BOOKPLATES CHRONOLOGICALLY
Lucas Cranach--Charles V.--Hans Holbein--Early French and English
bookplates--Sir Nicholas Bacon--Queen Elizabeth--Bookplates that
are not armorial--Bookplates in Switzerland, Sweden, and Italy.
In the _ex libris_ which Jost Amman made for “Johann Fischart genannt
Mentzer” the initial letters J.F.G.M. are the initial letters, too, of
the owner’s motto: “Jove fovente gignitur Minerva.”
Leaving now the Nuremberg school, we come to Lucas Cranach the elder. He
is just one of those figures of old time of whom one would like to know
much more. His chivalrous attachment to Frederick the Magnanimous, the
last of three Electors of Saxony, all of whom he served, points to noble
traits of character. He shared all the sufferings of Frederick the
Magnanimous in the five years that he was in the hands of Charles V.,
although himself an old man, went with him to Weimar on his release in
1552, and died there in his eighty--first year, on the 16th October,
1553. His paintings and engravings are without number, the latter mostly
woodcuts. One special interest of his work is that he was fond of
introducing homely portraits of his friends, and portraits always give
great interest to _ex libris_.
Among the _ex libris_ from the hand of Lucas Cranach the elder are the
woodcuts, in four different sizes, engraved for the Library of
Wittenberg University, and each bearing the portrait of Frederick the
Magnanimous.
At the foot of each is the inscription--
“Et patris, et patrui, famam, virtutibus, æquat.
Sui patris et patrui, nobile nomen habet.
Adserit, invicto divinum pectore verbum,
Et Musas omni dexteritate juvat.
Hinc etiam ad promptos studiorum contulit usus,
Inspicis hoc præsens quod modo Lector opus.”
Hans Holbein has been credited with the designs for two woodcuts _ex
libris_.
With the great amount and variety of work done by Holbein it would be
most natural that he should have designed some _ex libris_. We of to-day
can only deal with what has survived. For instance, scores of precious
works printed three hundred years ago have wholly passed out of
knowledge.
What a charming bookplate Hans Holbein would have invented--who knows
that he did not?--say, for his noble martyr friend Sir Thomas
More--perhaps depicting sweet Margaret Roper reading to her father,
adding at foot of the plate some quaint motto from Erasmus! Hans Holbein
lived scarcely forty-six years.
Next we will mention Hans Burgkmaier, born, too, at Augsburg in 1473,
and a son of Hans Holbein the elder’s father-in-law. Several _ex libris_
have been assigned to his hand; but with no certainty. The Emperor
Maximilian I. was his patron, and Albrecht Dürer his friend.
Now we reach about the time of what, until lately, was accounted the
earliest French bookplate with a date. This bears the brief but
comprehensive inscription: “Ex bibliotheca Caroli Albosii. E. Eduensis.
Ex labore quies.” The earliest known dated English _ex libris_ is also
of 1574; but we always, in courtesy, put our friends before ourselves,
and remember Napier’s splendid remark on hearing that Lord Mahon had
contemptuously spoken of Napier’s History as the best “French” history
of the war: “I always thought that to be generous to a noble foe was
truly English, until my Lord Mahon informed me it was wholly French.”
Sir Nicholas Bacon’s bookplate bears his arms with helmet surmounted by
crest; the crest being, of course, the only crest that could belong to
Bacon. The Germans very properly never dreamt that a crest ought to
appear anywhere but on a helmet. We have not been so correct. This
recalls the blank amazement of a German on beholding a British officer
in plain clothes. I remember thirty years ago, in Germany, my friend
FitzRoy Gardner happening to show a photograph of Field-Marshal Sir John
Burgoyne in plain clothes. The exclamation came at once, “He cannot be
an officer, he is not in uniform.” This was, of course, the chivalrous
old warrior who, in his yacht, brought the lovely Empress of the French
safely to our shores.
This very interesting and early English bookplate has at the foot Sir
Nicholas Bacon’s motto: “Mediocria Firma,” and we need not go here in
full into the point of its date, which is fairly established. It is with
an inscription in books given in 1574 by Sir Nicholas Bacon to Cambridge
University. Sir Nicholas, perhaps best known for being the father of
Francis, was the close friend of Cecil, Lord Burleigh, and Matthew
Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, fellow-ministers with him of Queen
Elizabeth. Queen Bess often made herself his guest, and after her visit
of six days in 1577, her host had the door by which she had passed under
his roof nailed up, so that no one, after her, might cross the same
threshold. Oh for the picturesque days of old! Lord Beaconsfield alone,
in our day, might have thought of such a graceful act.
The second dated engraved English bookplate known at present is that of
Sir Thomas Tresham, knighted by Queen Bess in 1575. The plate is
armorial, with a huge array of quarterings; helmet surmounted by crest
in proper style. Inscription: “Fecit mihi magna qui potens est. 1585.
Jun. 29.”, and below the arms: “S Tho: Tresame Knight.”
