FOREIGN ILLUSTRATED BOOKS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
[Illustration: XXIII. NUREMBERG, SODALITAS CELTICA. 1501
HROSWITHA. OPERA (4^b). HROSWITHA AND THE EMPEROR OTHO
(ATTRIBUTED TO DURER)]
As we have already said, the charm of the woodcut pictures in incunabula
lies in their simplicity, in their rude story-telling power, often very
forcible and direct, in the valiant effort, sometimes curiously
successful in cuts otherwise contemptibly poor, to give character and
expression to the human face, and as regards form in the harmony between
the woodcuts and the paper and type of the books in which they appear.
In the book-illustrations of the sixteenth century the artist is more
learned, more self-conscious, and his design is interpreted with far
greater skill by the better trained wood-cutters of his day. More pains
are taken with accessories, and often perhaps for this reason the cut
does not tell its story so quickly as of old. It is now a work of art
which demands study, no longer a signpost explaining itself however
rapidly the leaf is turned. Lastly, the artist seems seldom to have
thought of the form of the book in which his work was to appear, of the
type with which the text was to be printed, or even of how the
wood-cutter was to interpret his design. Book-illustration, which had
offered to the humble makers of playing-cards and pictures of saints new
scope for their skill, became to the artists of the sixteenth century a
lightly valued method of earning a little money from the booksellers,
their better work being reserved for single designs, or in some cases
for the copperplates which at first they executed, as well as drew,
themselves. Thus the book-collector is conscious, on the one hand, that
less pains have been taken to please him, and on the other that he is
separating by his hobby one section of an artist's work from the
rest, in connection with which it ought to be studied. He may even be in
some doubt as to where his province ends, since many of the illustrated
books of the sixteenth century, although they possess a titlepage and
are made up in quires, are essentially not books at all, the letterpress
being confined to explanations of the woodcuts printed either below them
or facing them on the opposite pages. The bibliographer himself, it may
be added, feels somewhat of an intruder in this field, which properly
belongs to the student of art, although in so far as art is enshrined in
books and thus brought within the province of the book-collector,
bibliography cannot refuse to deal with it.
Although we have taken off our caps in passing to Erhard Reuwich and
Michael Wolgemut for their admirable work, the one in the Mainz
_Breidenbach_, the other in the _Schatzbehalter_ and _Nuremberg
Chronicle_, it is Albrecht Durer who must be regarded as the inaugurator
of the second period of German book-illustrations. During his
Wanderjahre Durer had produced at Basel for an edition of S. Jerome's
Epistles, printed by Nicolaus Kesler in 1492 (reprinted 1497), a rude
woodcut of the saint extracting a thorn from his lion's foot. Durer's
important bookwork begins in 1498, when his fifteen magnificent woodcuts
illustrating the Apocalypse (which influenced all later treatments of
this theme) were issued twice over at Nuremberg, in one edition with
German title and text, in the other with Latin. Stated in their
colophons to have been "printed by Albrecht Durer, painter," neither
edition bears the name of a professional printer. The types used in each
case were those of Anton Koberger, Durer's godfather, and the effect of
the artist's personal superintendence, which the colophons attest, is
seen in the excellence of the presswork. The following year Koberger
published an illustrated edition of the _Reuelationes Sanctae Birgittae_
(German reprint in 1502), and Durer has been supposed to have helped in
this, but the theory is now discredited. In 1501 he probably
contributed two woodcuts to an edition of the comedies of Hroswitha, a
tenth century nun of the Benedictine Abbey at Gandersheim. Conrad Celtes
had unearthed these comedies some years previously in a Ratisbon
library, and they were now printed under his editorship for the
_Sodalitas Celtica_ at Nuremberg. The illustrations to the comedies
themselves, which vie in heaviness with their subjects, are attributed
by Mr. Campbell Dodgson to Wolfgang Traut.[44] One of the cuts assigned
to Durer represents Celtes offering the book to Frederick III, Elector
of Saxony; the other shows Hroswitha herself presenting her plays to the
Emperor Otto I (see Plate XXIII). In 1502 Durer designed another cut of
a presentation and an illustration of Philosophy (both very feebly
rendered by the cutter) for the _Quatuor libri Amorum_ of Celtes. In
1511 the Latin Apocalypse was reprinted, and three other sets of
woodcuts by Durer appeared in book form, in each case with Latin text by
Benedictus Chelidonius. One of these commemorated in twenty designs the
life of the Blessed Virgin (_Epitome in Diuae Parthenices Marie
Historiam ab Alberto Durero Norico per Figuras digestam cum versibus
annexis Chelidonii_), the other two the Passion of Christ, the Great
Passion (_Passio domini nostri Jesu ex hieronymo Paduano, Dominico
Mancino, Sedulio et Baptista Mantuano per fratrem Chelidonium collecta
cum figuris Alberti Dureri Norici Pictoris_, in folio) in twelve large
woodcuts, the Little Passion (_Passio Christi ab Alberto Durer
Norembergensi effigiata c[=u] varij generis carminibus Fratris Benedicti
Chelidonij Musophili_, in quarto) in thirty-seven smaller ones. After
this Durer was caught up by the Emperor Maximilian and set to work on
some of the various ambitious projects for illustrating his reign, as to
which more will be said later. His later bookwork includes a Crucifixion
and S. Willibald for an Eichstatt Missal (Nuremberg, H. Holzel, 1517),
some large designs for the _Etliche vnderricht zu befestigung der Stett
Schloss vnd flecken_ (Nuremberg, 1527), and his own book on the
Proportion of the Human Body, which was issued both in German and in a
Latin translation by Camerarius.
