practised in Germany, yet the art does not appear to have been so much
cultivated nor so highly prized in that country as in Italy. Between
1530 and 1550, when Antonio Fantuzzi, J. N. Vincentini, and other
Italians, were engaged in executing numerous chiaro-scuros after the
designs of such masters as Raffaele, Corregio, Parmegiano, Polidoro,
Beccafumi, and F. Salviati, the art appears to have been comparatively
abandoned by the wood engravers of Germany. The chiaro-scuros executed
in the latter country cannot generally for a moment bear a comparison,
either in point of design or execution, with those executed in Italy
during the same period. I have, however, seen one German cut executed in
this style, with the date 1543, which, for the number of the blocks from
which it is printed, and the delicacy of the impression in certain
parts, is, if genuine, one of the most remarkable of that period. As the
paper, however, seems comparatively modern, I am induced to suspect that
the date may be that of the painting or drawing, and that this
picture-print--for, though executed by the same process, it would be
improper to call it a chiaro-scuro--may have been the work of Ungher,
a German wood engraver, who executed some chiaro-scuros at Berlin about
seventy years ago. Whatever may be the date, however, or whoever may
have been the artist, it is one of the best executed specimens of
coloured block printing that I have ever seen.
This curious picture-print, including the border, is ten inches and
three quarters high by six inches and three quarters wide. The subject
is a figure of Christ; in his left hand he holds an orb emblematic of
his power, while the right is elevated as in the act of pronouncing a
benediction. His robe is blue, with the folds indicated by a darker
tint, and the border and lighter parts impressed with at least two
lighter colours. Above this robe there is a large red mantle, fastened
in front with what appears to be a jewel of three different colours,
ruby, yellow, and blue; the folds are of a darker colour; and the lights
are expressed by a kind of yellow, which has evidently been either
impressed, or laid on the paper with a brush, before the red colour of
the mantle, and which, from its glistening, seems to have been
compounded with some metallic substance like fine gold-dust. The border
of the print consists of a similar yellow, between plain black lines.
The face is printed in flesh colour of three tints, and the head is
surrounded with rays of glory, which appear like gilding. The engraving
of the face, and of the hair of the head and beard, is extremely well
executed, and much superior to anything that I have seen in wood-cuts
containing Ungher’s mark. The globe is blue, with the lights preserved,
intersected by light red and yellow lines; and the small cross at the
top is also yellow, like the light on the red mantle. The hands and feet
are expressed in their proper colours; the ground on which the Redeemer
stands is something between a lake and a fawn colour; and the ground of
the print, upwards from about an inch above the bottom, is of a lighter
blue than the robe. To the right, near the bottom, are the date and
mark, thus: [[1543]] The figure like a winged serpent resembles a mark
which was frequently used by Lucas Cranach, except that the serpent or
dragon of the latter appears less crooked, and usually has a ring in its
mouth. The letter underneath also appears rather more like an I than an
L. The drawing of the figure of Christ, however, is very much in the
style of Lucas Cranach, and I am strongly inclined to think that the
original painting or drawing was executed by him, whoever may have been
the engraver. There must have been at least ten blocks required for this
curious print, which, for clearness and distinctness in the colours, and
for delicacy of impression, more especially in the face, may challenge a
comparison not only with the finest chiaro-scuros of former times, but
also with the best specimens of coloured block-printing of the present
day.[VI-78]
[Illustration]
[Footnote VI-78: This interesting specimen of the combined arts of
wood engraving and printing formerly belonged to the late Mr.
Robert Branston, wood engraver, who executed several of the
chiaro-scuros, and imitations of coloured drawings, in Savage’s
work on Decorative Printing. It is now in the possession of his
son, Mr. Frederick Branston, who is of the same profession as his
father.]
In 1557, Hubert Goltzius, a painter, but better known as an author than
as an artist, published at Antwerp, in folio, a work containing
portraits, executed in chiaro-scuro, of the Roman emperors, from Julius
Cæsar to Ferdinand I.[VI-79] Descamps, in his work entitled “La Vie des
Peintres Flamands, Allemands et Hollandois,” says that those portraits,
which are all copied from medals, were “engraved on wood by a painter of
Courtrai, named Joseph Gietleughen;”[VI-80] and Papillon, who had
examined the work more closely, but not closely enough, says that the
outlines are etched, and that the two _rentrées_--the subsequent
impressions which give to the whole the appearance of a chiaro-scuro
drawing--are from blocks of wood engraved in _intaglio_. What Papillon
says about the outlines being etched is true; but a close inspection of
those portraits will afford any person acquainted with the process ample
proof of the “rentrées” being also printed from plates of metal in the
same manner as from engraved wood-blocks.
[Footnote VI-79: The title-page of this work is printed in three
colours,--black, sepia, and green. The black ornamental outlines
are from an etched plate; the sepia and green colours are printed
from wood-blocks. An edition of this work, enlarged by Gevartius,
with portraits in two colours, and entirely engraved on wood, was
printed at Antwerp in 1645.]
[Footnote VI-80: Tom. i. p. 129. Paris, 1753.]
Each of those portraits appears like an enlarged copy of a medal, and is
the result of three separate impressions; the first, containing the
outlines of the head, the ornaments, and the name, has been printed from
an etched plate of copper or some other metal, by means of a
copper-plate printing-press; and the two other impressions, over the
first, have also been from plates of metal, mounted on blocks of wood,
and printed by means of the common typographic printing-press. The
outlines of the head and of the letters forming the legend are black;
the field of the medal is a muddy kind of sepia; and the head and the
border, printed from the same surface and at the same time, are of a
lighter shade. The lights to be preserved have been cut in _intaglio_ in
the plates for the two “rentrées” in the same manner as on blocks of
wood for printing in chiaro-scuro. The marks of the pins by which the
two plates for the “rentrées” have been fastened to blocks of wood, to
raise them to a proper height, are very perceptible; in the field of the
medal they appear like circular points, generally in pairs; while round
the outer margin they are mostly of a square form. It is difficult to
conceive what advantage Goltzius might expect to derive by printing the
“rentrées” from metal plates; for all that he has thus produced could
have been more simply effected by means of wood-blocks, as practised up
to that time by all other chiaro-scuro engravers. Though those portraits
possess but little merit as chiaro-scuros, they are yet highly
interesting in the history of art, as affording the first instances of
etching being employed for the outlines of a chiaro-scuro, and of the
substitution, in surface-printing, of a plate of metal for a wood-block.
Goltzius’s manner of etching the outlines of a chiaro-scuro print was
frequently practised both by French and English artists about the middle
of the last century; and about 1722, Edward Kirkall engraved the
principal parts of his chiaro-scuros in mezzo-tint, and afterwards
printed a tint from a metal plate mounted on wood. In the present day
Mr. George Baxter has successfully applied the principle of engraving
the ground and the outlines of his subjects in aqua-tint; and, as in the
case of Hubert Goltzius and Kirkall, he sometimes uses a metal-plate
instead of a wood-block in surface-printing. In the picture-prints
executed by Mr. Baxter for the Pictorial Album, 1837, the tint of the
paper on which each imitative painting appears to be mounted, is
communicated from a smooth plate of copper, which receives the colour,
and is printed in the same manner as a wood-block.
Among the German artists who made designs for wood engravers from the
time of Durer to about 1590, Erhard Schön, Virgil Solis, Melchior
Lorich, and Jost Amman may be considered as the principal. They are all
frequently described as wood engravers from the circumstance of their
marks being found on the cuts which they undoubtedly designed, but most
certainly did not engrave. Erhard Schön chiefly resided at Nuremberg;
and some of the earliest cuts of his designing are dated 1528. In 1538
he published at Nuremberg a small treatise, in oblong quarto, on the
proportions of the human figure, for the use of students and young
persons.[VI-81] This work contains several wood-cuts, all coarsely
engraved, illustrative of the writer’s precepts; two or three of
them--where the heads and bodies are represented by squares and
rhomboidal figures--are extremely curious, though apparently not very
well adapted to improve a learner in the art of design. Another of the
cuts, where the proportions are illustrated by means of a figure
inscribed within a circle, is very like one of the illustrations
contained in Flaxman’s Lectures on Sculpture. Some cuts of
playing-cards, designed by Schön, are in greater request than any of his
other works engraved on wood, which, for the most part, have but little
to recommend them. He died about 1550.
[Footnote VI-81: The following is a copy of the title:
“Underweisung der Proportzion und Stellung der Possen, liegent und
stehent; abgestochen wie man das vor augen sieht, in dem puchlein,
durch Erhart Schon von Norrenberg; für die Jungen gesellen und
Jungen zu unterrichtung die zu der Kunst lieb tragen. In den druck
gepracht, 1538.”]
Virgil Solis, a painter, copper-plate engraver, and designer on wood,
was born at Nuremberg about 1514. The cuts which contain his mark are
extremely numerous; and, from their being mostly of small size, he is
ranked by Heineken with the “Little Masters.” Several of his cuts
display great fertility of invention; but though his figures are
frequently spirited and the attitudes good, yet his drawing is generally
careless and incorrect. As a considerable number of his cuts are of the
same kind as those of Bernard Solomon, it seems as if there had been a
competition at that time between the booksellers of Nuremberg and those
of Lyons for supplying the European market with illustrations of two
works of widely different character, to wit, the Bible, and Ovid’s
Metamorphoses,--Virgil Solis being retained for the German, and Bernard
Solomon for the French publishers. He designed the cuts in a German
edition of the Bible, printed in 1560; most of the portraits of the
Kings of France in a work published at Nuremberg in 1566; a series of
cuts for Esop’s fables; and the illustrations of an edition of Reusner’s
Emblems. Several cuts with the mark of Virgil Solis are to be found in
the first edition of Archbishop Parker’s Bible, printed by Richard
Jugge, folio, London, 1568. In the second edition, 1572, there are two
ornamented initial letters, apparently of his designing, which seem to
show that his sacred and profane subjects were liable to be confounded,
and that cuts originally designed for an edition of Ovid might by some
singular oversight be used in an edition of the Bible, although printed
under the especial superintendence of a Right Reverend Archbishop. In
the letter G, which forms the commencement of the first chapter of St.
Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews, the subject represented by the artist is
Leda caressed by Jupiter in the form of a swan; and in the letter T at
the commencement of the first chapter of the Epistle General of St.
John, the subject is Venus before Jove, with Cupid, Juno, Mars, Neptune,
and other Heathen deities in attendance.[VI-82]
[Footnote VI-82: This last letter contains the mark [[SA]], which
is to be found on some of the cuts in the editions of the Dance of
Death printed at Cologne, 1555-1572.]
A series of wood-cuts designed by Virgil Solis, illustrative of Ovid’s
Metamorphoses, was published at Frankfort, in oblong quarto, by George
Corvinus, Sigismund Feyerabend, and the heirs of Wigand Gallus, in 1569.
