Everything about Colard Mansion totally explained
Colard Mansion (or
Colart, before
1440 – after May
1484) was a 15th century
Flemish scribe and printer who worked together with
William Caxton. He is known as the first printer of a book with copper
engravings, and as the printer of the first books in English and French.
Biography
Colard Mansion was a central figure in the early printing industry in
Bruges. He was active as early as 1454 as a bookseller, and was also active as a
scribe, translator and contractor for
manuscripts, which meant entering into contracts with the clients, and organizing and sub-contracting the elements such as scribing, decorating and binding. From 1474 until 1476 he worked together with the early English printer
William Caxton, and he continued the company on his own afterwards. Caxton probably learned the art of printing from Mansion, and it was from Mansion's press that the first books printed in English (
Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye) and French came. He moved to the Burg, the commercial heart of Bruges at the time, in 1478. Mansion suffered heavily under the economic crisis in Bruges in the 1480s, and only one work was printed after the death of
Mary of Burgundy in 1482. Nothing is known with certainty about his life after 1484, although he may have moved to
Picardy.
Work
Mansion sold
illuminated manuscripts to the aristocracy, and luxurious
incunabula to the
bourgeoisie, but he was one of the first to also publish smaller and cheaper books of only twenty to thirty pages, mainly in French. Nowadays, 25 editions of incunabula by Mansion alone are known, making him the most prolific of Bruges' early printers. Only two of these are in Latin, all others are in French, many of them first editions. Customers of Mansion include
Charles de Croÿ, prince of Chimay, and Marie, the widow of
Louis de Luxembourg, Count of Saint-Pol. Mansion has been called the first printer of luxury books.
He collaborated with major manuscript illuminators, such as the
Master of the Dresden Prayer Book, who were fast losing work to printing, or copyists of their work. In fact only two of his books are illustrated, the influential
Ovide Moralisé with
woodcuts, and a French translation of
Boccaccio's
De casibus virorum illustrium, the first book to be illustrated with
engravings, some of which have been claimed to be the work of the Dresden Prayer Book Master and other identified illuminators in the circle of the
Master of Anthony of Burgundy. As
intaglio prints, the nine engravings had to be printed separately from the relief text and then pasted in, and only three copies are known with the engravings. More copies are known without the engravings, several of which contain illuminations instead. It has been suggested that this was Mansion's original intention (other incunabula left spaces for manual illustration), but that this hybrid product didn't attract the wealthy buyers of illuminations, so the engravings were an afterthought, aimed at a less exclusive market. Mansion is also known as the translator of at least five texts from Latin to French, including
Le dialogue des créatures, printed by Dutch
Gerard Leeu in 1482.
Known works
- 1467: Romuleon (manuscript by Benvenuto Rambaldi da Imola, dedicated to Philip the Good
- 1472 or later: Penitence d'Adam (Testament of Adam) (manuscript), dedicated to Lewis de Bruges probably made by Marc le Bongeteur.
- 1476: Controversie de Noblesse by Buonaccorso da Montemagno (or Surse de Pistoye), translated into French by Jean Miélot
- 1476-1477: an anonymous French prediction text
- 1477: La consolation de la philosophie by Boetius of Dacia
- 1477: Estrif de Fortune et de Vertu (anonymous)
- 1479: Le quadriloque invectif by Alain Chartier
- 1479: La somme rurale by Jean Boutillier
- 1479: Opera : De caelesti hyerarchia. De ecclesiastica hyerarchia. De divinis nominibus. De mystica theologia. Epistolae, a complete edition in Latin of the works of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, translated by Ambrosio Traversari
- 1480: Art de bien mourir (anonymous)
- before June 1481: Valere Maxime (life of Saint Hubert), dedicated to Philippe de Hornes It is his last known work, and it has been speculated that the expensive book bankrupted the company. This book was reprinted as the Bible des poëtes (Poets' Bible) at least four times in Paris between 1493 and 1531. Afterwards, a purer version (with all allegorical additions by Mansion removed, but keeping his translations) under the title Grand Olympe des histoires poëtiques du Prince de poësie Ovide Naso en sa Metamorphose was published repeatedly between 1532 and 1570.
Unknown date:
