The Tenschert Wunderkammer: A Journey Through the Book Treasures of the 16th Century

Nicolas Barker, Autumn 2023
Originally appeared in The Book Collector, Autumn 2023 Issue

For getting on for fifty years now the name ofHeribert Tenschert has stood in the world of books as a memorial of splendour. This has been commemorated by a series of catalogues, large in format, polychrome in design, learned in text, arnd astounding both in content and diversity. At the outset they dealt with medieval manuscripts, for which their format was well adapted, but in more recent times their scope has spread to take in a whole library of modern books, an outstanding collection of French book bindings, and an ever-increasing collection of printed books of hours as colourful as the manuscript books that they imitated and succeeded. Together, all these different manifestations created an image of the height to which the book in all its forms could reach. It came to delight and amaze Tenschert's customers and the many others who read the catalogues, until four years ago when sudderJy the Covid epidemic struck, and with it the luxurious world that had enjoyed the books suddenly disappeared.

Momentarily silenced, Tenschert has fought back. His catalogue 90, Wunderkammer. Herz der Bibliophilie has taken his readers into the 16th century and with it into the heart of the new appreciation of books that the invention of printing brought about. America has been discovered, and its gold has increased the wealth and the number of colours that decorate the illuminated book. It is about to transform the generally monochrome appearance of bookbinding.

Black and white, in letterpress typography, and in a whole new range of imagery created by different methods of engraving, creates a new aesthetic in both letters and pictures. It too is soon to be given a new vivacity with the naturalistic gift of colour, appealing in both ways to a new literary or scientific taste. Paper has overtaken vellum in economy if not permanence. Where every book was once ipso facto unique, the concept of multiplicity has given a new magic to the promise of another novelty, the creation of a unique copy.

The new century is typified in the first item, the founding document of a new kind of civil governance, the Swiss Confederation, brought into being through the Burgundian wars of 1474-77.The record of this is in the copy made in 1500-1501 by a Fribourg notary, Johann Lenz, who has added the unique copy of Hans Lenz's rhyming chronicle of the 'Schwabenkrieg' of 1499. The second item, a large festal Gradual, is far from unique as such, but is here transformed by three miniatures, of St Francis, the miraculous draft of fishes and the death and Assumption of the Virgin, by a Ferrarese painter, so like the work of Cosme Tura as to encourage the speculation that they are by him. The very different but equally accomplished Armorial of the order of the Golden Fleece made on the admission of the Prince of Melfi in 1531 may have belonged to Charles V. The Constitutiones of the order were also printed on vellum, in Latin and French, for Philip II of Spain. The French Evangeliary made for the Paris Celestine convent in 1545 looks both back and forward, while the Missal made for Cardinal Giovan Girolamo de' Rossi, written in a fine antica script and illuminated by Guarnerio Berretta, looks firmly forward. The contrast with the minute octagonal Persian Koran of 1564 could not be more striking, the Widerholz album amicorum (1583-4) no less so. Hieronymus Oertl had Dürer' s 1513 Passion and the Marten de Vos prayer book beside it, both illuminated to look like manuscripts.

There follows a selection of books printed on vellum. Liturgical books otherwise on paper had the canon of the mass on vellum, so here are the 1505 Passau and Constance Missals, both printed by Ratdolt, and the 1506 Arniens Missal and the 1506 Salzburg Missal with Cranach woodcuts, all finely coloured. Besides these are the famous 1507 Hibbert-Botfield Vigerius Decachordum, the little 1511 Paris Missal, ex-Doheny, one of only two known on vellum, the Helmingham 1514 Sarum Missal, coloured throughout, the unique I 517 Langres Missal illuminated by Etienne Co laud, and the vellum copy of Claude de Seyssel Explanatio moralis 1515, probably printed for François I.

The great vellum 1517 Theuerdanck with its wonderful Burgkmair cuts and the letterpress augmented with pen work was celebrated in Tenschert 85 'Der Wille zum Ruhm'. An equally famous chivalric work on vellum is the Gaguin La Mer des Croniques 1518, the François I-Diane de Poitiers-Anne of Bavaria-Harley-Tollemache copy, illuminated by Jean Coene. The Hieronyrnite Processional (Saragossa, 1526) was matched by the 1527 Evreux Missal, decorated by the Master of Anne de Graville, and the 15 5 5 Augsburg Missal was the dedication copy of Bishop Otto Truchsess von Waldburg. The unique Gaguin 15 31 Commentaries of Caesar illuminated by Etienne Colaud had also passed through the Diane de Poitiers-Anne of Bavaria-Harley-Tollemache libraries, an extraordinary double sequence of ownership.

