Of Bämler's later books, his edition (issued in 1482), of the History of the Crusades (Türken-Kreuzzüge), by Rupertus de Sancto Remigio, is perhaps the most noticeable. The large cut of the Pope, attended by a young cardinal, preaching to a crowd of pilgrims, whose exclamation of 'Deus Vult' is represented by a scroll between them and the preacher, is really a fine piece of work, though the buildings in the background, from whose windows listeners are thrusting their heads, have the usual curious resemblance to bathing-machines. Some of the smaller cuts also are good, notably one of a group of mounted pilgrims, which has a real out-of-door effect. After 1482, though he lived another twenty years, Bämler published few or no new works, being content to reprint his old editions.
Our next Augsburg printer is Anton Sorg, whose
first dated work with woodcuts is the Buch der Kindheit unseres Herrn (1476). In his Büchlein das da heisset der Seelen Trost, he produced the first series of illustrations to the Ten Commandments,—large full-page cuts, rudely executed. His Passion nach dem Texte der vier Evangelisten, first issued in 1480, ran through no less than five editions in twelve years. In 1481 he produced the first German translation of the Travels of Mandeville, illustrated with numerous cuts of some merit. By far his most famous work is his edition of Reichenthal's account of the Council of Constance, illustrated with more than eleven hundred cuts, chiefly of the arms of the dignitaries there present. The arms were necessarily intended to be coloured (the present system of representing the heraldic colours by conventional arrangements of lines and dots only dates from the seventeenth century), and this fate has also befallen the larger illustrations, whose workmanship is, indeed, so rude, that it could scarcely stand alone. These larger cuts represent processions of the Pope and his cardinals, the dubbing of a knight, a tournament, the burning of Huss for heresy, the scattering of his ashes (which half fill a cart) over the fields, and other incidents of the famous council. But the interest of the book remains chiefly heraldic.
After 1480, printers of illustrated books became numerous at Augsburg, Peter Berger, Johann Schobsser, Hans Schauer, and Lucas Zeissenmaier being rather more important than their fellows.
More prolific than these, but not more enterprising in respect to new designs, was the elder Hans Schoensperger, who began his long career in 1481. His chief claim to distinction is his printing of the Emperor Maximilian's Theuerdank, to which we shall refer in the next chapter. Erhard Ratdolt deserves mention for his ten years' stay at Venice, where, as we have seen, he issued in 1476 the Calendar, which is the first book with an ornamental title-page. In 1486 he returned to Augsburg at the invitation of Bishop Friedrich von Hohenzollern to print service-books, into which in future he put all his best work. His types and initial letters he brought with him from Italy; for his illustrations, he had recourse to German artists of no exceptional ability. A few of his service-books, however, are distinguished by some interesting, if not very successful, experiments in printing some of the colours in his woodcuts.
The foregoing sketch of the chief illustrated books published at Augsburg during the fifteenth century can hardly escape the charge of dullness. It has been worth while, however, to plod through with it, because it may serve very well as an epitome of the average illustrated work done between 1470 and 1490 throughout Germany. Some of the works we have mentioned remained to the end Augsburg books—e.g. the Buch der Kunst geistlich zu werden, the Buch der Natur, the Historie aus den Geschichten der Römer, were repeatedly published there and
nowhere else. Others, e.g. the Historie des Königs Apollonius, were shared between Augsburg and Ulm, chiefly, no doubt, through the relationship of the two Zainers. The Historia Trojana of Guido delle Colonne and the Geschichte des grossen Alexander enjoyed long careers at Augsburg, and were then taken up by Martin Schott at Strasburg. Eleven editions of the Belial of Jacobus de Theramo were shared fairly equally between the two cities. The Bible and the Legenda Aurea were of too widespread an interest to be monopolised by one or two places. A few books, like the Æsop and the De Claris Mulieribus of Boccaccio, which start from Ulm, or the early Fasciculus Temporum, of which more than half the early editions belonged to Cologne, trace their source elsewhere than to Augsburg. But it was at Augsburg that the majority of the popular illustrated books of the fifteenth century were first published, and the editions issued in other towns were mostly more or less servile imitations of them.
Next in importance to Augsburg in the early history of illustrated books in Germany, ranks the neighbouring city of Ulm, where the names of wood-engravers are found in the town registers from the early part of the century, and the printers had thus plenty of good material to call to their aid. The first illustrated book which we know with certainty to have been printed at Ulm is the De Claris Mulieribus of Boccaccio, issued by Johann Zainer, in a
Latin edition dated 1473, and in a German translation, with the same cuts, about the same time. This Johann Zainer was probably a kinsman of Günther Zainer of Augsburg, but very little is known of him. The De Claris Mulieribus begins with a fine engraved border extending over the upper and inner margins of the first page. It is not merely decorative but pictorial, the subject represented being the Temptation of Adam and Eve. Eve is handing her husband an apple from the Forbidden Tree, amid whose branches is seen the head of the serpent, his body being twisted into a large initial S, and then tapering away into the upper section of the border, where it becomes a branch, among the leaves of which appear emblems of the seven deadly sins. The numerous woodcuts in the text are quite equal to the average Augsburg work. Our illustration shows Scipio warning Massinissa to put away his newly married wife, and the hapless Sophonisba drinking the poison, which is the only marriage gift her husband could send her.