It was Guyot Marchant who produced, in 1485, the first edition of the 'Dance of Death,' which contained seventeen engravings on ten folio leaves, with the text printed in the old Gothic characters. This awe-inspiring but highly popular subject had been painted on the walls of many public buildings in Germany and France, and in past ages it had always been a great favourite with the lower classes (many of our readers will remember a version of it on the walls of the curious old wooden bridge at Lucerne, the designs of which have doubtless been handed down by tradition)—but
Marchant was the first who printed the story in a series of woodcuts, well drawn and admirably engraved, and he had his reward, for the work was reprinted over and over again. The Pope, the Emperor, the Bishop, the Duke and the Duchess are given with much spirit, and are evidently the work of a clever draughtsman, who might, however, have made his Death a little less hideous. But there was a great love of the horrible in those days.
A special chapter might well be devoted to the beautiful marks used by French printers. Guyot Marchant's mark represents leather-workers engaged at their trade, and above are a few musical notes. There are two varieties of this device. The mark of Jehan Du Pré is an elaborate piece of work, in which heraldry plays a conspicuous part, while that of Antoine Caillaut is pictorial. The Le Noirs used devices in which the heads of negroes figured prominently. The well-known mark of Badius Ascensius represents printers at work. Jehan Petit used several beautiful cuts, in which his mark forms part of an elaborate design.
CHAPTER VII
IN ENGLAND IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries many of the finest churches in England were built by architects so celebrated that some of them were sent for to erect similar buildings in France. The beautiful carvings and highly decorated monuments still existing in our cathedrals prove that the art of sculpture in England was at that time little inferior to that of other countries. And in the British Museum and Bodleian Library, and many private collections, there is plentiful evidence that the miniature painters and illuminators were but little behind their brethren in Italy and France; even the binders, as we see by existing work, used excellent ornament in the decoration of the covers of their books. Why is it, then, that we find the art of wood-engraving, when it was flourishing in all the chief countries on the Continent, almost at its earliest state of infancy in England? This is a question very difficult to answer. Certainly our great printers, William Caxton, and his successors, Wynkyn de Worde and Richard Pynson, did not follow the example of the great typographers of Venice or the yet more-to-be-praised booksellers of Paris, who devoted so much energy and taste in the decoration of their books.
Of the few cuts printed in the fifteenth century, such as they are, we must say a few words. The earliest are all
small devotional pictures, representing Scriptural subjects, as 'The Image of Pity,' a figure of Christ on the Cross surrounded by emblems of the Passion; four or five only of these early cuts have been found.