Part III

of his order, he could not assume until he was forty. At the time of his death, which happened in 1527, he could not thus be less than ninety-four years old. The true name of this amorous dreaming monk, and the fictitious one of the woman with whom he was in love, are thus expressed by combining, in the order in which they follow each other, tin; initial letters of the several chapters : " POLIAM FRATER FRAXCISCUS COLUMNA PERAMAVIT." If any reliance can be placed on Mr. Ottley in speaking ef an edition of the Metamorphoses printed at.Venice in 1509, with wood-cut*, mentions one of them as representing the " Birth of Hercules," which is probably treated in a manner similar to those alx.ve noticed. Mr. Ottley also states that he had discovered the artist to be Benedetto Montagna, who also engraved on copper. Inquiry, voL it p. 576. t- Bibliographers and booksellers contain " la figure rappresentante il in their catalogues specify with delight Sacrifizio & Priapo bene conservata," for such copies as in some copies this choice subject is wanting, and in others partially defaced. Some account of the Hypnerotomachia and its author is to be found in Prosper Marchand's Dictionnaire Historique. 8 In the life of " aJaaacU," which Colonna in the Bi'igraphie Universelle, is a mistake. The word formed by the the last word is said to be initial letter* of the nine lait chapten is " prramarit," an nlove. IN CONNEXION WITH THE PRESS. 219 the text and the cuts as narrating and representing real incidents, we may gather that the stream of love had not run smooth with father Francis any more than with simple laymen. With respect to the true name of the mistress of father Francis, biographers are not agreed. One says that her name was Lucretia Maura ; and another that her name was Ippolita, and that she belonged to the noble family of Poli, of Trevisa, and that she was a nun in that city. From the name Ippolita some authors thus derive the fictitious name Polia : Ippolita ; Polita ; Folia. .A second edition, also from the Aldine press, appeared in 1545 ; and in the following year a French translation was printed at Paris under the following title : " Le Tableau des riches inventions couvertes du voile des feintes amourouses qui sont representees dans le Songe de Poliphile, devoile'es des ombres du Songe, et subtilment expose"es." Of this translation several editions were published ; and in 1804 J. G. Legrand, an architect of some repute in Paris, printed a kind of paraphrase of the work, in two volumes 12mo, which, however, was not published until after his death in 1807. In 1811 Bodoni reprinted the original work at Parma in an elegant quarto volume. In the original work the wood-cuts with respect to design may rank among the best that have appeared in Italy. The whole number in the volume is one hundred and ninety-two ; of which eighty-six relate to mythology and ancient history ; fifty-four represent processions and emblematic figures : there are thirty-six architectural and ornamental subjects ; and sixteen vases and statues. Several writers have asserted that those cuts were designed by Raffaele,* while others with equal confidence, though on no better grounds, have ascribed them to Andrea Mantegna. Except from the resemblance which they are supposed to bear to the acknowledged works of those artists, I am not aware that there is any reason to suppose that they were designed by either of them. As Raffaele, who was born in 1483, was only sixteen when the Hypnerotomachia was printed, it is not likely that all, or even any ot hose cuts were designed by him ; as it is highly probable that all the drawings would be finished at least twelve months before, and many of them contain internal evidence of their not being the productions of a youth of fifteen. That Andrea Mantegna might design them is possible ; but this certainly cannot be a sufficient reason for positively asserting that he actually did. Mr. Ottley, at page 576, vol. ii, of his Inquiry, asserts that they were designed by Benedetto Montagna, an * Heineken, in his catalogue of Raffaele's works, mentions the cuts in the Hypnerotomachia, but he says that it is questionable whether he designed them all or only the eightysix mythological and historical subjects. Nachrichten von Kiinstlern und Kunst-Sachen, 2er Theil, S. 360. 8vo. Leipzig, 1769. 