Deze website maakt gebruik van cookies om je ervaring te verbeteren.
How did book publishing evolve during the Baroque? Why did a publisher like Balthasar Moretus choose to work with prominent artists? What is the vision of contemporary innovators on the book profession today? The exhibition in the Museum Plantin-Moretus, which is titled “BAROQUE BOOK DESIGN. A tale of friendship and co-operation”, illustrates the publisher’s passion for his trade, highlighting how he inspired and motivated artists, printers and book designers to create an outstanding product in the past and how his influence is still felt in the present.
Many new types of books were created in the sixteenth century. We largely owe this to publishers such as the Plantin-Moretus family, who searched for ways of committing new knowledge and ideas to paper and organising this information. They thought of creative ways to arrange text on a page, about the relationship between images and text, the nature of the title page... Books as we know them today were developed during this era.
Balthasar I Moretus took the next great step in the development of book architecture, working with prominent artists for his book designs. He commissioned illustrations from Peter Paul Rubens for his new prayer books. But artists such as Erasmus Quellinus, Karel de Mallery, Peeter de Jode and Abraham Van Diepenbeeck also supplied designs for title pages and illustrations to Balthasar Moretus.
Nowadays publishers still play a defining role in innovations in book architecture. Museum Plantin-Moretus reveals the similarities between Balthasar Moretus’s approach and a contemporary book publishing project in the exhibition, highlighting how a leading contemporary publisher approaches a book and reinvents it, time and again, working with artists.
The exhibition showcases the publisher’s passion for his trade, highlighting how he inspired and motivated artists, printers and book designers to create an outstanding product in the past and how his influence is still felt in the present. The museum aims to share this passion with its visitors through a lecture series, workshops, collection and workshop visits.
Museum Plantin-Moretus | 28.09.2018 - 06.01.2019
Closed on Mondays and on public holidays, open on Easter Monday and on Whit Monday.
Accessibility: the exhibition is accessible to wheelchair users.
Price per person:
Free for holders of the .
Discount rates
€ 75 for the guide + € 6 per person (ticket price valid from 12 people). Duration: 1.5 hours. You may not be accompanied by your own guide.
Guided tour: .
before booking a guide.
In 1628, the Augustinian order commissioned altarpieces from Antwerp’s three greatest Baroque painters for their church.