ON THE ARTISTIC QUALITIES OF THE WOODCUT BOOKS OF ULM AND AUGSBURG IN
THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
The invention of printing books, and the use of wood-blocks for book
ornament in place of hand-painting, though it belongs to the period of
the degradation of mediæval art, gave an opportunity to the Germans to
regain the place which they had lost in the art of book decoration
during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. This opportunity they
took with vigour and success, and by means of it put forth works which
showed the best and most essential qualities of their race. Unhappily,
even at the time of their first woodcut book, the beginning of the end
was on them; about thirty years afterwards they received the
Renaissance with singular eagerness and rapidity, and became, from the
artistic point of view, a nation of rhetorical pedants. An exception
must be made, however, as to Albert Dürer; for, though his method was
infected by the Renaissance, his matchless imagination and intellect
made him thoroughly Gothic in spirit. Amongst the printing localities
of Germany the two neighbouring cities of Ulm and Augsburg developed a
school of woodcut book ornament second to none as to character, and, I
think, more numerously represented than any other. I am obliged to
link the two cities, because the early school at least is common to
both; but the ornamented works produced by Ulm are but few compared
with the prolific birth of Augsburg.
It is a matter of course that the names of the artists who designed
these wood-blocks should not have been recorded, any more than those
of the numberless illuminators of the lovely written books of the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; the names under which the Ulm and
Augsburg picture-books are known are all those of their printers. Of
these by far the most distinguished are the kinsmen (their degree of
kinship is not known), Gunther Zainer of Augsburg and John Zainer of
Ulm. Nearly parallel with these in date are Ludwig Hohenwang and John
Bämler of Augsburg, together with Pflanzmann of Augsburg, the printer
of the first illustrated German Bible. Anthony Sorg, a little later
than these, was a printer somewhat inferior, rather a reprinter in
fact, but by dint of reusing the old blocks, or getting them recut and
in some cases redesigned, not always to their disadvantage, produced
some very beautiful books. Schoensperger, who printed right into the
sixteenth century, used blocks which were ruder than the earlier ones,
through carelessness, and I suppose probably because of the aim at
cheapness; his books tend towards the chap-book kind.
The earliest of these picture-books with a date is Gunther Zainer's
Golden Legend, the first part of which was printed in 1471; but, as
the most important from the artistic point of view, I should name:
first, Gunther Zainer's Speculum Humanæ Salvationis (undated but
probably of 1471); second, John Zainer's Boccaccio De Claris
Mulieribus (dated in a cut, as well as in the colophon, 1473); third,
the Æsop, printed by both the Zainers, but I do not know by which
first, as it is undated; fourth, Gunther Zainer's Spiegel des
Menschlichen lebens (undated but about 1475), with which must be taken
his German Belial, the cuts of which are undoubtedly designed by the
same artist, and cut by the same hand, that cut the best in the
Spiegel above mentioned; fifth, a beautiful little book, the story of
Sigismonda and Guiscard, by Gunther Zainer, undated; sixth, Tuberinus,
die geschicht von Symon, which is the story of a late German Hugh of
Lincoln, printed by G. Zainer about 1475; seventh, John Bämlers Das
buch der Natur (1475), with many full-page cuts of much interest;
eighth, by the same printer, Das buch von den 7 Todsünden und den 7
Tugenden (1474); ninth, Bämler's Sprenger's Rosencranz Bruderschaft,
with only two cuts, but those most remarkable.
To these may be added as transitional (in date at least), between the
earlier and the later school next to be mentioned, two really
characteristic books printed by Sorg:
(a) Der Seusse, a book of mystical devotion, 1482, and
(b) the Council of Constance, printed in 1483; the latter being, as
far as its cuts are concerned, mainly heraldic.
At Ulm, however, a later school arose after a transitional book,
Leonard Hol's splendid Ptolemy of 1482; of this school one printer's
name, Conrad Dinckmut, includes all the most remarkable books: to wit,
Der Seelen-wurzgarten (1483), Das buch der Weisheit (1485), the
Swabian Chronicle (1486), Terence's Eunuchus (in German) (1486).
Lastly, John Reger's Descriptio Obsidionis Rhodiæ (1496) worthily
closes the series of the Ulm books.
It should here be said that, apart from their pictures, the Ulm and
Augsburg books are noteworthy for their border and letter decoration.
The Ulm printer, John Zainer, in especial shone in the production of
borders. His De Claris Mulieribus excels all the other books of the
school in this matter; the initial S of both the Latin and the German
editions being the most elaborate and beautiful piece of its kind;
and, furthermore, the German edition has a border almost equal to the
S in beauty, though different in character, having the shield of
Scotland supported by angels in the corner. A very handsome border (or
half-border rather), with a zany in the corner, used frequently in J.
