Renaissance in Italy are more clearly and easily seen in the
reproduction of the Dream of Poliphilo, which was published in 1554, and
is ascribed to Cousin. The French artist did not copy the beautiful
designs of the Venetian; he kept the general character of each woodcut,
it is true, but he varied the style. He made Poliphilo elegant in
figure, taller and more modish in gesture and attitude; he represented
the landscape in greater detail and with more realism; he gave greater
height and more careful proportion to the architecture, added ornaments
to its bare façades and smooth lintels, and in the subordinate portions
he varied the curvature of the lines and made them more complex; in the
lesser figures, the statues and monumental devices, he allowed himself
more liberty in changing the original designs, and sometimes practically
transformed them; finally, he introduced a more vigorous dramatic action
throughout, and attempted to obtain more difficult effects of contrast
and to give relief to the figures. Nevertheless, the improvements which
the taste of Cousin required are distinctly injurious. The French
reproduction is inferior to the Italian original in feeling for design,
in simple beauty, in the force and directness of its appeal to the
artistic sense, in the power and sweetness of its charm; much that was
lovely in the original has become simply pretty, much that was noble and
striking has become only tasteful; especially that quality, by virtue of
which the original possessed something suggestive of the calm beauty of
sculpture, has vanished, and in the effort of the new designer to obtain
pictorial effects one has an unpleasant sense of something like
weakness. The comparative study of the two volumes is of extreme
interest, so clearly do they illustrate the different temper of the
Renaissance in France and Italy. France received the word of inspiration
from Italy, but could not become its oracle. Even at that early day
French art was marked by the dispersion of interest, the regard for
externals, and the inability to create the purest imaginative work,
which have since characterized the French people, despite their facility
in acquisition and the ease with which they reach the level of
excellence in any pursuit.
Of the other works, known or supposed to be by Cousin, the Book of
Perspective, published in 1560, is the most remarkable, because in its
designs considerable difficulties are overcome, and greater power of
relief is shown than in any previous French wood-engraving. This book
was a treatise, similar to those by Dürer and Leonardo da Vinci upon the
laws of art, and its dedication is noticeable because of the light it
throws on Cousin’s spirit--“neither to kings nor princes, as is
customary,” he says, “but to the public.” The Bible, usually called Le
Clerc’s, which contains two hundred and eighty-seven woodcuts, is said
to be by Cousin, but of this there is no direct evidence; and to him is
ascribed the Triumphal Entry of Charles IX., published in 1572, and
supposed by some to have been designed by the engraver Olivier Codoré;
many other works are also added to his list, but they were inferior in
value to those which have been described, and were unmarked by any
special interest. In consequence of the fineness and number of his
productions Cousin must be considered the principal French engraver of
the century; and he undoubtedly deserves a high rank among the artists
of talent, in distinction from the artists of genius, who have practised
wood-engraving.
About Cousin there were a number of other designers who gave attention
to the art and left works of value; but these works bear so much
resemblance to one another that it is frequently impossible to recognize
in them the hand of any individual of the school--a difficulty by which
Cousin’s reputation has profited, because of the eagerness of his
admirers to ascribe to him any excellent work in his style which is not
definitely known to belong to some one of his contemporaries. These
lesser artists were Jean Goujon (c. 1550), who made some excellent cuts
for a Vitruvius of 1547, and is believed by some authorities to have
designed the reproduction of the Dream of Poliphilo; Pierre Woeiriot (b.
1532), whose biblical cuts inserted in a Josephus of 1566 have much
merit; Jean Tortorel (b. 1540?) and Jacques Périssin (b. 1530?), who
designed some interesting illustrations of the Huguenot wars; and
Philibert de Lorme (c. 1570) and Jean Le Clerc (1580-1620), whose
productions are of comparatively little interest. The works of all these
artists lacked that intimate relation with the life of the people which
made the engravings of the lesser German designers valuable, and have
importance only as illustrations of the development of French art in the
Renaissance.
