In effigiem Thomæ Viati

Holbenus nitida pingendi maximus arte

Effigiem expressit graphicè: sed nullus Apelles

Exprimet ingenium felix animumque Viati.

It has been supposed that the original cut, of which the preceding is a fac-simile, was engraved by Holbein himself: if this were true, and the cut itself taken as a specimen of his abilities in this department of art, there could not be a doubt of his having been a very indifferent wood engraver, for though there be considerable expression of character in the drawing of the head, the cut is executed in a very inferior style of art.

The cuts in Cranmer’s Catechism, a small octavo, printed in 1548,VI.61 have been ascribed to Holbein; but out of the whole number, twenty-nine, including the cut on the reverse of the title, there are only two which contain his mark. In the others the manner of pencilling is so unlike that of these two, and the drawing and composition bear so little resemblance to Holbein’s usual style, that I do not believe them to have been of his designing. In the cut on the reverse of the title, the subject is Cranmer presenting the Bible to Edward VI.; the others, twenty-eight in number, but containing only twenty-six different subjects,—as two of them are repeated,—are illustrative of different passages of Scripture cited in the work. The following cut is one of those designed by Holbein. It occurs at folio CL as an illustration of “the fyrst sermon. A declaration of the fyrst peticion” [of the Lord’s Prayer]. Holbein’s initials, H. H.—though the cross stroke of the first H is broken away—are perceived on the edge of what seems to be a book, to the left of the figure praying.

The other cut, designed by Holbein, and which contains his name at full length,VI.62 occurs at folio CCI. The subject is Christ casting out Devils, in illustration of the seventh petition of the Lord’s Prayer,—“Deliver us from evil.” The following is a fac-simile.

For the purpose of showing the difference of style between those two cuts and the others contained in the same work, the three given on the following page have been selected. The first, illustrating the Creation, occurs at the folio erroneously numbered CXCV, properly CIX, No. 1; the second, illustrating the sermon of our redemption, at folio CXXI, No. 2; and the third, illustrating the third petition of the Lord’s Prayer,—“Thy will be done,”—at folio CLXVIII, No. 3. The following are the introductory remarks to the explanation of what the archbishop calls the third petition: “Ye have herde how in the former petycions, we require of our Lorde God to gyve us al thinges that perteyne to his glorye and to the kyngdom of heaven, whereof he hath gyven us commaunde­mente in the three preceptes written in the first table. Nowe folowethe the thirde peticyon, wherein we praye God to graūte us that we may fulfyll the other seven commaūde­mentes also, the whiche intreat of matiers concerning this worldly kingdome and transitorye lyfe, that is to saye, to honoure our parentes and gouernours, to kyl no man, to committe none adulterye, to absteyne from thefte and lyinge, and to behave our selfes in all thinges obedientlye, honestlye, peaceably, and godly.”

The feebleness of the drawing and the want of distinctness in these three cuts, are totally unlike the more vigorous delineation of Holbein, as exemplified, though but imperfectly, in the two which are doubtlessly of his designing. None of them have the slightest pretensions to delicacy or excellence of engraving, though they may be considered as the best that had been executed in this country up to that time. Those which, in my opinion, were not designed by Holbein have the appearance of having been engraved on a frushy kind of wood, of comparatively coarse grain. It is not, however, unlikely that this appearance might result from the feebleness of the drawing, conjoined with want of skill on the part of the engraver.

The following cut will not perhaps form an inappropriate termination to the notice of the principal wood engravings which have been ascribed to Holbein. It occurs as an illustration of the generation of Christ, Matthew, chapter I, in an edition of the New Testament, printed at Zurich, by Froschover, in 1554,VI.63 the year of Holbein’s death. Though there be no name to this cut, yet from the great resemblance which it bears to Holbein’s style, I have little doubt of the design being his.

The three following specimens of the cuts in Tindale’s Translation of the New Testament, printed at Antwerp in 1534,VI.64 ought, in strict chronological order, to have preceded those of the Dance of Death; but as Holbein holds the same rank in this chapter as Durer in the preceding, it seemed preferable to give first a connected account of the principal wood-cuts which are generally ascribed to him, and which there is the strongest reason to believe were actually of his designing. The celebrity of Tindale’s translation, as the earliest English version of the New Testament which appeared in print, and the place which his name occupies in the earlier part of the history of the Reformation in England, will give an interest to those cuts to which they could have no pretensions as mere works of art. It is probable that they were executed at Antwerp, where the book was printed; and the drawing and engraving will afford some idea of the style of most of the small cuts which are to be found in works printed in Holland and Flanders about that period. The first of the preceding cuts represents St. Luke employed in painting a figure of the Virgin, and it occurs at the commencement of the Gospel of that Evangelist. The second, which occurs at the commencement of the General Epistle of James, represents that Saint in the character of a pilgrim. The third, Death on the Pale Horse, is an illustration of the sixth chapter of Revelations.

There is a beautiful copy, printed on vellum, of this edition of Tindale’s Translation of the New Testament in the Library of the British Museum. It appears to have formerly belonged to Queen Anne Boleyn, and was probably a presentation copy from the translator. The title-page is beautifully illuminated; the whole of the ornamental border, which is seen in the copies on paper, is covered with gilding and colour, and the wood-cut of the printer’s mark is covered with the blazoning of the royal arms. On the edges, which are gilt, there is inscribed, in red letters, Anna Regina Angliæ. This beautiful volume formerly belonged to the Reverend C. M. Cracherode, by whom it was bequeathed to the Museum.

The first complete English translation of the Old and New Testaments was that of Miles Coverdale, which appeared in folio, 1535,VI.65 without the name or residence of the printer, but supposed to have been printed at Zurich by Christopher Froschover. The dedication is addressed to Henry VIII, by “his Graces humble subjecte and daylie oratour, Myles Coverdale;” and in the copy in the British Museum the commencement is as follows: “Unto the most victorious Prynce and our most gracyous soveraigne Lorde, kynge Henry the eyght, kynge of Englonde and of Fraunce, lorde of Irlonde, &c. Defendour of the Fayth, and under God the chefe and supreme heade of the churche of Englonde. ¶The ryght and just administracyon of the laws that God gave unto Moses and unto Josua: the testimonye of faythfulnes that God gave of David: the plenteous abundance of wysdome that God gave unto Salomon: the lucky and prosperous age with the multiplicacyon of sede which God gave unto Abraham and Sara his wyfe, he gevē unto you most Gracyous Prynce, with your dearest just wyfe and most virtuous Pryncesse, Quene Anne. Amen.” In most copies, however, “Quene Jane” is substituted for “Quene Anne,” which proves that the original dedication had been cancelled after the disgrace and execution of Anne Boleyn, and that, though the colophon is dated 4th October 1535, the work had not been generally circulated until subsequent to 20th May 1536, the date of Henry’s marriage with Jane Seymour.

This edition contains a number of wood-cuts, all rather coarsely engraved, though some of them are designed with such spirit as to be not unworthy of Holbein himself, as will be apparent from two or three of the following specimens. In the first, Cain killing Abel, the attitude of Abel, and the action of Cain, sufficiently indicate that the original designer understood the human figure well, and could draw it with great force in a position which it is most difficult to represent.

The figure of Abraham in No. 2 bears in some parts considerable resemblance to that of the same subject given as a specimen of Holbein’s Bible cuts at page 368; but there are several others in the work which are much more like his style; and which, perhaps, might be copied from earlier cuts of his designing. The two preceding may be considered as specimens of the best designed cuts in the Old Testament; and the following, the return of the Two Spies, is given us one of the more ordinary.

The three next cuts are from the New Testament. The first forms the head-piece to the Gospel of St. Matthew; the second, which occurs on the title-page, and displays great power of drawing in the figure, is John the Baptist; and the third represents St. Paul writing, with his sword before him, and a weaver’s loom to his left: the last incident, which is frequently introduced in old wood-cuts of this Saint, is probably intended to designate his business as a tentmaker, and also to indicate that, though zealously engaged in disseminating the doctrines of Christ, he had not ceased to “work with his hands.”

Many of the cuts in this work are copied in a subsequent edition, also in folio, printed in 1537; and some of the copies are so extremely like the originals—every line being retained—as to induce a suspicion that the impressions of the latter had been transferred to the blocks by means of what is technically termed “rubbing down.”

About 1530 the art of chiaro-scuro engraving on wood, which appears to have been first introduced into Italy by Ugo da Carpi, was practised by Antonio Fantuzzi, called also Antonio da Trente. Most of this engraver’s chiaro-scuros are from the designs of Parmegiano. It is said that Fantuzzi was employed by Parmegiano for the express purpose of executing chiaro-scuro engravings from his drawings, and that, when residing with his employer at Bologna, he took an opportunity of robbing him of all his blocks, impressions, and designs. Between 1530 and 1540 Joseph Nicholas Vincentini da Trente engraved several chiaro-scuros, most of which, like those executed by Fantuzzi, are from the designs of Parmegiano. From the number of chiaro-scuros engraved after drawings by this artist, I think it highly probable that the most of them were executed under his own superintendence and published for his own benefit. Baldazzar Peruzzi and Domenico Beccafumi, both painters of repute at that period, are said to have engraved in chiaro-scuro; but the prints in this style usually ascribed to them are not numerous, and I consider it doubtful if they were actually of their own engraving.

From about 1530, the art of wood engraving, in the usual manner, began to make considerable progress in Italy, and many of the cuts executed in that country between 1540 and 1580 may vie with the best wood engravings of the same period executed in Germany. Instead of the plain and simple style, which is in general characteristic of Italian wood-cuts previous to 1530, the wood engravers of that country began to execute their subjects in a more delicate and elaborate manner. In the period under consideration, we find cross-hatching frequently introduced with great effect; there is a greater variety of tint in the cuts; the texture of different substances is indicated more correctly; the foliage of trees is more natural; and the fur and feathers of animals are discriminated with considerable ability.

The following cut will afford perhaps some idea of the best Italian wood-cuts of the period under consideration. It is a reduced copy of the frontispiece to Marcolini’s Sorti,VI.66 folio, printed at Venice in 1540. There is an impression of this cut on paper of a greenish tint in the Print Room of the British Museum, and from this circumstance it is placed, though improperly, in a volume, marked I. W. 4, and lettered “Italian chiaro-scuros.” Underneath this impression the late Mr. Ottley has written, “Not in Bartsch;” and from his omitting to mention the work for which it was engraved, I am inclined to think that he himself was not aware of its forming the frontispiece to Marcolini’s Sorti. Papillon, speaking of the supposed engraver, Joseph Porta Garfagninus, whose name is seen on a tablet near the bottom towards the right, says, “J’ai de lui une fort belle Académie des Sciences,”VI.67 but seems not to have known of the work to which it belonged. This cut is merely a copy, reversed, of a study by Raffaele for his celebrated fresco, usually called the School of Athens, in the Vatican. It is engraved in a work entitled “Vies et Oeuvres des Peintres les plus célèbres,” 4to. Paris, 1813; and in the Table des Planches at the commencement of the volume in which it occurs, the subject is thus described: “Pl. CCCCV. Etude pour le tableau de l’Ecole d’Athènes. Ces différens episodes ne se retrouvant pas dans le tableau qui a été exécuté des mains de Raphaël, ne doivent être considérées que comme des essais ou premières pensées. Grav. M. Ravignano.” From this description it appears that the same subject had been previously engraved on copper by Marco da Ravenna, who flourished about the year 1530. Though I have never seen an impression of Marco’s engraving of this subject, and though it is not mentioned in Heineken’s catalogue of the engraved works of Raffaele,VI.68 I have little doubt that Porta’s wood-cut is copied from it.

