The Printed Book: Its History, Illustration and Adornment
by Henri Bouchot · English · Gutenberg #44890 · 410,798 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Printed Book: Its History, Illustration and Adornment
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: The Printed Book: Its History, Illustration and Adornment
Author: Henri Bouchot
Translator: E. C. Bigmore
Release date: February 13, 2014 [eBook #44890]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44890
Credits: Produced by Chris Curnow, Tony De Vita and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRINTED BOOK: ITS HISTORY, ILLUSTRATION AND ADORNMENT ***
THE PRINTED BOOK,
Its History, Illustration, and Adornment,
_FROM THE DAYS OF GUTENBERG TO THE
PRESENT TIME._
BY
HENRI BOUCHOT,
OF THE NATIONAL LIBRARY, PARIS.
_Translated and Enlarged by_
EDWARD C. BIGMORE.
WITH ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS OF FACSIMILES
OF EARLY TYPOGRAPHY, PRINTERS' MARKS, COPIES OF BOOK
ILLUSTRATIONS, AND SPECIMENS OF BINDINGS OF ALL AGES.
NEW YORK:
SCRIBNER AND WELFORD,
743 and 745, BROADWAY.
1887.
PREFACE.
Considering that this short study can claim to be nothing more than a
rapid and somewhat summary survey of the history of THE BOOK, it eschews
all controversial matter, nor does it pretend to convey much fresh
information to those already possessing a special knowledge of the
subject. It is rather a condensed, but at the same time, it may be
hoped, a useful, compendium of the thousand unknown or now forgotten
essays, involving endless contradictory statements, that have been
issued on this theme. The mere enumeration of such works would simply
suffice to fill a volume. We have accordingly no intention to attempt a
bibliography, satisfying ourselves with the modest avowal of having
found so many documents in all languages, that the very abundance has
been at least as embarrassing to us as the lack of materials may have
been to others.
The Book appealing in its present form to a special public interested
more in artistic than in purely typographical topics, our attention has
been more particularly given to the illustrators, the designers,
engravers, etchers, and so forth. Such graphic embellishment seemed to
us of more weight than the manufacture of the paper, the type-casting,
the printing properly so called. This technical aspect of the subject
has been very briefly dealt with in a separate chapter, and has also
been enlarged upon in the early section. To the binding also we have
devoted only a single chapter, while fully conscious that a whole volume
would not have sufficed merely to treat the subject superficially.
At the same time, we would not have the reader conclude from all this
that our book abounds in omissions, or has overlooked any important
features. The broad lines, we trust, have been adhered to, while each
section has been so handled as to give a fair idea of the epoch it deals
with. This is the first attempt to comprise within such narrow limits an
art and an industry with a life of over four centuries, essaying to
describe its beginnings and its history down to our days, without
omitting a glance at the allied arts.
The engravings selected for illustration have, as far as possible, been
taken from unedited materials, and have been directly reproduced by
mechanical processes, while fifteen new illustrations, having special
relation to the history of the Book in England, have been added to this
edition, which is also considerably enlarged in the text on the same
subject.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
14.. TO 1462 1
Origin of the Book--Engravers in relief--The St. Christopher of
1423--Origin of the Xylographs--The Xylographs, _Donatus_, and
_Speculum_--The Laurent Coster legend--From block books to movable
characters--John Gaensefleisch, called Gutenberg--The Strasbourg
trial--Gutenberg at Mayence--Fust and Schoeffer--The letters of
indulgence--The Bible--The "Catholicon"--The Mayence Bible--Causes of
the dispersion of the first Mayence printers--General considerations.
CHAPTER II.
1462 TO 1500 33
The Book and the printers of the second generation--The German workmen
dispersed through Europe--Caxton and the introduction of printing into
England--Nicholas Jenson and his supposed mission to Mayence--The
first printing in Paris; William Fichet and John Heinlein--The
first French printers; their installation at the Sorbonne and their
publications--The movement in France--The illustration of the Book
commenced in Italy--The Book in Italy; engraving in relief and metal
plates--The Book in Germany: Cologne, Nuremberg, Basle--The Book in
the Low Countries--French schools of ornament of the Book; Books of
Hours; booksellers at the end of the fifteenth century--Literary taste
in titles in France at the end of the fifteenth century--Printers
and booksellers' marks--The appearance of the portrait in the
Book--Progress in England--Caxton and his followers.
CHAPTER III.
1500 TO 1600 98
French epics and the Renaissance--Venice and Aldus Manutius--Italian
illustrators--The Germans; _Theuerdanck_, Schäufelein--The Book in
other countries--French books at the beginning of the century, before
the accession of Francis I.--Geoffroy Tory and his works--Francis
I. and the Book--Robert Estienne--Lyons a centre of bookselling;
Holbein's Dances of Death--School of Basle--Alciati's emblems and
the illustrated books of the middle of the century--The school of
Fontainebleau and its influence--Solomon Bernard--Cornelis de la Haye
and the _Promptuaire_--John Cousin--Copper plate engraving and metal
plates--Woériot--The portrait in the Book of the sixteenth century--How
a book was illustrated on wood at the end of the century--Influence
of Plantin on the Book; his school of engravers--General
considerations--Progress in England--Coverdale's Bible--English
printers and their work--Engraved plates in English books.
CHAPTER IV.
1600 TO 1700 151
Tendencies of the regency of Marie de Medicis--Thomas de Leu and
Leonard Gaultier--J. Picart and Claude Mellan--Lyons and J. de
Fornazeris--The Book at the beginning of the seventeenth century in
Germany, Italy, and Holland--Crispin Pass in France--The Elzevirs
and their work in Holland--Sebastian Cramoisy and the Imprimerie
Royale--Illustration with Callot, Della Bella, and Abraham Bosse--The
publishers and the Hotel de Rambouillet--The reign of Louis XIV.;
Antoine Vitré syndic at his accession--His works and mortifications;
the Polyglot Bible of Le Jay--Art and illustrators of the grand
century--Sébastien Leclerc, Lepautre, and Chauveau--Leclerc preparing
the illustration and decoration of the Book for the eighteenth
century--The Book in England in the seventeenth century.
CHAPTER V.
THE BOOK IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 184
The regency--Publishers at the beginning of the eighteenth
century--Illustrators in France; Gillot--The school of Watteau
and Boucher--Cars--The younger Cochin; his principal works in
vignettes--French art in England; Gravelot--Eisen--Choffard--The
_Baisers_ of Dorat; the _Contes_ of La Fontaine--The publisher
Cazin and the special literature of the eighteenth century--The
younger Moreau and his illustrations--The Revolution--The school of
David--Duplessis-Bertaux--The Book in Germany; Chodowiecki--In England;
Boydell and French artists--Caslon and Baskerville--English books
with illustrations--Wood engraving in the eighteenth century; the
Papillons--Printing offices in the eighteenth century.
CHAPTER VI.
THE BOOK IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 218
The Didots and their improvements--The folio Racine--The school of
Didot--Fine publications in England and Germany--Literature and art
of the Restoration--Romanticism--Wood engraving--Bewick's pupils,
Clennell, etc.--The illustrators of romances--The generation of
1840--The Book in our days in Europe and America.
CHAPTER VII.
TYPES, IMPRESSION, PAPER, INK 239
CHAPTER VIII.
BOOKBINDING 253
The binding of the first printed books--Ancient German
bindings--Binding in the time of Louis XII.--Italian
bindings--Aldus--Maioli--Grolier--Francis I.--Henry II. and
Diane de Poitiers--Catherine de Medicis--Henry III.--The
Eves--The "fanfares"--Louis XIII.--Le Gascon--Florimond
Badier--Louis XIV.--Morocco leathers--Cramoisy--The bindings
of the time of Louis XIV.--The regency--Pasdeloup--The
Deromes--Dubuisson--Thouvenin--Lesné--The nineteenth century--English
binders--Roger Payne--Francis Bedford.
CHAPTER IX.
LIBRARIES 290
INDEX 305
THE PRINTED BOOK.
CHAPTER I.
14.. TO 1462.
Origin of the Book--Engravers in relief--The St. Christopher of
1423--Origin of the Xylographs--The Xylographs, _Donatus_, and
_Speculum_--The Laurent Coster legend--From block books to movable
characters--John Gaensefleisch, called Gutenberg--The Strasbourg
trial--Gutenberg at Mayence--Fust and Schoeffer--The letters of
indulgence--The Bible--The Catholicon--The Mayence Bible--Causes of
the dispersion of the first Mayence printers--General
considerations.
Like its forerunner, Painting, the Book has ever been the most faithful
reflection of the times when it was written and illustrated. Natural and
genuine from the first, and simply embellished with crude illustrations,
it assumed in the sixteenth century the grand airs of the Renaissance,
gay or serious according to circumstances, decked in what were then
called _histoires_--that is to say, wonderful engravings--and daintily
printed in Gothic, Roman, or choice Italic characters. But at the close
of the century it had already abandoned _wood_ for line engravings,
heightening its mysticism or its satire at the whim of passing politics
and religious wranglings. Then, under the influence of the painters and
courtiers of the _Grand Monarque_, it becomes completely transformed,
donning the peruke, so to speak, indulging in allegory and
conventionalities, pompous and showy, tricking itself out in columns and
pilasters instead of the old arabesques and scroll work of the
Renaissance, thus continuing amid the coquetries of the regency, the
pastorals and insipidities of the following reigns, until at last it
suddenly assumes with the heroes of the Revolution the austere mien and
airs of classic art. The Book has always been as closely connected with
the manners of our predecessors as art itself. The artist submits more
than he thinks to the tendency of his surroundings; and if he at times
makes his taste appreciated, it is because he has more or less received
his first influence from others.
In the sixteenth century the fashion of emblematic representation placed
under the portrait of Gaston de Foix a figure of a young plant in full
bloom; and the inscription in Latin was "Nascendo maturus"--"Mature at
birth." The Book deserves the same device; from its first day up to now
it is a marvel of simplicity and harmony. The tentative efforts which
preceded the discovery of printing were but few; it may be said that
from the moment that Gutenberg conceived the idea of separating the
characters, of arranging the words in the forme, of inking them, and of
taking a proof on paper, the Book was perfect. At best we see in
following times some modifications of detail; the art of printing was
mature, mature from its birth.
But before arriving at the movable type placed side by side, and forming
phrases, which appears to us to-day so simple and so ordinary, many
years passed. It is certain that long before Gutenberg a means was found
of cutting wood and metal in relief and reproducing by application the
image traced. Signs-manual and seals were a kind of printing, inasmuch
as the relief of their engraving is impressed upon a sheet by the hand.
But between this simple statement and the uncritical histories of
certain special writers, attributing the invention of engraving to the
fourteenth century, there is all the distance of legendary history.
Remembering that the numerous guilds of _tailleurs d'images_, or
sculptors in relief, had in the Middle Ages the specialty of carving
ivories and of placing effigies on tombs, it can be admitted without
much difficulty, that these people one day found a means of multiplying
the sketches of a figure often asked for, by modelling its contour in
relief on ivory or wood, and afterwards taking a reproduction on paper
or parchment by means of pressure. When and where was this discovery
produced? We cannot possibly say; but it is certain that playing cards
were produced by this means, and that from the year 1423 popular figures
were cut in wood, as we know from the St. Christopher of that date
belonging to Lord Spencer.
It is not our task to discuss this question at length, nor to decide if
at first these reliefs were obtained on wood or metal. It is a
recognised fact that the single sheet with a printed figure preceded the
xylographic book in which text and illustration were cut in the same
block. This process did not appear much before the second quarter of
the fifteenth century, and it was employed principally for popular works
which were then the universal taste. The engraving also was nothing more
than a kind of imposition palmed off as a manuscript; the vignettes were
often covered with brilliant colours and gold, and the whole sold as of
the best quality.
The first attempts at these little figures in relief discovered by the
image-makers and diffused by the makers of playing cards were but
indifferent. The drawing and the cutting were equally unskilful, as may
be seen in the facsimiles given by M. H. Delaborde in his _Histoire de
la Gravure_. An attempt had been made to put some text at the foot of
the St. Christopher of 1423, and the idea of giving more importance to
the text was to the advantage of the booksellers. At the mercy of the
writers who fleeced them, obliged to recoup themselves by the
exaggerated prices of the most ordinary books, they hoped to turn
engraving to account in order to obtain on better terms the technical
work needed for their trade. At the epoch of the St. Christopher, in
1423, several works were in vogue in the universities, the schools, and
with the public. Among the first of these was the Latin Syntax of Ælius
Donatus on the eight parts of speech, a kind of grammar for the use of
young students, as well as the famous _Speculum_, a collection of
precepts addressed to the faithful, which were copied and recopied
without satisfying the demand.
[Illustration: Fig. 1.--Part of a _Donatus_ taken from a xylograph, the
original of which is preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale.]
To find a means of multiplying these treatises at little cost was a
fortune to the inventor. It is to be supposed that many artisans of the
time attempted it; and without doubt it was the booksellers themselves,
mostly mere dealers, who were tempted to the adventure by the sculptors
and wood-cutters. But none had yet been so bold as to cut in relief a
series of blocks with engravings and text to compose a complete work.
That point was reached very quickly when some legend was engraved at the
foot of a vignette, and it may be thought that the _Donatus_ was the
most ancient of books so obtained among the "Incunabuli," as we now call
them, a word that signifies origin or cradle.
The first books then were formed of sheets of paper or parchment,
laboriously printed from xylographic blocks, that is to say wooden
blocks on which a _tailleur d'images_ had left in relief the designs and
the letters of the text. He had thus to trace his characters in reverse,
so that they could be reproduced as written; he had to avoid faults,
because a phrase once done, well or ill, lasted. It was doubtless this
difficulty of correction that gave the idea of movable types. If the
cutter seriously erred, it was necessary to cancel altogether the faulty
block. This at least explains the legend of Laurent Coster, of Haarlem,
who, according to Hadrian Junius, his compatriot, discovered by accident
the secret of separate types while playing with his children. And if the
legend of which we speak contains the least truth, it must be found in
the sense above indicated, that is in the correction of faults, rather
than in the innocent game of a merchant of Haarlem. However, we shall
have occasion to return to the subject of these remarks. It should be
well established that engraving in relief on wood alone gave the idea of
making xylographic blocks and of composing books. Movable type, the
capital point of printing, the pivot of the art of the Book, developed
itself little by little, according to needs, when there was occasion to
correct an erroneous inscription; but, in any case, its origin is
unknown. Doubtless to vary the text, means were found to replace entire
phrases by other phrases, preserving the original figures; and thus the
light dawned upon these craftsmen, occupied in the manufacture and sale
of their books.
According to Hadrian Junius, Laurent Janszoon Coster (the latter name
signifying "the discoverer") published one of the celebrated series of
works under the general title of _Speculum_ which was then so popular
(the mystic style exercising so great an attraction on the people of the
fifteenth century), the _Speculum Humanæ Salvationis_. Written before
the middle of the fifteenth century, made popular by manuscripts, in
spite of its fantastic Latinity and of its false quantities, this
ascetic and crude poem was easy of access to the xylographists. Junius,
as we see, attributes to Laurent Coster the first impression of the
_Speculum_, no longer the purely xylographic impression of the _Donatus_
from an engraved block, but that of the more advanced manner in movable
types. In point of fact, this book had at least four editions, similar
in engravings and body of letters, but of different text. It must then
be admitted that the fount was dispersed, and typography discovered,
because the same cast of letters could not be adapted to different
languages. On the other hand, the vignettes do not change, indicating
sufficiently the mobility of the types. In comparison to what may be
seen in later works, the illustrations of the _Speculum_ are by no means
bad; they have the appearance, at once naïve and picturesque, of the
works of Van Eyck, and not at all of the style of the German
miniaturists; properly illuminated and gilded, they lent themselves to
the illusion of being confounded with the _histoyres_, drawn by the
hand, and this is what the publisher probably sought.
All the xylographic works of the fifteenth century may be classed in two
categories: the xylographs, rightly so called, or the block books, such
as the _Donatus_, and the books with movable types, like the _Speculum_,
of which we speak. This mystic and simple literature of pious works for
the use of people of modest resources found in printing the means of
more rapid reproduction. Then appeared the _Biblia Pauperum_, one of the
most celebrated and the most often reproduced, and the _Ars Moriendi_, a
kind of dialogue between an angel and a devil at the bedside of a dying
person, which, inspired no doubt by older manuscripts, retained for a
long time in successive editions the first tradition of its designs. On
labels displayed among the figures are found inscribed the dialogue of
the demons and angels seeking to attach to themselves the departing
soul, the temptations of Satan on the subject of faith, and the
responses of the angel on the same subject.
[Illustration: Fig. 2.--Xylographic figure from the _Ars Moriendi_,
copied in reverse in the _Art au Morier_.]
We can see what developments this theme could lend to the mysticism of
the fifteenth century. Composed in eleven designs, the _Ars Moriendi_
ran up to eight different editions. From the middle to the end of the
fifteenth century, the text was in Latin, then in French, under the
title _L'Art au Morier_. In the French edition will be found the blocks
that served for the second impression of the work. About 1480, more than
fifty years after the first essays, the _Ars Moriendi_ enjoyed so much
vogue that it employed all the resources of typography as much as in its
earliest days. The original subjects, copied in a very mediocre manner,
adorned the text, which was composed in Gothic letters, with a new and
more explicit title: _Tractatus brevis ac valde utilis de Arte et
Scientia bene moriendi_ (4to, s.l.n.d.), but the order is inverted,
figure 5 of the xylograph becoming No. 3 of the edition of 1480.
The _Ars Memorandi_, another xylographic work, of which the subject,
taken from the New Testament, was equally well adapted to the
imagination of the artists, had also a glorious destiny. The work
originally comprised thirty blocks, the fifteen blocks of text facing
the fifteen engravings. The designs represented the attributes of each
of the Evangelists, with allegories and explanatory legends. Thus, in
that which relates to the Apostle Matthew,
No. 1 represents the birth and genealogy of Jesus Christ,
No. 2 the offerings of the Magi,
No. 3 the baptism of St. John,
No. 4 the Temptation of Christ,
No. 5 the Sermon on the Mount,
No. 6 the parable of the birds.
The angel that supports the whole is the emblem of St. Matthew the
Evangelist.
[Illustration: Fig. 3.--Figure of the school of Martin Schongauer, taken
from the _Rationarium Evangelistarum_ of 1505, and copied from the
corresponding plate of the _Ars Memorandi_.]
This mnemonic treatment of the Gospels began with symbols of which we
have no means of finding the origin, but which without doubt were
employed many centuries earlier. However that may be, their success was
as great as that of the already-quoted works. In 1505 a German publisher
put forth an imitation, under the title of _Rationarium Evangelistarum_;
and this time the copier of the illustrations, retaining the tradition
of the first xylographers, no less reveals an artist of the first order,
at least a pupil of Martin Schongauer. Some of the conceptions of the
_Rationarium_ recall exactly the engravings of the great German master,
among others that of the Infant Jesus (plate 12), which nearly
approaches the style of the Infant Jesus of Schongauer; besides, the
principal figures leave but little doubt on the subject. The same wings
are on the angels and on the eagles, the same coiffures on the human
characters, often the same attitudes.
From the preceding can be judged the extraordinary favour these
productions enjoyed. From their origin they were diffused through the
whole of Europe, and attracted the attention of excellent artists.
Nevertheless their beginnings were difficult. The movable types used,
cut separately in wood, were not constituted to give an ideal
impression. We can understand the cost that the execution of these
characters must have occasioned, made as they were one by one without
the possibility of ever making them perfectly uniform. Progress was to
substitute for this irregular process types that were similar,
identical, easily produced, and used for a long time without breaking.
Following on the essays of Laurent Coster, continuous researches bore on
this point; but as the invention was said to be his, and it being of
importance to him not to divulge it, so that he should not lose his
profit, much time was lost over it in his workshop without much success.
Here history is somewhat confused. Hadrian Junius positively accuses one
of Laurent Coster's workmen of having stolen the secrets of his master
and taken flight to Mayence, where he afterwards founded a printing
office. According to Junius, the metal type was the discovery of the
Dutchman, and the name of the thief was John. Who was this John? Was it
John Gaensefleisch, called Gutenberg, or possibly John Fust? But it is
not at all apparent that Gutenberg, a gentleman of Mayence, exiled from
his country, was ever in the service of the Dutch inventor. As to Fust,
we believe his only intervention in the association of printers of
Mayence was as a money-lender, from which may be comprehended the
unlikelihood of his having been with Coster, the more so as we find
Gutenberg retired to Strasbourg, where he pursued his researches. There
he was, as it were, out of his sphere, a ruined noble whose great
knowledge was bent entirely on invention. Doubtless, like many others,
he may have had in his hands one of the printed works of Laurent Coster,
and conceived the idea of appropriating the infant process. In 1439 he
was associated with two artisans of the city of Strasbourg, ostensibly
in the fabrication of mirrors, which may be otherwise understood as
printing of _Speculums_, the Latin word signifying the same thing. These
men needed to surround themselves with precautions; printing was as yet
only a practical means of multiplying manuscripts, to impose a little on
the innocent, and fortune awaited him who, without saying anything, made
this invention serve him. The following will prove this, as well as its
tendency.
