Whether with or without color, the engravings in the Livres d’Heures are beautiful. Each page is enclosed in an ornamental border made up of small cuts, which are repeated in new arrangements on succeeding leaves; here and there a large cut, usually representing some Scriptural scene, is introduced in the upper portion of the page, and the text fills the vacant spaces. Not infrequently the taste displayed is Gallic rather than pious, and delights in profane legends and burlesque fancies which one would not expect to meet in a prayer-book. These volumes were so highly prized by foreign nations for the beauty of their workmanship, that they were printed in Flemish, English, and Italian. Those which were issued by Verard, Vostre, Pigouchet, and Kerver were the best products of the early French art.[34] The secular works which contain woodcuts are hardly worthy of mention, excepting Guyot Marchand’s La Danse Macabre, first published in 1485, which is a series of twenty-five spirited and graceful designs, marked by French vivacity and liveliness of fancy. In all early French work the peculiar genius of the people is not so easily distinguishable as in this example, but it is usually present, and gives a national characteristic to the art, notwithstanding the indubitable influences of the German archaic school in the earlier time, and of the Italian school in the first years of the sixteenth century.
French wood-engraving is remarkable, in respect to its technique, for the introduction of criblée, or dotted work, which has previously[35] been described, into the backgrounds on which the designs are relieved. This mode of engraving is probably a survival from the goldsmiths’ work of the first part of the fifteenth century, and it is not unlikely that, as Renouvier suggests, these criblée grounds were meant to represent the gold grounds on which both miniatures and early paintings were relieved. From an examination of the peculiarities of these engravings, some authors[36] have been led to maintain that they were taken off from metal plates cut in relief, and nearly all writers are ready to admit that this was sometimes, but not always, the case. The question is unsettled; but it is probable that wood was sometimes employed, and it would be impossible to determine with certainty what share in these prints belongs to wood-engraving and metal-engraving respectively. In general, French wood-engraving, in its best early examples at Paris, was characterized by greater fineness and elegance of line, and by more feeling for artistic effects, than was the case with German book-illustration; but the Parisian chronicles, histories, botanical works, and the like, possessed no greater merit than similar publications at Lyons or in the German cities, and their influence upon the middle classes in furthering the advance of education and taste was probably much less.
England was far behind the other nations of Europe in its appreciation of art, and wood-engraving throve there as feebly as did the other arts of design. The first English book with woodcuts was Caxton’s Game and Playe of the Chesse, published about 1476, the first edition of which was issued two years earlier, without illustrations. It is supposed by some writers that Caxton imported the blocks from which these cuts were printed, as he did the type for his text; and it is certain that in later years wood-blocks and metal-plates were brought over from the Continent for illustrating English books. It is not improbable that the art was practised by Englishmen as a part of the printer’s craft, and that there were no professional wood-engravers for many years; indeed, Chatto doubts whether the art was practised separately even so late as Holbein’s time. The cuts in Caxton’s works, and in those of the later printers, Wynkyn de Worde and Richard Pynson, were altogether rude and uninteresting in design. If the honor of them belongs to foreign rather than English workmen, no great hurt is done to English pride.
IV.
EARLY ITALIAN WOOD-ENGRAVING.