220 WOOD KNORAV1NO artist who flourished about the year 1500, and who is chiefly known as an engraver on copper. The grounds on which Mr. Ottley forms his opinion are not very clear, but if I understand him correctly they are as follows : In the collection of the late Mr. Douce there were sixteen wood engravings which had been cut out of a folio edition of Ovid's Metamor- phoses, printed at Venice in 1509. All those engravings, except two, were marked with the letters in, which according to Mr. Ottley are the initials of the engraver, loanne Andrea di Vavassori. Between some ot the cuts from the Ovid, and certain engravings executed by Montagna, it x-cms that Mr. Ottley discovered a resemblance ; and as he thought that he perceived a perfect similarity between the sLxteen cuts from the <>vi<l and those contained in the Hypnerotomachia, he considers that 1'x'iieiletto Montagna is thus proved to have been the designer of the cuts in the latter work. Not having seen the cuts in the edition of the Metamorphoses of I.")<>!), I cannot speak, from my own examination, of the resemblance between them and those in the Hypnerotomachia ; it, however, seems that Mr. Douce had noticed the .similarity as well as Mr. Ottley : but even admitting that there is a perfect identity of style in the cuts of the above two works, yet it by no means follows that, because a few of the cuts in the Ovid resemble some copper-plate engravings executed by Benedetto Montagna, he must have designed the cuts in the Hypnerotomachia. As the cuts in the Ovid may, as Mr. Ottley himself remarks, have been used in an earlier edition than that of 1500, it is not unlikely that they might appear before Montagna's copper-plates ; and that the latter might copy the designs of a greater artist than himself, and thus by his very plagiarism acquire, according to Mr. Ottley's train of reasoning, the merit which may be justly due to another. If Benedetto Montagna be really the designer of the cuts in the Hypnerotomachia, he has certainly excelled himself, for they certainly display talent of a much higher order than is to be perceived in his copper-plate engravings. Besides the striking difference with respect to drawing between the wood-cuts in Poliphilo* and the engravings of Benedetto Montagna, two of the cuts in the former work have a mark which never appears in any of that artist's known productions, which generally have either his name at length or the letters B. M. In the third cut of Poliphilo, the designer's or engraver's mark, a small b, may be perceived at the foot, to the right; and the same mark is repeated in a cut at signature C. The author thus names his hero in his Italian title : " Polipkilo inoomincia hi sua hypiierotoinachia ad detcrivete et 1'hora et il tempo quando gli appar ve in somno, &c." IN CONNEXION WITH THE PRESS. 221 A London bookseller in his catalogue published in 1834, probably speaking on Mr. Ottley's hint that the cuts in the Ovid of 1509 might have appeared in an earlier edition, thus describes Bonsignore's Ovid, a work in which the wood-cuts are of a very inferior description, and of which a specimen is given in a preceding page : " Ovidii Metamorphoseos Vulgare, con le Allegoric, [Venezia, 1497,] with numerous beautiful wood-cuts, apparently by the artist who executed the Poliphilo, printed by Aldus in 1499." The wood-cuts in the Ovid of 1497 are as inferior to those in Poliphilo as the commonest cuts in children's school-books are inferior to the beautiful wood-cuts in Kogers's Pleasures of Memory, printed in 1812, which were designed by Stothard and engraved by Clennell. It is but fair to add, that the cuts used in the Ovid of 1 497, printed by the brothers De Lignano, cannot be the same as those in the Ovid of 1 509 referred to by Mr. Ottley ; for though the subjects may be nearly the same, the cuts in the latter edition are larger than those in the former, and have besides an engraver's mark which is not to lie seen in any of the cuts in the edition of 1497The five following cuts are fac-similes traced line for line from the originals in Poliphilo. In the first, Mercury is seen interfering to save Cupid from the anger of Venus, who has been punishing him and plucking the feathers from his wings. The cause of her anger is explained by the figure of Mars behind the net in which he and Venus had been inclosed by Vulcan. Love had been the cause of his mother's misfortune. 22i WOOD ENORAVING In the following cut Cupid is represented as brought by Mercury before Jove, who in the text, " in Athica lingua," addresses the God of Love, as "2TMOirATKT2 KAI IIIKPO2" "at once sweet and AAAA bitter." In the inscription in the cut, " " is substituted for "KAI." KYSAAAA PIKPO S In the next cut Cupid appears piercing the sky with a dart, and thus causing a shower of gold to fall. The figures represent persons of all conditions whom he has wounded, looking on with amazement. IN CONNEXION WITH THE PKKS8. 