issue-17-specialist-knowledge-for-a-non-specialist-audience


British Art Studies

September 2020

Elizabethan and Jacobean Miniature
Paintings in Context

Edited by Catharine MacLeod and
Alexander Marr



British Art Studies
Issue 17, published 30 September 2020
Elizabethan and Jacobean Miniature Paintings in Context
Edited by Catharine MacLeod and Alexander Marr

Cover image: Left portrait: Isaac Oliver, Ludovick Stuart, 2nd Duke of Lennox, later
Duke of Richmond, ca. 1605, watercolour on vellum, laid onto table-book leaf, 5.7 x
4.4 cm. Collection of National Portrait Gallery, London (NPG 3063); Right portrait:
Isaac Oliver, Ludovick Stuart, 2nd Duke of Lennox, later Duke of Richmond, ca.
1603, watercolour on vellum, laid on card, 4.9 x 4 cm. Collection of Fitzwilliam
Museum, Cambridge (FM 3869). . Digital image courtesy of National Portrait Gallery,
London (All rights reserved); Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (All rights reserved).

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Published by:

Paul Mellon Centre
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In partnership with:

Yale Center for British Art
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ISSN: 2058-5462
DOI: 10.17658/issn.2058-5462
URL: https://www.britishartstudies.ac.uk

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Contents

A Very Proper Treatise: Specialist Knowledge for a Non-Specialist Public,
Annemie Leemans



A Very Proper Treatise: Specialist Knowledge for a
Non-Specialist Public

Annemie Leemans

Abstract

This paper discusses the authorship and audience of England’s first printed
recipe book which is entirely dedicated to the practice of limning. A number
of older sources show congruency with A Very Proper Treatise (1573), both in
manuscript and print, and in the various languages it was transmitted. The
contribution of the printer–publisher Richard Tottel is that of a compiler. I
have identified three categories of public or audience: the intended audience
(promoted by the book itself); circumstantial audience (the clients of the
bookshop); and actual audience (owners that have been traced through
material investigation of individual book copies and archival research).
Among this audience, there is a strong correlation between heraldic and
artistic interests, which matches the intention of the compiler, who created a
book that reaches out to individuals with an interest in painting, writing, and
heraldry.

Authors

Acknowledgements

The author owes sincere thanks to the editors for their comments, to the Paul
Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art for allowing me access to source
material, and to the organisers of the conference “Hilliard, Oliver and the
Miniature in Context”, for creating opportunities. Special thanks to Liam
Benison, who has been my sounding board during the editing process of this
article.

Cite as

Annemie Leemans, "A Very Proper Treatise: Specialist Knowledge for a Non-
Specialist Public", British Art Studies, Issue 17, https://dx.doi.org/10.17658/
issn.2058-5462/issue-17/aleemans



Introduction: Positioning Limning

This paper discusses the authorship and audience of England’s first printed
recipe book which is entirely dedicated to the practice of limning. Richard

Tottel printed the first edition of A Very Proper Treatise in 1573.
1

It offers
technical instructions on painting in books. The title A Very Proper Treatise
describes the intention of the book, to “briefly sett forthe the arte of

Limming” (Fig. 1).
2

This objective is repeated in the abbreviated or running
title at the top of each page: The Arte of Limming. The same title, The Arte of
Limning, was used later, around the turn of the century by the portrait

miniature painter Nicholas Hilliard.
3

His manuscript, in the words of Mary
Edmond, is "one of the most important documents in the history of English

art”.
4

Hilliard, followed by fellow limner Edward Norgate, referred to portrait

miniature painting as “limning”.
5

Richard Haydocke gave an explanation of
the material quality and technique of limning: “limming [is] where the
colours [pigments] are … mixed with gummers, but laied with a thicke body

and substance: wherein much arte and neatnesse is required.”
6

A Very
Proper Treatise addresses the preparation of paper and pigment for painting
in books, but also contains specific directions for portraiture and the

rendering of flesh and hair.
7

In fact, the book treats figurative elements in
coats of arms. Considering the meanings used in the various written works
that talk about limning, one can see that this term was charged with more
than one meaning. Limning indicated the practice of book illuminations as
well as portrait miniatures.



Figure 1.
Anonymous, A Very Proper Treatise, (London: Richard
Tottill, 1573), fol. 1r, title-page with signature and coat
of arms of Robert Thorne. Collection of The Huntington
Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens. Digital
image courtesy of Hathi Digital Trust (Public domain).

Specialist Artistic Knowledge and the Dynamics of its Transmission

A Very Proper Treatise promises in the title that it will (Fig. 1):



teacheth the order in drawing & tracing of letters, […] & the
maner how to make sundry sises or grounds to laye siluer or

golde uppon, […] & the waye to temper golde & siluer […] and
diuerse kyndes of colours to write or to lime withall […] & howe to

vernish yt when thou hast done.
8

The various recipes describe the materials and methods for executing a
limning—practical instructions that pertain to specialist knowledge.

Specialist artistic knowledge, as with any area of learning restricted to a
select group of practitioners, precludes widespread transmission of its
precepts. It was something that originally belonged to the context of
practitioners and professionals, often tied to a workshop and embedded in a
network. The continuation and longevity of a professional enterprise
benefitted by protecting its knowledge from competitors and preserving

“secrets” within a hierarchical and often hereditary workshop system.
9

A

Very Proper Treatise was a significant contributor to wider dissemination.
10

Visual communication of artistic knowledge can be easily conveyed through
demonstration, a viable technique to transmit knowledge. Not everything an
artist does can be articulated through the spoken or written word.
Demonstrations come in handy to communicate certain subtleties. A part of
practical knowledge transmission can be categorised as “silent” or “tacit”
knowledge, as determined by Michael Polanyi in his body of work. An
example is facial recognition. Polanyi says:

we can know more than we can tell. This fact seems obvious
enough; but it is not easy to say exactly what it means. Take an

example. We know a person’s face, and can recognize it among a
thousand, indeed among a million. Yet we usually cannot tell how
we recognize a face we know. Most of this knowledge cannot be

put into words.
11

In addition to the oral and demonstrational mode of conveying information, a
significant body of historical accounts are found in textual sources. Texts
containing practical knowledge are mostly compilations. They are rarely the
reflection of the authentic work of a single author, or practitioner. The
copying of texts was a common early modern practice. Not only does the
number of surviving copied manuscripts and printed books bear witness to

this practice, it was also actively promoted as a didactic means.
12



This can be illustrated through an undated work by Giovanni Battista Volpato

(1633–1706) Modo da tener nel dipingere.
13

This seventeenth-century
fictional dialogue has an educational function; two authors in particular are
recommended: Giovanni Battista Armenini and Raffaello Borghini. Armenini
(1525–1609), published De’ veri precetti della pittura (1587), a work

expounding on the basics of the painting trade and iconography.
14

Borghini
(ca. 1540–1588) is known for his work Il riposo (1584), which teaches the

basics of painting and sculpture.
15

These two important sixteenth-century
treatises are part of the canon of textual sources about practical knowledge.
Volpato’s didactic dialogue indicates that an apprentice was encouraged to
copy these two authors as part of the learning process in a seventeenth-

century studio.
16

Copying texts was considered to have a pedagogical value.

The copying of texts in early modern England did not proceed according to
today’s conventions. Michelle DiMeo points out that two seventeenth-century
British Library recipe books from the Brockman family contain the same

recipe to make cherry water.
17

Granddaughter Elizabeth copied this recipe
from the recipe book of her grandmother, Ann. What, by early modern
standards would be considered the same, to our eyes, is still characterised
by a lot of differences. Ann generally writes numbers with full words and she
uses punctuation, while Elizabeth writes the numbers with numerals and
uses almost no punctuation. Also, word order and word choice differ. Clearly
copying involved a good amount of personal interpretation.

Several recipes from A Very Proper Treatise can be found in other printed
books and manuscripts. A copy of the recipe “to make letters of the colour of
gould without gould” is encountered in MS Harley 1279, a heraldry
manuscript from the British Library. MS Harley 1279 is presumably copied

from A Very Proper Treatise.
18

The Harley recipe is a foreshortening of the
recipe in A Very Proper Treatise, by leaving out the advised work tools, such
as a “brazen morter” and “a paynters stone”. It also simplifies technical
vocabulary: glayre is being replaced, or explained, by “the whyte of egges”
(Figs 2 and 3).



