Tüskés Anna (szerk.): Omnis creatura significans - Tanulmányok Prokopp Mária 70. születésnapjára (2009)
Társtudományok
Omnis creatura significans published by Johann Theodor de Bry in Frankfurt in 1614 is strikingly similar to Rimay’s description. In this picture twelve personified virtues sit or stand forming a round under a tree. Most of the virtues hold the same rope. They have only few attributes because they can hold them only in their other hand. The French poem which is adjoined to and explains this engraving is based on thoughts which are also present in the poems of Rimay: concord and alliance among the virtues, constancy, love for one’s own and others, mutual dependency on each other, reciprocity and the being in the company of the others. The engraving with the French poem represents the same idyll, peace and calmness as the two poems of Rimay. In the 1620 edition of Zetter’s work contains prose comments on the engravings compiled by the Lutheran historian, theologian and poet Heinrich Oraeus. He wrote the title “Virtutes concathenatae” over the engraving. Thus the engraving became part of a complete emblematic structure. Similarly to Rimay, Oraeus explains first the whole picture and then he presents one by one the virtues and their tasks. A comparison of Oraeus’s explication in prose with the poems of Rimay reveals that the description of the landscape and the self-comment are more accentuated in the latter. At the same time the structure of the texts of the two authors is essentially the same: the description of the whole picture is followed by the presentation of the single virtues. While the differences may indicate differences in the detailedness of the pictures, the correspondence proves undoubtedly that the poems were inspired by the same iconographic type. Although we still do not know the concrete image that Rimay based his poems on, I think that I managed to identify its iconographic type. Using Zetter’s engraving, we can interpret the visual content of Rimay’s poems more exactly, and with the help of the text one may even reconstruct the picture seen by Rimay. 382
