Meditating the Unbearable in a Fifteenth-Century Netherlandish Manuscript Prayerbook with Printed Images

• Authors: Walter S Melion, Emory University
• Book Title: Vernacular Books and Their Readers in the Early Age of Print (c. 1450–1600)
• Publisher: Brill
• Publication Place: Leiden, Boston
• Publication Date: 2023-10-26
• Edition: Series: Intersections, Volume: 85
• Type of Work: Chapter | Final Publisher PDF
• Publisher DOI: http://doi.org/10.1163/9789004520158_013
• Subjects: Art History; Religion, History of
• Keywords: Groenendaal Passion; Grosse Passion; Israhel van Meckenem; plate tone; early printing; illustration; religious texts

Abstract

Compiled in late fifteenth-century Brabant, Metropolitan Museum Album 2003.476, known as the Groenendaal Passion, is a customised manuscript prayerbook organised around first-state impressions of the Grosse Passion, a series of twelve prints designed, engraved, and published ca. 1480 by the master engraver-goldsmith Israhel van Meckenem, who was resident in Bocholt (North Rhine-Westphalia) [Figs. 11.1–11.20]. All twelve show evidence of plate tone, and the set as a whole is an early printing, exceptionally fine, probably acquired for the express purpose of illustrating the meditative spiritual exercises on the Passion of Christ that the series currently anchors [Figs. 11.4–11.15]. The book takes the form of a rapiarium, a collection of religious texts in Latin and Middle Dutch gathered from various sources in order to facilitate pious devotion and prayerful edification.