A Brief History of Wood-engraving from Its Invention Part 4

At the beginning of the sixteenth century the wood-engravers of Florence were celebrated for beautiful book ill.u.s.trations in a distinct style. Those in the QUATRO REGGIE, Florence, 1508, are typical examples; their chief characteristics are, great breadth; ma.s.ses of white and black {46} evenly balanced; and the frequent use of white lines out of ma.s.ses of black.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TEOBALDO MANUZIO--KNOWN AS ALDUS, PRINTER AT VENICE]

Some of the fine borders to these early Italian wood-engravings owe their distinctive character to earlier work of {47} engravers on metal. Thus the borders round the ill.u.s.trations of the Venice folio of 1491 of the TRIUMPHS OF PETRARCH seem to be direct copies of engravings in metal by Filippo Lippi. The ma.s.ses of white on a black background are very effective, and the strength of the colour increases the effect of the picture which the border surrounds.

Between 1474 and 1512 Aldus printed for the first time the works of thirty-three Greek authors. The works of Aristotle, brought out in four volumes, occupied three years. A learned Greek, Musurus of Crete, corrected the proofs, in which Aldus himself a.s.sisted. The workmen were nearly all Greeks. The Greek type was copied from the handwriting of Musurus, and the Italian, known as the Aldine, from the writings of Petrarch; this was cut by the celebrated artist-goldsmith, Francia of Bologna. The Aldine edition of Virgil (1501), now exceedingly rare, was the first book printed in this Italic type. Notwithstanding all his learning, energy, and philanthropy, Aldus did not succeed in his business. Many of his books were pirated, wars and insurrections interrupted him, the League of Cambray caused him to close his works from 1506 to 1510, and he sold his books at a rate too cheap to be remunerative.

The first printed edition of aeSOP'S FABLES, which appeared at Verona as early as 1481, and was reprinted at Venice in 1491, contains many excellent engravings inclosed in ornamental borders, thoroughly Italian in character.

The figures are not unlike those in the 'Hypnerotomachia,' and we can readily imagine that they were drawn by the same artist, who has given us little more than outlines, which the engraver has well cut in facsimile.

The fable of 'The Jackdaw and the Peac.o.c.k' is particularly well done. An edition of OVID'S METAMORPHOSES appeared also at this time with tolerably good ill.u.s.trations not so well engraved.

There are some curious little cuts in the EPISTOLE DI SAN HIERONYMO VOLGARE, published in Ferrara in 1497, which {48} are more valuable for their originality than their beauty, either of drawing or engraving. The book was evidently intended for the use of the illiterate, to whom the quality of the pictures laid before them was of little consequence if they told the story that was meant for them to read with their eyes. The homely scene of Christ appearing like a Gardener with a hoe on His shoulder, addressing Mary Magdalene in an Italian _pergola_, would appeal to their feelings much more directly than the Transfiguration of Raphael.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A BOOTMAKER'S SHOP _From the 'Decameron,' printed in Venice in 1492_]

We do not find record of any other important wood-engravings in the history of printing in Italy at the end of the fifteenth century. Presses abounded everywhere, chiefly managed by Germans; there was scarcely an important town in Italy without a printer; few ill.u.s.trated books, however, were issued at this time. An edition of Boccaccio's {49} 'DECAMERON,' with many excellent cuts, one of which, representing a bootmaker's shop, we give as an ill.u.s.tration, was printed by the brothers Gregorio at Venice in 1492.

And there are some ill.u.s.trations in a book called 'FIORE DI VIRTu,' which appeared in Venice in the same year, that may be praised for the work of the wood-engraver, though the designer shows a sad ignorance of the laws of perspective and proportion. And we have before us an ill.u.s.tration to a poem by POLIZIANO, in which Giuliano dei Medici is kneeling before the altar of the G.o.ddess Minerva, where we see graceful drawing by the artist and fairly good engraving. It {50} was printed in Florence, but the type bears no comparison with the beauty of the Aldine books.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FRONTISPIECE TO A 'TERENCE,' PRINTED AT LYONS IN 1493]

The love of colour, which is born in all Italians, led them to develop a process of making pictures in chiaroscuro--by printing several wood-blocks one upon another, each block giving a separate tint. In fact, it was the beginning of the modern colour-printing. The invention of the new process was claimed by Ugo da Carpi, who reproduced several of the designs of Raphael. In the beginning of the next century we find pictures printed in four different colours--trying to imitate water-colour, or, rather, distemper drawings. (See p. 99.)

