Engraving: Its Origin, Processes, and HistoryDelaborde, Henri, comte
History
Engraving: Its Origin, Processes, and History
Delaborde, Henri, comte
Engravers -- Great Britain; Engraving -- Great Britain; Engraving -- History
Thanks to the Master of 1466 and to Martin Schongauer, line engraving
in Germany was marked by brilliant and unexpected advances, whilst wood
engraving merely followed the humble traditions of early days. It is
true that the latter process was no longer exclusively applied to the
production of occasional unbound prints, or cheap religious pictures on
loose leaves, of which we have a specimen in the "Saint Christopher"
of 1423. In Germany, towards the end of the fifteenth century, the
custom had spread of "illustrating" (as we now call it) type-printed
books with wood engravings. To mention a few amongst many examples, we
have the "Casket of the True Riches of Salvation" ("Schatzbehalter"),
published at Nuremberg in 1491, and the "Chronicorum Liber" called the
"Nuremberg Chronicle," printed in the same town in 1493, both of which
contain numerous wood-cuts interpolated in the text.
These cuts are not so bad as the earlier German work in the same
process, yet they are far from good. They scarcely hold out a
promise of the advance in skill made some years later by wood-cutters
under the influence of Albert Dürer, and if they are compared with
the illustrations which adorn Italian books of the same period--the
"Decameron" of 1492, for instance, and especially the "Hypnerotomachia
Poliphili" of 1499--they appear still worse. Though they are not of
much value in themselves, the prints which accompany the writings in
the "Casket" and the "Nuremberg Chronicle" deserve attention. They were
done from designs supplied by Albert Dürer's master, Michael Wolgemut;
and the gulf between the rather feeble talent of the older man, and the
profound knowledge and powerful originality of his illustrious pupil,
can thus be easily measured.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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