note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see 29928-h.htm or 29928-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/29928/29928-h/29928-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/29928/29928-h.zip) contributions from the museum of history and technology: paper 11 why bewick succeeded: a note in the history of wood engraving by jacob kainen the contemporary view of bewick 186 low status of the woodcut 188 woodcut and wood engraving 189 wood engraving and the stereotype 197 why bewick succeeded: _by jacob kainen_ _a note in the history of wood engraving_ _thomas bewick has been acclaimed as the pioneer of modern wood engraving whose genius brought this popular medium to prominence. this study shows that certain technological developments prepared a path for bewick and helped give his work its unique character._ the author: _jacob kainen is curator of graphic arts, museum of history and technology, in the smithsonian institution's united states national museum._ no other artist has approached thomas bewick (1753-1828) as the chronicler of english rustic life. the little wood engravings which he turned out in such great number were records of typical scenes and episodes, but the artist could also give them social and moral overtones. such an approach has attracted numerous admirers who have held him in esteem as an undoubted homespun genius. the fact that he had no formal training as a wood engraver, and actually never had a lesson in drawing, made his native inspiration seem all the more authentic. the contemporary view of bewick after 1790, when his _a general history of quadrupeds_ appeared with its vivid animals and its humorous and mordant tailpiece vignettes, he was hailed in terms that have hardly been matched for adulation. certainly no mere book illustrator ever received equal acclaim. he was pronounced a great artist, a great man, an outstanding moralist and reformer, and the master of a new pictorial method. this flood of eulogy rose increasingly during his lifetime and continued throughout the remainder of the 19th century. it came from literary men and women who saw him as the artist of the common man; from the pious who recognized him as a commentator on the vanities and hardships of life (but who sometimes deplored the frankness of his subjects); from bibliophiles who welcomed him as a revolutionary illustrator; and from fellow wood engravers for whom he was the indispensable trail blazer. during the initial wave of bewick appreciation, the usually sober wordsworth wrote in the 1805 edition of _lyrical ballads_:[1] o now that the genius of bewick were mine, and the skill which he learned on the banks of the tyne! then the muses might deal with me just as they chose, for i'd take my last leave both of verse and of prose. what feats would i work with my magical hand! book learning and books would be banished the land. if art critics as a class were the most conservative in their estimates of his ability, it was one of the most eminent, john ruskin, whose praise went to most extravagant lengths. bewick, he asserted, as late as 1890,[2] "... without training, was holbein's equal ... in this frame are set together a drawing by hans holbein, and one by thomas bewick. i know which is most scholarly; but i do _not_ know which is best." linking bewick with botticelli as a draughtsman, he added:[3] "i know no drawing so subtle as bewick's since the fifteenth century, except holbein's and turner's." and as a typical example of popular appreciation, the following, from the june 1828 issue of _blackwood's magazine_, appearing a few months before bewick's death, should suffice: have we forgotten, in our hurried and imperfect enumeration of wise worthies,--have we forgotten "_the genius that dwells on the banks of the tyne_," the matchless, inimitable bewick? no. his books lie in our parlour, dining-room, drawing-room, study-table, and are never out of place or time. happy old man! the delight of childhood, manhood, decaying age!--a moral in every tail-piece--a sermon in every vignette. this acclaim came to bewick not only because his subjects had a homely honesty, but also, although not generally taken into account, because of the brilliance and clarity with which they were printed. compared with the wood engravings of his predecessors, his were more detailed and resonant in black and white, and accordingly seemed miraculous and unprecedented. he could engrave finer lines and achieve better impressions in the press because of improvements in technology which will be discussed later, but for a century the convincing qualities of this new technique in combination with his subject matter led admirers to believe that he was an artist of great stature. [1] william wordsworth, _lyrical ballads_, london, 1805, vol. 1. p. 199. [2] john ruskin, _ariadne florentina_, london, 1890, pp. 98, 99. [3] _ibid._, p. 246. later, more mature judgment has made it plain that his contributions as a craftsman outrank his worth as an artist. he was no holbein, no botticelli--it is absurd to think of him in such terms--but he did develop a fresh method of handling wood engraving. because of this he represents a turning point in the development of this medium which led to its rise as the great popular vehicle for illustration in the 19th century. in his hands wood engraving underwent a special transformation; it became a means for rendering textures and tonal values. earlier work on wood could not do this; it could manage only a rudimentary suggestion of tones. the refinements that followed, noticeable in the highly finished products of the later 19th century, came as a direct and natural consequence of bewick's contributions to the art. linton[4] and a few others object to the general claim that bewick was the reviver or founder of modern wood engraving, not only because the art was practiced earlier, if almost anonymously, and had never really died out, but also because his bold cuts had little in common with their technician's concern with infinite manipulation of surface tones, a feature of later work. but this misses the main point--that bewick had taken the first actual steps in the new direction. [4] william linton, _the masters of wood engraving_, london, 1889, p. 133. [illustration: figure 1.--woodcutting procedure, showing method of cutting with the knife on the plank grain, from jean papillon's _traité de la gravure en bois_, 1766.] unquestionably he gave the medium a new purpose, even though it was not generally adopted until after 1830. through his pupils, his unrelenting industry, and his enormous influence he fathered a pictorial activity that brought a vastly increased quantity of illustrations to the public. periodical literature, spurred by accompanying pictures that could be cheaply made, quickly printed, and dramatically pointed, became a livelier force in education. textbooks, trade journals, dictionaries, and other publications could more effectively teach or describe; scientific journals could include in the body of text neat and accurate pictures to enliven the pages and illustrate the equipment and procedures described. articles on travel could now have convincingly realistic renditions of architectural landmarks and of foreign sights, customs, personages, and views. the wood engraving, in short, made possible the modern illustrated publication because, unlike copper plate engraving or etching, it could be quickly set up with printed matter. its use, therefore, multiplied increasingly until just before 1900, when it was superseded for these purposes by the photomechanical halftone. but while bewick was the prime mover in this revolutionary change, little attention has been given to the important technological development that cleared the way for him. without it he could not have emerged so startlingly; without it there would have been no modern wood engraving. it is not captious to point out the purely industrial basis for his coming to prominence. even had he been a greater artist, a study of the technical means at hand would have validity in showing the interrelation of industry and art although, of course, the aesthetic contribution would stand by itself. but in bewick's case the aesthetic level is not particularly high. good as his art was, it wore an everyday aspect: he did not give it that additional expressive turn found in the work of greater artists. it should not be surprising, then, that his work was not inimitable. it is well-known that his pupils made many of the cuts attributed to him, making the original drawings and engraving in his style so well that the results form almost one indistinguishable body of work. the pupils were competent but not gifted, yet they could turn out wood engravings not inferior to bewick's own. and so we find that such capable technicians as nesbit, clennell, robinson, hole, the johnsons, harvey, and others all contributed to the bewick cult. linton, who worshipped him as an artist but found him primitive as a technician, commented:[5] "widely praised by a crowd of unknowing connoisseurs and undiscriminating collectors, we have yet, half a century after his death, to point out how much of what is attributed to him is really by his hand." chatto,[6] who obtained his information from at least one bewick pupil, says that many of the best tailpieces in the _history of british birds_ were drawn by robert johnson, and that "the greater number of those contained in the second volume were engraved by clennell." granted that the outlook and the engraving style were bewick's, and that these were notable contributions, the fact that the results were so close to his own points more to an effective method of illustration than to the outpourings of genius. [5] _ibid._ low status of the woodcut bewick's training could not have been less promising. apprenticed to ralph beilby at the age of fourteen, he says of his master:[7] ... the work-place was filled with the coarsest kind of steel-stamps, pipe moulds, bottle moulds, brass clock faces, door plates, coffin plates, bookbinders letters and stamps, steel, silver and gold seals, mourning rings, &c. he also undertook the engraving of arms, crests and cyphers, on silver, and every kind of job from the silversmiths; also engraving bills of exchange, bank notes, invoices, account heads, and cards.... the higher department of engraving, such as landscapes or historical plates, i dare say, was hardly thought of by my master.... a little engraving on wood was also done, but bewick tells us that his master was uncomfortable in this field and almost always turned it over to him. his training, obviously, was of a rough and ready sort, based upon serviceable but routine engraving on metal. there was no study of drawing, composition, or any of the refinements that could be learned from a master who had a knowledge of art. whatever bewick had of the finer points of drawing and design he must have picked up by himself. [6] william chatto, and john jackson, _a treatise on wood engraving_, london, 1861 (1st ed. 1839), pp. 496-498. [7] thomas bewick, _memoir of thomas bewick_, new york, 1925 (1st ed. london, 1862), pp. 50, 51. when he completed his apprenticeship in 1774 at the age of twenty-one, the art of engraving and cutting on wood was just beginning to show signs of life after more than a century and a half of occupying the lowest position in the graphic arts. since it could not produce a full gamut of tones in the gray register, which could be managed brilliantly by the copper plate media--line engraving, etching, mezzotint and aquatint--it was confined to ruder and less exacting uses, such as ornamental headbands and tailpieces for printers and as illustrations for cheap popular broadsides. when good illustrations were needed in books and periodicals, copper plate work was almost invariably used, despite the fact that it was more costly, was much slower in execution and printing, and had to be bound in with text in a separate operation. but while the society of arts had begun to offer prizes for engraving or cutting on wood (bewick received such a prize in 1775) the medium was still moribund. dobson[8] described its status as follows: during the earlier part of the eighteenth century engraving on wood can scarcely be said to have flourished in england. it existed--so much may be admitted--but it existed without recognition or importance. in the useful little _état des arts en angleterre_, published in 1755 by roquet the enameller,--a treatise so catholic in its scope that it included both cookery and medicine,--there is no reference to the art of wood-engraving. in the _artist's assistant_, to take another book which might be expected to afford some information, even in the fifth edition of 1788, the subject finds no record, even though engraving on metal, etching, mezzotinto-scraping--to say nothing of "painting on silks, sattins, etc." are treated with sufficient detail. turning from these authorities to the actual woodcuts of the period, it must be admitted that the survey is not encouraging. [illustration: figure 2.--wood engraving procedure, showing manipulation of the burin, from chatto and jackson, _a treatise on wood engraving_, 1861. (see footnote 6.)] earlier, among other critics of the deficiencies of the woodcut, horace walpole[9] had remarked: i have said, and for two reasons, shall say little of wooden cuts; that art never was executed with any perfection in england; engraving on metal was a final improvement of the art, and supplied the defects of cuttings in wood. the ancient wooden cuts were certainly carried to a great heighth, but that was the merit of the masters, not of the method. [8] austin dobson, _thomas bewick and his pupils_, boston, 1884, pp. 1, 2. [9] horace walpole, _anecdotes of painting in england. a catalogue of engravers who have been born, or resided in england. digested from the manuscript of mr. george vertue_ ... london, 1782 (1st ed. 1762), p. 4. woodcut and wood engraving it is necessary, before continuing, to distinguish clearly between the woodcut and the wood engraving, not only because early writers used these terms interchangeably, but also to determine exactly what bewick contributed technically. the woodcut began with a drawing in pen-and-ink on the plank surface of a smooth-grained wood such as pear, serviceberry, or box. the woodcutter, using knife, gouges, and chisels, then lowered the wood surrounding the lines to allow the original drawing, unaltered, to be isolated in relief (see fig. 1). thus the block, when inked and printed, produced facsimile impressions of the drawing in black lines on white paper. usually an accomplished artist made the drawing, whereas only a skilled craftsman was needed to do the cutting; very few cutters were also capable of making their own drawings. the wood engraving, on the other hand, started with a section of dense wood of a uniform texture, usually box or maple, and with the end-grain rather than the plank as surface. for larger engravings a number of sections were mortised together. the drawing was made on the block, not in pen-and-ink although this could be done (certain types of wood engraving reproduced pen drawings) but in gray washes with a full range of tones. the engraver, using a burin similar to that employed in copper plate work, then ploughed out wood in delicate ribbons (see fig. 2). since the surface was to receive ink, the procedure moved from black to white: the more lines taken away, the lighter the tones would appear, and, conversely, where fewest or finest lines were removed the tones would be the darkest. in the finished print the unworked surface printed black while each of the engraved lines showed as white. it was the "white line" that gave wood engraving its special quality. on the smoother end-grain it could be manipulated with extreme fineness, an impossibility with the plank side, which would tear slightly or "feather" when the burin was moved across the grain. tones and textures approaching the scale of copper plate engraving could be created, except, of course, that the lines were white and the impressions not so brilliant. but since grays were achieved by the visual synthesis of black ink and white paper, it mattered little whether the engraved lines were black or white so long as the desired tones could be produced. [illustration: figure 3.--late 15th-century white-line engraving "the crowning of the virgin," in the "dotted manner" executed on metal for relief printing. parts were hand colored.] for purposes of realism, this was an enormous improvement over the old black-line woodcut. natural tones and textures could be imitated. the engraver was no longer a mere mechanical craftsman cutting around existing lines; special skill was needed to translate tones in terms of white lines of varying thickness and spacing. the opportunity also existed for each engraver to work his own tones in his own manner, to develop a personal system. in short, the medium served the same purpose as copper plate line engraving, with the added virtue that it could be printed together with type in one impression. if it failed artistically to measure up to line engraving or to plank woodcut, this was not the fault of the process but of the popular reproductive ends which it almost invariably served. actually, white-line engraving for relief printing dates from the 15th century. the most conspicuous early examples are the so-called "dotted prints" or "gravures en manière criblée," in which the designs were brought out by dots punched in the plates, and by occasional engraved lines (see fig. 3). until koehler's[10] study made this fact plain, 19th-century critics could hardly believe that these were merely white-line metal relief prints, inked on the surface like woodcuts. but a number of other examples of the same period exist which were also made directly on copper or type metal--the method, although rudimentary, being similar in intent to 19th-century wood engraving. one of these examples (fig. 4), in the collection of the u. s. national museum, is typical. this was not simply an ordinary line engraving printed in relief rather than in the usual way; the management of the lights shows that it was planned as a white-line engraving. the reason for this treatment, obviously, was to permit the picture and the type to be printed in one operation. the well-known wood engravings of soldiers with standards, executed by urs graf in the early 1500's, are probably the only white-line prints in this medium by an accomplished artist until the 18th century. but these are mainly in outline, with little attempt to achieve tones. no advantage was gained by having the lines white rather than black other than an engaging roughness in spots: the prints were simply whimsical excursions by an inventive artist. [10] sylvester r. koehler, "white-line engraving for relief-printing in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries," in _annual report of the ... smithsonian institution ... for the year ending june 30, 1890, report of the u. s. national museum_, washington, 1892, pp. 385-389. [illustration: figure 4.--white-line engraving on metal for relief printing, "the franciscan, pelbart of temesvar, studying in a garden," from "_pomerium quadragesimale, fratris pelbarti ordinis sancti francisci_," augsburg, 1502.] relief engraving on type metal and end-grain wood really got under way as a consistent process in england at the beginning of the 18th century. chatto[11] gives this date as conjecture, without actual evidence, but a first-hand account can be found in the rare and little-known book, published in 1752, in which the combination of anonymous authorship and a misleading title obscured the fact that it is a digest of john baptist jackson's manuscript journal. this eminent woodcutter, who was born about 1700 and worked in england during the early years of the century, must be considered an important and reliable witness. the unknown editor paraphrases jackson on the subject of engraving for relief purposes:[12] ... i shall give a brief account of the state of cutting on wood in _england_ for the type press before he [jackson] went to _france_ in 1725. in the beginning of this century a remarkable blow was given to all cutters on wood, by an invention of engraving on the same sort of metal which types are cast with. the celebrated mr. _kirkhal_, an able engraver on copper, is said to be the first who performed a relievo work to answer the use of cutting on wood. this could be dispatched much sooner, and consequently answered the purpose of booksellers and printers, who purchased those sort of works at a much chaper [sic] rate than could be expected from an engraver on wood; it required much more time to execute with accuracy any piece of work of the same measure with those carved on metal. this performance was very much in vogue, and continued down to this day, to serve for initials, fregii and finali; it is called a clear impression, but often gray and hazy, far from coming up to that clear black impression produced with cutting on the side of a piece of box-wood or pear-tree. much about the same time there started another method of engraving on the end ways of wood itself, which was cut to the height of the letters to accompany them in the press, and engraved in the same manner as the metal performance; this method was also encouraged, and is the only way of engraving on wood at present used in the english printing-houses. these performances are to be seen in magazines, news papers, &c. and are the remains of the ancient manner of cutting on wood, and is the reason why the curious concluded it was intirely lost. [11] chatto, _op. cit._ (footnote 6), p. 446. [12] _an enquiry into the origins of printing in europe, by a lover of art_, london, 1752, pp. 25, 26. this is important evidence that end-grain wood engraving was not only known in england in the early 18th century but was actually the prevailing style. in that country, where a woodcut tradition did not exist, the new method gained its first foothold. but it was not yet conceived in terms of white lines; it was merely a cheaper substitute for cutting with the knife on the plank. in european countries with long art and printing traditions, this substitute method was considered beneath contempt. jackson[13] describes the aversion of french woodcutters for the newer and cheaper process: from this account it is evident that there was little encouragement to be hoped for in _england_ to a person whose genius led him to prosecute his studies in the ancient manner; which obliged mr. _jackson_ to go over to the continent, and see what was used in the parisian printing-houses. at his arrival there he found the _french_ engravers on wood all working in the old manner; no metal engravers, or any of the same performance on the end of the wood, was ever used or countenanced by the printers or booksellers in that city. [illustration: figure 5.--example of the woodcut style that created facsimile drawings. woodcut (actual size) by hans lutzelburger, after a drawing by holbein for his "dance of death," 1538.] there were good reasons for the lack of development of a white-line style, even in england with its lower standards in printing and illustrative techniques. on the coarse paper of the period fine white lines could not be adapted to relief (typographical) presswork; they would be lost in printing because the ribbed paper received ink unevenly. even the simple black lines of the traditional woodcut usually printed spottily when combined with type. the white lines, then, had to be broadly separated. this did not permit the engraving of delicate tones. if this could not be achieved, the effect was similar to woodcutting but with less crispness and accuracy in the drawing. a good woodcut in the old manner could do everything the wood engraving could do, before bewick, with the added virtue that the black line was comparatively clear and unequivocal, as can be seen in figure 5. [13] _ibid._, p. 27. [illustration: figure 6.--woodcut tailpiece by j. m. papillon, from _traité historique et pratique de la gravure en bois_, 1766. the cutting was done so minutely that some details were lost in printing. (actual size.)] the woodcut, in the hands of a remarkable cutter, could produce miracles of delicacy. it could, in fact, have black lines so fine and so closely spaced as to take on the character of line engraving. it did not, of course, have the range of tones or the delicacy of modeling possible in the copper plate medium, where every little trench cut by the burin would hold ink below the wiped-off surface, to be transferred to dampened paper under the heavy pressure of the cylinder press. in addition, the roughness of early paper, which was serious for the woodcut, created no difficulties for the line engraver or for other workers in the intaglio or gravure media. but the influence of copper plate work was strong, and some skillful but misguided woodcut craftsmen tried to obtain some degree of its richness. french artists from about 1720, notably jean m. papillon, produced cuts so delicate that their printing became a problem (see fig. 6). jackson, who had worked with the french artist in paris, condemned his efforts to turn the woodcut into a tonal medium through the creation of numerous delicate lines because such effects were impossible to print. jackson[14] is quoted in the _enquiry_: in 1728 mr. _pappillon_ began his small _paris_ almanack, wherein is placed cuts (done on wood) allusive to each month, with the signs of the zodiack, in such a minute stile, that he seems to forget in that work the impossibility of printing it in a press with any clearness ... but alas! his father and m. _le seur_ [also woodcutters] had examined impression and its process, and saw how careful the ancients were to keep a proper distance between their lines and hatched works, so as to produce a clean impression ... i saw the almanack in a horrid condition before i left _paris_, the signs of the zodiack wore like a blotch, notwithstanding the utmost care and diligence the printer used to take up very little ink to keep them clean. it is clear that too thin a strip of white between black lines was not suitable for printing in the first half of the 18th century. but when bewick's cuts after 1790 are examined we can see many white lines thinner than a hair. obviously something had happened to permit him a flexibility not granted to earlier workers on wood. bewick's whole craft depended upon his ability to control white lines of varying thickness. why was he able to do this, and why could it be done without trouble by others after him? early paper, as already mentioned, had a ribbed grain because it was made on a hand mould in which wires were closely laid in one direction, but with enough space between to allow the water in the paper pulp to drain through. crossing wires, set some distance apart, held them together. each wire, however, made a slight impression in the finished paper, the result being a surface with minute ripples. the surface of this laid paper presented irregularities even after the glazing operation, done with hammers before about 1720 and with wooden rollers up to about 1825.[15] in 1756 james whatman began to manufacture a new, smooth paper to replace the laid variety that had been used since the importation of paper into europe in the 12th century. whether whatman or the renowned printer john baskerville was the guiding spirit in this development is uncertain.[16] baskerville, who had been experimenting with type faces of a lighter and more delicate design, had been dissatisfied with the uneven surface of laid paper. possibly he saw examples of the chinese wallpaper on wove stock, made from a cloth mesh, which was a staple of the trade with the orient. hunter[17] describes the new mould: the wove covering was made of fine brass screening and received its name because it was woven on a loom in about the same manner as cloth. it left in the paper an indistinct impression resembling a fabric. baskerville had been in the japanning and metal-working trades before becoming a printer, so that he was naturally familiar with this material, metal screening having been used in england for other purposes before it was put to use as a material upon which to mould sheets of paper. the first book printed in europe on wove paper unquestionably was the latin edition of virgil produced by baskerville in 1757. this was, however, partly on laid also. the actual paper was made in james whatman's mill in maidstone, kent, on the banks of the river len, where paper had been made since the 17th century. whatman, who became sole owner of the mill in 1740, specialized in fine white paper of the highest quality. but while the book attracted considerable attention it did not immediately divert the demand for laid paper, since it was looked on more as an oddity than as a serious achievement. baskerville was strictly an artist: he took unlimited time and pains, he had no regard for the prevailing market, and he produced sporadically; also, he was harshly criticized and even derided for his strange formats.[18] with such a reputation for impracticality the printer's influence was negligible during his lifetime although, of course, it was widely felt later. [14] jackson, _op. cit._ (footnote 12), p. 29. [15] dard hunter, _papermaking through eighteen centuries_, new york, 1930, pp. 148, 152. [16] a. t. hazen, "baskerville and james whatman," _studies in bibliography, bibliographical society of the university of virginia_, vol. 5, 1952-53. for a brilliant study of the whatman mill, where practically all wove paper up to the 1780's was manufactured, see thomas balston's _james whatman, father and son_, london, 1957. [17] hunter, _op. cit._ (footnote 15), p. 215. [18] r. straus and r. k. dent, _john baskerville_, cambridge, 1907. on page 19 the authors include a letter to baskerville from benjamin franklin, written in 1760 in a jocular tone, which notes that he overheard a friend saying that baskerville's types would be "the means of blinding all the readers in the nation owing to the thin and narrow strokes of the letters." about 1777 the french became acquainted with wove paper, which franklin brought to paris for exhibition. in 1779, according to hunter,[19] m. didot the famous printer, "having seen the _papier vélin_ that baskerville used, addressed a letter to m. johannot of annonay, a skilled papermaker, asking him to endeavour to duplicate the smooth and even surface of this new paper. johannot was successful in his experiments, and for his work in this field he was in 1781 awarded a gold medal by louis xvi." [19] hunter, _op. cit._ (footnote 15), p. 219. [illustration: figure 7.--wood engraving by thomas bewick, "the man and the flea," for _fables, by the late mr. gay_, 1779. (actual size.) note how the closely worked lines of the sky and water have blurred in printing on laid paper. the pale vertical streak is caused by the laid mould.] wove paper was so slow to come into use that jenkins gives the date 1788 for its first appearance in book printing.[20] while he missed a few examples, notably by baskerville, it is certain that few books with wove paper were published before 1790. but after that date its manufacture increased with such rapidity that by 1805 it had supplanted laid paper for many printing purposes. the reasons for this gap between the introduction and the acceptance of the new paper are not clear; the inertia of tradition as well as the probable higher cost no doubt played a part, and we may assume that early wove paper had imperfections and other drawbacks serious enough to cause printers to prefer the older material. bewick's early work was printed on laid paper. up to 1784 he had worked in a desultory fashion on wood, much of his time being occupied with seal cutting because there was still no real demand for wood engraving. in gay's _fables_, published in 1779, the cuts printed so poorly on the laid paper (see fig. 7) that dobson[21] was moved to say: generally speaking, the printing of all these cuts, even in the earlier editions (and it is absolutely useless to consult any others), is weak and unskillful. the fine work of the backgrounds is seldom made out, and the whole impression is blurred and unequal. [illustration: figure 8.--"the spanish pointer", illustration (actual size) by thomas bewick, from _a general history of quadrupeds_, 1790, in the collections of the library of congress.] [20] rhys jenkins, "early papermaking in england, 1495-1788," _library association record_, london, 1900-1902, vol. 2, nos. 9 and 11; vol. 3, no. 5; vol. 4, nos. 3 and 4. [21] dobson, _op. cit._ (footnote 8), p. 56. even in the _select fables of aesop and others_ of 1784, when bewick's special gifts began to emerge, the cuts on laid paper appeared weak in comparison with his later work. bewick was still using wood engraving as a cheaper, more quickly executed substitute for the woodcut. the designs were based upon croxall's edition of _aesop's fables_, published in 1722, which was probably the best and most popular illustrated book published in england during the century up to bewick's time. according to chatto, the cuts were made with the burin on end-grain wood, probably by kirkall,[22] but bewick believed they were engraved on type metal.[23] it was not easy to tell the difference. type metal usually made grayer impressions than wood and sometimes, but not always, nail-head marks appeared where the metal was fastened to the wood base. the croxall cuts, in turn, were adapted with little change from 17th-century sources--etchings by francis barlow and line engravings by sebastian le clerc. bewick's cuts repeated the earlier designs but changed the locale to the english countryside of the late 18th century. this was to be expected; to have a contemporary meaning the actors of the old morality play had to appear in modern dress and with up-to-date scenery. but technically the cuts followed the pattern of croxall's wood engraver, although with a slightly greater range of tone. artistically bewick's interpretation was inferior because it was more literal; it lacked the grander feeling of the earlier work. bewick really became the prophet of a new pictorial style in his _a general history of quadrupeds_, published in 1790 on wove paper (see figs. 8, 9, and 10). here his animals and little vignetted tailpieces of observations in the country announced an original subject for illustration and a fresh treatment of wood engraving, although some designs were still copied from earlier models. the white line begins to function with greater elasticity; tones and details beyond anything known previously in the medium appear with the force of innovation. the paper was still somewhat coarse and the cuts were often gray and muddy. but the audacity of the artist in venturing tonal subtleties was immediately apparent. [22] chatto, _op. cit._ (footnote 6), p. 448. [23] thomas bewick, _fables of aesop and others_, newcastle, 1818. one of bewick's old friends at newcastle had been william bulmer, who by the 1790's had become a famous printer. in 1795 he published an edition of _poems by goldsmith and parnell_, which was preceded by an advertisement announcing his intentions: the present volume ... [is] particularly meant to combine the various beauties of printing, type-founding, engraving, and paper-making.... the ornaments are all engraved on blocks of wood, by two of my earliest acquaintances, messrs. bewick [thomas and his brother and apprentice john], of newcastle upon tyne and london, after designs made from the most interesting passages of the poems they embellish. they have been executed with great care, and i may venture to say, without being supposed to be influenced by ancient friendship, that they form the most extraordinary effort of the art of engraving upon wood that ever was produced in any age, or any country. indeed it seems almost impossible that such delicate effects could be obtained from blocks of wood. of the paper, it is only necessary to say that it comes from the manufactory of mr. whatman. the following year, 1796, a companion volume, _the chase, a poem_, by william somervile, appeared with cuts by bewick after drawings by his brother john (see fig. 11). in both books, although no acknowledgment was given, there was considerable assistance from pupils robert and john johnson and charlton nesbit, as well as from an artist associate richard westall.[24] bulmer was quite conscious that a new era in printing and illustration had begun. updike[25] notes bulmer's recognition of the achievements of both baskerville and bewick in giving the art of printing a new basis: to understand the causes of the revival of english printing which marked the last years of the century, we must remember that by 1775 baskerville was dead.... there seems to have been a temporary lull in english fine printing and the kind of type-founding that contributed to it. the wood-engraving of thomas bewick, produced about 1780, called, nevertheless, for more brilliant and delicate letter-press than either caslon's or wilson's types could supply. if baskerville's fonts had been available, no doubt they would have served.... so the next experiments in typography were made by a little coterie composed of the boydells, the nicols, the bewicks (thomas and john), and bulmer. [illustration: figure 9.--tailpiece by thomas bewick (actual size), from _a general history of quadrupeds_, 1790, in the collections of the library of congress.] when the cuts in this book are compared with earlier impressions from wood blocks, the difference is quickly seen. the blocks are more highly wrought, yet every line is crisp and clear and the impressions are black and brilliant. when we realize that the only new technological factor of any consequence was the use of good smooth wove paper, we can appreciate its significance. there were no other developments of note in the practice of printing during the 18th century. the old wooden hand press, unimproved except for minor devices, was still in universal use. ink was little improved; paper was handmade; type was made from hand moulds. the ink was still applied by dabbing with inking balls of wool-stuffed leather nailed to wooden forms. the leather was still kept soft by removing it and soaking it in urine, after which it was trampled for some time to complete the unsavory operation. paper still had to be dampened overnight before printing, and freshly inked sheets were still hung to dry over cords stretched across the room. [24] d. c. thomson, _the life and works of thomas bewick_, london, 1882, p. 152. [25] d. b. updike, _printing types, their history, forms and use_, cambridge and london, 1922, vol. 2, pp. 122, 123. but with a more sympathetic surface for receiving ink from relief blocks, a new avenue for wood engraving was now open. in the following year, 1797, the first volume of bewick's finest and best-known work was published. this was the _history of british birds_, for which he and his pupils did the cuts while ralph beilby, his partner and former master, provided the descriptions (see figs. 12, 13, and 14.) it achieved an immense and instantaneous popularity that carried the artist's name over the british isles. the attractiveness of the subject, the freshness of the medium--which could render the softness of feathers and could be interspersed with text--the powerful and decorative little tail pieces, and the comparative inexpensiveness of the volumes, brought the _birds_ into homes everywhere. [illustration: figure 10.--tailpiece by thomas bewick (actual size), from _a general history of quadrupeds_, 1790, in the collections of the library of congress.] actually, wood engraving was not immediately adopted on a wide scale. having done without it for so long, printers and publishers made no concerted rush to avail themselves of the new type of cuts. bewick's pupils found little of this kind of work to do before about 1830. luke clennell dropped engraving for painting; william harvey restricted himself to drawing and designing; charlton nesbit and john jackson remained engravers, as did a host of lesser individuals. dobson says:[26] the pupils who quitted him to seek their fortunes in london either made their way with difficulty, or turned to other pursuits, and the real popularization of wood-engraving did not take place until some years after his death. one reason for delay in adopting the new technique may have been the danger of the block splitting, or of the sections of wood coming apart at the mortise-joints during the printing operation. if this happened, work had to be suspended until a new block was engraved, or until the sections were reglued. for periodicals with deadlines, this was a serious hazard. wood engraving and the stereotype in any event, wood engraving did not really flourish until a practical stereotyping process was perfected. by this procedure substitute blocks of type metal could replace the wood engravings in the press, and the danger of splitting the block was eliminated. the first steps of any importance toward a practical process were made by the earl of stanhope around 1800, but not until claude genoux in france, between 1828 and 1829, developed the papier mâché or wet mat process could acceptable stereotypes of entire pages be produced.[27] by this method, patented on july 24, 1829, and others that followed, a number of duplicate plates of each page could be made as required for rapid printing on a battery of presses. wood engraving now emerged as a practical method of illustration for popular publications. the _penny magazine_ and the _saturday magazine_, founded in 1832, immediately made use of genoux's stereotyping process. dobson[28] describes the effect of these periodicals: "the art of wood engraving received an astonishing impact from these publications. the engraver, instead of working merely with his own hands, has been obliged to take five or six pupils to get through the work." (mr. cowper's evidence before the select committee on arts and manufactures, 1835). it is difficult nowadays [1884] to understand what a revelation these two periodicals, with their representations of far countries and foreign animals, of masterpieces of painting and sculpture, were to middle-class households fifty years ago. [26] dobson, _op. cit._ (footnote 8), p. 174. [27] george kubler, _a history of stereotyping_, new york, 1941, p. 75. [28] dobson, _op. cit._ (footnote 8), p. 173. [illustration: figure 11.--tailpiece by thomas bewick (actual size), engraved after a drawing by john bewick, from _the chase_, by william somervile, 1796. (_photo courtesy the library of congress._)] we will not pursue bewick's career further. with habits of hard work deeply ingrained, he kept at his bench until his death in 1828, engraving an awesome quantity of cuts. but he never surpassed his work on the _birds_, although his reputation grew in proportion to the spread of wood engraving throughout the world. the medium became more and more detailed, and eventually rivaled photography in its minute variations of tone (see figs. 15 and 16). but printing wood engravings never was a problem again. not only was wove paper always used in this connection, but it had become much cheaper through the invention of a machine for producing it in lengths. nicholas louis robert, in france, had developed and exhibited such an apparatus in 1797, at the instigation of m. didot. john gamble in england, working with henry and charles fourdrinier, engaged a fine mechanic, bryan donkin, to build a machine on improved principles. the first comparatively successful one was completed in 1803. it was periodically improved, and wove paper appeared in increasing quantities. spicer[29] says: "naturally these improvements and economies in the manufacture of paper were accompanied by a corresponding increase in output. where, in 1806, a machine was capable of making 6 cwt. in twelve hours, in 1813 it could turn out double that quantity in the same time at one quarter the expense." [29] a. d. spicer, _the paper trade_, london, 1907, p. 63. [illustration: figure 12.--wood engraving by w. j. linton, 1878 (actual size). the detail opposite is enlarged four times to show white line-technique.] [illustration] [illustration: figure 13.--"pintail duck" by thomas bewick (actual size), from _history of british birds_, vol. 2, 1804. the detail opposite is enlarged three times.] at about the same time the all-iron stanhope press began to be manufactured in quantity, and shortly the new inking roller invented by the indispensable earl came into use to supplant the old inking balls. later in the century (there is no need to go into specific detail here) calendered and coated papers were introduced, and wood engraving on these glossy papers became a medium that could reproduce wash drawings, crayon drawings, pencil drawings, and oil paintings so faithfully that all the original textures were apparent.[30] the engraver, concerned entirely with accurate reproduction, became little more than a mechanic who rendered pictures drawn on the blocks by an artist. in time, photographic processes came to be used for transferring pictures to the blocks and eventually, of course, photomechanical halftones replaced the wood engraver altogether. [illustration: figure 14.--title-page illustration by thomas bewick, from _history of british birds_, vol. 1, 1797. (actual size.)] [30] the electrotyping process, which came into prominence in 1839 through the experiments of professor jacobi in st. petersburg and jordan and spencer in england, had made it possible to produce substitute plates of the highest fidelity. for fine work, these were much superior to stereotyping. bewick was an artist, not a reproductive craftsman. his blocks were conceived as original engravings, not as imitations of tones and textures created in another medium. if wood engraving advanced in the direction of commercialism to fill an overwhelming mass need, it was only because he had given it a technical basis. but it had greater artistic potentialities, as proved by blake, calvert, and lepére, among others, and has found new life in the engravers of the 20th-century revival. the reasons for bewick's remarkable effectiveness can now be summed up. he succeeded, first, because he was the natural inheritor of a specifically english graphic arts process, burin-engraving on the end grain of wood. this had been practiced almost solely in england, which lacked a woodcut tradition, for about 75 years before the date he finished his apprenticeship. we know from jackson's contemporary account that end-grain wood engraving was standard practice in england from about 1700. bewick merely continued and refined a medium that came down to him as a national tradition. secondly, his country isolation and lack of academic training saved him from the inanity of repeating the old decorative devices--trophies, cartouches, classical figures, roman ruins, and other international conventions that had lost their significance by the 1780's, although a spurious classicism was still kept alive for genteel consumption and the romantic picturesque still persisted in interior decoration. [illustration] thirdly, he looked at life and nature with a fresh eye, without preconceptions. while his lack of larger vision held him down as an artist, it contributed to his feeling for natural textures and story-telling detail. his approach to illustration, therefore, was the spontaneous expression of an observant but unimaginative nature, coated with a bitter-sweet sentiment. it was this quality, so homely and common and yet so charged with integrity, that delivered the shock of recognition to a mass audience. lastly, and perhaps most importantly in the long run, he was fortunate enough to live at a time when a necessary prerequisite for the physical appearance of his work, wove paper, was coming into use. without it he would soon have had to simplify his line system, returning to older and less detailed methods, or his work would have remained unprintable. it was the new paper that allowed him to extract unprecedented subtleties from the wood block, that made his cuts print clearly and evenly, and that encouraged the expansion of the wood engraving process. these factors, taken together, make up the phenomenon of thomas bewick. [illustration: figure 15.--tailpiece by thomas bewick, from _history of british birds_, vol. 2, 1804. (actual size.)] u. s. government printing office: 1959 note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see 20195-h.htm or 20195-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/0/1/9/20195/20195-h/20195-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/0/1/9/20195/20195-h.zip) transcriber's note: inconsistency in spelling and hyphenation is as in the original. the artistic crafts series of technical handbooks edited by w. r. lethaby wood-block printing a description of the craft of woodcutting & colour printing based on the japanese practice by f. morley fletcher with drawings and illustrations by the author and a. w. seaby. also collotype reproductions of various examples of printing, and an original print designed and cut by the author printed by hand on japanese taper [illustration: meadowsweet. collotype reproduction of a woodblock print by the author. (_frontispiece_.)] london sir isaac pitman & sons, ltd. parker street, kingsway, w.c.2 bath, melbourne, toronto, new york printed by sir isaac pitman & sons, ltd. bath, england editor's preface in issuing these volumes of a series of handbooks on the artistic crafts, it will be well to state what are our general aims. in the first place, we wish to provide trustworthy text-books of workshop practice, from the points of view of experts who have critically examined the methods current in the shops, and putting aside vain survivals, are prepared to say what is good workmanship, and to set up a standard of quality in the crafts which are more especially associated with design. secondly, in doing this, we hope to treat design itself as an essential part of good workmanship. during the last century most of the arts, save painting and sculpture of an academic kind, were little considered, and there was a tendency to look on "design" as a mere matter of _appearance_. such "ornamentation" as there was was usually obtained by following in a mechanical way a drawing provided by an artist who often knew little of the technical processes involved in production. with the critical attention given to the crafts by ruskin and morris, it came to be seen that it was impossible to detach design from craft in this way, and that, in the widest sense, true design is an inseparable element of good quality, involving as it does the selection of good and suitable material, contrivance for special purpose, expert workmanship, proper finish, and so on, far more than mere ornament, and indeed, that ornamentation itself was rather an exuberance of fine workmanship than a matter of merely abstract lines. workmanship when separated by too wide a gulf from fresh thought--that is, from design--inevitably decays, and, on the other hand, ornamentation, divorced from workmanship, is necessarily unreal, and quickly falls into affectation. proper ornamentation may be defined as a language addressed to the eye; it is pleasant thought expressed in the speech of the tool. in the third place, we would have this series put artistic craftsmanship before people as furnishing reasonable occupations for those who would gain a livelihood. although within the bounds of academic art, the competition, of its kind, is so acute that only a very few per cent. can fairly hope to succeed as painters and sculptors; yet, as artistic craftsmen, there is every probability that nearly every one who would pass through a sufficient period of apprenticeship to workmanship and design would reach a measure of success. in the blending of hand-work and thought in such arts as we propose to deal with, happy careers may be found as far removed from the dreary routine of hack labour as from the terrible uncertainty of academic art. it is desirable in every way that men of good education should be brought back into the productive crafts: there are more than enough of us "in the city," and it is probable that more consideration will be given in this century than in the last to design and workmanship. * * * * * there are two common ways of studying old and foreign arts--the way of the connoisseur and the way of the craftsman. the collector may value such arts for their strangeness and scarcity, while the artist finds in them stimulus in his own work and hints for new developments. the following account of colour-printing from wood-blocks is based on a study of the methods which were lately only practised in japan, but which at an earlier time were to some degree in use in europe also. the main principles of the art, indeed, were well known in the west long before colour prints were produced in japan, and there is some reason to suppose that the japanese may have founded their methods in imitating the prints taken from europe by missionaries. major strange says: "the european art of _chiaroscuro_ engraving is in all essentials identical with that of japanese colour-printing.... it seems, therefore, not vain to point out that the accidental sight of one of the italian colour-prints may have suggested the process to the japanese." the italians aimed more at expressing "relief" and the japanese at flat colour arrangements; the former used oily colours, and the latter fair distemper tints; these are the chief differences. both in the west and the east the design was cut on the plank surface of the wood with a knife; not across the grain with a graver, as is done in most modern wood engraving, although large plank woodcuts were produced by walter crane and herkomer, about thirty years ago, as posters. the old woodcuts of the fifteenth century were produced as pictures as well as for the illustration of books; frequently they were of considerable size. often, too, they were coloured by stencil plates or freely by hand. at the same time the printing in colour of letters and other simple devices in books from wood-blocks was done, and a book printed at st. albans in 1486 has many coats of arms printed in this way; some of the shields having two or three different colours.[1] about the year 1500 a method of printing woodcuts in several flat tones was invented in germany and practised by lucas cranach and others. a fine print of adam and eve by hans baldung in the victoria and albert museum has, besides the bold black "drawing," an over-tint printed in warm brown out of which sharp high lights are cut; the print is thus in three tones. [1] see r. m. burch, _colour printing_, 1900. ugo da carpo (_c._ 1480-1530) working in venice, introduced this new type of tone woodcut into italy; indeed, he claimed to be the inventor of the method. "this was called _chiaroscuro_, a name still given to it, and was, in fact, a simple form of our modern chromo printing." his woodcuts are in a simple, vigorous style; one of them after raphael's "death of ananias," printed in brown, has a depth and brilliancy which may remind us of the mezzo-tints of turner's _liber studiorum_. this is proudly signed, "per ugo da carpo," and some copies are said to be dated 1518. andrea andreani (_c._ 1560-1623), a better known but not a better artist, produced a great number of these tone woodcuts. several prints after mantegna's "triumphs of caesar" have a special charm from the beauty of the originals; they are printed in three tints of grey besides the "drawing"; the palest of these tints covers the surface, except for high lights cut out of it. a fine print of a holy family, about 15×18 inches, has a middle tone of fair blue and a shadow tint of full rich green. copies of two immense woodcuts at the victoria and albert museum, of biblical subjects, seem to have been seems to cramp the hand and injure the eyes of all but the most gifted draughtsmen. it is desirable to cultivate the ability to seize and record the "map-form" of any object rapidly and correctly. some practice in elementary colour-printing would certainly be of general usefulness, and simpler exercises may be contrived by cutting out with scissors and laying down shapes in black or coloured papers unaided by any pattern. finally, the hope may be expressed that the beautiful art of wood-cutting as developed in western europe and brought to such perfection only a generation ago is only temporarily in abeyance, and that it too may have another day. w. r. lethaby. _september 1916._ author's note this little book gives an account of one of the primitive crafts, in the practice of which only the simplest tools and materials are used. their method of use may serve as a means of expression for artist-craftsmen, or may be studied in preparation for, or as a guide towards, more elaborate work in printing, of which the main principles may be seen most clearly in their application in the primitive craft. in these days the need for reference to primitive handicrafts has not ceased with the advent of the machine. the best achievements of hand-work will always be the standards for reference; and on their study must machine craft be based. the machine can only increase the power and scale of the crafts that have already been perfected by hand-work. their principles, and the art of their design, do not alter under the machine. if the machine disregards these its work becomes base. and it is under the simple conditions of a handicraft that the principles of an art can be most clearly experienced. the best of all the wonderful and excellent work that is produced to-day by machinery is that which bears evidence in itself of its derivation from arts under the pure conditions of classic craftsmanship, and shows the influence of their study. the series of which this book is a part stands for the principles and the spirit of the classic examples. to be associated with those fellow-craftsmen who have been privileged to work for the series is itself an honour of high estimation in the mind of the present writer. if the book contributes even a little toward the usefulness of the series the experiments which are recorded here will have been well worth while. to my friend mr. j. d. batten is due all the credit of the initial work. he began the search for a pure style of colour-printing, and most generously supported and encouraged my own experiments in the japanese method. to my old colleague mr. a. w. seaby i would also express my indebtedness for his kind help and advice. f. m. f. edinburgh college of art, _september 1916._ contents chapter i page introduction and description of the origins of wood-block printing--its uses for personal artistic expression, for reproduction of decorative designs, and as a fundamental training for student of printed decoration 1 chapter ii general description of the operation of printing from a set of blocks 9 chapter iii description of the materials and tools required for block cutting 17 chapter iv block cutting and the planning of blocks 23 chapter v preparation of paper, ink, colour, and paste for printing 47 chapter vi detailed method of printing--the printing tools, baren and brushes 61 chapter vii principles and main considerations in designing wood-block prints--their application to modern colour printing 81 chapter viii co-operative printing 89 appendix prints and collotype plates 94 books of reference 129 index 130 illustrations fig. page 1. plan of work-table 11 2. block mounted with cross ends to prevent warping 18 3. drawing of the knife 19 4. sizes of chisels 20 5. short chisel in split handle 21 6. mallet 21 7. position of the hands in using the knife 30 8. another position of the hands in using the knife 31 9. knife cuts in section 33 10. diagram of knife cuts 33 11. method of holding gouge 35 12. clearing of wood between knife cuts 35 13. position of register marks 37 14. register marks 37 15. register marks (section of) 38 16. section of colour-block 42 17. drawing of sizing of paper 49 18. cork of ink-bottle with wad for preservative 56 19. method of re-covering baren 64 20. drawing of brushes 66 21. manner of holding the paper 70 22. manner of using the baren 72 collotype plates 1. meadowsweet. reproduction of a wood-block print by the author _frontispiece_ 2. key-block of a print drawn and cut by the author 5 3. the baren, or printing pad 12 4. colour-block of a print of which the key-block is shown at p. 5 23 5. impression (nearly actual size) or a portion of a japanese wood block showing great variety in the character of the lines and spots suggesting form 26 6. reproduction of an impression (reduced) of the key-block of a japanese print showing admirable variety in the means used to suggest form 33 7. portion of detail from a japanese wood block 48 appendix page 8. wood-block print by the author 95 9. first printing (_collotype reproduction_) 98 10. second printing " " 100 11. third printing " " 102 12. fourth printing " " 104 13. fifth printing " " 105 14. sixth printing " " 107 15. eighth printing " " 109 16. collotype reproduction of a colour print by hiroshigé 111 17. collotype reproduction of a portion of the print shown on the preceding page, actual size, showing the treatment of the foliage and the expressive drawing of the tree-trunk and stems 114 18. collotype reproduction of another portion of the print shown on p. 111 actual size, showing the expressive use of line in the drawing of the distant forms 116 19. collotype reproduction of a colour print by hiroshigé 118 20. collotype reproduction of a portion (actual size) of the print on the preceding page, showing treatment of tree forms and distance 120 21. collotype reproduction of a colour print by hiroshigé 121 22. collotype reproduction of a portion, actual size, of the print on the preceding page, showing treatment of tree and blossom 123 23. the tiger. collotype reproduction of a colour print by j. d. batten 125 24. lapwings. collotype reproduction of a colour print by a. w. seaby 127 errata page 62.--for "bamboo-sheath" read "bamboo leaf". " 63.--in last paragraph, delete "the inside of". " 64.--third line from bottom, after "occasionally" insert "when printing". wood-block printing by the japanese method chapter i _introductory_ introduction and description of the origins of wood-block printing; its uses for personal artistic expression, for reproduction of decorative designs, and as a fundamental training for students of printed decoration. the few wood-block prints shown from time to time by the society of graver printers in colour, and the occasional appearance of a wood-block print in the graver section of the international society's exhibitions, or in those of the society of arts and crafts, are the outcome of the experiments of a small group of english artists in making prints by the japanese method, or by methods based on the japanese practice. my interest was first drawn in 1897 to experiments that were being made by mr. j. d. batten, who for two years previously had attempted, and partially succeeded in making, a print from wood and metal blocks with colour mixed with glycerine and dextrine, the glycerine being afterwards removed by washing the prints in alcohol. as the japanese method seemed to promise greater advantages and simplicity, we began experiments together, using as our text-book the pamphlet by t. tokuno, published by the smithsonian institution, washington, and the dextrine and glycerine method was soon abandoned. the edition of prints, however, of eve and the serpent designed by j. d. batten, printed by myself and published at that time, was produced partly by the earlier method and partly in the simpler japanese way. familiar as everyone is with japanese prints, it is not generally known that they are produced by means of an extremely simple craft. no machinery is required, but only a few tools for cutting the designs on the surface of the planks of cherry wood from which the impressions are taken. no press is used, but a round flat pad, which is rubbed on the back of the print as it lies on the blocks. the colours are mixed with water and paste made from rice flour. the details of the craft and photographs of the tools were given in full in the smithsonian institution pamphlet already mentioned. it is slow and unsatisfactory work, however, learning manipulation from a book, and several technical difficulties that seemed insurmountable were made clear by the chance discovery in london of a japanese printseller who, although not a printer, was sufficiently familiar with the work to give some invaluable hints and demonstrations. further encouragement was given to the work by the institution, a little later, of a class in wood-cuts in colour under my charge, at the l.c.c. central school of arts and crafts, which for several years became the chief centre of the movement. such are the bare historical facts of the development in our country of this craft imported from the far east. on a merely superficial acquaintance the japanese craft of block-printing may appear to be no more than a primitive though delicate form of colour reproduction, which modern mechanical methods have long superseded, even in the land of its invention; and that to study so limited a mode of expression would be hardly of any practical value to an artist. moreover, the craft is under the disadvantage that all the stages of the work, from making the first design to taking the final impressions, must be done by the artist himself--work which includes the delicate cutting of line and planning of colour blocks, and the preparation of colour and paper. in japan there were trained craftsmen expert in each of these branches of the craft, and each carried out his part under the supervision of the artist. no part but the design was done by him. so that the very character of the work has an essential difference. under our present conditions the artist must undertake the whole craft, with all its detail. [illustration: plate ii.--key-block of the print shown on the frontispiece. (the portion of wood lying outside the points of the mass of foliage is left standing to support the paper, but is not inked in printing.) (_to face page 5._)] simple as the process is, there is, from first to last, a long labour involved in planning, cutting and printing, before a satisfactory batch of prints is produced. after several attempts in delegating printing to well-trained pupils i have found it impossible to obtain the best results by that means, but the cutting of the colour-blocks and the clearing of the key-block after the first cutting of the line may well be done by assistant craftsmen. a larger demand for the prints might bring about a commercial development of the work, and the consequent employment of trained craftsmen or craftswomen, but the result would be a different one from that which has been obtained by the artists who are willing to undertake the whole production of their work. the actual value of wood-block prints for use as decoration is a matter of personal taste and experience. in my own opinion there is an element that always remains foreign in the prints of the japanese masters, yet i know of no other kind of art that has the same telling value on a wall, or the same decorative charm in modern domestic rooms as the wood-block print. a single print well placed in a room of quiet colour will enrich and dominate a whole wall. the modern vogue still favours more expensive although less decorative forms of art, or works of reproduction without colour, yet here is an art available to all who care for expressive design and colour, and within the means of the large public to whom the cost of pictures is prohibitive. in its possibility as a decorative means of expression well suited to our modern needs and uses, and in the particular charm that colour has when printed from wood on a paper that is beautiful already by its own quality, there is no doubt of the scope and opportunity offered by this art. but as with new wine and old bottles, a new condition of simplicity in furniture and of pure colour in decoration must first be established. a wood-block print will not tell well amid a wilderness of bric-à-brac or on a gaudy wall-paper. from another and quite different point of view, the art of block-cutting and colour-printing has, however, a special and important value. to any student of pictorial art, especially to any who may wish to design for modern printed decoration, no work gives such instruction in economy of design, in the resources of line and its expressive development, and in the use and behaviour of colour. this has been the expressed opinion of many who have undertaken a course of wood-block printing for this object alone. the same opinion is emphatically stated by professor emil orlik, whose prints are well known in modern exhibitions. on the occasion of a visit to the kunstgewerbeschule of berlin, i found him conducting a class for designers for printed decoration, in which the japanese craft of block-printing was made the basis of their training. he held to the view that the primitive craft teaches the students the very economy and simplicity upon which the successful use of the great modern resources of colour-printing depend, yet which cannot be learnt except by recourse to simpler conditions and more narrow limitations before dealing with the greater scope of the machine. my own experience also convinces me that whatever may be the ultimate value of the eastern craft to our artists as a mode of personal expression, there is no doubt of its effect and usefulness in training students to design with economy and simplicity for modern printing processes. chapter ii general description of the operation of printing from a set of blocks the early stages of any craft are more interesting when we are familiar with the final result. for this reason it is often an advantage to begin at the end. to see a few impressions taken from a set of blocks in colour printing, or to print them oneself, gives the best possible idea of the quality and essential character of print-making. so also in describing the work it will perhaps tend to make the various stages clearer if the final act of printing is first explained. the most striking characteristic of this craft is the primitive simplicity of the act of printing. no press is required, and no machinery. a block is laid flat on the table with its cut surface uppermost, and is kept steady by a small wad of damp paper placed under each corner. a pile of paper slightly damped ready for printing lies within reach just beyond the wood-block, so that the printer may easily lift the paper sheet by sheet on to the block as it is required. it is the practice in japan to work squatting on the floor, with the blocks and tools also on the floor in front of the craftsman. our own habit of working at a table is less simple, but has some advantages. one practice or habit of the japanese is, however, to be followed with particular care. no description can give quite fully the sense of extreme orderliness and careful deliberation of their work. everything is placed where it will be most convenient for use, and this orderliness is preserved throughout the day's work. their shapely tools and vessels are handled with a deftness that shames our clumsy ways, and everything that they use is kept quite clean. this skilful orderliness is essential to fine craftmanship, and is a sign of mastery. the arrangement of tools and vessels on a work-table may be as the accompanying plan shows: [illustration: fig. 1.--plan of work-table. a. block. b. sheets of damped paper lying on a board. c. second board lifted from b. d. brushes lying on a strip of wood. e. white plate or dish containing colour. f. saucer containing paste of rice-flour. g. baren, or printing pad, lying on a sheet of paper slightly oiled with sweet oil and tacked to the table. h. deep bowl of water and brush for moistening the damping sheets. i. saucer of water for use in printing. j. sponge.] when printing on a table arranged in this way the board lying on the sheets of damped paper at b is first lifted off and placed at c to receive the sheets as they are done. if the block a is quite dry, it is thoroughly moistened with a damp sponge and wiped. the colour from a saucer, e, is then brushed over the printing surface thinly, and a trace of paste taken from f is also brushed into the colour. (this is best done after the colour is roughly spread on the block.) the brush is laid down in its place, d, and the top sheet of paper from the pile is immediately lifted to its register marks (notches to keep the paper in its place) on the block. the manner of holding the paper is shown on page 70. this must be done deftly, and it is important to waste no time, as the colour would soon dry on the exposed block and print badly. pressure is then applied to the back of the paper as it lies on the wet block. this is done by a round pad called the _baren_ by the japanese. it is made of a coil of cord covered by bamboo sheath as shown later on page 62. the pad is rubbed by hand with considerable pressure, moving transversely forwards and backwards across the block, working from the left to the right. once all over the block should be enough. the paper is then lifted off and laid face upwards on the board at c. the block is then re-charged with colour for another impression, and the whole operation repeated as many times as there are sheets to be printed. [illustration: plate iii. the baren, or printing pad. (the pad is actually 5 inches in diameter.) (_to face page 12._)] when this is done all the sheets will have received a single impression, which may be either a patch of colour or an impression in line of part of the design of the print. the block a is then removed, cleaned, and put away; and the block for the second impression put in its place. it is usual to print the line or key-block of a design first, as one is then able to detect faulty registering or imperfect fitting of the blocks and to correct them at once. but there are cases in which a gradated tone, such as a sky, may need to be printed before the line block. the complete design of a print may require several blocks for colour as well as the key block which prints the line. the impressions from all these blocks may be printed one after another without waiting for the colour on the paper to dry. as soon as the batch of damped sheets has been passed over the first block, the sheets are replaced at b between boards, and, if necessary, damped again by means of damping sheets (as described later in chapter v) ready for the next impression, which may be proceeded with at once without fear of the colour running. it is a remarkable fact that patches of wet colour which touch one another do not run if properly printed. for the second printing fresh colour is prepared and clean paste, and the printing proceeds as already described, care being taken to watch the proper registering or fitting of each impression to its place in the design. there are many niceties and details to be observed in the printing of both line and colour blocks. these are given in special chapters following. this description of the main action of printing will be of use in giving a general idea of the final operation before the details of the preliminary stages are described. chapter iii description of the materials and tools required for block-cutting the wood most commonly used by the japanese for their printing-blocks is a cherry wood very similar to that grown in england. the canadian cherry wood, which is more easily obtained than english cherry, is of too open a grain to be of use. the more slowly grown english wood has a closer grain and is the best for all the purposes of block cutting and printing. well-seasoned planks should be obtained and kept ready for cutting up as may be required. when a set of blocks is to be cut for a given design, the size of the printing surface of each block should be made equal to the size of the design plus 1 inch or, for large prints, 1-1/2 inch in addition long ways, and 1/4 or 1/2 inch crossways. the thickness of the plank need not be more than 5/8 or 3/4 inch. it is best for the protection of the surfaces of the printing blocks and to prevent warping, also for convenience in storing and handling them, to fix across each end a piece of wood slightly thicker than the plank itself. these cross-ends should be mounted as shown in fig. 2. [illustration: fig. 2.--block mounted with cross ends to prevent warping.] both surfaces of the plank should be planed smooth and then finished with a steel scraper, but not touched with sand-paper. it is understood that the face of the plank is used for the printing surface, and not the end of the grain as in blocks for modern wood engraving. the tools needed for cutting the blocks are the following: 1. the knife [illustration: fig. 3.--drawing of the knife.] with this knife the most important and delicate work is done. all the lines of the key-block as well as the boundaries of the colour masses are cut with it, before the removal of intervening spaces. the blade lies in a slot and is held tight by the tapered ferrule. this can be pulled off by hand and the blade lengthened by pulling it forward in the slot. 2. chisels these are used for removing the wood between the cut lines or colour masses, and should be ordinary carvers' chisels of the following sizes: [illustration: fig. 4.--sizes of chisels.] except those under no. 9, which are short-handled chisels for small work. the japanese toolmakers fit these small chisels into a split handle as shown in fig. 5. the blade is held tightly in its place by the tapered ferrule when the handle is closed, or can be lengthened by opening the handle and pulling forward the blade in its slot. in this way the blade can be used down to its last inch. 3. mallet this is needed for driving the larger chisels. [illustration: fig. 5.--short chisel in split handle.] [illustration: fig. 6.--mallet.] these are all the tools that are needed for block cutting. for keeping them in order it is well to have oilstones of three grades: 1. a carborundum stone for rapidly re-covering the shape of a chipped or blunt tool. 2. a good ordinary oil stone. 