Fine Books Part 7

After the publication of these works ill.u.s.tration seems to have languished for some years at Basel, but was taken up again about 1489 by Johann von Amerbach, Lienhart Ysenhut, and Michael Furter, the work of the two latter being mainly imitative. Johann Froben, who began work about this time, was too learned a publisher to concern himself with woodcuts, catering chiefly for students of the University. One of the professors, however, at the University was far from sharing this indifference to pictures. Born at Stra.s.sburg, Sebastian Brant was educated at Basel, and it was while holding there the Professorship of Laws that he ensured the popularity of his _Narrenschiff_ (1494) by equipping it with 115 admirable ill.u.s.trations. The original edition from the press of Johann Bergmann von Olpe was published in February, and before the end of the year Peter Wagner at Nuremberg, Greyff at Reutlingen, Schoensperger at Augsburg had all pirated it with copies of the Basel cuts. When the Latin translation by Brant's friend, Jakob Locher, was published by Bergmann in 1497, the success of the book became European, and probably no other ill.u.s.trated work of the fifteenth century is so well known.

Probably in the same year as the _Narrenschiff_ was first issued, Bergmann printed for Brant his _In laudem gloriosae virginis Mariae_, with sixteen woodcuts by the same hand. In 1495 Brant supplied him with two works in honour of the Emperor Maximilian, one celebrating the alliance with Pope Alexander VI, ill.u.s.trated with coats of arms, the other the _Origo bonorum regum_, with two woodcuts, in which the Emperor is shown receiving a sword from heaven. Brant was now in high favour with Maximilian, and his appointment as a Syndic and Imperial Chancellor at Stra.s.sburg led to his return and a consequent notable quickening of book-ill.u.s.tration in his native city.

At Stra.s.sburg Johann Mentelin had used woodcuts for diagrams in an undated edition of the _Etymologiae_ of S. Isidore, printed about 1473, but the first producer of books pictorially ill.u.s.trated was Heinrich k.n.o.blochtzer, who worked from 1476 to 1484, and issued over thirty books with woodcuts. Most of these were copies from other men's work, e.g. his _Belial_ and _Melusina_ from Bamler's, his _Philalethes_ from the Nuremberg edition of Johann Muller, his _Aesop_ and _Historie der Sigismunda_ from Johann Zainer's, his _Leben der heiligen drei Konigen_ probably from an anonymous edition by Johann Pruss. Early in his career in 1477 he issued two books on the great subject of the hour, the death of Charles the Bold, _Peter Hagenbach und der Burgundische Krieg_ and the _Burgunderkrieg_ of Erhard Tusch, in both of which he used eight woodcuts, most of them devoted to incidents of the Duke's ill-fated campaign. An anonymous edition of the _Euryalus und Lucretia_ of Aeneas Sylvius (Pope Pius II) has nineteen cuts, which were apparently commissioned by k.n.o.blochtzer, but he did not secure the services of a sufficiently skilled wood-cutter. It should be said, however, that his "historiated" or pictorial capitals are apparently original and mostly good.

To Johann Pruss at Stra.s.sburg are now a.s.signed editions in High and Low German of the Lives of the Fathers and of Antichrist, which Mr. Proctor, though he had a shrewd suspicion of their origin, left floating about among the German "adespota." The cuts to the former reach the average of early work; those to the _Antichrist_ vary greatly, that of Antichrist preaching before a queen being extraordinarily successful as a presentation of a type of coa.r.s.e spiritual effrontery. The acknowledged work of Pruss includes editions of the travels of _Mandeville_, of the _Directorium Humanae Vitae_, and of the _Flores Musicae_ of Hugo Reutlingensis, with a rather famous cut showing how musical notes are produced by the wind, by a water wheel, by tapping stones, and hammering on an anvil. Pruss also printed several ill.u.s.trated editions of the _Hortus Sanitatis_.

Far more prolific than either of the foregoing Stra.s.sburg printers was Johann Reinhard of Gruningen, usually called Gruninger after his birthplace. Setting up his press in 1483, he began book-ill.u.s.tration two years later with a German Bible with woodcuts copied from those in the Low German Bibles printed at Cologne and used in 1483 at Nuremberg by Koberger. Some minor books followed, and in 1491 he issued the _Antidotarius Animae_ of Nicolaus de Saliceto, with rather rude borders to each page and a woodcut of the a.s.sumption. This, however, like some of his earlier ill.u.s.trated books, appears to have been a commission, and in a reprint of 1493 the decorations disappear. It was not until 1496, under the influence of Sebastian Brant, that he undertook any important original ill.u.s.trated work on his own account. In that year he produced his first ill.u.s.trated cla.s.sic, the comedies of Terence (_Terentius c.u.m directorio_), with a large woodcut of a theatre and eighty-seven narrow cuts of the dramatis personae, or of scenery, used five at a time in 150 different combinations. Critically examined, the cuts are rather unpleasing, and were regarded at the time as likely to provoke mirth otherwise than by expressing the humorous intent of the playwright, but another edition and a German translation similarly decorated appeared in 1499, and Gruninger issued on the same plan a _Horace_ (edited by Locher) in 1498, and the _De consolatione philosophiae_ of Boethius in 1501. His full strength was reserved for the _Virgil_ of the following year, which was superintended by Brant, and is crowded with wonderful pictures, in which on the very eve of the Renaissance Virgil is thoroughly medievalized. Besides these cla.s.sics, Gruninger printed many other ill.u.s.trated editions, minor works by Brant, medical treatises by Brunschwig, an _Evangelienbuch_, a _Legenda S. Katherinae_ in Latin and also in German, editions of the _Hortulus Animae_, the romance of Hug Schapler, etc., in the fifteenth century, and in the sixteenth a sufficient number of ill.u.s.trated books to bring his total up to about 150 editions. These may be said to form a school by themselves, distinguished by a certain richness of effect partly due to heavy cutting, but with less power of characterization and fewer gleams of beauty than are to be found in the best work of other towns, the figures being often unpleasing and notably lean in the legs. Martin Scott, Hupfuff, and Kistler were other Stra.s.sburg printers of the fifteenth century who also used ill.u.s.trations.

At Cologne book-ill.u.s.tration began in 1474 with editions of the _Fasciculus Temporum_ of Werner Rolewinck, from the presses of ther h.o.e.rnen and Nicolaus Gotz. But with the notable exception of two great Bibles issued by Heinrich Quentell, ill.u.s.trated books before 1490 are neither important nor numerous. Even in 1490 the edition of the _Historia Septem Sapientum_ of Johannes de Hauteselve, issued by the elder Koelhoff, was adorned with cuts obtained from Gerard Leeu at Antwerp. Quentell issued a few stock cuts in one book after another, and Johann Landen, Martin von Werden (if he be rightly identified with the printer "Retro Minores"), and Cornelis von Zierickzee all used a few cuts, some of the latter's having a curiously Italian appearance. But the only important ill.u.s.trated book, other than the Bibles, is the Cologne Chronicle, issued (not to his profit, since he was imprisoned for it) by the younger Koelhoff in 1499, with armorial cuts and a few pictures of kings and queens somewhat too frequently repeated.

Quentell's Bibles in High and Low German are in curious contrast to all this work. They are ill.u.s.trated with 125 large oblong pictures, firmly if rather coa.r.s.ely cut, and full of story-telling power, several successive incidents being sometimes brought into the same picture in true medieval fashion. The book was imitated at Nuremberg and elsewhere, and the ill.u.s.trators of the Venetian Malermi Bible of 1490, and even Hans Holbein himself, did not disdain to take ideas from it.

At Lubeck a finely decorated edition of the _Rudimentum Noviciorum_, a universal history, was issued by Lucas Brandis as early as 1475, with some good pictorial capitals, and pictures beginning with the Creation and coming down to the life of Christ. In 1484 we come to a _Levend S.

Jeronimi_, printed by Bartholomaeus Ghotan and ill.u.s.trated by an anonymous artist whose work can be traced during the next ten years in other books of Ghotan's, in several very interesting editions by the unidentified "Poppy-Printer" (so called from his mark), including a _Dodendantz_ (1489 and 1496), _Imitatio Christi_, _Bergitten Openbaringe_ (1496), _Reynke de Vos_ (1498), _Schakspil_, etc., and in the splendid Low German Bible printed in 1494 by Stephan Arndes, with cuts which improve on those in the Cologne editions.

[Ill.u.s.tration: IX. MAINZ, ERHARD REUWICH, 1486

BREIDENBACH. PEREGRINATIO IN MONTEM SYON SARACENS AND SYRIANS]

At Mainz, which led the way so energetically in typography, book-ill.u.s.tration is not represented at all until 1479, and then almost accidentally in the _Meditationes_ of Cardinal Turrecremata, printed by Johann Neumeister "ciuem Moguntinensem," with thirty-four curious metal-cuts imitating on a smaller scale the woodcuts in the editions printed at Rome by Ulrich Han. Two years later these metal-cuts were used by Neumeister at Albi, and they are subsequently found at Lyon.

That this book was printed at Mainz was made practically certain by the type appearing subsequently in the possession of Peter von Friedberg, but that the cuts were executed at Mainz seemed to me improbable until the publication of Dr. Schreibers work on German ill.u.s.trated books acquainted me with the existence of an _Agenda Moguntinensis_ of 29 June, 1480, also attributed to Neumeister's press, with a metal-cut of S. Martin and the beggar, and the arms not only of Archbishop Diether and the province of Mainz, but of Canon Bernhard von Breidenbach, of whom we shall soon hear again. The _Agenda_ and its metal-cuts are thus firmly fixed as executed at Mainz, and the metal-cuts of the _Meditationes_ must therefore be regarded as Mainz work also.

In 1486 Mainz atoned for her long delay in taking up ill.u.s.trated work, with the _Peregrinationes in Montem Syon_ of the aforesaid Canon Bernhard von Breidenbach, printed with type of Schoeffer's, under the superintendence of Erhard Reuwich of Utrecht, the ill.u.s.trator. The text of Breidenbach's book is full of interest, for he gives a vivid account of the voyage and of the hardships and extortions to which pilgrims were exposed. In his preface he states that Reuwich was expressly taken on the expedition to ill.u.s.trate the narrative, and he certainly had ample skill to justify the engagement. Unfortunately, far too much of his labour was spent on great maps or views of Venice, Parenzo, Rhodes and other places pa.s.sed on the way. These are certainly interesting, as they mark all the chief buildings and are very decoratively drawn. But in the text of the book there are just a few sketches from the life, Jewish moneylenders and groups of Saracens, Syrians (see Plate IX), Indians, etc., and these are so vivid and vigorous that we may well regret that the labour bestowed on the great maps left time for very few of them.

They are interesting, moreover, not only as designs, but also for their cutting, as they introduce cross-hatching for the first time, and that very effectively, and are handled with equal firmness and freedom. At the end of the book is a jest, a full-page woodcut subscribed "Hec sunt animalia veraciter depicta sicut vidimus in terra sancta," among the animals thus certified as having been seen personally in the Holy Land being a unicorn and a creature (name unknown--_non constat de nomine_) with a great mane of hair and long tail, which might well serve for the missing link between a man and a gorilla. The frontispiece of the book, on the other hand, is a striking design of a woman (symbolizing the city of Mainz?) standing on a pedestal surrounded with the arms of Breidenbach and the two friends who went with him, decoratively treated, while above her is a canopy of trelliswork amid which children are joyously climbing. With the Mainz _Breidenbach_ we feel that we have pa.s.sed away from the naive craftsmanship of the earliest ill.u.s.trated books into a region of conscious art.

Naturally craftsmanship was not extinguished by the arrival of a single artist. We find it at work again in the charming and little known cut to a Leipzig edition of the Eclogues of Theodulus, printed in 1491, which the delight of recent discovery tempts me to show here (see Plate X), and at Mainz itself in the simple cuts to the _Hortus Sanitatis_, printed by Meidenbach, also in 1491, though here again there is an advance, as instead of plants and animals drawn out of the ill.u.s.trator's head merely for decorative effect we find in many of the cuts fairly careful copies made from the life.

In Conrad Botho's _Cronecken der Sa.s.sen_, printed by Schoeffer the following year, most of the armorial ill.u.s.trations and pictures of the foundation of towns are merely decoratively treated, but in one cut in which a rather wild-looking Charlemagne with lean legs is shown seated in a chair of state surmounted by an eagle, an idol crushed under his feet, the designer has given free play to his imagination.

[Ill.u.s.tration: X. LEIPZIG, CONRAD KACHELOFEN, 1489

THEODULUS. EGLOGA (I^b)]

The transition to different ideals of ill.u.s.tration thus begun at Mainz was carried on at Nuremberg, where Michael Wolgemut ill.u.s.trated two important works, the _Schatzbehalter_ in 1491 and the famous _Nuremberg Chronicle_ in 1493, this latter with the help of his stepson, Wilhelm Pleydenwurff, and no doubt also of several inferior designers. The _Schatzbehalter_, of which the text is ascribed to Stepha.n.u.s Fridelinus, a Nuremberg Franciscan, is one of several examples of a too ambitious scheme of decoration perforce abandoned for lack either of time or of money. In the first half there are ninety-two different full-page woodcuts, mostly ill.u.s.trating Scripture history, but in some cases allegorical; in the second half the number is no more than two. The pictures executed before the scheme was thus cut down vary greatly in quality, from the fine design of Christ kneeling before the throne of the Father and pointing to the emblems of the Pa.s.sion, which prepares us for the work which Durer, who was then being trained in Wolgemut's studio, was soon to execute, down to the amusing but uninspired craftsmanship of the picture of Solomon and a selection of his wives banqueting. For the _Liber Chronicarum_ of Hartman Schedel plans had been much more carefully worked out than for the _Schatzbehalter_, and by studying economy a seemingly profuse system of ill.u.s.tration was maintained to the end. The industry of Mr. Sydney c.o.c.kerell has evolved for us the exact figures as to the ill.u.s.tration of this book. Real liberality is shown in the large, double-page topographical cuts of twenty-six different cities, for many of which sketches must have been specially obtained, and not one of these is used a second time; but twenty-two other large cuts of cities and countries were made to serve for sixty-nine different subjects, and when we come to figures of emperors, kings, and popes we find ninety-six blocks used 598 times, or on an average half a dozen times apiece. Mr. c.o.c.kerell's grand totals are 1809 pictures printed from 645 different blocks, so that the repet.i.tions number no fewer than 1164. Both in the designs and their execution there is great inequality, but no single picture can compare with that of Christ kneeling before the Father in the _Schatzbehalter_, and both books, fine as their best work is, must be regarded rather as the crown of German medieval craftsmanship in book-building than as belonging to the period of self-conscious artistic aim which is heralded by the Mainz _Breidenbach_ but really begins with Durer.

With this Nuremberg work we may perhaps cla.s.s that in the one book printed at the Cistercian monastery at Zinna, near Magdeburg, the _Psalterium Beatae Mariae Virginis_, of Hermann Nitschewitz, the most richly decorated German book of the fifteenth century, executed in honour of the Emperor Frederick and his son Maximilian, who in the page here shown (Plate XI) are both represented.

Primitive Dutch and Flemish book-ill.u.s.trations when compared with German ones exhibit just the general likeness and specific differences which we might expect in the work of such near neighbours. The Low Country wood-cutters are on the whole more decorative than the Germans, they were more influenced by the work of the engravers on copper, and they were attracted by different types of the human figure, the faces and bodies of the men and women they drew being often long and thin, and often also showing a slightly fantastic touch rarely found in German work. Unfortunately, these Low Country ill.u.s.trated books are even rarer than the German ones, far fewer of them have found their way to England, and no attempt has been made to reproduce a really representative selection of them in facsimile. In 1884 Sir W. M. Conway, as the result of prolonged studies on the Continent, wrote an excellent account of these ill.u.s.trations and the makers of them under the t.i.tle, _The Woodcutters of the Netherlands in the Fifteenth Century_, which was unhappily allowed to appear without any facsimiles to elucidate the text. Thus the study of these Low Country ill.u.s.trated books is still difficult.

[Ill.u.s.tration: XI. ZINNA. MONASTERIUM CISTERCIENSE, C. 1493

NITSCHEWITZ. PSALTERIUM BEATAE MARIAE VIRGINIS FREDERICK AND MAXIMILIAN]

In the production of the early block-books (see Chapter II) the Low Countries had played a princ.i.p.al part, and we meet again with traces of them in later ill.u.s.trated books, cuts from the _Biblia Pauperum_ being used by Peter van Os at Zwolle in his _Episteln ende Evangelien_ of 5 January, 1487, and one from the _Cantic.u.m Canticorum_ in his edition of Mauberne's _Rosetum Exercitiorum Spiritualium_ in 1494. Two cut-up pieces from the block-book _Speculum Humanae Saluationis_ were used by Veldener in his _Episteln ende Evangelien_ completed at Utrecht 19 April, 1481, and all the old blocks, each divided in two, in a new edition of the _Speculum_ printed at Kuilenburg 27 September, 1483, with twelve new cuts added to them. Sir W. M. Conway has also shown that a set of sixty-four cuts used in a _Boec van der Houte_ or Legend of the Holy Cross, issued by Veldener at Kuilenburg earlier in 1483 (on 6 March), must have been obtained by dividing in a similar manner the double cuts of a block-book now entirely lost.

The first printer in the Low Countries who commissioned a woodcut for a book printed with movable type was Johann of Paderborn (John of Westphalia) at Louvain, the cut being a curious little representation of his own head, shown in white on a black oval. This he used in his _Inst.i.tutiones_ of Justinian of 21 November, 1475, and a few other books, and a similar but even better likeness of his kinsman, Conrad, appeared the next year in the _Formulae Epistularum_ of Maneken (1 December, 1476). Although Johann of Paderborn thus led the way in the use of cuts, he only resorted to them subsequently for a few diagrams, and towards the end of his career for some half-dozen miscellaneous blocks for devotional books.

The portrait of Johann of Paderborn being used only as a device, book-ill.u.s.tration begins, though on a very small scale, with Veldener's edition of the _Fasciculus Temporum_ (29 December, 1475), with its handful of poor little cuts modelled on those of the Cologne editions.

Five years later Veldener reprinted the _Fasciculus_ with a few new cuts, the originals of which have been found in the Lubeck _Rudimentum Noviciorum_. The only picture which seems to have been specially designed for him was a folio cut in his _Pa.s.sionael_ (Utrecht, 12 September, 1480), where in delicate simple outline a variety of martyrdoms are shown as taking place in the hollows of a series of hills. Mention has already been made of his two Kuilenburg reprints of block-books. In the same place he issued Dutch and Latin Herbals with cuts copied from Schoeffer's Mainz _Herbarius_, and this completes the story of his ill.u.s.trated ventures.

[Ill.u.s.tration: XII. HAARLEM, BELLAERT, 1484

JACOBUS DE THERAMO. BELIAL (4^a) THE HARROWING OF h.e.l.l]

We come now to Gerard Leeu, who on 3 June, 1480, issued at Gouda the first completely ill.u.s.trated book from a Dutch press, the _Dialogus creaturarum moralisatus_, a glorified version of the old bestiaries, full of wonderful stories of animals. This was ill.u.s.trated with 121 specially designed cuts (mostly about four inches by two), and Leeu's liberality was rewarded by the book pa.s.sing through nine editions, six in Latin and three in Dutch, in eleven years. The first page is decorated with a picture of the Sun and Moon, a large capital, and an ornamental border of foliage, but the merit of the book lies in the simple skill with which the craftsman, working entirely in outline, has reproduced the humour of the text. To the same hand are attributed ten cuts for Leeu's vernacular _Gesta Romanorum_ (30 April, 1481), four for an undated _Historia Septem Sapientum_, and four others, of the Four Last Things, which, to our puzzlement, appear first in a French edition printed by Arend de Keysere at Audenarde, and then (23 August, 1482) in a Dutch one of Leeu's. In the previous month he had brought out a _Liden ende pa.s.sie ons Heeren_ with thirty-two quarto cuts, part of a set of sixty-eight made for editions of the _Devote Ghetiden_ or Dutch version of the _Horae_, the first of which (unless a Gouda one has perished) appeared after his removal to Antwerp. During the following nine years he made good use of his old blocks. For his Dutch _Aesop_ of October, 1485, and Latin edition of September, 1486, he used cuts copied from the original Ulm and Augsburg set. These he bought from k.n.o.blochtzer of Stra.s.sburg and sold to Koelhoff of Cologne. In 1487 he issued an ill.u.s.trated _Reynard the Fox_, of which only a fragment survives, and the pleasant romance of _Paris and Vienne_, with twenty-five fairly successful cuts, with the help of which five editions were sold, the first in French, the next three in Dutch, and the last (23 June, 1492) in English. According to Sir W. M. Conway these _Paris and Vienne_ cuts were the work of a Haarlem craftsman, who from 1483 to 1486 had worked for Jacob Bellaert, whose press was intimately connected with Leeu's, type and cuts pa.s.sing freely from one to the other. Bellaert had begun by using some of Leeu's Pa.s.sion cuts for a _Liden ons Heeren_, but seems soon to have discovered his Haarlem wood-cutter, with whose aid he produced (15 February, 1484) _Der Sonderen troest_, The Sinners' Trust, a Dutch version of that remarkable work the _Belial_ or _Consolatio peccatorum_ of Jacobus de Theramo, of which the Augsburg edition has already been mentioned. This begins with a full folio-page cut combining in one panorama the Fall of Angels and of Adam and Eve, the Flood, the Egyptians overtaken in the Red Sea, and the Baptism of Christ. Six of the other cuts fill half-pages and show the Harrowing of h.e.l.l (here reproduced, Plate XII), Devils in consultation, Satan kneeling before the Lord, the Last Judgment, Ascension and Descent of the Holy Spirit.

The remaining half-page pictures are all composite, made up of different combinations of eight centre-pieces and seventeen sidepieces. The centre-pieces for the most part represent the different judges before whom the trials are heard, the side-pieces the messengers and parties to the suit. The combinations are occasionally a little clumsy, but far less so than in the Stra.s.sburg books printed by Gruninger in which the same labour-saving device was adopted, and in excellence of design and delicacy of cutting this Dutch _Belial_ ranks high among ill.u.s.trated incunabula.

Later in 1484 (25 October) Bellaert issued a _Boeck des Golden Throens_ with four-column cuts, often repeated, of an Elder instructing a maiden; in May, 1485, Le Fevre's _Jason_, and a little earlier than this an undated edition of the same author's _Recueil des histoires de Troie_, both in Dutch and both profusely ill.u.s.trated; on Christmas Eve in the same year a Dutch _De proprietatibus rerum_, and in 1486 versions of Pierre Michault's _Doctrinal_, in which a dreamer is shown the schools of virtue and of vice, and of Guillaume de Deguilleville's _Pelerinage de la vie humaine_, the medieval prototype of Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_. The _De proprietatibus_ is the only one of these books of 1485-6 that I have seen, and its full-page cuts are notable both for their own sake and as having been widely copied, although they ill.u.s.trate only eleven of the nineteen books.

No other Low Country printer showed anything like the enterprise of Leeu and Bellaert in commissioning long sets of original woodcuts from competent craftsmen, but several fine ill.u.s.trated books were produced by other firms. Beginning in 1484 Peter van Os printed numerous ill.u.s.trated books at Zwolle, few of which attain excellence. Yet one of the earliest of them, the Sermons of S. Bernard, has a frontispiece of the Virgin and Child and the Saint gazing at them which is unequalled by any other single cut in the Low Country book in its large pictorial effect. At Gouda, in 1486, Gottfried van Os issued the _Chevalier Delibere_ of Olivier de la Marche, with sixteen large cuts, in which the author's minute instructions for each picture are faithfully carried out with extraordinary freedom and spirit, though the ambitious designs are more suitable to frescoes than to book-ill.u.s.trations. About the end of the century the book was reprinted at Schiedam with the same cuts, from which facsimiles were made in 1898 by Dr. Lippmann and published by the Bibliographical Society.

At Louvain in 1487 Egidius van der Heerstraten issued the _De praeclaris mulieribus_ of Boccaccio with copies of the cuts of the Ulm edition of great interest for the differences in handling revealed when the two are compared. A little later than this another Louvain printer, Ludovicus de Ravescot, published the _De anno die et feria Dominicae Pa.s.sionis_ of Petrus de Rivo, with a t.i.tle-cut of the author kneeling before the Virgin and Child, and three large cuts of the Last Supper, Crucifixion, and Resurrection, somewhat in the temper of the ill.u.s.trations in the Cologne Bibles, but with characteristic Low Country touches. Lastly, mention must be made of the clumsy outline cuts in the Bruges edition of Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, issued in 1484 by Caxton's partner Colard Mansion. Mansion certainly, and possibly Caxton also, were among the early experimenters with copperplate ill.u.s.tration, but the story of these will be told in Chapter XV.

FOOTNOTES:

[29] Dr. Schreiber, in the introduction to Tome V of his _Manuel de l'amateur de la gravure sur bois au xv^e siecle_, dealing with German book-ill.u.s.trations, shows that some little difficulty was found at first in effecting this. In b.o.n.e.r's _Edelstein_ (Bamberg, 1461), probably the first ill.u.s.trated book printed in Germany, the cuts were printed after the text. In Zainer's _Heiligenleben_, the first ill.u.s.trated book printed at Augsburg, the cuts must have been printed first, as part of the text is sometimes printed over them.

[30] A set of proofs of cuts to this book, previously in the possession of the Marquis of Blandford and Mr. Perkins, was among the favourite possessions of William Morris, and is now owned by Mr.

Morgan. An ill.u.s.trated _Plenarium_, a.s.signed by Dr. Copinger to Richel, appears to be a "ghost," due to some confusion with this _Spiegel_.

CHAPTER VIII

EARLY ITALIAN ILl.u.s.tRATED BOOKS

As a frontispiece to this chapter (Plate XIII) we give a page from the 1487 edition of the _Devote meditatione sopra la Pa.s.sione del Nostro Signore_, printed at Venice by "Jeronimo di Sancti e Cornelio suo Compagno," the woodcuts in which, as already mentioned, are cut down from those in a block-book of some twenty or five-and-twenty years earlier, and must thus rank as the earliest Italian ill.u.s.trations. The ill.u.s.tration of books printed in movable type began in Italy as early as 1468, Ulrich Han issuing that year at Rome an edition of Cardinal Turrecremata's _Meditationes_, decorated with thirty-one rude cuts chiefly from the life of Christ. A few of these have a coa.r.s.e vigour, but in the greater number any merit in the original designs (professedly taken from the frescoes with which the Cardinal had decorated the cloisters of the Church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva) is lost in bad cutting. Notwithstanding this the work went through at least three editions (three new pictures being added to the second and one omitted), and served as a model for the metal-cuts of Neumeister's editions at Mainz and elsewhere, and for the small neat woodcuts of one by Plannck.

But though Han's venture was thus successful beyond its deserts, it took Italy nearly twenty years to make up its mind to welcome printed ill.u.s.trations. During this time nothing approaching a style of book-ill.u.s.tration emerges, though individual books of importance appeared at several towns. Thus at Verona the _De re militari_ of Robertus Valturius (written not later than 1468) was printed in 1472 by a certain Joannes of that city, with over eighty woodcuts of weapons and implements of war, including a galley which looks more picturesque than seaworthy, chariots, and mangonels, all well drawn and well cut, but a little spoilt by paper and presswork much less good than was usual at this time. Eleven years later Latin and Italian editions with practically the same cuts were printed, also at Verona, by Boninus de Boninis. The only other early Veronese book with ill.u.s.trations is an Italian version of one of the medieval collections of fables which sought shelter under the name of Aesop. This, which has some spirited cuts, was printed by Giovanni Alvise in 1479.

[Ill.u.s.tration: XIII. VENICE, GERONIMO DI SANCTI, 1487

BONAVENTURA. MEDITATIONE (14^b REDUCED) THE BETRAYAL]

At Naples, Sixtus Riessinger printed Boccaccio's _Libro di Florio et di Bianzefiore chiamato Filicolo_ in 1478, and also (without date) an Italian version of Ovid's _Heroides_, both with numerous cuts, some of them by no means devoid of charm. In 1485 an ill.u.s.trated _Aesop_ was produced at the expense of a book-loving jurist, Francesco Tuppo, probably from the press of certain "fidelissimi Germani." The cuts in this, which are hard and heavy but of considerable merit (see Plate XIV), may possibly be due to a mixture of Italian and German influences, but are more probably the work of a Spanish wood-cutter. A picture of an astronomer engaged on his calculations found in the _Arte di Astrologia_ of Granollachs, probably also printed in 1485, may be from the same hand. In the _Aesop_ each picture is placed in an architectural frame, in the upper sections of which there are representations sometimes of Hercules and a lion, sometimes of his wrestle with Antaeus, sometimes of a battle of mounted pygmies. The first page of text also has a fine decorative border, the design being in white on a black ground.

At Florence an ornamental capital in a _Psalter_ printed in 1489 is the earliest woodcut in any extant dated book. But engravings on copper had been employed as early as 1477 for three pictures in Bettini's _Monte Santo di Dio,_ and in 1481 for nineteen in a _Divina Commedia_; as to these something will be said in Chapter XV.

Two books printed at Milan in 1479 contain ill.u.s.trations, the _Summula di pacifica conscientia_ of Fra Pacifico di Novara, being ornamented with three engravings; two of the degrees of consanguinity and the third of a crown bearing the names of the virtues of the Madonna, while the _Breuiarium totius juris canonici_ of Paolo Attavanti printed by Pachel and Scinzenzeler has a little woodcut, which purports to be a portrait of the author.

In Venice book-ill.u.s.tration appears to have begun in the office not of a printer, but of an illuminator. Quite a number of books printed by various firms during the years 1470 to 1472 have a woodcut groundwork to their illuminated borders, and in the Spencer copy of the Italian Bible (Malermi's translation), printed in 1471 by Adam of Ammergau, the six miniatures of the Creation, with which the blanks left on leaves 11 and 12 are filled, have in the same way rough woodcuts beneath their colouring.[31] The workshop in which these decorated borders and miniatures were supplied seems to have closed or given up the practice in 1473, and until Erhard Ratdolt and his partners Loslein and Maler began publishing in 1476, no more woodcuts were produced at Venice. The work of the new firm was decorative rather than pictorial, consisting mainly of the fine borders and capital letters with which they ornamented their Calendars (1476, 1477, and 1482), their _Appian, Gesta Petri Mocenici_ of Coriola.n.u.s Cepio and _De situ orbis_ of Dionysius Periegetes, all in 1477, _Arte di ben morire_ of the following year, and _Euclid_ of 1482. With the exception of the earlier Calendars, where the borders to the t.i.tlepage (the first so decorated) are of flower-vases, these consist of highly conventionalized foliage (jasmine? vine, oak, etc.) or strapwork, some of them unequalled in their own kind until William Morris combined the same skill with a much bolder and richer treatment of his material. Ill.u.s.tration properly so called begins with Georg Walch's edition (1479) of the _Fasciculus Temporum_, a chronological epitome by Werner Rolewinck of Cologne. This has a quaint little view of the Piazza of San Marco and other pictures, which Ratdolt, not at all handsomely, proceeded to copy the next year. In 1481 Ratdolt adorned the _Tractatus de Actionibus_ oi Baptista de Sancto Blasio with rather a graceful little figure of a woman holding the stem of a tree. In 1482 he produced an edition of the _Poeticon Astronomicon_ of Hyginus with some figures of the planets which, rude as they were, served as models for many subsequent editions. In the same year the _Oratoriae artis epitomata_ of Jacobus Publicius was ornamented with some figures including a chessboard, cut in white on black, designed to a.s.sist the memory.

[Ill.u.s.tration: XIV. NAPLES, FRANCESCO TUPPO, 1485

AESOP. FABULA XXII., DE ATHENIENSIBUS PETENTIBUS REGEM]

In the later years of his stay at Venice, Ratdolt seems to have lost interest in book-decoration, but the popularity of woodcuts steadily increased throughout the 'eighties, and by the end of the decade was in full tide. In 1484 Bernardinus Benalius gave some rough ill.u.s.trations to the _Fioretti_ of Saint Francis; in 1486 Pietro Cremonese bestowed a formal but quite interesting decorated t.i.tlepage on the _Doctrinale_ of Alexander Gallus, with the t.i.tle inscribed in a cartouche, above which rise an urn and lamps. In the same year we have in the _Supplementum Chronicarum_ printed by Bernardinus Benalius a few cuts of some size "translated" into an Italian style from those on the same subject in Quentell's Cologne Bible (c. 1480), also a little view of Venice copied in reverse from the _Fasciculus Temporum_. The _Supplementum Chronicarum_ was re-issued several times (the author, Jacobus Philippus Bergomensis, bringing the statement of his age up to date in each edition which he revised), and changes were constantly made in the cuts.