Henry Peacham's Minerva Britanna had many influences, not the least of which was Cesare Ripa's Iconologia, which had been published about ten years before. In fact, thirty one of Peacham's emblems were directly influenced by Ripa (some of which are almost direct copies).
Cesare Ripa was born Giovanni Campani (1560-1623) and served as Cardinal Salviati's chief butler. He put together a collection of verses in his spare time which were published, without illustrations, in 1593 as the Iconologia. For this work he was knighted by Duke Emmanuel of Savoy. It was not until 1603 that the Iconologia was published with accompanying woodcuts (Tung 109). It was this version that so heavily influenced Peacham.
Peacham created most of his emblems by what Michael Bath calls an agglomerative process through which Peacham would 'glue' together related topoi and elements from various sources. Even in some of his emblems which come almost directly from Ripa, he would pull elements from other emblems also. One of the best examples of this is Emblem 206 from Minerva Britanna, Aula or Favor. Instead of using Ripa's Favor, many of its elements are drawn from his 'Court' emblem, which depicts a person with leaden shoes and golden shackles, which conveyed the fact that the court's opinion ruled over individuals. Peacham changes the shackles into set of stocks and gives the woman he uses a set of 'gilded hooks.' The stocks are linked to an emblem by Alciato, In aulicos, which has its source in one of the writings of Erasmus. Here Peacham has a problem because by changing the golden shackles to stocks he has lost the link of 'golden fetters' to Erasmus that the other two authors had even though by pairing the 'gilded hooks' with the stocks he conveys a similar meaning (Bath 103). Peacham's final illustration shows a woman standing next to a set of stocks, holding a set of hooks, with lead shoes on her feet. Peacham, by drawing from those several sources, created an emblem personifying courtly favor.
Each of the thirty one emblems that traces back to Ripa is either a direct copy or a product of this agglomerative process, through which Peacham turned Ripa's personifications into real emblems. Though obviously not the only source for Peacham's emblems, Ripa's Iconologia was well-received by Peacham.
-Rich Novak
Works Cited
- Bath, Michael. Speaking pictures: English emblem books and Renaissance culture.
- New York, NY: Longman, 1994.
- Tung, Mason. "From Personifications to Emblems." The English emblem and the continental tradition(1988). New York, NY: AMS Press, 1988