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A HISTORY OF WOOD-ENGRAVING
[Illustration: A HISTORY
OF
WOOD-ENGRAVING
BY
GEORGE E. WOODBERRY
_ILLUSTRATED_
LONDON
SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON
CROWN BUILDINGS, 188 FLEET STREET
1883]
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1882, by
HARPER & BROTHERS,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
_All rights reserved._
PREFACE.
In this book I have attempted to gather and arrange such facts as should
be known to men of cultivation interested in the art of engraving in
wood. I have, therefore, disregarded such matter as seems to belong
rather to descriptive bibliography, and have treated wood-engraving, in
its principal works, as a reflection of the life of men and an
illustration of successive phases of civilization. Where there is much
disputed ground, particularly in the early history of the art, the
writers on whom I have relied are referred to, and those who adopt a
different view are named; but where the facts seemed plain, and are
easily verifiable, reference did not appear necessary.
In conclusion, I have the honor to acknowledge my obligations to the
officers of the Boston Public Library, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts,
and the Harvard College Library, for permission to reproduce several
cuts in their possession; and to Mr. Lindsay Swift, of the Boston Public
Library, for the list of authorities at the end of the volume.
Especially it is my pleasant duty to thank Professor Charles Eliot
Norton, of Harvard University, from whose curious and valuable
collection more than half of these illustrations are derived, both for
them and for suggestion, advice, and criticism, without which, indeed,
the work could not have been written.
GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY.
CONTENTS.
I.
PAGE
_THE ORIGIN OF THE ART_ 13
II.
_THE BLOCK-BOOKS_ 30
III.
_EARLY PRINTED BOOKS IN THE NORTH_ 45
IV.
_EARLY ITALIAN WOOD-ENGRAVING_ 65
V.
_ALBERT DÜRER AND HIS SUCCESSORS_ 90
VI.
_HANS HOLBEIN_ 116
VII.
_THE DECLINE AND EXTINCTION OF THE ART_ 135
VIII.
_MODERN WOOD-ENGRAVING_ 151
_A LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL WORKS UPON WOOD-ENGRAVING
USEFUL TO STUDENTS_ 211
_INDEX_ 217
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
FIG.....PAGE
1.--From “Epistole di San Hieronymo Volgare.” Ferrara, 1497. (Initial
letter).....13
2.--St. Christopher, 1423. From Ottley’s “Inquiry into the Origin and
Early History of Engraving upon Copper and in Wood”.....22
3.--The Crucifixion. From the Manuscript “Book of Devotion.” 1445.....24
4.--From the “Epistole di San Hieronymo.” 1497. (Initial letter).....30
5.--Elijah Raiseth the Widow’s Son (1 K. xvii.). The Raising of Lazarus
(Jno. xi.). Elisha Raiseth the Widow’s Son (2 K. iv.). From the original
in the possession of Professor Norton, of Cambridge.....34
6.--The Creation of Eve. From the fac-simile of Berjeau.....35
7.--Initial letter. Source unknown.....45
8.--The Grief of Hannah. From the Cologne Bible, 1470-’75.....49
9.--Illustration of Exodus I. From the Cologne Bible, 1470-’75 51
10.--The Fifth Day of Creation. From Schedel’s “Liber Chronicarum.”
Nuremberg, 1493.....54
11.--The Dancing Deaths. From Schedel’s “Liber Chronicarum.” Nuremberg,
1493.....56
12.--Jews Sacrificing a Christian Child. From Schedel’s “Liber
Chronicarum.” Nuremberg, 1493.....58
13.--Marginal Border. From Kerver’s “Psalterium Virginis Mariæ.” 1509.....61
14.--From Ovid’s “Metamorphoses.” Venice, 1518 (design, 1497). (Initial
letter).....65
15.--The Creation. From the “Fasciculus Temporum.” Venice, 1484.....68
16.--Leviathan. From the “Ortus Sanitatis.” Venice, 1511.....68
17.--The Stork. From the “Ortus Sanitatis.” Venice, 1511.....69
18.--View of Venice. From the “Fasciculus Temporum.” Venice, 1484.....69
19.--The Contest of Apollo and Pan. From Ovid’s “Metamorphoses.” Venice,
1518 (design, 1497).....70
20.--Sirens. From the “Ortus Sanitatis.” Venice, 1511.....71
21.--Pygmy and Cranes. From the “Ortus Sanitatis.” Venice, 1511.....72
22.--The Woman and the Thief. From “Æsop’s Fables.” Venice, 1491
(design, 1481).....73
23.--The Crow and the Peacock. From “Æsop’s Fables.” Venice, 1491
(design, 1481).....75
24.--The Peace of God. From “Epistole di San Hieronymo Volgare.”
Ferrara, 1497.....76
25.--Mary and the Risen Lord. From “Epistole di San Hieronymo Volgare.”
Ferrara, 1497.....77
26.--St. Baruch. From the “Catalogus Sanctorum.” Venice, 1506.....77
27.--Poliphilo by the Stream. From the “Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.”
