Here we will turn aside from Germany for a moment just to refer to an undoubted English bookplate of this early period. It remains to this day in a book known to have belonged to Cardinal Wolsey, and afterwards to Henry VIII. This, though not an engraving, is none the less a bookplate. Mr. W. J. Hardy, our best authority on English ex libris, has described it: A carefully drawn sketch of the cardinal’s arms, with supporters, and surmounted by a cardinal’s hat, the whole coloured by hand.
Thus the very earliest English ex libris of which we know was used by the more than princely Thomas Wolsey, and at some time between 1514 and his death in 1530, in which interval he was the arbiter of empires, sometimes journeying attended by a personal retinue of two hundred gentlemen in crimson velvet, and then, later, what a contrast—“He was without beds, sheets, table-cloths, cups and dishes!”
Matthias Jundt, born at Nuremberg in 1498, and died in 1586, engraved a good number of ex libris. He produced several for members of the Nuremberg family of Pfinzing, and in one of them, that of Seyfried Pfinzing von Henfenfeld, there is used one of those fanciful conceits so common of old; the motto “Saluti Patriæ Vixisse Honestat” is used to show the owner’s initials. Virgil Solis, born at Nuremberg in 1514, engraved both on copper and on wood, working mostly from his own designs. The engravings known to be by him number eight hundred. He engraved an ex libris block for Gundlach of Nuremberg in 1555. It represents Pomona, with the arms of Gundlach and Fürleger, in a beautiful landscape. In the same year he engraved an armorial and landscape plate for Andreas Imhof, another Nuremberger. This is our first mention of landscape bookplates, but it will be by no means the last. The last of this set of engravers whom we will mention was not a native of Nuremberg, but came there from Zurich, at the age of twenty-one, in 1560, and died there in 1591. His best work was in woodcuts. The curious in calligraphy will find that he signed his initials in twelve different forms. His name was Jost Amman.
In German Bookplates, translated for George Bell and Sons’ ex libris series, nearly twenty bookplates engraved by Jost Amman are enumerated, and good reproductions are given of several. There is the usual armorial shield, but a large amount of richly decorative renaissance engraving outside it. In the plate engraved for Veit August Holzschuher, the owner has evidently signed his name in a space at the foot of the block left for it. His arms fittingly display a pair of wooden shoes to fit his name. One cannot help wishing that more of these early private ex libris had such a space, bearing the ancient owner’s autograph.
CHAPTER III
BOOKPLATES CHRONOLOGICALLY
Lucas Cranach—Charles V.—Hans Holbein—Early French and English bookplates—Sir Nicholas Bacon—Queen Elizabeth—Bookplates that are not armorial—Bookplates in Switzerland, Sweden, and Italy.
In the ex libris which Jost Amman made for “Johann Fischart genannt Mentzer” the initial letters J.F.G.M. are the initial letters, too, of the owner’s motto: “Jove fovente gignitur Minerva.”
Leaving now the Nuremberg school, we come to Lucas Cranach the elder. He is just one of those figures of old time of whom one would like to know much more. His chivalrous attachment to Frederick the Magnanimous, the last of three Electors of Saxony, all of whom he served, points to noble traits of character. He shared all the sufferings of Frederick the Magnanimous in the five years that he was in the hands of Charles V., although himself an old man, went with him to Weimar on his release in 1552, and died there in his eighty—first year, on the 16th October, 1553. His paintings and engravings are without number, the latter mostly woodcuts. One special interest of his work is that he was fond of introducing homely portraits of his friends, and portraits always give great interest to ex libris.
Among the ex libris from the hand of Lucas Cranach the elder are the woodcuts, in four different sizes, engraved for the Library of Wittenberg University, and each bearing the portrait of Frederick the Magnanimous.
At the foot of each is the inscription—