A History of Wood-Engraving/Chapter 7
VII.
THE DECLINE AND EXTINCTION OF THE ART.
Fig. 55.—From "Opera Vergiliana," printed by Sacon. Lyons, 1517.HE wood-engravers of France produced no great works like those of Maximilian, and no single cuts of the artistic value of those by Dürer and his contemporaries. They limited themselves almost exclusively to the illustration of books. The early printers, who had expended so much care in the adornment of their religious books, were succeeded by other printers who were hardly less animated by enthusiastic devotion to their art, as was shown by their efforts to make their works beautiful both in text and illustration. The Renaissance had now penetrated into France, and entered into the arts. Geoffrey Tory (c. 1480–1533), who had travelled in Italy, appears to have been the first to introduce a classical spirit into wood-engraving; from his time two distinct schools may be distinguished in French wood-engraving—one Germanic and archaic, the other filled by the Italian spirit. The most distinguished engravers belonged to the latter school, and their work was characterized by the curiously modified Italian taste which marked the French Renaissance. They understood design, and showed considerable power in it; they regarded the main lines and principal harmonies and contrasts of masses which are necessary to it; but they transformed its simplicity into elegance, and overlaid it with ornamentation and trifling detail which marred its effect, and gave to their works an appearance of artificiality, of over-labored refinement and mistaken scrupulousness of taste. As a rule, indeed, taste was their characteristic rather than a developed sense of beauty, and skill gather than power. Finally, they passed, by a natural progress, into a complexity and fineness of line which are unsuitable to wood-engraving; they lost the sense of unity in the abundance of detail, and were forced to give up engraving in wood and adopt engraving on copperplate, which was so much better fitted to the meaningless excess of delicacy and accumulation of ornament in which the French Renaissance ended.
The most talented of the French designers for wood-engraving was Jean Cousin (1501–1589), a member of the Reformed Church, little favored at court and much neglected by his contemporaries. He appears to have been of a robust and independent spirit, an admirer of Michael Angelo and the Italians, and an industrious and painstaking workman in many branches of art. A large number of designs are ascribed to him; but, as is the case with nearly all the French engravers, there is great difficulty in making out what really was his work. Among the characteristic products of French wood-engraving were representations of royal triumphal entries into the great cities of the kingdom. Two of these are ascribed to Cousin—the entry of Henry II. into Paris, published in 1549, and his entry into Rouen, published in the next year. In the latter the captains of Normandy lead the march; they are followed by ranks of foot-soldiers, trumpeters, men holding aloft laurel wreaths, other men with antique arms and banners, and a band which, with a reminiscence from Roman festivals, carry lambs in their arms for sacrifice to the gods; next succeed new ranks of soldiers, then elephants and captives, the fool and musicians leading on Flora and her nymphs, after whom comes the Car of Happy Fortune, on which the royal family are enthroned, and the triumphal Chariot of Fame; the procession closes with men-at-arms and two captains, with succeeding scenes of some places by which the pageant had passed. In this work the French Renaissance shows itself in the prime of its career, when some simplicity and nobility of design were still kept, and the tendency toward refinement of line and multiplication of ornament were still held in check by a regard for unity of effect. The Entry of Henry II. into Paris is, perhaps, even more excellent. The two works rank with the best French wood-engraving in the sixteenth century.