Figure 2.
Anonymous, A Very Proper Treatise, (London: Richard Tottill, 1573), fol.
10r, “Recipe to make letters of the colour of gould without gould”.
Collection of The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens.
Digital image courtesy of Hathi Digital Trust (Public domain).

Figure 3.
Fragment of the recipe “To make letters of the coloure of gold without
gold”, Collection of British Library, London (MS Harley 1279), fol. 62v.
Digital image courtesy of British Library Board (All rights reserved).

To get an idea of the complex patterns of dissemination, another example of
the recipe for gold paint without gold will be briefly discussed. The practical
knowledge of Alessio Piemontese was widely disseminated, and his work was

published posthumously by Girolamo Ruscelli.
19

One example of the recipe
“to make gold painted letters without gold” appears in the Dutch De secreten
van den eerweerdigen heere Alexis Piemontois (The Secrets of the Reverend



Master Alexis of Piedmont): “Take one ounce of orpiment and one ounce of
fine crystal. Break each specifically well, where after mingle it with the white

of eggs and write with it.”
20

This Dutch version shows a remarkable degree of concord with that of MS
Harley 1279. The complexity arises when we learn it was translated from
French, but publications in the name of Piemontese appeared also in Latin,
Italian, German, and English as well. Not all translations and editions are the
same, as parts were omitted, and new material was added, which suggests

little text fixity.
21

In this regard, the publication A Very Proper Treatise
appears more stable, as there are only minor, although significant, changes

in the last edition, which will be discussed below.
22

The precise source of A Very Proper Treatise remains thus far unknown.
Possibly different sources were used to compose the work. One of the
sources with a common root of A Very Proper Treatise is a manuscript
compiled in 1525 by a clerk and freeman of the Mercers of London, Robert

Freelove.
23

The full English title is The Art of Making the Gilded and Painted
Letters which we see in old MSS, hereafter referred to as The Art of Making.
The same manuscript was attributed the Latin title Artem illuminandi libros
(The Art of Illuminating Books) and was described as Tractatu de decorandis

& pingendis literis (Treatise About the Decorating and Painting of Letters).
24

No trace of this physical manuscript can be found, however, the text is not
lost. We know what was written in the manuscript through a series of copies

made by Humfrey Wanley, Elizabeth Elstob, and George Ballard.
25

The compilation of Robert Freelove has forty-six recipes. A Very Proper
Treatise contains forty-four recipes, of which thirteen have a significant
textual overlap with The Art of Making. In order to demonstrate the textual
overlap, I will compare the recipe on how to draw imagery (Figs 4 and 5).
Where A Very Proper Treatise has “pencell of blacke lead, or with a cole made
sharpe at the poynte”, The Art of Making uses the word “plummet”.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “plummet” was used to refer to
“a stick of lead for writing, ruling lines”, so it may very well refer to the same

writing device.
26



Figure 4.
Anonymous, A Very Proper Treatise, (London:
Richard Tottill, 1573), fol. 2r, “The order of
drawing or tracing.” Collection of The Huntington
Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens.
Digital image courtesy of Hathi Digital Trust
(Public domain).



Figure 5.
“How to make gilded letters”, Collection of
University of Glasgow (MS Hunter 330), 1.
Digital image courtesy of University of
Glasgow (All rights reserved).

In another recipe, The Art of Making mentions the word “books”, referring to
a parchment surface, meanwhile A Very Proper Treatise uses “vellym,

parchement or paper” instead.
27

Likewise, The Art of Making advises the
reader to soak azure in clean water multiple times, because “Mercers medle
chalke therewith for to multiplie it for their profits”. This is echoed in Tottel’s
warning “for the Potecaries minge chalke there with to multiplie it to there

profit”.
28

These instructions positions both works in their context. A Very
Proper Treatise is a book made for an audience with artistic interests.
Through the list of ingredients, it helps readers to put the recipes into
practise by guiding them to the place where they can buy specific
ingredients: the apothecary. As mentioned above, Robert Freelove was a
Mercer’s freeman and clerk. In an autograph manuscript from the British
Library, Sloane 3604, Freelove indicates himself as a mercer: “p me



Robertum ffrelove mercerum London / ρωβερτοs ελεφθερη`oς”.
29

His known
manuscript production shows an interest in writing, calligraphy, drawing,

copying artwork, and painting initials.
30

Freelove might have turned to his

own livery company for his equipment.
31

There is evidence in the structure and sequence of the recipes in A Very
Proper Treatise that the entire work has a compilatory nature. The various
discrepancies related to the audience are seen as a result of an editing
process. This will be discussed below because they are clearly of a more
“recent” date than certain features of the body of the text, and therefore
attributed to the printer Richard Tottel. The body of the text contains
structural features that may be related to older texts. “The waies howe to
make sundry kindes of colours by tempering & mingling of colors together”

contains a series of prescriptions that are presented as one block of text.
32

There is no space left between the various colour combinations. Instead of
announcing every colour with a title, the colour names and their purpose
appear in the margin of the text. This approach matches that of The Art of
Making in the part “here shall I tell the shortelye how to temper thie

coloures” and “these be mynglyngs of goode worke”.
33

Both sets of
instructions have a tightly woven layout, without titles, subtitles, or blank
spaces. There is no significant textual concordance between A Very Proper
Treatise and The Art of Making in these recipes, only a visual and structural

one.
34

Publishing, editing, and copying entailed personal interpretation. This is
exactly what the compiler of A Very Proper Treatise did. The application value
of the recipes is broader and more concrete, which makes the book more

accessible for its users.
35

Issues of Authorship

The correspondence between recipe books, as illustrated above, shows that
textual sources like A Very Proper Treatise are compilations that adopt
material from different sources. Rather than searching for the actual
“author” of a recipe book or the “inventor” of knowledge, certain viable
contributions discuss the consumers or users of practical knowledge: hence,
this article’s interest in the search for the non-specialist reader, which will
follow below.

However, first, a word on the anonymous authorship of A Very Proper
Treatise. Only a very limited amount of in-depth scholarly research has been

done on this subject.
36

The central question tackled by most studies of an
anonymously published source is the issue of authorship. In her book The



Feminine Dynamic in English Art, Susan E. James hypothesises that Levina
Teerlinc is the author of A Very Proper Treatise. James’s arguments arise from

the anonymity of the work, Teerlinc’s network, and linguistic indications.
37

James compares the anonymous authorship of A Very Proper Treatise to that

of a topic very well known to her.
38

Queen Catherine Parr’s first two works,
titled Psalms or Prayers (1544) and Prayers or Meditations (1545), both
appeared anonymously. However, Parr’s works appeared several decades
earlier than A Very Proper Treatise. There is a difference in subject matter of
the printed works: Parr published religiously inspired works, whereas A Very
Proper Treatise is instructive literature for art practice. The different context
may result in a different case of anonymity.

Another context of an anonymously published work is that of the network.
James highlights the connection between Levina Teerlinc and the printer of A
Very Proper Treatise Richard Tottel (ca. 1528–1593), relying on Tottel’s father-
in-law Richard Grafton, as both Teerlinc and Grafton were protégés of Queen

Catherine Parr.
39

However, this is not a direct connection between the
proposed author Teerlinc and printer Tottel, but rather a secondary
connection.

Secondary connections must be handled with care. Another lineage between
A Very Proper Treatise and Richard Tottel can be suggested. Provided that
there is a textual reliance between A Very Proper Treatise and The Art of
Making, one can start investigating if and how Richard Tottel and Robert
Freelove were connected, or, how Tottel could have read Freelove’s source.
Multiple secondary connections could be found between Robert Freelove and
Richard Grafton. We know through letters to Thomas Cromwell from one of
his diplomats, Stephen Vaughan, that both men knew Robert Freelove. Being
a Mercer freeman and clerk, Freelove was part of Vaughan’s mercantile

network.
40

Personal contact between the three men is testified by a letter
where it is stated that Freelove brings a globe to Cromwell, offered by

Vaughan.
41

Robert Freelove can be linked directly to Sir Thomas Cromwell.
But also Richard Grafton is part of Cromwell’s direct network, as Grafton was

Cromwell’s protégé.
42

In this way, we can establish an indirect link between
Grafton and Freelove.

