ITALY--II
FLORENCE AND MILAN--ITALIAN PRINTERS' MARKS
We must now return from Venice to Florence, where, after the
experiments with engravings on copper in 1477 and 1481, no illustrated
books had been published until on March 27, 1490, Francesco di Dino
(whom we have already seen at work at Naples ten years earlier)
brought out an edition of the _Specchio di Croce_ of Domenico Cavalca,
with a frontispiece representing the Crucifixion. In September of the
same year an edition of the _Laudi_ of Jacopone da Todi (the
Franciscan author of the _Stabat Mater_), was printed by Francesco
Buonaccorsi, which contains on the verso of its eighth leaf a most
beautiful outline woodcut,[12] St. Jacopone kneeling by a little
lectern, his book on the ground, while above him is a vision of the
Madonna enshrined in a 'mandorla,' supported below by three cherubs
and above by four maturer angels. In 1491 we make the acquaintance of
Lorenzo di Morgiani and Giovanni Tedesco da Maganza, or Johann Petri
of Mainz, from whose press some of the most important of the
Florentine illustrated books were issued. The first result of their
activity was a new edition of Bettini's _Monte Santo di Dio_, in which
the three copperplates of the edition of 1477 were freely imitated
upon wood. In the same year they printed a little treatise on
Arithmetic, written by Philippo Calandro and dedicated to Giuliano dei
Medici. This is the most delightful of all arithmetic books. It has a
title-cut of 'Pictagoras Arithmetice Introductor,' and the earlier
pages of the book are surrounded by a characteristic Renaissance
border. Towards the end of the work there is a series of illustrated
problems, only a little more absurd than those which still occur in
children's school-books. One of these, however, is so good that we
must permit ourselves a little digression to quote it in a free
translation:--
"A squirrel flying from a cat climbed to the top of a tree 26-3/4
arm's-lengths (_braccia_) in height. The cat, wanting to seize the
squirrel, began to climb the tree, and each day leaped up half an
arm's length, and each night descended a third of one. The squirrel,
on its part, believing that the cat had gone away, wanted to get
down from the tree, and each day descended a quarter of an arm's
length, and each night went back one-fifth of one: I want to know in
how many days the cat will reach the said squirrel?"
The answer is 121 days; but the picture must have been taken on the
first or second, for the cat is still very plump, and so large in
proportion to the tree that if he had but stood on his hind legs he
ought to have reached the top! Others of the pictures are without this
charming touch of absurdity, perhaps the most perfect being a little
cut of a traveller on horseback, as to the expenses of whose journey
the teacher was anxious for some information from his young friends.
These little cuts are all about an inch square, and drawn in outline.
Another edition of the Arithmetic, in Roman type instead of black
letter, but otherwise very similar, was issued in 1518 by Bernardo
Zucchetta.
With the year 1492 we come to the first dated editions of the
illustrated Savonarola tracts, which play no inconsiderable part in
the history of book illustration in Italy. Their existence is in
itself the best refutation of the popular belief that the reformer's
influence was wholly hostile to the interests of art, though the
number of artists who reckoned themselves, formally or informally,
among his followers should have sufficed to prevent the belief growing
up. These tracts, save for the cuts with which they are adorned, are
insignificant in appearance, being for the most part badly printed,
and with few and poor initial letters. The woodcuts, seldom more than
two in a tract, are, however, charming, and have won for them much
attention.
[Illustration: From an undated Savonarola tract, Florence, _c._ 1495.]
The first publisher of these tracts seems to have been Antonio
Mischomini, who on June 26, 1492, issued a
Trac
tato
dello
Amore Di Iesu Christo Composto
da frate Hieronymo da Ferrara del
l'ordine
de frati
predica
tori pri
ore di San
Marcho di
F I R E N Z E
with the title arranged cross-wise, as here shown. On the back of the
title is a picture of the Crucifixion, with the Blessed Virgin and S.
