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| WFU
4-6
Anonymous, French Various pages fr. Horae, or Books of Hours Simon de Vostre, publisher Woodcut, metalcut, paper, c. 1500 6 5/8" x 4 1/8" |
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development of printing with movable type in the mid-fifteenth century
led to the rapid spread of literacy from the clergy to the learned elite
and into the middle classes. Because printing on paper was one-fifth the
cost of manuscript production, books became more readily available to all
people. To meet the demands of the public, printing quickly became a commercial
business serving sacred, learned, bureaucratic, and popular needs. The
first market was for religious devotions, Psalters and Books
of Hours, also known as Horae. While members of the royalty
and the wealthier classes continued to commission manuscripts, the presses
catered to the larger public.
The earliest Book of Hours evolved from an appendix in the Psalter to a devotional book in its own right. These books were not subject to clerical control, so they could be decorated with greater or lesser elaboration, often "reflect[ing] vanity and affluence, not piety of the owner".1 The examples in the Wake Forest Collection are modest in comparison with the elaborate hand-written, painted, and gilded books on vellum and parchment held by the wealthier classes. Although the pages appear simple, they were published by one of the most successful Parisian publishers of the period, Simon de Vostre. Vostre worked closely with the printer Phillipe Pigouchet, using his press until at least 1502 to produce the greatest number of Books of Hours under one imprint.3 The pages in the Wake Forest collection, printed on paper with hand inked initial letters, are superb examples of typical French motifs and handling. The printed Horae purposefully follow the format of the older manuscripts, containing the same prayers, devotions, and schemes of illustration. The difference, however, was more technical than visual, as woodcut illustrations were colored by hand and spaces for initials were left to be filled in by a scribe. Text, initials, miniatures, and borders create a harmonious unit in the page of the Horae. The text is printed from a woodcut carved with simple tools, usually only a sharp knife and a flat gouge. The illustrations and borders are printed from separate blocks of wood or metal, most likely tin or pewter, which was soft enough to carve but durable enough to print repeatedly. The illustrations in the collection are a mixture of metalcuts and woodcuts, demonstrating the common practice of printers to exchange and reuse old blocks. The styles and techniques of the blocks of print on a single page show the development of printmaking techniques. Blocks in the earliest black line style are juxtaposed with blocks of plain black ground. The most complex style has a black background and white dots or lines and is printed from metal blocks, which gradually replaced the less durable wood blocks. This is known as manière criblée, or the ‘dotted manner’, a peculiarly French technique. Spaces were left for the initials, which were added later by hand painting or by hand inking and stamping a single block. The prints in the collection contain red and blue initials. The components, except for the additional initials, were arranged into a frame and printed as a single page. Although the three Simon de Vostre pages in the collection may not have come from the same book, they are clearly related to one another in size, composition, style, and subject matter. The borders of all three pages gradually increase in width from the inner margin clockwise around to the lower margin. Slim foliate and animal designs make up the inner and upper edges of all three pages. A flower motif is repeated in the upper right border of numbers 5 and 6. The left borders of numbers 4 and 6 contain scenes from the life of Christ. The texts on these two pages refer to the lives of the saints who are depicted in the borders. St. Jerome with his lion, St. Stephen holding a rock, and St. Lawrence with the grid are shown in the borders of number 4. St. Sebastian, who is shot with arrows, is shown on number 6. All three of the leaves also have images of sibyls, the ancient prophetesses who foretold the coming of Christ. The Cumaean Sibyl, who foretold the Nativity, is shown with a cradle on number 4; the Hellespontine Sibyl stands beside a cross on number 5; and the Tiburtine Sibyl, holding her severed hand, is on number 6. These images, which were probably used very frequently, were executed in the manière criblée. Perhaps most appealing, although unrelated to the texts, are the hunting scenes of number 5. Scenes of hunting, peasants dancing, children playing, the gathering of fruit , and other images of country life often appear in Simon de Vostre’s books. They show the increasing secularization of subject matter typical of French art of this period. Most of the Books of Hours maintained the traditional Latin texts; however, the illustrations often contain captions in the vernacular. This and the profusion of illustrations suggest that the makers of the books considered the illiterate consumers as well as the more educated reader. Religion was an important aspect in the lives of all medieval people, and these small devotionals provided them with personal guidelines for worship. Aside from the importance of the books as devotionals and as great French Renaissance works of art, they are important for illustrating the transition of the written book to the printed one and from the painted picture to the print. G.M. 1.
Harthan, 1977, 32.
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