by other German artists, but they have the great advantage of having been carefully printed on fine vellum, and this has materially assisted their reputation.
The Weisskunig, a celebration of Maximilian's life and travels, and the Freydal, in honour of his knightly deeds, were part of the same scheme as the Theuerdank. The two hundred and thirty-seven designs for the Weisskunig were mainly the work of Hans Burgkmair,[8] an Augsburg artist of repute; its literary execution was entrusted to the Emperor's secretary, Max Treitzsaurwein, who completed the greater part of the text as early as 1512. But the Emperor's death in 1519 found the great work still unfinished, and it was not until 1775 that it was published as a fragment, with the original illustrations (larger, and perhaps finer, than those in the Theuerdank), of which the blocks had, fortunately, been preserved. The Freydal, though begun as early as 1502, was left still less complete; the designs for it, however, are in existence at Vienna. The 'Triumph of the Emperor Maximilian,' another ambitious work, with one hundred and thirty-five woodcuts designed by Burgkmair, was first published in 1796.
The death of Maximilian in 1519 and the less
artistic tastes of Charles V. caused German illustrators to turn for work to the Augsburg printers, and during the next few years we find them illustrating a number of books for the younger Schoensperger, for Hans Othmar, for Miller, and for Grimm and Wirsung, all Augsburg firms. The most important result of this activity was the German edition of Petrarch's De Remediis utriusque Fortunae, for which in the years immediately following the Emperor's death an artist named Hans Weiditz, whose identity has only lately been re-established, drew no less than two hundred and fifty-nine designs. Owing to the death of the printer, Grimm, the book was put on one side, but was finally brought out by Heinrich Steiner, Grimm's successor, in 1532. In the interim some of the cuts had been used for an edition of Cicero De Senectute, and they were afterwards used again in a variety of works. Despite the excellence of the cuts the Petrarch is a very disappointing book. To do justice to the fine designs the most delicate press work was necessary, and, except when the pressmen were employed by an Emperor, the delicacy was not forthcoming; it may be said, indeed, that it was made impossible by the poorness and softness of the paper on which the book is printed. At this period it was only the skill of individual artists which prevented German books from being as dull and uninteresting as they soon afterwards became.
Books of devotion in Germany never attained to
the beauty of the French Horae, but they did not remain uninfluenced by them. In or before 1496 we find a Nouum B. Mariae Virginis Psalterium printed at Zinna, near Magdeburg, with very beautiful, though florid, borders. In 1513 there appeared at Augsburg a German prayer-book, entitled Via Felicitatis, with thirty cuts, all with rich conventional borders, probably by Hans Schäufelein, and we have already seen that in the same year Dürer himself designed borders for the Emperor's own Gebetbuch. In 1515, again, Burgkmair had contributed a series of designs, many of which had rich architectural borders, to a Leiden Christi, published by Schoensperger at Augsburg. In 1520 the same artist designed another set of illustrations, with very richly ornamented borders of flowers and animals, for the Devotissimae Meditationes de vita beneficiis et passione Jesu Christi, printed by Grimm. The use of borders soon became a common feature in German title-pages, especially in the small quartos in which the Lutherans and anti-Lutherans carried on their controversies; but it cannot be said that they often exhibit much beauty.
The innumerable translations of the Bible, which were another result of the Lutheran controversy, also provided plenty of work for the illustrators. The two Augsburg editions of the New Testament in 1523 were both illustrated, the younger Schoensperger's by Schäufelein, Silvan Othmar's by Burgkmair. Burgkmair also issued a series of twenty-one
illustrations to the Apocalypse, for which Othmar had not had the patience to wait.
