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Image, Knife, and Gluepot. Early Assemblage in Manuscript and Print by Kathryn M. Rudy

2022; The Catholic University of America Press; Volume: 108; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/cat.2022.0016

1534-0708

Massimo Ceresa,

Renaissance and Early Modern Studies

Reviewed by: Image, Knife, and Gluepot. Early Assemblage in Manuscript and Print by Kathryn M. Rudy Massimo Ceresa Image, Knife, and Gluepot. Early Assemblage in Manuscript and Print. By Kathryn M. Rudy, (Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers. 2019. £59.9.5. ISBN: 978-1-78374-517-3). In this engaging study, Kathryn Rudy investigates both failed and successful experimentation in book production in the transitional era from manuscript to print. In particular, she deals with how pasted printed images were used to decorate handwritten books. The focus of her attention is a Book of Hours (London, BL, [End Page 209] Add. 24332) a paper manuscript written in the year 1500 in Middle Dutch by the beghards of Maastricht, who pasted into the manuscript approximately 158 printed images as decoration. Written in the first person, Rudy's book is a tale, on the one hand, of the author's iter of research, her method, her successful effort to retrace and reconnect what in 1861 was cut out and separated for good, according to the fashionable method of the time that advocated separating different classes of supports. On the other hand, her book traces the iter of the manuscript: it was looted the Napoleonic army after they invaded the Low Countries in 1797, sold in the antiquarian book market, and acquired by the British Museum in 1861. Subsequently the prints were separated from the folios and what was left of the dismembered manuscript transferred to the British Library. Rudy's thorough and patient archival work allowed her to chase down the numerous membra disiecta of the beghards' book of hours and allowed her to identify the missing parts in a considerable number of manuscript and print collections. Narrating her research journey, the author unveils bit by bit her findings: the identity of the beghards who wrote and decorated the manuscript, their methods and ideas concerning the page design, how the informations in the manuscript was indexed and organized, especially concerning their management of the calendar, the nature of the manuscript itself as a book for teaching (the beghards ran a school), and the activity and personality of the primary author of most of the printed images in the manuscript, Israhel van Meckenem. In addition, Rudy discusses every print in detail, always including an image (either reproduced in full or with a link for those available on the Internet) and identifying every saint or figure. Relevant also is the reconstruction of the activity and spirituality of the beghards of Maastricht, a community formerly attached to the Franciscan Order, but making a living from their own labor which included teaching, weaving linen, binding books. Rudy's final chapter recounts a decade of research she pursued on this and related tracks, visiting countless public and private collections, perfecting her knowledge on the method of using prints in manuscript to form multimedia objects. In a rather unusual but always interesting way, the author interweaves her scholarly narrative with her personal history, especially highlighting the difficulties she encountered in finding financial support for her research, showing just how challenging it is nowadays for a scholar to conduct large-scale image-based research projects scattered across many libraries and collections. The book offers, together with an updated bibliography, inspiration and insights that may be useful to a wide range of scholars including book historians, art historians, scholars interested in devotion, hagiography, chronology, and pedagogy. [End Page 210] Massimo Ceresa The Catholic University of America Copyright © 2022 The Catholic University of America Press