The tools that binding finishers use to impress designs into the covering materials of books are of roughly three kinds, hand-held stamps and rolls (including fillets), and panels, which because they are larger require the assistance of a screw press. Bookbinders’ panel stamps are customarily made of metal, either engraved or cast from moulds, although as we shall see the earliest used at Bologna were probably cut in wood. Whenever possible, a pair of panels was employed, and both covers were decorated simultaneously, in a single operation. When they incorporate a complete design, and decorate most or all of one side of a binding, panels often are referred to as “plaques.”
This post is the first in a series of three providing details of panel-stamped bindings assumed to have been made at Bologna before about 1560. Presented here are bindings decorated by panels either rectangular in shape, or with the decoration contained within a rectangular frame. In a second post [link] bindings decorated by polylobed elliptical panels of arabesque ornament are described. A third post [link] lists some rectangular panels of arabesque ornament used by bookbinders at Rome.
Fig. 1. A panel used at Bologna ca 1410. The borders contain the words (repeated) “hilf got” - “wan got will” - “getreue kann dich selben”
The same panel is impressed on four volumes of commentaries on Justinian’s Digest of Roman civil law by Bartolo of Sassoferrato, in turn professor at Bologna, Pisa, and Perugia (1314-1357).2 Those manuscripts were written between about 1416 and 1419, by two scribes, Jodocus de Prucia and Johannes Erringer, both German students at Bologna. They were bought by a fellow student, Balthasar Ungerotin (Vngeroten) of Liegnitz (Silesia), who in 1420 was proclaimed doctor juris and returned with them to Wrocław (Breslau).3 The manuscripts are covered in either reddish brown or white leather, drawn again over pasteboards. This novel, technical feature attracted the attention of Anthony Hobson, who assigned all five bindings to Bologna, partly for the reason that manuscripts almost always were bound where they were written (unlike early printed books, ordinarily bound where they were sold). Hobson speculated that the binder was the beadle (bidellus) of the Natio Germanica Bononiae, who was often a stationer, and therefore also a binder.4
Fig. 2. A panel used at Bologna ca 1410-1430. The outer inscription reads “La lengua non [h]a osso ma la corpo et dosso” and in the centre is the single word “amore”
Fig. 3. Panels used at Bologna ca 1410-1430. The visible inscription on the upper cover is a version of the Latin proverb “Haurit aquam cribro, qui discere vult sine libro” (The person who wants to learn without a book is gathering water in a sieve)
Another binding, also in pasteboards, and covered with red leather, is impressed by a different panel (Fig. 2). It contains a theological miscellany (150 x 105mm), written and illuminated at Bologna about 1330.5 This panel follows a similar model, with two inscriptions (in Italian) separated by bands of foliage.6 A seventh binding (Fig. 3), its pasteboards covered by white leather (245 x 238mm), contains a manuscript of De universo spirituali by Guillaume d’Auvergne (1190-1249). Four vellum leaves from the discarded registry of a 13C Bolognese notary were used as endpapers (two at each end). Each cover is impressed with a different panel. On the upper cover are three scenes (a wild man, a wild woman, and Samson’s fight with the lion) enclosed by two inscriptions (in Latin), the outermost absent at top and bottom, as the panel was much too large for volume it decorates. On the lower cover are three roundels (identified by E.P. Goldschmidt as a dwarf, the Paschal Lamb, and a mermaid), again enclosed by two inscriptions (the outermost visible only at the sides).7 Hobson assigned these bindings also to Bologna, but was unsure whether they were bound in the shop of the German Nation, or elsewhere at the university.
Pictorial panel stamps of the type commonly used in north-western Europe from the last quarter of the fifteenth century until about the middle of the sixteenth are almost non-existent in Italy. The few surviving Italian examples belonged to booksellers in Liguria and Piedmont, and their use was doubtless the result of French influence.8 Several panels of interlaced ornament, with openings to accommodate a plaquette (or a hand stamp), were used in Rome ca 1509-1525, either in gilt or blind.9 But by and large, Italian binders continued to decorate covers with hand tools, and rejected the northern labour-saving devices of the panel and the roll.
From the second quarter of the sixteenth century onwards, economic reasons caused binders in the three principal centres of fine binding in Italy - of which Bologna was one - to add panels to their kit of tools. While demand for books no doubt was the precipitating cause, a contributory factor may have been a new fashion for covers richly gilt with arabesque ornament. Such designs were very time-consuming and laborious to build-up using hand tools. The panel saved both time and labour and also gave a much better result.