3. a hard stone for keeping a fine edge on the knife in cutting line blocks. the american "washita" stone is good for this purpose. [illustration: plate iv. colour block of a print of which the key-block is shown on page 5.] (_to face page 23._) chapter iv block cutting and the planning of blocks the cutting of a line block needs patience and care and skill, but it is not the most difficult part of print making, nor is it so hopeless an enterprise as it seems at first to one who has not tried to use the block-cutter's knife. in japan this work is a highly specialised craft, never undertaken by the artist himself, but carried out by skilled craftsmen who only do this part of the work of making colour prints. even the clearing of the spaces between the cut lines is done by assistant craftsmen or craftswomen. the exquisite perfection of the cutting of the lines in the finest of the japanese prints, as, for instance, the profile of a face in a design by outamaro, has required the special training and tradition of generations of craftsmen. the knife, however, is not a difficult weapon to an artist who has hands and a trained sense of form. in carrying out his own work, moreover, he may express a quality that is of greater value even than technical perfection. at present we have no craftsmen ready for this work--nor could our designs be safely trusted to the interpretation of japanese block-cutters. until we train craftsmen among ourselves we must therefore continue to cut our own blocks. cutting a set of blocks consists of a key-block and several colour blocks. the block that must be cut first is that which prints the line or "key" of the design. by means of impressions from this key-block the various other blocks for printing the coloured portions of the design are cut. the key-block is the most important of the set of blocks and contains the essential part of the design. a drawing of that part of the design which is to be cut on the key-block should first be made. this is done on the thinnest of japanese tissue paper in black indelible ink. the drawing is then pasted face downward on the prepared first block with good starch paste. it is best to lay the drawing flat on its back upon a pad of a few sheets of paper of about the same size, and to rub the paste on the surface of the block, not on the paper. the block is now laid down firmly with its pasted side on the drawing, which at once adheres to the block. next turn the block over and lay a dry sheet of paper over the damp drawing so as to protect it, and with the baren, or printing rubber, rub the drawing flat, and well on to the block all over. the drawing should then be allowed to dry thoroughly on the block. with regard to the design of the key block, it is a common mistake to treat this as a drawing only of outlines of the forms of the print. much modern so-called decorative printing has been weak in this respect. a flat, characterless line, with no more expression than a bent gaspipe, is often printed round the forms of a design, followed by printings of flat colour, the whole resulting in a travesty of "flat" decorative treatment. the key design should be a skeleton of all the forms of a print, expressing much more than mere exterior boundaries. it may so suggest form that although the colour be printed by a flat tint the result is not flat. when one is unconscious of any flatness in the final effect, though the result is obtained by flat printing, then the proper use of flat treatment has been made. the affectation of flatness in inferior colour printing and poster work is due to a misapprehension of the true principle of flat treatment. [illustration: plate v. impression (nearly actual size) of a portion of a japanese wood block showing great variety in the character of the lines and spots suggesting form.] (_to face page 26._) as an illustration of the great variety of form that may be expressed by the key-block, a reproduction is given (page 33) of an impression from a japanese key-block. it will be seen that the lines and spots express much more than boundaries of form. in the case of the lighter tree foliage the boundaries are left to be determined entirely by the subsequent colour blocks, and only the interior form or character of the foliage is suggested. the quality or kind of line, too, varies with the thing expressed, whether tree, rock, sea, or the little ship. the design, too, is in itself beautiful and gives the essential form of the entire print. the study of the drawing of any of the key-blocks of the japanese masters will reveal their wonderful power and resource in the suggestion of essential form by black lines, spots, and masses of one uniform tint of black or grey. the development of this kind of expressive drawing is most important to the designer of printed decoration, whether by wood blocks, or lithography, or any other printing process. other good types of drawing for the purposes of key-blocks in wood are given on plate v facing page 26 and plate xvi p. iii in appendix. when the key-block with its design pasted upon it is thoroughly dry, a little sweet oil should be rubbed with the finger at that part where the cutting is to begin, so as to make the paper transparent and the black line quite clear. in order to keep the block from moving on the work-table, there should be fixed one or two strips of wood screwed down, to act as stops in case the block tends to slip, but the block should lie freely on the table, so that it may be easily turned round during the cutting when necessary. one should, however, learn to use the cutting knife in all directions, and to move the block as little as possible. the knife is held and guided by the right hand, but is pushed along by the middle finger of the left hand placed at the back of the blade, close down near the point. the left hand should be generally flat on the work-table, palm down, and the nail of the middle finger must be kept short. this position is shown (fig. 7) on p. 30. the flat side of the knife should always be against the line to be cut. sometimes it is convenient to drive the knife from right to left, but in this case the pressure is given by the right hand, and the left middle finger is used to check and steady the knife, the finger being pressed against the knife just above the cutting edge. a good position for cutting a long straight line towards oneself on the block is shown below (fig. 8). the left hand is on its side, and the middle finger is hooked round and pulls the knife while the right hand guides it. in all cases the middle finger of the left hand pushes or steadies the knife, or acts as a fulcrum. [illustration: fig. 7.--position of the hands in using the knife.] a beginner with the knife usually applies too much pressure or is apt to put the left finger at a point too high up on the blade, where it loses its control. the finger should be as close down to the wood as possible, where its control is most effective. a small piece of india-rubber tubing round the knife blade helps to protect the finger. [illustration: fig. 8.--another position of the hands in using the knife.] with practice the knife soon becomes an easy and a very precise tool, capable of great expressiveness in drawing. bear in mind that both sides of a line are drawn by the knife. the special power of developing the expressive form of line _on both sides_ is a resource tending to great development of drawing in designs for wood-block prints. the line may be of varying form, changing from silhouette to pure line as may best serve to express the design. it should never be a mere diagram. [illustration: plate vi. reproduction of an impression (reduced) of the key-block of a japanese print showing admirable variety in the means used to suggest form. (_to face page 33._)] the actual cutting proceeds as follows: starting at some point where the surface of the key-block design has been oiled and made distinct, a shallow cut is made along one side of any form in the design, with the knife held slanting so that the cut slants away from the edge of the form. a second outer parallel cut is then made with the knife held slanting in the opposite direction from the first, so that the two cuts together make a v-shaped trench all along the line of the form. the little strip of wood cut out should detach itself as the second cut is made, and should not need any picking out or further cutting if the first two cuts are cleanly made. this shallow v-shaped trench is continued all round the masses and along both sides of all the lines of the design. no clearing of the intervening spaces should be attempted until this is done. it will be seen at once that the v-shaped cuts give great strength to the printing lines, so that a quite fine line between two cuts may have a strong, broad base (fig. 9). the depth of the cut would be slightly shallower than that shown in this diagram. in cutting fine line work a cut is first made a little beyond the line, then the cut is made on the line itself (fig. 10). [illustration: fig. 9.--knife cuts in section.] [illustration: fig. 10.--diagram of knife cuts.] where a very fine line is to be cut, especially if it is on a curve, the outer cut of the v trench should be made first, and then that which touches the line: there is thus less disturbance of the wood, and less danger of injuring the edge of the line. when the v cut has been made outside all the lines, one proceeds to clear the intervening spaces between the lines of the design by taking tool no. 1 (fig. 5). the large spaces should be cleared first. the safest and quickest way is to make a small gouge cut with no. 1 round all the large spaces close up to the first cut, then, with one of the shallower chisels, nos. 5, 6, or 7 (fig. 5), and the mallet, clear out the wood between the gouge cuts. for all shallow cuts where the mallet is not needed, the japanese hold the chisels as shown in fig. 11. with practice this will be found a very convenient and steady grip for the right hand. it has also the advantage that the chisel can be held against the centre of the body and exactly under one's eyes. in the diagram (fig. 12), if the wood from a to a1 is to be cleared away, gouge cuts are made at _b_ and _b_1, then the space between _b_ and _b_1 may be quickly cleared without risk to the edge of the form at a. when this rough work is done the little ridge between a and _b_ may be cleared with small round or flat tools, as is most convenient. but this final clearing should not be done until all the large spaces are roughed out. [illustration: fig. 11.--method of holding gouge.] [illustration: fig. 12.--clearing of wood between knife cuts.] the depth to which the spaces must be cleared will depend on their width, as, in printing, the paper will sag more deeply in a wide space than in a narrow one. in spaces of half an inch the depth of the first v-cuts is sufficient, but the proportionate depth is about that of the diagram above. the small spaces are cleared by means of small flat or round chisels without the mallet or the preliminary gouge cut: this is only needed where a large space has to be cleared. there remain now only the placing and cutting of the two register marks or notches for controlling the position of the paper in printing. these are placed relatively to the design as shown in fig. 13. the corner of the print fits into the notch at a, and one edge of the print lies against the straight notch at b. the register marks may be even closer to the space covered by the design, but must not actually touch it, as some margin of paper is necessary in printing: they should also be cut always on the long side of the printing block. it will be seen from the drawing on page 70 that these register marks correspond to the position of the thumb of each hand in laying the paper on the block for printing. [illustration: fig. 13.--position of register marks.] [illustration: fig. 14.--register marks.] the corner mark, abc, is made by cutting from a to b and b to c, with the knife held perpendicularly, and its flat side against the line, then the shaded portion is cut with a flat chisel, sloping from the surface of the block at ac to a depth of about 1/16 inch along ab and bc. the straight notch, ef, is similarly cut, first with a perpendicular knife along ef, and then the shaded portion is chiselled sloping down to the line ef. [illustration: fig. 15.--register marks (section of).] in section the two register marks would be as above. the register marks must be smoothly and evenly cut so that the paper, in printing, may slide easily home to its exact place. when the design of the key-block and the two register marks have been cut and cleared, the trace of paper and paste on the uncut parts of the wood should be carefully washed off with a piece of sponge and warm water. the block is then finished and ready for use. the key-block, however, is only one of the set of blocks required for a print in colour, but the colour blocks are simpler and require, as a rule, far less labour. the colour blocks are planned and established by means of impressions taken from the key-block. for this purpose the register marks are inked[2] for printing as well as the design on the block, and the impressions must include both. these impressions are taken on thin japanese paper, but not necessarily the thinnest tissue. if the thinnest is used, it should be pasted at the corners to a sheet of stiffer paper for convenience in handling. [2] the preparation of the ink for printing is described on p. 54. it is then a fairly simple matter to take one of these key-block impressions and to make a plan of the various colour-blocks that will be required. these should obviously be as few as possible. it is not necessary to provide an entire block for each patch of colour, but only the extent of surface required for each coloured portion of the print, as well as for its pair of register marks. patches of different colour that are not adjacent to one another on the design of the print may be cut on the same block, provided they are not too close for free colouring of the block in printing. each block also may be cut on both sides, so that there is considerable scope for economy in the arranging and planning of the colour blocks. when the arrangement of the plan of colour has been simplified as far as possible, a new block is prepared as described above, and a sheet of thin japanese paper (unsized) is cut large enough to cover the print design and its register marks. the clean surface of the new block is covered thinly with starch paste well rubbed into the grain, and while this is still wet an impression on the sheet of thin japanese paper is taken of the entire key-block, including its register marks in black, and laid before it is dry face downward on the pasted surface of the new block. this should be done as already described on page 25. it should be rubbed flat with the printing pad and left to dry. this operation requires careful handling, but it should be done easily and methodically, without any hurry. each side of the set of colour planks should be treated in the same way--a thin impression of the key-block and its register marks being laid upon each. it is advisable to paste down a freshly taken impression, each time, while the ink is still moist, for if these are allowed to dry, the shrinking of the paper causes errors of register. when these new blocks are dry, the patch of colour to be cut on each surface should be clearly indicated by a thin wash of diluted ink or colour, but not so as to hide the printed key line. the blocks may then be cut. a v-shaped cut is made round each form, as in the case of the key-block, and the clearing proceeds in the same way, but it is only necessary to clear a space of about an inch round each form: the rest of the wood should be left standing. a section of the printing surface of a colour block would be as follows: [illustration: fig. 16.--section of colour-block. a. colour mass. b. depression. c. surface of plank.] when the register marks corresponding to these colour forms have also been cut, and the paper washed off the blocks, the clear spaces may be used for pasting down new key impressions for the smaller colour patches and their corresponding register marks. in this way one side of a colour plank may contain several different colour forms and sets of register marks. as a rule the different colour patches would be printed separately, though in some cases two colours may be printed at one impression if they are small and have the same register marks. when the blocks have been cut and cleared it is advisable to smooth with sand-paper the edge of the depression where it meets the uncut surface of the wood, otherwise this edge, if at all sharp, will mark the print. for any particulars about which one may be in doubt, the sets of blocks at south kensington museum or in the print room at the british museum are available for examination. in one of the sets at the british museum it is interesting to see the temporary corrections that have been made in the register marks during printing by means of little wooden plugs stuck into the register notches. in nearly all cases the japanese blocks were made of cherry wood, but planks of box are said to have been occasionally used for very fine work. errors of register however exactly the register marks may be cut in a new set of blocks, very puzzling errors occasionally arise while printing, especially if the planks are of thin wood. some of the blocks are necessarily printed drier than others. for instance, the key-block is printed with a very small amount of ink and paste. other blocks may be even drier, such as the blocks which print small forms or details in a design. the blocks, however, which are used for large masses of colour, or for gradated tones, are moistened over the whole or a large part of the surface of the block, and if the wood is thin, and not well mounted across the ends, the block soon expands sufficiently to throw the register out. if the block is not mounted across the ends there will also be a tendency to warp, and this will add to the errors of register. but if the blocks are of fairly thick wood, and well mounted, the register will remain very exact indeed. usually the key-block is printed first. if the subsequent blocks are not in exact register the error is noticeable at once, and slight adjustments may be made for its correction. but in cases where the key-block is printed last (as sometimes is necessary) each colour block must be tested before a batch of prints is passed over it. for this purpose the first few prints of every batch should receive a faint impression of the key-block, so that the register of the colour impression may be verified before proceeding with the whole batch. if these precautions are taken, and the entire set of blocks kept as nearly as possible in the same conditions of dryness or moisture, all difficulties of register in printing will be easily overcome. when cutting a new set of blocks there is another possible source of error which needs to be carefully guarded against. most of the work in designing a new print is necessarily spent in planning and cutting the key-block, which may occupy a considerable time, especially if other work has to be carried on as well. if new wood is used, or wood that has not been seasoned long indoors, it will dry and contract considerably across the grain before the work is finished. then, if newer planks are prepared and cut up for the colour blocks, and impressions from the key-block are pasted down on them for cutting, it will be found that, as the newer wood of the colour-blocks goes on drying, it will shrink out of register, and the colour impressions will not fit the line perfectly. it is easy to fall into this difficulty, but there is no danger of it if the planks from which the key-block and the colour-blocks are cut are all equally seasoned and are in the same condition. chapter v preparation of paper, ink, colour, and paste for printing paper the paper made by the japanese from the inner bark of young shoots of the mulberry and certain other plants of similar fibre is beyond all others the best for wood-block printing. it is in itself a very remarkable material, and is used in japan for a great variety of purposes, on account of the strength and toughness due to its long silky fibre. paper of good quality for printing may be obtained directly from japan, or through trading agents dealing with japan. a case of five reams would be the smallest quantity obtainable directly, but it is by far the cheapest and most satisfactory way of buying it. in smaller quantities the paper is obtainable through many of the dealers in artists' materials. several kinds of this paper are made, but unsized sheets of a quality similar to the print on page 95, and a thin japanese tissue paper are the two kinds required for printing in colour. in its unsized state the paper is too absorbent for use, and it should be sized freshly as needed for work. this is done by brushing a thin solution of gelatine over the smooth surface of the sheets of paper. a drawing-board rather larger than the sheets of paper, placed as shown in fig. 17, with its lower edge resting on a basin of warm size, will be found a convenient arrangement. [illustration: plate vii. impression of a portion of detail from a japanese woodblock (very nearly actual size). (_to face page 48._)] the sheet gelatine sold by grocers for cooking makes an excellent size. six of the thin sheets to a pint of water is a good strength.[3] the gelatine is dissolved in hot water, but should not be boiled, as that partially destroys the size. when dissolved, a little powdered alum is also stirred in, about as much as will lie on a shilling to a pint of water. the addition of the alum is important, as it acts as a mordant and helps to make a better colour impression. [3] see also p. 75. [illustration: fig. 17.--drawing of sizing of paper.] in applying the size to the paper a four-inch broad flat paste brush is used. the paper is laid on the slanting board and the size brushed backward and forward across the paper from the upper end downward. care must be taken not to make creases in the paper, as these become permanent. to avoid this the lower end of the sheet may be held with the left hand and raised when necessary as the brush passes downwards. the waste size will run down to the basin, but the paper need not be flooded, nor should its surface be brushed unnecessarily, but it must be fully and evenly charged with size. the sheet is then picked up by the two upper corners (which may conveniently be kept unsized) and pinned at each corner over a cord stretched across the workroom. the sheets are left hanging until they are dry. the japanese lay the paper on the cord, letting the two halves of the sheet hang down equally on either side. the process of sizing and drying the sheets of paper is illustrated in a print shown in the collection at the south kensington museum. when the paper is quite dry it is taken down, and if required at once for printing should be cut up into sheets of the size required, with sufficient margin allowed to reach the register marks. it is best to cut a gauge or pattern in cardboard for use in cutting the sheets to a uniform size. a few sheets of unsized paper are needed as damping sheets, one being used to every three printing sheets. the damping sheets should be cut at least an inch wider and longer than the printing sheets. two wooden boards are also required. the sheets of printing paper are kept between these while damping before work. to prepare for work, a damping sheet is taken and brushed over evenly with water with a broad brush (like that used for sizing). the sheet must not be soaked, but made thoroughly moist, evenly all over. it is then laid on one of the two boards, and on it, with the printing side (the smoother side) downward, are laid three of the sized sheets of printing paper. on these another moist damping sheet is laid, and again three dry sheets of printing paper, face downwards, and so on alternately to the number of sheets of the batch to be printed. a board is placed on the top of the pile. the number of prints to be attempted at one printing will vary with the kind of work and with the printer's experience. the printing may be continued during three days, but if the paper is kept damp longer, there is danger of mould and spotting. with work requiring delicate gradation of colour and many separate block impressions twenty or thirty sheets will be found sufficient for three days' hard work. the professional printers of japan, however, print batches of two hundred and three hundred prints at a time, but in that case the work must become largely mechanical.[4] [4] see chapter xiii for further experience on this point. the batch of paper and damping sheets should remain between the boards for at least half an hour when new sheets are being damped for the first time. the damping sheets, all but the top and bottom ones, should then be removed and the printing sheets left together between the boards for some time before printing. an hour improves their condition very much, the moisture spreading equally throughout the batch of sheets. before printing they should be quite flat and soft, but scarcely moist to the touch. if the sheets are new, they may even be left standing all night after the first damping, and will be in perfect condition for printing in the morning without further damping. no weight should be placed on the boards. although no paper has hitherto been found that will take so perfect an impression from colour-blocks as the long-fibred japanese paper, yet it should be the aim of all craftsmen to become independent of foreign materials as far as possible. there is no doubt that our paper-makers should be able to produce a paper of good quality sufficiently absorbent to take colour from the wet block and yet tough enough to bear handling when slightly damp. if a short-fibred paper is made without size, it comes to pieces when it is damped for printing. but the amount of absorbency required is not so great as to preclude the use of size altogether. it is a problem which our paper-makers could surely solve. a soft, slightly absorbent, white paper is required. at present nothing has been produced to take the place of the long mulberry fibre of the japanese, which prints perfectly, but it is far from being pure white in colour. a white paper would have a great advantage in printing high and delicate colour schemes. ink next in importance is the preparation of the ink for printing the key-block or any black or grey parts of a design. as a rule the key-block is printed black, more or less diluted with paste; indeed the key-block is often printed very faintly by means of paste only just tinged with a trace of black. the use of colour for the key-block is treated in chapter vii. the ink is prepared as follows. take a stick of solid chinese ink of good quality, and break it with a hammer into fragments; put these to soak in a pot with water for three or four days. (the quality of the sticks of chinese ink varies greatly. the cheap sticks make a coarse and gritty ink which does not print well.) day by day pour off the water, adding fresh, so that the glue that soaks out of the softened black fragments is removed. three days is usually long enough for this. if left too long the whole mass goes bad and is spoiled. when the black mass is soft and clean drain off the water and rub the ink smooth in a dish with a bone palette knife. it is then ready for use, but would rapidly go bad if not used up at once, so that a preservative is necessary to keep a stock of ink in good condition. an effective method is to put the ink at once into a well-corked, wide-mouthed bottle. to the under side of the cork is nailed a little wad of unsized paper soaked with creosote. by this means ink can be kept in perfect condition for weeks or months. a drop of fresh creosote should occasionally be put on the wad fixed to the cork. [illustration: fig. 18.--cork of ink-bottle with wad for preservative.] fresh ink may at any time be obtained rapidly in small quantities by rubbing down a stick of chinese ink on a slab in the ordinary way, but this is very laborious, and is only worth while if one needs a small quantity of a glossy black, for which the rubbed-down ink containing all its glue is the best. colour any colour that can be obtained in a fine dry powder may be used in wood-block printing. some artists have succeeded in using ordinary water colours sold in tubes, by mixing the colour with the rice paste before printing; but the best results are obtained by the use of pure, finely ground dry colour mixed only with water, the rice paste being added actually on the block. most of the artists' colour merchants supply colour by weight in the form of dry powder: any colour that is commonly used in oil or water-colour painting may be obtained in this state. a stock of useful colours should be kept in wide-necked bottles. a few shallow plates or small dishes are needed to hold colour and a bone or horn palette knife for mixing and rubbing the colour into a smooth paste in the dishes. small bone paper knives are useful for taking colour from the bottles. when the colour scheme of a print is made certain--and this is best done by printing small experimental batches--it is a good plan to have a number of covered pots equal to the number of the different colour impressions, and to fill these with a quantity of each tint, the colour or colours being mixed smoothly with water to the consistency of stiff cream. some colours will be found to print more smoothly and easily than others. yellow ochre, for instance, prints with perfect smoothness and ease, while heavier or more gritty colours tend to separate and are more difficult. in the case of a very heavy colour such as vermilion, a drop of glue solution will keep the colour smooth for printing, and less paste is necessary. but most colours will give good impressions by means of rice paste alone. it is essential, however, that only very finely ground colours of good quality should be used. paste a paste must be used with the colour in order to hold it on to the surface of the paper and to give brilliancy. the colour, if printed without paste, would dry to powder again. the paste also preserves the matt quality which is characteristic of the japanese prints. finely ground rice flour may be obtained from grocery dealers. an excellent french preparation of rice sold in packets as _crême de riz_ is perfect for the purpose of making paste for printing. it should be carefully made as follows: while half a pint of water is put to boil in a saucepan over a small spirit lamp or gas burner, mix in a cup about two teaspoonfuls of rice flour with water, added little by little until a smooth cream is made with no lumps in it. a bone spoon is good for this purpose. pour this mixture into the boiling water in the saucepan all at once, and stir well till it boils again, after which it should be left simmering over a small flame for five minutes. when the paste has cooled it should be smooth and almost fluid enough to pour: not stiff like a pudding. while printing, a little paste is put out in a saucer and replenished from time to time. fresh paste should be made every day. chapter vi detailed method of printing success in printing depends very much on care and orderliness. it is necessary to keep to a fixed arrangement of the position of everything on the work-table and to have all kept as clean as possible. to see the deft and unhurried work of a japanese craftsman at printing is a great lesson, and a reproach to western clumsiness. the positions indicated by the diagram on page 11 will be found to be practical and convenient. the special tools used in printing are the "baren" or printing pad, which is the only instrument of pressure used, and the printing brushes. the baren or printing pad as made by the japanese, the baren is about five inches in diameter, and consists of a circular board upon which a flat coil of cord or twisted fibre is laid. this is held in place by a covering made of a strip of bamboo-sheath, the two ends of which are twisted and brought together at the back of the board so as to form a handle. the flat surface of the bamboo-sheath is on the under side of the pad when the handle is uppermost. the ribbed bamboo-sheath is impervious to the dampness of the paper in printing, and the pad may be used to rub and press directly on the back of the damp paper as it lies on the block without any protective backing sheet. the collotype reproduction facing page 12 shows the shape and character of the baren. japanese printing pads may be obtained from some of the artists' colour-men, or from japan through various agencies. they are by far the best instrument for the purpose. a pad lasts a considerable time, and when the bamboo sheath wears through may be re-covered as described below. if the new bamboo sheath is unobtainable, the baren may be re-covered by a sheet of vegetable parchment (of the kind used for covering pots of jam), laid on when wet, and twisted and bound at the end like the original bamboo covering. a baren used and re-covered when worn will last for an indefinite time in this way. to re-cover a worn baren with bamboo sheath damp the new leaf in water with a brush on both sides thoroughly. wipe dry both sides. lay it on a flat surface and stretch wider with the fingers on the inside, keeping the leaf flat with the palm of the hand. rub the inside of the leaf with something hard and smooth across the width on both sides. 1. cut ag, bg with leaf folded. 2. place the round pad in position on the flat leaf. 3. stretch the leaf to lap at sides ef. 4. turn in ea and bf fold by fold, first one side and then the other. 5. pull hard before beginning the other end. [illustration: fig. 19.--method of re-covering baren.] 6. cut away ch, dh, holding down firmly the end done. 7. twist up the ends tightly, pull over to the centre, and tie tightly together; cut off ends. 8. polish on board and oil slightly. twist the inside part of the baren occasionally to save wear by changing its position within the sheath. several substitutes have been tried in place of the japanese baren, with coverings of leather, shark's skin, celluloid, and various other materials, but these necessitate the use of a backing sheet to protect the paper from their harsh surfaces. an ingenious rubber of ribbed glass which works directly on the paper has been devised by mr. william giles, who has produced beautiful results by its means. if one is using the japanese baren, its surface needs to be kept very slightly oiled to enable it to run freely over the damp paper. a pad of paper with a drop of sweet oil suffices for this, and may lie on the right of the printing block where the baren is put after each impression is taken. an even simpler method is that of the japanese craftsman who rubs the baren from time to time on the back of his head. brushes japanese printing brushes are sold by some artists' colour dealers, but these are not essential, nor have they any practical superiority over well-made western brushes. [illustration: fig. 20.--drawing of brushes.] an excellent type of brush is that made of black siberian bear hair for fine varnishing. these can be had from good brush-makers with the hair fixed so that it will stand soaking in water. drawings of the type of brush are given above. three or four are sufficient; one broad brush, about three inches, for large spaces, one two-inch, and two one-inch, will do nearly all that is needed. occasionally a smaller brush may be of use. printing to begin printing, one takes first the key-block, laying it upon a wet sheet of unsized paper, or upon wads of wet paper under each corner of the block, which will keep it quite steady on the work-table. a batch of sheets of printing paper, prepared and damped as described in chapter v, lies between boards just beyond the block. the pad lies close to the block at the right on oily paper pinned to the table. to the right also are a dish or plate on which a little ink is spread, the printing brush (broad for the key-block), a saucer containing fresh paste, a bowl of water, a small sponge, and a cloth. nothing else is needed, and it is best to keep the table clear of unnecessary pots or colour bottles. when these things are ready one should see that the paper is in a good state. it should be rather drier for a key-block than for other blocks, as a fine line will print thickly if the paper is too damp and soft. in fact, it can scarcely be too dry for the key-block, provided that it has become perfectly smooth, and is still flexible enough for complete contact with the block. but it must not be either dry or damp in patches. if the paper is all right, one lifts off the upper board and top damping sheet, placing them on the left, ready to receive the sheets when printed. the key-block, if quite dry, must be moistened with a damp sponge and then brushed over with the broad printing brush and ink. if a grey line is wanted the brush should be dipped in a little of the paste and scarcely touched with ink. for a pale grey line the key-block also must be well washed before printing. even if the line is to be black a little paste should be used. this is best added after one has brushed the black ink on to the block, not mixed with it beforehand. the ink and paste are then broken together smoothly and completely over the whole surface of the block. the last few brush strokes should be of the full length or breadth of the block and be given lightly with the brush held upright. the inking of the block must be thoroughly done, but with no more brushing than is necessary to spread the colour equally. when properly charged with ink the block should not be at all wet, but just covered with a very thin and nearly dry film of ink and paste. no time should be wasted in lifting the top sheet of printing paper on to the block, placing first its right corner in the register notch, and holding it there with the thumb, then the edge of the paper to the other notch, to be held with the left thumb while the right hand is released to take up the baren (fig. 21). beginning at the left, the baren is rubbed backwards and forwards, a full stroke each time, to the outside limits of the block, with a moderate, even pressure, moving the stroke in a zigzag towards the right end of the block (fig. 22). once over should be enough. a second rub makes heavy printing of the finer lines. then the paper is lifted from the block and placed on the board to the left. [illustration: fig. 21.--manner of holding the paper.] particular attention must be given to the careful placing of the paper home in the register notches, and to holding it there until the rubber has gripped the paper on the block. sheet by sheet all the printing paper is passed in this way over the key-block, and piled together. there is no fear of the ink offsetting or marking the print placed above it. as the work proceeds the block will give better and better impressions. spoiled or defective impressions should be put together at the top of the pile when it lies ready for the next printing, for the first few impressions are always uncertain, and it is well to use the defective prints as pioneers, so as not to spoil good ones. [illustration: fig. 22.--manner of using the baren.] when the block has been printed on the whole batch, the sheets should be replaced at once between the boards before one prepares for the colour impressions. usually the paper will be too dry for colour by this time: if this is so, the damping sheets should be moistened and put in again as before; one to each three printing sheets. in a minute or two they will have damped the paper sufficiently and must be taken out, leaving the printing sheets to stand, between the boards, ready for the first colour-block. printing from colour-blocks in printing colour the paper may be slightly damper than it should be for key-block impressions, and a heavier pressure is necessary on the baren if the colour masses are large. if the baren is pressed lightly the colour will not completely cover the paper, but will leave a dry, granular texture. occasionally this quality may be useful, but as a rule a smooth, evenly printed surface is best. it will be found that smooth, even printing is not obtained by loading the block with colour or paste, but by using the least possible quantity of both, and nearly dry paper. in beginning to print from a colour-block, care should be taken to moisten the block fully before printing, or it will not yield the colour from its surface; but the block must be wiped, and not used while actually wet. the printing proceeds exactly as in the case of the key-block, except for the heavier use of the baren. the paste should be added after the colour has been roughly brushed on to the block, and then the two are smoothly brushed together. the japanese printers put the paste on to the block by means of a little stick kept in the dish of paste. experience will soon show the amount of paste needed. it is important neither to add too much nor to stint the paste, as the colour when dry depends on the paste for its quality. too little paste gives a dead effect. some of the colours print more easily than others. with a sticky colour it is well to wipe the block with a nearly dry sponge between each impression, so that the wood gives up its colour more readily. in the case of a very heavy colour such as vermilion a drop of glue and water may help; but with practically all the colours that are generally used the rice paste and careful printing are enough. the amount of size in the paper is another important factor in the printing of colour. if the paper is too lightly sized the fibres will detach themselves and stick to the damp block. or if too heavily sized the paper will not take up the colour cleanly from the block, and will look hard when dry. one very soon feels instinctively the right quality and condition of the block, colour, and paper which are essential to good printing; and to print well one must become sensitive to them. printing of gradations beside the printing of flat masses of colour, one of the great resources of block printing is in the power of delicate gradation in printing. the simplest way of making a gradation from strong to pale colour is to dip one corner of a broad brush into the colour and the other corner into water so that the water just runs into the colour: then, by squeezing the whole width of the brush broadly between the thumb and forefinger so that most of the water is squeezed out, the brush is left charged with a tint gradated from side to side. the brush is then dipped lightly into paste along its whole edge, and brushed a few times to and fro across the block where the gradation is needed. it is easy in this way to print a very delicately gradated tint from full colour to white. if the pale edge of the tint is to disappear, the block should be moistened along the surface with a sponge where the colour is to cease. a soft edge may be given to a tint with a brush ordinarily charged if the block is moistened with a clean sponge at the part where the tint is to cease. this effect is often seen at the top of the sky in a japanese landscape print where a dark blue band of colour is printed with a soft edge suddenly gradated to white, or sometimes the plumage of birds is printed with sudden gradations. in fact, the method may be developed in all kinds of ways. often it is an advantage to print a gradation and then a flat tone over the gradation in a second printing. offsetting no care need be taken to prevent "offsetting" of the colour while printing. the prints may be piled on the top of each other immediately as they are lifted from the block, without fear of offsetting or marking each other. only an excessive use of colour, or the leaving of heavy ridges of colour at the edges of the block by careless brushing, will sometimes mark the next print on the pile. as in printing the key-block, it is well to hold the brush quite upright for the last strokes across the block, and always to give a full stroke across the whole length or width of the form to be coloured. as soon as one colour-block has been printed, the next may be taken and printed at once, without fear of the colour running, even though the fresh colour touches the parts already printed. one by one each colour-block is printed in this way until the batch of paper has been passed over the whole set of blocks composing the design of the print. there may sometimes be an advantage in not printing the key-block first, though as a rule it should come first for the sake of keeping the later blocks in proper register. if the key-block is not printed one cannot see how the colour-blocks are fitting. but in the case of a sky with perhaps two or even three printings--a gradation and a flat tone or two gradations--there is danger of blurring the lines of the key-block, so that in such a case the sky should be printed first, and then the key-block followed by the remaining colour-blocks. at the end of a day's printing the prints may quite safely be left standing together between the boards until the next day. for three days the damp paper comes to no harm, except in hot weather, but on the fourth day little red spots of mould begin to show and spread. it should be remembered that freshly boiled paste is to be used each day. drying of prints when the prints are finished they should be put to dry as soon as possible. if they are spread out and left exposed to the air they will soon dry, but in drying will cockle, and cannot then be easily pressed flat. it is better to have a number of mill-boards or absorbent "pulp" boards rather larger than the prints, and to pile the prints and boards alternately one by one, placing a weight on the top of the pile. the absorbent boards will rapidly dry the prints and keep them quite flat. finished prints should be numbered for reference, and should, if printed by the artist himself, also bear his signature --or some printed sign to that effect. the number of prints obtainable from a set of blocks is difficult to estimate. the japanese printers are said to have made editions of several thousands from single sets of blocks. the actual wear in printing even of a fine line block is imperceptible, for the pressure is very slight. certainly hundreds of prints can be made without any deterioration. but an artist who is both designing and producing his own work will not be inclined to print large editions.[5] [5] further experience on this point is given in chapter viii on co-operative printing. chapter vii principles and main considerations in designing wood-block prints--their application to modern colour printing until one has become quite familiar with the craft of wood-block printing it is not possible to make a satisfactory design for a print, or to understand either the full resources that are available or the limits that are fixed. in beginning it is well to undertake only a small design, so that no great amount of material or time need be consumed in gaining the first experience, but this small piece of work should be carried through to the end, however defective it may become at any stage. a small key-block and two or three colour patches may all be cut on the two sides of one plank for this purpose. there is great diversity of opinion as to the conventions that are appropriate to the designing of colour prints. in the work of the japanese masters the convention does not vary. a descriptive black or grey line is used throughout the design, outlining all forms or used as flat spots or patches. the line is not always uniform, but is developed with great subtlety to suggest the character of the form expressed, so that the subsequent flat mass of colour printed within the line appears to be modelled. this treatment of the line is one of the great resources of the work, and is special to this kind of design, in which the line has to be cut with the knife _on both sides_, and is for this reason capable of unusual development in its power of expressing form. indeed the knife is the final instrument in the drawing of the design. typical examples of key-block impressions are given on pages 26 and 33: they show the variety of character and quality possible in the lines and black masses of key-blocks. the designing of a print depends most of all upon this development of line and black mass in the key-block. the colour pattern of the print is held together by it, and the form suggested. in the japanese prints the key-block is invariably printed black or grey. masses intended to be dense black in the finished print are printed first a flat grey by the key-block, and are then printed a full black from a colour-block like any other patch of colour, the double printing being necessary to give the intensity of the black. although several modern prints have been designed on other principles, and sometimes a coloured key-block is successfully used, yet the convention adopted by the japanese is the simplest and most fundamental of all. outside its safe limitations the technical difficulties are increased, and one is led to make compromises that strain the proper resources of block printing and are of doubtful advantage. the temptation to use colour with the key-block comes when one attempts to use the key-block for rendering light and shadow. its use by the japanese masters was generally for the descriptive expression of the contours of objects, ignoring entirely their shadows, or any effects of light and shade, unless a shadow happened occasionally to be an important part of the pattern of the design. generally, as in nearly all the landscape prints by hiroshigé, the line is descriptive or suggestive of essential form, not of effects in light and shade. if the key-block is used for light and shade, the question of relative tones and values of shadows arises, and these will be falsified unless a key-block is made for each separate plane or part of the design, and then there is danger of confusion or of compromises that are beyond the true scope of the work. it is generally safest to print the key-block in a tone that blends with the general tone of the print, and not to use it as a part of the colour pattern. it serves mainly to control the form, leaving the colour-blocks to give the colour pattern. there are cases, of course, where no rule holds good, and sometimes a design may successfully omit the key-block altogether, using only a few silhouettes of colour, one of which controls the main form of the print, and serves as key-block. frequently, also, the key-block may be used to give the interior form or character of part of a design, leaving the shape of a colour-block to express the outside shape or contour; as in the spots suggesting foliage in the print on page 114. the shapes of the tree forms are partly left to the colour-block to complete, the key only giving the suggestion of the general broken character of the foliage, not the outside limits of the branches. the outer shape of a tree or branch is rarely expressed by an enclosing line in any of the japanese prints. the key-block is often used to describe interior form when a silhouette of colour is all that is needed for the contour. the expressive rendering of the rough surface of tree trunks and of forms of rock, or the articulation of plants and the suggestion of objects in atmospheric distance or mist, should be studied in good prints by the japanese masters. in printed work by modern masters--as, for example, the work of the great french designers of poster advertisements--much may be learnt in the use and development of expressive line. the japanese system of training is well described in a book by henry p. bowie on "the laws of japanese painting," in which many useful suggestions are given with reference to graphic brush drawing and the suggestive use of line and brush marks. as part of the training of a designer for modern decorative printing, the experience and sense of economy that are to be gained from the study of wood-block printing are very great. perhaps no work goes so directly to the essentials of the art of decorative designing for printed work of all kinds. the wood blocks not only compel economy of design, but also lead one to it. even as a means of general training in the elements of decorative pictorial composition the wood blocks have great possibilities as an adjunct to the courses of work followed by art students. the same problems that arise in all decoration may be dealt with by their means on a small scale, but under conditions that are essentially instructive. colour schemes may be studied and worked out with entire freedom by printing and reprinting until a problem is thoroughly solved. a colour design may be studied and worked out as fully by means of a small set of blocks, and with more freedom for experiment and alteration than is possible by the usual methods of study, such as painting and repainting on paper or canvas or wall; for the form being once established by the blocks, the colour may be reconstructed again and again without limit. the craft has thus not only its special interest as a means of personal expression, but also a more general use as a means of training and preparation for the wider scope and almost unlimited resources of modern printing. the best use of those resources will be made by artists who have been trained under simpler conditions, and have found their way gradually to an understanding of the secrets of æsthetic economy in printing. one of the many paths to that experience is by way of the craft of the wood-block printer. chapter viii co-operative printing a print is shown at the end of this book (page 95) as an example of a first experiment in co-operative printing. an actual print was needed to illustrate the method of block printing, and the number required was too great for a single printer to undertake. so the work was divided between four printers (of whom the writer was one), working together. each of us had been accustomed to print our own prints in small batches of a dozen or two at a time, giving individual care to each print. the printing of 2000 prints to a fixed type was a very different matter, and proved an instructive and valuable experience. it was found that the printing of a large number of successive impressions gave one an increasingly delicate control of a block, and a high percentage of perfect impressions. after the initial experiments and practice, the failures in the later batches of the print were reduced to only 4 or 5 per cent. of the completed prints. the work was done in batches of 250 prints, each print receiving eight impressions, as shown on pages 98 to 109. each of the four printers took charge of a particular series of the blocks, which were printed in a regular order. it was found most convenient to print the key-block last of all, as the heavy blacks in it were inclined to offset under the pressure of the baren and slightly soil the colour-blocks, if the key-block was printed first, as is usually the practice. the colour-blocks were printed in the order in which they are placed in the appendix. the best quality of work was done on nearly dry paper. the damping sheets were placed among the new paper at the end of the day's work and removed after ten or fifteen minutes, the printing paper then was left standing over night between boards, ready for work in the morning, and was not damped again until after receiving several impressions. then it was very slightly damped again by means of a damping sheet to every ten or twelve prints placed there for a very few minutes. as one printer finished the impressions from one of his blocks, the batch of papers was passed on to the others, each in turn. in this way three batches of 250 were printed without haste in one week, working eight hours a day for five and a half days. the chief difficulty experienced was in keeping to the exact colour and quality of the type print, each printer being inclined to vary according to individual preferences. to counteract this tendency, it is necessary for one individual to watch and control the others in these respects. otherwise the work proceeded easily and made very clear the possibilities of the craft for the printing of large numbers of prints for special purposes where the qualities required are not obtainable by machine printing. obviously the best results will always be obtained by the individual printing of his own work by an artist. this can only be done, however, in comparatively small numbers, yet the blocks are capable of printing very large quantities without deterioration. the set of blocks used for the example given here showed very little deterioration after 4000 impressions had been taken. the key-block was less worn than any, the pressure being very slight for this block, and the ink perfectly smooth. the impression of which a reproduction is given on page 109 was taken after 4000 had been printed from the key-block. block no. 2 was much more worn by the gritty nature of the burnt sienna used in its printing. it would be an easy matter, however, to replace any particular colour-block that might show signs of wear in a long course of printing. other examples given in the appendix show qualities and methods of treatment that are instructive or suggestive. no. 6 is the key impression of a japanese print in which an admirable variety of resource is shown by its design; the character of each kind of form being rendered by such simple yet so expressive indications. it is instructive to study the means by which this is done, and to notice how interior form is sometimes suggested by groups of spots or black marks of varied shape while the indication of the external form is left entirely to the shape of the colour-block subsequently to be printed. plate xvi is a reproduction of a print by hiroshigé and shows the suggestive use of the key-block in rendering tree forms. plates xvii and xviii show in greater detail this kind of treatment. plates xxiii-xxiv are key-blocks of modern print designs. appendix an original print in colour, designed and cut by the author and printed by hand on japanese paper, followed by collotype reproductions showing the separate impressions of the colour blocks used for this print, and other collotype reproductions of various examples of printing and design. +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ |the particulars given in chapter viii on co-operative printing refer | |specially to the original print included in the first edition. in this | |edition an entirely new print is shown, and only 1,000 copies of it are| |being published. | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ [illustration: plate viii.--an original print designed and cut by the author, printed by hand on japanese paper.] plates originally printed in collotype are now produced in half-tone [illustration: plate ix.--first printing. key block. black.] [illustration: plate x.--second printing. dull red. printed lightly at the top.] [illustration: plate xi.--third printing. deep blue. strong at the bottom, paler at the top.] [illustration: plate xii.--fifth printing. bright orange. (the fourth printing, not shown, is a similar small block, printing a faint tone over the road in the foreground.)] [illustration: plate xiii.--sixth printing. indian red. gradation.] [illustration: plate xiv.--seventh printing. green. printed flat.] [illustration: plate xv.--eighth printing. bluish green. gradation.] [illustration: plate xvi.--reproduction of a colour print by hiroshigé.] [illustration: plate xvii.--reproduction of a portion of the print shown on the preceding page, actual size, showing the treatment of the foliage and the expressive drawing of the tree trunk and stems.] [illustration: plate xviii.--reproduction of another portion of the print shown on page 111 (actual size), showing the expressive use of line in the drawing of the distant forms.] [illustration: plate xix.--reproduction of a colour print by hiroshigé.] [illustration: plate xx.--reproduction of a portion (actual size) of the print on the preceding page, showing treatment of tree forms and distance.] [illustration: plate xxi.--reproduction of a colour print by hiroshigé.] [illustration: plate xxii.--reproduction of a portion (actual size) of the print on the preceding page, showing treatment of tree and blossom.] [illustration: plate xxiii.--the tiger. reproduction of a colour print by j. d. batten.] [illustration: plate xxiv.--lapwings. reproduction of a colour print by a. w. seaby.] books of reference "tools and materials illustrating the japanese method of colour printing." a descriptive catalogue of a collection exhibited in the victoria and albert museum, london. price twopence. victoria and albert museum catalogues. 1913. "the colour prints of japan." by edward f. strange. the langham series of art monographs. london. "japanese colour prints." by edward f. strange. (3rd edition.) victoria and albert museum handbooks. london. "japanese wood engravings." by william anderson, f. r. c. s. london, seeley & co., ltd. new york, macmillan & co. 1895. "japanese wood-cutting and wood-cut printing." by t. tokuno. edited and annotated by s. r. kochler. report of the smithsonian institution, washington, for the year ending june 30, 1892. issued in pamphlet form by the u.s.a. national museum, washington. 1893. other works containing descriptions and references to the craft of wood-block printing in the art library at the victoria and albert museum, london, are the following:-"the industries of japan." by j. j. rein. (paper, pp. 389.) london. 1889. "bungei ruisan," by yoshino sakakibara. essays on japanese literature, with additional chapters describing the manufacture of paper and the processes of printing and engraving. (the museum copy has ms. translations of the portion relating to engraving.) tokyo. 1878. index alum, 50 andreani, andrea, xi baldung, hans, x bamboo-sheath, 62 baren, 11, 61, 62 baren, manner of using, 72 baren, to re-cover, 63, 64 baren, to re-cover (diagram), 64 batches, size of, 89 batten, j. d., 2 block cutting, materials, 17 blocks, cutting of, 17, 23 blocks, mounting of, 18 blocks, planning of, 23 books of reference, 129 bowie, henry p., 86 british museum print room, 43 brushes, 65 brushes, drawing of, 66 carborundum stone, 21 cherry wood, 17 chiaroscuro, x chinese ink, 55 chisel, grip of, 34, 35 chisels, 20 clearing of spaces, 33 clearing of wood between knife cuts, 35 colour, 56 colour block, diagram of section, 42 colour blocks, plan of, 39 colour blocks, planning, 40, 41 colour blocks, printing from, 73 colour design, 87 commercial development, 5 conventions of design, 82 co-operative printing, 89 craft in japan, 61 craftsmen, training of, 24 cranach, lucas, x crane, walter, ix creasote, 56 cutting, 25 da carpo, ugo, x damping, 14 damping sheets, 51 design, 27 design, conventions in, 82 designing, 81 designing wood-block prints, principles of, 81 design of key-block, 26 diagram of knife cuts, 33 drying of colour, 77 drying of prints, 79 errors of register, 43 eve and the serpent, print of, 2 flat treatment, 26, 27 foliage, 85 gelatine, 48 giles, william, 65 glue solution with colour, 58, 75 gouge, method of holding, 35 gradations, printing of, 75 grip of chisel, 34, 35 hands, position of, in cutting, 30, 31 herkomer, ix hiroshigé, 84 impressions, possible number of, 92 ink, 54 inking of block, 69 ink, preservative for, 56 italian woodcuts, ix jackson, t. b., xii japan, craft in, 4, 23 japanese blocks, 43 japanese craftsmen, 61 japanese drawing, 27 japanese key-block, 33 "japanese painting, the laws of," 86 japanese paper, 54 japanese printers, 52, 80 japanese prints, 83 key-block, 25, 27, 84, 85 key-block impressions, 5, 26, 33 knife, 19 knife, drawing of, 19 knife, use of, 24 knife cuts, diagram of, 33 "laws of japanese painting," 86 light and shade, 85 line block, cutting of, 32 line, development of, 32 line of key-block, 26 mallet, 21 mallet, drawing of, 21 mantegna, xi millboards for drying, 79 modern prints, 83 mordant, alum as, 50 mould, 79 mulberry fibre, 47 museums, sets of blocks at, 43 number of impressions, 92 offsetting, 71, 77 oilstones, 21 orlik, prof. emil, 7 outamaro, 24 pad, 61 paper, 47 paper, damping of, 51 paper, manner of holding, 70 paper, mould in, 79 paper, need of white, 54 paper, sizing of, 48 paper, sizing of (drawing), 49 paste, 58 paste, amount used in printing, 74 paste, preparation of, 59 plank, preparation of, 18 planning of blocks, 24 position of hands, 30, 31 posters, 86, 87 printing, 67 printing, co-operative, 89 printing, detailed method of, 61 printing from colour blocks, 73 printing, general description of, 9 printing of gradations, 75, 76, 77 printing pad, 62 prints, designing, 81 prints, drying of, 79 register, 71, 78 register, errors of, 41, 43 register marks, 36, 37, 42 register marks, position of, 37 register marks, section of, 38 rice flour, 59 rice paste, 58 rubber, glass, 65 rubber, printing, 61 shadows, treatment of, 85 shallow cuts, 34 shrinking of paper, 41 siberian bear hair brushes, 66 size, amount of, in paper, 75 size, excess of, 75 sizing of paper, 48, 49 smithsonian institution pamphlet, 2 south kensington museum, 43 spots in paper, 79 table, plan of, 11 tokuno, t., 2 tools for block-cutting, 19 training of designers, 86 treatment of form, 93 tree-forms, 85, 93 variety of line, 82, 83 washita oilstone, 22 wood, 17 woodcuts, italian, ix. work-table, plan of, 11 * * * * * artists interested in the :: :: permanence of :: :: their wood block prints now use the cambridge colours only, because (1) only pigments of the highest order of permanence are included in the cambridge palette (2) all the pigments may be safely mixed together without danger of their acting injuriously on each other (3) all the pigments are pure and free from injurious impurities sole makers madderton & co., ltd., loughton, essex (established 1891) england telegrams telephone "madderton, loughton," essex 63 loughton * * * * * all tools and materials for japanese woodblock cutting and printing as described in this book are stocked by penrose's including several new forms of tools and brushes approved by f. morley fletcher, esq. _list free on application_ a. w. penrose & co., ltd. 109 farringdon road, london, e.c.1. printed by sir isaac pitman & sons, ltd., bath, england transcriber's note: a carat character is used to denote superscription. a single character following the carat is superscripted (example: cccc^o). the original page numbers are enclosed by curly brackets and embedded in the text to facilitate the use of the index (examples: {vii} and {127}). [illustration: henry viii. in council (_from holinshed's 'chronicles of england,'_ 1577) _page 100_] a brief history of wood-engraving from its invention by joseph cundall author of 'holbein and his works' etc. london sampson low, marston, & company limited st. dunstan's house fetter lane, fleet street, e.c. 1895 {vii} contents chapter i page on pictures of saints--the print of _the virgin with the holy child in her lap_ in the bibliothèque royale de belgique--on the print of _st. christopher_ in the spencer library at manchester--the _annunciation_ and the _st. bridget_ of sweden 1 chapter ii on the block books of the fifteenth century--biblia pauperum; apocalypsis sancti johannis, &c. 11 chapter iii the block books of the fifteenth century--ars moriendi- _temptacio diaboli_--canticum canticorum, and others 20 chapter iv block book--speculum humanae salvationis--_casus luciferi_--the mentz psalter of 1459--book of fables--the cologne bible--nürnberg chronicle--breydenbach's travels 28 chapter v on wood-engraving in italy in the fifteenth century--the venice _kalendario_ of 1476--the _triumph of petrarch_--the _hypnerotomachia poliphili_--aldo manuzio--portrait of aldus 40 {viii} chapter vi on wood-engraving in france in the fifteenth century- engraving on metal blocks--'books of hours'--famous french publishers: pierre le rouge, simon vostre, antoine verard, thielman kerver, guyot marchant, philippe pigouchet, jean dupré, and others 51 chapter vii wood-engraving in england in the fifteenth century--william caxton, _recuyell of the historyes of troye_--_dictes and sayings of philosophers_--_game and playe of the chesse_, &c.--wynkyn de worde--richard pynson 61 chapter viii wood-engraving in germany in the sixteenth century--albrecht dürer--_coronation of the virgin_--the apocalypse--the little passion--his engravings on copper--the triumphs of maximilian--the _triumphal arch_--the _triumphal car_--the _triumphal procession_ 69 chapter ix hans holbein--_dance of death_--bible cuts--hans lützelburger--_dance of death alphabet_--the little masters--altdorfer--beham--brosamer--aldegrever--cranach 81 chapter x wood-engraving in italy and france in the sixteenth century--giuseppe porta of venice--geoffroy tory and robert estienne of paris--borluyt's _figures from the new testament_--christophe plantin of antwerp 89 {ix} chapter xi wood-engraving in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in italy and england--printing in chiaro-oscuro in venice--printing in colour in germany--_habiti antichi e moderni_ by vecellio--wood-engraving in england--foxe's _acts and monuments_--holinshed's _chronicles_--_a booke of christian prayers_--dr. cuningham's _cosmographical glasse_--_æsop's fables_--the french engraver papillon 99 chapter xii thomas bewick and his pupils--_select fables_--_history of quadrupeds_--_history of british birds_--_æsop's fables_- prices at which these books were published--death of bewick 108 chapter xiii bewick's successors--john bewick (his brother)--_looking-glass for the mind_--_goldsmith's poems_--_somerville's chase_--robert johnson--charlton nesbit--robert elliot r. bewick--_history of fishes_--luke clennell--william harvey--george bonner--w. h. powis--john jackson--ebenezer landells--robert branston--f. w. branston--john thompson--j. orrin smith--john and mary byfield--samuel williams--w. t. green--o. jewitt--c. gray--s. slader--j. greenaway--w. j. palmer--german engravers--modern english engravers 116 index 129 {x} [illustration: the wood-engraver _by jost amman_ (1568)] {1} a brief history of wood-engraving -----chapter i _on the early pictures of saints_ many volumes have been written on the subject of wood-engraving, especially in germany, holland, and belgium, where the art first flourished; as well as in italy, france, and england; and some of the best of these books have been published during the present century. the most important of them are, dr. dibdin's celebrated bibliographical works; 'a treatise on wood-engraving,' by w. a. chatto, of which a new edition has lately been issued; 'wood-engraving in italy in the 15th century,' by dr. lippmann; and, above all, 'the masters of wood-engraving,' a magnificent folio volume written by mr. w. j. linton--himself a master--who, besides giving us the benefit of his technical knowledge obtained by the practice of the art for fifty years, presents us with copies, from blocks engraved by himself, of the most celebrated woodcuts of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. many writers have asserted that the first wood-engravings are to be found on playing-cards; others maintain that {2} the very rough prints on the playing-cards of the early fifteenth century were taken from stencil-plates. it is impossible to decide the point, nor is it of much importance; there is no evidence whatever as to the method of their production. they appeared in europe about the year 1350: they came from the east, but their positive history, according to dr. willshire, begins in the year 1392.[1] it has been asserted that many prints of images of saints produced by means of wood-engraving preceded even playing-cards. the first undoubted fact that we can arrive at in the history of wood-engraving is that early in the fifteenth century there were to be found, in many of the monasteries and convents in various parts of europe, prints of the virgin with the holy infant, the most popular saints, and subjects from the bible, which were certainly taken from engravings on wood; and we have now to describe some typical examples of primitive devotional pictures, printed by the xylographic process. the earliest of these woodcuts may date from 1380, and there are many which are assigned to the first half of the fifteenth century; they were all intended to be coloured by hand, and are therefore simply in outline, without shading. the designs are usually good, but the execution is not always so meritorious. in the royal library at brussels there is a coloured print of _the virgin with the holy child in her lap_, surrounded by four saints in an inclosed garden. on the virgin's right hand sits st. catherine, with a royal crown on her head, the sword in her left hand, and, leaning against her feet, a broken wheel. beneath is st. dorothea crowned with roses, with a branch of a rose-tree in her right hand and the handle of a basket of apples in her left; on the other side are st. barbara holding her tower, and, under her, st. margaret with a book in her left hand; her right hand clasps a laidly dragon, and a cross leans upon her arm. {3} [illustration: the virgin with four saints _in the bibliothèque royale de belgique_] {4} outside the palings a rabbit is feeding; a bird sits on the rail behind st. catherine, two others are flying, and, above all, three angels are offering chaplets of roses to the virgin; a palm-tree is growing on each side of her. but the most important part of the print is the very solid three-barred gate at the entrance to the garden, for on the uppermost of the bars we distinctly read m: cccc^o xviii^o. the print itself measures 14½ inches in height by 9 inches in width, without reckoning the border lines. it was found pasted at the bottom of an old coffer in the possession of an innkeeper at malines in 1844 by a well-known architect, m. de noter, who, recognising its great importance, offered it to the royal library at brussels. it has been reproduced in scrupulously exact facsimile and fully described in the work entitled 'documents iconographiques et typographiques de la bibliothèque royale de belgique,' published by mm. muquardt of brussels. the small letters ^o are supposed to represent nails in the gate. m. georges duplessis tells us that he has examined the print minutely several times, and that he does not believe this date has been tampered with in any way. some collectors and would-be critics maintain that the drawing of the figures and the folds of the garments are of a later date than 1418; if they were to examine the works of hubert and jan van eyck, and the paintings of meister stephan lochner of cologne, rogier van der weyden, and other artists who lived about this time, they would be sufficiently answered. mr. linton is of opinion (and there can be no better judge) that the _style_ of the engraving does not compel him to attribute it to a later date than 1418, yet both he and mr. chatto express their doubts as to its authenticity--it appears to us, without sufficient reason. about the middle of the eighteenth century herr heinecken, a german collector of engravings, discovered, pasted {5} inside the binding of a manuscript in the library of the convent of buxheim in suabia, a folio print brightly coloured of _st. christopher bearing the infant christ_. the outlines are printed in black ink, not by any kind of press, but in much the same way as that used by wood-engravers of the present day in taking their proofs, who first ink the engraved surface with a printer's ball, then lay the paper carefully over the cut, waxed at the edges to hold the paper firmly, and rub the back of the paper with a burnisher. in the fifteenth century a roller called a _frotton_ was used, as being more expeditious. our illustration gives an idea of the original, which is still in the cover of the book in which it was discovered, and now in the spencer library at manchester. the cut measures 11½ inches in height by 8½ inches in width, and is coloured after the manner of the time; that is, the saint's robe is tinted with red and the lining with yellow ochre, the nimbuses are of the same kind of yellow; the robes of christ and the monk are light blue, of the same tint as the water; the grass and foliage are bright green; the faces, hands, and legs are in a pale flesh-tint; there are but five or six colours used, and they may have been either washed in by hand or brushed in through a stencil-plate. as hand colouring would be quicker and less troublesome, one does not see the advantage of the stencil. the inscription beneath the cut reads thus:- cristofori faciem die quacumque tueris millesimo cccc^o illa nempe die morte mala non morieris xx^o tercio which may be rendered: on whatever day the face of christopher thou shalt see, on that day no evil form of death shall visit thee. {6} [illustration: st. christopher _the original (11½ in. by 8½ in.) is pasted inside the cover of an old manuscript book in the spencer library now at manchester._] {7} mr. linton is enthusiastic in praise of this cut. 'i am well content,' he says, 'to give some words of unstinted praise to our st. christopher for the design. i mind not the disproportionate space he occupies in the picture. is not he famous as a giant? the perspective also is good enough for me, as doubtless it was to those in whose interest the print was issued. it is certain he is crossing a stream; we see a fish beneath the waves. he supports his colossal frame and helps his steady course with a full-grown fruit-bearing palm-tree--fit staff for saintly son of anak; no heathen he; the nimbus is round his head. as on his shoulders he bears the lord of the world, can we fail to remark his upturned glance, inquiring why he is thus bowed down by a little child? the blessing hand of the blessed plainly gives reply. look again, and see on one side of the stream the merely secular life; is it not all expressed by the mill and the miller and his ass, and far up the steep road (what need for diminishing distance?) the peasant with the sack of flour toiling towards his humble home. and on the other side is the spiritual life--the hermit, by his windowless hut, the warning bell above; he kneels in front, with his lantern of faith lifted high in his hand, a beacon for whatever wayfarer the ferryman may bring. rank grasses and the fearless rabbit mark the quiet solitude in which the hermit dwells. i can forgive all shortcomings. these old-century men were in earnest.' in the spencer collection are two other prints which may be attributed to the same period as the st. christopher. one is a picture of _the annunciation_, which was found pasted on the end cover of the book (_laus virginis_) in which the st. christopher was discovered. it is of similar size, and is printed with a dark-coloured pigment, probably by means of a _frotton_. the angel gabriel is kneeling before the virgin, who also is kneeling; she holds a book in her hand, and is represented in a kind of gothic chapel; a vase with flowers in it stands under one of the diamond-paned windows. the holy dove is descending in a flood of rays; unfortunately the figure of the almighty has been torn from the top left-hand corner of the print. on one of the pillars of the chapel is a small scroll with the legend ave gracia plena dominus tecum. {8} [illustration: the annunciation _the original (11½ in. by 8½ in.) is pasted inside the cover of an old manuscript book in the spencer library._] {9} the wood-engraver may produce his design in two ways, either by means of black lines on a white ground, or by white designs on a black ground. the two methods are here united, while in the st. christopher one only (the first) is used. notice the discreet use of masses of black to give force to the design, and to contrast with the lightness of the other part of the picture. the annunciation belongs to quite a different school to the st. christopher. the other print is of st. bridget of sweden (who died in 1373). she is seated at a sloping desk, writing with a stylus in a book. the motto above her head is o brigita bit got für uns ('o bridget, pray to god for us'). in the left upper corner is a small representation of the virgin with the holy infant in her arms, opposite is a shield with the letters s.p.q.r. on it, referring to her journey to rome. in the lower corners are, on the left, the palm and crown of martyrdom; and on the right is a shield with the _lion rampant_ of sweden. a pilgrim's hat and scrip hang on a staff behind the virgin's seat. the print is roughly coloured, evidently by hand. many other woodcuts of the same character have been discovered, which are believed to have been engraved in the first half of the fifteenth century. in the imperial library at vienna there is a print of _st. sebastian_, bearing the date 1437, which was found in the monastery of st. blaise in the black forest. 'having visited,' says herr heinecken, 'in my last tour a great many convents in franconia, suabia, bavaria, and in the austrian states, i everywhere discovered in their libraries many of these kinds of figures engraved on wood. they were usually pasted either at the beginning or the end of old volumes of the fifteenth century. these facts have confirmed me in my opinion that the next step of the {10} engraver on wood, after playing-cards, was to engrave figures of saints, which, being distributed and lost among the laity, were in part preserved by the monks, who pasted them into the earliest printed books with which their libraries were furnished.' herr heinecken possessed more than a hundred of these pictures of saints. there can be little doubt they were produced in the monasteries and convents, and distributed to the people, especially in the processions of the church, as aids to devotion. among the thousands of monks who lived in the fifteenth century there must have been many men who, like fra angelico, were gifted with sufficient artistic taste to enable them to draw and engrave such a picture as the st. christopher. * * * * * {11} chapter ii _on the block books of the fifteenth century_ in the first half of the fifteenth century, before the invention of printing by means of movable type, many books were produced in which the woodcuts and the text were engraved on the same page, or sometimes the text was on one page and the woodcut opposite. they were impressed on one side only of the paper, and the two blank pages were often pasted together. they are usually called block books. many of the cuts are more than ten inches in height by eight inches in width, and were probably cut with a knife upon smoothly planed planks of the pear-tree, or other fine-grained wood, or possibly some were engraved upon soft metal. the most celebrated of them are: i. biblia pauperum.--bible of the poor. ii. apocalypsis sancti johnannis.--visions of st. john. iii. ars moriendi.--the art of dying. iv. canticum canticorum.--solomon's song. v. ars memorandi.--the art of remembering. vi. liber regum.--book of kings. vii. temptationes daemonis.--temptations of a demon. viii. endkrist (only known copy in the spencer library). ix. quindecim signa.--the fifteen signs. x. de generatione christi.--of the genealogy of christ. xi. mirabilia romae.--the wonders of rome. xii. speculum humanae salvationis.--mirror of salvation. xiii. die kunst ciromantia.--the art of chiromancy. xiv. confessionale.--of the confessional. xv. symbolum apostolicum.--symbols of the apostles. {12} and are supposed to have been issued between the years 1420 and 1440. there is no title-page to any of them, and the dates are generally only a matter of conjecture. probably they were copies of illuminated manuscripts, and were drawn, engraved, and coloured by the monks in their _scriptoria_. doubtless other books of a similar character may be existing in some of the old monasteries on the continent at the present day. the block books appear to have been made in germany and holland, and the most popular volumes passed through many editions. the earliest specimens are printed in a brown ink similar to that used for distemper drawings. it sometimes happened that the blocks used for a book were afterwards cut up and used over again in a different combination (as noticed by bradshaw in his 'memoranda,' no. 3, pp. 5 and 6, and by william blades, in his 'pentateuch of printing,' pp. 12 and 13.) a block-book edition of the 'biblia pauperum,' printed at zwolle, was cut up, and the pieces used afterwards in a different combination. the same was done with the blocks of the 'speculum nostrae salvationis,' which were cut up, and the pieces used again for an edition printed at utrecht in 1481. this was a step in the development of the art of printing. biblia pauperum.