At Basel Martin Flach was the first printer of illustrated books, ornamenting his 1473 edition of the Ackermann von Bohmen with a woodcut of Death, the labourer, and the dead woman, his _Cato_ with the usual picture of a master and scholar, his _Rosenkranz_ with a cut of a traveller beseeching the Virgin's protection from robbers, and another of a scene in heaven, and his _Streit der Seele mit dem Korper_ (these and the two preceding are undated) with eight illustrations of various moments in the dispute. More important than these are three profusely illustrated books from the press of Bernhard Richel. The first of these, his 1476 _Spiegel Menschlicher Behaltnis_, has 278 woodcuts, the work of two different hands, the earlier of the two showing less technical skill, but much more vigour and originality.[30] The other two books are undated editions of the romance of _Melusina_, with sixty-seven cuts, in which suggestions from the first Augsburg edition have been improved on by an abler workman, and a _Mandeville_ with 147 cuts, most of which passed into the hands of M. Hupfuff at Strassburg, who used them in 1501. After this Richel turned his attention to liturgies, and is credited by Dr. Schreiber with being the first printer to insert in his Missals the woodcut of the Crucifixion, which thenceforth is so frequently found facing the first page of the Canon. After the publication of these works illustration seems to have languished for some years at Basel, but was taken up again about 1489 by Johann von Amerbach, Lienhart Ysenhut, and Michael Furter, the work of the two latter being mainly imitative. Johann Froben, who began work about this time, was too learned a publisher to concern himself with woodcuts, catering chiefly for students of the University. One of the professors, however, at the University was far from sharing this indifference to pictures. Born at Strassburg, Sebastian Brant was educated at Basel, and it was while holding there the Professorship of Laws that he ensured the popularity of his _Narrenschiff_ (1494) by equipping it with 115 admirable illustrations. The original edition from the press of Johann Bergmann von Olpe was published in February, and before the end of the year Peter Wagner at Nuremberg, Greyff at Reutlingen, Schoensperger at Augsburg had all pirated it with copies of the Basel cuts. When the Latin translation by Brant's friend, Jakob Locher, was published by Bergmann in 1497, the success of the book became European, and probably no other illustrated work of the fifteenth century is so well known.