5. Art conceived as a language may be addressed
to large or to small groups. It depends on the scope
of communication. It can be intended as a message
to a possibly large audience, but it can also be limited
in its appeal to a small selected group of observers.
In an extreme case the polarization could be that
between a didactic art appealing to everybody and an
elitarian cryptic message understandable only to the
initiated few. Medieval art belonged by far to the first
category; the art of the Renaissance to the second.
Even in the monumental wall-paintings, decorating the
most celebrated places of Christianity such as the
Sistine Chapel, or the official rooms of the Popes, like
the Stanza della Segnatura; even in the sepulchral
chapels of the most important families like the Sassetti
and the Medici, the iconographic programs and sym-
bolism are extremely complicated. The meaning of the
decoration of the great Gallery of François I at Fon-
tainebleau is so cryptic that it was hypothetically ex-
plained only recently by the best specialists in icon-
ography (D. and E. Panofsky, 1958). Few works of
medieval art have provoked such a number of inter-
pretations as the well-known, and at first glance seem-
ingly easy to understand, pictures like Botticelli's
mythologies (Birth of Venus, Spring; The Uffizi, Flor-
ence), like Titian's Sacred and Profane Love, or like
sculptures such as Michelangelo's Medici tombs. The
same is true of works by Dürer, Holbein, and Bruegel
in the North. A deep symbolism, a complicated
iconography—especially current in the circles influ-
enced by Neo-Platonism—belonged to the perfection
of the work.
This idea had a long life: it recurs in 1604 in Carel
van Mander's Book of the Painter, as well as in Bernini's
utterances on the beauty of the concept which adorns
the work. The more refined the concept, the more
difficult the symbolism, the narrower the circle of those
who can really understand the work.
Art was considered, especially in the exclusive, court
social groups, or among the humanists, as a secret
language, accessible to the initiated. The visual sign
was connected with words into a specific union of
literature and art, which flourished at the time of the
Renaissance, of mannerism, and of the baroque in the
form of impresa, of hieroglyph, and of emblem. The
roots of the impresa—the personal sign and motto—are
to be found in chivalrous devices and signs, popular
in the late Middle Ages; it was brought to Italy from
France and connected with Neo-Platonic speculation
(Klein, 1957). Hieroglyphs became popular thanks to
the discovery in 1419 of the Hieroglyphica by Hora-
pollo Niliacus (of the second or fourth century A.D.),
published in 1505. The humanists believed that this
enigmatic image-script disguised a profound wisdom
of the Egyptians: “they supposed that the great minds
of Greece had been initiated into these Egyptian
'mysteries'—which in their turn, were of course one
more prefiguration of the teachings of Christ” (Seznec
[1953], p. 100). Emblems originated from an erudite,
intellectual play among the humanists, aiming however
at a moral lesson and sometimes considered, in a Neo-
Platonic way, as symbols revealing to those who con-
template them a higher knowledge of divine mysteries.
Emblem included a motto, called lemma, an image,
and an epigram. Only the whole of the emblem can
be understood, each element of it giving only one part
of the meaning. All those cryptic codes of expression,
connecting words and images, originated as secret and
elitarian. The problem of the degree of obscurity was
one of the main points discussed by the theorists of
the emblematics (Clements [1964], pp. 191-95). Eras-
mus of Rotterdam stressed that one of the virtues of
the impresa is that its meaning can be grasped only
with an intellectual effort. Cesare Ripa (Iconologia,
1593) demands that symbolic images be composed “in
the form of enigma.” Sambucus (1564) required “ob-
scuritas” and “novitas” from the emblems. Paolo
Giovio represented a reasonable middle: “The device
should not be so obscure as to require the Sybil to
interpret it, nor yet so obvious that any literal-minded
person can understand it.” Later however, the crypto-
grams of hieroglyphics and emblem books began to
be popularized and explained. Collections of emblems
became widely known. New systematization of icon
ography, now of a humanistic one, was inaugurated.
In 1556 Vincenzo Cartari published the first modern
handbook of mythological imagery: le imagini colla
sposizione degli dei degli antichi (Venice, 1556). In the
same year Pierio Valeriano produced a rich collection
of Hieroglyphica (Basel, 1556). Earlier in 1531, Andrea
Alciati had compiled the first emblem book (Emblema-
tum liber, Augsburg, 1531). The influence of such
books, which went through many translations and edi-
tions and which were imitated and continued all over
Europe, grew at the close of the sixteenth and in the
seventeenth century. In exclusive groups it happened
much earlier that hieroglyphic, astrological, and em-
blematic imagery influenced the iconography of im-
portant works of art, as, for example, at the court of
Maximilian I (M. Giehlow, 1915); sometimes this con-
cerned works done by the most distinguished artists,
like Dürer's Melencolia I (Klibansky, et al., 1964).
