Canticum CanticorumCANTICUM CANTICORUM—SECOND LEAF(Much reduced)
On the sixth leaf, the Bride and Bridegroom are eating grapes in a vineyard, three maidens attending, all seated. In the cut below, the Bridegroom is standing outside a garden wall over which the Bride is watching him. An angel is entering the gate, other angels with drawn swords are on the wall.
It is supposed that these engravings were executed in the Netherlands: the female figures are said to be in the costume of the Court of Burgundy! There are several shields of arms to be found in three of the subjects, and these have given rise to long dissertations by writers on heraldry. Mr. Chatto's book has engravings of eighteen of them with descriptions. One is the shield of Alsace, another of the house of Würtemberg, a third of the city of Ratisbon; and the cross-keys, thefleur-de-lis, the black spread-eagle, and a rose (much like our Tudor rose), may be seen on others. Several copies of the 'Canticum' have been found, coloured and uncoloured. Two editions of the Canticum Canticorum are known; both appear to have emanated from Holland and the Low Countries, and both bear clear traces of the influence of the school of the Van Eycks.
The Figure Alphabet.—In the Print Room of the British Museum there is a curious little book (six inches by four inches in size) in which nearly all the letters of the alphabet are formed by grotesque figures of men. Except that it was bequeathed to the Museum by Sir George Beaumont, no one knows anything of its history; but internal evidence warrants us in attributing it to the work of an engraver of the first half of the fifteenth century. The cuts are printed in a kind of sepia-coloured distemper which can be easily wiped off by means of moisture. There is one very curious thing connected with this work. In the cut forming theletter L a young man is leaning on a sword, on the blade of which is plainly writtenLondon, and on the cloak of the youth lying below we read, in a current hand usual at that date, the wordBethemsted. The figures, grotesque as they are, were drawn by a better artist than those who designed the block books. We know that the art of engraving was in a very low state in England at the time we are speaking of; we should therefore rejoice if we could anyhow prove that these very early specimens of wood-cutting were done in this country.
Letter F
In the letter F, which we have given as an illustration, very much reduced from the original, a tall man is blowing a very long trumpet; a youth, bending down to form the crotch of the letter, is beating a tabor; while a nondescript animal lies couched at his feet.
Many other block books exist in the British Museum, the Bodleian Library, Oxford, the Spencer Library, Manchester, and in the large libraries on the Continent besides those we have mentioned. Some were printed, long after the introduction of printing, in Venice and in the cities of Lower Germany.
Before the beginning of the fifteenth century we have no record of any examples of wood-engraving of an artistic kind, except, as we have said, the designs on playing-cards, and the workmanship of these, whether it was by woodcuts or by a stencil-plate, was very crude. The art really came into existence in the first quarter of that famous fifteenth century. There were scores of men at that time who could carve excellently well in stone or wood, or who could designand make beautiful jewels, and some of these men, probably monks in their monasteries, as well as secular craftsmen, drew and cut the first wood-engraving. No one knows who they were.
Up to the year 1475 the original method of wood-cutting changed very little; nearly every print was in outline with a thick and a thin line. A few, such as those in the 'Ars Moriendi,' had a little shading of the most primitive kind. They were intended to be coloured, and, among the prints that have been preserved, experts say they can detect the manner of colouring prevalent in Upper or Lower Germany, the Rhine Provinces, or the Netherlands. Towards the end of the century came a transition. Shading was introduced and even cross-hatching was executed by the best wood-engravers of the time. The art took, as it were, a sudden bound, and in a few years attained a height which we at the end of the nineteenth century find it hard to excel. But of this we must speak in a future chapter.
Ars Memorandi.—This very curious book—much more curious than beautiful—contains fifteen designs and the same number of pages of engraved text. The designs are intended to assist the memory in reading the Gospels, and perhaps to assist the friars in preaching to the people. To the Gospel of St. John, with which the book begins, there are three cuts allotted, and as many pages of text; to St. Matthew five cuts and five pages of text; to St. Mark, three cuts and three pages of text; and to St. Luke, four cuts and four pages of text.
