A History of Wood-Engraving Part 2

This volume of St. Jerome was, however, only a worthy forerunner of the Dream of Poliphilo, in which Italian wood-engraving, quickened by the spirit of the Renaissance, displayed its most beautiful creations. It was written by a Venetian monk, Francesco Columna, in 1467, and was first printed by Aldus, in 1499. It is a mystical work, composed in Italian, strangely mingled with Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic, and its theme, which is the praise of beauty and of love, is obscured by abstruse knowledge and by much varied learning. It recalls Dante's poem in some ways. The Renaissance Dominican, too, was a lover with a human Beatrice, of whom his dream is the memorial and the glory; like Dante, he seems to symbolize, under the beauty and guardianship of his gracious lady, a body of truth and a theory of life; and, as in Dante's poem Beatrice typified Divine Wisdom and theology, his Polia stood for the new gospel of this world's joy, for the loveliness of universal nature and the perfection of ancient art; in adoring her he worships them, and in celebrating her, as alike his goal and his guide through the mazes of his changing dream, he exalts the virtue and the hope that lay in the Renaissance ideal of life. There is, perhaps, no volume where the exuberant vigor of that age is more clearly shown, or where the objects for which that age was impa.s.sioned are more glowingly described.

This romantic and fantastic rhapsody mirrors every aspect of nature and art in which the Italians then took delight--peaceful landscape, where rivers flow by flower-starred banks and through bird-haunted woods; n.o.ble architecture and exquisite sculpture, the music of soft instruments, the ruins of antiquity, the legends of old mythology, the motions of the dance, the elegance of the banquet, splendor of apparel, courtesy of manners, even the ma.n.u.script, with its covers of purple velvet sown with Eastern pearls--everything which was cared for and sought in that time, when the gloom of asceticism lifted and disclosed the wide prospect of the world lying, as it were, in the loveliness of daybreak. Poliphilo wanders through fields and groves bright with this morning beauty, voyages down streams and loiters in gardens that are filled with gladness; he is graciously regaled in the palace, he attends the sacrifice in the temple, where his eyes are charmed by every exquisite ornament of art; he encounters in his progress triumphal processions, as they wind along through the pleasant country, bewildering the fancy with their lavish magnificence as of an Arabian dream; chariots that are wrought out of entire precious stones, carved with ba.s.s-reliefs from Grecian fables, and drawn by half-human centaurs or strange animals,--elephants, panthers, unicorns, in trappings of silk and jewels, pa.s.s before him, bearing exalted in their midst sculptured figures, Europa and the Bull, Leda and the Swan, Danae in the shower of gold, and, last and most wonderful, a vase, beautifully engraved and adorned, out of which springs a golden vine, with leaves of Persian selenite and grapes of Oriental amethyst; and about all are groups of attendant nymphs, fauns, satyrs, maenads, and lovely women, crowned with flowers, with instruments of music in their hands, chanting the praise of Valor and of Pleasure; again, he lingers among ancient ruins and remembers their perished glory, and falls into reflection, like that of the traveller whom he describes, "among those venerable monuments which still make Rome the queen of cities; where he sees," thinks Poliphilo, "the hand of Time, which punishes the excess of pride; and, seeking then on the steps of the amphitheatre the heads of the legions and that conquering eagle, that Senate whose decrees made and unmade the kings of the world, those profound historians, those eloquent orators, he finds there only a rabble of beggars, to whom an ignorant and ofttimes lying hermit preaches, only altars without honor and saints without a believer; the artist reigns alone in that vast enclosure; pencil in hand, rich with memories, he sees the whole of Rome, her pomp and her glory, in one mutilated block which a fragment of ba.s.s-relief adorns."