John standing by the Cross. This was followed on June 30th by the
_Tractato della humilta_, with a large title-cut representing the dead
Christ before His Cross, an angel supporting each arm. Neither of
these cuts shows typical Florentine work, for the blank spaces have
all to be cleared away by the engraver, and there is an abundance of
shading. The first design was clearly spoilt in the cutting, the
second is of great beauty. The typical Florentine work, in which white
lines are cut out from a black ground, as well as black lines from a
white, appears in the _Tractato ouero Sermone della oratione_,
finished by Mischomini on October 20th. Here the title-cut shows the
scene at Gethsemane: the three disciples asleep in the foreground,
Christ in prayer, and the hands of an angel holding a cup appearing
in a corner above. The picture, as always in distinctively Florentine
work, is surrounded by a little border or frame, in which a small
white pattern is picked out from a black ground.
The other illustrated Savonarola tracts bearing an early date, with
which I am acquainted, are the _De Simplicitate Christianae Vitae_,
printed 'impensis Ser Petri Pacini,' August 28th, 1496, and the
_Predica dell arte del bene Morire_, preached on Nov. 2 of that year,
taken down at the time by Ser Lorenzo Violi, and doubtless published
immediately afterwards. The _De Simplicitate_ has on its first page a
picture of a Dominican friar writing in his cell, a sand-glass at his
side, a crucifix in front of his desk, and books and his gown
scattered on a table. The illustrations to the _Arte del bene Morire_
comprise a hideous outline cut of Death, scythe on shoulder, flying
over ground strewn with corpses (this is enclosed in a large black
border used by Mischomini in 1492), and cuts of Death showing a young
man Heaven and Hell,[13] of a sick man with his good and bad angels
watching him and Death standing without the door, and of a dying man
attended by a friar, Death sitting now at his bed's foot, and the
angels watching as before.
Turning now to the undated tracts, we find that the _Expositione del
Pater Noster_ contains (1) a very beautiful variant of the
representation of the scene on Gethsemane, the angel appearing on the
left instead of the right,[14] (2) a cut of S. James writing at a
table, (3) a small cut of David in prayer, and some still smaller
pictures of prophets and of the Crucifixion. At the end of the book is
an _Epistola a una devota donna Bolognose_, which is headed and ended
by a cut of a Dominican preaching in the open air to a congregation of
nuns. An undated edition of the _Tractato della Humilta_ has Images of
Pity at the beginning and end, the former surrounded by a black
border. Yet another edition has an outline cut of Christ holding His
Cross, while blood streams from His hand into a chalice. An edition of
the _Tractato dello Amore di Iesu_ has two outline cuts, one large,
one small, showing the Blessed Virgin and S. John standing by the
Cross. A tract on self-examination, addressed to the Abbess of the
Convent of the Murate at Florence, shows an aged friar being welcomed
at the convent. Other tracts have pictures of a priest elevating the
Host, a man praying before an altar, a man and woman praying, &c. One
of the rarest is the superb cut to the _Dyalogo della Verita
prophetica_, in which a friar is preaching to seven questioners
arranged in a half-circle under a tree, a view of Florence occupying
the background. Cuts in other books show Savonarola meeting a devil
and an astrologer, and represent him preaching to an intent
congregation. With these tracts we must join the defence of Savonarola
by his follower Domenico Benivieni, who appears in the title-cut in
earnest disputation with a group of Florentines, while later on in the
book there is a full-page illustration of the reformer's vision of the
regeneration of the world and the Church, in which the stream of
Christ's blood as He hangs on the Cross is being literally used for
the washing away of sins. This book was published by Francesco
Buonaccorsi in 1496.
[Illustration: From Savonarola's _Operetta sopra i dieci commandamenti
di Dio_, 1495.]
Florentine book-illustration reached its highest in an edition of the
_Epistole e Evangelii_,[15] or liturgical Gospels and Epistles,
printed in 1495 by Lorenzo Morgiani and Johann Petri at the instance
of the Ser Piero Pacini da Pescia, who for the next fourteen or
fifteen years seems to have been an active promoter of illustrated
books. Only two copies of the edition of the _Epistole e Evangelii_
are known to exist, but the owner of one of them, Mr. C. W. Dyson
Perrins, has reproduced all the woodcuts in it in very finely executed
facsimile, together with a reprint of the text, for presentation to
the Roxburghe Club, so that the illustrator's work can now be studied
with comparative ease. The title-page shows S. Peter and S. Paul
standing in a circle enclosed in an arabesque border of white floral
ornaments and dolphins on a black ground. At the corners of the border
are figures of the four Evangelists. In the text there are twelve
dozen large woodcuts and two dozen half-length figures of prophets,
evangelists, and epistle-writers. Of the larger cuts eleven represent
S. Paul writing and one S. Peter, most of the rest scenes from the
life of Christ, several of those representing the Passion having
previously appeared in an undated edition of the _Meditatione_
attributed to S. Bonaventura from the press of Mischomini. The cuts
form a treasure-house of Florentine art, and were frequently drawn
upon by the printers of the later _Rappresentationi_, at which we
shall soon have to look.
