[118] has mentioned Papillon’s ascription of it to Silvio Antoniano, but without correcting the blunder, as he ought to have done. This monogram appears on five of the cuts to the present edition of the “Imagines Mortis;” but M. De Murr and his follower Janssen, are not warranted in supposing the rest of them to have been engraved by a different artist.
It will perhaps not be deemed an unimportant digression to introduce a few remarks concerning the owner of the above monogram. It is by no means clear whether he was a designer or an engraver, or even both. There is a chiaroscuro print of a group of saints, engraved by Peter Kints, an obscure artist, with the name of Antony Sallaerts at length, and the mark. Here he appears as a designer. M. Malpé, the Besançon author of “Notices sur les graveurs,” speaks of Sallaerts as an excellent painter, born at Brussels about 1576, which date cannot possibly apply to the artist in question; but at the same time, he adds, that he is said to have engraved on wood the cuts in a little catechism printed at Antwerp that have the monogram
. These are certainly very beautiful, in accordance with many others with the same mark, and very superior in design to those which have it in the “Imagines Mortis.” M. Malpé has also an article for Antony Silvyus or Silvius, born at Antwerp about 1525, and he mentions several books with engravings and the mark in question, which he gives to the same person. M. Brulliot expresses a doubt as to this artist; but it is very certain there was a family of that name, and surnamed, or at least sometimes called, Bosche or Bush, which indeed is more likely to have been the real Flemish name Latinized into Silvius. Foppens[119] has mentioned an Antony Silvius, a schoolmaster at Antwerp, in 1565, and several other members of this family. Two belonging to it were engravers, and another a writing master.
Whether the artist in question was a Sallaerts or a Silvius, it is certain that Plantin, the celebrated printer, employed him to decorate several of his volumes, and it is to be regretted that an unsuccessful search has been made for him in Plantin’s account books, that were not long since preserved, with many articles belonging to him, in his house at Antwerp. His mark also appears in several books printed in England during the reign of Elizabeth, and particularly on a beautiful set of initial letters, some of which contain the story of Cupid and Psyche, from the supposed designs by Raphael, and other subjects from Ovid’s Metamorphoses: these have been counterfeited, and perhaps in England. The initial G, in this alphabet, with the subject of Leda and the swan, was inadvertently prefixed to the sacred name at the beginning of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews in the Bishop’s Bible, printed by Rd. Jugge in 1572, and in one of his Common Prayer Books. An elegant portrait of Edward VI. with the mark
is likewise on Jugge’s edition of the New Testament, 1552, 4to. and there is reason to believe that Jugge employed this artist, as the same monogram appears on a cut of his device of the pelican.
VI. In the German volume, the title of which is already given in the first article of the engravings from the Basle painting,[120] there are twenty-nine subjects belonging to the present work; the rest relating to the Basle dance, except two or three that are not in either of them. These have fallen into the hands of a modern bookseller, but there can be no doubt that there were other editions which contained the whole set. The most of them have the letters G. S. with the graving tool, and one has the date 1576. The name of this artist is unknown; but M. Bartsch has mentioned several other engravings by him, omitting, however, the present, which, it is to be observed, sometimes vary in design from the originals.
VII. “Imagines Mortis illustratæ epigrammatis Georgii Æmylii theol. doctoris. Fraxineus Æmylio Suo. Criminis ut poenam mortem mors sustulit una: sic te immortalem mortis imago facit.” With a cut of Death and the old man. This is the middle part only of a work, intitled “Libellus Davidis Chytræi de morte et vita æterna. Editio postrema; cui additæ sunt imagines mortis, illustrata Epigrammatis D. Georgio Æmylio, Witebergæ. Impressus à Matthæo Welack, anno MDXC.” 12mo. The cuts, fifty-three in number, are, on the whole, tolerably faithful, but coarsely engraved. In the subject of the Pope the two Devils are omitted, and, in that of the Counsellor, the Demon blowing with a bellows into his ear is also wanting. Some have the mark