The only artist who can contest Cousin’s foremost place in French
wood-engraving is Bernard Salomon (c. 1550), usually called the Little
Bernard, from the small size of his cuts, who was the leading designer
of Lyons. That city had retained its importance as a centre of popular
literature illustrated by woodcuts, and is said to have sent forth more
books of this kind in the latter part of the sixteenth century than any
other city in Europe. The works of Holbein were the pride of the Lyonese
art, and exerted great influence upon the style of the designers who
were constantly employed in the service of the Lyonese press. Bernard
worked in the small manner which Holbein had made popular, and he
learned from him how to compress much in a little space; but he
multiplied details, and carried the lines to an extreme of fineness
which his engravers were unable to do justice to in cutting the block.
As is the case with Cousin, a vast number of designs are attributed to
Bernard, simply because they are sufficiently excellent to have been
his work; according to Didot, no less than twenty-three hundred cuts
have been claimed for him, and it is believed by some writers that he
not only designed but engraved this large number. A large proportion of
these must have been produced by the unknown contemporaries of Bernard,
because, although he gave his attention wholly to wood-engraving for
thirty years, he could not have accomplished so great a work. His
best-known designs are the illustrations to an Ovid, published by Jean
de Tournes, and two hundred and thirty cuts for the same printer’s
edition of the Bible: these rank next to Cousin’s works as the most
remarkable productions of French wood-engraving in the sixteenth
century. Of the other Lyonese designers very little is known; indeed, no
other important name has been preserved, excepting that of Jean Moni (c.
1570), who is remembered for a series of Bible cuts inferior to those by
Bernard. In Lyons, as in the rest of France, wood-engraving lost its
value toward the close of the century, in consequence of its attempts at
a kind of delicacy and refinement beyond its reach and inappropriate to
its class; it did not appeal to the taste of the late Renaissance, and
by degrees the engravers lost their technical skill, and the artists
gave up its practice as a fine art. This result was also partly due to
the contempt into which the popular romantic literature of the preceding
century had fallen, and to the degradation of wood-engraving as a mode
of coarse caricature. Copperplate-engraving gradually supplanted the
more simple art, and finally the practice of wood-engraving became
extinct.
[Illustration: FIG. 56.--St. Christopher. From a Venetian print.]
[Illustration: FIG. 57.--St. Sebastian and St. Francis. Portion of a
print by Andreani after Titian.]
In Italy the older style of woodcuts in simple outline continued to be
followed long after it was abandoned in the North. The designs in
Italian books up to the year 1530, when cross-hatching was introduced,
do not differ essentially in character from those of which examples have
already been given. The names of the artists who produced them are
either obscure or unknown, excepting Leonardo da Vinci, to whom are
ascribed the cuts in Luca Pacioli’s volume, De Proportione Divina,
published in 1509, and Marc Antonio Raimondi (1478-1534), to whom are
ascribed the remarkably excellent cuts in a volume entitled Epistole et
Evangelii Volgari Hystoriade, published in 1512 in Venice. From the
first, Venice (Fig. 56) had been the chief seat of wood-engraving in
Italy, and now became the rival of Lyons. The most distinguished of the
group of artists who produced woodcuts in that city was Nicolo Boldrini
(c. 1550), who designed several engravings (Fig. 59) after Titian
(1476?-1575) with such boldness and force that some writers have
believed Titian to have drawn the design on the block for Boldrini to
engrave. The works of Titian and other Venetian painters were reproduced
in the same way by Francesco da Nanto (c. 1530); and by other artists,
like Giovanni Battista del Porto (c. 1500), Domenico delle Greche (c.