Inspired by these thoughts, Poliphilo delays among like relics of the past, and reads on shattered tombs the brief inscriptions which tell the history of the lost lovers who lie beneath, while the pagan burden of their sorrow, and the pagan calm of the "adieu" with which each inscription ends, fill him with tender sentiment. So his dream drifts on through ever-shifting scenes of beauty and ever-dying moments of delight to the hour of awakening. These scenes and these moments, which Francesco Columna called out of his imagination, are pictured in the one hundred and ninety-two designs (Figs. 27, 28, 29, 30) which adorn his book; here in simple outline are the gardens, groves, and streams, the n.o.ble buildings, the bath, the palace and the temple, the feast, the allegory of life, the thronging triumphs, the sacrifices, the ruins, the tombs, the lover and his beloved, the priestess and the G.o.ddess, cupids, baccha.n.a.ls, and nymphs--a profusion of loveliness, joy, and revel; here, too, among the others, are some dramatic scenes: the lion and the lovers, Poliphilo fainting before Polia, and his revival at the touch of her lips; altogether, they are a precious memorial of the Renaissance spirit, reflecting alike its pa.s.sion for the new learning, pa.s.sing into useless and pedantic knowledge, and its ecstacy of the senses pa.s.sing into voluptuous delight.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 24.--The Peace of G.o.d. From "Epistole di San Hieronymo Volgare." Ferrara, 1497.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 25.--Mary and the Risen Lord. From "Epistole di San Hieronymo Volgare." Ferrara, 1497.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 26.--St. Baruch. From the "Catalogus Sanctorum."

Venice, 1506.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 27.--Poliphilo by the Stream. From the "Hypnerotomachia Poliphili." Venice, 1499.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 28.--Poliphilo and the Nymphs. From the "Hypnerotomachia Poliphili." Venice, 1499.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 29--Ornament. From the "Hypnerotomachia Poliphili."

Venice, 1499.]

These designs, of which the few that can be given afford only a slight idea, so various are they in beauty and feeling, have been attributed to many ill.u.s.trious masters, Giovanni Bellini and Raphael among others; but perhaps the conjecture which a.s.signs them to Benedetto Montagna is the most probable. They show what remarkable artistic taste there was even in the inferior masters of Italy. "They are," says Professor Sydney Colvin,[38] "without their like in the history of wood-cutting; they breathe the spirit of that delightful moment when the utmost of imaginative _navete_ is combined with all that is needed of artistic accomplishment, and in their simplicity are in the best instances of a n.o.ble composition, a masculine firmness, a delicate vigor and graceful tenderness in the midst of luxurious or even licentious fancy, which cannot be too much admired. They have that union of force and energy with a sober sweetness, beneath a last vestige of the primitive, which in the northern schools of Italy betokens the concurrent influence of the school of Mantegna and the school of Bellini." Italy never afterward produced so n.o.ble a monument of the art as this work of its early days.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 30.--Poliphilo meets Polia. From the "Hypnerotomachia Poliphili." Venice, 1499.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 31.--Nero Fiddling. From the Ovid of 1510. Venice.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 32.--The Physician. From the "Fasciculus Medicinae."

Venice, 1500.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 33.--Hero and Leander. From the Ovid of 1515.

Venice.]

