The Golden Compasses

The History of the House of Plantin-Moretus

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Chapter 8
Illustration

As a bookseller Plantin bought and sold prints,^1. but it is the engravings he had made to illustrate his own publications that are the concern of this chapter. Of all the aspects of the Plantinian press it is book illustration that has been dealt with in most detail, although there has been as yet no general, overall survey of the subject and recourse has to be made to the many specialized studies which have appeared.^2. The art-historical importance of book illustration explains this interest and so far it has been experts in this field who have produced such studies.

1. A.J.J. Delen, ‘Christoffel Plantin als prentenhandelaar’, De Gulden Passer, 10, 1932, pp. 1-24. Remarkable letter from Plantin to a Paduan nobleman, Franciscus Gentilis, about ‘antiquarian’ prints - by Albrecht Dürer - their value, and the collector's fever they were causing (Corr., I, no. 59, 19th July 1567).

2. For Plantin's period, Rooses, Musée, pp. 175-190; and notably A.J.J. Delen, ‘Les artistes collaborateurs de Christophe Plantin’, Sept études publiées à l'occasion du quatrième centenaire du célèbre imprimeur anversois, Christophe Plantin, 1920, pp. 85-123; cf. also A.J.J. Delen, ‘Les illustrateurs français de Christophe Plantin’, Le Bibliophile, 2, 1932, pp. 63-74 and 175-183. A general but interesting summary is R. Nash, ‘Plantin's illustrated books’, Gedenkboek der Plantin-dagen, 1956, pp. 270-282. The artists around Plantin are also discussed in the general setting of the graphic arts of the sixteenth-century Netherlands in A.J.J. Delen, Histoire de la gravure dans les anciens Pays-Bas et dans les provinces belges, des origines jusqu'à la fin du XVIII^e siècle. II. 1. Le XVI^e siècle. Lesgraveurs-illustrateurs, 1935. M. Rooses wrote scholarly and informative introductions to issues of certain Plantinian engravings, which were printed from the original wood-blocks or copperplates: De houtsneden uitgevoerd voor den Brevier en voor den Missaal in-folio. Les bois gravés pour le Breviaire et pour le Missel in-folio, 1910 (woodcuts by A. Nicolai, A. van Leest, G. Janssen van Kampen, C. Muller, G. van Parijs; and C. Jegher, seventeenth century);De houtsneden uitgevoerd voor de brevieren, de missalen en andere kerkelijke boeken. Les bois gravés pour les breviaires, les missels et autres livres liturgiques, 1911 (the various artists and woodcutters who worked for Plantin, together with C. Jegher); Het Oud en het Nieuw Testament. L'Ancien et le Nouveau Testament, 2 vols., 1911 (reproductions from the wood-blocks of an unpublished Old Testament and a New Testament that appeared in 1571; drawings by G. Ballain, woodcuts by A. Nicolai, G. Janssen van Kampen, C. Muller, M. Duchesne); De Emblemata van Hadrianus Junius. Herdruk der Plantijnsche uitgave, 1902; also with introductory text in French: Les Emblèmes d'Hadrianus Junius. Réimpression de l'édition plantinienne de 1565, 1901 (drawings by G. Ballain and P. Huys, woodcuts by G. Janssen van Kampen, and A. Nicolai). See also M. Rooses, ‘De Plantijnsche uitgaven van “Emblemata Joannis Sambuci”,’ Tijdschrift voor Boek- en Bibliotheekwezen, 2, 1904, pp. 7-21 (drawings by L. d'Heere and P. Huys, woodcuts by A. Nicolai, C. Muller, G. Janssen van Kampen). Cf. also p. 238, note 1 (Jan Wiericx) and p. 239, note 4 (Crispijn de Passe). For the seventeenth century only Rubens's activities as a designer for the Officina Plantiniana have been studied in any detail: H.F. Bouchery & F. van den Wijngaert, P.P. Rubens en het Plantijnsche huis, 1941, replaced M. Rooses's work, Petrus-Paulus Rubens en Balthasar Moretus. Eene bijdrage tot de geschiedenis der kunst, 1884 (see also p. 234, note 11). The craftsmen who engraved Rubens's drawings are also discussed in these works, but there is no study dealing with the others; incidental information about a few of them is in Rooses, Musée. For the later Moretuses, from c. 1660 to the end of the firm's activities, an excellent study is available: F. van den Wijngaert, ‘De late Moretussen en de boekillustratie’, De Gulden Passer, 25, 1947, pp. 186-240, and 26, 1948, pp. 150-205. There are interesting notes about the artists represented by extant drawings in the Museum (and sometimes about the engravers who interpreted their drawings) in F. van den Wijngaert, De oude tekeningen van het Museum Plantin-Moretus. Catalogus. For a number of minor studies, see pp. 233 sqq.

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In the heyday of the Officina Plantiniana there were only two means of illustrating a printed book: woodcuts and copperplate engravings (incised with a burin or etched).^1. At the end of the eighteenth century, lithography introduced a new medium, and somewhat later steelplate engraving began to compete with copperplate. The Moretuses of the nineteenth century only very occasionally made use of these new techniques,^2. and so the woodcut and the copperplate

1. And also engravings en relief in copper or lead. In the wood-block collection of the Museum there are some alphabets executed in this technique: one - incomplete - alphabet in copper (22 pieces: nos. 13656-13677) and three alphabets in lead (1: nos. 13567-13584, 13763, 13764; 2: nos. 13597-13655; 3: nos. 13585-13596 [12 variants of the initial I]; altogether 91 pieces). No data are available concerning the designers and engravers. The alphabet consisting of nos. 13567-13584, 13763, 13764 can be ascribed to the sixteenth century, and the one consisting of nos. 13585-13596 to the eighteenth. The others could belong either to the seventeenth or the eighteenth century.

2. In 1825 a 24mo diurnal with steel engravings (Van den Wijngaert, ‘De late Moretussen,’ II, p. 203) and in 1831 a 16mo breviary with lithographs (Bouchery & Van den Wijngaert, P.P. Rubens en het Plantijnsche huis, p. 67).

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engraving remained the basis of book illustration in the Plantin press from start to finish. This presupposed specialists to cut the wood-blocks or to engrave or etch the copperplates. Often an artist is proficient in both forms, but the craftsmen working for the Plantin house stuck consistently to one or the other. When judging their work it must always be borne in mind that they themselves would have been masters of workshops: many a wood-block or copperplate, ascribed to a particular master on the grounds of style, a signature, or references in the Plantinian records, was in reality wholly or partially the work of an anonymous journeyman or even apprentice, albeit under his master's supervision.^1. It was possible too that in engravings letters and figures were cut by different craftsmen.^2.

Most of these specialists were technicians rather than creative artists.^3. Pieter van der Borcht designed his own etchings; Pieter Huys produced designs and also engraved those of others. Jan Wiericx, Theodoor Galle, Schelte a Bolswert, and Karel de Mallery occasionally did the drawings from which they made their plates. Christoffel Jegher was paid on several occasions for the designs for his woodcuts. These were exceptions, however, most practitioners working to models, whether illustrations appearing in other books or drawings supplied by more creative artists. It was therefore the

1. A good example, but the only explicit one the author has found: Arch. 38, f^o 96^vo (Arnold Nicolai, woodcutter: ‘Le 17 mars [1557, 1558, or 1559] baillé la Chyromantie de Tricasse à tailler par son garson les figures et luy mesmes la lectre à 3½ st. pièce’).

2. Especially for copperplates. A. Huberti's activities for the firm were largely confined to engraving letters on other artists' plates. E.g., Arch. 21, f^o 13, 1589 [April]: ‘Pour tailleure des lectres en diverses plates’ 3 fl. 17 st.; [November]: ‘Noch gescrift gesneden in 7 plaetkens’ [further letters cut in 7 small plates] 1 fl. 1 st. (Cf. Delen, Graveurs-illustrateurs, p. 168.) In 1588 Huberti had been paid 2 fl. 10 st. ‘pour la taille de l'escriture’ on a portrait of St. Bruno; Crispijn de Passe, the engraver of the plate, was recorded as having received 15 fl., though this was probably only part of his fee (Corr., VIII-IX, no. 1378, p. 402). The same question could arise with wood-blocks: cf. note 1 (figures by Nicolai's boy, the letters by the master).

3. When no further information or references are given for a particular artist here and in subsequent pages, see pp. 233 sqq.

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calibre and evolution of these draughtsmen that determined the quality and development of Plantinian book illustration.

Information about the artists who worked for Plantin in the years 1555-62 is scanty. The copper engravings of La magnifique et sumptueuse Pompe funèbre de Charles Cinquième of 1559 give the famous Antwerp engraver and publisher of prints, Hieronymus Cock, as ‘inventor’ and the brothers Jan and Lucas Duetecum as the engravers. This spectacular album of Charles v's funeral procession carries Christophe Plantin's name as publisher, although it was in fact commissioned and financed by the herald of arms, Pieter Vernois. Plantin was an executor, like Cock and the Duetecums, and it is unlikely that he had any say in the choice of artists. Of the artists he obtained for his own publications only a few can be named with any certainty. Arnold Nicolai's signature on a number of woodcuts in Plantinian books show that this quite gifted woodcutter, to whom repeated reference will be made in this chapter, was already working for Plantin in 1555.^1. The Huys brothers had by this time engraved some copperplates for the Vesalius-Valverda medical treatise, planned by Plantin. These plates were auctioned with the rest of Plantin's property in April 1562, but he was able to buy them back in 1564.

Not until 1563 is it possible to glean more information about the illustrators around Plantin. During his enforced stay in Paris, Plantin must have met an artist whose talents for drawings and designing he valued. After his return to Antwerp he placed a number of orders. On 1st April 1564 a first remittance of 8 fl. 19 st. was made to Geoffroy Ballain, enlumineur of Paris, for a drawing of a ‘devant de livres en 16^o à termes’ (a border with caryatids for a title-page of a 16mo book); 3 ‘vignettes carrées’ and ‘2 portaux faceon de ruines en 4^o’ (borders in the form of ruined Roman porticos for title-pages of a quarto book). Until 1567 Ballain, of whom nothing further is known, continued to send

1. His monogram also appeared in the woodcuts of Den Spegel der Gherechticheit by Hendrik Niclaes (about 1562), issued without an imprint, but convincingly attributed to Plantin (cf. Vol. I, pp. 22-23). Nicolai is the only named artist in Plantin's wages books before 1562 (Arch. 38, f^os 96^vo and 97^ro).

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designs for printer's marks, borders, Biblical subjects and so on with great regularity. Only once was Plantin not wholly satisfied with the finished work: in 1565 he had six of the 57 designs for the Hadrianus Junius Emblemata volume redrawn by Pieter Huys. It should be pointed out that Ballain produced some excellent work, especially, as might be expected from an enlumineur, in the decorative genre. On 5th August 1567 Plantin wrote to Paris about work on a new order.^1. Contact must have been broken off soon after this, possibly because of Ballain's death.

In this period Lucas d'Heere of Ghent, in his day a highly praised painter and member of a chamber of rhetoric, received 80 fl. 10 st. from Plantin for the delivery of 168 drawings for the Sambucus Emblemata, but it was the Hungarian humanist himself, in the Netherlands at the time, who obtained his services.^2. The experiment did not prove successful: eighty of the designs had to be redrawn. There is no record of any further work from the Ghent artist.

Again it was the famous Antwerp painter Pieter Huys who did the redrawing; he has already been referred to in his capacity as copperplate engraver. In October 1563 he designed an alphabet for Plantin. Besides the redrawing, he produced a further thirteen emblemata for the Junius book and 65 illustrations for the Commentarii in Ptolomaeum et artem navigationis H. Broucci, which actually remained in manuscript. This seems to have been the end of this category of work from Huys. Plantin then and later called on his services as an engraver, but he apparently found other artists who pleased him better as draughtsmen and designers. Huys was a painter of great merit and Plantin's attitude was possibly caused by the personality of the man himself rather than by lack of appreciation of his talents.^3.

Plantin had probably made use of his services in 1563-65 because

1. Corr., I, no. 76.

2. Arch. 4, f^o 7^ro (21st Feb. 1564: ‘Maistre Lucas d'Heere painctre demeurant à Guendt payé ... sur la pourtraicture de 168 Emblesmes quil avoit marchandé avec Mons. Sambucus de faire à st. 10 la pièce’).

3. See Delen, ‘Artistes collaborateurs’, p. 104. In 1566 Plantin noted a payment to Huys for 5 copperplates, but he added ‘mais ie doubte que ie n'ay receu que 4 planches’ (Arch. 31, f^o 64).

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there were no other suitable artists available. In 1565 Rembert Dodoens, then living in Malines, sent him some drawings of plants intended for a botanical work of his which Plantin was to publish. These drawings brought Pieter van der Borcht, the man responsible for them, to Plantin's notice and led him to offer the artist commissions of his own. In this way began the relationship between the printer and the man who was to be his principal illustrator (and from 1574 also one of his chief engravers).^1. In 1566 Plantin was able to contact another artist who was to serve him faithfully for many years; this was Crispin (or Crispijn) van den Broeck, who lived in Antwerp. These two were responsible for the design of the greater part of the firm's book illustrations between 1565-66 and 1589.

There were other artists whom Plantin engaged. In 1566 the Antwerp painter Lambert van Noort designed the elegant title-page for the Vesalius-Valverda anatomical treatise. In 1574-75 the Dane, Melchior Lorck, who happened to be in Antwerp at that time, supplied some illustrations for breviaries and missals that are among the most beautiful of the genre. At the end of his career Plantin approached Maarten de Vos, a celebrated Antwerp painter in his day, who from about 1581 to 1589 provided him with a whole series of drawings.

The first of these principal Plantinian designers, Geoffroy Ballain, was a typical representative of the contemporary French school. His illustrations and ornaments gave Plantin's illustrated books of the period 1563-67 a pronounced Parisian character. The draughtsmen who principally served Plantin during the rest of his career - Van der Borcht, Van den Broeck and De Vos - were Italianizing and Mannerist, and therefore characteristic of the Netherlands of their day. Their work exhibits, among other features, elongated figures with relatively small heads. But whereas in contemporary Antwerp prints the Italianate completely dominates, French influences continued to leaven

1. It is typical that in October 1565 Plantin still did not know the name of the man who supplied the drawings for the blocks: Arch. 3, f^o 37^vo (27th Oct. 1565: ‘J'ay payé au painctre des figures de Mre Rembert Dodoens encores 20 fig.’). See also Arch. 3, f^o 33^ro (c. June 1565: ‘J'ay payé à Pierre [name left blank] painctre à Malines pour la pourtraicture de 60 figures des herbes...’).

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Plantinian book illustration in some measure. It is a moot point whether Plantin consciously helped to determine the style of the artists working for him or whether, as is more likely, the influence of contemporary French book illustration simply tended to modify the Italianizing proclivities of the Plantinian designers. The new style, in which Italian and French influences were blended with the local Flemish tradition, was not confined to the Officina Plantiniana. Pieter van der Borcht, Crispin van den Broeck, and their ‘romanist’ colleagues worked for other Antwerp publishers. It is not too great a claim, however, to suggest that it was largely due to the sphere of operation and influence of the Plantin house that this new Antwerp style so quickly achieved international currency. Van der Borcht, Van den Broeck, and De Vos were no geniuses, but the fact that they were able to work for the most eminent international publisher of the time gave them an extremely important role in the development of book illustration in the second half of the sixteenth century.