Several borders and illustrations formerly ascribed to Durer are now
attributed to one of his pupils, Hans Springinklee, who lived in Durer's
house at Nuremberg, where he worked from about 1513 to 1522. Most of
Springinklee's bookwork was done for Anton Koberger, who published some
of it at Nuremberg, while some was sent to the Lyon printers, Clein,
Sacon, and Marion, who were in Koberger's employment. A border of his
design bearing the arms of Bilibaldus Pirckheimer is found in several
works which Pirckheimer edited (1513-17). In a _Hortulus Animae_,
printed by J. Clein for Koberger at Lyon, 1516, fifty cuts are by
Springinklee. The _Hortulus Animae_ was as popular in Germany as the
illustrated _Horae_ in France and England. In 1517 another edition
appeared with Erhard Schon as its chief illustrator, and only a few of
Springinklee's cuts. The next year Springinklee produced a new set of
cuts, and Schon's work was less used. Springinklee and Schon were also
associated in Bible illustrations printed for Koberger by Sacon at Lyon,
and to Springinklee are now assigned two full-page woodcuts in an
Eichstatt Missal (H. Holzel, Nuremberg, 1517), and a border to the
_Reuelationes Birgittae_ (F. Peypus, Nuremberg, 1517), formerly ascribed
to Durer. A woodcut of Johann Tritheim presenting his _Polygraphia_ to
Maximilian, formerly attributed to Holbein as having been printed at
Basel (Adam Petri, 1518), is now also placed to the credit of
Springinklee, who, moreover, worked for the _Weisskunig_ and probably
for other of the artistic commemorations of himself which Maximilian
commissioned.
Hans Sebald Beham is best known as a book-illustrator from his work for
Christian Egenolph at Frankfurt am Main, which began in 1533. But he
belonged to the Nuremberg school, had worked for ten or twelve years for
Merckel, Peypus, Petreius and other Nuremberg firms, and has had the
honour of having some of his single cuts attributed to Durer. His most
important books for Egenolph were the _Biblische Historien_, a series of
small illustrations to the Bible, first printed in 1533, which went
through many editions in German and Latin, and another series
illustrating the Apocalypse, of which the first edition appeared in
1539, the texts of the Latin _Historiae_ and also to the Apocalypse cuts
being supplied by Georgius Aemilius. A set of medallion portraits of
Roman emperors by him also appeared in several German and Latin
chronicles published by Egenolph.
Between the Nuremberg book-illustrators and those of Augsburg, to whom
we must now turn, a connecting link may be found in the person of Hans
Leonhard Schaufelein, born about 1480, soon after his father, a
Nordlingen wool merchant, had settled at Nuremberg. He worked under
Durer, and his earliest book-illustrations were made for Dr. Ulrich
Pinder, the owner of a private press at Nuremberg. Several unsigned cuts
in _Der beschlossen gart des rosenkrantz Marie_ (Pinder, 1505), and
thirty out of thirty-four large cuts in a _Speculum Passionis_ (Pinder,
1507), are ascribed to Schaufelein, his associate in each book being
Hans Baldung. About 1510 Schaufelein removed to Augsburg, and, despite
his return to his paternal home at Nordlingen where he took up his
citizenship in 1515, he worked for the chief Augsburg publishers for the
rest of his life, though between 1523 and 1531 nothing is known as to
what he was doing.
Among the earlier Augsburg books with illustrations attributed to
Schaufelein are Tengler's _Der neu Layenspiegel_ (1511), Henricus Suso's
_Der Seusse (1512), Heiligenleben_ (1513), Geiler's _Schiff der
Penitentz_ (1514), and the _Hystori und wunderbarlich legend Katharine
von Senis_ (1515), all published by J. Otmar. In 1514 he had
illustrated for Adam Petri of Basel a _Plenarium_ or _Evangelienbuch_,
which went through several editions. Another _Evangelienbuch_, printed
by Thomas Anshelm at Hagenau in 1516, contains several cuts with
Schaufelein's signature, but in a different style, probably partly due
to a different wood-cutter; these were used again in other books.
In the _Theuerdank_ of 1517 about twenty cuts are assigned to
Schaufelein, some of them bearing his signature. The following year he
illustrated Leonrodt's _Himmelwagen_ for Otmar with twenty cuts, mostly
signed, some of which were used afterwards on the titlepages of early
Luther tracts. After an interval Schaufelein is found in 1533 working
for Heinrich Steyner of Augsburg, who employed him to illustrate his
German editions of the classics, Thucydides (1533), Plutarch (1534),
Cicero (1534), Apuleius (1538), etc. The blocks for some of his cuts
subsequently passed into the possession of Christian Egenolph of
Frankfort.
