10.  Hadrianus Junius, Emblemata

The first edition of the emblem book by a Duch physician, Hadrianus Junius, with 58 woodcuts by Arnold Nicolai and Gerard Janssen van Kampen after G. Ballain and P. Huys. Christopher Plantin was responsible for most of the emblem books published in the sixteenth-century Flandres, of which this is one of the early examples. Plantin kept woodblocks for re-use, and twenty-one of them are actually re-used in Geffrey Whitney, A Choice of Emblemes (Leiden: Christopher Plantin, 1586).

In fig. 1, Hercules stands before a sort of an ideal cityscape of the Renaissance, accompanied by Vice and Virtue. Virtue is armed with reason while Vice is the figure of lechery accompanied by Cupid. This emblem of Hercules choosing the right way was a popular one, also found, among others,  in Gabriel Rollenhagen, Nucleus Emblematum selectissimorum (no.21).

The emblem of 'Time revealing Truth' [2] shows the winged Saturn (Chronos) with a sickle helping his daughter Truth out of dungeon, while the enemies of Truth - Strife, Jealousy, and Calumny - stand behind. The same emblem also appears in Whitney, with the motto, 'Veritas temporis filia'.

Othe edition of Junius' Emblemata : no.11

Adams, J444; BL STC Nether., p.110; Landwehr, Low Countries, 276; Praz, p.384; Voet, 1476

Donald Gordon, 'Veritas filia temporis: Hadrianus Junius and Geoffrey Whitney,' JWCI 3(1939/40), 228-40