223 The three preceding cuts, in the original work, appear as compartments from left to right on one block. They are here given separate for the convenience of printing, as the page is not wide enough to allow of their being placed as in the original folio. The subjoined cut is intended to represent Autumn, according to a description of the figure in the text, where the author is speaking of an altar to be erected to the four seasons. On one of the sides he proposes that the following figure should be represented " with a jolly countenance, crowned with vine leaves, holding in one hand a bunch of grapes, and in the other a cornucopia, with an inscription : ' MUSTULENTO AuTUMNO 1 S. "* The face of jolly Autumn is indeed like that of one who loved new wine, and his body seems like an ample skin to keep the liquor in ; Sir John Falstaff playing Bacchus ere he had grown old and inordinately fat. * The epithets applied to the [different seasons as represented on this votive altar are singularly beautiful and appropriate : " Florido Veri ; Flavae Messi ; Mustulento Autumno ; Hyemi JEotix, Sacrum." 224 WOOD ENORAVINr, The following figure of Cupid is copied from the top of a fanciful military standard described by the author; and on a kind of banner beneath the figure is inscribed the word " AOPIKTHTOF " Gained in war." The following is a specimen of one of the ornamental vases contained in the work. It is not, like (he five preceding cuts, of the same size as the original, but is copied on a reduced scale. The simple style in which the cuts in the Hypne- rotomachia are engraved, continued to prevail, with certain modifications, in Italy for many years after th' nit-thud of cross-hatching became general in Germany; and from l.'iito to about 1530 tlic characteristic of most Italian wood-cuts is the simple manlier in which they are executed compared with the more laboured productions of the German wood engravers. While the German proceeds with considerable labour to obtain " co- lour," or shade, by moans of cross-hatching, the Italian in the early part of the sixteenth century endeavours to attain his object by easier means, such as leaving his lines thicker in certain parts, and in others, indicating shade by means of short slanting parallel lines. In the execution of flowered <>r ornamented initial letters a decided difference may frequently be noticed between the work of an Italian and a German artist. The German mostly, with considerable trouble, cuts his flourishes, figures, and flowers in relief, according to the general practice of wood engravers; the Italian, on the contrary, often cuts them, with much greater ease, in intaglio; and thus the form of the letter, and its ornaments, appear, when printed, white upon a black ground.* The letter C at the commencement of the present chapter is an example of the German style, with the ornamental parts in relief; M the letter at the commencement of chapter v. is a specimen of the manner frequently adopted by old Italian wood engravers, the form of the letter and the; ornamental foliage being cut in intaglio. At a subsequent period a more elaborate manner of engraving began to prevail in Italy, and cross-hatching was almost as generally employed to obtain depth of colour and shade as in Germany. The wood-cute which appear in works printed at Venice between 1550 and 1570 are generally as good as most German wood-cuts of the same period ; and M The letter at the commencement of the next chapter affords an example of this ntylc of engraving. IN CONNEXION WITH THE PRESS. 225 many of them, more especially those in books printed by the Giolitos, are executed with a clearness and delicacy which have seldom been surpassed. Before concluding the present chapter, which is more especially devoted to the consideration of wood engraving in the first period of its connexion with typography, it may not be improper to take a brief glance at the state of the art as practised by the Briefmalers and Formschneiders of Germany, who were the first to introduce the practice of block-printing, and who continued to exercise this branch of their art for many years after typography had been generally established throughout Europe. That the ancient wood engravers continued to practise the art of block-printing till towards the close of the fifteenth century, there can be little doubt. There is an edition of the