Mr. Corser’s copy of the first edition of the Dance of Death, and which was the gift of Francis Douce, Esq., to Edward Vernon Utterson, supplies the following title, “Les simulachres & Historiees faces de la Mort, avtant elegammēt pourtraictes, que artificiellement imaginées: A Lyon, soubz l’escu de Coloigne, M.D.XXXVIII.” The volume is a small quarto of 104 pages, unnumbered, dedicated to Madame Johanna de Touszele, the Reverend Abbess of the convent of Saint Peter at Lyons. There are forty-one emblems, each headed by a text of scripture from the Latin version; the devices follow, with a French stanza of four lines to each; and there are sundry Dissertations by Jean de Vauzelles, an eminent divine and scholar of the same city. But who can speak of the beauty of the work? The designs by Holbein are many of them wonderfully conceived,—the engravings by Hans Lützenberge, or Leutzelburger, as admirably executed.[[54]]
Rapidly was the work transferred into Latin and Italian, and before the end of the century at least fifteen editions had issued from the presses of Lyons, Bâle, and Cologne.
Scarcely less celebrated are Holbein’s Historical Figures of the Old Testament, which Sibald Beham’s had preceded in Francfort by only two years. Beham’s whole series of Bible Figures are contained in 348 prints, and were published between 1536 and 1540. Dibdin’s Decameron, vol. i. pp. 176, 177, will supply a full account of Holbein’s “Historiarum Veteris Instrumenti icones ad vivum expressæ una cum brevi, sed quoad fieri potuit, dilucida earundem expositione:” Lyons, small 4to, 1538. The edition of Frellonius, Lyons, 1547, is a very close reprint of the second edition, and from this it appears that the work is contained in fifty-two leaves, unnumbered, and that there are ninety-four devices, which are admirable specimens of wood-engraving. The first four are from the Dance of Death, but the others appropriate to the subjects, each being accompanied by a French stanza of four lines.
A Spanish translation was issued in 1543; and in 1549, at Lyons, an English version, “The Images of the Old Testament, lately expressed, set forthe in Ynglishe and Frenche, vuith a playn and brief exposition.” All the editions of the century were about twelve.
Hans Brosamer, of Fulda, laboured in the same mine, and between 1551 and 1553, copying chiefly from Holbein and Albert Durer, produced at Francfort his “Biblische Historien kunstlich fürgemalet,”—Bible Histories artistically pictured (3 vols. in 1).
We will, though somewhat earlier than the exact date, continue the subject of Bible-Figure Emblem-books by alluding to the Quadrins historiques de la Bible,—“Historic Picture-frames of the Bible,”—for the most part engraved by “Le Petit Bernard,” alias Solomon Bernard, who was born at Lyons in 1512. Of these works in French, English, Spanish, Italian, Latin, Flemish, and German, there were twenty-two editions printed between 1553 and 1583. Their general nature may be known from the fact that to each Scripture subject there is a device, in design and execution equally good, and that it is followed or accompanied by a Latin, Italian, &c. stanza, as the case may be. In the Italian version, Lyons, 1554, the Old Testament is illustrated by 222 engravings, and the New by ninety-five.
The first of the series appears to be Quadrins historiques du Genèse, Lyons, 1553; followed in the same year by Quadrins historiques de l’Exode. There is also of the same date (see Brunet, iv. c. 996), “The true and lyuely historyke Pvrtreatures of the woll Bible (with the arguments of eache figure, translated into english metre by Peter Derendel): Lyons; by Jean of Tournes.”
To conclude, there were Figures of the Bible, illustrated by French stanzas, and also by Italian and by German; published at Lyons and at Venice between 1564 and 1582. (See Brunet’s Manuel, ii. c. 1255.) Also Jost Amman, at Francfort, in 1564; and Virgil Solis, from 1560 to 1568, contributed to German works of the same character.
Two names of note among emblematists crown the years 1539 and 1540, both in Paris: they are William de la Perrière, and Giles Corrozet; of the former we know little more than that he was a native of Toulouse, and dedicated his chief work to “Margaret of France, Queen of Navarre, the only sister of the very Christian King of France;” and of the latter, that, born in Paris in 1510, and dying there in 1568, he was a successful printer and bookseller, and distinguished (see Brunet’s Manuel, ii. cc. 299–308) for a large number of works on History, Antiquities, and kindred subjects.
La Perrière’s chief Emblem-work is Le Theatre des bons Engins, auquel sont contenus cent Emblemes: Paris, 8vo, 1539. There are 110 leaves and really 101 emblems, each device having a pretty border. His other Emblem-works are—The Hundred Thoughts of Love, 1543, with woodcuts to each page; Thoughts on the Four Worlds, “namely, the divine, the angelic, the heavenly, and the sensible,” Lyons, 1552; and “La Morosophie,”—The Wisdom of Folly,—containing a hundred moral emblems, illustrated by a hundred stanzas of four lines, both in Latin and in French.