The first native Augsburg artist whom we have to notice is Hans
Burgkmair, who was born in 1473, and began bookwork in 1499 by
illustrating missals for Erhard Ratdolt with pictures of patron saints
and of the Crucifixion. The chief Augsburg publisher for whom he worked
in his early days was Johann Otmar, for whom he illustrated several
books by the popular preacher, Johann Geiler von Kaisersberg (_Predigen
teutsch_, 1508 and 1510, _Das Buch Granatapfel_, 1510, _Nauicula
Poenitentiae_, 1511), and other devotional and moral works. In 1515 Hans
Schoensperger the younger employed him to supply a dedication cut and
seven designs of the Passion for a _Leiden Christi_, and to the
_Theuerdank_ published by Schoensperger the elder at Nuremberg in 1517
he contributed thirteen illustrations (only one signed). He had already
been employed (1510) on a few of the cuts in the Genealogy of the
Emperor Maximilian, which a wholesome fear lest its accuracy should be
doubted caused that self-celebrating monarch to withhold from
publication, and much more largely (1514-16) on the _Weisskunig_, which
was first printed, from the original blocks, at Vienna in 1775; and he
was the chief worker (1516-18) on the woodcuts for the Triumphal
Procession of Maximilian printed by order of the Archduke Ferdinand in
1526. While these imperial commissions were in progress Burgkmair
designed a few title-cuts for Johann Miller, notably the very fine one
(see Plate XXIV) to the _De rebus Gothorum_ of Jornandes (1515), showing
kings Alewinus and Athanaricus in conversation, and subsequently worked
for Grimm and Wirsung and for H. Steiner, although not nearly to the
extent which was at one time supposed, as most of the illustrations
supplied to these firms with which he used to be credited are now
assigned to Hans Weiditz.
Jorg Breu, who was born and died (1537) some half-dozen years later than
Burgkmair, like him illustrated Missals for Ratdolt and contributed
Passion-cuts to Mann's _Leiden Christi_. His most important piece of
bookwork was the redrawing of the cuts in Anton Sorg's edition of
Reichenthal's _Conciliumbuch_ for a reprint by Steiner in 1536.
Illustrations by him also occur in a _Melusina_ (1538), and German
versions of Boccaccio's _De claris mulieribus_ and _De Casibus
Illustrium virorum_ issued after his death by the same firm. Leonhard
Beck contributed largely to the illustration of Maximilian's literary
ventures, especially the _Theuerdank_, _Weisskunig_, and Saints of the
House of Austria (published at some date between 1522 and 1551).
[Illustration: XXIV. AUGSBURG, J. MILLER, 1515
JORNANDES. DE REBUS GOTHORUM. (TITLE). ATTRIBUTED TO BURGKMAIR]
We come now to Hans Weiditz, the immense extension of whose work by the
attributions of recent years can only be compared to Mr. Proctor's
raising of Bartolommeo de' Libri from one of the smallest to one of the
most prolific of Florentine printers. Only two or three Augsburg
woodcuts bearing his initials are known, while scores and even hundreds
are now assigned to him, most of which had previously been credited to
Burgkmair.
Weiditz began bookwork in or before 1518, in which year he contributed a
title-cut to the _Nemo_ of Ulrich von Hutten, while in 1519 he made
twelve illustrations to the same author's account of Maximilian's
quarrel with the Venetians. In 1518 he had begun working for the firm of
Grimm and Wirsung, and this, with a few commissions from other Augsburg
publishers, kept him busy till about 1523, when he himself moved to
Strassburg, whence his family had come, while in the same year Grimm and
Wirsung gave up business and sold their blocks to Steiner. These
included not only many title-borders by Weiditz, twenty illustrations to
two comedies of Plautus and a set of cuts to the _Deuotissime
meditationes de vita et passione Christi_, and another to a German
_Celestina_, all published in 1520, but a series of some 260 masterly
illustrations to a German version of Petrarch's _De remediis utriusque
fortunae_. Steiner used some of these cuts in a Cicero _De Officiis_ of
1531, which has in addition sixty-seven important cuts by Weiditz,
presumably of the same period, and also in a _Justinus_ of the same
year, but the work for which they were specially designed did not appear
until a year later. Needless to say, selections from both the Petrarch
and the Cicero sets appear in later work.
After removing to Strassburg, Weiditz copied some Wittenberg Bible cuts
and also Holbein's Apocalypse set for Knoblauch in 1524. In 1530 he
illustrated for J. Schott the _Herbarium_ of Brunfels, which went
through several editions both in Latin and German, and for this
comparatively humble work was praised by name in both editions, so that
until 1904 it was only as the illustrator of the Herbal that he was
known. Many of his Augsburg woodcuts subsequently passed to that
persistent purchaser of old blocks, Christian Egenolph of Frankfort.
Before passing away from the Nuremberg and Augsburg book-illustrators,
it seems necessary to describe briefly, but in a more connected form,
the literary and artistic enterprises of the Emperor Maximilian, to
which so many incidental allusions have been made. The Emperor's first
attempt to glorify himself and his lineage took the form of a Genealogy
for which several antiquaries--Mennel, Sunthaim, Tritheim, and
Stabius--made researches. Burgkmair made designs of some ninety
ancestors and their heraldic coats in 1509-11, and the wood-blocks were
cut. It was apparently intended to print them in 1512, but the whole
project was abandoned, and the work is now only known from a few sets of
proofs, no one of which is quite complete.
After this failure Maximilian planned a Triumphal Arch and Procession,
the programme for the Arch being drawn up by Stabius, that of the
Procession by Treitzsaurwein. The plan of the Arch was largely worked
out by Durer, with help from Springinklee, Traut, and Altdorfer, whose
designs were carried out in 192 woodblocks cut by Hieronymus Andrea and
his assistants. When the impressions from these are put together they
make a design measuring nearly twelve feet by ten. In the centre is the
Gate of Honour, to the left and right the gates of Praise and Nobility.
