ITALY--I
THE FIRST ILLUSTRATED BOOKS AND THOSE OF VENICE
Surrounded by pictures and frescoes, and accustomed to the utmost
beauty in their manuscripts, the Italians did not feel the need of the
cheaper arts, and for the first quarter of a century after the
introduction of printing into their country, the use of engraved
borders, initial letters, and illustrations was only occasional and
sporadic. Perhaps not very long after the middle of the century an
Italian block-book of the Passion had been issued, probably at Venice,
as it was there that most of the cuts were used again in 1487 for an
edition of the _Devote Meditatione_, attributed to S. Bonaventura. A
copy of this is in the British Museum; of the block-book eighteen
leaves are preserved at Berlin. Despite some ungainliness in the
figures and rather coarse cutting, the pictures are vigorous and
effective, but quite unlike any later Venetian work. Something of the
same kind may be said of those in an edition of the _Meditationes_ of
Cardinal Turrecremata, printed by Ulrich Hahn at Rome in 1467, the
first work printed in Italy with movable type, in which woodcut
illustrations were used. The cuts are thirty-four in number, and
professed to illustrate the same subjects as the frescoes recently
painted by the cardinal's order in the Church of San Maria di Minerva
at Rome.[9] The execution is so rude, that it is impossible to say
whether they are the work of a German influenced by Italian models, or
of an Italian working to please a German master, nor is the point of
the slightest importance. Thirty-three of the cuts were used again in
the editions printed at Rome in 1473 and 1478, and it is from the 1473
edition that the accompanying illustration of the Flight into Egypt is
taken. This in its original size is one of the best of the series, but
the reduction necessary for its appearance on one of our pages has had
a more than usually unfortunate effect, both on the cut itself and on
the printer's type which appears below it.
[Illustration: From the _Meditationes_ of Turrecremata, Rome, 1473.]
In 1481, the courtier-printer, Joannes Philippus de Lignamine, issued
an edition of the _Opuscula_ of Philippus de Barberiis adorned with
twenty-nine cuts representing twelve prophets, twelve sibyls, St. John
the Baptist, the Holy Family, Christ with the Emblems of His Passion,
the virgin Proba, and the philosopher Plato. Plato, Malachi, and Hosea
are all represented by the same cut, another serves for both Jeremiah
and Zechariah, and two of the Sibyls are also made to merge their
individualities. With the exception of the figure of Christ, which is
merely painful, the cuts are pleasantly and even ludicrously rude.
Nevertheless, they are not without vigour, and are, to my thinking,
greatly preferable to the more conventional figures of the twelve
Sibyls and Proba which appeared shortly afterwards in an undated
edition of the same book, printed by Sixtus Riessinger. In this
edition the figures are surrounded by architectural borders, and we
have also a border to the first page and several large initial
letters, all in exact imitation of the interlacement work, which is
the commonest form of decoration in Italian manuscripts of the time.
Riessinger's mark, a girl holding a black shield with a white arrow on
it, and a scroll with the letters S.R.D.A. (Sixtus Riessinger de
Argentina), is found in the 'register' at the end of the book. To
Riessinger we also owe a _Cheiromantia_, with figures of hands, which
I have not seen, while from Lignamine's press there was issued an
edition of the _Herbarium_ of Apuleius Barbarus (who was, of course,
confused with his famous namesake), which has rude botanical figures
and, at the end of the book, a most man-like portrait of a mandrake,
with a dog duly tugging at one of his fibrous legs. The list of
illustrated books printed at Rome before 1490 also includes[10] some
little editions, mostly by Silber or Plannck, of the _Mirabilia
Romae_, a guidebook to the antiquities of the city, in which there are
a few cuts of pilgrims gazing at the cloth of S. Veronica, of SS.
Peter and Paul, of Romulus and Remus, and other miscellaneous
subjects. The interest of all these books is purely antiquarian.
