Far more prolific than either of the foregoing Strassburg printers was Johann Reinhard of Gruningen, usually called Gruninger after his birthplace. Setting up his press in 1483, he began book-illustration two years later with a German Bible with woodcuts copied from those in the Low German Bibles printed at Cologne and used in 1483 at Nuremberg by Koberger. Some minor books followed, and in 1491 he issued the _Antidotarius Animae_ of Nicolaus de Saliceto, with rather rude borders to each page and a woodcut of the Assumption. This, however, like some of his earlier illustrated books, appears to have been a commission, and in a reprint of 1493 the decorations disappear. It was not until 1496, under the influence of Sebastian Brant, that he undertook any important original illustrated work on his own account. In that year he produced his first illustrated classic, the comedies of Terence (_Terentius cum directorio_), with a large woodcut of a theatre and eighty-seven narrow cuts of the dramatis personae, or of scenery, used five at a time in 150 different combinations. Critically examined, the cuts are rather unpleasing, and were regarded at the time as likely to provoke mirth otherwise than by expressing the humorous intent of the playwright, but another edition and a German translation similarly decorated appeared in 1499, and Gruninger issued on the same plan a _Horace_ (edited by Locher) in 1498, and the _De consolatione philosophiae_ of Boethius in 1501. His full strength was reserved for the _Virgil_ of the following year, which was superintended by Brant, and is crowded with wonderful pictures, in which on the very eve of the Renaissance Virgil is thoroughly medievalized. Besides these classics, Gruninger printed many other illustrated editions, minor works by Brant, medical treatises by Brunschwig, an _Evangelienbuch_, a _Legenda S. Katherinae_ in Latin and also in German, editions of the _Hortulus Animae_, the romance of Hug Schapler, etc., in the fifteenth century, and in the sixteenth a sufficient number of illustrated books to bring his total up to about 150 editions. These may be said to form a school by themselves, distinguished by a certain richness of effect partly due to heavy cutting, but with less power of characterization and fewer gleams of beauty than are to be found in the best work of other towns, the figures being often unpleasing and notably lean in the legs. Martin Scott, Hupfuff, and Kistler were other Strassburg printers of the fifteenth century who also used illustrations.