--in the print room of the british museum there is a very fine copy of this work, probably the first edition. it is a small folio consisting of forty leaves impressed on one side only of the paper, in pale-brown ink or distemper, by means of friction, probably by a _frotton_ or roller, as we can tell by the glazed surface on the back. the right order of the pages is indicated by the letters a, b, c, &c., on the face of the prints, each of which is about ten inches in height by seven and a-half in breadth. on the upper part of each page are frequently two half-length figures and two on the lower, intended for portraits of the prophets and other holy men whose writings are cited in the latin text. {13} [illustration: biblia pauperum--tenth page (_reduced from 10 in. by 7½ in._)] {14} the middle part of the page consists of three compartments, each of which is occupied by a subject from the old or new testament. the greater part of the text is at the sides of the upper portraits. on each side of those below is frequently a rhyming latin verse. texts of scripture also appear on scrolls. the illustration, which is a much reduced copy of the tenth page (k), will afford a better idea of the arrangement of the subject and of the texts than any more lengthened description. the picture in the middle represents the temptation of christ by the devil; that on the right, the temptation of adam by eve; and that on the left, esau selling his birthright for a mess of pottage, which his brother jacob has evidently just cooked in the iron pot suspended over the fire on a ratchet in the chimney-breast. the ham and goat's flesh or venison hanging on the kitchen wall remind us of the dutch paintings of two centuries later. esau's bow and quiver will be seen to be of a very primitive character. on the thirty-second page (to give another example) we find in the middle compartment christ appearing to his disciples; on the left, joseph discovering himself to his brethren; and on the right, the return of the prodigal son. at the bottom of the page are these rhyming latin verses:- _under joseph and his brethren._ quos vex(av)it pridem blanditur fratribus idem. _under the return of the prodigal son._ flens amplexatur natum pater ac recreatur. hic ihesus apparet: surgentis gloria claret. which have been roughly translated: whom he so lately vexed he charms as brother next. the wept-one is embraced and as a son replaced, here doth christ appear, in rising glory clear. {15} [illustration: jacob and esau--biblia pauperum _facsimile of the original cut_] {16} the 'biblia pauperum,' although it could not be read by the laity, was evidently issued for their especial benefit, and, with the help of the priests, it afforded excellent lessons in bible history. it is believed that the first copies were printed at haarlem about a.d. 1430 to 1440. five editions of the 'biblia pauperum' are known as block books with the text in latin; two with the text in german; and several others were printed about 1475 with the text in movable type. at least three editions were printed in holland, and seven or eight others appear to be of german origin; the earlier are of the dutch school. there are four copies, differing editions, in the british museum, one in the bodleian library, and one in the spencer library. some of the copies are coloured in a very simple manner. apocalypsis sancti johannis.--this work consists of forty-eight pages of woodcuts about ten and a-half inches high by seven and a-half broad, printed in ink or distemper of a greyish-brown tint on thick paper on one side only. each page is equally divided into two subjects, taken from the apocalypse, one above the other. the cuts are engraved in the simplest manner, without any attempt at shading, as will be seen on examination of our print, which forms the first page of the book. in the upper half st. john is addressing three men and one woman. the words in the label conversi ab idolis per predicationem beati johannis drusiana et ceteri are literally 'drusiana and the others are converted from idols by the preaching of the blessed john.' the letter a indicates page 1. in the lower half we see st. john baptizing drusiana in a very small font in a small chapel; outside are six ill-looking men trying to peep in through the chinks of the door. over the chapel are the words sanctus johannes baptisans, and over the men cultores ydolorum explorantes facta ejus, literally, 'worshippers of idols spying on his acts.' two of the idolaters are armed with hatchets, as if they intended to break open the door. [the latin words, in accordance with the usual practice of the monks, are contracted in a manner very puzzling to those unused to these mediæval writings.] there are several editions of the apocalypsis, all apparently of german origin. {17} [illustration: apocalypsis sancti johannis _one of the earliest of the block books_] {18} many bibliographers, treating of block books and arguing from the very simple style of the drawings and engravings, consider that the 'apocalypsis' was the first that was produced. many worse woodcuts were issued in the eighteenth century. it would be very hazardous indeed to fix a date by the quality of woodcut illustrations. in order to assist our readers in reading the text printed with the early woodcuts, we give them a key to the most usual abbreviations of monkish latin. ************************************************************************* ** transcriber's note: in paragraph 1. [-e] denotes a letter with a ** ** straight line over (or through the riser), [~e] the same with a ** ** tilde-like curve. ** ************************************************************************* 1. a right line, thus (-), and a curve, thus (~), placed horizontally over a letter, denote: (-) 1st, over a vowel in the middle or end of a word, that _one letter_ is wanting, _e.g._ v[-e]d[-a]t=_vendant_, bon[-u]=_bonum_, terr[-a]=_terram_. (~) 2nd, above or through a letter=the omission of _more than one letter_, e.g. a[~i]a=_anima_, a[~l]r=_aliter_, a[~l]ia=_animalia_, abla[~c]o=_ablatio_, winto[~n]=wintonia, no[~b]=_nobis_, &c. a straight line through a consonant also denotes the omission of one or more letters, _e.g._ vo[-b]=_vobis_, q[-d]=_quod_, &c. ************************************************************************* ** transcriber's note: in paragraph 2. ? denotes a backward curl ** ** attached to the top of a letter. ** ************************************************************************* 2. [?]=_er_, or _re_, as the sense requires, _e.g._ [?t]ra=_terra_, [?p]dictus=predictus, _i.e._ _prædictus_. ************************************************************************* ** transcriber's note: in paragraph 3. the first [?e] has an oblique ** ** line attached below the letter, the second a lightning bolt. ** ************************************************************************* 3. the diphthong is sometimes represented thus, terr[?e] or terr[?e]=_terræ_. ************************************************************************* ** transcriber's note: in paragraph 4. the first [-p] has a straight ** ** line & the second a wavy one (like a tilde) through the ** * descender. in the third a line continues the bottom of the loop ** ** and bends down to cut the descender. ** ************************************************************************* 4. a straight or curved line through the letter p, thus, [-p] [-p]=_per_, _por_, and _par_. a curved line, thus [-p]=_pro_. ************************************************************************* ** transcriber's note: in paragraph 5. the sign [3] resembles the ** ** type of 3 with an angled top, or a drachm sign. ** ************************************************************************* 5. the character [3] at the end of a word=_us_, omnib[3]=_omnibus_, also _et_, deb[3]=_debet_. {19} ************************************************************************* ** transcriber's note: in paragraph 6. the sign [zs] resembles a z ** ** with a reversed s drawn through the bottom stroke. ** ************************************************************************* 6. the figure [zs] at the end of a word=rum, ras, res, ris, and ram; eo[zs]=_eorum_, lib[zs]=_libras_ or _libris_, windeso[zs]=_windesores_, alieno[zs]=_alienoram_, &c. ************************************************************************* ** transcriber's note: in paragraph 7. the sign [-&] is an ampersand ** ** with a straight line over; [q3] a q with a mark like a small 3 ** ** on the right; [9] a raised spiral rather like a 9, [c)] has a ** ** long bracket-shaped mark descending below the baseline. ** ************************************************************************* 7. [-&]=_etiam_, [q3]=_que_, _quia_, and _quod_; [9] at commencement of a word=_com_ or _con_; [9]mitto=_committo_, [9]victo=_convicto_. this contraction is also printed thus, [c)]. [c)]=_concordia_ or _concessio_. in the middle or end of a word [9]=_us_, de[9]=_deus_, reb[9]=_rebus_, aug[9]ti=_augusti_; also for os, p[9]=_post_, p[9]t=_post_. ************************************************************************* ** transcriber's note: in paragraph 8. and ~ are as in paragraph 1. ** ** ^ denotes the next letter is raised (so also in 12. below). ** ************************************************************************* 8. in domesday book 7=_et_, [-e]=_est_, [~s]t=_sunt_, [-m]=_manerium_, m^o=_modo_, di[~m]=_dimidius_, &c. ************************************************************************* ** transcriber's note: in paragraph 9. [-;] is like a semicolon with ** ** a straight line through the middle. ** ************************************************************************* 9. _est_ is sometimes written [-;] ÷. 10. points or dots after letters often denote contractions, _e.g._ di. et fi.=_dilectus et fidelis_, e. for _est_, plurib.=_pluribus_. ************************************************************************* ** transcriber's note: in paragraph 11. [?t] has a sort of streamer to ** ** the left and curling down. ** ************************************************************************* 11. [?t]=_et_ in later times. 12. a small letter placed over a word denotes an omission--p^ius=_prius_, t^i=_tibi_, q^os=_quos_, q^i=_qui_, &c. ************************************************************************* ** transcriber's note: in paragraph 13. ~ is as in paragraph 1. ** ************************************************************************* 13. x[~p]s, x[~p]c, x[~p]o, stand for _christus_ and its different cases. m[~e]= _marie_. these are the most common contractions. there are many more, including numerous technical terms, which it would be useless for us to give for our present purpose. * * * * * {20} chapter iii _the block books of the fifteenth century_ (_continued_). ars moriendi.--of all the block books known to us, this bears the palm for artistic merit. it is probable that the 'ars moriendi' is of later date than the block books already described. mr. george bullen (holbein society, 'ars moriendi,' 1881, p. 4) was of opinion that the first edition was printed at cologne in germany about the middle of the fifteenth century. others say that the quarto edition is the earlier. the illustrations belong to the lower rhenish school, which, about the middle of the fifteenth century, was influenced by the style of roger van der weyde, and probably also by the work of some of the pupils of the van eycks. there are eleven woodcuts, about eight and a-half inches, by five and a-half inches, without including the frame-lines, printed on separate pages, and thirteen pages of text, all impressed on one side only of the paper. five of the pictures represent a sick man in bed tempted by devils--i. to unbelief; ii. to despair and suicide; iii. to impatience of good advice; iv. to vainglory; and v. to avarice. in the five opposite pictures the sick man is attended by good angels, who refute the arguments of the demons. in the eleventh print we witness the death of the sick man. the drawings are somewhat similar in manner to the works of roger van der weyde, who lived in the early part of the fifteenth century. {21} it was a time when art was beginning to awake from its long sleep, and such works as the 'ars moriendi' were far in advance of any we know of belonging to the previous century. one of the best of the illustrations is from the last temptation: _temptacio diaboli de avaricia_, and is probably intended to be the presentation of a dream. the sick man's bed is on the roof of his house! a diabolus, as tall as the house, points to a youth--possibly the heir, who is leading a very flemish-looking horse into a doorway--and says, intende thesauro--take care of your treasures. the figures by the bedside must represent the father and mother, wife, sisters, and young son of the dying man. the diabolus on his right says provideas amicis--'you may provide for your friends.' the heads of the diaboli in this print are more laughable than terrible, and suggest the make-up of a pantomime rather than the demons who are messengers of the evil one. on the next page an angel gives good counsel to the dying man, a figure of christ on the cross is at his bed's head, and the mother of christ blesses him. a group of relations and friends still attend him, and beside them are sheep and oxen. in the foreground an angel is driving away a man and woman, who are evidently in great grief, and a crouching demon says, quid faciam--'what can i do?' pictures like this appealed forcibly to the minds of the laity in the middle ages, and were doubtless fully explained to the uneducated by the religious dwellers in the monasteries and convents which at that time abounded throughout europe. a reproduction of this book was issued a few years since by the holbein society. the designs were copied in careful pen-and-ink drawings by mr. f. price, and the text was translated and the pictures described by mr. george bullen, who also wrote a learned preface, enumerating the various editions of the book which are known to have been printed in different languages. weigel printed a photographic reproduction of this book in 1869. {22} the 'ars moriendi' was the most popular of all the block books. before the end of the fifteenth century eight different editions had been issued, seven of them in latin and one in french. m. passavant states that he had met with thirty different imitations of it issued in germany and holland. there is but one quite perfect copy of the first edition of this book known, and this fortunately is in the british museum. it was bought at the weigel sale in leipsic in 1872 for the large sum of £1,072 10s., exclusive of commission. canticum canticorum.--the church's love unto christ prefigured in 'the song of songs which is solomon's.' this is a much more pleasing book than the 'apocalypsis.' the figures are more gracefully designed and the engraver has shown much more knowledge of his art; the indications of shading are in many instances very happily given. it consists of only sixteen leaves with two subjects, one above the other on each leaf; each picture is five inches high by seven wide, and is printed by means of friction in dark-brown ink or distemper, on thick paper. our illustration is from the second leaf. in the upper subject we see the bride and bridegroom conversing, two maidens attending. the words on the scroll on the left are trahe me: post te curremus in odorem unguentorum tuorum, 'draw me, we will run after thee: because of the savour of thy good ointments' (song of solomon, ch. i., v. 4 and 3). on the scroll to the right, sonet vox tua in auribus meis, vox enim tua dulcis et facies tua decora, 'let me hear thy voice, for sweet is thy voice and thy countenance is comely' (song of solomon, ch. ii., verse 14). in the lower subject, in which the bride is seen seated by her maidens and the bridegroom is standing near, on the left-hand scroll we read, en dilectus meus loquitur mihi, surge, propera, amica mea, 'my beloved spake and said unto me, rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away' (ch. ii., verse 10); and on the right, quam pulchra es amica mea, quam pulchra es! oculi tui columbarum, absque eo quod intrinsecus latet, 'how beautiful art thou, my love, how beautiful art thou! thy eyes are doves' eyes, besides what is hid within' (ch. iv. 1). {23} [illustration: canticum canticorum--second leaf (_much reduced_)] {24} on the sixth leaf, the bride and bridegroom are eating grapes in a vineyard, three maidens attending, all seated. in the cut below, the bridegroom is standing outside a garden wall over which the bride is watching him. an angel is entering the gate, other angels with drawn swords are on the wall. it is supposed that these engravings were executed in the netherlands: the female figures are said to be in the costume of the court of burgundy! there are several shields of arms to be found in three of the subjects, and these have given rise to long dissertations by writers on heraldry. mr. chatto's book has engravings of eighteen of them with descriptions. one is the shield of alsace, another of the house of würtemberg, a third of the city of ratisbon; and the cross-keys, the _fleur-de-lis_, the black spread-eagle, and a rose (much like our tudor rose), may be seen on others. several copies of the 'canticum' have been found, coloured and uncoloured. two editions of the canticum canticorum are known; both appear to have emanated from holland and the low countries, and both bear clear traces of the influence of the school of the van eycks. the figure alphabet.--in the print room of the british museum there is a curious little book (six inches by four inches in size) in which nearly all the letters of the alphabet are formed by grotesque figures of men. except that it was bequeathed to the museum by sir george beaumont, no one knows anything of its history; but internal evidence warrants us in attributing it to the work of an engraver of the first half of the fifteenth century. the cuts are printed in a kind of sepia-coloured distemper which can be easily wiped off by means of moisture. there is one very curious thing connected with this work. in the cut forming the {25} letter l a young man is leaning on a sword, on the blade of which is plainly written london, and on the cloak of the youth lying below we read, in a current hand usual at that date, the word _bethemsted_. the figures, grotesque as they are, were drawn by a better artist than those who designed the block books. we know that the art of engraving was in a very low state in england at the time we are speaking of; we should therefore rejoice if we could anyhow prove that these very early specimens of wood-cutting were done in this country. [illustration] in the letter f, which we have given as an illustration, very much reduced from the original, a tall man is blowing a very long trumpet; a youth, bending down to form the crotch of the letter, is beating a tabor; while a nondescript animal lies couched at his feet. many other block books exist in the british museum, the bodleian library, oxford, the spencer library, manchester, and in the large libraries on the continent besides those we have mentioned. some were printed, long after the introduction of printing, in venice and in the cities of lower germany. before the beginning of the fifteenth century we have no record of any examples of wood-engraving of an artistic kind, except, as we have said, the designs on playing-cards, and the workmanship of these, whether it was by woodcuts or by a stencil-plate, was very crude. the art really came into existence in the first quarter of that famous fifteenth century. there were scores of men at that time who could carve excellently well in stone or wood, or who could design {26} and make beautiful jewels, and some of these men, probably monks in their monasteries, as well as secular craftsmen, drew and cut the first wood-engraving. no one knows who they were. up to the year 1475 the original method of wood-cutting changed very little; nearly every print was in outline with a thick and a thin line. a few, such as those in the 'ars moriendi,' had a little shading of the most primitive kind. they were intended to be coloured, and, among the prints that have been preserved, experts say they can detect the manner of colouring prevalent in upper or lower germany, the rhine provinces, or the netherlands. towards the end of the century came a transition. shading was introduced and even cross-hatching was executed by the best wood-engravers of the time. the art took, as it were, a sudden bound, and in a few years attained a height which we at the end of the nineteenth century find it hard to excel. but of this we must speak in a future chapter. ars memorandi.--this very curious book--much more curious than beautiful--contains fifteen designs and the same number of pages of engraved text. the designs are intended to assist the memory in reading the gospels, and perhaps to assist the friars in preaching to the people. to the gospel of st. john, with which the book begins, there are three cuts allotted, and as many pages of text; to st. matthew five cuts and five pages of text; to st. mark, three cuts and three pages of text; and to st. luke, four cuts and four pages of text. in every print an allegorical figure is represented; an eagle symbolical of st. john, an angel of st. matthew, a lion of st. mark, and an ox of st. luke. the first cut is intended to represent, figuratively, the first six chapters of st. john's gospel. an upright eagle, with spread wings and claws, has three human heads--that of the saint with a dove above it is in the middle, the head {27} of christ is on its right, and that of moses on its left. a lute, from which three bells depend, lies across the eagle's breast; this is supposed to refer to the marriage in cana, and a little numeral tells us that the account of it is in the second chapter. between the outspread claws is a bucket surmounted by a crown. these are symbolical of the well of samaria and the nobleman's son at capernaum in chapter iv. on the bend of the eagle's outspread right wing is a fish and the numeral 5, referring to the pool of bethesda in chapter v., and on the left wing are five barley loaves and two small fishes, and a small 6, referring to the parable of the loaves and fishes in the sixth chapter. this very singular book must have been a great favourite with the priests, and perhaps with the laity, for it was reprinted over and over again. it appears to have been of german origin. of the other block books mentioned in chapter ii. it would be tedious to give an account; they are very similar to those we have just described. * * * * * {28} chapter iv _speculum humanæ salvationis_ historians tell us that in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the cities of the netherlands were the most populous and the richest in all western europe. bruges, ghent, liège and brussels by their manufactures, and antwerp by her commerce, in which she rivalled venice, had become celebrated for their great wealth, the grandeur of their rulers, and the magnificence of their great guilds. the more northern towns, too, amsterdam, haarlem, and utrecht, and many cities of germany, such as mentz, cologne, strasburg, nürnberg, augsburg, and basel, were rich and prosperous. it was among these cities that the sister arts of printing and wood-engraving first flourished. from undoubted evidence accumulated by the patience and labour of many bibliographers, it appears that the art of printing by means of movable type was not invented by any one man, but was the result of a gradual development of the art of engraving. in the fifteenth century, as in the nineteenth, there was an ever-growing demand for school books. one of the most popular of these in the fifteenth century was the 'donatus,' a grammar so called from the name of the author. there was also a latin delectus called a 'catho.' these were cheap books and were usually printed from engraved wood blocks. these and the block books already described were contemporary, and the immediate forerunners of separate types. (see blades, 'pentateuch of printing,' p. 12.) {29} in certain editions of the 'speculum' there are to be seen woodcuts printed in ink of one colour and text in ink of another colour, from metal movable types. these types are rude in the extreme, far more so than the german indulgence of 1454, the very earliest known dated piece of printing. there is no doubt that the donatuses were at first printed from wood blocks, both in germany and the low countries, but there is not a single dutch block-book donatus known, while there are some nineteen or twenty early type-printed dutch donatuses already catalogued. therefore it appears likely that gutenberg simply developed the process which had already been for some time in use in the low countries for donatuses and similar books. [illustration: first page of the speculum humanæ salvationis] the first book of importance that was printed at a press {30} and from movable type was the celebrated bible[2] which gutenberg produced at mentz about the year 1455. about the same time it is asserted that laurent janszoon coster of haarlem issued the _speculum humanæ salvationis_, and much discussion has risen as to which book has the prior claim. the dutch insist on coster as being the proto-printer; the germans not only assert the claim of gutenberg but say that coster is a myth! the controversy is still carried on and there is little likelihood that it will ever be decided. in the year 1462 there was a small revolution in mentz, owing to the rival claims of two archbishops, and the city was sacked. the printers in the employment of gutenberg and his partners, fust and peter schoeffer, were scattered in every direction. fifteen years afterwards printing-presses were to be found in every large city of germany and the netherlands, as well as in italy and france; and about 1477, caxton set up his first press in the precincts of westminster abbey. _speculum humanae salvationis_--'the mirror of man's salvation.'--this was the first book, printed from type, that had wood engravings. it is a small folio containing fifty-eight cuts, each of which is divided into two subjects, inclosed in an architectural frame, in which is the title in latin. the cuts are placed at the head of the pages, of which they occupy one-third. it is to be noticed that, though the cuts are all printed in brown ink, the text beneath them is printed in black: probably because the prints were to be coloured. the arrangement and scope of this work are much like those of the 'biblia pauperum'; the subjects are taken from the old and new testaments, including the apocrypha, and a few are from classic history. the illustrations are from the first page: casus {31} luciferi--'the fall of lucifer'--and deus creavit hominem ad ymaginem et similitudinem suam--'god created man after his own image and likeness.' [illustration: speculum: the fall of lucifer (_size of the original cut_)] {32} we see that the arts of drawing and engraving had improved since the time of the 'biblia pauperum.' the figures are in better proportion: in many of the designs the folds of the dress fall more gracefully and the shading is more artistically done. there are four fifteenth-century editions of this work known, two with the text in dutch, and two in latin. three editions are printed entirely with movable type, while part of the fourth--the second latin edition--is certainly from engraved blocks. no one can tell the reason of this curious anomaly--we can only conjecture. experts tell the various editions by the state of the cuts; when these are unblemished, it is assumed that they are of the first edition; when a few of the lines of the cuts are broken, it is supposed that they belong to the second edition; when many are broken, to the third edition, and so on. mr. woodbery[3] has so graphically described the 'speculum' that we cannot do better than quote his words: 'a whole series needs to be looked at before one can appreciate the interest which these designs have in indicating the subjects on which imagination and thought were then exercised, and the modes in which they were exercised. symbolism and mysticism pervade the whole. all nature and history seem to have existed only to prefigure the life of the saviour: imagination and thought hover about him, and take colour, shape, and light only from that central form; the stories of the old testament, the histories of david, samson, and jonah, the massacres, victories, and miracles there recorded, foreshadow, as it were in parables, the narrative of the gospels; the temple, the altar, and the ark of the covenant, all the furnishings and observances of the jewish ritual, reveal occult meanings; the garden of solomon's song, and the sentiment of the bridegroom and the bride who wander in it, are interpreted, sometimes in graceful or even poetic feeling, under the inspiration of mystical devotion; old kings of pagan athens are transformed into witnesses of christ, and, with the sibyl of rome, attest spiritual truth. {33} [illustration: the grief of hannah (_from the cologne bible_)] {34} this book and others like it are mirrors of the ecclesiastical mind; they picture the principal intellectual life of the middle ages; they show the sources of that deep feeling in the earlier dutch artists which gave dignity and sweetness to their works. even in the rudeness of these books, in the texts as well as in the designs, there is a _naïveté_, an openness and freshness of nature, a confidence in limited experience and contracted vision, which make the sight of these cuts as charming as conversation with one who had never heard of america or dreamed of luther, and who would have found modern life a puzzle and an offence. the author of the _speculum_ laments the evils which fell upon man in consequence of adam's sin, and recounts them: blindness, deafness, lameness, floods, fire, pestilence, wild beasts, and law-suits (in such order he arranges them); and he ends the long list with this last and heaviest evil, that men should presume to ask "why god willed to create man, whose fall he foresaw; why he willed to create the angels, whose ruin he foreknew; wherefore he hardened the heart of pharaoh, and softened the heart of mary magdalene unto repentance; wherefore he made peter contrite, who had denied him thrice, but allowed judas to despair in his sin; wherefore he gave grace to one thief, and cared not to give grace to his companion." what modern man can fully realise the mental condition of this poet, who thus weeps over the temptation to ask these questions, as the supreme and direst curse which divine vengeance allows to overtake the perverse children of this world?' by far the most excellent book issued about this time is the psalter, printed by gutenberg's former partners, fust and schoeffer, at mentz in 1459. the initial letters, which are printed in red and blue and the gothic type, all of which are in exact imitation of the best manuscripts, could not be excelled at the present day. the book belongs more to the history of printing, but on account of its beautiful initial letters, which, it is said, were drawn and engraved by schoeffer, we feel constrained to notice it. {35} [illustration: frontispiece to breydenbach's travels (_much reduced_)] {36} a _book of fables_ issued from the press of albrecht pfister, of bamberg, in 1461, may be mentioned as a very early work in which woodcuts and type were printed together; it is a small folio of twenty-eight leaves, containing eighty-five fables in rhyme in the old german language, illustrated with a hundred and one cuts. they are of little merit and show no advancement in the art of wood-engraving. the only known copy of this book, which is in the wolfenbüttel library, was taken away by the french under napoleon's orders and added to the bibliothèque nationale; it was restored at the surrender of paris in 1815. we cannot give a list of all the books containing woodcuts that were issued in germany at the end of the fifteenth century; their name is legion. we must, however, mention two or three of the most important. in the cologne bible, printed about the year 1475, there are one hundred and nine cuts, one of which we give as an example; they are about equal in merit to those in the 'biblia pauperum,' but show no improvement. the subject of the cut is 'the grief of hannah.' we see elkanah and his two wives, hannah and peninnah, in a room from which the artist has obligingly taken away one of the sides. in the nürnberg bible, printed in 1482, we find the same set of cuts. the nürnberg chronicle, often quoted as an example of early german wood-engraving, is a folio volume containing more than two thousand cuts, which include views of cities, portraits of saints and other holy men, scenes from biblical and profane history, and a great many other subjects, produced, we are told, under the superintendence of michael wolgemuth and william pleydenwurff, 'mathematical men skilled in the art of painting.' the same head does duty for the portrait of a dozen or more historians or poets--the {37} same portrait is given to many military heroes--the saints are treated in the same way, and even the same view serves for several different cities. the cuts are bolder and more full of colour than any we have had before, and so far may be said to be in advance, and this we must put down to the superintendence of wolgemuth, who was an artist of repute. chatto says they are the most tasteless and worthless things that are to be found in any book, ancient or modern--but this is too sweeping an assertion. the work was compiled by hartman schedel, a physician of nürnberg, and printed in that city by anthony koburger in 1493. the most important book of this time, so far as the woodcuts are concerned, is a latin edition of breydenbach's travels, which was printed in folio by erhard reuwich in mentz in 1486. we give a much reduced copy of the frontispiece, which is without doubt the best example of wood-engraving of the fifteenth century. in this cut we see for the first time cross-hatching used in the shadows, in the folds of the drapery of the principal figure--saint catherine, who is the patroness of learned men--in the upper parts of the shields and beneath the top part of the frame. bernard de breydenbach, who was a canon of the cathedral of mentz, was accompanied in his travels to the holy sepulchre at jerusalem and the shrine of st. catherine on mount sinai by john, count of solms and lord of mintzenberg, and philip de bicken, knight. the arms of the three travellers are given in the cut with the names beneath them. besides the frontispiece there are many other good engravings in this volume--a picture of venice, five feet long and ten inches high; views of corfu, modon, in southern greece, and the country round jerusalem. there are also many pictures of animals, such as a giraffe, a unicorn, a salamander, a camel, and a creature something like an ouran-outang. travellers saw wonderful things in those days! it is a great pity that we do not know the names of the artists {38} who drew and engraved the cuts in this most interesting book. [illustration: the bibliomaniac _from 'navis stultifera' (the ship of fools)_] just at the close of the century we find the first humorous conception of german artists in the illustrations of the navis stultifera (ship of fools), written by sebastian brandt and printed at basel in 1497. this very bold and original work had an immense success and was frequently reprinted. every page is adorned with the antics of clowns and men in fools' caps and bells, in caricature of some absurdity, and the bibliomaniac is not spared: 'i have the first place among fools,' he is made to say; 'i have heaps of books which i {39} rarely open. if i read them i forget them and am no wiser.' as will be seen by the cut, though the perspective of the draughtsman is not to be praised, the work of the engraver is excellent; the fineness of the lines is new to us and the shadows are well treated. notice also the bindings of the books, with their bosses, hinges, and clasps; nearly all are folios, and four or five are ornamented with the same pattern. the decoration at the side is evidently copied from an illuminated manuscript. with this book we may fitly close our notice of german wood-engraving of the fifteenth century. * * * * * {40} chapter v _on wood-engraving in italy in the fifteenth century_ although at this time germany took the lead of all european countries so far as the illustrations of printed books are concerned, the transition from german to italian art is like the change from the strong bleak winds of the north to the balmy air and sunny skies of the south. we are aware of the difference both of climate and of art in a moment: the very first picture presented to us reveals it. the italians of the fifteenth century could not take up a handicraft without making it a fine art. here is a title-page of a folio kalendario produced in venice in the year 1476. this is the first title-page on which the contents of the book, the name of the author, the imprint of the publishers, who were also the printers, and the date of the issue of the book, were ever given. mark the decoration. though the publishers were germans, the artist who drew this border must have been an italian; and probably the engraver was an italian also, for the book was produced at venice. the character of the design suggests the work of an illuminator. the introduction of the printing-press must have interfered sadly with the writer of manuscripts and his brother the illuminator, and both were doubtless glad to avail themselves of the new art. the manuscript writer may have turned compositor, and the illuminator may have been transformed into a book decorator. {41} [illustration: title-page of a folio kalendario by joanne de monte regio, printed at venice in 1476 (_much reduced_)] we have before us a facsimile of a cut called 'the triumph of love,' which appeared as one of the illustrations of triumphi del petrarca, a book printed in venice, in 1488. a man, seated with his hands bound behind him, is tied with a rope to a triumphal car which is drawn by four horses; on a ball of fire, which rises from the car, a blindfolded cupid is shooting an arrow (apparently at the near leader); a great crowd of men and women, among whom we see a king and a mitred bishop, follow and surround the car, and on a distant hill we behold petrarch conversing with his friend. there are two rabbits feeding calmly in the {42} foreground, notwithstanding the danger of the horses' hoofs, and the usual conventional designs for grass and flowers. the groundwork of the border of this curious print is black, with an italian design carefully cut out in white, with but little shadow. from the waviness of many of the lines which should be straight, we think this print must be from an engraving on metal. of all the wood-engravings executed in italy in the fifteenth century, none can compare in excellence with those in the hypnerotomachia poliphili (dream of poliphilo) printed in venice, by aldus, in 1499.[4] there are, in all, one hundred and ninety-two subjects, of which eighty-six relate to mythology and ancient history, fifty-four are pictures of processions and emblematic figures, thirty-six are architectural and ornamental, and sixteen vases and statues. they have been attributed to many different artists, the most probable of whom is carpaccio. the subject of the 'hypnerotomachia' has been described as a 'contest between imagination and love'; it is a curious medley of all kinds of fable, history, architecture, mathematics, and other matters, seasoned with suggestions which do not reflect credit on the moral perceptions of its author, a dominican monk, named francesco colonna. an enthusiastic admirer of this book thus poetically describes it: 'there is, perhaps, no volume where the exuberant vigour of that age is more clearly shown, or where the objects for which that age was impassioned are more glowingly described. {43} [illustration: poliphilo in the garden _from 'hypnerotomachia poliphili,' printed by aldus at venice in 1499_] the romantic and fantastic rhapsody mirrors every aspect of nature and art in which the italians then took delight--peaceful landscape, where rivers flow by flower-starred banks and through bird-haunted woods; noble architecture and exquisite sculpture, {44} the music of soft instruments, the ruins of antiquity, the legends of old mythology, the motions of the dance, the elegance of the banquet, splendour of apparel, courtesy of manners, even the manuscript, with its cover of purple velvet sown with eastern pearls--everything that was cared for and sought in that time when the gloom of asceticism lifted and disclosed the wide prospect of the world lying, as it were, in the loveliness of daybreak.' but it is more on account of the beauty of the cuts than the poetry of the author that this book has been so much admired and so frequently reprinted. our illustration shows us where poliphilo in his dream visits a bevy of fair maidens in a garden. these nymphs are not very beautiful, but, though they have such high waists, remark how gracefully their figures are drawn, and look at the action and the drapery of the damsel running away. the engraving is, without doubt, an exact facsimile of the artist's drawing; the lines are clear and crisp, and are evidently the work of a practised hand. the drawing of the gateway and trees is simply conventional. we are sorry that we have not room for more of the illustrations of this remarkable work. in these early books it seems to have been nobody's business to record the name of the engraver who produced the illustrations, and, although the printer's name is generally very conspicuous in the colophon, the artist's name rarely, if ever, appears. but the work of certain masters of certain schools is generally recognised with ease, either by some peculiarity of manner, or by some particular mark. thus one artist, who, towards the end of the fifteenth century, illustrated a few books printed in italy, is known as 'the master of the dolphin,' because in most of his work this fish appears among the decorations. another is known to us only by the name of 'the illustrator of the "poliphilus,"' that quaint romance of colonna which has taken a proud place in literature, not for its own intrinsic merits, but {45} rather on account of the beauty of its woodcuts, the name of whose author is still a matter of conjecture. we may here say a few words about aldo manuzio, better known in england by his latinised name, aldus manutius, the celebrated printer, and some of the other early printers of venice. one of the first to set up a press in venice was nicolas jenson, a frenchman, who had worked at mentz, and who was the first to cut and introduce roman type such as is now in use. at his death his business and plant were bought by a rich man, andrea torresano, of asola, and the work was carried on successfully. aldo manuzio, who was born at sermoneta, a village near velletri, in 1450, received an excellent education, especially in greek; and the celebrated pico da mirandola made him tutor to his nephews, alberto and leonardo pio, lords of carpi. alberto pio, under his master's training, became a great lover of literature; and when aldo conceived the idea of starting a printing-press, the young lord advanced him the necessary funds, and gave him a house in venice near the church of sant' agostino. aldo then married a daughter of torresano, and the two printing businesses were joined and carried on together under aldo's direction. his house, we are told, was a veritable colony; besides the compositors' rooms and the press-rooms, he had closets for press-readers and studios for the special use of learned authors. the first 'printer's devil' was a little negro boy who had been brought by one of the men from greece. at the beginning of the sixteenth century the wood-engravers of florence were celebrated for beautiful book illustrations in a distinct style. those in the quatro reggie, florence, 1508, are typical examples; their chief characteristics are, great breadth; masses of white and black {46} evenly balanced; and the frequent use of white lines out of masses of black. [illustration: teobaldo manuzio--known as aldus, printer at venice] some of the fine borders to these early italian wood-engravings owe their distinctive character to earlier work of {47} engravers on metal. thus the borders round the illustrations of the venice folio of 1491 of the triumphs of petrarch seem to be direct copies of engravings in metal by filippo lippi. the masses of white on a black background are very effective, and the strength of the colour increases the effect of the picture which the border surrounds. between 1474 and 1512 aldus printed for the first time the works of thirty-three greek authors. the works of aristotle, brought out in four volumes, occupied three years. a learned greek, musurus of crete, corrected the proofs, in which aldus himself assisted. the workmen were nearly all greeks. the greek type was copied from the handwriting of musurus, and the italian, known as the aldine, from the writings of petrarch; this was cut by the celebrated artist-goldsmith, francia of bologna. the aldine edition of virgil (1501), now exceedingly rare, was the first book printed in this italic type. notwithstanding all his learning, energy, and philanthropy, aldus did not succeed in his business. many of his books were pirated, wars and insurrections interrupted him, the league of cambray caused him to close his works from 1506 to 1510, and he sold his books at a rate too cheap to be remunerative. the first printed edition of æsop's fables, which appeared at verona as early as 1481, and was reprinted at venice in 1491, contains many excellent engravings inclosed in ornamental borders, thoroughly italian in character. the figures are not unlike those in the 'hypnerotomachia,' and we can readily imagine that they were drawn by the same artist, who has given us little more than outlines, which the engraver has well cut in facsimile. the fable of 'the jackdaw and the peacock' is particularly well done. an edition of ovid's metamorphoses appeared also at this time with tolerably good illustrations not so well engraved. there are some curious little cuts in the epistole di san hieronymo volgare, published in ferrara in 1497, which {48} are more valuable for their originality than their beauty, either of drawing or engraving. the book was evidently intended for the use of the illiterate, to whom the quality of the pictures laid before them was of little consequence if they told the story that was meant for them to read with their eyes. the homely scene of christ appearing like a gardener with a hoe on his shoulder, addressing mary magdalene in an italian _pergola_, would appeal to their feelings much more directly than the transfiguration of raphael. [illustration: a bootmaker's shop _from the 'decameron,' printed in venice in 1492_] we do not find record of any other important wood-engravings in the history of printing in italy at the end of the fifteenth century. presses abounded everywhere, chiefly managed by germans; there was scarcely an important town in italy without a printer; few illustrated books, however, were issued at this time. an edition of boccaccio's {49} 'decameron,' with many excellent cuts, one of which, representing a bootmaker's shop, we give as an illustration, was printed by the brothers gregorio at venice in 1492. and there are some illustrations in a book called 'fiore di virtù,' which appeared in venice in the same year, that may be praised for the work of the wood-engraver, though the designer shows a sad ignorance of the laws of perspective and proportion. and we have before us an illustration to a poem by poliziano, in which giuliano dei medici is kneeling before the altar of the goddess minerva, where we see graceful drawing by the artist and fairly good engraving. it {50} was printed in florence, but the type bears no comparison with the beauty of the aldine books. [illustration: frontispiece to a 'terence,' printed at lyons in 1493] the love of colour, which is born in all italians, led them to develop a process of making pictures in chiaroscuro--by printing several wood-blocks one upon another, each block giving a separate tint. in fact, it was the beginning of the modern colour-printing. the invention of the new process was claimed by ugo da carpi, who reproduced several of the designs of raphael. in the beginning of the next century we find pictures printed in four different colours--trying to imitate water-colour, or, rather, distemper drawings. (see p. 99.) at lyons, about the same time, there was an illustrated edition of 'terence' published, with well-executed woodcuts, from which we are able to give only the frontispiece, 'the author writing his book.' it is sufficient to show that the engraving is the work of a practised hand. * * * * * {51} chapter vi _in france in the fifteenth century_ before we begin our brief history of wood-engraving in france it will be well to speak of the technical part of the new art in the fifteenth century. we have already stated that the engraving of the 'st. christopher' and other large prints were cut with a knife on planks of apple or pear or other close-grained wood; but there has always been much doubt about the small book illustrations which appeared in various countries quite at the end of the century. the discovery, however, of some engraved blocks of metal solved the difficulty. in those days workers in metal were to be found in all large towns; the age of moulding and casting everything that could be cast had not then arrived: of course, coins and medals were made in the foundry; but handwork of the most perfect kind on metal was as common as wood-carving for the churches. experts have discovered twisted lines in some of the old prints; a line in a woodcut may easily be broken but it can hardly be bent, and it is now asserted that many of the woodcuts, including the beautiful initial letters in fust and schoeffer's 'psalter,' were really engraved on metal. the view of london at the head of the first page of the _illustrated london news_ is, we are told, cut in brass; mulready's well-known envelope, engraved on brass by the celebrated wood-engraver, john thompson, may be seen in the south kensington museum; and scores of other examples of metalwork of this kind might be cited. {52} [illustration: ornaments from 'heures a l'usaige de chartre' (_published by vostre_)] and there is no doubt that the famous illustrations of the missal, or 'book of hours,' issued in paris between 1490 and 1520, were engraved on metal of some kind, perhaps on copper or some amalgam of tin and copper. there was a metal known as 'latten' in those days, and probably the engraving was done on some material of this kind, not too hard to cut, not too soft to wear away. it will be noticed that the groundwork of many borders in the french books is filled with little white dots, _criblé_ it was called; these dots are, in the first place, to imitate similar work in the gold grounds of the borders of illustrated missals, and, in the second place, to save the labour of cutting away so much of the metal as would be required for a white ground. these dots were evidently {53} made by means of a sharp and finely-pointed tool driven by a blow into the metal. (see page 59.) france was not early in the field with illustrated books, but she quickly made up for the delay by the excellence of her work, more especially in ornament. in 1488, pierre le rouge, a printer and publisher, sent forth a book, 'la mer des histoires,' which contains many charming designs, from which beautiful wall-papers we know of have been borrowed; they are as well engraved as similar work at the present day, and only needed better 'over-laying' by the pressman, an art but little practised at that time. this book contains the first decorative work by wood-engraving we have met with, and shows the great excellence of art in france at this period. there is a good example, though much reduced in size, among the illustrations of mr. william morris's paper 'on the woodcuts of gothic books,' that he read before a meeting of the society of arts in january 1892: it is printed in the journal of the society for february 12th. besides le rouge, there were in paris at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries four celebrated printers, who were also publishers, whose books command our attention. their names are simon vostre, antoine verard, thielman kerver, a german, and guyot marchant; they all published the 'book of hours,' illustrated and decorated by the best artists and engravers of their time. there was likewise a printer named philippe pigouchet, who was also an engraver on wood, and who began by cutting blocks for simon vostre, and afterwards turned publisher on his own account. an important point to notice in connection with the illustrations of french 'books of hours' at this time is that they are nearly all inspired by german artists and nearly all copied from illuminated mss. {54} [illustration: the death of the virgin (_from a missal published by simon vostre_)] {55} at the end of the fifteenth century the art of illumination was at its height in paris. no one excelled the exquisite work of jean foucquet, servant to the king, and jean perreal, painter to anne of brittany. manuscripts containing their miniature paintings command a large sum whenever they are offered for sale at the present day. these artists, it is said, gave their aid to the publishers of the 'book of hours' (_heures à l'usage de rome_), which had such an enormous sale that each publisher produced an edition for himself. mr. noel humphreys asserts, in his 'history of the art of printing,' that no fewer than sixty editions were published between 1484 and 1494. in his 'introduction to the study and collection of ancient prints,' dr. willshire says: 'towards the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries some well-known french printers--pigouchet, jean dupré, antoine verard, and simon vostre--published some beautiful "books of hours," ornamented with engravings having some peculiar characters. the chief of these were that the ground and often the dark portions of the print were finely _criblé_ or dotted white, serving as a means of "killing black"--a practice then prevalent among french engravers; secondly, each page of text was surrounded by a border of little subjects engraved in the same manner, and often repeated at every third page.... not unfrequently they were printed in brilliant ink on fine vellum, that they might compete with the illuminated ms. "books of hours" then in fashion. the prints decorating these books have been generally considered to be impressions from wood.' but mr. linton says they are from engraved blocks of metal; and every practical man will, we are sure, agree with the great living master of wood-engraving. our first illustration is from a 'book of hours,' or missal, published by simon vostre in 1488. it represents 'the death of the virgin,' a subject that was always chosen by the illustrator of religious books in those days; in our account of wood-engraving in the next two centuries we shall frequently meet with it among the works of the great artists. {56} [illustration: the passion of our lord (_after a painting by martin schongauer. from a missal by simon vostre_)] {57} the gothic framework of the cut is evidently borrowed from church ornament. the expression of the faces in the crowd of visitors is far in advance of anything we have seen hitherto in the german cuts; and the engraving, which was probably on metal, is evidently facsimile of the drawing and is remarkably well executed. the narrow border on the right of the cut is from an illuminated manuscript. in another of vostre's missals we find a copy of an engraving after the german painter, martin schongauer, 'christ bearing the cross,' enclosed in a french renaissance frame. in the sky there is a good example of the _criblé_ work of which we have spoken. the towers of jerusalem in the background must have been evolved from the artist's inner consciousness: he certainly never saw the holy city. antoine verard also published many 'livres d'heures,'[5] very much like vostre's. we are told that he frequently printed a few copies on the finest vellum and had them coloured in exact imitation of the illuminated missals. one of verard's patrons was the duc d'angoulême, a noted bibliophile, who commissioned him to print on vellum the romance of 'tristan,' the 'book of consolation' of boethius, the 'ordinaire du chrétien,' and the 'heures en françois,' all with illuminated borders and handsome bindings. for this great amount of work verard received about 240l., then equivalent perhaps to 1,000l. of the present day. we give an outline copy of one of the pages of the romance of 'tristan,' which will repay much attention both for the principal subject, the king's banquet, and the tapestry on the wall, which ought to be coloured to be properly appreciated. this famous publisher issued also a huge chronicle in five folio volumes, the 'miroir historical,' profusely illustrated with good wood engravings; the first volume in 1495, the last in 1496. {58} [illustration: the king's banquet (_from the romance of 'tristan,' published by antoine verard_)] thielman kerver, the german, also brought out many 'books of hours,' copying those issued by simon vostre in a most barefaced way; indeed, piracy of this kind was rampant all over europe, and but little regarded. we give {59} a reduced copy of kerver's book-mark; in the original it will be seen that the background is _criblé_, thus suggesting that it was cut on metal. [illustration: mark of thielman kerver] it was guyot marchant who produced, in 1485, the first edition of the 'dance of death,' which contained seventeen engravings on ten folio leaves, with the text printed in the old gothic characters. this awe-inspiring but highly popular subject had been painted on the walls of many public buildings in germany and france, and in past ages it had always been a great favourite with the lower classes (many of our readers will remember a version of it on the walls of the curious old wooden bridge at lucerne, the designs of which have doubtless been handed down by tradition)--but {60} marchant was the first who printed the story in a series of woodcuts, well drawn and admirably engraved, and he had his reward, for the work was reprinted over and over again. the pope, the emperor, the bishop, the duke and the duchess are given with much spirit, and are evidently the work of a clever draughtsman, who might, however, have made his death a little less hideous. but there was a great love of the horrible in those days. a special chapter might well be devoted to the beautiful marks used by french printers. guyot marchant's mark represents leather-workers engaged at their trade, and above are a few musical notes. there are two varieties of this device. the mark of jehan du pré is an elaborate piece of work, in which heraldry plays a conspicuous part, while that of antoine caillaut is pictorial. the le noirs used devices in which the heads of negroes figured prominently. the well-known mark of badius ascensius represents printers at work. jehan petit used several beautiful cuts, in which his mark forms part of an elaborate design. * * * * * {61} chapter vii _in england in the fifteenth century_ in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries many of the finest churches in england were built by architects so celebrated that some of them were sent for to erect similar buildings in france. the beautiful carvings and highly decorated monuments still existing in our cathedrals prove that the art of sculpture in england was at that time little inferior to that of other countries. and in the british museum and bodleian library, and many private collections, there is plentiful evidence that the miniature painters and illuminators were but little behind their brethren in italy and france; even the binders, as we see by existing work, used excellent ornament in the decoration of the covers of their books. why is it, then, that we find the art of wood-engraving, when it was flourishing in all the chief countries on the continent, almost at its earliest state of infancy in england? this is a question very difficult to answer. certainly our great printers, william caxton, and his successors, wynkyn de worde and richard pynson, did not follow the example of the great typographers of venice or the yet more-to-be-praised booksellers of paris, who devoted so much energy and taste in the decoration of their books. of the few cuts printed in the fifteenth century, such as they are, we must say a few words. the earliest are all {62} small devotional pictures, representing scriptural subjects, as 'the image of pity,' a figure of christ on the cross surrounded by emblems of the passion; four or five only of these early cuts have been found. william caxton, the first english printer, who was born in the weald of kent about the year 1422, was apprenticed to robert large, a rich mercer of london, who was lord mayor in 1440. in the following year the master died and caxton went to bruges, where he prospered in business, and in 1462 was made governor of a company of english merchants who traded in flanders, then the foremost mercantile country in the world. in 1471 caxton gave up commerce and attached himself to the court of margaret, duchess of burgundy, the sister of edward iv. at the request of the duchess, he then translated the _le recueil des histoires de troye_, written by raoul lefevre, and employed colard mansion of bruges to produce it. this was the first book printed in the english language. in passing his book through the press caxton learned the new art, and with type bought of colard mansion he set up the first printing-press in england, at the sign of 'the red pale' in the almonry at westminster, at the end of the year 1476. 'the dictes and sayings of philosophers,' which appeared in 1477, is believed to be the first book printed in england; this was followed by 'the morale prouerbes of cristyne,' and several other books, all without illustration. in 1478 he printed 'the mirrour of the world,' the first book printed in england with cuts, one of which we give as an example; and the more famous 'game and playe of the chesse,' from the second edition of which we have taken as a specimen 'the knight,' which caxton thus describes: 'the knyght ought to be maad al armed upon a hors in such wise that he have an helme on his heed and a spere in his right hond, and coverid with his shelde, a swerde and a mace on his left syde, clad with an halberke and plates tofore his breste, legge harnoys on his legges, spores on his heelis, on hys handes hys gauntelettes, hys hors wel broken and taught, and apte to bataylle, and coveryd with hys armes.' {63} [illustration: music (_from caxton's 'mirrour of the world'_)] (orthography was not much regarded in those days.) this book is so rare and so keenly sought for that at the sale at osterley park in 1855 a perfect copy was bought for the enormous sum of 1,950l. in 1483 appeared 'the golden legende,' considered to be his _magnum opus_, on account of the beauty of the typography; and about 1490 'the talis of cauntyrburye' with 27 cuts representing individual pilgrims, and one with all the pilgrims seated round a large table. it is {64} said that caxton printed ninety-nine different works, of which sixty-four survive either in perfect books or in fragments, which may be consulted at the british museum. he produced the first printed edition of chaucer, lydgate, gower, and sir thomas malory's 'king arthur.' he was an accomplished linguist, and translated and published cicero's orations 'de senectute' and 'de amicitia,' virgil's 'æneid' and many other classical works. [illustration: the knight (_from caxton's 'game and playe of the chesse'_)] with one exception none of his books has a title-page, though some have prologues and colophons; and the pages are not numbered. they are all printed in the gothic {65} character known as 'black letter,' and nearly all are in small folio size. caxton, we are assured, received the patronage and friendship of all the great men of his time and was much esteemed throughout europe; and from a miniature painting in a beautiful manuscript in the library of lambeth palace we know that earl rivers presented him with his first book in his hand to the king, edward iv. it is supposed that he died at the end of 1491 in his sixty-ninth year. [illustration: wynkyn de worde's mark _with caxton's initials_] wynkyn de worde, caxton's pupil and successor, was a native of lorraine. he probably came over with him from bruges, and so attached was he to his master, and so highly did he esteem him, that in all the nine book-marks that de worde used, he always included the initials w. c. the mark we have given is of rare occurrence, and is one of the best pieces of engraving of the time. bibliographers have found four hundred books printed by him; among them is 'the golden legende,' with woodcuts (1493); a translation of 'huon de bordeaux,' from which shakespeare borrowed the plot of his 'midsummer night's dream'; and his best-known {66} work, often reprinted, 'treatyses perteynynge to hawkynge and huntynge, and fyshynge with an angle,' by dame juliana berners (1496), which contains many woodcuts, one of which, a man fishing, is very quaint (_see engraving_). a book which was 'imprynted at london in flete street in 1531,' called 'pilgrymage of perfeccyon, a devoute treatyse in englysshe,' is illustrated by three curiously folded woodcuts. de worde was the first printer in england who used the roman type. several of his books have a woodcut on the title-page. in his 'history of wood-engraving,' mr. chatto gives his opinion about the cuts of this period:--'although i am inclined to believe that within the fifteenth century there were no persons who practised wood-engraving in this country as a distinct profession, yet it by no means follows from such an admission that caxton's and de worde's cuts must have been engraved by foreign artists. the manner in which they are executed is so coarse that they might have been cut by any person who could handle a graver. looking at them merely as specimens of wood-engraving, they are not generally superior to the practice-blocks cut by a modern wood-engraver's apprentice within the first month of his novitiate.' soon there were other printers in london. richard pynson began to publish books from his own press in fleet street. his first book illustrated with woodcuts appears to have been 'the canterbury tales,' printed before 1493. in the following year pynson issued lydgate's 'falle of princis' with numerous small woodcuts by a master-hand, which appear too good to be english. {67} [illustration: 'fyshynge wyth an angle' (_from 'the book of st. albans,' printed by wynkyn de worde in 1496_)] for a 'sarum missal' of 1500, he used some beautifully engraved borders and ornaments, as well as a large cut of archbishop morton's coat of arms. another of his important works was lord berners' translation of syr john froissart's 'cronycles of englande, fraunce, spayne, &c.' we give a {68} copy of pynson's 'mark,' but we fear both this and de worde's were engraved on the continent. [illustration: richard pynson's mark] in 1498, julian notary established an office from which twenty-three books have been traced. many of them have curious woodcuts, some of which seem to have descended to him from caxton and wynkyn de worde. we find the decoration of the covers of notary's works mentioned with approval in the early history of book-binding, which arrived at a much greater perfection than wood-engraving in this country at the close of the fifteenth century. * * * * * {69} chapter viii _in germany in the sixteenth century_ we must now retrace our brief history to germany, where, under the immediate direction and control of such well-known artists as albrecht dürer of nürnberg (_b._ 1471, d. 1528) and hans burgkmair of augsburg (_b._ 1472, d. 1531), as well as of lucas cranach, a franconian (_b._ 1472, d. 1553), and, afterwards, of hans holbein of augsburg (_b._ 1497, d. 1543), the art of wood-engraving in its grandest and purest form arrived at its first culmination. this was in a great measure due to the liberal patronage of the emperor maximilian, who, possessing a great love of art, esteemed all painters, architects, designers, and engravers as highly as his warriors. he was fond of magnificence in a truly imperial way, and the superb series of wood-engravings--the noblest the world has ever seen--known as 'the triumphs of maximilian,' were the outcome of this generous tendency. of these celebrated works, which were not completed when the emperor died in 1519, we must speak in their proper place. it was to the genius of albrecht dürer and the engravers who translated his drawings into woodcuts that the art received its new vigour. up to this time wood-engraving in germany had been the work of craftsmen who were little better than mechanics; but when dürer and burgkmair, who knew the capabilities of the art, made drawings on the wood expressly for the engravers to reproduce in exact lines, there {70} was a quick improvement which went on increasing in excellence for more than half a century. after the death of holbein and his immediate successors, the art faded into insignificance in germany for many years. the first important work of the early life of albrecht dürer was a series of fifteen large drawings on wood representing allegorical scenes from the apocalypse. they are mystical, indeed almost incomprehensible; at the same time we are obliged to notice the tremendous vigour and the wonderful power of invention in the man who designed them. but his attempt to embody the supernatural led him into the most extravagant conceptions. 'in attempting to bring such themes within the power of expression which art possesses,' writes mr. woodbery, 'he strove to give speech to the unutterable.' yet the genius of the true artist was apparent through all his work. the most celebrated of the apocalypse designs is the fourth in the book, 'the opening of the first four seals,' a wonderfully grand conception of the four horsemen going forth to conquer; death on the pale horse below, and 'hell following him.' (revelation vi. 8.) king, burgher, peasant and priest, have all fallen beneath him. although we are expressly told that dürer himself printed this work in 1498, it by no means follows that he engraved the woodcuts; they are greatly in advance of any previous work of the kind, and this may be attributed to the fact that the artist who designed them knew the best capabilities of the art. if he and the unknown engraver had learned the advantages of lowering the face of the wood when delicate lines were required, and the present methods of overlaying the cuts to produce greater intensity of colour, some of the engravings of dürer's time would be models of excellence. the series of the apocalypse was succeeded by three others in which the human interest is far greater. these were what the artist himself called 'the larger passion of {71} our lord,' a series of eleven large cuts, with a vignette on the title-page; 'the life of the virgin,' a series of twenty cuts; and 'the smaller passion of our lord,' a series of thirty-six cuts of less size, with a well-known vignette of 'christ mocked' on the title-page. these works mark an important era in the history of wood-engraving and clearly led onwards to its future development. they were all published between 1510 and 1512, and so great was their popularity that the celebrated italian engraver, marc antonio raimondi, reproduced the whole of 'the smaller passion' in copper-plate--much, as may be imagined, to dürer's annoyance. in the 'larger passion of our lord' we find representations of the last supper, christ on the mount of olives, the betrayal, the scourging, christ mocked, christ bearing his cross, the crucifixion, the resurrection, and other subjects from the new testament; and so deeply did the highly-wrought artist feel the awful importance of his subject that he repeated some of these events in at least five different series. in all of them his characters are dressed in the uncouth habiliments of german peasants, and we see bits of german villages; but in this respect he only followed the example of the great italian painters, who clothed the most sacred figures in the costumes of their own towns, and, when possible, gave an italian landscape for a background to their pictures of the holy land. the series of twenty large engravings called 'the life of the virgin' was published and sold by dürer himself in book form at about the same time (1510), and was equally well received by the german people, who were at that time in a state of religious ferment consequent on the preachings of martin luther, and dürer was one of his prominent disciples. {72} [illustration: the virgin crowned by two angels. by albrecht dürer _engraved by jerome andre_ (_?_)] {73} but it was the series of thirty-seven smaller woodcuts, known as 'the lesser passion,' that was most popular; in some measure, perhaps, because the prints are of a more handy size. all the subjects of 'the larger passion' are repeated, with variations, in this series, and twenty-five others from the life of christ are added. by a happy chance, thirty-five of the original woodcuts of this series are preserved in the british museum. in the year 1840 they were reprinted, by permission of the trustees, under the care of mr. henry cole. the wood was found to be much worm-eaten, but all injury was deftly repaired by mr. thurston thompson, and a small edition of the work was issued[6] with an exhaustive introduction by mr. cole. the most admired of all the works of dürer are the large plates known as 'the knight, death, and the devil,' 'the conversion of st. eustace,' 'melencolia,' 'st. jerome in his chamber,' and several others which he engraved or etched on copper with his own hands and which he himself published. fine impressions of these marvellous works are now as eagerly sought for as celebrated rembrandt etchings. dürer made also many drawings on wood which were engraved and printed under his immediate supervision, and issued in separate sheets. of one of the most beautiful, of these, 'the virgin crowned by two angels,' we are able to give an impression which is an exact facsimile (reduced) of a print of the year 1518. nothing of its kind can exceed the brilliancy of the original, the engraving is as nearly perfect as possible, and were it not for the hardness of the lines in the faces and other objects where softness is required, no craftsman of the present day could surpass its excellence as a product of the printing-press. many other separate large wood-engravings, after dürer's drawings, appeared between the years 1510 and 1518, such as 'the holy family with the three rabbits,' 'st. jerome in his chamber,' 'the flight into egypt,' 'beheading of st. john the baptist,' and, among other strange subjects, a representation of a rhinoceros. {74} dürer also designed a frontispiece to his own book of poems, published in 1510. three magnificent books illustrated with woodcuts of great size, the 'theuerdank,' the 'werskunig,' and the 'freydal,' appeared in germany early in the sixteenth century. the first is an epic relating to the emperor maximilian's journey to burgundy on matrimonial affairs; it was published in 1517. hans schaufelein drew the designs for a hundred and eighteen cuts, measuring 6½ inches by 5½ inches each. the second is in honour of the emperor's journeys in distant lands, and the third to celebrate his deeds of prowess. there are 237 designs, chiefly by hans burgkmair of augsburg, in the 'werskunig'; the blocks are still preserved; they remained unused till long after the emperor's death, and were not published till 1775. the 'freydal' has never been completed, though the designs are still in existence. _the triumphs of maximilian_ but we have yet to speak of 'the triumphs of maximilian.' this imperial work, the most important production of the art of wood-engraving the world has ever seen, was executed by command of the emperor maximilian to convey to posterity a pictorial representation of the magnificence of his court, the splendour of his victories, and the extent of his dominions. it consists of three distinct sets of designs: (i.) the 'triumphal arch,' (ii.) the 'triumphal car,' both from the hand of albrecht dürer, and (iii.) the 'triumphal procession,' by hans burgkmair. the size of the work is immense; if the whole series were laid out side by side it would cover about one hundred and ninety-two feet (64 yards!) the drawings were made on pear-wood and were cut by about eleven different engravers, of whom the most famous was jerome of nürnberg. many of the original blocks are happily preserved in the imperial library at vienna, and on the backs of them are written the names or {75} initials of the various engravers. it is evident, therefore, that at the beginning of the sixteenth century there was a recognised school of wood-engravers in germany of considerable importance. one of them, jobst de neger, or dienecker, came from antwerp; a few lived at nürnberg, others at augsburg. some idea of the 'triumphal arch' is conveyed to our mind when we learn that it was drawn on ninety-two separate blocks of wood, and that when properly joined it is ten and a half feet high and nine and a half feet wide! it was designed 'after the manner of those erected in honour of the roman emperors at rome;' there are three gateways or entrances--that in the centre is called the gate of honour and power, on the right is the gate of nobility, on the left the gate of fame, a part of which is seen in the illustration. the arch itself is decorated with portraits of the roman emperors from the time of julius cæsar, shields of arms showing the descent of the emperor and his alliances, representations of his most famous exploits, including his adventures while chamois-hunting in the tyrol, with explanatory verses in the german language cut in the wood. above the central entrance is a grand tower surmounted by a figure of fortune holding the imperial crown. the whole is a kind of epitome of the history of the german empire. the 'projector of the design' was hans stabius, who calls himself the historiographer and poet of the emperor. the work was begun in 1515--four years before the emperor's death--and was not quite finished at the time of the death of the artist in 1528. although we do not see the greatest excellence of dürer's peculiar genius in this immense production executed to order, for it is too full of german fantasies and very unlike the classic simplicity of the old roman arches, it will be found to contain the finest work of the wood-engraver at that period. some parts of it are of a marvellous delicacy that can hardly be surpassed. {76} [illustration: the gate of fame (_from the 'triumphal arch' by albrecht dürer. engraved by jerome andre._)] {77} the 'triumphal car,' also designed by dürer at the suggestion of stabius, is a richly decorated chariot drawn by six pairs of horses. in it the emperor in his imperial robes is seated under a canopy amid allegorical figures representing justice, truth, clemency, temperance, and the like, who offer to him triumphal wreaths. over the canopy is an inscription: quod . in . celis . sol . hoc . in . terra . caesar . est. the car is driven by reason with reins of nobility and power, and the horses are guided by female figures of swiftness, prudence, boldness, and similar equine virtues. the whole of the design is seven feet four inches in length and about a foot and a half in height. to modern eyes the car is not prepossessing, the figures of the attendant damsels are by no means elegant, and the horses would not, we fear, meet with the approval of english critics. it brings to us a reminiscence of the funeral car of the duke of wellington, which, we remember, was designed by a german artist. some parts of the decorations are excellent and the whole is well engraved. the 'triumphal procession' is still more important. it consists of a series of one hundred and thirty-five large cuts, which, joined together, would cover in length one hundred and seventy-five feet (upwards of 58 yards!) a herald, mounted on a fantastic, four-footed winged gryphon, leads the procession; next follow two led horses bearing a tablet with these words, doubtless by stabius: 'this triumph has been made for the praise and everlasting memory of the noble pleasures and glorious victories of the most serene and illustrious prince and lord, maximilian, roman emperor elect, and head of christendom, king and heir of seven christian kingdoms, archduke of austria, duke of burgundy and of other grand principalities and provinces of europe.' more horses follow, then come falconers with hawks on their wrists, hunters of the chamois and the bear, behind them are elks and buffaloes, richly caparisoned stags four abreast, and camels drawing decorated chariots in which ride the musicians. {78} [illustration: horsemen, three abreast, with banners (_from 'the triumphal procession' by burgkmair. cut by dienecker and other engravers_)] the emperor's favourite jester, conrad von der rosen, follows on horseback, bearing an immense flag; then come fools, fencing-masters, and soldiers of all kinds armed for every service, horsemen three abreast, with banners inscribed with the names of the great battles which the emperor had won, cars filled with trophies taken from conquered nations, among them the 'savages of calicut'--natives of india--one of them riding a huge elephant, and numerous other figures filled up the immense length of the engraving. {79} [illustration: the savages of calicut (_from 'the triumphal procession' by burgkmair. cut by dienecker and other engravers_)] the whole work, though evidently intended to be a glorification of the great emperor, is much {80} more valuable to us at the present day as a marvellous record of the barbaric magnificence of the middle ages, and an outward aspect of secular life. 