Venice, 1499.....78
28.--Poliphilo and the Nymphs. From the “Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.”
Venice, 1499.....79
29.--Ornament. From the “Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.” Venice, 1499.....80
30.--Poliphilo meets Polia. From the “Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.”
Venice, 1499.....81
31.--Nero Fiddling. From the Ovid of 1510. Venice.....82
32.--The Physician. From the “Fasciculus Medicinæ.” Venice, 1500.....83
33.--Hero and Leander. From the Ovid of 1515. Venice.....85
34.--Dante and Beatrice. From the Dante of 1520. Venice.....86
35.--St. Jerome Commending the Hermit’s Life. From “Epistole di San
Hieronymo.” Ferrara, 1497.....86
36.--St. Francis and the Beggar. From the “Catalogus Sanctorum.” Venice,
1506.....87
37.--The Translation of St. Nicolas. From the “Catalogus Sanctorum.”
Venice, 1506.....87
38.--Romoaldus, the Abbot. From the “Catalogus Sanctorum.” Venice, 1506
88
39.--From an Italian Alphabet of the 16th Century. (Initial letter).....90
40.--St. John and the Virgin. Vignette to Dürer’s “Apocalypse”.....93
41.--Christ Suffering. Vignette to Dürer’s “Larger Passion”.....94
42.--Christ Mocked. Vignette to Dürer’s “Smaller Passion”.....95
43.--The Descent into Hell. From Dürer’s “Smaller Passion”.....96
44.--The Herald. From “The Triumph of Maximilian”.....100
45.--Tablet. From “The Triumph of Maximilian”.....101
46.--The Car of the Musicians. From “The Triumph of Maximilian”.....102
47.--Three Horsemen. From “The Triumph of Maximilian”.....103
48.--Horseman. From “The Triumph of Maximilian”.....107
49.--Virgin and Child. From a print by Hans Sebald Behaim......113
50.--From the “Epistole di San Hieronymo.” Ferrara, 1497. (Initial
letter).....116
51.--The Nun. From Holbein’s “Images de la Mort.” Lyons, 1547.....123
52.--The Preacher. From Holbein’s “Images de la Mort.” Lyons, 1547.....124
53.--The Ploughman. From Holbein’s “Images de la Mort.” Lyons, 1547.....125
54.--Nathan Rebuking David. From Holbein’s “Icones Historiarum Veteris
Testamenti.” Lyons, 1547.....130
55.--From “Opera Vergiliana,” printed by Sacon. Lyons, 1517. (Initial
letter).....135
56.--St. Christopher. From a Venetian print.....142
57.--St. Sebastian and St. Francis. Portion of a print by Andreani after
Titian.....143
58.--The Annunciation. From a print by Francesco da Nanto.....144
59.--Milo of Crotona. From a print by Boldrini after Titian.....145
60.--From the “Comedia di Danthe.” Venice, 1536. (Initial letter).....151
61.--The Peacock. From Bewick’s “British Birds”.....156
62.--The Frightened Mother. From Bewick’s “British Quadrupeds”.....157
63.--The Solitary Cormorant. From Bewick’s “British Birds”.....157
64.--The Snow Cottage.....158
65.--Birth-place of Bewick. His last vignette, portraying his own
funeral.....158
66.--The Broken Boat. From Bewick’s “British Birds”.....160
67.--The Church-yard. From Bewick’s “British Birds”.....160
68.--The Sheep-fold. By Blake. From “Virgil’s Pastorals”.....162
69.--The Mark of Storm. By Blake. From “Virgil’s Pastorals”.....162
70.--Cave of Despair. By Branston. From Savage’s “Hints on Decorative
Printing”.....165
71.--Vignette from “Rogers’s Poems.” London, 1827.....167
72.--Vignette from “Rogers’s Poems.” London, 1827.....167
73.--Death as a Friend. From a print by Professor Norton, of Cambridge.
Engraved by J. Jungtow.....169
74.--Death as a Throttler. From a print by Professor Norton, of
Cambridge. Engraved by Steinbrecher.....170
75.--The Creation. Engraved by J. F. Adams.....172
76.--The Deluge. Engraved by J. F. Adams.....173
77.--Butterflies. Engraved by F. S. King.....175
78.--Spring-time. Engraved by F. S. King.....177
79.--Mount Lafayette (White Mountains). By J. Tinkey.....183
80.--“And silent were the sheep in woolly fold.” Engraved by J. G.
Smithwick.....187
81.--The Old Orchard. Engraved by F. Juengling.....189
82.--Some Art Connoisseurs. Engraved by Robert Hoskin.....191
83.--The Travelling Musicians. Engraved by R. A. Muller.....194
84.--Shipwrecked. Engraved by Frank French.....196
85.--The Tap-room. Engraved by Frank French.....198
86.--Going to Church. Engraved by J. P. Davis.....199
87.--“Nay, Love, ’tis you who stand with almond clusters in your
clasping hand.” Engraved by T. Cole.....201
88.--The Spanish Peasant. Engraved by F. Juengling.....203
89.--James Russell Lowell. Engraved by Thomas Johnson.....205
90.--Arthur Penrhyn Stanley. Engraved by G. Kruell.....207
A
HISTORY OF WOOD-ENGRAVING.
