Marginal thinking: Vérard & Godard
The pope
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Vérard's first book of hours. This was:
1) The first printed book of hours in France
2) The first printed, illustrated book of hours anywhere
3) The first printed book with a French text.
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On this site we know Antoine Vérard mostly for his great
and influential editions of Danse Macabre.
But Vérard was also an early mover when it came to publishing books of hours, in fact he was the first ever to publish
a printed book of hours in France (picture to the right).
This first book of hours was (naturally) fairly simple, but his publications were soon to be filled
with small and large illustrations.
The first version with a dance of death in the margin may be
the one owned by the Boston Public Library (Q.405.107),
which was printed »le .xx. iour de Januier. Lan .M.CCCCC.« — i.e. January 22nd 1500 (or 1501).
The colophon does not tell who printed the book — or for whom — but other woodcuts in the same book are those
that Antoine Vérard used for his books of hours.
One of the original woodblocks (the pope)
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In this book there is only one column, viz. pope-emperor-cardinal, which is used four times,
but in later books of hours from 1503 (BNF, Velins 1505) and 1506 (Orleans, A 5825), the number has been expanded
to 48 figures, 24 men and 24 women).
Thus the series is considerably shorter than
Simon Vostre's with 30 men and 36 women.
Later we find the same dance of death in books of hours published by Guillaume Godard.
This series could easily be taken for
Simon Vostre's.
They are slightly more clumsy and caricatured, but on the whole quite similar.
Except for the first three (i.e. pope-emperor-cardinal) the scenes are all laterally inverted
so Death stands to the right of the person.
The experts disagree about whether Simon Vostre's images were cut in wood or metal.
But when it comes to Godard, there's no doubt
because at least one of the original woodblocks still exists (picture to the right).
Guillaume Godard has also copied another dance of death, but we'll return to that later.
First we'll look at a variant by Thielman Kerver.
Vérard & Guillaume Godard's 48 dancers
Opus regale
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External links
The dance of death
Marginals
Vérard & Godard
