Of course the ungiving rhythm and unbending logic of the Janot series is obtained at a heavy price. All color, all interest in intricate details, all fascination with the elaboration of Petrarch’s vision must be sacrificed in favor of the terse emblematic shape of the hieroglyph.

Bernard Salomon’s version restores some of this lost color, but retains the assumptions and conceits of the emblem.

[Paragraph deleted: The iconography traditionally governing the representation of the Triumphs of Petrarch is borrowed, as Yates explains ("Chastity," 1975, p. 112), from imperial iconography. The earliest versions of the Trionfi present triumphal processions in the classical imperial manner staffed with allegorical representations appropriate to the poem. Although Petrarch’s Trionfi is organized as a narrative of successive triumphs and teleologically interlocking conquests, each allegory ignores much of the natural content of the poem, while adding considerably to it. The "panoply of the triumphal procession" that, as Yates notes, is actually presented only once in the poem, that is, for the "Triumph of Love," is adopted as a convenient convention for each successive part: Chastity triumphant over Love, Death over Chastity, Fame over Death, Time over Fame, and, finally, Eternity over Time.]

[Paragraph deleted: When one turns to Salomon’s illustrations of this poem, one is immediately struck by the independence of his images from the conventional triumphal procession formula. The motif of the triumphal cart appears only once among his illustrations, and this image arguably represents the triumph of the author, and is neither properly nor traditionally part of the iconography of the poem. It is a traditional image that serves as an author portrait, which, of course, would have no place on cassoni panels.]

[Paragraph deleted: In this preliminary illustration, interestingly, the cart holds no victor, only the captives, an assortment of spoils are within. [Cf. Mantegna, Triumphs of Petrarch, cf. Triumph of Maximilian.] An allegory of Victory holding a palm and a wreath, the poet’s rewards, is placed on a column in the rear, or, perhaps, on the cart itself. This nod to the conventional Trionfi iconography freely adapts the image invented for the first of the usual scenes: The Triumph of Love. In the version by Jacopo del Sellaio, for example, one sees a cart (here approaching frontally) holding bound captives; behind, on a column (on the cart?, behind it?) is the triumphant image of Cupid. One such image is freely adapted by Salomon to form a Triumph of Petrarch, as author, or, perhaps a sort of triumph of Triumph itself. The cart and the bound prisoners are retained, as is the column, but the image of Cupid is replaced by a personification of victory.]

Like the Janot version, Salomon’s allegorical triumphs for the poem dispense with the conventions of a triumphal procession. They return to the underlying narrative structure of the poem, without however, representing its content literally. He rids his images of debt to the long tradition of allegory that accumulated around the Italian versions of the triumphs. Instead, the content, and the narrative associated with it, are represented allegorically in a form that borrows its structure from the shape and conventions of the emblem. In effect, the narrative represented in Italy as a train of triumphal processional floats is transformed here into an allegorically abstract narrative of a sequence of emblems. In addition, imperial connotations associated with these triumphal processions (Mantegna, Triumph of Caesar) have been removed, and instead, one is presented with an unencumbered series of allegories presented as simple medallions, oval cameos, or perhaps shields connoting victory, or even as cameo engravings.

In each medallion the style of the emblem, as developed in such books as the Horropollo or the Emblemes of Alciati, is the ruling factor. The compositions are simple, the narrative is clear, the figures are essentially self-explanatory, if any allegory is "user friendly," this is it. There are few references that require specialized knowledge to understand--that is until the last image is met. One might say that as the imperial content of the traditional imagery was removed, the images presented by Salomon become democratized and begin to operate on a level appealing to simple human understanding: the allegories are less abstract and more real, in keeping with the goals of the Biblia Pauperum of a century earlier. [In short, the winner is the last one standing.]

Importantly, the narrative of the poem re-emerges as the narrative of the spectacle or parade is purged. The feeling, in contrast to previous illustrations, is one of immediacy. One may, perhaps, see this presentation as symptomatic of the reformist spirit gripping Lyonais intellectual thought in mid-century. It considers the human and moral message more important than expressions of symbolic or political content. [?] (See: Yates, Astraea, p. 41 and 44 for Protestant propaganda made of Petrarch.)

