Fortsas and perfume: Journées de Mariemont (4&5 October 2008)

The Royal Museum of Mariemont (Musée royal de Mariemont) at Morlanwelz –56 km south of Brussels and 28 km east of Mons – has an attractive roster of activities year-round, as can be inferred from its information bulletin called Bulletin d’information trimestriel (published every three months, free on request).

If anything in this country comes close to the J. Paul Getty Museum, it's Mariemont. The name (‘Mary’s hill’) refers to Charles V’s sister, Mary of Hungary, who built a castle in 1546. The ancient history of this noble abode stopped with a fire in 1794.

In the 19^th C, a family of industrialists called Warocqué, owners of coal mines in the immediate vicinity, built a new stately home amid facilities for their workers. One of the most prolific collectors of this family was Raoul Warocqué, whose collection became the basis of a state-owned museum.

Warocqué’s collection comprised old archeological finds from the region, as well as artefacts from Egypt, the Far East (China, Japan), and the Greek and Roman period, and porcelain from Tournai, now placed in juxtaposition with contemporary ceramics. There is also the arboretum around the museum, dotted with statues, such as Rodin’s Burghers of Calais.

Raoul Warocqué was a bibliophile collector, and Mariemont houses a library of rare printed books, bindings, artist books and original editions, ranging in date from the 15^th until the 21^st century. It also comprises almost 10,000 autograph letters, medals and prints, among others nearly 600 by Félicien Rops.

This year, the Museum opens house on Saturday and Sunday 4 & 5 October 2008 to present the collections from an olfactory standpoint. Les parfums de Mariemont is the organizing theme.

The museum is currently hosting an international exhibition (until 30 November 2008) related to perfume in Antiquity: Parfums de l’Antiquité. La rose et l’encens en Méditerranée. The exhibition shows artefacts from numerous institutions abroad, and has a catalogue that promises new scientific findings.

But back to the Activity Days, which can count on the collaboration of three curators with ties to rare book holdings: Bertrand Federinov, Claude Sorgeloos, and Frédéric Van de Vijver.

Bertrand Federinov is director of the Rare Books Department at Mariemont. Frédéric Van de Vijver is librarian at Mariemont. Both serve as guides on visits to the collection.

Federinov hosts a visit entitled ‘Sentir les livres. Approche olfactive des collections de la Réserve Précieuse.’ (Sunday, 5 October, 3 p.m.) Recently, Federinov compiled a catalogue of imprints from Mons from the Mariemont holdings: Quatre siècles d’imprimerie à Mons. Catalogue des éditions montoises (1580-1815) du Musée royal de Mariemont (monograph no. 12 of Musée royal de Mariemont, no ISBN, legal depot no. D/2004/0451/102).

Van de Vijver hosts two kinds of tours to the holdings. One is ‘Galanterie et raffinement capiteux des livres de la marquise de Pompadour, la comtesse du Barry, Marie Leszcynska et Madame Victoire’ (Saturday, 4 October at 2 p.m., repeated on Sunday at 11 a.m.) and the other is ‘Encens et souffre entremêlées aux parfums libertins dans les salons du Siècle des Lumières. L’encyclopédie de Diderot et d’Alembert, un diffuseur de savoir et d’idées révolutionnaires.’ (Saturday, 4 October at 5 p.m.)

Claude Sorgeloos, director of the Rare Books Department at Belgium’s Royal Library, will guide a tour to the exhibition ‘Renier Chalon, alias Fortsas.’ He will approach it with ‘L’odeur facétieuse du cochon.’ (Saturday 4 October, 4 p.m.)

Sorgeloos is one of the curators of the Fortsas exhibition, which has been running at Mariemont from 5 July 2008 onwards, and which is closing 5 October 2008. So the weekend at Mariemont is the last chance to see it.

Subtitle to the exhibition ‘Renier Chalon, alias Fortsas’ is: ‘Le canular en Belgique: toute une tradition!’ (the hoax in Belgium: an entire tradition). The museum’s website refers to a recent hoax called ‘Bye Bye Belgium’, presented about a year ago by the news department of the state-owned French speaking television network, which caused quite a stir in prime time.

Renier Chalon (1802-1889) was an avid collector of coins and rare books. He was born in Mons, but a quiet administrative career brought him to Brussels, where he was at leisure to pursue his numismatist and bibliophile predilections, as well as his passion for pranks.

