Filippo Picinelli  Picinelli was born in Milan, Italy in 1604 and joined the Augustinian Order in 1614. He studied philosophy and theology at Cremona and Piacenza, and lived in Milan. Picinelli believed that the world of God's creation could read as a symbolic book. This led him to assemble an encyclopaedia of emblems extending to more than a thousand pages, his "Mondo simbolico" ("Symbolic World").