Above the main gate rises a tower on which are displayed the Emperor's
ancestors and their arms, above the other gates a series of incidents of
Maximilian's life, surmounted by busts of his imperial predecessors and
of contemporary princes. This was printed in 1517-18 at Nuremberg, and
in 1526-8 and 1559 at Vienna. On the Procession or Triumph, Durer,
Springinklee, Schaufelein, Burgkmair, and Beck were all engaged. The 138
blocks composing it were cut by Andrea and Jost de Negker in 1516-18,
and it was printed by order of the Archduke Ferdinand in 1526. A
Triumphal Car designed by Durer in 1518, in connection with the same
project, was published in eight sheets in 1522.
A series of representations of Saints of the House of Hapsburg had been
planned soon after the abandonment of the Genealogy, and assumed shape
in 1514. From drawings now attributed to Leonhard Beck, 123 woodblocks
were made, and an edition in book form was printed some time after
1522.
The romance of _Theuerdank_ was written by Melchior Pfintzing, under
Maximilian's direction, to celebrate his wooing of Mary of Burgundy and
other exploits. The bulk (seventy-seven) of the illustrations in it are
now ascribed to Beck, seventeen to Schaufelein, thirteen to Burgkmair,
and three, two, and one respectively to Schon, Traut, and Breu. It was
published as a sumptuous folio, several copies being struck on vellum by
the elder Schoensperger at Nuremberg in 1517, and reprinted two years
later.
The _Weisskunig_, or White King, an account of Maximilian's parentage,
education, and exploits, was dictated by him in fragments to
Treitzsaurwein, but never fully edited. Of the 249 illustrations about
half are by Burgkmair, most of the others by Beck. With the exception of
thirteen the blocks were preserved at Vienna, and the book was printed
there for the first time in 1775.
Lastly, the _Freydal_, which was to have given an account of
Maximilian's tourneys and "Mummereien," is known to us by the
preservation of the original miniatures from which the illustrations
were to have been made, but only five blocks out of 256 were actually
cut.
The patronage of the Emperor Maximilian gives special importance to the
work done during his lifetime at Nuremberg and Augsburg, but there was
no lack of book-illustrations elsewhere. At Tubingen some of the
mathematical works of Johann Stoffler were curiously decorated, and the
second edition of his _Ephemerides_ (1533) has a fine portrait of the
author in his seventy-ninth year. At Ratisbon, Albrecht Altdorfer was
the most important worker for the wood-cutters, and to him are now
attributed thirty-eight cuts illustrating the Fall and Redemption of
Man, published at Hamburg in 1604, under the name of Durer, as "nunc
primum e tenebris in lucem editae." Their minute and rather niggling
style renders the bad printing which they have mostly received
peculiarly destructive to them. Another Ratisbon artist, Michael
Ostendorfer, illustrated a few books published at Ratisbon itself, and
others printed at Ingolstadt.
At Wittenberg, from a little before 1520, the influence of Martin Luther
made itself as much felt as that of Maximilian at Augsburg and
Nuremberg. Hither, in 1505, had come a Franconian artist, Lucas Cranach,
who had already illustrated some missals for Winterburger of Vienna.
Numerous pictures of saints, which he drew for the Wittenberg
_Heiligthumsbuch_ of 1509, are subsequently found dispersed in other
works, such as the _Hortulus Animae_. A few title-cuts on tracts by
Luther and others are assigned to him, but a great mass of bookwork,
including numerous fine borders, found in Wittenberg books of the Luther
period, while showing abundant traces of the elder Cranach's influence,
is yet clearly not by him. It has recently been assigned, with some
probability, to his eldest son, Hans. His younger son, Lucas Cranach II,
also supplied a few borders and illustrations to the Wittenberg
booksellers. Georg Lemberger also produced borders for titlepages and
some Bible cuts, and two other Wittenberg Bible-illustrators of this
school were Erhard Altdorfer, brother of Albrecht, whose best bookwork
is found in a fine Danish Bible printed at Copenhagen in 1550, and Hans
Brosamer, Bibles, or parts of the Bible, with whose cuts appeared both
at Wittenberg and at Frankfort.
At Strassburg, Hans Baldung Grien, whose work shows the influence of
Durer, illustrated the _Granatapfel_ (1510) and other works by Geiler of
Kaisersberg, the _Hortulus Animae_ printed by Flach (1510), etc. Johann
Wachtlin, who had contributed a Resurrection to a set of Passion cuts
published by Knoblauch in 1506, illustrated a _Leben Christi_ for the
same printer in 1508. We find his work again in the _Feldbuch der
Wundarznei_ of Hans von Gersdorff, printed by Schott in 1517. The work
of Hans Weiditz for Strassburg publishers has already been mentioned.
It was here also that Urs Graf worked for some little time for
Knoblauch, to whose Passion set of 1507 he contributed, and other
publishers. In 1509 he is found at Basel, where two years later he
became a citizen, supplying ninety-five little woodcuts to an edition of
the _Postilla_ of Guillermus, and also designing title borders. As a
centre of printing Basel was now rapidly increasing in importance, and
when Erasmus allied himself with the foremost Basel printer, Johann
Froben, for a time the city succeeded, in point of quality though not of
quantity, to the typographical supremacy which Venice was fast losing.