Each cut is surrounded by a heavy ornamental border; above each are four
verses in Latin, and underneath four in German, composed by Johannes
Posthius, descriptive of the subject. In the title-page,[VI-83] which is
both in Latin and in German, it is stated that they are
_designed_--_gerissen_--by Virgil Solis for the use and benefit of
painters, goldsmiths, and statuaries. It is thus evident that they were
not engraved by him; and in corroboration of this opinion it may be
observed that several of them, in addition to his mark, [Symbol], also
contain another, [Symbol], which is doubtless that of the wood engraver.
The latter mark occurs frequently in the cuts designed by Virgil Solis,
in the first edition of Archbishop Parker’s Bible.
[Footnote VI-83: The title is as follows: “Johan. Posthii
Germershemii Tetrasticha in Ovidii Metam. Lib. xv. Quibus
accesserunt Vergilii Solis figuræ elegantissimæ, primum in lucem
editæ.--Schöne Figuren, auss dem fürtrefflichen Poeten Ovidio,
allen Malern, Goldtschmiden, und Bildthauern, zu nutz und gutem
mit fleiss gerissen durch Vergilium Solis, und mit Teutschen
Reimen kürtzlich erkläret, dergleichein vormals im Druck nie
aussgangen, Durch Johan. Posthium von Germerssheim. M.D.LXIX.”]
Evelyn, in his Sculptura, has the following notice of this artist:
“Virgilius Solis graved also in wood _The story of the Bible_ and _The
mechanic arts_ in little; but for imitating those vile postures of
Aretine had his eyes put out by the sentence of the magistrate.” There
is scarcely a page of this writer’s works on art which does not contain
similar inaccuracies, and yet he is frequently quoted and referred to as
an authority. The “mechanic arts” to which Evelyn alludes were probably
the series of cuts designed by Jost Amman, and first published in
quarto, at Frankfort, in 1564; and the improbable story of Virgil Solis
having had his eyes put out for copying Julio Romano’s obscene designs,
engraved by Marc Antonio, and illustrated with sonnets by the scurrilous
ribald, Pietro Aretine, is utterly devoid of foundation. No such copies
have ever been mentioned by any well-informed writer on art, and there
is not the slightest evidence of Virgil Solis ever having been punished
in any manner by the magistrates of his native city, Nuremberg, where he
died in 1570.
Wood-cuts with the mark of Melchior Lorich are comparatively scarce. He
was a native of Flensburg in Holstein, and was born in 1527. He obtained
a knowledge of painting and copper-plate engraving at Leipsic, and
afterwards travelled with his master through some of the northern
countries of Europe. He afterwards visited Vienna, and subsequently
entered into the service of the Palsgrave Otho, in whose suite he
visited Holland, France, and Italy. In 1558 he went with the Imperial
ambassador to Constantinople, where he remained three years. His
principal works engraved on wood consist of a series of illustrations of
the manners and customs of the Turks, published about 1570. There is a
very clever cut, a Lady splendidly dressed, with his mark and the date
1551; it is printed on what is called a “broadside,” and underneath is a
copy of verses by Hans Sachs, the celebrated shoemaker and
_meistersänger_ of Nuremberg,[VI-84] entitled “_Eer und Lob einer schön
wolgezierten Frawen_”--The Honour and Praise of a beautiful well-dressed
woman. A large cut of the Deluge, in two sheets, is considered one of
the best of his designing. Among the copper-plates engraved by Melchior
Lorich, a portrait of Albert Durer, and two others, of the Grand Signior
and his favourite Sultana, are among the most scarce. The time of his
death is uncertain, but Bartsch thinks that he was still living in 1583,
as there are wood-cuts with his mark of that date.
[Footnote VI-84: Hans Sachs, whose poetical works might vie in
quantity with those of Lope Vega, was born at Nuremberg in 1494.
Notwithstanding the immense number of verses which he composed, he
did not trust to his profession of Meistersänger for the means of
living, but continued to carry on his business as a shoemaker till
his death, which happened in 1576. His verses were much admired by
his contemporaries; and between 1570 and 1579, a collection of his
works was published in five volumes folio. Several short pieces by
him were originally printed as “broadsides,” with an ornamental or
illustrative cut at the top.]
Jost Amman, one of the best designers on wood of the period in which he
lived, was born at Zurich in 1539, but removed to Nuremberg about
1560.[VI-85] His designs are more bold, and display more of the vigour
of the older German masters, than those of his contemporary Virgil
Solis. A series of cuts designed by him, illustrative of professions and
trades, was published in 1564, quarto, with the title “Hans Sachse
eigentliche Beschreibung aller Stände auf Erden--aller Künste und
Handwerker,” &c.--that is, Hans Sachs’s correct Description of all
Ranks, Arts, and Trades; and another edition in duodecimo, with the
descriptions in Latin, appeared in the same year.[VI-86] For the
correctness of the date of those editions I am obliged to rely on
Heineken, as I have never seen a copy of either; the earliest edition
with Hans Sachs’s descriptions that has come under my notice is dated
1574. In a duodecimo edition, 1568, and another of the same size, 1574,
the descriptions, by Hartman Schopper, are in Latin verse.[VI-87] This
is perhaps the most curious and interesting series of cuts, exhibiting
the various ranks and employments of men, that ever was published. Among
the higher orders, constituting what the Germans call the “_Lehre und
Wehr Stande_”--teachers and warriors--are the Pope, Emperor, King,
Princes, Nobles, Priests, and Lawyers; while almost every branch of
labour or of trade then known in Germany, from agriculture to
pin-making, has its representative. There are also not a few which it
would be difficult to reduce to any distinct class, as they are neither
trades nor honest professions. Of those heteroclytes is the “Meretricum
procurator--der Hurenweibel”--or, as Captain Dugald Dalgetty says, “the
captain of the Queans.”
[Footnote VI-85: Papillon, who appears to have been extremely
wishful to swell his catalogue of wood engravers, describes Jost
Amman of Zurich and Jost Amman of Nuremberg as two different
persons.]
[Footnote VI-86: Heineken, Idée Générale, p. 244.]
[Footnote VI-87: The following is the title of the edition of
1568;--that of 1574 is somewhat different. “ΠΑΝΟΠΛΙΑ omnium
Illiberalium mechanicarum aut sedentariarum artium, continens
quotquot unquam vel a veteribus, aut nostri etiam seculi
celebritate excogitari potuerunt, breviter et dilucide confecta:
carminum liber primus, tum mira varietate rerum vocabulorumque
novo more excogitatorum copia perquam utilis, lectuque jucundus.
Accesserunt etiam venustissimæ Imagines omnes omnium artificum
negociantes ad vivum lectori representantes, antehac nec visæ
nec unquam æditæ: per Hartman Schopperum, Novoforens. Noricum.
--Frankofurti ad Moenum, cum privelegio Cæsario, M.D.LXVIII.”]
The subject of the following cut, which is of the same size as the
original, is a _Briefmaler_,--literally, a card-painter, the name by
which the German wood engravers were known before they adopted the more
appropriate one of _Formschneider_. It is evident, that, at the time
when the cut was engraved, the two professions were distinct:[VI-88] we
here perceive the Briefmaler employed, not in engraving cuts, but
engaged in colouring certain figures by means of a _stencil_,--that is,
a card or thin plate of metal, out of which the intended figure is cut.
A brush charged with colour being drawn over the pierced card, as is
seen in the cut, the figure is communicated to the paper placed
underneath. The little shallow vessels perceived on the top of the large
box in front are the saucers which contain his colours. Near the window,
immediately to his right, is a pile of sheets which, from the figure of
a man on horseback seen impressed upon them, appear to be already
finished.
[Illustration]
[Footnote VI-88: The _Briefmalers_, though at that time evidently
distinct from the _Formschneiders_, still continued to _print_
wood-cuts. On several large wood-cuts with the dates 1553 and 1554
we find the words, “Gedrukt zu Nürnberg durch Hanns Glaser,
_Brieffmaler_.”]
The subject of the following cut, from the same work, is a
_Formschneider_, or wood engraver proper. He is apparently at work on a
block which he has before him; but the kind of tool which he employs is
not exactly like those used by English wood engravers of the present
day. It seems to resemble a small long-handled desk-knife; while the
tool of the modern wood engraver has a handle which is rounded at the
top in order to accommodate it to the palm of the hand. It is also never
held vertically, as it appears in the hand of the _Formschneider_. It
is, however, certain, from other woodcuts, which will be subsequently
noticed, that the wood engravers of that period were accustomed to use a
tool with a handle rounded at the top, similar to the graver used in the
present day.[VI-89]--The verses descriptive of the annexed cut are
translated from Hans Sachs.
[Illustration]
I am a wood-engraver good,
And all designs on blocks of wood
I with my graver cut so neat,
That when they’re printed on a sheet
Of paper white, you plainly view
The very forms the artist drew:
His drawing, whether coarse or fine,
Is truly copied line for line.
[Footnote VI-89: See the mark C. S. at page 413.]
Jost Amman died in 1591, and from the time of his settling at Nuremberg
to that of his decease he seems to have been chiefly employed in making
designs on wood for the booksellers of Nuremberg and Frankfort. He also
furnished designs for goldsmiths; and it is said that he excelled as a
painter on glass. The works which afford the best specimens of his
talents as a designer on wood are those illustrative of the costume of
the period, first published between 1580 and 1585 by S. Feyerabend at
Frankfort. One of those works contains the costumes of men of all ranks,
except the clergy, interspersed with the armorial bearings of the
principal families in Germany; another contains the costume of the
different orders of the priesthood of the church of Rome; and a third,
entitled Gynæceum sive Theatrum Mulierum, is illustrative of the costume
of women of all ranks in Europe. A work on hunting and fowling, edited
by J. A. Lonicerus, and printed in 1582, contains about forty excellent
cuts of his designing. A separate volume, consisting of cuts selected
from the four preceding works, and of a number of other cuts chiefly
illustrative of mythological subjects and of the costume of Turkey, was
published by Feyerabend about 1590. In a subsequent edition of this
work, printed in 1599, it is stated that the collection is published for
the especial benefit of painters and amateurs.[VI-90] Among the numerous
other cuts designed by him, the following may be mentioned:
illustrations for a Bible published at Frankfort 1565; a series of
subjects from Roman History, entitled Icones Livianæ, 1572; and the cuts
in an edition of Reynard the Fox. The works of Jost Amman have proved a
mine for succeeding artists; his figures were frequently copied by wood
engravers in France, Italy and Flanders; and even some modern English
paintings contain evidences of the artist having borrowed something more
than a hint from the figures of Jost Amman.
[Footnote VI-90: This work is entitled “Kunstbüchlein,” and
consists entirely of cuts without any explanatory letter-press.
