Fine Books Part 9

Nevertheless, he had no difficulty in finding support for his contention that "the ill.u.s.trations in Verard's books, when closely examined, hardly bear out their reputation." Thus he showed that "besides being repeatedly used in book after book, it not uncommonly happens that the same cut is used again and again in the same book," and gave as an extreme instance of this the repet.i.tion no fewer than twenty times of the same cut in the _Merlin_ of 1498.[39] He pointed out, moreover, that some far-fetched plea is nearly always needed to justify the presence of a cut in any but the work it was designed for. "For instance, in the _Josephus_ of 1492 the spoliation of a country is represented by the burial of a woman, the death of Samson by a picture of the Temple, and the Sacrifice of Isaac helps the reader to conceive the execution of a malefactor, while a mention of the sea brings out a cut of Noah's Ark."

However crowded a book may be with cuts, if the cuts are mostly irrelevant it cannot truly be said to be ill.u.s.trated, and the number of Verard's books which a rigorous application of this principle would condemn is very large. An explanation of at least some of these incongruities may be found in Verard's early training as an illuminator, and his habit of preparing special copies on vellum for Charles VIII of France, Henry VII of England, the Comte d'Angouleme, and other royal and n.o.ble patrons. A woodcut in itself quite inappropriate to the text might save an illuminator some trouble by suggesting the grouping of the figures in a picture, and a cut of Saturn devouring his children was actually used in this way in one of the Henry VII books in the British Museum as a ground plan for an illumination of a Holy Family. If King Henry ever held that illumination up to the light he would have had no difficulty in seeing the scythe of Chronos and the limbs of a child protruding from Saturn's mouth, but I have never seen a paper copy of this book, and can only wonder whether the same cut was allowed to appear in it.

Verard's earliest book was the translation of Boccaccio's _Decamerone_ by Laurent du Premierfait, completed 22 November, 1485, and ill.u.s.trated with a single cut of the author writing in an alcove looking out on a garden where the storytellers are seen seated. An edition of _Les dits moraux des philosophes_ of Guillaume de Tignonville (Caxton's _Dicts and Sayings of the Philosophers_) followed in April, 1486, and the _Livre des ruraulx prouffitz_, translated from Crescentius, with a few small cuts, not so good as those in the edition just issued by Jean Bonhomme, in the following July. His first important ill.u.s.trated book was the _Cent nouvelles nouvelles_, of Christmas Eve, 1486, with two large cuts, very alike in style, of an author presenting his book to a king, and forty column-cuts, most of them used several times, occasionally with mutilations intended to erase features unsuitable to the later stories.

The next important book was a _Chevalier Delibere_ of 8 August, 1488, with some excellent cuts which reappear frequently in later books.

Pa.s.sing over many inferior books, we come in 1492 to a really fine one, containing four separate treatises: (1) _Art de bien mourir_, ill.u.s.trated with copies of the old German block-book; (2) _Traite des peines d'enfer_ (otherwise known as _L'Aiguillon de crainte divine_), with grotesque but striking cuts of the tortures of the d.a.m.ned; (3) _Advenement de antichrist_ and fifteen Tokens of Judgment, very poorly ill.u.s.trated compared with the other parts of the book; and (4) _L'Art de bien vivre_, copiously decorated with scenes from Bible history, an oblong set, ill.u.s.trating the Adoration of the Virgin and Child, the Lord's Prayer, Commandments, Apostles, etc.; (5) a very fine set of cuts ill.u.s.trating the Sacraments.

