Cesare Ripa (c. 1555, Perugia – (1622-01-22)January 22, 1622 Rome) was an Italian iconographer who worked for Cardinal Anton Maria Salviati as a cook and butler.

He was very active in academic circles as member of the Filomati and the Intronati in Siena, both dedicated to the study of antiquities and of Greek and Latin literature, and the Insensati in his native Perugia.

The book was used by orators, artists, poets and "modern Italians" to give substance to qualities such as virtues, vices, passions, arts and sciences.

Also Dutch painters like Gerard de Lairesse, Willem van Mieris based work on Ripa's emblems.

A large part of Vondel's work cannot be understood without this allegorical source, and ornamentation of the Amsterdam townhall by Artus Quellinus, a sculptor, is totally dependent on Ripa.

In 1779, the Scottish architect George Richardson's Iconology; or a Collection of Emblematical Figures; containing four hundred and twenty-four remarkable subjects, moral and instructive; in which are displayed the beauty of Virtue and deformity of Vice was published in London.