The printer Richard Tottel and printer–historian Richard Grafton are linked
through a family tie and their business relationship. Tottel married within the
printing trade, a common practice in the early modern period. In 1559, he
married Joan, the daughter of Richard Grafton, who was seventeen years his

junior.
43

Tottel benefitted through this marriage from Grafton’s types and

woodcuts. Later, Tottel printed one of Grafton’s historical works.
44

There
exists ample evidence that Tottel and Grafton belonged to the same network
and that they maintained an ongoing relationship. Questions arise as to



whether Grafton built relationships with other protégés of his patrons, such
as Katheryn Parr or Thomas Cromwell. So far, no known source shows
Grafton interacting with Teerlinc or Freelove.

Richard Grafton is pivotal in this search for a network, but this is problematic
because he is not the printer. In the Teerlinc hypothesis, Grafton would
function as a mediator, introducing potential author and printer to one
another, giving Teerlinc the opportunity to publish and be a “literate,

articulate woman”.
45

In the Freelove hypothesis, Grafton may have had
access to Freelove’s work or his sources. Network studies proves a useful
discipline; however, this type of research uncovers multiple potential
networks, where it is hard to ascertain actual contact.

The second argument James uses for understanding the identity of the
author is linguistic indications, which may indicate a non-native speaker.
James correctly saw that A Very Proper Treatise contains several examples
where colours and colour names are indicated as “male”. For example the
recipe “to temper redde leade” uses this grammatical gender: “Of this you

shal make no false color, but of him selfe” (see Fig. 6).
46

The use of
grammatical gender could be an indication of the foreign roots of the writer.
47

However, the following recipe “to temper blacke leade” uses the

impersonal “it selfe” to refer to the colour (Fig. 6).
48

The same book uses
two genders to refer to colours: the masculine and the impersonal. When
compared to Freelove’s work, one can see a similar tendency of referring to
colours as masculine. Historical linguistics have since long described the
phenomenon of “the loss of grammatical gender concord by Middle English”.
49



Figure 6.
Anonymous, A Very Proper Treatise, (London: Richard Tottill, 1573), fols
5v–6r. Collection of The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical
Gardens. Digital image courtesy of Hathi Digital Trust (Public domain).

The appearance of non-corresponding reflexive pronouns may be due to a
problem in translation. The Latin words for colour and pigment, color and
pigmentum, are both masculine nouns. The reflexive pronoun ipse is used to

refer to both neutral and masculine words, “itself” and “himself”.
50

In other
words, the odd formulations may be a result of a translation from Latin.

Robert Freelove translated alchemical, medical, and botanical works from
Latin to English. A good example is Mellon MS 33 from the Beinecke
collection at Yale. The manuscript contains seven texts, which are announced
in the beginning as being “translatyd out of latyn into Englyshe” by

“Robertus Freloue”.
51

The catalogue reports the following texts: 1) An
unidentified alchemical work; 2) Jean de Meung, Liber Lapidis mineralis, Book
II only, translated into English by Robert Freelove, 1522; 3) The Practys of
Lyghtes; 4) Roger Bacon or Johannes Sawtre, Radix mundi, translated into
English by Robert Freelove, 1550; 5) Rudianus, Liber trium verborum,
translated into English; 6) Khalid ibn Yazid, Liber secretorum philosophorum,

translated into English, 1542; and 7) an unidentified alchemical work.
52

Latin has been often considered an authoritative language throughout
European history. Ryan Szpiech discusses the status of Latin as connected to
the Roman empire, as the language of learning and wisdom and as one of

the three holy languages.
53

Thomas Burman states that in medieval



European Christianity, and especially in the Mediterranean world, there was a

culture to translate into Latin.
54

This tradition of using Latin is also common
in recipe culture of art technology during the medieval period. The medieval

corpus of technological instructions was predominantly a Latin one.
55

By the
sixteenth century, there was apparently a need to translate Latin text into
vernacular. The Luther Bible is certainly a representative example of this
need for vernacular Bibles, or texts in general. Elizabeth Eisenstein described
this as the vernacular translation movement. Through translation, text

became available to “readers who were unlearned in Latin”.
56

This is not a claim that Latin disappears, but that the scenario of translating
Latin into vernacular seems to be a valid working hypothesis for art
technological recipe books. Robert Freelove’s recipe collection is most likely a
translation. A Latin title appears in the work Temperantia colorum alumnata,
which groups together the last twenty-two of the forty-six recipes of The Art
of Making. This is a strong indication that at least that part is translated from
Latin. This same consideration can perhaps be made for the entire work, as a
significant corpus of art technological appeared in Latin prior the vernacular

translation movement and signs of translation can be found.
57

In this case, the anonymity does not indicate female authorship per se. The
scope and method used in this article point towards a different conclusion.
This article takes the pre-existing corpus of texts that were copied and
translated into account, among other ways of handling texts. Various people
interacted with individual copies of A Very Proper Treatise, a topic which this
article will explore below. In what follows, the contribution of the
printer–publisher will be examined.

Richard Tottel as a Compiler

Richard Tottel is best known for his achievements as a printer–publisher and
bookseller. Tottel was granted his first printing patent in 1554 during the
reign of Edward VI, which was continued by both Queen Mary and Queen
Elizabeth. He is mostly remembered for his capacity to understand the book

market and adapt his products accordingly.
58

Before Tottel’s law books
appeared on the market, students and lawyers often had to deal with Latin
and French documents. Tottel provided the market with accurate English

translations and clear explanations.
59

The hypothesis sustained here is that the involvement of Richard Tottel goes
beyond the mere printing of A Very Proper Treatise. He is considered the
compiler and editor of the very first edition of the booklet. Evidence was
drawn from the study of Tottel’s body of work, where unique working
methods attributed to him can be identified in several different books. These



include Thomas Tusser’s Hundreth good Pointes of Husbandry.
60

The first of
Tottel’s books about heraldry is Gerard Legh’s The Accedens of Armory

(1562).
61

His second is John Bossewell’s Workes of Armorie (1572).
62

He is
above all remembered for his long-lasting printing success Songes and

Sonnets, also known as Tottel’s Miscellany.
63

This anthology bears the signs

of Tottel’s working methods and marketing strategies.
64

By marketing
strategy is intended a product-centred approach, where the printer studies
the needs of the readers and adapts the product accordingly. In this regard,
the title-page may be seen as a means of advertising.

There are strong indications that Tottel is the originator of A Very Proper
Treatise. Signs of editing are present in this work, as well as the marketing
and business style identified here as Tottel’s. He subjected existing text(s) to
a fierce editing process: introducing order, sequence, internal coherence, and
friendly navigation tools. A few inconsistencies hint at an editor’s hand.
Described below is a lapse in the editing process, a discrepancy between the
body of the text and index that reveals a deliberate shift in the book’s
intended audience.

A Very Proper Treatise contains two indexes: an ingredients index and a
recipe index. The recipe index is of interest to demonstrate the friendly
navigation tools Tottel created. Meanwhile, the ingredient index is of interest
to demonstrate a lapse in the editing process.

The recipe index is described as “a table of suche things as be contained in

this present booke”.
65

It contains recipe titles and folio numbers and it is a
useful tool for the reader to swiftly navigate through the work. In order to
fulfil this scope, Tottel kept recipe titles relatively complex, meanwhile the
corresponding titles in the recipe index were a simplification of the
information. “To make a grounde or a syse to lay golde or silver upon” refers
to “To make a dooble syse or bottome to laye or settle silver or goulde upon

called an embossed ground”.
66

“To make syses other maner of ways” refers
to “To make a thinne sise or bottome to laye or settle silver or golde upon
called a single grounde”. The different methods it refers to are not related to
silver or to gold, but to the many different ingredients that can be used to
prepare the preparatory layer: with heat, or without heat, with old
parchment, or leftovers of new parchment, or with gummed water made with
Arabic gum, regulating the thickness with old glair, green fig milk, spurge
milk, wartweed, green saladine milk, garlic or onion juice, or the grease of

snails.
67

This large variety of ways of obtaining a preparatory layer for silver
or gold is summarised by “other maner of ways”. This way the reader does
not get lost in detail but can focus during a search for information. This is a
sign of an editing process.



Figure 7.
Anonymous, A Very Proper Treatise , (London: Richard
Tottill, 1573), fol. 12r. Collection of The Huntington
Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens. Digital
image courtesy of Hathi Digital Trust (Public domain).

The ingredient index provides the names of the colours and the ingredients
that one can acquire at the “Poticaries” or apothecary (Fig. 7). This list
purports to be complete and representative of the ingredients used in the
recipes. However, not all the ingredients on the list appear in the body of the
text. Here it is contended that this disparity is a sign of editing. The
ingredients that are not mentioned in the recipes, which include alabaster,
cow milk, ewe milk, rue juice, red nettle juice, scraped cheese, and lye, have
a purpose in art technology but not to the aspects of limning Tottel wished to
include. Presumably, the recipes corresponding to the solitary ingredients
disappeared during the editing process, whereas their references in the index
remained.