I.
_THE ORIGIN OF THE ART._
[Illustration: T FIG. 1.--From “Epistole di San Hieronymo Volgare.”
Ferra 1497.]
The beginning of the art of wood-engraving in Europe, the time when
paper was first laid down upon an engraved wood block and the first rude
print was taken off, is unknown; the name of the inventor and his
country are involved in a double obscurity of ignorance and fable,
darkened still more by national jealousies and vanities; even the
mechanical appliances and processes which led up to and at last resulted
in the new art, can only be conjectured. The art had long lain but just
beyond the border-line of discovery. The principle of making impressions
by means of lines cut in relief upon wood was known to the ancients, who
used engraved wooden stamps to indent figures and letters in soft
substances like wax and clay, and, possibly, to print colors on
surfaces, as had been done from early times in India in the manufacture
of cloth; similar stamps were used in the Middle Ages by notaries and
other public officers to print signatures on documents, by Italian
cloth-makers to impress colors on silk and other fabrics, and by the
illuminators of manuscripts to strike the outlines of initial letters.
This practice may have suggested the new process.
It is more probable that the art began in the workshops of the
goldsmiths, who were so skilled in engraving upon metal that impressions
of much artistic value have been taken from work executed by them in the
twelfth century, showing that they really were engravers obliged to
remain goldsmiths, because the art of printing from metal plates was
unknown.[1] By their knowledge of design and their artistic execution,
at least, if not by their mechanical inventiveness, the goldsmiths were
the lineal ancestors of the great engravers of the Renaissance. Their
art had been continued from Roman times, with fewer interruptions and
hinderances than any other of the fine arts. It was early employed in
the adornment of the altar, the pax, and other articles of the Church
service; already, in St. Bernard’s time, so much attention was given to
workmanship of this kind, and so much wealth lavished upon it, that he
denounced it, with true ascetic spirit, as a decoration of what was soon
to become vile, a waste of what might have been given to the poor, and a
distraction of the spirit from holiness to the admiration of beauty.
“The Church,” he said, “shines with the splendor of her walls, and
among her poor is destitution; she clothes her stones with gold, and
leaves her children naked. * * * Finally, so many things are to be seen,
everywhere such a marvellous variety of different forms, that one may
read more upon the sculptured walls than in the written Scriptures, and
spend the whole day in going about in wonder from one such thing to
another, rather than in meditating upon God’s law.”[2] The art might
have suffered seriously from such uncompromising opposition as St.
Bernard made, had not Suger, the great abbot of St. Denys, taken up its
defence and supported it by his patronage and by his eloquence. “Let
each one have his own opinion,” he writes, “but I confess it is my
conviction that whatever is most precious ought to be devoted above all
to that holiest rite of the Eucharist; if golden lavers, if golden cups,
and if golden bowls were used, by the command of God or of the prophet,
to catch the blood of rams or bullocks or heifers, how much more ought
vases of gold, precious stones, and whatever is dearest among all
creatures, ever to be set forth with full devotion to receive the blood
of Jesus Christ!”[3] By such arguments Suger defended the rightfulness
and value of the goldsmith’s art in the service of the Church. After
his time the employment of the goldsmiths upon church decoration became
so great that they were really the artists of Europe during the two
hundred years previous to the invention of wood-engraving.[4] In the
pursuit of their craft they practised the arts of modelling, casting,
sculpture, engraving, enamelling, and the setting of precious stones;
and in the thirteenth century they made use of all these resources in
the execution of their beautiful works of art made of gold and silver,
richly engraved, and adorned with bass-reliefs and statuettes, and
brilliant with many-colored enamel and with jewels--the reliquaries in
which were kept the innumerable holy relics that then filled Europe, the
famous shrines for the bodies of the saints, about which pilgrims from
every quarter were ever at prayer, and the tombs of the Crusaders, and
of dignitaries of Church or State. They employed their skill, too, for
the lesser glory of the churches, upon the vessels of the Holy
Communion, the crosses, candelabra, and censers, and the ornaments that
incrusted the vestments of the priests. With the increase of luxury and
wealth they found a new field for their invention in contributing to the
magnificence of secular life; in fashioning into strange forms the
ewers, goblets, flagons, and every vessel which adorned the banquet;
and in ornamenting them with fantastic figures, or with scenes from the
chase, or from the history of Charlemagne and Saladin, as well as in
executing those finely wrought decorations with which the silks and
velvets of the nobles were so heavily charged that the old poet, Martial
d’Auvergne, says the lords and knights were “caparisoned in gold-work
and jewels.” Under Charles V. of France (1364) and the great Dukes of
the Low Countries, the jewel-chamber of the prince was his pride in
peace and his treasury in war: it furnished gifts for the bride, the
favorite, and the heir, and for foreign ambassadors and princes; it
afforded pay for retainers before the battle and ransom after it, and in
the days of the great fêtes its treasures gave to the courts of France,
Burgundy, and Flanders a magnificence that has seldom been seen in
Europe.[5]
Under such fortunate encouragement the goldsmiths of the fourteenth
century reached a knowledge of design and a finish in execution that
justified the claim of their art to the first place among the fine arts,
and made their workshops the apprentice-home of many great masters of
art in Italy as well as in the North. They best understood the value of
art, and were best skilled in artistic processes; they were the only
persons[6] who had by them all the means for taking an impression--the
engraved metal plate, iron tools, burnishers for rubbing off a proof,
blackened oil, and paper which they used for tracing their designs;
they would, too, have been aided in their art, merely as goldsmiths,
could they have tested their engraving from time to time by taking an
impression from it in its various stages. It is not unlikely, therefore,
that the art of taking impressions from engraved work was found out, or
at least was first extensively applied, in their workshops, where it
could hardly have failed to be discovered ultimately, as paper came into
use more generally and for more various purposes. If this were the case,
metal-engraving preceded wood-engraving, but only by a brief space of
time, because, as soon as the idea of the new art was fully grasped,
wood must have been almost immediately employed in preference to metal,
on account of the greater ease and speed of working in wood, and of the
less injury done to the paper in printing from it.
