see textI am a wood-engraver good,And all designs on blocks of woodI with my graver cut so neat,That when they’re printed on a sheetOf paper white, you plainly viewThe very forms the artist drew:His drawing, whether coarse or fine,Is truly copied line for line.Jost Amman died in 1591, and from the time of his settling at Nuremberg to that of his decease he seems to have been chiefly employed in making designs on wood for the booksellers of Nuremberg and Frankfort. He also furnished designs for goldsmiths; and412it is said that he excelled as a painter on glass. The works which afford the best specimens of his talents as a designer on wood are those illustrative of the costume of the period, first published between 1580 and 1585 by S. Feyerabend at Frankfort. One of those works contains the costumes of men of all ranks, except the clergy, interspersed with the armorial bearings of the principal families in Germany; another contains the costume of the different orders of the priesthood of the church of Rome; and a third, entitled Gynæceum sive Theatrum Mulierum, is illustrative of the costume of women of all ranks in Europe. A work on hunting and fowling, edited by J. A. Lonicerus, and printed in 1582, contains about forty excellent cuts of his designing. A separate volume, consisting of cuts selected from the four preceding works, and of a number of other cuts chiefly illustrative of mythological subjects and of the costume of Turkey, was published by Feyerabend about 1590. In a subsequent edition of this work, printed in 1599, it is stated that the collection is published for the especial benefit of painters and amateurs.VI.90Among the numerous other cuts designed by him, the following may be mentioned: illustrations for a Bible published at Frankfort 1565; a series of subjects from Roman History, entitled Icones Livianæ, 1572; and the cuts in an edition of Reynard the Fox. The works of Jost Amman have proved a mine for succeeding artists; his figures were frequently copied by wood engravers in France, Italy and Flanders; and even some modern English paintings contain evidences of the artist having borrowed something more than a hint from the figures of Jost Amman.Jost Amman was undoubtedly one of the best professional designers on wood of his time; and his style bears considerable resemblance to that of Hans Burgmair as exemplified in the Triumphs of Maximilian. Many of his figures are well drawn; but even in the best of his subjects the attitudes are somewhat affected and generally too violent; and this, with an overstrained expression, makes his characters appear more like actors in a theatre than like real personages. In the cuts of the horse in the “Kunstbüchlein” the action of the animal is frequently represented with great spirit: but in points of detail the413artist is as frequently incorrect. Some of his very best designs are to be found among his equestrian subjects. His men generally have a good “seat,” and his ladies seem to manage their heavy long-tailed steeds with great ease and grace.Several of the views of cities, in Sebastian Munster’s Cosmography—first published in folio, at Basle, 1550—contain two marks, one of the designer, and the other of the person by whom the subject was engraved, the latter being frequently accompanied by a graver, thus:H·H; or with two gravers of different kinds, thus:·C·S·This last mark, which also occurs in Jost Amman’s Kunstbüchlein, is said to be that of Christopher Stimmer, a brother of Tobias Stimmer, a Swiss artist, who is generally described as a designer and engraver on wood. The cuts with the former mark have been ascribed to Hans Holbein, but they bear not the least resemblance to his style of design, and they have been assigned to him solely on account of the letters corresponding with the initials of his name. Professor Christ’s Dictionary of Monograms, and Papillon’s Treatise on Wood-engraving, afford numerous instances of marks being assigned to persons on no better grounds.A writer, in discussing the question, “Were Albert Durer, Lucas Cranach, Hans Burgmair, and other old German artists, the engravers or only the designers of the cuts which bear their mark?” has been pleased to assert that the mark of the actual engraver is usually distinguished by the graver with which it is accompanied. This statement has been adopted and further disseminated by others; and many persons who have not an opportunity of judging for themselves, and who receive with implicit credit whatever they find asserted in a Dictionary of Engravers, suppose that from the time of Albert Durer, or even earlier, the figure of a graver generally distinguishes the mark of theformschneideror engraver on wood. So far, however, from this being a general rule, I am not aware of any wood-cut which contains a graver in addition to a mark of an earlier date than those in Munster’s Cosmography, and the practice which appears to have been first introduced about that time never became generally prevalent. When the graver is thus introduced there can be no doubt that it is intended to distinguish the mark of the engraver; but as at least ninety-nine out of every hundred marks on cuts executed between 1550 and 1600 are unaccompanied with a graver, it is exceedingly doubtful in most cases whether the mark be that of the engraver or the designer.The wood-cuts in Munster’s Cosmography are generally poor in design and coarse in execution. One of the best is that representing an encounter of two armed men on horseback with the marksymbol, which also occurs in some of the cuts in Gesner’s History of Animals, printed414at Zurich, 1551-1558. This cut, as well as several others, is repeated in another part of the book, in the manner of the Nuremberg Chronicle, where the same portrait or the same view is used to represent several different persons or places. The cuts are not precisely the same in every edition of Munster’s work, which was several times reprinted between 1550 and 1570. Those which are substituted in the later editions are rather more neatly engraved.The present cut is copied from one at page 49 of the first edition, where it is given as an illustration of a wonderful kind of tree said to be found in Scotland, and from the fruit of which it was believed that geese were produced. Munster’s account of this wonderful tree and its fruit is as follows; “In Scotland are found trees, the fruit of which appears like a ball of leaves. This fruit, falling at its proper time into the water below, becomes animated, and turns to a bird which they call thetree goose. This tree also grows in the island of Pomona [the largest of the Orkneys], not far distant from Scotland towards the north. As old cosmographers—especially Saxo Grammaticus—mention this tree, it is not to be considered as a fiction of modern authors. Aeneas Sylvius also notices this tree as follows: ‘We have heard that there was a tree formerly in Scotland, which, growing by the margin of a stream, produced fruit of the shape of ducks; that such fruit, when nearly ripe, fell, some into the water and some on land. Such as fell on land decayed, but such as fell into the water quickly became animated, swimming below, and then flying into the air with feathers and wings.415When in Scotland, having made diligent inquiry concerning this matter of King James, a square-built man, and very fat,VI.91we found that miracles always kept receding;—this wonderful tree is not found in Scotland, but in the Orcades.’”see textThe bird said to be the produce of this tree is the “Bernacle Goose, Clakis, or Tree Goose” of Bewick; and the pretendedtreefrom which it was supposed to be produced was undoubtedly a testaceous insect, a species of which, frequently found adhering to ships’ bottoms, is described under the name of “LepasAnatifera” by Linnæus, who thus commemorates in the trivial name the old opinion respecting its winged and feathered fruit. William Turner, a native of Morpeth in Northumberland, one of the earliest writers on British Ornithology, notices the story of the Bernacle Goose being produced from “something like a fungus proceeding from old wood lying in the sea.” He says it is mentioned by Giraldus Cambrensis in his description of Ireland, and that the account of its being generated in this wonderful manner is generally believed by the people inhabiting the sea-coasts of England, Scotland, and Ireland. “But,” says Turner, “as it seemed not safe to trust to popular report, and as, on account of the singularity of the thing, I could not give entire credit to Giraldus, I, when thinking of the subject of which I now write, asked a certain clergyman, named Octavianus, by birth an Irishman, whom I knew to be worthy of credit, if he thought the account of Giraldus was to be believed. He, swearing by the Gospel, declared that what Giraldus had written about the generation of this bird was most true; that he himself had seen and handled the young unformed birds, and that if I should remain in London a month or two, he would bring me some of the brood.”VI.92In Lobel and Pena’s Stirpium Adversaria Nova, folio, London, 1570, there is a cut of the “Britannica Concha Anatifera,” growing on a stalk from a rock, with figures of ducks or geese in the water below. In the text the popular belief of a kind of goose being produced from the shell of this insect is noticed, but the writer declines pronouncing any opinion till he shall have had an opportunity of visiting Scotland and judging for himself. Gerard, in his Herbal, London, 1597, has an article on theGoose-tree; and he says that its native soil is a small island, called the Pile of Fouldres, half a mile from the main land of Lancashire. Ferrer416de Valcebro, a Spanish writer, in a work entitled “El Gobierno general hallado en las Aves,” with coarse wood-cuts, quarto, printed about 1680, repeats, with sundry additions, the story of the Bernacle, or, as he calls it, the Barliata, being produced from a tree; and he seems rather displeased that his countrymen are not disposed to yield much faith to such singularities, merely because they do not occur in their own country.see textThere are two portraits of Erasmus in the first edition of Munster’s Cosmography, one at page 130, and the other, with the markHRMD, at page 407. The latter, as the author especially informs the reader, was engraved after a portrait by Holbein in the possession of Bonifacius Amerbach. The present