All these examples contain crucial indicators of Tottel’s working method and
trademark, which can be summarised in three things: 1) he took into account
the market and his public; 2) he assembled texts into publishable books; and

3) he made user-friendly volumes.
68

All three aspects are applicable to A
Very Proper Treatise.

Non-Specialist Audience

Long before A Very Proper Treatise appeared in Tottel’s bookshop, he had
been working with people who were interested in law, either professionally,
scholarly, or educationally. Tottel adapted his texts to this audience. Students
of law would be potentially interested in embellishing their texts, which is the
target of A Very Proper Treatise. As mentioned above, copying texts was
considered to have a pedagogical value, but it was also done for practical
reasons, such as making a customised copy. There was also interest in

embellishing printed texts, which will be discussed below.
69

As mentioned
above, the audience of this book is divided into three categories: 1) the

intended, 2) the circumstantial, and 3) the actual audience.
70

The intended audience is the public whom the compiler had in mind while
assembling the book. This audience is defined on the title-page and in the
concluding words of the text itself. These two different places in the book
show a variegated image of the intended audience. The title-page itself
specifies two groups as its audience. The first is “all suche gentlemenne”

(Fig. 1).
71

The concept of a gentleman in the early modern period was

characterised by variation and fluidity; it was not a legal categorisation.
72

In
various instances, the gentle birth, heraldic status, and economic situation of
a person played a role in defining whether the person was a gentleman or
not. Other ideas circulated about education and behaviour being the prime

characteristics of a gentleman.
73

The status of the coat of arms was a point
of discussion, but A Very Proper Treatise promotes the interest and making of
coats of arms in its title and also in the margins of the book. Some recipes
are accompanied with extra instructions in the margin on how to use colours
for heraldic purposes (Fig. 8).



Figure 8.
Anonymous, A Very Proper Treatise, (London: Richard
Tottill, 1573), fol. 6r. Collection of The Huntington
Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens. Digital
image courtesy of Hathi Digital Trust (Public domain).

The second category of intended audience in the title of A Very Proper
Treatise includes “persones as doe delite in limming, painting or in tricking of

armes in their right colors” (Fig. 1).
74

In other words, a group of people with
heraldic interest who limn for pleasure. At times, “pleasure” was a

determining factor in the understanding of what a gentleman was.
75

The title-page gives yet another insight. This book belongs to a group of
books named “the bookes of armes”. Words in titles are rarely chosen
randomly. In fact, Tottel had, prior to the publication of A Very Proper Treatise,
published two books about heraldry, mentioned above: Gerard Legh’s The
Accedence of Armorie and John Bossewell’s Workes of Armorie. Together with
A Very Proper Treatise, these are the only book titles Tottel ever published

dealing with heraldry and armoury.
76



The gentleman with painterly and heraldic interests, and spare time, stands
in contrast to the intended audience discussed at the conclusion of the

recipes, being “paynters & scriveners”.
77

The meaning of a painter will not
be scrutinised, but some clarification on the role of a scribe is in order.
According to Daybell, scriveners were “semi-professional letter-writers”, but
the Oxford English Dictionary extends the function of a scrivener to the

writing business in general.
78

These indications at the conclusion of the text
point towards a professional audience. Even though authors like Peacham,
Norgate, and Castiglione have put gentlemen in relation to painting, it was

never intended as a professional occupation.
79

The intended audience of A
Very Proper Treatise is not homogenous. It is argued here that this is due to
an editing process.

The point of interest addressed here is whether or not the book’s intended
audience corresponds to the circumstantial audience – the customers of
Tottel’s printing shop – or the actual audience, the various book owners of
whom the ownership of the book could be confirmed through material and

archival evidence.
80

Tottel’s business was located in “Fleetestreet” in London, at the “Sign of the
Hande and the Starre”. This information can be retrieved from the colophon

(Fig. 1), but it is also seen in Tottel’s printer’s device.
81

The customers
coming to his printing house were mainly students and practitioners of law, a
topic brought up by Christopher Warner in his work about Songs and

Sonnets.
82

These students, for instance, might have showed interest in the
embellishment of documents, for which A Very Proper Treatise offers suitable
instructions. We also saw that Tottel had an audience interested in Songs and
Sonnets, and that people had already bought “bookes of armes”, as
mentioned earlier, meaning that he might have targeted those groups as
well. Tottel knew his audience and adapted to his customers and the existing
market. Tottel printed with a purpose.

To prove this argument, the provenance and materiality of all the remaining
copies of the treatise were investigated. It has been possible to trace thirty-
seven surviving copies of A Very Proper Treatise, spread over six known

editions.
83

This corpus brought various names of people and interactions to
light. In the table below, you see the statistics of the extant copies mapped
out (Fig. 9).

View this illustration online

Figure 9.
Table of chronological and geographical distribution of the extant copies per
edition, A Very Proper Treatise,



However, much of the evidence of provenance, ownership, and use was
neutralised during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, through actions
such as washing, cropping, and rebinding. Comparison between the diverse
types of audience and the actual users are based on the remaining user
traces. Listed below are sixteenth- and seventeenth-century names culled

from material and archival research.
84

They correspond to only eight
volumes. Some of them were passed on to heirs, of which few names could
be traced. In this list, heirs are indicated after the arrow.

1. William Neile (1560–1624) (1573, Bodleian Library)
2. James Ussher (1581–1656) (1581, TCD)
3. Phebe Challoner (?) (1581, TCD) → daughter Elizabeth, wife of Timothy

Tyrrel
4. William Le Neve (1592–1661) (1581, British Library)
5. Robert(us) Thorne (?) (1581, Huntington Library)
6. Elias Ashmole (1617–1692) (1583, Bodleian Library)
7. John Aubrey (1626–1697) (1583, Bodleian Library)
8. William Goodman (?) (1583, Bodleian Library)
9. John Dyson (?) (1583, Bodleian Library)

10. Andrew Astley (?–1633) (1588, Bodleian Library) → son Thomas Astley
11. Jenny Myll (?) (1596, Cadbury Library Birmingham)
12. Brian Twyne (1581–1644) (1605, Corpus Christi Oxford)

Unfortunately, most of these individuals can be excluded as Tottel’s direct
customers. Archival research presents Brian Twyne as a potential customer
with antiquarian interests, and a contemporary of A Very Proper Treatise
when newly printed. A letter dated 1605 places him in London—the same

year his copy of A Very Proper Treatise was printed.
85

However, Twyne would
have been a customer of Tottel’s follower for the publication of this treatise,

Thomas Purfoot, who published A Very Proper Treatise from 1583 onwards.
86

Another potential customer of Thomas Purfoot was Jenny Myll, whose identity
remains unknown. An inscription notes that she bought a fifth edition copy in
the year it was printed: “Jeny Myll owe this booke / 1596”. Jenny Myll is
probably the individual closest to the original setting of the book market. She
embraces the function of circumstantial and actual audience. Regrettably,
she was not a customer of Richard Tottel, nor could she have been the
hypothetical reader he had in mind when editing A Very Proper Treatise.
Myll’s copy shows minor painterly interactions. The title-page contains traces
of paint. Two brown brushstrokes, traces of an oilier green paint, and a tiny
dot of red paint on the title-page. It is unclear whether these painterly daubs
were created by Jenny Myll, thus far the interactions remain of an

unidentified consumer.
87



Among the recorded owners, there is only one known artist, John Aubrey
(1626–1697), who shared heraldic interests with Elias Ashmole (1617–1692).
88

Both users were born in the beginning of the seventeenth century. These
individuals were not direct customers of Tottel.

Another individual with heraldic interests is Robert Thorne.
89

He expressed
his ownership through the writing of his name and through the painting of his
coat of arms on the title-page of a 1581 copy (Fig. 10). The coat of arms
contains a chevron between three crescents.

Figure 10.
Anonymous, A Very Proper Treatise, (London: Richard
Tottel, 1581), fol. 1r, title-page with signature and
coat of arms of Robert Thorne. Collection of The
Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical
Gardens. Digital image courtesy of Hathi Digital Trust
(Public domain).



