Joseph Cundall and the Binding Design for the Illustrated Biographies of the Great Artists

The article identifies the Renaissance source for the cover design of a late nineteenth-century series published by Sampson Low, the Illustrated Biographies of the Great Artists. The designer and editor of the series, Joseph Cundall, had borrowed and modified the cover design from the early-sixteenth-century title-page of a Venetian edition of Terence, a design that had been created by Benedetto Bordon and had also once been used by Hans Holbein. The article is partly an explanation of the long-lasting design, and partly a contribution to the career of the designer, Cundall, who was also a sometime publisher, a historian of bookbinding and of wood-engraving, and an early photographer of works of art.