Aside from our instinctive delight in their indisputable charm and variety of invention, knowledge of Salomon's works is crucial to an understanding of the increasing intimate interrelationships linking the graphic arts, the so-called minor arts, and the fine arts. From his own time in the mid-16th century, Salomon's illustrations were copied, recopied and adapted by artists and artisans throughout Europe. As a transmitter of images by way of little picture books, Salomon's work is analogous to and a consequence of the the way printing, itself, spread culture and knowledge across Europe and elsewhere.

A darling of book collectors from the seventeenth century onward, his attributed works -- always unsigned -- grew with each hopeful bibliophile's newest acquisition, until it became clear that the number of works attributed to him had surpassed the bounds of human possibility. This study will establish criteria for the determination of a corpus of illustrations, discuss the genesis and evolution of his style, and study the aesthetic and conceptual function of his oeuvre. But even more importantly, to the extent it is feasible, it will document the breadth of his work and place it in the context of Lyon's aggressive publishing milieu.

Salomon's style is deeply rooted in the courtly art of Fontainebleau, although his contact with this style was probably indirect, achieved through prints and book illustrations. Rooted, thus, in French mannerism, Salomon yet fulfills the demands of a medium turned to didactic purpose and crafted to reach a broad and varied audience. The works he illustrated for Jean de Tournes were created by and for poets, intellectuals, religious factions, humanists and artists, and especially for a growing Protestant middle class in search of a moralizing literature, broadening horizons and utilitarian handbooks. The picture-bibles especially were translated into a broad variety of European languages and carried on the trade routes to their intended destinations. While the de Tournes catalogue of offerings may not have been unique, and may have copied the output of contemporary publishers in Paris and elsewhere, Salomon's illustrations elevate Jean de Tournes's careful and handsome printings with an elegance of form and pictorial rhythm that quickly turned these works into collectors items.

The hundreds of illustrations to the Old and New Testaments, to the Metamorphoses of Ovid, among many other works Salomon designed, initiate new iconographic and stylistic traditions by recasting earlier formulations into a new, popular, yet elegant idiom.

If Salomon's inventions for the Bible (both Old and New Testaments) and Ovid's Metamorphoses are his masterpieces, his artful hand can be seen in numerous emblem books, Alciati's being the best known. Indeed, it might be said that the preeminence of Salomon's pictures transformed nearly everything he touched into emblem literature -- the Bibles, included. Attributed to him are images for the Fables of Aesop, for the Triumphs of Petrarch; and illustrations to the works of modern poets such as Marguerite d'Angoulême, Clement Marot, Maurice Scève, and Pontus de Tyard, and for classical authors, such as Apuleius, Plutarch, Virgil and Vitruvius; for books of contemporary scientific and astrological content, as well as books documenting contemporary travels and natural if bizarre wonders. So often, when looking at Salomon's characteristic style one want to say that the image is just as powerfully expressive as is the text, and that both text and image are molded into complimentary expressions.

If the images in the above volumes are accepted as authentic works by Salomon, it must be remembered that they come to him primarily through attribution, there being scant contemporary proof that they are indisputably his. Nor is it known what degree of responsibility fell to Salomon in these works. Did he work in the de Tournes shop (most of these works bear the de Tournes imprint), or was he an independent contractor (as we are wont to say), perhaps supervising a crew of woodcutters working off his designs? Or were his designs jobbed out to workshops serving the Lyon printing industry. If his responsibility for his most famous works is murky, a picture no clearer emerges from the archives of the city of Lyon where he is cited as the artistic director, in 1548, of the entry of Henri II into that city. He is also given credit for a variety of civic or (at least) public works; but, alas, all these projects are now lost, turned by time and circumstance into ephemera. Surviving are two commemorative books, one for the Henri II entry and another (rather crudely cut) presenting his 1553 designs for the entry of Alexander Farnese into Carpentras.

If Salomon's outwardly narrative works sometimes hug to the extremes of emblem and narrative or revel in descriptive observation, as already noted, in his best works these opposites tend to merge in such a way so that text and image support each other with a profundity that revitalizes the meaning of the catch-phrase: ut pictura poesis. So while Salomon exhibits new interests in pictorial narrative, and in the relationship between text and image, he also must share the credit for translating the emblem into a popular `literary' form whose images and principles became the `lingua franca' of popular philosophy. With a modicum of imagination, it is not difficult to project Salomon's literary images into Poussin's, even though it might be difficult to map a route that starts in one and ends in the other. Indeed, it is not difficult to see reverberations of Salomon lurking within a number of Poussin's inventions -- the city of Lyon, being a common denominator for them both and an ideal stage on which human actions can be invested with moralized meanings.

Indeed, images by Salomon and his contemporaries and followers also served to educate generations of French and European artists of the 16th and 17th centuries. These tiny compositions were universally used as pattern-books (the "Dover" editions of their time) by his own and by succeeding generations. One should not be surprised, therefore, to discover 16th century specimens (as I did in the New York Public Library) with woodcuts redesigned by later hands reworking initial images with overlays in pencil, pen or wash.

Arguably, the French illustrated book of the Renaissance may prove to be a valuable link between the style and concerns of Fontainebleau and those of France in the seventeenth century. Certainly, an investigation of Salomon and the nature of book illustration during this Lyonnaise renaissance should do much to expose a world of images and ideas which, until now, has tended to be neglected by art historians.

Both the illustrations and the subjects of Salomon's books were dear to the late 16th and early 17th centuries. If they served as essential workshop tools into the 17th century, in the 18th they metamorphosed into treasured collectors' items. As noted, as "collectables," Salomon's name adhered to almost any likely book passing through a dealer's or collector's hand.

One would think that in this case the art historian's task would be to whittle a wildly attributed corpus down to a reasonable size -- the purpose of which being to expose the aesthetic personality of the artist, and through him, his take on the age. Such a task, though theoretically awarding, is made difficult by the dilution of the artist's style that sometimes occurs as drawings become woodcuts. Even more to the point is that the enterprising nature of the publishing industry often put Salomon's artistic personality in second place to the illustration cycle as it evolved from one edition to the next. It is the belief of this writer that for purposes of publication and appreciation in those days, it was the cycle qua edition that was paramount. For that reason, this "catalogue" of Salomon's work will think first about identifying and documenting the "cycle," in its evolution, and, in passing, will isolate those items clearly not by the hand or mind of Bernard Salomon. The picture that emerges may yet be murky, but by discarding those accretions of attribution that clearly are not by his hand or mind, a more refined picture may ensue.

Bernard Salomon Home Page
Robert Baron Home Page

© 2002 Robert A. Baron --