The cover of our Italian Books catalogue series: A masterpiece of early Venetian woodcut borders revisited
To accompany the first installment of Italian Books in 2019, Margherita Palumbo wrote a post on the cover of the catalogue, which makes use of Benedetto Bordone’s celebrated border for his edition of Lucian’s Vera historia. In light of our recent focus on Venice and Venetian book production, we revisit the topic here, highlighting some further contextual dimensions that help make Bordone and his work so important to the history of the (Venetian) book.
The white-on-black border framing the front cover of our Italian Books series is taken from one of the finest ornamental title-pages designed in Venice in the fifteenth century, which was executed by the renowned artist Benedetto Bordone (or Bordon; ca. 1450/1455-1430) for his edition of Lucian of Samosata’s Vera historia, printed in 1494 (read the full description of our available copy of this work here).
The book was published on 25 August by Simone Bevilaqua (active in Venice between 1492 and 1506) at Bordone's expense, and his name is mentioned in a final address, composed in verse, on fol. p6r, and in the statement of privilege printed on the verso of the same leaf. In the four-verse address, Bordone invites the reader to take this book and relax among the collected stories of Lucian. It is indeed an enjoyable book. Designed by Bordone, it features widespread text without scholarly commentaries or notes, and is printed in a roman type that is easy to read, and in a small quarto format, a practical prelude to the well-known Aldine octavos.
The first page of the Lucian text is framed by an exquisite woodcut border all’antica on a black ground, the design of which is again attributed to Bordone himself. This refined and delicate candelabra border is a perfect compendium of the artist’s extraordinary imagery and inventiveness, revealing his life-long passion for the ancient world and his virtuoso use of classical decorative themes and motifs: vases, vine leaves, foliate branches, the head of a ‘leafy old man’, a Roman eagle, horns, and winged animals.
Lucianus Samosatensis (125–after 180 BC). Vera historia. Tr: Lilius (Tifernas) Castellanus. Add: De asino aureo; Philosophorum vitae; Scipio; Tyrannus; Scaphidium (Dialogus de funerali pompa); Palinurus; Charon; Diogenes; Terpsion; Hercules; Virtus dea; In amorem; Timon; Sermo de calumnia; Laus muscae. Ed: Benedictus Bordonus; Maephus Vegius: De Felicitate et miseria. Venice, Simon Bevilaqua, for Benedetto Bordone, 25 August 1494.
Read the full description of this copy here.
The Lucian border is commonly associated with the border found, in larger format, in Lorenzo Valla’s translation of Herodotus’s Historiae, printed for Bordone by Johannes and Gregorius de Gregoriis on 8 March 1494, and re-used in 1497-1498 to illustrate one of the separate title-pages of Hieronymus’s Commentaria in Bibliam. This latter was likewise issued by Johannes and Gregorius de Gregoriis, and we are pleased to include an extraordinarily rare complete copy of it in our forthcoming Italian Books catalogue.
Hieronymus, Sophronius Eusebius (347-420). Commentaria in Bibliam. Ed: Bernardinus Gadolus. Venice, Johannes and Gregorius de Gregoriis, de Forlivio, 1497 - 25 August 1498.
This border is more elaborate than that included in the Lucian, with two additional white-ground vignettes: the upper vignette shows a satyr preparing a sacrifice, while the lower one presents Hercules at the parting of the ways. Single elements of Bordone’s decorative vocabulary also find close parallel in ornamental headpieces and initials used by Aldus in the years 1495-1499, and several scholars share the opinion that Bordone was the principal designer of the 172 woodcuts illustrating the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, the pinnacle of Aldus’ printing career.
Colonna, Francesco (ca. 1433-1527). La Hypnerotomachia di Poliphilo, cioe pugna d’amore in sogno. Dou’egli mostra, che tutte le cose humane non sono altro che Sogno: & doue narra molt’altre cose degne di cognitione. Venice, Sons of Aldo Manuzio, 1545.
Read the full description of this copy here.
The Lucian edition represents the first official appearance of Bordone's name in Venice, though it is hardly his earliest work. Born in Padua around 1450/55 and evidently having received a humanistic education, Bordone was strongly influenced by Andrea Mantegna and his school, and by the end of the 1470s had started working in the atelier of the famous illuminator Girolamo da Cremona. His name is also linked to the production of a set of eight juridical and philosophical incunabula printed in Venice by Nicolaus Jenson, illuminated on behalf of Jenson’s patron Peter Ugelheimer, a rich and learned German merchant, and Bordone is partly responsible as well for illuminating the two-volume Aristotle of 1483, now preserved at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York (Goff A-962).
At the beginning of the 1490s (probably in 1492) Bordone moved to Venice where he headed a prominent workshop in San Zulian, close to St. Mark's Basilica, and became one of the greatest figures of the multi-faceted world of the Venetian book, working as a miniaturist and designer of woodblocks as well as the editor of classical texts and author of works on geography. Above all, Bordone’s success as a miniaturist was fundamental to his contributions to the history of the printed book, for in settling in Venice when he did, he entered into a thriving, experimental milieu. By the 1490s, Venice was established as the leading printing centre in Europe, but in many ways it was still adapting to the shift from manuscripts to printed books. In this context, Bordone’s ability to re-define and adapt his talent as a miniaturist allowed him to become one of the most esteemed and sought-after woodcut designers in a continuous and fruitful exchange between various media.