The characteristics by which the French Renaissance differed from the Renaissance in Italy are more clearly and easily seen in the reproduction of the Dream of Poliphilo, which was published in 1554, and is ascribed to Cousin. The French artist did not copy the beautiful designs of the Venetian; he kept the general character of each woodcut, it is true, but he varied the style. He made Poliphilo elegant in figure, taller and more modish in gesture and attitude; he represented the landscape in greater detail and with more realism; he gave greater height and more careful proportion to the architecture, added ornaments to its bare façades and smooth lintels, and in the subordinate portions he varied the curvature of the lines and made them more complex; in the lesser figures, the statues and monumental devices, he allowed himself more liberty in changing the original designs, and sometimes practically transformed them; finally, he introduced a more vigorous dramatic action throughout, and attempted to obtain more difficult effects of contrast and to give relief to the figures. Nevertheless, the improvements which the taste of Cousin required are distinctly injurious. The French reproduction is inferior to the Italian original in feeling for design, in simple beauty, in the force and directness of its appeal to the artistic sense, in the power and sweetness of its charm; much that was lovely in the original has become simply pretty, much that was noble and striking has become only tasteful; especially that quality, by virtue of which the original possessed something suggestive of the calm beauty of sculpture, has vanished, and in the effort of the new designer to obtain pictorial effects one has an unpleasant sense of something like weakness. The comparative study of the two volumes is of extreme interest, so clearly do they illustrate the different temper of the Renaissance in France and Italy. France received the word of inspiration from Italy, but could not become its oracle. Even at that early day French art was marked by the dispersion of interest, the regard for externals, and the inability to create the purest imaginative work, which have since characterized the French people, despite their facility in acquisition and the ease with which they reach the level of excellence in any pursuit.Of the other works, known or supposed to be by Cousin, the Book of Perspective, published in 1560, is the most remarkable, because in its designs considerable difficulties are overcome, and greater power of relief is shown than in any previous French wood-engraving. This book was a treatise, similar to those by Dürer and Leonardo da Vinci upon the laws of art, and its dedication is noticeable because of the light it throws on Cousin's spirit—"neither to kings nor princes, as is customary," he says, "but to the public." The Bible, usually called Le Clerc's, which contains two hundred and eighty-seven woodcuts, is said to be by Cousin, but of this there is no direct evidence; and to him is ascribed the Triumphal Entry of Charles IX., published in 1572, and supposed by some to have been designed by the engraver Olivier Codoré; many other works are also added to his list, but they were inferior in value to those which have been described, and were unmarked by any special interest. In consequence of the fineness and number of his productions Cousin must be considered the principal French engraver of the century; and he undoubtedly deserves a high rank among the artists of talent, in distinction from the artists of genius, who have practised wood-engraving.
About Cousin there were a number of other designers who gave attention to the art and left works of value; but these works bear so much resemblance to one another that it is frequently impossible to recognize in them the hand of any individual of the school—a difficulty by which Cousin's reputation has profited, because of the eagerness of his admirers to ascribe to him any excellent work in his style which is not definitely known to belong to some one of his contemporaries. These lesser artists were Jean Goujon (c. 1550), who made some excellent cuts for a Vitruvius of 1547, and is believed by some authorities to have designed the reproduction of the Dream of Poliphilo; Pierre Woeiriot (b. 1532), whose biblical cuts inserted in a Josephus of 1566 have much merit; Jean Tortorel (b. 1540?) and Jacques Perissin (b. 1530?), who designed some interesting illustrations of the Huguenot wars; and Philibert de Lorme (c. 1570) and Jean Le Clerc (1580-1620), whose productions are of comparatively little interest. The works of all these artists lacked that intimate relation with the life of the people which made the engravings of the lesser German designers valuable, and have importance only as illustrations of the development of French art in the Renaissance.
The only artist who can contest Cousin’s foremost place in French wood-engraving is Bernard Salomon (c. 1550), usually called the Little Bernard, from the small size of his cuts, who was the leading designer of Lyons. That city had retained its importance as a centre of popular literature illustrated by woodcuts, and is said to have sent forth more books of this kind in the latter part of the sixteenth century than any other city in Europe. The works of Holbein were the pride of the Lyonese art, and exerted great influence upon the style of the designers who were constantly employed in the service of the Lyonese press. Bernard worked in the small manner which Holbein had made popular, and he learned from him how to compress much in a little space; but he multiplied details, and carried the lines to an extreme of fineness which his engravers were unable to do justice to in cutting the block. As is the case with Cousin, a vast number of designs are attributed to Bernard, simply because they are sufficiently excellent to have been his work; according to Didot, no less than twenty-three hundred cuts have been claimed for him, and it is believed by some writers that he not only designed but engraved this large number. A large proportion of these must have been produced by the unknown contemporaries of Bernard, because, although he gave his attention wholly to wood-engraving for thirty years, he could not have accomplished so great a work. His best-known designs are the illustrations to an Ovid, published by Jean de Tournes, and two hundred and thirty cuts for the same printer’s edition of the Bible: these rank next to Cousin’s works as the most remarkable productions of French wood-engraving in the sixteenth century. Of the other Lyonese designers very little is known; indeed, no other important name has been preserved, excepting that of Jean Moni (c. 1570), who is remembered for a series of Bible cuts inferior to those by Bernard. In Lyons, as in the rest of France, wood-engraving lost its value toward the close of the century, in consequence of its attempts at a kind of delicacy and refinement beyond its reach and inappropriate to its class; it did not appeal to the taste of the late Renaissance, and by degrees the engravers lost their technical skill, and the artists gave up its practice as a fine art. This result was also partly due to the contempt into which the popular romantic literature of the preceding century had fallen, and to the degradation of wood-engraving as a mode of coarse caricature. Copperplate-engraving gradually supplanted the more simple art, and finally the practice of wood-engraving became extinct.
