Alfred W. Pollard

“ Against these books printed at Seville, during the last decade of the century, I have only notes of one or two books issued at Salamanca, Valencia, and Barcelona, with unimportant title-cuts, and a reprint at Burgos of the Trabajos de Hercules (1499) with poor illustrations fitted into the columns of a folio page. But it is quite possible that my knowledge is as one-sided as it is limited, and I must, therefore, refrain from building up any theory that Seville, rather than any other town, was the chief home of illustrated books in Spain. ”

“ In Germany its use was only too common, but for popular, not for artistic work, for at least two out of every three early German books with woodcut illustrations have the cuts garishly painted over in the rudest possible manner, to the great defacement of the outlines, which we would far rather see unobscured. It is tempting, indeed, to believe that in many cases this deplorable addition must have been the work of the 'domestic' [Pg 14] artist; it is certainly rare to find an instance in which it in any way improves the underlying cut. ”

“ As we have seen, the typical book during the first quarter of a century of the history of printing is one in which the printer supplied the place of the scribe and of the scribe alone. An appreciable, though not a very large, percentage of early books have come down to us in the exact state in which they issued from the press, with a blank space at their beginning for an illumination, blanks for the initial letters, blanks for the chapter headings, no head-lines, no title-page, no pagination, and no signatures to guide the binder in arranging the sheets in the different gatherings. ”

“ Theology had become popular, and theological books were not adapted for illustration. The ordinary book, with pictures put in haphazard, absolutely died out; and cuts were only used in chap books, or in large illustrated volumes,—descriptions of horrible creatures, and the likenesses of comets or portents on the one hand, chronicles, books of travel, and scientific works on the other. The difference which we noticed between W. de Worde and Pynson, the one being a popular printer and the other a printer of standard works, is distinctly marked in the succeeding generation. ”

“ Vérard diminished his output, and the publishers of the Horae turned in despair to German designs in place of the now despised native work. Soon only some little octavos remained to show that there was still an unclassical public to be catered for. These were chiefly printed by Galliot du Pré, with titles in red and black, and sometimes with little architectural borders in imitation of the more ambitious German ones. When they disappear we say farewell to the richness and colour which distinguishes the best French books of the end of the fifteenth century. ”

“ There were, however, a few stock cuts: a schoolmaster with a gigantic birch for grammars, a learned man seated at a desk for works of more advanced scholarship, and lively pictures of hell for theological treatises. The title-page was formed on a fixed plan. At the top, printed inside a wood-cut ribbon, was placed the title, below this the cut.
Pynson, who was the Royal printer, and a publisher of learned works, disdained such attempts to catch the more vulgar buyers. His title-pages rarely have cuts, and these are only used on such few popular books as he issued. ”

“ The finest German vellum book with which I am acquainted is the Lamoignon copy of the 1462 Bible, now in the British Museum. This was specially illuminated for a certain Conradus Dolea, whose name and initials are introduced into the lower border on the first page of the second volume. The scroll-work is excellent, and the majority of the large initials are wisely restricted to simple decorative designs. Only in a few cases, as at the beginning of the Psalms, where David is as usual playing his harp, is the general good taste which marks the volume disturbed by clumsy figure-work. ”

“ So long as a few rich amateurs cared for copies of their favourite authors printed on vellum, and decorated by the hands of skilful artists, a high standard of excellence was set up which influenced the whole of the [Pg 20] book-trade, and for this reason the revival of the use of vellum in our own day may perhaps be welcomed. It may be noted that the especially Italian custom of introducing the arms of the owner into the majority of illuminated designs left its trace in the blank shields which so frequently form the centre of the printed borders in Italian books from 1490 to 1520. ”

“ In directing the attention of German artists to the illustration of books, the Emperor Maximilian played a more important part than Dürer himself. As in politics, so in art, his designs were on too ambitious a scale, and of the three great books he projected, the Theuerdank, the Weisskunig, and the Freydal, only the first was brought to a successful issue. ”

“ The utmost on this subject that we can say at present is that as a printer would depend for the sale of his books in the first place on the inhabitants of the town in which he printed, and as these would be [Pg 7] most likely to employ an illuminator from the same place, the predominant style of decoration in any book is likely to be that of the district in which it was printed, and if we find the same style predominant in a number of books this may give us a clue to connect them altogether, or to distinguish them from some other group. ”

“ The art of the wood-engraver may almost be said to have had no existence in England before the introduction of printing, for there are not probably more than half a dozen cuts now known, if indeed so many, that are of an earlier date. The few that exist are devotional prints of the type known as the 'Image of Pity,' in which a half-length figure of Christ on the cross stands surrounded with the emblems of the Passion. ”

“ We shall have very soon to return again to Wohlgemuth and Nuremberg, but in the year which followed the production of the great Chronicle Sebastian Brant's Narrenschiff attracted the eyes of the literary world throughout Europe to the city of Basel, and we also may be permitted to digress thither. In the year of the Chronicle itself a Basel printer, Michael Furter, had produced a richly illustrated work, the Ritter vom Thurn von den Exempeln der Gottesfurcht und Ehrbarkeit, the cuts in which have ornamental borders on each side of them. ”

“ The illustrated books printed in Italy which we have hitherto noticed are of great individual interest, but they led to the establishment of no school of book-illustration, and the value of wood engravings was as yet so little understood that the cuts in them often failed to escape the hands of the colourists. At Venice, on the other hand, where Bernhard Maler and Erhard Ratdolt introduced the use of printed initials and borders in 1476, we find a continuous progress to the record of which we must now turn. ”

