To trace the history of these border-pieces would require a separate article. Jean du Pré, Vérard, and Pigouchet, made several experiments in smaller Horae with designs of flowers and birds for borders; but the popular taste decided in favour of allegorical and historical figures, and these were soon multiplied to such an extent that their original order and significance were lost sight of. In the editions published by Jean du Pré in 1488, and by Vérard in 1489, several pages are occupied with an explanation of the small figures in the border. Jesse and Balaam are shown as types of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, the betrothal of Isaac and Rebecca as a type of her Espousal, Eve tempted by the Serpent shows the Fall to which the Annunciation preluded the remedy, the Burning Bush and Aaron's rod foreshadowed the Nativity. Here all is clear, but as the demand for variety increased, there were added, in addition to the 'Dance of Death,' figures of the Saints, Prophets, Angels, and Virtues, representations of the Sibyls, emblems of the Fifteen Signs of Coming Judgment, and scenes from the life of the Blessed Virgin and our Lord, and from the Old Testament.
FROM TORY'S 'HORAE.' PARIS, 1527
Partly for convenience of printing, but more, we may imagine, for the sake of producing an appearance of endless variety, these border-pieces were not cut in a single block, but were detachable, so that they could be used in different combinations. In several editions, even in one of that very scholarly and artistic printer Geoffroy Tory, this is effected at the cost of suggesting that the block had been accidentally broken, as in the page already shown from his edition of 1527, where at the foot the pieces do not even fit together. The more general plan, however, was that exemplified in Tory's edition of 1525, where it is carried out with unusual precision, the borders being built up by the repetition of exactly sixteen blocks of each size, fitting respectively into the inner and outer margin and the head and foot of the page. In earlier editions the border-pieces are more numerous and not so mathematically apportioned, the reason being that while Tory's are purely decorative, and their number therefore fixed at will, in the earlier editions the cuts are pictorial, and their number decided by the exigencies of the subjects. Thus in Pigouchet's Paris 'Hours' of 1491 there are in all 147 border-pieces, of which 78 are outer side-pieces, 15 inner side-pieces, 16 cornices, 8 head-pieces, and 30 foot-pieces. The numbers illustrate the greater importance of the outer side-pieces and foot-pieces, which have a depth or breadth of twenty-one millimetres against the nine of the inner side-piece and head-piece. The subjects illustrated in them are the Creation, the Gospel history from the birth of the Blessed Virgin to the Last Judgment, and special sets of the Nativity and Passion with Old Testament types. All these were extensively imitated by other publishers, and the same honour was paid to the famous set of the Dance of Death, which Pigouchet began to introduce early in 1496, and gradually increased in successive editions till in that of 8th August 1497 we find the full number of ten triple blocks of male victims and twelve of women. A similar succession may be traced in the gradual changes in the full-page cuts, so that we can often tell within two or three months the time at which an undated edition was sent to press. In my own little book there are no large border-pieces, only ledges round the text, but from its containing the picture of the stem of Jesse (shown as one of our illustrations) and the Church Militant and Triumphant, it must be assigned to the year 1498 or a little later.
THE DANCE OF DEATH. FROM PIGOUCHET'S 'HORAE' OF 1498.
[THE TRANSFERENCE OF WOODCUTS IN THE FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES][5]
GRANOLLACHS' 'LUNARE.' FLORENCE: L. MORGIANI FOR P. PACINI, 1496. IMITATED FROM THE NAPLES EDITION OF 1485
DESPITE some efforts to prove the contrary, there can be little doubt that the art of taking clichés of woodcuts, or of cuts engraved on soft metal treated in the same way as wood, was quite unknown during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. If one printer or publisher desired the use of a set of cuts in possession of another, it was open to him to try to borrow or buy them, and failing this to have them copied as best he could, on the theory of artistic copyright having as yet been broached. In the present paper, after a few words on the simpler processes of borrowing and buying, I propose to bring together some typical instances of the different methods in which cuts designed in one country or district were copied in another, and incidentally, perhaps, to throw a little new light on the relations of designers and woodcutters in these early days of book-illustration.