EARLY GERMAN AND DUTCH ILLUSTRATED BOOKS
[Illustration: VIII. AUGSBURG, G. ZAINER, C. 1475
TUBERINUS. GESCHICHT VON DEM SELIGEN KIND SYMON]
The natural method of illustrating a book printed with type is by means
of designs cut in relief, which can be locked up in the forme with the
type, so that text and illustrations are printed together by a single
impression[29] without any special preparation of the paper. So long as
the design to be printed stands out clearly on the block it matters
nothing whether it be cut on wood or on soft metal. Even as between the
design cut by hand and the process line-block which has as its basis a
photograph taken direct from a pen drawing, the difference can hardly be
said to be one of better and worse. We lose the individuality of the
wood-cutter or wood-engraver, but we are brought into closer touch with
the individuality of the artist, and whether we gain or lose depends on
the ability of the artist to dispense with a skilled interpreter. The
one requisite for success is that either the artist, or an interpreter
for him, should recognize the limits within which his work can be
effective. The reproductions of the artist's designs will be looked at,
not in isolation, but as part of an _ensemble_ made up of two pages
printed in a type which, perhaps with a little trouble, can be
ascertained beforehand, and they will be printed not as proofs on a
special press by a special workman on paper chosen solely to suit them,
but with average skill and care in an ordinary press and on paper the
choice of which will be dictated by several considerations. Whenever
relief blocks have been used for any length of time as a method of
book-illustration the rivalry of artists has tended to cause these
restrictions to be forgotten. In our own day line-blocks have been
almost driven out of the field by "half-tones," which cannot be printed
without the aid of paper specially coated, or at least rolled or
"calendared." Shortly before the process line-block was perfected the
extreme fineness of the American school of wood-engraving had induced a
nearly similar result. The successors of Bewick worked with equal
disregard of the need for clearly defined lines, and when we travel back
to the first half of the sixteenth century we find the Holbeins,
Burgkmair, Weiditz, and other artists producing designs far too delicate
for the conditions under which they were to be reproduced. Thus the
charm of the woodcuts in books of the fifteenth century is by no means
confined to that "quaintness" which is usually the first thing on which
the casual observer comments. The "quaintness" is usually there, but
along with it is a harmony between print, paper, and woodcut which has
very rarely since been attained.
The claim made in the last paragraph must be understood as applying only
to books honestly illustrated with blocks specially made for them. Books
decorated with a job lot of cuts, as was often the case, especially
after about 1495, may accidentally be delightful and often possess some
of the charm of a scrapbook. It is good sport, for instance, to take one
of Verard's later books and trace the origin of the cuts with which that
cheaply liberal publisher made his wares attractive. But the incongruity
is mostly manifest, and collectors might well be more fastidious than
they show themselves and refuse to waste the price of a good book with
homogeneous illustrations in buying half a dozen dull little volumes
with an old Horae cut at the beginning and the end of each.
A second exception must be recognized in the books illustrated by
untrained wood-cutters. In Germany and the Low Countries few, if any,
quite untrained wood-cutters were employed, and this is true also of
Paris and Florence. But at Lyon and other provincial towns in France
(the Abbeville cutters, who probably came from Paris, are strikingly
good), in a few books printed at Rome and Venice, here and there in
Spain, and in one or two of Caxton's and several of Wynkyn de Worde's
books in England, the cutting is so bad that, though it is possible
sometimes to see that excellent designs underlie it, the effect is
either ludicrous or repellent. Only fanatics could admire such pictures
as we find in the early Lyonnese _Quatre fils d'Aymon_ (_s.n._, but
about 1480), in the _Opuscula_ of Philippus de Barberiis printed by
Joannes de Lignamine (Rome, 1481), in a large number of the cuts of the
Malermi Bible of 1490 (Venice, G. Ragazzo for L. A. Giunta, 1490), in
_Los doze trabajos de Ercules_ (Zamora, 1483), in Caxton's _Aesop_ or in
Wynkyn de Worde's _Morte d'Arthur_ (1527). Books such as these (the
Malermi Bible is on a different footing from the rest owing to the
wonderful excellence of the good cuts) may be bought as curiosities, or
for the light they throw on the state of the book trade when such work
could be put on the market, but no artistic merit can be claimed for
them.
In Germany good work began early, because, to supply the demand for
playing-cards and pictures of saints, schools of wood-cutters had grown
up, more especially at Augsburg and at Ulm. Block-books also had come
into existence in the district of the lower Rhine, and these, which in
their earliest forms can hardly be later than 1460, must be divided
between the Low Countries and Germany and prove the existence of
competent workmen. The earliest type-printed books which possess
illustrations are the little handful printed by Albrecht Pfister at
Bamberg in and about 1461, described in Chapter V, but it was at
Augsburg in the early seventies that book-illustration first flourished.
As has been mentioned in Chapter V, trade difficulties at first stood in
the way, but by the arbitration of Melchior Stanheim, abbot of the
local monastery of SS. Ulrich and Afra, these were settled on the
sensible basis that printers might have as many illustrations in their
books as they chose to provide, but that they must be designed and cut
by Augsburg craftsmen. The series seems to have begun with some
tolerably good column-cuts to an edition of the Lives of the Saints in
German, of which the first part was issued in October, 1471, and the
second in April, 1472. In _Das guldin spiel_ of a Dominican writer,
Ingold, finished on 1 August of the latter year, we find for the first
time real power of characterization. Lovers of woodcuts owe some
gratitude to the medieval trick of attaching edifying discourses to
matters of everyday interest and amusement, for whereas the edifying
discourses themselves could hardly carry illustrations, hunting, chess,
or, as here, seven games which could be likened to the seven deadly
sins, gave opportunities for showing pictures by which the natural man
would be attracted. Another important book of this year, only known to
me in Bamler's plagiarism of it, was the first edition of the _Belial_,
the amazing book which tells the story of Christ being summoned for the
trespass committed in harrowing Hell.
