Now where did I put my glasses?

Did you ever leave your glasses in a book? Cryn van Zuyderhoudt, the writing master who created two almost identical trompe l'oeil books in 1779, most certainly did:

Leiden University Libraries, LTK 1889

Allard Pierson, Universiteit van Amsterdam, HS. XXXV A 33

We'll play a game of 'spot the difference' some other time! Today, let's focus on this pair of glasses, that now serves as the logo for this blog. Zuyderhoudt seems to make a habit of leaving his glasses 'accidentally' lying about. We find the same pair of glasses in a trompe l'oeil watercolour drawing he made in 1765:

Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, RP-T-1916-21

The iconography of spectacles and magnifying glasses in trompe l'oeil paintings has been discussed by Dror Wahrman in his book about Edward Collier, Mr. Collier's Letter Racks (1). Wahrman suggests that these reading aids are meant to urge the observer to pay attention. According to him, this is Collier's message to the viewer:

'Painters can play games equally as well as printers do. You are on your guard because you know you are observing a trompe l’oeil. You are on your guard because I charged you to be so with my magnifying glass. And still, no matter how close you look, you will never be certain that what you see is what you get.’ (p. 17, italics by Wahrman).   

Discussing the imagery of reading glasses in early modern pamphlets, Marijke Meijer Drees also suggests that they imply a play on truth and falsehood: glasses can make you see properly, or they can distort your vision (2).

So we might take Zuyderhoudt's glasses as a warning not to be fooled by the contents of the trompe l'oeil book.


However, the reading glasses in Zuyderhoudt's books are not mere symbols. They also refer to the very real practice of keeping your spectacles in your book, which has left real traces in real books. The sources mentioned below come with some stunning images, that are very similar to what Cryn van Zuyderhoudt is showing us.

Max Wiringa (PhD student in Art History at KU Leuven) pointed me to a recent blog about imprints of eyeglasses in books from the Bibliotheca Philadelphiensis (3). In this blog post, Nicholas Herman describes how he discovered 'multiple imprints of a single pair of glasses repeatedly left in an early-sixteenth-century French Book of Hours' while showing the book to his students (oh, the benefits of showing books to students!).

Herman's blog led me to earlier publications about similar traces, such as this one from 2014 by Peter Kidd (4) and this one from 2012 by Micah Erwin (5).

But how would one keep a three-dimensional object inside a book? Wouldn't the glasses break? No worries, that has been taken care of. On Twitter, Camille Davis (6) shared her find of an eighteenth century book with 'a binding that has a space for glasses'! https://twitter.com/cendarcy/status/1110639332099047424


References

(1) Dror Wahrman, Mr. Collier's Letter Racks. A Tale of Art and Illusion at the Threshold of the Modern Information Age. Oxford 2012. For spectacles in paintings, cf. fig. 6.7 and fig. 11.8.
(2) Marijke Meijer Drees, 'Goed voor de ogen. Brilmetaforiek in vroegmoderne pamfletten'. In: J. de Kruif, M. Meijer Drees, J. Salman (eds.), Het lange leven van het pamflet. Boekhistorische, iconografische, literaire en politieke aspecten van pamfletten 1600-1900. Hilversum 2006, p. 129-142.
   (3) Nicholas Herman, 'A "Spectacular" Discovery: imprints of eyeglasses and their specific context in a Book of Hours'. Fifty-two discoveries from the BiblioPhilly project, No. 14/52. Bibliotheca Philadelphiensis, June 28, 2019.
(4) Peter Kidd, Evidence of Medieval (?) Reading-Glasses. Midweek Miscellany 5. Medieval Manuscripts Provenance. Weekly Notes and Observations, December 3, 2014.
(5) Micah Erwin, Early printed book contains rare specimen of medieval spectacles . In: Ransom Center Magazine, April 17, 2012.
(6) Camille Davis (@cendarcy), https://twitter.com/cendarcy/status/1110639332099047424, March 26, 2019.