Part 11 (2/2)

As to French book-ill.u.s.trations of the sixteenth century, a competent historian should have much to say, but the present writer has made no detailed study of them, and in the absence of any monograph to steal from must be content with recording general impressions, only here and there made precise by references to books which he has examined. Far more than those of Germany or Venice, French publishers of the sixteenth century relied on the great stock of woodcuts which had come into existence during the decades 1481-1500. That they did so may be regarded as some compensation for the exceptional rarity of most of the more interesting French incunabula. We have spoken disrespectfully of the little devotional books printed about 1500 with an old Horae cut on the back of the t.i.tlepage or at the end, but in the popular books printed by the Lenoirs and other publishers as late as 1530, and even later, cuts will be found from Millet's _Destruction de Troie_ and other incunabula now quite un.o.btainable, and it is even possible at times from salvage of this kind to deduce the former existence of fifteenth century editions of which no copy can now be found.

After about 1503 the French Horae decline rapidly in beauty and interest, but many fine missals were issued by Wolfgang Hopyl and other firms, some with one or more striking pictures, almost all with admirable capitals.

Among non-liturgical books it is difficult to find any cla.s.s for which new ill.u.s.trations were made at all freely. Several books of Chronicles by Monstrelet, Robert Gaguin, and others have one or more cuts at the beginning which may have been made for them, e.g. a folio cut of S.

Denis and S. Remy, with s.h.i.+elds of arms found in the _Compendium super Francorum gestis_ by Robert Gaguin (this, however, dates back to 1500), a double cut of S. Louis blessed by the Pope and confronting the Turks (found in Gaguin's _Sommaire Historial de France, c._ 1523, and elsewhere), another double cut of Clovis baptized and in battle (Gaguin's _Mer des Chronicques_, 1536, but much earlier), a spirited battle scene (_Victoire du Roy contre les Venitiens_, 1510), etc. But wherever we find ill.u.s.trations in the text, there we are sure to light on a medley of old cuts (e.g. in _Les grands chronicques de France_, 1514, Gaguin's _Chronicques_, 1516, and the _Rozier historial_, 1523), and it will be odds that Millet's _Destruction de Troie_ will be found contributing its woodcuts of the Trojan War as ill.u.s.trations of French history. When an original cut of this period can be found, it seldom has the charm of the best work of the last five years of the fifteenth century, but is usually quite good; there is, for instance, a quite successful metal-cut with crible background of Justinian in Council in an edition of his laws printed by Bocard for Pet.i.t in 1516, and some of the liturgical cuts are admirable. There is thus no reason to impute the falling off in new cuts to lack of artists. It seems clear that the demand for ill.u.s.trations had for the moment s.h.i.+fted to an uncritical audience who liked (small blame to them) the fifteenth century cuts which had delighted more educated people a generation earlier, and were not at all particular as to their appropriateness. Meanwhile the educated book-buyers were learning Greek and preparing themselves to appreciate the severe, unill.u.s.trated elegance of the books of the Estiennes, and new cuts were not needed.

The inception of a new style must certainly be connected with the name of Geoffroi Tory, whose best work is to be found in his Books of Hours, which have already been described in an earlier chapter. Its predominant note is a rather thin elegance of outline, in which the height of the figures is usually somewhat exaggerated. Tory is supposed to have brought home this style after his visit to Italy, but its application to bookwork appears to have been his own idea. There is, indeed, a striking resemblance between the little cuts of Tory's third Horae set, dated 8 February, 1529, and those in an Aldine Horae of October of the same year, but to the best of my belief Tory reckoned his year from 1 January, not in the old French style from Easter, and if so it was Tory who supplied the Aldine artist with a model, which indeed is a logical continuation of his editions of 1525 and 1527. It is greatly to be regretted that his own _Champfleury_ of 1527 is so slightly ill.u.s.trated.

The little picture of Hercules Gallicus which comes in it is quite delightful.

If any guide were in existence to the ill.u.s.trated French books of the thirties in the sixteenth century it would probably be possible to trace the spread of Tory's influence. In 1530 Simon Colines ill.u.s.trated Jean Ruel's _Veterinaria Medicina_ with a good enough cut in the old French style slightly modified. For the same author's _De Natura Stirpium_ of 1536 he provided a woodcut, of an alcove scene in a garden, the tone of which is quite new. It is evident that French publishers were waking up to new possibilities and sending their artists to foreign models, as a _Perceforest_ printed for Gilles Gourmont in 1531 and a _Meliadus de Leonnoys_ for Denis Janot in 1532, have both of them elaborate t.i.tle borders in the style which the Holbeins had made popular at Basel. The latter is signed .F., a signature found in several later books in the new style. In 1534 we find Wechel issuing a _Valturius_ with neat adaptations of the old Verona ill.u.s.trations. Doubtless there were many other interesting books, with cuts original or copied of this decade, but the only one of which I have a note is the _L'amant mal traicte de sa mye_ (translated from the Spanish of Diego de San Pedro), printed by Denis Janot for V. Sertenas in 1539, in which the t.i.tle is enclosed in a delicately cut border, the footpiece of which shows the lovers in a garden. Not long after this Janot printed (without putting his name or a date) _La touche Naifue pour esprouver Lamy and le Flateur_ of Antoine Du Saix, in which the rules enclosing the t.i.tle cut into a pretty oval design of flowers and ribbons. In 1540 we find the new style fully established in the _Hecatongraphie Cest a dire les descriptions de cent figures & hystoires_, a book of emblems, by Gilles Corrozet, printed by Denis Janot, which I only know in the third edition, that of 1543. Here we find little vignettes, much smaller than those in the Malermi Bible, with a headline over them and a quatrain in italics beneath, the whole enclosed in an ornamental frame. The little cuts have the faults inevitable in emblems, and some of them are poorly cut, but the best of them are not only wonderfully delicate, but show a sense of movement and a skill in the manipulation of drapery never reached in the fifteenth century.

[Ill.u.s.tration: XXVI. PARIS, J. LOYS FOR V. SERTENAS, 1545

HOMER. L'ILIADE EN VERS FRANCOIS. (t.i.tLE-CUT)]

In 1543 appeared, again from the press of Denis Janot, ”imprimeur du Roy en langue francoise,” another emblem book, _Le Tableau de Cebes de Thebes, ancien philosophe & disciple de Socrate: auquel est paincte de ses couleurs, la uraye image de la vie humaine, & quelle uoye l'homme doit elire, pour peruenir a vertu & perfaicte science. Premierem[=e]t escript en Grec & maintenant expose en Ryme Francoyse_. The French rhymester was again the author of the _Hecatongraphie_, and the imprint, ”A Paris On les uend en la grand [_sic_] salle du Palais en la boutique de Gilles Corrozet,” shows that he not only wrote the verses and perhaps inspired the ill.u.s.trations, but sold the books as well.

In 1545 we find this same style of design and cutting on a larger scale in _Les dix premiers livres de l'Iliade d'Homere, Prince des Poetes, traduictz en vers Francois, par M. Hugues Salel_, and printed by Iehan Loys for Vincent Sertenas. The cuts are in two sizes, the smaller being surrounded with Toryesque borders. It is difficult to pa.s.s any judgment other than one of praise on such delicate work. Nevertheless, just as the _fanfare_ style of binding used by Nicolas Eve, with its profuse repet.i.tion of small tools, is much more effective on a small book cover than on a large, so here we may well feel that some bolder and clearer design would be better suited to the ill.u.s.tration of a folio. In the t.i.tle-cut here shown (Plate XXVI) a rather larger style is attempted with good results.

The year after the Homer there appeared at Paris from the press of Jacques Kerver a French translation of the _Hypnerotomachia_ by Jean Martin. This is one of the most interesting cases of the rehandling of woodcuts, the arrangement of the original designs being closely followed, while the tone is completely changed by the subst.i.tution of the tall rather thin figures which had become fas.h.i.+onable in French woodcuts for the short and rather plump ones of the Venetian edition, and by similar changes in the treatment of landscape.

In the second half of the century at Paris excellent woodcut portraits, mostly in an oval frame, are sometimes found on t.i.tlepages, and in other cases decoration is supplied by a neatly cut device. Where ill.u.s.trations are needed for the explanation of works on hunting or any other subjects they are mostly well drawn and cut. But the use of woodcuts in books of imaginative literature became more and more rare.

At Lyon, as at Paris, at the beginning of the century the store of fifteenth century cuts was freely drawn on for popular editions.

Considerable influence, however, was exercised at first by Italian models, afterwards by Germany, so that while in the early sixteenth century Latin Bibles the cuts are mostly copied from Giunta's Malermi Bible, these were gradually superseded by German cuts, which Anton Koberger supplied to the Lyonnese printers who worked for him. While in Italy the small octavos popularized by Aldus continued to hold their own, in France, from about 1530, editions in 32 came rapidly into fas.h.i.+on, and about the middle of the century these were especially the vogue at Lyon, the publishers often casing them in very gay little trade bindings sometimes stamped in gold, but often with painted interlacements. The publication by the Trechsels in 1538 of the two Holbein books, the _Dance of Death_ and ill.u.s.trations to the Old Testament, must have given an impetus to picture-making at Lyon, but this was at first chiefly visible in ill.u.s.trated Bibles and New Testaments. Gilles Corrozet, who had written the verses for both the Holbein books, continued his career, as we have seen, at Paris. The most typical Lyonnese ill.u.s.trated books were the rival editions of Ovid's _Metamorphoses_ in French, one printed by Mace Bonhomme in 1556, with borders to every page and little cuts measuring about 1 in. by 2, and a similar edition (reissued in Dutch and Italian) of the next year from the press of Jean de Tournes, the borders and little pictures in which are attributed to Bernard Salomon. In 1557 De Tournes issued also the _Devises Heroiques_ of Claude Paradin, and he was also the publisher of a _Calendrier Historial_, a memorandum book charmingly decorated with cuts of the seasons.

Partly owing to religious troubles the book trade at Lyon soon after this rapidly declined, but the French style was carried on for a while at Antwerp by Christopher Plantin, who printed Paradin's _Devises Heroiques_ in 1562 and in 1564, and the two following years three books of Emblems, those of Sambucus, Hadria.n.u.s Junius, and Alciatus himself.

His earlier Horae are also ill.u.s.trated with woodcuts, and in at least one edition we find the unusual combination of woodcut borders and copperplate pictures. But although Plantin never wholly gave up the use of woodcuts, for his more sumptuous editions he developed a marked preference for copperplates, and by his example helped to complete the downfall of the woodcut, which by the end of the sixteenth century had gone almost completely out of fas.h.i.+on.

FOOTNOTES:

[44] Mr. Dodgson also ascribes to Traut the ill.u.s.trations in the _Legend des heyligen vatters Francisci_ (Nuremberg, 1512), and some of the cuts in the _Theuerdank_ (1517).

[45] Including perhaps the four sets of decorative capitals attributed to Holbein, one ornamental, the others representing a Dance of Peasants, Children, and a Dance of Death.

CHAPTER XII

PRINTING IN ENGLAND (1476-1580)[46]

Something has already been written about the earliest English books on the scale to which they are ent.i.tled in a rapid survey of European incunabula. We may now consider them more in detail as befits a book written in English.

[Ill.u.s.tration: XXVII. WESTMINSTER, CAXTON, C. 1490

THE FIFTEEN OES.]

William Caxton, a Kentishman, born about 1420, had been brought up as a mercer in the city of London, and the relations between the English wooltraders and the clothmakers of Flanders being very intimate, he had, as he tells us himself, pa.s.sed thirty years of his life (in round numbers the years from twenty years of age to fifty) ”for the most part in Brabant, Flanders, Holland, and Zealand.” During the last few years of this time he had held the important position of Governor of the English merchants at Bruges, but about 1469 he surrendered this in order to become secretary to Edward IV's sister, Margaret, wife of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. Some years before this, Raoul Lefevre, chaplain to the Duke's predecessor, had compiled an epitome of the histories of Troy, _Le Recueil des histoires de Troye_, and in March, 1469, Caxton amused himself by beginning to translate this into English. Dissatisfied with the result he laid it on one side, but was bidden by his patroness, the d.u.c.h.ess, to continue his work. This he finished on 19 September, 1471, while staying at Cologne. According to a distinct statement by Wynkyn de Worde, whom (at least as early as 1480) he employed as his foreman, Caxton printed at Cologne ”himself to avaunce” the first Latin edition of the _De Proprietatibus Rerum_, a kind of encyclopaedia ”on the properties of things,” by an English friar of the thirteenth century named Bartholomew. Now the first edition of this work is undoubtedly one printed at Cologne about 1471 or 1472 at an anonymous press which Bradshaw called that of the printer of the 1473 edition of the _Dialogi decem Auctorum_, and Mr. Proctor, less happily, that of the printer of the _Flores Sancti Augustini_, an undated book in the same type. The _De Proprietatibus Rerum_ is certainly slightly earlier than either of these, and there are some typographical differences which suggest that between the completion of the one book and the beginning of the other two the press may have changed masters. The _De Proprietatibus_ is by far the largest book of the whole group, and being by, or credited to, an English author, it is highly probable that the well-to-do ex-Governor of the English merchants became temporarily a member of the firm for its production and shared in the venture. This is the natural meaning of Wynkyn de Worde's statement that Caxton was the ”first prynter of this boke,” and is quite as likely to be true as the supposition that he took part in printing it as a kind of amateur journeyman to advance himself in the art. It may be noted, moreover, that the books of this anonymous press belong to the less advanced school of printing at Cologne, a school technically several years behind that of Ulrich Zell, and this takes the force out of the objection raised by William Blades, that if Caxton had learnt printing at Cologne, he must have printed better when he made his start.

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