'Constructing the Imaginary Desert of the Soul in Emblematic Literature

Devotional emblematic literature offers to its reader a favourable opportunity to construct his/her own imaginary hermitage. In order to do so, the emblem represents in the engraving the inner place that the soul must occupies for her meditation, and develops in the text the discourse that brings to life this imaginary place. In this paper, I would like to explore the representation of “mental solitude” and “spiritual retreat” as it develops in meditative emblematics in France and the Southern Low Countries. I would like to address more specifically the paradoxical position and nature of the image in such apparatuses. After defining what mental solitude is in the 17th century and how it develops in the topos of the mental retreat, I shall examin how to build a mental oratory with images, starting with the explanation given by the Jesuit Louis Richeome in his Tableaux sacrez (1601). I shall then see how to represent this very odd object that is a “spiritual hermitage”, taking, among others, the example of the Cor Jesu amanti sacrum series, engraved by Anthony II Wierix around 1586 in Antwerp. In short, I intend to follow the movement that goes from the idea of mental solitude and spiritual retirement, expressed in a metaphor, to the elaboration of the mental image of such a place and finally to the material shape (figure) of this spiritual hermitage