37Similar spaces were left in the typographically anonymous French version of Valerius Maximus, printed about the same date.38Antoine Vérard.By John Macfarlane. Illustrated monographs published by the Bibliographical Society. No. VII. Printed at the Chiswick Press, September, 1900.39So in theLucain Suetonne et Salusteof 1490, five cuts of battle-scenes, all borrowed from theMer des Histoires, printed by Lerouge in 1488, are made to do duty sixty-four times.40In 1491 these are found at Saragossa in an edition printed by Hurus.41It has also been attributed to Jean Croquet at Geneva, but there is only a typographical argument for this ascription, whereas on the side of Lyon, in addition to (rather weaker) typographical arguments, we have to reckon with Lyonnese paper, the similarity of the illustrations to those of a cutter employed by Martin Huss, and the fact that the book was copied in two editions undoubtedly Lyonnese. See F. W. Bourdillon’sThe Early Editions of the Roman de la Rose(1906).42Only a few of the cuts in this were specially designed for it, all the later ones being taken from stock in Vérard’s most haphazard fashion.
37Similar spaces were left in the typographically anonymous French version of Valerius Maximus, printed about the same date.
38Antoine Vérard.By John Macfarlane. Illustrated monographs published by the Bibliographical Society. No. VII. Printed at the Chiswick Press, September, 1900.
39So in theLucain Suetonne et Salusteof 1490, five cuts of battle-scenes, all borrowed from theMer des Histoires, printed by Lerouge in 1488, are made to do duty sixty-four times.
40In 1491 these are found at Saragossa in an edition printed by Hurus.
41It has also been attributed to Jean Croquet at Geneva, but there is only a typographical argument for this ascription, whereas on the side of Lyon, in addition to (rather weaker) typographical arguments, we have to reckon with Lyonnese paper, the similarity of the illustrations to those of a cutter employed by Martin Huss, and the fact that the book was copied in two editions undoubtedly Lyonnese. See F. W. Bourdillon’sThe Early Editions of the Roman de la Rose(1906).
42Only a few of the cuts in this were specially designed for it, all the later ones being taken from stock in Vérard’s most haphazard fashion.
CHAPTER X
LATER FOREIGN BOOKS
Oneof the chief charms of the books of the fifteenth century is that they are so unlike those of our own day. In the first year of its successor a great step was taken towards their modernization by the production of the first of the Aldine octavos, and the process went on very rapidly. In the early days of printing all the standard works of the previous three centuries that could by any possibility be considered alive were put on the press. By 1500 men were thinking of new things. New editions of many of the old religious and didactic treatises, the old poems and romances, continued to be printed, though mostly in a form which suggests that they were now intended for a lower class of readers, but the new publishers would have little to do with them. Scholarship, which till now had been almost confined to Italy, spread rapidly to all the chief countries of Europe, and amid the devastation which constant war soon brought upon Italy, was lucky in being able to find new homes. With the new literary ideals came new forms for books, and new methods of housing them. Before 1500 several publishers had found it worth their while to print editions in five huge volumes of theSpeculumof Vincent de Beauvais, each volume measuring eighteen inches by thirteen and weighing perhaps a dozen pounds, though paper in those days was not yet made of clay. These great volumes had been cased in thick wooden boards, covered with stout leather and protected with bosses or centre-pieces and corner-pieces of metal. They were not intended to stand on shelves like modern books, but were laid on their sides, singly, on shelves and desks, and frompictures which have come down to us we can see that the library furniture of the day included a variety of reading-stands with the most wonderful of screws. The men for whom Aldus catered wanted books which they could put in their pockets and their saddlebags, and it was not long before the publishers of Paris and Lyon outdid Aldus in the smallness and neatness of their editions. Of course large books continued to be issued. TheComplutensian Polyglottwill not easily be got either into a pocket or a saddlebag, but it is a good deal smaller than theSpeculumof Vincent de Beauvais, and, speaking generally, small folios took the place of large folios, and octavos the place of quartos, and in a little time the octavos themselves were threatened by the still smaller sextodecimos. There is, indeed, no stop till in the seventeenth century we come to the tiny Elzevirs, which remained the last word in book-production until the diamond editions of Didot and Pickering.
Aldus Manutius, who led the revolution, has often been wrongly praised. He can hardly be called a great printer. He burdened Greek scholarship for three centuries with a thoroughly bad style in Greek types, and the cursive substitute which he provided for the fine roman founts for which Italy had been famous almost drove them from the field. Both the Greek type and the italics were the outcome of confused thinking. They were based upon styles of handwriting which Aldus and his scholarly friends doubtless found more expeditious than the formal book-hands which had previously been in use. Quickness in writing is an excellent thing. But a sloping type takes just as long to set up as an upright one, and absolutely nothing is gained by the substitution of an imitation of a quicker hand for the imitation of a slower one.
Aldus had begun publishing at Venice early in 149543with an edition of the Greek grammar of Lascaris, an earlier edition of which, issued at Milan in 1476, hadbeen the first book wholly in Greek to obtain the honour of print. The Idylls of Theocritus and the poem of Hesiod calledWorks and Dayshad been printed at the same place in 1479 and a Greek Psalter in 1487. At Florence the famous first edition of Homer was printed (by Bartolommeo Libri) in 1488, and was followed in the years 1494-6 (i.e. about the time that Aldus began work) by five books printed entirely in majuscules on the model of the letters used in inscriptions. Among these books were the Greek Anthology, four plays of Euripides, and an Apollonius Rhodius. The printing of the Greek classics had thus made a start, although a slow one. Aldus now greatly quickened the pace, producing his great Aristotle in four (or, as it is sometimes reckoned, five) volumes, between the years 1495 and 1498, and following it up with nine comedies of Aristophanes in 1498, Thucydides, Sophocles, and Herodotus in 1502, Xenophon’sHellenics, and the plays of Euripides in 1503 and Demosthenes in 1504. The service which he thus rendered to Greek scholarship was incalculable, but it was accompanied by a very serious drawback, the evil effects of which lasted for nearly three centuries. The Greek quotations in many books printed in Italy before this time had been printed in types imitating the writing in fairly old Greek manuscripts, handsome in appearance and fairly free from contractions; Aldus is said to have taken as his model the handwriting of his friend Marcus Musurus, with all its crabbed and often fantastic ligatures, and the simplicity of the Greek alphabet was thus intolerably complicated.
As we have seen, the introduction of the Aldine italics, though in themselves a better fount than the Greek type, was almost as mischievous in its effects. On the other hand, the service which Aldus rendered to scholarship by his cheap and handy series of the Latin and Italian classics was very great. The first book which he printed in his new type was a Virgil, and this was quickly followed by works by Petrarch and Dante and a wholeseries of similar editions. Aldus had powerful supporters in these ventures, among them being Jean Grolier, the famous bibliophile, who for many years was resident in Italy as Treasurer of the Duchy of Milan. Despite this encouragement he did not find printing very profitable, partly, no doubt, on account of the wars in which Venice was at this time engaged.
On the death of Aldus in 1515 his business was for some time carried on by his father-in-law, Andrea de Torresani, an excellent printer, but with little of Aldus’s scholarship. In 1533, at the age of twenty-one, Paulus Manutius, the youngest son of Aldus, took over the management of the firm, and proved himself an even finer scholar than his father. Financially he was no more successful, and when he was made printer to the Pope the anxiety of carrying on business at Rome as well as at Venice only added to his difficulties. On his death in 1574 his son, Aldus Manutius the younger, succeeded him and worked till 1597, but without adding anything to the reputation of the firm, perhaps because he had been pushed on prematurely in his boyhood, as is witnessed by his compilation of a volume of elegant extracts at the age of nine.
