CHAPTER II. OF THE TRANSITION, AND OF THE SECOND PERIOD OF DECORATIVELY

ILLUSTRATED BOOKS, FROM THE INVENTION OF PRINTING IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY ONWARDS.

We have seen to what a pitch of perfection and magnificence the decoration and illustration of books attained during the Middle Ages, and the splendid results to which art in the three distinct forms--calligraphy, illumination, and miniature--contributed. We have traced a gradual progression and evolution of style through the period of MS. books, both in the development of writing and ornament. We have noted how the former became more and more regular and compact in its mass on the page, and how in the latter the illustrative or pictorial size grew more and more important, until at the close of the fifteenth century we had large and elaborately drawn and naturalistic pictures framed in the initial letters, as in the Choir Books of Siena, or occupying the whole page with a single subject, as in the Grimani Breviary. The tree of design, springing from small and obscure germs, sends up a strong stem, branches and buds in the favourable sun, and finally breaks into a beautiful free efflorescence and fruitage. Then we mark a fresh change. The autumn comes after the summertide, winter follows autumn, till the new life, ever ready to spring from the husk of the old, puts forth its leaves, until by almost imperceptible degrees and changes, and the silent growth of new forces, the face of the world is changed for us.

So it was with the change that came upon European art towards the end of the fifteenth century, the result of many causes working together; but as regards art as applied to books, the greatest of these was of course the invention and application of printing. Like most great movements in art or life, it had an obscure beginning. Its parentage might be sought in the woodcuts of the earlier part of the fifteenth century applied to the printing of cards. The immediate forerunners of printed books were the block books. Characteristic specimens of the quaint works may be seen displayed in the King's Library, British Museum. The art of these block books is quite rude and primitive, and, contrasted with the highly-finished work of the illuminated MS. of the same time, might almost belong to another period. These are the first tottering steps of the infant craft; the first faint utterances, soon to grow into strong, clear, and perfect speech, to rule the world of books and men.

[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVTH CENTURY.

FROM THE LÜBECK BIBLE. (LÜBECK, STEFFEN ARNDES, 1494.)]

[Sidenote: THE EARLIEST PRINTERS.]

Germany had not taken any especial or distinguished part in the production of MSS. remarkable for artistic beauty or original treatment; but her time was to come, and now, in the use of an artistic application of the invention of printing, and the new era of book decoration and illustration, she at once took the lead. Seeing that the invention itself is ascribed to one of her own sons, it seems appropriate enough, and natural that printing should grow to quick perfection in the land of its birth; so that we find some of the earliest and greatest triumphs of the Press coming from German printers, such as Gutenberg, Fust, and Schoeffer, not to speak yet of the wonderful fertility of decorative invention, graphic force, and dramatic power of German designers, culminating in the supreme genius of Albrecht Dürer and Hans Holbein.

The prosperous German towns, Cologne, Mainz, Frankfort, Strassburg, Augsburg, Bamberg, Halberstadt, Nuremberg, and Ulm, all became famous in the history of printing, and each had its school of designers in black and white, its distinctive style in book-decoration and printing.

Italy, France, Switzerland, and England, however, all had their share, and a glorious share, in the triumph of printing in its early days. The presses of Venice, of Florence, and of Rome and Naples, of Paris, and of Basel, and of our own William Caxton, at Westminster, must always be looked upon as in the van of the early progress of the art, and the richness of the decorative invention and beauty, in the case of the woodcut adornments used by the printers of Venice and Florence especially, gives them in the last years of the fifteenth century and the early years of the sixteenth a particular distinction.

1454 appears to be the earliest definite date that can be fixed on to mark the earliest use of printing. In that year, the Mainz "Indulgences" were in circulation, but the following year is more important, as to it is assigned the issue, from the press of Gutenberg and Fust at Mainz, of the famous Mazarin Bible, a copy of which is in the British Museum. Mr. Bullen says, "The copy which first attracted notice in modern times was discovered in the library of Cardinal Mazarin"--hence the name.

