This volume is the first translation into English of the monograph Bilderschriften der Renaissance: Hieroglyphik und Emblematik in ihren Beziehungen und Fortwirkungen, by Ludwig Volkmann, first published in 1923. The German text was published by Brill in 1969. None of this information is provided in the present text. Volkmann's book was inspired by Karl Giehlow's Die Hieroglyphenkunde des Humanismus in der Allegorie der Renaissance of 1915, and Volkmann's intention was to continue Giehlow's analysis and complete what he started. Giehlow's Hieroglyphenkunde was first translated into English by Robin Raybould, and published by Brill in 2015. That publication was also reviewed by this reviewer in Renaissance Quarterly 69.1 (Spring 2016).

In the preface and copious footnotes, Raybould describes how Volkmann focuses on two categories of the symbolic literature of the Renaissance, the hieroglyph and the emblem, which includes the device and the impresa. Texts and artworks in the Renaissance were intended to have a double meaning, literal and symbolic. Hieroglyphs were seen as a secret and universal language, communicating mystical and religious learning and divine revelation. The characters of hieroglyphs were seen as a language, particularly by Leon Battista Alberti and Francesco Colonna, but they were aware that the language could not be understood and that no explanation of them could be provided (hieroglyphs were not deciphered until 1822 by Jean-Francois Champollion).

In the author's introduction, Volkmann describes how the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili of Francesco Colonna inspired his book, and how images in the Renaissance evolved out of the pictographic signs of the Egyptians. Volkmann also wishes to show how the use of hieroglyphics evolved in Northern Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and in printers’ and editors’ marks, which are treated in the appendix. In chapter 1, “The Hieroglyphics of the Italian Humanists,” Volkmann discusses literary sources by authors such as Alberti and Marsilio Ficino, and artworks by figures such as Piero Valeriano, Francesco Colonna, Leonardo da Vinci, Andrea Mantegna, Giovanni Bellini, Titian, Raphael, and Bernini. As Raybould says, Volkmann was a pioneer in the importance of emblems and devices in Renaissance art.

In chapter 2, “Emblematics and Its Derivatives: Imprese and Devices,” Volkmann focuses on the Emblemata of Andrea Alciato. In chapter 3, “Hieroglyphics North of the Alps,” Volkmann discusses figures such as Rabelais, Dürer, and Erasmus, and the influence of Horapollo's Hieroglyphica and Valeriano's Hieroglyphica. In chapter 4, “Resonances from the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” figures discussed include Cesare Ripa and Athanasius Kircher, who applied his translations of the hieroglyphs to the inscriptions on reconstructed Roman obelisks, all of which were completely wrong and worthless. The appendix on “Hieroglyphs and Emblems in Printers and Publishers Marks (Signeten)” is almost unique in the field, according to Raybould.