Michael Snijders / Gillis van Schoor / Herman Hugo - Emblems of divine and human love (Emblems Book) - 1631

1631 FIRST EDITION WITH 118 EMBLEMS by Michael Snijders (1586-1672), Gillis van Schoor (1596-1637), Karel van Mallery (1571-1635) and other Flemish artists. Snijders was a prodigious engraver and publisher who spent his career working in the center of Antwerp. The illustrations feature two children, little angels, earthly and divine love, in their games, who strike with their arrows like winged cupids, amidst dangers, temptations, death, apparitions, demons, and daily pursuits. The text in Latin and French is by Herman Hugo (1588-1629) famous for his "Pia Desideria" one of the most important emblem books of the period. Pages and illustrations in excellent condition, old binding from around 1850, solid and in very good condition. No copies for sale, the 1650 second edition is selling for US$ 5,300.00, this 1631 first edition is offered at a fraction of that price. References; World Cat OCLC n°1048239590; USTC n°6004568 (1640 edition); Landwehr, Low Countries 33-36; Praz p. 255; Landwehr Romanic 272; Morgan Library Museum PML 126349; F.W.H. Hollstein, Dutch and Flemish Engravings and Woodcuts 1450-1700, XXVI, page 49.

This emblemata appeared at a time when Protestant and Catholic authorities were ‘fishing for souls’. Apart from the activities of the religious orders, such as the Jesuits with their emphasis on education, the secular authorities set up their campaigns for recatholization and consolidation of their own power. «The book shows the works of the Devil contrasted with those of God, the effects of earthly love compared to those of divine love». Ref. Praz, Studies in 17th Century imagery, pages 147/148. This book was first published in Latin by Michael Snijders at Antwerp with 39 emblems in 1626 with the title "Amoris Divini et Humani Effectus Varie", and with 83 emblems in 1629, this first edition with 118 emblems reflects a widespread tendency to incorporate emblems from earlier successful print series into new ones. See J. Landwehr, Emblem and fable books (3rd ed.), 33ff and McGeary & Nash. Emblem books at the University of Illinois. Majority of plates are after Michael Snijders, Gillis van Schoor and Karel van Mallery. The dating of the book is on the page of the approval of the royal privilege. "The 'Pere Capucin' of the title is presumably Herman Hugo (1588-1629), who was responsible for the expansion of the work in 1629." See Adams.

TITLE: Les emblemes d'amour divin et humain ensemble. Expliquez par des vers françois. Par un Père Capucin…(The emblems of divine and human love together. Explained in French verse. By a Capuchin friar...)
AUTHORS: Text by Herman Hugo (1588-1629), engravings by Michael Snijders (1586-1672), Gillis van Schoor and other Flemish artists
PUBLISHER: Jean Messager
DATE: 1631, Paris, first edition

DESCRIPTION: In 8vo size, height 160 x width 105 mm (6.3 by 4.2 inches). Pages [2], 118 leaves. A charming engraved suite comprising a title-frontispiece framed by drums, bows, quivers, shields, and a lamb, text and illustrations are clean, intact and well engraved, rare small stains or defects. 1850 circa binding in full blue morocco leather, corners slightly rubbed, edges gilt, with titles on the spine, minimal defects. COMPLETE ILLUSTRATED EDITION.

AUTHOR: Michael Snijders (1586-1672) was a prodigious engraver and publisher who spent his career working in the center of Antwerp. Snijders was one of Antwerp’s many makers of "devotieprenten", small, printed images of saints given out on feast days, awarded at school festivals, and exported across the wider Catholic world. This was his bread and butter, his shop produced objects using practices that aligned it with an entire cadre of printmakers working in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Antwerp. Reference; Michael Snijders’s Copious Copies and the Mechanisms of Print by Aaron M. Hyman.

AUTHOR: Herman Hugo (1588-1629) was a Jesuit priest, writer and military chaplain. His Pia desideria, a spiritual emblem book published in Antwerp in 1624, was "the most popular religious emblem book of the seventeenth century".

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