The official symbol of Antwerp was the silver hand but I have no idea why a hand was chosen. De facto the symbol seen throughout the city was this white 'A' surrounded by what looked like yellow exclamation marks on a red background.
As travel writer Rick Steves has indicated, in this digital age it's extraordinarily easy to forget how absolutely revolutionary printing books were back in the 1500s. Being in Antwerp gave us an incredible opportunity to learn at the Museum Plantin-Moretus how the city was able to disseminate ideas from its brand-new presses. The museum was named for two prominent printers, Frenchman Christoffel Plantin who had started a printing business in Antwerp in 1546, and his son-in-law, Jan Moretus who furthered the family business. The firm later became the official printer for the Spanish monarchs of the Low Countries.
As the museum was both the family home and their workshop, visiting the museum was an incredible opportunity to look at 16th and 17th-century aristocratic life as it had been recreated to appear just as it was in the mid-1500s. The lighting in the rooms was intentionally low so it would replicate a candlelit glow. The sumptuous, centuries-old Belgian tapestries were themselves worth the price of admission in the Small Drawing Room.
The Big Drawing Room was an elaborately decorated hall with portraits from nine generations of the family including a painting of Plantin by native son Peter Paul Rubens.
Plantin's wife, Jeanne Riviere, with whom he had five daughters:
Rubens designed the title page of Jesuit Leonardus Lessier's bestselling book, De Justitia, in 1632.
Just as we had no inkling of the luxurious courtyard behind the 'simple' facade of Rubens' home the previous day, the stunning courtyard that was revealed to us by going through a dark curtain and then a doorway (so no light would permeate the delicate books and art in the drawing room) made me ooh and ahh.
One door from the courtyard led to a reconstructed bookshop that included an extensive list of books, including those sold by Christoffel Plantin, that had been banned by the Catholic Church.
Being able to actually touch paper that was the same that the printing company had used almost 600 years ago was quite a thrill.
Another room had more breathtaking tapestries.
In a room with a printing press, a video showed each step of how it worked with one man inking the press, another placing blank paper in it, with the process repeated every 20 seconds. I read that sometimes a volunteer operates the press but we weren't that lucky.
As Plantin was in charge of what was then considered a large company in Antwerp, the agreements with his workers were clearly written down.
The printer's private office was surprisingly small.
Did you notice the background in the photos above? I don't know how else to describe the absolutely stunning, magnificent, leather 'wallpaper' on the walls. I have never seen anything as beautiful on any wall anywhere.
Normally I focus exclusively on the painting to show the detail as closely as possible but with Rubens' depiction of the Roman philosopher Seneca, I wanted to show it against the leather background of the wall.
A sculpture of Plantin adorned one wall.
We finally reached the workshop where there were many presses, including some of the oldest in the world, type cases, and assorted printing tools.
Printing presses from the 1600s!
It was so hard to grasp that there were ten tons of lead letters with racks of complete sets of fonts and different type fonts.
The displays in the ground floor rooms around the courtyard were the 'nuts and bolts' if you will of the printing industry in 16th-century Antwerp. That was all a critical prelude to the rooms on the upper level where we were privileged to view some of the most famous books Plantin-Moretus published.
To succeed as a printer in the 1600s, a knowledge of languages was a must. Plantin was among the very few publishers who possessed the fonts with foreign characters required to publish a vast number of linguistic works and texts. The books were needed for trading, to spread the word of God, and to do scientific research.
In the Plantin the Publisher room we saw examples of some of the very small, low-cost editions of classical authors published by Plantin. The book in the middle could easily have fit in a pocket it was so small.
Plantin was so revolutionary he believed that every scholar should have the chance to read the Bible in all five original languages. In case you were wondering what they were, they are Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Old Syriac. After a team of linguists wrote manuals for the study of old languages, Plantin ordered new letterset or typefaces. This Hebrew letterset is dated from 1551.
Franciscus Raphelengius wrote the first Arabic language dictionary in Europe in 1613. Arabic was regarded as a sister language to Hebrew.
Know your classics: I learned that humanists dreamt of a life 'following the classics' and were inspired by ancient Greece and Rome. These scholars spoke and wrote Latin flawlessly. Even after studying the 'dead' language for five years in high school back in Canada, I remember appallingly little. By studying old manuscripts learned men tried to find the original versions of texts and languages. One important humanist was Justus Lipsius in the Netherlands.
During the 1st century AD, Roman Tacitus wrote a history of Rome. Lipsius' first and most important work as a philologist or someone studying languages by looking closely at literature was writing the text about Tacitus. Throughout his life, Lipsius kept improving and correcting his initial text. Plantin secured the famous scholar's loyalty as a writer for his publishing firm.
Another of the Top Ten books in the collection as determined by curators was the world's first Dutch dictionary which contained 40,000 entries by Cornelius Kiliaan. It was printed by Plantin in 1599.
Not one of the top ten books but one I found beautiful nonetheless was Excertiatio alphabetica published by Plantin in 1569 by just 18-year-old writing teacher Clemens Perret. it was a model book for calligraphic writing. What a young genius he was!
We then walked through the Small Library and the Big Library - I'm sure you can imagine how splendid both were!