A legal document discovered in 1760 by Wencker and Schoepflin in the
Pfennigthurm of Strasbourg, and afterwards translated into French by
M. Leon de Laborde, makes us at length acquainted with the work of
Gutenberg and of his associates Andrew Dritzehen and Andrew Heilmann.
Apparently these three men were, as we have said, _Spiegelmacher_,
that is makers of mirrors. They had jointly entered into a deed by
the terms of which, if one of the partners died in the course of
their researches, his heirs would have no rights beyond an indemnity
corresponding to the amount invested by him. It happened that
Andrew Dritzehen did die, and that one of his brothers aspired to
occupy his place in the partnership. The dead man left debts behind
him; he had squandered his florins by hundreds in his experiments.
Gutenberg having offered to pay the amounts expended, the heirs of
Dritzehen, who wanted more, summoned him before the courts to show
why he should not make place for them in the work of experiments and
making of mirrors. The witnesses in their testimony before the court
told what they knew of the inventions of the partnership. One among
them deposed that after the death of Dritzehen, Gutenberg's servant
went to the workshop and begged Nicholas Dritzehen, brother of the
deceased, to displace and break up four formes placed in a press.
A second testified that the works of Andrew had cost him at the
least three hundred florins, an enormous sum for those days. Other
witnesses painted Gutenberg in a curious light: they made him out
to be a savage, a hermit, who concealed from his associates certain
arts of which the deed stipulated nothing. One fact proved that the
experiments referred to the manufacture of metallic characters. A
goldsmith, named Dünne, maintained that he had received more than a
hundred florins for printing material "das zu dem trucken gehoret."
"Trucken!"--"Typography!" The word was found, and from that day usage
has consecrated it.
Before 1439, then, John Gaensefleisch, or Gutenberg, was devoted to the
art of reproduction of texts, and had consecrated his life and feeble
resources to it. Three problems presented themselves to him. He wanted
types less fragile than wooden types and less costly than engraving. He
wanted a press by the aid of which he could obtain a clear impression on
parchment or paper. He desired also that the leaves of his books should
not be anopistograph, or printed only on one side. There were many
unknown things to vex his soul, of which he himself alone could have a
presentiment. Until then, and even long after, the xylographs were
printed _au frotton_ or with a brush, rubbing the paper upon the forme
coated with ink, thicker than ordinary ink. He dreamed of something
better.
In the course of his work John Gutenberg returned to Mayence. The idea
of publishing a Bible, the Book of books, had taken possession of his
heart. The _Spiegelmacher_ of Strasbourg was on the road to loss. The
cutting of his types had ruined him, and on his arrival in his native
town, his stock in trade, transported by him, was of no great weight:
some boxes of type, an inconvenient forme, and perhaps an ordinary
press, a wine-maker's press, with a wooden screw. The idea of using this
unwieldy instrument for the impression of his formes had already
occurred to him; but would not the _frotton_ serve still better? The
force of the blow from the bar would break the miserable type, the
raised parts of which could not resist the repeated strokes. In this
unhappy situation, Gutenberg made the acquaintance of a financier of
Mayence, named Fust, who was in search of a business, and who put a sum
of eleven hundred florins at his disposal to continue his experiments.
Unfortunately this money disappeared, it melted away, and the results
obtained were absolutely ludicrous.
It is certain that John Fust did not enter on the engagement without
protecting himself. From the first he bound his debtor in a contract for
six per cent. interest, besides a share in the profits. In addition he
stipulated repayment in case of failure. Gutenberg, improvident, as is
the way of inventors, had signed away all that he possessed to procure
funds. It is presumed, besides, that during the continuance of his
investigations, he composed some current books with the resources at his
disposal, that served a little to lighten his debts. But the printing
house of the Zum Jungen at Mayence was far from shining in the world,
because the association of Fust concerned itself only with the
publication of a Bible, and not at all with the _Speculums_ and
_Donatuses_ that were so much in vogue at this time. Besides, the
money-lender made a point of pressing his debtor, and did not allow him
any leisure to labour outside the projected work. About this time a
third actor enters on the scene. Peter Schoeffer, of Gernsheim, a
writer, introduced into the workshop of Gutenberg to design letters,
benefited by the abortive experiments, and taking up the invention at
its deadlock, conducted it to success. John of Tritenheim, called
Trithemius, the learned abbot of Spanheim, is the person who relates
these facts; but as he got his information from Schoeffer himself, too
much credence must not be given to his statements. Besides, Schoeffer
was not at all an ordinary artisan. If we credit a Strasbourg manuscript
written by his hand in 1449, he was a student of the "most glorious
university of Paris." In the workshop of Gutenberg, his industrious and
inventive intellect found a fecund mine, and this caligraphist dreamt
of other things than shaping letters for the use of wood engravers.
Gutenberg, arrested in his career by the wants of life, the worries of
business, and perhaps also the fatigues of his labours, may have let the
new-comer know something of his experiences. One cannot know, but it is
certain that, shortly after, John Fust was so fascinated by Schoeffer,
so attracted by his youth and his application, that he resolved to put
new capital into the business. He did more: to permanently attach him,
he gave him his grand-daughter in marriage, not his daughter, as was
thought until M. Auguste Bernard rectified this mistake.
We have now come to 1453, the year preceding the first dated monument of
printing in movable types: _the letters of indulgence_. It may be
acknowledged that the sudden affection of Fust for his workman depended
on some interested motive, and not at all on attraction of the heart.
Had this former student of the university of Paris found the means of
rapidly founding metallic types, the search for which had cost Gutenberg
many sleepless nights? Had he completed it by applying to it the matrix
and punch which had then and for centuries served the makers of seals
and the money-coiners? Perhaps, as was most probable, the two associates
had agreed, and putting their experiences together, had conquered
hitherto insurmountable difficulties.
The year 1454 witnessed the diffusion throughout Christendom of letters
of indulgence, accorded by Pope Nicholas V., who wished to aid in funds
the King of Cyprus against the Turks. These circular letters, scattered
by thousands to every corner of the world, employed numerous copyists.
Arrived at Mayence, the distributers found a workshop ready prepared to
furnish copies in the shortest possible time. They set to work and
brought together all the type they possessed, cast or engraved, to set
up these famous letters. Among the impressions was that of which we give
a reproduction, which belongs to the edition called that of thirty-one
lines. The original was delivered for a consideration to Josse Ott von
Mospach on the 31st of December, 1454.
It is not without interest, for the history of the Book and of printing,
to note here that these letters of indulgence, the clandestine traffic
in which was largely accelerated by rapidity of production and the small
cost of each copy, formed one of the causes of the religious reform of
Martin Luther. They afforded a means of raising money, and were so
generally resorted to that in the register of the Hotel de Ville of
Paris preserved in the Archives Nationales (H 1778) it may be seen that
the sheriffs requested the Pope to allow them to employ them in the
reconstruction of the bridge at the Hotel de Ville.
The ice once broken, Fust and Schoeffer found it hard to nourish a
useless mouth. For them Gutenberg was more of a hindrance than a profit,
and they sought brutally to rid themselves of him. Fust had a most easy
pretext, which was to demand purely and simply from his associate the
sums advanced by him, and which had produced so little. Gutenberg had
probably commenced his Bible, but, in face of the claims of Fust, he had
to abandon it altogether, types, formes, and press.
[Illustration: Fig. 4.--Letters of indulgence, from the so-called
edition of thirty-one lines, printed at Mayence in the course of 1454.]
In November, 1455, he had retired to a little house outside the city,
where he tried his best, by the aid of foreign help, to establish a
workshop, and to preserve the most perfect secrecy. Relieved of his
company, Fust and Schoeffer were able to take up the impression of the
Bible and to complete it without him. If matters did so happen, and
Schoeffer had not the excuse that he had previously discovered the
casting of type, there is but one word to designate his conduct:
robbery, and moral robbery, the worst of all. But what can be said
to-day of these people?
One thing is certain: that the Bible of Schoeffer, commenced by
Gutenberg or not, put on sale by Fust and Schoeffer alone about the end
of 1455 or beginning of 1456, proves to be the first completed book.
Retired to his new quarters, Gutenberg was taking courage, so as not
to appear too much behindhand, but the reconstitution of his workshop
cost him enormous time. And, besides, he missed the letter-maker
Schoeffer, his own Gothic letters, engraved on steel with a punch, not
having the same elegance. When his work appeared, it could not sustain
comparison. The Bible of Schoeffer was more compact, the impression was
more perfect, the ink better, the type less irregular. The original
inventor, in his business with Fust, made an unhappy competition for
himself. We give here a fragment of this celebrated book, a kind of
mute witness of the science and mortifications of the first printer.
It is now called the Mazarine Bible, from the fact that the copy in
the Mazarin Library was the first to give evidence concerning it. The
book was put on sale at the end of 1455 or beginning of 1456, for a
manuscript note of a vicar of St. Stephen at Mayence records that
he finished the binding and illuminating of the first volume on St.
Bartholomew's Day, 1456, and the second on the 15th of August. St.
Bartholomew's Day is the 13th of June, and not the 24th of August, as
the catalogue of the Bibliothèque Nationale has it.
[Illustration: Fig. 5.--Fragment of the Mazarine Bible, printed in two
columns. Beginning of the text in the second column; original size.]
All these remarks show that the printers did not proclaim themselves,
and were making pseudo-manuscripts. They did not make known their names
or address. The rubricators sided with them, for many of the copies are
illuminated with as much care and beauty as if they were the finest
manuscripts.
There is no record extant of the number of copies printed, but it was
done on both vellum and paper. Copies are by no means uncommon, most of
the great libraries having one, and many are in private collections. One
is shown among the typographical monuments in the King's Library of the
British Museum, and there is a finely illuminated copy in the show-room
of the Bibliothèque Nationale. From its very great importance as the
first book that is known to have been printed, its value has a constant
increase. Of the copies recently sold, one at the Perkins sale in 1873
on vellum sold for £3,400, another on paper at the same sale fetched
£2,900, while one on paper in the Syston Park Library sold in December,
1884, for £3,900. It has been asserted that the copies on paper were the
first issued by Gutenberg and his partners, and those on vellum
subsequently printed by Fust and Schoeffer, after they had obtained
possession of the inventor's stock.
But so many copies absolutely similar in aspect, and of so regular a
style, put in the market from day to day by Fust and Schoeffer, gave
rise to protests from the caligraphists. Criticism always attends upon
success, but having obtained the result, the two associates did not
hesitate to proclaim themselves the printers of the Bible. On the
publication of the Psalter, which followed the Bible at a year's
interval, they gave their names and added a date, 1457, the first
instance of a date being recorded in a book. This second work was of so
skilful a typography, that it might have been shown as the work of an
expert penman; the faults remarked in the letters of indulgence are no
longer seen; type had attained perfection; in two years printing had
reached its culminating point.
In spite of his disappointments, Gutenberg did not rest idle. If he had
seen his two enemies rob him of his claim of priority in the invention,
he had to show that, reduced to his own exertions and to the restricted
means furnished him by charitable people, he also could print well. Two
years after the Bible a dated book, composed in Gothic letters, appeared
at Mayence; this was the _Catholicon_ of John Balbus, of Genoa. It had
not yet occurred to these first printers to exercise their art otherwise
than on religious works. It is admitted by general opinion that the
_Catholicon_ issued from the press of Gutenberg; on the other hand, M.
Bernard believes that it ought to be attributed to a printer of Eltvil,
who published in 1467 a vocabulary called the _Vocabularium ex quo_ with
the same types. The former theory may be sustained by the words of the
colophon of the book, which is a sort of hymn to God and a recognition
of the city of Mayence without any mention of the name of the printer.
Now in the situation in which Gutenberg found himself, in the face of
his rivals, had he not some claim to regard the great discovery as his
own? But if M. Bernard is mistaken, and if our supposition has no
foundation, what a beautiful act of humility, what a noble idea of his
character, Gutenberg gives us in writing, "With the aid of the Most
High, Who releases the tongues of infants and often reveals to babes
that which is sealed to learned men, this admirable book the
_Catholicon_ was finished in the year of the incarnation of our Saviour
MCCCCLX. in the mother-country of Mayence, famous city of Germany, which
God, in His clemency, has deigned to render the most illustrious and the
first of cities; and this book was perfected without the usual help of
pen or style, but by the admirable linking of formes and types"!
[Illustration: Fig. 6.--Colophon of the _Catholicon_, supposed to have
been printed by Gutenberg in 1460.]
The history of these men, it is easy to understand, has to be regarded
with caution, people of so little consequence then that the authentic
documents relating to them have for ever disappeared. If we except that
of the Pfennigthurm of Strasbourg, of which we have before spoken, and
the deed of claim for money from Fust to Gutenberg dated 1455, we are
forced to quote from authors living long afterwards, who submitted,
without knowing better, to the miserable errors of oral tradition. It is
nearly always the same with men who have occupied a large place in the
history of art; posterity only knows of their genius at the time when no
one knows anything of them. For Gutenberg the situation was still more
terrible; a rival, Peter Schoeffer, survived him, and he did not for his
own reputation care to preserve his rival's memory; and if, as is
believed, Gutenberg left pupils and heirs, Henry Bechtermuncze, Ulrich
Zell, and Weigand Spyes, his misfortune is crowned by Bechtermuncze
being now reputed to be the printer of the _Catholicon_, of which we
have just given the history. Even Albert Pfister, one of his workmen,
dismissed at the end of his work, having obtained from his master some
rejected types, was presumed later to have invented printing. We find
this artisan established at Bamberg about 1460, composing Bibles in
movable types, the first known being that published in 1461. But Albert
Pfister showed that he was not at all an inventor by the mediocrity of
his work, and more by the old types that he used. If he had known the
secret of engraving the punches, he would have cast new letters and have
given a better aspect to his work.
[Illustration: Fig. 7.--Colophon of the Bible printed in 1462 by Fust
and Schoeffer, which is the first dated Bible. There are two different
editions with this signature. The above is from the second edition.]
In these statements all is supposition and contradiction. That which is
certain--and the dates are there to prove it--is the enormous progress
in the productions of Peter Schoeffer. In 1459 he published his third
book, Durand's _Rationale Divinorum Officiorum_, in folio. As in the
Psalter, Schoeffer employed initial letters printed in red, which the
rival workshop could not do in the _Catholicon_, the rubrics of which
are painted by hand, as in manuscripts. In time he put forth a second
edition of the Psalter, always with Fust's name joined to his own. A
great number of types were broken at the beginning, but he dreamed of
doing yet better. In 1460 he gave the _Constitutiones_ of Pope Clement
V., with a gloss and commentaries by John André; here was the first
example of a process much employed in manuscripts, but of which the
typographical composition was very difficult. Again, in 1462 a new Latin
Bible issued from their workshops in two folio volumes. It is the first
dated edition. The first volume has two hundred and forty-two folios in
double columns, the second two hundred and thirty-nine. It commences
with an epistle of St. Jerome, and on the last leaf of the second volume
is the colophon on the preceding page.
This book, one of the first worthy of the name, and which is called by
preference the Mayence Bible, appeared in one of the most troubled
epochs that the episcopal city had had to go through. Subject to its
archbishops, who were at the head of all the lay lords and fighting men,
the city found itself in 1462 the prey of two prelates of equal title
who refused to give way to one another: Thierry of Isembourg and Adolph
of Nassau-Wiesbaden. Adolph surprised Mayence on the 27th October, 1462,
pursuing his adversary, who scaled the walls with a rope to escape
quicker, and the city was sacked and pillaged from its foundations. In
the middle of this turmoil, what became of the obscure persons who were
then the printers of the Bible? Doubtless their insignificance saved
them from disaster, but as it was long before peace was re-established,
and the entire edition of their last volume could not be kept back, we
incline to believe that they were for a time going about the country as
itinerant booksellers. Paris was to them a well-indicated point of
travel--Paris, toward which all German commerce tended. The university
where Peter Schoeffer was instructed in letters, and that truly passed
for the first in Europe, appeared to them a market of the first order.
If we may believe Walchius (_Decas fabularum generis humani_:
Strasbourg, 1609, 4to, p. 181), John Fust himself went to that city,
where he put books on sale from sixty crowns a copy, then fifty, then
forty, according to the prevailing system in matters of discount. Fust
was above all things a merchant; he led it to be believed that he had
the marvellous establishment of a copyist beyond the Rhine, and he had
disposed of many copies, when the corporate scribes of the university,
becoming aware of the imposition, cried out furiously and declared it a
diabolical invention. We may now take this tale of Walchius as a fable,
as the registers of Parliament, on being consulted, rest silent on the
proceedings instituted against the "magician" of Mayence. Only we must
not lose sight of the fact that the booksellers had their masters, their
syndicate, if we may use the modern word, charged to prohibit fraudulent
publications. They were too much interested in the suppression of
printed books to judge the matter coldly. The Parliament had nothing to
see to in this.
The revolution of Mayence had otherwise great results, which were not
affected by these minor reverses. The printing workshops, or at least
the successors of Gutenberg, began to be dispersed, and Fust and
Schoeffer having established a school of printers in the city, their
trade was no longer secret. Deprived of their liberties by the new
Archbishop, many of them expatriated themselves. We shall take occasion
later to name some of these exiles, through whom the art of printing
spread itself almost simultaneously throughout the world: to Cologne and
Strasbourg, to Italy and Spain, without reckoning Holland, France,
Switzerland, and the country around Mayence. We have before named the
episcopal city of Bamberg; it had the singular fortune to be the second
city to possess a printing office, but it disappeared as quickly as it
was established, with Albert Pfister, without leaving the least trace;
we do not find printing there again before 1480, more than twenty years
later.
Gutenberg was dead before 1468. He was interred in the Church of the
Récollets of Mayence, by the pious care of a friend, who attributed the
invention of printing to him on his tomb.
We may begin to comprehend the influence of this man upon the discovery
of which all the world was then talking, but the troubles of the
archiepiscopal city hampered the respective merit of the inventors.
Peter Schoeffer and John Fust were not much affected by the political
crisis. After two years' suspension, they reappeared with a Cicero, _De
Officiis_, 1465, quarto, always at work and always surpassing
themselves. This time they freely gave up religious publications, and,
still more extraordinary, they employed Greek types.
Such is, detached from the incredible contradictions of writers on art,
and sketched solely on its main lines, the origin of printing as it is
established at this day. First came the image engraved in relief, which
we have not gone to China to find, with some of our predecessors. Upon
this image were often cut, by the same economical process, legends of
explanation that presented the idea of imitation of manuscript; and the
xylographs appeared with or without illustrations. Then from the
correction of errors in these books followed the discovery of movable
characters. This wooden type, possible when it was used with a _frotton_
for printing, would quickly break under the press, the idea of which was
gained from the common press of the wine-makers. Then a kind of metallic
type had to be found which would run in a mould struck by a punch. This
punch was not invented for the purpose; it served previously for the
makers of coins and seals. The fabrication of type from the matrix was a
simple adoption. The lead thrown into the matrix gave the desired type.
Thus were made the first books, of which we have briefly related the
composition.
As to the proportion of glory due to each one of the first printers, it
is necessary equally, to guard against error on one side or the other.
We have sought to separate from the heap of publications probable
opinions or those based on certain documents. That the origin of the
_Donatus_, the block books, was Dutch would be puerile to deny, because,
on one side, the engravings on blocks are surely of the school of Van
Eyck, and, on the other hand, Ulrich Zell, who inspired the "Cologne
Chronicle" of 1499, assigned positively to Holland the cradle of the
_Donatus_. At any rate, it was a pupil of Gutenberg, a question we have
discussed. After that we will trouble ourselves but little about Laurent
Coster. The name makes no difference in a matter of this kind.
As to Gutenberg, we have not been able to go as far as M. E. Dutuit, who
in his _Manuel a'Estampes_ (vol. i., p. 236, etc.) doubts Gutenberg's
right to the title of inventor. It is stated that in a letter of William
Fichet, prior of the Sorbonne, of whom we shall have more to say
presently, to Robert Gaguin, which M. A. Claudin found at the beginning
of a work entitled _Gasparim Pergamensis orthographiæ liber_, published
in 1470, nearly twenty years after the first work at Mayence, Gutenberg
is proclaimed the inventor of printing. Without any other, this
testimony of a _savant_ who was the first to bring the German printers
to Paris appears to us well nigh irrefutable.
As to John Fust and his grandson by marriage, Peter Schoeffer, they are
so well defended by their works, that there is no more to say here;
doubtless grave presumptions arise as to the delicacy of their conduct
with Gutenberg, but we are not so bold as to censure them beyond
measure. We know nothing precise either of the time or of the men.
Let us now imagine humble workmen, the most simple of _gens de
mestiers_, to employ the French expression then in use, shut up in a
kind of dark workshop, like a country forge, formed in little groups of
two or three persons, one designing and the other cutting the wood,
having near them a table, on which is held the engraved block after its
reliefs have been rubbed with sombre ink, who afterwards, by means of
the _frotton_, apply the damped paper to the raised parts of the block;
we shall have without much stretch of thought all the economy of the
xylographic impression. If we add to this primitive workshop the matrix
in which the types are cast, the box in which they are distributed, the
forme on which they are arranged to compose the pages, and a small
hand-press, with blacker ink and paper damped to permit the greasy ink
to take better, we have a picture of the work-room of Gutenberg, Fust,
and Schoeffer, and of the first printers with movable types.