In 1473 the heavy gothic type which Zainer used in these illustrated
books was put at the disposal of the Abbot of SS. Ulrich and Afra and
used to print a _Speculum Humanae Saluationis_, to which was added a
summary in verse by Frater Johannes, an inmate of his monastery. This
book was illustrated by 176 different cuts of Biblical subjects, of
varying degrees of merit. In the same year, and again in 1474, Zainer
printed an illustrated _Plenarium_, i.e. the Epistles and Gospels for
the round of the Church's year. In or shortly after 1475 he printed and
illustrated a narrative of great contemporary interest, the story,
written by one Tuberinus, of a child named Simon, who was supposed to
have been slain by the Jews out of hatred of the Christian faith and
desire to taste Christian flesh. The tale appears to contain internal
evidence of its untruth, and the unhappy Jews who were cruelly executed
had much better claims to be regarded as martyrs than "das susses Kind"
Simon. But some of the pictures are quite animated, especially one (see
Plate VIII) of the hired kidnapper beguiling the child through the
streets and then deftly hurrying him into the house of doom with a touch
of his knee.
In 1475 or 1476, and again with the date 1477, Zainer produced editions
of the German Bible in large folio, illustrated with great pictorial
capitals at the beginning of each book. But his greatest achievement was
in an undated book of this period, the _Speculum Humanae Vitae_ of
Rodericus Bishop of Zamora, in the German translation of Heinrich
Steinhowel. If this Mirror of Man's Life had been written by a man with
his eyes open instead of by a vapid rhetorician it should have been one
of the most valuable documents for the social life of the fifteenth
century, since it professes to contrast the advantages and evils of
every rank and occupation of life, from the Pope and the Emperor down to
craftsmen and labourers. There is but little joy to be gained from its
text, but the Augsburg artist has atoned for many literary shortcomings
by his vivid and charming pictures of scenes from the social life of his
day, though it is not to be supposed that German judges took bribes
quite so openly as he is pleased to represent. In addition to fifty-four
woodcuts of this kind, there is a large genealogical tree of the House
of Hapsburg, which is a triumph of decorative arrangement.
Two other early Augsburg printers devoted themselves to illustrated
work, Johann Bamler and Anton Sorg. The former at first contented
himself with prefixing a full-page frontispiece to his books, as in the
_Summa_ of Johannes Friburgensis and _Die vier und zwanzig goldenen
Harfen_, both of 1472, and again in the picture of S. Gregory and Peter
the Deacon in the Dialogues of the former printed for the monastery of
SS. Ulrich and Afra, and that of the dying Empress in the _Historie von
den sieben weisen Meistern_ of the following year. In the _Belial_ of
1473 and _Plenarium_ of 1474 Bamler was content for most of the cuts to
borrow or copy from the editions of Zainer, but in the _Alexander der
Grosse_ of the former year and _Melusine_ and _Sieben Todsunden_ of the
latter he himself led the way with some excellent sets of woodcuts,
which were copied by others. Again, in _Das Buch der Natur_ of 1475 we
find a dozen specially designed full-page cuts, one to each book,
illustrating man, the spheres, beasts, birds, mermaids, serpents,
insects, etc.; in the _Chronica von allen Kaisern and Konigen_ of 1476
there are four large cuts, showing Christ in glory, the dream of the
Emperor Sigismund, the vision of S. Gregory at Mass, and S. Veronica
holding before her the cloth with the imprint of Christ's face. It was
perhaps in this same year that Bamler issued, without dating it, Jacob
Sprenger's _Die Rosenkranz Bruderschaft_, with two very striking cuts,
one of the offering of garlands to Our Lady, the other of Christ's
scourgers looking back mockingly as they leave Him. A dated edition
appeared in 1477. Another book of 1476 with a good set of cuts was the
romance of Apollonius, King of Tyre. In 1477 Bamler issued a _Buch der
Kunst_, which, like the _Buch der Natur_, went through several editions;
it must be noted, however, that there is no such contrast between Art
and Nature as the short title of this book might suggest, the full title
being _Buch der Kunst geistlich zu werden_. The illustrations for the
most part represent a soul in different situations, but there are also
many of Biblical subjects. The last book of Bamler's which need be
mentioned is the _Turken-Kreuzzuge_ of Rupertus de Sancto Remigio, which
has an effective frontispiece of the Pope preaching to the Crusaders and
some vigorous smaller cuts.
Anton Sorg began printing in 1475 and issued his first illustrated book
the next year. He was a prolific printer, and issued many close
imitations of books originated by Gunther Zainer and others. The most
famous work specially connected with his name is Ulrich von
Reichenthal's _Das Conciliumbuch geschehen zu Costencz_ (1483),
illustrated with forty-four larger cuts, all in the first ninety leaves,
and 1158 coats of arms of the various dignitaries present at the
Council. The larger cuts show the knighting of the Burgermeister of
Constance, processions, a tournament, and the martyrdom of Huss (despite
his safe conduct) and the scattering of his ashes over a field. The
later Augsburg illustrated books, issued by the elder Schoensperger,
Johann Schobsser, Peter Berger, and Hans Schauer, though they maintain a
respectable level of craftsmanship, have less interest and individuality
than these earlier ones. One Augsburg printer, Erhard Ratdolt, who had
made himself a reputation by ten years' work at Venice (1476-86),
shortly after his return issued a notable illustrated book, the
_Chronica Hungarorum_ of Thwrocz. His main business was the production
of missals and other service books, in some of which he made experiments
in colour-printing.
