Illustrated books -- Bibliography; Illustration of books; Printing -- History
Signatures which occur with some frequency between 1515 and 1529 are the
z.a., z.A., and I.A. used by Zoan Andrea, i.e. Johannes Andreas
Vavassore. This Zoan Andrea was an assiduous copyist. Early in his
career (1515-16) we find him imitating Durers large illustrations to the
Apocalypse; in 1517 his title-cut for the _De modo regendi_ of Antonio
Cornazano imitates that of Burgkmair on the 1515 _De rebus Gothorum_ of
Jornandes. In 1520 he prefixed to a Livy printed by Giunta an excellent
portrait modelled, as the Prince d'Essling has shown, on a sculpture set
up at Padua to the memory either of the historian himself or of one of
his descendants; in 1521 he copied Marcantonio Raimondi's engraving
of Horatius Cocles, and in the same year another by Raimondi of Quintus
Curtius. This was for an edition of Boiardo, and for a later edition of
1524 Zoan Andrea copied yet another engraving, that of Scipio Africanus.
In 1525 he imitated Holbein's elaborate border to the _Tabula Cebetis_,
applying it to a _Dictionarium Graecum_. About this time also he
produced the well-known block-book (at least three editions known)
_Opera noua contemplatiua_, imitating Durer's Little Passion in some of
the cuts. Because of the rarity of signed woodcuts in Italian books Zoan
Andrea has attracted more attention than the quality of his work
deserves. It seems probable that he was the head of a workshop, and the
craftsmanship of the cuts bearing his signature is very unequal.
Turning to the general course of book-illustration in Venice as it may
be studied in the great work of the Prince d'Essling, unhappily left
without the promised introduction at the time of his lamented death, we
find several different influences at work. As has been already noted,
the shaded work which had begun to make its appearance before 1500, as
in the frontispiece to the _Epitome Almagesti_ of Regiomontanus (1496),
rapidly became the predominant style. We find it combined with some of
the charm of the earlier outline vignettes in the small pictures of a
Virgil of 1507, and in some of those of another edition in 1508, though
the larger ones in this are heavy and coarse. The extreme of coarseness
is found in an edition of the _Legendario di Sancti_ of 1518, the
woodcuts being more suited to a broadside for a cottage wall than to
Venetian bookwork. The style is seen at its best in the illustrations of
a well-known Horae printed by Bernardinus Stagninus in 1507, and,
generally speaking, it is in the Missals, Breviaries, and Horae
published by L. A. Giunta, Stagninus and the De Gregoriis (see Plate
XXV) that the most satisfactory bookwork of this period is found.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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