[Illustration: From the _Giuocho delli Scacchi_, Florence, 1493.]
We must return now to Antonio Mischomini, who published many other
illustrated books besides the Savonarola tracts. In 1492 he printed an
edition of Cristoforo Landino's _Formulare di lettere e di orationi
uolgari_, with a large title-cut of a very young teacher addressing a
class, and at the end of the book his mark (a cross-surmounted M
within two squares and a circle), surrounded by the arabesque border
which we have already noticed in the _Arte del bene Morire_ of 1496.
The next year (_i.e._ 1493) he printed the _Libro di Giuocho delli
Scacchi_ of Jacobus de Cessolis, with a large title-cut (repeated at
the end of the book) representing courtiers playing in the presence of
a king, and thirteen smaller cuts personifying the various pieces.
These comprise a king and queen, a judge, a knight, a 'rook,' or vicar
of the king to visit in his stead all parts of the realm, and the
eight 'popolari' or pawns, a labourer, smith, wool-merchant,
money-changer, physician, tavern-keeper (here shown), city-guard, and
a runner to be at the rook's service. Chess-players may be interested
to know that the pawns actually in use in 1493, as shown on the board
in the title-cut, had already lost this excessive individuality, and
resemble those of our own day.
[Illustration: From the _Fior di Virt[u']_, Florence, 1498.]
In 1494 Mischomini printed the commentary on the Ten Commandments by
Frate Marco dal Monte Sancta Maria, which has a title-cut of the friar
preaching, and three full-page allegorical illustrations freely copied
from those in an edition printed at Venice. The first of these
represents 'la figura della vita eterna' by a picture of the glories
of heaven,[16] and the earthly devotions by which they are to be
attained; the second, which is in three divisions, the traversing of
the Desert of Sin; and the third, Mount Sinai, up which Moses is seen
climbing. In the same year, 1494, Mischomini also published a
catechism known as the _Lucidario_, to which he prefixed a title-cut
showing Damocles at his feast, the sword hanging over his head, and in
another compartment some little rabbits running happily in a wood.
Damocles and the rabbits have nothing whatever to do with the
Catechism, and the occurrence of the cut proves that before this date
Mischomini must have printed an edition of the _Fior di Virt[u']_, to
which it rightfully belongs. We have already looked at the Venetian
editions of this book, and shall not be surprised to find that the
Florentine printers had the good sense to copy their charming
title-cut, though they did not improve it by their addition of an
incongruous border of pilasters, a vernicle, and an Image of Pity. The
first Florentine edition of this book, with which I am acquainted, has
a fitfully rhyming colophon, adapted from that of the Venetian edition
of 1493, showing that it was printed at Florence in 1498, and ought,
at any rate, to be read on feast-days. To entice readers to persevere
in this task, there are thirty-five illustrations, some of which, like
the one in the _Lucidario_, are divided into two parts, so as to
secure a contrast or comparison between an animal and a man--as, for
example, between a humble sheep and a proud general riding in triumph,
or, as shown in our illustration, between the constancy of the
ph[oe]nix, who permits herself to be burnt to ashes rather than quit
her nest, and that of an Emperor Constantine who (by a gross
plagiarism upon Solon) quitted his country for ever, after making his
counsellors swear to observe his laws unaltered until his return. The
book was printed yet a third time, probably about 1515, by Gian
Stephano da Pavia, at the request of Bernardo Pacini. The printer of
the 1498 edition is not known; it cannot have been Mischomini, who
seems to have brought his brilliant career to a close about 1495. The
foregoing notice of his illustrated books is by no means exhaustive.
