Thus it happened that when the German printers brought over the Alps the art which was to do so much toward civilizing the North, they found in Italy a civilization already culminated, hastening on, indeed, to a swift decline; they found the people already in possession of the manuscripts which they came to reproduce and multiply, and the princes, like Frederick of Urbino,[37] “ashamed to own a printed book” among their splendid collections, where every art seemed to vie in making beautiful their volumes of vellum and velvet. Wood-engraving, too, which here as elsewhere accompanied printing, could be of no use in spreading ideas and preparing the way for a popular knowledge and appreciation of art; it was to receive rather than bestow benefits; it was to be made a fine art before it could perform any real service. The printers, however, proved the utility of their art, and were soon busily employed in all the Italian cities in reproducing the precious manuscripts with which Italy was stored; and from the first they called wood-engraving to their aid. It is true that the earliest Italian woodcuts—which were, however, Germanic in design and execution—were as rude as those of the Northern workshops. They appeared for the first time in an edition of Cardinal Turrecremata’s Meditations, published at Rome by Ulric Hahn, in 1467. In Venice, although without much doubt the art had been practised there by the makers of cards and prints long before, woodcuts were first introduced by the German printers. The accompanying cuts are fair examples of their work (Figs. 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21), and at the same time interesting reflections of popular fable. The views of Venice are examples of the very common attempts to represent the actual appearance of the great cities, which possess sometimes an historic value. This Germanic work is but slightly different from that already noticed; but as soon as the art became naturalized, and was practised by the Italian engravers, it was characterized at once by beauty of design. There is something more than promise in an edition of Æsop’s Fables, published at Verona in 1481, as may be seen from these examples (Figs. 22, 23), taken from a Venetian reprint of 1491. An Ovid, printed at Venice in 1497, is adorned with several excellent woodcuts, such as this of The Contest of Apollo and Pan (Fig. 19); and there are other works of similar merit belonging to the same period. The finest example of Italian wood-engraving before it reached its highest perfection in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, or Dream of Poliphilo, is a volume which contains the epistles of St. Jerome, and a description of cloistral life. This is adorned with a large number of small woodcuts of simple beauty, marked by grace and feeling, and full of reminiscences of moods and sentiments which have long ceased to hold a place in human hearts (Figs. 24, 25, 26). Here is pictured the religious life; the monk’s cell is barely furnished, but it is seldom without shelves of books and a window opening upon a distant prospect; the teacher expounds to his pupils the great volume on the desk before him; the priest administers consolation to the dying and the bereaved, and encourages the feeble of spirit and the sinful; the preacher discourses to his brethren and the crowding people the Blessed Word; the nuns of the sisterhood perform their daily offices of religion, the panel of the confessional slides back for them, they wash the feet of the poor, they sit at table together; all the pieties of their life, which knew no close human relation, which knew only God and mankind, are depicted; and now and then there is a thought, too, of the worldly life outside—here the beautiful youths stop to gaze at the convent gates barred against them. There are other cuts, also, of landscape, towers, and cities. The great themes of religion are not forgotten—the Resurrection and the Judgment unfold their secrets of justice and of the life eternal. In all the religious spirit prevails, and gives to the whole series a simple and sweet charm. One may look at them long, and be content to look many times thereafter.
