In 1525 Geoffroi Tory, a native of Bourges (born about 1480), who at this period of his life was at once a skilled designer, a scholar, and a printer, completed a Horae which, though somewhat thin and unsatisfying compared with the richer and more pictorial work of Pigouchet at his best, far surpassed any edition produced at Paris for the previous twenty years. Part of the edition was taken up by the great publisher of the day, Simon Colines, and while the body of the book was only printed once, differences in the titlepages and colophons and in the arrangement of the almanac and privilege constitute altogether three different issues. Whereas the best earlier editions had been printed in gothic letter this is in roman, and both the borders and the twelve illustrations aim at the lightness and grace necessary to match the lighter type. The vase-like designs of the borders are meaningless, but the pictures, despite the long faces and somewhat angular figures, have a peculiar charm. They were used again, with some additions, in a Horae completed 20 October, 1531. An edition of 1 October, 1527, described by Tory’s chief biographer, Auguste Bernard, as printed, “chez Simon de Colines en caractères romains avec des vignettes de même genre, mais beaucoup plus petites,” I have never seen. Three weeks later Tory printed in gothic letter a Paris Horae with borders of birds and fruits and flowers rather in the style of some of the Flemish manuscripts. In February, 1529, he produced a much smaller Horae in roman type without borders, but with some very delicate little cuts, used again by Olivier Mallard, who married his widow, in 1542. Tory appears to have died in 1533, and attributions of later work to him on the ground of its being marked with a “cross of Lorraine” (i.e. a cross with two transverse strokes) should be received with caution, unless the cuts are found in books by Tory’s widow or her second husband. It is not quite clear that the cross is not the mark of a wood-cutter rather than a designer, and if it really marks the designer we must believe that it was used by others beside Tory, so various is the work on which it is found.
Illustrated books were published at Lyon somewhat earlier than at Paris, and in point of numbers, if the comparison be confined to secular books with sets of cuts especially appropriated to them, the provincial city probably equalled, if it did not surpass, the metropolis. But if it must be reckoned to the credit of Lyon that it had no Antoine Vérard, reckless in his use of unsuitable stock cuts, it must be noted, on the other hand, that strikingly good illustrations are rare and bad ones numerous. Inasmuch as Lyon, before it welcomed the art of printing, had established some reputation for the manufacture of playing-cards, the number of rude and badly cut illustrations is indeed surprisingly large. The first Lyonnese printer to use pictorial woodcuts in a dated book was Martin Huss, who issued a Miroir de la Rédemption, 27 August, 1478, with the aid of blocks previously used (1476) by Bernard Richel at Basel; cuts of surgical instruments appeared in the following March, 1478-9, in the Chirurgia of Guido de Cauliaco printed for Barth. Buyer by Nicolaus Philippi and Marcus Reinhart, and the same printers’ undated Legende dorée with very rude pictures is probably contemporaneous with this. The earliest woodcut of any artistic interest and of Lyonnese origin is a picture, occupying a folio-page, of the Blessed Virgin, with the Holy Child in her arms, standing in front of a curtain. This is found in the Histoire du Chevalier Oben qui vouloist acuplir le voiage de S. Patrix, printed by Leroy about 1480, of which the only known copy is at the British Museum.
After 1480 all the firms we have named continued to issue illustrated books of varying merit. On 30 September, 1483, Leroy completed a Livre des Eneydes with cuts which are often grotesque, though sometimes neat and sometimes giving evidence of a vigour of design too great for the wood-cutter’s skill. In 1485 he found a Lyonnese cutter able to copy for him the Paris cuts of Jean Bonhomme’s edition of the Destruction de Troye la Grant quite competently, though in a much heavier style. In May, 1486, he printed a Livre des Sainctz Anges with a figure of Christ in a mandorla (perhaps suggested by the engraving of the same subject in Bettini’s Monte Santo di Dio), and this, despite a certain clumsiness in the face, is quite good. In the same year, in an edition of Fierabras, Leroy went back to cuts of incredible rudeness, while about 1490 in Les Mysteres de la Saincte Messe, we find him employing for a cut of the Annunciation a skilled craftsman, signing himself I. D. (Jean Dalles?), whose work, though lacking in charm, is neatness itself. Some shaded cuts in his romance of Bertrand Du Guesclin (undated, but c. 1487) are among the best work in any book by Leroy. Among his other undated illustrated books are editions of Pierre de Provence, Melusine, and the Roman de la Rose.