In June, 1493, Verard published in three large folio volumes, printed for him by Jean Morand, _Les Croniques de France_, with pictures of a coronation, royal entry into a town, a king sitting in judgment, etc.

etc., the cutting being only of average delicacy, but good enough to do justice to the vigour of some of the designs. From this point onwards his interest seems more and more to have centred in his illuminated copies, and almost all the later Verard ill.u.s.trations in M. Claudin's great work are taken from these. Along, however, with many old cuts in his undated _Bible historiee_ there are two very fine ones specially made for the work, one of Adam and Eve in Eden, a round cut placed, below the roots of a tree, in a square of black, from which it stands out with extraordinary vividness (see Plate XIX), and a picture of the Trinity and the four evangelists. In an undated _Terence en francois_, printed about 1500, Verard availed himself of an idea already exploited by Gruninger and some of the Low Country ill.u.s.trators, the use of blocks made up of five or six pieces used in different combinations, so as to give an effect of great variety at very small expense. Many of the individual blocks, though the figures are not at all Terentian, are very charming, and a few of them were freely copied for the English market, where they may be traced for over a century. About the same time as this Verard published a _Livre des Ordonnances de la Prevoste des Marchans et Eschevinage de la Ville de Paris_, with numerous small ill.u.s.trations of different crafts and a most interesting picture of the court of the Prevoste with its judges and officials. After the first few years of the sixteenth century Verard seems to have relied more than ever on his stock of old cuts, and does not seem to have produced any notable new books.

[Ill.u.s.tration: XIX. PARIS, VeRARD, 1505

BIBLE EN FRANCOYS (2^a). ADAM AND EVE. (REDUCED)]

A few books printed or published by less prolific firms remain to be noticed before we speak of the Horae which form so important a section among Paris ill.u.s.trated books as to require separate treatment. One of Verard's printers was Pierre Le Rouge, a member of a family which worked also at Chablis and at Troyes. In July, 1488, and February, 1488-9, Le Rouge printed "pour Vincent Commin Marchand libraire" _La mer des histoires_ in two great folios with large cuts of the kind Verard subsequently used in his _Chroniques de France_, and on the t.i.tlepage a particularly fine capital L. Philippe Pigouchet, mainly a printer of Horae, produced in 1499 for his usual publisher, Simon Vostre, a charmingly ill.u.s.trated edition of a dull poem, _Le Chasteau de Labeur_, attributed to the playwright of Victor Hugo's _Notre Dame de Paris_, Pierre Gringore. Wolfgang Hopyl printed some fine Missals, mostly after 1500; Le Pet.i.t Laurens, besides working for Verard, printed for G.

Marnef _La nef des folles_, with a few cuts by one of the most skilled of Paris craftsmen, and these were rivalled by Jean Treperel in an undated _Paris et Vienne_; Gillet Couteau and Jean Menard printed a _Danse Macabre_ in 1492 (not so good as Gui Marchant's) and a new version of the _Biblia Pauperum_ ent.i.tled _Les figures du vieil testament et du nouveau;_ Jean Lambert, in 1497, produced _La nef des folz du monde_, with cuts imitating those in the Basel editions. It would be easy to mention other books, but not without turning our pages into a catalogue.

We must turn now to the Paris Horae. As already noted, among the pictures in Jean Du Pre's Verdun Missal of November, 1481, there are a set of cuts which seem to have been designed for a Horae, though if they were even put to this use no copy of the edition in which they appeared has been recorded. The earliest ill.u.s.trated Horae of which copies exist are three editions published by Verard, in February 1485-6, August 1486, and July 1487, all of them small and with insignificant cuts, and all known only from single copies, of which that of the earliest edition (in private hands) is imperfect, while the woodcuts in the other two, both at the Bibliotheque Nationale, are heavily coloured.

Verard's Horae of 1486 and 1487 are said to have been printed for him by Jean Du Pre, and in the next group of editions Du Pre on his own account seems to have played the chief part, with Levet and Caillaut as subordinate actors. It is probable that the group may have been started by a Psalter printed by Levet 23 September, 1486, and reprinted 19 February, 1488-9, the cuts of these appearing in an undated _Horae ad usum Romanum_, printed by Du Pre, now in the British Museum. This measures about 4(5/8) 3 inches, and of the same size, but with different woodcuts, are another undated Horae by Du Pre in the Bodleian, and a third, with Caillaut's mark at the end, in the Bibliotheque Nationale. The cuts in all three are delightfully simple and naive, and those in the Bodleian Du Pre edition show really delicate work. The group, which comprised other editions only known from fragments, seems to be continued by two dated respectively 10 May, 1488, and 4 February, 1488-9, each measuring about 5(5/8) 3(5/8) inches, the ill.u.s.trations in which are distinctly stated to have been cut on copper (_les vignettes de ces presentes heures imprimees en cuyvre_). The ill.u.s.trations especially referred to are the borderpieces, which are of great importance as containing the earliest examples of a series of small Horae cuts continued from page to page, in this case depicting incidents in the life of Christ and their prefigurements, on the plan of the old block-book _Biblia Pauperum_. Lastly, in 1490, we have a Du Pre Horae, with very fine cuts and with some of the miscellaneous borderpieces of the editions just mentioned, which is of exceptional interest in the history of French book-ill.u.s.tration and printing, since the cuts and borders in it are printed in different colours, faint red, blue and green, two colours (laid on the same block and printed at the same time) usually appearing together. The British Museum possesses one of two known copies of this Horae, and the late Prince d'Essling bought the other.