When Plantin set himself up as a printer, copper engraving already reigned unchallenged as far as separate prints were concerned, but with a few exceptions it was still woodcuts which enlivened the pages of books. The young Plantin turned to woodcutters to convert into blocks for printing the designs of his draughtsmen, or the models taken from books to be reprinted. In later years he continued to make much use of their services. In Paris in 1565 Jean de Gourmont cut blocks of a number of drawings by Ballain. Nothing else is known about this Gourmont, except that, like Ballain, he was a Parisian. Equally mysterious are Marc Duchesne and Jan Cressone, who in 1568 and 1570 respectively appeared in the Plantinian accounts, only to disappear again without trace. It is known that Cressone was active in Antwerp, but it is possible that Duchesne, like de Gourmont, sent Plantin his work from Paris. A less mysterious figure was Willem van Parijs, son of the Antwerp print publisher Silvester van Parijs, although his period of activity for the Plantin press was equally brief (1564-65). Plantin's orders were mainly executed by four masters. Three of them were active in Antwerp, namely Arnold Nicolai (1555-c. 1568), Cornelis Muller (1564-72) and Antoon van

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Leest (1566-84). The fourth, Gerard Janssen van Kampen (1564-83), was a bookseller in Breda.

In the beginning of Plantin's career these woodcut craftsmen had to work unceasingly to keep up with the printer's orders, but from about 1576 onwards the tempo began to slacken off. After 1584 orders practically ceased. This was partly due to the fact that the older masters had become sick or had died and no new ones had taken their places. In letters written between 1585 and 1589, Plantin complained bitterly that there was only one woodcutter left in Antwerp, and he was too old to deliver usable work. A few years later Jan i Moretus was obliged to entrust the making of a series of wood-blocks to a Frankfurt craftsman. Not until the seventeenth century were there Antwerp practitioners who could be called on. But there was a reason for this reluctance on the part of young artists to follow in the footsteps of the dwindling woodcutters in the Southern Netherlands of this time: copper engraving was replacing the woodcut in book illustration, too. In fact the man who had largely contributed to this development was Christophe Plantin.

Of the two media, the woodcut was the more compatible with the printed book. Wood-blocks and lead type could be integrated in the same formes and printed on the same presses. Typographical unity was thus preserved. The copper engraving required its own press. If this medium was to be used then any page on which text and illustration appeared together had to be printed twice on two different presses. Copper intaglio printing was considerably slower than letterpress printing; the copperplates were dearer; and engraving them required more time. Thus the use of copper engravings in a book destroyed the typographical unity and pushed up the production costs. For these reasons printers in the post-Gutenberg century preferred the woodcut for their illustrated works, leaving the copper engraving to those of their colleagues who sold separate prints. However, copper engraving had certain advantages: it allowed much finer and more precise work than the woodcut, and in a greater range of tones. But this advantage would not have been enough to enable copperplate engraving to prevail, had not fashion tipped the balance in

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its favour. The bibliophiles and connoisseurs were coming to prize intaglio prints ever more highly and were beginning to demand them in illustrated books. When courageous publishers risked both the higher prices and the typographical difficulties involved in combining intaglio printing with letterpress - and began to reap success - then their fellow-publishers had to follow them. One of these pioneers was Plantin.

La magnifique et sumptueuse Pompe funèbre de Charles Cinquième, 1559, was Plantin's first publication with copperplate engravings. But this was in fact an album in which the printed text at the beginning of the book was subordinate to the illustrations. Plantin must already have been thinking of issuing an actual book illustrated with engravings. He had had some plates for the Vesalius-Valverda medical treatise cut by Frans and Pieter Huys before 1562. The interruption of his activities in 1562-63 and the sale in 1562 of his effects, including these plates, postponed the project for a few years. After his return from Paris, Plantin was able to buy the plates back and he had the remainder of the set engraved. At last in 1566 the Vivae imagines partium corporis humani, illustrated with forty-two copperplate engravings, was published.

Plantin did not switch from woodcuts to copperplates all at once. In 1567 he could still state in a letter to Granvelle that he would give advice about woodcut illustrations, but did not regard himself as qualified to discuss copper engravings.^1. He had an impressive number of wood-blocks cut for the missals and breviaries he published between 1570 and 1575 for the Spanish market: Antoon van Leest alone produced at least sixty. But at the same time he ordered a no less impressive number of copperplates for the same class of publications. In fact, he then and later published a number of liturgical editions - breviaries and missals - in different versions. Though they

1. Corr., III, no. 342 (8th Aug. 1567: ‘Mais quant est des figures taillées en cuivre, je ne voys pas que ce soit chose là où je m'entende ne de quoy je me doibve mesler aucunement: bien s'il est besoing de quelques figures aux livres, les quelles se puissent tailler en bois, en feray-je volontiers le devoir’).

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are identical in their printed texts, they differ as far as their technique of illustration is concerned: they either have only woodcuts or they have only copper engravings. In such cases the difference in cost price must have been the determining factor.^1.

Plantin also had the cheaper wood-blocks made for books financed wholly or partly by their authors.^2. Both in this period and later the masters of the Golden Compasses continued to use woodcuts for herbals and other lavishly illustrated scientific and scholarly works.^3. Between 1630 and 1640 Balthasar i Moretus had a number of large wood-blocks cut for service books.^4. Nevertheless it was already clear by the late 1560s that the copper engraving was superseding the woodcut.

The Vivae imagines partium corporis humani of 1566 was a turning point in the development of book illustration in the Plantin press - and in the West.^5. It was one of the first publications with copperplate engravings in the Netherlands, though it was not the very first: Hubertus Goltzius, the Bruges engraver and publisher, had issued one in 1563.^6. Plantin was immediately imitated in Antwerp itself.^7.

The idea was certainly abroad, but Plantin was one of the few in the Southern Netherlands who had the nerve - and the capital - to apply

1. The breviary in quarto of 1575 cost 3 fl. with woodcut illustrations and 4 fl. with copper engravings (Arch. M. 296, f^o 2). A breviary in quarto of 1587 was priced 5 fl. for the copies with woodcuts and 6 fl. for those with copper engravings (Arch. M. 296, f^o 2). Cf. p. 381. It may be assumed that in most cases the number of copies printed with woodcuts exceeded those illustrated with copper engravings. In January 1575, for example, Plantin shipped to Spain 1,900 copies of his breviary in quarto with woodcuts and 300 copies with intaglio prints; for the breviary in folio shipped in October 1575 these numbers were 1,083 as against 177 (Arch. 22).

2. Including the Stewechius edition of Flavius Vegetius in 1585 and various illustrated books of J.B. Houwaert. Typical of the changing attitudes is the fact that Pegasides Pleyn by J.B. Houwaert, 1582-83, was planned to have woodcuts but finally appeared with copper engravings.

3. Including the edition of J.E. Nicrembergius. Historia naturae, as late as 1641.

4. Cf. p. 209.

5. See plate 33.

6. Caesar sive Historiae Imperatorum Caesarumque Romanorum ex antiquis numismatibus restitutae, liber primus. Cf. Delen, Illustrateurs-graveurs, p. 117.

7. W. Silvius, Plantin's great rival, published in 1567 an illustrated edition of L. Guicciardini, Descrittione di tutti i Paesi Bassi, with 13 large woodcuts and 2 large copper engravings.

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it fairly consistently in a number of books with all the risks that this entailed: higher investment of money and higher retail prices in an untried market. It would not be an exaggeration to assert that it was Plantin's example and the success of his publications which spread the new technique of book illustration over Western Europe so rapidly that the woodcut had been reduced to a subsidiary role within a few decades. At all events it is significant that in the years 1570 to 1580 the Paris publishers began to import Antwerp copper engravers;^1. so is the fact that it was mainly by way of the copper engraving that the Plantinian style of book illustration spread through the whole of Western Europe.

Of the two brothers who had engraved the copperplates for the Vivae imagines it was Pieter Huys who did most work for Plantin. He has also been referred to in his capacity of draughtsman. He engraved a number of other plates between 1566 and 1574, but relations between the artist and the printer do not seem to have been particularly cordial.^2. Other engravers appeared even more briefly in the records: Pieter van der Heyden (a Meriga) (1569), Cornelis d'Hooghe (1569), Pieter Dufour (1574), Jules Goltzius (1577 and 1586), Frans Hogenberg (1581), Jan Collaert the Elder (1588-89), Crispijn [van] de Passe the Elder (1588-89), Hendrik Goltzius (1589). But Plantin was able to engage the services of some very capable engravers for longer periods: the best of them all in the second half of the sixteenth century, the brothers Jan and Hieronymus Wiericx,^3. who divided their interests between the workshop and the tavern, with the emphasis on the latter, and sorely tried the patience and the purse of the printer;^4. also Abraham de Bruyn (1570-83) and Jan [de] Sadele(e)r (1579? - 1609?). In 1574 the name of Pieter van der Borcht appeared: after producing countless drawings for the Plantinian woodcuts, he

1. H.J. Martin, in Anvers, ville de Plantin et de Rubens, Bibliothèque nationale (Paris). Catalogue de l'exposition, 1954, pp. 257-260.

2. Cf. p. 198.

3. The third brother, Antoon, does not appear to have worked for the Officina Plantiniana.

4. Typical instances in Delen, ‘Artistes collaborateurs’, p. 117.

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now became one of the firm's foremost engravers, turning out copperplates in large numbers, mostly to his own designs.^1.

It is rather surprising that Philip Galle, one of the outstanding engravers in the Antwerp of that day, should have done so little work for his friend Plantin. The explanation was that he did not want to undertake commissions for works for which he himself could not be fully responsible, and he did not wish his apprentices to do such work either.^2. He would not make an exception even in Plantin's case and only a few minor jobs were executed in his studio.^3. Galle's attitude comes to light in letters written between 1585 and 1587 in which Plantin complained of the difficulties he had had in obtaining engravers: two good practitioners had recently died (probably Dufour and De Bruyn); Philip Galle and Jan de Sadeleer would not work for third parties, and the latter had in fact emigrated to Germany in 1586; the Wiericx brothers were utterly unreliable; the printer had made efforts to persuade Hendrik Goltzius to leave Holland and settle in Antwerp, but without success.^4. Plantin may have painted an unnecessarily gloomy picture. He was reporting to certain Jesuits on his vain quest for engravers to illustrate a monumental work instigated by

1. Van der Borcht seems only to have produced etchings; the author knows of no work of his done with the burin.

2. This passage in Corr., VII, no. 1106 (Plantin to M. Hernandez, 28th May 1586) characterizes his attitude: ‘Veni Antverpiam, conveni Gallaeum qui prorsus negavit se nullum opus suscepturum cujus non esset absolute futurus Dominus.’

3. Five small plates engraved in 1580 and a few re-cut in 1589: Delen, Graveurs-illustrateurs, p. 158.

4. Corr., VII, nos. 1044 (5th Nov. 1585, Galle, de Sadeler and Goltzius mentioned), 1106 (28th May 1586, Goltzius, Galle, and de Sadeler mentioned), 1107 (31st May 1586, mention of Goltzius; ‘... j'ay long temps différé de vous escrire pource qu'après mon arrivée en ceste ville j'ay trouvé que le plus grand nombre des tailleurs en cuivre estoyent trespassés et que une partie de ceux qui restoyent icy ne vouloyent rien entreprendre à tailler que pour euxmesmes et que l'autre partie se gouvernoit si pauvrement qu'il n'y avoit ordre de leur bailler vostre besongne’), 1108 (31st May-8th June 1586; letter to Hendrik Goltzius asking him if he would leave Haarlem for Antwerp); VIII-IX, nos. 1160 (22nd Oct. 1586, Goltzius and the Wiericx brothers mentioned; de Sadeler had gone to Mainz), 1182 (25th-27th Dec. 1586, mention of de Sadeler, Goltzius, Galle and the Wiericx brothers), 1188 (2nd Jan. 1587, the Wiericx brothers mentioned), 1193 (13th Jan. 1587, mention of the Wiericx brothers and Galle), 1194 (13th Jan. 1587, about the Wiericx brothers).

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the Order which would engage all the energies of a number of artists for a considerable time.^1. For his own publications the printer was able to count on Pieter van der Borcht, and was also able to chase the Wiericx brothers out of the taverns when necessary and constrain them to take up the burin again.

After Plantin's death, Jan i Moretus continued to call on Van der Borcht for drawings and etchings, and on the Wiericx brothers and Jan de Sadeler - the latter had returned from Germany in the meantime - for engravings. Nevertheless he had to think about eventual replacements. This proved to be a not too difficult matter. Antwerp remained a European art centre. There were enough painters to hand who could find time to draw designs when requested by the masters of the Golden Compasses. In fact, Joos de Momper, Cornelis iiiin Floris, Adam van Noort, and Pieter de Jode did some work for Plantin's son-in-law.

The replacement of copperplate engravers was as swift and easy. Theodoor Galle, son of Philip, and since 1598 married to a daughter of Jan Moretus, did not show the same aversion as his father to working for others - or possibly he did not like to refuse his father-in-law. From 1600 Moretus was able to place with him all the orders he wanted. In fact, from 1600 to 1694 the Moretuses commissioned nearly all their engraving work from the Galle studio - under Theodoor until 1633, under his son Jan from 1633 to 1676, and then under Jan's son Norbert from 1676 to 1694.^2. In the first half of the seventeenth century the only engraver outside the Galle clan who received more than a very small quantity of work from the Moretuses was Adriaan Pauwels (1631-35). However, when Jan I Moretus had to obtain wood-blocks for illustrations of plants, with a view to publishing a botanical work by Clusius, he was obliged to turn to a German artist,

1. The book was Hieronymus Natalis's Evangelicae Historiae Imagines, issued at Antwerp, 1593, without the name of the printer or publisher. For Plantin's efforts see M. Rooses, ‘De plaatsnijders der Evangelicae Historiae Imagines’, Oud-Holland, 6, 1888. Cf. also Delen, Graveurs-illustrateurs, pp. 150-155.

2. Most of the bills and other documents relating to the work of the Galle workshop for the firm are in Arch. 123.

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Virgilius Solis of Frankfurt.^1. Minor commissions, however, were still carried out at Antwerp.^2.

As in many other aspects of the business, Jan i Moretus's management was a transitional period in book illustration. Under Balthasar i Moretus (1610-41) the emergent Baroque began to flower. Through the talents of the Antwerp artists Plantin's grandson was able to engage the Plantin House once again exerted an international influence through its Baroque style of book illustration. Theodoor Galle and the other engravers often produced the designs for their plates themselves;^3. occasional recourse was also had to casual workers (P. de Jode, N. van der Horst). But not long after Balthasar i had taken over, he was able to interest a friend of his youth in designing illustrations for him. This friend was Peter Paul Rubens. In 1612 the great master began his work for the Officina Plantiniana^4. with his design for a title-page and a dozen illustrations for a breviary and a missal (published in 1614) and for the title-page and six vignettes of an optical study by Aguilonius (published in 1613). In the following years Rubens drew a number of portraits but it was above all title-pages that Balthasar commissioned from his friend.^5. From 1613 to 1640 Rubens determined their style in the Plantinian books and,^6. as these were distributed all

1. Jan Moretus could probably have found someone nearer home, but his choice of Solis was no doubt partly determined by the fact that Clusius was then in Germany and could to some extent supervise the craftsman's production.

2. On 15th March 1603 Theodoor Galle sent in a bill for some pen drawings on wood (meant for cutting) (Arch. 123, f^o 10). This small commission would probably have been carried out in Antwerp, perhaps through the agency of Galle.

3. Many examples in Arch. 123, including f^o 2^ro (30th Sept. 1600): ‘Drew the title-page for the Triumph of Valencin: 4 fl.; in addition drew and cut 2 plates for the Horae in quarto [12 fl. altogether]’.

4. In 1608 Rubens had made a few drawings for plates for the Electorum libri II by his brother Philip. However, this had been done more to oblige his brother than to please the publisher, Jan Moretus.

5. Altogether Rubens produced designs for 27 title-pages, seven portraits and eleven illustrations (all for the breviary and missal of 1613-14), and some eight vignettes. He collaborated with Erasmus Quellin to ‘invent’ five title-page designs and one portrait.

6. As far as the present author knows, the influence and diffusion of Rubens's title-pages have not yet been systematically studied.