Casting type: Plantin bought his lettersets from the best designers of his era such as Robert Granjon, Claude Garamont, and Hendrik van den Keere. The modern Times New Roman font most of us use for everyday work on the computer was based on Granjon's work! To ensure other printers weren't able to use his exclusive letter types, Plantin bought the punches and matrices too. They made up the wealth of his company because he was the only one able to reproduce the letters. What a brilliant manager and businessman ahead of his time Plantin was.
Look how virtually identical the lower case 'a' looks now compared to that from 500 plus years ago!
Being a former math teacher, Steven was especially interested in the next of the museum's Top Ten books. Mathematics in a port city like Antwerp was focused on the needs of the trade market and in maritime shipping. Plantin realized that when he had the opportunity to print one of the most influential mathematical books of his time in 1585.
De Thiende by Simon Stevin from Leiden in the Netherlands described the application of decimal fractions in adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, and calculating a square root. Even though the decimal system would be very useful for international trade which was so critical in Antwerp in that period, his ideas were not fully introduced until after the French Revolution.
The next book was Le premier atlas by Abraham Ortelius who began collecting every known map in the world in 1570. For his atlas that was published by Plantin in 1584 in 7 languages and in almost 40 editions, Ortelius used maps by other cartographers but he compiled them in the same format. The atlas became an immediate commercial success and was used all over Europe.
This was definitely the book that grabbed me so fat the most in the museum as I am a map reader from way back. Most people I know have given up maps nowadays in lieu of Google maps and other tech digital forms. I am old-school enough (or perhaps just old!) to much prefer being able to feel and look at a map when routing where we're going to get the bigger picture. A map on a small screen has its place certainly but I will always go with a physical map as my first choice.
Sickness examined: In the 16th-century medicine was mainly based on theories from antiquity which meant "the doctrine of the temperaments." With university scholars examining bodies through dissection, doctors had new insights on anatomy and the causes of disease. There were new recommendations on hygiene and diet that contributed to improved public health.
This 965-page herbal book with 1,309 high-quality illustrations by Flemish native Rembert Dodoens was considered a masterpiece because it was the synthesis of all his previous books. In it, plants, their origins, flowering time and uses, were systematically described and added to up until his death. Dodoens is considered the father of botany as a result of this brilliant text. The Moretuses reprinted the book until 1644. A Japanese version was printed in the 18th century.
Before reprinting Valerius Cordus' pharmacological work on medication from 1546, Plantin asked his friend Pieter Coudenberg from Leiden who knew his way around medicinal plants to check it for inaccuracies. The result was Dispensatorium published in 1599 without the 400 mistakes Coudenburg found!
After Plantin hired the most outstanding artists to illustrate the herbal books by Dodoens, Coudenburg, and other scholars, the supreme quality of the illustrations, and Plantin's extended international trade network, contributed to the publications being an enormous success. I read they are still an inspiration for plant lovers from all over the world.
Man, power, and society: If you remember high-school history, you may recall what a turbulent period the 16th-century was with Catholics fighting reformers and the Netherlands revolting against their Spanish oppressors. These conflicts were reflected in various types of publications and printers editing learned books but also producing mass-produced popular works such as calendars and pamphlets.
For king and country: Printers like Plantin and Moretus liked to work for those in power because printing new laws guaranteed them a regular income. Plantin alternatively worked for the Spanish King Philip II and the Netherlands States General and became the official Antwerp municipal printer beginning in 1579.
This album of a 12-meter-long funeral procession called Le cortege funebre de Charles Quint was Plantin's first major work and was dated 1559 and read like a picture book. 'Reading' the book we could see musicians, standard-bearers, dignitaries, and Charles V's son, Philip II joining the procession at the end.
If you're into astrology at all, it would give you a kick to see one of the rare almanacs that have survived. Planted published Almanach pour l'an de nostre redemption in MDLXXXIII. In case you're forgotten your Roman numerals, that's 1583 by the way!
After working on a luxury edition of the Latin Bible for three years, Plantin finally published the Biblia regia in 1583. It is considered one of the most beautiful and most impressive works to appear from his office because of its size and many illustrations from leading artists. Even though those qualities made it an expensive proposition, the Bible still sold well across Europe and brought Plantin international fame.
Plantin was able to achieve his absolute masterpiece with financial support from Spain's Philip II. The work was in eight parts: four volumes for the Old Testament, one for the New, and three volumes of the Apparatus, a compilation of linguistic, historical, and theological writings. The eight books weighed a total of 106 pounds!
The polyglot Biblia that Plantin published had five languages over two pages! Absolutely, make sure you click on the photo so you can make it larger and see what a work of art and printing triumph Plantin's book was.
The museum was, for me, like Plantin's signature work - a triumph of literary genius and superb artistic merit. Visiting the museum was like being transported back 500 years and discovering the intellectual revolution of ideas that took place. Books have always brought me much joy and a way to escape into another world and the museum reminded me of that gift.
The museum was on a delightful square, Vrijdagmarkt or Friday Market, where people were enjoying the cafe scene.
Next post: On to Bruges for five nights including day trips to unforgettable WWI sights in Ypres and Ghent.
Posted on September 29th, 2021, on our last night in Frankfurt after taking an exciting day trip to nearby Heidelberg. Tomorrow, Steven and I head to eastern and southern Switzerland for ten days which will be his first time visiting the Alpine nation. I lived and worked in Switzerland for a year in 1974 and 1975 but haven't been back since so I am looking forward to seeing the country again through Steven's eyes.
