Drolleries

Drolleries are decorative thumbnail illustrations which adorn the margins of certain manuscripts, often depicting fanciful or grotesque hybrid creatures. One manuscript in particular features such an abundance of this type of illumination that it has become known as ‘the Book of Drolleries’ (Le Livre des Drôleries).

The manuscript is an early 16th-Century Book of Hours thought to have been commissioned by a lady connected with the Habsburg-Burgundy court. The book later came into the possession of the Croy family, historically one of Burgundy’s wealthiest, hence its other name, the ‘Croy Hours’ (Les Heures de Croy). Today, the manuscript is in the collection of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna.

Some of the best-known artists of the Ghent-Bruges school of illumination are thought to have contributed to the Croy Hours, namely Gerard Horenbout and Simon Bening (who was also responsible for the miniatures in the Da Costa Hours, amongst others). The work also apparently shows the supervisory influence of Gerard David.

My source for the present images was a book by the title of Codices Illustres, a marvellous Taschen publication which reproduces images from dozens of the most famous illuminated manuscripts. Almost every page in this book is ornamented with a single drollery drawn from the Croy Hours, placed next to the page-number. This page, meanwhile, offered the best summary of information about the Croy Hours that I could find.

Click on the images to see them enlarged, although note that the originals were so small that these enlargements are necessarily somewhat fuzzy.

The Mantegna Tarot

The so-called Mantegna Tarot (I Tarocchi del Mantegna) is not a Tarot, nor, according to most authorities, is it Mantegna’s. This set of prints, dating, it is thought, from the 1460s, comprises fifty engraved designs arranged as five series of ten cards. While a few of the designs correspond to some of the Major Arcana in the standard Tarot deck, there are more differences than similarities between the two.

The cards numbered I-X depict various levels of the Human Condition, from its base, no. I Misero (the Beggar or Pauper) to its apex, no. X, Papa (the Pope). Those numbered XI-XIX represent the nine muses, and card XX, Apollo. Cards XXI-XXX depict the realm of knowledge, and feature the seven Liberal Arts, Astronomy, Philosophy and Theology. The cardinal and theological Virtues are illustrated on cards XXXIV-XV, and are preceded by three cards representing the Cosmos, Time, and the Sun, respectively. Lastly, cards XVI through to L constitute an ascent through the celestial spheres, with representations of the seven planets, of the ‘eighth sphere’ of the fixed stars, up to the Primum Mobile (the Prime Mover) and Prima Causa (the First Cause), which is to say, towards God.

These cards are an important document of the Renaissance at a fairly early stage of its unfolding. According to Joscelyn Godwin, in his book The Pagan Dream of the Renaissance, this ‘Tarot’ is a microcosm that owes something to Mediaeval representations of the Great Chain of Being, but which also has a distinctly Neoplatonist flavour in its implicit purpose as a map & model of the ascent (or descent) of the soul. The imagery too, combines traditional (Mediaeval) motives with the new enthusiasm for all things Classical: the card for Mercury (the 9th image, below), for example, is partly based on a sketch of an ancient statue made in Greece.

It is debatable as to whether these designs were intended for use in a game, or as an instructional tool, or as an aid to contemplation. The engravings survive only as grouped prints on uncut sheets of thin paper, and there are no known examples (recent facsimiles aside) where these designs have been found on decks of separate cards. The present images are taken from a version of the ‘Tarot’ printed in Cologne ca 1550.

The captions on the cards follow northeastern Italian (Venetian) orthography. Mantua and Ferrara have been proposed as plausible points of their origin. Given the likely place & date of their making, it is not inconceivable that Mantegna could have made some contribution to the designs. A line in Vasari’s life of Mantegna has, moreover, been taken as proof of his authorship of the designs: ‘Andrea delighted in copper engraving, and, among other things, reproduced his Triumphs [Trionfi]’ While the word Trionfi here most likely refers to Mantegna’s series of paintings of The Triumph of Caesar, it was also, apparently, a contemporary term for playing-cards, in which context it simply meant ‘Trumps’.

Click on the images above to see enlarged versions of the same. For smaller versions of the complete set of images, click the following links: A, B, C, D, E (source here). My source for the larger-format card pictures above was this site (note: Geocities image-hosting). For more information about these images, this page by Andy Pollett is a good place to start.

Mantegna, Engraver

The Renaissance artist Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506) was a painter and draughtsman of great renown, and also a pioneering and prolific graphic artist, one of the first in Northern Italy to make prints from engraved copper plates. Or, Mantegna produced a handful of noteworthy graphic works, and influenced a school of imitators who produced inferior prints in a similar style. Or, none of the engravings traditionally attributed to Mantegna are actually by his hand: the artist’s resposibilities at the Gonzaga court would have left him no time for printmaking.