Scholarly works such as approved themselves to Erasmus and Froben
offered, of course, very little scope for book-illustration properly so
called, but the desire for beauty found vent, not only with them, but
with the other Basel printers of the day, Valentin Curio, Johann Bebel,
Adam Petri, Andreas Cratander, etc., in elaborate borders to titlepages,
headpieces and tailpieces, ornamental capitals and trade devices. The
arrival of Hans Holbein (born at Augsburg in 1497) at Basel in 1516 on
his Wanderjahre supplied a decorator of a skill altogether outshining
that shown in the rather tasteless architectural work, varied with
groups of children, produced by Urs Graf, though Holbein himself was
content to begin in this style. In his most characteristic work the
footpiece of the border illustrates some classical scene, Mutius
Scaevola and Porsenna, the death of Cleopatra, or Quintus Curtius
leaping into the abyss; less commonly a scriptural one, such as the
death of John the Baptist. The most elaborate of his titlepages was that
to the _Tabula_ of Cebes (1521), in which little children crowd through
the gate of life to meet all the varied fortunes which life brings.
Delightful humour is shown in an often used headpiece and tailpiece,
showing villagers chasing a fox and returning home dancing. During 1517
and the following year, when Hans Holbein was absent from Basel, his
brother Ambrosius worked there on the same lines, and decorated, among
other books, More's _Utopia_.
After his return to Basel in 1519, Hans Holbein remained at work there
until 1526, and it was during this period that his book-illustrations,
properly so called, were executed, including those to the Apocalypse and
his two most famous pieces of bookwork, his _Dance of Death_ and
_Historiarum Veteris Testamenti Icones_, both of which were first
published in 1538 at Lyon by Melchior and Gaspar Trechsel. These (with
perhaps some exceptions) and many of his other designs[45] were cut in
wood by Hans Lutzelburger who signed a Holbein titlepage to a German New
Testament printed by Thomas Wolff in 1523, and who, if rightly
identified with the Hans Formschneider with whose widow the Trechsels
were in correspondence in 1526 and 1527, must have died about the time
that Holbein left Basel. Pen copies, moreover, of some of the cuts of
the _Dance of Death_ are preserved at the Berlin Museum, and one of
these is dated 1527, so that there can be no question that the originals
belong to this period of Holbein's life, and the British Museum
possesses a set of proofs of forty out of the original series of
forty-one, printed on four sheets, ten on a sheet. It has been
conjectured that the occupations of some of the great personages whom
Death is depicted as seizing may have been considered as coming under
the offence of _scandalum magnatum_ and so have caused the long delay
before the blocks were used, but as this explanation does not apply to
the illustrations to the Old Testament it seems inadequate. As published
in 1538 by the Trechsels the cuts are accompanied by French quatrains
from the pen of Gilles Corrozet and other appropriate matter, and have
prefixed to them a titlepage reading: _Les Simulachres & Historiees
Faces de la Mort, autant elegamm[=e]t pourtraictes que artificiellement
imaginees. A Lyon, soubz lescu de Coloigne, M.D.XXXVIII._ A second
edition with Latin instead of French verses was published by Jean and
Francois Frellon, and others followed, in one of which, that of 1545,
one, and in another, that of 1547, eleven additional cuts were printed,
while in 1562, when the book was still in Frellon's hands, five woodcuts
of children make their appearance, though they have no connection with
the original series.
That Holbein's Old Testament designs also belong to his Basel period is
shown by copies of them appearing in a Bible printed by Froschouer in
1531, though the original cuts were not published till seven years
later. As printed by the Trechsels they are eighty-six in number, and
while the cutting of the best is worthy of Lutzelburger, their execution
is too unequal for it to be certain that the whole series was executed
by him. The cuts were also used by the Trechsels in a Bible of the same
year, and both the Bible and the cuts under their own title _Historiarum
Veteris Testamenti Icones_ were republished by the Frellons.
Considerations of space forbid more than a bare mention of the
_Bambergische Halssgericht_ (1508), with its all too vivid
representations of the cruel punishments then in use, and the
illustrated classics published at later dates by Johann Schoeffer at
Mainz, or of the work of Jakob Kobel at Oppenheim with its rather clumsy
imitations of Ratdolt's Italian ornaments, or of the illustrated books
printed by Johann Weissenburger at Landshut, or of those from the press
of Hieronymus Rodlich at Siemen, the _Thurnierbuch_ of 1530, _Kunst des
Messens_ of the following year, and _Fierabras_ of 1533. After about
1535 little original book-illustration of any importance was produced in
other German cities, but in Nuremberg and Frankfurt it continued
plentiful, Virgil Solis and Jobst Amman working assiduously for the
booksellers in both places.
In no other country did the first thirty years of the sixteenth century
produce so much interesting work as in Germany. Interesting, moreover,
as this German work is in itself, it is made yet more so by the fact
that a sufficient proportion of it is signed to enable connoisseurs to
pursue their pleasant task of distributing the unsigned cuts among the
available artists. Less intrinsically good, and with very few facilities
for playing this fascinating game, the book-illustrations of other
countries have been comparatively little studied. In Italy the new
century brought some evil days to the book trade. Printing itself ceased
for a time at Brescia; at Florence publishers for many years relied
chiefly on their old stock of cuts; at Milan, at Ferrara and Pavia a
little new work was done. At Venice the thin delicate outline cuts of
the last decade of the fifteenth century ceased to be produced any
longer, though the old blocks sometimes reappear. More often the old
designs were either simply copied or imitated in the more heavily shaded
style which was now coming into vogue. The interest of some of this
shaded work is increased by the occasional appearance on it of a
signature. Thus in the _Missale Romanum_ of 30 July, 1506, published by
Stagninus, some of the cuts in this shaded style bear the same
signature, "ia," as appears on the outline work in the Ovid of 1497.
Work done by "ia" is also sometimes found copied by another cutter
calling himself VGO, whose name is also found on some copies of French
Horae cuts in a Venice Horae of 1513.