[Ill.u.s.tration: XX. PARIS, VeRARD, 1490

GRANDES HEURES (SIG. C 6 VERSO). Ma.s.sACRE OF THE INNOCENTS]

In the Horae of the group we have been describing the subjects of the larger cuts became fairly well settled, in accordance with the normal contents of the prayer book. For the Kalendar there is the figure of a man with an indication of the parts of his body presided over by the different planets: for the sequence of the Gospels of the Pa.s.sion, sometimes a Crucifixion, sometimes a picture of S. John; for the Hours of the Blessed Virgin, the Annunciation, Visitation, Nativity, Shepherds, Magi, Circ.u.mcision, Ma.s.sacre of the Innocents or Flight into Egypt, and a.s.sumption of the Blessed Virgin; for the Hours of the Cross, a Crucifixion; for the Hours of the Holy Spirit, His Descent at Pentecost; for the Penitential Psalms, David's fall (Bathsheba bathing or the death of Uriah) or repentance; for the Office of the Dead, either a Funeral, Dives and Lazarus, or the three Gallants and three Skeletons (_les trois vifs et trois morts_); for the Suffrages, small pictures of various saints. Any edition might have one or more additional cuts with less usual subjects, but those named occur in almost all.

Pa.s.sing on, we come now to Verard's countermove to Du Pre's group, Horae measuring 6 inches or a little under by about 3. Editions of these were issued in April, 1488-9, and in January, February, and April of the following year. The last of these, completed 10 April, 1489-90, I wrongly described, in an article in Vol. III of _Bibliographica_, as having a t.i.tlepage bearing the words _Les figures de la Bible_. It has such a t.i.tlepage in the copy in the British Museum, but I have now woke up to the fact that it is a modern fabrication, added either by an artful bookseller or an artless owner. In these Horae the borders are made up of four pieces, one of which extends along most of the outer and lower margins, and shows children wrestling with each other, or playing with hobbies or go-carts. On 10 July, 1493, these are found in a Horae issued by Laurens Philippe. Verard could the better afford to part with them, since in August, 1490, perhaps earlier, he had subst.i.tuted much larger borders, the subjects in which seem imitated from those of Du Pre's metal-cuts, the printed page now measuring about 8 5 inches, and thus winning for them the t.i.tle Grandes Heures, by which they are generally known (see Plate XX). The large cuts, of which, though not all appear in every edition, there seems to have been seventeen, ill.u.s.trate the following subjects:--

1. Prayer to the Virgin; 2. Anatomical Man; 3. A chalice the circ.u.mference of which represents the measurement of Christ's wound; 4. Fall of Angels; 5. Creation of Eve and Fall; 6. Controversy in heaven between Mercy, Justice, Peace, and Reason, and Annunciation; 7.

Reconciliation of Joseph and Mary, and Visitation; 8. Nativity and Adoration by the Shepherds; 9. Angels and Shepherds, Shepherds dancing; 10. Magi; 11. Circ.u.mcision; 12. Ma.s.sacre of Innocents; 13.

Coronation of the Virgin; 14. David's choice of punishments; 15.

Hea.r.s.e in a Chancel; 16. Invention of the Cross; 17. Pentecost.