The first cut consists of a group of heads, drawn and engraved
with great spirit. On what appears something like a slab of stone
or wood--most unmeaningly and awkwardly introduced--are Jost
Amman’s initials, I.A., towards the top, and lower down the mark,
[[MF]] which is doubtless that of the engraver. This mark, with a
figure of a graver underneath, occurs on several of the other
cuts. The three following marks, with a graver underneath each,
also occur: L. F. C.S. G. H. These facts are sufficient to prove
that Jost Amman was not the engraver of the cuts which he
designed. In the edition of 1599 the cuts are said to have been
_drawn_ by “the late most excellent and celebrated artist, Jost
Amman of Nuremberg.”]
Jost Amman was undoubtedly one of the best professional designers on
wood of his time; and his style bears considerable resemblance to that
of Hans Burgmair as exemplified in the Triumphs of Maximilian. Many of
his figures are well drawn; but even in the best of his subjects the
attitudes are somewhat affected and generally too violent; and this,
with an overstrained expression, makes his characters appear more like
actors in a theatre than like real personages. In the cuts of the horse
in the “Kunstbüchlein” the action of the animal is frequently
represented with great spirit: but in points of detail the artist is as
frequently incorrect. Some of his very best designs are to be found
among his equestrian subjects. His men generally have a good “seat,” and
his ladies seem to manage their heavy long-tailed steeds with great ease
and grace.
Several of the views of cities, in Sebastian Munster’s Cosmography--
first published in folio, at Basle, 1550--contain two marks, one of the
designer, and the other of the person by whom the subject was engraved,
the latter being frequently accompanied by a graver, thus: [H·H]; or
with two gravers of different kinds, thus: [·C·S·] This last mark, which
also occurs in Jost Amman’s Kunstbüchlein, is said to be that of
Christopher Stimmer, a brother of Tobias Stimmer, a Swiss artist, who is
generally described as a designer and engraver on wood. The cuts with
the former mark have been ascribed to Hans Holbein, but they bear not
the least resemblance to his style of design, and they have been
assigned to him solely on account of the letters corresponding with the
initials of his name. Professor Christ’s Dictionary of Monograms, and
Papillon’s Treatise on Wood-engraving, afford numerous instances of
marks being assigned to persons on no better grounds.
A writer, in discussing the question, “Were Albert Durer, Lucas Cranach,
Hans Burgmair, and other old German artists, the engravers or only the
designers of the cuts which bear their mark?” has been pleased to assert
that the mark of the actual engraver is usually distinguished by the
graver with which it is accompanied. This statement has been adopted and
further disseminated by others; and many persons who have not an
opportunity of judging for themselves, and who receive with implicit
credit whatever they find asserted in a Dictionary of Engravers, suppose
that from the time of Albert Durer, or even earlier, the figure of a
graver generally distinguishes the mark of the _formschneider_ or
engraver on wood. So far, however, from this being a general rule, I am
not aware of any wood-cut which contains a graver in addition to a mark
of an earlier date than those in Munster’s Cosmography, and the practice
which appears to have been first introduced about that time never became
generally prevalent. When the graver is thus introduced there can be no
doubt that it is intended to distinguish the mark of the engraver; but
as at least ninety-nine out of every hundred marks on cuts executed
between 1550 and 1600 are unaccompanied with a graver, it is exceedingly
doubtful in most cases whether the mark be that of the engraver or the
designer.
The wood-cuts in Munster’s Cosmography are generally poor in design and
coarse in execution. One of the best is that representing an encounter
of two armed men on horseback with the mark [Symbol], which also occurs
in some of the cuts in Gesner’s History of Animals, printed at Zurich,
1551-1558. This cut, as well as several others, is repeated in another
part of the book, in the manner of the Nuremberg Chronicle, where the
same portrait or the same view is used to represent several different
persons or places. The cuts are not precisely the same in every edition
of Munster’s work, which was several times reprinted between 1550 and
1570. Those which are substituted in the later editions are rather more
neatly engraved.
The present cut is copied from one at page 49 of the first edition,
where it is given as an illustration of a wonderful kind of tree said to
be found in Scotland, and from the fruit of which it was believed that
geese were produced. Munster’s account of this wonderful tree and its
fruit is as follows; “In Scotland are found trees, the fruit of which
appears like a ball of leaves. This fruit, falling at its proper time
into the water below, becomes animated, and turns to a bird which they
call the _tree goose_. This tree also grows in the island of Pomona [the
largest of the Orkneys], not far distant from Scotland towards the
north. As old cosmographers--especially Saxo Grammaticus--mention this
tree, it is not to be considered as a fiction of modern authors. Aeneas
Sylvius also notices this tree as follows: ‘We have heard that there was
a tree formerly in Scotland, which, growing by the margin of a stream,
produced fruit of the shape of ducks; that such fruit, when nearly ripe,
fell, some into the water and some on land. Such as fell on land
decayed, but such as fell into the water quickly became animated,
swimming below, and then flying into the air with feathers and wings.
When in Scotland, having made diligent inquiry concerning this matter of
King James, a square-built man, and very fat,[VI-91] we found that
miracles always kept receding;--this wonderful tree is not found in
Scotland, but in the Orcades.’”
[Footnote VI-91: It is uncertain if James I. or James II. be
meant. According to Sir Walter Scott, Aeneas Sylvius, afterwards
Pope Pius II, visited Scotland in 1448, when James II.--if
Chalmers be correct, Caledonia, vol. i. p. 831,--was scarcely
nineteen, and when his appearance was not likely to correspond
with the learned prelate’s description,--“hominem quadratum et
multa pinguedine gravem.”]
[Illustration]
The bird said to be the produce of this tree is the “Bernacle Goose,
Clakis, or Tree Goose” of Bewick; and the pretended _tree_ from which it
was supposed to be produced was undoubtedly a testaceous insect,
a species of which, frequently found adhering to ships’ bottoms, is
described under the name of “Lepas _Anatifera_” by Linnæus, who thus
commemorates in the trivial name the old opinion respecting its winged
and feathered fruit. William Turner, a native of Morpeth in
Northumberland, one of the earliest writers on British Ornithology,
notices the story of the Bernacle Goose being produced from “something
like a fungus proceeding from old wood lying in the sea.” He says it is
mentioned by Giraldus Cambrensis in his description of Ireland, and that
the account of its being generated in this wonderful manner is generally
believed by the people inhabiting the sea-coasts of England, Scotland,
and Ireland. “But,” says Turner, “as it seemed not safe to trust to
popular report, and as, on account of the singularity of the thing,
I could not give entire credit to Giraldus, I, when thinking of the
subject of which I now write, asked a certain clergyman, named
Octavianus, by birth an Irishman, whom I knew to be worthy of credit, if
he thought the account of Giraldus was to be believed. He, swearing by
the Gospel, declared that what Giraldus had written about the generation
of this bird was most true; that he himself had seen and handled the
young unformed birds, and that if I should remain in London a month or
two, he would bring me some of the brood.”[VI-92] In Lobel and Pena’s
Stirpium Adversaria Nova, folio, London, 1570, there is a cut of the
“Britannica Concha Anatifera,” growing on a stalk from a rock, with
figures of ducks or geese in the water below. In the text the popular
belief of a kind of goose being produced from the shell of this insect
is noticed, but the writer declines pronouncing any opinion till he
shall have had an opportunity of visiting Scotland and judging for
himself. Gerard, in his Herbal, London, 1597, has an article on the
_Goose-tree_; and he says that its native soil is a small island, called
the Pile of Fouldres, half a mile from the main land of Lancashire.
Ferrer de Valcebro, a Spanish writer, in a work entitled “El Gobierno
general hallado en las Aves,” with coarse wood-cuts, quarto, printed
about 1680, repeats, with sundry additions, the story of the Bernacle,
or, as he calls it, the Barliata, being produced from a tree; and he
seems rather displeased that his countrymen are not disposed to yield
much faith to such singularities, merely because they do not occur in
their own country.
[Footnote VI-92: “Avium præcipuarum, quarum apud Plinium et
Aristotelem mentio est, brevis et succincta historia. Per Dn.
Gulielmum Turnerum, artium et medicinæ doctorem,” 8vo. Coloniæ,
M.D.XLIIII, fol. 9 _b_.]
[Illustration]
There are two portraits of Erasmus in the first edition of Munster’s
Cosmography, one at page 130, and the other, with the mark [[HRMD]], at
page 407. The latter, as the author especially informs the reader, was
engraved after a portrait by Holbein in the possession of Bonifacius
Amerbach. The present is a reduced copy of a cut at page 361 of Henry
Petri’s edition, 1554. On a stone, near the bottom, towards the left, is
seen a mark[VI-93]--probably that of the artist who made the drawing on
the block--consisting of the same letters as the double mark just
noticed as occurring in the portrait of Erasmus, H.R. M.D. A cut of the
same subject, William Tell about to shoot at the apple on his son’s
head, was given in the first edition, but the design is somewhat
different and the execution more coarse. The cut from which the
preceding is copied may be ranked among the best in the work.
[Footnote VI-93: In Professor Christ’s Dictionary of Monograms
this mark is ascribed, though doubtfully, to “Manuel Deutsch.” It
is certainly not the mark of Nicholas Emanuel Deutsch of Bern, for
he died several years before 1548, the date on several of the cuts
with the mark H.R. M.D. in Munster’s Cosmography, and which date
evidently relates to the year in which the artist made the
drawing. There can be no doubt that those four letters belong to a
single name, for some of the cuts in which they occur also contain
the mark of an engraver.]
Though Sebastian Munster, in a letter, probably written in 1538,
addressed to Joachim Vadianus, alludes to an improvement which he and
his printer had made in the mode of printing maps, and to a project for
casting complete words, yet the maps which appear in his Cosmography,
with the outlines, rivers, and mountains engraved on wood, and the names
inserted in type, are certainly not superior to the generality of other
maps executed wholly on wood about the same period.[VI-94] Joachim
Vadianus, to whom Munster writes, and of whose assistance he wished to
avail himself in a projected edition of Ptolemy, was an eminent scholar
of that period, and had published an edition, in 1522, of Pomponius
Mela, with a commentary and notes. The passage in Munster’s letter,
wherein maps are mentioned, is to the following effect: “I would have
sent you an impression of one of the Swiss maps which I have had printed
here, if Froschover had not informed me of his having sent you one from
Zurich. If this mode of printing should succeed tolerably well, and when
we shall have acquired a certain art of _casting whole words_, Henri
Petri, Michael Isengrin, and I have thought of printing Ptolemy’s
Cosmography; not of so great a size as it has hitherto been frequently
printed, but in the form in which your Annotations on Pomponius appear.
