Promptuarium Iconum Insigniorum

Prima pars Promptuarii iconum insigniorum à seculo hominum, subiectis eorum vitis, per compendium ex probatissimis autoribus desumptis. or Promptuarium Iconum Insigniorum for short is an iconographic collection of wood engravings authored and published by French humanist, numismatist, publisher and bookseller Guillaume Rouillé in Latin, French and Italian in 1553, in Lyon, France. The book's initial editions contain 828 portraits, designed as medallions, of figures some of whom are mythical and some historical. The portraits are listed in chronological order, beginning with those of Adam and Eve and ending with those of renowned individuals from the mid-16th century, each accompanied by a summarized biographical text. In a 1577 edition, approximately 100 more portraits were added.

The contents are divided into two parts: Prima pars ('first part') covers those who supposedly or historically lived before the birth of Christ while pars secunda ('second part') deals with those who did during or after his lifetime. The two parts are usually bound into one book, albeit with separate pagination. The book does not mention the engraver's name; the portraits have been typically attributed, however, to Piedmontese engraver Georges Reverdy. Many of the portraits were based on depictions from ancient coins, but Rouillé did not intend his work to be a numismatic or academic reference text. The book instead appealed as a collection of brief, well-written and illustrated history lessons to a broader audience and became a bestseller in its era.

Iconographic basis
Portrait books, which featured genuine or fictitious woodcut portraits of renowned individuals of different eras and places, were highly popular in 16th-century Europe. Guillaume Rouillé, an established publisher and bookseller in Lyon by mid-century, saw an opportunity for a profitable business in the genre like many of his competitors did. Rouillé got the idea for the medallion portrait format from the 1517 book Illustrium imagines ('Images of the famous') by Renaissance humanist Andrea Fulvio, which contained 204 busts of individuals engraved in the styles of antique coins. Rouillé humorously states in his preface of Promptuarium Iconum Insigniorum that he included fictitious images of individuals who were supposed to have lived before the biblical account of the Flood or the invention of the art of painting and engraving, in order not to be accused for having spread counterfeit money to the public. He admits that such portraits were drawn with the help of imagination, yet in accordance with the characteristics of the individual's deeds, customs, personality, and the region they were said to be from; likewise for the images of historical figures whose attested iconographic traces did not exist.

As for the rest, the portraits were either based on paintings and numismatic, sigillographic, and intaglio collections Rouillé and the engraver had access to —for example, Rouillé based the portrait of Alexander the Great on a Macedonian gold stater that had Athena on the obverse, mistaking her depiction for that of Alexander while getting depictions of Demetrius I of Macedon and Mithridates VI Eupator from the correct coins —or copied from earlier portrait books. The portraits of French monarchs were copied from the 1528 book Les Anciennes et modernes genealogies des Roys de France ('The ancient and modern genealogies of the Kings of France') authored by poet Jean Bouchet and the 1546 book Epitome gestorum LVIII regum Franciae ('Epitome of the deeds of the 58 kings of France') published by Balthazar Arnoullet. Most portraits of the early Caesars were copied from the 1534 book Imperatorum et Caesarum vitae ('Lives of Emperors and Caesars') authored by historian Johannes Huttich.

Rouillé's book does not disclose the portrait engraver's identity; however, 19th-century Lyonese bibliographer Henri-Louis Baudrier attributed the portraits to Georges Reverdy from Piedmont, whose engraving skills he praised. Reverdy was a resident of Lyon at the time of the book's authorship and had gained wide recognition, having been compared to Hans Holbein the Younger. Either Reverdy modeled some of the engravings after drawings and paintings of Dutch painter Corneille de Lyon, or Reverdy and Corneille worked jointly, because the artistic style in some of the book's contemporary portraits—such as that of Marguerite de Navarre—very closely matches Corneille's.

Contents
The work, which contains 828 medallion portraits in the initial editions, is chronologically divided into two parts: Prima pars ('first part') and pars secunda ('second part') based on the birth of Christ, which Rouillé placed in the 3,962nd year after the biblical account of the creation of the world. The individuals who supposedly or historically lived before Christ are grouped together in the first part, and each major event of their lives is given two dates: one in anno Mundi ('the year of the world') and the other ante Christum natum ('before Christ [was] born'). Those who lived during Christ's lifetime or after his death are listed in the second part, which is titled Promptuarii iconum pars secunda incipit à Christo nato, perpetuam ducens seriem ad usque Christianissimũ Francorum regem Henricum hoc nomine secundum, hodie feliciter regnantem in the initial Latin edition. The two parts, nevertheless, are usually bound into one book, although they maintain separate pagination.

