Emptus est iste liber per nos Doctorem Joannem Fabrum Episcopum Vienne[n]sem...

by Johann Faber

[Vienna: Johann Singriener?] 1540

2 prints | 276 x 198 mm and 128 x 85 mm

A large letterpress bookplate made for the books Johann Faber purchased for the diocese of Vienna from Ferdinand I, then King of Bohemia and later Holy Roman Emperor. The text reassures us that any book bearing this label came to the diocese "by our most honest labors" (ex honestissimis nostris laboribus), and so "we are free to bequeath it to whomever we wish. We therefore give it to our college of St. Nicholas, that it may be forever available for the use of the students." The plate notes this decision was made by the diocese on 1 September 1540. We've seen the presswork attributed to Johann Singriener, among Vienna's earliest printers. This seems eminently reasonable, as he's the only printer Benzing has active in Vienna at the time. ¶ As a genre, the bookplate was a German invention of the later 15th century. Hilprand Brandenburg's is often cited as the earliest, dating to at least ca. 1480. The bookplate's popularity exploded during the 18th and 19th centuries, as countless engraved armorial bookplates will attest. So as bookplates go, this one is certainly early—indeed, THE EARLIEST GERMAN BOOKPLATE LEININGEN CITES DOCUMENTING A BEQUEST OF BOOKS. ¶ According to the literature, Faber, the prolific counter-Reformer (and book buyer), produced four different bookplates: two of them woodcuts, two of them letterpress, the latter presumably including the smaller version set in italics which here accompanies the large version. Dr. Sebarn further described this smaller bookplate, "printed not in gothic but rather in cursive letters and counts 19 lines of the same length." Our source suspected this smaller version was printed in the later 18th century, and a penciled note beneath it calls it a reprint (Nachdruck). We've been unable to find such an opinion in print, and the typography is appropriately 16th-century, set entirely in an old italic face and using a few Latin abbreviations that had largely disappeared by the 18th century. The larger bookplate would only have suited folios and large quartos, so it seems perfectly logical for Faber to have commissioned a smaller version for smaller books. We'll let you be the judge. Either way, they make a potent pair. ¶ A fantastic early example of one of the most enduring genres of printed ephemera.

PROVENANCE: An exceptional copy of this print for bearing on its verso THE SHADOW OF AN EVEN EARLIER BOOKPLATE, that of Viennese jurist Johann Alexander Brassicanus (1500-1539). This should be the earliest of his two bookplates, dated ca. 1524. Another followed ca. 1529 and is reproduced in O'Dell's guide to German and Austrian bookplates in the British Museum. The pair must have belonged to a bookplate collector, with our Faber sitting atop the Brassicanus in a stack of loose prints. The Greek text beneath the image is all but illegible in our shadow, but should have read: "Ye Robbers, go ye to the Houses of the Rich! Poverty is the Guardian of my Home!"

CONDITION: Each printed on the recto only of a single piece of laid paper with no discernible watermark. The smaller bookplate is mounted on a separate piece of paper, this then tipped to a larger sheet bearing a number of penciled notes in German. ¶ The larger print has quite a few wormholes, is moderately soiled, and its left edge is darkened and a bit crispy; traces of paper at the top of its blank recto from having been hinged to a separate sheet. The smaller bookplate lightly soiled and with a small hole at the bottom (not affecting any text).

REFERENCES: F. Warnecke, Die Deutschen Bücherzeichen (1890), p. 6 (bookplate reproduced), p. 62, #495 (description) ¶ Karl Emich Count zu Leiningen-Westerburg, German Book-Plates (1901), p. 144 (briefly citing Faber's four bookplates), 443 (as the earliest gift bookplate); W.J. Hardy, Book-Plates (1893), p. 124 ("a very pompous declaration on a German book-plate, of a donor's intention that certain volumes given by him should remain for ever in the library to which they are presented. The owner of the book-plate was John Faber, Bishop of Vienna, who died in 1541, and who, in the previous year, presented his books to the College of St. Nicholas in that city."; despite Faber's text citing the diocese, and his use of third person plural, most bookplate scholars record this as Faber's personal gift); Walter Hamilton, Dated Book-Plates (1895), pt. 2, p. 2; John Byrne Leicester Warren, A Guide to the Study of Book-Plates (1900), p. 197 (calls the text a "very lawyer-like statement"), 203 (description and transcription); Karl Mandl-Schloss Sebarn, "Seltene Ex libris aus der Sammlung Sr. Exzellenz Graf Johann Wilczek," Österreichische Ex Libris Gesellschaft (1905), p. 37; David Pearson, Speaking Volumes (2022), p. 20 (“The idea of marking ownership by using a printed and pasted-in label in a book began in Germany in the late fifteenth century, and really took off in popularity in many European countries a couple of centuries later"); Victor Scholderer, "Hilprand Brandenburg and His Books," Fifty Essays in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Bibliography (1966), p. 219-223 (good background on that early bookplate); Suzanne Karr Schmidt, Altered and Adorned: Using Renaissance Prints in Daily Life (2011), p. 46 (on the Brandenburg bookplate, "The earliest documented printed ex libris," calling it 1470/1480); Ilse O'Dell, Deutsche und Österreichische Exlibris 1500-1599 im Britischen Museum (2003), p. 36, #62 (the Brassicanus bookplate described), 130 (the later version reproduced); "Old Danish Bookplates," The Bookplate Magazine 1.5 (Nov 1920), p. 130 (for the Greek on the Brassicanus bookplate, dating it 1525); Josef Benzing, Die Buchdrucker des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts im Deutschen Sprachgebiet (1963), p. 455

Item #772