Andrea Alciato

Andrea Alciato was a jurist from the Italian city of Milan? who settled in France in the early 16th century. A learned man, Alciato wrote a number of legal treatises, but he is most famous for his Emblemata?, published in dozens of editions from 1531 onward. This collection of short Latin verse texts and accompanying woodcuts created an entire European genre, the [emblem book]?, which attained enormous popularity in continental Europe and Britain. Emblem books, normally containing about one hundred picture/text combinations, were intended to inspire their readers to reflect on a general moral lesson derived from the reading of both picture and text together. The picture was potentially subject to numerous interpretations: only by reading the text could a reader be certain which meaning was intended by the author.