LATER GERMAN INITIALS
Hitherto we have devoted each chapter to special towns and their
printers. In this, the final one, we shall deal with German initials
that have not found a place elsewhere. Before, however, proceeding to
their enumeration, we wish it to be understood that if certain towns
or presses have not been given, it is because we have not wished to
go beyond a certain limit. And for this reason we have preferred
using the documents at our disposal to reproducing specimens of these
presses from other sources. Were it otherwise, and had this _recueil_
of initials been intended to be entirely representative, we should have
considered it necessary to give specimens of the large letters used by
Johann Scheffer in his Livy, of those designed by Cranach for Luft of
Wittemberg, and of those used by Kobel of Oppenheim and of many others.
It should be said, moreover, that the greater number of what may be
termed representative alphabets--those that occur most frequently in
the publications of the time--have been already reproduced in works on
Renaissance book ornamentation, whereas our initials have been selected
because less generally met with, and consequently less known.
We have already given specimens of initials printed in red, which
nearly always are found in missals; the three following are taken
from the Missal of Spires, printed at the expense of that honest
‘dominus Peter Drach,’ and dated 1500. In the copy of the _Bibliothèque
Nationale_ there is a fine engraving, before the Canon, of the
Crucifixion with the date 1516, but these pictures were often added
afterwards.
Although a comparatively small town, Hagenau towards the end of the
first quarter of the sixteenth century had become an important printing
centre, two printers at least making use of typographical ornaments.
Those used by Heinrich Gran are not of the very first merit, as can be
seen by reference to Butsch, who reproduces one of his title-pages.
Thomas Anselm de Bade, on the contrary, has title-pages and initials
from two different sources of the very greatest interest, as our
reproductions show.
The nine very large letters, with the very much smaller E, are met with
in several missals published after 1518, the most important of which
is known as the Benedictine Missal, the _Missale Bursfeldense. Missale
denuo diligentissime castigatum et revisum ordinis sancti Benedicti
reformatorum nigrorum Monachorum Bursfeldensium._ As the reader can
see, they differ in character from those found in any other missal, and
have been attributed to Hans Baldung Grün, who also designed Anselm’s
printer’s mark.
Nothing can be more charming than the little E with the children which
commences so appropriately the verse beginning _Ex ore infantium_, and
which gives still another example of the alliance so frequently met
with between the serious and the grotesque. There is another set of
initials in the same style, slightly smaller, in which the incidents on
the T are reversed, the sacrifice of Abraham being on the left. They
are to be found in the Strasburg Missal of Hagenau of 1518.
Another very good Hagenau series is the children’s alphabet used by the
same Thomas Anselm in his _Plinius_ of 1520, and said by Weigel in his
_Altdeutsches Holzschnittalphabet_ to have been designed by the elder
Heinrich Vogtherr. It is on a somewhat smaller scale than the Dürer
alphabet, and about the same size as that of Urs Graf. Artistically it
occupies a middle place between the two.
These letters, which nearly form a complete series, were almost at once
copied by Franc Birckmann of Cologne, the only difference being that
the M and the R are on a black instead of a white ground, as in the
Hagenau original.
Some of the letters were used in books published by Lucas Alantius of
Vienna.
In the M, which is reproduced from a Vienna copy, there are some
further modifications. The shield under the child’s left arm has been
added, and there would appear to be a monogram between the pendent
grapes and tassel not in the original.
The five letters, C, E, I, M, and O, the last representing the Massacre
of the Innocents, belong to a collection where they are classed as
coming from the missal of Magdeburg, which we have not been able to
verify. They are said to be the only ones in the volume of this size,
and are accompanied by a small ornamental series in the style of
Cranach, who may very likely have designed the larger letters.
In the missal of Posen (_Posnaniense_) of 1524 there are only five
ornamental letters, of which three are given, the T being a picture of
the cathedral of the town as it was at the time.
The two Apocalyptic initials are typical specimens of the style of
Cranach, and come from the _Missale Evangeliare_ of Luther, printed by
Lufft of Wittemberg in 1525.
We have mentioned above the alphabet of Cranach which is given by
Butsch in his _Bücher-Ornamentik_. There are several smaller alphabets
in the same style, in one of which is an initial representing a donkey
sitting up with spectacles, no doubt a satire on the doctors of the
church with whom Cranach had often to do. Wittemberg was one of the
chief centres of the Lutheran controversy, and inundated Europe
with tracts on the subject. A great many of these have ornamental
title-pages, many of which were designed by Cranach in a style quite
different from his initials. Those with children, which equal anything
of the period, are particularly charming.