'the ideal of worldly power and splendour, the spirit of pleasure and festival, is shown forth in this marvellously varied march of laurelled horses and horsemen, whose trappings and armour have the beauty and glitter of peaceful parade. there is nowhere else a work which so presents at once the feudal spirit and feudal delights in such exuberance of picturesque and feudal display.' dürer's designs for the 'prayer-book of maximilian' also claim a short notice. only three copies of the work are known to be in existence, one of which is in the british museum. the margins are full of fanciful designs; amid intertwining branches, birds are singing, apes are climbing, snakes creeping, and gnats flying. king david is charming a stork with his harp; a fox is playing a flute to poultry. it is a curious mixture of the sacred and profane, for which dürer has often been censured. the engraving of the subjects, which are in outline, is excellent. * * * * * {81} chapter ix _hans holbein and hans lützelburger_ hans holbein, who first saw the light at augsburg in the year 1497, was the greatest artist ever born in germany, and as he passed half of his artistic life in england we may claim some little share in the glory of his undisputed eminence. the son of a worthy painter of sacred pictures for the church, he was brought up amidst all the paraphernalia of the studio, and at a very early age began to design title-pages, initial letters, and ornaments for numerous important books published by johann froben, valentine curio, and other printers of basel, and christoph froschover, of zürich. some of these folio title-pages, most of which are of an architectural character, are veritable works of art, and are greatly treasured at the present day. next we find him making illustrations for the new testament, some of which were engraved on wood and some on metal, probably by dienecker or lützelburger, though of this we have no direct evidence. but holbein's greatest fame, as a designer of book-illustrations, is derived from his well-known series of the 'dance of death,' which was first given to the world in the year 1538, though from some proofs still in existence they are known to have been engraved before the artist's first visit to london in 1527. it is believed that the original forty-one drawings on wood were all cut by hans lützelburger, who has been very properly called the 'true prince of wood-engravers,' for, in the opinion of our foremost critics, these 'dance of death' cuts are the masterpieces of the art at that period, excelling even the work of jerome andre of nürnberg on dürer's 'triumphal arch.' {82} [illustration: holbein's dance of death the king] seventeen other designs were added to the 'dance of death' afterwards, making the complete series fifty-eight. the original blocks are lost; they have been copied on the continent many times, and were reproduced in england in perfect facsimile and in the very best manner under the superintending care of francis douce, a celebrated antiquary, by john and mary byfield and george bonner, all excellent engravers. accompanied by a learned dissertation by mr. douce, the work {83} was published by william pickering[7] in the year 1833. it is from electrotypes of these blocks that we are enabled to present to our readers the designs of 'the king,' 'the queen,' 'the astrologer,' and 'the pedlar,' four of the best of the series. [illustration: holbein's dance of death the queen] wall-pictures of 'the dance of death,' with but little artistic merit, existed at a much earlier period, and some of them may still be traced in the cloisters of old cathedrals. the subject was a great favourite with both priest and people in the middle ages; it appealed to the feelings of rich and poor, old and young, and holbein's 'fearful' pictures, as soon as they appeared, met with immense popularity, which, to this day, has never ceased. {84} [illustration: holbein's dance of death the astrologer] almost every class is represented in them--the king at his well-spread board is served by his fellow king, who fills his bowl; the queen, walking with her ladies, is led into an open grave; in a landscape, in which we see a flock of sheep, death appears to an aged bishop; here we see death running away with the abbot's mitre and crozier; there he visits the physician and the astrologer. in the church is a preacher who holds the people in awe, behind him is a preacher more dread still; the miser with his bags, the merchant with his bales, are alike surprised by death; the knight's armour is defenceless, the pedlar with his basket cannot escape, the waggoner with {85} his wine-cart is overthrown. all are represented in their turn--the duchess in her bed, the poor woman in her hovel, the child who is ruthlessly taken from his mother. we can imagine the sensation which such a work would create among a very impressionable people at that season of religious ferment, the greatest the world has ever known. thirteen editions from the original blocks are known to have been printed between the years 1538 and 1563. [illustration: holbein's dance of death the pedlar] about the same time another series of wood-engravings appeared, consisting of eighty-six designs by holbein, drawn on wood larger than the 'dance of death' blocks and just as well engraved, probably by lützelburger; these were 'scenes from old testament history,' generally known as 'holbein's bible cuts'; they were issued separately with descriptions in verse and were also used to illustrate bibles. {86} [illustration: the happiness of the godly.--holbein's bible cuts _engraved by lützelburger_] this series was also reproduced by the same artists who cut the 'dance of death,' under the superintendence of mr. douce; and it is from electrotypes of these blocks that we are enabled to give our two bible illustrations, 'the happiness of the godly' (psalm i.), and 'joab's artifice' (2 samuel xiv. 4). they copy the original prints in exact facsimile, and, looking at them, one cannot but wonder at the high state of perfection to which the art of wood-engraving had attained nearly four hundred years ago. at that time, germany stood alone in its excellence; france, and even italy, were far behind her; and england and spain were nowhere. we ought to add that both the 'dance of death' and the 'bible cuts' were {87} issued, with text, by the brothers trechsel, the celebrated publishers of lyons, in 1538, when holbein must have been in england. a wonderful alphabet, with 'dance of death' figures, evidently designed by holbein, has hanns lützelburger (formschnider) genant franck printed at the foot of the page. these letters were probably engraved on metal. a 'peasant's dance' and 'children's sports,' designed as headings of chapters by the same artist, are well known, as they have been frequently reproduced. [illustration: joab's artifice.--holbein's bible cuts _engraved by lützelburger_] in the works of 'the little masters' who succeeded dürer and holbein we are not much concerned. albrecht altdorfer (d. 1538) was a designer as well as an engraver on wood. hans beham (d. 1550?) is best known by his {88} twentysix designs from the apocalypse which mr. linton praises as of 'supremest excellence.' he says, moreover, that they were probably engraved on metal (perhaps copper), by beham himself, as well as his 81 little bible cuts which were used to illustrate the first english bible. he also designed and perhaps engraved several large cuts, one of which, 'the fountain of youth,' is four feet long; another is 'the dance of the daughter of herodias,' reproduced by dr. lippmann. hans brosamer (d. 1552) designed and engraved pictures for books. heinrich aldegrever (d. 1558) is well known for his portraits of luther, melanchthon, and the notorious john of leyden. virgil solis (d. 1562) was a prolific book-illustrator; he designed a series of 216 bible pictures, all of small size, as well as 178 cuts for ovid's 'metamorphoses,' and 194 for æsop's fables; he also designed and probably engraved much ornament, especially for title-pages of books, some of which was very good. jost amman (d. 1591) is celebrated for his book of 'all ranks, arts, and trades,' with one hundred and thirty-two figures. (see page 128). the religious books printed in germany at the end of the sixteenth century were altogether inferior as regards their illustrations, though a few are fairly designed and executed. ornamental borders, especially on title pages, were usual, and those designed by lucas cranach are of considerable merit. many of the german printers' marks or devices, which are very well engraved, were the work of some of the best artists of the times. these were but expiring efforts, and by the end of the century, owing to continual warfare and internal disturbances, the art of wood-engraving in germany was almost forgotten. * * * * * {89} chapter x _in italy and france in the sixteenth century_ in the early years of the sixteenth century, the printers of florence issued many cheap popular books, chiefly _rappresentazioni_, i.e. plays, sacred or secular. these plays are generally badly printed in double columns, but they are illustrated with numerous cuts, some of which are of peculiar merit. the earliest known printer of them was francesco benvenuto (c. 1516-1545), but the majority appear to have been issued between 1550 and 1580, anonymously, though we know that giovanni baleni of florence was the printer of some of these. there were also many quaint little tracts, metrical _novelle_ and _istorie_, of which a collection has been found at the university library, erlangen; a valuable description of them was published by dr. varnhagen. the poems are, as a rule, illustrated with small cuts, inclosed within a neat border, the subjects are usually well chosen, and the drawing very good; the treatment of some of the domestic scenes is worthy of bewick. {90} [illustration: frontispiece of 'le sorti di marcolini' _by giuseppe porta venice 1540_] [illustration: le pot-cassé (_device of geoffroy tory_)] in striking contrast to the simplicity of these popular wood-engravings are the elaborate engravings which appeared in the more expensive books issued in the latter half of the same century, when illustrated editions of dante, boccaccio, ovid, æsop's fables, and alciat's 'emblems,' appeared, one after the other, but not one of these calls for {91} special notice; nor did the best of their wood-engravings equal the work of lützelburger. the frontispiece of a curious book, _le sorti di marcolini da forli_, printed at venice in 1540, of which we offer a reduced copy, gives us a good idea of the prevailing art of the period. it is said to be taken from a design by raphael for his celebrated picture 'the school of athens,' and we see by the tablet in the foreground that it was either drawn on the wood or engraved by joseph (giuseppe) porta, known as salviati, after his more celebrated master whom he accompanied to venice. in paris, in the first half of the sixteenth century, there lived a very celebrated printer, 'geoffroy tory, peintre et graveur, premier imprimeur royal, reformateur de l'orthographe, et de la typographie,' as he is described by his biographer, m. a. bernard (paris, 1857). he was born at bourges in 1480, and in early life went to paris, where he not only wrote books and printed them, but designed ornamental borders and engraved them. he also studied his profession in italy, and brought back with him new ideas about printing and illustrating books. such a man had great influence at that time, for he had much inborn taste and excellent skill, and publishers should all be proud of him as one of their most praiseworthy ancestors. he adopted the singular design the _pot-cassé_, of which we give a copy, as his somewhat enigmatical device; and some writers maintain that the little 'cross of lorraine' (++) found on many of the cuts of this period is also his mark. {92} [illustration: from 'les heures' printed by simon de colines _engraved by geoffroy tory_] {93} in our illustration, taken from the _heures_, printed by simon de colines, this cross of lorraine will be seen under the kneeling priest. he made antique letters, he himself tells us, for monseigneur the treasurer for war, master jehan grolier, whom we know as one of the best patrons of book-binding; and wrote a book which he called '_champfleury, auquel est contenu l'art et science de la deue proportion des lettres ... selon le corps et le visage humain_,' a very learned and amusing treatise. some of the initial letters in this book are very cleverly designed and engraved--probably by the ingenious author. the picture of 'antoine macault reading his translation of diodorus siculus to the king' is said to have been engraved by tory; it is evidently either from a design by hans holbein or by an artist who copied his style. all the figures in this excellent engraving are portraits--the king (francis i.), his three sons, and his favourite nobles. it is the best cut that was issued at paris at this time. geoffroy tory died in 1533, though his workshop was carried on for many years afterwards. among other woodcuts of this period we find a small portrait of the poet nicholas bourbon, dated 1535. as this is a direct copy of the portrait of the same individual, undoubtedly by holbein, which is now at windsor castle, and as the ornamentation is quite in holbein's style, we cannot doubt that this celebrated painter had frequent relations with the publishers on the continent in the first half of the sixteenth century. {94} [illustration: antoine macault reading his translation of diodorus siculus to king francis i. _designed by holbein. engraved by geoffroy tory?_] {95} another celebrated printer who enjoyed the patronage of the king was robert estienne, who, by some curious perversity, is frequently spoken of by english scholars and biographers as robert stephens, simply because, following the fashion of the day, he often latinised his name and signed robertus stephanus. estienne was, next to aldo manuzio of venice, the most learned of printers, and deserves to be held in due reverence. the most important illustrated book he published was 'the lives of the dukes of milan,' by paulus jovius (paris, 1549). this work has sixteen portraits of the dukes, well engraved, some say by geoffroy tory himself, but this is a matter of dispute, though they certainly were cut in his workshop. among the most characteristic works of the wood-engraver in the middle of the century were two large processions, 'the triumphal entry of king henri ii. into paris,' published by roville of lyons, in 1548, and 'the triumphal entry into lyons,' issued in the following year. these prints were designed either by jean cousin or cornelis de la haye, but the name of the engraver is nowhere mentioned. they are somewhat similar to 'the triumph of maximilian,' by burgkmair, but are not nearly so important as works of art, and did nothing to raise the character of wood-engraving. in the books published in the second half of the century we frequently meet with the name of bernhard salomon (born at lyons in 1512), generally called le petit bernard, who made designs for alciat's 'emblems' (a.d. 1560) and ovid's 'metamorphoses' (a.d. 1564), which were engraved in the workshop of geoffroy tory, and published by jean (or hans) de tournes, of lyons. bernard's style was much influenced by the italian painters rosso and primaticcio, who had been invited by the king to decorate fontainebleau, and may be easily recognised by the extreme height and tenuity of his figures, and by the peculiar ornament which he used as framework for his drawings. another book containing equally good illustrations is _ghesneden figuera wyten niewen testamente_ ('engraved figures from the new testament'), adorned with ninety-two small cuts besides the title-page and initial letters; these were drawn and probably engraved by guilliame borluyt, {96} citizen of ghent, and published by jean de tournes of lyons in 1557. from the fineness of the lines and other indications we suspect these designs were cut on metal, which was much used at this time instead of wood. through the kindness of messrs. h. s. nichols & co., of soho square, who possess an excellent copy of this very rare book, we are enabled to offer our readers two cuts, 'the woman of samaria' and 'christ scourged,' of the same size as the originals. the publishers of lyons were celebrated from the end of the fourteenth to the middle of the fifteenth century for their dainty little books, which were very prettily illustrated. [illustration: christ and the woman of samaria _by guilliame borluyt_] we must not conclude this chapter without mentioning another celebrated publisher, christophe plantin of antwerp. he was born at saint-avertin, near tours, in 1514, and at an early age apprenticed to a printer and book-binder, robert macé, at caen; thence he went to paris, whence wars soon drove him away. he next took refuge at antwerp, where he employed himself in binding books and making leather boxes, _coffrets_, curiously inlaid and gilt. {97} [illustration: the scourging of christ _by guilliame borluyt_] by mistake he was, one dark evening, stabbed with a sword, and he afterwards suffered so much pain from the wound that he could not stoop without feeling it: consequently he turned to the business of a printer, and soon became the most celebrated man of the day in that craft. philip ii. of spain made him his chief printer, and under royal orders plantin produced the well-known polyglot bible in eight folio volumes (1568-1573). he had previously printed some smaller books of emblems (1564), and _devises héroïques_ (1562), and had employed pierre huys, lucas de heere, godefroid ballain, and other artists, to illustrate them. he died in 1589. his second daughter married jean moret, one of the overseers of {98} the printing-office, and the business known as 'plantin-moretus' continued to prosper up to the present century. a few years since the offices were bought by the city authorities, and the plantin museum is now one of the principal attractions of antwerp. in his various works plantin used many woodcuts, but most of his title-pages have borders executed by wierix, pass, and other celebrated copperplate engravers. his device was a hand with a pair of compasses, and his motto _labore et constantia_. the history of wood-engraving and wood-engravers in holland forms the subject of a monograph from the pen of mr. w. m. conway ('the woodcutters of the netherlands,' cambridge, 1884). the list commences with a louvain engraver, who worked for veldener in 1475, and about the same time for john and conrad de westphalia. most of the greater dutch towns had wood-engravers, and the work of these artists appears in many of the books printed in the low countries. as in france, many of the printers' marks are very good. it was in this century that publishers began to illustrate their books with copperplate engravings, which soon came into general use, and these plates for many years, to a very great extent, superseded engraving on wood. etchings by the artist's own hands are also frequently met with, and to these causes we may in a great measure attribute the decay of the formschneider's art for at least two centuries. * * * * * {99} chapter xi _in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in germany, italy and england_ in the portfolios of collectors of works of art of the sixteenth century we frequently meet with very interesting examples of printing in _chiaro-oscuro_, as it was called, by means of successive impressions of engraved wood-blocks. sometimes two or three blocks were used, sometimes six or eight, in all cases with the intention of reproducing the appearance of a tinted water-colour drawing or an oil-painting. those prints which were the least ambitious were the most successful, they were generally printed in various shades of grey and brown--from light sepia to deep umber--and sometimes the effects are admirable. a well-known designer and engraver on wood, ugo da carpi (c. 1520), introduced this new style of printing into venice, and other artists, antonio da trento, andrea andreani, bartolomeo coriolano, and others made many successful efforts in a similar direction; their best works are much prized. at the same time a group of venetian artists, who were also engravers on wood, distinguished themselves by copying the works of titian and other italian painters. the most celebrated of these engravers were nicolo boldrini, francesco da nanto, giovanni battista del porto, and giuseppe scolari, who all flourished between the years 1530 and 1580. their {100} productions, which are on a large scale, are greatly valued by artists. near the end of the century a book of costume entitled _habiti antichi e moderni di tutto il mondo_ was designed and published at venice by cesare vecellio, who is said to have been a nephew of the great titian. this work contains nearly six hundred figures in the costume of every age and country, admirably drawn and engraved; indeed, they are the best examples of the art of wood-engraving in italy at the time. this excellent work was reproduced in their well-known style by messrs. firmin, didot & cie in two volumes (paris, 1860). an edition of 'dante' published by the brothers sessa at venice in 1578 is well illustrated with good woodcuts. german artists were also bitten at this time with a mania for reproducing pictures by means of colour blocks. the results, however, were much more curious than beautiful. we have before us a copy of a painting designed by altdorfer, one of the 'little masters,' of 'the virgin with the holy infant on her lap,' set in an elaborate architectural frame. in this print at least eight different colour-blocks were used, among them a deep red and a vivid green. the printer's register has been fairly well kept, and the mechanical part of the work is worthy of all praise; but we fear the effect on most of our readers would be to produce anything but admiration. a saint christopher, designed and probably engraved by lucas cranach, printed in black and deep umber, only with the high lights carefully cut out of the latter block, is much more satisfactory. in the middle and towards the end of the sixteenth century there were several excellent wood-engravings published in london in illustration of foxe's 'book of martyrs' (1562), holinshed's 'chronicles of england, scotland, and ireland' (1577), 'a booke of christian prayers' (1569), and other works, chiefly from the press of the celebrated john daye. {101} [illustration: portrait of john daye, the celebrated printer of foxe's 'book of martyrs,' a.d. 1562] {102} as an example we give one of the illustrations of holinshed's chronicles as a frontispiece. there can be no doubt that holbein designed it; the ornamentation alone would almost prove it to be from his hand. the title-page of the 'bishops' bible,' printed about the same time, has a finely engraved border, representing the king handing the volume to the bishops, who in turn present it to the people. there are many woodcuts in the text, but they are of very low merit. we give an illustration of 'a booke of christian prayers,' known as queen elizabeth's prayer-book, from a fine portrait of her majesty kneeling on a handsome cushion, with clasped hands before a kind of altar. the queen's dress is magnificent, and the ornamentation of the whole design is of a similar character. it is an excellent piece of engraving, and we are able to give a facsimile of it, cut about sixty years ago by george bonner. mr. linton thinks the original was on metal; who engraved it is at present unknown. we fear there was no one in england who could produce such work, nor can anyone tell who made the design. it is printed on the back of the title-page, which is decorated with a border of a 'jesse-tree,' with a figure of jesse at the foot and the virgin with the holy infant on her lap at the head. there are woodcut borders to each of the 274 pages, all betraying german origin, and evidently by different hands. a few floral designs and single figures of 'temperance,' 'charity,' and the like are the best. among the rest is a series of 'dance of death' pictures, but _not_ by holbein. another edition of this work was printed in 1590 at london, 'by richard yardley and peter short for the assignes of richard day dwelling in bred-street hill at the signe of the starre.' [doubtless this was on the site of the present printing office of richard clay & sons.] richard day was a son of john day or daye, as we often find the name printed. {103} [illustration: elizabetha regina (_from 'a booke of christian prayers.' printed by john daye, london, 1569._)] {104} another illustrated book, 'the cosmographical glasse, conteinyng the pleasant principles of cosmographie, geographie, hydrographie or navigation. compiled by william cuningham, doctor in physicke' (of norwich), was printed by john day in 1559, with many cuts. in the ornamental title-page there is a large bird's-eye view of the city of norwich, with a mark of the engraver, i. b. there is also a large and well-engraved portrait of the author, 'ætatis 28,' a rather sad-looking young man; and many initial letters, some of which have a small i. d. at the foot, which probably tell us that john day himself engraved them. others have a small i inside a larger c, and this monogram appears frequently on the small cuts in the border of queen elizabeth's book of prayers. john day tells us in a work published in 1567 that the saxon type in which it is printed was _cut_ by himself. john day was a great friend of john foxe, and assisted him in producing his celebrated 'acts and monuments of the church,' generally known as his 'booke of martyrs.' in the 'acts and monuments,' printed in 1576, there is a large initial c, evidently drawn and engraved by the artists who produced the queen's portrait. in this initial, elizabetha regina is seen seated in state, with her feet resting on the same cushion that appears in the larger print, attended by three of her privy councillors standing at her right hand. a figure of the pope with two _broken_ keys in his hands forms part of the decoration of the base; an immense cornucopia reaches over the top. early in the seventeenth century we meet with the name of an excellent wood-engraver at antwerp, christoph jegher, who worked for many years with peter paul rubens, and produced many large woodcuts. we are enabled to give a much-reduced copy of a 'flight into egypt,' which in the original is nearly twenty-four inches in length. underneath appears the inscription, _p. p. rub. delin. & excud._, from which we learn that rubens himself superintended the {105} printing, for _c. jegher sculp._ appears on the other side. some of this series of cuts were printed with a tint of sepia over them in imitation of the italian chiaro-oscuro prints of the previous century. christoph jegher was born in germany in 1590 (?) and died at antwerp in 1670. he lived through many tempestuous years and did much good work. a contemporary wood-engraver named cornelius van sichem, living at amsterdam, produced a few excellent cuts from drawings by heinrich goltzius (d. 1617), who copied the italian school. [illustration: the flight into egypt. by rubens _reduced copy of the engraving by c. jegher_] at the end of the seventeenth century the art of wood-engraving reached its lowest ebb. there were a few tolerably good mechanical engravers on the continent, who were {106} chiefly employed in the manufacture of ornaments for cards, and head and tail pieces for books and ballads, but nearly all the woodcuts we meet with in english books are of the most childish character. the rage for copper-plate engravings had set in with so much vigour among all the printers and publishers that the poor wood-engraver was well-nigh forgotten. in london a new edition of 'æsop's fables,' edited by dr. samuel croxall, and illustrated with many woodcuts much better engraved than was customary at the time, was published by jacob tonson at the shakespear's head, in the strand, in 1722. we do not learn the names of the artists. in 1724 elisha kirkall engraved and published seventeen views of shipping, from designs by w. vandevelde, which he printed in a greenish kind of ink; and in a portfolio full of woodcuts in the print room of the british museum mr. w. j. linton recently discovered a large card of invitation (query--to a wedding?) from mr. elisha and _mrs._ elizabeth kirkall, dated '_august_ the 31st, 1709. printed at his majesty's printing office in _blackfryers_,' which is very firmly and boldly engraved, probably in soft metal. on the left of the royal arms, fame, blowing a trumpet, holds up a circular medallion portrait of guttenburgh (we follow the spelling); a similar figure on the right holds the portrait of w. caxton and a scroll; at the foot, in the middle, is a view of london bridge over the thames, with the monument and st. paul's cathedral, and on either side is a cupid--one with a torch and a dove, with masonic emblems at his feet, the other with attributes of painting, sculpture, and music. the cupids are very like the fat-faced little cherubim we so constantly meet with on seventeenth-century monuments, though mr. linton has nothing but praise to give to the engraving, which he says is the first example of the use of the 'white line' in english work. in paris there was a family of three generations of {107} engravers named papillon, who illustrated hundreds of books with small and very fine cuts, in evident imitation of the copper-plates then so much in vogue. jean michel papillon, the youngest of them, published a _traité historique et pratique de la gravure en bois_, in two volumes with a supplement, which, though full of credulous errors, has been of inestimable service to all writers on the history of wood-engraving. this papillon was probably in england at one time, for he received a prize from the society of arts. he was born in the year 1698, began to engrave blocks when only eight years old, and lived till the year 1776. * * * * * {108} chapter xii _thomas bewick and his pupils_ in the year 1775, the society for the encouragement of arts offered a series of small money premiums for the best engravings on wood. these prizes were won by thomas hodgson, william coleman, both then living in london, and thomas bewick, of newcastle, who sent up for competition five engravings intended to illustrate a new edition of 'gay's fables.' it is of the last of these three--who received an award of seven guineas, which he immediately gave over to his mother--that we have now to write. he was born at cherryburn, a farmhouse on the south bank of the tyne, in the parish of ovingham, about twelve miles from newcastle, in august 1753. this we learn from an inscription now over the door of the 'byre,' or cowshed, which is still standing. his father was a farmer, who also rented a small coal-pit at mickley, close by. after having received a fair education at local schools and at ovingham parsonage, young thomas, who had shown a great love of drawing, was in october 1767 apprenticed to ralph beilby, a general engraver, in st. nicholas' churchyard, newcastle. here the boy learned to cut diagrams in wood, engrave copper-plates for books, tradesmen's cards, etch ornament on sword-blades, and other work of the kind, much as hogarth had done some fifty years before him; and, as luck would have it, his master received an {109} order to engrave a series of wood-blocks to illustrate a 'treatise on mensuration' written by mr. charles hutton, a schoolmaster in newcastle--afterwards dr. hutton, a fellow of the royal society. this work was issued in fifty sixpenny numbers, and published in a quarto volume in 1770. it was on this book that thomas bewick trained his 'prentice hand in the art in which he was afterwards to become so famous. at the end of his apprenticeship in 1774, he worked with his old master for a short time at a guinea a week; then he went to live for a time at cherryburn, and in 1776, with three guineas sewed in his waist-band, he walked to edinburgh, glasgow, and northwards to the highlands, always staying at farm-houses on the road. he returned to newcastle in a leith sloop, and, after working till he had earned sufficient money, took a berth in a collier for london, where he arrived in october and soon found several newcastle friends. but london life did not suit this child of the country-side. 'i would rather be herding sheep on mickley bank top,' he writes to a friend, 'than remain in london, although for so doing i was to be made premier of england.' soon after his return to newcastle he joined his old master in partnership, and took his younger brother, john, as an apprentice, and for eight years the brothers made a weekly visit to cherryburn, often fishing by the way. in the year 1785, their mother, father, and eldest sister all died, and in the following year thomas bewick married isabella elliot, of ovingham, one of the companions of his childhood. he was at that time living in the 'fine, low, old-fashioned house'--with a long garden behind it, in which he cultivated roses--formerly occupied by dr. hutton; and going daily to work in the old house overlooking st. nicholas' churchyard. we have previously said that the early wood-engravings were cut with a knife, held like a pen and drawn towards the craftsman, on 'planks' of the soft wood of the pear or {110} apple-tree, or some similar tree. it is believed that bewick was the first who used the wood of the box-tree, which is very hard, and who made his drawings on the butt-ends of the blocks, and cut his lines with the graver pushed from him. he brought into practice what is known as the 'white line' in wood-engraving; that is, he produced his effects more by means of many white lines wide apart to give an appearance of lightness, and by giving closer lines to produce a grey effect, as in our cut of 'the yellowhammer.' he gave up the old method of obtaining 'colour,' as it is termed, by means of cross-hatching, and used a much simpler and more expeditious way of giving depth of shadow by leaving solid masses of the block, which of course printed black--and he constantly adopted the plan of lowering the wood in the background, and such parts of the block as were required to be printed lightly. [illustration: the yellowhammer (_from_ '_the land birds_')] {111} the first book of real importance that was illustrated by thomas bewick was the 'select fables' published by saint of newcastle in 1784; this is now very rare; there is, however, a copy in the british museum (press-mark 12305 g 16) which can at all times be consulted. most of the designs are derived from 'croxall's fables,' and many of these were copied from the copper-plates by francis barlow in his edition of æsop, published 'at his house, the golden eagle, in new street, near shoo lane, 1665.' though bewick improved the drawings, there was little originality in them, but the engravings were far in advance of any other work of the kind done at that period. the success of this book induced him to carry out an idea he had long entertained of producing a series of illustrations for a 'general history of quadrupeds,' on which he was engaged for six years, making the drawings and engraving them mostly in the evening. he tells us he had much difficulty in finding models, and was delighted when a travelling menagerie visited newcastle and enabled him to depict many wild animals from nature. it was while he was employed on this work that he received a commission to make an engraving of a 'chillingham bull,' one of those famous wild cattle to which sir walter scott refers in his ballad, 'cadyow castle': 'mightiest of all the beasts of chase that roam in woody caledon.' he made the drawing on a block 7¾ inches by 5½ inches, and used his highest powers in rendering it as true to nature as he could; it is said that he always considered it to be his best work. after a few impressions had been taken off on paper and parchment, the block, which had been carelessly left by the printers in the direct rays of the sun, was split by the heat; and, though it was in after years clamped in gun-metal, no impressions could be taken which did not show {112} a trace of the accident. happily, one of the original impressions on parchment may be seen in the townsend collection in the south kensington museum. meanwhile the 'quadrupeds' were going on bravely: ralph beilby compiled the necessary text, which bewick revised where he could, and in 1790 the book was published. it sold so well that a second edition was issued in 1791, and a third in 1792. since then it has been frequently reprinted. [the first edition consisted of 1,500 copies in demy octavo at 8s., and 100 in royal octavo at 12s. the price of the eighth edition, with additional cuts, published in 1825, was one guinea.] [illustration: tail-piece (_from 'the quadrupeds'_)] besides the engravings of quadrupeds, the best that had appeared up to that time, the numerous tail-pieces which bewick drew from nature charmed the public immensely. we give an example, one of them in which a small boy, said to be a young brother of the artist, is pulling a colt's tail, while the mother is rushing to his rescue. this little cut gives an admirable idea of their style. many of them are humorous, many very pathetic, many grimly sarcastic, and all perfectly original. {113} [illustration: the woodcock (_from 'the water birds'_)] as soon as the success of the 'quadrupeds' was assured, bewick commenced without delay his still more celebrated book, the 'history of british birds.' in making the drawings for this work he was much more at home, for he knew every feathered creature that flew within twenty miles of ovingham, and it was all 'labour of love.' he worked with all his soul first at the 'land birds' and afterwards at the 'water birds,' and it is on these two books that bewick's fame both as a draughtsman and an engraver principally rests. we give a copy of the 'yellowhammer,' which the artist himself considered to be one of his best works, and the 'woodcock,' in which all the excellences of his peculiar style may readily be traced. the first volume, the 'land birds,' appeared in 1797, and was received with rapture by all lovers of nature. again, {114} the tail-pieces, pictures in miniature, were applauded to the skies, and the gratified author was beset on all sides with congratulations. mr. beilby wrote the descriptions as before, and performed his work very creditably. [illustration: a farmyard (_from 'the land birds'_)] the partnership between ralph beilby and thomas bewick was dissolved in 1797, and the descriptions to the second volume, 'the water birds,' which did not appear till 1804, were written by bewick himself, and revised by the rev. h. cotes, vicar of bedlington. it is known that bewick was assisted in the tail-pieces by his pupils, robert johnson as a draughtsman, and luke clennell as an engraver, but it is certain that every line was done under his immediate superintendence, and no doubt the originator of these excellent works was beginning to feel that he was no longer young. {115} [of the first edition of the 'land birds' 1,000 were printed in demy octavo at 10s. 6d., 850 on thin and thick royal octavo, at 13s. and 15s., and twenty-four on imperial octavo at £1 1s. the first edition of the 'water birds' in 1804 consisted of the same number of copies as that of the 'land birds,' but the prices were increased respectively to 12s., 15s., 18s., and £1 4s.] the only book of importance on which bewick was engaged after 1804 was an edition of 'æsop's fables,' which was published in 1818. mr. chatto says: 'whatever may be the merits or defects of the cuts in the fables, bewick certainly had little to do with them--for by far the greater number were designed by robert johnson and engraved by w. w. temple and william harvey, while yet in their apprenticeship.' bewick amused himself by re-writing the fables, to which he contributed a few of his own, but he was in no sense a literary man, and several of his greatest admirers openly expressed their disappointment at the book; even his supreme advocate, dr. dibdin, said: 'i will fearlessly and honestly aver that his "æsop" disappointed me.' in 1826 bewick lost his wife, who left to his care one son and three daughters. in the summer of 1828 he visited london alone; he was not in good health, took but little interest in what was going on, and soon longed to return home. there he was busy as ever on a large cut of an old horse 'waiting for death' (which mr. linton has faithfully copied). early in november he took the block to the printers to be proved, and after a few days' illness, he died on november 8, 1828. he was buried in ovingham churchyard, where a tablet is erected to his memory. but his books are his true monument, and they will live for ever. * * * * * {116} chapter xiii _thomas bewick's successors_ it redounds greatly to the glory of thomas bewick that the important advance in the art of wood-engraving which was due to his talents and his industry did not die with him. he left behind him several eminent successors, whose influence is felt to the present day. his brother john, seven years younger than himself, was his first pupil, and to him we are indebted for the illustrations to a work called 'emblems of mortality,' 1789, copied from holbein's 'dance of death,' the 'looking-glass for the mind,' and 'blossoms of morality,' 1796. of these, the cuts in the 'looking-glass for the mind' are decidedly the best, and after examining them carefully we cannot but regret that the artist was taken away so young. his drawings are very unlike those of his elder brother, and are certainly more graceful--we give one as an example of their style. two other books, 'poems,' by goldsmith and parnell, 1795, and somerville's 'chase,' 1796, also contain some of his best work; they were printed in quarto by bulmer, 'to display the excellence of modern printing and wood-engraving.' for the former of these, john bewick made most of the drawings, in which he was assisted by the clever artist, robert johnson, a fellow-pupil, and nearly all were engraved by thomas and john bewick, and a few by another pupil, charlton nesbit. {117} for 'the chase,' john bewick made all the drawings except one, and nearly all were engraved by his brother. for five or six years john bewick lived in london, till ill-health compelled him to return to his native place, where he died in the same year in which somerville's 'chase' was published. he was buried in ovingham churchyard, where a tablet is erected to his memory. [illustration: little anthony. by john bewick _from 'looking-glass for the mind'_] robert elliot bewick, the only son of thomas bewick, was trained to the business of wood-engraver, and at one time, over the window of the house in st. nicholas' churchyard, there was a board with an inscription 'bewick and son, _engravers and copper-plate printers_.' robert suffered much from ill-health and turned his attention to drawing rather than engraving. he died in 1849, leaving fifty beautiful designs for a 'history of fishes,' which he had long in contemplation as a companion volume to his father's works. {118} these drawings, the gift of the last of bewick's daughters, are now in the british museum. the most celebrated of bewick's other pupils were charlton nesbit, born at shalwell, near gateshead, in 1775; luke clennell, born at ulgham, a village near morpeth, in 1781; and william harvey, born near newcastle in 1796. nesbit engraved a few of the tail-pieces in the 'land birds,' and most of the head and tail pieces in the 'poems' of goldsmith and parnell. he also engraved, from a drawing by robert johnson, a large block, 15 inches by 12 inches, of st. nicholas church, newcastle, which at the time was considered a triumph of art. about the end of the century nesbit migrated to london, where for many years he was employed by rudolph ackermann and other publishers in engraving the drawings of the artist, john thurston, whose work was at that time very popular. in 1815 nesbit returned to shalwell, where he continued to reside till 1830, doing but little work besides the engraving of 'rinaldo and armida' for savage's 'hints on decorative printing,' after a design by thurston. this is considered to be his best work. he then went back to london, and was chiefly engaged in engraving drawings by william harvey for the second volume of northcote's 'fables.' he died at queen's elms in november 1838, aged 63. mr. chatto says: 'nesbit is unquestionably the best wood-engraver that has proceeded from the great northern hive of art--the workshop of thomas bewick.' the story of luke clennell's life is very sad. like many other artists, he showed an early disposition to make sketches on his slate instead of 'doing sums,' and was often reproved; his uncle sympathised with him, and in 1797 apprenticed him to thomas bewick for the usual seven years, during which time he engraved many of the tail-pieces to the 'water birds' and learned to make water-colour drawings from nature. when his apprenticeship was over he assisted bewick in the illustrations to a 'history of england,' {119} published by wallis and scholey, in which nisbet had also joined, but finding that bewick was paid five pounds for each cut, while he received only two pounds, clennell sent some specimens of his abilities to the publishers, who immediately offered him work in london, where he arrived in the autumn of 1804. two years afterwards he received the gold palette of the society of arts for a wood-engraving of a battle-scene, and soon afterwards he was engaged on illustrations to new editions of beattie's 'minstrel,' 1807, and falconer's 'shipwreck,' 1808. about this time he married the eldest daughter of charles warren, a well-known line engraver, and became intimate with abraham raimbach and other artists whose friendship was of much service to him. his most important work as a wood-engraver was the 'diploma of the highland society,' a large block 13½ inches by 10½ inches, of which we give a much-reduced copy. benjamin west made the original design on paper, clennell himself drew the highlander and fisherman on the wood, and gave thurston fifteen pounds to fill in the circle with britannia and her attendant groups. after he had worked on the block, which was of boxwood veneered upon beech, for about two months, the same fate befell it that had ruined bewick's 'chillingham bull'; one evening, while he was at tea, the boxwood split with a loud report, and it is said poor clennell threw the tea-things into the fire! this was the sad beginning of a long malady. taking courage, however, he procured a block made of pieces of solid boxwood firmly clamped together, paid thurston again for drawing the central groups, and, after much labour, produced his _chef d'oeuvre_, for which he received 150 guineas from the highland society, and was further rewarded with the gold medal of the society of arts, may 30, 1809. this second block likewise met with an untimely fate; it was burnt in the fire at bensley's printing-office. john thompson afterwards engraved it in fac-simile. a copy of clennell's original engraving, bequeathed by mr. john {120} thompson, may be seen in the art library at south kensington. [illustration: diploma of the highland society _engraved by luke clennell_] among the best wood-engravings by clennell we may rank the illustrations designed by stothard as head and tail pieces for a small edition of rogers's 'pleasures of memory,' 1810. they were drawn in pen and ink, and engraved in facsimile with charming spirit and fidelity. after this time, clennell, who could work beautifully in water-colours, gave up engraving and exhibited drawings and paintings at the academy, the british institution, and the exhibition of painters in water-colours at their room in spring gardens. in march 1815, the british {121} institution set aside 1,000 guineas for premiums for the best oil-paintings illustrating the career of wellington. one of these premiums was awarded to clennell for his 'charge of the life guards at waterloo,' a picture full of spirit, which was afterwards engraved. in 1814 the earl of bridgewater gave him a commission to paint 'the banquet of the allied sovereigns in guildhall.' he experienced great difficulty in obtaining sitters for the necessary portraits, and suffered so much from anxiety that, although in april 1817 he had nearly conquered all his troubles, he suddenly lost his reason. this so much affected his wife that she also became insane and soon died. by the advice of his friends poor clennell was sent to live with a relation who resided near newcastle, and there he lingered till february 1840, when he died, leaving three children, who were for a time supported in a great measure by the committee of the artists' fund and by the profits of the engraving of the 'charge of the life guards.' william harvey was apprenticed to bewick in 1810 and was his favourite pupil. he frequently made drawings on the wood after the designs of robert johnson, and engraved many of the cuts in 'bewick's fables,' 1818. on new year's day 1815 bewick presented him with a copy of his 'history of british birds' in two volumes, which he always showed to his friends with much pride. in september 1817 harvey came to london and, to improve his knowledge of drawing, took lessons of an excellent master--b. r. haydon. while under his tuition harvey copied his picture of the 'assassination of dentatus' on a large block, and engraved it with most elaborate care. this cut has always been greatly admired by the profession, who point to the variety of the lines of engraving in the right leg of dentatus as being a triumph of their art. if we can find any fault with this celebrated work, it is that, to use mr. chatto's words, 'more has been attempted than can be efficiently {122} represented by means of wood-engraving'--it is, in fact, too much like an attempt to rival copper-plate line-engraving. about the year 1824 harvey had so many commissions for designs for both copper-plates and woodcuts that he gave up entirely the practice of engraving, and devoted himself to drawings for the illustration of books. his first successes were his vignettes for dr. henderson's 'history of ancient and modern wines,' 1824, the illustrations to northcote's 'fables,' 1828 and 1833, the 'tower menagerie,' 1828, 'gardens and menagerie of the zoological society,' 1831, and 'the children in the wood' and a 'story without an end,' 1832. but perhaps his most characteristic designs were the illustrations to lane's 'thousand and one nights' in 1834-40; these are considered to be his best work. he was at this time at the height of his reputation, and for twenty-six years more he almost monopolised the illustration of books published in london. merely to give a list of them would occupy too much space. during the latter years of his life, harvey lived near the old church of richmond, and there he died in 1866. he was one of the most courteous and amiable of men, and though his designs were 'mannered,' they were always pleasant to look at, and often very poetical. there were other pupils of bewick who obtained some little fame. among them were john anderson, a native of scotland, who assisted thurston in illustrating bloomfield's 'farmer's boy,' published in 1800 by vernor and hood; john jackson, who was born at ovingham in 1801, and ebenezer landells, born at newcastle in 1808. jackson for some reason quarrelled with his master, came to london and worked for william harvey, who was much employed about that time in making illustrations for the various works issued by charles knight, including the 'penny magazine,' knight's 'shakspere,' 'pictorial bible,' 'pictorial prayer-book,' and a hundred other books which appeared between 1828 and 1840--under the auspices of that enterprising publisher. some of {123} jackson's best work will be found in the 'tower menagerie' and other illustrations of animals designed by harvey. he will always be remembered for the share he took in the 'treatise on wood-engraving,' for which mr. chatto wrote the text. this work was undertaken at the sole risk of mr. jackson, who engraved many of the three hundred illustrations. it is a very valuable book and, supplemented by mr. linton's 'masters of wood-engraving,' tells pretty well all that is ever likely to be known of this fascinating art. jackson died in london in the year 1848. at the death of bewick, ebenezer landells came to london, 1829, and soon found employment in engraving designs for the _illustrated london news_, _punch_, and other periodicals. his studio became quite a nursery of art, and many excellent draughtsmen--among them, birket foster--and engravers were educated under his superintendence. he died at brompton in 1860, the last of bewick's pupils. going back to the last century we find that we have omitted to speak of another self-taught wood-engraver, robert branston, who was born in 1778 at lynn in norfolk. when he was twenty-one years of age he settled in london and soon found employment in working for the publishers. he engraved the 'cave of despair' from a drawing by thurston for savage's 'hints on decorative printing' in rivalry with nesbit's 'rinaldo and armida'; this is considered to be his best work. he also assisted in engraving the cuts in scholey's 'history of england,' bloomfield's 'wild flowers,' 1806, and a series of 'fables' after thurston's designs which, though beautifully executed, were never published. he died at brompton in 1827. among his pupils were his son, robert branston the younger, who for many years produced excellent work. {124} [illustration: haymaking. by w. mulready, r.a. _engraved by john thompson_] john thompson, one of the princes of wood-engravers, was born in manchester in 1785, came to london early in life, and, after practising for some years under robert branston the elder, soon gained great distinction in his art. like all other wood-engravers of the period, he was employed chiefly in rendering the designs of thurston. in 1818 he engraved the illustrations to a new edition of butler's 'hudibras,' and about the same time he was engaged by the bank of england to produce a bank-note which could not be imitated. then followed the illustrations to the 'blind beggar of bethnal green,' 1832, shakespeare, 1836, and the 'arabian nights,' 1841, all after designs by william harvey. he also engraved many of the beautiful cuts in the books of natural history published by van voorst. in {125} 1843 he produced the work for which he will for ever be celebrated, the illustrations to the 'vicar of wakefield' from the drawings by mulready--one of the most charming books ever published. it would take too much time to enumerate even the best of the engravings he executed in his long life. we must not, however, forget to mention that he engraved in gun-metal mulready's design for a postal envelope in 1839, and the figure of britannia which is still printed on bank of england notes. he presented his collection of valuable woodcuts to the art library at south kensington, and died at kensington in 1866, aged 81. his son, thurston thompton, was also an excellent engraver. among the other celebrated wood-engravers of the latter half of this century were john and mary byfield, who engraved the facsimile cuts of holbein's 'dance of death' and 'scenes from old testament history' for pickering's editions of these celebrated works; w. h. powis, some of whose best work may be seen in 'solace of song'; j. orrin smith, born in colchester in 1800, who placed himself under the tuition of william harvey, and became a very expert craftsman, and whose best work may be seen in wordsworth's 'greece,' 'the solace of song,' lane's 'arabian nights,' and in 'paul et virginie,' published by curmer of paris--orrin smith died in 1843; samuel williams, also a native of colchester, who designed on the wood most of the works which he engraved--he was famous for his country scenes, the best of which are in thomson's 'seasons' and cowper's 'poems,' published about 1840--he died in 1853 in his 65th year; w. t. green and thomas bolton, both excellent reproducers of landscape, and especially of the drawings of birket foster; charles gray, and samuel v. slader, all of the first repute; orlando jewitt, celebrated both for his beautiful reproductions of architectural work, for parker's 'glossary,' and other important works; and, lately, we have lost j. greenaway, brother of the famous artist, kate {126} greenaway, and w. j. palmer, both excellent men and engravers of the very first class. [illustration: o'erarched with oaks that form fantastic bowers] still with us, we can only mention in a few words the modern prince of wood-engravers, w. j. linton, who has for {127} many years resided in america; w. l. thomas, the originator of _the graphic_ newspaper, and one of the ablest artists in water-colours in 'the institute'; edmund evans and horace harral, who so successfully rendered birket foster's drawings some years ago; j. w. whymper, the brothers dalziel and james cooper, the producers of thousands of good engravings, and a comparatively new man, w. biscombe gardner, who excels in portraiture. in germany, during the last half-century, wood-engraving met with much encouragement, and reverting to the earlier and purer style of the fifteenth century, many artists and engravers produced work of great merit: e. kretzschmar, of leipsic, the brothers a. and o. vogel, f. unzelmann and h. müller, rendered the drawings of adolf menzel and ludwig richter with careful exactitude. in the atelier of hugo bürkner, of dresden, the much-admired 'death as a friend,' by rethel, was engraved by jungtow, and 'death as an enemy' by steinbrecher: and a. gaber, recently deceased, faithfully reproduced the drawings of overbeck, schnorr von carolsfeld, oscar pletsch, and moritz von schwind. of living engravers we may refer our readers to the excellent examples of skill to be seen in the 'meisterwerke der holzschneidekunst,' a monthly periodical of great merit; and especially to the works of pfnorr of darmstadt; höfel of vienna; flegel and weber of leipsic; mezger and vieweg of brunswick; h. günter, karl oertel, lüttge, and e. krelb. in france no great advance has been made, and most of the engravers have been contented to produce work a little above mediocrity. several french publishers have given commissions to english engravers--orrin smith, henry linton, and others. in america great strides have been made, and, in the estimation of many excellent judges, the best works ever done by wood-engravers have been presented to us in the pages of the illustrated magazines. these publications excite {128} our wonder not only at the great energy which is thrown into them, apparently without regard to cost, but at the immense success which they have justly achieved. some critics disapprove of the style to which we have just referred, and say it is in too close an imitation of steel engraving, but it seems hard to censure works which have given unbounded satisfaction to so many thousand lovers of art. owing to the invention of various mechanical processes, and the perfection to which photography has attained, the art of wood-engraving would seem to be in danger of becoming extinct. this is by no means the real case, for the brilliant band of wood-engravers which has arisen in america, of whom we have just spoken, still continue to give us excellent examples of their skill; and especially we may mention the inimitable copies of paintings by the old masters by timothy cole, whose rendering of paul potter's 'young bull' excites our warmest admiration. in england, under the influence of mr. william morris and his followers, a revival of this interesting craft, as practised in the fifteenth century, has been set on foot in some of the schools of art--notably at birmingham, where in 1893 the students issued a book of carols illustrated with original designs, some of which were cut by the students themselves. this revival of the earlier and purer methods of engraving, coupled with a careful study of the possibilities of the art, may be taken as a sign that by no means the last chapter on the history of engraving on wood has yet been written. at present, much of the new process work which we find in such over-abundance in newspapers and magazines is slovenly to the last degree. on the other hand, now and then we see beautiful results--the best in the american magazines; let us hope that the facile cheapness of this new craft--art it cannot be called--will in good hands soon achieve something more worthy of our regard. * * * * * {129} index _the engravings in this book are referred to in italic type_ abbreviations of latin words, 18 æsop's fables (1481), 47 æsop's fables (bewick's), 115 aldegrever, 88 aldus manutius, 45-47 _alphabet_, _figure_, xv cent., 25 altdorfer, albrecht, 87, 100 amman, jost, 88 anderson, john, 122 andre, jerome, 82 andreani, andrea, 99 _annunciation, the_, 8 apocalypse, dürer's, 70 _apocalypsis sancti johannis_, 17 ars memorandi, 11, 26 ars moriendi, 11, 20, 26 battista del porta, 99 beham, hans, 87 beilby, ralph, 108,112 berners, dame juliana, 66 bewick, john, 116 bewick, robert, 117 bewick, thomas, 108-115 _bible cuts_, holbein's, 86, 87 _biblia pauperum_, 12-16 _bibliomaniac, the_, 38 block books of the xv cent., 11 blossoms of morality, 116 boldrini, nicolo, 99 bolton, thomas, 126 bonner, george, 82, 102 _booke of christian prayers_ (q. elizabeth), 100 book of fables (pfister, 1461), 36 book of hours, 55 book of st. albans, 66 borluyt's _figures from new testament_, 96, 97 bourbon, nicolas, 93 brandt's _navis stultifera_, 38 branston, robert, 123 _breydenbach's travels_, 35, 37 _british birds_, history of (bewick), 110-115 _british quadrupeds_, history of (bewick), 111, 112 brosamer, hans, 88 bürkner (german engraver), 127 bullen, mr. george, 20 burgkmair, hans, 69-80 byfield, john and mary, 82, 125 caillaut, antoine, 60 canterbury tales, the, 66 _canticum canticorum_, 11, 23 _casus luciferi_, 30 caxton, william, 62 chatto, w. a., 1, 4, 66, 118 chiar-oscuro, printing in, 50, 99 chillingham bull (bewick), 111 _christopher, saint_, 6 clennell, luke, 118-121 cole, mr. henry, 73 cole, timothy, 128 colines, simon de, _heures_ de, 92 _cologne bible_, 33, 36 colonna, francesco, 42 colour printing in germany (xvi cent.), 100 conway, w. m. (woodcutters of the netherlands), 98 copperplate-engraving introduced, 98 coriolano, bartolommeo, 99 cranach, lucas, 69, 88, 100 croxall's æsop, 106, 111 cuningham's cosmographical glasse, 102 curio, valentine, 81 dance of death (1485), 59 _dance of death_ (holbein's), 81-85 _daye, john_ (printer), 101-104 _death of the virgin_ (missal), 54 _decameron, the_ (1492), 48 dentatus, death of (_engraved by w. harvey_), 121 dibdin's, dr., works, 1 dienecker (engraver), 78 _diploma of highland society_ (clennell), 120 douce, francis, 82 duplessis, m. georges, 4 dupré, jean, 55, 60 dürer, albrecht, 69 ---apocalypse, 70 ---engravings on copper, 71 ---life of the virgin, 71 ---passion of our lord, 71 ---'smaller' passion, 71, 73 ---_virgin crowned by angels_, 72 _elizabetha regina_ (1569), 103 elizabeth's, queen, prayer book, 102 emblems of mortality (1789), 116 estienne, robert, 93 figure alphabet, the, 24 _flight into egypt_ (jegher's), 105 foster, birket, _drawing_ by, 126 foxe's book of martyrs, 100 froben, johann, 81 froschover, christoph, 81 _fyshynge with an angle_ (1496), 67 gaber (german engraver), 127 _game and playe of the chesse_ (caxton's), 62, 64 german engravers, 127 gray, charles, 125 green, w. t. (engraver), 125 greenaway, j., 125 gutenberg's psalter, 34 harvey, william, 115, 121 heinecken, herr, 4, 10 _henry viii in council_, _frontispiece_ _heures à l'usaige de chartres_, 52 _history of british birds_ (bewick), 110-114 _history of quadrupeds_ (bewick), 111, 112 holbein, hans, 69, 81-87 ---alphabet of dance of death, 87 ---_bible cuts_ (old testament), 86, 87 ---_dance of death_, 82-84 ---society, 20, 21 holinshed's 'chronicles of england,' &c., 100 humphreys, noel, 55 _hypnerotomachia poliphili_ (1494), 42-44 illuminated books of xv century, 53 images of saints, 2 jackson, john, 122 _jegher, christoph_, of antwerp, 104 jewitt, orlando, 125 johnson, robert, 115 jovius, paulus, 95 jungtow, 127 _kalendario_ (venice, 1476), 41 kerver, thielman, 53, 58, 59 _king's banquet, the_, 58 kirkall, elisha (1724), 106 knight, charles, 122 landells, ebenezer, 122 le noir (printers' mark), 60 le rouge, 53 linton, w. j., 1, 5, 106 lippmann, dr., 1 little masters, the, 87 livres d'heures, 57 _looking-glass for the mind_, 116, 117 lützelburger, hans, 81, 87 _macault reading his translation_, 94 macé, robert, of caen, 96 mansion, colard, of bruges, 62 _manuzio, aldo_, 45, 46 marchant, guyot, 53, 59 maximilian, emperor, 69, 74-80 mazarine bible, 30 mer des histoires, la, 53 milan, lives of dukes of, 95 metal blocks, 51 _mirrour of the world_ (1478), 63 morris, william, 53, 128 mulready: _vicar of wakefield_, 125 nanto, francesco da, 99 _navis stultifera_ (1497), 38 nesbit, charlton, 116, 118 notary, julian, 68 nürnberg chronicle, 36 palmer, w. j., 126 papillon, j. m. (french engraver), 107 _passion of our lord_ (missal), 56 petit, jehan, 60 pigouchet, philippe, 55 plantin, christophe, antwerp, 96 playing cards, 2 porta, giuseppe, 90, 91 porto, battista del, 99 powis, w. h. (engraver), 125 printers' marks, 60 ---_kerver's_, 59 ---_le noir's_, 60 ---_plantin's_, 98 ---_pynson's_, 68 ---_tory's, geoffroy_, 91 ---_wynkyn de worde's_, 65 psalter, gutenberg's, 34 pynson, richard, 66 recueil des histoires de troye, 62 saint bridget of sweden, 9 _saint christopher_, 6 saint sebastian, 9 salomon, bernhard (petit bernhard), 95 schaufelein, hans, 74 schongauer, martin, 56, 57 scolari, giuseppe, 99 select fables (bewick), 111 sessa brothers, of venice, 100 slader, samuel, 125 smith, j. orrin, 125 somerville's chase, 117 _sorti di marcolini_ (1540), 90, 91 _speculum salvationis_, 11, 29 _terence_ (lyons, 1493), 49 theuredank, adventures of, 74 thompson, john, 119, 123, 124 thurston, john, 118 tory, geoffroy, 91, 92, 94, 95 tournes, jean de, 95, 96 trento, antonio da, 99 _tristan, romance of_, 58 triumphs of maximilian, 74-80 ---_triumphal arch_ (dürer), 75, 76 ---_triumphal car_ (dürer), 77 ---_triumphal procession_ (burgkmair), 78, 79 triumphal entry of henri ii into lyons, 95 triumphal entry of henri ii into paris, 95 triumphi del petrarca (1488), 41, 47 ugo da carpi, 99 vecellio, cesare, 100 verard, antoine, 53, 57 virgil solis, 88 _virgin with four saints_ (1418), 3 vostre, simon, 53, 55 werskunig, 74 williams, samuel, 125 willshire, dr., 2, 55 woodbery, mr., 32 _wood-engraver, the_, x wood engravers (living), 126 wynkyn de worde, 65 _spottiswoode & co. printers, new-street square, london._ * * * * * notes [1] w. h. willshire, _playing and other cards in the british museum_, 1 vol. 8vo. (1876). [2] it is often called the mazarine bible, because a copy was discovered, with notes written in it by the illuminator, in the library of cardinal mazarin. it is very scarce. in 1884 mr. quaritch bought a very fine copy from the library of sir john thorold, for which he paid £3,900. [3] _history of wood-engraving_, 1883. [4] an english version, neither faithful nor complete, was published in the time of queen elizabeth, '_at london, printed for simon waterson, and are to be sold at his shop in st. paule's churchyard at chepegate, 1592._' it is extremely scarce. many of the pages, as giving examples of costume, have lately been reprinted by authority of the science and art department. there is a french edition of poliphilo, printed at paris by kerver in 1561, with illustrations in a late florid french style. [5] in a recent catalogue, mr. quaritch offers no less than seven different editions of the illustrated 'livre d'heures' printed by verard, at prices varying from 60l. to 200l. [6] it was printed, with descriptions in black-letter, at the chiswick press, and published by joseph cundall, 12 old bond street, 1840. [7] it is now issued by george bell & sons, who also publish holbein's bible pictures. _library edition_ the complete works of john ruskin the eagle's nest love's meinie ariadne florentina val d'arno proserpina national library association new york chicago ariadne florentina. six lectures on wood and metal engraving with appendix. given before the university of oxford, in michaelmas term, 1872. contents. lecture i. page definition of the art of engraving 1 lecture ii. the relation of engraving to other arts in florence 22 lecture iii. the technics of wood engraving 42 lecture iv. the technics of metal engraving 61 lecture v. design in the german schools of engraving (holbein and dürer) 81 lecture vi. design in the florentine schools of engraving (sandro botticelli) 108 appendix. article i. notes on the present state of engraving in england 143 ii. detached notes 157 list of plates facing page diagram 27 the last furrow (fig. 2). facsimile from holbein's woodcut 47 the two preachers (fig. 3). facsimile from holbein's woodcut 48 i. things celestial and terrestrial, as apparent to the english mind 56 ii. star of florence 62 iii. "at evening from the top of fésole" 72 iv. "by the springs of parnassus" 77 v. "heat considered as a mode of motion." florentine natural philosophy 92 vi. fairness of the sea and air. in venice and athens 95 the child's bedtime (fig. 5). facsimile from holbein's woodcut 103 "he that hath ears to hear let him hear" (fig. 6). facsimile from holbein's woodcut 105 vii. for a time, and times 130 viii. the nymph beloved of apollo (michael angelo) 131 ix. in the woods of ida 132 x. grass of the desert 135 xi. "obediente domino voci hominis" 145 xii. the coronation in the garden 158 ariadne florentina. lecture i. definition of the art of engraving. 1. the entrance on my duty for to-day begins the fourth year of my official work in oxford; and i doubt not that some of my audience are asking themselves, very doubtfully--at all events, i ask myself, very anxiously--what has been done. for practical result, i have not much to show. i announced, a fortnight since, that i would meet, the day before yesterday, any gentleman who wished to attend this course for purposes of study. my class, so minded, numbers four, of whom three wish to be artists, and ought not therefore, by rights, to be at oxford at all; and the fourth is the last remaining unit of the class i had last year. 2. yet i neither in this reproach myself, nor, if i could, would i reproach the students who are not here. i do not reproach myself; for it was impossible for me to attend properly to the schools and to write the grammar for them at the same time; and i do not blame the absent students for not attending a school from which i have generally been absent myself. in all this, there is much to be mended, but, in true light, nothing to be regretted. i say, i had to write my school grammar. these three volumes of lectures under my hand,[a] contain, carefully set down, the things i want you first to know. none of my writings are done fluently; the second volume of "modern painters" was all of it written twice--most of it, four times,--over; and these lectures have been written, i don't know how many times. you may think that this was done merely in an author's vanity, not in a tutor's care. to the vanity i plead guilty,--no man is more intensely vain than i am; but my vanity is set on having it _known_ of me that i am a good master, not in having it _said_ of me that i am a smooth author. my vanity is never more wounded than in being called a fine writer, meaning--that nobody need mind what i say. 3. well, then, besides this vanity, i have some solicitude for your progress. you may give me credit for it or not, as you choose, but it is sincere. and that your advance may be safe, i have taken the best pains i could in laying down laws for it. in these three years i have got my grammar written, and, with the help of many friends, all working instruments in good order; and now we will try what we can do. not that, even now, you are to depend on my presence with you in personal teaching. i shall henceforward think of the lectures less, of the schools more; but my best work for the schools will often be by drawing in florence or in lancashire--not here. 4. i have already told you several times that the course through which i mean every student in these schools should pass, is one which shall enable them to understand the elementary principles of the finest art. it will necessarily be severe, and seem to lead to no immediate result. some of you will, on the contrary, wish to be taught what is immediately easy, and gives prospect of a manifest success. but suppose they should come to the professor of logic and rhetoric, and tell him they want to be taught to preach like mr. spurgeon, or the bishop of ----. he would say to them,--i cannot, and if i could i would not, tell you how to preach like mr. spurgeon, or the bishop of ----. your own character will form your style; your own zeal will direct it; your own obstinacy or ignorance may limit or exaggerate it; but my business is to prevent, as far as i can, your having _any_ particular style; and to teach you the laws of all language, and the essential power of your own. in like manner, this course, which i propose to you in art, will be calculated only to give you judgment and method in future study, to establish to your conviction the laws of general art, and to enable you to draw, if not with genius, at least with sense and propriety. the course, so far as it consists in practice, will be defined in my instructions for the schools. and the theory connected with that practice is set down in the three lectures at the end of the first course i delivered--those on line, light, and color. you will have, therefore, to get this book,[b] and it is the only one which you will need to have of your own,--the others are placed, for reference, where they will be accessible to you. 5. in the 139th paragraph it states the order of your practical study in these terms:-"i wish you to begin by getting command of line;--that is to say, by learning to draw a steady line, limiting with absolute correctness the form or space you intend it to limit; to proceed by getting command over flat tints, so that you may be able to fill the spaces you have inclosed evenly, either with shade or color, according to the school you adopt; and, finally, to obtain the power of adding such fineness of drawing, within the masses, as shall express their undulation, and their characters of form and texture." and now, since in your course of practice you are first required to attain the power of drawing lines accurately and delicately, so in the course of theory, or grammar, i wish you first to learn the principles of linear design, exemplified by the schools which (§ 137) you will find characterized as the schools of line. 6. if i had command of as much time as i should like to spend with you on this subject, i would begin with the early forms of art which used the simplest linear elements of design. but, for general service and interest, it will be better that i should sketch what has been accomplished by the greatest masters in that manner; the rather that their work is more or less accessible to all, and has developed into the vast industries of modern engraving, one of the most powerful existing influences of education and sources of pleasure among civilized people. and this investigation, so far from interrupting, will facilitate our examination of the history of the nobler arts. you will see in the preface to my lectures on greek sculpture that i intend them to be followed by a course on architecture, and that by one on florentine sculpture. but the art of engraving is so manifestly, at florence, though not less essentially elsewhere, a basis of style both in architecture and sculpture, that it is absolutely necessary i should explain to you in what the skill of the engraver consists, before i can define with accuracy that of more admired artists. for engraving, though not altogether in the method of which you see examples in the print-shops of the high street, is, indeed, a prior art to that either of building or sculpture, and is an inseparable part of both, when they are rightly practiced. 7. and while we thus examine the scope of this first of the arts, it will be necessary that we learn also the scope of mind of the early practicers of it, and accordingly acquaint ourselves with the main events in the biography of the schools of florence. to understand the temper and meaning of one great master is to lay the best, if not the only, foundation for the understanding of all; and i shall therefore make it the leading aim of this course of lectures to remind you of what is known, and direct you to what is knowable, of the life and character of the greatest florentine master of engraving, sandro botticelli; and, incidentally, to give you some idea of the power of the greatest master of the german, or any northern, school, hans holbein. 8. you must feel, however, that i am using the word "engraving" in a somewhat different, and, you may imagine, a wider, sense, than that which you are accustomed to attach to it. so far from being a wider sense, it is in reality a more accurate and restricted one, while yet it embraces every conceivable right application of the art. and i wish, in this first lecture, to make entirely clear to you the proper meaning of the word, and proper range of the art of, engraving; in my next following lecture, to show you its place in italian schools, and then, in due order, the place it ought to take in our own, and in all schools. 9. first then, to-day, of the differentia, or essential quality of engraving, as distinguished from other arts. what answer would you make to me, if i asked casually what engraving was? perhaps the readiest which would occur to you would be, "the translation of pictures into black and white by means admitting reduplication of impressions." but if that be done by lithography, we do not call it engraving,--whereas we speak contentedly and continually of seal engraving, in which there is no question of black and white. and, as scholars, you know that this customary mode of speaking is quite accurate; and that engraving means, primarily, making a permanent cut or furrow in something. the central syllable of the word has become a sorrowful one, meaning the most permanent of furrows. 10. but are you prepared absolutely to accept this limitation with respect to engraving as a pictorial art? will you call nothing an engraving, except a group of furrows or cavities cut in a hard substance? what shall we say of mezzotint engraving, for instance, in which, though indeed furrows and cavities are produced mechanically as a ground, the artist's work is in effacing them? and when we consider the power of engraving in representing pictures and multiplying them, are we to recognize and admire no effects of light and shade except those which are visibly produced by dots or furrows? i mean, will the virtue of an engraving be in exhibiting these imperfect means of its effect, or in concealing them? 11. here, for instance, is the head of a soldier by dürer,--a mere gridiron of black lines. would this be better or worse engraving if it were more like a photograph or lithograph, and no lines seen?--suppose, more like the head of mr. santley, now in all the music-shops, and really quite deceptive in light and shade, when seen from over the way? do you think dürer's work would be better if it were more like that? and would you have me, therefore, leaving the question of technical method of production altogether to the craftsman, consider pictorial engraving simply as the production of a light-and-shade drawing, by some method permitting its multiplication for the public? 12. this, you observe, is a very practical question indeed. for instance, the illustrations of my own lectures on sculpture are equivalent to permanent photographs. there can be little doubt that means will be discovered of thus producing perfect facsimiles of artists' drawings; so that, if no more than facsimile be required, the old art of cutting furrows in metal may be considered as, at this day, virtually ended. and, indeed, it is said that line engravers cannot any more get apprentices, and that a pure steel or copper plate is not likely to be again produced, when once the old living masters of the bright field shall have been all laid in their earth-furrows. 