Joseph Porta, frequently called Joseph Salviati by Italian authors, was a painter, and he took the surname of Salviati from that of his master, Francesco Salviati.VI.69 There are a few other wood-cuts which contain his name; but whether he was the designer, or the engraver only, is extremely uncertain.

Marcolini’s work contains nearly a hundred wood-cuts besides the frontispiece, but, though several of them are designed with great spirit, no one is so well engraved.VI.70 The following is a fac-simile of one which occurs at page 35. The relentless-looking old woman is a personification of Punitione—Punishment—holding in her right hand a tremendous scourge for the chastisement of evil-doers. Though this cut be but coarsely engraved, the domestic Nemesis, who here appears to wield the retributive scourge, is designed with such spirit that if the figure were executed in marble it might almost pass for one of Michael Angelo’s. The drapery is admirably cast; the figure is good; and the action and expression are at once simple and severe.

The preceding cut, also a fac-simile, occurs at page 81 as an illustration of Matrimony. The young man, with his legs already tied, seems to be deliberating on the prudence of making a contract which may possibly add a yoke to his shoulders. The ring which he holds in his hand appears to have given rise to his cogitations.

The following small cuts of cards—“Il Re, Fante, Cavallo, e Sette di denari”—are copied from the instructions in the preface;VI.71 and the beautiful design of Truth rescued by Time—Veritas Filia Temporis—occurs as a tail-piece on the last page of the work. This cut occurs not unfrequently in works published by Giolito, by whom I believe the Sorti was printed; and two or three of the other cuts contained in the volume are to be found in a humorous work of Doni’s, entitled “I Marmi,” printed by Giolito in 1552.

The wood engravers of Venice about the middle of the sixteenth century appear to have excelled all other Italian wood engravers, and for the delicacy of their execution they rivalled those of Lyons, who at that period were chiefly distinguished for the neat and delicate manner of their engraving small subjects. In the pirated edition of the Lyons Dance of Death, published at Venice in 1545 by V. Vaugris, the cuts are more correctly copied and more delicately engraved than those in the edition first published at Cologne by the heirs of Arnold Birkman in 1555. In fact, the wood engravings in books printed at Lyons and Venice from about 1540 to 1580 are in general more delicately engraved than those executed in Germany and the Low Countries during the same period. Among all the Venetian printers of that age, Gabriel Giolito is entitled to precedence from the number and comparative excellence of the wood-cuts contained in the numerous illustrated works which issued from his press. In several of the works printed by him every cut is surrounded by an ornamental border; and this border, not being engraved on the same block as the cut, but separately as a kind of frame, is frequently repeated: sixteen different borders, when the book is of octavo size and there is a cut on every page, would suffice for the whole work, however extensive it might be. The practice of ornamenting cuts in this manner was very prevalent about the period under consideration, and at the present time some publishers seem inclined to revive it. I should, however, be sorry to see it again become prevalent, for though to some subjects, designed in a particular manner, an ornamental border may be appropriate, yet I consider the practice of thus framing a series of cuts as indicative of bad taste, and as likely to check the improvement of the art. Highly ornamented borders have, in a certain degree, the effect of reducing a series of cuts, however different their execution, to a standard of mediocrity; for they frequently conceal the beauty of a well-engraved subject, and serve as a screen to a bad one. In Ludovico Dolce’s Transformationi—a translation, or rather paraphrase of Ovid’s Metamorphoses—first printed by Giolito in 1553, and again in 1557, the cuts, instead of having a border all round, have only ornaments at the two vertical sides. The preceding is a fac-simile of one of those cuts, divested of its ornaments, from the edition of 1557. The subject is the difficult labour of Alcmena,—a favourite with Italian artists. This is the cut previously alluded to at page 217.

A curious book, of which an edition, in quarto, was printed at Rome in 1561, seems deserving of notice here, not on account of any merit in the wood-cuts which it contains, but on account of the singularity of four of them, which are given as a specimen of a “Sonetto figurato,” in the manner of the cuts in a little work entitled “A curious Hieroglyphick Bible,” first printed in London, in duodecimo, about 1782. The Italian work in question was written by “Messer Giovam Battista Palatino, Cittadino Romano,” and from the date of the Pope’s grant to the author of the privilege of exclusively printing it for ten years, it seems likely that the first edition was published about 1540. The work is a treatise on penmanship; and the title-page of the edition of 1561—which is embellished with a portrait of the author—may be translated as follows: “The Book of M. Giovam Battista Palatino, citizen of Rome, in which is taught the manner of writing all kinds of characters, ancient and modern, of whatever nation, with Rules, Proportions, and Examples. Together with a short and useful Discourse on Cyphers. Newly revised and corrected by the Author. With the addition of fifteen beautiful cuts.”VI.72 In Astle’s Origin and Progress of Writing, page 227, second edition, Palatino’s work is thus noticed: “In 1561, Valerius Doricus printed at Rome a curious book on all kinds of writing, ancient and modern. This book contains specimens of a great variety of writing practised in different ages and countries; some of these specimens are printed from types to imitate writing, and others from carved wood-blocks. This book also contains a treatise on the art of writing in cipher, and is a most curious specimen of early typography.”

After his specimens of “Lettere Cifrate,” Palatino devotes a couple of pages to “Cifre quadrate, et Sonetti figurati,” two modes of riddle-writing which, it appears, are solely employed for amusement. The “Cifro quadrato” is nothing more than a monogram, formed of a cluster of interwoven capitals, but in which every one of the letters of the name is to be found. In the following specimen the name thus ingeniously disguised is Lavinia.

The following is a slightly reduced copy of the first four lines of the “Sonetto figurato;” the other ten lines are expressed by figures in a similar manner. “As to figured sonnets,” says the author, “no better rule can be given, than merely to observe that the figures should clearly and distinctly correspond with the matter, and that there should be as few supplementary letters as possible. Of course, orthography and pure Italian are not to be looked for in such exercises; and it is no objection that the same figure be used for the beginning of one word, the middle of another, or the end of a third. It is the chief excellence of such compositions that there should be few letters to be supplied.”

The “interpretatio” of the preceding figured text is as follows:

“Dove son gli occhi, et la serena forma

Del santo alegro et amoroso aspetto?
Dov’ è la man eburna ov’ e ’l bel petto

Ch’ appensarvi hor’ in fonte mi transforma?”

This figured sonnet is a curious specimen of hieroglyphic and “phonetic” writing combined. For those who do not understand Italian, it seems necessary to give the following explanation of the words, and point out their phonetic relation to the things. Dove, where, is composed of D, and ove, eggs, as seen at the commencement of the first line. Son, are, is represented by a man’s head and a trumpet, making a sound, son. The preceding figures are examples of what is called “phonetic” writing, by modern expounders of Egyptian antiquities,—that is, the figures of things are not placed as representatives of the things themselves, but that their names when pronounced may form a word or part of a word, which has generally not the least relation to the thing by which it is phonetically, that is, vocally, expressed. Occhi, eyes, is an instance of hieroglyphic writing; the figure and the idea to be represented agree. La, the, is represented by the musical note la; serena, placid, by a Siren,—Sirena,—orthography, as the author says, is not to be expected in figured sonnets; and forma, shape, by a shoemaker’s last, which is called forma in Italian.

In the second line, Santo, holy, is represented by a Saint, Santo; allegro, cheerfulness, by a pair of wings, ale, and grue, a crane, the superfluous e forming, with the T following, the conjunction et, and. The words amoroso aspetto are formed of amo, a hook, rosa, a rose, and petto, the breast, with a supplementary s between the rose and the breast.

In the third line we have ove, eggs, and the musical la again; man, the hand, is expressed by its proper figure; eburna, ivory-like, is composed of the letters EB and an urn, urna; and in the latter part of the line the eggs, ov’, and the breast, petto, are repeated.

At the commencement of the fourth line, a couple of cloaks, cappe, stand for ch’ appe in the compound word ch’ appensarvi; hor’, now, is represented by an hour-glass, hora, literally, an hour; fonte, a fountain, is expressed by its proper figure; and the words mi transforma, are phonetically expressed by a mitre, mitra, the supplementary letters NS, and the shoemaker’s last, forma.

In the reign of Queen Elizabeth, a taste for inventing devices in this manner seems to have been fashionable among professed wits; and the practice of expressing a name by a rebus was not unfrequent in an earlier age. It is probable that the old sign of the Bolt-in-Tun in Fleet Street derives its origin from Bolton, a prior of St. Bartholomew’s in Smithfield, who gave a bird-bolt in the bung-hole of a tun as the rebus of his name. The peculiarities of the Italian figured sonnet are not unaptly illustrated in Camden’s Remains, in the chapter entitled “Rebus,VI.73 or Name-Devises:” “Did not that amorous youth mystically expresse his love to Rose Hill, whom he courted, when in a border of his painted cloth he caused to be painted as rudely as he devised grossely, a rose, a hill, an eye, a loafe, and a well,—that is, if you will spell it,

Rose Hill I love well.”VI.74

Among the wood engravers of Lyons who flourished about the middle of the sixteenth century, the only one whose name has come down to modern times is Bernard Solomon; and if he were actually the engraver of the numerous cuts which are ascribed to him, he must have been extremely industrious. I am not, however, aware of any cut which contains his mark; and it is by no means certain whether he were really a wood engraver, or whether he only made the designs for wood engravers to execute. Papillon, who has been blindly followed by most persons who have either incidentally or expressly written on wood engraving, unhesitatingly claims him as a wood engraver; but looking at the inequality in the execution of the cuts ascribed to him, and regarding the sameness of character in the designs, I am inclined to think that he was not an engraver, but that he merely made the drawings on the wood. Sir E. L. Bulwer has committed a mistake of this kind in his England and the English: “This country,” says he in his second volume, page 205, edition 1833, “may boast of having, in Bewick of Newcastle, brought wood engraving to perfection; his pupil, Harvey, continues the profession with reputation.” The writer here evidently speaks of that which he knows very little about, for at the time that his book was published, Harvey, though originally a wood engraver, and a pupil of Bewick, had abandoned the profession for about eight years, and had devoted himself entirely to painting and drawing for copper-plate and wood engravers. Indeed I very much question if Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer ever saw a cut—except, perhaps, that of Dentatus,—which was actually engraved by Harvey. With about equal propriety, a writer, speaking of wood engraving in England twenty years ago, might have described the late John Thurston as “continuing the profession with reputation,” merely because he was one of the principal designers of wood engravings at that period.

