Ars Memorandi
PAGE FROM THE NUREMBERG CHRONICLE
Nuremberg, 1493
A typical page from the “Ars Memorandi” (probably cut in the Netherlands) shows the character of these school books. This is designed to help theological students in memorizing the Holy Writ. The pictures are good; the text, hard to read, was soon to be replaced by movable type.
A page, from the Nuremberg “Chronicle” of 1494, shows us the state of woodcut, technically as well as its use in books. Many examples might be shown, from different parts of Germany, from schools swayed by various currents of artistic thought. Common to them all, despite their crudity, is a growing familiarity with woodcut, a realization of its possibilities and of its limitations. Artistic talent of a high order—compared with earlier productions—reveals itself, resulting from a division of labor. The artisan of the playing-cards and early saints’ pictures could never have risen to these heights of creative independence. His simple figures were copied from manuscripts, or from some other handy model, but when it came to supplying the growing demands of book-illustration with material from fields without precedent in past productions, the publishers were constrained to entrust artists with these designs, and the woodcut maker was given the task—not easy, though mechanical—of cutting with precision the lines drawn by the artist.
VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH ST. JOHN
Woodcut