[Illustration: XXV. VENICE. GREG. DE GREGORIIS, 1518
MISSALE ROMANUM (246^b). THE ASCENSION]
Signatures which occur with some frequency between 1515 and 1529 are the
z.a., z.A., and I.A. used by Zoan Andrea, i.e. Johannes Andreas
Vavassore. This Zoan Andrea was an assiduous copyist. Early in his
career (1515-16) we find him imitating Durers large illustrations to the
Apocalypse; in 1517 his title-cut for the _De modo regendi_ of Antonio
Cornazano imitates that of Burgkmair on the 1515 _De rebus Gothorum_ of
Jornandes. In 1520 he prefixed to a Livy printed by Giunta an excellent
portrait modelled, as the Prince d'Essling has shown, on a sculpture set
up at Padua to the memory either of the historian himself or of one of
his descendants; in 1521 he copied Marcantonio Raimondi's engraving
of Horatius Cocles, and in the same year another by Raimondi of Quintus
Curtius. This was for an edition of Boiardo, and for a later edition of
1524 Zoan Andrea copied yet another engraving, that of Scipio Africanus.
In 1525 he imitated Holbein's elaborate border to the _Tabula Cebetis_,
applying it to a _Dictionarium Graecum_. About this time also he
produced the well-known block-book (at least three editions known)
_Opera noua contemplatiua_, imitating Durer's Little Passion in some of
the cuts. Because of the rarity of signed woodcuts in Italian books Zoan
Andrea has attracted more attention than the quality of his work
deserves. It seems probable that he was the head of a workshop, and the
craftsmanship of the cuts bearing his signature is very unequal.
Turning to the general course of book-illustration in Venice as it may
be studied in the great work of the Prince d'Essling, unhappily left
without the promised introduction at the time of his lamented death, we
find several different influences at work. As has been already noted,
the shaded work which had begun to make its appearance before 1500, as
in the frontispiece to the _Epitome Almagesti_ of Regiomontanus (1496),
rapidly became the predominant style. We find it combined with some of
the charm of the earlier outline vignettes in the small pictures of a
Virgil of 1507, and in some of those of another edition in 1508, though
the larger ones in this are heavy and coarse. The extreme of coarseness
is found in an edition of the _Legendario di Sancti_ of 1518, the
woodcuts being more suited to a broadside for a cottage wall than to
Venetian bookwork. The style is seen at its best in the illustrations of
a well-known Horae printed by Bernardinus Stagninus in 1507, and,
generally speaking, it is in the Missals, Breviaries, and Horae
published by L. A. Giunta, Stagninus and the De Gregoriis (see Plate
XXV) that the most satisfactory bookwork of this period is found.
Another style which may be traced in many books of the early years of
the century is a rather coarse development of the characteristic
Florentine manner of the fifteenth century. The cuts are as a rule
considerably larger than the Florentine ones, and the ornamental borders
which surround them are much deeper. As in many of the Florentine cuts,
more use is made of black spaces than was usual at Venice, but the
cutting as a rule is coarse, and there is none of the charm of the best
Florentine work. Woodcuts in this style are found most frequently on the
titlepages of popular books in small quarto, published by the Sessas,
who apparently did not see their way to commissioning more than a single
illustration to each book. But the influence of the style affected the
pictures in a few works of larger size--for instance, the 1503 edition
of the _Chronica Chronicarum_ of Bergomensis, and the well-known picture
of a choir in the _Practica Musices_ of Gafori (1512).
Despite his connection with the _Hypnerotomachia_, which, however, was
printed on commission, Aldus concerned himself little with
book-illustrations, and if the miserable cuts which he put into his
edition of _Hero and Leander_ of Musaeus are fair specimens of what he
thought sufficiently good when left to himself, he was well advised in
holding aloof from them. Nevertheless, the popularity which he gained
for the small octavos which he introduced in 1501 was an important
factor in the development of book-illustration in the sixteenth century.
Although Aldus did not illustrate them himself, it was impossible that
the lightly printed handy books which he introduced should remain
permanently unillustrated, and when italic type was ousting roman and
small books taking the place of large, the introduction of smaller
illustrations, depending for their effect on the delicacy of their
cutting, became inevitable. If we take any popular book of the century,
such as the _Sonetti_ of Petrarch, and note the illustrations in
successive editions, we shall find them getting smaller and smaller and
more and more lightly cut and lightly printed, in order to match better
with the thin italic types. The new style is seen at its best in the
books of 1540-60, the Petrarch of 1544 printed by Gabriel Giolito,
Boccaccio's _Decamerone_ printed by Valgrisi in 1552, Ovid's
_Metamorphoses_ by Giolito in 1553. Finally, book-illustration peters
out at Venice in pictorial capitals, which take as their subjects any
heroes of Greek and Roman history and mythology whose names begin with
the required letter, on the principle of the nursery alphabet in which
"A was an Archer who shot at a frog, B was a Butcher who had a great
dog." To an age which, not otherwise to its loss, neglects the study of
Lempriere's Classical Dictionary, many of these puzzle initials are
bafflingly obscure, relieved only by a recurring Q, which in almost all
alphabets depicts Quintus Curtius leaping into the chasm at Rome. Some
similar sets of Old Testament subjects are much easier. Books decorated
with capitals of this kind are found as late as the end of the
seventeenth century. Isolated initials designed on this plan are found
also in other countries, but outside Italy it is only seldom that we
come across anything approaching a set.
