Marginal thinking: Jean de Coulonces
The fool
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Nobleman
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We don't know much about Jean de Coulonces.
A book of hours from 2nd July 1492 was printed
»pour Jehan de coulonce libraire demourant a Paris sus le pont nostre dame a lenseigne des chantres«,
but "pour" is a little ambiguous.
In addition, there exist fragments of his books of hours from around 1503,
found in the binding of other books.
There are eight different margins with dances of death, i.e. 24 dancers. They are introduced early in the book and repeated many times.
Claudin (Histoire De L'imprimerie, vol. 2, p. 306) writes that most of Coulonces' marginals
are also to be found in books printed by Jehan du Pré for Antoine Vérard,
but here Claudin must be thinking of the book from 1492, and not this 1503 edition.
The margins we are looking at here are coarse and caricatured and very similar to
the 48 figures that were used by Vérard,
but they are still not the same.
For instance the fool (picture to the left) looks like
the fool that was published by Godard and Vérard,
but they are not identical.
Then it might be tempting to think that Coulonces might have copied his 24 figures from Vérard's 48,
but that's not the case either
for Coulonces also has a column with
nobleman, abbot and bailiff
and with
bride, darling wife and young girl
that Vérard doesn't have.
Coulonces has a nobleman (pictured right), so you'd think
he had borrowed
nobleman, abbot and bailiff
from Antoine Chapiel, who has
the same column
(he had only this one),
but again they are too different.
Now we'll look at a very different variant by Thielman Kerver.
Jean de Coulonces' 24 dancers
Coulonces
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Coulonces
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Coulonces
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Coulonces
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Coulonces
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Coulonces
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Coulonces
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Coulonces
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External links
The dance of death
Marginals
Jean de Coulonces