In the maps we shall insert only the names of the principal cities, and
give the others alphabetically in some blank space,--for instance, in
the margin or any adjoining space beyond the limits of the map.”[VI-95]
The art of casting whole words, alluded to in this passage, appears to
have been something like an attempt at what has been called “logographic
printing;”[VI-96] though it is not unlikely that those “whole words”
might be the names of countries and places intended to be inserted in a
space cut out of the block on which the map was engraved. By thus
inserting the names, either cast as complete words, or composed of
separate letters, the tedious process of engraving a number of letters
on wood was avoided, and the pressman enabled to print the maps at one
impression. In some of the earlier maps where the names are printed from
types, the letters were not inserted in spaces cut out of the block, but
were printed from a separate form by means of a “re-iteration” or second
impression.[VI-97] In illustration of what Munster says about a certain
art of casting whole words,--“_artem aliquam fundendarum integrarum
dictionum_,”--the following extract is given from Dr. Dibdin’s
Bibliographical Tour, volume iii. page 102, second edition. “What think
you of undoubted proofs of STEREOTYPE PRINTING in the middle of the
sixteenth century? It is even so. What adds to the whimsical puzzle is,
that these pieces of metal, of which the surface is composed of types,
fixed and immovable, are sometimes inserted in wooden blocks, and
introduced as titles, mottoes, or descriptions of the subjects cut upon
the blocks. Professor May [of Augsburg] begged my acceptance of a
specimen or two of the types thus fixed upon plates of the same metal.
They rarely exceeded the height of four or five lines of text, by about
four or five inches in length. I carried away, with his permission, two
proofs (not long ago pulled) of the same block containing this
intermixture of stereotype and wood-block printing.”
[Footnote VI-94: A map of Russia, engraved wholly on wood, in a
work entitled “Commentari della Moscovia e parimente della
Russia,” &c. translated from the Latin of Sigmund, Baron von
Herberstein, printed at Venice, 4to. 1550, is much superior in
point of appearance to the best in the work of Munster. This map,
which is of folio size, appears to have been constructed by
“Giacomo Gastaldo, Piamontese, Cosmographo in Venetia.” The work
also contains six wood-cuts, which afford some curious specimens
of Russian and Tartar arms and costume.]
[Footnote VI-95: Philologicarum Epistolarum Centuria una, ex
Bibliotheca M. H. Goldasti, p. 165. 8vo. Francofurti, 1610.]
[Footnote VI-96: According to this method, certain words, together
with radices and terminations of frequent occurrence, were cast
entire, and not in separate letters, and placed in cases in such
an order that the compositor could as “readily possess himself of
the Type of a word as of the Type of a single letter.” This
method, for which a patent was obtained, is explained in a
pamphlet entitled “An Introduction to Logography: or the Art of
Arranging and Composing for Printing with Words entire, their
Radices and Terminations, instead of single Letters. By Henry
Johnson: London, printed Logographically, and sold by J. Walter,
bookseller, Charing Cross, and J. Sewell, Cornhill,
M.DCC.LXXXIII.” Several works were printed in this manner, and
among others an edition of Anderson’s History of Commerce, 4 vols.
4to. 1787-1789, by John Walter, at the Logographic Press,
Printing-House-Square, Blackfriars. Logography has long been
abandoned. The following account of this art is given in H. G.
Bohn’s Lecture on Printing, pp. 88, 89. “Something akin to
stereotyping is another mode of printing called Logography,
invented by the late Mr. Walter, of the _Times_, in 1783, and for
which he took out a patent. This means a system of printing from
type cast in words instead of single letters, which it was thought
would save time and corrections when applied to newspapers, but it
was not found to answer. A joke of the time was a supposed order
to the typefounder for some words of frequent occurrence, which
ran thus:--‘Please send me a hundred-weight, sorted, of murder,
fire, dreadful robbery, atrocious outrage, fearful calamity,
alarming explosion, melancholy accident; an assortment of
honourable member, whig, tory, hot, cold, wet, dry; half-a-hundred
weight, made up in pounds, of butter, cheese, beef, mutton, tripe,
mustard, soap, rain, &c.; and a few devils, angels, women, groans,
hisses, &c.’ This method of printing did not succeed: for if
twenty-four letters will give six hundred sextillions of
combinations, no printing office could keep a sufficient
assortment of even popular words.”]
[Footnote VI-97: See an edition of Ptolemy, printed at Venice by
Jacobus Pentius de Leucho, in 1511, previously noticed at page
203.]
As the engraving of the letters in maps executed on wood--or indeed on
any other material--is, when the names of many places are given, by far
the most tedious and costly part of the process, the plan of inserting
them in type by means of holes pierced in the block, as adopted in
Munster’s Cosmography, was certainly a great saving of labour; yet on
comparing the maps in this work with those in Ptolemy’s Cosmography,
printed by Leonard Holl, at Ulm, 1482, and with others engraved in the
early part of the sixteenth century, it is impossible not to perceive
that the art of wood engraving, as applied to the execution of such
works, had undergone no improvement: with the exception of the letters,
the maps in Holl’s Ptolemy--the earliest that were engraved on
wood--are, in point of appearance, equal to those in the work of
Munster, published about eighty years later. Considering that the
earliest printed maps--those in an edition of Ptolemy, printed by Arnold
Bukinck, at Rome, 1478[VI-98]--are from copper-plates, it seems rather
surprising that, until about 1570, no further attempt should have been
made to apply the art of engraving on copper to this purpose. In the
latter year a collection of maps, engraved on copper,[VI-99] was
published at Antwerp under the superintendence of Abraham Ortelius; and
so great was their excellence when compared with former maps executed on
wood, that the business of map engraving was within a few years
transferred almost exclusively to engravers on copper. In 1572 a map
engraved on copper was printed in England, in the second edition of
Archbishop Parker’s Bible. It is of folio size, and the country
represented is the Holy Land. Within an ornamented tablet is the
following inscription: “Graven bi Humfray Cole, goldsmith, an English
man born in y^e north, and pertayning to y^e mint in the Tower. 1572.”
In Walpole’s Catalogue of Engravers the portraits engraved on copper of
Queen Elizabeth, the Earl of Leicester, and Lord Burleigh, which appear
in the first edition of Archbishop Parker’s Bible, 1568,[VI-100] are
ascribed to Humphrey Cole, apparently on no better ground than that his
name appears as the engraver of the map, which is given in the second.
If Cole were really the engraver of those portraits, he was certainly
entitled to a more favourable notice[VI-101] than he receives from the
fastidious compiler of the “Catalogue of Engravers who have been born or
resided in England;” for, considering _when_ and _where_ they were
executed, the engraver is entitled to rank at least as high as George
Vertue. In fact, the portrait of Leicester, considered merely as a
specimen of engraving, without regard to the time and place of its
execution, will bear a comparison with more than one of the portraits
engraved by Vertue upwards of a hundred and fifty years later.
[Footnote VI-98: Some account of this work is given at page 200.]
[Footnote VI-99: At page 204 it is stated, on the authority of
Breitkopf, that those maps were engraved by Ægidius Diest.
Ortelius himself says in the preface that they were engraved by
“Francis Hogenberg, Ferdinand and Ambrose Arsens, and others.”]
[Footnote VI-100: The portrait of Queen Elizabeth appears on the
title; the Earl of Leicester’s is prefixed to the Book of Joshua;
and Lord Burleigh’s is given, with a large initial B, at the
beginning of the first psalm. In the second edition, 1572, the
portrait of Lord Burleigh is omitted, and the impressions of the
other two are much inferior to those in the first edition in
consequence of the plates being worn. Many of the cuts in the
second edition are quite different from those in the first, and
generally inferior to the cuts for which they are substituted.]
[Footnote VI-101: “Humphrey Cole, as he says himself, was born in
the North of England, and _pertayned to the mint in the Tower_,
1572. I suppose he was one of the engravers that _pertayned_ to
Archbishop Parker, for this edition was called Matthew Parker’s
Bible. I hope the flattery of the favourites was the incense of
the engraver!” Catalogue of Engravers, p. 16. Edit. 1794.--Walpole
does not appear to have paid the least attention to the engraver’s
merits--supposing, as he does, the portraits to have been executed
by him:--he sneers at him because he had engraved certain
portraits for a _Bible_, and because he was supposed to have been
patronised by a _bishop_. A more liberal writer on art would have
praised Parker, although he were an _archbishop_, for his
patronage of a native engraver.]
The advantages of copper-plate engraving for the purpose of executing
maps, as exemplified in the work of Ortelius, appear to have been
immediately appreciated in England, and this country is one of the first
that can boast of a collection of provincial or county maps engraved on
copper. A series of maps of all the counties of England and Wales, and
of the adjacent islands, were engraved, under the superintendence of
Christopher Saxton, between 1573 and 1579, and published at London, in a
folio volume, in the latter year. Though the greater number of those
maps were the work of Flemish engravers, eight, at least, were engraved
by two Englishmen, Augustine Ryther and Nicholas Reynolds.[VI-102] They
appear to have been all drawn by Christopher Saxton, who lived at
Tingley, near Leeds. Walpole says, that “he was servant to Thomas
Sekeford, Esq. Master of the Court of Wards,” the gentleman at whose
expense they were engraved. He also states that many of them were
engraved by Saxton himself; but this I consider to be extremely
doubtful. In his account of early English copper-plate engravers,
Walpole is frequently incorrect: he mentions Humphrey Lhuyd--an author
who wrote a short description of Britain, printed at Cologne in
1572[VI-103]--as the _engraver_ of the map of England in the collection
of Ortelius; and he includes Dr. William Cuningham, a physician of
Norwich, in his catalogue of engravers, without the slightest reason
beyond the mere fact, that a book entitled “The Cosmographical Glasse,”
written by the Doctor, and printed in 1559, contains several
_wood-cuts_. He might, with equal justice, have placed Archbishop Parker
in his catalogue, and asserted that some of the _plates_ in the Bible
were “engraved by his own hand.”
[Footnote VI-102: “Augustinus Ryther, _Anglus_,” occurs on the
maps of Cumberland and Westmorland, Gloucester, and Yorkshire.
Ryther afterwards kept a bookseller’s shop in Leadenhall-street.
He engraved some maps and charts, which were published about 1588.
On the map of the county of Hertford, Reynolds’s name occurs thus:
“Nicholas Reynoldus, Londinensis, sculpsit.” Several of those maps
were engraved by Remigius Hogenberg, one of the engravers who are
said to have been employed by Archbishop Parker in his palace at
Lambeth.]
[Footnote VI-103: This little work, entitled “Commentarioli
Britannicæ Descriptionis Fragmentum,” was sent by the author to
Ortelius, and the prefatory address is dated Denbigh, in North
Wales, 30th August 1568. A translation of it, under the title of a
“Breviary of Britain,” was printed at London in 1573.--Lhuyd had
only furnished Ortelius with materials for the construction of the
map of England.]
In connexion with the preceding account of the earliest maps executed in
England on copper, it perhaps may not be unnecessary to briefly notice
here the introduction of copper-plate engraving into this country.
