John Manning. The Emblem. London: Reaktion, 2002 [Book review]

The emblem as art form began with the "father" of the emblem, Andrea Alciato, an academic lawyer who presented to a printer in 1522 a book he titled Emblemata. Alciato claimed that he had invented a new literary art form containing a series of humorous epigrams. Various printers of Alciato's popular and soon reprinted book made several errors, which in turn developed the form, by either adding or removing pictures or modifying them. Printers and publishers also manipulated the form to increase profits once the genre proved to attract an audience.