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last edit: 7/30/04 To the reader: The article before you is a draft of an unfinished study written before 1978, but never prepared or submitted for publication. An early text was edited and corrected by Professor Colin Eisler of the Institute of Fine Arts. The author is offering this current version to its interested public in a slightly revised, but still incomplete state, hoping that it may prove useful to interested scholars and that it might inspire them to submit their corrections and revisions. It is not the intention here to rewrite or substantially revise what was said over thirty years ago. But when the intervening time demands a revision here or there, changes and additions have been incorporated. This is not a peer-reviewed article. With that in mind, the author will be happy to accept suggestions, corrections and opinions concerning its content and interpretations. Substantial comments, with the permission of their authors assumed, will be included in an appendix of readers' comments. The illustrations: Many of the images used in this paper have been copied from original editions, generously supplied by their owners. Other images derive from the edition of Salomon's OT Bible series compiled by Madame Renée Loche. (See below). This publication included prints drawn from the available woodblocks. It is the intention of this author eventually to provide on-line access to images of all the Bible woodcuts related to Salomon and the de Tournes publishers.
This paper aims to explore the Renaissance concept of Ut Pictura Poesis as it applies to one aspect of French Renaissance book illustration. Figures of the Old Testament by the famous book illustrator, Bernard Salomon (familiarly called "Le Petit Bernard"), may be shown to exemplify the apparently conflicting narrative and emblematic aims of 16th-century French imagery. Because Salomon's illustrations at times appear to depart from the biblical texts with which they are associated, there is reason to suspect that they were intended to serve as a pictorial gloss to the passages they accompany, for the purposed of conveying through images -- perhaps clandestinely -- the ethic of the reformist Christianity that had been taking hold in Lyon and Geneva during his time. The book in which these biblical images first appeared, the pseudo-emblematic Quadrins Historiques de la Bible (patterned after Holbein's Icones, also published in Lyons -- see below) contains the same series of illustrations the publisher Jean de Tournes was to use in his full-text versions of the bible, but here, in their original presentation, they are joined with quatrains in the form of epigrams.
Salomon's Old Testament series (first appearing in 1553) was reprinted with varying numbers of cuts over the years, but does not seem to have been programmatically expanded until 1561 when suddenly six new subjects were added to the book of Joshua. Indirect documentation of these new images is found in Pierre Eskrich's Old Testament illustrations of the following year (1562). Eskrich's depend upon Salomon's series in general, but, in particular, show familiarity with Salomon's most recent Joshua inventions. This article contends that Salomon's illustrations place moral significance over fidelity to Biblical narrative. To do this he abandons the chronology or sequence of Biblical narrative and ignores conventional details in order to juxtapose elements of symbolic or moral worth -- in essence creating silent sermons. On the other hand, Eskrich, Salomon's closest competitor in Lyons (and sometimes cited as Salomon's student), in his own revisions eschews Salomon's graphic sermonizing, better to put forward a more literally accurate evocation of biblical events. It will be difficult not to conclude that Eskrich's Bible cycle, itself, is a critical commentary on the strategy employed by Salomon and his publisher Jean de Tournes. The intended meaning of Salomon's Old Testament inventions emerges from comparison with the verses they accompany in the emblem-book format of the popular Quadrins. The reigning conceit of emblematic literature -- the reciprocal relationship between word and image -- is the key to Salomon's biblical pictures. In his introduction to the Quadrins, Claude Paradin places the emblematic conceit on a neo-platonic foundation: words and images supplement each other, but are each, in and of themselves, insufficient to convey the full biblical content. To achieve this end, "faith" is required. (See Appendix 01.)
A comparison of Paradin's quatrains with Salomon's images reveals a co-ordination not found when the images are compared to the biblical text's narrative. The quatrains ignore (if they do not contradict) the complexities of biblical narrative, yet they support Salomon's modifications without interfering with the pictorial domain the artist has claimed as his own. But more, the quatrains transform the sacred text into an elegant poetic version of biblical events encapsulated in a sensitized world of artifice and grace corresponding to Salomon's evocations of refined elegance and graceful movements. In all this, the emblematic ideal as put forward in popular handbooks like Alciati's (also published by de Tournes) remains unfulfilled, if not outright rejected: Salomon's pictures, replete with narrative and unique content, refuse to bend to the hieroglyphic impulses and rigorous abstraction of the emblem; instead, they approach the independent character often associated with the major "larger" arts. The immense popularity of these pictures is no doubt due in large measure to the way the images of "Le Petit Bernard" dignify their intimate locations across the pages of the Renaissance book. Here they stand ready to be adapted by contemporary and future artists and artisans into robust narratives of the Baroque period.