Nothing could be more fantastic than the subjects in the series of
initials, seven or eight altogether, of which the C, L, and T are
specimens. What, however, they mean exactly we do not pretend to say.
In the T there are apparently two Satyrs dancing a saraband, but
the personage in the C would appear rather to be one of those weird
creations that grow out of foliage under the pencil of the artist.
These letters are to be found no doubt in other publications of the
same press, but those given here were taken from the _Elegantiae_ of
Laurentius Valla, printed in 1522 by Lazarus Schurer of Schlestadt.
The complete series is known as the alphabet of Pilgrim ‘le maître aux
Bourdons,’ Waechstein. Besides the C, L, and the T there are seven
others in the _Elegantiae_; an H with a lion’s head, an I, two winged
children; P and Q each with a child, R and S in the same style as the
C, the latter having the head of a fantastic animal. There is also a
smaller D with an extraordinary kind of winged satyr, and a Q with a
couple of children.
Chronologically, we should have mentioned before the _Missale
Pataviense_ of Vienna, printed by J. Winterberger in 1512, which has
initials of several dimensions, but most of them too indistinct for
reproduction. Those chosen, C, P, S, T, are the best of the smaller
series.
We have described in their proper places the Psalters of Ratdolt of
1499; of Furter of 1501-3; and of Knoblouch ten years later, all of
them exactly uniform in size and arrangement, the two latter with
German commentary framing the text. In all of these, ornamental
initials are used occasionally, those in the two first-named volumes
having exactly the same historiation, whilst in the Strasburg Psalter
they are simply ornamental. The Psalter of Metz, printed by Caspar
Hochffeder in 1513, is on the same general plan, but without any
woodcut initials in the body of the volume; on the title-page, however,
is the P given here, which is the only initial of this origin that we
have been able to discover.
The four initials, comprising an O with the portrait in costume of a
young girl, an outline T representing a money-changer’s office, and two
others, are from a Pogge by Knoblouch, who printed several works of
this author.
We have already had occasion to remark about the incongruity between
certain books and the initials that embellish them, and the two D’s,
one with a personage magnificently costumed, the other with a mandoline
player, afford another example of this peculiarity. The volume from
which they are taken is the Magdeburg Bible of 1542, printed by H.
Walther. In this edition the different books of Scripture are preceded
by initials of the same size as the reproductions, but nearly always
with Biblical subjects corresponding to the text that is to follow. In
Genesis, Adam and Eve are being chased by an angel with flaming sword
from Paradise, and so on. The chapters of the books begin by smaller
initials, with children romping and playing, in one letter torturing
a cat, in another fighting a cock; whilst in a third a child is armed
with a pewter squirt, apparently in no way different to the squirt of
fifty years ago. Besides initials, this Bible is embellished with cuts,
in some of which German castles of the fifteenth century serve as a
background to Biblical scenes, and Jews and infidels sometimes wear
costumes of the same period.
Scheffer’s large ornamental letters have been mentioned at the
beginning of this chapter. In 1518 he was using a small alphabet in
some of his publications, and a few initials of intermediate size, four
of which are given by Butsch. There is an A with a naked woman sitting
on the ground, two C’s with children, and an S, also with children,
one of whom is playing on a kind of horn. The B, reproduced in the
same style, not given by Butsch, is less frequently met with, Latin
paragraphs rarely beginning with this initial.
Ingoldstadt is known to bibliographers chiefly by the _Astronomicon
Cesareum_ of 1540, a folio volume with movable astronomical diagrams.
On the verso of the title are the arms of Charles V. and Ferdinand,
to whom the book is dedicated. The last page is entirely covered
by the arms of the printer, P. Apianus, which serve as his mark.
Throughout the volume are the geometrical initials designed by
Michael Ostendorfer, of which we give the best specimens, some of
them occurring only once, others two, three, and four times, the C
occurring on ten occasions. There are twenty-two different letters in
all, including a Greek Φ.
Another smaller alphabet of children occurs chiefly towards the end,
to which set belongs a compound double initial, much wider than it is
tall, which contains the letters Q, U. Besides these, there are four
I’s with the four Evangelists, each one with his special symbol.
Although undoubtedly a pictorial initial, the C with which we terminate
our German selection is not reproduced from a book, but was taken from
a document of which we have seen several copies, a licence to marry
within prohibited degrees. In this document the body of the text is
printed in ordinary black-letter characters, with blanks for the names
of the persons wishing to contract marriage. Above the text is a line
of ornamental ‘bullatic’ letters, as they are termed, preceded by the
C here given, which form together the word ‘Collegium,’ the meaning
of the historiation being no doubt that St. Peter with his key has
delegated his power to open the Paradise of Matrimony.