The art did not, however, fall into decline immediately. It is true that wood-engraving never won for itself in Italy a place in the popular esteem like that which it held in the North; the Italians were too fond of color, and possessed too many master-pieces of the n.o.bler arts, to set a very high value on such simple effects; but, nevertheless, in the first quarter of the sixteenth century there appeared in Venice, the chief seat of the art, many volumes which were ill.u.s.trated by woodcuts of excellent design, such as this of Nero (Fig. 31), from an Ovid of 1510, the representation of the physician attending a patient stricken with the plague (Fig. 32), from the _Fasciculus Medicinae_, by Johannes de Ketham, published in 1500, and that of Hero and Leander (Fig. 33), from an Ovid of 1515. Of Venetian work of lesser merit, the representation of Dante and Beatrice (Fig. 34), from a Dante of 1520, and the cuts (Figs. 35, 36, 37, 38), from the Catalogue of the Saints, by Petrus de Natalis, published in 1506, may serve as examples. The whole Italian series, even as ill.u.s.trated by the cuts here given, exhibits a greater variety of interest, knowledge, and feeling than does the work of any other nation, and affords a lively notion of the manifold elements that went to make up the Renaissance; it reflects fable, superst.i.tion, learning, the symbolism of mediaeval theology, ancient myth and legend, the rise of the modern feeling for nature, the pa.s.sion for beauty and art; and, ranging from the life of the scholar and the nunnery to that of the beggar and the plague, it pictures vividly contemporary times, while it adds to the interest of history and humanity the interest of beauty. Its prime, however, was of brief duration. Venetian engraving, and that of the other Italian cities also, continued to be marked by this simplicity and skill in design until 1530, when cross-hatching was introduced from the North; after that date wood-engraving shared in the rapid decline into which all the arts of Italy fell in consequence of the internal troubles of the country, which, from the time of the sack of Rome, in 1527, became the common battlefield of Europe for generations. But, in the short s.p.a.ce during which the Italians practised the art with such success, they showed that they had mastered it, and had come to an understanding of its capacities, both as a mode of drawing in black line and as a mode of relief in white line, such as appears in their arabesques and initial letters, examples of which are scattered through this volume. They came to this mastery and understanding before any other nation, because of their artistic instinct; for the same reason, they did not surpa.s.s the rudeness of German workmen in skill more than they excelled in simple beauty of design the best of early French work, which was characterized by such confused exuberance of fancy and such profusion of detail. They breathed into the art the Italian spirit, and its presence made their works beautiful.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 34.--Dante and Beatrice. From the Dante of 1520.

Venice.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 35.--St. Jerome Commending the Hermit's Life. From "Epistole di San Hieronymo." Ferrara, 1497.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 36.--St. Francis and the Beggar. From the "Catalogus Sanctorum." Venice, 1506.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 37.--The Translation of St. Nicolas. From the "Catalogus Sanctorum." Venice, 1506.]

To the Italian love of color is due the development of what is known as engraving in chiaroscuro, a process which, although it had been practised in Germany since 1506, was claimed as a new invention by Ugo da Carpi (1460-1523), at Venice, in 1516, and was carried by the Italians to the highest point of perfection which it reached in the sixteenth century. It was an attempt to imitate the results of painting; two, and sometimes several, blocks were used in the process; on the first the outlines and heavy shadows of the design were engraved, and a proof was taken off; on the second block the lighter parts of the design were engraved, and an impression was taken off from this on the same print in a different color, or, at least, in a color of different intensity; thus the original proof was overlaid with different tints by successive impressions from different blocks, and a variety of shades was obtained in the finished engraving, a.n.a.logous to those which the painter gets by laying flat tints over each other with the brush. Great care had to be taken in laying the original proof down on the second block, so that the lines of the design should fall in exactly the same position as in the first block; it is owing to a lack of exactness in this superposition of the proof on the later blocks that some of these engravings are so displeasing. There was considerable variety in the detail of the process. Sometimes the impression from the outline block was taken last; sometimes the different impressions were taken off in different colors, but usually in the same color of different intensities; sometimes the impressions were taken off on colored paper.

The Italians used four blocks at an early time, and were able to imitate water-colors with some success. All of their prints in this kind are marked by more artistic feeling and skill than those of the Germans, even when the latter are by masters. This application of the art, however, is not a true development, and really lies outside its province.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 38--Romoaldus, the Abbot. From the "Catalogus Sanctorum." Venice, 1506.]

V.

_ALBERT DuRER AND HIS SUCCESSORS._

[Ill.u.s.tration: A FIG. 39.--From an Italian Alphabet of the 16th Century.]