13. suppose, then, that this come to pass; and more than this, suppose that wood engraving also be superseded, and that instead of imperfect transcripts of drawings, on wood-blocks or metal-plates, photography enabled us to give, quite cheaply, and without limit to number, facsimiles of the finished light-and-shade drawings of artists themselves. another group of questions instantly offers itself, on these new conditions; namely, what are the best means for a light-and-shade drawing--the pen, or the pencil, the charcoal, or the flat wash? that is to say, the pen, producing shade by black lines, as old engraving did; the pencil, producing shade by gray lines, variable in force; the charcoal, producing a smoky shadow with no lines in it, or the washed tint, producing a transparent shadow with no lines in it. which of these methods is the best?--or have they, each and all, virtues to be separately studied, and distinctively applied? 14. see how curiously the questions multiply on us. 1st, is engraving to be only considered as cut work? 2d, for present designs multipliable without cutting, by the sunshine, what methods or instruments of drawing will be best? and now, 3dly, before we can discuss these questions at all, is there not another lying at the root of both,--namely, what a light-and-shade drawing itself properly _is_, and how it differs, or should differ, from a painting, whether by mere deficiency, or by some entirely distinct merit? 15. for instance, you know how confidently it is said, in common talk about turner, that his works are intelligible and beautiful when engraved, though incomprehensible as paintings. admitting this to be so, do you suppose it is because the translation into light and shade is deficient in some qualities which the painting had, or that it possesses some quality which the painting had not? does it please more because it is deficient in the color which confused a feeble spectator, and offended a dogmatic one,--or because it possesses a decision in its steady linear labor which interprets, or corrects, the swift penciling of the artist? 16. do you notice the two words i have just used, _decision_, and _linear_?--decision, again introducing the idea of cuts or divisions, as opposed to gradations; linear, as opposed to massive or broad? yet we use all these words at different times in praise, while they evidently mark inconsistent qualities. softness and decision, breadth and delineation, cannot co-exist in equal degrees. there must surely therefore be a virtue in the engraving inconsistent with that of the painting, and vice versâ. now, be clear about these three questions which we have to-day to answer. a. is all engraving to be cut work? b. if it need not be cut work, but only the reproduction of a drawing, what methods of executing a light-and-shade drawing will be best? c. is the shaded drawing itself to be considered only as a deficient or imperfect painting, or as a different thing from a painting, having a virtue of its own, belonging to black and white, as opposed to color? 17. i will give you the answers at once, briefly, and amplify them afterwards. a. all engraving must be cut work;--_that_ is its differentia. unless your effect be produced by cutting into some solid substance, it is not engraving at all. b. the proper methods for light-and-shade drawing vary according to subject, and the degree of completeness desired,--some of them having much in common with engraving, and others with painting. c. the qualities of a light-and-shade drawing ought to be entirely different from those of a painting. it is not a deficient or partial representation of a colored scene or picture, but an entirely different reading of either. so that much of what is intelligible in a painting ought to be unintelligible in a light-and-shade study, and _vice versâ_. you have thus three arts,--engraving, light-and-shade drawing, and painting. now i am not going to lecture, in this course, on painting, nor on light-and-shade drawing, but on engraving only. but i must tell you something about light-and-shade drawing first; or, at least, remind you of what i have before told. 18. you see that the three elementary lectures in my first volume are on line, light, and color,--that is to say, on the modes of art which produce linear designs,--which produce effects of light,--and which produce effects of color. i must, for the sake of new students, briefly repeat the explanation of these. here is an arabian vase, in which the pleasure given to the eye is only by lines;--no effect of light, or of color, is attempted. here is a moonlight by turner, in which there are no lines at all, and no colors at all. the pleasure given to the eye is only by modes of light and shade, or effects of light. finally, here is an early florentine painting, in which there are no lines of importance, and no effect of light whatever; but all the pleasure given to the eye is in gayety and variety of color. 19. i say, the pleasure given to the _eye_. the lines on this vase write something; but the ornamentation produced by the beautiful writing is independent of its meaning. so the moonlight is pleasant, first, as light; and the figures, first, as color. it is not the shape of the waves, but the light on them; not the expression of the figures, but their color, by which the _ocular_ pleasure is to be given. these three examples are violently marked ones; but, in preparing to draw _any_ object, you will find that, practically, you have to ask yourself, shall i aim at the color of it, the light of it, or the lines of it? you can't have all three; you can't even have any two out of the three in equal strength. the best art, indeed, comes so near nature as in a measure to unite all. but the best is not, and cannot be, as good as nature; and the mode of its deficiency is that it must lose some of the color, some of the light, or some of the delineation. and in consequence, there is one great school which says, we will have the color, and as much light and delineation as are consistent with it. another which says, we will have shade, and as much color and delineation as are consistent with it. the third, we will have delineation, and as much color and shade as are consistent with it. 20. and though much of the two subordinate qualities may in each school be consistent with the leading one, yet the schools are evermore separate: as, for instance, in other matters, one man says, i will have my fee, and as much honesty as is consistent with it; another, i will have my honesty, and as much fee as is consistent with it. though the man who will have his fee be subordinately honest,--though the man who will have his honor, subordinately rich, are they not evermore of diverse schools? so you have, in art, the utterly separate provinces, though in contact at their borders, of the delineators; the chiaroscurists; and the colorists. 21. the delineators are the men on whom i am going to give you this course of lectures. they are essentially engravers, an engraved line being the best means of delineation. the chiaroscurists are essentially draughtsmen with chalk, charcoal, or single tints. many of them paint, but always with some effort and pain. lionardo is the type of them; but the entire dutch school consists of them, laboriously painting, without essential genius for color. the colorists are the true painters; and all the faultless (as far, that is to say, as men's work can be so,) and consummate masters of art belong to them. 22. the distinction between the colorist and chiaroscurist school is trenchant and absolute: and may soon be shown you so that you will never forget it. here is a florentine picture by one of the pupils of giotto, of very good representative quality, and which the university galleries are rich in possessing. at the distance at which i hold it, you see nothing but a checker-work of brilliant, and, as it happens, even glaring colors. if you come near, you will find this patchwork resolve itself into a visitation, and birth of st. john; but that st. elizabeth's red dress, and the virgin's blue and white one, and the brown posts of the door, and the blue spaces of the sky, are painted in their own entirely pure colors, each shaded with more powerful tints of itself,--pale blue with deep blue, scarlet with crimson, yellow with orange, and green with richer green. the whole is therefore as much a mosaic work of brilliant color as if it were made of bits of glass. there is no effect of light attempted, or so much as thought of: you don't know even where the sun is: nor have you the least notion what time of day it is. the painter thinks you cannot be so superfluous as to want to know what time of day it is. 23. here, on the other hand, is a dutch picture of good average quality, also out of the university galleries. it represents a group of cattle, and a herdsman watching them. and you see in an instant that the time is evening. the sun is setting, and there is warm light on the landscape, the cattle, and the standing figure. nor does the picture in any conspicuous way seem devoid of color. on the contrary, the herdsman has a scarlet jacket, which comes out rather brilliantly from the mass of shade round it; and a person devoid of color faculty, or ill taught, might imagine the picture to be really a fine work of color. but if you will come up close to it, you will find that the herdsman has brown sleeves, though he has a scarlet jacket; and that the shadows of both are painted with precisely the same brown, and in several places with continuous touches of the pencil. it is only in the light that the scarlet is laid on. this at once marks the picture as belonging to the lower or chiaroscurist school, even if you had not before recognized it as such by its pretty rendering of sunset effect. 24. you might at first think it a painting which showed greater skill than that of the school of giotto. but the skill is not the primary question. the power of imagination is the first thing to be asked about. this italian work imagines, and requires you to imagine also, a st. elizabeth and st. mary, to the best of your power. but this dutch one only wishes you to imagine an effect of sunlight on cow-skin, which is a far lower strain of the imaginative faculty. also, as you may see the effect of sunlight on cow-skin, in reality, any summer afternoon, but cannot so frequently see a st. elizabeth, it is a far less useful strain of the imaginative faculty. and, generally speaking, the dutch chiaroscurists are indeed persons without imagination at all,--who, not being able to get any pleasure out of their thoughts, try to get it out of their sensations; note, however, also their technical connection with the greek school of shade, (see my sixth inaugural lecture, § 158,) in which color was refused, not for the sake of deception, but of solemnity. 25. with these final motives you are not now concerned; your present business is the quite easy one of knowing, and noticing, the universal distinction between the methods of treatment in which the aim is light, and in which it is color; and so to keep yourselves guarded from the danger of being misled by the, often very ingenious, talk of persons who have vivid color sensations without having learned to distinguish them from what else pleases them in pictures. there is an interesting volume by professor taine on the dutch school, containing a valuable historical analysis of the influences which formed it; but full of the gravest errors, resulting from the confusion in his mind between color and tone, in consequence of which he imagines the dutch painters to be colorists. 26. it is so important for you to be grounded securely in these first elements of pictorial treatment, that i will be so far tedious as to show you one more instance of the relative intellectual value of the pure color and pure chiaroscuro school, not in dutch and florentine, but in english art. here is a copy of one of the lost frescoes of our painted chamber of westminster;--fourteenth-century work, entirely conceived in color, and calculated for decorative effect. there is no more light and shade in it than in a queen of hearts in a pack of cards;--all that the painter at first wants you to see is that the young lady has a white forehead, and a golden crown, and a fair neck, and a violet robe, and a crimson shield with golden leopards on it; and that behind her is clear blue sky. then, farther, he wants you to read her name, "debonnairete," which, when you have read, he farther expects you to consider what it is to be debonnaire, and to remember your chaucer's description of the virtue:- she was not brown, nor dun of hue, but white as snowe, fallen new, with eyen glad, and browes bent, her hair down to her heeles went, and she was simple, as dove on tree, full debonnair of heart was she. 27. you see chaucer dwells on the color just as much as the painter does, but the painter has also given her the english shield to bear, meaning that good-humor, or debonnairete, cannot be maintained by self-indulgence;--only by fortitude. farther note, with chaucer, the "eyen glad," and brows "bent" (high-arched and calm), the strong life, (hair down to the heels,) and that her gladness is to be without subtlety,--that is to say, without the slightest pleasure in any form of advantage-taking, or any shrewd or mocking wit: "she was simple as dove on tree;" and you will find that the color-painting, both in the fresco and in the poem, is in the very highest degree didactic and intellectual; and distinguished, as being so, from all inferior forms of art. farther, that it requires you yourself first to understand the nature of simplicity, and to like simplicity in young ladies better than subtlety; and to understand why the second of love's five kind arrows (beauté being the first)- simplece ot nom, la seconde qui maint homme parmi le monde et mainte dame fait amer. nor must you leave the picture without observing that there is another reason for debonnairete's bearing the royal shield,--of all shields that, rather than another. "de-bonne-aire" meant originally "out of a good eagle's nest," the "aire" signifying the eagle's nest or eyrie especially, because it is flat, the latin "area" being the root of all. and this coming out of a good nest is recognized as, of all things, needfulest to give the strength which enables people to be good-humored; and thus you have "debonnaire" forming the third word of the group, with "gentle" and "kind," all first signifying "of good race." you will gradually see, as we go on, more and more why i called my third volume of lectures eagle's nest; for i am not fantastic in these titles, as is often said; but try shortly to mark my chief purpose in the book by them. 28. now for comparison with this old art, here is a modern engraving, in which color is entirely ignored; and light and shade alone are used to produce what is supposed to be a piece of impressive religious instruction. but it is not a piece of religious instruction at all;--only a piece of religious sensation, prepared for the sentimental pleasure of young ladies; whom (since i am honored to-day by the presence of many) i will take the opportunity of warning against such forms of false theological satisfaction. this engraving represents a young lady in a very long and, though plain, very becoming white dress, tossed upon the waves of a terrifically stormy sea, by which neither her hair nor her becoming dress is in the least wetted; and saved from despair in that situation by closely embracing a very thick and solid stone cross. by which far-sought and original metaphor young ladies are expected, after some effort, to understand the recourse they may have, for support, to the cross of christ, in the midst of the troubles of this world. 29. as those troubles are for the present, in all probability, limited to the occasional loss of their thimbles when they have not taken care to put them into their work-boxes,--the concern they feel at the unsympathizing gayety of their companions,--or perhaps the disappointment at not hearing a favorite clergyman preach,--(for i will not suppose the young ladies interested in this picture to be affected by any chagrin at the loss of an invitation to a ball, or the like worldliness,)--it seems to me the stress of such calamities might be represented, in a picture, by less appalling imagery. and i can assure my fair little lady friends,--if i still have any,--that whatever a young girl's ordinary troubles or annoyances may be, her true virtue is in shaking them off, as a rose-leaf shakes off rain, and remaining debonnaire and bright in spirits, or even, as the rose would be, the brighter for the troubles; and not at all in allowing herself to be either drifted or depressed to the point of requiring religious consolation. but if any real and deep sorrow, such as no metaphor can represent, fall upon her, does she suppose that the theological advice of this piece of modern art can be trusted? if she will take the pains to think truly, she will remember that christ himself never says anything about holding by his cross. he speaks a good deal of bearing it; but never for an instant of holding by it. it is his hand, not his cross, which is to save either you, or st. peter, when the waves are rough. and the utterly reckless way in which modern religious teachers, whether in art or literature, abuse the metaphor somewhat briefly and violently leant on by st. paul, simply prevents your understanding the meaning of any word which christ himself speaks on this matter! so you see this popular art of light and shade, catching you by your mere thirst of sensation, is not only undidactic, but the reverse of didactic--deceptive and illusory. 30. this _popular_ art, you hear me say, scornfully; and i have told you, in some of my teaching in "aratra pentelici," that all great art must be popular. yes, but great art is popular, as bread and water are to children fed by a father. and vile art is popular, as poisonous jelly is, to children cheated by a confectioner. and it is quite possible to make any kind of art popular on those last terms. the color school may become just as poisonous as the colorless, in the hands of fools, or of rogues. here is a book i bought only the other day,--one of the things got up cheap to catch the eyes of mothers at bookstalls,--puss in boots, illustrated; a most definite work of the color school--red jackets and white paws and yellow coaches as distinct as giotto or raphael would have kept them. but the thing is done by fools for money, and becomes entirely monstrous and abominable. here, again, is color art produced by fools for religion: here is indian sacred painting,--a black god with a hundred arms, with a green god on one side of him and a red god on the other; still a most definite work of the color school. giotto or raphael could not have made the black more resolutely black, (though the whole color of the school of athens is kept in distinct separation from one black square in it), nor the green more unquestionably green. yet the whole is pestilent and loathsome. 31. now but one point more, and i have done with this subject for to-day. you must not think that this manifest brilliancy and harlequin's-jacket character is essential in the color school. the essential matter is only that everything should be of _its own_ definite color: it may be altogether sober and dark, yet the distinctness of hue preserved with entire fidelity. here, for instance, is a picture of hogarth's,--one of quite the most precious things we have in our galleries. it represents a meeting of some learned society--gentlemen of the last century, very gravely dressed, but who, nevertheless, as gentlemen pleasantly did in that day,--you remember goldsmith's weakness on the point--wear coats of tints of dark red, blue, or violet. there are some thirty gentlemen in the room, and perhaps seven or eight different tints of subdued claret-color in their coats; and yet every coat is kept so distinctly of its own proper claret-color, that each gentleman's servant would know his master's. yet the whole canvas is so gray and quiet, that as i now hold it by this dutch landscape, with the vermilion jacket, you would fancy hogarth's had no color in it at all, and that the dutchman was half-way to becoming a titian; whereas hogarth's is a consummate piece of the most perfect colorist school, which titian could not beat, in its way; and the dutchman could no more paint half an inch of it than he could summon a rainbow into the clouds. 32. here then, you see, are, altogether, five works, all of the absolutely pure color school:- 1. one, indian,--religious art; 2. one, florentine,--religious art; 3. one, english,--from painted chamber, westminster,--ethic art; 4. one, english,--hogarth,--naturalistic art; 5. one, english,--to-day sold in the high street,--caricaturist art. and of these, the florentine and old english are divine work, god-inspired; full, indeed, of faults and innocencies, but divine, as good children are. then this by hogarth is entirely wise and right; but worldly-wise, not divine. while the old indian, and this, with which we feed our children at this hour, are entirely damnable art;--every bit of it done by the direct inspiration of the devil,--feeble, ridiculous,--yet mortally poisonous to every noble quality in body and soul. 33. i have now, i hope, guarded you sufficiently from the danger either of confusing the inferior school of chiaroscuro with that of color, or of imagining that a work must necessarily be good, on the sole ground of its belonging to the higher group. i can now proceed securely to separate the third school, that of delineation, from both; and to examine its special qualities. it begins (see "inaugural lectures," § 137) in the primitive work of races insensible alike to shade and to color, and nearly devoid of thought and of sentiment, but gradually developing into both. now as the design is primitive, so are the means likely to be primitive. a line is the simplest work of art you can produce. what are the simplest means you can produce it with? a cumberland lead-pencil is a work of art in itself, quite a nineteenth-century machine. pen and ink are complex and scholarly; and even chalk or charcoal not always handy. but the primitive line, the first and last, generally the best of lines, is that which you have elementary faculty of at your fingers' ends, and which kittens can draw as well as you--the scratch. the first, i say, and the last of lines. permanent exceedingly,--even in flesh, or on mahogany tables, often more permanent than we desire. but when studiously and honorably made, divinely permanent, or delightfully--as on the venerable desks of our public schools, most of them, now, specimens of wood engraving dear to the heart of england. 34. engraving, then, is, in brief terms, the art of scratch. it is essentially the cutting into a solid substance for the sake of making your ideas as permanent as possible, graven with an iron pen in the rock forever. _permanence_, you observe, is the object, not multiplicability;--that is quite an accidental, sometimes not even a desirable, attribute of engraving. duration of your work--fame, and undeceived vision of all men, on the pane of glass of the window on a wet day, or on the pillars of the castle of chillon, or on the walls of the pyramids;--a primitive art,--yet first and last with us. since then engraving, we say, is essentially cutting into the surface of any solid; as the primitive design is in lines or dots, the primitive cutting of such design is a scratch or a hole; and scratchable solids being essentially three--stone, wood, metal,--we shall have three great schools of engraving to investigate in each material. 35. on tablet of stone, on tablet of wood, on tablet of steel,--the first giving the law to everything; the second true athenian, like athena's first statue in olive-wood, making the law legible and homely; and the third true vulcanian, having the splendor and power of accomplished labor. now of stone engraving, which is joined inseparably with sculpture and architecture, i am not going to speak at length in this course of lectures. i shall speak only of wood and metal engraving. but there is one circumstance in stone engraving which it is necessary to observe in connection with the other two branches of the art. the great difficulty for a primitive engraver is to make his scratch deep enough to be visible. visibility is quite as essential to your fame as permanence; and if you have only your furrow to depend on, the engraved tablet, at certain times of day, will be illegible, and passed without notice. but suppose you fill in your furrow with something black, then it will be legible enough at once; and if the black fall out or wash out, still your furrow is there, and may be filled again by anybody. therefore, the noble stone engravers, using marble to receive their furrow, fill that furrow with marble ink. and you have an engraved plate to purpose;--with the whole sky for its margin! look here--the front of the church of san michele of lucca,--white marble with green serpentine for ink; or here,--the steps of the giant's stair, with lead for ink; or here,--the floor of the pisan duomo, with porphyry for ink. such cutting, filled in with color or with black, branches into all sorts of developments,--florentine mosaic on the one hand, niello on the other, and infinite minor arts. 36. yet we must not make this filling with color part of our definition of engraving. to engrave is, in final strictness, "to decorate a surface with furrows." (cameos, in accuratest terms, are minute sculptures, not engravings.) a plowed field is the purest type of such art; and is, on hilly land, an exquisite piece of decoration. therefore it will follow that engraving distinguishes itself from ordinary drawing by greater need of muscular effort. the quality of a pen drawing is to be produced easily,--deliberately, always,[c] but with a point that _glides_ over the paper. engraving, on the contrary, requires always force, and its virtue is that of a line produced by pressure, or by blows of a chisel. it involves, therefore, always, ideas of power and dexterity, but also of restraint; and the delight you take in it should involve the understanding of the difficulty the workman dealt with. you perhaps doubt the extent to which this feeling justly extends, (in the first volume of "modern painters," expressed under the head "ideas of power.") but why is a large stone in any building grander than a small one? simply because it was more difficult to raise it. so, also, an engraved line is, and ought to be, recognized as more grand than a pen or pencil line, because it was more difficult to execute it. in this mosaic of lucca front you forgive much, and admire much, because you see it is all cut in stone. so, in wood and steel, you ought to see that every line has been costly; but observe, costly of deliberative, no less than athletic or executive power. the main use of the restraint which makes the line difficult to draw, is to give time and motive for deliberation in drawing it, and to insure its being the best in your power. 37. for, as with deliberation, so without repentance, your engraved line must be. it may, indeed, be burnished or beaten out again in metal, or patched and botched in stone; but always to disadvantage, and at pains which must not be incurred often. and there is a singular evidence in one of dürer's finest plates that, in his time, or at least in his manner of work, it was not possible at all. among the disputes as to the meaning of dürer's knight and death, you will find it sometimes suggested, or insisted, that the horse's raised foot is going to fall into a snare. what has been fancied a noose is only the former outline of the horse's foot and limb, uneffaced. the engraved line is therefore to be conclusive; not experimental. "i have determined this," says the engraver. much excellent pen drawing is excellent in being tentative,--in being experimental. indeterminate, not through want of meaning, but through fullness of it--halting _wisely_ between two opinions--feeling cautiously after clearer opinions. but your engraver has made up his opinion. this is so, and must forever be so, he tells you. a very proper thing for a thoughtful man to say; a very improper and impertinent thing for a foolish one to say. foolish engraving is consummately foolish work. look,--all the world,--look for evermore, says the foolish engraver; see what a fool i have been! how many lines i have laid for nothing! how many lines upon lines, with no precept, much less superprecept! 38. here, then, are two definite ethical characters in all engraved work. it is athletic; and it is resolute. add one more; that it is obedient;--in their infancy the nurse, but in their youth the slave, of the higher arts; servile, both in the mechanism and labor of it, and in its function of interpreting the schools of painting as superior to itself. and this relation to the higher arts we will study at the source of chief power in all the normal skill of christendom, florence; and chiefly, as i said, in the work of one florentine master, sandro botticelli. footnotes: [a] "inaugural series," "aratra pentelici," and "eagle's nest." [b] my inaugural series of seven lectures (now published uniform in size with this edition. 1890). [c] compare inaugural lectures, § 144. lecture ii. the relation of engraving to other arts in florence. 39. from what was laid before you in my last lecture, you must now be aware that i do not mean, by the word 'engraving,' merely the separate art of producing plates from which black pictures may be printed. i mean, by engraving, the art of producing decoration on a surface by the touches of a chisel or a burin; and i mean by its relation to other arts, the subordinate service of this linear work, in sculpture, in metal work, and in painting; or in the representation and repetition of painting. and first, therefore, i have to map out the broad relations of the arts of sculpture, metal work, and painting, in florence, among themselves, during the period in which the art of engraving was distinctly connected with them.[d] 40. you will find, or may remember, that in my lecture on michael angelo and tintoret i indicated the singular importance, in the history of art, of a space of forty years, between 1480, and the year in which raphael died, 1520. within that space of time the change was completed, from the principles of ancient, to those of existing, art;--a manifold change, not definable in brief terms, but most clearly characterized, and easily remembered, as the change of conscientious and didactic art, into that which proposes to itself no duty beyond technical skill, and no object but the pleasure of the beholder. of that momentous change itself i do not purpose to speak in the present course of lectures; but my endeavor will be to lay before you a rough chart of the course of the arts in florence up to the time when it took place; a chart indicating for you, definitely, the growth of conscience, in work which is distinctively conscientious, and the perfecting of expression and means of popular address, in that which is distinctively didactic. 41. means of popular address, observe, which have become singularly important to us at this day. nevertheless, remember that the power of printing, or reprinting, black _pictures_,--practically contemporary with that of reprinting black _letters_,--modified the art of the draughtsman only as it modified that of the scribe. beautiful and unique writing, as beautiful and unique painting or engraving, remain exactly what they were; but other useful and reproductive methods of both have been superadded. of these, it is acutely said by dr. alfred woltmann,[e]- "a far more important part is played in the art-life of germany by the technical arts for the _multiplying_ of works; for germany, while it was the land of book-printing, is also the land of picture-printing. indeed, wood-engraving, which preceded the invention of book-printing, _prepared the way for it, and only left one step more necessary for it_. _book-printing_ and _picture-printing_ have both the same inner cause for their origin, namely, the impulse to make each mental gain a common blessing. not merely princes and rich nobles were to have the privilege of adorning their private chapels and apartments with beautiful religious pictures; the poorest man was also to have his delight in that which the artist had devised and produced. it was not sufficient for him when it stood in the church as an altar-shrine, visible to him and to the congregation from afar; he desired to have it as his own, to carry it about with him, to bring it into his own home. the grand importance of wood-engraving and copperplate is not sufficiently estimated in historical investigations. they were not alone of use in the advance of art; they form an epoch in the entire life of mind and culture. the idea embodied and multiplied in pictures became like that embodied in the printed word, the herald of every intellectual movement, and conquered the world." 42. "conquered the world"? the rest of the sentence is true, but this, hyperbolic, and greatly false. it should have been said that both painting and engraving have conquered much of the good in the world, and, hitherto, little or none of the evil. nor do i hold it usually an advantage to art, in teaching, that it _should_ be common, or constantly seen. in becoming intelligibly and kindly beautiful, while it remains solitary and unrivaled, it has a greater power. westminster abbey is more didactic to the english nation, than a million of popular illustrated treatises on architecture. nay, even that it cannot be understood but with some difficulty, and must be sought before it can be seen, is no harm. the noblest didactic art is, as it were, set on a hill, and its disciples come to it. the vilest destructive and corrosive art stands at the street corners, crying, "turn in hither; come, eat of my bread, and drink of my wine, which i have mingled." and dr. woltmann has allowed himself too easily to fall into the common notion of liberalism, that bad art, disseminated, is instructive, and good art isolated, not so. the question is, first, i assure you, whether what art you have got is good or bad. if essentially bad, the more you see of it, the worse for you. entirely popular art is all that is noble, in the cathedral, the council chamber, and the market-place; not the paltry colored print pinned on the wall of a private room. 43. i despise the poor!--do i, think you? not so. they only despise the poor who think them better off with police news, and colored tracts of the story of joseph and potiphar's wife, than they were with luini painting on their church walls, and donatello carving the pillars of their market-places. nevertheless, the effort to be universally, instead of locally, didactic, modified advantageously, as you know, and in a thousand ways varied, the earlier art of engraving: and the development of its popular power, whether for good or evil, came exactly--so fate appointed--at a time when the minds of the masses were agitated by the struggle which closed in the reformation in some countries, and in the desperate refusal of reformation in others.[f] the two greatest masters of engraving whose lives we are to study, were, both of them, passionate reformers: holbein no less than luther; botticelli no less than savonarola. 44. reformers, i mean, in the full and, accurately, the only, sense. not preachers of new doctrines; but witnesses against the betrayal of the old ones, which were on the lips of all men, and in the lives of none. nay, the painters are indeed more pure reformers than the priests. they rebuked the manifest vices of men, while they realized whatever was loveliest in their faith. priestly reform soon enraged itself into mere contest for personal opinions; while, without rage, but in stern rebuke of all that was vile in conduct or thought,--in declaration of the always-received faiths of the christian church, and in warning of the power of faith, and death,[g] over the petty designs of men,--botticelli and holbein together fought foremost in the ranks of the reformation. 45. to-day i will endeavor to explain how they attained such rank. then, in the next two lectures, the technics of both,--their way of speaking; and in the last two, what they had got to say. first, then, we ask how they attained this rank;--who taught _them_ what they were finally best to teach? how far must every people--how far did this florentine people--teach its masters, before _they_ could teach _it_? even in these days, when every man is, by hypothesis, as good as another, does not the question sound strange to you? you recognize in the past, as you think, clearly, that national advance takes place always under the guidance of masters, or groups of masters, possessed of what appears to be some new personal sensibility or gift of invention; and we are apt to be reverent to these alone, as if the nation itself had been unprogressive, and suddenly awakened, or converted, by the genius of one man. no idea can be more superficial. every nation must teach its tutors, and prepare itself to receive them; but the fact on which our impression is founded--the rising, apparently by chance, of men whose singular gifts suddenly melt the multitude, already at the point of fusion; or suddenly form, and _in_form, the multitude which has gained coherence enough to be capable of formation,--enables us to measure and map the gain of national intellectual territory, by tracing first the lifting of the mountain chains of its genius. 46. i have told you that we have nothing to do at present with the great transition from ancient to modern habits of thought which took place at the beginning of the sixteenth century. i only want to go as far as that point;--where we shall find the old superstitious art represented _finally_ by perugino, and the modern scientific and anatomical art represented _primarily_ by michael angelo. and the epithet bestowed on perugino by michael angelo, 'goffo nell' arte,' dunce, or blockhead, in art,--being, as far as my knowledge of history extends, the most cruel, the most false, and the most foolish insult ever offered by one great man to another,--does you at least good service, in showing how trenchant the separation is between the two orders of artists,[h]--how exclusively we may follow out the history of all the 'goffi nell' arte,' and write our florentine dunciad, and laus stultitiæ, in peace; and never trench upon the thoughts or ways of these proud ones, who showed their fathers' nakedness, and snatched their masters' fame. 47. the florentine dunces in art are a multitude; but i only want you to know something about twenty of them. twenty!--you think that a grievous number? it may, perhaps, appease you a little to be told that when you really have learned a very little, accurately, about these twenty dunces, there are only five more men among the artists of christendom whose works i shall ask you to examine while you are under my care. that makes twenty-five altogether,--an exorbitant demand on your attention, you still think? and yet, but a little while ago, you were all agog to get me to go and look at mrs. a's sketches, and tell you what was to be thought about _them_; and i've had the greatest difficulty to keep mrs. b's photographs from being shown side by side with the raphael drawings in the university galleries. and you will waste any quantity of time in looking at mrs. a's sketches or mrs. b's photographs; and yet you look grave, because, out of nineteen centuries of european art-labor and thought, i ask you to learn something seriously about the works of five-and-twenty men! 48. it is hard upon you, doubtless, considering the quantity of time you must nowadays spend in trying which can hit balls farthest. so i will put the task into the simplest form i can. 1200 1300 1400 | 1250 | 1350 | + + + + + niccola pisano |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | | | | | arnolfo |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | | cimabue |-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | | | giovanni pisano |-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | andrea pisano |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | giotto |-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | orcagna |-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | 1400 1500 1600 | 1450 | 1550 | + + + + + quercia |-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | brunelleschi |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | ghiberti |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | donatello |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | | | | | | luca della robbia |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | | | | | filippo lippi |-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | | | | | | giovanni bellini |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | mantegna |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | | verrocchio |-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | | | | perugino |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | botticelli |-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | luini |-|-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | dürer |-|-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | cima |-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | | carpaccio |-|-|-|-| | | | | | | | correggio |-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | | holbein |-|-|-|-|-| | | | | | tintoret |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| here are the names of the twenty-five men,[i] and opposite each, a line indicating the length of his life, and the position of it in his century. the diagram still, however, needs a few words of explanation. very chiefly, for those who know anything of my writings, there is needed explanation of its not including the names of titian, reynolds, velasquez, turner, and other such men, always reverently put before you at other times. they are absent, because i have no fear of your not looking at these. all your lives through, if you care about art, you will be looking at them. but while you are here at oxford, i want to make you learn what you should know of these earlier, many of them weaker, men, who yet, for the very reason of their greater simplicity of power, are better guides for you, and of whom some will remain guides to all generations. and, as regards the subject of our present course, i have a still more weighty reason;--vandyke, gainsborough, titian, reynolds, velasquez, and the rest, are essentially portrait painters. they give you the likeness of a man: they have nothing to say either about his future life, or his gods. 'that is the look of him,' they say: 'here, on earth, we know no more.' 49. but these, whose names i have engraved, have something to say--generally much,--either about the future life of man, or about his gods. they are therefore, literally, seers or prophets. false prophets, it may be, or foolish ones; of that you must judge; but you must read before you can judge; and read (or hear) them consistently; for you don't know them till you have heard them out. but with sir joshua, or titian, one portrait is as another: it is here a pretty lady, there a great lord; but speechless, all;--whereas, with these twenty-five men, each picture or statue is not merely another person of a pleasant society, but another chapter of a sibylline book. 50. for this reason, then, i do not want sir joshua or velasquez in my defined group; and for my present purpose, i can spare from it even four others:--namely, three who have _too_ special gifts, and must each be separately studied--correggio, carpaccio, tintoret;--and one who has no special gift, but a balanced group of many--cima. this leaves twenty-one for classification, of whom i will ask you to lay hold thus. you must continually have felt the difficulty caused by the names of centuries not tallying with their years;--the year 1201 being the first of the thirteenth century, and so on. i am always plagued by it myself, much as i have to think and write with reference to chronology; and i mean for the future, in our art chronology, to use as far as possible a different form of notation. 51. in my diagram the vertical lines are the divisions of tens of years; the thick black lines divide the centuries. the horizontal lines, then, at a glance, tell you the length and date of each artist's life. in one or two instances i cannot find the date of birth; in one or two more, of death; and the line indicates then only the ascertained[j] period during which the artist worked. and, thus represented, you see nearly all their lives run through the year of a new century; so that if the lines representing them were needles, and the black bars of the years 1300, 1400, 1500 were magnets, i could take up nearly all the needles by lifting the bars. 52. i will actually do this, then, in three other simple diagrams. i place a rod for the year 1300 over the lines of life, and i take up all it touches. i have to drop niccola pisano, but i catch five. now, with my rod of 1400, i have dropped orcagna indeed, but i again catch five. now, with my rod of 1500, i indeed drop filippo lippi and verrocchio, but i catch seven. and here i have three pennons, with the staves of the years 1300, 1400, and 1500 running through them,--holding the names of nearly all the men i want you to study in easily remembered groups of five, five, and seven. and these three groups i shall hereafter call the 1300 group, 1400 group, and 1500 group. 1300. ^ | 1240-1302 cimabue +-+-+-+-+-+-+ | 1250-1321 giovanni pisano +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | 1232-1310 arnolfo -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | 1270-1345 andrea pisano +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | 1276-1336 giotto +-+-+-+-+-+ 1400. ^ | 1374-1438 quercia -+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | 1381-1455 ghiberti +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | 1377-1446 brunelleschi +-+-+-+-+-+-+ | 1386-1468 donatello +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | 1400-1481 luca +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ 1500. ^ | 1431-1506 mantegna -+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | 1457-1515 botticelli +-+-+-+-+-+ | 1426-1516 bellini +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | 1446-1524 perugino +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | 1470-1535 luini +-+-+-+-+-+-+ | 1471-1527 dürer -+-+-+-+-+ | 1498-1543 holbein +-+-+-+-+ 53. but why should four unfortunate masters be dropped out? well, i want to drop them out, at any rate; but not in disrespect. in hope, on the contrary, to make you remember them very separately indeed;--for this following reason. we are in the careless habit of speaking of men who form a great number of pupils, and have a host of inferior satellites round them, as masters of great schools. but before you call a man a master, you should ask, are his pupils greater or less than himself? if they are greater than himself, he is a master indeed;--he has been a true teacher. but if all his pupils are less than himself, he may have been a great _man_, but in all probability has been a bad _master_, or no master. now these men, whom i have signally left out of my groups, are true _masters_. niccola pisano taught all italy; but chiefly his own son, who succeeded, and in some things very much surpassed him. orcagna taught all italy, after him, down to michael angelo. and these two--lippi, the religious schools, verrocchio, the artist schools, of their century. lippi taught sandro botticelli; and verrocchio taught lionardo da vinci, lorenzo di credi, and perugino. have i not good reason to separate the masters of such pupils from the schools they created? 54. but how is it that i can drop just the cards i want out of my pack? well, certainly i force and fit matters a little: i leave some men out of my list whom i should like to have in it;--benozzo gozzoli, for instance, and mino da fiesole; but i can do without them, and so can you also, for the present. i catch luca by a hair's-breadth only, with my 1400 rod; but on the whole, with very little coaxing, i get the groups in this memorable and quite literally 'handy' form. for see, i write my lists of five, five, and seven, on bits of pasteboard; i hinge my rods to these; and you can brandish the school of 1400 in your left hand, and of 1500 in your right, like--railway signals;--and i wish all railway signals were as clear. once learn, thoroughly, the groups in this artificially contracted form, and you can refine and complete afterwards at your leisure. 55. and thus actually flourishing my two pennons, and getting my grip of the men, in either hand, i find a notable thing concerning my two flags. the men whose names i hold in my left hand are all sculptors; the men whose names i hold in my right are all painters. you will infallibly suspect me of having chosen them thus on purpose. no, honor bright!--i chose simply the greatest men,--those i wanted to talk to you about. i arranged them by their dates; i put them into three conclusive pennons; and behold what follows! 56. farther, note this: in the 1300 group, four out of the five men are architects as well as sculptors and painters. in the 1400 group, there is one architect; in the 1500, none. and the meaning of that is, that in 1300 the arts were all united, and duly led by architecture; in 1400, sculpture began to assume too separate a power to herself; in 1500, painting arrogated all, and, at last, betrayed all. from which, with much other collateral evidence, you may justly conclude that the three arts ought to be practiced together, and that they naturally are so. i long since asserted that no man could be an architect who was not a sculptor. as i learned more and more of my business, i perceived also that no man could be a sculptor who was not an architect;--that is to say, who had not knowledge enough, and pleasure enough in structural law, to be able to build, on occasion, better than a mere builder. and so, finally, i now positively aver to you that nobody, in the graphic arts, can be quite rightly a master of anything, who is not master of everything! 57. the junction of the three arts in men's minds, at the best times, is shortly signified in these words of chaucer. love's garden, everidele enclosed was, and walled well with high walls, embatailled, portrayed without, and well entayled with many rich portraitures. the french original is better still, and gives four arts in unison:- quant suis avant un pou alé et vy un vergier grant et le, bien cloz de bon mur batillié pourtrait dehors, et entaillié ou (for au) maintes riches escriptures. read also carefully the description of the temples of mars and venus in the knight's tale. contemporary french uses 'entaille' even of solid sculpture and of the living form; and pygmalion, as a perfect master, professes wood carving, ivory carving, waxwork, and iron-work, no less than stone sculpture:- pimalion, uns entaillieres pourtraians en fuz[k] et en pierres, en mettaux, en os, et en cire, et en toute autre matire. 58. i made a little sketch, when last in florence, of a subject which will fix the idea of this unity of the arts in your minds. at the base of the tower of giotto are two rows of hexagonal panels, filled with bas-reliefs. some of these are by unknown hands,--some by andrea pisano, some by luca della robbia, two by giotto himself; of these i sketched the panel representing the art of painting. you have in that bas-relief one of the foundation-stones of the most perfectly built tower in europe; you have that stone carved by its architect's own hand; you find, further, that this architect and sculptor was the greatest painter of his time, and the friend of the greatest poet; and you have represented by him a painter in his shop,--bottega,--as symbolic of the entire art of painting. 59. in which representation, please note how carefully giotto shows you the tabernacles or niches, in which the paintings are to be placed. not independent of their frames, these panels of his, you see! have you ever considered, in the early history of painting, how important also is the history of the frame maker? it is a matter, i assure you, needing your very best consideration. for the frame was made before the picture. the painted window is much, but the aperture it fills was thought of before it. the fresco by giotto is much, but the vault it adorns was planned first. who thought of these;--who built? questions taking us far back before the birth of the shepherd boy of fésole--questions not to be answered by history of painting only, still less of painting in _italy_ only. 60. and in pointing out to you this fact, i may once for all prove to you the essential unity of the arts, and show you how impossible it is to understand one without reference to another. which i wish you to observe all the more closely, that you may use, without danger of being misled, the data, of unequaled value, which have been collected by crowe and cavalcaselle, in the book which they have called a history of painting in italy, but which is in fact only a dictionary of details relating to that history. such a title is an absurdity on the face of it. for, first, you can no more write the history of painting in italy than you can write the history of the south wind in italy. the sirocco does indeed produce certain effects at genoa, and others at rome; but what would be the value of a treatise upon the winds, which, for the honor of any country, assumed that every city of it had a native sirocco? but, further,--imagine what success would attend the meteorologist who should set himself to give an account of the south wind, but take no notice of the north! and, finally, suppose an attempt to give you an account of either wind, but none of the seas, or mountain passes, by which they were nourished, or directed. 61. for instance, i am in this course of lectures to give you an account of a single and minor branch of graphic art,--engraving. but observe how many references to local circumstances it involves. there are three materials for it, we said;--stone, wood, and metal. stone engraving is the art of countries possessing marble and gems; wood engraving, of countries overgrown with forest; metal engraving, of countries possessing treasures of silver and gold. and the style of a stone engraver is formed on pillars and pyramids; the style of a wood engraver under the eaves of larch cottages; the style of a metal engraver in the treasuries of kings. do you suppose i could rightly explain to you the value of a single touch on brass by finiguerra, or on box by bewick, unless i had grasp of the great laws of climate and country; and could trace the inherited sirocco or tramontana of thought to which the souls and bodies of the men owed their existence? 62. you see that in this flag of 1300 there is a dark strong line in the center, against which you read the name of arnolfo. in writing our florentine dunciad, or history of fools, can we possibly begin with a better day than all fools' day? on all fools' day--the first, if you like better so to call it, of the month of _opening_,--in the year 1300, is signed the document making arnolfo a citizen of florence, and in 1310 he dies, chief master of the works of the cathedral there. to this man, crowe and cavalcaselle give half a page, out of three volumes of five hundred pages each. but lower down in my flag, (not put there because of any inferiority, but by order of chronology,) you will see a name sufficiently familiar to you--that of giotto; and to him, our historians of painting in italy give some hundred pages, under the impression, stated by them at page 243 of their volume, that "in his hands, art in the peninsula became entitled for the first time to the name of italian." 63. art became italian! yes, but _what_ art? your authors give a perspective--or what they call such,--of the upper church of assisi, as if that were merely an accidental occurrence of blind walls for giotto to paint on! but how came the upper church of assisi there? how came it to be vaulted--to be aisled? how came giotto to be asked to paint upon it? the art that built it, good or bad, must have been an italian one, before giotto. he could not have painted on the air. let us see how his panels were made for him. 64. this captain--the center of our first group--arnolfo, has always hitherto been called 'arnolfo di lapo;'--arnolfo the son of lapo. modern investigators come down on us delightedly, to tell us--arnolfo was _not_ the son of lapo. in these days you will have half a dozen doctors, writing each a long book, and the sense of all will be,--arnolfo wasn't the son of lapo. much good may you get of that! well, you will find the fact to be, there was a great northman builder, a true son of thor, who came down into italy in 1200, served the order of st. francis there, built assisi, taught arnolfo how to build, with thor's hammer, and disappeared, leaving his name uncertain--jacopo--lapo--nobody knows what. arnolfo always recognizes this man as his true father, who put the soul-life into him; he is known to his florentines always as lapo's arnolfo. that, or some likeness of that, is the vital fact. you never can get at the literal limitation of living facts. they disguise themselves by the very strength of their life: get told again and again in different ways by all manner of people;--the literalness of them is turned topsy-turvy, inside-out, over and over again;--then the fools come and read them wrong side upwards, or else, say there never was a fact at all. nothing delights a true blockhead so much as to prove a negative;--to show that everybody has been wrong. fancy the delicious sensation, to an empty-headed creature, of fancying for a moment that he has emptied everybody else's head as well as his own! nay, that, for once, his own hollow bottle of a head has had the best of other bottles, and has been _first_ empty;--first to know--nothing. 65. hold, then, steadily the first tradition about this arnolfo. that his real father was called "cambio" matters to you not a straw. that he never called himself cambio's arnolfo--that nobody else ever called him so, down to vasari's time, is an infinitely significant fact to you. in my twenty-second letter in fors clavigera you will find some account of the noble habit of the italian artists to call themselves by their masters' names, considering their master as their true father. if not the name of the master, they take that of their native place, as having owed the character of their life to that. they rarely take their own family name: sometimes it is not even known,--when best known, it is unfamiliar to us. the great pisan artists, for instance, never bear any other name than 'the pisan;' among the other five-and-twenty names in my list, not above six, i think, the two german, with four italian, are family names. perugino, (peter of perugia,) luini, (bernard of luino,) quercia, (james of quercia,) correggio, (anthony of correggio,) are named from their native places. nobody would have understood me if i had called giotto, 'ambrose bondone;' or tintoret, robusti; or even raphael, sanzio. botticelli is named from his master; ghiberti from his father-in-law; and ghirlandajo from his work. orcagna, who _did_, for a wonder, name himself from his father, andrea cione, of florence, has been always called 'angel' by everybody else; while arnolfo, who never named himself from his father, is now like to be fathered against his will. but, i again beg of you, keep to the old story. for it represents, however inaccurately in detail, clearly in sum, the fact, that some great master of german gothic at this time came down into italy, and changed the entire form of italian architecture by his touch. so that while niccola and giovanni pisano are still virtually greek artists, experimentally introducing gothic forms, arnolfo and giotto adopt the entire gothic ideal of form, and thenceforward use the pointed arch and steep gable as the limits of sculpture. 66. hitherto i have been speaking of the relations of my twenty-five men to each other. but now, please note their relations altogether to the art before them. these twenty-five include, i say, all the great masters of _christian_ art. before them, the art was too savage to be christian; afterwards, too carnal to be christian. too savage to be christian? i will justify that assertion hereafter; but you will find that the european art of 1200 includes all the most developed and characteristic conditions of the style in the north which you have probably been accustomed to think of as norman, and which you may always most conveniently call so; and the most developed conditions of the style in the south, which, formed out of effete greek, persian, and roman tradition, you may, in like manner, most conveniently express by the familiar word byzantine. whatever you call them, they are in origin adverse in temper, and remain so up to the year 1200. then an influence appears, seemingly that of one man, nicholas the pisan, (our first master, observe,) and a new spirit adopts what is best in each, and gives to what it adopts a new energy of its own; namely, this conscientious and didactic power which is the speciality of its progressive existence. and just as the new-born and natural art of athens collects and reanimates pelasgian and egyptian tradition, purifying their worship, and perfecting their work, into the living heathen faith of the world, so this new-born and natural art of florence collects and animates the norman and byzantine tradition, and forms out of the perfected worship and work of both, the honest christian faith, and vital craftsmanship, of the world. 67. get this first summary, therefore, well into your minds. the word 'norman' i use roughly for north-savage;--roughly, but advisedly. i mean lombard, scandinavian, frankish; everything north-savage that you can think of, except saxon. (i have a reason for that exception; never mind it just now.)[l] all north-savage i call norman, all south-savage i call byzantine; this latter including dead native greek primarily--then dead foreign greek, in rome;--then arabian--persian--phoenician--indian--all you can think of, in art of hot countries, up to this year 1200, i rank under the one term byzantine. now all this cold art--norman, and all this hot art--byzantine, is virtually dead, till 1200. it has no conscience, no didactic power;[m] it is devoid of both, in the sense that dreams are. then in the thirteenth century, men wake as if they heard an alarum through the whole vault of heaven, and true human life begins again, and the cradle of this life is the val d'arno. there the northern and southern nations meet; there they lay down their enmities; there they are first baptized unto john's baptism for the remission of sins; there is born, and thence exiled,--thought faithless, for breaking the font of baptism to save a child from drowning, in his 'bel san giovanni,'--the greatest of christian poets; he who had pity even for the lost. 68. now, therefore, my whole history of _christian_ architecture and painting begins with this baptistery of florence, and with its associated cathedral. arnolfo brought the one into the form in which you now see it; he laid the foundation of the other, and that to purpose, and he is therefore the captain of our first school. for this florentine baptistery[n] is the great one of the world. here is the center of christian knowledge and power. and it is one piece of large _engraving_. white substance, cut into, and filled with black, and dark-green. no more perfect work was afterwards done; and i wish you to grasp the idea of this building clearly and irrevocably,--first, in order (as i told you in a previous lecture) to quit yourselves thoroughly of the idea that ornament should be decorated construction; and, secondly, as the noblest type of the intaglio ornamentation, which developed itself into all minor application of black and white to engraving. 69. that it should do so first at florence, was the natural sequence, and the just reward, of the ancient skill of etruria in chased metal-work. the effects produced in gold, either by embossing or engraving, were the direct means of giving interest to his surfaces at the command of the 'auri faber,' or orfevre: and every conceivable artifice of studding, chiseling, and interlacing was exhausted by the artists in gold, who were at the head of the metal-workers, and from whom the ranks of the sculptors were reinforced. the old french word 'orfroiz,' (aurifrigia,) expresses essentially what we call 'frosted' work in gold; that which resembles small dew or crystals of hoar-frost; the 'frigia' coming from the latin frigus. to chase, or enchase, is not properly said of the gold; but of the jewel which it secures with hoops or ridges, (french, _en_chasser[o]). then the armorer, or cup and casket maker, added to this kind of decoration that of flat inlaid enamel; and the silver-worker, finding that the raised filigree (still a staple at genoa) only attracted tarnish, or got crushed, early sought to decorate a surface which would bear external friction, with labyrinths of safe incision. 70. of the _security_ of incision as a means of permanent decoration, as opposed to ordinary carving, here is a beautiful instance in the base of one of the external shafts of the cathedral of lucca; thirteenth-century work, which by this time, had it been carved in relief, would have been a shapeless remnant of indecipherable bosses. but it is still as safe as if it had been cut yesterday, because the smooth round mass of the pillar is entirely undisturbed; into that, furrows are cut with a chisel as much under command and as powerful as a burin. the effect of the design is trusted entirely to the depth of these incisions--here dying out and expiring in the light of the marble, there deepened, by drill holes, into as definitely a black line as if it were drawn with ink; and describing the outline of the leafage with a delicacy of touch and of perception which no man will ever surpass, and which very few have rivaled, in the proudest days of design. 71. this security, in silver plates, was completed by filling the furrows with the black paste which at once exhibited and preserved them. the transition from that niello-work to modern engraving is one of no real moment: my object is to make you understand the qualities which constitute the _merit_ of the engraving, whether charged with niello or ink. and this i hope ultimately to accomplish by studying with you some of the works of the four men, botticelli and mantegna in the south, dürer and holbein in the north, whose names i have put in our last flag, above and beneath those of the three mighty painters, perugino the captain, bellini on one side--luini on the other. the four following lectures[p] will contain data necessary for such study: you must wait longer before i can place before you those by which i can justify what must greatly surprise some of my audience--my having given perugino the captain's place among the three painters. 72. but i do so, at least primarily, because what is commonly thought affected in his design is indeed the true remains of the great architectural symmetry which was soon to be lost, and which makes him the true follower of arnolfo and brunelleschi; and because he is a sound craftsman and workman to the very heart's core. a noble, gracious, and quiet laborer from youth to death,--never weary, never impatient, never untender, never untrue. not tintoret in power, not raphael in flexibility, not holbein in veracity, not luini in love,--their gathered gifts he has, in balanced and fruitful measure, fit to be the guide, and impulse, and father of all. footnotes: [d] compare "aratra pentelici," § 154. [e] "holbein and his time," 4to, bentley, 1872, (a very valuable book,) p. 17. italics mine. [f] see carlyle, "frederick," book iii., chap. viii. [g] i believe i am taking too much trouble in writing these lectures. this sentence, § 44, has cost me, i suppose, first and last, about as many hours as there are lines in it;--and my choice of these two words, faith and death, as representatives of power, will perhaps, after all, only puzzle the reader. [h] he is said by vasari to have called francia the like. francia is a child compared to perugino; but a finished working-goldsmith and ornamental painter nevertheless; and one of the very last men to be called 'goffo,' except by unparalleled insolence. [i] the diagram used at the lecture is engraved on page 30; the reader had better draw it larger for himself, as it had to be made inconveniently small for this size of leaf. [j] 'ascertained,' scarcely any date ever is, quite satisfactorily. the diagram only represents what is practically and broadly true. i may have to modify it greatly in detail. [k] for fust, log of wood, erroneously 'fer' in the later printed editions. compare the account of the works of art and nature, towards the end of the romance of the rose. [l] of course it would have been impossible to express in any accurate terms, short enough for the compass of a lecture, the conditions of opposition between the heptarchy and the northmen;--between the byzantine and roman;--and between the byzantine and arab, which form minor, but not less trenchant, divisions of art-province, for subsequent delineation. if you can refer to my "stones of venice," see § 20 of its first chapter. [m] again much too broad a statement: not to be qualified but by a length of explanation here impossible. my lectures on architecture, now in preparation ("val d'arno"), will contain further detail. [n] at the side of my page, here, i find the following memorandum, which was expanded in the viva-voce lecture. the reader must make what he can of it, for i can't expand it here. _sense_ of italian church plan. baptistery, to make christians in; house, or dome, for them to pray and be preached to in; bell-tower, to ring all over the town, when they were either to pray together, rejoice together, or to be warned of danger. harvey's picture of the covenanters, with a shepherd on the outlook, as a campanile. [o] and 'chassis,' a window frame, or tracery. [p] this present lecture does not, as at present published, justify its title; because i have not thought it necessary to write the viva-voce portions of it which amplified the 69th paragraph. i will give the substance of them in better form elsewhere; meantime the part of the lecture here given may be in its own way useful. lecture iii. the technics of wood engraving. 73. i am to-day to begin to tell you what it is necessary you should observe respecting methods of manual execution in the two great arts of engraving. only to _begin_ to tell you. there need be no end of telling you such things, if you care to hear them. the theory of art is soon mastered; but 'dal detto al fatto, v'e gran tratto;' and as i have several times told you in former lectures, every day shows me more and more the importance of the hand. 74. of the hand as a servant, observe,--not of the hand as a master. for there are two great kinds of manual work: one in which the hand is continually receiving and obeying orders; the other in which it is acting independently, or even giving orders of its own. and the dependent and submissive hand is a noble hand; but the independent or imperative hand is a vile one. that is to say, as long as the pen, or chisel, or other graphic instrument, is moved under the direct influence of mental attention, and obeys orders of the brain, it is working nobly;--the moment it moves independently of them, and performs some habitual dexterity of its own, it is base. 75. _dexterity_--i say;--some 'right-handedness' of its own. we might wisely keep that word for what the hand does at the mind's bidding; and use an opposite word--sinisterity,--for what it does at its own. for indeed we want such a word in speaking of modern art; it is all full of sinisterity. hands independent of brains;--the left hand, by division of labor, not knowing what the right does,--still less what it ought to do. 76. turning, then, to our special subject. all engraving, i said, is intaglio in the solid. but the solid, in wood engraving, is a coarse substance, easily cut; and in metal, a fine substance, not easily. therefore, in general, you may be prepared to accept ruder and more elementary work in one than the other; and it will be the means of appeal to blunter minds. you probably already know the difference between the actual methods of producing a printed impression from wood and metal; but i may perhaps make the matter a little more clear. in metal engraving, you cut ditches, fill them with ink, and press your paper into them. in wood engraving, you leave ridges, rub the tops of them with ink, and stamp them on your paper. the instrument with which the substance, whether of the wood or steel, is cut away, is the same. it is a solid plowshare, which, instead of throwing the earth aside, throws it up and out, producing at first a simple ravine, or furrow, in the wood or metal, which you can widen by another cut, or extend by successive cuts. this (fig. 1) is the general shape of the solid plowshare: but it is of course made sharper or blunter at pleasure. the furrow produced is at first the wedge-shaped or cuneiform ravine, already so much dwelt upon in my lectures on greek sculpture. [illustration: fig. 1] 77. since, then, in wood printing, you print from the surface left solid; and, in metal printing, from the hollows cut into it, it follows that if you put few touches on wood, you draw, as on a slate, with white lines, leaving a quantity of black; but if you put few touches on metal, you draw with black lines, leaving a quantity of white. now the eye is not in the least offended by quantity of white, but is, or ought to be, greatly saddened and offended by quantity of black. hence it follows that you must never put little work on wood. you must not sketch upon it. you may sketch on metal as much as you please. 78. "paradox," you will say, as usual. "are not all our journals,--and the best of them, punch, par excellence,--full of the most brilliantly swift and slight sketches, engraved on wood; while line-engravings take ten years to produce, and cost ten guineas each when they are done?" yes, that is so; but observe, in the first place, what appears to you a sketch on wood is not so at all, but a most laborious and careful imitation of a sketch on paper; whereas when you see what appears to be a sketch on metal, it _is_ one. and in the second place, so far as the popular fashion is contrary to this natural method,--so far as we do in reality try to produce effects of sketching in wood, and of finish in metal,--our work is wrong. those apparently careless and free sketches on the wood ought to have been stern and deliberate; those exquisitely toned and finished engravings on metal ought to have looked, instead, like free ink sketches on white paper. that is the theorem which i propose to you for consideration, and which, in the two branches of its assertion, i hope to prove to you; the first part of it, (that wood-cutting should be careful,) in this present lecture; the second, (that metal-cutting should be, at least in a far greater degree than it is now, slight, and free,) in the following one. 79. next, observe the distinction in respect of _thickness_, no less than number, of lines which may properly be used in the two methods. in metal engraving, it is easier to lay a fine line than a thick one; and however fine the line may be, it lasts;--but in wood engraving it requires extreme precision and skill to leave a thin dark line, and when left, it will be quickly beaten down by a careless printer. therefore, the virtue of wood engraving is to exhibit the qualities and power of _thick_ lines; and of metal engraving, to exhibit the qualities and power of _thin_ ones. all thin dark lines, therefore, in wood, broadly speaking, are to be used only in case of necessity; and thick lines, on metal, only in case of necessity. 80. though, however, thin _dark_ lines cannot easily be produced in wood, thin _light_ ones may be struck in an instant. nevertheless, even thin light ones must not be used, except with extreme caution. for observe, they are equally useless as outline, and for expression of mass. you know how far from exemplary or delightful your boy's first quite voluntary exercises in white line drawing on your slate were? you could, indeed, draw a goblin satisfactorily in such method;--a round o, with arms and legs to it, and a scratch under two dots in the middle, would answer the purpose; but if you wanted to draw a pretty face, you took pencil or pen, and paper--not your slate. now, that instinctive feeling that a white outline is wrong, is deeply founded. for nature herself draws with diffused light, and concentrated dark;--never, except in storm or twilight, with diffused dark, and concentrated light; and the thing we all like best to see drawn--the human face--cannot be drawn with white touches, but by extreme labor. for the pupil and iris of the eye, the eyebrow, the nostril, and the lip are all set in dark on pale ground. you can't draw a white eyebrow, a white pupil of the eye, a white nostril, and a white mouth, on a dark ground. try it, and see what a specter you get. but the same number of dark touches, skillfully applied, will give the idea of a beautiful face. and what is true of the subtlest subject you have to represent, is equally true of inferior ones. nothing lovely can be quickly represented by white touches. you must hew out, if your means are so restricted, the form by sheer labor; and that both cunning and dextrous. the florentine masters, and dürer, often practice the achievement, and there are many drawings by the lippis, mantegna, and other leading italian draughtsmen, completed to great perfection with the white line; but only for the sake of severest study, nor is their work imitable by inferior men. and such studies, however accomplished, always mark a disposition to regard chiaroscuro too much, and local color too little. we conclude, then, that we must never trust, in wood, to our power of outline with white; and our general laws, thus far determined, will be--thick lines in wood; thin ones in metal; complete drawing on wood; sketches, if we choose, on metal. 81. but why, in wood, lines at all? why not cut out white _spaces_, and use the chisel as if its incisions were so much white paint? many fine pieces of wood-cutting are indeed executed on this principle. bewick does nearly all his foliage so; and continually paints the light plumes of his birds with single touches of his chisel, as if he were laying on white. but this is not the finest method of wood-cutting. it implies the idea of a system of light and shade in which the shadow is totally black. now, no light and shade can be good, much less pleasant, in which all the shade is stark black. therefore the finest wood-cutting ignores light and shade, and expresses only form, and _dark local color_. and it is convenient, for simplicity's sake, to anticipate what i should otherwise defer telling you until next lecture, that fine metal engraving, like fine wood-cutting, ignores light and shade; and that, in a word, all good engraving whatsoever does so. 82. i hope that my saying so will make you eager to interrupt me. 'what! rembrandt's etchings, and lupton's mezzotints, and le keux's line-work,--do you mean to tell us that these ignore light and shade?' i never said that _mezzotint_ ignored light and shade, or ought to do so. mezzotint is properly to be considered as chiaroscuro drawing on metal. but i do mean to tell you that both rembrandt's etchings, and le keux's finished line-work, are misapplied labor, in so far as they regard chiaroscuro; and that consummate engraving never uses it as a primal element of pleasure. [illustration: the last furrow. (fig. 2) facsimile from holbein's woodcut.] 83. we have now got our principles so far defined that i can proceed to illustration of them by example. here are facsimiles, very marvelous ones,[q] of two of the best wood engravings ever produced by art,--two subjects in holbein's dance of death. you will probably like best that i should at once proceed to verify my last and most startling statement, that fine engraving disdained chiaroscuro. this vignette (fig. 2) represents a sunset in the open mountainous fields of southern germany. and holbein is so entirely careless about the light and shade, which a dutchman would first have thought of, as resulting from the sunset, that, as he works, he forgets altogether where his light comes from. here, actually, the shadow of the figure is cast from the side, right across the picture, while the sun is in front. and there is not the slightest attempt to indicate gradation of light in the sky, darkness in the forest, or any other positive element of chiaroscuro. this is not because holbein cannot give chiaroscuro if he chooses. he is twenty times a stronger master of it than rembrandt; but he, therefore, knows exactly when and how to use it; and that wood engraving is not the proper means for it. the quantity of it which is needful for his story, and will not, by any sensational violence, either divert, or vulgarly enforce, the attention, he will give; and that with an unrivaled subtlety. therefore i must ask you for a moment or two to quit the subject of technics, and look what these two woodcuts mean. 84. the one i have first shown you is of a plowman plowing at evening. it is holbein's object, here, to express the diffused and intense light of a golden summer sunset, so far as is consistent with grander purposes. a modern french or english chiaroscurist would have covered his sky with fleecy clouds, and relieved the plowman's hat and his horses against it in strong black, and put sparkling touches on the furrows and grass. holbein scornfully casts all such tricks aside; and draws the whole scene in pure white, with simple outlines. [illustration: the two preachers. (fig. 3) facsimile from holbein's woodcut.] 