Эмблемы и символы

During his stay in Amsterdam in 1697-8, Peter Alexeyevich Romanov, tsar of Russia, acquired an emblem-book entitled Devises et Emblemes Anciennes et Modernes, which had been compiled by the engraver and publisher Daniel de la Feuille and published in 1691. The tsar was inspired by the imagery in the book, and sought to transfer some of its emblems into crests that would adorn the ships in the new navy he was just beginning to construct. Peter engaged the services of one Il’ja Kopievskij, a Pole resident in Amsterdam, to translate the emblem titles in de la Feuille’s compilation (which were listed therein in Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, English and German) into Russian.

At around the same time, Peter made arrangements with a Dutch merchant named Jan Tesing to compile, publish and export a series of books wholly or partly in Russian, an agreement formalised by a royal warrant issued in 1700. It is assumed that one of these books was to be a Russian version of de la Feuille’s Devises et Emblemes. Tesing was assisted in this endeavour by Kopievskij, but did not live to profit much from it, as he died the following year. Kopievskij himself left Amsterdam in 1702, but must have left his emblem-translations behind, as these were at length published in a volume issued under the title Symbola et Emblemata in 1705 by the bookseller Hendrik Wetstein.

The 1705 Symbola et Emblemata comprised 840 small emblems, or more specifically ‘devices,’ or imprese, 708 of which had been copied from de la Feuille’s book, the remainder being drawn from another multi-lingual emblem-publication, the 1696 Devises et Emblemes d’Amour, of Giuseppe Pallavicini. Both of these source-works were themselves highly derivative. Almost half of the content of the 1691 Devises et Emblemes had been copied wholesale from Nicolas Verrien’s 1685 compilation Livre Curieux et Utile, while its remaining contents had been drawn from various other emblem-books, including those of Alciato, the original emblematist, from the Idea de un Principe Politico Christiano of Diego de Saavedra, and from the Symbola Varia Diversorum Principium of Anselm de Boodt and Aegidius Sadeler, which formed the third volume of the Symbola divina & humana of Typotius.

The recycling of material extended back further to the secondary sources of the Symbola et Emblemata. Verrien’s Livre Curieux apparently made extensive use of the works of emblematists such as Camerarius, Heinsius, Cats, Vænius, and, again, of Alciato, who was thus simultaneously plagiarised at both two and three removes. Not surprisingly, these repeated appropriations, transpositions and translations garbled and corrupted a proportion of the original images and texts, but even then they had not yet reached their final state. Some seventy-three years after its first publication, a revised edition of the Symbola et Emblemata was issued in St. Petersburg, its title reversed as Емвлемы и символы (Emvlemy i Simvoly, ‘Emblems and Symbols,’ Эмблемы и символы in modern Russian—my thanks to sett for the correction): the first (and only) truly Russian emblem-book.

The 1788 volume was the work of a St. Petersburg-based doctor named Nestor Maksimovič-Ambodik. He was born near Poltava, Ukraine, in 1744. His father was a priest of Polish extraction named Maxim Maximowicz. Living in Ukraine, however, Nestor acquired a patronymic by default, which, awkwardly, was the same as his surname, so, rather than be known as Nestor Maximowitsch Maximowitsch, he invented a surname derived from the Latin ambo dic ‘say both.’ Ambodik was educated in Kiev, then later at Strasbourg, where he earned his medical degree. From 1781 he lived and practised in St. Petersburg, specialising as an obstetrician. Besides his emblem-book, he wrote a six-volume treatise on obstetrics, compiled botanical works, and edited medical dictionaries.

While Ambodik’s book shows there was still interest in emblemata in Russia at this time (indeed, there was a second edition of the Emvlemy in 1811), its vogue had almost completely faded elsewhere in Europe. Emblem-books had come to be perceived by many as the strange and slightly embarrassing relics of the questionable tastes of a less enlightened age… The images above are details of scans from a facsimile reprint of the 1788 Emvlemy published by Brill, Leiden, in 1989. Most of the information above is paraphrased from Anthony Hippisley’s introduction to this edition. Click on the images above to see them enlarged and in full: to see the multiligual text corresponding to the third, fourth, fifth and sixth of them, click on the relevant links in this sentence.

Carlo Maggi’s Voyage

Newly-posted in Curiosities of Literature today, is Isaac D’Israeli’s article, Of a Biography Painted, which describes a curiosity more pictorial than literary: the so-called Codex Maggi, a manuscript tracing the adventures and misfortunes of ‘Charles Magius, a noble Venetian,’ which ‘consisted only of eighteen pages, composed of a series of highly finished miniature paintings on vellum, some executed by the hand of Paul Veronese.’ D’Israeli had never seen the codex himself, and based his article on an account of it written (ca. 1761) by Louis César de La Baume le Blanc, the duke de la Vallière (1708-1780). The codex now belongs to the Bibliothèque National de France. The paintings from its pages were reproduced in a book, Le Voyage de Charles Magius, 1568-1573, published by Anthèse in 1992: the following images are details of scans of the reproductions therein.

