Chapter IV (3)

In the last map,--of Loraine,--in an edition of Ptolemy, in folio, printed at Strasburg in 1513, by John Schott, the attempt to print in colours, in the manner of chiaro-scuro wood engravings, is carried yet further. The hills and woods are printed green; the indications of towns and cities, and the names of the most considerable places, are red; while the names of the smaller places are black. For this map, executed in three colours, green, red, and black, there would be required two wood engravings and two forms of type, each of which would have to be separately printed. The arms which form a border to the map are printed in their proper heraldic colours.[IV-48] The only other specimen of armorial bearings printed in colours from wood-blocks, that I am aware of, is Earl Spencer’s arms in the first part of Savage’s Hints on Decorative Printing, which was published in 1818, upwards of three hundred years after the first essay.

[Footnote IV-48: I regret that I have not had an opportunity of
personally examining this map. There is a copy of Schott’s edition
in the British Museum; but all the maps, except one of the sphere,
are taken out. The above account of the map of Loraine is from
Breitkopf’s interesting essay “Ueber den Druck der Geographischen
Charten,” S. 7. 4to. Leipzig, 1777.]

At a later period a new method was adopted by which the wood engraver was spared the trouble of cutting the letters, while the printer was enabled to obtain a perfect copy of each map by a single impression. The mode in which this was effected was as follows. The indications of mountains, rivers, cities, and villages were engraved on the wood as before, and blank spaces were left for the names. Those spaces were afterwards cut out by means of a chisel or drill, piercing quite through the block: and the names of the places being inserted in type, the whole constituted only one “form,” from which an impression both of the cut and the letters could be obtained by its being passed once through the press. Sebastian Munster’s Cosmography, folio, printed at Basle in 1554, by Henry Petri, affords several examples of maps executed in this manner. This may be considered as one of the last efforts of the old wood engravers and printers to secure to themselves a share of the business of map-engraving. Their endeavours, however, were unavailing; for within twenty years of that date, this branch of art was almost exclusively in the hands of the copper-plate engravers. From the date of the maps of Ortelius, Antwerp, 1570, engraved on copper by Ægidius Diest, maps engraved on wood are rarely to be seen. The practice of engraving the outlines and rivers on wood, and then piercing the block and inserting the names of the places in type has, however, lately been revived; and where publishers are obliged either to print maps with the type or to give none at all, this mode may answer very well, more especially when the object is to give the relative position of a few of the principal places, rather than a crowded list of names. Most of the larger maps in the Penny Cyclopædia are executed in this manner. The holes in the blocks are pierced with the greatest rapidity by gouges of different sizes acting vertically, and put in motion by machinery contrived by Mr. Edward Cowper, to whose great mechanical skill the art of steam-printing chiefly owes its perfection.

Having thus noticed consecutively the progress of map engraving, it may not here be out of place to give a brief account of Breitkopf’s experiment to print a map with separate pieces of metal in the manner of type.[IV-49] Previous to 1776 some attempts had been made by a person named Preusch, of Carlsruhe, to print maps by a process which he named typometric, and who published an account of his plan, printed at the press of Haass the Younger, of Basil. In 1776 Breitkopf sent a communication to Busching’s Journal, containing some remarks on the invention of Preusch, and stating that he had conceived a similar plan upwards of twenty years previously, and that he had actually set up a specimen and printed off a few copies, which he had given to his friends. The veracity of this account having been questioned by an illiberal critic, Breitkopf, in 1777, prefixed to his Essay on the Printing of Maps a specimen composed of moveable pieces of metal in the manner of types. He expressly declares that he considered his experiment a failure; and that he only produced his specimen--a quarto map of the country round Leipsic--in testimony of the truth of what he had previously asserted, and to show that two persons might, independently of each other, conceive an idea of the same invention, although they might differ considerably in their mode of carrying it into effect.

[Footnote IV-49: The following particulars respecting Breitkopf’s
invention are derived from his essay “Ueber den Druck der
Geographischen Charten,” previously referred to.]

He was first led to think on the practicability of printing maps with moveable pieces of metal by considering that when the letters are omitted there remain but hills, rivers, and the indications of places; and for these he was convinced that representations consisting of moveable pieces of metal might be contrived. Having, however, made the experiment, he felt satisfied that the appearance of such a map was unpleasing to the eye, and that the invention was not likely to be practically useful. Had it not been for the publication of Preusch, he says that he never would have thought of mentioning his invention, except as a mechanical experiment; and to show that the execution of maps in such a manner was within the compass of the printer’s art.

In the specimen which he gives, rivers are represented by minute parallel lines, which are shorter or longer as the river contracts or expands; and the junction of the separate pieces may be distinctly perceived. For hills and trees there are distinct characters representing those objects. Towns and large villages are distinguished by a small church, and small villages by a small circle. Roads are indicated by dotted parallel lines. For the title of the map large capitals are used. The name of the city of LEIPSIC is in small capitals. The names of towns and villages are in _Italic_; and of woods, rivers, and hills, in Roman type. The general appearance of the map is unpleasing to the eye. Breitkopf has displayed his ingenuity by producing such a typographic curiosity, and his good sense in abandoning his invention when he found that he could not render it useful.

Mr. Ottley, at page 755 of the second volume of his Inquiry, makes the following remarks on the subject of cross-hatching in wood engravings:--“It appears anciently to have been the practice of those masters who furnished designs for the wood engravers to work from, carefully to avoid all cross-hatchings, which, it is probable, were considered beyond the power of the Xylographist to represent. Wolgemuth perceived that, though difficult, this was not impossible; and in the cuts of the Nuremberg Chronicle, the execution of which, (besides furnishing the designs,) he doubtless superintended, a successful attempt was first made to imitate the bold hatchings of a pen-drawing, crossing each other, as occasion prompted the designer, in various directions: to him belongs the praise of having been the first who duly appreciated the powers of this art.”

