"This volume includes the late Elisabeth Stopp's previously unpublished study of La vie symbolique du bienheureux Francois de Sales (1664) of Adrien Gambart (1660-68), an introductory essay by Agnes Guiderdoni-Brusle that updates and amplifies Stopp's work, and a facsimile of Gambart's emblem book. This book was inspired by the life and writings of St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622), and written for the Sisters of the Visitation monastery of Faubourg Saint-Jacques in Paris, where Gambart, a Vincentian priest, served as chaplain for over thirty years. It was published in preparation for Francis's canonization in 1665." "Stopp's study offers an English translation of the key observations made by Gambart about each of the fifty-two emblems, while the facsimile makes available Gambarts original French text. Moreover, the facsimile is reproduced in color in order to convey the tonal richness of the original emblems."--BOOK JACKET.

The volume is a cross-section of contributions to the Glasgow International Emblem Conference 1990, and demonstrates the range of research currently under way into the emblem tradition in the Renaissance and Baroque periods and the variety of its development across the centuries in many European countries. The seventeen papers are arranged here in broad national and thematic groupings, showing the emblem tradition in France, Italy, the Low Countries, Germany, Britain, within the field of alchemy, and extending into wider European traditions. The volume is generously illustrated, and an index is provided for the orientation of the reader. An impression of the richness of the European emblem tradition is given for the general reader, whilst the specialist is provided with a comprehensive insight into the many and varied strands of current emblem research and the diversity of approach adopted by scholars internationally.

The ten papers in this volume were all presented at the first International Conference "The European Emblem", held in Glasgow in August, 1987 under the auspices of the Society for Emblem Studies. The conference included papers discussing most of the major European languages in which emblem books flourished, and the papers selected for the presented volume represent something of the variety and scope of current scholarship in this field. Subjects dealt with include a protoemblematic Latin translation of the Tabula Cebetis, the Emblematum Liber by Andreas Alciat, the earliest reception of the 'Ars Emblematica' in Dutch, the career of Thomas Palmer, Daniel Cramers 80 Emblemata moralia nova, and the Emlimata of Polockij. The papers selected for this volume demonstrate the vigor and variety of work in this field, whilst also suggesting some of the directions and opportunities for further research.

The emblem was big business in early-modern Europe, used extensively not only in printed books and broadsheets, but also to decorate pottery, metalware, furniture, glass and windows and numerous other domestic, devotional and political objects. At its most basic level simply a combination of symbolic visual image and texts, an emblem is a hybrid composed of words and picture. However, as this book demonstrates, understanding the precise and often multiple meaning, intention and message emblems conveyed can prove a remarkably slippery process. In this book, Peter Daly draws upon many years’ research to reflect upon the recent upsurge in scholarly interest in, and rediscovery of, emblems following years of relative neglect. Beginning by considering some of the seldom asked, but important, questions that the study of emblems raises, including the importance of the emblem, the truth value of emblems, and the transmission of knowledge through emblems, the book then moves on to investigate more closely-focussed aspects such as the role of mnemonics, mottoes and visual rhetoric. The volume concludes with a review of some perhaps inadequately considered issues such as the role of Jesuits (who had a role in the publication of about a quarter of all known emblem books), and questions such as how these hybrid constructs were actually read and interpreted. Drawing upon a database containing records of 6,514 books of emblems and imprese, this study suggests new ways for scholars to approach important questions that have not yet been satisfactorily broached in the standard works on emblems.