At page 7 of the same Disquisition it is said that the figures in the Game of Chess, the Mirror of the World, and other works printed by Caxton “are, in all probability, not the genuine productions of this country; and may be traced to books of an earlier date printed abroad, from which they were often borrowed without acknowledgment or the least regard to the work in which they again appeared. Caxton, however, has judiciously taken one of the prints from the ‘Biblia Pauperum’ to introduce in his ‘Life of Christ.’ The cuts for his second edition of ‘Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales’ may perhaps safely be considered as the genuine invention and execution of a British artist.”Although I am well aware that the printers of the fifteenth century were accustomed to copy without acknowledgment the cuts which appeared in each other’s books, and though I think it likely that Caxton might occasionally resort to the same practice, yet I am decidedly of opinion that the cuts in the “Game of Chess” and the “Mirror of the World” were designed and engraved in this country. Caxton’s Game of Chess is certainly the first book of the kind which appeared with wood-cuts in any country; and I am further of opinion that in no book printed previous to 1481 will the presumed originals of the eleven principal cuts in the Mirror of the World be found. Before we are required to believe that the cuts in those two books were copied from similar designs by some foreign artist, we ought to be informed in what work such originals are to be found. If there be any merit in a first design, however rude, it is but just to assign it to him who first employs the unknown artist and makes his productions known. Caxton’s claims to the merit of “illustrating” the Game of Chess and the Mirror of the World with wood-cuts from original designs, I conceive to be indisputable.Dr. Dibdin, in a long note at pages 33, 34, and 35 of the Typographical Antiquities, gives a confused account of the earliest editions of books on chess. He mentions as the first, a Latin edition—supposed by Santander to be the work of Jacobus de Cessolis—in folio, printed about the year 1473, by Ketelaer and Leempt. In this edition, however, there are no cuts, and the date is only conjectural. He says that two editions of the work of Jacobus de Cessolis on the Morality of Chess, in German and Italian, with wood-cuts, were printed, without date, in the fifteenth century, and he adds: “Whether Caxton borrowed the198cuts in his second edition from those in the 8vo. German edition without date, or from this latter Italian one, I am not able to ascertain, having seen neither.” He seems satisfied that Caxton hadborrowedthe cuts in his book of chess, though he is at a loss to discover the party who might have them tolend. Had he even seen the two editions which he mentions, he could not have known whether Caxton had borrowed his cuts from them or not until he had ascertained that they were printed previously to the English edition. There is a German edition of Jacobus de Cessolis, in folio, with wood-cuts supposed to be printed in 1477, at Augsburg, by Gunther Zainer, but both date and printer’s name are conjectural. The first German edition of this work with wood-cuts, and having a positive date, I believe to be that printed at Strasburg by Henry Knoblochzer in 1483. Until a work on chess shall be produced of an earlier date than that ascribed to Caxton’s, and containing similar wood-cuts, I shall continue to believe that the wood-cuts in the second English edition of the “Game and Playe of the Chesse” were both designed and executed by an English artist; and I protest against bibliographers going a-begging with wood-cuts found in old English books, and ascribing them to foreign artists, before they have taken the slightest pains to ascertain whether such cuts were executed in England or not.The wood-cuts in the Game of Chess and the Mirror of the World are equally as good as the wood-cuts which are to be found in books printed abroad about the same period. They are even decidedly better than those in Anthony Sorg’s German Bible, Augsburg, 1480, or those in Veldener’s edition of the Fasciculus Temporum, printed at Utrecht in the same year.It has been supposed that most of the wood-cuts which appear in books printed by Caxton and De Worde were executed abroad; on the presumption that there were at that period no professed wood engravers in England. Although I am inclined to believe that within the fifteenth century there were no persons in this country who practised wood engraving as a distinct profession, yet it by no means follows from such an admission that Caxton’s and De Worde’s cuts must have been engraved by foreign artists. The manner in which they are executed is so coarse that they might be cut by any person who could handle a graver. Looking at them merely as specimens of wood engraving, they are not generally superior to the practice-blocks cut by a modern wood-engraver’s apprentice within the first month of his noviciate. I conceive that there would be no greater difficulty in finding a person capable of engraving them than there would be in finding the pieces of wood on which they were to be executed. Persons who have noticed the embellishments in manuscripts, the carving, the199monuments, and the stained glass in churches, executed in England about the time of Caxton, will scarcely suppose that there were no artists in this country capable of making the designs for those cuts. There is in fact reason to believe that in England in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the walls of apartments, more especially in taverns and hostelries, frequently contained paintings, most probably in distemper, of subjects both from sacred and general history. That paintings of sacred subjects were not unusual in churches at those periods is well known.In most of the cuts which are to be found in books printed by Caxton, the effect is produced by the simplest means. The outline of the figures is coarse and hard, and the shades and folds of the draperies are indicated by short parallel lines. Cross-hatchings occur in none of them, though in one or two I have noticed a few angular dots picked out of the black part of a cut in order that it might not appear like a mere blot. The foliage of the trees is generally represented in a manner similar to those in the background of the cut of the knight, of which a copy is given at page 193. The oak leaves in a wood-cutIV.42at the commencement of the preface to the Golden Legend, 1483, are an exception to the general style of Caxton’s foliage; and represent what they are intended for with tolerable accuracy. Having thus noticed some of the earliest books with wood-engravings printed in England, I shall now resume my account of the progress of the art on the Continent.In an edition of Ptolemy’s Cosmography, printed at Ulm in 1482 by Leonard Holl, we have the first instance of maps engraved on wood. The work is in folio, and the number of the maps is twenty-seven. In a general map of the world the engraver has thus inserted his name at the top: “Insculptum est per Johannē Schnitzer de Armssheim.”IV.43At the corners of this map the winds are represented by heads with puffed-out cheeks, very indifferently engraved. The work also contains ornamental initial letters engraved on wood. In a large one, the letter at the beginning of the volume, the translator is represented offering his book to Pope Paul II. who occupied the see of Rome from 1464 to 1471.Each map occupies two folio pages, and is printed on the verso of one page and the recto of the next, in such a manner that when the book is open the adjacent pages seem as if printed from one block. What may be considered as the skeleton of each map,—such as200indications of rivers and mountains,—is coarsely cut; but as the names of the places are also engraved on wood, the execution of those thirty-seven maps must have been a work of considerable labour. In 1486 another edition with the same cuts was printed at Ulm by John Regen at the cost of Justus de Albano of Venice.The idea of Leonard Holl’s Ptolemy was most likely suggested by an edition of the same work printed at Rome in 1478 by Arnold Bukinck, the successor of Conrad Sweinheim. In this edition the maps are printed from plates of copper; and from the perfect similarity of the letters, as may be observed in the names of places, there can be no doubt of their having been stamped upon the plate by means of a punch in a manner similar to that in which a bookbinder impresses the titles at the back of a volume. It is absolutely impossible that such perfect uniformity in the form of the letters could have been obtained, had they been separately engraved on the plate by hand. Each single letter is as perfectly like another of the same character,—the capital M for instance,—as types cast by a letter-founder from the same mould. The names of the places are all in capitals, but different sizes are used for the names of countries and cities. The capitals at the margins referring to the degrees of latitude are of very beautiful shape, and as delicate as the capitals in modern hair-type.At the back of some of the maps in the copy in the King’s Library at the British Museum, the paper appears as if it had received, when in a damp state, an impression from linen cloth. As this appearance of threads crossing each other does not proceed from the texture of the paper, but is evidently the result of pressure, I am inclined to think that it has been occasioned by a piece of linen being placed between the paper and the roller when the impressions were taken.In the dedication of the work to the Pope it is stated that this edition was prepared by Domitius Calderinus of Verona, who promised to collate the Latin version with an ancient Greek manuscript; and that Conrad Sweinheim, who was one of the first who introduced the art of printing at Rome, undertook, with the assistance of “certain mathematical men,” whom he taught, to “impress” the maps upon plates of copper. Sweinheim, after having spent three years in preparing these plates, died before they were finished; and Arnold Bukinck, a learned German printer, completed the work, “that the emendations of Calderinus,—who also died before the book was printed,—and the results of Sweinheim’s most ingenious mechanical contrivances might not be lost to the learned world.”IV.44201An edition of Ptolemy in folio, with the maps engraved on copper, was printed at Bologna by Dominico de Lapis with the erroneous dateM.CCCC.LXII.This date is certainly wrong, for no work from the press of this printer is known of an earlier date than 1477; and the editor of this edition, Philip Beroaldus the elder, was only born in 1450, if not in 1453. Supposing him to have been born in the former year, he would only be twelve years old in 1462. Raidel, who in 1737 published a dissertation on this edition, thinks that two numerals—XX—had accidentally been omitted, and that the date ought to be 1482. Breitkopf thinks that oneXmight be accidentally omitted in a date and pass uncorrected, but not two. He rather thinks that the compositor had placed anIinstead of anL, and that the correct date ought to stand thus:M CCCC L XLI—1491. I am however of opinion that no instance of the Roman numerals,L XLI, being thus combined to express 91, can be produced. It seems most probable that the date 1482 assigned by Raidel is correct; although his opinion respecting the numerals—XX—being accidentally omitted may be wrong. It is extremely difficult to account for the erroneous dates of many books printed previous to 1500. Several of those dates may have been accidentally wrong set by the compositor, and overlooked by the corrector; but others are so obvious that it is likely they were designedly introduced. The bibliographer who should undertake to enquire what the printers’ reasons might be for falsifying the dates of their books, would be as likely to arrive at the truth, as he would be in an enquiry into the reason of their sometimes adding their name, and sometimes omitting it. The execution of the maps in the edition of De Lapis is much inferior to that of the maps begun by Sweinheim, and finished by Bukinck in 1478.Bukinck’s edition of Ptolemy, 1478, is the second book which contains impressions from copper-plates. Heineken, at page 233, refers to the “Missale Herbipolense,” folio, 1481, as the first book printed in Germany containing a specimen of copper-plate engraving. Dr. Dibdin, however, in the 3rd volume of his Tour, page 306, mentions the same work as having the date of 1479 in the prefatory admonition, and says that the plate of a shield of arms—the only one in the volume—is noticed by Bartsch in his “Peintre-Graveur,” vol. x. p. 57. The printer202of the edition of 1481 appears from Heineken to have been George Reyser. In the “Modus Orandi secundum chorum Herbipolensem,” folio, printed by George Reyser, “Herbipoli,” [at Wurtzburg,] 1485, there is on folioII.a copper-plate engraving of the arms of Rudolph de Scherenberg, bishop of that see. This plate is also described by Bartsch in his “Peintre-Graveur,” vol. x. p. 156. The first book which appeared with copper-plate engravings is intitled “Il Monte Sancto di Dio,” written by Antonio Bettini, and printed at Florence in 1477 by Nicolo di Lorenzo della Magna. As this book is of extreme rarity, I shall here give an account of the plates from Mercier, who first called the attention of bibliographers to it as being of an earlier date than the folio edition of Dante, with copper-plate engravings, printed also by Nicolo Lorenzo in 1481. This edition of Dante was generally supposed to be the first book containing copper-plate engravings until Bettini’s work was described by Mercier.The work called “Il Monte Sancto di Dio” is in quarto, and according to Mercier there ought to be a quire or gathering of four leaves at the commencement, containing a summary of the work, which is divided into three parts, with a table of the chapters. On the reverse of the last of those four leaves is the first plate, which