Vasari on Vasari

Giorgio Vasari is famous for creating the first substantial work of art history, his Vite delle pui eccellenti pittori, scultori, ed architettori (Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects), but he also wrote a shorter book describing one of his own works. Ragionamenti Sopra le inuentioni da lui dipinte in Firenze nel Palazzo di loro Altezze Serenissime (Florance: F. Giunta, 1588) is a written description of Vasari's three great cycles at the Palazzo Vecchio commissioned by Cosimo I de Medici. The narrative of the books carries the reader through the cycles, room by room, as Vasari lays open the references and meanings of the images in conversational dialogue with Francesco de Medici.

The book was written to give a wide audience to the cycles (which were in Cosimo's private residence) and share the Medici's glory more broadly. Oddly, there are is only one image in the book, a full-page woodcut of Vasari, but words substitute for images in the description of the art. There is an irony there--the art elevates and spreads the power of the Medici family, but the image is reserved to lift the artist. The book shows how the Renaissance was a time of patronage, but also a period where the individual artist gained prominence.

To see the book, and tour with the Medicis, ask for Rare ND2757.F5 V3 1588.

Shakespeare's what?

Here we have what appears to be the first quarto edition of The First Part of the True & Honorable History, of the Life of Sir John Old-castle, the Good Lord Cobham written by William Shakespeare (London: Printed for T.P., 1600). While the title page's claim that the history is "True & Honorable," the publisher was being neither with this publication.

The play has now been attributed to Anthony Munday, Michael Drayton, Robert Wilson, and Richard Hathway rather than Shakespeare, and it is likely that Thomas Pavier (T.P.) knew that the play was not a work by Shakespeare when this edition was printed. Even more blatantly dishonest was the 1600 date on the title page. In fact, evidence shows that this was printed in 1619 and falsely dated to make it appear to be overstock of the first edition. All of this was an attempt to increase the profit margin, but it points to the status of authors and plays at the time. Douglas Brooks states in "Sir John Oldcastle and the Construction of Shakespeare's Authorship," in Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 (Vol. 38, No.2):

...one thing seems clear: the proprietary status of printed drama in the period was so inconsequential that Pavier must have felt free to manipulate the identity of a given play's author(s) as the particular publishing circumstance required (page 335).

Ask for Hickmott 57 to see for yourself.

It's Cool Inside!

Okay, it really is nice and cool in Rauner--one of the benefits of working with rare materials is you usually are in an area with great climate control--but, it is also very "cool" in Rauner. Where else can you walk up to a desk, ask to see a 500-year-old manuscript or the first edition of your favorite 19th-century novel, and, moments later, be sitting at a table with it?

We also have a penguin (naturally, doesn't everyone?), but he did not come to us as part of our world renowned polar exploration collection. This Adelie penguin in its juvenile plumage was given to Sherman Adams (Class of 1920), Eisenhower's White House Chief of Staff, by Admiral Richard Byrd.  Adams passed "Byrd's bird" on to Dartmouth in 1964, where it took up residence in Special Collections. It is most at home in the Rauner Rooke[ry] Reading Room.

So, get out of the heat and enjoy the cool comfort of Rauner this summer.

Dartmouth Sartorial Revolution

According to the June 1930 issue of the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine: "Dartmouth had gone 'shorts' mad, Hanover and neighboring merchants were besieged with orders for shorts of any description, and the campus became a colorful pageant of bare legs and bizarre shorts. Those who could not purchase abbreviations, hacked off their trousers and flaunted legs which never faced the public eye before."  Supporters of the "shorts" movement faced the "opposition" who were dressed in "sheepskins, fur coats, ski jackets, mufflers and mittens."  Though the weather dampened the enthusiasm of the supporters of the new fad, they prevailed and the opposition movement "suffered at the hands of the rebels."

To see this image and more Dartmouth style, ask for the photo files on college life and clothing.

Federal Music Project in New Hampshire

This ephemeral pamphlet from 1937 is a cross between a promotional piece and an annual report.  The mimeographed typescript briefly describes the Federal Project under the direction of Dr. Nikolai Sokoloff, then focuses in on the New Hampshire Music Project. The advisory board included Maurice Longhurst, Chair of the Dartmouth Music Department, and then Congressman, Charles Tobey.

Started in December of 1935, the project had employed over 80 people in New Hampshire by October 1937 and sponsored a marching band that participated in 191 engagements, a dance orchestra that played 243 times "for the pleasure of 90,172 people," and a symphony orchestra that performed 97 programs "for the pleasure and education of 101,900 people."

The stunning pictorial wrap is an excellent example of WPA style "designed and executed by William J. White of the WPA Federal Art Project."

The Mark of the Hydra

Perhaps the most remarkable beast in Rauner’s collections is the depiction of Albertus Seba’s specimen of a seven-headed hydra in his collection of natural wonders, Locupletissimi rerum naturalium (Amsterdam, 1734-65). He admits in the text to being doubtful at first, but becoming convinced that the specimen was true to nature. To a European collector reared on the classics, a seven-headed hydra brought back by sailors traveling into new worlds would probably have been less questionable than a duck-billed platypus.

Seba was one of the great collectors of all time. His first natural history collection was sold to the czar of Russia and became the seed collection for the natural history museum in St. Petersburg. With the proceeds of the sale, he assembled his second great collection cataloged here.

To see it in "real" life, ask for Rare Book QH41.S4.

Titled Title Page

Who's on top here? Sometimes a title page will clue you into the ideology of a text immediately. Here, in the first edition of John Smith's The Generall Historie of Virginia (London: Michael Sparkes, 1624), we see dominion over the new lands of Virginia laid out graphically.

England's royalty are superimposed on a map of Virginia atop the page. As your eye wanders down the engraved title page, the arms of Virginia Company and the arms of the New England Company divide the map from the details of life in the new world. Across the bottom of the page there are scenes of native peoples inhabiting the newly colonized space.

Ask for McGregor 164 to see it in person in Rauner.