If we turn from Rome to the neighbouring city of Naples, we shall find
evidence of much more artistic work. In 1478 Sixtus Riessinger printed
there for Francesco Tuppo an edition of Boccaccio's _Libro di florio e
di bianzefiore_, or _Philocolo_, illustrated with forty-one woodcuts,
of no great technical merit, but by no means without charm. Two years
later a representation of the supposed origin of music by the figures
of five blacksmiths working at an anvil occurs in an edition of the
_Musices Theoria_ of Francesco Gafori, printed in 1480 by Francesco di
Dino. Much more important than this is a handsome edition of _[AE]sop_
published in 1485 by Francesco Tuppo, and printed for him by an
anonymous firm known to bibliographers as the 'Germain fidelissimi.'
This contains eighty-seven large cuts heavily cut, but well drawn and
with a massive vigour, one of which, representing the death of [AE]sop,
occupies a full page. The cuts illustrating the fabulist's life have
rather commonplace borders to them, but when the fables themselves are
reached, these are replaced by much more important ones. Into an upper
compartment are introduced figures of Hercules wrestling with Ant[ae]us,
Hercules riding on a lion, and a combat between mounted pigmies. The
fables have also a large border surrounding the first page of text,
used again in the Hebrew Bible of 1488. The ground-work of all the
borders is black, but this has not always enabled them to escape the
hand of the colourist. The book is also adorned by two large and two
smaller printed initials. To the same artist as the illustrator of the
_[AE]sop_ must be attributed the title-cut of Granollach's _Astrologia_,
issued in or about the same year. In 1486, again, Matthias Moravus
printed one of the few Italian _Horae_, a charming little book, three
inches by two, with sixteen lines of very pretty Gothic type, printed
in red and black, to each of its tiny pages, and four little woodcuts,
which in the only copy I have seen have been painted over. A daintier
prayer-book can hardly be conceived.
When we turn from the south to the north of Italy, we find that an
Italian printer at Verona had preceded the German immigrants in
issuing an important work with really fine woodcuts as early in 1472.
This is the _De Re Militari_ of Robertus Valturius, written some few
years previously, and dedicated to Sigismund Malatesta. In this fine
book, printed by John of Verona, there are eighty-two woodcuts
representing various military operations and engines, all drawn in
firm and graceful outline, which could hardly be bettered. The designs
for these cuts have been attributed to the artist Matteo de' Pasti,
whose skill as a painter, sculptor, and engraver, Valturius had
himself commended in a letter written in the name of Malatesta to
Mahomet II. The conjecture rests solely on this commendation, but
seems intrinsically probable. The book has no other adornment save
these woodcuts and its fine type. Another edition was printed in the
same town eleven years later by Boninus de Boninis.
Besides the _Valturius_, the only other early Verona book with
illustrations known to me is an edition of _[AE]sop_ in the Italian
version of Accio Zucco, printed by Giovanni Alvisio in 1479. This has
a frontispiece in which the translator is seen presenting his book to
a laurel-crowned person sitting in a portico, through which there is a
distant view. This is followed by a page of majuscules containing the
title of the book, but ending with a 'foeliciter incipit.' On the back
of this is a tomb-like erection, bearing the inscription 'Lepidissimi
[AE]sopi Fabellae,' which gives it the rank of the second ornamental
title-page (see p. 32 for the first). Facing this is a page surrounded
by an ornamental border, at the foot of which is the usual shield
supported by the usual naked boys. Within the border are Latin verses
beginning:
"Vt iuuet et prosit conatum pagina praesens
Dulcius arrident seria picta iocis,"
the lines being spaced out with fragments from the ornamental borders
which surround each of the pictures in the body of the book. These, on
the whole, are not so good as those in the Naples edition of 1485, but
were helped out, at least in some copies, by rather pretty colouring.
The chief feature in the book is the care bestowed upon the
preliminary leaves.