[Paragraph deleted: {Margin: Too Simple.} The borrowings from the language of the emblem is significant. The great vogue for emblematic literature in sixteenth-century France catered to the Renaissance delight in the interconnection between word and image, a popular conceit generally called ut pictura poësis (From Horace's Ars Poetica. But even more important for our purposes, is the understanding that much emblematic literature was essentially moralistic in intent and thus congenial to those nurturing Protestant viewpoints. The great collections of popular moral literature quickly saw translation into emblematic form: Aesop’s Fables, Alciati, of course, even the Bible saw itself transformed into images paired with suitable epigrams. Many other books served as the means of inculcating the moral principles of the age to a wide audience. Perhaps Northrup Frye is correct in suggesting that the didactic aphorism is a symptom of the rise of a middle class with conservative moral and human values. [RAB add note.] If this is true, it is easy to understand Salomon’s transformation of the iconography and his rejection of the established processional pageants which, if anything, distracted the observer from the moral content of Petrarch’s poem.]

In many ways Janot’s hieroglyphic illustrations to the Trionfi serve as the logical predecessor to the Salomon set. Janot’s books supply prototypes for many of Salomon’s illustrations for books other than Petrarch Triumphs, and, although no definitive connection has been established between Salomon and Janot, it seems unlikely that there was not any. In Janot’s Petrarch one finds the same general formula as Salomon used, but, instead of allegories which use the human form as a base, as has been seen, the Janot images present the triumph in the form of a series of hieroglyphic devices arranged within a wreath of oak leaves.

[RAB: This material handled better above.] This symbolic writing, or properly, imaging, presents its content only to those initiated into the grammar of such writing; in this case, however, captions are supplied. The Janot version is highly abstract and tends to crystallize narrative into the relatively static structure of the emblem, or, strictly speaking, the hieroglyph. The severely geometrical restrictions placed upon this sort of emblem resists narrative, and, in the Janot version, almost succeeds in preventing the moral of the narrative to emerge, although it must be admitted that the difficulty of the hieroglyphic language is intended and is to be considered an asset, or even a puzzle. (Perhaps the impermeability of the hieroglyph or device to internal narrative made it useful as a decorative motif in embroidery and wood-inlay on furniture.) The Janot artist must have felt that the text was necessary, however; Salomon’s images, although based on the same principle of emblemification, are not hieroglyphic. Although they are deeply influenced by the mentality of the emblem and the use of language of the emblem to communicate their content, they are, nevertheless, self-explanatory and therefore appear without text.

[I no longer agree with this.] These illustrations to Petrarch’s Trionfi testify to Salomon’s early ability to take a conventional idea and mold it into an invention of genius. (Or he had good advice.) Perhaps Salomon’s personified allegories are retardataire when compared to the difficult but advanced language of the Janot emblematic triumphs, however, one may also see them as an adaptation of the Janot series, depending upon its principle of brevity, but using the system to introduce the moral human content referred to above. In short, Salomon humanizes the emblem and thereby humanizes the content of the Petrarchan triumphs as presented in the de Tournes edition. In this sense, when viewed in a larger historical context, one can see the Salomon Petrarch with[?] led[?] [as having lead] from the use of medievalizing symbolic language based upon conventional symbols towards a new language receptive to experience and the senses as the agency with which to establish meaningful content, of the word that became popular a half century later.

In contrast to Salomon’s Petrarch of 1547, Rouillé’s two series of Petrarchan triumphs of 1550 and 1558 use the conventional processional formula, not Salomon’s. Eskrich is responsible for Rouillé’s version, in the series of 1550. Although Eskrich rejects the advanced emblematic abstractions of Salomon’s woodcuts, none-the-less he does rely on the cameo formula for this subject that Salomon introduced. This intimate device is finally rejected in Eskrich’s second trionfi that appeared in 1558.

Salomon’s humanizing interpretation of allegory is, of course, not his own invention. Certainly its sources may be traced into the early Renaissance if not even earlier. One interesting precedent to Salomon’s version of Petrarchan images is Lorenzo Lotto’s Allegory of Chastity of 1530 (Rome, Coll Rospigliosi-Pallavicini) representing Chastity vanquishing Cupid and Venus. Although this painting does not seem to belong to the Petrarchan cycle, and although its iconography is distinct from previous examples of the theme, it is yet not inconceivable that Lotto made this with Petrarch’s theme in mind. The figure of Chastity appears here with an ermine near her collar. The ermine, mentioned by Petrarch, as an attribute of chastity is often found in representations of Petrarch’s theme. If Lotto’s picture does have Petrarchan implications, it may be taken as one important predecessor to Salomon’s chariotless iconography. However, the Lotto, in contrast to the Salomon, sees the allegory as pure narrative--action and event receive more attention than the fait accompli upon which Salomon dwells. This difference may certainly owe to the lack of correspondence between painting and book illustration, but it may also be understood as the product of a mentality that prefers the crystallization of content when formed as emblems -- the pictorial equivalent of the motto or aphorism. The sign or symbol is preferred to the event and, as such, gives witness to the depth to which the Renaissance in France was infused with lingering medievalisms.