According to Herbert, in his edition of Ames’s Typographical
Antiquities, the frontispiece of a small work entitled “Galenus de
Temperamentis,” printed at Cambridge, 1521, is the earliest specimen of
copper-plate engraving that is to be found in any book printed in
England. The art, however, supposing that the plate was really engraved
and printed in this country, appears to have received no encouragement
on its first introduction, for after this first essay it seems to have
lain dormant for nearly twenty years. The next earliest specimens appear
in the first edition of a work usually called “Raynalde’s Birth of
Mankind,” printed at London in 1540.[VI-104] This work, which is a
treatise on the obstetric art, contains, when perfect, three plates,
illustrative of the subject. Not having had an opportunity of seeing any
one of these three plates nor the frontispiece to “Galenus de
Temperamentis,” I am obliged to trust to Herbert for the fact of their
being engraved on copper. In the third volume of his edition of Ames,
page 1411, there is a fac-simile of the frontispiece to the Cambridge
book; and in the Preliminary Disquisition on Early Engraving and
Ornamental Printing, prefixed to Dr. Dibdin’s edition of the
Typographical Antiquities, will be found a fac-simile, engraved on wood,
of one of the plates in Raynalde’s Birth of Mankind. In an edition of
the latter work, printed in 1565, the “byrthe figures” are not engraved
on copper, but on wood.
[Footnote VI-104: The name of “Thomas Raynalde, Physition,” is not
to be found in the edition of 1540. The title of the work is, “The
byrth of Mankynd, newly translated out of Latin into Englysshe. In
the which is entreated of all suche thynges the which chaunce to
women in theyr labor,” &c. At folio vi. there is an address from
Richard Jonas, “Unto the most gracious, and in all goodnesse most
excellent vertuous Lady Quene Katheryne, wyfe and most derely
belovyd spouse unto the moste myghty sapient Christen prynce,
Kynge Henry the VIII.”--This “most excellent vertuous lady” was
_Catherine Howard_. The imprint at the end of the work is as
follows: “Imprynted at London, by T. R, Anno Domini, M.CCCCC.XL.”
Raynalde’s name first appears in the second edition, 1545. Between
1540 and 1600 there were at least eight editions of this work
printed in London.]
A work printed in London by John Hereford, 1545, contains several
unquestionable specimens of copper-plate engraving. It is of folio size,
and the title is as follows: “Compendiosa totius Anatomiæ delineatio ære
exarata, per Thomam Geminum.” The ornamental title-page, with the arms
of Henry VIII. towards the centre, is engraved on copper, and several
anatomical subjects are executed in the same manner. Gemini, who is
believed to have been the engraver of those plates, was not a native of
this country.[VI-105] In a dedication to Henry VIII, he says that in his
work he had followed Andrew Vesalius of Brussels; and he further
mentions that in the year before he had received orders from the King to
have the plates printed off [_excudendas_]. A second edition, dedicated
to Edward VI, appeared in 1553; and a third, dedicated to Queen
Elizabeth, in 1559.[VI-106] In the last edition the Royal Arms on the
title-page are effaced, and the portrait of Queen Elizabeth engraved in
their stead. Traces of the former subject are, however, still visible,
and the motto, “Dieu et mon Droit,” has been allowed to remain. One of
the engravings in this work affords a curious instance of the original
plate of copper having been either mended or enlarged by joining another
piece to it. Even in the first edition, the zigzag line where the two
pieces are joined, and the forms of the little _cramps_ which hold them
together, are visible, and in the last they are distinctly apparent.
[Footnote VI-105: At the end of the dedication to Henry VIII. he
signs himself “Thomas Geminus, Lysiensis.”]
[Footnote VI-106: In the edition of 1559 there is a large
wood-cut--“Interiorum corporis humani partium viva
delineatio”--with the mark R. S. and a graver underneath. In this
cut the interior parts of the body are impressed on separate
slips, which are pasted, by one edge, at the side of the figure.
Those slips on being raised show the different parts as they occur
on dissection.]
The earliest portrait engraved on copper, printed singly, in this
country, and not as an illustration of a book, is that of Archbishop
Parker engraved by Remigius Hogenberg. It is a small print four and a
half inches high by three and a half wide. At the corners are the arms
of Canterbury, impaled with those of Parker; the archbishop’s arms
separately; a plain shield, with a cross and the letters [[IX]]; and the
arms of Archbishop Cranmer. The portrait is engraved in an oval, round
the border of which is the following inscription: “Mūdus transit, et
cupiscētia ejus. Anno Domini 1572, ætatis suæ Anno 69. Die mensis
Augusti sexto.” In an impression, now before me, from the original
plate, the date and the archbishop’s age are altered to 1573 and 70, but
the marks of the ciphers erased are quite perceptible. The portrait of
the archbishop is a half-length; he is seated at a table, on which are a
bell, a small coffer, and what appears to be a stamp. A Bible is lying
open before him, and on one of the pages is inscribed in very small
letters the following passage from the VI. chapter of Micah, verse 8:
“Indicabo tibi, o homo, quid sit bonum, et quid Deus requirat a te,
utique facere judicium, et diligere misericordiam, et solicitum ambulare
cum Deo tuo.” The engraver’s name, “_R. Berg f._,” appears at the bottom
of the print to the right: a cross line from the R to the B indicates
the abbreviation of the surname, which, written at length, was
_Hogenberg_. Caulfield, speaking of this engraving in his
Calcographiana, page 4, 1814, says,--“The only impression supposed to be
extant is in the library at Lambeth Palace; but within the last two
years, Mr. Woodburn, of St. Martin’s Lane, purchased a magnificent
collection of portraits, among which was a very fine one of Parker.”
The number of books, containing copper-plate engravings, published in
England between 1559 and 1600, is extremely limited; and the following
list will perhaps be found to contain one or two more than have been
mentioned by preceding writers: 1. Pena and Lobel’s Stirpium Adversaria
Nova, folio, 1570,--ornamented title-page, with the arms of England at
the top, and a small map towards the bottom:--the ornaments surrounding
the map are very beautifully engraved. 2. Archbishop Parker’s Bible,
1568-1572, with the portraits, previously noticed at page 419.
3. Saxton’s Maps, with the portrait of Queen Elizabeth on the title,
1579. 4. Broughton’s Concent of Scripture, 1591,--engraved title, and
four other plates. 5. Translation of Ariosto by Sir John Harrington,
1591,--engraved title-page, containing portraits of the author and
translator, and forty-six other plates. 6. R. Haydock’s Translation of
Lomazzo’s Treatise on Painting and Architecture, Oxford, 1598,--engraved
title-page, containing portraits of Lomazzo and Haydock, and several
very indifferent plates, chiefly of architecture and figures in outline.
Walpole mentions a plate of the arms of Sir Christopher Hatton on the
title-page of the second part of Wagenar’s Mariner’s Mirrour, printed in
1588, and the plates in a work entitled “A True Report of the
Newfoundland of Virginia,” all engraved by Theodore de Bry. The first of
these works I have not been able to obtain a sight of;[VI-107] and the
second cannot properly be included in a list of works containing
copper-plates published in England previous to 1600;[VI-108] for though
it appeared in 1591, it was printed at Frankfort. In the reigns of James
and Charles I, copper-plate engraving was warmly patronised in England,
and several foreign engravers, as in the reign of Elizabeth, were
induced to take up their abode in this country. In the first edition of
Chambers’ Cyclopedia, it is stated that the art of copper-plate
engraving was brought to this country from Antwerp by Speed the
historian,--an error which is pointed out by Walpole: the writer it
seems had not been aware of any earlier copper-plates printed in England
than Speed’s maps, which were chiefly executed by Flemish engravers.
[Footnote VI-107: In Herbert’s edition of the Typographical
Antiquities, vol. iii. p. 1681, both parts of this work are said
to have engraved titles, and the arms of Sir C. Hatton are said to
occur at the back of the title to the first part. The work
contains twenty-two maps and charts, probably copied from the
original Dutch edition of Wagenar, who was a native of Enchuysen.
There is no printer’s name in the English edition.]
[Footnote VI-108: Walpole erroneously states that “Broughton’s
book was not printed till 1600,” and he says that “the _cuts_ were
probably engraved by an English artist named William Rogers.” The
mark [[WR]] is to be found on some of the plates of the edition of
1600, but it is to be observed that they are not the same as those
in the edition of 1591. The _first_ edition of the work was
printed in 1588.]
[Illustration:
Ἡ ΜΕΓΑΛΗ ΕΥΔΑΙΜΟΝΙΑ ΟΥΔΕΝΙ ΦΘΟΝΕΙΝ / ÆTATIS 28]
Dr. William Cuningham, whom Walpole describes as an engraver, was a
physician practising at Norwich; and his book, entitled The
Cosmographical Glasse,[VI-109] some of the _plates_ of which are said to
have been “engraved by the doctor’s own hand,” was printed at London by
John Day in 1559. It contains no _plates_, properly speaking, for the
engravings are all from wood-blocks. At the foot of the ornamental
title-page, and in a large bird’s-eye view of Norwich, is the mark I. B.
F, which, from something like a tool for engraving, between the B. and F
in the original, is most likely that of the engraver. The principal cut
is a portrait of the author, a fac-simile of which is given in the
opposite page.
[Footnote VI-109: The following is the title of this work: “The
Cosmographical Glasse, conteinyng the pleasant Principles of
Cosmographie, Geographie, Hydrographie or Navigation. Compiled by
William Cuningham, Doctor in Physicke. Excussum Londini in
officina Joan. Daii, Anno 1559.
In this Glasse, if you will beholde
The starry skie and yearth so wide,
The seas also, with the windes so colde,
Yea, and thy selfe all these to guide:
What this Type mean first learne a right,
So shall the gayne thy travaill quight.”
The “_Type_” mentioned in these verses relates to the various
allegorical and other figures in the engraved title-page.]
[Illustration]
[Illustration: A]
It is much more likely that some of those cuts were engraved by the
printer of the book, John Day, than by the author, Dr. Cuningham; for
the initials I. D. appear on a cut at the end of the book,--a skeleton
extended on a tomb, with a tree growing out of it--and also on two or
three of the large ornamental letters. John Day, in a book printed by
him in 1567, says that the Saxon characters used in it were _cut_ by
himself. The cut on page 425 and the three following are specimens of
some of the large ornamental letters which occur in the Cosmographical
Glasse. The first, the letter D, inclosing the arms of Lord Robert
Dudley, afterwards Earl of Leicester, to whom the work is dedicated.
The second, the letter A, Silenus on an ass, accompanied by satyrs; the
mark, a C with a small I within the curve, is perceived near the bottom,
to the right.[VI-110] The third, the letter I, with a military commander
taking the angles between three churches; and the mark I. D. at the
bottom to the left. The fourth, the letter T, a ship with a naked figure
as pilot, preceded by Neptune on a dolphin. A mark, H, is perceived in
the right-hand corner, at the bottom.