Some support for this view, that the art of printing from engraved metal
plates was discovered by the goldsmiths, and preceded and suggested
wood-engraving, is derived from the peculiar prints in the _manière
criblée_, or the dotted style, of which over three hundred are known.
They were produced by a mixed process of engraving in relief and in
intaglio, usually upon a metal plate, but sometimes upon wood. The
effects are given by dots and lines relieved in white upon a black
ground, assisted by dots and lines relieved in black upon a white
ground. These prints have afforded much material for dispute and
controversy, both as to their process and their date; the mode in which
the metal plates from which they were printed were engraved,
particularly the punching out small holes in the metal, which appear
usually as white dots, and give the name to the prints, is the same as
a mode of ornamental work[7] in metal that had been practised for
centuries in the workshops of the goldsmiths, and on this account they
have been ascribed to the goldsmiths of the great Northern cities.[8]
They appeared certainly as early as 1450, and probably much earlier.[9]
Some of these prints are evidently taken from metal plates not
originally meant to be printed from, for the inscriptions on the prints
as well as the actions of the figures appear reversed, the words reading
backward, and the figures performing actions with the left hand almost
always performed by the right hand.[10] These may be the work of the
first years of the fifteenth century, or they may have been taken long
afterward, in a spirit of curiosity or experiment. The existence of
these early prints, however, undoubtedly from the workshops of the
goldsmiths, and after a mode long practised by them, strengthens the
hypothesis--suggested by their wide acquaintance with artistic processes
and their exclusive possession of all the proper instruments--that they
originated the art of taking impressions on paper from engraved work; at
all events, this seems the least wild, the most consistent, and best
supported conjecture which has been put forth.
There is, however, no lack of more specific accounts of the origin of
wood-engraving. Pliny’s[11] reference to the portraits with which Varro
illustrated his works indicates, in the opinion of some writers, a
momentary, isolated, and premature appearance of the art in his day.
Ottley[12] maintains that the art was introduced into Europe by the
Venetians, who learned it “at a very early period of their intercourse
with the people of Tartary, Thibet, and China;” but of this there is no
satisfactory evidence. Papillon,[13] a French engraver of the last
century, relates that in his youth he saw in the library of a retired
Swiss officer nine woodcuts, illustrative of the deeds of Alexander the
Great, executed with a small knife by “two young and amiable twins,”
Isabella and Alexander Alberico Cunio, Knt., of Ravenna, in their
seventeenth year, and dedicated by them to Pope Honorius IV., in
1284-85; but, as no one else ever saw or heard of them, and there is no
contemporary reference to them, as no single unquestionable fact has
been adduced in direct support of the story, and as Papillon is an
untrustworthy writer, his tale, although accepted by some
authorities,[14] is generally discredited,[15] and was regarded by
Chatto[16] as the hallucination of a distempered mind. Meerman,[17] the
stout defender of the claim of Lawrence Coster to the invention of
printing with movable types, relying on the authority of Junius,[18] who
wrote from tradition more than a century after the facts, makes Coster
the first printer of woodcuts. Some writers accept this story; but in
spite of them, and of the well-developed genealogical tree with which
Meerman provided his hero, and even of Mr. Sotheby’s[19] supposed
discovery of Coster’s portrait, his very existence is doubted. The
charming scene in which the idea of the new art first occurred to
Coster, as he was walking after dinner in his garden, and cutting
letters from beech-tree bark with which to print moral sentences for his
grandchildren--the old man surrounded by the childish group in the
well-ordered Haarlem garden--is probably, after all, little more than a
play of antiquarian fancy. These stories have slight historic weight;
they are, to use M. Renouvier’s simile, “a group of legends about the
cradle of modern art, like those recounted of ancient art, the history
of Craton, of Saurias, or of the daughter of Dibutades, who invented
design by tracing on a wall the silhouette of her lover.”