In every print an allegorical figure is represented; an eagle symbolical of St. John, an angel of St. Matthew, a lion of St. Mark, and an ox of St. Luke.
The first cut is intended to represent, figuratively, the first six chapters of St. John's Gospel. An upright eagle, with spread wings and claws, has three human heads—that of the Saint with a dove above it is in the middle, the headof Christ is on its right, and that of Moses on its left. A lute, from which three bells depend, lies across the eagle's breast; this is supposed to refer to the Marriage in Cana, and a little numeral tells us that the account of it is in the second chapter. Between the outspread claws is a bucket surmounted by a crown. These are symbolical of the Well of Samaria and the Nobleman's son at Capernaum in chapter iv. On the bend of the eagle's outspread right wing is a fish and the numeral 5, referring to the Pool of Bethesda in chapter v., and on the left wing are five barley loaves and two small fishes, and a small 6, referring to the parable of the loaves and fishes in the sixth chapter. This very singular book must have been a great favourite with the priests, and perhaps with the laity, for it was reprinted over and over again. It appears to have been of German origin.
Of the other block books mentioned in chapter ii. it would be tedious to give an account; they are very similar to those we have just described.
Historians tell us that in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the cities of the Netherlands were the most populous and the richest in all Western Europe. Bruges, Ghent, Liège and Brussels by their manufactures, and Antwerp by her commerce, in which she rivalled Venice, had become celebrated for their great wealth, the grandeur of their rulers, and the magnificence of their great Guilds. The more northern towns, too, Amsterdam, Haarlem, and Utrecht, and many cities of Germany, such as Mentz, Cologne, Strasburg, Nürnberg, Augsburg, and Basel, were rich and prosperous. It was among these cities that the sister arts of printing and wood-engraving first flourished.
From undoubted evidence accumulated by the patience and labour of many bibliographers, it appears that the art of printing by means of movable type was not invented by any one man, but was the result of a gradual development of the art of engraving. In the fifteenth century, as in the nineteenth, there was an ever-growing demand for school books. One of the most popular of these in the fifteenth century was the 'Donatus,' a grammar so called from the name of the author. There was also a Latin Delectus called a 'Catho.' These were cheap books and were usually printed from engraved wood blocks. These and the block books already described were contemporary, and the immediate forerunners of separate types. (See Blades, 'Pentateuch of Printing,' p. 12.)
In certain editions of the 'Speculum' there are to be seen woodcuts printed in ink of one colour and text in ink of another colour, from metal movable types. These types are rude in the extreme, far more so than the German Indulgence of 1454, the very earliest known dated piece of printing. There is no doubt that the Donatuses were at first printed from wood blocks, both in Germany and the Low Countries, but there is not a single Dutch block-book Donatus known, while there are some nineteen or twenty early type-printed Dutch Donatuses already catalogued. Therefore it appears likely that Gutenberg simply developed the process which had already been for some time in use in the Low Countries for Donatuses and similar books.
First Page of the Speculum Humanæ SalvationisFIRST PAGE OF THE SPECULUM HUMANÆ SALVATIONIS
The first book of importance that was printed at a pressand from movable type was the celebrated Bible[2]which Gutenberg produced at Mentz about the year 1455. About the same time it is asserted that Laurent Janszoon Coster of Haarlem issued theSpeculum Humanæ Salvationis, and much discussion has risen as to which book has the prior claim. The Dutch insist on Coster as being the proto-printer; the Germans not only assert the claim of Gutenberg but say that Coster is a myth! The controversy is still carried on and there is little likelihood that it will ever be decided.
In the year 1462 there was a small revolution in Mentz, owing to the rival claims of two Archbishops, and the city was sacked. The printers in the employment of Gutenberg and his partners, Fust and Peter Schoeffer, were scattered in every direction. Fifteen years afterwards printing-presses were to be found in every large city of Germany and the Netherlands, as well as in Italy and France; and about 1477, Caxton set up his first press in the precincts of Westminster Abbey.
