
or move around. But what one perceives in such objects can still defy com-
prehension because there is so little to perceive in the first place. Putting an
obvious prompt in the service of a nonobvious operation, puzzles of this sort
take on an air of impossibility, as if the way of the world has somehow gone
awry. Suffice it to say that such a feeling can generate all sorts of questions, not
to mention frustration. Herein lies part of the reason that Pacioli must urge
his readers to keep their own counsel: failing to solve a puzzle is frustrating,
but so is watching someone fail when you know the solution. Who among us
would not be tempted to help the student struggling with an especially thorny
problem that is so near to hand?
4 Counterintuitive Informational Generosity
Whatever hopes a sixteenth-century youth might have had, Pacioli seems to

have been hell-bent on crushing them. De Viribus Quantitatis repeatedly trots
out puzzles and tasks that are by Pacioli’s own reckoning tough nuts to crack.
Take, for instance, a puzzle now called the Chinese Rings [Fig. 22.3]. The chal-
lenge here is, he notes, ‘cavare et mettere una strenghetta salda in alquanti an-
elli saldi: difficil caso’ (‘to remove and replace a small bar held by a number of
linked rings’). The mechanics of resolution are entirely linear and predictable,
but they are linear and predictable only once you have sorted their particulars,
and that can be tricky. Pacioli himself knew this, offering an assessment of the
task at hand before he went on to explain the solution. This is, he admits, a dif-
ficil caso, or difficult case.23
At first blush, then, De Viribus Quantitatis seems to treat the aspirant cruelly,
training its readers to present material that Pacioli knew would stump their stu-
dents. But nothing could be further from the truth. As a pedagogical resource,
it was designed to help shape an interpretive community comprising talented
youths (giovini) whose wit could, with a bit of application, presumably make
them productive citizens as well as devout souls.24 That is why, for instance,
De Viribus Quantitatis explains how the problem of the ‘Three Husbands and
the Three Jealous Wives’ can be translated into a mathematical dual, or con-
ceptual equivalent, by substituting letters for individuals and then subjecting

24 Pacioli’s text also offers a number of moralizing passages as well as some that apply more
directly to vocational matters.
Figure 22.3 Unknown inventor, Untitled disentanglement problem also known as the
Chinese Rings. Reconstructed from the description in Luca Pacioli, De
Viribus Quantitatis (ca. 1500). Pine, penny nails, brass rings, copper rod, and a
repurposed jigsaw handle, 1.8 × 10.9 × 4.3 cm (wood block); 2.3 × 26.0 × 2.3 cm
(wire bar and handle)
Image © the author
those letters to a simple combinatorial restriction.25 In so doing, it shows how

a question seemingly about marital harmony or transportation infrastructure
was actually conformable to a simple decision tree – that is to say, a kind of
maze with various branches and dead-ends. There is an important generosity
in lessons of this sort, since becoming adept at such translations would en-
able a youth to navigate superficially complicated circumstances by learning to
perceive their underlying simplicity. Pacioli’s problems and the difficulty they
caused were gifts one had to struggle to receive, and the instructor’s job was to
ensure that that struggle was as productive as possible.
First appearances lie at the heart of the problem, and not for the first time.
Consider, for instance, a joke of sorts that the Limbourg brothers presented to
duke Jean de Berry in 1410 as part of the New Year’s gift exchange. A 1413 inven-
tory subsequently lists the gift as
25 Pacioli, De Viribus Quantitatis 146–148.

720 Rothstein
Item, un livre contrefait d’une pièce de bois paincte en semblance d’un livre,
où il n’a nuls fueillets ne riens escript; convert de veluiau blanc, à deux fer-
mouers d’argent dorez, esmaillez aux armes de Monseigneur….
a book fashioned from a piece of wood painted in the likeness of a book,

though there are neither pages nor anything written [on them]; covered
in white velvet with two gilded silver clasps enameled with the arms of
my lord….26
The Limbourg brothers’ joke turned on the fact that the duke received a bearer
of meaning, though the meaning in question departed from the appearance of
the object itself. Whereas external adornment was supposed to serve an essen-
tially honorific function, it also provided a barometer of one’s wealth and taste.
Well acquainted with this less spiritual side of the manuscript business, the
Limbourgs parodied the relationship between the value systems that attached
to a book’s substance, both literal and metaphorical.
The Limbourg brothers gave their master a gift not of text, not of illumi-
nations, not even primarily of external decoration (which served to set up a
punch-line in the course of providing traditional forms of enjoyment). Rather,
they gave him the gift of surprise, in which a parodic inversion of the custom-
ary text-ornament hierarchy lent the brothers’ handiwork special perceptual
and interpretive weight.27 Later placement of that object in the ducal library
sharpened the experience of interpretive disruption, insofar as it augmented
the non-book’s unreliable appearance with even less reliable context cues –
cues, such as other books, that ironically enhanced the Limbourg brothers’s
hoax by being entirely honest brokers. Indeed, once ensconced in the ducal
library, the non-book must have been even more effective at confounding
expectations by espousing bookish qualities that bore only a cosmetic re-
lationship to fact. Rather than serve more or less transparently as a vehicle
for verbal and pictorial content, it became conceptually dense, a true thing
rather than a mere object.28 Such was the value of the non-book’s difficulty,
such was the success of its thingness, that Jean de Berry chose to amplify
26 Guiffrey J., Inventaires de Jean duc de Berry, vol. 1 (1401–1416) (Paris: 1894), article 994.
On the significance of this object in the context of fifteenth-century gift-exchange, see
Buettner B., “Past Presents: New Year’s Gifts at the Valois Courts, ca. 1400”, Art Bulletin 83.4
(2001), esp. 605, 615–616.
27 Buettner, “Past Presents” 604–609 and 622, note 58.
28 See, for instance, the distinction made by Brown B.C., “Thing Theory”, Critical Inquiry 28.1
(2001) 1–22. Cf. Findlen P (ed.), Early Modern Things: Objects and Their Histories, 1500–1800
(London: 2013).
it by association with his ducal library, where it could work its wily magic on
others. The seemingly useless object could, in its own small way, turn out to
have a certain kind of use.
5 Refining Thought with Small Things
The problems, operations, and objects in De Viribus Quantitatis certainly qual-

