Manuscript graphic models of the post-Tridentine liturgy through the production of Christopher Plantin (original) (raw)
Related papers
Protodesigners: The Spanish briefing and Plantin's graphical evolution
2022
For this Sharp 2022 I intend to critically analyse the importance of the instructions sent by the Spanish crown to Christobal Plantin to produce the new liturgical texts in the context of the Protestant Reformation. The instructions sent between 1572 and 1576 include specific orders that affected the graphic development of the Plantinian liturgical text. Through them, I will trace the graphic evolution of the Plantinian liturgical texts during the first years of their production. Once the orders of the Hispanic crown to the printer are understood, I will analyze how the 1572 copies change with respect to those of 1573. In the latter copies I find handwritten corrections that I will relate to the orders received, hoping to discern between what was ordered and what was delivered. The graphic context of the printer, linked to the socio-political context of the last years of the 16th century, is also key at this point. Having understood the instructions, their application and the origin of other influences, I will offer a conclusion on the importance they had in the graphic evolution of Plantin and the printed book.
2023
The post-Tridentine period and its liturgical book production provided the perfect environment for cultural exchange and fierce competition between publishers. In this context, I will focus on the production of missals by Christopher Plantin and Lucantonio Giunta pointing out the similarities found in the typographic style and general outlook of their imprints. By way of the actual artefacts and the available documentation I will show how the Roman typography Plantin chose for his early production, and how it influenced the outlook of some of the late editions printed by Lucantonio Giunta in Venice. The goal of my paper is to point out how the inner characteristics and graphic evolution of both productions were influenced by a rich context of silent cultural and commercial transnational exchange that, crossing borders, shaped books.
2021
In the early modern Iberian book world, as in the European book world more broadley, most works issuing from the presses contained some form of ornamentation. The nineteen contributions presented here cast light on these visual elements-on thre production and ownership of printers' materials, and on the frequency with which these materials were exchanged and shared. A third of all items printed in the early modern Iberian world carried no imprint at all; for these items, woodblocks and engravings can assist scholars seeking to identify their place of origin or their date of publication. As importantly, decoration and illustration in early print can also reveal much about the history of the graphic arts and evolving forms of cultural presentation. Contributors: Paula Almeida Mendes, Nuria Aranda García, Ángela Barreto Xavier, Helena Carvajal González, Domenico Ciccarello, Don W. Cruickshank, Thomas Cummins, Isabel Cristina Díez Ménguez, Kelly Donahue-Wallace, Benjamin Hazard, María-Eugenia López-Varea, Manuel-José Pedraza-Gracia, Celeste Pedro, Benito Rial Costas, Guadalupe Rodríguez Domínguez, Jeremy Roe, María Sanz Julián, Alejandra Ulla Lorenzo, Neus Verger Arce, Alexander S. Wilkinson. (Library of the Written Word, volume 91). (The Handpress World, volume 72). Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2021. ISBN 978-90-04-44713-4. ISSN 1874-4834
Print Culture at the Crossroards. The Book and Central Europe, edited by Elizabeth Dilleburg, Howard Louthan and Drew B. Thomas, Brill Publishing, 2021, 2021
Post-Tridentine Liturgical books, such as Breviaries and Missals, have until now been scarcely considered in Book history, although they may provide a wide range of insights, crossing cultural, political, religious and confessional history. Moreover, scrutinizing liturgical calendars and Propers of Saints makes possible to reassess such seemingly independent topics as the question of coexistence of norms and competences in celebrating feasts, the one of local identities interacting with the new frame of the Roman Breviary (since 1568) and Roman Missal (since 1570), and even the changes in vernacular literary culture of the Counter-Reformation. All those aspects and processes deserve better understanding in Central Europe. In Historiography, Central European bishops are commonly supposed to have soon accepted the new Roman liturgical order, though the point is by no means so simple. Furthermore, liturgical reorganization, breviaries and hagiographical books had many features in common, as already brilliantly demonstrated, for instance, by Simon Ditchfield for Italian Piacenza. On one side, ancient and recent Breviary lessons often appear as a matrix for vernacular hagiography and catholic devotional books in Czech, Hungarian, German or Polish during the Counter-Reformation era. On the other side, the new Officia propria sanctorum patronorum of the Kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary mixed Latin old and new texts, but were always presented as the true expression of timeless local historical and sacral tradition, in a time of re-conversion to Catholicism and complete disruption of religious habits. Though these books should have been approved by the Roman Congregation of Rites, some of them introduced “old-new” feasts and saints -especially in Bohemia. We shall try to reconstruct the local reasons of such liturgical innovations and to highlight their links to latin and vernacular literary culture, as well as to the reshaping of local identities.