is a reduced copy of a cut at page 361 of Henry Petri’s edition, 1554. On a stone, near the bottom, towards the left, is seen a markVI.93—probably that of the artist who made the drawing on the block—consisting of the same letters as the double mark just noticed as occurring in the portrait of Erasmus, H.R. M.D. A cut417of the same subject, William Tell about to shoot at the apple on his son’s head, was given in the first edition, but the design is somewhat different and the execution more coarse. The cut from which the preceding is copied may be ranked among the best in the work.Though Sebastian Munster, in a letter, probably written in 1538, addressed to Joachim Vadianus, alludes to an improvement which he and his printer had made in the mode of printing maps, and to a project for casting complete words, yet the maps which appear in his Cosmography, with the outlines, rivers, and mountains engraved on wood, and the names inserted in type, are certainly not superior to the generality of other maps executed wholly on wood about the same period.VI.94Joachim Vadianus, to whom Munster writes, and of whose assistance he wished to avail himself in a projected edition of Ptolemy, was an eminent scholar of that period, and had published an edition, in 1522, of Pomponius Mela, with a commentary and notes. The passage in Munster’s letter, wherein maps are mentioned, is to the following effect: “I would have sent you an impression of one of the Swiss maps which I have had printed here, if Froschover had not informed me of his having sent you one from Zurich. If this mode of printing should succeed tolerably well, and when we shall have acquired a certain art ofcasting whole words, Henri Petri, Michael Isengrin, and I have thought of printing Ptolemy’s Cosmography; not of so great a size as it has hitherto been frequently printed, but in the form in which your Annotations on Pomponius appear. In the maps we shall insert only the names of the principal cities, and give the others alphabetically in some blank space,—for instance, in the margin or any adjoining space beyond the limits of the map.”VI.95The art of casting whole words, alluded to in this passage, appears to have been something like an attempt at what has been called “logographic printing;”VI.96though it is not unlikely that418those “whole words” might be the names of countries and places intended to be inserted in a space cut out of the block on which the map was engraved. By thus inserting the names, either cast as complete words, or composed of separate letters, the tedious process of engraving a number of letters on wood was avoided, and the pressman enabled to print the maps at one impression. In some of the earlier maps where the names are printed from types, the letters were not inserted in spaces cut out of the block, but were printed from a separate form by means of a “re-iteration” or second impression.VI.97In illustration of what Munster says about a certain art of casting whole words,—“artem aliquam fundendarum integrarum dictionum,”—the following extract is given from Dr. Dibdin’s Bibliographical Tour, volume iii. page 102, second edition. “What think you of undoubted proofs ofSTEREOTYPE PRINTINGin the middle of the sixteenth century? It is even so. What adds to the whimsical puzzle is, that these pieces of metal, of which the surface is composed of types, fixed and immovable, are sometimes inserted in wooden blocks, and introduced as titles, mottoes, or descriptions of the subjects cut upon the blocks. Professor May [of Augsburg] begged my acceptance of a specimen or two of the types thus fixed upon plates of the same metal. They rarely exceeded the height of four or five lines of text, by about four or five inches in length. I carried away, with his permission, two proofs (not long ago pulled) of the same block containing this intermixture of stereotype and wood-block printing.”As the engraving of the letters in maps executed on wood—or indeed on any other material—is, when the names of many places are given, by far the most tedious and costly part of the process, the plan of inserting them in type by means of holes pierced in the block, as adopted419in Munster’s Cosmography, was certainly a great saving of labour; yet on comparing the maps in this work with those in Ptolemy’s Cosmography, printed by Leonard Holl, at Ulm, 1482, and with others engraved in the early part of the sixteenth century, it is impossible not to perceive that the art of wood engraving, as applied to the execution of such works, had undergone no improvement: with the exception of the letters, the maps in Holl’s Ptolemy—the earliest that were engraved on wood—are, in point of appearance, equal to those in the work of Munster, published about eighty years later. Considering that the earliest printed maps—those in an edition of Ptolemy, printed by Arnold Bukinck, at Rome, 1478VI.98—are from copper-plates, it seems rather surprising that, until about 1570, no further attempt should have been made to apply the art of engraving on copper to this purpose. In the latter year a collection of maps, engraved on copper,VI.99was published at Antwerp under the superintendence of Abraham Ortelius; and so great was their excellence when compared with former maps executed on wood, that the business of map engraving was within a few years transferred almost exclusively to engravers on copper. In 1572 a map engraved on copper was printed in England, in the second edition of Archbishop Parker’s Bible. It is of folio size, and the country represented is the Holy Land. Within an ornamented tablet is the following inscription: “Graven bi Humfray Cole, goldsmith, an English man born in yenorth, and pertayning to yemint in the Tower. 1572.” In Walpole’s Catalogue of Engravers the portraits engraved on copper of Queen Elizabeth, the Earl of Leicester, and Lord Burleigh, which appear in the first edition of Archbishop Parker’s Bible, 1568,VI.100are ascribed to Humphrey Cole, apparently on no better ground than that his name appears as the engraver of the map, which is given in the second. If Cole were really the engraver of those portraits, he was certainly entitled to a more favourable noticeVI.101than he420receives from the fastidious compiler of the “Catalogue of Engravers who have been born or resided in England;” for, consideringwhenandwherethey were executed, the engraver is entitled to rank at least as high as George Vertue. In fact, the portrait of Leicester, considered merely as a specimen of engraving, without regard to the time and place of its execution, will bear a comparison with more than one of the portraits engraved by Vertue upwards of a hundred and fifty years later.The advantages of copper-plate engraving for the purpose of executing maps, as exemplified in the work of Ortelius, appear to have been immediately appreciated in England, and this country is one of the first that can boast of a collection of provincial or county maps engraved on copper. A series of maps of all the counties of England and Wales, and of the adjacent islands, were engraved, under the superintendence of Christopher Saxton, between 1573 and 1579, and published at London, in a folio volume, in the latter year. Though the greater number of those maps were the work of Flemish engravers, eight, at least, were engraved by two Englishmen, Augustine Ryther and Nicholas Reynolds.VI.102They appear to have been all drawn by Christopher Saxton, who lived at Tingley, near Leeds. Walpole says, that “he was servant to Thomas Sekeford, Esq. Master of the Court of Wards,” the gentleman at whose expense they were engraved. He also states that many of them were engraved by Saxton himself; but this I consider to be extremely doubtful. In his account of early English copper-plate engravers, Walpole is frequently incorrect: he mentions Humphrey Lhuyd—an author who wrote a short description of Britain, printed at Cologne in 1572VI.103—as theengraverof the map of England in the collection of Ortelius; and he includes Dr. William Cuningham, a physician of Norwich, in his catalogue of engravers, without the slightest reason beyond the mere fact, that a book entitled “The Cosmographical421Glasse,” written by the Doctor, and printed in 1559, contains severalwood-cuts. He might, with equal justice, have placed Archbishop Parker in his catalogue, and asserted that some of theplatesin the Bible were “engraved by his own hand.”In connexion with the preceding account of the earliest maps executed in England on copper, it perhaps may not be unnecessary to briefly notice here the introduction of copper-plate engraving into this country. According to Herbert, in his edition of Ames’s Typographical Antiquities, the frontispiece of a small work entitled “Galenus de Temperamentis,” printed at Cambridge, 1521, is the earliest specimen of copper-plate engraving that is to be found in any book printed in England. The art, however, supposing that the plate was really engraved and printed in this country, appears to have received no encouragement on its first introduction, for after this first essay it seems to have lain dormant for nearly twenty years. The next earliest specimens appear in the first edition of a work usually called “Raynalde’s Birth of Mankind,” printed at London in 1540.VI.104This work, which is a treatise on the obstetric art, contains, when perfect, three plates, illustrative of the subject. Not having had an opportunity of seeing any one of these three plates nor the frontispiece to “Galenus de Temperamentis,” I am obliged to trust to Herbert for the fact of their being engraved on copper. In the third volume of his edition of Ames, page 1411, there is a fac-simile of the frontispiece to the Cambridge book; and in the Preliminary Disquisition on Early Engraving and Ornamental Printing, prefixed to Dr. Dibdin’s edition of the Typographical Antiquities, will be found a fac-simile, engraved on wood, of one of the plates in Raynalde’s Birth of Mankind. In an edition of the latter work, printed in 1565, the “byrthe figures” are not engraved on copper, but on wood.A work printed in London by John Hereford, 1545, contains several unquestionable specimens of copper-plate engraving. It is of folio size, and the title is as follows: “Compendiosa totius Anatomiæ delineatio ære exarata, per Thomam Geminum.” The ornamental title-page, with the arms of Henry VIII. towards the centre, is engraved