World Book Heritage. 35. Netherlands 1550-1800
 | World Book heritage
A series of talks on
the history of the written word
35. The Netherland 1550-1800.
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Netherlands 1550-1800.
The leading country during much of this period, partly because it was an important trading nation and partly because of the lack of censorship.
Christopher Plantin.
The life and work of Plantin, the leading scholar-printer of the Netherlands in the sixteenth century is splendidly brought to life in the Plantin-Moretus Museum in the heart of Antwerp, its baroque main entrance facing onto the quiet square of the Friday Market and its original Renaissance façade lost in the shadows of a narrow side street.
Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp. Original façade
Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp. Main entrance
It really is a remarkable institution, rightly inscribed in the two UNESCO registers of World Heritage Sites and Memory of the World. Christopher Plantin (c.1520-1589) was one of the major scholar printers of 16th century Europe and the Moretus family continued the tradition, making the building a major cultural centre of Antwerp into the 18th century. Not only that, but he was one of the first printers to produce works on an industrial scale. In 1876 the last of the Moretus family passed the building and its entire contents to the city of Antwerp. The result is the survival of an important printing office, with all its equipment and archives, and the living quarters of one of the most important families of this major city together with the furnishings, works of art and the scholarly library of more than 30,000 volumes.
Of the printing departments the most stunning room is the workshop with its row of eight wooden presses, two of them dating from about 1600 and the oldest known surviving examples anywhere.
Printing workshop. Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp.
One of the oldest surviving presses, c.1600. Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp.
There is also the other paraphernalia of a printing office:
Compositors’ cases. Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp.
Composing sticks. Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp.
Rolling press for printing copperplate illustrations. Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp.
The type foundry, with the stoves set up in the 1620s, is on the first floor.
Type foundry. Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp.
This too has its associated artefacts, punches, with individual letters painstakingly carved on the end of a steel rod, matrices, produced on a flat bar of copper by striking it with the punch, typecasters moulds, into which the matrices were fitted and individual pieces of cast type.
Punches, a set for printing music from the 4,492 in the Museum’s collections. Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp.
Matrices, a set for civilité type from the 15,825 held by the Museum. Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp.
A type caster’s mould, one of the 62 originally in the Museum’s collection. Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp.
There were also racks of cast type – in 1589 Plantin had 22 tonnes of cast type and there are still ten tonnes in the Museum today. The individual letters were assembled into lines on composing sticks and transferred to galleys, and there are examples of these with impressions taken from them, as well as woodcut illustrations, frames, initial letters and ornaments and copperplates, many of them engraved for the Moretus family after designs by Rubens.
Racks of cast type. The printing office had some ninety different fonts. Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp.
Galley of type with impression taken from it. Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp.
Woodblock illustration with impression taken from it. The Museum has 13,791 woodblocks. Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp..
Engraved portrait of Christopher Plantin aged 74, with original copperplate. The Museum has 2,846 copperplates. Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp.
There are also the rooms where the correctors worked, the office and strong room and the shop, still with unbound works on its shelves awaiting customers.
Table for correctors. Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp.
Oil painting of corrector at work. Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp.
Shop. Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp.
The business had its ups and downs, particularly for the founder Christopher Plantin, who had to steer an uneasy course through the religious wars that ravaged the Spanish Netherlands in the 16th century. At one stage in the 1580s he was forced to leave briefly for Leiden where he became university printer, a post that was continued by one of his son-in-laws Franciscus Raphelengius (1539-1597) who converted to Calvinism. However in 1570 he was granted the post of “architypographus” for the Spanish Netherlands by Philip II with the exclusive right to produce and sell service books and liturgies. His business expanded and five presses in 1568, he was running sixteen by 1575 and with seventy employees it was the largest printing office in Europe. On his death the business was taken over by another son-in-law Jan Moretus (1543-1610) and continued under the management of a dozen successive members of the family until the late 19th century. The early successors continued Plantin’s tradition of scholarly printing, but after about 1650 the main publications were liturgical works for the Catholic Church, both in the Low Countries and Spain.
After initial problems the family did very well from the privilege of liturgical and official printing and this is reflected in the living quarters, which are those of a wealthy patrician family, the rooms lined with embossed leather coverings and filled with furniture, paintings and other works of art, many by Rubens and other noted painters.
Drawing room. Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp.
Bedroom. Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp.
The printing offices and living quarters were built over a period of time around a beautiful central courtyard.
Courtyard. Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp.
The most impressive rooms in the living quarters are the two library rooms, the larger of which also served as a chapel which explains the presence of a painting of Christ on the cross by Peter Thijs.
The great library. Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp.
Plantin started the library as a reference collection, including texts which might served as a basis for scholarly editions and works such as dictionaries and accounts of travel and atlases. The collection was developed by the Moretus family until it contained more than 30,000 items. They are displayed in rooms throughout the house and provide an outline of fine book production throughout Europe. Of course many of Plantin’s own productions are on display including his wonderful polyglot Bible.