Bernard Solomon, whether a designer or engraver on wood, is justly entitled to be ranked among the “little masters” in this branch of art. All the cuts ascribed to him which have come under my notice are of small size, and most of them are executed in a delicate manner; they are, however, generally deficient in effect,VI.75 and may readily be distinguished by the tall slim figures which he introduces. He evidently had not understood the “capabilities” of his art, for in none of his productions do we find the well-contrasted “black-and-white,” which, when well managed, materially contributes to the excellence of a well-engraved wood-cut. The production of a good black is, indeed, one of the great advantages, in point of conventional colour, which wood possesses over copper; and the wood engraver who neglects this advantage, and labours perhaps for a whole day to cut with mechanical precision a number of delicate but unmeaning lines, which a copper-plate engraver would execute with facility in an hour, affords a tolerably convincing proof of his not thoroughly understanding the principles of his art. In Bernard’s cuts, and in most of those executed at Lyons about the same period, we find much of this ineffective labour; we perceive in them many evidences of the pains-taking workman, but few traits of the talented artist. From the time that a taste for those little and laboriously executed, but spiritless cuts, began to prevail, the decline of wood engraving may be dated. Instead of confining themselves within the legitimate boundaries of their own art, wood engravers seem to have been desirous of emulating the delicacy of copper-plate engraving, and, as might naturally be expected by any one who understands the distinctive peculiarities of the two arts, they failed. The book-buyers of the period having become sickened with the glut of tasteless and ineffective trifles, wood engraving began to decline: large well-engraved wood-cuts executed between 1580 and 1600 are comparatively scarce.

Bernard Solomon, or, as he is frequently called, Little Solomon, from the smallness of his works, is said to have been born in 1512, and the most of the cuts which are ascribed to him appeared in works printed at Lyons between 1545 and 1580. Perhaps more books containing small wood-cuts were printed at Lyons between those years than in any other city or town in Europe during the corresponding period. It appears to have been the grand mart for Scripture cuts, emblems, and devices; but out of the many hundreds which appear to have been engraved there in the period referred to, it would be difficult to select twenty that can be considered really excellent both in execution and design. One of the principal publishers of Lyons at that time was Jean de Tournes; many of the works which issued from his press display great typographic excellence, and in almost all the cuts are engraved with great neatness. The following cut is a fac-simile of one which appears in the title-page of an edition of Petrarch’s Sonnetti, Canzoni, e Trionfi, published by him in a small octodecimo volume, 1545.

The design of the cut displays something of the taste for emblem and deviceVI.76 which was then so prevalent, and which became so generally diffused by the frequent editions of Alciat’s Emblems, the first of which was printed about 1531. The portraits of Petrarch and Laura, looking not unlike “Philip and Mary on a shilling,” are seen enclosed within a heart which Cupid has pierced to the very core with one of his arrows. The volume contains seven other small cuts, designed and engraved in a style which very much resembles that of the cuts ascribed to Bernard Solomon; and as there is no mark by which his productions are to be ascertained, I think they are as likely to be of his designing as three-fourths of those which are generally supposed to be of his engraving.

The work entitled “Quadrins Historiques de la Bible,” with wood-cuts, ascribed to Bernard Solomon, and printed at Lyons by Jean de Tournes, was undoubtedly suggested by the “Historiarum Veteris Testamenti Icones”—Holbein’s Bible-cuts—first published by the brothers Frellon in 1538. The first edition of the Quadrins Historiques was published in octavo about 1550, and was several times reprinted within the succeeding twenty years. The total number of cuts in the edition of 1560 is two hundred and twenty-nine, of which no less than one hundred and seventy are devoted to the illustration of Exodus and Genesis. At the top of each is printed the reference to the chapter to which it relates, and at the bottom is a “Quadrin poëtique, tiré de la Bible, pour graver en la table des affeccions l’amour des sacrees Histories.” Those “Quadrins” appear to have been written by Claude Paradin. The composition of several of the cuts is good, and nearly all display great neatness of execution. The following is a fac-simile of the seventh, Adam and Eve driven out of Paradise. It is, however, necessary to observe that this is by no means one of the best cuts either in point of design or execution.

A similar work, entitled “Figures du Nouveau Testament,” with cuts, evidently designed by the person who had made the drawings for those in the “Quadrins Historiques de la Bible,” was also published by Jean de Tournes about 1553, and several editions were subsequently printed. The cuts are rather less in size than those of the Quadrins, and are, on the whole, rather better engraved. The total number is a hundred and four, and under each are six explanatory verses, composed by Charles Fonteine, who, in a short poetical address at the commencement, dedicates the work “A Tres-illustre et Treshaute Princesse, Madame Marguerite de France, Duchesse de Berri.” The following, Christ tempted by Satan, is a copy of the sixteenth cut, but like that of the expulsion of Adam and Eve, it is not one of the best in the work.

Old engravings and paintings illustrative of manners or of costume are generally interesting; and on this account a set of large wood-cuts designed by Peter Coeck of Alost, in Flanders, is deserving of notice. The subjects of those cuts are the manners and costumes of the Turks; and the drawings were made on the spot by Coeck himself, who visited Turkey in 1533. It is said that he brought from the east an important secret relative to the art of dyeing silk and wool for the fabrication of tapestries, a branch of manufacture with which he appears to have been connected, and for which he made a number of designs. He was also an architect and an author; and published several treatises on sculpture, geometry, perspective, and architecture. The cuts illustrative of the manners and costume of the Turks were not published until 1553, three years after his decease, as we learn from an inscription on the last.VI.77 They are oblong, of folio size; and the seven of which the set consists are intended to be joined together, and thus to form one continuous subject. The figures, both on foot and horseback, are designed with great spirit, but they want relief, and the engraving is coarse. One of the customs which he has illustrated in the cut No. 3 is singular; and though this orientalism has been noticed by a Scottish judge—Maclaurin of Dreghorn—Peter Coeck appears to be the only traveller who has graphically represented “quo modo Turci mingunt,” i. e. sedentes. Succeeding artists have availed themselves liberally of those cuts. As the Turks in the sixteenth century were much more formidable as a nation than at present, and their manners and customs objects of greater curiosity, wood engravings illustrative of their costume and mode of living appear to have been in considerable demand at that period, for both in books and as single cuts they are comparatively numerous.

Though chiaro-scuro engraving on wood was, in all probability, first practised in Germany, yet the art does not appear to have been so much cultivated nor so highly prized in that country as in Italy. Between 1530 and 1550, when Antonio Fantuzzi, J. N. Vincentini, and other Italians, were engaged in executing numerous chiaro-scuros after the designs of such masters as Raffaele, Corregio, Parmegiano, Polidoro, Beccafumi, and F. Salviati, the art appears to have been comparatively abandoned by the wood engravers of Germany. The chiaro-scuros executed in the latter country cannot generally for a moment bear a comparison, either in point of design or execution, with those executed in Italy during the same period. I have, however, seen one German cut executed in this style, with the date 1543, which, for the number of the blocks from which it is printed, and the delicacy of the impression in certain parts, is, if genuine, one of the most remarkable of that period. As the paper, however, seems comparatively modern, I am induced to suspect that the date may be that of the painting or drawing, and that this picture-print—for, though executed by the same process, it would be improper to call it a chiaro-scuro—may have been the work of Ungher, a German wood engraver, who executed some chiaro-scuros at Berlin about seventy years ago. Whatever may be the date, however, or whoever may have been the artist, it is one of the best executed specimens of coloured block printing that I have ever seen.

This curious picture-print, including the border, is ten inches and three quarters high by six inches and three quarters wide. The subject is a figure of Christ; in his left hand he holds an orb emblematic of his power, while the right is elevated as in the act of pronouncing a benediction. His robe is blue, with the folds indicated by a darker tint, and the border and lighter parts impressed with at least two lighter colours. Above this robe there is a large red mantle, fastened in front with what appears to be a jewel of three different colours, ruby, yellow, and blue; the folds are of a darker colour; and the lights are expressed by a kind of yellow, which has evidently been either impressed, or laid on the paper with a brush, before the red colour of the mantle, and which, from its glistening, seems to have been compounded with some metallic substance like fine gold-dust. The border of the print consists of a similar yellow, between plain black lines. The face is printed in flesh colour of three tints, and the head is surrounded with rays of glory, which appear like gilding. The engraving of the face, and of the hair of the head and beard, is extremely well executed, and much superior to anything that I have seen in wood-cuts containing Ungher’s mark. The globe is blue, with the lights preserved, intersected by light red and yellow lines; and the small cross at the top is also yellow, like the light on the red mantle. The hands and feet are expressed in their proper colours; the ground on which the Redeemer stands is something between a lake and a fawn colour; and the ground of the print, upwards from about an inch above the bottom, is of a lighter blue than the robe. To the right, near the bottom, are the date and mark, thus: The figure like a winged serpent resembles a mark which was frequently used by Lucas Cranach, except that the serpent or dragon of the latter appears less crooked, and usually has a ring in its mouth. The letter underneath also appears rather more like an I than an L. The drawing of the figure of Christ, however, is very much in the style of Lucas Cranach, and I am strongly inclined to think that the original painting or drawing was executed by him, whoever may have been the engraver. There must have been at least ten blocks required for this curious print, which, for clearness and distinctness in the colours, and for delicacy of impression, more especially in the face, may challenge a comparison not only with the finest chiaro-scuros of former times, but also with the best specimens of coloured block-printing of the present day.VI.78

In 1557, Hubert Goltzius, a painter, but better known as an author than as an artist, published at Antwerp, in folio, a work containing portraits, executed in chiaro-scuro, of the Roman emperors, from Julius Cæsar to Ferdinand I.VI.79 Descamps, in his work entitled “La Vie des Peintres Flamands, Allemands et Hollandois,” says that those portraits, which are all copied from medals, were “engraved on wood by a painter of Courtrai, named Joseph Gietleughen;”VI.80 and Papillon, who had examined the work more closely, but not closely enough, says that the outlines are etched, and that the two rentrées—the subsequent impressions which give to the whole the appearance of a chiaro-scuro drawing—are from blocks of wood engraved in intaglio. What Papillon says about the outlines being etched is true; but a close inspection of those portraits will afford any person acquainted with the process ample proof of the “rentrées” being also printed from plates of metal in the same manner as from engraved wood-blocks.

Each of those portraits appears like an enlarged copy of a medal, and is the result of three separate impressions; the first, containing the outlines of the head, the ornaments, and the name, has been printed from an etched plate of copper or some other metal, by means of a copper-plate printing-press; and the two other impressions, over the first, have also been from plates of metal, mounted on blocks of wood, and printed by means of the common typographic printing-press. The outlines of the head and of the letters forming the legend are black; the field of the medal is a muddy kind of sepia; and the head and the border, printed from the same surface and at the same time, are of a lighter shade. The lights to be preserved have been cut in intaglio in the plates for the two “rentrées” in the same manner as on blocks of wood for printing in chiaro-scuro. The marks of the pins by which the two plates for the “rentrées” have been fastened to blocks of wood, to raise them to a proper height, are very perceptible; in the field of the medal they appear like circular points, generally in pairs; while round the outer margin they are mostly of a square form. It is difficult to conceive what advantage Goltzius might expect to derive by printing the “rentrées” from metal plates; for all that he has thus produced could have been more simply effected by means of wood-blocks, as practised up to that time by all other chiaro-scuro engravers. Though those portraits possess but little merit as chiaro-scuros, they are yet highly interesting in the history of art, as affording the first instances of etching being employed for the outlines of a chiaro-scuro, and of the substitution, in surface-printing, of a plate of metal for a wood-block. Goltzius’s manner of etching the outlines of a chiaro-scuro print was frequently practised both by French and English artists about the middle of the last century; and about 1722, Edward Kirkall engraved the principal parts of his chiaro-scuros in mezzo-tint, and afterwards printed a tint from a metal plate mounted on wood. In the present day Mr. George Baxter has successfully applied the principle of engraving the ground and the outlines of his subjects in aqua-tint; and, as in the case of Hubert Goltzius and Kirkall, he sometimes uses a metal-plate instead of a wood-block in surface-printing. In the picture-prints executed by Mr. Baxter for the Pictorial Album, 1837, the tint of the paper on which each imitative painting appears to be mounted, is communicated from a smooth plate of copper, which receives the colour, and is printed in the same manner as a wood-block.

