Erhard Ratdolt: Printer and Illustrator of Jacobus Publicius’s Ars Memoriae (1482 and 1485)

Abstract

This article examines the nature of the intervention by the renowned printer Erhard Ratdolt in the publication of the Ars Memorie by the Spanish humanist Jacobus Publicius, to whose editorial success he significantly contributed through the incorporation of engravings—some drawn from other texts printed in his Venetian workshop, and others devised specifically for this work. The changes observed between the first (1482) and second (1485) editions of the Ars Memorie coincide with a broader phase of reprinting by Ratdolt of other works in high demand at the time. We outline the editorial context of the period and analyse the characteristics of the engravings in Ratdolt’s edition, identifying their iconographic sources and assessing their alignment with the rhetorical doctrine expounded by Publicius. We conclude that some engravings reproduce the original images employed by Publicius himself, others are inspired by an earlier printed edition (Cologne, 1481), and a number were added directly by Ratdolt.