gorical figure is enthroned within a niche and below there is a pedeStal-like rectangle inscribed with the book-title and allegorical figures to the right and left of this very elaborate and fantastic setting. A variation on this kind of
maniera composition but with the center entirely occupied by the book title can
be found in the 1597 frontispiece for J.J. Boissard’s II. Pars Antiquitatum
Romanarum (Fig, 58). Even closer to Rubens’s placement of Optica is the main
personification in the 1600 publication entitled Symbola Divina & Humana
17 The designs for the engravings of the life of St. Ignatius of Loyola, published in Rome in 1609, which have been attributed to Rubens by J. Held (Rubens and the Vita Beati P. Ignatii Loiolae of 1609, in Rubens before 1620, ed. by J.R . Martin, Princeton, N .J., 1972, pp. 9 3 -13 4 ) are not taken into consideration here because they do not illustrate the text of a book, but form a series of inscribed prints such as one often finds in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (see e.g. H oil ft ein, n, p. 66, Nos. 355-378 ;
IV,
p. 203, Nos. 198-248; v u , p. 12, Nos. 34-47; XV, p. 160, Nos. 224-239). Besides, there is also some question as to whether or not the Louvre drawing for the L ife of St. Ignatius is by the same hand as the sheet in Edinburgh for the same series, also published by J. Held (Some Rubens Drawings Unknown or N egleâed, Mafter Drawings,xii,
1974, pp. 249, 250, pi. 26b). Furthermore, it is difficult to accept Held’s attribution to Rubens of the title-page for the series (Rubens and the Vita ..., op. cit., pp. 10 4 -10 7, fig. 47).Pontificum, Imperatorum, Regum (Fig. 59). In this title-page engraved by Gillis
Sadeler, the %ure is no longer enframed by solid architectural forms but the niche-like Structure curves around her and is pierced by daylight. The forms, however, are Still mannered and constrained to the surface. It is Rubens who imparts a new vigour to them. His allegorical figures are solid, three-dimen sional, and displace space, as opposed to the wispy and overly posed earlier figures. His architecture is heavy and is the antithesis of the light and decorative surface forms of 1599 and earlier. However much Rubens is indebted to the paSt for his general composition, there can be little doubt that he has translated previous ideas into the new seventeenth-century vision of monumental three- dimensional shapes that move in a measurable space.
The basic arrangement of the main figures in the 16 13 Aguilon title-page (Fig. 55) is continued in the frontispiece for the 1614 Breviarium (No. 18; Fig. 7 1). Now, however, the framing architecture is eliminated and the figures Stand before the open sky. Rubens also includes flying angels, who give the upper portion a more dramatic and illusioniStic character. The general concept seems to be closely allied with sixteenth-century Italian sculpture such as Bandi- nelli’s designs for the Tombs of Pope Leo X and Pope Clement VII in Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome.19 In these monuments, the Pope is seated in the center on a raised pedeStal and flanked on either side by saints. Rubens departs from these sculptural models by eliminating the architectural boundaries between the figures. In this way he creates an image similar to sixteenth-century sculptural ensembles of the Virgin enthroned and flanked by saints.20 His
Ecclesia is a type used throughout Italy during the latter half of the sixteenth
century for sculptural representations of Popes whether in or out-of-doors.21 Although Rubens’s compositions and figures seem to resemble closely Italian commemorative sculpture, there is at leaSt one sixteenth-century maniera title- page which uses an analogous arrangement, L. Dolce’s Italian translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, published in Venice in 1553 (Fig. 74). Here the main figure, Jupiter, is enthroned above and surrounded by clouds while below, to
1* Venturi, xi, 2, figs. 501, 510.
20 Cf. Alfonso Lombardi’s Madonna and Child with Saints John the Baptist and John the Evangelist, Pinacoteca Civica, Faenza {Venturi, x , 1, fig. 438), or Francesco and G.B. Altarese’s ensemble in Vicenza, Torre Gvica, where flying angels crown the Virgin (Venturi, x, 3, fig. 270).
21 For numerous examples see Venturi, x , 3, figs. 466, 467, 469, 473, 479, 480, 490, 524. 542, 55*. 555. 556-
the right and left, an allegorical figure Stands on a socle unimpeded by the architectural framework. However similar the basic notion may be to Rubens’s design, it muSt be remembered that the earlier book illustration is completely
maniera in Style.
Rubens repeated his Breviarium (Fig. 72) composition with slight variations in several of his designs in 1622,1623 and later.22 As early as 1640 Rubens’s fol lower Abraham van Diepenbeeck muSt also have had this type in mind when executing his title-page for the Afbeeldinghe van d’Eerlte Eeuwe der Societeyt
Iesu (Fig. 8).
