# A History of Wood-Engraving/Chapter 4

IV.
EARLY ITALIAN WOOD-ENGRAVING.
Fig. 14.—From Ovid's "Metamorphoses." Venice, 1518 (design, 1497).REVIOUS to the time of Dürer, wood-engraving in the North, as has been seen, was little more than a trade, and has its main interest to the scholar as an agent of civilization; in Italy it first became a fine art, a mode of beautiful expression. The Italians, set in the midst of natural loveliness and among the ruins of ancient art, had never wholly lost the sense of beauty; they may have paid but slight attention to what was about them, but they lived life-long in the daily sight of fair scenes and beautiful forms, which impressed their senses and moulded their nature, so that, when with the revival of letters they felt the native impulses of humanity toward the higher life stirring once more in their hearts, they found themselves endued with powers of perception and appreciation beyond any other people in the world. These powers were not the peculiar possession of a well-born class; the centuries had bred them unobserved into the nature of the race, into ​the physical constitution of the whole people. The artisan, no less than the prince, took delight in the dawn of art, and welcomed it with equal worship. Nor was this artistic instinct the only common acquisition; the enthusiasm for letters was likewise widely shared, so that some of the best manuscripts of the classics have come down to modern times from the hands of humble Florentine workmen. Italy, indeed, was the first country where democratic civilization had place; here the contempt of the Northern lord for the peasant and the mechanic had never been wide-spread, partly because mercantile life was early held to be honorable, and partly because of peculiar social conditions. The long, uninterrupted intercourse with the remains of Roman civilization in the unbarbarized East, the contact with Saracenic civilization in the South, the culture of the court of the Two Sicilies, and the invariably levelling influence of commerce, had made Italy the most cosmopolitan of European countries; the sharp and warlike rivalry of small, but intensely patriotic, states, and the necessity they lay under of utilizing for their own preservation whatever individual energy might arise among them, perhaps most of all the powerful example of the omnipresent Church in which the son of a swineherd might take the Papal Throne, had contributed to make it comparatively easy to pass from lower to higher social ranks; the aristocratic structure of society remained, but the distinction of classes was obscured, and the excellence of the individual’s faculties, the energy and scope of his powers, were recognized as the real dignities which were worthy of respect. In this recognition of the individual, and this common taste for art and letters, lay the conditions of new and vigorous ​intellectual life; they resulted in the great age of Italy. It was this in the main that made possible the popular fervor for the things of the mind in the Italian Renaissance, to which nothing else in the world’s history is comparable but the popular enthusiasm of the modern Revolution for liberty. Dante gave his country a native language, the Humanists gave it the literature of Rome, the Hellenists the literature of Greece; poets sang and artists painted with a loftiness and dignity of imagination, a sweetness and delicacy of sentiment, an energy and reach of thought, a music of verse and harmony of line and color, still unsurpassed. The gifts which these men brought were not for a few, but for the many who shared in this mastering, absorbing interest in the things of the mind, in beauty and wisdom, which was the vital spirit of the Italian Renaissance.
Thus it happened that when the German printers brought over the Alps the art which was to do so much toward civilizing the North, they found in Italy a civilization already culminated, hastening on, indeed, to a swift decline; they found the people already in possession of the manuscripts which they came to reproduce and multiply, and the princes, like Frederick of Urbino, “ashamed to own a printed book” among their splendid collections, where every art seemed to vie in making beautiful their volumes of vellum and velvet. Wood-engraving, too, which here as elsewhere accompanied printing, could be of no use in spreading ideas and preparing the way for a popular ​knowledge Fig. 15.—The Creation. From the "Fascilus Temporum." Venice, 1484. and appreciation of art; it was to receive rather than bestow benefits; it was to be made a fine art before it could perform any real service. The printers, however, proved the utility of their art, and were soon busily employed in all the Italian cities in reproducing the precious manuscripts with which Italy was stored; and from the first they called wood-engraving to their aid. It is true that the earliest Italian woodcuts—which were, however, Germanic in design and execution—were as rude as those of the Northern workshops. They appeared for the first time in an edition of Cardinal Turrecremata's Meditations, published at Rome by Ulric Hahn, in 1467. In Venice, although withoutFig. 16.—Leviathan. From the "Ortus Sanitatus." Venice, 1511. much doubt the art had been practised there by the makers of cards and prints long before, woodcuts were first introduced by the German printers. The accompanying cuts are fair examples of their work (Figs. 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21), and at the same time interesting reflections of ​Fig. 17.—The Stork. From the "Ortus Sanitatus." Venice, 1511. popular fable. The views of Venice are examples of the very common attempts to represent the actual appearance of the great cities, which possess sometimes an historic value. This Germanic work is but slightly different from that already noticed; but as soon as the art became naturalized, and was practised by the Italian engravers, it was characterized at once by beauty of design. There is something more than promise in an edition of Æsop's Fables, published at Verona in 1481, as may be seen from these examples (Figs.
Fig. 18.—View of Venice. From the "Fascilus Temporum." Venice, 1484.