on copper, and several anatomical subjects are executed in the same manner.422Gemini, who is believed to have been the engraver of those plates, was not a native of this country.VI.105In a dedication to Henry VIII, he says that in his work he had followed Andrew Vesalius of Brussels; and he further mentions that in the year before he had received orders from the King to have the plates printed off [excudendas]. A second edition, dedicated to Edward VI, appeared in 1553; and a third, dedicated to Queen Elizabeth, in 1559.VI.106In the last edition the Royal Arms on the title-page are effaced, and the portrait of Queen Elizabeth engraved in their stead. Traces of the former subject are, however, still visible, and the motto, “Dieu et mon Droit,” has been allowed to remain. One of the engravings in this work affords a curious instance of the original plate of copper having been either mended or enlarged by joining another piece to it. Even in the first edition, the zigzag line where the two pieces are joined, and the forms of the littlecrampswhich hold them together, are visible, and in the last they are distinctly apparent.The earliest portrait engraved on copper, printed singly, in this country, and not as an illustration of a book, is that of Archbishop Parker engraved by Remigius Hogenberg. It is a small print four and a half inches high by three and a half wide. At the corners are the arms of Canterbury, impaled with those of Parker; the archbishop’s arms separately; a plain shield, with a cross and the lettersIX; and the arms of Archbishop Cranmer. The portrait is engraved in an oval, round the border of which is the following inscription: “Mūdus transit, et cupiscētia ejus. Anno Domini 1572, ætatis suæ Anno 69. Die mensis Augusti sexto.” In an impression, now before me, from the original plate, the date and the archbishop’s age are altered to 1573 and 70, but the marks of the ciphers erased are quite perceptible. The portrait of the archbishop is a half-length; he is seated at a table, on which are a bell, a small coffer, and what appears to be a stamp. A Bible is lying open before him, and on one of the pages is inscribed in very small letters the following passage from theVI.chapter of Micah, verse 8: “Indicabo tibi, o homo, quid sit bonum, et quid Deus requirat a te, utique facere judicium, et diligere misericordiam, et solicitum ambulare cum Deo tuo.” The engraver’s name, “R. Berg f.,” appears at the bottom of the print to the right: a cross line from the R to the B indicates the abbreviation of the surname, which, written at length, was423Hogenberg. Caulfield, speaking of this engraving in his Calcographiana, page 4, 1814, says,—“The only impression supposed to be extant is in the library at Lambeth Palace; but within the last two years, Mr. Woodburn, of St. Martin’s Lane, purchased a magnificent collection of portraits, among which was a very fine one of Parker.”The number of books, containing copper-plate engravings, published in England between 1559 and 1600, is extremely limited; and the following list will perhaps be found to contain one or two more than have been mentioned by preceding writers: 1. Pena and Lobel’s Stirpium Adversaria Nova, folio, 1570,—ornamented title-page, with the arms of England at the top, and a small map towards the bottom:—the ornaments surrounding the map are very beautifully engraved. 2. Archbishop Parker’s Bible, 1568-1572, with the portraits, previously noticed at page 419. 3. Saxton’s Maps, with the portrait of Queen Elizabeth on the title, 1579. 4. Broughton’s Concent of Scripture, 1591,—engraved title, and four other plates. 5. Translation of Ariosto by Sir John Harrington, 1591,—engraved title-page, containing portraits of the author and translator, and forty-six other plates. 6. R. Haydock’s Translation of Lomazzo’s Treatise on Painting and Architecture, Oxford, 1598,—engraved title-page, containing portraits of Lomazzo and Haydock, and several very indifferent plates, chiefly of architecture and figures in outline.Walpole mentions a plate of the arms of Sir Christopher Hatton on the title-page of the second part of Wagenar’s Mariner’s Mirrour, printed in 1588, and the plates in a work entitled “A True Report of the Newfoundland of Virginia,” all engraved by Theodore de Bry. The first of these works I have not been able to obtain a sight of;VI.107and the second cannot properly be included in a list of works containing copper-plates published in England previous to 1600;VI.108for though it appeared in 1591, it was printed at Frankfort. In the reigns of James and Charles I, copper-plate engraving was warmly patronised in England, and several foreign engravers, as in the reign of Elizabeth, were induced to take up their abode in this country. In the first edition of Chambers’ Cyclopedia, it is stated that the art of copper-plate engraving was brought424to this country from Antwerp by Speed the historian,—an error which is pointed out by Walpole: the writer it seems had not been aware of any earlier copper-plates printed in England than Speed’s maps, which were chiefly executed by Flemish engravers.portrait with text Ἡ ΜΕΓΑΛΗ ΕΥΔΑΙΜΟΝΙΑ ΟΥΔΕΝΙ ΦΘΟΝΕΙΝ ÆTATIS 28425Dr. William Cuningham, whom Walpole describes as an engraver, was a physician practising at Norwich; and his book, entitled The Cosmographical Glasse,VI.109some of theplatesof which are said to have been “engraved by the doctor’s own hand,” was printed at London by John Day in 1559. It contains noplates, properly speaking, for the engravings are all from wood-blocks. At the foot of the ornamental title-page, and in a large bird’s-eye view of Norwich, is the mark I. B. F, which, from something like a tool for engraving, between the B. and F in the original, is most likely that of the engraver. The principal cut is a portrait of the author, a fac-simile of which is given in the opposite page.see textsee textIt is much more likely that some of those cuts were engraved by the printer of the book, John Day, than by the author, Dr. Cuningham; for the initials I. D. appear on a cut at the end of the book,—a skeleton extended on a tomb, with a tree growing out of it—and also on two or three of the large ornamental letters. John Day, in a book printed426by him in 1567, says that the Saxon characters used in it werecutby himself. The cut on page 425 and the three following are specimens of some of the large ornamental letters which occur in the Cosmographical Glasse. The first, the letter D, inclosing the arms of Lord Robert Dudley, afterwards Earl of Leicester, to whom the work is dedicated. The second, the letter A, Silenus on an ass, accompanied by satyrs; the mark, a C with a smallIwithin the curve, is perceived near the bottom, to the right.VI.110The third, the letter I, with a military commander taking the angles between three churches; and the mark I. D. at the bottom to the left.427The fourth, the letter T, a ship with a naked figure as pilot, preceded by Neptune on a dolphin. A mark, H, is perceived in the right-hand corner, at the bottom.see textsee textOf all the books printed in England in the reigns of Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, those from the press of John Day generally contain the best executed wood-cuts; and even though he might not be the engraver of the cuts which contain his initials, yet it cannot be doubted that he possessed a much better taste in such matters than any other English printer of his age. Some of the large ornamental letters in works printed by him are much superior to anything of the kind that had previously appeared in England. In the “Booke of Christian Prayers” printed by John Daye 1569, which goes by the name of “Queen Elizabeth’s Prayer Book,” there is a portrait of her Majesty, kneeling upon a superb cushion, with elevated hands, in prayer, of which the428following is a fac-simile. The book is decorated with wood-cut borders of considerable spirit and beauty, representing, among other things, some of the subjects of Holbein’s Dance of Death.see textOur next cut is a copy, slightly reduced, of a large letter, C, at the commencement of the dedication of Fox’s Acts and Monuments to Queen Elizabeth, in the edition printed by Day in 1576. The Queen, appearing more juvenile than she is usually represented, is seen seated on a throne, attended by three persons, supposed to be intended for one429of her council, John Day, the printer, and John Fox, the author of the work. A cherub, with an immense cornucopia over his shoulder, holds a rose and a lily in one hand, and with the other supports the arms of England; while underneath a representation of the Pope is introduced, holding in his hands the broken keys.VI.111see textThough it be beyond the plan of the present work to trace the progress of the various kinds of large ornamental letters engraved on wood that have been from time to time introduced by the principal German, French, Italian, and English printers from the invention of typography, it may not be unnecessary to say a few words on this subject. In the earliest works of the German printers, as the type was a close imitation of the handwriting of the period, as used in Bibles and Missals, the large ornamental letters occasionally introduced are distinguished by their flourishes and grotesque work extending on the margin both above and below the body of the letter, as is frequently seen in illumined manuscripts of the period. Large initial letters of this kind are not430unfrequent in early French works; but are comparatively scarce in books printed in England, where a letter, engraved on a square block, appearing, with the ornaments, white on a black ground, was adopted shortly after the introduction of printing by Caxton.VI.112As the capitals of the Roman character used in Italy did not admit of the flourishes which accorded so well with the curves of Gothic or German capitals, the printers of that country, towards the end of the fifteenth century, began to introduce flowers, figures of men, birds, and quadrupeds, as back-grounds to their large initial letters. Between 1520 and 1530 this mode of ornamenting their large Roman letters was in great repute with the printers of Basle, Geneva, and Zurich, and to this taste we owe the small alphabet of the Dance of Death. Subsequently the Italian wood engravers, employed by the printers, carried this style of ornament a step further by introducing landscapes as well