Filippo Picinelli

Filippo Picinelli (21 November 16041686) was an Italian Augustinian canon, scholar and emblematist. He is best known for his emblem book Il Mondo simbolico, printed in Milan in 1653, which enjoyed great success in Italy and throughout Europe.

Biography Little is known about the life of Picinelli. The main source of information on this author is the short biography that Picinelli himself includes in his Ateneo dei Letterati Milanesi, a bio-bibliographical dictionary of Milanese authors. He was born in Milan, Italy in November 1604. At baptism, he was named Carlo Francesco, but upon his entrance into the Augustinian Order (1614), his name was changed to Filippo. He studied philosophy in Cremona and theology in Piacenza, where he probably graduated. Once ordained a priest, he devoted himself to teaching in the colleges of his order; he also acquired a considerable reputation as a preacher. His preaching skills won him favour with several bishops, including Paolo Arese, bishop of Tortona, who encouraged Picinelli to publish his works. In 1653 he published his Mondo simbolico (Symbolic World), an encyclopaedia of emblems useful for scholars as a reference book. Picinelli's work was exceedingly popular among the intellectual elite of the Baroque era and went through several editions.

Picinelli's work is the culmination of a lifetime's erudition, drawing on many Renaissance emblem books and medieval encyclopedias and bestiaries. It was intended for "orators, preachers, academicians, and poets," and contained many examples drawn from the works of his predecessors, particularly Alciato and Valeriano. For the material for his encyclopaedic survey of symbols, Picinelli also drew on old manuscripts, some of them unpublished, from Italian monasteries.

Picinelli's Mondo simbolico is divided into two parts, one devoted to natural objects (Corpora Naturalia), and the other to artefacts (Corpora Artificialia).

Picinelli's work was translated into Latin by the Augustinian monk Augustinus Erath (1648-1729), and in the process also expanded. This expanded Latin edition (first published in Cologne in 1681) went through several new editions and can be regarded as the most comprehensive emblem encyclopedia of the seventeenth century. The comprehensiveness of Picinelli's work made it a model for subsequent scholars, including Claude-François Ménestrier, Johannes Michael von der Ketten, Arthur Henkel and Albrecht Schöne.

Books