Thus typography was born of painting, passing in its infancy through
wood-cutting, revolutionising ideas and somewhat the world. But the
mighty power of the new art was not confined to itself; it extended the
circle of engraving, which till then had suffered from the enormous
difficulties of reproduction. As if the time were ripe for all these
things, nearly at the moment when the first printers were distinguishing
themselves by serious works, a Florentine goldsmith accidentally
discovered the cutting of cast metal.[A] What would have become of this
new process if the presses of Gutenberg had not brought their powerful
assistance to the printing of engravings? It will be found then that
printing rendered a hundredfold to engraving for that which it received
from it and bore it along with its own rapid advance.
Then reappeared, following the new processes, the figures somewhat
abandoned by the Mayence workmen during the period of transformation.
Our object is to speak at length of the Book ornamented and illustrated
according to the means of relief-cutting or casting; to demonstrate the
influence of painting, of sculpture, of art, on the production of the
Book; and thus to help the reader at the same time to understand the
almost sudden and irresistible development of typography, and to mention
its foremost representatives.
[Footnote A: The opinion that Finiguerra was the unconscious inventor of
casting engravings is now abandoned.]
CHAPTER II.
1462 TO 1500.
The Book and the printers of the second generation--The German
workmen dispersed through Europe--Caxton and the introduction of
printing into England--Nicholas Jenson and his supposed mission to
Mayence--The first printing in Paris; William Fichet and John
Heinlein--The first French printers; their installation at the
Sorbonne and their publications--The movement in France--The
illustration of the Book commenced in Italy--The Book in Italy;
engraving in relief and metal plates--The Book in Germany: Cologne,
Nuremberg, Basle--The Book in the Low Countries--French schools of
ornament of the Book; Books of Hours; booksellers at the end of the
fifteenth century--Literary taste in titles in France at the end of
the fifteenth century--Printers and booksellers' marks--The
appearance of the portrait in the Book--Progress in England--Caxton
and his followers.
Considering the influence of printing on the book trade of the fifteenth
century, as referred to in the preceding pages, the dealers in
manuscripts were not disposed to give way at the first blow. An entire
class of workmen would find themselves from day to day without
employment if the new art succeeded; these were the copyists, miserable
scribes, who for meagre remuneration frequented the shops of the
merchants, where they transcribed manuscripts by the year. Before
printing the publication of books was so effected, and the booksellers
were rather intermediaries between the copyist and the buyer, than
direct dealers having shops and fittings complete. It is evident that
they would not provide themselves with these costly books long in
advance without being sure of disposing of them.
Small as was the remuneration of the writers, it was much to them; and
they were naturally the first to protest against the new invention. At
the same time, their opposition and that of the booksellers was soon
overcome, swamped, and choked by the growing crowd of printers. Then, as
always happens in similar cases, in place of fighting against the
current, most of the former workers in manuscript followed it. The
writers designed letters for engraving in wood, the booksellers sold the
printed works, and some of the illuminators engraved in relief or cast
their _histoyres_. For a long time these last continued to decorate
books with the ornamental drawings with which they had adorned the
manuscripts, and so contributed to form the fine school of illustrators
who carried their art to so high a point from the end of the fifteenth
century.
[Illustration: Fig. 8.--Imprint of Arnold Ther Hoernen, printer, of
Mayence.]
As previously related, the revolution of Mayence caused the flight of a
crowd of artisans who found their liberty suddenly compromised by the
conqueror. The want of money at this time always brought a diminution of
patronage, and working printers have been at all times tenacious of
their privileges. It so happened that their guild, in place of remaining
established at Mayence many years longer, was, as it were, turned out,
scattered to the four cardinal points by the dispersion of its members,
and scattered many years before the natural time. In point of fact, in
the common order of things, a workman here and there quits the principal
workshop to try the world. He makes his way timidly, unconscious apostle
of a marvellous art. If he succeeds, he gathers some pupils round him;
if he fails, no trace of him remains; in any case invention propagates
itself more gradually. With printing it was a thunderclap. Hardly had it
made its appearance when the exodus commenced. The greater part of the
Mayence men went to Italy: to Subiaco and to Rome, Arnold Pannartz,
Conrad Sweynheim, Ulrich Hahn; to Venice, John of Spire, Vendelin of
Spire, Christopher Valdarfer, Bernard Pictor (of Augsburg), Erhardt
Ratdolt, Peter Loslein; to Ferrara, Andrew Belfort; to Foligno, John
Neumeister; Henry Alding tried Sicily; Andrew Vyel, of Worms, printed
at Palermo. Lambert Palmart was at Valencia, in Spain, in 1477;
Nicholas Spindeler at Barcelona; Peter Hagenbach at Toledo; not far from
Mayence--that is, at Cologne--Ulrich Zell, a pupil of Gutenberg, who
dated his first work 1466. It was Arnold Ther Hoernen who numbered a
book with Arabic figures; it was Koelhof who first used signatures to
indicate to the binder the order of the sheets; it was at Eltvil that
Henry Bechtermuncze, as we have already said, printed his _Vocabularium_
in German, with the types of the _Catholicon_; at Basle, Berthold
Rüppel, of Hanau, was the first established in that city which after
Mayence did the most for printing; at Nuremberg, Koburger, who took
nearly the first rank among his contemporaries, set as many as
twenty-four presses to work, and was named by Badius the prince of
printers. And how matters went on! For instance, the very year that
followed the death of Gutenberg, monks, the Brothers of the Common Life
of Marienthal, in the Rheingau, themselves published a copy of the
indulgences accorded by Adolph of Nassau, Archbishop of Mayence. Before
1480, presses were everywhere in Germany: at Prague, Augsburg, Ulm,
Lubeck, Essling, etc.
It is to be remarked that the Mayence men did not turn towards Holland.
Is it that they found there the descendants of Laurent Coster firmly
established in their workshops? Must the coexistence, the simultaneous
advance, of the invention in Germany and in the Low Countries be
admitted? It is a secret for us and for many others, but we know for
certain that Flemish printers were established at Utrecht in 1473, at
Delft, Bruges, Gouda, Zwoll, Antwerp, and Brussels. At Louvain there
was besides John of Westphalia, who published in 1474 a work of Peter
Crescens, and several other works.
Colard Mansion was printing at Bruges about 1473; and was employed by
William Caxton, who had been for some years trading as a merchant in the
Low Countries, to print the "Recuyell of the Histories of Troy," by
Raoul Le Fevre, which Caxton had translated into English at the command
of Queen Margaret. This was issued in 1474, and was the first book
printed in the English language. In 1475 or 1476 Caxton returned to
England with a fount of types, which he had employed Mansion to cut and
cast for him, and established himself as a printer in the precincts of
Westminster Abbey. In 1477 he produced the first book printed in
England, "The Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers," followed by a
large number of important works, many of them written or translated by
Caxton himself. Thus was typography firmly established in England; and
Caxton's immediate successors, Wynken de Worde, Richard Pynson, William
Machlinia, have had a glorious roll of followers, which has never been
broken to this day. From Westminster the art spread in England to
Oxford, where Theodoricus Rood, from Cologne, printed an _Exposicio
Sancti Jeronimi_ in 1478; and to St. Albans in 1480 by a printer who has
never been identified, and who produced the famous "Chronicle" and "Boke
of St. Albans."
The invasion, we see, had been most rapid. In less than fifteen years,
every important city had followed the movement, and was ready to
establish printing offices. If we may credit a certain controverted
document, Charles VII. had on the 3rd of October, 1458, sent to Mayence
one of the best medal engravers of the Mint of Tours to study the
process of which marvels were spoken: "The 3rd of October, 1458, the
King having learned that Messire Guthenberg, living at Mayence, in the
country of Germany, a dexterous man in carving and making letters with a
punch, had brought to light the invention of printing by punches and
types, desirous of inquiring into such a treasure, the King has
commanded the generals of his mints to nominate persons well instructed
in the said cutting and to send them secretly to the said place to
inform themselves of the said mode and invention, to understand and
learn the art of them, in order to satisfy the said Lord King; and it
was undertaken by Nicholas Jenson, who took the said journey to bring
intelligence of the said art and of the execution of it in the said
kingdom, which first has made known the said art of impression to the
said kingdom of France" (Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, Hf 467, pp. 410,
411).
Nicholas Jenson on his return met with a cool reception from Louis XI.,
who did not continue the works of his father. It may be supposed that
this coolness was the cause of his expatriating himself and retiring to
a place where his industry could be better exercised. Ten years after
the above mission we find him established at Venice, his art of engraver
of letters joined to that of printer. His Eusebius, translated by
Trapezuntius, and his Justinian, were composed in 1470 with such
marvellous and clear types that from that day the best typographers have
imitated his founts. In spite of its success, he did not confine himself
to these letters, but he made use also of Gothic, in which he printed
by preference pious books.
[Illustration: Fig. 9.--Imprint of Nicholas Jenson to a Justinian,
printed in 1470 at Venice. This type has prevailed up to now.]
In spite of the attempts of Jenson in the name of the King of
France--that is, if these attempts ever took place in the manner
indicated above--the invention was not known to have commended itself to
the powerful university of Paris. In general, and especially for the
introduction of innovations in that learned body, it was necessary to
fight, to strike without much chance of success, save in case of having
acquaintance in the place. We have seen John Fust, obliged suddenly to
retake the road to Germany, in a fair way to find himself taxed with
sorcery, not an inconsiderable matter. For others the sale of
unauthorised books had had most unhappy consequences unless the
Parliament intervened. So ten years had passed since the journey of
Jenson, and ten or twelve since the first manifestations of typography
at Mayence, without the diabolical discovery finding admittance to the
Sorbonne. A still more extraordinary thing, a Cologne printer issued
about 1472 a small folio in Gothic type, thirty-one long lines to a
page, which was a work written in French. The _Histoires de Troyes_ of
Raoul Le Fevre, chaplain of the dukes of Burgundy, first found a
publisher in Germany, and soon after another in England, before a single
press was definitely installed at Paris.
As we have said of Peter Schoeffer, numerous German students were in the
university, where they pursued their studies, and frequently remained
later as masters. It has been found that in 1458 a former student of
Leipzig named John Heinlein, a native of Stein, in the diocese of Spire,
entered as regent of the college of Burgundy, from whence he passed to
the Sorbonne in 1462, the year of the troubles in Mayence. After the
manner of latinising names so common at that time, he called himself
Lapidanus, from the name of his native place, which means Stone in
German. Heinlein met in Paris a Savoyard, William Fichet, born in 1433
at Petit Bornand, who became an associate of the Sorbonne about 1461,
and finally rector in 1468. These two men were great friends, and their
particular instincts attracted them to men of elevated studies. They
divined at once the enormous help printing would bring to their work.
Besides, it grieved them to see through the whole of France, especially
in Touraine, German colporteurs carrying on their trade under cover of
other commerce, a practice from which the most grave inconveniences
might result. It occurred to them that to prevent fraud they would
themselves create a printing establishment; but if they deliberated on
it, it must have been in secret, for the registers of the Sorbonne are
silent on their enterprise. If Fichet conceived the idea, it may be
believed that, from his German origin, Heinlein put it into execution.
M. Philippe thinks that he was formerly at Basle. In all probability it
was from that city he tried to obtain his workmen. In 1468 six years had
elapsed since the craftsmen were dispersed and fled from Mayence. At all
events, it was from Basle that Ulrich Gering, Michael Freyburger, and
Martin Krantz, printers recommended to the two Sorbonnists, departed,
and in due course arrived in Paris. Of these three men, who were the
first to establish a printing office on the French side of the Rhine,
Ulrich Gering was a student as well as a printer, so was Freyburger,
originally of Colmar. Krantz was a letter-founder, and the only real
workman of the three companions.
We have often regretted with regard to these men, as also to Gutenberg,
Fust, and Schoeffer, that no really authentic portrait has transmitted
their features to us. Every one will recall the fur cap and loose
pantaloons of the mediocre statue at Mayence, but there is really no
portrait of Gutenberg. As to Gering, M. Philippe, in his _Histoire de
l'Origine de l'Imprimerie à Paris_, publishes a grotesque figure muffled
in the ruff of the sixteenth century, after a picture preserved at
Lucerne, but for which much cannot be said. Lacaille, in his _Histoire
de l'Imprimerie_, gives a full-length portrait of Gering, said to be
taken from a painting in the College Montagu.
The workshop of the three Germans was set up within the walls of the
Sorbonne--_in ædibus Sorbonnicis_--in 1469. There they set to work at
once, their printing establishment consisting simply of a room, none too
light, a table, a press, and formes. Krantz doubtless struck the types
chosen by the Sorbonnists, for there were then in use two sorts of
letters: German Gothic and Roman. They kept to the Roman, as being more
round and clear; and as soon as they obtained matrices and cast their
type, they entered on their task with ardour.
[Illustration: Fig. 10.--"Letters" of Gasparin of Bergamo. First page of
the first book printed at Paris, in 1470.]
The tendencies of Fichet and Heinlein were not towards transcendent
theology, but rather towards the literature of the ancients and
contemporary rhetorical works. Besides, it may be said, considering that
men are far from perfect, Fichet counted on making the authorised
presses serve his own purpose. We find him publishing a treatise on
rhetoric in quarto in 1471; meantime he supervised the work confided to
his artists. They commenced with a large volume of "Letters" of Gasparin
of Bergamo, which was set up in quarto with the Roman type, the form of
which had been accepted. At the end of the work, the impression of
which cost much time--possibly a year--the three printers placed a
quatrain in Latin distichs, which is at once a statement of identity and
a promise for the future.
[Illustration: Fig. 11.--Colophon in distichs in the "Letters" of
Gasparin of Bergamo, first book printed at Paris, at the office of the
Sorbonne.]
If we try to apportion to each of the three printers his share in the
making of the book, it may be supposed that the intellectual part of the
composition and the correction fell to Freyburger and Gering, while the
heavier work of founding, placing in formes, and press work fell to
Krantz. This essay, satisfactory as it appeared, was far from
perfection. The first Parisian printers had multiplied abbreviations and
irregular contractions, and enormous difficulties and inevitable faults
ensued. Further, either they had more than one punch, or the leaden
matrix was deformed, for the characters frequently differ. At the same
time, we must commend them for having used the _æ_ and _[oe]_, which
were uniformly written _e_ in the manuscripts, thus giving rise to
errors without number. Their punctuation was the comma, semicolon, and
full stop.
[Illustration: Fig. 12.--_Rhetorique_ of Fichet, printed at Paris in
1471. The marginal ornaments are drawn by hand.]
Fichet and Heinlein had become the modest librarians of the Sorbonne,
and this new employment gave them greater facilities for surveillance.
The printing office did not remain inactive. It issued successively the
"Orthography" of Gasparin of Bergamo, the "Letters" of Phalaris, two
books of Æneas Sylvius, the "Conspiracy of Catiline" of Sallust, the
"Epitome of Titus Livius" of Florus, and finally the "Rhetorics" of
William Fichet, which, if we may credit a letter addressed to Bessarion,
was finished in 1471. Following came the "Letters" of Bessarion, the
_Elegantia Latinæ Linguæ_ of Valla, the first folio volume from the
Sorbonne presses; and others, thirteen volumes in 1470-71 and seventeen
in 1472.
At the end of 1472 the workshop was somewhat broken up, Fichet having
left for Rome and Heinlein preaching in Germany. The three printers had
shown by their works that they were in earnest; besides, they had from
the first gratuitously distributed copies among the nobles, who, being
accustomed to pay highly for manuscripts, did not fail to note the
difference. The associates then resolved to quit the Sorbonne and create
an establishment for themselves; their patrons being no longer there to
sustain them in case of failure, and in giving up their presses and
types it may be judged that they were not without anxiety on that point.
Their oldest dated book, the _Manipulus Curatorum_ of Montrochet, was
also the first that they printed in their new quarters, at the sign of
the "Golden Sun" in the Rue St. Jacques. They remained united up to the
year 1477, when Gering alone printed at the "Golden Sun," but he
obtained associates, George Mainyal in 1480 and Berthold Rembold in
1494, who lived with him in the Rue de la Sorbonne, where he established
himself on leaving the Rue St. Jacques. Ulrich Gering died on the 23rd
of August, 1510, after a half-century of work.
The movement inaugurated by the Sorbonne was promptly followed. German
workmen opened their shops nearly everywhere in France; then the French
themselves scattered. At Lyons in 1472 a Frenchman was established, the
same at Angers, Caen, Metz, Troyes, Besançon, and Salins. But in the
central provinces we find Henry Mayer at Toulouse, John Neumeister at
Albi; in the east Metlinger at Dijon; and Michael Wensler, of Basle, at
Macon, among others, about 1493.
We have now arrived at an epoch of greater efforts. The Lyons printers
used ornamental letters, from which were developed engravings in the
Book. Since the block books illustration had been neglected, as the
means were wanting to distribute the plates here and there in the forme;
Schoeffer still employed initial letters in wood very like vignettes.
John Fust was now dead, but Peter Schoeffer continued to print without
intermission.
If we search for the precise epoch in which illustration appeared in the
history of the Book, we shall perhaps have to go back to the time of
Albert Pfister, printer of Bamberg, who issued in 1461 an edition of the
"Fables of Ulrich Bohner" with a hundred and one figures on wood. This
may be said to be the unconscious combination of xylography with
typography, a kind of transformation of old elements to new things
without other importance; art had no place in this adaptation.
Up to this time Germany had not, in its school of painters or
miniaturists, men capable of giving a personal impulse to ornament. In
the German editions of the block books the influence of Van Eyck had
made itself felt very sensibly, and the Flemish had preserved their
supremacy on this point; on the other hand, the German printers who went
to seek their fortune in Italy fell into the middle of a circle
admirably prepared to receive them and to communicate their ideas to
them. It is believed that the first book printed in Italy with woodcuts
in the text and with an ascertained date is the work of a German
established at Rome, Ulrich Hahn, in 1467. An account in the _Annuaire
du Bibliophile_, which, being without citation of authority, we quote
for what it is worth, relates that Ulrich Hahn was established as a
printer at Vienna about 1462, but was driven thence by the publication
of a pamphlet against the burgomaster of the city, and was attracted to
Rome by Torquemada, who confided to him the impression of his work the
_Meditationes_. Hahn was an engraver, as were also most of his
_confrères_ at that time--that is, he cut in relief designs to be
intercalated in the text--and Passavant relates that the designs of the
_Meditationes_ were from compositions of Fra Angelico, who died in 1455.
Be that as it may, the book, the printing of which was finished on St.
Sylvester's Day, 1467, is the first known with engravings, and only
three copies of it exist: one at Vienna, one at Nuremberg, and one in
Lord Spencer's library; it is composed in Gothic type in folio.
[Illustration: Fig. 13.--Wood engraving of Matteo Pasti for Valturius'
_De Re Militari_: Verona, 1472.]
Illustration found a true artist at Verona, Matteo Pasti, who furnished
designs for a volume on military art by Valturius, printed in Roman
characters in folio, at the expense of John of Verona, and dedicated to
Sigismond Pandolfi. Pasti's eighty-two figures are simple outlines, and
we here reproduce one of the principal--an archer shooting at a butt.
Published in 1472, the volume of Valturius followed soon after the
_Meditationes_, but the engravings enable us to see how the Italian
process, consisting mostly of lines without shadows, differed from the
Dutch and German. One thing to be remarked here is the purity of the
design, in spite of the roughness of the engraving; we see in these
figures Italian art at its height, despite the somewhat coarse
translation of the wood-cutter.
At Venice the German inventors had reaped their harvest. At the end of
the fifteenth century, fifty years after the invention of typography,
the printing offices and booksellers' shops were counted by hundreds. It
was in this city that for the first time a title with frontispiece
carrying indication of the contents, the place, the date, and the name
of the printer, was given to the Book. We give here this ornamental
title, placed before a _Calendario_ of John de Monteregio, printed by
Pictor, Loslein, and Ratdolt in 1476, folio.
The German Erhardt Ratdolt was probably the promoter of these
innovations. He soon afterwards published the first geometrical book
with figures, the "Elements of Euclid," 1482, folio; in the same year he
produced the _Poeticon Astronomicum_ of Hyginus, previously printed at
Ferrara, with illustrations on wood of excellent design, but laboriously
and unskilfully engraved. Yet the art of the Book could not remain
mediocre in this city, where the artists were creating marvels. John of
Spire and afterwards Nicholas Jenson, the emigrant from France, of whom
we have spoken above, had created, after Italian manuscripts, that Roman
letter, the primitive type of which has come down to our time very
little retouched. At the death of Jenson in 1481, his materials passed
into the hands of Andrew d'Asola, called Andrea Torresani, who did not
allow the good traditions of his master to die, and who produced among
others a book bearing signatures, catchwords, and paging ("Letters of
St. Jerome," 1488). Torresani was the father-in-law of Aldus Manutius,
who was to be for ever illustrious in the art of printing at Venice, and
raised his art to the highest perfection.