Fig. 4. Details Left Vavassore, Opera noua uniuersal intitulata corona di racammi (Venice ca 1530) [link]
Centre Zoppino, Esemplario di lavori (Venice 1529) [link]
Right Master F (ca 1530) [link]
Arabesque (or more properly moresque) ornament had been introduced into Italy via Venice late in the fifteenth century and popularised in print series by the Master f (1520-1530) and anonymous printmakers, and in textile pattern books published there by Giovanni Antonio Tagliente (1527), Nicolò Zoppino (1529), Giovanni Andrea Vavassore (1530), Matteo Pagano (1532), among others. Characterised by interlaced vegetal tendrils with stylised leaves, often organised vertically around a central axis, and covering the entire surface, it was applied by craftsmen in the most diverse fields to objects of all kinds, but especially damascened metalwork, furnishing textiles, and bookbindings. Although the published patterns are mostly horizontal strips, ideal models for bookbinders, the Italian binders did not adopt them as templates (as occurred later in France),10 but drew on individual elements or structural principles.
Arabesque ornament on Bolognese bookbindings: Type A (I-A/3, I-A/5, I-A/7, I-A/8 in List below)
Arabesque ornament on Bolognese bookbindings: Types B-C (I-B/2, I-B/6, I-B/7, I-C/1 in List below)
Arabesque ornament on Bolognese bookbindings: Type D (I-D/3, I-D/4, I-D/7, I-D/11 in List below)
Arabesque ornament on Bolognese bookbindings: Type E (I-E/1, I-E/3, I-E/4, I-E/5 in List below)
It was customary for Germans attending the Italian universities at Padua and Bologna to commission bookbindings as mementos of their student years. Typically, the book’s title was displayed within a cartouche on one cover, and the owner’s name in an identical cartouche on the other. A Bolognese bindery active from about 1520 to 1535 which included German students among its clientele (hence designated “The ‘German Students’ Binder’” by Anthony Hobson) produced many such bindings. It employed a limited range of decorative patterns. Initially, its use of gilt arabesque ornament was modest, as for example on the shop’s bindings (Fig. 5a-b) for Jakob von Mosheim (matriculated 1522) and Dietrich (Theodor) von Spiegel (matriculated 1524), which are decorated mostly in blind with arabesque cornerpieces and borders formed by repeated arabesque hand tools, and in gilt by a triangular arabesque block placed at each end of a rectangular cartouche.11
Fig. 5. Bindings by the German Students’ Binder (a [link] b [link] c-d [link])
From about 1524, more elaborate gilt arabesque decoration is seen, as for example on bindings by the German Students’ Binder for V.C.A. (Pieter Van der Vorst?) dated 1524 and 1526 (Fig. 5c-d), and on bindings for the students Alessandro and Ranuccio Farnese (see Type I-A/5 and A/8 in List below). How the German Students’ Binder applied this decoration to the covers is an open question. Hobson declared that it was achieved from “a large plaque of arabesque ornament” and he listed four books printed between 1519 and 1527 in bindings by the German Students’ Binder on which it is featured (I-A/1-4).12 Two of those four bindings have been examined (I-A/3-4) and more examples found (I-A/5-9). Most covers bear traces of lines scored by the binder, in the form of a cross, to enable accurate positioning of a block. However, misaligned tools and an uneven distribution of pressure imply that the decoration on some bindings was executed using half-panel stamps or blocks, engraved or cast, repeated head to tail horizontally (tête-bêche), and applied on the covers by the use of a hammer or in a press. Available illustrations of other bindings, such as that made for V.C.A. in 1526 (I-A/7), suggest the application of a larger, full-panel stamp.
Fig. 6. Details from bindings by the German Students’ Binder (Top I-A/3 Middle I-A/5 Bottom I-A/8)
The design evolved into a stock pattern, which endured until at least 1560 and is associated (by Hobson) with other Bolognese binderies and also with Roman shops. Hobson cites another four bindings on books printed 1515-1549 executed in anonymous Bolognese shops using what he calls a “two-part plaque” (see below, Type I-B/1-4),13 and a binding by “The ‘First S. Salvatore Binder’” covering a Venetian book of 1555 “stamped with a large plaque and lavishly, though roughly, gilt” (I-C/1).14
Judging from illustrations of the four bindings decorated by the “two-part plaque”, it appears that either a different stamp was used for each of the eight covers, or the decoration was built-up using blocks and individual hand tools. But without handling the four bindings, as Hobson presumably did, we hesitate to dispute his claim, and simply re-present his four bindings together with a few additional examples, as an aid for future investigations.
