Gateways to the Book: Frontispieces and Title Pages in Early Modern Europe

Gateways to the Book investigates the complex image–text relationships between frontispieces and illustrated title pages on the one hand and texts on the other, in European books published between 1500 and 1800. Although interest in this broad field of research has increased in the past decades, many varieties of title pages and a great deal of printers and books remain as yet unstudied. The fifteen essays collected in this volume tackle this field with a great variety of academic approaches, asking how the images can be interpreted, how the texts and contexts shape their interpretation, and how they in turn shape the understanding of the text.

Gitta Bertram teaches art history at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart (Germany). She has published a monograph, translations and articles on early modern title pages, including Peter Paul Rubens as a Designer of Title Pages (2018).
Nils Büttner teaches art history at the State Academy of Arts Stuttgart and specialises in the visual culture of Germany and the Netherlands from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries. He has published monographs and articles on Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter Bruegel, Rubens, Rembrandt and Vermeer, as well as the history of landscape painting and the history of drawings and prints. He has also written numerous catalogue essays, and has served as a curator for several museum exhibitions.
Claus Zittel teaches German literature and philosophy at the Universities of Stuttgart (Germany) and Venice (Italy). He is Deputy Director of the Stuttgart Research Center for Text Studies and of the Bembo Laboratory at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, and has published monographs, translations and articles pertaining to early modern culture, including Theatrum Philosophicum. Descartes und die Rolle ästhetischer Formen in der Wissenschaft (Akademie 2009).