Already, before the Dream of Poliphilo had been published in Venice, wood-engraving in the North had pa.s.sed into the hands of the great German master who was to transform it; in the studio of Albert Durer (1471-1528) it had entered upon its great period. The earlier German engravers, whose woodcuts in simple outline, shadowed by courses of short parallel lines, showed a nave spirit almost too simple for modern taste, a force ignorant of the channels of expression and feeling inexpert in utterance, did not know the full resources of their art. It was not until the very close of the fifteenth century, when they discarded the aid of the colorists, and sought all their effects from simple contrast of black and white, that they conceived of wood-engraving as an independent art; even then their sense of beauty was so insignificant, and their power of thought was so feeble, that their works have only an historical value. Durer was the first to discover the full capacities of wood-engraving as a mode of artistic expression; it had begun to imitate the methods of copperplate-engraving before his day, but he saw immediately that it could not equal the rival art in that delicacy of line and harmony of tone on which copperplate-engraving depends for its excellence; the materials and processes of wood-engraving required different methods, and Durer prescribed them. He increased the size of the cuts, gave breadth and boldness to the lines, and obtained new and pleasing effects from strong contrasts of black and white. He thus showed the true method of wood-engraving; but the art owes to him much more than this: he brought to the practice of it the hand and brain of a great master, lifted it, a mechanic's trade, into the service of high imagination and vigorous intellect, and placed it among the fine arts--a deed of far more importance than any improvements in processes or methods, even though they have such brilliant consequences as followed Bewick's later innovations. He taught the art a language, put meaning into its words, and made it capable of conveying the ideas which art can express, and of spreading them and the appreciation of them among the people.

The application of Durer's genius to wood-engraving could not fail of great results. He recorded in it the German Renaissance. Civilization had gained much in freedom of thought, independence of action, and community of knowledge, as well as in a respect for nature; but it was still ruled by the devout and romantic spirit of the Middle Ages. Durer shared in all the intellectual life of his time, alike in its study of antiquity and its revolt against Rome; he was interested in all the higher subjects for which his contemporaries cared, and his versatile genius enabled him often to work with them in preparing the modern age, but he was not touched by the modern spirit; in thought and feeling he remained deeply religious, fantastic, picturesque, mystical--in a word, mediaeval. He did not possess the modern sense of limitation, the power to restrict himself to realizing a definite conception, the power to disregard and refuse what cannot be clearly seen and expressed, which the modern age, when it came, gave to the perfect artist; he was not content to embody his idea simply, directly, and forcibly; he supplemented it with secondary thought and subordinate suggestion in unmeasured profusion; he did not know when his work was done, but kept on adding to it in the true wandering, Gothic spirit, which never finishes its task, because its main purpose does not control it; he allowed his fancy to enc.u.mber the n.o.ble work of his imagination, and allegory to obscure the truth he uttered; he was not master of himself, but was hurried on by the fire and speed of his own genius along paths which led only to the obscure and the inaccessible. His imagination was deeply suggestive, straightforward, and marvellously fertile in invention; but he interpreted the imaginative world in terms of daily and often homely life; he represented ideal characters, not under ideal forms, but realistically under forms such as he saw about him; he knew beauty only as German beauty, and life and its material surroundings only as German life and German civilization; and thus his works are characterized by an uncouthness which offends minds not habituated to German taste. But there is no need to be irritated at this realism, this content with gross forms, or to wish with Vasari that he had been born in Italy and had studied antiquity at Florence, whereby he would have missed that national endowment which individualized him and gave him a peculiar charm. The grotesqueness disappears as the eye becomes acquainted with the unfamiliar, and the mind is occupied with the emotion, the intellectual idea, and imaginative truth, expressed in these sometimes ugly modes, for they are of that rare value which wins forgiveness for far greater defects of formal beauty than are apparent in Durer's work. Although his spirit was romantic and uncontrolled, and his imagination dealt with forms not in themselves beautiful, he possessed the greatest energy of genius of all the masters who have intrusted their works to wood-engraving, and with him it was a favorite art.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 40.--St. John and the Virgin. Vignette to Durer's "Apocalypse."]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 41.--Christ Suffering. Vignette to Durer's "Larger Pa.s.sion."]

The first of the four famous series of designs by which his skill in wood-engraving is best known was published in 1498, but it was probably finished before that time. It consisted of fifteen large cuts in ill.u.s.tration of the Apocalypse of St. John, to which a vignette (Fig.

40) of wonderful n.o.bility and simplicity was prefixed. The theme must have been peculiarly attractive to him, because of the opportunities it afforded for grandeur of conception and for the symbolism in which his genius delighted; it was supernatural and religious; it dealt with images and thoughts on which the laws of this world imposed no restraint, and revealed visionary scenes through types of awe, terror, and mystery, the impressiveness of which had almost no human relation.