In Italy the older style of woodcuts in simple outline continued to be followed long after it was abandoned in the 
Fig. 56.—St. Christopher. From a Venetian print.
North. The designs in Italian books up to the year 1530, when cross-hatching was introduced, do not differ essentially in character from those of which examples have already been given. The names of the artists who produced them are either obscure or unknown, excepting Leonardo da Vinci, to whom are ascribed the cuts in Luca Pacioli’s volume, De Proportione Divina, published in 1509, and Marc Antonio Raimondi (1478–1534), to whom are ascribed the remarkably excellent cuts in a volume entitled Epistole et Evangelii Volgari Hystoriade, published in 1512 in Venice. From the first, Venice (Fig. 56) had been the chief seat of
Fig. 57.—St. Sebastian and St. Francis. Portion of a print by Andreani after Titian.
Fig. 58.—The Annunciation. From a print by Francesco da Nanto.
woodcuts in that city was Nicolo Boldrini (c. 1550), who designed several engravings (Figg. 59) after Titian (1476?–1575) with such boldness and force that some writers have believed Titian to have drawn the design on the block for Boldrini to engrave. The works of Titian and other Venetian painters were reproduced in the same way by Francesco da Nanto (c. 1530); and by other artists, like Giovanni Battista del Porto (c. 1500), Domenico delle Greche (c. 1550), and Giuseppe Scolari (c. 1580), who also sometimes made
Fig. 59.—Milo of Crotona. From a print by Boldrini after Titian.
wood-cuts from their own designs. Besides these engravings, some very large cuts, similar to those which the German artists had attempted, were printed from several blocks; but they have little interest. The illustrations in Vesalius’s Anatomy, published at Bâsle in 1543, in which wood-engraving was first employed as an aid to scientific exposition, were designed in Venice by Jean Calcar, a pupil of Titian, and are of extraordinary merit. Finally, in the cuts by Cesare Vecellio (1550–1606) for the volume entitled Habiti Antiche e Moderne, published in 1590, Venetian wood-engraving produced its last excellent work—so excellent, indeed, that the designs have been attributed to Titian himself, who was the uncle of Vecellio.
The Italians devoted themselves with especial ardor to wood-engraving in chiaroscuro, and from the time when Ugo da Carpi introduced it in Venice it was practised by many artists. Nearly all of those designers who have been mentioned left works in chiaroscuro engraving as well as in the ordinary manner. Beside them, Antonio da Trento (c. 1530), Giuseppe Nicolo (c. 1525), Andrea Andreani (c. 1600), and Bartolemeo Coriolano (c. 1635) produced chiaroscuro engravings which are now much valued and sought for by collectors of prints. The Italian love of color led these artists into this application of wood-engraving, which must be regarded as a wrongly-directed and unfruitful effort of the art to obtain results beyond its powers. The Italians had been the first to discover the capacity of wood-engraving as an art of design, but they never developed it as it was developed in Germany; when they gave up the early simple manner in which they had achieved great results, and began to follow the later manner, the great age of Italy was near its close, and the arts felt the weakening influences of the rapid decline in the vigor of society. At Venice the arts remained for a while longer powerful and illustrious, and wood-engraving shared in the excellence which characterized all the artistic work of that city; but the place which wood-engraving held in the estimation of the Venetians appears to have been far lower than its place in the North, where it was popular and living, highly valued and widely influential as it could not be in any Italian city. At last in Italy, as in France, it died out altogether, and was no longer heard of as a fine art.
