Henderson 1982

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Henderson, George. "Bible Illustrations in the Age of Laud."

complaints in Scotland about Bibles printed with pictures; misunderstanding -- the Bibles were likely put together by individuals; see top of 175

Laud, accused of owning some of the books that Little Gidding used in their Bibles; see Prynne, Canterburies doome; History of the Troubles and Tryal..."

offence was not just owning popish pictures, but inserting them into Bibles

Robert Peake's changes to Bolswert when he copied his engravings (180)

Peake's quotes differ -- many taken from Geneva Bible, even though no Geneva Bible has his engravings (183)

Geneva Bible -- William Whittingham's text of NT based on Theodore Beza's translation out of the Greek; disliked by King James; Authorised Version intended to replace it; "It had no currency in England in the 1630s except against Laud's will." (183)

Henderson -- hasn't found a Geneva Bible with Peake's or Bolswert's pictures (183)

Robert Sparke, A Second Beacon Fired by Scintilla -- brings up issue of bible illustration; tells the story of a stationer who makes money putting Peake's prints in Bibles, buying up prints from France, etc.

early Lutherans interested in Gospel Harmonies

  • Martin Chemnitz, left

unfinished at his death in 1586; completed by Johann Gerhard of Jena in 1626

  • Henry Garthwait, Monotessaron; Ferrar awaited a copy, see letter to Robert Mapletoft, Aug 22 1634
"The Collets' painstaking techniques are the sublimation of scissors and pate, the art of decoupage at its highest, before that art is generally acknowledged to exist." (187)

cuttings unused were mounted in 1910 as Vol. III in the series of "Prints General" at the Pepys library at Magdalene College; were probably bequeathed to the college by Peckard, Ferrar's biographerHenderson claims that the story books were "composed by Nicholas Ferrar for semi-dramatic reading" (188) -- example of bias against women's work in interpretations of LG

"The illustrations are not mere incidental additions. They are an essential part of the spiritual gratification that the Concordances were intended to provide.

Occasionally the compilers can be seen responding personally to the text, for example to Acts XXI, 9, where mention is made of a man who had four daughters, 'virgins, which did prophesy'. The Collets found and cut out and pasted in four assorted nuns, which it may not be too fanciful to see as spiritual portraits of some of themselves and of their grandmother, Mary Ferrar." (189)

letter on the back of a print requesting an engraving of the annunciation by Stradanus; request variety (189) <-- whose handwriting?

Ferrar Papers, pg 86 -- John Ferrar's anxiety for clients (see 190)

"backbone of the King's great Concordance, the store of smaller pictures that move the Gospel story onwards, are the engravings of the life of Christ by Boethius Bolswert" (191) -- even Bolswert's title page is used; only modification is that any images of God are replaced

use of multiples of the same image in C.23.e.2; "such were the clumsy devices employed by amateur Bible illustrators in the age of prints and printing! What a medieval miniaturist could supply with ease, has to be coaxed into shape in seventeenth century England by raids into a store of ready-made engravings." (192)

"I wonder, however, if the Ferrars/Collets were not rather special patrons, who might on occasion affect the character of the prints made available for sale? After all, they used a great many of them, employing whole prints and assorted portions of the same prints in disguised rearrangements." (193) -- could have they influenced Peake's decision to maintain Bolswert's "IHS" monogram in the engraving showing the crucifixion, for instance?
"Visually the most impressive of the Little Gidding books, other than the great royal Concordance itself, is the British Library's copy of the Acts of the Apostles and The Book of Revelation." (193) -- c.f. with Ransome's comments that it's little more than an illustrated version that could have been done by unskilled/illiterate workers (women)

unpacks sources for Peake's controversial Acts illustrations

  • "We see, therefore, that the Acts illustrations whose launching into Scotland in 1638 was so ill-timed, were derived from imported, some very recently imported, fashionable models. Many of the pictorial sources on which they drew are represented in the King's own copy of Acts from Little Gidding, and whoever was responsible for putting them in their evolved form into Bibles, and responsible in the first place for conflating the various images, seems likely enough to have been known to the King" (196-7)