Great Bindings from the Spanish Royal Collections

This book brings together the most select pieces from the Hapsburg and Bourbon collections from the fifteenth to the twenty-first centuries, which are analysed from different perspectives by the most prestigious international experts on the art of bookbinding.

It deals with aspects ranging from the complex relations between Francis I of France and Charles V, which are the context for a group of French bindings held at El Escorial; the varied commissions of Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, who gave the contents of his library to Philip II; and the structure of limp parchment bindings and their production process, which provide useful information for studying the circulation of books in Europe; to bindings executed by known typographers such as Plantin and Bodoni; and, finally, the serial but distinctive bindings on the books in the Real Biblioteca that were created by royal bookbinders as part of the effort to shape a national historical image for the king. All this is accompanied by more than two hundred colour illustrations and a complete thematic bibliography on bookbinding in Spain.

Great Bindings from the

Spanish Royal Collections 15th – 21st centuries

EDICIONES EL VISO

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Fig . 9 6 Volumes bound in Paris in the early 1540s with gilt titles on the spine, preserved in the Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial

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Fig . 9 7 Guillaume BudĂŠ, Libri V de Asse. Venetiis: in aedibus Aldi, et Andreae Asulani soceri, 1522.

Bound in dark blue morocco. RBME, 177.IV.14

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100

101

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Fi gs. 102 and 103 Angelo Poliziano, Opera .... Lugduni: apud Seb. Gryphium, 1536–37, 3 tomes in 2 vols.

Bound in white sheepskin with different gold ornamentation on each volume. RBME, 37.

VI.31–32

Fig . 1 0 4 Thomas Aquinas, Principis ac sacre scripture sinceri interp[re]tis Commentarij in Soliloq[ui] a, sive hymnos davidicos .... Lugdu[ni]: In edibus Jacobi myt: impensis Jacobi q. Fra[n]scici de giu[n] ta et sociorum florentinoru[m], 1520. Bound in calfskin originally painted black.

RBME, 177.V.11

A Gift, from Whom and for Whom?

umes rules out the idea that they were sent

If the peculiarity common to these bindings—

to Charles V after his journey through France.

the title gilded on the spine—necessarily points

The gift is more likely to have been made in

to the court of Francis I as the source of this

the following months, in 1540, 1541 or at the

order to the binders, the precise details of it

beginning of 1542 (as stated above, war would

remain unknown. It is extremely difficult to

be officially declared on 12 July 1542).

extrapolate from the printing dates of the

The volumes have no armorial bearings,

volumes, since it is probable that these eigh-

nor do they figure in any of the published

teen bindings represent only a part of a group

inventories of the Spanish royal libraries.8

that must have been considerably larger. The

Were they sent to Charles V personally? The

publication date of 1540 of several of the vol-

choice of authors (Erasmus, Cicero, Latin poets

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Fig . 1 0 5 Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, Institutionum oratoriarum libri XII. Lugduni: apud Seb. Gryphium, 1536. Bound in bronze green morocco.

RBME, 80.IV.1 Fig . 1 0 6 Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae. Lugduni: apud Seb. Gryphium, 1534. Bound in bronze green morocco.

RBME, 56.IV.22 Fig . 1 0 7 Ambrosius Aurelius Theodosius Macrobius, In Somnium Scipionis libri II; Saturnaliorum libri VII. Excud. Lugd.: Seb. Gryphius Germ., 1532. Bound in bronze green morocco. RBME, 56.IV.23 Fig . 1 0 8 Marcus Tullius Cicero, M. Tullij Ciceronis Rhetoricorum libri quatuor ad Herennium. Parisiis: ex officina Simonis Colinaei, 1539. Bound in bronze green morocco. RBME, 80.IV.5 Fig . 1 0 9 Guillaume Budé, Annotationes Gulielmi Budaei ... in quatuor & viginti Pandectarum libros...: per autore[m] diligentissime recognitae & auctae.