The cutting is good and the pictures are both quaint and decorative, their larger size enabling them to avoid the overcrowding which had damaged the effect of the earlier sets. These cuts continued in use till 1498, successive editions in May, July, and October of that year, from the press of Jean Poitevin, showing their gradual replacement by copies of Philippe Pigouchet's second set.

This famous printer-ill.u.s.trator was certainly printing as early as 1488, though Mr. Proctor in his "Index" makes the Horae for the use of Paris, finished 1 December, 1491, his earliest book. Although not his earliest book, I still believe that this was Pigouchet's earliest Book of Hours, and regret that M. Claudin, while rejecting supposed editions of 1486 and 1487, should have accepted as authentic one of 16 September, 1488, said to have very rude and archaic cuts, while owning that he could not trace a copy. Until the book can be produced I shall continue to believe that this edition of 16 September, 1488, is a ghost begotten of a double crime, a bookseller's manipulation of the date of one of Pigouchet's best-known editions, that of "le xvi iour de Septembre Lan Mil cccc.iiii.xx et xviii," by omitting the x in xviii, and a bibliographer's endeavour to make this imaginary edition of 16 September, 1488, more credible by a.s.suming--and a.s.serting--that its cuts were rude and archaic because over three years earlier than any authenticated Horae from Pigouchet's press. His edition of 1 December, 1491, was printed partly for sale by himself, partly for de Marnef, who subsequently owned the blocks. Besides the usual ill.u.s.trations for the Hours, it has pictures of S. John writing and of the Betrayal for the Gospels of the Pa.s.sion, of David's choice of punishments for the Penitential Psalms, and of Les trois vifs et trois morts, and Dives and Lazarus for the Office for the Dead; also a small cut, with a crible background of the Vision of S. Gregory, and numerous small cuts of saints. The sidepieces, which are marked with letters to indicate their sequence, ill.u.s.trate the Creation, the prophecies of the Sibyls, and the subjects of the _Biblia Pauperum._ During the years 1491 and 1495 at least eight or ten Horae for various uses were printed by Pigouchet, mostly for Simon Vostre. Of most of these a good many copies have survived printed on vellum and often illuminated for wealthy purchasers.

The paper copies, which presumably formed the bulk of each edition, are now far rarer, and to students of book-ill.u.s.tration much preferable to the coloured vellum copies. Good vellum copies with the pictures and borders uncoloured, but with their pages brightened by illuminated capitals and coloured paragraph marks, are the pleasantest to possess.

At the end of 1495 or early in 1496 Pigouchet began replacing the woodcuts of this series of editions with a new set much more graceful and less stiff, a few changes being made in the subjects. At the same time he subst.i.tuted new borderpieces for the old, among the new blocks being a fine series of the Dance of Death, which were brought into use as they were completed, so that we can trace the increase of them from month to month, so frequent now were the editions. In 1497 and 1498 further additions were made to the large pictures by the addition of new metal cuts with crible backgrounds for the Anatomical Man, chalice, Stem of Jesse, Adoration by the Shepherds, Descent from the Cross, Death of Uriah, and the Church Militant and Triumphant. By the end of 1499 new crible borderpieces had been added, ill.u.s.trating the life of Joseph, history of the Prodigal Son, history of Susanna, Fifteen Tokens of Judgment, Christ Seated in Judgment, the Cardinal Virtues, and woodland and hunting scenes. From August, 1498, to the end of 1502 Pigouchet's editions were at their finest. Meanwhile the cuts of his second set were slavishly copied in editions printed for Verard. From 1497, moreover, he had to face serious compet.i.tion from Thielman Kerver, who issued closely similar editions with pictures and borders by cutters little, if at all, inferior either in technical skill or charm. On 5 April, 1503, Jean Pych.o.r.e and Remy de Laistre completed an edition, in which Pigouchet probably had a hand, with three very large cuts of the Annunciation, Nativity, and Adoration by the Magi, and eight smaller ones surrounded by architectural framework, representing S. John before the Latin Gate, the Crucifixion, the Emperor Octavian and the Sibyl, the Ma.s.sacre of the Innocents, Descent of the Holy Spirit, Death of the Virgin, and Raising of Lazarus, some of them showing strong traces of the influence of Durer. From this point onwards the Renaissance spirit became increasingly powerful in these prayer books, and while in almost all their advances to meet it the work of Pigouchet himself, and of Thielman Kerver, continues interesting (though the mixture of old and new styles in their editions is often confusing), in the numerous editions poured forth by Germain and Gillet Hardouyn, many of them printed for them by Guillaume Anabat, and again in those printed by Nicolas Higman for Guillaume Eustace, the cuts are very inferior, so that they look best when most heavily illuminated. In a few editions published by the Hardouyns s.p.a.ces appear to have been left for the illuminator to work unaided. In most of these late editions only the pages with cuts have borders, and these of the nature of picture frames, as contrasted with the old historiated borders.

