THE POLITICS-IMAGE INTERSECTION: PAOLO GIOVIO AND THE TEXTUAL TRACEABILITY OF SYMBOLIC MEANING IN IMAGES

During the Renaissance, symbolic art flourished, and emblems were an important sort of emblem during this time period. Dialogo dell� Imprese Militari et Amorose, Paolo Giovio (1483-1552)�s work on emblems, was written during the development of the chronicle of his book Historiarum (1550-1552). It is an important aspect of the establishment of Giovio�s system of historiographical thought and aims to establish a model for the display of iconic pictures. The Dialogo is of tremendous relevance in cross-field studies due to the fact that it is an important work in the fields of both image studies and history studies. This paper will argue that Giovio�s writing does not stop at the symbolic description and interpretation of images, but rather borrows the functional features of the emblematic vehicle to symbolize the characters, and will attempt to further discuss the interpretive dimension of iconography through the use of Dialogo. The purpose of this paper is to link the perspective of image interpretation with the perspective of historiographical analysis. This argument will be presented through Dialogo.