The emblem was one of the most distinctive of Renaissance art forms, lending itself to the concrete manifestation of the deeply-rooted Renaissance belief in the interrelationship between painting and poetry. Emblems, typically consisting of a combination of motto, picture, and poem, had a didactic as well as illustrative function, and were used to expound an ethical or moral truth.

Henry Peacham's Manuscript Emblem Books is a collection of four emblem manuscripts by the noted seventeenth-century humanist scholar, Henry Peacham. The volume includes three books based on King...