Learned images of Nature: Physica, Philip Sidney, and the Camerarius Brothers

Abstract

Within the context of popular early modern “learned images,” – that is, emblems pertaining to the study of nature – this essay focuses on contacts between Philip Sidney, his continental mentor Hubert Languet, and the brothers Philipp Camerarius (1537–1624) and Joachim Camerarius the Younger (1534-1598), important intellectuals active in Nuremberg. Joachim Camerarius the Younger, was a respected figure in the emergent field of medical science and published a collection of emblems, Symbolorum et emblematum (1587), that probably introduced Sidney to emblem books by Hadrianus Junius and Jean-Jacques Boissard. Philipp Camerarius was a lawyer and historian, whose treatise Operae horarum subcisivarum: sive meditations historicae (1599) includes a re-ported discussion with Philip Sidney (which took place most likely in Prague in 1577) on why there are no wolves in England. The essay considers especially Sidneyʼs fondness for emblem books, and whether they could have an impact on his own writing.