occupies the whole page, and “measures nine inches and seven-eighths in height, by seven inches in width.”IV.45This plate represents the Holy Mountain, on the top of which Christ is seen standing in the midst of adoring angels. A ladder is placed against this mountain, to which it is fastened with iron chains, and on each step is engraved the name of a virtue, for instance, Prudence, Temperance, Fortitude, and others. A figure clothed in a long robe, and who appears to be a monk, is seen mounting the ladder. His eyes are directed towards a huge crucifix placed half way up the hill to the right of the ladder, and from his mouth there proceeds a label inscribed with these words: “Tirami doppo ti,”—“Draw me up after thee.” Another figure is seen standing at the foot of the mountain, looking towards the top, and uttering these words: “Levavi oculos meos in montes,” &c. The second plate occurs at signature IvIV.46after the 115th chapter. It also represents Christ in his glory, surrounded by angels. It is only four inches and five lines high, by six inches wide, French measure. The third plate, which is the same size as the second, occurs at signature Pvij, and represents a view of Hell according to the description of Dante. Those plates, which for the period are well enough designed and executed, especially the second, were most likely engraved203on copper; and they seem to be by the same hand as those in the edition of Dante of 1481, from the press of Nicolo di Lorenzo, who also printed the work of Bettini.IV.47A copy of “Il Monte Sancto di Dio” is in Earl Spencer’s Library; and a description and specimens of the cuts are given by Dr. Dibdin in the Bibliotheca Spenceriana, vol. iv. p. 30; and by Mr. Ottley in the Inquiry into the Origin and Early History of Engraving, vol. i. pp. 375-377.In the execution of the maps, the copper-plate engraver possesses a decided advantage over the engraver on wood, owing to the greater facility and clearness with which letters can be cutincopper thanonwood. In the engraving of letters on copper, the artist cuts the form of the letterintothe plate, the character being thus inintaglio; while in engraving on a block, the wood surrounding has to be cut away, and the letter left inrelief. On copper, using only the graver,—for etching was not known in the fifteenth century,—as many letters might be cut in one day as could be cut on wood in three. Notwithstanding the disadvantage under which the ancient wood engravers laboured in the execution of maps, they for many years contended with the copper-plate printers for a share of this branch of business; and the printers, at whose presses maps engraved on wood only could be printed, were well inclined to support the wood engravers. In a folio edition of Ptolemy, printed at Venice in 1511, by Jacobus Pentius de Leucho, the outlines of the maps, with the indications of the mountains and rivers, are cut on wood, and the names of the places are printed in type, of different sizes, and with red and black ink. For instance, in the map of Britain, which is more correct than any which had previously appeared, the word “ALBION” is printed in large capitals, and the word “GADINI” in small capitals, and both with red ink. The words “Curia” and “Bremenium” are printed in small Roman characters, and with black ink. The names of the rivers are also in small Roman, and in black ink. Such of those maps as contain many names, are almost full of type. The double borders surrounding them, within which the degrees of latitude are marked, appear to have been formed of separate pieces of metal, in the manner of wide double rules. At the head of several of the maps there are figures of animals emblematic of the country. In the first map of Africa there are two parrots; in the second an animal like a jackal, and a non-descript; in the third, containing Egypt, a crocodile, and a monstrous kind of fish like a dragon; and in the204fourth, two parrots. In the last, the “curious observer” will note a specimen of decorative printing from two blocks of wood; for the beak, wing, and tail of one of the parrots is printed in red.In the last map,—of Loraine,—in an edition of Ptolemy, in folio, printed at Strasburg in 1513, by John Schott, the attempt to print in colours, in the manner of chiaro-scuro wood engravings, is carried yet further. The hills and woods are printed green; the indications of towns and cities, and the names of the most considerable places, are red; while the names of the smaller places are black. For this map, executed in three colours, green, red, and black, there would be required two wood engravings and two forms of type, each of which would have to be separately printed. The arms which form a border to the map are printed in their proper heraldic colours.IV.48The only other specimen of armorial bearings printed in colours from wood-blocks, that I am aware of, is Earl Spencer’s arms in the first part of Savage’s Hints on Decorative Printing, which was published in 1818, upwards of three hundred years after the first essay.At a later period a new method was adopted by which the wood engraver was spared the trouble of cutting the letters, while the printer was enabled to obtain a perfect copy of each map by a single impression. The mode in which this was effected was as follows. The indications of mountains, rivers, cities, and villages were engraved on the wood as before, and blank spaces were left for the names. Those spaces were afterwards cut out by means of a chisel or drill, piercing quite through the block: and the names of the places being inserted in type, the whole constituted only one “form,” from which an impression both of the cut and the letters could be obtained by its being passed once through the press. Sebastian Munster’s Cosmography, folio, printed at Basle in 1554, by Henry Petri, affords several examples of maps executed in this manner. This may be considered as one of the last efforts of the old wood engravers and printers to secure to themselves a share of the business of map-engraving. Their endeavours, however, were unavailing; for within twenty years of that date, this branch of art was almost exclusively in the hands of the copper-plate engravers. From the date of the maps of Ortelius, Antwerp, 1570, engraved on copper by Ægidius Diest, maps engraved on wood are rarely to be seen. The practice of engraving the outlines and rivers on wood, and then piercing the block and inserting the names of the places in type has, however, lately been revived; and where publishers are obliged either to print maps with the type or to205give none at all, this mode may answer very well, more especially when the object is to give the relative position of a few of the principal places, rather than a crowded list of names. Most of the larger maps in the Penny Cyclopædia are executed in this manner. The holes in the blocks are pierced with the greatest rapidity by gouges of different sizes acting vertically, and put in motion by machinery contrived by Mr. Edward Cowper, to whose great mechanical skill the art of steam-printing chiefly owes its perfection.Having thus noticed consecutively the progress of map engraving, it may not here be out of place to give a brief account of Breitkopf’s experiment to print a map with separate pieces of metal in the manner of type.IV.49Previous to 1776 some attempts had been made by a person named Preusch, of Carlsruhe, to print maps by a process which he named typometric, and who published an account of his plan, printed at the press of Haass the Younger, ofBasil. In 1776 Breitkopf sent a communication to Busching’s Journal, containing some remarks on the invention of Preusch, and stating that he had conceived a similar plan upwards of twenty years previously, and that he had actually set up a specimen and printed off a few copies, which he had given to his friends. The veracity of this account having been questioned by an illiberal critic, Breitkopf, in 1777, prefixed to his Essay on the Printing of Maps a specimen composed of moveable pieces of metal in the manner of types. He expressly declares that he considered his experiment a failure; and that he only produced his specimen—a quarto map of the country round Leipsic—in testimony of the truth of what he had previously asserted, and to show that two persons might, independently of each other, conceive an idea of the same invention, although they might differ considerably in their mode of carrying it into effect.He was first led to think on the practicability of printing maps with moveable pieces of metal by considering that when the letters are omitted there remain but hills, rivers, and the indications of places; and for these he was convinced that representations consisting of moveable pieces of metal might be contrived. Having, however, made the experiment, he felt satisfied that the appearance of such a map was unpleasing to the eye, and that the invention was not likely to be practically useful. Had it not been for the publication of Preusch, he says that he never would have thought of mentioning his invention, except as a mechanical experiment; and to show that the execution of maps in such a manner was within the compass of the printer’s art.In the specimen which he gives, rivers are represented by minute parallel lines, which are shorter or longer as the river contracts or206expands; and the junction of the separate pieces may be distinctly perceived. For hills and trees there are distinct characters representing those objects. Towns and large villages are distinguished by a small church, and small villages by a small circle. Roads are indicated by dotted parallel lines. For the title of the map large capitals are used. The name of the city ofLEIPSICis in small capitals. The names of towns and villages are inItalic; and of woods, rivers, and hills, in Roman type. The general appearance of the map is unpleasing to the eye. Breitkopf has displayed his ingenuity by producing such a typographic curiosity, and his good sense in abandoning his invention when he found that he could not render it useful.Mr. Ottley, at page 755 of the second volume of his Inquiry, makes the following remarks on the subject of cross-hatching in wood engravings:—“It appears anciently to have been the practice of those masters who furnished designs for the wood engravers to work from, carefully to avoid all cross-hatchings, which, it is probable, were considered beyond the power of the Xylographist to represent. Wolgemuth perceived that, though difficult, this was not impossible; and in the cuts of the Nuremberg Chronicle, the execution of which, (besides furnishing the designs,) he doubtless superintended, a successful attempt was first made to imitate the bold hatchings of a pen-drawing, crossing each other, as occasion prompted the designer, in various directions: to him belongs the praise of having been the first who duly appreciated the powers of this art.”Although it is true that cross-hatchings are not to be found in the earliest wood engravings, yet Mr. Ottley is wrong in assigning this material improvement in the art to Michael Wolgemuth; for cross-hatching is introduced in the beautiful cut forming the frontispiece to the Latin edition of Breydenbach’s Travels, folio, first printed at Mentz, by Erhard Reuwich, in 1486,IV.50seven years before the Nuremberg Chronicle appeared. The cut in the following page is a reduced but accurate copy of Breydenbach’s frontispiece, which is not only the finest wood engraving which had appeared up to that date, 1486, but is in point of design and execution as superior to the best cuts in the Nuremberg Chronicle, as the designs of Albert Durer are to the cuts in the oldest editions of the “Poor Preachers’ Bible.”see textIn this cut, cross-hatching may be observed in the drapery of the female figure, in the upper part of the two shields on each side of her, in the border at the top of the cut, and in other places. Whether the female figure be intended as a personification of the city of Mentz, as is207sometimes seen in old books of the sixteenth century, or for St. Catherine, whose shrine on Mount Sinai was visited by Breydenbach in his travels, I shall not pretend to determine. The arms on her right are Breydenbach’s own; on her left are the arms of John, Count of Solms and Lord of Mintzenberg, and at the bottom of the cut those of Philip de Bicken, knight, who were Breydenbach’s companions to the holy sepulchre at Jerusalem and the shrine of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai. St. Catherine, it may be observed, was esteemed the patroness of learned men, and her figure was frequently placed in libraries in Catholic countries, in the same manner as the bust of Minerva in the libraries of ancient Greece and Rome. The name of the artist by whom the frontispiece to Breydenbach’s travels was executed is unknown; but I have no hesitation in declaring him to be one of the best wood engravers of the period. As this is the earliest wood-cut in which I have noticed208cross-hatching, I shall venture to ascribe the merit of the invention to the unknown artist, whoever he may have been; and shall consider the date 1486 as marking the period when a new style of wood engraving was introduced. Wolgemuth, as associated with wood engraving, has too long been decked out with borrowed plumes; and persons who knew little or nothing either of the history or practice of the art, and who are misled by writers on whose authority they rely, believe that Michael Wolgemuth was not only one of the best wood engravers of his day, but that he was the first who introduced a material improvement into the practice of the art. This error becomes more firmly rooted when such persons come to be informed that he was the master of Albert Durer, who is generally, but erroneously, supposed to have been the best wood engraver of his day. Albert Durer studied under Michael Wolgemuth as a painter, and not as a wood engraver; and I consider it as extremely questionable if either of them ever engraved a single block. There are many evidences in Germany of Wolgemuth having been a