1550), and Giuseppe Scolari (c. 1580), who also sometimes made woodcuts
from their own designs. Besides these engravings, some very large cuts,
similar to those which the German artists had attempted, were printed
from several blocks; but they have little interest. The illustrations in
Vesalius’s Anatomy, published at Bâsle in 1543, in which wood-engraving
was first employed as an aid to scientific exposition, were designed in
Venice by Jean Calcar, a pupil of Titian, and are of extraordinary
merit. Finally, in the cuts by Cesare Vecellio (1550-1606) for the
volume entitled Habiti Antiche e Moderne, published in 1590, Venetian
wood-engraving produced its last excellent work--so excellent, indeed,
that the designs have been attributed to Titian himself, who was the
uncle of Vecellio.
[Illustration: FIG. 58.--The Annunciation. From a print by Francesco da
Nanto.]
[Illustration: FIG. 59.--Milo of Crotona. From a print by Boldrini after
Titian.]
The Italians devoted themselves with especial ardor to wood-engraving in
chiaroscuro, and from the time when Ugo da Carpi introduced it in Venice
it was practised by many artists. Nearly all of those designers who have
been mentioned left works in chiaroscuro engraving as well as in the
ordinary manner. Beside them, Antonio da Trento (c. 1530), Giuseppe
Nicolo (c. 1525), Andrea Andreani (c. 1600), and Bartolemeo Coriolano
(c. 1635) produced chiaroscuro engravings which are now much valued and
sought for by collectors of prints. The Italian love of color led these
artists into this application of wood-engraving, which must be regarded
as a wrongly-directed and unfruitful effort of the art to obtain results
beyond its powers. The Italians had been the first to discover the
capacity of wood-engraving as an art of design, but they never developed
it as it was developed in Germany; when they gave up the early simple
manner in which they had achieved great results, and began to follow the
later manner, the great age of Italy was near its close, and the arts
felt the weakening influences of the rapid decline in the vigor of
society. At Venice the arts remained for a while longer powerful and
illustrious, and wood-engraving shared in the excellence which
characterized all the artistic work of that city; but the place which
wood-engraving held in the estimation of the Venetians appears to have
been far lower than its place in the North, where it was popular and
living, highly valued and widely influential as it could not be in any
Italian city. At last in Italy, as in France, it died out altogether,
and was no longer heard of as a fine art.
In the Netherlands the art had been practised continuously from the time
of the Block-books with varying success, but, excepting in the works of
Lukas van Leyden (1494-1533), it had produced nothing of great value. In
the sixteenth century Hendrick Goltzius (1558-1617) designed some
woodcuts in the common manner as well as chiaroscuro engravings, and
Christopher van Sichem (c. 1620) some woodcuts in the ordinary manner,
which have some worth. The only work of high excellence was due to
Christopher Jegher (c. 1620-1660), who engraved some large designs which
Rubens (1577-1640) drew upon the block; they are inferior to Boldrini’s
reproductions of Titian’s designs, but are free, bold, and effective,
and succeed in reproducing the designs characterized by the vehement
energy of Rubens’s style. Rembrandt (1606-1665) also gave some attention
to the art which the older masters had prized, and left one small
portrait in wood-engraving by his own hand. His example was followed by
his pupils, Jean Livens (1607-1663) and Theodore De Bray (c. 1650),
whose cuts are characterized by the style of their master.
In England, where the art had not been really practised until Holbein’s
day, and had not reached any degree of excellence, some improvement was
made during the sixteenth century in designs for titlepages, portraits,
and separate cuts, particularly in the publications of John Day. In the
next century, during the civil wars, woodcuts of extreme rudeness were
inserted in the pamphlets of the hour, and in the latter half of the
century some interest was still felt in the art. In the eighteenth
century two engravers, Edward Kirkall (c. 1690-1750) and John Baptist
Jackson (1701-1754?), worked both in the ordinary manner and in
chiaroscuro, but both were forced to seek support on the Continent,
where, although the practice of wood-engraving as a fine art had long
been extinct, the tradition of it as a mechanical process by which cheap
ornaments for books were produced was still preserved. In France the
engravers Pierre Le Sueur (1636-1710) and Jean Papillon (1660-1710)
executed cuts of this sort which are without intrinsic value, and in the
next generation their sons produced works which remained at the same low
level of excellence. In Italy an artist, named Lucchesini, engraved some
cuts in the latter part of the century, but they are without merit. In
Germany the art was equally neglected, and the woodcuts in German books
of the eighteenth century are entirely worthless.
