At Lübeck a finely decorated edition of theRudimentum Noviciorum, a universal history, was issued byLucas Brandis as early as 1475, with some good pictorial capitals, and pictures beginning with the Creation and coming down to the life of Christ. In 1484 we come to aLevend S. Jeronimi, printed by Bartholomaeus Ghotan and illustrated by an anonymous artist whose work can be traced during the next ten years in other books of Ghotan’s, in several very interesting editions by the unidentified “Poppy-Printer” (so called from his mark), including aDodendantz(1489 and 1496),Imitatio Christi,Bergitten Openbaringe(1496),Reynke de Vos(1498),Schakspil, etc., and in the splendid Low German Bible printed in 1494 by Stephan Arndes, with cuts which improve on those in the Cologne editions.
At Mainz, which led the way so energetically in typography, book-illustration is not represented at all until 1479, and then almost accidentally in theMeditationesof Cardinal Turrecremata, printed by Johann Neumeister “ciuem Moguntinensem,” with thirty-four curious metal-cuts imitating on a smaller scale the woodcuts in the editions printed at Rome by Ulrich Han. Two years later these metal-cuts were used by Neumeister at Albi, and they are subsequently found at Lyon. That this book was printed at Mainz was made practically certain by the type appearing subsequently in the possession of Peter von Friedberg, but that the cuts were executed at Mainz seemed to me improbable until the publication of Dr. Schreibers work on German illustrated books acquainted me with the existence of anAgenda Moguntinensisof 29 June, 1480, also attributed to Neumeister’s press, with a metal-cut of S. Martin and the beggar, and the arms not only of Archbishop Diether and the province of Mainz, but of Canon Bernhard von Breidenbach, of whom we shall soon hear again. TheAgendaand its metal-cuts are thus firmly fixed as executed at Mainz, and the metal-cuts of theMeditationesmust therefore be regarded as Mainz work also.
In 1486 Mainz atoned for her long delay in taking upillustrated work, with thePeregrinationes in Montem Syonof the aforesaid Canon Bernhard von Breidenbach, printed with type of Schoeffer’s, under the superintendence of Erhard Reuwich of Utrecht, the illustrator. The text of Breidenbach’s book is full of interest, for he gives a vivid account of the voyage and of the hardships and extortions to which pilgrims were exposed. In his preface he states that Reuwich was expressly taken on the expedition to illustrate the narrative, and he certainly had ample skill to justify the engagement. Unfortunately, far too much of his labour was spent on great maps or views of Venice, Parenzo, Rhodes and other places passed on the way. These are certainly interesting, as they mark all the chief buildings and are very decoratively drawn. But in the text of the book there are just a few sketches from the life, Jewish moneylenders and groups of Saracens, Syrians (see Plate IX), Indians, etc., and these are so vivid and vigorous that we may well regret that the labour bestowed on the great maps left time for very few of them. They are interesting, moreover, not only as designs, but also for their cutting, as they introduce cross-hatching for the first time, and that very effectively, and are handled with equal firmness and freedom. At the end of the book is a jest, a full-page woodcut subscribed “Hec sunt animalia veraciter depicta sicut vidimus in terra sancta,” among the animals thus certified as having been seen personally in the Holy Land being a unicorn and a creature (name unknown—non constat de nomine) with a great mane of hair and long tail, which might well serve for the missing link between a man and a gorilla. The frontispiece of the book, on the other hand, is a striking design of a woman (symbolizing the city of Mainz?) standing on a pedestal surrounded with the arms of Breidenbach and the two friends who went with him, decoratively treated, while above her is a canopy of trelliswork amid which children are joyously climbing. With the MainzBreidenbachwe feel that we have passed away from the naive craftsmanshipof the earliest illustrated books into a region of conscious art.
Naturally craftsmanship was not extinguished by the arrival of a single artist. We find it at work again in the charming and little known cut to a Leipzig edition of the Eclogues of Theodulus, printed in 1491, which the delight of recent discovery tempts me to show here (see Plate X), and at Mainz itself in the simple cuts to theHortus Sanitatis, printed by Meidenbach, also in 1491, though here again there is an advance, as instead of plants and animals drawn out of the illustrator’s head merely for decorative effect we find in many of the cuts fairly careful copies made from the life.
In Conrad Botho’sCronecken der Sassen, printed by Schoeffer the following year, most of the armorial illustrations and pictures of the foundation of towns are merely decoratively treated, but in one cut in which a rather wild-looking Charlemagne with lean legs is shown seated in a chair of state surmounted by an eagle, an idol crushed under his feet, the designer has given free play to his imagination.
The transition to different ideals of illustration thus begun at Mainz was carried on at Nuremberg, where Michael Wolgemut illustrated two important works, theSchatzbehalterin 1491 and the famousNuremberg Chroniclein 1493, this latter with the help of his stepson, Wilhelm Pleydenwurff, and no doubt also of several inferior designers. TheSchatzbehalter, of which the text is ascribed to Stephanus Fridelinus, a Nuremberg Franciscan, is one of several examples of a too ambitious scheme of decoration perforce abandoned for lack either of time or of money. In the first half there are ninety-two different full-page woodcuts, mostly illustrating Scripture history, but in some cases allegorical; in the second half the number is no more than two. The pictures executed before the scheme was thus cut down vary greatly in quality, from the fine design of Christ kneeling before the throne of the Father and pointing to the emblemsof the Passion, which prepares us for the work which Dürer, who was then being trained in Wolgemut’s studio, was soon to execute, down to the amusing but uninspired craftsmanship of the picture of Solomon and a selection of his wives banqueting. For theLiber Chronicarumof Hartman Schedel plans had been much more carefully worked out than for theSchatzbehalter, and by studying economy a seemingly profuse system of illustration was maintained to the end. The industry of Mr. Sydney Cockerell has evolved for us the exact figures as to the illustration of this book. Real liberality is shown in the large, double-page topographical cuts of twenty-six different cities, for many of which sketches must have been specially obtained, and not one of these is used a second time; but twenty-two other large cuts of cities and countries were made to serve for sixty-nine different subjects, and when we come to figures of emperors, kings, and popes we find ninety-six blocks used 598 times, or on an average half a dozen times apiece. Mr. Cockerell’s grand totals are 1809 pictures printed from 645 different blocks, so that the repetitions number no fewer than 1164. Both in the designs and their execution there is great inequality, but no single picture can compare with that of Christ kneeling before the Father in theSchatzbehalter, and both books, fine as their best work is, must be regarded rather as the crown of German medieval craftsmanship in book-building than as belonging to the period of self-conscious artistic aim which is heralded by the MainzBreidenbachbut really begins with Dürer.
