Baroque Book Illustrations; A Short Survey
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970. Second edition. Quarto (11 1/2 inches tall), original green cloth, original dust jacket. Small price sticker ("National Gallery of Art") to bottom rear panel of price-clipped dust jacket, else Fine. Item #1241
"THE MOST GORGEOUS EPOCH OF WESTERN OSTENTATION"
Second printing of Philip Hofer's "pioneering" survey of two hundred years of Baroque illustration—complete in the original dust jacket. With Hofer's original calling card laid-in at the title page.
The Baroque Age was a transformative period for the design and production of books in the West. Philip Hofer, the founder and first Curator of the Department of Printing and Graphic Arts at Harvard University's Houghton Library, sought to address what he described as Baroque's "stylistic limbo"—a yawning information gap stretching from the late sixteenth century into the early eighteenth century. Ushering in a tectonic shift—from woodcuts to copper-engravings—in the design and production of illustrations, the Baroque era was a study in contrasts: "As in every other aspect of the baroque styles, in illustration the formal and the exuberant vied for predominance....on paper, the most dizzying contrivances could be made to stand."
First published in 1951, Hofer's geographical survey proceeds in "climactic order" of national influence. This second printing reflects the revision with an epigraph ("No book is completed until Error has crept in and affixed his Sly imprimatur") opening the new Introduction. Books produced in this new "grand manner" featured monumental architecturally-inspired plates coupled with the emergence of an increasingly expressive portraiture: "The best was none too good when the prestige of ambitious men was concerned. They became aware of the illustrated book's intrinsic permanence and its potency in disseminating personal glory far beyond the confines of a local reputation. For books, despite wars and customs barriers, remained one of the most international of all commodities." A catalogue ("Descriptions of the Reproductions") precedes a selection of 149 illustrations collected together at the back of the book. The illustrated dust jacket (lettered by Rudolph Ruzicka) includes reviews of the first printing on the back panel of the jacket: "The most gorgeous epoch of Western ostentation naturally found dazzling reflection in honorific editions, noble folios of art, science, theatre, and portraiture...Selection of plates is admirable; the quality of the work, breathtaking. There are few lovelier or more surprising books this season" (The New Republic).
Price: $100.00