“ The romance of Count Baldwin has a full-page cut of the Count riding on a gaily-decked charger, and thirteen smaller illustrations of his adventures, of which, however, several are repeated. The execution of them all is as rude as can well be conceived. Two years later, Neyret printed the first edition of a very famous book, [Pg 145] Le Livre du Roi Modus et de la reine Ratio, 'lequel fait mencion commant on doit deviser de toutes manières de chasses.' The cuts in this are numerous, and their representations of the various hunting scenes are more than sufficiently grotesque. ”

“ In 1482, Leonhard Holl printed at Ulm an edition of Ptolemy's Cosmographia, which contains the first woodcut map and fine initial letters, one of which, showing the editor, Nicolaus Germanus, presenting his book to the Pope, is given as a frontispiece to this chapter. In 1483 he issued the first of many editions of the Buch der Weisheit der alten Menschen von Anbeginn der Welt. The wisdom of the ancients chiefly takes the form of fables, which are illustrated with cuts, larger but much less artistic than those of Zainer's Æsop. ”

“ In 1501 Celtes published the comedies of Hroswitha, a learned nun of the tenth century, who had undertaken to show what charming religious plays might be written on the lines of Terence. By far the finest of the large cuts with which the book is illustrated is the second frontispiece, in which Hroswitha, comedies in hand, is being presented by her Abbess to the Emperor. The designs to the plays themselves are dull enough, a fault which those who are best acquainted with the good nun's style as a dramatist will readily excuse. ”

“ In France and Italy, on the other hand, the early printers were confronted by many wealthy book-lovers, accustomed to manuscripts adorned with every possible magnificence, and in a few instances they found it worth while to cater for their tastes. For this purpose they employed the most delicate vellum (very unlike the coarse material used by the Germans for its strength) decorating the margins with elaborate borders, and sometimes prefixing a coloured frontispiece. In France this practice was begun by Guillaume Fichet and Jean Heynlyn, the managers of the press at the Sorbonne. ”

“ The fact that, e.g., the editions printed by Pigouchet in August and September 1498 have the 1488 to 1508 calendar is by itself sufficient to prove that they cannot do more than this. Unluckily a connection has often been assumed between the first year of the calendar and the year of publication—e.g. undated Horae with the calendar for 1488-1508 are frequently ascribed on that ground only to 1488, or with perverse ingenuity to 1487; as if a calendar of the moveable feasts were like an annual almanac, and must necessarily be printed in readiness for the new year. ”

“ Germany and Italy are the only two countries in which illumination plays an important part in the decoration of early books. In England, where the Wars of the Roses had checked the development of a very promising native school of illuminators, the use of colour in printed books is almost unknown. The early issues from Caxton's press, before he began to employ printed initials, are either left with their blanks unfilled, or rubricated in the plainest possible manner. ”

“ Much more important than this is a handsome edition of Æsop published in 1485 by Francesco Tuppo, and printed for him by an anonymous firm known to bibliographers as the 'Germain fidelissimi.' This contains eighty-seven large cuts heavily cut, but well drawn and with a massive vigour, one of which, representing the death of Æsop, occupies a full page. The cuts illustrating the fabulist's life have rather commonplace borders to them, but when the fables themselves are reached, these are replaced by much more important ones. ”

“ The importance of this illustrated edition has perhaps been overrated. Taken individually, the best of the cuts are not superior to those in earlier Florentine books of less pretensions, while the cumulative effect of the series of one hundred and twenty-six (several of which, it should be said, are duplicates) is seriously diminished, partly by the monotonous recurrence of the same figure in every cut, partly by the coarseness and angularity with which most of the blocks have been engraved. ”

“ Those to Pynson's books have already been noticed, but lesser printers like Scot, Godfrey, Rastell, and Treveris also made use of borders of classical design, and gave up the use of woodcuts. It is extremely curious to notice what excellent effects on a title-page the printers at this time produced from the poorest materials. They seem to have understood much better than those of a later date how to use different sized type with effect, and to make the whole page pleasing, without attracting too much attention to one particular part. ”

“ Schoeffer prints them, as a rule, in his favourite red ink, and it was as an appendix to the colophon that the printer's device first made its appearance. Schoeffer's well-known shields occur in this connection in his Bible of 1462. No other instance of a device is known until about 1470, when they became common, some printers, like Arnold ther Hoernen of Cologne, and Colard Mansion of Bruges, imitating Schoeffer in the modest size of their badges, while others, among whom some Dutch printers are prominent, made their emblem large enough, if need be, to decorate a whole page. ”

“ Other countries were earlier than England both in the adoption of the label title-page and in filling the blank space beneath the title with some attempt at ornament. In France the ornament usually took the form of a printer's mark, more rarely of an illustration; in Italy and Germany usually of an illustration, more rarely of a printer's mark. Until the first quarter of the sixteenth century was drawing to a close the colophon still held its place at the end of the book as the chief source of information as to the printer's name and place and date of publication. ”

“ In a title-page to the Tabula Cebetis he shows the whole course of man's life—little children crowding through the gate, which is guarded by their 'genius,' and the fortune, sorrow, luxury, penitence, virtue, and happiness which awaits them. The two well-known borders for the top and bottom of a page, illustrating peasants chasing a thieving fox and their return dancing, were designed for Andreas Cratander, for whom also, as for Valentine Curio, Holbein drew printers' devices. ”

“ In the fifteenth century a book of devotions, commissioned by some wealthy book-lover, such as the Duke of Bedford, might be written by one man, have its rubrics supplied by another, its small initial letters and borders by a third, and then be sent to some famous miniaturist in France or Flanders for final completion. The scribe only supplied the groundwork, all the rest was added by other hands, and it was only with the scribe that the early printers competed. ”