Details (top to bottom) from I-B/1, I-B/2, I-B/3, I-B/4 (upper cover, lower cover, upper cover)
The clientele of the German Students’ Binder and very probably also its equipment were taken over by a binder designated by Hobson the “Pflug & Ebeleben Binder” after its two important clients. Among the shop’s earliest work are three bindings for the student Georg Zollner von Brand, who was promoted doctor of civil and canon law at Bologna in 1535 and afterwards returned to Bamberg. Those bindings (images, [link]) are decorated in the traditional style with blind borders and cornerpieces enclosing a gilt cartouche formed of arabesque ornament.
From about 1540, the shop began producing bindings with gilt arabesque decoration of scrolls and stems and stylised leaves covering the entire surface. Hobson lists eleven bindings featuring “one plaque in two parts, upper and lower” which he believed “was used mainly, and perhaps exclusively, by the ‘Pflug and Ebeleben Binder’” (see below, Type I-D/1-11).15 Hobson mentions an additional binding, “decorated with one of the ‘Students’ Binders’ favourite large plaques accompanied by ‘Pflug and Ebeleben’ tools” (Bologna, Archivio di Stato, Fondo Demaniale, Abbazia di SS. Naborre e Felice, 86/914), and he publishes without comment one covering a portolan atlas which also features the German Students’ Binders’ tools (Fig. 7).16
Fig. 7. Grazioso Benincasa, Atlante nautico (1473), bound ca 1550-1560 by the Pflug & Ebeleben Binder using materials of the German Students’ Binder
Hobson’s expressions “two-part plaque” and “one plaque in two parts” allude to Staffan Fogelmark’s revolutionary study, published in 1990, on the manufacture and use of panel stamps.17 Fogelmark demonstrates that binder’s panels were not engraved, but cast, and therefore were not unique objects, but multiples, identical except in the event of casting flaws. In order to press both covers in a single operation (by far the most economic procedure), binders required two stamps of a panel, hence Hobson’s “one plaque in two parts”. Binders with foresight would have commissioned extra stamps of the same design in anticipation of the damage (cracking) which occurred in daily work. A bindery operating several presses simultaneously might require multiple panels of the same design. If they could not be borrowed from colleagues, the process of “clichage” (re-casting) enabled the binder to create new generations of panels from those in his possession, potentially different from their sources. Thus, two stamps used to decorate the upper and lower boards of a single binding could easily have dissimilar origins. The covers would then exhibit subtle or even profound differences.
The eleven panel-stamped bindings which Hobson associates with the Pflug and Ebeleben Binder are of quite disparate design. His assertion that “one plaque in two parts” was used to decorate all of them is unconvincing, despite Fogelmark’s explanations of the variations produced by repeated clichage. The question once again arises: are some of these bindings decorated by blocks and hand tools, not by panels?
Another Bolognese shop producing gilt bookbindings, known by its most celebrated production, the binding on a Latin Bible bound for Ulrich Fugger, also used arabesque plaques. Hobson supposed that it was situated near the Pflug and Ebeleben Binder, as the two binderies appear to have undertaken jointly the binding of a five-volume Aldine Aristotle, and frequently shared tools. Nevertheless, Hobson distinguished thirteen bindings as bound exclusively by “The Binder of Ulrich Fugger’s Bible” during the comparatively brief period of its activity, ca 1533 to ca 1550. Four bindings in that list are said to be decorated by plaques (E/1, E3-5).
Other types of arabesque panel stamps may be tentatively localised to Bologna by their use in combination with certain emblematic tools. Hobson linked to the Pflug and Ebeleben Binder tools of the Crucifixion (compare here I-D/3) and Madonna and Child (I-D/3, I-D/9, I-K/1), and associated with the Ulrich Fugger’s Bible Binder tools of a Cupid, usually blindfolded and shooting an arrow (I-D/13, I-D/14, I-F/1, I-I/1, I-I/2, I-I/3).18 Tools of a Roman Emperor (?) (I-B/4), the bust-portrait of a poet crowned with a laurel (I-A/3, I-A/4), Fortune on the back of a dolphin holding a billowing sail (I-D/4, I-F/1), the “clasped hands” symbol of faithfulness (I-D/5), a hand with finger pointing upwards to heaven (I-D/8), and the “vase of flames” symbol of love (I-H/1), are centred within the panel on other bindings. Variants of some tools are known, used without a panel stamp on bindings from different towns. For the moment, claims for a Bolognese origin of these bindings rest entirely on provenance.
1. Francesco Zabarella, Commentarium super IV et V libro Decretalium cum repetitione c. Perpendimus (Kraków, Biblioteka Jagiellońska, Rkp. 355 IV; opac, [link]). The first owner of the manuscript is unknown; it later was owned by the humanist Mikołaj Czepiel (ca 1453-1518).