It is noticeable as showing how transitional was the change in the treatment of the page. The scribe has been supplanted--the marshalled legions of printed letters have invaded his territory and driven him from his occupation; but the margin is still left for the illuminator to spread his coloured borders upon, and the initial letters wait for the touch of colour from his hand. The early printers evidently regarded their art as providing a substitute for the MS. book. They aimed at doing the work of the scribe and doing it better and more expeditiously. No idea of a new departure in effect seems to have been entertained at first, to judge from such specimens as these.

[Illustration: FRENCH SCHOOL. XVTH CENTURY.

FROM PARIS ET VIENNE. (PARIS, JEHAN TREPEREL, C. 1495.)]

[Sidenote: THE MAINZ PSALTER.]

Another early printed book is the Mainz Psalter. It is printed on vellum, and comes from the press of Fust and Schoeffer in 1457. It is remarkable not only as the first printed psalter and as the first book printed with a date, but also as being the first example of printing in colours. The initial letter B is the result of this method, and it affords a wonderful instance of true register. The blue of the letter fitted cleanly into the red of the surrounding ornament with a precision which puzzles our modern printers, and it is difficult to understand how such perfection could have been attained. Mr. Emery Walker has suggested to me that the blue letter itself might have been cut out, inked, and dropped in from the back of the red block when that was in the press, and so the two colours printed together. If this could be done with sufficient precision, it would certainly account for the exactitude of the register. Apart from this interesting technical question, however, the page is a very beautiful one, and the initial, with its solid shape of figured blue, inclosed in the delicate red pen-like tracery climbing up and down the margin, is a charming piece of page decoration. The original may be seen in one of the cases in the King's Library, British Museum. We have here an instance of the printer aiming at directly imitating and supplanting by his craft the art of the calligrapher and illuminator, and with such a beauty and perfection of workmanship as must have astonished them and given them far more reason to regard the printer as a dangerous rival than had (as it is said) the early wood engravers, who were unwilling to help the printer by their art for fear his craft would injure their own, which seems somewhat extraordinary considering how closely allied both wood engraver and printer have been ever since. The example of the Mainz Psalter does not seem to have been much followed, and as regards the application of colour, it was as a rule left as a matter of course to be added by the miniaturist, who evidently declined as an artist after he had got into the way of having his designs in outline provided for him ready-made by the printer; or, rather, perhaps the accomplished miniature printer, having carried his art as applied to books about as far as it would go, became absorbed as a painter of independent pictures, and the printing of books fell into inferior hands. There can be no doubt that the devices and decorations of the early printers were intended to be coloured in emulation of illuminated and miniatured MSS., and were regarded, in fact, as the pen outlines of the illuminator, only complete when filled in with colours and gold. It appears to have been only by degrees that the rich and vigorous lines of the woodcut, as well as the black and white effect, became admired for their own sake--so slowly moves the world!

[Sidenote: GERMAN ILLUSTRATION.]

A good idea of the general character of the development of the wood (and metal) cut in book and illustration and decoration in Germany, from 1470 (Leiden Christi, Pfister, Bamberg, 1470) to (Virgil Solis' Bible) 1563, may be gained from a study of the series of reproductions given in this and the preceding chapter, in chronological order, with the names, dates, and places, as well as the particular characteristics of the style of the different designers and printers.

[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVTH CENTURY.

"DAS BUCH UND LEBEN DES HOCHBERÜHMTEN FABELDICHTERS ÆSOPI." (ULM, 1498.[1])]

[1] This is the date of the copy from which the illustration is reproduced. The first edition of the book was, however, probably issued about 1480.

[Sidenote: ITALIAN ILLUSTRATIONS.]

The same may be said in regard to the Italian series which follows, and those from Basel and Paris.

[Illustration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVTH CENTURY.

DE CLARIS MULIERIBUS. (FERRARA, 1497.)]