In 1525 Geoffroi Tory, a native of Bourges (born about 1480), who at this period of his life was at once a skilled designer, a scholar, and a printer, completed a Horae which, though somewhat thin and unsatisfying compared with the richer and more pictorial work of Pigouchet at his best, far surpa.s.sed any edition produced at Paris for the previous twenty years. Part of the edition was taken up by the great publisher of the day, Simon Colines, and while the body of the book was only printed once, differences in the t.i.tlepages and colophons and in the arrangement of the almanac and privilege const.i.tute altogether three different issues. Whereas the best earlier editions had been printed in gothic letter this is in roman, and both the borders and the twelve ill.u.s.trations aim at the lightness and grace necessary to match the lighter type. The vase-like designs of the borders are meaningless, but the pictures, despite the long faces and somewhat angular figures, have a peculiar charm. They were used again, with some additions, in a Horae completed 20 October, 1531. An edition of 1 October, 1527, described by Tory's chief biographer, Auguste Bernard, as printed, "chez Simon de Colines en caracteres romains avec des vignettes de meme genre, mais beaucoup plus pet.i.tes," I have never seen. Three weeks later Tory printed in gothic letter a Paris Horae with borders of birds and fruits and flowers rather in the style of some of the Flemish ma.n.u.scripts. In February, 1529, he produced a much smaller Horae in roman type without borders, but with some very delicate little cuts, used again by Olivier Mallard, who married his widow, in 1542. Tory appears to have died in 1533, and attributions of later work to him on the ground of its being marked with a "cross of Lorraine" (i.e. a cross with two transverse strokes) should be received with caution, unless the cuts are found in books by Tory's widow or her second husband. It is not quite clear that the cross is not the mark of a wood-cutter rather than a designer, and if it really marks the designer we must believe that it was used by others beside Tory, so various is the work on which it is found.

Ill.u.s.trated books were published at Lyon somewhat earlier than at Paris, and in point of numbers, if the comparison be confined to secular books with sets of cuts especially appropriated to them, the provincial city probably equalled, if it did not surpa.s.s, the metropolis. But if it must be reckoned to the credit of Lyon that it had no Antoine Verard, reckless in his use of unsuitable stock cuts, it must be noted, on the other hand, that strikingly good ill.u.s.trations are rare and bad ones numerous. Inasmuch as Lyon, before it welcomed the art of printing, had established some reputation for the manufacture of playing-cards, the number of rude and badly cut ill.u.s.trations is indeed surprisingly large.

The first Lyonnese printer to use pictorial woodcuts in a dated book was Martin Huss, who issued a _Miroir de la Redemption_, 27 August, 1478, with the aid of blocks previously used (1476) by Bernard Richel at Basel; cuts of surgical instruments appeared in the following March, 1478-9, in the _Chirurgia_ of Guido de Cauliaco printed for Barth. Buyer by Nicolaus Philippi and Marcus Reinhart, and the same printers' undated _Legende doree_ with very rude pictures is probably contemporaneous with this. The earliest woodcut of any artistic interest and of Lyonnese origin is a picture, occupying a folio-page, of the Blessed Virgin, with the Holy Child in her arms, standing in front of a curtain. This is found in the _Histoire du Chevalier Oben qui vouloist acuplir le voiage de S. Patrix_, printed by Leroy about 1480, of which the only known copy is at the British Museum.