A Very Proper Treatise shows interest in the painting and writing of letters.
This interest is shared by William Neile, who signed his 1573 copy with a
calligraphic inscription on the title-page. Neile has a very recognisable
calligraphy, which is shared by his relatives. Both William and Mildred add a

similar calligraphic embellishment to their names.
90

What Brayman Hackel
calls “sassy records of ownership” can be applied to the herald and

genealogist William Le Neve as well.
91

William Le Neve speaks in name of
the book with his inscription: “Willym Le Neve me iure possidet” (William Le
Neve is my legal owner). The precise identities of William Goodman and John
Dyson could be verified through a bookplate and a signature respectively,
but not much information in their interest has been found.

Another female book owner in the list, Phebe Challoner, inherited an
impressive book collection from her father, Luke Challoner, the Provost of
Trinity College Dublin. This means that Phebe owned the first library nucleus

of Trinity College Dublin.
92

A material investigation of the collection brought

several of her signatures to light.
93

Phebe faithfully signed over the
signature of her father. She would turn the “L” of Luke into a “P”, sometimes

continuing to write her name over her fathers.
94

Luke’s collection contains a
fair amount of theology works. He signed, for instance, the title-page of the

Master of Bezaes Sermons
95

with his family name only. Phebe then added
her first name before Luke’s family name (Fig. 11).



Figure 11.
Théodore de Bèze, Master Bezaes Sermons, (London:
Joseph Barnes, 1587), title-page with Luke and Phebe
Challoner’s signature. Collection of Trinity College
Dublin (TCD CC.l.29). Digital image courtesy of The
Board of Trinity College Dublin (All rights reserved).

In the case of the volume containing A Very Proper Treatise, this pattern of
Phebe overwriting her father’s signature cannot be confirmed. TCD volume
EE.k.19 binds three books together:

1. Gerard Legh, The Accedens of Armory, 1576 (TCD EE.k.19.N°.1.)
2. John Bossewell, Workes of Armorie, 1572 (TCD EE.k.19.N°.2.)
3. Anonymous, A Very Proper Treatise, 1581 (TCD EE.k.19.N°.3.)

It is the first book in this volume that contains Phebe’s maiden name, entirely
written by herself (Fig. 12). In contrast with most other books in the original
collection, this precise volume (which remained unchanged until today)
appeared in the 1608 catalogue of James Ussher’s book collection. He had
acquired several books in England in 1606 and brought them to Ireland,



among which TCD EE.k.19.
96

These facts precede the death of Luke

Challoner in 1612 and James’ and Phebe’s marriage in 1615.
97

This is a
strong indication that James Ussher, the later archbishop of Armagh and
Phebe’s husband to be, gave this volume as a token of friendship, or love

perhaps, prior to their wedding.
98

Figure 12.
Gerard Legh, The Accedens of Armory, (London:
Richard Tottel, 1576), fol. 2r, with Phebe’s signature
in the lower margin. Collection of Trinity College
Dublin (EE.k.19.N°.1). Digital image courtesy of
Board of Trinity College Dublin (All rights reserved).

The TCD volume contains the most interactions in the first two books. The
frontispiece was partially painted in yellow, indicating the heraldic or (gold)

(Fig. 13). The other consistent interest is the copying of imagery.
99

The coat
of arms with “the virgin Marie, with her chylde, standing in the sonne” has
been superimposed with a drawing grid (Fig. 14). This grid is numbered
horizontally and vertically, mimicking a system used by artists to transpose



an image to another surface, and allowing artists to scale the image up or

down.
100

The other technique to transfer images is through burnishing the
paper with printers’ ink soaked in oil and pressing it onto another surface.

This way the image is reproduced (Fig. 15).
101

It is unknown whether these
interactions with the volume were Phebe’s or James’s, or made by other
users. The volume was bound together between 1581 and 1606, being merit

of a previous owner.
102

The precise selection of these three books together
is not a coincidence, as it echoes the printer’s intention to see these three
books as a united group. The title of A Very Proper Treatise says that it is “a

worke very mete to be adioined to the bookes of armes” (Fig. 1).
103

Figure 13.
John Bossewell, Workes of Armorie, (London: Richardi
Totelli, 1572), fol. 79v, a pencil grid with numbering in
brown ink, superposing a Virgin with Child. Collection of
Trinity College Dublin (EE.k.19.N°.2). Digital image
courtesy of The Board of Trinity College Dublin (All rights
reserved).



Figure 14.
John Bossewell, Workes of Armorie, (London: Richardi Totelli, 1572), fol.
79v, a pencil grid with numbering in brown ink, superposing a Virgin with
Child. Collection of Trinity College Dublin (EE.k.19.N°.2). Digital image
courtesy of The Board of Trinity College Dublin (All rights reserved).



Figure 15.
John Bossewell, Workes of Armorie, (London: Richardi Totelli, 1572), fol.
29v, inkloss in the region of Pacis nuntia dove. Collection of Trinity College
Dublin (EE.k.19.N°.2). Digital image courtesy of The Board of Trinity
College Dublin (All rights reserved).

This article evaluated the audience of A Very Proper Treatise through the
material investigation of all surviving copies and through archival research.
Among the signatures, some strong claims of ownership appear, such as that
of Jenny Myll and William Le Neve. Only one artist emerges from the group of
identified owners: John Aubrey, and several individuals who can be seen as
amateur artists, with heraldic and calligraphic interests. Three among the
book owners are female. This actual audience coincides with the intended
audience from the title-page of A Very Proper Treatise: “gentlemenne” and
“persones as doe delite in limming, painting or in tricking of armes in their
right colors”. The term “persones” includes both male and female readers. In
addition, painters showed an interest, a category of intended audience met
at the closing of A Very Proper Treatise. The printer Richard Tottel edited
specialist knowledge as a marketable product for wider dissemination, while
keeping a specific non-specialist audience in mind. And this printer's
intention found its way to the public.



Footnotes

A Very Proper Treatise was published six times between 1573 and 1605. The six editions appeared in 1573, 1581,
1583, 1588, 1596, and 1605. Only the first two were printed by Richard Tottel and the remaining editions were
printed by Thomas Purfoot. Tottel uses several variants of his name for publishing: Richard Tottel, Tottill, Tottyl,
Richardum Totell, Richardum Tottellum, etc.

Anonymous, A Very Proper Treatise (London: Richard Tottill, 1573).

For a recent biography, see Elizabeth Goldring, Nicholas Hilliard: Life of an Artist (New Haven, CT: Published for the
Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art by Yale University Press, 2019).

Mary Edmond, “Hilliard, Nicholas (1547?–1619)”, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 3 January 2008,
doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/13320, accessed 29 February 2020.

Arthur F. Kinney, Linda Bradley Salamon, and John Pope-Hennessy (eds), Nicholas Hilliard’s Art of Limning: A New
Edition of, A Treatise Concerning the Arte of Limning (Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 1983); Edward
Norgate, Miniatura or The Art of Limning, edited by Martin Hardie (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1919).

Richard Haydocke discussed limning in his translation of Gian Paolo Lomazzo’s treatise. The quotation was taken from
Victoria Button, Katherine Coombs, and Alan Derbyshire, “Limning, the Perfection of Painting: The Art of Painting
Portrait Miniatures”, in Catharine MacLeod and Rab MacGibbon (eds), Elizabethan Treasures: Miniatures by Hilliard
and Oliver (London: National Portrait Gallery Publications, 2019), 22.

Anonymous, A Very Proper Treatise, fol. 6r.

Anonymous, A Very Proper Treatise, fol. 1r.

Jo Wheeler, Renaissance Secrets, Recipes & Formulas (London: V&A Publishing, 2009), 7 and 17.

