ROCOLET, Pierre (d. 1662), publisher
Paris, 1643
Paris: Pierre Rocolet, 1643. 12mo (132 x 82 mm). [8], 40; 192; 312 pages. Engraved frontispiece and thirteen engraved plates, of which five signed by the print publisher Mariette; woodcut head- and tail-pieces and initials. Fore-edges of first few leaves a bit frayed, paper flaw with slight loss to fol. A1 in part 1. Contemporary Parisian mosaic binding of gold-tooled red morocco, probably from the shop of Pierre Rocolet; covers with roll-tooled outer border, corners of onlaid brown morocco and a central quadrilobular lozenge of black morocco, overall pointillé tooling of arabesques and scrolling tendrils, with blossoms at center, top and bottom, leaves and petals highlighted with silver infill, spine in six compartments with similar gold and silver decoration; pair of metal fore-edge clasps (catches on back cover), gilt edges, marbled paper pastedown endleaves, plain free endleaves; small stain to upper cover, some tarnishing of silver infill; 20th-century leather-backed cloth folding case (worn). Provenance: small booklabel inside folding box, "Bibliophilia / AG / Bern," with an image of a binding press. ***
Unrecorded first edition of a devotional handbook, this copy in a lovely gold- and silver-tooled mosaic binding, probably produced in the bindery owned by the printer Pierre Rocolet.
This complete guide to the Sacraments, also containing the Hours of the Virgin, various prayers and hymns, is illustrated with mainly pedestrian devotional engravings, showing the Holy Family, St. Anne, the Annunciation, the Eucharist, Saints Teresa, Catherine, Hyacinth and Dominic, but one emblematic engraving is more interesting. It shows a well-dressed woman (symbolizing worldliness), handing a bag of money to a kneeling pilgrim, who ignores her as an angel and the powers on high help him prepare for death, embodied nearby in a bearded skeleton with a crow.
The author or compiler "V.C.P." is unidentified. Describing the 1654 edition, which has a slightly different title and different illustrations, but which also attributes authorship to V.C.P., the Bibliothèque nationale de France cataloguers suggested that the initials designated "Louis Cousin for the initial C and Paul Paul Pellisson-Fontanier for the initial P," both being mentioned in a later edition (1719) as editors. But that is unlikely, since the same initials appear in this 1643 edition, when Cousin would have been 16 years old and Pellisson-Fontanier 19.
A native of Paris, Pierre Rocolet set up shop ca. 1610, and was named royal printer and bookseller in 1635. He later distinguished himself during the Fronde for his fidelity to Louis XIV. As a particularly enterprising libraire-imprimeur, Rocolet had acquired a bindery ca. 1638, which remained active until his death in 1662. Its anonymous workers produced lavishly tooled bindings, largely though not exclusively on books from Rocolet's own press, for a rich clientèle in the circle of the King, notably including the powerful Chancellor Pierre Séguier, Rocolet's principal patron, and his spouse, the Chancelière Séguier (née Madelaine Fabry). Rocolet signed this edition's dedication to Mme Séguier. The binding tools include a four-petalled flower that closely resembles Esmerian's reproduction of a tool from the Rocolet atelier (Tableaux Synoptiques, Annexe A-V). Produced for a person of rank, this binding is unusual for its silver highlighting.
Not in OCLC, USTC, the BnF catalogue, Barbier, etc. On Rocolet, cf. data.bnf.fr; on the Rocolet bindery, see Bibliothèque Raphaël Esmérian II, p. 47.
HORAE B.M.V., use of Rome, in Italian
Venice, 1549
Venice: per Giovan[ni] Griffio, 1549. 12mo (146 x 74 mm). Collation: [Greek cross]12 [2 Greek crosses]12 A-O12 P6 . [24], 173, [1] leaves. Roman and gothic types. Red and black printing throughout, including of title woodcut (allegorical figure of Charity); 40 metalcut and woodcut illustrations, printed from 28 plates or blocks, including a full-page Annunciation metalcut, the rest half-page or smaller; one large woodcut initial with a monk (printed twice), a few small initials. Very occasional light staining in lower outer corners; spot-stains to first page of the Office (A1r), else fine. Contemporary parchment over pasteboards, covers each with a different gold-stamped figurative panel stamp within an arabesque border (part of the stamp), showing one half of an Annunciation scene: Mary on front cover and the Angel on the back cover, each framed in parallel blind-rules, edges gilt and gauffered; the binding rebacked in unsightly modern white parchment, preserving fragments of spine, upper portions of covers with large holes backed in the same white parchment, endpapers renewed. ***
A sixteenth-century Venetian illustrated book of hours, in a rare Italian panel-stamped binding. This internally fresh copy, apparently the only survivor of the edition, appears never to have been subjected to daily use.
Sixteenth-century Italian printed books of hours (usually titled Officium BVM, in Italian Officio, or, later, Uffizio) appear rarely on the market, and most of the few extant editions are represented in only one or two copies. They are, in fact, almost as rare as those printed in the fifteenth century. Although the first recorded Italian printed books of hours (Venice: Jenson, 1474) "precedes by eleven years the earliest dated Parisian edition" (Dondi, p. xxxviii), large-scale production of this essential domestic liturgical book was soon dominated by Paris. In Italy, these usually small-format books were printed for a predominantly local use (cf. Dondi, pp. 22-23); commercial production of printed books of hours, aiming at (and reaching) a broader public, was a French phenomenon, and the number of extant French editions vastly outnumbers their Italian counterparts, whose dissemination was more limited. We have little way of knowing the extent of publication of 16th-century Italian Horae, i.e., how many editions were printed, and in what kind of average pressruns, but it is clear that these books were produced in far greater numbers than surviving copies would suggest. Devotional books such as these were part of the bread and butter of printers' business. As is always the case, this most regular, everyday segment of overall book production now represents a tiny fraction of the corpus of surviving books; and to complicate matters, even more so than for their 15th-century predecessors, which until publication of Dondi's masterful census were also poorly described and analyzed, our knowledge of these 16th-century books suffers from a lack of bibliographical control (or, more bluntly, bibliographical chaos), with only very spotty crossover between editions listed in Bohatta, Essling, Sander, EDIT-16, USTC, and the major online OPACS like OCLC.
The edition:
Joannes Gryphius was son of the Reutlingen printer Michael Greif and brother of the powerful Lyonese publisher Sebastian Gryphius. The two brothers had trained in Venice; when Sebastian emigrated to Lyon to join the Compagnie des Libraires, Hans/Joannes/Giovanni remained there, setting up his own shop in or before 1544. Griffio's imprints show a preponderance of classics, medicine, and law, but about a quarter of his surviving output was in Italian (and again, fewer of those by definition more "popular" books have survived). This book of hours may have been printed for him rather than by him: rather than one of his usual devices, all of which incorporate gryphons, the title-page is adorned with a color-printed allegorical woodcut of Charity within an ornamental border, which the printer Domenico Farri, active, according to EDIT-16, from 1555 to 1600, used as his device (EDIT-16 device V346 - Z205). The same woodcut appears on the title-page of a Missal published by Griffio in 1548-1549 (Edit-16 CNCE 11571). Were both these books actually printed by Farri, moving back the earliest dates of his activity? Finding examples of the metalcut or woodcut material used in the Officio in other imprints by either Farri or Griffio would help settle the question, which for now remains unanswered.
Text:
Like French books of hours of the second half of the 16th century, often prefaced by an ABC des Chrétiens or Instruction des Chrétiens, this Venetian pocket devotional book contains everything a devout layperson would need for their daily liturgical duties, including a basic primer of Christian dogma and essential prayers, printed between the calendar (a plenary calendar, with one saint per day) and lunario, and the Hours or Offices proper. This edition includes no fewer than three different Offices of the Virgin: the "regular" Office, the Office for the days from Advent to Christmas (Natività) and the Office from Christmas to Candlemas (la Purificatione de la Madonna). These are followed by the usual Penitential psalms, Litany, various prayers, Office of the Dead, Office of the Cross, and Office of the Holy Spirit. Also included are a Mass of the Virgin. As noted by Dondi (pp. 201-2), the contents of Italian Hours are generally simpler than those of French Horae, partly because the Italian books were usually printed in smaller formats. The Saints of the calendar and of the Litany, as well as the various prayers in this edition, would repay further, expert study, and could shed light on the filiation of this book of hours, now an isolated survivor.
The Hours are printed in a semi-gothic type, while the prefatory calendar and devotional primer are in a small roman type, which is also used from fol. 153 (N8) to the end, apparently simply in order to fit the remaining text into the last two and a half quires.
Contents: +1r title, +1v - +7v monthly calendar (one to two Saints per day); +8r - +11r lunario (almanac or list of full and new moons, dates of Carnival and other holidays) for 1549-1555; ++11v - ++4v basic Christian "primer" (instructions for Confession, sins of Conscience, Ten commandments; Seven deadly sins, Five articles of Faith, Cardinal and theological virtues), and short prayers for various occasions (upon leaving the house, going to bed, entering a church, etc.); ++5r - ++8v the Passion according to St. John; ++8v - ++12v prayers to the Holy Crucifix, Preparation for Mass, Psalmo contra ogni adversità, Canto in praise of the Virgin; prayers to the Virgin, to receive an indulgence from Pope Sixtus IV (1471-1484); ++12v full-page woodcut; A1r-D4r Office of the Virgin (Income[n]za lofficio della glorisa vergine Maria ...); D4v-G6v Office of the Virgin from Advent to Christmas (Incomenza lo officio de la gloriosa vergine Maria: per lo advento del Signore: infino a la nativita); G6v-G7r Salutation anzelica laqual fu data del Angelo a Santo Bernardo abbate; G7v-K9v Office of the Virgin from Christmas to Candlemas (Incomenza lofficio de la gloriosa vergine Maria: da la natività del signore: infino a la purificatione de la Madonna); K10r-L8r Penitential psalms; L8r-M2r litanies and prayers; M2r-M8v Mass of the Virgin (Messa de la madonna); M8r-M12r Vespero de morti; M12v-N2v Officio de la croce; N2v-N4v Officio del spirito sancto; N4v-O4r various prayers, commencing with a prayer against the plague (Oratio Devotissima contra la peste); O4r-P1r Confitemini de la Madonna with litany to the Virgin; P1r-P5v Prayer of St Bridget; P6r register and colphon, P6v blank.
Illustrations:
The 30 larger text illustrations (including 10 repeats) were printed from at least three series of metalcuts or woodcuts. The first consists of half-page metalcuts, shaded, with foreground and background scenes filling the entire space, and within double rule borders (approx. 69 x 60 mm). Series 2 contains smaller cuts (46 x 43 mm.), somewhat worn, also with double borders. Three taller narrow woodcuts (80 x 42 mm.) are from a third series. The full-page Annunciation metalcut stands alone, as it belongs to none of these series. Most of the cuts from Series 2 and 3 are flanked by ornamental vertical border cuts to fill out the width of the text-block; the Flight into Egypt cut on 31r has instead a narrow vertical metalcut of saints printed on the right side.
These plates or blocks were almost certainly used for other books, possibly in earlier, now lost editions of the Officio de la gloriosa Vergine. The full-page Annunciation cut, showing the Virgin under a colonnade, loosely copies a woodcut or metalcut used in an Italian Officio published in Venice by Gregoris de Gregoriis in 1512 (see Essling I, 479). Both cuts show God the Father at the upper left; in the 1512 cut he is releasing a small messenger-putto who descends carrying a cross. The putto is absent from this metalcut, which has a small break in the back arch of the colonnade just where his leg would have crossed it.
I have not found the other metalcuts or woodcuts in any of the Venetian Offices of the Virgin reproduced by Essling or Sander, or in institutional copies that have been digitized or for which I have obtained reproductions (the latter being Officii printed by [Zoppino] in 1531, at UNC Chapel Hill, and by Bindoni, 1555, at SMU [neither of which are listed in EDIT-16, USTC, Sander or Essling]: with thanks to their respective curators).