[Illustration: FIG 2.--St. Christopher, 1423. From Ottley’s “Inquiry
into the Origin and Early History of Engraving upon Copper and in
Wood.”]
The first fact known with certainty in the history of wood-engraving is,
that in the first quarter of the fifteenth century there were scattered
abroad in Northern Europe rude prints, representing scenes from the
Scriptures and the lives of the saints. These pictures were on single
leaves of paper; the outlines were printed from engraved wood-blocks,
but occasionally, it is believed, from metal plates cut in relief; they
were taken off in a pale, brownish ink by rubbing on the back of the
paper with a burnisher, and sometimes in black ink and with a press;
they were then colored, either by hand or by means of a stencil plate,
in order to make them more attractive to the people. The earliest of
these prints which bears an unquestionable date is the famous St.
Christopher (Fig. 2) of 1423, found by Heinecken,[20] in the middle of
the last century, pasted inside the cover of a manuscript in the library
of the convent of Buxheim, in Suabia. It represents St. Christopher,
according to a favorite legend of the Middle Ages, fording a river with
the infant Christ upon his shoulders; opposite, on the right bank, a
hermit holds a lantern before his cell; on the left a peasant, with a
bag on his back, climbs the steep ascent from his mill to the cottage
high up on the cliff, where no swelling of the stream will reach it. The
attitude of the two heads is expressive, and the folds of the saint’s
robes are well cast about the shoulders; in other respects the cut has
little artistic merit, but the attempt to mark shadows by a greater or
less width of line is noticeable, and the lines in general are much more
varied than is usual in early work. It was printed in black ink, and
with a press. There are two other early prints, the dates of which are
uncertain, but still sufficiently probable to deserve mention--the
warmly controverted Brussels print[21] of 1418, which represents the
Virgin and Child, surrounded by four saints, in an enclosed garden, in
the style of the Van Eycks, and with more artistic merit than the St.
Christopher in design, drawing, and execution; and, secondly, the St.
Sebastian of 1437, at Vienna. The former was discovered in 1844, in a
bad condition, and the latter in 1779; both are taken off in pale ink,
and with a rubber. There are numerous other prints of this kind, which
have been described in detail and have had conjectural dates assigned to
them, fruitful of much antiquarian dispute. One of these (Fig. 3) is
here reproduced for the first time; it was found stitched into a
manuscript of 1445, and is unquestionably as old as the manuscript; it
represents a Crucifixion, with the Virgin and Longinus at the left, and
St. John and, perhaps, the Centurion at the right; in the upper
left-hand corner is an angel with the Veronica, or handkerchief, which
bears the miraculous portrait of the Saviour, and above are a scourge
and a knife; in the original the body of Christ is covered with dots and
scratches in vermillion, to represent blood. It was taken off in black
ink with a press, and is one of the rudest engravings known.[22]
[Illustration: FIG. 3.--The Crucifixion. From the Manuscript “Book of
Devotion.” 1445.]
Valueless as these prints[23] are, for the most part, as works of art,
they are of great interest. They were the first pictures the common
people ever had, and doubtless they were highly prized. Rude as they
were, the poor German peasant or humble artisan of the great industrial
cities cared for them; they had been given to him by the monks, like the
rudely-carved wooden images of earlier times, at the end of some
pilgrimage that he had made for penance or devotion, and were treasured
by him as a precious memento; or some preaching friar, to whom he had
devoutly given a small alms for the building of a church or the
decoration of a shrine, had rewarded his piety with a picture of the
saint whom, so far as he could, he had honored; or he had received them
on some day of festival, when in the streets of the Flemish cities the
Lazarists or other orders of monks had marched in grand procession,
scattering these brilliantly colored prints among the populace. Stuck up
on the low walls of his dwelling, they not only recalled his pious
deeds, they brought home before his eyes in daily sight the reality of
that holy living and holy dying of the Saviour and his martyrs in whose
intercession and prayer his hope of salvation lay. Throughout the
fifteenth and a part of the sixteenth centuries, although the
intellectual life of the higher classes began to be secularized, among
the common people these mediæval sentiments and customs, which gave rise
to the holy prints, continued without change until the Reformation; and
so the workshops of the monks and of the guilds of Augsburg, Nuremberg,
Ulm, Cologne, and the Flemish cities, kept on issuing these saints’
images, as they were called, long after the art had produced refined and
noble works. They remained, in accordance with the true mediæval spirit,
not only without the name of the craftsman, _nomen vero auctoris
humilitate siletur_, but unmarked by any individuality, impersonal as
well as anonymous; there is little to show even the difference in the
time and place of their production, except that their lines in the first
half of the century were more round and flowing, while in the latter
half they were angular, after the manner of the Van Eycks, and that they
vary in the choice and brilliancy of their colors.[24]
At the very beginning, too, wood-engraving was applied to a new
industry, which had sprung up rapidly, to furnish amusement for the camp
and the town--the manufacture of playing-cards. Some writers have
maintained that the art was thus applied before it was employed to make
the holy prints; but there are no playing-cards known to have been
printed before 1423, and it is probable that they were painted by hand
and adorned by the stencil for some time after the first unquestioned
mention of them in 1392.[25] The manufacture of both cards and holy
prints soon became a thriving trade; it is mentioned in Augsburg in
1418, and soon afterward in Nuremberg; and in 1441 the exportation of
these articles into Italy had become so large that the Venetian Senate
passed a decree,[26] which is the earliest document relative to
wood-engraving in Italy, forbidding their importation into Venice,
because the guild engaged in this manufacture in the city was suffering
from the foreign competition. Wood-engraving, being only one process in
the craft of the card-maker and the print-maker, seems to have remained
without a distinct name for a long while after its invention.