Chalon fathered a hoax known under the name of Fortsas, short for a soi-disant Comte de Fortsas, and an equally fictitious sale of the library of this elusive count, which, with catalogue and all, was promised to be held at Binche, on 10 August 1840. Book collectors from all over Europe descended there in vain.

A few other blogs have recently referred to Fortsas, here and here, both without mention of the exhibition at Mariemont, which is said to paint a far more complex picture of Chalon, and which provides a Belgian history of the prank from the 19^th century until this day.

Mariemont has published the following monograph on Chalon: Reinier Chalon alias Fortsas: un érudit malicieux au mitan du XIXe siècle (Monographies du Musée royal de Mariemont no. 16, publishing year: 2008). Authors: François de Callatay, Claude Sorgeloos. ISBN: 2-930469-19-6.

New University Library website and Piranesi exhibition, both at Gent

The University Library of the city of Ghent ("Gent") is as of today (25 September 2008) presenting a newly formatted website.

Noteworthy is the link called 'Schatkamer', where some of the collection's treasures are presented in digitized form, but the holdings are far richer than that.

Around its collection of etchings by the Italian architect Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) now runs an exhibition, in part curated by the Department of Architecture of the university, with the help of the Royal Library at Brussels.

"Piranesi" opened on 20 September, and runs until 18 January 2009 at the Museum voor Schone Kunsten.

Hora est! The Fate of Jesuit Libraries in the Southern Netherlands (1773-1828)

In our previous post on current Ph.D research (6 June 2008), we were not yet able to provide the exact details for Bart op de Beeck, director at the Rare Books Department of Belgium's National Library. Here there are.

Op de Beeck will defend his Ph.D at the University of Leuven, Faculty of Arts, in Dutch. The title is: Jezuïetenbibliotheken in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden. De liquidatie 1773-1828.

Op de Beeck attempts the reconstruction of the libraries of one religious institutional order, from 1773 onwards, when the Jesuit order was abolished in the Southern Netherlands, and their book and manuscript holdings became subject to dispersal.

According to Op de Beeck, book catalogues of Jesuit libraries, monasteries and colleges from the 16-18th centuries hardly have been examined. His research attemps a reconstruction of three great Jesuit library holdings: at Brussels, Antwerp, and Louvain, and of two smaller ones, at Halle and Aalst.

Op de Beeck studied provenance markings on some 24,000 books. Many dispersed Jesuit holdings ended up at our National Library, but had never been the subject of extensive study.

Promotor is Dr. Jan Roegiers, former Head of the University Library at Leuven. The board of examiners among others counts professors Chris Coppens (Leuven), Pierre Delsaerdt (Antwerp), and Paul Hoftijzer (Leiden).

Venue: Thursday 25 September 2008, at 2 p.m. Promotiezaal van de Universiteitshal (Naamsestraat 22, 3000 Leuven).

Women Latinists of Renaissance England (Lecture at Leuven, 24 September 2008)

Neo-Latin scholars at the University of Leuven recently informed their fellow members at IANLS - International Association for Neo-Latin Studies - of a lecture, to be held at Leuven tomorrow, by Professor Brenda M. Hosington (University of Warwick): ' "Minerva and the Muses". Women Latinists of Renaissance England'.

This lecture both serves as the third Jozef IJsewijn lecture, and as the opening of the 2008-2009 Master in Medieval and Renaissance Studies at the University of Leuven.

Jozef IJsewijn (1932-1998) was professor of Neo-Latin at Leuven. In 1966, he founded the Seminarium Philologiae Humanisticae for the study of Neo-Latin language and literature, and somewhat later, a journal called Humanistica Lovaniensia.

Related to the journal, Leuven University Press publishes a publication series called Supplementa Humanistica Lovaniensia. Number 16 in this series was a volume of essays edited by Dirk Sacré and Gilbert Tournoy in honor of Jozef IJsewijn: Myricae. Essays on Neo-Latin Literature in Memory of Jozef IJsewijn (Leuven, 2000, ISBN 978-90586705-40).

The Master in Medieval and Renaissance Studies is an interdisciplinary, post-initial Master's degree ('Manama') on offer in English at the university of Leuven. Various research centers participate in it: the Seminarium Philologiae Humanisticae; Illuminare or the Center for the Study of Illumination; the 'Aristoteles Latinus' project; the De Wulf-Mansion Centre (philosophy); the Research Unit History of the Middle Ages, and the Institute for Medieval Studies.

