Year: 1893
Type: article
Abstract: often designed by the greatest artists, contain as a rule portraits of celebrated people, ancient and modern, depicted in a very German manner.Lucretia, with puffed sleeves and a feathered hat, stabs herself elegantly between the ribbons which tie her ornamental bodice ; Judith, fashionably attired in a similar style, holds the fiercely mustachioed -head of Holofernes ; " Justice," not unlike Queen Elizabeth, with her hair in an embroidered net, stands gazing open-eyed upon a very unbalanced pair of scales which she holds in her hand.Other panels contain portraits of such modern celebrities as Martin Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, or the reigning sovereign.The borders contain coats of arms and small medallion heads.These bindings bear, as a rule, the name or ini- tials of the binder, often that of the designer as well, and in many cases are dated.However good their execution may be, they bear unmistakable signs of the decadence of stamped work, which, so far as producing anything artistic is concerned, now died out absolutely.HISTORICAL SKETCH OF BOOKBINDING.Anne of Brittany, we find a semis of bees, and the mottO "NON UTITUR ACULEO REGINA GUI PAREMUS.''After his marriage we have sometimes only the Louis XIL, monogram L.A., with or without a crown, or the arms 1498-1515. of France alternating with the ermine of Brittany, and the hedgehog that was also his emblem, with the motto " COMINUS ET EMINUS." Louis was a great collector of books ; after the conquest of Milan he annexed part of the libraries of the Visconti and the Sforza, and he also bought the collection of the Flemish amateur, Louis de la Gruthuyse.All these books he sent to his library at Blois, whence they were subsequently removed by Francis I. to Fontainebleau.The Bibliotheque Nationale and the Bibliotheque Mazarine each possess one specimen.Grolier's library, in respect of size and selection, was so much the finest of the time, and his name is so inseparably connected with the finest period of binding, jeanGroiier, that a brief account of it is necessary.Born at Lyons, 1479-1565.in 1479, of a family that came from Verona, he replaced his father, in 1510, asTreasurerof the Duchy of Milan under Louis XII.
Source: Notes and Queries
Language: English
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W1503224109