After 1480 all the firms we have named continued to issue ill.u.s.trated books of varying merit. On 30 September, 1483, Leroy completed a _Livre des Eneydes_ with cuts which are often grotesque, though sometimes neat and sometimes giving evidence of a vigour of design too great for the wood-cutter's skill. In 1485 he found a Lyonnese cutter able to copy for him the Paris cuts of Jean Bonhomme's edition of the _Destruction de Troye la Grant_ quite competently, though in a much heavier style. In May, 1486, he printed a _Livre des Sainctz Anges_ with a figure of Christ in a mandorla (perhaps suggested by the engraving of the same subject in Bettini's _Monte Santo di Dio_), and this, despite a certain clumsiness in the face, is quite good. In the same year, in an edition of _Fierabras_, Leroy went back to cuts of incredible rudeness, while about 1490 in _Les Mysteres de la Saincte Messe_, we find him employing for a cut of the Annunciation a skilled craftsman, signing himself I. D.

(Jean Dalles?), whose work, though lacking in charm, is neatness itself.

Some shaded cuts in his romance of Bertrand Du Guesclin (undated, but _c._ 1487) are among the best work in any book by Leroy. Among his other undated ill.u.s.trated books are editions of _Pierre de Provence_, _Melusine_, and the _Roman de la Rose_.

Nicolaus Philippi and Marcus Reinhart in 1482 ill.u.s.trated a _Mirouer de la vie humaine_ (from the Latin of Rodericus Zamorensis) with Augsburg cuts purchased from the stock of Gunther Zainer[40], and copied a Paris edition in their _Vie des Saintz peres hermites_ and German originals in their _Mandeville_ and _Aesop_. Their edition of the _Postilla Guillermi_ (_c._ 1482) has rather a fine Crucifixion and some primitive but vigorous ill.u.s.trations of the gospels.

Martin Huss issued an undated _Exposition de la Bible_ with rude cuts and a French _Belial_ (version of Pierre Ferget), first printed in November, 1481, and at least five times subsequently. After his death in 1482 his business was carried on by a kinsman, Mathieu Huss, who became a prolific publisher of ill.u.s.trated books, with cuts of very varying merit. Two of his earliest ventures were the _Proprietaire des Choses_ (2 November, 1482), a French version of the _De proprietatibus rerum_ of Bartholomaeus Anglicus, and a _Fasciculus temporum_ (1483), both with very rude cuts. During a partners.h.i.+p with Johann Schabeler he issued (about 1484) a French version of Boccaccio's _De casibus ill.u.s.trium virorum_, the pictures in which are hard, stiff, and a little grotesque, but not without character. Of his later books several are ill.u.s.trated with cuts borrowed or copied from other editions; but beyond a _Legende doree_ with shaded column-cuts, frequently reprinted, he does not seem to have commissioned any important ill.u.s.trated book.

While the pictorial work of the Lyonnese presses was thus largely imitative, at least two very important books were first ill.u.s.trated there. The earlier of these was the _Roman de la Rose_, of which the first printed edition, decorated with eighty-six cuts mostly small and rudely executed, but which at least have the merit of intelligently following the text, is now attributed to the press of Ortuin and Schenck at Lyon about 1481.[41] These primitive pictures were quickly copied by a cutter of somewhat greater skill but much less intelligence, who "improved" the original designs without troubling to understand them.

This new set of cuts was used twice at Lyon, by Jean Syber (about 1485) and by Leroy (about 1487), and was then acquired (less one of the two larger cuts) by Jean Du Pre of Paris, who issued an edition about 1494.