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over the Western world, he decisively influenced this aspect of the Baroque book. Until 1637 Rubens did the drawings,^1. but the rheumatic pains which made his latter years a torment forced him to look for a collaborator. From 1637 to 1640 Rubens continued to produce the inventio, but his pupil Erasmus Quellin was responsible for transferring the design to paper.^2. Rubens's first drawings were engraved by Theodoor Galle. Karel de Mallery and an engraver of the school of Rubens, the talented Lucas Vorsterman, also cut a number of copperplates. But from 1614 onwards it was principally Cornelis Galle, Theodoor's son, who was responsible for executing Rubens's designs. Cornelis was not among the most brilliant engravers of the Antwerp school of that time, but he knew his craft and never let Rubens down. In 1636 he settled in Brussels and thereafter worked only intermittently for the Plantin press. His son, Cornelis ii Galle, who returned to Antwerp, took over his father's task and, among other works, engraved Erasmus Quellin's drawings of Rubens's designs.

Men able to cut wood-blocks appeared once more in the vital artistic centre that Antwerp had remained, so that Balthasar i, more fortunate than his father, was able to engage such specialists locally. Woodcuts, indeed, were not completely finished. They remained in use for tailpieces, initials, and other ornaments - where it was practically impossible to replace them by copperplates. Like the illustrations themselves, they had to be adapted to changing public tastes and therefore needed regular renewal and augmentation. But Balthasar i and his successor Balthasar ii did not restrict the use of wood-blocks to minor ornaments. In fact, in a period when the woodcut had all but been superseded for illustrations, as opposed to ornaments, they found it desirable to use this technique, now thought old-fashioned, to illustrate some of their publications. This was not so strange in the case of the two-colour portraits of emperors intended

1. A few designs were painted in oil on panel: one of these grisailles is in the Plantin-Moretus Museum.

2. This co-operation is indicated on the copperplates: ‘E. Quellinus delineavit. Pet. Paul. Rubenius invenit.’

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(33) Vesalius & Valverda, Vivae imagines partium corporis humani, 1566: title-page engraved in copper by Pieter Huys to a design of Lambert van Noort. The Vivae imagines, with its title-page and 42 plates, was one of the first books illustrated with copper engravings to be published in the Netherlands. The medallion ana cartouche with engraved title and printer's address were later excised to enable the title and printer's address of the 1568 Dutch edition to be set in letterpress. The mutilated copperplate is in the Plantin-Moretus Museum.

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(34) Title-page of the Psalterium, 1571: Woodcut depicting the choir of Malines Cathedral. The coats of arms of the Archbishop of Malines and the six bishops of the archdiocese were cut on separate blocks. For new editions these blocks could if necessary be lifted out and replaced by new designs without damaging the main block. Cut by Antoon van Leest to a design of Pieter van der Borcht.

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(35) Title-page of the Antiphonarium, 1573. This monumental work in two parts was issued without a title-page at first, drawing protests from customers. Plantin felt himself obliged to print a title-page in great haste. The wood-block from the 1571 Psalterium was used but as the legend was longer a piece had to be cut out of the block, which in its mutilated state is kept in the Plantin-Moretus Museum.

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(36) Top: The Adoration of the Shepherds: wood-block for the folio missal of 1575, cut by Gerard Janssen van Kampen to a design by Pieter van der Borcht.

(37) Left: Plantin's printer's mark: pen and ink drawing on a wood-block prepared with a white ground, ready for cutting. For some reason the work was not carried out.

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(38) Right: Maarten de Vos: The Last Judgment. Drawing in pen and bistre, signed and dated bottom left ‘M.D. Vos F. 1582’. From a series of eight, drawings to illustrate a folio missal (two dated 1582, a third 1588). The outlines of the drawing were gone over probably by the engraver to make transference to the plate easier. The work may not have been executed. There are no Plantinian service books known with copperplates engraved to these designs.

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(39) Antwerp Cathedral: illustration in woodcut from L. Guicciardini, Descrittione di tutti i Paesi Bassi, published by Willem Silvius, Antwerp 1567. When preparing his own edition of Guicciardini, Plantin made Silvius an offer, in 1580, for these wood-blocks-not with the idea of utilizing them himself but rather to compensate Silvius to some extent while at the same time preventing him from spoiling the market with a similar edition. Silvius, then at Leiden, seems to have refused, but in 1583 his widow proved more amenable and sold her woodcuts to Plantin. Designer and engraver are unknown.

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(40) Antwerp Cathedral: copperplate illustration (etching) from Guicciardini, Descrittione di tutti i Paesi Bassi, published by Plantin in 1581, 1582, and 1588. The work contains about 80 maps of principalities and cities, and views of Antwerp specially produced for this edition. The engraver of this picture-probably Van der Borcht-based his work on the illustration in the Silvius edition. Note, however the difference in execution

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(41) Drawing by Peter Paul Rubens: title-page design from the Poemata of Maphaeus Barberini (Pope Urban viii), 1634. Samson discovers a swarm of bees in the carcase of a lion-an allusion to Urban viii's coat of arms, which shows bees, and to the sweetness of his poems.

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(42) Title-page of Maphaeus Barberini, Poemata, 1634, in quarto; copper engraving by Cornelis Galle to Rubens's design (see also plate 41).

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(43) Left: Anatomical illustration: copperplate used in Vesalius & Valverda, Vivae imagines partium corporis humani, 1566. One of the 42 plates engraved by Pieter and Frans Huys (see also plate 33).

(44) Right: Title-page of Goltzius, Romanae et Graecae antiquitatis monumenta e priscis monumentis eruta, first part of the Opera Huberti Goltzii, 1645. Engraved in copper in 1632 by Theodoor Galle to a design of Rubens. The allegorical and symbolical significance was set out in an ‘explication’ in the preliminary matter of the book (Gaspar Gevaerts, an officer of the City of Antwerp and a humanist scholar, probably wrote it). The composition represents the Renaissance of Antiquity. In the top right is Time, symbolized by an old man with wings and a scythe. Next to him is Death. Both throw into the abyss of time the symbols of the empires of Rome (a goddess with a small figure in her left hand representing victory and a broken lance in her right), Macedonia (Alexander with helmet and cuirass, and lightning in his right hand), Persia (Darius with diadem, shattered by Alexander); and of the Medes (a prince with turban, bow, and quiver). On the other side of the abyss is Mercury with a spade in one hand with which he has uncovered the busts of Romans and Greeks. With his other hand he lifts the statue of a Roman emperor out of the abyss. A little above this, Hercules, wrapped in his lion skin, receives a basket full of antique coins from a slave. Athene, helmeted, illuminates the objects with her torch. In the centre is a bust with the symbol of Antiquity. On its head is the phoenix, representing resurrection and eternity.

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to replace the lost sixteenth-century wood-blocks in a new edition of a work by Hubertus Goltzius,^1. or for the technical and scientific illustrations of a series of books aimed at a rather learned market.^2. But what was remarkable was the fact that Balthasar i not only went on using the wood-blocks inherited from his grandfather in certain editions of his breviaries and missals, but even felt himself justified in modernizing in this direction and replacing the old blocks, made by Van Leest after the designs of Pieter van der Borcht, by Rubens-inspired new ones. He probably decided on this course not for reasons of personal preference or taste, but because of the potential sales of lavishly illustrated but fairly cheap books in the Spanish market that was once again opening for the Plantin press. The experiment did not last long, however.

Balthasar i, and to a lesser extent Balthasar ii, thus needed woodcutters. One of them was Cristoffel van Sichem. This outstanding Dutch engraver lived in Antwerp for some time and executed a number of commissions for the officina from 1616 until 1620, when he left the city. A few years later Balthasar i acquired the services of the man considered to be the greatest of seventeenth-century practitioners, Christoffel Jegher (Jegherendorf). He undertook work for the Golden Compasses from 1625 to 1643, and was actually on the pay-roll as a regular employee from 1625 to 1640. After his death his son Jan Christoffel succeeded him and executed woodcuts for the House until 1655. It was Christoffel Jegher who adapted the ornaments and decorations to the new Baroque fashion, who cut the emperor portraits and many of the scientific illustrations and executed the full-page illustrations for the breviaries and missals. It should be said that these last were not particularly brilliant - clumsy efforts that compare unfavourably with his many inspired interpretations of Rubens's works and his masterly emperor portraits.^3.

1. Goltzius, Icones Imperatorum Romanorum, ..., part V of the Opera Omnia Huberti Goltzii, 1645. For this work see, inter alia, L. Voet in Anvers, ville de Plantin et de Rubens. Bibliothèque nationale (Paris). Catalogue de l'exposition, 1954, p. 212.

2. Such as J.E. Nierembergius, Historia naturae, 1641.

3. This may be because in this case he had to draw the outlines on the wood himself, instead of an artist doing it for him - as, for example, in his splendid woodcuts after Rubens. Nevertheless, the emperor portraits were masterfully executed and jegher is known to have done the drawings for at least twelve of these himself (portraits for which Goltzius had not supplied models; see p. 235, note 2). Cf. p. 217 concerning drawing on blocks.

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After the death of Rubens the fame of the Antwerp school of painters and engravers soon passed away. The epigones of Rubens were succeeded by the epigones of the epigones - and their numbers were dwindling. By the end of the seventeenth century Antwerp was of no more than regional importance as an artistic centre. This general decline affected the Officina Plantiniana. In the second half of that century it had specialized in the production of missals and breviaries. Its book illustrations thenceforth were exclusively religious. Many such plates had been engraved in the first half of the seventeenth century and the later Moretuses could, and to a large extent did, continue to draw on the collection assembled by their forebears. However, the plates could not be used indefinitely. They had to be re-cut in due season and the ornaments had regularly to be adapted to changes in public taste. The later Moretuses had to maintain contact with the requisite draughtsmen, woodcutters and copper engravers, something that grew more and more difficult with the passing years, and by the eighteenth century it had become a serious problem.

Finding artists who could draw usable models seems to have been the easiest aspect of the matter and the standard of designs remained reasonable until quite late in the eighteenth century. Cornelis Jozef d'Heur, the ‘official’ draughtsman for the house from about 1740 to 1762, was no genius but he knew his trade. His significance in those autumnal years of Antwerp art is shown by what happened after his death in 1762. After unsuccessfully trying out a number of artists, including the Parisian Jean Beugnet, the Moretuses had to give up the unequal struggle. After 1765 there were practically no more original designs.

However, the attempts to find designers were as child's play compared

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with the pathetic efforts of the later Moretuses to track down competent craftsmen who could transfer the designs to wood or copper. From about 1733 they had to start looking outside Antwerp. The tribulations of Joannes Jacobus and Franciscus Joannes Moretus with Paris craftsmen - the woodcutters J.M. Papillon, N. Le Sueur, N. Caron (contacted while he was in prison), and the copper engravers P.L. Auvray, Hendelot, R. Brichet - would fill a poignant book. Attempts to find suitable practitioners in their own country - at Bruges, Malines, and Brussels - were totally abortive. Happily they were able to call on the services of the Antwerp engraver Lodewijk Fruytiers from 1757 to 1778. His was a mediocre talent, but at least he was fairly consistently productive and did not have to be set to work via agents and letters. His plates marked virtually the end of the Moretuses' efforts to bring out new illustrations. Their subsequent books were illustrated with plates inherited from a more glorious past, in so far as these had not already been worn out and replaced with feeble copies. In the nineteenth century steel engravings^1. and lithographs^2. were commissioned from specialist firms, but not many of these seem to have been delivered.

The archives of the Plantin house that allow the evolution of its book illustration to be traced also yield details of the lives of many of the artists, both important ones and lesser figures, who worked for its masters. In a number of cases it is only these archives that enable flesh and blood to be added to the bare bones of birth and death dates or dates of registration as masters of the Antwerp guild of St. Luke.

Of the illustrators of Plantin's time only Van der Borcht and Van den Broeck seem to have been numbered among his personal friends. In October 1565 Plantin was unable to give Van der Borcht's name in his journal and had to describe him as the ‘Malines painter’, but within a few years he was an intimate of the great printer. It was to the Golden Compasses that Van der Borcht brought his wife and children

1. In 1825, by the ‘Calcographie royale de J. Goubaud’, Brussels. Cf. p. 195, note 2.

2. In 1831: cf. p. 195, note 2.

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when the sacking of his home town by Alva's soldiers on 2 October 1572 had reduced him to penury. Plantin enabled him to start life again in Antwerp. Through Plantin, Van der Borcht and Van den Broeck became friendly with Arias Montanus. The letters exchanged between Plantin and Jan i Moretus and the humanist after his return to Spain often contained references to the two artists, with biographical details of some interest.^1. Plantin's woodcutters and copper engravers on the other hand do not seem to have been included in his circle of friends, but he did record particulars that illuminate their private circumstances: the dissolute life of the Wiericx brothers who virtually had to be locked up in their client's house to ensure delivery of their copperplates; the straitened means of certain aged artists (such as Arnold Nicolai) and so on.^2. The letters between the Moretuses and their Parisian agents in the eighteenth century provide an interesting glimpse of the character of one of the foremost French woodcut craftsmen of the time, J.M. Papillon.

However, the technical details of book illustration in the past that can be gleaned from the Plantinian records are of more pertinence to this work. Artists entrusted with illustrating a book have of course always been limited by having to fit their pictures to a text. In the first half of the sixteenth century it was not unusual for illustrations to be rather loosely and, to put it mildly, fancifully related to the text. Publishers illustrated people and events quite arbitrarily, according to the material available. The same wood-block might represent Julius Caesar or the Emperor Charles v. A picture of a battle might be captioned as Samson's defeat of the Philistines or as the Battle of Pavia. This imaginative but imprecise mode still lingered on in Plantin's time, but was increasingly relegated to popular romances and similar cheap literature. Serious printer-publishers, Plantin and his successors

1. Telling him, for example, of the arrival of Pieter van der Borcht and his family after the sack of Malines: ‘Petrus noster cum uxore ambo morbo correpti et prolibus nudi ad nos venerunt.’ (Corr., III, no. 421, Plantin to Arias Montanus, 1st Nov. 1572).

2. See for example Plantin's letters referred to on p. 205, note 4; and on Arnold Nicolai the texts quoted by Delen in ‘Les artistes collaborateurs’, p. 113.

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among them, saw to it that their illustrations were not only of some artistic merit but were also historically or scientifically matched to the subject.

Joannes Rethius, the Jesuit who supervised the text of Hillessemius's Sacrarum Antiquitatum Monumenta (1577) for the heirs of the deceased author, asked Plantin to send the illustrations for his approval before publication and in any case to warn the artist beforehand against ‘obscene representations’.^1. This is one of the few pieces of evidence of this nature in Plantin's correspondence, but it suggests that the authors, in so far as they were directly involved in a publication, normally wished to see and approve illustrators' work themselves after giving instructions about what should be illustrated and, if necessary, where models or inspiration might be sought. This was particularly the case when scholarly or scientific works were being published. The authors might refer to illustrations in already published books,^2. paintings,^3. the object itself,^4. or they might offer sketches for the artist to work up.^5. For the maps of the towns in the Netherlands in

1. Corr., IV, no. 536 (Rethius to Plantin, 14th June 1574).

2. The illustrations in Vesalius-Valverda, Vivae Imagines, 1566, were copied from those of the Roman edition of a few years before. See also Corr., VIII-IX, no. 1224 (Plantin to Clusius, 12th March 1587, concerning the publication of a Latin translation by the latter of the works of Belon de Mans. Plantin had already had wood-blocks cut for his 1556 publication of the French text: ‘[je n'ay encores sceu...] recouvrer les figures des observations qu'un personnage de ceste ville m'avoit promis faire vendre par celuy qui les achapta à la vendue qui fat faicte de mes biens a la licorne [in 1562], ce que voyant j'ay bailié vostre copie françoise a Peeter vander Borcht pour les pourtraire de rechef...’)

3. For example, an engraving was made of Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows by Hieronymus Wiericx at the request of Abbot Mofflin. The model was an existing painting, Crispijn van den Broeck drawing a copy of it for the engraver (see Corr., VIII-IX, nos. 1170 and 1191). The bust of Seneca that appeared in the Lipsius edition of 1605 was copied from a portrait the scholar had received from Rome. Later it seemed to him that the portrait was not altogether faithful: Bouchery & Van den Wijngaert, P.P. Rubens en het Plantijnsche huis, p. 135.