Although it is true that cross-hatchings are not to be found in the earliest wood engravings, yet Mr. Ottley is wrong in assigning this material improvement in the art to Michael Wolgemuth; for cross-hatching is introduced in the beautiful cut forming the frontispiece to the Latin edition of Breydenbach’s Travels, folio, first printed at Mentz, by Erhard Reuwich, in 1486,[IV-50] seven years before the Nuremberg Chronicle appeared. The cut in the following page is a reduced but accurate copy of Breydenbach’s frontispiece, which is not only the finest wood engraving which had appeared up to that date, 1486, but is in point of design and execution as superior to the best cuts in the Nuremberg Chronicle, as the designs of Albert Durer are to the cuts in the oldest editions of the “Poor Preachers’ Bible.”

[Footnote IV-50: An edition of this work in German, with the same
cuts, was printed by Reuwich in 1488. Within ten years, at least
six different editions of this work were printed in Germany. It
was also translated into Low Dutch, and printed in Holland.]

In this cut, cross-hatching may be observed in the drapery of the female figure, in the upper part of the two shields on each side of her, in the border at the top of the cut, and in other places. Whether the female figure be intended as a personification of the city of Mentz, as is sometimes seen in old books of the sixteenth century, or for St. Catherine, whose shrine on Mount Sinai was visited by Breydenbach in his travels, I shall not pretend to determine. The arms on her right are Breydenbach’s own; on her left are the arms of John, Count of Solms and Lord of Mintzenberg, and at the bottom of the cut those of Philip de Bicken, knight, who were Breydenbach’s companions to the holy sepulchre at Jerusalem and the shrine of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai. St. Catherine, it may be observed, was esteemed the patroness of learned men, and her figure was frequently placed in libraries in Catholic countries, in the same manner as the bust of Minerva in the libraries of ancient Greece and Rome. The name of the artist by whom the frontispiece to Breydenbach’s travels was executed is unknown; but I have no hesitation in declaring him to be one of the best wood engravers of the period. As this is the earliest wood-cut in which I have noticed cross-hatching, I shall venture to ascribe the merit of the invention to the unknown artist, whoever he may have been; and shall consider the date 1486 as marking the period when a new style of wood engraving was introduced. Wolgemuth, as associated with wood engraving, has too long been decked out with borrowed plumes; and persons who knew little or nothing either of the history or practice of the art, and who are misled by writers on whose authority they rely, believe that Michael Wolgemuth was not only one of the best wood engravers of his day, but that he was the first who introduced a material improvement into the practice of the art. This error becomes more firmly rooted when such persons come to be informed that he was the master of Albert Durer, who is generally, but erroneously, supposed to have been the best wood engraver of his day. Albert Durer studied under Michael Wolgemuth as a painter, and not as a wood engraver; and I consider it as extremely questionable if either of them ever engraved a single block. There are many evidences in Germany of Wolgemuth having been a tolerably good painter for the age and country in which he lived; but there is not one of his having engraved on wood. In the Nuremberg Chronicle he is represented as having, in conjunction with William Pleydenwurf, superintended the execution of the wood-cuts contained in that book. Those cuts, which are frequently referred to as excellent specimens of old wood engraving, are in fact the most tasteless and worthless things that are to be found in any book, ancient or modern. It is a book, however, that is easy to be obtained; and it serves as a land-mark to superficial enquirers who are perpetually referring to it as containing wood-cuts designed, if not engraved, by Albert Durer’s master,--and such, they conclude, must necessarily possess a very high degree of excellence.

Breydenbach was a canon of the cathedral church of Mentz, and he dedicates the account of his pilgrimage to the Holy Land and visit to Mount Sinai to Berthold, archbishop of that see. The frontispiece, although most deserving of attention as a specimen of wood engraving, is not the only cut in the book which is worthy of notice. Views are given, engraved on wood, of the most remarkable places which he visited;--and those of Venice, Corfu, Modon, and the country round Jerusalem, which are of great length, are inserted in the book as “folding plates.” Each of the above views is too large to have been engraved on one block. For that of Venice, which is about five feet long, and ten inches high, several blocks must have been required, from each of which impressions would have to be taken singly, and afterwards pasted together, as is at present done in such views as are too wide to be contained on one sheet. Those views, with respect to the manner in which they are executed, are superior to everything of the same kind which had previously appeared. The work also contains smaller cuts printed with the type, which are not generally remarkable for their execution, although some of them are drawn and engraved in a free and spirited manner. The following cut is a reduced copy of that which is prefixed to a chapter intitled “De Surianis qui Ierosolimis et locis illis manentes etiam se asserunt esse Christianos:”--

In a cut of animals there is a figure of a giraffe,[IV-51] named by Breydenbach “seraffa,” of a unicorn, a salamander, a camel, and an animal something like an oran-outang, except that it has a tail. Of the last the traveller observes, “non constat de nomine.” Some account of this book, with fac-similes of the cuts, will be found in Dibdin’s Bibliotheca Spenceriana, vol iii. pp. 216-228. In the copy there described, belonging to Earl Spencer, the beautiful frontispiece was wanting.

[Footnote IV-51: This is probably the first figure of the giraffe
that was communicated to the “reading public” of Europe. Its
existence was afterwards denied by several naturalists; and it is
only within a comparatively recent period that the existence of
such an animal was clearly established.]