Among the German artists who made designs for wood engravers from the time of Durer to about 1590, Erhard Schön, Virgil Solis, Melchior Lorich, and Jost Amman may be considered as the principal. They are all frequently described as wood engravers from the circumstance of their marks being found on the cuts which they undoubtedly designed, but most certainly did not engrave. Erhard Schön chiefly resided at Nuremberg; and some of the earliest cuts of his designing are dated 1528. In 1538 he published at Nuremberg a small treatise, in oblong quarto, on the proportions of the human figure, for the use of students and young persons.VI.81 This work contains several wood-cuts, all coarsely engraved, illustrative of the writer’s precepts; two or three of them—where the heads and bodies are represented by squares and rhomboidal figures—are extremely curious, though apparently not very well adapted to improve a learner in the art of design. Another of the cuts, where the proportions are illustrated by means of a figure inscribed within a circle, is very like one of the illustrations contained in Flaxman’s Lectures on Sculpture. Some cuts of playing-cards, designed by Schön, are in greater request than any of his other works engraved on wood, which, for the most part, have but little to recommend them. He died about 1550.

Virgil Solis, a painter, copper-plate engraver, and designer on wood, was born at Nuremberg about 1514. The cuts which contain his mark are extremely numerous; and, from their being mostly of small size, he is ranked by Heineken with the “Little Masters.” Several of his cuts display great fertility of invention; but though his figures are frequently spirited and the attitudes good, yet his drawing is generally careless and incorrect. As a considerable number of his cuts are of the same kind as those of Bernard Solomon, it seems as if there had been a competition at that time between the booksellers of Nuremberg and those of Lyons for supplying the European market with illustrations of two works of widely different character, to wit, the Bible, and Ovid’s Metamorphoses,—Virgil Solis being retained for the German, and Bernard Solomon for the French publishers. He designed the cuts in a German edition of the Bible, printed in 1560; most of the portraits of the Kings of France in a work published at Nuremberg in 1566; a series of cuts for Esop’s fables; and the illustrations of an edition of Reusner’s Emblems. Several cuts with the mark of Virgil Solis are to be found in the first edition of Archbishop Parker’s Bible, printed by Richard Jugge, folio, London, 1568. In the second edition, 1572, there are two ornamented initial letters, apparently of his designing, which seem to show that his sacred and profane subjects were liable to be confounded, and that cuts originally designed for an edition of Ovid might by some singular oversight be used in an edition of the Bible, although printed under the especial superintendence of a Right Reverend Archbishop. In the letter G, which forms the commencement of the first chapter of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews, the subject represented by the artist is Leda caressed by Jupiter in the form of a swan; and in the letter T at the commencement of the first chapter of the Epistle General of St. John, the subject is Venus before Jove, with Cupid, Juno, Mars, Neptune, and other Heathen deities in attendance.VI.82

A series of wood-cuts designed by Virgil Solis, illustrative of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, was published at Frankfort, in oblong quarto, by George Corvinus, Sigismund Feyerabend, and the heirs of Wigand Gallus, in 1569. Each cut is surrounded by a heavy ornamental border; above each are four verses in Latin, and underneath four in German, composed by Johannes Posthius, descriptive of the subject. In the title-page,VI.83 which is both in Latin and in German, it is stated that they are designed—gerissen—by Virgil Solis for the use and benefit of painters, goldsmiths, and statuaries. It is thus evident that they were not engraved by him; and in corroboration of this opinion it may be observed that several of them, in addition to his mark, , also contain another, , which is doubtless that of the wood engraver. The latter mark occurs frequently in the cuts designed by Virgil Solis, in the first edition of Archbishop Parker’s Bible.

Evelyn, in his Sculptura, has the following notice of this artist: “Virgilius Solis graved also in wood The story of the Bible and The mechanic arts in little; but for imitating those vile postures of Aretine had his eyes put out by the sentence of the magistrate.” There is scarcely a page of this writer’s works on art which does not contain similar inaccuracies, and yet he is frequently quoted and referred to as an authority. The “mechanic arts” to which Evelyn alludes were probably the series of cuts designed by Jost Amman, and first published in quarto, at Frankfort, in 1564; and the improbable story of Virgil Solis having had his eyes put out for copying Julio Romano’s obscene designs, engraved by Marc Antonio, and illustrated with sonnets by the scurrilous ribald, Pietro Aretine, is utterly devoid of foundation. No such copies have ever been mentioned by any well-informed writer on art, and there is not the slightest evidence of Virgil Solis ever having been punished in any manner by the magistrates of his native city, Nuremberg, where he died in 1570.

Wood-cuts with the mark of Melchior Lorich are comparatively scarce. He was a native of Flensburg in Holstein, and was born in 1527. He obtained a knowledge of painting and copper-plate engraving at Leipsic, and afterwards travelled with his master through some of the northern countries of Europe. He afterwards visited Vienna, and subsequently entered into the service of the Palsgrave Otho, in whose suite he visited Holland, France, and Italy. In 1558 he went with the Imperial ambassador to Constantinople, where he remained three years. His principal works engraved on wood consist of a series of illustrations of the manners and customs of the Turks, published about 1570. There is a very clever cut, a Lady splendidly dressed, with his mark and the date 1551; it is printed on what is called a “broadside,” and underneath is a copy of verses by Hans Sachs, the celebrated shoemaker and meistersänger of Nuremberg,VI.84 entitled “Eer und Lob einer schön wolgezierten Frawen”—The Honour and Praise of a beautiful well-dressed woman. A large cut of the Deluge, in two sheets, is considered one of the best of his designing. Among the copper-plates engraved by Melchior Lorich, a portrait of Albert Durer, and two others, of the Grand Signior and his favourite Sultana, are among the most scarce. The time of his death is uncertain, but Bartsch thinks that he was still living in 1583, as there are wood-cuts with his mark of that date.

Jost Amman, one of the best designers on wood of the period in which he lived, was born at Zurich in 1539, but removed to Nuremberg about 1560.VI.85 His designs are more bold, and display more of the vigour of the older German masters, than those of his contemporary Virgil Solis. A series of cuts designed by him, illustrative of professions and trades, was published in 1564, quarto, with the title “Hans Sachse eigentliche Beschreibung aller Stände auf Erden—aller Künste und Handwerker,” &c.—that is, Hans Sachs’s correct Description of all Ranks, Arts, and Trades; and another edition in duodecimo, with the descriptions in Latin, appeared in the same year.VI.86 For the correctness of the date of those editions I am obliged to rely on Heineken, as I have never seen a copy of either; the earliest edition with Hans Sachs’s descriptions that has come under my notice is dated 1574. In a duodecimo edition, 1568, and another of the same size, 1574, the descriptions, by Hartman Schopper, are in Latin verse.VI.87 This is perhaps the most curious and interesting series of cuts, exhibiting the various ranks and employments of men, that ever was published. Among the higher orders, constituting what the Germans call the “Lehre und Wehr Stande”—teachers and warriors—are the Pope, Emperor, King, Princes, Nobles, Priests, and Lawyers; while almost every branch of labour or of trade then known in Germany, from agriculture to pin-making, has its representative. There are also not a few which it would be difficult to reduce to any distinct class, as they are neither trades nor honest professions. Of those heteroclytes is the “Meretricum procurator—der Hurenweibel”—or, as Captain Dugald Dalgetty says, “the captain of the Queans.”

The subject of the following cut, which is of the same size as the original, is a Briefmaler,—literally, a card-painter, the name by which the German wood engravers were known before they adopted the more appropriate one of Formschneider. It is evident, that, at the time when the cut was engraved, the two professions were distinct:VI.88 we here perceive the Briefmaler employed, not in engraving cuts, but engaged in colouring certain figures by means of a stencil,—that is, a card or thin plate of metal, out of which the intended figure is cut. A brush charged with colour being drawn over the pierced card, as is seen in the cut, the figure is communicated to the paper placed underneath. The little shallow vessels perceived on the top of the large box in front are the saucers which contain his colours. Near the window, immediately to his right, is a pile of sheets which, from the figure of a man on horseback seen impressed upon them, appear to be already finished.

The subject of the following cut, from the same work, is a Formschneider, or wood engraver proper. He is apparently at work on a block which he has before him; but the kind of tool which he employs is not exactly like those used by English wood engravers of the present day. It seems to resemble a small long-handled desk-knife; while the tool of the modern wood engraver has a handle which is rounded at the top in order to accommodate it to the palm of the hand. It is also never held vertically, as it appears in the hand of the Formschneider. It is, however, certain, from other woodcuts, which will be subsequently noticed, that the wood engravers of that period were accustomed to use a tool with a handle rounded at the top, similar to the graver used in the present day.VI.89—The verses descriptive of the annexed cut are translated from Hans Sachs.

I am a wood-engraver good,

And all designs on blocks of wood

I with my graver cut so neat,

That when they’re printed on a sheet

Of paper white, you plainly view

The very forms the artist drew:

His drawing, whether coarse or fine,

Is truly copied line for line.

Jost Amman died in 1591, and from the time of his settling at Nuremberg to that of his decease he seems to have been chiefly employed in making designs on wood for the booksellers of Nuremberg and Frankfort. He also furnished designs for goldsmiths; and it is said that he excelled as a painter on glass. The works which afford the best specimens of his talents as a designer on wood are those illustrative of the costume of the period, first published between 1580 and 1585 by S. Feyerabend at Frankfort. One of those works contains the costumes of men of all ranks, except the clergy, interspersed with the armorial bearings of the principal families in Germany; another contains the costume of the different orders of the priesthood of the church of Rome; and a third, entitled Gynæceum sive Theatrum Mulierum, is illustrative of the costume of women of all ranks in Europe. A work on hunting and fowling, edited by J. A. Lonicerus, and printed in 1582, contains about forty excellent cuts of his designing. A separate volume, consisting of cuts selected from the four preceding works, and of a number of other cuts chiefly illustrative of mythological subjects and of the costume of Turkey, was published by Feyerabend about 1590. In a subsequent edition of this work, printed in 1599, it is stated that the collection is published for the especial benefit of painters and amateurs.VI.90 Among the numerous other cuts designed by him, the following may be mentioned: illustrations for a Bible published at Frankfort 1565; a series of subjects from Roman History, entitled Icones Livianæ, 1572; and the cuts in an edition of Reynard the Fox. The works of Jost Amman have proved a mine for succeeding artists; his figures were frequently copied by wood engravers in France, Italy and Flanders; and even some modern English paintings contain evidences of the artist having borrowed something more than a hint from the figures of Jost Amman.