Speculum Humanae Salvationis—'The Mirror of Man's Salvation.'—This was the first book, printed from type, that had wood engravings. It is a small folio containing fifty-eight cuts, each of which is divided into two subjects, inclosed in an architectural frame, in which is the title in Latin. The cuts are placed at the head of the pages, of which they occupy one-third. It is to be noticed that, though the cuts are all printed in brown ink, the text beneath them is printed in black: probably because the prints were to be coloured.
The arrangement and scope of this work are much like those of the 'Biblia Pauperum'; the subjects are taken from the Old and New Testaments, including the Apocrypha, and a few are from classic history.
The illustrations are from the first page:CasusLuciferi—'The Fall of Lucifer'—andDeus creavit hominem ad ymaginem et similitudinem suam—'God created Man after His own image and likeness.'
The Fall of LuciferSPECULUM: THE FALL OF LUCIFER(Size of the original cut)
We see that the arts of drawing and engraving had improved since the time of the 'Biblia Pauperum.' The figures are in better proportion: in many of the designs the folds of the dress fall more gracefully and the shading is more artistically done. There are four fifteenth-century editions of this work known, two with the text in Dutch, and two in Latin. Three editions are printed entirely with movable type, while part of the fourth—the second Latin edition—is certainly from engraved blocks. No one can tell the reason of this curious anomaly—we can only conjecture. Experts tell the various editions by the state of the cuts; when these are unblemished, it is assumed that they are of the first edition; when a few of the lines of the cuts are broken, it is supposed that they belong to the second edition; when many are broken, to the third edition, and so on.
Mr. Woodbery[3]has so graphically described the 'Speculum' that we cannot do better than quote his words: 'A whole series needs to be looked at before one can appreciate the interest which these designs have in indicating the subjects on which imagination and thought were then exercised, and the modes in which they were exercised. Symbolism and mysticism pervade the whole. All nature and history seem to have existed only to prefigure the life of the Saviour: imagination and thought hover about Him, and take colour, shape, and light only from that central form; the stories of the Old Testament, the histories of David, Samson, and Jonah, the massacres, victories, and miracles there recorded, foreshadow, as it were in parables, the narrative of the Gospels; the temple, the altar, and the ark of the covenant, all the furnishings and observances of the Jewish ritual, reveal occult meanings; the garden of Solomon's Song, and the sentiment of the Bridegroom and the Bride who wander in it, are interpreted, sometimes in graceful or even poetic feeling, under the inspiration of mystical devotion; old kings of pagan Athens are transformed into witnesses of Christ, and, with the Sibyl of Rome, attest spiritual truth.
The Grief of HannahTHE GRIEF OF HANNAH(From the Cologne Bible)
This book and others like it are mirrors of the ecclesiastical mind; they picture the principal intellectual life of the Middle Ages; they show the sources of that deep feeling in the earlier Dutch artists which gave dignity and sweetness to their works. Even in the rudeness of these books, in the texts as well as in the designs, there is anaïveté, an openness and freshness of nature, a confidence in limited experience and contracted vision, which make the sight of these cuts as charming as conversation with one who had never heard of America or dreamed of Luther, and who would have found modern life a puzzle and an offence. The author of theSpeculumlaments the evils which fell upon man in consequence of Adam's sin, and recounts them: blindness, deafness, lameness, floods, fire, pestilence, wild beasts, and law-suits (in such order he arranges them); and he ends the long list with this last and heaviest evil, that men should presume to ask "why God willed to create man, whose fall He foresaw; why He willed to create the angels, whose ruin He foreknew; wherefore He hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and softened the heart of Mary Magdalene unto repentance; wherefore He made Peter contrite, who had denied Him thrice, but allowed Judas to despair in his sin; wherefore He gave grace to one thief, and cared not to give grace to his companion." What modern man can fully realise the mental condition of this poet, who thus weeps over the temptation to ask these questions, as the supreme and direst curse which Divine vengeance allows to overtake the perverse children of this world?'
By far the most excellent book issued about this time isThe Psalter, printed by Gutenberg's former partners, Fust and Schoeffer, at Mentz in 1459. The initial letters, which are printed in red and blue and the Gothic type, all of which are in exact imitation of the best manuscripts, could not be excelled at the present day. The book belongs more to the History of Printing, but on account of its beautiful initial letters, which, it is said, were drawn and engraved by Schoeffer, we feel constrained to notice it.
