Ecole flamande, après Jacques de Gheyn II (1565-1629): Quatorze emblèmes, encre et aquarelle sur papier, 17ème siècle

Dia.: 11,5 x 12,2 cm (the smallest and the largest drawing)

The emblems taken from the 'Emblemata Amatoria' by Daniel Heinsius (1580-1655), printed in Amsterdam by Dirck Pietersz. in 1608 (link). The original designs made bij Jacques de Gheyn II, as shown by some drawings in the collection of the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig (e.g. inv./cat.nr Z. 542, link).

An emblem always consists of an image (pictura) with a saying (inscriptio/motto) and a short poem (subscriptio) and can have all kinds of subjects. Around 1600 Daniël Heinsius made the first Dutch emblem collection, 'Quaeris sit amor?' or 'Emblemata amatoria', which contained only emblems about love. The emblems of Heinsius consist of a pictura with an inscriptio in Latin and an eight-line subscriptio in Dutch (both the Dutch - see verso - and the Latin text - above the emblems - were copied with each emblem). In 1608 a second Dutch collection of love emblems followed, made by Otto Vaenius, a painter and humanist from Antwerp. Poems were published in three languages ​​for the first time in this collection. P.C. Hooft his 'Emblemata amatoria' is the third collection of love emblems in Dutch. As visible, love emblems were a very popular 17th-C. genre.