FROM THE 'RAPPRESENTAZIONE D'UNO MIRACOLO DEL CORPO DI GESÙ,' S.A.
An edition of the play of 'S. Cecilia,' probably printed about 1560, affords a good example of the gradual addition of cuts in later reprints. This little tract of about twenty pages has no fewer than eighteen pictures in it, three of which, however, are only repetitions of one of the most familiar cuts in the whole series of 'Rappresentazioni'—a Christian virgin dragged before a king; while three other well-worn cuts are each repeated twice, so that the number of blocks used was only thirteen, though these yielded eighteen impressions. As might be expected, the little pictures are often dragged in with very little appropriateness. Thus, the Roman soldiers sent to arrest Cecilia gave the publisher an excuse to show a party of knights riding in the country, and so on. On the other hand, the pleasant picture of a disputation here shown, though undoubtedly executed in the first instance for some other work, probably gives us a very correct representation of the costume and grouping of the actors.
FROM THE 'RAPPRESENTAZIONE DI S. CECILIA,' S.A.
One point in the text of the 'S. Cecilia,' deserves noting. In the main it resembles very closely indeed the legend as it is known to lovers of English poetry from the version which Chaucer made in his early days and afterwards inserted, with little revision, into the 'Canterbury Tales.' But when Cecilia has gone through the form of marriage with the husband who is forced upon her, and is proceeding with him to his home, the lads of the neighbourhood bar their passage with a demand for petty gifts, to which the virgin submits with good grace—a fragment of Florentine life thus cropping up amid the rather unreal atmosphere of the old legend.
Whatever the shortcomings of the 'Rappresentazioni,' their popularity was very great, and they were reprinted again and again throughout the sixteenth century. Naturally the woodcuts suffered from continual use, and the stock-subjects, like that of a general martyrdom shown on page 10, are often found in the later editions with their little frames or borders almost knocked to pieces. Recutting was also frequent, and in the same edition of the play of S. Mary Magdalene, from which, for the sake of the unusual freedom in the handling, I have taken the title-cut as one of our illustrations, this is repeated later on from a new block, clumsily cut in imitation of the old one.
FROM THE 'RAPPRESENTAZIONE DI SANTA MARIA MADDALENA,' S.A.
As the 'Rappresentazioni' and their illustrations are connected with the Savonarola tracts on the one hand, so on the other we find them influencing some less dramatic forms of literature. Thus, among the early Florentine illustrated books we find a number of 'Contrasti'—the contrast of men and women, of the living and the dead, of riches and poverty, etc. These were rather poems than plays, but the name 'Rappresentazione' is sometimes applied to them in later editions. This is so, for instance, with the famous 'Contrasto di Carnesciale e la Quaresima,' from which the first of the two cuts is here given, the second representing a visit to the fish and vegetable market for Lenten fare when the days of Carnival are over.
