THE WOODCUTS OF GOTHIC BOOKS
Notes on Woodcut Books
I shall presently have the pleasure of showing you in some kind of sequence a number of illustrations taken from books of the 15th, and first years of the 16th centuries. But before I do so I wish to read to you a few remarks on the genesis and the quality of the kind of art represented by these examples, and the lessons which they teach us.
Since the earliest of those I have to show is probably not earlier in date than about 1420, and almost all are more than fifty years later than that, it is clear that they belong to the latest period of Mediæval art, and one or two must formally be referred to the earliest days of the Renaissance, though in spirit they are still Gothic. In fact, it is curious to note the suddenness of the supplanting of the Gothic by the neo-classical style in some instances, especially in Germany: e.g., the later books published by the great Nuremberg printer, Koburger, in the fourteen-nineties, books like the "Nuremberg Chronicle," and the "Schatzbehalter," show no sign of the coming change, but ten years worn, and hey, presto, not a particle of Gothic ornament can be found in any German printed book, though, as I think, the figure-works of one great man, Albert Dürer, were Gothic in essence.
The most part of these books, in fact all of them in the earlier days (the exceptions being mainly certain splendidly ornamented French books, including the sumptuous books of "Hours"), were meant for popular books: the great theological folios, the law books, the decretals, and such like of the earlier German printers, though miracles of typographical beauty, if ornamented at all, were ornamented by the illuminator, with the single exception of Gutenberg's splendid "Psalter," which gives us at once the first and best piece of ornamental colour-printing yet achieved. Again, the dainty and perfect volumes of the classics produced by the earlier Roman and Venetian printers disdained the help of wood blocks, though they were often beautifully illuminated, and it was not till after the days of Jenson, the Frenchman who brought the Roman letter to perfection, it was not till Italian typography began to decline, that illustration by reproducible methods became usual; and we know that these illustrated books were looked upon as inferior wares, and were sold far cheaper than the unadorned pages of the great printers. It must be noted in confirmation of the view that the woodcut books were cheap books, that in most cases they were vernacular editions of books already printed in Latin.
The work, then, which I am about to show you has first the disadvantage of the rudeness likely to disfigure cheap forms of art in a time that lacked the resource of slippery plausibility which helps out cheap art at the present day. And secondly, the disadvantage of belonging to the old age rather than the youth or vigorous manhood of the Middle Ages. On the other hand, it is art, and not a mere trade "article;" and though it was produced by the dying Middle Ages, they were not yet dead when it was current, so that it yet retains much of the qualities of the more hopeful period; and in addition, the necessity of adapting the current design to a new material and method gave it a special life, which is full of interest and instruction for artists of all times who are able to keep their eyes open.
All organic art, all art that is genuinely growing, opposed to rhetorical, retrospective, or academical art, art which has no real growth in it, has two qualities in common: the epical and the ornamental; its two functions are the telling of a story and the adornment of a space or tangible object. The labour and ingenuity necessary for the production of anything that claims our attention as a work of art are wasted, if they are employed on anything else than these two aims. Mediæval art, the result of a long unbroken series of tradition, is preëminent for its grasp of these two functions, which, indeed, interpenetrate then more than in any other period. Not only is all its special art obviously and simply beautiful as ornament, but its ornament also is vivified with forcible meaning, so that neither in one or the other does the life ever flag, or the sensuous pleasure of the eye ever lack. You have not got to say, Now you have your story, how are you going to embellish it? Nor, Now you have made your beauty, what are you going to do with it? For here are the two together, inseparably a part of each other. No doubt the force of tradition, which culminated in the Middle Ages, had much to do with this unity of epical design and ornament. It supplied deficiencies of individual by collective imagination (compare the constantly recurring phases and lines in genuine epical or ballad poetry); it ensured the inheritance of deft craftsmanship and instinct for beauty in the succession of the generations of workmen; and it cultivated the appreciation of good work by the general public. Now-a-days artists work essentially for artists, and look on the ignorant layman with contempt, which even the necessity of earning a livelihood cannot force them wholly to disguise. In the times of art, they had no one but artists to work for, since every one was a potential artist.
