Cesare Ripa

Cesare Ripa (* 1555 in Perugia, † 1622 in Rome ) was an Italian chef, writer and scholar.

Ripa went as a young man to Rome. There he worked long as a servant and cook for Cardinal Anton Maria Salviati and after his death for his relatives. Ripa's work, the Iconologia from 1593 is an iconographic dictionary, which has become an inexhaustible source of art and literature of the Baroque.

After the great success of his book, which he had written in his spare time, he was honored with a title of nobility.

The Iconologia

The Iconologia overo Descrittione Dell'imagini Universali cavate dall'Antichità et da altri luoghi was a successful and momentous book. The book, which is based on Egyptian, Greek and Roman pictorial and written sources, was used by rhetoricians, visual artists and poets to give abstract concepts such as virtues and vices, emotions and passions, the arts and sciences form. The book was arranged according to a conventional method in the Renaissance, not systematic, but alphabetically. Each term corresponds to a picture in the book with a description of the allegorical figure or personification, in the type and color of the clothes of a character and their different attributes must be given, including documents from the Bible or classical literature. It was not until 1603 appeared an illustrated version with 151 images.

Numerous translations into Italian, French (1644, 1677, 1681 and 1698 ), the Netherlands ( 1644-1750 ), German (1670, 1704, and 1758 to 1760 ) and English (1709, 1779, 1785 ) confirm the high demand. Text and illustrations of each issue vary widely. The Hertel edition in Augsburg around 1758-1760 with little text, but excellent engravings of Jeremias Wachsmuth is one of the most beautiful. Only the classicist Johann Winckelmann has been critical to Ripa.

The work Ripa is still relevant today for the decryption both baroque allegories as well as allegorical representations of classicism and historicism and for the emblems. Especially when you work by Johannes Vermeer and his painting The Art of Painting the Iconologia used by Ripa to interpretation.