In Florence, before 1490, we have no example of wood-engraving
employed in book illustration, but in 1477, Nicolaus Lorenz of Breslau
issued there the first of three books with illustrations engraved on
copper. This is an edition of Bettini's _Monte Santo di Dio_ with
three plates, representing respectively (1) the Holy Mountain, up
which a man is climbing by the aid of a ladder of virtues; (2) Christ
standing in a 'mandorla' or almond-shaped halo formed by the heads of
cherubs; and (3) the torments of Hell. This was followed in 1481 by a
_Dante_ with the commentary of Landino, with engravings illustrating
the first eighteen cantos. Spaces were left for engravings at the head
of the other cantos, but the plan was too ambitious, and they were
never filled up. Some copies of the book have no engravings at all,
others only two, those prefixed to Cantos 1 and 3, the first of which
is most inartistically introduced on the lower margin of the page,
tempting mutilation by the binder's shears. The other venture of
Nicolaus Lorenz, which has engraved work, is the _Sette Giornate della
Geographia_ of Berlinghieri, in which he introduces numerous maps.
At Milan only two illustrated books are known to have been issued
before 1490, both of which appeared in 1479. The rarer of these, which
is seldom found in perfect condition, is the _Summula di pacifica
Conscientia_ of Fra Pacifico di Novara, printed by Philippus de
Lavagna, and illustrated with three copper-plates, one of which
represents the virtues of the Madonna, the others containing diagrams
exhibiting the prohibited degrees of consanguinity. The other book is
a _Breviarium totius juris canonici_, printed by Leonard Pachel and
Ulrich Scinzenceller, with a woodcut portrait of its author, 'Magister
Paulus Florentinus ordinis Sancti Spiritus,' otherwise Paolo
Attavanti.
The illustrated books printed in Italy which we have hitherto noticed
are of great individual interest, but they led to the establishment of
no school of book-illustration, and the value of wood engravings was
as yet so little understood that the cuts in them often failed to
escape the hands of the colourists. At Venice, on the other hand,
where Bernhard Maler and Erhard Ratdolt introduced the use of printed
initials and borders in 1476, we find a continuous progress to the
record of which we must now turn. The border to the title-page of the
Kalendars of 1476 has already been noticed: both the Latin and the
Italian editions also contained printed initials of a rustic shape,
resembling those in some early books in Ulm, but larger and better.
The next year the partners made a great step in advance in the
initials and borders of an _Appian_, and an edition of Cepio's _Gesta
Petri Mocenici_. These were followed by an edition of _Dionysius
Periegetes_, and in 1478 by the _Cosmographia_ of Pomponius Mela.
Three distinct borders are used in these books, all of them with light
and graceful floral patterns in relief on a black ground. The large
initials are of the same character, and both these and the borders are
unmistakably Italian. In 1478 Ratdolt lost the aid of Bernhard Maler,
who up to that date seems to have been the leading spirit of the firm,
and the books subsequently issued are much less decorative. In 1479
another German, Georg Walch, issued an edition of the _Fasciculus
Temporum_ with illustrations mostly poor enough, but with a quaint
little attempt at realism in one of Venice. These cuts of Walch's, and
also a decorative initial, Ratdolt was content to copy on a slightly
larger scale in an edition of his own the next year. He also printed
an undated _Chiromantia_, with twenty-one figures of heads, a reprint
of which bearing his name and that of Mattheus Cerdonis de
Windischgretz was issued at Padua in 1484. In 1482, came the _Poetica
Astronomica_ of Hyginus, with numerous woodcuts of the astronomical
powers, those of Mercury (here very slightly reduced) and Sol being
perhaps the best. To the same year belongs a reprint of the
_Cosmographia_ of Pomponius Mela with a curious map and a few good
initials, also a _Euclid_ with mathematical diagrams and a border and
initials from the _Appian_ of 1477.
[Illustration: From the _Hyginus_ of 1482.]
After 1482 Ratdolt does not seem to have printed any new illustrated
books, and in 1486 he ceased printing at Venice and returned, as we
have seen, to Augsburg. Subject to the doubt as to whether he has not
been credited with praise which really belongs to Bernhard Maler, his
brief Italian career entitles him to a place of some importance among
the decorators of books, for though his illustrations were
unimportant, his borders and initials are among the best of the
fifteenth century.
In 1482 Octavianus Scotus printed three Missals with a rude cut of the
Crucifixion, and these were imitated by other printers in 1483, 1485,
and 1487.
