Overview

Achille Bocchi's Symbolicarum Quaestionum de Universo Genere is one of the most intellectually ambitious emblem books of the sixteenth century. First published in Bologna in 1555 at Bocchi's own Nova Academica Bocchiana press, the work appears here in its second and final edition of 1574 — the first publication issued by the newly founded Società Tipografica Bolognese. The title announces its programme through the phrase serio ludere — playing seriously — a humanist ideal in the spirit of Horace's Ars Poetica, placing the work within a tradition that includes Erasmus's Adagia and the emblem literature inaugurated by Alciati's Emblemata of 1531. Bocchi's relation to Alciati was one of intellectual kinship: the Syntagma index records at p. 87 the dedication Ad Andream Alciatum amicorum optimum - to Andrea Alciati, best of friends - an explicit homage to the founder of the genre embedded within the body of the work itself. Symbolic literature is treated here not as light diversion but as a vehicle for theology, philosophy, moral inquiry, and philology, structured across four formal classes as the Syntagma makes clear. The visual programme is equally distinguished. The 151 full-page copperplate engravings were executed by Giulio Bonasone after designs principally by Prospero Fontana, with some attributed to Parmigianino. Bonasone, who is believed to have trained with Marcantonio Raimondi, brought to the plates a formal elegance well suited to Bocchi's allegorical register. For this 1574 edition, the plates were retouched throughout by Agostino Carracci — then seventeen years old and at the very beginning of his career as an engraver — who also appears to have newly engraved plate I in copper, replacing the woodcut that had served in the 1555 printing. The occurrence of first and second states varies from copy to copy, making precise collation complex, as noted by Ruth Mortimer. A further biographical thread connects the artists: Prospero Fontana, who provided the majority of the designs, later opened the Bolognese painting school attended by the young Carracci cousins, making the Symbolicarum Quaestionum a small but telling document in the formation of that tradition.