[297]. The ‘filiera,’ or iron plate pierced with holes of various sizes for drawing wires through, was known to Theophilus. See chapter 8 of Book III of the Schedula, ‘De ferris per quae fila trahuntur.’
[298]. Vasari does not attempt to deal with the art of wood engraving in general nor need this Note traverse the whole subject. In all these later chapters of the ‘Introduction’ to Painting he is dealing with forms of the decorative art in which various materials are put together so as to produce something of the effect of a picture. Hence all that he envisages in the department of wood engraving are what are called chiaroscuri, or engravings meant to produce the effect of shaded drawings by tints rather than by the lines which constitute engravings proper. It has been noticed that some writers on engraving, (ante, p. [20]) have denied to these imitated light-and-shade drawings the character of true engravings.
As we have seen to be the case with copper-plate engraving (ante, p. [275]) priority is now claimed in these chiaroscuri for Germany over Italy, and Ugo da Carpi, who was born about 1450, near Bologna, becomes rather the improver of a German process than the inventor of a new one. On July 24, 1516, when resident in Venice he petitions the Signoria of that city for privilege for his ‘new method of printing in light and shade, a novel thing and not done before.’ Lippmann (The Art of Wood Engraving in Italy in the Fifteenth Century, trans., London, 1888) thinks that this claim may be true ‘in so far as he may have introduced further developments in the practice of colour printing with several blocks, which still survived in Venice, especially after the production of coloured wood-cuts by Burgkmair and Cranach in Germany had given fresh stimulus to a more artistic cultivation of that method’ (p. 69), and that ‘he gave the art an entirely new development based upon the principles which guided the profession of painting’ (p. 136). This last phrase explains the interest that Vasari here manifests in his work. In the older wood engraving only lines had been left on the block to take the ink, the rest of the surface being cut away, and whatever was to be shown in the print was displayed in the lines alone. In the new method broad surfaces of the wood were left, on which was spread a film of ink or pigment, and these printed a corresponding tint upon the paper which took off the film thus laid. The pigment might be of any colour desired, or might only represent a lighter tint of the ink that had been used all along for the lines. Hence either an effect of colour or one merely of gradations of light and shade could equally well be produced by the process Vasari describes. The work he contemplates is of the latter kind, and his explanation of the process by which it was produced is fairly clear. Plate XIV, from a print by Ugo da Carpi in the British Museum, gives a specimen of the result.
Critics of Ugo da Carpi’s work, which is sufficiently abundant, notice that he begins by merely adding tints of shading to outlines, which as in the earlier productions of the Germans, like those of Cranach or Dienecker, remained substantially responsible for the effect; but that he gives more and more importance to the tints, the pictorial element in the design, till the outlines end by merely reinforcing the chiaroscuro, like the touches ‘a tempera’ that give effect and decision to painting in fresco (Kristeller, Kupferstich und Holzschnitt in vier Jahrhunderten, Berlin, 1905, p. 300).
[299]. That is, he made three blocks A, B, C, each the full size of the design, but each containing only a part of the work. A has engraved on it all the lines of the design, and a print from it would be an old-fashioned engraving proper. Such a print with the ink on it still wet is pressed down on a clean block of wood, on which it leaves indications of all these lines. The broad tints of shading, in which gradations may be introduced, are then laid on the block by hand, the outlines being a guide, and so is constituted block B, an impression from which printed on a sheet already printed from block A, and made to register accurately with this, would add shading to the outlines. C would add by the same process a third tint, quite flat, for the background, and this might of course be of another colour. The high lights would be cut away in this block, C, and these parts come out white in the print, as is seen on Plate XIV. The uniform grey shade on the Plate is the background tint. In the actual process of printing this block, C, is first put into the press and produces an impression showing the tinted background but white spaces where the high lights are to come. B, with the shadows tinted but all the rest of the wood cut away, is printed over the impression from C, and lastly A comes to give the decided lines and sharpen up the whole effect.
[300]. The ‘oil colour’ is the pigment which is transferred from the block to the paper. The ‘water colour’ and the ‘white lead mixed with gum’ mentioned above are only put on by the artist to guide the wood-cutter in his work of cutting the block.
[301]. The text, in both the original editions, runs as follows: ‘E la terza che è la prima a formarsi, è quella dove il profilato del tutto è incavato per tutto, salvo che dove e’ non ha i profili tocchi dal nero della penna,’ and the negative is puzzling, for obviously the wood must be cut away everywhere but in those places where the outlines do come.
[302]. But Theophilus says practically nothing about design, and yet the mediaeval epoch was for the decorative arts one of the most glorious the world has ever seen. See on this subject the last part of the Introductory Essay, ante, p. [20] f.
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