Emblemata, 1648
Andrea Alciato invented the emblem book. His Emblemata first appeared in 1531 and was still being reprinted a century later; this is the Plantin press edition of 1648, with Claude Mignault's commentary. Every emblem is the same four things on one page: a motto, a woodcut, an epigram, and a gloss. That is the whole reason the archive holds it. A picture printed under a motto and over an explanation is a picture whose maker expected to be decoded, and said so on the page. The three kept here are the Homeric ones.
