Glasgow University Library's pre-eminent position in the Emblem field derives from its ownership of the Stirling Maxwell Collection of Emblem Books, the largest such collection in the world. A detailed description of the collection is available. Entries for the whole collection are found in the Library Catalogue. Responsible for the up-keep and development of the collection is the Special Collections Department (library-asc@gla.ac.uk), to whom enquiries about its use should be addressed.
Within the University there is a strong research interest in Emblem Studies, based in the Stirling Maxwell Centre, formerly the Centre for Emblem Studies. There is also a Publication series Glasgow Emblem Studies. The Centre's Research Seminar meets five or six times a year, often online as well as in person, and welcomes both local and visiting scholars, and scholars from further afield. The Sir William Stirling Maxwell Fellowship provides a framework for scholars wishing to visit Glasgow in order to use the Stirling Maxwell Collection. For all enquiries concerning the Centre and its activities, please contact Laurence Grove or Luís Gomes (Laurence.Grove@glasgow.ac.uk; Luis.Gomes@glasgow.ac.uk).
What is an Emblem?
An Emblem is a combination of an image and one or more related texts, of a type which developed in the sixteenth century and enjoyed an enormous vogue for the next 200 years or more, when several thousand emblem books issued from printing presses throughout Europe. Unlike personal imprese or devices that express the values or aspirations of a particular individual rather than a general moral, emblems communicate moral, political, or religious values in ways that have to be decoded by the viewer. Emblem books differ in some respects from popular contemporary genres such as fables and other beast literature, enigmas, rebuses. They have long attracted the attention of scholars with a more general interest in painting, decorative arts, illustrated books, iconography, symbolism, theories of representation, social and cultural history.
About the Glasgow Projects
While the University of Glasgow had already hosted a modest emblems website, developed purely for teaching purposes, the current site (launched 2006-2007) is the fruit of a series of international collaborative workshops and seminars, starting with a meeting in Glasgow in June 2001. Further meetings in Palma Mallorca, La Coruña, Wolfenbüttel and Urbana Champaign both established common standards to which emblem digitisation should aspire and in effect achieved an amicable division of the corpus between different interest groups. Thus Glasgow took responsibility to develop its existing interest in French material (supported by generous funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council) and in Alciato (supported by funding from the British Academy); Donato Mansueto's Italian site (developed with European funding under the Marie Curie scheme) also exploits the riches of Glasgow's collections. During the course of the projects, further meetings and workshops were held with our international collaborators, and regular contact with our consultant David Graham (Concordia University, Montreal) and the Iconclass team (http://iconclass.org) and the Emblem Project Utrecht (https://emblems.hum.uu.nl/) have been essential in their development. Data from Glasgow projects and those of our collaborators have been harvested, integrated and made available through Emblematica Online (http://emblematica.library.illinois.edu/).
Collaborators
Where possible links to the sites of the various participants in the international collaborative effort are given here.
Emblematica Online (http://emblematica.library.illinois.edu/) is an international initiative hosted by the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, home of one of the largest emblem book collections. This is a digital library of over 1,400 emblem books from seven world-class libraries with emblem collections, from which 33,000 individual emblems have been indexed according to Iconclass, making them fully searchable. The Glasgow emblems and emblem books are thus browsable and searchable within a much broader context. Now emblem books and indivual emblems located at remote geographic locations can be searched and browsed on the web, using a single search mechanism.
Grupo de Investigacion sobre Literatura Emblematica Hispanica: Universidade da Coruna: http://rosalia.dc.fi.udc.es/emblematica/.
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel was an early partner with Emblematica Online and emblem books are incorporated into their general catalogue: https://opac.lbs-braunschweig.gbv.de/DB=2/
Emblem Project Utrecht houses more than 20 Dutch love emblem books: https://emblems.hum.uu.nl/
Bavarian State Library Project, Munich: “Digitalisierung von ausgewählten Emblembüchern der frühen Neuzeit”. The project has been closed. The project website still gives much detailed information. Books may be search for in the main BSB catalogue.
French Project: Contents
For full details see the French Emblems at Glasgow website.