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As so often, the paucity of the documentary evidence leaves more than enough room for conjecture. None of the prints linked to Mantegna bear his signature or monogram, and there is no reliable contemporary documentary evidence that Mantegna produced engravings himself, although Vasari, in his 1550 account of the artist's life does state that:

Andrea improved the foreshortening of figures as seen from below, and this was a difficult and fine invention. He was also fond, as I have said, of copper engraving, a very remarkable process, by means of which the world has been able to see the Bacchanalia, the battle of the sea-monsters, [etc.] - source here.

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The Bacchanalias (or should that be Bacchanaliae?) and the Sea Monsters (or Sea-Gods) are the works I’ve chosen to reproduce here (click on the thumbnails to see the images in full). According to Tancred Borenius, in his book Four Early Italian Engravers, the figures in the latter two engravings are, in fact, neither Monsters or Gods, but rather the Ichthyophagi (‘fish-eaters’) described in a composition of that name by Diodorus Siculus. ‘Mantegna shows these beings, who according to Diodorus are free of every passion, yet incited to fight by irresistible Envy…’ Whether Mantegna is their author or not, these are impressive and forceful, if not immediately likeable compositions. This entry, by the way, completes my brief backwards skim through Borenius’ book, begun here and continued here.

Petrantoni

When my wife and I go to Malmö, we will usually make a point of stopping by the Pressbyrån store at the Central Station to pick up an armful of English-language magazines, of which they stock a fine selection. On one of our recentest visits there I bought a copy of Defrag, an Italian publication (but with English text, too) whose focus is on ‘Art [particularly ‘Street’ Art], Music and Urban Culture’. Of all the images therein, my eye was drawn in particular to some black-and-white collages by a Designer and Artist called Lorenzo Petrantoni.

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Petrantoni is based in Milan, where he works as an Art Director at an advertising agency. Of his collages, he writes:

I am a picture thief […] My search leads me to the past and I scour through old books, magazines and encyclopaedias for iconographic booty - source here.

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I lifted the present images from Two-Zero and the Wooster Collective. Behind the fourth image (above), and the sixth (below), are larger copies of the same that I scanned from the magazine. For a few more works by Petrantoni, try looking here, here & here.

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These works are Copyright © 2002-04 Lorenzo Petrantoni, and are reproduced without permission, only for as long as no-one objects to their presence here.

Bretschneider

I keep returning to the on-line emblem-books presented by the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, Germany (most recently here). Today, I’ve been leafing through a book by one Andreas Bretschneider (ca. 1578-1640) entitled Pratrum Emblematicum (1617), which presents emblems grouped astrologically in seven sections corresponding to the Sun, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn respectively.

Six of the seven emblems for the celestial bodies themselves (not reproduced here) show suitably Olympian deities reclining among the clouds. Only Luna (above) departs from this format, being depicted riding atop a fish, from which, perhaps, she is directing the ebb and flow of the tides.

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The remaining emblems (there are fifty in all) are a mixed bag. I recognised a couple as straightforward copies from Alciato, whilst others (notably, I suspect, the sledding and skating scenes below) seem to be Bretschneider’s own compositions. There is a nice balance of the humorous and the serious. An example of the former is the farting donkey (above) from whose motto, Fortuna non mutat Genus, I presume we are supposed to conclude that a priveliged ass is still very much an ass.

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I found very little information about Bretschneider himself. From this page I learned the approximate dates of his birth and death, that he hailed from Dresden, and was a painter as well as an engraver. I guess he must have moved to Leipzig some time before 1617, as his books were published in the latter city.

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Besides emblems for his own works, Bretschneider also produced engravings to illustrate the German edition of a book by the Italian military engineer Agostino Ramelli. Another of his engravings, an illustration for a volume by one Tobias Hübner, has the distinction of being one of the earliest known depictions of ‘El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha, Cavallero de la Triste Figura.’

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Click on the images to see them enlarged.

Back from the Farm

I’m just back from two weeks in a beautiful big farmhouse about fifteen km south of Lund, in Skåne, southwestern Sweden. It was all very relaxing & enjoyable.

The farmhouse had six bedrooms, and a capacious kitchen with a table big enough to seat twelve. My wife & our dog & cats and I were a little lost in the place for a couple of days, but soon felt at home, and later, when we were joined by my mother, my sister and her two daughters, the house filled up nicely. I hadn’t met up with my folks for a year and a half, so it was a great pleasure to see them.

In the garden were apple and plum trees, hammocks, swings, tables-&-chairs, and a trampoline. In a field behind the house was a potato patch, from which we dug up spuds for some of our suppers. Next to the field was a pen for seven sheep. As many bullocks lived in another field on the other side of the homestead.

Tomorrow, I go back to work…;