Jost Amman was undoubtedly one of the best professional designers on wood of his time; and his style bears considerable resemblance to that of Hans Burgmair as exemplified in the Triumphs of Maximilian. Many of his figures are well drawn; but even in the best of his subjects the attitudes are somewhat affected and generally too violent; and this, with an overstrained expression, makes his characters appear more like actors in a theatre than like real personages. In the cuts of the horse in the “Kunstbüchlein” the action of the animal is frequently represented with great spirit: but in points of detail the artist is as frequently incorrect. Some of his very best designs are to be found among his equestrian subjects. His men generally have a good “seat,” and his ladies seem to manage their heavy long-tailed steeds with great ease and grace.

Several of the views of cities, in Sebastian Munster’s Cosmography—first published in folio, at Basle, 1550—contain two marks, one of the designer, and the other of the person by whom the subject was engraved, the latter being frequently accompanied by a graver, thus: ; or with two gravers of different kinds, thus: This last mark, which also occurs in Jost Amman’s Kunstbüchlein, is said to be that of Christopher Stimmer, a brother of Tobias Stimmer, a Swiss artist, who is generally described as a designer and engraver on wood. The cuts with the former mark have been ascribed to Hans Holbein, but they bear not the least resemblance to his style of design, and they have been assigned to him solely on account of the letters corresponding with the initials of his name. Professor Christ’s Dictionary of Monograms, and Papillon’s Treatise on Wood-engraving, afford numerous instances of marks being assigned to persons on no better grounds.

A writer, in discussing the question, “Were Albert Durer, Lucas Cranach, Hans Burgmair, and other old German artists, the engravers or only the designers of the cuts which bear their mark?” has been pleased to assert that the mark of the actual engraver is usually distinguished by the graver with which it is accompanied. This statement has been adopted and further disseminated by others; and many persons who have not an opportunity of judging for themselves, and who receive with implicit credit whatever they find asserted in a Dictionary of Engravers, suppose that from the time of Albert Durer, or even earlier, the figure of a graver generally distinguishes the mark of the formschneider or engraver on wood. So far, however, from this being a general rule, I am not aware of any wood-cut which contains a graver in addition to a mark of an earlier date than those in Munster’s Cosmography, and the practice which appears to have been first introduced about that time never became generally prevalent. When the graver is thus introduced there can be no doubt that it is intended to distinguish the mark of the engraver; but as at least ninety-nine out of every hundred marks on cuts executed between 1550 and 1600 are unaccompanied with a graver, it is exceedingly doubtful in most cases whether the mark be that of the engraver or the designer.

The wood-cuts in Munster’s Cosmography are generally poor in design and coarse in execution. One of the best is that representing an encounter of two armed men on horseback with the mark , which also occurs in some of the cuts in Gesner’s History of Animals, printed at Zurich, 1551-1558. This cut, as well as several others, is repeated in another part of the book, in the manner of the Nuremberg Chronicle, where the same portrait or the same view is used to represent several different persons or places. The cuts are not precisely the same in every edition of Munster’s work, which was several times reprinted between 1550 and 1570. Those which are substituted in the later editions are rather more neatly engraved.

The present cut is copied from one at page 49 of the first edition, where it is given as an illustration of a wonderful kind of tree said to be found in Scotland, and from the fruit of which it was believed that geese were produced. Munster’s account of this wonderful tree and its fruit is as follows; “In Scotland are found trees, the fruit of which appears like a ball of leaves. This fruit, falling at its proper time into the water below, becomes animated, and turns to a bird which they call the tree goose. This tree also grows in the island of Pomona [the largest of the Orkneys], not far distant from Scotland towards the north. As old cosmographers—especially Saxo Grammaticus—mention this tree, it is not to be considered as a fiction of modern authors. Aeneas Sylvius also notices this tree as follows: ‘We have heard that there was a tree formerly in Scotland, which, growing by the margin of a stream, produced fruit of the shape of ducks; that such fruit, when nearly ripe, fell, some into the water and some on land. Such as fell on land decayed, but such as fell into the water quickly became animated, swimming below, and then flying into the air with feathers and wings. When in Scotland, having made diligent inquiry concerning this matter of King James, a square-built man, and very fat,VI.91 we found that miracles always kept receding;—this wonderful tree is not found in Scotland, but in the Orcades.’”

The bird said to be the produce of this tree is the “Bernacle Goose, Clakis, or Tree Goose” of Bewick; and the pretended tree from which it was supposed to be produced was undoubtedly a testaceous insect, a species of which, frequently found adhering to ships’ bottoms, is described under the name of “Lepas Anatifera” by Linnæus, who thus commemorates in the trivial name the old opinion respecting its winged and feathered fruit. William Turner, a native of Morpeth in Northumberland, one of the earliest writers on British Ornithology, notices the story of the Bernacle Goose being produced from “something like a fungus proceeding from old wood lying in the sea.” He says it is mentioned by Giraldus Cambrensis in his description of Ireland, and that the account of its being generated in this wonderful manner is generally believed by the people inhabiting the sea-coasts of England, Scotland, and Ireland. “But,” says Turner, “as it seemed not safe to trust to popular report, and as, on account of the singularity of the thing, I could not give entire credit to Giraldus, I, when thinking of the subject of which I now write, asked a certain clergyman, named Octavianus, by birth an Irishman, whom I knew to be worthy of credit, if he thought the account of Giraldus was to be believed. He, swearing by the Gospel, declared that what Giraldus had written about the generation of this bird was most true; that he himself had seen and handled the young unformed birds, and that if I should remain in London a month or two, he would bring me some of the brood.”VI.92 In Lobel and Pena’s Stirpium Adversaria Nova, folio, London, 1570, there is a cut of the “Britannica Concha Anatifera,” growing on a stalk from a rock, with figures of ducks or geese in the water below. In the text the popular belief of a kind of goose being produced from the shell of this insect is noticed, but the writer declines pronouncing any opinion till he shall have had an opportunity of visiting Scotland and judging for himself. Gerard, in his Herbal, London, 1597, has an article on the Goose-tree; and he says that its native soil is a small island, called the Pile of Fouldres, half a mile from the main land of Lancashire. Ferrer de Valcebro, a Spanish writer, in a work entitled “El Gobierno general hallado en las Aves,” with coarse wood-cuts, quarto, printed about 1680, repeats, with sundry additions, the story of the Bernacle, or, as he calls it, the Barliata, being produced from a tree; and he seems rather displeased that his countrymen are not disposed to yield much faith to such singularities, merely because they do not occur in their own country.

There are two portraits of Erasmus in the first edition of Munster’s Cosmography, one at page 130, and the other, with the mark , at page 407. The latter, as the author especially informs the reader, was engraved after a portrait by Holbein in the possession of Bonifacius Amerbach. The present is a reduced copy of a cut at page 361 of Henry Petri’s edition, 1554. On a stone, near the bottom, towards the left, is seen a markVI.93—probably that of the artist who made the drawing on the block—consisting of the same letters as the double mark just noticed as occurring in the portrait of Erasmus, H.R. M.D. A cut of the same subject, William Tell about to shoot at the apple on his son’s head, was given in the first edition, but the design is somewhat different and the execution more coarse. The cut from which the preceding is copied may be ranked among the best in the work.

Though Sebastian Munster, in a letter, probably written in 1538, addressed to Joachim Vadianus, alludes to an improvement which he and his printer had made in the mode of printing maps, and to a project for casting complete words, yet the maps which appear in his Cosmography, with the outlines, rivers, and mountains engraved on wood, and the names inserted in type, are certainly not superior to the generality of other maps executed wholly on wood about the same period.VI.94 Joachim Vadianus, to whom Munster writes, and of whose assistance he wished to avail himself in a projected edition of Ptolemy, was an eminent scholar of that period, and had published an edition, in 1522, of Pomponius Mela, with a commentary and notes. The passage in Munster’s letter, wherein maps are mentioned, is to the following effect: “I would have sent you an impression of one of the Swiss maps which I have had printed here, if Froschover had not informed me of his having sent you one from Zurich. If this mode of printing should succeed tolerably well, and when we shall have acquired a certain art of casting whole words, Henri Petri, Michael Isengrin, and I have thought of printing Ptolemy’s Cosmography; not of so great a size as it has hitherto been frequently printed, but in the form in which your Annotations on Pomponius appear. In the maps we shall insert only the names of the principal cities, and give the others alphabetically in some blank space,—for instance, in the margin or any adjoining space beyond the limits of the map.”VI.95 The art of casting whole words, alluded to in this passage, appears to have been something like an attempt at what has been called “logographic printing;”VI.96 though it is not unlikely that those “whole words” might be the names of countries and places intended to be inserted in a space cut out of the block on which the map was engraved. By thus inserting the names, either cast as complete words, or composed of separate letters, the tedious process of engraving a number of letters on wood was avoided, and the pressman enabled to print the maps at one impression. In some of the earlier maps where the names are printed from types, the letters were not inserted in spaces cut out of the block, but were printed from a separate form by means of a “re-iteration” or second impression.VI.97 In illustration of what Munster says about a certain art of casting whole words,—“artem aliquam fundendarum integrarum dictionum,”—the following extract is given from Dr. Dibdin’s Bibliographical Tour, volume iii. page 102, second edition. “What think you of undoubted proofs of STEREOTYPE PRINTING in the middle of the sixteenth century? It is even so. What adds to the whimsical puzzle is, that these pieces of metal, of which the surface is composed of types, fixed and immovable, are sometimes inserted in wooden blocks, and introduced as titles, mottoes, or descriptions of the subjects cut upon the blocks. Professor May [of Augsburg] begged my acceptance of a specimen or two of the types thus fixed upon plates of the same metal. They rarely exceeded the height of four or five lines of text, by about four or five inches in length. I carried away, with his permission, two proofs (not long ago pulled) of the same block containing this intermixture of stereotype and wood-block printing.”