[Illustration: Fig. 14.--Title-page of the _Calendario_, first
ornamental title known. Printed in 1476 at Venice.]
But if decoration by means of relief blocks found a favourable reception
in Italy and, above all, a group of artists capable of carrying it to
success, there were at the same time other experiments conceived in a
different way. The discovery of Maso Finiguerra gave to the art a new
process of reproduction, and printing presses had now to render possible
and practicable the working of engraved plates. In order to make that
which follows comprehensible, we enter into a few technical details, the
whole subject having been so admirably and fully treated by MM.
Delaborde and Duplessis.
In the engraved wood block, as in the printing type, it is a projection
in the wood or metal which, being inked and passed under a press, leaves
on paper its lines in black. Naturally then the intercalation of an
engraving of this kind in typographical composition is made without
difficulty, and the impression of both is taken at once. On the other
hand, a line engraving is obtained from incised lines on a plate of
copper; that is, an instrument called a burin traces the lines, which
are filled with greasy ink. These incised lines only are inked. The
surface of the plate is cleaned off to avoid smudging. The sheet of
paper destined for the impression has then to be made very pliable, so
that at the striking of the press it runs, so to speak, to find the ink
in the lines and hold it. It is therefore impossible to take a text from
relief characters at the same time as an engraved plate.
[Illustration: Fig. 15.--Engraving on metal by Baccio Baldini for _El
Monte Santo di Dio_, in 1477.]
However, this kind of reproduction, which, contrary to that from
wood, allowed of half-tints or toning down, attracted in good time
the workers at the Book. It appeared to them possible to reconcile
the two printings by the successive passage of the same sheet of
paper through the press, to receive at first the impression from the
type and afterwards to find the ink deposited in the incisions in the
copper. The first manifestation of this new method of illustration was
made at Florence, the home of line engraving, by Nicholas di Lorenzo
in 1477, for the work of Antonio Bettini, of Siena, called _El Monte
Santo di Dio_. Here the artists were never known. Common opinion has
it that Baccio Baldini borrowed from Sandro Botticelli the subjects of
his plates. Italian engraving always seeks its source in Pollajuolo,
Botticelli, and Baldini. It is not the simple work of a niellist,
but it had not yet reached perfection either in the work or in the
impression; the illustrations of the _Monte Santo_ are proof of this,
as are also those of the _Dante_, by Baldini, in 1481, for the same
Nicholas di Lorenzo. From this we reproduce the Misers.
[Illustration: Fig. 16.--Metal engraving by Baccio Baldini from the
Dante of 1481.]
At this epoch engravings from the burin were taken with a pale ink, the
composition of which is very different from the fine black ink of
Schoeffer as well as of the old Italian printers. And besides in most
cases the proofs were obtained with the _frotton_, like the ancient
block books, an eminently defective process. The press was not yet well
adapted to the delicate work of line engraving, and the workmen, who did
not apply the plates until after the text was printed, preferred not to
risk the loss of their sheets by the use of inappropriate presses.
These, with the insignificant attempts made by the Germans in 1479,[A]
are the beginnings of the process of line engraving in the ornamentation
of the Book. In fact, the process failed to take its due position for
want of a more convenient mode of working. Relief engraving had got
ahead; with it the sheets used for the impression did not require
working more than once to register the figures with the text; in a word,
the labour was not so great. A century had to pass before line engraving
completely dethroned the vignette on wood, a century in which the latter
attained its height, and showed what able artisans could make of a
process apparently the least flexible.
[Footnote A: _Breviarium ecclesie Herbipolensis_: Et. Dold., 1479,
folio, copper plate engravings.]
Not to leave Italy, which had the honour of making the book with
engraved illustrations known to the world, we pass by some years,
during which Arnold Bucking gave at Rome a _Cosmographia_ of Ptolemy,
1478, with incised plates, which is the first printed atlas that was
produced, whilst as regards ordinary publications there appeared in all
parts classical and Italian works, such as Cicero, Virgil, Tacitus,
Pliny, Eusebius, among the ancients, and Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio,
etc., among moderns. Among the editions of Dante, we may cite that of
Peter of Cremona, dated 18th November, 1491, with one engraving to
each canto, of which the earlier are after Botticelli, and perhaps
drawn by him directly on the wood. Passavant believes these figures
to be cut in relief in the metal. On some of the plates there is a
signature, a Gothic b, the signification of which leaves a free
field for conjecture, and perhaps for error. Copies of this book with
the complete series of twenty plates are extremely rare; one in the
Hamilton Palace Library sold in May, 1884, for £380; the Royal Library
of Berlin recently agreed to pay £1,200 for a proof set of the plates.
[Illustration: Fig. 17.--Plate from the _Hypnerotomachia Poliphili_,
printed by Aldus Manutius, in 1499.]
As we shall see later apropos of German vignettes of the same period,
the characteristic of Italian engraving was sobriety, the complete
absence of useless work and the great simplicity of the human figure.
This special manner will be found in the famous edition of the
_Hypnerotomachia Poliphili_ of Francis Colonna, printed in 1499 by
Aldus, copied sixty years later by a French printer, and lately
reproduced in reduced size.
[Illustration: Fig. 18.--Plate from Bonino de Bonini's Dante, at
Brescia, in 1487.]
The Italian illustrators, whether they were working in wood, or, as some
writers have it, in metal, adroitly brought their figures forward by
contrasting some rudimentary work in the persons with the more
accentuated and often stippled ground, which formed a dark background.
This was also the ordinary process in their ornaments, among the most
interesting of which are the borders of the plates to an edition of
Dante by Bonino de Bonini, Brescia, 1487, of which a specimen is here
reproduced.
If we return from Italy, which then took the lead, to Germany, a school
of _Formschneiders_ is found about the year 1470 at Augsburg, whose
secluded workshops were of no benefit to the booksellers. These
ill-advised artisans went still further. Apparently furious to see
printing so widely spread as to render their bad woodcuts difficult to
get rid of, they united in a body to interdict Gunther Zainer and
Schüssler from putting engravings into their books. They must
nevertheless have come to an ultimate arrangement, for Zainer printed in
1477 a book on chess by Jacopo da Cessole, with vignettes. He was one of
the few German printers who employed Roman characters in place of the
Gothic of Peter Schoeffer. At Cologne in 1474 Arnold Ther Hoernen
published a work entitled _Fasciculus Temporum_, with small
illustrations engraved on wood. A Bible without date contains most
interesting illustrations. As to the celebrated _Todtentantz_, or "Dance
of Death," published about 1485, it contains forty-one relief plates of
the most ordinary kind, the same as in the "Chronicle of Cologne" of
1499, of which the figures, though less German, less distorted, are
worth little compared with those of the Nuremberg books, more German,
but more artistic.
[Illustration: Fig. 19.--The creation of woman, plate from the
_Schatzbehalter_, engraved after Michael Wolgemuth.]
At Nuremberg, Antony Koburger, called by Badius the prince of
booksellers, directed an immense establishment, employing more than a
hundred workmen, without counting smaller houses at Basle and Lyons.
Koburger was a capable and a fortunate man. He had at first put forth a
Bible very indifferently illustrated with the cuts of the Cologne Bible,
but he had before him something better than copying others. Michael
Wohlgemuth, born at Nuremberg in 1434, was then in the full vigour of
his talent. To his school the young Albert Dürer came to study; and as
he was able to draw on wood as well as to engrave on copper and paint on
panel, Koburger was attracted to him, and engaged him to make a set of
illustrations for a book. The projected work was the _Schatzbehalter_, a
sort of ascetic compilation, without interest, without arrangement.
Michael Wohlgemuth set to work; and, thanks to the ability of his
engravers, of whom William Pleydenwurff was probably one, Koburger was
able to put the book on sale in the course of 1491 in three hundred and
fifty-two folios of two columns. Without being perfection, the designs
of Wohlgemuth, very German, very striking, present the vigour and merit
of the future school of Nuremberg. The figure is no longer a simple
line, in the manner of the block books, but a combination of interlaced
cuttings, intended to imitate colour. Those representing the creation of
Eve and the daughter of Jephthah are here reproduced. In the search for
harmony between the text and engravings of this curious work, we shall
find grace and gaiety laid aside, on the other hand a freedom and
boldness that interest and permit us to appreciate at their value the
Nuremberg artists and Koburger, the printer. In fact, the German artists
are more individual, each one taken by himself, than the Italian
illustrators could be, condemned as they were to the hierarchical
commonplace and to a certain form of idealism into which the art of
Italy entered little by little. The German painters, naturalists and
believers, presented their heroes in the image of that robust nature
that was before their eyes. It was in this rude and unpolished spirit
that Michael Wohlgemuth decorated the _Schatzbehalter_; he also composed
the designs for the "Nuremberg Chronicle" of Dr. Hartman Schedel,
printed by Koburger in 1493.
[Illustration: Fig. 20.--The daughter of Jephthah, plate taken from the
_Schatzbehalter_, engraved after Michael Wolgemuth.]
With Dürer, at the latter end of the fifteenth century, the Book was no
more than a pretext for engravings. Thausing, his biographer, says that
the great artist felt the necessity of designing an Apocalypse at Rome
at the time that Luther was premeditating his religious revolution in
face of the worldly splendours of the pontifical court. The
"Apocalypse," published in 1511 in Latin, with Gothic characters, was an
album of fifteen large wood engravings. The Four Horsemen is the best of
these plates, and the boldest; but in this gross fancy, in these poor
halting old hacks, the fantastic and grand idea which the artist meant
to convey can hardly be seen. It may be said the genius of Dürer was
little adapted to vignettes, however large they were, and did not easily
lend itself to the exigencies of a spun-out subject. The title of his
"Apocalypse" is of its kind a curious example of German genius, but, in
spite of its vigour, it does not please like an Italian headpiece or
like a French or Flemish frontispiece. The other works of Dürer
published in the fifteenth century, "The Life of the Virgin" and "The
Passion," were also sets of prints that received a text in the sixteenth
century.
[Illustration: Fig. 21.--Title of the "Apocalypse," by Albert Dürer,
printed in 1498. First edition, without text.]
[Illustration: Fig. 22.--Title of Sebastian Brandt's "Ship of Fools,"
printed in 1497 at Basle by Bergman de Olpe.]
[Illustration: Fig. 23.--The _Bibliomaniac_. Engraving from the "Ship of
Fools."]
For the rest of his illustrations Dürer belongs to the sixteenth
century, and we shall have occasion to recur to his works. At present it
remains to speak of a curious work printed at Basle by Bergman de Olpe
in 1497, which appears to be the first comic conception of fifteenth
century artists: the _Navis Stultifera_, or "Ship of Fools," of
Sebastian Brandt. This work of the school of Basle lacks neither
originality nor vigour. At the time when it was published its success
was immense, from the strange tricks of its clowns, with fools' caps,
with which every page was adorned. Alas! the best things fall under the
satire of these jesters, even the Book and the lover of books, if we may
judge by the sarcasms against useless publications volleyed by the
personage here reproduced. "I have the first place among fools.... I
possess heaps of volumes that I rarely open. If I read them, I forget
them, and I am no wiser." Brunet sees in these humorous caricatures more
art than is really to be found in them. Their value is owing more to
their spirit and humour than to any other artistic merit. Even the
engraving is singularly fitted to the subject, with its peculiar
cutting, somewhat executed in hairlines. The designer was certainly not
a Holbein, but he is no longer the primitive artisan of the first German
plates, and his freedom is not displeasing.
We have before spoken, apropos of engraving by the burin in Italy, of
the small share of Germany in the essay at illustration by that means,
and we do not see a real and serious attempt in the two little coats of
arms in copper plate in the _Missale Herbipolense_, printed in 1479.
The Flemish had not taken any great flights in the midst of this almost
European movement. The school of Burgundy, whose influence was felt in
all the surrounding countries, had lost its authority in consequence of
the progress realized at Mayence. Without doubt the great Flemish
artists were there, but they were honoured painters, and their
inclination did not descend to seeking the booksellers beyond making
them offers of service. Besides, the first of these, officially
established in Flanders, were two Germans, John of Westphalia and John
Veldener, of Cologne, who established themselves in the university of
Louvain in 1473, three years after the first Paris printers. John of
Westphalia, who took his own portrait for his mark, edited the
_Fasciculus Temporum_, a book which had enormous success in the
fifteenth century.
At Haarlem, in spite of the block books attributed to Laurent Coster,
illustration was backward. About 1485, a Dutch translation of the
_Malheurs de Troye_ of Le Fevre was put on sale. This French book was
published at Cologne before France possessed the smallest typographical
workshop. At Bruges Colard Mansion illuminated the cuts of his
_Metamorphoses_ of Ovid in 1484. Simple engraving appeared to him far
remote from manuscripts of which the vogue had not yet passed away. At
Zwoll Peter van Os, the publisher, cut up and used the xylographic
plates of the _Biblia Pauperum_, while the master _à la navette_, John
of Cologne, an artist in the best sense of the word, was ornamenting
certain popular publications with his designs. At Utrecht Veldener came
from Louvain to establish a workshop. He published for the second time a
_Fasciculus_ in 1480; he created a style of decoration with flowers and
leaves, which shortly after developed into the trade of
_Rahmenschneiders_. Antwerp had attracted Gerard de Leeu from Gouda, and
he produced the romance of _Belle Vienne_. Schiedam had an inventive
engraver who illustrated an edition of the _Chevalier Delibéré_ of
Oliver de la Marche, in folio, with Gothic letters, after 1483, as we
read in the colophon:--
"Cet traittié fut parfait l'an mil
Quatre cens quatre vings et trois
Ainsi que sur la fin d'avril
Que l'yver est en son exil,
Et que l'esté fait ses explois.
Au bien soit pris en tous endrois
De ceulx à qui il est offert
Par celui qui _Tant a souffert_,
La Marche."
The French language, bright and harmonious, thus found hospitality in
other countries. For many examples of French books published abroad, we
cannot cite one German work printed in France. Spreading from the north
to the south, typography had from 1490 its two principal centres at
Paris and Lyons. After the success of the three Germans at the Sorbonne,
events took their own course. In 1474 Peter Cæsaris and John Stol, two
students who had been instructed by Gering and Krantz, founded the
second establishment in Paris, at the sign of the "Soufflet Vert;" and
they printed classical works. Ten years later appeared Antony Vérard,
Simon Vostre, and Pigouchet, the first of whom gave to French
bookselling an impulse that it has not since lost; but before them
Pasquier-Bonhomme published his _Grandes Chroniques_ in 1476, three
volumes folio, the oldest in date of books printed at Paris in French.
The French school of illustration was at its most flourishing point at
the end of the fifteenth century, but solely in miniature and
ornamentation by the pencil. The charming figures of the manuscripts had
at this time a Flemish and naturalistic tendency. The most celebrated
of the great artists in manuscripts, John Foucquet, could not deny the
source of his talent nor the influence of the Van Eyck school, yet the
touch remained distinctly personal. He had travelled, and was not
confined to the art circles of a single city, as were so many of the
earliest painters of Flanders. He had gone through Italy, and from
thence he transported architectural subjects for his curious designs in
the _Heures_ of Etienne Chevalier, now at Frankfort; a precious fragment
of it is preserved in the National Library of Paris. Side by side with
this undoubted master, whose works are happily known, lived a more
modest artist: John Perréal, called John of Paris, painter to Charles
VIII., Louis XII., and Anne of Brittany.
In joining with these two masters, to serve as a transition between
Foucquet and Perréal, John Bourdichon, designer to the kings of France
from Louis XI. to Francis I., we obtain already a not despicable
assemblage of living forces. Without doubt these men were not comparable
either with the admirable school of Flanders, or the Germans of
Nuremberg, or the masters of Italy; but, moderate as we may deem their
merit, they did their tasks day by day, painting miniatures, colouring
coats of arms, rendering to the kings, their masters, all the little
duties of devoted servants without conceit, and preparing, according to
their means, the great artistic movement in France of the seventeenth
century. That these men, leaving the brush for the pencil, devoted
themselves to design figures on wood, is undeniable. It is said that one
of them followed Charles VIII. to the Italian wars, and probably
sketched the battles of the campaign as they took place. Now in the
books published at this epoch in France we meet with vignettes which so
very nearly approach miniatures, that we can easily recognise in them
French taste and finish. Such are, for example, the illustrations of the
_Mer des Histoires_, printed by Le Rouge in 1488, where suppleness of
design is blended in some parts with extraordinary dexterity in
engraving. Nevertheless, others leave something to be desired; they maim
the best subjects by their unskilful line and their awkwardness of
handling. Were not these engravers on wood printers themselves: the
Commins, Guyot Marchants, Pierre Lecarrons, Jean Trepperels, and others?
We are tempted to see in certain shapeless work the hasty and light
labour of an artisan hurried in its execution. As mentioned above, the
part taken by the booksellers in the making of the plates does not make
our supposition in itself appear inadmissible.
[Illustration: Fig. 24.--Mark of Philip Pigouchet, French printer and
wood engraver of the fifteenth century.]
Printing had been established about twenty years in Paris when Philip
Pigouchet, printer and engraver on wood, began to exercise his trade for
himself or on account of other publishers. Formerly bookseller in the
University, he transported his presses to the Rue de la Harpe, and took
for his mark the curious figure here reproduced. At this moment a
veritable merchant, Simon Vostre, conceived the idea of putting forth
Books of Hours, until then disdained in France, and of publishing them
in fine editions with figures, borders, ornaments, large separate
plates, and all the resources of typography. The trials made at Venice
and Naples between 1473 and 1476 warranted the enterprise. Entering
into partnership with Pigouchet, the two were able on the 17th of April,
1488, to place on sale the _Heures à l'Usaige de Rome_, octavo, with
varied ornaments and figures. The operation having succeeded beyond
their hopes, thanks to the combination of the subjects of the borders,
subjects that could be turned and re-turned in all ways so as to obtain
the greatest variety, Simon Vostre reapplied himself to the work, and
ordered new cuts to augment the number of his decorations. Passavant's
idea is commonly received that the engraving was in relief on metal; the
line in it is very fine, the background stippled, and the borders
without scratches. Wood could not have resisted the force of the press;
the reliefs would have been crushed, the borders rubbed and broken. In
all the successive editions hard work and wear are not remarked, and we
are forced to admit the use of a harder material than the pear or
box-wood of ordinary blocks.
According to his wants, Simon Vostre designed new series of ornaments.
Among them were histories of the saints, Biblical figures, even
caricatures against Churchmen, after the manner of the old sculptors,
who thought that sin was rendered more horrible in the garb of a monk.
Then there were the Dance of Death and sibyls, allying sacred with
profane, even the trades, all forming a medley of little figures in the
margins, in the borders, nestled among acanthus leaves, distorted men,
fantastic animals, and saints piously praying. The Middle Ages live
again in these bright and charming books, French in their style, imbued
with good sense and perfect toleration.
[Illustration: Fig. 25.--Border in four separate blocks in the _Heures à
l'Usaige de Rome_, by Pigouchet, for Simon Vostre, in 1488. Small
figures from the "Dance of Death."]
The Book rose under Simon Vostre and Philip Pigouchet to the culminating
point of ornamentation. Here design and engraving improve and sustain
each other. It is not only the stippled backgrounds of the borders that
please the eye. And who was this unknown designer, this painter of bold
conceptions, whose work is complete in little nothings? However, the
large full-page figures have not always an originality of their own, nor
the French touch of the borders. Thus that of the Passion here
reproduced is inspired line for line by the German, Martin Schongauer.
Are we to suppose, that duplicates of blocks passed between France and
Germany, or was a copy made by a French designer? It is difficult to
say. Still the coincidence is not common to all the missals of the great
Parisian bookseller. The Death of the Virgin here reproduced is an
evident proof of it. It forms part of the 1488 book, and is a truly
French work.
[Illustration: Fig. 26.--Plate copied from Schongauer's Carrying of the
Cross, taken from the _Heures_ of Simon Vostre.]
[Illustration: Fig. 27.--The Death of the Virgin, plate taken from the
_Heures_ of Simon Vostre, printed in 1488. The border is separate.]
It may be said that from the artistic association of Philip Pigouchet
and Simon Vostre was born the art of illustration of the Book in France;
they worked together for eighteen years, in steady collaboration, and,
as far as we know, without a cloud. At Vostre's commencement in 1488 he
lived in the Rue Neuve Notre Dame, at the sign of "St. Jean
l'Evangeliste;" and in 1520 he was still there, having published more
than three hundred editions of the Missal, according to the use of the
several cities.
Contemporary with Simon Vostre, another publisher was giving a singular
impulse to the Book by his extreme energy, true taste, and the aid of
first-class artists. Antony Verard, the most illustrious of the old
French booksellers, was a writer, printer, illuminator, and dealer. Born
in the second half of the fifteenth century, he established himself in
Paris on the Pont Notre Dame, both sides of which were then covered with
shops, and about 1485 commenced his fine editions with a "Decameron" in
French by Laurent de Premierfait. M. Renouvier remarks in his notice of
Verard that his first books were not good, the plates were often
unskilful, and were probably borrowed or bought from others; this may be
very well understood in a beginner whose modest resources did not permit
bold enterprises; the figures were in most cases groundworks for
miniatures, outlines and sketches rather than vignettes.