Between 1469, when Johann von Speyer established the first printing press in Venice, and 1474, the von Speyer brothers and Nicolaus Jenson dominated a rapidly growing printing scene with publications that echoed the design and layout of manuscripts. Many of these incunabula were finished by hand by illuminators who created designs for the margins and initials. Woodcuts stamped and coloured by hand were also included for a time in the margins of printed texts, probably in an effort to speed up the decorating process as more and more books were being printed.
The ever-increasing number of publications meant the proportion of hand-finished incunabula to non-hand-finished incunabula diminished over the following years, but particularly special copies continued to be hand-decorated in this way. The extraordinary illuminated copy of the 1476 Venice edition of Regiomontanus’s Kalendarium presented here is one such example.
Regiomontanus, Johannes (1436-1476). Kalendarium. Venice, Bernhard Maler, Peter Loeslein and Erhard Ratdolt, 1476.
Read the full description of this copy here.
Regiomontanus’s Calendar was first issued in Latin in 1474 from the Augsburg press of Erhard Ratdolt, who moved to Venice in 1476. The edition presented here is the first book he printed in the lagunar city, in partnership with Bernhard Maler, also of Augsburg, and Peter Löslein, of Langencen (in Bavaria). It represents – to borrow the words of Gilbert Richard Redgrave – a ‘marvellous improvement’ upon the Kalendarium printed by Regiomontanus himself in Nuremberg in 1473, largely because of its numerous design features. Augsburg was then a leading centre for illustrated books in the north, and in this publication the partnership brought significant innovations to Venetian book production. It represents, for example, the first Italian book to feature extensive use of woodcut initials, as well as the first borders in Venetian books meant to stand on their own, that is, without the additional colouring of the illuminator (even if the copy presented here was indeed further decorated). (Hind, Introduction, p. 458)
Regiomontanus, Johannes (1436-1476). Kalendarium. Venice, Bernhard Maler, Peter Loeslein and Erhard Ratdolt, 1476.
Read the full description of this copy here.
The border framing the title-page was designed by Maler in the purest Renaissance style. As Goldsmith states, the floral and foliate motifs recall the ornaments carved in relief by Lombardi in the marble pilasters of the Venetian church Santa Maria dei Miracoli. “One recognizes an undeniable Italian Renaissance influence in both the borders and initials [...] Here, a new harmony is achieved by Ratdolt's congruous design in both initials and borders, which seem to have been executed by the same cutter, resulting in some of the most beautiful borders ever included in a printed book” (D. Laube, The Stylistic Development of German Book Illustration, p. 54). The next year, in 1477, Ratdolt introduced a full white-vine border at the start of Part I of his edition of Appianus’s Historia Romana (De bellis civilibus), with the border again being designed by Maler.
Other innovations presented here include Ratdolt’s pioneering colour printing, with the title-page printed in red and black (and, in this copy, lavishly illuminated on gold ground), and perhaps most remarkably, the first ornamental title-page in the history of printing: even if in verse, it gives date, place and the names of the printers responsible for the publication:
Aureus hic liber est: non est preciosior ulla / Gema kalendario: quod docet istud opus./ [...] Hoc Ioannes opus Regio de Monte probatum / Composuit: tota notus in Italia. / Quod Veneta impressum fuit in tellure per illos / Inferius quorum nomina picta loco. 1476. Bernardus Pictor de Augusta, Petrus Loslein de Langencen, Erhardus Ratdolt de Augusta.
In this context it is also worth mentioning Ratdolt’s development of a technique for printing in gold for the prefatory epistle in two dedication copies of his Euclid of 1486. The technique was picked up by Antonio di Bartolomeo Miscomini who used it to print the first lines of text in an extraordinary copy of Ficino’s “magical” De vita libri tres published in Florence in 1489.
Ficino, Marsilio (1433-1499). De vita libri tres (De triplici vita); Apologia; Quod necessaria sit ad vitam securitas. Add: Poem by Amerigus Corsinus. Florence, Antonio di Bartolommeo Miscomini, 3 December 1489.
Read the full description of this copy here.
In aristocratic Florence, entirely handmade books predominated throughout the 1480s, with printing catching on only in the 1490s, so Miscomini’s fusion of printed text with the luxuriousness of illumination is particularly significant.