Zainer's books [by the by, in Gritsch's Quadragesimale, 1475, this
zany is changed into an ordinary citizen by means of an ingenious
piecing of the block], e.g., in the 1473 and 1474 editions of the
Rationale of Durandus, and, associated with an interesting historiated
initial O, in Alvarus, De planctu Ecclesiæ, 1474. There are two or
three other fine borders, such as those in Steinhowel's Büchlein der
Ordnung, and Petrarch's Griseldis (here shown), both of 1473, and in
Albertus Magnus, Summa de eucharistiæ Sacramento, 1474. A curious
alphabet of initials made up of leafage, good, but not very showy, is
used in the De Claris Mulieribus and other books. An alphabet of large
initials, the most complete example of which is to be found in Leonard
Hol's Ptolemy, is often used and is clearly founded on the
pen-letters, drawn mostly in red and blue, in which the Dutch
'rubrishers' excelled. [Another set of initials founded on twelfth
century work occurs in John Zainer's folio books, and has some
likeness to those used by Hohenwang of Augsburg in the Golden Bibel
and elsewhere, and perhaps was suggested by these, as they are not
very early (c. 1475), but they differ from Hohenwang's in being
generally more or less shaded, and also in not being enclosed in a
square.] This big alphabet is very beautiful and seems to have been a
good deal copied by other German printers, as it well deserved to be.
[The initials of Knoblotzer of Strassburg and Bernard Richel of Basel
may be mentioned.] John Reger's Caoursin has fine handsome
'blooming-letters,' somewhat tending toward the French style.
In Augsburg Gunther Zainer has some initial I's of strap-work without
foliation: they are finely designed, but gain considerably when, as
sometimes happens, the spaces between the straps are filled in with
fine pen-tracery and in yellowish brown; they were cut early in
Gunther's career, as one occurs in the Speculum Humanæ Salvationis, c.
1471, and another in the Calendar, printed 1471. These, as they always
occur in the margin and are long, may be called border-pieces. A
border occurring in Eyb, ob einem manne tzu nemen ein weib is drawn
very gracefully in outline, and is attached, deftly enough, to a very
good S of the pen-letter type, though on a separate block; it has
three shields of arms in it, one of which is the bearing of Augsburg.
This piece is decidedly illuminators' work as to design.
Gunther's Margarita Davidica has a border (attached to a very large P)
which is much like the Ulm borders in character. A genealogical tree
of the House of Hapsburg prefacing the Spiegel des Menschlichen
lebens, and occupying a whole page, is comparable for beauty and
elaboration to the S of John Zainer above mentioned; on the whole, for
beauty and richness of invention and for neatness of execution, I am
inclined to give it the first place amongst all the decorative pieces
of the German printers.
Gunther Zainer's German Bible of c. 1474 has a full set of pictured
letters, one to every book, of very remarkable merit: the foliated
forms which make the letters and enclose the figures being bold,
inventive, and very well drawn. I note that these excellent designs
have received much less attention than they deserve.
In almost all but the earliest of Gunther's books a handsome set of
initials are used, a good deal like the above mentioned Ulm initials,
but with the foliations blunter, and blended with less of geometrical
forms: the pen origin of these is also very marked.
Ludwig Hohenwang, who printed at Augsburg in the seventies, uses a
noteworthy set of initials, alluded to above, that would seem to have
been drawn by the designer with a twelfth century MS. before him,
though, as a matter of course, the fifteenth century betrays itself in
certain details, chiefly in the sharp foliations at the ends of the
scrolls, etc. There is a great deal of beautiful design in these
letters; but the square border round them, while revealing their
origin from illuminators' work, leaves over-large whites in the
backgrounds, which call out for the completion that the illuminator's
colour would have given them. Bämler and the later printer Sorg do not
use so much ornament as Gunther Zainer; their initials are less rich
both in line and design than Gunther's, and Sorg's especially have a
look of having run down from the earlier ones: in his Seusse, however,
there are some beautiful figured initials designed on somewhat the
same plan as those of Gunther Zainer's Bible.
Now it may surprise some of our readers, though I should hope not the
greatest part of them, to hear that I claim the title of works of art,
both for these picture-ornamented books as books, and also for the
pictures themselves. Their two main merits are first their decorative
and next their story-telling quality; and it seems to me that
these two qualities include what is necessary and essential in
book-pictures. To be sure the principal aim of these unknown German
artists was to give the essence of the story at any cost, and it may
be thought that the decorative qualities of their designs were
accidental, or done unconsciously at any rate. I do not altogether
dispute that view; but then the accident is that of the skilful
workman whose skill is largely the result of tradition; it has thereby
become a habit of the hand to him to work in a decorative manner.