The family of printers and publishers which came nearest to rivalling the fame of the Aldi in Italy during the sixteenth century was that of the Giunta. Springing originally from Florence, members of it worked for some time simultaneously at Florence and Venice, and Lucantonio Giunta, the earliest member of it to rise into note, was already one of the foremost publishers at Venice in the closing years of the fifteenth century, and subsequently printed for himself instead of always employing other men to print for him. The speciality of this Venetian firm was at first illustrated books of all kinds, afterwards the production of large and magnificent missals and other service books of the Roman Church, and these they continued to publish until nearly the end of the sixteenth century.
At Florence, Filippo Giunta competed with Aldus of Venice in printing pretty little editions of the classics, his competition sometimes taking the form of unscrupulous imitation.
At Rome, Eucharius Silber and his successor Marcellus were the chief printers from 1500 to 1516. A little later the Bladi took their place, and under the auspices of the Council of the Propaganda of the Faith a press was set up for printing in Syriac, Armenian, and other Oriental languages. The output also of the presses in other Italian cities was still considerable. Nevertheless, from the same causes which produced her political decay Italy rapidly ceased to be the head-quarters of European printing, yielding this honour to France about the end of the first quarter of the century, and by some thirty or forty years later becoming quite uninfluential.
To the German printing trade, also, the sixteenth century brought a notable decline of reputation. In its first two decades Johann Schoeffer (son of Peter) produced some fine books at Mainz; at Strassburg Grüninger poured forth illustrated books, and Johann Knoblouch and Matthias Schürer were both prolific. The importance of Cologne diminished, though the sons of Heinrich Quentell had a good business. Augsburg, on the other hand, came to the front, the elder and younger Schoensperger, Johann and Silvanus Otmar, Erhard Oglin, Johann Miller, and the firm of Sigismund Grim and Marcus Wirsung all doing important work. At Nuremberg the chief printing houses were those of Hieronymus Hölzel, Johann Weissenburger, and Friedrich Peypus. Leipzig and Hagenau both greatly increased their output, and with the advent of Luther, Wittenberg soon became an important publishing centre. Luther’s activity alone would have sufficed to make the fortunes of any publisher had it not been for the fact that as each pamphlet from his pen was produced at Wittenberg by Hans Lufft, or some other authorized printer, it was promptly pirated inother cities, often with the retention of the original imprint. Many of these Luther tracts had ornamental borders, and, as will be narrated in another chapter, the German book-illustrations of this period were often very finely designed, but the paper used, even in important books, was poor compared to that found in German incunabula, and the presswork too often careless. These defects are found intensified in almost all the German books published after this date, and German printing soon lost all its technical excellence, though the output of its presses continued to be large, and the great annual fair at Frankfort during the course of the sixteenth century became the most important event in the book-trade of Northern Europe.
A little before Germany gave herself up to theological strife, the conjunction at Basel of the great printer Johann Froben and the great scholar Erasmus temporarily raised that city to importance as an intellectual centre. Froben had begun printing at Basel in 1491, but until he formed his friendship with Erasmus in 1513 published only a few editions of the Bible, some of the papal Decretals, the works of S. Ambrose, and a few other books of no special interest. From 1513 onwards his output increased rapidly both in quantity and importance, so that by the time of his death in 1527 he had printed over three hundred books, including almost all the works of Erasmus and many books in Greek. During this period, also, border-pieces and initials were designed for him by the two Holbeins (Hans and Ambrosius) and other skilful artists, and he was entitled to rank as the greatest printer-publisher in Europe in succession to Aldus. After his death in 1527 the supremacy of European printing rested for the next generation indisputably with France.
During the fifteenth century printing in France had developed almost entirely on its own lines. Vernacular books of every description had poured from the presses of Paris and Lyon, and many of them had been charminglyillustrated in a style worthy of the great French school of illustrators of manuscripts. In the first half of the sixteenth century the publication of these popular books—romances, poetry, and works of devotion—still continued, though with some loss of quality, the print and paper being less good and the illustrations often consisting of a medley of old blocks, or where new ones were made being executed in a coarser and heavier style. But to the vernacular literature there was now added a learned and scholarly literature which soon rose to great importance. As early as 1492 Johann Trechsel, a printer of Lyon, had possessed himself of sufficient Greek type to print quotations in that language, and in the following year he issued the profusely illustrated edition ofTerence, the cuts in which were imitated by Grüninger at Strassburg. Trechsel’s press corrector and general editor was a young scholar named Josse Bade, of Asch, near Ghent, better known by the Latin form of his name as Jodocus Badius Ascensius, or Ascensianus. In 1503, after Trechsel’s death, Ascensius started business for himself in Paris, and his editions of the classics, well known from the device of a printing-press found on many of their titlepages, obtained a considerable reputation. Almost simultaneously, in 1502, Henri Estienne, the first of a famous family of scholar-printers, had started in business by an expedient of which we hear a great deal in the annals of English printing, that of marrying a printer’s widow. Of Henri Estienne’s three sons the eldest, François, became a bookseller, Robert a scholar-printer, and Charles, in the first instance, a physician. In the technical side of his business Henri had been helped by Simon de Colines, who, on his employer’s death, in 1520, became his widow’s third husband, and carried on the business until 1526, when he handed it over to Robert Estienne, and started on his own account in another house in the same street. Thus, just as the co-operation of Erasmus with Froben, which began shortly before the death of Aldus, brought the Basel press into prominence,so this duplication, just before the death of Froben, of the business of Henri Estienne with the two firms of Robert Estienne and Simon de Colines materially aided the rivalry of Paris. Greek printing, which by this time had become essential to a printer’s reputation for scholarship, had at last begun there with the publication of a Greek Grammar in 1507, and had increased somewhat, though not very rapidly. In 1539 François I appointed Robert Estienne royal printer for Latin and Hebrew, and Conrad Neobar, a German from the diocese of Cologne, his printer for Greek. It was soon after this that plans were formed for the printing of Greek texts from manuscripts in the royal library, and the preparation for this purpose of a special fount of Greek type. Neobar died from overwork the following year, and the office of royal printer in Greek was added to Robert Estienne’s other honours, and with it the supervision of the new Greek type. For this Angelus Vergetius, a celebrated Greek calligrapher, had probably already made the drawings, and the cutting of the punches was entrusted to Claude Garamond. By 1544 a fount of great primer had been completed and a book printed in it, thePraeparatio Euangelicaof Eusebius. A smaller type, of the size known as pica, was next put in hand, and a pocket Greek Testament in sextodecimo printed with it in 1546. Lastly, a third fount, larger than either of the others, was produced and used for the text of a folio Greek Testament in 1550, the other two founts appearing in the prefatory matter and notes. These royal Greek types became very famous and served as a model to all designers of Greek characters for nearly two centuries. Technically, indeed, they are as good as they could be, showing a great advance in clearness and dignity upon those of Aldus, from which nevertheless they inherited the fatal defect of being based on the handwriting of contemporary Greek scholars, instead of on the book-hand of a nobler period of Greek writing.
While the name of Robert Estienne is thus connected with these royal Greek types he was himself distinctly a Latinist, and his own personal contribution to scholarship was a Latin Dictionary (Thesaurus Linguae Latinae) published in 1532, which remained a standard work for two centuries. He published, too, as did also Simon de Colines, many very pretty little editions of Latin classics in sextodecimo, some in italics, others in roman type, thus carrying a step further the triumphant march of the small book, which Aldus had only taken as far as octavos. Simon de Colines, while sharing in work of this kind, did not neglect other classes of literature, and, as has already been noted, joined with Geoffroi Tory, another scholar-printer, who was also a scholar-artist, in producing some remarkable editions of the Hours of the Blessed Virgin.
