great bindings from the spanish royal collections

Great Bindings from the

Spanish Royal Collections15th – 21st centuries

This book brings together the most select pieces from the Hapsburg

and Bourbon collections from the fi fteenth to the twenty-fi rst cen-

turies, which are analysed from different perspectives by the most

prestigious international experts on the art of bookbinding.

It deals with aspects ranging from the complex relations between

Francis I of France and Charles V, which are the context for a group

of French bindings held at El Escorial; the varied commissions of

Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, who gave the contents of his library to

Philip II; and the structure of limp parchment bindings and their

production process, which provide useful information for studying

the circulation of books in Europe; to bindings executed by known

typographers such as Plantin and Bodoni; and, fi nally, the serial but

distinctive bindings on the books in the Real Biblioteca that were

created by royal bookbinders as part of the effort to shape a national

historical image for the king. All this is accompanied by more than

two hundred colour illustrations and a complete thematic bibliogra-

phy on bookbinding in Spain.

E D I C I O N E S E L V I S O

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153D O S M O M E N T O S D E L A E N C U A D E R N A C I Ó N F R A N C E S A E N L A S C O L E C C I O N E S P A T R I M O N I A L E S

Fig . 96

Volumes bound in Paris in the early 1540s with gilt titles on the spine, preserved in the Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial

Fig . 97

Guillaume Budé, Libri V de Asse. Venetiis: in aedibus Aldi, et Andreae Asulani soceri, 1522. Bound in dark blue morocco. RBME, 177.IV.14


100 101

9998

158 I S A B E L L E D E C O N I H O U T A N D P A S C A L R A C T - M A D O U X


A Gift, from Whom and for Whom?

If the peculiarity common to these bindings—

the title gilded on the spine—necessarily points

to the court of Francis I as the source of this

order to the binders, the precise details of it

remain unknown. It is extremely difficult to

extrapolate from the printing dates of the

volumes, since it is probable that these eigh-

teen bindings represent only a part of a group

that must have been considerably larger. The

publication date of 1540 of several of the vol-

umes rules out the idea that they were sent

to Charles V after his journey through France.

The gift is more likely to have been made in

the following months, in 1540, 1541 or at the

beginning of 1542 (as stated above, war would

be officially declared on 12 July 1542).

The volumes have no armorial bearings,

nor do they figure in any of the published

inventories of the Spanish royal libraries.8

Were they sent to Charles V personally? The

choice of authors (Erasmus, Cicero, Latin poets

Figs. 102 and 103

Angelo Poliziano, Opera .... Lugduni: apud Seb. Gryphium, 1536–37, 3 tomes in 2 vols. Bound in white sheepskin with different gold ornamentation on each volume. RBME, 37.VI.31–32

Fig . 104

Thomas Aquinas, Principis ac sacre scripture sinceri interp[re]tis Commentarij in Soliloq[ui]a, sive hymnos davidicos .... Lugdu[ni]: In edibus Jacobi myt: impensis Jacobi q. Fra[n]scici de giu[n]ta et sociorum fl orentinoru[m], 1520. Bound in calfskin originally painted black. RBME, 177.V.11

160 I S A B E L L E D E C O N I H O U T Y P A S C A L R A C T - M A D O U X

Fig . 105

Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, Institutionum oratoriarum libri XII. Lugduni: apud Seb. Gryphium, 1536. Bound in bronze green morocco. RBME, 80.IV.1

Fig . 106

Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae. Lugduni: apud Seb. Gryphium, 1534. Bound in bronze green morocco. RBME, 56.IV.22

Fig . 107

Ambrosius Aurelius Theodosius Macrobius, In Somnium Scipionis libri II; Saturnaliorum libri VII. Excud. Lugd.: Seb. Gryphius Germ., 1532. Bound in bronze green morocco. RBME, 56.IV.23

Fig . 108

Marcus Tullius Cicero, M. Tullij Ciceronis Rhetoricorum libri quatuor ad Herennium. Parisiis: ex offi cina Simonis Colinaei, 1539. Bound in bronze green morocco. RBME, 80.IV.5

Fig . 109

Guillaume Budé, Annotationes Gulielmi Budaei ... in quatuor & viginti Pandectarum libros...: per autore[m] diligentissime recognitae & auctae. Basileae: apud Thomam Volffi um, 1534. Bound in citron morocco. RBME, 74.IV.10

