Emblematum Liber

Andrea Alciati (1492-1550)

On May 8, 1492, Andrea Alciati was born in Alzate, near Milan, whence his cognomen. His family moved to Milan in 1504, and, between 1507 and 1514, he went to Pavia and Bologna to study law.

In 1516, at age twenty-four, the University of Ferrara granted him a doctorate in civil and canon law, and he then practiced jurisprudence in Pavia and Bologna. Soon renowned for his intellectual acumen, in 1518 he was invited to teach in France, where he took up his first academic post in the papal city of Avignon.

Equally fluent in Latin and Greek, he regularly corresponded with notable European humanists, the likes of Desiderius Erasmus in Rotterdam and Konrad Peutinger in Augsburg. In 1521, he was made a Palatine count by Pope Leo X. Although the prestige he enjoyed in France was enormous, he was driven to return to his homeland in 1522. Unfortunately, for the next four years northern Italy was to become the battle ground between Charles V., and Francois I., for dominion over Milan, so Alciati reluctantly left Italy in 1527 to take up academic posts in Avignon and, later, in Bourges.

In 1533, he was recalled to Milan by Duke Francesco Sforza II. Back in Italy, besides teaching at Pavia, Bologna and Ferrara, Alciati worked tirelessly to re-establish political harmony, and Pope Paul II., appointed him an apostolic first notary. At the age of fifty-seven, covered with honours, he died in Pavia on January 12, 1550. His posthumously published (1582) writings on the interpretation of laws filled two volumes. (John F. Moffitt, 1940)

Emblematum Liber

“Without Alciati’s Emblematum liber one lacks an essential key to the once easily read meanings attached to many of the greatest artworks produced from the sixteenth century through the eighteenth century. The practice of composing moralizing maxims goes back at least to the sixth century BCE, when Aesop assembled a collection of 358 folk-wisdom tales, the Fables, told to highlight human follies and foibles; according to his simple two-part formula, he would first relate an anecdote about an unfortunate animal encounter, then he would add a succinct moral injunction for the human reader. Everything that exists necessarily points to a meaning lying beyond any given res, the thing itself. Since each natural res contains potential meaning, it simultaneously becomes a res significans. ‘Every creature and object in the world is like a book providing a picture and mirror of ourselves.’” 1,2

In order that the invention, or impresa, may have a pleasing grace, it is obligatory that it conforms to five conditions. First, there must be established a just proportion between the soul [motto] and the body [image].

Second, its meaning must not be so obscure that it is necessary to call upon the Sibyl in order to interpret it; however, neither should its meaning be so transparent that any common person might understand it.

Third, above all it must have a handsome appearance, with this appearing delightful and most attractive, it being accompanied by stars, suns, moons, flames, waters, trees, mechanical instruments, fantastic animals and birds.

The fourth condition is that it is not suitable that any human figure should appear therein.

The fifth condition is that the motto, which is its soul, should be stated in a different language from that of the author of the device, so that its sentiments should be somewhat more concealed. 3

In Alciati’s De Verborum signficatione published in 1530: “Words indicate; things are indicated. But things can also indicate, for example, in the Hieroglyphics of Horapollo. Working from their arguments, we have also written a book in verse with the title Emblemata.” It is a fact that Alciati propagated the word emblem throughout sixteenth century Europe and Francesco Colonna used the word emblematura to signify mosaic work in his Hypnerotomachia in 1499.