Sirens as printer’s marks
Left: Georg Variscus, Venice, 1599. Right: Nicolaus Marschalk, d. 1525.
During the Renaissance, with the rise in popularity of books due to the printing press, two-tailed sirens were a favorite printer’s device, especially in Italy, and of course, with the now-famous siren of Nicolaus Marschalk. I have a theory as to why.
To start, let’s look at the relationship between sirens and books. As scholar Thomas Dale writes:
“For other monastic writers the Siren represented more specifically the dangers of reading pagan literature. Peter Damian (d. 1072) warned his monks that those lovers of the “sirens” of pagan literature had abandoned the faith that should be their legitimate spouse and had forsaken chastity for those actress-courtesans.”
Throughout medieval writing and into the Renaissance, sirens stood for temptation, flattery, and other vices. Sirens in Homer’s Odyssey lured men not just with the promise of sex, but the lure of forbidden knowledge. They offered to tell him the future, and it was this suggestion that lured him so. As another academic, Allison Lucas, wrote:
“The frontal, double-tailed siren might have appealed to the publisher as an alluring antiquarian device, a symbol of the attractions of learning, an apotropaic charm to ward off evil, or simply as a way of naturalizing himself to Venice.”
While the church did not oppose the printing press outright, the ease that people could make books meant the church was no longer the one in control of the spread of knowledge. In my opinion, sirens were chosen as printer’s marks because sirens stood for temptation with knowledge, and it may have been a sly dig at the church. Many of these sirens are crowned.
Let’s take a look at these sirens.
Juan Joffre, about 1530. Valencia, Spain. University of Barcelona.
Giovanni Varisco, Venice, active 1558-1590. University of Barcelona.
Simone Tini, 1584? Brescia and Milan. University of Barcelona. He printed music.
Giorgio Varisco, 1610? Venice. University of Barcelona.
Heredi di Giorgio Varisco, Venice. University of Barcelona.
Two tailed siren, Nikolaou Sarou, Greek. Wikipedia.
Vrbani Bolzanii by Urbano Bolzanio Publication 1550, Venice. Internet Archive.
Valentin Schumann of Leipzig, 1542. Penn Libraries call number: GC5 Em830 525a 1. Flickr.
Antonio Bulifon, 1649-1707, Naples. University of Barcelona.
Marco Varisco, active 1598-1607. Venice. University of Barcelona.
I have found a few others, mostly on art auction websites. But these are by far the loveliest and the best sourced two tailed sirens I've found.
I'm going to close by linking to George Seferis’s siren, likely inspired by these printer's devices, Marie Laurencin's siren, in the front paper of a bestiary she illustrated; and modern bookplates with two tailed sirens.
There's also an eternity siren as a printer's mark.
Dale, Thomas E. A. "The Monstrous." A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe. Ed. Rudolph, Conrad. Malden: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2006. 253-73.
Luchs, Alison. The Mermaids of Venice : Fantastic Sea Creatures in Venetian Renaissance Art. Harvey Miller Publishers, 2010. Chapter 1. Tome: Marine Hybrids in Late Fifteenth Century Book Decoration. Page 53.
Goudriaan, Koen. “The Church and the Market: Vernacular Religious Works and the Early Printing Press in the Low Countries, 1477-1540 Instructing the Soul, Feeding the Spirit, and Awakening the Passion.” Cultures of Religious Reading in the Late Middle Ages : Instructing the Soul, Feeding the Spirit, and Awakening the Passion, 2013, pp. 93–116.