AUGSBURG
From what has been already said, it seems evident that the aim of the
first printers was to produce by the new art as perfect as possible an
imitation of the manuscript.
Scheffer printed books with ornamental letters in the manuscript style.
The other printers left them to be added by hand, which produced the
same effect. It was not until the beginning of the seventies that the
printed book assumed its definite form, and that it was recognised that
new methods and new processes were necessary. The printed book was
henceforth to be a printed book, and not an imitation manuscript. It
was no longer to pass, for accessory embellishment, through a number of
successive hands, but to be finished at a single impression.
It would not be exact to say that it was Günther Zainer who
relinquished the fiction of a printed manuscript, and who recognised
that, in virtue of the economic principle of which the press itself is
a manifestation, text and ornamental embellishments should be produced
as simply as possible.
The alteration was brought about by the Augsburg printers generally,
rather than by any one in particular, and was a matter of evolution
rather than of sudden change.
It was hindered, too, to a great extent by the opposition of the Guild
of Engravers, who saw in the innovation a menace to their privileges,
and who brought an action against Zainer and Schussler in 1471 to
prevent them using wood-engraving in their books, and even opposed
their admission as burgesses. It was only at the intervention of
Melchior Stanheim, Abbot of St. Ulrich, that the matter was arranged,
on the understanding that they should insert in their books neither
woodcut pictures nor letters, a prohibition that was only withdrawn
after a new arrangement which bound the printers to employ only
recognised members of the Formschneider Guild.
As an example of the jealousy with which these privileges of
corporations were maintained, it may be mentioned that Albert Dürer was
compelled to pay four florins to the Society of Painters of Venice for
working at his profession during his stay in that city.
Günther Zainer’s first woodcut initials, if they can be called
‘woodcuts,’ are merely outline letters without any kind of ornament.
They were intended simply as a guide to the rubricator.
In the next stage we have a framed initial with an ornamental
groundwork, but the composition is less effective in black and white
than when the letter itself is picked out in red. A good example of
this is in the alphabet of the Zainer German Bible, afterwards used in
the _Summa Confessorum_ of J. Friburgensis. In these initials, what
a contemporary authority on lettering calls a ‘friskiness’ of the
design leads to a difficulty of distinguishing between the ornamental
prolongation of the different parts of the letter, and the very similar
decorative groundwork,--so much so, that even the rubricator was
sometimes mistaken, the colour being left unapplied where needed, and
_vice versâ_.
Finally we come to initials, of which the specimens that have come
down to us are coloured as often as not. These are more effective when
not so treated, and were probably intended to be left as printed. The
reader can judge from the specimens reproduced.
Butsch (_Bücher-Ornamentik_) mentions the _Gulden Bibel_ of
Rampigollis, the _Belial_ of 1472, and the _Glossae_ of Salemo, as the
earliest works of G. Zainer with woodcut initials. The _Belial_, he
says, has a large ornamental initial of arabesque design.
Our first selections are from the _Summa Confessorum_; the large P is
from the _Margarita Davitica_ of 1475.
The new plan was soon adopted by the other Augsburg printers, and
spread thence to other towns and countries.
As far as Augsburg is concerned, it should be noted that the same
letters were often used by different printers, and they are therefore
as much illustrative of the town and period, as of any one particular
press. Ludwig Hohenwang, for instance, uses the same initials in his
_Gulden Bibel_ of 1477, as does J. Pflantzmann in his _Glossa_ of
Salemo of the same year. The two specimens given of these printers
might have been taken from either volume.
Our other examples are taken from works published by Sorg, Keller,
Bämler, and Schönsperger.
The Bämler selection is exceedingly curious as presenting probably
the first example, if our date is correct, of what was afterwards so
common--the grotesque profile.
Unfortunately we are unable to give their exact origin, as they form
part of a collection of initials, cut from early books, but if the
attribution ‘Bämler, 1475,’ is correct, they are of the same date as
the Rihel Bible of 1475, in which there are two initials with profiles,
but neither of them grotesque.[10]
[10] There are two pictorial letters in the fifth German Bible (see
the reproductions of both at pp. 118, 119), in which the border is
formed partly of a grotesque profile.