In the middle of the fifteenth century, therefore, wood-engraving, the
youngest of the arts of design, after fifty years of obscure and
unnoticed history, held an established position, and was recognized as a
new craft. In art its discovery was the parallel of the invention of
printing in literature; it was a means of multiplying and spreading the
ideas which are expressed by art, of creating a popular appreciation and
knowledge of art, and of bringing beautiful design within the reach of a
larger body of men. It is difficult for a modern mind to realize the
place which pictures filled in mediæval life, before the invention of
printing had brought about that great change which has resulted in
making books almost the sole means of education. It was not merely that
the paintings upon the walls of the churches conveyed more noble
conceptions to the peasant and the artisan than their slow imagination
could build up out of the words of the preacher; like children, they
apprehended through pictures, they thought upon all higher themes in
pictures rather than in words; their ideas were pictorial rather than
verbal; painting was in spiritual matters more truly a language to them
than their own _patois_. They could not reason, they could not easily
understand intellectual statement, they could not imagine vividly, they
could only see. This accounts for the rapid spread of the new art, and
for the popularity and utility of the holy prints which were so widely
employed to convey religious ideas and quicken religious sentiment; in
the production of these wood-engraving appears from the first in its
true vocation as a democratic art in the service of the people; its
influence was one, and by no means the most insignificant, of the great
forces which were to transform mediæval into modern life, to make the
civilization of the heart and the brain no longer the exclusive
possession of a few among the fortunately born, but a common blessing.
Wood-engraving was at once the product of the desire for this change and
of the effort toward it, a mirror of the movement the more valuable
because the art was more intimately connected with the popular life than
any other art of the Renaissance, and a power feeding the impulse from
which it derived its own vitality. In this fact lies the historic
interest of the art to the student of civilization. At first it served
mediæval religion; afterward it took a wider range, and by both its
serious and satirical works afforded valuable aid in the progress of the
Reformation, while it rendered the earliest printed books more
attractive, in which its nobler designs educated the eye in the
perception of beauty. Finally, in the hands of the great engravers--of
Dürer, who, still mastered by the mediæval spirit, employed it to embody
the German Renaissance; of Maximilian’s artists, who recorded in it the
dying picturesqueness and chivalric spirit of the Middle Ages; of
Holbein, who first heralded, by means of it, the intelligence and
sentiment of modern times--it produced its chief monuments, which, for
the most part, will here be dealt with, in order to illustrate its value
as a fine art practised for its own sake, as a trustworthy contemporary
record of popular customs, ideas, and taste, and as an element of
considerable power in the advancement of modern civilization.
II.
_THE BLOCK-BOOKS._
[Illustration: D FIG. 4.--From the “Epistole di San Hieronymo.” 1497.]
During the first half of the fifteenth century, in more than one quarter
of Europe, ingenious minds were at work seeking by various experiments
and repeated trials, with more and more success, the great invention of
printing with movable types; even now, after the most searching inquiry,
the time and place of the invention are uncertain. Printing with movable
types, however, was preceded and suggested by printing from engraved
wood-blocks. The holy prints sometimes bore the name of the saint, or a
brief _Ora pro nobis_ or other legend impressed upon the paper; the
wood-engravers who first cut these few letters upon the block, although
ignorant of the vast consequences of their humble work, began that great
movement which was to change the face of civilization. After letters had
once been printed, to multiply the words and lengthen the sentences, to
remove them from the field of the cut to the space below it, to engrave
whole columns of text, and, finally, to reproduce entire manuscripts,
and thus make printed books, were merely questions of manual skill and
patience. Where or when or by whom these block-books, as they are
called, were first engraved and printed is unknown; these questions have
been bones of contention among antiquarians for three hundred years, and
in the dispute much patient research has been expended, and much dusty
knowledge heaped together, only to perplex doubt still farther, and to
multiply baseless conjectures. It is probable that they were produced in
the first half of the fifteenth century, when the men of the
Renaissance, whose aroused curiosity made them alert to seize any new
suggestion, were everywhere seeking for means to overthrow the great
barrier to popular civilization, the rarity of the instruments for
intellectual instruction; they soon saw of what service the new art
might be in this task, through the cheapness and rapidity of its
processes, and they applied it to the printing of words as well as of
pictures.