With this Nuremberg work we may perhaps class that in the one book printed at the Cistercian monastery at Zinna, near Magdeburg, thePsalterium Beatae Mariae Virginis, of Hermann Nitschewitz, the most richly decorated German book of the fifteenth century, executed in honour of the Emperor Frederick and his son Maximilian, who in the page here shown (Plate XI) are both represented.
Primitive Dutch and Flemish book-illustrations whencompared with German ones exhibit just the general likeness and specific differences which we might expect in the work of such near neighbours. The Low Country wood-cutters are on the whole more decorative than the Germans, they were more influenced by the work of the engravers on copper, and they were attracted by different types of the human figure, the faces and bodies of the men and women they drew being often long and thin, and often also showing a slightly fantastic touch rarely found in German work. Unfortunately, these Low Country illustrated books are even rarer than the German ones, far fewer of them have found their way to England, and no attempt has been made to reproduce a really representative selection of them in facsimile. In 1884 Sir W. M. Conway, as the result of prolonged studies on the Continent, wrote an excellent account of these illustrations and the makers of them under the title,The Woodcutters of the Netherlands in the Fifteenth Century, which was unhappily allowed to appear without any facsimiles to elucidate the text. Thus the study of these Low Country illustrated books is still difficult.
In the production of the early block-books (see Chapter II) the Low Countries had played a principal part, and we meet again with traces of them in later illustrated books, cuts from theBiblia Pauperumbeing used by Peter van Os at Zwolle in hisEpisteln ende Evangelienof 5 January, 1487, and one from theCanticum Canticorumin his edition of Mauberne’sRosetum Exercitiorum Spiritualiumin 1494. Two cut-up pieces from the block-bookSpeculum Humanae Saluationiswere used by Veldener in hisEpisteln ende Evangeliencompleted at Utrecht 19 April, 1481, and all the old blocks, each divided in two, in a new edition of theSpeculumprinted at Kuilenburg 27 September, 1483, with twelve new cuts added to them. Sir W. M. Conway has also shown that a set of sixty-four cuts used in aBoec van der Houteor Legend of the Holy Cross, issued by Veldener at Kuilenburg earlier in 1483 (on 6 March), must havebeen obtained by dividing in a similar manner the double cuts of a block-book now entirely lost.
The first printer in the Low Countries who commissioned a woodcut for a book printed with movable type was Johann of Paderborn (John of Westphalia) at Louvain, the cut being a curious little representation of his own head, shown in white on a black oval. This he used in hisInstitutionesof Justinian of 21 November, 1475, and a few other books, and a similar but even better likeness of his kinsman, Conrad, appeared the next year in theFormulae Epistularumof Maneken (1 December, 1476). Although Johann of Paderborn thus led the way in the use of cuts, he only resorted to them subsequently for a few diagrams, and towards the end of his career for some half-dozen miscellaneous blocks for devotional books.
The portrait of Johann of Paderborn being used only as a device, book-illustration begins, though on a very small scale, with Veldener’s edition of theFasciculus Temporum(29 December, 1475), with its handful of poor little cuts modelled on those of the Cologne editions. Five years later Veldener reprinted theFasciculuswith a few new cuts, the originals of which have been found in the LübeckRudimentum Noviciorum. The only picture which seems to have been specially designed for him was a folio cut in hisPassionael(Utrecht, 12 September, 1480), where in delicate simple outline a variety of martyrdoms are shown as taking place in the hollows of a series of hills. Mention has already been made of his two Kuilenburg reprints of block-books. In the same place he issued Dutch and Latin Herbals with cuts copied from Schoeffer’s MainzHerbarius, and this completes the story of his illustrated ventures.
We come now to Gerard Leeu, who on 3 June, 1480, issued at Gouda the first completely illustrated book from a Dutch press, theDialogus creaturarum moralisatus, a glorified version of the old bestiaries, full of wonderful stories of animals. This was illustrated with 121specially designed cuts (mostly about four inches by two), and Leeu’s liberality was rewarded by the book passing through nine editions, six in Latin and three in Dutch, in eleven years. The first page is decorated with a picture of the Sun and Moon, a large capital, and an ornamental border of foliage, but the merit of the book lies in the simple skill with which the craftsman, working entirely in outline, has reproduced the humour of the text. To the same hand are attributed ten cuts for Leeu’s vernacularGesta Romanorum(30 April, 1481), four for an undatedHistoria Septem Sapientum, and four others, of the Four Last Things, which, to our puzzlement, appear first in a French edition printed by Arend de Keysere at Audenarde, and then (23 August, 1482) in a Dutch one of Leeu’s. In the previous month he had brought out aLiden ende passie ons Heerenwith thirty-two quarto cuts, part of a set of sixty-eight made for editions of theDevote Ghetidenor Dutch version of theHorae, the first of which (unless a Gouda one has perished) appeared after his removal to Antwerp. During the following nine years he made good use of his old blocks. For his DutchAesopof October, 1485, and Latin edition of September, 1486, he used cuts copied from the original Ulm and Augsburg set. These he bought from Knoblochtzer of Strassburg and sold to Koelhoff of Cologne. In 1487 he issued an illustratedReynard the Fox, of which only a fragment survives, and the pleasant romance ofParis and Vienne, with twenty-five fairly successful cuts, with the help of which five editions were sold, the first in French, the next three in Dutch, and the last (23 June, 1492) in English. According to Sir W. M. Conway theseParis and Viennecuts were the work of a Haarlem craftsman, who from 1483 to 1486 had worked for Jacob Bellaert, whose press was intimately connected with Leeu’s, type and cuts passing freely from one to the other. Bellaert had begun by using some of Leeu’s Passion cuts for aLiden ons Heeren, but seems soon to have discovered his Haarlem wood-cutter, with whose aidhe produced (15 February, 1484)Der Sonderen troest, The Sinners’ Trust, a Dutch version of that remarkable work theBelialorConsolatio peccatorumof Jacobus de Theramo, of which the Augsburg edition has already been mentioned. This begins with a full folio-page cut combining in one panorama the Fall of Angels and of Adam and Eve, the Flood, the Egyptians overtaken in the Red Sea, and the Baptism of Christ. Six of the other cuts fill half-pages and show the Harrowing of Hell (here reproduced, Plate XII), Devils in consultation, Satan kneeling before the Lord, the Last Judgment, Ascension and Descent of the Holy Spirit. The remaining half-page pictures are all composite, made up of different combinations of eight centre-pieces and seventeen sidepieces. The centre-pieces for the most part represent the different judges before whom the trials are heard, the side-pieces the messengers and parties to the suit. The combinations are occasionally a little clumsy, but far less so than in the Strassburg books printed by Grüninger in which the same labour-saving device was adopted, and in excellence of design and delicacy of cutting this DutchBelialranks high among illustrated incunabula.
