The Print Collection of Ferdinand Columbus (1488-1539): A Renaissance Collector in Seville (review)

This monumental publication is worthy of its stupendous subject, devoted to one of the most significant and earliest recorded print collections ever assembled, formed by Ferdinand Columbus, the explorer's illegitimate son. He had traveled with his father on the fourth and final sailing to America in 1502, describing it in Columbus's biography. Ferdinand was counselor to Charles V, and may have known Erasmus and possibly met Dürer. Ferdinand bequeathed the print collection and library of over 15,000 books to Seville. His library was the largest of the day, and all lost; his 3,204 prints, also mostly lost. The print inventory is still in Seville, at the Columbus Library.

Though correctly credited with devising what may have been the first systematic print catalogues, Ferdinand's (like most systems) was fraught with its maker's eccentricities. It took Mark P. McDonald's patient decoding to figure out just how the weird reference system worked. What may be the most important aspect of Ferdinand's catalogue for present-day scholarship is the way it records prints that no longer exist, including maps and genre subjects as well as ornament series.

Rather than provide the conventional critical review, it seems wisest to present the reader with some indication of the encyclopedic resources of this un-precedented and extraordinary publication. McDonald is the author of the first six chapters of the first volume devoted to history and commentary. These cover the collector's life, the Seville inventory, "The System of Print Classification and Description of the Inventory." Chapter 4 is entitled "Excavating the Inventory: An Archaeology of the Columbus Print Collection." The fifth is devoted to "The Physical Life of the Print Collection and Ferdinand's Universal Library." McDonald concludes by "Assembling the Columbus Print Collection."

All Mark P. McDonald's pages make for essential reading for anyone interested in Ferdinand Columbus and in the early history of European print and book collecting. Unlike many Hispanic studies, the author's knowledge is far from parochial, encompassing profound familiarity with Italy and the north. His chapters form the head, heart, soul, and guts of this extraordinary publication involving extensive scholarly detective work of the very highest order.

Fritz Koreny has explored, "'Per universam Europam': German Prints and Printmaking before 1500." He noted that the collector "appears not particularly selective and bought whatever was available to him." But fortunately selectivity seems to be just the opposite of Ferdinand's goals. Predictably the bulk of his prints from this area date from the second half of the fifteenth century. Three lost works by Caspar von Regensburg are included in Ferdinand's inventory. Koreny identifies several other lost works, these now known only from their entries in Ferdinand's inventory.

Peter Parshall pursues Koreny's area for the sixteenth century. He notes that "around half of the entire inventory appears to have been issued" from German and Swiss printers, yet Ferdinand did not schedule his northern visits to coincide with any of the book and print fairs, buying most of the 1400 prints between 1521–22, less than half of these readily identifiable from the inventory. Expectedly, the bulk of the material is from Dürer and his school.

Michael Bury and David Landau have addressed themselves to the topic of "Ferdinand Columbus's Italian Prints: Clarifications and Implications." As the collector was in Italy from 1512–16, in Venice, Rome, and Florence, he had ample opportunity to buy such works on the spot, inventoried before 1522. Many of his prints were mounted in books and on scrolls, and probably often bought from book dealers, with few securely identified.

As one might expect, Ferdinand owned fewer Italian than northern prints since the South was never that drawn to the reproductive arts. Surprisingly, while there...