The Americas of 1671

Frontpiece (one website entry says it's called 'American Allegory')

Brazil

Tobago

Peru

Brazil (I wonder if these are the Tupinamba people)

from a chapter entitled 'Cannibal Islands' if I'm guessing correctly
(Dutch web translator sites are just appalling)

Canada

Those critters with pups lounging on shore are marked
as 'Manati' so I presume this is in the region of Florida.

De Nieuwe en onbekende weereld: of Beschryving van America en 't zuid-land was first published in Dutch in 1671. This large 'encyclopedic' geocartographical book about the New World was written by Arnoldus Montanus, variously described as explorer, missionary and trader but who published a number of other important works...

"Montanus wrote books on church history, theology, the history of the Netherlands, and the peoples and cultures of the New World. His widespread interests and learning were typical of the intellectual flowering of the Netherlands during the Golden Age."

There are myriad engravings in the >800 website pages in which this rare book is displayed. The copperwork was done by Jacob Meurs, an engraver and publisher from Amsterdam. I may be wrong but I sense that there was more than one engraver involved. The shame is that some of the finest illustration work appears in the many very detailed maps which are double page spreads and were digitized page by page. This book contains the best maps of America in the world as at the date of publication - and includes the curious feature of depicting California as an island, an error that was propagated in a number of publications for a century - commencing in ~1625 or so.

There are a a sizeable number of illustrations of natives in various places in the Americas, purporting to record customs and culture etc. Although it made a contribution to world knowledge about tribe locations, these illustrations (well, all the book images really) are more interesting these days for their eccentricity value rather than their historical accuracy. Needless to say, a book of such exceptional quality at the time was well-received, translated and republished on numerous occasions.

• De Nieuwe en onbekende weereld: of Beschryving van America en 't zuid-land is online at the Library of Congress as part of The Atlantic World: America and the Netherlands series.
• You can buy the first edition book for only $24,000! (some information here too - 3/4 of the way down the page)
• This ebay site will give a quick view of some more images - natives - from a German edition of Montanus's book.
• I love the title page image - I 'think' it's the publication mark of Meurs (250kb).

Image Catharsis

I have no idea where this Abraham Ortelio 1586 map
of the present day Palestine/Israel region comes from.
I've uploaded a large version if you click on the picture.

'Military Habits of the Eighth Century' in:
A Complete View of Dress and Habits of the People of England
by Joseph Strutt 1862. [large selection of plates from this book]

Vanité by Pierre Giffart (sometime around 1700 at a guess)
[Found at the Université de Liège (Belgium) -
Collections Artistiques (Florilège) website
where I enjoyably spent a considerable amount of time.]

Combat entre la lampe au pétrole
et la théière tristesse du sucrier
in L'Opinion (magazine) 1877
[No idea what site it comes from.]

Adriaen Collaert after Marten de Vos
Die vier Weltteile: Afrika - late 16th century.
This comes from the eclectic set of images at the
Ruhr-Universität Bochum exhibition website:
'Allegorische Graphikserien des Manierismus'

"Historia de la vida, hechos y astucias 1769/1781
traditional Don Juan Bartholomé" ..
..is the name this image was saved as on my computer.
I know it comes from a pdf from one of the South American repositories -
if you only knew how much time I spent not finding suitable/sufficient material to make posts on subjects from South America and particularly Asia and Africa....well, anyway - if anyone ever has any suggestions about esoteric and rare book or print image sites or ideas even that pertain to these areas of the world, please don't be shy in passing on the details.

"Küchler, Balthasar"
from one of the festival books at the British Library.

There. A clean desktop for the new year.
Best wishes to all !

The Devil in the Detail

[The top image is the complete work - click on it for a reasonably large sized version - and the images below are details from it]

Jacques Callot (1592-1635) created the above etching - The Temptation of St Anthony - in the last year of his life. It is likely that his previous depiction of St Anthony from 1617 is online (Artcylopedia) but I couldn't find it. In the intervening period there had been a brutal invasion of his native land, the Lorraine Duchy, by the French, which probably influenced the nature of some of the details in this wonderfully grotesque and severe portrayal.

