FIG. 13.—Marginal Border. From Kerver’s “Psalterium Virginis Mariæ.” 1509.FIG. 13.—Marginal Border. From Kerver’s “Psalterium Virginis Mariæ.” 1509.
Whether with or without color, the engravings in theLivres d’Heuresare beautiful. Each page is enclosed in an ornamental border made up of small cuts, which are repeated in new arrangements on succeeding leaves; here and there a large cut, usually representing some Scriptural scene, is introduced in the upper portion of the page, and the text fills the vacant spaces. Not infrequently the taste displayed is Gallic rather than pious, and delights in profane legends and burlesquefancies which one would not expect to meet in a prayer-book. These volumes were so highly prized by foreign nations for the beauty of their workmanship, that they were printed in Flemish, English, and Italian. Those which were issued by Verard, Vostre, Pigouchet, and Kerver were the best products of the early French art.[34]The secular works which contain woodcuts are hardly worthy of mention, excepting Guyot Marchand’s La Danse Macabre, first published in 1485, which is a series of twenty-five spirited and graceful designs, marked by French vivacity and liveliness of fancy. In all early French work the peculiar genius of the people is not so easily distinguishable as in this example, but it is usually present, and gives a national characteristic to the art, notwithstanding the indubitable influences of the German archaic school in the earlier time, and of the Italian school in the first years of the sixteenth century.
French wood-engraving is remarkable, in respect to its technique, for the introduction ofcriblée, or dotted work, which has previously[35]been described, into the backgrounds on which the designs are relieved. This mode of engraving is probably a survival from the goldsmiths’ work of the first part of the fifteenth century, and it is not unlikely that, as Renouvier suggests, thesecribléegrounds were meant to represent the gold grounds on which both miniatures and early paintings were relieved. From an examination of the peculiarities of these engravings, some authors[36]have beenled to maintain that they were taken off from metal plates cut in relief, and nearly all writers are ready to admit that this was sometimes, but not always, the case. The question is unsettled; but it is probable that wood was sometimes employed, and it would be impossible to determine with certainty what share in these prints belongs to wood-engraving and metal-engraving respectively. In general, French wood-engraving, in its best early examples at Paris, was characterized by greater fineness and elegance of line, and by more feeling for artistic effects, than was the case with German book-illustration; but the Parisian chronicles, histories, botanical works, and the like, possessed no greater merit than similar publications at Lyons or in the German cities, and their influence upon the middle classes in furthering the advance of education and taste was probably much less.
England was far behind the other nations of Europe in its appreciation of art, and wood-engraving throve there as feebly as did the other arts of design. The first English book with woodcuts was Caxton’s Game and Playe of the Chesse, published about 1476, the first edition of which was issued two years earlier, without illustrations. It is supposed by some writers that Caxton imported the blocks from which these cuts were printed, as he did the type for his text; and it is certain that in later years wood-blocks and metal-plates were brought over from the Continent for illustrating English books. It is not improbable that the art was practised by Englishmen as a part of the printer’s craft, and that there were no professional wood-engravers for many years; indeed, Chatto doubts whether the art was practised separately even so late as Holbein’s time. The cuts inCaxton’s works, and in those of the later printers, Wynkyn de Worde and Richard Pynson, were altogether rude and uninteresting in design. If the honor of them belongs to foreign rather than English workmen, no great hurt is done to English pride.
