XXIII. NUREMBERG, SODALITAS CELTICA. 1501
HROSWITHA. OPERA (4b). HROSWITHA AND THE EMPEROR OTHO
(ATTRIBUTED TO DÜRER)

CHAPTER XI

FOREIGN ILLUSTRATED BOOKS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

As we have already said, the charm of the woodcut pictures in incunabula lies in their simplicity, in their rude story-telling power, often very forcible and direct, in the valiant effort, sometimes curiously successful in cuts otherwise contemptibly poor, to give character and expression to the human face, and as regards form in the harmony between the woodcuts and the paper and type of the books in which they appear. In the book-illustrations of the sixteenth century the artist is more learned, more self-conscious, and his design is interpreted with far greater skill by the better trained wood-cutters of his day. More pains are taken with accessories, and often perhaps for this reason the cut does not tell its story so quickly as of old. It is now a work of art which demands study, no longer a signpost explaining itself however rapidly the leaf is turned. Lastly, the artist seems seldom to have thought of the form of the book in which his work was to appear, of the type with which the text was to be printed, or even of how the wood-cutter was to interpret his design. Book-illustration, which had offered to the humble makers of playing-cards and pictures of saints new scope for their skill, became to the artists of the sixteenth century a lightly valued method of earning a little money from the booksellers, their better work being reserved for single designs, or in some cases for the copperplates which at first they executed, as well as drew, themselves. Thus the book-collector is conscious, on the one hand, that less pains have been taken to please him, and on the other that he is separating by his hobby one section of an artist’s work from the rest, in connection with which it ought to be studied. He may even be in some doubt as to where his province ends, since many of the illustrated books of the sixteenth century, although they possess a titlepage and are made up in quires, are essentially not books at all, the letterpress being confined to explanations of the woodcuts printed either below them or facing them on the opposite pages. The bibliographer himself, it may be added, feels somewhat of an intruder in this field, which properly belongs to the student of art, although in so far as art is enshrined in books and thus brought within the province of the book-collector, bibliography cannot refuse to deal with it.

Although we have taken off our caps in passing to Erhard Reuwich and Michael Wolgemut for their admirable work, the one in the Mainz Breidenbach, the other in the Schatzbehalter and Nuremberg Chronicle, it is Albrecht Dürer who must be regarded as the inaugurator of the second period of German book-illustrations. During his Wanderjahre Dürer had produced at Basel for an edition of S. Jerome’s Epistles, printed by Nicolaus Kesler in 1492 (reprinted 1497), a rude woodcut of the saint extracting a thorn from his lion’s foot. Dürer’s important bookwork begins in 1498, when his fifteen magnificent woodcuts illustrating the Apocalypse (which influenced all later treatments of this theme) were issued twice over at Nuremberg, in one edition with German title and text, in the other with Latin. Stated in their colophons to have been “printed by Albrecht Dürer, painter,” neither edition bears the name of a professional printer. The types used in each case were those of Anton Koberger, Dürer’s godfather, and the effect of the artist’s personal superintendence, which the colophons attest, is seen in the excellence of the presswork. The following year Koberger published an illustrated edition of the Reuelationes Sanctae Birgittae (German reprint in 1502), and Dürer has been supposed to have helped in this, but the theory is now discredited. In 1501 he probably contributed two woodcuts to an edition of the comedies of Hroswitha, a tenth century nun of the Benedictine Abbey at Gandersheim. Conrad Celtes had unearthed these comedies some years previously in a Ratisbon library, and they were now printed under his editorship for the Sodalitas Celtica at Nuremberg. The illustrations to the comedies themselves, which vie in heaviness with their subjects, are attributed by Mr. Campbell Dodgson to Wolfgang Traut.[44] One of the cuts assigned to Dürer represents Celtes offering the book to Frederick III, Elector of Saxony; the other shows Hroswitha herself presenting her plays to the Emperor Otto I (see Plate XXIII). In 1502 Dürer designed another cut of a presentation and an illustration of Philosophy (both very feebly rendered by the cutter) for the Quatuor libri Amorum of Celtes. In 1511 the Latin Apocalypse was reprinted, and three other sets of woodcuts by Dürer appeared in book form, in each case with Latin text by Benedictus Chelidonius. One of these commemorated in twenty designs the life of the Blessed Virgin (Epitome in Diuae Parthenices Marie Historiam ab Alberto Durero Norico per Figuras digestam cum versibus annexis Chelidonii), the other two the Passion of Christ, the Great Passion (Passio domini nostri Jesu ex hieronymo Paduano, Dominico Mancino, Sedulio et Baptista Mantuano per fratrem Chelidonium collecta cum figuris Alberti Dureri Norici Pictoris, in folio) in twelve large woodcuts, the Little Passion (Passio Christi ab Alberto Durer Norembergensi effigiata cū varij generis carminibus Fratris Benedicti Chelidonij Musophili, in quarto) in thirty-seven smaller ones. After this Dürer was caught up by the Emperor Maximilian and set to work on some of the various ambitious projects for illustrating his reign, as to which more will be said later. His later bookwork includes a Crucifixion and S. Willibald for an Eichstätt Missal (Nuremberg, H. Hölzel, 1517), some large designs for the Etliche vnderricht zu befestigung der Stett Schloss vnd flecken (Nuremberg, 1527), and his own book on the Proportion of the Human Body, which was issued both in German and in a Latin translation by Camerarius.