Passing mention has been made in the chapter on Venice of one other
important one, the undated _Meditatione_, attributed to S.
Bonaventura, with cuts of peculiar interest, from the opportunity they
afford of comparing the different styles in vogue in the two cities.
Three other Florentine books issued during the fifteenth century remain
to be mentioned, none of which I have seen. The first of these, an
undated edition of Domenico Capranica's _Arte di bene Morire_ (not to be
confounded with Savonarola's), published by Morgiani and Johann Petri
about 1495, contains twelve large cuts and twenty-two small ones. The
larger cuts are interesting, because ten of them are based on those
found in the old block books of the _Ars Moriendi_, the other two coming
from Savonarola's book of the same name. The smaller ones seem brought
together rather at haphazard. The other two books, an _[AE]sop_, printed
in 1495 by Francesco Buonaccorsi for Piero Pacini, and the _Morgante
Maggiore_ (a long poem on the adventures of Orlando) of Ludovico Pulci,
printed in 1500, both exist only in single copies in foreign libraries,
but a good many illustrations from both have been reproduced by Dr.
Kristeller.
[Illustration]
Of illustrated books printed at Florence after 1500, the most
important is an edition of the _Quatriregio del decorso della vita
humana_ of Federico Frezzi, printed, this also, 'ad petitione di Ser
Piero Pacini di Pescia,' as late as 1508, though there is ground for
believing that this may really be a reprint from a fifteenth century
edition now no longer extant. Like the author of the
_Hypnerotomachia_, Frezzi was a Dominican, and was consecrated Bishop
of Foligno, his native place, in 1403. He attended the Council of
Constance, and died there in 1416. He was a man of great learning and
a book-collector, but rather a dull poet. His _Quatriregio_ is an
imitation of Dante's _Divina Commedia_, and is divided into four books
treating successively of the kingdoms 'of the god Cupid,' 'of Satan,'
'of the Vices,' and 'of the goddess Minerva and of Virtue.' It was
first printed in 1481, and went through three other editions before
it was honoured with illustrations. The importance of this illustrated
edition has perhaps been overrated. Taken individually, the best of
the cuts are not superior to those in earlier Florentine books of less
pretensions, while the cumulative effect of the series of one hundred
and twenty-six (several of which, it should be said, are duplicates)
is seriously diminished, partly by the monotonous recurrence of the
same figure in every cut, partly by the coarseness and angularity with
which most of the blocks have been engraved. It must be mentioned that
the cut on the first page of the poem is signed with the initials L.
V., which were at one time interpreted as standing for Luca Egidio di
Venturi, _i.e._ Luca Signorelli, whose recognised signature, however,
was L. C. (Luca di Cortona).
Two other great series of Florentine illustrated books still remain to
be considered. The first of these is the _Rappresentazioni_, sacred
and secular, which enjoyed a life extending over two centuries, and
must be reckoned as the most artistic of chapbooks. In 1852 M. Colomb
de Batines published at Florence a bibliography of these 'Antiche
Rappresentazioni Italiane,' to which I am indebted for the following
details concerning their chief authors. The plays are almost uniformly
written in _ottava rima_, and poorly printed in double columns. A
large number of them, at least a score, were written and printed
during the fifteenth century, but these earliest editions are, as a
rule, not illustrated. Maffeo Belcari (1410-1484) apparently was the
first author who obtained the honours of print. His play of _Abraham_
appeared in 1485, after which it was reprinted some twenty times, the
latest known edition belonging to the eighteenth century. Belcari also
wrote on the Annunciation, on S. John the Baptist visited by Christ in
the Desert, and on S. Panuntius. Lorenzo de' Medici himself wrote a
play of S. John and S. Paul, Bernardo Pulci (d. 1501) produced one on
the legend of Barlaam and Josaphat, while his wife Antonia was quite a
prolific dramatist, claiming as her own plays on S. Domitilla, S.
Guglielma, the Patriarch Joseph, S. Francis, and the Prodigal Son.
During the fifteenth century anonymous plays were written on the
Nativity, on the life of Queen Hester, on the Angel Raphael, on the
conversion of three robbers by S. Francis, and on S. Eustachio, S.
Antony, and S. Antonia. Plays on the Last Judgment, on S. Agatha, S.