Now, in such a period, when written literature was still divine, and almost miraculous to men, it was impossible that books should fail to have a due share in the epical-ornamental art of the time. Accordingly, the opportunities offered by the pages which contained the wisdom and knowledge of past and present times were cultivated to the utmost. The early Middle Ages, beginning with the wonderful calligraphy of the Irish MSS., were, above all times, the epoch of writing. The pages of almost all books, from the 8th to the 15th century, are beautiful, even without the addition of ornament. In those that are ornamented without pictures illustrative of the text, the eye is so pleasured, and the fancy so tickled by the beauty and exhaustless cheerful invention of the illuminator, that one scarcely ventures to ask that the tale embodied in the written characters should be further illustrated. But when this is done, and the book is full of pictures, which tell the written tale again with the most conscientious directness of design, and as to execution with great purity of outline and extreme delicacy of colour, we can say little more than that the only work of art which surpasses a complete Mediæval book is a complete Mediæval building. This must be said, with the least qualification, of the books of from about 1160 to 1300. After this date, the work loses, in purity and simplicity, more than it gains in pictorial qualities, and, at last, after the middle of the 15th century, illuminated books lose much of their individuality on the ornamental side; and, though they are still beautiful, are mostly only redeemed from commonplace when the miniatures in them are excellent. But here comes in the new element, given by the invention of printing, and the gradual shoving out of the scribe by the punch-cutter, the typefounder, and the printer. The first printed characters were as exact reproductions of the written ones as the new craftsmen could compass, even to the extent of the copying of the infernal abbreviations which had gradually crept into manuscript; but, as I have already mentioned, the producers of serious books did not at first supply the work of the illuminator by that of the woodcutter, either in picture work or ornament. In fact, the art of printing pictures from wood blocks is earlier than that of printing books, and is undoubtedly the parent of book illustration. The first woodcuts were separate pictures of religious subjects, circulated for the edification of the faithful, in existing examples generally coloured by hand, and certainly always intended to be coloured. The earliest of these may be as old as 1380, and there are many which have been dated in the first half of the 15th century; though the dates are mostly rather a matter of speculation. But the development of book illustration proper by no means puts an end to their production. Many were done between 1450 and 1490, and some in the first years of the 16th century; but the earlier ones only have any special character in them. Of these, some are cut rudely and some timidly also, but some are fairly well cut, and few so ill that the expression of the design is not retained. The design of most of these early works is mostly admirable, and as far removed from the commonplace as possible; many, nay most of these cuts, are fine expressions of that pietism of the Middle Ages which has been somewhat veiled from us by the strangeness, and even grotesqueness which has mingled with it, but the reality of which is not doubtful to those who have studied the period without prejudice. Amongst these may be cited a design of Christ being pressed in the wine press, probably as early as the end of the 14th century, which may stand without disadvantage beside a fine work of the 13th century.
The next step towards book illustration brings us to the block-books, in which the picture-cuts are accompanied by a text, also cut on wood; the folios being printed by rubbing off on one side only. The subject of the origin of the most noteworthy of these books, the "Ars Moriendi," the "Lord's Prayer," the "Song of Solomon," the "Biblia Pauperum," the "Apocalypse," and the "Speculum Humanæ Salvationis," has been debated, along with the question of the first printer by means of movable types, with more acrimony than it would seem to need. I, not being a learned person, will not add one word to the controversy; it is enough to say that these works were done somewhere between the years 1430 and 1460, and that their style was almost entirely dominant throughout the Gothic period in Flanders and Holland, while it had little influence on the German wood-cutters. For the rest, all these books have great merit as works of art; it would be difficult to find more direct or more poetical rendering of the events given than those of the "Speculum Humanæ Salvationis;" or more elegant and touching designs than those in the "Song of Solomon." The cuts of the "Biblia Pauperum" are rougher, but full of vigour and power of expression. The "Ars Moriendi" is very well drawn and executed, but the subject is not so interesting. The "Apocalypse" and "The Lord's Prayer" are both of them excellent, the former being scarcely inferior in design to the best of the Apocalypse picture MSS. of the end of the thirteenth century.
We have now come to the wood-cuts which ornament the regular books of the Gothic period, which began somewhat timidly. The two examples in Germany and Italy, not far removed from each other in date, being the "Historie von Joseph, Daniel, Judith, and Esther," printed by Albrecht Pfister, at Bamberg, in 1462; and the "Meditations of Turrecremata (or Torquemada)," printed at Rome by Ulric Hahn, in the year 1467, which latter, though taken by the command of the Pope from the frescoes of a Roman Church (Sta. Maria Sopra Minerva) are as German as need be, and very rude in drawing and execution, though not without spirit. But, after this date, the school of wood-carving developed rapidly; and, on the whole, Germany, which had been very backward in the art of illumination, now led the new art. The main schools were those of Ulm and Augsburg, of Maintz, of Strasburg, of Basel, and of Nuremberg, the latter being the later. The examples which I shall presently have the pleasure of showing you are wholly of the first and the last, as being the most representative, Ulm and Augsburg of the earlier style, Nuremberg of the later. But I might mention, in passing, that some of the earlier Basel books, notably Bernard Richel's "Speculum Humanæ Salvationis," are very noteworthy; and that, in fourteen-eighties, there was a school at Maintz that produced, amongst other books, a very beautiful "Herbal," and Breydenbach's "Peregrinatio," which, amongst other merits, such as actual representations of the cities on the road to the Holy Land, must be said to contain the best executed woodcuts of the Middle Ages. Of course, there were many other towns in Germany which produced illustrated books, but they may be referred in character to one or other of these schools. In Holland and Flanders there was a noble school of woodcutting, delicately decorative in character, and very direct and expressive, being, as I said, the direct descendant of the block-books. The name of the printer who produced most books of this school was Gerard Leeuw (or Lion), who printed first at Gouda, and afterwards at Antwerp. But Colard Mansion, of Bruges, who printed few books, and was the master of Caxton in the art of printing, turned out a few very fine specimens of illustrated books. One of the most remarkable illustrated works published in the Low Countries—which I mention for its peculiarity—is the "Chevalier Deliberé" (an allegorical poem on the death of Charles the Rash), and I regret not being able to show you a slide of it, as it could not be done satisfactorily. This book, published at Schiedam in 1500, decidedly leans towards the French in style, rather than the native manner deduced from the earlier block-books.