PFIG. 14.—From Ovid’s “Metamorphoses.”Venice, 1518 (design, 1497).REVIOUS to the time of Dürer wood-engraving in the North, as has been seen, was little more than a trade, and has its main interest to the scholar as an agent of civilization; in Italy it first became a fine art, a mode of beautiful expression. The Italians, set in the midst of natural loveliness and among the ruins of ancient art, had never wholly lost the sense of beauty; they may have paid but slight attention to what was about them, but they lived life-long in the daily sight of fair scenes and beautiful forms, which impressed their senses and moulded their nature, so that, when with the revival of letters they felt the native impulses of humanity toward the higher life stirring once more in their hearts, they found themselves endued with powers of perception and appreciation beyond any other people in the world. These powers were not the peculiar possession of a well-born class; the centuries had bred them unobserved into the nature of the race, intothe physical constitution of the whole people. The artisan, no less than the prince, took delight in the dawn of art, and welcomed it with equal worship. Nor was this artistic instinct the only common acquisition; the enthusiasm for letters was likewise widely shared, so that some of the best manuscripts of the classics have come down to modern times from the hands of humble Florentine workmen. Italy, indeed, was the first country where democratic civilization had place; here the contempt of the Northern lord for the peasant and the mechanic had never been wide-spread, partly because mercantile life was early held to be honorable, and partly because of peculiar social conditions. The long, uninterrupted intercourse with the remains of Roman civilization in the unbarbarized East, the contact with Saracenic civilization in the South, the culture of the court of the Two Sicilies, and the invariably levelling influence of commerce, had made Italy the most cosmopolitan of European countries; the sharp and warlike rivalry of small, but intensely patriotic, states, and the necessity they lay under of utilizing for their own preservation whatever individual energy might arise among them, perhaps most of all the powerful example of the omnipresent Church in which the son of a swineherd might take the Papal Throne, had contributed to make it comparatively easy to pass from lower to higher social ranks; the aristocratic structure of society remained, but the distinction of classes was obscured, and the excellence of the individual’s faculties, the energy and scope of his powers, were recognized as the real dignities which were worthy of respect. In this recognition of the individual, and this common taste for art and letters, lay the conditions of new and vigorousintellectual life; they resulted in the great age of Italy. It was this in the main that made possible the popular fervor for the things of the mind in the Italian Renaissance, to which nothing else in the world’s history is comparable but the popular enthusiasm of the modern Revolution for liberty. Dante gave his country a native language, the Humanists gave it the literature of Rome, the Hellenists the literature of Greece; poets sang and artists painted with a loftiness and dignity of imagination, a sweetness and delicacy of sentiment, an energy and reach of thought, a music of verse and harmony of line and color, still unsurpassed. The gifts which these men brought were not for a few, but for the many who shared in this mastering, absorbing interest in the things of the mind, in beauty and wisdom, which was the vital spirit of the Italian Renaissance.
FIG. 15.—The Creation. From the “Fasciculus Temporum.” Venice, 1484.FIG. 15.—The Creation. From the “Fasciculus Temporum.” Venice, 1484.
FIG. 16.—Leviathan. From the “Ortus Sanitatis.” Venice, 1511.FIG. 16.—Leviathan. From the “Ortus Sanitatis.” Venice, 1511.
Thus it happened that when the German printers brought over the Alps the art which was to do so much toward civilizing the North, they found in Italy a civilization already culminated, hastening on, indeed, to a swift decline; they found the people already in possession of the manuscripts which they came to reproduce and multiply, and the princes, like Frederick of Urbino,[37]“ashamed to own a printed book” among their splendid collections, where every art seemed to vie in making beautiful their volumes of vellum and velvet. Wood-engraving, too, which here as elsewhere accompanied printing, could be of no use in spreading ideas and preparing the way for a popular knowledgeand appreciation of art; it was to receive rather than bestow benefits; it was to be made a fine art before it could perform any real service. The printers, however, proved the utility of their art, and were soon busily employed in all the Italian cities in reproducing the precious manuscripts with which Italy was stored; and from the first they called wood-engraving to their aid. It is true that the earliest Italian woodcuts—which were, however, Germanic in design and execution—were as rude as those of the Northern workshops. They appeared for the first time in an edition of Cardinal Turrecremata’s Meditations, published at Rome by Ulric Hahn, in 1467. In Venice, although without much doubt the art had been practised there by the makers of cards and prints long before, woodcuts were first introduced by the German printers. The accompanying cuts are fair examples of their work (Figs. 