No name brings more immediately to mind book illustration of the French Renaissance than that of Bernard Salomon. More than the plentiful, but often crudely cut images of Pierre Eskrich, more than the delicately subtle cuts of the Maître à la Capeline, those by Bernard Salomon are associated with the French illustrated book of the Sixteenth Century. Even Geoffroy Tory's advanced and erudite images never reached the popularity of those by Salomon. His inventions are often taken as the paradigm of the genre. Thus, in his iconographical study of Titian, Erwin Panofsky uses Salomon's illustrations to Ovid's Metamorphoses not simply as sources, but, perhaps more significantly, as norms against which Titian's dramatic departures from the meaning of Ovid's text are to be measured.
The sense that Salomon's images dominate the illustrated book of later 16th century France may be due in part to the abundance of pictures and multitudinous series of subjects attributed to "le Petit Barnard" during the late years of the Nineteenth and first few decades of the Twentieth Centuries by such collectors, bibliographers, and scholars as Baudrier, Cartier, and Rondot, to name just the most prominent.
The works attributed to Salomon epitomize the peaks of humanistic and religious interests of French Renaissance scholars and publishers. For example, works ascribed to him include a large series for Aesop's fables, the popular emblems of Alciati, two distinct Old Testament series (the earlier and less well known set measuring 40 x 50mm, and the larger better known series measuring 58 x 82mm), another for the New Testament; the Metamorphoses; and many other illustrations that reveal both the breadth and depth of sixteenth-century curiosity about the natural, humanistic, and Christian worlds. In short, Salomon's illustrations form a cross-section of Renaissance interests as exemplified by the books emanating from that vortex of publishing activity, Lyons. Indeed, the emblem his publisher, Jean de Tournes, most frequently used to identify his productions was that of Le Semeur, the sower, emblematic, no doubt of the publisher's mission to spread the word of reformist Christianity by virtue of books translated into the native languages of literate European public.
If the fame of Salomon's style was secured by his many and diverse works, it was insured by the uses to which his works were put by contemporaries and followers. It is well known that the abundance of Salomon's "clever" inventions were seized upon by sixteenth-century artisans, and even by seventeenth-century artists for use as virtually limitless iconographic encyclopedias and as inspiration for their own inventions. Be these books texts in which the woodcuts were understood as mere illustrations, or volumes in which texts were reduced to captions or simple verbal amplifications of the images, it was not unusual for Salomon's volumes, in effect, to become virtual pattern books for the practicing artisan and artist. Direct evidence of this is sometimes found in illustrated volumes whose pictures have been redesigned by a later hand drawing in pen or wash directly over the original woodcut, as if to re-stylize Salomon into the current manner or idiom. Much recent Salomon scholarship has specialized in demonstrating the indebtedness of both the minor and major arts to the miniature designs of this intriguing artist.
However, to appreciate Salomon's grace with woodcut illustration and to feel both the qualitative and quantitative magnitude of his achievement, such specialized studies of his effect upon other arts often leave much to be desired.
Because the greater parts of his work remain secluded among the shelves of rare book rooms, or worse, banished to virtually permanent storage, they have become available only to the specialist scholar and bibliophile, so that the means by which Salomon's style was carried all over Europe in the Sixteenth Century has become the cause of his relative obscurity in the Twentieth.
Of the two Old Testament series attributed to Salomon, it is the second, larger series that was most often used by later artists, and therefore was responsible for establishing his fame. While these cuts first appeared in 1553, additions appeared from time to time.
This study will introduce an edition of a de Tournes Bible featuring Salomon's Old Testament figures that has been overlooked by the bibliographers and that may alter our conception of the extent of his work, and help confirm its religious significance. This hitherto unknown, seemingly unrecorded edition allows the identification and dating of woodcuts either previously attributed to others, or heretofore totally unknown. Attributions to Salomon will be made on the basis of stylistic affinities with his known work and by an analysis of his narrative technique. In these new images, the master's illustrations, it will be shown, rarely precisely conform to the specifications of the biblical text, suggesting, as already noted, that they be interpreted as a visual gloss on the biblical narrative. His method will be shown to contrast with that of his closest Lyonais competitor, Pierre Eskrich, who seems to see the function of biblical illustration to be one of equating word and image, accepting, without hesitation, the possibility of such a word-to-image translation.