List of major illustrations:
Fol. ++5r: Betrayal (with smaller metalcut), Series 1
++12v: Annunciation (Matins), full-page
A12r / f. 12r: Visitation (Lauds), Series 1
B7r / 19r: Nativity (Prime), Series 1
B10r / 22r: Annunciation to the Shepherds (Terce), Series 1
C1r / 25r: Adoration of the Magi (Sext), Series 1
C4r / 28r: Presentation in the Temple (None), Series 2
C7r / 31r: Flight into Egypt (Vespers), Series 3, with border cut of Saints
C12r / 36r: Massacre of the Innocents (Compline), Series 2
D4v / 40v: Annunciation (Office of the Virgin from Advent to Nativity, Matins), Series 3, with ornamental border cuts
E4r / 52r: Visitation (Lauds) = same cut as f. 12r
E10v / 58v: Nativity (Prime) = 19r
F1v / 61v: Nativity (Terce) = 19r = 58v
F4v / 64v: Adoration of the Magi (Sext) = 25r
F7r / 67r: Presentation in the Temple (None) = 28r
F10r / 70r: Flight into Egypt (Vespers), with border cuts = 31r
G3r / 75r: Massacre of the Innocents (Compline), Series 1
G7v / 79v: Annunciation (Office of the Virgin from Nativity to Purification of the Virgin, Matins) = 40v
H6v / 90v: Visitation (Lauds), Series 2, with border cuts
I1r / 97r: Annunciation to the Shepherds (Prime), Series 2, with border cuts
I4r / 100r: Nativity (Terce), Series 2, with border cuts
I7r / 103r: Presentation in the Temple (Sext) = 28r = 67r
I10r / 106r: Flight into Egypt (None), with border cuts = 31r = 70r
K1r / 109r: Adoration of the Magi (Vespers), Series 2, with border cuts
K6r / 114r: Massacre of the Innocents (Compline), with border cuts = 36r
K10r / 118r: King David in Penitence (Penitential psalms), Series 3
M2r / 134r: Annunciation (Mass of the Madonna), Series 2, with border cuts
M8r / 140r: A funeral Mass (Office of the Dead), Series 2, with border cuts
M12v / 144v: Crucifixion (Office of the Cross), Series 2, with border cuts
N2v / 146v: Pentecost (?), Series 2, with border cuts
Besides these metalcuts and woodcuts there are 10 small cuts printed from 8 blocks or metalcuts (32 x 21 mm.) showing saints, the Virgin and Child, Mary Magdalene (N9r), the Resurrection (N11v), Crucifixion (O3v), and St. Margaret, with dragon and cross (P2v)
The binding:
The gold-blocked panel stamps of the binding (each measuring approx. 122 x 62 mm.) together showing the Annunciation, make it a reliure parlante, reflecting the contents of the book. The type of thick parchment, the purely local uses of such Italian Books of Hours, the style of the panels' arabesque borders and of the gauffered edges - all testify to the binding's Italian origin. Whether commissioned by the buyer or by the bookseller-publisher, its decoration is unusual, as (apart from small medallion or cameo stamps) panel stamps were rarely used in Italy during this period. "In Italy the panel stamp is not entirely unknown, but it is rare, and unquestionable examples are difficult to find" (Goldschmidt, Gothic and Renaissance Bookbindings, p. 68). There are no examples in the British Library or Folger bookbinding databases, and none are recorded by Tammaro de Marinis. E.P. Goldschmidt knew of, and reproduced, only one example of a comparable panel-stamped Italian binding, also of the Annunciation, on a copy of a Psalter published in Lyon for Frellon, 1542 (op. cit., no. 194, plate LXIX). The Lyonese connection may be relevant: although Goldschmidt was certain that his binding was Italian, the design and/or the stamp itself may have originated in Lyon. It is not too far-fetched to speculate that ours was a kind of publisher's binding: Gryphius / Griffio, who must have maintained close contacts to Lyon via his brother, may have seen and handled books from France in panel-stamped bindings, and he may have commissioned a pair of similar but locally produced stamps for use on special copies of small format devotional books, which the customer could purchase ready-bound.
This edition was described in the 18th century by Giacomo Maria Paitoni, from a copy then in the library of the Augustinians of San Stefano in Venice; that convent was suppressed by the French regime in 1810 and its contents disbursed. Our copy bears no marks of provenance, other than its exceptional binding, and appears to have been unused; it could perhaps be the copy described by Paitoni, no others being recorded. It is worth noting that of the seven pre-1600 editions of Officii recorded by Paitoni, only three, including this one, are recorded in extant copies.
Not in Essling, Sander, Bohatta, EDIT-16, USTC, OCLC, KVK, etc.
Giacomo Maria Paitoni, Biblioteca degli autori antichi greci, e latini volgarizzati, 5 vols. (Venice 1766-67), 5: 210-211. Cf. Cristina Dondi, Printed books of hours from fifteenth-century Italy: the texts, the books, and the survival of a long-lasting genre (Florence: Olschki, 2016). Cf. Tammaro de Marinis, La Legatura artistica in Italia nei secoli XV e XVI (Venice, 1960).
[VAN DEN BUSSCHE, Alexandre], called LE SYLVAIN (ca. 1535?-ca. 1585)
Paris, 1576
Paris: Guillaume Julian, 1576. 4to (194 x 135 mm). [136] pages. Woodcut printer's device on title (Renouard 491), initials, type ornament head- and tailpieces. A wide-margined copy (washed, residual discoloration, paper flaw obscuring a couple of words on N4v). 19th-century green morocco, covers gilt-panelled, spine gold-tooled and -lettered, turn-ins gilt, gilt edges, by Chambolle-Duru (joints and extremities rubbed). Provenance: Hector de Backer, bookplate (sale, Part 1, Paris 1926, lot 409); Jean-Paul Barbier-Mueller, bookplate.***
Only Edition of a large collection of verse anagrams, acrostics, and short verses by a Flemish poet of the French court, whose graceful word-games on the names of the royal family, members of the court, aristocratic friends, and a few ordinary nobodies are presented in descending hierarchical order.
As remarked by his sole biographer, Henri Helbig, the poetry of the little-known Alexandre Sylvain [Van den Bussche] is "much more intelligible to the modern reader than most other French poetry of the period" (p. 18, transl). Although a contemporary of Ronsard, his style was relatively uninfluenced by the classicizing innovations of the Pléiäde. He excelled in verbal challenges, as is evident from these acrostic poems and anagrams. Providing a snapshot of the court of Henri III, around 55 personages are the subjects of acrostic poems (a few appearing more than once), each followed by several anagrams. The King (Henri de Vallois), the Queen (Loise de Lorraine), his mother (Catherine de Medici), sister (Marguerite de Valois), and other members of the royal family are followed by more obscure male courtiers like Jacques de Matignon, African de Haussonville, or Antoine du Mesnil Simon, and numerous ladies, as well as a couple of children. The last 6 pages contain only anagrams, in French, Italian and Spanish. Naturally the collection was well-received, and not only among the pleased subjects of the verses; one of the anagrams of the king (Roi es de nul hay: The king is hated by none) was reputedly known throughout Europe (Helbig, p. 24), rather ironically in light of Henri III's assassination by a crazed Dominican 13 years later.
Such "lightweight" poems, composed largely to curry favor (or protection), were considered unimportant by their author: Van den Bussche did not reprint them with his collected verse, published in 1581 in the Epitomes de cent histoires tragicques, with the exception of one poem, an "anagrammatisme" to Madeleine de La Fin, the woman he loved (E3v). Two other heart-rending poems in this collection describe the death in her arms of her husband François de Seneret, Seigneur du Chaussin, who was shot (by arquebuse) in 1573 by three other nobles (cf. Aubert de La Faige, Les Fiefs du Bourbonnais, 1896, p. 142).
Of Van den Bussche few biographical details are documented, and only the outlines of his life can be gleaned from his works. A self-described Belgian, his place of birth is uncertain. In the royal privilege of this edition he is described as "in the suite and service" of the King, but his precise role is lost to history. From remarks in the preliminary verses of this edition, by the Poitevin poet Pierre de May, it appears that Van den Bussche had traveled widely and was a gifted linguist. In his own dedication to the Cardinal of Ferrara (Luigi II d'Este, patron of music and letters, and a cousin of the Valois), dated 10 May 1554, the poet alludes to time spent in the employ of the latter's father, the deeply mourned Duke of Ferrara; this would be Ercole II d'Este, who died in 1559. After first appearing at the French court in the early 1570s, and publishing a work of military arithmetic (under his Flemish name), Van den Bussche was imprisoned for an unknown period, possibly three years, probably for speaking out against Charles IX after the terrible events of the St. Bartholomew. By 1575 he was released and publishing collections of poetry. It has been suggested that he may have composed these poems in prison, but evidence is lacking.
In the early 1570s, when he first appeared at the French court and in print, Van den Bussche had embraced a lyrical French rendering of his name, Sylvain (snubbing the prosaic "Dubois"), always adding his country of origin. This has created confusion in some library catalogues (see: OCLC), where his works appear under both names without cross-referencing.
3 US copies located. Bibliotheca Belgica B 164; Brunet I: 1420 & Supplément I: 188; Cioranesco 21593; H. Helbig, Alexandre Sylvain de Flandre, sa Vie et ses Oeuvres (Liège 1861), pp. 24-25 and passim.
WATENBACH, Johann Gottfried (scribe & artist)
[Germany or Austria], 1748
[Germany or Austria], 1748. Manuscript on paper, oblong folio (197 x 328 mm). [65] unnumbered leaves, written on rectos only, in pen-and-ink, pencil, watercolor and gouache within ink-ruled page borders, containing: a "title" leaf with the artist's name and colored figures; 7 leaves of calligraphic alphabets; 49 leaves with flamboyantly ornamented calligraphic Biblical quotations or prayers in German, fulsomely illustrated, of which 36 leaves with the illustrations colored in watercolor or gouache (one figure in grisaille), and 13 uncolored or with only touches of color; 8 leaves with drawings and no text (some unfinished). Occasional corrections and insertions. Bound with 47 mostly blank leaves, 2 with pencil sketches, at the end a 9-page text in Dutch in a different 18th-century hand (datable to after 1772). Watermark: key within a crowned shield flanked by the letters H B.
Condition: first leaf slightly stained and frayed, some minor soiling, acidic ink causing some staining and an occasional small hole or tear along borders, frequent ink showthrough to versos (not affecting facing rectos), f. [64] detached. Bound in 18th-century half blind-ruled calf and marbled paper over boards, plain pastedown endpapers. ***
A lavishly illustrated "popular" calligraphic manuscript, whose creator Johann Gottfried Watenbach, otherwise unknown, possessed an exuberant visual imagination. He embellished his pious calligraphic quotations with both relevant figures - prophets, saints, and angels - and characters from everyday life: shepherds and peasant girls in bucolic landscapes, hunters, tradesmen and -women, a bagpiper, preachers and soldiers; and he also threw in ancient philosophers, a two-faced sibyl, exotic birds and animals, flowering plants and fruit baskets. Some small figures sit on swirls, others balance on unreadable ornate capitals, and a few are nearly hidden within interlocking clusters of ornaments. A dynamic propulsion pervades each page. Watenbach was probably a teenage student, showing off his calligraphic skills in this display album. While the calligraphy is respectable, the drawings are charmingly crude, and the overall effect is ludic, and enchanting.
Watenbach used the classic scripts taught in the German-speaking lands in the 18th century: the Latin script, Current or Kurrentschrift, and chancery or Kanzleischrift. He reveled in wildly ornate and figurative letters, used for the first line of each text (one or two very large words), which he decorated with intertwining or overlaid serpents, flowers, or chains, filling each letter with meticulously drawn geometric or repeated patterns. On fol. 42, the first line of the Epistle of James, 5:13, is overlaid by Psalm 23, in tiny script.
Biblical quotations were a common subject of German calligraphic model and exercise books, and Watenbach's is no exception. Following the "title" leaf and a series of alphabets, the main part of the album consists of 45 leaves each with an elaborately presented quotation from the Lutheran Bible or a prayer. He identified the Biblical citations in the upper left corners (not always accurately: for example, the passage identified as Ezekiel 5:12 is actually from the Book of Lamentations [die Klagelieder Jeremiahs] 2:4, "He has bent his bow like an enemy...), choosing passages from the Old Testament: the apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon (Buch der Weisheit), chapter 8:8, Exodus (14:24-25), Psalms 37:5-6, the Prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel (but see above), Daniel, Hosea, Joel, etc., and the New Testament: the Gospels, Epistles, and Acts of the Apostles; and various prayers. While he represented each Biblical figure or speaker in the upper left, the relationship to the text of the other figures illustrated, of which the largest usually appear in the right margins, is usually tenuous.
Contents:
Folio [1]: the scribe Watenbach's name, "Johann" incorporating gouache and watercolor figures (an angel and 7 smaller human figures of indeterminate gender (souls?), wearing only loincloths, their arms raised, and a yellow tulip).
Ff. [2-8]: 7 leaves of alphabets. Ff. 2-3 with full alphabets, their scripts identified as Current, "small and large" (i.e., minuscule and majuscule) Latin; French, chancery (Cantzley) script, and Greek (a double-column list of the Greek letters and their names); f. 4 with a fine full-page chancery alphabet of capitals, originally highlighted in a yellowish dye apparently imitating gold (mostly abraded); ff. 5-8 with very large ornamented capitals with intricate flourishes and decorative infill in pen-and-ink or color, a few incorporating flowers, one, the N on f. 6 containing the name Johann Gottfried Watenbach(?) and the date Anno 1748.
F. [9]: dedication to Christ, in German and Latin ("Alphabetum Germanicum et Latinum") within colored cartouche border with a pair of angels holding a torch and a flame.
Ff. [10-54]: Biblical citations, the first two or three lines of each in ornate colored calligraphic lettering, the rest in Kantzlei or Currentschrift, the text flanked by a wide variety of illustrations, some or all of the figures colored in gouache and watercolor on ff. 10-28, 33, 36-47, those on ff. 29-32, 34-35 and 48-54 with only touches of red coloring or uncolored. Grisaille portrait of the Churfürst (Prince Elector) of Cologne on f. 39. F. 10 with allegorical female figures of justice and wisdom holding a shield bearing the scribe-artist's initials W I G, at lower left his name and the date 3 September 1748; his initials or monogram appear as well on ff. 12, 15 (with the year), 20, 35 and 50.
Ff. [55-58] each with two pencil and/or ink sketches or portraits within roundel borders, fol. 55 with 2 lines of text, else no text, fol. 57 depicting Luther and his wife Katharina von Bora, fol. 58 with an unfinished partly colored portrait of a woman in central roundel flanked by putti.
Ff. [59-61] each with a biblical citation in Kantzleischrift within a large circular colored roundel and hand-colored floral and figurative border, incorporating angels and other figures; fol. 62 unfinished, with the colored border only and no text; ff. 63-64 pencil sketches of borders.
Fol. 65: sketch of scales of justice, followed by 47 mainly blank leaves, the first two with border rules, the 31st and 32nd with two unfinished pencil drawings, one with a sphere and a soldier fencing, the sphere labeled "Mundus / Die Welt," the second showing a bearded man in classical garb walking holding a carafe, with an unlettered banner sketched in the background; at end a 9-page manuscript in Dutch in a flowing cursive hand, written after 1772 (containing 2 pieces, with headings "Een Beschreÿving van Melchisedeks Koning van Salem" and "Geschiedenis van den Koning van Sweden Geworden Suvaraÿn den 19 August 1772").
