Catholic Emblems Repurposed for Protestants
ZAUNSLIFER, Petrus.
Tafereel van overdeftige Zinnebeelden, gemaelt naer de Deuchden, Ondeuchden, Gemoetsdriften der Menschen, Straffen Godts, en Zegeningen. Eerst beschreven door Cesare Ripa, Pierius Valerianus, Orus Apollo, en anderen, maer nu in meerder Orde gebracht … Amsterdam, Gerard Onder de Linden, 1722.
4to, pp. [xviii], 440, [8], with a duplicate bifolium A1.A4 (a variant setting without engraved illustrations); with 70 engraved illustrations (by Houbraken?) printed in-text, engraved title by Gilbert Schouten printed to *1, title printed in red and black with a copper-engraved vignette; small hole in last leaf (affecting a few characters of index), very occasional light stains, nonetheless a very good copy; bound in contemporary vellum over boards, arabesque centrepieces blocked in blind, manuscript lettering to spine, edges specked red and blue; very slightly rubbed with a few minor marks.
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Tafereel van overdeftige Zinnebeelden, gemaelt naer de Deuchden, Ondeuchden, Gemoetsdriften der Menschen, Straffen Godts, en Zegeningen. Eerst beschreven door Cesare Ripa, Pierius Valerianus, Orus Apollo, en anderen, maer nu in meerder Orde gebracht …
First edition of this illustrated collection of religious emblems by the Dutch preacher Petrus Zaunslifer, adapting Cesare Ripa’s influential Iconologia.
Zaunslifer (1677–1739) had been a chaplain for the Dutch fleet on its 1702 Cadiz campaign against Spanish ships carrying silver from the New World. In the present work he draws on Ripa’s Iconologia – published in 1593 and first illustrated in 1603 – both in word and image, but adapts it for the Dutch Reformed church. ‘In 1722, Ripa’s Iconologia was adapted by the Dutch Reformed minister Peter Zaunslifer with the intention of making Ripa’s personifications serve as a means to reveal the “verborgeheden des geloofs” [mysteries of the faith], just as God Himself had used “zinnebeeldige vertogen” [emblematic elucidations] in the Bible. Zaunslifer maintained that he selected all the fragments of the Iconologia relating to religion, hoping to convey their meaning and value to a large audience … What follows is Zaunslifer’s own selection of classical and biblical sources on the subject. His work could therefore be used as a handbook for those who wanted to create theological emblems’ (Stronks, pp. 282–283).
STCN 181118939; Landwehr, Low Countries 747 & Emblem and fable books of the Low Countries 903; Praz, pp. 539–540. See Stronks, Negotiating differences: Word, Image, and Religion in the Dutch Republic (2011).