Fine Books Part 10

One of 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 cla.s.s 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 the _Speculum_ of 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 from pictures 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. The _Complutensian Polyglott_ will not easily be got either into a pocket or a saddlebag, but it is a good deal smaller than the _Speculum_ of 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 s.e.xtodecimos. 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 subst.i.tute 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 subst.i.tution of an imitation of a quicker hand for the imitation of a slower one.

Aldus had begun publishing at Venice early in 1495[43] with an edition of the Greek grammar of Lascaris, an earlier edition of which, issued at Milan in 1476, had been the first book wholly in Greek to obtain the honour of print. The Idylls of Theocritus and the poem of Hesiod called _Works and Days_ had 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 cla.s.sics 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's _h.e.l.lenics_, 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 ma.n.u.scripts, 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 cla.s.sics 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 whole series 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 ill.u.s.trated 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 cla.s.sics, his compet.i.tion 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 Stra.s.sburg Gruninger poured forth ill.u.s.trated books, and Johann k.n.o.blouch and Matthias Schurer 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 Silva.n.u.s 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 Holzel, 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 in other 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-ill.u.s.trations 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 quant.i.ty 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 ent.i.tled 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 charmingly ill.u.s.trated in a style worthy of the great French school of ill.u.s.trators of ma.n.u.scripts. 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 ill.u.s.trations often consisting of a medley of old blocks, or where new ones were made being executed in a coa.r.s.er 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 ill.u.s.trated edition of _Terence_, the cuts in which were imitated by Gruninger at Stra.s.sburg. 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 Ascensia.n.u.s. In 1503, after Trechsel's death, Ascensius started business for himself in Paris, and his editions of the cla.s.sics, well known from the device of a printing-press found on many of their t.i.tlepages, 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, Francois, 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 Francois 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 ma.n.u.scripts 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, the _Praeparatio Euangelica_ of Eusebius. A smaller type, of the size known as pica, was next put in hand, and a pocket Greek Testament in s.e.xtodecimo 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 n.o.bler 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 cla.s.sics in s.e.xtodecimo, 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 cla.s.ses 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 name _Champfleury_, 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 very nearly a thousand different editions, mostly in Latin, and many of them in the dainty format in s.e.xtodecimo 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 Francois Juste, Claude Nourry, Mace Bonhomme, and Guillaume Roville. From the old Lyonnese firm of Trechsel proceeded in 1538 two books ill.u.s.trated by Holbein (the _Dance of Death_ and _Historiarum Veteris Testamenti Icones_, see p.

192), and numerous other Lyonnese books were charmingly ill.u.s.trated 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 att.i.tude 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 obliged to 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 near to 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 Musee 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 cla.s.sics 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 Alcala, in Spain, under the auspices of Cardinal Ximenes. The Latin name of Alcala 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 ma.n.u.script, 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 editions of the _Oresteia_ and _Odyssey_, 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 ma.s.sive 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 pa.s.sed or was pa.s.sing.

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 cla.s.sics 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 cla.s.sics. 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 the _Imitatio Christi_ and 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 cla.s.sical editions, and a French cookery book called _Le Pastissier Francois_, that are at all famous, and the fame of these (the little cla.s.sics 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 cla.s.sical 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 instincts of book-loving gourmets, and not in any way to the printing.

The little cla.s.sics, 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.

FOOTNOTE:

[43] He was born at Ba.s.siano in the Papal States in 1450.

CHAPTER XI

FOREIGN ILl.u.s.tRATED BOOKS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

[Ill.u.s.tration: XXIII. NUREMBERG, SODALITAS CELTICA. 1501

HROSWITHA. OPERA (4^b). HROSWITHA AND THE EMPEROR OTHO

(ATTRIBUTED TO DuRER)]

