Study material, the old textbook examined

As you may know we, at Van der Steur, live amongst the mysterious history of more than 40.000 books and prints. Logically we are unable to read each and every one of them. This is why it can be very refreshing when a new intern stumbles upon an object that tells a greater story than just the one that is written inside. When our intern Sterre van der Sijde took a book from the shelf in our section dedicated to classical literature she noticed immediately that the book in her hands was special. This beautiful work, titled Fabulae Aesopi Graecè & Latinè is not bound in linen, leather or blank parchment as could be expected. Oddly enough it is bound in a parchment manuscript page with rubrication (sentences in red ink) and decorated initials. 

 

When opened, the book shows that it concerns the 1672 version of the fables of the Greek slave Aesopus (600 BC) and those of the Latin poet Avianus (400 to 500 AD), written in Greek and Latin in parallel columns. 

The book concludes with the poem ‘Batrachomyomachia’ or ‘Battle of the frogs and mice’, attributed to Homer. This book was first published in Amsterdam in 1626 as a study book for Latin and Greek scholars. The particular edition was provided by the academic Daniel Heinsius (1580-1655) from Leiden and copied at least eleven times without any major changes. It appeared to be in use for this purpose until 1727. 

Can you remember how your study books looked after toiling with them for a year? If they looked a bit like mine I find it astonishing that this small fable book survived this well for almost 350 years.

The fables in this book feature exquisite woodcarvings by the Swiss/Dutch woodcutter and engraver Christoffel van Sichem (1581-1658). Van Sichem made prints after portraits by his father, Christoffel van Sichem the Elder, and leading artists such as Bloemaert and Goltzius. For this fable book he made forty-one beautiful illustrations. The clearness of the cuts gives a modern feel to the plates. The illustration on page 73, ‘the fox and the goat’, is the only woodcut left that shows the monogram of van Sichem.

Besides the unusual binding, function and decoration there is definitely something else to talk about. On the recto of the first flyleaf, in between the stamps of institutions that previously owned the book, is an indication present of two V.I.P. from the past. The handwritten text: “Ex libris Joh: Conradi Zwinglij. Ao: 1693” and “Martini Usterii 1780”. The first name 'Johannes Conradi Zwinglij (Zwingli)' sounds familiar because the surname Zwingli was made famous by the Swiss reformer Huldrych Zwingli (1484-1531). Whether Johannes Conradi is a distant relative is not clear. The second name mentioned is Martini Usterii, better known as Johann Martin Usteri (1763-1827). 

Usteri, who was 17 when he signed this little book, was a famous swiss poet and engraver who was best known for his romantic idylls and historical prints. It's quite interesting to imagine to what extent an artist like Usteri could have been influenced by the fable illustrations he saw in his youth.

If there is one thing that we have learned from this little work of art, it is that our collection is like a treasure chest waiting to be discovered. 

  

 





Sanne Hansler

A fake Potter: history of a small album of prints

The Friesian Horse

In 1652, Paulus Potter (1625-1654) produced a series of five prints of horses in landscapes.^[1] In 1974 Jan Verbeek suggested that these prints represent different seasons, namely spring, late spring, summer, autumn and winter, and that the demeanour and the condition of the animals correspond to the stages in human life.^[2]

The Album

The album in our collection contains remarkable copies of the second and third states of this well-known series by Potter. It is highly likely that these etchings were made by Ignace-Joseph de Claussin (France, 1766-1844). De Claussin was an amateur engraver who travelled through England and the Netherlands. He etched an impressive number of copies – more than 200 – after the most famous Dutch masters in his collection: Rembrandt, Potter, Berchem, Du Jardin. From literature we know that he definitely copied Potter’s Vaches et taureaux.^[3]

 

The Worn-out horse

The album is bound in blue paper, with an annotation on the front: “Vente de Rigal en 1817 (...)” and a note pasted in the doublure with a brief description of the volume in French. These prints are best seen in their original setting, in their frail but at the same time effective binding. The plates however do not follow the order proposed in 1974 by Jan Verbeek. Although he suggested that the prints should have been read as a progression, from the young and healthy horse to the worn-out and dead ones, the album is not in the order as proposed by Verbeek which is: 1) the healthy clean Friesian; 2) the Neighing horse; 3) the Cropped horse; 4) the Plough horse; and finally 5) the Worn-out horse. In the album however, the Worn-out horse is placed between the first two plates and the Cropped horse is located at the end. 