Fig. 19.—The Contest of Apollo and Pan. From Ovid’s “Metamorphoses.” Venice, 1518 (design, 1497).
and a description of cloistral life. This is adorned with a large number of small woodcuts of simple beauty, marked by grace and feeling, and full of reminiscences of moods and sentiments which have long ceased to hold a place in human hearts (Figs. 24, 25, 26). Here is pictured the religious life; the monk’s cell is barely furnished, but it is seldom without shelves of books and a window opening upon a distant prospect; the teacher expounds ​to his pupils the great volume on the desk before him; the priest administers consolation to the dying and the bereaved, and encourages the feeble of spirit and the sinful; the preacher discourses to his brethren and the crowding people the Blessed Word; the nuns of the sisterhood perform their daily offices of religion, Fig. 20.—Sirens. From the "Ortus Sanitatis." Venice, 1511. the panel of the confessional slides back for them, they wash the feet of the poor, they sit at table together; all the pieties of their life, which knew no close human relation, which knew only God and mankind, are depicted; and now and then there is a thought, too, of the worldly life outside—here the beautiful youths stop to gaze at the convent gates barred against them.
There are other cuts, also, of landscape, towers, and cities. The great themes of religion are not forgotten—the Resurrection and the Judgment unfold their secrets of justice and of the life eternal. In all the religious spirit prevails, and gives to the whole series a simple and sweet charm. One may look at them long, and be content to look many times thereafter.
Fig. 22.—The Woman and the Thief. From "Æsop's Fables." Venice, 1491 (design, 1481).
Fig. 23.—The Crow and the Peacock. From “Æsop’s Fables.” Venice, 1491 (design, 1481).
the ruins of antiquity, the legends of old mythology, the motions of the dance, the elegance of the banquet, splendor of apparel, courtesy of manners, even the manuscript, with its covers of purple velvet sown with Eastern pearls—everything which 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. Poliphilo wanders through fields and groves bright with this morning beauty, voyages down streams and loiters in gardens that are filled with gladness; he is graciously regaled in the palace, he attends the sacrifice in the temple, where his eyes are charmed by every exquisite ornament of art; he encounters in his progress triumphal processions, as they wind along through the pleasant country, Fig. 24.—The Peace of God. From "Epistole di San Hieronymo Volgare." Ferrara, 1497.bewildering the fancy with their lavish magnificence as of an Arabian dream; chariots that are wrought out of entire precious stones, carved with bass-reliefs from Grecian fables, and drawn by half-human centaurs or strange animals,—elephants, panthers, unicorns, in trappings of silk and jewels, pass before him, bearing exalted in their midst sculptured figures, Europa and the Bull, Leda and the Swan, Danaë in the shower of gold, and, last and most wonderful, a vase, beautifully engraved and adorned, out of which springs a golden vine, with leaves of Persian selenite and grapes of Oriental amethyst; and about all are groups of attendant nymphs, fauns, satyrs, mænads, and lovely women, crowned with flowers, with instruments of music in their hands, chanting the praise of ​Valor and of Pleasure; again, he lingers among ancient ruins and remembers their perished glory, and falls into reflection, like that Fig. 25.—Mary and the Risen Lord. From "Epistile di San Hieronymo Volgare." Ferrara, 1497. of the traveller whom he describes, "among those venerable monuments which still make Rome the queen of cities; where he sees," thinks Poliphilo, "the hand of Time, which punishes the excess of pride; and, seeking then on the steps of the amphitheatre the heads of the legions and that conquering eagle, that Senate whose decrees made and unmade the kings of the world, those profound historians, those Fig. 26.—St. Baruch. From the "Catalogus Sanctorum." Venice, 1506. eloquent orators, he finds there only a rabble of beggars, to whom an ignorant and oft-times lying hermit preaches, only altars without honor and saints without a believer; the artist reigns alone in that vast enclosure; pencil in hand, rich with memories, he sees the whole of Rome, her pomp and her glory, in one mutilated block which a fragment of bass-relief adorns." Inspired ​by these thoughts, Poliphilo delays among like relics of the past, and reads on shattered tombs the brief inscriptions which tell the history of the lost lovers who lie beneath, while the pagan burden of their sorrow, and the pagan calm of the "adieu" with which each inscription ends, fill him with tender sentiment. So his dream drifts on through ever-shifting scenes of beauty and ever-dying moments of delight
Fig. 27.— Poliphilo by the Stream. From the "Hypnerotomachia Poliphili." Venice, 1499.
to the hour of awakening. These scenes and these moments, which Francesco Columna called out of his imagination, are pictured in the one hundred and ninety-two designs (Figs. 27, 28, 29, 30) which adorn his book; here in simple outline are the gardens, groves, and streams, the ​noble buildings, the bath, the palace and the temple, the feast, the allegory of life, the thronging triumphs, the sacrifices, the ruins, the tombs, the lover and his beloved, the priestess
Fig. 28.—Poliphilo and the Nymphs. From the "Hypnerotomachia Poliphili." Venice, 1499.
and the goddess, cupids, bacchanals, and nymphs—a profusion of loveliness, joy, and revel; here, too, among the others, are some dramatic scenes: the lion and the lovers, Poliphilo fainting before Polia, and his revival at the touch of her lips; altogether, they are a precious memorial of the Renaissance spirit, reflecting alike its passion for the new learning, passing into useless and pedantic knowledge, and its ecstacy of the senses passing into voluptuous delight.
