CHAPTER VII

EARLY GERMAN AND DUTCH ILLUSTRATED BOOKS

The natural method of illustrating a book printed with type is by means of designs cut in relief, which can be locked up in the forme with the type, so that text and illustrations are printed together by a single impression[29] without any special preparation of the paper. So long as the design to be printed stands out clearly on the block it matters nothing whether it be cut on wood or on soft metal. Even as between the design cut by hand and the process line-block which has as its basis a photograph taken direct from a pen drawing, the difference can hardly be said to be one of better and worse. We lose the individuality of the wood-cutter or wood-engraver, but we are brought into closer touch with the individuality of the artist, and whether we gain or lose depends on the ability of the artist to dispense with a skilled interpreter. The one requisite for success is that either the artist, or an interpreter for him, should recognize the limits within which his work can be effective. The reproductions of the artist's designs will be looked at, not in isolation, but as part of an _ensemble_ made up of two pages printed in a type which, perhaps with a little trouble, can be ascertained beforehand, and they will be printed not as proofs on a special press by a special workman on paper chosen solely to suit them, but with average skill and care in an ordinary press and on paper the choice of which will be dictated by several considerations. Whenever relief blocks have been used for any length of time as a method of book-illustration the rivalry of artists has tended to cause these restrictions to be forgotten. In our own day line-blocks have been almost driven out of the field by "half-tones," which cannot be printed without the aid of paper specially coated, or at least rolled or "calendared." Shortly before the process line-block was perfected the extreme fineness of the American school of wood-engraving had induced a nearly similar result. The successors of Bewick worked with equal disregard of the need for clearly defined lines, and when we travel back to the first half of the sixteenth century we find the Holbeins, Burgkmair, Weiditz, and other artists producing designs far too delicate for the conditions under which they were to be reproduced. Thus the charm of the woodcuts in books of the fifteenth century is by no means confined to that "quaintness" which is usually the first thing on which the casual observer comments. The "quaintness" is usually there, but along with it is a harmony between print, paper, and woodcut which has very rarely since been attained.

The claim made in the last paragraph must be understood as applying only to books honestly illustrated with blocks specially made for them. Books decorated with a job lot of cuts, as was often the case, especially after about 1495, may accidentally be delightful and often possess some of the charm of a scrapbook. It is good sport, for instance, to take one of Verard's later books and trace the origin of the cuts with which that cheaply liberal publisher made his wares attractive. But the incongruity is mostly manifest, and collectors might well be more fastidious than they show themselves and refuse to waste the price of a good book with homogeneous illustrations in buying half a dozen dull little volumes with an old Horae cut at the beginning and the end of each.

A second exception must be recognized in the books illustrated by untrained wood-cutters. In Germany and the Low Countries few, if any, quite untrained wood-cutters were employed, and this is true also of Paris and Florence. But at Lyon and other provincial towns in France (the Abbeville cutters, who probably came from Paris, are strikingly good), in a few books printed at Rome and Venice, here and there in Spain, and in one or two of Caxton's and several of Wynkyn de Worde's books in England, the cutting is so bad that, though it is possible sometimes to see that excellent designs underlie it, the effect is either ludicrous or repellent. Only fanatics could admire such pictures as we find in the early Lyonnese _Quatre fils d'Aymon_ (_s.n._, but about 1480), in the _Opuscula_ of Philippus de Barberiis printed by Joannes de Lignamine (Rome, 1481), in a large number of the cuts of the Malermi Bible of 1490 (Venice, G. Ragazzo for L. A. Giunta, 1490), in _Los doze trabajos de Ercules_ (Zamora, 1483), in Caxton's _Aesop_ or in Wynkyn de Worde's _Morte d'Arthur_ (1527). Books such as these (the Malermi Bible is on a different footing from the rest owing to the wonderful excellence of the good cuts) may be bought as curiosities, or for the light they throw on the state of the book trade when such work could be put on the market, but no artistic merit can be claimed for them.

In Germany good work began early, because, to supply the demand for playing-cards and pictures of saints, schools of wood-cutters had grown up, more especially at Augsburg and at Ulm. Block-books also had come into existence in the district of the lower Rhine, and these, which in their earliest forms can hardly be later than 1460, must be divided between the Low Countries and Germany and prove the existence of competent workmen. The earliest type-printed books which possess illustrations are the little handful printed by Albrecht Pfister at Bamberg in and about 1461, described in Chapter V, but it was at Augsburg in the early seventies that book-illustration first flourished. As has been mentioned in Chapter V, trade difficulties at first stood in the way, but by the arbitration of Melchior Stanheim, abbot of the local monastery of SS. Ulrich and Afra, these were settled on the sensible basis that printers might have as many illustrations in their books as they chose to provide, but that they must be designed and cut by Augsburg craftsmen. The series seems to have begun with some tolerably good column-cuts to an edition of the Lives of the Saints in German, of which the first part was issued in October, 1471, and the second in April, 1472. In _Das guldin spiel_ of a Dominican writer, Ingold, finished on 1 August of the latter year, we find for the first time real power of characterization. Lovers of woodcuts owe some gratitude to the medieval trick of attaching edifying discourses to matters of everyday interest and amusement, for whereas the edifying discourses themselves could hardly carry illustrations, hunting, chess, or, as here, seven games which could be likened to the seven deadly sins, gave opportunities for showing pictures by which the natural man would be attracted. Another important book of this year, only known to me in Bamler's plagiarism of it, was the first edition of the _Belial_, the amazing book which tells the story of Christ being summoned for the trespass committed in harrowing Hell.