At the neighbouring city of Ulm, where also the wood-cutters had long
been at work, illustrated books began to be issued in 1473 by Johann
Zainer, no doubt a kinsman of Gunther Zainer of Augsburg. His chief
books are (1) Latin and German editions of Boccaccio's _De claris
mulieribus_ (1473), with a fine borderpiece of Adam and Eve and numerous
spirited little pictures which, though primitive both in conception and
execution, are full of life, and (2) an _Aesop_ which was reprinted at
Augsburg and copied elsewhere in Germany, and also in France, the
Netherlands, and England. From 1478 onwards he seems to have been in
continual financial trouble. He was apparently able, however, to find
funds to issue two rather notable books about 1490, the _Prognosticatio_
of Lichtenberger, and a Totentanz. The blocks of both of these passed to
Meidenbach at Mainz.
Most of the forty books of a later printer, Conrad Dinckmut (1482-96),
have illustrations. His _Seelenwurzgarten_ (1483) appears at first sight
to be a most liberally decorated book, crowded with full-page cuts, but
of its 133 illustrations only seventeen are different, one,
representing the tortures of the damned, being used as many as
thirty-seven times, a deplorable waste of good paper, which the printer
had the good sense to reduce in a later edition. Dinckmut's most famous
book is a German edition of the _Eunuchus_ of Terence "ain maisterliche
vnd wolgesetzte Comedia zelesen vnd zehoren lustig und kurtzwylig, die
der Hochgelert vnd gross Maister und Poet Therencius gar subtill mit
grosser Kunnst und hochem Flyss gesetzt hat." This has twenty-eight
nearly full-page cuts in which the characters are well drawn, the
setting for the most part showing the streets of a medieval town. A
_Chronik_, by Thomas Lirer, issued about the same time, was begun to be
illustrated on a generous scale with eighteen full-page cuts in the
first twenty-eight leaves, but was hastily finished off with only three
more cuts in the remaining thirty-six. They are less carefully executed
than those of the _Eunuchus_, but show more variety, and are on the
whole very pleasing.
Another Ulm printer, who began work in 1482, Leonhard Holl, printed in
that year a magnificent edition of Ptolemy's _Cosmographia_, with
woodcut maps (one signed "Insculptum est per Iohann[=e] Schnitzer de
Armszheim") and fine capitals. The first of these, a pictorial N, shows
the editor, Nicolaus Germanus, presenting his book to the Pope.
Of later Ulm books by far the most important are two by Gulielmus
Caoursin, published by Johann Reger in 1496, and both concerned with the
Knights of St. John of Jerusalem at Rhodes. One volume gives their
_Stabilimenta_ or Constitution, the other _Obsidionis urbis Rhodiae
descriptio_, an illustrated history of their defence of their island
against the Turks and their subsequent dealings with the infidel, who at
one time were so complaisant as to present them with no less valuable a
relic than the arm of their patron, which was duly honoured with
processions and sermons. Altogether the two books contain fifty-six
full-page pictures, rather roughly cut, but full of vigour and bringing
the course of the siege and the character of the wild Turkish horsemen
very vividly before the reader. William Morris was even tempted to
conjecture that the designs may have been made by Erhard Reuwich, the
illustrator of the Mainz _Breidenbach_, of which we shall soon have to
speak.
At Nuremberg book-illustration begins with the _Ars et modus
contemplatiuae vitae_, six leaves of which partake of the nature of a
block-book. In or about 1474 Johann Muller of Konigsberg (whose variant
names, Johannes Regiomontanus, Johannes de Monteregio, have trapped more
bibliographers into inconsistencies than those of any other fifteenth
century author) issued calendars and other works with astronomical
diagrams, and prefixed to his edition of the _Philalethes_ of Maffeus
Vegius a woodcut (for which Dr. Schreiber suspects an Italian origin)
showing Philalethes in rags and Truth with no other clothing than a pair
of very small wings. In June, 1475, Sensenschmidt and Frisner
illustrated their folio edition of Justinian's _Codex_, with ten
charming little column-cuts; the following month Sensenschmidt produced
a _Heiligenleben_, with more than 250 illustrations, which, according to
Dr. Schreiber, are very noteworthy as they stand, and would have been
more so had not the wood-cutter been hurried into omitting the
backgrounds in the later cuts, those to the "Pars aestiualis."
Sensenschmidt also printed an undated German Bible with pictorial
capitals.
In 1477 Creussner issued the travels of Marco Polo with a woodcut of the
traveller, and about the same time Latin and German editions of the
tract of Tuberinus on the supposed fate suffered by "Das Kind Simon" at
the hand of the Jews.
In 1481 Anton Koberger published his first illustrated book, _Postilla
super Bibliam_ of Nicolaus de Lyra, with forty-three woodcuts, which
were imitated not only at Cologne, but at Venice, though their interest
is not very great. In his German Bible of 1483 he himself was content
to acquire blocks previously used at Cologne. The next year he prefixed
to his edition of the _Reformation der Stadt Nuremberg_ a notable
woodcut of S. Sebald and S. Laurence in the style of Michael Wolgemut.
