|
DESKS HUNG TO THE WALLS.
Some such arrangement as this must have been long in fashion. Libraries
such as those of Diane de Poitiers and Francis the First could not have
been bestowed in any other way; and in fact, when books are enriched with
metal-work, or have specially elaborate ornaments on their sides, a desk
of some sort is indispensable.
DESK AND CUPBOARD.
Humbler scholars had to content themselves with small cupboards
constructed in the thickness of the wall, or hung against it, as in the
picture I will next shew you, from a French translation of Valerius
Maximus, copied for [Pg 59]King Edward the Fourth, and dated 1479[4]. You will
observe that the lower part of the window is fitted with trellises as in
the French king's library, not casements. The upper part only is glazed.
Another, and apparently very usual way of bestowing books, especially when
they were not numerous, was to place them in a sort of cupboard under the
sloping desk on which the owner read or wrote. An excellent specimen of
this device—which Richard de Bury specially commends, as being modelled
on the Ark, in the side of which the book of the Law was put—is to be
found in the Ship of Fools (1498). Another, of a curiously modern type,
occurs in an Hours in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, executed about
1445 for Isabel, Duchess of Brittany.
Next: Conclusion
|
|