The five specimens given are selected from the thirteen letters
comprised in the collection, and need no description. The others
consist of a D, which is in reality the same as our C but reversed;
a G, two L’s, an R, a T, and a V. One of the L’s has a sun with
full face, and the T, besides being of an unusual pattern, has also
a grotesque profile. Unfortunately it has been daubed over by a
rubricator too badly for reproduction. The S with the two human figures
occurs several times in Rihel’s Latin Bible, and was given by us in
a former essay[11] as a specimen of Basle woodcuts. We now class it
provisionally with Augsburg.
[11] ‘On Some Old Initial Letters.’ _The Library_, January 1901.
Of Sorg, our earliest specimens are of the pure Maiblümchen pattern,
the S without any trace of historiation being from a copy of St.
Ambrosius on St. Luke of 1476. Other letters of this type are to be
found in his _Breidenbach_ and other works, but later on they become
almost identical with those of Keller. Compare the A and the H from the
_Valerius Maximus_ of Sorg of 1480, with the E and V from the Keller
edition of Aristotle’s _Opera Nonnulla_ of 1479. The S with a grotesque
profile at each end and the letters G I A dates from 1480, and is the
first initial we have met with in which the fool, so popular in the
imagery of the period, here complete with cap, ass’s ears, bells and
cockscomb, is represented.
Schönsperger’s initials, of which four reproductions are given, are a
little later, 1489.
We come now to pictorial initials, and in this respect the printers of
Augsburg had been anticipated by those of Ulm and Nuremberg.
It was in 1473 that the fourth German Bible was published at Nuremberg.
It was probably the success of this edition that induced Günther Zainer
to bring out the magnificent folio classed as fifth, which may truly,
from its size and solidity, be considered as a typographical monument.
Zainer’s first edition (the fifth German Bible) was undated, but was
published either in 1474 or 1475. It succeeded so well that another
edition, this time dated and in two volumes, was published in 1477,
with small ornamental initials at the beginnings of the chapters, as
well as the large pictorial letters previously used at the commencement
of each book.
The difference between the Augsburg and Nuremberg initials can be
seen in our reproductions, the former being taller and surrounded
with accessory ornaments. In the Nuremberg Bible, Corinthians 1 and
2, Ephesians, Philippians, Thessalonians 1 and 2, Timothy 1 and 2,
Titus and Philemon, all have the same initial. Hebrews has no initial
at all, nor has Galatians. In the Augsburg edition the letters are
all different; Galatians has its initial, and Hebrews begins with a
pictorial Z.
In Sorg’s Bible of 1477, the only large historiated letter is the B at
the beginning of the dedicatory epistle, with bishop and cardinal in
a cell which, as can be seen in the corresponding Nuremberg initial,
looks like a third-class railway compartment. There is a smaller D, not
worth reproducing. The different books of the Bible are mostly preceded
by small engravings.
But Sorg’s best historiated initials, in fact the only ones with which
we are acquainted (for the B in his Bible is a copy of Zainer’s), are
to be found in a work by Henricus Suso, ‘dictus Amandus,’ published
in 1482: _Das Buch das heisset Der Seusse_, a translation of his
_Horologium aeternae Sapientiae_.
This book contains a number of engravings on Biblical subjects, which
are most often painted over beyond the possibility of reproduction.
Such is the case with the copies both in the British Museum and in the
Paris National Library.
Besides these illustrations there are three large pictorial initials,
C, R, and S, of which the C alone occurs twice, representing, the C an
angel appearing to a woman, the R a saint with a crozier, and the S an
eagle, the background being filled up with Maiblümchen.
Towards the end of the century Ratdolt, who had returned from Venice,
was the chief printer at Augsburg.
Amongst his other productions, Ratdolt printed a number of liturgical
works, the most beautiful that we have seen being the folio Breviary of
1493. The type is admirable, and those pages which begin with the large
letters, such as the C with the Pope, or the H (All Saints), printed as
they are with the brilliant black ink of the period, are particularly
effective. The B at the beginning of the Psalter is used again in the
smaller Psalter of 1499, as are several of the smaller initials. The
_pars aestivalis_ begins with the U. The C with St. Urban is at the
commencement of the section _De Sanctis_.
Two of the smaller initials occur in the larger Psalter, which are not
in the smaller one. A D representing a kind of Indian with a club and
feathers is the fool referred to in the opening words of the Psalm
_Dixit insipiens_. Another D has Jesus kneeling to His father (_Dixit
Deus Domino meo_). On the other hand, the crucifixion initials of the
Psalter of 1499 are not in this edition.
