A History of Wood-Engraving

by George Edward Woodberry

The internal evidence, however, only enforces the probabilities springing from the social condition of the Netherlands, then the most highly civilized country north of the Alps. Its industries, in the hands of the great guilds of Bruges, Ghent, Brussels, Louvain, Antwerp, and Liege, were the busiest in Europe. Its commerce was fast upon the lagging sails of Venice. The “Lancashire of the Middle Ages,” as it has been fitly called, sent its manufactures abroad wherever the paths of the sea had been made open, and received the world’s wealth in return. The magnificence of its Court was the wonder of foreigners, and the prosperity of its people their admiration. The confusion of mediæval life, it is true, was still there—fierce temper in the artisans, blood-thirstiness in the soldiery, everywhere the pitilessness of military force, wielded by a proud and selfish caste, as Froissart and Philippe de Comyns plainly recount; but there, nevertheless—although the brutal sack of Liege was yet to take place—modern life was beginning; merchant-life, supported by trade, citizen-life, made possible by the high organization of the great guilds, had begun, although the merchant and the citizen must still wear the sword; art, under the guidance of the Van Eycks, was passing out of mediæval conventionalism, out of the monastery and the monkish tradition, to deal no longer with lank, meagre, martyr-like bodies, to care no more for the moral lesson in contempt of artistic beauty, to come face to face with nature and humanity as they really were before men’s eyes; and modern intellectual life, too—faint and feeble, no doubt—was nevertheless beginning to show signs of its presence there, where in after-times great thinkers were to find a harbor of refuge, and the most heroic struggle of freedom was to be fought out against Spain and Rome. This comparatively high state of civilization, the activity of men’s minds, the variety of mechanical pursuits, the excellence of the goldsmiths’ art, the number and character of the early prints undoubtedly issued there, the mention of incorporated guilds of printers at Antwerp as early as 1417, and again in 1440, and at Bruges in 1454, make it probable that the invention of wood-engraving was due to the Netherlands, and perhaps the invention of typography also. Whether this were the case or not, it is certain that the artists of the Netherlands carried the art of engraving in wood to its highest point of excellence during its first period.

Antiquarians have not been contented to show that the best of the block-books came from the Netherlands; they have attempted to discover the names of the composer of the Speculum, the engraver of its designs, and its printer. But their conjectures[30] are so doubtful that it is unnecessary to examine them, with the exception of the ascription of the printing of the Speculum to the Brothers of the Common Lot.[31] This brotherhood was one of the many orders which arose at that time in the Netherlands, given to mysticism and enthusiasm, that resulted in real licentiousness; or to piety and reform, that prepared the way for the Reformation. Its members were devoted to the spread of knowledge, and were engaged in copying manuscripts and founding public schools in the cities. After the invention of printing, they set up the first presses in Brussels and Louvain, and published many books, always, however, without their name as publishers. They practised the art of wood-engraving, and doubtless some of the early holy prints were from their workshops; sometimes they inserted woodcuts in their manuscripts, as in the Spirituale Pomerium, or Spiritual Garden, of Henri van den Bogaerde, the head of the retreat at Groenendael, where the painter Diedrick Bouts occasionally sought retirement, and where he may have aided the Brothers with his knowledge of design. It is quite possible that this brotherhood, so favorably placed, produced the Speculum and others of the block-books, and that they were aided by the painters of the time whose style of design they followed; but, as Renouvier remarks in rejecting this account, the monks were not the only persons too little desirous of notoriety to print their names, and although they took part in early engraving and printing, a far more important part was taken by the great civil corporations. In either case, whether the monks or the secular engravers designed these woodcuts, they were probably aided at times by the painters, who at that period did not restrict themselves to the higher branches of art, but frequently put their skill to very humble tasks.

The character of the design is very easily seen; the lines are simple, often graceful and well-arranged; there is but little attempt at marking shadows; there is less stiffness in the forms, and the draperies follow the lines of the forms better than in either earlier or later work of a similar kind, and there is also much less unconscious caricature and grimace. A whole series needs to be looked at before one can appreciate the interest which these designs have in indicating the subjects on which imagination and thought were then exercised, and the modes in which they were exercised. Symbolism and mysticism pervade the whole. All nature and history seem to have existed only to prefigure the life of the Saviour: imagination and thought hover about him, and take color, shape, and light only from that central form; the stories of the Old Testament, the histories of David, Samson, and Jonah, the massacres, victories, and miracles there recorded, foreshadow, as it were in parables, the narrative of the Gospels; the temple, the altar, and the ark of the covenant, all the furnishings and observances of the Jewish ritual, reveal occult meanings; the garden of Solomon’s Song, and the sentiment of the Bridegroom and the Bride who wander in it, are interpreted, sometimes in graceful or even poetic feeling, under the inspiration of mystical devotion; old kings of pagan Athens are transformed into witnesses of Christ, and, with the Sibyl of Rome, attest spiritual truth. This book and others like it are mirrors of the ecclesiastical mind; they picture the principal intellectual life of the Middle Ages; they show the sources of that deep feeling in the earlier Dutch artists which gave dignity and sweetness to their works. Even in the rudeness of these books, in the texts as well as in the designs, there is a naïveté, an openness and freshness of nature, a confidence in limited experience and contracted vision, which make the sight of these cuts as charming as conversation with one who had never heard of America or dreamed of Luther, and who would have found modern life a puzzle and an offence. The author of the Speculum laments the evils which fell upon man in consequence of Adam’s sin, and recounts them: blindness, deafness, lameness, floods, fire, pestilence, wild beasts, and lawsuits (in such order he arranges them); and he ends the long list with this last and heaviest evil, that men should presume to ask “why God willed to create man, whose fall he foresaw; why he willed to create the angels, whose ruin he foreknew; wherefore he hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and softened the heart of Mary Magdalene unto repentance; wherefore he made Peter contrite, who had denied him thrice, but allowed Judas to despair in his sin; wherefore he gave grace to one thief, and cared not to give grace to his companion.” What modern man can fully realize the mental condition of this poet, who thus weeps over the temptation to ask these questions, as the supreme and direst curse which Divine vengeance allows to overtake the perverse children of this world?

