DENYS JANOT.
| WILLIAM FAQUES. |
The employment of mottoes in Greek and Hebrew characters is a not unimportant feature in the earlier examples of Printers’ Marks, but it must suffice us here to indicate a few of the leading printers who used either one or the other, and sometimes both. B. Rembolt was one of the earliest to incorporate a Greek phrase; De Salenson, Ghent, had a Greco-Latin motto on an open bible, which is the pièce de resistance of a pretty Mark, a similar idea occurring in the totally different Marks of the brothers Treschel, Lyons; another Lyons firm of printers, the brothers Huguetan, employed a Greek motto, and a phrase, also in Greek characters, occurs in one of the Marks of Peter Vidoue. The more notable Marks which contain Hebrew characters, which generally signify Jehovah, are those of Joannes Knoblouchus, or Knoblouch, Strassburg, in which we have not only Hebrew, but upper and lower case Greek, and a Latin quotation—“Verum, quum latebris delituit diu, emergit”; and of Wolfius Cæphalæus, also of Strassburg; and here again we have the Mark environed by quotations in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. In a few instances we have the unlucky letter of the Greek alphabet—theta—forming a Mark with considerable originality, as in that of Guillaume Morel, where this symbol of death is surrounded by two dragon serpents representing immortality. The theta was also employed by Etienne Prevosteau.
The subject of the sphere in Printers’ Marks might profitably occupy a good deal of space in discussing. It is generally considered to be not only the peculiar property of the Elzevirs, but that books possessing it without having one or other of the real or assumed imprints of this celebrated family of printers are impudent frauds. But as a matter of fact, it was used by at least half-a-dozen printers many years before the Elzevirs started printing. For example, it was employed during the last decade of the fifteenth century by Gilles Hardouyn, and early in the sixteenth by Huguetan brothers at Lyons, by P. Sergent and L. Grandin at Paris, by J. Steels, or Steelsius of Antwerp, and P. Lichtenstein of Venice. In these instances, however, it is endowed, so to speak, with accessories. In the earliest Mark it plays only an incidental part, but in the Huguetan example it forms the device itself: it is held by a hand and is encircled by a ring on which the owner of the hand is evidently trying to balance a ball; there is a Greek motto. In a later and slightly different design of the same family, the motto is altered in position, and is in Latin: “Vniversitas rerum, vt Pvlis, in manv Iehovae.” Each of the two Paris examples is remarkable in its peculiar way. In Grandin’s two Marks the same allegorical idea prevails, viz., one person seizing a complete sphere from an angel out of the clouds, apparently to exchange it for the broken one held by a second person: in the cruder of the two examples of these there is a quotation from the 117th Psalm. In Sergent’s bold and vigorous Mark, the sphere, which incloses a figure of the crucified Christ, is fixed into the top of a dead trunk of a tree. It may also be mentioned that this device was frequently used by printers during the middle and latter part of the seventeenth century in this country—it appears, for example, on several books printed by R. Bentley, London, during that period. The sphere as an Elzevir Mark will be referred to in the chapter dealing with Dutch examples.
