Of The Decorative Illustration Of Books Old And New Part 5

(STRa.s.sBURG, MARTIN FLACH, 1511.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: HANS BALDUNG GRuN. "HORTULUS ANIMae."

(STRa.s.sBURG, MARTIN FLACH, 1511.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: HANS BALDUNG GRuN.

"HORTULUS ANIMae."

(STRa.s.sBURG, MARTIN FLACH, 1511.)]

There is an edition of Alciati printed at Lyons (Bonhomme), 1551, a reprint of which was published by the Holbein Society in 1881. The figure designs and the square woodcut subjects are supposed to be the work of Solomon Bernard--called the little Bernard--born at Lyons in 1522. These are surrounded by elaborate and rather heavy decorative borders, in the style of the later Renaissance, by another hand, some of them bearing the monogram P.V., which has been explained to mean either Pierino del Vaga, the painter (a pupil of Raphael's), or Petro de Vingles, a printer of Lyons.

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

HANS WaCHTLIN. (STRa.s.sBURG, MATHIAS SCHuRER, 1513.)]

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

HANS SEBALD BEHAM. "DAS PAPSTTHUM MIT SEINEN GLIEDERN."

(NUREMBERG, HANS WANDEREISEN, 1526.)]

These borders, as we learn from a preface to one of the editions ("Ad Lectorem"--Roville's Latin text of the emblems), were intended as patterns for various craftsmen. "For I say this is their use, that as often as any one may wish to a.s.sign fulness to empty things, ornament to base things, speech to dumb things, and reason to senseless things, he may, from a little book of emblems, as from an excellently well-prepared hand-book, have what he may be able to impress on the walls of houses, on windows of gla.s.s, on tapestry, on hangings, on tablets, vases, ensigns, seals, garments, the table, the couch, the arms, the sword, and lastly, furniture of every kind."

[Sidenote: EMBLEMS.]

An emblem has been defined ("Cotgrave's Dictionary," Art. "Emblema") as "a picture and short posie, expressing some particular conceit;" and by Francis Quarles as "but a silent parable;" and Bacon, in his "Advancement of Learning," says:--"Embleme deduceth conceptions intellectuall to images sensible, and that which is sensible more fully strikes the memory, and is more easily imprinted than that which is intellectual."

[Sidenote: THE COPPER-PLATE.]

All was fish that fell into the net of the emblem writer or deviser; hieroglyphic, heraldry, fable, mythology, the ancient Egyptians, Homer, ancient Greece and Rome, Christianity, or pagan philosophy, all in their turn served

"To point a moral and adorn a tale."

As to the artistic quality of the designs which are found in these books, they are of very various quality, those of the earlier sixteenth century with woodcuts being naturally the best and most vigorous, corresponding in character to the qualities of the contemporary design. Holbein's "Dance of Death," or rather "Images and Storied Aspects of Death," its true t.i.tle, might be called an emblem book, but very few can approach it in artistic quality. Some of the devices in early editions of the emblem books of Giovio, Witney, and even the much later Quarles have a certain quaintness; but though such books necessarily depended on their ill.u.s.trations, the moral and philosophic, or epigrammatic burden proved in the end more than the design could carry, when the impulse which characterized the early Renaissance had declined, and design, as applied to books, became smothered with cla.s.sical affectation and pomposity, and the clear and vigorous woodcut was supplanted by the doubtful advantage of the copper-plate. The introduction of the use of the copper-plate marks a new era in book ill.u.s.tration, but as regards their decoration, one of distinct decline. While the surface-printed block, whether woodcut or metal engraving (by which method many of the early book ill.u.s.trations were rendered) accorded well with the conditions of the letter-press printing, as they were set up with the type and printed by the same pressure in the same press. With copper-plate quite other conditions came in, as the paper has to be pressed into the etched or engraved lines of the plate, instead of being impressed by the lines in relief of the wood or the metal. Thus, with the use of copper-plate ill.u.s.trations in printed books, that mechanical relation which exists between a surface-printed block and the letter-press was at once broken, as a different method of printing had to be used. The apparent, but often specious, refinement of the copper-plate did not necessarily mean extra power or refinement of draughtsmanship or design, but merely thinner lines, and these were often attained at the cost of richness and vigour, as well as decorative effect.