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21), and at the same time interesting reflections ofpopular fable. The views of Venice are examples of the very common attempts to represent the actual appearance of the great cities, which possess sometimes an historic value. This Germanic work is but slightly different from that already noticed; but as soon as the art became naturalized, and was practised by the Italian engravers, it was characterized at once by beauty of design. There is something more than promise in an edition of Æsop’s Fables, published at Verona in 1481, as may be seen from these examples (Figs.22, 23), taken from a Venetian reprint of 1491. An Ovid, printed at Venice in 1497, is adorned with several excellent woodcuts, such as this of The Contest of Apollo and Pan (Fig. 19); and there are other works of similar merit belonging to the same period. The finest example of Italian wood-engraving before it reached its highest perfection in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, or Dream of Poliphilo, is a volume which contains the epistles of St. Jerome, and a description of cloistral life. This is adorned with a large number of small woodcuts of simple beauty, marked by grace and feeling, and full of reminiscences of moods and sentiments which have long ceased to hold a place in human hearts (Figs. 24, 25, 26). Here is pictured the religious life; the monk’s cell is barely furnished, but it is seldom without shelves of books and a window opening upon a distant prospect; the teacher expoundsto his pupils the great volume on the desk before him; the priest administers consolation to the dying and the bereaved, and encourages the feeble of spirit and the sinful; the preacher discourses to his brethren and the crowding people the Blessed Word; the nuns of the sisterhood perform their daily offices of religion, the panel of the confessional slides back for them, they wash the feet of the poor, they sit at table together; all the pieties of their life, which knew no close human relation, which knew only God and mankind, are depicted; and now and then there is a thought, too, of the worldly life outside—here the beautiful youths stop to gaze at the convent gates barred against them. There are other cuts, also, of landscape, towers, and cities. The great themes of religion are not forgotten—the Resurrection and the Judgment unfold their secrets of justice and of the life eternal. In all the religious spirit prevails, and gives to the whole series a simple and sweet charm. One may look at them long, and be content to look many times thereafter.
FIG. 17.—The Stork. From the “Ortus Sanitatis.” Venice, 1511.FIG. 17.—The Stork. From the “Ortus Sanitatis.” Venice, 1511.
FIG. 18.—View of Venice. From the “Fasciculus Temporum.” Venice, 1484.FIG. 18.—View of Venice. From the “Fasciculus Temporum.” Venice, 1484.
FIG. 19.—The Contest of Apollo and Pan. From Ovid’s “Metamorphoses.” Venice, 1518 (design, 1497).FIG. 19.—The Contest of Apollo and Pan. From Ovid’s “Metamorphoses.” Venice, 1518 (design, 1497).
FIG. 20.—Sirens. From the “Ortus Sanitatis.” Venice, 1511.FIG. 20.—Sirens. From the “Ortus Sanitatis.” Venice, 1511.
FIG. 21.—Pygmy and Cranes. From the “Ortus Sanitatis.” Venice, 1511.FIG. 21.—Pygmy and Cranes. From the “Ortus Sanitatis.” Venice, 1511.
FIG. 22.—The Woman and the Thief. From “Æsop’s Fables.” Venice, 1491 (design, 1481).FIG. 22.—The Woman and the Thief. From “Æsop’s Fables.” Venice, 1491 (design, 1481).
FIG. 23.—The Crow and the Peacock. From “Æsop’s Fables.” Venice, 1491 (design, 1481).FIG. 23.—The Crow and the Peacock. From “Æsop’s Fables.” Venice, 1491 (design, 1481).
This volume of St. Jerome was, however, only a worthy forerunner of the Dream of Poliphilo, in which Italian wood-engraving, quickened by the spirit of the Renaissance, displayed its most beautiful creations. It was written by aVenetian monk, Francesco Columna, in 1467, and was first printed by Aldus, in 1499. It is a mystical work, composed in Italian, strangely mingled with Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic, and its theme, which is the praise of beauty and of love, is obscured by abstruse knowledge and by much varied learning. It recalls Dante’s poem in some ways. The Renaissance Dominican, too, was a lover with a human Beatrice, of whom his dream is the memorial and the glory; like Dante, he seems to symbolize, under the beauty and guardianship of his gracious lady, a body of truth and a theory of life; and, as in Dante’s poem Beatrice typified Divine Wisdom and theology, his Polia stood for the new gospel of this world’s joy, for the loveliness of universal nature and the perfection of ancient art; in adoring her he worships them, and in celebrating her, as alike