ify as what Paula Findlen called ‘jokes of knowledge’.29 But how they qualify
is at least as important as the fact that they do so. Robust puzzle designs fre-
quently demonstrate an almost comedic quality in the interpretive dynamic
they establish. Underlying virtually any good challenge is a strongly counter-
intuitive streak, and that streak is especially important in simple examples,
since these cannot rely on complexity, de-emphasis, or misdirection as defense
mechanisms.30 The parsimony of Solomon’s Seal, the Victoria puzzle, or the
Chinese Rings, for instance, has a power not so much to advance understand-
ing as to defer and to complicate it by appealing to and then undercutting the
illusory certitude of common sense. For the aspirant, the result recalls Cicero’s
suggestion in De oratore that, ‘scitis esse notissimum ridiculi genus, cum aliud
exspectamus, aliud dicitur. Hic nobismet ipsis noster error risum movet’ (‘you
know already that the best-known type of joke is when we expect one thing
and another is said. With this, our own error moves us to laugh’).31 This is,
I suspect, Pacioli’s aim: by barring his readers from breaking the first rule of
solutions, he seeks to disrupt youthful expectation, which by any other name
is a form of nascent common sense.
In this respect, each of Pacioli’s puzzles would have been its own best exam.
Until you can solve it, the Victoria puzzle, Solomon’s Seal, or the Chinese Rings
will remain incontrovertibly unsolved. So long as each bead remains on its
own loop, so long as that shuttle remains knit with those rings, or so long as
that cord remains tied fast around that piece of wood, you have manifestly
not met your goal. More to the point, perhaps, your failure is not static – the
29 Findlen P., “Jokes of Nature and Jokes of Knowledge: The Playfulness of Scientific

Discourse in Early Modern Europe”, Renaissance Quarterly 43.2 (1990) 292–331.

30 On the strategies a puzzle might employ to complicate understanding, see Rothstein
Shape of Difficulty, esp. Chapters 1–4.
31 Cf. the translation in Cicero Marcus Tullius, De Oratore, trans. E.W. Sutton – H. Rackham,
2 vols. (Cambridge, MA: 1942), II, chapter 63: ‘You know already, however, that the most
familiar of these is exemplified when we are expecting to hear a particular phrase,
and something different is uttered. In this case our own mistake even makes us laugh
ourselves’.
722 Rothstein
end product of some fleeting process. Rather, it is durable, insistent even, ac-
companying your every step as you grapple with the puzzle, test a hypothesis,
experience its failure – up close and personally – and then set about trying
again. That is why, after describing the mechanics of solving the Chinese Rings,
Pacioli recommends that his reader have an example on hand. (More on this
in a moment.)
A puzzle’s deceptive gravity – the depth it can reveal upon closer
inspection – seems to have been at least as important, though. The Chinese
Rings, the Victoria puzzle, and Solomon’s Seal all had perceptible intellectual
weight, since they comprised the material expression of underlying principles –
again, that order one could perceive, if not necessarily comprehend.32 Though
manufactured, mechanical puzzles such as these nonetheless conformed to
and expressed the ‘powers of numbers’, which Pacioli tried to demonstrate and
explain in his lengthy discussions of each. Such objects might present difficult
cases, but they are governed by something both greater and simpler. The fact
that they are small, both physically and intellectually, would have lent special
force to their impact, since they concretize in surprisingly modest ways the
measure, and number, and weight of creation (Wisdom 11:21). Such challenges
may have been physically unassuming, but they were intellectually rich.
Accordingly, it seems reasonable to suggest that the reshaping of knowledge
in Pacioli’s circle involved much more than abstraction. To solve any of the
puzzles under consideration in this essay, for instance, is to entangle eyes and
hands in ways that defy easy analytical reduction. Indeed, you cannot merely
see your way clear to a solution, but must instead feel that happen as well.
We may see a possible avenue to solving, say, the Victoria, but our hands will
ultimately confirm whether the cord will allow us to perform the task we had
in mind. Similarly, working through the Chinese Rings may involve a rigorous-
ly mathematical sequence of highly visible moves, but it nonetheless subtly
brings forward aspects of fine-motor function as one moves the shuttle to and
fro, shifts rings relative to that shuttle, and so forth.33 Far from a mere observer
or viewer, the aspirant quite literally grapples with the challenges Pacioli has
set, with the embodied character of understanding rendered unambiguous.
32 This is so, even if Pacioli himself could not quite grasp the full extent of that order. One
has to look to the eighteenth century and Leonhard Euler for the topological substance of
these puzzles to begin making proper mathematical sense.
33 On the mathematics governing the Chinese Rings, see Afriat S.N., The Ring of Linked Rings
(London: 1982).
Accordingly, the early modern aspirant’s multiple failures and the frustra-
tion they must have generated were important in their own rights. Indeed,
Pacioli seems to have been something of a materialist on this front. After dis-
cussing the solution to the Chinese Rings, he recommends that the instructor
minimize verbal description of how to solve the puzzle, ‘perché non solo a scri-
vere el modo, ma actu mostrandolo’ (‘because not just describing the method,
but actually showing it’) is central to the lesson. For, as Pacioli goes on to note,
‘con fatiga el giovine lo aprende’ (‘with effort a youth will apprehend [the sub-
stance of the problem]’).34 It is a nice idea, though easier said than done. The
instructor in a hurry will get a quicker payoff by telling an aspirant the solution
to this puzzle rather than watch them fail over and over again before reach-
ing (perhaps) the solution. But however convenient explanation might have
been for the instructor, it deprived the aspirant of the opportunity to feel com-
mon sense fail, to experience a discrepancy between what he thought he knew
about the world and the way the world actually behaves, and to reconsider his
sense of measure, of number, and of weight. Working directly with the puzzle
was necessary because, for Pacioli, apprehension was both physical and intel-
lectual. One saw and also felt the results of a successful or unsuccessful re-
sponse. Knowledge production was distinctly corporeal and, thus, inseparable
from perception. And because that corporeal experience was entangled with
varieties of misinterpretation, knowledge production also required that one
demonstrate a counterintuitive form of generosity by withholding information
in order to allow it to blossom more fully on its own.
The extent of that generosity comes through in Pacioli’s mention, regarding
the Victoria puzzle, that the delight gained from its solution is a result of the
fact such challenges ‘are extremely insightful’ (sonno de grande speculatione).
As Jeffrey Hamburger has noted with respect to medieval and early modern
religious practice, ‘speculation insists on the interconnectedness of things, the
way in which all creation can be read as a mirror reflecting its Creator and
in which man, in turn, can find in nature and sensory experience a spur to
his salvation’.35 De Viribus Quantitatis did not offer its readers or their pupils
an eschatological model, but it did depend on the idea that sensory experience
both conveyed and, in some ways, constituted comprehension. The matter at