Later in 1484 (25 October) Bellaert issued aBoeck des Golden Throenswith four-column cuts, often repeated, of an Elder instructing a maiden; in May, 1485, Le Fèvre’sJason, and a little earlier than this an undated edition of the same author’sRecueil des histoires de Troie, both in Dutch and both profusely illustrated; on Christmas Eve in the same year a DutchDe proprietatibus rerum, and in 1486 versions of Pierre Michault’sDoctrinal, in which a dreamer is shown the schools of virtue and of vice, and of Guillaume de Deguilleville’sPélérinage de la vie humaine, the medieval prototype of Bunyan’sPilgrim’s Progress. TheDe proprietatibusis the only one of these books of 1485-6 that I have seen, and its full-page cuts are notable both for their own sake and as having been widely copied, although they illustrate only eleven of the nineteen books.
No other Low Country printer showed anything like the enterprise of Leeu and Bellaert in commissioning long sets of original woodcuts from competent craftsmen, but several fine illustrated books were produced by other firms. Beginning in 1484 Peter van Os printed numerous illustrated books at Zwolle, few of which attain excellence. Yet one of the earliest of them, the Sermons of S. Bernard, has a frontispiece of the Virgin and Child and the Saint gazing at them which is unequalled by any other single cut in the Low Country book in its large pictorial effect. At Gouda, in 1486, Gottfried van Os issued theChevalier Délibéréof Olivier de la Marche, with sixteen large cuts, in which the author’s minute instructions for each picture are faithfully carried out with extraordinary freedom and spirit, though the ambitious designs are more suitable to frescoes than to book-illustrations. About the end of the century the book was reprinted at Schiedam with the same cuts, from which facsimiles were made in 1898 by Dr. Lippmann and published by the Bibliographical Society.
At Louvain in 1487 Egidius van der Heerstraten issued theDe praeclaris mulieribusof Boccaccio with copies of the cuts of the Ulm edition of great interest for the differences in handling revealed when the two are compared. A little later than this another Louvain printer, Ludovicus de Ravescot, published theDe anno die et feria Dominicae Passionisof Petrus de Rivo, with a title-cut of the author kneeling before the Virgin and Child, and three large cuts of the Last Supper, Crucifixion, and Resurrection, somewhat in the temper of the illustrations in the Cologne Bibles, but with characteristic Low Country touches. Lastly, mention must be made of the clumsy outline cuts in the Bruges edition of Ovid’sMetamorphoses, issued in 1484 by Caxton’s partner Colard Mansion. Mansion certainly, and possibly Caxton also, were among the early experimenters with copperplate illustration, but the story of these will be told in Chapter XV.
29Dr. Schreiber, in the introduction to Tome V of hisManuel de l’amateur de la gravure sur bois au xvesiècle, dealing with German book-illustrations, shows that some little difficulty was found at first in effecting this. In Boner’sEdelstein(Bamberg, 1461), probably the first illustrated book printed in Germany, the cuts were printed after the text. In Zainer’sHeiligenleben, the first illustrated book printed at Augsburg, the cuts must have been printed first, as part of the text is sometimes printed over them.30A set of proofs of cuts to this book, previously in the possession of the Marquis of Blandford and Mr. Perkins, was among the favourite possessions of William Morris, and is now owned by Mr. Morgan. An illustratedPlenarium, assigned by Dr. Copinger to Richel, appears to be a “ghost,” due to some confusion with thisSpiegel.
29Dr. Schreiber, in the introduction to Tome V of hisManuel de l’amateur de la gravure sur bois au xvesiècle, dealing with German book-illustrations, shows that some little difficulty was found at first in effecting this. In Boner’sEdelstein(Bamberg, 1461), probably the first illustrated book printed in Germany, the cuts were printed after the text. In Zainer’sHeiligenleben, the first illustrated book printed at Augsburg, the cuts must have been printed first, as part of the text is sometimes printed over them.
30A set of proofs of cuts to this book, previously in the possession of the Marquis of Blandford and Mr. Perkins, was among the favourite possessions of William Morris, and is now owned by Mr. Morgan. An illustratedPlenarium, assigned by Dr. Copinger to Richel, appears to be a “ghost,” due to some confusion with thisSpiegel.
CHAPTER VIII
EARLY ITALIAN ILLUSTRATED BOOKS
Asa frontispiece to this chapter (Plate XIII) we give a page from the 1487 edition of theDevote meditatione sopra la Passione del Nostro Signore, printed at Venice by “Jeronimo di Sancti e Cornelio suo Compagno,” the woodcuts in which, as already mentioned, are cut down from those in a block-book of some twenty or five-and-twenty years earlier, and must thus rank as the earliest Italian illustrations. The illustration of books printed in movable type began in Italy as early as 1468, Ulrich Han issuing that year at Rome an edition of Cardinal Turrecremata’sMeditationes, decorated with thirty-one rude cuts chiefly from the life of Christ. A few of these have a coarse vigour, but in the greater number any merit in the original designs (professedly taken from the frescoes with which the Cardinal had decorated the cloisters of the Church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva) is lost in bad cutting. Notwithstanding this the work went through at least three editions (three new pictures being added to the second and one omitted), and served as a model for the metal-cuts of Neumeister’s editions at Mainz and elsewhere, and for the small neat woodcuts of one by Plannck. But though Han’s venture was thus successful beyond its deserts, it took Italy nearly twenty years to make up its mind to welcome printed illustrations. During this time nothing approaching a style of book-illustration emerges, though individual books of importance appeared at several towns. Thus at Verona theDe re militariof Robertus Valturius (written not later than 1468) was printed in 1472 by a certain Joannes of that city, withover eighty woodcuts of weapons and implements of war, including a galley which looks more picturesque than seaworthy, chariots, and mangonels, all well drawn and well cut, but a little spoilt by paper and presswork much less good than was usual at this time. Eleven years later Latin and Italian editions with practically the same cuts were printed, also at Verona, by Boninus de Boninis. The only other early Veronese book with illustrations is an Italian version of one of the medieval collections of fables which sought shelter under the name of Aesop. This, which has some spirited cuts, was printed by Giovanni Alvise in 1479.
