Some of the fine borders to these early Italian wood-engravings owe their distinctive character to earlier work of
engravers on metal. Thus the borders round the illustrations of the Venice folio of 1491 of the Triumphs of Petrarch seem to be direct copies of engravings in metal by Filippo Lippi. The masses of white on a black background are very effective, and the strength of the colour increases the effect of the picture which the border surrounds.
Between 1474 and 1512 Aldus printed for the first time the works of thirty-three Greek authors. The works of Aristotle, brought out in four volumes, occupied three years. A learned Greek, Musurus of Crete, corrected the proofs, in which Aldus himself assisted. The workmen were nearly all Greeks. The Greek type was copied from the handwriting of Musurus, and the Italian, known as the Aldine, from the writings of Petrarch; this was cut by the celebrated artist-goldsmith, Francia of Bologna. The Aldine edition of Virgil (1501), now exceedingly rare, was the first book printed in this Italic type. Notwithstanding all his learning, energy, and philanthropy, Aldus did not succeed in his business. Many of his books were pirated, wars and insurrections interrupted him, the League of Cambray caused him to close his works from 1506 to 1510, and he sold his books at a rate too cheap to be remunerative.
The first printed edition of Æsop's Fables, which appeared at Verona as early as 1481, and was reprinted at Venice in 1491, contains many excellent engravings inclosed in ornamental borders, thoroughly Italian in character. The figures are not unlike those in the 'Hypnerotomachia,' and we can readily imagine that they were drawn by the same artist, who has given us little more than outlines, which the engraver has well cut in facsimile. The fable of 'The Jackdaw and the Peacock' is particularly well done. An edition of Ovid's Metamorphoses appeared also at this time with tolerably good illustrations not so well engraved.
There are some curious little cuts in the Epistole di San Hieronymo Volgare, published in Ferrara in 1497, which
are more valuable for their originality than their beauty, either of drawing or engraving. The book was evidently intended for the use of the illiterate, to whom the quality of the pictures laid before them was of little consequence if they told the story that was meant for them to read with their eyes. The homely scene of Christ appearing like a Gardener with a hoe on His shoulder, addressing Mary Magdalene in an Italian pergola, would appeal to their feelings much more directly than the Transfiguration of Raphael.
We do not find record of any other important wood-engravings in the history of printing in Italy at the end of the fifteenth century. Presses abounded everywhere, chiefly managed by Germans; there was scarcely an important town in Italy without a printer; few illustrated books, however, were issued at this time. An edition of Boccaccio's
'Decameron,' with many excellent cuts, one of which, representing a bootmaker's shop, we give as an illustration, was printed by the brothers Gregorio at Venice in 1492. And there are some illustrations in a book called 'Fiore di Virtù,' which appeared in Venice in the same year, that may be praised for the work of the wood-engraver, though the designer shows a sad ignorance of the laws of perspective and proportion. And we have before us an illustration to a poem by Poliziano, in which Giuliano dei Medici is kneeling before the altar of the goddess Minerva, where we see graceful drawing by the artist and fairly good engraving. It
was printed in Florence, but the type bears no comparison with the beauty of the Aldine books.