Haute Lecture: Colard Mansion

Reputedly, a drawing of Colard Mansion, right lower corner

Shorn of the over-long Dutch classes and the over-arduous exertion required to meet those demands, feelings of freedom broke out yesterday, Friday 30 March, and at long last I had the time to go to the Groeninge Museum to see the much-advertised exhibition on a famous resident of Brugge, the scribe, translator, eventual printer Colard Mansion, resident here from 1457-1484. Nothing is known of his birthplace or early life nor of his life after 1484 when he completely disappeared from the known world! The priests of Sint Donaas allegedly remarked, 'Colard Mansion is gevlucht!' [Colard Mansion is fled!] at his sudden disappearance in 1484, and without paying the rent due on his atelier in Sint Donaas. The first printed reference to his presence here was in 1457 but it is likely that he lived here before that date.

A page from Colard Mansion's

Ovide Metamorphose

I found the exhibition thrilling, with an impressive range of Mansion exhibits gathered from across Europe and the U.S. The innovative audio guide really enhanced the knowledge available to the lay person but the many stars of the show, huge illustrated Mansion books and manuscripts, were dazzling. The experts who put together the material, headed by Ludo Vandamme from Bruges Library, assembled a variety of manuscripts, illuminated incunabulae and rare prints and books to tell the most important part of the Mansion narrative. [Incunabula, a new word to me, refers to early printed material before 1500.] Perhaps the most stunning of the Mansion exhibits are the Boccaccio and the Ovide Metamorphose, both richly extraordinary in the majesty of the concept, size and realisation.

William Caxton

Brugge in the mid fifteenth century was an international economic and cultural hub. Indeed, late mediaeval Bruges was the market par excellence for fashionable and high-quality products and with the active patronage of Philip the Good, followed inevitably by the aristocratic elite, there were unprecedented opportunities for scribes, miniaturists, printers and bookbinders in Bruges. Mansion began as a scholarly scribe, a skilled copyist, but one document shows that by 1457, the first mention of his name suggests that he already held a certain position in the administrative networks of the city. This experience plus his history of producing richly- illuminated manuscripts, were perfectly timed to coincide with the appearance of book printing, stemming from the revolutionary and iconic Gutenberg Bible in 1455 printed in Mainz by Johannes Gutenberg.

A page from Mansion's Boccaccio.

In actuality, a huge and

sumptuous volume.

Mansion produced illuminated manuscripts only for the luxury market but the advent of printing enabled him to begin to move into luxury book production in the 1470s. He collaborated with William Caxton and produced a Book of Hours in 1475/6, for the English market, long a magnet for Bruges' manuscripts. Soon after this, Caxton returned to England and what had begun as a quest for Mansion into the mechanical production of manuscripts, moved into a fully-fledged luxury book production business. Mansion developed into an assured and courageous entrepreneur, deftly developing his printing and publishing business while remaining an admired scribe, comfortable with Latin, firmly established in a French-speaking world with its strong connection to the wealthy Burgundian court and drawing almost exclusively on a French language body of material for his books.

Caxton served as Governor to the English Nation of Merchant

Adventurers for many years and almost certainly

lived and worked in this building.

Mansion's place of work was in the Burg, in the

precincts of Sint Donaas.

This blog is an enthusiastic introduction only; seriously-interested readers should go to the museum and buy the splendid book, Colard Mansion. Incunabula, Prints and Manuscripts in Medieval Bruges. It contains many scholarly but accessible essays on various aspects of Mansion's life and work.