[Footnote VI-110: This mark, which occurs in two other cuts of
large letters in the Cosmographical Glasse, is also to be found on
a large ornamented letter in Robert Record’s Castle of Knowledge,
folio, printed at London, by Reginald Wolfe, 1556. This work, like
that of Cuningham, is a treatise on Geography. A mark, I. C., with
a graver between the letters, occurs frequently in cuts which
ornament the margins of a work entitled “A Book of Christian
Prayers,” &c. 4to. first printed by John Day in 1569. It is
usually called “Queen Elizabeth’s Prayer Book.” In Herbert’s
edition of the Typographical Antiquities it is erroneously stated
that such of the cuts as relate to the History of Christ are
“after Albert Durer and his wife, _Agnes Frey_.” They are _not_
copied from any cuts designed by Albert Durer, and his wife most
certainly neither drew nor engraved on wood. It is also
incorrectly stated “that a Dance of Death, in the same work, is
after Hans Holbein.”--The cuts in this work are very unequal in
point of execution. The best are those of the Senses--without any
mark--Sight, Hearing, Taste, Smelling, and Touch. A mark not
unlike that in the letter A, from Cuningham’s Cosmographical
Glass, occurs on several of the smaller cuts.]
[Illustration: I]
[Illustration: T]
Of all the books printed in England in the reigns of Queen Mary and
Queen Elizabeth, those from the press of John Day generally contain the
best executed wood-cuts; and even though he might not be the engraver of
the cuts which contain his initials, yet it cannot be doubted that he
possessed a much better taste in such matters than any other English
printer of his age. Some of the large ornamental letters in works
printed by him are much superior to anything of the kind that had
previously appeared in England. In the “Booke of Christian Prayers”
printed by John Daye 1569, which goes by the name of “Queen Elizabeth’s
Prayer Book,” there is a portrait of her Majesty, kneeling upon a superb
cushion, with elevated hands, in prayer, of which the following is a
fac-simile. The book is decorated with wood-cut borders of considerable
spirit and beauty, representing, among other things, some of the
subjects of Holbein’s Dance of Death.
[Illustration]
Our next cut is a copy, slightly reduced, of a large letter, C, at the
commencement of the dedication of Fox’s Acts and Monuments to Queen
Elizabeth, in the edition printed by Day in 1576. The Queen, appearing
more juvenile than she is usually represented, is seen seated on a
throne, attended by three persons, supposed to be intended for one of
her council, John Day, the printer, and John Fox, the author of the
work. A cherub, with an immense cornucopia over his shoulder, holds a
rose and a lily in one hand, and with the other supports the arms of
England; while underneath a representation of the Pope is introduced,
holding in his hands the broken keys.[VI-111]
[Illustration]
[Footnote VI-111: This work contains a considerable number of
wood-cuts, all undoubtedly designed and engraved in England. Two
of the best are Henry VIII, attended by his council, giving his
sanction to the publication of the Bible in English, with the mark
I. F.; and a view of Windsor Castle, with the mark M. D. Both
these cuts are in the second volume of the edition of 1576.]
Though it be beyond the plan of the present work to trace the progress
of the various kinds of large ornamental letters engraved on wood that
have been from time to time introduced by the principal German, French,
Italian, and English printers from the invention of typography, it may
not be unnecessary to say a few words on this subject. In the earliest
works of the German printers, as the type was a close imitation of the
handwriting of the period, as used in Bibles and Missals, the large
ornamental letters occasionally introduced are distinguished by their
flourishes and grotesque work extending on the margin both above and
below the body of the letter, as is frequently seen in illumined
manuscripts of the period. Large initial letters of this kind are not
unfrequent in early French works; but are comparatively scarce in books
printed in England, where a letter, engraved on a square block,
appearing, with the ornaments, white on a black ground, was adopted
shortly after the introduction of printing by Caxton.[VI-112] As the
capitals of the Roman character used in Italy did not admit of the
flourishes which accorded so well with the curves of Gothic or German
capitals, the printers of that country, towards the end of the fifteenth
century, began to introduce flowers, figures of men, birds, and
quadrupeds, as back-grounds to their large initial letters. Between 1520
and 1530 this mode of ornamenting their large Roman letters was in great
repute with the printers of Basle, Geneva, and Zurich, and to this taste
we owe the small alphabet of the Dance of Death. Subsequently the
Italian wood engravers, employed by the printers, carried this style of
ornament a step further by introducing landscapes as well as figures to
form a back-ground to the letter. The following specimen of letter thus
ornamented is from a work printed by Giolito at Venice about 1550. The
large capitals, in Cuningham’s Cosmographical Glasse, were doubtless
suggested by Italian letters in the same taste.
[Illustration]
[Footnote VI-112: Dr. Dibdin, in his Preliminary Disquisition on
Early Engraving and Ornamental Printing, in his edition of Ames
and Herbert’s Typographical Antiquities, has given several curious
specimens of large ornamented capitals.]
The borders which appear in the title-pages of Italian books of this
period, and more especially in those printed at Venice, frequently
display considerable excellence both in design and execution. They are
generally much lighter and more varied in design than the borders in
German books; and cross-hatching, which is seldom seen in Italian
wood-cuts executed previous to 1520, is so frequently introduced that it
would seem that this mode of producing a certain effect--which might
often have been accomplished by simpler means--was then considered as a
proof of the engraver’s talent. Some of the Italian printers’ marks and
devices, on the title-page, or at the end of a work, are drawn and
engraved with great spirit. The following devices occur in a folio
edition of Dante--known to bibliographers as the _cat edition_--
published by the brothers Sessa, at Venice, in 1578. The smaller
cut--with ornamental work on each side, occupying nearly the width
of a page, but omitted in the copy--is several times repeated; the
larger--where Grimalkin “sits like an eastern monarch upon his
throne”[VI-113]--forms the tail-piece at the end of the volume.
[Illustration]
[Footnote VI-113: Bibliographical Decameron, vol. i. p. 289.]
[Illustration:
DISSIMILIVM IN / FIDA SOTIETAS]
In the latter part of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth
century, an Italian artist named Andrea Andreani executed a considerable
number of chiaro-scuros on wood. He was born at Mantua in 1540, and one
of his earliest and largest works in this style is dated 1586. The
subject is the History of Abraham, from the pavement of the cathedral of
Siena;[VI-114] the first compartment consists of twelve pieces, printed
in three colours, forming, when joined together, a large composition
about five feet six inches wide by about two feet six inches high. The
second compartment, Moses breaking the Tables of the Law, is not
properly a chiaro-scuro, but a large wood-cut, consisting of several
pieces, printed in ink in the usual manner. It is about six feet wide by
about four feet high. Another large work of Andreani’s is the Triumphs
of Julius Cæsar, from the designs of Andrea Mantegna, dedicated to
Vincentius Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, and published in a folio volume in
1598. Andreani having obtained the blocks of several of the
chiaro-scuros executed by Ugo da Carpi, Antonio da Trente, Nicholas da
Vincenza, and others, reprinted them with the addition of his own mark;
and from this circumstance he frequently obtains the credit of having
engraved many pieces which were really executed by his predecessors and
superiors in the art. The chiaro-scuros which he reprinted are generally
superior to those pieces which were engraved by himself from original
designs, and in the execution of which he had to depend on his own
judgment and taste. He continued to engrave in this manner till he was
upwards of seventy years old, for there are one or two subjects by him
dated 1612. Bartsch says that he died in 1623, but observes that some
writers place his death in 1626.
[Footnote VI-114: “The pavement of this cathedral is the work of a
succession of artists from Duccio down to Meccarino, who have
produced the effect of the richest mosaic, merely by inserting
grey marble into white, and hatching both with black mastic. The
grandest composition is the History of Abraham, a figure which is
unfortunately multiplied in the same compartments; but, when
grasping the knife, the patriarch is truly sublime. These works
lay exposed at least for a hundred years to the general tread, and
have been rather improved than defaced by the attrition; for one
female figure which had never been trodden looks harsher than the
rest. Those of the choir were opportunely covered two centuries
ago.”--Forsyth’s Italy, p. 102, 2nd Edit.]
Henry Goltzius, a painter and engraver, born in 1558, near Venloo, in
Flanders, executed several chiaro-scuros, chiefly from his own designs.
The most of them are from three blocks; and among the best executed are
Hercules and Cacus, and four separate pieces representing the four
elements. Like most of the other productions of this artist, whether
paintings or copper-plate engravings, his chiaro-scuros are designed
with great spirit, though the action of the figures is frequently
extravagant. He imitated Michael Angelo, but not with success; he too
frequently mistakes violence of action for the expression of
intellectual grandeur, and displays the “contortions of the pythoness
without her inspiration.” The cut in the opposite page is a reduced copy
of the subject intended to represent the element of water. In the
original the impression is from four blocks; one with the outlines and
shaded parts black, as in the copy here given; the other three
communicating different tints of sepia. Henry Goltzius died in 1617. His
mark, an H combined with a G, is seen at the bottom of the cut.
[Illustration]
The cuts contained in a work on ancient and modern costume, printed at
Venice in 1590,[VI-115] are frequently described as having been drawn by
Titian and engraved by his _brother_, Cesare Vecellio. That this person
might have been a relation of Titian, whose family name was Vecelli, is
not unlikely, but it is highly improbable that he was his brother; for
Titian died in 1576, aged ninety-nine, and the dedication of the work to
Pietro Montalbano by Cesare Vecellio is dated October, 1589. In the
title it is stated that the costumes in question were “done”-- _fatti_--
by Vecellio himself; but whether this word relates to the drawing or the
engraving, or to both, it would be exceedingly difficult to ascertain.
Those cuts have the appearance of having been drawn on the block with
pen-and-ink; and some of the best display so much “character” that they
look like portraits of individuals freely sketched by the hand of a
master. It was first stated in an edition of the work, printed in 1664,
that the cuts were drawn by Titian and engraved by Cesare Vecellio, his
brother. The improbable assertion was merely a bookseller’s trick to
attract purchasers. It has also been frequently asserted, that the cuts
in Vesalius’s Anatomy, printed at Basle in 1548, were drawn by Titian.
The Abbé Morelli has, however, shown that they were not drawn by him,
but by John Calcar, a Flemish painter, who had been one of his pupils.
[Footnote VI-115: The following is the title of this work, which
is a large octavo: “De gli Habiti Antichi et Moderni di diverse
Parti del Mondo Libri due, fatti da Caesare Vecellio, & con
Discorsi da lui dichiriati. In Venetia, MD.XC.” This work is thus
mentioned in the notes to Rogers’s Italy: “Among the Habiti
Antichi, in that admirable book of wood-cuts ascribed to Titian,
(A. D. 1590,) there is one entitled Sposa Venetiana à Castello. It
was taken from an old painting in the Scuola di S. Giovanni
Evangelista, and by the writer is believed to represent one of the
brides here described.”--Italy, p. 257, note. Edit. 1830.]
Papillon, who in his desire to dignify his art claims almost every
eminent painter as a wood engraver, pretends that Titian executed
several large cuts from his own designs. He says that Titian began to
engrave on wood when he was twenty-five years old [in 1502], and he
mentions a cut of the Virgin and the infant Christ, with other
figures,--probably intended to represent the marriage of St.
Catherine,--as one of the earliest specimens of his talents as a wood
engraver. Papillon also informs us that Titian engraved a large cut of
the Triumph of Christ, or of Faith, in 1508; and in another part of his
work he describes several others as engraved by Titian himself.
