Old Picture Books, With Other Essays on Bookish Subjects

by Alfred W. Pollard

DEVICE OF FRANÇOYS REGNAULT

In Italy, despite what has just been said, the earliest device known is that of a German printer, Sixtus Riessinger, who worked at Naples, 1471-80. It represents a woman holding a shield, while behind her is a scroll bearing the letters 'S.R.D.A., Sixtus Riessinger de Argentina,' i.e. of Cologne. This device stands by itself, the real sequence of Italian designs beginning with that used at Venice by Nicolas Jenson and John of Cologne in 1481. This consists of a circle and of a straight line, crossed by two bars, rising at right angles to the base of a segment of it. It was imitated by one Italian printer after another at Venice, Pavia, Brescia, and elsewhere, and with various ornamental modifications re-appears in quite three out of four of the fifteenth century Italian devices. From Italy it passed to France, and from France to England, where it was used by Julian Notary. The design, by dividing the circle into three parts, allows the printer to place his initials in them, and this was frequently done. Jenson was also a very famous printer, and his example would naturally be imitated. But how it came to be imitated so widely, and whether any meaning, symbolical or otherwise, can be extracted from the design, are problems to which no satisfactory answer has been returned. Among the prettier modifications of this too popular design are those used by Franciscus de Mazaliis, of Reggio, and by Egmont and Barrevelt, the printers of the Venice edition of the Sarum Missal. The latter is shown on page 229.

Among designs of other patterns, mention may be made of the crown used by Mazochius, of Ferrara; the 'putti' of Filippo Giunta, and the crowned dolphin of Piero Pacini, both of Florence; the fourteen varieties of angels which appear on as many devices used by the brothers De Legnano, of Milan; the shielded warrior of Bernardinus de Garaldis, of Milan; the S. Jerome of Bernardinus Benalius; the fleur-de-lys of Lucantonio Giunta; the S. Antony of Philippus Pintius; the S. George and the Dragon of Giorgio Rusconi; and the mouse-eating cat of J. B. Sessa, reproduced on page 231. The last five printers all worked at Venice, and almost all of those we have named belonged not only to the fifteenth century, but to the sixteenth, in which the vogue of the Jenson model at last came to an end.

It has already been said that for variety and artistic treatment among printers' devices, the first place must be given to those found in French books. Yet their beginning was poor enough, the representation of the ship, taken from the arms of the city of Paris, which was used by Louis Martineau about 1484, being badly cut and quite insignificant. Jean Du Pré (for his first device), Pierre Levet, Jean Lambert, and one or two other French printers at Paris, used some of the features of the normal Italian design, though in a far more elaborate and decorative form; while at Lyons, where Italian influence was always strong, simple copying was thought good enough.

DEVICE OF DIEGO DE GUMIEL

But the typical French device is much more pictorial than any of these. The arms of France and of the city of Paris are prominent in many of them, and in that of André Bocard both are used at once; but the printer used often to take a suggestion from his Christian name, from the sign by which his shop was known, or from the motto with which most early French devices are encircled. The second device of Antoine Caillaut (reproduced on p. 241) is a beautiful and early example of the appearance of a patron saint in a device; while that of the two swans used by Du Pré, whose printing house had the 'Deux Cygnes' for its sign, is a good example of the second class. The device here chosen for our second French illustration I take to be an example of the pictorial expansion of a motto, Regnault's expression of trust in God being well represented by this quiet little pastoral scene (see page 234).

DEVICE OF JOHN OF PADERBORN

Though far inferior to the best French examples, the printers' marks used in the Low Countries are also numerous, varied and good. They range from the twin shields of Veldener and Gerard Leeu to such imposing devices as the elephant and howdah used, with punning intent, by an unknown printer ('G.D.') at Gouda, and the bannered castle, the arms of the city of Antwerp, adopted by Thierry Martens. Among the earliest are the small portraits of the printers themselves found in some of the books of John and Conrad, of Paderborn, in Westphalia. That of the former, here reproduced, is sometimes found in red ink as well as black, and is referred to in one of his colophons as 'meum solitum signum.' The bird-cage used by Godfrid Back at Antwerp has no parallel among devices that I know of, but as a specimen of the larger Dutch marks we will take that of his fellow-citizen, Matthias van der Goes, which represents a very vigorous 'wild man' with club and shield (see page 228).