Jan Moretus and the Continuation of the Plantin Press, by Dirk Imhof
2016; Oxford University Press; Volume: 131; Issue: 549 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/ehr/cew034
ISSN1477-4534
Autores Tópico(s)Renaissance Literature and Culture
ResumoThe printer Jan I Moretus (1543–1610) has traditionally had a bad reputation among historians of the book. As the son-in-law and successor of the famous Antwerp printer Christophe Plantin ( c .1520–89) he has been held responsible for the decline of the Officina Plantiniana , one of the most famous printing houses of the early modern period—responsible, among many other things, for printing the polyglot Bible sponsored by Philip II of Spain. In particular, Moretus has been blamed for the turn away from Plantin’s original emphasis on printing humanist treatises and classical editions towards the printing of religious and liturgical texts. An earlier director of the Plantin-Moretus Museum, Leon Voet (1919–2002), has already shown that this is oversimplifying things; the shift towards liturgical publications had already taken place in the last years of Plantin’s stewardship. Following in Voet’s footsteps, Dirk Imhof nuances and enriches our understanding of the workings of the Plantin Press still further. His two-volume bibliography of all of Moretus’ publications is a resource that will prove indispensable for scholars working in a large number of fields, including book history, intellectual history and (for reasons that will become apparent) urban history.
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