This scholar-artist, Geoffroi Tory, was a native of Bourges, who had been a professor at several of the Paris colleges and was at one time proof-reader to Henri Estienne. His career as a printer began in 1522 and ended with his death in 1533, after which his business was carried on by Olivier Mallard, who married his widow. Tory printed a few scholarly books and wrote and published a curious work, to which he gave the nameChampfleury, on the right forms and proportions of the letters of the alphabet. It is, however, by his Books of Hours that he is now chiefly remembered.
While all this good work was going on in Paris the printers at Lyon were no less busy. At the beginning of the century Aldus had been justly annoyed at the clever counterfeits of his italic octavos which were put on the market at Lyon. But in Sebastian Gryphius (a German, born in 1491 at Reutlingen) Lyon became possessed of a printer who had no need to imitate even Aldus. After printing one or two works in the four preceding years his press got into full swing in 1528 and, by the time of his death in 1556 he had issued verynearly a thousand different editions, mostly in Latin, and many of them in the dainty format in sextodecimo which Estienne and de Colines were using in Paris. In 1534 the luckless Etienne Dolet, soon to be burnt as a heretic, arrived at Lyon, and with some friendly help from Gryphius printed between 1538 and 1544 some seventy editions. In 1546 Jean de Tournes, who had been a journeyman in the office of Gryphius, started business for himself, and soon proved a worthy rival to his master. Meanwhile excellent popular work was being done by other printers, such as François Juste, Claude Nourry, Macé Bonhomme, and Guillaume Roville. From the old Lyonnese firm of Trechsel proceeded in 1538 two books illustrated by Holbein (theDance of DeathandHistoriarum Veteris Testamenti Icones, see p. 192), and numerous other Lyonnese books were charmingly illustrated and also, it may be added, charmingly bound, a very pretty style of trade bindings being just then in vogue.
Against the pretty bindings and vignettes and the popular books to which they were applied little or no opposition was raised, and they continued to be issued till the taste for them died out about 1580. But against all the scholarly work of the French presses the leaders of the Church took up an attitude of unrelenting hostility. Foremost in this opposition, regretful that their predecessors had introduced printing into France, were the theologians of the Sorbonne, who forbade the study of Hebrew as dangerous and likely to lead to heresy, and looked with eyes almost as unfriendly on that of Greek. In 1546 (just after the iniquitous campaign against the Vaudois) Etienne Dolet was hanged on a charge of atheism, and his body cut down and burnt amid a pile of his books. In 1550, despite his position as a royal printer, Robert Estienne, who had just completed his fine folio edition of the Greek Testament, was obliged to seek safety by flying to Geneva, and a generation later Jean de Tournes the younger, of Lyon, was obligedto follow his example. The kings of France and their advisers at this period were determined to be rid of both Huguenots and Freethinkers at all costs, and French scholarship and French printing were both the recipients of blows from which it took them some generations to recover.
When Robert Estienne fled to Geneva, his brother, the physician, Charles, was allowed to succeed to his office at Paris, and he in turn was followed by a younger Robert, who died in 1571. Meanwhile Robert I had taken with him a set of matrices of the royal Greek types, and with these and other founts printed at Geneva until his death in 1559. His son, Henri Estienne II, then took over the business, but was of too restless and roving a disposition to conduct it with success. As a scholar he was even greater than his father, excelling in Greek as Robert had in Latin, and producing in 1572 a Greek dictionary (Thesaurus Graecae Linguae) which became as famous as the Latin one which Robert had published forty years earlier. Henri Estienne the younger died in 1598, but the Estienne tradition was kept up by his son Paul (1566-1627) and grandson Antoine (1592-1674), the latter bringing back into the family the office of royal printer at Paris, and printing an edition of the Septuagint.
Under the discouraging conditions of the middle of the sixteenth century French printers gradually ceased to be scholars and enthusiasts, but Christopher Plantin, a Frenchman, born in the neighbourhood of Tours in 1514, built up by his energy and industry a great business at Antwerp, the memory of which is preserved in the famous Plantin Museum. He had started at Antwerp in 1549 as a binder, but about six years later turned his attention to printing, in consequence (it is said) of an accident which disabled him for binding-work. The most famous of his books is the great Antwerp Polyglott edition of the Bible in eight volumes, published between the years 1569 and 1573. Over this he came so nearto ruining himself that the Spanish Government granted him special privileges for the production of service-books by way of compensation. The sack of Antwerp by the Spaniards in 1576 was another heavy financial blow, and for a time Plantin removed to Leyden, and also for a time kept a branch business at Paris. But he ultimately returned to Antwerp, and his premises remained in the possession of the descendants of one of his sons-in-law, Joannes Moretus, until they were purchased in 1877 for £48,000 as the Musée Plantin.
After Plantin’s death the branch business which he had left at Leyden was carried on by another of his sons-in-law, Franciscus Raphelengius, who printed some pretty little editions of the classics and other good books. Plantin’s own work as a printer was costly and pretentious rather than beautiful, and the bad style of his ornaments and initials exercised a powerful influence for evil on the printers of the ensuing century.
The mention of Plantin’s Antwerp Polyglott may remind us that the first Polyglott edition of the Bible had been printed between 1514 and 1518 at Alcalà, in Spain, under the auspices of Cardinal Ximenes. The Latin name of Alcalà being Complutum, this edition is generally quoted as the Complutensian Polyglott. Among the notable features in it is the use of a singularly fine Greek type in the New Testament. Absolutely different from the Aldine and all the other Greek types imitating the rapid handwriting of the Greek scholars of the sixteenth century, this was based on the book-hand used in some early manuscript, possibly the one which the Pope had lent from the Vatican to aid Cardinal Ximenes in forming his text. It was on this Greek type that Mr. Robert Proctor, shortly before his death, based his own fount of Greek, supplying the majuscules which (with a single exception) are wanting in the original and making other improvements, but keeping closely to his model and thus producing by far the finest Greek type ever cast. This has been used to print notable editionsof theOresteiaandOdyssey, the former at the Chiswick, the latter at the Clarendon Press.
Save for the Complutensian Polyglott there is nothing striking to record of the Spanish printing of the sixteenth century, which retained its massive and archaic character for some decades, and then became as dull and undistinguished as the printing of all the rest of Europe tended to be towards the end of the century. The enthusiasm with which the new art had at first been received had died out. Printers were no longer lodged in palaces, monasteries, and colleges; Church and State, which had at first fostered and protected them, were now jealous and suspicious, even actively hostile. Thriving members of other occupations and professions had at one time taken to the craft. A little later great scholars had been willing to give their help and advice, and at least a few printers had themselves been men of learning. All this had passed or was passing. Printing had sunk to the level of a mere craft, and a craft in which the hours appear to have been cruelly long and work uncertain and badly paid. In the eighteenth century the Dutch journeymen were certainly better paid than our own, and it may be that it was through better pay that they did better work in the seventeenth century also. It seems certain, moreover, that the improvements in the construction of printing presses which were introduced in that century originated in Holland. The primacy of the Dutch is proved by the large amount of Dutch type imported into England, and indeed the Dutch books of the seventeenth century are neater and in better taste than those of other countries. It was in Holland also that there worked the only firm of printers of this period who made themselves any abiding reputation. The founder of this firm, Louis Elzevir, was a bookseller and bookbinder at Leyden, where, in 1583, he began printing on his own account, and issued between that year and his death in 1617 over a hundred different books of no very special note. No fewer than five of his seven sons carried on his business,and the different combinations of these and of their successors in different towns are not a little bewildering. Bonaventura Elzevir with his nephew Abraham issued pretty little editions of the classics in very small type in 12mo and 16mo, of which the most famous are the Greek Testament of 1624 and 1633, the Virgil, Terence, Livy, Tacitus, Pliny, and Caesar of 1634-6, and a similar series of French historical and political works and French and Italian classics. After the deaths of Abraham and Bonaventura in 1652 the business was carried on by their respective sons Jean and Daniel, who issued famous editions of theImitatio Christiand the Psalter. Meanwhile Louis Elzevir (another grandson of the founder) had been working at Amsterdam, and in 1654 was joined there by Daniel, the new partnership producing some fine folio editions. Other members of the family went on working at Utrecht and Leyden until as late as 1712, so that its whole typographical career extended over a hundred and thirty years. But it is only the little classical editions, and a French cookery book calledLe Pastissier François, that are at all famous, and the fame of these (the little classics being troublesome to read and having more than a fair share of misprints, though edited by David Heinsius) probably rests on a misconception. These small classical editions were the last word for two centuries in that development of the Small Book which we have already traced in the Aldine editions at Venice, those of De Colines and Robert Estienne of Paris, of Sebastian Gryphius at Lyons, and of the successors of Plantin at Antwerp. Now the small books of the Elzevirs were produced at a very important period in the history of bookbinding, and when we hear of large sums having been paid for an Elzevir it will mostly turn out that the excellence of its binding has had a good deal to do with the price. The cookery book is an exception, the value of this, though often enhanced by a fine binding, being yet considerable, even in a shabby jacket. But the interest in this case is due to the antiquarian instinctsof book-loving gourmets, and not in any way to the printing. The little classics, even when of the right date and with all the right little headpieces and all the right misprints, have never been worth on their own merits more than a few pounds, while shabby, cropped copies have no selling value whatever.