About 1497, and again a few years later, new editions were issued in which most of the same cuts reappear, Jean Pet.i.t having a share in both editions and Verard in the first, despite the fact that he had issued a rival edition about 1495.[42]

[Ill.u.s.tration: XXI. LYON, TRECHSEL, 1493

TERENCE (SIG. A 7 VERSO)]

The other famous Lyonnese ill.u.s.trated book was an annotated edition of _Terence_ "with pictures prefixed to every scene" printed in 1493 by Johann Trechsel. This has a curious full-page picture at the beginning, giving the artist's idea of a Roman theatre, with a box for the aediles at the side and a ground floor labelled "Fornices." The text is ill.u.s.trated by 150 half-page cuts, a little hard, but with abundance of life (see Plate XXI). These certainly influenced the Stra.s.sburg edition of Gruninger (1496), and through Gruninger's that published at Paris by Verard about 1500, and to an even greater extent the ill.u.s.trated editions issued at Venice.

How eagerly Lyonnese publishers looked out for books to imitate may be seen from the rival Lyonnese renderings of Breidenbach's _Peregrinationes_ and Brant's _Narrenschiff_. Of the Breidenbach, Michel Topie and Jac. de Herrnberg issued in November, 1480, an adaptation by Nicolas Le Huen with copies on copperplate of the maps and on wood of the smaller pictures, both very well executed. Rather over a year later, in February, 1490, a translation by "frere iehan de Hersin" was published by Jacques Maillet with the original Mainz blocks. As for the s.h.i.+p of Fools, Jacques Sacon, the leading publisher at the end of the century, issued an edition of Locher's Latin version with close copies of the Basel cuts in June, 1498, and in the following August a French edition was published by Guillaume Balsarin with cuts so hastily executed that in many cases all the background has been omitted.

A few ill.u.s.trated incunabula were issued at Chambery, and isolated books elsewhere, but with the exception of Lyon and Abbeville no French provincial town produced any notable work. In Spain the fine gothic types and frequent use of woodcut capitals give a very decorative appearance to most of the incunabula, but pictorial ill.u.s.trations are rare, and of the few sets of cuts known to us several are borrowed or copied from French or German editions. The earliest Spanish ill.u.s.trated book known to me is a _Fasciculus Temporum_, printed by Bart. Segura and Alfonsus de Portu at Seville in 1480, with a dozen metal-cuts of the usual stock subjects; the earliest with original ill.u.s.trations, the Marquis of Villena's _Trabajos de Hercules_, printed by Antonio de Centenera at Zamora, 15 January, 1483, with eleven extraordinarily rude cuts of the hero's adventures. In 1484 and 1485 an unidentified printer at Huete produced editions of the _Copilacion de Leyes_ of Diaz de Montalvo, with some striking metal-cut pictorial capitals, ill.u.s.trating the subjects of the successive books. In one copy of the 1484 edition I have seen a very fine full-page cut, but could not satisfy myself as to whether this belonged to the book, or was an insertion. An edition of Martorell's romance, ent.i.tled _Tirant lo blanch_, printed at Valentia in 1490 by Nic. Spindeler, has a decorative metal-cut border to the first page of text, and during the following decade ill.u.s.trated books become fairly numerous. At Saragossa Paul Hurus issued in 1491 a Spanish version of the _Speculum humanae vitae_ of Rodericus Zamorensis, with cuts copied from the Augsburg edition, another in 1494 of Boccaccio's _De claris Mulieribus_, with seventy-two cuts, copied from the editions printed by Johann Zainer at Ulm, and four from some other source, another in 1498 of Breidenbach's _Peregrinatio_, and other books, not known to me personally, but which from their t.i.tles almost certainly contain copies of foreign cuts. In 1500, when his press had been taken over by three partners, Coci, Hutz, and Appentegger, there issued from it an _Officia quotidiana_, ornamented with some fifty pictures and many hundreds of fine capitals.

[Ill.u.s.tration: XXII. SEVILLE, STANISLAUS POLONUS, 1500

RICOLDUS. IMPROBATIO ALCORANI. (t.i.tLE)]

At Barcelona several ill.u.s.trated books were printed by Juan Rosenbach, one of the earliest of them, the _Carcel d'Amor_ of Diego de San Pedro (1493), having sixteen original cuts, characteristically Spanish in tone and showing good craftsmans.h.i.+p. In or about the same year Friedrich Biel of Basel (usually quoted as Fadrique de Basilea, or Fadrique Aleman) headed an edition of the _Pa.s.sion de Christo_ with a striking metal-cut of Christ standing upright in the tomb, watched by the B. Virgin and S.