At this point there is a visible break in the narrative, consequent on the impact of the Reformation. There was no diminution in the quality or number of treasurable books, but the books themselves were different. The great 1561 Luther bible, illustrated by Cranach, Lemberger and Brosamer, printed on vellum by Hans Lufft and bound by Brosius Faust, the Dresden court binder, in two volumes for August von Sachsen to give to his chancellor Johann Pyrner, is further decorated and fortified with a battery of metal bosses and clasps. This is balanced by the Carthusian Gradual printed at Paris in 1578, and the great Strasbourg illustrated Vergil, printed by Gruninger in 1502, in a superb polychrome binding by Gomar Estienne for Jacques de Saint-Mesmin. Its fine woodcut illustrations match those of the 1501/3 Verard Gyron le Courtoys, whose chivalric figures are comparable with those of the 1503 Lyon Romant de la Rose.

Woodcut illustration invited colouring by out of work illuminators, and the 1507 N iirnberg Speculum Passionis is richly thus decorated, as is the 1508 Predigen Teiitsch of Johann Getler von Kaysersberg. The amazing detail of the Dürer'Large Passion' is unsurprisingly left to speak for itself, unlike the second Strasbourg Vergil, where colour fairly leaps off the page. The 1530 Riixner Turnierbuch is uncoloured, while the second edition of 1532 exhibits a rare diversity of different colours. The 1532 Augsburg Petrarch De Remediis has the woodcuts plain, while the 1533 Fierrabras is enlivened with colour amd a fine red goatskin binding. Holbein's legendary Old Testament illustrations are present in both 1538 and 1547 editions. The first truly realistic herbal, Fuchs De Historia Stirpium 1542, was coloured as accurately by Hubert Cailleau for Mary of Hungary. The fifth decade of the century ends, as it began, with Switzerland, in the 1548 Chronicle of Johann Stumpf, appropriately printed at Zurich by Christoph Froschauer, and available in two copies, one handsomely bound at Dresden in two volumes in blind-stamped calf by, again, Brosius Faust, and the other elaborately coloured and bound in Nürnberg in 1591 by Hans Pfister.

The Notitia Dignitatum is an illustrated list of all the officials of the later Roman empire, printed by Johann Froben at Basel. The survival of this important classical text has been heightened by the application of colour to the woodcuts, which depict their late imperial originals with great fidelity, as well as the images of fish used to demonstrate piscatory regulations. Further graphic monuments of the age are the 15 5 3 Quadrins historiques, the bible illustrations cut by Bernard Salomon, in the Schafer copy, and Ola us Magnus Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus 1555, bound for the great classical scholar Richard Brunck. The 1561 French Hypnerotomachie was in contemporary colour, and Agricola De Re Metallica, printed the same year, is in a Hague binding. Guicciardini Descrittione di Tutti I Paesi Bassi 1567 is again in contemporary colour, as is the 1568 account of the weddingofReneedeLorraineand Wilhelm VofBavaria. The 1574 Lehrbuch der Chirurgie of Jean Tagault and Jacques Houllier has 22 large woodcuts by Jost Amman, some derived from V esalius, while Besson Theatrum Instrumentorum et Machinarum 1582 displays 60 plates of ingenious machinery designed by Androuet du Cerceau.

