Chapter V (5)

Within the first thirty years of the sixteenth century the practice of illustrating books with wood-cuts seems to have been more general than at any other period, scarcely excepting the present; for though within the last eight or ten years an immense number of wood-cuts have been executed in England and France, yet wood engravings at the time referred to were introduced into a greater variety of books, and the art was more generally practised throughout Europe. In modern German and Dutch works wood engravings are sparingly introduced; and in works printed in Switzerland and Italy they are still more rarely to be found. In the former period the art seems to have been very generally practised throughout Europe, though to a greater extent, and with greater skill, in Germany than in any other country. The wood-cuts which are to be found in Italian books printed between 1500 and 1530 are mostly meagre in design and very indifferently engraved; and for many years after the German wood engravers had begun to give variety of colour and richness of effect to their cuts by means of cross-hatchings, their Italian contemporaries continued to adhere to the old method of engraving their figures, chiefly in outline, with the shadows and the folds of the draperies indicated by parallel lines. These observations relate only to the ordinary wood engravings of the period, printed in the same page with type, or printed separately in the usual manner of surface printing at one impression. The admirable chiaro-scuros of Ugo da Carpi, printed from two or more blocks, are for effect and general excellence the most admirable specimens of this branch of the art that ever have been executed; they are as superior to the chiaro-scuros of German artists as the usual wood engravings of the latter excel those executed in Italy during the same period.

In point of drawing, some of the best wood-cuts executed in Italy in the time of Albert Durer are to be found in a folio work entitled Triompho di Fortuna, written by Sigismond Fanti, and printed at Venice in 1527.[V-88] The subject of this work, which was licensed by Pope Clement VII, is the art of fortune-telling, or of answering all kinds of questions relative to future events. The volume contains a considerable number of wood-cuts; some designed and executed in the very humblest style of wood engraving, and others, which appear to have been drawn on the block with pen-and-ink, designed with great spirit. The smallest and most inferior cuts serve as illustrations to the questions, and an idea may be formed of them from the three here given, which occur under the question: “Qual fede o legge sia di queste tre la buona, o la Christiana, l’Hebrea, o quello di Mahumeto?”[V-89] In English: “Which of these three religions is the best, the Christian, the Jewish, or the Mahometan?” Several larger cuts are executed in a dry hard style, and evidently drawn by a person very inferior to the artist who designed the cuts executed in the manner of pen-and-ink drawings. The following is a fac-simile of one of the latter. It is entitled “Fortuna de Africo,” in a series of twelve, intended for representations of the winds.

[Footnote V-88: The title of this book is, in red letters,
“Triompho di Fortuna, di Sigismondo Fanti, Ferrarese.” The
title-page is also ornamented with a wood-cut, representing the
Pope, with Virtue on one side, and Vice on the other, seated above
the globe, which is supported by Atlas, and provided with an axis,
having a handle at each side, like a winch. At one of the handles
is a devil, and at the other an angel; to the left is a naked
figure holding a die, and near to him is an astronomer taking an
observation. At the foot of the cut is the mark I. M. or T. M.,
for I cannot positively decide whether the first letter be
intended for an I or a T. The following is the colophon: “Impresso
in la inclita citta di Venegia per Agostin da Portese. Nel anno
dil virgineo parto MD.XXVII. Nel mese di Genaro, ad instātia di
Jacomo Giunta Mercatāte Florentino. Con il Privilegio di Clemente
Papa VII, et del Senato Veneto a requisitione di l’Autore.” In the
Catalogue of the British Museum this book is erroneously entered
as printed at Rome, 1526. The compiler had mistaken the date of
the Pope’s licence for the time when the book was printed. This
trifling mistake is noticed here, as from similar oversights
bibliographers have sometimes described books as having been twice
or thrice printed, when, in fact, there had been only one
edition.]

[Footnote V-89: The following questions, selected from a number of
others, will perhaps afford some idea of this “Opera utilissima et
jocosa,” as it is called by the author. “Se glie bene a pigliar
bella, o bruta donna; se’l servo sara fidele al suo signore; se
quest’ anno sara carestia o abundantia; quanti mariti havera la
donna; se glie bene a far viaggio et a che tempo; se’l parto della
donna sara maschio o femina; se’l sogno fatto sara vero; se’l fin
del huomo sara buono.” The three small illustrations of the last
query are of evil omen; in one, is seen a gallows; in another,
a man praying; and in the third, the quarters of a human body hung
up in terrorem.]