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In the summer of 1570, the Ottoman Sultan Selim II ordered an attack on the island of Cyprus, at that time a dependecy of the Venetian Republic. The Ottoman army conquered most of the island in a relatively short time, but were unable to seize the fortified port of Famagusta on its North coast. Carlo Maggi (aka Charles Magius) was charged by the Venetian senate with aiding in the defence of Famagusta, and in this capacity he helped raise troops in the Republic’s territories in Puglia, travelled on diplomatic missions to Egypt and Syria, and visited Rome in an effort to secure Papal assistance. Returning to the beseiged city, Maggi helped its governor Marcantonio Bragadin orchestrate its defence, but their efforts were in vain: while their troops repelled three attacks on the city’s walls, these defences had exhausted their stock of gunpowder, and in August 1571, a surrender was negotiated.

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The terms of the surrender were favourable to the Famagustans, and many of its erstwhile defenders were allowed to leave in peace. Soon after, however, events took a nastier turn: Maggi and others were captured and sold into slavery, while Bragadin’s fate was yet worse—he was flayed alive, and his skin, stuffed with straw, was sent to Constantinople as a macabre trophy of victory. Maggi’s servitude was relatively short-lived, as ‘his age and infirmities induced his master, at length, to sell him to some Christian merchants,’ who freed him, allowing him to return to his native Venice in 1573. Having been missing—persumed dead, Maggi had been a convenient scapegoat for the defeat at Famagusta by his political opponents, and was obliged to vindicate himself before the Venetian Senate, who, presumably satisfied by his account (or perhaps merely embarrassed by his return) thereafter exonerated, and honoured him.

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Rather than write a memoir, Maggi took the unusual step of commissioning a pictorial record of his journeyings, which was completed ca. 1578. The first six paintings in the codex serve as a sort of introduction: (i) an elaborate title-page, (ii) Maggi’s genealogy, (iii) Maggi’s coat of arms, (iv) A portrait of Maggi himself—see the first of the images above, (v) a portrait of his young son, and, (vi) an elevated view of part of Cyprus, with, at its centre, an emblematic motif of a tree, broken by a storm, from which new growth nevertheless issues—see the second image above. The next eight paintings form a narrative of Maggi’s travels. Each of these pictures consists of a central figure, the personification of a particular nation, or virtue, around which are ten smaller scenes illustrating places Maggi visited or incidents he participated in, or was a witness to.

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The first, second, sixth and seventh of these narrative paintings are represented by the quartet of red-bordered details above. Note especially the third of these, which illustrates the beginning of Maggi’s captivity, where he is shown being presented, stripped, for the purpose of estimating his retail value. Click on these details to see them in the context of the full pages to which they belong. The codex is concluded with three more paintings. The first presents Maggi’s ‘debriefing’ before the Senate. This is followed by the jewel of the book, an exceptionally vivid and rich double-page painting, which, along with the portrait of Maggi’s son, was thought by de la Vallière to be the work of Paolo Veronese. The final pair of details above offer an incomplete view of this painting. At its centre, Maggi is depicted with his son, his father, brothers and sisters-in-law, and to the left of the painting, the same figures are shown seated for a feast in a magnificent outdoor dining-hall, reunited and reconciled. The codex concludes with Maggi and his son shown together at the foot of a mannerist stairway to heaven…

The Grapes of Ralph

I am fond of red wine, although these days I’ll only drink a bottle of it, on average, every four or five days. Living in Sweden, I have just the one option as to where I can purchase my poison, but, when I lived in England, where the choice was plentiform and multiplicitous, or real words to that effect, I customarily preferred to buy my wine at Oddbins. One of the things I liked about Oddbins were their cool catalogues, which in those days were adorned with illustrations by Ralph Steadman, best-known, of course, as an occasional accomplice to the late Hunter S. Thompson. Each new catalogue would feature some pictures and some travelogue from one or another of the world’s wine-growing regions. I kept a few of these, from the Summer 1995 issue, which contained an account of a visit of Mr Steadman’s to Alsace, to that for Summer 1998, which was concerned with Sicily, and Puglia, the ‘heel’ of Italy. The following are details of scans from the latter catalogue…

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The pair of images above are taken from a series of three illustrations of the piazza in the town of Avetrana, Puglia. The details below are from a tabular depiction of Sicilian gesticulations, each one accompanied ‘with explanations which may help the descriptive powers of a taster, preferring as they do, to keep his or her opinions to themselves, particularly when the wine commands an embarrassed silence—or a stifled gasp of breathless grief!’

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Below is a detail from an incomplete scan of a landscape vista of the Trapani salt pans, with, in the foreground, an (evidently British) interloper ‘with a barrowload of chips and a wine-vinegar backpack.’ The last pair of details are both from another landscape, this time of the Tempio di Segesta in Sicily. Note that the image behind these last two details comprises a pair of inexpertly-conjoined scans, and is marred by an unconcealed page-fold. Even so, I think it’s still rather splendid. Two book-length compilations of Mr Steadman’s wine-related artwork have been published, as The Grapes of Ralph, and Untrodden Grapes—the latter volume only having been issued last year. I think I’ll buy a copy to supplement the yellowed & dogeared catalogues I’ve kept all this time, as a small measure of my esteem for this ‘lifetime supporter of the maverick tradition in all fields of human activity.’

