The Art of the Emblem: Essays in Honor of Karl Josef Holtgen.

This Festschrift, honoring Karl Josef Holtgen's career as a scholar of the English emblem tradition, is stimulating and varied. Its eight essays treat English emblem books, the iconography of English Renaissance portraiture, Italian and English treatises on the impresa, even the Victorian emblems of Margaret Gatty. Many of the essays challenge assumptions that the English tradition is fundamentally derivative and static; all are compelling because the authors, who approach their subjects with great curiosity and impressive historical knowledge, demonstrate the significant influence of the art of the emblem on the literature of the English Renaissance.

Clifford Davidson and John Horden focus on the dynamism and fluidity of emblem iconography in England. Both essayists call attention to the multiple, and sometimes contradictory, meanings of common icons such as the Pelican. For Davidson, this dynamism flows from the ferment of English doctrinal controversy. Horden, also cautioning against assuming too quickly an unchanging meaning for traditional symbols, emphasizes the critic's need to develop a "Renaissance eye," an ability to read the whole picture as would a contemporary in order to see how icon plays against icon. In different contexts traditional symbols acquire nuances of meaning which differ from supposed universal meanings, and it is precisely in this way that individual authors achieve unique intentions. Similarly, Mary V. Silcox argues for the creativity of Geffrey Whitney in A Choice of Emblemes, who does not simply copy Alciato, but fuses the moral wisdom of the original with his own brand of Protestantism by adding considerable text.

Many of these essayists impress us with their ability to see with the "Renaissance eye" Horden recommends. Roy Strong's essay on the portrait of the Persian Lady is a brilliant piece of historical detection based on close analysis of the portrait's iconography, the politics of Elizabeth's Court, and the biography of the artist, Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger. Strong makes a convincing case that the weeping stag is Essex, recently fallen from favor; that the lady is his wife, Frances Walsingham; and that the portrait is a plea for forgiveness. Peter M. Daly, commenting on Wither's A Collection of Emblemes, challenges the view that Wither paid little attention to his source and thus the relationship between picture and text is often arbitrary. Daly demonstrates Wither's careful study of his Rollenhagen original and his employment of a large number of its symbolic motifs. Judith Dundas, in her essay, "De Morte et Amore," studies the meanings these traditional figures acquire in the context of Petrarchan poetry and the masque tradition, and notes their transmutation into symbols of cyclical renewal in the works of Jonson and Shakespeare, as well as in the works of artists such as Titian.

Other essays study the evolution of the impresa and emblem in England. Denis L. Drysdall, contrasting the views of the impresa expressed by Abraham France and Samuel Daniel, based on their readings of Italian treatises, shows that only France understood the evolution this device was undergoing in contemporary collections from a trivial personal symbol to a guide to moral behavior. Wendy R. Katz traces the influence of Renaissance collections on the emblems of Margaret Gatty. That a tradition laden with didactic morality would attract a Victorian may not astonish; what is surprising, Katz argues, is Gatty's lightness and creativity within the genre. By joining whimsical drawings to a didactic text, she turns her emblems into puzzles, the study of which introduces children to the complexities of irony. Finally, The Art of the Emblem is amply illustrated and concludes with a useful bibliography of Holtgen's work compiled by Sabine Haass.

Brian Meehan SALEM COLLEGE