As the engraving of the letters in maps executed on wood—or indeed on any other material—is, when the names of many places are given, by far the most tedious and costly part of the process, the plan of inserting them in type by means of holes pierced in the block, as adopted in Munster’s Cosmography, was certainly a great saving of labour; yet on comparing the maps in this work with those in Ptolemy’s Cosmography, printed by Leonard Holl, at Ulm, 1482, and with others engraved in the early part of the sixteenth century, it is impossible not to perceive that the art of wood engraving, as applied to the execution of such works, had undergone no improvement: with the exception of the letters, the maps in Holl’s Ptolemy—the earliest that were engraved on wood—are, in point of appearance, equal to those in the work of Munster, published about eighty years later. Considering that the earliest printed maps—those in an edition of Ptolemy, printed by Arnold Bukinck, at Rome, 1478VI.98—are from copper-plates, it seems rather surprising that, until about 1570, no further attempt should have been made to apply the art of engraving on copper to this purpose. In the latter year a collection of maps, engraved on copper,VI.99 was published at Antwerp under the superintendence of Abraham Ortelius; and so great was their excellence when compared with former maps executed on wood, that the business of map engraving was within a few years transferred almost exclusively to engravers on copper. In 1572 a map engraved on copper was printed in England, in the second edition of Archbishop Parker’s Bible. It is of folio size, and the country represented is the Holy Land. Within an ornamented tablet is the following inscription: “Graven bi Humfray Cole, goldsmith, an English man born in ye north, and pertayning to ye mint in the Tower. 1572.” In Walpole’s Catalogue of Engravers the portraits engraved on copper of Queen Elizabeth, the Earl of Leicester, and Lord Burleigh, which appear in the first edition of Archbishop Parker’s Bible, 1568,VI.100 are ascribed to Humphrey Cole, apparently on no better ground than that his name appears as the engraver of the map, which is given in the second. If Cole were really the engraver of those portraits, he was certainly entitled to a more favourable noticeVI.101 than he receives from the fastidious compiler of the “Catalogue of Engravers who have been born or resided in England;” for, considering when and where they were executed, the engraver is entitled to rank at least as high as George Vertue. In fact, the portrait of Leicester, considered merely as a specimen of engraving, without regard to the time and place of its execution, will bear a comparison with more than one of the portraits engraved by Vertue upwards of a hundred and fifty years later.

The advantages of copper-plate engraving for the purpose of executing maps, as exemplified in the work of Ortelius, appear to have been immediately appreciated in England, and this country is one of the first that can boast of a collection of provincial or county maps engraved on copper. A series of maps of all the counties of England and Wales, and of the adjacent islands, were engraved, under the superintendence of Christopher Saxton, between 1573 and 1579, and published at London, in a folio volume, in the latter year. Though the greater number of those maps were the work of Flemish engravers, eight, at least, were engraved by two Englishmen, Augustine Ryther and Nicholas Reynolds.VI.102 They appear to have been all drawn by Christopher Saxton, who lived at Tingley, near Leeds. Walpole says, that “he was servant to Thomas Sekeford, Esq. Master of the Court of Wards,” the gentleman at whose expense they were engraved. He also states that many of them were engraved by Saxton himself; but this I consider to be extremely doubtful. In his account of early English copper-plate engravers, Walpole is frequently incorrect: he mentions Humphrey Lhuyd—an author who wrote a short description of Britain, printed at Cologne in 1572VI.103—as the engraver of the map of England in the collection of Ortelius; and he includes Dr. William Cuningham, a physician of Norwich, in his catalogue of engravers, without the slightest reason beyond the mere fact, that a book entitled “The Cosmographical Glasse,” written by the Doctor, and printed in 1559, contains several wood-cuts. He might, with equal justice, have placed Archbishop Parker in his catalogue, and asserted that some of the plates in the Bible were “engraved by his own hand.”

In connexion with the preceding account of the earliest maps executed in England on copper, it perhaps may not be unnecessary to briefly notice here the introduction of copper-plate engraving into this country. According to Herbert, in his edition of Ames’s Typographical Antiquities, the frontispiece of a small work entitled “Galenus de Temperamentis,” printed at Cambridge, 1521, is the earliest specimen of copper-plate engraving that is to be found in any book printed in England. The art, however, supposing that the plate was really engraved and printed in this country, appears to have received no encouragement on its first introduction, for after this first essay it seems to have lain dormant for nearly twenty years. The next earliest specimens appear in the first edition of a work usually called “Raynalde’s Birth of Mankind,” printed at London in 1540.VI.104 This work, which is a treatise on the obstetric art, contains, when perfect, three plates, illustrative of the subject. Not having had an opportunity of seeing any one of these three plates nor the frontispiece to “Galenus de Temperamentis,” I am obliged to trust to Herbert for the fact of their being engraved on copper. In the third volume of his edition of Ames, page 1411, there is a fac-simile of the frontispiece to the Cambridge book; and in the Preliminary Disquisition on Early Engraving and Ornamental Printing, prefixed to Dr. Dibdin’s edition of the Typographical Antiquities, will be found a fac-simile, engraved on wood, of one of the plates in Raynalde’s Birth of Mankind. In an edition of the latter work, printed in 1565, the “byrthe figures” are not engraved on copper, but on wood.

A work printed in London by John Hereford, 1545, contains several unquestionable specimens of copper-plate engraving. It is of folio size, and the title is as follows: “Compendiosa totius Anatomiæ delineatio ære exarata, per Thomam Geminum.” The ornamental title-page, with the arms of Henry VIII. towards the centre, is engraved on copper, and several anatomical subjects are executed in the same manner. Gemini, who is believed to have been the engraver of those plates, was not a native of this country.VI.105 In a dedication to Henry VIII, he says that in his work he had followed Andrew Vesalius of Brussels; and he further mentions that in the year before he had received orders from the King to have the plates printed off [excudendas]. A second edition, dedicated to Edward VI, appeared in 1553; and a third, dedicated to Queen Elizabeth, in 1559.VI.106 In the last edition the Royal Arms on the title-page are effaced, and the portrait of Queen Elizabeth engraved in their stead. Traces of the former subject are, however, still visible, and the motto, “Dieu et mon Droit,” has been allowed to remain. One of the engravings in this work affords a curious instance of the original plate of copper having been either mended or enlarged by joining another piece to it. Even in the first edition, the zigzag line where the two pieces are joined, and the forms of the little cramps which hold them together, are visible, and in the last they are distinctly apparent.

The earliest portrait engraved on copper, printed singly, in this country, and not as an illustration of a book, is that of Archbishop Parker engraved by Remigius Hogenberg. It is a small print four and a half inches high by three and a half wide. At the corners are the arms of Canterbury, impaled with those of Parker; the archbishop’s arms separately; a plain shield, with a cross and the letters ; and the arms of Archbishop Cranmer. The portrait is engraved in an oval, round the border of which is the following inscription: “Mūdus transit, et cupiscētia ejus. Anno Domini 1572, ætatis suæ Anno 69. Die mensis Augusti sexto.” In an impression, now before me, from the original plate, the date and the archbishop’s age are altered to 1573 and 70, but the marks of the ciphers erased are quite perceptible. The portrait of the archbishop is a half-length; he is seated at a table, on which are a bell, a small coffer, and what appears to be a stamp. A Bible is lying open before him, and on one of the pages is inscribed in very small letters the following passage from the VI. chapter of Micah, verse 8: “Indicabo tibi, o homo, quid sit bonum, et quid Deus requirat a te, utique facere judicium, et diligere misericordiam, et solicitum ambulare cum Deo tuo.” The engraver’s name, “R. Berg f.,” appears at the bottom of the print to the right: a cross line from the R to the B indicates the abbreviation of the surname, which, written at length, was Hogenberg. Caulfield, speaking of this engraving in his Calcographiana, page 4, 1814, says,—“The only impression supposed to be extant is in the library at Lambeth Palace; but within the last two years, Mr. Woodburn, of St. Martin’s Lane, purchased a magnificent collection of portraits, among which was a very fine one of Parker.”

The number of books, containing copper-plate engravings, published in England between 1559 and 1600, is extremely limited; and the following list will perhaps be found to contain one or two more than have been mentioned by preceding writers: 1. Pena and Lobel’s Stirpium Adversaria Nova, folio, 1570,—ornamented title-page, with the arms of England at the top, and a small map towards the bottom:—the ornaments surrounding the map are very beautifully engraved. 2. Archbishop Parker’s Bible, 1568-1572, with the portraits, previously noticed at page 419. 3. Saxton’s Maps, with the portrait of Queen Elizabeth on the title, 1579. 4. Broughton’s Concent of Scripture, 1591,—engraved title, and four other plates. 5. Translation of Ariosto by Sir John Harrington, 1591,—engraved title-page, containing portraits of the author and translator, and forty-six other plates. 6. R. Haydock’s Translation of Lomazzo’s Treatise on Painting and Architecture, Oxford, 1598,—engraved title-page, containing portraits of Lomazzo and Haydock, and several very indifferent plates, chiefly of architecture and figures in outline.

Walpole mentions a plate of the arms of Sir Christopher Hatton on the title-page of the second part of Wagenar’s Mariner’s Mirrour, printed in 1588, and the plates in a work entitled “A True Report of the Newfoundland of Virginia,” all engraved by Theodore de Bry. The first of these works I have not been able to obtain a sight of;VI.107 and the second cannot properly be included in a list of works containing copper-plates published in England previous to 1600;VI.108 for though it appeared in 1591, it was printed at Frankfort. In the reigns of James and Charles I, copper-plate engraving was warmly patronised in England, and several foreign engravers, as in the reign of Elizabeth, were induced to take up their abode in this country. In the first edition of Chambers’ Cyclopedia, it is stated that the art of copper-plate engraving was brought to this country from Antwerp by Speed the historian,—an error which is pointed out by Walpole: the writer it seems had not been aware of any earlier copper-plates printed in England than Speed’s maps, which were chiefly executed by Flemish engravers.

Dr. William Cuningham, whom Walpole describes as an engraver, was a physician practising at Norwich; and his book, entitled The Cosmographical Glasse,VI.109 some of the plates of which are said to have been “engraved by the doctor’s own hand,” was printed at London by John Day in 1559. It contains no plates, properly speaking, for the engravings are all from wood-blocks. At the foot of the ornamental title-page, and in a large bird’s-eye view of Norwich, is the mark I. B. F, which, from something like a tool for engraving, between the B. and F in the original, is most likely that of the engraver. The principal cut is a portrait of the author, a fac-simile of which is given in the opposite page.

It is much more likely that some of those cuts were engraved by the printer of the book, John Day, than by the author, Dr. Cuningham; for the initials I. D. appear on a cut at the end of the book,—a skeleton extended on a tomb, with a tree growing out of it—and also on two or three of the large ornamental letters. John Day, in a book printed by him in 1567, says that the Saxon characters used in it were cut by himself. The cut on page 425 and the three following are specimens of some of the large ornamental letters which occur in the Cosmographical Glasse. The first, the letter D, inclosing the arms of Lord Robert Dudley, afterwards Earl of Leicester, to whom the work is dedicated. The second, the letter A, Silenus on an ass, accompanied by satyrs; the mark, a C with a small I within the curve, is perceived near the bottom, to the right.VI.110 The third, the letter I, with a military commander taking the angles between three churches; and the mark I. D. at the bottom to the left. The fourth, the letter T, a ship with a naked figure as pilot, preceded by Neptune on a dolphin. A mark, H, is perceived in the right-hand corner, at the bottom.

Of all the books printed in England in the reigns of Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, those from the press of John Day generally contain the best executed wood-cuts; and even though he might not be the engraver of the cuts which contain his initials, yet it cannot be doubted that he possessed a much better taste in such matters than any other English printer of his age. Some of the large ornamental letters in works printed by him are much superior to anything of the kind that had previously appeared in England. In the “Booke of Christian Prayers” printed by John Daye 1569, which goes by the name of “Queen Elizabeth’s Prayer Book,” there is a portrait of her Majesty, kneeling upon a superb cushion, with elevated hands, in prayer, of which the following is a fac-simile. The book is decorated with wood-cut borders of considerable spirit and beauty, representing, among other things, some of the subjects of Holbein’s Dance of Death.

