Emblem XIII

Charles Bennett

1861

Wood engraving by an unidentified engraver

2¾ x 2¼ inches

Illustration for Quarles’ Emblems, p.54.

One of Bennett’s bizarre visualizations of Quarles’s text, ‘Men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil’ (p.55). The artist’s solution to this sentiment takes the form of a curious merger of animals – a post-Darwinian nightmare in which emblematic creatures are assembled as elements within a moral iconography.

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Scanned image and text by Simon Cooke.

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