85. and yet, when i put it beside this second vignette, (fig. 3,) which is of a preacher preaching in a feebly lighted church, you will feel that the diffused warmth of the one subject, and diffused twilight in the other, are complete; and they will finally be to you more impressive than if they had been wrought out with every superficial means of effect, on each block. for it is as a symbol, not as a scenic effect, that in each case the chiaroscuro is given. holbein, i said, is at the head of the painter-reformers, and his dance of death is the most energetic and telling of all the forms given, in this epoch, to the _rationalist_ spirit of reform, preaching the new gospel of death,--"it is no matter whether you are priest or layman, what you believe, or what you do: here is the end." you shall see, in the course of our inquiry, that botticelli, in like manner, represents the _faithful_ and _catholic_ temper of reform. 86. the teaching of holbein is therefore always melancholy,--for the most part purely rational; and entirely furious in its indignation against all who, either by actual injustice in this life, or by what he holds to be false promise of another, destroy the good, or the energy, of the few days which man has to live. against the rich, the luxurious, the pharisee, the false lawyer, the priest, and the unjust judge, holbein uses his fiercest mockery; but he is never himself unjust; never caricatures or equivocates; gives the facts as he knows them, with explanatory symbols, few and clear. 87. among the powers which he hates, the pathetic and ingenious preaching of untruth is one of the chief; and it is curious to find his biographer, knowing this, and reasoning, as german critics nearly always do, from acquired knowledge, not perception, imagine instantly that he sees hypocrisy in the face of holbein's preacher. "how skillfully," says dr. woltmann, "is the preacher propounding his doctrines; how thoroughly is his hypocrisy expressed in the features of his countenance, and in the gestures of his hands." but look at the cut yourself, candidly. i challenge you to find the slightest trace of hypocrisy in either feature or gesture. holbein knew better. it is not the hypocrite who has power in the pulpit. it is the _sincere_ preacher of untruth who does mischief there. the hypocrite's place of power is in trade, or in general society; none but the sincere ever get fatal influence in the pulpit. this man is a refined gentleman--ascetic, earnest, thoughtful, and kind. he scarcely uses the vantage even of his pulpit,--comes aside out of it, as an eager man would, pleading; he is intent on being understood--_is_ understood; his congregation are delighted--you might hear a pin drop among them: one is asleep indeed, who cannot see him, (being under the pulpit,) and asleep just because the teacher is as gentle as he is earnest, and speaks quietly. 88. how are we to know, then, that he speaks in vain? first, because among all his hearers you will not find one shrewd face. they are all either simple or stupid people: there is one nice woman in front of all, (else holbein's representation had been caricature,) but she is not a shrewd one. secondly, by the light and shade. the church is not in extreme darkness--far from that; a gray twilight is over everything, but the sun is totally shut out of it;--not a ray comes in even at the window--_that_ is darker than the walls, or vault. lastly, and chiefly, by the mocking expression of death. mocking, but not angry. the man has been preaching what he thought true. death laughs at him, but is not indignant with him. death comes quietly: _i_ am going to be preacher now; here is your own hour-glass, ready for me. you have spoken many words in your day. but "of the things which you have spoken, _this_ is the sum,"--your death-warrant, signed and sealed. there's your text for to-day. 89. of this other picture, the meaning is more plain, and far more beautiful. the husbandman is old and gaunt, and has passed his days, not in speaking, but pressing the iron into the ground. and the payment for his life's work is, that he is clothed in rags, and his feet are bare on the clods; and he has no hat--but the brim of a hat only, and his long, unkempt gray hair comes through. but all the air is full of warmth and of peace; and, beyond his village church, there is, at last, light indeed. his horses lag in the furrow, and his own limbs totter and fail: but one comes to help him. 'it is a long field,' says death; 'but we'll get to the end of it to-day,--you and i.' 90. and now that we know the meaning, we are able to discuss the technical qualities farther. both of these engravings, you will find, are executed with blunt lines; but more than that, they are executed with quiet lines, entirely steady. now, here i have in my hand a lively woodcut of the present day--a good average type of the modern style of wood-cutting, which you will all recognize.[r] the shade in this is drawn on the wood, (not _cut_, but drawn, observe,) at the rate of at least ten lines in a second: holbein's, at the rate of about one line in three seconds.[s] 91. now there are two different matters to be considered with respect to these two opposed methods of execution. the first, that the rapid work, though easy to the artist, is very difficult to the wood-cutter; so that it implies instantly a separation between the two crafts, and that your wood-cutter has ceased to be a draughtsman. i shall return to this point. i wish to insist on the other first; namely, the effect of the more deliberate method on the drawing itself. 92. when the hand moves at the rate of ten lines in a second, it is indeed under the government of the muscles of the wrist and shoulder; but it cannot possibly be under the complete government of the brains. i am able to do this zigzag line evenly, because i have got the use of the hand from practice; and the faster it is done, the evener it will be. but i have no mental authority over every line i thus lay: chance regulates them. whereas, when i draw at the rate of two or three seconds to each line, my hand disobeys the muscles a little--the mechanical accuracy is not so great; nay, there ceases to be any _appearance_ of dexterity at all. but there is, in reality, more manual skill required in the slow work than in the swift,--and all the while the hand is thoroughly under the orders of the brains. holbein deliberately resolves, for every line, as it goes along, that it shall be so thick, so far from the next,--that it shall begin here, and stop there. and he is deliberately assigning the utmost quantity of meaning to it, that a line will carry. 93. it is not fair, however, to compare common work of one age with the best of another. here is a woodcut of tenniel's, which i think contains as high qualities as it is possible to find in modern art.[t] i hold it as beyond others fine, because there is not the slightest caricature in it. no face, no attitude, is pushed beyond the degree of natural humor they would have possessed in life; and in precision of momentary expression, the drawing is equal to the art of any time, and shows power which would, if regulated, be quite adequate to producing an immortal work. 94. why, then, is it _not_ immortal? you yourselves, in compliance with whose demand it was done, forgot it the next week. it will become historically interesting; but no man of true knowledge and feeling will ever keep this in his cabinet of treasure, as he does these woodcuts of holbein's. the reason is that this is base coin,--alloyed gold. there _is_ gold in it, but also a quantity of brass and lead--willfully added--to make it fit for the public. holbein's is beaten gold, seven times tried in the fire. of which commonplace but useful metaphor the meaning here is, first, that to catch the vulgar eye a quantity of,--so-called,--light and shade is added by tenniel. it is effective to an ignorant eye, and is ingeniously disposed; but it is entirely conventional and false, unendurable by any person who knows what chiaroscuro is. secondly, for one line that holbein lays, tenniel has a dozen. there are, for instance, a hundred and fifty-seven lines in sir peter teazle's wig, without counting dots and slight cross-hatching;--but the entire face and flowing hair of holbein's preacher are done with forty-five lines, all told. 95. now observe what a different state of mind the two artists must be in on such conditions;--one, never in a hurry, never doing anything that he knows is wrong; never doing a line badly that he can do better; and appealing only to the feelings of sensitive persons, and the judgment of attentive ones. that is holbein's habit of soul. what is the habit of soul of every modern engraver? always in a hurry; everywhere doing things which he knows to be wrong--(tenniel knows his light and shade to be wrong as well as i do)--continually doing things badly which he was able to do better; and appealing exclusively to the feelings of the dull, and the judgment of the inattentive. do you suppose that is not enough to make the difference between mortal and immortal art,--the original genius being supposed alike in both?[u] 96. thus far of the state of the artist himself. i pass, next to the relation between him and his subordinate, the wood-cutter. the modern artist requires him to cut a hundred and fifty-seven lines in the wig only,--the old artist requires him to cut forty-five for the face, and long hair, altogether. the actual proportion is roughly, and on the average, about one to twenty of cost in manual labor, ancient to modern,--the twentieth part of the mechanical labor, to produce an immortal instead of a perishable work,--the twentieth part of the labor; and--which is the greatest difference of all--that twentieth part, at once less mechanically difficult, and more mentally pleasant. mr. otley, in his general history of engraving, says, "the greatest difficulty in wood engraving occurs in clearing out the minute quadrangular lights;" and in any modern woodcut you will see that where the lines of the drawing cross each other to produce shade, the white interstices are cut out so neatly that there is no appearance of any jag or break in the lines; they look exactly as if they had been drawn with a pen. it is chiefly difficult to cut the pieces clearly out when the lines cross at right angles; easier when they form oblique or diamond-shaped interstices; but in any case some half-dozen cuts, and in square crossings as many as twenty, are required to clear one interstice. therefore if i carelessly draw six strokes with my pen across other six, i produce twenty-five interstices, each of which will need at least six, perhaps twenty, careful touches of the burin to clear out.--say ten for an average; and i demand two hundred and fifty exquisitely precise touches from my engraver, to render ten careless ones of mine. 97. now i take up punch, at his best. the whole of the left side of john bull's waistcoat--the shadow on his knee-breeches and great-coat--the whole of the lord chancellor's gown, and of john bull's and sir peter teazle's complexions, are worked with finished precision of cross-hatching. these have indeed some purpose in their texture; but in the most wanton and gratuitous way, the wall below the window is cross-hatched too, and that not with a double, but a treble line (fig. 4). there are about thirty of these columns, with thirty-five interstices each: approximately, 1,050--certainly not fewer--interstices to be deliberately cut clear, to get that two inches square of shadow. now calculate--or think enough to feel the impossibility of calculating--the number of woodcuts used daily for our popular prints, and how many men are night and day cutting 1,050 square holes to the square inch, as the occupation of their manly life. and mrs. beecher stowe and the north americans fancy they have abolished slavery! [illustration: fig. 4.] 98. the workman cannot have even the consolation of pride; for his task, even in its finest accomplishment, is not really difficult,--only tedious. when you have once got into the practice, it is as easy as lying. to cut regular holes without a purpose is easy enough; but to cut _ir_regular holes with a purpose, that is difficult, forever;--no tricks of tool or trade will give you power to do that. the supposed difficulty--the thing which, at all events, it takes time to learn, is to cut the interstices neat, and each like the other. but is there any reason, do you suppose, for their being neat, and each like the other? so far from it, they would be twenty times prettier if they were irregular, and each different from the other. and an old wood-cutter, instead of taking pride in cutting these interstices smooth and alike, resolutely cuts them rough and irregular; taking care, at the same time, never to have any more than are wanted, this being only one part of the general system of intelligent manipulation, which made so good an artist of the engraver that it is impossible to say of any standard old woodcut, whether the draughtsman engraved it himself or not. i should imagine, from the character and subtlety of the touch, that every line of the dance of death had been engraved by holbein; we know it was not, and that there can be no certainty given by even the finest pieces of wood execution of anything more than perfect harmony between the designer and workman. and consider how much this harmony demands in the latter. not that the modern engraver is unintelligent in applying his mechanical skill: very often he greatly improves the drawing; but we never could mistake his hand for holbein's. 99. the true merit, then, of wood execution, as regards this matter of cross-hatching, is first that there be no more crossing than necessary; secondly, that all the interstices be various, and rough. you may look through the entire series of the dance of death without finding any cross-hatching whatever, except in a few unimportant bits of background, so rude as to need scarcely more than one touch to each interstice. albert dürer crosses more definitely; but yet, in any fold of his drapery, every white spot differs in size from every other, and the arrangement of the whole is delightful, by the kind of variety which the spots on a leopard have. on the other hand, where either expression or form can be rendered by the shape of the lights and darks, the old engraver becomes as careful as in an ordinary ground he is careless. the endeavor, with your own hand, and common pen and ink, to copy a small piece of either of the two holbein woodcuts (figures 2 and 3) will prove this to you better than any words. 100. i said that, had tenniel been rightly trained, there might have been the making of a holbein, or nearly a holbein, in him. i do not know; but i can turn from his work to that of a man who was not trained at all, and who was, without training, holbein's equal. equal, in the sense that this brown stone, in my left hand, is the equal, though not the likeness, of that in my right. they are both of the same true and pure crystal; but the one is brown with iron, and never touched by forming hand; the other has never been in rough companionship, and has been exquisitely polished. so with these two men. the one was the companion of erasmus and sir thomas more. his father was so good an artist that you cannot always tell their drawings asunder. but the other was a farmer's son; and learned his trade in the back shops of newcastle. yet the first book i asked you to get was his biography; and in this frame are set together a drawing by hans holbein, and one by thomas bewick. i know which is most scholarly; but i do _not_ know which is best. 101. it is much to say for the self-taught englishman;--yet do not congratulate yourselves on his simplicity. i told you, a little while since, that the english nobles had left the history of birds to be written, and their spots to be drawn, by a printer's lad;--but i did not tell you their farther loss in the fact that this printer's lad could have written their own histories, and drawn their own spots, if they had let him. but they had no history to be written; and were too closely maculate to be portrayed;--white ground in most places altogether obscured. had there been mores and henrys to draw, bewick could have drawn them; and would have found his function. as it was, the nobles of his day left him to draw the frogs, and pigs, and sparrows--of his day, which seemed to him, in his solitude, the best types of its nobility. no sight or thought of beautiful things was ever granted him;--no heroic creature, goddess-born--how much less any native deity--ever shone upon him. to his utterly english mind, the straw of the sty, and its tenantry, were abiding truth;--the cloud of olympus, and its tenantry, a child's dream. he could draw a pig, but not an aphrodite. 102. the three pieces of woodcut from his fables (the two lower ones enlarged) in the opposite plate, show his utmost strength and utmost rudeness. i must endeavor to make you thoroughly understand both:--the magnificent artistic power, the flawless virtue, veracity, tenderness,--the infinite humor of the man; and yet the difference between england and florence, in the use they make of such gifts in their children. for the moment, however, i confine myself to the examination of technical points; and we must follow our former conclusions a little further. [illustration: i. things celestial and terrestrial, as apparent to the english mind.] 103. because our lines in wood must be thick, it becomes an extreme virtue in wood engraving to economize lines,--not merely, as in all other art, to save time and power, but because, our lines being necessarily blunt, we must make up our minds to do with fewer, by many, than are in the object. but is this necessarily a disadvantage? _absolutely_, an immense disadvantage,--a woodcut never can be so beautiful or good a thing as a painting, or line engraving. but in its own separate and useful way, an excellent thing, because, practiced rightly, it exercises in the artist, and summons in you, the habit of abstraction; that is to say, of deciding what are the essential points in the things you see, and seizing these; a habit entirely necessary to strong humanity; and so natural to all humanity, that it leads, in its indolent and undisciplined states, to all the vulgar amateur's liking of sketches better than pictures. the sketch seems to put the thing for him into a concentrated and exciting form. 104. observe, therefore, to guard you from this error, that a bad sketch is good for nothing; and that nobody can make a good sketch unless they generally are trying to finish with extreme care. but the abstraction of the essential particulars in his subject by a line-master, has a peculiar didactic value. for painting, when it is complete, leaves it much to your own judgment what to look at; and, if you are a fool, you look at the wrong thing;--but in a fine woodcut, the master says to you, "you _shall_ look at this, or at nothing." 105. for example, here is a little tailpiece of bewick's, to the fable of the frogs and the stork.[v] he is, as i told you, as stout a reformer as holbein,[w] or botticelli, or luther, or savonarola; and, as an impartial reformer, hits right and left, at lower or upper classes, if he sees them wrong. most frequently, he strikes at vice, without reference to class; but in this vignette he strikes definitely at the degradation of the viler popular mind which is incapable of being governed, because it cannot understand the nobleness of kingship. he has written--better than written, engraved, sure to suffer no slip of type--his legend under the drawing; so that we know his meaning: "set them up with a king, indeed!" 106. there is an audience of seven frogs, listening to a speaker, or croaker, in the middle; and bewick has set himself to show in all, but especially in the speaker, essential frogginess of mind--the marsh temper. he could not have done it half so well in painting as he has done by the abstraction of wood-outline. the characteristic of a manly mind, or body, is to be gentle in temper, and firm in constitution; the contrary essence of a froggy mind and body is to be angular in temper, and flabby in constitution. i have enlarged bewick's orator-frog for you, plate i. c., and i think you will feel that he is entirely expressed in those essential particulars. this being perfectly good wood-cutting, notice especially its deliberation. no scrawling or scratching, or cross-hatching, or '_free_' work of any sort. most deliberate laying down of solid lines and dots, of which you cannot change one. the real difficulty of wood engraving is to cut every one of these black lines or spaces of the exactly right shape, and not at all to cross-hatch them cleanly. 107. next, examine the technical treatment of the pig, above. i have purposely chosen this as an example of a white object on dark ground, and the frog as a dark object on light ground, to explain to you what i mean by saying that fine engraving regards local color, but not light and shade. you see both frog and pig are absolutely without light and shade. the frog, indeed, casts a shadow; but his hind leg is as white as his throat. in the pig you don't even know which way the light falls. but you know at once that the pig is white, and the frog brown or green. 108. there are, however, two pieces of chiaroscuro _implied_ in the treatment of the pig. it is assumed that his curly tail would be light against the background--dark against his own rump. this little piece of heraldic quartering is absolutely necessary to solidify him. he would have been a white ghost of a pig, flat on the background, but for that alternative tail, and the bits of dark behind the ears. secondly: where the shade is necessary to suggest the position of his ribs, it is given with graphic and chosen points of dark, as few as possible; not for the sake of the shade at all, but of the skin and bone. 109. that, then, being the law of refused chiaroscuro, observe further the method of outline. we said that we were to have thick lines in wood, if possible. look what thickness of black outline bewick has left under our pig's chin, and above his nose. but that is not a line at all, you think? no;--a modern engraver would have made it one, and prided himself on getting it fine. bewick leaves it actually thicker than the snout, but puts all his ingenuity of touch to vary the forms, and break the extremities of his white cuts, so that the eye may be refreshed and relieved by new forms at every turn. the group of white touches filling the space between snout and ears might be a wreath of fine-weather clouds, so studiously are they grouped and broken. and nowhere, you see, does a single black line cross another. look back to figure 4, page 54, and you will know, henceforward, the difference between good and bad wood-cutting. 110. we have also, in the lower woodcut, a notable instance of bewick's power of abstraction. you will observe that one of the chief characters of this frog, which makes him humorous,--next to his vain endeavor to get some firmness into his fore feet,--is his obstinately angular hump-back. and you must feel, when you see it so marked, how important a general character of a frog it is to have a hump-back,--not at the shoulders, but the loins. 111. here, then, is a case in which you will see the exact function that anatomy should take in art. all the most scientific anatomy in the world would never have taught bewick, much less you, how to draw a frog. but when once you _have_ drawn him, or looked at him, so as to know his points, it then becomes entirely interesting to find out _why_ he has a hump-back. so i went myself yesterday to professor rolleston for a little anatomy, just as i should have gone to professor phillips for a little geology; and the professor brought me a fine little active frog; and we put him on the table, and made him jump all over it, and then the professor brought in a charming squelette of a frog, and showed me that he needed a projecting bone from his rump, as a bird needs it from its breast,--the one to attach the strong muscles of the hind legs, as the other to attach those of the fore legs or wings. so that the entire leaping power of the frog is in his hump-back, as the flying power of the bird is in its breast-bone. and thus this frog parliament is most literally a rump parliament--everything depending on the hind legs, and nothing on the brains; which makes it wonderfully like some other parliaments we know of nowadays, with mr. ayrton and mr. lowe for their æsthetic and acquisitive eyes, and a rump of railway directors. 112. now, to conclude, for want of time only--i have but touched on the beginning of my subject,--understand clearly and finally this simple principle of all art, that the best is that which realizes absolutely, if possible. here is a viper by carpaccio: you are afraid to go near it. here is an arm-chair by carpaccio: you who came in late, and are standing, to my regret, would like to sit down in it. this is consummate art; but you can only have that with consummate means, and exquisitely trained and hereditary mental power. with inferior means, and average mental power, you must be content to give a rude abstraction; but if rude abstraction _is_ to be made, think what a difference there must be between a wise man's and a fool's; and consider what heavy responsibility lies upon you in your youth, to determine, among realities, by what you will be delighted, and, among imaginations, by whose you will be led. footnotes: [q] by mr. burgess. the toil and skill necessary to produce a facsimile of this degree of precision will only be recognized by the reader who has had considerable experience of actual work. [r] the ordinary title-page of punch. [s] in the lecture-room, the relative rates of execution were shown; i arrive at this estimate by timing the completion of two small pieces of shade in the two methods. [t] john bull, as sir oliver surface, with sir peter teazle and joseph surface. it appeared in punch, early in 1863. [u] in preparing these passages for the press, i feel perpetual need of qualifications and limitations, for it is impossible to surpass the humor, or precision of expressional touch, in the really golden parts of tenniel's works; and they _may_ be immortal, as representing what is best in their day. [v] from bewick's æsop's fables. [w] see _ante_, § 43. lecture iv. the technics of metal engraving. 113. we are to-day to examine the proper methods for the technical management of the most perfect of the arms of precision possessed by the artist. for you will at once understand that a line cut by a finely-pointed instrument upon the smooth surface of metal is susceptible of the utmost fineness that can be given to the _definite_ work of the human hand. in drawing with pen upon paper, the surface of the paper is slightly rough; necessarily, two points touch it instead of one, and the liquid flows from them more or less irregularly, whatever the draughtsman's skill. but you cut a metallic surface with one edge only; the furrow drawn by a skater on the surface of ice is like it on a large scale. your surface is polished, and your line may be wholly faultless, if your hand is. 114. and because, in such material, effects may be produced which no penmanship could rival, most people, i fancy, think that a steel plate half engraves itself; that the workman has no trouble with it, compared to that of a pen draughtsman. to test your feeling in this matter accurately, here is a manuscript book written with pen and ink, and illustrated with flourishes and vignettes. you will all, i think, be disposed, on examining it, to exclaim, how wonderful! and even to doubt the possibility of every page in the book being completed in the same manner. again, here are three of my own drawings, executed with the pen, and indian ink, when i was fifteen. they are copies from large lithographs by prout; and i imagine that most of my pupils would think me very tyrannical if i requested them to do anything of the kind themselves. and yet, when you see in the shop windows a line engraving like this,[x] or this,[x] either of which contains, alone, as much work as fifty pages of the manuscript book, or fifty such drawings as mine, you look upon its effect as quite a matter of course,--you never say 'how wonderful' _that_ is, nor consider how you would like to have to live, by producing anything of the same kind yourselves. [illustration: ii. the star of florence.] 115. yet you cannot suppose it is in reality easier to draw a line with a cutting point, not seeing the effect at all, or, if any effect, seeing a gleam of light instead of darkness, than to draw your black line at once on the white paper? you cannot really think[y] that there is something complacent, sympathetic, and helpful in the nature of steel; so that while a pen-and-ink sketch may always be considered an achievement proving cleverness in the sketcher, a sketch on steel comes out by mere favor of the indulgent metal; or that the plate is woven like a piece of pattern silk, and the pattern is developed by pasteboard cards punched full of holes? not so. look close at this engraving, or take a smaller and simpler one, turner's mercury and argus,--imagine it to be a drawing in pen and ink, and yourself required similarly to produce its parallel! true, the steel point has the one advantage of not blotting, but it has tenfold or twentyfold disadvantage, in that you cannot slur, nor efface, except in a very resolute and laborious way, nor play with it, nor even see what you are doing with it at the moment, far less the effect that is to be. you must _feel_ what you are doing with it, and know precisely what you have got to do; how deep, how broad, how far apart your lines must be, etc. and etc., (a couple of lines of etceteras would not be enough to imply all you must know). but suppose the plate _were_ only a pen drawing: take your pen--your finest--and just try to copy the leaves that entangle the head of io, and her head itself; remembering always that the kind of work required here is mere child's play compared to that of fine figure engraving. nevertheless, take a small magnifying glass to this--count the dots and lines that gradate the nostrils and the edges of the facial bone; notice how the light is left on the top of the head by the stopping, at its outline, of the coarse touches which form the shadows under the leaves; examine it well, and then--i humbly ask of you--try to do a piece of it yourself! you clever sketcher--you young lady or gentleman of genius--you eye-glassed dilettante--you current writer of criticism royally plural,--i beseech you,--do it yourself; do the merely etched outline yourself, if no more. look you,--you hold your etching needle this way, as you would a pencil, nearly; and then,--you scratch with it! it is as easy as lying. or if you think that too difficult, take an easier piece;--take either of the light sprays of foliage that rise against the fortress on the right, pass your lens over them--look how their fine outline is first drawn, leaf by leaf; then how the distant rock is put in between, with broken lines, mostly stopping before they touch the leaf-outline; and again, i pray you, do it yourself,--if not on that scale, on a larger. go on into the hollows of the distant rock,--traverse its thickets,--number its towers;--count how many lines there are in a laurel bush--in an arch--in a casement; some hundred and fifty, or two hundred, deliberately drawn lines, you will find, in every square quarter of an inch;--say _three thousand to the inch_,--each, with skillful intent, put in its place! and then consider what the ordinary sketcher's work must appear, to the men who have been trained to this! 116. "but might not more have been done by three thousand lines to a square inch?" you will perhaps ask. well, possibly. it may be with lines as with soldiers: three hundred, knowing their work thoroughly, may be stronger than three thousand less sure of their aim. we shall have to press close home this question about numbers and purpose presently;--it is not the question now. suppose certain results required,--atmospheric effects, surface textures, transparencies of shade, confusions of light,--then, more could _not_ be done with less. there are engravings of this modern school, of which, with respect to their particular aim, it may be said, most truly, they "cannot be better done." here is one just finished,--or, at least, finished to the eyes of ordinary mortals, though its fastidious master means to retouch it;--a quite pure line engraving, by mr. charles henry jeens; (in calling it pure line, i mean that there are no mixtures of mezzotint or any mechanical tooling, but all is steady hand-work,) from a picture by mr. armytage, which, without possessing any of the highest claims to admiration, is yet free from the vulgar vices which disgrace most of our popular religious art; and is so sweet in the fancy of it as to deserve, better than many works of higher power, the pains of the engraver to make it a common possession. it is meant to help us to imagine the evening of the day when the father and mother of christ had been seeking him through jerusalem: they have come to a well where women are drawing water; st. joseph passes on,--but the tired madonna, leaning on the well's margin, asks wistfully of the women if they have seen such and such a child astray. now will you just look for a while into the lines by which the expression of the weary and anxious face is rendered; see how unerring they are,--how calm and clear; and think how many questions have to be determined in drawing the most minute portion of any one,--its curve,--its thickness,--its distance from the next,--its own preparation for ending, invisibly, where it ends. think what the precision must be in these that trace the edge of the lip, and make it look quivering with disappointment, or in these which have made the eyelash heavy with restrained tears. 117. or if, as must be the case with many of my audience, it is impossible for you to conceive the difficulties here overcome, look merely at the draperies, and other varied substances represented in the plate; see how silk, and linen, and stone, and pottery, and flesh, are all separated in texture, and gradated in light, by the most subtle artifices and appliances of line,--of which artifices, and the nature of the mechanical labor throughout, i must endeavor to give you to-day a more distinct conception than you are in the habit of forming. but as i shall have to blame some of these methods in their general result, and i do not wish any word of general blame to be associated with this most excellent and careful plate by mr. jeens, i will pass, for special examination, to one already in your reference series, which for the rest exhibits more various treatment in its combined landscape, background, and figures; the belle jardinière of raphael, drawn and engraved by the baron desnoyers. you see, in the first place, that the ground, stones, and other coarse surfaces are distinguished from the flesh and draperies by broken and wriggled lines. those broken lines cannot be executed with the burin, they are etched in the early states of the plate, and are a modern artifice, never used by old engravers; partly because the older men were not masters of the art of etching, but chiefly because even those who were acquainted with it would not employ lines of this nature. they have been developed by the importance of landscape in modern engraving, and have produced some valuable results in small plates, especially of architecture. but they are entirely erroneous in principle, for the surface of stones and leaves is not broken or jagged in this manner, but consists of mossy, or blooming, or otherwise organic texture, which cannot be represented by these coarse lines; their general consequence has therefore been to withdraw the mind of the observer from all beautiful and tender characters in foreground, and eventually to destroy the very school of landscape engraving which gave birth to them. considered, however, as a means of relieving more delicate textures, they are in some degree legitimate, being, in fact, a kind of chasing or jagging one part of the plate surface in order to throw out the delicate tints from the rough field. but the same effect was produced with less pains, and far more entertainment to the eye, by the older engravers, who employed purely ornamental variations of line; thus in plate iv., opposite § 137, the drapery is sufficiently distinguished from the grass by the treatment of the latter as an ornamental arabesque. the grain of wood is elaborately engraved by marc antonio, with the same purpose, in the plate given in your standard series. 118. next, however, you observe what difference of texture and force exists between the smooth, continuous lines themselves, which are all really _engraved_. you must take some pains to understand the nature of this operation. the line is first cut lightly through its whole course, by absolute decision and steadiness of hand, which you may endeavor to imitate if you like, in its simplest phase, by drawing a circle with your compass-pen; and then, grasping your penholder so that you can push the point like a plow, describing other circles inside or outside of it, in exact parallelism with the mathematical line, and at exactly equal distances. to approach, or depart, with your point at finely gradated intervals, may be your next exercise, if you find the first unexpectedly easy. 119. when the line is thus described in its proper course, it is plowed deeper, where depth is needed, by a second cut of the burin, first on one side, then on the other, the cut being given with gradated force so as to take away most steel where the line is to be darkest. every line of gradated depth in the plate has to be thus cut eight or ten times over at least, with retouchings to smooth and clear all in the close. jason has to plow his field ten-furrow deep, with his fiery oxen well in hand, all the while. when the essential lines are thus produced in their several directions, those which have been drawn across each other, so as to give depth of shade, or richness of texture, have to be farther enriched by dots in the interstices; else there would be a painful appearance of network everywhere; and these dots require each four or five jags to produce them; and each of these jags must be done with what artists and engravers alike call 'feeling,'--the sensibility, that is, of a hand completely under mental government. so wrought, the dots look soft, and like touches of paint; but mechanically dug in, they are vulgar and hard. 120. now, observe, that, for every piece of shadow throughout the work, the engraver has to decide with what quantity and kind of line he will produce it. exactly the same quantity of black, and therefore the same depth of tint in general effect, may be given with six thick lines; or with twelve, of half their thickness; or with eighteen, of a third of the thickness. the second six, second twelve, or second eighteen, may cross the first six, first twelve, or first eighteen, or go between them; and they may cross at any angle. and then the third six may be put between the first six, or between the second six, or across both, and at any angle. in the network thus produced, any kind of dots may be put in the severally shaped interstices. and for any of the series of superadded lines, dots, of equivalent value in shade, may be substituted. (some engravings are wrought in dots altogether.) choice infinite, with multiplication of infinity, is, at all events, to be made, for every minute space, from one side of the plate to the other. 121. the excellence of a beautiful engraving is primarily in the use of these resources to exhibit the qualities of the original picture, with delight to the eye in the method of translation; and the language of engraving, when once you begin to understand it, is, in these respects, so fertile, so ingenious, so ineffably subtle and severe in its grammar, that you may quite easily make it the subject of your life's investigation, as you would the scholarship of a lovely literature. but in doing this, you would withdraw, and necessarily withdraw, your attention from the higher qualities of art, precisely as a grammarian, who is that, and nothing more, loses command of the matter and substance of thought. and the exquisitely mysterious mechanisms of the engraver's method have, in fact, thus entangled the intelligence of the careful draughtsmen of europe; so that since the final perfection of this translator's power, all the men of finest patience and finest hand have stayed content with it;--the subtlest draughtsmanship has perished from the canvas,[z] and sought more popular praise in this labyrinth of disciplined language, and more or less dulled or degraded thought. and, in sum, i know no cause more direct or fatal, in the destruction of the great schools of european art, than the perfectness of modern line engraving. 122. this great and profoundly to be regretted influence i will prove and illustrate to you on another occasion. my object to-day is to explain the perfectness of the art itself; and above all to request you, if you will not look at pictures instead of photographs, at least not to allow the cheap merits of the chemical operation to withdraw your interest from the splendid human labor of the engraver. here is a little vignette from stothard, for instance, in rogers' poems, to the lines, "soared in the swing, half pleased and half afraid, 'neath sister elms, that waved their summer shade." you would think, would you not? (and rightly,) that of all difficult things to express with crossed black lines and dots, the face of a young girl must be the most difficult. yet here you have the face of a bright girl, radiant in light, transparent, mysterious, almost breathing,--her dark hair involved in delicate wreath and shade, her eyes full of joy and sweet playfulness,--and all this done by the exquisite order and gradation of a very few lines, which, if you will examine them through a lens, you find dividing and checkering the lip, and cheek, and chin, so strongly that you would have fancied they could only produce the effect of a grim iron mask. but the intelligences of order and form guide them into beauty, and inflame them with delicatest life. 123. and do you see the size of this head? about as large as the bud of a forget-me-not! can you imagine the fineness of the little pressures of the hand on the steel, in that space, which at the edge of the almost invisible lip, fashioned its less or more of smile? my chemical friends, if you wish ever to know anything rightly concerning the arts, i very urgently advise you to throw all your vials and washes down the gutter-trap; and if you will ascribe, as you think it so clever to do, in your modern creeds, all virtue to the sun, use that virtue through your own heads and fingers, and apply your solar energies to draw a skillful line or two, for once or twice in your life. you may learn more by trying to engrave, like goodall, the tip of an ear, or the curl of a lock of hair, than by photographing the entire population of the united states of america,--black, white, and neutral-tint. and one word, by the way, touching the complaints i hear at my having set you to so fine work that it hurts your eyes. you have noticed that all great sculptors--and most of the great painters of florence--began by being goldsmiths. why do you think the goldsmith's apprenticeship is so fruitful? primarily, because it forces the boy to do small work, and mind what he is about. do you suppose michael angelo learned his business by dashing or hitting at it? he laid the foundation of all his after power by doing precisely what i am requiring my own pupils to do,--copying german engravings in facsimile! and for your eyes--you all sit up at night till you haven't got any eyes worth speaking of. go to bed at half-past nine, and get up at four, and you'll see something out of them, in time. 124. nevertheless, whatever admiration you may be brought to feel, and with justice, for this lovely workmanship,--the more distinctly you comprehend its merits, the more distinctly also will the question rise in your mind, how is it that a performance so marvelous has yet taken no rank in the records of art of any permanent or acknowledged kind? how is it that these vignettes from stothard and turner,[aa] like the woodcuts from tenniel, scarcely make the name of the engraver known; and that they never are found side by side with this older and apparently ruder art, in the cabinets of men of real judgment? the reason is precisely the same as in the case of the tenniel woodcut. this modern line engraving is alloyed gold. rich in capacity, astonishing in attainment, it nevertheless admits willful fault, and misses what it ought first to have attained. it is therefore, to a certain measure, vile in its perfection; while the older work is noble even in its failure, and classic no less in what it deliberately refuses, than in what it rationally and rightly prefers and performs. 125. here, for instance, i have enlarged the head of one of dürer's madonnas for you out of one of his most careful plates.[ab] you think it very ugly. well, so it is. don't be afraid to think so, nor to say so. frightfully ugly; vulgar also. it is the head, simply, of a fat dutch girl, with all the pleasantness left out. there is not the least doubt about that. don't let anybody force albert dürer down your throats; nor make you expect pretty things from him. stothard's young girl in the swing, or sir joshua's age of innocence, is in quite angelic sphere of another world, compared to this black domain of poor, laborious albert. we are not talking of female beauty, so please you, just now, gentlemen, but of engraving. and the merit, the classical, indefeasible, immortal merit of this head of a dutch girl with all the beauty left out, is in the fact that every line of it, as engraving, is as good as can be;--good, not with the mechanical dexterity of a watch-maker, but with the intellectual effort and sensitiveness of an artist who knows precisely what can be done, and ought to be attempted, with his assigned materials. he works easily, fearlessly, flexibly; the dots are not all measured in distance; the lines not all mathematically parallel or divergent. he has even missed his mark at the mouth in one place, and leaves the mistake, frankly. but there are no petrified mistakes; nor is the eye so accustomed to the look of the mechanical furrow as to accept it for final excellence. the engraving is full of the painter's higher power and wider perception; it is classically perfect, because duly subordinate, and presenting for your applause only the virtues proper to its own sphere. among these, i must now reiterate, the first of all is the _decorative_ arrangement of _lines_. 126. you all know what a pretty thing a damask tablecloth is, and how a pattern is brought out by threads running one way in one space, and across in another. so, in lace, a certain delightfulness is given by the texture of meshed lines. similarly, on any surface of metal, the object of the engraver is, or ought to be, to cover it with lovely _lines_, forming a lace-work, and including a variety of spaces, delicious to the eye. and this is his business, primarily; before any other matter can be thought of, his work must be ornamental. you know i told you a sculptor's business is first to cover a surface with pleasant _bosses_, whether they mean anything or not; so an engraver's is to cover it with pleasant _lines_, whether they mean anything or not. that they should mean something, and a good deal of something, is indeed desirable afterwards; but first we must be ornamental. 127. now if you will compare plate ii. at the beginning of this lecture, which is a characteristic example of good florentine engraving, and represents the planet and power of aphrodite, with the aphrodite of bewick in the upper division of plate i., you will at once understand the difference between a primarily ornamental, and a primarily realistic, style. the first requirement in the florentine work, is that it shall be a lovely arrangement of lines; a pretty thing upon a page. bewick _has_ a secondary notion of making his vignette a pretty thing upon a page. but he is overpowered by his vigorous veracity, and bent first on giving you his idea of venus. quite right, he would have been, mind you, if he had been carving a statue of her on mount eryx; but not when he was engraving a vignette to æsop's fables. to engrave well is to ornament a surface well, not to create a realistic impression. i beg your pardon for my repetitions; but the point at issue is the root of the whole business, and i _must_ get it well asserted, and variously. let me pass to a more important example. 128. three years ago, in the rough first arrangement of the copies in the educational series, i put an outline of the top of apollo's scepter, which, in the catalogue, was said to be probably by baccio bandini of florence, for your first real exercise; it remains so, the olive being put first only for its mythological rank. the series of engravings to which the plate from which that exercise is copied belongs, are part of a number, executed chiefly, i think, from early designs of sandro botticelli, and some in great part by his hand. he and his assistant, baccio, worked together; and in such harmony, that bandini probably often does what sandro wants, better than sandro could have done it himself; and, on the other hand, there is no design of bandini's over which sandro does not seem to have had influence. and wishing now to show you three examples of the finest work of the old, the renaissance, and the modern schools,--of the old, i will take baccio bandini's astrologia, plate iii., opposite. of the renaissance, dürer's adam and eve. and of the modern, this head of the daughter of herodias, engraved from luini by beaugrand, which is as affectionately and sincerely wrought, though in the modern manner, as any plate of the old schools. [illustration: iii. "at ev'ning from the top of fésole."] 129. now observe the progress of the feeling for light and shade in the three examples. the first is nearly all white paper; you think of the outline as the constructive element throughout. the second is a vigorous piece of _white_ and _black_--not of _light_ and _shade_,--for all the high lights are equally white, whether of flesh, or leaves, or goat's hair. the third is complete in chiaroscuro, as far as engraving can be. now the dignity and virtue of the plates is in the exactly inverse ratio of their fullness in chiaroscuro. bandini's is excellent work, and of the very highest school. dürer's entirely accomplished work, but of an inferior school. and beaugrand's, excellent work, but of a vulgar and non-classical school. and these relations of the schools are to be determined by the quality in the _lines_; we shall find that in proportion as the light and shade is neglected, the lines are studied; that those of bandini are perfect; of dürer perfect, only with a lower perfection; but of beaugrand, entirely faultful. 130. i have just explained to you that in modern engraving the lines are cut in clean furrow, widened, it may be, by successive cuts; but, whether it be fine or thick, retaining always, when printed, the aspect of a continuous line drawn with the pen, and entirely black throughout its whole course. now we may increase the delicacy of this line to any extent by simply printing it in gray color instead of black. i obtained some very beautiful results of this kind in the later volumes of 'modern painters,' with mr. armytage's help, by using subdued purple tints; but, in any case, the line thus engraved must be monotonous in its character, and cannot be expressive of the finest qualities of form. accordingly, the old florentine workmen constructed the line _itself_, in important places, of successive minute touches, so that it became a chain of delicate links which could be opened or closed at pleasure.[ac] if you will examine through a lens the outline of the face of this astrology, you will find it is traced with an exquisite series of minute touches, susceptible of accentuation or change absolutely at the engraver's pleasure; and, in result, corresponding to the finest conditions of a pencil line drawing by a consummate master. in the fine plates of this period, you have thus the united powers of the pen and pencil, and both absolutely secure and multipliable. 131. i am a little proud of having independently discovered, and had the patience to carry out, this florentine method of execution for myself, when i was a boy of thirteen. my good drawing-master had given me some copies calculated to teach me freedom of hand; the touches were rapid and vigorous,--many of them in mechanically regular zigzags, far beyond any capacity of mine to imitate in the bold way in which they were done. but i was resolved to have them, somehow; and actually facsimiled a considerable portion of the drawing in the florentine manner, with the finest point i could cut to my pencil, taking a quarter of an hour to forge out the likeness of one return in the zigzag which my master carried down through twenty returns in two seconds; and so successfully, that he did not detect my artifice till i showed it him,--on which he forbade me ever to do the like again. and it was only thirty years afterwards that i found i had been quite right after all, and working like baccio bandini! but the patience which carried me through that early effort, served me well through all the thirty years, and enabled me to analyze, and in a measure imitate, the method of work employed by every master; so that, whether you believe me or not at first, you will find what i tell you of their superiority, or inferiority, to be true. 132. when lines are studied with this degree of care, you may be sure the master will leave room enough for you to see them and enjoy them, and not use any at random. all the finest engravers, therefore, leave much white paper, and use their entire power on the outlines. 133. next to them come the men of the renaissance schools, headed by dürer, who, less careful of the beauty and refinement of the line, delight in its vigor, accuracy, and complexity. and the essential difference between these men and the moderns is that these central masters cut their line for the most part with a single furrow, giving it depth by force of hand or wrist, and retouching, _not in the furrow itself, but with others beside it_.[ad] such work can only be done well on copper, and it can display all faculty of hand or wrist, precision of eye, and accuracy of knowledge, which a human creature can possess. but the dotted or hatched line is not used in this central style, and the higher conditions of beauty never thought of. in the astrology of bandini,--and remember that the astrologia of the florentine meant what we mean by astronomy, and much more,--he wishes you first to look at the face: the lip half open, faltering in wonder; the amazed, intense, dreaming gaze; the pure dignity of forehead, undisturbed by terrestrial thought. none of these things could be so much as attempted in dürer's method; he can engrave flowing hair, skin of animals, bark of trees, wreathings of metal-work, with the free hand; also, with labored chiaroscuro, or with sturdy line, he can reach expressions of sadness, or gloom, or pain, or soldierly strength,--but pure beauty,--never. 134. lastly, you have the modern school, deepening its lines in successive cuts. the instant consequence of the introduction of this method is the restriction of curvature; you cannot follow a complex curve again with precision through its furrow. if you are a dextrous plowman, you can drive your plow any number of times along the simple curve. but you cannot repeat again exactly the motions which cut a variable one.[ae] you may retouch it, energize it, and deepen it in parts, but you cannot cut it all through again equally. and the retouching and energizing in parts is a living and intellectual process; but the cutting all through, equally, a mechanical one. the difference is exactly such as that between the dexterity of turning out two similar moldings from a lathe, and carving them with the free hand, like a pisan sculptor. and although splendid intellect, and subtlest sensibility, have been spent on the production of some modern plates, the mechanical element introduced by their manner of execution always overpowers both; nor _can any plate of consummate value ever be produced in the modern method_. 135. nevertheless, in landscape, there are two examples in your reference series, of insuperable skill and extreme beauty: miller's plate, before instanced, of the grand canal, venice; and e. goodall's of the upper fall of the tees. the men who engraved these plates might have been exquisite artists; but their patience and enthusiasm were held captive in the false system of lines, and we lost the painters; while the engravings, wonderful as they are, are neither of them worth a turner etching, scratched in ten minutes with the point of an old fork; and the common types of such elaborate engraving are none of them worth a single frog, pig, or puppy, out of the corner of a bewick vignette. 136. and now, i think, you cannot fail to understand clearly what you are to look for in engraving, as a separate art from that of painting. turn back to the 'astrologia' as a perfect type of the purest school. she is gazing at stars, and crowned with them. but the stars are _black_ instead of shining! you cannot have a more decisive and absolute proof that you must not look in engraving for chiaroscuro. nevertheless, her body is half in shade, and her left foot; and she casts a shadow, and there is a bar of shade behind her. all these are merely so much acceptance of shade as may relieve the forms, and give value to the linear portions. the face, though turned from the light, is shadowless. again. every lock of the hair is designed and set in its place with the subtlest care, but there is no luster attempted,--no texture,--no mystery. the plumes of the wings are set studiously in their places,--they, also, lusterless. that even their filaments are not drawn, and that the broad curve embracing them ignores the anatomy of a bird's wing, are conditions of design, not execution. of these in a future lecture.[af] [illustration: iv. "by the springs of parnassus."] 137. the 'poesia,' plate iv., opposite, is a still more severe, though not so generic, an example; its decorative foreground reducing it almost to the rank of goldsmith's ornamentation. i need scarcely point out to you that the flowing water shows neither luster nor reflection; but notice that the observer's attention is supposed to be so close to every dark touch of the graver that he will see the minute dark spots which indicate the sprinkled shower falling from the vase into the pool. 138. this habit of strict and calm attention, constant in the artist, and expected in the observer, makes all the difference between the art of intellect, and of mere sensation. for every detail of this plate has a meaning, if you care to understand it. this is poetry, sitting by the fountain of castalia, which flows first out of a formal urn, to show that it is not artless; but the rocks of parnassus are behind, and on the top of them--only one tree, like a mushroom with a thick stalk. you at first are inclined to say, how very absurd, to put only one tree on parnassus! but this one tree is the immortal plane tree, planted by agamemnon, and at once connects our poesia with the iliad. then, this is the hem of the robe of poetry,--this is the divine vegetation which springs up under her feet,--this is the heaven and earth united by her power,--this is the fountain of castalia flowing out afresh among the grass,--and these are the drops with which, out of a pitcher, poetry is nourishing the fountain of castalia. all which you may find out if you happen to know anything about castalia, or about poetry; and pleasantly think more upon, for yourself. but the poor dunces, sandro and baccio, feeling themselves but 'goffi nell' arte,' have no hope of telling you all this, except suggestively. they can't engrave grass of parnassus, nor sweet springs so as to look like water; but they can make a pretty damasked surface with ornamental leaves, and flowing lines, and so leave you something to think of--if you will. 139. 'but a great many people won't, and a great many more can't; and surely the finished engravings are much more delightful, and the only means we have of giving any idea of finished pictures, out of our reach.' yes, all that is true; and when we examine the effects of line engraving upon taste in recent art, we will discuss these matters; for the present, let us be content with knowing what the best work is, and why it is so. although, however, i do not now press further my cavils at the triumph of modern line engraving, i must assign to you, in few words, the reason of its recent decline. engravers complain that photography and cheap wood-cutting have ended their finer craft. no complaint can be less grounded. they themselves destroyed their own craft, by vulgarizing it. content in their beautiful mechanism, they ceased to learn, and to feel, as artists; they put themselves under the order of publishers and print-sellers; they worked indiscriminately from whatever was put into their hands,--from bartlett as willingly as from turner, and from mulready as carefully as from raphael. they filled the windows of print-sellers, the pages of gift books, with elaborate rubbish, and piteous abortions of delicate industry. they worked cheap, and cheaper,--smoothly, and more smoothly,--they got armies of assistants, and surrounded themselves with schools of mechanical tricksters, learning their stale tricks with blundering avidity. they had fallen--before the days of photography--into providers of frontispieces for housekeepers' pocket-books. i do not know if photography itself, their redoubted enemy, has even now ousted them from that last refuge. 140. such the fault of the engraver,--very pardonable; scarcely avoidable,--however fatal. fault mainly of humility. but what has _your_ fault been, gentlemen? what the patrons' fault, who have permitted so wide waste of admirable labor, so pathetic a uselessness of obedient genius? it was yours to have directed, yours to have raised and rejoiced in, the skill, the modesty, the patience of this entirely gentle and industrious race;--copyists with their _heart_. the common painter-copyists who encumber our european galleries with their easels and pots, are, almost without exception, persons too stupid to be painters, and too lazy to be engravers. the real copyists--the men who can put their soul into another's work--are employed at home, in their narrow rooms, striving to make their good work profitable to all men. and in their submission to the public taste they are truly national servants as much as prime ministers are. they fulfill the demand of the nation; what, as a people, you wish to have for possession in art, these men are ready to give you. and what have you hitherto asked of them?--ramsgate sands, and dolly vardens, and the paddington station,--these, i think, are typical of your chief demands; the cartoons of raphael--which you don't care to see themselves; and, by way of a flight into the empyrean, the madonna di san sisto. and literally, there are hundreds of cities and villages in italy in which roof and wall are blazoned with the noblest divinity and philosophy ever imagined by men; and of all this treasure, i can, as far as i know, give you not _one_ example, in line engraving, by an english hand! well, you are in the main matter right in this. you want essentially ramsgate sands and the paddington station, because there you can see yourselves. make yourselves, then, worthy to be seen forever, and let english engraving become noble as the record of english loveliness and honor. footnotes: [x] miller's large plate of the grand canal, venice, after turner; and goodall's, of tivoli, after turner. the other examples referred to are left in the university galleries. [y] this paragraph was not read at the lecture, time not allowing:--it is part of what i wrote on engraving some years ago, in the papers for the art journal, called the cestus of aglaia. (refer now to "on the old road.") [z] an effort has lately been made in france, by meissonier, gérome, and their school, to recover it, with marvelous collateral skill of engravers. the etching of gérome's louis xiv. and molière is one of the completest pieces of skillful mechanism ever put on metal. [aa] i must again qualify the too sweeping statement of the text. i think, as time passes, some of these nineteenth century line engravings will become monumental. the first vignette of the garden, with the cut hedges and fountain, for instance, in rogers' poems, is so consummate in its use of every possible artifice of delicate line, (note the look of _tremulous_ atmosphere got by the undulatory etched lines on the pavement, and the broken masses, worked with dots, of the fountain foam,) that i think it cannot but, with some of its companions, survive the refuse of its school, and become classic. i find in like manner, even with all their faults and weaknesses, the vignettes to heyne's virgil to be real art-possessions. [ab] plate xi., in the appendix, taken from the engraving of the virgin sitting in the fenced garden, with two angels crowning her. [ac] the method was first developed in engraving designs on silver--numbers of lines being executed with dots by the punch, for variety's sake. for niello, and printing, a transverse cut was substituted for the blow. the entire style is connected with the later roman and byzantine method of drawing lines with the drill hole, in marble. see above, lecture ii., section 70. [ad] this most important and distinctive character was pointed out to me by mr. burgess. [ae] this point will be further examined and explained in the appendix. [af] see appendix, article i. lecture v. design in the german schools of engraving. 141. by reference to the close of the preface to 'eagle's nest,' you will see, gentlemen, that i meant these lectures, from the first, rather to lead you to the study of the characters of two great men, than to interest you in the processes of a secondary form of art. as i draw my materials into the limited form necessary for the hour, i find my divided purpose doubly failing; and would fain rather use my time to-day in supplying the defects of my last lecture, than in opening the greater subject, which i must treat with still more lamentable inadequacy. nevertheless, you must not think it is for want of time that i omit reference to other celebrated engravers, and insist on the special power of these two only. many not inconsiderable reputations are founded merely on the curiosity of collectors of prints, or on partial skill in the management of processes; others, though resting on more secure bases, are still of no importance to you in the general history of art; whereas you will find the work of holbein and botticelli determining for you, without need of any farther range, the principal questions of moment in the relation of the northern and southern schools of design. nay, a wider method of inquiry would only render your comparison less accurate in result. it is only in holbein's majestic range of capacity, and only in the particular phase of teutonic life which his art adorned, that the problem can be dealt with on fair terms. we northerns can advance no fairly comparable antagonist to the artists of the south, except at that one moment, and in that one man. rubens cannot for an instant be matched with tintoret, nor memling with lippi; while reynolds only rivals titian in what he learned from him. but in holbein and botticelli we have two men trained independently, equal in power of intellect, similar in material and mode of work, contemporary in age, correspondent in disposition. the relation between them is strictly typical of the constant aspects to each other of the northern and southern schools. 142. their point of closest contact is in the art of engraving, and this art is developed entirely as the servant of the great passions which perturbed or polluted europe in the fifteenth century. the impulses which it obeys are all new; and it obeys them with its own nascent plasticity of temper. painting and sculpture are only modified by them; but engraving is educated. these passions are in the main three; namely, 1. the thirst for classical literature, and the forms of proud and false taste which arose out of it, in the position it had assumed as the enemy of christianity. 2. the pride of science, enforcing (in the particular domain of art) accuracy of perspective, shade, and anatomy, never before dreamed of. 3. the sense of error and iniquity in the theological teaching of the christian church, felt by the highest intellects of the time, and necessarily rendering the formerly submissive religious art impossible. to-day, then, our task is to examine the peculiar characters of the design of the northern schools of engraving, as affected by these great influences. 143. i have not often, however, used the word 'design,' and must clearly define the sense in which i now use it. it is vaguely used in common art-parlance; often as if it meant merely the drawing of a picture, as distinct from its color; and in other still more inaccurate ways. the accurate and proper sense, underlying all these, i must endeavor to make clear to you. 'design' properly signifies that power in any art-work which has a purpose other than of imitation, and which is 'designed,' composed, or separated to that end. it implies the rejection of some things, and the insistence upon others, with a given object.[ag] let us take progressive instances. here is a group of prettily dressed peasant children, charmingly painted by a very able modern artist--not absolutely without design, for he really wishes to show you how pretty peasant children can be, (and, in so far, is wiser and kinder than murillo, who likes to show how ugly they can be); also, his group is agreeably arranged, and its component children carefully chosen. nevertheless, any summer's day, near any country village, you may come upon twenty groups in an hour as pretty as this; and may see--if you have eyes--children in them twenty times prettier than these. a photograph, if it could render them perfectly, and in color, would far excel the charm of this painting; for in it, good and clever as it is, there is nothing supernatural, and much that is subnatural. 144. beside this group of, in every sense of the word, 'artless' little country girls, i will now set one--in the best sense of the word--'artful' little country girl,--a sketch by gainsborough. you never saw her like before. never will again, now that gainsborough is dead. no photography,--no science,--no industry, will touch or reach for an instant this _super_-naturalness. you will look vainly through the summer fields for such a child. "nor up the lawn, nor by the wood," is she. whence do you think this marvelous charm has come? alas! if we knew, would not we all be gainsboroughs? this only you may practically ascertain, as surely as that a flower will die if you cut its root away, that you cannot alter a single touch in gainsborough's work without injury to the whole. half a dozen spots, more or less, in the printed gowns of these other children whom i first showed you, will not make the smallest difference to them; nor a lock or two more or less in their hair, nor a dimple or two more or less in their cheeks. but if you alter one wave of the hair of gainsborough's girl, the child is gone. yet the art is so subtle, that i do not expect you to believe this. it looks so instinctive, so easy, so 'chanceux,'--the french word is better than ours. yes, and in their more accurate sense, also, 'il a de la chance.' a stronger designer than he was with him. he could not tell you himself how the thing was done. 145. i proceed to take a more definite instance--this greek head of the lacinian juno. the design or appointing of the forms now entirely prevails over the resemblance to nature. no real hair could ever be drifted into these wild lines, which mean the wrath of the adriatic winds round the cape of storms. and yet, whether this be uglier or prettier than gainsborough's child--(and you know already what i think about it, that no greek goddess was ever half so pretty as an english girl, of pure clay and temper,)--uglier or prettier, it is more dignified and impressive. it at least belongs to the domain of a lordlier, more majestic, more guiding and ordaining art. 146. i will go back another five hundred years, and place an egyptian beside the greek divinity. the resemblance to nature is now all but lost, the ruling law has become all. the lines are reduced to an easily counted number, and their arrangement is little more than a decorative sequence of pleasant curves cut in porphyry,--in the upper part of their contour following the outline of a woman's face in profile, over-crested by that of a hawk, on a kind of pedestal. but that the sign-engraver meant by his hawk, immortality, and by her pedestal, the house or tavern of truth, is of little importance now to the passing traveler, not yet preparing to take the sarcophagus for his place of rest. 147. how many questions are suggested to us by these transitions! is beauty contrary to law, and grace attainable only through license? what we gain in language, shall we lose in thought? and in what we add of labor, more and more forget its ends? not so. look at this piece of sandro's work, the libyan sibyl.[ah] it is as ordered and normal as the egyptian's--as graceful and facile as gainsborough's. it retains the majesty of old religion; it is invested with the joy of newly awakened childhood. mind, i do not expect you--do not wish you--to enjoy botticelli's dark engraving as much as gainsborough's aerial sketch; for due comparison of the men, painting should be put beside painting. but there is enough even in this copy of the florentine plate to show you the junction of the two powers in it--of prophecy, and delight. 148. will these two powers, do you suppose, be united in the same manner in the contemporary northern art? that northern school is my subject to-day; and yet i give you, as type of the intermediate condition between egypt and england--not holbein, but botticelli. i am obliged to do this; because in the southern art, the religious temper remains unconquered by the doctrines of the reformation. botticelli was--what luther wished to be, but could not be--a reformer still believing in the church: his mind is at peace; and his art, therefore, can pursue the delight of beauty, and yet remain prophetic. but it was far otherwise in germany. there the reformation of manners became the destruction of faith; and art therefore, not a prophecy, but a protest. it is the chief work of the greatest protestant who ever lived,[ai] which i ask you to study with me to-day. 149. i said that the power of engraving had developed itself during the introduction of three new--(practically and vitally new, that is to say)--elements, into the minds of men: elements which briefly may be expressed thus: 1. classicism, and literary science. 2. medicine, and physical science.[aj] 3. reformation, and religious science. and first of classicism. you feel, do not you, in this typical work of gainsborough's, that his subject as well as his picture is 'artless' in a lovely sense;--nay, not only artless, but ignorant, and unscientific, in a beautiful way? you would be afterwards remorseful, i think, and angry with yourself--seeing the effect produced on her face--if you were to ask this little lady to spell a very long word? also, if you wished to know how many times the sevens go in forty-nine, you would perhaps wisely address yourself elsewhere. on the other hand, you do not doubt that _this_ lady[ak] knows very well how many times the sevens go in forty-nine, and is more mistress of arts than any of us are masters of them. 150. you have then, in the one case, a beautiful simplicity, and a blameless ignorance; in the other, a beautiful artfulness, and a wisdom which you do not dread,--or, at least, even though dreading, love. but you know also that we may remain in a hateful and culpable ignorance; and, as i fear too many of us in competitive effort feel, become possessed of a hateful knowledge. ignorance, therefore, is not evil absolutely; but, innocent, may be lovable. knowledge also is not good absolutely; but, guilty, may be hateful. so, therefore, when i now repeat my former statement, that the first main opposition between the northern and southern schools is in the simplicity of the one, and the scholarship of the other, that statement may imply sometimes the superiority of the north, and sometimes of the south. you may have a heavenly simplicity opposed to a hellish (that is to say, a lustful and arrogant) scholarship; or you may have a barbarous and presumptuous ignorance opposed to a divine and disciplined wisdom. ignorance opposed to learning in both cases; but evil to good, as the case may be. 151. for instance: the last time i was standing before raphael's arabesques in the loggias of the vatican, i wrote down in my pocket-book the description, or, more modestly speaking, the inventory, of the small portion of that infinite wilderness of sensual fantasy which happened to be opposite me. it consisted of a woman's face, with serpents for hair, and a virgin's breasts, with stumps for arms, ending in blue butterflies' wings, the whole changing at the waist into a goat's body, which ended below in an obelisk upside-down, to the apex at the bottom of which were appended, by graceful chains, an altar, and two bunches of grapes. now you know in a moment, by a glance at this 'design'--beautifully struck with free hand, and richly gradated in color,--that the master was familiar with a vast range of art and literature: that he knew all about egyptian sphinxes, and greek gorgons; about egyptian obelisks, and hebrew altars; about hermes, and venus, and bacchus, and satyrs, and goats, and grapes. you know also--or ought to know, in an instant,--that all this learning has done him no good; that he had better have known nothing than any of these things, since they were to be used by him only to such purpose; and that his delight in armless breasts, legless trunks, and obelisks upside-down, has been the last effort of his expiring sensation, in the grasp of corrupt and altogether victorious death. and you have thus, in gainsborough as compared with raphael, a sweet, sacred, and living simplicity, set against an impure, profane, and paralyzed knowledge. 152. but, next, let us consider the reverse conditions. let us take instance of contrast between faultful and treacherous ignorance, and divinely pure and fruitful knowledge. in the place of honor at the end of one of the rooms of your royal academy--years ago--stood a picture by an english academician, announced as a representation of moses sustained by aaron and hur, during the discomfiture of amalek. in the entire range of the pentateuch, there is no other scene (in which the visible agents are mortal only) requiring so much knowledge and thought to reach even a distant approximation to the probabilities of the fact. one saw in a moment that the painter was both powerful and simple, after a sort; that he had really sought for a vital conception, and had originally and earnestly read his text, and formed his conception. and one saw also in a moment that he had chanced upon this subject, in reading or hearing his bible, as he might have chanced on a dramatic scene accidentally in the street. that he knew nothing of the character of moses,--nothing of his law,--nothing of the character of aaron, nor of the nature of a priesthood,--nothing of the meaning of the event which he was endeavoring to represent, of the temper in which it would have been transacted by its agents, or of its relations to modern life. 153. on the contrary, in the fresco of the earlier scenes in the life of moses, by sandro botticelli, you know--not 'in a moment,' for the knowledge of knowledge cannot be so obtained; but in proportion to the discretion of your own reading, and to the care you give to the picture, you _may_ know,--that here is a sacredly guided and guarded learning; here a master indeed, at whose feet you may sit safely, who can teach you, better than in words, the significance of both moses' law and aaron's ministry; and not only these, but, if he chose, could add to this an exposition as complete of the highest philosophies both of the greek nation, and of his own; and could as easily have painted, had it been asked of him, draco, or numa, or justinian, as the herdsman of jethro. 