collection of symbolic pictures, usually accompanied by mottoes and expositions in verse and often also by a prose commentary. Derived from the medieval allegory and bestiary, the emblem book developed as a pictorial-literary genre in 16th-century Italy and became popular throughout western Europe in the 17th century.

The father of emblem literature was the 16th-century Italian lawyer and humanist Andrea Alciato, with the Emblemata (Latin; 1531), which appeared in translation and in more than 150 editions. The Plantin (Plantin, Christophe) press specialized in emblem literature, publishing at Antwerp in 1564 the Emblemata of the Hungarian physician and historian Johannes Sambucus; in 1565, that of the Dutch physician Hadrianus Junius (Adriaen de Jonghe); and, at Leiden, the early English emblem book, Geoffrey Whitney's Choice of Emblemes (1585), an anthology of emblems from Alciato, Junius, and others. English emblem books were either printed in the Netherlands or made by combining English text with foreign engravings, as in the English edition of the Amorum Emblemata, Figuris Aeneis Incisa (1608) of Octavius Vaenius (Otto van Veen), an important early Dutch emblem book.

The Netherlands became the centre of the vogue. Vaenius' Amorum Emblemata presented metaphors from Ovid and other Latin erotic poets with pictorial representation. The Dutch emblem books were widely translated, plagiarized, and reprinted with different text or engravings. From polyglot editions, begun by Heinsius' verses in Dutch and Latin and later in French, publication of emblem books became an international enterprise, and books of love emblems were exchanged by lovers and formed pretty little encyclopaedias of those “questions of love” that had been the erudite pastime of the academies throughout the Renaissance. Meanwhile, the Dutch emblematists had turned to religious emblems, serving Calvinists as well as Jesuits, who used them for propaganda. In Vaenius' Amoris Divini Emblemata (1615), quotations from St. Augustine replace those of Ovid, and Cupid reappears as the soul's preceptor.

The only English emblem book to achieve widespread popularity was the Emblemes (1635) of Francis Quarles, with plates from the Pia Desideria and from Typus Mundi (1627), popular Jesuit emblem books.