35 Hamburger J.F. “Speculations on Speculation: Vision and Perception in the Theory and
Practice of Mystical Devotion”, in Haug, W. – Schneider-Lastin W. (eds.) Deutsche Mystik
im abendländischen Zusammenhang. Neu erschlossene Text, neue methodische Ansätze,
neue theoretische Konzepte. Kolloquium Kloster Fischingen 1998 (Tübingen: 2000) 359.
724 Rothstein
hand was not instruction and delight, but rather instruction in delight, and
vice versa. And the problem, its resolution, that delight, and the knowledge
associated with them were all inseparable from physicality. Indeed, discuss-
ing another disentanglement, Pacioli refers to it as ‘un altro caso ancora spec-
ulativo, lima de ingegno a li giovini’ (‘another insightful case that refines the
ingenuity of youths’).36 The verb lima does indeed metaphorically designate
refinement, but it also has strong links to materiality and craft. Florio’s 1598
dictionary, for instance, defines limare as ‘to file, to fret, to gnaw, to polish, to
trim’, not just ‘to amend, to correct’.37 Pacioli’s version of the Victoria puzzle did
more than serve as a vehicle for something ‘larger’; it also constituted part of
that something in its own right. Its jokes – the disruptions of expectation that
it created – had a capacity to reshape knowledge that was very much literal
as well as metaphorical. To encounter the Victoria puzzle was, for Pacioli, an
opportunity to grapple with and internalize immutable laws. That was what
made it so valuable as a teaching tool: each such encounter taught a youth
how to interrogate what he would encounter in the world, seeking patterns
that might initially seem occult but were merely non-obvious. It afforded him
the chance to shape himself into an aspirant, agile and intellectually dynamic.
6 Knowledge Production Is a Chasing Game
Pacioli talks of delight, but that is probably not the mood one would have ex-
perienced most often with his lessons. In the face of an interpretive challenge,
especially one that was recognizably difficil, much of that person’s time would
have been marked by frustration. Erring, the aspirant would have become acute-
ly aware of the incongruity between a manufactured object, which continually
signaled its interpretability, and his unsuccessful responses.38 Responding to
that signal, the aspirant became errant, trying to migrate within a spectrum of
understanding. His migration would have been idiosyncratic. To experience
the failure of an interpretation was not merely to recognize a mistake and set
it right in some linear way. Rather, it belonged to a complex oscillation be-
tween what the aspirant expected a given action to achieve and what that ac-
tion actually accomplished. Thus, frustration was necessary, for it taught one
36 See Pacioli, De Viribus Quantitatis 284.

37 Furthermore, it translates limato as ‘filed, pressed […]. Also polished, neate, pure, elegant,
curious, amended, corrected’.
38 My thinking here owes a significant debt to Furey C.M., “Erring Together: Renaissance
Humanists in Certainty’s Shadow”, Journal of Religion 95.4 (2015) 454–476.
to interrogate interpretive failure – to reconsider not only a set of perceptible

prompts, but also the mental habits with which one had approached them. In
addition, it taught one to value the effort required for overcoming those habits.
That is why a puzzle deprived of its ability to frustrate would inevitably fail to
delight and, thus, to instruct. To give away the solution was to rob a youth of
the chance to construct himself fully and properly. The process of construction
might be unpleasant. Pacioli’s mention of fatiga, for instance, carries implica-
tions of trouble and affliction. Nonetheless, it was crucial for producing a suit-
ably nimble and high-functioning member of the community
What can I say? We have arrived at the borderlands between what should
and should not be revealed about an object ca. 1500. If giovini were building
comprehension by repeatedly failing to comprehend what they quite literally
held in their hands, then revelation had to be doled out not just carefully, but
also reluctantly. Omissions and obfuscations, hints and jokes all could serve
not to disrupt the interpretive community, but in fact to shore it up by allow-
ing misinterpretation to stand out against a backdrop of objects that enjoyed
demonstrably right answers. The result was an attempt to embrace misunder-
standing as a salutary, and not just unavoidable, phenomenon.39 For in the
face of an unruly object, one had no choice but to interrogate what had seemed
like a good idea at the time. Inquiry became reflexive, as did instruction. And,
perhaps with a bit of luck, so might the delight that could accompany that
hoped-for solution and, with it, a fuller realization of the early modern self.
7 Afterword
The contingency of shared responses, regardless of type or scale, is a field ripe

for further study, for that contingency belies one of our most cherished expec-
tations: that people make objects and images specifically so that those objects
and images will provoke interpretations of a dependable sort in a relatively
straightforward way, at least where members of the community that gener-
ated those objects and images are at stake. Driven by that expectation, we tend
to frame historical work on interpretive communities and their contours in
terms of what such a group would have considered acceptable and unaccept-
able responses, with rather less interest in what lies elsewhere within, or even
beyond, that spectrum. It is almost as if, perversely, a given object or topic so
39 Lerer S. Error and the Academic Self: The Scholarly Imagination, Medieval to Modern (New
York: 2002); and Schulz K. Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error (New York:
2010).
726 Rothstein
constrains the possible responses of a group that departure from those re-
sponses becomes not just divergent but somehow invalid in an absolute sense.
This essay has attempted to redirect attention from binary oppositions toward
the penumbra that we experience daily but perhaps overlook in our research.
In the bargain, it also has attempted to model a ludic theory of cultural pro-
duction, hitching its star to a minor text by a Renaissance figure of supposedly
secondary importance. If something so modest and unassuming could pro-
duce such friction as has been discussed here, one can only marvel at the fact
that people get along at all. But this is the dirty little secret of any interaction,
whether educational or economic, political or social: it takes work. Plagued by
the Janus-faced virtue and vice of instability, interpretive communities must
continually be rebuilt, rather than defended or policed. To put it another way,
they thrive only insofar as they invite people to come and play, rather than
demand that those people fall in line and get serious.
Bibliography
Afriat S.N., The Ring of Linked Rings (London: 1982).