WALASSER, Adam (d. 1581), editor
Dillingen, 1572
Dillingen: Sebald Mayer, 1572. 8vo (153 x 120 mm). Collation: A-Z8 a4 (-a4 blank). [7], 173, [7] leaves. Title printed in red and black within 4-part metalcut border, repeated on title verso, shoulder notes; 121 woodcuts, of which 17 flanked by type-ornament borders; the cut on f. 113v roughly colored. One-inch tear to title, first few leaves loosening and slightly softened, some minor soiling, a few short marginal tears. Contemporary blind-tooled calf(?) over wooden boards, covers with border of a Fides-Justitia-Prudentia-Spes roll (approx. 166 x 14 mm., not in Haebler or the Einbanddatenbank), pair of metal fore-edge clasps and catches, plain endpapers (rubbed, knife slashes to front cover [by an anti-Catholic?]). Provenance: partially legible early signature on back flyleaf, Ex libris Andreas Zwy---; inscription in a different early hand on front flyleaf: ich läbte [lebte] und weiss nit wie / ich stirb und weiss nich wän / ich fahr[?] und weiss nit wohin[?]" (this popular German saying, incorrectly attributed to Martin von Biberach, was called by Luther the "rhyme of the godless").***
First Edition of Walasser's modernized adaptation of a late medieval allegorical romance of the soul's marriage to Christ, in an illustrated pocket edition from the first press of Dillingen.
The compiler Adam Walasser was not a cleric, but a writer for hire, who worked as "content producer," editor and proofreader for Sebald Mayer from the time the press was founded in 1550 until 1573, when, along with Mayer's son Johann, Walasser helped the Tegernsee Benedictines set up their own monastic press. His charge for Mayer was to produce copy, by editing, translating, reworking, or completing existing printed or manuscript works, in order to further the Counter-Reformation program of the press's patron (and eventually owner), the Cardinal-Prince-Bishop of Augsburg, Otto von Waldburg. The hard-working Walasser, who also produced a few works of his own, left dozens of works of Catholic religious devotion, Counter-Reformation polemics, and a couple of books on German heraldry and language.
The Büchlein der geistlichen Gemahelschaft, a didactic allegory in rhyming couplets, by one "Konrad of Vienna," identified as the Viennese Franciscan Konrad Spitzer (d. 1380), circulated in manuscript in the late 14th and 15th centuries. A prose version written ca. 1418-1430, known in a few illustrated manuscripts, was printed in Augsburg by Johann Bämler in 1477-1478 (GW 5666-5668) and later by Johann Schönsperger (GW 5669). Bämler used the title Buch der Kunst, dadurch der weltliche Mensch mag geistlich werden ("the Book of art by which the worldly person can become spiritual"), hence the word Kunstbüchlin, usually reserved for practical manuals, in Walasser's title. Walasser used one of the Bämler editions as his copy-text. In his dedicatory letter to the powerful Abbess of the Imperial Abbey of Buchau (Maria Jakoba, from the noble family of von Schwarzenberg und Hohenlandsberg), he describes his labors after receiving an "old book" from an "honorable person in Konstanze," who suggested that he republish it; it "delighted him as if it were a noble precious treasure," for he found it filled with the Gold and Silver of Christ's teachings (fol. A6r-v). Walasser followed the Bämler text, modernizing the language, omitting a few words and phrases and adding others, and added chapter numbers and a final table.
The tale of seven virgins, one of whom is chosen to marry the King, is an allegory of the eternal struggle between good and evil (God and Satan). The bride is led through temptation and is accompanied on mystical visits by the allegorical figures of Hope, Faith, and Wisdom. The latter teaches her "the theocentric worldview" (Verfasserlexikon) through seven secret words. The final magnificent wedding, prepared by ten more virtuous maidens, represents the unification, through baptism, of the soul with God. The symbolic meanings of the plot developments are helpfully spelled out in printed shoulder notes. The story is used as a framework for teaching the basics of Christian doctrine, of Creation, the Passion, and the Sacraments. Using this old tale for Counter-Reformation messaging was a way to beat the Protestants at their own vernacular game, by instructing while diverting the literate lay reader unversed in Latin (often a woman).
The many woodcut illustrations are smaller copies, some in reverse, of the cuts used in Bämler's editions. Whereas Bämler used some of his blocks more than once, there are no repeats in Mayer's edition, and while the cuts showing the virgins in action are all copied from the incunable editions, there are some divergences in the sections on the Passion and other "generic" passages. A few of the woodcuts, which are more heavily shaded than the others and/or are narrower than the text-block, may have come from Mayer's stock and been used in other works. The cut on 51v, stylistically different from the others, is signed BP; this monogrammist's woodcuts appeared in other books by Walasser (cf. Nagler, Monogrammisten I:1992).
No doubt in part because of the rarity of the Dillingen editions, the source of this work does not seem to have been previously recognized. Although four more editions appeared during the next 30 years, all are rare, with none represented in American libraries.
VD16, ZV 2620; Otto Bucher, Bibliographie der deutschen Drucke des XVI. Jahrhunderts. I: Dillingen (Bibliotheca Bibliographica, I) 648; cf. Bäumker, Wilhelm, "Walasser, Adam," Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie 40, pp 640-643.
GIL POLO, Gaspar (c. 1540?-c. 1584)
[Zaragoza?, 1566
[Zaragoza?: widow of Bartolomé de Nájera?], "Impresso con licencia,, 1566. Small 8vo (138 x 87 mm). [4], "140" [i.e., 136] leaves. Roman types, typographic fleurons. Six woodcut illustrations including portrait on title, printed from four blocks; one large woodcut and several smaller initials. Scattered browning. Contemporary unlined parchment, five thong sewing supports, remains of two fore-edge ties, spine liners from a 15th-century manuscript on vellum; covers stained, small hole to backstrip at upper joint, flyleaves a bit frayed and soiled. Provenance: "Bibliothèque du Miral.," 18th- or early 19th-century inscription on flyleaf; with Libreria Bardón, Catalogue 185 (2006), sold to: Kenneth Rapoport, bookplate and purchase notes on loosely inserted bookseller's description. ***
Second edition, and the first illustrated, of a continuation of the earliest and most popular Spanish pastoral romance. This anonymously printed edition, recorded in one or two other copies and virtually unknown, reprints the licencia of the Inquisition from the first edition (Valencia: Ioan Mey 1564), but it does not include the 1564 edition's 4-page royal privilege or author's letter to the readers, also 4 pages. Quickly printed, its errors include a misspelling in the title, foliation errors, and erroneous running heads (many of the headlines in Book Two are incorrectly printed Libro Primero).
The book was conceived as a sequel to Jorge de Montemayor's Siete libros de la Diana, first printed ca. 1559, also by Juan Mey of Valencia. An instant bestseller, Montemayor's Diana launched the mode in Spain for idyllic romances between shepherds and shepherdesses. Hugely popular both in Spain and abroad, it influenced Shakespeare, who is thought to have borrowed a sub-plot featuring cross-dressing for the Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Philip Sydney.
Gil Polo's Diana Enamorada was one of two different sequels to Montemayor's text, both appearing in 1564 (the other was Alonso Pérez's La Segunda Parte de la Diana). These writers swooped in to rescue the melancholy and unresolved ending of Montemayor's book (he had promised a sequel but died before writing it). Gil Polo gave the couples a happy ending, and his Diana in love became hugely popular in her own right. It was "perhaps the most successful continuation ever written by another hand. Cervantes, punning on the writer's name, recommended that `the Diana enamorada should be guarded as carefully as though it were by Apollo himself' [Don Quixote part 1, Chapter 6]; the hyperbole is not wholly, nor even mainly, ironical. The book is one of the most agreeable of Spanish pastorals; interesting in incident, written in fluent prose, and embellished with melodious poems, it was constantly reprinted, was imitated by Cervantes in the Canto de Caliope, and was translated into English, French, German and Latin" (1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica).
Unlike the other early editions (Valencia 1564, Antwerp 1567 and 1574, and Zaragoza 1577) this edition is illustrated, with an author portrait and three astrological woodcuts, heading Books 3-5 (one repeated, as is the portrait). One cut appropriately shows Artemis / Diana, but the others, of Mercury and Jupiter, seem unrelated to the text. The blocks or copies of them clearly circulated in Spain. A closely similar Jupiter woodcut appeared on the titles of Juan de Mena, Co[m]pilacion de todas las obras, Toledo: Fernando de Sancta Catalina, 1547 and 1548 (IB 12816 and 12817). All three woodblocks were used in 1585 in an edition of Tornamira, Chronographia y Repertorio de los tiempos, Pamplona: Tomás Porralis, 1585 (IB 18503). A more likely indicator of the place of printing is the ornamental printing material. The woodcut capitals point to Zaragoza: the large opening T and the D appeared in a 1549 edition from the Zaragoza press of Bartolomé de Nájera (Domingo del Pico, Prima pars trilogii de ordinaria conversione peccatoris, IB 14810), and another initial, an L, appeared in a 1565 book from the same press, under his widow's imprint (Juan Tomás Porcell, Informacion y curacion de la peste de Caragoca, IB 15093). It is possible therefore, if far from proven, that this edition was printed at the same Zaragoza press.
Iberian Books lists one copy of this edition, in the Jagiellonian Library in Cracow (but not in their online catalogue); and Palau knew of a copy in the Cervantes collection of Amelia Marty de Firpo, of Montevideo, Uruguay. All early editions are rare: I locate 3 copies in total in American libraries: the Hispanic Society holds a copy of the 1564 edition, and Berkeley and Univ. of Arizona each have a copy of the Zaragoza 1577 edition.
IB 9498; USTC 352662; Palau 102074. Not in CCPB or OCLC. Cf. Muir, The Sources of Shakespeare's Plays (2005),17-18. Our thanks to Sandy Wilkinson for his help in tracing the woodcut ornaments.
BARAHONA DE SOTO, Luis (1547/48-1595)
Granada, 1586
Granada: Hugo de Mena for Juan Diaz, 1586. 4to (183 x 130 mm). [4], 251 leaves. Woodcut initials opening each of the 12 cantos. The Advertimientos to cantos 2-9 and first 4 lines of that of canto 10 crossed out in ink, apparently by the same early reader who supplied stanza and line counts at the end of each canto. Title extensively repaired, the paper of first two quires rather thinned from washing and dampstained, scattered mostly faint dampstaining elsewhere. Seventeenth-century French(?) gold-tooled red morocco, covers panelled with two double fillet frames, at center an oval fan built up of small tools, flowering plant tools at corners of inner panel; sewn on recessed cords, smooth spine similarly panelled with double fillets, tiny fleurons at corners of inner panel, red-sprinkled edges, later (19th-century) endleaves and front flyleaves (repairs to head of spine, minor wear). Provenance: early ink markings and notations as above; James Patrick Ronaldson Lyell (1871-1948), green gilt morocco bookplate; manuscript notes on the edition in two hands, the first a series of citations (from Cervantes, Sedano, Gallardo, Salva and Ticknor), the second a description of this copy on a mounted leaf, signed with initials D.D.V.; with Libreria Bardón, sold in 2017 to: Kenneth Rapoport, bookplate.***
First Edition, all published, of an epic chivalric poem, praised by Cervantes and Lope de Vega (who wrote a sequel). One of the first works in Spain to be modeled on Ariosto's Orlando furioso and Boiardo's Orlando innamorato, the poem in 12 cantos, by a physician and, later, mayor of Osuna, expands on Ariosto's tale of the Cathay princess Angelica and her love for the Saracen Medoro (the cause of Orlando's wild fury). Barahona's epic relates the adventures of the beautiful Angelica after her marriage with Medoro, her efforts to flee Orlando's persecutions, her imprisonment, encounter with an orc, enchantments and other tribulations endured in her efforts to reconquer the reign of Cathay, seized by a rival queen.
The book was famously singled out by Cervantes, at the end of the priest's book-sorting in chapter 6, Part 1: "The priest wearied of seeing more books, and so, without further reflection, he wanted all the rest to be burned; but the barber already had one open, and it was called The Tears of Angelica. `I would shed them myself,' said the priest when he heard the name, `if I had sent such a book to be burned, because its author was one of the famous poets not only of Spain but of the world" (transl. by Edith Grossman, Harper Collins 2005, p. 52). A 19th-century literary historian wrote of the Angelica that "all contemporaries, from Diego Hurtado de Mendoza downwards, swell the chorus of applause" (James Fitzmaurice-Kelly, A History of Spanish Literature (1898), p. 188). In the past century, Barahona's poem has been widely studied and interpreted on various levels, as an example of complex imitatio, a parable of the perils of worldly life and manual for spiritual perfection (cf. DBE), a mannerist exercise, or, in a particularly fluffy deconstructionist vision, as a metaphoric enactment of Vesalian dissection (based, apparently, on the assertion that "Barahona the writer carries within him Barahona the physician" - Ganelin, p. 304).
But the Angelica may not have been as popular as these paratextual musings imply, for this was the only edition to appear until it was reprinted in a facsimile edition for Archer Huntington in 1904. It appears rarely in the trade; the last copy that I trace was offered by Bill Salloch in 1975. 5 copies are held by N. American libraries (Hispanic Society, Boston Public, Univ. of Arizona, Harvard, and Thomas Fisher).
In an interesting example of private censorship, this copy was inexplicably marked up by an early reader, who perhaps just wanted to count the stanzas and found the preliminary summaries to each canto so annoying that he (we shall assume) energetically crossed them out (the text is still more or less legible), running out of steam at canto 10.