Our next cut is a copy, slightly reduced, of a large letter, C, at the commencement of the dedication of Fox’s Acts and Monuments to Queen Elizabeth, in the edition printed by Day in 1576. The Queen, appearing more juvenile than she is usually represented, is seen seated on a throne, attended by three persons, supposed to be intended for one of her council, John Day, the printer, and John Fox, the author of the work. A cherub, with an immense cornucopia over his shoulder, holds a rose and a lily in one hand, and with the other supports the arms of England; while underneath a representation of the Pope is introduced, holding in his hands the broken keys.VI.111

Though it be beyond the plan of the present work to trace the progress of the various kinds of large ornamental letters engraved on wood that have been from time to time introduced by the principal German, French, Italian, and English printers from the invention of typography, it may not be unnecessary to say a few words on this subject. In the earliest works of the German printers, as the type was a close imitation of the handwriting of the period, as used in Bibles and Missals, the large ornamental letters occasionally introduced are distinguished by their flourishes and grotesque work extending on the margin both above and below the body of the letter, as is frequently seen in illumined manuscripts of the period. Large initial letters of this kind are not unfrequent in early French works; but are comparatively scarce in books printed in England, where a letter, engraved on a square block, appearing, with the ornaments, white on a black ground, was adopted shortly after the introduction of printing by Caxton.VI.112 As the capitals of the Roman character used in Italy did not admit of the flourishes which accorded so well with the curves of Gothic or German capitals, the printers of that country, towards the end of the fifteenth century, began to introduce flowers, figures of men, birds, and quadrupeds, as back-grounds to their large initial letters. Between 1520 and 1530 this mode of ornamenting their large Roman letters was in great repute with the printers of Basle, Geneva, and Zurich, and to this taste we owe the small alphabet of the Dance of Death. Subsequently the Italian wood engravers, employed by the printers, carried this style of ornament a step further by introducing landscapes as well as figures to form a back-ground to the letter. The following specimen of letter thus ornamented is from a work printed by Giolito at Venice about 1550. The large capitals, in Cuningham’s Cosmographical Glasse, were doubtless suggested by Italian letters in the same taste.

The borders which appear in the title-pages of Italian books of this period, and more especially in those printed at Venice, frequently display considerable excellence both in design and execution. They are generally much lighter and more varied in design than the borders in German books; and cross-hatching, which is seldom seen in Italian wood-cuts executed previous to 1520, is so frequently introduced that it would seem that this mode of producing a certain effect—which might often have been accomplished by simpler means—was then considered as a proof of the engraver’s talent. Some of the Italian printers’ marks and devices, on the title-page, or at the end of a work, are drawn and engraved with great spirit. The following devices occur in a folio edition of Dante—known to bibliographers as the cat edition—published by the brothers Sessa, at Venice, in 1578. The smaller cut—with ornamental work on each side, occupying nearly the width of a page, but omitted in the copy—is several times repeated; the larger—where Grimalkin “sits like an eastern monarch upon his throne”VI.113—forms the tail-piece at the end of the volume.

In the latter part of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century, an Italian artist named Andrea Andreani executed a considerable number of chiaro-scuros on wood. He was born at Mantua in 1540, and one of his earliest and largest works in this style is dated 1586. The subject is the History of Abraham, from the pavement of the cathedral of Siena;VI.114 the first compartment consists of twelve pieces, printed in three colours, forming, when joined together, a large composition about five feet six inches wide by about two feet six inches high. The second compartment, Moses breaking the Tables of the Law, is not properly a chiaro-scuro, but a large wood-cut, consisting of several pieces, printed in ink in the usual manner. It is about six feet wide by about four feet high. Another large work of Andreani’s is the Triumphs of Julius Cæsar, from the designs of Andrea Mantegna, dedicated to Vincentius Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, and published in a folio volume in 1598. Andreani having obtained the blocks of several of the chiaro-scuros executed by Ugo da Carpi, Antonio da Trente, Nicholas da Vincenza, and others, reprinted them with the addition of his own mark; and from this circumstance he frequently obtains the credit of having engraved many pieces which were really executed by his predecessors and superiors in the art. The chiaro-scuros which he reprinted are generally superior to those pieces which were engraved by himself from original designs, and in the execution of which he had to depend on his own judgment and taste. He continued to engrave in this manner till he was upwards of seventy years old, for there are one or two subjects by him dated 1612. Bartsch says that he died in 1623, but observes that some writers place his death in 1626.

Henry Goltzius, a painter and engraver, born in 1558, near Venloo, in Flanders, executed several chiaro-scuros, chiefly from his own designs. The most of them are from three blocks; and among the best executed are Hercules and Cacus, and four separate pieces representing the four elements. Like most of the other productions of this artist, whether paintings or copper-plate engravings, his chiaro-scuros are designed with great spirit, though the action of the figures is frequently extravagant. He imitated Michael Angelo, but not with success; he too frequently mistakes violence of action for the expression of intellectual grandeur, and displays the “contortions of the pythoness without her inspiration.” The cut in the opposite page is a reduced copy of the subject intended to represent the element of water. In the original the impression is from four blocks; one with the outlines and shaded parts black, as in the copy here given; the other three communicating different tints of sepia. Henry Goltzius died in 1617. His mark, an H combined with a G, is seen at the bottom of the cut.

The cuts contained in a work on ancient and modern costume, printed at Venice in 1590,VI.115 are frequently described as having been drawn by Titian and engraved by his brother, Cesare Vecellio. That this person might have been a relation of Titian, whose family name was Vecelli, is not unlikely, but it is highly improbable that he was his brother; for Titian died in 1576, aged ninety-nine, and the dedication of the work to Pietro Montalbano by Cesare Vecellio is dated October, 1589. In the title it is stated that the costumes in question were “done”—fatti—by Vecellio himself; but whether this word relates to the drawing or the engraving, or to both, it would be exceedingly difficult to ascertain. Those cuts have the appearance of having been drawn on the block with pen-and-ink; and some of the best display so much “character” that they look like portraits of individuals freely sketched by the hand of a master. It was first stated in an edition of the work, printed in 1664, that the cuts were drawn by Titian and engraved by Cesare Vecellio, his brother. The improbable assertion was merely a bookseller’s trick to attract purchasers. It has also been frequently asserted, that the cuts in Vesalius’s Anatomy, printed at Basle in 1548, were drawn by Titian. The Abbé Morelli has, however, shown that they were not drawn by him, but by John Calcar, a Flemish painter, who had been one of his pupils.

Papillon, who in his desire to dignify his art claims almost every eminent painter as a wood engraver, pretends that Titian executed several large cuts from his own designs. He says that Titian began to engrave on wood when he was twenty-five years old [in 1502], and he mentions a cut of the Virgin and the infant Christ, with other figures,—probably intended to represent the marriage of St. Catherine,—as one of the earliest specimens of his talents as a wood engraver. Papillon also informs us that Titian engraved a large cut of the Triumph of Christ, or of Faith, in 1508; and in another part of his work he describes several others as engraved by Titian himself.

Several of the cuts after designs by Titian, but which were certainly not of his engraving, are of large size, and executed in a free, coarse manner, as if they were rather intended to paste against a wall than to be inserted in a portfolio. One of the largest is the destruction of Pharaoh and his host; it consists of several pieces, which, when united, form a complete subject about four and a half feet wide by about three feet high. A dog, which the painter has introduced in a peculiar attitude,VI.116 gives to the whole the air of burlesque. The person by whom it was engraved styles himself “depintore,” a word perhaps intended to imply that he was a brother of the guild, or society of painter-stainers, stencillers, and wood engravers.VI.117 His name, with the date, is engraved thus at the bottom of the cut, which is one of those which Papillon says were executed by Titian himself: “In Venetia p. dominico dalle greche depintore venetiano. M.DXLIX.”

The following is a reduced copy of a cut designed by Titian, and said to have been intended by him to ridicule those painters who, not being able to succeed in colouring, recommended ancient sculptures, on account of the correctness of the forms, as most deserving of a painter’s diligent study. The subject is a caricature of the Laocoon; and the professed admirers of antiquity, who, above all, insisted on correct drawing, and thought slightly of colouring, are represented by the old ape wanting a tail, seen in the distance, attended by three of her young ones. The original cut is fifteen inches and seven-eighths wide by ten inches and a half high. It is coarsely engraved, and contains neither name nor date.VI.118 There are several chiaro-scuros after designs by Titian, engraved by Boldrini, Andreani, and others.

Wood engraving in Germany at the close of the sixteenth century appears to have greatly declined; the old race of artists who furnished designs for the wood engraver had become extinct, and their places were not supplied by others. The more expensive works were now illustrated with copper-plates; and the wood-cuts which appeared in the commoner kinds of books were in general very indifferent both in design and execution. As Germany was the country in which wood engraving was first encouraged and fostered, so was it also the country in which the art earliest declined and subsequently became most thoroughly neglected. In France and Italy, wood engraving had also by this time experienced a considerable decline, but not to such an extent as in Germany.

Between 1590 and 1610, when the art was rapidly declining in other countries, the wood-cuts which are to be met with in English books are generally better executed than at any preceding period. Engraved title-pages were then frequent, and several of them are executed with considerable skill. A large wood-cut, with the date 1607, in particular displays great merit both in design and engraving. The following is a reduced copy of an impression preserved in the Print Room of the British Museum.VI.119 The original, exclusive of the verses, and the ornaments at each side of them, is about fourteen inches high by about fourteen and a half wide.

Text within illustration

The following are the six concluding lines of the sonnet underneath the cut: in the original they are printed in smaller type than the others, and in a double column. In the copy they are merely indicated to show the relative size of the type to that of the first eight lines.

And (thus) to these to stand still open wide,

He neither wrings with Wrongs nor racks his Rents;

But saves the charge of wanton Waste & Pride:

For, Thrift’s right Fuel of Magnificence:

As Protean Fashions of new Prodigalitie
Have quight worn out all ancient Hospitalitie.

The flowers at each side of the verses are, in the original, very coarsely executed. They are merely printers’ ornaments, engraved on separate pieces of wood, and not on the same block as the cut above them.