his goal and his guide through the mazes of his changing dream, he exalts the virtue and the hope that lay in the Renaissance ideal of life. There is, perhaps, no volume where the exuberant vigor of that age is more clearly shown, or wherethe objects for which that age was impassioned are more glowingly described. This 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, splendor of apparel, courtesy of manners, even the manuscript, with its covers of purple velvet sown with Eastern pearls—everything which 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. Poliphilo wanders through fields and groves bright with this morning beauty, voyages down streams and loiters in gardens that are filled with gladness; he is graciously regaled in the palace, he attends the sacrifice in the temple, where his eyes are charmed by every exquisite ornament of art; he encounters in his progress triumphal processions, as they wind along through the pleasant country, bewildering the fancy with their lavish magnificence as of an Arabian dream; chariots that are wrought out of entire precious stones, carved with bass-reliefs from Grecian fables, and drawn by half-human centaurs or strange animals,—elephants, panthers, unicorns, in trappings of silk and jewels, pass before him, bearing exalted in their midst sculptured figures, Europa and the Bull, Leda and the Swan, Danaë in the shower of gold, and, last and most wonderful, a vase, beautifully engraved and adorned, out of which springs a golden vine, with leaves of Persian selenite and grapes of Oriental amethyst; and about all are groups of attendant nymphs, fauns, satyrs, mænads, and lovely women, crowned with flowers, with instruments of music in their hands, chanting the praise ofValor and of Pleasure; again, he lingers among ancient ruins and remembers their perished glory, and falls into reflection, like that of the traveller whom he describes, “among those venerable monuments which still make Rome the queen of cities; where he sees,” thinks Poliphilo, “the hand of Time, which punishes the excess of pride; and, seeking then on the steps of the amphitheatre the heads of the legions and that conquering eagle, that Senate whose decrees made and unmade the kings of the world, those profound historians, those eloquent orators, he finds there only a rabble of beggars, to whom an ignorant and ofttimes lying hermit preaches, only altars without honor and saints without a believer; the artist reigns alone in that vast enclosure; pencil in hand, rich with memories, he sees the whole of Rome, her pomp and her glory, in one mutilated block which a fragment of bass-relief adorns.” Inspiredby these thoughts, Poliphilo delays among like relics of the past, and reads on shattered tombs the brief inscriptions which tell the history of the lost lovers who lie beneath, while the pagan burden of their sorrow, and the pagan calm of the “adieu” with which each inscription ends, fill him with tender sentiment. So his dream drifts on through ever-shifting scenes of beauty and ever-dying moments of delight to the hour of awakening. These scenes and these moments, which Francesco Columna called out of his imagination, are pictured in the one hundred and ninety-two designs (Figs. 27, 28, 29, 30) which adorn his book; here in simple outline are the gardens, groves, and streams, the noblebuildings, the bath, the palace and the temple, the feast, the allegory of life, the thronging triumphs, the sacrifices, the ruins, the tombs, the lover and his beloved, the priestess and the goddess, cupids, bacchanals, and nymphs—a profusion of loveliness, joy, and revel; here, too, among the others, are some dramatic scenes: the lion and the lovers, Poliphilo fainting before Polia, and his revival at the touch of her lips; altogether, they are a precious memorial of the Renaissance spirit, reflecting alike its passion for the new learning, passing into useless and pedantic knowledge, and its ecstacy of the senses passing into voluptuous delight.
FIG. 24.—The Peace of God. From “Epistole di San Hieronymo Volgare.” Ferrara, 1497.FIG. 24.—The Peace of God. From “Epistole di San Hieronymo Volgare.” Ferrara, 1497.
FIG. 25.—Mary and the Risen Lord. From “Epistole di San Hieronymo Volgare.” Ferrara, 1497.FIG. 25.—Mary and the Risen Lord. From “Epistole di San Hieronymo Volgare.” Ferrara, 1497.
FIG. 26.—St. Baruch. From the “Catalogus Sanctorum.” Venice, 1506.FIG. 26.—St. Baruch. From the “Catalogus Sanctorum.” Venice, 1506.
FIG. 27.—Poliphilo by the Stream. From the “Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.” Venice, 1499.FIG. 27.—Poliphilo by the Stream. From the “Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.” Venice, 1499.
FIG. 28.—Poliphilo and the Nymphs. From the “Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.” Venice, 1499.FIG. 28.—Poliphilo and the Nymphs. From the “Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.” Venice, 1499.
FIG. 29—Ornament. From the “Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.” Venice, 1499.FIG. 29—Ornament. From the “Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.” Venice, 1499.
