CATS, Jacob

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First collected edition of these beautifully illustrated emblem books by Jacob Cats, one of the most important author s of emblem books whose volumes still form one of the adornmen ts of Dutch houses. Cats took inspiration from proverbs and everyday life, his realistic emblems form a counterpart to genre painting and supply interesting evidence for the history of costume (Praz p. 86). The work contains, each with separate pagination: Sinne ende Minnebeelden, (an expanded version of Silenus Alcibiadis ); Emblemata Di Iacobi Catsii, in linguam Anglicam transfusa, (an English verse translation of the foregoing sometimes attributed to Josuah Sylvester); Emblemata moralia et aeconomica, (with illustrations copied from Maechden plicht); the Latin text, with French translation, of the dialogue between Anna and Phyllis from Maechden plicht; Galathee ofte Harder Minne-klachte. Laudatory poems by D. Heinsius, A. Hofferus, J. Arcerius, I. Lyraeus, A. Roemers, I. Luyt, S. de Swaef, L. Peutemans, I. Hobius. Jacob Cats (1577-1660), seventeenth-century poet, moralist, and statesman, was one of the leading poets in the golden age of Dutch literature. His emblem books, which reflected a stolid Calvinist philosophy, exhorted readers to virtuous and industrial lives. Enormously popular, the books became the source of many well-known maxims and proverbs, giving him the title of Father Cats, a fond soubriquet still used by modern Dutch to describe him. He is best known as a poet and author of emblem books illustrated collections of didactic and moralistic (although clever and often humorous) poetry. They are valued as treasure troves of sociological and historical detail, illustrating not only many facets of daily life in the seventeenth century, but the moral and philosophical ideals of the era as well. Cats s first book Sinne-en minnebeelden (Portraits of morality and love) was published in 1618, when he was forty years old. The book, divided into three sections, contains prose, poetry, Bible verses, quotations from the classics, and common proverbs in Dutch, French, and Latin. Each illustration was accompanied by three different texts, each of which was designed to give three different but always instructive interpretations: the first romantic, the second social, and last religious. This combination of texts, styles, and languages in various degrees of complexity made the book accessible to a broad public. The images for many of Cats s books were supplied by Adriaan van de Venne. He drew literally hundreds of illustrations for the books, and they were, in turn, reproduced by master engravers. Cats is one of the major fingers in emblem literature, exerting a wide influence on later exponents of the genre. He is responsible for two regular emblem books, whose bibliography is complicated for a number of reasons. Firstly they appear under various different names: his first emblem book, Silenus Alcibiadis is also known in Latin as Proteus and in Dutch as Minnelikje, zedelijke en stichtelijke sinne-beelden en gedichten, or sinne- en minne bilden. Often associated with Silenus Alcibiadis is another work which is broadly emblematic, although the text is in dialogue form, Maschden-plicht or Monita amoris virginei. In 1627, the engraving designs for this work were reused in a new emblem book, Emblemata moralia et oeconomica. For all three works, Adriaen van de Venne supplied the designs for the engravings, which were executed by different engravers for different printers, according to the required size and shape, sometimes in mirror image Alison Adams, Stephen Rawles. A Bibliography of French Emblem Books. Show more