43He was born at Bassiano in the Papal States in 1450.
43He was born at Bassiano in the Papal States in 1450.
CHAPTER XI
FOREIGN ILLUSTRATED BOOKS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Aswe have already said, the charm of the woodcut pictures in incunabula lies in their simplicity, in their rude story-telling power, often very forcible and direct, in the valiant effort, sometimes curiously successful in cuts otherwise contemptibly poor, to give character and expression to the human face, and as regards form in the harmony between the woodcuts and the paper and type of the books in which they appear. In the book-illustrations of the sixteenth century the artist is more learned, more self-conscious, and his design is interpreted with far greater skill by the better trained wood-cutters of his day. More pains are taken with accessories, and often perhaps for this reason the cut does not tell its story so quickly as of old. It is now a work of art which demands study, no longer a signpost explaining itself however rapidly the leaf is turned. Lastly, the artist seems seldom to have thought of the form of the book in which his work was to appear, of the type with which the text was to be printed, or even of how the wood-cutter was to interpret his design. Book-illustration, which had offered to the humble makers of playing-cards and pictures of saints new scope for their skill, became to the artists of the sixteenth century a lightly valued method of earning a little money from the booksellers, their better work being reserved for single designs, or in some cases for the copperplates which at first they executed, as well as drew, themselves. Thus the book-collector is conscious, on the one hand, that less pains have been taken to please him, and on the other that he is separating by his hobbyone section of an artist’s work from the rest, in connection with which it ought to be studied. He may even be in some doubt as to where his province ends, since many of the illustrated books of the sixteenth century, although they possess a titlepage and are made up in quires, are essentially not books at all, the letterpress being confined to explanations of the woodcuts printed either below them or facing them on the opposite pages. The bibliographer himself, it may be added, feels somewhat of an intruder in this field, which properly belongs to the student of art, although in so far as art is enshrined in books and thus brought within the province of the book-collector, bibliography cannot refuse to deal with it.
Although we have taken off our caps in passing to Erhard Reuwich and Michael Wolgemut for their admirable work, the one in the MainzBreidenbach, the other in theSchatzbehalterandNuremberg Chronicle, it is Albrecht Dürer who must be regarded as the inaugurator of the second period of German book-illustrations. During his Wanderjahre Dürer had produced at Basel for an edition of S. Jerome’s Epistles, printed by Nicolaus Kesler in 1492 (reprinted 1497), a rude woodcut of the saint extracting a thorn from his lion’s foot. Dürer’s important bookwork begins in 1498, when his fifteen magnificent woodcuts illustrating the Apocalypse (which influenced all later treatments of this theme) were issued twice over at Nuremberg, in one edition with German title and text, in the other with Latin. Stated in their colophons to have been “printed by Albrecht Dürer, painter,” neither edition bears the name of a professional printer. The types used in each case were those of Anton Koberger, Dürer’s godfather, and the effect of the artist’s personal superintendence, which the colophons attest, is seen in the excellence of the presswork. The following year Koberger published an illustrated edition of theReuelationes Sanctae Birgittae(German reprint in 1502), and Dürer has been supposed to have helped in this, but the theory is now discredited. In 1501 heprobably contributed two woodcuts to an edition of the comedies of Hroswitha, a tenth century nun of the Benedictine Abbey at Gandersheim. Conrad Celtes had unearthed these comedies some years previously in a Ratisbon library, and they were now printed under his editorship for theSodalitas Celticaat Nuremberg. The illustrations to the comedies themselves, which vie in heaviness with their subjects, are attributed by Mr. Campbell Dodgson to Wolfgang Traut.44One of the cuts assigned to Dürer represents Celtes offering the book to Frederick III, Elector of Saxony; the other shows Hroswitha herself presenting her plays to the Emperor Otto I (see Plate XXIII). In 1502 Dürer designed another cut of a presentation and an illustration of Philosophy (both very feebly rendered by the cutter) for theQuatuor libri Amorumof Celtes. In 1511 the Latin Apocalypse was reprinted, and three other sets of woodcuts by Dürer appeared in book form, in each case with Latin text by Benedictus Chelidonius. One of these commemorated in twenty designs the life of the Blessed Virgin (Epitome in Diuae Parthenices Marie Historiam ab Alberto Durero Norico per Figuras digestam cum versibus annexis Chelidonii), the other two the Passion of Christ, the Great Passion (Passio domini nostri Jesu ex hieronymo Paduano, Dominico Mancino, Sedulio et Baptista Mantuano per fratrem Chelidonium collecta cum figuris Alberti Dureri Norici Pictoris, in folio) in twelve large woodcuts, the Little Passion (Passio Christi ab Alberto Durer Norembergensi effigiata cū varij generis carminibus Fratris Benedicti Chelidonij Musophili, in quarto) in thirty-seven smaller ones. After this Dürer was caught up by the Emperor Maximilian and set to work on some of the various ambitious projects for illustrating his reign, as to which more will be said later. His later bookwork includes a Crucifixion and S. Willibaldfor an Eichstätt Missal (Nuremberg, H. Hölzel, 1517), some large designs for theEtliche vnderricht zu befestigung der Stett Schloss vnd flecken(Nuremberg, 1527), and his own book on the Proportion of the Human Body, which was issued both in German and in a Latin translation by Camerarius.
Several borders and illustrations formerly ascribed to Dürer are now attributed to one of his pupils, Hans Springinklee, who lived in Dürer’s house at Nuremberg, where he worked from about 1513 to 1522. Most of Springinklee’s bookwork was done for Anton Koberger, who published some of it at Nuremberg, while some was sent to the Lyon printers, Clein, Sacon, and Marion, who were in Koberger’s employment. A border of his design bearing the arms of Bilibaldus Pirckheimer is found in several works which Pirckheimer edited (1513-17). In aHortulus Animae, printed by J. Clein for Koberger at Lyon, 1516, fifty cuts are by Springinklee. TheHortulus Animaewas as popular in Germany as the illustratedHoraein France and England. In 1517 another edition appeared with Erhard Schön as its chief illustrator, and only a few of Springinklee’s cuts. The next year Springinklee produced a new set of cuts, and Schön’s work was less used. Springinklee and Schön were also associated in Bible illustrations printed for Koberger by Sacon at Lyon, and to Springinklee are now assigned two full-page woodcuts in an Eichstätt Missal (H. Hölzel, Nuremberg, 1517), and a border to theReuelationes Birgittae(F. Peypus, Nuremberg, 1517), formerly ascribed to Dürer. A woodcut of Johann Tritheim presenting hisPolygraphiato Maximilian, formerly attributed to Holbein as having been printed at Basel (Adam Petri, 1518), is now also placed to the credit of Springinklee, who, moreover, worked for theWeisskunigand probably for other of the artistic commemorations of himself which Maximilian commissioned.