IB (Wilkinson, Iberian Books) 1607; CCPB (Catálogo Colectivo del Patrimonia Bibliografico Español) CCPB000001731-0; USTC 334911; Palau 23550; Salva y Mallen, Catalogo de la biblioteca de Salva (1872), no. 1530; Catalogue de la Bibliotheque de M. Ricardo Heredia (1891-94) 2128; BM/STC Spanish p. 10. Cf. José Lara Garrido, article in the Diccionario Biográfico electrónico; Lara Garrido, Las lágrimas de Angélica de Barahona de Soto, Los mejores plectros. Teoría y práctica de la épica culta en el Siglo de Oro (Málaga 1999); C. Ganelin, "Bodies of Discovery: Vesalian Anatomy and Luis Barahona de Soto's Las Lágrimas de Angélica," Calïope: Journal of the Society for Renaissance and Baroque Hispanic Poetry, Vol. 6, Nos. 1-2 (2000): 295-308.
SATIRE -
Paris ("A Londres, et se trouve à Paris, 1781
Paris ("A Londres, et se trouve à Paris: chez les Libraires qui vendent les nouveautés"), 1781. 8vo (200 x 122 mm). Collation: A-B8 (-A1, probably the half-title). [3-5] 6-31 pages. Woodcut title vignette, tailpiece, and headpiece signed Cotte. A trifle discolored, "1781" in later ink on title. Formerly stab-stitched and folded horizontally; bound in later boards covered in old Dutch-gilt paper. ***
A bitingly funny satire of the shallowness of privileged urban life during the last years of the ancien régime, one of at least two (and probably more) editions published in 1781. This account of a noble provincial couple's holiday in Paris relates their exciting (for Madame) and disillusioning (for Monsieur) plunge into the corrupt morals of Parisian society. Madame la Baronesse delightedly embraces all that is au courant: cosmetics, fashion, addressing her husband as Monsieur, sleeping apart (from him), post-midnight parties, adultery, and, eventually, absconding with another (to Bordeaux!)
The anonymous author paints vivid portraits in few words. The Baroness is "lively, sharp, decisive, witty but not judicious; in spite of these flaws her husband adored her; he was an indulgent man, and she was a pretty woman." Contrasting the spouses, the author evokes their divergent experiences: she can finally breathe in Paris, he sees only fog, and bad air. The tone is light, the arrows swift. The Baron's cousin, the Chevalier Dorimont (her tour-guide into debauchery), is a con artist and gigolo, "skilled, like many others, at living at the expense of the public." Several other characters are clearly modeled on known Parisian personages (one appears to be Lavoisier, portrayed as a chemist scorned by academe but beloved to ladies and prelates). Ahead of its time stylistically, written largely in dialogue, this short story provides more fodder for the eternal urban-rural debate - whether to be bored but pure in the countryside, or lead interesting lives in Sodom - while illuminating the relative satisfactions, or lack of them, of the dominant sex and the one that was forced to play second fiddle. The author mocks Americans, who spend their six-month visits to Paris glued to their windows gawking "like monkeys," the Foire Saint Germain, center of commerce and diversion, of "witty marionettes, eloquent baladins (street performers), decoupled acrobats, rare and industrious animals," Wauxhall, a chic party venue, the Opera ("Italian throats grafted onto French throats"), where the audience, dressed incognito, prefers viewing each other to the performance, the Comédie Italienne, where the Baron is shocked by the frivolity of the play, and the Comédie Française, where the audience weeps and the Baron is bored. Everywhere one goes only to see and be seen, and the worst is the grand dinner held by a Fermier Général (tax collector): "grande toilette, poudres, essences, blanc, rouge, rien n'est oublié" (Evening dress, powders, perfumes, white, rouge, nothing is forgotten) ... "Disdainful airs, shrugging of shoulders, ceremonial grimaces, pirouettes, strutting conceit ... They praised the beauty of the service without seeing it, picked at their food, drank the wine without tasting it," and strained to outdo each other for cleverness.
In the dedicatory Epistle to his book, the author promises that it will have readers, though it won't be found in libraries: instead it will circulate in dressing rooms, surrounded by pompons, flowers and perfumes. In fact the pamphlet must have been popular, as at least one other edition is recorded (though not differentiated by library catalogues), and it was plagiarized by another unidentified writer 30 years later, in a longer work titled Il n'y a qu'un Paris dans le monde (Paris: Mathiot, 1813).
Like this copy, the digitized BnF copy lacks the first leaf, either blank or a half-title (a different 1781 edition, at the Bibl. Ste-Geneviève, has a half-title). I locate 6 institutional copies (editions not clear), of which 2 outside France (Augsburg and Queens Univ. Library, Ontario).
Lacombe, Bibliographie Parisienne, no. 238. Not in Barbier or Gay-Lemonnyer.
HELL
Strassburg, 1509
Strassburg: [Matthis Hupfuff], 1509. Bound with: GEILER VON KAISERSBERG, Johann (1445-1510). Das irrig Schaf. Sagt von kleinmuetikeit und verzweiflung. Gebrediget und gedeütscht ... mit sampt den nachvolgenden tractaten. [Strassburg]: Matthias Schürer, [ca. 1510].
2 volumes in one, 4to (200 x 138 mm). Büchlin von den Peinen [bound second]: Collation A-K6.4. 49, [1] leaves. 28 woodcut illustrations: 10 full-page cuts, including two repeats, each within a 4-part woodcut ornamental border, all but one depicting the torments of Hell; 18 half-page or slightly smaller cuts, of which 10 are printed from two adjacent blocks, all but one with one to three border blocks; 2 historiated woodcut initials.
Geiler: 7 parts, with separate title-pages and quiring (for collations see Adams): Das irrig Schaf: [40] ff., last leaf blank; Der hellisch Low: [34] ff.; Die Christenlich Künigin: [30] ff., last leaf blank; Der dreieckecht Spiegel: [36] ff; Der Eschen Grüdel: [28] ff., last leaf blank; Das Klappermaul: [10] ff., last leaf blank; Der Trostspiegel: [24] ff., last leaf blank, used for the second leaf of the two-leaf manuscript (see below; the first leaf being inserted with its stub visible between fols. EE1 and EE2). Gothic types, 20 lines. A few marginal chapter numbers; initial spaces with guide letters. The seven title-pages each with a different woodcut illustration, that for the Dreieckecht Spiegel signed H G. Rubrication: capital strokes in red in most of the tracts.
Condition: sewing of first and last quires slightly loose, occasional marginal dampstaining. Irrig Schaf title-leaf nearly detached and a bit stained and frayed; a word censured on f. A5r, f. B1 with closed tear affecting a letter; Büchlin with crease to title-leaf (before printing), some marginal soiling, short marginal tears to a couple of leaves.
Binding: 16th-century half blind-stamped alum-tawed pigskin and wooden boards, the leather with quadruple fillets stamped with a repeated rhomboid foliate tool, large and small rosettes, and another indistinguishable tool, single fore-edge clasp, plain pastedown endleaves, no free endleaves, no headcaps, traces of lettering on front cover apparently from a removed manuscript label, spine liners, visible after the first quire and before the last quire, cut from a 12th-century manuscript on vellum written in a Carolingian minuscule; rubbed, a small old patch repair near lower hinge, a couple of wormholes to front cover.
Provenance: scattered marginal corrections and crossed out words in the first two Geiler tracts; contemporary three-page manuscript account of a vision of St. Truta (Gertrude) bound between the two works (details below); early parchment label on first title (cropped), in red ink; trace (yellowish square) of a removed book label on title verso; Ernst Kyriss (1881-1974), scholar of fifteenth-century gothic bookbinding stamps, his small 'EK' inkstamp on first title.***
A superb Sammelband of medieval christian fables, containing a unique German account of hell and its punishments, combining the Visions of Tundale and of Lazarus, bound with the first edition of a collection of moralizing tales by the popular preacher Geiler von Kaisersberg, containing the first illustrated printing of the Cinderella story. This large-margined, unpressed copy, from the library of Ernst Kyriss, also includes a contemporary manuscript account of a vision of the mystic and nun Saint Gertrude.
1) Büchlein von den Peinen:
Second and last edition, following that of Bartholomäus Kistler in 1506, of an anonymous account of a soul's guided tour of the underworld in the company of a guardian angel, illustrated with extraordinary full-page woodcuts by an anonymous Formschneider (possibly Kistler). Combining two popular medieval legends, the Vision of Tnugdalus (or Tundale, or Tondal), and the Vision of Lazarus, the text is unique to these two printed editions. Long misattributed to Kistler, this 1509 edition was in fact printed, using the same blocks, by the Strassburg printer Matthias Hupfuff, who had recently acquired Kistler's stock. No copies of either edition of this important German woodcut book are held by American libraries.
The text is in two parts. The longer first part, relating a voyage to Purgatory and Hell, describes the creative variety of punishments inflicted for each of the Seven Deadly Sins. This account essentially derives from the popular medieval legend of the vision of the Irish knight Tnugdalus, recounting his involuntary voyage through Hell and Paradise accompanied by a guardian angel. The Tundale tale was the most widely disseminated of several otherworld voyages that originated in the 12th century. It has been called the most important, "most popular, and most elaborate text in the genre of visionary infernal literature" (Dinzelbacher, p. 112 and Kren, Illuminating the Renaissance: the Triumph of Flemish Manuscript Painting in Europe [2003], p. 112), and "the most precise and detailed fictional account of the Christian afterlife before Dante" (Foster, ed., Three Purgatory Poems [2004], intro. to the Vision of Tundale). Tundale's vision circulated widely in manuscript, in various Latin and vernacular verse and prose recensions, and was also familiar to readers from its inclusion by Vincent de Beauvais in the Speculum historiale (Palmer. p. 157). German vernacular versions of the separate Tundale tale were particularly well represented in manuscript and print: of the 30 printed editions listed by Palmer, 20 were in German (all but four of the latter illustrated), most surviving in one or two copies. One can never be reminded too often that "such popular illustrated books evidently had poor chances of survival, and we must assume that there were in fact many more than the twenty editions known to us today" (op. cit., p. 158).
A similar medieval tale, featuring Lazarus, who relates his voyage through purgatory and hell after returning from the dead, circulated in Latin, German and especially French versions. Unlike the Tundale tale, in which the narrator not only views but is forced to suffer along with the souls in Purgatory, the "Lazarus of the Traité des peines d'enfer simply [witnesses] the torments for the Seven Deadly Sins.... Each vision begins `iay veu' and the illustrations present tableaux of the perpetrators of a particular sin, from which the visionary himself is excluded" (Palmer, 166). The compiler of the Büchlein von den Peinen combined these two legends: the vision of Tundale (der Ritter Tundalus) is here spoken by Lazarus, who must himself endure the punishments. The compiler's source for Lazarus's infernal voyage through Purgatory was the French treatise Les Peines d'enfer, published as part of Guy Marchant's April 1493 edition (GW 5908) and Verard's 1492 Ars moriendi (GW 2586). In the Büchlein von den Peinen, our compiler (whom Palmer identifies as Kistler) "took the text of Lazarus's vision from the version of the Traité des peines d'enfer contained in the Kalendrier des bergers and then augmented the description of the punishment for each sin by adding extensive texts extracted from the German text of the Visions of Tondal. For these texts [Kistler] used the German translation from the printed Tondolus edition that he himself [had] published [GW 12835], i.e., recension D" (Palmer, p. 162; cf. Verfasserlexikon 2 vol. 9: 1144).
Following the illustrated descriptions of the punishments of Purgatory, Lazarus's accounts of Lucifer in Hell and of Paradise are copied verbatim from that same Kistler edition of the Vision of Tundale. The second part of the book contains 30 "exempla" (some are just pious admonishments) from various Latin sources, relating to the afterlife, Purgatory and the horrors of hell. "A single Latin source for this material has not been found" (Palmer, p. 166).
The illustrations:
Each of the seven sins and corresponding punishments is illustrated with two woodblocks, one full-page and one smaller. The seven full-page woodblocks (two are repeated) depict the gruesome punishments of souls who have succumbed to pride, lust, avarice, anger, envy, gluttony or sloth. Sinners spin on spiked wheels, are cooked in cauldrons, roasted on gridirons, shot out of cannons, immersed in frozen lakes, forced to eat toads and snakes, and devoured by snakes and winged lizards. In every woodcut the naked soul of Lazarus and his angel-guide perch on the side, watching.
These woodcuts cleave to the text in most details, showing that they were produced (or commissioned) by Kistler for the Büchlein von den Peinen, either for his 1506 edition or, as appears likely, for an earlier edition, since lost. Most of the cuts were used in Kistler's aforementioned undated edition of the German Tundale text (GW 12835, of which 2 copies survive), published probably after 1500. The iconography (described in detail by Palmer), does not, however, match the Tundale tale; instead it precisely illustrates descriptions from the present hybrid text, and therefore can be assumed to have been produced specifically for the Büchlein von den Peinen. While most of the cuts illustrate details of the visions as described in the text, occasional elements betray different sources: the cannon motif, for example, is found in neither the Tundale nor Lazarus visions. Palmer concludes from certain details that the wood engraver was influenced by and may have had access to Franco-Flemish illuminations, or to copies made from them.