Although a flowered border surrounding a whole page may be observed as occurring twice in Veldener’s edition of the Fasciculus Temporum, printed at Utrecht in 1480, yet I am inclined to think that the practice of surrounding every page with an ornamental flowered border cut in wood, was first introduced by the Parisian printers at a period somewhat later. In 1488, an edition of the “Horæ in Laudem beatissimæ virginis Mariæ,” in octavo, was printed at Paris by Anthony Verard, the text of which is surrounded with ornamental borders. The practice thus introduced was subsequently adopted by the printers of Germany and Holland, more especially in the decoration of devotional works, such as Horæ, Breviaries, and Psalters. Verard appears to have chiefly printed works of devotion and love, for a greater number of Horæ and Romances proceeded from his press than that of any other printer of his age. Most of them contain wood-cuts, some of which, in books printed by him about the beginning of the sixteenth century, are designed with considerable taste and well engraved; while others, those for instance in “La Fleur des Battailes,” 4to, 1505, are not superior to those in Caxton’s Chess: it is, however, not unlikely that the cuts in “La Fleur des Battailes” of this date had been used for an earlier edition.[IV-52]

[Footnote IV-52: A good specimen of early French wood engraving
may be seen in the large cut forming a kind of frontispiece to the
“Roman du Roy Artus,” folio, printed at Rouen in 1488 by Jehan de
Bourgeois. This cut, which occupies the whole page, represents
King Arthur and his knights dining off the round table. A smaller
one occurs at the beginning of the second part, and both are
surrounded by ornamental borders.]

The “Hortus Sanitatis,” folio, printed at Mentz in 1491 by Jacobus Meydenbach, is frequently referred to by bibliographers; not so much on account of the many wood-cuts which it contains, but as being supposed in some degree to confirm a statement in Sebastian Munster’s Cosmography, and in Serrarius, De Rebus Moguntinis, where a _John_ Meydenbach is mentioned as being a partner with Gutemberg and Faust. Von Murr, as has been previously noticed, supposed that this person was a wood engraver; and Prosper Marchand,[IV-53] though without any authority, calls _Jacobus_ Meydenbach his son or his relation.

[Footnote IV-53: Hist. de l’Imprimerie, p. 49.]

This work, which is a kind of Natural History, explaining the uses and virtues of herbs, fowls, fish, quadrupeds, minerals, drugs, and spices, contains a number of wood-cuts, many of which are curious, as containing representations of natural objects, but none of which are remarkable for their execution as wood engravings. On the opposite page is a fac-simile of the cut which forms the head-piece to the chapter “De Ovis.” The figure, which possesses considerable merit, represents an old woman going to market with her basket of eggs.

This is a fair specimen of the manner in which the cuts in the Hortus Sanitatis are designed and executed. Among the most curious and best designed are: the interior of an apothecary’s shop, on the reverse of the first leaf; a monkey seated on the top of a fountain, in the chapter on water; a butcher cutting up meat; a man selling cheese at a stall; a woman milking a cow; and figures of the male and female mandrake. At chapter 119, “De Pediculo,” a woman is represented brushing the head of a boy with a peculiar kind of brush, which answers the purpose of a small-toothed comb; and she appears to bestow her labour on no infertile field, for each of her “sweepings,” which are seen lying on the floor, would scarcely slip through the teeth of a garden rake. Meydenbach’s edition has been supposed to be the first; and Linnæus, in the Bibliotheca Botanica, has ascribed the work to one John Cuba, a physician of Mentz; but other writers have doubted if this person were really the author. The first edition of this work, under the title of “Herbarus,” with a hundred and fifty wood-cuts, was printed at Mentz by Peter Scheffer in 1484; and in 1485 he printed an enlarged edition in German, containing three hundred and eighty cuts, under the title of “Ortus Sanitatis oder Garten der Gesundheit.” Of the work printed by Scheffer, Breydenbach is said to have been one of the compilers. Several editions of the Hortus Sanitatis were subsequently printed, not only in Germany, but in France, Holland, and Switzerland.

Having previously expressed my opinion respecting the wood-cuts in the Nuremberg Chronicle, there will be less occasion to give a detailed account of the book and the rubbish it contains here: in speaking thus it may perhaps be necessary to say that this character is meant to apply to the wood-cuts and not to the literary portion of the work, which Thomas Hearne, of black-letter memory, pronounces to be extremely “pleasant, useful, and curious.” With the wood-cuts the Rev. Dr. Dibdin appears to have been equally charmed.

The work called the “Nuremberg Chronicle” is a folio, compiled by Hartman Schedel, a physician of Nuremberg, and printed in that city by Anthony Koburger in 1493. In the colophon it is stated that the views of cities, and figures of eminent characters, were executed under the superintendence of Michael Wolgemuth and William Pleydenwurff, “mathematical men”[IV-54] and skilled in the art of painting. The total number of impressions contained in the work exceeds two thousand, but several of the cuts are repeated eight or ten times. The following fac-simile will afford an idea of the style in which the portraits of illustrious men contained in this often-cited chronicle are executed.

[Footnote IV-54: The expression “adhibitis tamen viris
mathematicis” in the Nuremberg Chronicle, is evidently borrowed
from that,--“subinde mathematicis adhibitis viris,”--in the
dedication of Bukinck’s Ptolemy, 1478, to the Pope. “Mathematical
men,” in the present sense of the term, might be required to
construct the maps in the edition of Ptolemy, but scarcely to
design or engrave the vulgar figures and worthless views in the
Nuremberg Chronicle.]