St Anthony lived sometime during the 3rd and 4th centuries and is said to have established the religious practice of ascetism. Legend (recorded by Athanasius) has our hermit Saint beseiged by the devil on a number of occasions, projected in the present circumstances as phantoms of wild beasts, wolves, lions, snakes and scorpions.

It's easy to see where Francisco Goya's predeliction for the fantastical and grotesque derived inspiration.

• Jacques Callot's The Temptation of St Anthony is posted online at the Spencer Museum of Art Printroom at the University of Kansas (thumbnail page).
• Previous Callot entry on BibliOdyssey.
• SaintAnthony.
• Jacques Callot biography at the New Advent.
  

Festa Teatrale

In 1729, on the occasion of the birth of Louis, Dauphin son of King Louis XV, a 3-Act opera about Emperor Charlemagne was written and staged in Rome by way of celebration.

The libretto for Festa Teatrale was written by the wealthy arts patron and future Pope Alexander VIII, Cardinal Ottoboni. Roman composer (and typesetter) Giovanni Battista Costanzi (aka 'Violoncello') provided the musical score for the production and the set designs were by the noted architect, Nicola Michetti.

14 full-page etchings by F. Vasconi, B. Gabuggiani, P. Piloia, C. Grandi and G. Massi were based on Michetti's stage sets.

The Festival book, Carlo Magno : festa teatrale in occasione della nascita del Delfino : offerta alle sacre reali maestà cristianissime del Re, e Regina di Francia is only available online in pdf format - photocopy of the digitized work - at the University of London Research Library Services (Warburg Institute) website [click on 'festivals' and then the bottom link on the resulting page to go to the information page {it has a timeout setup}] or [pdf - direct download 10Mb]

This short piece (translation) is about the best source of information on the Festa Teatrale book.

Meggendorfer Whimsy : Pop-Ups & Sketchbook

[large jpeg]

Lothar Meggendorfer (1847-1925) grew up in Munich as the youngest of 25 children (2 marriages) . He originallly worked as an illustrator for the satirical magazines Fliegende Blätter and Münchener Bilderbogen but eventually founded the long running Meggendorfer Blätter. He would also illustrate more than 100 children's books.


He is best known however for the ingenious movable (pop-up or toy) books which he took to a new level of sophisticated construction. His first effort, Lebende Bilder was a Christmas gift for his own son but was eventually published in 1878. His books included tab movement, stand-up panoramas and revolving plates, but for all their mechanical complexity his work always displayed comedic situations. Needless to say these new and amazing books were enthusiastically received by the general public. Perhaps it was such enthusiasm that prompted him to add a verse to one of his publications telling children to treat his movable books gently.


There are many websites around with material by Meggendorfer. I had been looking at the book with the Punchinello-like image above when I started searching. I have to say that I was thoroughly enchanted by his original sketchbook. Whimsical scribbles, penetrating caricatures and test book sketches brought not only a smile to my face but had me wondering if and where the matured illustration(s) might be found. I was also turning pages expectantly, hoping that one of the little characters such as the piano player above would reappear (as it did) again and again. Maybe it's the holiday season that has me more than usually appreciative of Meggendorf's benign but insightful humour. He seems like somebody I would love to have met.

• Meggendorfer Album : the sketch/scrap-book (~100 pages) is online at Braunschweig University Library as are Nimm mich mit! (218 page theme based picturebook) and Für die ganz Kleinen (26 page large-sized picturebook) and Münchener Kasperl-Theater (24 page Punchinello-esque)
• University of Virginia biography with a few bookcovers.
• The Chicago Tribune cartoons (two).
• Meggendorfer pop-up books in action at bugpowder.
• Die Uhr book illustrations at ebay.
• The Genius of Lothar Meggendorfer. A Moveable Toy Book at ebay.
• Struwwelpeterbuch at ebay.
• Meggendorfer Blätter in hardcover format at ebay.
• Meggendorfer at PopUpBooks.
• Sketches at Spaightwood Gallery (including the child/toy soldier image above).
• Previous BibliOdyssey post on Pop-Up books with Meggendorfer page at University of North Texas.