Breydenbach's TravelsFRONTISPIECE TO BREYDENBACH'S TRAVELS(Much reduced)
ABook of Fablesissued from the press of Albrecht Pfister, of Bamberg, in 1461, may be mentioned as a very early work in which woodcuts and type were printed together; it is a small folio of twenty-eight leaves, containing eighty-five fables in rhyme in the old German language, illustrated with a hundred and one cuts. They are of little merit and show no advancement in the art of wood-engraving. The only known copy of this book, which is in the Wolfenbüttel Library, was taken away by the French under Napoleon's orders and added to the Bibliothèque Nationale; it was restored at the surrender of Paris in 1815.
We cannot give a list of all the books containing woodcuts that were issued in Germany at the end of the fifteenth century; their name is legion. We must, however, mention two or three of the most important.
In theCologne Bible, printed about the year 1475, there are one hundred and nine cuts, one of which we give as an example; they are about equal in merit to those in the 'Biblia Pauperum,' but show no improvement. The subject of the cut is 'The Grief of Hannah.' We see Elkanah and his two wives, Hannah and Peninnah, in a room from which the artist has obligingly taken away one of the sides. In the Nürnberg Bible, printed in 1482, we find the same set of cuts.
TheNürnberg Chronicle, often quoted as an example of early German wood-engraving, is a folio volume containing more than two thousand cuts, which include views of cities, portraits of saints and other holy men, scenes from Biblical and profane history, and a great many other subjects, produced, we are told, under the superintendence of Michael Wolgemuth and William Pleydenwurff, 'mathematical men skilled in the art of painting.' The same head does duty for the portrait of a dozen or more historians or poets—thesame portrait is given to many military heroes—the saints are treated in the same way, and even the same view serves for several different cities. The cuts are bolder and more full of colour than any we have had before, and so far may be said to be in advance, and this we must put down to the superintendence of Wolgemuth, who was an artist of repute. Chatto says they are the most tasteless and worthless things that are to be found in any book, ancient or modern—but this is too sweeping an assertion. The work was compiled by Hartman Schedel, a physician of Nürnberg, and printed in that city by Anthony Koburger in 1493.
The most important book of this time, so far as the woodcuts are concerned, is a Latin edition ofBreydenbach's Travels, which was printed in folio by Erhard Reuwich in Mentz in 1486. We give a much reduced copy of the frontispiece, which is without doubt the best example of wood-engraving of the fifteenth century. In this cut we see for the first time cross-hatching used in the shadows, in the folds of the drapery of the principal figure—Saint Catherine, who is the patroness of learned men—in the upper parts of the shields and beneath the top part of the frame. Bernard de Breydenbach, who was a canon of the cathedral of Mentz, was accompanied in his travels to the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem and the shrine of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai by John, Count of Solms and Lord of Mintzenberg, and Philip de Bicken, Knight. The arms of the three travellers are given in the cut with the names beneath them. Besides the frontispiece there are many other good engravings in this volume—a picture of Venice, five feet long and ten inches high; views of Corfu, Modon, in Southern Greece, and the country round Jerusalem. There are also many pictures of animals, such as a giraffe, a unicorn, a salamander, a camel, and a creature something like an ouran-outang. Travellers saw wonderful things in those days! It is a great pity that we do not know the names of the artistswho drew and engraved the cuts in this most interesting book.
The BibliomaniacTHE BIBLIOMANIACFrom 'Navis Stultifera' (The Ship of Fools)
Just at the close of the century we find the first humorous conception of German artists in the illustrations of theNavis Stultifera(Ship of Fools), written by Sebastian Brandt and printed at Basel in 1497. This very bold and original work had an immense success and was frequently reprinted. Every page is adorned with the antics of clowns and men in fools' caps and bells, in caricature of some absurdity, and the bibliomaniac is not spared: 'I have the first place among fools,' he is made to say; 'I have heaps of books which Irarely open. If I read them I forget them and am no wiser.' As will be seen by the cut, though the perspective of the draughtsman is not to be praised, the work of the engraver is excellent; the fineness of the lines is new to us and the shadows are well treated. Notice also the bindings of the books, with their bosses, hinges, and clasps; nearly all are folios, and four or five are ornamented with the same pattern. The decoration at the side is evidently copied from an illuminated manuscript. With this book we may fitly close our notice of German wood-engraving of the fifteenth century.
