APES (Applied prints and emblems) is a scholarly website conceived to show the prints that inspired the religious visual arts created in the Iberian Peninsula during the Early Modern Period.
These paintings and sculptures can be divided into two basic categories: descriptive/narrative representations and allegorical/symbolic compositions. Among the first ones, scenes of the life of Christ, Virgin and saints stand out; among the second ones, emblems play an important role.
Precisely, in the case of programmes based on applied emblems, finding their engraved sources can be determining to decipher their meaning; not in vain, when literary emblems are transferred to the new media and become applied emblems, they are usually reduced to the motto and the pictura, losing the subscriptio that clarifies and explains their contents. It is true that this content can undergo little changes so as to fit in the new context, but (at least in the examples that the author has hitherto analysed) the basic meaning tends to remain since it is exactly what motivates its choice.
The cycles that the author displays in this web have been studied in detail in her doctoral thesis, entitled Traces of the Emblematic Literature and the European Print in the XVIIIth century programmes consecrated to Mary in the Iberian Peninsula, as well as in the publications derived from it. They are also the result of the posdoctoral research that she is currently conducting, funded by the Programa de axudas a etapa posdoutoral da Xunta de Galicia (Consellería de Cultura, Educación e Ordenación Universitaria) .
Consequently, unless otherwise noted, all texts and photos are by the author. Concerning the engravings, their origin is indicated and, when it exists, their watermark is respected; at this regard, the author can assert that without the Google Books, Emblematica online and MDZ projects her work would have taken a completely distinct direction.
Finally, if available on the Internet, she links the texts on this web to the cited images, primary and secondary sources; hyperlinks are indicated by gold-coloured words that also display underline when hovering the mouse over them.