4. Like the Classical vase belonging to Cardinal Granvelle depicted in the work by his librarian, Stephanus Winandus Pighius, Themis Dea, 1567.

5. See for example Corr., VII, no. 1094 (Plantin to J. Sarrazin, abbot of St. Vedast's, 30th April 1586: ‘Quant a l'histoire de Malchus il serait expedient que V. Rev^me S^e fist designer ou pourtraire simplement de crayon ou charbon legerement les figures ainsi qu'il luy plairoit, après quoy nous les ferions mectre icy au nect et faire comme les autres...’). Presumably the title-pages ‘designed’ for the first volume of the Polyglot Bible by Don Luis Manrique, Grand Almoner of Spain (Rooses, Musée, p. 104), were also rough sketches and notes.

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his editions of Guicciardini's Descrittione di tutti i Paesi Bassi Plantin spared neither effort nor time. At his own expense he had local artists draw plans of some of the towns. In a few instances the town councils were prepared to bear the cost themselves; other towns sent sketches that Plantin's Antwerp draughtsmen could use as models. Nevertheless a number of maps had to be copied from prototypes in existing publications.^1. In March 1604, in the time of Jan i Moretus, the painter Rousandt was sent to Halle to make a drawing ‘ad vivum’ of the Lady Chapel there for Lipsius's Diva Virgo Hallensis, which appeared in that same year.^2. With religious subjects there was another problem. Representation, characteristics, attitudes, and so on had to be in accord with current theological ideas if the illustrations were not to run the risk of being branded heretical.^3.

There is relatively little information extant about the kind of instructions Plantin and Jan i Moretus gave their illustrators. This is understandable. Instructions of this nature, and authors' requests, were most easily given by word of mouth or by means of rough sketches, and most of the artists working for Plantin could be contacted personally.^4. For the seventeenth century the correspondence concerning Rubens's work for the Officina Plantiniana provides rather more detail, particularly - and for obvious reasons - where foreign clients were involved. There was, too, a new factor - at least as far

1. J. Denucé, Oud-Nederlandsche kaartmakers in betrekking met Plantijn, I, pp. 148-150.

2. Arch. 124, p. 323: ‘Aenden schilder expres van Brussel op Halle ghesonden int beghinsel van meert 1604 om ad vivum te doen affteeckenen de Cappelle van onser Liever Vrouwe mette de stadt van Halle etc.’ [To sending the painter from Brussels to Halle at the beginning of March 1604 expressly to draw the Chapel of Our Lady ad vivum, with the town of Halle etc.]. This meant two journeys and a stay of six days; a fee of 18 fl. was paid.

3. Even an illustration provided by Arias Montanus did not escape sharp criticism from a censor and had to be ‘reworked’: see p. 261. Cf. also Corr., IV, no. 510 (Plantin to P. Canisius, 23rd Jan. 1574, about the representation of the Holy Trinity).

4. Either at Antwerp or, in the years 1564-67 and in the case of G. Ballain, during Plantin's many visits to Paris. Typically, Plantin's letter of 5th Aug. 1567 to Ballain (Corr., I, no. 76) only gives instructions about the order in which the blocks should be done, not about the pictures themselves.

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as title-page designs were concerned - that made more detailed instruction and discussion necessary. Whereas in the previous century the function of these designs had been purely decorative and only very generally related to the contents of the book, with the advent of the Baroque they had acquired an allegorical significance. Title-page designs were now expected to bring out the content and purpose of the book through an involved interplay of symbol and allegory. Rubens was a master at this. Each of his title-pages was truly a rebus for the adequate interpretation of which a lengthy exposition was usually necessary. To spare the readers this cerebral game, or at least to make it easier, an explanatory note was often included in the preliminary matter.^1.

Such complex title-page designs meant more detailed discussions among publishers, authors, and illustrators and these found their way into their letters more often than in Plantin's time, affording an interesting glimpse of how artists set about illustrating books. Right at the beginning of Rubens's career as a designer for the house, Balthasar i Moretus deemed it necessary to set out in detail what exactly was required of him. For the title-page of the Breviarium Romanum, published in 1614, he sketched the lay-out of the page and described in his fine humanist handwriting, in Latin, the figures that should appear and the attributes they should display.^2. This was not out of any lack of confidence in Rubens's capabilities. There can be no doubt that this was one of the first attempts in the Netherlands, and possibly in Europe, to create a title-page in the new spirit of the Baroque. The credit for this must be given to Balthasar i Moretus

1. So in Aguilonius, Opticorum libri sex, 1613 (Bouchery & Van den Wijngaert, op. cit., pp. 131-132); L. Blosius, Opera, 1632 (ibid., p. 139); H. Goltzius, Romanae et Graecae antiquitatis monumenta, 1645 (text probably compiled by the humanist G. Gevartius; ibid., pp. 147-148; cf. plate 44); F. de Marselaer, Legatus, 1666 (exposition by Rubens himself; ibid., pp. 150- 152). Rubens provided an interpretation, in his own handwriting, on the underlying significance of the drawings he made for the title-pages of B. Bauhusius and B. Cabillavus, Epigrammata, 1634, and I. Bidermanus, Heroum epistolae, 1634 (ibid., pp. 140-141).

2. Arch. 118, f^os 437 and 439; Arch. 1150, f^o 73. Documents reproduced and commented on in Bouchery & Van den Wijngaert, P.P. Rubens en het Plantijnsche huis, figures 31 and 32; Hellinga, Copy and Print, figures 64, 65, 66.

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himself, a cultivated humanist and Latin scholar, and pupil of Justus Lipsius. The fact that the design was among the first of its kind explains why he felt he should put his ideas down on paper for his friend. Rubens was more than quick to understand what was wanted. He was himself a representative practitioner of the new style and completely at home in its allegorical modes. After this one pioneering model, Rubens let himself be guided solely by his own inspiration, becoming in the course of time considerably more imaginative and subtle than his client. But this did not prevent a meeting of minds with each new commission. B. de los Rios himself set the general theme for the title-page of his De Hierarchia Mariana (1641), but neither he nor Balthasar i was happy with a certain detail of the final design, so a piece of paper with their amendment was pasted over the offending part. It should be pointed out that Erasmus Quellin did the drawing, working to one of Rubens's designs.^1. The master himself was usually much less accommodating in these matters and rejected every alteration, even when a scandalized monk insisted that Truth should be more comprehensively clad^2. or when a theologian pointed to some error of interpretation.^3. Authors sometimes sent portraits from life to make the engraver's, if not the designer's task easier.^4. For the title-page of a book by Boyvin about the siege and relief of Dôle, Rubens chose as the main theme the offering of a crown of honour to the hero, but had to ask who this should be. Philippe Chifflet, acting on behalf of Boyvin, supplied the information required and enclosed in his letter a drawing of the arms and motto of the town of Dôle.^5.

As the task of the engravers was executive, not creative, there was no need to give them instructions except about size. Balthasar i's

1. Bouchery & Van den Wijngaert, op. cit., pp. 108 and 147.

2. The title-page of B. Corderius, Catena sexaginta quinque Graecorum Patrum in S. Lucam, 1628. Balthasar Moretus had to write to Corderius to inform him ‘Rubens is of the opinion that Truth, which [originally] he had depicted naked, is [now] sufficiently clothed’: ibid., p. 138.

3. Namely A. de Winghe, editor of L. Blosius, Opera, 1632: ibid., p. 139.

4. See the correspondence between Balthasar I Moretus and Corderius about the sending of a portrait of King Ferdinand III: ibid., pp. 85-90.

5. Ibid., pp. 144-145.

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account-books show that Rubens occasionally retouched the proofs of his illustrations.^1. It is possible that other designers checked and where necessary corrected the engravers' work, but details are lacking.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries designers usually did their drawings for woodcuts directly on the wood-blocks. Not only is there evidence for this in the account-books,^2. but a number of such drawings have been preserved because they were never cut. The series of sixteen wood-blocks for J.B. Houwaert's Pegasides Pleyn were laid aside because at the last moment it was decided to replace them with copper engravings.^3. In other instances wood-blocks split at an early stage;^4. drawings proved not to be accurate enough;^5. it was discovered before the engraver set to work that a similar block had already been cut;^6. or quite simply a project might be scrapped.^7. In some cases the engraver must have worked from models that had not been drawn on the block. There is evidence for this for the eighteenth century.^8. However, in the preceding two centuries the normal procedure was for the designer, or in exceptional circumstances the woodcutter,^9. to draw the illustration on the block.

This method could not of course be applied to copperplates. The models for these were drawn on loose sheets of paper.^10. It was possible to trace the outlines of the drawing lightly on to the plate

1. Ibid., pp. 60 and 63; reproduction of one of these page proofs corrected by Rubens: Hellinga, Copy and print, figure 69.

2. Arch. 123, f^o 10 (Theodoor Galle, 15th March 1603: ‘drew the “Annunciation” on wood with pen...’).

3. Drawings of the Plantin-Moretus Museum, Inv. nos. 594-609.

4. Drawings, Inv. no. 126 (Emblemata drawing by Pieter van der Borcht).

5. Drawings, Inv. nos. 664-667 (drawings of plants by Van der Borcht).

6. Drawings, Inv. no 129 (coat-of-arms for the Sambucus Emblemata).

7. Drawings, Inv. nos. 610 (printer's mark, sixteenth century; see plate 37) and 614-663 (alphabet by R. van Orley).

8. Van den Wijngaert, ‘De late Moretussen’, I, pp. 233 sqq.

9. Christoffel Jegher did his own drawings for the (new) emperor portraits he cut for the Goltzius Icones Imperatorum Romanorum. The author is of the opinion that he also did the designs for the wood-blocks on religious subjects he cut in the 1620s (cf. p. 209 note 3).

10. Occasionally painted on panel or canvas (grisailles), as for example the title-page for the M.C. Sarbievius Lyricorum libri IV by Rubens, and the portrait of Balthasar I Moretus by Erasmus Quellin (cf. Vol. I, pp. 331 and 330).

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with a needle and many drawings in the Museum show that engravers were glad enough to avail themselves of this method.

The picture engraved on a wood-block or copperplate appears reversed so that a plate that literally copied a drawing would print as a mirror image. In woodcuts the designers were responsible for getting this right. Sometimes they forgot: a few wood-blocks with Plantin's printer's mark have the ‘Labore et Constantia’ the wrong way round. With copperplates it was possible for the engraver to make the necessary adjustments. This is what Van der Horst thought of at all events. Underneath his drawing of Maria de' Medici's entry into the palace at Brussels^1. he scribbled a note asking the engraver to cut the plate in reverse.^2. The engraver complied and this is the only instance known to the author of an original drawing and the print being identical. In another instance - the portrait of Balthasar i Moretus, who was paralysed in the right arm - the designer, Erasmus Quellin, retained the initiative. In his grisaille he made the subject's left arm the affected one, thus ensuring correctness in the print.

In the eighteenth century publishers succeeded in producing polychrome copperplate engravings. This was technically difficult. Before this time - and quite often afterwards - engravings had been simply coloured by hand. The production of coloured woodcuts was somewhat easier as their lines are simpler and bolder and it was possible to superimpose the various blocks needed with greater precision. As with modern colour reproductions, one block had to be made for each colour. In practice printers confined themselves to two colours, usually black and red. Experiments in the Plantinian house were restricted to this simplest form of colour printing. They were not numerous: the title-page of P. Heyns's alphabet book, 1568; a few alphabets;^3. some decorative borders; and in the seventeenth century

1. Drawings of the Plantin-Moretus Museum, Inv. no. 371.

2. Translation of Dutch text: ‘This must be printed as it is drawn, for otherwise the palace will come to the front; so you must look through the paper [by holding it up to the light] or soak it with oil [so that the drawing becomes visible on the reverse side] for they must print it that way round.’

3. Including the one reproduced in M. Rooses, Index Characterum, 1905, no. 19, and Musée, pp. 296-297 (cut about 1570 and used in the Antiphonarium and Graduale).

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the series of emperor portraits for volume v of H. Goltzius's collected works, published in 1645 but prepared in 1631-34. In this last case, Balthasar i's hand was forced. He had managed to buy up a stock of the first four volumes, in De Bie's reprint of 1617-20 (but printed with the original wood-blocks). The original two-tone plates of volume v had been lost and in order to be able to bring out a new edition of the complete works, the publisher was obliged to have a series of identical replacements cut (plus a few additional ones).^1.

Wood-blocks have certain drawbacks. They are difficult to alter or refurnish. Small corrections are possible - but even these leave tell-tale traces.^2. Large alterations can only be made by cutting away portions of the block.^3. Renovation of a much-used block was virtually impossible and nothing could be done about warping or splitting. Copperplates were less of a problem in these respects. Big alterations meant drastic treatment,^4. but small amendments to legend or picture could be done simply with a burin in an expert hand,^5. as could touching up and renovating. The accounts of the

1. See plates 45-47.

2. Among the wood-blocks Plantin bought from the widow of the Antwerp printer J. van Loe was the title-page border of Dodoens's Herbal. In the first edition of 1554 this border had included Charles V's coat of arms. Van Loe later had the Herbal translated into French and English in the hope of selling it abroad. Charles V was not popular in France and England at that time. The 1557 French edition still bore the imperial device on the title-page, but in the English version of the same year it was replaced by an inoffensive vase. This was skilfully done, but the traces are nevertheless visible. The altered wood-block is in the Plantin-Moretus Museum.

3. The fine wood-block showing the choir of St. Rombout's Cathedral, Malines, which had served as title-page for the 1571 psalter, was adapted for the Antiphonarium of 1572 by having a groove cut in it in which a typographical text was placed. Cf. plates 34 and 35.

4. The whole of the central medallion was later excised from the frontispiece of Vesalius-Valverda, Vivae imagines partium corporis humani, 1566. This had contained an engraved text of bibliographical references. A completely different text was needed for the 1567 Dutch translation and instead of erasing the Latin text and engraving the new one, the quicker but more radical method was chosen of simply cutting out the medallion from the plate. Cf. plate 33. The new text was set in the space left. The same thing was done with the medallion in Rubens's title-page design for H. Hugo, Obsidio Bredana, 1626, when subsequent translations required completely new titles.

5. The 1614 edition of the Breviarium Romanum had a title-page cut to a Rubens design with a central panel containing the address of Balthasar I and Jan II Moretus, the date 1614, and, at the bottom, the arms of Pope Paul V. In the 1628 edition these had been erased and replaced by a new imprint, engraved with the date 1628, in the name of Balthasar Moretus, the widow of Jan II Moretus, and Jan Meursius; the papal arms were those of the new pope, Urbanus VIII. Cf. Hellinga, Copy and print, figures 70 and 71.

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Galle workshop show that these jobs were done quite often and cost the masters of the Golden Compasses a fair amount over the years.^1.

Not all copperplates were equally easy to renovate. It depended on whether they had been engraved with a burin or etched with acid. The burin demanded the trained hand of a craftsman; etching a lesser degree of skill. This explains why painters who ventured into the medium were particularly attracted to the latter technique. It was neither by chance nor by a whim that Van der Borcht, when he began to work for Plantin as an engraver, produced only etchings. However, etchings have certain disadvantages compared with burin-engraved plates. The lines are relatively shallow and broad, giving a less sharp picture. For the same reason it is difficult to re-cut the lines to renovate the plate and this reduces the number of copies of the picture than can be printed. For moderate runs the technical inferiority of etchings was not so important: Van der Borcht produced a goodly number for Plantin and in the seventeenth century the Moretuses were still illustrating a few of their works with etchings.^2. But in that same century the officina began to specialize in service books in large runs, which meant heavy use of plates for illustrations. Etching was out and henceforth engravings with the burin held sway. Occasionally, subsequent masters of the Golden Compasses set down their thoughts on the matter in some detail, and these records are important to the study of the question.^3.