Hans Sebald Beham is best known as a book-illustrator from his work for Christian Egenolph atFrankfurt am Main, which began in 1533. But he belonged to the Nuremberg school, had worked for ten or twelve years for Merckel, Peypus, Petreius and other Nuremberg firms, and has had the honour of having some of his single cuts attributed to Dürer. His most important books for Egenolph were theBiblische Historien, a series of small illustrations to the Bible, first printed in 1533, which went through many editions in German and Latin, and another series illustrating the Apocalypse, of which the first edition appeared in 1539, the texts of the LatinHistoriaeand also to the Apocalypse cuts being supplied by Georgius Aemilius. A set of medallion portraits of Roman emperors by him also appeared in several German and Latin chronicles published by Egenolph.
Between the Nuremberg book-illustrators and those of Augsburg, to whom we must now turn, a connecting link may be found in the person of Hans Leonhard Schäufelein, born about 1480, soon after his father, a Nördlingen wool merchant, had settled at Nuremberg. He worked under Dürer, and his earliest book-illustrations were made for Dr. Ulrich Pinder, the owner of a private press at Nuremberg. Several unsigned cuts inDer beschlossen gart des rosenkrantz Marie(Pinder, 1505), and thirty out of thirty-four large cuts in aSpeculum Passionis(Pinder, 1507), are ascribed to Schäufelein, his associate in each book being Hans Baldung. About 1510 Schäufelein removed to Augsburg, and, despite his return to his paternal home at Nördlingen where he took up his citizenship in 1515, he worked for the chief Augsburg publishers for the rest of his life, though between 1523 and 1531 nothing is known as to what he was doing.
Among the earlier Augsburg books with illustrations attributed to Schäufelein are Tengler’sDer neu Layenspiegel(1511), Henricus Suso’sDer Seusse (1512), Heiligenleben(1513), Geiler’sSchiff der Penitentz(1514), and theHystori und wunderbarlich legend Katharine vonSenis(1515), all published by J. Otmar. In 1514 he had illustrated for Adam Petri of Basel aPlenariumorEvangelienbuch, which went through several editions. AnotherEvangelienbuch, printed by Thomas Anshelm at Hagenau in 1516, contains several cuts with Schäufelein’s signature, but in a different style, probably partly due to a different wood-cutter; these were used again in other books.
In theTheuerdankof 1517 about twenty cuts are assigned to Schäufelein, some of them bearing his signature. The following year he illustrated Leonrodt’sHimmelwagenfor Otmar with twenty cuts, mostly signed, some of which were used afterwards on the titlepages of early Luther tracts. After an interval Schäufelein is found in 1533 working for Heinrich Steyner of Augsburg, who employed him to illustrate his German editions of the classics, Thucydides (1533), Plutarch (1534), Cicero (1534), Apuleius (1538), etc. The blocks for some of his cuts subsequently passed into the possession of Christian Egenolph of Frankfort.
The first native Augsburg artist whom we have to notice is Hans Burgkmair, who was born in 1473, and began bookwork in 1499 by illustrating missals for Erhard Ratdolt with pictures of patron saints and of the Crucifixion. The chief Augsburg publisher for whom he worked in his early days was Johann Otmar, for whom he illustrated several books by the popular preacher, Johann Geiler von Kaisersberg (Predigen teutsch, 1508 and 1510,Das Buch Granatapfel, 1510,Nauicula Poenitentiae, 1511), and other devotional and moral works. In 1515 Hans Schoensperger the younger employed him to supply a dedication cut and seven designs of the Passion for aLeiden Christi, and to theTheuerdankpublished by Schoensperger the elder at Nuremberg in 1517 he contributed thirteen illustrations (only one signed). He had already been employed (1510) on a few of the cuts in the Genealogy of the Emperor Maximilian, which a wholesome fear lest its accuracy shouldbe doubted caused that self-celebrating monarch to withhold from publication, and much more largely (1514-16) on theWeisskunig, which was first printed, from the original blocks, at Vienna in 1775; and he was the chief worker (1516-18) on the woodcuts for the Triumphal Procession of Maximilian printed by order of the Archduke Ferdinand in 1526. While these imperial commissions were in progress Burgkmair designed a few title-cuts for Johann Miller, notably the very fine one (see Plate XXIV) to theDe rebus Gothorumof Jornandes (1515), showing kings Alewinus and Athanaricus in conversation, and subsequently worked for Grimm and Wirsung and for H. Steiner, although not nearly to the extent which was at one time supposed, as most of the illustrations supplied to these firms with which he used to be credited are now assigned to Hans Weiditz.
Jörg Breu, who was born and died (1537) some half-dozen years later than Burgkmair, like him illustrated Missals for Ratdolt and contributed Passion-cuts to Mann’sLeiden Christi. His most important piece of bookwork was the redrawing of the cuts in Anton Sorg’s edition of Reichenthal’sConciliumbuchfor a reprint by Steiner in 1536. Illustrations by him also occur in aMelusina(1538), and German versions of Boccaccio’sDe claris mulieribusandDe Casibus Illustrium virorumissued after his death by the same firm. Leonhard Beck contributed largely to the illustration of Maximilian’s literary ventures, especially theTheuerdank,Weisskunig, and Saints of the House of Austria (published at some date between 1522 and 1551).
We come now to Hans Weiditz, the immense extension of whose work by the attributions of recent years can only be compared to Mr. Proctor’s raising of Bartolommeo de’ Libri from one of the smallest to one of the most prolific of Florentine printers. Only two or three Augsburg woodcuts bearing his initials are known, while scores and even hundreds are now assigned to him, most of which had previously been credited to Burgkmair.
Weiditz began bookwork in or before 1518, in which year he contributed a title-cut to theNemoof Ulrich von Hutten, while in 1519 he made twelve illustrations to the same author’s account of Maximilian’s quarrel with the Venetians. In 1518 he had begun working for the firm of Grimm and Wirsung, and this, with a few commissions from other Augsburg publishers, kept him busy till about 1523, when he himself moved to Strassburg, whence his family had come, while in the same year Grimm and Wirsung gave up business and sold their blocks to Steiner. These included not only many title-borders by Weiditz, twenty illustrations to two comedies of Plautus and a set of cuts to theDeuotissime meditationes de vita et passione Christi, and another to a GermanCelestina, all published in 1520, but a series of some 260 masterly illustrations to a German version of Petrarch’sDe remediis utriusque fortunae. Steiner used some of these cuts in a CiceroDe Officiisof 1531, which has in addition sixty-seven important cuts by Weiditz, presumably of the same period, and also in aJustinusof the same year, but the work for which they were specially designed did not appear until a year later. Needless to say, selections from both the Petrarch and the Cicero sets appear in later work.
After removing to Strassburg, Weiditz copied some Wittenberg Bible cuts and also Holbein’s Apocalypse set for Knoblauch in 1524. In 1530 he illustrated for J. Schott theHerbariumof Brunfels, which went through several editions both in Latin and German, and for this comparatively humble work was praised by name in both editions, so that until 1904 it was only as the illustrator of the Herbal that he was known. Many of his Augsburg woodcuts subsequently passed to that persistent purchaser of old blocks, Christian Egenolph of Frankfort.