While the modern interest in Salomon's works may have begun among collectors and connoisseurs of the 18th and 19th Centuries, such as Papillon and Dibdin, appreciation of Salomon's art-historical significance developed slowly. The 1933 facsimile of the 1557 illustrations to Ovid's Metamorphoses,
often proclaimed to be Salomon's masterpiece, may be the first attempt to reprint any of his works in its entirety. The sense of continuity -- the passage from illustration to illustration and from page to page -- transmitted in the original editions -- easily becomes lost in specialized and fractionalized studies that often must focus upon the individuality of each cut rather than the totality of the series. In other words, art historical studies, of necessity, often do not attempt to look at such books as a whole, in the narrative sense. Even a facsimile of necessarily must ignore the fact that these series are in themselves often develop fluidly. For de Tournes, each edition seems to be a perpetual work in progress; no attempt was made to create definitive editions. Thus, as Salomon's cycles evolve, new woodcuts are added, substituted or removed altogether; the pictorial contents are in continual flux. In the Ovid series, for instance, of the 178 cuts included in the 1557 first edition of de Tournes's Metamorphose figuree, twenty-one had appeared earlier in the publisher's 1549 edition of Marot's translation of the first two books of Ovid's poem. In the sixteenth century there seems not to have been a concept of the "definitive" work since the sense of being definitive implies that there is nothing more to be said.
Two years after the appearance of the Metamorphose figuree of 1557 eighteen new subjects were added, but six of the old subjects were dropped, two of them having been replaced with new versions.
Only one scholar has noted that Salomon's graceful and elegantly manneristic miniature style, carefully nurtured upon elements from the School of Fontainebleau, cannot be found in these eighteen additional cuts, which, in contrast to the original woodcuts, often display crude and awkward design and graceless figures.
In contrast with Salomon's Ovid series, the publication history of his larger, famous Old Testament pictures is even more complex. These images were first used for a series of picture bibles with verses by Claude Paradin; the popular Quadrins. Introduced as 199 cuts in 1553 in two volumes, the Quadrins were soon translated into German, English, Spanish, Italian, Flemish and Latin for international distribution.
The same cuts were also used to illustrate a series of full text Bibles in Latin (Robert Estienne's version) and French (the Calvinist Geneva Bible). In all, over twenty editions of the Bible had used Salomon's images by the time they last appeared in the Sixteenth Century -- in the 1583 edition of the Quadrins historiques.
The illustrated series seems to vary with each new edition. As new cuts became available, they were added to the corpus, but such growth was obscured by the fact that not all available images were used in every edition. Thus no single 16th-century edition can satisfy modern demands for a complete set of all the Salomon Old Testament images, and simultaneously give a feeling for the growth of the series from edition to edition. In this context the 1969 edition of Bernard Salomon's Old Testament cuts, as compiled by Madame Renée Loche of the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire of Geneva has considerable significance.
In addition to the 248 cuts that form the body of the work, Madame Loche presents three other subjects that came to light when the Geneva museum inherited a large group of wood-blocks that had been part of de Tournes's sixteenth-century inventory! [figs. 7 (344-24), 18 (398-32), 19 (398-33)]
Fig 7 (344-24)
In addition to the series of illustrations (accompanied by the corresponding texts from sixteenth-century French and Latin bibles) Madame Loche includes two especially useful scholarly devices: 1) A list of twenty-one editions that employ the Salomon cuts (information that appeared originally in more diffuse form in Alfred Cartier's bibliography of the editions of the de Tournes),
and, 2) Tables, which, for each figure, list those editions in which it appeared. With the aid of these lists it is possible to reconstruct the pictorial content of any single edition and to determine the point at which any of the illustrations first entered the series. In short, these tables, when accompanied by the preceding illustrations, give ample evidence of the organic nature of the growth and evolution of Bernard Salomon's Old Testament images, and provide a telling picture of the development of French sixteenth-century bible illustration within the de Tournes shop. Because Salomon's images for the Old Testament were probably designed in concert with Paradin's quatrains, it is unfortunate that these verses were not included in Madame Loche's opus.
The title-page may be rendered as follows: La Sainte / Bible. / [Fleuron] / [Mark: Cartier's "Le Semeur"] / A LYON / PAR IAN DE TOVRNES. / M.D.LX1. [figs. Title Page and Joshua Pages (342-08, 343-12, 343-13, 343-14) ]
As such, this volume would be the fourth edition of a French folio bible by de Tournes, following those of 1554, 1557 and 1559, and conveniently filling the five-year gap between the 1559 edition and the following printing of 1564.
The 1561 date is significant for Salomon. This is the year (or thereabouts) when he is thought to have died or disappeared from Lyons. It is generally well accepted that Salomon embraced the reformist religion of his employer, but it is not known whether he returned to Catholicism or kept his reformist faith. It is in this light that one must ask why, so suddenly, was the book of Joshua given added prominence.