In attempting to bring such a theme within the compa.s.s of the powers of expression which art possesses, he strove to give speech to the unutterable, and to imprison the unsubstantial, so that it is no wonder if, although the fertility of invention and power of drawing which he displayed, and the variety and richness of effect which he obtained, made his work a masterpiece of art, yet much of what he intended to express is not readily comprehended.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 42.--Christ Mocked. Vignette to Durer's "Smaller Pa.s.sion."]

This series was succeeded by three others, in which the human interest is far greater, although they are not unmarked by fantastic invention; they were the Larger Pa.s.sion of our Lord, a series of twelve cuts, including this impressive vignette (Fig. 41), Christ Suffering; the Life of the Virgin, a series of twenty cuts; and the Smaller Pa.s.sion of our Lord (Figs. 42, 43), a series of thirty-six cuts, the vignette to which (Christ Mocked) is a design marvellous for its intensity, for its seizure of the malignant, mocking spirit in devilish possession of every lineament of the face and every muscle working in that sinuous gesture, for the ideal endurance in the Saviour's att.i.tude, which needs not those symbols of his sufferings beside him for pity, though Durer's genius must crowd every corner with thought and suggestion. These three great series were published about 1511, and were probably the work of the previous six years; they are full of force, and are characterized by tenderness of sympathy and fervor of devotion, as well as by the imaginative insight and power of thought which distinguish all his works. They quickly became popular; several editions were issued, and they were copied by more than one engraver, especially by the famous Italian, Marc Antonio Raimondi, who reproduced the Smaller Pa.s.sion on copperplate. They marked an epoch in the history of wood-engraving. It is not possible to over-estimate the debt which the art owes Durer, who thus suddenly and by his own artistic insight revealed the power and dignity which wood-engraving might attain, opened to it a great career, and was its first master in the era of its most splendid accomplishment.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 43.--The Descent into h.e.l.l. From Durer's "Smaller Pa.s.sion."]

Besides these connected series of woodcuts, many others, making in all three hundred and forty-seven, are attributed to Durer; and of these one hundred and seventy are undoubtedly from his hand. They represent nearly all aspects of German life in the early sixteenth century, and, taken all together, afford a nearly complete picture of his time, not only in its general characteristics, but in detail. They show for the first time the power of wood-engraving to produce works of real artistic value, and its power to record faithfully the vast variety of contemporary life.

Durer was himself the highest product of the new freedom of individual development in the North, but his individuality gathered the age within itself, and became universal in knowledge and interest; so that he was not only the Reformer of German art and the greatest master in it, but was in a true sense the historian of the German Renaissance; it is to his works, and not least to his wood-engraving, that the student of that age must have recourse for the truest record of its thought and feeling at their best.

In his later years he designed two other works which rank among the chief monuments of wood-engraving; they were the Car and Gate of Triumph, executed for the Emperor Maximilian, who was then the great patron of the art, and employed it to perpetuate the glory of his reign and realm. The Emperor, although the Italians made a jest of him, was one of the most interesting characters in German history. He ill.u.s.trates in practical life, as Durer in artistic and intellectual life, the age that was pa.s.sing away, and he foreshadows more than Durer the age that was coming on. He was romantic by nature, a lover of the chivalric and picturesque elements of mediaeval life; he was skilful in all the manly sports which belonged to a princely education--a daring hunter, and brave in the lists of the tourney; in affairs of more moment he had always some great adventure in hand, the humbling of France, or the destruction of Venice, or the protection of Luther; at home he was devoted to reform, to internal improvements, to establishing permanently the orderly methods of civilization, to the spread of commerce, and to increasing the safety and facility of communication. He left his empire more civilized than he found it; and if he was unsuccessful in war, he was, in the epigram of the time, fortunate in love, and won by marriage what the sword could not conquer, so that he prepared by the craft of his diplomacy that union of the vast possessions of the House of Austria which made his grandson, Charles V., almost the master of Europe. He was a lover of art and books; and, being puffed up with imperial vanity, he employed the engravers and printers to record his career and picture his magnificence. The great works which by his order were prepared for this purpose were upon a scale unthought of before that time, and never attempted in later days. The Triumphal Car, which he employed Durer to design, was a richly decorated chariot drawn by six pair of horses; the Emperor is seated in it under a canopy amid female figures, representing Justice, Truth, and other virtues, who offer him triumphal wreaths; the driver symbolizes Reason, and guides the horses by the reins of n.o.bility and Power; the wheels are inscribed with the words Magnificentia and Dignitas, and the horses are attended by allegoric figures of swiftness, foresight, prudence, boldness, and similar virtues. The whole design was seven feet four inches in length, and about eighteen inches high. The Gate of Triumph was similarly allegoric in conception; it was an arch with three entrances, the central one being the gate of Honor and Power, and those upon the right and left the gates of n.o.bility and Fame; the body of the arch was ornamented with portraits of the Roman Emperors from the time of Caesar, shields of arms which indicated the Emperor's descent and alliances, portraits of his relatives and friends, and representations of his famous exploits. The size of the cut, which was made up of ninety-two separate pieces, was about ten and a half feet by nine and a half feet. In both of these works Durer was limited by the directions which were given him, and neither of them are equal to his original creations.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 44.--The Herald. From "The Triumph of Maximilian."]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 45.--Tablet. From "The Triumph of Maximilian."]