Brown B.C., “Thing Theory”, Critical Inquiry 28, 1 (2001) 1–22.
Buettner B., “Past Presents: New Year’s Gifts at the Valois Courts, ca. 1400”, Art Bulletin
83, 4 (2001) 598–625.
Cicero Marcus Tullius, De Oratore, trans. E.W. Sutton and H. Rackham, 2 vols.
(Cambridge, MA: 1942).
Falkenburg R.L., “The Household of the Soul: Conformity in the Merode Triptych”, in
Ainsworth M.W. (ed.), Early Netherlandish Painting at the Crossroads: A Critical Look
at Current Methodologies (New York – New Haven: 2001) 2–17.
Findlen P., “Jokes of Nature and Jokes of Knowledge: The Playfulness of Scientific
Discourse in Early Modern Europe”, Renaissance Quarterly 43, 2 (1990) 292–331.
Findlen P (ed.), Early Modern Things: Objects and Their Histories, 1500–1800 (London:
2013).
Furey C.M., “Erring Together: Renaissance Humanists in Certainty’s Shadow”, Journal
of Religion 95, 4 (2015) 454–76.
Galloway A., Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture (Minneapolis: 2006).
Geertz C., “Common Sense as a Cultural System”, Antioch Review 33, 1 (1975) 5–26.
Guiffrey J., Inventaires de Jean duc de Berry (1401–1416), 2 vols. (Paris: 1894–1896).
Hamburger J.F., “Speculations on Speculation: Vision and Perception in the Theory
and Practice of Mystical Devotion”, in Haug, W. – Schneider-Lastin W. (eds.),
Deutsche Mystik im abendländischen Zusammenhang. Neu erschlossene Text, neue
methodische Ansätze, neue theoretische Konzepte. Kolloquium Kloster Fischingen

1998 (Tübingen: 2000) 353–408.
Henare A. – Holbraad M. – Wastell S., “Introduction: Thinking through Things”, in
Henare A. – Holbraad M. – Wastell S. Thinking through Things: Theorising Artefacts
Ethnographically (London – New York: 2007).
Hodder I., Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things
(London: 2012).
Høyrup J., Jacopo da Firenze’s Tractatus Algorismi and Early Italian Abbacus Culture,
Science Networks: Historical Studies, 34 (Basel – Boston – Berlin: 2000).
Jütte D., The Age of Secrecy: Jews, Christians, and the Economy of Secrets, 1400–1800 (New
Haven: 2015).
Lerer, S., Error and the Academic Self: The Scholarly Imagination, Medieval to Modern
(New York: 2002).
Long P., Openness, Secrecy, Authorship. Technical Arts and the Culture of Knowledge
from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Baltimore: 2001).
Pacioli L., De Viribus Quantitatis, ed. M. Garlaschi Peirani with A. Marinoni (Milan:
1997).
‘Professor Hoffmann’ (Lewis A.J.), Puzzles Old and New (London: 1893).
Rothstein B.L., “Early Modern Play: Three Perspectives”, Renaissance Quarterly 71, 3
(2018) 1036–1046.
Rothstein B.L., The Shape of Difficulty: A Fan Letter to Unruly Objects (University Park:
2019).
Schulz K., Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error (New York: 2010).
Shibutani T., Society and Personality: An Interactionist Approach to Social Psychology,
rev. ed. (Englewood Cliffs: 1961) 5–11.
Singmaster D., “De Viribus Quantitatis by Luca Pacioli: The First Recreational
Mathematics Book”, in Demaine E.D. – Demaine M.L. – Rodgers T. (eds.), A Lifetime
of Puzzles. Honoring Martin Gardner (Natick, MA: 2008) 77–122.
Taylor R.E., “Luca Pacioli”, in Littleton A.C. – Yamey B.S. (eds.), Studies in the History of
Accounting (Homewood, IL: 1956) 175–184.
Taylor R.E., No Royal Road. Luca Pacioli and His Times (Chapel Hill: 1942).
Van Egmond W., The Commercial Revolution and the Beginnings of Western Mathematics
in Renaissance Florence, 1300–1500, Ph.D. dissertation (Indiana University: 1976).
Van Egmond W., Practical Mathematics in the Italian Renaissance: A Catalogue of Italian
Abbacus Manuscripts and Printed Books to 1600 (Florence: 1980).
Index Nominum
Abraham a Sancta Clara: see Theophilo Beaumetz, Jean de 20–21

Mariophilo Beffa de’Negrini, Antonio 605
Achillini, Alessandro 637, 652 Bella, Stefano della 699
Achillini, Cinzio 605 Benedetti, Alessandro 266, 269, 271
Aesop 551 Benigno Salviati, Giorgio 434
Agapitus, Saint 446 Berengario da Carpi, Jacomo 266–268
Agricola, Martin 348–349, 351 Bernard, Catherine 511–512, 519–520, 528,
Alberti, Leon Battista 320, 322–324, 326, 530, 542
328 Bernardino de Laredo, O.F.S. 59
Albert the Great, Saint 147, 174 n. 74 Bernard of Clairvaux, Saint (Bernardus
Albertus Magnus: see Albert the Great, Saint Claraevallensis) 105 n. 75, 171 n. 59, 536
Albert VII (Archduke of Austria) 153 n. 52
Albrecht, Johannes 643–644 Bernini, Gian Lorenzo 493
Albrecht of Brandenburg 641 Berntsz, Jan 642
Albrecht V (Duke of Bavaria) 326–328 Berry, Duke Jean de 719–720
Alciato, Andrea 550, 572, 574, 582–583, Beutler, Matthias 338
600–601 Bloccius, Peter 385, 387
Aldegrever, Heinrich 353–355 Blocke, Isaak van den 664, 665 n. 17,
Alegambe, Philippe 150 n. 18 666–668, 671, 673
Alexander the Great 637 Boccaccio, Giovanni 293–295, 297
Al-Jawbari 292–293 Boileau, Nicolas 407 n. 23
Amman, Jost 338, 342, 345, 357, 361 Bolland, Jean 195 n. 6
Anna, Queen of Hungary and Bohemia 684, Bolswert, Boëtius 195, 198
701 Borghini, Vincenzo 299–300
Antonello da Messina 324 Bosch, Hieronymus 346–347, 372
Apelles 417–418, 421 Bossuet, Jacques-Bénigne, Bishop 522, 523
Apian, Peter 236–237 n. 20
A Porta, Johannes 391 Bouhours, Dominique 422–423, 620,
Aquinas, Thomas, Saint 106, 387, 433 629–630
Arcadius, Eastern Roman Emperor 608 Brant, Sebastian 357
Aresi, Paolo (Aresius, Paulus) 173 n. 66 Brecht, Ian van 380, 385 n. 11, 15, 386 n. 17
Arias, Francisco 170 n. 57 Brosamer, Hans 345
Aristotle 212, 224, 282, 487, 489, 637–638, Brunelleschi, Filippo 304, 308
656, 679 Bruno, Saint 13–14, 27
Augustine, Aurelius, of Hippo, Saint 147, Buffalmacco 293–294
421, 448, 497 Bugenhagen, Johannes 678
Burgkmair, Hans 638–639
Babington, Anthony 656 Busbecq, Ogier Ghislain de 574, 589, 598,
Bacon, Francis 620 n. 3, 630–631 608
Baglione, Braccio 701
Baldinucci, Filippo 296, 300, 468 Callot, Jacques 181, 182 n. 91
Barigazzi, Jacopo: see Berengario da Carpi, Camilli, Camillo 605, 607
Jacomo Cammerlander, Jacob 646–648
Baronius, Cesare, Cardinal 197 Candiotti, Giulio 152 n. 24
Bartoli, Francesco 505 Canisius, Petrus, S.J. 41, 59, 61, 62, 77, 78, 81,
Basil the Great, Saint 386 86, 105–114
Baudoin, Jean 620 n. 3, 625–626, 630 Carvajal, Bernardino 434 n. 13
730 Index Nominum
Castagno, Andrea 311–312 Della Seta, Lombardo 308

