GOLTZIUS, Hubertus.

Lavishly coloured, handsomely bound copy of this masterpiece of Renaissance numismatics. This copy features an additional etched, hand-coloured frontispiece with the same armorial design as the gilt centrepieces on the covers. The escutcheon—‘d’argent à la fasce de gules, acc. en chef d’un lion naissant de sable, mouvant de la fasce’ (Rietstap, ‘Armorial général’, 329)—is probably that of the Norroy family in Berry. (According to Rietstap, the double-queued tail can be a variation on the single-queued, without indicating any specific heraldic differences.) At the time, the bearer of the arms was Jean de Norroy (d. after 1570), seigneur de Lestang and chevalier de l’Ordre de Saint-Michel (‘Archives généalogiques’, 58). His seat was the Castle of Orbigny in the Val de Loire; nothing else is known about him except a few mentions in notarial documents. The bordure in gules and ermine may indicate a younger branch of the family or a reference to the maternal line. The crest and the cornerpieces feature thunderbolts modelled after the iconography of ancient Roman deities; the person who designed the binding was well-acquainted with classical antiquity. 

Hubertus Goltzius (1526-83) was a Flemish painter and engraver trained in classical art by his father, a German artist. He worked for 12 years on this compendium of Roman imperial coins and medals, from Julius Caesar to the Holy Roman Emperors Charles V and Ferdinand, which he had seen in the collection of Antwerp humanists including the geographer Cornelius Grapheus and the antiquarian Marc Laurin, Duke of Watervliet. The first edition was published in Spanish in 1550; Italian, German and Latin translations followed in 1557, urged by the great success of the work. This is the second Italian edition, which bears a slightly different title. Goltzius’s work displayed the first combined use of copperplate and woodblocks engraved following the chiaroscuro technique—its first appearance in a book. The woodcutter, Josse Gietleughen of Courtrai, prepared two blocks for each etched image: ‘a darker tone provide[d] the background for the effigy, a lighter tone the flesh-tone and the background for the inscription, and the white of the paper the highlights’ (‘Printing Colour 1400-1700’, 154). In this copy changes in degrees of ochre, brown and green between plates well illustrate the ongoing experimentation with chiaroscuro printing. Each medallion is surmounted by a motto summarising the virtues and vices of the individual emperor and preceded by a short account of his deeds. The annotator, who wrote in French and Italian, was interested in the dates of the emperors’ accessions, which he noted on the margins, and on religious references (e.g., the appearance of the ‘Antichristo’ Mahomet among the Saracens under Heraclius and that the Kings of England ‘are now all heretics and excommunicated’).