These small italic books of Aldus were not all intended for sale at a low rate; many copies exist which are magnificently illuminated, and some are even printed on vellum.
The issue of the cheaper Aldine classics gave the death-blow to the illuminator's art, which the early large and costly printed folios had done little or nothing to supersede.
| Wood-cuts in MSS. |
Wood-cuts in MSS.It should also be noticed that half a century before the invention of printing with moveable types, quite at the beginning of the fifteenth or towards the close of the fourteenth century, some few manuscripts of a cheap and inferior sort had their miniature illustrations not drawn by hand, but printed from rudely cut wood-blocks. These prints were afterwards coloured by hand. Manuscripts of this class are very rare, and are now chiefly of value as supplying the earliest known European examples of wood engraving[[158]].
One of the most notable examples of these manuscripts illustrated with wood-cuts is described by Mr Quaritch in his catalogue No. 291 of 1873[[159]]. This is a South-German manuscript of about the year 1400, containing certain pious Weekly Meditations written on 17 leaves of coarse vellum; throughout the manuscript text are scattered 69 wood-cuts of Saints and Prophets, with Biblical and other sacred scenes, averaging in size three inches by two inches and a quarter. These miniature designs are all richly illuminated with gold and colours; some of them have names and other inscriptions forming part of the engraved block.
| Block-books. |
Block-books.This method of combining printing and manuscript very soon led to the next stage, that of Xylographic printing or "block-books"; in which not only the illustrations but the text itself was cut on blocks of wood and printed like the wood-cut pictures; each page occupying a separate plank of wood[[160]].
These block-book illustrations were coloured by hand in a very decorative and effective way, very superior to the coarse gaudy painting in opaque pigments with which the Parisian illuminators so often spoilt the exquisite miniatures and the borders in the vellum-printed Horae. The block-books are not painted over with opaque pigment, but delicately washed in with transparent tints, without obliterating the outlines of the printed pictures, which, though simple and even rude in treatment, are often full of real beauty and great decorative charm[[161]].
| Illumination and printing. |
Illumination and printing.Thus we see that as early as about the year 1400 the printer's art had begun to supplement that of the manuscript illuminator[[162]]; and the two arts continued to work, as it were, hand in hand till after the close of the fifteenth century when the illumination of manuscripts ceased to be a real living art and gradually degenerated into a mere appendage to individual pomp and luxury.