Treasures
Icons, work by Théodore de Bèze
![](https://www.musee-reforme.ch/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Vue-de-Geneve-en-1548-txt-1536x755.png.webp)
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As early as 1577, Théodore de Bèze undertook the creation of a work intended to present faithful portraits of illustrious actors of the Reformation – theologians, martyrs, and even sovereigns.
In 1580, he delivered a first version, still incomplete, printed in Geneva under the title Icons. Each portrait was accompanied by a small biography and some Latin verses. These representations were followed by a small collection of emblems, the Emblemata. These symbolic images were accompanied by morals in Latin. The portraits of the Icons are partly attributed to the Swiss artist Tobias Stimmer (1539-1584). The Emblemata are, for their part, the work of Pierre Eskrich (c. 1518-1595), an engraver of Parisian origin received by a bourgeois from Geneva in the 1560s.
The MIR has a copy of the work whose binding, decorated with splendid decoration, is largely from the period.
Work by Théodore de Bèze
![](https://www.musee-reforme.ch/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Icones-txt.png.webp)
Théodore de Bèze produced this work to present faithful portraits of illustrious actors of the Reformation.