In 1615, Rubens’s 16 1 1 design for the Imperatorum Romanorum Numismata
Aurea was published and one year later his drawing for the frontispiece of the Commentaria in Pentateuchum (Nos. 36, 36a; Figs. 118 , 119 ). In the latter,
he continues the enthroned figure type seated on a large pedestal containing the book title, which he had used so successfully in the 16 13 and 1614 title- pages. As in the former, he encloses Moses within an architectural setting but now the entire body is framed and rises up through the entablature and part of the pediment. Although the fragmentation of the architectural elements is common in the sixteenth century and usually denies space or creates odd and unreadable combinations, Rubens clearly depicts the breaks and allows Moses to exist in an easily defined spatial area. Moses is not wedged into the archi tecture but light and shade invade the space around him. This is very different from the sixteenth century, where the figures are imprisoned by the Structure which presses in upon them,23 but similar to the figure of Paul, although reversed, in the Nutius and Van Meurs 16 14 publication of the Commentaria
in D. Pauli Epiîtolas (Fig. 12 5 ) .24 Rubens’s praying angels are in basically the
same position as those in the aforementioned title-page, which suggests that he might very well have had parts of this frontispiece in mind when creating his own. Furthermore, his compositional and architectural vocabulary, including Corinthian capitals, fragmented entablature and pediment upon which angels kneel and pray to a vision appearing in the top center, are all found earlier in
22 D e Kerckelycke Hiflorie (No. 49; Fig. 16 6 ), the Summa Conciliorum Omnium (No. 50; Fig. 17 2 ) and the Annales Ducum Brabantiae, l- H (No. 5 1; Fig. 17 4 ); later it was repeated for De Hierarchia Mariana of 16 4 1 (No. 80; Fig. 2 7 1).
23 Cf. Giovanni Antonio Dosio’s Tomb of Antonio Massa di Gdlese, Rome, San Pietro in Montorio (Venturi, x i, 2, fig. 322),
24 The same frontispiece was also used for the 16 2 1 and 16 2 7 publications of this book by Nutius.
Italian (Fig. 122), French (Fig. 123) and Flemish (Figs. 9, 10) book illus trations or title-pages. The inclusion of the medallions secured to the columns as well as the broken pediment, but with reclining instead of praying angels are details found in the Breviarium MonaUicum, Rome, 16 13 (Fig. 124).
The year 16 17 was the moSt important one for the publication of Rubens’s title-page designs: for the firSt time, his full range of creativity is realized. Very likely his earliest project in 16 17 was the frontispiece for the Crux Triumphans (No. 37; Fig. 126), finished sometime prior to May 29. Contrary to the previous year’s architectural arrangement (Fig. 118 ), he returns to a solid, sculptural concept which is softened in the upper 2one by a new accent upon a painterly and illusioniStic rendering of the sky. The figures and the supports recall monumental tomb sculpture with a central figure flanked by two lesser ones below, as one finds, for example, in Michelangelo’s Medici Tombs or in Leone Leoni’s Monument to Gian Galeazzo Medici in the Duomo, M ilan.25 Although Rubens changes the basic arrangement of the earlier works by having the personifications enter the Saviour’s space, the figure of Christ is clearly based upon Michelangelo’s Statue in Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome. The alle gorical figures bring to mind the mourning ones that sit precariously along the edge of the pedeStal in monuments like the one designed by Vasari for Michel angelo in Santa Croce, Florence, 26 or sixteenth-century fountain ensembles.27 However, Rubens’s figures are not separated from each other but rather enter into one another’s space and are therefore part of a composition that advances toward the viewer. This is accomplished by the movement of the pedeStal, which recedes back into depth along the sides and moves forward and out at the spectator in the central section. This sense of logical movement is reinforced by Faith and Divine Love, who sit firmly on the pedeStal and whose bodies are turned diagonally to the picture plane. The dynamic foreground sculptural ensemble is combined with a visionary and pictorial rendering of the sky and an architectural solidity in the background; everything is unified into a coherent and impressive whole. Here Rubens achieves the ideal, unified dramatic seven teenth-century integration of architecture, painting and sculpture in a title-page