Although at this time Germany took the lead of all European countries so far as the illustrations of printed books are concerned, the transition from German to Italian art is like the change from the strong bleak winds of the North to the balmy air and sunny skies of the South. We are aware of the difference both of climate and of art in a moment: the very first picture presented to us reveals it. The Italians of the fifteenth century could not take up a handicraft without making it a fine art. Here is a title-page of a folioKalendarioproduced in Venice in the year 1476. This is the first title-page on which the contents of the book, the name of the author, the imprint of the publishers, who were also the printers, and the date of the issue of the book, were ever given. Mark the decoration. Though the publishers were Germans, the artist who drew this border must have been an Italian; and probably the engraver was an Italian also, for the book was produced at Venice. The character of the design suggests the work of an illuminator. The introduction of the printing-press must have interfered sadly with the writer of manuscripts and his brother the illuminator, and both were doubtless glad to avail themselves of the new art. The manuscript writer may have turned compositor, and the illuminator may have been transformed into a book decorator.
Folio KalendarioTITLE-PAGE OF A FOLIO KALENDARIO BY JOANNE DE MONTE REGIO, PRINTED AT VENICE IN 1476 (much reduced)
We have before us a facsimile of a cut called 'The Triumph of Love,' which appeared as one of the illustrations ofTriumphi del Petrarca, a book printed in Venice, in 1488. A man, seated with his hands bound behind him, is tied with a rope to a triumphal car which is drawn by four horses; on a ball of fire, which rises from the car, a blindfolded Cupid is shooting an arrow (apparently at the near leader); a great crowd of men and women, among whom we see a king and a mitred bishop, follow and surround the car, and on a distant hill we behold Petrarch conversing with his friend. There are two rabbits feeding calmly in theforeground, notwithstanding the danger of the horses' hoofs, and the usual conventional designs for grass and flowers. The groundwork of the border of this curious print is black, with an Italian design carefully cut out in white, with but little shadow. From the waviness of many of the lines which should be straight, we think this print must be from an engraving on metal.
Of all the wood-engravings executed in Italy in the fifteenth century, none can compare in excellence with those in theHypnerotomachia Poliphili(Dream of Poliphilo) printed in Venice, by Aldus, in 1499.[4]There are, in all, one hundred and ninety-two subjects, of which eighty-six relate to mythology and ancient history, fifty-four are pictures of processions and emblematic figures, thirty-six are architectural and ornamental, and sixteen vases and statues. They have been attributed to many different artists, the most probable of whom is Carpaccio. The subject of the 'Hypnerotomachia' has been described as a 'Contest between Imagination and Love'; it is a curious medley of all kinds of fable, history, architecture, mathematics, and other matters, seasoned with suggestions which do not reflect credit on the moral perceptions of its author, a Dominican monk, named Francesco Colonna. An enthusiastic admirer of this book thus poetically describes it: 'There is, perhaps, no volume where the exuberant vigour of that age is more clearly shown, or where the objects for which that age was impassioned are more glowingly described.