The following cut, which appears in folio 38, is intitled “Michael Fiorentino,”--Michael Angelo; and it certainly conveys no bad idea of the energetic manner in which that great artist is said to have used his mallet and chisel when engaged on works of sculpture. This cut, however, is made to represent several other sculptors besides the great Florentine; it is repeated seven times in the subsequent pages, and on each occasion we find underneath it a different name. The late T. Stothard, R.A. was of opinion that wood engraving was best adapted to express pen-and-ink drawing, and that the wood engraver generally failed when he attempted more. His illustrations of Rogers’s poems, engraved on wood by Clennell and Thompson, are executed in a similar style to that of the following specimen, though with greater delicacy.

Certain wood-cuts with the mark A. G., executed towards the conclusion of the fifteenth century, have been ascribed to an artist named Albert Glockenton. Bartsch, however, says that the name of the artist is unknown; and he seems to consider that Sandrart had merely conjectured that those letters might represent the name Albert Glockenton. For no better reason the letters I. V. on a tablet, with two pilgrim’s-staffs crossed between them, which are to be found on several old chiaro-scuro wood engravings, have been supposed to represent the name, John Ulric Pilgrim. This name appears to be a pure invention of some ingenious expounder of monograms, for there is not the slightest evidence, that I am aware of, to show that any artist of this name ever lived. The chiaro-scuros with this mark were probably executed in the time of Durer, but none of them contains a date to establish the fact. Heineken considers them to have been the productions of a German artist; and he refers to them in proof of the art of chiaro-scuro having been practised in Germany long before the time of Ugo da Carpi. It is, however, highly questionable if they are of an earlier date than 1518; and it is by no means certain that the artist was a German. By some persons he has been supposed to have been the inventor of chiaro-scuro engraving, on no better grounds, it would seem, than that his pieces are without a date.

Next to the Germans, in the time of Albert Durer, the Dutch and Flemings seem to have excelled in the art of wood engraving; but the cuts executed in Holland and Flanders are generally much inferior to those designed and engraved by German artists. In a considerable number of Dutch wood engravings, of the period under review, I have observed an attempt to combine something like the effect of cross-hatching and of the dotted manner mentioned at page 232 as having been frequently practised by French wood engravers in the early part of the sixteenth century. In a series of cuts from a Dutch prayer-book, apparently printed between 1520 and 1530, this style of engraving is frequently introduced. Where a German artist would have introduced lines crossing each other with great regularity, the Dutch wood engraver has endeavoured to attain his object by irregularly picking out portions of the wood with the point of his graver; the effect, however, is not good. In the border surrounding those cuts, a Dance of Death is represented, consisting of several more characters than are to be found in the celebrated work ascribed to Holbein, but far inferior in point of design and execution.

An artist, named John Walter van Assen, is usually mentioned as one of the best Dutch wood engravers or designers of this period. Nothing further is known of him than that he lived at Amsterdam about 1517. The mark supposed to be Van Assen’s is often ascribed by expounders of monograms to another artist whom they call Werner or Waer van Assanen.

A considerable number of French works, printed in the time of Albert Durer, contain wood engravings, but few of them possess much merit when compared with the more highly finished and correctly drawn productions of the German school of the same period. The ornamental borders, however, of many missals and prayer-books, which then issued in great numbers from the Parisian press, frequently display great beauty. The taste for surrounding each page with an ornamental border engraved on wood was very generally prevalent in Germany, France, and Flanders at that period, more especially in devotional works; and in the former country, and in Switzerland, scarcely a tract was printed--and the Lutheran controversy gave rise to many hundreds--without an ornamental border surrounding the title. In Germany such wood engravers as were chiefly employed in executing cuts of this kind were called _Rahmen-schneiders_--border-cutters,--as has been previously observed at page 190. In England during the same period wood engraving made but little progress; and there seems to have been a lack of good designers and competent engravers in this country. The best cuts printed in England in the time of Durer are contained in a manual of prayers, of a small duodecimo size. On a tablet in the border of one of the cuts--the Flight into Egypt[V-90]--I perceive the date 1523. The total number of cuts in the volume is about a hundred; and under each of the largest are four verses in English. Several of the smaller cuts, representing figures of saints, and preceding the prayers for their respective days, have evidently been designed by an artist of considerable talent. As most of the wood-cuts which constitute the ornaments or the illustrations of books printed at this period are without any name or mark, it is impossible to ascertain the names of the persons by whom they were designed or engraved.