For examples of specialist knowledge in wider dissemination, see Mark Clarke, “Writing Recipes for Non-Specialists
c.1300: The Anglo-Latin Secretum philosophorum, Glasgow MS Hunterian 110”, in Erma Hermens, Joyce Townsend,
and Art Technological Source Research (Study group) (eds), Sources and Serendipity: Testimonies of Artists’ Practice
(London: Archetype, 2009), 50–64; and Jeffrey M. Muller and Jim Murrell, “The Actual Audience, Purposes, and Uses of
Norgate’s Treatises and their Derivatives”, in Edward Norgate, Miniatura, or, The Art of Limning, edited by Jeffrey M.
Muller and Jim Murrell (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 14–20. Connected to this is the topic of the artist
in his capacity as reader, see Heiko Damm, Michael Thimann, and Claus Zittel (eds), The Artist as Reader: On
Education and Non-Education of Early Modern Artists. Intersections: Interdisciplinary Studies in Early Modern Culture
27 (Leiden: Brill, 2013). For early modern copying, see the recent special issue of Word & Image: Sietske Fransen and
Katherine M. Reinhart (eds), “The Practice of Copying in Making Knowledge in Early Modern Europe”, Special issue,
Word & Image: A Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry 35, no. 3 (2019): 211–222. On dissemination issues of A Very Proper
Treatise, see Mansfield Kirby Talley, “Repetition and Plagiarism”, in Mansfield Kirby Talley, Portrait Painting in England:
Studies in the Technical Literature Before 1700 (London: The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 1981),
171–190. Talley notices that two books use recipes from A Very Proper Treatise. A recipe for varnish (“vernix”) and
size are copied into the anonymous A Book of Drawing, Limning, Washing or Colouring of Maps and Prints, 1st edn
(London: M. Simmons, 1652). Talley states that John Bate copied a recipe for varnish into what he identifies as Bate’s
third edition of The Mysteries of Nature and Art, 4th edn (London: Thomas Harper, 1654). The textual
interdependency between A Very Proper Treatise and The Mysteries of Nature and Art deserves more scholarly
attention. His book treats on waterworks and hydraulic machinery, fireworks, various arts (drawing, limning, painting,
engraving, metalwork, and glasswork) and medicine. Little is known about John Bate, but he may have been a
gunner. For speculations on the identity of Bate, see S.A. Walton, “Bate, John (fl. 1626–1635)”, Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography, 23 September 2004, doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/53656, accessed 5 August 2020. Recipes from A Very
Proper Treatise ended up in both manuscript and print.

Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2009 [1966]), 4.

Ann Blair's research on intellectual history has focused on technological continuities, in particular when manuscripts
were copied from printed books. The practical and the educational are just two of the many reasons why people
copied books. See Ann Blair, “Reflections on Technological Continuities: Manuscripts Copied from Printed Books”,
Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 91, no. 1 (2015): 7–33.

See Mary P. Merrifield, Medieval and Renaissance Treatises on the Arts of Painting: Original Texts with English
Translations (New York: Dover Publications, 1999 [1849]), 719–755.

Giovanni Battista Armenini, De’ veri precetti della pittura (Ravenna: Francesco Tebaldini, 1587).

Raffaello Borghini, Il riposo (Firenze: Giorgio Marescotti, 1584).

On learning process of artists, see Damm, Thimann, and Zittel, The Artist as Reader.

Michelle DiMeo, “Authorship and Medical Networks: Reading Attributions in Early Modern Manuscript Recipe Books”,
in Michelle DiMeo and Sara Pennell (eds), Reading & Writing Recipe Books 1550–1800 (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 2013), 25–46.

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There are still a lot of mysteries around MS Harley 1279. It is unclear when this manuscript was made, and it does not
frequently appear in catalogues. I thank the staff of the British Library for their communications. In the catalogue of
Manuscripts in the Harleian Collection, it is described as an “old paper book”. Rosamund Drusilla Harley noted that
fols 62–64v contain recipes from A Very Proper Treatise. She points out that there is a connection to Peacham’s
Graphice (1612). Whereas Jim Murrell situates it as “pre-1600”. See Humfrey Wanley, David Casley, William Hocker,
and Charles Morton, Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, Vol. 1 (London: George Eyre &
Andrew Strahan, 1808), 645–646; R.D. Harley, “Literature on Technical Aspects of the Arts: Manuscripts in the British
Museum”, Studies in Conservation 14, no. 1 (1969), 3–4; Jim Murrell, The Way Howe to Lymne: Tudor Miniatures
Observed (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1983).

Alessio Piemontese is often seen as a pseudonym for Girolamo Ruscelli, however, there is clear evidence to assume
that they are two separate persons. See Ad Stijnman, “A Short-Title Bibliography of the Secreti by Alessio
Piemontese”, in Sigrid Eyb-Green, Joyce H. Townsend, Mark Clarke, Jilleen Nadolny, and Stefanos Kroustallis (eds),
The Artist’s Process: Technology and Interpretation. Proceedings of the Fourth Symposium of the Art Technological
Source Research Working Group (London: Archetype Publications, 2012), 32. For an examination of the entanglement
of Piemontese and Ruscelli, see Annemie D.G. Leemans, Contextualizing Practical Knowledge in Early Modern Europe
(Berlin: Peter Lang, 2020), 133–138.

The translation was made by this author. Transcription of the recipe: “Om gout-verwinghe letteren sonder goudt te
maken. Neemt een once orpiment / ende een once fijnen cristael / breeckt elck bysondert wel / daer na menghet
onder een met het wit vanden eye / ende schryfter mede.” Alexis Piemontoir, De secreten van den eerweerdigen
heere Alexis Piemontois (Antwerp: Christoffel Plantijn, 1561), fol. 105v.

Leemans has discussed the transmission of practical knowledge as rhizomatic, borrowing Deleuze and Guattari's
concept. Sources that borrow from each other could potentially also engage in metaphorical cross-pollination. For a
graphic, see Leemans, Contextualizing Practical Knowledge in Early Modern Europe, 85–111, especially 91.

In general, none of these recipes can be regarded as stable or fixed texts during the early modern period, although
their similar structural layout and wording in different editions of the same early modern book, such as A Very Proper
Treatise, might give the appearance of text fixity where none exists.

His autograph manuscript confirms his status in various places: London, British Library: MS Sloane 3604, fols 2r, 30v,
63v, 141r, 218v, 287r, 290v.

The source stating that Robert Freelove’s manuscript was written in English comes from Thomas Tanner. Another
author, Albrecht von Haller, reported that Freelove’s manuscript was bound to a herbal codex. See Thomas Tanner,
Biblioteca Britannico-Hibernica (London: Gulielmus Bowyer, 1748), 297; and Albrecht von Haller, Biblioteca Botanica
(Tiguri: Orell, Gessner, Fuesslu, et Socc., 1771), 668.

These copies are preserved at the University of Glasgow as MS Hunter 330, at the Society of Antiquaries as MS SAL/
MS/6, and at the Bodleian Library as MS Douce 392. Elstob titled the work To Make Such Coloured and Gilded Letters,
as Are to Be Seen Frequently in Old MSS. Ballard extended the title: Directions How to Make Such Coloured and
Gilded Letters, as Are to Be Seen Frequently in Old Manuscripts. See Leemans, Contextualizing Practical Knowledge in
Early Modern Europe, 176.

“Plummet”, Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edn 20 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). Continually updated
at http://www.oed.com/.

Glasgow, University of Glasgow, MS Hunter 330; and Anonymous, A Very Proper Treatise.

Glasgow, University of Glasgow, MS Hunter 330, 7–8; and Anonymous, A Very Proper Treatise, fols 4r-v.

London, British Library: MS Sloane 3604, fol. 141r. This manuscript contains multiple references to Freelove’s identity.
His autograph manuscript confirms his status in various places: London, British Library: MS Sloane 3604, fols 2r, 30v,
63v, 141r, 218v, 287r, 290v. The current one is in Latin and Greek, which is a reference to his learned status.

London, British Library: MS Sloane 3604.

Freelove may or may not have been aware of any malpractice. He could have copied this from another source, with
or without adaptations. He takes a position of an outsider in his writing of 1525. Two years later, at the closure of an
apprenticeship with Robert Packington, he joins the Mercers as a freeman. I thank Anne F. Sutton for communications
about this topic.

Anonymous, A Very Proper Treatise, fols 8r-v.

Glasgow, University of Glasgow, MS Hunter 330, 24–26.

This argument is only valid where the various transcriptions of Robert Freelove’s work maintain these structural
features of the layout, which is very plausible.

Other than linguistic or practical considerations, there are conceptual notions inherent to both works which are worth
discussing. Both works proclaim a notion of perfect knowledge, which will be explored in the chapter “The Secrecy
Trope in Prescriptive Literature: A Literary Investigation” by Annemie D.G. Leemans in the series of Studies in the
History of Knowledge from the Amsterdam University Press (publication forthcoming).

Noteworthy are Mansfield Kirby Talley, Portrait Painting in England: Studies in the Technical Literature before 1700
(London: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 1981); Susan E. James, The Feminine Dynamic in English Art,
1485–1603: Women as Consumers, Patrons and Painters (Burlington: Ashgate, 2009), 287–333; and Leemans,
Contextualizing Practical Knowledge in Early Modern Europe, 183–210. I am indebted to the work of Susan E. James,
as her work on Levina Teerlinc was an inducement to pursue research in this field, write my master thesis, and later
my PhD thesis.