As to French book-illustrations of the sixteenth century, a competent
historian should have much to say, but the present writer has made no
detailed study of them, and in the absence of any monograph to steal
from must be content with recording general impressions, only here and
there made precise by references to books which he has examined. Far
more than those of Germany or Venice, French publishers of the sixteenth
century relied on the great stock of woodcuts which had come into
existence during the decades 1481-1500. That they did so may be regarded
as some compensation for the exceptional rarity of most of the more
interesting French incunabula. We have spoken disrespectfully of the
little devotional books printed about 1500 with an old Horae cut on the
back of the titlepage or at the end, but in the popular books printed by
the Lenoirs and other publishers as late as 1530, and even later, cuts
will be found from Millet's _Destruction de Troie_ and other incunabula
now quite unobtainable, and it is even possible at times from salvage of
this kind to deduce the former existence of fifteenth century editions
of which no copy can now be found.
After about 1503 the French Horae decline rapidly in beauty and
interest, but many fine missals were issued by Wolfgang Hopyl and other
firms, some with one or more striking pictures, almost all with
admirable capitals.
Among non-liturgical books it is difficult to find any class for which
new illustrations were made at all freely. Several books of Chronicles
by Monstrelet, Robert Gaguin, and others have one or more cuts at the
beginning which may have been made for them, e.g. a folio cut of S.
Denis and S. Remy, with shields of arms found in the _Compendium super
Francorum gestis_ by Robert Gaguin (this, however, dates back to 1500),
a double cut of S. Louis blessed by the Pope and confronting the Turks
(found in Gaguin's _Sommaire Historial de France, c._ 1523, and
elsewhere), another double cut of Clovis baptized and in battle
(Gaguin's _Mer des Chronicques_, 1536, but much earlier), a spirited
battle scene (_Victoire du Roy contre les Venitiens_, 1510), etc. But
wherever we find illustrations in the text, there we are sure to light
on a medley of old cuts (e.g. in _Les grands chronicques de France_,
1514, Gaguin's _Chronicques_, 1516, and the _Rozier historial_, 1523),
and it will be odds that Millet's _Destruction de Troie_ will be found
contributing its woodcuts of the Trojan War as illustrations of French
history. When an original cut of this period can be found, it seldom has
the charm of the best work of the last five years of the fifteenth
century, but is usually quite good; there is, for instance, a quite
successful metal-cut with crible background of Justinian in Council in
an edition of his laws printed by Bocard for Petit in 1516, and some of
the liturgical cuts are admirable. There is thus no reason to impute the
falling off in new cuts to lack of artists. It seems clear that the
demand for illustrations had for the moment shifted to an uncritical
audience who liked (small blame to them) the fifteenth century cuts
which had delighted more educated people a generation earlier, and were
not at all particular as to their appropriateness. Meanwhile the
educated book-buyers were learning Greek and preparing themselves to
appreciate the severe, unillustrated elegance of the books of the
Estiennes, and new cuts were not needed.
The inception of a new style must certainly be connected with the name
of Geoffroi Tory, whose best work is to be found in his Books of Hours,
which have already been described in an earlier chapter. Its predominant
note is a rather thin elegance of outline, in which the height of the
figures is usually somewhat exaggerated. Tory is supposed to have
brought home this style after his visit to Italy, but its application to
bookwork appears to have been his own idea. There is, indeed, a striking
resemblance between the little cuts of Tory's third Horae set, dated 8
February, 1529, and those in an Aldine Horae of October of the same
year, but to the best of my belief Tory reckoned his year from 1
January, not in the old French style from Easter, and if so it was Tory
who supplied the Aldine artist with a model, which indeed is a logical
continuation of his editions of 1525 and 1527. It is greatly to be
regretted that his own _Champfleury_ of 1527 is so slightly illustrated.
The little picture of Hercules Gallicus which comes in it is quite
delightful.
If any guide were in existence to the illustrated French books of the
thirties in the sixteenth century it would probably be possible to trace
the spread of Tory's influence. In 1530 Simon Colines illustrated Jean
Ruel's _Veterinaria Medicina_ with a good enough cut in the old French
style slightly modified. For the same author's _De Natura Stirpium_ of
1536 he provided a woodcut, of an alcove scene in a garden, the tone of
which is quite new. It is evident that French publishers were waking up
to new possibilities and sending their artists to foreign models, as a
_Perceforest_ printed for Gilles Gourmont in 1531 and a _Meliadus de
Leonnoys_ for Denis Janot in 1532, have both of them elaborate title
borders in the style which the Holbeins had made popular at Basel. The
latter is signed .F., a signature found in several later books in the
new style. In 1534 we find Wechel issuing a _Valturius_ with neat
adaptations of the old Verona illustrations. Doubtless there were many
other interesting books, with cuts original or copied of this decade,
but the only one of which I have a note is the _L'amant mal traicte de
sa mye_ (translated from the Spanish of Diego de San Pedro), printed by
Denis Janot for V. Sertenas in 1539, in which the title is enclosed in a
delicately cut border, the footpiece of which shows the lovers in a
garden. Not long after this Janot printed (without putting his name or a
date) _La touche Naifue pour esprouver Lamy and le Flateur_ of Antoine
Du Saix, in which the rules enclosing the title cut into a pretty oval
design of flowers and ribbons. In 1540 we find the new style fully
established in the _Hecatongraphie Cest a dire les descriptions de cent
figures & hystoires_, a book of emblems, by Gilles Corrozet, printed by
Denis Janot, which I only know in the third edition, that of 1543. Here
we find little vignettes, much smaller than those in the Malermi Bible,
with a headline over them and a quatrain in italics beneath, the whole
enclosed in an ornamental frame. The little cuts have the faults
inevitable in emblems, and some of them are poorly cut, but the best of
them are not only wonderfully delicate, but show a sense of movement and
a skill in the manipulation of drapery never reached in the fifteenth
century.