In 1473 the heavy gothic type which Zainer used in these illustrated books was put at the disposal of the Abbot of SS. Ulrich and Afra and used to print a _Speculum Humanae Saluationis_, to which was added a summary in verse by Frater Johannes, an inmate of his monastery. This book was illustrated by 176 different cuts of Biblical subjects, of varying degrees of merit. In the same year, and again in 1474, Zainer printed an illustrated _Plenarium_, i.e. the Epistles and Gospels for the round of the Church's year. In or shortly after 1475 he printed and illustrated a narrative of great contemporary interest, the story, written by one Tuberinus, of a child named Simon, who was supposed to have been slain by the Jews out of hatred of the Christian faith and desire to taste Christian flesh. The tale appears to contain internal evidence of its untruth, and the unhappy Jews who were cruelly executed had much better claims to be regarded as martyrs than "das susses Kind" Simon. But some of the pictures are quite animated, especially one (see Plate VIII) of the hired kidnapper beguiling the child through the streets and then deftly hurrying him into the house of doom with a touch of his knee.

In 1475 or 1476, and again with the date 1477, Zainer produced editions of the German Bible in large folio, illustrated with great pictorial capitals at the beginning of each book. But his greatest achievement was in an undated book of this period, the _Speculum Humanae Vitae_ of Rodericus Bishop of Zamora, in the German translation of Heinrich Steinhowel. If this Mirror of Man's Life had been written by a man with his eyes open instead of by a vapid rhetorician it should have been one of the most valuable documents for the social life of the fifteenth century, since it professes to contrast the advantages and evils of every rank and occupation of life, from the Pope and the Emperor down to craftsmen and labourers. There is but little joy to be gained from its text, but the Augsburg artist has atoned for many literary shortcomings by his vivid and charming pictures of scenes from the social life of his day, though it is not to be supposed that German judges took bribes quite so openly as he is pleased to represent. In addition to fifty-four woodcuts of this kind, there is a large genealogical tree of the House of Hapsburg, which is a triumph of decorative arrangement.

Two other early Augsburg printers devoted themselves to illustrated work, Johann Bamler and Anton Sorg. The former at first contented himself with prefixing a full-page frontispiece to his books, as in the _Summa_ of Johannes Friburgensis and _Die vier und zwanzig goldenen Harfen_, both of 1472, and again in the picture of S. Gregory and Peter the Deacon in the Dialogues of the former printed for the monastery of SS. Ulrich and Afra, and that of the dying Empress in the _Historie von den sieben weisen Meistern_ of the following year. In the _Belial_ of 1473 and _Plenarium_ of 1474 Bamler was content for most of the cuts to borrow or copy from the editions of Zainer, but in the _Alexander der Grosse_ of the former year and _Melusine_ and _Sieben Todsunden_ of the latter he himself led the way with some excellent sets of woodcuts, which were copied by others. Again, in _Das Buch der Natur_ of 1475 we find a dozen specially designed full-page cuts, one to each book, illustrating man, the spheres, beasts, birds, mermaids, serpents, insects, etc.; in the _Chronica von allen Kaisern and Konigen_ of 1476 there are four large cuts, showing Christ in glory, the dream of the Emperor Sigismund, the vision of S. Gregory at Mass, and S. Veronica holding before her the cloth with the imprint of Christ's face. It was perhaps in this same year that Bamler issued, without dating it, Jacob Sprenger's _Die Rosenkranz Bruderschaft_, with two very striking cuts, one of the offering of garlands to Our Lady, the other of Christ's scourgers looking back mockingly as they leave Him. A dated edition appeared in 1477. Another book of 1476 with a good set of cuts was the romance of Apollonius, King of Tyre. In 1477 Bamler issued a _Buch der Kunst_, which, like the _Buch der Natur_, went through several editions; it must be noted, however, that there is no such contrast between Art and Nature as the short title of this book might suggest, the full title being _Buch der Kunst geistlich zu werden_. The illustrations for the most part represent a soul in different situations, but there are also many of Biblical subjects. The last book of Bamler's which need be mentioned is the _Turken-Kreuzzuge_ of Rupertus de Sancto Remigio, which has an effective frontispiece of the Pope preaching to the Crusaders and some vigorous smaller cuts.

Anton Sorg began printing in 1475 and issued his first illustrated book the next year. He was a prolific printer, and issued many close imitations of books originated by Gunther Zainer and others. The most famous work specially connected with his name is Ulrich von Reichenthal's _Das Conciliumbuch geschehen zu Costencz_ (1483), illustrated with forty-four larger cuts, all in the first ninety leaves, and 1158 coats of arms of the various dignitaries present at the Council. The larger cuts show the knighting of the Burgermeister of Constance, processions, a tournament, and the martyrdom of Huss (despite his safe conduct) and the scattering of his ashes over a field. The later Augsburg illustrated books, issued by the elder Schoensperger, Johann Schobsser, Peter Berger, and Hans Schauer, though they maintain a respectable level of craftsmanship, have less interest and individuality than these earlier ones. One Augsburg printer, Erhard Ratdolt, who had made himself a reputation by ten years' work at Venice (1476-86), shortly after his return issued a notable illustrated book, the _Chronica Hungarorum_ of Thwrocz. His main business was the production of missals and other service books, in some of which he made experiments in colour-printing.

