"Könyveimet békötöttem ... mégpedig többire aranyosan" : a Tótfalusi-Biblia amszterdami kötéseinek ismeretlen altipusáról

Abstract

Nicholas Tótfalusi Kis, the Transylvanian punchcutter who worked in Amsterdam between 1681 and 1689 presented a copy of his Hungarian Bible in gilt bindings to four Dutch libraries from which three have been preserved. In opposition to the richly decorated copies of his Bible which are mainly kept in Hungarian libraries, the copies in the Netherlands are, concerning both their covers and their spines, simpler than the previously known ones, and represent an unknown subtype of the original (Amsterdam) binding of his Bible. The analysis of the bindings indicates that the punchcutter ordered Bibles not only from different workshops but also different versions of the bindings with gilt decorations from the same workshop, namely richly decorated and simply decorated ones which also differ from each other. The decoration of the spines seems to have been made in much less versions than one should expect on the basis of the various appearances of the covers.