1. In the second half of the seventeenth century and in the eighteenth, there were even engravers who did only retouching for the firm. See p. 241.

2. Including J. Boenerus, Delineatio historica fratrum minorum occisorum, 1635, illustrated by Adriaan Pauwels.

3. Letter from J.J. Moretus to N. Heylbroeck, May 1754 (Arch. 283, f^o 160^vo; quoted by Van den Wijngaert in ‘De late Moretussen’, I, p. 207): the publisher asked ‘that these plates must be engraved by you entirely with a burin and not etched or engraved with spirits or by any other means’; for, he continued, ‘my copperplate pressman is very experienced in printing so that he prints more than 4,000 copies before the plates have to be retouched’; he was therefore reckoning on the fact that ‘the plates that you are going to engrave for me will be of the same durability’. A letter by F.J. Moretus, early in 1763, about engravings done by Hendelot (quoted by Van den Wijngaert, ‘De late Moretussen’, II, p. 163), is clearer and more precise. The publisher found Hendelot's production only ‘passably good’. Too much of the surface was etched away and for two reasons he wanted all future work to be engraved with the burin. First and chiefly, because an engraving had to be imposed on the reverse side of a printed sheet: the lines had to be deep enough to give a full-bodied reproduction that would prevent the text from showing through. Secondly this kind of engraving was longer-lasting and the copperplate easier to retouch: etched lines became blurred after being printed a number of times.

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No explicit details have been discovered of the production rate of the copperplate engravers who worked for the Plantin press, but there are a few indications of the time in which woodcutters were expected to have their wood-blocks ready.^1. Norms of this kind were probably more theoretical than real. Whenever engravers are mentioned in Plantin's correspondence it is almost always because they had not been able to deliver their work on time.^2.

Wood-blocks can be printed in conjunction with the text and on the same presses. Copper engraving is a form of intaglio printing and therefore requires a special press. For a few months, from 5th March 1571 to 21st June 1572, Plantin entered the ‘coperdrucker’ (copper printer) Jacob van der Houven in his livre des ouvriers.^3. Whether the man worked in the press or at home cannot be said with any certainty, but an intaglio press was listed in the inventory of Plantin's estate.^4. This press must, however, have stood idle for the greater part of the time: before and after the dates quoted Plantin

1. Arch. 31, f^o 50^vo (Arnold Nicolai, 17th Nov. 1563: ‘faict marché avec luy quil me taille les 150 fig[ures] des Emblesmes de Sambucus à 7 st. la pièce et quil men livrera 3 pour chacun jour à commencer le 22 jour de ce present mois’); Arch. 31, f^o 64^vo (Cornelis Muller, 1st Jan. 1564: ‘Et faict marché avec luy quil me livrera p[our] chaicunne semaine 9 fig[ures] desd[icts] [J. Sambucus, Emblemata] à peine qu'il prendra [perdra?] 3 st. pour chaicun jour quil aura failli à en tailler et livrer à l'équipolent d'une fig[ure] et demye p[our] chaicun iour...’). Jegher in 1631-33 delivered an average of two emperor portraits per week (Rooses, Musée, p. 301).

2. Much information on this is in Delen, ‘Artistes collaborateurs’.

3. Arch. 31, f^o 180^vo and Arch. 32, f^o 27^ro. (He earned an average of 7 st. per day, very regularly: he probably received a daily wage, not piece rates.)

4. In the second version of the detailed valuation of the typographical collections at Antwerp, an intaglio press is mentioned. With some other material, it was not separately estimated: ‘sans conter une presse pour imprimer en cuivre...’ (Arch. 99, p. 19).

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entrusted the printing of the copperplates to those who prepared them^1. or specialized in the print trade.^2. Conversely he often set and printed texts for the albums of prints which such firms produced.^3.

The Moretuses followed the same policy at first, having their plates printed exclusively by the Galle workshop. But at the end of the seventeenth century this firm closed down. Activity in the graphic arts in Antwerp was then nearing its lowest point and it became as difficult to have copperplates printed there as to have them engraved. Balthasar iv tackled the problem resolutely by having an intaglio press made in Holland in 1714 and smuggled into Antwerp^4. - not, as would nowadays be the case, so as to escape import duties but to avoid difficulties with the Antwerp carpenters, who would have immediately protested against ‘unfair’ Dutch competition.^5. Balthasar iv set up a small workshop for intaglio printing in his house and engaged specialist pressmen.^6. The workshop remained in use until the end of the eighteenth century. A few notes from the middle years of that century give some interesting particulars of its equipment^7. and of the amount of material the pressman used a year.^8.

1. Such as Pieter Huys.

2. Such as Mijnken Liefrinck.

3. Particularly Philip Galle (cf. p. 10; see also Rooses, Musée, p. 190).

4. M. Sabbe, ‘Ysbrand Vincent en zijn Antwerpsche vrienden’, De Moretussen en hun kring, 1928, pp. 200-202. When ordering, through this Amsterdam paper merchant and associate of the firm, Balthasar Moretus let himself be guided by A. Bosse's work, Traité des manières de graver en taille douce sur lairain par le moyen des eaues fortes et des vernix durs et mols; ensemble de la façon d'en imprimer les planches et d'en construire la presse, Paris, 1645. Thus informed, he required ‘une presse de la dernière perfection pour imprimer oeuvrages avec deux rouleaux, avec du bois de Guajac; des langes pour mettre dessus les planches et quelque fois dessous en les imprimant; quatre tampons ou balles pour encrer les planches, des meilleures faites; le vaisseau ou marmitte pour faire cuire l'huile avec sa couverte; le marbre et la mollette pour broyer le nois; la poisle [poêle] et le gril pour chauffer la planche’. On 17th Dec. 1714 the press arrived in Antwerp. From a letter of 17th Jan. 1715 it appears that it cost, with all appurtenances, 217 fl. See plate 22.

5. ‘... to avoid all difficulties with the [Antwerp] carpenters' guild’.

6. From February 1717 two intaglio printers were entered in the wages accounts (Arch. 793).

7. Arch. 697, no. 55 (Inventory with the values of the pieces of equipment that were the personal property of the intaglio printer Gaspar Courtoy).

8. Arch. 697, no 101, f^o 9^ro: see L. Voet, ‘Een aantekenboek van Franciscus Joannes Moretus’, De Gulden Passer, 44, 1966, p. 234.

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Drawings, wood-blocks, and copperplates, and their printing, had to be paid for. Over the years the prices followed the general trend of decline in the purchasing power of money and at the same time were adjusted to the difficulty and size of the illustration to be drawn, cut, or engraved. The absolute figures are of less importance than the comparisons they make possible - among themselves and with the rest of the production costs of a book. Sample figures are to be found in the table on pp. 224-225.

The first fact that emerges is that of the three specialists the designer was virtually always the least well paid. This applied even to someone like Rubens. However, this master realized that the price paid for drawing an illustration formed only a fraction of the total investment in a publication, and had to be kept as low as possible. He also knew to the last stuiver what a day's work in his studio brought him in - and that was much more than he could ask from a publisher or an author. He therefore drew his designs in the solitude of his room on Sundays and feast days when he could not paint in his studio.^1. He was thus able to ask prices that were relatively low, considering his standing. In doing this Rubens implicitly acknowledged that in book illustration the creative work of the artist had to be less well remunerated than its technical execution.

A second obvious point is that the woodcut specialist had to be content with much less for his work than the copperplate engraver. The reason did not lie in preference for the engraving, but in a simple fact that also explains why the artist received less for his designs than the craftsman who executed them: payment was directly proportionate to the speed with which the work could be done, and a reasonable daily wage thereby earned. In principle the draughtsman could

1. Letter from Balthasar I Moretus to B. Corderius, 13th Sept. 1630 (Arch. 144, pp. 124 sqq.; given in Bouchery & Van den Wijngaert, op. cit., p. 85, note 1): ‘Theses Theologicas accepi, quas eleganter et cito excusas curabo. At de imaginibus laboro qui absolvantur. Rubenius delineare eas recusat, nisi ad trimestre delineatio differri possit. Et solet fere a me praemoneri sex mensibus, ut titulum aliquem meditetur, et describat cum plenissimo otio, et diebus fere sacris: nam profanos operi tali haud impendit; aut centum florenos pro unica delineatione exigeret. Itaque per alium delineari curabo...’

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Sample figures of the costs of drawings, wood-blocks, and copperplates^1.

	Drawings	Wood-blocks	Copperplates
1563-67
Borders		3 fl.(A. Nicolai)
Emblemata, octavo	10 st. (Ballain; d'Heere) 7 st. (Huys)	9, 10, 12, 15 st.
Nicander, quarto	7 st. (Ballain)	14 st. (Gourmont)
Reynard the Fox, octavo	30 fl. for 72 drawings	54 fl. for 72 wood-blocks
Vesalius-Valverda, Vivae imagines, folio	3½ fl. (title-page design; L. van Noort)		11 fl. (Huys)
1570-76
Missal, folio	3 fl. for 7 drawings (Van der Borcht)	7 to 10 fl. (Van Leest)	12 fl. (Dufour)
Title-page for Psalter, folio		18 fl. (Van Leest)
Title-pages for Polyglot Bible, folio			43 fl.
1585
Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows (engraving 43 × 29 cm)	6 fl. (Van den Broeck)		96 fl. (Wiericx) + 6 fl. (for copper)

1. Taken from Delen, ‘Artistes collaborateurs’, for Plantin's period; from Bouchery & Van den Wijngaert, P.P. Rubens en het Plantijnsche huis, for the period 1610-40. For the Justus Lipsius Diva Virgo Hallensis, data from Arch. 124, p. 323.

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Sample figures of the costs of drawings, wood-blocks, and copperplates

	Drawings	Wood-blocks	Copperplates
1604
J. Lipsius, Diva Virgo Hallensis, quarto	10 fl. for 3 drawings (Rousandt)^1.		110 fl. for 3 plates (C. Galle & A. Collaert)
1610-40
Designs by Rubens
folio	20 fl.		75-100 fl.
quarto	12 fl		30-40 fl.
octavo	8 fl.		25 fl.
24mo	5 fl.		25 fl.
Emperor portraits (two colours)	2 fl. and 2 fl. 12 st. (outlines; Jegher); 6 st. (light effects; Er. Quellin)^2.	6 fl. for the blocks with outlines (Jegher); 2 fl. 8 st. for the blocks with light effects (Jegher)

complete his task the quickest and the woodcutter was only a little slower. The engraver had to spend much longer over his copperplate.

It is usually hard to determine whether the cost of the wood-block or the copperplate was included in the prices charged. In the years 1563-67, at the beginning of his career, Plantin seems himself to have ordered the softwood blocks (‘bois de buis’) for woodcuts from Antwerp carpenters.^3. They did not cost much each, and even in the quantities he had to buy this was not a large item of expenditure.

1. Rousandt received a further 18 fl. for his journey to Halle (see p. 214, note 2).

2. Jegher received 2 fl. 12 st. for the portrait of Charles V and 2 fl. each for nine other portraits; Erasmus Quellin 3 fl. ‘for the lighting [i.e., light effects] of 10 emperors’. Jegher and Erasmus Quellin must have executed two other portraits. The rest were copied from the earlier Hubertus Goltzius edition. See Bouchery & Van den Wijngaert, op. cit., pp. 93-94.

3. For example, Arch. 3, f^o 3^ro (4th Nov. 1563: ‘Jay faict faire à Gilles Gevele des bois de buis à faire tailler figures demblesmes pour Sambucus dont il men a livré 11 de grandes pour mectre in 8^o de travers comprenant 12 lignes de median en hauteur dont iay payé 1 st. de la pièce. Plus men a faict 25 petits bois de grandeur à mectre de travers en 16^o. Item 7 escarreures de mesme bois où entrent les[dicts] autres 25 petites pièces de forme en 16^o dont iay payé pour la pièce ½ st.: 1 fl. 13½ st.’); f^o 9^ro (1st April 1564: ‘Jay payé ... à Gilles Heville faiseur d'espinettes pour 3 bois à faire commencements de livres in 16^o, pour 3 in 8^o, pour 3 pièces de bois à repourtraire aucuns Emblesmes de Sambucus, pour 20 listes ou carrés à mectre les fig[ures] dedans à 3 st. pièce et pour 60 bois carrés à faire pourtraire des Emblesmes d'Adrianus Junius et pour 26 bois à pourtraire les médailles des Emblesmes de Sambucus: 10 fl. 5 st.’); f^o 23^ro (10th April 1565: ‘... à Gilles Heville pour 60 bois à pourtraire les figures des petites heures et pour les bois faicts à mectre au lieu des vignettes des heures 8^o et pour 10 pièces de formats: 2 fl. 14 st.’); f^o 30 (23rd June 1565: ‘pour 65 bois à les pourtraire [illustrations for the Commentaria in Ptolemaeum; to Heville]: 2 fl.’); f^o 41 (29th Dec. 1565: ‘Les bois desd[icts] figures [Fables de Faerne] à Gilles van Heville: 7 fl. 15 st.’).

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The author has not discovered a single piece of evidence for the later years that would show that the publisher continued this practice and it must be assumed that either the artist or the woodcutter provided the blocks and allowed for this in his price. Copperplates were much more expensive. Sometimes the printer bought these too.^1. In other instances the artist supplied the plate but charged for it separately.^2. However, it may be assumed that in the majority of cases the plates were included in the price of the finished work.^3.

It has been seen that the wood-blocks were printed in the house, but in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries specialist firms printed copperplates for the Plantinian press and these too had to be paid. In 1566 P. Huys asked 1 fl. per hundred sheets for printing the copperplates for the Vesalius-Valverda Vivae Imagines. There was a run of 600 copies and 42 plates per copy. This meant 13,500 sheets for which Plantin paid 132 fl.^4. In 1570 Mijnken Liefrinck charged 10 st. per

1. Cf. a number of receipts signed by Pieter van der Borcht for plates of copper: Arch. 734, p. 2 (15th Sept. [?]: 3⅛ lb. of copper already cleaned, at 19 st. per lb.: 2 fl. 19 st.); p. 3 (16th Sept. [?]: 3 lb. of beaten copper, not cleaned, at 15 st. per lb.: 2 fl. 5 st. ‘I shall have the woman clean it’); p. 4 (4th Aug. 1597: 10½ lb. copper, cleaned, at 6 st. per lb.: 3 fl. 3 st.).

2. For example, P. van der Heyden, about 1569 (Arch. 757, p. 370: ‘P. Van der Heyden doibt avoir pour le cuivre de la deuxième plate est à scavoir de la Terre Sainte, pesante 5 lb. à 8 st. la lb. et 20 st. schoonmaken [Dutch for “to clean”]: 3 fl....; Item pour les derniers plates ascavoir pour les nettoyer et sur le cuivre: 2 fl.’). Plantin was charged 6 fl. for the plate with the picture of Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows (cf. p. 224). Theodoor Galle also charged separately for the copper sometimes. Cf. Arch. 123, f^o 13 (5th Feb. 1605: to copper used for 2 borders in the missal: 2 fl. 16 st.); f^o 14 (26th Nov. 1605: ‘The copper done for the [view of the] town of Louvain with beating: 8 fl. 15 st.’).

3. Shown for example by Theodoor Galle's accounts, where there is an occasional note to the effect that the price for an engraved plate included ‘copper and everything together’.

