Typographorum Emblemata

Anja Wolkenhauer

Sisters, or Mother and Daughter? The Relationship between Printer’s Marks and Emblems during the First Hundred Years

Introduction

Printer’s marks and emblems began their career about the same time around 1500. Both art forms combine images and (Latin) texts in an often enigmatic way, both are closely connected to early printing, and both draw on devices, Renaissance hieroglyphics, courtly pastime, and the figures and techniques of ars memorativa. Consequently, similarities should hardly be surprising and were, indeed, established early on – this is not least made apparent by the fact that both forms were often summarised under the term symbolum in Latin texts.

Research, however, has added a further premise and, from quite early ...