[Footnote V-90: The following lines descriptive of this cut are
printed underneath it:

+How Mary and Joseph with iesu were fayne.
In to Egypte for socour to fle.
Whan the Innocentes for his sake wer slayne.
By com̄issyon of Herodes crueltie.+]

The manner of wood engraving in _intaglio_ so that the figures appear white on a black ground, so frequently adopted by early Italian wood engravers, was sometimes practised in Germany; and in one of the earliest works containing portraits of the Roman emperors,[V-91] copied from ancient medals, printed in the latter country, the cuts are executed in this style. The subject of the work is the lives of the Roman emperors, written by Joannes Huttichius, and the portraits with which it is illustrated are copied from medals in a collection which had been formed by the Emperor Maximilian, the great promoter of wood engraving in Germany. The first edition, in Latin, was printed by Wolff Köpffel, at Strasburg, in 1525; and a second edition, in German, was published at the same place in the succeeding year. The cut on the next page, of the head of Nero, will afford an idea of the style in which the portraits are executed, and of the fidelity with which the artist has in general represented the likeness impressed on the original medals.

[Footnote V-91: In a folio work entitled “Epitome Thesauri
Antiquitatum, hoc est IMPP. Rom. Orientalium et Occidentalium
Iconum, ex Antiquis Numismatibus quam fidelissime delineatarum. Ex
Musæo Jacobi de Strada Mantuani Antiquarii,” Lyons, 1553, it is
stated that the first work containing portraits of the Roman
emperors engraved from their coins was that entitled “Illustrium
Imagines,” written by Cardinal Sadolet, and printed at Rome by
Jacobus Mazochius.--In Strada’s work the portraits are executed in
the same manner as in that of Huttichius. The wood-cut containing
the printer’s device, on the title-page of Strada’s work, is
admirably engraved.]

Besides Durer, Burgmair, Cranach, and Schaufflein, there are several other German painters of the same period who are also said to have engraved on wood, and among the most celebrated of this secondary class the following may be mentioned: Hans Sebald Behaim, previously noticed at page 253; Albert Altdorffer; Hans Springinklee; and Hans Baldung Grün. The marks of all those artists are to be found on wood-cuts executed in the time of Durer; but I am extremely doubtful if those cuts were actually engraved by themselves. If they were, I can only say that, though they might be good painters and designers, they were very indifferent wood engravers; and that their time in executing the subjects ascribed to them must have been very badly employed. The common working _formschneider_ who could not execute them as well, must have been a very ordinary wood-_cutter_, not to say wood-_engraver_,--by the latter term meaning one who excels in his profession, and not a mere cutter of lines, without skill or taste, on box or pear-tree.

Albert Altdorffer was born at Ratisbon in 1480, and afterwards became a magistrate of his native city. The engravings on wood and copper containing his mark are mostly of a small size, and he is generally known as one of the _little masters_ of the German school of engraving.[V-92] Hans Springinklee was a painter of some eminence, and according to Doppelmayer, as referred to by Bartsch, was a pupil of Durer’s. His mark is to be found on several wood-cuts; and it occurs in one of the illustrations in the Wise King. Hans Baldung Grün was born at Gemund in Suabia, and studied at Nuremberg under Albert Durer. He excelled as a painter; and the wood-cuts which contain his mark are mostly designed with great spirit. The earliest wood engraving that contains his mark is a frontispiece to a volume of sermons with the date 1508; and the latest is a group of horses, engraved in a hard, stiff manner, with the name “BALDUNG” and the date 1534.[V-93] He chiefly resided at Strasburg, where he died in 1545. He is mentioned by Durer, in his Journal, by the name of “Grün Hannsen.”