John. For his Spanish _Aesop_ of 1496 he presumably copied the German cuts, and he certainly did so for his _Exemplario contra enganos_ of 1498, the 116 cuts of which are all careless copies of those in Pruss's edition of the _Directorium humanae vitae._ Even when in (or about) the next year he was issuing the first edition of the _Celestina_ or _Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea_, he could not do so without German models, and based his sixteen little pictures on some of those in Gruninger's _Terence_, while for his _Stultiferae naues_ of Badius Ascensius he went, of course, to the charming French cuts of De Marnef.

As a rule, these Spanish versions of foreign cuts have the interest which always attaches to a free rehandling by a craftsman with a characteristic touch and style of his own. None the less it is refres.h.i.+ng to turn to more original work, and at least a little of this (though some one with wider knowledge than myself may further minimize the statement) is to be found at Seville. Here in 1494 Ungut and Stanislaus Polonus issued a _Regimiento de los principes_, translated from the Latin of Aegidius Columna, with a fine t.i.tle-cut of a young prince (his hair is long) seated in a chair of state, holding a sword and royal orb. The same partners were responsible for another striking t.i.tlepage in 1495, that of the _Lilio de Medicina_, Bernardus de Gordonio, where two angels are seen upholding seven lilies in a pot; they also issued in the same year the _Contemplaciones sobre el Rosario de Nuestra Senora_, a fine and typically Spanish book, printed in red and black, with good capitals, two large cuts and fifteen smaller ones, enclosed in borders of white tracery on a black ground. In the last year of the century they issued an _Improbatio Alcorani_ with a swart picture of a disputation on the t.i.tlepage, not easily forgotten (see Plate XXII). It was at Seville also that in 1498 Pedro Brun printed in quarto the romance of the Emperor Vespasian, ill.u.s.trated with fourteen excellent cuts, some of them full of life and movement; but for these a foreign model is quite likely some day to be discovered. On the other hand, at Valentia also there was at least a little work indisputably of native origin, as in the case of the t.i.tle-cut to the _De regimine domus_ of S. Bernard, printed by Nic. Spindeler about 1498, and (less certainly) another to the _Obra allaors de S. Christofol_, issued by Peter Trincher in the same year. Pictorial t.i.tle-cuts are not so common in Spanish books as in those of other countries, because of the Spanish fondness for filling the t.i.tlepage with an elaborate coat of arms. But nearly all their early bookwork is strong and effective, and the printer who placed a cut on a t.i.tlepage nearly always secured a good one. Is it too much to hope that Dr. Conrad Haebler, who has already done such admirable work in recording Spanish incunabula and printing facsimiles of their types, will some day complete his task by publis.h.i.+ng a similar volume of facsimiles of Spanish cuts?

FOOTNOTES:

[37] Similar s.p.a.ces were left in the typographically anonymous French version of Valerius Maximus, printed about the same date.

[38] _Antoine Verard._ By John Macfarlane. Ill.u.s.trated monographs published by the Bibliographical Society. No. VII. Printed at the Chiswick Press, September, 1900.

[39] So in the _Lucain Suetonne et Sal.u.s.te_ of 1490, five cuts of battle-scenes, all borrowed from the _Mer des Histoires_, printed by Lerouge in 1488, are made to do duty sixty-four times.

[40] In 1491 these are found at Saragossa in an edition printed by Hurus.

[41] It has also been attributed to Jean Croquet at Geneva, but there is only a typographical argument for this ascription, whereas on the side of Lyon, in addition to (rather weaker) typographical arguments, we have to reckon with Lyonnese paper, the similarity of the ill.u.s.trations to those of a cutter employed by Martin Huss, and the fact that the book was copied in two editions undoubtedly Lyonnese.

See F. W. Bourdillon's _The Early Editions of the Roman de la Rose_ (1906).

[42] Only a few of the cuts in this were specially designed for it, all the later ones being taken from stock in Verard's most haphazard fas.h.i.+on.

CHAPTER X

LATER FOREIGN BOOKS