[Illustration: Fig. 28.--Border of the _Grandes Heures_ of Antony
Verard: Paris, 1498 (?).]
Antony Verard was accustomed to take a certain number of fine copies on
vellum or paper of each book published by him, in which authorised
painters added miniatures and ornaments. It is curious now to find what
the cost to one of the great lords of the court of Charles VIII. was of
one of these special copies in all the details of its impression, and we
find it in a document published by M. Senemaud in a provincial journal
(_Bulletin de la Société Archéologique de la Charente_, 1859, part 2, p.
91), which enables us at the same time to penetrate into a printing
office of a great French publisher of the fifteenth century. According
to this document, Verard did not disdain to put his own hand to the
work, even to carrying the book to the house of his patron if he were a
man of consequence. It is an account of Charles de Valois-Angoulême,
father of Francis I. He was then living at Cognac; and he ordered Verard
to print separately for him on vellum the romance of Tristan, the "Book
of Consolation" of Boetius, the _Ordinaire du Chrétien_, and _Heures en
François_, each with illuminations and binding. In the detail of
expenses Verard omits nothing. He reckons the parchment at three sous
four deniers the sheet, the painted and illuminated figures at one écu
the large and five sols the small. We give here the outline of one of
the plates of the Tristan, ordered by the Duc d'Angoulême, reduced by
two-thirds, and from it it may be judged that the profession of the
illuminator, even for the time, was by no means brilliant. The binding
was in dark-coloured velvet, with two clasps with the arms of the Duke,
which cost sixty sous each. The work finished, Verard took the route for
Cognac, carrying the precious volumes. He was allowed twenty livres for
carriage; and this brings the total to 207 livres 10 sous, equivalent to
£200 to £240 of present money.
[Illustration: Fig. 29.--Plate from the Tristan published by Antony
Verard, a copy of which was illuminated for Charles of Angoulême.]
Verard had preceded Simon Vostre in the publication of books of hours,
but his first volume dated 1487 was not successful for the want of
borders and frontispieces. At the most he had introduced figures
intended for illumination, which, as well as the vignettes, were cut in
wood. In 1488, the same year that Simon Vostre commenced his
publications, Verard put forth, by "command of the King our lord," the
book called the _Grandes Heures_, which is in quarto, Gothic letter,
without paging, twenty lines to the full page. This _Grandes Heures_
contained fourteen engravings, large borders in four compartments,
smaller subjects and initials rubricated by hand. He also published more
than two hundred editions between 1487 and 1513, and among them the
_Mystère de la Passion_, with eighty figures; the _Grandes Chroniques_,
in three folio volumes, printed by John Maurand; the _Bataille Judaïque_
of Flavius Josephus; the _Legende Dorée_ of Voragine, all books for
which he called to his aid rubricators, illuminators, and miniaturists.
From the first he had two shops where he put his productions on sale:
one on the Pont Notre Dame, the other at the Palace of Justice, "au
premier pilier devant la chapelle où l'on chante la messe de
messeigneurs les présidents." From 1499, when the Pont Notre Dame was
burned, Verard transported his books to the Carrefour St. Severin. At
his death in 1513 he was living in the Rue Neuve Notre Dame, "devant
Nostre-Dame de Paris."
[Illustration: Fig. 30.--Page of the _Grandes Heures_ of Antony Verard:
Paris, fifteenth century.]
Besides Verard, Vostre, and Pigouchet, many others will be found who
imitated them in the publication of books of hours. The first was John
du Pré, who published a Paris missal in 1481, and who was at once
printer and bookseller. Like Pigouchet, Du Pré printed books of hours on
account of provincial publishers, without dreaming of the competition he
was creating for himself. The encroachments of the publishers upon one
another, the friendly exchanges, the loans of plates and type, form one
of the most curious parts of the study of the Book. Thielman Kerver, a
German, also began to put forth books of hours in 1497 in Paris,
ornamenting them with borders and figures on wood, and modelling his
work completely upon that of Simon Vostre. But after having imitated
him, he was associated with him in the publication and sale of the Paris
Missal; the competition of these men was evidently an honest one, or the
sale of pious works was sufficient to maintain all engaged in it.
Established on the Pont St. Michel, at the sign of the "Unicorn," he
sold his stock to Gilles Remacle about the beginning of the sixteenth
century.
Thielman Kerver in his own works shows himself as the rival of Simon
Vostre. The Hardouins, who followed the same profession, do not appear
to have attained the success of their predecessors; and, excepting in
the _Heures à l'Usage de Rome_, published in 1503 by Gilles Hardouin on
the Pont au Change, at the sign of the "Rose," they servilely imitated
them. There was also among the disciples of Vostre William Eustache,
bookseller to the King, "tenant la boutique dedans la grant salle du
palais du costé de messeigneurs les présidens, ou sur les grans degrés
du costé de la conciergerie à l'ymage St. Jean levangeliste." Eustache
made use of the work of Pigouchet and Kerver, not to mention the
printers of the end of the fifteenth century.
We have named the principal, the fortunate ones; but what becomes of the
crowd of other publishers whose hopes vanished before the success of
Vostre and Verard? There were Denis Meslier, with his quarto _Heures de
Bourges_, and Vincent Commin, bookseller of the Rue Neuve Notre Dame,
who thus appealed to his customers:--
"Qui veult en avoir? On en treuve
A tres grand marché et bon pris
A la Rose, dans la rue Neuve
De Nostre-Dame de Paris."
[Illustration: Fig. 31.--Plate from a book of hours of Simon Vostre,
representing the massacre of the Innocents.]
There were also Robin Chaillot, Laurent Philippe, and a hundred others
whose names have died with them or are only preserved on the torn pages
of their works.
[Illustration: Fig. 32.--Dance of Death, said to be by Verard. The Pope
and the Emperor.]
[Illustration: Fig. 33.--Dance of Death of Guyot Marchant in 1486. The
Pope and the Emperor.]
But if books of this kind found vogue and a large sale at this epoch,
the dealers did not keep to pious publications only. By a singular
mixture of the sacred and the profane, the bookmen put on sale on their
stalls the "Decameron" of Boccaccio as well as the "Hours of the
Immaculate Virgin," and the purchasers thought fit to make the
acquaintance of the one as well as the other. Besides, the end of the
fifteenth century had its literary preferences, its alluring titles, its
attractive frontispieces. At the commencement of the present century
double titles--"Atala; or, The Child of Mystery;" "Waverley; or, Sixty
Years Since"--were common, although now out of fashion. Since then came
books of travels--_Voyages au Pays des Milliards_, etc. In the fifteenth
century, and even since the fourteenth, a series of titles was in public
favour. There was first the _Débats_, or "Dialogues:" _Débat de la Dame
et de l'Escuyer_, Paris, 1490, folio; "Dialogue of Dives and Pauper,"
London, Richard Pynson, 1493; and many other eccentric titles. There
came also thousands of _complaintes_, a kind of lay in verse or prose;
_blasons_, light pieces describing this or that thing; _doctrinals_,
that had nothing to do with doctrine. And among the most approved
subjects, between the piety of some and the gaiety of others, the Dances
of Death established themselves firmly, showing, according to the
hierarchy of classes then prevalent, Death taking the great ones of the
earth, torturing equally pope, emperor, constable, or minstrel,
grimacing before youth, majesty, and love. Long before printing
appeared, the Dances of Death took the lead; they were some consolation
for the wretched against their powerful masters, the revenge of the
rabble against the king; they may be seen painted, sculptured,
illuminated, when engraving was not there to multiply their use; they
may be seen largely displayed on walls, sombre, frightful, at Dresden,
Leipzig, Erfurt, Berne, Lucerne, Rouen, Amiens, and Chaise-Dieu. It was
the great human equality, attempted first by the French, then by the
inimitable Holbein.
We can imagine the impression these bitter ironies made on the oppressed
and disdained lower classes. The first "Dance of Death" was produced by
Guyot Marchant in 1485, in ten leaves and seventeen engravings, in
folio, with Gothic characters. Marchant describes himself as "demeurant
en Champ Gaillart à Paris le vingt-huitiesme jour de septembre mil
quatre cent quatre-vingtz et cinq." The book must have gone off rapidly,
for it was republished in the following year, with additions and new
engravings. French illustration was already moving forward, as may be
judged by the reproductions here given from the folio edition of 1486.
Pope and emperor, glory and power, are led and plagued by Death, hideous
Death, with open body and frightful grin.
We could wish that the tendencies and processes of what may be called
the second generation of printers were well understood. In a few years
they surmounted the difficulties of their art, and made the Book a model
of elegance and simplicity. The smallest details were cared for, and
things apparently the most insignificant were studied and rendered
practical. Speaking of titles, an enormous progress was here made in the
publications of the end of the century. In Italy the subjects of
decoration ordinarily formed a framework for the front page, wherein
were included useful indications. The most ancient specimen of this kind
has already been referred to. A model of this species is the "St.
Jerome," published at Ferrara by Lorenzo Rossi, of Valenza, in 1497,
folio; the title, much adorned, is in Gothic letters; the engraved
initial is very adroitly left in outline, so as not to burden or break
the text.
In Germany there was already the appearance of bad taste and
prodigality, the letters crossing each other, the Gothic type covered
with bizarre appendices, the titles intricate; later they became
illegible even for the Germans.
[Illustration: Fig. 34.--Typographical mark of Thielman Kerver.]
In France the first page gave the most circumstantial indications of the
contents of the work, the name and abode of the printer and bookseller.
Often these titles were ornamented with movable frameworks, printed in
Gothic, sometimes in two colours, which necessitated two printings, one
for the black and one for the red ink. The mark of the printer or
publisher generally appeared, and it was nearly always a charming work.
These French marks were all more or less treated heraldically; that is
to say, the initials occupy a shield, sustained by supporters and cut
with extreme care. The first was that of Fust and Schoeffer at Mayence,
of admirable simplicity and grace. In France this early specimen of the
trade mark took with Simon Vostre and Verard the shape of delicate
illustrations, finely designed and carefully engraved; but the custom of
allusive marks did not prevail, as we shall have occasion to see, until
the sixteenth century. The mark of Pigouchet has already been given;
that of Thielman Kerver is conceived in the same principles of taste and
art. The sign of his house being the "Unicorn," Kerver took as
supporters to his shield two unicorns _affrontées_.
In these colophons are found philosophic aphorisms, satirical remarks,
marvels of poetry. A certain bookseller paid court to the powerful
university, which dispensed glory and riches to the poor tradesmen by
buying many books. Andrew Bocard engraved on his mark this flattery as a
border:--
"Honneur au Roy et à la court,
Salut à l'université
Dont nostre bien procède et sourt.
Dieu gart de Paris la cité!"
The Germans introduced into their colophons some vainglorious notices.
Arnold Ther Hoernen, already mentioned, who printed the _Theutonista_ at
Cologne in 1477, boasted in it of having corrected it all with his own
hands. Jean Treschel, established at Lyons in 1493, proclaims himself a
German, because the Germans were the inventors of an art that he himself
possessed to an eminent degree. He prided himself on being what we may
call a skilled typographer; "virum hujus artis solertissimum," he writes
without false modesty. At times, in the colophons of his books, he
attempted Latin verse, the Sapphic verse of Horace, of a playful turn,
to say that his work was perfected in 1494.
"Arte et expensis vigilique cura
Treschel explevit opus hoc Joannes,
Mille quingentos ubi Christus annos
Sex minus egit.
Jamque Lugduni juvenes, senesque,
Martias nonas celebres agebant
Magna Reginæ quia prepotenti
Festa parabant."
[Illustration: Fig. 35.--Frontispiece to Terence, published by Treschel
at Lyons in 1493. The author writing his book.]
The portrait is another element of illustration, the figure of the
author prefixed to his work. It had already been a custom in the
manuscripts to paint on the first leaf of the work the likeness of him
who composed it, frequently in the act of presenting his book to some
noble patron; and in this way is often preserved the only known portrait
of either patron or author. Printing and engraving rendered these
effigies more common, the portraits of one often served for another, and
the booksellers used them without very much scruple. As we shall see
later, this became in the sixteenth century a means of illustrating a
book plainly, but only at the time when the portrait, drawn or painted,
commenced to be more widely used. Previously the _clichés_ of which we
speak went everywhere, from the Italians to the French, from Æsop to
Accursius; these uncertain physiognomies began with the manuscript
romances of chivalry, from whence they were servilely copied in
typography. From the first the Italians mixed the ancient and the
modern. Thus in a _Breviarium_, printed in 1478, there is an engraved
portrait of Paul Florentin. On the same principle, the portrait of
Burchiello, an early Italian poet, was later reproduced in England as a
likeness of William Caxton.
In France the author is often represented writing, and it was so up to
the middle of the sixteenth century. In an edition of _Des Cas des
Nobles Hommes_, by Jean Dupré, in 1483, Boccaccio is represented seated,
having before him his French translator, Laurent de Premierfait. This
plate is one of the oldest representations of authors in French books.
In the _Roman de la Rose_, first edition of Paris and Lyons, in folio,
probably published by William Leroy about 1485, William de Lorris, the
author, is shown in his bed:--
"Une nuyt comme je songeoye,
Et de fait dormir me convient,
En dormant un songe m'advint...."
[Illustration: Fig. 36.--Woodcut from Caxton's "Game and Playe of the
Chesse."]
There is also a portrait of Alain Chartier in his _Faits_, printed in
1489. In the Terence of Treschel, of Lyons, in 1493, we see a grammarian
of the fifteenth century in a furnished room of the time occupied in
writing at a desk; this is Guy Jouvenal, of Mans, the author of the
commentary.
[Illustration: Fig. 37.--The Knight, a woodcut from Caxton's "Game and
Playe of the Chesse."]
While this good work was progressing so nobly in France, Italy, and
Germany, the typographers of England were by no means idle, although the
illustration of the Book in the fifteenth century was not there so
forward. William Caxton had produced over sixty works, the colophons of
many of them revealing much of the personal life and character of the
first English printer. Some of them were ornamented with woodcuts; we
reproduce two from the "Game and Playe of the Chesse," printed in folio,
about 1476. The first represents a king and another person playing at
chess; the smaller cut is a representation of the knight, who is thus
described in Caxton's own words: "The knyght ought to be maad al armed
upon an hors in suche wise that he have an helme on his heed and a spere
in his right hond, and coverid with his shelde, a swerde and a mace on
his left syde, clad with an halberke and plates tofore his breste, legge
harnoys on his legges, spores on his heelis, on hys handes hys
gauntelettes, hys hors wel broken and taught, and apte to bataylle, and
coveryd with hys armes." The other Caxton block which we reproduce is a
representation of music from the "Mirrour of the World," a thin folio
volume of one hundred leaves printed in 1481, with thirty-eight
woodcuts. These specimens will serve to show the rudimentary character
of English wood engraving in the fifteenth century. No authentic
portrait of Caxton is known, and the one that is generally accepted is
really a portrait of an Italian poet, Burchiello, taken from an octavo
edition of his work on Tuscan poetry, printed 1554; this was copied by
Faithorne for Sir Hans Sloane as the portrait of Caxton, and was
reproduced by Ames in his "Typographical Antiquities," 1749. Lewis
prefixed the portrait here given to his "Life of Mayster Willyam
Caxton," 1737, which is a copy of Faithorne's drawing with some
alterations. John Lettou and William Machlinia issued various statutes
and other legal works.
[Illustration: Fig. 38.--Music, a woodcut from Caxton's "Mirrour of the
World."]
[Illustration: Fig. 39.--William Caxton, from Rev. J. Lewis' "Life."]
[Illustration: Fig. 40.--Mark of Wynken de Worde.]
Wynken de Worde continued printing up to 1534, and issued over four
hundred works. He used no less than nine different marks, all of them
bearing Caxton's initials, evidencing the regard of the pupil for his
master; the mark which we reproduce is one of rare occurrence. Richard
Pynson began in 1493, and continued well into the sixteenth century, and
was one of the first of the "privileged" printers, authorised to issue
the legal and parliamentary publications. One of the marks used by him
is here reproduced. Julian Notary began in 1498. The only style of
illustration used by any of these early printers was the woodcut, and of
this there was very little beyond the title-page and printer's mark. The
artistic form of the Book originated on the Continent, but England was
not slow to adopt it and fashion it to her own ends.
[Illustration: Fig. 41.--Mark of Richard Pynson.]
Thus was printing spread abroad, carrying with it to the countries where
it was established the rules of an unchangeable principle; but,
according to its surroundings, it was so transformed in a few years that
its origin was no longer recognised. It was light in Italy, heavy in
Germany, gay in France. Painting, of which it was accidentally the
issue, returned to it under the form of illustration a short time after
its first and fruitful essays. The Gothic character, generally used in
Germany, continued in France with the Vostres, the Verards, and others
up to the middle of the sixteenth century, although the first artisans
before this used Roman type; it was also the prevailing type used in
English books. In Italy it was Jenson, a Frenchman, who gave to the
matrix the alphabet preserved to the present time; and it was the
Venetians and Florentines who learned before all others the art of
judicious ornamentation of the Book. The French came very near
perfection, thanks to their printers and booksellers, at the end of the
century; and the Germans found illustrious artists to scatter their
compositions in their large, heavy works.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER III.
1500 TO 1600.
French epics and the Renaissance--Venice and Aldus
Manutius--Italian illustrators--The Germans: _Theuerdanck_,
Schäufelein--The Book in other countries--French books at the
beginning of the century, before the accession of Francis
I.--Geoffroy Tory and his works--Francis I. and the Book--Robert
Estienne--Lyons a centre of bookselling; Holbein's Dances of
Death--School of Basle--Alciati's emblems and the illustrated books
of the middle of the century--The school of Fontainebleau and its
influence--Solomon Bernard--Cornelis de la Haye and the
_Promptuaire_--John Cousin--Copper plate engraving and metal
plates--Woériot--The portrait in the Book of the sixteenth
century--How a book was illustrated on wood at the end of the
century--Influence of Plantin on the Book; his school of
engravers--General considerations--Progress in England--Coverdale's
Bible--English printers and their work--Engraved plates in English
books
Our simple division into chapters will be understood without difficulty
as not corresponding exactly with the most momentous epochs in the
history of the Book in France and abroad. Doubtless it would be easy for
France alone to find some limits and to furnish scholastic formulæ by
which contemporary publishers might be grouped. But in order to present,
as in a synoptical table, an essential and abridged sketch of the Book
in all European countries, it appeared to us more convenient to begin
with the confused and tangled notions by centuries and to unfold in our
review the characteristic facts of each country conjointly. Moreover,
after the sixteenth century neither Italy nor Germany could compare with
France, which, less fortunate, perhaps, at the beginning than her
neighbours, surpassed them in all the pride of her genius.
The commencement of the sixteenth century found the French army in
Italy, under the command of Louis XII. Marching from glory to glory, the
French successively saw Pisa, Capua, and Naples, and that which has
since been called the Renaissance displayed itself little by little to
the conquerors. At Venice was living Aldus Pius Manutius, then the
greatest printer of the entire world. Aldus was proprietor of the
celebrated printing office of Nicholas Jenson, through his
father-in-law, Andrea Torresani, of Asola, who acquired it on the death
of the French printer; and he had in a few years reached a position in
which he was without a rival. We have seen that he composed, at the end
of the fifteenth century, the admirable volume _Hypnerotomachia_, the
renown of which became universal. Aldus was fifty-two years of age,
having been born in 1447; and his learning was increased by daily
intercourse with learned Italians, among them the celebrated Pico de la
Mirandola. His establishment at Venice in 1488 had for its object the
creation of a chair in Greek, in which language he was well instructed
from his youth. Occupied with the idea of issuing editions of the
principal Greek writers, which up to then remained in manuscript, he
engaged himself in the formation of a printing office. He first
published the _Herone et Leandro_ of Musæus in 1494, quarto, in a Greek
character apparently designed by him, and perhaps engraved by Francisco
da Bologna; then the Greek grammar of Constantine Lascaris, with the
date of 1494; and the works of Aristotle in five folio volumes. At the
time of the Italian wars Aldus was making a revolution in typography, by
producing more practical sizes and finer characters, which would permit
a volume of the smallest height to contain the matter of a folio printed
with large type. Legend says that the new letters were copied exactly
from the handwriting of Petrarch, inclining like all cursive writing;
the name of _Italic_ was given to this character, which was also called
_Aldine_, from its inventor. It was engraved by Francisco da Bologna.
Aldus published in octavo size, with this kind of letter, an edition of
Virgil in 1501, then a Horace, a Juvenal, a Martial, and a Petrarch in
the same year. The following year, 1502, he gave an edition of the
_Terze Rime_ of Dante, and for the first time took as his typographical
mark an anchor encircled by a dolphin.[A]
[Footnote A: Tory in his _Champfleury_ explains thus the mark of Aldus
and his device, which was in Greek the "Make haste slowly" of Boileau:
"The anchor signifies tardiness, and the dolphin haste, which is to say
that in his business he was moderate."]
[Illustration: Fig. 42.--The anchor and dolphin, mark of Aldus Manutius,
after the original in the _Terze Rime_ of 1502, where it appears for the
first time.]
