Bontemps, Pierre (c. 1507–1568) French sculptor
Assistant to PRIMATICCIOat FONTAINEBLEAU, Bontemps is
best known for his work on the tomb of Francis I and
Claude de France and their children (1547–58) at the
church of St. Denis. The monument was designed by
Philibert DELORME; Bontemps worked on it alongside
François Marchand. Bontemps also worked on a monu-
ment for the heart of Francis I in the same church, incor-
porating a number of features from the outdated Gothic
tradition. As a Huguenot, he became a religious fugitive
after 1562.
book illustration The earliest illustrated books in-
evitably suffered by comparison with illuminated MANU-
SCRIPTS. Some copies of early printed books have however
been decorated as though they were manuscripts, for ex-
ample, the Bodleian Library copy of Jenson’s 1476 edition
of Pliny’s Natural History, enriched with splendid Floren-
tine illumination. Printing was slow to kill the earlier craft
in most of Europe, especially Italy.
Block-books, mostly German, with text and picture
cut on the same block, began to be produced about 1430.
The oldest surviving single woodcut is a St. Christopher of
- Although WOODCUTSand text were formed into
books soon afterwards, no extant block-book bears a date
before 1470, and by 1480 they were ousted by the spread
of printing with movable type. Most block-books were in-
tended for those who preferred stories in pictures, with as
few words as possible, so the Biblia pauperum and other
religious writings provided most of the material.
Ornamental initials, sometimes printed in color, and
woodcuts soon appeared, to such an extent that about a
third of all INCUNABULAare thus illustrated. Albrecht Pfis-
ter of Bamberg added woodcuts to his popular books in
the 1460s, though the pictures were printed after the text.
The quality of book illustration in Italy was soon the best
in Europe, culminating in the HYPNEROTOMACHIA POLIFILI
(1499). Engraving on metal was first used in Florence in
1477, though the process was not taken up on a signifi-
cant scale until the middle of the next century. The use of
roman or italic type in Italy led to smaller books with a
lighter appearance than black-letter printing, an effect
echoed in the illustrations (see TYPOGRAPHY).
In Germany the printers of Augsburg specialized in il-
lustrated books, and Günther Zainer’s Golden Legend
(1471) has historiated initials echoing manuscript ones. A
little later his brother Johann, working in Ulm, printed an
edition of Aesop the illustrations of which were subse-
quently used in CAXTON’s 1484 London edition, the first
known example of a sort of borrowing that later became
widespread. The Liber chronicarum (Nuremberg Chronicle),
was printed in Nuremberg by Anton Koberger in 1493,
with nearly 2000 pictures from only 645 blocks, an econ-
omy allowed by using illustrations as decoration rather
than an integrated complement to the text.
The first named illustrator was Erhard Reuwich,
whose pictures for Peregrinationes in terram sanctam
(Mainz, 1486) are an essential part of the book. Later, pro-
fessional illustrators like Hans (II) WEIDITZ, who designed
woodcuts for BRUNFELS’s herbal, were also given credit in
print for their work.
In the 1530s and 1540s Basle became a famous center
for illustrated books. Dürer may have worked there in the
1490s, and his influence certainly refined the local style.
The HOLBEINfamily lived there, though the books they il-
lustrated were often printed in France, like the Dance of
Death (Lyons, 1538). Leonhart FUCHS’s herbal (1542) and
VESALIUS’s textbook of human anatomy (1548) were two
famous Basle productions of this period.
EMBLEM books were another development of the
1530s. Soon afterwards topographical books, illustrated
by engravings, began to be published in Italy; the first,
Speculum Romanae magnificentiae (Rome, 1548–68), has
nearly 150 plates of monuments in the city. Some printers
became specialists in engraving on metal, like the DE BRY
FAMILY in Frankfurt and the Dutch printers of carto-
graphic works like ORTELIUS’s Theatrum orbis terrarum
(1570) and MERCATOR’s Atlas (1595).
PLANTIN’s Antwerp Polyglot Bible (1568–73) features
both woodcuts and copper engravings. This printer, who
encouraged the use of pictures, organized his illustrators
on a grand scale, so that blocks from his store were often
borrowed and used elsewhere. By the end of the 16th cen-
tury, engravings, which allowed greater delicacy, were
overtaking woodcuts for book illustration. The products
of both methods were still colored by hand, sometimes in
the printers’ own workshops, if colored copies were re-
quired. The quality of the engraving, as in flower books
like Crispin de Passe’s Hortus floridus (Utrecht, 1614) is
sometimes so fine that the addition of color is the reverse
of improvement.
Further reading: Jonathan J. G. Alexander (ed.), The
Painted Page: Italian Renaissance Book Illumination
1450–1550 (Munich, Germany: Prestel, 1994); Lilian
Armstrong Studies of Renaissance Miniaturists in Venice
(London: Pindar Press, 2003).Book of Common Prayer The official service book of
the Church of England, containing offices of morning and
evening prayer, guides on how to administer the sacra-
ments and other rites, Psalms, and (since 1552) the Ordi-
nal (rules for appointing clergy). The Prayer Book is an
essential record of 16th-century Protestantism. During the
1530s, Thomas CRANMERand other English reformers en-
deavored to amend, simplify, and standardize liturgical in-
structions for priests and worshipers. The first Prayer
Book was eventually printed by EDWARD VI’s Parliament of
1549, and a Uniformity Act enforced its exclusive use.
Typically for a Tudor Anglican document, the book dis-BBooookk ooff CCoommmmoonn PPrraayyeerr 6611