Death and love. The motifs of vanitas and memento mori in Alciato's editions of the Emblemata

The paper is an analysis of the iconography of vanitas and memento mori in the various editions of Emblematum Liber, the emblem book by Andrea Alciato. The basis of the analysis consists of Alciato's original Latin editions (Augsburg 1531, Paris 1534, Venice 1546, Lyon 1547, Lyon 1551, Frankfurt 1567, Antwerp 1577, Paris 1583, Padua 1621). Nonetheless, considerable deviations in the contents also appear in the other available editions from the 16th and 17th centuries (Paris 1536, Paris 1539, Paris 1542, Lyon 1549, Lyon 1551, Lyon 1556, Frankfurt am Main 1566/67, Paris 1584, Najera 1615, Geneva/Cologne 1615). The motif of transience in Alciato's emblems is nimbly intertwined with the motifs of love and friendship. Viewed against the backdrop of Alciato's sources of inspiration from Greek and Roman antiquity, much in the spirit of Renaissance humanism, this allows for establishing original iconographic motifs and interpretations. It is precisely the juxtaposition of death and love as motifs that enables an interpretational exposition that in turn provides the possibility of forming novel ideas within the iconography of transience. Emblem books in particular played a key role as a medium for the development and proliferation of moral -didactic content, with the Early Modern Period's often satirical emblems. The paper seeks to shed light on Alciati's scarcely researched innovative interpretation and additions to the motif of transience, which is accomplished based on the iconological analysis of five emblems (Tumulus meretricis, Senex pulleam amans, De Morte & Amore, In Formosam fato praeraptam and In mortem praeraptam). As a result of combining established iconographic motifs from the High Middle Ages based on the macabre with the allegorical language of the Early Modern Period's emblems, the motif of transience itself brims with imagery that could not have developed prior to Alciato's book.