Tuileries Tournament

[click for full size versions; mouseover for titles]


Prior to the royal court moving to Versailles, a festival was held by Louis XIV at Tuileries Palace in Paris in 1662 as a way of celebrating the birth of his son, Louis, le Grande Dauphin, the previous year.

After a procession past monuments in the streets of Paris the entourage entered the arena at (or adjacent to) the palace, which held 15,000 spectators. There followed an equestrian pageant {this book has an informal name of 'Circius Regius' or Royal Circus} in which the participants from the upper echelons of society and the Court were divided into groups, representing the 5 great nations: Romans, Moors (Indians), Turks, Persians and American Indians.

In the style of a medieval tournament the horsemen engaged in equestrian tests such as jousting through rings, and racing. The riders were all decked out in the finest jewel-encrusted silk brocade, streamers, feathered headwear and wigs with some of the saddles said to be covered by leopard and tiger skins. Although this is self-evident from the engravings perhaps, these kind of details are confirmed by eyewitness accounts, so the illustrators weren't always exaggerating.

The engravings, in a dramatic baroque style, were produced by François Chauveau and Sylvain Sylvestre. If you only enlarge one of the above images, look at the first one - the embellished grooming is fantastic, in all senses of the word. Such stylistic elements no doubt contributed to the book's popular reception when it was published in 1670. [As best as I understand it, there were no actual Americans or Turks etc in the parade - it was all a theatrical piece played out by Dukes, Princes and similar Lordly types, including Louis XIV himself who was unsurprisingly the Roman King]

The accompanying text was written by (the later) renowned fairytale writer, Charles Perrault {previously}, who was brother to the favoured architect of the Court at the time, Claude Perrault {previously}, designer of some major additions to Le Louvre.

• Illustrated samples from 'Courses de Testes et de Bague Faittes par le Roy et par les Princes et Seigneurs de sa Cour en l'Année 1662' are online among the festival books at the British Library.
• The complete work - photocopy quality - is available from BNF.
• This pdf catalogue (3Mb) has a couple of pages (in french) describing the book from an exhibition in Versailles in 2003 (about p.27).

Chook Book

55 chromolithograph plates from 'The Illustrated Book of Poultry, with Practical Schedules for Judging, Constructed from Actual Analysis of the Best Modern Decisions' by Lewis Wright, first published 1880 are online at Ecole Nationale Vétérinaire de Lyon. [Some background]

Kohler Artist Books

'The Left-Handed Punch King'
Roy Ronald Fisher, 1986

'Neo Emblemata Nova'
Daniel E.Kelm, 1990

'MayBow's Book Arts Jargonator'
Dan Mayer and Ed Lebow, 2000.

'The Owl-phabet of Art'
JoAnna Poehlmann, 1999.

'Rondo - an artist book'
Stephen Vincent and Deborah Bruce, 1989.

'Soft Impressions'
Laurie Stein Bush, 1972.

'Polar Projections'
Timothy Ely, 1986.

'Polar Projections'
Timothy Ely, 1986.

'Ikhnaton'
Marta Gomez, 2002.

'Codex Seraphinianus'
Luigi Serafini, 1983.

'African Proverbs from Nigeria'
Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. 1992

'Face to Face - twelve contemporary American artists interpret
themselves in a limited edition of original wood engravings'
Robert Hauser and Michael McCurdy, 1985.
(featuring John de Pol and Dard Hunter)

'High Tension'
Philip Zimmerman, 1993.

'Regional Museum'
Studebaker Livingston Hoche, 2001.

'Fire: Investigations: The Four Elements'
Timothy Ely, 1989.

The University of Wisconsin have a new site: Artists' Book Collection-

"This database is an illustrated, descriptive index to the Artists’ Book Collection, located in the Kohler Art Library, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Presently, the Artists’ Book Collection contains over 800 titles. The database indexes approximately 760 of those titles, over 500 of which have one to four images to visually represent the structure and/or content of the book. With the goal to create a “visual finding aid” to the entire Artists’ Book Collection, the database will be expanded and updated on a periodic basis."

• The people named with each image above are the 'creator'. There are usually others involved.
• In my opinion the choice artist book destination from the archives is the Otis College of Art and Design Collection.
• More? Book Arts Websites.

Around and About

This is a slight but worthwhile repeat of sorts. Aztec sunstones discovered in Mexico in 1790 were described by Antonio de León y Gama in 'Descripción Histórica y Cronológica de las dos Piedras..' [An historical and chronological description of two stones found under ground, in the great square of the City of Mexico]. Since I last posted (more info) a couple of images, the Library of Congress have digitized the whole book.