Polyglot Bible produced between 1568 and 1573 in eight volumes under the editorship of Benito Arias Montano. Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp.
Plantin produced 2,450 works over a period of 34 years and over 90 per cent of these are represented in the collections. There are also many works by other Antwerp printers. The city was the major centre of printing in the southern Netherlands and there are incunabula by Mathias van der Goes, Geraert Leeu and others. There are also more than 500 manuscripts, the earliest dating from the ninth century and including beautiful books of hours. The earliest printed book in the collections is a copy of the 36 line Bible, printed with Gutenberg’s type, probably in Bamberg by Albrecht Pfister about 1460.
The 36-line Bible, c.1460. Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp.
Early French printing is represented by the Estiennes, including their scholarly dictionaries
Work by Henri Estienne on the Frankfurt fair, an important exchange for books, published in 1574. Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp.
Italy by the careful editions of classical texts produced by Aldus Manutius, Spain by the Complutensian polyglot Bible, produced in Alcala de Henares by Brocar between 1514 and 1517 – a precursor to Plantin’s own polyglot Bible.
Complutensian polyglot Bible. Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp.
There are many maps and atlases, including a wonderfully detailed bird’s eye view plan of Antwerp by Virgilius Boniensis, dating from 1565.
Plan of Antwerp 1565, the only known copy. Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp.
There are also several panoramas, mainly of triumphal processions.
The triumphal entry into Bologna of Emperor Charles V and pope Clement VII on 24 February 1530, by Robert Péril. The only known copy of this woodcut, printed on parchment. Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp.
The graphic collection includes sketches by Rubens and others for illustrations, title pages and ornaments, including Plantin’s own printer’s device of the golden compasses with the appropriate motto “Labore et constantia”.
This constant work is revealed not only in his motto but in the massive archive which includes his dealings with many of the leading thinkers and artists of the day. Scholarship and culture breathe from the walls of this building. There is a room where the philosopher Justus Lipsius was lodged at Plantin’s own expense. Plantin was also a writer and poet. He participated in the production of early dictionaries and members of his family were also men of learning – Raphelengien became professor of oriental languages at Leiden University and cut a set of Arabic types.
Justus Lipsius, portrait bust. Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp.
Raphelenien’s proof of Arabic types. Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp.
The important library can host special exhibitions, for example the special exhibition for 2012 “Mercator: exploring new horizons”, commemorating the 500th anniversary of the birth of the cartographer Gerhard Mercator (1512-1594). This included a portolan chart of Asia borrowed from the Municipal Library in Valenciennes, beautifully illuminated, certainly not the sort of thing that a sailor would keep in his back pocket.
Detail of Ceylon from portolan produced by Jaime Holives in Barcelona in 1573. Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp.
There were other wonderful things on display as well:
An early edition of Ptolemy printed in Ulm in the 1480s. Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp.
Map of the coast of the North Sea off the Thames Estuary by Lucas Janszoon Waghenaer in Spieghel del zeevaerdt printed by Plantin in 1584. Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp.
There were also early travel and navigational works – most of them from the remarkable collections of the Plantin-Moretus library. Later in the main displays we saw archives with entries relating to Mercator.
Summary account of Plantin’s dealings with Mercator between 1573 and 1579. Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp.
Moretus
The Elzevir family main printers after Plantin. Founder of dynasty, Louis, started with Plantin, then, as a Calvinist, moved to Leiden. Published editions of classics. Printer's mark eagle holding seven arrows. Sons established businesses in the Hague and Utrecht. In 1629 started series of duodecomo classical authors at one guilder for a 500 page volume. Family became University printers to Leiden, publishing Hugo Grotius, Descartes, Bacon, Moliere, Pascal, Milton, Hobbes etc. Also produced series of 35 16mo books on different countries, the Little Republics. Family continued as printers until 1712.
Map production a prominent feature of a trading nation.
Gerhard Mercator a leading publisher (1512-94). Son Rumold first to use term atlas in 1595.
Mercator's plates sold to Joost de Hondt of Amsterdam who had worked for some years in London. The Blaeu family were de Hondt's main rivals. Atlas novus (6 vol. 1634-62) and Atlas major (11 vol. 1650-62) with text in several languages.
Jan Blaeu had nine presses named after the muses. Jan Jansson of Amsterdam also produced atlases but was also responsible for Athanasius Kirchner's Ars magna lucis et umbrae (1671) which first illustrated the magic lantern.
Emblem books
Enschedé & Zonen, leading modern Dutch firm was founded by Izaak Enschede (1682-1762) in 1703. In 1743 acquired Wetstein's type foundry and built up fine range of types. Entrusted with banknote printing for Bank of Netherlands from 1814.
