24. Rare emblem book. Gilles Correzet. 1543.

The emblem book as genre was 'invented' in 1531 by the Italian Andrea Alciato. His Emblematum liber has been printed at least 170 times. It consists of 212 small woodcuts, each accompanied by an often puzzling motto and a brief explanatory poem. The origin of the genre goes back to the Greek and Latin epigrammatic poetry of Antiquity, but the synthesis of picture, motto and poem, where the picture although mysterious and paradoxical in content, is the central and most important element, is characteristic of Alciato's use of the epigramatical art. Each individual emblem has a morally educational function. It postulates a connection between an ethical rule or condition and something objectively existent, such as a natural phenomenon, a historical event, a societal fact or a social experience. The ethical doctrines are not opposed to Christian ethics, but the premises are temporal, not biblical.

The genre became immensely popular in southern and central Europe right up until the end of the 1700s. As a pedagogical genre, emblem books were used for presentation and learning of all forms of abstract knowledge, and these often tastefully illustrated and composed small collections of poems were amongst the weapons diligently employed in a Europe harassed by religious wars after the Reformation.

Since then emblem books have become a collector's item, and The Royal Library has through the private libraries which were incorporated in the 17. and 18. century built up a fine collection. Some of them are in imminent need of conservation of the covers, for example the early French emblem book by Gilles Correzet: Hecatongraphie, c'est à dire les descriptions de cent figures et hystoires, contenants plusieurs appophtegmes, proverbes, sentences et dictz tant des anciens, que des modernes. Paris: Denys Ianot Imprimeur et Libraire. 1543.