[31] In the masterly work of the Prince d'Essling on _Les livres a figures Venitiens_, the discovery of this interesting fact is inadvertently ascribed to Mr. Guppy, the present librarian of the John Rylands Library. It was made by his predecessor, Mr. Gordon Duff, a note by whom on the subject was quoted in my _Italian Book-Illustrations_ (p. 18), published in 1894. [32] The same trick is used in the _Rudimenta astronomica_ of Alfraganus, printed at Ferrara by Andreas Bellfortis in 1493. [33] Also used in an undated edition of the _Flores Poetarum_. [34] Mr. Berenson prefers to call him "Alunno di Domenico," Ghirlandajo's pupil. [35] Introduction to the Roxburghe Club edition (presented by Mr. Dyson Perrins) of the _Epistole et Evangelii_ of 1495. [36] There were two issues or editions of this book in 1489, one of which is said to have only the cut of S. Maurelius. CHAPTER IX EARLY FRENCH AND SPANISH ILLUSTRATED BOOKS Although interrupted by the death of its veteran author, Claudin's magnificent _Histoire de l'imprimerie en France_, in the three volumes which he lived to complete, made it for the first time possible for students to trace the early history of book-illustration at Paris and Lyon, the two great centres of printing in France. No illustrated books were printed at the Sorbonne, nor by its German printers when they set up in the rue S. Jacques, nor by their rivals there, Keysere and Stoll, and the French printers at the sign of the Soufflet vert. In January, 1476-7, in the first French book printed at Paris, the _Chroniques de France_ or de _S. Denis_, Pasquier Bonhomme so far recognized the possibility of illustration as to leave a space for a miniature on the first page of text,[37] but he used no woodcuts himself, and his son Jean suffered himself to be anticipated in introducing them by Jean Du Pre. Although he worked on rather narrow lines, Du Pre was the finest of the early Parisian printers, and possessed far better taste than the prolific publisher, Antoine Verard, of whom so much more has been written. His first book, a Paris Missal issued in partnership with Didier Huym, 22 September, 1481, has a large picture of the Pere Eternel and the Crucifixion. Although this is fairly well cut, it is baldly handled, and was far surpassed two months later (28 November) in a similar missal for the diocese of Verdun, by a really fine metal-cut of a priest and other worshippers at prayer at an altar. From the priest's uplifted hands a little figure of a man is rising up to a vision of the Pere Eternel, seen with His angels against the background of a sky full of stars. The little figure is the priest's soul, and the cut (often confused with pictures of the Mass of S. Gregory, in which the Host is seen as a figure of Christ) illustrates the opening words of the introit: "Ad te levavi animam meam." In the same Missal are a number of