A folio of 1100 pages, which within the period of our sketch was reprinted four times, issued from Bâle in 1556; it is, “HIEROGLYPHICA,”—_Hieroglyphics_, or, _Commentaries on the Sacred Literature of the Egyptians_,—by John Pierius Valerian, a man of letters, born in extreme poverty at Belluno in 1477, and untaught the very elements of learning until he was fifteen. (Aikin’s _Gen. Biog._ ix. 537.) He died in 1558. As an exposition of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, his very learned work is little esteemed; but it contains emblems innumerable, comprised in fifty-eight books, each book dedicated to a person of note, and treating one class of objects. The devices—small woodcuts—amount to 365. Etienne Jodelle, a poet, equally versatile whether in Latin or in French, was skilled in the ancient languages, and acquainted with the arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture, as well as dexterous in the use of arms. He published, in 1558, a thin quarto “RECUEIL,” or _Collection_ of the inscriptions, figures, devices, and masks ordained in Paris at the Hôtel de Ville. The same year, and again in 1569 and 1573, appeared the large folio volume, in five parts, “AUSTRIACIS GENTIS IMAGINES,”—_Portraits of the Austrian family_,—full lengths, engraved by Gaspar ab Avibus, of Padua. At the foot of each portrait are a four-lined stanza, a brief biographical notice, and some emblematical figure. Of similar character, though much inferior as a work of art, is Jean Nestor’s HISTOIRE _des Hommes illustres de la Maison de Medici_; a quarto of about 240 leaves, printed at Paris in 1564. (See the Keir _Catalogue_, p. 143.) It contains “twelve woodcuts of the emblems of the different members of the House of Medici.” Hoffer’s “ICONES CATECHESEOS,” or _Pictures of instruction_, and of virtues and vices, illustrated by verses, and also by seventy-eight figures or woodcuts, was printed at Wittenberg in 1560. The next year, 1561—if not in 1556 (see Brunet’s _Manuel_, vol. ii. cc. 930, 931)—John Duvet, one of the earliest engravers on copper in France, at Lyons, published in twenty-four plates, folio, his chief work, “LAPOCALYPSE FIGUREE;” and in 1562, at Naples, the Historian of Florence, Scipione Ammirato, gave to the world “IL ROTA OVERO DELL’ IMPRESE,” or, _Dialogue of the Sig. Scipione Ammirato_, in which he discourses of many emblems of divers excellent authors, and of some rules and admonitions concerning this subject written to the Sig. Vincenzo Carrafa.