The 252 cuts in his _Heiligenleben_ of 1488 are mainly improved
rehandlings of previous versions; of his _Schatzbehalter_ and Schedel's
Chronicle we speak later on.
At Basel Martin Flach was the first printer of illustrated books,
ornamenting his 1473 edition of the Ackermann von Bohmen with a woodcut
of Death, the labourer, and the dead woman, his _Cato_ with the usual
picture of a master and scholar, his _Rosenkranz_ with a cut of a
traveller beseeching the Virgin's protection from robbers, and another
of a scene in heaven, and his _Streit der Seele mit dem Korper_ (these
and the two preceding are undated) with eight illustrations of various
moments in the dispute. More important than these are three profusely
illustrated books from the press of Bernhard Richel. The first of these,
his 1476 _Spiegel Menschlicher Behaltnis_, has 278 woodcuts, the work of
two different hands, the earlier of the two showing less technical
skill, but much more vigour and originality.[30] The other two books are
undated editions of the romance of _Melusina_, with sixty-seven cuts, in
which suggestions from the first Augsburg edition have been improved on
by an abler workman, and a _Mandeville_ with 147 cuts, most of which
passed into the hands of M. Hupfuff at Strassburg, who used them in
1501. After this Richel turned his attention to liturgies, and is
credited by Dr. Schreiber with being the first printer to insert in his
Missals the woodcut of the Crucifixion, which thenceforth is so
frequently found facing the first page of the Canon.
After the publication of these works illustration seems to have
languished for some years at Basel, but was taken up again about 1489
by Johann von Amerbach, Lienhart Ysenhut, and Michael Furter, the work
of the two latter being mainly imitative. Johann Froben, who began work
about this time, was too learned a publisher to concern himself with
woodcuts, catering chiefly for students of the University. One of the
professors, however, at the University was far from sharing this
indifference to pictures. Born at Strassburg, Sebastian Brant was
educated at Basel, and it was while holding there the Professorship of
Laws that he ensured the popularity of his _Narrenschiff_ (1494) by
equipping it with 115 admirable illustrations. The original edition from
the press of Johann Bergmann von Olpe was published in February, and
before the end of the year Peter Wagner at Nuremberg, Greyff at
Reutlingen, Schoensperger at Augsburg had all pirated it with copies of
the Basel cuts. When the Latin translation by Brant's friend, Jakob
Locher, was published by Bergmann in 1497, the success of the book
became European, and probably no other illustrated work of the fifteenth
century is so well known.
Probably in the same year as the _Narrenschiff_ was first issued,
Bergmann printed for Brant his _In laudem gloriosae virginis Mariae_,
with sixteen woodcuts by the same hand. In 1495 Brant supplied him with
two works in honour of the Emperor Maximilian, one celebrating the
alliance with Pope Alexander VI, illustrated with coats of arms, the
other the _Origo bonorum regum_, with two woodcuts, in which the Emperor
is shown receiving a sword from heaven. Brant was now in high favour
with Maximilian, and his appointment as a Syndic and Imperial Chancellor
at Strassburg led to his return and a consequent notable quickening of
book-illustration in his native city.
At Strassburg Johann Mentelin had used woodcuts for diagrams in an
undated edition of the _Etymologiae_ of S. Isidore, printed about 1473,
but the first producer of books pictorially illustrated was Heinrich
Knoblochtzer, who worked from 1476 to 1484, and issued over thirty
books with woodcuts. Most of these were copies from other men's work,
e.g. his _Belial_ and _Melusina_ from Bamler's, his _Philalethes_ from
the Nuremberg edition of Johann Muller, his _Aesop_ and _Historie der
Sigismunda_ from Johann Zainer's, his _Leben der heiligen drei Konigen_
probably from an anonymous edition by Johann Pruss. Early in his career
in 1477 he issued two books on the great subject of the hour, the death
of Charles the Bold, _Peter Hagenbach und der Burgundische Krieg_ and
the _Burgunderkrieg_ of Erhard Tusch, in both of which he used eight
woodcuts, most of them devoted to incidents of the Duke's ill-fated
campaign. An anonymous edition of the _Euryalus und Lucretia_ of Aeneas
Sylvius (Pope Pius II) has nineteen cuts, which were apparently
commissioned by Knoblochtzer, but he did not secure the services of a
sufficiently skilled wood-cutter. It should be said, however, that his
"historiated" or pictorial capitals are apparently original and mostly
good.
To Johann Pruss at Strassburg are now assigned editions in High and Low
German of the Lives of the Fathers and of Antichrist, which Mr. Proctor,
though he had a shrewd suspicion of their origin, left floating about
among the German "adespota." The cuts to the former reach the average of
early work; those to the _Antichrist_ vary greatly, that of Antichrist
preaching before a queen being extraordinarily successful as a
presentation of a type of coarse spiritual effrontery. The acknowledged
work of Pruss includes editions of the travels of _Mandeville_, of the
_Directorium Humanae Vitae_, and of the _Flores Musicae_ of Hugo
Reutlingensis, with a rather famous cut showing how musical notes are
produced by the wind, by a water wheel, by tapping stones, and hammering
on an anvil. Pruss also printed several illustrated editions of the
_Hortus Sanitatis_.
