Baroque Book Illustration : A Short Survey from the Collection in the Department of Graphic Arts, Harvard College Library

Harvard University Press, Cambridge, first edition, 1951. Cloth, 4to,. 43 pp, 149 plates. From the blurb: "This is the first book in a large, unexplored field, designed to give the connoisseur, collector, and interested amateur an idea of the scope and merits of seventeenth-century European illustration. Here is a concise text which presents the range and quality of baroque book illustration, designed to aid the reader in forming an idea of a vigorous and exciting neglected period in the book arts. The baroque style, in all forms, is now receiving growing appreciation after being "out of fashion" since the beginning of modern criticism. The seventeenth century in particular has been neglected or written around, while the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries have had the critical attention of book connoisseurs. Mr. Hofer seeks to remedy this neglect through a survey of the baroque book in general, with separate attention to the book production of individual countries. The illustrations are many (nearly 150 books are represented and varied as to subject, size and kind so that the reader can form his own impression of the importance and scope of the material. The range of subject matter - from books on fencing, on fireworks, on heraldry to those on medicine or botany, from dissertations on suicide to works on horsemanship - is the range of the ever-curious seventeeth-century mind. The first illustrated edition of Paradise Lost, the de Bry views of Indian life in America, two of the very few book illustrations by Rembrandt, as well as an atrocity scene presaging more modern artists' horror of war, are all represented. Illustrations from great commemorative volumes in honor of kings and from small books of patterns for lacemakers show the range of size as well as subject. Booklabel on front pastedown endpaper, otherwise Good in a somewhat torn dustwrapper.