Susan E. James, The Feminine Dynamic in English Art, 293–297.

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James does not provide a precise reference, but she has written about this precise topic in Susan E. James, Kateryn
Parr: The Making of a Queen (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999).

Susan E. James, The Feminine Dynamic in English Art, 294.

London, British Library: MS Cotton Galba B X, fol. 57; London, National Archives, State Papers: SP 1/76, fol. 10.

London, National Archives, State Papers: SP 1/58, fol. 147.

J.E. Sherwood, “A Variety of Response to the Henrician Reformation: Some Members of the Twelve Great Livery
Companies of London”, Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 50, no. 4 (1981): 347–348.

Anna Greening, “Tottel, Richard (b. in or before 1528, d. 1593)”, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 17
September 2015, doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/27573, accessed 29 February 2020. For Richard Tottel’s biographical details,
see H.J. Byrom, “Richard Tottell—His Life and Work”, The Library, no. 8 (1927–1928): 199–232. For further elaboration
of the lacunae Byrom left, see Anna Greening, “A 16th-Century Stationer and His Business Connections: The Tottell
Family Documents (1448–1719) at Stationers’ Hall”, in Arnold Hunt, Giles Mandelbrote, and Alison Shell (eds), The
Book Trade & Its Customers, 1450–1900: Historical Essays for Robin Myers (Winchester: St. Paul’s Bibliographies, New
Castle: Oak Knoll Press, 1997), 1–8.

The precise title is A Chronicle at Large and Meere History of the Affayres of Englande and Kinges. Connections
between Grafton and Tottel are discussed in Meraud Grant Ferguson, “Grafton, Richard (1506/7–1573)”, Oxford
Dictionary of National Bibliography, 17 September 2015, doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/11186, accessed 17 July 2020.

James, The Feminine Dynamic in English Art, 294.

Anonymous, A Very Proper Treatise, fols 5v-6r.

James, The Feminine Dynamic in English Art, 294.

Anonymous, A Very Proper Treatise, fol. 5v. This article focuses on examples using “himself” and “itself” as gendered
words. In some occasions, “his” is used, but this was used both as masculine and neutral. More examples can be
found in Figure 6.

In 1997, Michael Newman was able to trace this back to Chaucer; Anne Curzan goes as far as Beowulf. Curzan
discusses the work of Newman: Michael Newman, Epicene Pronouns: The Linguistics of a Prescriptive Problem (New
York: Garland, 1997). See Anne Curzan, Gender Shifts in the History of English (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2003), 59. I thank Professor Peter Petré of the University of Antwerp for his help on this topic.

The same reasoning can be made for Italian: colore and pigmento are masculine, in which case the reflexive pronoun
is se stesso.

New Haven, Yale University Library, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Mellon MS 33, fol. 2r.

Mellon MS 33, Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, General Collection of Rare Books and
Manuscripts, Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts, https://pre1600ms.beinecke.library.yale.edu/docs/
pre1600.mell033.htm, accessed 29 July 2020.

Ryan Szpiech, “Latin as a Language of Authoritative Tradition”, in Ralph Hexter and David Townsend (eds), The Oxford
Handbook of Medieval Latin Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 64.

Thomas Burman, “The Cultures and Dynamics of Translation into Medieval Latin”, in Ralph Hexter and David
Townsend (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Latin Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 86–87.

A scholar of reference in the domain of medieval and renaissance art treatises is Mary P. Merrifield, who transcribed
several authentic treatises and translated them in English. The majority of Merrifield’s working materials are texts in
Latin, with a few in Italian and French. The corpus of medieval recipe books for painters and illuminators published by
Mark Clarke contains a language index; from roughly 400 manuscripts, 259 contain Latin. The second most used
language is German: of these approximate 400 manuscripts, 70 contain German. The third place is taken by Italian:
48; followed by English: 43. Likewise, a consultation of Julius Schlosser’s Kunstliteratur (1924) reveals plenty of works
in Latin. This last source was consulted in Italian: Julius Schlosser Magnino, La Letteratura artistica: manuale delle
fonti della storia dell’ arte moderne (Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1996 [1935]); Mary. P. Merrifield, Medieval and
Renaissance Treatises on the Arts of Painting; and Mark Clarke, The Art of All Colours: Medieval Recipe Books for
Painters and Illuminators (London: Archetype Publications, 2001), 1, 123–124.

Eisenstein discusses this topic throughout her work. She also advocates that vernacular translations have anti-
intellectual implications, a topic not sustained in this article. See Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an
Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early-Modern Europe, Volumes I and II
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 63; 360.

Thomas Tanner stated that Freelove’s work was written in English but does report the work itself with a Latin title,
such as Albrecht van Haller in his catalogue. Perhaps this is the recognition of the original title. See above. Tanner,
Biblioteca Britannico-Hibernica, 297; and von Haller, Biblioteca Botanica, 668.

Christopher A. Knott, “Richard Tottell”, in James Bracken and Joel Silver (eds), The British Library Book Trade,
1475–1700, Dictionary of Literary Biography, 170 (Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1996), 311.

Paul A. Marquis, “Printing History and Editorial Design in the Elizabethan Version of Tottel’s Songes and Sonettes”, in
Stephen Hamrick (ed.), Tottel’s Songes and Sonettes in Context (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), 14.

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A Hundreth Good Pointes of Husbandrie is an instructional poem. The first edition of 1557 is a modest book of 26
pages and has a little elaborate title-page. It contains a small introduction, 100 points organised by month, a
conclusion, and an anonymous sonnet. The third edition of 1570 counts 88 pages and comes with an elaborated
frontispiece. It contains various introductory parts, an index, the 100 numbered points organised per month, an
overview of the months, comparisons, and a sonnet attributed to Tusser. In the year 1573, the same year as the
publishing of A Very Proper Treatise, the book was extended again to 500 points. This edition uses the same
frontispiece as the 1570 edition. Details about the first edition: STC 24372; Thomas Tusser, A Hundreth Good Pointes
of Husbandrie (London: Richard Tottel, 1557).

The first edition: STC 15388; Gerard Legh, The Accedens of Armory (London: Richard Tottill, 1562).

The first edition: STC 3393; John Bossewell, Workes of Armorie, Deuyded into Three Books, Entituled, the Concordes
of Armorie, the Armorie of Honor, and of Coates and Creastes (London: Richardi Totelli, 1572).

Songs and Sonnets, known as Tottel’s Miscellany, has a fascinating printing history. It is marked by translations,
arrangements, and re-arrangements. The first edition appeared on 5 June of the year 1557. The second thoroughly
revised edition appeared immediately after on 31 July, with a third one in the same year, and several other editions
in the years that followed. The first edition's details are: STC13860; Henry Howard, Songes and Sonettes (London:
Richardum Tottel, 1557). On the topic, see Jason Powell, “The Network Behind ‘Tottel’s’ Miscellany”, English Literary
Renaissance 46, no. 2 (2016): 193–224; Stephen Hamrick (ed.), Tottel’s Songes and Sonettes in Context (London:
Taylor & Francis Group, 2013); J. Christopher Warner, The Making and Marketing of Tottel’s Miscellany, 1557: Songs
and Sonnets in the Summer of the Martyrs’ Fires (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013); and Paul A. Marquis (ed.), Richard Tottel’s
Songes and Sonettes: The Elizabethan Version (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies,
2007).

For arrangements of Tottel’s Miscellany and adaptations for the audience, see especially the Chapters 1 and 3 of
Warner, The Making and Marketing of Tottel’s Miscellany, 1557.

Anonymous, A Very Proper Treatise, fol. 12v.

Anonymous, A Very Proper Treatise, fols 2r; 12v.

Anonymous, A Very Proper Treatise, fols 2v; 12v.

Leemans, Contextualizing Practical Knowledge in Early Modern Europe, 183–210.

Early modern books with hand-coloured initials by book owners are countless. A beautiful example is a copy of
Tottel’s publication of Gerard Legh’s The Accedence of Armorie (1591), which is found at the Library of Congress in
Washington (nDLC CR19.L5). This copy was signed by “Horace W. Smith”, presumably the writer. Another, earlier
handwriting appears in the margins of the book, together with the colouring of the frontispiece, initials, and
escutcheons. These practices are described in David Pearson, Provenance Research in Book History: A Handbook. The
British Library Studies in the History of the Book (London: The British Library & Oak Knoll Press, 1998), 41–44; and
Nigel Thorp, The Glory of the Page: Medieval & Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts from Glasgow University Library
(London: H. Miller, 1987).

