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Many a “splendid occasion” in European history – coronation, royal wedding, funeral, beatification, embassy or triumphal entry – has been commemorated in an illustrated “festival book.” Like a souvenir scrapbook, such volumes record memorable events down to their most fleeting aspects: the food and the fireworks. Catholic Italy and France, eminent in opera and liturgy, were the chief producers of festival books. Even though England came late to the genre, The History of the Coronation of James II is one of the most splendid illustrated books of the seventeenth century. It served as a visual touchstone for subsequent coronations, almost inventing a tradition. British royal ceremonial is one of the few to survive intact, and it remains the most magnificent and brilliantly orchestrated. Here in twenty-eight double-page plates, drawn under the direction of the herald Francis Sandford, one may follow every detail of the procession and banqueting, from the discreet presence of the diarist Samuel Pepys, holding a pole of the canopy that shields the king, to the “1,445 dishes of the delicious viands” consumed that day.
The original book imaged for this digital edition:
19 3/4 x 12 inches (502 x 305 mm)
The original book imaged for this digital edition:
19 3/4 x 12 inches (502 x 305 mm)
Political Portraiture
The illustrated book was hardly a novelty at the time Sandford commissioned the plates for The History of the Coronation of James II (1687). Woodcuts were used in Bibles and other books from the mid-fifteenth century, and by the early seventeenth century, under the influence of Dutch engravers and with the help of specialist printers, copperplate engravings had come into their own in England. Indeed the entire world of print publication – books and broadsides, pamphlets, proclamations, woodcuts and engravings – was crucial to the articulation of politics and political culture. Satirical images constituted an obvious part of this program, and the circulation of libels, ballads, and woodcuts aimed against Archbishop William Laud contributed powerfully to the turmoil of the 1640s, but title pages like that devised for Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan (1651) were critical to the publication of arguments and ideas. The arts of portraiture and book illustration continued to flourish in the later seventeenth century. Charles II and his court were circulated through the print publication of their images and on coins and medals; they themselves were to be seen in sites of public spectacle: the king at the theater, his latest mistress on its stage. Nell Gwyn and Mary Davis, as well as the king’s more aristocratic companions – the Duchess of Portsmouth, the Duchess of Cleveland, Hortense Mancini – were painted in a provocative and often daringly explicit manner, and engravings after their portraits were advertised and put to sale in a busy print market that made it possible to own suites of images of the Windsor beauties.
The illustrated book was hardly a novelty at the time Sandford commissioned the plates for The History of the Coronation of James II (1687). Woodcuts were used in Bibles and other books from the mid-fifteenth century, and by the early seventeenth century, under the influence of Dutch engravers and with the help of specialist printers, copperplate engravings had come into their own in England. Indeed the entire world of print publication – books and broadsides, pamphlets, proclamations, woodcuts and engravings – was crucial to the articulation of politics and political culture. Satirical images constituted an obvious part of this program, and the circulation of libels, ballads, and woodcuts aimed against Archbishop William Laud contributed powerfully to the turmoil of the 1640s, but title pages like that devised for Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan (1651) were critical to the publication of arguments and ideas. The arts of portraiture and book illustration continued to flourish in the later seventeenth century. Charles II and his court were circulated through the print publication of their images and on coins and medals; they themselves were to be seen in sites of public spectacle: the king at the theater, his latest mistress on its stage. Nell Gwyn and Mary Davis, as well as the king’s more aristocratic companions – the Duchess of Portsmouth, the Duchess of Cleveland, Hortense Mancini – were painted in a provocative and often daringly explicit manner, and engravings after their portraits were advertised and put to sale in a busy print market that made it possible to own suites of images of the Windsor beauties.
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