tolerably good painter for the age and country in which he lived; but there is not one of his having engraved on wood. In the Nuremberg Chronicle he is represented as having, in conjunction with William Pleydenwurf, superintended the execution of the wood-cuts contained in that book. Those cuts, which are frequently referred to as excellent specimens of old wood engraving, are in fact the most tasteless and worthless things that are to be found in any book, ancient or modern. It is a book, however, that is easy to be obtained; and it serves as a land-mark to superficial enquirers who are perpetually referring to it as containing wood-cuts designed, if not engraved, by Albert Durer’s master,—and such, they conclude, must necessarily possess a very high degree of excellence.Breydenbach was a canon of the cathedral church of Mentz, and he dedicates the account of his pilgrimage to the Holy Land and visit to Mount Sinai to Berthold, archbishop of that see. The frontispiece, although most deserving of attention as a specimen of wood engraving, is not the only cut in the book which is worthy of notice. Views are given, engraved on wood, of the most remarkable places which he visited;—and those of Venice, Corfu, Modon, and the country round Jerusalem, which are of great length, are inserted in the book as “folding plates.” Each of the above views is too large to have been engraved on one block. For that of Venice, which is about five feet long, and ten inches high, several blocks must have been required, from each of which impressions would have to be taken singly, and afterwards pasted together, as is at present done in such views as are too wide to be contained on one sheet. Those views, with respect to the manner in which they are executed, are superior to everything of the same kind which had previously appeared. The work also contains smaller cuts209printed with the type, which are not generally remarkable for their execution, although some of them are drawn and engraved in a free and spirited manner. The following cut is a reduced copy of that which is prefixed to a chapter intitled “De Surianis qui Ierosolimis et locis illis manentes etiam se asserunt esse Christianos:”—see textIn a cut of animals there is a figure of a giraffe,IV.51named by Breydenbach “seraffa,” of a unicorn, a salamander, a camel, and an animal something like an oran-outang, except that it has a tail. Of the last the traveller observes, “non constat de nomine.” Some account of this book, with fac-similes of the cuts, will be found in Dibdin’s Bibliotheca Spenceriana, vol iii. pp. 216-228. In the copy there described, belonging to Earl Spencer, the beautiful frontispiece was wanting.Although a flowered border surrounding a whole page may be observed as occurring twice in Veldener’s edition of the Fasciculus Temporum, printed at Utrecht in 1480, yet I am inclined to think that the practice of surrounding every page with an ornamental flowered border cut in wood, was first introduced by the Parisian printers at a period somewhat later. In 1488, an edition of the “Horæ in Laudem beatissimæ virginis Mariæ,” in octavo, was printed at Paris by Anthony Verard, the text of which is surrounded with ornamental borders. The practice thus introduced was subsequently adopted by the printers of210Germany and Holland, more especially in the decoration of devotional works, such as Horæ, Breviaries, and Psalters. Verard appears to have chiefly printed works of devotion and love, for a greater number of Horæ and Romances proceeded from his press than that of any other printer of his age. Most of them contain wood-cuts, some of which, in books printed by him about the beginning of the sixteenth century, are designed with considerable taste and well engraved; while others, those for instance in “La Fleur des Battailes,” 4to, 1505, are not superior to those in Caxton’s Chess: it is, however, not unlikely that the cuts in “La Fleur des Battailes” of this date had been used for an earlier edition.IV.52The “Hortus Sanitatis,” folio, printed at Mentz in 1491 by Jacobus Meydenbach, is frequently referred to by bibliographers; not so much on account of the many wood-cuts which it contains, but as being supposed in some degree to confirm a statement in Sebastian Munster’s Cosmography, and in Serrarius, De Rebus Moguntinis, where aJohnMeydenbach is mentioned as being a partner with Gutemberg and Faust. Von Murr, as has been previously noticed, supposed that this person was a wood engraver; and Prosper Marchand,IV.53though without any authority, callsJacobusMeydenbach his son or his relation.This work, which is a kind of Natural History, explaining the uses and virtues of herbs, fowls, fish, quadrupeds, minerals, drugs, and spices, contains a number of wood-cuts, many of which are curious, as containing representations of natural objects, but none of which are remarkable for their execution as wood engravings. On the opposite page is a fac-simile of the cut which forms the head-piece to the chapter “De Ovis.” The figure, which possesses considerable merit, represents an old woman going to market with her basket of eggs.This is a fair specimen of the manner in which the cuts in the Hortus Sanitatis are designed and executed. Among the most curious and best designed are: the interior of an apothecary’s shop, on the reverse of the first leaf; a monkey seated on the top of a fountain, in the chapter on water; a butcher cutting up meat; a man selling cheese at a stall; a woman milking a cow; and figures of the male and female mandrake. At chapter 119, “De Pediculo,” a woman is represented brushing the head of a boy with a peculiar kind of brush, which answers the purpose of a small-toothed comb; and she appears211to bestow her labour on no infertile field, for each of her “sweepings,” which are seen lying on the floor, would scarcely slip through the teeth of a garden rake. Meydenbach’s edition has been supposed to be the first; and Linnæus, in the Bibliotheca Botanica, has ascribed the work to one John Cuba, a physician of Mentz; but other writers have doubted if this person were really the author. The first edition of this work, under the title of “Herbarus,” with a hundred and fifty wood-cuts, was printed at Mentz by Peter Scheffer in 1484; and in 1485 he printed an enlarged edition in German, containing three hundred and eighty cuts, under the title of “Ortus Sanitatis oder Garten der Gesundheit.” Of the work printed by Scheffer, Breydenbach is said to have been one of the compilers. Several editions of the Hortus Sanitatis were subsequently printed, not only in Germany, but inFrance,Holland, and Switzerland.see textHaving previously expressed my opinion respecting the wood-cuts in the Nuremberg Chronicle, there will be less occasion to give a detailed account of the book and the rubbish it contains here: in speaking thus it may perhaps be necessary to say that this character is meant to apply to the wood-cuts and not to the literary portion of the work, which Thomas Hearne, of black-letter memory, pronounces to be extremely “pleasant, useful, and curious.” With the wood-cuts the Rev. Dr. Dibdin appears to have been equally charmed.212The work called the “Nuremberg Chronicle” is a folio, compiled by Hartman Schedel, a physician of Nuremberg, and printed in that city by Anthony Koburger in 1493. In the colophon it is stated that the views of cities, and figures of eminent characters, were executed under the superintendence of Michael Wolgemuth and William Pleydenwurff, “mathematical men”IV.54and skilled in the art of painting. The total number of impressions contained in the work exceeds two thousand, but several of the cuts are repeated eight or ten times. The following fac-simile will afford an idea of the style in which the portraits of illustrious men contained in this often-cited chronicle are executed.see textThe above head, which the owner appears to be scratching with so much earnestness, first occurs as that of Paris the lover of Helen; and it is afterwards repeated as that of Thales, Anastasius, Odofredus, and the poet Dante. In a like manner the economical printer has a stock-head for kings and emperors; another for popes; a third for bishops; a fourth for saints, and so on. Several cuts representing what might be supposed to be particular events are in the same manner pressed into the general service of the chronicler.The peculiarity of the cuts in the Nuremberg Chronicle is that they generally contain more of what engravers term “colour” than any which213had previously appeared. Before proceeding, however, to make any further observations on these cuts, I shall endeavour to explain what engravers mean by the term “colour,” as applied to an impression taken with black ink from a copper-plate or a wood-block.Though there is no “colour,” strictly speaking, in an engraving consisting merely of black and white lines, yet the term is often conventionally applied to an engraving which is supposed, from the varied character of its lines and the contrast of light and shade, to convey the idea of varied local colour as seen in a painting or a water-colour drawing. For instance, an engraving is said to contain much “colour” which appears clearly to indicate not only a variety of colour, but also its different degrees of intensity in the several objects, and which at the same time presents an effective combination of light and shade. An engraver cannot certainly express the difference between green and yellow, or red and orange, yet in engraving a figure, say that of a cavalier by Vandyke, with brown leather boots, buff-coloured woollen hose, doublet of red silk, and blue velvet cloak, a master of his art will not only express a difference in the texture, but will also convey an idea of the different parts of the dress being of different colours. The Rent Day, engraved by Raimbach from a painting by Wilkie, and Chelsea Pensioners hearing the Gazette of the Battle of Waterloo read, engraved by Burnet from a picture by the same artist, may be instanced as copper-plate engravings which contain much “colour.”Mr. Landseer, at pages 175, 176, of his Lectures on Engraving, makes the following remarks on the term “colour,” as conventionally applied by engravers in speaking of impressions from plates or from wood-blocks:—“It is not uncommon among print-publishers, nor even amongst engravers themselves, to hear the wordCOLOURmistakenly employed to signifyshade; so that if they think an engraving too dark, they say it has too muchcolour, too little colour if too light—and so forth. The same ignorance which has hitherto reigned over the pursuits of this Art, has here imposed its authority, and with the same unfortunate success: I cannot however yield to it the same submission, since it is not only a palpable misuse of a word, but would lead to endless confusion when I come to explain to you my ideas of the means the Art of engraving possesses of rendering local colour in the abstract. Wherefore, whenever I may use the termcolour, I mean it in no other than its ordinary acceptation.”“ByMIDDLE TINT, I understand and mean, ‘the medium between strong light and strong shade.’—These are Mr. Gilpin’s words; and he adds, with a propriety that confers value on the definition—‘the phrase isnot at allexpressive of colour.’”Whether we owe the term “colour,” as applied to engravings, to the214ignorance of printsellers or not, I shall not inquire; I only know that a number of terms equally objectionable, if their primitive meaning be considered, are used in speaking of the arts of painting and engraving by persons who are certainly not ignorant. We have the wordshighanddeep, which strictly relate to objects of lineal altitude or profundity, applied to denote intensity of colour; and the very wordintensity, when thus applied, is only relative; the speaker being unable to find a word directly expressive of his meaning, explains himself by referring to some object or thing previously known, as, in this instance, by reference to thetensionof a string or cord. The wordtone, which is so frequently used in speaking of pictures, is derived from the sister art of music. I presume that none of these terms were introduced into the nomenclature of painting and engraving by ignorant persons, but that they were adopted from a necessity originating from the very constitution of the human mind. It is well known to every person who has paid any attention to the construction of languages, that almost every abstract term is referable to, and derived from, the name of some material object. The very word to “think,” implying the exercise of our mental faculties, is probably an offset from the substantive “thing.”It is also to be observed, that Mr. Landseer speaks as if the termcolourwas used by ignorant printsellers, and of course ignorant engravers, to signifyshadeonly. It is, however, used by them to signify that there is a considerable proportion of dark lines and hatchings in an engraving, although such lines and hatchings are not expressive of shade, but merely indicative of deep colours. Dark brown, red, and purple, for instance, even when receiving direct rays of light, would naturally contain much conventional “colour” in an engraving; and so would a bay horse, a coal barge, or the trunk of an old oak tree, when receiving the light in a similar manner; all would be represented as comparatively dark, when contrasted with lighter coloured objects,—for instance, with a blue sky, grass, or light green foliage,—although not in shade. An engraving that appears too light, compared with the painting from which it is copied, is said to want “colour,” and the copper-plate engraver remedies the defect by thickening the dark lines, or by adding cross lines and hatchings. As a copper-plate engraver can always obtain more “colour,” he generally keeps his work light in the first stage of a plate; on the contrary, a wood engraver keeps his first proof dark, as he cannot afterwards introduce more “colour,” or give to an object a greater depth of shade. A wood engraver can make his lines thinner if they be too thick, and thus cause his subject to