The full-page cut of Lazarus in the house of Sion the Leper, used as the title woodcut of the 1506 edition, and appearing on the title verso here, was used in a pamphlet printed by Kistler in 1500 (GW M17702). Some of the smaller woodcuts depict the relevant sins as a man or woman astride various animals while accosted by devils. "These illustrations are clearly related to a well-known set of French manuscript illustrations of the vices riding animals, and to a German printed broadside in Vienna, but the iconography is distinct and an exact parallel is not recorded" (Palmer, p. 163). The small cuts for pride (Hoffart) and envy (Nyd und Hass) may stem from different series. The allegorical cut for Hell shows souls in the monstruous Hellmouth; this illustration and those illustrating Paradise, most printed from two blocks, follow the iconography of the "regular" Tundalus editions. The right-hand block of all but one of the two-block illustrations shows the angel and the naked soul of Lazarus; these are printed from two alternating repeated blocks. The exception is the illustration on G5v, showing a house on the left, and a soul leaving a dying man on the right. (One illustration was printed from three separate woodblocks, the larger pictorial block having split through the middle vertically.)
Palmer's assertion that the blocks may have been cut by Kistler is unproven but not wholly speculative, as Kistler was known to have been an illuminator, painter, and "Kartenmaler." All of the blocks, as well as the woodcut initials, were acquired by Hupfuff from Kistler, along with his bookshop, in 1509, soon before publication of this edition. Mathias Hupfuff, active from 1498 to 1516, published more vernacular German works, mostly illustrated with woodcuts, than any other Strassburg printer-publisher of the time (Duntze, p. 7). Most are now extremely rare. This one is no exception: only six copies of the 1509 edition are recorded. Kistler's 1506 edition survives in three copies. Of these nine copies containing this marvelous suite of woodcuts, none are found in American libraries.
VD 16 V 2555; Oliver Duntze, Ein Verleger sucht sein Publikum, Die Straßburger Offizin des Matthias Hupfuff (2007), pp. 153-4 & no. 143; Schmidt, Répertoire bibliographique strasbourgeois IV, p. 10, no. 26; Benzing, Bibliographie Strasbourgeoise: bibliographie des ouvrages imprimes a Strasbourg ... au XVIe siècle (1981-1986), 450; cf. Weller, Repertorium typographicum. Die deutsche Literatur im esten Viertel des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts (Panzer, Annalen part 3, 1864), p. 40, no. 354 (1506 edition); Muther, Die Deutsche Bücherillustration der Gothik und Frührenaissance (1884), 603 (1506 ed.). On the text and illustrations see Nigel Palmer, "Illustrated Printed Editions of The Visions of Tondal from the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries," in T. Kren, ed., Margaret of York, Simon Marmion, and The Visions of Tondal (1992), 157-166; Dinzelbacher, "The Latin Visio Tnugdali and its French Translations," in Kren, Margaret of York, pp. 111-116; Verfasserlexikon 2 (= Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon. Zweite ... Ausgabe, 2010) 10: 409-410 (Visio Lazari, III: these editions) and cf. 1: 108-111, 5: 1231-1233, and 9: 1142-1146 (Visio Tundali). On Hupfuff cf. Reske, Buchdrucker, 949-951. On B. Kistler as artist, see Thieme Becker 20:390, and Kristeller, Strassburger Bücherillustration (1888), 54.
2) Irrig Schaf: Johann Geiler from Kaisersberg, Switzerland, spent three decades preaching at the cathedral of Strassburg, urging reform not of the Church but of its members. Geiler's sermons, delivered in colorful and often down-to-earth language, combined great erudition with uncommon exempla. Many were transcribed by contemporaries. Geiler himself adapted the seven tracts in this volume from moral sermons by the French theologian and reformer Jean Gerson (explicitly mentioned several times in the tracts), whose works he had edited from 1488 to 1502. The tracts were probably distributed as individual pamphlets before being collected in this volume, published around the time of his death. Most popular was the Trostspiegel, a "mirror of comfort" first published in 1503, and the most often reprinted of any of Geiler's works.
But best known today is the fifth tract, the Eschen Grüdel, considered the first printed appearance of the ancient tale of the cinder girl, published as Aschenputtel by the Brothers Grimm. In Gerson/Geiler's treatment, the figure of the Eschen Grüdel, who stands in for the humbly suffering soul, is a nun, and her persecutors are not stepsisters but a mob of her spiritual sisters, who mock her as an imbecile, exclude and enslave her. Her rescuer is a holy man who recognizes her sainthood. The title woodcut of a woman kneeling alone in a scullery is considered the earliest printed illustration of Cinderella.
VD16 G 764, G 723, G 733, G 738, G 760, G 768, G 811; Goedeke I:400,15; Schmidt, Répertoire bibliographique strasbourgeois VIII (Schürer), no. 43; Adams G-320; Leon Dacheux, Die ältesten Schriften Geylers von Kaysersberg, no. 47 (pp. 55-57); Muther, Die Deutsche Bücherillustration der Gothik und Frührenaissance, 1434 (1514 edition).
3) Bound between the two printed works is a three-page contemporary manuscript in German, on two leaves (the first leaf is inserted, with a stub, the second leaf is the final blank of the Trostspiegel), in a neat upright German gothic hand in brown ink, 22-24 lines, justification approx. 150 x 95 mm., drop-title Ein schöne lere in red ink, 2-line opening initial and capital strokes in red; incipit: "Es pat die heillig Junckfraw Sant Truta eins mals unßern hern[n andechtiglich für ein person die umb ein lieb[e]n frewnt durch sein sterb[e]n ser betrübt was [i.e., war?] ...".
The text relates a vision of St. Gertrude of Helfta (Gertrude the Great, 1256-1301 or 1302), the German Benedictine nun and mystic. Named here as Truta, she calls on Christ to help comfort a person who is mourning the loss of a friend. At the end Christ gives Truta two golden rings and a precious crown, and she declares that she is his Bride. The situation, vocabulary and imagery evoke and appear to be adapted from the German version of Gertrude's Legatus divinae pietatis, the Botte der götlichen miltekeit, which circulated widely in the 15th century and was first printed in Melchior Lotter's edition of 1505 (Das Buch der botschaft oder Legatio, VD 16 M 1785: Leipzig copy digitized: see particularly fols. viii-ix). Notable is the narrator Truta's role, in this manuscript, as the "mouthpiece" of Christ, and the use of mystical marriage imagery, which played a central and influential part in her and her fellow sisters' mystical writings (all but book 2 of the 7-book Legatus are now ascribed to other anonymous authors, thought to be fellow sisters of the Helfta convent). The relationship of this manuscript to the Botte tradition would repay further study.
Vernacular devotional texts were typically read by women (cf. Kren, Margaret of York, p. 42). The likelihood that this volume may have been assembled for a woman's use is supported by the presence of this manuscript account of a vision of one of the most important medieval female mystics.
Cf. Verfasserlexikon 2 3: 9-10; Racha Kirakosian, "The Earliest Transmitted German Redaction of the Legatus: Gotha, Forschungsbibliothek, Chart. B 269," Analecta Cisterciensia 2019 (69): 178-197.
CLASSICAL DICTIONARY
Strassburg, 1502
Strassburg: Johann Prüss, 1502. 4to (200 x 142 mm). [34] leaves, the last blank. Title and headings in gothic type, text in roman. Initial spaces with guide letters. Annunciation woodcut on title: the Virgin and angel within a floral wreath, angels above and two worshippers below; on verso a full-page woodcut of the Virgin and Child in Majesty, with typographic inscription "Virgo roga pr[o]le[m] q[uod] plebe[m] seruet et urbe[m]" on an undulating banner. A nice copy (first and last leaves each with a short marginal tear to title-leaf, small stain to penultimate leaf, a couple of pencil underlines to colophon). Modern parchment over thin boards. ***
First edition, first issue, with the dating error in the colophon uncorrected, of a basic and still useful index of places and people in classical history, literature and mythology (mainly Greek). Written in simple Latin, this handy booklet provides concise identifications of "proper names of famous men [and women], cities, provinces, mountains, and rivers, most often found in poetry and histories." The three-line introduction states that the glossary was condensed from Tortellius (from his massive Orthographia, first printed Rome 1471) and other unspecified works.
Indiscriminately intermingled by the alphabetical order are mythological and historical figures and places. Boiled down to basics, the usually one- or two-line definitions provided the busy student all he needed to know, with no sources or cumbersome notes (e.g., "Argonauts: the heroes who went to Colchos [sic] with Jason. Argo: the first great ship built in Thessaly for the expedition to Colchos..."). A few of the approximately 1200 entries require a bit more explanation: Socrates, for example, or the river Acheron, or Medea, or Ariadne ("Ariadne was the daughter of Minos king of Crete, who helped Theseus against the minotaur and who gave him her trust, which however did not protect her as he deserted her. Then Bacchus married her and Venus gave her a crown which is reported to have been raised among the stars" [the corona borealis].
The unrelated but attractive woodcuts are from Prüss's stock. The fine woodcut of the Virgin and Child enthroned, with the motto "Virgin, call upon the child to serve the people and the city," represents Strassburg; that image was used for the city's seal. Prüss used the same cut a few weeks earlier (with a different setting of the type on the banner) for an edition of Filippo Beroaldo De tribus fratribus, Wimpheling's Germania, and other short works (VD 16 B 2078). The woodcut has been tentatively ascribed to the young Hans Wechtlin (cf. Ritter).
I locate one US copy of this first issue (Indiana State U.) and one of the second issue (U. Illinois).
VD16 V 2018; Schmidt, Répertoire Bibliographique Strasbourgeois III Prüss, p. 10, no. 33; Muller, Bibliographie strasbourgeoise II: 14, 9; Ritter, Repertoire Bibliographique des Livres Imprimes en Alsace aux XVe et XVIe siècles 2439; BM/STC German 900; Proctor, Index to the Early Printed Books in the British Museum II 1501-1520 (1903), 9962.
MEYER, Conrad (1618-1689), artist
[Zürich, 1651
[Zürich, 1651. Bound with: MEYER. Spiegel der Christen das ist Bedenkliche Figuren und Erinerungen über die Beruffspflichten aller Stände. [Zürich, 1652].
2 vols. in one, folio (312 x 207 mm). [11] leaves; 17 leaves, foliated [2], I-XIII, [XIV], XV. entirely etched and engraved. 1) Zeitbetrachtung: allegorical title and 10 leaves, each with a half-page etched and engraved illustration of a stage of life, with heading and two-line caption above and verses below. 2) Spiegel: title within 7-compartment border with biblical scenes, 10 lines of verses below, printed from a separate copperplate, dedication leaf to Matthäus Merian [the younger], dated Zürich, 31 May 1652; 15 leaves with 15 engraved illustrations of which two on pl. 13, fol. 14 unillustrated, all but leaves 7 and 11 with the caption, illustration, and engraved text at bottom printed from 3 separate copperplates (plates 7 and 11 printed from a single plate), plate 10 with upper caption printed upside down. a full-sized copy with fine, first state impressions of the plates, but well used, with soiling and staining, first few leaves of both works with a few tears in gutters, just touching text of second leaf of the Zeitbetrachtung; stains affecting title and touching images of pls. 7-9 of the Spiegel; sewing of first gatherings loose. Old parchment over pasteboards with partially removed pastepaper covering, remnants of two green silk fore-edge ties, outer half of front free endpaper cut away, pastedowns with repaired tears. Provenance: small sketches on Spiegel dedication leaf and on front pastedown; first title with owner's stamp in red (illegible); Julius Stadler (1828-1904), Zürich architect and watercolorist, influential architecture professor at the Polytechnikum Zürich, inkstamp.***
First editions of two enchanting and very rare engraved books - print suites with text - by the Zürich artist Conrad Meyer. Both contain engravings depicting both emblematically and realistically the stages and states of human life.
1) Nützliche Zeitbetrachtung: This poignant and funny Baroque survey of the stages of life (a "useful observation of time") shows the progression of man (and woman) from childhood to senectitude. At center of the engraved title is a bourgeois family (complete with crying baby and a child having a tantrum) considering their fate on Judgment Day, with a crowd of sinners behind them; Death, a skeleton with writhing worms and snakes, reclines in one foreground corner and a saintly beggar prays in the other; in the background hellfire rains down on distant hordes and a few lucky souls ascend to heaven. The 10 engravings are snapshots at ten-year intervals, from 10 to 100, with other ages snuck in (e.g., the ten-year old in a nursery has a little brother and baby sister). All scenes show both men and women. Two are ostensibly self-portraits. The image of the twenty-year old may allude to Meyer's own Wanderjahre: a man clad in boots and sword points with one hand to a book and with the other to a print, held up by a donkey, showing a peacock-feather-crowned mermaid with a sheepskin around her waist (a similar creature, representing lust or the Devil?, appears on the title and in the Spiegel der Christen), while opposite a pair of cherubs hold up a religious print and a woman sews nearby; all around are scattered emblems of learning (a globe, an anchor, a sextant, a glass beaker, more books...). The thirty-year-old depicts the artist at his easel, his wife nursing a baby with another child behind him; on the easel in turn is a painting of a man about the artist's age, digging in his garden, with a woman and child at her breast. Behind the painting are Christian emblems (the cross entwined with the snake, a book, and the Tablets of the Law), and a lute occupies a front corner (Meyer was also a musician and composer). The prime of life, one's 40s and 50s, are shown outdoors, working hard but enjoying the fullness of la belle saison. The 60-year-old counts his money, and it's downhill from there, until finally death arrives, gently for the lady, and with a spear and hideous visage for her frightened husband, still resisting.
This is one of meyer's scarcest and most visually satisfying engraved books. Meyer's engravings contain complex mises-en-scène, depicting two or three foreground figures, often acting independently of each other, while in the background tapestries, murals, pastoral scenes, or pictures within the picture add further symbolic elements to the meticulously planned images. With every element perfectly balanced, the engravings are unconfusing, uncluttered, and clear. The author of the verses is unknown. Meyer was a talented writer and they may have been his own.