Perhaps the most interesting examples of the use of early printing as a substitute for illumination and miniature are to be found in the Books of Hours which were produced at Paris in the later years of the fifteenth and the early years of the sixteenth centuries (1487-1519 about) by Vérard, Du Pré, Philip Pigouchet, Kerver, and Hardouyn.

Specimens of these books may be seen in the British Museum, and at the Art Library at South Kensington Museum. The originals are mostly printed on vellum.

[Illustration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVTH CENTURY.

TUPPO'S ÆSOP. (NAPLES, 1485.)]

[Sidenote: BORDERS AND ORNAMENTS.]

The effect of the richly designed borders on black dotted grounds is very pleasant, but these books seem to have been intended to be illuminated and coloured. We find in some copies that the full-page printed pictures are coloured, being worked up as miniatures, and the semi-architectural borderings with Renaissance mouldings and details are gilded flat, and treated as the frame of the picture. There is one which has the mark of the printer Gillet Hardouyn (G. H. on the shield), on the front page. In another copy (1515) this is painted and the framework gilded; the subject is Nessus the Centaur carrying off Deianira, the wife of Hercules; a sign of the tendency to revive classical mythology which had set in, in this case, in curious association with a Christian service-book. It is noticeable how soon the facility for repetition by the press was taken advantage of, and a design, especially if on ornamental borderings of a page, often repeated several times throughout a book. These borderings and ornaments being generally in separate blocks as to headings, side panels, and tail-pieces, could easily be shifted and a certain variety obtained by being differently made up. Here we may see commercialism creeping in. Considerations of profit and economy no doubt have their effect, and mechanical invention comes in to cheapen not only labour, but artistic invention also.

[Illustration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVTH CENTURY.

P. CREMONESE'S "DANTE." (VENICE, NOVEMBER, 1491.)]

[Illustration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVTH CENTURY.

THE DISCOVERY OF THE INDIES. (FLORENCE, 1493.)]

[Illustration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVTH CENTURY.

FIOR DI VIRTÙ. 1498 (FLORENCE, 1493?)]

[Sidenote: THE RENAISSANCE.]

It took some time, however, to turn the printer into the manufacturer or tradesman pure and simple. Nothing is more striking than the high artistic character of the early printed books. The invention of printing, coming as it did when the illuminated MSS. had reached the period of its greatest glory and perfection, with the artistic traditions of fifteen centuries poured, as it were, into its lap, filling its founts with beautiful lettering, and guiding the pencil of its designers with a still unbroken sense of fitness and perfect adaptability; while as yet the influence of the revival of classic learning and mythology was only felt as the stirring and stimulating breath of new awakening spring--the aroma of spice-laden winds from unknown shores of romance--or as the mystery and wonder of discovery, standing on the brink of a half-disclosed new world, and fired with the thought of its possibilities--

"Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific."

Had the discovery of printing occurred two or three centuries earlier, it would have been curious to see the results. But after all, an invention never lives until the world is ready to adopt it. It is impossible to say how many inventions are new inventions. "Ask and ye shall have," or the practical application of it, is the history of civilization. Necessity, the stern mother, compels her children to provide for their own physical and intellectual necessities, and in due time the hour and the man (with his invention) arrives.

[Illustration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVTH CENTURY.

STEPHANO CAESENATE PEREGRINI INVENTORE (S.C. P.I.). (VENICE, DE GREGORIIS, 1498.)]

Classical mythology and Gothic mysticism and romance met together in the art and books of the early Renaissance. Ascetic aspiration strives with frank paganism and nature worship. The gods of ancient Greece and Rome seemed to awake after an enchanted sleep of ages, and reappear again unto men.

Italy, having hardly herself ever broken with the ancient traditions of Classical art and religion, became the focus of the new light, and her independent republics, such as Florence and Venice, the centres of wealth, culture, refinement, and artistic invention. Turkish conquest, too, had its effect on the development of the new movement by driving Greek scholars and the knowledge of the classical writers of antiquity Westward. These were all materials for an exceptional development of art, and, above all, of the art of the printer, and the decoration and illustration of books.

