2 HISTORY OF WOOD-ENGRAVING
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
- ↑ W. H. Willshire, Playing and other Cards in the British Museum, 1 vol. 8vo. (1876).