as figures to form a back-ground to the letter. The following specimen of letter thus ornamented is from a work printed by Giolito at Venice about 1550. The large capitals, in Cuningham’s Cosmographical Glasse, were doubtless suggested by Italian letters in the same taste.see textThe borders which appear in the title-pages of Italian books of this period, and more especially in those printed at Venice, frequently display considerable excellence both in design and execution. They are generally much lighter and more varied in design than the borders in German books; and cross-hatching, which is seldom seen in Italian wood-cuts executed previous to 1520, is so frequently introduced that it would seem that this mode of producing a certain effect—which might often have been accomplished by simpler means—was then considered as a proof of the engraver’s talent. Some of the Italian printers’ marks and devices, on the title-page, or at the end of a work, are drawn and engraved with great spirit. The following devices occur in a folio431edition of Dante—known to bibliographers as thecat edition—published by the brothers Sessa, at Venice, in 1578. The smaller cut—with ornamental work on each side, occupying nearly the width of a page, but omitted in the copy—is several times repeated; the larger—where Grimalkin “sits like an eastern monarch upon his throne”VI.113—forms thetail-pieceat the end of the volume.see textsee textIn the latter part of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century, an Italian artist named Andrea Andreani executed a432considerable number of chiaro-scuros on wood. He was born at Mantua in 1540, and one of his earliest and largest works in this style is dated 1586. The subject is the History of Abraham, from the pavement of the cathedral of Siena;VI.114the first compartment consists of twelve pieces, printed in three colours, forming, when joined together, a large composition about five feet six inches wide by about two feet six inches high. The second compartment, Moses breaking the Tables of the Law, is not properly a chiaro-scuro, but a large wood-cut, consisting of several pieces, printed in ink in the usual manner. It is about six feet wide by about four feet high. Another large work of Andreani’s is the Triumphs of Julius Cæsar, from the designs of Andrea Mantegna, dedicated to Vincentius Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, and published in a folio volume in 1598. Andreani having obtained the blocks of several of the chiaro-scuros executed by Ugo da Carpi, Antonio da Trente, Nicholas da Vincenza, and others, reprinted them with the addition of his own mark; and from this circumstance he frequently obtains the credit of having engraved many pieces which were really executed by his predecessors and superiors in the art. The chiaro-scuros which he reprinted are generally superior to those pieces which were engraved by himself from original designs, and in the execution of which he had to depend on his own judgment and taste. He continued to engrave in this manner till he was upwards of seventy years old, for there are one or two subjects by him dated 1612. Bartsch says that he died in 1623, but observes that some writers place his death in 1626.Henry Goltzius, a painter and engraver, born in 1558, near Venloo, in Flanders, executed several chiaro-scuros, chiefly from his own designs. The most of them are from three blocks; and among the best executed are Hercules and Cacus, and four separate pieces representing the four elements. Like most of the other productions of this artist, whether paintings or copper-plate engravings, his chiaro-scuros are designed with great spirit, though the action of the figures is frequently extravagant. He imitated Michael Angelo, but not with success; he too frequently mistakes violence of action for the expression of intellectual grandeur, and displays the “contortions of the pythoness without her inspiration.” The cut in the opposite page is a reduced copy of the subject intended433to represent the element of water. In the original the impression is from four blocks; one with the outlines and shaded parts black, as in the copy here given; the other three communicating different tints of sepia. Henry Goltzius died in 1617. His mark, an H combined with a G, is seen at the bottom of the cut.see textThe cuts contained in a work on ancient and modern costume, printed at Venice in 1590,VI.115are frequently described as having been drawn by Titian and engraved by hisbrother, Cesare Vecellio. That this person might have been a relation of Titian, whose family name was Vecelli, is not unlikely, but it is highly improbable that he was his brother; for434Titian died in 1576, aged ninety-nine, and the dedication of the work to Pietro Montalbano by Cesare Vecellio is dated October, 1589. In the title it is stated that the costumes in question were “done”—fatti—by Vecellio himself; but whether this word relates to the drawing or the engraving, or to both, it would be exceedingly difficult to ascertain. Those cuts have the appearance of having been drawn on the block with pen-and-ink; and some of the best display so much “character” that they look like portraits of individuals freely sketched by the hand of a master. It was first stated in an edition of the work, printed in 1664, that the cuts were drawn by Titian and engraved by Cesare Vecellio, his brother. The improbable assertion was merely a bookseller’s trick to attract purchasers. It has also been frequently asserted, that the cuts in Vesalius’s Anatomy, printed at Basle in 1548, were drawn by Titian. The Abbé Morelli has, however, shown that they were not drawn by him, but by John Calcar, a Flemish painter, who had been one of his pupils.Papillon, who in his desire to dignify his art claims almost every eminent painter as a wood engraver, pretends that Titian executed several large cuts from his own designs. He says that Titian began to engrave on wood when he was twenty-five years old [in 1502], and he mentions a cut of the Virgin and the infant Christ, with other figures,—probably intended to represent the marriage of St. Catherine,—as one of the earliest specimens of his talents as a wood engraver. Papillon also informs us that Titian engraved a large cut of the Triumph of Christ, or of Faith, in 1508; and in another part of his work he describes several others as engraved by Titian himself.Several of the cuts after designs by Titian, but which were certainly not of his engraving, are of large size, and executed in a free, coarse manner, as if they were rather intended to paste against a wall than to be inserted in a portfolio. One of the largest is the destruction of Pharaoh and his host; it consists of several pieces, which, when united, form a complete subject about four and a half feet wide by about three feet high. A dog, which the painter has introduced in a peculiar attitude,VI.116gives to the whole the air of burlesque. The person by whom it was engraved styles himself “depintore,” a word perhaps intended to imply that he was a brother of the guild, or society of painter-stainers, stencillers, and wood engravers.VI.117His name, with the date, is engraved thus at the bottom of the cut, which is one of those which Papillon says435were executed by Titian himself: “In Venetia p. dominico dalle greche depintore venetiano.M.DXLIX.”The following is a reduced copy of a cut designed by Titian, and said to have been intended by him to ridicule those painters who, not being able to succeed in colouring, recommended ancient sculptures, on account of the correctness of the forms, as most deserving of a painter’s diligent study. The subject is a caricature of the Laocoon; and the professed admirers of antiquity, who, above all, insisted on correct drawing, and thought slightly of colouring, are represented by the old ape wanting a tail, seen in the distance, attended by three of her young ones. The original cut is fifteen inches and seven-eighths wide by ten inches and a half high. It is coarsely engraved, and contains neither name nor date.VI.118There are several chiaro-scuros after designs by Titian, engraved by Boldrini, Andreani, and others.see textWood engraving in Germany at the close of the sixteenth century appears to have greatly declined; the old race of artists who furnished designs for the wood engraver had become extinct, and their places were not supplied by others. The more expensive works were now illustrated with copper-plates; and the wood-cuts which appeared in the commoner kinds of books were in general very indifferent both in design and436execution. As Germany was the country in which wood engraving was first encouraged and fostered, so was it also the country in which the art earliest declined and subsequently became most thoroughly neglected. In France and Italy, wood engraving had also by this time experienced a considerable decline, but not to such an extent as in Germany.Between 1590 and 1610, when the art was rapidly declining in other countries, the wood-cuts which are to be met with in English books are generally better executed than at any preceding period. Engraved title-pages were then frequent, and several of them are executed with considerable skill. A large wood-cut, with the date 1607, in particular displays great merit both in design and engraving. The following is a reduced copy of an impression preserved in the Print Room of the British Museum.VI.119The original, exclusive of the verses, and the ornaments at each side of them, is about fourteen inches high by about fourteen and a half wide.see textText within illustrationThe following are the six concluding lines of the sonnet underneath the cut: in the original they are printed in smaller type than the others, and in a double column. In the copy they are merely indicated to show the relative size of the type to that of the first eight lines.
see textI am a wood-engraver good,And all designs on blocks of woodI with my graver cut so neat,That when they’re printed on a sheetOf paper white, you plainly viewThe very forms the artist drew:His drawing, whether coarse or fine,Is truly copied line for line.
see text
I am a wood-engraver good,And all designs on blocks of woodI with my graver cut so neat,That when they’re printed on a sheetOf paper white, you plainly viewThe very forms the artist drew:His drawing, whether coarse or fine,Is truly copied line for line.