The name of Aldus, of Venice, is famous among those of the early Renaissance printers. Perhaps the most remarkable book, from this or any press, for the beauty of its decorative illustration, is the _Poliphili Hypnerotomachia_--"The Dream of Poliphilus"--printed in 1499, an allegorical romance of love in the manner of those days. The authorship of the design has been the subject of much speculation. I believe they were attributed at one time to Mantegna, and they have also been ascribed to one of the Bellini. The style of the designer, the quality of the outline, the simplicity yet richness of the designs, their poetic feeling, the mysticism of some, and frank paganism of others, places the series quite by themselves. The first edition is now very difficult to obtain, and might cost something like 100 guineas.

My illustrations are taken from the copy in the Art Library at South Kensington Museum, and are from negatives taken by Mr. Griggs, for the Science and Art Department, who have issued a set of reproductions in photo-lithography, by him, of the whole of the woodcuts in the volume, of the original size, at the price, I believe, of 5_s._ 6_d._ Here is an instance of what photographic reproduction can do for us--when originals of great works are costly or unattainable we can get reproductions for a few shillings, for all practical purposes as good for study as the originals themselves. If we cannot, in this age, produce great originals, we can at least reproduce them--perhaps the next best thing.

[Illustration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVTH CENTURY.

POLIPHILUS. (VENICE, ALDUS, 1499.)]

[Illustration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. =TERTIVS= XVTH CENTURY.

POLIPHILUS. (VENICE, ALDUS, 1499.)]

[Illustration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY.

ALESSANDRO MINUZIANO. (MILAN, DESIGNER UNKNOWN, 1503.)]

[Illustration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY.

SCHOOL OF GIOV. BELLINI.

(VENICE, GEORGIUS DE RUSCONIBUS, 1506.)]

[Illustration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY.

THE DESCENT OF MINERVA, FROM THE QUATRIREGIO. (FLORENCE, 1508.)]

[Illustration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY.

AULUS GELLIUS, PRINTED BY GIOV. TACUINO. (VENICE, 1509.)]

[Illustration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY.

QUINTILIAN. (VENICE, GEORGIUS DE RUSCONIBUS, 1512.)]

[Illustration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY.

OTTAVIANO DEI PETRUCCI. (FOSSOMBRONE, 1513.)]

There is a French edition of Poliphilus printed at Paris, by Kerver, in 1561,[2] which has a frontispiece designed by Jean Cousin. The illustrations, too, have all been redrawn, and are treated in quite a different manner from the Venetian originals--but they have a character of their own, though of a later, florid, and more self-conscious type, as might be expected from Paris in the latter half of the sixteenth century. The initial letters of a series of chapters in the book spell, if read consecutively, Francisco Columna (F.R.A.N.C.I.S.C.O. C.O.L.V.M.N.A.)--the name of the writer of the romance.

[2] The first French edition is dated 1546.

Whether such designs as these were intended to be coloured is doubtful. They are very satisfactory as they are in outline, and want nothing else. The book may be considered as an illustrated one, drawings of monuments, fountains, standards, emblems, and devices are placed here and there in the text, but they are so charmingly designed and drawn that the effect is decorative, and being in open line the mechanical conditions are perfectly fulfilled of surface printing with the type.

[Sidenote: CAXTON.]

After the beautiful productions of the German, Italian (of which some reproductions are given here), and French printers, our own William Caxton's first books seem rather rough, though not without character, and, at any rate, picturesqueness, if they cannot be quoted as very accomplished examples of the printer's art. The first book printed in England is said to be Caxton's "Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers," printed by him at Westminster in 1477.