appear lighter; but if he has made them too fine at first, and more colour be wanted, it is not in his power to remedy the defect.What Mr. Landseer’s ideas may be of the “means [which] the art215of engraving possesses of rendering local colour in the abstract,” I cannot very well comprehend. I am aware of the lines used conventionally by engravers to indicate heraldic colours in coat-armour; but I can see no natural relation between perpendicular lines in an engraving and the red colour of a soldier’s coat. I believe that no person could tell the colour of the draperies in Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper from an inspection of Raphael Morghen’s engraving of it. When Mr. Landseer says that he will use the term “colour” in its “ordinary acceptation,” he ought to have explained what the ordinary acceptation of the word meant when applied to impressions from copper-plates which consist of nothing but lines and interstices of black and white.see textIn the second paragraph Mr. Landseer displays great inconsistency in praising Mr. Gilpin for his definition of the word “tint,” which, when applied to engravings, is as objectionable as the term “colour.” It appears that Mr. Gilpin may employ a conventional term with “singular propriety,” while printsellers and engravers who should use the same liberty would be charged with ignorance. Is there such a thing as atintin nature which is of no colour? Mr. Gilpin’s lauded definition involves a contradiction even when the word is applied to engravings, in which every “tint” is indicative of positive colour. That “medium216between strong light and strong shade,” and which is yet of no colour, remains to be discovered. Mr. Gilpin has supplied us with the “word,” but it appears that no definite idea is necessary to be attached to it. Having thus endeavoured to give a little brightness to the “colour” of “ignorant printsellers and engravers,” I shall resume my observations on the cuts in the Nuremberg Chronicle, to the “colour” of which the preceding digression is to be ascribed.The preceding cut, representing the Creation of Eve, is copied from one of the best in the Nuremberg Chronicle, both with respect to design and engraving. In this, compared with most other cuts previously executed, much more colour will be perceived, which results from the closeness of the single lines, as in the dark parts of the rock immediately behind the figure of Eve; from the introduction of dark lines crossing each other,—called “cross-hatching,”—as may be seen in the drapery of the Divinity; and from the contrast of the shade thus produced with the lighter parts of the cut.see textThe subjoined cut, of the same subject, copied from the Poor Preachers’ Bible,IV.55will, by comparison with the preceding, illustrate more clearly than any verbal explanation the difference with respect to colour between the wood-cuts in the old block-books and in most others printed between 1462 and 1493, and those contained in the Nuremberg217Chronicle. In this cut there is no indication of colour; the shades in the drapery which are expressed by hard parallel lines are all of equal strength, or rather weakness; and the hair of Adam’s head and the foliage of the tree are expressed nearly in the same manner.This manner of representing the creation of Eve appears to have been general amongst the wood engravers of the fifteenth century, for the same subject frequently occurs in old cuts executed previous to 1500. It is frequently represented in the same manner in illuminated missals; and in Flaxman’s Lectures on Sculpture a lithographic print is given, copied from an ancient piece of sculpture in Wells Cathedral, where Eve is seen thus proceeding from the side of Adam. In a picture by Raffaele the creation of Eve is also represented in the same manner.In the wood-cuts which occur in Italian books printed previous to 1500 the engravers have seldom attempted anything beyond a simple outline with occasionally an indication of shade, or of colour, by means of short parallel lines. The following is a fac-simile of a cut in Bonsignore’s Italian prose translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, folio, printed at Venice by the brothers De Lignano in 1497. It may serve at once as a specimen of the other cuts contained in the work and of the general style of engraving on wood in Italy for about ten years preceding that period.see textThe subject illustrated is the difficult labour of Alcmena through the malign influence of Lucina, as related by Ovid in theIXth book of the Metamorphoses, from verse 295 to 314. This would appear to have been rather a favourite subject with designers, for it is again selected for illustration in Ludovico Dolce’s Transformationi, a kind of paraphrase of the Metamorphoses, 4to, printed at Venice by Gabriel Giolito in 1557; and it is also represented in the illustrations to the Metamorphoses218designed by Virgil Solis, and printed at Frankfort, in oblong 4to, by George Corvinus and Sigismund Feyrabent, in 1569.IV.56Of all the wood-cuts executed in Italy within the fifteenth century there are none that can bear a comparison for elegance of design with those contained in an Italian work entitled “Hypnerotomachia Poliphili,” a folio without printer’s name or place, but certainly printed at Venice by Aldus in 1499. This “Contest between Imagination and Love, by a general Lover,”—for such seems to be the import of the title,—is an obscure medley of fable, history, antiquities, mathematics, and various other matters, highly seasoned with erotic sketchesIV.57suggested by the prurient imagination of a monk,—for such the author was,—who, like many others of his fraternity, in all ages, appears to have had “alawnot to marry, and acustomnot to live chaste.” The language in which this chaos of absurdities is composed is almost as varied as the subjects. The ground-work is Italian, on which the author engrafts at will whole phrases of Latin, with a number of words borrowed from the Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Chaldee. “Certain persons,” says Tiraboschi, “who admire a work the more the less they understand it, have fancied that they could perceive in the Hypnerotomachia a complete summary of human knowledge.”IV.58The name of the author was Francis Colonna, who was born at Venice, and at an early age became a monk of the order of St. Dominic. In 1467 he professed Grammar and Classical Literature in the convent of his order at Trevisa; and he afterwards became Professor of Theology at Padua, where he commenced Doctor in 1473, a degree which, according to the rule of his order, he could not assume until he was forty. At the time of his death, which happened in 1527, he could not thus be less than ninety-four years old. The true name of this amorous dreaming monk, and the fictitious one of the woman with whom he was in love, are thus expressed by combining, in the order in which they follow each other, the initial letters of the several chapters: “Poliam Frater Fransiscus Columna peramavit.”IV.59If any reliance can be placed on219the text and the cuts as narrating and representing real incidents, we may gather that the stream of love had not run smooth with father Francis any more than with simple laymen. With respect to the true name of the mistress of father Francis, biographers are not agreed. One says that her name was Lucretia Maura; and another that her name was Ippolita, and that she belonged to the noble family of Poli, of Trevisa, and that she was a nun in that city. From the name Ippolita some authors thus derive the fictitious name Polia: Ippolita; Polita; Polia.A second edition, also from the Aldine press, appeared in 1545; and in the following year a French translation was printed at Paris under the following title: “Le Tableau des riches inventions couvertes du voile des feintes amourouses qui sont representées dans le Songe de Poliphile, devoilées des ombres du Songe, et subtilment exposées.” Of this translation several editions were published; and in 1804 J. G. Legrand, an architect of some repute in Paris, printed a kind of paraphrase of the work, in two volumes 12mo, which, however, was not published until after his death in 1807. In 1811 Bodoni reprinted the original work at Parma in an elegant quarto volume.In the original work the wood-cuts with respect to design may rank among the best that have appeared in Italy. The whole number in the volume is one hundred and ninety-two; of which eighty-six relate to mythology and ancient history; fifty-four represent processions and emblematic figures: there are thirty-six architectural and ornamental subjects; and sixteen vases and statues. Several writers have asserted that those cuts were designed by Raffaele,IV.60while others with equal confidence, though on no better grounds, have ascribed them to Andrea Mantegna. Except from the resemblance which they are supposed to bear to the acknowledged works of those artists, I am not aware that there is any reason to suppose that they were designed by either of them. As Raffaele, who was born in 1483, was only sixteen when the Hypnerotomachia was printed, it is not likely that all, or even any ofthosecuts were designed by him; as it is highly probable that all the drawings would be finished at least twelve months before, and many of them contain internal evidence of their not being the productions of a youth of fifteen. That Andrea Mantegna might design them is possible; but this certainly cannot be a sufficient reason for positively asserting that he actually did. Mr. Ottley, at page 576, vol. ii, of his Inquiry, asserts that they were designed by Benedetto Montagna, an220artist who flourished about the year 1500, and who is chiefly known as an engraver on copper. The grounds on which Mr. Ottley forms his opinion are not very clear, but if I understand him correctly they are as follows:In the collection of the late Mr. Douce there were sixteen wood engravings which had been cut out of a folio edition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, printed at Venice in 1509. All those engravings, except two, were marked with the lettersía, which according to Mr. Ottley are the initials of the engraver, Ioanne Andrea di Vavassori. Between some of the cuts from the Ovid, and certain engravings executed by Montagna, it seems that Mr. Ottley discovered a resemblance; and as he thought that he perceived a perfect similarity between the sixteen cuts from the Ovid and those contained in the Hypnerotomachia, he considers that Benedetto Montagna is thus proved to have been the designer of the cuts in the latter work.Not having seen the cuts in the edition of the Metamorphoses of 1509, I cannot speak, from my own examination, of the resemblance between them and those in the Hypnerotomachia; it, however, seems that Mr. Douce had noticed the similarity as well as Mr. Ottley: but even admitting that there is a perfect identity of style in the cuts of the above two works, yet it by no means follows that, because a few of the cuts in the Ovid resemble some copper-plate engravings executed by Benedetto Montagna, he must have designed the cuts in the Hypnerotomachia. As the cuts in the Ovid may, as Mr. Ottley himself remarks, have been used in an earlier edition than that of 1509, it is not unlikely that they might appear before Montagna’s copper-plates; and that the latter might copy the designs of a greater artist than himself, and thus by his very plagiarism acquire, according to Mr. Ottley’s train of reasoning, the merit which may be justly due to another. If Benedetto Montagna be really the designer of the cuts in the Hypnerotomachia, he has certainly excelled himself, for they certainly display talent of a much higher order than is to be perceived in his copper-plate engravings. Besides the striking difference with respect to drawing between the wood-cuts in PoliphiloIV.61and the engravings of Benedetto Montagna, two of the cuts in the former work have a mark which never appears in any of that artist’s known productions, which generally have either his name at length or the letters B. M. In the third cut of Poliphilo, the designer’s or engraver’s mark, a small b, may be perceived at the foot, to the right; and the same mark is repeated in a cut at signature C.221A London bookseller in his catalogue published in 1834, probably speaking on Mr. Ottley’s hint that the cuts in the Ovid of 1509 might have appeared in an earlier edition, thus describes Bonsignore’s Ovid, a work in which the wood-cuts are of a very inferior description, and of which a specimen is given in a preceding page: “Ovidii Metamorphoseos Vulgare, con le Allegorie, [Venezia, 1497,] with numerous beautiful wood-cuts, apparently by the artist who executed the Poliphilo, printed by Aldus in 1499.” The wood-cuts in the Ovid of 1497 are as inferior to those in Poliphilo as the commonest cuts in children’s school-books are inferior to the beautiful wood-cuts in Rogers’s Pleasures of Memory, printed in 1812, which were designed by Stothard and engraved by Clennell. It is but fair to add, that the cuts used in the Ovid of 1497, printed by the brothers De Lignano, cannot be the same as those in the Ovid of 1509 referred to by Mr. Ottley; for though the subjects may be nearly the same, the cuts in the latter edition are larger than those in the former, and have besides an engraver’s mark which is not to be seen in any of the cuts in the edition of 1497.The five following cuts are fac-similes traced line for line from the originals in Poliphilo. In the first, Mercury is seen interfering to save Cupid from the anger of Venus, who has been punishing him and plucking the feathers from his wings. The cause of her anger is explained by the figure of Mars behind the net in which he and Venus had been inclosed by Vulcan. Love had been the cause of his mother’s misfortune.222In the following cut Cupid is represented as brought by Mercury before Jove, who in the text, “in Athica lingua,” addresses the God of Love, as “ΣΥΜΟΙΓΛΥΚΥΣ ΚΑΙ ΠΙΚΡΟΣ”—“at once sweet and bitter.” In the inscription in the cut, “ΑΛΛΑ” is substituted for “ΚΑΙ.”