At the neighbouring city of Ulm, where also the wood-cutters had long been at work, illustrated books began to be issued in 1473 by Johann Zainer, no doubt a kinsman of Gunther Zainer of Augsburg. His chief books are (1) Latin and German editions of Boccaccio's _De claris mulieribus_ (1473), with a fine borderpiece of Adam and Eve and numerous spirited little pictures which, though primitive both in conception and execution, are full of life, and (2) an _Aesop_ which was reprinted at Augsburg and copied elsewhere in Germany, and also in France, the Netherlands, and England. From 1478 onwards he seems to have been in continual financial trouble. He was apparently able, however, to find funds to issue two rather notable books about 1490, the _Prognosticatio_ of Lichtenberger, and a Totentanz. The blocks of both of these passed to Meidenbach at Mainz.

Most of the forty books of a later printer, Conrad Dinckmut (1482-96), have illustrations. His _Seelenwurzgarten_ (1483) appears at first sight to be a most liberally decorated book, crowded with full-page cuts, but of its 133 illustrations only seventeen are different, one, representing the tortures of the damned, being used as many as thirty-seven times, a deplorable waste of good paper, which the printer had the good sense to reduce in a later edition. Dinckmut's most famous book is a German edition of the _Eunuchus_ of Terence "ain maisterliche vnd wolgesetzte Comedia zelesen vnd zehoren lustig und kurtzwylig, die der Hochgelert vnd gross Maister und Poet Therencius gar subtill mit grosser Kunnst und hochem Flyss gesetzt hat." This has twenty-eight nearly full-page cuts in which the characters are well drawn, the setting for the most part showing the streets of a medieval town. A _Chronik_, by Thomas Lirer, issued about the same time, was begun to be illustrated on a generous scale with eighteen full-page cuts in the first twenty-eight leaves, but was hastily finished off with only three more cuts in the remaining thirty-six. They are less carefully executed than those of the _Eunuchus_, but show more variety, and are on the whole very pleasing.

Another Ulm printer, who began work in 1482, Leonhard Holl, printed in that year a magnificent edition of Ptolemy's _Cosmographia_, with woodcut maps (one signed "Insculptum est per Iohann[=e] Schnitzer de Armszheim") and fine capitals. The first of these, a pictorial N, shows the editor, Nicolaus Germanus, presenting his book to the Pope.

Of later Ulm books by far the most important are two by Gulielmus Caoursin, published by Johann Reger in 1496, and both concerned with the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem at Rhodes. One volume gives their _Stabilimenta_ or Constitution, the other _Obsidionis urbis Rhodiae descriptio_, an illustrated history of their defence of their island against the Turks and their subsequent dealings with the infidel, who at one time were so complaisant as to present them with no less valuable a relic than the arm of their patron, which was duly honoured with processions and sermons. Altogether the two books contain fifty-six full-page pictures, rather roughly cut, but full of vigour and bringing the course of the siege and the character of the wild Turkish horsemen very vividly before the reader. William Morris was even tempted to conjecture that the designs may have been made by Erhard Reuwich, the illustrator of the Mainz _Breidenbach_, of which we shall soon have to speak.

At Nuremberg book-illustration begins with the _Ars et modus contemplatiuae vitae_, six leaves of which partake of the nature of a block-book. In or about 1474 Johann Muller of Konigsberg (whose variant names, Johannes Regiomontanus, Johannes de Monteregio, have trapped more bibliographers into inconsistencies than those of any other fifteenth century author) issued calendars and other works with astronomical diagrams, and prefixed to his edition of the _Philalethes_ of Maffeus Vegius a woodcut (for which Dr. Schreiber suspects an Italian origin) showing Philalethes in rags and Truth with no other clothing than a pair of very small wings. In June, 1475, Sensenschmidt and Frisner illustrated their folio edition of Justinian's _Codex_, with ten charming little column-cuts; the following month Sensenschmidt produced a _Heiligenleben_, with more than 250 illustrations, which, according to Dr. Schreiber, are very noteworthy as they stand, and would have been more so had not the wood-cutter been hurried into omitting the backgrounds in the later cuts, those to the "Pars aestiualis." Sensenschmidt also printed an undated German Bible with pictorial capitals.

In 1477 Creussner issued the travels of Marco Polo with a woodcut of the traveller, and about the same time Latin and German editions of the tract of Tuberinus on the supposed fate suffered by "Das Kind Simon" at the hand of the Jews.