A noticeable characteristic of the early printed books is the development of the title page. Whereas the MSS. generally did without one, with the advent of printing the title page became more and more important, and even if there were no other illustrations or ornaments in a book, there was often a woodcut title. Such examples as some here given convey a good idea of what charming decorative feeling these title page designs sometimes displayed, and those greatest of designers and book decorators and illustrators, Albrecht Dürer and Hans Holbein, showed their power and decorative skill, and sense of the resources of the woodcut, in the designs made by them for various title pages.

The noble designs of the master craftsman of Nuremberg, Albrecht Dürer, are well known. His extraordinary vigour of drawing, and sense of its resources as applied to the woodcut, made him a great force in the decoration and illustration of books, and many are the splendid designs from his hand. Three designs from the fine series of the Little Passion and two of his title pages are given, which show him on the strictly decorative side. The title dated 1523 may be compared with that of Oronce Finé (Paris, 1534). There appears to have been a return to this convoluted knotted kind of ornament at this period. It appears in Italian MSS. earlier, and may have been derived from Byzantine sources.

[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY.

ALBRECHT DÜRER, "KLEINE PASSION." (NUREMBERG, 1512.)]

[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY. ALBRECHT DÜRER, "KLEINE PASSION." (NUREMBERG, 1512.)]

[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY.

ALBRECHT DÜRER, "KLEINE PASSION." (NUREMBERG, 1512.)]

[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY.

ALBRECHT DÜRER. (NUREMBERG, HEINRICH STEYNER, 1513.)]

[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY.

DESIGNED BY ALBRECHT DÜRER. (NUREMBERG, 1523.)]

[Sidenote: HANS HOLBEIN.]

There is a fine title page designed by Holbein, printed by Petri, at Basle, in 1524. It was originally designed and used for an edition of the New Testament, printed by the same Adam Petri in 1523. At the four corners are the symbols of the Evangelists; the arms of the city of Basle are in the centre of the upper border, and the printer's device occupies a corresponding space below. Figures of SS. Peter and Paul are in the niches at each side. But the work always most associated with the name of Holbein is the remarkable little book containing the series of designs known as the "Dance of Death," the first edition of which was printed at Lyons in 1538. The two designs here given are printed from the blocks cut by Bonner and Byfield (1833). These cuts are only about 2-1/2 by 2 inches, and yet an extraordinary amount of invention, graphic power, dramatic and tragic force, and grim and satiric humour, is compressed into them. They stand quite alone in the history of art, and give a wonderfully interesting and complete series of illustrations of the life of the sixteenth century. Holbein is supposed to have painted this "Dance of Death" in the palace of Henry VIII., erected by Cardinal Wolsey at Whitehall, life size; but this was destroyed in the fire which consumed nearly the whole of that palace in 1697.

[Illustration: GER. SCHOOL. XVITH CENT.

HOLBEIN. "DANCE OF DEATH."

THE NUN. (LYONS, 1538.)]

The Bible cuts of Hans Holbein are also a very fine series, and remarkable for their breadth and simplicity of line, as well as decorative effect on the page.

[Illustration: GER. SCHOOL. XVITH CENT.

HOLBEIN, "DANCE OF DEATH."

THE PLOUGHMAN. (LYONS, 1538.)]

It is interesting to note that Holbein's father and grandfather both practised engraving and painting at Augsburg, while his brother Ambrose was also a fertile book illustrator. Hans Holbein the elder married a daughter of the elder Burgmair, father of the famous Hans Burgmair, examples of whose fine and vigorous style of drawing are given.

[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY.

HANS HOLBEIN. (BASEL, ADAM PETRI, _circa_ 1524.)]

[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY.

HANS HOLBEIN. HIST. VET. TEST. ICONIBUS ILLUSTRATA.]

[Sidenote: THE GERMAN MASTERS.]

[Sidenote: THE GERMAN TRADITION.]