A wonderful copy of the Braun and Hogenberg city views, Cologne, c.1575-1618, is in immaculate French red goatskin, while Boissard Habitus Variarum Orbis Gentium 1581 is as colourful, uniquely so. The vast compilation of works on horses and horsemanship by Grisone, Fayser and Hohenburg, 1576-1581, has fine woodcuts, paralleled by the 104 mannerist copper plates of Johann Stradanus's encyclopaedia of hunting, Antwerp, c.1585. A third copy ofStumpfs Swiss Chronicle, Zurich, 1586, numbers over 2,000 woodcut maps and coats of arms, all coloured. Speckle Architectura von Vestungen 1589, the German equivalent ofVitruvius and Frontinus, has the etchings of forti£cations by Matthaus Greuter coloured with exceptional delicacy, while the 132 woodcut illustrations after Tobias Stimmer of the 1590 Strasbourg Josephus are coloured by the contemporary Niirnberg illuminator, Georg Mack, possibly for the Fugger family library. Four different editions of Jeronimo Nadal's Evangelicae Historiae Imagines, 1591-1599, testify to the popularity ofWiericx's plates, and Hoefuagel's realistic natural history engravings give advance notice of the new taste for scientific accuracy.

The eighty-two manuscripts and printed books in chronological order have so far given us a glorious picture of the diversity achieved by books in the first full century after the invention of printing. Another forty-one examples turn to other distinguishing features, the decorative bindings and other marks of important ownership that mark them out as different from any other copy. The first is the great Magdeburg Missal printed at Ni.irnberg in 1503, still in its first binding with metal clasps and corners, which is the cornerstone of the great Bourbon-Parma collection of liturgical books. The Rauen Croniques de Normandie, undated but c.1505-13, is famous for its previous owners: Robert Lang, founder member of the Roxburghe Club, Richard Heber, the Prince d'Essling, Felix Solar, who commissioned its present binding by Trautz-Bauzonnet, and Louis-Hippolyte Rangeard de la Germoniere, while the romance of Gerard de Nevers, 1520, similarly bound for Charles-Joseph Giraud, went on to Solar, Ambroise Firmin-Didot, Lucien Gougy, Cortlandt Bishop and Edmee Maus. Monstrelet and Froissart's chronicles, 1518 and 1530, were bound together by Pierre-Marcellin Lortie, while the folio 1521 Romant de la Rose was bound for Marcus Fugger, and bears his signature. The 1529 octavo of the same text as modernised by Clement Marot was bound in red goatskin by Derome-le-jeune. The Biblia Sacra printed at Basel by Cratander in 1521 was bound by Jean Picard in black goatskin with the sides with 218 large and many smaller woodcuts, all in contemporary colour. The binding, in two volumes overall gilt, was made for Hans Harrer, Chancellor of the Elector of Saxony, and his wife Barbara in 1574. This is followed by the equally large Hegesippus continuation of Josephus, Strasbourg, 1578, with the mannerist woodcut illustrations after Tobias Stimmer, all coloured, in another, but very different, overall gilt interlace binding. The distinctive sparer style affected by the binders who worked for Jacques-Auguste de Thou, whether in folio red goatskin or smaller plain vellum, is demonstrated in no less than five examples. The author best known worldwide at the end of the century was Montaigne, here represented by the 1588 fifth edition of the Essais, the last in his lifetime, bound a century later by Bradel, and by two copies of the next (1595), famous as revised by Marie de Gournay, Montaigne' s literary executor, one in an amazing mosaic binding by Lortie, the other by his contemporary English competitor, Riviere.

The accent in the last quarter of the century of Tenschert's 'Wunderkammer' has been Germanic, but the very last book recalls the large part that Italian books, patrons and artisans have taken in the universal splendour thus displayed. It is fitting, thus, that it should end with a book that combines Italy with Spain, both under the overarching shadow of the papacy. It was for Clement VIII (1592-1605) and in Rome (1598-1601) that Alonso Chac6n's monumental account of the lives of the popes and cardinals was published. What must be Chac6n's dedication copy for the Pope was bound in chestnut red goatskin decorated in silver and gilt, with the Aldobrandini arms in colour in the centre of each board and on the blue painted edges. Its next known owner was Sir Andrew Fountaine, whose library was formed in France, the Low Countries and Italy c.1701-32, and after him the legendary collector, Archibald, 5th Earl ofRosebery (1847-1929).