Details Prof. Hosington's lecture: Lipsiuszaal, Faculty of Arts (Blijde-Inkomststraat 21, 3000 Leuven), 5 p.m. Lecture followed by a reception. Organisation: Seminarium Philologiae Humanisticae, KU Leuven.

Talk on manuscript illumination at Public Library Bruges (18 September 2008)

In libraries in the Dutch-speaking part of this country, the term stadsbibliotheek (City Library) is falling in desuetude. At Antwerp, Stadsbibliotheek Antwerpen (SBA) has become Erfgoedbibliotheek Hendrik Conscience. We also should stop saying Stadsbibliotheek Brugge to Openbare Bibliotheek Brugge (Public Library).

In Bruges, the main building in the public library system is also called Hoofdbibliotheek 'Biekorf' (beehive). Now its Friends, Vrienden van de Biekorfbibliotheek vzw, are the organizers, about twice a year, for public events related to its older holdings.

The Biekorf now welcomes the public for a talk by Dutch illumination specialist Saskia van Bergen, in Dutch, entitled Een Brugs handschriftenatelier in de late middeleeuwen, which is based on the results of her doctoral research.

Van Bergen completed a PhD at the University of Amsterdam in 2007 with a thesis called
De Meesters van Otto van Moerdrecht. Een onderzoek naar de stijl en iconografie van een groep miniaturisten, in relatie tot de productie van getijdenboeken in Brugge rond 1430.

The Biekorf holds manuscripts, including books of hours by Bruges facture, but none, so far as we know, by the so-called Masters of Otto van Moerdrecht.

Van Bergen will no doubt explain who Otto van Moerdrecht was, but via this case study of a workshop around 1430 also show how vast an illumination and manuscript industry, solely working for export, was at Bruges.

Details: Hoofdbibliotheek Biekorf (Reading Room), Kuipersstraat 3, 8000 Brugge, 18 September 2008, 8.pm. Entrance fee: 3 € (free entry for Friends of the Biekorf).

Photo: Christ before Pilate, illumination from Book of Hours, use of Bruges (late 16th C). Illuminations on the verso side of interfoliated leaves. Cultura Fonds Collection.

Symposium 'De tuin der talen: taalkennis en taalkunde tijdens de renaissance in de Lage Landen' (Antwerp, 18-19 September 2008)

Is ‘gale 8, perhaps severe gale 9 later’ the forecast to be issued for the state of Dutch as a standard language -the language shared by, among others, the Dutch in Holland and the Flemish in Belgium?

Yes, said Joop van der Horst, professor of Dutch at the University of Leuven. Need we despair? No, he says, and in a book, entitled Het einde van de standaardtaal (The end of standard language)(Meulenhoff, ISBN 9789029082655), he is willing to explain why.

According to van der Horst, the last tidal language change of this kind harks back to the transition from the Middle Ages to the renaissance.

Let’s keep this in mind at the conference 'De tuin der talen: taalkennis en taalkunde tijdens de renaissance in de Lage Landen' (the garden of languages: language knowledge and linguistics during the renaissance in the Low Countries), held in… Dutch.

The format is a line-up of ten short papers, presented in 20-25 minutes, and followed by discussion. The speakers include both formidable and young promising researchers from both French and Dutch speaking universities in Belgium as well as universities in the Netherlands, some carrying on research in other countries.

Talks will be presented around four big themes: plurilingual aspects and book history; the standardization of Dutch, the presentation of a Wiki about the ‘Garden of languages’, and lastly, Semitic language study.

A concluding talk will be delivered by... Joop van der Horst on nothing else but the end of a renaissance language culture.

All details can be found under http://tuindertalen.short.be/

Notice of attendance: best before 10 September 2008.

Venue: Nottebohmzaal, Erfgoedbibliotheek Hendrik Conscience, Antwerp (formerly known as Stadsbibliotheek Antwerpen), Flanders’ biggest heritage library.

Organizers: Erfgoedbibliotheek Hendrik Conscience; Center for the History of Linguistics at University of Leuven (Centrum voor de Geschiedenis van de Linguïstiek)

Coordinator: Dr.Toon van Hal, who recently graduated with a PhD thesis about comparative linguistics in the 16th and 17th century. We hope to come back to that later.