4. Cf. p. 384.

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hundred sheets for printing the C. Perret calligraphic album^1. and in 1574 an average of 8 st. per 100 sheets.^2. In 1571-85 Philip Galle received an average of 15 st. per 100 sheets.^3. Theodoor Galle's accounts for the early years of the seventeenth century show a great variation in price according to the format, but always reckoned per 100 sheets: 10 st., 12 st., 16 st., 18 st., 1 fl., 1 fl. 16 st.^4.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, illustrating a book, even modestly, meant investing quite a lot of money. In the section of this work dealing with costing concrete examples are given which show that the pictures accounted for a considerable part of the capital investment necessary to publish an illustrated book; sometimes it was more than 75 per cent.^5. In this section it is simply the cost of illustrations compared with the total expenditure of the press that will be looked at. The percentage varied from year to year according to the number of illustrated books published and to the percentage of the annual production these represented. Plantin's list of illustrated titles seems impressive but it was relatively small compared with other works. However high the expenditure might run in individual cases, the money paid for pictures was generally rather lost in Plantin's budget for any given year. In 1566, for example, illustrations accounted for 137 fl. 14 st. out of total running costs of 13,041 fl.: less than one per cent.^6. This percentage increased in the time of the Moretuses, when they started turning out liturgical and devotional books in large quantities. Between 1600 and 1610 Jan i Moretus paid his son-in-law, Theodoor Galle, 13,530 fl. Of this 6,179 fl. was for engraving copperplates (this included re-engraving, retouching, and a few drawings) and 7,341 fl. for printing them.^7. This was not the sum total of Jan Moretus's spending on illustrations; there were also payments for designs, for a few engravings made at other studios, and for

1. Arch. 16, f^o 136.

2. Arch. 18, f^o 82.

3. Arch. 18, f^o 143.

4. Arch. 123. For example, f^o 1 (1600: for a folio edition, 16 st. per hundred; for a book of hours in 12mo and for the F. Costerus Meditations in 16mo, 10 st.); f^o 10 (1603: for the large plates in the ‘Triumphs’ [Entry of the Archdukes Albert and Isabella into Antwerp], 1 fl. 16 st. per hundred).

5. Cf. pp. 381 sqq.

6. Cf. Appendix 1.

7. Compiled from Arch. 123.

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wood-blocks. His account-books for 1600-10 record an expenditure of 57,885 fl. for compositors' and pressmen's wages.^1. Expenditure on illustrations was therefore 25 per cent of that on wages in the period, compared with 2.5 per cent half a century before in 1566 (137 fl. 14 st. on illustrations and 4,141 fl. 3½ st. on wages).

As so much capital went into illustrating books the materials, at least the wood-blocks and copperplates, were carefully preserved. Drawings were rather indifferently treated. Of this material commissioned and collected through the centuries by the masters of the Golden Compasses, 13,791 wood-blocks and 2,846 copperplates are preserved in the Plantin-Moretus Museum, but only about 500 drawings. This is partly due to the fact that the drawings for woodcuts were actually traced through on to the blocks and the bulk of them consequently destroyed in the process. But even in the case of the drawings for the copper engravings, only a fraction has remained in the house.^2. Probably they were either lost in the engravers' studios or became so dirty or torn that they were thrown away.^3. It was not until about the middle of the eighteenth century that the Moretuses began to take more care of the drawings they commissioned; they mounted some of them, but more as collectors' pieces than out of practical considerations.^4. Whereas inventories were regularly made of the wood-blocks and copperplates, even the later Moretuses neglected to do this for their drawings.

1. Cf. p. 386.

2. Rubens, for example, must have done over 50 drawings for the firm. Only five of these, and a grisaille, are in the Plantin-Moretus Museum; ten or so are in the collections of foreign museums or libraries; the rest are lost. In 1754 some of these drawings were disposed of at an auction (Bouchery & Van den Wijngaert, op. cit., p. 69, note 3, and p. 153).

3. There is actual evidence of drawings being lost in this way in the eighteenth century. Franciscus Joannes Moretus wanted to retrieve for his personal collection some drawings entrusted to Parisian studios for engraving. The French bookseller acting as agent managed to collect the greater number, but some had already been lost (Van den Wijngaert, ‘De late Moretussen’, I, p. 230). In some cases drawings may have been handed over to the author or to the institution meeting the costs of publication or illustration, as was probably the case with a part of Rubens's work.

4. See Van den Wijngaert, ‘De late Moretussen’, I, pp. 230 and 233.

[p. 229]

This attitude is understandable. The drawings were only a means to an end and of no further use once the design had been transferred to wood or copper. Wood-blocks and copperplates were a valuable part of a printer's material and were therefore meticulously stored, inventoried, specified when estates were divided up, and could be sold or purchased from other printers. When Plantin began to specialize to some extent in herbals he not only had a goodly number of wood-blocks cut depicting plants, but also bought quantities of existing blocks. In 1580, for example, he bought 250 blocks from the London printer Purfoot, and in April 1581 one thousand from the widow Jan van Loe, who for a long time had been Dodoens's printer and publisher.^1. In other instances he bought up copperplates and wood-blocks of a particular work, not because he intended to use them, but in order to prevent a colleague from bringing out a new edition that might compete with a projected Plantin book. There were, for example, the illustrations used by Willem Silvius for his 1567 edition of Guicciardini's Descrittione di tutti i Paesi Bassi. Plantin wrote to Silvius telling him quite openly what were his intentions,^2. but the transaction did not go through until after Silvius's death.^3. On this occasion Plantin acquired other wood-blocks for which he could have had even less use.^4. The Moretuses embarked on similar transactions. Balthasar i and Jan ii Moretus spent 12,114 fl. in April 1612 on several hundred copperplates included in the estate of J.B. Vrients, a printer and engraver.^5.

1. Rooses, Musée, pp. 221 and 223; Delen, Graveurs-illustrateurs, p. 80.

2. Corr., VI, no. 864 (16th Feb. 1580: ‘... Et d'autant que c'est chose arrestée et resolue qu'il me convient poursuivre en diligence les choses susdictes je n'ay voulu pour l'ancienneté, congnoissance et familiarité de vous en advertir et offrir le payement de telles figures que pouvés avoir soit en bois soit en cuivre (encores que je ne m'en veuille servir veu que je fays faire le tout en cuivre en autres grandeurs que les vostres) et pareillement de tous pourtraicts, versions et autres despenses que voudrés presentement delivrer’).

3. Rooses, Musée, p. 224.

4. Such as the wood-blocks of the Spelen van Sinnen, published by Silvius in 1561.

5. Among them the Ortelius copperplates - 135 from the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 40 from the Parergon and 40 from the Epitome - which Vrients had bought from the cartographer's heirs, together with a whole series of plates that he made himself or commissioned. These were listed in the ‘Inventaire des planches etc. achaptées en l'auction de la vefve de J. Bapt^e Vriendts’ (Arch. 101, f^o 29). Cf. Denucé, Oud-Nederlandsche kaartmakers in betrekking met Plantijn, II, pp. 89-90 and 266.

[p. 230]

At the same time the Moretuses did not hesitate to get rid of items from their own collection when an attractive enough offer seemed likely. In 1659 Balthasar ii started negotiations for the sale of the 3,180 botanical wood-blocks he then possessed to Pieter van Waesberghe, the great Amsterdam printer and publisher.^1. Fortunately the sale did not go through and these bio cks still form a numerically important part of the Museum's collection. Other negotiations were more successful: this is how most of the Ortelius plates must have left the Plan tin house.^2. The 144 emperor portraits that Balthasar i commissioned between 1631 and 1634 for Goltzius's Icones Imperatorum Romanorum (volume v of the complete works, published in 1645) were handed over to the Verdussens for their 1708 edition. By a happy chance, Max Rooses was able to buy back the whole collection for the Museum.^3.

1. Letter from Balthasar II Moretus to P. van Waesberghe: Arch. 299, f^os 733 sqq. Cf. Delen, Graveurs-illustrateurs, p. 83.

2. Only a few of these plates were preserved: Denucé, Oud-Nederlandsche kaartmakers, II, p. 90. It has not been possible to discover how the rest were alienated.

3. Charging for the use of plates was another means of making money from them. For the loan of his wood-blocks of plants for the re-issue at Leiden of the Dodoens Herbal, Jan I Moretus asked the younger Frans Raphelengius for 100 copies of the new edition. Raphelengius thought this too much, observing that he had been charged only 50 thalers for a larger number of wood-blocks he had borrowed at Frankfurt; he suggested that his uncle should receive 50 copies (M. Sabbe, ‘Een en ander over Dodoens' Cruydboek-uitgaven van 1608 and 1618...’, De Gulden Passer, 15, 1937, pp. 94-95). See also a letter from the younger Frans Raphelengius to Balthasar I Moretus, 23rd May 1623 (Arch. 92, p. 219): a good friend had asked him to find out Moretus's terms for the use of his copperplates from the Vesalius-Valverda anatomical treatise in a planned Dutch edition. Judocus Hondius, the famous Amsterdam type-cutter and cartographical publisher, twice obtained the use of some of Balthasar I Moretus's copperplates in 1618. In the first case the plates were sent to Amsterdam; what Balthasar expected in return is not precisely stated: presumably a number of copies of the Hondius edition (Arch. 228, f^o 93, 13th June 1618, 8 plates of the Tabula Peutingeriana ‘desquelles il demande imprimer en son Ptolomeus Mercatoris 800 ou 600 copies dont sommes attendants... [left blank]’). In the second case 3,200 prints of maps from Ortelius's Parergon were sent to Hondius, who had to pay the cost of printing and carriage (Arch. 228, f^o 175, 24th Oct. 1618).

[p. 231]

The worst losses from Plantin's original collection were caused by two other events. When the young printer's possessions were auctioned in April 1562, the by no means small stock he had already built up was dispersed.^1. The distribution of his estate had even worse consequences.^2. At his death he had 7,530 wood-blocks and 2,391 copperplates.^3. The wood-blocks were valued at 10 st. each, making a total of 3,716 fl. The old copperplates were valued at averages of 1 fl. 8 st. for the plates at Leiden and 1 fl. 10 st. for those at Antwerp. The new ones, intended for works not yet published, were priced higher, nearer their actual value.^4. The total value of the copperplates was put at 4,384 fl. 14 st. These amounts represent only a fraction of cost, but on the other hand, many of the plates and blocks were of little further use because there was no point in reissuing the relevant works. But even after this low evaluation, these blocks and plates added up to an appreciable percentage of the typographical material Plantin left his heirs.^5. Like the rest of this material it was divided between Jan Moretus at Antwerp and Frans Raphelengius at Leiden. The 461 copperplates, estimated at 637 fl., and the 1,578 wood-blocks valued at 750 fl.^6. which were already at Leiden remained there. To Jan Moretus passed 1,930 copperplates valued at 3,747 fl. 14 st. and 5,952 wood-blocks, valued at 2,976 fl.^7. At the

1. Arch. 27, f^os 15^ro, 15^vo, 32^ro, 35^ro, 35^vo, 36^ro, 38^ro, 38^vo, 39^ro - a total value of 372 fl. 6 st.; all were wood-blocks except for ‘three copperplates of Anathomia’ [intended for the Vesalius-Valverda Vivae imagines, eventually published in 1566] and ‘the plates and figures of the funeral of [the] emperor’ [the copperplates for the Magnifique et Sumptueuse Pompe funèbre de Charles Cinquième, 1559, sold for 129 fl.]

2. See Vol. I, pp. 165-166. Pieter van der Borcht, Ortelius, and Philip Galle were the valuers (Arch. 99, p. 15). Inventory of the collection at Antwerp: Arch. 98, pp. 513-514 and 523-524; Arch. 99, pp. 14-15; Arch. 124, p. 321. Inventory of the collection at Leiden: Arch. 99, p. 33-34.

3. Viz. 5,952 wood-blocks at Antwerp and 1,578 at Leiden; 1,930 copperplates at Antwerp and 461 at Leiden.

4. Only those at Antwerp (319 etched and 73 engraved plates): Arch. 124, p. 321.

5. 8,110 fl. 14 st. out of a total of 22,607 fl. (18,000 fl. for the typographical material at Antwerp, 4,607 fl. for that at Leiden); the cast type was put at 9,600 fl. and the punches, matrices, and moulds at 5,821 fl. 10 st. (see p. 124, note 2).

6. 1,387 fl. altogether out of a total for the Leiden printing office of 4,607 fl.

7. Altogether 6,723 fl. 14 st. out of a total of 18,000 fl. for the Antwerp printing office.

[p. 232]

closing down of the Leiden firm in 1619 the Moretuses succeeded in buying back from their relatives a considerable number of wood-blocks,^1. but the larger part of the copperplates went astray at Leiden.^2.

Experts drew up the inventory of Plantin's estate. Philip Galle, Abraham Ortelius, and Pieter van der Borcht dealt with the wood-blocks and copperplates. Their list forms an interesting record of what Plantin possessed in this line, at least in so far as it was preserved at Antwerp.^3. After 1589 the Plantinian collection was never again divided up in this way, but from time to time the Moretuses thought it advisable to compile an inventory of their wood-blocks and copperplates. Their stock-taking enables posterity to trace the development of the collection, what had been acquired and what disappeared.^4.

1. When the Leiden branch closed down in June 1619, the younger Frans Raphelengius sent to Antwerp eight boxes of wood-blocks (including those used for works by Clusius and Belon de Mans, the Alciatus emblem books, and Plantinian printer's marks) and unspecified copperplates (Arch. 92, p. 195, letter from F. Raphelengius, 27th June 1619). See also Raphelengius's letters of 22nd Oct. 1618 (Arch. 95, p. 48) and 20th Nov. 1618 (Arch. 92, p. 187 - advising his cousin to take all the wood-blocks for 1,000 fl.; Balthasar Moretus had already taken 1,286 at 13 st. each, worth 835 fl. 18 st.; for just a little more he could have had all the Leiden wood-blocks).

2. See for example the letter from the younger Raphelengius to Jan Moretus, 12th May 1602 (Arch. 92, p. 141), concerning the possible closing down of the press: ‘Mais les figures de cuivre ie les veux vendre, soit que je demeure ou non; car il me semble que cela ne peut tourner à deshonneur, pour raisons. Je ne pense pas aussi que vous les voudriez avoir; toutesfois si les voulez mandez le moy. Ce sont les figures de vander Borcht longuets et quarrez, les prophetes de Hildesemius, et celles de Usu et Abusu. Le reste est usé of uytgeslepen [Dutch for “or worn out”]. Les Icones Medicorum je les ay accordé à Cornelis Claesz. à condition qu'il imprimera les 300 exemplaires pour moy.’

3. Cf. p. 231, note 2

4. Including a very detailed inventory by Balthasar II Moretus, June 1653 (Arch. 354, pp. 85-100) and a series of inventories of the collection of copperplates assembled in Arch. 124: 1642 (pp. 7-30), 1653 (p. 32: only the plates of Ortelius), 1673 (pp. 35-56; pp. 67-113), 1704 (pp. 205-218).

[p. *41]

(45) Print from the outline block of the portrait of Charles v. The portrait (shown in complete form in plate 47) was conceived in two colours, black and ochre. This necessitated the use of two different blocks, one for the outlines to be printed in black, shown here, and one for the light effects to be printed in ochre, shown in plate 46 overleaf.

[p. *42]

(46) Print from the light-effect block in ochre of the portait of Charles v (cf. plates 45 and 47).

[p. *43]

(47) Portrait of Charles v in complete form. This two-colour woodcut appears in Hubert Goltzius's Icones Imperatorum Romanorum..., volume V of Opera Huberti Goltzii, 1645. For this volume Balthasar i Moretus had 144 ‘emperor portraits’ cut by Christoffel Jegher between 1631 and 1634. For most of the portraits Jegher could use those in the 1557 edition as models, but he drew the above portrait himself. The blocks were sold in 1708 to the Antwerp printers Verdussen, but in 1876 they were reacquired by the Plantin-Moretus Museum. The reproductions in plates 45-47 were slightly reduced.

[p. *44]

(48) Copy of Valerius, Argonauticon libri VIII, 1566, in 16mo (OB 1.9) bound with four gilt fleurons in the corners and Plantin's printer's mark. The signature on the title-page shows that the book belonged to Abraham Ortelius, the cartographer, and was presumably given to him by Plantin.