To turn back to the books numbered above as the most important of the
school, I should call John Zainer's De Claris Mulieribus, and the
Æsop, and Gunther Zainer's Spiegel des Menschlichen lebens the most
characteristic. Of these my own choice would be the De Claris
Mulieribus, partly perhaps because it is a very old friend of mine,
and perhaps the first book that gave me a clear insight into the
essential qualities of the mediæval design of that period. The
subject-matter of the book also makes it one of the most interesting,
giving it opportunity for setting forth the mediæval reverence for the
classical period, without any of the loss of romance on the one hand,
and epical sincerity and directness on the other, which the flood-tide
of renaissance rhetoric presently inflicted on the world. No
story-telling could be simpler and more straightforward, and less
dependent on secondary help, than that of these curious, and, as
people phrase it, rude cuts. And in spite (if you please it) of their
rudeness, they are by no means lacking in definite beauty: the
composition is good everywhere, the drapery well designed, the lines
rich, which shows of course that the cutting is good. Though there is
no ornament save the beautiful initial S and the curious foliated
initials above mentioned, the page is beautifully proportioned and
stately, when, as in the copy before me, it has escaped the fury of
the bookbinder.
The great initial 'S' I claim to be one of the very best printers'
ornaments ever made, one which would not disgrace a thirteenth century
MS. Adam and Eve are standing on a finely-designed spray of poppy-like
leafage, and behind them rise up the boughs of the tree. Eve reaches
down an apple to Adam with her right hand, and with her uplifted left
takes another from the mouth of the crowned woman's head of the
serpent, whose coils, after they have performed the duty of making the
S, end in a foliage scroll, whose branches enclose little medallions
of the seven deadly sins. All this is done with admirable invention
and romantic meaning, and with very great beauty of design and a full
sense of decorative necessities.
As to faults in this delightful book, it must be said that it is
somewhat marred by the press-work not being so good as it should have
been even when printed by the weak presses of the fifteenth century;
but this, though a defect, is not, I submit, an essential one.
In the Æsop the drawing of the designs is in a way superior to that of
the last book: the line leaves nothing to be desired; it is thoroughly
decorative, rather heavy, but so firm and strong, and so obviously in
submission to the draughtman's hand, that it is capable of even great
delicacy as well as richness. The figures both of man and beast are
full of expression; the heads clean drawn and expressive also, and in
many cases refined and delicate. The cuts, with few exceptions, are
not bounded by a border, but amidst the great richness of line no lack
of one is felt, and the designs fully sustain their decorative
position as a part of the noble type of the Ulm and Augsburg printers;
this Æsop is, to my mind, incomparably the best and most expressive of
the many illustrated editions of the Fables printed in the fifteenth
century. The designs of the other German and Flemish ones were all
copied from it.
Gunther Zainer's Spiegel des Menschlichen lebens is again one of the
most amusing of woodcut books. One may say that the book itself, one
of the most popular of the Middle Ages, runs through all the
conditions and occupations of men as then existing, from the Pope and
Kaiser down to the field labourer, and, with full indulgence in the
mediæval love of formal antithesis, contrasts the good and the evil
side of them. The profuse illustrations to all this abound in
excellent pieces of naïve characterisation; the designs are very well
put together, and, for the most part, the figures well drawn, and
draperies good and crisp, and the general effect very satisfactory as
decoration. The designer in this book, however, has not been always so
lucky in his cutter as those of the last two, and some of the pictures
have been considerably injured in the cutting. On the other hand the
lovely genealogical tree above mentioned crowns this book with
abundant honour, and the best of the cuts are so good that it is
hardly possible to rank it after the first two. Gunther Zainer's
Speculum Humanæ Salvationis and his Golden Legend have cuts decidedly
ruder than these three books; they are simpler also, and less
decorative as ornaments to the page, nevertheless they have abundant
interest, and most often their essential qualities of design shine
through the rudeness, which by no means excludes even grace of
silhouette: one and all they are thoroughly expressive of the story
they tell. The designs in these two books by the by do not seem to
have been done by the same hand; but I should think that the designer
of those in the Golden Legend drew the subjects that 'inhabit' the
fine letters of Gunther's German Bible. Both seem to me to have a kind
of illuminator's character in them. The cuts to the story of Simon
bring us back to those of Spiegel des Menschlichen lebens; they are
delicate and pretty, and tell the story, half so repulsive, half so
touching, of 'little Sir Hugh,' very well. I must not pass by without
a further word on Sigismund and Guiscard. I cannot help thinking that
the cuts therein are by the same hand that drew some of those in the
Æsop; at any rate they have the same qualities of design, and are to
my mind singularly beautiful and interesting.
