VI. Triumphant baroque

Jacobus Bosius. Crux triumphans et gloriosa...– Anvers: Officina Plantiniana (Balthasar I et Jan II Moretus), 1617. In-folio.

Balthasar Moretus i supervised each step of the editorial process, notably the iconographic programme in discussion with authors, draughtsmen and engravers, which also concerned the positioning of the images in relation to the text. Aware of the attention-getting commercial function of the book’s initial pages, he took particular care of its production and resorted to the best artists.

   It thus explains the long collaboration of his fellow countryman Peter Paul Rubens with the Plantin firm, which began in 1613 and ended with the painter’s death in 1640. Rubens’ contributions to the frontispieces and to the title pages, ‘strategic points’ of Plantinian editions, shook up architectonic concepts of the Renaissance: a new model prevailed, in which architecture still had its place, but henceforth it favoured landscape, perspective, vitality and animation of human figures and animals.

   Here, Moretus had the frontispiece of the Italian edition (1610) replaced in order to have a more spacious, dynamic and balanced page, approved by Bosio and printed once more by Cornelis Galle, brother of Theodore.

   Rubens designed 29 frontispieces or title pages for the Moretuses.

Mazarine: 2° 2155 A