The late 1550s in France saw increasing intolerance of the Protestants. Under Francis II and later, Charles IX (his brother), Marie de Medici gained dominance. Persecution of the Huguenots (then called) increased until it erupted into religious wars. One can only guess that in Lyons, with Protestant Geneva so close by, increasing numbers of reformists looked to the east for safe haven, eventually moving there for safety. Jean I de Tournes died from the plague in 1564 and his son Jean II eventually fled to Geneva in 1585. More research would be needed, but one might speculate that the increased interest in the Book of Joshua might correspond to the desire to escape religious oppression and flee to a welcoming reformist Geneva. One wonders if Geneva was presented as a welcoming destination to the reformist congregations of Lyons.
This new edition of 1561 contains three woodcuts in the book of Joshua that had been thought to appear for the first and only time in the 1583 edition of de Tournes's Quadrins historiques,
the last edition to present the Salomon cuts as a set. These three woodcuts consist of the following subjects:
Before the discovery of the 1561 edition, the 1583 Quadrins was thought to present sixteen new subjects: five from Joshua plus eleven from Numbers. These figures may be revised now to read thirteen new images in the 1583 Quadrins, i.e., two from Joshua [figs. 16 (382-18), 17 (832-17)] plus the same eleven from Numbers, four of which will be cited below [figs 12-15 (380-03, 380-04, 380-06, 380-07)]. Traditionally all sixteen subjects are ascribed to a hand other than Salomon's; however, when seen as a group, the three subjects mentioned above (figures 8, 9 & 10) are clearly distinct in style from the others and can be shown to relate to the artist's known works.
Fig 16 (382-18) The 1561 Sainte Bible supplies a date to one of the three extant wood-blocks that Madame Loche presented in her volume as previously unpublished, the Ark carried through the Jordan (Joshua ch/v) [fig. 7 (344-24)]. Furthermore, in this 1561 volume, one finds two hitherto unknown woodcuts for Joshua. They show Rahab letting the spies escape through the window [fig. 6 (344-23)], and Achan's treasure discovered in his tent. [fig. 11 (345-29)]. Thus, in all, six cuts can be given a terminus ad quem of 1561, the very year when Salomon's contributions to the house of De Tournes seem to cease.
To organize and recapitulate how the contents of the 1561 Sainte Bible alters our knowledge of Salomon's work, we see that it contains six new scenes, all for the book of Joshua. Three of these were know from the 1583 Quadrins and now can be dated earlier:
Three additional cuts appear in the 1561 edition for the first and only time:
Of the above three, however, only numbers 5 and 6 are new to modern scholarship, since the design of the Ark carried through the Jordan could have been known (but certainly not widely) by the existence of the wood-block, an image of which was published in 1939 by W. Deonna. See above. Taking these discoveries into account, the development of the de Tournes Old Testament illustration series would thus assume the following approximate shape: The series appears with 199 images in the Quadrins historiques de la Bible and the Quadrins historiques d'Exode of 1553. By the following year thirty more cuts were added, all of these appearing in de Tournes's Italian edition of the Quadrins.
Subsequently, in 1555, two additional subject appeared in that year's edition of the Quadrins historiques.
Between 1555 and 1561 no new images were added. When in 1561 six new woodcuts appear as illustrations to Joshua, one recognizes that this is the first time since the inception of the series that additions took the form of a coördinated program. The endeavor must certainly have been cut short by the death (disappearance or apostasy) of Salomon, de Tournes's prolific inventor. As we have seen, the program was continued later on in the 1583 edition of the Quadrins (produced under Jean II de Tournes) when two more subjects were added to Joshua and eleven more for Numbers. These later additions have little in common with Salomon's acknowledged style.
One may look at the 1583 Quadrins as an attempt on the part of Jean II de Tournes to update a then old Old Testament series. (By that date he had twice reissued Salomon's New Testament illustrations as a series of figures, but had not yet produced an edition of Salomon's Old Testament cuts in the Quadrins format.) By 1583 Lyons had witnessed the appearance of other editions of Old Testament images produced in the popular format of the emblem-book, following Salomon's successful example, and Holbein's before that.
Such an hypothesis would be supported by Cartier's claim that the de Tournes 1583 Quadrins is actually built from unused gatherings made for the 1555 edition, to which were added the materials needed to produce an enlarged edition.
Commentators on Bernard Salomon's bible series give no indication of the possibility that the new figures appearing in the 1583 Quadrins are anything but stylistically uniform. In her model catalogue of the French sixteenth-century illustrated books in Harvard's Houghton Library, Ruth Mortimer restates the prevailing opinion concerning these late additions -- that they are by another hand.
Even René Loche, who misattributes all the new cuts from the 1583 Quadrins to Bernard Salomon, himself, does not recognize any stylistic irregularities among the sixteen cuts she thought were added to the 1583 edition.
Cartier, while isolating the sixteen cuts new to the 1583 Quadrins, makes no attempt at attribution, but he does call the set "fort belles." He does not suggest that the style of the group is heterogeneous.