Of the other contemporary, or nearly contemporary, printers Bämler
comes first in interest. His book von den 7 Todsünden, etc., has cuts
of much interest and invention, not unlike in character to those of
Gunther Zainer's Golden Legend. His Buch der Natur has full-page cuts
of animals, herbs, and human figures exceedingly quaint, but very well
designed for the most part. A half-figure of a bishop 'in
pontificalibus' is particularly bold and happy. Rupertus a sancto
Remigio's History of the crusade and the Cronich von allen Konigen und
Kaisern are finely illustrated. His Rosencranz Bruderschaft above
mentioned has but two cuts, but they are both of them, the one as a
fine decorative work, the other as a deeply felt illustration of
devotional sentiment, of the highest merit.
The two really noteworthy works of Sorg (who, as aforesaid, was
somewhat a plagiaristic publisher) are, first, the Seusse, which is
illustrated with bold and highly decorative cuts full of meaning and
dignity, and next, the Council of Constance, which is the first
heraldic woodcut work (it has besides the coats-of-arms, several fine
full-page cuts, of which the burning of Huss is one). These armorial
cuts, which are full of interest as giving a vast number of curious
and strange bearings, are no less so as showing what admirable
decoration can be got out of heraldry when it is simply and well
drawn.
To Conrad Dinckmut of Ulm, belonging to a somewhat later period than
these last-named printers, belongs the glory of opposing by his fine
works the coming degradation of book-ornament in Germany. The
Seelen-wurzgarten, ornamented with seventeen full-page cuts, is
injured by the too free repetition of them; they are, however, very
good; the best perhaps being the Nativity, which, for simplicity and
beauty, is worthy of the earlier period of the Middle Ages. The
Swabian Chronicle has cuts of various degrees of merit, but all
interesting and full of life and spirit: a fight in the lists with
axes being one of the most remarkable. Das buch der Weisheit (Bidpay's
Fables) has larger cuts which certainly show no lack of courage; they
are perhaps scarcely so decorative as the average of the cuts of the
school, and are somewhat coarsely cut; but their frank epical
character makes them worthy of all attention. But perhaps his most
remarkable work is his Terence's Eunuchus (in German), ornamented with
twenty-eight cuts illustrating the scenes. These all have backgrounds
showing (mostly) the streets of a mediæval town, which clearly imply
theatrical scenery; the figures of the actors are delicately drawn,
and the character of the persons and their action is well given and
carefully sustained throughout. The text of this book is printed in a
large handsome black-letter, imported, as my friend Mr. Proctor
informs me, from Italy. The book is altogether of singular beauty and
character.
The Caoursin (1496), the last book of any account printed at Ulm, has
good and spirited cuts of the events described, the best of them being
the flight of Turks in the mountains. One is almost tempted to think
that these cuts are designed by the author of those of the Mainz
Breidenbach of 1486, though the cutting is much inferior.
All these books, it must be remembered, though they necessarily (being
printed books) belong to the later Middle Ages, and though some of
them are rather decidedly late in that epoch, are thoroughly 'Gothic'
as to their ornament; there is no taint of the Renaissance in them. In
this respect the art of book-ornament was lucky. The neo-classical
rhetoric which invaded literature before the end of the fourteenth
century (for even Chaucer did not quite escape it) was harmless
against this branch of art at least for more than another hundred
years; so that even Italian book-pictures are Gothic in spirit, for
the most part, right up to the beginning of the sixteenth century,
long after the New Birth had destroyed the building arts for Italy:
while Germany, whose Gothic architecture was necessarily firmer rooted
in the soil, did not so much as feel the first shiver of the coming
flood till suddenly, and without warning, it was upon her, and the art
of the Middle Ages fell dead in a space of about five years, and was
succeeded by a singularly stupid and brutal phase of that rhetorical
and academical art, which, in all matters of ornament, has held Europe
captive ever since.
[Illustration: From John Zainer's Griseldis, Ulm, 1473]
[Illustration: From Gunther Zainer's Speculum Humanæ Salvationis,
Augsburg, C. 1471]
[Illustration: From Gunther Zainer's Ingold, Das Golden Spiel,
Augsburg, 1472]
[Illustration: From John Zainer's Boccaccio de Claris Mulieribus, Ulm,
1473]
[Illustration: From Gunther Zainer's Epistles and Gospels, Augsburg,
C. 1474]
[Illustration: From Gunther Zainer's Spiegel D. Menschl. Lebens,
Augsburg, C. 1475]
[Illustration: From Gunther Zainer's Tuberinus, Geschicht von Dem
Heiligen Kind Symon, Augsburg, C. 1475]
[Illustration: From the Æsop]