Sir Thomas married Muriel, daughter of Sir Robert Throckmorton, and
their son was Francis, “a wylde and unstayed man,” who first engaged in,
and then revealed, the Gunpowder Plot. The father’s dying, in 1605, was
probably the cause of the son’s not going forward in the plot, as he
inherited property which would steady his aspirations. Sir Thomas left
interesting memories of himself in fine buildings; and particularly in
his own county of Northampton, the market-house at Rothwell, and the
triangular lodge at Rushton.
A characteristic German plate of about 1570 is that of Johann Hector zum
Jungen, with his name thus engraved in full under his arms, and the
Latin motto: “Memorare nouissima tua,” at the top of the plate. In the
earliest _ex libris_ we did not find the owners’ names engraved.
So far almost everything has been purely armorial, and now we will turn
to something different. This is a 1588 German plate; certainly it bears
a small shield of arms, but most of the plate is occupied with the
following engraved inscription: “Reverendus et Nobilis Dominus
Wolfgangus Andreas Rem à Ketz, Cathedralis Ecclesia August: Sum:
Præpositus, librum hunc unà cum mille et tribus aliis, variisque
instrumentis Mathematicis, Bibliothecæ Monasterii S. Crucis Augustæ, ad
perpetuum Conventualium usum. Anno Christi M.D.LXXXVIII. Testamento
legauit.”
We have noticed 1574 as the date of the earliest English dated
bookplate, the next dated is not until 1585, and in France the gap is
still wider; 1574 is the earliest dated French plate, and the next that
has been found is dated 1611.
In Sweden, too, many years passed after the 1595 example without a dated
successor. In Switzerland, also, where the earliest dated _ex libris_
was in 1607, a long interval followed, in which we do not find dated
Swiss _ex libris_. In Italy we do not find any dated _ex libris_ before
1623.
This 1611 plate is that of Alexandre Bouchart, Viscount de Blosseville.
This was found in a folio copy of the works of Ptolemy printed at
Amsterdam in 1605, in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. The
graver-work and probably the design, too, was done by Leonard Gaultier,
who also executed an engraved portrait of Alexandre Bouchart. Leonard
Gaultier was born at Mayence in about 1561, and died in Paris in 1641,
having engraved above eight hundred plates.
Herr Carlander, the chief authority for Swedish bookplates, finds 1596
the earliest date, and this on the plate of Senator Thure Bielke, of
whom we do not know much more than that to his own cost he took the
wrong side in politics, was beheaded in 1600, and had therefore no
further use for his dated _ex libris_.
A German _ex libris_ of near this date is interesting, as, like a good
many others, it is to be found in three sizes. This is the _ex libris_
of Johann Baptist Zeyll, designed by P. Opel, and cut on wood by C. L.
in 1593.
Of course now in the days of photography it is easy to have your
bookplate in several sizes; but it was far otherwise in these old
times.
Next must be named a plate engraved in 1613 for placing in the books
presented by William Willmer, a Northamptonshire gentleman, to his
college library in Cambridge. Mr. Griggs reproduced it among his
eighty-three armorial examples. It is inscribed “Sydney Sussex Colledge
Ex dono Wilhelmi Willmer de Sywell in Com. Northamtoniæ, Armigeri,
quondam pentionarii in ista Domi. Vizin Anno Domini 1599 seddedit in Anº
Dñi 1613.”
In France, as likewise in England, there are hardly any dated bookplates
at this period. Mr. Walter Hamilton, in writing of French _ex libris_
before 1650, refers to three in different sizes, all engraved for Jean
Bigot, Sieur de Sommesnil; and somewhat later, another set differing
from the former, and with the owner’s name engraved as Johannes Bigot.
After that we read of three bookplates engraved for the son, L. E.
Bigot. In this connection the late Mr. Walter Hamilton is drawn on to
give particulars of a family of ardent book collectors, thus
incidentally illustrating very happily how the possession of one dirty
scrap of paper--an old _ex libris_--may lead on from one fascinating
inquiry to another.
A fine characteristic German ecclesiastical _ex libris_ of 1624 is the
plate given--page 330, George Bell and Sons--of Otto Gereon von Gutmann,
Doctor of Theology, Electoral Councillor, and Suffragan Bishop of
Cologne.
A very fine armorial plate, of which we do not know the designer, the
engraver, nor the date, is that of Alexandre Petau. His father, Paul
Petau, Conseiller au Parlement de Paris, died in 1613, bequeathing to
his son a fine library of manuscripts and printed books.
A bookplate in two sizes, engraved for Claude Sarrau, Councillor to the
Parliament of Paris. He died in 1651, and his son Isaac, in 1654, edited
his father’s correspondence with the learned of his time. The larger
Sarrau plate, and probably the smaller as well, were engraved by Isaac
Briot, who was born in 1585, and died in Paris in 1670.
Reaching the seventeenth century, we find German _ex libris_ multiplying
greatly, but not improving in design.
Armorial bookplates still predominate, but the shield is often in one
way or another surrounded by wreaths of leaves and flowers. It can
hardly be insisted on too clearly that there is nothing mysterious,
though much that is interesting, about the varying modes and manners of
_ex libris_. They, in fact, represented the art, customs, learning, and
taste of successive ages.
Thus turn to Johann Sibmacher’s Wappenbüchlein, published in 1596, and
you will find plenty of illustrations of these wreaths, though with no
reference to bookplates.