At Strassburg Johann Mentelin had used woodcuts for diagrams in an undated edition of the Etymologiae of S. Isidore, printed about 1473, but the first producer of books pictorially illustrated was Heinrich Knoblochtzer, who worked from 1476 to 1484, and issued over thirty books with woodcuts. Most of these were copies from other men’s work, e.g. his Belial and Melusina from Bämler’s, his Philalethes from the Nuremberg edition of Johann Müller, his Aesop and Historie der Sigismunda from Johann Zainer’s, his Leben der heiligen drei Königen probably from an anonymous edition by Johann Prüss. Early in his career in 1477 he issued two books on the great subject of the hour, the death of Charles the Bold, Peter Hagenbach und der Burgundische Krieg and the Burgunderkrieg of Erhard Tusch, in both of which he used eight woodcuts, most of them devoted to incidents of the Duke’s ill-fated campaign. An anonymous edition of the Euryalus und Lucretia of Aeneas Sylvius (Pope Pius II) has nineteen cuts, which were apparently commissioned by Knoblochtzer, but he did not secure the services of a sufficiently skilled wood-cutter. It should be said, however, that his “historiated” or pictorial capitals are apparently original and mostly good.
To Johann Prüss at Strassburg are now assigned editions in High and Low German of the Lives of the Fathers and of Antichrist, which Mr. Proctor, though he had a shrewd suspicion of their origin, left floating about among the German “adespota.” The cuts to the former reach the average of early work; those to the Antichrist vary greatly, that of Antichrist preaching before a queen being extraordinarily successful as a presentation of a type of coarse spiritual effrontery. The acknowledged work of Prüss includes editions of the travels of Mandeville, of the Directorium Humanae Vitae, and of the Flores Musicae of Hugo Reutlingensis, with a rather famous cut showing how musical notes are produced by the wind, by a water wheel, by tapping stones, and hammering on an anvil. Prüss also printed several illustrated editions of the Hortus Sanitatis.
Far more prolific than either of the foregoing Strassburg printers was Johann Reinhard of Grüningen, usually called Grüninger after his birthplace. Setting up his press in 1483, he began book-illustration two years later with a German Bible with woodcuts copied from those in the Low German Bibles printed at Cologne and used in 1483 at Nuremberg by Koberger. Some minor books followed, and in 1491 he issued the Antidotarius Animae of Nicolaus de Saliceto, with rather rude borders to each page and a woodcut of the Assumption. This, however, like some of his earlier illustrated books, appears to have been a commission, and in a reprint of 1493 the decorations disappear. It was not until 1496, under the influence of Sebastian Brant, that he undertook any important original illustrated work on his own account. In that year he produced his first illustrated classic, the comedies of Terence (Terentius cum directorio), with a large woodcut of a theatre and eighty-seven narrow cuts of the dramatis personae, or of scenery, used five at a time in 150 different combinations. Critically examined, the cuts are rather unpleasing, and were regarded at the time as likely to provoke mirth otherwise than by expressing the humorous intent of the playwright, but another edition and a German translation similarly decorated appeared in 1499, and Grüninger issued on the same plan a Horace (edited by Locher) in 1498, and the De consolatione philosophiae of Boethius in 1501. His full strength was reserved for the Virgil of the following year, which was superintended by Brant, and is crowded with wonderful pictures, in which on the very eve of the Renaissance Virgil is thoroughly medievalized. Besides these classics, Grüninger printed many other illustrated editions, minor works by Brant, medical treatises by Brunschwig, an Evangelienbuch, a Legenda S. Katherinae in Latin and also in German, editions of the Hortulus Animae, the romance of Hug Schapler, etc., in the fifteenth century, and in the sixteenth a sufficient number of illustrated books to bring his total up to about 150 editions. These may be said to form a school by themselves, distinguished by a certain richness of effect partly due to heavy cutting, but with less power of characterization and fewer gleams of beauty than are to be found in the best work of other towns, the figures being often unpleasing and notably lean in the legs. Martin Scott, Hupfuff, and Kistler were other Strassburg printers of the fifteenth century who also used illustrations.
At Cologne book-illustration began in 1474 with editions of the Fasciculus Temporum of Werner Rolewinck, from the presses of ther Hoernen and Nicolaus Götz. But with the notable exception of two great Bibles issued by Heinrich Quentell, illustrated books before 1490 are neither important nor numerous. Even in 1490 the edition of the Historia Septem Sapientum of Johannes de Hauteselve, issued by the elder Koelhoff, was adorned with cuts obtained from Gerard Leeu at Antwerp. Quentell issued a few stock cuts in one book after another, and Johann Landen, Martin von Werden (if he be rightly identified with the printer “Retro Minores”), and Cornelis von Zierickzee all used a few cuts, some of the latter’s having a curiously Italian appearance. But the only important illustrated book, other than the Bibles, is the Cologne Chronicle, issued (not to his profit, since he was imprisoned for it) by the younger Koelhoff in 1499, with armorial cuts and a few pictures of kings and queens somewhat too frequently repeated. Quentell’s Bibles in High and Low German are in curious contrast to all this work. They are illustrated with 125 large oblong pictures, firmly if rather coarsely cut, and full of story-telling power, several successive incidents being sometimes brought into the same picture in true medieval fashion. The book was imitated at Nuremberg and elsewhere, and the illustrators of the Venetian Malermi Bible of 1490, and even Hans Holbein himself, did not disdain to take ideas from it.