His marriage with the daughter of Andrea Torresani, of Asola, brought
together into his possession two printing houses. The burden became too
heavy for Manutius to think henceforth of publishing by himself.
Besides, the wars did not allow him any repose, of which he bitterly
complained in his prefaces. He attracted learned Greek scholars, who
supervised, each one in his specialty, the works in progress, and
founded a society, an Aldine academy, in which the greatest names of the
epoch were united. Aldus conveys the perfect idea of a great printer of
those times, doing honour to celebrated men, in spite of business
preoccupations and of the annoyance caused by the war. It is said that
Erasmus, passing through Venice, called on him, and not making himself
known, was badly received by the powerful printer. All at once, at the
name of the distinguished visitor, Aldus, overwhelmed for an instant,
rose in great haste and showed him how highly he appreciated men of
letters.
The war finished by ruining this state of affairs. In 1505 Aldus quitted
Venice to travel, and on his return found it poorer than when he went
away. Andrea d'Asola, his father-in-law, came to his aid; but the great
printer had received his death-blow; and in spite of the activity which
he brought to the new establishment, he further declined until 1515,
when he expired, leaving an inextricable confusion to his son Paul.
He had early abandoned illustration for the scientific and useful
in his publications; besides, the size of book chosen by him did
not admit of plates; but other publishers employed artists in the
ornamentation of the Book. Lucantonio Giunta, the most celebrated among
them, was printer and engraver, a striking example of the affinity
of the two trades from their origin. In 1508 Lucantonio Zonta, as he
then spelt his name, published a Roman breviary in large quarto, with
twelve engravings in the Lombardo-Venetian manner, signed "L. A.," in
very good style. The same artist-publisher cut a portrait of Virgil for
an edition of that poet about 1515. Furthermore, Giunta did not alone
illustrate the book from his own office. Other designers lent him their
assistance. We find evidence of this in the Bible printed by him in
1519 in small octavo.
[Illustration: Fig. 43.--Mark of Lucantonio Giunta, of Venice.]
The most meritorious of the artists of Venice at this time was John
Andrea, known as Guadagnino. He designed the vignettes for Florus's
epitome of Livy, printed at Venice for Melchior Sessa and Peter of
Ravenna (1520, folio); in 1516 he copied the plates of Dürer's
_Apocalypse_ for that of Alexander Paganini, of Venice. A Venetian work
which signalised the beginning of the sixteenth century was the _Trionfo
di Fortuna_ of Sigismond Fanti, of Ferrara, printed by Agostino da
Portese in 1527.
Venice was the home of Titian, and at the present time the great artist
was at the height of his glory. In 1518 two brothers, Nicholas and
Dominic dal Gesù, published a translation of the celebrated "Golden
Legend" of Voragine. The plates which were added to the work were
manifestly inspired by the school of the Venetian master. Unhappily the
engravers have not always equalled the genius of the drawings.
To resume, the city of Venice was, at the beginning of the sixteenth
century, one of the most prolific in publishers and artists of talent.
Since the first establishments of the Germans, typography had
successively employed in Venice Nicholas Jenson, a Frenchman, inventor
of the Roman character; Erhard Ratdolt, the first to employ illustration
there; and Aldus Manutius, scholar and printer, whose progress in
printing elevated that art to the highest rank among human discoveries;
there were also remarkable engravers and draughtsmen, among others
Guadagnino and Giunta, besides the anonymous masters of the school of
Titian. The part of Venice in the movement, then, was great, but it may
be explained by the riches of its citizens, the extent of its commerce,
and the genius it possessed.
If we now return from Venice to the north, to Milan, the school of
Leonardo da Vinci will make itself apparent in the Book. In order of
date we will mention the _Mysterii Gesta Beatæ Veronicæ Virginis_,
published by Gotardo de Ponte 1518, small quarto, with figures in the
style of Luini, and Vitruvius in Italian by Cesariano. On the testimony
of the author, the wood engravings in a book of Fra Luca Pacioli, _De
Divina Proportione_, are attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. M. Delaborde
does not believe this, but M. Passavant does.
[Illustration: Fig. 44.--Title of the _Theuerdanck_. The flourishes of
the letters are printed.]
In Germany, Nuremberg continued, with Albert Dürer and the artists of
his school, to furnish book illustrations at the beginning of the
century. The master reprinted his valuable engravings of the "Life of
the Virgin" in 1511, and also the "Apocalypse." But after him the art
commenced to decline; a hundred years later nothing remained of the
honour and glory gained by Germany in the commencement. Among the most
interesting of the Nuremberg publications is a chivalric poem by
Melchior Pfinzfing, composed for the marriage of Maximilian and Mary of
Burgundy. As M. Delaborde in his _Débuts de I'Imprimerie_ well remarks,
this is not a book destined for sale by a bookseller; it is a work of
art destined by an emperor for his friends, and he saw that it was an
unapproachable work.
[Illustration: Fig. 45.--Plate taken from the _Theuerdanck_,
representing Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy. Engraved on wood after
Schäufelein.]
Bold strokes, majestic letters, intertwined ornaments, are here
multiplied. Three persons worked upon it for five years; these were,
Peutinger says, Hans Leonard Schäufelein, the painter, Jost Necker, the
engraver, and Schönsperger, the printer of Augsburg, who quitted his
native city for Nuremberg. When they were able to take a proof,
craftsmen were unwilling to believe it to be a book composed in movable
characters; they were sure, on the contrary, that it was a true
xylograph, cut in wood; and, in fact, from the title here reproduced,
the error was excusable. This work, which is now called the
_Theuerdanck_, from the name of the hero of the romance, is ornamented
with a number of wood engravings, numbered by Arabic figures. We
reproduce one of the last plates, in which Theuerdanck--Maximilian--is
introduced to the Queen--Mary of Burgundy. The designs of Schäufelein
recall very nearly the work of Albert Dürer, his master; but, as we said
of him, these works, heavy and dull, although very clever, do not always
suit as vignettes. Again, our criticism does not extend so much to the
_Theuerdanck_, whose letters, excessively ornamented and much flattened,
furnish a framework more suitable for the engravings than would a more
slender character, which would be completely overshadowed by the German
plate.
When we have mentioned the _Passional Christi_ of Lucas Cranach,
published by J. Grünenberg at Wittemberg in 1521--twenty-six mediocre
wood engravings--we shall have cited the most important of the
interesting and rare volumes published in Germany at the commencement of
the sixteenth century.
The Netherlands, Spain, and England were working, but without great
success. In the Low Countries Plantin and his gigantic enterprises may
be recalled. In Spain the taste had not yet developed itself; and
although the drawing of illustrations may be careful enough, the
wood-cutting is pitiable. We will mention the Seneca of Toledo in 1510,
and the "Chronicle of Aragon" in 1523. Of England we will speak later.
In France, on the contrary, we find an enormous commerce in books at the
commencement of the sixteenth century. All the publishers mentioned in
the preceding chapter were still living, and they were feeling the
effects of the French conquests in Italy. The dithyrambic literature
then inaugurated, and which had its origin under Louis XII., exercised a
bad influence equally upon the printers and decorators of the Book.
Doubtless the composition of the text and engravings was done hastily,
for the great people did not like to wait for this kind of history. _Le
Vergier d'Honneur_, written by Octavian de St. Gelais and Andry de la
Vigne, was thus published about the end of the fifteenth century and
ornamented with hasty vignettes, probably at the expense of Antoine
Verard. Upon the accession to the throne of Louis XII., Claude de
Seyssel, his master of council, composed _Les Louenges du Roy Louis
XII._, and soon after translated it from Latin into French for the same
Verard, who printed it in 1508.
The taste for historical works induced the publishers to produce _La Mer
des Histoires_, which had already been published in the fifteenth
century; Thielman Kerver put forth the "Compendium" of Robert Gaguin in
1500 on account of Durand Gerlier and John Petit. The French version of
this work was given in 1514 by Galliot du Pré, with vignettes, and
afterwards under the name of _Mirouer Historial_, by Renaud Chaudière in
1520, by Nyverd, and others; the same with the _Rozier Historial_, with
figures, in 1522 and 1528. Among the most popular works was the
_Illustrations de la Gaule et Singularitez de Troye_, by John le Maire
de Belges, printed in Paris and ornamented. In 1512 it was published by
Geoffroy de Marnef, in 1515 by John and Gilbert de Marnef, by Regnault,
by Philip le Noir, and others, always in the Gothic characters which
prevailed in France at the beginning of the sixteenth century.
We give from the curious book of John le Maire an interesting woodcut
representing Queen Anne of Brittany as Juno, in which we can without
much difficulty see a remarkable sketch by a Bourdichon or a Perréal.
The truly French style of this figure leaves no doubt as to its origin.
At the same time, it may possibly have been inspired by the Virgin of a
German master, say one of 1466, judging from the accessories, and even
from the pose. This engraving will be found in the edition of 1512 of
Gilbert de Marnef, in Gothic letter, quarto. On the reverse are the arms
and device of John le Maire de Belges.
[Illustration: Fig. 46.--Vignette taken from the _Illustrations de la
Gaule et Singularitez de Troye_. Queen Anne of Brittany as Juno.]
The time that elapsed from the death of Louis XI. until the accession of
Francis I.--that is to say, from 1483 to 1515--was, to employ an old
expression, the golden age of French printing and illustration. Under
Charles VIII. and Louis XII. the designers on wood were not yet affected
by the neighbouring schools; neither the accentuated Italian influence
nor the German processes had reached them; they did in their own way
that which came to them, and they did it in their own fashion and habit,
without foreign influence. Further, the kings did not ignore them, and
Louis XII. preserved to the printers of the university all their rights
and privileges in a magniloquent ordinance, in which the art of
typography was extolled in the highest terms. It restores to them all
the advantages that they had lost. It recites, "In consideration of the
great benefit that has come to our kingdom by means of the art and
science of printing, the invention of which seems more Divine than
human, which, thanks to God, has been invented and found in our time by
the help and industry of booksellers, by which our holy Catholic faith
has been greatly augmented and strengthened, justice better understood
and administered, and Divine service more honourably and diligently
made, said, and celebrated, ... by means of which our kingdom precedes
all others," etc., etc. (Blois, 9th April, 1513). Certainly Louis made
the best of himself and his kingdom in this preamble, but it must be
recognised that France already held a predominant rank in the new
industry, and that beyond the Italians she had no fear of serious
rivalry. The school of ornamentists made constant progress. Before the
books of hours, the booksellers contented themselves with miserable
blocks, placed side by side, forming a framework of good and bad
together; but after Simon Vostre, Verard, and the others they were
singularly refined. The borders, at least in the books of hours, had
become the principal part of the book; they had in them flowers,
architectural, complicated, and simple subjects, all of perfect taste
and extreme elegance; and, as we have observed in the representation of
Anne of Brittany in the _Illustrations de la Gaule_, the figure subjects
were no longer mechanical, commonplace, and tiresome blocks, but, on the
contrary, more often works specially designed and engraved by artists of
merit.
[Illustration: Fig. 47.--Title of the _Entree d'Eléonore d'Autriche a
Paris_, by Guillaume Bochetel. Printed by Geoffroy Tory in May, 1531,
quarto.]
Geoffroy Tory, born at Bourges in 1480, continued after Vostre and
Verard the onward march of illustration of the Book. He was a sort of
encyclopædist, who knew and foresaw everything, but with a singularly
subtler and finer genius than his predecessors. There is now very little
doubt that at first Tory was an engraver and printer. Moreover, he
published with Jean Petit one of his first volumes, the geography of
Pomponius Mela, printed by Gilles de Gourmont in 1507. Tory was then an
erudite and diffusive commentator. Later he published a book with poor
engravings (_Valerii Probi Grammatici Opusculum_, 1510), waiting until
his good star should place him on the right road. He had for his mark,
say the bibliographers, the cross of Lorraine [Symbol: double cross],
small enough to be lost in the ornamentation of his plates. Really this
sign is found in Tory's mark--the "Pot Cassé"--the broken jar--and also
sometimes in the letter G, which was his ordinary signature. This
opinion, which we will not try to contradict in a popular work like
this, appears to us to err, as others used this mark, as may be judged
from the essentially different touches of engravings bearing the cross
of Lorraine, and particularly those of Woériot in the middle of the
century.
If M. A. Bernard[A] may be credited, Geoffroy Tory cultivated all the
sciences with equal success. For our purpose, suffice it to recognise
his right to one of the first places in the art of decoration of books
of hours. Doubtless his travels in Italy had contributed to modify his
taste and to detach him a little from the sober and simple manner that
then characterised French engraving; but he nevertheless preserved the
indelible traces of the origin of his art, in the same way as some
people cannot correct their provincial accent. The _Heures de la
Vierge_, which he designed, and which he had engraved about 1520, on
account of Simon de Colines, is marvellously surrounded by ornaments,
until then unknown in France; at the same time, and in spite of other
tendencies, it is purely a French work, and the specimen given here is a
convincing proof.
[Footnote A: _Geoffroy Tory, Peintre et Graveur, Premier Imprimeur
Royal, Réformateur de l'Orthographe et de la Typographie_: Paris, 1857,
8vo.]
[Illustration: Fig. 48.--Full page of the _Heures_ of Simon de Colines,
by Tory.]
[Illustration: Fig. 49.--_Heures_ of Geoffroy Tory. The Circumcision.]
[Illustration: Fig. 50.--_Heures_ of Simon de Colines, with the mark of
the Cross of Lorraine.]
Geoffroy Tory composed a curious book, as poetic as learned, in which he
studied at once the form of the letter from the typographic and the
emblematic point of view, and also the French orthography of the time.
He tells us himself that he was brought to commence this book on the
fête-day of the kings, 1523, when, after a frugal repast, he was, he
says, "dreaming on my bed and revolving my memory, thinking of a
thousand little fancies, serious and mirthful, among which I thought of
some antique letters that I had made for Monseigneur the treasurer for
war, Master Jehan Grolier, councillor and secretary of our lord the
King, amateur of fine letters and of all learned personages." Tory
called his book _Champfleury, auquel est contenu l'art et science de la
deue proportion des lettres ... selon le corps et le visage humain_, and
he published it himself in small folio, putting upon it the sign of
Gilles de Gourmont, in 1529.
At heart Tory had been fascinated by the theories of Dürer on the
proportions of the human body; and he says, "The noble German painter
Albert Dürer is greatly to be praised that he has so well brought to
light his art of painting in designing geometrical forms, the ramparts
of war, and the proportions of the human body." He wished to indicate
the true measure of letters to his contemporaries, "the number of points
and turns of the compass that each one requires." The most amusing part
of this curious treatise is his short academical preface, where, under a
playful form, the great publisher studies the orthography of his time,
and exclaims against the forgers of new words, the Latinisers of the
language, "the skimmers of Latin, jesters and gibberers, ... who mock
not only their shadows, but themselves." The entire passage was copied
by Rabelais, nearly literally, and it indicates that its author was
possessed of good sense, which, unhappily, all his contemporaries were
not.
For the technical part, he added to his theories a number of designs of
geometrical letters, but he was carried away, after the fashion of the
time, by Greek and Roman models, perhaps a little further than he meant,
losing himself in the midst of idle dissertations. To these geometrical
engravings he added small and charming figures, said to be by Jean
Perréal, as well as emblematical letters of the nature of the Y which is
here given, with explanatory text and commentary. To him this Y had two
branches: one of virtue and one of vice; that of virtue shows palms,
crowns, a sceptre, and a book; that of vice birches, a gallows, and
fire.
[Illustration: Fig. 51.--Emblematical letter Y, taken from the
_Champfleury_ of Geoffroy Tory.]
With the importance that cannot be denied to his works, Geoffroy Tory
founded a school; and it was from his workshop that the plates came for
the book of Paulus Jovius on the dukes of Milan, published by Robert
Estienne in 1549, quarto. The portraits of the dukes in this work have
been attributed to Tory himself, but he died in 1533, and there is not
the least indication that he engraved these sixteen portraits with his
own hand sixteen years before their publication. Besides, our doubts as
to the cross of Lorraine being the exclusive signature of Tory, as has
been believed, lead us to think it the collective mark of a workshop,
as we meet it on works long after the death of the master. As a proof,
the mark is found on the engravings of _L'Entrée du Roi à Paris_ in
1549, which cannot be taken as a posthumous work of Tory, for these
engravings had their origin at a certain and special date. But in spite
of the absence of the monogram, the admirable block from the Diodorus
Siculus of Antoine Macault might, from its design and engraving, be
considered as by Tory himself. Holbein, who, about the same time,
designed a somewhat similar scene, the King of France seated on a
throne receiving poison from the hands of Death, never did anything
better. Within the scanty proportions of the design, all the figures
are portraits. Duprat, Montmorency and the three sons of the King may
be recognised; Macault, on the left, is reading his translation to a
circle of nobles and men of letters. This admirable page is one of the
truest and most skilful of the monuments of French engraving; it is
equal to the best inventions of Holbein, and it marks the culminating
point of the illustration of the Book before the exaggerations of the
school of Fontainebleau. Geoffroy Tory was not the publisher. The
Diodorus Siculus, doubtless prepared two or three years before, was not
published until 1535, in quarto, with his ordinary mark of the "Pot
Cassé."
[Illustration: Fig. 52.--Macault reading to Francis I. his translation
of Diodorus Siculus. Wood engraving attributed to Tory.]
We have now arrived through him at the reign of Francis I., who was
called the father of letters, and who for various reasons favoured the
arts. Doubtless grand paintings and the decoration of the royal palaces
interested him more than vignettes in books and the efforts of printers;
but, at the same time, books occupied him. He studied much, and in his
travels accumulated many volumes. An account in the French National
Archives shows that Claude Chappuis, his librarian, packed entire cases,
which were sent to Dauphiné at the time of the wars of Piedmont, the
carriage costing twenty livres tournois. Francis had, moreover,
following sudden impulses, curious fits of wantonness and mischief. It
was perceived a little later that the doctrines of Luther were
propagated by the Book; and the Sorbonne was up in arms, on the pretence
of imposing its own expurgated text of the Bible on the publishers and
tolerating no other. Theodore Beza, enemy of the Sorbonnists, said with
regard to this (we translate the antique French literally), "Our great
doctors with cherubic visage have forbidden men to see the Holy Bible in
vulgar language, of which every one has knowledge, because, they say,
the desire of knowing everything engenders nothing but error, fear, and
care. _Arguo sic_, if they so, for its abuse, wish to take away this
book, it is clear also that it is their duty to put away the wine with
which each of them makes himself drunk."
[Illustration: Fig. 53.--Robert Estienne, after the engraving in the
_Chronologie Collée_.]
This piece is only cited to show to what lengths matters had gone,
thanks to printing. It is very certain that all the pamphlets, placards,
and other horrors published to raise religious warfare, did not aid in
the progress of the Book. The King was not always disinterested on the
technical question; books merited encouragement, at least as much as
castigation, and besides, as time passed, they gradually transformed men
and ideas. In spite of apparent severities, was not the King himself a
little touched by contact with the new religion, like his sister
Marguerite, or his sister-in-law, Renée of Ferrara? However that may be,
he twice showed himself a resolute partisan of the celebrated Robert
Estienne, son-in-law and associate of Simon de Colines, whose works in
point of erudition and typography assumed day by day more importance.
Robert Estienne had the great honour of being chosen from all his
contemporaries by King Francis as the royal printer. This prince had
ordered to be engraved for him by Claude Garamond, after the design of
Ange Vergèce, the first cutter of matrices of his time, a special Greek
character in three sizes, which was used in 1544 to compose the
"Ecclesiastical History" of Eusebius. These are the famous royal
types--_typi regii_--as Estienne did not fail to indicate on the
title-pages of his works. It has been said since that Francis I. founded
the Royal Printing House, but the truth is that Estienne kept these
characters in his own office for use in the royal editions; they may now
be seen in the Imprimerie Nationale at Paris.
Robert Estienne married the daughter of Josse Badius, of Asch--Badius
Ascencianus, one of the first Parisian typographers of the time. We
reproduce the mark of Badius, representing the interior of a printing
house, and shall return in a special chapter to the functions of these
workshops. Meantime it appears proper to present to the reader a
printing office of the time of Robert Estienne and Geoffroy Tory.
[Illustration: Fig. 54.--Printing office of Josse Badius at the
commencement of the sixteenth century.]
Robert Estienne does not appear to have concerned himself much about the
decoration of the Book. The purity of the text and the characters were
essentials with him, erudition, and not art. He published many works in
Latin and Greek, among them the _Thesaurus_, a great Latin dictionary
published in 1532, also a Bible, with notes by Vatable, revised by Leon
de Juda. From that came trouble. Leon de Juda was a partisan of Zwingli;
the Sorbonne accused the Bible of leaning towards the Huguenots;
Francis I. took the part of Estienne, but when that prince died Estienne
fled to Geneva, where he was accused of having imported the royal types.
The truth was that he simply imported the matrices.
[Illustration: Fig. 55.--Portrait of Nicholas Bourbon. Wood engraving of
the commencement of the sixteenth century.]
At this time everything served for the decoration of the Book:
portraits, blazons, topographical plates, costumes, and emblems. Small
portraits engraved on wood usually ornamented the works of the poets,
like that of Nicholas Bourbon, for example, marvel of truth and skill.