[Footnote V-92: Heineken ranks the following in the class of
_little masters_: Henry Aldgrever, Albert Altdorffer, Bartholomew
Behaim, Hans Sebald Behaim, Hans Binck, Henry Goerting, George
Penez, and Virgil Solis. Most of them were engravers on copper.]

[Footnote V-93: The following curious testimony respecting a lock
of Albert Durer’s hair, which had formerly been in the possession
of Hans Baldung Grün, is translated from an article in Meusel’s
Neue Miscellaneen, 1799. The lock of hair and the document were
then in the possession of Herr H. S. Hüsgen of Frankfort on the
Mayn: “Herein is the hair which was cut from the head of that
ingenious and celebrated painter Albert Durer, after his death at
Nuremberg, 8th April 1528, as a token of remembrance. It
afterwards came into the possession of that skilful painter Hans
Baldung, burger of this city, Strasburg; and after his death, in
1545, my late brother-in-law, Nicholas Krämer, painter, of this
city, having bought sundry of his works and other things, among
them found this lock of hair, in an old letter, wherein was
written an account of what it contained. On the death of my
brother-in-law, in 1550, it was presented to me by my sister
Dorothy, and I now enclose it in this letter for a memorial. 1559.
SEBOLD BÜHELER.” To this testimony are subjoined two or three
others of subsequent date, showing in whose possession the valued
relic had been before it came into the hands of Herr Hüsgen.]

We may here conveniently introduce fac-similes on a reduced scale of two rather interesting wood engravings given by Dr. Dibdin in his Bibliomania, and copied from an early folio volume, entitled _Revelationes cœlestes sanctæ Brigittæ de Suecia_, printed at Nuremberg by Anthony Köberger, M CCC XXI. _mensis Septembris_, which some read 1500, on the 21st of September, others 1521, in the month of September. The first of these cuts is curious as representing the simplicity of an ancient reading room, with its three-legged joint stool, such as is so prettily described by Cowper, Task, I. v. 19; the other cut describes a punishment which is said to have been revealed to St. Bridget against those ladies who have “ornamenta indecentia capitibus et pedibus, et reliquis membris, ad provocandam luxuriam, et irritandum Deum, in strictis vestibus, ostensione mamillarum, unctionibus, &c.” The artist is unknown, but seems to be among the best of the Nuremberg school.

It cannot be reasonably doubted that Durer and several other German painters of his time were accustomed to engrave their own designs on copper; for in many instances we have the express testimony of their contemporaries, and not unfrequently their own, to the fact. Copper-plate engraving for about sixty years from the time of its invention was generally practised by persons who were also painters, and who usually engraved their own designs. Wood engraving, on the contrary, from an early period was practised as a distinct profession by persons who are never heard of as painters. That some of the early German painters--of a period when “artists were more of workmen, and workmen more of artists”[V-94] than in the present day--_might_ engrave some of the wood-cuts which bear their marks, is certainly not impossible; but it is highly improbable that all the wood-cuts which are ascribed to them should have been executed by themselves. If any wood-cuts were actually engraved by Durer, Cranach, Burgmair, and other painters of reputation, I conceive that such cuts are not to be distinguished by their superior execution from those engraved by the professional _formschneider_ and _brief-maler_ of the day. The best copper-plates engraved by Albert Durer can scarcely be surpassed by the best copper-plate engraver of the present day,--that is, supposing him to execute his work by the same means; while the best of the wood-cuts which he is supposed to have engraved himself might be readily executed by a score of modern wood engravers if the subject were drawn for them on the block. In the age of Durer the best wood-cuts are of comparatively large size, and are distinguished more from the boldness and freedom of their design than from any peculiar excellence of engraving: they display, in fact, rather the talent of the _artist_ than the skill of the _workman_. Though wood engraving had very greatly improved from about the end of the fifteenth century to the time of Durer’s decease, yet it certainly did not attain its perfection within that period. In later years, indeed, the workman has displayed greater excellence; but at no time does the art appear to have been more flourishing or more highly esteemed than in the reign of its great patron, the Emperor Maximilian.

[Footnote V-94: Evidence of Dr. G. F. Waagen of Berlin before the
Select Committee of the House of Commons on Arts and their
Connexion with Manufactures, 1835.]