Poliphilo in the GardenPOLIPHILO IN THE GARDENFrom 'Hypnerotomachia Poliphili,' printed by Aldus at Venice in 1499
The romantic and fantastic rhapsody mirrors every aspect of nature and art in which the Italians then took delight—peaceful landscape, where rivers flow by flower-starred banks and through bird-haunted woods; noble architecture and exquisite sculpture,the music of soft instruments, the ruins of antiquity, the legends of old mythology, the motions of the dance, the elegance of the banquet, splendour of apparel, courtesy of manners, even the manuscript, with its cover of purple velvet sown with Eastern pearls—everything that was cared for and sought in that time when the gloom of asceticism lifted and disclosed the wide prospect of the world lying, as it were, in the loveliness of daybreak.' But it is more on account of the beauty of the cuts than the poetry of the author that this book has been so much admired and so frequently reprinted. Our illustration shows us where Poliphilo in his dream visits a bevy of fair maidens in a garden. These nymphs are not very beautiful, but, though they have such high waists, remark how gracefully their figures are drawn, and look at the action and the drapery of the damsel running away. The engraving is, without doubt, an exact facsimile of the artist's drawing; the lines are clear and crisp, and are evidently the work of a practised hand. The drawing of the gateway and trees is simply conventional. We are sorry that we have not room for more of the illustrations of this remarkable work.
In these early books it seems to have been nobody's business to record the name of the engraver who produced the illustrations, and, although the printer's name is generally very conspicuous in the colophon, the artist's name rarely, if ever, appears. But the work of certain masters of certain schools is generally recognised with ease, either by some peculiarity of manner, or by some particular mark. Thus one artist, who, towards the end of the fifteenth century, illustrated a few books printed in Italy, is known as 'the master of the dolphin,' because in most of his work this fish appears among the decorations. Another is known to us only by the name of 'the illustrator of the "Poliphilus,"' that quaint romance of Colonna which has taken a proud place in literature, not for its own intrinsic merits, butrather on account of the beauty of its woodcuts, the name of whose author is still a matter of conjecture.
We may here say a few words about Aldo Manuzio, better known in England by his Latinised name, Aldus Manutius, the celebrated printer, and some of the other early printers of Venice. One of the first to set up a press in Venice was Nicolas Jenson, a Frenchman, who had worked at Mentz, and who was the first to cut and introduce Roman type such as is now in use. At his death his business and plant were bought by a rich man, Andrea Torresano, of Asola, and the work was carried on successfully. Aldo Manuzio, who was born at Sermoneta, a village near Velletri, in 1450, received an excellent education, especially in Greek; and the celebrated Pico da Mirandola made him tutor to his nephews, Alberto and Leonardo Pio, Lords of Carpi. Alberto Pio, under his master's training, became a great lover of literature; and when Aldo conceived the idea of starting a printing-press, the young lord advanced him the necessary funds, and gave him a house in Venice near the Church of Sant' Agostino. Aldo then married a daughter of Torresano, and the two printing businesses were joined and carried on together under Aldo's direction. His house, we are told, was a veritable colony; besides the compositors' rooms and the press-rooms, he had closets for press-readers and studios for the special use of learned authors. The first 'printer's devil' was a little negro boy who had been brought by one of the men from Greece.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century the wood-engravers of Florence were celebrated for beautiful book illustrations in a distinct style. Those in theQuatro Reggie, Florence, 1508, are typical examples; their chief characteristics are, great breadth; masses of white and blackevenly balanced; and the frequent use of white lines out of masses of black.
Teobaldo ManuzioTEOBALDO MANUZIO—KNOWN AS ALDUS, PRINTER AT VENICE
Some of the fine borders to these early Italian wood-engravings owe their distinctive character to earlier work ofengravers on metal. Thus the borders round the illustrations of the Venice folio of 1491 of theTriumphs of Petrarchseem to be direct copies of engravings in metal by Filippo Lippi. The masses of white on a black background are very effective, and the strength of the colour increases the effect of the picture which the border surrounds.
Between 1474 and 1512 Aldus printed for the first time the works of thirty-three Greek authors. The works of Aristotle, brought out in four volumes, occupied three years. A learned Greek, Musurus of Crete, corrected the proofs, in which Aldus himself assisted. The workmen were nearly all Greeks. The Greek type was copied from the handwriting of Musurus, and the Italian, known as the Aldine, from the writings of Petrarch; this was cut by the celebrated artist-goldsmith, Francia of Bologna. The Aldine edition of Virgil (1501), now exceedingly rare, was the first book printed in this Italic type. Notwithstanding all his learning, energy, and philanthropy, Aldus did not succeed in his business. Many of his books were pirated, wars and insurrections interrupted him, the League of Cambray caused him to close his works from 1506 to 1510, and he sold his books at a rate too cheap to be remunerative.
