Hand-Colored Catholic Devotional Engravings, 1610
This is a most unusual plate book. It presents over two dozen handsome engravings—all exceptionally hand colored and surrounded by sharply contrasting hand-painted black borders—entirely laid down on stiff leaves of card as a bound codex.
This extraordinarily rare, exquisitely colored collection of devotional engravings was printed in Paris in 1610 by the Flemish engraver and publisher Thomas de Leu (ca.1576–1614) and was owned at various times by Nicolas Richard de la Barollière, bibliophile and secretary to the French crown, and one “Thomae Graffart presbiteri 1703.” Bound in limp vellum with gilt crests on the covers and the remains of four leather ties, this volume features twenty-seven full-page hand-colored illustrations printed on boards, divided into two works: (1) a series of large-scale scenes from the life of the Virgin, with two-line Latin legends at the foot, based on designs by the Flemish mannerist Jan van der Straet and likely after Adriaan Collaerts’s engravings from van der Straet’s original drawings (ca.1589); and (2) a subsequent visual calendar of religious holidays for each month of the year, after engravings by Leonard Gaultier first published by Jean LeClerc (1603).
The striking mannerist title page presents allegorical figures of the Four Seasons with indications of the earth’s bounty at each quarter of the year. This is followed, first, by conventional scenes of various mysteries of the Blessed Virgin Mary and stages in the life of Christ typical of Roman Catholic books of hours. And yet each of the mysteries is colored in a dazzling array of orange, red, yellow, purple, green, and blue accented with glittering silver and gilt passages. Though derived from the work of van der Straet and Collaert, this sequence of hand coloring is unique to the Hopkins copy.
The temporal rhythms that distinguish this collection assume the form of more original sacra rappresentazione and their monthly apostolic and saintly dramatis personae as prescribed by the Tridentine reform of the sacred calendar of ferial observances. The biblical scenes presented under each respective month—each of which is identified, in the text as well as visually, with its corresponding zodiacal sign—reveal the lives, miracles, and divine revelations of saints and the sufferings of martyrs. Unlike the version printed by Gaultier seven years prior, de Leu’s four-line verses at the foot of each monthly scene diverge, appearing in both Latin and French rather than French alone. This bilingual component may suggest de Leu’s commercial interest in a wider, possibly trans-European market for his version of these popular temporal devotions.
Although the identity of the colorist remains unknown, it was probably a contemporary of de Leu. Evidence suggests that, much like printing, the trade of early modern hand colorists was often dominated by families who passed their craft down through multiple generations. In the city of Nuremberg, for example, the Mack family maintained a veritable monopoly on Briefmaler and Illuministen work. In the Low Countries, at least two families famously specialized in cartographic coloring, including its female members Anna Beek and Anna Ortelius. While some critics of early coloring have treated it as a means of concealing imperfections of the intaglio process, recent scholarship has highlighted a more fundamental intentionality behind coloring, particularly of devotional works that could be hung on walls or mounted in altarpieces. While the quality of hand coloring was hardly uniform in the early modern period, and the evidence behind its general dating complicated (many engraved illustrations having been colored decades, even centuries, after they were first printed), the skill evident in the Hopkins Sacer Zodiacvs is second to none.
OCLC (accessed Sept. 19, 2021) indicates only two other recorded copies in library records worldwide—preserved at Stuttgart and in Dayton, Ohio—though a subsequent version of the calendar of holy days was issued in 1615 by Nicolas de Marthonière, with the plates bearing the signature of Isaac Briot. A separate, third version of the ferial calendar portion, held by the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, is entirely undated and gives no indication of its publisher; it is simply marked “non sine privilegio.” The fine contemporary binding and provenance of the Hopkins Sacer Zodiacvs are particularly rich. The gilt arms on the upper and lower covers of the volume are those of the family of Richard de la Barollière near Lyon, which is further confirmed by the manuscript note “ex Bibliotheca Domini Barrolleriae,” dated 1618, on the front free endpaper. The bibliophile Nicolas Richard (d. 1634–35) was a titled landowner, a representative of the royal treasury in Dauphiné, and treasurer of the Aumone-Generale in Lyon, in addition to his service as a secretary to the French crown. A subsequent ownership inscription, “ex libris Thomae Graffart presbyteri 1703,” appears on the back of the front pastedown.
—Kelsey Champagne, Earle Havens
Bibliography
Susan Dackerman (ed.), Painted Prints: The Revelation of Color in Northern Renaissance andBaroque Engravings, Etchings and Woodcuts (University Park: Penn State Press, 2002); Susan Dackerman and Thomas Primeau, “The History and Technology of Renaissance and Baroque Hand-Colored Prints,” in Harriet Stratis and Britt Salvesen (eds.), The Broad Spectrum: Materials, Techniques and Conservation of Color on Paper (Pasadena, CA: Archetype Publications, 2002); Ad Stijnman and Elizabeth Savage (eds.), Printing Colour 1400–1700: History, Techniques, Functions and Receptions (Leiden: Brill, 2015); Stephanie Stillo, “Putting the World in Its ‘Proper Colour’: Exploring Hand-Coloring in Early Modern Maps,” Journal of Map & Geography Libraries 12:2 (2016): 158–86.