2) The Spiegel der Christen describes and illustrates emblematically the duties of various types of devout Christian: the pastor and members of his flock, the powerful (Obrigkeiten) and their subjects (Untertanen), married couples, parents and teachers, children, young men & women and the widowed (lumped together), servants, and those who care for the poor. The dedication to Matthäus Merian (the younger, since Merian senior had died in June 1650), is printed on the second leaf along with a note to the reader, dated 31 May 1652, in which Meyer, embracing his Swissness, describes Christian life as a well-functioning clockwork.
Using the burin only lightly, Meyer illustrates the verse text by the pastor Georg Müller (1610-1672), which weaves together Old and New Testament passages (identified in shoulder notes). Biblical and emblematic episodes or objects complement the main scene. Some are unusually framed. For example, the Duties of Children shows two Old Testament episodes, referred to in the text (one of bears attacking children, from 2 Kings 2:24), on large canvases or prints held aloft by angels flying high above the delicately etched city of Zürich. For Judgment Day (Rechnungstag), the theme of plate 12, Meyer chose an emblematic scene of a monarch directing his underlings to add up (rechnen) numerous bags of money, a busy port visible through an open portal, while a tapestry on the wall behind shows the separation of souls. In plate 13, whose text compares the present day to the times of Noah and Lot, the two etchings show in the foreground different versions of the Devil cavorting with Bacchus, while in the background are the etched Biblical scenes. The final, powerful engraving is of Saint Christopher carrying the Christ child through waters peopled by hideous monsters (and the mermaid with peacock feather crown), the Savior beckoning from the opposite shore.
Conrad Meyer apprenticed with his father, the engraver Dietrich Meyer, and his older brother Rudolf, who died at 35. During five years traveling as a journeyman through Switzerland, France and Germany, Meyer spent many months with the large Merian family in Frankfurt, who introduced him to Netherlandish art, a lasting influence especially on his engraved oeuvre. He became the "dominant artistic personality" of 17th-century Zürich (Lexikon zur Kunst in der Schweiz), painting portraits, historical scenes and mountain landscapes, and his engraved output was prodigious. His work was "of the greatest importance in 17th-century Zurich book-illustration. He placed his stamp on local book illustration during the Baroque period ... As a Little Master [Meyer] found his own artistic style, which expressed the simple, nature-loving Swiss nature along with a streak of idyllic pastoralism. His strength lay in his pathos-free depiction of everyday life...." (Leeman-van Elck, p. 117, my translation).
The Zeitbetrachtung was reprinted in 1675 and the Spiegel in 1657, in letterpress, with the title Christen-Spiegel, and a different title engraving. Of this first edition of the Zeitbetrachtung OCLC and VD16 locate just two copies, at Yale and the Bavarian State Library. Outside Switzerland and Germany OCLC records only the NYPL and British Library copies of the Spiegel der Christen.
1) VD17 12:653572N; Lonchamp, Bibliographie générale des ouvrages publiés ou illustrés en Suisse 2038b.
2) Lonchamp 2038c; Praz, Studies in Seventeenth -Century Imagery p. 425 (1657 ed.) and Supplement, p. 77, mentioning this edition; Landwehr, German Emblem Books, 435. Not in VD17. Cf. Thieme Becker 24:467; Leemann-van Elck, Die zürcherische Buchillustration von den Anfängen bis um 1850 (1952), pp. 117-121 (referring only to the second edition of the Zeitbetrachtung, incorrectly dated).
GARDENER'S APPRENTICESHIP CERTIFICATE
Oranienwald [Oranjewoud, Netherlands], 1741
Oranienwald [Oranjewoud, Netherlands], 1741. Large vellum sheet (380 x 508 mm.), the blank bottom (58 mm.) folded up and sewn with decorative ribbon, the calligraphic drawing on left continued over the fold. Calligraphic document with drawings in pen and ink: first lines in large calligraphic lettering enclosing the arms of William IV, Prince of Orange flanked by crowned lions rampant, at top two festoons of fruit and flowers, two very large ornate initials on left (D and I) intertwined with and enclosing respectively an elaborate cartouche within which is a drawing of a gardener about to plant a tree in a pot, and a large orange tree in a pot; similar images in right margin of text: in the upper cartouche a gardener digs with a spade, at lower right a lemon tree is flanked by two cacti. Signed by Berken in brown ink under the fold. A small stain affecting a drawing, tiny holes at fold junctures, the ribbons frayed and partially faded. ***
An ornate calligraphic apprenticeship certificate on vellum for a gardener in a princely estate. Well into the 19th century, in German-speaking regions, documents certifying the completion of training, apprenticeships or the achievement of master craftsman status in various professions continued to be produced as manuscripts, often calligraphic. The use of vellum and the lavish decoration used here testifies to the prestige enjoyed by gardeners, especially those employed in royal or aristocratic gardens.
The text states that "I Daniel von Berken, the present Pleasure- and Orange-Gardener of His most Serene Highness Prince Wilhelm Carl Heinrich Friso, Prince of Orange-Nassau, Count of Katzenelnbogen, Vianden, Dietz [etc.] state herewith that the bearer of the present document, the honorable and art-loving Lorentz Tihlmann, Ölck, a native of Ostfriesland, served as an apprentice gardener with me, from 27 January 1739 to the present date in 1741, during which time he worked diligently, earning the satisfaction and contentment" of his employer, etc.*
In 1676 Princess Albertine Agnes of Nassau purchased as a country estate a house in a wooded area in the province of Friesland. She renamed it Oranjewoud, after the royal dynasty, and had a park, alleys and canals constructed in the French style. The property was used until 1747 as a summer residence by successive Princes of Orange. As Wilhelm IV, Wilhelm Carl Heinrich Friso (1711-1751), who married the English princess Anne (called Anna van Hanover in the Netherlands), became the first hereditary stadtholder of all seven provinces of the Northern Netherlands.
* "Durchlauchtigsten Fürsten und Herrn Herren Wilhelm Carl Heinrich Friso, Fürsten zu Oranien und Nassau, Grafen zu Katzenelnbogen, Vianden, Dietz, Spiegelberg Büren und Leerdam... [follow several more lines of titles] ... Meines gnädigsten Fürsten und Hernn jetziger zeit bestellter Lust-und Orangen Gärtner: Ich Daniel von Berken uhrkunde und bekenne hiermit, dass Vorzeiger dieses, der Erbare und Künstliebende Lorentz Tihlman Ölck, gebürtig aus Ostfriesland ... in Hochfürstl. Lust Garten...".
RITUAL,WÜRZBURG
Würzburg, 1564
Würzburg: Hans Baumann, 1564. Small folio (255 x 182 mm). Collation: *4 A2 [bound between *2 and *3]; 2A-Z Aa-Zz Aaa-Ppp4 Qqq6 Rrr2. [6], 248, [4] leaves including final blank. 2 parts, separately titled but continuously paginated (part 2 beginning on fol. 152). Two errata (quire A2 and fol. Rrr1). Gothic types, roman type used for shoulder notes, second title & preface, final errata, and the instructional text at end of part 2 (Pro Simplicioribus Sacerdotibus Instructio), the other errata (quire A2) in italics. Printed in red and black throughout, double page borders, 68 pages with 4-line staves for chant (the musical notes to be supplied in manuscript). Woodcut architectural title borders, that of the first title from 2 blocks, second title border from 6 blocks, twenty-nine woodcut text illustrations printed from 25 blocks, about 8 half-page or larger, most of the cuts in part 1 framed in woodcut ornamental border blocks, also used as line fillers and tailpieces, along with other ornaments including white on black grotesque blocks; ornamental and historiated initials in various sizes, of which four over-printed with a red color block. Fraying to edges of first and last leaves, last leaf loosening, some small stains in upper margins, but overall a fresh copy. Near-contemporary blind-tooled alum-tawed pigskin over wooden boards, by Jakob Preisger, Würzburg bookbinder, his panel stamps of the Crucifixion and Ark of the Covenant on front cover, and of Faith and Hope on lower cover, both within parallel fillets and a heads-in-medallion roll framed by a repeated palmette roll, two metal clasps and catches, edges stained blue-green, parchment ms. spine liners (soiled, somewhat rubbed, small hole to leather of lower cover, the leather torn at lower board edges). Modern ink signature on front pastedown, Anton Heustein.***
Only edition, first issue, of the second printed Ritual for the diocese of Würzburg, a rare complete copy with both errata, bound in the shop of the Würzburg binder Jakob Preisger. This edition superseded that of 1482. Before the Council of Trent every diocese had its own slightly different forms of ritual, necessitating the issuance of a plethora of guides for priests, known variously as Manuale, Liber agendarum, Agenda, Sacramentale or Rituale. Published mere months after the conclusion of the Council of Trent (in December 1563), but before Pius V's issuance of standardized forms of the Catechism, Breviary, and Mass, the present Agenda updates and clarifies the prevailing forms of local ritual. In a pastoral letter (dated 27 June 1564) printed following the title, the Prince-Bishop of Würzburg, Friedrich von Wirsberg (1507-1573), who commissioned the edition, explains that the sacraments having become corrupted through a combination of ignorance and indifference on the part of the clergy, he decided to publish this new guide, and he exhorts all priests to make use of it. All sacraments are covered, in a mixture of Latin and German: exorcism of salt and water, baptism (of babies, women, sick children, etc.), confirmation, marriage, Mass, confession, last rites, Mass for the Dead, etc., as are the duties of the priest under various circumstances and for various holidays. The printer Baumann had no music types, so the over 60 pages of chant for Easter benedictions have only the words and bare staves, the reader being expected to supply his own notes. At the end is a 20-page Latin summary, for "more simple priests."
The woodcuts, from Baumann's stock, are in various styles and, other than the fine Renaissance title border blocks, most are quite archaic. Illustrated are baptism, a marriage, the last rites, etc., and a few New Testament scenes, including a Last Supper cut, signed by the Master CW, and a striking large cut of the avenging angel weighing souls, above the torments of the damned. In part two, woodcuts of hands and of a monk mouthing words provide visual gestural instruction and enliven the note-less music pages. Many of the smaller cuts are set within complex woodcut and typographical borders.
The history of this book's publication, evidenced in its bibliographical structure and variants, is revealing of 16th-century printing and publishing practices, and of relations between the printing trade and their biggest customer, the Catholic Church. Hans Baumann, born in 1510 of a poor family in Rothenburg ob der Tauber, was an intellectual who was forced to enter the printing trade, in his native city, when the University of Erfurt declined to renew his scholarship. Subsequently he worked as an itinerant printer, a soldier under the Duke of Alba in the Schmalkadic war, a journalist (reporting on the Battle of Mühlberg), and a chronicler, before setting up a press in Salzburg under the patronage of the local Duke, Ernst of Bavaria. In 1561 he moved to Würzburg, where he was granted tax-exempt status, and began printing in 1562, soon becoming official court printer. This Agenda was the most important of Baumann's commissions and the greatest production of his career, and he clearly undertook it with enthusiasm, decorating it generously with woodcut illustrations and ornaments from blocks brought from Salzburg. But this book would prove his undoing. Thanks to a surviving petition to Prince-Bishop Friedrich from Baumann's five children in 1571, a year after his death, the sad history of its publication has been preserved: Baumann printed 1000 official copies for the Prince-Bishop (this issue), for which he was to receive 2 Hellers (half a pfennig) per copy. But the Prince-Bishop used the edition's "defects," - its many errors, necessitating the extensive errata - as an excuse to pay only half that sum. Meanwhile Baumann had printed an extra 500 copies for his own use, which he published with a different title (Agenda ecclesiastica, sive Caeremoniarum..., VD16 A 631), without the errata, and with a letter from the printer to the reader replacing the Prince-Bishop's pastoral. But from this "commercial" issue Baumann was only able to sell 100 copies. He died poor in 1570. The pleas of his disgruntled heirs to the Bishop, requesting payment of the outstanding 500 Heller, in which they describe in detail the labors of running the same sheets multiple times through the press for the red printing and the salaries paid their workers, apparently fell on deaf ears, and the press was closed in 1572. Most of the Baumann heirs' remaining copies were probably destroyed, although the next revision of the Würzburg Agenda was not to appear until 1671.
Meanwhile, the Diocese still had copies of the sheets stored away. The present binding, by a Würzburg binder who worked closely with the Prince-Bishopric (see below), dates to at least 12 years after the Agenda was published, showing that the Diocese, having stiffed the printer, was still distributing copies as needed for a number of years after its publication. This copy includes an extra four-page errata (Emendatio quorundam erratorum), printed on bifolium A1-2, inserted in the first quire, which is not recorded in the copies listed by VD 16 or OCLC, or in any of the digitized copies linked to by VD 16 (although standardized cataloguing may hide the existence of one or more copies with the leaves). These leaves are required for a complete copy, according to the book's bibliographer Anton Ruland (p. 165), as they contain essential corrections, pertaining mainly to the rubrics. Printed in a different style, with a large Renaissance woodcut initial and decorative tailpiece that clash with the more archaic material of the edition, the absence of this addendum in so many copies can be explained by its having been printed after the edition was completed, perhaps months or even years later, in any case after the first batch of copies had been distributed by the Diocese. In their petition Baumann's heirs complained that the Church officials were slow in sending their corrections, which apparently trickled in. One may speculate that by printing the Emendatio for the Diocese Baumann may have hoped to persuade the Diocesan treasurer to disburse the funds owed to him.
