Cerulean
Fair Theatre of Love, you reveal to our eyes
How a child laughs at men and the gods.
He introduces a comic element in the opening scene
And in this pleasant fashion captivates our spirits.
Then the traitor; having thus caught us unawares,
Finds as passion from cup of tragedy
Despite Cupid's harshness, we run towards our misfortunes,
And tired unto death of suffering his works
We are nevertheless delighted to burn in his flames.
It is not out of reason but out of necessity
That we obey his divinity,
Which forces reason to obey his charms.
Why then proclaim chaste continence
And bitter austerity as a means of barring his strength
If he hands our hearts of stone whenever he wishes?
Love conquers all, foolish is he who resists,
In the end we must taste Cupid's sweet rigors
And follow him on the path with no thought for our heart.
It is a pleasant danger to follow this god,
Whose greatest evil is really a game:
Love is Cupid's game
Preface, Theatre d'Amour, Complete reprint of the coloured Emblemata amortoria of 1620, by Carsten-Peter Warncke (Taschen Publishers)
A century and one half perhaps from a circa 1471-81 tarocchi courtly poem and game of 78 verses from MM Boiardo also speaks of the game of love and 'Love Conquers All.' The dating of copied and illuminated collections of fine art engravings that focus on subjects such as 'Love' are in libraries of this time.
The engravings in style to me resembles to me a tarocchi-style game, a variant called the Florentine Minchiate from 1725.
From the Theatre D'Amour commentary on page 312:
..part of the emblem genre which flourished between the 16th and 18th century and which was typically exploited for its symbolic potential. As otherwise almsot neer the case in the history of art, the birth of the emblem as an artistic genre can be assigned to a precise date. In 1531 the offices of Heinrich Steyner in Augsburg published the Emblematum liber, a small book authored by Andrea Alciato, an Italian humanist and professor of jurisprudences at Lyons. Most of the texts sprung not from Alciato's own pen, however, but from a collection of ancient Greek poetry entitled Anthologia Grecea. The Emblematium liber is nonetheless ALciato's intellectual achievement for he prefaced each poem with a short caption summarizing the message conveyed by the verse. The publisher in turn also added woodcut illustrations by the Augsburg artist Jorg Breu. The result was an attractive three-part form comprising a short, pithy motto (or lemma) at the top, a picture and a text expounding the lesson delivered by the motto and the scene portrayed in the picture. This text text is ideally formatted in lines of verse but may also be completed in prose.
The technique of combining a symbolic image with a definition of its hidden meaning is perhaps best illustrated with an example. From the Anthologia Grecea Alciato took a six-line poem (Anth Grae IX, 221) which belongs to the genre of ekphrasis, a description -- in partaicular of pictures or sculptures--undertaken as an exercise in rhetorical excellence (cf ill p.312 and folio 7). In this case the poem describes a scene carved as a cameo onto a stone Cupid, depicted as a young boy, is driving two mighty lions with one nonchalant hand and thereby symbolizes the power of love. No one can shield himself from this power. Alciato has captioned the poem with a brief motto of just three words: Potentissimus affectus amor. Love is the most powerful passion. The artist depictes Cupid who has his eyes bound representing blind love, driving a chariot pulled by two lions. All three components combine to make up the specific significance of the emblem as a whole.
(I'm checking for more clues, maybe tarotwise....)
Cerulean who is fascinated by this and peeking at her Marseilles precursors and the Burdel of 1751...
How a child laughs at men and the gods.
He introduces a comic element in the opening scene
And in this pleasant fashion captivates our spirits.
Then the traitor; having thus caught us unawares,
Finds as passion from cup of tragedy
Despite Cupid's harshness, we run towards our misfortunes,
And tired unto death of suffering his works
We are nevertheless delighted to burn in his flames.
It is not out of reason but out of necessity
That we obey his divinity,
Which forces reason to obey his charms.
Why then proclaim chaste continence
And bitter austerity as a means of barring his strength
If he hands our hearts of stone whenever he wishes?
Love conquers all, foolish is he who resists,
In the end we must taste Cupid's sweet rigors
And follow him on the path with no thought for our heart.
It is a pleasant danger to follow this god,
Whose greatest evil is really a game:
Love is Cupid's game
Preface, Theatre d'Amour, Complete reprint of the coloured Emblemata amortoria of 1620, by Carsten-Peter Warncke (Taschen Publishers)
A century and one half perhaps from a circa 1471-81 tarocchi courtly poem and game of 78 verses from MM Boiardo also speaks of the game of love and 'Love Conquers All.' The dating of copied and illuminated collections of fine art engravings that focus on subjects such as 'Love' are in libraries of this time.
The engravings in style to me resembles to me a tarocchi-style game, a variant called the Florentine Minchiate from 1725.
From the Theatre D'Amour commentary on page 312:
..part of the emblem genre which flourished between the 16th and 18th century and which was typically exploited for its symbolic potential. As otherwise almsot neer the case in the history of art, the birth of the emblem as an artistic genre can be assigned to a precise date. In 1531 the offices of Heinrich Steyner in Augsburg published the Emblematum liber, a small book authored by Andrea Alciato, an Italian humanist and professor of jurisprudences at Lyons. Most of the texts sprung not from Alciato's own pen, however, but from a collection of ancient Greek poetry entitled Anthologia Grecea. The Emblematium liber is nonetheless ALciato's intellectual achievement for he prefaced each poem with a short caption summarizing the message conveyed by the verse. The publisher in turn also added woodcut illustrations by the Augsburg artist Jorg Breu. The result was an attractive three-part form comprising a short, pithy motto (or lemma) at the top, a picture and a text expounding the lesson delivered by the motto and the scene portrayed in the picture. This text text is ideally formatted in lines of verse but may also be completed in prose.
The technique of combining a symbolic image with a definition of its hidden meaning is perhaps best illustrated with an example. From the Anthologia Grecea Alciato took a six-line poem (Anth Grae IX, 221) which belongs to the genre of ekphrasis, a description -- in partaicular of pictures or sculptures--undertaken as an exercise in rhetorical excellence (cf ill p.312 and folio 7). In this case the poem describes a scene carved as a cameo onto a stone Cupid, depicted as a young boy, is driving two mighty lions with one nonchalant hand and thereby symbolizes the power of love. No one can shield himself from this power. Alciato has captioned the poem with a brief motto of just three words: Potentissimus affectus amor. Love is the most powerful passion. The artist depictes Cupid who has his eyes bound representing blind love, driving a chariot pulled by two lions. All three components combine to make up the specific significance of the emblem as a whole.
(I'm checking for more clues, maybe tarotwise....)
Cerulean who is fascinated by this and peeking at her Marseilles precursors and the Burdel of 1751...
