HORACE - VEEN, Otto van.

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Le Théâtre moral de la vie humaine, Second Brussels edition of this celebrated Baroque emblem book, pairing excerpts from Horace and other ancient authors with allegorical images and moral commentary.Published in more than 25 editions in various languages, the work "is rightly considered a work of primary importance for seventeenth-century Horace reception, and for the development of emblematics: Veen 'translated' the works of the Roman poet into catchy, innovative, and artistically demanding images, engravings of high technical quality, to be used for philosophical and moral meditation. He equipped each engraving with a number of text fragments that he selected from Horace and other ancient, primarily Latin, authors. His work not only opened up new dimensions for the genre of emblematics that arose in the sixteenth century, but also for ethical didactics and for the way illustrated books contributed to the transmission of knowledge... [the work] was extraordinarily successful" (Enenkel, p. 365). The work was first published in 1607 as Q. Horati Flacci emblemata. The first Brussels edition was in 1672.

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