At page 7 of the same Disquisition it is said that the figures in the Game of Chess, the Mirror of the World, and other works printed by Caxton “are, in all probability, not the genuine productions of this country; and may be traced to books of an earlier date printed abroad, from which they were often borrowed without acknowledgment or the least regard to the work in which they again appeared. Caxton, however, has judiciously taken one of the prints from the ‘Biblia Pauperum’ to introduce in his ‘Life of Christ.’ The cuts for his second edition of ‘Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales’ may perhaps safely be considered as the genuine invention and execution of a British artist.”
Although I am well aware that the printers of the fifteenth century were accustomed to copy without acknowledgment the cuts which appeared in each other’s books, and though I think it likely that Caxton might occasionally resort to the same practice, yet I am decidedly of opinion that the cuts in the “Game of Chess” and the “Mirror of the World” were designed and engraved in this country. Caxton’s Game of Chess is certainly the first book of the kind which appeared with wood-cuts in any country; and I am further of opinion that in no book printed previous to 1481 will the presumed originals of the eleven principal cuts in the Mirror of the World be found. Before we are required to believe that the cuts in those two books were copied from similar designs by some foreign artist, we ought to be informed in what work such originals are to be found. If there be any merit in a first design, however rude, it is but just to assign it to him who first employs the unknown artist and makes his productions known. Caxton’s claims to the merit of “illustrating” the Game of Chess and the Mirror of the World with wood-cuts from original designs, I conceive to be indisputable.
Dr. Dibdin, in a long note at pages 33, 34, and 35 of the Typographical Antiquities, gives a confused account of the earliest editions of books on chess. He mentions as the first, a Latin edition—supposed by Santander to be the work of Jacobus de Cessolis—in folio, printed about the year 1473, by Ketelaer and Leempt. In this edition, however, there are no cuts, and the date is only conjectural. He says that two editions of the work of Jacobus de Cessolis on the Morality of Chess, in German and Italian, with wood-cuts, were printed, without date, in the fifteenth century, and he adds: “Whether Caxton borrowed the198cuts in his second edition from those in the 8vo. German edition without date, or from this latter Italian one, I am not able to ascertain, having seen neither.” He seems satisfied that Caxton hadborrowedthe cuts in his book of chess, though he is at a loss to discover the party who might have them tolend. Had he even seen the two editions which he mentions, he could not have known whether Caxton had borrowed his cuts from them or not until he had ascertained that they were printed previously to the English edition. There is a German edition of Jacobus de Cessolis, in folio, with wood-cuts supposed to be printed in 1477, at Augsburg, by Gunther Zainer, but both date and printer’s name are conjectural. The first German edition of this work with wood-cuts, and having a positive date, I believe to be that printed at Strasburg by Henry Knoblochzer in 1483. Until a work on chess shall be produced of an earlier date than that ascribed to Caxton’s, and containing similar wood-cuts, I shall continue to believe that the wood-cuts in the second English edition of the “Game and Playe of the Chesse” were both designed and executed by an English artist; and I protest against bibliographers going a-begging with wood-cuts found in old English books, and ascribing them to foreign artists, before they have taken the slightest pains to ascertain whether such cuts were executed in England or not.
The wood-cuts in the Game of Chess and the Mirror of the World are equally as good as the wood-cuts which are to be found in books printed abroad about the same period. They are even decidedly better than those in Anthony Sorg’s German Bible, Augsburg, 1480, or those in Veldener’s edition of the Fasciculus Temporum, printed at Utrecht in the same year.
It has been supposed that most of the wood-cuts which appear in books printed by Caxton and De Worde were executed abroad; on the presumption that there were at that period no professed wood engravers in England. Although I am inclined to believe that within the fifteenth century there were no persons in this country who practised wood engraving as a distinct profession, yet it by no means follows from such an admission that Caxton’s and De Worde’s cuts must have been engraved by foreign artists. The manner in which they are executed is so coarse that they might be cut by any person who could handle a graver. Looking at them merely as specimens of wood engraving, they are not generally superior to the practice-blocks cut by a modern wood-engraver’s apprentice within the first month of his noviciate. I conceive that there would be no greater difficulty in finding a person capable of engraving them than there would be in finding the pieces of wood on which they were to be executed. Persons who have noticed the embellishments in manuscripts, the carving, the199monuments, and the stained glass in churches, executed in England about the time of Caxton, will scarcely suppose that there were no artists in this country capable of making the designs for those cuts. There is in fact reason to believe that in England in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the walls of apartments, more especially in taverns and hostelries, frequently contained paintings, most probably in distemper, of subjects both from sacred and general history. That paintings of sacred subjects were not unusual in churches at those periods is well known.
In most of the cuts which are to be found in books printed by Caxton, the effect is produced by the simplest means. The outline of the figures is coarse and hard, and the shades and folds of the draperies are indicated by short parallel lines. Cross-hatchings occur in none of them, though in one or two I have noticed a few angular dots picked out of the black part of a cut in order that it might not appear like a mere blot. The foliage of the trees is generally represented in a manner similar to those in the background of the cut of the knight, of which a copy is given at page 193. The oak leaves in a wood-cutIV.42at the commencement of the preface to the Golden Legend, 1483, are an exception to the general style of Caxton’s foliage; and represent what they are intended for with tolerable accuracy. Having thus noticed some of the earliest books with wood-engravings printed in England, I shall now resume my account of the progress of the art on the Continent.
In an edition of Ptolemy’s Cosmography, printed at Ulm in 1482 by Leonard Holl, we have the first instance of maps engraved on wood. The work is in folio, and the number of the maps is twenty-seven. In a general map of the world the engraver has thus inserted his name at the top: “Insculptum est per Johannē Schnitzer de Armssheim.”IV.43At the corners of this map the winds are represented by heads with puffed-out cheeks, very indifferently engraved. The work also contains ornamental initial letters engraved on wood. In a large one, the letter at the beginning of the volume, the translator is represented offering his book to Pope Paul II. who occupied the see of Rome from 1464 to 1471.
Each map occupies two folio pages, and is printed on the verso of one page and the recto of the next, in such a manner that when the book is open the adjacent pages seem as if printed from one block. What may be considered as the skeleton of each map,—such as200indications of rivers and mountains,—is coarsely cut; but as the names of the places are also engraved on wood, the execution of those thirty-seven maps must have been a work of considerable labour. In 1486 another edition with the same cuts was printed at Ulm by John Regen at the cost of Justus de Albano of Venice.
The idea of Leonard Holl’s Ptolemy was most likely suggested by an edition of the same work printed at Rome in 1478 by Arnold Bukinck, the successor of Conrad Sweinheim. In this edition the maps are printed from plates of copper; and from the perfect similarity of the letters, as may be observed in the names of places, there can be no doubt of their having been stamped upon the plate by means of a punch in a manner similar to that in which a bookbinder impresses the titles at the back of a volume. It is absolutely impossible that such perfect uniformity in the form of the letters could have been obtained, had they been separately engraved on the plate by hand. Each single letter is as perfectly like another of the same character,—the capital M for instance,—as types cast by a letter-founder from the same mould. The names of the places are all in capitals, but different sizes are used for the names of countries and cities. The capitals at the margins referring to the degrees of latitude are of very beautiful shape, and as delicate as the capitals in modern hair-type.
At the back of some of the maps in the copy in the King’s Library at the British Museum, the paper appears as if it had received, when in a damp state, an impression from linen cloth. As this appearance of threads crossing each other does not proceed from the texture of the paper, but is evidently the result of pressure, I am inclined to think that it has been occasioned by a piece of linen being placed between the paper and the roller when the impressions were taken.
In the dedication of the work to the Pope it is stated that this edition was prepared by Domitius Calderinus of Verona, who promised to collate the Latin version with an ancient Greek manuscript; and that Conrad Sweinheim, who was one of the first who introduced the art of printing at Rome, undertook, with the assistance of “certain mathematical men,” whom he taught, to “impress” the maps upon plates of copper. Sweinheim, after having spent three years in preparing these plates, died before they were finished; and Arnold Bukinck, a learned German printer, completed the work, “that the emendations of Calderinus,—who also died before the book was printed,—and the results of Sweinheim’s most ingenious mechanical contrivances might not be lost to the learned world.”IV.44
An edition of Ptolemy in folio, with the maps engraved on copper, was printed at Bologna by Dominico de Lapis with the erroneous dateM.CCCC.LXII.This date is certainly wrong, for no work from the press of this printer is known of an earlier date than 1477; and the editor of this edition, Philip Beroaldus the elder, was only born in 1450, if not in 1453. Supposing him to have been born in the former year, he would only be twelve years old in 1462. Raidel, who in 1737 published a dissertation on this edition, thinks that two numerals—XX—had accidentally been omitted, and that the date ought to be 1482. Breitkopf thinks that oneXmight be accidentally omitted in a date and pass uncorrected, but not two. He rather thinks that the compositor had placed anIinstead of anL, and that the correct date ought to stand thus:M CCCC L XLI—1491. I am however of opinion that no instance of the Roman numerals,L XLI, being thus combined to express 91, can be produced. It seems most probable that the date 1482 assigned by Raidel is correct; although his opinion respecting the numerals—XX—being accidentally omitted may be wrong. It is extremely difficult to account for the erroneous dates of many books printed previous to 1500. Several of those dates may have been accidentally wrong set by the compositor, and overlooked by the corrector; but others are so obvious that it is likely they were designedly introduced. The bibliographer who should undertake to enquire what the printers’ reasons might be for falsifying the dates of their books, would be as likely to arrive at the truth, as he would be in an enquiry into the reason of their sometimes adding their name, and sometimes omitting it. The execution of the maps in the edition of De Lapis is much inferior to that of the maps begun by Sweinheim, and finished by Bukinck in 1478.
Bukinck’s edition of Ptolemy, 1478, is the second book which contains impressions from copper-plates. Heineken, at page 233, refers to the “Missale Herbipolense,” folio, 1481, as the first book printed in Germany containing a specimen of copper-plate engraving. Dr. Dibdin, however, in the 3rd volume of his Tour, page 306, mentions the same work as having the date of 1479 in the prefatory admonition, and says that the plate of a shield of arms—the only one in the volume—is noticed by Bartsch in his “Peintre-Graveur,” vol. x. p. 57. The printer202of the edition of 1481 appears from Heineken to have been George Reyser. In the “Modus Orandi secundum chorum Herbipolensem,” folio, printed by George Reyser, “Herbipoli,” [at Wurtzburg,] 1485, there is on folioII.a copper-plate engraving of the arms of Rudolph de Scherenberg, bishop of that see. This plate is also described by Bartsch in his “Peintre-Graveur,” vol. x. p. 156. The first book which appeared with copper-plate engravings is intitled “Il Monte Sancto di Dio,” written by Antonio Bettini, and printed at Florence in 1477 by Nicolo di Lorenzo della Magna. As this book is of extreme rarity, I shall here give an account of the plates from Mercier, who first called the attention of bibliographers to it as being of an earlier date than the folio edition of Dante, with copper-plate engravings, printed also by Nicolo Lorenzo in 1481. This edition of Dante was generally supposed to be the first book containing copper-plate engravings until Bettini’s work was described by Mercier.
