La première face du Ianus franc̜ois
This exhibit has shown several examples of readers taking advantage of the endpapers or large open spaces on a text page for their illustrations; unusually, this user marks the front cover of this book with a sketch of a man’s profile. What is particularly fascinating about this illustration is that one can see the remains of several pencil drawings emulating the portrait on the cover, an interaction between readers throughout the centuries.
This text is a history of one of the French Dauphins, so it is possible that this sketch is of him. It demonstrates the process of thinking about the book’s content and using drawing as a way to think through that content.
Moreover, there are erased pencil markings of the same profile in several places throughout the book. This is an example of someone interacting not with the text alone, but using another person’s marginalia as a launching point for their own artistic renditions, since the pencil drawings inside the book were likely drawn by a different person. Of particular interest is the later erasure of these drawings, which points to changing opinions on marginalia throughout the centuries: once acceptable, now not. As a medium for marginalia, pencil adds an additional level of ephemerality to pen. It can be erased more easily than pen, but still leaves impressions.
