The 'emblem', an image accompanied by a motto and a verse or short prose passage, is both art and literature: in the emblem tradition, the image presents a story – often with pictorial symbols – and the verse below the image drives home the picture-story's moral instruction. It is one of the most fascin-ating, and enduring, art forms in Western culture. John Manning's book charts the rise and evolution of the emblem from its earliest manifestations to its emergence as a genre in its own right in the sixteenth century, and through its various reinventions and mutations to the present day.