MATHIAS VAN DER GOES.
| R. VAN DEN DORP. | G. BACK. |
| A. CÆSARIS. |
If it could be proved that “Het boeck van Tondalus visioen” was, as has been stated, printed at Antwerp in 1472, by Mathias Van der Goes, the claim of Antwerp to be regarded as the first place in the Low Countries in which printing was introduced would be irrefutable. Unfortunately there is very little doubt but that the date is an error, although Goes is still rightly regarded as having introduced printing into Antwerp, where he was issuing books from 1482 to about 1494 in Dutch and Latin. He had two large Marks, one of which was a ship, apparently emblematical of Progress or commercial enterprise, and the other, a savage brandishing a club and bearing arms of Brabant,—the latter, from “Sermones Quatuor Novissimorum,” 1487, is here given. Rolant Van den Dorp, 1494–1500, whose chief claim to fame is that he printed the “Cronyke van Brabant,” folio, Antwerp, 1497, had as his most ambitious Mark a charming picture of Roland blowing his horn; on one of the shields (suspended from the branch of a tree) is the arms of Antwerp, which he sometimes used separately as his device. Contemporaneously with Van den Dorp, 1493–1500, we have Godefroy Back, a binder who, on November 19, 1492, married the widow of Van der Goes, and continued the printing-office of his predecessor. His house was called the Vogehuis, and had for its sign the Birdcage, which he adopted as his Mark; this he modified several times, notably in 1496, when the monogram of Van der Goes was replaced by his own. In the accompanying example (apparently broken during the printing) the letter M is surmounted by the Burgundy device—a wand upholding a St. Andrew’s cross. We give also a small example of the two other Marks used by this printer. Arnoldus Cæsaris, l’Empereur, or De Keysere, according as his name happened to be spelt in Latin, French, or Flemish, is another of the early Antwerp printers whose mark is sufficiently distinct to merit insertion here. His first book is dated 1480, “Hermanni de Petra Sermones super orationem dominicam.” Michael Hellenius, 1514–36, is a printer of this city who has a special interest to Englishmen from the fact that “in 1531 he printed at Antwerp an anti-Protestant work for Henry Pepwell, who could find no printer in London with sufficient courage to undertake it.” Hellenius’ Mark is emblematical of Time, in which the figure is standing on clouds, with a sickle in one hand and a serpent coiled in a circle on the left. The Mark of Jan Steels, Antwerp ([p. 19]), 1533–75, is regarded by some bibliographers as the emblem of an altar, but “from the entire absence of any ritual accessories, and the introduction of incongruous figures (which no mediæval artist would have thought of representing), it would appear to be merely a stone table.” Jacobus Bellaert, 1483–86, was the first Haarlem printer, one of his earliest works being “Dat liden ende die passie ons Heeren Jesu Christi,” which is dated December 10, 1483. Bellaert’s name does not appear in it, but his Mark at the end permits of an easy identification, it being the same as that which appears in his Dutch edition of “Glanvilla de Proprietatibus Rerum,” 1485: the arms above the Griffin are those of the city of Haarlem. One of the most famous printing localities of the Low Countries was Leyden (Lugdunum Batavorum), where the art was practised so early as 1483, Heynricus Henrici, 1483–4, being one of the earliest, his Mark carrying two shields, one of which bears the cross keys of Leyden. The Pelican is an exceedingly rare element in Dutch and Flemish Printers’ Marks, one of the very few exceptions being that of J. Destresius, Ypres, 1553, the motto on the border reading “Sine sanguinis effusione non fit remissio.”
GODEFROY BACK.