The Venetian ambassador in Paris, Pietro Duodo (1554-1610), had the books in his travelling library uniformly bound in fanfare style with his arms, including the 1533 Enchiridion Psalmorum here. Perrinet du Pin Lhystoire et Conqueste de Grece l 543-66 was bound by Louis Douceur in olive-green goatskin for the Due de la Valliere, the epitome of ancien regime bibliophily. The 1545 Greek bible printed at Basel by Herwagen is in red goatskin with the arms of Louis XIV's minister,Jean-Baptiste Colbert, and the Terence printed by Vascosan in Paris, 1545, was bound there in polychrome tinted wax entrelac style, and was later in the Sunderland library. Bale's first bibliography of British writers ( l 548) is bound for Thomas Wotton in calf with a wonderful arabesque interlace enclosing his arms. Outdoing even this in tinted wax interlace with delicate oval miniatures is the Dialectica Aristotelis in the translation of Boethius, Lyon, Gryphius, 15 5 l, and the Gryphius octavo Amrnianus Marcellinus is bound in limp vellum gilt by the Cupid' s Bow binder, with similarly gilt and gauffered edges. At the other end of the scale is Cromer' s 1555 history of Poland in Louis Hague's masterpiece, a 'richly painted pastiche' of the French Renaissance style. The great 1557 De Tournes Lyon Bible in French with Salamon' s cuts is in calf arabesque gilt, with further decoration from classical medallions. The rare Plantin Aesop (Antwerp, 1567) was bound for Count Hoym, and the Estienne 1568-69 Greek New Testament is in a perfect fanfare a la grecque binding by the' Atelier a la premiere palmette'. As an example of this overall style of tooling it could only be matched by the copy of the great Plantin 1583 Bible illustrated with ninety-four plates engraved by or after six of the leading Flemish artists, specially printed for the scholar-collector Jacques-Marius d' Amboise. This vast book, bound in red morocco overall gilt tooled with unbelievable precision, with details subtly inlaid in black, is arguably the most beautiful binding in the whole collection.

As sumptuous if stylistically far removed is the masterpiece of Jakob Krause, court binder at Dresden, a copy of the large Bible printed by Hans Krafft at Wittenberg in 1572, copiously illustrated with 218 large and many smaller woodcuts, all in contemporary colour. The binding, in two volumes overall gilt, was made for Hans Harrer, Chancellor of the Elector of Saxony, and his wife Barbara in 1574. This is followed by the equally large Hegesippus continuation of Josephus, Strasbourg, 1578, with the mannerist woodcut illustrations after Tobias Stimmer, all coloured, in another, but very different, overall gilt interlace binding. The distinctive sparer style affected by the binders who worked for Jacques-Auguste de Thou, whether in folio red goatskin or smaller plain vellum, is demonstrated in no less than five examples. The author best known worldwide at the end of the century was Montaigne, here represented by the 1588 fifth edition of the Essais, the last in his lifetime, bound a century later by Bradel, and by two copies of the next (1595), famous as revised by Marie de Gournay, Montaigne' s literary executor, one in an amazing mosaic binding by Lortie, the other by his contemporary English competitor, Riviere.

This makes an appropriately splendid end to the 'Wunderkammer' as such, yet there is more, something less obviously valuable, to be measured on something other than a terrestrial scale. This is the small quarto Bible printed by Plantin in 1565, hallowed by its possession by a saint, Carlo Borromeo, Archbishop of Milan ( l 53 8-15 84). First bound in now worn purple velvet, but adorned with silver embroidery and clasps, its status as a relic of the saint (canonised in 1610) is attested not only by the silver-embroidered green velvet case in which it is now preserved, but also by a series of documents certifying that the Bible was given by the saint to Michael Casentino, brother of the Bernardine Order, and in turn by him to Alvaro de Mendotta, Bishop ofL' Aquila, all duly recorded under notarial seal in 1626.

By any standard, any one of the contents of Tenschert' s 'Wunderkammer' would transform any catalogue in which it might appear. Over a century of such treasures turns the catalogue in which they appear into a treasure itself. Nothing if not generous, Heribert Tenschert has recorded the sources that have enabled the descriptions of all that he noted, converting their record into a document of permanent value, the greater for being sumptuously illustrated. There are too many to be all described as they should be here, but enough is given to give a full flavour of the whole. Those who have enjoyed his earlier catalogues, starved of the once familiar bibliophilic banquets during the epidemic, have been properly satiated by this latest feast.

Heribert TenschertMarch 12, 2024Book Collector