Colard Mansion

Colard Mansion was a 15th-century Flemish scribe and printer who is known as the first printer of a book with copper engravings. He was the most important early printer of Bruges and had emerged in the 1470s from the tradition of manuscript-book production for the aristocracy.

Mansion began his career as a scribe in the mid-fifteenth century Bruges, which was a center for the copying of deluxe manuscript books. His principal patron was Louis of Bruges, but he was also a scribe for other nobleman in the circle of the Burgundian court. In 1458 he copied the Romuleon of Roberto della Porta for Philip the Good. Patronage of Louis of Bruges during his printing years was especially significant since he possessed the largest manuscript library among the nobles at the court of Philip the Good. Approximately one-third of Mansion’s 26 published texts were based on manuscripts from this library.

As a printer Mansion followed the tradition of the translators who prepared manuscripts for great noblemen and added personal prologues and epilogues to the works he published. His edition of Boccaccio’s De la ruine des nobles homes et femmes was perhaps the first printed book to use copper-plate engravings. It is unknown whether he was trying to produce illuminations at a lower cost or more quickly than contemporary miniaturists could by hand. Perhaps he was also trying to impress the nobility by applying mechanical devices to art. His prints were intended for French aristocracy, and most of his books are in French, in fact only one of his printed titles was in Latin.