Engraving: Its Origin, Processes, and History

by comte Henri Delaborde

The rest of Marc Antonio's life is only imperfectly known. It is said that he was wounded and left for dead in the streets when Rome was sacked by the Spanish under the Constable de Bourbon; that he was then taken prisoner, and only recovered his liberty at the cost of a ransom large enough to ruin him; and that he then took refuge at Bologna, where it would appear he soon afterwards died: not, as has been alleged, murdered by the lawful possessor of one of his plates, which he had himself forged, but, so says Vasari, "nearly reduced to beggary" ("poco meno che mendico"), and at any rate completely forgotten.

Marc Antonio's death did not bring with it the ruin of line engraving in Italy. The numerous pupils he had educated, and in turn the pupils of these, handed down to the beginning of the seventeenth century the master's manner, and propagated his doctrines in neighbouring countries. We have spoken of the revolution which their works produced in German art; we shall presently see French art submitting in its turn to Italian influences. Meanwhile, and even during Marc Antonio's life, a particular sort of engraving was making rapid progress in Italy. It consisted in the employment of a process, popularised by Ugo da Carpi, for obtaining from several wooden blocks proofs of engravings in camaïeu: that is, as we explained at the beginning of this book, proofs in two, three, or four tones, offering almost the same appearance as drawings washed in with water-colour: a process which Ugo did not really invent, but only improved from the first attempts made at Augsburg in 1510 by Jobst Necker, which were destined to be still further improved by Nicolò Vicentino, Andrea Andreani, Antonio da Trento, and many others.

A great number of pieces, executed in the same manner from Raphael and Parmigiano, prove the skill of Ugo da Carpi, who unfortunately took it into his head to introduce into painting even more radical changes than those he had first promoted in engraving. He conceived the strange idea of painting a whole picture with his finger, without once having recourse to a brush, and, the proceeding appearing to him praiseworthy, he perpetuated the recollection of it in a few proud words at the bottom of the canvas. Michelangelo, to whom the picture was shown as a remarkable curiosity, merely said that "the only remarkable thing about it was the folly of the author." What would he have thought of Luca Cambiaso, the Genoese, whose talent consisted in painting with both hands at once?

The practice of engraving in camaïeu was not continued in Italy and Germany beyond the last years of the sixteenth century. Even before then wood engraving, properly so called, had reached a stage of considerable importance in both countries; and it had distinguished itself by decided enough progress to cause engraving in camaïeu to lose much of the favour with which at first it was welcomed.

We said at the beginning of this chapter that a real regeneration in wood engraving took place in Germany under the influence of Albert Dürer. We have plates from the drawings of the master, engraved, if not entirely by himself, at any rate to a certain extent with his practical co-operation; we have others—for instance, the "Life of the Virgin" and the "Passion," to which we have referred in speaking of Marc Antonio's copies of them with the burin. But, in addition to these, we have a number of wood engravings, earlier than the second half of the sixteenth century, which prove the progress made in the art at this time in Germany, and the ability with which it was practised by the successors of Wolgemut. Wood engraving was no longer, as in the time of Wolgemut, a mere mode of linear imitation, and only fit to represent form by outlines; it was now capable of suggesting modelling and effect, not of course with that finished delicacy and freedom which can only be produced in true line engraving, but with an energetic exactness quite, in accordance with the special conditions and resources of the process. The "Triumphal Arch of the Emperor Maximilian," by Hans Burgkmair and to some extent by Albert Dürer; the "Theuerdannck," an allegorical history of the same prince by Hans Schaüfflein; the "Passion of Jesus Christ;" and the "Illustrium Ducum Saxoniæ Effigies," by Lucas Cranach, as well as many other collections published at Nuremberg, Augsburg, Weimar, or Wittenberg, deserve mention as remarkable examples of the peculiar skill of the German artists of the time. Indeed, when, a little later, the "Dance of Death," by Lützelburger, from Holbein, made its appearance, this masterpiece in wood engraving closed the period of progress which had gone on in Germany from the beginning of the sixteenth century, and marked in its general history the time when the art itself had told its last secret, and attained perfection.

Fig. 50.—LÜTZELBURGER.

The Miser. After Holbein.

Whilst this regeneration in wood engraving was being accomplished in Germany, the art continued to be practised in Italy, and especially in Venice, with a feeling for composition, and that delicate reticence of handling, of which the cuts in the "Hypnerotomachia Poliphili," published before the end of the fifteenth century (1499), and in other books printed some years later, are such striking examples. The Italian wood engravers of the sixteenth century, however, did not limit themselves so entirely to the national traditions as to stifle altogether any attempt at innovation. They had already tried to enliven even the execution of the illustrations intended to accompany letterpress by more decided suggestions of light and shade and general effect. This is the reason of the successful first appearance, and the present value, of so many beautiful volumes from the printing presses of Marcolini da Forli, Giolito da Ferrari and other printers established at Venice.