The above head, which the owner appears to be scratching with so much earnestness, first occurs as that of Paris the lover of Helen; and it is afterwards repeated as that of Thales, Anastasius, Odofredus, and the poet Dante. In a like manner the economical printer has a stock-head for kings and emperors; another for popes; a third for bishops; a fourth for saints, and so on. Several cuts representing what might be supposed to be particular events are in the same manner pressed into the general service of the chronicler.

The peculiarity of the cuts in the Nuremberg Chronicle is that they generally contain more of what engravers term “colour” than any which had previously appeared. Before proceeding, however, to make any further observations on these cuts, I shall endeavour to explain what engravers mean by the term “colour,” as applied to an impression taken with black ink from a copper-plate or a wood-block.

Though there is no “colour,” strictly speaking, in an engraving consisting merely of black and white lines, yet the term is often conventionally applied to an engraving which is supposed, from the varied character of its lines and the contrast of light and shade, to convey the idea of varied local colour as seen in a painting or a water-colour drawing. For instance, an engraving is said to contain much “colour” which appears clearly to indicate not only a variety of colour, but also its different degrees of intensity in the several objects, and which at the same time presents an effective combination of light and shade. An engraver cannot certainly express the difference between green and yellow, or red and orange, yet in engraving a figure, say that of a cavalier by Vandyke, with brown leather boots, buff-coloured woollen hose, doublet of red silk, and blue velvet cloak, a master of his art will not only express a difference in the texture, but will also convey an idea of the different parts of the dress being of different colours. The Rent Day, engraved by Raimbach from a painting by Wilkie, and Chelsea Pensioners hearing the Gazette of the Battle of Waterloo read, engraved by Burnet from a picture by the same artist, may be instanced as copper-plate engravings which contain much “colour.”

Mr. Landseer, at pages 175, 176, of his Lectures on Engraving, makes the following remarks on the term “colour,” as conventionally applied by engravers in speaking of impressions from plates or from wood-blocks:--“It is not uncommon among print-publishers, nor even amongst engravers themselves, to hear the word COLOUR mistakenly employed to signify _shade_; so that if they think an engraving too dark, they say it has too much _colour_, too little colour if too light--and so forth. The same ignorance which has hitherto reigned over the pursuits of this Art, has here imposed its authority, and with the same unfortunate success: I cannot however yield to it the same submission, since it is not only a palpable misuse of a word, but would lead to endless confusion when I come to explain to you my ideas of the means the Art of engraving possesses of rendering local colour in the abstract. Wherefore, whenever I may use the term _colour_, I mean it in no other than its ordinary acceptation.”

“By MIDDLE TINT, I understand and mean, ‘the medium between strong light and strong shade.’--These are Mr. Gilpin’s words; and he adds, with a propriety that confers value on the definition--‘the phrase is _not at all_ expressive of colour.’”

Whether we owe the term “colour,” as applied to engravings, to the ignorance of printsellers or not, I shall not inquire; I only know that a number of terms equally objectionable, if their primitive meaning be considered, are used in speaking of the arts of painting and engraving by persons who are certainly not ignorant. We have the words _high_ and _deep_, which strictly relate to objects of lineal altitude or profundity, applied to denote intensity of colour; and the very word _intensity_, when thus applied, is only relative; the speaker being unable to find a word directly expressive of his meaning, explains himself by referring to some object or thing previously known, as, in this instance, by reference to the _tension_ of a string or cord. The word _tone_, which is so frequently used in speaking of pictures, is derived from the sister art of music. I presume that none of these terms were introduced into the nomenclature of painting and engraving by ignorant persons, but that they were adopted from a necessity originating from the very constitution of the human mind. It is well known to every person who has paid any attention to the construction of languages, that almost every abstract term is referable to, and derived from, the name of some material object. The very word to “think,” implying the exercise of our mental faculties, is probably an offset from the substantive “thing.”

It is also to be observed, that Mr. Landseer speaks as if the term _colour_ was used by ignorant printsellers, and of course ignorant engravers, to signify _shade_ only. It is, however, used by them to signify that there is a considerable proportion of dark lines and hatchings in an engraving, although such lines and hatchings are not expressive of shade, but merely indicative of deep colours. Dark brown, red, and purple, for instance, even when receiving direct rays of light, would naturally contain much conventional “colour” in an engraving; and so would a bay horse, a coal barge, or the trunk of an old oak tree, when receiving the light in a similar manner; all would be represented as comparatively dark, when contrasted with lighter coloured objects,--for instance, with a blue sky, grass, or light green foliage,--although not in shade. An engraving that appears too light, compared with the painting from which it is copied, is said to want “colour,” and the copper-plate engraver remedies the defect by thickening the dark lines, or by adding cross lines and hatchings. As a copper-plate engraver can always obtain more “colour,” he generally keeps his work light in the first stage of a plate; on the contrary, a wood engraver keeps his first proof dark, as he cannot afterwards introduce more “colour,” or give to an object a greater depth of shade. A wood engraver can make his lines thinner if they be too thick, and thus cause his subject to appear lighter; but if he has made them too fine at first, and more colour be wanted, it is not in his power to remedy the defect.

What Mr. Landseer’s ideas may be of the “means [which] the art of engraving possesses of rendering local colour in the abstract,” I cannot very well comprehend. I am aware of the lines used conventionally by engravers to indicate heraldic colours in coat-armour; but I can see no natural relation between perpendicular lines in an engraving and the red colour of a soldier’s coat. I believe that no person could tell the colour of the draperies in Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper from an inspection of Raphael Morghen’s engraving of it. When Mr. Landseer says that he will use the term “colour” in its “ordinary acceptation,” he ought to have explained what the ordinary acceptation of the word meant when applied to impressions from copper-plates which consist of nothing but lines and interstices of black and white.

