At Nuremberg in 1472, Johann Sensenschmidt, its first printer, issued a German Bible, introducing illustrations into the large initial letters. At Cologne first one printer and then another published illustrated editions (ten in all) of the Fasciculus Temporum, though the cuts in these are mostly restricted to a few conventional scenes of cities, and representations of the Nativity and Crucifixion and of Christ in glory. At Cologne also, about 1480, there appeared two great German dialect Bibles in two volumes, in the type and with borders which are found in books signed by Heinrich Quentel, to whose press they are therefore assigned. There are altogether one hundred and twenty-five cuts, ninety-four in the Old Testament (thirty-three of which illustrate the life of Moses), and thirty-one in the New. They are of considerable size, stretching right across the double-columned page, and are
the work of a skilful, but not very highly inspired, artist. They have neither the naïveté of the early Augsburg and Ulm workmen, nor the richness of the later German work. They were, however, immensely popular at the time. In 1483 Anton Koberger copied them at Nuremberg, omitting, however, the borders which occur on the first and third pages of the first volume, and at the beginning of the New Testament, and rejecting also nineteen of the thirty-one New Testament illustrations. The cuts were used again in other editions, and influenced later engravers for many years. Hans Holbein even used them as the groundwork for his own designs for the Old Testament printed by Adam Petri at Basel in 1523.
At Strassburg, illustrated books were first issued by Knoblochtzer in 1477, and after 1480, Martin Schott and Johann Prüss printed them in considerable numbers. Both these printers, however, were as a rule contented to reproduce the woodcuts in the different Augsburg books, and the original works issued by them are mostly poor. An exception may be made in favour of the undated Buch der Heiligen drei Könige of Johannes Hildeshemensis, printed by Prüss. This has a good border round the upper and inner margins of the first page of text woodcut initials, and fifty-eight cuts of considerable merit.[6]
At Mainz, Peter Schoeffer was very slow in introducing pictures into his books, making no use of them until he took to Missal printing in 1483, when a cut of the Crucifixion became almost obligatory. In 1479, however, a remarkable reprint of the Meditationes of Cardinal Turrecremata had been issued at Mainz by Johann Numeister or Neumeister, a wandering Mainz printer, who had previously worked at Foligno, and is subsequently found at Albi, but now while revisiting his native place published there reduced adaptations of the cuts in the editions printed by Hahn at Rome (see Chapter V), worked on soft metal instead of on wood.
In addition to the places we have mentioned, illustrated books were issued during this period by Bernhard Richel at Basel, by Conrad Fyner at Esslingen, and by other printers in less important German towns. But those we have already discussed are perhaps sufficient as representatives of the first stage of book-illustration in Germany. They have all this much in common that they are planned and carried out under the immediate direction of the printers themselves, each of whom seems to have had one or more wood-engravers attached to his office, who drew their own designs upon the wood and cut them themselves. There is a maximum of outline-work, a minimum of shading and
no cross-hatching. Every line is as direct and simple as possible. At times the effect is inconceivably rude, at times it is delightful in its child-like originality, and the craftsman's efforts to give expression to the faces are sometimes almost ludicrously successful. To the present writer these simple woodcuts are far more pleasing than all the glories of the illustrated work of the next century. They are in keeping with the books they decorate, in keeping with the massive black types and the stiff white paper. After 1500, we may almost say after 1490, we shall find that the printing and illustrating of books are no longer closely allied trades. An artist draws a design with pen and ink, a clever mechanic imitates it as minutely as he can on the wood, and the design is then carelessly printed in the midst of type-work, which bears little relation to it. Paper and ink also are worse, and types smaller and less carefully handled. Everything was sacrificed to cheapness, and the result was as dull as cheap work usually is. By the time that the great artists began to turn their attention to book-illustration, printing in Germany was almost a lost art.
[6] Many of Knoblochtzer's books also have very pretentious borders, though the designs are usually coarse. A quarto border used in his Salomon et Marcolfus with a large initial letter, and a folio one in his reprint of Æsop perhaps show his best work. These are reproduced, with many other examples of his types, initials, and illustrations in Heinrich Knoblochtzer in Strassburg von Karl Schorbach und Max Spirgatis. (Strassburg, 1888.)