Agnes, S. Catharine, S. Cecilia, S. Christina, &c., also appeared at
an early date. An angel, as a rule, acts as Prologue, and the action
of the drama is divided between numerous characters. Most of the plays
were, doubtless, intended to be acted on the feast-day of the Saint
whose life they celebrate, and in a church bearing the Saint's name,
but the multiplicity of the editions show that they also won the
favour of a reading public.
A few undated editions of these little books, from the types used in
their press work, may be assigned to the end of the fifteenth
century. The first printer who is known to have made a specialty of
the _Rappresentazioni_ is Francesco Benvenuto, who began printing them
in 1516, and enjoyed a career of thirty years. M. Colomb de Batines
mentions several of his editions, but they are very scarce, and I have
only myself seen a _Raphael_ of 1516 with a title-cut of Tobit and the
Angel enclosed in a border, partly the same as that of the _Fior di
Virt[u']_ of 1498, a _Barlaam_ and _Josafat_, also of 1516, with six
illustrations (including our friend Damocles and the Rabbit, whose
fate seems to have been to be lugged in inappropriately), and a
_Miracolo di Tre Peregrini che andauano a sancto Iacopo di Galitia_,
with a solitary cut of the Saint rescuing one of the pilgrims who is
being unjustly hanged. The great majority of the extant
_Rappresentazioni_ were printed between 1550 and 1580, mostly
anonymously, though Giovanni Baleni and a printer 'Alle Scale di
Badia' were responsible for a great many of them. Of course, in many
cases the cuts were sadly the worse for wear, but they held on
wonderfully, and even in the seventeenth century editions a tolerable
impression is sometimes met with. Many of them, also, were recut,
sometimes skilfully, so that it is not uncommon to find a better
example in a later edition than in an earlier. The illustrations here
shown are from an undated edition of Lorenzo de' Medici's
_Rappresentatione di San Giovanni e Paulo_, the careful printing of
which is an argument for its belonging to the beginning of the
sixteenth century, and a picture of the martyrdom of S. Dorothea from
an edition of her _Rappresentatione_ printed in 1555.
[Illustration: Martyrdom of S. Dorothea.]
With these religious _Rappresentazioni_ M. Colomb de Batines joins a
few secular poems, whose title to be considered dramatic is not very
clear. Of those which he mentions, the earliest is the _Favola d'
Orfeo_, by Angelo Politiano, which forms part of _La Giostra di
Giuliano di Medici_, printed without name or date, probably about
1495, with ten excellent cuts, that of Aristeo pursuing the flying
Eurydice being, perhaps, the best. _La Giostra di Lorenzo di Medici_,
celebrated by Luigi Pulci, has only a single cut, but that a fine
one--a meeting of knights in an amphitheatre. Among other secular
chapbooks which enjoyed a long popularity was a series of
'contrasti,'[17] the contrast of Carnival and Lent, of Men and Women,
of the Living and the Dead, of the Blonde and the Brunette, and of
Riches and Poverty. I give here the first of the two cuts of the
_Contrasto di Carnesciale e la Quaresima_, undated, but probably
early. With these little poems we must join the metrical _Novelle_ and
_Istorie_, now chiefly known through the discovery in the University
Library at Erlangen of a little collection of twenty-one tracts, all
undated, and without any indication of their printers, but which may
mostly be assigned to the end of the fifteenth century. Among them are
the _Novella di Gualtieri e Griselda_, the _Novella di due Preti et un
Cherico_, the _Novella della Figliuola del Mercatante_, &c.
[Illustration]
The charm of these little Florentine books is so great, and of late
years has won such steadily increasing recognition, that I do not
think an apology is needed for the length at which they have here been
treated. None the less, we must remember that they were essentially
popular books, and that the wealthy book lovers of the time probably
regarded them very slightly. Mischomini himself did not turn his
attention to them till he had been printing nearly a dozen years, and
even after 1492 his more expensive books, the great _Plotinus_, for
instance, issued in that year, kept strictly to the traditions of
twenty years earlier, and were wholly destitute of ornament, even of
printed initials. The two classes of books--those on good paper and in
a large handsome type, and those on poor paper with small type
carelessly printed, but with delightful woodcuts--were issued side by
side, but the beauties of the two were never combined, and the
Florentine printers would doubtless have been greatly surprised if
they had been told that it was the chapbooks which were to win the
day. Even in the little italic editions issued by the Giuntas, in
imitation of Aldus, which appealed to an intermediate class of
purchasers, woodcuts occur but rarely, and the only instance I can
call to mind is a _Dante_, printed by Philippo Giunta in 1506, which,
besides some plans of the _Inferno_, &c., has a single cut
illustrating the first canto.