Redgrave’s and Goldsmith’s commentary is also particularly significant in this context, for they were both owners of the copy of Lucian presented here. Gilbert Richard Redgrave (1844-1941), who wrote a book about Ratdolt’s work in Venice, was president of the Bibliographical Society of London, and well known as the co-editor, with Alfred W. Pollard, of A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, & Ireland and of English Books Printed Abroad, 1475-1640. Redgrave assembled a notable collection of incunables, with special attention to illustrated editions, such as the Summa arithmetica by Luca Pacioli, and the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. In this copy, a note on the front flyleaf written in Redgrave’s own hand states: ‘All writers on book ornament agree in attributing the splendid border on f. a2 to the same designer as the border of the Herodotus of 1494. These two borders are the most splendid works of the early Venetian press’. This opinion is shared by the compiler of the sale catalogue of Redgrave’s library, who highlighted the beauty of the “first page of text within a fine white on black woodcut border” (Catalogue of an Important Collection of Incunabula, Early Woodcuts, Emblem Books, &c.: Selected from the Library of Gilbert R. Redgrave, which will be sold by Sotheby & Co., on Monday, the 3rd of May, 1926, lot 161). The copy was then purchased by the eminent London bookseller, scholar, and incunabula collector Ernst Philip Goldschmidt (1887-1954), for the grand sum of 33 pounds.
Gilbert Richard Redgrave’s inscription regarding Bordone’s splendid border.
These descriptions concerning the placement of the Lucian border are telling, for our use of the term “title-page”, though commonly used, requires qualification. As noted, in Venice, in general, the proportion of hand-decorated to non-hand-decorated incunabula shifted as the number of books being printed simply grew too vast, though it was only at the end of the 1480s that woodcut decoration really caught on among Venetian printers and patrons. (Armstrong,“The Decoration and Illustration of Venetian Incunabula From Hand Illumination to the Design of Woodcuts," p. 798) Titles were likewise increasingly included in publications, but despite Ratdolt’s early use of a title-page in the 1476 edition of Regiomontanus, it was not until the 1510s that they became common.
Bordone’s exquisite borders thus present an intermediary moment in this turning point in the history of the book. In the Lucian, the border surrounds the first page of text, as was typical practice for illuminated manuscripts, and his woodcuts are clearly designed in the style of his celebrated miniatures. Indeed, in the presentation copy of his Vera historia, printed on vellum and intended for a member of the Patrician Mocenigo family of Venice (and now preserved in Vienna) the woodcut border is replaced with an illuminated border with highly similar classicizing motifs painted in gold on a blue background, likewise surrounding the first page of text.
The Herodotus/Hieronymus border is similarly used to surround the main text rather than the sort of introductory content typically found on a title-page, i.e., the publication information presented in the Regiomontanus. Nevertheless, as a precursor to the modern title-page, the marvelous illumination-inspired border is given a prominent place in 200 Decorative Title-Pages by Alexander Nesbitt, who notes that it is “often considered the finest piece of Renaissance book ornament” (Nesbitt Pl. 4), and it is even used as the cover image on Margaret M. Smith’s great book, The Title-Page: Its Early Development 1460-1510 (London, 2000).
It is thus with great pride that we include Bordone’s border on the cover of our Italian Books series, for not only are the miniaturist’s designs a leading example of the splendor of Venetian book illustration, but they also stand for a particularly transformative moment in the history of the book as we know it.
H 8581*; Hain 13776*; HC 1026; GW M19059, M37455 and 12419; BMC V, 243, 350, and 519; IGI 4729, 5310, and 5842; Goff L-329, H-160, and R-93; Flodr Lucianus, 4; Essling 247, 747 and 1170; Sander 3386, 4037, and 6400; G. R. Redgrave, Erhard Ratdolt and His Work at Venice, London 1899, pp. 6-9, and no. 1; E. Ph. Goldsmith, The Printed Book of the Renaissance, Amsterdam 1974, pp. 63-66; D. De Simone (ed.), A Heavenly Craft. The Woodcut in Early Printed Books. Illustrated Books Purchased by Lessing J. Rosenwald at the Sale of the Library of C. W. Dyson Perrins, New York-Washington, DC 2004, pp. 54-55; M. H. Shank, “The Geometrical Diagrams in Regiomontanus's Edition of His Own Disputationes (c. 1475). Background, Production, and Diffusion”, Journal for the History of Astronomy, 43 (2012), pp. 27-55; M. M. Smith, The Title-Page: Its Early Development 1460-1510, London, 2000; L. Armstrong, “Benedetto Bordon, 'Miniator', and Cartography in Early Sixteenth-Century Venice”, Eadem, Studies of Renaissance Miniaturists in Venice, London 2003, 2, pp. 591-643; Philobiblon, One Thousand Years of Bibliophily, nos. 20, 37, and 40; L. Armstrong, “The Decoration and Illustration of Venetian Incunabula From Hand Illumination to the Design of Woodcuts," C. Dondi (ed.), Printing R-Evolution and Society 1450-1500, Studi di storia vol. 13, 2020, pp. 773-816.
How to cite this information
Margherita Palumbo and Julia Stimac, "The cover of our Italian Books catalogue series: A masterpiece of early Venetian woodcut borders revisited," 3 November 2021, www.prphbooks.com/blog/bordone-revisted. Accessed [date].This post is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.