These designs, of which the few that can be given afford only a slight idea, so various are they in beauty and feeling, have been attributed to many illustrious masters, Giovanni Bellini and Raphael among others; but perhaps the conjecture which assigns them to Benedetto Montagna is the most probable. They show what remarkable artistic taste there was even in the inferior masters of Italy. “They are,” says Professor Sydney Colvin,[38]“without their like in the history of wood-cutting; they breathe the spirit of that delightful moment when the utmost of imaginativenaïvetéis combined with all that is needed of artistic accomplishment, and in their simplicity are in the best instances of a noble composition, a masculine firmness, a delicate vigor and graceful tenderness in the midst of luxurious or even licentious fancy, which cannot be too much admired. They have that union of force and energy with a sober sweetness, beneath a last vestige of the primitive, which in the northern schools of Italy betokens the concurrent influence of the school of Mantegna and the school of Bellini.” Italy never afterward produced so noble a monument of the art as this work of its early days.
FIG. 30.—Poliphilo meets Polia. From the “Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.” Venice, 1499.FIG. 30.—Poliphilo meets Polia. From the “Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.” Venice, 1499.
FIG. 31.—Nero Fiddling. From the Ovid of 1510. Venice.FIG. 31.—Nero Fiddling. From the Ovid of 1510. Venice.
FIG. 32.—The Physician. From the “Fasciculus Medicinæ.” Venice, 1500.FIG. 32.—The Physician. From the “Fasciculus Medicinæ.” Venice, 1500.
FIG. 33.—Hero and Leander. From the Ovid of 1515. Venice.FIG. 33.—Hero and Leander. From the Ovid of 1515. Venice.
The art did not, however, fall into decline immediately. It is true that wood-engraving never won for itself in Italya place in the popular esteem like that which it held in the North; the Italians were too fond of color, and possessed too many master-pieces of the nobler arts, to set a very high value on such simple effects; but, nevertheless, in the first quarter of the sixteenth century there appeared in Venice, the chief seat of the art, many volumes which were illustrated by woodcuts of excellent design, such as this of Nero (Fig. 31), from an Ovid of 1510, the representation of the physician attending a patient stricken with the plague (Fig. 32), from theFasciculus Medicinæ, by Johannes de Ketham, published in 1500, and that of Hero and Leander (Fig. 33), from an Ovid of 1515. Of Venetian work of lesser merit, the representation of Dante and Beatrice (Fig. 34), from a Dante of 1520, and the cuts (Figs. 35, 36, 37, 38), from the Catalogue of the Saints, by Petrus de Natalis, published in 1506, may serve as examples. The wholeItalian series, even as illustrated by the cuts here given, exhibits a greater variety of interest, knowledge, and feeling than does the work of any other nation, and affords a lively notion of the manifold elements that went to make up the Renaissance; it reflects fable, superstition, learning, the symbolism of mediæval theology, ancient myth and legend, the rise of the modern feeling for nature, the passion for beauty and art; and, ranging from the life of the scholar and the nunnery to that of the beggar and the plague, it pictures vividly contemporary times, while it adds to the interest of history and humanity the interest of beauty. Its prime, however, was of brief duration. Venetian engraving, and that of the other Italian cities also, continued to be marked by thissimplicity and skill in design until 1530, when cross-hatching was introduced from the North; after that date wood-engraving shared in the rapid decline into which all the arts of Italy fell in consequence of the internal troubles of the country, which, from the time of the sack of Rome, in 1527, became the common battlefield of Europe for generations. But, in the short space during which the Italians practised the art with such success, they showed that they had mastered it, and had come to an understanding of its capacities, both as a mode of drawing in black line and as a mode of relief in white line, such as appears in their arabesques and initial letters, examples of which are scattered through this volume. They came to this mastery and understanding before any other nation, because of their artistic instinct; for the same reason, they did not surpass the rudeness of German workmen inskill more than they excelled in simple beauty of design the best of early French work, which was characterized by such confused exuberance of fancy and such profusion of detail. They breathed into the art the Italian spirit, and its presence made their works beautiful.
FIG. 34.—Dante and Beatrice. From the Dante of 1520. Venice.FIG. 34.—Dante and Beatrice. From the Dante of 1520. Venice.
FIG. 35.—St. Jerome Commending the Hermit’s Life. From “Epistole di San Hieronymo.” Ferrara, 1497.FIG. 35.—St. Jerome Commending the Hermit’s Life. From “Epistole di San Hieronymo.” Ferrara, 1497.