I am a wood-engraver good,
And all designs on blocks of wood
I with my graver cut so neat,
That when they’re printed on a sheet
Of paper white, you plainly view
The very forms the artist drew:
His drawing, whether coarse or fine,
Is truly copied line for line.
Jost Amman died in 1591, and from the time of his settling at Nuremberg to that of his decease he seems to have been chiefly employed in making designs on wood for the booksellers of Nuremberg and Frankfort. He also furnished designs for goldsmiths; and412it is said that he excelled as a painter on glass. The works which afford the best specimens of his talents as a designer on wood are those illustrative of the costume of the period, first published between 1580 and 1585 by S. Feyerabend at Frankfort. One of those works contains the costumes of men of all ranks, except the clergy, interspersed with the armorial bearings of the principal families in Germany; another contains the costume of the different orders of the priesthood of the church of Rome; and a third, entitled Gynæceum sive Theatrum Mulierum, is illustrative of the costume of women of all ranks in Europe. A work on hunting and fowling, edited by J. A. Lonicerus, and printed in 1582, contains about forty excellent cuts of his designing. A separate volume, consisting of cuts selected from the four preceding works, and of a number of other cuts chiefly illustrative of mythological subjects and of the costume of Turkey, was published by Feyerabend about 1590. In a subsequent edition of this work, printed in 1599, it is stated that the collection is published for the especial benefit of painters and amateurs.VI.90Among the numerous other cuts designed by him, the following may be mentioned: illustrations for a Bible published at Frankfort 1565; a series of subjects from Roman History, entitled Icones Livianæ, 1572; and the cuts in an edition of Reynard the Fox. The works of Jost Amman have proved a mine for succeeding artists; his figures were frequently copied by wood engravers in France, Italy and Flanders; and even some modern English paintings contain evidences of the artist having borrowed something more than a hint from the figures of Jost Amman.
Jost Amman was undoubtedly one of the best professional designers on wood of his time; and his style bears considerable resemblance to that of Hans Burgmair as exemplified in the Triumphs of Maximilian. Many of his figures are well drawn; but even in the best of his subjects the attitudes are somewhat affected and generally too violent; and this, with an overstrained expression, makes his characters appear more like actors in a theatre than like real personages. In the cuts of the horse in the “Kunstbüchlein” the action of the animal is frequently represented with great spirit: but in points of detail the413artist is as frequently incorrect. Some of his very best designs are to be found among his equestrian subjects. His men generally have a good “seat,” and his ladies seem to manage their heavy long-tailed steeds with great ease and grace.
Several of the views of cities, in Sebastian Munster’s Cosmography—first published in folio, at Basle, 1550—contain two marks, one of the designer, and the other of the person by whom the subject was engraved, the latter being frequently accompanied by a graver, thus:H·H; or with two gravers of different kinds, thus:·C·S·This last mark, which also occurs in Jost Amman’s Kunstbüchlein, is said to be that of Christopher Stimmer, a brother of Tobias Stimmer, a Swiss artist, who is generally described as a designer and engraver on wood. The cuts with the former mark have been ascribed to Hans Holbein, but they bear not the least resemblance to his style of design, and they have been assigned to him solely on account of the letters corresponding with the initials of his name. Professor Christ’s Dictionary of Monograms, and Papillon’s Treatise on Wood-engraving, afford numerous instances of marks being assigned to persons on no better grounds.
A writer, in discussing the question, “Were Albert Durer, Lucas Cranach, Hans Burgmair, and other old German artists, the engravers or only the designers of the cuts which bear their mark?” has been pleased to assert that the mark of the actual engraver is usually distinguished by the graver with which it is accompanied. This statement has been adopted and further disseminated by others; and many persons who have not an opportunity of judging for themselves, and who receive with implicit credit whatever they find asserted in a Dictionary of Engravers, suppose that from the time of Albert Durer, or even earlier, the figure of a graver generally distinguishes the mark of theformschneideror engraver on wood. So far, however, from this being a general rule, I am not aware of any wood-cut which contains a graver in addition to a mark of an earlier date than those in Munster’s Cosmography, and the practice which appears to have been first introduced about that time never became generally prevalent. When the graver is thus introduced there can be no doubt that it is intended to distinguish the mark of the engraver; but as at least ninety-nine out of every hundred marks on cuts executed between 1550 and 1600 are unaccompanied with a graver, it is exceedingly doubtful in most cases whether the mark be that of the engraver or the designer.
The wood-cuts in Munster’s Cosmography are generally poor in design and coarse in execution. One of the best is that representing an encounter of two armed men on horseback with the marksymbol, which also occurs in some of the cuts in Gesner’s History of Animals, printed414at Zurich, 1551-1558. This cut, as well as several others, is repeated in another part of the book, in the manner of the Nuremberg Chronicle, where the same portrait or the same view is used to represent several different persons or places. The cuts are not precisely the same in every edition of Munster’s work, which was several times reprinted between 1550 and 1570. Those which are substituted in the later editions are rather more neatly engraved.
The present cut is copied from one at page 49 of the first edition, where it is given as an illustration of a wonderful kind of tree said to be found in Scotland, and from the fruit of which it was believed that geese were produced. Munster’s account of this wonderful tree and its fruit is as follows; “In Scotland are found trees, the fruit of which appears like a ball of leaves. This fruit, falling at its proper time into the water below, becomes animated, and turns to a bird which they call thetree goose. This tree also grows in the island of Pomona [the largest of the Orkneys], not far distant from Scotland towards the north. As old cosmographers—especially Saxo Grammaticus—mention this tree, it is not to be considered as a fiction of modern authors. Aeneas Sylvius also notices this tree as follows: ‘We have heard that there was a tree formerly in Scotland, which, growing by the margin of a stream, produced fruit of the shape of ducks; that such fruit, when nearly ripe, fell, some into the water and some on land. Such as fell on land decayed, but such as fell into the water quickly became animated, swimming below, and then flying into the air with feathers and wings.415When in Scotland, having made diligent inquiry concerning this matter of King James, a square-built man, and very fat,VI.91we found that miracles always kept receding;—this wonderful tree is not found in Scotland, but in the Orcades.’”
see text
The bird said to be the produce of this tree is the “Bernacle Goose, Clakis, or Tree Goose” of Bewick; and the pretendedtreefrom which it was supposed to be produced was undoubtedly a testaceous insect, a species of which, frequently found adhering to ships’ bottoms, is described under the name of “LepasAnatifera” by Linnæus, who thus commemorates in the trivial name the old opinion respecting its winged and feathered fruit. William Turner, a native of Morpeth in Northumberland, one of the earliest writers on British Ornithology, notices the story of the Bernacle Goose being produced from “something like a fungus proceeding from old wood lying in the sea.” He says it is mentioned by Giraldus Cambrensis in his description of Ireland, and that the account of its being generated in this wonderful manner is generally believed by the people inhabiting the sea-coasts of England, Scotland, and Ireland. “But,” says Turner, “as it seemed not safe to trust to popular report, and as, on account of the singularity of the thing, I could not give entire credit to Giraldus, I, when thinking of the subject of which I now write, asked a certain clergyman, named Octavianus, by birth an Irishman, whom I knew to be worthy of credit, if he thought the account of Giraldus was to be believed. He, swearing by the Gospel, declared that what Giraldus had written about the generation of this bird was most true; that he himself had seen and handled the young unformed birds, and that if I should remain in London a month or two, he would bring me some of the brood.”VI.92In Lobel and Pena’s Stirpium Adversaria Nova, folio, London, 1570, there is a cut of the “Britannica Concha Anatifera,” growing on a stalk from a rock, with figures of ducks or geese in the water below. In the text the popular belief of a kind of goose being produced from the shell of this insect is noticed, but the writer declines pronouncing any opinion till he shall have had an opportunity of visiting Scotland and judging for himself. Gerard, in his Herbal, London, 1597, has an article on theGoose-tree; and he says that its native soil is a small island, called the Pile of Fouldres, half a mile from the main land of Lancashire. Ferrer416de Valcebro, a Spanish writer, in a work entitled “El Gobierno general hallado en las Aves,” with coarse wood-cuts, quarto, printed about 1680, repeats, with sundry additions, the story of the Bernacle, or, as he calls it, the Barliata, being produced from a tree; and he seems rather displeased that his countrymen are not disposed to yield much faith to such singularities, merely because they do not occur in their own country.
see text
There are two portraits of Erasmus in the first edition of Munster’s Cosmography, one at page 130, and the other, with the markHRMD, at page 407. The latter, as the author especially informs the reader, was engraved after a portrait by Holbein in the possession of Bonifacius Amerbach. The present is a reduced copy of a cut at page 361 of Henry Petri’s edition, 1554. On a stone, near the bottom, towards the left, is seen a markVI.93—probably that of the artist who made the drawing on the block—consisting of the same letters as the double mark just noticed as occurring in the portrait of Erasmus, H.R. M.D. A cut417of the same subject, William Tell about to shoot at the apple on his son’s head, was given in the first edition, but the design is somewhat different and the execution more coarse. The cut from which the preceding is copied may be ranked among the best in the work.