The work called “Il Monte Sancto di Dio” is in quarto, and according to Mercier there ought to be a quire or gathering of four leaves at the commencement, containing a summary of the work, which is divided into three parts, with a table of the chapters. On the reverse of the last of those four leaves is the first plate, which occupies the whole page, and “measures nine inches and seven-eighths in height, by seven inches in width.”IV.45This plate represents the Holy Mountain, on the top of which Christ is seen standing in the midst of adoring angels. A ladder is placed against this mountain, to which it is fastened with iron chains, and on each step is engraved the name of a virtue, for instance, Prudence, Temperance, Fortitude, and others. A figure clothed in a long robe, and who appears to be a monk, is seen mounting the ladder. His eyes are directed towards a huge crucifix placed half way up the hill to the right of the ladder, and from his mouth there proceeds a label inscribed with these words: “Tirami doppo ti,”—“Draw me up after thee.” Another figure is seen standing at the foot of the mountain, looking towards the top, and uttering these words: “Levavi oculos meos in montes,” &c. The second plate occurs at signature IvIV.46after the 115th chapter. It also represents Christ in his glory, surrounded by angels. It is only four inches and five lines high, by six inches wide, French measure. The third plate, which is the same size as the second, occurs at signature Pvij, and represents a view of Hell according to the description of Dante. Those plates, which for the period are well enough designed and executed, especially the second, were most likely engraved203on copper; and they seem to be by the same hand as those in the edition of Dante of 1481, from the press of Nicolo di Lorenzo, who also printed the work of Bettini.IV.47A copy of “Il Monte Sancto di Dio” is in Earl Spencer’s Library; and a description and specimens of the cuts are given by Dr. Dibdin in the Bibliotheca Spenceriana, vol. iv. p. 30; and by Mr. Ottley in the Inquiry into the Origin and Early History of Engraving, vol. i. pp. 375-377.
In the execution of the maps, the copper-plate engraver possesses a decided advantage over the engraver on wood, owing to the greater facility and clearness with which letters can be cutincopper thanonwood. In the engraving of letters on copper, the artist cuts the form of the letterintothe plate, the character being thus inintaglio; while in engraving on a block, the wood surrounding has to be cut away, and the letter left inrelief. On copper, using only the graver,—for etching was not known in the fifteenth century,—as many letters might be cut in one day as could be cut on wood in three. Notwithstanding the disadvantage under which the ancient wood engravers laboured in the execution of maps, they for many years contended with the copper-plate printers for a share of this branch of business; and the printers, at whose presses maps engraved on wood only could be printed, were well inclined to support the wood engravers. In a folio edition of Ptolemy, printed at Venice in 1511, by Jacobus Pentius de Leucho, the outlines of the maps, with the indications of the mountains and rivers, are cut on wood, and the names of the places are printed in type, of different sizes, and with red and black ink. For instance, in the map of Britain, which is more correct than any which had previously appeared, the word “ALBION” is printed in large capitals, and the word “GADINI” in small capitals, and both with red ink. The words “Curia” and “Bremenium” are printed in small Roman characters, and with black ink. The names of the rivers are also in small Roman, and in black ink. Such of those maps as contain many names, are almost full of type. The double borders surrounding them, within which the degrees of latitude are marked, appear to have been formed of separate pieces of metal, in the manner of wide double rules. At the head of several of the maps there are figures of animals emblematic of the country. In the first map of Africa there are two parrots; in the second an animal like a jackal, and a non-descript; in the third, containing Egypt, a crocodile, and a monstrous kind of fish like a dragon; and in the204fourth, two parrots. In the last, the “curious observer” will note a specimen of decorative printing from two blocks of wood; for the beak, wing, and tail of one of the parrots is printed in red.
In the last map,—of Loraine,—in an edition of Ptolemy, in folio, printed at Strasburg in 1513, by John Schott, the attempt to print in colours, in the manner of chiaro-scuro wood engravings, is carried yet further. The hills and woods are printed green; the indications of towns and cities, and the names of the most considerable places, are red; while the names of the smaller places are black. For this map, executed in three colours, green, red, and black, there would be required two wood engravings and two forms of type, each of which would have to be separately printed. The arms which form a border to the map are printed in their proper heraldic colours.IV.48The only other specimen of armorial bearings printed in colours from wood-blocks, that I am aware of, is Earl Spencer’s arms in the first part of Savage’s Hints on Decorative Printing, which was published in 1818, upwards of three hundred years after the first essay.
At a later period a new method was adopted by which the wood engraver was spared the trouble of cutting the letters, while the printer was enabled to obtain a perfect copy of each map by a single impression. The mode in which this was effected was as follows. The indications of mountains, rivers, cities, and villages were engraved on the wood as before, and blank spaces were left for the names. Those spaces were afterwards cut out by means of a chisel or drill, piercing quite through the block: and the names of the places being inserted in type, the whole constituted only one “form,” from which an impression both of the cut and the letters could be obtained by its being passed once through the press. Sebastian Munster’s Cosmography, folio, printed at Basle in 1554, by Henry Petri, affords several examples of maps executed in this manner. This may be considered as one of the last efforts of the old wood engravers and printers to secure to themselves a share of the business of map-engraving. Their endeavours, however, were unavailing; for within twenty years of that date, this branch of art was almost exclusively in the hands of the copper-plate engravers. From the date of the maps of Ortelius, Antwerp, 1570, engraved on copper by Ægidius Diest, maps engraved on wood are rarely to be seen. The practice of engraving the outlines and rivers on wood, and then piercing the block and inserting the names of the places in type has, however, lately been revived; and where publishers are obliged either to print maps with the type or to205give none at all, this mode may answer very well, more especially when the object is to give the relative position of a few of the principal places, rather than a crowded list of names. Most of the larger maps in the Penny Cyclopædia are executed in this manner. The holes in the blocks are pierced with the greatest rapidity by gouges of different sizes acting vertically, and put in motion by machinery contrived by Mr. Edward Cowper, to whose great mechanical skill the art of steam-printing chiefly owes its perfection.
Having thus noticed consecutively the progress of map engraving, it may not here be out of place to give a brief account of Breitkopf’s experiment to print a map with separate pieces of metal in the manner of type.IV.49Previous to 1776 some attempts had been made by a person named Preusch, of Carlsruhe, to print maps by a process which he named typometric, and who published an account of his plan, printed at the press of Haass the Younger, ofBasil. In 1776 Breitkopf sent a communication to Busching’s Journal, containing some remarks on the invention of Preusch, and stating that he had conceived a similar plan upwards of twenty years previously, and that he had actually set up a specimen and printed off a few copies, which he had given to his friends. The veracity of this account having been questioned by an illiberal critic, Breitkopf, in 1777, prefixed to his Essay on the Printing of Maps a specimen composed of moveable pieces of metal in the manner of types. He expressly declares that he considered his experiment a failure; and that he only produced his specimen—a quarto map of the country round Leipsic—in testimony of the truth of what he had previously asserted, and to show that two persons might, independently of each other, conceive an idea of the same invention, although they might differ considerably in their mode of carrying it into effect.
He was first led to think on the practicability of printing maps with moveable pieces of metal by considering that when the letters are omitted there remain but hills, rivers, and the indications of places; and for these he was convinced that representations consisting of moveable pieces of metal might be contrived. Having, however, made the experiment, he felt satisfied that the appearance of such a map was unpleasing to the eye, and that the invention was not likely to be practically useful. Had it not been for the publication of Preusch, he says that he never would have thought of mentioning his invention, except as a mechanical experiment; and to show that the execution of maps in such a manner was within the compass of the printer’s art.
In the specimen which he gives, rivers are represented by minute parallel lines, which are shorter or longer as the river contracts or206expands; and the junction of the separate pieces may be distinctly perceived. For hills and trees there are distinct characters representing those objects. Towns and large villages are distinguished by a small church, and small villages by a small circle. Roads are indicated by dotted parallel lines. For the title of the map large capitals are used. The name of the city ofLEIPSICis in small capitals. The names of towns and villages are inItalic; and of woods, rivers, and hills, in Roman type. The general appearance of the map is unpleasing to the eye. Breitkopf has displayed his ingenuity by producing such a typographic curiosity, and his good sense in abandoning his invention when he found that he could not render it useful.
Mr. Ottley, at page 755 of the second volume of his Inquiry, makes the following remarks on the subject of cross-hatching in wood engravings:—“It appears anciently to have been the practice of those masters who furnished designs for the wood engravers to work from, carefully to avoid all cross-hatchings, which, it is probable, were considered beyond the power of the Xylographist to represent. Wolgemuth perceived that, though difficult, this was not impossible; and in the cuts of the Nuremberg Chronicle, the execution of which, (besides furnishing the designs,) he doubtless superintended, a successful attempt was first made to imitate the bold hatchings of a pen-drawing, crossing each other, as occasion prompted the designer, in various directions: to him belongs the praise of having been the first who duly appreciated the powers of this art.”
Although it is true that cross-hatchings are not to be found in the earliest wood engravings, yet Mr. Ottley is wrong in assigning this material improvement in the art to Michael Wolgemuth; for cross-hatching is introduced in the beautiful cut forming the frontispiece to the Latin edition of Breydenbach’s Travels, folio, first printed at Mentz, by Erhard Reuwich, in 1486,IV.50seven years before the Nuremberg Chronicle appeared. The cut in the following page is a reduced but accurate copy of Breydenbach’s frontispiece, which is not only the finest wood engraving which had appeared up to that date, 1486, but is in point of design and execution as superior to the best cuts in the Nuremberg Chronicle, as the designs of Albert Durer are to the cuts in the oldest editions of the “Poor Preachers’ Bible.”
see text
In this cut, cross-hatching may be observed in the drapery of the female figure, in the upper part of the two shields on each side of her, in the border at the top of the cut, and in other places. Whether the female figure be intended as a personification of the city of Mentz, as is207sometimes seen in old books of the sixteenth century, or for St. Catherine, whose shrine on Mount Sinai was visited by Breydenbach in his travels, I shall not pretend to determine. The arms on her right are Breydenbach’s own; on her left are the arms of John, Count of Solms and Lord of Mintzenberg, and at the bottom of the cut those of Philip de Bicken, knight, who were Breydenbach’s companions to the holy sepulchre at Jerusalem and the shrine of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai. St. Catherine, it may be observed, was esteemed the patroness of learned men, and her figure was frequently placed in libraries in Catholic countries, in the same manner as the bust of Minerva in the libraries of ancient Greece and Rome. The name of the artist by whom the frontispiece to Breydenbach’s travels was executed is unknown; but I have no hesitation in declaring him to be one of the best wood engravers of the period. As this is the earliest wood-cut in which I have noticed208cross-hatching, I shall venture to ascribe the merit of the invention to the unknown artist, whoever he may have been; and shall consider the date 1486 as marking the period when a new style of wood engraving was introduced. Wolgemuth, as associated with wood engraving, has too long been decked out with borrowed plumes; and persons who knew little or nothing either of the history or practice of the art, and who are misled by writers on whose authority they rely, believe that Michael Wolgemuth was not only one of the best wood engravers of his day, but that he was the first who introduced a material improvement into the practice of the art. This error becomes more firmly rooted when such persons come to be informed that he was the master of Albert Durer, who is generally, but erroneously, supposed to have been the best wood engraver of his day. Albert Durer studied under Michael Wolgemuth as a painter, and not as a wood engraver; and I consider it as extremely questionable if either of them ever engraved a single block. There are many evidences in Germany of Wolgemuth having been a tolerably good painter for the age and country in which he lived; but there is not one of his having engraved on wood. In the Nuremberg Chronicle he is represented as having, in conjunction with William Pleydenwurf, superintended the execution of the wood-cuts contained in that book. Those cuts, which are frequently referred to as excellent specimens of old wood engraving, are in fact the most tasteless and worthless things that are to be found in any book, ancient or modern. It is a book, however, that is easy to be obtained; and it serves as a land-mark to superficial enquirers who are perpetually referring to it as containing wood-cuts designed, if not engraved, by Albert Durer’s master,—and such, they conclude, must necessarily possess a very high degree of excellence.