Castiglione, Baldassare 417 Deloney, Thomas 645, 655
Cato the Elder 610 De Noailles, Louis-Antoine, Cardinal and
Cavalcanti, Giovanni 296 Archbishop 522
Cennini, Cennino 295–305, 311 Denys (Denis) the Carthusian 13, 24, 25–26,
Cezary, Franciszek 195 n. 6, 196, 208 nn. 27 n. 40, 29–30, 32, 174 n. 74
12–13, 209, 216 Descartes, René 397, 404, 406 nn. 11, 13, 407,
Chantelou, Paul Fréart de 493, 494 n. 14, 408 n. 28, 413, 424
499 n. 24 D’Este, Isabella (Marchioness of
Charlemagne 694 Mantua) 324
Charles VI, King of France 588 Diemerbroeck, Isbrand van 277
Chaucer, Geoffrey 293 Dilherr, Johann Michael 580
Cherubini, Laerzio (Cherobini, Laertius) 151 Dinet, Pierre 620, 627
n. 22 Dionysius Carthusianus: see Denys (Denis)
Chevreuse, Jeanne-Marie Colbert, Duchess the Carthusian
523 D’Ivrée, Guillaume 22
Christus, Petrus 22, 23 n. 29, 27 n. 40, 30–31 Dolce, Lodovico 418, 421 n. 72
Chrysostomus, John, Archbishop of Dornn, Franz (Franciscus) Xavier 152 n. 25,
Constantinople 62 172
Cicero, Marcus Tullius 721 Du Fresnoy, Charles Alphonse 404 n. 9, 407
Claesz, Allaert 377 n. 16, 414
Claudius à Rota 41, 72, 75–76 Dulner, Paul 344
Clement VIII, Pope 152 n. 24 Duncanus, Martinus 386, 388–389, 391
Colonna, Francesco 624 n. 11, 626 Dürer, Albrecht 333, 341–344, 357, 464 n. 7,
Columbus, Christopher 377 572, 612
Columella, Lucius Junius Moderatus 611 d’Urfé, Honoré, Marquis de Valromey, Comte
Constantine 608 de Châteauneuf 356
Conincxloo, Adriaen van 382 Duvet, Jean 338
Conti, Natale 622, 625-626, 630
Cornelius à Lapide 148 Egmond, Warren van 714–715
Correggio, Antonio Alegri 419–421 Eligius, Saint 331–334
Corrozet, Gilles 324, 550–557, 617–618 Elyot, Thomas 318, 320
Cossin, Louis 350-351 Epiphanius 109, 148 n. 10
Coulanges, Marie-Angélique du Gué de Erasmus, Desiderius 575, 577, 579–584,
Bagnols, Marquise 512 n. 3, 519, 589, 592, 594, 596, 600 n. 56,
526 n. 27 607, 613
Cousin, Jean 551, 556 n. 15 Erath, Augustin de 172 n. 64
Craeyverwe, Nicolaus 16 Este, Isabella d’ 324, 684
Crollius, Oswald 703–704 Estienne, Charles 274
Curicke, Georg Reinhold 663 n. 12, 679 n. 45
Fabricius of Aquapendente,
David, Jan S.J. (David, Johannes) 152, 153 n. Hieronymus 276–277
28, 154–155, 162–163, 171, 172 n. 62, 207 Faure, Anthitus 692
Day, Angel 318, 320 Félibien, André 492
De Bry, Theodor 373–375 Felicissimus, Saint 446
De Decker, Jeremias 483–486 Fénelon, François de Salignac de la Mothe-,
De Gheyn II, Jacques 367–368 Archbishop 518 n. 13, 522–523,
Delaune, Etienne 332 n. 3, 338, 345 525 n. 23
Index Nominum 731
Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor 597, 701, Guercino (Barbieri, Giovanni Francesco)
705 417
Ferdinand II (Archduke of Tyrol) 318 Guigo I 14, 15–17
Feyerabend, Sigmund 364 Guyon, Jeanne-Marie Bouvier de La Motte
Ficino, Marsilio 443, 444 n. 30, 445 521–523, 525, 533–534
Flindt, Paulus 338
Forcellini, Egidio 173 n. 68 Haeften, Benedictus van 199, 200, 206, 224
Frances of Rome, Saint 513, 515–516, 519, n. 54
525–527, 530, 541 Hájek, Tadeáš 651–652, 658
Francia, Francesco 303, 311–313 Hajek, Thaddeus: see Hájek, Tadeáš
François de Sales, Saint 507, 525–526, Hamburger, Jeffrey 25
528–529, 530 n. 38, 541 Hayden, Hans 343, 344
François I (King of France) 274 n. 32 Heinsius, Daniel 199 n. 7, 200
Frederick II (Holy Roman Emperor) 637 Hendrik, Frederik 463–464
Friedrich, Johann, I (elector of Saxony) 676 Henri II (King of France) 684
Fugger, Anton 325–326 Herle, Simon 664
Fugger, Hans Jacob 326 Heseler, Baldasar 275
Fugger, Raimund 325–326 Heule, Marinus van 39–41, 59–60, 62, 63 n.
15, 72, 74–77, 81, 84–86, 109–112, 115,
Gaddi, Agnolo 296, 300 n. 27, 302–305, 311 126
Gaffurio, Francesco 348 Hill, Thomas 654
Galen 641 Hińcza, Martin 191–226
Galle, Cornelis (I) 37, 199–200 Hopfer, Daniel 338
Galle, Jan 37 Houbraken, Arnold 473, 476, 477 n. 22,
Galle, Philip 195 479–480
Galle, Theodore 37–38, 40–41, 58–59, 62, Hueber, Fortunatus 172
67, 72, 77, 81, 85, 114, 122, 153, 195 Hugh of Fouilloy 28
Georg II Grill (Abbot of Wilhering Abbey) Hugh of Saint-Victor 25
158 Hus, Johannes 678
Gersaint, Edme-François 473, 476 n. 18, 480 Huygens, Constantijn 482–483
n. 26
Gesner, Johann Matthias 173 n. 68 Iglesia, Nicolás de la 146 n. 4, 174
Ghiberti, Lorenzo 295, 304–311 Ignatius of Loyola 207
Ghiberti, Vittorio di Buonacorso 305–306 Indagine, Johannes ab: see Rosenbach,
Giorgione (Barbarelli da Castelfranco, Johannes
Giorgio) 417 Isabella Clara Eugenia, Archduchess 38, 51,
Giotto 298 nn. 21–22, 303, 306 68, 153
Godet des Marais, Paul, Bishop 513, Isidore de Saint-Gilles (Isidorus a Sancto
523–524, 532–540 Egidio) 148 n. 10
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 438 Isidore of Seville, Saint 148 n. 10
Goltzius, Hendrick 610 Isselburg, Peter 584–585, 600 n. 58, 606
Goudt, Hendrik 476
Gracián, Baltasar 213 Jamnitzer, Christoph 361, 371–372, 375–377
Gracián, Gerónimo 41, 71–72, 86, 114–126 Jamnitzer, Wenzel 317–319, 342–344, 357
Gregory of Nyssa 421 Janot, Denys 550–551, 552 n. 9, 553
Gregory the Great, Saint 443 Jansen, Cornelius 421
Grundler, Michael 338 Jeanne de Chantal, Saint 25
Grünewald, Matthias 328 John Damascene, Saint 71
732 Index Nominum
Junius, Hadrianus 589–591, 614 Master of Balaam 331–334, 345–347, 354,