FIG. 36.—St. Francis and the Beggar. From the “Catalogus Sanctorum.” Venice, 1506.FIG. 36.—St. Francis and the Beggar. From the “Catalogus Sanctorum.” Venice, 1506.
FIG. 37.—The Translation of St. Nicolas. From the “Catalogus Sanctorum.” Venice, 1506.FIG. 37.—The Translation of St. Nicolas. From the “Catalogus Sanctorum.” Venice, 1506.
To the Italian love of color is due the development of what is known as engraving in chiaroscuro, a process which, although it had been practised in Germany since 1506, was claimed as a new invention by Ugo da Carpi (1460-1523), at Venice, in 1516, and was carried by the Italians to the highest point of perfection which it reached in the sixteenth century. It was anattempt to imitate the results of painting; two, and sometimes several, blocks were used in the process; on the first the outlines and heavy shadows of the design were engraved, and a proof was taken off; on the second block the lighter parts of the design were engraved, and an impression was taken off from this on the same print in a different color, or, at least, in a color of different intensity; thus the original proof was overlaid with different tints by successive impressions from different blocks, and a variety of shades was obtained in the finished engraving, analogous to those which the painter gets by laying flat tints over each other with the brush. Great care had to be taken in laying the original proof down on the second block, so that the lines of the design should fall in exactly the same position as in the first block; it is owing to a lack of exactness in thissuperposition of the proof on the later blocks that some of these engravings are so displeasing. There was considerable variety in the detail of the process. Sometimes the impression from the outline block was taken last; sometimes the different impressions were taken off in different colors, but usually in the same color of different intensities; sometimes the impressions were taken off on colored paper. The Italians used four blocks at an early time, and were able to imitate water-colors with some success. All of their prints in this kind are marked by more artistic feeling and skill than those of the Germans, even when the latter are by masters. This application of the art, however, is not a true development, and really lies outside its province.
FIG. 38—Romoaldus, the Abbot. From the “Catalogus Sanctorum.” Venice, 1506.FIG. 38—Romoaldus, the Abbot. From the “Catalogus Sanctorum.” Venice, 1506.
A FIG. 39.—From an Italian Alphabet of the 16th Century.A FIG. 39.—From an Italian Alphabet of the 16th Century.
AFIG. 39.—From an ItalianAlphabet of the 16th Century.LREADY, before the Dream of Poliphilo had been published in Venice, wood-engraving in the North had passed into the hands of the great German master who was to transform it; in the studio of Albert Dürer (1471-1528) it had entered upon its great period. The earlier German engravers, whose woodcuts in simple outline, shadowed by courses of short parallel lines, showed a naïve spirit almost too simple for modern taste, a force ignorant of the channels of expression and feeling inexpert in utterance, did not know the full resources of their art. It was not until the very close of the fifteenth century, when they discarded the aid of the colorists, and sought all their effects from simple contrast of black and white, that they conceived of wood-engraving as an independent art; even then their sense of beauty was so insignificant, and their power of thought was so feeble, that their works have only an historical value. Dürer was the first to discover the full capacities of wood-engraving as a mode of artistic expression; it had begun to imitate the methods of copperplate-engraving before his day, but he saw immediately that it could not equal the rival art in that delicacy of line and harmony of tone on which copperplate-engraving depends for its excellence; the materials and processes of wood-engraving required different methods, and Dürer prescribed them. He increased the size of the cuts, gave breadth and boldness to the lines, and obtained new and pleasing effects from strong contrasts of black and white. He thus showed the true method of wood-engraving; but the art owes to him much more than this: he brought to the practice of it the hand and brain of a great master, lifted it, a mechanic’s trade, into the service of high imagination and vigorous intellect, and placed it among the fine arts—a deed of far more importance than any improvements in processes or methods, even though they have such brilliant consequences as followed Bewick’s later innovations. He taught the art a language, put meaning into its words, and made it capable of conveying the ideas which art can express, and of spreading them and the appreciation of them among the people.
