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When Pompeo Batoni, mindful of the mystic visions of Marguerite Marie Alacoque, painted his renowned Sacred Heart of Jesus (1765-1767), he like her was engaging with a meditative visual theme that the Society of Jesus had already codified by the 1640s. This essay examines several key Jesuit and Jesuit-inspired Flemish emblem books, asking how and to what ends they visualize the mimetic-affective relationship between the Lord's heart and the votary's. These books present the Sacred Heart and the spiritual exercises attached to it as the highest form of image-based prayer directed at uniting the exercitant with Christ. Jesuit emblematists treat spiritual conformation as a pictorial process, and concomitantly they construe exercitants as skilled artisans whose expert manipulation of various materials secures the Lord's likeness in their hearts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introductory essay examines the principles of Jesuit emblematic usage, as codified by Antonio Possevino, S.J. (1533–1611) in his educational treatise Bibliotheca selecta de ratione studiorum of 1603 and developed by two of the Society's key emblematists: Jan David, S.J. (1545–1613) in his Duodecim specula of 1610 and Herman Hugo, S.J. (1588–1629) in his Pia desideria of 1624. The essay concludes by summarizing the five articles contained in this issue of the Journal of Jesuit Studies and then, on that basis, offering a brief account of the state of the question in the study of Jesuit emblematics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jan David, S.J.'s Duodecim specula (Antwerp: Jan Moretus, 1610), an innovative emblematic treatise in twelve chapters, focuses on various kinds and degrees of specular image generated by the human soul. Each chapter responds to an opening imago , designed and engraved by Theodoor Galle, that illustrates the operations of the mirror in question. Three of the imagines, V. The Mirror of Others' Eyes , viii. The Mirror of Created Things , and X. The Mirror of Example , rather than displaying persons, actions, or things that fall under the purview of the respective mirror, instead depict the mirrored image that such a speculum is seen to reflect. Accordingly, as printed imagines that prove upon closer inspection to contain specular imagines or, better, that function as pictorial representations of particular kinds of image, these imagines imaginum (images of images) can be said to produce a trompe-l'oeil effect. They ask the reader-viewer to consider why s/he thinks s/he sees a present image when what is actually seen by the eye is a pictured image, a pictured picture, doubly mediated by the process of representation. My essay examines how and why this deceptive effect was marshaled by David as a figure of thought: by articulating the manner and meaning of these three specula in particular, he offers the reader-viewer a therapeutic antidote wherewith to combat the human propensity for idolatry and self-deception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8365.2010.00758.x Byline: Walter S. Melion

Hendrick Goltzius includes himself at age 48 in the painting 'Venus, Bacchus and Ceres' holding burins over a fire, symbolizing his hands as instruments for engraving or artisanship. Cupid, Venus' servant, is at Goltzius' side and Venus personifies his love of art. The painting is also a representation of the creative act as described in Karel van Mander's 'Schilder-Boeck,' a key 17th century theoretical text. The burins symbolize the artisanal component of Goltzius' art and also his interest in turning, a favorite craft of one of his patrons, Rudolf II.

Lydia Salviucci Insolera. L'Imago primi saeculi (1640) e il signicato dell'immagine allegorica nella Compagnia di Gesu: Genesi e fortuna del libro. Miscellanea Historiae Pontificiae edita a Facultate Historiae Ecclesiasticae in [...]

Craig Harbison. Reaktion Books, 1991. 130 illus. + 228 pp. $50. This ambitious study interrogates the realistic effect of Jan van Eyck's panels, arguing that his imagery is neither simply [...]

Ethan Matt Kavaler, Pieter Bruegel: Parables of Order and Enterprise Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 139 pls. + 403 pp. $80. ISBN: 0-521-62267-0. This important, richly documented [...]

Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 200l. xii + 146 pp. illus. index. n.p. ISBN: 0-8014-8675-0. This important book consists of philosophical essays on the crucial relation between contemporary theory [...]

The article examines the sublime view of Jerónimo Nadal on Jesus Christ and how his understanding of the sublime as a rhetorical category is bound up with the Jesuit project of visualizing the verba Christi or words of Christ and Christ as Verbum Dei or Word of God.

Features a discourse of color in the book, 'Pygmalion and the Ivory Statue,' invented, engraved, and published by Hendrick Goltzius in 1593. Significance of Goltzius' claim that the art that conceals art engenders love by enlivening inert matter; Ability of Goltzius to describe the luster, suppleness, and color of flesh; Analogy between Pygmalion's art and the engravings of Goltzius.

The article describes Karel van Mander's critique of mnemonic practice and suggests how that critique, answered in the life and work of Hendrick Goltzius, derives from the theory and practice of schrijfconst, the art of writing. The author argues the pictorial status of writing, and explains how the calligrapher's criteria of penmanship resonate with schilderconst, the art of picturing, thus giving access to Dutch protocols of imitation and memory at the turn of the seventeenth century. It cites a series of anecdotes appended by van Mander designed to map the connection between memory and the reputation for inimitability.