In the second paragraph Mr. Landseer displays great inconsistency in praising Mr. Gilpin for his definition of the word “tint,” which, when applied to engravings, is as objectionable as the term “colour.” It appears that Mr. Gilpin may employ a conventional term with “singular propriety,” while printsellers and engravers who should use the same liberty would be charged with ignorance. Is there such a thing as a _tint_ in nature which is of no colour? Mr. Gilpin’s lauded definition involves a contradiction even when the word is applied to engravings, in which every “tint” is indicative of positive colour. That “medium between strong light and strong shade,” and which is yet of no colour, remains to be discovered. Mr. Gilpin has supplied us with the “word,” but it appears that no definite idea is necessary to be attached to it. Having thus endeavoured to give a little brightness to the “colour” of “ignorant printsellers and engravers,” I shall resume my observations on the cuts in the Nuremberg Chronicle, to the “colour” of which the preceding digression is to be ascribed.

The preceding cut, representing the Creation of Eve, is copied from one of the best in the Nuremberg Chronicle, both with respect to design and engraving. In this, compared with most other cuts previously executed, much more colour will be perceived, which results from the closeness of the single lines, as in the dark parts of the rock immediately behind the figure of Eve; from the introduction of dark lines crossing each other,--called “cross-hatching,”--as may be seen in the drapery of the Divinity; and from the contrast of the shade thus produced with the lighter parts of the cut.

The subjoined cut, of the same subject, copied from the Poor Preachers’ Bible,[IV-55] will, by comparison with the preceding, illustrate more clearly than any verbal explanation the difference with respect to colour between the wood-cuts in the old block-books and in most others printed between 1462 and 1493, and those contained in the Nuremberg Chronicle. In this cut there is no indication of colour; the shades in the drapery which are expressed by hard parallel lines are all of equal strength, or rather weakness; and the hair of Adam’s head and the foliage of the tree are expressed nearly in the same manner.

[Footnote IV-55: In the original, this cut, with one of Christ’s
side pierced by a soldier, and another of Moses striking the rock,
are intended to illustrate the mystery of the Sacrament of the
Lord’s Supper.]

This manner of representing the creation of Eve appears to have been general amongst the wood engravers of the fifteenth century, for the same subject frequently occurs in old cuts executed previous to 1500. It is frequently represented in the same manner in illuminated missals; and in Flaxman’s Lectures on Sculpture a lithographic print is given, copied from an ancient piece of sculpture in Wells Cathedral, where Eve is seen thus proceeding from the side of Adam. In a picture by Raffaele the creation of Eve is also represented in the same manner.

In the wood-cuts which occur in Italian books printed previous to 1500 the engravers have seldom attempted anything beyond a simple outline with occasionally an indication of shade, or of colour, by means of short parallel lines. The following is a fac-simile of a cut in Bonsignore’s Italian prose translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, folio, printed at Venice by the brothers De Lignano in 1497. It may serve at once as a specimen of the other cuts contained in the work and of the general style of engraving on wood in Italy for about ten years preceding that period.

The subject illustrated is the difficult labour of Alcmena through the malign influence of Lucina, as related by Ovid in the IXth book of the Metamorphoses, from verse 295 to 314. This would appear to have been rather a favourite subject with designers, for it is again selected for illustration in Ludovico Dolce’s Transformationi, a kind of paraphrase of the Metamorphoses, 4to, printed at Venice by Gabriel Giolito in 1557; and it is also represented in the illustrations to the Metamorphoses designed by Virgil Solis, and printed at Frankfort, in oblong 4to, by George Corvinus and Sigismund Feyrabent, in 1569.[IV-56]

[Footnote IV-56: Mr. Ottley in speaking of an edition of the
Metamorphoses printed at Venice in 1509, with wood-cuts, mentions
one of them as representing the “Birth of Hercules,” which is
probably treated in a manner similar to those above noticed. Mr.
Ottley also states that he had discovered the artist to be
Benedetto Montagna, who also engraved on copper.--Inquiry, vol. ii
p. 576.]

Of all the wood-cuts executed in Italy within the fifteenth century there are none that can bear a comparison for elegance of design with those contained in an Italian work entitled “Hypnerotomachia Poliphili,” a folio without printer’s name or place, but certainly printed at Venice by Aldus in 1499. This “Contest between Imagination and Love, by a general Lover,”--for such seems to be the import of the title,--is an obscure medley of fable, history, antiquities, mathematics, and various other matters, highly seasoned with erotic sketches[IV-57] suggested by the prurient imagination of a monk,--for such the author was,--who, like many others of his fraternity, in all ages, appears to have had “a _law_ not to marry, and a _custom_ not to live chaste.” The language in which this chaos of absurdities is composed is almost as varied as the subjects. The ground-work is Italian, on which the author engrafts at will whole phrases of Latin, with a number of words borrowed from the Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Chaldee. “Certain persons,” says Tiraboschi, “who admire a work the more the less they understand it, have fancied that they could perceive in the Hypnerotomachia a complete summary of human knowledge.”[IV-58]

[Footnote IV-57: Bibliographers and booksellers in their
catalogues specify with delight such copies as contain “la figura
rappresentante il Sacrifizio à Priapo bene conservata,” for in
some copies this choice subject is wanting, and in others
partially defaced.]