Though Sebastian Munster, in a letter, probably written in 1538, addressed to Joachim Vadianus, alludes to an improvement which he and his printer had made in the mode of printing maps, and to a project for casting complete words, yet the maps which appear in his Cosmography, with the outlines, rivers, and mountains engraved on wood, and the names inserted in type, are certainly not superior to the generality of other maps executed wholly on wood about the same period.VI.94Joachim Vadianus, to whom Munster writes, and of whose assistance he wished to avail himself in a projected edition of Ptolemy, was an eminent scholar of that period, and had published an edition, in 1522, of Pomponius Mela, with a commentary and notes. The passage in Munster’s letter, wherein maps are mentioned, is to the following effect: “I would have sent you an impression of one of the Swiss maps which I have had printed here, if Froschover had not informed me of his having sent you one from Zurich. If this mode of printing should succeed tolerably well, and when we shall have acquired a certain art ofcasting whole words, Henri Petri, Michael Isengrin, and I have thought of printing Ptolemy’s Cosmography; not of so great a size as it has hitherto been frequently printed, but in the form in which your Annotations on Pomponius appear. In the maps we shall insert only the names of the principal cities, and give the others alphabetically in some blank space,—for instance, in the margin or any adjoining space beyond the limits of the map.”VI.95The art of casting whole words, alluded to in this passage, appears to have been something like an attempt at what has been called “logographic printing;”VI.96though it is not unlikely that418those “whole words” might be the names of countries and places intended to be inserted in a space cut out of the block on which the map was engraved. By thus inserting the names, either cast as complete words, or composed of separate letters, the tedious process of engraving a number of letters on wood was avoided, and the pressman enabled to print the maps at one impression. In some of the earlier maps where the names are printed from types, the letters were not inserted in spaces cut out of the block, but were printed from a separate form by means of a “re-iteration” or second impression.VI.97In illustration of what Munster says about a certain art of casting whole words,—“artem aliquam fundendarum integrarum dictionum,”—the following extract is given from Dr. Dibdin’s Bibliographical Tour, volume iii. page 102, second edition. “What think you of undoubted proofs ofSTEREOTYPE PRINTINGin the middle of the sixteenth century? It is even so. What adds to the whimsical puzzle is, that these pieces of metal, of which the surface is composed of types, fixed and immovable, are sometimes inserted in wooden blocks, and introduced as titles, mottoes, or descriptions of the subjects cut upon the blocks. Professor May [of Augsburg] begged my acceptance of a specimen or two of the types thus fixed upon plates of the same metal. They rarely exceeded the height of four or five lines of text, by about four or five inches in length. I carried away, with his permission, two proofs (not long ago pulled) of the same block containing this intermixture of stereotype and wood-block printing.”
As the engraving of the letters in maps executed on wood—or indeed on any other material—is, when the names of many places are given, by far the most tedious and costly part of the process, the plan of inserting them in type by means of holes pierced in the block, as adopted419in Munster’s Cosmography, was certainly a great saving of labour; yet on comparing the maps in this work with those in Ptolemy’s Cosmography, printed by Leonard Holl, at Ulm, 1482, and with others engraved in the early part of the sixteenth century, it is impossible not to perceive that the art of wood engraving, as applied to the execution of such works, had undergone no improvement: with the exception of the letters, the maps in Holl’s Ptolemy—the earliest that were engraved on wood—are, in point of appearance, equal to those in the work of Munster, published about eighty years later. Considering that the earliest printed maps—those in an edition of Ptolemy, printed by Arnold Bukinck, at Rome, 1478VI.98—are from copper-plates, it seems rather surprising that, until about 1570, no further attempt should have been made to apply the art of engraving on copper to this purpose. In the latter year a collection of maps, engraved on copper,VI.99was published at Antwerp under the superintendence of Abraham Ortelius; and so great was their excellence when compared with former maps executed on wood, that the business of map engraving was within a few years transferred almost exclusively to engravers on copper. In 1572 a map engraved on copper was printed in England, in the second edition of Archbishop Parker’s Bible. It is of folio size, and the country represented is the Holy Land. Within an ornamented tablet is the following inscription: “Graven bi Humfray Cole, goldsmith, an English man born in yenorth, and pertayning to yemint in the Tower. 1572.” In Walpole’s Catalogue of Engravers the portraits engraved on copper of Queen Elizabeth, the Earl of Leicester, and Lord Burleigh, which appear in the first edition of Archbishop Parker’s Bible, 1568,VI.100are ascribed to Humphrey Cole, apparently on no better ground than that his name appears as the engraver of the map, which is given in the second. If Cole were really the engraver of those portraits, he was certainly entitled to a more favourable noticeVI.101than he420receives from the fastidious compiler of the “Catalogue of Engravers who have been born or resided in England;” for, consideringwhenandwherethey were executed, the engraver is entitled to rank at least as high as George Vertue. In fact, the portrait of Leicester, considered merely as a specimen of engraving, without regard to the time and place of its execution, will bear a comparison with more than one of the portraits engraved by Vertue upwards of a hundred and fifty years later.
The advantages of copper-plate engraving for the purpose of executing maps, as exemplified in the work of Ortelius, appear to have been immediately appreciated in England, and this country is one of the first that can boast of a collection of provincial or county maps engraved on copper. A series of maps of all the counties of England and Wales, and of the adjacent islands, were engraved, under the superintendence of Christopher Saxton, between 1573 and 1579, and published at London, in a folio volume, in the latter year. Though the greater number of those maps were the work of Flemish engravers, eight, at least, were engraved by two Englishmen, Augustine Ryther and Nicholas Reynolds.VI.102They appear to have been all drawn by Christopher Saxton, who lived at Tingley, near Leeds. Walpole says, that “he was servant to Thomas Sekeford, Esq. Master of the Court of Wards,” the gentleman at whose expense they were engraved. He also states that many of them were engraved by Saxton himself; but this I consider to be extremely doubtful. In his account of early English copper-plate engravers, Walpole is frequently incorrect: he mentions Humphrey Lhuyd—an author who wrote a short description of Britain, printed at Cologne in 1572VI.103—as theengraverof the map of England in the collection of Ortelius; and he includes Dr. William Cuningham, a physician of Norwich, in his catalogue of engravers, without the slightest reason beyond the mere fact, that a book entitled “The Cosmographical421Glasse,” written by the Doctor, and printed in 1559, contains severalwood-cuts. He might, with equal justice, have placed Archbishop Parker in his catalogue, and asserted that some of theplatesin the Bible were “engraved by his own hand.”
In connexion with the preceding account of the earliest maps executed in England on copper, it perhaps may not be unnecessary to briefly notice here the introduction of copper-plate engraving into this country. According to Herbert, in his edition of Ames’s Typographical Antiquities, the frontispiece of a small work entitled “Galenus de Temperamentis,” printed at Cambridge, 1521, is the earliest specimen of copper-plate engraving that is to be found in any book printed in England. The art, however, supposing that the plate was really engraved and printed in this country, appears to have received no encouragement on its first introduction, for after this first essay it seems to have lain dormant for nearly twenty years. The next earliest specimens appear in the first edition of a work usually called “Raynalde’s Birth of Mankind,” printed at London in 1540.VI.104This work, which is a treatise on the obstetric art, contains, when perfect, three plates, illustrative of the subject. Not having had an opportunity of seeing any one of these three plates nor the frontispiece to “Galenus de Temperamentis,” I am obliged to trust to Herbert for the fact of their being engraved on copper. In the third volume of his edition of Ames, page 1411, there is a fac-simile of the frontispiece to the Cambridge book; and in the Preliminary Disquisition on Early Engraving and Ornamental Printing, prefixed to Dr. Dibdin’s edition of the Typographical Antiquities, will be found a fac-simile, engraved on wood, of one of the plates in Raynalde’s Birth of Mankind. In an edition of the latter work, printed in 1565, the “byrthe figures” are not engraved on copper, but on wood.
