Bulletin du Musée National de Varsovie (23.1982)

sky has lighter patches, and the rough sea, the sinking sliips and the shipwrecked are lit with.
sunrays, a symbol of hope7 that the endangeres sailors can associate with the salvation given
by God.

Nicolas Reusner combines a ship presented on the rough sea with the motto Christus meum
asylum (Christ Is My Asylum) and this is how he explains its religious meaning:

Seu morior, seu viuo, meum sit Christus asylum:

Fortunae Christus portus, et aura meae.

Ille meae mcntis spes, et fiducia sola:

Pendet ab hoc uno iam certa salus.

Anchora sit fidei signum, sub imagine Christi:

Sistere ąuae tutum littore sola potests.
Picinelli also combines the image of a disintcgrating ship with the conviction of God's help
that can be reached by praycr; the motto vota supersunt (Prayers Help), altered by Bargagli
into Salus tantum ab alto (Rescue Comes From Above), refers to those „deserted and despairing
who are left convinced of the sole help — that desired, expected of and granted by God"9.

Andrea Alciati placed an image of a ship on the rough sea under tho motto saying Spes proxima
(The Proximate Hope), but he associated the hopeless situation of the ship with political
circumstances and compared it to a state constantly shaken by storms:

Jnnumeris agitur respub. nostra procellis,

Et spes uenturae sola salutis adest.

Non secus ac navis medio circum aeąuore uenti,

Quam rapiunt salsis iamąue fatiscit aąuis.

Quod si Helenae adveniant lucentia sydera fratres,

Amissos animos spes bona restituit10.
The political symbolism of the ship was also taken up by other authors11 e.g. La Perriere, de Sa-
avedra and Zincgraff, the last-mentioned of whom compared the helm and the helmsman to the
power of a sovereign in charge of a state. Emblems of this type were modelled on, and often
repeated almost literally excerpts from, Horace's Ode to the Ship. The poem, an allegory of
a state in danger, contains a warning that found emblematic imitations:

O navis, referent in mare te novi

Fluctus. 0 ąuid agis? fortiter occupa

Portum12.

7. Cf. G. de Tcrvarent, Atlributs et symboles dans l'arl profane, Geneve, 1958, col. 356 et al.

8. N. Reusner, Emblemata, Francoforti, 1581; After A. Henkel, A. Schone, Ejnblemata. Handbuch zur Sinnbildkunst des 17.
und 18. Jahrhunderts, Stuttgart, 1967, col. 1463:

In death and life may Christ be my refuge:
Christ is my haven and the fair wind of my lot.
He is my hope and my only certainty:
Only on him does my salvation depend.

May the anchor be the sign of faith as the image of Christ.
He only is in power to lead me safely to the shore.

9. F. Picinelli, Mondo Simbolico, lib. XX, capo VII: Nave, No. 40.

10. A. Alciati, Emblematum liber..., Augsburg, 1531 (first edition), cf. Henkel, Schone, op. cit., col. 1462:

Countless storms have shaken our republic.
Only hope for a prompt salvation is Icft.
Like a ship among the sea gales

Tossed by the salty waves, it almost breaks to pieces.
And if Helen*s brothers appear — the shining stars*
The good hope brings back the lost spirit.
* Helen* s brothers — the shining stars — are Castor and Pollux, the Gemini.

11. Cf. Henkel, Schone, op. cit., Chap. V: Menschenwclt. Schiff und Schiffgerdt, cols. 1453—1484.

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