[Footnote IV-58: Some account of the Hypnerotomachia and its
author is to be found in Prosper Marchand’s Dictionnaire
Historique.]

The name of the author was Francis Colonna, who was born at Venice, and at an early age became a monk of the order of St. Dominic. In 1467 he professed Grammar and Classical Literature in the convent of his order at Trevisa; and he afterwards became Professor of Theology at Padua, where he commenced Doctor in 1473, a degree which, according to the rule of his order, he could not assume until he was forty. At the time of his death, which happened in 1527, he could not thus be less than ninety-four years old. The true name of this amorous dreaming monk, and the fictitious one of the woman with whom he was in love, are thus expressed by combining, in the order in which they follow each other, the initial letters of the several chapters: “POLIAM FRATER FRANSISCUS COLUMNA PERAMAVIT.”[IV-59] If any reliance can be placed on the text and the cuts as narrating and representing real incidents, we may gather that the stream of love had not run smooth with father Francis any more than with simple laymen. With respect to the true name of the mistress of father Francis, biographers are not agreed. One says that her name was Lucretia Maura; and another that her name was Ippolita, and that she belonged to the noble family of Poli, of Trevisa, and that she was a nun in that city. From the name Ippolita some authors thus derive the fictitious name Polia: Ippolita; Polita; Polia.

[Footnote IV-59: In the life of Colonna in the Biographie
Universelle, the last word is said to be “_adamavit_,” which is a
mistake. The word formed by the initial letters of the nine last
chapters is “_peramavit_,” as above.]

A second edition, also from the Aldine press, appeared in 1545; and in the following year a French translation was printed at Paris under the following title: “Le Tableau des riches inventions couvertes du voile des feintes amourouses qui sont representées dans le Songe de Poliphile, devoilées des ombres du Songe, et subtilment exposées.” Of this translation several editions were published; and in 1804 J. G. Legrand, an architect of some repute in Paris, printed a kind of paraphrase of the work, in two volumes 12mo, which, however, was not published until after his death in 1807. In 1811 Bodoni reprinted the original work at Parma in an elegant quarto volume.

In the original work the wood-cuts with respect to design may rank among the best that have appeared in Italy. The whole number in the volume is one hundred and ninety-two; of which eighty-six relate to mythology and ancient history; fifty-four represent processions and emblematic figures: there are thirty-six architectural and ornamental subjects; and sixteen vases and statues. Several writers have asserted that those cuts were designed by Raffaele,[IV-60] while others with equal confidence, though on no better grounds, have ascribed them to Andrea Mantegna. Except from the resemblance which they are supposed to bear to the acknowledged works of those artists, I am not aware that there is any reason to suppose that they were designed by either of them. As Raffaele, who was born in 1483, was only sixteen when the Hypnerotomachia was printed, it is not likely that all, or even any of those cuts were designed by him; as it is highly probable that all the drawings would be finished at least twelve months before, and many of them contain internal evidence of their not being the productions of a youth of fifteen. That Andrea Mantegna might design them is possible; but this certainly cannot be a sufficient reason for positively asserting that he actually did. Mr. Ottley, at page 576, vol. ii, of his Inquiry, asserts that they were designed by Benedetto Montagna, an artist who flourished about the year 1500, and who is chiefly known as an engraver on copper. The grounds on which Mr. Ottley forms his opinion are not very clear, but if I understand him correctly they are as follows:

[Footnote IV-60: Heineken, in his catalogue of Raffaele’s works,
mentions the cuts in the Hypnerotomachia, but he says that it is
questionable whether he designed them all or only the eighty-six
mythological and historical subjects.--Nachrichten von Künstlern
und Kunst-Sachen, 2er Theil, S. 360. 8vo. Leipzig, 1769.]

In the collection of the late Mr. Douce there were sixteen wood engravings which had been cut out of a folio edition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, printed at Venice in 1509. All those engravings, except two, were marked with the letters +ía+, which according to Mr. Ottley are the initials of the engraver, Ioanne Andrea di Vavassori. Between some of the cuts from the Ovid, and certain engravings executed by Montagna, it seems that Mr. Ottley discovered a resemblance; and as he thought that he perceived a perfect similarity between the sixteen cuts from the Ovid and those contained in the Hypnerotomachia, he considers that Benedetto Montagna is thus proved to have been the designer of the cuts in the latter work.

Not having seen the cuts in the edition of the Metamorphoses of 1509, I cannot speak, from my own examination, of the resemblance between them and those in the Hypnerotomachia; it, however, seems that Mr. Douce had noticed the similarity as well as Mr. Ottley: but even admitting that there is a perfect identity of style in the cuts of the above two works, yet it by no means follows that, because a few of the cuts in the Ovid resemble some copper-plate engravings executed by Benedetto Montagna, he must have designed the cuts in the Hypnerotomachia. As the cuts in the Ovid may, as Mr. Ottley himself remarks, have been used in an earlier edition than that of 1509, it is not unlikely that they might appear before Montagna’s copper-plates; and that the latter might copy the designs of a greater artist than himself, and thus by his very plagiarism acquire, according to Mr. Ottley’s train of reasoning, the merit which may be justly due to another. If Benedetto Montagna be really the designer of the cuts in the Hypnerotomachia, he has certainly excelled himself, for they certainly display talent of a much higher order than is to be perceived in his copper-plate engravings. Besides the striking difference with respect to drawing between the wood-cuts in Poliphilo[IV-61] and the engravings of Benedetto Montagna, two of the cuts in the former work have a mark which never appears in any of that artist’s known productions, which generally have either his name at length or the letters B. M. In the third cut of Poliphilo, the designer’s or engraver’s mark, a small b, may be perceived at the foot, to the right; and the same mark is repeated in a cut at signature C.