154. it is rarely that we can point to an opposition between faultful, because insolent, ignorance, and virtuous, because gracious, knowledge, so direct, and in so parallel elements, as in this instance. in general, the analysis is much more complex. it is intensely difficult to indicate the mischief of involuntary and modest ignorance, calamitous only in a measure; fruitful in its lower field, yet sorrowfully condemned to that lower field--not by sin, but fate. when first i introduced you to bewick, we closed our too partial estimate of his entirely magnificent powers with one sorrowful concession--he could draw a pig, but not a venus. eminently he could so, because--which is still more sorrowfully to be conceded--he liked the pig best. i have put now in your educational series a whole galaxy of pigs by him; but, hunting all the fables through, i find only one venus, and i think you will all admit that she is an unsatisfactory venus.[al] there is honest simplicity here; but you regret it; you miss something that you find in holbein, much more in botticelli. you see in a moment that this man knows nothing of sphinxes, or muses, or graces, or aphrodites; and, besides, that, knowing nothing, he would have no liking for them even if he saw them; but much prefers the style of a well-to-do english housekeeper with corkscrew curls, and a portly person. 155. you miss something, i said, in bewick which you find in holbein. but do you suppose holbein himself, or any other northern painter, could wholly quit himself of the like accusations? i told you, in the second of these lectures, that the northern temper, refined from savageness, and the southern, redeemed from decay, met, in florence. holbein and botticelli are the purest types of the two races. holbein is a civilized boor; botticelli a reanimate greek. holbein was polished by companionship with scholars and kings, but remains always a burgher of augsburg in essential nature. bewick and he are alike in temper; only the one is untaught, the other perfectly taught. but botticelli _needs_ no teaching. he is, by his birth, scholar and gentleman to the heart's core. christianity itself can only inspire him, not refine him. he is as tried gold chased by the jeweler,--the roughest part of him is the outside. now how differently must the newly recovered scholastic learning tell upon these two men. it is all out of holbein's way; foreign to his nature, useless at the best, probably cumbrous. but botticelli receives it as a child in later years recovers the forgotten dearness of a nursery tale; and is more himself, and again and again himself, as he breathes the air of greece, and hears, in his own italy, the lost voice of the sibyl murmur again by the avernus lake. 156. it is not, as we have seen, every one of the southern race who can thus receive it. but it graces them all; is at once a part of their being; destroys them, if it is to destroy, the more utterly because it so enters into their natures. it destroys raphael; but it graces him, and is a part of him. it all but destroys mantegna; but it graces him. and it does not hurt holbein, just because it does _not_ grace him--never is for an instant a part of him. it is with raphael as with some charming young girl who has a new and beautifully made dress brought to her, which entirely becomes her,--so much, that in a little while, thinking of nothing else, she becomes _it_; and is only the decoration of her dress. but with holbein it is as if you brought the same dress to a stout farmer's daughter who was going to dine at the hall; and begged her to put it on that she might not discredit the company. she puts it on to please you; looks entirely ridiculous in it, but is not spoiled by it,--remains herself, in spite of it. 157. you probably have never noticed the extreme awkwardness of holbein in wearing this new dress; you would the less do so because his own people think him all the finer for it, as the farmer's wife would probably think her daughter. dr. woltmann, for instance, is enthusiastic in praise of the splendid architecture in the background of his annunciation. a fine mess it must have made in the minds of simple german maidens, in their notion of the virgin at home! i cannot show you this annunciation; but i have under my hand one of holbein's bible cuts, of the deepest seriousness and import--his illustration of the canticles, showing the church as the bride of christ. [illustration] you could not find a subject requiring more tenderness, purity, or dignity of treatment. in this maid, symbolizing the church, you ask for the most passionate humility, the most angelic beauty: "behold, thou art fair, my dove." now here is holbein's ideal of that fairness; here is his "church as the bride." i am sorry to associate this figure in your minds, even for a moment, with the passages it is supposed to illustrate; but the lesson is too important to be omitted. remember, holbein represents the temper of northern reformation. he has all the nobleness of that temper, but also all its baseness. he represents, indeed, the revolt of german truth against italian lies; but he represents also the revolt of german animalism against hebrew imagination. this figure of holbein's is half-way from solomon's mystic bride, to rembrandt's wife, sitting on his knee while he drinks. but the key of the question is not in this. florentine animalism has at this time, also, enough to say for itself. but florentine animalism, at this time, feels the joy of a gentleman, not of a churl. and a florentine, whatever he does,--be it virtuous or sinful, chaste or lascivious, severe or extravagant,--does it with a grace. 158. you think, perhaps, that holbein's solomon's bride is so ungraceful chiefly because she is overdressed, and has too many feathers and jewels. no; a florentine would have put any quantity of feathers and jewels on her, and yet never lost her grace. you shall see him do it, and that to a fantastic degree, for i have an example under my hand. look back, first, to bewick's venus (lecture iii.). you can't accuse her of being overdressed. she complies with every received modern principle of taste. sir joshua's precept that drapery should be "drapery, and nothing more," is observed more strictly even by bewick than by michael angelo. if the absence of decoration could exalt the beauty of his venus, here had been her perfection. now look back to plate ii. (lecture iv.), by sandro; venus in her planet, the ruling star of florence. anything more grotesque in conception, more unrestrained in fancy of ornament, you cannot find, even in the final days of the renaissance. yet venus holds her divinity through all; she will become majestic to you as you gaze; and there is not a line of her chariot wheels, of her buskins, or of her throne, which you may not see was engraved by a gentleman. [illustration: v. "heat considered as a mode of motion." florentine natural philosophy.] 159. again, plate v., opposite, is a facsimile of another engraving of the same series--the sun in leo. it is even more extravagant in accessories than the venus. you see the sun's epaulets before you see the sun; the spiral scrolls of his chariot, and the black twisted rays of it, might, so far as types of form only are considered, be a design for some modern court-dress star, to be made in diamonds. and yet all this wild ornamentation is, if you will examine it, more purely greek in spirit than the apollo belvedere. you know i have told you, again and again, that the soul of greece is her veracity; that what to other nations were fables and symbolisms, to her became living facts--living gods. the fall of greece was instant when her gods again became fables. the apollo belvedere is the work of a sculptor to whom apollonism is merely an elegant idea on which to exhibit his own skill. he does not himself feel for an instant that the handsome man in the unintelligible attitude,[am] with drapery hung over his left arm, as it would be hung to dry over a clothes-line, is the power of the sun. but the florentine believes in apollo with his whole mind, and is trying to explain his strength in every touch. for instance; i said just now, "you see the sun's epaulets before the sun." well, _don't_ you, usually, as it rises? do you not continually mistake a luminous cloud for it, or wonder where it is, behind one? again, the face of the apollo belvedere is agitated by anxiety, passion, and pride. is the sun's likely to be so, rising on the evil and the good? this prince sits crowned and calm: look at the quiet fingers of the hand holding the scepter,--at the restraint of the reins merely by a depression of the wrist. 160. you have to look carefully for those fingers holding the scepter, because the hand--which a great anatomist would have made so exclusively interesting--is here confused with the ornamentation of the arm of the chariot on which it rests. but look what the ornamentation is;--fruit and leaves, abundant, in the mouth of a cornucopia. a quite vulgar and meaningless ornament in ordinary renaissance work. is it so here, think you? are not the leaves and fruits of earth in the sun's hand?[an] you thought, perhaps, when i spoke just now of the action of the right hand, that less than a depression of the wrist would stop horses such as those. you fancy botticelli drew them so, because he had never seen a horse; or because, able to draw fingers, he could not draw hoofs! how fine it would be to have, instead, a prancing four-in-hand, in the style of piccadilly on the derby-day, or at least horses like the real greek horses of the parthenon! yes; and if they had had real ground to trot on, the florentine would have shown you he knew how they should trot. but these have to make their way up the hill-side of other lands. look to the example in your standard series, hermes eriophoros. you will find his motion among clouds represented precisely in this laboring, failing, half-kneeling attitude of limb. these forms, toiling up through the rippled sands of heaven, are--not horses;--they are clouds themselves, _like_ horses, but only a little like. look how their hoofs lose themselves, buried in the ripples of cloud; it makes one think of the quicksands of morecambe bay. and their tails--what extraordinary tufts of tails, ending in points! yes; but do you not see, nearly joining with them, what is not a horse tail at all; but a flame of fire, kindled at apollo's knee? all the rest of the radiance about him shoots _from_ him. but this is rendered _up_ to him. as the fruits of the earth are in one of his hands, its fire is in the other. and all the warmth, as well as all the light of it, are his. we had a little natural philosophy, gentlemen, as well as theology, in florence, once upon a time. 161. natural philosophy, and also natural art, for in this the greek reanimate was a nobler creature than the greek who had died. his art had a wider force and warmer glow. i have told you that the first greeks were distinguished from the barbarians by their simple humanity; the second greeks--these florentine greeks reanimate--are human more strongly, more deeply, leaping from the byzantine death at the call of christ, "loose him, and let him go." and there is upon them at once the joy of resurrection, and the solemnity of the grave. [illustration: vi. fairness of the sea and air. in venice and athens.] 162. of this resurrection of the greek, and the form of the tomb he had been buried in "those four days," i have to give you some account in the last lecture. i will only to-day show you an illustration of it which brings us back to our immediate question as to the reasons why northern art could not accept classicism. when, in the closing lecture of "aratra pentelici,"[ao] i compared florentine with greek work, it was to point out to you the eager passions of the first as opposed to the formal legalism and proprieties of the other. greek work, i told you, while truthful, was also restrained, and never but under majesty of law; while gothic work was true, in the perfect law of liberty or franchise. and now i give you in facsimile (plate vi.) the two aphrodites thus compared--the aphrodite thalassia of the tyrrhene seas, and the aphrodite urania of the greek skies. you may not at first like the tuscan best; and why she is the best, though both are noble, again i must defer explaining to next lecture. but now turn back to bewick's venus, and compare her with the tuscan venus of the stars, (plate ii.); and then here, in plate vi., with the tuscan venus of the seas, and the greek venus of the sky. why is the english one vulgar? what is it, in the three others, which makes them, if not beautiful, at least refined?--every one of them 'designed' and drawn, indisputably, by a gentleman? i never have been so puzzled by any subject of analysis as, for these ten years, i have been by this. every answer i give, however plausible it seems at first, fails in some way, or in some cases. but there is the point for you, more definitely put, i think, than in any of my former books;--at present, for want of time, i must leave it to your own thoughts. 163. ii. the second influence under which engraving developed itself, i said, was that of medicine and the physical sciences. gentlemen, the most audacious, and the most valuable, statement which i have yet made to you on the subject of practical art, in these rooms, is that of the evil resulting from the study of anatomy. it is a statement so audacious, that not only for some time i dared not make it to you, but for ten years, at least, i dared not make it to myself. i saw, indeed, that whoever studied anatomy was in a measure injured by it; but i kept attributing the mischief to secondary causes. it _can't_ be this drink itself that poisons them, i said always. this drink is medicinal and strengthening: i see that it kills them, but it must be because they drink it cold when they have been hot, or they take something else with it that changes it into poison. the drink itself _must_ be good. well, gentlemen, i found out the drink itself to be poison at last, by the breaking of my choicest venice glass. i could not make out what it was that had killed tintoret, and laid it long to the charge of chiaroscuro. it was only after my thorough study of his paradise, in 1870, that i gave up this idea, finding the chiaroscuro, which i had thought exaggerated, was, in all original and undarkened passages, beautiful and most precious. and then at last i got hold of the true clue: "il disegno di michel agnolo." and the moment i had dared to accuse that, it explained everything; and i saw that the betraying demons of italian art, led on by michael angelo, had been, not pleasure, but knowledge; not indolence, but ambition; and not love, but horror. 164. but when first i ventured to tell you this, i did not know, myself, the fact of all most conclusive for its confirmation. it will take me a little while to put it before you in its total force, and i must first ask your attention to a minor point. in one of the smaller rooms of the munich gallery is holbein's painting of st. margaret and st. elizabeth of hungary,--standard of his early religious work. here is a photograph from the st. elizabeth; and, in the same frame, a french lithograph of it. i consider it one of the most important pieces of comparison i have arranged for you, showing you at a glance the difference between true and false sentiment. of that difference, generally, we cannot speak to-day, but one special result of it you are to observe;--the omission, in the french drawing, of holbein's daring representation of disease, which is one of the vital honors of the picture. quite one of the chief strengths of st. elizabeth, in the roman catholic view, was in the courage of her dealing with disease, chiefly leprosy. now observe, i say _roman_ catholic view, very earnestly just now; i am not at all sure that it is so in a catholic view--that is to say, in an eternally christian and divine view. and this doubt, very nearly now a certainty, only came clearly into my mind the other day after many and many a year's meditation on it. i had read with great reverence all the beautiful stories about christ's appearing as a leper, and the like; and had often pitied and rebuked myself alternately for my intense dislike and horror of disease. i am writing at this moment within fifty yards of the grave of st. francis, and the story of the likeness of his feelings to mine had a little comforted me, and the tradition of his conquest of them again humiliated me; and i was thinking very gravely of this, and of the parallel instance of bishop hugo of lincoln, always desiring to do service to the dead, as opposed to my own unmitigated and louis-quinze-like horror of funerals;--when by chance, in the cathedral of palermo, a new light was thrown for me on the whole matter. 165. i was drawing the tomb of frederick ii., which is shut off by a grating from the body of the church; and i had, in general, quite an unusual degree of quiet and comfort at my work. but sometimes it was paralyzed by the unconscious interference of one of the men employed in some minor domestic services about the church. when he had nothing to do, he used to come and seat himself near my grating, not to look at my work, (the poor wretch had no eyes, to speak of,) nor in any way meaning to be troublesome; but there was his habitual seat. his nose had been carried off by the most loathsome of diseases; there were two vivid circles of scarlet round his eyes; and as he sat, he announced his presence every quarter of a minute (if otherwise i could have forgotten it) by a peculiarly disgusting, loud, and long expectoration. on the second or third day, just i had forced myself into some forgetfulness of him, and was hard at my work, i was startled from it again by the bursting out of a loud and cheerful conversation close to me; and on looking round, saw a lively young fledgling of a priest, seventeen or eighteen years old, in the most eager and spirited chat with the man in the chair. he talked, laughed, and spat, himself, companionably, in the merriest way, for a quarter of an hour; evidently without feeling the slightest disgust, or being made serious for an instant, by the aspect of the destroyed creature before him. 166. his own face was simply that of the ordinary vulgar type of thoughtless young italians, rather beneath than above the usual standard; and i was certain, as i watched him, that he was not at all my superior, but very much my inferior, in the coolness with which he beheld what was to me so dreadful. i was positive that he could look this man in the face, precisely because he could _not_ look, discerningly, at any beautiful or noble thing; and that the reason i dared not, was because i had, spiritually, as much better eyes than the priest, as, bodily, than his companion. having got so much of clear evidence given me on the matter, it was driven home for me a week later, as i landed on the quay of naples. almost the first thing that presented itself to me was the sign of a traveling theatrical company, displaying the principal scene of the drama to be enacted on their classical stage. fresh from the theater of taormina, i was curious to see the subject of the neapolitan popular drama. it was the capture, by the police, of a man and his wife who lived by boiling children. one section of the police was coming in, armed to the teeth, through the passage; another section of the police, armed to the teeth, and with high feathers in its caps, was coming up through a trap-door. in fine dramatic unconsciousness to the last moment, like the clown in a pantomime, the child-boiler was represented as still industriously chopping up a child, pieces of which, ready for the pot, lay here and there on the table in the middle of the picture. the child-boiler's wife, however, just as she was taking the top off the pot to put the meat in, had caught a glimpse of the foremost policeman, and stopped, as much in rage as in consternation. 167. now it is precisely the same feeling, or want of feeling, in the lower italian (nor always in the lower classes only) which makes him demand the kind of subject for his secular drama; and the crucifixion and pietà for his religious drama. the only part of christianity he can enjoy is its horror; and even the saint and saintess are not always denying themselves severely, either by the contemplation of torture, or the companionship with disease. nevertheless, we must be cautious, on the other hand, to allow full value to the endurance, by tender and delicate persons, of what is really loathsome or distressful to them in the service of others; and i think this picture of holbein's indicative of the exact balance and rightness of his own mind in this matter, and therefore of his power to conceive a true saint also. he had to represent st. catherine's chief effort;--he paints her ministering to the sick, and, among them, is a leper; and finding it thus his duty to paint leprosy, he courageously himself studies it from the life. not to insist on its horror; but to assert it, to the needful point of fact, which he does with medical accuracy. now here is just a case in which science, in a subordinate degree, is really required for a spiritual and moral purpose. and you find holbein does not shrink from it even in this extreme case in which it is most painful. 168. if, therefore, you _do_ find him in other cases not using it, you may be sure he knew it to be unnecessary. now it may be disputable whether in order to draw a living madonna, one needs to know how many ribs she has; but it would have seemed indisputable that in order to draw a skeleton, one must know how many ribs _it_ has. holbein is par excellence the draughtsman of skeletons. his painted dance of death was, and his engraved dance of death is, principal of such things, without any comparison or denial. he draws skeleton after skeleton, in every possible gesture; but never so much as counts their ribs! he neither knows nor cares how many ribs a skeleton has. there are always enough to rattle. monstrous, you think, in impudence,--holbein for his carelessness, and i for defending him! nay, i triumph in him; nothing has ever more pleased me than this grand negligence. nobody wants to know how many ribs a skeleton has, any more than how many bars a gridiron has, so long as the one can breathe, and the other broil; and still less, when the breath and the fire are both out. 169. but is it only of the bones, think you, that holbein is careless?[ap] nay, incredible though it may seem to you,--but, to me, explanatory at once of much of his excellence,--he did not know anatomy at all! i told you in my preface,[aq] already quoted, holbein studies the face first, the body secondarily; but i had no idea, myself, how completely he had refused the venomous science of his day. i showed you a dead christ of his, long ago. can you match it with your academy drawings, think you? and yet he did not, and would not, know anatomy. _he_ would not; but dürer would, and did:--went hotly into it--wrote books upon it, and upon 'proportions of the human body,' etc., etc., and all your modern recipes for painting flesh. how did his studies prosper his art? people are always talking of his knight and death, and his melancholia, as if those were his principal works. they are his characteristic ones, and show what he might have been _without_ his anatomy; but they were mere by-play compared to his greater fortune, and adam and eve. look at these. here is his full energy displayed; here are both male and female forms drawn with perfect knowledge of their bones and muscles, and modes of action and digestion,--and i hope you are pleased. but it is not anatomy only that master albert studies. he has a taste for optics also; and knows all about refraction and reflection. what with his knowledge of the skull inside, and the vitreous lens outside, if any man in the world is to draw an eye, here's the man to do it, surely! with a hand which can give lessons to john bellini, and a care which would fain do all so that it can't be done better, and acquaintance with every crack in the cranium, and every humor in the lens,--if we can't draw an eye, we should just like to know who can! thinks albert. so having to engrave the portrait of melanchthon, instead of looking at melanchthon as ignorant holbein would have been obliged to do,--wise albert looks at the room window; and finds it has four cross-bars in it, and knows scientifically that the light on melanchthon's eye must be a reflection of the window with its four bars--and engraves it so, accordingly; and who shall dare to say, now, it isn't like melanchthon? unfortunately, however, it isn't, nor like any other person in his senses; but like a madman looking at somebody who disputes his hobby. while in this drawing of holbein's, where a dim gray shadow leaves a mere crumb of white paper,--accidentally it seems, for all the fine scientific reflection,--behold, it is an eye indeed, and of a noble creature. 170. what is the reason? do you ask me; and is all the common teaching about generalization of details true, then? no; not a syllable of it is true. holbein is right, not because he draws more generally, but more truly, than dürer. dürer draws what he knows is there; but holbein, only what he sees. and, as i have told you often before, the really scientific artist is he who not only asserts bravely what he _does_ see, but confesses honestly what he does _not_. you must not draw all the hairs in an eyelash; not because it is sublime to generalize them, but because it is impossible to see them. how many hairs there are, a sign painter or anatomist may count; but how few of them you can see, it is only the utmost masters, carpaccio, tintoret, reynolds, and velasquez, who count, or know. 171. such was the effect, then, of his science upon dürer's ideal of beauty, and skill in portraiture. what effect had it on the temper and quantity of his work, as compared with poor ignorant holbein's! you have only three portraits, by dürer, of the great men of his time, and those bad ones; while he toils his soul out to draw the hoofs of satyrs, the bristles of swine, and the distorted aspects of base women and vicious men. what, on the contrary, has ignorant holbein done for you? shakespeare and he divide between them, by word and look, the story of england under henry and elizabeth. 172. of the effect of science on the art of mantegna and marc antonio, (far more deadly than on dürer's,) i must tell you in a future lecture;--the effect of it on their minds, i must partly refer to now, in passing to the third head of my general statement--the influence of new theology. for dürer and mantegna, chiefly because of their science, forfeited their place, not only as painters of men, but as servants of god. neither of them has left one completely noble or completely didactic picture; while holbein and botticelli, in consummate pieces of art, led the way before the eyes of all men, to the purification of their church and land. 173. iii. but the need of reformation presented itself to these two men last named on entirely different terms. to holbein, when the word of the catholic church proved false, and its deeds bloody; when he saw it selling permission of sin in his native augsburg, and strewing the ashes of its enemies on the pure alpine waters of constance, what refuge was there for _him_ in more ancient religion? shall he worship thor again, and mourn over the death of balder? he reads nature in her desolate and narrow truth, and she teaches him the triumph of death. but, for botticelli, the grand gods are old, are immortal. the priests may have taught falsely the story of the virgin;--did they not also lie, in the name of artemis, at ephesus;--in the name of aphrodite, at cyprus?--but shall, therefore, chastity or love be dead, or the full moon paler over arno? saints of heaven and gods of earth!--shall _these_ perish because vain men speak evil of them! let _us_ speak good forever, and grave, as on the rock, for ages to come, the glory of beauty, and the triumph of faith. 174. holbein had bitterer task. of old, the one duty of the painter had been to exhibit the virtues of this life, and hopes of the life to come. holbein had to show the vices of this life, and to obscure the hope of the future. "yes, we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, and fear all evil, for thou art not with us, and thy rod and thy staff comfort us not." he does not choose this task. it is thrust upon him,--just as fatally as the burial of the dead is in a plague-struck city. these are the things he sees, and must speak. he will not become a better artist thereby; no drawing of supreme beauty, or beautiful things, will be possible to him. yet we cannot say he ought to have done anything else, nor can we praise him specially in doing this. it is his fate; the fate of all the bravest in that day. [illustration: the child's bedtime. (fig. 5) facsimile from holbein's woodcut.] 175. for instance, there is no scene about which a shallow and feeble painter would have been more sure to adopt the commonplaces of the creed of his time than the death of a child,--chiefly, and most of all, the death of a country child,--a little thing fresh from the cottage and the field. surely for such an one, angels will wait by its sick bed, and rejoice as they bear its soul away; and over its shroud flowers will be strewn, and the birds will sing by its grave. so your common sentimentalist would think, and paint. holbein sees the facts, as they verily are, up to the point when vision ceases. he speaks, then, no more. the country laborer's cottage--the rain coming through its roof, the clay crumbling from its partitions, the fire lighted with a few chips and sticks on a raised piece of the mud floor,--such dais as can be contrived, for use, not for honor. the damp wood sputters; the smoke, stopped by the roof, though the rain is not, coils round again, and down. but the mother can warm the child's supper of bread and milk so--holding the pan by the long handle; and on mud floor though it be, they are happy,--she, and her child, and its brother,--if only they could be left so. they shall not be left so: the young thing must leave them--will never need milk warmed for it any more. it would fain stay,--sees no angels--feels only an icy grip on its hand, and that it cannot stay. those who loved it shriek and tear their hair in vain, amazed in grief. 'oh, little one, must you lie out in the fields then, not even under this poor torn roof of thy mother's to-night?' [illustration: "he that hath ears to hear, let him hear." (fig. 6) facsimile from holbein's woodcut.] 176. again: there was not in the old creed any subject more definitely and constantly insisted on than the death of a miser. he had been happy, the old preachers thought, till then: but his hour has come; and the black covetousness of hell is awake and watching; the sharp harpy claws will clutch his soul out of his mouth, and scatter his treasure for others. so the commonplace preacher and painter taught. not so holbein. the devil want to snatch his soul, indeed! nay, he never _had_ a soul, but of the devil's giving. his misery to begin on his death-bed! nay, he had never an unmiserable hour of life. the fiend is with him now,--a paltry, abortive fiend, with no breath even to blow hot with. he supplies the hell-blast _with a machine_. it is winter, and the rich man has his furred cloak and cap, thick and heavy; the beggar, bare-headed to beseech him, skin and rags hanging about him together, touches his shoulder, but all in vain; there is other business in hand. more haggard than the beggar himself, wasted and palsied, the rich man counts with his fingers the gain of the years to come. but of those years, infinite that are to be, holbein says nothing. 'i know not; i see not. this only i see, on this very winter's day, the low pale stumbling-block at your feet, the altogether by you unseen and forgotten death. you shall not pass _him_ by on the other side; here is a fasting figure in skin and bone, at last, that will stop you; and for all the hidden treasures of earth, here is your spade: dig now, and find them.' 177. i have said that holbein was condemned to teach these things. he was not happy in teaching them, nor thanked for teaching them. nor was botticelli for his lovelier teaching. but they both could do no otherwise. they lived in truth and steadfastness; and with both, in their marvelous design, veracity is the beginning of invention, and love its end. i have but time to show you, in conclusion, how this affectionate self-forgetfulness protects holbein from the chief calamity of the german temper, vanity, which is at the root of all dürer's weakness. here is a photograph of holbein's portrait of erasmus, and a fine proof of dürer's. in holbein's, the face leads everything; and the most lovely qualities of the face lead in that. the cloak and cap are perfectly painted, just because you look at them neither more nor less than you would have looked at the cloak in reality. you don't say, 'how brilliantly they are touched,' as you would with rembrandt; nor 'how gracefully they are neglected,' as you would with gainsborough; nor 'how exquisitely they are shaded,' as you would with lionardo; nor 'how grandly they are composed,' as you would with titian. you say only, 'erasmus is surely there; and what a pleasant sight!' you don't think of holbein at all. he has not even put in the minutest letter h, that i can see, to remind you of him. drops his h's, i regret to say, often enough. 'my hand should be enough for you; what matters my name?' but now, look at dürer's. the very first thing you see, and at any distance, is this great square tablet with "the image of erasmus, drawn from the life by albert dürer, 1526," and a great straddling a.d. besides. then you see a cloak, and a table, and a pot, with flowers in it, and a heap of books with all their leaves and all their clasps, and all the little bits of leather gummed in to mark the places; and last of all you see erasmus's face; and when you do see it, the most of it is wrinkles. all egotism and insanity, this, gentlemen. hard words to use; but not too hard to define the faults which rendered so much of dürer's great genius abortive, and to this day paralyze, among the details of a lifeless and ambitious precision, the student, no less than the artist, of german blood. for too many an erasmus, too many a dürer, among them, the world is all cloak and clasp, instead of face or book; and the first object of their lives is to engrave their initials. 178. for us, in england, not even so much is at present to be hoped; and yet, singularly enough, it is more our modesty, unwisely submissive, than our vanity, which has destroyed our english school of engraving. at the bottom of the pretty line engravings which used to represent, characteristically, our english skill, one saw always _two_ inscriptions. at the left-hand corner, "drawn by--so-and-so;" at the right-hand corner, "engraved by--so-and-so." only under the worst and cheapest plates--for the stationers' almanack, or the like--one saw sometimes, "drawn and engraved by--so-and-so," which meant nothing more than that the publisher would not go to the expense of an artist, and that the engraver haggled through as he could. (one fortunate exception, gentlemen, you have in the old drawings for your oxford almanack, though the publishers, i have no doubt, even in that case, employed the cheapest artist they could find.[ar]) but in general, no engraver thought himself able to draw; and no artist thought it his business to engrave. 179. but the fact that this and the following lecture are on the subject of design in engraving, implies of course that in the work we have to examine, it was often the engraver himself who designed, and as often the artist who engraved. and you will observe that the only engravings which bear imperishable value are, indeed, in this kind. it is true that, in wood-cutting, both dürer and holbein, as in our own days leech and tenniel, have workmen under them who can do all they want. but in metal cutting it is not so. for, as i have told you, in metal cutting, ultimate perfection of line has to be reached; and it can be reached by none but a master's hand; nor by his, unless in the very moment and act of designing. never, unless under the vivid first force of imagination and intellect, can the line have its full value. and for this high reason, gentlemen, that paradox which perhaps seemed to you so daring, is nevertheless deeply and finally true, that while a woodcut may be laboriously finished, a grand engraving on metal must be comparatively incomplete. for it must be done, throughout, with the full fire of temper in it, visibly governing its lines, as the wind does the fibers of cloud. 180. the value hitherto attached to rembrandt's etchings, and others imitating them, depends on a true instinct in the public mind for this virtue of line. but etching is an indolent and blundering method at the best; and i do not doubt that you will one day be grateful for the severe disciplines of drawing required in these schools, in that they will have enabled you to know what a line may be, driven by a master's chisel on silver or marble, following, and fostering as it follows, the instantaneous strength of his determined thought. footnotes: [ag] if you paint a bottle only to amuse the spectator by showing him how like a painting may be to a bottle, you cannot be considered, in art-philosophy, as a designer. but if you paint the cork flying out of the bottle, and the contents arriving in an arch at the mouth of a recipient glass, you are so far forth a designer or signer; probably meaning to express certain ultimate facts respecting, say, the hospitable disposition of the landlord of the house; but at all events representing the bottle and glass in a designed, and not merely natural, manner. not merely natural--nay, in some sense non-natural, or supernatural. and all great artists show both this fantastic condition of mind in their work, and show that it has arisen out of a communicative or didactic purpose. they are the signpainters of god. i have added this note to the lecture in copying my memoranda of it here at assisi, june 9th, being about to begin work in the tavern, or tabernaculum, of the lower church, with its variously significant four great 'signs.' [ah] plate x., lecture vi. [ai] i do not mean the greatest teacher of reformed faith; but the greatest protestant against faith unreformed. [aj] it has become the permitted fashion among modern mathematicians, chemists, and apothecaries, to call themselves 'scientific men,' as opposed to theologians, poets, and artists. they know their sphere to be a separate one; but their ridiculous notion of its being a peculiarly scientific one ought not to be allowed in our universities. there is a science of morals, a science of history, a science of grammar, a science of music, and a science of painting; and all these are quite beyond comparison higher fields for human intellect, and require accuracies of intenser observation, than either chemistry, electricity, or geology. [ak] the cumaean sibyl, plate vii., lecture vi. [al] lecture iii., § 101. [am] i read somewhere, lately, a new and very ingenious theory about the attitude of the apollo belvedere, proving, to the author's satisfaction, that the received notion about watching the arrow was all a mistake. the paper proved, at all events, one thing--namely, the statement in the text. for an attitude which has been always hitherto taken to mean one thing, and is plausibly asserted now to mean another, must be in itself unintelligible. [an] it may be asked, why not corn also? because that belongs to ceres, who is equally one of the great gods. [ao] "aratra pentelici," § 181. [ap] or inventive! see woltmann, p. 267. "the shinbone, or the lower part of the arm, exhibits only one bone, while the upper arm and thigh are often allowed the luxury of two!" [aq] see ante, § 141. the "preface" is that to "the eagle's nest." [ar] the drawings were made by turner, and are now among the chief treasures of the oxford galleries. i ought to add some notice of hogarth to this lecture in the appendix; but fear i shall have no time: besides, though i have profound respect for hogarth, as, in literature, i have for fielding, i can't criticise them, because i know nothing of their subjects. lecture vi. design in the florentine schools of engraving. 181. in the first of these lectures, i stated to you their subject, as the investigation of the engraved work of a group of men, to whom engraving, as a means of popular address, was above all precious, because their art was distinctively didactic. some of my hearers must be aware that, of late years, the assertion that art should be didactic has been clamorously and violently derided by the countless crowd of artists who have nothing to represent, and of writers who have nothing to say; and that the contrary assertion--that art consists only in pretty colors and fine words,--is accepted, readily enough, by a public which rarely pauses to look at a picture with attention, or read a sentence with understanding. 182. gentlemen, believe me, there never was any great advancing art yet, nor can be, without didactic purpose. the leaders of the strong schools are, and must be always, either teachers of theology, or preachers of the moral law. i need not tell you that it was as teachers of theology on the walls of the vatican that the masters with whose names you are most familiar obtained their perpetual fame. but however great their fame, you have not practically, i imagine, ever been materially assisted in your preparation for the schools either of philosophy or divinity by raphael's 'school of athens,' by raphael's 'theology,'--or by michael angelo's 'judgment.' my task, to-day, is to set before you some part of the design of the first master of the works in the sistine chapel; and i believe that, from his teaching, you will, even in the hour which i ask you now to give, learn what may be of true use to you in all your future labor, whether in oxford or elsewhere. 183. you have doubtless, in the course of these lectures, been occasionally surprised by my speaking of holbein and sandro botticelli, as reformers, in the same tone of respect, and with the same implied assertion of their intellectual power and agency, with which it is usual to speak of luther and savonarola. you have been accustomed, indeed, to hear painting and sculpture spoken of as supporting or enforcing church doctrine; but never as reforming or chastising it. whether protestant or roman catholic, you have admitted what in the one case you held to be the abuse of painting in the furtherance of idolatry,--in the other, its amiable and exalting ministry to the feebleness of faith. but neither has recognized,--the protestant his ally,--or the catholic his enemy, in the far more earnest work of the great painters of the fifteenth century. the protestant was, in most cases, too vulgar to understand the aid offered to him by painting; and in all cases too terrified to believe in it. he drove the gift-bringing greek with imprecations from his sectarian fortress, or received him within it only on the condition that he should speak no word of religion there. 184. on the other hand, the catholic, in most cases too indolent to read, and, in all, too proud to dread, the rebuke of the reforming painters, confused them with the crowd of his old flatterers, and little noticed their altered language or their graver brow. in a little while, finding they had ceased to be amusing, he effaced their works, not as dangerous, but as dull; and recognized only thenceforward, as art, the innocuous bombast of michael angelo, and fluent efflorescence of bernini. but when you become more intimately and impartially acquainted with the history of the reformation, you will find that, as surely and earnestly as memling and giotto strove in the north and south to set forth and exalt the catholic faith, so surely and earnestly did holbein and botticelli strive, in the north, to chastise, and, in the south, to revive it. in what manner, i will try to-day briefly to show you. 185. i name these two men as the reforming leaders: there were many, rank and file, who worked in alliance with holbein; with botticelli, two great ones, lippi and perugino. but both of these had so much pleasure in their own pictorial faculty, that they strove to keep quiet, and out of harm's way,--involuntarily manifesting themselves sometimes, however; and not in the wisest manner. lippi's running away with a novice was not likely to be understood as a step in church reformation correspondent to luther's marriage.[as] nor have protestant divines, even to this day, recognized the real meaning of the reports of perugino's 'infidelity.' botticelli, the pupil of the one, and the companion of the other, held the truths they taught him through sorrow as well as joy; and he is the greatest of the reformers, because he preached without blame; though the least known, because he died without victory. i had hoped to be able to lay before you some better biography of him than the traditions of vasari, of which i gave a short abstract some time back in fors clavigera (letter xxii.); but as yet i have only added internal evidence to the popular story, the more important points of which i must review briefly. it will not waste your time if i read,--instead of merely giving you reference to,--the passages on which i must comment. 186. "his father, mariano filipepi, a florentine citizen, brought him up with care, and caused him to be instructed in all such things as are usually taught to children before they choose a calling. but although the boy readily acquired whatever he wished to learn, yet was he constantly discontented; neither would he take any pleasure in reading, writing, or accounts, insomuch that the father, disturbed by the eccentric habits of his son, turned him over in despair to a gossip of his, called botticello, who was a goldsmith, and considered a very competent master of his art, to the intent that the boy might learn the same." "he took no pleasure in reading, writing, nor accounts"! you will find the same thing recorded of cimabue; but it is more curious when stated of a man whom i cite to you as typically a gentleman and a scholar. but remember, in those days, though there were not so many entirely correct books issued by the religious tract society for boys to read, there were a great many more pretty things in the world for boys to see. the val d'arno was pater-noster row to purpose; their father's row, with books of his writing on the mountain shelves. and the lad takes to looking at things, and thinking about them, instead of reading about them,--which i commend to you also, as much the more scholarly practice of the two. to the end, though he knows all about the celestial hierarchies, he is not strong in his letters, nor in his dialect. i asked mr. tyrwhitt to help me through with a bit of his italian the other day. mr. tyrwhitt could only help me by suggesting that it was "botticelli for so-and-so." and one of the minor reasons which induced me so boldly to attribute these sibyls to him, instead of bandini, is that the lettering is so ill done. the engraver would assuredly have had his lettering all right,--or at least neat. botticelli blunders through it, scratches impatiently out when he goes wrong: and as i told you there's no repentance in the engraver's trade, leaves all the blunders visible. 187. i may add one fact bearing on this question lately communicated to me.[at] in the autumn of 1872 i possessed myself of an italian book of pen drawings, some, i have no doubt, by mantegna in his youth, others by sandro himself. in examining these, i was continually struck by the comparatively feeble and blundering way in which the titles were written, while all the rest of the handling was really superb; and still more surprised when, on the sleeves and hem of the robe of one of the principal figures of women, ("helena rapita da paris,") i found what seemed to be meant for inscriptions, intricately embroidered; which nevertheless, though beautifully drawn, i could not read. in copying botticelli's zipporah this spring, i found the border of her robe wrought with characters of the same kind, which a young painter, working with me, who already knows the minor secrets of italian art better than i,[au] assures me are letters,--and letters of a language hitherto undeciphered. 188. "there was at that time a close connection and almost constant intercourse between the goldsmiths and the painters, wherefore sandro, who possessed considerable ingenuity, and was strongly disposed to the arts of design, became enamored of painting, and resolved to devote himself entirely to that vocation. he acknowledged his purpose at once to his father; and the latter, who knew the force of his inclination, took him accordingly to the carmelite monk, fra filippo, who was a most excellent painter of that time, with whom he placed him to study the art, as sandro himself had desired. devoting himself thereupon entirely to the vocation he had chosen, sandro so closely followed the directions, and imitated the manner, of his master, that fra filippo conceived a great love for him, and instructed him so effectually, that sandro rapidly attained to such a degree in art as none would have predicted for him." i have before pointed out to you the importance of training by the goldsmith. sandro got more good of it, however, than any of the other painters so educated,--being enabled by it to use gold for light to color, in a glowing harmony never reached with equal perfection, and rarely attempted, in the later schools. to the last, his paintings are partly treated as work in niello; and he names himself, in perpetual gratitude, from this first artisan master. nevertheless, the fortunate fellow finds, at the right moment, another, even more to his mind, and is obedient to him through his youth, as to the other through his childhood. and this master loves him; and instructs him 'so effectually,'--in grinding colors, do you suppose, only; or in laying of lines only; or in anything more than these? 189. i will tell you what lippi must have taught any boy whom he loved. first, humility, and to live in joy and peace, injuring no man--if such innocence might be. nothing is so manifest in every face by him, as its gentleness and rest. secondly, to finish his work perfectly, and in such temper that the angels might say of it--not he himself--'iste perfecit opus.' do you remember what i told you in the eagle's nest (§ 53), that true humility was in hoping that angels might sometimes admire _our_ work; not in hoping that we should ever be able to admire _theirs_? thirdly,--a little thing it seems, but was a great one,--love of flowers. no one draws such lilies or such daisies as lippi. botticelli beat him afterwards in roses, but never in lilies. fourthly, due honor for classical tradition. lippi is the only religious painter who dresses john baptist in the camelskin, as the greeks dressed heracles in the lion's--over the head. lastly, and chiefly of all,--le père hyacinthe taught his pupil certain views about the doctrine of the church, which the boy thought of more deeply than his tutor, and that by a great deal; and master sandro presently got himself into such question for painting heresy, that if he had been as hot-headed as he was true-hearted, he would soon have come to bad end by the tar-barrel. but he is so sweet and so modest, that nobody is frightened; so clever, that everybody is pleased: and at last, actually the pope sends for him to paint his own private chapel,--where the first thing my young gentleman does, mind you, is to paint the devil in a monk's dress, tempting christ! the sauciest thing, out and out, done in the history of the reformation, it seems to me; yet so wisely done, and with such true respect otherwise shown for what was sacred in the church, that the pope didn't mind: and all went on as merrily as marriage bells. 190. i have anticipated, however, in telling you this, the proper course of his biography, to which i now return. "while still a youth he painted the figure of fortitude, among those pictures of the virtues which antonio and pietro pollaiuolo were executing in the mercatanzia, or tribunal of commerce, in florence. in santo spirito, a church of the same city, he painted a picture for the chapel of the bardi family: this work he executed with great diligence, and finished it very successfully, depicting certain olive and palm trees therein with extraordinary care." it is by a beautiful chance that the first work of his, specified by his italian biographer, should be the fortitude.[av] note also what is said of his tree drawing. "having, in consequence of this work, obtained much credit and reputation, sandro was appointed by the guild of porta santa maria to paint a picture in san marco, the subject of which is the coronation of our lady, who is surrounded by a choir of angels--the whole extremely well designed, and finished by the artist with infinite care. he executed various works in the medici palace for the elder lorenzo, more particularly a figure of pallas on a shield wreathed with vine branches, whence flames are proceeding: this he painted of the size of life. a san sebastiano was also among the most remarkable of the works executed for lorenzo. in the church of santa maria maggiore, in florence, is a pietà, with small figures, by this master: this is a very beautiful work. for different houses in various parts of the city sandro painted many pictures of a round form, with numerous figures of women undraped. of these there are still two examples at castello, a villa of the duke cosimo,--one representing the birth of venus, who is borne to earth by the loves and zephyrs; the second also presenting the figure of venus crowned with flowers by the graces: she is here intended to denote the spring, and the allegory is expressed by the painter with extraordinary grace." our young reformer enters, it seems, on a very miscellaneous course of study; the coronation of our lady; st. sebastian; pallas in vine-leaves; and venus,--without fig-leaves. not wholly calvinistic, fra filippo's teaching seems to have been! all the better for the boy--being such a boy as he was: but i cannot in this lecture enter farther into my reasons for saying so. 191. vasari, however, has shot far ahead in telling us of this picture of the spring, which is one of botticelli's completest works. long before he was able to paint greek nymphs, he had done his best in idealism of greater spirits; and, while yet quite a youth, painted, at castello, the assumption of our lady, with "the patriarchs, the prophets, the apostles, the evangelists, the martyrs, the confessors, the doctors, the virgins, and the hierarchies!" imagine this subject proposed to a young, (or even old) british artist, for his next appeal to public sensation at the academy! but do you suppose that the young british artist is wiser and more civilized than lippi's scholar, because his only idea of a patriarch is of a man with a long beard; of a doctor, the m.d. with the brass plate over the way; and of a virgin, miss ---of the ---theater? not that even sandro was able, according to vasari's report, to conduct the entire design himself. the proposer of the subject assisted him; and they made some modifications in the theology, which brought them both into trouble--so early did sandro's innovating work begin, into which subjects our gossiping friend waives unnecessary inquiry, as follows. "but although this picture is exceedingly beautiful, and ought to have put envy to shame, yet there were found certain malevolent and censorious persons who, not being able to affix any other blame to the work, declared that matteo and sandro had erred gravely in that matter, and had fallen into grievous heresy. "now, whether this be true or not, let none expect the judgment of that question from me: it shall suffice me to note that the figures executed by sandro in that work are entirely worthy of praise; and that the pains he took in depicting those circles of the heavens must have been very great, to say nothing of the angels mingled with the other figures, or of the various foreshortenings, all which are designed in a very good manner. "about this time sandro received a commission to paint a small picture with figures three parts of a braccio high,--the subject an adoration of the magi. "it is indeed a most admirable work; the composition, the design, and the coloring are so beautiful that every artist who examines it is astonished; and, at the time, it obtained so great a name in florence, and other places, for the master, that pope sixtus iv. having erected the chapel built by him in his palace at rome, and desiring to have it adorned with paintings, commanded that sandro botticelli should be appointed superintendent of the work." 192. vasari's words, "about this time," are evidently wrong. it must have been many and many a day after he painted matteo's picture that he took such high standing in florence as to receive the mastership of the works in the pope's chapel at rome. of his position and doings there, i will tell you presently; meantime, let us complete the story of his life. "by these works botticelli obtained great honor and reputation among the many competitors who were laboring with him, whether florentines or natives of other cities, and received from the pope a considerable sum of money; but this he consumed and squandered totally, during his residence in rome, where he lived without due care, as was his habit." 193. well, but one would have liked to hear _how_ he squandered his money, and whether he was without care--of other things than money. it is just possible, master vasari, that botticelli may have laid out his money at higher interest than you know of; meantime, he is advancing in life and thought, and becoming less and less comprehensible to his biographer. and at length, having got rid, somehow, of the money he received from the pope; and finished the work he had to do, and uncovered it,--free in conscience, and empty in purse, he returned to florence, where, "being a sophistical person, he made a comment on a part of dante, and drew the inferno, and put it in engraving, in which he consumed much time; and not working for this reason, brought infinite disorder into his affairs." 194. unpaid work, this engraving of dante, you perceive,--consuming much time also, and not appearing to vasari to be work at all. it is but a short sentence, gentlemen,--this, in the old edition of vasari, and obscurely worded,--a very foolish person's contemptuous report of a thing to him totally incomprehensible. but the thing itself is out-and-out the most important fact in the history of the religious art of italy. i can show you its significance in not many more words than have served to record it. botticelli had been painting in rome; and had expressly chosen to represent there,--being master of works, in the presence of the defender of the faith,--the foundation of the mosaic law; to his mind the eternal law of god,--that law of which modern evangelicals sing perpetually their own original psalm, "oh, how hate i thy law! it is my abomination all the day." returning to florence, he reads dante's vision of the hell created by its violation. he knows that the pictures he has painted in rome cannot be understood by the people; they are exclusively for the best trained scholars in the church. dante, on the other hand, can only be read in manuscript; but the people could and would understand _his_ lessons, if they were pictured in accessible and enduring form. he throws all his own lauded work aside,--all for which he is most honored, and in which his now matured and magnificent skill is as easy to him as singing to a perfect musician. and he sets himself to a servile and despised labor,--his friends mocking him, his resources failing him, infinite 'disorder' getting into his affairs--of this world. 195. never such another thing happened in italy any more. botticelli engraved her pilgrim's progress for her, putting himself in prison to do it. she would not read it when done. raphael and marc antonio were the theologians for her money. pretty madonnas, and satyrs with abundance of tail,--let our pilgrim's progress be in _these_ directions, if you please. botticelli's own pilgrimage, however, was now to be accomplished triumphantly, with such crowning blessings as heaven might grant to him. in spite of his friends and his disordered affairs, he went his own obstinate way; and found another man's words worth engraving as well as dante's; not without perpetuating, also, what he deemed worthy of his own. 196. what would that be, think you? his chosen works before the pope in rome?--his admired madonnas in florence?--his choirs of angels and thickets of flowers? some few of these yes, as you shall presently see; but "the best attempt of this kind from his hand is the triumph of faith, by fra girolamo savonarola, of ferrara, of whose sect our artist was so zealous a partisan that he totally abandoned painting, and not having any other means of living, he fell into very great difficulties. but his attachment to the party he had adopted increased; he became what was then called a piagnone, or mourner, and abandoned all labor; insomuch that, finding himself at length become old, being also very poor, he must have died of hunger had he not been supported by lorenzo de' medici, for whom he had worked at the small hospital of volterra and other places, who assisted him while he lived, as did other friends and admirers of his talents." 197. in such dignity and independence--having employed his talents not wholly at the orders of the dealer--died, a poor bedesman of lorenzo de' medici, the president of that high academy of art in rome, whose academicians were perugino, ghirlandajo, angelico, and signorelli; and whose students, michael angelo and raphael. 'a worthless, ill-conducted fellow on the whole,' thinks vasari, 'with a crazy fancy for scratching on copper.' well, here are some of the scratches for you to see; only, first, i must ask you seriously for a few moments to consider what the two powers were, which, with this iron pen of his, he has set himself to reprove. 198. two great forms of authority reigned over the entire civilized world, confessedly, and by name, in the middle ages. they reign over it still, and must forever, though at present very far from confessed; and, in most places, ragingly denied. the first power is that of the teacher, or true father; the father 'in god.' it may be--happy the children to whom it is--the actual father also; and whose parents have been their tutors. but, for the most part, it will be some one else who teaches them, and molds their minds and brain. all such teaching, when true, being from above, and coming down from the father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning, is properly that of the holy catholic '[greek: ekklêsia],' council, church, or papacy, of many fathers in god, not of one. eternally powerful and divine; reverenced of all humble and lowly scholars, in jewry, in greece, in rome, in gaul, in england, and beyond sea, from arctic zone to zone. the second authority is the power of national law, enforcing justice in conduct by due reward and punishment. power vested necessarily in magistrates capable of administering it with mercy and equity; whose authority, be it of many or few, is again divine, as proceeding from the king of kings, and was acknowledged, throughout civilized christendom, as the power of the holy empire, or holy roman empire, because first throned in rome; but it is forever also acknowledged, namelessly, or by name, by all loyal, obedient, just, and humble hearts, which truly desire that, whether for them or against them, the eternal equities and dooms of heaven should be pronounced and executed; and as the wisdom or word of their father should be taught, so the will of their father should be done, on earth, as it is in heaven. 199. you all here know what contention, first, and then what corruption and dishonor, had paralyzed these two powers before the days of which we now speak. reproof, and either reform or rebellion, became necessary everywhere. the northern reformers, holbein, and luther, and henry, and cromwell, set themselves to their task rudely, and, it might seem, carried it through. the southern reformers, dante, and savonarola, and botticelli, set hand to their task reverently, and, it seemed, did not by any means carry it through. but the end is not yet. 200. now i shall endeavor to-day to set before you the art of botticelli, especially as exhibiting the modesty of great imagination trained in reverence, which characterized the southern reformers; and as opposed to the immodesty of narrow imagination, trained in self-trust, which characterized the northern reformers. 'the modesty of great _imagination_;' that is to say, of the power which conceives all things in true relation, and not only as they affect ourselves. i can show you this most definitely by taking one example of the modern, and unschooled temper, in bewick;[aw] and setting it beside botticelli's treatment of the same subject of thought,--namely, the meaning of war, and the reforms necessary in the carrying on of war. 201. both the men are entirely at one in their purpose. they yearn for peace and justice to rule over the earth, instead of the sword; but see how differently they will say what is in their hearts to the people they address. to bewick, war was more an absurdity than it was a horror: he had not seen battle-fields, still less had he read of them, in ancient days. he cared nothing about heroes,--greek, roman, or norman. what he knew, and saw clearly, was that farmer hodge's boy went out of the village one holiday afternoon, a fine young fellow, rather drunk, with a colored ribbon in his hat; and came back, ten years afterwards, with one leg, one eye, an old red coat, and a tobacco-pipe in the pocket of it. that is what he has got to say, mainly. so, for the pathetic side of the business, he draws you two old soldiers meeting as bricklayers' laborers; and for the absurd side of it, he draws a stone, sloping sideways with age, in a bare field, on which you can just read, out of a long inscription, the words "glorious victory;" but no one is there to read them,--only a jackass, who uses the stone to scratch himself against. 202. now compare with this botticelli's reproof of war. _he_ had seen it, and often; and between noble persons;--knew the temper in which the noblest knights went out to it;--knew the strength, the patience, the glory, and the grief of it. he would fain see his florence in peace; and yet he knows that the wisest of her citizens are her bravest soldiers. so he seeks for the ideal of a soldier, and for the greatest glory of war, that in the presence of these he may speak reverently, what he must speak. he does not go to greece for his hero. he is not sure that even her patriotic wars were always right. but, by his religious faith, he cannot doubt the nobleness of the soldier who put the children of israel in possession of their promised land, and to whom the sign of the consent of heaven was given by its pausing light in the valley of ajalon. must then setting sun and risen moon stay, he thinks, only to look upon slaughter? may no soldier of christ bid them stay otherwise than so? he draws joshua, but quitting his hold of the sword: its hilt rests on his bent knee; and he kneels before the sun, not commands it; and this is his prayer:-"oh, king of kings, and lord of lords, who alone rulest always in eternity, and who correctest all our wanderings,--giver of melody to the choir of the angels, listen thou a little to our bitter grief, and come and rule us, oh thou highest king, with thy love which is so sweet!" is not that a little better, and a little wiser, than bewick's jackass? is it not also better, and wiser, than the sneer of modern science? 'what great men are we!--we, forsooth, can make almanacs, and know that the earth turns round. joshua indeed! let us have no more talk of the old-clothes-man.' all bewick's simplicity is in that; but none of bewick's understanding. 203. i pass to the attack made by botticelli upon the guilt of wealth. so i had at first written; but i should rather have written, the appeal made by him against the cruelty of wealth, then first attaining the power it has maintained to this day. the practice of receiving interest had been confined, until this fifteenth century, with contempt and malediction, to the profession, so styled, of usurers, or to the jews. the merchants of augsburg introduced it as a convenient and pleasant practice among christians also; and insisted that it was decorous and proper even among respectable merchants. in the view of the christian church of their day, they might more reasonably have set themselves to defend adultery.[ax] however, they appointed dr. john eck, of ingoldstadt, to hold debates in all possible universities, at their expense, on the allowing of interest; and as these augsburgers had in venice their special mart, fondaco, called of the germans, their new notions came into direct collision with old venetian ones, and were much hindered by them, and all the more, because, in opposition to dr. john eck, there was preaching on the other side of the alps. the franciscans, poor themselves, preached mercy to the poor: one of them, brother marco of san gallo, planned the 'mount of pity' for their defense, and the merchants of venice set up the first in the world, against the german fondaco. the dispute burned far on towards our own times. you perhaps have heard before of one antonio, a merchant of venice, who persistently retained the then obsolete practice of lending money gratis, and of the peril it brought him into with the usurers. but you perhaps did not before know why it was the flesh, or heart of flesh, in him, that they so hated. 204. against this newly risen demon of authorized usury, holbein and botticelli went out to war together. holbein, as we have partly seen in his designs for the dance of death, struck with all his soldier's strength.[ay] botticelli uses neither satire nor reproach. he turns altogether away from the criminals; appeals only to heaven for defense against them. he engraves the design which, of all his work, must have cost him hardest toil in its execution,--the virgin praying to her son in heaven for pity upon the poor: "for these are also my children."[az] underneath, are the seven works of mercy; and in the midst of them, the building of the mount of pity: in the distance lies italy, mapped in cape and bay, with the cities which had founded mounts of pity,--venice in the distance, chief. little seen, but engraved with the master's loveliest care, in the background there is a group of two small figures--the franciscan brother kneeling, and an angel of victory crowning him. 205. i call it an angel of victory, observe, with assurance; although there is no legend claiming victory, or distinguishing this angel from any other of those which adorn with crowns of flowers the nameless crowds of the blessed. for botticelli has other ways of speaking than by written legends. i know by a glance at this angel that he has taken the action of it from a greek coin; and i know also that he had not, in his own exuberant fancy, the least need to copy the action of any figure whatever. so i understand, as well as if he spoke to me, that he expects me, if i am an educated gentleman, to recognize this particular action as a greek angel's; and to know that it is a temporal victory which it crowns. 206. and now farther, observe, that this classical learning of botticelli's, received by him, as i told you, as a native element of his being, gives not only greater dignity and gentleness, but far wider range, to his thoughts of reformation. as he asks for pity from the cruel jew to the _poor_ gentile, so he asks for pity from the proud christian to the _untaught_ gentile. nay, for more than pity, for fellowship, and acknowledgment of equality before god. the learned men of his age in general brought back the greek mythology as anti-christian. but botticelli and perugino, as pre-christian; nor only as pre-christian, but as the foundation of christianity. but chiefly botticelli, with perfect grasp of the mosaic and classic theology, thought over and seized the harmonies of both; and he it was who gave the conception of that great choir of the prophets and sibyls, of which michael angelo, more or less ignorantly borrowing it in the sistine chapel, in great part lost the meaning, while he magnified the aspect. 207. for, indeed, all christian and heathen mythology had alike become to michael angelo only a vehicle for the display of his own powers of drawing limbs and trunks: and having resolved, and made the world of his day believe, that all the glory of design lay in variety of difficult attitude, he flings the naked bodies about his ceiling with an upholsterer's ingenuity of appliance to the corners they could fit, but with total absence of any legible meaning. nor do i suppose that one person in a million, even of those who have some acquaintance with the earlier masters, takes patience in the sistine chapel to conceive the original design. but botticelli's mastership of the works evidently was given to him as a theologian, even more than as a painter; and the moment when he came to rome to receive it, you may hold for the crisis of the reformation in italy. the main effort to save her priesthood was about to be made by her wisest reformer,--face to face with the head of her church,--not in contest with him, but in the humblest subjection to him; and in adornment of his own chapel for his own delight, and more than delight, if it might be. 208. sandro brings to work, not under him, but with him, the three other strongest and worthiest men he knows, perugino, ghirlandajo, and luca signorelli. there is evidently entire fellowship in thought between botticelli and perugino. they two together plan the whole; and botticelli, though the master, yields to perugino the principal place, the end of the chapter, on which is to be the assumption of the virgin. it was perugino's favorite subject, done with his central strength; assuredly the crowning work of his life, and of lovely christian art in europe. michael angelo painted it out, and drew devils and dead bodies all over the wall instead. but there remains to us, happily, the series of subjects designed by botticelli to lead up to this lost one. 209. he came, i said, not to attack, but to restore the papal authority. to show the power of inherited honor, and universal claim of divine law, in the jewish and christian church,--the law delivered first by moses; then, in final grace and truth, by christ. he designed twelve great pictures, each containing some twenty figures the size of life, and groups of smaller ones scarcely to be counted. twelve pictures,--six to illustrate the giving of the law by moses; and six, the ratification and completion of it by christ. event by event, the jurisprudence of each dispensation is traced from dawn to close in this correspondence. 1. covenant of circumcision. 2. entrance on his ministry by moses. 3. moses by the red sea. 4. delivery of law on sinai. 5. destruction of korah. 6. death of moses. 7. covenant of baptism. 8. entrance on his ministry by christ. 9. peter and andrew by the sea of galilee. 10. sermon on mount. 11. giving keys to st. peter. 12. last supper. of these pictures, sandro painted three himself, perugino three, and the assumption; ghirlandajo one, signorelli one, and rosselli four.[ba] i believe that sandro intended to take the roof also, and had sketched out the main succession of its design; and that the prophets and sibyls which he meant to paint, he drew first small, and engraved his drawings afterwards, that some part of the work might be, at all events, thus communicable to the world outside of the vatican. 210. it is not often that i tell you my beliefs; but i am forced here, for there are no dates to found more on. is it not wonderful that among all the infinite mass of fools' thoughts about the "majestic works of michael angelo" in the sistine chapel, no slightly more rational person has ever asked what the chapel was first meant to be like, and how it was to be roofed? nor can i assume myself, still less you, that all these prophets and sibyls are botticelli's. of many there are two engravings, with variations: some are inferior in parts, many altogether. he signed none; never put grand tablets with 's. b.' into his skies; had other letters than those to engrave, and no time to spare. i have chosen out of the series three of the sibyls, which have, i think, clear internal evidence of being his; and these you shall compare with michael angelo's. but first i must put you in mind what the sibyls were. 211. as the prophets represent the voice of god in man, the sibyls represent the voice of god in nature. they are properly all forms of one sibyl, [greek: dios boulê], the counsel of god; and the chief one, at least in the roman mind, was the sibyl of cumae. from the traditions of her, the romans, and we through them, received whatever lessons the myth, or fact, of sibyl power has given to mortals. how much have you received, or may you yet receive, think you, of that teaching? i call it the myth, or fact; but remember that, _as_ a myth, it _is_ a fact. this story has concentrated whatever good there is in the imagination or visionary powers in women, inspired by nature only. the traditions of witch and gypsy are partly its offshoots. you despise both, perhaps. but can you, though in utmost pride of your supreme modern wisdom, suppose that the character--say, even of so poor and far-fallen a sibyl as meg merrilies--is only the coinage of scott's brain; or that, even being no more, it is valueless? admit the figure of the cumaean sibyl, in like manner, to be the coinage only of virgil's brain. as such, it, and the words it speaks, are yet facts in which we may find use, if we are reverent to them. to me, personally, (i must take your indulgence for a moment to speak wholly of myself,) they have been of the truest service--quite material and indisputable. i am writing on st. john's day, in the monastery of assisi; and i had no idea whatever, when i sat down to my work this morning, of saying any word of what i am now going to tell you. i meant only to expand and explain a little what i said in my lecture about the florentine engraving. but it seems to me now that i had better tell you what the cumaean sibyl has actually done for me. 212. in 1871, partly in consequence of chagrin at the revolution in paris, and partly in great personal sorrow, i was struck by acute inflammatory illness at matlock, and reduced to a state of extreme weakness; lying at one time unconscious for some hours, those about me having no hope of my life. i have no doubt that the immediate cause of the illness was simply, eating when i was not hungry; so that modern science would acknowledge nothing in the whole business but an extreme and very dangerous form of indigestion; and entirely deny any interference of the cumaean sibyl in the matter. i once heard a sermon by dr. guthrie, in edinburgh, upon the wickedness of fasting. it was very eloquent and ingenious, and finely explained the superiority of the scotch free church to the benighted catholic church, in that the free church saw no merit in fasting. and there was no mention, from beginning to end of the sermon, of even the existence of such texts as daniel i. 12, or matthew vi. 16. without the smallest merit, i admit, in fasting, i was nevertheless reduced at matlock to a state very near starvation; and could not rise from my pillow, without being lifted, for some days. and in the first clearly pronounced stage of recovery, when the perfect powers of spirit had returned, while the body was still as weak as it well could be, i had three dreams, which made a great impression on me; for in ordinary health my dreams are supremely ridiculous, if not unpleasant; and in ordinary conditions of illness, very ugly, and always without the slightest meaning. but these dreams were all distinct and impressive, and had much meaning, if i chose to take it. 213. the first[bb] was of a venetian fisherman, who wanted me to follow him down into some water which i thought was too deep; but he called me on, saying he had something to show me; so i followed him; and presently, through an opening, as if in the arsenal wall, he showed me the bronze horses of st. mark's, and said, 'see, the horses are putting on their harness.' the second was of a preparation at rome, in st. peter's, (or a vast hall as large as st. peter's,) for the exhibition of a religious drama. part of the play was to be a scene in which demons were to appear in the sky; and the stage servants were arranging gray fictitious clouds, and painted fiends, for it, under the direction of the priests. there was a woman dressed in black, standing at the corner of the stage watching them, having a likeness in her face to one of my own dead friends; and i knew somehow that she was not that friend, but a spirit; and she made me understand, without speaking, that i was to watch, for the play would turn out other than the priests expected. and i waited; and when the scene came on, the clouds became real clouds, and the fiends real fiends, agitating them in slow quivering, wild and terrible, over the heads of the people and priests. i recollected distinctly, however, when i woke, only the figure of the black woman mocking the people, and of one priest in an agony of terror, with the sweat pouring from his brow, but violently scolding one of the stage servants for having failed in some ceremony, the omission of which, he thought, had given the devils their power. the third dream was the most interesting and personal. some one came to me to ask me to help in the deliverance of a company of italian prisoners who were to be ransomed for money. i said i had no money. they answered, yes, i had some that belonged to me as a brother of st. francis, if i would give it up. i said i did not know even that i _was_ a brother of st. francis; but i thought to myself, that perhaps the franciscans of fésole, whom i had helped to make hay in their field in 1845, had adopted me for one; only i didn't see how the consequence of that would be my having any money. however, i said they were welcome to whatever i had; and then i heard the voice of an italian woman singing; and i have never heard such divine singing before nor since;--the sounds absolutely strong and real, and the melody altogether lovely. if i could have written it! but i could not even remember it when i woke,--only how beautiful it was. 214. now these three dreams have, every one of them, been of much use to me since; or so far as they have failed to be useful, it has been my own fault, and not theirs; but the chief use of them at the time was to give me courage and confidence in myself, both in bodily distress, of which i had still not a little to bear; and worse, much mental anxiety about matters supremely interesting to me, which were turning out ill. and through all such trouble--which came upon me as i was recovering, as if it meant to throw me back into the grave,--i held out and recovered, repeating always to myself, or rather having always murmured in my ears, at every new trial, one latin line, tu ne cede malis, sed contra fortior ito. now i had got this line out of the tablet in the engraving of raphael's vision, and had forgotten where it came from. and i thought i knew my sixth book of virgil so well, that i never looked at it again while i was giving these lectures at oxford, and it was only here at assisi, the other day, wanting to look more accurately at the first scene by the lake avernus, that i found i had been saved by the words of the cumaean sibyl. 