As we 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-ill.u.s.trations 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-ill.u.s.tration, 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 hobby one 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 ill.u.s.trated books of the sixteenth century, although they possess a t.i.tlepage 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 pa.s.sing to Erhard Reuwich and Michael Wolgemut for their admirable work, the one in the Mainz _Breidenbach_, the other in the _Schatzbehalter_ and _Nuremberg Chronicle_, it is Albrecht Durer who must be regarded as the inaugurator of the second period of German book-ill.u.s.trations. During his Wanderjahre Durer 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. Durer's important bookwork begins in 1498, when his fifteen magnificent woodcuts ill.u.s.trating the Apocalypse (which influenced all later treatments of this theme) were issued twice over at Nuremberg, in one edition with German t.i.tle and text, in the other with Latin. Stated in their colophons to have been "printed by Albrecht Durer, painter," neither edition bears the name of a professional printer. The types used in each case were those of Anton Koberger, Durer's G.o.dfather, 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 ill.u.s.trated edition of the _Reuelationes Sanctae Birgittae_ (German reprint in 1502), and Durer has been supposed to have helped in this, but the theory is now discredited. In 1501 he probably 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 the _Sodalitas Celtica_ at Nuremberg. The ill.u.s.trations to the comedies themselves, which vie in heaviness with their subjects, are attributed by Mr. Campbell Dodgson to Wolfgang Traut.[44] One of the cuts a.s.signed to Durer 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 Durer designed another cut of a presentation and an ill.u.s.tration of Philosophy (both very feebly rendered by the cutter) for the _Quatuor libri Amorum_ of Celtes. In 1511 the Latin Apocalypse was reprinted, and three other sets of woodcuts by Durer 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 c.u.m versibus annexis Chelidonii_), the other two the Pa.s.sion of Christ, the Great Pa.s.sion (_Pa.s.sio domini nostri Jesu ex hieronymo Paduano, Dominico Mancino, Sedulio et Baptista Mantuano per fratrem Chelidonium collecta c.u.m figuris Alberti Dureri Norici Pictoris_, in folio) in twelve large woodcuts, the Little Pa.s.sion (_Pa.s.sio Christi ab Alberto Durer Norembergensi effigiata c[=u] varij generis carminibus Fratris Benedicti Chelidonij Musophili_, in quarto) in thirty-seven smaller ones. After this Durer was caught up by the Emperor Maximilian and set to work on some of the various ambitious projects for ill.u.s.trating his reign, as to which more will be said later. His later bookwork includes a Crucifixion and S. Willibald for an Eichstatt Missal (Nuremberg, H. Holzel, 1517), some large designs for the _Etliche 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 ill.u.s.trations formerly ascribed to Durer are now attributed to one of his pupils, Hans Springinklee, who lived in Durer'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 a _Hortulus Animae_, printed by J. Clein for Koberger at Lyon, 1516, fifty cuts are by Springinklee. The _Hortulus Animae_ was as popular in Germany as the ill.u.s.trated _Horae_ in France and England. In 1517 another edition appeared with Erhard Schon as its chief ill.u.s.trator, and only a few of Springinklee's cuts. The next year Springinklee produced a new set of cuts, and Schon's work was less used. Springinklee and Schon were also a.s.sociated in Bible ill.u.s.trations printed for Koberger by Sacon at Lyon, and to Springinklee are now a.s.signed two full-page woodcuts in an Eichstatt Missal (H. Holzel, Nuremberg, 1517), and a border to the _Reuelationes Birgittae_ (F. Peypus, Nuremberg, 1517), formerly ascribed to Durer. A woodcut of Johann Tritheim presenting his _Polygraphia_ to 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 the _Weisskunig_ and probably for other of the artistic commemorations of himself which Maximilian commissioned.

Hans Sebald Beham is best known as a book-ill.u.s.trator from his work for Christian Egenolph at Frankfurt 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 Durer. His most important books for Egenolph were the _Biblische Historien_, a series of small ill.u.s.trations to the Bible, first printed in 1533, which went through many editions in German and Latin, and another series ill.u.s.trating the Apocalypse, of which the first edition appeared in 1539, the texts of the Latin _Historiae_ and 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-ill.u.s.trators and those of Augsburg, to whom we must now turn, a connecting link may be found in the person of Hans Leonhard Schaufelein, born about 1480, soon after his father, a Nordlingen wool merchant, had settled at Nuremberg. He worked under Durer, and his earliest book-ill.u.s.trations were made for Dr. Ulrich Pinder, the owner of a private press at Nuremberg. Several unsigned cuts in _Der beschlossen gart des rosenkrantz Marie_ (Pinder, 1505), and thirty out of thirty-four large cuts in a _Speculum Pa.s.sionis_ (Pinder, 1507), are ascribed to Schaufelein, his a.s.sociate in each book being Hans Baldung. About 1510 Schaufelein removed to Augsburg, and, despite his return to his paternal home at Nordlingen 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 ill.u.s.trations attributed to Schaufelein are Tengler's _Der neu Layenspiegel_ (1511), Henricus Suso's _Der Seusse (1512), Heiligenleben_ (1513), Geiler's _Schiff der Penitentz_ (1514), and the _Hystori und wunderbarlich legend Katharine von Senis_ (1515), all published by J. Otmar. In 1514 he had ill.u.s.trated for Adam Petri of Basel a _Plenarium_ or _Evangelienbuch_, which went through several editions. Another _Evangelienbuch_, printed by Thomas Anshelm at Hagenau in 1516, contains several cuts with Schaufelein's signature, but in a different style, probably partly due to a different wood-cutter; these were used again in other books.

