THE COURSE: DESCRIPTION
Professor Richard Cooper
History of the book and its illustration in Lyon in the 16th century
The introduction to the course will consist of an overview of printing in Lyon up to outbreak of the Wars of Religion (1562). Printing reaches Lyon in 1472/73, when the first merchant booksellers like the Lyonnais Barthélemy Buyer start publishing, entrusting the production of their books to printers like the Belgian Guillaume Leroy. Lyon quickly specialises in illustrated books, printing the first illustrated book in French, followed soon after by the magnificent edition of Terence by the Trechsels (1493). At the turn of the century, Lyon is producing a third of all books printed in France and, with Paris, will dominate the book trade in France for the sixteenth century. Thanks to its strategic position close to the Italian and Swiss borders, and the availability of finance from bankers and merchants, Lyon attracts printers from abroad, who set up distribution networks throughout Europe, including Germany and Spain.
The period 1530-60 is the heyday of Lyonnais printing is. For thirty years, the German printer Sébastien Gryphe publishes classical texts and the latest humanist works in editions widely distributed, almost exclusively in Latin and Greek. By contrast a printer like François Juste publishes mainly vernacular works, including new writing by Rabelais or Marot, In the 1540s, the two rival houses of Jean de Tournes (a printer) and Guillaume Roville (a publisher), greatly diversify their production, focusing on Italian works, new poetry, and emblem books, many of them richly illustrated. Jacques Moderne also opens up a new market in Lyon in the printing of music.
Many of the printers and their employees are protestants, and the outbreak of the Wars of Religion, with the sack of the city in 1562, led to a many printers choosing exile, and printing entering a decline from which Lyon took time to recover.
We will look at case studies of some major Lyonnais printers, the range of subjects they published, and the role of illustration in their books.
Dr Paul Taylor
Book illustrations, title pages and bookbindings
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Dr Taylor’s course aim is to introduce the subject matter of Lyon book illustrations before 1600. Most of the images in books of the period assume knowledge of a religious, literary and philosophical context which is no longer familiar, and if we are to understand what illustrations depict we need to engage in a form of cultural archaeology, which will allow us to reconstruct the references and allusions of the imagery of the time.
There are many thousands of different subjects in sixteenth-century imagery, and it will only be possible in this brief course to introduce the main types of image, and to give some idea of how they functioned in European culture. The course will consist of six 90-minute classes taught over three days, devoted to 1) biblical illustration and typology, 2) antiquities, mythology and literature, 3) personifications, emblems and devices, 4) portraits and pageants, 5) divination and astrology, and 6) alchemy, medicine and geography.
Dr Barbara Tramelli
Between text and Image:
the collection of illustrated books at the municipal library of Lyon 1480-1600 (Municipal Library, Lyon)
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The printing industry in Lyon during the Renaissance is characterized by the importance given to illustration. The number of books printed in the city during the sixteenth century is around 25,000, of which we estimate that at least 2,000 are illustrated. The Bibliothèque Municipale (Public Library) in Lyon hosts the largest collections of early printed books in France outside Paris, and for the first lesson I will select and present (subject to curators’ approval) some of the highlights of the collection, among which the Mirouer de la Redemption de l’Humaine Lignage, the first illustrated book printed in France, in order to give an overview on the developments and growing popularity of illustrated books in the city. I will make comparisons between editions and between images, to see how the same iconographic subject was reinterpreted by different artists in the same period.
The printing process and the print matrices as objects of knowledge
(Museum of Printing)
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In recent years, art historical research increasingly shifted its focus on the role of artistic materials and tools as key-narrators of the artistic process as well as bearers of artistic value in themselves. For printed images, surviving cut woodblocks, engraved plates and other print matrices convey essential information which the final product cannot offer, concerning (but not limited to) artists and printers’ techniques and ways of working. The Musée de l’Imprimerie in Lyon holds a very large collection of print matrices, among which an exceptional collection of around 600 woodblocks with different biblical episodes engraved or drawn. In order to better understand the illustrations seen at the Bibliothèque Municipale, this class will focus on a selection of woodblocks (to be selected with the permission of the Museum’s curators) to gain insight into this crucial surviving material, in order to understand how these objects were produced, used and shared among printers in the city of Lyon in the sixteenth century.
Indexing iconographic developments:
The Warburg Institute database (Enssib)
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This class will offer a more technical approach on the digital collection ‘Le livre illustré à Lyon’ hosted by the Warburg Database. It will present an introduction on the history of the Warburg Photographic Collection, an explanation of the Iconographic types in the Database and of the ways of indexing. It will then present examples of iconographic developments, and it will end with a practical example of how to create a file in the database and how to create multiple indexations for a complex illustration.