25 Venturi, x , 3, fig. 350. 2« Venturi, x i, 2, fig. 386.
design which looks forward to, and might even have inspired, the works of the other great seventeenth-century “Baroque” artist, Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini.28 The greater Stress on more painterly and dramatic sky effects found in the
Crux Triumphans (Fig. 126) is carried even further in the frontispiece, which
was completed by July 1 5 ,1 6 1 7 , 29 for De Juîtitia et Jure, also published by the Plantin Press (No. 38; Fig. 128). Here Rubens adds Stars and trees and eliminates all of the Structural elements except for the base and the circular medallion, which has become more decorative than massive. JuStice really is supported by the clouds like Christ in The LaU Judgment30 or the Virgin in
The Assumption.31 Down below, two bound prisoners, symbolic of vice and
based on the antique or a sixteenth-century adaptation of the latter,32 support the frame containing the title. This type of bound nude prisoner or slave also begins to appear in Rubens’s painted œuvre at this time.33 In this book design, Rubens moves away from the sculptural and architectural framework and, for the firSt time, thinks of the title-page more in terms of painting. Nonetheless, this change in attitude was not decisive, for in the same year 16 17, Rubens designed two decidedly architectonic frontispieces. The one made for Jan van Meurs’s Biblia Sacra (No. 40; Fig. 136) is an obvious return to the architectonic concepts of the 16 13 Optic or urn libri sex (No. 10; Fig. 55), although, as Evers has pointed out,34 the Biblia Sacra arrangement presents a more unified surface. In the latter, the imaginary architectural forms do not project Strongly out into space, and the terms are set in front of a flat wall surface. Rubens’s Structure is imaginative, but the placement of Theology before a niche overlapped by
m Cf. for example the projects for the K om m ent of Alexander VII, design in Windsor CaStle (H. Brauer and R. Wittkower, Die Zeichnungen des Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Berlin, 19 3 1, pp. 168, 175 , pi. 129a). The possible connection between Bernini and Rubens’s title-pages was first suggested by Held, i960, pp. 261-264.
2» Appendix 1, p. 405 [98],
30 Cf. The LaU Judgment, Munich (K.d.K., p. 1 18 ) . 31 Cf. the painting in Brussels of 16 16 - 17 (K d .K ., p. 12 0 ).
32 See below, p. 186 under No. 38.
33 Cf. the 16 17 cartoon for The Funeral of Decius Mus, Vaduz, Collection of the Prince of Liechtenstein {[Cat. Exhi] Peter Paul Rubens. Aus den Sammlungen des FürUen von UechtenSein, Vaduz, 1974, p. 14, No. 22, pl. x x ii) .
volutes uniting both sides with the center35 suggests late sixteenth and early seventeenth-century Italian church façades.
DireCtly in opposition to the more decorative, imaginative, thin surface Structure made for the Biblia Sacra (No. 40; Fig. 136), Stands the ruStic, massive niche Rubens designed in the same year for V Voders Boeck (No. 42; Fig. 146). This heavy architectural setting was created, with or without the intervention of the artist’s patron, with an obvious concern for the content of a book which focuses upon the lives of the hermit saints who lived in ancient times. The rusticated framework with moss and ivy clearly suggests Antiquity and the wilderness. It is ultimately based upon Roman prototypes34 that Rubens knew so well in Mantua and which he freely adaped in the garden architecture for his own house in Antwerp.
Late in 1617, Jacob de Bie’s Nomismata Imperatorum (No. 39; Fig. 130) was published in Antwerp and, once again, befitting the contents of the book, Rubens turned back to the antique and produced a highly imaginative ensemble based on the imagery found in Roman coins and antique sculpture. Although the general arrangement can be found in various combinations in earlier man nerist title-pages for books like Jean Jacques Boissard’s Romanae Urbis Topo-
graphia, I, of 1597 (Fig. 1 3 3 ) ,37 or Guicciardini’s 1599 De Oorlogen van Italien
(Fig. 134), Rubens gives the illustration a new direction and a clarity not found earlier.
The year 16 17 appears to solidify and establish Rubens’s approach to title- page design which formed the framework out of which his mature Style evolved. Now for the firSt time sculptural and illusioniStic elements combine to become a basic part of his repertoire. Previously, the forms had been sculptural, their heaviness clearly articulated and the parts separated. In 16 17 the monu mental forms move and interact together. This is achieved through a new interest in a more developed use of light and shade and a breaking down of Structural boundaries within the framework of the image. In the Crux Trium
phans and in De Ju Uit ia et Jure (Figs. 12 6 ,12 8 ), the figures overlap and invade
35 For a similar combination of volutes and entablature see the title-page of A. du Laurens, Hilioria anatomica humani corporis, Paris, [16 0 0 ], illustrated in Mortimer, French, 1, p. 2 3 1, No. 189.
34 For a discussion of the symbolism of this type of niche see K . Dorment, Tomb and Tedament: Archileâural Significance in Titian’s Pieta, The Art Quarterly, x x x v, 1972, pp. 399-418.
each other’s space. This is quite different from the clearly partitioned view, whether established by the architecture or by Strong contrasts of light and shade
in the earlier title-pages (Figs. 55, 7 1 ,1 1 8 ) .
