Renaissance icons had to satisfy a number of require-
ments. First was the principle of decorum; the icon had to
be appropriate to the situation or object. For example, a
representation of Vulcan’s smithy was a suitable decora-
tion for a fireplace. However, an image had also to convey
a moral message so an even better subject would be Croe-
sus about to be burnt on his pyre and recalling Solon’s say-
ing that no man should be considered happy until he had
finished his life happily. Symbols could be drawn in this
way from the whole range of classical and biblical sources,
and many handbooks were published classifying and ex-
plaining their application, thus evolving a shared vocabu-
lary of symbols current throughout educated Europe.
Perhaps the most representative of these was the Iconolo-
gia of Cesare Ripa (1593). Ripa takes as his starting point
the theory of metaphor developed by ARISTOTLEin the
Rhetoric and Poetics, and the fourfold definition by types
of causes, material, efficient, formal, and final. The deviser
of images has the same freedom to work within these four
categories as the formulator of verbal definitions. Ben JON-
SON, for instance, is known to have owned a copy of Ripa’s
book and drew upon it when devising his masques.
The other strand of iconography in the Renaissance
was the Neoplatonic. This owed much also to Christian
mysticism, particularly the works of Dionysius the Areo-
pagite. These fused Neoplatonic and Christian ideas to
produce a theory of symbolism which made the image the
medium by which the deepest truths were expressed in
the most concise way. Platonism assumed that unity was
superior to multiplicity and the icon seemed to Renais-
sance Platonists to have a precision that was denied to dis-
cursive language. This made the designing of icons one of
the most serious tasks for the philosopher, as it was by
means of the image that one approached the ineffable Re-
ality which was the Divine Oneness.
From this it will be clear that the study of icons in the
Renaissance requires not only an extensive knowledge of
the possible sources for such images but also an awareness
of the philosophical subtleties which determined the
choice of a particular image in a particular situation. Thus,
much ingenuity has been exercised by historians of art in
expounding the Neoplatonic program that underlies the
images of Botticelli’s PRIMAVERAand by literary critics in
explaining the inner significance of such verbal icons as
those created by Edmund Spenser in such passages as
the Masque of Cupid or the Bower of Bliss in his FAERIE
QUEENE.
See also: EMBLEMS; IMPRESE; GRACES
Further reading: Edgar Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the
Renaissance (London: Faber and Faber, 1958; rev. ed. Har-
mondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1967).
Ignatius Loyola, St. (1491–1556) Spanish mystic,
founder of the Jesuits
Ignatius was born at his family’s castle in the Basque
province of Gúipuzcos, the youngest of 13 children. After
his leg had been shattered in battle at Pampeluna in 1521,
he went on pilgrimage and retreat for a year, during which
time he drafted his Ejercicios espirituales (Spiritual Exer-
cises), eventually printed at Rome in 1548. He was
brought before the Inquisition because of his preaching,
but was released. In 1534 he and six other students
founded the Society of Jesus (see JESUITS) in Paris and took
their first vows. In 1539 they presented their plans for the
order to Pope Paul III, and the order was approved the fol-
lowing year. Ignatius was appointed the first superior-gen-
eral. He sent his companions as missionaries to found
Jesuit schools, colleges, and seminaries throughout Eu-
rope. Ignatius wrote the Jesuit Constitutions, which were
adopted in 1554. These regulations created a monarchical
organization and stressed absolute obedience to the pope.
The Jesuits thus became a major factor in the success of
the COUNTER-REFORMATION.
Ignatius was a mystic who believed in a rigorously or-
dered spiritual life. His ideal became the Jesuit motto: ad
maiorem dei gloriam (“All things for the greater glory of
God”). He died in Rome and was canonized in 1622.
The Ejercicios espirituales were translated from the
Latin text into English by C. Seager in 1847. J. Norris and
others worked from the Spanish text for their 1880 trans-
lation, which has been several times reprinted. The ver-
sion by Thomas Corbishley S.J. appeared in 1963 and that
by Pierre Wolf in 1997. English recusants (see RECUSANCY)
of the 16th and 17th centuries were supplied with English
texts based on the Exercises printed by Catholic presses
overseas: Tomás de Villacastín’s Manual de consideraciones
y ejercicios espirituales was made available in English as
Manuall of Devout Meditations and Exercises, published at
St. Omer in 1618 (repr. 1976), with further editions in
1623 and 1624, and Annotations to the exercise, translated
from Latin, appeared about 1630 at Rouen (repr. 1972).
Further reading: John Patrick Donnelly, Ignatius of
Loyola: Founder of the Jesuits (New York and London:
Pearson Longman, 2003).imprese Devices embodying a picture and a motto in such
a way that they reciprocally interpret each other. The im-
presa is thus a subtype of the EMBLEM; the difference, ac-
cording to CARPACCIO(1592), was that the emblem had
only to feed the eyes, whereas the device fed the mind.
While the design of an emblem was largely a matter of per-
sonal choice, the rules of the impresa were fixed by the
academies, and one of the tasks a court humanist would
be expected to perform was the devising of suitable imp-
rese. The concept of the impresa came into Italy from
courtly French society in the reign of Louis XII, specifi-
cally during the occupation of Milan from 1499.iimmpprreessee 225511