Poor Preachers' Bible, with the date 1470, printed from wood-blocks, without place or engraver's name, but having at the end, as a mark, two shields, on one of which is a squirrel, and on the other something like two pilgrim's staves crossed. Another edition of the same work, though not from the same blocks, appeared in 1471. In this the engraver's mark is two shields, on one of which is a spur, probably a rebus for the name of "Sporer;" in the same manner that a pair of folding-doors represented the name " Thurer," or " Durer." An engraver of the name of Hans Sporer printed an edition of the Ars Moriendi from wood-blocks in 1473 ; and in the preceding year Young Hans, Brief- maler, of Nuremberg, printed an edition of the Antichrist in the same manner.* It is probable that most of the single sheets and short tracts, printed from wood-blocks, preserved in the libraries of Germany, were printed between 1440 and 1480. Books consisting of two or more sheets printed from wood-blocks are of rare occurrence with a date subsequent to 1480. Although about that period the wood engravers appear to have resigned the printing of books entirely to typographers, yet for several years afterwards they continued to print broadsides from blocks of wood ; and until about 1500 they continued to compete with the press for the printing of " \Vand-Ka; endars," or gheet Almanacks to be hung up against a wall. Several copies of such Almanacks, engraved between 1470 and loOO, are preserved in libraries on the Continent that are rich in specimens of early block-printing. But even this branch of their business the wood engravers were at length obliged to abandon ; and at the end of the fifteenth century the practice of printing pages of text from engraved wood-blocks may be considered as almost extinct in Germany. It probably began with a single sheet, and with a Von Murr says that " Young Hans" was unquestionably the son of " Hans Form- schneider," whose name appears in the town-books of Xuremberg from 1449 to 1490. He also thinks that he might be the same person as Hans Sporer. Journal, 2 Theil, S. 140, 141. Q 22G WOOD KNGRAVINO single sheet it ended; and tion are comprised within U50 its perfection; 1460 its origin, perfection, decline, and extinc- a century. 1430 may mark its origin ; the commencement of its decline; and 1500 its fall. In an assemblage of wood engravings printed at Gotha between 1808 and 1816,* from old blocks collected by the Baron Von Derschau, there are several to which the editor, Zacharias Becker, assigns an earlier date than the year 1 ">00. It is not unlikely that two or three of those in his oldest class, A, may have been executed previous to that period ; but there are others in which bad drawing and rude engraving have been mistaken for indubitable proofs of antiquity. There are also two or three in the same class which I strongly suspect to be modern forgeries. It would appear from a circumstance mentioned in Dr. Dibdin's Biblio- graphical Tour.t and referred to at page 236 of the present work, that the I!; iron was a person from whose collection copper-plate engravings of questionable date had proceeded as well as wood-blocks. The following is a redueed ropy of one of those suspicious blocks, but which the editor considers to be of an earlier date than the St. Christopher in the collection of Karl Spencer. I am however of opinion that it is of comparatively modern manufacture. The inscription, intended for old German, at the bottom of the cut, is literally as follows : " Iliet itch, vor den Katczen dy vorn hcken unde The title of this work is : " Ilolzschnitte alter Dcutscher Meister in den Original-Flatten gesammelt von Dans Albrecht Von Dcrschau. Als ein Beytrag znr Kunstgeschichte heraus- gegeben, und mil einer Abhandlung fiber die Holzschneidekunst begleitet, von Rudolph Zacbarias Becker." It is in large folio, with the text in German and French. The first part was published at Ootha in 1808 ; the second in 1810 ; and the third in 1816. + Vol. iii. p. 446, edit 1829. IN CONNEXION WITH THE PRESS. 227 " hinden kraiczen that is : " Beware of the cats that lick before and scratch behind." It is rather singular that the editor who describes the subject as a cat which appears to teach her kitten " le Jeu de Souris" should not have informed his readers that more was meant by this inscription than met the eye, and that it was in. fact part of a German proverb descriptive of a class of females who are particularly dangerous to simple young men.