Several of the cuts after designs by Titian, but which were certainly
not of his engraving, are of large size, and executed in a free, coarse
manner, as if they were rather intended to paste against a wall than to
be inserted in a portfolio. One of the largest is the destruction of
Pharaoh and his host; it consists of several pieces, which, when united,
form a complete subject about four and a half feet wide by about three
feet high. A dog, which the painter has introduced in a peculiar
attitude,[VI-116] gives to the whole the air of burlesque. The person by
whom it was engraved styles himself “depintore,” a word perhaps intended
to imply that he was a brother of the guild, or society of
painter-stainers, stencillers, and wood engravers.[VI-117] His name,
with the date, is engraved thus at the bottom of the cut, which is one
of those which Papillon says were executed by Titian himself: “In
Venetia p. dominico dalle greche depintore venetiano. M.DXLIX.”
[Footnote VI-116: A dog performing the same act occurs as a
tail-piece in the first edition of Bewick’s Quadrupeds, 1790, page
310.]
[Footnote VI-117: I have seen a large head, which at first sight
might be mistaken for an impression from a wood-block, executed by
means of a stencil after a design of Correggio. It was
unquestionably old, and was about three feet high by two and a
half wide.]
The following is a reduced copy of a cut designed by Titian, and said to
have been intended by him to ridicule those painters who, not being able
to succeed in colouring, recommended ancient sculptures, on account of
the correctness of the forms, as most deserving of a painter’s diligent
study. The subject is a caricature of the Laocoon; and the professed
admirers of antiquity, who, above all, insisted on correct drawing, and
thought slightly of colouring, are represented by the old ape wanting a
tail, seen in the distance, attended by three of her young ones. The
original cut is fifteen inches and seven-eighths wide by ten inches and
a half high. It is coarsely engraved, and contains neither name nor
date.[VI-118] There are several chiaro-scuros after designs by Titian,
engraved by Boldrini, Andreani, and others.
[Illustration]
[Footnote VI-118: The following is Papillon’s description of this
cut: “Une Estampe que je possede, et que l’on regarde assez
indifférement, est le Laocoon gravé en bois par le Titien,
représenté sous la figure d’un singe et ses deux petits entourés
de serpens. Il fit ce morceau pour railler les Peintres de son
temps qui étudoient cette figure et les Statues antiques; et il
prétendit démontrer par cette Estampe qu’ils ressembloient aux
singes, lesquels ne font qu’imiter ce qu’ils voyent, sans rien
inventer d’eux mêmes.”--Traité de la Gravure en Bois, tom.
i. p. 160.]
Wood engraving in Germany at the close of the sixteenth century appears
to have greatly declined; the old race of artists who furnished designs
for the wood engraver had become extinct, and their places were not
supplied by others. The more expensive works were now illustrated with
copper-plates; and the wood-cuts which appeared in the commoner kinds of
books were in general very indifferent both in design and execution. As
Germany was the country in which wood engraving was first encouraged and
fostered, so was it also the country in which the art earliest declined
and subsequently became most thoroughly neglected. In France and Italy,
wood engraving had also by this time experienced a considerable decline,
but not to such an extent as in Germany.
Between 1590 and 1610, when the art was rapidly declining in other
countries, the wood-cuts which are to be met with in English books are
generally better executed than at any preceding period. Engraved
title-pages were then frequent, and several of them are executed with
considerable skill. A large wood-cut, with the date 1607, in particular
displays great merit both in design and engraving. The following is a
reduced copy of an impression preserved in the Print Room of the British
Museum.[VI-119] The original, exclusive of the verses, and the ornaments
at each side of them, is about fourteen inches high by about fourteen
and a half wide.
[Footnote VI-119: There is also in the Print Room of the British
Museum a curious wood-cut, of large size, engraved on several
blocks, apparently of the time of James I. The title at the top,
in Latin and English, is as follows: “HUMANÆ VITÆ IMAGO OLIM AB
APELLE IN TABULA QUADAM DEPICTA. The image of the lyfe of man that
was painted in a table by Apelles.” The subject, however, is not
so much a general representation of the life of man in its several
stages, as an allegorical representation of the evils attendant on
sensual indulgence. Several of the figures are designed with great
spirit, and the explanations underneath the principal are engraved
on the same block, in Latin and English. It seems likely that this
cut was engraved for the purpose of being pasted or hung against a
wall. It is about five feet four inches wide by about three feet
high. Some of the figures are engraved with considerable spirit,
but the groups want that well-contrasted light and shade which
give such effect to the large cuts of Durer and Burgmair. It is
likely that large cuts of this kind were intended to be pasted on
the walls of rooms, to serve at once for instruction and ornament,
like “King Charles’s Golden Rules and the Royal Game of Goose” in
later times.--_To this note Mr. Jackson adds in his annotated
copy_: “The drawing appears to have been executed by an artist who
was rather partial to cross-hatching, and the engraving by one who
knew how to render every line before him with a degree of
sharpness and delicacy by no means common at that period.”]
[Illustration:
The good / Howſ-holder
The good Howſ-holder, that his Howſe may hold,
Firſt builds it on the Rock, not on the Sand.
Then, with a warie head and charie hand
Pro[v]ides (in tyme) for Hunger and for Cold:
Not daintie Fare and Furniture of Gold,
But handſom-holſom (as with Health dooth ſtand).
Not for the Rich that can as much command
But the poor Stranger, th’Orfan & the Old.
PRINTED AT LONDON IN THE BLACKE FRIERS. 1607]
The following are the six concluding lines of the sonnet underneath the
cut: in the original they are printed in smaller type than the others,
and in a double column. In the copy they are merely indicated to show
the relative size of the type to that of the first eight lines.
And (thus) to these to stand still open wide,
He neither wrings with Wrongs nor racks his Rents;
But saves the charge of wanton Waste & Pride:
For, Thrift’s right Fuel of Magnificence:
As Protean Fashions of new Prodigalitie
Have quight worn out all ancient Hospitalitie.
The flowers at each side of the verses are, in the original, very
coarsely executed. They are merely printers’ ornaments, engraved on
separate pieces of wood, and not on the same block as the cut above
them.
From one or two worm-holes, which have been in the block when it was
printed in 1607, and which are apparent in the impression, it seems
probable that this cut had been engraved some time previous to the date
which appears at the bottom. As it is, however, very likely that the
block was of pear-tree, which is extremely liable to the attacks of the
worm, it is possible that it might have been injured in this manner
within a year or two of its being finished. The bold, _cleanly cut_
lines of the original are very much like the work of Christopher Jegher,
one of the best wood engravers of that period. He resided at Antwerp,
but he is said to have been born in Germany in 1578. His best works are
several large cuts which he engraved for Rubens from drawings made on
the block by Rubens himself, who appears to have originally published
them on his own account. From the manner in which the great painter’s
name is introduced at the bottom of each--“_P. P. Rub. delin. &
excud._”--it would appear that they were both designed and printed by
him. Impressions of those cuts sometimes occur with a tint printed over
them, in sepia, from a second block, in the manner of chiaro-scuros. We
here give a reduced copy of one of the largest.[VI-120]
[Illustration]
[Footnote VI-120: The original cut is twenty-three inches and a
half wide by eighteen inches high.]
As profit could not have been Rubens’s motive for having these cuts
engraved, it is not unlikely that his object was to compare his designs
when executed in this manner with those of the older German
masters--Durer, Burgmair, and Cranach. The best, however, differ
considerably in the manner of their execution from the best old German
wood-cuts, for the lines are too uniform and display too much of art; in
looking at those which consist chiefly of figures, attention is first
called to the _means_ by which an effect is produced, rather than to the
effect itself in connexion with the entire subject. This objection
applies most forcibly to the cut which represents the Virgin crowned by
the Almighty and Jesus Christ. The design displays much of Rubens’s
grandeur, with not less of his extravagance in the attitude of the
figures; but he seems to have studied less the effect of the whole, than
to have endeavoured to express certain parts by a peculiar arrangement
of lines und hatchings. The subject does not produce that feeling, which
it is the great object of art to excite, in consequence of the attention
being diverted from the contemplation of the whole to the means by which
it is executed. In such impressions, however, as have a tint of sepia
printed over them from a second block, the hardness of the lines and
heaviness in the hatchings are less apparent. The following is a reduced
copy of another of those cuts, which, for the beautiful simplicity of
the design, is perhaps the most pleasing of the whole. The execution of
the original is, however, coarse, a defect which is not so apparent in
the copy in consequence of the small scale on which it is
engraved.[VI-121]
[Illustration:
CVM PRIVILEGIIS]
[Footnote VI-121: The original is eighteen inches wide by thirteen
inches and a half high, including the margin with the inscription
“Cum privilegiis,” which is engraved on the same block.]
Cornelius van Sichem,[VI-122] a contemporary of Christopher Jegher,
appears to have been one of the most industrious wood engravers of his
time. He was a native of Holland, and is supposed to have resided at
Amsterdam. One of his best cuts is a large head, engraved from a drawing
by Henry Goltzius, with the date 1607. This and several other large
cuts, which he probably engraved about the same time, are so much
superior to the smaller cuts, with his mark, which appear in books, that
I am inclined to think that most of the latter must have been engraved
by his pupils; they are indeed so numerous that it seems almost
impossible that he should have engraved them all himself. He seems at
first to have worked for fame, and afterwards to have turned a
manufacturer of wood-cuts for money. The cuts with his mark contained in
a quarto book entitled “Bibels Tresoor,” printed at Amsterdam in 1646,
by no means afford an idea of his ability as a wood-engraver; many of
them are wretched copies of old wood-cuts designed by Albert Durer and
other old masters, discreditable alike to the engraver and to the
originals. The following is a slightly reduced copy of a cut, engraved
by Van Sichem, from a design by Henry Goltzius. The original, which was
probably engraved about 1607, may be considered as an average specimen
of the engraver’s talents; it is not so well executed as some of his
best large cuts, while it is much superior to the greater number of the
small cuts which contain his mark. The subject is Judith with the head
of Holofernes.
[Illustration]
[Footnote VI-122: Papillon, tom. i. p. 274-276, calls this
engraver _C. S. Vichem_; and charges Professor Christ with
confounding three _Sichems_ with three _Vichems_. The name at the
bottom of the cut, in the following page, is most certainly
intended for _C. V. Sichem_.]