A better illustration of the sentiment and grace sometimes to be found in the block-books is the Historia Virginis Mariæ ex Cantico Canticorum, or History of the Virgin, as it is prefigured in the Song of Solomon. This volume is the finest in design of all the block-books. In it the Bride, the Bridegroom, three attendant maidens, and an angel are grouped in successive scenes, illustrating the mystical meaning of some verse of the Song. The artistic feeling displayed in the arrangement of the figures is such that the designs have been attributed directly to Roger Van der Weyden, the greatest of Van Eyck’s pupils. This book, like the Biblia Pauperum and the Speculum, came from the engravers and the printers of the Netherlands; but it shows progress in art beyond those works, more elegance and vivacity of line, more ability to render feeling expressively, and especially more delight in nature and carefulness in delineating natural objects.

In spite of these three chief monuments of the art of block-printing in the Netherlands, the claim of that country to the invention of the block-books is not undisputed. The Historia Johannis Evangelistæ ejusque Visiones Apocalypticæ, or the Apocalypse of St. John, much ruder in drawing and in execution, is the oldest block-book according to most writers, and especially those who maintain the claims of Germany to the honor of the invention. This volume has been ascribed by Chatto to Upper Germany, where some Greek artist may have designed it; but with more probability, by Passavant, to Lower Germany, and especially to Cologne, on account of the coloring, which is in the Cologne manner. The volume bears a surer sign of early work than mere rudeness of execution: it is hieratic rather than artistic in character; the artist is concerned more with enforcing the religious lesson than with designing pleasant scenes. But although for this reason a very early date (1440-1460) must be assigned to the book, the question of the origin of the art of block-printing remains unsettled, even if it be granted that the volume is of German workmanship. Some evidence must be shown that the Netherlands imported the art from Cologne or some other German city, and this is lacking; indeed, the absence in early Flemish work of any trace of influence from the school of art which flourished at Cologne before the Van Eycks painted in the Netherlands, is strong negative evidence against such a supposition. On the other hand, it must be remembered that Germany produced the St. Christopher, and many other early prints. In some of the German block-books Heinecken recognized the modes of the German card-makers; but this may be explained otherwise than by supposing that the card-makers invented the art of block-printing. On the whole, the rudeness of early German block-books must be held to be a result of the unskilfulness and tastelessness of German workmen, rather than an indication that the art was discovered by them. The engraving of the Apocalypse, like all other German work, will bear no comparison with the Netherland engraving, either in refinement, vivacity, or skill.

The other block-books, many of which are in themselves interesting and curious, do not elucidate the history of the art, and therefore need not be discussed. It is sufficient to say that they are less valuable than those which have been described, and far ruder in design and execution. Some of them throw light upon the time. The Ars Memorandi, a series of designs meant to assist the memory in recalling the chapters of the Apocalypse, is a very curious monument of an age when such a device was useful; and the Ars Moriendi, or Art of Dying, in which were depicted frightful and eager devils about a dying man’s couch, is a book which may stir our laughter, but was full of a different meaning for the poor sinner to whose bedside the pious monks carried it to bring him to repentance, by showing him designs of such horrible suggestion, enforced, no doubt, by exhortations hardly more humane. These books were all reproduced many times. This Art of Dying, for example, appeared in Latin, Flemish, German, Italian, French, and English, with similar designs, although there were variations in the text. Once popular, they have long since lost their attraction; few care for the ideas or the pictures preserved in them; the bibliophile collects them, because they are rare, costly, and curious; the scholar consults them, because they reveal the unprofitableness of mediæval thought, the needs and characteristics of the class that could prize them, the poverty of the civilization of which they are the monuments, and because they disclose glimpses of actual human life as it then was, with its humors, its burdens, and its imaginations. The world has forgotten them; but they hold in the history of civilization an honorable place, for by means of them wood-engraving led the way to the invention of printing, and thereby performed its greatest service to mankind.

III.
EARLY PRINTED BOOKS IN THE NORTH.

The new printers were most active in the great German cities—Cologne, Mayence, Nuremberg, Ulm, Augsburg, Strasburg, and Basle—and from the presses of these cities the greatest number of books with woodcuts were issued. This is one reason why the mastering influence from this time in Northern wood-engraving was German; why German taste, German rudeness, coarseness, and crudity became the main characteristics of wood-engraving in the latter half of the fifteenth century. The Germans had been, from the first, artisans rather than artists. They had produced many anonymous prints and block-books, but they had never attained to the power and elegance of the Flemish school. Now the quality of their work became even less excellent; for decline had set in, and the increasing popularity of the new art of copperplate-engraving combined with the unfavorable influences resulting from printing, which required cheap and rapid processes, to degrade the art still lower. The illustrations in the new books had ordinarily little art-value: they were often grotesque, stiff, ignorant in design, and careless or inexpert in execution; but they had nevertheless their use and their interest.