[p. 233]

List of the graphic artists who worked for the Plantin house

1. Draughtsmen and designers^1.
Hieronymus Cock (c. 1510-70)	1559^2.
Geoffroy Ballain (Paris)	1563-67^3.
Pieter Huys (1519-81?)	1563-65^4.
Lucas d'Heere (Ghent; 1534-84)	1563-64^5.
*Pieter van der Borcht (Malines to 1572; Antwerp from 1572; c. 1540-1608)	1565-1608^6.
Lambert van Noort (1520-70)	1566^7.
*Crispin van den Broeck (1524-91)	1566-c. 1591^8.
Clement Perret (Brussels)	1569^9.

1. Drawings by the artists marked with an asterisk are in the Plantin-Moretus Museum. Valuable information on these artists and their productions preserved in the Museum is given in Catalogus van de tekeningen van het Museum Plantin-Moretus by F. van den Wijngaert (in manuscript; this can be consulted at the Museum).

2. Did the drawings of La Magnifique et Sumptueuse Pompe funèbre de Charles Cinquième, 1559, probably on commission from the herald who paid for the edition. Cf. Rooses, Musée, p. 24; Delen, ‘Artistes collaborateurs’, pp. 107-108; Delen, Graveurs-illustrateurs, p. 118.

3. Rooses, Musée, pp. 180-181; Delen, ‘Artistes collaborateurs’, pp. 87-90; Delen, Graveurs-illustrateurs, pp. 106-108, 130-131, 133, 136; Delen, ‘Les illustrateurs français’, pp. 64-74, 175-178.

4. Rooses, Musée, pp. 181-182; Delen, ‘Artistes collaborateurs’, pp. 102-105; Delen, Graveurs-illustrateurs, pp. 84-86, 107, 112-115, 134.

5. He was contacted by Sambucus to do the drawings for his Emblemata; a large number of these drawings were rejected by Plantin and redrawn by P. Huys: cf. p. 198; Rooses, Musée, p. 181; Delen, ‘Artistes collaborateurs’, p. 110.

6. The most eminent of Plantin's draughtsmen; Rooses, Musée, pp. 177-180, 263, 265, 268; Delen, ‘Artistes collaborateurs’, pp. 90-99; Delen, Graveurs-illustrateurs, pp. 79-98. Cf. also the introduction by M. Rooses to the reissue of the Plantin edition of J. Sambucus, Icones medicorum, 1574 (Antwerp, 1901).

7. He drew the frontispiece for Vesalius-Valverda, Vivae imagines partium corporis humani, 1566: Rooses, Musée, p. 182; Delen, ‘Artistes collaborateurs’, p. 110.

8. Together with Van der Borcht and De Vos Plantin's most important designer: Rooses, Musée, pp. 180,188, 263; Delen, ‘Artistes collaborateurs’, pp. 100-102.

9. He published a calligraphic album under Plantin's imprint in 1569 engraved from his drawings. On the title-page it is stated that he was from Brussels and only eighteen years old. He was not actually a draughtsman of Plantin but rather an author who had his drawings published by him. Delen, ‘Artistes collaborateurs’, pp. 105-107. Cf. also: P. Bergmans, ‘Clement Perret, calligraphe bruxellois du XVI^e siècle’, Annales de l'Académie d'Archéologie de Belgique, 1902; C. Clair, ‘Clement Perret, calligrapher’, The Library, Fifth Series, 11, 1956, pp. 50-52; C. Clair, ‘Clement Perret, calligrapher: an addendum’, The Library, Fifth Series, 13. 1958. PP- 127-128.

[p. 234]

Jan Wiericx	1573^1.
Melchior Lorck (1526/27 - d. after 1583)	1573-74^2.
Bernardinus Passarus (Passerus) (Italy; c. 1540-90)	1577^3.
*Maarten de Vos (1532-1603)	1581-88^4.
Cornelis iii Floris (c. 1551-1615)	1595^5.
*Joos de Momper (1564-1635)	1595; 1602^6.
Theodoor Galle (1571-1633)	from 1600^7.
Rousandt (Brussels?)	1604^8.
*Adam van Noort (1562-1641)	1608-1630^9.
*Pieter i de Jode (1570-1634)	1608-09; 1631^10.
*Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640)	1608; 1612-37^11.

1. An engraver; sometimes sketched the drawings for his own engravings. This was the case in or about 1573 with a number of plates for an octavo breviary: M. Rooses, De platen van den brevier in-8^o gesneden door Jan Wiericx, s.d. On J. Wiericx, cf. p. 238, note 1.

2. Rooses, Musée, pp. 104-105, suggests that the drawings for five woodcuts in the folio missal of 1575, which bore the monogram F ML, might be attributed to Don Luis Manrique, Grand Almoner of Spain. They should in fact be accredited to the Danish artist Melchior Lorck. For this artist and his stay in Antwerp in the years 1573-74, see E. Fischer, Melchior Lorck, Drawings from the Evelyn collection at Stonor Park, England and from the Department of Prints and Drawings, The Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Copenhagen, 1962.

3. An Italian artist whose name was mentioned as designer in the frontispiece of L. Gambara, Rerum sacrarum liber, 1577. The ‘invention’ of the bulk of the remaining 55 copperplates which illustrate the work is probably also to be attributed to him. The plates were probably executed in Italy and sent to Plantin by the author of the work.

4. Rooses, Musée, p. 181; Delen, ‘Artistes collaborateurs,’ pp. 108-110. Cf. also p. 239, note 4.

5. He did, together with Josse de Momper, the drawings for the Entry of Archduke Ernest into Antwerp, published by the Officina Plantiniana in 1595; Rooses, Musée, p. 363.

6. He did, together with Cornelis Floris, the drawings for the Entry of Archduke Ernest (cf. preceding note) and the drawings for the Entry of Archdukes Albert and Isabella into Antwerp in 1600, published by the Officina Plantiniana in 1602: Rooses, Musée, pp. 265 and 363.

7. He may have done some of the drawings from which he made his engravings: cf. p. 239, note 6.

8. In 1604 he made the drawings for the three engravings inj. Lipsius, Diva Virgo Hallensis, 1604: Arch. 124, p. 123.

9. Rooses, Musée, p. 334.

10. Rooses, Musée, p. 264; Bouchery & Van den Wijngaert, P.P. Rubens en het Plantijnsche huis, p. 83.

11. Bouchery & Van den Wijngaert, op. cit., 1941. See also: M. Rooses, Titels en portretten gesneden naar P.P. Rubens voor de Plantijnsche drukkerij. Titres et portraits gravés d'après P.P. Rubens pour l'imprimerie plantinienne, 1901.

[p. 235]

*Schelte a Bolswert (c. 1586-1659)	1617^1.
Christoffel Jegher (1596-1653)	[1625-43]^2.
*Abraham van Diepenbeeck (1596-1675)	1627; 1648-50^3.
*Karel de Mallery (1571-after 1638)	1630-34^4.
*Nicolaas van der Horst (Brussels; 1587 or 1589-1646)	1631; 1639^5.
*Erasmus ii Quellin (1607-78)	1636; 1637-45^6.
Filips Fruytiers (1610-66)	1640^7.
*Jacob van Werden	1645-58^8.
*Jan van Bockhorst (1605-68)	1648-54; 1664^9.
*Van Loeybos	1683^10.
*Jan Erasmus Quellin (1643-1715)	1687^11.
*Godfried Maes (1649-1700)	1694-96^12.
Gonzales van Heylen (1661-1730?)	1694; 1703-07^13.
*Jan Claudius de Cock (1668-1736)	1704^14.
*Richard van Orley (1663-1732)	1709^15.
*Cornelis Jozef d'Heur (1707-62)	c. 1740-62^16.
*Filips Jozef Tassaert (Brussels; 1732-1803)	1762^17.
*Andreas-Cornelis Lens (1739-1822)	1762-64^18.

1. He may have drawn some of the originals from which he made his engravings. Cf. p. 240, note 3.

2. He may have done some of the drawings from which he made his engravings: among them twelve ‘new’ portraits of emperors (Bouchery & Van den Wijngaert, pp. 93-94).

3. Rooses, Musée, p. 299; Bouchery & Van den Wijngaert, pp. 64-65, 80.

4. He may have done some of the drawings from which he engraved. Cf. p. 240, note 1.

5. Rooses, Musée, pp. 293, 310, 311; Bouchery & Van den Wijngaert, p. 107.

6. Bouchery & Van den Wijngaert, pp. 92, 94, 103, 106, 108, 110; cf. also for a commission discharged in 1636: Rooses, Musée, p. 299.

7. He drew the frontispiece of Imago primi saeculi Societatis Iesu, 1640, as appears from the inscription on the plate.

8. Notable for his drawings for the illustrations to the work of Jean-Jacques and Jean Chifflet, probably as a commission from the authors; in any case he was not paid by the Officina Plantiniana: Van den Wijngaert, Catalogus Tekeningen.

9. Rooses, Musée, p. 299; Bouchery & Van den Wijngaert, pp. 55-56.

10. Van den Wijngaert, ‘De late Moretussen en de boekillustratie,’ I, p. 196.

11. Ibid, I, pp. 194-196.

12. Ibid, I, p. 197.

13. He probably did some of the drawings for his engravings himself: ibid, I, pp. 203-204.

14. Ibid, I, p. 198.

15. Ibid, I, pp. 198-200, 202-204.

16. Ibid, I, pp. 205-206, 233-239; II, pp. 192-193.

17. Ibid, II, pp. 159-160.

18. Ibid, II, pp. 160-161.

[p. 236]

*Jean Beugnet (Paris; died 1803)	1763-64^1.
*Theodoor de Bruyn (died 1804)	1765^2.
2. Woodcutters
Arnold Nicolai (master 1550; died 1585)	1555-c. 68^3.
Cornelis Muller	1564-72^4.
Gerard Janssen van Kampen (Breda; master 1560)	1564-83^5.
Willem van Parijs (died 1587)	1564-65^6.
Jean de Gourmont (Paris)	1565^7.
Antoon van Leest (master 1566; died c. 1592)	1566-84^8.
Marc Duchesne	1568^9.
Jan Cressone (master 1570)	1570^10.
Dierick van Hoochstraete	1570^11.
Gilles Claes (master 1590; died 1631)	1589^12.
Virgilius Solis (Frankfurt)	1592-93^13.
Egidius (& Willem?) Claessens	1612-13^14.

1. Ibid, II, pp. 166-180, 192.

2. Ibid, II, pp. 161-162.

3. Rooses, Musée, pp. 182-183; Delen, ‘Artistes collaborateurs’, pp. 111-113; Delen, Graveurs-illustrateurs, pp. 86, 98-112.

4. Rooses, Musée, pp. 184-185; Delen, ‘Artistes collaborateurs’, p. 115; Delen, Graveurs-illustrateurs, pp. 85, 119-123.

5. Also a bookseller in Breda; related to Egidius Beys. Rooses, Musée, p. 184; Delen, ‘Artistes collaborateurs’, pp. 114-115; Delen, Graveurs-illustrateurs, pp. 124-128.

6. Rooses, Musée, p. 185; Delen, ‘Artistes collaborateurs’, p. 115; Delen, Graveurs-illustrateurs, pp. 123-124; Delen, ‘Les illustrateurs français’, pp. 179-180.

7. For the most part executed the drawings of his fellow townsman, Ballain: Rooses, Musée, p. 185; Delen, ‘Artistes collaborateurs’, p. 115; Delen, Graveurs-illustrateurs, p. 131; Delen, ‘Les illustrateurs français’, p. 178.

8. Rooses, Musée, pp. 183-184; Delen, ‘Artistes collaborateurs’, pp. 113-114; Delen, Graveurs-illustrateurs, pp. 85-87, 134-140.

9. Rooses, Musée, p. 185; Delen, Graveurs-illustrateurs, p. 131; Delen, ‘Les illustrateurs français’, p. 178.

10. Rooses, Musée, p. 185; Delen, ‘Artistes collaborateurs’, pp. 115-116; Delen, Graveurs-illustrateurs, pp. 131-133; Delen, ‘Les illustrateurs français’, pp. 178-179.

11. In 1570 he cut a few initials for Plantin: Delen, Graveurs-illustrateurs, p. 168.

12. In 1589 he made a few woodcuts for Plantin: Delen, Graveurs-illustrateurs, pp. 169-170.

13. In 1592-93 he cut a few wood-blocks with illustrations of plants for a Clusius edition: M. Sabbe, ‘Uit de briefwisseling van Clusius met Chr. Plantin en J. Moretus’, Uit het Plantijnsche huis, 1924, pp. 63-64.

14. They did the scientific illustrations for Aguilonius, Opticorum libri sex, 1613: Bouchery & Van den Wijngaert, p. 60.

[p. 237]

Christoffel van Sichem (c. 1546-1624)	1616-20^1.
Christoffel Jegher (1596-1653)	1625-43^2.
Judocus de Weerdt	1626^3.
Jan Christoffel Jegher (1618-66/67)	1644-55^4.
Mathurin Vernoeil	1687^5.
Gonzales van Heylen (1661-1730?)	1694; 1703-15^6.
M. Graet	1732^7.
Jean-Michel Papillon (Paris; 1698-1776)	1733-35; 1750; 1757-63^8.
Nicolas Le Sueur (Paris; 1691-1762)	1750-51; 1762^9.
Nicolas Caron (Paris; 1719-68)	1760-61^10.
Jean-Guillaume Mack (Brussels)	1762^11.
Pierre Antoine Boury (Brussels)	1764-65^12.
3. Copperplate engravers
Jan & Lucas Duetecum (Doetecum)	1559; 1584-85^13.
Frans Huys (1522-62)	1561-62^14.
Pieter Huys (1519-81?)	1562; 1566-74^15.
Pieter van der Heyden (a Meriga) (1530-76)	1569^16.
Cornelis d'Hooghe (died 1583)	1569^17.

1. Rooses, Musée, p. 299; Bouchery & Van den Wijngaert, p. 99.

2. Rooses, Musée, pp. 276, 281, 295, 299-301; Bouchery & Van den Wijngaert, pp. 67-68, 92-94, 99-103. Cf. also M. Rooses, ‘De Jegher's, vader en zoon’, De Vlaamsche School, 35, 1889, pp. 41-44, 53-58; M.L. Myers, ‘Rubens and the Woodcuts of Christoffel Jegher,’ The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, 1966, pp. 7-23.

3. Rooses, Musée, p. 299.

4. Son of Christopher: Rooses, Musée, p. 301; Bouchery & Van den Wijngaert, pp. 102-103. Cf. note 2.

5. Van den Wijngaert, ‘De late Moretussen,’ I, p. 203.

6. Ibidem, I, pp. 202-204.

7. Ibidem, I, p. 209.

8. Ibidem, I, pp. 208-212, 214-231.

9. Ibidem, I, pp. 210-212, 214, 225, 229, 231.

10. Ibidem, I, pp. 220-226.

11. Ibidem, I, pp. 232-233.

12. Ibidem, I, pp. 231-232.

13. They executed the copperplates for the Magnifique et sumptueuse Pompe Funèbre de Charles Cinquième, 1559: Delen, Graveurs-illustrateurs, p. 118. Also the maps in the Marine Atlas by Waghenaer which appeared under Plantin's imprint in Leiden in 1584-85.

14. Rooses, Musée, p. 181; Delen, ‘Artistes collaborateurs’, pp. 102-105; Delen, Graveurs-illustrateurs, p. 114. Cf. also I. de Ramaix, ‘Frans Huys. Catalogue de l'oeuvre gravé’, Le livre et l'Estampe, 55-56, 1968, pp. 258-293; 57-58, 1969, pp. 23-54.

15. Cf. p. 233, note 4.

16. Rooses, Musée, pp. 189-190; Delen, ‘Artistes collaborateurs’, pp. 119-120; Delen, Graveurs- illustrateurs, pp. 163-164.

17. ‘Sculptor literarum’ for Cl. Perret, Exercitatio alphabetica, 1569, probably at the author's request: Delen, Graveurs-illustrateurs, pp. 142-143.

