The two really noteworthy works of Sorg (who, as aforesaid, was somewhat a plagiaristic publisher) are, first, the Seusse, which is illustrated with bold and highly decorative cuts full of meaning and dignity, and next, the Council of Constance, which is the first heraldic woodcut work (it has besides the coats-of-arms, several fine full-page cuts, of which the burning of Huss is one). These armorial cuts, which are full of interest as giving a vast number of curious and strange bearings, are no less so as showing what admirable decoration can be got out of heraldry when it is simply and well drawn.
To Conrad Dinckmut of Ulm, belonging to a somewhat later period than these last-named printers, belongs the glory of opposing by his fine works the coming degradation of book-ornament in Germany. The Seelen-wurzgarten, ornamented with seventeen full-page cuts, is injured by the too free repetition of them; they are, however, very good; the best perhaps being the Nativity, which, for simplicity and beauty, is worthy of the earlier period of the Middle Ages. The Swabian Chronicle has cuts of various degrees of merit, but all interesting and full of life and spirit: a fight in the lists with axes being one of the most remarkable. Das buch der Weisheit (Bidpay's Fables) has larger cuts which certainly show no lack of courage; they are perhaps scarcely so decorative as the average of the cuts of the school, and are somewhat coarsely cut; but their frank epical character makes them worthy of all attention. But perhaps his most remarkable work is his Terence's Eunuchus (in German), ornamented with twenty-eight cuts illustrating the scenes. These all have backgrounds showing (mostly) the streets of a mediæval town, which clearly imply theatrical scenery; the figures of the actors are delicately drawn, and the character of the persons and their action is well given and carefully sustained throughout. The text of this book is printed in a large handsome black-letter, imported, as my friend Mr. Proctor informs me, from Italy. The book is altogether of singular beauty and character.
The Caoursin (1496), the last book of any account printed at Ulm, has good and spirited cuts of the events described, the best of them being the flight of Turks in the mountains. One is almost tempted to think that these cuts are designed by the author of those of the Mainz Breidenbach of 1486, though the cutting is much inferior.
All these books, it must be remembered, though they necessarily (being printed books) belong to the later Middle Ages, and though some of them are rather decidedly late in that epoch, are thoroughly 'Gothic' as to their ornament; there is no taint of the Renaissance in them. In this respect the art of book-ornament was lucky. The neo-classical rhetoric which invaded literature before the end of the fourteenth century (for even Chaucer did not quite escape it) was harmless against this branch of art at least for more than another hundred years; so that even Italian book-pictures are Gothic in spirit, for the most part, right up to the beginning of the sixteenth century, long after the New Birth had destroyed the building arts for Italy: while Germany, whose Gothic architecture was necessarily firmer rooted in the soil, did not so much as feel the first shiver of the coming flood till suddenly, and without warning, it was upon her, and the art of the Middle Ages fell dead in a space of about five years, and was succeeded by a singularly stupid and brutal phase of that rhetorical and academical art, which, in all matters of ornament, has held Europe captive ever since.
From John Zainer's Griseldis, Ulm, 1473
From Gunther Zainer's Speculum Humanæ Salvationis, Augsburg, C. 1471
From Gunther Zainer's Ingold, Das Golden Spiel, Augsburg, 1472