In the Netherlands the art had been practised continuously from the time of the Block-books with varying success, but, excepting in the works of Lukas van Leyden (1494-1533), it had produced nothing of great value. In the sixteenth century Hendrick Goltzius (1558-1617) designed some woodcuts in the common manner as well as chiaroscuro engravings, and Christopher van Sichem (c. 1620) some woodcuts in the ordinary manner, which have some worth. The only work of high excellence was due to Christopher Jegher (c. 1620-1660), who engraved some large designs which Rubens (1577-1640) drew upon the block; they are inferior to Boldrini’s reproductions of Titian’s designs, but are free, bold, and effective, and succeed in reproducing the designs characterized by the vehement energy of Rubens’s style. Rembrandt (1606-1665) also gave some attention to the art which the older masters had prized, and left one small portrait in wood-engraving by his own hand. His example was followed by his pupils, Jean Livens (1607-1663) and Theodore De Bray (c. 1650), whose cuts are characterized by the style of their master. In England, where the art had not been really practised until Holbein’s day, and had not reached any degree of excellence, some improvement was made during the sixteenth century in designs for titlepages, portraits, and separate cuts, particularly in the publications of John Day. In the next century, during the civil wars, woodcuts of extreme rudeness were inserted in the pamphlets of the hour, and in the latter half of the century some interest was still felt in the art. In the eighteenth century two engravers, Edward Kirkall (c. 1690-1750) and John Baptist Jackson (1701-1754?), worked both in the ordinary manner and in chiaroscuro, but both were forced to seek support on the Continent, where, although the practice of wood-engraving as a fine art had long been extinct, the tradition of it as a mechanical process by which cheap ornaments for books were produced was still preserved. In France the engravers Pierre Le Sueur (1636-1710) and Jean Papillon (1660-1710) executed cuts of this sort which are without intrinsic value, and in the next generation their sons produced works which remained at the same low level of excellence. In Italy an artist, named Lucchesini, engraved some cuts in the latter part of the century, but they are without merit. In Germany the art was equally neglected, and the woodcuts in German books of the eighteenth century are entirely worthless.
The explanation of this rapid and universal decline of wood-engraving is to be found in general causes. The great artistic movement, which both in the North and the South had sprung out of mediæval religious life, and had gathered force and spirit as the minds of men grew in strength and independence, and as the compass of their interests expanded, which had been so transformed by the study of antiquity that in the South it seemed to be almost wholly due to that single influence, and in the North to have suffered an essential change in its spirit and standards, had at last spent itself. The intellectual movement which had gone along with it side by side, gaining vigor from the spread of literature, the debates of the Reformation, and the exercise of the mind upon the various and novel objects of interest in that age of great discoveries and inventions, had resulted in a century of religious warfare, aggravated by the violence of dynastic quarrels which arose in consequence of the new political organization of Europe. In this conflict the arts were lost; they all became feeble, and wood-engraving under the most favorable conditions would have shared in this general degradation. But for its utter extinction as a fine art there were more special causes. The popular literature with which it had flourished had been brought into contempt by Cervantes and Ariosto; the use of wood-engraving for coarse caricature also reflected discredit upon it; but the principal cause of its decadence lay in the taste of the age, which had ceased to prize art as a means of simple and beautiful design, but valued it rather as a means of complicated and delicate ornament, so that excessive attention was given to form divorced from meaning, and, as always happens in such a case, artificiality resulted. The wood-engravers attempted to satisfy this taste by seeking the refinement which copperplate-engraving obtained with greater ease and success, and they failed in the effort; in other words, wood-engraving yielded to copperplate-engraving because the taste of the age forced it to abandon its own province, and to contend with its rival on ground where its peculiar powers were ineffective.
Here the history of wood-engraving in the old manner, as a means of reproducing pen-and-ink sketches in facsimile, came to an end. It has been seen how valuable it had proved both as an agent of civilization and as a mode of art; how serviceable it had been in the popularization of literature and of art, and what influence it had exerted in the practical questions of the day as a weapon of satire; how faithfully it had reflected the characteristics of successive periods of civilization, and how perfectly, in response to the touch of the artist, it had embodied his imagination and expressed his thought. It had run a great career; its career seemed to have closed; but, when at the end of the eighteenth century the movement toward the civilization of the people again began with vigor and spirit, a new life was opened to it, because it is essentially a democratic art—a career in which it has already reached a scope of influence that makes its usefulness far greater than in the earlier time, and has given promise of a degree of excellence which, though in design it may not equal Holbein’s power, may yet result in valuable artistic work.