Binding: Three of the four panel stamps and roll-tools decorating the binding of this copy are associated with the Würzburg binder Jakob Preisger, active from 1576 to 1594. While the binding was presumably commissioned by the office of the Prince-Bishop, that office was by then occupied by Friedrich von Wirsberg's successor, Julius Echter von Mespelbrunn, considered Würzburg's greatest bishop, and one of the most capable rulers of his time. (Echter was also a dedicated bibliophile: his own books, many bound by Preisger, can be identified by his armorial panel stamp.) The upper cover panel stamp (EBDB Werkzeug p003638, attributed to Preisger), shows the Crucifixion in an oval central medallion with the Holy Spirit between angels at top and the Ark of the Covenant at the foot of the Cross, a banner across the center reading Propiciatorium nostrum, and at bottom the inscription Christus per proprium sanguine semel ingressus in sancta. The palmette roll, a "negative" roll (the pattern is intaglio rather than in relief), is also attributed to Preisger (EBDB r001035). The lower cover panel stamp, which shows the allegorical figures of Faith and Hope, with cross, chalice, book, and God the father, within an oval frame inscribed Impetrat alma Fides Christo quam dante salutem expectare soror Spes animosa solet, is not recorded by the EBDB, but was used in conjuntion with other Preisger material on a copy of Henri Estienne, Thesaurus graecae linguae ([Geneva] 1572), from the library of Julius Echter von Mespelbrunn, with his arms (the copy was sold at auction in Paris in 2008 and is now in the book trade). The heads-in-medallion roll is not in the EBDB but it is stylistically close to the three listed by the EBDB among Preisger's tools. Unless these stamps and tools were used previously by another binder, this binding could not have been produced before 1576, the year when Preisger, a native of Dresden, obtained his citizenship in Würzburg.
OCLC locates one copy of this issue in the US (Trinity College) and one of the second issue (Boston College).
VD16 A 772 = P 4861; Adams L-1295; A. Ruland, "Zur Druckgeschichte der vom Fürstbischofe Friedrich zu Würzburg herausgegebenen Agenda Ecclesiastica..., Serapeum 25 (1864), 161-170 (digitized); Reske, Buchdrucker, 1113-1114 & 884. On the binder, see Einbanddatenbank Werkstatt w002509; and R. Halwas, "Julius Echter von Mespelbrunn's Library," on his website.
*When Ruland transcribed the document it was in the library of the University of Würzburg; it is apparently no longer in their collections, and may have been destroyed along with large parts of the library's holdings in WWII (thanks to Svenja Keller of the Univ. of Würzburg for this information).
EDUCATION
Arras, 1781
Arras: Michel Nicolas, 1781. 4to (238 x 187 mm). 2 parts, separately titled and paginated. [21], 1 pages; 16 pages. Shoulder notes. Woodcut arms of Arras on title, woodcut headpieces and small tailpiece vignettes. Central section of the first title, containing the woodcut, removed, the two remaining portions of the leaf neatly mounted; first leaf with creased corner. 18th-century morocco, sides with wide gold-tooled border, a scalloped central medallion with small flower and star tools enclosing a later onlay with the arms of Arras within a roughly gold-tooled border, flat spine with horizontally gold-tooled title within a double gilt fillet border, blue silk liners, edges gilt (the binding was evidently created for another book and was adapted for this one at an early date). Provenance: MD, modern leather gilt bookplate.***
An unrecorded program of study for the students of the Collège des Oratoriens of Arras. A Jesuit college until the suppression of that order in 1762, the Arras collège had been founded in 1561, and still exists, now called the Lycée Robespierre, after its best-known alumnus. The Oratorian order, whose raison d'être was the education of future priests (and local social elites), had been the Jesuits' main competitor, and its priests were hotly pursued to run schools once the Jesuits had left. The Arras collège was one of the lucky schools to succeed in bringing them in. There, starting in the 1770s, the Oratorians overhauled the curriculum and generally raised the level of the school, bringing into their instruction the "new ideas" and the sciences, in a program directly influenced by the Encyclopédie.
These pamphlets describe one aspect of the Oratorians' innovative pedagogy: they decreed that all students be required to present their work in public, once per semester, along with a group of 8 professors (Académiciens). The reasoning behind this proposal (emulation is a stimulus, preparing for an event inspires students to work, and public speaking builds confidence) are explained in a 3-page introduction, which concludes with a list of all the subjects assigned to each grade in preparation for the presentations, for each of the two semesters. While Latin literature was a constant, the first semester was dedicated to History and Geography, and the second to Natural History. In order not to overtire or confuse the students, each presentation was to contain only two subjects, one being Latin. In the second semester, for example, the students of the Fifth class must be prepared to speak on pastoral poetry and the natural history of fish, those of the Fourth class on didactic poetry and the natural history of insects, and so on.
The two parts that follow this introduction contain the detailed curricula which each class had to study in preparation for these public events. Local citizens are exhorted to attend, and the pamphlets appear to have been printed as much for the use of the public as for the school (the dates and times of the presentations, extending over seven days in May and August, are provided at the end of each part). For the Second class, for example (the junior year), the students were to prepare a selection from the first book and all of the second book of Horace's Odes, as well as the natural history of quadrupeds; a list of the animals and the relevant topics takes up two long paragraphs. The oldest students, in their last year, known as Rhétorique, were assigned, besides Cicero's Pro Milone and the entire Ars poetica of Horace, the natural history of man. The paragraph describing this loaded subject is a sort of resume of 18th-century prejudice, with topics including the characteristics of various peoples and races, customs of native Americans, political institutions of the early (Precolumbian) Mexicans, and many questions about the propensities and habits of "les Sauvages."
These rare programs, of which I locate no other copies, were lovingly bound together a few years later, probably by a former student, or perhaps by a professor or a parent, who adapted a luxurious binding from another, slightly thicker volume, adding the arms of Arras and the rather clumsy spine lettering.
On the history of the Arras college, see the website of the Lycée Robespierre.
[TREU, Martin]
[Germany], 1543
[Germany], 1543. 12 small engravings (58/60 x 42/44 mm.) of well-dressed couples engaged in courtly dances, all signed with the MT monogram (one with monogram partly effaced), most numbered, fine, dark impressions, trimmed to borders, a few with hairline margins (nos. 1, 7, 9, 10, 12), tipped to three leaves in an album, within neat pen-and ink borders, with tissue guards. No. [6] with possible small restoration in upper blank margin. Modern red morocco gilt, spine gold-tooled and lettered "Martin Treu / Danses de la Renaissance." Provenance: Friedrich August II, King of Saxony(?): the upper edge of what appears to be his smaller inkstamped mark visible at the foot of most of the engravings (cf. Lugt 170-171, noting that the second sale of duplicates from the collection, held in 1900, included "les petits-maîtres allemands"); "MD," leather bookplate. ***
A rare suite of miniature Renaissance dance engravings, the first depicting a pair of musicians playing a flute and drum, the rest showing prosperous couples engaged in courtly dances. Included are three engravings not recorded by Hollstein but clearly part of the series.
The name Martin Treu was first associated with the monogrammist MT, active ca. 1540-1543, by J. F. Christ in his Dictionnaire des Monogrammes (1750). Although no evidence has emerged for this identification, the name has stuck. This artist belonged to the second generation of "Little Masters," a picturesque term for several engravers who produced minuscule prints, from the size of a postage card to that of a playing card. Our artist was of the generation succeeding the most famous representatives of this school, Sebald and Barthel Beham and Georg Pencz; his work has been compared to that of Heinrich Aldegrever, active in Westphalia.
This series of well-dressed couples dancing demurely (several appear to be standing still) contrasts markedly with a complementary set of engravings, ascribed to the same Master MT (though stylistically rather different), showing 12 peasant couples dancing rowdily (Hollstein, Treu 26-36).
Here we see women in high-waisted and low-bodiced gowns, with long waist-ribbons, translucent cambrics covering their bosoms, and double or triple-puffed long sleeves, wearing caps or coifs, one with a feathered hat, and necklaces. Some lift outer skirts bearing short trains, a few hold flowers, and one (no. 4), appears to be pregnant. Their partners are exuberantly dressed, showing no signs of the Protestant sobriety that was to influence men's fashion by the middle of the century. They wear doublets, pleated knee-length breeches, ornate sleeves, and delicate dancing-shoes; some wear cloaks or capes, and most sport caps, though several are bare-headed. All but one carry swords at their waists. Only one gentleman lifts a leg more than an inch off the ground. Most look intent on the dance (although one tries to snatch a kiss). These are serious people.
Hollstein records 12 engravings, numbered 1 to 14, with no numbers 9 or 11 (a plate numbered 15, Hollstein 26, is actually part of the peasant dance series). Three of our engravings are not in Hollstein, and absent from this set are Hollstein nos. 20, 23 and 25. Three others represent unrecorded states.
Contents:
1, dated 1543: Hollstein 14 (only state)
2, 1543: Hollstein 15 (only state)
3, 1543: Hollstein 16 (only state)
4, 1541: Hollstein 17, state 2
5, 1543: Hollstein 18, state 1
6, no date: Hollstein 24, unrecorded state, with the date deleted, and the number 6 incompletely rubbed out.
[7] unnumbered, 1542: not in Hollstein
8, 1543: Hollstein 21, state 2
[9], 1542: Hollstein 19, unrecorded state without numbering
[10], unnumbered, 1542: Not in Hollstein
[11], 1542: Hollstein 22, unrecorded state without numbering
1[2], the 2 of the number added in early ink, 1542: Not in Hollstein
I locate no copies in American museums or libraries. Hollstein, German Engravings, Etchings and Woodcuts 1400-1700, vol. XCV (2019), Treu no. 14-25 (but see above); Bartsch, Le Peintre Graveur IX: 68-78; Nagler, Künstler Lexikon 19: 74-78.
MISSAL, use of Augsburg
Dillingen, 1555
Dillingen: Sebald Mayer, 1555. Folio (355 x 249 mm). [28], 471 leaves (of 472, final blank removed). Printed in red and black in 4 different sizes of gothic type, in two columns (except the prologue, calendar, verse to priests and colophon), printed shoulder-notes, 34 pages of printed music on red staves within vertical double rules, metalcut calligraphic initials in red; the canon quire printed on vellum, with full-page crucifixion woodcut, large historiated initial, and paschal lamb roundel with fine contemporary illumination; woodcut illustrations by Matthias Gerung: title border incorporating at top the arms of the Cardinal Prince-Bishop Otto Truchsess von Waldburg, at the left side the Bishop's vestments and at the right side the suffering Christ holding a chalice to receive his blood, at bottom five patron saints of Augsburg (Afra, Dionysius, Hilaria, Narcissus and Digna); on title verso a full-page woodcut of the Virgin and Child with Saints Ulrich and Afra, dated 1555; full-page illustration opening the Missal, containing a central scene of the Adoration of the Sacrament of the Altar by the Apostles, Evangelists and Doctors, set within an architectural border with the Coronation of the Virgin and Saints at top, and in the bottom socle a small rectangular inset woodcut of the Last Supper, this page border used 10 more times, each with a different small Biblical cut at the foot; initials printed from several sets: two very ornate larger sets (93 x 75 mm. and 63 x 54 mm.), incorporating a small xylographic "guide" roman letter for ease of reading (one, an S, using instead a patriarchal cross), all enclosing a variety of small woodcuts; smaller initials (most 33 x 31 mm.) from two main sets, one also including a small roman capital; ornamental marginal extenders to some of the largest initials; approximately 61 small woodcut illustrations (27/28 x 23/24 mm.), including a very few repeats, set within 4 different sets of ornamental borders.
Condition: from one to two dozen small wormholes in the first and last 75 or so leaves, one or two wormholes elsewhere, small wormtrack in quires k-l; short marginal tears in fols. 33, 383, and 464; small repair to upper margin of last Canon leaf, a couple of wax stains on canon cut, small marginal stain to f. 396v; the last 3 leaves (ooo 2-5) shorter and apparently supplied at the time of binding. Most of the large woodcut page borders very slightly shaved at fore-edge.
Binding: contemporary or slightly later sixteenth-century blind-tooled alum-tawed pigskin over wooden boards, sides panelled with two Biblical rolls, a heads in medallion roll, and palmette rolls, two metal fore-edge catches and clasps, edges stained blue-green, trace of an index tab on first canon leaf (rubbed, worming to covers, corners abraded).
Provenance: 17th or 18th-century manuscript notes in margins of the music on fols. 151 and 152; on the lower pastedown a mounted tinted and colored lithographic facsimile of a page from an Apocalypse blockbook (or manuscript?), printed on laid paper, signed at lower left "Facsimile p Ad Pilinski," from an unidentified edition by the lithographer Adam Pilinski (not Monuments de la Xylographie. Apocalypse, Bible des Pauvres ... Paris, 1882); MD, modern leather gilt bookplate.***
A celebrated masterpiece of liturgical printing, this beautiful book was the greatest technical and artistic production of Sebald Mayer, Dillingen's first printer, and the most significant achievement of the artist Matthias Gerung in the medium of woodcut.
Gerung (ca. 1500-ca. 1570), painter, miniaturist, designer of tapestries and woodcuts, was a native of Nördlingen and probably studied there with Hans Schäufelein. For his first patron, Herzog Ottheinreich von Neuburg, Gerung illuminated a splendid manuscript New Testament in German (completed in 1532), widely held to be a pinnacle of that art. His earlier work was for Reformists, and included a series of satirical woodcuts of the Church of Rome, but clearly his artistic reputation overrode this taint, as the Cardinal and Prince-Bishop of Augsburg, Otto Truchsess von Waldburg, accepted Gerung as the master printer of this, his Pracht-Missal.