At Naples, Sixtus Riessinger printed Boccaccio’sLibro di Florio et di Bianzefiore chiamato Filicoloin 1478, and also (without date) an Italian version of Ovid’sHeroides, both with numerous cuts, some of them by no means devoid of charm. In 1485 an illustratedAesopwas produced at the expense of a book-loving jurist, Francesco Tuppo, probably from the press of certain “fidelissimi Germani.” The cuts in this, which are hard and heavy but of considerable merit (see Plate XIV), may possibly be due to a mixture of Italian and German influences, but are more probably the work of a Spanish wood-cutter. A picture of an astronomer engaged on his calculations found in theArte di Astrologiaof Granollachs, probably also printed in 1485, may be from the same hand. In theAesopeach picture is placed in an architectural frame, in the upper sections of which there are representations sometimes of Hercules and a lion, sometimes of his wrestle with Antaeus, sometimes of a battle of mounted pygmies. The first page of text also has a fine decorative border, the design being in white on a black ground.
At Florence an ornamental capital in aPsalterprinted in 1489 is the earliest woodcut in any extant dated book. But engravings on copper had been employed as early as 1477 for three pictures in Bettini’sMonte Santo di Dio,and in 1481 for nineteen in aDivinaCommedia; as to these something will be said in Chapter XV.
Two books printed at Milan in 1479 contain illustrations, theSummula di pacifica conscientiaof Fra Pacifico di Novara, being ornamented with three engravings; two of the degrees of consanguinity and the third of a crown bearing the names of the virtues of the Madonna, while theBreuiarium totius juris canoniciof Paolo Attavanti printed by Pachel and Scinzenzeler has a little woodcut, which purports to be a portrait of the author.
In Venice book-illustration appears to have begun in the office not of a printer, but of an illuminator. Quite a number of books printed by various firms during the years 1470 to 1472 have a woodcut groundwork to their illuminated borders, and in the Spencer copy of the Italian Bible (Malermi’s translation), printed in 1471 by Adam of Ammergau, the six miniatures of the Creation, with which the blanks left on leaves 11 and 12 are filled, have in the same way rough woodcuts beneath their colouring.31The workshop in which these decorated borders and miniatures were supplied seems to have closed or given up the practice in 1473, and until Erhard Ratdolt and his partners Löslein and Maler began publishing in 1476, no more woodcuts were produced at Venice. The work of the new firm was decorative rather than pictorial, consisting mainly of the fine borders and capital letters with which they ornamented their Calendars (1476, 1477, and 1482), theirAppian, Gesta Petri Moceniciof Coriolanus Cepio andDe situ orbisof Dionysius Periegetes, all in 1477,Arte di ben morireof the following year, andEuclidof 1482. With the exception of the earlier Calendars, where the borders to the titlepage (the first so decorated) are of flower-vases, these consist of highly conventionalized foliage (jasmine? vine, oak, etc.) orstrapwork, some of them unequalled in their own kind until William Morris combined the same skill with a much bolder and richer treatment of his material. Illustration properly so called begins with Georg Walch’s edition (1479) of theFasciculus Temporum, a chronological epitome by Werner Rolewinck of Cologne. This has a quaint little view of the Piazza of San Marco and other pictures, which Ratdolt, not at all handsomely, proceeded to copy the next year. In 1481 Ratdolt adorned theTractatus de Actionibusoi Baptista de Sancto Blasio with rather a graceful little figure of a woman holding the stem of a tree. In 1482 he produced an edition of thePoeticon Astronomiconof Hyginus with some figures of the planets which, rude as they were, served as models for many subsequent editions. In the same year theOratoriae artis epitomataof Jacobus Publicius was ornamented with some figures including a chessboard, cut in white on black, designed to assist the memory.
In the later years of his stay at Venice, Ratdolt seems to have lost interest in book-decoration, but the popularity of woodcuts steadily increased throughout the ’eighties, and by the end of the decade was in full tide. In 1484 Bernardinus Benalius gave some rough illustrations to theFiorettiof Saint Francis; in 1486 Pietro Cremonese bestowed a formal but quite interesting decorated titlepage on theDoctrinaleof Alexander Gallus, with the title inscribed in a cartouche, above which rise an urn and lamps. In the same year we have in theSupplementum Chronicarumprinted by Bernardinus Benalius a few cuts of some size “translated” into an Italian style from those on the same subject in Quentell’s Cologne Bible (c. 1480), also a little view of Venice copied in reverse from theFasciculus Temporum. TheSupplementum Chronicarumwas re-issued several times (the author, Jacobus Philippus Bergomensis, bringing the statement of his age up to date in each edition which he revised), and changes were constantly made in the cuts. In 1486 alsocame an edition of theLibro de la divina legeof Marco del Monte S. Maria, with cuts of Mount Sinai and its desert, notable as having been copied by a much more skilful wood-cutter at Florence eight years later; 1487 produced the first of the Venetian illustratedAesops, the cuts having borders of white scroll-work on a black ground and being influenced by the Naples edition of 1485. With this must be mentioned aFior di virtu, with a title cut of a Friar plucking blossoms from a tree, which was thought good enough to be copied at Milan, but was replaced at Venice three years later by a delightful picture of a walled garden. It was in 1487 also that there appeared the edition of theDevote Meditatione sopra la Passione, with cuts taken from the old block-book (see p. 123). In subsequent editions (of 1489, etc.) these were replaced by new woodcuts of varying merit. A later edition still (1500) has a fine picture of the Entry into Jerusalem which Prince d’Essling connects with theHypnerotomachiaof 1499. In 1488 we come to the first illustrated edition of theTrionfiof Petrarch, printed by Bernardino de Novara. This has six large cuts, showing respectively the triumphs of Love, of Chastity, Death, Fame, Time, and the Divinity. All are well designed, but spoilt by weak cutting. In the same year appeared two other illustrated books, aSphaera Mundi, with a few cuts not in themselves of great importance, and theDe Essent et Essentaof S. Thomas Aquinas, with a striking little picture of a child lighting a fire by means of a burning-glass. By studying these books in conjunction Prince d’Essling has shown that they were designed by one of their printers, Johann Santritter, and executed by the other, Hieronymus de Sanctis, and that to the latter may thus be attributed the illustrations (one at least of them of unusual beauty) in anOfficium Beatae Virginiswhich issued from his press 26 April, 1494.