The year 1486 was marked by the publication, by Bernardino de
Benaliis, of an edition of the _Supplementum Chronicarum_ of Giovanni
Philippo Foresti of Bergamo, with numerous outline woodcuts of cities,
for the most part purely imaginary and conventional, the same cuts
being used over and over again for different places. Four years later
a new edition was printed by Bernardino de Novara, in which more
accurate pictures were substituted in the case of some of the more
important towns, notably Florence and Rome. In both issues the first
three cuts, representing the Creation, the Fall, and the sacrifice of
Cain and Abel, are copied from those in the Cologne Bible.
The year after his edition of the _Supplementum_, Bernardinus de
Benaliis printed an _[AE]sop_ with sixty-one woodcuts adapted from those
in the Veronese edition of 1479. Of this edition Dr. Lippmann, who
had the only known copy under his charge at Berlin, remarks that 'the
style of engraving is, to a large extent, cramped and angular, and the
entire appearance of the work is that of a genuine chapbook.'
[Illustration: From the _Devote Meditatione_, Venice, 1508 [1489].]
In 1488 we arrive at the first of the numerous illustrated editions of
the _Trionfi_ of Petrarch. This was printed by Bernardino de Novara,
and has six full-page cuts, measuring some ten inches by six, and
illustrating the triumphs of Love, of Chastity, Death, Fame, and Time,
and of the true Divinity over the false gods. The designs are
excellent, but the engraver had very imperfect control over his point,
and his treatment of the eyes of the figures introduced is by itself
sufficient to spoil the pictures. Curiously enough, the ornamental
border of white figures on a black ground is certainly better cut than
the pictures themselves.
The same inferiority of the engraver to the designer is seen in the
illustrations to the 1489 edition of the _Deuote Meditatione sopra la
passione del nostro signore_ attributed to S. Bonaventura. The first
illustrated edition of this book, with eleven illustrations taken
(slightly cut down) from the block book of the Passion already
mentioned, had been printed in 1487 by Ieronimo de Santis. The 1489
edition was printed by Matteo di Codecha (or Capcasa) of Parma, who
republished the book no less than six times during the next five years,
after which the cuts were used by other printers,--_e.g._ by Gregorio di
Rusconi, from whose edition in 1508 our illustration of the mocking of
Christ is taken. It is interesting to compare this Venetian series with
the Florentine edition published a little later by Antonio Mischomini,
whose engraver, while taking many hints from the designs of his
predecessor, greatly improved on them. The next year witnessed the
first Venetian edition of another work in which the artists of the two
cities were to be matched together. This is the _Fior di Virt[u']_,
whose title-cut of Fra Cherubino da Spoleto gathering flowers in the
convent garden shows a great advance on previous Venetian work.
Unfortunately the British Museum copy has been slightly injured, so that
I am obliged to take my reproduction from the second of two similar
editions published by Matteo Codecha in 1492, 1493. These have each
thirty-six vignettes in the text, illustrating the examples in the
animal world of the virtues which the author desired to inculcate.
[Illustration: From the _Fior di Virt[u']_, Venice, 1493.]
We must now turn to the first illustrated edition of Malermi's Italian
version of the Bible, printed in 1490. After the woodcut basis for the
six little illuminations in the Spencer copy of Adam of Ammergau's
edition of 1471, the first Biblical woodcuts at Venice are a series of
thirty-eight small vignettes which decorate an edition of the
_Postilla_ or sermons, of Nicolaus de Lyra, printed for Octavianus
Scotus in 1489. In the Bible itself, printed the next year by Giovanni
Ragazzo for Lucantonio Giunta, the illustrations are on a very lavish
scale, numbering in all three hundred and eighty-three, of which a few
are duplicates, and about a fourth are adapted in miniature from the
cuts in the Cologne Bibles, which formed a model for so many other
editions. Some of the best cuts in this and other Venetian books are
signed with a small _b_, which by some writers has been supposed to
stand for the name of the artist who designed them, but is more
probably to be referred to the workshop at which they were engraved.
The craftsmen employed on the New Testament were quite unskilled, but
many of the illustrations to the Old Testament are delightful. The
first page of the Bible is occupied by six somewhat larger cuts,
illustrating the days of Creation, joined together within an
architectural border. Other editions containing the same cuts, with
additions from other books, were issued in 1494, 1498, and 1502. A
rival edition, printed by Guglielmo de Monteferrato, with a new set of
cuts of a similar character appeared in 1493.
