CHAPTER IV
GERMANY, FROM 1486
The second period of book-illustration in Germany dates from the publication at Mainz in 1486 of Bernhard von Breydenbach's celebrated account of his pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Two years previously Schoeffer had brought out a Herbarius in which one hundred and fifty plants were illustrated, mostly only in outline, and in 1485 he followed this up with another work of the same character, the Gart der Gesundheyt, which has between three and four hundred cuts of plants and animals, and a fine frontispiece of botanists in council. This in its turn formed the basis of Jacob Meidenbach's enlarged Latin edition of the same work, published under the title of Hortus Sanitatis, with additional cuts and full-page frontispieces to each part. These three books in the naïveté and simplicity of some of their illustrations, belong to the period which we have reviewed in our last chapter, but in other cuts a real effort seems to have been made to reproduce the true appearance of the plant, and the increased care for accuracy links them with the newer work. It is, however, the Opus transmarinae peregrinationis ad sepulchrum dominicum in Jherusalem
which opens a new era, as the first work executed by an artist of distinction as opposed to the nameless craftsmen at whose woodcuts we have so far been looking.
When Bernhard von Breydenbach went on his pilgrimage in 1483 he took with him the artist, Erhard Reuwich, and while Breydenbach made notes of their adventures, Reuwich sketched the inhabitants of Palestine, and drew wonderful maps of the places they visited. On their return to Mainz in 1484, Breydenbach began writing out his Latin account of the pilgrimage, and Reuwich not only completed his drawings, but took so active a part in passing the work through the press that, though the types used in it apparently belonged to Schoeffer, he is spoken of as its printer. The book appeared in 1486, and as its magnificence deserved, was issued on vellum as well as on paper. Its first page was blank, the second is occupied by a frontispiece, in which the art of wood-engraving attained at a leap to an unexampled excellence. In the centre of the composition is the figure of a woman, personifying the town of Mainz, standing on a pedestal, below and on either side of which are the shields of Breydenbach and his two noble companions, the Count of Solms and Sir Philip de Bicken. The upper part of the design is occupied by foliage amid which little naked boys are happily scrambling. The dedication to the Archbishop of Mainz begins with a beautiful, but by no means legible, R, in
which a coat of arms is enclosed in light and graceful branches. This, and the smaller S which begins the preface are the only two printed initials in the volume. All the rest are supplied by hand.
The most noticeable feature in the book are seven large maps, of Venice, Parenzo in Illyria, Corfu, Modon, near the bay of Navarino, Crete, Rhodes, and Jerusalem. These are of varying sizes, from that of Venice, which is some five feet in length, to those of Parenzo and Corfu, which only cover a double-page. They are panoramas rather than maps, and are plainly drawn from painstaking sketches, with some attempt at local colour in the people on the quays and the shipping. Besides these maps there is a careful drawing, some six inches square, of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, headed 'Haec est dispositio et figura templi dominici sepulchri ab extra,' and cuts of Saracens (here shown), two Jews, Greeks, both seculars and monks, Syrians and Indians, with tables of the alphabets of their respective languages. Spaces are also left for drawings of Jacobites, Nestorians, Armenians, and Georgians, which apparently were not engraved.
After Breydenbach and his fellows had visited Jerusalem they crossed the desert to the shrine of St. Katharine on Mount Sinai, and this part of their travels is illustrated by a cut of a cavalcade of Turks in time of peace. There is also a page devoted to drawings of animals, showing a giraffe, a crocodile, two Indian goats, a camel led by a baboon with a
long tail and walking stick, a salamander and a unicorn. Underneath the baboon is written 'non constat de nomine' ('name unknown'), and the presence of the unicorn did not prevent the travellers from solemnly asserting,—'Haec animalia sunt veraciter depicta sicut vidimus in terra sancta!' At the end of the text is Reuwich's device, a woman holding a shield, on which is depicted the figure of a bird. The book is beautifully printed, in a small and very graceful gothic letter. It obtained the success it deserved, for there was a speedy demand for a German translation (issued in 1488), and at least six different editions were printed in Germany during the next twenty years, besides other translations.