[Footnote IV-61: The author thus names his hero in his Italian
title: “_Poliphilo_ incomincia la sua hypnerotomachia ad
descrivere et l’hora et il tempo quando gli appar ve in somno,
&c.”]

A London bookseller in his catalogue published in 1834, probably speaking on Mr. Ottley’s hint that the cuts in the Ovid of 1509 might have appeared in an earlier edition, thus describes Bonsignore’s Ovid, a work in which the wood-cuts are of a very inferior description, and of which a specimen is given in a preceding page: “Ovidii Metamorphoseos Vulgare, con le Allegorie, [Venezia, 1497,] with numerous beautiful wood-cuts, apparently by the artist who executed the Poliphilo, printed by Aldus in 1499.” The wood-cuts in the Ovid of 1497 are as inferior to those in Poliphilo as the commonest cuts in children’s school-books are inferior to the beautiful wood-cuts in Rogers’s Pleasures of Memory, printed in 1812, which were designed by Stothard and engraved by Clennell. It is but fair to add, that the cuts used in the Ovid of 1497, printed by the brothers De Lignano, cannot be the same as those in the Ovid of 1509 referred to by Mr. Ottley; for though the subjects may be nearly the same, the cuts in the latter edition are larger than those in the former, and have besides an engraver’s mark which is not to be seen in any of the cuts in the edition of 1497.

The five following cuts are fac-similes traced line for line from the originals in Poliphilo. In the first, Mercury is seen interfering to save Cupid from the anger of Venus, who has been punishing him and plucking the feathers from his wings. The cause of her anger is explained by the figure of Mars behind the net in which he and Venus had been inclosed by Vulcan. Love had been the cause of his mother’s misfortune.

In the following cut Cupid is represented as brought by Mercury before Jove, who in the text, “in Athica lingua,” addresses the God of Love, as “ΣΥΜΟΙΓΛΥΚΥΣ ΚΑΙ ΠΙΚΡΟΣ”--“at once sweet and bitter.” In the inscription in the cut, “ΑΛΛΑ” is substituted for “ΚΑΙ.”

In the next cut Cupid appears piercing the sky with a dart, and thus causing a shower of gold to fall. The figures represent persons of all conditions whom he has wounded, looking on with amazement.

The three preceding cuts, in the original work, appear as compartments from left to right on one block. They are here given separate for the convenience of printing, as the page is not wide enough to allow of their being placed as in the original folio.

The subjoined cut is intended to represent Autumn, according to a description of the figure in the text, where the author is speaking of an altar to be erected to the four seasons. On one of the sides he proposes that the following figure should be represented “with a jolly countenance, crowned with vine leaves, holding in one hand a bunch of grapes, and in the other a cornucopia, with an inscription: ‘MUSTULENTO AUTUMNO S.’”[IV-62] The face of jolly Autumn is indeed like that of one who loved new wine, and his body seems like an ample skin to keep the liquor in;--Sir John Falstaff playing Bacchus ere he had grown old and inordinately fat.

[Footnote IV-62: The epithets applied to the different seasons as
represented on this votive altar are singularly beautiful and
appropriate: “Florido Veri; Flavæ Messi; Mustulento Autumno; Hyemi
Æoliæ, Sacrum.”]

The following figure of Cupid is copied from the top of a fanciful military standard described by the author; and on a kind of banner beneath the figure is inscribed the word “ΔΟΡΙΚΤΗΤΟΙ”--“Gained in war.”

The following is a specimen of one of the ornamental vases contained in the work. It is not, like the five preceding cuts, of the same size as the original, but is copied on a reduced scale.

The simple style in which the cuts in the Hypnerotomachia are engraved, continued to prevail, with certain modifications, in Italy for many years after the method of cross-hatching became general in Germany; and from 1500 to about 1530 the characteristic of most Italian wood-cuts is the simple manner in which they are executed compared with the more laboured productions of the German wood engravers. While the German proceeds with considerable labour to obtain “colour,” or shade, by means of cross-hatching, the Italian in the early part of the sixteenth century endeavours to attain his object by easier means, such as leaving his lines thicker in certain parts, and in others, indicating shade by means of short slanting parallel lines. In the execution of flowered or ornamented initial letters a decided difference may frequently be noticed between the work of an Italian and a German artist. The German mostly, with considerable trouble, cuts his flourishes, figures, and flowers in relief, according to the general practice of wood engravers; the Italian, on the contrary, often cuts them, with much greater ease, in _intaglio_; and thus the form of the letter, and its ornaments, appear, when printed, white upon a black ground.[IV-63] The letter C at the commencement of the present chapter is an example of the German style, with the ornamental parts in _relief_; the letter M at the commencement of chapter V. is a specimen of the manner frequently adopted by old Italian wood engravers, the form of the letter and the ornamental foliage being cut in _intaglio_. At a subsequent period a more elaborate manner of engraving began to prevail in Italy, and cross-hatching was almost as generally employed to obtain depth of colour and shade as in Germany. The wood-cuts which appear in works printed at Venice between 1550 and 1570 are generally as good as most German wood-cuts of the same period; and many of them, more especially those in books printed by the Giolitos, are executed with a clearness and delicacy which have seldom been surpassed.

[Footnote IV-63: The letter M at the commencement of the next
chapter affords an example of this style of engraving.]