I find a lot to enjoy in Steadman’s writing, too, even though he often seems too ready to resort to hyperbole. If you can forgive a sudden change of subject, I found the following paragraph on his website perfectly accords with my feelings on a subject of much current debate, only expressing them better & more directly than I could hope to do:

Last night I listened to the po-faced BBC programme Moral Maze. This one was about TORTURE, as though it was something to question and discuss. Torture, in whatsoever form it is manipulated is an abomination, a crude and savage leftover from the darkest of ages. Unless you are going to kill and eat the poor fucker, what in God’s perverse and beautiful Kingdom do you think you are doing. TORTURE is out of bounds and as a practice in any form, for any reason—even as a hypothesis to maybe prevent a suspected holocaust, it is the one definitive unforgiveable sin—an abhorrent practice banished from all human activity. If I was being tortured, I would sure as hell tell my tormentors any damn thing they may want to know if it stopped them screwing my fingers off or shoving a red hot poker up my backside.

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These images are Copyright © 1997, Ralph Steadman, & are reproduced here without permission, only for as long as no-one objects to their presence on these pages.

A Paper Museum, and the Academy of Lynxes

One of peacay’s entries at Bibliodyssey last October, about the Melissographia of Francesco Stelluti, one of the founder-members of the Accademia dei Lincei, (regarded by some as the first true scientific society), reminded me of a book about the Academy’s early years that I’d picked up and turned over a few years before in Hedengrens bokhandel, Stockholm: David Freedberg’s The Eye of the Lynx: Galileo, His Friends, and the Beginnings of Modern Natural History. Newly-interested, I ordered a copy from Amazon, which arrived mid-December, and which I have been reading over the past few weeks. The images below are details of scans of illustrations in this book.

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The story behind the book’s inception is a fascinating one. Freedburg had been researching the background to a book about citrus fruit: the Hesperides of Giovanni Battista Ferrari, which had been published in Rome, in 1646. In his search for the original drawings after which the Hesperides’ engravings had been made, Freedberg recalled a conversation he’d had some years earlier with the erstwhile ‘Surveyor of the Queen᾿s Pictures,’ (Sir) Anthony Blunt, in which the art historian had told him about an extensive, but little-documented collection of natural-historical illustrations in the Royal Collection at Windsor, which included numerous watercolour paintings of said fruits. When Freedberg visited Windsor, he was amazed to find a magnificent trove of exceptionally fine 17th-Century drawings of all manner of flora and fauna…

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Freedberg discovered that this collection had been put together by a wealthy and well-connected antiquarian named Cassiano del Pozzo as his Museo Cartaceo (‘paper museum’), an accumulation of ‘more than seven thousand watercolours, drawings and prints […] documenting ancient art, archaeology, botany, geology, ornithology and zoology:’ a collection perhaps even surpassing that of Aldrovandi. Many of the finest natural-historical paintings in the museum (including those of the citrus fruit) were the work of an artist named Vincenzo Leonardi (fl.1621-ca.1646), and had been directly commissioned by del Pozzo. Many other illustrations and drawings, however, had been acquired by del Pozzo from his friend Federico Cesi, not long after the latter’s untimely death in 1630.

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Cesi, while still only 18, had founded the Accadmia dei Lincei (‘The Academy of Lynxes’) together with three of his friends: Stelluti; a volatile Dutch physician named Johannes van Heeck (known also as Johann Eck, Ecchio, Eckius, or Heckius); and Anastasio de Filiis, a kinsman of Cesi’s. The name of their academy was aptly-chosen, as the four sharp-eyed young men threw themselves into the meticulous study of the plant and animal life around them, and of the night skies above them. Cesi’s family, and in particular his father, disapproved of these activities to such an extent that he engineered the group’s dispersal. Nevertheless, they continued to study and observe, and to communicate via letters. Gradually, they won a reputation among progressive thinkers, and attracted new members, notably the Neapolitan scholar Giambattista della Porta, and, most importantly, Galileo Galilei.

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The Linceans’s observations were not only extended by the telescope, as in Galileo’s famous work, which was ably supported and tirelessly encouraged by his fellow Academicians, but also by the newly-invented compound microscope: Stelluti’s Melissographia is thought to have been the first printed illustration largely drawn from microscopic observation. The church’s hostile reaction to Galileo’s ideas has trained an historical spotlight upon it, which has left the Linceans’ other less revolutionary, but nevertheless important (and often pioneering) work in relative darkness, and Freedberg’s book is a valuable corrective in this regard. Its central theme is the tension, especially evident in Cesi’s research, between the Linceans’ need to record and illustrate every particular detail of the natural phenomena they encountered (thereby furnishing many of the ‘rooms’ in Cassiano’s paper museum), and the quest to classify the same phenomena by deduction & abstraction, by identifying the common structures and underlying processes of nature. While Cesi’s conclusions were often muddled and wrong, he meanwhile made some brave and valuable breaks with Aristotelian tradition in the attempt…