Before passing away from the Nuremberg and Augsburg book-illustrators, it seems necessary to describe briefly, but in a more connected form, the literary and artistic enterprises of the Emperor Maximilian, to whichso many incidental allusions have been made. The Emperor’s first attempt to glorify himself and his lineage took the form of a Genealogy for which several antiquaries—Mennel, Sunthaim, Tritheim, and Stabius—made researches. Burgkmair made designs of some ninety ancestors and their heraldic coats in 1509-11, and the wood-blocks were cut. It was apparently intended to print them in 1512, but the whole project was abandoned, and the work is now only known from a few sets of proofs, no one of which is quite complete.
After this failure Maximilian planned a Triumphal Arch and Procession, the programme for the Arch being drawn up by Stabius, that of the Procession by Treitzsaurwein. The plan of the Arch was largely worked out by Dürer, with help from Springinklee, Traut, and Altdorfer, whose designs were carried out in 192 woodblocks cut by Hieronymus Andrea and his assistants. When the impressions from these are put together they make a design measuring nearly twelve feet by ten. In the centre is the Gate of Honour, to the left and right the gates of Praise and Nobility. Above the main gate rises a tower on which are displayed the Emperor’s ancestors and their arms, above the other gates a series of incidents of Maximilian’s life, surmounted by busts of his imperial predecessors and of contemporary princes. This was printed in 1517-18 at Nuremberg, and in 1526-8 and 1559 at Vienna. On the Procession or Triumph, Dürer, Springinklee, Schäufelein, Burgkmair, and Beck were all engaged. The 138 blocks composing it were cut by Andrea and Jost de Negker in 1516-18, and it was printed by order of the Archduke Ferdinand in 1526. A Triumphal Car designed by Dürer in 1518, in connection with the same project, was published in eight sheets in 1522.
A series of representations of Saints of the House of Hapsburg had been planned soon after the abandonment of the Genealogy, and assumed shape in 1514. From drawings now attributed to Leonhard Beck, 123 woodblockswere made, and an edition in book form was printed some time after 1522.
The romance ofTheuerdankwas written by Melchior Pfintzing, under Maximilian’s direction, to celebrate his wooing of Mary of Burgundy and other exploits. The bulk (seventy-seven) of the illustrations in it are now ascribed to Beck, seventeen to Schäufelein, thirteen to Burgkmair, and three, two, and one respectively to Schön, Traut, and Breu. It was published as a sumptuous folio, several copies being struck on vellum by the elder Schoensperger at Nuremberg in 1517, and reprinted two years later.
TheWeisskunig, or White King, an account of Maximilian’s parentage, education, and exploits, was dictated by him in fragments to Treitzsaurwein, but never fully edited. Of the 249 illustrations about half are by Burgkmair, most of the others by Beck. With the exception of thirteen the blocks were preserved at Vienna, and the book was printed there for the first time in 1775.
Lastly, theFreydal, which was to have given an account of Maximilian’s tourneys and “Mummereien,” is known to us by the preservation of the original miniatures from which the illustrations were to have been made, but only five blocks out of 256 were actually cut.
The patronage of the Emperor Maximilian gives special importance to the work done during his lifetime at Nuremberg and Augsburg, but there was no lack of book-illustrations elsewhere. At Tübingen some of the mathematical works of Johann Stöffler were curiously decorated, and the second edition of hisEphemerides(1533) has a fine portrait of the author in his seventy-ninth year. At Ratisbon, Albrecht Altdorfer was the most important worker for the wood-cutters, and to him are now attributed thirty-eight cuts illustrating the Fall and Redemption of Man, published at Hamburg in 1604, under the name of Dürer, as “nunc primùm è tenebris inlucem editæ.” Their minute and rather niggling style renders the bad printing which they have mostly received peculiarly destructive to them. Another Ratisbon artist, Michael Ostendorfer, illustrated a few books published at Ratisbon itself, and others printed at Ingolstadt.
At Wittenberg, from a little before 1520, the influence of Martin Luther made itself as much felt as that of Maximilian at Augsburg and Nuremberg. Hither, in 1505, had come a Franconian artist, Lucas Cranach, who had already illustrated some missals for Winterburger of Vienna. Numerous pictures of saints, which he drew for the WittenbergHeiligthumsbuchof 1509, are subsequently found dispersed in other works, such as theHortulus Animae. A few title-cuts on tracts by Luther and others are assigned to him, but a great mass of bookwork, including numerous fine borders, found in Wittenberg books of the Luther period, while showing abundant traces of the elder Cranach’s influence, is yet clearly not by him. It has recently been assigned, with some probability, to his eldest son, Hans. His younger son, Lucas Cranach II, also supplied a few borders and illustrations to the Wittenberg booksellers. Georg Lemberger also produced borders for titlepages and some Bible cuts, and two other Wittenberg Bible-illustrators of this school were Erhard Altdorfer, brother of Albrecht, whose best bookwork is found in a fine Danish Bible printed at Copenhagen in 1550, and Hans Brosamer, Bibles, or parts of the Bible, with whose cuts appeared both at Wittenberg and at Frankfort.
At Strassburg, Hans Baldung Grien, whose work shows the influence of Dürer, illustrated theGranatapfel(1510) and other works by Geiler of Kaisersberg, theHortulus Animaeprinted by Flach (1510), etc. Johann Wächtlin, who had contributed a Resurrection to a set of Passion cuts published by Knoblauch in 1506, illustrated aLeben Christifor the same printer in 1508. We find his work again in theFeldbuch der Wundarzneiof Hans von Gersdorff, printed by Schott in 1517. The work ofHans Weiditz for Strassburg publishers has already been mentioned. It was here also that Urs Graf worked for some little time for Knoblauch, to whose Passion set of 1507 he contributed, and other publishers. In 1509 he is found at Basel, where two years later he became a citizen, supplying ninety-five little woodcuts to an edition of thePostillaof Guillermus, and also designing title borders. As a centre of printing Basel was now rapidly increasing in importance, and when Erasmus allied himself with the foremost Basel printer, Johann Froben, for a time the city succeeded, in point of quality though not of quantity, to the typographical supremacy which Venice was fast losing. Scholarly works such as approved themselves to Erasmus and Froben offered, of course, very little scope for book-illustration properly so called, but the desire for beauty found vent, not only with them, but with the other Basel printers of the day, Valentin Curio, Johann Bebel, Adam Petri, Andreas Cratander, etc., in elaborate borders to titlepages, headpieces and tailpieces, ornamental capitals and trade devices. The arrival of Hans Holbein (born at Augsburg in 1497) at Basel in 1516 on his Wanderjahre supplied a decorator of a skill altogether outshining that shown in the rather tasteless architectural work, varied with groups of children, produced by Urs Graf, though Holbein himself was content to begin in this style. In his most characteristic work the footpiece of the border illustrates some classical scene, Mutius Scaevola and Porsenna, the death of Cleopatra, or Quintus Curtius leaping into the abyss; less commonly a scriptural one, such as the death of John the Baptist. The most elaborate of his titlepages was that to theTabulaof Cebes (1521), in which little children crowd through the gate of life to meet all the varied fortunes which life brings. Delightful humour is shown in an often used headpiece and tailpiece, showing villagers chasing a fox and returning home dancing. During 1517 and the following year, when Hans Holbein was absent from Basel, his brother Ambrosius worked thereon the same lines, and decorated, among other books, More’sUtopia.