Fig. 30.—Poliphilo meets Polia. From the "Hypnerotomachia Poliphili." Venice, 1499
licentious fancy, which cannot be too much admired. They have that union of force and energy with a sober sweetness, beneath a last vestige of the primitive, which in the northern schools of Italy betokens the concurrent influence of the school of Mantegna and the school of Bellini." Italy never afterward produced so noble a monument of the art as this work of its early days.
The art did not, however, fall into decline immediately. It is true that wood-engraving never won for itself in Italy ​a place in the popular esteem like that which it held in the North; the Italians were too fond of color, and possessed too many master-pieces of the nobler arts, to set a very high value on such simple effects; but, nevertheless, in the
Fig. 31.—Nero Fiddling. From the Ovid of 1510. Venice.
Fig. 32.—The Physician. From the "Fasciculus Medicinæ." Venice, 1500.
Fig. 33.— Hero and Leander. From the Ovid of 1515. Venice.
vividly contemporary times, while it adds to the interest of history and humanity the interest of beauty. Its prime, however, was of brief duration. Venetian engraving, and that of the other Italian cities also, continued to be marked by this ​simplicity and skill in design until 1530, when cross-hatching was introduced from the North; after that date Fig. 34.—Dante and Beatrice. From the Dante of 1520. Venice. wood-engraving shared in the rapid decline into which all the arts of Italy fell in consequence of the internal troubles of the country, which, from the time of the sack of Rome, in 1527, became the common battlefield of Europe for generations. But, in the short space during which the Italians practised the art with such success, they showed that they had mastered it, and had come to an understanding of its capacities, both as a mode of drawing in Fig. 35.—St. Jerome Commending the Hermit’s Life. From “Epistole di San Hieronymo.” Ferrara, 1497. black line and as a mode of relief in white line, such as appears in their arabesques and initial letters, examples of which are scattered through this volume. They came to this mastery and understanding before any other nation, because of their artistic instinct; for the same reason, they did not surpass the rudeness of German workmen in ​skill more than they excelled in simple beauty of design the best of early French work, which was characterized by suchFig. 36.—St. Francis and the Beggar. From the "Catalogus Sanctorum." Venice, 1506. confused exuberance of fancy and such profusion of detail. They breathed into the art the Italian spirit, and its presence made their works beautiful.
To the Italian love of color is due the development of what is known as engraving in chiaroscuro, a process which, although it had been practised in GermanyFig. 37.—The Translation of St. Nicolas. From the "Catalogus Sanctorum." Venice, 1506. since 1506, was claimed as a new invention by Ugo da Carpi (1460-1523), at Venice, in 1516, and was carried by the Italians to the highest point of perfection which it reached in the sixteenth century. It was an ​attempt to imitate the results of painting; two, and sometimes several, blocks were used in the process; on the first the outlines and heavy shadows of the design were engraved, and a proof was taken off; on the second block the lighter parts of the design were engraved, and an impression was taken off from this on the same print in a different color, or, at least, in a color of different intensity; thus the original proof was overlaid with different tints by successive
Fig. 38—Romoaldus, the Abbot. From the "Catalogus Sanctorum." Venice, 1506.
impressions from different blocks, and a variety of shades was obtained in the finished engraving, analogous to those which the painter gets by laying flat tints over each other with the brush. Great care had to be taken in laying the original proof down on the second block, so that the lines of the design should fall in exactly the same position as in the first block; it is owing to a lack of exactness in this ​superposition of the proof on the later blocks that some of these engravings are so displeasing. There was considerable variety in the detail of the process. Sometimes the impression from the outline block was taken last; sometimes the different impressions were taken off in different colors, but usually in the same color of different intensities; sometimes the impressions were taken off on colored paper. The Italians used four blocks at an early time, and were able to imitate water-colors with some success. All of their prints in this kind are marked by more artistic feeling and skill than those of the Germans, even when the latter are by masters. This application of the art, however, is not a true development, and really lies outside its province.
* ↑ Vespas. Fior., p. 129. Quoted in Burckhardt, “The Civilization of the Period of the Renaissance in Italy.” Translated by S. G. C. Middlemore. Vol. i., p. 271. London, 1878.
* ↑ The Academy, October 15, 1872, pp. 383 et seq. Vide, also, Albert Ilg, "Ueber den Kunsthistorischen Werth der Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Kunstliteratur in der Renaissance." Wien, 1872. The original edition of the Dream of Poliphilo is rare and costly. It was re-issued in Venice, in 1545, and in Paris, with some variations (of which some account is given on a later page), in 1546. There is an abridged translation in French by Legrand, without cuts, printed by Didot in 1804.