To this writer, the rather coarse appearance of the majority of these late additions -- which warrants the attribution to another artist is exemplified by the cut illustrating the Leprosy of Miriam (Numbers XII, 9-10) [fig. 12 (380-03)].
Here some of Salomon's inventions have been turned into formulas, losing the spirit with which he originally had imbued them. Thus, the continuously calligraphic outline, which in Salomon's best pictures often forms distant mountain ranges and vibrates with suggestions of atmospheric perspective, are now lines which dryly define mass and volume. The rich and lively renderings of desert tents, which, in Bernard Salomon's original contributions to the series, tend to quiver with space-filling and space-defining form, here lie lifeless and flat, both insignificant and unconvincing. The pillar of smoke, indicating that the deity is present, is ordinarily one of Salomon's most awesome devices, but now has become a solid, inorganic, and arbitrary form. But the most obvious distinction between these late cuts and those acknowledged to be by Salomon is in the conception of the human figure. Even in his most extravagant excursions into Fontainebleau mannerism, such as in the figure of Abraham receiving bread from Melchizedek [fig. 2 (353-24)]
one senses a harmonious balance between form and fiber. The self-sufficient dictates of a maniera prevail over the natural laws of gravity and anatomy. Art and nature have for a moment abandoned their traditional conflict and stand poised in harmonious opposition, momentarily striking a stable, but delicate covenant. But in the scene of the Leprosy of Miriam, that detente between style and nature has disintegrated; her robes flow with a self-proclaimed energy, yet she seems weighted. Although having mass, Miriam cannot support her weight on the ground; rather, her body hangs from an unseen center of gravity located within her abdomen. The figure of Aaron on the right in priest's garb also ignores gravity, and appears with an archaic, or emblematic frontality. Faces tend toward caricature, but this may be due to the possibility that the small size defeated a less subtle cutter. A second example of the additions of 1583 to the Quadrins series may be by a different hand than the one above. In the Massacre of the Inhabitants of Jericho (Joshua VI, 21) [fig. 16 (382-18)]
the background separates from the
foreground, giving the impression that the action occurs on a stage. This
space, however, is inconclusive, even ludicrous, containing abrupt, but
unexciting changes in scale. Three-dimensionality is further denied by the
horror vacui that infects the surface plane, which, under other
circumstances may be appropriate to a mannerist impulse, but on this
occasion is merely an archaic, or even perhaps a primitive version of a
mannerist stylistic convention. In essence, the scheme reduces to
absurdity Antoine Caron's Massacre of the Triumvirate of 1566
(Coll. Marquis de Jaucourt). The classical ambiance of Caron's composition
has been purged to convert a Roman massacre into biblical slaughter. The
figures and their constituents connect themselves by laws that have never
governed the anatomy of man -- in nature or art.
The above two examples display a style that is neither characteristic nor worthy of Bernard Salomon. The lurking shadow of Caron's Massacre would rule out the possibility of Salomon's invention, if his oeuvre ended ca. 1560 or 1561. A comparison of the two woodcuts of 1583 to one of the three illustrations long wrongly thought to have appeared with them, but, here shown to date from 1561, discloses marked contrasts in both style and narrative sophistication. For example, the scene of the angel appearing to Joshua (Joshua V, 13-14)
has more in common with what is
traditionally associated with Salomon's style than with the above 1583
cuts [fig. 10 (382-16)].
This cut also displays the unmistakable stamp of Bernard Salomon. His touch may be noted in the infinitely expansive view over the edge of the water, in the deft rendition and pacing of the moving crowds, and perhaps most clearly in the nearly idiosyncratic means he uses to show rollicking foam and curling caps of the churning water, which, as the text says, stood still and "rose vpon an heape" (III, 16).
This cut, as are the two above, is distinct
in style from the cruder ones of 1583; it too may be attributed to
Salomon, for it embraces a landscape and pastoral formula common in his
work. The distinctly pre-Christian or pagan ambiance of this image of the
celebration is due, perhaps, to its close ties to a tradition that looks
to such Venetian works as Titian's Andrian Bacchanal of the early
1520s or even to Bellini's Feast of the Gods of 1514. The foliage,
translated by Salomon into a black and white version of Titianesque
evocations of lush, gloriously verdant woods, is typical, and reminds one
of similar scenes in Salomon's Ovid Metamorphoses series of several
years earlier. Especially noteworthy here is the infinite variety of
textures and forms, of lines and shadows that amply evoke the vision of
this human habitation and rejoicing in nature. The subtlety and variety of
Salomon's style should be contrasted to the repetitive and often
gratuitous vocabulary of the artist(s) of the remaining cuts of 1583. See,
for example, the limited, but surprisingly charming scene of the spies
picking grapes in the land of Canaan (Numbers XIII, 1-2)
and note in particular how shading lines, undifferentiated in form and texture, are applied throughout the distant mountain range, reducing thereby their monumentality and nobility [fig. 15 (380-07)].