In 1481 Anton Koberger published his first illustrated book, _Postilla super Bibliam_ of Nicolaus de Lyra, with forty-three woodcuts, which were imitated not only at Cologne, but at Venice, though their interest is not very great. In his German Bible of 1483 he himself was content to acquire blocks previously used at Cologne. The next year he prefixed to his edition of the _Reformation der Stadt Nuremberg_ a notable woodcut of S. Sebald and S. Laurence in the style of Michael Wolgemut. The 252 cuts in his _Heiligenleben_ of 1488 are mainly improved rehandlings of previous versions; of his _Schatzbehalter_ and Schedel's Chronicle we speak later on.

At Basel Martin Flach was the first printer of illustrated books, ornamenting his 1473 edition of the Ackermann von Bohmen with a woodcut of Death, the labourer, and the dead woman, his _Cato_ with the usual picture of a master and scholar, his _Rosenkranz_ with a cut of a traveller beseeching the Virgin's protection from robbers, and another of a scene in heaven, and his _Streit der Seele mit dem Korper_ (these and the two preceding are undated) with eight illustrations of various moments in the dispute. More important than these are three profusely illustrated books from the press of Bernhard Richel. The first of these, his 1476 _Spiegel Menschlicher Behaltnis_, has 278 woodcuts, the work of two different hands, the earlier of the two showing less technical skill, but much more vigour and originality.[30] The other two books are undated editions of the romance of _Melusina_, with sixty-seven cuts, in which suggestions from the first Augsburg edition have been improved on by an abler workman, and a _Mandeville_ with 147 cuts, most of which passed into the hands of M. Hupfuff at Strassburg, who used them in 1501. After this Richel turned his attention to liturgies, and is credited by Dr. Schreiber with being the first printer to insert in his Missals the woodcut of the Crucifixion, which thenceforth is so frequently found facing the first page of the Canon.

After the publication of these works illustration seems to have languished for some years at Basel, but was taken up again about 1489 by Johann von Amerbach, Lienhart Ysenhut, and Michael Furter, the work of the two latter being mainly imitative. Johann Froben, who began work about this time, was too learned a publisher to concern himself with woodcuts, catering chiefly for students of the University. One of the professors, however, at the University was far from sharing this indifference to pictures. Born at Strassburg, Sebastian Brant was educated at Basel, and it was while holding there the Professorship of Laws that he ensured the popularity of his _Narrenschiff_ (1494) by equipping it with 115 admirable illustrations. The original edition from the press of Johann Bergmann von Olpe was published in February, and before the end of the year Peter Wagner at Nuremberg, Greyff at Reutlingen, Schoensperger at Augsburg had all pirated it with copies of the Basel cuts. When the Latin translation by Brant's friend, Jakob Locher, was published by Bergmann in 1497, the success of the book became European, and probably no other illustrated work of the fifteenth century is so well known.

Probably in the same year as the _Narrenschiff_ was first issued, Bergmann printed for Brant his _In laudem gloriosae virginis Mariae_, with sixteen woodcuts by the same hand. In 1495 Brant supplied him with two works in honour of the Emperor Maximilian, one celebrating the alliance with Pope Alexander VI, illustrated with coats of arms, the other the _Origo bonorum regum_, with two woodcuts, in which the Emperor is shown receiving a sword from heaven. Brant was now in high favour with Maximilian, and his appointment as a Syndic and Imperial Chancellor at Strassburg led to his return and a consequent notable quickening of book-illustration in his native city.

At Strassburg Johann Mentelin had used woodcuts for diagrams in an undated edition of the _Etymologiae_ of S. Isidore, printed about 1473, but the first producer of books pictorially illustrated was Heinrich Knoblochtzer, who worked from 1476 to 1484, and issued over thirty books with woodcuts. Most of these were copies from other men's work, e.g. his _Belial_ and _Melusina_ from Bamler's, his _Philalethes_ from the Nuremberg edition of Johann Muller, his _Aesop_ and _Historie der Sigismunda_ from Johann Zainer's, his _Leben der heiligen drei Konigen_ probably from an anonymous edition by Johann Pruss. Early in his career in 1477 he issued two books on the great subject of the hour, the death of Charles the Bold, _Peter Hagenbach und der Burgundische Krieg_ and the _Burgunderkrieg_ of Erhard Tusch, in both of which he used eight woodcuts, most of them devoted to incidents of the Duke's ill-fated campaign. An anonymous edition of the _Euryalus und Lucretia_ of Aeneas Sylvius (Pope Pius II) has nineteen cuts, which were apparently commissioned by Knoblochtzer, but he did not secure the services of a sufficiently skilled wood-cutter. It should be said, however, that his "historiated" or pictorial capitals are apparently original and mostly good.

To Johann Pruss at Strassburg are now assigned editions in High and Low German of the Lives of the Fathers and of Antichrist, which Mr. Proctor, though he had a shrewd suspicion of their origin, left floating about among the German "adespota." The cuts to the former reach the average of early work; those to the _Antichrist_ vary greatly, that of Antichrist preaching before a queen being extraordinarily successful as a presentation of a type of coarse spiritual effrontery. The acknowledged work of Pruss includes editions of the travels of _Mandeville_, of the _Directorium Humanae Vitae_, and of the _Flores Musicae_ of Hugo Reutlingensis, with a rather famous cut showing how musical notes are produced by the wind, by a water wheel, by tapping stones, and hammering on an anvil. Pruss also printed several illustrated editions of the _Hortus Sanitatis_.