A work printed in London by John Hereford, 1545, contains several unquestionable specimens of copper-plate engraving. It is of folio size, and the title is as follows: “Compendiosa totius Anatomiæ delineatio ære exarata, per Thomam Geminum.” The ornamental title-page, with the arms of Henry VIII. towards the centre, is engraved on copper, and several anatomical subjects are executed in the same manner.422Gemini, who is believed to have been the engraver of those plates, was not a native of this country.VI.105In a dedication to Henry VIII, he says that in his work he had followed Andrew Vesalius of Brussels; and he further mentions that in the year before he had received orders from the King to have the plates printed off [excudendas]. A second edition, dedicated to Edward VI, appeared in 1553; and a third, dedicated to Queen Elizabeth, in 1559.VI.106In the last edition the Royal Arms on the title-page are effaced, and the portrait of Queen Elizabeth engraved in their stead. Traces of the former subject are, however, still visible, and the motto, “Dieu et mon Droit,” has been allowed to remain. One of the engravings in this work affords a curious instance of the original plate of copper having been either mended or enlarged by joining another piece to it. Even in the first edition, the zigzag line where the two pieces are joined, and the forms of the littlecrampswhich hold them together, are visible, and in the last they are distinctly apparent.
The earliest portrait engraved on copper, printed singly, in this country, and not as an illustration of a book, is that of Archbishop Parker engraved by Remigius Hogenberg. It is a small print four and a half inches high by three and a half wide. At the corners are the arms of Canterbury, impaled with those of Parker; the archbishop’s arms separately; a plain shield, with a cross and the lettersIX; and the arms of Archbishop Cranmer. The portrait is engraved in an oval, round the border of which is the following inscription: “Mūdus transit, et cupiscētia ejus. Anno Domini 1572, ætatis suæ Anno 69. Die mensis Augusti sexto.” In an impression, now before me, from the original plate, the date and the archbishop’s age are altered to 1573 and 70, but the marks of the ciphers erased are quite perceptible. The portrait of the archbishop is a half-length; he is seated at a table, on which are a bell, a small coffer, and what appears to be a stamp. A Bible is lying open before him, and on one of the pages is inscribed in very small letters the following passage from theVI.chapter of Micah, verse 8: “Indicabo tibi, o homo, quid sit bonum, et quid Deus requirat a te, utique facere judicium, et diligere misericordiam, et solicitum ambulare cum Deo tuo.” The engraver’s name, “R. Berg f.,” appears at the bottom of the print to the right: a cross line from the R to the B indicates the abbreviation of the surname, which, written at length, was423Hogenberg. Caulfield, speaking of this engraving in his Calcographiana, page 4, 1814, says,—“The only impression supposed to be extant is in the library at Lambeth Palace; but within the last two years, Mr. Woodburn, of St. Martin’s Lane, purchased a magnificent collection of portraits, among which was a very fine one of Parker.”
The number of books, containing copper-plate engravings, published in England between 1559 and 1600, is extremely limited; and the following list will perhaps be found to contain one or two more than have been mentioned by preceding writers: 1. Pena and Lobel’s Stirpium Adversaria Nova, folio, 1570,—ornamented title-page, with the arms of England at the top, and a small map towards the bottom:—the ornaments surrounding the map are very beautifully engraved. 2. Archbishop Parker’s Bible, 1568-1572, with the portraits, previously noticed at page 419. 3. Saxton’s Maps, with the portrait of Queen Elizabeth on the title, 1579. 4. Broughton’s Concent of Scripture, 1591,—engraved title, and four other plates. 5. Translation of Ariosto by Sir John Harrington, 1591,—engraved title-page, containing portraits of the author and translator, and forty-six other plates. 6. R. Haydock’s Translation of Lomazzo’s Treatise on Painting and Architecture, Oxford, 1598,—engraved title-page, containing portraits of Lomazzo and Haydock, and several very indifferent plates, chiefly of architecture and figures in outline.
Walpole mentions a plate of the arms of Sir Christopher Hatton on the title-page of the second part of Wagenar’s Mariner’s Mirrour, printed in 1588, and the plates in a work entitled “A True Report of the Newfoundland of Virginia,” all engraved by Theodore de Bry. The first of these works I have not been able to obtain a sight of;VI.107and the second cannot properly be included in a list of works containing copper-plates published in England previous to 1600;VI.108for though it appeared in 1591, it was printed at Frankfort. In the reigns of James and Charles I, copper-plate engraving was warmly patronised in England, and several foreign engravers, as in the reign of Elizabeth, were induced to take up their abode in this country. In the first edition of Chambers’ Cyclopedia, it is stated that the art of copper-plate engraving was brought424to this country from Antwerp by Speed the historian,—an error which is pointed out by Walpole: the writer it seems had not been aware of any earlier copper-plates printed in England than Speed’s maps, which were chiefly executed by Flemish engravers.
portrait with text Ἡ ΜΕΓΑΛΗ ΕΥΔΑΙΜΟΝΙΑ ΟΥΔΕΝΙ ΦΘΟΝΕΙΝ ÆTATIS 28
Dr. William Cuningham, whom Walpole describes as an engraver, was a physician practising at Norwich; and his book, entitled The Cosmographical Glasse,VI.109some of theplatesof which are said to have been “engraved by the doctor’s own hand,” was printed at London by John Day in 1559. It contains noplates, properly speaking, for the engravings are all from wood-blocks. At the foot of the ornamental title-page, and in a large bird’s-eye view of Norwich, is the mark I. B. F, which, from something like a tool for engraving, between the B. and F in the original, is most likely that of the engraver. The principal cut is a portrait of the author, a fac-simile of which is given in the opposite page.
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It is much more likely that some of those cuts were engraved by the printer of the book, John Day, than by the author, Dr. Cuningham; for the initials I. D. appear on a cut at the end of the book,—a skeleton extended on a tomb, with a tree growing out of it—and also on two or three of the large ornamental letters. John Day, in a book printed426by him in 1567, says that the Saxon characters used in it werecutby himself. The cut on page 425 and the three following are specimens of some of the large ornamental letters which occur in the Cosmographical Glasse. The first, the letter D, inclosing the arms of Lord Robert Dudley, afterwards Earl of Leicester, to whom the work is dedicated. The second, the letter A, Silenus on an ass, accompanied by satyrs; the mark, a C with a smallIwithin the curve, is perceived near the bottom, to the right.VI.110The third, the letter I, with a military commander taking the angles between three churches; and the mark I. D. at the bottom to the left.427The fourth, the letter T, a ship with a naked figure as pilot, preceded by Neptune on a dolphin. A mark, H, is perceived in the right-hand corner, at the bottom.
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Of all the books printed in England in the reigns of Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, those from the press of John Day generally contain the best executed wood-cuts; and even though he might not be the engraver of the cuts which contain his initials, yet it cannot be doubted that he possessed a much better taste in such matters than any other English printer of his age. Some of the large ornamental letters in works printed by him are much superior to anything of the kind that had previously appeared in England. In the “Booke of Christian Prayers” printed by John Daye 1569, which goes by the name of “Queen Elizabeth’s Prayer Book,” there is a portrait of her Majesty, kneeling upon a superb cushion, with elevated hands, in prayer, of which the428following is a fac-simile. The book is decorated with wood-cut borders of considerable spirit and beauty, representing, among other things, some of the subjects of Holbein’s Dance of Death.
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Our next cut is a copy, slightly reduced, of a large letter, C, at the commencement of the dedication of Fox’s Acts and Monuments to Queen Elizabeth, in the edition printed by Day in 1576. The Queen, appearing more juvenile than she is usually represented, is seen seated on a throne, attended by three persons, supposed to be intended for one429of her council, John Day, the printer, and John Fox, the author of the work. A cherub, with an immense cornucopia over his shoulder, holds a rose and a lily in one hand, and with the other supports the arms of England; while underneath a representation of the Pope is introduced, holding in his hands the broken keys.VI.111
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Though it be beyond the plan of the present work to trace the progress of the various kinds of large ornamental letters engraved on wood that have been from time to time introduced by the principal German, French, Italian, and English printers from the invention of typography, it may not be unnecessary to say a few words on this subject. In the earliest works of the German printers, as the type was a close imitation of the handwriting of the period, as used in Bibles and Missals, the large ornamental letters occasionally introduced are distinguished by their flourishes and grotesque work extending on the margin both above and below the body of the letter, as is frequently seen in illumined manuscripts of the period. Large initial letters of this kind are not430unfrequent in early French works; but are comparatively scarce in books printed in England, where a letter, engraved on a square block, appearing, with the ornaments, white on a black ground, was adopted shortly after the introduction of printing by Caxton.VI.112As the capitals of the Roman character used in Italy did not admit of the flourishes which accorded so well with the curves of Gothic or German capitals, the printers of that country, towards the end of the fifteenth century, began to introduce flowers, figures of men, birds, and quadrupeds, as back-grounds to their large initial letters. Between 1520 and 1530 this mode of ornamenting their large Roman letters was in great repute with the printers of Basle, Geneva, and Zurich, and to this taste we owe the small alphabet of the Dance of Death. Subsequently the Italian wood engravers, employed by the printers, carried this style of ornament a step further by introducing landscapes as well as figures to form a back-ground to the letter. The following specimen of letter thus ornamented is from a work printed by Giolito at Venice about 1550. The large capitals, in Cuningham’s Cosmographical Glasse, were doubtless suggested by Italian letters in the same taste.