The design preserved in
wood-block, published by Loche as a restrike, but heretofore thought
absent from de Tournes's editions, represents the crossing of the Jordan
into the land of Canaan. [fig. 7
(344-24).]
In this narrative -- suitably symmetrical to the entrance into the desert -- the waters divide once again as the people leave. The illustration emphasizes the miraculous role of the ark as the "Israelites went over drye, vntil all the people were gone cleane over through Iordén" (Joshua III, 16-17). In narrative sequence this cut precedes the the closely related picture of the placement of the twelve stones in the bed of the river -- discussed above.
The presence of the Salomon/de Tournes 1561 La Sainte Bible
in the publishing history of Lyons may be documented and its effect gauged by comparing the woodcuts from Joshua in the de Tournes edition to those of a bible published just one year later (1562) by Guillaume Rouillé (de Tournes's primary Lyon competitor). Rouillé's bible contains the first appearance of the 269 Old Testament cuts (61 x 84 mm) attributed to Salomon's major Lyonnais rival, Pierre Eskrich.
Eskrich frequently copies Salomon's ideas and presents them, therefore, often in mirror image. As in the de Tournes 1561 bible, the Eskrich edition has two scenes of the events in the parted waters of the Jordan [figs. 22 (656-21), 23 (656-22)]. Although Eskrich's compositions completely "rethink" Salomon's inventions, the latter's notions prevail so as to certify their dependence upon him.
The book of Joshua in all likelihood preserves a contradiction produced (as is quite common) by two separate accounts of the same event being conflated into one canonical text.
Salomon solves this problem by choosing to show both the stones assembled in the river-bed and (in the far distance) the stones being erected on the far bank of the river. (See note above.) At the same time Salomon ignores that part of the text that indicates that the ark was held in the river-bed "where the fete of the Priests, which bare the Arke of the couenant, stode," implying that the river was held in abeyance by the presence of the ark and was moved from there only when all the people had passed onto the far bank. This is the scene that Eskrich shows [fig. 23 (656-22)]. He must be revising Salomon's model. Salomon chose to focus on the movement of the people across the river as a single activity that includes the passage of the priests with the ark. In selecting this action, does Salomon intend to diminish the role of the Ark as a mystical totem? Whatever this change means, it serves to unify the way the people and the Ark together moved through the Jordan. Moreover, while Eskrich placed the eye of the observer on the far side of the river, thus showing the stones broguth forward and the Ark alone as the instrument of the miracle -- showing what for his purpose must be the essence of the event; Salomon, in contrast, places the eye of the observer into the action so that the observer becomes part of the experience of ending the exile and entering the promised land. It is consistent with Eskrich's literal narrative sense that he chose to change the event illustrated to one that turned the focus onto the role of the deity in the miracle of the crossing. (Joshua IV, 20-24):
If the primary thrust of the biblical text about the monument concerns the significance of the stones on the shore, one wonders why Salomon would have chosen to illustrate a lesser event, one cited only once and never given special significance. Speculation may suggest that by selecting a moment when the passage through the Jordan is combined with the construction of the celebratory monument, Salomon wished to fuse the concept of the latter with the fact of the crossing. He ignores the biblical inference that the crossing and the building of the monument are connected sequentially, and opts, instead, for an image of greater symbolic and dramatic effect -- one that highlights the human role in the story.
In contrast, Eskrich's version relies more heavily upon the text to provide the narrative context. The text says twelve men carried stones, and Eskrich draws twelve men carrying stones. Even so, Eskrich's narrative is confused. In the distance the Israelites pass into the new land (the narrative sequence is correct), but the logistics of the passage are unclear. It is difficult to determine what is happening; the people seem to loop around a river that has been drawn into the shape of a ribbon extending into the distance along the course of the river-bed. To be sure, Salomon also refers to the "other" monument; as noted, one sees it being built on the far bank, but this event is decidedly of lesser importance than the foreground activity. In Salomon's version, the fusion of the passage with the building of the monument and the movement of the ark recalls the close connection of composition, narrative and meaning in his rendition of the angel and Joshua, and gives us a clear indication of how Salomon's inventions develop meaning, especially when compared to the contrived realism and literary (One is tempted to call it "pedantic.") exactitude that Eskrich uncomfortably merges with the figural and compositional fantasies of a fabricated and predictable mannerism.