Emblematic principle of composition, uniting as it did
the image with the verbal formulations, found great
popularity in northern Europe, perhaps because, the
importance of the word, so prominent in Protestantism,
was stressed (Luther required “fragments from the
Holy Writ” to be included in the Epitaph-pictures).
Epitaphs and other religious pictures of the Protestant
North connect words and images in the harmonious
indivisible whole (Białostocki, 1968).
In the Netherlands emblems played an important
part in the development of realistic painting in the
seventeenth century, since they furnished a rich reper-
tory of imagery, charged with allegorical meaning (de
Jongh, von Monroy). However, the meaning of those
images, obvious to the viewer who remembered the
original emblematic context, eluded for a long time
later interpreters who were no longer conversant with
the emblems.
After Cartari and his followers furnished artists and
patrons with images of classical gods, there was a need
felt for another handbook, which would enable the
artist to represent, and the patron to understand, the
abstract, moral, philosophical, scientific, and other
ideas symbolized. Only then was art able to express
complex thoughts. This task was fulfilled by Cesare
Ripa of Perugia, who in 1593 published his Iconologia,
a handbook explaining how to represent all the incor-
poreal concepts. In 1603 Iconologia was republished
with illustrations and became one of the most popular
and influential art books. With Ripa in hand art
historians—initially Émile Mâle (1932)—were able to
decipher hundreds of allegorical statements in paint
and stone, guided by this alphabet of personifications.
Ripa's basic entity was a human figure, female more
often than male, whose costumes, attributes, gestures,
and other particulars express specific qualities of the
idea represented. With the publication of Ripa's work—
translated soon into many languages and frequently
republished and revised—the humanistic system of
allegorical iconography was established: classical gods
and personifications, hieroglyphic signs and emblems
connecting words and images: this was the material
used by the artists of mannerism and the baroque when
they did not choose to keep to the “historical” world,
i.e., to borrow their subjects directly from literature.
When they did so, when they painted stories, they used
to select them not only from Ovid and Vergil, but also
from the more recent poems by Ariosto and Tasso, and
also from the works of less known writers, ancient and
modern. Valerius Maximus furnished them with exam-
ples of virtuous behavior. These historical examples
were in general either connected with allegorical gen-
eralizations (in the big decorations of the late baroque
the central fresco was often an allegory and the ac-
companying canvas-pictures presented historical ex-
amples of virtues; Garas, pp. 280-83) or conceived in
an allegorical way.
Ovide moralisé was popular already
in the late Middle Ages. Its influence persisted also
in the time of the baroque. Myths and stories under-
went allegorical interpretations along the lines of that
moralizing commentary.
What was considered necessary for an artist around
1600 can be seen from Carel van Mander's Book of
the Painter (1604). It included a long, theoretical poem,
a history of classical and modern Italian and Nether-
landish artists, a translation and a moral interpretation
of Ovid's Metamorphoses, and finally a description of
personifications. There is no specific section on reli-
gious iconography, since artists were well furnished
with books giving them rules in this respect.
Against the humanistic conception of art the Council
of Trent proclaimed rules, constituting a new system
of religious iconography, which put an end to the live
tradition of medieval art. These rules were published
officially by the Church and they have been com-
mented upon and elaborated in books by Joannes
Molanus (1570), Saint Carlo Borromeo (1577), Gabriele
Paleotti (1581), Federico Borromeo (1624), and several
others. The rules of the Council governed the decora-
tion of churches and other sacred buildings, and the
character of pictures representing sacred subjects. A
break between the religious and the secular iconogra-
phy became obvious in theoretical literature, although
there existed many emblem books of a very distinct
religious character (G. de Montenay, 1571; B. Arias
Montanus, 1571; H. Hugo, 1624). A new strictly for-
mulated system of religious iconography coexisted in
the seventeenth century with humanistic subject mat-
ter, symbolism, and allegory. The classical nude, intro-
duced by the Renaissance into art, was strictly forbid
den now in religious art, but found a free field of
development in secular mythological and allegorical
works. Many artists exercised their imagination in both
fields; in some specific fields such as sepulchral iconog-
raphy, cooperation between religious and humanistic
symbolism was common. In the work of P. P. Rubens
the various aspects of the new iconography found
perhaps their best expression. In his art allegorical
concepts, classical gods and heroes, triumphs of mythi-
cal beings as well as of secular rulers accompany mar-
tyrdoms of Catholic saints and the triumphs of the
Eucharist. What began to be separated in theory could
yet coexist in harmony in the work of a great artist.