[Illustration: XXVI. PARIS, J. LOYS FOR V. SERTENAS, 1545
HOMER. L'ILIADE EN VERS FRANCOIS. (TITLE-CUT)]
In 1543 appeared, again from the press of Denis Janot, "imprimeur du Roy
en langue francoise," another emblem book, _Le Tableau de Cebes de
Thebes, ancien philosophe & disciple de Socrate: auquel est paincte de
ses couleurs, la uraye image de la vie humaine, & quelle uoye l'homme
doit elire, pour peruenir a vertu & perfaicte science. Premierem[=e]t
escript en Grec & maintenant expose en Ryme Francoyse_. The French
rhymester was again the author of the _Hecatongraphie_, and the imprint,
"A Paris On les uend en la grand [_sic_] salle du Palais en la boutique
de Gilles Corrozet," shows that he not only wrote the verses and perhaps
inspired the illustrations, but sold the books as well.
In 1545 we find this same style of design and cutting on a larger scale
in _Les dix premiers livres de l'Iliade d'Homere, Prince des Poetes,
traduictz en vers Francois, par M. Hugues Salel_, and printed by Iehan
Loys for Vincent Sertenas. The cuts are in two sizes, the smaller being
surrounded with Toryesque borders. It is difficult to pass any judgment
other than one of praise on such delicate work. Nevertheless, just as
the _fanfare_ style of binding used by Nicolas Eve, with its profuse
repetition of small tools, is much more effective on a small book cover
than on a large, so here we may well feel that some bolder and clearer
design would be better suited to the illustration of a folio. In the
title-cut here shown (Plate XXVI) a rather larger style is attempted
with good results.
The year after the Homer there appeared at Paris from the press of
Jacques Kerver a French translation of the _Hypnerotomachia_ by Jean
Martin. This is one of the most interesting cases of the rehandling of
woodcuts, the arrangement of the original designs being closely
followed, while the tone is completely changed by the substitution of
the tall rather thin figures which had become fashionable in French
woodcuts for the short and rather plump ones of the Venetian edition,
and by similar changes in the treatment of landscape.
In the second half of the century at Paris excellent woodcut portraits,
mostly in an oval frame, are sometimes found on titlepages, and in other
cases decoration is supplied by a neatly cut device. Where illustrations
are needed for the explanation of works on hunting or any other subjects
they are mostly well drawn and cut. But the use of woodcuts in books of
imaginative literature became more and more rare.
At Lyon, as at Paris, at the beginning of the century the store of
fifteenth century cuts was freely drawn on for popular editions.
Considerable influence, however, was exercised at first by Italian
models, afterwards by Germany, so that while in the early sixteenth
century Latin Bibles the cuts are mostly copied from Giunta's Malermi
Bible, these were gradually superseded by German cuts, which Anton
Koberger supplied to the Lyonnese printers who worked for him. While in
Italy the small octavos popularized by Aldus continued to hold their
own, in France, from about 1530, editions in 32 deg. came rapidly into
fashion, and about the middle of the century these were especially the
vogue at Lyon, the publishers often casing them in very gay little trade
bindings sometimes stamped in gold, but often with painted
interlacements. The publication by the Trechsels in 1538 of the two
Holbein books, the _Dance of Death_ and illustrations to the Old
Testament, must have given an impetus to picture-making at Lyon, but
this was at first chiefly visible in illustrated Bibles and New
Testaments. Gilles Corrozet, who had written the verses for both the
Holbein books, continued his career, as we have seen, at Paris. The most
typical Lyonnese illustrated books were the rival editions of Ovid's
_Metamorphoses_ in French, one printed by Mace Bonhomme in 1556, with
borders to every page and little cuts measuring about 1(1/2) in. by 2,
and a similar edition (reissued in Dutch and Italian) of the next year
from the press of Jean de Tournes, the borders and little pictures in
which are attributed to Bernard Salomon. In 1557 De Tournes issued also
the _Devises Heroiques_ of Claude Paradin, and he was also the publisher
of a _Calendrier Historial_, a memorandum book charmingly decorated with
cuts of the seasons.
Partly owing to religious troubles the book trade at Lyon soon after
this rapidly declined, but the French style was carried on for a while
at Antwerp by Christopher Plantin, who printed Paradin's _Devises
Heroiques_ in 1562 and in 1564, and the two following years three books
of Emblems, those of Sambucus, Hadrianus Junius, and Alciatus himself.
His earlier Horae are also illustrated with woodcuts, and in at least
one edition we find the unusual combination of woodcut borders and
copperplate pictures. But although Plantin never wholly gave up the use
of woodcuts, for his more sumptuous editions he developed a marked
preference for copperplates, and by his example helped to complete the
downfall of the woodcut, which by the end of the sixteenth century had
gone almost completely out of fashion.
FOOTNOTES:
[44] Mr. Dodgson also ascribes to Traut the illustrations in the
_Legend des heyligen vatters Francisci_ (Nuremberg, 1512), and some
of the cuts in the _Theuerdank_ (1517).
[45] Including perhaps the four sets of decorative capitals
attributed to Holbein, one ornamental, the others representing a
Dance of Peasants, Children, and a Dance of Death.