After his return to Basel in 1519, Hans Holbein remained at work there until 1526, and it was during this period that his book-illustrations, properly so called, were executed, including those to the Apocalypse and his two most famous pieces of bookwork, hisDance of DeathandHistoriarum Veteris Testamenti Icones, both of which were first published in 1538 at Lyon by Melchior and Gaspar Trechsel. These (with perhaps some exceptions) and many of his other designs45were cut in wood by Hans Lutzelburger who signed a Holbein titlepage to a German New Testament printed by Thomas Wolff in 1523, and who, if rightly identified with the Hans Formschneider with whose widow the Trechsels were in correspondence in 1526 and 1527, must have died about the time that Holbein left Basel. Pen copies, moreover, of some of the cuts of theDance of Deathare preserved at the Berlin Museum, and one of these is dated 1527, so that there can be no question that the originals belong to this period of Holbein’s life, and the British Museum possesses a set of proofs of forty out of the original series of forty-one, printed on four sheets, ten on a sheet. It has been conjectured that the occupations of some of the great personages whom Death is depicted as seizing may have been considered as coming under the offence ofscandalum magnatumand so have caused the long delay before the blocks were used, but as this explanation does not apply to the illustrations to the Old Testament it seems inadequate. As published in 1538 by the Trechsels the cuts are accompanied by French quatrains from the pen of Gilles Corrozet and other appropriate matter, and have prefixed to them a titlepage reading:Les Simulachres & Historiees Faces de la Mort, autant elegammēt pourtraictes que artificiellement imaginees.A Lyon, soubz lescu de Coloigne, M.D.XXXVIII.A second edition with Latin instead of French verses was published by Jean and François Frellon, and others followed, in one of which, that of 1545, one, and in another, that of 1547, eleven additional cuts were printed, while in 1562, when the book was still in Frellon’s hands, five woodcuts of children make their appearance, though they have no connection with the original series.
That Holbein’s Old Testament designs also belong to his Basel period is shown by copies of them appearing in a Bible printed by Froschouer in 1531, though the original cuts were not published till seven years later. As printed by the Trechsels they are eighty-six in number, and while the cutting of the best is worthy of Lutzelburger, their execution is too unequal for it to be certain that the whole series was executed by him. The cuts were also used by the Trechsels in a Bible of the same year, and both the Bible and the cuts under their own titleHistoriarum Veteris Testamenti Iconeswere republished by the Frellons.
Considerations of space forbid more than a bare mention of theBambergische Halssgericht(1508), with its all too vivid representations of the cruel punishments then in use, and the illustrated classics published at later dates by Johann Schoeffer at Mainz, or of the work of Jakob Köbel at Oppenheim with its rather clumsy imitations of Ratdolt’s Italian ornaments, or of the illustrated books printed by Johann Weissenburger at Landshut, or of those from the press of Hieronymus Rodlich at Siemen, theThurnierbuchof 1530,Kunst des Messensof the following year, andFierabrasof 1533. After about 1535 little original book-illustration of any importance was produced in other German cities, but in Nuremberg and Frankfurt it continued plentiful, Virgil Solis and Jobst Amman working assiduously for the booksellers in both places.
In no other country did the first thirty years of the sixteenth century produce so much interesting work as inGermany. Interesting, moreover, as this German work is in itself, it is made yet more so by the fact that a sufficient proportion of it is signed to enable connoisseurs to pursue their pleasant task of distributing the unsigned cuts among the available artists. Less intrinsically good, and with very few facilities for playing this fascinating game, the book-illustrations of other countries have been comparatively little studied. In Italy the new century brought some evil days to the book trade. Printing itself ceased for a time at Brescia; at Florence publishers for many years relied chiefly on their old stock of cuts; at Milan, at Ferrara and Pavia a little new work was done. At Venice the thin delicate outline cuts of the last decade of the fifteenth century ceased to be produced any longer, though the old blocks sometimes reappear. More often the old designs were either simply copied or imitated in the more heavily shaded style which was now coming into vogue. The interest of some of this shaded work is increased by the occasional appearance on it of a signature. Thus in theMissale Romanumof 30 July, 1506, published by Stagninus, some of the cuts in this shaded style bear the same signature, “ia,” as appears on the outline work in the Ovid of 1497. Work done by “ia” is also sometimes found copied by another cutter calling himself VGO, whose name is also found on some copies of French Horae cuts in a Venice Horae of 1513.
Signatures which occur with some frequency between 1515 and 1529 are the z.a., z.A., and I.A. used by Zoan Andrea, i.e. Johannes Andreas Vavassore. This Zoan Andrea was an assiduous copyist. Early in his career (1515-16) we find him imitating Dürers large illustrations to the Apocalypse; in 1517 his title-cut for theDe modo regendiof Antonio Cornazano imitates that of Burgkmair on the 1515De rebus Gothorumof Jornandes. In 1520 he prefixed to a Livy printed by Giunta an excellent portrait modelled, as the Prince d’Essling has shown, on a sculpture set up at Padua to the memory either of the historian himself or of one of his descendants; in1521 he copied Marcantonio Raimondi’s engraving of Horatius Cocles, and in the same year another by Raimondi of Quintus Curtius. This was for an edition of Boiardo, and for a later edition of 1524 Zoan Andrea copied yet another engraving, that of Scipio Africanus. In 1525 he imitated Holbein’s elaborate border to theTabula Cebetis, applying it to aDictionarium Graecum. About this time also he produced the well-known block-book (at least three editions known)Opera noua contemplatiua, imitating Dürer’s Little Passion in some of the cuts. Because of the rarity of signed woodcuts in Italian books Zoan Andrea has attracted more attention than the quality of his work deserves. It seems probable that he was the head of a workshop, and the craftsmanship of the cuts bearing his signature is very unequal.
Turning to the general course of book-illustration in Venice as it may be studied in the great work of the Prince d’Essling, unhappily left without the promised introduction at the time of his lamented death, we find several different influences at work. As has been already noted, the shaded work which had begun to make its appearance before 1500, as in the frontispiece to theEpitome Almagestiof Regiomontanus (1496), rapidly became the predominant style. We find it combined with some of the charm of the earlier outline vignettes in the small pictures of a Virgil of 1507, and in some of those of another edition in 1508, though the larger ones in this are heavy and coarse. The extreme of coarseness is found in an edition of theLegendario di Sanctiof 1518, the woodcuts being more suited to a broadside for a cottage wall than to Venetian bookwork. The style is seen at its best in the illustrations of a well-known Horae printed by Bernardinus Stagninus in 1507, and, generally speaking, it is in the Missals, Breviaries, and Horae published by L. A. Giunta, Stagninus and the De Gregoriis (see Plate XXV) that the most satisfactory bookwork of this period is found.
Another style which may be traced in many books ofthe early years of the century is a rather coarse development of the characteristic Florentine manner of the fifteenth century. The cuts are as a rule considerably larger than the Florentine ones, and the ornamental borders which surround them are much deeper. As in many of the Florentine cuts, more use is made of black spaces than was usual at Venice, but the cutting as a rule is coarse, and there is none of the charm of the best Florentine work. Woodcuts in this style are found most frequently on the titlepages of popular books in small quarto, published by the Sessas, who apparently did not see their way to commissioning more than a single illustration to each book. But the influence of the style affected the pictures in a few works of larger size—for instance, the 1503 edition of theChronica Chronicarumof Bergomensis, and the well-known picture of a choir in thePractica Musicesof Gafori (1512).