At Lyons, about the same time, there was an ill.u.s.trated edition of 'TERENCE' published, with well-executed woodcuts, from which we are able to give only the frontispiece, 'The Author writing his book.' It is sufficient to show that the engraving is the work of a practised hand.

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CHAPTER VI

_IN FRANCE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY_

Before we begin our brief history of wood-engraving in France it will be well to speak of the technical part of the new art in the fifteenth century. We have already stated that the engraving of the 'St. Christopher'

and other large prints were cut with a knife on planks of apple or pear or other close-grained wood; but there has always been much doubt about the small book ill.u.s.trations which appeared in various countries quite at the end of the century. The discovery, however, of some engraved blocks of metal solved the difficulty. In those days workers in metal were to be found in all large towns; the age of moulding and casting everything that could be cast had not then arrived: of course, coins and medals were made in the foundry; but handwork of the most perfect kind on metal was as common as wood-carving for the churches.

Experts have discovered twisted lines in some of the old prints; a line in a woodcut may easily be broken but it can hardly be bent, and it is now a.s.serted that many of the woodcuts, including the beautiful initial letters in Fust and Schoeffer's 'Psalter,' were really engraved on metal. The view of London at the head of the first page of the _Ill.u.s.trated London News_ is, we are told, cut in bra.s.s; Mulready's well-known envelope, engraved on bra.s.s by the celebrated wood-engraver, John Thompson, may be seen in the South Kensington Museum; and scores of other examples of metalwork of this kind might be cited.

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[Ill.u.s.tration: ORNAMENTS FROM 'HEURES A L'USAIGE DE CHARTRE'

(_Published by Vostre_)]

And there is no doubt that the famous ill.u.s.trations of the Missal, or 'Book of Hours,' issued in Paris between 1490 and 1520, were engraved on metal of some kind, perhaps on copper or some amalgam of tin and copper. There was a metal known as 'latten' in those days, and probably the engraving was done on some material of this kind, not too hard to cut, not too soft to wear away. It will be noticed that the groundwork of many borders in the French books is filled with little white dots, _crible_ it was called; these dots are, in the first place, to imitate similar work in the gold grounds of the borders of ill.u.s.trated missals, and, in the second place, to save the labour of cutting away so much of the metal as would be required for a white ground. These dots were evidently {53} made by means of a sharp and finely-pointed tool driven by a blow into the metal. (See page 59.)

France was not early in the field with ill.u.s.trated books, but she quickly made up for the delay by the excellence of her work, more especially in ornament. In 1488, Pierre Le Rouge, a printer and publisher, sent forth a book, 'LA MER DES HISTOIRES,' which contains many charming designs, from which beautiful wall-papers we know of have been borrowed; they are as well engraved as similar work at the present day, and only needed better 'over-laying' by the pressman, an art but little practised at that time.

This book contains the first decorative work by wood-engraving we have met with, and shows the great excellence of art in France at this period. There is a good example, though much reduced in size, among the ill.u.s.trations of Mr. William Morris's paper 'On the Woodcuts of Gothic Books,' that he read before a meeting of the Society of Arts in January 1892: it is printed in the Journal of the Society for February 12th.

Besides Le Rouge, there were in Paris at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries four celebrated printers, who were also publishers, whose books command our attention. Their names are Simon Vostre, Antoine Verard, Thielman Kerver, a German, and Guyot Marchant; they all published the 'Book of Hours,' ill.u.s.trated and decorated by the best artists and engravers of their time. There was likewise a printer named Philippe Pigouchet, who was also an engraver on wood, and who began by cutting blocks for Simon Vostre, and afterwards turned publisher on his own account. An important point to notice in connection with the ill.u.s.trations of French 'Books of Hours' at this time is that they are nearly all inspired by German artists and nearly all copied from illuminated MSS.

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[Ill.u.s.tration: THE DEATH OF THE VIRGIN (_From a Missal published by Simon Vostre_)]

{55} At the end of the fifteenth century the art of illumination was at its height in Paris. No one excelled the exquisite work of Jean Foucquet, servant to the King, and Jean Perreal, painter to Anne of Brittany.