The information on the last two pages is all epitomized from the Prince d’Essling’s great workLes livres à figures Vénitiens(1907, etc.), and is quoted here in some detailas showing that from the time of Erhard Ratdolt onwards book-illustrations are found with some frequency at Venice, a fact for which, until the Prince published the results of his unwearying researches, there was very little evidence available.
The event of 1490 was the publication by Lucantonio Giunta of an edition of Niccolo Malermi’s Italian version of the Bible, illustrated with 384 cuts, many of them charming, measuring about three inches by two. The success of this set a fashion, and several important folio books in double columns similarly illustrated appeared during the next few years, aVite di Sancti Padrein 1491, Boccaccio’sDecamerone, Masuccio’sNovellino, and aLegendariotranslated from the Latin of Jacobus de Voragine in 1492, a rival Italian Bible and an Italian Livy in 1493, aMorgante Maggiorein 1494, and an ItalianTerencein 1497, while in quarto we have aMiracoli de la Madonna(1491),Vita de la VergineandTrabisonda Istoriata(1492),Guerrino Meschino(1493), and several others. In some of these books cuts are found signed with F, in others with N, in others with i or ia; in the Malermi Bible and some other books we sometimes find the signature b or .b. Such signatures, which at one time aroused keen controversy, are now believed to have belonged not to the designer, but to the workshop of the wood-cutters by whom the blocks were cut. In the case of the Malermi Bible of 1490 workmen of very varying skill were employed, some of the illustrations to the Gospels being emptied of all delight by the rudeness of their cutting. Where the designer and the cutter are both at their best the result is nearly perfect of its kind, and it is curious to think that some of these dainty little blocks were imitated from the large, heavy woodcuts in the Cologne Bibles printed by Quentell some ten years earlier. In the rival Bible of 1493 the best cuts are not so good, nor the worst so bad as in the original edition of 1490. In the other books (I have not seen the Masuccio) the cutting is again more even, but the designs, thoughoften charming and sometimes amusing, are seldom as good as the best in the Bible. Most of these books have one or more larger cuts used at the beginning of the text or of sections of it, and these are always good.
Two editions of Dante’sDivina Commedia, both published in 1491, one by Bernardinus Benalius and Matheo Codeca in March, the other by Pietro Cremonese in November, must be grouped with the books just mentioned, as they are also illustrated with small cuts (though those in the November edition are a good deal larger than the usual column-cuts), and these are signed in some cases with the letter .b. which appears in the Malermi Bible of 1490. Neither designer has triumphed over the monotonous effect produced by the continual reappearance of the figures of Dante and his guide, and the little cuts in the March edition are far from impressive. On the other hand it has a good frontispiece, in which, after the medieval habit, the successive incidents of the first canto of theInfernoare all crowded into the same picture.
Popular as were the little vignettes, they were far from exhausting the energies of the Venetian illustrators of this decade. At the opposite pole from them are the four full-page pictures in the 1493 and later editions of theFascicolo de Medicinaof Joannes Ketham. These represent a physician lecturing, a consultation, a dissection, and a visit of a doctor to an infectious patient, whom he views by the light of two flambeaux held by pages, while he smells his pouncet-box. This picture (in the foreground of which sits a cat, afterwards cut out to reduce the size of the block) is perhaps the finest of the four, but that of the Dissection has the interest of being printed in several colours. Erhard Ratdolt had made some experiments in colour-printing in the astronomical books which he printed at Venice, and at Augsburg completed the crucifixion cut in some of his missals partly by printed colours, partly by hand. In 1490 a Venetian printer, Johann Herzog, had illustrated theDe Heredibusof Johannes Crispus de Montibus with a genealogical tree growing out of a recumbent human figure, and had printed this in brown, green, and red. But the dissection in theFascicolo di Medicinawas the most elaborate of the Venetian experiments in colour-printing and apparently also the last.
With the illustrations to the Ketham may be mentioned for its large pictorial effect, though it comes in a quarto, the fine cut of the author in theDoctrina della vita monasticaof San Lorenzo Giustiniano, first patriarch of Venice. The figure of San Lorenzo as he walks with a book under his arm and a hand held up in benediction is imitated from that in a picture by Gentile Bellini, but he is here shown (Plate XV) preceded by a charming little crucifer, whose childish face enhances by contrast the austerer benignity of the saint.
However good the large illustrations in Venetian books, the merits of them are rather those of single prints than of really appropriate bookwork. The little column-cuts, on the other hand, are almost playful in their minuteness, and even when most successful produce the effect of a delightful border or tailpiece without quite attaining to the full possibilities of book-illustration. The feverish production of these column-cuts began to slacken, though it did not cease, in 1493, and about that date a few charming full-page pictures are found at the beginning and end of various small quartos. From the treatment of the man’s hair and beard it is clear that the delightful frontispiece to theFioretti della Bibliaof 1493 (Prince d’Essling, I, 161) was the work of the illustrator of the second Malermi Bible from which the small cuts in the text are taken. The three cuts to theFiorettiof S. Francis, completed 11 June in the same year, that of theChome l’angelo amaestra l’animaof Pietro Damiani, dated in the following November, of an undatedMonte de la Oratione,and again of theDe la confessioneof S. Bernardino of Siena, all in the same style, form a group of singular beauty (see Prince d’Essling, I, 284sqq.; II, 191, 194, 195). Those of S. Catherine’sDialogo de la divina providentia, 17 May, 1494 (D’Essling, II, 199sqq.), were probably no less happily designed, but have lost more in their cutting, and with these must be grouped the picture of a Venetian school in theRegulae Sypontinaeof Nicolaus Perottus, 29 March, 1492 (D’Essling, II, 86), used also in theDe Structura Compositionisof Nicolaus Ferettus, printed three years later at Forlì. The style is continued in theSpecchio della fedeof Robertus Caracciolus, 11 April, 1495 (D’Essling, II, 260), in the headpiece of theCommentaria in libros Aristotelisof S. Thomas Aquinas, 28 Sept., 1496, and in the two admirable pictures of Terence lecturing to his commentators, and of a theatre as seen from the back of the stage, found in theTerentius cum tribus commentariisof July, 1497 (D’Essling, II, 295, and 277sqq.). Still in the same style, but carelessly designed and poorly cut, are the illustrations to the well-known Ovid of April, 1497 (D’Essling, III, 220sqq.), and this leads us on to the still more famousHypnerotomachia Poliphiliof Francesco Colonna, printed by Aldus for Leonardo Crassus, a jurisconsult, in December, 1499, and finally to the cut of Christ entering Jerusalem in theDevote Meditationeof the following April (D’Essling, I, 372), where the hand of the artist of theHypnerotomachiais clearly visible, though he has surrounded his picture with a frame in the Florentine manner, which was then beginning to make its influence felt at Venice.