Far more prolific than either of the foregoing Strassburg printers was Johann Reinhard of Gruningen, usually called Gruninger after his birthplace. Setting up his press in 1483, he began book-illustration two years later with a German Bible with woodcuts copied from those in the Low German Bibles printed at Cologne and used in 1483 at Nuremberg by Koberger. Some minor books followed, and in 1491 he issued the _Antidotarius Animae_ of Nicolaus de Saliceto, with rather rude borders to each page and a woodcut of the Assumption. This, however, like some of his earlier illustrated books, appears to have been a commission, and in a reprint of 1493 the decorations disappear. It was not until 1496, under the influence of Sebastian Brant, that he undertook any important original illustrated work on his own account. In that year he produced his first illustrated classic, the comedies of Terence (_Terentius cum directorio_), with a large woodcut of a theatre and eighty-seven narrow cuts of the dramatis personae, or of scenery, used five at a time in 150 different combinations. Critically examined, the cuts are rather unpleasing, and were regarded at the time as likely to provoke mirth otherwise than by expressing the humorous intent of the playwright, but another edition and a German translation similarly decorated appeared in 1499, and Gruninger issued on the same plan a _Horace_ (edited by Locher) in 1498, and the _De consolatione philosophiae_ of Boethius in 1501. His full strength was reserved for the _Virgil_ of the following year, which was superintended by Brant, and is crowded with wonderful pictures, in which on the very eve of the Renaissance Virgil is thoroughly medievalized. Besides these classics, Gruninger printed many other illustrated editions, minor works by Brant, medical treatises by Brunschwig, an _Evangelienbuch_, a _Legenda S. Katherinae_ in Latin and also in German, editions of the _Hortulus Animae_, the romance of Hug Schapler, etc., in the fifteenth century, and in the sixteenth a sufficient number of illustrated books to bring his total up to about 150 editions. These may be said to form a school by themselves, distinguished by a certain richness of effect partly due to heavy cutting, but with less power of characterization and fewer gleams of beauty than are to be found in the best work of other towns, the figures being often unpleasing and notably lean in the legs. Martin Scott, Hupfuff, and Kistler were other Strassburg printers of the fifteenth century who also used illustrations.

At Cologne book-illustration began in 1474 with editions of the _Fasciculus Temporum_ of Werner Rolewinck, from the presses of ther Hoernen and Nicolaus Gotz. But with the notable exception of two great Bibles issued by Heinrich Quentell, illustrated books before 1490 are neither important nor numerous. Even in 1490 the edition of the _Historia Septem Sapientum_ of Johannes de Hauteselve, issued by the elder Koelhoff, was adorned with cuts obtained from Gerard Leeu at Antwerp. Quentell issued a few stock cuts in one book after another, and Johann Landen, Martin von Werden (if he be rightly identified with the printer "Retro Minores"), and Cornelis von Zierickzee all used a few cuts, some of the latter's having a curiously Italian appearance. But the only important illustrated book, other than the Bibles, is the Cologne Chronicle, issued (not to his profit, since he was imprisoned for it) by the younger Koelhoff in 1499, with armorial cuts and a few pictures of kings and queens somewhat too frequently repeated. Quentell's Bibles in High and Low German are in curious contrast to all this work. They are illustrated with 125 large oblong pictures, firmly if rather coarsely cut, and full of story-telling power, several successive incidents being sometimes brought into the same picture in true medieval fashion. The book was imitated at Nuremberg and elsewhere, and the illustrators of the Venetian Malermi Bible of 1490, and even Hans Holbein himself, did not disdain to take ideas from it.

At Lubeck a finely decorated edition of the _Rudimentum Noviciorum_, a universal history, was issued by Lucas Brandis as early as 1475, with some good pictorial capitals, and pictures beginning with the Creation and coming down to the life of Christ. In 1484 we come to a _Levend S. Jeronimi_, printed by Bartholomaeus Ghotan and illustrated by an anonymous artist whose work can be traced during the next ten years in other books of Ghotan's, in several very interesting editions by the unidentified "Poppy-Printer" (so called from his mark), including a _Dodendantz_ (1489 and 1496), _Imitatio Christi_, _Bergitten Openbaringe_ (1496), _Reynke de Vos_ (1498), _Schakspil_, etc., and in the splendid Low German Bible printed in 1494 by Stephan Arndes, with cuts which improve on those in the Cologne editions.

At Mainz, which led the way so energetically in typography, book-illustration is not represented at all until 1479, and then almost accidentally in the _Meditationes_ of Cardinal Turrecremata, printed by Johann Neumeister "ciuem Moguntinensem," with thirty-four curious metal-cuts imitating on a smaller scale the woodcuts in the editions printed at Rome by Ulrich Han. Two years later these metal-cuts were used by Neumeister at Albi, and they are subsequently found at Lyon. That this book was printed at Mainz was made practically certain by the type appearing subsequently in the possession of Peter von Friedberg, but that the cuts were executed at Mainz seemed to me improbable until the publication of Dr. Schreibers work on German illustrated books acquainted me with the existence of an _Agenda Moguntinensis_ of 29 June, 1480, also attributed to Neumeister's press, with a metal-cut of S. Martin and the beggar, and the arms not only of Archbishop Diether and the province of Mainz, but of Canon Bernhard von Breidenbach, of whom we shall soon hear again. The _Agenda_ and its metal-cuts are thus firmly fixed as executed at Mainz, and the metal-cuts of the _Meditationes_ must therefore be regarded as Mainz work also.