In addition to the two scenes of the passage through the Jordan, the woodcut of the feast of Guigal, and the cut of Joshua and the angel (as noted, all of which were known from the 1583 edition or the extant wood-blocks) the 1561 La Sainte Bible introduces two subjects, also from Joshua, which, until now, were unknown to Bernard Salomon studies. These illustrate the spies escaping from Jericho [fig. 6 (344-23)], and the discovery of Achan's theft [fig. 11 (345-29)]. They, too, display Salomon's sophisticated independence from the biblical narrative and other stylistic characteristics that warrant attribution to him.
The first of these shows Rahab letting Joshua's spies out of the locked city through a window of her house -- which was built into the city wall (Joshua II, 15).
Here Salomon's style manifests itself in
the organic flow of the city as it follows the undulations of
If the two scenes about Rahab are to be understood as narrative opposites, Salomon has taken care to create contrasts in composition and character that enforce these differences. When the spies enter the city, the wall unfolds from right to left; the city dominates. Geometrical and solid in its walled security, the city projects an ambiance not unlike a medieval fortress. In this city clustered roofs and congested skyline form the dominant impression. In the first image, the city may be seen as a formidable obstacle, secure and powerful; but in the second it is ancient. As the old, vulnerable city, it undulates and flows as it unfolds in a direction opposite the first, and seems to stretch and yawn in harmony with a terrain of equal ancestry. One is tempted to surmise that the obvious differences between the cuts of Rahab and the spies are purposeful, and that Salomon has rethought the image to adjust for the changing narrative. That narrative fidelity and literary truthfulness are not always sufficient for Salomon may be inferred from such earlier examples of woodcuts in the Quadrins historiques in which two adjacent cuts are closely related compositionally. For instance, in the scenes of Abraham before Melchizedek
and Abraham before the king of Sodom
of 1553 and 1554 respectively, Salomon's close compositional variations are probably intended to reinforce the differences between Abraham accepting and Abraham rejecting [figs. 2 (353-24), 3 (353-25)].
In these two scenes from Genesis, the contrast is clear -- Abraham accepts the proto-Eucharistic bread and wine in the first cut, and rejects material goods in the second. The contrasting Rahab scenes are probably to be understood in a similar manner -- as symmetrical positions in a narrative arc -- the spies secretly met, and the spies secretly departing.
Salomon illustrates the pursuers on horseback, too [fig. 6 (344-23)], but combines this scene, instead, with the escape through the window in the wall. Such a combination of escape and pursuit can be found only in the following passage (Joshua II, 15-16):
Note that the above two texts describe the pursuers in a different grammatical state. In the first-cited (II, 6-7) the pursuit is described in the historical past, but in the second example (II, 15-16) the pursuit had not yet taken place. It is advice, a proposed strategy. Thus, this second description exists at a level of conjectural probability folded within the larger narrative and is not presumed to be an actual event like the escape through the window, but, rather a planned or hypothetical event. Thus, in Salomon's cut, events both present and planned for the future are combined as though share the same level of reality, as if there are no differences in time. The image thus created transforms the sequence of narrative into the present tense (as it were), and in the process ignores the subjunctive nature of events as related in the biblical text.
If Eskrich has a clearer understanding of the methodology of narrative illustration in its literal mode, and, hence, a greater regard for the authority of the text, Salomon has a deeper and sharper feeling for the drama that narrative illustration makes possible, and a keener mind for the dramatic moment, even if he does not show consistent concern for the unity or continuity of time. By juxtaposing secret escape and close pursuit, Salomon has rearranged events to create the kind of dramatic situation that any film director knows by instinct. Salomon does not hesitate to "cut to the chase." His eye for the dramatic and meaningful moment, certainly, was one factor that endeared him to the Baroque painters of the next century. Even as Eskrich, with his staid and literal modifications, renounces the narrative tension of Salomon's scene of dramatic escape, he integrates elements from each of Salomon's images into his own. One of the horsemen is copied from the episode of escape and therefore appears in reverse. The tall, domed, vaguely oriental tower in Salomon's city finds its stunted copy in Eskrich's version. His walled city rejects the flowing landscape formula of Salomon's second scene and adapts elements of the buttressed wall with its dominant entrance from Salomon's depiction of the spies entering the city.
The conquest and eventual destruction of this city by Joshua is connected to Achan's confession, for God made this victory possible only after Achan admitted his theft and disclosed the location of the stolen riches he had hidden in the floor of his tent. In this fashion God's vengeful wrath was soothed. The illustration places God's will in the affairs of humans; but these affairs are written in terms of actions and consequences..
If Salomon's narrative places less emphasis upon the unity of time by relating episodes that do not occur simultaneously, it suggests, instead, a unity of events tied in time by cause and effect. Achan's confession is not shown, but the discovery of the stolen riches is related to the conquest of the city. Didactic and moralized purposes prevail over narrative exactitude here -- just as one has come to expect.