The primacy usually given to theHypnerotomachiaamong all these books is probably in part due to considerations which have little to do with its artistic merit. The story is a kind of archaeological romance which appealed greatly to the dilettante, for whose benefit Leonardo Crassus commissioned Aldus to print it, but which was far from exciting the popular interest which shows its appreciation for a book by thumbing it out of existence. TheHypnerotomachiais probably almost as common a book as theNuremberg Chronicleor theFirst Folio Shakespeare, and thus its merits have become known to all lovers of old books. It is impressive, moreover, from its size and the profusion of its 168 illustrations of various sizes, while the extraordinary variety of these and the excellence of their cutting are further points in its favour. The initial letters of the successive chapters form the sentencePOLIAM FRATER FRANCISCUS COLVMNA PERAMAVIT, and this with the colophon assigning the completion of the book to May-Day, 1467, at Treviso, reveals the author as Francesco Colonna, a Dominican, who had taught rhetoric at Treviso and Padua, and in 1499, when his book was printed, was still alive and an inmate of the convent of SS. Giovanni and Paolo at Venice. The Polia whom he so greatly loved has been identified with Lucretia Lelio, daughter of a jurisconsult at Treviso.
The story of theHypnerotomachia, or “Strife of Love in a Dream,” as its English translator called it, is greatly influenced by the Renaissance interest in antique architecture and art which is evident in so many of its illustrations. Polifilo’s dreams are full, as the preface-writer says, of “molte cose antiquarie digne di memoria, & tutto quello lui dice hauere visto di puncto in puncto & per proprii uocabuli ello descriue cum elegante stilo, pyramidi, obelisce, ruine maxime di edificii, la differentia di columne, la sua mensura, gli capitelli, base, epistyli,” etc. etc. But he is brought also to the palace of Queen Eleuterylida, and while there witnesses the triumphs or festivals of Europa, Leda, Danae, Bacchus, Vertumnus, and Pomona, which provide several attractive subjects for the illustrator. The second part of the book is somewhat less purely antiquarian. Lucrezia Lelio had entered a convent after being attacked by the plague which visited Treviso from 1464 to 1466, and so here also Polia is made to take refuge in the temple of Diana, whence, however, she is driven on account of the visits of Polifilo, with whom, by the aid of Venus, she is ultimately united.
One other point to be mentioned is that many of the full-page Venetian illustrations, both in quartos and folios, have quasi-architectural borders to them, the footpiece being sometimes filled with children riding griffins or other grotesques, while school-books were often made more attractive to young readers by a border in which a master is flogging a boy duly horsed for the purpose on the back of a schoolfellow. In two of the most graceful of Venetian borders, those to theHerodotusof 1494 (and also in the 1497 edition of S. Jerome’s Epistles) and Johann Müller’s epitome of Ptolemy’sAlmagest(of 1496), the design is picked out in white on a black ground.
A few Florentine woodcut illustrations have borders of the kind just mentioned in which the design stands out in white on a black ground. In one of these borders there are rather ugly candelabra at the sides, at the top two lovers facing each other in a circle supported by Cupids, at the foot a shield supported by boys standing on the backs of couchant stags. Another has mermen at the top, a shield within a wreath supported by eagles at the foot, and floral ornaments and armour at the sides. In a third on either side of the shield in the footpiece boys are tilting at each other mounted on boars. In a fourth are shown saints and some of the emblems of the Passion, supported by angels. But as a rule, while nearly all Florentine woodcuts have borders these are only from an eighth to three-sixteenths of an inch in depth, and the pattern on them is a leaf or flower or some conventional design of the simplest possible kind. A very few cuts have only a rule round them, one of the largest a triple rule. A rude cut of the Crucifixion is found in Francesco di Dino’s 1490 edition of Cavalca’sSpecchio di Crocesurrounded by a rope-work border two-fifths of an inch deep, and this border, partly broken away, also surrounds a really beautiful Pietà (Christ standing in a tomb, His cross behind Him, His hands upheld by angels) in Miscomini’s 1492 edition ofSavonarola’sTrattato dell’ Umiltà. When the same publisher used Dino’s Crucifixion cut, also in 1492, for Savonarola’sTractato dell’ Amore di Gesù, he left it without either border or rule round it, the only instance of a Florentine cut so treated in the fifteenth century. Dr. Paul Kristeller, whose richly illustrated monograph onEarly Florentine Woodcuts(Kegan Paul, 1897) is the standard work on the subject, suggests with much plausibility that these two cuts, of the Crucifixion and the Pietà, were originally made for earlier books now lost, and belong to an older school of wood-cutting, more akin to that which produced the few extant Florentine single prints.
The earliest work of the new school of illustration is the magnificent cut of the Virgin in a mandorla appearing to S. Jacopone da Todi as he kneels in prayer. This, surrounded by the triple rule already mentioned, is prefixed to an edition of Jacopone’sLaudeprinted by Francesco Buonacorsi and dated 28 September, 1490. Apparently the earliest dated cut with a typical Florentine border is that to theLunareof Granollachs printed by Lor. Morgiani and Giovanni da Magonza in September, 1491. It measures more than 6 inches by 4, and is copied, and transfigured in the process, from the heavy cut in a Naples edition of 1485. Two months later the same firm issued theSoliloquii of S. Augustine with an extraordinarily fine title-cut of the saint (the same picture did duty in 1493 for S. Antonino) writing at a desk in his cell. This has a border, but with a white ground instead of a black. On 1 January, 1491-2, still from the same firm, we have surely the prettiest Arithmetic ever printed, that of Filippo Calandri, with delightful little pictures and border pieces, cut in simple outline, in the Venetian rather than the Florentine manner. On 20 March, Morgiani and his partner produced a new edition of Bettini’sMonte Santo di Diowith the three copperplates of 1481 (see Chapter XV) skilfully translated into duly bordered woodcuts, the first two filling a foliopage, the third somewhat shorter. AMandevillewith a single cut followed in June, and in December theTrattatiof Ugo Pantiera, also with a single cut, perhaps by the designer of the Calandri, since it employs the same trick of representing a master on a much larger scale than a disciple as is found in the picture of Pythagoras in the earlier book.32One of the earliest (and also most delightful) of the title-cuts of another prolific publisher, the picture of a lecturer and his pupils in Antonio Miscomini’s 1492 edition of Landini’sFormulario,33measures about 6 inches by 4. But after this the period of experiment was at an end, and with very few exceptions the woodcuts in Florentine books for the rest of the century all measure either a little over or a little under 3 inches by 4, and are all surrounded by a narrow border with some simple design in white upon a black ground.