Justin, Martyr 146 370, 375
Justus, Saint 446 Mazière de Monville, Simon-Philippe, Abbot
Ketham, Johannes de 266–267 514, 518 n. 13
Kilian, Lucas 49, 364–365 Medici, Catherine de 684
Kostka, Stanislas, S.J., Saint 192 Medici, Giulio de’ 430, 432 n. 5, 434
Meer, Willem van den 664
Laredo: see Bernardino de Laredo Megerle, Johann Ulrich: see Theophilo
Largeot, Toussaint 507–508 Mariophilo
Lazius, Wolfgang 589 Mela, Pomponius 233, 235 n. 12
Le Blon, Michel 338 Menes Silva, Amedeo de (Amedeus
Le Brun, Charles 413 n. 45, 492 Hispanus) 434, 452
Lechner, Leonhard 344 Ménestrier, Claude-François, S.J. 10, 172 n.
Le Comte, Florent 476 n. 20 64, 220, 499–500, 506–507, 620–621,
Leeu, Gerard 72 628–629
Leo the Great, Pope 433, 446 Mercator, Gerard (Kramer, Gerhard) 231–
Leo X, Pope 434 233, 237–257
Leuven, Lodovicus van (Philippe de Villers) Met de Bles, Herri 502–503
199 n. 7, 200 Michelangelo 419, 432 n. 5, 435
Lewis, Angelo John: see Professor Hoffman Mignard, Catherine-Marguerite 514
Limbourg (Jean, Pol, and Herman, Brothers) Mignard, Pierre 512–521, 525, 530–533,
719–720 535–536, 541–542
Loher, Dietrich 24, 25 n. 34, 27 n. 40 Mignault, Claude 624–625
Loisy, Jean de 153, 156 Molanus, Johannus 387, 382 n. 8
Loisy, Pierre 153 Moncornet, Balthasar 359, 363
Lorck, Balthasar 586 Mondino de’ Luzzi 264–265
Lorck, Caspar 586 Monogrammist AB 338, 340, 345
Lorck, Melchior 572–614 Montefeltro, Federico da (Duke of Urbino)
Lorenzetti, Ambrogio 287–291, 304, 308, 324–325
309 n. 45, 311 Montone, Braccio da (Braccio di
Lorichs, Melchior: see Lorck, Melchior Fortebraccio) 689, 701, 705
Louis XIII (King of France) 550 Moretus, Balthasar 199, 206, 223 n. 54
Louis XIV (King of France) 511–514, 517, Moses 244, 446, 448
519–520, 530, 533 n. 44, 540 Müller, Godfridt 369–370, 375
Ludolph of Saxony 03–504, 505 n. 37 Münster, Sebastian 235
Luther, Martin 164 n. 45, 676, 678–679
Nadal, Jerónimo 200, 204, 225 n. 61
Machiavelli, Niccolò 296 Navarro, Antonio 166 n. 53
Maintenon, Françoise d’Aubigné, Marquise
511–516, 518–523, 525, 530, 532–542 Ochsenfurth, Isaac von: see Oxoviensis,
Manutius, Aldus 41, 594–595, 600, 607, 611 Isaac
Marcus Aurelius (Roman Emperor) 646 Origen Adamantius, of Alexandria 62
Marracci, Ippolito (Marraccius, Hippolytus) Orpheus 337–338, 340–341, 344–345
148 Ortelius, Abraham 234, 555, 557–558, 565,
Martini, Simone 290 589
Martin, Jean 620, 625 Oxoviensis, Isaac (Ostoviensis, Isaac) 152 n.
Masen, Jakob (Masenius, Jacobus) 172 n. 64, 25, 167, 173–175, 177 n. 76, 181 n. 86, 182
219, 497–498 n. 93, 183
Index Nominum 733
Pacioli, Luca 711 n. 10, 712–719, 721–725 Rabelais, François 551

