Abstract
This essay analyzes a central problem in the tradition of Renaissance and baroque emblematic literature, namely, the distinction between private and universal communication. The Italian Renaissance theorized the existence of two visual/verbal genres, one (the so-called impresa) conveying a 'personal, individual, noble, and covert expression' and the other (emblem), structurally similar but not identical to the first, was meant to express a universal communication and thus an abstract state of mind (for instance, bravery or honesty.1 As Mario Praz reminds us, emblems and imprese 'originate as a humanistic attempt to give a modern equivalent of the hierogliphys' as they were wrongly interpreted by Florentine Neoplatonism.2 Indeed, Italian humanists saw hieroglyphs as 'ideogrammatic figures' synthesizing a form of intuitive knowledge.3 In a seminal passage from his commentary on Plotinus, Marsilio Ficino states that the image of a snake biting its tail expresses the concept of time in a sudden and insightful manner.4
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