2. Super prima parte Digesti novi (Kraków, Biblioteka Jagiellońska, Rkp. 335 III; opac, [link]); Lectura super prima parte Digesti Infortiati dictis Nicolai Spinelli de Neapoli aucta (Biblioteka Jagiellońska, Rkp. 336 IV; opac, [link]); Lectura super prima parte Digesti Veteris (Biblioteka Jagiellońska, Rkp. 338 IV; opac, [link]); Lectura super secunda parte Digesti Novi (Biblioteka Jagiellońska, Rkp. 340 IV; opac, [link]). Anna Lewicka-Kamińska, “Włoskie oprawy plakietowe z lat 20 XV wieku w Bibliotece Jagiellońskiej [Italian plaque bindings from the 1420s in the Jagiellonian Library; summary in French]” in Biuletyn Biblioteki Jagiellońskiej 24-25 (1975), pp.81-89.
3. Gustav Knod, Deutsche Studenten in Bologna (1289-1562) (Berlin 1899), p.589 no. 3930 ([link]; cf. nos. 2871, 836 for the two scribes); Repertorium Academicorum Germanicorum (rag), [link].
4. A. Hobson, Humanists and bookbinders: the origins and diffusion of the humanistic bookbinding 1459-1559 (Cambridge 1989), Appendix 1: The use of pasteboard in binding (p.253); A. Hobson, “Bookbinding in Bologna” in Schede umanistiche, n.s., 1 (1998), pp.147-175 (p.149); A. Hobson & Leonardo Quaquarelli, Legature bolognesi del Rinascimento (Bologna [1998]), p.10; A. Hobson, “Some early pasteboard bindings - Bologna, Silesia or Kraków” in Association international de Bibliophilie, Actes et communications, Pologne, XXVIIe congrès [2011] ([Czech Republic?] 2017), pp.77-91 (pp.83-84). Hobson suggests that this large panel was “possibly made of wood” (p.80).
5. Ps.-Augustinus, Bernardus Claraevallensis, Thomas de Aquino, etc (Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 675; opac, [link], digitised, [link]). It belonged to Giovanni Gaspare da Sala (ca 1440-1511), who may have inherited it from his father, Bornio da Sala (d. 1469), a jurist at Bologna’s university. Ernst Kyriss, “Zwei unbekannte Plattenstempel aus gotischer Zeit” in Gutenberg Jahrbuch 1955, pp.249-253.
6. The outer inscription “La lengua non [h]a osso ma la corpo et dosso” incorporates a meaningless letter “n” between “la” and “corpo,” leading Hobson to suppose that the binder was an alien, perhaps the beadle of the German Nation in Bologna (op. cit. 2017, pp.81, 84).
7. Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, Ms Add. 6171. E.P. Goldschmidt, “An Italian panel-stamped binding of the fifteenth century” in Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 1 (1949), pp.37-40. Goldschmidt considered that the two panels “must have been metal plates engraved to some depth” (p.37).
8. Francesco Malaguzzi, “Legature del Cinquecento decorate con piastre e placchette nella Biblioteca comunale dell’Archiginnasio” in L’Archiginnasio 90 (1995), pp.23-31; F. Malaguzzi, “Rare legature con piastre e plaquette in biblioteche del Piemonte” in Bulletin du Bibliophile (2005), pp.351-362; Anthony Hobson, “Panel-Stamps used on Italian Bindings” in Comites latentes per gli ottanta anni di Francesco Malaguzzi (Vercelli 2010), pp.49-70.
9. Hobson, op. cit. 1989, p.218 (8c), p.221 (15k, 15l [image]); A. Hobson, “Plaquette and medallion bindings: A supplement” in Bulletin du bibliophile (1994) pp.24-37 (p.75, no. 15lx). A different panel covering a copy of Francesco Cei, Sonecti, capituli, canzone, sextine, stanze et strambocti (Florence: Filippo Giunta, 1503) is cited by Hobson, op. cit. 1989, p.221, no. 15m (Sotheby’s, Bibliotheca Brookeriana: The Aldine Collection A-C, New York, 12 October 2023, lot 263 [link; image]. A panel with three circular openings on a copy of the 1505 Aldine Pontani Opera in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (opac, [link]) is described by Hobson, “Plaquette and medallion bindings: A supplement” in Bulletin du bibliophile (1994) pp.24-37 (p.25, no. 15mm).
10. Fabienne Le Bars, “Maurusias & Co.: the influence of Hieronymus Cock’s print series on bookbinding in sixteenth-century Paris” in Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art 39 (2017), pp.197-214.
