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Keywords:

Emblem Studies, Applied Emblematics, Jesuit Emblem Books, Jesuit Art, Jesuit Art - Belgium Flanders - History - 17th Century, Book History, Jesuits - Publishing, Emblems in Art, Emblem Theory, Jesuit Emblem Theory, Impresa in Art, Impresa Theory, KUL-EC-LECTIO

Abstract:

The Imago primi saeculi Societatis Iesu is unquestionably one of the most impressive emblem books ever published in early modern times. It was the felicitous result of an intensive collaboration between Jesuit authors and closely associated craftsmen. Working under great time pressure, the editors stretched their organizational talents to make sure that the Imago came to light in the festive year 1640. They attracted talented Neo-Latin poets such as Sidronius Hosschius and Jacobus Wallius for composing numerous learned emblems. Furthermore, they solicited the experienced engraver Cornelis Galle the Elder for designing captivating picturae and contracted the famous Antwerp book printer Balthasar Moretus to turn their emblem compositions into a book of the highest possible quality. In all likelihood, the tight schedule compelled both the emblem poets and the engraver mainly to draw inspiration from materials that were readily available in Antwerp. This limitation greatly increased the stakes of the artistic game in which they were involved ‒ a game ruled by the rhetoric of argutia as it had been developed by Jesuit and non-Jesuit emblem theoreticians at the time: creating a dense web of subtle intertextual and 'intericonic' references, the emblem artists were expected to modify existing literary and visual motives in order to create new, surprising, and witty emblems. More often than not, they proved equal to the arduous task. Typically enough, the Imago was submitted to careful scrutiny immediately after its publication. The internal quality control was a first step towards issuing a French adaption of the Imago which would serve as a counterpart to the Dutch version which was composed, more or less concomitantly with the Latin work, by Laurentius Uwens and Adriaen Poirters. Just as the festivities organized in Antwerp and elsewhere to celebrate the centenary of the Society, the book designed to commemorate them had to cater for men of letters as well as for ordinary people. Far from producing a rather slavish adaptation of the Imago, Poirters succeeded in creating a new work that yielded in nothing to its Latin counterpart. Perfectly attuned to vernacular literary standards and expectations, the Af-beeldinghe provided remarkably fresh encodings of the pictorial material that was not only culled from the Imago as such but also from the existing emblematic tradition as a whole. While time pressure forced the author to reduce the number of emblems, he managed to compose a cogent work of art which conveyed an equally strong message as the Imago: the tone is self-confident, sometimes even polemical. The Imago is exactly what it proclaims to be: it is an 'image' that renders the Jesuit order and its great past visible. It represents, albeit in a selective and strategic manner, the ideals and achievements of the Society, as a whole, and of the Flemish-Belgian province, more particularly. It not only describes a glorious past, but also aims to explain it in terms of a well-defined program and spirit. However, the obvious representational goal of the Imago should not blind us for its less apparent but equally important performative function. Heavily drawing on imprese books and deliberately blurring the distinction between the 'heroic symbol' and the emblem, the composers of the Imago intended their work to be an autographum, a public declaration, a solemn pledge. The explicit message to the reader ('This is what we do, what we are') contains an unmistakable implicit message: 'This is what we promise to do and to be in the future'. Not unlike the vows taken by each Jesuit upon entering the order, the emblems function as sacred oaths which impose a heavy duty on the Society and its members: they commit themselves to follow in the footsteps of their illustrious predecessors, to imitate and, if possible, emulate their heroic words and deeds. As such, the Imago set the example for future exercises in self-presentation and commitment: for more than a century to come, the emblems were re-utilized in various ways in order to convey a similar ‒ or different ‒ message on various occasions and in diverse contexts. The picturae were turned into huge paintings which were displayed in the Antwerp Jesuit church during the festivities of 1640. After the celebration, they continued to serve as models for emblematic exhibitions held in numerous Jesuit colleges in the Flandro-Belgian province and elsewhere. For decades to come, they served as a basis for emblematic adaptation by Jesuit emblem poets living and working in the Low Countries, such as Henricus Engelgraeve, Joannes van Sambeeck and Franciscus Nerrincq. Some of the picturae of the Imago were reproduced in the Chaplaincy of Blatten in Switserland, in the Jesuit church of Córdoba, Argentina in 1671 and even inspired the sculptor Pedro de Laboria for his retable on the rapture of Saint Ignatius in the Iglesia San Ignacio in Bogotá, Colombia as late as 1748. If anything, those imitations eloquently prove the productive power of the Imago's exceptional verbal and visual opulence. However rich and diverse the reception of the Imago appears to have been, its reutilization entailed at the same time a significant shift in status and function. Designed to commemorate the Society's centenary and highlight its past achievements and future aspirations, it rapidly turned into a 'source book' among other source books: it was searched for pictorial motives which could and would be combined with emblematic elements derived from other, equally interesting volumes. A magnificent imaginotheca in its own right, the Imago came to function as part of a larger imaginotheca, a huge storehouse of emblematic models freely to be selected and adapted by future Jesuit authors eager to execute their own artistic and ideological agenda.