We have devoted so much space to Venice and Florence that the
illustrated books of other towns must be noticed with rather unfair
brevity. Brescia may be taken as an example of a town at which the
native artist did his best. We have already remarked the publication
there of a _Dante_ in 1487. The same year witnessed the appearance of
an _[AE]sop_, rudely imitated from the Verona edition, and in 1491
Baptista da Farfengo printed another book in which we have been
interested, a _Fior di Virt[u']_, with a title-cut of a student, head on
hand, reading at a desk. On a ledge on the wall are two flower-pots,
the flowers in which reach up to a very decorative ceiling. This is
quite a nice example of Brescian art, but the productions of the town
have not been specially studied, and further research might show that
they deserve more serious praise. At Ferrara artists of the schools of
Venice and Florence appear to have combined in the production of some
very notable books. Two of these were published by Lorenzo di Rossi in
1497. The first is an edition of the Epistles of S. Jerome, with
numerous vignettes and three frontispieces, the third of which,
somewhat in the style of the Venetian Boccaccio, bears the date 1493,
divided between its two columns. This frontispiece appears also in
the other work, the _De pluribus claris selectisque mulieribus_ of
Philippus Bergomensis, the illustrations in the text of which show
Florentine influence in their black backgrounds. This book has a
title-page printed in large Gothic letters cut in wood, similar to
that of the _Nuremberg Chronicle_.
No illustrated books appear to have been issued at Milan during the
eighties, but in 1492 Philippo Mantegazza printed the _Theorica
Musice_ of Gafori with some coarse cuts, and this was followed in 1494
by the _Triumfi_ of Petrarch, printed by Antonio Zaroto with the usual
six full-page illustrations. As befits the reputation of Milan as a
musical centre, the works of Gafori were often printed there. In 1496
Guillaume Le Signerre of Rouen printed there the first edition of the
_Practica Musice_, with a curious title-page representing the
relations of the Muses and the heavenly bodies, and fine ornamental
borders to two pages of text. At the base of one of these are little
scenes of choir-boys practising and a music-mistress giving a lesson.
The style of the borders is distinctly Venetian. In another work of
Gafori's printed at Milan, the _De Harmonia Instrumentorum_ of 1518
(reprinted two years later at Turin), the cuts exhibit the heavy
Milanese shading, one of them representing a lesson on the organ, and
the other a performer playing.
In 1496 Le Signerre printed a devotional work, the _Specchio di Anima_
of Besalii, with seventy-eight full-sized cuts to its eighty-eight
pages. Most of the cuts relate to the passion of Christ, and they are
described by Dr. Lippmann as 'vigorously executed in coarse thick
outlines, with scarcely any shading.' Some of these cuts reappear
three years later in the same printer's _Tesauro Spirituale_, of which
the unique copy is in the Berlin Print-Room. In 1498 Le Signerre
printed an _[AE]sop_, the cuts in which are surrounded by small black
borders relieved in white. The illustrations themselves are poor. At
the end of the book is the printer's mark, a crowned stork in a shield
within a circle, on either side of which stand a fox and a monkey. In
this same year Le Signerre transferred his press to Saluzzo, where in
1499 he issued the _Tesauro Spirituale_, and four years later an
edition of the _De Veritate Contricionis_ of Vivaldus, with a fine
frontispiece representing S. Jerome in the desert. The border shows
typical Milanese ornament, and recalls the illumination to the
_Sforziada_, mentioned in our first chapter. In 1507 a still finer
work, an edition of the _Opus Regale_, also by Vivaldus, was printed
at Saluzzo by Jacobus de Circis. This contains a fine picture of Saint
Louis of France in prayer, and also a large portrait of the Marquis
of Saluzzo, Louis II., whose taste has won for the town its little
niche in the history of printing.
