Unknown Versions of Typographical Design of Elizabethan Bibles Published in Moscow in 1757—1762

Abstract

The article analyzes previously unknown examples of the design of the Elizabethan Bible with additional engravings. We are talking about three monuments discovered by the author of this article in the collections of the Library of the Moscow Theological Academy of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Central Andrei Rublev Museum of Old Russian Culture and Art.The Elizabethan Bible (after the Empress Elizabeth Petrovna) is commonly referred to as the Bible, which was edited in preparation for a new edition and first published in St. Petersburg in 1751. The book was intended to be illustrated. The Synodal illustration design of the edition included 49 engravings on the Old Testament subjects (according to the number of the books of the Old Testament) was realized by the masters of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, I.A. Sokolov and G.A. Kachalov based on the drawings by I.E. Grimmel in 1751—1753. The decorated copper boards became exemplary, and as they became worn, they were copied again by the masters of the Moscow Synodal Printing House, where 15 illustrated reprints with complete sets of engravings were published between 1756 and 1817. All cases of typographical design of the Bible editions are described in the reference works, and some scholarly publications of individual proprietary copies are undertaken. These are convolutions of printed text, illustrations made according to the Synodal design, and also individually published additional engravings of Western European origin. It is shown that the folios of the identified specimens correspond to the bibliographic descriptions of their corresponding editions in the reference works, with additional illustrations pasted into the folds. Copper engravings of the four Evangelists and King David may have been imprinted in copies directly at the Moscow Synodal Printing House, using prints made between 1745—1757 by the engravers A.F. Zubov and V.A. Ikonnikov.