The chief of the great works of Maximilian was the Triumphal Procession,[39] which was designed by Hans Burgkmaier, of Augsburg (1473-1531), whose secular and picturesque genius found its most congenial occupation in inventing the figures of this splendid train of n.o.bles, warriors, and commons, on horse, foot, and in chariots, winding along in symbolical representation of the Emperor's victories and conquests, and in magnificent display of the wealth, power, and resources of all the imperial dominions. The herald of the Triumph (Fig.

44), mounted upon a winged griffin, leads the march; behind him go two led horses supporting a tablet (Fig. 45), on which is written: "This Triumph has been made for the praise and everlasting memory of the n.o.ble pleasures and glorious victories of the most serene and ill.u.s.trious prince and lord, Maximilian, Roman Emperor elect, and Head of Christendom, King and Heir of Seven Christian Kingdoms, Archduke of Austria, Duke of Burgundy and of other grand princ.i.p.alities and provinces of Europe;" his fifer Anthony, with his attendants, his falconers, led by Teuschel, their hawks pursuing prey, his hunters of the chamois, the stag, the boar, and the bear, habited for the chase, follow on; behind them richly caparisoned animals, elk, buffalo, and camels, draw finely decorated chariots, in which are seated the Emperor's favorite musicians (Fig. 46), playing diverse instruments; the jesters (among them that famous Conrad von der Rosen whom Heine tenderly remembered), the fools, the maskers, the fencers, knights of the tourney and the joust, armed foot-soldiers of every service, continue the procession, which lengthens out with cuira.s.sed hors.e.m.e.n (Fig. 47) carrying banners emblazoned with the arms of the Austrian provinces in which the Emperor had waged war, and other hors.e.m.e.n (Fig. 48) in the garb of peace, with standards of the faithful provinces, lasquenets whose pennants are inscribed with the names of the great battles which the Emperor had fought, trophy-cars filled with the armorial shields of the conquered peoples, representations of the Emperor's marriage and coronation, of the German Empire and the great wars--Flanders, Burgundy, Hungary, Guelders, Naples, Milan, Venice, an unending list--the symbols of military power, artillery, treasure, the statues of the great rulers who were allied by blood to Maximilian or had ruled his dominions before him, prisoners of war in chains, the Imperial Standard, the Sword of the Empire, the counts, lords, and knights who owned the Emperor's sovereignty--a splendid display of the pomp and pride of mediaeval life. Maximilian himself is the central thought of the whole; he is never lost sight of in any smaller figure; his servants are there, as their devices relate, because they served him; his provinces, because he ruled them; his victories, because he won them; his ancestors, because they were of his line. His personality groups the variety of the procession round itself alone; but the real interest of the work does not lie in him or his praise, but in the revelation there made of the secular side of the Middle Ages, the outward aspect of life, the ideal of worldly power and splendor, the spirit of pleasure and festival, shown forth in this marvellously varied march of laurelled horses and hors.e.m.e.n whose trappings and armor have the beauty and glitter of peaceful parade. There is nowhere else a work which so presents at once the feudal spirit and feudal delights in such exuberance of picturesque and truthful display.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 46.--The Car of the Musicians. From "The Triumph of Maximilian."]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 47.--Three Hors.e.m.e.n. From "The Triumph of Maximilian."]

