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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]