Albrecht Dürer and Holbein, indeed, seem to express and to sum up all the vigour and power of design of that very vigorous and fruitful time of the German Renaissance. They had able contemporaries, of course, among whom are distinguished, Lucas Cranach (the elder) born 1470, and Hans Burgmair, already named, who was associated with Dürer in the work of the celebrated series of woodcuts, "The Triumphs of Maximilian;" one of the fine series of "Der Weiss König," a noble title page, and a vigorous drawing of peasants at work in a field, here represent him. Other notable designers were Hans Sebald Beham, Hans Baldung Grün, Hans Wächtlin, Jost Amman, and others, who carried on the German style or tradition in design to the end of the sixteenth century. This tradition of convention was technically really the mode of expression best fitted to the conditions of the woodcut and the press, under which were evolved the vigorous pen line characteristic of the German masters. It was a living condition in which each could work freely, bringing in his own fresh observation and individual feeling, while remaining in collective harmony.

[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY.

HANS HOLBEIN. BIBLE.]

[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY.

AMBROSE HOLBEIN. "DAS GANTZE NEUE TESTAMENT," ETC.

(BASEL, 1523.)]

[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY.

HANS BURGMAIR. "DER WEISS KÖNIG" (1512-14).]

[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY.

HANS BURGMAIR. (AUGSBURG, 1516.)]

[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY.

HANS BURGMAIR. "HISTORIA MUNDI NATURALIS," PLINY. (FRANKFORT, 1582.)]

[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY.

HANS BURGMAIR. "DIE MEERFAHRT ZU VILN ONERKANNTEN INSELN UND KUNIGREICHEN."

(AUGSBURG, 1509.)]

[Sidenote: PRINTERS' MARKS]

[Sidenote: EMBLEM BOOKS.]

The various marks adopted by the printers themselves are often decorative devices of great interest and beauty. The French printers, Gillett Hardouyn and Thielman Kerver, for instance, had charming devices with which they generally occupied the front page of their Books of Hours. Others were pictorial puns and embodied the name of the printer under some figure, such as that of Petri of Basle, who adopted a device of a stone, which the flames and the hammer stroke failed to destroy; or the mark of Philip le Noir--a black shield with a negro crest and supporter; or the palm tree of Palma Isingrin. Others were purely emblematic and heraldic, such as the dolphin twined round the anchor, of Aldus, with the motto "_Propera tarde_"--"hasten slowly." This, and another device of a crab holding a butterfly by its wings, with the same signification, are both borrowed from the favourite devices of two of the early emperors of Rome--Augustus and Titus. This symbolic, emblematic, allegorizing tendency which had been more or less characteristic of both art and literature, in various degrees, from the most ancient times, became more systematically cultivated, and collections of emblems began to appear in book form in the sixteenth century. The earliest being that of Alciati, the first edition of whose book appeared in 1522, edition after edition following each other from various printers and places from that date to 1621, with ever-increasing additions, and being translated into French, German, and Italian. Mr. Henry Green, the author of "Shakespeare and the Emblem Writers" (written to prove Shakespeare's acquaintance with the emblem books, and constant allusions to emblems), said of Alciati's book that "it established, if it did not introduce, a new style for emblem literature--the classical, in the place of the simply grotesque and humorous, or of the heraldic and mystic."

[Illustration: HANS BALDUNG GRÜN. "HORTULUS ANIMÆ."

(STRASSBURG, MARTIN FLACH, 1511.)]

[Illustration: HANS BALDUNG GRÜN. "HORTULUS ANIMÆ."

(STRASSBURG, MARTIN FLACH, 1511.)]

[Illustration: HANS BALDUNG GRÜN. "HORTULUS ANIMÆ."

(STRASSBURG, MARTIN FLACH, 1511.)]

[Illustration: HANS BALDUNG GRÜN.

"HORTULUS ANIMÆ."

(STRASSBURG, MARTIN FLACH, 1511.)]