These three religious works, the _Meditatione_, the _Postilla_, and
the Malermi Bible thoroughly established the use of vignettes, or
small cuts worked into the text, as an alternative to full-page
illustrations, like those in the _Petrarch_, and it was natural that
this method of decoration should soon be applied to the greatest of
Italian works, the _Divina Commedia_. In producing an illustrated
Dante, Venice had been anticipated not only by the Florentine edition
of 1481, though the engravings in this are only found in the first few
cantos, but by a very curious edition published at Brescia in 1487,
with full-page cuts, surrounded by a black border with white
arabesques. These large cuts, which measure ten inches by six, are
very coarsely executed, and have no merit save what the earlier ones
derive from their imitation of those in the Florentine edition. In the
course of the year 1491 two illustrated _Dantes_ were published at
Venice, the first on March 3rd by Bernardino Benali and Matteo
[Codecha] da Parma, the second on November 18th by Pietro Cremonese.
The earlier edition has a fine woodcut frontispiece illustrating the
first canto, but the vignettes which succeed it are so badly cut as to
lose all their beauty. In the later edition the same designs appear to
have been followed, but the vignettes are larger and much better cut,
so that they are at least somewhat less unworthy of their subject.
Both editions have printed initials, but of the poorest kind, and in
both the text is hidden away amid the laborious commentary of Landino.
After Dante's _Divina Commedia_ it is natural to expect an edition of
Boccaccio's _Decamerone_, and this duly followed the next year from
the press of Gregorius de Gregoriis. The first page is occupied by a
woodcut of the ten fine ladies and gentlemen who tell the stories,
seated in the beautiful garden to which they had retired from the
plague which was raging around them. Beneath this are seventeen lines
of text, with a blank left for an initial H, and woodcut and text are
surrounded by an architectural border, at the foot of whose columns
little boys standing on the heads of lions are blowing horns, while in
the lower section of the design the usual blank shield is approached
from either side by cupids riding on rams. The blank for the initial
is a great blot on the page, as any coloured letter would have
destroyed the delicacy of the whole design. In the body of the work
each of the ten books is headed by a double cut, in one part of which
the company of narrators is standing in front of a gateway, while one
of their number is playing a guitar; in the other they are all seated
before a fountain, presided over by a wreath-crowned master of the
story-telling. The vignettes which illustrate the different tales vary
very much in quality, though some, like the little cut of the Marquis
and his friends approaching Griselda as she brings water from the
well, could hardly be bettered.
The _Boccaccio_ of 1492 heralded a long series of illustrated books
from the press of Gregorius de Gregoriis and his brother John. Most of
these were devotional in their character, _e.g._ the _Zardine de
Oratione_, the _Monte dell' Oratione_, the _Vita e Miracoli del Sancto
Antonio di Padova_, the _Passione di Cristo_, &c. The _Novellino_ of
Masuccio Salernitano formed a pendant to the _Boccaccio_, and was
published in the same year. To the Gregorii we also owe the
magnificent border, in white relief on a black ground, to the Latin
_Herodotus_ of 1494, repeated again in the second volume of the works
of S. Jerome published in 1497-98. Equally famous with any of these is
the same printer's series of editions of the _Fascicolo de Medicina_
of Johannes Ketham. In the first of these, printed in 1491, the
illustrations are confined to cuts of various dreadful-looking
surgical instruments; but in 1493 large pictures were added, each
occupying the whole of a folio page, and representing a dissection, a
consultation of physicians, the bedside of a man struck down by the
plague. The dissection was printed in several colours, but this
experiment was abandoned, and a new block was cut for the subsequent
editions. In some of his later books Gregorius repaired the mistake of
the _Boccaccio_, and used excellent woodcut initials.