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

REFORMATION DER BA[:Y]RISCHEN LANDRECHT. (MUNICH, 1518.)]

The first book ill.u.s.trated with copper-plate engravings, however, bears an early date--1477. ["El Monte Sancto di Dio." Niccolo di Lorenzo, Florence]. In this case it was reserved for the full page pictures. The method does not seem to have commended itself much to the book designers, and did not come into general use until the end of the sixteenth century, with the decline of design.

The encyclopaedic books of this period--the curious compendiums of the knowledge of those days--were full of entertaining woodcuts, diagrams, and devices, and the various treatises on grammar, arithmetic, geometry, physiology, anatomy, astronomy, geography, were made attractive by them, each section preceded perhaps by an allegorical figure of the art or science discoursed of in the costume of a grand dame of the period. The herbals and treatises on animals were often filled with fine floral designs and vigorous, if sometimes half-mythical, representations of animals.

[Sidenote: FUCHSIUS.]

[Sidenote: HERBALS.]

There are fine examples of plant drawing in a beautiful herbal ("Fuchsius: De Historia Stirpium"; Basle, Isingrin, 1542). They are not only faithful and characteristic as drawings of the plants themselves, but are beautiful as decorative designs, being drawn in a fine free style, and with a delicate sense of line, and well thrown upon the page.

At the beginning of the book is a woodcut portrait of the author, Leonard Fuchs--possibly the fuchsia may have been named after him--and at the end is another woodcut giving the portrait of the artist, the designer of the flowers, and the draughtsman on wood and the formschneider, or engraver on wood, beneath, who appears to be fully conscious of his own importance. The first two are busy at work, and it will be noticed the artist is drawing from the flower itself with the point of a brush, the brush being fixed in a quill in the manner of our water-colour brushes.

The draughtsman holds the design or paper while he copies it upon the block. The portraits are vigorously drawn in a style suggestive of Hans Burgmair. Good examples of plant drawing which is united with design are also to be found in Matthiolus (Venice, 1583), and in a Kreuterbuch (Strasburg, 1551), and in Gerard's Herbal, of which there are several editions.

As examples of design in animals, there are some vigorous woodcuts in a "History of Quadrupeds," by Conrad Gesner, printed by Froschover, of Zurich, in 1554. The porcupine is as like a porcupine as need be, and there can be no mistake about his quills. The drawings of birds are excellent, and one of a crane (as I ought, perhaps, more particularly to know) is very characteristic.

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

(TOSCULANO, ALEX. PAGANINI, 1520.)

(_Comp. Durer's t.i.tle page, Nuremberg, 1523._)]

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

"FUCHSIUS: DE HISTORIA STIRPIUM." (BASLE, ISINGRIN, 1542.)]

[Sidenote: THE NEW SPIRIT.]

But we have pa.s.sed the Rubicon--the middle of the sixteenth century.

Ripening so rapidly, and blossoming into such excellence and perfection as did the art of the printer, and design as applied to the printed page, through the woodcut and the press, their artistic character and beauty was somewhat short-lived. Up to about this date (1554 was the date of our last example), as we have seen, to judge only from the comparatively few specimens given here, what beautiful books were printed, remarkable both for their decorative and ill.u.s.trative value, and often uniting these two functions in perfect harmony; but after the middle of the sixteenth century both vigour and beauty in design generally may be said to have declined. Whether the world had begun to be interested in other things--and we know the great discovery of Columbus had made it practically larger--whether discovery, conquest, and commerce more and more filled the view of foremost spirits, and art was only valued as it ill.u.s.trated or contributed to the knowledge of or furtherance of these; whether the Reformation or the spirit of Protestantism, turning men's minds from outward to inward things, and in its revolt against the half paganized Catholic Church--involving a certain ascetic scorn and contempt for any form of art which did not serve a direct moral purpose, and which appealed to the senses rather than to the emotions or the intellect--practically discouraged it altogether. Whether that new impulse given to the imagination by the influence of the revival of Cla.s.sical learning, poetry, and antique art, had become jaded, and, while breaking with the traditions and spirit of Gothic or Mediaeval art, began to put on the fetters of authority and pedantry, and so, gradually overlaid by the forms and cerements of a dead style, lost its vigour and vitality--whether due to one or all of these causes, certain it is that the lamp of design began to fail, and, compared with its earlier radiance, shed but a doubtful flicker upon the page through the succeeding centuries.