* Among the cuts supposed to have been engraved previous to the year 1500, another is given which I suspect also of being a forgery, and by the same person that engraved the cat. The cut alluded to represents a woman sitting beside a young man, whose purse she is seen picking while she appears to fondle him. A hawk is seen behind the woman, and an ape behind the man. At one side is a lily, above which are the words " Icf) foart." At the top of the cut is an inscription, which seems, like that in the cut of the cat, to be in affectedly old German, describing the young man as a prey for hawks and a fool, and the woman as a flatterer, who will fawn upon him until she has emptied his pouch. The subjects of those two cuts, though not apparently, are, in reality, connected. In the first we are presented with the warning, and in the latter with the example. Von Murr whom Dr. Dibdin suspects to have forged the French St. Christopher describes in his Journal impressions from those blocks as old wood-cuts in the collection of Dr. Silberrad ;t and it is certainly very singular that the identical blocks from which Dr. Silberrad's scarce old wood engravings were taken should afterwards happen to be discovered and come into the possession of the Baron Von Derschau. In the same work there is a rude wood-cut of St. Catharine and three other saints ; and at the back of the block there is also engraved the figure of a soldier. At the bottom of the cut of St. Catharine, the name of the engraver, " 3forg (SlocfeEn&on," appears in old German characters. As " Glockendon " or " Glockentoii " was the name of a family of artists who appear to have been settled at Nuremberg early in the fifteenth century, Becker concludes that the cut in question was engraved prior to 1482, and that this " Jorg Glockeudon" was "the first wood engraver known by name, and not John Schnitzer of Arnsheim, who engraved the maps in Leonard Holl's Ptolemy, printed in the above year, as Heineken and others pretend." That the cut was engraved previous to 1482 rests merely on Becker's conjecture ; and a person who would assert that it was engraved ten or fifteen years later, would perhaps be nearer the truth. John Schnitzer, however, is not the first wood engraver known by name. The name of Hans Sporer appears in the Ars Moriendi of 1473 ; and it is not probable that Hartlieb's stnti tosr Siittrn lite bornen Irrltrn nnti ftuitrii hvatirn." t Journal zur Kunstgeschichte, 2er Theil, S. 125, 126. Q'2 228 WOOD ENGRAVING Chiromantia, in which we find the name " gjorg jbthapff ?u was engraved subsequent to 1480. It would appear that Becker did not consider " Hans Briefmaler," who occurs as a wood engraver between 1470 and 1480, as a person "known by name," though it is probable that he had no other surname than that which was derived from his profession. Althouogh Perschau's collodion contains a number of old cuts which are well worth preserving, more especially among those executed in the sixteenth century ; yet it also contains a large portion of worthless cuts, which air neither interesting from their subjects nor their antiquity, and which throw no light on the progress of the art There are also not a few modern antiques which are only illustrative of the credulity of tlie collector, who mistakes rudeness of execution for a certain test of antiquity. According to this test the following cut ought to be ascribed to the age of C'axton, and published with a long commentary a-i an undoubted specimen of early English wood engraving. It is however nothing more than an impression from a block engraved with a pen-knife by a printer's apprentice between 1770 and 1780. It was one of the numerous cuts of a similar kind belonging to the late Mr. George Angus of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, who used them as head-pieces to chap-books and broadside histories and ballads. Besides the smaller block-books, almanacks, and broadsides of text, executed by wood engravers between 1460 and 1500, they also executed a number of single cuts, some accompanied with a few sentences of IN CONNEXION WITH THE PKESS. 229 text also cut in wood, and others containing only figures. Many of the sacred subjects were probably executed for convents in honour of a favourite saint ; while others were engraved by them on their own account for sale among the poorer classes of the people, who had neither the means to purchase, nor the ability to read, a large " " picbure-book which contained a considerable portion of explanatory text. In almost every one of the works executed by the Briefmalers and Formschneiders subsequent to