[p. 238]

Jan Wiericx (c. 1549-after 1615)	1569-c. 1600^1.
Hieronymus Wiericx (15 53-1620)	1570-c. 1600; 1616^2.
Abraham de Bruyn (c. 1540-85)	1570-83^3.
Pieter Dufour (Furnius) (Liège; c. 1545-c. 1626)	1574^4.
Pieter van der Borcht (died 1608)	1574-1608^5.
Jan Collaert the Elder (c. 1545-c. 1581)	c. 1576; 1589^6.
Jules Goltzius (c. 1550-after 1595)	1577; 1586^7.
Marcus Gheeraerts (c. 1530-c. 1600)	1579^8.
Jan de Sadeleer or Sadeler (1550-1610)	1579(?); 1609(?)^9.
Philip Galle (1537-1612)	1580; 1589^10.
Adriaan Huybrechts (Huberti)	1580; 1589^11.

1. Rooses, Musée, pp. 186-189; Delen, ‘Artistes collaborateurs’, pp. 116-119; Delen, Graveurs-illustrateurs, pp. 84-87, 144-157. On the brothers Wiericx and the Plantin house, see M. Rooses, ‘Les frères Wiericx à l'imprimerie plantinienne’, Bulletijn van de Maatschappij der Antwerpsche Bibliophilen, I, 1882, pp. 225-248. An edition of offprints of a series of plates drawn and engraved by J. Wiericx, but not published by the Officina Plantiniana, with an introduction by M. Rooses: De platen van den brevier in-8^o, gesneden door Jan Wiericx, s.d. Also with French introductory text: Les planches du bréviaire in -8^o, gravés par Jean Wiericx, s.d. On the brothers' production generally, see L. Alvin, Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre des trois frères Jean, Jérôme et Antoine Wiericx, 1866; L. Alvin, Catalogue raisonné des portraits gravés par les trois frères Wiericx, 1867.

2. Brother of the foregoing. Cf. note 1. See also Rooses, Musée, pp. 263-264.

3. Rooses, Musée, pp. 189, 263; Delen, ‘Artistes collaborateurs’, p. 119; Delen, Graveurs-illustrateurs, pp. 85-86, 159-162.

4. Rooses, Musée, p. 190; Delen, ‘Artistes collaborateurs’, p. 121; Delen, Graveurs-illustrateurs, pp. 164-165.

5. Cf. p. 233, note 6.

6. Delen, Graveurs-illustrateurs, p. 165.

7. Rooses, Musée, p. 190; Delen, ‘Artistes collaborateurs’, p. 120; Delen, Graveurs-illustrateurs, pp.165-166.

8. A number of etched plates used in the work of A. Freytag, Mythologia Ethica, which was published by Plantin for Galle and appeared in 1579, was taken over from Les Fables des animaux illustrated by M. Gheeraerts and published at Bruges in 1576. It is possible that the artist also etched the remaining plates in 1579: Delen, Graveurs-illustrateurs, pp. 140-141.

9. Rooses, Musée, pp. 189, 263-264; Delen, ‘Artistes collaborateurs’, p. 120; Delen, Graveurs-illustrateurs, pp. 162-163.

10. Though the most important Netherlands engraver in the second half of the sixteenth century and an intimate friend of Plantin, Philip Galle only had a few unimportant engravings prepared for Plantin in his studio and these were in part retouches; Rooses, Musée, pp. 186-187, 190; Delen, Graveurs-illustrateurs, pp. 157-153. Cf. also above, p. 205. On the Galle family, see J.J.P. van den Bemden, De familie Galle, plaetsnijders van het laetst der XVI^e en de eerste helft der XVII^e eeuw, 1863.

11. His work presumably comprised only the letter-engraving in plates produced by other artists: see Delen, Graveurs-illustrateurs, p. 168; Corr., VIII-IX, no. 1378, p. 402. Cf. p. 196, note 2.

[p. 239]

Frans Hogenberg (before 1540-after 1588)	1581^1.
Bartholomeus Weerts (Leiden)	1581^2.
Hendrik Rijcker (Haarlem)	1585^3.
Crispin [van] de Passe the Elder (c. 1565-1637)	1588-89^4.
Hendrik Goltzius (Haarlem; 1558-1617)	1589^5.
The Galle Workshop
- Theodoor Galle (1571-1633)	1600-33^6.
- Jan Galle (1600-76)	1633-76^7.
- Norbertus Galle (1648-94)	1676-94^8.
Cornelis i Galle (1576-1650)	c. 1608-50^9.
Adriaan Collaert (born 1560)	1608^10.

1. He engraved a few maps and plans of towns for the 1581 Plantin edition of L. Guicciardini, Descrittione di tutti i Paesi Bassi; Delen, Graveurs-illustrateurs, I, p. 158; Denucé, Oud-Nederlandsche kaartmakers, I, pp. 281-282.

2. In 1581 he engraved, for Plantin, the seal of the university of Leiden: Delen, Graveurs-illustrateurs, p. 168.

3. He engraved the maps of A. Hayen, Amstelredamsche zeecaerten, published at Leiden in 1585 under the Plantin imprint.

4. Rooses, Musée, p. 190; Delen, ‘Artistes collaborateurs’, p. 121; Delen, Graveurs-illustrateurs, p. 169. An edition of offprints of a series of copperplates engraved by C. van de Passe from drawings by M. de Vos, but not published by the Officina Plantiniana, with introduction by M. Rooses: De platen van het getijdenboek gegraveerd door Crispijn van de Passe, s.d. On this artist, see also D. Franken, L'oeuvre gravé des Van de Passe, 1881.

5. Rooses, Musée, p. 190; Delen, ‘Artistes collaborateurs’, p. 120; Delen, Graveurs-illustrateurs, pp. 151-154, 168-170. The only work which he can be proved to have done for the Officina Plantiniana is the portrait of Plantin, published in the memorial album of 1590 (cf. also O. Hirschmann, Verzeichnis des graphischen Werks von Hendrick Goltzius, 1558-1617, 1921, p. 94). After 1585 Plantin made strenuous endeavours to get the engraver to move from Haarlem to Antwerp: cf. above, p.

6. Son of Philip Galle and son-in-law of Jan I Moretus from 1598. From 1600 onwards his studio produced copper engravings for books published by the Moretuses; Theodoor Galle also personally cut plates now and then (apart from making the drawings for them) for the Officina Plantiniana: Rooses, Musée, pp. 264, 267, 281, 287, 288, 290; Delen, Graveurs-illustrateurs, pp. 170-171; Bouchery & Van den Wijngaert, pp. 59, 61, 63, 69-71, 74-75.

7. Son of the foregoing; carried on his father's studio: Bouchery & Van den Wijngaert, p. 71.

8. Son of Jan Galle; carried on his father's studio: Bouchery & Van den Wijngaert, pp. 71-72.

9. Son of Philip Galle and brother of Theodoor Galle: Rooses, Musée, pp. 268, 277, 283, 289, 295, 297, 301, 310; Bouchery & Van den Wijngaert, pp. 57, 63, 72-73, 75-82, 92, 96-98, 103-106.

10. Rooses, Musée, p. 264.

[p. 240]

Karel de Mallery (1571-after 1638)	1609; 1633^1.
Jan Collaert the Younger (1566-1628)	1616^2.
Schelte a Bolswert (c. 1586-1659)	1617^3.
Lucas Vorsterman (1595-1675)	1623^4.
Abraham van Merlen (1579-1659)	1624^5.
Adriaan Pauwels (1600-39)	1628-35^6.
Jacob Neeffs (c. 1610-after 1680)	1639^7.
Cornelis ii Galle (1615-78)	1640-78^8.
Pieter ii de Jode (born 1606)	1646^9.
Conrad Lauwers	1653^10.
Gaspar Huybrechts (1619-84)	1657-58^11.
Richard Collin (1627-97)	1657-58; 1665(?)^12.
Cornelis iii Galle (1642-78)	c. 1660-78^13.
Martinus Bouché (1645-89)	1683; 1687^14.
Jan-Antoon de Pooter (born 1660)	1689-1712^15.
Martinus Causé	1730-33^16.
Pieter-Balthasar Bouttats (1672-1756)	1732-55^17.
Jan-Baptist Jonghelinckx (born 1689)	1732-36^18.
Jan-Hendrik Schauwberg (Schouwenberg) (1717-60)	1733^19.

1. Rooses, Musée, pp. 264, 297; Bouchery & Van den Wijngaert, p. 73.

2. Rooses, Musée, p. 362.

3. Rooses, Musée, p. 290; Van den Wijngaert, Catalogue Tekeningen.

4. Rooses, Musée, p. 288; Bouchery & Van den Wijngaert, p. 72.

5. He engraved the plate in De vita et miraculis... Joannae Valesiae, 1624.

6. Rooses, Musée, pp. 293, 297, 301.

7. Rooses, Musée, p. 298; Bouchery & Van den Wijngaert, pp. 82-83.

8. Son of Cornelis I Galle: Rooses, Musée, pp. 277, 298, 311; Bouchery & Van den Wijngaerl pp. 65, 67, 103-106, 108-110.

9. He engraved the frontispiece of B. Corderius, Expositio patrum graecorum in psalmos, 1646.

10. Rooses, Musée, p. 363.

11. Van den Wijngaert, ‘De late Moretussen,’ I, pp. 192-193.

12. Ibidem, I, pp. 192-193.

13. Son of Cornelis II Galle. It is practically impossible to distinguish the work of Cornelis II from that of Cornelis III: Bouchery & Van den Wijngaert, pp. 111-112.

14. Van den Wijngaert, ‘De late Moretussen,’ I, p. 196.

15. Ibid., I, p. 197.

16. Ibid., I, p. 206.

17. Ibid., I, pp. 206-207.

18. Ibid., I, p. 206.

19. Ibid., I, p. 206.

[p. 241]

Norbertus Heylbrouck (Bruges)	1755^1.
Lodewijk Fruytiers (1713-82)	1757-78^2.
A.J. Defehrt (1723-74)	1760^3.
Pierre-Laurent Auvray (Paris, Antwerp) (born 1736)	1762-63^4.
Hendelot (Paris)	1762-69^5.
Egidius Verhelst the Younger (Mannheim) (born 1733)	1784(?)^6.
W. Kok (1761-1806) (?)	1793^7.
Jozef Hunin (1770-1851)	1799^8.
J. Goubaud workshop (Brussels)	1825^9.
4. Copying and retouching
Under Balthasar ii Moretus	(1641-74)^10.
- Melchior Drumon
- Alexander ii Voet (1637-93)
- Pieter de Loos
- Jan-Frans Desruelles
Under Balthasar iii Moretus (1674-96)^11.
- Cornelis-Martinus Vermeulen (1664-1709)
In the eighteenth century^12.
- Franciscus Bouché (born 1673)	1704-37
- H.F. Diamaer (born 1685)	1717-19
- Robert Brichet (Paris, Antwerp)	1765

1. Van den Wijngaert, ‘De late Moretussen,’ I, pp. 207-208; II, pp. 150-151.

2. Ibid., II, pp. 150, 192-193.

3. He engraved the title vignette for the Rituale of 1760.

4. Ibid., II, pp. 156, 163-164.

5. Ibid., II, pp. 158-159, 162-164, 166-180, 184-191, 195-198.

6. Ibid., II, p. 200.

7. Ibid., II, p. 200.

8. Ibid., II, pp. 201-202.

9. Steel engravings supplied by the ‘Calcographie Royale’ of J. Goubaud at Brussels for Diurnale, 1825 (Ibid., II, p. 203).

10. Ibid., I, p. 196.

11. Ibid., I, pp. 196-197.

12. Bouché & Diamaer: ibid., I, p. 201; Brichet: ibid., II, pp. 182-184.

[p. 242]

Colouring of illustrations

Illustrations were sometimes coloured by hand. It was mainly maps that were treated in this way, both large wall-maps and smaller ones for atlases. Plantin issued many of these mappae pictae, coloured for him in the workshops of dealers specializing in producing and selling cartographical material: Pieter Draeckx at Malines, Bernard van de Putte and Mijnken Liefrinck at Antwerp. Abraham Ortelius did maps of this sort for his friend Plantin: it was actually as ‘Abraham, peintre de cartes’ that he first appeared in the firm's accounts in 1558.^1.

Those who liked their maps coloured had to pay substantial amounts for their predilection. Plantin paid 1 fl. 10 st. (it was 2 fl. at first) for Mercator's map of Europe of 1554; for the colouring of these same maps he paid amounts varying between 1 fl. 5 st. and 1 fl. 10 st., and as much as 3 fl. for a few copies. He paid an average of 1 fl. 10 st. to 1 fl. 15 st. to have Mercator's map of the world of 1569 coloured (the map itself had cost 2 fl. 8 st. at first, later 2 fl.) Between 1566 and 1576 Plantin had no less than 135 Mercator wall-maps coloured and this cost him altogether 177 fl. 10 st.^2.

The situation was the same for atlases. In 1572 Ortelius supplied Plantin with copies of his Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, ‘grand papier en blanc’ (i.e., unbound) at 7 fl. 10 st. each and charged 15 fl. 10 st. for one coloured copy.^3. Mijnken Liefrinck's scale of prices was similar. For colouring two copies of the Italian edition of Guicciardini's Descrittione di tutti i Paesi Bassi (with 78 maps and town plans) she charged 12 fl. in 1588. The book itself cost 7 fl.^4.

Less interest in colour was shown for other illustrated works, although their pictures too were occasionally coloured. In November

1. Data to be found in the chapters devoted to these various figures in J. Denucé, Oud-Nederlandsche kaartmakers in betrekking met Plantijn. For the Mercator maps which Plantin had coloured, see L. Voet, ‘Les relations commerciales entre Gérard Mercator et la Maison Plantinienne à Anvers’, Duisburger Forschungen, 1962, pp. 217-218.

2. Of these 56 were coloured by M. Liefrinck, 42 by Draeckx, 32 by A. Ortelius, 5 by B. van de Putte.

3. Denucé, Oud-Nederlandsche kaartmakers, II, p. 171.

4. Ibid., I, p. 114.

[p. 243]

1579 Pierre Porret wrote to Jan Moretus asking him to have an Antwerp publication with illustrations of costumes coloured and varnished for him and, if possible, pasted on linen.^1. On 16th May 1582 Plantin paid Abraham de Bruyn 4 fl. 8 st. for ‘painting’ two copies of the Joyous Entry of Francis, Duke of Anjou into Antwerp (with a title-page design and 21 copper engravings),^2. and on 18th August 1573 the sum of 13 fl. 10 st. was entered to the account of George Kesselaer for colouring the pictures in three copies of the last volume of the Polyglot Bible.^3.

Severinus Gobelius, physician to the Duke of Prussia, who was presumably acting on his master's behalf, was prepared to pay a great deal to get a coloured copy of a herbal: the Plantarum seu stirpium icones, published by Plantin in 1581 and actually dedicated to Gobelius. But on 11th October 1581 the printer had to write to Gobelius and say that he had no coloured copy available and that it would take at least three months for the plants depicted in the Icones to be painted from life. However, ‘with great difficulty and at considerable cost’ he had had coloured three copies of Lobelius's herbal, also published in 1581 and lavishly illustrated, but with a Dutch explanatory text. Plantin would send the doctor one of these.^4. This he did, for in the ledger for that year there is the entry against Gobelius's name: ‘Adi pour 1 Herb. Lobelii pictum ad vivum’; the work contained 2,100 illustrations, coloured at 1 st. each which came to 105 fl., with 8 fl. ‘pour le livre blancq’ (unbound).^5. This makes this coloured copy of the herbal one of the most expensive books ever sold by the officina.^6.

1. Corr., VI, no. 849.

2. Delen, Graveurs-illustrateurs, p. 161.

3. Rooses, Musée, p. 85.

4. Corr., VI, no. 954. Another of these three coloured examples has remained in the Plantin-Moretus Museum.

5. Arch. 18, f^o 442. Cf. Corr., VI, p. 316.

6. The Polyglot Bible cost 60 fl. when on ordinary paper; the copies on Italian paper cost up to 200 fl.