Pierce Tempest and Isaac Fuller included in their edition of Cesare Ripa's Iconologia or Moral Emblems (1709) an allegorical engraving of friendship, which they described: “A Youth crown'd with a Garland of several Flowers, in a green, loose Garment, holding a Crystal Vase, in his right Hand, full of Claret, which he offers with a seeming Cheerfulness” (figure 3.1). Other editions of the famous collection of iconography also link friendship to gestures of offering. Johann Georg Hertel's elaborate Historiae et Allegoriae from 1758–60 (figure 3.2) illustrates yet more details: the main figure draped in white, the color of truth; a skull beneath her feet, showing that friendship outlasts death; the dog, embodying loyalty; and finally, an image of Classical figures giving and reciprocating, held in the foreground by a cherub.

Gift giving has long been associated with representations of friendship, and dedications exemplify this connection. Previous chapters here have examined the ways they demonstrate generosity and humility, but dedications also capture cultural orientations toward intimate relationships and their public facade. That link is apparent, for instance, in the host of early to mid-nineteenth-century dedications to friends, as in Ries's offering “à son ami” Beethoven (figure 3.3, discussed below), and is also underlined in composer- biography, an emerging literary genre that began its life in the early nineteenth century recounting anecdotal tales of sociability. Dedications and anecdotal biographies are so connected in their illustration of friendship that we can argue that they manifested the same impulse to present their subjects as idealized embodiments of friendship itself. Further, as composers became more modern celebrities toward the mid-century, standing for a brand name, dedications remained ego-documents:4 they related the commoditized printed page to an increasingly commoditized version of the author.