One should not be surprised, therefore, to find that Eskrich split his version of the events surrounding Achan and the destruction of Ai into two separate pictures, thus disengaging the ulterior religious connection between the two episodes and restoring the convention of having one picture illustrate no more than one chapter. The first of Eskrich's cuts shows Achan on one knee confessing to Joshua [fig. 25 (656-24)] -- perhaps in imitation of Salomon's rendition of an angel appearing to Joshua (V, 13-14), (fig. 10 (382-16). The observer is led by Achan's gesturing hand to his tent where the treasure is discovered. The next picture illustrates the stratagem Joshua used to capture the Amorite city. Here the decoy battalion escapes to the right; the forces of Ai follow as they are led from the city. In the foreground Joshua holds his javelin aloft, the sign to attack. In the distance the city is shown burning (Joshua VIII, 18-26) [fig. 26 (656-25)]. Eskrich looks at the bible as a narrative to be visualized by the invention of a form sufficient to represent its complex content. Salomon is an interpreter of a different order, whose late illustrations for the Old Testament aim to reveal meanings and morals and are witness to his attempt to uncover these significances through pictures as though they were pictorial sermons or illustrated glosses; and not just merely accurate evocations of the biblical text. It would not be fair to categorize Eskrich's versions of Old Testament scenes as naïve. His publisher, Rouillé, although located in Huguenot Lyons, and following a publishing program similar to Jean de Tournes, seems to to have been Catholic; anyway, he published works for Catholic readers to be exported to Flanders and to Spain as well as a catechumen according to Tridentine doctrines. Of Eskrich, Baudrier (IX, p. 455) says he was, from time to time, Catholic and Protestant. Eskrich's Old Testament images, appearing when the council of Trent was in its last session, can probably be shown to incorporate Counter-Reformation attitudes. Natalie Zemon Davis notes that Rouillé published hardly any works that mention Calvin before 1561. Moreover, she notes that there were no Huguenot Psalters and very few "vernacular works of consolation and piety." The strongest link between Rouillé and the publishing program of reformed Christianity is his many picture bible, such as the one discussed here.
Given the analysis of Eskrich's iconography in the bibles
he illustrated for Rouillé, it is reasonable to assume that the popularity
of this kind of book was too great for an entrepreneurial printer like
Rouillé to ignore. This author suggests that his response may have been to
create catholicized versions of the popular picture bibles.
Whatever Rouillé's intent, certainly the high moral intent of the picture bibles Salomon produced for Jean de Tournes convey Calvinist attitudes -- using the bible as a casebook in moral rectitude: Salomon's Abraham and Melchizedek [fig. 2 (353-24), Loche no. 23] from 1553 shows Abraham erect and Melchizedek as priest-king, slightly kneeling as if he is rendering service to the patriarch. He offers the bread to Abraham who, in turn, motions toward the tenth-art of the booty he is offering to the king of Salem. The wine is forthcoming. On the other hand, Eskrich's version of 1582 makes several important revisions, none of which are either sanctioned or refuted by the text of the bible, itself, but all of which are in accord with Roman Catholic Eucharistic concepts as established by the Council of Trent [fig. 1, (634-37)], and all of which serve to convey a hierarchical relationship between Melchizedek as priest-king and Abraham as laity. Professor Colin Eisler, in a handwritten note to this author sees in Eskrich's rendition a reference to an Italian source. Perhaps the iconography was conveyed to Eskrich through this means. The hieratic relationship between Abraham and Melchizedek reverses that of the Salomon composition; in Eskrich's the offering of tithes assumes major prominence and is underlined by Abraham's rather active gesture, which balances, as it were, the priest's motion toward the symbolic Eucharistic bread. Here the loaves and wine appear to be withheld, as if to say that the giving of the sacrament is contingent upon Abraham's gesture of obeisance -- quid pro quo. (Also, see a note above, and a note below.)
Once one agrees that Bernard Salomon's late Old Testament illustrations depart from the text of the Old Testament in significant ways, one must ask what role, beyond the obvious, might the quatrains have served. Admitting the possibility that the function of the quatrains might (or might not) differ as the image set evolves, for this study the quatrains for the book of Joshua in the 1583 edition of the Quadrins will be included. The Quadrins format (we remember) gave shape to the first edition (1553) of the Bernard Salomon cuts when they were paired with verses by Claude Paradin. [fig: Quadrins format.] In the Quadrins one image appears on each page, directly under that image is the quatrain, thus continuing use of the emblem-book formula established in the Lyonnais publication of the Holbein bible cuts of 1538, and capitalizing (one would surmise) on the by now conventional, popular and lucrative formula of the emblem book. See examples below |