Breydenbach was a canon of the cathedral church of Mentz, and he dedicates the account of his pilgrimage to the Holy Land and visit to Mount Sinai to Berthold, archbishop of that see. The frontispiece, although most deserving of attention as a specimen of wood engraving, is not the only cut in the book which is worthy of notice. Views are given, engraved on wood, of the most remarkable places which he visited;—and those of Venice, Corfu, Modon, and the country round Jerusalem, which are of great length, are inserted in the book as “folding plates.” Each of the above views is too large to have been engraved on one block. For that of Venice, which is about five feet long, and ten inches high, several blocks must have been required, from each of which impressions would have to be taken singly, and afterwards pasted together, as is at present done in such views as are too wide to be contained on one sheet. Those views, with respect to the manner in which they are executed, are superior to everything of the same kind which had previously appeared. The work also contains smaller cuts209printed with the type, which are not generally remarkable for their execution, although some of them are drawn and engraved in a free and spirited manner. The following cut is a reduced copy of that which is prefixed to a chapter intitled “De Surianis qui Ierosolimis et locis illis manentes etiam se asserunt esse Christianos:”—
see text
In a cut of animals there is a figure of a giraffe,IV.51named by Breydenbach “seraffa,” of a unicorn, a salamander, a camel, and an animal something like an oran-outang, except that it has a tail. Of the last the traveller observes, “non constat de nomine.” Some account of this book, with fac-similes of the cuts, will be found in Dibdin’s Bibliotheca Spenceriana, vol iii. pp. 216-228. In the copy there described, belonging to Earl Spencer, the beautiful frontispiece was wanting.
Although a flowered border surrounding a whole page may be observed as occurring twice in Veldener’s edition of the Fasciculus Temporum, printed at Utrecht in 1480, yet I am inclined to think that the practice of surrounding every page with an ornamental flowered border cut in wood, was first introduced by the Parisian printers at a period somewhat later. In 1488, an edition of the “Horæ in Laudem beatissimæ virginis Mariæ,” in octavo, was printed at Paris by Anthony Verard, the text of which is surrounded with ornamental borders. The practice thus introduced was subsequently adopted by the printers of210Germany and Holland, more especially in the decoration of devotional works, such as Horæ, Breviaries, and Psalters. Verard appears to have chiefly printed works of devotion and love, for a greater number of Horæ and Romances proceeded from his press than that of any other printer of his age. Most of them contain wood-cuts, some of which, in books printed by him about the beginning of the sixteenth century, are designed with considerable taste and well engraved; while others, those for instance in “La Fleur des Battailes,” 4to, 1505, are not superior to those in Caxton’s Chess: it is, however, not unlikely that the cuts in “La Fleur des Battailes” of this date had been used for an earlier edition.IV.52
The “Hortus Sanitatis,” folio, printed at Mentz in 1491 by Jacobus Meydenbach, is frequently referred to by bibliographers; not so much on account of the many wood-cuts which it contains, but as being supposed in some degree to confirm a statement in Sebastian Munster’s Cosmography, and in Serrarius, De Rebus Moguntinis, where aJohnMeydenbach is mentioned as being a partner with Gutemberg and Faust. Von Murr, as has been previously noticed, supposed that this person was a wood engraver; and Prosper Marchand,IV.53though without any authority, callsJacobusMeydenbach his son or his relation.
This work, which is a kind of Natural History, explaining the uses and virtues of herbs, fowls, fish, quadrupeds, minerals, drugs, and spices, contains a number of wood-cuts, many of which are curious, as containing representations of natural objects, but none of which are remarkable for their execution as wood engravings. On the opposite page is a fac-simile of the cut which forms the head-piece to the chapter “De Ovis.” The figure, which possesses considerable merit, represents an old woman going to market with her basket of eggs.
This is a fair specimen of the manner in which the cuts in the Hortus Sanitatis are designed and executed. Among the most curious and best designed are: the interior of an apothecary’s shop, on the reverse of the first leaf; a monkey seated on the top of a fountain, in the chapter on water; a butcher cutting up meat; a man selling cheese at a stall; a woman milking a cow; and figures of the male and female mandrake. At chapter 119, “De Pediculo,” a woman is represented brushing the head of a boy with a peculiar kind of brush, which answers the purpose of a small-toothed comb; and she appears211to bestow her labour on no infertile field, for each of her “sweepings,” which are seen lying on the floor, would scarcely slip through the teeth of a garden rake. Meydenbach’s edition has been supposed to be the first; and Linnæus, in the Bibliotheca Botanica, has ascribed the work to one John Cuba, a physician of Mentz; but other writers have doubted if this person were really the author. The first edition of this work, under the title of “Herbarus,” with a hundred and fifty wood-cuts, was printed at Mentz by Peter Scheffer in 1484; and in 1485 he printed an enlarged edition in German, containing three hundred and eighty cuts, under the title of “Ortus Sanitatis oder Garten der Gesundheit.” Of the work printed by Scheffer, Breydenbach is said to have been one of the compilers. Several editions of the Hortus Sanitatis were subsequently printed, not only in Germany, but inFrance,Holland, and Switzerland.
see text
Having previously expressed my opinion respecting the wood-cuts in the Nuremberg Chronicle, there will be less occasion to give a detailed account of the book and the rubbish it contains here: in speaking thus it may perhaps be necessary to say that this character is meant to apply to the wood-cuts and not to the literary portion of the work, which Thomas Hearne, of black-letter memory, pronounces to be extremely “pleasant, useful, and curious.” With the wood-cuts the Rev. Dr. Dibdin appears to have been equally charmed.
The work called the “Nuremberg Chronicle” is a folio, compiled by Hartman Schedel, a physician of Nuremberg, and printed in that city by Anthony Koburger in 1493. In the colophon it is stated that the views of cities, and figures of eminent characters, were executed under the superintendence of Michael Wolgemuth and William Pleydenwurff, “mathematical men”IV.54and skilled in the art of painting. The total number of impressions contained in the work exceeds two thousand, but several of the cuts are repeated eight or ten times. The following fac-simile will afford an idea of the style in which the portraits of illustrious men contained in this often-cited chronicle are executed.
see text
The above head, which the owner appears to be scratching with so much earnestness, first occurs as that of Paris the lover of Helen; and it is afterwards repeated as that of Thales, Anastasius, Odofredus, and the poet Dante. In a like manner the economical printer has a stock-head for kings and emperors; another for popes; a third for bishops; a fourth for saints, and so on. Several cuts representing what might be supposed to be particular events are in the same manner pressed into the general service of the chronicler.
The peculiarity of the cuts in the Nuremberg Chronicle is that they generally contain more of what engravers term “colour” than any which213had previously appeared. Before proceeding, however, to make any further observations on these cuts, I shall endeavour to explain what engravers mean by the term “colour,” as applied to an impression taken with black ink from a copper-plate or a wood-block.
Though there is no “colour,” strictly speaking, in an engraving consisting merely of black and white lines, yet the term is often conventionally applied to an engraving which is supposed, from the varied character of its lines and the contrast of light and shade, to convey the idea of varied local colour as seen in a painting or a water-colour drawing. For instance, an engraving is said to contain much “colour” which appears clearly to indicate not only a variety of colour, but also its different degrees of intensity in the several objects, and which at the same time presents an effective combination of light and shade. An engraver cannot certainly express the difference between green and yellow, or red and orange, yet in engraving a figure, say that of a cavalier by Vandyke, with brown leather boots, buff-coloured woollen hose, doublet of red silk, and blue velvet cloak, a master of his art will not only express a difference in the texture, but will also convey an idea of the different parts of the dress being of different colours. The Rent Day, engraved by Raimbach from a painting by Wilkie, and Chelsea Pensioners hearing the Gazette of the Battle of Waterloo read, engraved by Burnet from a picture by the same artist, may be instanced as copper-plate engravings which contain much “colour.”
Mr. Landseer, at pages 175, 176, of his Lectures on Engraving, makes the following remarks on the term “colour,” as conventionally applied by engravers in speaking of impressions from plates or from wood-blocks:—“It is not uncommon among print-publishers, nor even amongst engravers themselves, to hear the wordCOLOURmistakenly employed to signifyshade; so that if they think an engraving too dark, they say it has too muchcolour, too little colour if too light—and so forth. The same ignorance which has hitherto reigned over the pursuits of this Art, has here imposed its authority, and with the same unfortunate success: I cannot however yield to it the same submission, since it is not only a palpable misuse of a word, but would lead to endless confusion when I come to explain to you my ideas of the means the Art of engraving possesses of rendering local colour in the abstract. Wherefore, whenever I may use the termcolour, I mean it in no other than its ordinary acceptation.”
“ByMIDDLE TINT, I understand and mean, ‘the medium between strong light and strong shade.’—These are Mr. Gilpin’s words; and he adds, with a propriety that confers value on the definition—‘the phrase isnot at allexpressive of colour.’”
Whether we owe the term “colour,” as applied to engravings, to the214ignorance of printsellers or not, I shall not inquire; I only know that a number of terms equally objectionable, if their primitive meaning be considered, are used in speaking of the arts of painting and engraving by persons who are certainly not ignorant. We have the wordshighanddeep, which strictly relate to objects of lineal altitude or profundity, applied to denote intensity of colour; and the very wordintensity, when thus applied, is only relative; the speaker being unable to find a word directly expressive of his meaning, explains himself by referring to some object or thing previously known, as, in this instance, by reference to thetensionof a string or cord. The wordtone, which is so frequently used in speaking of pictures, is derived from the sister art of music. I presume that none of these terms were introduced into the nomenclature of painting and engraving by ignorant persons, but that they were adopted from a necessity originating from the very constitution of the human mind. It is well known to every person who has paid any attention to the construction of languages, that almost every abstract term is referable to, and derived from, the name of some material object. The very word to “think,” implying the exercise of our mental faculties, is probably an offset from the substantive “thing.”
It is also to be observed, that Mr. Landseer speaks as if the termcolourwas used by ignorant printsellers, and of course ignorant engravers, to signifyshadeonly. It is, however, used by them to signify that there is a considerable proportion of dark lines and hatchings in an engraving, although such lines and hatchings are not expressive of shade, but merely indicative of deep colours. Dark brown, red, and purple, for instance, even when receiving direct rays of light, would naturally contain much conventional “colour” in an engraving; and so would a bay horse, a coal barge, or the trunk of an old oak tree, when receiving the light in a similar manner; all would be represented as comparatively dark, when contrasted with lighter coloured objects,—for instance, with a blue sky, grass, or light green foliage,—although not in shade. An engraving that appears too light, compared with the painting from which it is copied, is said to want “colour,” and the copper-plate engraver remedies the defect by thickening the dark lines, or by adding cross lines and hatchings. As a copper-plate engraver can always obtain more “colour,” he generally keeps his work light in the first stage of a plate; on the contrary, a wood engraver keeps his first proof dark, as he cannot afterwards introduce more “colour,” or give to an object a greater depth of shade. A wood engraver can make his lines thinner if they be too thick, and thus cause his subject to appear lighter; but if he has made them too fine at first, and more colour be wanted, it is not in his power to remedy the defect.
