It is the charm of the earlier books illustrated with incised engravings that the impressions are pulled on the same paper as the rest of the book, very often on pages bearing letterpress, and almost always, even when they chance to occupy a whole page, the back of which is left blank, as part of the quire or gathering. The price, however, which had to be paid for these advantages was a heavy one, the trouble not merely of double printing, as in the case of a sheet printed in red and black, but of double printing in two different kinds, one being from a raised surface, the other from an incised. It is clear that this trouble was found very serious, as both at Rome and Florence in Italy, at Bruges in the Low Countries, at Würzburg and Eichstätt in Germany, and at Lyon in France, the experiment was tried independently and in every case abandoned after one or two books had been thus ornamented.
| XXXIV. FLORENCE, NICOLUS LAURENTII, 1477 BETTINI. MONTE SANTO DI DIO. CHRIST IN GLORY. (REDUCED) |
At Rome, after the failure of his printing partnership with Pannartz, Conrad Sweynheym betook himself to engraving maps to illustrate an edition of Ptolemy’s Cosmographia, and this was brought out after his death by Arnold Buckinck, 10 October, 1478. Thirteen months earlier Nicolaus Laurentii, of Breslau, had published at Florence the Monte Santo di Dio of Antonio Bettini, with two full-page engravings and one smaller one. The first of these shows the ladder of Prayer and the Sacraments up which, by the virtues which form its successive rungs, a cassocked youth is preparing to climb to heaven, where Christ stands in a mandorla supported by angels. The second plate is given up entirely to a representation of Christ in a mandorla, both drawing and engraving being excellent, and the little angels who are lovingly upholding the frame being really delightful (see Plate XXXIV). The third picture, printed on a page with text, is smaller than these and represents the pains of hell.
When a second edition of the Monte Santo di Dio was needed in 1491 the copperplates were replaced by woodcuts, a fact which may remind us that not only the trouble of printing, but the small number of impressions which could be taken from copperplates, must have been a formidable objection to their use in bookwork. But at the time the first edition may well have been regarded as a success. If so, it was an unlucky one, as Nicolaus Laurentii was thereby encouraged to undertake a much more ambitious venture, an annotated Divina Commedia with similar illustrations, and this, which appeared in 1481, can only be looked on as a failure. No space was left at the head of the first canto, and the engraving was printed on the lower margin, where it is often found cruelly cropped. In subsequent cantos spaces were sometimes left, sometimes not, but after the second the engravings are generally founded printed on separate slips and pasted into their places, and in no copy do they extend beyond canto xix. They used to be assigned to Botticelli, but the discovery of his real designs to the Divina Commedia has shown that these of 1481 were only slightly influenced by them.
In Germany the only copper engravings found in fifteenth century books are the coats of arms of the Bishops and Chapters of Würzburg and Eichstätt in the books printed for them at these places by Georg and Michel Reyser respectively. In order more easily to persuade the clergy of these dioceses to buy properly revised service-books to replace their tattered and incorrect manuscript copies, the Bishops attached certain “indulgences” to their purchase, and as a proof that the recital of these was not a mere advertising trick of the printer permitted him to print their arms at the foot of the notice. These arms, most charmingly and delicately engraved, are found in the Würzburg Missals of 1481 (this I have not seen) and 1484, and the “Agenda” of 1482 (see Plate XXXV), and no doubt also in other early service-books printed by Georg Reyser. The Eichstätt books of his kinsmen Michel are similarly adorned—for instance, the Statuta Synodalia Eystettensia of 1484, though neither the design nor the engraving is so good. In how many editions by the Reysers these engraved arms appeared I cannot say, as the books are all of great rarity; but by 1495, if not earlier, they had been abandoned, for in the Würzburg Missale Speciale of that year we find the delicate engraving replaced by a woodcut copy of nearly four times the size and less than a fourth of the charm.
The only French book of the fifteenth century known to me as possessing copper engravings is a very beautiful one, the version of Breidenbach’s Peregrinatio ad Terram Sanctam, by Frère Nicole le Huen, printed at Lyon by Michel Topie and Jacob Heremberck in 1488, and adorned with numerous excellent capitals. In this all the cuts in the text of the Mainz editions are fairly well copied on wood, but the large folding plans of Venice and other cities on the pilgrims’ route are admirably reproduced on copper with a great increase in the delicacy of their lines.
| XXXV. WÜRZBURG, G. REYSER, 1482 WÜRZBURG AGENDA. (END OF PREFACE) |
We come now to a book bearing an earlier date than any of those already mentioned, but not entitled to its full pride of place because it is doubtful to what extent the engravings connected with it can be reckoned an integral part of it. This is the French version of Boccaccio’s De casibus illustrium virorum (“Des cas des nobles hommes”), printed at Bruges by Colard Mansion and dated 1476. As originally printed there was no space left for any pictorial embellishments; but in at least two copies the first leaf of the prologue has been reprinted so as to leave room for a picture; in another copy, which in 1878 belonged to Lord Lothian, spaces are left also at the beginning of each of the nine books into which the work is divided, except the first and sixth, and all the spaces have been filled with copper engravings coloured by hand; in yet another copy there is a space left also at the beginning of Book VI. According to the monograph on the subject by David Laing (privately printed in 1878), the subjects of the engravings are:—
(1) Prologue, the Author presenting his work to his patron, Mainardo Cavalcanti.
(2) Book I. Adam and Eve standing before the Author as he writes.