J. STEELS.
An element which may be generically termed religious plays no unimportant part in this subject. It will not be necessary to enter deeply into the motives which induced so many of the old printers and booksellers to select either their devices or the illustrations of their Marks from biblical sources; and it must suffice to say that, if the object is frequently hidden to us to-day, the fact of the extent of their employment cannot be controverted. The incident of the Brazen Serpent (Numbers xxi.) was a very popular subject. One of the earliest to use it was Conrad Neobar, Paris, 1538; it was adopted by Reginald Wolfe, who commenced printing in this country about 1543, and its possession was considered of sufficient importance to merit special mention among the goods bequeathed by his widow to her son Robert. It was also the Mark of Wolfe’s contemporaries, Martin Le Jeune, Paris, Jean Bien-Né, of the same city, and of Jean Crespin, Geneva, the last-named using it in several sizes, in which the foot of the cross is “continued” into an anchor. Apart from crosses in an infinite variety of forms, and to which reference will presently be made, by far the most popular form of religious devices consisted of what may, for convenience sake, be termed angelic. Pictorially they are nearly always failures, and often ludicrously so. The same indeed might be said of the work of most artists who have essayed the impossible in this direction. An extraordinary solemnity of countenance, a painful sameness and extreme ugliness, are the three dominant features of the angels of the Printers’ Mark. The subject offers but little scope for an artist’s ingenuity it is true, and it is only in a very few exceptions that a tolerable example presents itself. Their most frequent occurrence is in supporting a shield with the national emblem of France, and in at least one instance—that of André Bocard, Paris,—with the emblems of the city and the University of Paris. This idea, without the two latter emblems, occurs in the devices of Jehan Trepperel, Anthoine Denidel, and J. Bouyer and G. Bouchet (who adopted it conjointly), who were printing or selling books in Paris during the last decade of the fifteenth century; whilst in the provinces in that period it was employed by Jacques Le Forestier, at Rouen; and by Jehan De Gourmont, Paris, J. Besson, Lyons, and J. Bouchet at Poitiers, early in the following century. The angels nearly always occur in couples, as in the case of Antoine Vérard, one of the earliest printers to adopt this form; but a few exceptions may be mentioned where only one appears, namely, in the Mark of Estienne Baland, Lyons (1515), in which an angel is represented as confounding Balaam’s ass; and in that of Vincent Portunaris, of the same place and of about the same time, in which an angel figures holding an open book; in the four employed by G. Silvius, an Antwerp printer (1562), in three of which the figure is also holding a book; in the elaborate Mark of Philip Du Pré, Paris, 1595, and in the exceeding rough Mark of Jannot de Campis, of Lyons, 1505. Curiously enough, the subject of Christ on the cross was very rarely employed, an exception occurring in the case of Schäffeler, of Constance, or Bodensee, Bavaria, 1505. The same centre-piece, without the cross, was employed by Jehan Frellon, Paris, 1508, and evidently copied by Jehan Burges, the younger, at Rouen, 1521, whilst that of Guillaume Du Puy, Paris, 1504, has already been referred to. The Virgin Mary occurs occasionally, the more notable examples being the Marks of Guillaume Anabat, Paris, 1505–10, really a careful piece of work; and the elder G. Ryverd, Paris, 1516, and in each case with the infant Jesus. St. Christopher is a subject one sometimes meets with in Printers’ Marks: in that of Gervais Chevallon, Paris, 1538, it however plays a comparatively subordinate part, and its merits were only fully recognized by the Grosii, of Leipzig, who nearly always used it for about two centuries, 1525–1732; the example bearing the last date is by far one of the most absurd of its kind—the cowled monk with a modern lantern lighting St. Christopher on his way through the river is a choice piece of incongruity. Another phase of the religious element capable of considerable expansion is that in relation to the part played in Marks by saints and priests generally. Sometimes these are found together with an effect not at all happy, notably the two Marks of Jehan Olivier, Paris, 1518, which, with Jesus Christ on one side, a Pope on the other, and an olive tree, are sufficiently crude to present an appearance which seems to-day almost blasphemous. The last of the several religious phases of Printers’ Marks to which we shall allude is at the same time the most elaborate and complicated. We refer to that of the Cross. The subject is sufficiently wide to occupy of itself a small volume, but even after the most careful investigation, there are many points which will for ever remain in the region of doubt and obscurity. Tradition is proverbially difficult to eradicate; and all the glamour which surrounds the history of the Cross, and which found expression in, among other popular books, the “Legenda Aurea,” maintained all its pristine force and attractiveness down to the end of the sixteenth century. The invention of printing and the gradual enlightenment of mankind did much in reducing these legends into their proper place; but the process was gradual, and whatever may have been their private opinions, the old printers found it discreet to fall into line with the established order of things. Indeed, the religious sentiment was perhaps never so alive as at the time of the invention of printing, in proof of which some of the earliest and most magnificent typographical monuments may be cited,—the Gutenberg Bible, the Psalter of Fust and Schoeffer, for example. The accompanying plate will give the reader a faint idea of the extraordinary variety of crosses to be found on Printers’ Marks used chiefly by the Italian printers.