On the Composition of Images, Signs and Ideas

De imaginum, signorum et idearum compositione was printed at Frankfurt in 1591 by Johann Wechel and Peter Fischer, and dedicated to Johann Heinrich Hainzel, a patron at Elgg near Zürich. It is the last work Bruno published before returning to Italy, where he was arrested by the Venetian Inquisition in 1592 and, after a long trial in Rome, burned in 1600. The three books form his most mature treatment of the art of memory and invention. The first book sets out the theory: the relation of the mind’s light to the images and signs through which it knows, the kinds of signs, and the principles by which imagination forms memorable pictures, introduced by verses on Mnemosyne. The second book describes vast imaginary architectures of ‘atria’, ‘fields’ and ‘beds’ as memory places, and populates them with images. The third book presents thirty ‘seals’ or statues built from the figures of the classical gods, interpreted as embodiments of divine attributes and of the powers of nature, in which mythology, astrology and memory technique are merged. Frances Yates regarded the work as the summit of Bruno’s ‘Hermetic’ memory art, and later scholars have studied it as a sophisticated theory of mental imagery and creativity. The online page gives the Latin text of the first book and the opening of the second.

What it contains

• Dedication to Johann Heinrich Hainzel
• Book I: light, signs, images and the principles of imagination
• Verses on Mnemosyne, mother of the Muses
• Book II: imaginary atria, fields and ‘beds’ as memory places
• Book III: images of the gods as seals of divine attributes