Some pains have been taken to make clear both the experiments as to style, size, and borders in the Florentine book-illustrations of 1490-2, and the external uniformity in size and borders in the great bulk of the work of the next few years, because in the first number of theBurlington Magazineand subsequently in his fine book on Florentine Drawings, Mr. Bernhard Berenson put forward with considerable confidence the theory that nine-tenths of the Florentine book-illustrations of this period were made from designs supplied by a single artist whom he identifies with a certain Bartolommeo di Giovanni. This Bartolommeo contracted in July, 1488, with the Prior of the Innocents to paint before the end of October seven predelle (Innocenti Museum, Nos. 63-70) for an altarpiece of the Adoration of the Magi, the commission for which had been given to Domenico Ghirlandajo. Mr. Berenson believes that in addition to these predelle (the only works with which Bartolommeo is connected by any evidence other than that of style) hepainted the Massacre of the Innocents, as an episode in Ghirlandajo’s altarpiece at the Innocenti, that he must have been one of the more famous painter’s apprentices in the years 1481-5, and subsequently helped him with altarpieces at Lucca and at the Accademia at Florence, and painted a fresco for the church of S. Frediano at Lucca and numerous fronts to the cassonì or ornamental chests, which were at this period the most decorative articles of Florentine furniture. As a minor painter Bartolommeo di Giovanni34is pronounced by Mr. Berenson to have been “incapable of producing on the scale of life a figure that can support inspection”: in predelle and cassone-fronts he is “feeble, if vivacious, and scarcely more than pleasant,” yet with no authenticated work to build on except the predelle in the Innocenti, Mr. Berenson does not hesitate to assert that “in Florence between 1490 and 1500 few apparently, if any, illustrated books were published without woodcuts for which Alunno di Domenico34furnished the designs,” and on the strength of this assumption bestows on him the praise, amply deserved by the Florentine school as a whole, that he was “a book-illustrator, charming as few in vision and interpretation, with scarcely a rival for daintiness and refinement of arrangement, spacing and distribution of black and white.” Mr. Berenson’s theories oblige him to credit Bartolommeo with having copied at least from Filippo Lippi, Botticelli, and Piero di Cosimo, as well as from Ghirlandajo, and push the licence accorded to “connoisseurship” to its extreme limit. As I have already acknowledged elsewhere,35if any one man is to be credited with the whole, or nearly the whole of the Florentine book-illustrations of this decade, a minor artist used to painting predelle and cassone-fronts would be the right kind of man for the task, but on the veryscanty evidence at present available I am personally more inclined to attribute such unity as can be traced in these Florentine cuts to their having all come from one large wood-cutter’s shop, without attempting to trace them back to a single designer.
In the year 1492, when the form of the Florentine woodcuts had become fairly fixed, Savonarola was called to the death-bed of Lorenzo the Magnificent, only to refuse him absolution. HisAmore di GesùandTrattato dell’ Umiltàwere printed in June of that year by Miscomini, each decorated with a single cut. During the six years ending with his execution in May, 1498, some twenty-three different tracts from his pen, illustrated with one or more woodcuts, were printed at Florence, most of them in several different editions. In theDe Simplicitate Christianae vitae(1496) a friar is shown writing in his cell; in other cuts we see a friar preaching, or visiting the convent of the “Murate” or Recluses of Florence, or talking with seven Florentines under a tree, but in no case has any attempt been made at portraiture. This is true also of theCompendio di Revelatione(1495), in which there are some charming cuts showing Savonarola escorted by four holy women representing Simplicity, Prayer, Patience, and Faith, on an embassy to the Blessed Virgin. In the first of these they meet the devil attired as a hermit; in the second they arrive at the gate of the celestial city of which the wall is crowded with saints and angels; in the third they are ushered forth by S. Peter. A tract by Domenico Benivieni in defence of Savonarola, besides a cut of the usual size representing Benivieni arguing with his opponents, has a full-page one of the river of blood flowing from Christ’s wounds and sinners cleansing themselves in it and marking their foreheads with the sign of the cross. One of the finest cuts in the Savonarola series represents a citizen of Florence in prayer before a crucifix. But almost all of them are good.
Besides the Savonarola tracts the miscellaneous religioustreatises illustrated with one or more woodcuts are very numerous. In some cases outside models were still sought. One of the most important of these books is theMeditatione sopra la Passioneattributed to S. Bonaventura, of which two undated editions were issued, one with eight cuts, the other with twelve, three of the additional cuts in the second edition—the Entry into Jerusalem, Christ before Pilate, and Procession to Calvary (see Plate XVI)—being exceptionally fine. The earlier designer probably had the Venetian edition of 1489 before him, but used it quite freely. Two of the three cuts in the 1494 Florentine edition of theLibro delli commandamenti di Dioof Marco del Monte S. Maria are improved copies of those in the Venetian edition of 1486. The third cut, which appears also in the same author’sTabula della Salute(also of 1494), representing the Monte della Pietà, is copied on a reduced scale from a large copper engraving attributed to Baccio Baldini, of which an example is in the Print Room of the British Museum. Of the thirty-four cuts in Cardinal Capranica’sArte del benmorire, eleven are imitated from the well-known series in the German block-books.
