Illustrated books -- Bibliography; Illustration of books; Printing -- History
As we have already said, the charm of the woodcut pictures in incunabula
lies in their simplicity, in their rude story-telling power, often very
forcible and direct, in the valiant effort, sometimes curiously
successful in cuts otherwise contemptibly poor, to give character and
expression to the human face, and as regards form in the harmony between
the woodcuts and the paper and type of the books in which they appear.
In the book-illustrations of the sixteenth century the artist is more
learned, more self-conscious, and his design is interpreted with far
greater skill by the better trained wood-cutters of his day. More pains
are taken with accessories, and often perhaps for this reason the cut
does not tell its story so quickly as of old. It is now a work of art
which demands study, no longer a signpost explaining itself however
rapidly the leaf is turned. Lastly, the artist seems seldom to have
thought of the form of the book in which his work was to appear, of the
type with which the text was to be printed, or even of how the
wood-cutter was to interpret his design. Book-illustration, which had
offered to the humble makers of playing-cards and pictures of saints new
scope for their skill, became to the artists of the sixteenth century a
lightly valued method of earning a little money from the booksellers,
their better work being reserved for single designs, or in some cases
for the copperplates which at first they executed, as well as drew,
themselves. Thus the book-collector is conscious, on the one hand, that
less pains have been taken to please him, and on the other that he is
separating by his hobby one section of an artist's work from the
rest, in connection with which it ought to be studied. He may even be in
some doubt as to where his province ends, since many of the illustrated
books of the sixteenth century, although they possess a titlepage and
are made up in quires, are essentially not books at all, the letterpress
being confined to explanations of the woodcuts printed either below them
or facing them on the opposite pages. The bibliographer himself, it may
be added, feels somewhat of an intruder in this field, which properly
belongs to the student of art, although in so far as art is enshrined in
books and thus brought within the province of the book-collector,
bibliography cannot refuse to deal with it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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