Tue Aug 21, 2018 04:29 PM

Morning Modelbuch (5/18/2018)

This style of ornament is called Moresque and is a stylized plant based ornament that is an Italian derivative of Arabic arabesques. It starts showing up in 15th century Venice. These are from a 1530 book published by Francisco Pellegrino. _La Fleur de la Science de Pourtraicture_ He published a second book specifically titled _The Book of Moresque_ and similar motifs show up in books by Peter Flotner and some others.

The ornaments are interesting and useful on their own, but I find them especially fascinating because Moresque is one of the most dominant styles in bookbinding. So the designs are important to Venetian publishing for their eventual use as well.

The French national library has a copy of the 1530 version of Pelligrino http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k857536m/f34.image

A facsimile was published in 1908 when so many other modelbuch were republished and Harvard’s copy is available for download on Archive via Google Books. https://archive.org/details/lafleurdelascie00migegoog