Bulletin du Musée National de Varsovie (39.1998)

Printmaking had become an art form that was independent of other techniąues
and it has sińce remained a valid artistic medium with lts own laws and canons
of beauty.

Prints depicting typographers at work or the interiors of their ateliers began
to appear in the 1470s. These prints served to popularise “the black art” and
the development of pieta poesis which, embellished with inscriptions, took the
form of devices, emblems or printers’ marks in an emblematic shape intended
to glorify typography.

Printers’ marks, as identification signs, in sources of their earliest and most
rudimentary application, had forms fulfilling similar functions. These consisted
of mediaeval merchants’ property marks or coats of arms. Freąuently, the
oldest printers’ marks took the shape of the printer’s own crest or the coat of
arms for the town in which he operated, or compositions bearing a heraldic
character.3 The tradition of creatmg impresses, providing another source in
imprinting, only this time associated with the Renaissance, is connected with
heraldry. The celebrated example of Aldus Manutius, who was the first to
apply his own printer’s emblem, both as a motto and device (an anchor with
a dolphin and the motto “Festina lente”), encouraged publishers to do the
same.4 Devices or emblems, combining in their composition a picture and
inscription, proved a suitable form of expressing even complicated contents
in a relatively uncomplicated design, distinguishing the printing houses.
In time, emblematics created by erudites became a fashionable field in art
appreciated by educated people who represented the typographer’s potential
customers. In composing his own device, which might include a personal
motto or a symbol relating to the printing house’s publishing profile, the
typographer was aiming to conciliate or enlarge the circle of readers. The
imprint’s value in publicising the printing house was ąuickly recognised by the
publishers. At the same time, the printed mark (sign) with its emblematic shape,
duplicated in numerous books and distributed in many countries, helped to
disseminate the emblem as a form in its own right.

In the 15th and 16th centuries reference to the typographer at work was morę
freąuent than in later times. The tools connected with this profession or even
interiors of the publishing houses were displayed. One of the oldest plates
depicting typographers at their work was connected with the publishing
house of Petrus Caesar, a student of Ulrich Gering’ who operated until 1473

In this paper only the printed emblems which originally contained lllustrations will be taken
into account. Gravures sur bois tirees des livres franęais du XVe siecle, Marąues inedites, Paris 1868,
Ul. 307-323; E. Ph. Goldschmidt, The Printed Book of the Renaissance, Three Lectures on Type,
Illustration, Ornament, Amsterdam 1974, pp. 62, 78-84; E. Vaccaro, LeMarche dei Tipografi ed
editori Italiani del secoloXVl, Firenze 1988, p. 104-114; L. Schliiter, P Vinken, The Elseuier Non
Solus Imprint, Amsterdam 1997, pp. 7-8; K. Porteman, Symbolische boekwetenschap of twee
uliegen in een klap, Uitgewerij De Buitenkant Rijksuniversiteit Leiden, Amsterdam 1988, s. 5-11.
4 E. Ph. Goldschmidt, op. cit., pp. 81-82; P M. Dały, “Modern Advertising and the Renaissance
Emblem, Modes of Verbal and Visual Persuasion”, in Word and Visual Imgagination: Studies in
the Interaction ofEnglish Literaturę and Visual Arts, Erlangen 1988, pp. 349-371.

In 1470, under the initiative of two professors at the Sorbonne, Jean Heynlin and Guillaume

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