In 1618, Rubens introduces a new motif into his title-pages, the “sepulchral altar” . Again he borrows an antique format for a book concerned with Antiquity: H. Goltzius’s Graeciae Universae Nomismata..., Antwerp, 1618 (No. 43; Fig. 148), and this form, with a slight variation, is used again in 1622 for a book that imitates ancient literature, AgoStino Mascardi’s Silvarum Libri IV (No. 48; Fig. 165).
The illusionism of 1617, based on a combination of sculptural and painterly elements, becomes, in 1619, more closely allied to Rubens’s painting Style. His design for P. Ribadineira and H. Rosweyde’s Generale Legende der Heylighen (No. 44; Fig. 149), is conceived in much the same visionary way as the ca. 16 15 -16 La ft Judgment in Dresden and the Great Lafl Judgment in Munich.38 This painterly approach also characterizes the 1620 design for Thomas a Jesu’s
De Contemplatione Divina (No. 45; Fig. 153) where, for the firSt time, there
is the suggestion of a fully developed landscape disappearing into the distance. However, in this same year he also returns to an imaginative rustic archi tectural design for the Gelrescbe Rechten (No. 47; Fig. 158). The architectural vocabulary behind the royal personages has a ruStic quality similar to that in the image fo r ’t Voders Boeck of 16 17 (No. 42; Fig. 146). The similarity ends there and again no specific Italian architectural model can be found. Actually, Rubens has really taken over an earlier frontispiece arrangement such as the one for H. d’Oultremannus’s Descriptio Triumphi and Speftaculorum . . . Alberto et
lsabellae, Antwerp, 1602 (Fig. 162) and replaced the mannered classical archi
tectural vocabulary with the rusticated type associated with Roman Antiquity and North-Italy, especially Mantua. There is also a possible debt to North-Italy in the poses of Isabella and Albert, which are very similar to those found in an illustration in Fabrizio Caroso’s 11 Ballarino, Venice, 1581 (Fig. 16 4 ).39
There are no published Rubens book illustrations in 16 21. AgoStino Mascardi’s Silvarum Libri IV of 1622 (No. 48; Fig. 165) repeats the 1618 “sepulchral altar” type. The other book with a Rubens title-page published in 1622 repeats an earlier type. His project for De Kerckelycke Hiltorie
3»K J. K„ ç. 118
.
(No. 49; Fig. 166), and also those for the firft volume of the Annales
Ducum Brabantiae (No. 51; Fig. 174) and for the Summa Conciliorum (No.
50; Fig. 172), both published in 1623, are all close variations on the 1614
Breviarium frontispiece (Fig. 7 1). On the other hand his work for the two
other title-pages issued in 1623, volume hi of F. Van Haer’s Annales Ducum
Brabantiae (No. 52; Fig. 179) and C. Baronius’s, H. Spondanus's and H. Ros-
weyde’s Generale Kerckelycke HiUorie (No. 53; Fig. 183), are original in concept. The scheme for Van Haer’s book employs a rustic Stone wall which is a variant on the niche in his earlier frontispiece printed in 16 15 in Hemelaers’s publication on coins (No. 33; Fig. 114 ) and the 16 17 Voders Boeck (Fig. 146). In 1623 (Fig. 179) the rusticated niche is replaced by a rough wall which is part of a Doric temple. The building is pierced by a door which opens out toward the viewer and in the opening appears a hanging containing the book’s title. Rubens here creates a solid and readable architectural form executed in the heavy Doric Style. In doing this he breaks with book designs of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries where architectural details were used in fantastic combinations to create wholly imaginative Structures. This is moSt evident when one compares titles like the 1566 Vivae Imagines Partium
Corporis Humani (Fig. 1) , the 1584 De Poeticsche Werken (Fig. 6) or J. B.
Villalpando’s De Poftrema Ezechielis Visione of 1604 (Fig. 1 1 ) . However, one element does carry over from earlier examples and that is the piercing of the architrave and frieze with the niche containing Janus’s buSt. This parallels the coat-of-arms with the Order of the Golden Fleece found in the 1604 title-page cited above (Fig. 1 1 ) . Nevertheless, this one deviation from an otherwise pure Doric building doet not diminish the readable and monumental character of the image which Rubens uses again later with slight variations.
Whereas the Annales Ducum Brabantiae, hi title-page (Fig. 179) is conceived in terms of a clearly defined spatial area, the Generale Kerckelycke Hiflorie (Fig. 183) is rendered with the same vigour as Rubens’s illusioniStic paintings executed around 1623. He places the personification of the Church in the bottom center of the scene. She is surrounded by clouds with flying angels carrying torches and lamps. Below, the figures rise up from outside of the aCtual picture plane toward the Church. Their monumental bodies, intense facial