Frames and supports in 15th and 16th-century Southern Netherlandish painting

CHAPTER IV 94 19. Wolfe 1990, 8. 20. Grünebaum 1982, 16. 21. Wolfe 1990, 3-4. 22. Doizy and Ipert 1985, 37. 23. Tsien 1985, 297-299. 24. Wolfe 1990, 3. 25. Doizy and Ipert 1985, 36. poems and Coran verses. It was also used for a variety of other purposes such as in the fine arts and for diplomatic and administrative purposes. It was put on display in houses and served as gifts. 19 In Europe, marbled paper is said to have been first manufactured in Germany at the end of the 15th century. 20 It was highly appreciated and collected in the Low Countries in the 16th century. It was occasionally included in Libri Amicorum. Initially those albums were merely a number of blank leaves bound into volumes, intended to receive the signatures and armorial bearings of the owners’ friends and acquaintances, the signatory’s motto or device, quotations and sentences and the like. 21 Some 16th century Libri Amicorum have an Ottoman bookbinding. 22 These Libri were used in Germany, Switzerland, the Low Countries and in Italy. In the Low Countries and in England marbled paper was first manufactured in the 17th century. It is omnipresent in European bookbinding from the 17th century on until late in the 19th century. It reached in Europe an unequalled high level of craftsmanship and was used not only in bookbinding, but also for covering a wide range of objects like books, boxes, drawers, trunks… Marbled paper must have been included among the admired products that travellers brought along from their trips to the East. It is reasonable to think that some marbled papers, wherever they had been manufactured, had reached Europe before the 15th century and that the painters were aware of their use in the Persian and Arabic worlds. Marbled sheets must have come along with other paper. From the 11th century on, Persia and the Arab world exported their paper to Spain and Italy. Europe imported paper until late in the 15th century, even though paper had been produced in Spain since 1150, in Xativa and in Italy, in Fabriano, since 1268-1276. 23 By the 14th century, Europe had started to export paper. In the 16th century, Venice created papers with watermarking inspired by the Middle East (a crescent moon, stars etc.) and sent it there occasionally to be marbled. The first examples seen by Europeans resembled the appearance of veined marble. 24 Hence the name of “marbled paper”. Later patterns, such as the beautiful combed patterns, no longer resemble marble, but the name “marbled paper” remained. Marbled papers are difficult to date because they have long been ignored. They are often older than the manuscript they are included in. Some old terms refer to the origins of marbled paper used in bookbinding. In 1608 marbled paper is referred to as “Chinese paper”. Germans also mention “Turkish paper”. 25