In 1486 Mainz atoned for her long delay in taking up illustrated work, with the _Peregrinationes in Montem Syon_ of the aforesaid Canon Bernhard von Breidenbach, printed with type of Schoeffer's, under the superintendence of Erhard Reuwich of Utrecht, the illustrator. The text of Breidenbach's book is full of interest, for he gives a vivid account of the voyage and of the hardships and extortions to which pilgrims were exposed. In his preface he states that Reuwich was expressly taken on the expedition to illustrate the narrative, and he certainly had ample skill to justify the engagement. Unfortunately, far too much of his labour was spent on great maps or views of Venice, Parenzo, Rhodes and other places passed on the way. These are certainly interesting, as they mark all the chief buildings and are very decoratively drawn. But in the text of the book there are just a few sketches from the life, Jewish moneylenders and groups of Saracens, Syrians (see Plate IX), Indians, etc., and these are so vivid and vigorous that we may well regret that the labour bestowed on the great maps left time for very few of them. They are interesting, moreover, not only as designs, but also for their cutting, as they introduce cross-hatching for the first time, and that very effectively, and are handled with equal firmness and freedom. At the end of the book is a jest, a full-page woodcut subscribed "Hec sunt animalia veraciter depicta sicut vidimus in terra sancta," among the animals thus certified as having been seen personally in the Holy Land being a unicorn and a creature (name unknown--_non constat de nomine_) with a great mane of hair and long tail, which might well serve for the missing link between a man and a gorilla. The frontispiece of the book, on the other hand, is a striking design of a woman (symbolizing the city of Mainz?) standing on a pedestal surrounded with the arms of Breidenbach and the two friends who went with him, decoratively treated, while above her is a canopy of trelliswork amid which children are joyously climbing. With the Mainz _Breidenbach_ we feel that we have passed away from the naive craftsmanship of the earliest illustrated books into a region of conscious art.

Naturally craftsmanship was not extinguished by the arrival of a single artist. We find it at work again in the charming and little known cut to a Leipzig edition of the Eclogues of Theodulus, printed in 1491, which the delight of recent discovery tempts me to show here (see Plate X), and at Mainz itself in the simple cuts to the _Hortus Sanitatis_, printed by Meidenbach, also in 1491, though here again there is an advance, as instead of plants and animals drawn out of the illustrator's head merely for decorative effect we find in many of the cuts fairly careful copies made from the life.

In Conrad Botho's _Cronecken der Sassen_, printed by Schoeffer the following year, most of the armorial illustrations and pictures of the foundation of towns are merely decoratively treated, but in one cut in which a rather wild-looking Charlemagne with lean legs is shown seated in a chair of state surmounted by an eagle, an idol crushed under his feet, the designer has given free play to his imagination.

The transition to different ideals of illustration thus begun at Mainz was carried on at Nuremberg, where Michael Wolgemut illustrated two important works, the _Schatzbehalter_ in 1491 and the famous _Nuremberg Chronicle_ in 1493, this latter with the help of his stepson, Wilhelm Pleydenwurff, and no doubt also of several inferior designers. The _Schatzbehalter_, of which the text is ascribed to Stephanus Fridelinus, a Nuremberg Franciscan, is one of several examples of a too ambitious scheme of decoration perforce abandoned for lack either of time or of money. In the first half there are ninety-two different full-page woodcuts, mostly illustrating Scripture history, but in some cases allegorical; in the second half the number is no more than two. The pictures executed before the scheme was thus cut down vary greatly in quality, from the fine design of Christ kneeling before the throne of the Father and pointing to the emblems of the Passion, which prepares us for the work which Durer, who was then being trained in Wolgemut's studio, was soon to execute, down to the amusing but uninspired craftsmanship of the picture of Solomon and a selection of his wives banqueting. For the _Liber Chronicarum_ of Hartman Schedel plans had been much more carefully worked out than for the _Schatzbehalter_, and by studying economy a seemingly profuse system of illustration was maintained to the end. The industry of Mr. Sydney Cockerell has evolved for us the exact figures as to the illustration of this book. Real liberality is shown in the large, double-page topographical cuts of twenty-six different cities, for many of which sketches must have been specially obtained, and not one of these is used a second time; but twenty-two other large cuts of cities and countries were made to serve for sixty-nine different subjects, and when we come to figures of emperors, kings, and popes we find ninety-six blocks used 598 times, or on an average half a dozen times apiece. Mr. Cockerell's grand totals are 1809 pictures printed from 645 different blocks, so that the repetitions number no fewer than 1164. Both in the designs and their execution there is great inequality, but no single picture can compare with that of Christ kneeling before the Father in the _Schatzbehalter_, and both books, fine as their best work is, must be regarded rather as the crown of German medieval craftsmanship in book-building than as belonging to the period of self-conscious artistic aim which is heralded by the Mainz _Breidenbach_ but really begins with Durer.