The _Herodotus_ of 1494 has only its magnificent border by way of
illustration, but other classical authors received much more generous
treatment during this decade. An Italian _Livy_, with numerous
vignettes, was printed in 1493 by Giovanni di Vercelli, and a Latin
one in 1495 by P. Pincio, Lucantonio Giunta in each case acting as
publisher.[11] In 1497 Lazarus de Soardis printed for Simon de Luere a
_Terence_ with numerous vignettes; and in the same year there appeared
an illustrated edition, several times reprinted, of the
_Metamorphoses_ of Ovid, the printer being Giovanni Rossi and the
publisher once more Lucantonio Giunta. The cuts in this work measure
something over three inches by five, and have little borders on each
side of them; but the fineness of the designs is lost by poor
engraving. Some of them are signed _ia_, others N.
We now approach one of the most famous books in the annals of Venetian
printing, the _Hypnerotomachia Poliphili_ printed by Aldus in 1499, at
the expense of a certain Leonardo Crasso of Verona, 'artium et iuris
Pontificis consultus,' by whom it was dedicated to Guidobaldo, Duke of
Urbino. The author of the book was Francesco Colonna, a Dominican
friar, who had been a teacher of rhetoric at Treviso and Padua, and
was now spending his old age in the convent of SS. Giovanni e Paolo in
Venice, his native city. Colonna's authorship of the romance is
revealed in an acrostic formed by the initial letters of the
successive chapters, which make up the sentence, 'Poliam Frater
Franciscus Columna peramavit': 'Brother Francesco Colonna greatly
loved Polia.' Who Polia was is a little uncertain. In the opening
chapter she tells her nymphs that her real name was Lucretia, but she
has been identified with a Hippolita Lelio, daughter of a jurisconsult
at Treviso, who entered a convent after having been attacked by the
plague, which visited Treviso from 1464 to 1468. On the other hand, it
is plausibly suggested that Polia ([Greek: polia]), 'the grey-haired
lady,' is only a symbol of Antiquity, and at the beginning of the book
there is at least a pretence of an allegory, though this is not
carried very far.
[Illustration: From the _Hypnerotomachia_, Venice, 1499.]
In the story Polifilo, a name intended to mean 'the lover of Polia,'
imagines himself in his dream as passing through a dark wood till he
reaches a little stream, by which he rests. The valley through which
it runs is filled with fragments of ancient architecture, which form
the subjects of many illustrations. As he comes to a great gate he is
frightened by a dragon. Escaping from this, he meets five nymphs (the
five senses), and is brought to the court of Queen Eleuterylida (Free
Will). Then follows a description of the ornaments of her palace and
of four magnificent processions, the triumphs of Europa, Leda, and
Dana[:e], and the festival of Bacchus. After this we have a triumph of
Vertumnus and Pomona, and a picture of nymphs and men sacrificing
before a terminal figure of Priapus. Meanwhile Polifilo has met the
fair Polia, and together they witness some of the ceremonies in the
Temple of Venus, and view its ornaments and those of the gardens round
it. The first book, which is illustrated with one hundred and
fifty-one cuts, now comes to an end. Book II describes how the
beautiful Polia, after an attack of the plague, had taken refuge in a
temple of Diana; how, while there, she dreamt a terrifying dream of
the anger of Cupid, so that she was moved to let her lover embrace
her, and was driven from Diana's temple with thick sticks; lastly, of
how Venus took the lovers under her protection, and at the prayer of
Polifilo caused Cupid to pierce an image of Polia with his dart,
thereby fixing her affections as firmly on Polifilo as he could
wish--if only it were not all a dream! This second book is illustrated
with only seventeen woodcuts, but as these are not interrupted by any
wearisome architectural designs, their cumulative effect is far more
impressive than those of the first, though many of the pictures in
this--notably those of Polifilo in the wood and by the river, his
presentation to Eleuterylida, the scenes of his first meeting with
Polia, and some of the incidents of the triumphs--are quite equal to
them. Unfortunately, the best pictures in both books are nearly
square, so that it is impossible to reproduce them in an octavo except
greatly reduced.