The explanation of this rapid and universal decline of wood-engraving is
to be found in general causes. The great artistic movement, which both
in the North and the South had sprung out of mediæval religious life,
and had gathered force and spirit as the minds of men grew in strength
and independence, and as the compass of their interests expanded, which
had been so transformed by the study of antiquity that in the South it
seemed to be almost wholly due to that single influence, and in the
North to have suffered an essential change in its spirit and standards,
had at last spent itself. The intellectual movement which had gone along
with it side by side, gaining vigor from the spread of literature, the
debates of the Reformation, and the exercise of the mind upon the
various and novel objects of interest in that age of great discoveries
and inventions, had resulted in a century of religious warfare,
aggravated by the violence of dynastic quarrels which arose in
consequence of the new political organization of Europe. In this
conflict the arts were lost; they all became feeble, and wood-engraving
under the most favorable conditions would have shared in this general
degradation. But for its utter extinction as a fine art there were more
special causes. The popular literature with which it had flourished had
been brought into contempt by Cervantes and Ariosto; the use of
wood-engraving for coarse caricature also reflected discredit upon it;
but the principal cause of its decadence lay in the taste of the age,
which had ceased to prize art as a means of simple and beautiful design,
but valued it rather as a means of complicated and delicate ornament, so
that excessive attention was given to form divorced from meaning, and,
as always happens in such a case, artificiality resulted. The
wood-engravers attempted to satisfy this taste by seeking the refinement
which copperplate-engraving obtained with greater ease and success, and
they failed in the effort; in other words, wood-engraving yielded to
copperplate-engraving because the taste of the age forced it to abandon
its own province, and to contend with its rival on ground where its
peculiar powers were ineffective.
Here the history of wood-engraving in the old manner, as a means of
reproducing pen-and-ink sketches in fac-simile, came to an end. It has
been seen how valuable it had proved both as an agent of civilization
and as a mode of art; how serviceable it had been in the popularization
of literature and of art, and what influence it had exerted in the
practical questions of the day as a weapon of satire; how faithfully it
had reflected the characteristics of successive periods of civilization,
and how perfectly, in response to the touch of the artist, it had
embodied his imagination and expressed his thought. It had run a great
career; its career seemed to have closed; but, when at the end of the
eighteenth century the movement toward the civilization of the people
again began with vigor and spirit, a new life was opened to it, because
it is essentially a democratic art--a career in which it has already
reached a scope of influence that makes its usefulness far greater than
in the earlier time, and has given promise of a degree of excellence
which, though in design it may not equal Holbein’s power, may yet result
in valuable artistic work.
VIII.
_MODERN WOOD-ENGRAVING._
[Illustration: T FIG. 60.--From the “Comedia di Danthe.” Venice, 1536.]
The revival of the art began in England, in the workshop of Thomas
Bewick (1753-1828). He is called, not without justice, the father of the
true art of engraving in wood. The history of the art in the older time
is concerned mainly with the designer and the ideas which he endeavored
to convey, and only slightly with the engraver whom he employed for the
mechanical work of cutting the block. In the modern art the engraver
holds a more prominent position, because he is no longer restricted to a
servile following of the designer’s work, line for line, but has an
opportunity to show his own artistic powers. This change was brought
about by the invention of white line, as it is called, which was first
used by Bewick. White line was a new mechanical mode of obtaining color.