There is an edition of Alciati printed at Lyons (Bonhomme), 1551, a reprint of which was published by the Holbein Society in 1881. The figure designs and the square woodcut subjects are supposed to be the work of Solomon Bernard--called the little Bernard--born at Lyons in 1522. These are surrounded by elaborate and rather heavy decorative borders, in the style of the later Renaissance, by another hand, some of them bearing the monogram P.V., which has been explained to mean either Pierino del Vaga, the painter (a pupil of Raphael's), or Petro de Vingles, a printer of Lyons.

[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY.

HANS WÄCHTLIN. (STRASSBURG, MATHIAS SCHÜRER, 1513.)]

[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY.

HANS SEBALD BEHAM. "DAS PAPSTTHUM MIT SEINEN GLIEDERN."

(NUREMBERG, HANS WANDEREISEN, 1526.)]

These borders, as we learn from a preface to one of the editions ("Ad Lectorem"--Roville's Latin text of the emblems), were intended as patterns for various craftsmen. "For I say this is their use, that as often as any one may wish to assign fulness to empty things, ornament to base things, speech to dumb things, and reason to senseless things, he may, from a little book of emblems, as from an excellently well-prepared hand-book, have what he may be able to impress on the walls of houses, on windows of glass, on tapestry, on hangings, on tablets, vases, ensigns, seals, garments, the table, the couch, the arms, the sword, and lastly, furniture of every kind."

[Sidenote: EMBLEMS.]

An emblem has been defined ("Cotgrave's Dictionary," Art. "Emblema") as "a picture and short posie, expressing some particular conceit;" and by Francis Quarles as "but a silent parable;" and Bacon, in his "Advancement of Learning," says:--"Embleme deduceth conceptions intellectuall to images sensible, and that which is sensible more fully strikes the memory, and is more easily imprinted than that which is intellectual."

[Sidenote: THE COPPER-PLATE.]

All was fish that fell into the net of the emblem writer or deviser; hieroglyphic, heraldry, fable, mythology, the ancient Egyptians, Homer, ancient Greece and Rome, Christianity, or pagan philosophy, all in their turn served

"To point a moral and adorn a tale."

As to the artistic quality of the designs which are found in these books, they are of very various quality, those of the earlier sixteenth century with woodcuts being naturally the best and most vigorous, corresponding in character to the qualities of the contemporary design. Holbein's "Dance of Death," or rather "Images and Storied Aspects of Death," its true title, might be called an emblem book, but very few can approach it in artistic quality. Some of the devices in early editions of the emblem books of Giovio, Witney, and even the much later Quarles have a certain quaintness; but though such books necessarily depended on their illustrations, the moral and philosophic, or epigrammatic burden proved in the end more than the design could carry, when the impulse which characterized the early Renaissance had declined, and design, as applied to books, became smothered with classical affectation and pomposity, and the clear and vigorous woodcut was supplanted by the doubtful advantage of the copper-plate. The introduction of the use of the copper-plate marks a new era in book illustration, but as regards their decoration, one of distinct decline. While the surface-printed block, whether woodcut or metal engraving (by which method many of the early book illustrations were rendered) accorded well with the conditions of the letter-press printing, as they were set up with the type and printed by the same pressure in the same press. With copper-plate quite other conditions came in, as the paper has to be pressed into the etched or engraved lines of the plate, instead of being impressed by the lines in relief of the wood or the metal. Thus, with the use of copper-plate illustrations in printed books, that mechanical relation which exists between a surface-printed block and the letter-press was at once broken, as a different method of printing had to be used. The apparent, but often specious, refinement of the copper-plate did not necessarily mean extra power or refinement of draughtsmanship or design, but merely thinner lines, and these were often attained at the cost of richness and vigour, as well as decorative effect.

[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY.

REFORMATION DER BA[:Y]RISCHEN LANDRECHT. (MUNICH, 1518.)]

The first book illustrated with copper-plate engravings, however, bears an early date--1477. ["El Monte Sancto di Dio." Niccolo di Lorenzo, Florence]. In this case it was reserved for the full page pictures. The method does not seem to have commended itself much to the book designers, and did not come into general use until the end of the sixteenth century, with the decline of design.