Before concluding the present chapter, which is more especially devoted to the consideration of wood engraving in the first period of its connexion with typography, it may not be improper to take a brief glance at the state of the art as practised by the Briefmalers and Formschneiders of Germany, who were the first to introduce the practice of block-printing, and who continued to exercise this branch of their art for many years after typography had been generally established throughout Europe. That the ancient wood engravers continued to practise the art of block-printing till towards the close of the fifteenth century, there can be little doubt. There is an edition of the Poor Preachers’ Bible, with the date 1470, printed from wood-blocks, without place or engraver’s name, but having at the end, as a mark, two shields, on one of which is a squirrel, and on the other something like two pilgrim’s staves crossed. Another edition of the same work, though not from the same blocks, appeared in 1471. In this the engraver’s mark is two shields, on one of which is a spur, probably a rebus for the name of “Sporer;” in the same manner that a pair of folding-doors represented the name “Thurer,” or “Durer.” An engraver of the name of Hans Sporer printed an edition of the Ars Moriendi from wood-blocks in 1473; and in the preceding year Young Hans, Briefmaler, of Nuremberg, printed an edition of the Antichrist in the same manner.[IV-64]

[Footnote IV-64: Von Murr says that “Young Hans” was
unquestionably the son of “Hans Formschneider,” whose name appears
in the town-books of Nuremberg from 1449 to 1490. He also thinks
that he might be the same person as Hans Sporer.--Journal,
2 Theil, S. 140, 141.]

It is probable that most of the single sheets and short tracts, printed from wood-blocks, preserved in the libraries of Germany, were printed between 1440 and 1480. Books consisting of two or more sheets printed from wood-blocks are of rare occurrence with a date subsequent to 1480. Although about that period the wood engravers appear to have resigned the printing of books entirely to typographers, yet for several years afterwards they continued to print broadsides from blocks of wood; and until about 1500 they continued to compete with the press for the printing of “Wand-Kalendars,” or sheet Almanacks to be hung up against a wall. Several copies of such Almanacks, engraved between 1470 and 1500, are preserved in libraries on the Continent that are rich in specimens of early block-printing. But even this branch of their business the wood engravers were at length obliged to abandon; and at the end of the fifteenth century the practice of printing pages of text from engraved wood-blocks may be considered as almost extinct in Germany. It probably began with a single sheet, and with a single sheet it ended; and its origin, perfection, decline, and extinction are comprised within a century. 1430 may mark its origin; 1450 its perfection; 1460 the commencement of its decline; and 1500 its fall.

In an assemblage of wood engravings printed at Gotha between 1808 and 1816,[IV-65] from old blocks collected by the Baron Von Derschau, there are several to which the editor, Zacharias Becker, assigns an earlier date than the year 1500. It is not unlikely that two or three of those in his oldest class, A, may have been executed previous to that period; but there are others in which bad drawing and rude engraving have been mistaken for indubitable proofs of antiquity. There are also two or three in the same class which I strongly suspect to be modern forgeries. It would appear from a circumstance mentioned in Dr. Dibdin’s Bibliographical Tour,[IV-66] and referred to at page 236 of the present work, that the Baron was a person from whose collection copper-plate engravings of questionable date had proceeded as well as wood-blocks. The following is a reduced copy of one of those suspicious blocks, but which the editor considers to be of an earlier date than the St. Christopher in the collection of Earl Spencer. I am however of opinion that it is of comparatively modern manufacture.

[Footnote IV-65: The title of this work is: “Holzschnitte alter
Deutscher Meister in den Original-Platten gesammelt von Hans
Albrecht Von Derschau. Als ein Beytrag zur Kunstgeschichte
herausgegeben, und mit einer Abhandlung über die Holzschneidekunst
begleitet, von Rudolph Zacharias Becker.” It is in large folio,
with the text in German and French. The first part was published
at Gotha in 1808; the second in 1810; and the third in 1816.]

[Footnote IV-66: Vol. iii. p. 445, edit. 1829.]

The inscription, intended for old German, at the bottom of the cut, is literally as follows: “_Hiet uch, vor den Katczen dy vorn lecken unde hinden kraiczen_”--that is: “Beware of the cats that lick before and scratch behind.” It is rather singular that the editor--who describes the subject as a cat which appears to teach her kitten “le Jeu de Souris”--should not have informed his readers that more was meant by this inscription than met the eye, and that it was in fact part of a German proverb descriptive of a class of females who are particularly dangerous to simple young men.[IV-67] Among the cuts supposed to have been engraved previous to the year 1500, another is given which I suspect also of being a forgery, and by the same person that engraved the cat. The cut alluded to represents a woman sitting beside a young man, whose purse she is seen picking while she appears to fondle him. A hawk is seen behind the woman, and an ape behind the man. At one side is a lily, above which are the words “+Ich wart+.” At the top of the cut is an inscription,--which seems, like that in the cut of the cat, to be in affectedly old German,--describing the young man as a prey for hawks and a fool, and the woman as a flatterer, who will fawn upon him until she has emptied his pouch. The subjects of those two cuts, though not apparently, are, in reality, connected. In the first we are presented with the warning, and in the latter with the example. Von Murr--whom Dr. Dibdin suspects to have forged the French St. Christopher--describes in his Journal impressions from those blocks as old wood-cuts in the collection of Dr. Silberrad;[IV-68] and it is certainly very singular that the identical blocks from which Dr. Silberrad’s scarce old wood engravings were taken should afterwards happen to be discovered and come into the possession of the Baron Von Derschau.

[Footnote IV-67: “+Huren sind böse katzen die vornen lecken und
hinten kratzen.+”]

[Footnote IV-68: Journal zur Kunstgeschichte, 2er Theil, S. 125,
126.]