The first printed edition ofÆsop's Fables, which appeared at Verona as early as 1481, and was reprinted at Venice in 1491, contains many excellent engravings inclosed in ornamental borders, thoroughly Italian in character. The figures are not unlike those in the 'Hypnerotomachia,' and we can readily imagine that they were drawn by the same artist, who has given us little more than outlines, which the engraver has well cut in facsimile. The fable of 'The Jackdaw and the Peacock' is particularly well done. An edition ofOvid's Metamorphosesappeared also at this time with tolerably good illustrations not so well engraved.
There are some curious little cuts in theEpistole di San Hieronymo Volgare, published in Ferrara in 1497, whichare more valuable for their originality than their beauty, either of drawing or engraving. The book was evidently intended for the use of the illiterate, to whom the quality of the pictures laid before them was of little consequence if they told the story that was meant for them to read with their eyes. The homely scene of Christ appearing like a Gardener with a hoe on His shoulder, addressing Mary Magdalene in an Italianpergola, would appeal to their feelings much more directly than the Transfiguration of Raphael.
A Bootmaker's ShopA BOOTMAKER'S SHOPFrom the 'Decameron,' printed in Venice in 1492
We do not find record of any other important wood-engravings in the history of printing in Italy at the end of the fifteenth century. Presses abounded everywhere, chiefly managed by Germans; there was scarcely an important town in Italy without a printer; few illustrated books, however, were issued at this time. An edition of Boccaccio's'Decameron,' with many excellent cuts, one of which, representing a bootmaker's shop, we give as an illustration, was printed by the brothers Gregorio at Venice in 1492. And there are some illustrations in a book called 'Fiore di Virtù,' which appeared in Venice in the same year, that may be praised for the work of the wood-engraver, though the designer shows a sad ignorance of the laws of perspective and proportion. And we have before us an illustration to a poem byPoliziano, in which Giuliano dei Medici is kneeling before the altar of the goddess Minerva, where we see graceful drawing by the artist and fairly good engraving. Itwas printed in Florence, but the type bears no comparison with the beauty of the Aldine books.
Frontispiece to TerenceFRONTISPIECE TO A 'TERENCE,' PRINTED AT LYONS IN 1493
The love of colour, which is born in all Italians, led them to develop a process of making pictures in chiaroscuro—by printing several wood-blocks one upon another, each block giving a separate tint. In fact, it was the beginning of the modern colour-printing. The invention of the new process was claimed by Ugo da Carpi, who reproduced several of the designs of Raphael. In the beginning of the next century we find pictures printed in four different colours—trying to imitate water-colour, or, rather, distemper drawings. (See p.99.)
At Lyons, about the same time, there was an illustrated edition of 'Terence' published, with well-executed woodcuts, from which we are able to give only the frontispiece, 'The Author writing his book.' It is sufficient to show that the engraving is the work of a practised hand.
Before we begin our brief history of wood-engraving in France it will be well to speak of the technical part of the new art in the fifteenth century. We have already stated that the engraving of the 'St. Christopher' and other large prints were cut with a knife on planks of apple or pear or other close-grained wood; but there has always been much doubt about the small book illustrations which appeared in various countries quite at the end of the century. The discovery, however, of some engraved blocks of metal solved the difficulty. In those days workers in metal were to be found in all large towns; the age of moulding and casting everything that could be cast had not then arrived: of course, coins and medals were made in the foundry; but handwork of the most perfect kind on metal was as common as wood-carving for the churches.
Experts have discovered twisted lines in some of the old prints; a line in a woodcut may easily be broken but it can hardly be bent, and it is now asserted that many of the woodcuts, including the beautiful initial letters in Fust and Schoeffer's 'Psalter,' were really engraved on metal. The view of London at the head of the first page of theIllustrated London Newsis, we are told, cut in brass; Mulready's well-known envelope, engraved on brass by the celebrated wood-engraver, John Thompson, may be seen in the South Kensington Museum; and scores of other examples of metalwork of this kind might be cited.