Several borders and illustrations formerly ascribed to Dürer are now attributed to one of his pupils, Hans Springinklee, who lived in Dürer’s house at Nuremberg, where he worked from about 1513 to 1522. Most of Springinklee’s bookwork was done for Anton Koberger, who published some of it at Nuremberg, while some was sent to the Lyon printers, Clein, Sacon, and Marion, who were in Koberger’s employment. A border of his design bearing the arms of Bilibaldus Pirckheimer is found in several works which Pirckheimer edited (1513-17). In a Hortulus Animae, printed by J. Clein for Koberger at Lyon, 1516, fifty cuts are by Springinklee. The Hortulus Animae was as popular in Germany as the illustrated Horae in France and England. In 1517 another edition appeared with Erhard Schön as its chief illustrator, and only a few of Springinklee’s cuts. The next year Springinklee produced a new set of cuts, and Schön’s work was less used. Springinklee and Schön were also associated in Bible illustrations printed for Koberger by Sacon at Lyon, and to Springinklee are now assigned two full-page woodcuts in an Eichstätt Missal (H. Hölzel, Nuremberg, 1517), and a border to the Reuelationes Birgittae (F. Peypus, Nuremberg, 1517), formerly ascribed to Dürer. A woodcut of Johann Tritheim presenting his Polygraphia to Maximilian, formerly attributed to Holbein as having been printed at Basel (Adam Petri, 1518), is now also placed to the credit of Springinklee, who, moreover, worked for the Weisskunig and probably for other of the artistic commemorations of himself which Maximilian commissioned.

Hans Sebald Beham is best known as a book-illustrator from his work for Christian Egenolph at Frankfurt am Main, which began in 1533. But he belonged to the Nuremberg school, had worked for ten or twelve years for Merckel, Peypus, Petreius and other Nuremberg firms, and has had the honour of having some of his single cuts attributed to Dürer. His most important books for Egenolph were the Biblische Historien, a series of small illustrations to the Bible, first printed in 1533, which went through many editions in German and Latin, and another series illustrating the Apocalypse, of which the first edition appeared in 1539, the texts of the Latin Historiae and also to the Apocalypse cuts being supplied by Georgius Aemilius. A set of medallion portraits of Roman emperors by him also appeared in several German and Latin chronicles published by Egenolph.

Between the Nuremberg book-illustrators and those of Augsburg, to whom we must now turn, a connecting link may be found in the person of Hans Leonhard Schäufelein, born about 1480, soon after his father, a Nördlingen wool merchant, had settled at Nuremberg. He worked under Dürer, and his earliest book-illustrations were made for Dr. Ulrich Pinder, the owner of a private press at Nuremberg. Several unsigned cuts in Der beschlossen gart des rosenkrantz Marie (Pinder, 1505), and thirty out of thirty-four large cuts in a Speculum Passionis (Pinder, 1507), are ascribed to Schäufelein, his associate in each book being Hans Baldung. About 1510 Schäufelein removed to Augsburg, and, despite his return to his paternal home at Nördlingen where he took up his citizenship in 1515, he worked for the chief Augsburg publishers for the rest of his life, though between 1523 and 1531 nothing is known as to what he was doing.

Among the earlier Augsburg books with illustrations attributed to Schäufelein are Tengler’s Der neu Layenspiegel (1511), Henricus Suso’s Der Seusse (1512), Heiligenleben (1513), Geiler’s Schiff der Penitentz (1514), and the Hystori und wunderbarlich legend Katharine von Senis (1515), all published by J. Otmar. In 1514 he had illustrated for Adam Petri of Basel a Plenarium or Evangelienbuch, which went through several editions. Another Evangelienbuch, printed by Thomas Anshelm at Hagenau in 1516, contains several cuts with Schäufelein’s signature, but in a different style, probably partly due to a different wood-cutter; these were used again in other books.