The blocks of frontispieces in the folios were multiplied; large initial
letters, ingeniously engraved and stippled, like that at the
commencement of this chapter, were used. Jacques Kerver reproduced in
1545 for himself, and with plates made for him, the famous _Songe de
Poliphile_, published by Aldus in 1499. The widow of the publisher Denis
Janot, Jeanne de Marnef, published one of the most delightful books of
the time, _L'Amour de Cupidon et de Psyche_ of Apuleius, with delicious
figures in wood after Italian engravings. Many more could be named in
the extraordinary profusion of charming books.
[Illustration: Fig. 56.--King and Death. Vignette from the "Dance of
Death" by Holbein.]
Without entering into detail, something must be said of Lyons, then a
most extensive and prosperous centre of bookselling. Lyons had the
signal honour of publishing first in France the celebrated cuts of the
"Dance of Death" of Holbein, the Basle painter. Doubtless Treschel, the
printer, was not the first, as a copy of a German edition is known,
because in the Lyons edition the cuts are worn and broken. However, the
Cabinet d'Estampes of Paris has some of the figures of the Dance with a
German text, probably printed by Froben at Basle. Treschel's title was
_Les Simulachres et Historiées Faces de la Mort autant elegamment
pourtraictes que artificiellement imaginées_, and the volume in quarto
was printed by Frelon. The _Icones veteris testamenti_, which preceded
the publication of the "Dance of Death," had also been printed at Basle
before Lyons.
With Holbein, as with Geoffroy Tory, we arrive at the zenith of
illustration and marvellous skill of the engraver. If we were to
institute comparisons, it was Hans Lutzelburger who cut the blocks after
the designs of the Basle master, but, contrary to what generally
happens, the translator reaches almost to the height of his model; the
line is perfection itself, it is precise and intelligent, simple, and,
above all, explicit. If the work of Lutzelburger be admitted, it must
also be admitted that Holbein designed his cuts before 1526, date of the
death of the Basle engraver; but it was precisely before 1526 that
Holbein lived in Basle, and it was after he had travelled. We will add
nothing to the universal praise of the book of Treschel, of Lyons;
everything has been written of Holbein, and repetitions are unnecessary.
We would ask the reader to compare the Francis I. of Tory and the King
in Holbein's "Dance of Death;" there is a certain family resemblance
between the two cuts, which is a singular honour for Tory.
At the commencement of the century Basle had a school of
_Formschneiders_ working for export. Besides the numerous products used
at Lyons, it had also a trade in wood blocks, which, having been used,
were afterwards sold. Among these exchanges of engravings were many
plates of Brandt's "Ship of Fools," sold in 1520 to Galliot du Pré,
publisher, of Paris, who used them in the _Eloge de la Folie_ of
Erasmus.
The reign of Francis I. saw a great advance in the national art of
illustration. The arrival at the court of Italian artists of the
decadence, such as Rosso and Primaticcio, produced a revolution in
taste. The exaggerated slightness of the figures brought by these
artists from beyond the Alps was considered as of supreme distinction;
in their twisted draperies and mannered poses was seen a precious beauty
that tempted the ready intelligence of the court of France. The simple
and ingenuous figures of the old French artists were ranked among the
refuse of another age, and their compositions were regarded with
contempt, and deemed antique.
The rage for emblems and for allegories and mythological figures
generally was well suited to these eccentric and bizarre inventions.
From another side, an entire class of artists or artisans, book
illustrators first, then enamellers and jewellers, made use of these
Italian models, with which the King encumbered his galleries, and which,
at great expense, covered the walls of Fontainebleau. One can understand
what these skilful men made of such a movement and of so thoughtless an
infatuation. The publishers saw the demand, and composed works of which
the sale was assured by the subjects that they furnished to other
designers. This explains the quantity of Alciati's "Emblems" and Ovid's
"Metamorphoses" published at Lyons and Paris, and copied and recopied a
hundred times by the art industries of the time. Without it the enormous
success of mediocre productions, as the "Emblems," for example, in which
the meaning of the enigma or rebus cannot always be seized, is ill
understood. It was Alciati who made this literature the fashion. He was
a sort of Epicurean and miserly jurisconsult, who had as many lords and
masters on earth, as the kings and princes who liked to bid against each
other to engage him. He had quitted Italy, seduced by the offers of
Francis I., but when Sforza paid him a larger sum, he returned, giving
as reason for his vacillation that the sun had to travel the earth and
warm it by its rays; this was an emblematic answer, for his emblems had
all the coarse, sceptical humour which not a few had then already
discovered. At most these philosophical aphorisms, if we take them
seriously, have their droll side in that their author often practised
the reverse of his teaching. A miser, he abuses the avaricious; flying
his country for the love of gain, he blames those to whom "a better
condition is offered by strangers." Yet he is sometimes logical and
consistent, as when he assures us that "poverty hinders the success of
intelligence," and when, finally, lover of good cheer, he died of
indigestion in 1550.
[Illustration: Fig. 57.--Page of the "Metamorphoses" of Ovid, by Petit
Bernard. Edition of 1564.]
His book of "Emblems" had a vogue that lasted until the seventeenth
century, and repetitions were infinitely multiplied: at Paris by Wechel
in 1534; at Lyons by Hans de Tornes, of Suabia, one of the greatest
Lyons publishers; by Roville, also one of the first Lyons publishers,
and by Bonhomme; at Venice by the Alduses; in fact, everywhere,
translated into French, Spanish, and Italian.
Bernard Salomon, called _le Petit Bernard_, born at Lyons, was one of
the designers of the school of Fontainebleau--that is to say, of the
Franco-Italian school of which we have spoken above--who furnished many
of the engravings for books printed at Lyons. He illustrated the edition
of Alciati's "Emblems" published by Bonhomme in 1560; and designed
skilful little plates, which, with the text, were surrounded by a border
from the workshop of Geoffroy Tory, for Ovid's "Metamorphoses,"
published by Hans de Tornes in 1564. Bernard had all the defects and all
the qualities of those of his time, from John Cousin to the least of
them; he was a Primaticcio on a small scale, but agreeably so. His
designs for the New Testament were also very careful, but in them more
than elsewhere the manner and the affectation of the school of
Fontainebleau are apparent.
[Illustration: Fig. 58.--Portraits of Madeleine, Queen of Scotland, and
of Marguerite, Duchess of Savoy, after the originals of Cornelis of
Lyons.]
[Illustration: Fig. 59.--Portraits of Francis, dauphin, and of Charles,
Duke of Angoûleme, after the originals of Cornelis of Lyons. Woodcuts
taken from Roville's _Promptuaire des Médailles_.]
The workshops of the second city of France, we see, had at this time
attained considerable importance; but before the books of which we shall
speak, Roville published two anonymous books, one _L'Entrée du Roi Henri
II. à Lyon_, in 1549, ornamented with very graceful woodcuts, the other
the _Promptuaire des Médailles_, comprising a series of charming
portraits under the pretence of reproductions from the antique. The
designs of the _Entrée_ are often attributed to John Cousin, as it is a
rule with certain amateurs to give a known name to a work; but it must
be remembered that Lyons then had celebrated artists, Petit-Bernard,
alluded to above, and Cornelis de la Haye, of whom we have more to say;
and it is not necessary to go to Paris or to Rome to find the author of
these illustrations.
[Illustration: Fig. 60.--Captain of foot from the _Entree de Henri II. à
Lyon_ (1549).]
Cornelis de la Haye was a painter who executed nearly the same work as
Francis Clouet in Paris, portraits on panel, in a clear and harmonious
tone, then much the fashion. During a journey of the King, he had, if
Brantôme may be credited, portrayed the entire court, keeping the
sketches for himself. Ten or fifteen years after, Catherine de Medicis,
passing through Lyons, saw these portraits and highly praised them,
recognising the old costumes, astonished at the courtiers of the day,
whom she had never seen in such dress. This artist is now known, thanks
to various works that have been found, among others two portraits of the
sons of Francis I., preserved by Gaignières, who attributed them
resolutely to Cornelis, doubtless on the faith of inscriptions that have
disappeared. Both of them were engraved on wood at Lyons and published
in Roville's book the _Promptuaire des Médailles_, mentioned above,
with small differences of detail altogether insignificant. It is not
impossible then that Cornelis designed these portraits, and that they
were drawn on wood after the cabinet models spoken of by Brantôme. The
delicate figures of the _Promptuaire_ are the work of a master; and the
differences mentioned are those of the artist, not of the copyist, who
would not be permitted to change anything. It is the first time, we
believe, that these comparisons have been made; they will perhaps help
the learned Lyonnais to pierce the mystery, but in any case our
suppositions are more honourable to Cornelis de la Haye than the fancies
of Robert Dumesnil (_Peintre-graveur Français_, tome vi., p. 343). To
judge by the four little medallions here reproduced, the art of
engraving on wood was rarely more skilful than in these portraits. It
would not be astonishing if a man like Cornelis had designed the figures
of the _Entrée de Henri II._ In any case, why should we choose John
Cousin instead of Petit-Bernard? At this time, we know, the kings
carried in their suite their ordinary painters; but we do not know that
John Cousin followed the court to Lyons in 1549. He did not hold an
official position, like Clouet.
This artist produced well-authenticated works; one of them is signed,
and leaves no doubt: the _Livre de Perspective de Jehan Cousin Senonois,
Maistre Painctre_, published in 1560 by Jean le Royer, printer to the
King for mathematics. This profession of printer for mathematics had its
difficulties of engraving, for Le Royer tells us in his preface that he
had himself finished the plates commenced by Albin Olivier. In another
practical treatise, entitled _Livre de Portraiture_, published in 1593,
John Cousin is styled _peintre géometrien_. It is beyond doubt that this
master produced for many works figures and ornaments, but what were the
books? The manner was then to repeat the engraved borders of titles, the
_passe-partout_, in the centre of which the text was printed. Cousin
designed many of these title-pages on wood; that of the _Livre de
Portraiture_ affords a curious element of comparison; but he was not by
any means the inventor. In 1555 was sold at Antwerp a book printed from
engraved plates after John Vriedman, by Gerard Juif, which is simply a
collection of engravings for title-pages for the use of publishers.
[Illustration: Fig. 61.--Title of John Cousin's _Livre de Portraiture_,
published in 1593 by Le Clerc. (The spot on the title is in the
original, preserved among the prints of the Bibliothèque Nationale.)]
It is about this time that metal plates may be seen in conjunction with
wood engraving in the illustration of the Book, and the best artists
attached their names to important publications of this kind. We have
explained in a former chapter in what this process is least convenient
in the impression of a book. In fact, two successive printings, that of
the plates and that of the text, were additional trouble and a frequent
cause of errors; but wood-cutting was somewhat abandoned in the middle
of the sixteenth century, especially for separate plates, and engraved
plates took a considerable importance under different artistic
influences. The first was the facility of engraving a metal plate
compared to the difficulty of cutting a wood block. It thus naturally
happened that the artists of the burin wished to employ their art in
illustration, and taste was soon drawn to the new process.
In France the first volume of this kind was printed in 1488 by Topie de
Pymont in folio: the _Pérégrinations en Terre Sainte_ of Bernard de
Breydenbach, with figures on engraved plates copied from the Mayence
edition of 1486. Since this manner was abandoned until about 1550, as
much for the reasons given above as for others, we only meet with a
stray plate now and again, which remains as a bait, and relates to
nothing. Under the reign of Henri II. the smallness of the volumes did
not always admit of wood engravings, and the artists in metal found a
footing among illustrators; they made attempts, such as that of the
_Histoire de Jason_ of Réné Boivin in 1563, which came out under
Charles IX. in a charming volume of engraved plates by P. Woériot.
The "Emblems" of Georgette de Montenay were also in the burlesque style
of Alciati, but they had an advantage, as the author assures us:--
"Alciat fist des emblèmes exquis,
Lesquels, voyant de plusieurs requis,
Désir me prist de commencer les miens,
Lesquels je croy estre premiers chrestiens."
This orthodoxy does not make them more intelligible, but the engravings
of Woériot, unskilful as they are, import an element of interest which
surpasses the rest. It was always at Lyons, the rival and often the
master of Paris in typography, that the author printed his work.
By the privilege dated 1566, five years before publication, we see that
it is permitted to Peter Woériot, engraver of the Duke of Lorraine, to
portray, engrave, and cut in copper the said figures called emblems for
the time and term of five years (18th October, 1566). Peter Woériot
sometimes signed his prints with the small Lorraine cross adopted by
Geoffroy Tory's workshop, as may be seen in our engraving.
Copper plate engraving had by this time established itself, and the
works that were so illustrated spread themselves. Du Cerceau published
his admirable collection of _Plus Beaux Bastiments de France_ in folio
1576-79, which had numerous plans and views of the royal and princely
castles. Thevet put forth his _Cosmographie Universelle_ and his _Hommes
Illustres_, the latter adorned with skilfully engraved portraits. In
Paris the publishers Mamert Patisson, who married the widow of Robert
Estienne and took his mark, Adrien le Roy, and Robert Ballard, published
the celebrated _Ballet Comique de la Royne Faict aux Nopces de Monsieur
le Duc de Joyeuse_, composed by Balthasar de Beaujoyeux, valet de
chambre to Henri III.; and in this book, in which were put hasty
etchings, the King displayed all his immodesty and depravity. The Book
has often had the unconscious mission of transmitting to posterity the
unworthiness of its author or of its heroes. From this time the Book has
left its golden age to enter into the boastings of courtiers and
political abstractions.
[Illustration: Fig. 62.--Engraving by P. Woériot for Georgette de
Montenay's _Emblèmes_.]
Among the publications opposed to the Government of the time, the two
associates James Tortorel and John Perrissin, of Lyons, had published a
celebrated collection of plates on the religious wars that stained the
reign of Charles IX. with blood. At first engraved on metal, these
plates were worn out, and were gradually replaced by others engraved on
wood, on which several artists worked, among them James le Challeux and
also John de Gourmont, one of the most celebrated wood-cutters of the
sixteenth century. This was a work composed of single leaves in folio
size, which had an extraordinary sale among the religious people of the
time.
At the same time, illustration on wood did not stand still. The
portraits of authors diffused by the pencil of Clouet and his school
were commonly put at the head of their works. We cannot say whether
Clouet himself designed the portraits of Tiraqueau and of Taillemont in
1553; of Du Billon, the author of the _Fort Inexpugnable_, in 1555;
Papon and Ambroise Paré in 1561; Grevin, Ramus, and others; but the
precision of these physiognomies recalls the peculiar manner of the
French artists of the sixteenth century. The "Poems" of Ronsard in 1586
contains a series of very clever portraits, among them that of Muret,
his commentator, one of the most perfect of its kind. Christopher de
Savigny, author of the _Tableaux Accomplis de Tous les Arts Liberaux_,
published by John and Francis de Gourmont in 1587, is represented at
full length in the frontispiece of his work, offering the book to the
Duc de Nevers, to whom it is dedicated. This plate in folio, probably
engraved by John de Gourmont, is the best finished that we have seen.
The work of Savigny, forgotten as it may be now, had a great reputation
in its own time; and Bacon took from it the idea of his "Advancement of
Learning."
Speaking of the Duc de Nevers, it will not be without interest to our
readers to mention here a manuscript found by us in the Bibliothèque
Nationale, which enables us to give an account of the work then
necessary for the publication of an illustrated book. In 1577 the Duke
arranged for the impression of an apologetic book, of which no trace
remains; and his _intendant_ writes a long letter to him on the subject
of composition and bindings. It was necessary that the work should be
produced quickly, bound and gilt, for presents. The _intendant_ thinks
calf will be the most expeditious covering. "It would be much the best
to use black or red calf, ... well gilt above, and not vellum, which is
a thin parchment that quickly shrinks." The statements of this man of
business show that five proofs of each sheet were taken for
typographical correction, and that twelve full days were wanted for the
binding. The most interesting part of this memoir is that which treats
of the engraving on wood of the portrait. The plate was designed by an
artist who had afterwards gone away; it was not satisfactory, but the
ornaments would pass. The _intendant_ proposes to "fix a little piece of
wood in the block that could be drawn upon." Here we see correction by
elimination. The pear-wood on which the original figure was engraved was
to be cut out, and a square of boxwood substituted, "forasmuch as in
this task the pear-wood, which is the successful, well-cut block, is the
wood that is harder."
[Illustration: Fig. 63.--Portrait of Christopher Plantin, printer of
Antwerp. Engraved by Wierix.]
The portrait of the Duchesse de Nevers was better, yet the pear-wood had
given way under the work. "That of Madame is more passable.
Nevertheless, there is still something to say to one eye. The wood
cannot carry the subtlety of the line." Here, in a few clear and
explicit lines by a man of the time, we see the economy of a publication
of the sixteenth century, at a time when wood engraving was declining,
to give place to engraving on metal, which was soon to reign supreme,
through the most important book house of the century: the Plantins of
Antwerp.
Christopher Plantin, like Jenson, came originally from Tours. After
having learned his art with Macé at Caen, he went to Paris, from which
the wars soon drove him. He left for the Low Countries, and there Philip
II. nominated him as chief printer--"architypographus." Established at
Antwerp in 1555, he surrounded himself, as had the Estiennes and
Alduses, with most of the learned and literary men of his time, among
them Justus Lipsius, to whom Balzac attributed the Latin prefaces signed
by Plantin. It is certain that he was neither an Estienne nor an Aldus.
His artistic probity caused him to submit the proofs of his works to
strangers, with promise of recompense for faults indicated; the
Estiennes employed the same system. Plantin, not to be behind any of his
contemporaries in typographical perfection, brought from France the
celebrated type-founder William Lebé, and charged him to furnish a
special fount.[A] Under the orders of Philip II., he printed the
celebrated Polyglot Bible, in eight folio volumes, absolutely perfect in
its execution; unfortunately the Spanish Government, having advanced
funds in the course of publication, prosecuted him with the utmost
rigour to obtain repayment. This very nearly shut up his printing house,
but he took courage and overcame his difficulties, until he became, in
1589, the year of his death, the principal publisher of Flanders. His
mark was a hand holding a compass, with the motto "Labore et
constantia."
[Footnote A: In the Bibliothèque Nationale is a copy of an octavo _Album
de Caractères_, in which Lebé has written, "This gloss, made in Paris
(1574) by me, is my fourteenth letter, and the text is made on the
pattern of the preceding one for size, but of a better art; and from
this was printed the great Bible of Antwerp by Plantin, to whom I sold a
fount" (folio 6). On folio 20 he wrote, "I do not know whence came this
small Hebrew that I received from Plantin to make a smaller one for him.
He sent me this half-sheet, and I have not seen at Venice another
part."]
[Illustration: Fig. 64.--Plantin's mark.]
Plantin died at the age of seventy-four, leaving a prosperous business
to be divided between his three daughters. His first house at Antwerp
employed seventeen presses even at the time when he was in trouble, and
he had branches at Paris and Leyden, of less consequence. His second
daughter married Moretus, and to him descended the Antwerp workshop; he
and his descendants continued the printing house until recently; the
house of the great printer and publisher is now a typographical museum.
The Plantin printing office--"Officina Plantiniana"--was as well managed
by its descendants as by himself. The fashion of engraving in metal
spread itself before the death of the head of the house, and his
successors continued it. The principal engravers with the burin of the
Low Countries were employed by them: Wierix, Galle, Pass, Mallery, Van
Sichern; it was a real school of illustration, that created by degrees a
precious and sustained style, not without influence on the artists of
that epoch. It was from this particular manner that came Thomas de Leu
and Leonard Gaultier in France; and from Antwerp came those small
religious figures that have lasted to our time in their incomprehensible
mysticism.
The title-pages of the Plantin printing office inaugurated the
_passe-partout_ engraved by the burin, overloaded and complicated, of
which the seventeenth century took advantage. To tell the truth, these
elaborate displays, blackened by ink, do not accord well with the
titles; and there is a long distance between this decadence and the
books ornamented with wood blocks by the Italians and French of the
commencement of the century. Exception must be made in favour of Rubens,
who designed many of these titles. The heavy and squat architecture of
the time was least of all appropriate to these decorations, which wanted
grace. It passed from Plantin into France through the engravers; it went
to Rome with Martin de Vos and John Sadeler; it imposed itself
everywhere; and from that day to this it has not ceased. At the time of
which we write it had taken its flight in France, and spread itself in
Europe with extraordinary success. Engraving in relief, holding its
own until then, gave way little by little before this invasion. When
Henri IV. mounted the throne wood engraving had finished its upward
movement, it still remained in the _canards_, or popular pieces sold at
low prices, but it is easy to see what these hasty vignettes are worth.
[Illustration: Fig. 65.--Frontispiece of a book from Plantin's printing
office. Metal engraving.]