About 1625 a French wood engraver of the name of Businck executed
several chiaro-scuros chiefly from designs by Lalleman and Bloemart; and
between 1630 and 1647, Bartolomeo Coriolano, who sometimes styles
himself “Romanus Eques,” practised the same art at Bologna with great
reputation.[VI-123] In an edition of Hubert Goltzius’s Lives of the
Roman Emperors, enlarged by Casper Gevartius, folio, printed at Antwerp
in 1645, the portraits, in the manner of chiaro-scuros, from two blocks,
are executed with great spirit. The name of the engraver is not
mentioned, but from the mark I. C. I. on a tail-piece at the end of the
work, I am inclined to think that he was the same person who engraved
the cuts in a little book of devotion, first printed in Latin, French,
Spanish, and Flemish, at Antwerp, about 1646.[VI-124] The number of cuts
in this little work is forty, and most of them contain the mark of the
designer, [[AS]], as well as that of the engraver. From the drawing of
these cuts it would seem that the designer was either a pupil of Rubens,
or had closely copied his manner. In Professor Christ’s Dictionary of
Monograms the mark [[AS]] is ascribed to Andrea Salmincio, “an engraver
and pupil of Valesius.” Papillon, Traité de la Gravure en Bois, tom.
i. p. 274, adopting Professor Christ’s explanation of the mark, mentions
“Andrea Salmincio” as the designer of those cuts; but in page 461 of the
same volume, he says, referring to his former statement, that he had
since been informed by M. Eisen, a painter, and a native of
Valenciennes, that they were designed by “a famous Flemish painter and
engraver on wood, named Sallarte, a contemporary of Rubens, and who is
supposed to have assisted the latter in some of his great works.” Those
cuts may perhaps be considered as the last series that were expressly
designed by an artist of talent in the seventeenth century, for the
purpose of being engraved on wood. The style in which they are executed
is not worthy of the designs, though, considering the period, they are
not without merit. The engraver appears to have been extremely partial
to a kind of cross-hatching, in which the interstices are more like
squares than acute-angled lozenges, thus giving to the figures and
draperies a hard and unpliable appearance.
[Footnote VI-123: The twelfth volume of Bartsch’s Peintre-Graveur
contains an ample list of Italian chiaro-scuros, together with the
names of the painters and engravers.]
[Footnote VI-124: The only perfect copy which I have seen of this
little work is in Spanish. The title is as follows: “La Perpetua
Cruz, o Passion de Jesu Christo Nuestro Señor, desde el principio
de su encarnacion hasta su muerte. Representada en quarenta
estampas que se reparten de balde, y explicada con differentes
razones y oraciones de devocion. En Amberes, en la emprenta de
Cornelio Woons, 1650.” The cuts were engraved at the instance of
the Archbishop of Malines. Before the Spanish edition appeared,
thirty thousand copies of the work in Flemish and Latin had
already been circulated.]
Though several English wood engravings of the reigns of James I. and
Charles I. have evidently been executed by professed wood engravers, yet
a great proportion of those contained in English books and pamphlets
printed in this country during the seventeenth century appear to have
been the work of persons who had not learnt and did not regularly
practise the art. The cuts of those occasional wood engravers, who were
most likely printers, are as rude in design as they are coarse in
execution, frequently displaying something like the fac-simile of a
boy’s drawing in his first attempts to sketch “the human _form_ divine.”
Such cuts, evidently executed on the spur of the moment, are of frequent
occurrence in tracts and pamphlets published during the time of the war
between Charles I. and the Parliament. Evelyn, in the first edition of
his Sculptura, published in 1662, thus mentions Switzer as a wood
engraver of that period: “We have likewise Switzer for cutting in wood,
the son of a father[VI-125] who sufficiently discovered his dexterity in
the _Herbals_ set forth by Mr. Parkinson, Lobel, and divers other
works.” The cuts of plants in the work, usually called Lobel’s Botany,
were most certainly not engraved by the elder Switzer; they are much
superior to the cuts of the same kind which are undoubtedly of his
engraving, and the work in which they first appeared was printed in
London in 1571. He engraved the cuts in Speed’s History of Britain,
folio, 1611; and, though the author calls him “the most exquisite and
curious hand of that age,” they abundantly testify that he was a very
ordinary workman. They are executed in a meagre, spiritless manner; the
best are those which represent the portraitures of the ancient Britons.
The cuts in Parkinson’s Paradisus Terrestris, folio, 1629, were also
undoubtedly engraved by him; his name, “_A. Switzer_,” with a graver
underneath, occurs at the bottom of the very indifferent cut which forms
the title-page. The portrait of the author is scarcely superior to the
title-page; and the cuts of plants are the most worthless that are to be
found in any work of the kind. It is not unlikely that the cuts in
Topsell’s History of Four-footed Beasts, 1607, and in Moffet’s Theatre
of Insects, 1634, were also engraved by the elder Switzer. The taste for
wood-cuts must have been low indeed when such an engraver was considered
one of the best of his age. Of the younger Switzer’s abilities I have
had no means of judging, never having seen a single cut which was known
to be of his engraving.
[Footnote VI-125: In Walpole’s Catalogue of Engravers there is the
following notice of the elder Switzer: “In the Harleian Library
was a set of wooden cuts, representing the broad seals of England
from the conquest to James I. inclusive, neatly executed. Vertue
says this was the sole impression he had seen, and believed that
they were cut by Chr. Switzer, and that these plates were copied
by Hollar for Sandford. Switzer also cut the coins and seals in
Speed’s History of Britain, 1614 [1611], from the originals in the
Cottonian Collection. Speed calls him _the most exquisite and
curious hand of that age_. He probably engraved the botanic
figures for Lobel’s Observations, and the plates [cuts] for
Parkinson’s Paradisus Terrestris, 1629. Chr. Switzer’s works have
sometimes been confounded with his son’s, who was of both his
names.”--Catalogue of Engravers, p. 18 note, Edit. 1794. It is
doubtful if the elder Switzer’s Christian name were Christopher.
The initial in Parkinson’s Paradisus Terrestris is an A. It is,
however, possible that this letter may be intended for a Latin
preposition, and not for the first letter of the engraver’s
Christian name.]
Between 1650 and 1700 wood engraving, as a means of multiplying the
designs of eminent artists, either as illustrations of books or as
separate cuts, may be considered as having reached its lowest ebb. A few
tolerably well executed cuts of ornaments are occasionally to be found
in Italian, French, and Dutch books of this period; but though they
sufficiently attest that the race _of workmen_ was not wholly extinct,
they also afford ample proof that _artists_ like those of former times
had ceased to furnish designs for the wood engraver. The art of design
was then, however, in a languishing condition throughout Europe; and
even supposing that wood engraving had been as much in fashion as
copper-plate printing then was for the purpose of illustrating books, it
would be vain to expect in wood-cuts that excellence of composition and
drawing which is not to be found in the works of the best painters of
the time. Wood engravings to please must possess _some_ merit in the
design--must show some trait of feeling for his subject on the part of
the designer. Deficiency in this respect can never be compensated by
dexterity of execution: in anything that approaches to fine art, mere
workmanship, the result of laborious application, can never atone for
want of mind. The man who drew a portrait of Queen Anne with a pen, and
wrote the Psalms in the lines of the face, and in the curls of the hair,
in characters so small that it required a glass to read them, does not
rank with a Vandyke or a Reynolds, nor even with a Lely or a Kneller. At
the period of the greatest decline of wood engraving, the want that was
felt was not of working engravers to execute cuts, but of talented
artists to design them.
The principal French wood engravers about the end of the seventeenth
century were: Peter Le Sueur,--born in 1636, died 1716; his two sons,
Peter and Vincent; John Papillon the elder--who died in 1710; and his
son, of the same name, who was born in 1661, and died in 1723. Though
John Michael Papillon, son of John Papillon the younger, and author of
the Traité de la Gravure en Bois, speaks highly of the talents of the
aforesaid members of the families of Le Sueur and Papillon as wood
engravers, yet, from his account of their productions, it would seem
that they were chiefly employed in engraving subjects which scarcely
allowed of any display of excellence either in design or execution.
Their fine works were ornamental letters, flowered vignettes, and
tail-pieces for the booksellers; while their staple productions appear
to have been blocks for card-makers and paper-stainers, with patterns
for embroiderers, lace-workers, and ribbon-manufacturers. In the
succeeding century, J. M. Papillon, grandson of the first John Papillon,
and Nicholas le Sueur, grandson of the elder Peter Le Sueur, fully
supported the character of their respective families as wood engravers.
Some account of their works will be given in the proper place.
The tail-piece at the conclusion of this chapter will afford some idea
of the primitive style of the wood-cuts previously mentioned as
occurring in tracts and pamphlets printed in England during the civil
war. It is a fac-simile of a cut which originally appeared on the
title-page to the first known edition of Robin Hood’s Garland, printed
in 1670.[VI-126] The original block is now in the possession of Mr.
William Garret of Newcastle-on-Tyne, and was frequently used by the late
Mr. George Angus of that town, as it had also been by his predecessors
in the same business, to decorate the title-pages of the penny histories
and garlands, which they supplied in such abundance for the
winter-evenings’ entertainment of the good folks of Northumberland and
the “Bishoprick.” Mr. Douce, in the second volume of his Illustrations
of Shakspeare, also gives a fac-simile of this cut; and the following is
his explanation of the subject.
[Footnote VI-126: The cuts in an edition of “The most Delightful
History of Reynard the Fox,” 4to. London, printed for Thomas
Passinger, 1681, are scarcely superior to this cut in point of
execution, though it must be confessed that the figures are
generally in better “keeping.”]
“Mr. Ritson has taken notice of an old wooden cut ‘preserved on the
title-page of a penny history (_Adam Bell, &c._), printed at Newcastle
in 1772,’ and which represents, in his opinion, a morris dance,
consisting of the following personages: 1. A bishop. 2. Robin Hood.
3. The potter or beggar. 4. Little John. 5. Friar Tuck. 6. Maid Marian.
He remarks that the whole is too rude to merit a copy, a position that
is not meant to be controverted; but it is necessary to introduce the
cut in this place for the purpose of correcting an error into which the
above ingenious writer has fallen. It is proper to mention that it
originally appeared on the title-page to the first known edition of
Robin Hood’s Garland, printed in 1670, 18mo. Now, this cut is certainly
not the representation of a morris dance, but merely of the principal
characters belonging to the Garland. These are Robin Hood, Little John,
_Queen Catherine_, the bishop, the _curtal frier_, (not Tuck,) and the
beggar. Even though it were admitted that Maid Marian and Friar Tuck
were intended to be given, it could not be maintained that either the
bishop or the beggar made part of a morris.”
To give more specimens of wood engraving when in its lowest state of
declension has not been thought necessary; for even at this period it
would not be difficult to produce cuts which in point of mere execution
are superior to many which appeared when the art was at its height. It
is sufficient to have stated that, towards the end of the seventeenth
century, wood engraving for the higher purposes of the art had sunk into
utter neglect; that the best productions of the regular wood engravers
of the period mostly consist of unmeaning ornaments which neither excite
feeling nor suggest a thought; and that the wood-cuts which appear to
have been engraved by persons not instructed in the business partake
generally of the character of the following tail-piece. Having now
brought down the history of the art of wood engraving to the end of the
seventeenth century, its revival in the eighteenth, with some account of
the works of Thomas Bewick and the principal English wood engravers of
his time, will form the subject of the next chapter.
[Illustration]