Paleotti, Gabriele 387, 382 n. 8 Radziwiłł, Albrycht 199 n. 7
Pambst, Paulus 691, 698, 702, 704–705 Radziwiłł, Nicolaus Christoph 199 n. 7
Palamedes 586 Raimondino dei Liucci: see Mondino de’ Luzzi
Paracelsus, Theophrastus von Hohenheim Ramelli, Agostino 320–321
651, 653 Raphael, Sanzio, da Urbino (Raffaelle Sanzio
Paradin, Claude 586–588 da Urbino) 311–312, 417–418, 421,
Parmigianino (Mazzola, Girolamo Francesco 429–455
Maria) 421 Rapin, René 409
Pastor, Saint 446 Raynaud, Théophile 148, 149 n. 13
Pauw, Pieter 261 n. 4, 280 Redelius (Redel), Augustin Casimir 152 n.
Perino del Vaga (Buonaccorsi, Piero) 466 n. 25, 167–168, 175–176, 183–184
10 Rem, Georg 584–585, 600 n. 58, 606
Petrarch (Petrarca, Francesco) 295, 297, 298 Reni, Guido 421
n. 21 Richard of Saint-Victor 25
Pfinzing, Paulus 342–343 Richardson, Jonathan 420
Philip II (King of Spain) 324 Richelieu, Armand Jean du Plessis, Duke and
Philip the Bold 18, 20 Cardinal 550, 559
Philostratus, of Lemnos 492 Richeome, Louis, S.J. 492–494, 496–499
Picinelli, Filippo 172 n. 64 Ringhieri, Innocenzio 684–687, 701 n. 14
Piles, Roger de 397–424, 476 Ripa, Cesare 177 n. 78, 180 n. 84, 182, 477 n. 25
Piombo, Sebastiano del (Sebastiano Rivard, Claude 338
Luciani) 430 n. 3, 432 n. 5, 434 n. 13, 435, Rosenbach, Johannes 640–643
449, 451 Rota: see Claudius à Rota
Piotrkowczyk, Andrzej 199, 201–203, 205, Rubens, Peter Paul 195, 200, 394, 397, 417,
223 n. 51 419, 421–422
Pius V, Pope (Antonio Ghislieri) 151 n. 22 Rudolf II 612
Plantin, Christophe 589 n. 38, 590–591, 601 Ruisch, Frederik 263
Plato 222
Plautus 271, 273–274 Sacchetti, Franco 297–299
Pleginck, Martin 338 Sacrobosco, John of 249
Plinius Gaius Secundus (Pliny the Elder) 6, Sadeler II, Aegidius 704
294, 417, 421 n. 72, 579 n. 20, Saenredam, Pieter Janz. 231
583–584 Sambucus, Johannes 589–591, 614
Polidoro da Caravaggio (Caldara, Polidoro) Sannazzaro, Jacopo 41, 77–86
466 Sanson, Nicolas 550, 566–571
Pomona 608 Scarperia, Jacopo d’Angelo da 233–234
Porta, Giambattista Della 656 Schön, Erhard 359–361
Poussin, Nicolas 492–508, 513 n. 6 Schönsperger, Johannes 638–639
Praetorius, Michael 344 n. 29, 361 Schoor, Egidius van (Aegidius van Schoor or
Professor Hoffmann 711 Gillis Verschoren) 194–196, 209
Pseudo-Dionysius 619, 622–623 Schott, Johannes 640–643
Pseudo-Longinus 408 Scotus, Michael 637, 643 n. 15
Ptolemy, Claudius 233–235, 553–554 Seneca, Lucius Annaeus 394
Puteanus, Erycius 199 n. 7 Serlio, Sebastiano 274
Sévigné, Marie de Rabutin-Chantal,
Quiccheberg, Samuel 316–318, 320, 323–328 Marquise 519, 526 n. 27
Quintilian 210–212, 407 n. 20, 417 Sigismund, August, II (Polish king) 672, 674
734 Index Nominum
Solis, Virgil 338, 340, 341 Van Uyttenbroeck, Moyses 476 n. 20

Spirito, Lorenzo Gualtieri 683-684, 686–701, Van Vliet, Jan Gillisz 476 n. 20
705-706 Varchi, Benedetto 418
Steen, Cornelis Cornelissen van den: see Varro, Marcus Terrentius 610
Cornelius à Lapide Vasari, Giorgio 295–296, 299–307, 311–312,
Stephens, Charles: see Estienne, Charles 418–419, 421 n. 72, 422, 435, 443, 709
Stoergler, Peter (Stergler, Peter; Sterglerus, Veen, Otto van: see Vaenius
Petrus) 145, 147, 149–150, 154, 157–158, Veneziano, Domenico 311
159 n. 36, 160–161, 162 n. 44, 164–165, Vermeer, Johannes 231
168 n. 54, 169–170, 171 nn. 60, 61, Veronese, Paolo (Paolo Caliari) 448
178-180, 182 n. 93, 185 Verville, Béroalde de 555–557, 620,
Suleiman the Magnificent, Ottoman 626–627, 630
Emperor 599 Vesalius, Andreas 269–272, 275–276, 279,
281
Tassin, Nicolas 550, 559, 565, 569–570 Vieyra, Antonio 166 n. 52
Tavernier, Melchior 559, 561, 565–566, 569 Vigenère, Blaise de 492
Terrier, Jean 151, 152 n. 23, 153–154, 156 Vinci, Leonardo da (Leonardo di ser Piero da
Tesauro, Emanuele, S.J. 213 Vinci) 345–346, 348, 419, 435, 445,
Theophilo Mariophilo 152 n. 25 453–454
Theophilus 336 Virdung, Sebastian 348–349, 351, 353, 355,
Theophilus Presbyter 301 357, 362, 364–365, 370, 372, 376–377
Thutomosis III, Pharaoh 607 Vitruvius 274
Tillet, Jean du 389 Vogtherr the Elder, Heinrich 691, 698,
Titian (Vecellio, Tiziano) 417 702–704
Toutin, Jean 338–339, 366-369 Von Nettesheim, Heinrich Cornelius
Tradescant, John 320 Agrippa 375
Trajan 645 Von Siegen, Ludwig 476
Tronson, Louis 522–523 Voragine, Jacobus da 41, 72, 73 n. 41, 75 n.
46, 76 n. 49
Vadian, Joachim 233–234, 235 n. 12 Vos, Jan 27 n. 40, 30, 32
Vaenius, Otto (Otto van Veen) 195, 198, Vries, Hans Vredeman de 664
576–577, 603, 614
Vaillant, Wallerant 476 n. 21 Wechtlin, Hans 640–643
Van der Heyden, Pieter 346–347, 357, 367, Weckerlin, Jean-Baptiste 372–373
369 n. 58 Wesel, Andries van: see Vesalius, Andreas
Van der Sandt, Maximilian 497 Wierix, Antoon II 37, 40–41, 72
Van de Velde, Jan 476 Wierix, Hieronymus 204
Van de Weyck, Hendrick 336–338 William of Saint-Thierry 15, 16 n. 10, 29–30
Van Haarlem, Hendrik 27 William, Prince of Orange-Nassau 380
Van Hoogstraten, Samuel Dirksz 231
Van Meckenem, Israel 354 Xerxes I, King 642
Van Neckham, Alexander 348
Van Rijn, Rembrandt 9, 460–490 Zurla, Placido 446, 447 n. 36

(Intersections Series) Ralph Dekoninck

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

(Intersections Series) Ralph Dekoninck

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Quid est secretum?

