The cost of an unprotected gaze

Jan David (ca.1545–1613).
Christeliicken waerseggher.
Antwerp: Jan Moretus at the Plantin Press, 1603.
(BRB0180)

This Jesuit catechism employs the emblem book’s interplay of image, narrative, and couplet, but the couplet here comprises a catechismal question-and-answer instead of the expected poetic verse. The query and its response appear in Dutch as the title of the chapter and are also found in the caption to the engraving, provided in Latin and French as well as Dutch. Flemish engraver Theodore Galle (1571–1633) labeled figures and symbols in the illustrations with letters corresponding to specific passages in the extensive exegesis. The explanatory text for the image of a house includes a quotation attributed to Saint Augustine, “The eyes are the windows to the soul,” and a paraphrase from Jeremiah 9:19-20, “For death climbs through our windows and enters our homes.”

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Adspectus incauti dispendium (The cost of an unprotected gaze).

The cost of an unprotected gaze