Little is known about his life. He was born in Perugia and died in Rome. After the death of the cardinal, Ripa worked for his relatives. He was knighted after his highly successfulIconologia, which he wrote in his free time, was published.
Iconologia di Cesare Ripa Perugino...: divisa in tre libri, by Cesare Ripa, Cristoforo Tomassini publisher, Venice, 1645.
Work
The Iconologia was a highly influential emblem book based on Egyptian, Greek and Roman emblematical representations, many personifications. 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.
History
The first edition of his Iconologia was published without illustrations in 1593 and dedicated to Anton Maria Salviati. A second edition was published in Rome in 1603 this time with 684 concepts and 151 woodcuts, dedicated to Lorenzo Salviati. Jean Baudoin translated the Iconologia into French and published it in Paris in 1636 under the title Iconologie. For the French translation, the Flemish engraver Jacob de Bie turned the prints from Ripa's original book into linear figures inside circular frames, thus turning Ripa's allegories into the reverse side of Roman coins. The book was extremely influential in the 17th and 18th centuries and was quoted extensively in various art forms. In particular, it influenced the painterPietro da Cortona and his followers. Also Dutch painters like Gerard de Lairesse, Willem van Mieris based work on Ripa's emblems. Vermeer used the emblem for the muse Clio for his The Art of Painting, and several others in his The Allegory of Faith. A large part of Vondel's work cannot be understood without this allegorical source, and ornamentation of the Amsterdam townhall by Artus Quellinus, a sculptor, is totally dependent on Ripa. An English translation appeared in 1709 by Pierce Tempest. The baroque painterAntonio Cavallucci drew inspiration for his painting Origin of Music from the book. In 1779, the Scottish architect George Richardson's Iconology; or a Collection of Emblematical Figures; containing four hundred and twenty-four remarkable subjects, moral and instructive; in which are displayed the beauty of Virtue and deformity of Vice was published in London. The drawings were by William Hamilton. In 1819, Filippo Pitrucci, a London-based artist, published his version of Iconologia.