11. Compare De Marinis, op. cit. 1960, nos. 1273, 1279 & Pl. 221 (two bindings for Christoph Schlick, a student in Bologna 1523-1526).
12. Hobson, op. cit. 1998, pp.157-158; Hobson & Quaquarelli, op. cit. 1998, p.17.
13. Hobson, op. cit. 1998, p.174; Hobson & Quaquarelli, op. cit. 1998, pp.29-30.
14. Hobson, op. cit. 1998, p.165; Hobson & Quaquarelli, op. cit. 1998, p.22.
15. Hobson, op. cit. 1998, pp.173-174; Hobson & Quaquarelli, op. cit. 1998, p.29.
16. Hobson, op. cit. 1998, p.166; Hobson & Quaquarelli, op. cit. 1998, p.23 and no. 40.
17. Staffan Fogelmark, Flemish and related panel-stamped bindings: evidence and principles (New York 1990).
18. Hobson, op. cit. 1998, p.174; Hobson & Quaquarelli, op. cit. 1998, p.30.
(I-A/1) Gaius Iulius Caesar, Hoc volumine continentur haec. Commentariorum de bello Gallico libri VIII (Venice: Heirs of Aldo Manuzio & Andrea Torresano, [January 1518] November 1519)
provenance
● Budapest, Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Ant. 445 (opac (translation:) Contemporary Italian Renaissance brown leather binding, boards decorated with gilded plates with arabesque patterns, gilded inscription in the middle: ‘C. Ivlii Caesaris Commentaria’, on the back board: ‘Non semper idem’ [link])
literature
Hobson, op. cit. 1998, p.158 [as decorated by a large plaque of arabesque ornament used by “The ‘German Students’ Binder’”]
Hobson & Quaquarelli, op. cit. 1998, p.17
(I-A/2) Marcus Tullius Cicero, In hoc volumine haec continentur. M. T. Cic. Officiorum lib. III. (Venice: Heirs of Aldo Manuzio & Andrea Torresano, February 1519)
provenance
● Chatsworth, Devonshire Collections Archives & Library
literature
J.P. Lacaita, Catalogue of the library at Chatsworth, Volume I A-C (London 1879), p.382 [link]
Hobson, op. cit. 1998, p.158 [as decorated by a large plaque of arabesque ornament used by “The ‘German Students’ Binder’”]
Hobson & Quaquarelli, op. cit. 1998, p.17
(I-A/3) Francesco Petrarca, Il Petrarcha (Venice: Heirs of Aldo Manuzio & Andrea Torresano, July 1521)
(I-B/1) Marcus Tullius Cicero, M. T. Ciceronis Orationum volumen tertium (Venice: Heirs of Aldus Manutius & Andreas Torresanus, August 1519)
(I-C/1) Roberto Caracciolo, Specchio della fede christiana volgare. Nouamente ristampato et con diligenza corretto et historiato (Venice: Bartolomeo Imperatore & Francesco Imperatore, for Pietro Nicolini da Sabbio, 1555)
(I-D/1) [Manuscript, Libro per farsi bella (Ricettario di bellezza)] Incominca il libro dei segreti galanti et prima il trattato per fare diverse acque perfette (mid-16C)
(I-E/1) Dioscorides Pedanius, De medica materia (Basel: Michael Isengrin, 1542)
(I-F/1) Jacopo Sannazzaro, Arcadia di m. Giacomo Sanazaro con la gionta (Toscolano: Paganino Paganini & Alessandro Paganini, [ca 1527-1533])
Image courtesy of Federico Macchi
provenance
● Plinio Fraccaro (1883-1959)
● Pavia, Universitaria, Fondo Fraccaro, 68 H 14
literature
Federico Macchi, Legature storiche nella biblioteca “A. Mai” (“La Biblioteche Trivulziana di Milano e Universitaria di Pavia, possiedono rispettivamente un inedito esemplare di questo genere (Milano, Trivulziana: Opere toscane di Luigi Alemanni, Venetiis, apud haeredes Lucae Antonii Juntae, MDXLII, segnatura Triv. L 1613; Pavia, Universitaria: Fondo Fraccaro, segnatura 68 H 14)” [link])
(I-I/2) Theodorus Gaza, Theodori Grammatices libri. IIII. De mensibus liber eiusdem. Georgii lecapeni de constructione uerborum. Emmanuellis Moscopuli de constructione nominum & uerborum. Eiusdem de accentibus. Hephaestionis Enchiridion (Florence: Heirs of Filippo Giunta, April 1526)