215. "quam tua te fortuna sinet," the completion of the sentence, has yet more and continual teaching in it for me now; as it has for all men. her opening words, which have become hackneyed, and lost all present power through vulgar use of them, contain yet one of the most immortal truths ever yet spoken for mankind; and they will never lose their power of help for noble persons. but observe, both in that lesson, "facilis descensus averni," etc.; and in the still more precious, because universal, one on which the strength of rome was founded,--the burning of the books,--the sibyl speaks only as the voice of nature, and of her laws;--not as a divine helper, prevailing over death; but as a mortal teacher warning us against it, and strengthening us for our mortal time; but not for eternity. of which lesson her own history is a part, and her habitation by the avernus lake. she desires immortality, fondly and vainly, as we do ourselves. she receives, from the love of her _refused_ lover, apollo, not immortality, but length of life;--her years to be as the grains of dust in her hand. and even this she finds was a false desire; and her wise and holy desire at last is--to die. she wastes away; becomes a shade only, and a voice. the nations ask her, what wouldst thou? she answers, peace; only let my last words be true. "l'ultimo mie parlar sie verace." [illustration: vii. for a time, and times.] 216. therefore, if anything is to be conceived, rightly, and chiefly, in the form of the cumaean sibyl, it must be of fading virginal beauty, of enduring patience, of far-looking into futurity. "for after my death there shall yet return," she says, "another virgin." jam redit et virgo;--redeunt saturnia regna, ultima cumaei venit jam carminis aetas. here then is botticelli's cumaean sibyl. she is armed, for she is the prophetess of roman fortitude;--but her faded breast scarcely raises the corselet; her hair floats, not falls, in waves like the currents of a river,--the sign of enduring life; the light is full on her forehead: she looks into the distance as in a dream. it is impossible for art to gather together more beautifully or intensely every image which can express her true power, or lead us to understand her lesson. [illustration: viii. the nymph beloved of apollo. (michael angelo.)] 217. now you do not, i am well assured, know one of michael angelo's sibyls from another: unless perhaps the delphian, whom of course he makes as beautiful as he can. but of this especially italian prophetess, one would have thought he might, at least in some way, have shown that he knew the history, even if he did not understand it. she might have had more than one book, at all events, to burn. she might have had a stray leaf or two fallen at her feet. he could not indeed have painted her only as a voice; but his anatomical knowledge need not have hindered him from painting her virginal youth, or her wasting and watching age, or her inspired hope of a holier future. 218. opposite,--fortunately, photograph from the figure itself, so that you can suspect me of no exaggeration,--is michael angelo's cumaean sibyl, wasting away. it is by a grotesque and most strange chance that he should have made the figure of this sibyl, of all others in the chapel, the most fleshly and gross, even proceeding to the monstrous license of showing the nipples of the breast as if the dress were molded over them like plaster. thus he paints the poor nymph beloved of apollo,--the clearest and queenliest in prophecy and command of all the sibyls,--as an ugly crone, with the arms of goliath, poring down upon a single book. 219. there is one point of fine detail, however, in botticelli's cumaean sibyl, and in the next i am going to show you, to explain which i must go back for a little while to the question of the direct relation of the italian painters to the greek. i don't like repeating in one lecture what i have said in another; but to save you the trouble of reference, must remind you of what i stated in my fourth lecture on greek birds, when we were examining the adoption of the plume crests in armor, that the crest signifies command; but the diadem, _obedience_; and that every crown is primarily a diadem. it is the thing that binds, before it is the thing that honors. now all the great schools dwell on this symbolism. the long flowing hair is the symbol of life, and the [greek: diadêma] of the law restraining it. royalty, or kingliness, over life, restraining and glorifying. in the extremity of restraint--in death, whether noble, as of death to earth, or ignoble, as of death to heaven, the [greek: diadêma] is fastened with the mort-cloth: "bound hand and foot with grave-clothes, and the face bound about with the napkin." 220. now look back to the first greek head i ever showed you, used as the type of archaic sculpture in aratra pentelici, and then look at the crown in botticelli's astrologia. it is absolutely the greek form,--even to the peculiar oval of the forehead; while the diadem--the governing law--is set with appointed stars--to rule the destiny and thought. then return to the cumaean sibyl. she, as we have seen, is the symbol of enduring life--almost immortal. the diadem is withdrawn from the forehead--reduced to a narrow fillet--here, and the hair thrown free. [illustration: ix. in the woods of ida.] 221. from the cumaean sibyl's diadem, traced only by points, turn to that of the hellespontic, (plate 9, opposite). i do not know why botticelli chose her for the spirit of prophecy in old age; but he has made this the most interesting plate of the series in the definiteness of its connection with the work from dante, which becomes his own prophecy in old age. the fantastic yet solemn treatment of the gnarled wood occurs, as far as i know, in no other engravings but this, and the illustrations to dante; and i am content to leave it, with little comment, for the reader's quiet study, as showing the exuberance of imagination which other men at this time in italy allowed to waste itself in idle arabesque, restrained by botticelli to his most earnest purposes; and giving the withered tree-trunks, hewn for the rude throne of the aged prophetess, the same harmony with her fading spirit which the rose has with youth, or the laurel with victory. also in its weird characters, you have the best example i can show you of the orders of decorative design which are especially expressible by engraving, and which belong to a group of art instincts scarcely now to be understood, much less recovered, (the influence of modern naturalistic imitation being too strong to be conquered)--the instincts, namely, for the arrangement of pure line, in labyrinthine intricacy, through which the grace of order may give continual clue. the entire body of ornamental design, connected with writing, in the middle ages seems as if it were a sensible symbol, to the eye and brain, of the methods of error and recovery, the minglings of crooked with straight, and perverse with progressive, which constitute the great problem of human morals and fate; and when i chose the title for the collected series of these lectures, i hoped to have justified it by careful analysis of the methods of labyrinthine ornament, which, made sacred by theseian traditions,[bc] and beginning, in imitation of physical truth, with the spiral waves of the waters of babylon as the assyrian carved them, entangled in their returns the eyes of men, on greek vase and christian manuscript--till they closed in the arabesques which sprang round the last luxury of venice and rome. but the labyrinth of life itself, and its more and more interwoven occupation, become too manifold, and too difficult for me; and of the time wasted in the blind lanes of it, perhaps that spent in analysis or recommendation of the art to which men's present conduct makes them insensible, has been chiefly cast away. on the walls of the little room where i finally revise this lecture,[bd] hangs an old silken sampler of great-grandame's work: representing the domestic life of abraham: chiefly the stories of isaac and ishmael. sarah at her tent-door, watching, with folded arms, the dismissal of hagar: above, in a wilderness full of fruit trees, birds, and butterflies, little ishmael lying at the root of a tree, and the spent bottle under another; hagar in prayer, and the angel appearing to her out of a wreathed line of gloomily undulating clouds, which, with a dark-rayed sun in the midst, surmount the entire composition in two arches, out of which descend shafts of (i suppose) beneficent rain; leaving, however, room, in the corner opposite to ishmael's angel, for isaac's, who stays abraham in the sacrifice; the ram in the thicket, the squirrel in the plum tree above him, and the grapes, pears, apples, roses, and daisies of the foreground, being all wrought with involution of such ingenious needlework as may well rank, in the patience, the natural skill, and the innocent pleasure of it, with the truest works of florentine engraving. nay; the actual tradition of many of the forms of ancient art is in many places evident,--as, for instance, in the spiral summits of the flames of the wood on the altar, which are like a group of first-springing fern. on the wall opposite is a smaller composition, representing justice with her balance and sword, standing between the sun and moon, with a background of pinks, borage, and corn-cockle: a third is only a cluster of tulips and iris, with two byzantine peacocks; but the spirits of penelope and ariadne reign vivid in all the work--and the richness of pleasurable fancy is as great still, in these silken labors, as in the marble arches and golden roof of the cathedral of monreale. but what is the use of explaining or analyzing it? such work as this means the patience and simplicity of all feminine life; and can be produced, among _us_ at least, no more. gothic tracery itself, another of the instinctive labyrinthine intricacies of old, though analyzed to its last section, has become now the symbol only of a foolish ecclesiastical sect, retained for their shibboleth, joyless and powerless for all good. the very labyrinth of the grass and flowers of our fields, though dissected to its last leaf, is yet bitten bare, or trampled to slime, by the minotaur of our lust; and for the traceried spire of the poplar by the brook, we possess but the four-square furnace tower, to mingle its smoke with heaven's thunder-clouds.[be] we will look yet at one sampler more of the engraved work, done in the happy time when flowers were pure, youth simple, and imagination gay,--botticelli's libyan sibyl. glance back first to the hellespontic, noting the close fillet, and the cloth bound below the face, and then you will be prepared to understand the last i shall show you, and the loveliest of the southern pythonesses. [illustration: x. grass of the desert.] 222. a less deep thinker than botticelli would have made her parched with thirst, and burnt with heat. but the voice of god, through nature, to the arab or the moor, is not in the thirst, but in the fountain--not in the desert, but in the grass of it. and this libyan sibyl is the spirit of wild grass and flowers, springing in desolate places. you see, her diadem is a wreath of them; but the blossoms of it are not fastening enough for her hair, though it is not long yet--(she is only in reality a florentine girl of fourteen or fifteen)--so the little darling knots it under her ears, and then makes herself a necklace of it. but though flowing hair and flowers are wild and pretty, botticelli had not, in these only, got the power of spring marked to his mind. any girl might wear flowers; but few, for ornament, would be likely to wear grass. so the sibyl shall have grass in her diadem; not merely interwoven and bending, but springing and strong. you thought it ugly and grotesque at first, did not you? it was made so, because precisely what botticelli wanted you to look at. but that's not all. this conical cap of hers, with one bead at the top,--considering how fond the florentines are of graceful head-dresses, this seems a strange one for a young girl. but, exactly as i know the angel of victory to be greek, at his mount of pity, so i know this head-dress to be taken from a greek coin, and to be meant for a greek symbol. it is the petasus of hermes--the mist of morning over the dew. lastly, what will the libyan sibyl say to you? the letters are large on her tablet. her message is the oracle from the temple of the dew: "the dew of thy birth is as the womb of the morning."--"ecce venientem diem, et latentia aperientem, tenebit gremio gentium regina." 223. why the daybreak came not then, nor yet has come, but only a deeper darkness; and why there is now neither queen nor king of nations, but every man doing that which is right in his own eyes, i would fain go on, partly to tell you, and partly to meditate with you: but it is not our work for to-day. the issue of the reformation which these great painters, the scholars of dante, began, we may follow, farther, in the study to which i propose to lead you, of the lives of cimabue and giotto, and the relation of their work at assisi to the chapel and chambers of the vatican. 224. to-day let me finish what i have to tell you of the style of southern engraving. what sudden bathos in the sentence, you think! so contemptible the question of style, then, in painting, though not in literature? you study the 'style' of homer; the style, perhaps, of isaiah; the style of horace, and of massillon. is it so vain to study the style of botticelli? in all cases, it is equally vain, if you think of their style first. but know their purpose, and then, their way of speaking is worth thinking of. these apparently unfinished and certainly unfilled outlines of the florentine,--clumsy work, as vasari thought them,--as mr. otley and most of our english amateurs still think them,--are these good or bad engraving? you may ask now, comprehending their motive, with some hope of answering or being answered rightly. and the answer is, they are the finest gravers' work ever done yet by human hand. you may teach, by process of discipline and of years, any youth of good artistic capacity to engrave a plate in the modern manner; but only the noblest passion, and the tenderest patience, will ever engrave one line like these of sandro botticelli. 225. passion, and patience! nay, even these you may have to-day in england, and yet both be in vain. only a few years ago, in one of our northern iron-foundries, a workman of intense power and natural art-faculty set himself to learn engraving;--made his own tools; gave all the spare hours of his laborious life to learn their use; learnt it; and engraved a plate which, in manipulation, no professional engraver would be ashamed of. he engraved his blast furnace, and the casting of a beam of a steam engine. this, to him, was the power of god,--it was his life. no greater earnestness was ever given by man to promulgate a gospel. nevertheless, the engraving is absolutely worthless. the blast furnace _is not_ the power of god; and the life of the strong spirit was as much consumed in the flames of it, as ever driven slave's by the burden and heat of the day. how cruel to say so, if he yet lives, you think! no, my friends; the cruelty will be in you, and the guilt, if, having been brought here to learn that god is your light, you yet leave the blast furnace to be the only light of england. 226. it has been, as i said in the note above (§ 200), with extreme pain that i have hitherto limited my notice of our own great engraver and moralist, to the points in which the disadvantages of english art-teaching made him inferior to his trained florentine rival. but, that these disadvantages were powerless to arrest or ignobly depress him;--that however failing in grace and scholarship, he should never fail in truth or vitality; and that the precision of his unerring hand[bf]--his inevitable eye--and his rightly judging heart--should place him in the first rank of the great artists not of england only, but of all the world and of all time:--that _this_ was possible to him, was simply because he lived a _country_ life. bewick himself, botticelli himself, apelles himself, and twenty times apelles, condemned to slavery in the hell-fire of the iron furnace, could have done--nothing. absolute paralysis of all high human faculty _must_ result from labor near fire. the poor engraver of the piston-rod had faculties--not like bewick's, for if he had had those, he never would have endured the degradation; but assuredly, (i know this by his work,) faculties high enough to have made him one of the most accomplished figure painters of his age. and they are scorched out of him, as the sap from the grass in the oven: while on his northumberland hill-sides, bewick grew into as stately life as their strongest pine. 227. and therefore, in words of his, telling consummate and unchanging truth concerning the life, honor, and happiness of england, and bearing directly on the points of difference between class and class which i have not dwelt on without need, i will bring these lectures to a close. "i have always, through life, been of opinion that there is no business of any kind that can be compared to that of a man who farms his own land. it appears to me that every earthly pleasure, with health, is within his reach. but numbers of these men (the old statesmen) were grossly ignorant, and in exact proportion to that ignorance they were sure to be offensively proud. this led them to attempt appearing above their station, which hastened them on to their ruin; but, indeed, this disposition and this kind of conduct invariably leads to such results. there were many of these lairds on tyneside; as well as many who held their lands on the tenure of 'suit and service,' and were nearly on the same level as the lairds. some of the latter lost their lands (not fairly, i think) in a way they could not help; many of the former, by their misdirected pride and folly, were driven into towns, to slide away into nothingness, and to sink into oblivion, while their 'ha' houses' (halls), that ought to have remained in their families from generation to generation, have moldered away. i have always felt extremely grieved to see the ancient mansions of many of the country gentlemen, from somewhat similar causes, meet with a similar fate. the gentry should, in an especial manner, prove by their conduct that they are guarded against showing any symptom of foolish pride; at the same time that they soar above every meanness, and that their conduct is guided by truth, integrity, and patriotism. if they wish the people to partake with them in these good qualities, they must set them the example, without which no real respect can ever be paid to them. gentlemen ought never to forget the respectable station they hold in society, and that they are the natural guardians of public morals and may with propriety be considered as the head and the heart of the country, while 'a bold peasantry' are, in truth, the arms, the sinews, and the strength of the same; but when these last are degraded, they soon become dispirited and mean, and often dishonest and useless." * * * * * "this singular and worthy man[bg] was perhaps the most invaluable acquaintance and friend i ever met with. his moral lectures and advice to me formed a most important succedaneum to those imparted by my parents. his wise remarks, his detestation of vice, his industry, and his temperance, crowned with a most lively and cheerful disposition, altogether made him appear to me as one of the best of characters. in his workshop i often spent my winter evenings. this was also the case with a number of young men who might be considered as his pupils; many of whom, i have no doubt, he directed into the paths of truth and integrity, and who revered his memory through life. he rose early to work, lay down when he felt weary, and rose again when refreshed. his diet was of the simplest kind; and he ate when hungry, and drank when dry, without paying regard to meal-times. by steadily pursuing this mode of life he was enabled to accumulate sums of money--from ten to thirty pounds. this enabled him to get books, of an entertaining and moral tendency, printed and circulated at a cheap rate. his great object was, by every possible means, to promote honorable feelings in the minds of youth, and to prepare them for becoming good members of society. i have often discovered that he did not overlook ingenious mechanics, whose misfortunes--perhaps mismanagement--had led them to a lodging in newgate. to these he directed his compassionate eye, and for the deserving (in his estimation), he paid their debt, and set them at liberty. he felt hurt at seeing the hands of an ingenious man tied up in prison, where they were of no use either to himself or to the community. this worthy man had been educated for a priest; but he would say to me, 'of a "trouth," thomas, i did not like their ways.' so he gave up the thoughts of being a priest, and bent his way from aberdeen to edinburgh, where he engaged himself to allan ramsay, the poet, then a bookseller at the latter place, in whose service he was both shopman and bookbinder. from edinburgh he came to newcastle. gilbert had had a liberal education bestowed upon him. he had read a great deal, and had reflected upon what he had read. this, with his retentive memory, enabled him to be a pleasant and communicative companion. i lived in habits of intimacy with him to the end of his life; and, when he died, i, with others of his friends, attended his remains to the grave at the ballast hills." and what graving on the sacred cliffs of egypt ever honored them, as that grass-dimmed furrow does the mounds of our northern land? footnotes: [as] the world was not then ready for le père hyacinthe;--but the real gist of the matter is that lippi did, openly and bravely, what the highest prelates in the church did basely and in secret; also he loved, where they only lusted; and he has been proclaimed therefore by them--and too foolishly believed by us--to have been a shameful person. of his true life, and the colors given to it, we will try to learn something tenable, before we end our work in florence. [at] i insert supplementary notes, when of importance, in the text of the lecture, for the convenience of the general reader. [au] mr. charles f. murray. [av] some notice of this picture is given at the beginning of my third morning in florence, 'before the soldan.' [aw] i am bitterly sorry for the pain which my partial references to the man whom of all english artists whose histories i have read, i most esteem, have given to one remaining member of his family. i hope my meaning may be better understood after she has seen the close of this lecture. [ax] read ezekiel xviii. [ay] see also the account by dr. woltmann of the picture of the triumph of riches. 'holbein and his time,' p. 352. [az] these words are engraved in the plate, as spoken by the virgin. [ba] cosimo rosselli, especially chosen by the pope for his gay coloring. [bb] i am not certain of their order at this distance of time. [bc] callimachus, 'delos,' 304, etc. [bd] in the old king's arms hotel, lancaster. [be] a manufacturer wrote to me the other day, "we don't _want_ to make smoke!" who said they did?--a hired murderer does not want to commit murder, but does it for sufficient motive. (even our shipowners don't want to drown their sailors; they will only do it for sufficient motive.) if the dirty creatures _did_ want to make smoke, there would be more excuse for them: and that they are not clever enough to consume it, is no praise to them. a man who can't help his hiccough leaves the room: why do they not leave the england they pollute? [bf] i know no drawing so subtle as bewick's, since the fifteenth century, except holbein's and turner's. i have been greatly surprised lately by the exquisite water-color work in some of stothard's smaller vignettes; but he cannot set the line like turner or bewick. [bg] gilbert gray, bookbinder. i have to correct the inaccurate--and very harmfully inaccurate, expression which i used of bewick, in love's meinie (§ 3), 'a printer's lad at newcastle.' his first master was a goldsmith and engraver, else he could never have been an artist. i am very heartily glad to make this correction, which establishes another link of relation between bewick and botticelli; but my error was partly caused by the impression which the above description of his "most invaluable friend" made on me, when i first read it. much else that i meant to correct, or promised to explain, in this lecture, must be deferred to the appendix; the superiority of the tuscan to the greek aphrodite i may perhaps, even at last, leave the reader to admit or deny as he pleases, having more important matters of debate on hand. but as i mean only to play with proserpina during the spring, i will here briefly anticipate a statement i mean in the appendix to enforce, namely, of the extreme value of colored copies by hand, of paintings whose excellence greatly consists in color, as auxiliary to engravings of them. the prices now given without hesitation for nearly worthless original drawings by fifth-rate artists, would obtain for the misguided buyers, in something like a proportion of ten to one, most precious copies of drawings which can only be represented at all in engraving by entire alteration of their treatment, and abandonment of their finest purposes. i feel this so strongly that i have given my best attention, during upwards of ten years, to train a copyist to perfect fidelity in rendering the work of turner; and having now succeeded in enabling him to produce facsimiles so close as to look like replicas, facsimiles which i must sign with my own name and his, in the very work of them, to prevent their being sold for real turner vignettes, i can obtain no custom for him, and am obliged to leave him to make his bread by any power of captivation his original sketches may possess in the eyes of a public which maintains a nation of copyists in rome, but is content with black and white renderings of great english art; though there is scarcely one cultivated english gentleman or lady who has not been twenty times in the vatican, for once that they have been in the national gallery. notes. 228. i. the following letter, from one of my most faithful readers, corrects an important piece of misinterpretation in the text. the waving of the reins must be only in sign of the fluctuation of heat round the sun's own chariot:- "spring field, ambleside, "february 11, 1875. "dear mr. ruskin,--your fifth lecture on engraving i have to hand. "sandro intended those wavy lines meeting under the sun's right[bh] hand, (plate v.) primarily, no doubt, to represent the four ends of the four reins dangling from the sun's hand. the flames and rays are seen to continue to radiate from the platform of the chariot between and beyond these ends of the reins, and over the knee. he may have wanted to acknowledge that the warmth of the earth was apollo's, by making these ends of the reins spread out separately and wave, and thereby inclose a form like a flame. but i cannot think it. "believe me, "ever yours truly, "chas. wm. smith." ii. i meant to keep labyrinthine matters for my appendix; but the following most useful by-words from mr. tyrwhitt had better be read at once:-"in the matter of cretan labyrinth, as connected by virgil with the ludus trojæ, or equestrian game of winding and turning, continued in england from twelfth century; and having for last relic the maze[bi] called 'troy town,' at troy farm, near somerton, oxfordshire, which itself resembles the circular labyrinth on a coin of cnossus in fors clavigera. (letter 23, p. 12.) "the connecting quotation from virg., æn., v. 588, is as follows: 'ut quondam creta fertur labyrinthus in alta parietibus textum cæcis iter, ancipitemque mille viis habuisse dolum, qua signa sequendi falleret indeprensus et inremeabilis error. haud alio teucrün nati vestigia cursu impediunt, texuntque fagas et proelia ludo, delphinum similes.'" labyrinth of ariadne, as cut on the downs by shepherds from time immemorial,-shakespeare, 'midsummer night's dream,' act ii., sc. 2: "_oberon._ the nine-men's morris[bj] is filled up with mud; and the quaint mazes in the wanton green by lack of tread are undistinguishable." the following passage, 'merchant of venice,' act iii., sc. 2, confuses (to all appearance) the athenian tribute to crete, with the story of hesione: and may point to general confusion in the elizabethan mind about the myths: "_portia._ ... with much more love than young alcides, when he did reduce the virgin-tribute paid by howling troy to the sea monster."[bk] theseus is the attic hercules, however; and troy may have been a sort of house of call for mythical monsters, in the view of midland shepherds. footnotes: [bh] "would not the design have looked better, to us, on the plate than on the print? on the plate, the reins would be in the left hand; and the whole movement be from the left to the right? the two different forms that the radiance takes would symbolize respectively heat and light, would they not?" [bi] strutt, pp. 97-8, ed. 1801. [bj] explained as "a game still played by the shepherds, cowkeepers," etc., in the midland counties. [bk] see iliad, 20, 145. [illustration: xi. "obediente domino voci hominis."] appendix. article i. notes on the present state of engraving in england. 229. i have long deferred the completion of this book, because i had hoped to find time to show, in some fullness, the grounds for my conviction that engraving, and the study of it, since the development of the modern finished school, have been ruinous to european knowledge of art. but i am more and more busied in what i believe to be better work, and can only with extreme brevity state here the conclusions of many years' thought. these, in several important particulars, have been curiously enforced on me by the carelessness shown by the picture dealers about the copies from turner which it has cost mr. ward and me[bl] fifteen years of study together to enable ourselves to make. "they are only copies," say they,--"nobody will look at them." 230. it never seems to occur even to the most intelligent persons that an engraving also is 'only a copy,' and a copy done with refusal of color, and with disadvantage of means in rendering shade. but just because this utterly inferior copy can be reduplicated, and introduces a different kind of skill, in another material, people are content to lose all the composition, and all the charm, of the original,--so far as these depend on the chief gift of a _painter_,--color; while they are gradually misled into attributing to the painter himself qualities impertinently added by the engraver to make his plate popular: and, which is far worse, they are as gradually and subtly prevented from looking, in the original, for the qualities which engraving could never render. further, it continually happens that the very best color-compositions engrave worst; for they often extend colors over great spaces at equal pitch, and the green is as dark as the red, and the blue as the brown; so that the engraver can only distinguish them by lines in different directions, and his plate becomes a vague and dead mass of neutral tint; but a bad and forced piece of color, or a piece of work of the bolognese school, which is everywhere black in the shadows, and colorless in the lights, will engrave with great ease, and appear spirited and forcible. hence engravers, as a rule, are interested in reproducing the work of the worst schools of painting. also, the idea that the merit of an engraving consisted in light and shade, has prevented the modern masters from even attempting to render works dependent mainly on outline and expression; like the early frescoes, which should indeed have been the objects of their most attentive and continual skill: for outline and expression are entirely within the scope of engraving; and the scripture histories of an aisle of a cloister might have been engraved, to perfection, with little more pains than are given by ordinary workmen to round a limb by correggio, or imitate the texture of a dress by sir joshua,--and both, at last, inadequately. 231. i will not lose more time in asserting or lamenting the mischief arising out of the existing system: but will rapidly state what the public should now ask for. 1. exquisitely careful engraved outlines of all remaining frescoes of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries in italy, with so much pale tinting as may be explanatory of their main masses; and with the local darks and local lights brilliantly relieved. the arundel society have published some meritorious plates of this kind from angelico,--not, however, paying respect enough to the local colors, but conventionalizing the whole too much into outline. 2. finished small plates for book illustration. the cheap wood-cutting and etching of popular illustrated books have been endlessly mischievous to public taste: they first obtained their power in a general reaction of the public mind from the insipidity of the lower school of line engraving, brought on it by servile persistence in hack work for ignorant publishers. the last dregs of it may still be seen in the sentimental landscapes engraved for cheap ladies' pocket-books. but the woodcut can never, educationally, take the place of serene and accomplished line engraving; and the training of young artists in whom the gift of delineation prevails over their sense of color, to the production of scholarly, but small plates, with their utmost honor of skill, would give a hitherto unconceived dignity to the character and range of our popular literature. 3. vigorous mezzotints from pictures of the great masters, which originally present noble contrasts of light and shade. many venetian works are magnificent in this character. 4. original design by painters themselves, decisively engraved in few lines--(_not_ etched); and with such insistence by dotted work on the main contours as we have seen in the examples given from italian engraving. 5. on the other hand, the men whose quiet patience and exquisite manual dexterity are at present employed in producing large and costly plates, such as that of the belle jardinière de florence, by m. boucher desnoyers, should be entirely released from their servile toil, and employed exclusively in producing colored copies, or light drawings, from the original work. the same number of hours of labor, applied with the like conscientious skill, would multiply precious likenesses of the real picture, full of subtle veracities which no steel line could approach, and conveying, to thousands, true knowledge and unaffected enjoyment of painting; while the finished plate lies uncared for in the portfolio of the virtuoso, serving only, so far as it is seen in the printseller's window by the people, to make them think that sacred painting must always be dull, and unnatural. 232. i have named the above engraving, because, for persons wishing to study the present qualities and methods of line-work, it is a pleasant and sufficient possession, uniting every variety of texture with great serenity of unforced effect, and exhibiting every possible artifice and achievement in the distribution of even and rugged, or of close and open line; artifices for which,--while i must yet once more and emphatically repeat that they are illegitimate, and could not be practiced in a revived school of classic art,--i would fain secure the reader's reverent admiration, under the conditions exacted by the school to which they belong. let him endeavor, with the finest point of pen or pencil he can obtain, to imitate the profile of this madonna in its relief against the gray background of the water surface; let him examine, through a good lens, the way in which the lines of the background are ended in a lance-point as they approach it; the exact equality of depth of shade being restored by inserted dots, which prepare for the transition to the manner of shade adopted in the flesh: then let him endeavor to trace with his own hand some of the curved lines at the edge of the eyelid, or in the rounding of the lip; or if these be too impossible, even a few of the quiet undulations which gradate the folds of the hood behind the hair; and he will, i trust, begin to comprehend the range of delightful work which would be within the reach of such an artist, employed with more tractable material on more extended subject. 233. if, indeed, the present system were capable of influencing the mass of the people, and enforcing among them the subtle attention necessary to appreciate it, something might be pleaded in defense of its severity. but all these plates are entirely above the means of the lower middle classes, and perhaps not one reader in a hundred can possess himself, for the study i ask of him, even of the plate to which i have just referred. what, in the stead of such, he can and does possess, let him consider,--and, if possible, just after examining the noble qualities of this conscientious engraving. 234. take up, for an average specimen of modern illustrated works, the volume of dickens's 'master humphrey's clock,' containing 'barnaby rudge.' you have in that book an entirely profitless and monstrous story, in which the principal characters are a coxcomb, an idiot, a madman, a savage blackguard, a foolish tavern-keeper, a mean old maid, and a conceited apprentice,--mixed up with a certain quantity of ordinary operatic pastoral stuff, about a pretty dolly in ribbons, a lover with a wooden leg, and an heroic locksmith. for these latter, the only elements of good, or life, in the filthy mass of the story,[bm] observe that the author must filch the wreck of those old times of which we fiercely and frantically destroy every living vestige, whenever it is possible. you cannot have your dolly varden brought up behind the counter of a railway station; nor your jolly locksmith trained at a birmingham brass-foundry. and of these materials, observe that you can only have the ugly ones illustrated. the cheap popular art cannot draw for you beauty, sense, or honesty; and for dolly varden, or the locksmith, you will look through the vignettes in vain. but every species of distorted folly and vice,--the idiot, the blackguard, the coxcomb, the paltry fool, the degraded woman,--are pictured for your honorable pleasure in every page, with clumsy caricature, struggling to render its dullness tolerable by insisting on defect,--if perchance a penny or two more may be coined out of the cockney reader's itch for loathsomeness. 235. or take up, for instance of higher effort, the 'cornhill magazine' for this month, july, 1876. it has a vignette of venice for an illuminated letter. that is what your decorative art has become, by help of kensington! the letter to be produced is a t. there is a gondola in the front of the design, with the canopy slipped back to the stern like a saddle over a horse's tail. there is another in the middle distance, all gone to seed at the prow, with its gondolier emaciated into an oar, at the stern; then there is a church of the salute, and a ducal palace,--in which i beg you to observe all the felicity and dexterity of modern cheap engraving; finally, over the ducal palace there is something, i know not in the least what meant for, like an umbrella dropping out of a balloon, which is the ornamental letter t. opposite this ornamental design, there is an engraving of two young ladies and a parasol, between two trunks of trees. the white face and black feet of the principal young lady, being the points of the design, are done with as much care,--not with as much dexterity,--as an ordinary sketch of du maurier's in punch. the young lady's dress, the next attraction, is done in cheap white and black cutting, with considerably less skill than that of any ordinary tailor's or milliner's shop-book pattern drawing. for the other young lady, and the landscape, take your magnifying glass, and look at the hacked wood that forms the entire shaded surface--one mass of idiotic scrabble, without the remotest attempt to express a single leaf, flower, or clod of earth. it is such landscape as the public sees out of its railroad window at sixty miles of it in the hour--and good enough for such a public. 236. then turn to the last--the poetical plate, p. 122: "lifts her--lays her down with care." look at the gentleman with a spade, promoting the advance, over a hillock of hay, of the reposing figure in the black-sided tub. take your magnifying glass to _that_, and look what a dainty female arm and hand your modern scientific and anatomical schools of art have provided you with! look at the tender horizontal flux of the sea round the promontory point above. look at the tender engraving of the linear light on the divine horizon, above the ravenous sea-gull. here is development and progress for you, from the days of perugino's horizon, and dante's daybreaks! truly, here it seems "si che le bianche e le vermiglie guance per troppa etate divenivan rance." 237. i have chosen no gross or mean instances of modern work. it is one of the saddest points connected with the matter that the designer of this last plate is a person of consummate art faculty, but bound to the wheel of the modern juggernaut, and broken on it. these woodcuts, for 'barnaby rudge' and the 'cornhill magazine,' are favorably representative of the entire illustrative art industry of the modern press,--industry enslaved to the ghastly service of catching the last gleams in the glued eyes of the daily more bestial english mob,--railroad born and bred, which drags itself about the black world it has withered under its breath, in one eternal grind and shriek,--gobbling,--staring,--chattering,--giggling,--trampling out every vestige of national honor and domestic peace, wherever it sets the staggering hoof of it; incapable of reading, of hearing, of thinking, of looking,--capable only of greed for money, lust for food, pride of dress, and the prurient itch of momentary curiosity for the politics last announced by the newsmonger, and the religion last rolled by the chemist into electuary for the dead. 238. in the miserably competitive labor of finding new stimulus for the appetite--daily more gross--of this tyrannous mob, we may count as lost, beyond any hope, the artists who are dull, docile, or distressed enough to submit to its demands; and we may count the dull and the distressed by myriads;--and among the docile, many of the best intellects we possess. the few who have sense and strength to assert their own place and supremacy, are driven into discouraged disease by their isolation, like turner and blake; the one abandoning the design of his 'liber studiorum' after imperfectly and sadly, against total public neglect, carrying it forward to what it is,--monumental, nevertheless, in landscape engraving; the other producing, with one only majestic series of designs from the book of job, nothing for his life's work but coarsely iridescent sketches of enigmatic dream. 239. and, for total result of our english engraving industry during the last hundred and fifty years, i find that practically at this moment i cannot get a _single_ piece of true, sweet, and comprehensible art, to place for instruction in any children's school! i can get, for ten pounds apiece, well-engraved portraits of sir joshua's beauties showing graceful limbs through flowery draperies; i can get--dirt-cheap--any quantity of dutch flats, ditches, and hedges, enlivened by cows chewing the cud, and dogs behaving indecently; i can get heaps upon heaps of temples, and forums, and altars, arranged as for academical competition, round seaports, with curled-up ships that only touch the water with the middle of their bottoms. i can get, at the price of lumber, any quantity of british squires flourishing whips and falling over hurdles; and, in suburban shops, a dolorous variety of widowed mothers nursing babies in a high light with the bible on a table, and baby's shoes on a chair. also, of cheap prints, painted red and blue, of christ blessing little children, of joseph and his brethren, the infant samuel, or daniel in the lions' den, the supply is ample enough to make every child in these islands think of the bible as a somewhat dull story-book, allowed on sunday;--but of trained, wise, and worthy art, applied to gentle purposes of instruction, no single example can be found in the shops of the british printseller or bookseller. and after every dilettante tongue in european society has filled drawing-room and academy alike with idle clatter concerning the divinity of raphael and michael angelo, for these last hundred years, i cannot at this instant, for the first school which i have some power of organizing under st. george's laws, get a good print of raphael's madonna of the tribune, or an ordinarily intelligible view of the side and dome of st. peter's! 240. and there are simply no words for the mixed absurdity and wickedness of the present popular demand for art, as shown by its supply in our thoroughfares. abroad, in the shops of the rue de rivoli, brightest and most central of parisian streets, the putrescent remnant of what was once catholicism promotes its poor gilded pedlars' ware of nativity and crucifixion into such honorable corners as it can find among the more costly and studious illuminations of the brothel: and although, in pall mall, and the strand, the large-margined landseer,--stanfield,--or turner-proofs, in a few stately windows, still represent, uncared-for by the people, or inaccessible to them, the power of an english school now wholly perished,--these are too surely superseded, in the windows that stop the crowd, by the thrilling attraction with which doré, gérome, and tadema have invested the gambling table, the dueling ground, and the arena; or by the more material and almost tangible truth with which the apothecary-artist stereographs the stripped actress, and the railway mound. 241. under these conditions, as i have now repeatedly asserted, no professorship, nor school, of art can be of the least use to the general public. no race can understand a visionary landscape, which blasts its real mountains into ruin, and blackens its river-beds with foam of poison. nor is it of the least use to exhibit ideal diana at kensington, while substantial phryne may be worshiped in the strand. the only recovery of our art-power possible,--nay, when once we know the full meaning of it, the only one desirable,--must result from the purification of the nation's heart, and chastisement of its life: utterly hopeless now, for our adult population, or in our large cities, and their neighborhood. but, so far as any of the sacred influence of former design can be brought to bear on the minds of the young, and so far as, in rural districts, the first elements of scholarly education can be made pure, the foundation of a new dynasty of thought may be slowly laid. i was strangely impressed by the effect produced in a provincial seaport school for children, chiefly of fishermen's families, by the gift of a little colored drawing of a single figure from the paradise of angelico in the accademia of florence. the drawing was wretched enough, seen beside the original; i had only bought it from the poor italian copyist for charity: but, to the children, it was like an actual glimpse of heaven; they rejoiced in it with pure joy, and their mistress thanked me for it more than if i had sent her a whole library of good books. of such copies, the grace-giving industry of young girls, now worse than lost in the spurious charities of the bazaar, or selfish ornamentations of the drawing-room, might, in a year's time, provide enough for every dame-school in england; and a year's honest work of the engravers employed on our base novels, might represent to our advanced students every frescoed legend of philosophy and morality extant in christendom. 242. for my own part, i have no purpose, in what remains to me of opportunity, either at oxford or elsewhere, to address any farther course of instruction towards the development of existing schools. after seeing the stream of the teviot as black as ink, and a putrid carcass of a sheep lying in the dry channel of the jed, under jedburgh abbey, (the entire strength of the summer stream being taken away to supply a single mill,) i know, finally, what value the british mind sets on the 'beauties of nature,' and shall attempt no farther the excitement of its enthusiasm in that direction. i shall indeed endeavor to carry out, with mr. ward's help, my twenty years' held purpose of making the real character of turner's work known, to the persons who, formerly interested by the engravings from him, imagined half the merit was of the engraver's giving. but i know perfectly that to the general people, trained in the midst of the ugliest objects that vice can design, in houses, mills, and machinery, _all_ beautiful form and color is as invisible as the seventh heaven. it is not a question of appreciation at all; the thing is physically invisible to them, as human speech is inaudible during a steam whistle. 243. and i shall also use all the strength i have to convince those, among our artists of the second order, who are wise and modest enough not to think themselves the matches of turner or michael angelo, that in the present state of art they only waste their powers in endeavoring to produce original pictures of human form or passion. modern aristocratic life is too vulgar, and modern peasant life too unhappy, to furnish subjects of noble study; while, even were it otherwise, the multiplication of designs by painters of second-rate power is no more desirable than the writing of music by inferior composers. they may, with far greater personal happiness, and incalculably greater advantage to others, devote themselves to the affectionate and sensitive copying of the works of men of just renown. the dignity of this self-sacrifice would soon be acknowledged with sincere respect; for copies produced by men working with such motive would differ no less from the common trade-article of the galleries than the rendering of music by an enthusiastic and highly trained executant differs from the grinding of a street organ. and the change in the tone of public feeling, produced by familiarity with such work, would soon be no less great than in their musical enjoyment, if having been accustomed only to hear black christys, blind fiddlers, and hoarse beggars scrape or howl about their streets, they were permitted daily audience of faithful and gentle orchestral rendering of the work of the highest classical masters. 244. i have not, until very lately, rightly appreciated the results of the labor of the arundel society in this direction. although, from the beginning, i have been honored in being a member of its council, my action has been hitherto rather of check than help, because i thought more of the differences between our copies and the great originals, than of their unquestionable superiority to anything the public could otherwise obtain. i was practically convinced of their extreme value only this last winter, by staying at the house of a friend in which the arundel engravings were the principal decoration; and where i learned more of masaccio from the arundel copy of the contest with simon magus, than in the brancacci chapel itself; for the daily companionship with the engraving taught me subtleties in its composition which had escaped me in the multitudinous interest of visits to the actual fresco. but the work of the society has been sorely hindered hitherto, because it has had at command only the skill of copyists trained in foreign schools of color, and accustomed to meet no more accurate requisitions than those of the fashionable traveler. i have always hoped for, and trust at last to obtain, co-operation with our too mildly laborious copyists, of english artists possessing more brilliant color faculty; and the permission of our subscribers to secure for them the great ruins of the noble past, undesecrated by the trim, but treacherous, plastering of modern emendation. 245. finally, i hope to direct some of the antiquarian energy often to be found remaining, even when love of the picturesque has passed away, to encourage the accurate delineation and engraving of historical monuments, as a direct function of our schools of art. all that i have generally to suggest on this matter has been already stated with sufficient clearness in the first of my inaugural lectures at oxford: and my forthcoming 'elements of drawing'[bn] will contain all the directions i can give in writing as to methods of work for such purpose. the publication of these has been hindered, for at least a year, by the abuses introduced by the modern cheap modes of printing engravings. i find the men won't use any ink but what pleases them; nor print but with what pressure pleases them; and if i can get the foreman to attend to the business, and choose the ink right, the men change it the moment he leaves the room, and threaten to throw up the job when they are detected. all this, i have long known well, is a matter of course, in the outcome of modern principles of trade; but it has rendered it hitherto impossible for me to produce illustrations, which have been ready, as far as my work or that of my own assistants is concerned, for a year and a half. any one interested in hearing of our progress--or arrest, may write to my turner copyist, mr. ward:[bo] and, in the meantime, they can help my designs for art education best by making these turner copies more generally known; and by determining, when they travel, to spend what sums they have at their disposal, not in fady photography, but in the encouragement of any good _water-color_ and _pencil_ draughtsmen whom they find employed in the _galleries_ of europe. article ii. detached notes. i. _on the series of sibyl engravings attributed to botticelli._ 246. since i wrote the earlier lectures in this volume, i have been made more doubtful on several points which were embarrassing enough before, by seeing some better (so-called) impressions of my favorite plates containing light and shade which did not improve them. i do not choose to waste time or space in discussion, till i know more of the matter; and that more i must leave to my good friend mr. reid of the british museum to find out for me; for i have no time to take up the subject myself, but i give, for frontispiece to this appendix, the engraving of joshua referred to in the text, which however beautiful in thought, is an example of the inferior execution and more elaborate shade which puzzle me. but whatever is said in the previous pages of the plates chosen for example, by whomsoever done, is absolutely trustworthy. thoroughly fine they are, in their existing state, and exemplary to all persons and times. and of the rest, in fitting place i hope to give complete--or at least satisfactory account. ii. _on the three excellent engravers representative of the first, middle, and late schools._ [illustration: xii. the coronation in the garden.] 247. i have given opposite a photograph, slightly reduced from the dürer madonna, alluded to often in the text, as an example of his best conception of womanhood. it is very curious that dürer, the least able of all great artists to represent womanhood, should of late have been a very principal object of feminine admiration. the last thing a woman should do is to write about art. they never see anything in pictures but what they are told, (or resolve to see out of contradiction,)--or the particular things that fall in with their own feelings. i saw a curious piece of enthusiastic writing by an edinburgh lady, the other day, on the photographs i had taken from the tower of giotto. she did not care a straw what giotto had meant by them, declared she felt it her duty only to announce what they were to _her_; and wrote two pages on the bas-relief of heracles and antæus--assuming it to be the death of abel. 248. it is not, however, by women only that dürer has been over-praised. he stands so alone in his own field, that the people who care much for him generally lose the power of enjoying anything else rightly; and are continually attributing to the force of his imagination quaintnesses which are merely part of the general mannerism of his day. the following notes upon him, in relation to two other excellent engravers, were written shortly for extempore expansion in lecturing. i give them, with the others in this terminal article, mainly for use to myself in future reference; but also as more or less suggestive to the reader, if he has taken up the subject seriously, and worth, therefore, a few pages of this closing sheet. 249. the men i have named as representative of all the good ones composing their school, are alike resolved their engraving shall be lovely. but botticelli, the ancient, wants, with as little engraving, as much sibyl as possible. dürer, the central, wants, with as much engraving as possible, anything of sibyl that may chance to be picked up with it. beaugrand, the modern, wants, as much sibyl as possible, and as much engraving too. 250. i repeat--for i want to get this clear to you--botticelli wants, with as little engraving, as much sibyl as possible. for his head is full of sibyls, and his heart. he can't draw them fast enough: one comes, and another and another; and all, gracious and wonderful and good, to be engraved forever, if only he had a thousand hands and lives. he scratches down one, with no haste, with no fault, divinely careful, scrupulous, patient, but with as few lines as possible. 'another sibyl--let me draw another, for heaven's sake, before she has burnt all her books, and vanished.' dürer is exactly botticelli's opposite. he is a workman, to the heart, and will do his work magnificently. 'no matter what i do it on, so that my craft be honorably shown. anything will do; a sibyl, a skull, a madonna and christ, a hat and feather, an adam, an eve, a cock, a sparrow, a lion with two tails, a pig with five legs,--anything will do for me. but see if i don't show you what engraving is, be my subject what it may!' 251. thirdly: beaugrand, i said, wants as much sibyl as possible, and as much engraving. he is essentially a copyist, and has no ideas of his own, but deep reverence and love for the work of others. he will give his life to represent another man's thought. he will do his best with every spot and line,--exhibit to you, if you will only look, the most exquisite completion of obedient skill; but will be content, if you will not look, to pass his neglected years in fruitful peace, and count every day well spent that has given softness to a shadow, or light to a smile. iii. _on dürer's landscape, with reference to the sentence on p. 101_: "i hope you are pleased." 252. i spoke just now only of the ill-shaped body of this figure of fortune, or pleasure. beneath her feet is an elaborate landscape. it is all drawn out of dürer's head;--he would look at bones or tendons carefully, or at the leaf details of foreground;--but at the breadth and loveliness of real landscape, never. he has tried to give you a bird's-eye view of germany; rocks, and woods, and clouds, and brooks, and the pebbles in their beds, and mills, and cottages, and fences, and what not; but it is all a feverish dream, ghastly and strange, a monotone of diseased imagination. and here is a little bit of the world he would not look at--of the great river of his land, with a single cluster of its reeds, and two boats, and an island with a village, and the way for the eternal waters opened between the rounded hills.[bp] it is just what you may see any day, anywhere,--innocent, seemingly artless; but the artlessness of turner is like the face of gainsborough's village girl, and a joy forever. iv. _on the study of anatomy._ 253. the virtual beginner of artistic anatomy in italy was a man called 'the poulterer'--from his grandfather's trade; 'pollajuolo,' a man of immense power, but on whom the curse of the italian mind in this age[bq] was set at its deepest. any form of passionate excess has terrific effects on body and soul, in nations as in men; and when this excess is in rage, and rage against your brother, and rage accomplished in habitual deeds of blood,--do you think nature will forget to set the seal of her indignation upon the forehead? i told you that the great division of spirit between the northern and southern races had been reconciled in the val d'arno. the font of florence, and the font of pisa, were as the very springs of the life of the christianity which had gone forth to teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the prince of peace. yet these two brother cities were to each other--i do not say as abel and cain, but as eteocles and polynices, and the words of æschylus are now fulfilled in them to the uttermost. the arno baptizes their dead bodies:--their native valley between its mountains is to them as the furrow of a grave;--"and so much of their land they have, as is sepulcher." nay, not of florence and pisa only was this true: venice and genoa died in death-grapple; and eight cities of lombardy divided between them the joy of leveling milan to her lowest stone. nay, not merely in city against city, but in street against street, and house against house, the fury of the theban dragon flamed ceaselessly, and with the same excuse upon men's lips. the sign of the shield of polynices, justice bringing back the exile, was to them all, in turn, the portent of death: and their history, in the sum of it and substance, is as of the servants of joab and abner by the pool of gibeon. "they caught every one his fellow by the head, and thrust his sword in his fellow's side; so they fell down together: wherefore that place was called 'the field of the strong men.'" 254. now it is not possible for christian men to live thus, except under a fever of insanity. i have before, in my lectures on prudence and insolence in art, deliberately asserted to you the logical accuracy of the term 'demoniacal possession'[br]--the being in the power or possession of a betraying spirit; and the definite sign of such insanity is delight in witnessing pain, usually accompanied by an instinct that gloats over or plays with physical uncleanness or disease, and always by a morbid egotism. it is not to be recognized for demoniacal power so much by its _viciousness_, as its _paltriness_,--the taking pleasure in minute, contemptible, and loathsome things.[bs] now, in the middle of the gallery of the brera at milan, there is an elaborate study of a dead christ, entirely characteristic of early fifteenth century italian madman's work. it is called--and was presented to the people as--a christ; but it _is_ only an anatomical study of a vulgar and ghastly dead body, with the soles of the feet set straight at the spectator, and the rest foreshortened. it is either castagno's or mantegna's,--in my mind, set down to castagno; but i have not looked at the picture for years, and am not sure at this moment. it does not matter a straw which: it is exactly characteristic of the madness in which all of them--pollajuolo, castagno, mantegna, lionardo da vinci, and michael angelo, polluted their work with the science of the sepulcher,[bt] and degraded it with presumptuous and paltry technical skill. foreshorten your christ, and paint him, if you can, half putrefied,--that is the scientific art of the renaissance. 255. it is impossible, however, in so vast a subject to distinguish always the beginner of things from the establisher. to the poulterer's son, pollajuolo, remains the eternal shame of first making insane contest the only subject of art; but the two _establishers_ of anatomy were lionardo and michael angelo. you hear of lionardo chiefly because of his last supper, but italy did not hear of him for that. this was not what brought _her_ to worship lionardo--but the battle of the standard. v. _fragments on holbein and others._ 256. of holbein's st. elizabeth, remember, she is not a perfect saint elizabeth, by any means. she is an honest and sweet german lady,--the best he could see; he could do no better;--and so i come back to my old story,--no man can do better than he sees: if he can reach the nature round him, it is well; he may fall short of it; he cannot rise above it; "the best, in this kind, are but shadows." * * * * * yet that intense veracity of holbein is indeed the strength and glory of all the northern schools. they exist only in being true. their work among men is the definition of what is, and the abiding by it. they cannot dream of what is not. they make fools of themselves if they try. think how feeble even shakspere is when he tries his hand at a goddess;--women, beautiful and womanly, as many as you choose; but who cares what his minerva or juno says, in the masque of the tempest? and for the painters--when sir joshua tries for a madonna, or vandyke for a diana--they can't even _paint_! they become total simpletons. look at rubens' mythologies in the louvre, or at modern french heroics, or german pietisms! why, all--cornelius, hesse, overbeck, and david--put together, are not worth one de hooghe of an old woman with a broom sweeping a back-kitchen. the one thing we northerns can do is to find out what is fact, and insist on it: mean fact it may be, or noble--but fact always, or we die. 257. yet the intensest form of northern realization can be matched in the south, when the southerns choose. there are two pieces of animal drawing in the sistine chapel unrivaled for literal veracity. the sheep at the well in front of zipporah; and afterwards, when she is going away, leading her children, her eldest boy, like every one else, has taken his chief treasure with him, and this treasure is his pet dog. it is a little sharp-nosed white fox-terrier, full of fire and life; but not strong enough for a long walk. so little gershom, whose name was "the stranger" because his father had been a stranger in a strange land,--little gershom carries his white terrier under his arm, lying on the top of a large bundle to make it comfortable. the doggie puts its sharp nose and bright eyes out, above his hand, with a little roguish gleam sideways in them, which means,--if i can read rightly a dog's expression,--that he has been barking at moses all the morning and has nearly put him out of temper:--and without any doubt, i can assert to you that there is not any other such piece of animal painting in the world,--so brief, intense, vivid, and absolutely balanced in truth: as tenderly drawn as if it had been a saint, yet as humorously as landseer's lord chancellor poodle. 258. oppose to- holbein's veracity--botticelli's fantasy. " shade " color. " despair " faith. " grossness " purity. true fantasy. botticelli's tree in hellespontic sibyl. not a real tree at all--yet founded on intensest perception of beautiful reality. so the swan of clio, as opposed to dürer's cock, or to turner's swan. the italian power of abstraction into one mythologic personage--holbein's death is only literal. he has to split his death into thirty different deaths; and each is but a skeleton. but orcagna's death is one--the power of death itself. there may thus be as much _breadth in thought_, as in execution. * * * * * 259. what then, we have to ask, is a man _conscious of_ in what he sees? for instance, in all cruikshank's etchings--however slight the outline--there is an intense consciousness of light and shade, and of local color, _as a part_ of light and shade; but none of color itself. he was wholly incapable of coloring; and perhaps this very deficiency enabled him to give graphic harmony to engraving. * * * * * bewick--snow-pieces, etc. _gray_ predominant; _perfect sense of color_, coming out in patterns of birds;--yet so uncultivated, that he engraves the brown birds better than pheasant or peacock! for quite perfect consciousness of color makes engraving impossible, and you have instead--correggio. vi. _final notes on light and shade._ 260. you will find in the 138th and 147th paragraphs of my inaugural lectures, statements which, if you were reading the book by yourselves, would strike you probably as each of them difficult, and in some degree inconsistent,--namely, that the school of color has exquisite character and sentiment; but is childish, cheerful, and fantastic; while the school of shade is deficient in character and sentiment; but supreme in intellect and veracity. "the way by light and shade," i say, "is taken by men of the highest powers of thought and most earnest desire for truth." the school of shade, i say, is deficient in character and sentiment. compare any of dürer's madonnas with any of angelico's. yet you may discern in the apocalypse engravings that dürer's mind was seeking for truths, and dealing with questions, which no more could have occurred to angelico's mind than to that of a two-years-old baby. 261. the two schools unite in various degrees; but are always distinguishably generic, the two headmost masters representing each being tintoret and perugino. the one, deficient in sentiment, and continually offending us by the want of it, but full of intellectual power and suggestion. the other, repeating ideas with so little reflection that he gets blamed for doing the same thing over again, (vasari); but exquisite in sentiment and the conditions of taste which it forms, so as to become the master of it to raphael and to all succeeding him; and remaining such a type of sentiment, too delicate to be felt by the latter practical mind of dutch-bred england, that goldsmith makes the admiration of him the test of absurd connoisseurship. but yet, with under-current of intellect, which gets him accused of free-thinking, and therefore with under-current of entirely exquisite chiaroscuro. light and shade, then, imply the understanding of things--color, the imagination and the sentiment of them. 262. in turner's distinctive work, color is scarcely acknowledged unless under influence of sunshine. the sunshine is his treasure; his lividest gloom contains it; his grayest twilight regrets it, and remembers. blue is always a blue shadow; brown or gold, always light;--nothing is cheerful but sunshine; wherever the sun is not, there is melancholy or evil. apollo is god; and all forms of death and sorrow exist in opposition to him. but in perugino's distinctive work,--and therefore i have given him the captain's place over all,--there is simply _no_ darkness, _no_ wrong. every color is lovely, and every space is light. the world, the universe, is divine: all sadness is a part of harmony; and all gloom, a part of peace. the end. footnotes: [bl] see note to the close of this article, p. 156. [bm] the raven, however, like all dickens's animals, is perfect: and i am the more angry with the rest because i have every now and then to open the book to look for him. [bn] "laws of fésole." [bo] 2, church terrace, richmond, surrey. note.--i have hitherto permitted mr. ward to copy any turner drawing he was asked to do; but, finding there is a run upon the vignettes of loch lomond and derwent, i have forbidden him to do more of them for the present, lest his work should get the least mechanical. the admirable drawings of venice, by my good assistant, mr. bunney, resident there, will become of more value to their purchasers every year, as the buildings from which they are made are destroyed. i was but just in time, working with him at verona, to catch record of fra giocondo's work in the smaller square; the most beautiful renaissance design in north italy. [bp] the engraving of turner's "scene on the rhine" (near bingen?) with boats on the right, and reedy foreground on the left; the opening between its mountain banks in central distance. it is exquisitely engraved, the plate being of the size of the drawing, about ten inches by six, and finished with extreme care and feeling. [bq] see the horrible picture of st. sebastian by him in our own national gallery. [br] see "the eagle's nest," § 79. [bs] as in the muscles of the legs and effort in stretching bows, of the executioners, in the picture just referred to. [bt] observe, i entirely distinguish the study of _anatomy_--i.e., of intense bone and muscle--from study of the nude, as the greeks practiced it. this for an entirely great painter is absolutely necessary; but yet i believe, in the case of botticelli, it was nobly restricted. the following note by mr. tyrwhitt contains, i think, the probable truth:-"the facts relating to sandro botticelli's models, or rather to his favorite model (as it appears to me), are but few; and it is greatly to be regretted that his pictures are seldom dated;--if it were certain in what order they appeared, what follows here might approach moral certainty. "there is no doubt that he had great personal regard for fra filippo, up to that painter's death in 1469, sandro being then twenty-two years old. he may probably have got only good from him; anyhow he would get a strong turn for realism,--i.e. the treatment of sacred and all other subjects in a realistic manner. he is described in crowe and cavalcaselle from filippino lippi's martyrdom of st. peter, as a sullen and sensual man, with beetle brows, large fleshy mouth, etc., etc. probably he was a strong man, and intense in physical and intellectual habit. "this man, then, begins to paint in his strength, with conviction--rather happy and innocent than not--that it is right to paint any beautiful thing, and best to paint the most beautiful,--say in 1470, at twenty-three years of age. the allegorical spring and the graces, and the aphrodite now in the ufficii, were painted for cosmo, and seem to be taken by vasari and others as early, or early-central, works in his life: also the portrait of simonetta vespucei[1]. he is known to have painted much in early life for the vespucei and the medici;--and this daughter of the former house seems to have been inamorata or mistress of giuliano de' medici, murdered by the pazzi in 1478. now it seems agreed by crowe and cavalcaselle, pater, etc., (and i am quite sure of it myself as to the pictures mentioned)--first, that the same slender and long-throated model appears in spring, the aphrodite, calumny, and other works.[2] secondly, that she was simonetta, the original of the pitti portrait. "now i think she must have been induced to let sandro draw from her whole person undraped, more or less; and that he must have done so as such a man probably would, in strict honor as to deed, word, and _definite_ thought, but under occasional accesses of passion of which he said nothing, and which in all probability and by grace of god refined down to nil, or nearly so, as he got accustomed to look in honor at so beautiful a thing. (he may have left off the undraped after her death.) first, her figure is absolutely fine gothic; i don't think any antique is so slender. secondly, she has the sad, passionate, and exquisite lombard mouth. thirdly, her limbs shrink together, and she seems not quite to have 'liked it' or been an accustomed model. fourthly, there is tradition, giving her name to all those forms. "her lover giuliano was murdered in 1478, and savonarola hanged and burnt in 1498. now, can her distress, and savonarola's preaching, between them, have taken, in few years, all the carnality out of sandro, supposing him to have come already, by seventy-eight, to that state in which the sight of her delighted him, without provoking ulterior feelings? all decent men accustomed to draw from the nude tell us they get to that. "sandro's dante is dated as published in 1482. he may have been saddening by that time, and weary of beauty, pure or mixed;--though he went on painting madonnas, i fancy. (can simonetta be traced in any of them? i think not. the sistine paintings extend from 1481 to 1484, however. i cannot help thinking zipporah is impressed with her.) after savonarola's death, sandro must have lost heart, and gone into dante altogether. most ways in literature and art lead to dante; and this question about the nude and the purity of botticelli is no exception to the rule. "now in the purgatorio, lust is the last sin of which we are to be made pure, and it has to be burnt out of us; being itself as searching as fire, as smoldering, devouring, and all that. corruptio: optimi pessima; and it is the most searching and lasting of evils, because it really is a corruption attendant on true love, which is eternal--whatever the word means. that this is so, seems to me to demonstrate the truth of the fall of man from the condition of moral very-goodness in god's sight. and i think that dante connected the purifying pains of his intermediate state with actual sufferings in this life, working out repentance,--in himself and others. and the 'torment' of this passion, to the repentant or resisting, or purity-seeking soul is decidedly like the pain of physical burning. "further, its casuistry is impracticable; because the more you stir the said 'fire' the stronger hold it takes. therefore, men and women are _rightly_ secret about it, and detailed confessions unadvisable. much talk about 'hypocrisy' in this matter is quite wrong and unjust. then, its connection with female beauty, as a cause of love between man and woman, seems to me to be the inextricable nodus of the fall, the here inseparable mixture of good and evil, till soul and body are parted. for the sense of seen beauty is the awakening of love, at whatever distance from any kind of return or sympathy--as with a rose, or what not. sandro may be the man who has gone nearest to the right separation of delight from desire: supposing that he began with religion and a straight conscience; saw lovingly the error of fra filippo's way; saw with intense distant love the error of simonetta's; and reflected on florence and _its_ way, and drew nearer and nearer to savonarola, being yet too big a man for asceticism; and finally wearied of all things and sunk into poverty and peace." [1] pitti, stanza di prometeo, 348. [2] i think zipporah may be a remembrance of her. +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | transcribers' notes | | | | | | general: corrections to punctuation have not been individually | | documented | | | | list of plates: fac-simile standardised to facsimile (3 occurrences) | | | | list of plates, illustration iii: fesole standardised to fésole | | | | list of plates: obedienta corrected to obediente | | | | pages 10, 31, 105: leonardo standardised to lionardo | | | | pages 26, 78: nell' arte as in original | | | | page 27: diagram has been split into two parts as it was too wide to | | display | | | | page 27: durer standardised to dürer (in diagram) | | | | page 46: line work standardised to line-work (first occurrence) | | | | page 47, 51, 54, 70, 151: wood-cuts standardised to woodcuts | | | | page 50, 51, 53, 56, 57, 59, 70, 107, 147: wood-cut standardised to | | woodcut | | | | page 76: dexterous standardised to dextrous | | | | page 103: "holbein had bitterer task." as in the original | | | | page 112: beame corrected to became | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ 