Of The Decorative Illustration Of Books Old And New Part 3

[1] This is the date of the copy from which the ill.u.s.tration is reproduced. The first edition of the book was, however, probably issued about 1480.

[Sidenote: ITALIAN ILl.u.s.tRATIONS.]

The same may be said in regard to the Italian series which follows, and those from Basel and Paris.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVTH CENTURY.

DE CLARIS MULIERIBUS. (FERRARA, 1497.)]

Perhaps the most interesting examples of the use of early printing as a subst.i.tute for illumination and miniature are to be found in the Books of Hours which were produced at Paris in the later years of the fifteenth and the early years of the sixteenth centuries (1487-1519 about) by Verard, Du Pre, Philip Pigouchet, Kerver, and Hardouyn.

Specimens of these books may be seen in the British Museum, and at the Art Library at South Kensington Museum. The originals are mostly printed on vellum.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVTH CENTURY.

TUPPO'S aeSOP. (NAPLES, 1485.)]

[Sidenote: BORDERS AND ORNAMENTS.]

The effect of the richly designed borders on black dotted grounds is very pleasant, but these books seem to have been intended to be illuminated and coloured. We find in some copies that the full-page printed pictures are coloured, being worked up as miniatures, and the semi-architectural borderings with Renaissance mouldings and details are gilded flat, and treated as the frame of the picture. There is one which has the mark of the printer Gillet Hardouyn (G. H. on the shield), on the front page. In another copy (1515) this is painted and the framework gilded; the subject is Nessus the Centaur carrying off Deianira, the wife of Hercules; a sign of the tendency to revive cla.s.sical mythology which had set in, in this case, in curious a.s.sociation with a Christian service-book. It is noticeable how soon the facility for repet.i.tion by the press was taken advantage of, and a design, especially if on ornamental borderings of a page, often repeated several times throughout a book. These borderings and ornaments being generally in separate blocks as to headings, side panels, and tail-pieces, could easily be shifted and a certain variety obtained by being differently made up. Here we may see commercialism creeping in. Considerations of profit and economy no doubt have their effect, and mechanical invention comes in to cheapen not only labour, but artistic invention also.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVTH CENTURY.

P. CREMONESE'S "DANTE." (VENICE, NOVEMBER, 1491.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVTH CENTURY.

THE DISCOVERY OF THE INDIES. (FLORENCE, 1493.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVTH CENTURY.

FIOR DI VIRTu. 1498 (FLORENCE, 1493?)]

[Sidenote: THE RENAISSANCE.]

It took some time, however, to turn the printer into the manufacturer or tradesman pure and simple. Nothing is more striking than the high artistic character of the early printed books. The invention of printing, coming as it did when the illuminated MSS. had reached the period of its greatest glory and perfection, with the artistic traditions of fifteen centuries poured, as it were, into its lap, filling its founts with beautiful lettering, and guiding the pencil of its designers with a still unbroken sense of fitness and perfect adaptability; while as yet the influence of the revival of cla.s.sic learning and mythology was only felt as the stirring and stimulating breath of new awakening spring--the aroma of spice-laden winds from unknown sh.o.r.es of romance--or as the mystery and wonder of discovery, standing on the brink of a half-disclosed new world, and fired with the thought of its possibilities--

"Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific."

Had the discovery of printing occurred two or three centuries earlier, it would have been curious to see the results. But after all, an invention never lives until the world is ready to adopt it. It is impossible to say how many inventions are new inventions. "Ask and ye shall have," or the practical application of it, is the history of civilization. Necessity, the stern mother, compels her children to provide for their own physical and intellectual necessities, and in due time the hour and the man (with his invention) arrives.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVTH CENTURY.

STEPHANO CAESENATE PEREGRINI INVENTORE (S.C. P.I.). (VENICE, DE GREGORIIS, 1498.)]

Cla.s.sical mythology and Gothic mysticism and romance met together in the art and books of the early Renaissance. Ascetic aspiration strives with frank paganism and nature worship. The G.o.ds of ancient Greece and Rome seemed to awake after an enchanted sleep of ages, and reappear again unto men.

Italy, having hardly herself ever broken with the ancient traditions of Cla.s.sical art and religion, became the focus of the new light, and her independent republics, such as Florence and Venice, the centres of wealth, culture, refinement, and artistic invention. Turkish conquest, too, had its effect on the development of the new movement by driving Greek scholars and the knowledge of the cla.s.sical writers of antiquity Westward. These were all materials for an exceptional development of art, and, above all, of the art of the printer, and the decoration and ill.u.s.tration of books.

The name of Aldus, of Venice, is famous among those of the early Renaissance printers. Perhaps the most remarkable book, from this or any press, for the beauty of its decorative ill.u.s.tration, is the _Poliphili Hypnerotomachia_--"The Dream of Poliphilus"--printed in 1499, an allegorical romance of love in the manner of those days. The authorship of the design has been the subject of much speculation. I believe they were attributed at one time to Mantegna, and they have also been ascribed to one of the Bellini. The style of the designer, the quality of the outline, the simplicity yet richness of the designs, their poetic feeling, the mysticism of some, and frank paganism of others, places the series quite by themselves. The first edition is now very difficult to obtain, and might cost something like 100 guineas.

My ill.u.s.trations are taken from the copy in the Art Library at South Kensington Museum, and are from negatives taken by Mr. Griggs, for the Science and Art Department, who have issued a set of reproductions in photo-lithography, by him, of the whole of the woodcuts in the volume, of the original size, at the price, I believe, of 5_s._ 6_d._ Here is an instance of what photographic reproduction can do for us--when originals of great works are costly or unattainable we can get reproductions for a few shillings, for all practical purposes as good for study as the originals themselves. If we cannot, in this age, produce great originals, we can at least reproduce them--perhaps the next best thing.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVTH CENTURY.

POLIPHILUS. (VENICE, ALDUS, 1499.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. =TERTIVS= XVTH CENTURY.

POLIPHILUS. (VENICE, ALDUS, 1499.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY.

ALESSANDRO MINUZIANO. (MILAN, DESIGNER UNKNOWN, 1503.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY.

SCHOOL OF GIOV. BELLINI.

(VENICE, GEORGIUS DE RUSCONIBUS, 1506.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY.

THE DESCENT OF MINERVA, FROM THE QUATRIREGIO. (FLORENCE, 1508.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY.

AULUS GELLIUS, PRINTED BY GIOV. TACUINO. (VENICE, 1509.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY.

QUINTILIAN. (VENICE, GEORGIUS DE RUSCONIBUS, 1512.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY.

OTTAVIANO DEI PETRUCCI. (FOs...o...b..ONE, 1513.)]

There is a French edition of Poliphilus printed at Paris, by Kerver, in 1561,[2] which has a frontispiece designed by Jean Cousin. The ill.u.s.trations, too, have all been redrawn, and are treated in quite a different manner from the Venetian originals--but they have a character of their own, though of a later, florid, and more self-conscious type, as might be expected from Paris in the latter half of the sixteenth century.

The initial letters of a series of chapters in the book spell, if read consecutively, Francisco Columna (F.R.A.N.C.I.S.C.O. C.O.L.V.M.N.A.)--the name of the writer of the romance.

[2] The first French edition is dated 1546.

Whether such designs as these were intended to be coloured is doubtful.

They are very satisfactory as they are in outline, and want nothing else.

The book may be considered as an ill.u.s.trated one, drawings of monuments, fountains, standards, emblems, and devices are placed here and there in the text, but they are so charmingly designed and drawn that the effect is decorative, and being in open line the mechanical conditions are perfectly fulfilled of surface printing with the type.

[Sidenote: CAXTON.]