Por quanto maestre Garcia de la Torre librero vezino de Toledo & Alonso Lorenço librero vezino de Seuilla se obligaron de dar los dichos capitulos a precio de xvi [sic] mrs: manda su alteza & los del su muy alto consejo que ninguno no sea osado de los empremir ni vender en todos sus reynos & señorios desde el dia dela fecha destos capitulos fasta tres años primeros siguientes sin licencia d’los dichos maestre Garcia de la Torre & Alonso Lorenço libreros: so pena que el que los emprimiere [o] vendiere sin su licencia pague diez mill marauedis para la camara de sus altezas.
Forasmuch as Master Garcia de la Torre, bookseller, of Toledo, and Alonso Lorenço, bookseller, of Seville, bind themselves to offer the said Ordinances at the price of sixteen maravedis, His Highness, with those of his illustrious Council, commands that no one presume to print nor to sell copies in all his kingdoms and dominions from the day of the ratification of the said Ordinances for the first three years following, without the license of the said Master Garcia de la Torre and Alonso Lorenço, booksellers, under penalty that the unlicensed printer or vendor shall pay ten thousand maravedis for the Chamber of their Highnesses.
In Germany, on the other hand, the longer period favored in Italy seems to have been adopted. Here the earliest privileges I have come across are those granted to the Sodalitas Celtica of Nuremberg—i.e., to Conrad Celtes and his partners or friends—for printing books in which he was interested. In the first of these privileges—that for the Comedies of the nun Hroswitha—the period for which it held good is not specified;[9] but in that granted to Celtes in the following year for his own “Quatuor Libri Amorum” it is distinctly stated, “ut nullus haec in decem annis in Imperii urbibus imprimat”; i.e., that under the terms of the privilege no one might print the book in any town of the Empire for ten years.
The instances of privileges here quoted may not be the very earliest in their several countries, but they at least show how quickly the demand for this form of protection spread from one country of Europe to another. It seems to me a little remarkable that while publishers were at the pains to obtain such legal monopolies (which presumably cost money), and advertised all the other attractions of their books so freely, they should have said so little about the illustrations which often form so pleasant a feature in the editions of this period. In the colophon, as on the title-page, of the “Meditationes” of Cardinal Turrecremata printed by Ulrich Han at Rome we are informed where the woodcuts were copied from:
Contemplaciones deuotissime per reuerendissimum dominum dominum Iohannem de Turrecremata cardinalem quondam Sancti Sixti edite, atque in parietibus circuitus Marie Minerue nedum litterarum caracteribus verum eciam ymaginum figuris ornatissime descripte atque depicte, feliciter finiunt Anno salutis M.cccc.lxxii. die uero uigesima quarta mensis decembris sedente Sixto quarta [sic] pontifice magno, etc.
The most devout contemplations published by the most reverend lord, Lord Johannes de Turrecremata, formerly cardinal of S. Sixtus, and in the walls of the cloisters of S. Maria Minerva not only in words and letters but also in pictorial figures set forth and painted, come to a happy end, in the year of Salvation 1472, on December 24th, in the pontificate of Sixtus IV.
So again the colophon[10] of the Verona Valturius notes not only that John of Verona was the first printer in his native town, but also that the book appeared with most elegant types “et figuratis signis,” by which we must understand the pictorial representations of the numerous military engines he describes. In some of the French Horae the illustrations are just alluded to in the titles or colophons, and in Meidenbach’s “Ortus Sanitatis” there is a fairly long reference, in the Address to the Reader, to the “effigies et figuras” with which the book is so successfully adorned. But the only colophon which really does justice to the illustrations of a fifteenth-century book is that to Hartmann Schedel’s “Liber Chronicarum,” or “Nuremberg Chronicle.”
[A]Dest nunc studiose lector finis libri Cronicarum per viam epithomatis et breuiarii compilati, opus quidem preclarum et a doctissimo quoque comparandum. Continet enim gesta quecunque digniora sunt notatu ab initio mundi ad hanc usque temporis nostri calamitatem. Castigatumque a uiris doctissimis ut magis elaboratum in lucem prodiret. Ad intuitum autem et preces prouidorum ciuium Sebaldi Schreyer et Sebastiani Kamermaister hunc librum dominus Anthonius Koberger Nuremberge impressit. Adhibitis tamen uiris mathematicis pingendique arte peritissimis, Michaele Wolgemut et Wilhelmo Pleydenwurff, quorum solerti acuratissimaque animaduersione tum ciuitatum tum illustrium uirorum figure inserte sunt. Consummatum autem duodecima mensis Iulii. Anno salutis nostre 1493.
You have here, studious reader, the end of the book of Chronicles, compiled by way of an epitome and abridgment, a notable work indeed, and one to be bought by every learned man. For it records all the matters specially worthy of note from the beginning of the world to these last distressful times of our own. And it has been corrected by very learned men, that it may make a more finished appearance. Now at the respect and prayers of those prudent citizens, Sebald Schreyer and Sebastian Kamermaister, this book has been printed by Master Anton Koberger at Nuremberg, with the assistance, nevertheless, of mathematical men, well skilled in the art of painting, Michael Wolgemut and Wilhelm Pleydenwurff, by whose skilful and most accurate annotation the pictures both of cities and of illustrious men have been inserted. It has been brought to an end on July 12th. In the year of our salvation 1493.
Out of all the hundreds of fifteenth-century books with interesting pictures, this is the only one I can call to mind which gives explicit information as to its illustrations. Perhaps the publishers thought that the woodcuts were themselves more conspicuous in the books than the colophons. But it is certainly strange that when authors, editors, press-correctors, printers, patrons, and booksellers all get their due, the illustrators, save in this one instance, should have been kept in anonymous obscurity.