Despite his connection with theHypnerotomachia, which, however, was printed on commission, Aldus concerned himself little with book-illustrations, and if the miserable cuts which he put into his edition ofHero and Leanderof Musaeus are fair specimens of what he thought sufficiently good when left to himself, he was well advised in holding aloof from them. Nevertheless, the popularity which he gained for the small octavos which he introduced in 1501 was an important factor in the development of book-illustration in the sixteenth century. Although Aldus did not illustrate them himself, it was impossible that the lightly printed handy books which he introduced should remain permanently unillustrated, and when italic type was ousting roman and small books taking the place of large, the introduction of smaller illustrations, depending for their effect on the delicacy of their cutting, became inevitable. If we take any popular book of the century, such as theSonettiof Petrarch, and note the illustrations in successive editions, we shall find them getting smaller and smaller and more and more lightly cut and lightly printed, inorder to match better with the thin italic types. The new style is seen at its best in the books of 1540-60, the Petrarch of 1544 printed by Gabriel Giolito, Boccaccio’sDecameroneprinted by Valgrisi in 1552, Ovid’sMetamorphosesby Giolito in 1553. Finally, book-illustration peters out at Venice in pictorial capitals, which take as their subjects any heroes of Greek and Roman history and mythology whose names begin with the required letter, on the principle of the nursery alphabet in which “A was an Archer who shot at a frog, B was a Butcher who had a great dog.” To an age which, not otherwise to its loss, neglects the study of Lemprière’s Classical Dictionary, many of these puzzle initials are bafflingly obscure, relieved only by a recurring Q, which in almost all alphabets depicts Quintus Curtius leaping into the chasm at Rome. Some similar sets of Old Testament subjects are much easier. Books decorated with capitals of this kind are found as late as the end of the seventeenth century. Isolated initials designed on this plan are found also in other countries, but outside Italy it is only seldom that we come across anything approaching a set.
As to French book-illustrations of the sixteenth century, a competent historian should have much to say, but the present writer has made no detailed study of them, and in the absence of any monograph to steal from must be content with recording general impressions, only here and there made precise by references to books which he has examined. Far more than those of Germany or Venice, French publishers of the sixteenth century relied on the great stock of woodcuts which had come into existence during the decades 1481-1500. That they did so may be regarded as some compensation for the exceptional rarity of most of the more interesting French incunabula. We have spoken disrespectfully of the little devotional books printed about 1500 with an old Horae cut on the back of the titlepage or at the end, but in the popular books printed by the Lenoirs and other publishers as late as 1530, and even later, cuts will be foundfrom Millet’sDestruction de Troieand other incunabula now quite unobtainable, and it is even possible at times from salvage of this kind to deduce the former existence of fifteenth century editions of which no copy can now be found.
After about 1503 the French Horae decline rapidly in beauty and interest, but many fine missals were issued by Wolfgang Hopyl and other firms, some with one or more striking pictures, almost all with admirable capitals.
Among non-liturgical books it is difficult to find any class for which new illustrations were made at all freely. Several books of Chronicles by Monstrelet, Robert Gaguin, and others have one or more cuts at the beginning which may have been made for them, e.g. a folio cut of S. Denis and S. Rémy, with shields of arms found in theCompendium super Francorum gestisby Robert Gaguin (this, however, dates back to 1500), a double cut of S. Louis blessed by the Pope and confronting the Turks (found in Gaguin’sSommaire Historial de France, c.1523, and elsewhere), another double cut of Clovis baptized and in battle (Gaguin’sMer des Chronicques, 1536, but much earlier), a spirited battle scene (Victoire du Roy contre les Vénitiens, 1510), etc. But wherever we find illustrations in the text, there we are sure to light on a medley of old cuts (e.g. inLes grands chronicques de France, 1514, Gaguin’sChronicques, 1516, and theRozier historial, 1523), and it will be odds that Millet’sDestruction de Troiewill be found contributing its woodcuts of the Trojan War as illustrations of French history. When an original cut of this period can be found, it seldom has the charm of the best work of the last five years of the fifteenth century, but is usually quite good; there is, for instance, a quite successful metal-cut with criblé background of Justinian in Council in an edition of his laws printed by Bocard for Petit in 1516, and some of the liturgical cuts are admirable. There is thus no reason to impute the falling offin new cuts to lack of artists. It seems clear that the demand for illustrations had for the moment shifted to an uncritical audience who liked (small blame to them) the fifteenth century cuts which had delighted more educated people a generation earlier, and were not at all particular as to their appropriateness. Meanwhile the educated book-buyers were learning Greek and preparing themselves to appreciate the severe, unillustrated elegance of the books of the Estiennes, and new cuts were not needed.
The inception of a new style must certainly be connected with the name of Geoffroi Tory, whose best work is to be found in his Books of Hours, which have already been described in an earlier chapter. Its predominant note is a rather thin elegance of outline, in which the height of the figures is usually somewhat exaggerated. Tory is supposed to have brought home this style after his visit to Italy, but its application to bookwork appears to have been his own idea. There is, indeed, a striking resemblance between the little cuts of Tory’s third Horae set, dated 8 February, 1529, and those in an Aldine Horae of October of the same year, but to the best of my belief Tory reckoned his year from 1 January, not in the old French style from Easter, and if so it was Tory who supplied the Aldine artist with a model, which indeed is a logical continuation of his editions of 1525 and 1527. It is greatly to be regretted that his ownChampfleuryof 1527 is so slightly illustrated. The little picture of Hercules Gallicus which comes in it is quite delightful.
If any guide were in existence to the illustrated French books of the thirties in the sixteenth century it would probably be possible to trace the spread of Tory’s influence. In 1530 Simon Colines illustrated Jean Ruel’sVeterinaria Medicinawith a good enough cut in the old French style slightly modified. For the same author’sDe Natura Stirpiumof 1536 he provided a woodcut, of an alcove scene in a garden, the tone of which is quite new.It is evident that French publishers were waking up to new possibilities and sending their artists to foreign models, as aPerceforestprinted for Gilles Gourmont in 1531 and aMeliadus de Leonnoysfor Denis Janot in 1532, have both of them elaborate title borders in the style which the Holbeins had made popular at Basel. The latter is signed .F., a signature found in several later books in the new style. In 1534 we find Wechel issuing aValturiuswith neat adaptations of the old Verona illustrations. Doubtless there were many other interesting books, with cuts original or copied of this decade, but the only one of which I have a note is theL’amant mal traicte de sa mye(translated from the Spanish of Diego de San Pedro), printed by Denis Janot for V. Sertenas in 1539, in which the title is enclosed in a delicately cut border, the footpiece of which shows the lovers in a garden. Not long after this Janot printed (without putting his name or a date)La touche Naifue pour esprouver Lamy and le Flateurof Antoine Du Saix, in which the rules enclosing the title cut into a pretty oval design of flowers and ribbons. In 1540 we find the new style fully established in theHecatongraphie Cest à dire les descriptions de cent figures & hystoires, a book of emblems, by Gilles Corrozet, printed by Denis Janot, which I only know in the third edition, that of 1543. Here we find little vignettes, much smaller than those in the Malermi Bible, with a headline over them and a quatrain in italics beneath, the whole enclosed in an ornamental frame. The little cuts have the faults inevitable in emblems, and some of them are poorly cut, but the best of them are not only wonderfully delicate, but show a sense of movement and a skill in the manipulation of drapery never reached in the fifteenth century.
In 1543 appeared, again from the press of Denis Janot, “imprimeur du Roy en langue françoise,” another emblem book,Le Tableau de Cebes de Thebes, ancien philosophe & disciple de Socrate: auquel est paincte de ses couleurs, la uraye image de la vie humaine, & quelle uoye l’hommedoit élire, pour peruenir à vertu & perfaicte science. Premieremēt escript en Grec & maintenant expose en Ryme Francoyse. The French rhymester was again the author of theHecatongraphie, and the imprint, “A Paris On les uend en la grand [sic] salle du Palais en la boutique de Gilles Corrozet,” shows that he not only wrote the verses and perhaps inspired the illustrations, but sold the books as well.