The application of Dürer’s genius to wood-engraving could not fail of great results. He recorded in it the German Renaissance. Civilization had gained much in freedom of thought, independence of action, and community of knowledge, as well as in a respect for nature; but it was still ruled by the devout and romantic spirit of the Middle Ages. Dürer shared in all the intellectual life of his time, alike in its study of antiquity and its revolt against Rome; he was interested in all the higher subjects for which his contemporaries cared, and his versatile genius enabled him often to work with them in preparing the modern age, buthe was not touched by the modern spirit; in thought and feeling he remained deeply religious, fantastic, picturesque, mystical—in a word, mediæval. He did not possess the modern sense of limitation, the power to restrict himself to realizing a definite conception, the power to disregard and refuse what cannot be clearly seen and expressed, which the modern age, when it came, gave to the perfect artist; he was not content to embody his idea simply, directly, and forcibly; he supplemented it with secondary thought and subordinate suggestion in unmeasured profusion; he did not know when his work was done, but kept on adding to it in the true wandering, Gothic spirit, which never finishes its task, because its main purpose does not control it; he allowed his fancy to encumber the noble work of his imagination, and allegory to obscure the truth he uttered; he was not master of himself, but was hurried on by the fire and speed of his own genius along paths which led only to the obscure and the inaccessible. His imagination was deeply suggestive, straightforward, and marvellously fertile in invention; but he interpreted the imaginative world in terms of daily and often homely life; he represented ideal characters, not under ideal forms, but realistically under forms such as he saw about him; he knew beauty only as German beauty, and life and its material surroundings only as German life and German civilization; and thus his works are characterized by an uncouthness which offends minds not habituated to German taste. But there is no need to be irritated at this realism, this content with gross forms, or to wish with Vasari that he had been born in Italy and had studied antiquity at Florence, whereby he would have missed that national endowment which individualized him and gavehim a peculiar charm. The grotesqueness disappears as the eye becomes acquainted with the unfamiliar, and the mind is occupied with the emotion, the intellectual idea, and imaginative truth, expressed in these sometimes ugly modes, for they are of that rare value which wins forgiveness for far greater defects of formal beauty than are apparent in Dürer’s work. Although his spirit was romantic and uncontrolled, and his imagination dealt with forms not in themselves beautiful, he possessed the greatest energy of genius of all the masters who have intrusted their works to wood-engraving, and with him it was a favorite art.
FIG. 40.—St. John and the Virgin. Vignette to Dürer’s “Apocalypse.”FIG. 40.—St. John and the Virgin. Vignette to Dürer’s “Apocalypse.”
FIG. 41.—Christ Suffering. Vignette to Dürer’s “Larger Passion.”FIG. 41.—Christ Suffering. Vignette to Dürer’s “Larger Passion.”
The first of the four famous series of designs by which his skill in wood-engraving is best known was published in1498, but it was probably finished before that time. It consisted of fifteen large cuts in illustration of the Apocalypse of St. John, to which a vignette (Fig. 40) of wonderful nobility and simplicity was prefixed. The theme must have been peculiarly attractive to him, because of the opportunities it afforded for grandeur of conception and for the symbolism in which his genius delighted; it was supernatural and religious; it dealt with images and thoughts on which the laws of this world imposed no restraint, and revealed visionary scenes through types of awe, terror, and mystery, the impressiveness of which had almost no human relation.In attempting to bring such a theme within the compass of the powers of expression which art possesses, he strove to give speech to the unutterable, and to imprison the unsubstantial, so that it is no wonder if, although the fertility of invention and power of drawing which he displayed, and the variety and richness of effect which he obtained, made his work a masterpiece of art, yet much of what he intended to express is not readily comprehended.
FIG. 42.—Christ Mocked. Vignette to Dürer’s “Smaller Passion.”FIG. 42.—Christ Mocked. Vignette to Dürer’s “Smaller Passion.”
This series was succeeded by three others, in which the human interest is far greater, although they are not unmarked by fantastic invention; they were the Larger Passion of our Lord, a series of twelve cuts, including this impressive vignette (Fig. 41), Christ Suffering; the Life of the Virgin, a series of twenty cuts; and the Smaller Passion of our Lord (Figs. 42, 43), a series of thirty-six cuts, the vignette to which (Christ Mocked) is a design marvellous for its intensity, for its seizure of the malignant, mocking spirit in devilish possession of every lineament of the face and every muscle working in that sinuous gesture, for the ideal endurance in the Saviour’s attitude, which needs not those symbols of his sufferings beside him for pity, though Dürer’s genius must crowd every corner with thought and suggestion. These three great series were published about 1511,and were probably the work of the previous six years; they are full of force, and are characterized by tenderness of sympathy and fervor of devotion, as well as by the imaginative insight and power of thought which distinguish all his works. They quickly became popular; several editions were issued, and they were copied by more than one engraver, especially by the famous Italian, Marc Antonio Raimondi, who reproduced the Smaller Passion on copperplate. They marked an epoch in the history of wood-engraving. It is not possible to over-estimate the debt whichthe art owes Dürer, who thus suddenly and by his own artistic insight revealed the power and dignity which wood-engraving might attain, opened to it a great career, and was its first master in the era of its most splendid accomplishment.