The designs for this work were first painted upon parchment, and were afterward reproduced by engraving in wood; but the reproduction varied from the originals in important particulars. The series was far from completion at the time of Maximilian's death, and was left unfinished; it was never published until 1796, when the first edition appeared at Vienna, whither the lost wood-blocks had found their way in 1779. In its present shape the series consists of one hundred and thirty-five large cuts, extending for a linear distance of over one hundred and seventy-five feet; all but sixteen of these are reproductions of the designs on vellum, which numbered two hundred and eighteen in all, and these sixteen are so different in style from the others as to suggest a doubt whether they belong to the Triumph or to some other unknown work.

Hans Burgkmaier is believed to be the designer of all except the few that are ascribed to Durer; but, owing to their being engraved by different hands, they vary considerably in merit.

Maximilian also ordered two curious books to be prepared and adorned with woodcuts in his own honor, a prose work ent.i.tled The Wise King, and a poem ent.i.tled The Adventures of Sir Tewrdannckh. In these volumes the example of his own life is offered for the instruction of princes, and the history of his deeds, amours, courtship, perils, and temptations is written, once for the edification, but now for the amus.e.m.e.nt, of the world. The woodcuts in The Adventures of Sir Tewrdannckh are one hundred and eighteen in number, and are princ.i.p.ally, if not entirely, the work of Hans Schauffelin (1490?-1540); they show how Sir Tewrdannckh, attended by his squire, started out upon his travels, and what moving dangers he encountered in his hunting, voyaging, tilting, and fighting, under the guidance and instigation of his three great enemies, Envy, Daring, and Curiosity, who at last, when he is happily at the end of his troubles, are represented as meeting their own fate by the gallows, the block, and the moat. The engravings are marked by spirit, and due attention is given to landscape; but they are not infrequently too near caricature to be pleasing, and cannot pretend to rank beside the other works of Maximilian. This volume was printed during the Emperor's lifetime, and was the only one of his works of which he saw the completion. The Wise King was ill.u.s.trated by two hundred and thirty-seven cuts, of which several bear Burgkmaier's mark, one the mark of Schauffelin and one that of Hans Springinklee (1470?-1540). They picture the journey of the Emperor's father to Rome, the youth and education of the young prince, his gradual acquirement of the liberal arts--kingcraft, the black-art, medicine, the languages, painting, architecture, music, cookery, dancing, shooting, falconry, angling, fencing, tilting, gunnery, the art of fortification, and the like; and they represent, in conclusion, his political career by means of obscure allegory. They are similar to the ill.u.s.trations in Sir Tewrdannckh in general character, and, like them, are inferior to the other works of Maximilian. In the composition of this volume Maximilian is supposed to have had a considerable share; it was not printed entire until 1775.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 48.--Horseman. From "The Triumph of Maximilian."]

These five great works, apart from their value as artistic productions and their interest as historic records, have a farther importance because of their influence upon the art, both in the way of encouragement and of instruction. Although there has been much dispute about the matter, it must now be acknowledged that the artists themselves did not ordinarily engrave their designs, but left the actual cutting of the block to the professional workmen; at most they only occasionally corrected the lines after the engraver had cut them. The works of Maximilian employed a number of these engravers, who practised the art only as a craft; the experience these workmen gained in such labor as they were now called upon to do, under the superintendence of artists like Durer and Burgkmaier, who knew what engraving ought to be, and who held up a high standard of excellence, was most valuable to them, and made itself felt in a general improvement of the technical part of the art everywhere. The standard of the engraver's craft was permanently raised. The engravers' names now became known; and sometimes the engraver received hardly less admiration for his skill in technique than the artist for his power of design.