CHAPTER III. OF THE PERIOD OF THE DECLINE OF DECORATIVE FEELING IN BOOK DESIGN AFTER THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY, AND OF THE MODERN REVIVAL.

As I indicated at the outset of the first chapter, my purpose is not to give a complete historical account of the decoration and ill.u.s.tration of books, but rather to dwell on the artistic treatment of the page from my own point of view as a designer. So far, however, the ill.u.s.trations I have given, while serving their purpose, also furnished a fair idea of the development of style and variation of treatment of both the MS. and printed book under different influences, from the sixth to the close of the sixteenth century, but now I shall have to put on a pair of seven-league boots, and make some tremendous skips.

We have seen how, at the period of the early Renaissance, two streams met, as it were, and mingled, with very beautiful results. The freedom, the romance, the naturalism of the later Gothic, with the newly awakened Cla.s.sical feeling, with its grace of line and mythological lore. The rich and delicate arabesques in which Italian designers delighted, and which so frequently decorated, as we have seen, the borders of the early printer, owe also something to Oriental influence, as indeed their name indicates. The decorative beauty of these early Renaissance books were really, therefore, the outcome of a very remarkable fusion of ideas and styles. Printing, as an art, and book decoration attained a perfection it has not since reached. The genius of the greatest designers of the time was a.s.sociated with the new invention, and expressed itself with unparalleled vigour in the woodcut; while the type-founder, being still under the influence of a fine traditional style in handwriting, was in perfect harmony with the book decorator or ill.u.s.trator. Even geometric diagrams were given without destroying the unity of the page, as may be seen in early editions of Euclid, and we have seen what faithful and characteristic work was done in ill.u.s.trations of plants and animals, without loss of designing power and ornamental sense.

[Sidenote: THE CLa.s.sICAL INFLUENCE.]

This happy equilibrium of artistic quality and practical adaptation after the middle of the sixteenth century began to decline. There were designers, like Oronce Fine and Geoffroy Tory, at Paris, who did much to preserve the traditions in book ornament of the early Italian printers, while adding a touch of grace and fancy of their own, but for the most part the taste of book designers ran to seed after this period. The cla.s.sical influence, which had been only felt as one among other influences, became more and more paramount over the designer, triumphing over the naturalistic feeling, and over the Gothic and Eastern ornamental feeling; so that it might be said that, whereas Mediaeval designers sought after colour and decorative beauty, Renaissance designers were influenced by considerations of line, form, and relief. This may have been due in a great measure to the fact that the influence of the antique and Cla.s.sical art was a sculpturesque influence, mainly gathered from statues and relievos, gems and medals, and architectural carved ornaments, and more through Roman than Greek sources. While suggestions from such sources were but sparingly introduced at first, they gradually seemed to outweigh all other motives with the later designers, whose works often suggest that it is impossible to have too much Roman costume or too many Roman remains, which crowd their Bible subjects, and fill their borders with overfed pediments, corpulent scrolls, and volutes, and their interstices with scattered fragments and att.i.tudinizing personifications of Cla.s.sical mythology. The lavish use of such materials were enough to overweight even vigorous designers like Virgil Solis, who though able, facile, and versatile as he was, seems but a poor subst.i.tute for Holbein.

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

DESIGNED BY ORONCE FINe. (PARIS, SIMON DE COLINES, 1534.)

(_Comp. Durer's t.i.tle to Plutarch, 1513, and St. Ambrosius, 1520._)]

[Sidenote: THE RENAISSANCE.]

What was at first an inspiriting, imaginative, and refining influence in art became finally a destructive force. The youthful spirit of the early Renaissance became clouded and oppressed, and finally crushed with a weight of pompous pedantry and affectation. The natural development of a living style in art became arrested, and authority, and an endeavour to imitate the antique, took its place.

The introduction of the copper-plate marked a new epoch in book ill.u.s.tration, and wood-engraving declined with its increased adoption, which, in the form it took, as applied to books, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was certainly to the detriment and final extinction of the decorative side.

[Sidenote: COPPER-PLATE.]