The Psalter of 1499, _Psalterium cum apparatu vulgari familiariter
impresso--Lateinisch Psalter mit dem teutschen nutzlichen dabey
gedruckt_, has not the imposing appearance of the earlier folio volume,
but like all Ratdolt’s work is well printed. This would appear to have
been taken as a model for Psalters in the Vulgate. There are several
editions of different towns with the text framed, as it were, by a
translation in the vernacular in smaller type. The Psalter of Furter
has the same disposition, the initial letters, although different
in treatment, corresponding almost exactly with those of Ratdolt’s
Psalter. Knoblouch has a similar Psalter, but with non-historiated
initials. In the Metz Psalter of Hochffeder, otherwise on the same
plan, the only initial is on the title-page.
In the Missal of Frisingen of 1492 there are no historiated letters,
and the ornamental initials in the Venetian style are unfortunately
most outrageously coloured in the only copy we have seen. Amongst
other letters there is in it an extremely curiously designed S which
is difficult to describe, but which we would recommend to students
of lettering. In the D, which is in the shape of a Gothic German
Q reversed, and the P, there is a branch-work pattern starting
tangentially from a central circle and ending in trifoliated ornaments
altogether graceful and harmonious. Ratdolt’s mark is on the last page,
and above it:
‘Erhardi Ratdolt felicia conspice signa,
Testata artificem qua valet ipse manum.’
Ratdolt continued to print liturgical works for some part of the
sixteenth century, but the only other volume of the kind that we
have had at our disposal is the _Pars Aestivalis_ of the _Breviarium
Constantiense_. Ratdolt, Aug Vindel, 1516. In this book there are four
pages with borders, one of which is reproduced, and on the opposite
sides are full-page engravings. There are eight initials, which we
reproduce, and which are also, we believe, to be found in his Ratisbon
Breviary.
Hitherto, with the exception of the last-mentioned work, we have
had to do with what may be called the first style of engraving, in
which designs and pictures drawn by the artist were executed by the
wood-cutter in linear reproduction only.
With Albert Dürer, however, came a new epoch, and it became the
custom for artists not only to design but also to engrave their own
work. This practice, which was commenced by Dürer, who served a long
apprenticeship to the celebrated Wohlgemuth, was continued by most of
his pupils, and new technical methods were naturally the consequence.
Henceforth the more liberal use of shading, and the invention of
cross-hatching, enabled effects to be produced which had been before
impossible.
The results may be seen to this day in the magnificent engravings by
the great artists of the beginning of the sixteenth century, which,
notwithstanding the difficulties under which they laboured, have never
been excelled.[12] Their productions, even when it comes to initials,
are real compositions with a personal character.
[12] At this time the wood employed for engraving was pear, and
the surface of the block was parallel to the fibre. This made
cross-hatching most difficult of execution, and in consequence of the
extreme care and attention necessary, it is said that the work took
eight or nine times as long as at present. It is only since the days
of Bewick that boxwood has been used, and the blocks cut with the
fibre of the wood perpendicular to the surface.
To mention those only who designed initial letters, and of whose works
we shall give specimens, there were Albert Dürer, Hans Burgkmair,
Hans Holbein, Hans Schauffelein, Anton von Worms, Lucas Cranach, Hans
Baldung Grün.
We have here to speak of the initials generally attributed to Hans
Burgkmair, but which, according to Dr. H. Röttinger, ought to be
assigned to Hans Weiditz, one of his pupils.
These initials are to be met with for the most part in the publications
of Heinrich Steyner in 1531 and the following ten or eleven years,
and come mostly from German translations of classical authors. The
influence of Albert Dürer, of whom Burgkmair was himself the pupil, is
clearly seen. Different treatises and different editions of Cicero
were published in 1531, 1535, 1540; of Herodianus in 1531; Justinus,
1531; Boccaccio, 1532; Cassiodorus, 1533; Plutarch, 1534; Petrarch,
1542, in all of which we meet with specimens of these letters.
The Z with a fox trying to get at the poultry in the market-woman’s
basket is from the German _Cicero_. The C (bagpiper) and the N
(caricature with big head and small legs) and the P with a peacock are
from the _Magni Aurelii Cassiodori variarum libri xii_. The E with the
monk and nun, and the C and H in a different style, are from the German
_Petrarch_. The other initials are from one or other of the volumes
mentioned.