Emblem 146( Icon Peccati ) is an allegorical representation of sin. It is one of Peacham's emblems that was influenced by Cesare Ripa's Iconologia others include his depiction of prudence as a young woman holding a mirror and an arrow, or courtly favor as a woman holding hooks beside a spaniel. While Peacham was no doubt influenced by Ripa's allegory of sin, his differs from Ripa's in terms of style and the meaning assigned to its parts.

In Peacham's allegory Sin is personified through a young boy who stands whimsically with his arms gently extended at his sides. The figure is placed on a rocky and thorn laden mountain. The arduous landscape represents the dangerous steps one takes to reach Sin. Sin is shown naked with intertwined snakes around his waist that reach upward to eat at a his heart. Sin's eyes are blank and lack detail to show that Sin is blind and symbolize Sin's lack of insight, which comes from wisdom and knowledge. Sin's nakedness represents the state of shame in which man was cast from the Garden of Eden. His youth denotes that sin is a human error that befalls the young and serves to remind the viewer of the greatest of youth's folly-Adam's fall from grace. The snakes (one of the images lifted directly from Ripa) become the defining feature of Icon Peccati. They are a symbol of power and show dominance over the figure, they eat at his body as vultures might a carcass and they bind his waist serving as his only clothing. For Peacham the snakes signify evil or original sin. They are around the waist of Sin to show the control evil has over the loins, and carnal desires. The snake above the waist of Sin, that eats at his heart, represents Sin's bad conscience and lack of compassion as Peacham tells us.

Ripa's emblem is symbolically different from Peacham's, but similar in appearance. In Ripa's emblem Sin takes the same soft pose, and is naked with snakes around his waist and at his heart. One of the stylistic areas in which Ripa differs from Peacham, is in terms of the background. Ripa's background has less detail in the thorns and rocky ground but makes up for it in Sin's facial expressions and the wound on his body. Ripa's Sin is shown with a head of snakes in place of his hair. This image enhances Sin's inhuman and monstrous appearance that came as a result of his fall from grace. The fundamental areas in which Peacham's and Ripa's allegories of Sin differ are in style and interpretation. Ripa's emblem offers a much more textured picture of Sin, the snake that gnaws at the wound in the Sin's chest represents Pain. This variation in the emblem complicates Ripa's allegory; one way in which the allegory could be interpreted is having the young boy, symbolize the innocence of youth that Sin (depicted by the snakes) ravages and destroys with pain. Or the emblem could be understood as showing the union of Pain, evil and Sin that work together and are inseparable. It could also be interpreted more generally as giving an illustration of the anti-God and Hell's power. The message of Ripa's emblem is much bleaker than that of Peacham's, he depicts the monstrous and grotesque Sin as a means of showing the viewer that they must seek a life of prudence and penitence if they want to avoid the path of Sin.

Link to Ripa:http://emblemlibraries.psu.edu/Ripa/images/.ripa059b.html

- Erin Amico