Far more prolific than either of the foregoing Strassburg printers was
Johann Reinhard of Gruningen, usually called Gruninger after his
birthplace. Setting up his press in 1483, he began book-illustration two
years later with a German Bible with woodcuts copied from those in the
Low German Bibles printed at Cologne and used in 1483 at Nuremberg by
Koberger. Some minor books followed, and in 1491 he issued the
_Antidotarius Animae_ of Nicolaus de Saliceto, with rather rude borders
to each page and a woodcut of the Assumption. This, however, like some
of his earlier illustrated books, appears to have been a commission, and
in a reprint of 1493 the decorations disappear. It was not until 1496,
under the influence of Sebastian Brant, that he undertook any important
original illustrated work on his own account. In that year he produced
his first illustrated classic, the comedies of Terence (_Terentius cum
directorio_), with a large woodcut of a theatre and eighty-seven narrow
cuts of the dramatis personae, or of scenery, used five at a time in 150
different combinations. Critically examined, the cuts are rather
unpleasing, and were regarded at the time as likely to provoke mirth
otherwise than by expressing the humorous intent of the playwright, but
another edition and a German translation similarly decorated appeared in
1499, and Gruninger issued on the same plan a _Horace_ (edited by
Locher) in 1498, and the _De consolatione philosophiae_ of Boethius in
1501. His full strength was reserved for the _Virgil_ of the following
year, which was superintended by Brant, and is crowded with wonderful
pictures, in which on the very eve of the Renaissance Virgil is
thoroughly medievalized. Besides these classics, Gruninger printed many
other illustrated editions, minor works by Brant, medical treatises by
Brunschwig, an _Evangelienbuch_, a _Legenda S. Katherinae_ in Latin and
also in German, editions of the _Hortulus Animae_, the romance of Hug
Schapler, etc., in the fifteenth century, and in the sixteenth a
sufficient number of illustrated books to bring his total up to about
150 editions. These may be said to form a school by themselves,
distinguished by a certain richness of effect partly due to heavy
cutting, but with less power of characterization and fewer gleams of
beauty than are to be found in the best work of other towns, the figures
being often unpleasing and notably lean in the legs. Martin Scott,
Hupfuff, and Kistler were other Strassburg printers of the fifteenth
century who also used illustrations.
At Cologne book-illustration began in 1474 with editions of the
_Fasciculus Temporum_ of Werner Rolewinck, from the presses of ther
Hoernen and Nicolaus Gotz. But with the notable exception of two great
Bibles issued by Heinrich Quentell, illustrated books before 1490 are
neither important nor numerous. Even in 1490 the edition of the
_Historia Septem Sapientum_ of Johannes de Hauteselve, issued by the
elder Koelhoff, was adorned with cuts obtained from Gerard Leeu at
Antwerp. Quentell issued a few stock cuts in one book after another, and
Johann Landen, Martin von Werden (if he be rightly identified with the
printer "Retro Minores"), and Cornelis von Zierickzee all used a few
cuts, some of the latter's having a curiously Italian appearance. But
the only important illustrated book, other than the Bibles, is the
Cologne Chronicle, issued (not to his profit, since he was imprisoned
for it) by the younger Koelhoff in 1499, with armorial cuts and a few
pictures of kings and queens somewhat too frequently repeated.
Quentell's Bibles in High and Low German are in curious contrast to all
this work. They are illustrated with 125 large oblong pictures, firmly
if rather coarsely cut, and full of story-telling power, several
successive incidents being sometimes brought into the same picture in
true medieval fashion. The book was imitated at Nuremberg and elsewhere,
and the illustrators of the Venetian Malermi Bible of 1490, and even
Hans Holbein himself, did not disdain to take ideas from it.
At Lubeck a finely decorated edition of the _Rudimentum Noviciorum_, a
universal history, was issued by Lucas Brandis as early as 1475, with
some good pictorial capitals, and pictures beginning with the Creation
and coming down to the life of Christ. In 1484 we come to a _Levend S.
Jeronimi_, printed by Bartholomaeus Ghotan and illustrated by an
anonymous artist whose work can be traced during the next ten years in
other books of Ghotan's, in several very interesting editions by the
unidentified "Poppy-Printer" (so called from his mark), including a
_Dodendantz_ (1489 and 1496), _Imitatio Christi_, _Bergitten
Openbaringe_ (1496), _Reynke de Vos_ (1498), _Schakspil_, etc., and in
the splendid Low German Bible printed in 1494 by Stephan Arndes, with
cuts which improve on those in the Cologne editions.
[Illustration: IX. MAINZ, ERHARD REUWICH, 1486
BREIDENBACH. PEREGRINATIO IN MONTEM SYON SARACENS AND SYRIANS]
At Mainz, which led the way so energetically in typography,
book-illustration is not represented at all until 1479, and then almost
accidentally in the _Meditationes_ of Cardinal Turrecremata, printed by
Johann Neumeister "ciuem Moguntinensem," with thirty-four curious
metal-cuts imitating on a smaller scale the woodcuts in the editions
printed at Rome by Ulrich Han. Two years later these metal-cuts were
used by Neumeister at Albi, and they are subsequently found at Lyon.
That this book was printed at Mainz was made practically certain by the
type appearing subsequently in the possession of Peter von Friedberg,
but that the cuts were executed at Mainz seemed to me improbable until
the publication of Dr. Schreibers work on German illustrated books
acquainted me with the existence of an _Agenda Moguntinensis_ of 29
June, 1480, also attributed to Neumeister's press, with a metal-cut of
S. Martin and the beggar, and the arms not only of Archbishop Diether
and the province of Mainz, but of Canon Bernhard von Breidenbach, of
whom we shall soon hear again. The _Agenda_ and its metal-cuts are thus
firmly fixed as executed at Mainz, and the metal-cuts of the
_Meditationes_ must therefore be regarded as Mainz work also.