The most common manuscripts of the time, which had hitherto been the
cheapest mode of intellectual communication, were especially fitted to
be reproduced by the new art; they were those illustrated abridgments of
Scriptural history or doctrine, called _Biblia Pauperum_, or books of
the poor preachers, which had long been used in popular religious
instruction, in accordance with the mediæval custom of conveying
religious ideas to the illiterate more quickly and vividly through
pictures than was possible by the use of language alone. In the sixth
century Gregory the Great had defended wall-paintings in the churches as
a means of religious instruction for the ignorant population which then
filled the Roman provinces. In a letter to the Bishop of Marseilles, who
had shown indiscreet zeal in destroying the pictures of the saints, he
wrote: “What writing is to those who read, that a picture is to those
who have only eyes; because, however ignorant they are, they see their
duty in a picture, and there, although they have not learned their
letters, they read; wherefore, for the people especially, painting
stands in the place of literature.”[27] In conformity with this opinion
these manuscripts were composed at an early period; they were written
rapidly by the scribes, and illustrated with designs made with the pen,
and rudely colored by the rubricators. They served equally to take the
place of the Bible among the poor clergy--for a complete manuscript of
the Scriptures was far too valuable a treasure to be within their
reach--and to aid the people in understanding what was told them; for,
doubtless, in teaching both young and old the monks showed these
pictures to explain their words, and to make a more lasting impression
upon the memory of their hearers. These designs, it is worth while to
point out, exhibit the immobility of mind in the mediæval communities,
guided, as they were, almost wholly by custom and tradition; the designs
were not original, but were copied from the artistic representations in
the principal churches, where the common people may have seen them, when
upon a pilgrimage or at other times, carved among the bass-reliefs or
glowing in the bright colors of the painted windows. They were copied
without change, the scenes were conceived in the same manner, the
characters were represented after the same conventional type, even in
the details there was slight variation; and as the decorative arts in
the churches were subordinated to architecture, these designs not
infrequently bear the stamp of their original purpose, and are marked by
the characteristics of mural art. They were copied, too, not only by the
scribes from early representations, but they were reproduced by the
great masters of the Renaissance from the manuscripts and block-books
themselves; Dürer, Quentin Matzys, Lukas van Leyden, Martin Schön, and,
in earlier times, Taddeo Gaddi and Orcagna, took their conceptions from
these sources.
Of the block-books which reproduced these and similar manuscripts
several have been preserved, and some of them have been reproduced in
fac-simile, and minutely described. Among the most important of these,
the _Biblia Pauperum_,[28] or Poor Preachers’ Bible, of which copies of
several editions exist, deserves to be first mentioned. It is a small
folio, containing forty pages, printed upon one side only, with the pale
brownish ink used in most early prints, and by means of a rubber. The
pages are arranged so that they can be pasted back to back; each page is
divided into five compartments, separated by the pillars and mouldings
of an architectural design, which immediately recall the divisions of a
church window; in the centre is depicted some scene (Fig. 5) from the
Gospels, and on either side are placed scenes from the Old Testament
history illustrative or typical of that commemorated in the central
design; both above and below are two half-length representations of
holy men. Various texts are interspersed in the field, and Latin verses
are written below the central compartments. It will be seen that the
designs not only served to illustrate the preacher’s lesson, but
suggested his subject, and indicated and directed the course of his
sermon: they taught him before they taught the people.
[Illustration: ELIJAH RAISETH THE WIDOW’S SON (1 K, xvii.). THE RAISING
OF LAZARUS (Jno, xi.). ELISHA RAISETH THE WIDOW’S SON (2 K. iv.).
FIG. 5.--From the original in the possession of Professor Norton, of
Cambridge.]
[Illustration: FIG. 6.--The Creation of Eve. From the fac-simile of
Berjeau.]
But, before commenting on this volume, it will be useful to describe
first the much more interesting and more famous _Speculum Humanæ
Salvationis_,[29] or Mirror of Human Salvation, an examination of which
will throw light on the history of the art. It is a small folio, and
contains sixty-three pages, printed upon one side, of which fifty-eight
are surmounted by two designs enclosed in an architectural border, which
are illustrative or symbolical of the life of Christ or of the Virgin;
the designs (Fig. 6) are printed in pale ink by means of a rubber. The
text is not engraved on the block or placed in the field of the cut, but
is printed from movable metallic type in black ink with a press, and
occupies the lower two-thirds of the page, in double columns. The book
is, therefore, a product of the two arts of wood-engraving and
typography in combination. There are four early editions known, two in
Latin, and two in Dutch, all without the name of the printer, or the
date or place of publication. They are printed on paper of the same
manufacture, with woodcuts from the same blocks, and in the same
typographical manner, excepting that one of the Latin editions contains
twenty pages in which the text is printed from engraved wood-blocks in
pale brownish ink, and with a rubber, like the designs. These four
editions, therefore, were issued in the same country.