From one or two worm-holes, which have been in the block when it was printed in 1607, and which are apparent in the impression, it seems probable that this cut had been engraved some time previous to the date which appears at the bottom. As it is, however, very likely that the block was of pear-tree, which is extremely liable to the attacks of the worm, it is possible that it might have been injured in this manner within a year or two of its being finished. The bold, cleanly cut lines of the original are very much like the work of Christopher Jegher, one of the best wood engravers of that period. He resided at Antwerp, but he is said to have been born in Germany in 1578. His best works are several large cuts which he engraved for Rubens from drawings made on the block by Rubens himself, who appears to have originally published them on his own account. From the manner in which the great painter’s name is introduced at the bottom of each—“P. P. Rub. delin. & excud.”—it would appear that they were both designed and printed by him. Impressions of those cuts sometimes occur with a tint printed over them, in sepia, from a second block, in the manner of chiaro-scuros. We here give a reduced copy of one of the largest.VI.120

As profit could not have been Rubens’s motive for having these cuts engraved, it is not unlikely that his object was to compare his designs when executed in this manner with those of the older German masters—Durer, Burgmair, and Cranach. The best, however, differ considerably in the manner of their execution from the best old German wood-cuts, for the lines are too uniform and display too much of art; in looking at those which consist chiefly of figures, attention is first called to the means by which an effect is produced, rather than to the effect itself in connexion with the entire subject. This objection applies most forcibly to the cut which represents the Virgin crowned by the Almighty and Jesus Christ. The design displays much of Rubens’s grandeur, with not less of his extravagance in the attitude of the figures; but he seems to have studied less the effect of the whole, than to have endeavoured to express certain parts by a peculiar arrangement of lines und hatchings. The subject does not produce that feeling, which it is the great object of art to excite, in consequence of the attention being diverted from the contemplation of the whole to the means by which it is executed. In such impressions, however, as have a tint of sepia printed over them from a second block, the hardness of the lines and heaviness in the hatchings are less apparent. The following is a reduced copy of another of those cuts, which, for the beautiful simplicity of the design, is perhaps the most pleasing of the whole. The execution of the original is, however, coarse, a defect which is not so apparent in the copy in consequence of the small scale on which it is engraved.VI.121

Cornelius van Sichem,VI.122 a contemporary of Christopher Jegher, appears to have been one of the most industrious wood engravers of his time. He was a native of Holland, and is supposed to have resided at Amsterdam. One of his best cuts is a large head, engraved from a drawing by Henry Goltzius, with the date 1607. This and several other large cuts, which he probably engraved about the same time, are so much superior to the smaller cuts, with his mark, which appear in books, that I am inclined to think that most of the latter must have been engraved by his pupils; they are indeed so numerous that it seems almost impossible that he should have engraved them all himself. He seems at first to have worked for fame, and afterwards to have turned a manufacturer of wood-cuts for money. The cuts with his mark contained in a quarto book entitled “Bibels Tresoor,” printed at Amsterdam in 1646, by no means afford an idea of his ability as a wood-engraver; many of them are wretched copies of old wood-cuts designed by Albert Durer and other old masters, discreditable alike to the engraver and to the originals. The following is a slightly reduced copy of a cut, engraved by Van Sichem, from a design by Henry Goltzius. The original, which was probably engraved about 1607, may be considered as an average specimen of the engraver’s talents; it is not so well executed as some of his best large cuts, while it is much superior to the greater number of the small cuts which contain his mark. The subject is Judith with the head of Holofernes.

About 1625 a French wood engraver of the name of Businck executed several chiaro-scuros chiefly from designs by Lalleman and Bloemart; and between 1630 and 1647, Bartolomeo Coriolano, who sometimes styles himself “Romanus Eques,” practised the same art at Bologna with great reputation.VI.123 In an edition of Hubert Goltzius’s Lives of the Roman Emperors, enlarged by Casper Gevartius, folio, printed at Antwerp in 1645, the portraits, in the manner of chiaro-scuros, from two blocks, are executed with great spirit. The name of the engraver is not mentioned, but from the mark I. C. I. on a tail-piece at the end of the work, I am inclined to think that he was the same person who engraved the cuts in a little book of devotion, first printed in Latin, French, Spanish, and Flemish, at Antwerp, about 1646.VI.124 The number of cuts in this little work is forty, and most of them contain the mark of the designer, , as well as that of the engraver. From the drawing of these cuts it would seem that the designer was either a pupil of Rubens, or had closely copied his manner. In Professor Christ’s Dictionary of Monograms the mark is ascribed to Andrea Salmincio, “an engraver and pupil of Valesius.” Papillon, Traité de la Gravure en Bois, tom. i. p. 274, adopting Professor Christ’s explanation of the mark, mentions “Andrea Salmincio” as the designer of those cuts; but in page 461 of the same volume, he says, referring to his former statement, that he had since been informed by M. Eisen, a painter, and a native of Valenciennes, that they were designed by “a famous Flemish painter and engraver on wood, named Sallarte, a contemporary of Rubens, and who is supposed to have assisted the latter in some of his great works.” Those cuts may perhaps be considered as the last series that were expressly designed by an artist of talent in the seventeenth century, for the purpose of being engraved on wood. The style in which they are executed is not worthy of the designs, though, considering the period, they are not without merit. The engraver appears to have been extremely partial to a kind of cross-hatching, in which the interstices are more like squares than acute-angled lozenges, thus giving to the figures and draperies a hard and unpliable appearance.

Though several English wood engravings of the reigns of James I. and Charles I. have evidently been executed by professed wood engravers, yet a great proportion of those contained in English books and pamphlets printed in this country during the seventeenth century appear to have been the work of persons who had not learnt and did not regularly practise the art. The cuts of those occasional wood engravers, who were most likely printers, are as rude in design as they are coarse in execution, frequently displaying something like the fac-simile of a boy’s drawing in his first attempts to sketch “the human form divine.” Such cuts, evidently executed on the spur of the moment, are of frequent occurrence in tracts and pamphlets published during the time of the war between Charles I. and the Parliament. Evelyn, in the first edition of his Sculptura, published in 1662, thus mentions Switzer as a wood engraver of that period: “We have likewise Switzer for cutting in wood, the son of a fatherVI.125 who sufficiently discovered his dexterity in the Herbals set forth by Mr. Parkinson, Lobel, and divers other works.” The cuts of plants in the work, usually called Lobel’s Botany, were most certainly not engraved by the elder Switzer; they are much superior to the cuts of the same kind which are undoubtedly of his engraving, and the work in which they first appeared was printed in London in 1571. He engraved the cuts in Speed’s History of Britain, folio, 1611; and, though the author calls him “the most exquisite and curious hand of that age,” they abundantly testify that he was a very ordinary workman. They are executed in a meagre, spiritless manner; the best are those which represent the portraitures of the ancient Britons. The cuts in Parkinson’s Paradisus Terrestris, folio, 1629, were also undoubtedly engraved by him; his name, “A. Switzer,” with a graver underneath, occurs at the bottom of the very indifferent cut which forms the title-page. The portrait of the author is scarcely superior to the title-page; and the cuts of plants are the most worthless that are to be found in any work of the kind. It is not unlikely that the cuts in Topsell’s History of Four-footed Beasts, 1607, and in Moffet’s Theatre of Insects, 1634, were also engraved by the elder Switzer. The taste for wood-cuts must have been low indeed when such an engraver was considered one of the best of his age. Of the younger Switzer’s abilities I have had no means of judging, never having seen a single cut which was known to be of his engraving.

Between 1650 and 1700 wood engraving, as a means of multiplying the designs of eminent artists, either as illustrations of books or as separate cuts, may be considered as having reached its lowest ebb. A few tolerably well executed cuts of ornaments are occasionally to be found in Italian, French, and Dutch books of this period; but though they sufficiently attest that the race of workmen was not wholly extinct, they also afford ample proof that artists like those of former times had ceased to furnish designs for the wood engraver. The art of design was then, however, in a languishing condition throughout Europe; and even supposing that wood engraving had been as much in fashion as copper-plate printing then was for the purpose of illustrating books, it would be vain to expect in wood-cuts that excellence of composition and drawing which is not to be found in the works of the best painters of the time. Wood engravings to please must possess some merit in the design—must show some trait of feeling for his subject on the part of the designer. Deficiency in this respect can never be compensated by dexterity of execution: in anything that approaches to fine art, mere workmanship, the result of laborious application, can never atone for want of mind. The man who drew a portrait of Queen Anne with a pen, and wrote the Psalms in the lines of the face, and in the curls of the hair, in characters so small that it required a glass to read them, does not rank with a Vandyke or a Reynolds, nor even with a Lely or a Kneller. At the period of the greatest decline of wood engraving, the want that was felt was not of working engravers to execute cuts, but of talented artists to design them.

The principal French wood engravers about the end of the seventeenth century were: Peter Le Sueur,—born in 1636, died 1716; his two sons, Peter and Vincent; John Papillon the elder—who died in 1710; and his son, of the same name, who was born in 1661, and died in 1723. Though John Michael Papillon, son of John Papillon the younger, and author of the Traité de la Gravure en Bois, speaks highly of the talents of the aforesaid members of the families of Le Sueur and Papillon as wood engravers, yet, from his account of their productions, it would seem that they were chiefly employed in engraving subjects which scarcely allowed of any display of excellence either in design or execution. Their fine works were ornamental letters, flowered vignettes, and tail-pieces for the booksellers; while their staple productions appear to have been blocks for card-makers and paper-stainers, with patterns for embroiderers, lace-workers, and ribbon-manufacturers. In the succeeding century, J. M. Papillon, grandson of the first John Papillon, and Nicholas le Sueur, grandson of the elder Peter Le Sueur, fully supported the character of their respective families as wood engravers. Some account of their works will be given in the proper place.

The tail-piece at the conclusion of this chapter will afford some idea of the primitive style of the wood-cuts previously mentioned as occurring in tracts and pamphlets printed in England during the civil war. It is a fac-simile of a cut which originally appeared on the title-page to the first known edition of Robin Hood’s Garland, printed in 1670.VI.126 The original block is now in the possession of Mr. William Garret of Newcastle-on-Tyne, and was frequently used by the late Mr. George Angus of that town, as it had also been by his predecessors in the same business, to decorate the title-pages of the penny histories and garlands, which they supplied in such abundance for the winter-evenings’ entertainment of the good folks of Northumberland and the “Bishoprick.” Mr. Douce, in the second volume of his Illustrations of Shakspeare, also gives a fac-simile of this cut; and the following is his explanation of the subject.

“Mr. Ritson has taken notice of an old wooden cut ‘preserved on the title-page of a penny history (Adam Bell, &c.), printed at Newcastle in 1772,’ and which represents, in his opinion, a morris dance, consisting of the following personages: 1. A bishop. 2. Robin Hood. 3. The potter or beggar. 4. Little John. 5. Friar Tuck. 6. Maid Marian. He remarks that the whole is too rude to merit a copy, a position that is not meant to be controverted; but it is necessary to introduce the cut in this place for the purpose of correcting an error into which the above ingenious writer has fallen. It is proper to mention that it originally appeared on the title-page to the first known edition of Robin Hood’s Garland, printed in 1670, 18mo. Now, this cut is certainly not the representation of a morris dance, but merely of the principal characters belonging to the Garland. These are Robin Hood, Little John, Queen Catherine, the bishop, the curtal frier, (not Tuck,) and the beggar. Even though it were admitted that Maid Marian and Friar Tuck were intended to be given, it could not be maintained that either the bishop or the beggar made part of a morris.”

To give more specimens of wood engraving when in its lowest state of declension has not been thought necessary; for even at this period it would not be difficult to produce cuts which in point of mere execution are superior to many which appeared when the art was at its height. It is sufficient to have stated that, towards the end of the seventeenth century, wood engraving for the higher purposes of the art had sunk into utter neglect; that the best productions of the regular wood engravers of the period mostly consist of unmeaning ornaments which neither excite feeling nor suggest a thought; and that the wood-cuts which appear to have been engraved by persons not instructed in the business partake generally of the character of the following tail-piece. Having now brought down the history of the art of wood engraving to the end of the seventeenth century, its revival in the eighteenth, with some account of the works of Thomas Bewick and the principal English wood engravers of his time, will form the subject of the next chapter.