We come now to the last and most interesting section of our subject, the cuts in which one artist has borrowed the design of another, but whether imitating it freely or closely has introduced modifications in technical treatment which make it his own, harmonising it so closely with the work of his own city or country that it easily takes its place with purely native designs until by some chance its real origin is discovered. For various reasons these transformations are almost, though not entirely, confined to Italy. Thus it would be idle to expect them in England because there was no English school of design or engraving of sufficient individuality to modify the style of the cuts it borrowed. In Germany, on the other hand, the native school was immensely productive, and had a long start of France and Italy in point of time. Very shortly after 1470 we find illustrated books at Augsburg and Ulm of a simple excellence which could not be bettered. In France and Italy we get a few good books about 1480, but woodcuts do not become common till ten years later. One of the few very early illustrated books of Italy, the 'Valturius,' printed at Verona in 1472, was indeed copied in Germany, the cuts being reproduced in reverse in an undated 'Vegetius,' probably printed at Augsburg about 1475 by Johann Wiener, though it should be mentioned that Dr. Muther, like a true Teuton, tries to claim priority for his countrymen by bringing back the 'Vegetius' to about 1470. But this is a solitary instance, which belongs, moreover, to an earlier section of our subject, and, until Mr. Redgrave communicated to the Bibliographical Society his paper on the early illustrated books of Oppenheim, I knew of nothing more apposite. In that paper, however, Mr. Redgrave showed how both the border of the 'Calendar,' printed by Ratdolt at Venice in 1476, and some of Ratdolt's ornamental initials, were closely imitated by Johann Köbel, in an undated 'Passio Domini.' The two books were separated by an interval of quite thirty years, and Köbel in imitating Ratdolt was not content with his delicate outline, but put in a heavy background which does not improve it. Some late German prayer-books show traces of the influence of the French 'Horae,' but beyond these I know of nothing.
The case of Holland is somewhat similar to that of Germany. In the last decade of the fifteenth century, the Dutch woodcutters imitated closely, or directly borrowed, from the French 'Horae,' but the best work, which is also the earliest, was entirely original.
In the sixteenth century the popular printers, like John of Doesborgh, no doubt obtained their haphazard illustrations whence and how they could. In the editions of 'Le Chevalier Délibéré,' by Olivier de la Marche, printed at Antwerp in French and Spanish, in 1547, etc., I thought, at first, that I had found an instance of artistic copying of a very interesting nature, for there is a close connection in design between these highly-finished cuts and the rude yet striking work in the edition printed at Gouda, by Gottfried van Os, shortly after 1486. Inasmuch, however, as La Marche had given elaborate directions for the illumination of his poem, it is obvious that by following these directions any two designers would obtain fairly similar results, without any direct imitation of one by the other.
As far as my own information goes, the French wood-cutters trusted almost entirely to their own imagination during the fifteenth century, and, when they took to borrowing for their 'Horae,' borrowed outright without any attempt at adaptation. One famous example of copying of a later date deserves mention. In 1545 the younger Aldus printed at Venice a second edition of the famous 'Hypnerotomachia,' and either this or the original of 1499 attracted the attention of Gohorry, who made a translation which was revised by Jean Martin and printed by Jacques Kerver in 1546. The cuts to this translation have been variously attributed to Jean Goujon and Jean Cousin, but a moment's glance at the book will show that they are not all by the same hand. The majority of the illustrations show wretched work, and are very clumsily cut, but those at the beginning and a few in the latter part of the volume are fine examples of artistic translation into a different manner. I give here the scene of Poliphilo by the river bank from both the original and the copy, and old favourite as the Venetian cut justly is, I think that the French cut attains almost equal excellence in another style. No finer example of free adaptation could easily be found.
CUT FROM THE 'POLIPHILO' OF VENICE, 1499. (REDUCED)
When we come to Italy we find a wholly different set of conditions. Here book-illustration started late, but during the twenty years from 1490 to 1510 its vogue was enormous, and great as was the fertility of the Italian designers it was natural that in face of the demands made upon them by the publishers they should seek help whereever they could find it. But in Italy at this period every craftsman was an artist, and whether he sought his inspiration in the paintings which he saw around him, in the engravings on copper which had flourished long before book-illustration became popular, in the cuts in foreign books, or in those published in other districts of his own country, the Italian woodcutter always put his own individuality into his work and made the design he was copying his own. I am unfortunately unacquainted with the pictures to which Dr. Lippmann and Dr. Kristeller have traced three or four of the Venetian and Florentine woodcuts,[7] but the examples of translation from engravings on copper to woodcuts in the Venetian 'Petrarch' of 1490, in the second Florentine edition of Bettini's 'Monte Sancto di Dio' (1491), and in the illustration of the works of mercy in the 'Libro delli Comandamente di Dio' of Fra Marco del Monte Sancta Maria (Florence, 1496), are extremely interesting, and show how well the workmen, especially those of Florence, understood the principle of artistic selection.
THE SAME CUT AS REDRAWN IN THE FRENCH EDITION OF THE 'POLIPHILO,' 1546. (RATHER MORE REDUCED)
No more characteristic example of free imitation can be found than in the use made of the cuts in the Latin and German Bibles, printed by Quentell at Cologne about 1480, by the illustrator of the Malermi Bible ten years later. The German cuts are large and clumsy (measuring about 7½ x 5 in.), overcrowded with figures, and with the rudest ideas of perspective and arrangement. The little Italian vignettes, on the other hand, are gracefully and delicately designed, and it is only from the presence of some purely fanciful accessory, such as the pond and the swan swimming in it in the examples here given, that we are compelled to recognise the debt of the Venetian artist to his German predecessor.