| IIn the past few pages we have been exploring the doubtful methods of Jacques Guignard in attempting to promote his theory that the supposed Paris atelier of Simon Vostre produced all the bindings previously attributed to the atelier of Louis XII. A theory that the BnF have embraced sans hésitation. Above I have reproduced Guignard's planche 8, below is a copy of the text from his 1968 article that relates to this binding. |
| We don't really need to translate this, we see that he mentions plate 7 (pl. 7) first, this is an obvious Louis XII binding with the same crown and ecu from the earliest bindings. I found another identical binding in an Alde Auction catelogue it is now inventory No. 35, below n Comparative Diagram 1, I show these two bindings together. |
| I have discussed these two bindings on another page, where I demonstrate that large outer roulette of both bindings is Gid Type Roulette d'ananas entrelacés AEa 3 and showed on another page that Gid had mistakenly identified this imprint as AEa 1 (unsigned) on an important atelier Louis XII binding (618) (detailed on this page). I show the 618 binding below, Thus we have 3 bindings with the same roulette, AEa 3. All three bear the same crown and ecu as found on the early atelier Louis XII bindings, the crown is now slightly damaged but is the same one. Now returning to Guignard's text above we see that he states that the same roulette found on the binding in plate 7 (pl. 7) is also found on the binding he shows in plate 8 (pl. 8) and thus touts this as a sure Simon Vostre connection. |
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In Comparative Diagram 2, I have extracted strips of roulette from Guignard's plate 8 binding (shown at the top of the page, white rectangles extracted) and compare them with Denise Gid's 1984 Roulette d'ananas entrelacés AEa 1 (pl. 38) this is a signed roulette with the letters I B (indicated with the small white arrows). The roulette is similar to AEa 3 which is a reversed pattern and thus probably a copy of the original AEa 1. Being therefore quite different it is rather mysterious how Guignard could have mistaken this as being the same roulette as those found on the louis XII bindings. However as we now know it is not the same roulette, we are forced to conclude that Simon Vostre, or rather the supposed atelier Simon Vostre, did not produce the Louis XII bindings, nor did Pierre Roffet! On the next page we are going to show that Guignard tried the same trick with another supposed Simon Vostre binding. |
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