At Lübeck a finely decorated edition of the Rudimentum Noviciorum, a universal history, was issued by Lucas Brandis as early as 1475, with some good pictorial capitals, and pictures beginning with the Creation and coming down to the life of Christ. In 1484 we come to a Levend S. Jeronimi, printed by Bartholomaeus Ghotan and illustrated by an anonymous artist whose work can be traced during the next ten years in other books of Ghotan’s, in several very interesting editions by the unidentified “Poppy-Printer” (so called from his mark), including a Dodendantz (1489 and 1496), Imitatio Christi, Bergitten Openbaringe (1496), Reynke de Vos (1498), Schakspil, etc., and in the splendid Low German Bible printed in 1494 by Stephan Arndes, with cuts which improve on those in the Cologne editions.
| IX. MAINZ, ERHARD REUWICH, 1486 BREIDENBACH. PEREGRINATIO IN MONTEM SYON SARACENS AND SYRIANS |
At Mainz, which led the way so energetically in typography, book-illustration is not represented at all until 1479, and then almost accidentally in the Meditationes of Cardinal Turrecremata, printed by Johann Neumeister “ciuem Moguntinensem,” with thirty-four curious metal-cuts imitating on a smaller scale the woodcuts in the editions printed at Rome by Ulrich Han. Two years later these metal-cuts were used by Neumeister at Albi, and they are subsequently found at Lyon. That this book was printed at Mainz was made practically certain by the type appearing subsequently in the possession of Peter von Friedberg, but that the cuts were executed at Mainz seemed to me improbable until the publication of Dr. Schreibers work on German illustrated books acquainted me with the existence of an Agenda Moguntinensis of 29 June, 1480, also attributed to Neumeister’s press, with a metal-cut of S. Martin and the beggar, and the arms not only of Archbishop Diether and the province of Mainz, but of Canon Bernhard von Breidenbach, of whom we shall soon hear again. The Agenda and its metal-cuts are thus firmly fixed as executed at Mainz, and the metal-cuts of the Meditationes must therefore be regarded as Mainz work also.
In 1486 Mainz atoned for her long delay in taking up illustrated work, with the Peregrinationes in Montem Syon of the aforesaid Canon Bernhard von Breidenbach, printed with type of Schoeffer’s, under the superintendence of Erhard Reuwich of Utrecht, the illustrator. The text of Breidenbach’s book is full of interest, for he gives a vivid account of the voyage and of the hardships and extortions to which pilgrims were exposed. In his preface he states that Reuwich was expressly taken on the expedition to illustrate the narrative, and he certainly had ample skill to justify the engagement. Unfortunately, far too much of his labour was spent on great maps or views of Venice, Parenzo, Rhodes and other places passed on the way. These are certainly interesting, as they mark all the chief buildings and are very decoratively drawn. But in the text of the book there are just a few sketches from the life, Jewish moneylenders and groups of Saracens, Syrians (see Plate IX), Indians, etc., and these are so vivid and vigorous that we may well regret that the labour bestowed on the great maps left time for very few of them. They are interesting, moreover, not only as designs, but also for their cutting, as they introduce cross-hatching for the first time, and that very effectively, and are handled with equal firmness and freedom. At the end of the book is a jest, a full-page woodcut subscribed “Hec sunt animalia veraciter depicta sicut vidimus in terra sancta,” among the animals thus certified as having been seen personally in the Holy Land being a unicorn and a creature (name unknown—non constat de nomine) with a great mane of hair and long tail, which might well serve for the missing link between a man and a gorilla. The frontispiece of the book, on the other hand, is a striking design of a woman (symbolizing the city of Mainz?) standing on a pedestal surrounded with the arms of Breidenbach and the two friends who went with him, decoratively treated, while above her is a canopy of trelliswork amid which children are joyously climbing. With the Mainz Breidenbach we feel that we have passed away from the naive craftsmanship of the earliest illustrated books into a region of conscious art.
Naturally craftsmanship was not extinguished by the arrival of a single artist. We find it at work again in the charming and little known cut to a Leipzig edition of the Eclogues of Theodulus, printed in 1491, which the delight of recent discovery tempts me to show here (see Plate X), and at Mainz itself in the simple cuts to the Hortus Sanitatis, printed by Meidenbach, also in 1491, though here again there is an advance, as instead of plants and animals drawn out of the illustrator’s head merely for decorative effect we find in many of the cuts fairly careful copies made from the life.
In Conrad Botho’s Cronecken der Sassen, printed by Schoeffer the following year, most of the armorial illustrations and pictures of the foundation of towns are merely decoratively treated, but in one cut in which a rather wild-looking Charlemagne with lean legs is shown seated in a chair of state surmounted by an eagle, an idol crushed under his feet, the designer has given free play to his imagination.