Ma.n.u.scripts containing their miniature paintings command a large sum whenever they are offered for sale at the present day. These artists, it is said, gave their aid to the publishers of the 'Book of Hours' (_Heures a l'usage de Rome_), which had such an enormous sale that each publisher produced an edition for himself. Mr. Noel Humphreys a.s.serts, in his 'History of the Art of Printing,' that no fewer than sixty editions were published between 1484 and 1494. In his 'Introduction to the Study and Collection of Ancient Prints,' Dr. Willshire says: 'Towards the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries some well-known French printers--Pigouchet, Jean Dupre, Antoine Verard, and Simon Vostre--published some beautiful "Books of Hours," ornamented with engravings having some peculiar characters. The chief of these were that the ground and often the dark portions of the print were finely _crible_ or dotted white, serving as a means of "killing black"--a practice then prevalent among French engravers; secondly, each page of text was surrounded by a border of little subjects engraved in the same manner, and often repeated at every third page.... Not unfrequently they were printed in brilliant ink on fine vellum, that they might compete with the illuminated MS. "Books of Hours" then in fashion. The prints decorating these books have been generally considered to be impressions from wood.'

But Mr. Linton says they are from engraved blocks of metal; and every practical man will, we are sure, agree with the great living Master of Wood-engraving.

Our first ill.u.s.tration is from a 'Book of Hours,' or Missal, published by Simon Vostre in 1488. It represents 'The Death of the Virgin,' a subject that was always chosen by the ill.u.s.trator of religious books in those days; in our account of wood-engraving in the next two centuries we shall frequently meet with it among the works of the great artists. {56}

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE Pa.s.sION OF OUR LORD (_After a painting by Martin Schongauer. From a Missal by Simon Vostre_)]

{57} The Gothic framework of the cut is evidently borrowed from church ornament. The expression of the faces in the crowd of visitors is far in advance of anything we have seen hitherto in the German cuts; and the engraving, which was probably on metal, is evidently facsimile of the drawing and is remarkably well executed. The narrow border on the right of the cut is from an illuminated ma.n.u.script. In another of Vostre's Missals we find a copy of an engraving after the German painter, Martin Schongauer, 'Christ bearing the Cross,' enclosed in a French Renaissance frame. In the sky there is a good example of the _crible_ work of which we have spoken.

The towers of Jerusalem in the background must have been evolved from the artist's inner consciousness: he certainly never saw the Holy City.

Antoine Verard also published many 'Livres d'Heures,'[5] very much like Vostre's. We are told that he frequently printed a few copies on the finest vellum and had them coloured in exact imitation of the illuminated Missals.

One of Verard's patrons was the Duc d'Angouleme, a noted bibliophile, who commissioned him to print on vellum the romance of 'TRISTAN,' the 'Book of Consolation' of Boethius, the 'Ordinaire du Chretien,' and the 'Heures en Francois,' all with illuminated borders and handsome bindings. For this great amount of work Verard received about 240l., then equivalent perhaps to 1,000l. of the present day. We give an outline copy of one of the pages of the romance of 'TRISTAN,' which will repay much attention both for the princ.i.p.al subject, the King's Banquet, and the tapestry on the wall, which ought to be coloured to be properly appreciated. This famous publisher issued also a huge chronicle in five folio volumes, the 'Miroir Historical,' profusely ill.u.s.trated with good wood engravings; the first volume in 1495, the last in 1496. {58}

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE KING'S BANQUET (_From the romance of 'Tristan,' published by Antoine Verard_)]

Thielman Kerver, the German, also brought out many 'Books of Hours,'

copying those issued by Simon Vostre in a most barefaced way; indeed, piracy of this kind was rampant all over Europe, and but little regarded.