With this Nuremberg work we may perhaps class that in the one book printed at the Cistercian monastery at Zinna, near Magdeburg, the _Psalterium Beatae Mariae Virginis_, of Hermann Nitschewitz, the most richly decorated German book of the fifteenth century, executed in honour of the Emperor Frederick and his son Maximilian, who in the page here shown (Plate XI) are both represented.

Primitive Dutch and Flemish book-illustrations when compared with German ones exhibit just the general likeness and specific differences which we might expect in the work of such near neighbours. The Low Country wood-cutters are on the whole more decorative than the Germans, they were more influenced by the work of the engravers on copper, and they were attracted by different types of the human figure, the faces and bodies of the men and women they drew being often long and thin, and often also showing a slightly fantastic touch rarely found in German work. Unfortunately, these Low Country illustrated books are even rarer than the German ones, far fewer of them have found their way to England, and no attempt has been made to reproduce a really representative selection of them in facsimile. In 1884 Sir W. M. Conway, as the result of prolonged studies on the Continent, wrote an excellent account of these illustrations and the makers of them under the title, _The Woodcutters of the Netherlands in the Fifteenth Century_, which was unhappily allowed to appear without any facsimiles to elucidate the text. Thus the study of these Low Country illustrated books is still difficult.

In the production of the early block-books (see Chapter II) the Low Countries had played a principal part, and we meet again with traces of them in later illustrated books, cuts from the _Biblia Pauperum_ being used by Peter van Os at Zwolle in his _Episteln ende Evangelien_ of 5 January, 1487, and one from the _Canticum Canticorum_ in his edition of Mauberne's _Rosetum Exercitiorum Spiritualium_ in 1494. Two cut-up pieces from the block-book _Speculum Humanae Saluationis_ were used by Veldener in his _Episteln ende Evangelien_ completed at Utrecht 19 April, 1481, and all the old blocks, each divided in two, in a new edition of the _Speculum_ printed at Kuilenburg 27 September, 1483, with twelve new cuts added to them. Sir W. M. Conway has also shown that a set of sixty-four cuts used in a _Boec van der Houte_ or Legend of the Holy Cross, issued by Veldener at Kuilenburg earlier in 1483 (on 6 March), must have been obtained by dividing in a similar manner the double cuts of a block-book now entirely lost.

The first printer in the Low Countries who commissioned a woodcut for a book printed with movable type was Johann of Paderborn (John of Westphalia) at Louvain, the cut being a curious little representation of his own head, shown in white on a black oval. This he used in his _Institutiones_ of Justinian of 21 November, 1475, and a few other books, and a similar but even better likeness of his kinsman, Conrad, appeared the next year in the _Formulae Epistularum_ of Maneken (1 December, 1476). Although Johann of Paderborn thus led the way in the use of cuts, he only resorted to them subsequently for a few diagrams, and towards the end of his career for some half-dozen miscellaneous blocks for devotional books.

The portrait of Johann of Paderborn being used only as a device, book-illustration begins, though on a very small scale, with Veldener's edition of the _Fasciculus Temporum_ (29 December, 1475), with its handful of poor little cuts modelled on those of the Cologne editions. Five years later Veldener reprinted the _Fasciculus_ with a few new cuts, the originals of which have been found in the Lubeck _Rudimentum Noviciorum_. The only picture which seems to have been specially designed for him was a folio cut in his _Passionael_ (Utrecht, 12 September, 1480), where in delicate simple outline a variety of martyrdoms are shown as taking place in the hollows of a series of hills. Mention has already been made of his two Kuilenburg reprints of block-books. In the same place he issued Dutch and Latin Herbals with cuts copied from Schoeffer's Mainz _Herbarius_, and this completes the story of his illustrated ventures.

