Prints: A Brief Review of Their Technique and History

by Emil H. Richter

We know how Gothic architecture grew up in the North, how in the Gothic church the ample wall space, which had been heretofore the realm of painting, was divided, reduced, suppressed. We know how the curtailed pictorial art sought new spheres of expression, how the panel picture took possession of the altars. Before long this picture, which could be shifted from one position to another, was used independently of altars, for the adornment of suitable wall spaces in the church, until finally it found its way from the church to the home, henceforth to be one of its indispensable adornments.

As painting made its way into the lay world, the impersonal, traditional, dogmatic character of sacred subjects faded away. Not that ecclesiastic art had lost its deeply religious sincerity, but the artist saw nature with new eyes; he realized the beautiful world around him, and lovingly painted the plants and flowers at the feet of the Virgin. He removed her throne from the formal diapered background of gold, and placed it in the midst of the actual living world. The figures became more personal and lifelike; worldly subjects, even portraits, or at least efforts in the direction of individual differentiation, came within the artist’s sphere, while as yet the sacred subject remained the one great theme of artistic expression.

The panel picture had come into the home as a means of decoration, but the wealthy only could gratify their desire for this costly form of artistic adornment. The burgher, the artisan, the economical household, could not think of owning such painted luxury, not any more than they could afford the costly miniatures painted on parchment. Then some bethought themselves that they might cut the outline of figures on blocks of wood, after the manner of the cloth-printers and of the initial blocks which we have found in use in monastic writing-rooms. These outlines could then be printed on parchment, or on that new and cheaper product, paper, as an inexpensive substitute for panel picture and miniature. In this manner the common people obtained their saints’ pictures or “Helgen” (Heiligen), more or less crude in design, clumsy in the execution of knife-work, colored with the gayest pigments which the Briefmaler could find. With all their imperfections these early woodcuts were prized and evidently found a ready market, as souvenirs of pilgrimages, as fit embellishments of wayside shrines or altars of the chapels and churches of poor parishes, as scapulars, or pasted in books, as makeshifts for the unattainable miniatures, or else they were simply fastened on the wall, as a decoration. Tastes were simple, and with all their crudeness, these productions—of greatly varying size and of every degree of careful or careless execution—are not without charm even to the twentieth-century beholder.

The same artisans who cut and printed these saints’ pictures found lucrative employment in a field quite remote from religious matters. Playing-cards had been introduced into Europe from the Orient, probably in the latter part of the thirteenth century. They quickly won popular favor and were used by rich and poor with equal zest. Cards exquisitely painted or charmingly engraved attest the favor accorded the game by people of rank and wealth, but in making cards for the use of the people at large, cheapness of production far outweighed any æsthetic considerations which might have existed. Cards had to be sold cheaply, and they had to be produced in large quantities to satisfy the growing demand. How were these conditions to be met? One solution of the problem was stenciling, another stamping the outlines on paper by means of relief-blocks; both were resorted to by the artisans of the fifteenth century, and their trade spread beyond the confines of Germany, to the south of the Alps, causing Venetian craftsmen to clamor for legislative protection of their home production.

In all these early manifestations, we saw woodcut in the service of the common people; we saw it used instead of other means of production for reasons purely utilitarian. But a change is at hand, for has not the crusader sown a seed throughout the land; has not the human mind been awakened from its mediæval lethargy? The humanist arises, seeking enlightenment and the solution of life’s problems amid the meager surviving relics and records of the art and thought of antiquity. Feudal conditions are grudgingly modified, under pressure from a new element, which brings about a gradual shifting of the balance of power, intellectually as well as economically and politically: the rise of the Town. During our early, turbulent centuries with their grim

“simple plan,

That he shall take who has the power,

And he shall keep who can,”—

misery not only loved company, as the old proverb has it, but absolutely needed it. Groups of those, too weak singly to withstand the attacks of that vast, lawless element which lived by oppression and plunder, huddled themselves together, built themselves shelters, and intrenched themselves against the common foe. In the course of time, owing to an advantageous position or to intensity of commerce or industry, these one-time shelters grew into towns, rising in wealth, power, and independent spirit, girt about with strong walls and moats, each town a state within the state, protected by imperial grants and privileges, bound together by the common enmity of the feudal power, and within the walls by an ardent local patriotism. Strong in their guilds and associations, in touch with each other and with the world by the constant travel of merchants and craftsmen, the towns became not only centers of wealth, but also the bearers of progressive thought, of art, of mental enlightenment. Here the graphic arts might well originate and flourish, for here were their patrons, the burgher, the craftsman, the people.

The time was at hand when the call for the multiplying arts would become imperative—compelling. Man looked about, and beheld a world full of beauty and abuses; he felt himself a unit, an individual, not merely part of the mass of mankind, and he was going to think for himself; he demanded to know, to learn, to grasp the truths and probe the problems of his world. For the instruction of this untutored multitude, eager for light, there were two modes of expression, instantly intelligible: the simple spoken word, and that other—the illustrative, explanatory picture. This latter must now go forth also among the people, to help in the task of enlightenment; not the panel picture, to be sure, nor the miniature in the costly manuscript, for aside from their costliness they could never numerically satisfy so universal a demand. In response to the call—we are now in the fifteenth century—we see woodcut pictures pasted into manuscripts, to form edifying picture books, the pictures printed from wood blocks, a few lines of text added with the pen. Then both picture and text are cut into the same wood block in imitation of the picture manuscripts. These early “block-books,” of Biblical or moralizing contents, were intended for the use of pupils in the monastic schools which were then the only educational institutions.