In the _Theuerdank_ of 1517 about twenty cuts are a.s.signed to Schaufelein, some of them bearing his signature. The following year he ill.u.s.trated Leonrodt's _Himmelwagen_ for Otmar with twenty cuts, mostly signed, some of which were used afterwards on the t.i.tlepages of early Luther tracts. After an interval Schaufelein is found in 1533 working for Heinrich Steyner of Augsburg, who employed him to ill.u.s.trate his German editions of the cla.s.sics, Thucydides (1533), Plutarch (1534), Cicero (1534), Apuleius (1538), etc. The blocks for some of his cuts subsequently pa.s.sed 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 ill.u.s.trating 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 ill.u.s.trated 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 Pa.s.sion for a _Leiden Christi_, and to the _Theuerdank_ published by Schoensperger the elder at Nuremberg in 1517 he contributed thirteen ill.u.s.trations (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 should be doubted caused that self-celebrating monarch to withhold from publication, and much more largely (1514-16) on the _Weisskunig_, 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 t.i.tle-cuts for Johann Miller, notably the very fine one (see Plate XXIV) to the _De rebus Gothorum_ of 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 ill.u.s.trations supplied to these firms with which he used to be credited are now a.s.signed to Hans Weiditz.

Jorg Breu, who was born and died (1537) some half-dozen years later than Burgkmair, like him ill.u.s.trated Missals for Ratdolt and contributed Pa.s.sion-cuts to Mann's _Leiden Christi_. His most important piece of bookwork was the redrawing of the cuts in Anton Sorg's edition of Reichenthal's _Conciliumbuch_ for a reprint by Steiner in 1536.

Ill.u.s.trations by him also occur in a _Melusina_ (1538), and German versions of Boccaccio's _De claris mulieribus_ and _De Casibus Ill.u.s.trium virorum_ issued after his death by the same firm. Leonhard Beck contributed largely to the ill.u.s.tration of Maximilian's literary ventures, especially the _Theuerdank_, _Weisskunig_, and Saints of the House of Austria (published at some date between 1522 and 1551).

[Ill.u.s.tration: XXIV. AUGSBURG, J. MILLER, 1515

JORNANDES. DE REBUS GOTHORUM. (t.i.tLE). ATTRIBUTED TO BURGKMAIR]

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 a.s.signed to him, most of which had previously been credited to Burgkmair.

Weiditz began bookwork in or before 1518, in which year he contributed a t.i.tle-cut to the _Nemo_ of Ulrich von Hutten, while in 1519 he made twelve ill.u.s.trations 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 Stra.s.sburg, 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 t.i.tle-borders by Weiditz, twenty ill.u.s.trations to two comedies of Plautus and a set of cuts to the _Deuotissime meditationes de vita et pa.s.sione Christi_, and another to a German _Celestina_, all published in 1520, but a series of some 260 masterly ill.u.s.trations to a German version of Petrarch's _De remediis utriusque fortunae_. Steiner used some of these cuts in a Cicero _De Officiis_ of 1531, which has in addition sixty-seven important cuts by Weiditz, presumably of the same period, and also in a _Justinus_ of 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 Stra.s.sburg, Weiditz copied some Wittenberg Bible cuts and also Holbein's Apocalypse set for k.n.o.blauch in 1524. In 1530 he ill.u.s.trated for J. Schott the _Herbarium_ of 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 ill.u.s.trator of the Herbal that he was known. Many of his Augsburg woodcuts subsequently pa.s.sed to that persistent purchaser of old blocks, Christian Egenolph of Frankfort.