We come now to Gerard Leeu, who on 3 June, 1480, issued at Gouda the first completely illustrated book from a Dutch press, the _Dialogus creaturarum moralisatus_, a glorified version of the old bestiaries, full of wonderful stories of animals. This was illustrated with 121 specially designed cuts (mostly about four inches by two), and Leeu's liberality was rewarded by the book passing through nine editions, six in Latin and three in Dutch, in eleven years. The first page is decorated with a picture of the Sun and Moon, a large capital, and an ornamental border of foliage, but the merit of the book lies in the simple skill with which the craftsman, working entirely in outline, has reproduced the humour of the text. To the same hand are attributed ten cuts for Leeu's vernacular _Gesta Romanorum_ (30 April, 1481), four for an undated _Historia Septem Sapientum_, and four others, of the Four Last Things, which, to our puzzlement, appear first in a French edition printed by Arend de Keysere at Audenarde, and then (23 August, 1482) in a Dutch one of Leeu's. In the previous month he had brought out a _Liden ende passie ons Heeren_ with thirty-two quarto cuts, part of a set of sixty-eight made for editions of the _Devote Ghetiden_ or Dutch version of the _Horae_, the first of which (unless a Gouda one has perished) appeared after his removal to Antwerp. During the following nine years he made good use of his old blocks. For his Dutch _Aesop_ of October, 1485, and Latin edition of September, 1486, he used cuts copied from the original Ulm and Augsburg set. These he bought from Knoblochtzer of Strassburg and sold to Koelhoff of Cologne. In 1487 he issued an illustrated _Reynard the Fox_, of which only a fragment survives, and the pleasant romance of _Paris and Vienne_, with twenty-five fairly successful cuts, with the help of which five editions were sold, the first in French, the next three in Dutch, and the last (23 June, 1492) in English. According to Sir W. M. Conway these _Paris and Vienne_ cuts were the work of a Haarlem craftsman, who from 1483 to 1486 had worked for Jacob Bellaert, whose press was intimately connected with Leeu's, type and cuts passing freely from one to the other. Bellaert had begun by using some of Leeu's Passion cuts for a _Liden ons Heeren_, but seems soon to have discovered his Haarlem wood-cutter, with whose aid he produced (15 February, 1484) _Der Sonderen troest_, The Sinners' Trust, a Dutch version of that remarkable work the _Belial_ or _Consolatio peccatorum_ of Jacobus de Theramo, of which the Augsburg edition has already been mentioned. This begins with a full folio-page cut combining in one panorama the Fall of Angels and of Adam and Eve, the Flood, the Egyptians overtaken in the Red Sea, and the Baptism of Christ. Six of the other cuts fill half-pages and show the Harrowing of Hell (here reproduced, Plate XII), Devils in consultation, Satan kneeling before the Lord, the Last Judgment, Ascension and Descent of the Holy Spirit. The remaining half-page pictures are all composite, made up of different combinations of eight centre-pieces and seventeen sidepieces. The centre-pieces for the most part represent the different judges before whom the trials are heard, the side-pieces the messengers and parties to the suit. The combinations are occasionally a little clumsy, but far less so than in the Strassburg books printed by Gruninger in which the same labour-saving device was adopted, and in excellence of design and delicacy of cutting this Dutch _Belial_ ranks high among illustrated incunabula.

Later in 1484 (25 October) Bellaert issued a _Boeck des Golden Throens_ with four-column cuts, often repeated, of an Elder instructing a maiden; in May, 1485, Le Fevre's _Jason_, and a little earlier than this an undated edition of the same author's _Recueil des histoires de Troie_, both in Dutch and both profusely illustrated; on Christmas Eve in the same year a Dutch _De proprietatibus rerum_, and in 1486 versions of Pierre Michault's _Doctrinal_, in which a dreamer is shown the schools of virtue and of vice, and of Guillaume de Deguilleville's _Pelerinage de la vie humaine_, the medieval prototype of Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_. The _De proprietatibus_ is the only one of these books of 1485-6 that I have seen, and its full-page cuts are notable both for their own sake and as having been widely copied, although they illustrate only eleven of the nineteen books.

No other Low Country printer showed anything like the enterprise of Leeu and Bellaert in commissioning long sets of original woodcuts from competent craftsmen, but several fine illustrated books were produced by other firms. Beginning in 1484 Peter van Os printed numerous illustrated books at Zwolle, few of which attain excellence. Yet one of the earliest of them, the Sermons of S. Bernard, has a frontispiece of the Virgin and Child and the Saint gazing at them which is unequalled by any other single cut in the Low Country book in its large pictorial effect. At Gouda, in 1486, Gottfried van Os issued the _Chevalier Delibere_ of Olivier de la Marche, with sixteen large cuts, in which the author's minute instructions for each picture are faithfully carried out with extraordinary freedom and spirit, though the ambitious designs are more suitable to frescoes than to book-illustrations. About the end of the century the book was reprinted at Schiedam with the same cuts, from which facsimiles were made in 1898 by Dr. Lippmann and published by the Bibliographical Society.

At Louvain in 1487 Egidius van der Heerstraten issued the _De praeclaris mulieribus_ of Boccaccio with copies of the cuts of the Ulm edition of great interest for the differences in handling revealed when the two are compared. A little later than this another Louvain printer, Ludovicus de Ravescot, published the _De anno die et feria Dominicae Passionis_ of Petrus de Rivo, with a title-cut of the author kneeling before the Virgin and Child, and three large cuts of the Last Supper, Crucifixion, and Resurrection, somewhat in the temper of the illustrations in the Cologne Bibles, but with characteristic Low Country touches. Lastly, mention must be made of the clumsy outline cuts in the Bruges edition of Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, issued in 1484 by Caxton's partner Colard Mansion. Mansion certainly, and possibly Caxton also, were among the early experimenters with copperplate illustration, but the story of these will be told in Chapter XV.

FOOTNOTES:

[29] Dr. Schreiber, in the introduction to Tome V of his _Manuel de l'amateur de la gravure sur bois au xv^e siecle_, dealing with German book-illustrations, shows that some little difficulty was found at first in effecting this. In Boner's _Edelstein_ (Bamberg, 1461), probably the first illustrated book printed in Germany, the cuts were printed after the text. In Zainer's _Heiligenleben_, the first illustrated book printed at Augsburg, the cuts must have been printed first, as part of the text is sometimes printed over them.

[30] A set of proofs of cuts to this book, previously in the possession of the Marquis of Blandford and Mr. Perkins, was among the favourite possessions of William Morris, and is now owned by Mr. Morgan. An illustrated _Plenarium_, assigned by Dr. Copinger to Richel, appears to be a "ghost," due to some confusion with this _Spiegel_.