Read Ebook: Early Woodcut Initials Containing over Thirteen Hundred Reproductions of Ornamental Letters of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries by Jennings Oscar

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PAGE

PREFACE, vii

INTRODUCTION, 1

CHAP.

REPRODUCTIONS OF INITIALS, 111

INDEX, 281

INTRODUCTION

The ornamentation of books dates probably from the time of their invention, that is to say, it goes back to a very remote antiquity. From Greece, where the book-trade was flourishing at an early period, it passed into Italy, extending thence to the provinces of the Empire, to Gaul and Spain, where book-lovers became more and more numerous, and as civilisation became more refined, increasingly particular about bindings and ornamentation.

The verse of Tibullus,

'Indicet ut nomen littera picta tuum,'

shows the extent of the embellishments to which bibliophiles had then become accustomed, requiring the titles of their favourite authors to be engrossed in coloured or illuminated letters.

Numerous passages might be quoted from Latin writers to show how great an interest they took in books, and how valuable rare, and what might be called original, editions had even then become. It would seem, too, that they even knew the pleasures of book-hunting, for Aulus Gellius relates how, having a few hours to spare after landing at Brindisi, he spent his time looking through the contents of an old book-stall, and was lucky enough to discover a very old work on occult science.

Besides the title, the headings of chapters and the initial letters were also distinguished in the same way from the rest of the work, a custom which passed from the Roman copyists to those of the Lower Empire, and in course of time became generally adopted in the preparation of manuscripts. But this was not all. It is now recognised that book illustration was known to the Romans, and that the miniatures of the mediaeval manuscripts only followed the fashion of the rich and sumptuous volumes transcribed by the copyists of Athens and Rome. The fourth-century Virgil, for instance, one of the treasures of the Vatican, which has been so well described by M. Pierre de Nolhac, is an example of this, containing as it does a large number of figures. Like all manuscripts of the time, it was written exclusively in majuscules, very similar to those used in Roman inscriptions.

The intelligent protection and encouragement and hospitality afforded to men of letters by Charlemagne was a great contrast to the bigotry of Leo the Byzantine. Interesting himself warmly in all questions relating to instruction, he took a special interest in the copying and transcription of manuscripts, inviting to his kingdom the Irish and Anglo-Saxon monks, who from the sixth century had made a special study of calligraphy, and were celebrated all over Europe for their miniatures and historiation.

In consequence of the patronage of Charlemagne and of Charles the Bald, son of Louis the D?bonnaire, artists of all nationalities, but more particularly Germans and Italians, who had come from Oriental schools, received a warm welcome. At first in the sixth century the initial letter was of the same size as the others, only distinguished by the difference of colour, being in minium or cinnabar. A hundred years later, under the Byzantine influence, the letter grows larger, until it occupies the whole page, at the same time being painted with the most vivid colours according to the fancy and caprice of the artist. Little by little the Byzantine style first introduced became modified, and assumed by degrees a national character. The decoration of the initials took the form of interlaced chequer-work or of historiated arabesques, resembling the mosaics of enamelled specimens of Gallo-Frank jewellery.

To quote the opinion of a contemporary writer, there was nothing under heaven or earth that had not served as a model for designers of ornamental letters.

Towards the fourteenth century this exuberance of decoration quiets down. Fancy is by no means excluded, but it becomes more regulated and more sure, to the advantage of art itself, which speaks through the skill of the painters, whose names, however, with but few exceptions, unfortunately remain unknown to us.

In England, illumination had flourished from before the twelfth to the fourteenth century, but by the middle of the fifteenth art was dead, and when handsome miniatures or other decorations were required for books, it was to French artists that it was necessary to apply.

In Italy, the influence, as regards book ornamentation, of French art may be judged from the passage of Dante, who, speaking to a miniaturist of his profession, is obliged to use a periphrase to design it:

'. . . di quell' arte Ch' alluminare ? chiamata in Parisi.'

The dawn of printing was at hand. Manuscripts, whether handsomely embellished or copied simply without ornament, were expensive luxuries which only the rich could purchase. With the revival of learning, for students in general, for the poorer classes, for school children, cheap books costing as little as possible, but serving the same end as the manuscript, were necessary, and the xylograph came at its hour.

From the earliest times copyists had used stamps and copper stencillings in order to apply initials that recurred frequently, a practice which contains in it the first germ of printing. Playing-cards were printed by the same process and afterwards illuminated.

Passavant.

See, under 'PARIS,' the representation of one of these death-scenes in an initial of Chevallon's.

A last variety of xylographic impressions is known under the generic name of 'Donatus.' This is a little primer of Latin grammar first compiled by the grammarian Aelius Donatus, by whose name it was afterwards known.

We have mentioned the xylographic publications, because in a certain number of them ornamental initials are to be met with. These, as would naturally be supposed, are of the same style as those found in manuscripts of the same period. It may be observed here, that whilst books of price were embellished with expensive work, the less valuable manuscripts were left either without initials at all, or with ornamental letters of a few stereotyped patterns, that experience had shown to be most harmonious to the written text. Of these patterns the most popular is the Maibl?mchen, or lily of the valley design, constantly seen in manuscript books, and adopted by many of the early printers. This design will be seen in many of the first initials of the Augsburg printers, and especially of Rihel of Basle.

We have noted briefly the successive changes in the manuscript book, the different phases of its evolution towards its final formula and expression as an impression from movable type.

This brings us to the invention of printing, but it must be noted that printing, which revolutionised in so many ways the world, did not immediately put an end to the professions of the rubricator and illuminator. Some printed works of the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries are embellished with miniatures of the very highest merit and illuminated letters of the greatest beauty.