Frontpiece 'Syntagma Anatomicum' by Johannes Vesling, first published in 1647 - That array of instruments above their heads would be sure to inspire confidence in a surgeon's office. [from Kyushu University, Japan - an overlooked image from a previous post]
















The first 2 images above are from the the 'Papstprophetien' manuscript (~1464-1471) and the other 3 are from 'Vaticinia Pontificum' from earlier in the 15th century. By any other description, these are the 'Pope books' with figurative (mostly) illustrations of about 30 popes. These manuscripts are linked to a degree - there are at least a couple of images that are copied between them. The top images come from the German National Museum digital collection (click 'index') [inadvertently via Armchair Aquarium] and the other set are from Stiftsbibliothek Kremsmünster in Austria.





Speaking of rediscovered historical documents ... I went sifting through the caverns below the momentarily silent but venerable nonist institution and stumbled upon a cache of wonderful original works: Archeography © Jaime Morrison.

'The Bull Fight' by H.Cook. 19th century.

'The Great Mosque & the Alcazar or Dungeon of the Inquisition,
Córdova on the Guadalquiver', engraved by T. Higham, 1844.

'Torre de la Infantas, Alhambra'

Cadiz

'Córdova - carcel de la Inquisicion' by Antonio Roca Sallent, 19th century.

'Les Gitanos. Faubourg de Triana à Séville'
from a book by Emile Rouargue, 19th century.

The above images come from Biblioteca Virtual de Andalucía - somewhere among the Gráfica tab in 'Secciones' I think - or thereabouts.





'La Grande Religion des Trois Diffusions' - Indochine, 1930s from the Ulysses database at Le Centre des Archives d’outre-mer (Archives nationales, Aix-en-Provence) [via Agence Eureka]

All images © François Houtin

It comes as no surprise to learn that Parisian etcher, draughtsman and printmaker, François Houtin started out his working life as a gardener. See: Richard Reed Armstrong Gallery and Galleria del Leone. [Via the eclectic Ullabenulla]

Geological survey of Ashby, Nebraska, 1955.

This comes from Kansas University Insight Browser collections but I can't refind it at the moment. I have 'insight.ku.edu' saved in the image title so it seems reasonably certain.

Geological Survey in Nevada, 1947
[in Stanford University Luna Insight Browser image collections]

Saab Memorial Medical Library at the American University of Beirut: Instructional Posters 1930s and '40s. {Geological and anatomical surveys seem like kindred spirits.}

'Perfectorium' at Marienburg Castle.

'Korridor vor dem Kapitel Saal' (Marienburg Castle).

Marienburg Castle scenes - 'Schloss Marienburg in Preussen', 1799 by Friederich Gilly, in the architectural section of the German National Museum digital collection.

'Le Plaisir des Fous' {The Pleasure of ?Madmen/?Idiots} engraved
by Pierre-François Basan, 18th century. Alchemy satire.

The image (and detail) above are from Heinrich Khunrath's 'Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae', first published in 1609 - "infused with a strange combination of Christianity and magic [..and a] tension between spirituality and experiment". I've posted the colour illustrations previously (see Wisconsin University Library) but had not seen the primary engraving in a book format. The Khunrath and alchemy satire prints both come from University of Pennsylvania's Schoenberg Center for Text and Images [SCETI] which I'm surprised to note I've never referenced previously. It is worth poking about. They have enormous images available.

IN: 'Ornamental architecture in the Gothic, Chinese, and modern taste
: being above fifty intire new designs of plans, sections, elevations, &c.'

by Charles Over, architect, 1758. [NYPL]

'Album de Mostres Abadal Tartar' [I can see the date 1664 and I suspect the text is italian or perhaps just latin. The image was found somewhere in Biblioteca Virtuale de Miguel Cervantes. Can someone please enlighten me - is this a satire on the Tatar people of Eastern Europe or is there a mythological creature 'Tartaro'? I have a vague feeling I've seen or even posted a lubock folk print of a similar figure before.]
Not toooo far off:
Tartarus: "While almost all the dead were said to go to hades, the gods cast the very worst mortal sinners and immortal enemies into tartarus for endless punishment."
Thanks Jack!








A series of illuminated letters that were (I think) included in a 19th century work (?songbook) from València, 'Àlbum factici amb caplletres ornamentades' by Estanislau Sacristán - online at Biblioteca Virtuale de Miguel Cervantes (click 'Leer' for thumbnail pages).


There has been slight background cleaning of a few images. Click to enlarge.