In 1486 Mainz atoned for her long delay in taking up illustrated
work, with the _Peregrinationes in Montem Syon_ of the aforesaid Canon
Bernhard von Breidenbach, printed with type of Schoeffer's, under the
superintendence of Erhard Reuwich of Utrecht, the illustrator. The text
of Breidenbach's book is full of interest, for he gives a vivid account
of the voyage and of the hardships and extortions to which pilgrims were
exposed. In his preface he states that Reuwich was expressly taken on
the expedition to illustrate the narrative, and he certainly had ample
skill to justify the engagement. Unfortunately, far too much of his
labour was spent on great maps or views of Venice, Parenzo, Rhodes and
other places passed on the way. These are certainly interesting, as they
mark all the chief buildings and are very decoratively drawn. But in the
text of the book there are just a few sketches from the life, Jewish
moneylenders and groups of Saracens, Syrians (see Plate IX), Indians,
etc., and these are so vivid and vigorous that we may well regret that
the labour bestowed on the great maps left time for very few of them.
They are interesting, moreover, not only as designs, but also for their
cutting, as they introduce cross-hatching for the first time, and that
very effectively, and are handled with equal firmness and freedom. At
the end of the book is a jest, a full-page woodcut subscribed "Hec sunt
animalia veraciter depicta sicut vidimus in terra sancta," among the
animals thus certified as having been seen personally in the Holy Land
being a unicorn and a creature (name unknown--_non constat de nomine_)
with a great mane of hair and long tail, which might well serve for the
missing link between a man and a gorilla. The frontispiece of the book,
on the other hand, is a striking design of a woman (symbolizing the city
of Mainz?) standing on a pedestal surrounded with the arms of
Breidenbach and the two friends who went with him, decoratively treated,
while above her is a canopy of trelliswork amid which children are
joyously climbing. With the Mainz _Breidenbach_ we feel that we have
passed away from the naive craftsmanship of the earliest illustrated
books into a region of conscious art.
Naturally craftsmanship was not extinguished by the arrival of a single
artist. We find it at work again in the charming and little known cut to
a Leipzig edition of the Eclogues of Theodulus, printed in 1491, which
the delight of recent discovery tempts me to show here (see Plate X),
and at Mainz itself in the simple cuts to the _Hortus Sanitatis_,
printed by Meidenbach, also in 1491, though here again there is an
advance, as instead of plants and animals drawn out of the illustrator's
head merely for decorative effect we find in many of the cuts fairly
careful copies made from the life.
In Conrad Botho's _Cronecken der Sassen_, printed by Schoeffer the
following year, most of the armorial illustrations and pictures of the
foundation of towns are merely decoratively treated, but in one cut in
which a rather wild-looking Charlemagne with lean legs is shown seated
in a chair of state surmounted by an eagle, an idol crushed under his
feet, the designer has given free play to his imagination.
[Illustration: X. LEIPZIG, CONRAD KACHELOFEN, 1489
THEODULUS. EGLOGA (I^b)]
The transition to different ideals of illustration thus begun at Mainz
was carried on at Nuremberg, where Michael Wolgemut illustrated two
important works, the _Schatzbehalter_ in 1491 and the famous _Nuremberg
Chronicle_ in 1493, this latter with the help of his stepson, Wilhelm
Pleydenwurff, and no doubt also of several inferior designers. The
_Schatzbehalter_, of which the text is ascribed to Stephanus Fridelinus,
a Nuremberg Franciscan, is one of several examples of a too ambitious
scheme of decoration perforce abandoned for lack either of time or of
money. In the first half there are ninety-two different full-page
woodcuts, mostly illustrating Scripture history, but in some cases
allegorical; in the second half the number is no more than two. The
pictures executed before the scheme was thus cut down vary greatly in
quality, from the fine design of Christ kneeling before the throne of
the Father and pointing to the emblems of the Passion, which prepares
us for the work which Durer, who was then being trained in Wolgemut's
studio, was soon to execute, down to the amusing but uninspired
craftsmanship of the picture of Solomon and a selection of his wives
banqueting. For the _Liber Chronicarum_ of Hartman Schedel plans had
been much more carefully worked out than for the _Schatzbehalter_, and
by studying economy a seemingly profuse system of illustration was
maintained to the end. The industry of Mr. Sydney Cockerell has evolved
for us the exact figures as to the illustration of this book. Real
liberality is shown in the large, double-page topographical cuts of
twenty-six different cities, for many of which sketches must have been
specially obtained, and not one of these is used a second time; but
twenty-two other large cuts of cities and countries were made to serve
for sixty-nine different subjects, and when we come to figures of
emperors, kings, and popes we find ninety-six blocks used 598 times, or
on an average half a dozen times apiece. Mr. Cockerell's grand totals
are 1809 pictures printed from 645 different blocks, so that the
repetitions number no fewer than 1164. Both in the designs and their
execution there is great inequality, but no single picture can compare
with that of Christ kneeling before the Father in the _Schatzbehalter_,
and both books, fine as their best work is, must be regarded rather as
the crown of German medieval craftsmanship in book-building than as
belonging to the period of self-conscious artistic aim which is heralded
by the Mainz _Breidenbach_ but really begins with Durer.
With this Nuremberg work we may perhaps class that in the one book
printed at the Cistercian monastery at Zinna, near Magdeburg, the
_Psalterium Beatae Mariae Virginis_, of Hermann Nitschewitz, the most
richly decorated German book of the fifteenth century, executed in
honour of the Emperor Frederick and his son Maximilian, who in the page
here shown (Plate XI) are both represented.
