Cesare Ripa

Cesare Ripa COSML (c. 1555, Perugia – (1622-01-22)January 22, 1622 Rome) was an Italian Renaissance scholar and iconographer.

Little is known about his life. The scant biographical information that exists derives from his one very successful work: the Iconologia. He was born of humble origin in Perugia about 1555. The exact date of his birth has never been established. He was very active in academic circles as member of the Filomati and the Intronati in Siena, both dedicated to the study of antiquities and of Greek and Latin literature, and the Insensati in his native Perugia.

While still very young he went to Rome to work at the court of Cardinal Antonio Maria Salviati. He attended the Accademia degli Incitati the Accademia di San Luca, where he probably met the Dominican mathematician Ignazio Danti, and was introduced into the learned circles of Baroque Rome. Among the friends who are credited in different editions of his Iconologia with suggestions and even new images are Pietro Leone Casella (c. 1540–c. 1620), whose Elogia illustrium artificum was published in 1606, Prospero Podiani (c. 1535–1615), and the antiquarian Giovanni Zaratino Castellini (1570–1641).

In 1593 Ripa published the first edition of his Iconologia; the work was highly successful, and went through several editions and subsequent translations. Like Vincenzo Cartari’s handbook of mythology, Le imagini dei dei de gli antichi (Venice, 1556), the book was not originally illustrated. The Iconologia rapidly became familiar in practically every painter’s or sculptor’s workshop in Italy and elsewhere in Europe. It appears in the book lists of many 17th-century artists, a painter’s bible to set beside Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and provided the raw material for numerous iconographic programmes.

In 1598 Ripa was knighted Cavaliere dell'Ordine dei Santi Maurizio e Lazzaro by the Pope Clement VIII. He died in Rome on 22 January 1622.

Ripa was a close friend of several artists, most notably the brothers Alberti, Giovanni, Alberto and Cherubino, who used personifications from the 1593 edition of Ripa's Iconologia in their decorations for the Vatican Sala Clementina (1595–1602).

The Iconologia was a highly influential emblem book based on Egyptian, Greek and Roman emblematical representations, many personifications. Besides ancient Roman sculpture and imperial coins, Ripa's most important source was the Hieroglyphica (Basel, 1556 ) of Pierio Valeriano. Other sources were Prudentius' Psicomachia, Martianus Capella's De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, Conrad Gessner's Historia animalium and the Hieroglyphica of Horapollo.

The book was used by orators, artists, poets and "modern Italians" to give substance to qualities such as virtues, vices, passions, arts and sciences. The concepts were arranged in alphabetical order, after the fashion of the Renaissance. For each there was a verbal description of the allegorical figure proposed by Ripa to embody the concept, giving the type and color of its clothing and its varied symbolic attributes, along with the reasons why these were chosen, reasons often supported by references to literature (largely classical).