Emblemata
Emblemata is a 1608 emblem book by the Italian jurist Andrea Alciati, with commentary by Claude Mignault, printed at the Plantin press in Antwerp for scholars and readers of Latin moral verse. Its woodcut pictures are small framed scenes, each illustrating a moral motto with a striking figure, object or action, such as a man releasing a bird, a group of fighting men beneath archers in the clouds, a corpse picked at by birds, and a murder in a palace interior. A designer might take from them the habit of pairing a compact woodcut scene with a short motto, a system of clear allegorical gestures, and the dense hatching that gives both sky and ground their texture.