Ornaments from Heures a l'Usaige de ChartreORNAMENTS FROM 'HEURES A L'USAIGE DE CHARTRE'(Published by Vostre)
And there is no doubt that the famous illustrations of the Missal, or 'Book of Hours,' issued in Paris between 1490 and 1520, were engraved on metal of some kind, perhaps on copper or some amalgam of tin and copper. There was a metal known as 'latten' in those days, and probably the engraving was done on some material of this kind, not too hard to cut, not too soft to wear away. It will be noticed that the groundwork of many borders in the French books is filled with little white dots,cribléit was called; these dots are, in the first place, to imitate similar work in the gold grounds of the borders of illustrated missals, and, in the second place, to save the labour of cutting away so much of the metal as would be required for a white ground. These dots were evidentlymade by means of a sharp and finely-pointed tool driven by a blow into the metal. (See page59.)
France was not early in the field with illustrated books, but she quickly made up for the delay by the excellence of her work, more especially in ornament. In 1488, Pierre Le Rouge, a printer and publisher, sent forth a book, 'La Mer des Histoires,' which contains many charming designs, from which beautiful wall-papers we know of have been borrowed; they are as well engraved as similar work at the present day, and only needed better 'over-laying' by the pressman, an art but little practised at that time. This book contains the first decorative work by wood-engraving we have met with, and shows the great excellence of art in France at this period. There is a good example, though much reduced in size, among the illustrations of Mr. William Morris's paper 'On the Woodcuts of Gothic Books,' that he read before a meeting of the Society of Arts in January 1892: it is printed in the Journal of the Society for February 12th.
Besides Le Rouge, there were in Paris at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries four celebrated printers, who were also publishers, whose books command our attention. Their names are Simon Vostre, Antoine Verard, Thielman Kerver, a German, and Guyot Marchant; they all published the 'Book of Hours,' illustrated and decorated by the best artists and engravers of their time. There was likewise a printer named Philippe Pigouchet, who was also an engraver on wood, and who began by cutting blocks for Simon Vostre, and afterwards turned publisher on his own account. An important point to notice in connection with the illustrations of French 'Books of Hours' at this time is that they are nearly all inspired by German artists and nearly all copied from illuminated MSS.
Death of the VirginTHE DEATH OF THE VIRGIN(From a Missal published by Simon Vostre)
At the end of the fifteenth century the art of illumination was at its height in Paris. No one excelled the exquisite work of Jean Foucquet, servant to the King, and Jean Perreal, painter to Anne of Brittany. Manuscripts containing their miniature paintings command a large sum whenever they are offered for sale at the present day. These artists, it is said, gave their aid to the publishers of the 'Book of Hours' (Heures à l'usage de Rome), which had such an enormous sale that each publisher produced an edition for himself. Mr. Noel Humphreys asserts, in his 'History of the Art of Printing,' that no fewer than sixty editions were published between 1484 and 1494. In his 'Introduction to the Study and Collection of Ancient Prints,' Dr. Willshire says: 'Towards the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries some well-known French printers—Pigouchet, Jean Dupré, Antoine Verard, and Simon Vostre—published some beautiful "Books of Hours," ornamented with engravings having some peculiar characters. The chief of these were that the ground and often the dark portions of the print were finelycribléor dotted white, serving as a means of "killing black"—a practice then prevalent among French engravers; secondly, each page of text was surrounded by a border of little subjects engraved in the same manner, and often repeated at every third page.... Not unfrequently they were printed in brilliant ink on fine vellum, that they might compete with the illuminated MS. "Books of Hours" then in fashion. The prints decorating these books have been generally considered to be impressions from wood.' But Mr. Linton says they are from engraved blocks of metal; and every practical man will, we are sure, agree with the great living Master of Wood-engraving.
Our first illustration is from a 'Book of Hours,' or Missal, published by Simon Vostre in 1488. It represents 'The Death of the Virgin,' a subject that was always chosen by the illustrator of religious books in those days; in our account of wood-engraving in the next two centuries we shall frequently meet with it among the works of the great artists.