Colnaghi Foundation Journal 03 - Magazine - Page 144
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G I U LI O CAM PAG N OL A / Landscape, and Venetian illumination
GI U LI O CAMPAG N OLA / Landscape, and Venetian illumination
Fig. 8 / Illuminator in the
circle of Benedetto Bordon,
illuminated border with
landscape in Jacopo Sannazaro,
Arcadia, Naples, 1504,
Sigismund Mayr, Chicago,
Newberry Library, Ms. Wing ZP
5351.07, sig. D6r.
Fig. 9 / Illuminator in the
circle of Benedetto Bordon,
illuminated Border with Pisani
coat of arms and landscape in
Ovid, Fasti, Venice, 1502-1503,
Aldus Manutius, Manchester,
John Rylands Library, Ms.
Spencer 3366, vol. II, sig.aaa2r.
Fig. 7 / Benedetto Bordon,
Domitian Awarding Honours to
the Poet in Martial, Epigrams,
Venice, 1501, Aldus Manutius,
London, The British Library, Ms.
C.4.d.11, sigs. A1v and A2r.
Fig. 10 / Illuminator in the
circle of Benedetto Bordon,
Bucolic Landscape in Dante, Le
Terze Rime, Venice, 1502, Aldus
Manutius, Dublin, Trinity College
Library, Ms. Quin 52, sig. a2v.
Bembo sends greetings to Giulio.32 Ten days before
this letter was written, Aldo Manuzio stipulated in his
testament that Giulio should design new majuscules for
his Italic typeface.33
Over the previous decade, following his arrival in
Venice, Giulio’s explorations of landscape subject
matter had become increasingly sophisticated. Over the
same period, landscape imagery became widespread in
illuminations in high-end printed books, like the Aldines
mentioned above. One finds some strikingly bucolic,
pastoral scenes produced by illuminators working in
Bordon’s circle, such as those in the Newberry Library’s
1504 edition of Sannazaro’s Arcadia (fig. 8) and the
1502-1503 Aldine Ovid with the Pisani family arms
now at John Rylands Library (fig. 9), as well as a full
page illumination in a 1502 Aldine Dante (fig. 10)
in Dublin.34 However, Bordon and his collaborators
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did not only incorporate landscape imagery into
the decoration of poetic printed works, but also into
illuminated manuscripts of sacred texts and official
Venetian documents, known broadly as ducali, which
record the commissions of important government posts.
As Helena Szépe has demonstrated, these documents
were highly valued by Venetian patricians as testimonies
of family honour and constituted a major, important
source of employment for Venetian illuminators
throughout the sixteenth century.35
Despite the ubiquity of landscape imagery in Venetian
illumination of the period, and the clear links between
Benedetto Bordon and Giulio Campagnola, scholarship
on the latter artist has never thoroughly investigated
the relationship between his extant works and the
illuminations being produced by Bordon and his circle
in the years in which they overlapped in Venice.