We give {59} a reduced copy of Kerver's book-mark; in the original it will be seen that the background is _crible_, thus suggesting that it was cut on metal.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MARK OF THIELMAN KERVER]

It was Guyot Marchant who produced, in 1485, the first edition of the 'DANCE OF DEATH,' which contained seventeen engravings on ten folio leaves, with the text printed in the old Gothic characters. This awe-inspiring but highly popular subject had been painted on the walls of many public buildings in Germany and France, and in past ages it had always been a great favourite with the lower cla.s.ses (many of our readers will remember a version of it on the walls of the curious old wooden bridge at Lucerne, the designs of which have doubtless been handed down by tradition)--but {60} Marchant was the first who printed the story in a series of woodcuts, well drawn and admirably engraved, and he had his reward, for the work was reprinted over and over again. The Pope, the Emperor, the Bishop, the Duke and the d.u.c.h.ess are given with much spirit, and are evidently the work of a clever draughtsman, who might, however, have made his Death a little less hideous. But there was a great love of the horrible in those days.

A special chapter might well be devoted to the beautiful marks used by French printers. Guyot Marchant's mark represents leather-workers engaged at their trade, and above are a few musical notes. There are two varieties of this device. The mark of Jehan Du Pre is an elaborate piece of work, in which heraldry plays a conspicuous part, while that of Antoine Caillaut is pictorial. The Le Noirs used devices in which the heads of negroes figured prominently. The well-known mark of Badius Ascensius represents printers at work. Jehan Pet.i.t used several beautiful cuts, in which his mark forms part of an elaborate design.

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CHAPTER VII

_IN ENGLAND IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY_

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries many of the finest churches in England were built by architects so celebrated that some of them were sent for to erect similar buildings in France. The beautiful carvings and highly decorated monuments still existing in our cathedrals prove that the art of sculpture in England was at that time little inferior to that of other countries. And in the British Museum and Bodleian Library, and many private collections, there is plentiful evidence that the miniature painters and illuminators were but little behind their brethren in Italy and France; even the binders, as we see by existing work, used excellent ornament in the decoration of the covers of their books. Why is it, then, that we find the art of wood-engraving, when it was flourishing in all the chief countries on the Continent, almost at its earliest state of infancy in England? This is a question very difficult to answer. Certainly our great printers, William Caxton, and his successors, Wynkyn de Worde and Richard Pynson, did not follow the example of the great typographers of Venice or the yet more-to-be-praised booksellers of Paris, who devoted so much energy and taste in the decoration of their books.

Of the few cuts printed in the fifteenth century, such as they are, we must say a few words. The earliest are all {62} small devotional pictures, representing Scriptural subjects, as 'The Image of Pity,' a figure of Christ on the Cross surrounded by emblems of the Pa.s.sion; four or five only of these early cuts have been found.

William Caxton, the first English printer, who was born in the Weald of Kent about the year 1422, was apprenticed to Robert Large, a rich mercer of London, who was Lord Mayor in 1440. In the following year the master died and Caxton went to Bruges, where he prospered in business, and in 1462 was made Governor of a Company of English Merchants who traded in Flanders, then the foremost mercantile country in the world. In 1471 Caxton gave up commerce and attached himself to the court of Margaret, d.u.c.h.ess of Burgundy, the sister of Edward IV. At the request of the d.u.c.h.ess, he then translated the _Le Recueil des Histoires de Troye_, written by Raoul Lefevre, and employed Colard Mansion of Bruges to produce it. This was the first book printed in the English language. In pa.s.sing his book through the press Caxton learned the new art, and with type bought of Colard Mansion he set up the first printing-press in England, at the sign of 'The Red Pale'

in the Almonry at Westminster, at the end of the year 1476. 'The Dictes and Sayings of Philosophers,' which appeared in 1477, is believed to be the first book printed in England; this was followed by 'The Morale Prouerbes of Cristyne,' and several other books, all without ill.u.s.tration. In 1478 he printed 'The Mirrour of the World,' the first book printed in England with cuts, one of which we give as an example; and the more famous 'Game and Playe of the Chesse,' from the second edition of which we have taken as a specimen 'The Knight,' which Caxton thus describes: 'The knyght ought to be maad al armed upon a hors in such wise that he have an helme on his heed and a spere in his right hond, and coverid with his shelde, a swerde and a mace on his left syde, clad with an halberke and plates tofore his breste, legge harnoys on his legges, spores on his heelis, on hys handes hys gauntelettes, hys hors wel broken and taught, and apte to bataylle, and coveryd with hys armes.' {63}

[Ill.u.s.tration: MUSIC (_From Caxton's 'Mirrour of the World'_)]