What Mr. Landseer’s ideas may be of the “means [which] the art215of engraving possesses of rendering local colour in the abstract,” I cannot very well comprehend. I am aware of the lines used conventionally by engravers to indicate heraldic colours in coat-armour; but I can see no natural relation between perpendicular lines in an engraving and the red colour of a soldier’s coat. I believe that no person could tell the colour of the draperies in Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper from an inspection of Raphael Morghen’s engraving of it. When Mr. Landseer says that he will use the term “colour” in its “ordinary acceptation,” he ought to have explained what the ordinary acceptation of the word meant when applied to impressions from copper-plates which consist of nothing but lines and interstices of black and white.
see text
In the second paragraph Mr. Landseer displays great inconsistency in praising Mr. Gilpin for his definition of the word “tint,” which, when applied to engravings, is as objectionable as the term “colour.” It appears that Mr. Gilpin may employ a conventional term with “singular propriety,” while printsellers and engravers who should use the same liberty would be charged with ignorance. Is there such a thing as atintin nature which is of no colour? Mr. Gilpin’s lauded definition involves a contradiction even when the word is applied to engravings, in which every “tint” is indicative of positive colour. That “medium216between strong light and strong shade,” and which is yet of no colour, remains to be discovered. Mr. Gilpin has supplied us with the “word,” but it appears that no definite idea is necessary to be attached to it. Having thus endeavoured to give a little brightness to the “colour” of “ignorant printsellers and engravers,” I shall resume my observations on the cuts in the Nuremberg Chronicle, to the “colour” of which the preceding digression is to be ascribed.
The preceding cut, representing the Creation of Eve, is copied from one of the best in the Nuremberg Chronicle, both with respect to design and engraving. In this, compared with most other cuts previously executed, much more colour will be perceived, which results from the closeness of the single lines, as in the dark parts of the rock immediately behind the figure of Eve; from the introduction of dark lines crossing each other,—called “cross-hatching,”—as may be seen in the drapery of the Divinity; and from the contrast of the shade thus produced with the lighter parts of the cut.
see text
The subjoined cut, of the same subject, copied from the Poor Preachers’ Bible,IV.55will, by comparison with the preceding, illustrate more clearly than any verbal explanation the difference with respect to colour between the wood-cuts in the old block-books and in most others printed between 1462 and 1493, and those contained in the Nuremberg217Chronicle. In this cut there is no indication of colour; the shades in the drapery which are expressed by hard parallel lines are all of equal strength, or rather weakness; and the hair of Adam’s head and the foliage of the tree are expressed nearly in the same manner.
This manner of representing the creation of Eve appears to have been general amongst the wood engravers of the fifteenth century, for the same subject frequently occurs in old cuts executed previous to 1500. It is frequently represented in the same manner in illuminated missals; and in Flaxman’s Lectures on Sculpture a lithographic print is given, copied from an ancient piece of sculpture in Wells Cathedral, where Eve is seen thus proceeding from the side of Adam. In a picture by Raffaele the creation of Eve is also represented in the same manner.
In the wood-cuts which occur in Italian books printed previous to 1500 the engravers have seldom attempted anything beyond a simple outline with occasionally an indication of shade, or of colour, by means of short parallel lines. The following is a fac-simile of a cut in Bonsignore’s Italian prose translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, folio, printed at Venice by the brothers De Lignano in 1497. It may serve at once as a specimen of the other cuts contained in the work and of the general style of engraving on wood in Italy for about ten years preceding that period.
see text
The subject illustrated is the difficult labour of Alcmena through the malign influence of Lucina, as related by Ovid in theIXth book of the Metamorphoses, from verse 295 to 314. This would appear to have been rather a favourite subject with designers, for it is again selected for illustration in Ludovico Dolce’s Transformationi, a kind of paraphrase of the Metamorphoses, 4to, printed at Venice by Gabriel Giolito in 1557; and it is also represented in the illustrations to the Metamorphoses218designed by Virgil Solis, and printed at Frankfort, in oblong 4to, by George Corvinus and Sigismund Feyrabent, in 1569.IV.56
Of all the wood-cuts executed in Italy within the fifteenth century there are none that can bear a comparison for elegance of design with those contained in an Italian work entitled “Hypnerotomachia Poliphili,” a folio without printer’s name or place, but certainly printed at Venice by Aldus in 1499. This “Contest between Imagination and Love, by a general Lover,”—for such seems to be the import of the title,—is an obscure medley of fable, history, antiquities, mathematics, and various other matters, highly seasoned with erotic sketchesIV.57suggested by the prurient imagination of a monk,—for such the author was,—who, like many others of his fraternity, in all ages, appears to have had “alawnot to marry, and acustomnot to live chaste.” The language in which this chaos of absurdities is composed is almost as varied as the subjects. The ground-work is Italian, on which the author engrafts at will whole phrases of Latin, with a number of words borrowed from the Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Chaldee. “Certain persons,” says Tiraboschi, “who admire a work the more the less they understand it, have fancied that they could perceive in the Hypnerotomachia a complete summary of human knowledge.”IV.58
The name of the author was Francis Colonna, who was born at Venice, and at an early age became a monk of the order of St. Dominic. In 1467 he professed Grammar and Classical Literature in the convent of his order at Trevisa; and he afterwards became Professor of Theology at Padua, where he commenced Doctor in 1473, a degree which, according to the rule of his order, he could not assume until he was forty. At the time of his death, which happened in 1527, he could not thus be less than ninety-four years old. The true name of this amorous dreaming monk, and the fictitious one of the woman with whom he was in love, are thus expressed by combining, in the order in which they follow each other, the initial letters of the several chapters: “Poliam Frater Fransiscus Columna peramavit.”IV.59If any reliance can be placed on219the text and the cuts as narrating and representing real incidents, we may gather that the stream of love had not run smooth with father Francis any more than with simple laymen. With respect to the true name of the mistress of father Francis, biographers are not agreed. One says that her name was Lucretia Maura; and another that her name was Ippolita, and that she belonged to the noble family of Poli, of Trevisa, and that she was a nun in that city. From the name Ippolita some authors thus derive the fictitious name Polia: Ippolita; Polita; Polia.
A second edition, also from the Aldine press, appeared in 1545; and in the following year a French translation was printed at Paris under the following title: “Le Tableau des riches inventions couvertes du voile des feintes amourouses qui sont representées dans le Songe de Poliphile, devoilées des ombres du Songe, et subtilment exposées.” Of this translation several editions were published; and in 1804 J. G. Legrand, an architect of some repute in Paris, printed a kind of paraphrase of the work, in two volumes 12mo, which, however, was not published until after his death in 1807. In 1811 Bodoni reprinted the original work at Parma in an elegant quarto volume.
In the original work the wood-cuts with respect to design may rank among the best that have appeared in Italy. The whole number in the volume is one hundred and ninety-two; of which eighty-six relate to mythology and ancient history; fifty-four represent processions and emblematic figures: there are thirty-six architectural and ornamental subjects; and sixteen vases and statues. Several writers have asserted that those cuts were designed by Raffaele,IV.60while others with equal confidence, though on no better grounds, have ascribed them to Andrea Mantegna. Except from the resemblance which they are supposed to bear to the acknowledged works of those artists, I am not aware that there is any reason to suppose that they were designed by either of them. As Raffaele, who was born in 1483, was only sixteen when the Hypnerotomachia was printed, it is not likely that all, or even any ofthosecuts were designed by him; as it is highly probable that all the drawings would be finished at least twelve months before, and many of them contain internal evidence of their not being the productions of a youth of fifteen. That Andrea Mantegna might design them is possible; but this certainly cannot be a sufficient reason for positively asserting that he actually did. Mr. Ottley, at page 576, vol. ii, of his Inquiry, asserts that they were designed by Benedetto Montagna, an220artist who flourished about the year 1500, and who is chiefly known as an engraver on copper. The grounds on which Mr. Ottley forms his opinion are not very clear, but if I understand him correctly they are as follows:
In the collection of the late Mr. Douce there were sixteen wood engravings which had been cut out of a folio edition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, printed at Venice in 1509. All those engravings, except two, were marked with the lettersía, which according to Mr. Ottley are the initials of the engraver, Ioanne Andrea di Vavassori. Between some of the cuts from the Ovid, and certain engravings executed by Montagna, it seems that Mr. Ottley discovered a resemblance; and as he thought that he perceived a perfect similarity between the sixteen cuts from the Ovid and those contained in the Hypnerotomachia, he considers that Benedetto Montagna is thus proved to have been the designer of the cuts in the latter work.
Not having seen the cuts in the edition of the Metamorphoses of 1509, I cannot speak, from my own examination, of the resemblance between them and those in the Hypnerotomachia; it, however, seems that Mr. Douce had noticed the similarity as well as Mr. Ottley: but even admitting that there is a perfect identity of style in the cuts of the above two works, yet it by no means follows that, because a few of the cuts in the Ovid resemble some copper-plate engravings executed by Benedetto Montagna, he must have designed the cuts in the Hypnerotomachia. As the cuts in the Ovid may, as Mr. Ottley himself remarks, have been used in an earlier edition than that of 1509, it is not unlikely that they might appear before Montagna’s copper-plates; and that the latter might copy the designs of a greater artist than himself, and thus by his very plagiarism acquire, according to Mr. Ottley’s train of reasoning, the merit which may be justly due to another. If Benedetto Montagna be really the designer of the cuts in the Hypnerotomachia, he has certainly excelled himself, for they certainly display talent of a much higher order than is to be perceived in his copper-plate engravings. Besides the striking difference with respect to drawing between the wood-cuts in PoliphiloIV.61and the engravings of Benedetto Montagna, two of the cuts in the former work have a mark which never appears in any of that artist’s known productions, which generally have either his name at length or the letters B. M. In the third cut of Poliphilo, the designer’s or engraver’s mark, a small b, may be perceived at the foot, to the right; and the same mark is repeated in a cut at signature C.
A London bookseller in his catalogue published in 1834, probably speaking on Mr. Ottley’s hint that the cuts in the Ovid of 1509 might have appeared in an earlier edition, thus describes Bonsignore’s Ovid, a work in which the wood-cuts are of a very inferior description, and of which a specimen is given in a preceding page: “Ovidii Metamorphoseos Vulgare, con le Allegorie, [Venezia, 1497,] with numerous beautiful wood-cuts, apparently by the artist who executed the Poliphilo, printed by Aldus in 1499.” The wood-cuts in the Ovid of 1497 are as inferior to those in Poliphilo as the commonest cuts in children’s school-books are inferior to the beautiful wood-cuts in Rogers’s Pleasures of Memory, printed in 1812, which were designed by Stothard and engraved by Clennell. It is but fair to add, that the cuts used in the Ovid of 1497, printed by the brothers De Lignano, cannot be the same as those in the Ovid of 1509 referred to by Mr. Ottley; for though the subjects may be nearly the same, the cuts in the latter edition are larger than those in the former, and have besides an engraver’s mark which is not to be seen in any of the cuts in the edition of 1497.
The five following cuts are fac-similes traced line for line from the originals in Poliphilo. In the first, Mercury is seen interfering to save Cupid from the anger of Venus, who has been punishing him and plucking the feathers from his wings. The cause of her anger is explained by the figure of Mars behind the net in which he and Venus had been inclosed by Vulcan. Love had been the cause of his mother’s misfortune.
In the following cut Cupid is represented as brought by Mercury before Jove, who in the text, “in Athica lingua,” addresses the God of Love, as “ΣΥΜΟΙΓΛΥΚΥΣ ΚΑΙ ΠΙΚΡΟΣ”—“at once sweet and bitter.” In the inscription in the cut, “ΑΛΛΑ” is substituted for “ΚΑΙ.”