The Biblia Sacra of 'Petit' Bernard Salomon

"Perhaps no name is more intimately associated with the renaissance of French book illustration than that of Bernard Salomon, foremost designer for the publisher Jean de Tournes of Lyon. Working for de Tournes, Salomon's works intersect with the intellectual, religious and cultural concerns of mid-16th-century France."

The Tower of Babel

The 2nd Plague - Frogs infest Egypt

Pairs of animals are gathered into Noah's ark

Jonah is spat (out) of the whale

"The hundreds of illustrations to the Old and New Testaments ... among many other works Salomon designed, initiate new iconographic and stylistic traditions by recasting earlier formulations into a new, popular, yet elegant idiom."

The handwriting on the wall

Daniel is thrown into the lion's den

Gideon (Jerubbaal) routs the Midianites

The above woodcut images are from the Old Testament and are among 198 illustrations contributed by Bernard Salomon to the 1558 version of the Biblia Sacra that are displayed on the Vivarium website - the online digital collections of St John's University and the College of St Benedict. (20 pages of thumbnails)

The 'Petit' refers to the intricate detail Salomon works into his designs at small scale. Although it seems difficult to identify all the book images that he produced in that he didn't sign his work and much of it was reworking of older illustrations or was itself reproduced by other woodcut artists, Salomon contributed woodcuts for Alciato's famed Emblemata* and designed the images for a mid-16th century book on Ovid's Metamorphosis among other things. [*Most likely this will have been in one of the large number of republications that followed the 1531/1534 originals - certainly Salomon was a leading emblem book illustrator]

The quotes above come from an unfinished PhD dissertation - The woodcuts and art of Bernard Salomon - begun 40 or so years ago (!) by Robert A. Baron who has posted his 'work in progress' online.

Picturing Women

Does it matter who is looking?

Who decides what is feminine?

Who is telling the story?

Is beauty skindeep?

JN Gimbrede engraver after JJ Grandville
'Marvel of Peru' in 'The Flowers Personified' 1847

No paint, nor powder, needs that skin of thine
Shroud not the beauty in goods of cost,
For only know, my beaut'ous Valentine,
Beauty, when unadorned's adorned the most.

Carl E. Miksch, M.D. Jefferson Medical College Faculty of 1923

Franz Hanfstaeng after Joseph Stieler
mezzotint before 1858
August Strobel. Kgl. Residenz zu München No. 12

'Tricycle Dress' in The Exhibition of the Rational Dress Association 1883

From an exhibition held last year at Bryn Mawr College, the Picturing Women website was established to display sketches, cartoons, photographs and rare book illustrations of women through history. It is primarily a teaching aid in which evocative questions are posted alongside images arranged in thematic vignettes. There are filmed sequences from interviews and performances occurring during the original exhibition, an extensive online link list and library bibliography, ecards and lesson plans. There's quite a bit to see here.

Picturing Women features material from Bryn Mawr College, the Rosenbach Museum & Libary and The Library Company of Philadelphia. (flash, music initially)

The Skottowe Manuscript

Black & White (sulphur-crested) Cockatoos

"The birds are very numerous and in their wild
state their note is of a most discordant nature.
The white bird however when tame can be learn'd to talk. I
have never seen a black one alive in the possession of anyone."
[I attest to both observations: they are very noisy
and the black ones are reasonably rare]

John Dory
[good eating!]

Mamura superba
{Lyrebird}

"There are however in this part of the world,
a great number, most of which possess some
remarkable and beautiful tints and I shall ever
regret that the part where I was station'd at
was so extremely barren of subjects."

Macleay's swallowtail butterfly

"Thomas Skottowe of the 73 (Highland) Regiment of Foot was Commandant of the Newcastle penal settlement from 1811 to 1814. While in Newcastle, Skottowe organised the collection and drawing of specimens for this manuscript. He was also was responsible for their arrangement and wrote the accompanying text."

Select Specimens From Nature of the Birds Animals &c of New South Wales Collected and Arranged by Thomas Skottowe Esqr. The Drawings By T. R. Browne. Newcastle, New South Wales, 1813 is online at the State Library of NSW via the Picman database.