“I could never discover,” says Bewick, “any additional beauty or color
that the cross-strokes gave to the impression beyond the effect produced
by plain parallel lines. This is very apparent when to a certainty the
plain surface of the wood will print as black as ink and balls can make
it, without any farther labor at all; and it may easily be seen that the
thinnest strokes cut upon the plain surface will throw some light on the
subject or design; and if these strokes again are made still wider or of
equal thickness to the black lines, the color these produce will be a
gray; and the more the white strokes are thickened, the nearer will they
in their varied shadings approach to white; and if quite taken away,
then a perfect white is obtained.” The practical difference between the
two methods is this: by the old method, after the simple work in outline
of the early Italian engravers had been relinquished for the style of
which Dürer was the great master, the block was treated as a white
surface, on which the designer drew with pen and ink, and obtained grays
and blacks by increasing the number of cross-strokes, as if he were
drawing on paper; by the new method the block was treated as a black
surface, and the color was lessened by increasing the number of white
lines. The latter process was as easy for the engraver as the former was
difficult, because whereas in the former he had to gouge out the diamond
spaces between the crossing lines, now he obtained white color by single
strokes of the graver. Bewick may have been led into the use of white
line simply by this consideration of the economy of labor, because he
engraved his own designs, and was directly sensible of the waste of
labor involved in the old method. In both methods color depends, of
course, upon the relative quantity of black and white in the prints; the
new method merely arranges color differently, so that it can be obtained
by an easy mechanical process instead of by a difficult one.
The use of white line not only affected the art by making it more easy
to practise, but also involved a change in the mode of drawing. Formerly
the effects were given by the designers’ lines, now they were given by
the engravers’ lines; in other words, the old workman followed the
designer’s drawing, the modern workman draws himself with his graver. By
the old method the design was reproduced by keeping the same
line-arrangement that the artist employed; by the new method the design
is not thus reproduced, but is interpreted by a line-arrangement first
conceived by the engraver. In the earlier period the design had to be a
drawing in line for the engraver to cut out and reproduce by leaving the
original lines in relief; now the design may be a washed sketch, the
tints of which the engraver reproduces by cutting lines of his own in
intaglio. The change required the modern engraver to understand how to
arrange white lines so as to obtain artistic effects; he thus becomes an
artist in proportion to his knowledge and skill in such arrangement. It
is clear that, no matter how much mechanical skill, firmness, justness
and delicacy of touch were requisite in the older manner of following
carefully and precisely the lines already drawn upon the block, still
the engraver was precluded from exercising any original artistic power
he might have; he could appreciate the artistic value of the design
before him, and, like Hans Lützelburger, show his appreciation by his
fidelity in rendering it, but the lines were not his own. The new method
of reproducing artists’ work by means of lines first conceived and
arranged by the engraver requires, besides skill of hand, qualities of
mind--perception and origination, and the judgment that results from
cultivated taste. This is what is meant when it is said that the true
art of wood-engraving is not a hundred years old, for it is only within
that time that the value of a print has been due to the engraver’s
capacity for thought and his artistic skill in line-arrangement, as well
as to the designer’s genius. The use of white line as a mechanical mode
of obtaining color was not unknown in the sixteenth century, and the
artistic value of white line was definitely felt in early French and
Italian wood-engraving; but the possibilities of development were not
seen, and no such development took place. The step in advance was taken
by Bewick, who thus disclosed the opportunities which wood-engraving
offers its craftsmen for the exhibition of high artistic qualities. The
white line revolutionized the art, and this is the essential meaning
there is in calling Bewick the father of wood-engraving.
Of course the older method has not ceased to be practised; artists have
drawn upon the block, and their lines have been reproduced; sometimes a
part of the lines are thus drawn, particularly the leading lines, and
the minor portions of the sketch have been indicated by the designer by
washes and left to be rendered by the engraver in his own lines. Old or
modern wood-engraving as a mode of reproducing designs in fac-simile is
valuable, but none of the artistic merit they may possess is due to the
engraver; while the artistic merit shown in the new style of
wood-engraving, as an art of design in white line, belongs wholly to the
engraver. It results from this that white line is the peculiar province
of wood-engraving, considered as an art; but that does not exclude it
from being practised in its old manner as a mode of copying and
multiplying ordinary design which it is able to reproduce.