Leemans, Contextualizing Practical Knowledge in Early Modern Europe, 156–157. For the concept of circumstantial
audience, this research is indebted to the work of Warner, who described the audience frequenting Tottel’s print
shop: Warner, The Making and Marketing of Tottel’s Miscellany. For the concept of the actual audience, this research
is indebted to the work of Jeffrey M. Muller and Jim Murrell. The concept used here is slightly adapted to the precise
book of interest: the anonymously printed A Very Proper Treatise. Muller and Murrell discussed the actual audiences
of Edward Norgate’s treatise Miniatura or The Art of Limning. The originally intended audience of this work was De
Mayerne only, but eventually a larger audience got hold of his work. This is a valid reason for fragmenting the
concept of the audience into intended audience and actual audience. See Muller and Murrell, “The Actual Audience,
Purposes, and Uses of Norgate’s Treatises and their Derivatives”, 14–20. This article focuses on the material copies
and archival research. Copying practices are not taken up in the current selection of the audience, even though it
could be argued that they provide evidence of book consumption.

Anonymous, A Very Proper Treatise, fol. 1r.

Keith Wrightson, English Society 1580–1680 (London: Routledge, 1982), 7.

Steven Hindle, “Social Classes and the Social Order”, in Arthur F. Kinney and David W. Swain (eds), Tudor England: An
Encyclopedia (New York: Garland Publishing, 2001), 655–656; Wendy Wall, The Imprint of Gender: Authorship and
Publication in the English Renaissance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), 56; and Wrightson, English Society
1580–1680, 4–8.

Anonymous, A Very Proper Treatise, fol. 1r.

Bartholomaeus Anglicus, Batman upon Bartholome his booke De proprietatibus rerum (London: Thomas East, 1582),
fol. 185 r.

Both of the heraldry book titles know several editions.

Anonymous, A Very Proper Treatise, fol. 11v.

James Daybell, The Material Letter in Early Modern England. Manuscript Letters and the Culture and Practices of
Letter-Writing, 1512–1635 (London: Palgrave, 2012), 23 and 74; Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edn 20 vols (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1989). Continually updated at http://www.oed.com/.

Leemans, Contextualizing Practical Knowledge in Early Modern Europe, 168–170.

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Material evidence is understood as notes and annotations, and interactions of all kinds. William Sherman points out
that not all writings in books qualify to be annotations (for instance, doodling). He refers to them as graffiti, in line
with the work of Juliet Fleming. See William H. Sherman, Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England
(Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008). For the work of Fleming, see Juliet Fleming, Graffiti and the
Writing Arts of Early Modern England (London: Reaktion, 2001). The notes which owners and users of A Very Proper
Treatise made, comply to the observations of Sherman.

Anonymous, A Very Proper Treatise, fol. 1r; Anonymous, A Very Proper Treatise (London: Richarde Tottill, 1581), fol. 1r.

Warner, The Making and Marketing of Tottel’s Miscellany, 161.

The sixth edition has a slight alteration in the title: A Proper Treatises. The STC number (17593) coincides with that of
A Profitable Booke, because the printer Thomas Purfoote printed and sold these two book titles together. For this
book title, light adjustments were made in the text, such as the omissions of the printed words in the margins. This
measure, as a few others, have principally led to a different layout of the work. For the various editions, the individual
copies, and the collation, see the Appendix in Leemans, Contextualizing Practical Knowledge in Early Modern Europe,
251–279.

Later book owners are disregarded in this article.

Strickland Gibson, “Brian Twyne”, Oxoniensia 5 (1940): 95–96.

Thomas Purfoot published the editions of 1583, 1588, 1596, and 1605.

Tracing a female (miniature) painter would be of great interest. However, it would be necessary to find further
evidence on Jenny Myll in order to draw this conclusion. The painterly daubs may or may not come from Jenny Myll.
There is no information on whether Myll was her maiden name, in which case a marriage would have made her
change her name. Jenny Myll (and variations of “Jeny”, “Jennifer”, and “Mill”) is a name that does not appear in The
National Archives, or the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

John Aubrey is discussed as an artist in Ruth Scurr, John Aubrey: My Own Life (London: Chatto and Windus, 2015),
194.

A potential connection between Robert Thorne and Elias Ashmole needs to be further explored, if at least Robert
Thorne is a descendent of the Thorne’s, a trader’s family of Bristol. The Thorne family was befriended by John Dee
and his son Arthur Dee. John Dee, in turn was a “cosin” and friend of William Aubrey, the great-grandfather of John
Aubrey. A hypothetical network between the owners of A Very Proper Treatise would be interesting but is at this stage
far from being confirmed. See Michael C.W. Hunter, John Aubrey and the Realm of Learning (London: Duckworth,
1975), 80, n. 8; and Anthony Powell, John Aubrey and His Friends (London: Hogarth Press, 1988).

This embellishment is a series of organised curls, seen also in the initials of Robert Freelove. See Anonymous, The Art
of Limming. A Reproduction of the 1573 Edition Newly Imprinted, edited by Society of Scribes and Illuminators
(London: The Federation of British Craft Societies, 1979); and Jason Scott-Warren, “Reading Graffiti in the Early
Modern Book”, Huntington Library Quarterly 73, no. 3 (2010), 367.

Heidi Brayman Hackel, Reading Material in Early Modern England: Print, Gender, and Literacy (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005), 158–159.

Leemans, Contextualizing Practical Knowledge in Early Modern Europe, 228–243.

Six volumes with Phebe’s signature were found, of which five show some interaction with her father’s signature.
Leemans, Contextualizing Practical Knowledge in Early Modern Europe, 279–280.

Leemans, Contextualizing Practical Knowledge in Early Modern Europe, 279–280.

STC 2025; Théodore de Bèze, Master Bezaes Sermons upon the Three First Chapters of the Canticle of Canticles
(Oxford: Joseph Barnes, 1587).

Dublin, TCD MS 793, fol. 184r contains the description of the three works in TCD EE.k.19 as being one volume.

For the calculation of the wedding date of James Ussher and Phebe Challoner, see Leemans, Contextualizing Practical
Knowledge in Early Modern Europe, 232–233.

The earliest sign of acquaintance or friendship goes back to at least 1601, where James borrowed a book from Phebe.
See Leemans, Contextualizing Practical Knowledge in Early Modern Europe, 236.

For literature on practices of copying in art, see Maddalena Bellavitis (ed.), Making Copies in European Art
1400–1600: Shifting Tastes, Modes of Transmission, and Changing Contexts. Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History,
Volume 286 (Leiden: Brill, 2018); and Christopher S. Wood, Forgery, Replica, Fiction: Temporalities of German
Renaissance Art (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2008). The concept of imitation is discussed in Eric Jan
Sluijter and Anton W.A. Boschloo (eds), Aemulatio: Imitation, Emulation and Invention in Netherlandish Art from 1500
to 1800: Essays in Honor of Eric Jan Sluijter (Zwolle: Waanders, 2011).

For the use of heraldry as decoration, see Thomas Woodcock and John Martin Robinson, The Oxford Guide to Heraldry
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

All stains in this volume rigorously coincide with imagery; Dublin, TCD, EE.k.19. See Leemans, Contextualizing
Practical Knowledge in Early Modern Europe, 239–240.

The last of the three books to be published was 1581, and the year in which James Ussher acquired the already
bound together volume, was 1605.

Anonymous, A Very Proper Treatise, fol. 1r.

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	British Art Studies
	September 2020
	Elizabethan and Jacobean Miniature Paintings in Context
	Edited by Catharine MacLeod and Alexander Marr
	Contents
	A Very Proper Treatise: Specialist Knowledge for a Non-Specialist Public
	Annemie Leemans
	Abstract
	Authors
	Acknowledgements
	Cite as

	Introduction: Positioning Limning
	Figure 1.

	Specialist Artistic Knowledge and the Dynamics of its Transmission
	Figure 2.
	Figure 3.
	Figure 4.
	Figure 5.

	Issues of Authorship
	Figure 6.

	Richard Tottel as a Compiler
	Figure 7.

	Non-Specialist Audience
	Figure 8.
	Figure 9.
	Figure 10.
	Figure 11.
	Figure 12.
	Figure 13.
	Figure 14.
	Figure 15.
	Footnotes
	Bibliography

	Licensing