Karl A.E. Enenkel (Chair of Medieval and Neo-Latin Literature

W. van Anrooij (University of Leiden)

volume 65/2 – 2020

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/inte

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Lovis Corinth Colloquium (8th : 2018 : Emory University), author. |

Copyright 2020 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Introduction: What’s in a Secret? 1

1 In the Secrecy of the Cell: Late Medieval Carthusian Devotional Imagery

3 Symbols and (Un)concealed Marian Mysteries in the First Litany of

5 Of Grids and Divine Mystery: Gerard Mercator’s Revelation 231

7 The Sienese Goldsmith and the Secrets of Florentine Disegno 287

9 Mysterious Noises: Orphic Strings, Rough Music, and the Sounds of

10 ‘Insettinghe’ and ‘yegelijcx conversatie’: Understanding of the Image on

11 Roger de Piles and the Secret of Grace 397

12 In Abscondito: Visuality and Testimony in Raphael’s

13 Secrets of the Dark: Rembrandt’s Entombment (c. 1654) 460

14 Poussin and Richeome: Mystery and Figurability 492

15 Portrait or Parable?: Pierre Mignard and the Mystery of Madame de

16 Secret est à louer: Secrets and Secrecy in French Baroque Cartography,

17 Hidden in Plain Sight: Melchior Lorck’s Emblematized Adages 572

18 To Hide Is to Reveal: the Paradox of Representing Secrets 617

19 Getting to How-To: Chiromancy, Physiognomy, Metoscopy and Prints in

21 Convents, Condottieri, and Compulsive Gamblers: Hands-On Secrets of

22 Secrecy and the Understanding of Small Things in Early Modern

Index Nominum 729

Analysis (gemca). Originally a specialist of seventeenth-century French lit-

in progress are approaching completion: Imago veridica: The Form, Function,

Suzanne Karr Schmidt

Carme López Calderón

Lars Cyril Nørgaard

Centre for Privacy Studies at the University of Copenhagen, where he is con-

Lee Palmer Wandel

2.3 Theodoor, Cornelis, and/or Jan Galle, “Virginis sponsae Annunciatio”

Virginis sponsi patriarcharum maximi iconibus delineata ac versiculis

Verses), ca. 1601–1633. Engraving, 90 × 57 mm. Antwerp, Plantin Moretus

Greatest of the Patriarchs, Portrayed in Images and Ornamented with Verses),

and Ornamented with Verses) (Antwerp, Theodoor Galle: ca. 1601–1633).

3.1 Theodore Galle, “Hortus Conclusus”, in Jan David, Pancarpium Marianum

3.11 Anonymous [Redelius?], “Mater Salvatoris”, in Isaac Oxoviensis, Elogia

4.11 Anonymous engraver, copperplate engraving in Marcin Hińcza’s Chwała z

5.10 Gerard Mercator, “Evropa”, Atlas sive Cosmographicæ Meditationes de Fabrica

6.7 Lazarus de Soardi, illustration from Plautus, Comoediae XX (Venice, Lazarus

17.18 Otto Vaenius, “Festina Lente”, Emblemata aliquot selectiora amatoria.

19.3 Hans Wechtlin, “types of noses and mouths”, woodcut, in Johannes

20.2 Isaak van den Blocke, “Bildschema der Deckenkomposition”

21.5 Wheel of Fortune, from Laurens L’Esprit, Le passetemps de la fortvne des

reprint ed., 1611). Bayerisches Staatsbibliothek, Munich (4 Alch. 17) (images:

Quid est secretum? Visual Representation of Secrets in Early Modern Europe,

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004432260_002

ende swackheydt, de welcke onsen goeden Godt ende Vader aensiende,

allegorical literature provided one of best contexts for the propagation of an

7 Pietrasanta Silvestro, De symbolis heroïcis libri IX (Antwerp, Ex officina Plantiniana Baltha­

Sunt autem in primis observandae transmigrationes hominum in pecu-

But first of all, there must be observed the metamorphoses (transmigra-

9 Sprengius Johannes, Metamorphoses Ovidii, argumentis quidem soluta oratione, enarrationi-

10 Marin L., “Logiques du secret”, in Lectures traversières, Bibliothèque du Collège interna-

Nagelsmit). The ‘ingenious mystery’, to use Claude-François Ménestrier’s ter-

11 Menestrier Claude-François, La philosophie des images enigmatiques (Lyons, Hilaire

In the Secrecy of the Cell: Late Medieval Carthusian

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004432260_003

to be ‘hermits living in a communal monastery’,2 the Carthusians praise the

7 Pietrasanta Silvestro, De symbolis heroïcis libri IX (Antwerp, Ex officina Plantiniana Baltha

9 Sprengius Johannes, Metamorphoses Ovidii, argumentis quidem soluta oratione, enarrationi-

10 Marin L., “Logiques du secret”, in Lectures traversières, Bibliothèque du Collège interna-

11 Menestrier Claude-François, La philosophie des images enigmatiques (Lyons, Hilaire

6 See the introduction of Guigues Ier le chartreux, Coutumes de chartreuse 17–23.

21 Lindquist, Agency, Visuality and Society 190.

3 ‘Schripsit marinus van heule sintaxianus’.

14 ‘Blande natum quando lactat,

Totum cinge corculum. //

22 ‘Ultro cordis portam pultat

33 ‘Fructum tenens hunc vitalem

35 ‘Scisti solus hic mortalis,

39 ‘Summi nexus est amoris,

45 ‘Traut ghi des hemels coninghin

49 Voragine, Legenda, ut vocant, ed. Rota, fol. 172r.

Si tunc Pater dicebaris.

53 Canisius, “Sannazarij elegans carmen de partu Virginis et Christi Domini nativitate.

54 Canisius, De Maria virgine 407:

56 Canisius, De Maria virgine 407:

64 ‘Fructum, Ioseph fert puella,

69 ‘Aaensiet toch ioseph ghij heijleghen man

71 ‘Vides Mundi Plasmatorem

92 See note 87 supra.

96 ‘Fallax mundus ornat vultus,

108 ‘Bone Iesu conde crucem,

Procul, procul hinc libido:

120 Gracián, Summario 123–124.

123 Ibid. 79.