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The borders which appear in the title-pages of Italian books of this period, and more especially in those printed at Venice, frequently display considerable excellence both in design and execution. They are generally much lighter and more varied in design than the borders in German books; and cross-hatching, which is seldom seen in Italian wood-cuts executed previous to 1520, is so frequently introduced that it would seem that this mode of producing a certain effect—which might often have been accomplished by simpler means—was then considered as a proof of the engraver’s talent. Some of the Italian printers’ marks and devices, on the title-page, or at the end of a work, are drawn and engraved with great spirit. The following devices occur in a folio431edition of Dante—known to bibliographers as thecat edition—published by the brothers Sessa, at Venice, in 1578. The smaller cut—with ornamental work on each side, occupying nearly the width of a page, but omitted in the copy—is several times repeated; the larger—where Grimalkin “sits like an eastern monarch upon his throne”VI.113—forms thetail-pieceat the end of the volume.
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In the latter part of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century, an Italian artist named Andrea Andreani executed a432considerable number of chiaro-scuros on wood. He was born at Mantua in 1540, and one of his earliest and largest works in this style is dated 1586. The subject is the History of Abraham, from the pavement of the cathedral of Siena;VI.114the first compartment consists of twelve pieces, printed in three colours, forming, when joined together, a large composition about five feet six inches wide by about two feet six inches high. The second compartment, Moses breaking the Tables of the Law, is not properly a chiaro-scuro, but a large wood-cut, consisting of several pieces, printed in ink in the usual manner. It is about six feet wide by about four feet high. Another large work of Andreani’s is the Triumphs of Julius Cæsar, from the designs of Andrea Mantegna, dedicated to Vincentius Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, and published in a folio volume in 1598. Andreani having obtained the blocks of several of the chiaro-scuros executed by Ugo da Carpi, Antonio da Trente, Nicholas da Vincenza, and others, reprinted them with the addition of his own mark; and from this circumstance he frequently obtains the credit of having engraved many pieces which were really executed by his predecessors and superiors in the art. The chiaro-scuros which he reprinted are generally superior to those pieces which were engraved by himself from original designs, and in the execution of which he had to depend on his own judgment and taste. He continued to engrave in this manner till he was upwards of seventy years old, for there are one or two subjects by him dated 1612. Bartsch says that he died in 1623, but observes that some writers place his death in 1626.
Henry Goltzius, a painter and engraver, born in 1558, near Venloo, in Flanders, executed several chiaro-scuros, chiefly from his own designs. The most of them are from three blocks; and among the best executed are Hercules and Cacus, and four separate pieces representing the four elements. Like most of the other productions of this artist, whether paintings or copper-plate engravings, his chiaro-scuros are designed with great spirit, though the action of the figures is frequently extravagant. He imitated Michael Angelo, but not with success; he too frequently mistakes violence of action for the expression of intellectual grandeur, and displays the “contortions of the pythoness without her inspiration.” The cut in the opposite page is a reduced copy of the subject intended433to represent the element of water. In the original the impression is from four blocks; one with the outlines and shaded parts black, as in the copy here given; the other three communicating different tints of sepia. Henry Goltzius died in 1617. His mark, an H combined with a G, is seen at the bottom of the cut.
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The cuts contained in a work on ancient and modern costume, printed at Venice in 1590,VI.115are frequently described as having been drawn by Titian and engraved by hisbrother, Cesare Vecellio. That this person might have been a relation of Titian, whose family name was Vecelli, is not unlikely, but it is highly improbable that he was his brother; for434Titian died in 1576, aged ninety-nine, and the dedication of the work to Pietro Montalbano by Cesare Vecellio is dated October, 1589. In the title it is stated that the costumes in question were “done”—fatti—by Vecellio himself; but whether this word relates to the drawing or the engraving, or to both, it would be exceedingly difficult to ascertain. Those cuts have the appearance of having been drawn on the block with pen-and-ink; and some of the best display so much “character” that they look like portraits of individuals freely sketched by the hand of a master. It was first stated in an edition of the work, printed in 1664, that the cuts were drawn by Titian and engraved by Cesare Vecellio, his brother. The improbable assertion was merely a bookseller’s trick to attract purchasers. It has also been frequently asserted, that the cuts in Vesalius’s Anatomy, printed at Basle in 1548, were drawn by Titian. The Abbé Morelli has, however, shown that they were not drawn by him, but by John Calcar, a Flemish painter, who had been one of his pupils.
Papillon, who in his desire to dignify his art claims almost every eminent painter as a wood engraver, pretends that Titian executed several large cuts from his own designs. He says that Titian began to engrave on wood when he was twenty-five years old [in 1502], and he mentions a cut of the Virgin and the infant Christ, with other figures,—probably intended to represent the marriage of St. Catherine,—as one of the earliest specimens of his talents as a wood engraver. Papillon also informs us that Titian engraved a large cut of the Triumph of Christ, or of Faith, in 1508; and in another part of his work he describes several others as engraved by Titian himself.
Several of the cuts after designs by Titian, but which were certainly not of his engraving, are of large size, and executed in a free, coarse manner, as if they were rather intended to paste against a wall than to be inserted in a portfolio. One of the largest is the destruction of Pharaoh and his host; it consists of several pieces, which, when united, form a complete subject about four and a half feet wide by about three feet high. A dog, which the painter has introduced in a peculiar attitude,VI.116gives to the whole the air of burlesque. The person by whom it was engraved styles himself “depintore,” a word perhaps intended to imply that he was a brother of the guild, or society of painter-stainers, stencillers, and wood engravers.VI.117His name, with the date, is engraved thus at the bottom of the cut, which is one of those which Papillon says435were executed by Titian himself: “In Venetia p. dominico dalle greche depintore venetiano.M.DXLIX.”
The following is a reduced copy of a cut designed by Titian, and said to have been intended by him to ridicule those painters who, not being able to succeed in colouring, recommended ancient sculptures, on account of the correctness of the forms, as most deserving of a painter’s diligent study. The subject is a caricature of the Laocoon; and the professed admirers of antiquity, who, above all, insisted on correct drawing, and thought slightly of colouring, are represented by the old ape wanting a tail, seen in the distance, attended by three of her young ones. The original cut is fifteen inches and seven-eighths wide by ten inches and a half high. It is coarsely engraved, and contains neither name nor date.VI.118There are several chiaro-scuros after designs by Titian, engraved by Boldrini, Andreani, and others.
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Wood engraving in Germany at the close of the sixteenth century appears to have greatly declined; the old race of artists who furnished designs for the wood engraver had become extinct, and their places were not supplied by others. The more expensive works were now illustrated with copper-plates; and the wood-cuts which appeared in the commoner kinds of books were in general very indifferent both in design and436execution. As Germany was the country in which wood engraving was first encouraged and fostered, so was it also the country in which the art earliest declined and subsequently became most thoroughly neglected. In France and Italy, wood engraving had also by this time experienced a considerable decline, but not to such an extent as in Germany.
Between 1590 and 1610, when the art was rapidly declining in other countries, the wood-cuts which are to be met with in English books are generally better executed than at any preceding period. Engraved title-pages were then frequent, and several of them are executed with considerable skill. A large wood-cut, with the date 1607, in particular displays great merit both in design and engraving. The following is a reduced copy of an impression preserved in the Print Room of the British Museum.VI.119The original, exclusive of the verses, and the ornaments at each side of them, is about fourteen inches high by about fourteen and a half wide.
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The following are the six concluding lines of the sonnet underneath the cut: in the original they are printed in smaller type than the others, and in a double column. In the copy they are merely indicated to show the relative size of the type to that of the first eight lines.