Fig . 110

Decius Junius Juvenal, Satyrae iam recens recognitae, simul ac adnotatiunculis, quae breuis commentarij uice esse possint, illustratae. Lugduni: apud Seb. Gryphium, 1538; Iacopo Sannazaro, Opera omnia .... Lugduni: apud Seb. Gryphium, 1536. Bound in brown morocco. RBME, 17.V.1


106 107

109 110

165T H R E E A S P E C T S O F F R E N C H B I N D I N G S I N T H E S P A N I S H N A T I O N A L H E R I T A G E C O L L E C T I O N S


Here we set out our objections to the

conclusions of Colin and Nixon. Some forty

volumes in their list certainly constitute a

very homogenous group (Antwerp printings,

Spanish authors, Spanish dedicatees or own-

ers, similar decorative style), but the presence

of others is harder to explain, or cannot be

explained at all. The binding most evidently

foreign to this homogenous group is the one

that bears the device and emblems of Henry

II, preserved in Oxford (CN 41).25

It covers a book of hours printed in 1549

by Regnauld and Claude Chaudière. It is

unprecedented and furthermore totally improb-

able that a book printed in Paris and meant

for Henry II should have been sent abroad

to be bound. And even more unlikely in view

of the absolute evidence that the copy was

presented to the king by Chaudière. The

elegant and skilfully designed decoration

includes two wide bows and an emblem; it

also bears eight stamps of the small Cupid’s

Fig . 123Flavius Josephus, Los siete libros de Flauio Iosefo los quales contienen las guerras de los Iudios, y la destrucion de Hierusalem y d’el templo / traduzidos agora nueua-mente segun la verdad de la historia por Iuan Martin Cor-dero .... En Anuers: en casa de Martin Nucio ..., 1557. Binding with the painted royal coat of arms. RBME, 33.V.17

Fig . 122Ivo, bishop of Chartres, Pannormia, seu Decretum, D. Iuo-nis Carnothensis episcopi restitutu[m], correctum, & emen-datum / opera & diligentia Melchioris à Vosmediano .... Louanii: ex officina Antonij Maria Bergagne ..., 1557. RBME, 25.VI.20

Fig . 124Tommaso Fazello, De rebus Siculis decades duae .... Pan-ormi: ex officina Ioannis Matthaei Maydae, 1558. Bound in green and red morocco. RBME, 60.IX.13


Fig. 125 Pedro Alfonso de Burgos, Dialogi de immortali-tate animae .... Barcinone: apud Claudium Bornat, 1561. French “spineless” binding. RBME, 6.V.54

tomer) when he executed, on a copy of the

Viaje probably intended for Pérez [fig. 118],

a highly ingenious semé pattern on two small,

very elegant stamps, one of which also adorns

the Ode.

In 1557 and 1558, in a dramatic turn of

events, the Antwerp workshop produced six

remarkable bindings (our group C) whose

decoration featured two Parisian tools employed

on the “Plantin” bindings in group A, as well

as some new tools that formed part of the

Cupid’s Bow bindery. These bindings, deco-

rated by a competent gilder, were not taken

into account by Colin and Nixon.26 On the

other hand, they did study two bindings (on

Plantin printings) executed nearly forty years

later, on which the decoration includes some

tools from the same sources. Nixon very cor-

rectly concluded that the Parisian Cupid’s

Bow workshop had ceased to exist, probably

in 1556, and that part of its tools had turned

up in Antwerp.

For our part we are convinced that the

six uncatalogued bindings in the Escorial were

executed in an Antwerp workshop belonging

to Plantin or patronised by him.

We end this section with an extraordinary

binding, without a cover on the spine, which

is certainly Parisian and which covers the

dedication copy to Philip II of a work printed

in Barcelona in 1561 by Claude Bornat (Alfon-

sus, Dialogi de immortalitate animae, Barce-

lona, 1561) [fig. 125].

Only four sixteenth-century French bind-

ings with uncovered spines had appeared

until now, all made for a corpus such as the

one in the Escorial. At first we thought that

Plantin could have served as intermediary

for the commissioning of this binding in

Paris, but it was more probably Claude Bornat

who himself took charge of it, since in 1564

the dedication copy to Philip II of another

work published by him, in a Spanish binding

on this occasion, is half-decorated with the

same very elegant stamp-impressed design.


Fig . 126Almanach Royal. Á Paris: De l’Imprimerie de la Veuve d’Houry, au Saint-Esprit, 1749–58. Bindings by Pierre-Paul Dubuisson. RB, PAS/ARM3/44–53

great bindings from the spanish royal collections

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