Primitive Dutch and Flemish book-illustrations when compared with
German ones exhibit just the general likeness and specific differences
which we might expect in the work of such near neighbours. The Low
Country wood-cutters are on the whole more decorative than the Germans,
they were more influenced by the work of the engravers on copper, and
they were attracted by different types of the human figure, the faces
and bodies of the men and women they drew being often long and thin, and
often also showing a slightly fantastic touch rarely found in German
work. Unfortunately, these Low Country illustrated books are even rarer
than the German ones, far fewer of them have found their way to England,
and no attempt has been made to reproduce a really representative
selection of them in facsimile. In 1884 Sir W. M. Conway, as the result
of prolonged studies on the Continent, wrote an excellent account of
these illustrations and the makers of them under the title, _The
Woodcutters of the Netherlands in the Fifteenth Century_, which was
unhappily allowed to appear without any facsimiles to elucidate the
text. Thus the study of these Low Country illustrated books is still
difficult.
[Illustration: XI. ZINNA. MONASTERIUM CISTERCIENSE, C. 1493
NITSCHEWITZ. PSALTERIUM BEATAE MARIAE VIRGINIS FREDERICK AND MAXIMILIAN]
In the production of the early block-books (see Chapter II) the Low
Countries had played a principal part, and we meet again with traces of
them in later illustrated books, cuts from the _Biblia Pauperum_ being
used by Peter van Os at Zwolle in his _Episteln ende Evangelien_ of 5
January, 1487, and one from the _Canticum Canticorum_ in his edition of
Mauberne's _Rosetum Exercitiorum Spiritualium_ in 1494. Two cut-up
pieces from the block-book _Speculum Humanae Saluationis_ were used by
Veldener in his _Episteln ende Evangelien_ completed at Utrecht 19
April, 1481, and all the old blocks, each divided in two, in a new
edition of the _Speculum_ printed at Kuilenburg 27 September, 1483, with
twelve new cuts added to them. Sir W. M. Conway has also shown that a
set of sixty-four cuts used in a _Boec van der Houte_ or Legend of the
Holy Cross, issued by Veldener at Kuilenburg earlier in 1483 (on 6
March), must have been obtained by dividing in a similar manner the
double cuts of a block-book now entirely lost.
The first printer in the Low Countries who commissioned a woodcut for a
book printed with movable type was Johann of Paderborn (John of
Westphalia) at Louvain, the cut being a curious little representation of
his own head, shown in white on a black oval. This he used in his
_Institutiones_ of Justinian of 21 November, 1475, and a few other
books, and a similar but even better likeness of his kinsman, Conrad,
appeared the next year in the _Formulae Epistularum_ of Maneken (1
December, 1476). Although Johann of Paderborn thus led the way in the
use of cuts, he only resorted to them subsequently for a few diagrams,
and towards the end of his career for some half-dozen miscellaneous
blocks for devotional books.
The portrait of Johann of Paderborn being used only as a device,
book-illustration begins, though on a very small scale, with Veldener's
edition of the _Fasciculus Temporum_ (29 December, 1475), with its
handful of poor little cuts modelled on those of the Cologne editions.
Five years later Veldener reprinted the _Fasciculus_ with a few new
cuts, the originals of which have been found in the Lubeck _Rudimentum
Noviciorum_. The only picture which seems to have been specially
designed for him was a folio cut in his _Passionael_ (Utrecht, 12
September, 1480), where in delicate simple outline a variety of
martyrdoms are shown as taking place in the hollows of a series of
hills. Mention has already been made of his two Kuilenburg reprints of
block-books. In the same place he issued Dutch and Latin Herbals with
cuts copied from Schoeffer's Mainz _Herbarius_, and this completes the
story of his illustrated ventures.
[Illustration: XII. HAARLEM, BELLAERT, 1484
JACOBUS DE THERAMO. BELIAL (4^a) THE HARROWING OF HELL]
We come now to Gerard Leeu, who on 3 June, 1480, issued at Gouda the
first completely illustrated book from a Dutch press, the _Dialogus
creaturarum moralisatus_, a glorified version of the old bestiaries,
full of wonderful stories of animals. This was illustrated with 121
specially designed cuts (mostly about four inches by two), and Leeu's
liberality was rewarded by the book passing through nine editions, six
in Latin and three in Dutch, in eleven years. The first page is
decorated with a picture of the Sun and Moon, a large capital, and an
ornamental border of foliage, but the merit of the book lies in the
simple skill with which the craftsman, working entirely in outline, has
reproduced the humour of the text. To the same hand are attributed ten
cuts for Leeu's vernacular _Gesta Romanorum_ (30 April, 1481), four for
an undated _Historia Septem Sapientum_, and four others, of the Four
Last Things, which, to our puzzlement, appear first in a French edition
printed by Arend de Keysere at Audenarde, and then (23 August, 1482) in
a Dutch one of Leeu's. In the previous month he had brought out a _Liden
ende passie ons Heeren_ with thirty-two quarto cuts, part of a set of
sixty-eight made for editions of the _Devote Ghetiden_ or Dutch version
of the _Horae_, the first of which (unless a Gouda one has perished)
appeared after his removal to Antwerp. During the following nine years
he made good use of his old blocks. For his Dutch _Aesop_ of October,
1485, and Latin edition of September, 1486, he used cuts copied from the
original Ulm and Augsburg set. These he bought from Knoblochtzer of
Strassburg and sold to Koelhoff of Cologne. In 1487 he issued an
illustrated _Reynard the Fox_, of which only a fragment survives, and
the pleasant romance of _Paris and Vienne_, with twenty-five fairly
successful cuts, with the help of which five editions were sold, the
first in French, the next three in Dutch, and the last (23 June, 1492)
in English. According to Sir W. M. Conway these _Paris and Vienne_ cuts
were the work of a Haarlem craftsman, who from 1483 to 1486 had worked
for Jacob Bellaert, whose press was intimately connected with Leeu's,
type and cuts passing freely from one to the other. Bellaert had begun
by using some of Leeu's Passion cuts for a _Liden ons Heeren_, but seems
soon to have discovered his Haarlem wood-cutter, with whose aid he
produced (15 February, 1484) _Der Sonderen troest_, The Sinners' Trust,
a Dutch version of that remarkable work the _Belial_ or _Consolatio
peccatorum_ of Jacobus de Theramo, of which the Augsburg edition has
already been mentioned. This begins with a full folio-page cut combining
in one panorama the Fall of Angels and of Adam and Eve, the Flood, the
Egyptians overtaken in the Red Sea, and the Baptism of Christ. Six of
the other cuts fill half-pages and show the Harrowing of Hell (here
reproduced, Plate XII), Devils in consultation, Satan kneeling before
the Lord, the Last Judgment, Ascension and Descent of the Holy Spirit.
