If it could be proved that “Het boeck van Tondalus visioen” was, as has
been stated, printed at Antwerp in 1472, by Mathias Van der Goes, the
claim of Antwerp to be regarded as the first place in the Low Countries
in which printing was introduced would be irrefutable. Unfortunately
there is very little doubt but that the date is an error, although Goes
is still rightly regarded as having introduced printing into Antwerp,
where he was issuing books from 1482 to about 1494 in Dutch and Latin.
He had two large Marks, one of which was a ship, apparently emblematical
of Progress or commercial enterprise, and the other, a savage
brandishing a club and bearing arms of Brabant,--the latter, from
“Sermones Quatuor Novissimorum,” 1487, is here given. Rolant Van den
Dorp, 1494-1500, whose chief claim to fame is that he printed the
“Cronyke van Brabant,” folio, Antwerp, 1497, had as his most ambitious
Mark a charming picture of Roland blowing his horn; on one of the
shields (suspended from the branch of a tree) is the arms of Antwerp,
which he sometimes used separately as his device. Contemporaneously with
Van den Dorp, 1493-1500, we have Godefroy Back, a binder who, on
November 19, 1492, married the widow of Van der Goes, and continued the
printing-office of his predecessor. His house was called the Vogehuis,
and had for its sign the Birdcage, which he adopted as his Mark; this he
modified several times, notably in 1496, when the monogram of Van der
Goes was replaced by his own. In the accompanying example (apparently
broken during the printing) the letter M is surmounted by the Burgundy
device--a wand upholding a St. Andrew’s cross. We give also a small
example of the two other Marks used by this printer. Arnoldus Cæsaris,
l’Empereur, or De Keysere, according as his name happened to be spelt in
Latin, French, or Flemish, is another of the early Antwerp printers
whose mark is sufficiently distinct to merit insertion here. His first
book is dated 1480, “Hermanni de Petra Sermones super orationem
dominicam.” Michael Hellenius, 1514-36, is a printer of this city who
has a special interest to Englishmen from the fact that “in 1531 he
printed at Antwerp an anti-Protestant work for Henry Pepwell, who could
find no printer in London with sufficient courage to undertake it.”
Hellenius’ Mark is emblematical of Time, in which the figure is standing
on clouds, with a sickle in one hand and a serpent coiled in a circle on
the left. The Mark of Jan Steels, Antwerp (p. 19), 1533-75, is regarded
by some bibliographers as the emblem of an altar, but “from the entire
absence of any ritual accessories, and the introduction of incongruous
figures (which no mediæval artist would have thought of representing),
it would appear to be merely a stone table.” Jacobus Bellaert, 1483-86,
was the first Haarlem printer, one of his earliest works being “Dat
liden ende die passie ons Heeren Jesu Christi,” which is dated December
10, 1483. Bellaert’s name does not appear in it, but his Mark at the end
permits of an easy identification, it being the same as that which
appears in his Dutch edition of “Glanvilla de Proprietatibus Rerum,”
1485: the arms above the Griffin are those of the city of Haarlem. One
of the most famous printing localities of the Low Countries was Leyden
(Lugdunum Batavorum), where the art was practised so early as 1483,
Heynricus Henrici, 1483-4, being one of the earliest, his Mark carrying
two shields, one of which bears the cross keys of Leyden. The Pelican is
an exceedingly rare element in Dutch and Flemish Printers’ Marks, one of
the very few exceptions being that of J. Destresius, Ypres, 1553, the
motto on the border reading “Sine sanguinis effusione non fit remissio.”
[Illustration: GODEFROY BACK.]
[Illustration: A. CÆSARIS.]
[Illustration: MICHAEL HILLENIUS.