Anima ragionevole e beata (Ripa, 1603) - Giuseppe Cesari

1. Description:

The most gracious maiden will have her face covered with a very fine, transparent veil, her clothing will be light and shining, she will have a pair of wings on her shoulders, and a star on top of her head. Although the soul, as theologians say, is an incorporeal and immortal substance, it is nevertheless represented in the best way that man, bound to those bodily senses with his imagination, can comprehend it. She is depicted as a most gracious maiden, because she was created by the Creator, who is the source of all beauty, and to indicate that she is, as St. Augustine says in his book De definitio animae, a substance invisible to human eyes and the substantial form of the body in which she is not evident, except through certain external actions. Her light and shining clothing is to indicate the purity and perfection of her essence. The star is placed above her head, since the Egyptians used it to signify the immortality of the soul, as Pierio Valeriano reports in book 44 of his Hieroglyphics. The wings and homeri thus denote the agi…