FIG. 43.—The Descent into Hell. From Dürer’s “Smaller Passion.”FIG. 43.—The Descent into Hell. From Dürer’s “Smaller Passion.”
Besides these connected series of woodcuts, many others, making in all three hundred and forty-seven, are attributed to Dürer; and of these one hundred and seventy are undoubtedly from his hand. They represent nearly all aspects of German life in the early sixteenth century, and, taken all together, afford a nearly complete picture of his time, not only in its general characteristics, but in detail. They show for the first time the power of wood-engraving to produce works of real artistic value, and its power to record faithfully the vast variety of contemporary life. Dürer was himself the highest product of the new freedom of individual development in the North, but his individuality gathered the age within itself, and became universal in knowledge and interest; so that he was not only the Reformer of German art and the greatest master in it, but was in a true sense the historian of the German Renaissance; it is to his works, and not least to his wood-engraving, that the student of that age must have recourse for the truest record of its thought and feeling at their best.
In his later years he designed two other works which rank among the chief monuments of wood-engraving; they were the Car and Gate of Triumph, executed for the Emperor Maximilian, who was then the great patron of the art, and employed it to perpetuate the glory of his reign and realm. The Emperor, although the Italians made a jest of him, was one of the most interesting characters in Germanhistory. He illustrates in practical life, as Dürer in artistic and intellectual life, the age that was passing away, and he foreshadows more than Dürer the age that was coming on. He was romantic by nature, a lover of the chivalric and picturesque elements of mediæval life; he was skilful in all the manly sports which belonged to a princely education—a daring hunter, and brave in the lists of the tourney; in affairs of more moment he had always some great adventure in hand, the humbling of France, or the destruction of Venice, or the protection of Luther; at home he was devoted to reform, to internal improvements, to establishing permanently the orderly methods of civilization, to the spread of commerce, and to increasing the safety and facility of communication. He left his empire more civilized than he found it; and if he was unsuccessful in war, he was, in the epigram of the time, fortunate in love, and won by marriage what the sword could not conquer, so that he prepared by the craft of his diplomacy that union of the vast possessions of the House of Austria which made his grandson, Charles V., almost the master of Europe. He was a lover of art and books; and, being puffed up with imperial vanity, he employed the engravers and printers to record his career and picture his magnificence. The great works which by his order were prepared for this purpose were upon a scale unthought of before that time, and never attempted in later days. The Triumphal Car, which he employed Dürer to design, was a richly decorated chariot drawn by six pair of horses; the Emperor is seated in it under a canopy amid female figures, representing Justice, Truth, and other virtues, who offer him triumphal wreaths; the driver symbolizes Reason, and guides the horses by the reins of Nobility and Power;the wheels are inscribed with the words Magnificentia and Dignitas, and the horses are attended by allegoric figures of swiftness, foresight, prudence, boldness, and similar virtues. The whole design was seven feet four inches in length, and about eighteen inches high. The Gate of Triumph was similarly allegoric in conception; it was an arch with three entrances, the central one being the gate of Honor and Power, and those upon the right and left the gates of Nobility and Fame; the body of the arch was ornamented with portraits of the Roman Emperors from the time of Cæsar, shields of arms which indicated the Emperor’s descent and alliances, portraits of his relatives and friends, and representations of his famous exploits. The size of the cut, which was made up of ninety-two separate pieces, was about ten and a half feet by nine and a half feet. In both of these works Dürer was limited by the directions which were given him, and neither of them are equal to his original creations.
FIG. 44.—The Herald. From “The Triumph of Maximilian.”FIG. 44.—The Herald. From “The Triumph of Maximilian.”