Nicolaus Philippi and Marcus Reinhart in 1482 illustrated a Mirouer de la vie humaine (from the Latin of Rodericus Zamorensis) with Augsburg cuts purchased from the stock of Günther Zainer[40], and copied a Paris edition in their Vie des Saintz pères hermites and German originals in their Mandeville and Aesop. Their edition of the Postilla Guillermi (c. 1482) has rather a fine Crucifixion and some primitive but vigorous illustrations of the gospels.
Martin Huss issued an undated Exposition de la Bible with rude cuts and a French Belial (version of Pierre Ferget), first printed in November, 1481, and at least five times subsequently. After his death in 1482 his business was carried on by a kinsman, Mathieu Huss, who became a prolific publisher of illustrated books, with cuts of very varying merit. Two of his earliest ventures were the Proprietaire des Choses (2 November, 1482), a French version of the De proprietatibus rerum of Bartholomaeus Anglicus, and a Fasciculus temporum (1483), both with very rude cuts. During a partnership with Johann Schabeler he issued (about 1484) a French version of Boccaccio’s De casibus illustrium virorum, the pictures in which are hard, stiff, and a little grotesque, but not without character. Of his later books several are illustrated with cuts borrowed or copied from other editions; but beyond a Legende dorée with shaded column-cuts, frequently reprinted, he does not seem to have commissioned any important illustrated book.
While the pictorial work of the Lyonnese presses was thus largely imitative, at least two very important books were first illustrated there. The earlier of these was the Roman de la Rose, of which the first printed edition, decorated with eighty-six cuts mostly small and rudely executed, but which at least have the merit of intelligently following the text, is now attributed to the press of Ortuin and Schenck at Lyon about 1481.[41] These primitive pictures were quickly copied by a cutter of somewhat greater skill but much less intelligence, who “improved” the original designs without troubling to understand them. This new set of cuts was used twice at Lyon, by Jean Syber (about 1485) and by Leroy (about 1487), and was then acquired (less one of the two larger cuts) by Jean Du Pré of Paris, who issued an edition about 1494. About 1497, and again a few years later, new editions were issued in which most of the same cuts reappear, Jean Petit having a share in both editions and Vérard in the first, despite the fact that he had issued a rival edition about 1495.[42]
| XXI. LYON, TRECHSEL, 1493 TERENCE (SIG. A 7 VERSO) |
The other famous Lyonnese illustrated book was an annotated edition of Terence “with pictures prefixed to every scene” printed in 1493 by Johann Trechsel. This has a curious full-page picture at the beginning, giving the artist’s idea of a Roman theatre, with a box for the aediles at the side and a ground floor labelled “Fornices.” The text is illustrated by 150 half-page cuts, a little hard, but with abundance of life (see Plate XXI). These certainly influenced the Strassburg edition of Grüninger (1496), and through Grüninger’s that published at Paris by Vérard about 1500, and to an even greater extent the illustrated editions issued at Venice.
How eagerly Lyonnese publishers looked out for books to imitate may be seen from the rival Lyonnese renderings of Breidenbach’s Peregrinationes and Brant’s Narrenschiff. Of the Breidenbach, Michel Topie and Jac. de Herrnberg issued in November, 1480, an adaptation by Nicolas Le Huen with copies on copperplate of the maps and on wood of the smaller pictures, both very well executed. Rather over a year later, in February, 1490, a translation by “frere iehan de Hersin” was published by Jacques Maillet with the original Mainz blocks. As for the Ship of Fools, Jacques Sacon, the leading publisher at the end of the century, issued an edition of Locher’s Latin version with close copies of the Basel cuts in June, 1498, and in the following August a French edition was published by Guillaume Balsarin with cuts so hastily executed that in many cases all the background has been omitted.