Each portrait is accompanied by a summarized biographical text below it, with the individual's name in a circular inscription inside the edge of the medallion. The medallions are arranged in pairs so that two members of the same family, usually a married couple, are often displayed on the page together. Some of the biographical texts have been taken from compendia of history from the antiquity, such as Ausonius's epigrams. The first part begins with the portraits of Adam and Eve, followed by those of the patriarchs, prophets and kings of the Old Testament including Abraham, Noah, Jeremiah, Nimrod and Ahab, pagan deities, creatures and heroes like the Minotaur, Vesta, Janus, Osiris, Romulus and Hercules, and renowned historical figures who lived before Christ's era, such as Zoroaster, Thales of Miletus, Julius Caesar and Pericles.

The second part opens with a title page depicting the Nativity and deals with the portraits and biographies of individuals from Christ's time, the Roman Empire after Christ's death, Middle Ages, and Rouillé's contemporary era—the mid-16th century: Christ himself, Judas Iscariot, Pontius Pilate, Caligula and most of the other Roman emperors, Attila of the Huns, Islamic prophet Muhammad, a complete set of the early Ottoman sultans, post-classical writers like Dante Alighieri, Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Emperors up to Charles V, and a large number of contemporary royals such as Edward VI of England, Marguerite de Navarre and Catherine de' Medici. In a 1577 edition, approximately 100 more portraits—mostly those of individuals from Rouillé's era—were added to the second part and those of Hippocrates and Galen were added to the appendix.

Publication history


The book was published in Lyon, in 1553, in three editions simultaneously: Latin, French, and Italian. Rouillé often published different language editions of what he thought would sell internationally and distributed them throughout Europe, aided by his in-law connections. He dedicated the Latin edition to Henry II of France, the Italian edition to Catherine de' Medici, and the French edition to Marguerite de Navarre; the dedications to the royals were an indirect advertising technique. Several subsequent editions in these languages were published in the following years. In the 1577 French edition, Rouillé gave a more prominence to humanists who had contributed to the European development of law and medicine in the first half of the 16th century—such as jurist François Douaren and anatomist and physician Andreas Vesalius—thus paying tribute to the humanist movement of his time.

The Spanish translation, Promptuario de las medallas de todos las más insignes varones que ha habido desde el principio del mundo, was a work of Valencian theologian and translator Joan Martí Cordero. His dedication of the work, dated September 8, 1558, and written from the Université catholique de Louvain where he was a student at the time, was addressed "[...] al muy alto y muy poderoso señor don Carlos, por la gracia de Dios, Príncipe de las Españas ('[...] to the very high and very powerful lord Don Carlos, by the grace of God, Prince of the Spains')", referring to Prince Carlos of Asturias, who was the eldest son and heir apparent of King Philip II of Spain. The Spanish edition was published in 1561 by Rouillé.

Reception
Promptuarium Iconum Insigniorum was a bestseller in its era. Although many of the book's portraits were based on depictions from ancient coins and emulated their artistic styles, Rouillé did not intend his work to be a reference text for academics or numismatists: for example, he entirely disregarded the reverse sides of the coins he used as the sources of the depictions. The book instead appealed as a collection of brief, well-written and illustrated history lessons to a broader audience. Many of the similar iconographic collections published in Europe from the mid-16th to 17th centuries referenced and copied from the work, partly because Rouillé had used a variety of diverse sources and chosen individuals based on more daring criteria than what was generally accepted at the time. Jean de Tournes, who was Rouillé's main competitor in the Lyonese publishing industry, published Insignium aliquot virorum icones ('Images of some notable men'), an imitation of Promptuarium Iconum Insigniorum with fewer portraits and a lower price, in 1559. It did not sell as well as Rouillé's work and no further editions were released.

Physician and numismatist Antoine Le Pois mentioned Promptuarium Iconum Insigniorum in his posthumous 1579 work Discours sur les médailles et gravures antiques ('Discourse on antique medals and engravings') as one of the texts he felt more useful for their abridgements of history than the fictitious portraits they contained. Julian Sharman, the 19th-century author of The Library of Mary Queen of Scots, declared Rouillé's work to be "not one of much numismatic interest"; however he added that the portrait book had been "pronounced to be one of the marvels of early wood-engraving". In her 2006 essay, art historian Ilaria Andreoli commented on Promptuarium Iconum Insigniorum: "Beyond any scruples of historical, archaeological and antiquarian exactitude and precision, Rouillé's ambition is [...] to speak to the eyes [...] thanks to which the reader will be able to peer into the features and hear them speak, as if they were actors' masks".