The woodcuts of the _Polifilo_ have been ascribed to nearly a dozen
artists, but in every case on the very slenderest grounds. Some of the
cuts, like some of those in the Mallermi Bible, are marked with a
little _b_; but this, as has been said, is almost certainly indicative
of the engraver's workshop from which they proceeded, rather than of
the artist who drew the designs. The edition of 1499 is a handsome
folio; the text is printed in fine Roman type, with three or four
different varieties of beautiful initial letters. The title and
headings are printed in the delicate majuscules which belong to the
type, and have a very graceful appearance. A second edition of the
_Polifilo_ was published in 1545, with, for the most part, the same
cuts. This was followed in the next year by a French translation by
Jean Martin, printed at Paris by Jacques Kerver, and republished three
times during the century. For the French editions the cuts were freely
imitated, the rather short, plump Italian women reappearing as ladies
of even excessive height. In England in 1592 Simon Waterson printed an
abridged translation with the pretty title, _Hypnerotomachia, or the
Strife of Love in a Dreame_, with a few cuts copied from the Italian
originals. The book, now extremely rare, was apparently not well
received, for Waterson, abandoning all hope of a second edition,
speedily parted with his wood-blocks. Four of the cuts are found amid
the most incongruous surroundings in the _Strange and wonderful
tidings happened to Richard Hasleton, borne at Braintree in Essex, in
his ten yeares trauailes in many forraine countries_, though this
egregious work was printed by A. I. for William Barley in 1595, only
three years after the _Strife of Love in a Dreame_.
As we have noted, Aldus printed the _Hypnerotomachia_ on commission,
and save for two discreditably bad cuts in his _Musaeus_ and a rather
fine portrait of S. Catherine of Siena in his edition of her Letters
printed in 1500, he troubled himself with no other illustrations. In
his larger works he revived the memory of the stately folios of
Jenson, and in his popular editions sought no other adornment than the
beauty of his italic type. If pictures were needed to make a book more
acceptable to a rich patron, he did not disdain to have recourse to
the illuminator. Some of his Greek books have most beautiful initial
letters, and in the Aristotle of 1497 he employs good head-pieces,
though these fall far short of the large oriental design, printed in
red, placed by his friendly rival, Zacharias Kaliergos, at the top of
the first page of the _Commentary_ of Simplicius on Aristotle of 1499.
[Illustration]
The influence of Aldus certainly helped to widen the gulf which
already existed between the finely printed works intended for scholars
and wealthy book-lovers and the cheaper and more popular ones in which
woodcuts formed an addition very attractive to the humbler
book-buyers. Perhaps this in part accounts for the great deterioration
in Italian illustrated books after the close of the fifteenth century.
The delicate vignettes and outline cuts only appear in reprints, and
in new works their place is taken by heavily shaded engravings, mostly
of very little charm. The numerous liturgical works published by
Lucantonio Giunta and his successors perhaps show this work at its
best. They are mostly printed in Gothic type with an abundant use of
red ink, and the heaviness of the illustrations is thus all the better
carried off. But as the century advanced Venetian printing
deteriorated more and more rapidly: partly from excessive competition;
partly, as Mr. Brown has shown in his _The Venetian Printing Press_,
from too much interference on the part of the Government; partly, we
must suppose, simply from the decline of good taste, though it is
noticeable that between 1540 and 1560, when the insides of books had
become merely dull, is a brilliant period in the history of Venetian
binding. Whatever the cause, within a few years after the close of the
fifteenth century the glories of Venetian printing had disappeared.
[Illustration: From the _Epistole_ of Pulci, Florence, _c._ 1495.]
* * * * *
[9] The title of the book, printed in red, beneath the first woodcut,
reads: 'Meditationes Rever[=e]dissimi patris d[~n]i Johannis de turre
cremata sacros[~c]e Romane eccl'ie cardinalis posite & depicte de
ipsius m[~a]dato [~i] eccl'ie ambitu Marie de Minerva, Rome.'
[10] Maps hardly come under the head of illustrations, but we may note
the appearance in 1478 of the edition of Ptolemy's _Cosmographia_, by
Arnold Buckinck, with maps engraved by Conrad Sweynheim, the partner
of Pannartz.
[11] In the intervening year Giunta had published the _Santa
Catharina_, printed by Matteo Codecha, some copies of which have the
false date MCCCCLXXXIII.