Alciato, Andrea:
Livret des emblemes, 1536
Emblemes, 1549
Emblemata / Les emblemes, 1584
Les emblemes, 1615
Aneau, Barthélemy:
Picta poesis, 1552
Imagination poetique, 1552
Bèze, Théodore de:
Icones, 1580
Les vrais Pourtraits, 1581
Boissard, Jean Jacques:
Emblematum Liber / Emblemes latins..., 1588
Emblematum Liber, 1593
Emblemes ... mis de Latin en françois, 1595
Corrozet, Gilles:
Hecatomgraphie, 1540
Emblemes in Cebes, Le tableau, 1543
Coustau, Pierre:
Le pegme, 1560
Pegma, 1555
Gueroult, Guillaume:
Le premier livre des emblemes, 1550
Junius, Hadrianus:
Les emblesmes, 1567
Emblemata, 1565
La Perrière, Guillaume de:
Le thëatre des bons engins, 1544
Morosophie, 1553
Montenay, Georgette de:
Emblemes ou devises chestiennes, 1571
Emblematum Christianorum centuria / Cent emblemes chrestiens, 1584
Paradin, Claude:
Devises heroïques, 1551
Devises heroïques, 1557
Sambucus, Joannes:
Les emblemes, 1567
Emblemata, 1564
Scève, Maurice:
Delie, 1544
Italian Project: Contents
For full details see the The Study and Digitisation of Italian Emblems website.
Alciato, Andrea, Diverse imprese, 1551
Bocchi, Achille, Symbolicarum quaestionum, 1574
Ruscelli, Girolamo, Imprese illustri, 1584
Giovio, Paolo (Domenichi, L.; Simeoni, G.), Dialogo dell'imprese, 1574
Pittoni, Giovanni Battista / Dolce, Lodovico, Imprese, 1568
Pittoni, Giovanni Battista / Dolce, Lodovico, Imprese II, 1566
Contile, Luca, Ragionamento, 1574
Contents of the Alciato Project
For full details see the Alciato at Glasgow website.
Emblematum liber, Augsburg, 1531 (2 editions)
Emblematum liber, Augsburg, 1534
Emblematum liber, Paris, 1534
Les Emblemes, Paris, 1539
Emblematum liber (with German), Paris, 1542
Les Emblemes, Paris, 1542
Emblematum libellus, Venise, 1546
Los Emblemas, Lyon, 1549
Emblemata, Lyon, 1550
Emblemata, Lyon, 1551
Emblemata (with Stockhamer commentary), Lyon, 1556
Toutes les emblemes, Lyon, 1558
Liber emblematum ... Kunstbuch, Frankfurt am Main, 1567
Emblemata, Leiden, 1591
Declaración magistral sobre las Emblemas, Najera, 1615
Emblematum liber, Padua, 1621
Also included here is
- Table of Alciato's Emblems: A table of the incidence of Alciato's Emblems in key early editions.
Copyright and Reproduction
The copyright of all transcribed material in edited pages, along with the associated data files,and design, resides with the University of Glasgow, and due acknowledgement of this should be made by users. For the images, copyright also resides with the University of Glasgow, with the exception of those drawn from the 1544 edition of Scève's Délie, and the liminary material of the 1571 edition of Montenay's Emblemes, ou devises chrestiennes, for which copyright belongs to the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford; and the 1595 edition of Boissard's Emblemes... nouvellement mis de Latin en François, for which copyright belongs the Bibliothèque Mazarine in Paris. No images may be reproduced without the express permission of the appropriate copyright holder.
To order images of publishable standard, please apply:
- for Scève's Délie, and the relevant parts of the 1571 Montenay, to: Imaging Services, Bodleian Library, Broad Street Oxford, OX1 3BG, England
- for Boissard's Emblemes... nouvellement mis de latin en françois to: Bibliothèque Mazarine, 23 quai de Conti, 75006 Paris, France.
- for all other material to: Special Collections, University of Glasgow Library, Hillhead Street, Glasgow G12 8QE, Scotland. (e-mail: asc@gla.ac.uk).
Applications for permission to reproduce images from Glasgow University Library should be addressed in writing to the Senior Librarian, Special Collections, University of Glasgow Library, Hillhead Street, Glasgow G12 8QE, Scotland. (e-mail: asc@gla.ac.uk).
Feedback
We welcome feedback. Comments should be addressed to Alison.Adams@glasgow.ac.uk
Other Research Aids
Mignault's Theoretical Work on the Emblem
- An edition, with parallel English text of Mignault's theoretical work on the Emblem, prepared by Denis Drysdall.