5. Andrea Alciati, Emblemata Andrea Alciato's Emblemata (first edition, 1531) is the most popular as well as the first emblem book. Chrestien Wechel printed the first French edition in 1536, using the translation by Jean le Fevre. In 1549, Barthélemy Aneau issued, from Guillaume Roville of Lyon, a new French edition in which emblems were classified by subject matter. The present edition, by Claude Mignault, is the third French translation and also the first parallel edition (Latin and French). Mignault, who wrote a commentary to the Latin edition published by Christopher Plantin (1573), here supplements his own translation with a short didactic explication to each emblem. The translation itself is a fairly free and somewhat lengthy paraphrase of the original, which however renders the original more readable in a sense. In the fig. 1, the motto 'Temeritas' is accompanied by the picture of a chariot while the quatrain below points out the danger of the rider who fails to check his horse. The metaphor of a horse and the rider goes back to Plato and was used widely in the Middle Ages to teach the necessity of reason controlling senses. In the fig. 2, the emblem with the motto 'In temerarios' is a more concrete rendering of basically the same moral. Presumptuous Phaeton who wrought havoc on the earth by failing to control the chariot of the sun, is a warning to a young prince whose rash action can bring harm to the kingdom.
Other editions of Alciato's Emblemata : nos. 6, 7 Other Images : [3]
Green, Alciati, 107; Landwehr, Romanic, 83; Praz, pp.248-52 Andreae Alciati Emblematum Fontes Quatuor, ed. by Henry Green, The Holbein Society (London, 1870); Andreae Alciati Emblematum Flumen Abundans; or Alciat's Emblems in Their Full Stream, ed. by Henry Green, The Holbein Society (London, 1871); Daly, Peter M. and others, Andreas Alciatus. 1 The Latin Emblems: Idexes and Lists, Index Emblematicus (Toronto, 1985); Saunders, Alison, 'Sixteenth-Century French Translations of Alciati's Emblemata,' French Studes, 44(1990), 271-88
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