BLOCK-BOOKS: THE INVENTION OF PRINTING: THE PSALTER OF MAYENCE

This is not the place to relate its general history, which is to be found in all the special works on the question. We shall set down here only the facts which concern our subject more particularly, and show the evolution of ornamental letters in books of the first period after the discovery of the new art.

At the present time an expert could see at a glance that this book is printed, instead of being written. But in 1457, and until the invention of printing had become generally known, no one could have guessed that it was anything but what it appeared, a beautifully finished manuscript.

Of the letters, which are mostly in red and blue, the handsomest is the initial B at the beginning of the first psalm, which is surrounded by arabesques, continued along the margin. Besides these ornaments, figures of a dog and bird are stencilled, as it were, in white on the red ground of the letter.

We have said that the object of the first printers was to produce an imitation manuscript. It has even been suggested that Scheffer tried to palm off some of the copies of the Bible as, and at the price of, the manuscripts.

The story is charmingly circumstantial but hardly convincing. At any rate, it is certain that no sharp practice could have been attempted after 1457, as the colophon of the Psalter states the volume 'Venustate capitalium decoratus rubricationibusque sufficienter distinctus adinventione artificiosa imprimendi et characterizandi; absque calami ulla exaratione sic effigiatus.'

Two other questions remain to be considered: Why Scheffer should have used the initials frequently until 1462, and then have given up their use entirely? Who was their author?

For the first there was a combination of several reasons. The opposition of the Formschneiders may have had something to do with it. On the other hand, Scheffer may have got tired of always using the same initials which had been cut for him by an exceptionally clever engraver, of whom he had afterwards lost sight. In the third place, the sack of Mayence in 1462, which led to the dispersion of his workmen, may have been partly the reason, but that he did not lose his material is proved by the initials appearing in the antiquarian reprints of the Psalter.

In our opinion the second reason is most probable, and it is supported by the testimony of Papillon as to the identity of the artist, which seems to have escaped recent bibliographers.

We have not seen any references to Cocksperger in modern works, but Dibdin in one of his books quotes Papillon's account of him. It would be curious to know whether there was really a family of this name in Mayence at the date Papillon gives, and whether there is any trace there of such a tradition.

It has been said that the Psalter letters ceased to be used in 1462. Whatever may have been the reason for this, and it is possible after all that it was simply from motives of economy, Scheffer's example, as regards the suppression of ornament, was followed by the other printers, and with the exception of Pfister, whose impressions from movable characters have every appearance of xylographic productions, for some years no books were issued with typographical embellishments.

It is probable that, for the two years during which he flourished, Pfister's illustrated publications were tolerated because they were generally supposed to be block-books, and that he was compelled to stop operations by the Guilds, as soon as they found out that he was in reality one of the hated printers. For it was not only as craftsmen that the Formschneiders were hostile to the members of the new trade. The engravers had become the printers of the xylographic books, then a new and profitable industry, and they were afraid of the sale of their own productions being interfered with by the illustrated works of the type-printers.

From the point of view of ornamental initials there is little to say about the xylographic impressions.

Another specimen of this kind of printing is the P, which we reproduce with a border, from a Donatus, the first and eighth leaves of which were preserved for centuries in an old binding.

This Donatus, of which the only leaves remaining belong to the Leipsic Museum, was printed by Dinckmut. There is another xylographic fragment with a colophon bearing the same name in the Bodleian Library. The initial itself represents a schoolmaster surrounded by his pupils, a subject frequently met with as a frontispiece to books of this class, and it is prolonged into a border which frames the page.

When the initial of a Donatus does not represent a pedagogue and his class, the subject is often the Virgin and Holy Family. J. Rosenthal has an extremely valuable edition with the Virgin, the Child, and St. Catherine. Amongst our specimens of Cologne is a Donatus without name of printer or date, but no doubt printed by Quentell towards 1500, in which, besides the Virgin and Child, there are grotesque profiles in the two left corners which look as if copied from the same source as one of the B?mler initials, and the initial with grotesques in the B?le Psalters.

The Donatus, always being in demand, was generally one of the first books printed at a new press. It was the first work issued by Pannartz and Sweynheim when they started at Subiaco.

During the remainder of the fifteenth century there was very little in the way of initial ornamentation in books published at Mayence, where Scheffer, who was always the chief printer, seems to have exhausted his possibilities in this direction with his first experiment.

During the first two decades of the sixteenth century there is the same dearth of anything like ornament in Mayence books, but towards 1520 John, the grandson of the first Peter Scheffer, has several alphabets, one of very large letters with arabesques of flowers, foliage, and birds, used first in his Livy of 1518, published under the patronage of Brandeburg, Archbishop of Magdeburg and Mayence. There is also a smaller one with the most varied subjects, besides a few letters with children on a black ground, and one or two linear initials also with children, copied from Venetian models.

AUGSBURG

From what has been already said, it seems evident that the aim of the first printers was to produce by the new art as perfect as possible an imitation of the manuscript.

Scheffer printed books with ornamental letters in the manuscript style. The other printers left them to be added by hand, which produced the same effect. It was not until the beginning of the seventies that the printed book assumed its definite form, and that it was recognised that new methods and new processes were necessary. The printed book was henceforth to be a printed book, and not an imitation manuscript. It was no longer to pass, for accessory embellishment, through a number of successive hands, but to be finished at a single impression.

It would not be exact to say that it was G?nther Zainer who relinquished the fiction of a printed manuscript, and who recognised that, in virtue of the economic principle of which the press itself is a manifestation, text and ornamental embellishments should be produced as simply as possible.

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