"The naturalism of seventeenth-century art is inextricably bound up with a metaphysical view of the world. It is for this reason that the familiar objects of visible reality may be looked on as emblems of a higher invisible reality." (Martin, 119)

ALLEGORY
A written, oral, or artistic expression by use of symbolic fictional figures (personifications) and actions of truths or generalizations about human conduct or experience.

Cesare Ripa, Iconologia (1593)
A dictionary (illustrated in later editions) of symbols, attributes, and personifications, arranged in alphabetical order
• Iconologia or Moral Emblems by Caesar Ripa (Illustrated English edition, London 1709)

EMBLEM (Emblem book)
A picture with a motto or set of verses intended as a moral lesson or a subject of meditation (common in 17th century)

The name of "emblems" is usually given to simple allegorical designs accompanied by an explanatory motto and destined to teach in an intuitive form a moral truth.

Emblems originated as a humanistic attempt to give a modern equivalent of the hieroglyphs (as interpreted as a purely ideographical form of writing) with which the Egyptian priests foreshadowed divine ideas.

Andrea Alciati, Emblematum liber (1531)
Each emblem consists of a motto, a picture, and an epigram

• Andrea Alciati's Emblematum liber (Alciati's Book of Emblems)
• Liber Emblemata by Andreas Alciati

CLASSICAL SUBJECTS

Nicolas Poussin
The Dance of the Music of Time
c. 1639-40
(Wallace Collection, London)

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Diego Velazquez
The Fable of Arachne
c. 1657
(Madrid, Prado)

Georges de La Tour
Christ and St. Joseph
c. 1645
Paris, Louvre Museum)