For theRappresentazionior miracle-plays in honour of various saints originality was more imperative, and numerous cuts were designed, only a few of which have come down to us in editions of the fifteenth century, most being known as they survive in reprints of the second half of the sixteenth. Our example (Plate XVII) is from an undated edition ofLa Festa di San Giovanni, in which, as on many other titlepages, an angel is shown above the title-cut as the speaker of the Prologue. Purely secular literature in the shape ofNovellewas no doubt plentiful, despite the influence of Savonarola, but most of it has perished, thumbed to pieces by too eager readers. A volume ofNovelleat the University Library, Erlangen, is illustrated with delightful cuts, and others survive here and there in different libraries. Of more pretentious quartos Angelo Politiano’sLa Giostra diGiuliano di Medici(first edition undated, second 1513) is very finely illustrated, and Petrarch’sTrionfi(1499) has good versions of the usual six subjects.
Many of the best of the quartos and all the illustrated folios were financed by a publisher, Ser Piero Pacini of Pescia, who was succeeded early in the sixteenth century by his son Bernardo. Pacini in 1495 began his career with a very ambitious venture, a folio edition of theEpistole et Evangelii et Lectionias they were read in the Mass throughout the year. This has a decorative frontispiece, in the centre of which stand SS. Peter and Paul, while small cuts of the four evangelists are placed in the corners. The text is illustrated with 144 different woodcuts, besides numerous fancy portraits of evangelists, prophets, etc. A few of the cuts are taken from theMeditationesof S. Bonaventura, and one or two, perhaps, from other books already published; but the enormous majority are new, and from the consistency of the portrait-types of Christ, S. Peter, S. John, etc., appear all to have been designed by the same man. Some are less successful than others, but the average is exceptionally high, and the best cuts are full of movement and life. AnAesopfollowed in 1496, Pulci’sMorgante Maggiorein 1500, and theQuatriregio, a dull poem in imitation of Dante by Bishop Frezzi, in 1508. It has been conjectured, however, that an earlier edition of theQuatriregiomay have been printed in the fifteenth century with the same illustrations, and there is considerable reason to doubt whether any fresh cuts in the old style were made at Florence after the temporary cessation of publishing brought about by the political troubles of 1501. On the other hand, the old cuts went on being used, sometimes in the originals, sometimes in copies, throughout the greater part of the sixteenth century, and it is only in these reprints that many of them are known to survive.
At no other Italian town was there any outburst of book-illustration at all comparable to those at Venice andFlorence in the last decade of the fifteenth century. At Ferrara, after a fine cut of S. George and a much ruder one of S. Maurelius in aLegendaof the latter saint printed in 1489,36no illustration appeared until 1493, when theCompilatioof Alfraganus was adorned with a picture of the astronomer instructing a diminutive hermit. After this, in 1496 we have a fine cut of the Virgin and Child in theDe ingenuis adolescentium moribus, and in 1497 two important folio books, both from the press of Lorenzo Rossi, theDe claris mulieribusof Jacobus Philippus Bergomensis (29 April) and the Epistles of S. Jerome (12 October). The former of these is distinctly native work, with the exception of an architectural border, decorated chiefly withputtiand griffins, etc., which is thoroughly Venetian in style, and was used again in the S. Jerome. There are two large illustrations, one showing the author presenting his book to the Queen of Hungary and Bohemia, the other containing eight scenes from the life of the Blessed Virgin. Fifty-six cuts in the text are made to serve as portraits of 172 different women, and under the strain of such repetition individuality perforce disappears. But at the end of the book are seven cuts of Italian ladies of the fifteenth century: Bona of Lombardy, Bianca Maria of Milan, Catherine Countess of Fréjus and Imola, Leonora Duchess of Ferrara, Bianca Mirandula, Genebria Sforza, and Damisella Trivulzia, and these, some of them fair, some rather forbidding, appear all to be genuine portraits. The cutting is mostly rather stiff and heavy (Damisella Trivulzia is exceptionally tenderly treated), and much use is made of black grounds.
In contrast to those in theDe claris mulieribus, the cuts in theEpistulaeof S. Jerome are distinctly Venetian in style. As one of the two architectural borders is dated 1493, it is possible that the book was at first intended to be issued at Venice, but was transferred to Ferrarawhen Venetian interest in small column-cuts was found to be on the wane. It possesses in all over 160 of these, those illustrating conventual life in the second part of the book being much the most interesting.
At Milan theTheorica Musicaeof Franchino Gafori, printed in 1492 by Philippus Mantegatius, has a title-cut of a man playing the organ, and four coarsely cut pictures, together occupying a page, showing primitive musical experiments. Four years later the same author’sPractica Musicaewas issued by another printer, Guillaume Le Signerre, with a title-cut illustrating the different measures and the Muses and signs of the Zodiac to which they belong, and with two fine woodcut borders surrounding the opening pages of Books I and III, and II and IV. In 1498 Le Signerre produced two much more profusely illustrated books, theSpecchio dell’ Animaof Ludovicus Besalii and anAesop, some of the cuts of the former being used again in 1499 in theTesoro Spiritualeof Johannes Petrus de Ferrariis. After this he migrated to Saluzzo, and in 1503 produced there a fine edition of theDe Veritate Contritionisof Vivaldus, with a frontispiece of S. Jerome in the desert. At Modena in 1490 Dominicus Rocociola printed aLegenda Sanctorum Trium Regum, with a rather pleasing cut of their Adoration of the Holy Child; and two years later, at the same place, thePrognosticatioof Johann Lichtenberger, printed by Pierre Maufer, was illustrated with three full-page quarto cuts and forty-two half-page ones, careful directions for each picture being supplied in the text, but the cuts being modelled on those in the German editions at Ulm and Mainz. At Aquila in 1493 anAesopwas produced, copied from the Naples edition of 1485. At Pavia in 1505 theSanctuariumof Jacobus Gualla was illustrated with seventy woodcuts and some excellent initials. At Saluzzo in 1508 another work by Vivaldus, printed by Jacobus de Circis and Sixtus de Somachis, was decorated with three large woodcuts of very exceptional merit: a portrait of the Marquis Ludovico II (almost too strikingfor a book-illustration), a picture of S. Thomas Aquinas in his cell, and another of S. Louis of France. The treatise of Paulus de Middelburgo on the date of Easter, printed by Petruzzi at Fossombrone in 1513, contains some very fine borders, and theDecachordum Christianumof Marcus Vigerius, printed at Fano in 1507 by Hieronymus Soncinus, has ten cuts by Florio Vavassore, surrounded with good arabesque borders. To multiply isolated examples such as these would turn our text into a catalogue. Here and there special care was taken over the decoration of a book, and worthy results produced. But throughout Italy the best period of illustration had come to an end when the sixteenth century was only a few years old.