We have now seen the history of the Book and its decoration in the
sixteenth century in France: at first French epics in Italy, books of
hours, romances of chivalry; then about 1550, with the reign of Henri
II., the religious pamphlets commenced, bookselling spread itself; the
strife between illustrations on metal plates and those in relief assumed
shape, it continued under Henri III., and terminated abruptly by the
victory of the first at the extreme end of the century. With political
passions, printing had become a weapon of warfare, which it will never
cease to be. They knew in the sixteenth century what perfidious
accusations or excessive praises were worth. The Book followed the fate
of its author. If the writer was burned, so was his book. Witness the
_Christianismi Restitutio_ of the Catholic Servetus, printed at Vienne,
in Dauphiné, and consigned to the flames with its author at Geneva in
1553. A single copy was saved from the fire, and is now preserved in the
Bibliothèque Nationale; it is the identical copy annotated by Colladon,
the accuser of the unhappy Servetus, and still bears traces of fire on
its leaves.
Typography and the illustration of the Book in England in the sixteenth
century did not make the same progress as in France and Italy. Much good
work was done, but it was mostly with foreign material. Type was
obtained from French and Dutch founders, and most of the woodcuts had
the same origin. In the early part of the century most of the
publications were translations of popular foreign books, such as
Voragine's "Golden Legend," Caxton's translations of Cicero, Boetius,
etc. Too many restrictions and privileges obtained to encourage or allow
of the establishment of an English school, which was to come later with
the spread of wealth and education. Books were mostly printed in Gothic
type, or "black letter," and the woodcuts were of the coarsest kind. An
exception was the beautiful Prayer-book of John Day, 1578, known as
Queen Elizabeth's Prayer-book, from the fine portrait of the Queen,
which we reproduce, on the previous page; but in this the woodcuts were
designed by Albert Dürer and Hans Holbein. Pynson was the first to use
Roman type in England, in the _Oratio in pace nuperrimâ_, 1518, quarto;
and the first English Bible in Roman type was printed at Edinburgh in
1576. It is thought that until about 1600 printers were their own
type-founders, as no record exists of founding as a separate trade until
that time.
[Illustration: Fig. 66.--Portrait of Queen Elizabeth from the "Book of
Christian Praiers," printed by John Day, 1578.]
The greatest achievement of the sixteenth century in England was the
printing of the first English Bible, in Coverdale's translation, in
1535, folio, but even this was printed abroad, the latest investigation
giving it to Van Meteren at Antwerp. The woodcuts in it are by Hans
Sebald Beham; we reproduce one representing Cain killing Abel. Tyndall
had previously printed abroad an English New Testament. Another
importation was Brandt's "Shyp of Folys," printed by Pynson, 1509, and
John Cawood, 1570, the woodcuts in both being copied from the originals
before referred to.
[Illustration: Fig. 67.--Woodcut from Coverdale's Bible, 1535. Cain
killing Abel.]
Folio was the size usually adopted, and in this size the series of
chronicles appeared: Arnold, printed abroad in 1502; Fabian, in 1516;
Froissart, by Pynson, in two volumes, 1523-5; Harding, by Grafton, 1543;
Hall, by the same, 1548; Holinshed, in two volumes, 1577. In the same
size Chaucer was first given to the world entire by T. Godfrey in 1532,
and many times reprinted, and Sir Thomas More in 1557. Polemical and
religious treatises were mostly printed in quarto, as were the poets:
Spenser's _Faerie Queene_, in 1590; Langland's _Pierce Plowman_, in
1550; and Sidney's _Arcadia_, in 1590. Plays were also printed in
quarto, in which shape at the end of the century some of Shakespeare's
single plays were issued.
From the great perfection to which the liturgies, or books of hours, had
been brought by Vostre, Verard, and others in France, it is not perhaps
extraordinary that the service books for English use should have been
mostly printed abroad. Those for Salisbury and York were produced at
Paris, Rouen, and Antwerp. A Salisbury Primer in English was printed by
John Kyngston and Henry Sutton in 1557, and Wynken de Worde printed a
York Manual in 1509. The first English Common Prayer Book, known as
Edward VI.'s, was printed by Grafton in 1549, who also printed in 1545
Henry VIII.'s Primer in Latin and English. Edward's book is curious as
having on the last page a royal order as to the price at which it was to
be sold: "No maner of persone shall sell the present Booke vnbounde
aboue the price of two shillynges and two pence. And bound in Forell for
ii_s._ x_d._, and not aboue. And the same bound in Shepes Lether for
iii_s._ iii_d._, and not aboue. And the same bounde in paste or in
boordes, in Calues Lether, not aboue the price of iiii_s._ the pece."
Cranmer's Catechism was printed by Nicholas Hill in 1548, with
twenty-nine woodcuts by Hans Holbein, one of which we reproduce,
representing Christ casting out devils.
Translations from the classics were popular, and in the second half of
the century arose that passion for voyage and travel which has so
largely contributed to the wealth and extension of England. This was
begun by Eden's translation of Peter Martyr's "Decades of the New World;
or, West India," London, 1555, quarto, followed by Hakluyt's "Principall
Navigations, Voyages, and Discoveries," 1589, folio. Many accounts of
single voyages and discoveries were issued, and the taste thus created
culminated in the establishment of the East India Company in the last
year of the century.
The first specimen of copper plate engraving for books in England is a
frontispiece to Galen's _De Temperamentis_, printed at Cambridge 1521,
and the number of books containing copper plates engraved before 1600 is
extremely limited, the most notable being portraits of Queen Elizabeth,
Lord Leicester, and Lord Burleigh in Archbishop Parker's Bible of 1568;
Saxton's Atlas, 1579, the first atlas in England; Harrington's
translation of Ariosto, 1591, with forty-seven engraved plates.
[Illustration: Fig. 68.--Woodcut by Hans Holbein from Cranmer's
Catechism, 1548.]
The first printer at Cambridge was John Siberch, 1521. Peter of Treves
established himself at Southwark in 1514. Among his productions is a
Higden's _Polychronicon_, 1527, folio. John Oswen printed at Ipswich
1538, and among the English towns in which printers established
themselves in the century were York, Canterbury, Tavistock, Norwich, and
Worcester.
The establishment of the Reformed Church, and the diffusion of education
among the people which followed, created an original English school of
literature in the sixteenth century, and this gave employment and great
impetus to typography in England, so that by the time we reach the end
of the century we find a great improvement in the art of the Book, to be
carried to still greater perfection in the next.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER IV.
1600 TO 1700.
Tendencies of the regency of Marie de Medicis--Thomas de Leu and
Leonard Gaultier--J. Picart and Claude Mellan--Lyons and J. de
Fornazeris--The Book at the beginning of the seventeenth century in
Germany, Italy, and Holland--Crispin Pass in France--The Elzevirs
and their work in Holland--Sebastian Cramoisy and the Imprimerie
Royale--Illustration with Callot, Della Bella, and Abraham
Bosse--The publishers and the Hotel de Rambouillet--The reign of
Louis XIV., Antoine Vitré syndic at his accession--His works and
mortifications; the polyglot Bible of Le Jay--Art and illustrators
of the grand century--Sébastien Leclerc, Lepautre, and
Chauveau--Leclerc preparing the illustration and decoration of the
Book for the eighteenth century--The Book in England in the
seventeenth century.
[Illustration: Fig. 69.--Letter engraved by A. Bosse.]
Now we have arrived at a critical epoch, in which the science of the old
printers transformed itself gradually into commerce, in which taste lost
itself under the influence of religious architecture. The title of the
Book represents the portico of a cathedral, with columns, mitred saints,
and crosses, of little decorative aspect. Figures on copper plates
replaced the foliage and arabesques of the older booksellers. Through
the Plantins and their imitators, the architectural passion was far
spread. It inundated France, ran through Germany and Italy, and reigned
pre-eminent in Holland. Literary taste also underwent change; manners
were no longer those of the sixteenth century: bold, free, and gay; from
the religious wars a certain hypocrisy arose; bombast replaced the
natural; the gods were preparing, as a contemporary said, to receive
Louis and his spirit.
It is not that artists were wanting at the opening of the seventeenth
century who could, in giving scope to their talent, show themselves
worthy successors of those who went before them. Unhappily the
booksellers no longer had a loose rein; they had the rope, for they were
hung or burned at the least infraction of political or religious
propriety. Yet the reign of Henri IV. was relatively an easier period
for the artisans of the Book, in which they were less confined to the
strict terms of excessive regulations; but after this prince severity
increased, and during the year 1626 a new law was promulgated punishing
with death the printers or distributers of prohibited books. Doubtless
the books that were thus secretly sold, and prohibited in defence of
good manners, were neither _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of typography nor art. The
author threw off the indecencies by which he hoped to make profit and
fame, regardless of type or illustration. But during the regency of
Marie de Medicis, it was not only the authors of a bad standard that
were in danger of being hung; the printer or seller of the pamphlet or
book of a reputed heterodox author was also hung, and it became
difficult to steer safely among the prohibitions. Enormous numbers of
works were made with frontispieces decorated with colonnades and mitred
saints, and bearing high-sounding titles of sound orthodoxy. A somewhat
gross mysticism, from the office of Plantin, formed the most solid stock
of every respectable dealer.
[Illustration: Fig. 70.--Title of the _Metanealogie_, engraved by
Leonard Gaultier.]
Under Henri IV. and the minority of Louis XIII., two French illustrators
received from the school of Antwerp their inspiration for the ornament
of the Book. Thomas de Leu, probably from Flanders, was allied with the
old Parisian painter and engraver of celebrated portraits, Antoine
Caron, in furnishing the engraved plates for the _Images de Plate
Peinture des Deux Philostrates, Sophistes Grecs_, Paris, Claude
Cramoisy, 1609, folio; and Leonard Gaultier, his contemporary,
collaborated with Jaspar Isaac and other artists in the Book. Leonard
Gaultier contributed most to spread in France the Plantinian style, and
his somewhat cold but characteristic talent suited this art more than
that of any one else then could. He was an engraver of portraits, now
rare and valuable, in the style of Wierix or Thomas de Leu; but, at the
demand of publishers and booksellers, he composed other plates, at first
historical figures representing the royal family and the nobles for the
publisher Leclerc, in a simple and true manner; he also designed pious
figures, recording a miracle or representing the ceremonies of a jubilee
and other devotional things. But he made his great success in the
composition of frontispieces to theological and pious works, printed for
nearly all the booksellers. Leonard Gaultier had a fashion of his own
with pilasters and Grecian columns, under which he boldly placed entire
councils of cardinals and bishops; witness the heading of the
_Bibliotheca Veterum Patrum_, into which he crowded nearly forty
figures. He united also with a certain grace the sacred and the profane,
placing among ideal saints the sinning fine ladies of the time, with
their large collarettes and jewels falling on naked breasts. The work of
Andrew Valladier, chaplain of the King, entitled _Métanéalogie Sacrée_,
published by Peter Chevallier in 1609, was adorned with a title of this
particular kind, in which Gaultier had no rival, and which preserves the
precision of Flemish masters in the detail of ornaments of the toilet.
He was one of the first to work for Sebastian Cramoisy, printer and
publisher, who had established his shop in the Rue St. Jacques at the
sign of the "Stork." We shall have occasion to speak of him later in
connection with the Royal Printing House, of which he was the first
director; he is mentioned now because in 1611 Leonard Gaultier engraved
for him the frontispiece of _L'Aigle Français_, a collection of sermons
by Thomas Girault. The publisher used the same plate in 1618 for the
sermons of Raymond de Hézèque.
Besides the publications of Sebastian Cramoisy and Chevallier, Leonard
Gaultier adorned also those of Nicholas Buon and many other publishers
of the time in Paris and Lyons. With such a profusion of works emanating
from a single artist, without reckoning those which were produced in
great quantity by men of less note, wood engraving was dead. At most it
dared to put a wood block of a printer's mark on a title; more
ordinarily this mark was not alone sufficient, and showed the disdain in
which taste then held wood-cutting. Thus goes fashion, heedless of the
most elementary rules of art. To put type within an engraved title, or
to ornament a printed text with engravings, is a heresy of principle
that was established in the eighteenth century, by the strength of its
cleverness and talent. But at the beginning of the seventeenth, in spite
of Leonard Gaultier or Thomas de Leu, these overloaded titles,
overpowering the opening of the Book, offend the eye by their excessive
blackness, and incontestably make us regret the admirable frontispiece
on wood of the preceding century.
This is all the ornament, properly so called, of the reign of Louis
XIII. Leonard Gaultier composed also small vignettes for an edition of
Homer, but they are mediocre and unskilful, and it must be said that
there were others following the same path. John Picart made a
frontispiece with architecture and figures for the _Histoire de la
Maison de Châtillon-sur-Marne_ for account of Sebastian Cramoisy. A cold
and hard artist he was, the rival of Gaultier, and one of the most
employed of the vignette engravers of Paris. There was also Jaspar
Isaac, a mediocre craftsman, but who could design clever titles, among
them that of the continuation of the _Annales_ of Baronius for the
publisher Denis de la Noue. Then Claude Mellan, whose great and clever
talent did not disdain second-rate works, in which he gave free play to
his burin. It must be said, however, that his bold touch did not well
accommodate itself to reduced spaces, and that he was not working in the
field necessary to his inventive powers. We mention his portrait of
Louis XIV. at the head of the _Code Louis XIV._; the title of the
_Perfection du Chrestien_, in which is included a portrait of Cardinal
Richelieu, A. Vitré, 1647, folio; that of the _Instruction du Dauphin_
for Cramoisy, 1640; that of the works of St. Bernard for the Royal
Printing House; and, perhaps the best of all, the _Poésies_ of Pope
Urban VIII., of which we here give a copy.
[Illustration: Fig. 71.--Title engraved by Claude Mellan for Urban
VIII.'s _Poésies_, printed at the Royal Printing House, in 1642.]
Lyons did not remain far behind in the movement, but how changed from
its great reputation of the sixteenth century! J. de Fornazeris engraved
the frontispieces to Justus Lipsius, published by Horace Cardon in 1613.
Peter Favre and Audran imitated them. C. Audran designed for Claude
Landry the _Theologia Naturalis_ of Theophilus Reynaud, and the
bookseller Picquet ordered from him the title for the _Annales Minorum_
in 1628. Everywhere taste was modelled on the works of the capital, to
name only the principal centres, Rouen, Rheims, Sens, down to Venes, a
small town of Tarn, where William de Nautonnier published in 1603 his
curious book _Mécométrie_, whose frontispiece was bordered by views of
cities, with an equestrian portrait of King Henry.
And if we pass to Germany, we find Mayence with mediocre engravings for
titles according to the formula and process used elsewhere, the title of
the _Droit Civil_ of Aymar Vailius, that of the works of St. Bonaventura
in 1609 for the bookseller Antoine Hiérat, and that of the _Viridarium
Virtutûm_, rather cleverly treated by the burin in 1610. What a period
had passed since Gutenberg, Fust, and Schoeffer! There was still one
Yves Schoeffer at Mayence, but only the name lived; nothing more
remained of the old printers of the other century. It was the same at
Bamberg, Cologne, Nuremberg, and Basle, in all the cities that made the
honour of typography and the Book in former times. Cologne was neither
better nor worse favoured than others. The booksellers Boetzer, Kinck,
and De Binghy had passable engravings for their titles; and the
Commentaries of Salmeron may be mentioned, with portraits from the
German originals of the fifteenth century. At Nuremberg there was a
curious specimen treating of natural history by Basil Besler, in which
the artist gives the interior of a zoological cabinet of the time; but
the blocks and the typography of the city of Koburger are wanting. Basle
held its own later in relief engraving. Meantime there was a mediocre
set of the Dance of Death on copper, published by Miegen, 1621.
At Jena and Frankfort-on-the-Main were prosperous printing houses, but
engravings and ornamentation were neglected. Frankfort employed the
frontispiece in the _Traité du Commerce_ of Sigismond Scaccia, published
by Zuner in 1648; it was divided into compartments, in which the Bourse,
the Exchange, and the port of the city were represented.
It is scarcely necessary to mention the Italian cities which followed
the movement. Venice from the middle of the sixteenth century had used
engraved frontispieces, among which was that of Domenic Zenoi for the
_Portraits des Hommes Illustres_ of Nicholas Valegio. In the same city
James Piccini worked for account of Sgava in 1648, but he was equally at
the service of Roman publishers, for whom he designed a number of
titles. Along with him Frederic Greuter adorned the publications of
Alexander Zanetti, not without talent, but without individuality.
Bologna, Brescia, Florence, and Naples, had no original sentiment; they
followed indifferently the manner of the day.
In Holland, artists were rather numerous. The family of the Passes
designed vignettes for books, and engraved frontispieces, admirably
studied and composed. The clear and truly personal style of their works
places their illustrations in the first rank among those of their time.
They had, at the same time, the genius that created and the intelligent
burin that faithfully translated an idea. They imagined with art the
scenes that they depicted without at all copying their predecessors.
From 1599, the date of the publication of the _Hortus Deliciarum_, one
of their best works, up to about 1623, they were in Holland, at Arnheim
and at Amsterdam. In 1623 we find one of them, the most celebrated,
Crispin the younger, designing figures for the _Manège Royal_ of
Pluvinel, published by Angelier in Paris, and for another edition, with
folding plates, in 1624 for William Lenoir, at the sign of the "White
Rose Crowned." This magnificent work, in which the King, Louis XIII., is
represented receiving lessons from the rider Pluvinel, had a third and
more complete reimpression in 1625 with another publisher, Michael
Nivelle. Here we see the Dutch accredited in France, in Paris, in the
city then the most ready to understand and pay for the works of eminent
artists. In 1624 Gombauld published an _Endymion_--Boileau later
associated Gombauld with other poets to declare him a maker of pitiable
sonnets--Nicholas Buon, the bookseller named above, undertook the
publication, and employed Pass, Leonard Gaultier, and J. Picart to
furnish plates in octavo size. Heavy and black as were these vignettes,
they do not the less make a good appearance in the edition of the
forgotten poet; and it is due to truth to recognise how much Pass was
above his collaborators. The following year, 1625, he engraved the
_Dionysiaques_ of Nonus, for Robert Fouet, and the _Roman des Romans_ of
Du Verdier, comprising more than ten engravings, in a very free and bold
manner. The _Berger Extravagant_ and the _Académie de l'Espée_ came in
1628, among numerous others.
[Illustration: Fig. 72.--Title of Pluvinel's _Manège Royal_, engraved by
Crispin Pass in 1624.]
To speak truly, Crispin Pass did not devote himself entirely to Parisian
publishers; he always preserved interests in Flanders so as to return
there from time to time; but he did not find in his own country the
ready and assured sales of Paris. Still the city of Leyden had then one
of the most renowned workshops of typography; the Elzevirs had commenced
to make a good place for themselves among the printers of Europe by the
extreme correctness of their editions, the distinctness of their work,
and their marvellous art in the taste and economy of the Book. In
reality, the sizes and characters of their books were very small, but if
the smallness of the page did not allow room for vignette or ornament,
they bore a certain practical elegance that was not without charm. The
origin of the printing house was due to Louis Elzevir, who published in
1592 an edition of Eutropius at Leyden. He left sons, who associated
themselves together, and founded a house which was unrivalled.
[Illustration: Fig. 73.--Title of the _Imitation_ of the Elzevirs.]
Bonaventure Elzevir, grandson of Louis, was the most illustrious of this
family, so remarkably devoted to its art. He took Abraham as partner,
and together they put forth those little Latin classics in duodecimo of
which the value is now so great. Among others, Pliny issued from their
presses in the year 1635, in three volumes, Virgil in 1636, and Cicero
in 1642. To-day amateurs, above all those afflicted with bibliomania,
hunt for unbound Elzevirs, because they have full margins. From about
1633 to 1639 these volumes were composed of paper of rather small size,
making a page of a hundred and thirty to a hundred and thirty-three
millimetres; from 1639 onwards the paper was larger, and the page from
about a hundred and thirty-five to a hundred and thirty-seven. One must
be a book-lover to understand the interest attaching to these figures,
and employ his entire activity in the discovery of these undiscoverable
books, which are concealed as soon as they are met with.
One of the most esteemed of their works is the _De Imitatione_ of Thomas
à Kempis, printed by John and Daniel Elzevir about 1653, and known as
the edition without date. But as the association of John and Daniel is
known to have lasted from 1652 to 1654, the date 1653 appears to be very
plausible. We reproduce the entire title of this typographical _bijou_,
which merited a cleverer engraver.
The rarest of all the numerous Elzevirs, possibly by reason of the
popularity of its subject, is the _Pastissier François_, Louis and
Daniel Elzevir, Amsterdam, 1655, of which M. Morgand had an uncut copy,
measuring a hundred and forty-three millimetres, in 1878. The Benzon
copy sold in 1875 for three thousand two hundred and fifty-five francs.
It is to be remarked that the Elzevirs frequently avoided dating or even
signing their books, for reasons easy to comprehend. Publishing numerous
works, they were afraid of compromising themselves in the eyes of the
powerful, and they let them go forth without any trade mark. These
artists in typography were, besides, the most prudent and subtle of men.
Working at a time when bookselling had become an acknowledged commerce,
and a trade requiring all the skill and resources of others, they wisely
availed themselves of these, gathering for themselves honour and profit
without having done more than seize their opportunity. Employing the
characters of Claude Garamond, of James Sanlecques, and the papers of
Angoulême, M. Didot thence claims them as French publishers.
In France the Elzevirs had no rivals; but a fashion was introduced from
the end of the sixteenth century of associating together publishers in
the production of imp
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/44890