The encyclopædic books of this period--the curious compendiums of the knowledge of those days--were full of entertaining woodcuts, diagrams, and devices, and the various treatises on grammar, arithmetic, geometry, physiology, anatomy, astronomy, geography, were made attractive by them, each section preceded perhaps by an allegorical figure of the art or science discoursed of in the costume of a grand dame of the period. The herbals and treatises on animals were often filled with fine floral designs and vigorous, if sometimes half-mythical, representations of animals.

[Sidenote: FUCHSIUS.]

[Sidenote: HERBALS.]

There are fine examples of plant drawing in a beautiful herbal ("Fuchsius: De Historia Stirpium"; Basle, Isingrin, 1542). They are not only faithful and characteristic as drawings of the plants themselves, but are beautiful as decorative designs, being drawn in a fine free style, and with a delicate sense of line, and well thrown upon the page. At the beginning of the book is a woodcut portrait of the author, Leonard Fuchs--possibly the fuchsia may have been named after him--and at the end is another woodcut giving the portrait of the artist, the designer of the flowers, and the draughtsman on wood and the formschneider, or engraver on wood, beneath, who appears to be fully conscious of his own importance. The first two are busy at work, and it will be noticed the artist is drawing from the flower itself with the point of a brush, the brush being fixed in a quill in the manner of our water-colour brushes. The draughtsman holds the design or paper while he copies it upon the block. The portraits are vigorously drawn in a style suggestive of Hans Burgmair. Good examples of plant drawing which is united with design are also to be found in Matthiolus (Venice, 1583), and in a Kreuterbuch (Strasburg, 1551), and in Gerard's Herbal, of which there are several editions.

As examples of design in animals, there are some vigorous woodcuts in a "History of Quadrupeds," by Conrad Gesner, printed by Froschover, of Zurich, in 1554. The porcupine is as like a porcupine as need be, and there can be no mistake about his quills. The drawings of birds are excellent, and one of a crane (as I ought, perhaps, more particularly to know) is very characteristic.

[Illustration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY.

(TOSCULANO, ALEX. PAGANINI, 1520.)

(_Comp. Dürer's title page, Nuremberg, 1523._)]

[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY.

"FUCHSIUS: DE HISTORIA STIRPIUM." (BASLE, ISINGRIN, 1542.)]

[Sidenote: THE NEW SPIRIT.]

But we have passed the Rubicon--the middle of the sixteenth century. Ripening so rapidly, and blossoming into such excellence and perfection as did the art of the printer, and design as applied to the printed page, through the woodcut and the press, their artistic character and beauty was somewhat short-lived. Up to about this date (1554 was the date of our last example), as we have seen, to judge only from the comparatively few specimens given here, what beautiful books were printed, remarkable both for their decorative and illustrative value, and often uniting these two functions in perfect harmony; but after the middle of the sixteenth century both vigour and beauty in design generally may be said to have declined. Whether the world had begun to be interested in other things--and we know the great discovery of Columbus had made it practically larger--whether discovery, conquest, and commerce more and more filled the view of foremost spirits, and art was only valued as it illustrated or contributed to the knowledge of or furtherance of these; whether the Reformation or the spirit of Protestantism, turning men's minds from outward to inward things, and in its revolt against the half paganized Catholic Church--involving a certain ascetic scorn and contempt for any form of art which did not serve a direct moral purpose, and which appealed to the senses rather than to the emotions or the intellect--practically discouraged it altogether. Whether that new impulse given to the imagination by the influence of the revival of Classical learning, poetry, and antique art, had become jaded, and, while breaking with the traditions and spirit of Gothic or Mediæval art, began to put on the fetters of authority and pedantry, and so, gradually overlaid by the forms and cerements of a dead style, lost its vigour and vitality--whether due to one or all of these causes, certain it is that the lamp of design began to fail, and, compared with its earlier radiance, shed but a doubtful flicker upon the page through the succeeding centuries.