Basileae: apud Thomam Volffium, 1534. Bound in citron morocco. RBME, 74.IV.10 Fig . 1 1 0 Decius Junius Juvenal, Satyrae iam recens recognitae, simul ac adnotatiunculis, quae breuis commentarij uice esse possint, illustratae. Lugduni: apud Seb. Gryphium, 1538; Iacopo Sannazaro, Opera omnia .... Lugduni: apud Seb. Gryphium, 1536. Bound in brown morocco. RBME, 17.V.1

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107

109

110

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Fig . 1 2 2

Fig . 1 2 3

Ivo, bishop of Chartres, Pannormia, seu Decretum, D. Iuonis Carnothensis episcopi restitutu[m], correctum, & emendatum / opera & diligentia Melchioris à Vosmediano ....

Louanii: ex officina Antonij Maria Bergagne ..., 1557.

RBME, 25.VI.20

Flavius Josephus, Los siete libros de Flauio Iosefo los quales contienen las guerras de los Iudios, y la destrucion de Hierusalem y d’el templo / traduzidos agora nueuamente segun la verdad de la historia por Iuan Martin Cordero .... En Anuers: en casa de Martin Nucio ..., 1557.

Binding with the painted royal coat of arms.

RBME, 33.V.17

Here we set out our objections to the

It covers a book of hours printed in 1549

conclusions of Colin and Nixon. Some forty

by Regnauld and Claude Chaudière. It is

volumes in their list certainly constitute a

unprecedented and furthermore totally improb-

very homogenous group (Antwerp printings,

able that a book printed in Paris and meant

Spanish authors, Spanish dedicatees or own-

for Henry II should have been sent abroad

ers, similar decorative style), but the presence

to be bound. And even more unlikely in view

of others is harder to explain, or cannot be

of the absolute evidence that the copy was

explained at all. The binding most evidently

presented to the king by Chaudière. The

foreign to this homogenous group is the one

elegant and skilfully designed decoration

that bears the device and emblems of Henry

includes two wide bows and an emblem; it

II, preserved in Oxford (CN 41).25

also bears eight stamps of the small Cupid’s

Fig . 1 2 4 Tommaso Fazello, De rebus Siculis decades duae .... Panormi: ex officina Ioannis Matthaei Maydae, 1558. Bound in green and red morocco. RBME, 60.IX.13

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tomer) when he executed, on a copy of the Viaje probably intended for Pérez [fig. 118], a highly ingenious semé pattern on two small, very elegant stamps, one of which also adorns the Ode. In 1557 and 1558, in a dramatic turn of events, the Antwerp workshop produced six remarkable bindings (our group C) whose decoration featured two Parisian tools employed on the “Plantin” bindings in group A, as well as some new tools that formed part of the Cupid’s Bow bindery. These bindings, decorated by a competent gilder, were not taken into account by Colin and Nixon.26 On the other hand, they did study two bindings (on Plantin printings) executed nearly forty years later, on which the decoration includes some tools from the same sources. Nixon very correctly concluded that the Parisian Cupid’s Bow workshop had ceased to exist, probably in 1556, and that part of its tools had turned up in Antwerp.

Fig. 125 Pedro Alfonso de Burgos, Dialogi de immortalitate animae .... Barcinone: apud Claudium Bornat, 1561.

French “spineless” binding. RBME, 6.V.54

For our part we are convinced that the six uncatalogued bindings in the Escorial were executed in an Antwerp workshop belonging to Plantin or patronised by him.

We end this section with an extraordinary binding, without a cover on the spine, which is certainly Parisian and which covers the dedication copy to Philip II of a work printed

Plantin could have served as intermediary

in Barcelona in 1561 by Claude Bornat (Alfon-

for the commissioning of this binding in

sus, Dialogi de immortalitate animae, Barce-

Paris, but it was more probably Claude Bornat

lona, 1561) [fig. 125].

who himself took charge of it, since in 1564

Only four sixteenth-century French bind-

the dedication copy to Philip II of another

ings with uncovered spines had appeared

work published by him, in a Spanish binding

until now, all made for a corpus such as the

on this occasion, is half-decorated with the

one in the Escorial. At first we thought that

same very elegant stamp-impressed design.

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Fig . 1 2 6 Almanach Royal. Á Paris: De l’Imprimerie de la Veuve d’Houry, au Saint-Esprit, 1749–58. Bindings by PierrePaul Dubuisson. RB, PAS/ARM3/44–53

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