Part 10 (2/2)

Save for the Complutensian Polyglott there is nothing striking to record of the Spanish printing of the sixteenth century, which retained its ma.s.sive and archaic character for some decades, and then became as dull and undistinguished as the printing of all the rest of Europe tended to be towards the end of the century. The enthusiasm with which the new art had at first been received had died out. Printers were no longer lodged in palaces, monasteries, and colleges; Church and State, which had at first fostered and protected them, were now jealous and suspicious, even actively hostile. Thriving members of other occupations and professions had at one time taken to the craft. A little later great scholars had been willing to give their help and advice, and at least a few printers had themselves been men of learning. All this had pa.s.sed or was pa.s.sing.

Printing had sunk to the level of a mere craft, and a craft in which the hours appear to have been cruelly long and work uncertain and badly paid. In the eighteenth century the Dutch journeymen were certainly better paid than our own, and it may be that it was through better pay that they did better work in the seventeenth century also. It seems certain, moreover, that the improvements in the construction of printing presses which were introduced in that century originated in Holland. The primacy of the Dutch is proved by the large amount of Dutch type imported into England, and indeed the Dutch books of the seventeenth century are neater and in better taste than those of other countries. It was in Holland also that there worked the only firm of printers of this period who made themselves any abiding reputation. The founder of this firm, Louis Elzevir, was a bookseller and bookbinder at Leyden, where, in 1583, he began printing on his own account, and issued between that year and his death in 1617 over a hundred different books of no very special note. No fewer than five of his seven sons carried on his business, and the different combinations of these and of their successors in different towns are not a little bewildering. Bonaventura Elzevir with his nephew Abraham issued pretty little editions of the cla.s.sics in very small type in 12mo and 16mo, of which the most famous are the Greek Testament of 1624 and 1633, the Virgil, Terence, Livy, Tacitus, Pliny, and Caesar of 1634-6, and a similar series of French historical and political works and French and Italian cla.s.sics. After the deaths of Abraham and Bonaventura in 1652 the business was carried on by their respective sons Jean and Daniel, who issued famous editions of the _Imitatio Christi_ and the Psalter. Meanwhile Louis Elzevir (another grandson of the founder) had been working at Amsterdam, and in 1654 was joined there by Daniel, the new partners.h.i.+p producing some fine folio editions. Other members of the family went on working at Utrecht and Leyden until as late as 1712, so that its whole typographical career extended over a hundred and thirty years. But it is only the little cla.s.sical editions, and a French cookery book called _Le Pastissier Francois_, that are at all famous, and the fame of these (the little cla.s.sics being troublesome to read and having more than a fair share of misprints, though edited by David Heinsius) probably rests on a misconception. These small cla.s.sical editions were the last word for two centuries in that development of the Small Book which we have already traced in the Aldine editions at Venice, those of De Colines and Robert Estienne of Paris, of Sebastian Gryphius at Lyons, and of the successors of Plantin at Antwerp. Now the small books of the Elzevirs were produced at a very important period in the history of bookbinding, and when we hear of large sums having been paid for an Elzevir it will mostly turn out that the excellence of its binding has had a good deal to do with the price. The cookery book is an exception, the value of this, though often enhanced by a fine binding, being yet considerable, even in a shabby jacket. But the interest in this case is due to the antiquarian instincts of book-loving gourmets, and not in any way to the printing.

The little cla.s.sics, even when of the right date and with all the right little headpieces and all the right misprints, have never been worth on their own merits more than a few pounds, while shabby, cropped copies have no selling value whatever.

FOOTNOTE:

[43] He was born at Ba.s.siano in the Papal States in 1450.

CHAPTER XI

FOREIGN ILl.u.s.tRATED BOOKS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

[Ill.u.s.tration: XXIII. NUREMBERG, SODALITAS CELTICA. 1501

HROSWITHA. OPERA (4^b). HROSWITHA AND THE EMPEROR OTHO

(ATTRIBUTED TO DuRER)]

As we have already said, the charm of the woodcut pictures in incunabula lies in their simplicity, in their rude story-telling power, often very forcible and direct, in the valiant effort, sometimes curiously successful in cuts otherwise contemptibly poor, to give character and expression to the human face, and as regards form in the harmony between the woodcuts and the paper and type of the books in which they appear.

In the book-ill.u.s.trations of the sixteenth century the artist is more learned, more self-conscious, and his design is interpreted with far greater skill by the better trained wood-cutters of his day. More pains are taken with accessories, and often perhaps for this reason the cut does not tell its story so quickly as of old. It is now a work of art which demands study, no longer a signpost explaining itself however rapidly the leaf is turned. Lastly, the artist seems seldom to have thought of the form of the book in which his work was to appear, of the type with which the text was to be printed, or even of how the wood-cutter was to interpret his design. Book-ill.u.s.tration, which had offered to the humble makers of playing-cards and pictures of saints new scope for their skill, became to the artists of the sixteenth century a lightly valued method of earning a little money from the booksellers, their better work being reserved for single designs, or in some cases for the copperplates which at first they executed, as well as drew, themselves. Thus the book-collector is conscious, on the one hand, that less pains have been taken to please him, and on the other that he is separating by his hobby one section of an artist's work from the rest, in connection with which it ought to be studied. He may even be in some doubt as to where his province ends, since many of the ill.u.s.trated books of the sixteenth century, although they possess a t.i.tlepage and are made up in quires, are essentially not books at all, the letterpress being confined to explanations of the woodcuts printed either below them or facing them on the opposite pages. The bibliographer himself, it may be added, feels somewhat of an intruder in this field, which properly belongs to the student of art, although in so far as art is enshrined in books and thus brought within the province of the book-collector, bibliography cannot refuse to deal with it.

Although we have taken off our caps in pa.s.sing to Erhard Reuwich and Michael Wolgemut for their admirable work, the one in the Mainz _Breidenbach_, the other in the _Schatzbehalter_ and _Nuremberg Chronicle_, it is Albrecht Durer who must be regarded as the inaugurator of the second period of German book-ill.u.s.trations. During his Wanderjahre Durer had produced at Basel for an edition of S. Jerome's Epistles, printed by Nicolaus Kesler in 1492 (reprinted 1497), a rude woodcut of the saint extracting a thorn from his lion's foot. Durer's important bookwork begins in 1498, when his fifteen magnificent woodcuts ill.u.s.trating the Apocalypse (which influenced all later treatments of this theme) were issued twice over at Nuremberg, in one edition with German t.i.tle and text, in the other with Latin. Stated in their colophons to have been ”printed by Albrecht Durer, painter,” neither edition bears the name of a professional printer. The types used in each case were those of Anton Koberger, Durer's G.o.dfather, and the effect of the artist's personal superintendence, which the colophons attest, is seen in the excellence of the presswork. The following year Koberger published an ill.u.s.trated edition of the _Reuelationes Sanctae Birgittae_ (German reprint in 1502), and Durer has been supposed to have helped in this, but the theory is now discredited. In 1501 he probably contributed two woodcuts to an edition of the comedies of Hroswitha, a tenth century nun of the Benedictine Abbey at Gandersheim. Conrad Celtes had unearthed these comedies some years previously in a Ratisbon library, and they were now printed under his editors.h.i.+p for the _Sodalitas Celtica_ at Nuremberg. The ill.u.s.trations to the comedies themselves, which vie in heaviness with their subjects, are attributed by Mr. Campbell Dodgson to Wolfgang Traut.[44] One of the cuts a.s.signed to Durer represents Celtes offering the book to Frederick III, Elector of Saxony; the other shows Hroswitha herself presenting her plays to the Emperor Otto I (see Plate XXIII). In 1502 Durer designed another cut of a presentation and an ill.u.s.tration of Philosophy (both very feebly rendered by the cutter) for the _Quatuor libri Amorum_ of Celtes. In 1511 the Latin Apocalypse was reprinted, and three other sets of woodcuts by Durer appeared in book form, in each case with Latin text by Benedictus Chelidonius. One of these commemorated in twenty designs the life of the Blessed Virgin (_Epitome in Diuae Parthenices Marie Historiam ab Alberto Durero Norico per Figuras digestam c.u.m versibus annexis Chelidonii_), the other two the Pa.s.sion of Christ, the Great Pa.s.sion (_Pa.s.sio domini nostri Jesu ex hieronymo Paduano, Dominico Mancino, Sedulio et Baptista Mantuano per fratrem Chelidonium collecta c.u.m figuris Alberti Dureri Norici Pictoris_, in folio) in twelve large woodcuts, the Little Pa.s.sion (_Pa.s.sio Christi ab Alberto Durer Norembergensi effigiata c[=u] varij generis carminibus Fratris Benedicti Chelidonij Musophili_, in quarto) in thirty-seven smaller ones. After this Durer was caught up by the Emperor Maximilian and set to work on some of the various ambitious projects for ill.u.s.trating his reign, as to which more will be said later. His later bookwork includes a Crucifixion and S. Willibald for an Eichstatt Missal (Nuremberg, H. Holzel, 1517), some large designs for the _Etliche vnderricht zu befestigung der Stett Schloss vnd flecken_ (Nuremberg, 1527), and his own book on the Proportion of the Human Body, which was issued both in German and in a Latin translation by Camerarius.

Several borders and ill.u.s.trations formerly ascribed to Durer are now attributed to one of his pupils, Hans Springinklee, who lived in Durer's house at Nuremberg, where he worked from about 1513 to 1522. Most of Springinklee's bookwork was done for Anton Koberger, who published some of it at Nuremberg, while some was sent to the Lyon printers, Clein, Sacon, and Marion, who were in Koberger's employment. A border of his design bearing the arms of Bilibaldus Pirckheimer is found in several works which Pirckheimer edited (1513-17). In a _Hortulus Animae_, printed by J. Clein for Koberger at Lyon, 1516, fifty cuts are by Springinklee. The _Hortulus Animae_ was as popular in Germany as the ill.u.s.trated _Horae_ in France and England. In 1517 another edition appeared with Erhard Schon as its chief ill.u.s.trator, and only a few of Springinklee's cuts. The next year Springinklee produced a new set of cuts, and Schon's work was less used. Springinklee and Schon were also a.s.sociated in Bible ill.u.s.trations printed for Koberger by Sacon at Lyon, and to Springinklee are now a.s.signed two full-page woodcuts in an Eichstatt Missal (H. Holzel, Nuremberg, 1517), and a border to the _Reuelationes Birgittae_ (F. Peypus, Nuremberg, 1517), formerly ascribed to Durer. A woodcut of Johann Tritheim presenting his _Polygraphia_ to Maximilian, formerly attributed to Holbein as having been printed at Basel (Adam Petri, 1518), is now also placed to the credit of Springinklee, who, moreover, worked for the _Weisskunig_ and probably for other of the artistic commemorations of himself which Maximilian commissioned.

Hans Sebald Beham is best known as a book-ill.u.s.trator from his work for Christian Egenolph at Frankfurt am Main, which began in 1533. But he belonged to the Nuremberg school, had worked for ten or twelve years for Merckel, Peypus, Petreius and other Nuremberg firms, and has had the honour of having some of his single cuts attributed to Durer. His most important books for Egenolph were the _Biblische Historien_, a series of small ill.u.s.trations to the Bible, first printed in 1533, which went through many editions in German and Latin, and another series ill.u.s.trating the Apocalypse, of which the first edition appeared in 1539, the texts of the Latin _Historiae_ and also to the Apocalypse cuts being supplied by Georgius Aemilius. A set of medallion portraits of Roman emperors by him also appeared in several German and Latin chronicles published by Egenolph.

Between the Nuremberg book-ill.u.s.trators and those of Augsburg, to whom we must now turn, a connecting link may be found in the person of Hans Leonhard Schaufelein, born about 1480, soon after his father, a Nordlingen wool merchant, had settled at Nuremberg. He worked under Durer, and his earliest book-ill.u.s.trations were made for Dr. Ulrich Pinder, the owner of a private press at Nuremberg. Several unsigned cuts in _Der beschlossen gart des rosenkrantz Marie_ (Pinder, 1505), and thirty out of thirty-four large cuts in a _Speculum Pa.s.sionis_ (Pinder, 1507), are ascribed to Schaufelein, his a.s.sociate in each book being Hans Baldung. About 1510 Schaufelein removed to Augsburg, and, despite his return to his paternal home at Nordlingen where he took up his citizens.h.i.+p in 1515, he worked for the chief Augsburg publishers for the rest of his life, though between 1523 and 1531 nothing is known as to what he was doing.

Among the earlier Augsburg books with ill.u.s.trations attributed to Schaufelein are Tengler's _Der neu Layenspiegel_ (1511), Henricus Suso's _Der Seusse (1512), Heiligenleben_ (1513), Geiler's _Schiff der Penitentz_ (1514), and the _Hystori und wunderbarlich legend Katharine von Senis_ (1515), all published by J. Otmar. In 1514 he had ill.u.s.trated for Adam Petri of Basel a _Plenarium_ or _Evangelienbuch_, which went through several editions. Another _Evangelienbuch_, printed by Thomas Anshelm at Hagenau in 1516, contains several cuts with Schaufelein's signature, but in a different style, probably partly due to a different wood-cutter; these were used again in other books.

In the _Theuerdank_ of 1517 about twenty cuts are a.s.signed to Schaufelein, some of them bearing his signature. The following year he ill.u.s.trated Leonrodt's _Himmelwagen_ for Otmar with twenty cuts, mostly signed, some of which were used afterwards on the t.i.tlepages of early Luther tracts. After an interval Schaufelein is found in 1533 working for Heinrich Steyner of Augsburg, who employed him to ill.u.s.trate his German editions of the cla.s.sics, Thucydides (1533), Plutarch (1534), Cicero (1534), Apuleius (1538), etc. The blocks for some of his cuts subsequently pa.s.sed into the possession of Christian Egenolph of Frankfort.

The first native Augsburg artist whom we have to notice is Hans Burgkmair, who was born in 1473, and began bookwork in 1499 by ill.u.s.trating missals for Erhard Ratdolt with pictures of patron saints and of the Crucifixion. The chief Augsburg publisher for whom he worked in his early days was Johann Otmar, for whom he ill.u.s.trated several books by the popular preacher, Johann Geiler von Kaisersberg (_Predigen teutsch_, 1508 and 1510, _Das Buch Granatapfel_, 1510, _Nauicula Poenitentiae_, 1511), and other devotional and moral works. In 1515 Hans Schoensperger the younger employed him to supply a dedication cut and seven designs of the Pa.s.sion for a _Leiden Christi_, and to the _Theuerdank_ published by Schoensperger the elder at Nuremberg in 1517 he contributed thirteen ill.u.s.trations (only one signed). He had already been employed (1510) on a few of the cuts in the Genealogy of the Emperor Maximilian, which a wholesome fear lest its accuracy should be doubted caused that self-celebrating monarch to withhold from publication, and much more largely (1514-16) on the _Weisskunig_, which was first printed, from the original blocks, at Vienna in 1775; and he was the chief worker (1516-18) on the woodcuts for the Triumphal Procession of Maximilian printed by order of the Archduke Ferdinand in 1526. While these imperial commissions were in progress Burgkmair designed a few t.i.tle-cuts for Johann Miller, notably the very fine one (see Plate XXIV) to the _De rebus Gothorum_ of Jornandes (1515), showing kings Alewinus and Athanaricus in conversation, and subsequently worked for Grimm and Wirsung and for H. Steiner, although not nearly to the extent which was at one time supposed, as most of the ill.u.s.trations supplied to these firms with which he used to be credited are now a.s.signed to Hans Weiditz.

Jorg Breu, who was born and died (1537) some half-dozen years later than Burgkmair, like him ill.u.s.trated Missals for Ratdolt and contributed Pa.s.sion-cuts to Mann's _Leiden Christi_. His most important piece of bookwork was the redrawing of the cuts in Anton Sorg's edition of Reichenthal's _Conciliumbuch_ for a reprint by Steiner in 1536.

Ill.u.s.trations by him also occur in a _Melusina_ (1538), and German versions of Boccaccio's _De claris mulieribus_ and _De Casibus Ill.u.s.trium virorum_ issued after his death by the same firm. Leonhard Beck contributed largely to the ill.u.s.tration of Maximilian's literary ventures, especially the _Theuerdank_, _Weisskunig_, and Saints of the House of Austria (published at some date between 1522 and 1551).

[Ill.u.s.tration: XXIV. AUGSBURG, J. MILLER, 1515

JORNANDES. DE REBUS GOTHORUM. (t.i.tLE). ATTRIBUTED TO BURGKMAIR]

We come now to Hans Weiditz, the immense extension of whose work by the attributions of recent years can only be compared to Mr. Proctor's raising of Bartolommeo de' Libri from one of the smallest to one of the most prolific of Florentine printers. Only two or three Augsburg woodcuts bearing his initials are known, while scores and even hundreds are now a.s.signed to him, most of which had previously been credited to Burgkmair.

Weiditz began bookwork in or before 1518, in which year he contributed a t.i.tle-cut to the _Nemo_ of Ulrich von Hutten, while in 1519 he made twelve ill.u.s.trations to the same author's account of Maximilian's quarrel with the Venetians. In 1518 he had begun working for the firm of Grimm and Wirsung, and this, with a few commissions from other Augsburg publishers, kept him busy till about 1523, when he himself moved to Stra.s.sburg, whence his family had come, while in the same year Grimm and Wirsung gave up business and sold their blocks to Steiner. These included not only many t.i.tle-borders by Weiditz, twenty ill.u.s.trations to two comedies of Plautus and a set of cuts to the _Deuotissime meditationes de vita et pa.s.sione Christi_, and another to a German _Celestina_, all published in 1520, but a series of some 260 masterly ill.u.s.trations to a German version of Petrarch's _De remediis utriusque fortunae_. Steiner used some of these cuts in a Cicero _De Officiis_ of 1531, which has in addition sixty-seven important cuts by Weiditz, presumably of the same period, and also in a _Justinus_ of the same year, but the work for which they were specially designed did not appear until a year later. Needless to say, selections from both the Petrarch and the Cicero sets appear in later work.

After removing to Stra.s.sburg, Weiditz copied some Wittenberg Bible cuts and also Holbein's Apocalypse set for k.n.o.blauch in 1524. In 1530 he ill.u.s.trated for J. Schott the _Herbarium_ of Brunfels, which went through several editions both in Latin and German, and for this comparatively humble work was praised by name in both editions, so that until 1904 it was only as the ill.u.s.trator of the Herbal that he was known. Many of his Augsburg woodcuts subsequently pa.s.sed to that persistent purchaser of old blocks, Christian Egenolph of Frankfort.

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