This curious book has been the subject of more dispute than any other of
the block-books, because it offers more tangible facts to the
investigator. The type is of a peculiar kind, distinctly different from
that used by the early German printers, and the same in character with
that used in other early books undoubtedly issued in the Low Countries.
The language of the Dutch editions is the pure dialect of North Holland
in the first part of the fifteenth century; the costumes, the short
jackets, the high, broad-brimmed hats, sometimes with flowing ribbons,
the close-fitting hose and low shoes of the men, the head-dresses and
skirts of the women, are of the same period in the Netherlands, and even
in the physiognomy of the faces Flemish features have been seen. The
designs, too, are in the manner of the great Flemish school, renowned as
the best in Europe outside Italy, which was founded by Van Eyck, the
discoverer of the art of painting in oil, and which was marked by a
realism altogether new and easily distinguished; the backgrounds are
filled with architecture of the same time and country. The _Speculum_,
therefore, was produced in the Low Countries; it must have been printed
there before 1483, and probably was printed some time before 1454. The
_Biblia Pauperum_ has so much in common with the _Speculum_ in the
style of its art, its costumes, and its general character, that,
although of earlier date, it may be unhesitatingly ascribed to the same
country.
The internal evidence, however, only enforces the probabilities
springing from the social condition of the Netherlands, then the most
highly civilized country north of the Alps. Its industries, in the hands
of the great guilds of Bruges, Ghent, Brussels, Louvain, Antwerp, and
Liege, were the busiest in Europe. Its commerce was fast upon the
lagging sails of Venice. The “Lancashire of the Middle Ages,” as it has
been fitly called, sent its manufactures abroad wherever the paths of
the sea had been made open, and received the world’s wealth in return.
The magnificence of its Court was the wonder of foreigners, and the
prosperity of its people their admiration. The confusion of mediæval
life, it is true, was still there--fierce temper in the artisans,
blood-thirstiness in the soldiery, everywhere the pitilessness of
military force, wielded by a proud and selfish caste, as Froissart and
Philippe de Comyns plainly recount; but there, nevertheless--although
the brutal sack of Liege was yet to take place--modern life was
beginning; merchant-life, supported by trade, citizen-life, made
possible by the high organization of the great guilds, had begun,
although the merchant and the citizen must still wear the sword; art,
under the guidance of the Van Eycks, was passing out of mediæval
conventionalism, out of the monastery and the monkish tradition, to deal
no longer with lank, meagre, martyr-like bodies, to care no more for the
moral lesson in contempt of artistic beauty, to come face to face with
nature and humanity as they really were before men’s eyes; and modern
intellectual life, too--faint and feeble, no doubt--was nevertheless
beginning to show signs of its presence there, where in after-times
great thinkers were to find a harbor of refuge, and the most heroic
struggle of freedom was to be fought out against Spain and Rome. This
comparatively high state of civilization, the activity of men’s minds,
the variety of mechanical pursuits, the excellence of the goldsmiths’
art, the number and character of the early prints undoubtedly issued
there, the mention of incorporated guilds of printers at Antwerp as
early as 1417, and again in 1440, and at Bruges in 1454, make it
probable that the invention of wood-engraving was due to the
Netherlands, and perhaps the invention of typography also. Whether this
were the case or not, it is certain that the artists of the Netherlands
carried the art of engraving in wood to its highest point of excellence
during its first period.
Antiquarians have not been contented to show that the best of the
block-books came from the Netherlands; they have attempted to discover
the names of the composer of the _Speculum_, the engraver of its
designs, and its printer. But their conjectures[30] are so doubtful that
it is unnecessary to examine them, with the exception of the ascription
of the printing of the _Speculum_ to the Brothers of the Common
Lot.[31] This brotherhood was one of the many orders which arose at that
time in the Netherlands, given to mysticism and enthusiasm, that
resulted in real licentiousness; or to piety and reform, that prepared
the way for the Reformation. Its members were devoted to the spread of
knowledge, and were engaged in copying manuscripts and founding public
schools in the cities. After the invention of printing, they set up the
first presses in Brussels and Louvain, and published many books, always,
however, without their name as publishers. They practised the art of
wood-engraving, and doubtless some of the early holy prints were from
their workshops; sometimes they inserted woodcuts in their manuscripts,
as in the _Spirituale Pomerium_, or Spiritual Garden, of Henri van den
Bogaerde, the head of the retreat at Groenendael, where the painter
Diedrick Bouts occasionally sought retirement, and where he may have
aided the Brothers with his knowledge of design. It is quite possible
that this brotherhood, so favorably placed, produced the _Speculum_ and
others of the block-books, and that they were aided by the painters of
the time whose style of design they followed; but, as Renouvier remarks
in rejecting this account, the monks were not the only persons too
little desirous of notoriety to print their names, and although they
took part in early engraving and printing, a far more important part was
taken by the great civil corporations. In either case, whether the monks
or the secular engravers designed these woodcuts, they were probably
aided at times by the painters, who at that period did not restrict
themselves to the higher branches of art, but frequently put their skill
to very humble tasks.