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Grolier and The Renascence Part 3
His praises are repeated in many a dedication from the scholars and the publisher printers of the period. Many a book was brought out wholly, or partly, at his expense. The managers of the Aldine press often borrowed money from him, and never applied in vain. He quarreled once with Benvenuto Cellini but he was a close friend of Geoffroy Tory. He was a scholar, as is attested by the elegant Latinity of his extant correspondence.
He was an artist of not a little skill with the pencil, as a sketch in his copy of the "Maxims" of Erasmus proves. Fournier thought that perhaps Grolier himself designed the graceful arabesques and interwoven bands which characterize the covers of his books. "Compared with the other bindings of the same time, and of the same country. Those of Grolier are distinguished by an unequalled and unfailing taste." They are closely akin to the bindings executed for Aldus in Venice, and to the bindings then made by the Italian workmen elsewhere in Italy.
In France, and even in England: but they are somehow superior; they have a note of their own; they are the result of a finer artistic sense; and the longer I study the books bound during the Italian renascence, the more I am inclined to agree with Fournier when he asserts that Grolier, "with Italian methods, created a French art." Certainly he gave to his library so definite an individuality that the volumes which composed it three hundred years ago are now treated as veritable works of art; they have their catalogue, like the pictures of a great painter, or the plates of a great engraver; they are numbered. Every existing book bound for Grolier has its pedigree, and is traced lovingly from catalogue to catalogue of the great collectors.
The beauty of the Grolier bindings is in the lavish and tasteful ornamentation of the sides. In the early days of printing, and when the traditions of the days of manuscripts still were dominant, the shelves of a library inclined like a reading-desk, and the handsome volumes lay on their sides, taking their ease. Books then were not packed together on level shelves as they are now, shoulder to shoulder, like common soldiers; but each stately tome stood forward by itself singly, like an officer. So the broad sides of the ample folios seemed to invite decoration.
The first books which Grolier had bound in Italy are similar in their style of decoration to those then sent forth from the Aldine press; a few have elegant arabesques, setting off a central shield, but most of them have simple geometrical designs in which interlacing bands, formed by parallel lines gilt tooled, are relieved by solid ornaments very like those with which the Aldus family then adorned the pages of the books they were printing, and which were suggested some, no doubt, by the illuminations of the old missals, but more, beyond question, by the Oriental traditions of the Greek workmen. The distinguishing quality of these ornaments, familiar enough to all who know the Aldine style, was grace united to boldness.
Look at a specimen of the earlier of Grolier's bindings. Note the simplicity of the interlaced bands, the sharp strength of the enriching arabesques, the skill with which they are combined; and then remember that this, like every other design, was laboriously tooled bit by bit, and line by line, each separate ornament being stamped on the cover at least twice, once to impress the leather, and again to attach the gold.