The emblem of the Renaissance masquerades as the simplest of forms. But through this simplicity lies complex networks of meaning, in which the emblem may pose as a metaphor that is pictorial and a literary statement. At one extreme of this spectrum is the device and on the other, the hieroglyph. In the case of the former, Pimbley's Dictionary of Heraldry, a popular on-line dictionary, notes that the Device is "An emblem, intended to represent a family, person, action or quality, with a suitable motto. It generally consists in a metaphorical similitude between the thing representing and the person or thing represented." The Renaissance Hieroglyph – however, lies at the other end of the spectrum, and may be composed of pictures or signs that on their own, when out of context, may be opaque to understanding, yet serve symbolically to convey literary or representational content. Within these parameters we may locate the emblem, which, for the period under consideration was "an enigmatic picture with a motto and explanatory verse attached." [Basic Glossary of Literary Terms (online).] Intrinsic to all three is the puzzle put to the viewer. It is the mystery within that inspired so many commentaries -- as evidenced by the numerous interpretations added to Alciati edition.

As developed in the Renaissance, the allegorical emblem is one of the more complex of symbolic statements, for within the simplicity of its mechanism and rationale lies an involved process by which ideas of the past and present are subjected to a variety of literary and pictorial types of assimilation. Understanding the metaphoric bases of emblems ultimately depends upon a society’s ability to subsume a body of conventional and esoteric knowledge and ideas. The creation of the emblem may be likened to the creation of language itself, for in the simplest societies language and its grammar lean toward complexity, often incorporating a variety of voices, genders, cases, inflections and tenses, the purpose of which is to insure unambiguous communication.   As languages mature context replaces complexity. For example, to use a well-known simple example, witness the evolution of modern French, which in its written language has preserved its declensions, agreements and conjugations long since dropped in the spoken language: Il parle, Ils parlent. For our purposes we shall investigate the use of emblems derived from Petrarch’s Trionfi. These first appeared in visual form not so much as illustrations to his text as the creation of images of allegorical significance on their own. The separate triumphs of Love, of Chastity, of Death, of Fame, etc. could appear in paintings either individually or in cycles.

It is unusual to find images of all six of Petrarch’s triumphs represented together in a single modern study of emblemata. It is only in contemporary works dedicated to Petrarch's theme of sequential triumphs, be they publications of the complete text or just those that limit themselves to emblems, that the full sequence will be shown. The first representations, during the fifteenth century, in Italy especially, each adopt a uniform formula, varying only in the symbolic elements that satisfy the iconographical requirements or identify the allegories. As if by instinct, the way to represent Petrarch's trionfi was suggested by recollections of the imagery of the Roman military triumph. This imagery certainly was visually enforced by the extant remnants of antiquity and hence metamorphosed into  representations for the profane and religious triumph. The transformation of the secular Roman triumph into a Christian context occurred during the middle ages. The formula was ready for use by Renaissance illustrators and artists. [Need examples.]

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Although the Italian form of Roman triumph as used to illustrate Petrarch’s trionfi is, indeed, found in French art of the fifteenth century, the French were by not so quick to adopt the Italian formulas and symbolisms. Whereas a convention for this was quickly adopted in the fifteenth century in Italy, in the North one only finds diversity. For our purposes the series of triumphs found in the manuscript in the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal is the most interesting, for it ignores the tradition of a triumphal procession and uses (substitutes?) a medieval triumphal scheme of a type previously reserved for strictly spiritual triumphs -- usually triumphs of Virtues over Vices or good over evil. The victorious figures dominate and stand over the crumpled bodies of the vanquished. In effect an elementary visual grammar is substituted for the rich but complex notion of the classical triumphal procession. It is as if the Goths have undone ancient Rome all over again. In the manuscript at the Arsenal the visual language claimed by a northern area is substituted for an essentially southern one. [We have seen that in Italy among illustrations of the Petrarchan triumphs there was a tendency toward simplification and a predisposition toward geometrical purity and symmetry. [where?] This path parallels the formation of the emblematic solutions seen in French fifteenth century examples, emerging in the 1530s and 1540s as full fledged emblems in the Janot and de Tournes editions.

If the French took the road leading to the emblem, in Italy the editions of Giolito and his followers (Valgrisi) took another but related path. Instead of emphasizing the abstract or intellectual elements, the Giolito editions call attention to a coordination of activity and a fusion of all elements into a single connected narrative. One might say that the French turned the trionfi into abstractions while the Italians turned them into a parade, thus making them more real and sensual than the French images. Thus in these we see prefigurations of French classicism and academicism on one hand and the Italian Baroque in the other. [?]