Anti-Catholicism in the Free Imperial city of Augsburg had spurred the transfer of the residence of the Prince-Bishops to the quiet town of Dillingen in 1486, and in 1537 the transfer of the Bishopric itself. In 1543 Otto von Waldburg, one of the most effective leaders of the Counter-Reformation, was named Prince-Bishop of Augsburg, and was appointed Cardinal a year later. Determined to revitalize Catholicism, he methodically set about ameliorating the plight and image of Catholics in the Augsburg Diocese. In 1549 he founded a Seminary in Dillingen, which would become a University in 1554. But there was no printing press in the town, a situation remedied by the Cardinal-Prince-Bishop, who summoned from Ingolstadt the printer Sebald Mayer. The first works of the press date to 1550. The present magnificent altar book, for which the Prince-Bishop spared no cost, appeared a few months before the ratification of the Peace of Augsburg, in September 1555, which put an end, at least for the time being, to hostilities between the Catholic Holy Roman Empire and the Lutheran Schmalkadic League. Mayer, who was plagued by financial difficulties throughout his career, had to sell his press to the Cardinal in 1560, and was thereafter an employee of the university. In 1576 his son took over the press, which remained active until 1619, producing some 1200 books, as one of the leading Catholic presses in southern Germany.
"As printer, [Mayer] deserves the greatest praise, often using ten different types in a single work, harmoniously linking the title-page and the text ... his books are all clean and clear. His most outstanding technical achievement was the Missal of 1555 ... (Bucher, p. 111, transl.). Indeed, this edition, the first Augsburg Missal to appear since 1510, is a tour-de-force of printing. Into its typographic intricacies are integrated Gerung's wonderful woodcuts, rinted from over 500 individual blocks. Besides the full-page woodcuts and the 11 impressions of the elegant page border, each with a different Bible woodcut at the foot (most containing 2 or 3 scenes), Gerung produced four main sets of initials for this edition (a few small initials come from other series). The two larger sets (93 x 75 mm. and 63 x 54 mm.) are ornamented with swags and grotesques, and within each is inset a separate small woodcut illustration, usually correlated to the text. These initials are not factotum initials, as each represents a specific letter, but each impression encloses a different woodcut. Mindful of the challenges in deciphering the complex visual contents of these two-block initials, Gerung helpfully cut into the outer block a small roman letter to help the priests in reading, and he repeated the practice with one of the smaller initial sets. Added to the initials are many small illustrations, all within ornamental borders printed from separate blocks.
The pelican in her piety, symbol of Christ's sacrifice, appears in the upper corners of the title border, with the motto Sic his qui diligunt, and in several other cuts (abbreviated to Sic HQD). Hans Schäufelein had used the same image and motto for the device of the printer Hans Beham. Gerung signed the full-page Virgin and Child cut and the repeated border cut with his monogram. Dodgson attributed all the woodcuts to him, but Hollstein excepts the Canon cuts.
The binding of this copy, which may be from an Augsburg workshop, has two distinct Biblical rolls, as follows: Salvator - Petrus - Paulus - Johannes, approx. 224 x 18/19 mm., and Crucifixion - Annunciation - Baptism - Resurrection, approx. 200 or 201 x 20 mm. (details of the inscriptions under each motif available on request). These rolls do not seem to have been recorded by Haebler or the Einbanddatenbank.
VD 16 M 5556; Hollstein X, 55, 73-77; Adams L-1178; BM/STC German 512; Weale-Bohatta 109; Dodgson, Early German and Flemish Woodcuts II, 213.12 & 218.14; RELICS 3293; cf. Thieme Becker 13: 487-490; Otto Bucher, Bibliographie der deutschen Drucke des xvi. Jahrhunderts. I: Dillingen (Bibliotheca Bibliographica, I), 39; Bucher, "Sebald Mayer, der erste Dillinger Buchdrucker (1550-1576)," Jahrbuch des Historischen Vereins Dillingen an der Donau, vol. 54 (1952), 108-129.
[SCALVO, Bartolomeo (d. 1583)]
Milan, 1569
Milan: Pacifico da Ponte, 1569. 4to (201 x 149 mm). [8], 172, [4] pages. Title within four-block woodcut border containing 9 compartmentalized Biblical scenes, three full-page illustrations each containing a large woodcut placed within woodcut and type-ornament borders, all text pages set within woodcut ornamental and figurative four-block borders (alternating four series for the top and side blocks and five for the lower blocks), nearly every page with a woodcut or typographic ornamental cartouche for chapter headings (six sets), extensive use of type ornaments, one woodcut initial. Light staining to first few leaves. Modern parchment over pasteboards, two pairs of leather fore-edge ties (defective), scalloped edges. Provenance: "Giuseppe Franceschino Milleri Perugino", 18th or 19th-century inscription on title.***
First Edition in Italian of a pre-Tridentine Milanese book of prayers for adherents of the Rosary. The strikingly illustrated edition, containing two fine late 15th- or early 16th-century Lombard woodcuts, promoted the hugely popular but not yet orthodox religious phenomenon of the Rosary, serving a strategic purpose in Charles Borromeo's Counter-Reformation activism.
Scalvo signed the dedication to Borromeo, who had been ordained as Archbishop of Milan in 1564. Pacifico Da Ponte, official printer to the Archbishopric, had issued a Latin edition (with a different dedication) a month earlier, using the same stock of woodcuts. In its two editions, this Marian text clearly served the activist Counter-Reformation program promoted by the future Cardinal and saint in his Milan diocese. The largest archidiocese in Italy, Milan's was also the most corrupt, abuse having run rampant following 80 years of absentee Archbishops.
While it had ancient origins, the "modern" form of reciting the Rosary originated in monastic devotions in the early 15th century. It spread quickly, largely through the medium of print. "The Virgin's psalter could be recited by laypeople, the destitute, or the illiterate; it did not require a special place of worship or clergy" (Ardissino, 344). Long resisted by the Church for these reasons, recitation of the Rosary prayers was finally ratified as admissible Church practice by Pope Pius V, in the bull Consueverunt Romani Pontifices, in September 1569, a few months after publication of these editions. As a manifestation of the cult of the Virgin - attacked by Luther and the Reformers, in whose view Marian devotion threatened to eclipse worship of Christ - the Rosary was embraced by the Counter-Reformation as part of its general co-opting of popular devotion to the Virgin as a means of strengthening adhesion to the Church.
The edition is characterized by a lavish and imaginative use not only of woodcut borders, which incorporate scenes from the life of the Virgin, figures of saints, putti, caryatids, masks, flower vases, and arabesques, but also of typographic ornaments, including manicules and Greek crosses. The three large woodcuts, introducing each of the three parts, show the Virgin and Child enthroned (facing p. 1), the Crucifixion (p. 56), and the Resurrection (p. 118). The two latter beautiful, archaic woodcuts inspired a long entry in Rava's supplement to Sander, for these "remarkable woodcuts," unknown outside Scalvo's rosary book, were almost certainly printed from blocks dating to very beginning of the 16th century. Rava remarks that "above all the woodcut of the Resurrection belongs to the best period of Lombard woodcuts," comparing it to several earlier woodcuts, including a large cut used by the Milanese printer Leonardus Pachel in Melchior da Parma, Dialogi de anima, 1499 (GW M 473), which uses the same style of parallel hatching all in the same direction, and very similar background landscape and clouds, and to woodcuts used in Ferraro, Tesoro spirituale, Milan 1499 (GW M45657), and Nani Mirabelli, Polyanthea, Savona 1503, both illustrated by Paul Kristeller in Die Lombardische Graphik (pp. 49 and 52), and attributed by him to an artist or wood engraver whom he dubbed the "Master of Melchior da Parma."
This vernacular edition is rarer, outside of Italy, than the Latin edition, with OCLC locating one copy of this edition in an American library (Newberry), and five of the Latin edition.
EDIT-16 CNCE 53865; Rava, Supplément à Max Sander, Le livre à figures italien (1969) 4342 (wrongly collated), illus. pl. 50 & 51. Cf. P. Kristeller, Die lombardische Graphik der Renaissance (1913), pp. 48-57. Cf. E. Ardissino, "Literary and Visual Forms of a Domestic Devotion: The Rosary in Renaissance Italy," Domestic Devotions in Early Modern Italy (Brill, 2018), pp. 342-371.
FARTHINGALES
[Paris, 1733
[Paris, 1733. 12mo (157 x 89 mm). Collation: A12. 23, [1] pp. Title with oval woodcut of a goddess with caduceus and hourglass, full-page arabesque ornament on last page, woodcut initials (one a factotum) and headpieces. Paper flaw at foot of p. 4 obscuring a few letters in note. self-wrappers and deckle edges. 19th-century jansenist green morocco, turn-ins gold-tooled, edges gilt, by Hardy-Mennil. Provenance: M. G., small 19th-century bookplate with Neptune emerging from a Viscount's crown, shelfmark 331 supplied in manuscript; Paul Desq (1816-1877), red gilt bookplate (his sale, Paris 1866, lot 825); Dominique Courvoisier, DC bookplate. ***
A very rare humorous pamphlet, satirizing the use of farthingales, known as vertugadins in French: a series of hoops, made of whalebone, wood or wire, sewn into an underskirt to make it rigid, adding volume to the dress. (The term vertugadin was originally used in French by gardeners to refer to a kind of grassy mound.) Also called paniers (baskets), or jupes de baleine (whalebone skirts), what had begun in the 16th century as simple rolls placed around the hips had evolved into extraordinary armatures which dominated women's dress styles for over 200 years. Some examples, for particularly great ladies, required the construction of special chairs.
Jokingly approaching this "vast subject, and even very vast, since it pleased our ladies to make them very ample," the anonymous author traces the origins of this folly of fashion. Early theorists speculated that such "feminine cages" were modeled on the Tower of Babel, or on the Pyramids of Egypt, but our author traces the object's origin rather fancifully to the 7th or 8th century, crediting the Moors, who brought the idea to Spain. Ruefully noting the contrariness of the fair sex, who ignored the orders of Charles IX (1550-1574) to abandon the practice, he muses that had the King made the hoops obligatory, the ladies would certainly have abandoned them. Its light-hearted tone notwithstanding, the piece is full of information, not least the many terms for both the farthingales and the women who wore them. Porte-paniers, swollen skirts, meteors, comets, fleets of sailboats ... the author paints a comical picture of a country bumpkin seeing an elegant lady in her barn-door-wide dress for the first time, and imagining that "women had become living barrels."
After dying down for half a century, the fashion had flared up again in the early 18th century, with a vengeance, in skirts widened from the hips to the hems. The author records the spread of the most recent vogue through Europe: a German merchant having wrapped a bale of merchandise in one of the garments, it reached England, where it became the rage, eventually conquering the French court. By 1718 the style and its accouterments were "ratified by the feminine Senate of France." The latest date mentioned is 1730, in which year a woman was apparently saved from drowning in the Thames by her giant floating skirt.
Why do women wear these things? To hide their bodies, perhaps certain midriff bulges (pregnancies)? Or perhaps to defend against that eventuality, by clothing themselves in veritable ramparts. The author, who is less misogynous than mocking of human folly, defends women, who can't win, being criticized equally for excessively magnificent clothing and for dressing too simply. Besides, only a person ignorant of the extreme suppleness of women's bodies, and especially of their vocal cords, and of the fibers of their tongues, would dare criticize them too harshly ... Men should not mock women for their excessive concern with their appearances, for what else is there for them to do? Let them join public life, from which "envious and jealous men have excluded them." And what of men's wigs? which hide many a flaw (and which today are "no longer just a coiffure for the head, but an envelope for the whole body"). In conclusion, the author reveals his true sentiments, which are that women should abandon the artifice, and be themselves; even if they look like spindles or sticks, it is more "glorious and useful" to return to the arms of nature.
The printing of this genuinely funny pamphlet was rocky. The compositor began with one type, but, realizing after a few pages that the text would overlap a single gathering, he switched mid-word to a smaller font. The lines are wavy. The signatures are idiosyncratic (fol. A3 is signed on the verso). But all is redeemed by the striking arabesque ornament covering the last page, which functioned, along with the illustrated title-page, as pretty "self-wrappers," in which the stitched pamphlet was sold. Treasured by several bibliophiles, this copy appears to be one of two recorded; the other is preserved in the Institut national de l'Histoire de l'Art (Paris). Another edition, in 44 pages, is recorded (OCLC lists one copy, in Denmark). On p. 6 the author describes this pamphlet as a "piece fugitive, comme l'avant-coureur d'une autre dans un stile tout différent": possibly a reference to the longer edition.
Brunet, Supplement, II:789, this copy; cf. Gay-Lemonnyer, III:1237 (the other edition).
MAN'S BAG
France, 1758
France, 1758. A large, flat satchel (approx. 390 x 380 mm.) of woven hemp and unbleached linen, the front side crocheted with five fleurs-de-lis, geometrical elements including an X and two diamonds, and the date 1758, with stripes of openwork, the scalloped bottom with fringes; the lower or inner side and an internal pocket in plain unbleached hemp; with the original (or early) leather strap, attached on one side with a metal buckle (old repairs at attachment), the other end of the strap stitched to the bag. In very good condition (back and inner panels with a couple of holes and some staining). Provenance: from the collection of Gilles Labrosse.***
This homemade raw linen satchel for a French officer, lovingly crocheted by a wife, mother or sister, with fleurs-de-lis and the date 1758, would have been worn by a cavalry or horse artillery officer, hanging from the left-hand side of his waist belt. Also called besaces, such flat bags were often made of leather and splendidly decorated. This humble and appealing example no doubt belonged to a lower-ranking officer, who hopefully survived his call of duty. It was presumably not extensively worn, as it has been preserved in excellent condition. While sabretaches could carry any kind of small essentials, they were often used for maps, notebooks, and writing utensils. The survival of this kind of plain and simple object of everyday use is much more precarious than that of more richly decorated counterparts.
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