 

The Cropped horse

The symbolism of decay was not taken into consideration in this album. Instead, we think that the copyist arranged the prints according to the order of another album of originals by Potter that he might have seen previously. However, this remains speculation. 

 

The Neighing horse

The etchings are very sharp, so they might be from among the first pressed. Overall the plates are somewhat smaller than the originals, but they preserve the same direction and the copyist carefully transcribed the date and the signature of Potter on each plate. The etcher did his best to copy the originals faithfully, yet his skills did not allow him to obtain the same successful results of Potter. For example in the Neighing horse the head of the animal is very dark and flattened, especially in the neck area. Either the etcher etched too deeply in the plate and his scratches are too close to each other, or he did not know how to handle the mordant and its timing. Similarly, the landscapes in the background suffer de Claussin’s inexperience. Potter was able to create a thick atmosphere between the foreground with scant vegetation beside the horses and the villages in the distance, whereas in the plates by the French master the sense of a three-dimensional space is less perceivable, due to the sharpness of the contours of the houses in the background. 

 

The Plough horse

What is further interesting is that we know that the album was sold at the sale of the Count of Rigal in 1817 as a suite of copies.^[4] In the sale catalogue these prints are praised for their similarity to the originals: it is noted that they preserve the same direction but are smaller in size. 

by Anna Bianco

Ref. nr. 60561

---

^[1] Hollstein, F.W.H. Hollstein's Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, Ca. 1450-1700. Vol. XVII. Amsterdam: Van Gendt &, 1976. Print. Andries Pauli (Pauwels) - Johannes Rem. “Series of Horses” 9-13, pp. 216-218. 

^[2] Verbeek, Jan. “Vroege staten van de etsen van Paulus Potter. 1625-1645”. Antiek vol. 10 (1974), pp. 854-861. In the same school of thought is the article by Alexandra Turnbull ‘The Horse in Landscape: Animals, Grooming, Labour and the City in the Seventeenth-Century Netherlands’ included in Shift: Queen’s Journal of Visual & Material Culture, no. 3 (2010), pp. 1-24, available online (link).

^[3] Treydel, Renate. "Claussin, Ignace Joseph de" Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon. Berlin, Boston: K. G. Saur. 2015.

^[4]Catalogue Raisonné Des Estampes Du Cabinet De M. Le Comte Rigal. Paris: Chez L'auteur, 1817. Print., lot 635, p. 288-289.

Steven Blankaart's ‘De borgerlyke tafel, om lang gesond sonder ziekten te leven’

 

With the New Year come new resolutions. What more popular than the wish to eat healthier in the next year, or at least until we feel better about ourselves or swimwear worthy.

So how do you go about eating healthier? First of all you should know what to eat and what not of course. These days it is all about the super foods, raw food, no carbs, no fat (or is fat good now?) and so on. Every year seems to have a new trend in what is healthy and what not. 

Apparently hundreds of years ago people suffered from the same ideas as we do now. In fact it is the other way around: we still have this obsession with health trends, and have had this for a long time. In 1683 a book was published in Amsterdam called ‘De borgerlyke tafel, om lang gesond sonder ziekten te leven’ (The civil table, to live a long healthy life without illness). 

The title is so refreshing: it says exactly what the purpose of the book is! So this book is a kind of cookbook with the latest healthy food tips, just like there are so many today. Actually the title of the book is more elaborate, it goes on as follows: ‘Waar in van yder spijse in ‘t besonder gehandelt werd. Mitsgaders een beknopte manier van de spijsen voor te snijden, en een onderrechting der schikkelijke wijsen, die men aan de tafel moet houden.' (In which every ingredient is treated separately. Furthermore with a concise manual of the cutting of the dishes, and an education in table manners). So the author Steven Blankaart, a physician of profession, had huge goals in mind with this book. The frontispiece (engraved title print) shows that he had a very broad audience in mind as well. At the table young, adult and old all eat the healthy food that Blankaart prescribes in this book. 

[Reference Nr. B1467]

by Hugo Rijpma