The remaining half-page pictures are all composite, made up of different
combinations of eight centre-pieces and seventeen sidepieces. The
centre-pieces for the most part represent the different judges before
whom the trials are heard, the side-pieces the messengers and parties to
the suit. The combinations are occasionally a little clumsy, but far
less so than in the Strassburg books printed by Gruninger in which the
same labour-saving device was adopted, and in excellence of design and
delicacy of cutting this Dutch _Belial_ ranks high among illustrated
incunabula.
Later in 1484 (25 October) Bellaert issued a _Boeck des Golden Throens_
with four-column cuts, often repeated, of an Elder instructing a maiden;
in May, 1485, Le Fevre's _Jason_, and a little earlier than this an
undated edition of the same author's _Recueil des histoires de Troie_,
both in Dutch and both profusely illustrated; on Christmas Eve in the
same year a Dutch _De proprietatibus rerum_, and in 1486 versions of
Pierre Michault's _Doctrinal_, in which a dreamer is shown the schools
of virtue and of vice, and of Guillaume de Deguilleville's _Pelerinage
de la vie humaine_, the medieval prototype of Bunyan's _Pilgrim's
Progress_. The _De proprietatibus_ is the only one of these books of
1485-6 that I have seen, and its full-page cuts are notable both for
their own sake and as having been widely copied, although they
illustrate only eleven of the nineteen books.
No other Low Country printer showed anything like the enterprise of Leeu
and Bellaert in commissioning long sets of original woodcuts from
competent craftsmen, but several fine illustrated books were produced by
other firms. Beginning in 1484 Peter van Os printed numerous illustrated
books at Zwolle, few of which attain excellence. Yet one of the earliest
of them, the Sermons of S. Bernard, has a frontispiece of the Virgin and
Child and the Saint gazing at them which is unequalled by any other
single cut in the Low Country book in its large pictorial effect. At
Gouda, in 1486, Gottfried van Os issued the _Chevalier Delibere_ of
Olivier de la Marche, with sixteen large cuts, in which the author's
minute instructions for each picture are faithfully carried out with
extraordinary freedom and spirit, though the ambitious designs are more
suitable to frescoes than to book-illustrations. About the end of the
century the book was reprinted at Schiedam with the same cuts, from
which facsimiles were made in 1898 by Dr. Lippmann and published by the
Bibliographical Society.
At Louvain in 1487 Egidius van der Heerstraten issued the _De praeclaris
mulieribus_ of Boccaccio with copies of the cuts of the Ulm edition of
great interest for the differences in handling revealed when the two are
compared. A little later than this another Louvain printer, Ludovicus de
Ravescot, published the _De anno die et feria Dominicae Passionis_ of
Petrus de Rivo, with a title-cut of the author kneeling before the
Virgin and Child, and three large cuts of the Last Supper, Crucifixion,
and Resurrection, somewhat in the temper of the illustrations in the
Cologne Bibles, but with characteristic Low Country touches. Lastly,
mention must be made of the clumsy outline cuts in the Bruges edition of
Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, issued in 1484 by Caxton's partner Colard
Mansion. Mansion certainly, and possibly Caxton also, were among the
early experimenters with copperplate illustration, but the story of
these will be told in Chapter XV.
FOOTNOTES:
[29] Dr. Schreiber, in the introduction to Tome V of his _Manuel de
l'amateur de la gravure sur bois au xv^e siecle_, dealing with German
book-illustrations, shows that some little difficulty was found at
first in effecting this. In Boner's _Edelstein_ (Bamberg, 1461),
probably the first illustrated book printed in Germany, the cuts were
printed after the text. In Zainer's _Heiligenleben_, the first
illustrated book printed at Augsburg, the cuts must have been printed
first, as part of the text is sometimes printed over them.
[30] A set of proofs of cuts to this book, previously in the
possession of the Marquis of Blandford and Mr. Perkins, was among the
favourite possessions of William Morris, and is now owned by Mr.
Morgan. An illustrated _Plenarium_, assigned by Dr. Copinger to
Richel, appears to be a "ghost," due to some confusion with this
_Spiegel_.