[Illustration: Mark of Bazalerius de Bazaleriis.]
[Illustration: Mark of Stephanus Guillireti.]
[Illustration: Mark of Francis de Mazalis.]
Italian printers' devices are very decorative and interesting, and may
now be studied in Dr. Paul Kristeller's 'Die italienischen
Buchdrucker- und Verlegerzeichen,' which gives nearly a complete
collection of those in use before 1525, to the number of between three
and four hundred. In the great majority of devices the ground is
black, with a simple design, mostly including a circle and a cross,
outlined in white. The mark of Bazalerius de Bazaleriis of Bologna and
Reggio, taken from a copy of the _Epistolae_ of Philelphus, printed by
him in 1489, shows this class of design in almost its simplest form.
In that of Stephanus Guillireti, who printed at Rome from 1506 to
1524, we have the addition of a shield (the arms on which, unluckily,
have not been identified) and floral sprays. These floral sprays
become the chief feature in the design of Franciscus de Mazalis of
Reggio, who printed from 1493 to 1504; though the initials, circle,
and cross of the simpler devices are all retained. An even more
beautiful example of this class of mark was used by Egmont and
Barrevelt, the printers of the Sarum Missal, who added to its
attractiveness by the use of red ink, instead of black. Red ink also
adds immensely to the effect of the well-known mark of Nikolaos
Blastos, which occurs in a copy of the Commentary of Simplicius upon
Aristotle, printed by Zacharias Kaliergos at Venice in 1499. The
delicate tracery of this design is unsurpassed by any work of the
time. The mark of Nicolaus Gorgonzola, who printed at Milan from 1504
to 1533, in its floral ornaments, is very similar in style to those of
Mazalis and Egmont, but, as in the mark of Blastos, the cross and
circle have disappeared, and the name is set out in full, instead of
by its initials.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
[Illustration: Mark of Niccolo Zoppino.]
Purely ornamental designs, of the styles illustrated in these five
examples, form the majority among Italian devices, but more pictorial
ones were by no means unknown. One of the best of these was that used
by 'Simon de Gabiis dictus Bevilaqua,' who printed at Venice from 1485
to about 1512. Another good device is that of Ser Piero di Pacini of
Pescia, the publisher of so many of the Florentine illustrated books.
This consists of a crowned dolphin on a black ground, with sometimes a
smaller device of a bird, placed on each side of it.
[Illustration: Mark of Hieronymus Francisci Baldassaris.]
As examples of later styles, though not very beautiful in themselves,
we add here the rather clumsy woodcut of S. Nicholas adopted by
Niccol[o'] d'Aristotele da Ferrara, called 'il Zoppino,' who printed at
Venice from 1508 to about 1536, and the very florid device of
Hieronymus Francisci Baldassaris, a printer at Perugia from about 1526
to 1550. The arms there shown are those of the city of Perugia, while
the F. and the cross above it reproduce the mark used by the printer's
father, Francesco, the founder of the firm. The Aldine anchor and the
_fleur-de-lys_ of Lucantonio Giunta and his successors are too well
known to need reproduction or comment, though both stand rather apart
from the ordinary run of Italian marks.
[Illustration]
* * * * *
[12] This, and nearly all the Florentine illustrations mentioned here,
will be found reproduced in Dr. Paul Kristeller's _Early Florentine
Woodcuts_, published in 1897, after this chapter was written.
[13] There are two variants of this cut, the smaller introducing a
little landscape background.
[14] There is yet a third variant, which may be recognised by the
angel appearing on the right, but showing his whole body, not the
hands only, as in the 1492 cut.
[15] A reprint was issued in 1515.
[16] In contrast to the prevailing anthropomorphism of the time, the
First Person of the Trinity is represented by a 'loco tondo et vacuo,'
a blank circle, with a halo of angels round it. On either side of this
circle stand Christ and the Blessed Virgin.
[17] El Contrasto di Carnesciale e la Quaresima; El Contrasto degli
Huomini e delle Donne; El Contrasto del Vivo e del Morto; El Contrasto
della Bianca e della Brunetta; La Contenzione della Poverta contra la
Richezza, &c.