We must now return from Venice to Florence, where, after the experiments with engravings on copper in 1477 and 1481, no illustrated books had been published until on March 27, 1490, Francesco di Dino (whom we have already seen at work at Naples ten years earlier) brought out an edition of the Specchio di Croce of Domenico Cavalca, with a frontispiece representing the Crucifixion. In September of the same year an edition of the Laudi of Jacopone da Todi (the Franciscan author of the Stabat Mater), was printed by Francesco Buonaccorsi, which contains on the verso of its eighth leaf a most beautiful outline woodcut,[12] St. Jacopone kneeling by a little lectern, his book on the ground, while above him is a vision of the Madonna enshrined in a 'mandorla,' supported below by three cherubs and above by four maturer angels. In 1491 we make the acquaintance of Lorenzo di Morgiani and Giovanni Tedesco da Maganza, or Johann Petri of Mainz, from whose press some of the most important of the Florentine illustrated books were issued. The first result of their activity was a new edition of Bettini's Monte Santo di Dio, in which the three copperplates of the edition of 1477 were freely imitated upon wood. In the same year they printed a little treatise on Arithmetic, written by Philippo Calandro and dedicated to Giuliano dei Medici. This is the most delightful of all arithmetic books. It has a title-cut of 'Pictagoras Arithmetice Introductor,' and the earlier pages of the book are surrounded by a characteristic Renaissance border. Towards the end of the work there is a series of illustrated problems, only a little more absurd than those which still occur in children's school-books. One of these, however, is so good that we must permit ourselves a little digression to quote it in a free translation:—

"A squirrel flying from a cat climbed to the top of a tree 26¾ arm's-lengths (braccia) in height. The cat, wanting to seize the squirrel, began to climb the tree, and each day leaped up half an arm's length, and each night descended a third of one. The squirrel, on its part, believing that the cat had gone away, wanted to get down from the tree, and each day descended a quarter of an arm's length, and each night went back one-fifth of one: I want to know in how many days the cat will reach the said squirrel?"

The answer is 121 days; but the picture must have been taken on the first or second, for the cat is still very plump, and so large in proportion to the tree that if he had but stood on his hind legs he ought to have reached the top! Others of the pictures are without this charming touch of absurdity, perhaps the most perfect being a little cut of a traveller on horseback, as to the expenses of whose journey the teacher was anxious for some information from his young friends. These little cuts are all about an inch square, and drawn in outline. Another edition of the Arithmetic, in Roman type instead of black letter, but otherwise very similar, was issued in 1518 by Bernardo Zucchetta.

The first publisher of these tracts seems to have been Antonio Mischomini, who on June 26, 1492, issued a

Trac
tato
dello
Amore Di Iesu Christo Composto
da frate Hieronymo da Ferrara del
l'ordine
de frati
predica
tori pri
ore di San
Marcho di
F I R E N Z E

with the title arranged cross-wise, as here shown. On the back of the title is a picture of the Crucifixion, with the Blessed Virgin and S. John standing by the Cross. This was followed on June 30th by the Tractato della humilta, with a large title-cut representing the dead Christ before His Cross, an angel supporting each arm. Neither of these cuts shows typical Florentine work, for the blank spaces have all to be cleared away by the engraver, and there is an abundance of shading. The first design was clearly spoilt in the cutting, the second is of great beauty. The typical Florentine work, in which white lines are cut out from a black ground, as well as black lines from a white, appears in the Tractato ouero Sermone della oratione, finished by Mischomini on October 20th. Here the title-cut shows the scene at Gethsemane: the three disciples asleep in the foreground, Christ in prayer, and the hands of an angel holding a cup appearing in a corner above. The picture, as always in distinctively Florentine work, is surrounded by a little border or frame, in which a small white pattern is picked out from a black ground.

The other illustrated Savonarola tracts bearing an early date, with which I am acquainted, are the De Simplicitate Christianae Vitae, printed 'impensis Ser Petri Pacini,' August 28th, 1496, and the Predica dell arte del bene Morire, preached on Nov. 2 of that year, taken down at the time by Ser Lorenzo Violi, and doubtless published immediately afterwards. The De Simplicitate has on its first page a picture of a Dominican friar writing in his cell, a sand-glass at his side, a crucifix in front of his desk, and books and his gown scattered on a table. The illustrations to the Arte del bene Morire comprise a hideous outline cut of Death, scythe on shoulder, flying over ground strewn with corpses (this is enclosed in a large black border used by Mischomini in 1492), and cuts of Death showing a young man Heaven and Hell,[13] of a sick man with his good and bad angels watching him and Death standing without the door, and of a dying man attended by a friar, Death sitting now at his bed's foot, and the angels watching as before.

Turning now to the undated tracts, we find that the Expositione del Pater Noster contains (1) a very beautiful variant of the representation of the scene on Gethsemane, the angel appearing on the left instead of the right,[14] (2) a cut of S. James writing at a table, (3) a small cut of David in prayer, and some still smaller pictures of prophets and of the Crucifixion. At the end of the book is an Epistola a una devota donna Bolognose, which is headed and ended by a cut of a Dominican preaching in the open air to a congregation of nuns. An undated edition of the Tractato della Humilta has Images of Pity at the beginning and end, the former surrounded by a black border. Yet another edition has an outline cut of Christ holding His Cross, while blood streams from His hand into a chalice. An edition of the Tractato dello Amore di Iesu has two outline cuts, one large, one small, showing the Blessed Virgin and S. John standing by the Cross. A tract on self-examination, addressed to the Abbess of the Convent of the Murate at Florence, shows an aged friar being welcomed at the convent. Other tracts have pictures of a priest elevating the Host, a man praying before an altar, a man and woman praying, &c. One of the rarest is the superb cut to the Dyalogo della Verita prophetica, in which a friar is preaching to seven questioners arranged in a half-circle under a tree, a view of Florence occupying the background. Cuts in other books show Savonarola meeting a devil and an astrologer, and represent him preaching to an intent congregation. With these tracts we must join the defence of Savonarola by his follower Domenico Benivieni, who appears in the title-cut in earnest disputation with a group of Florentines, while later on in the book there is a full-page illustration of the reformer's vision of the regeneration of the world and the Church, in which the stream of Christ's blood as He hangs on the Cross is being literally used for the washing away of sins. This book was published by Francesco Buonaccorsi in 1496.

Florentine book-illustration reached its highest in an edition of the Epistole e Evangelii,[15] or liturgical Gospels and Epistles, printed in 1495 by Lorenzo Morgiani and Johann Petri at the instance of the Ser Piero Pacini da Pescia, who for the next fourteen or fifteen years seems to have been an active promoter of illustrated books. Only two copies of the edition of the Epistole e Evangelii are known to exist, but the owner of one of them, Mr. C. W. Dyson Perrins, has reproduced all the woodcuts in it in very finely executed facsimile, together with a reprint of the text, for presentation to the Roxburghe Club, so that the illustrator's work can now be studied with comparative ease. The title-page shows S. Peter and S. Paul standing in a circle enclosed in an arabesque border of white floral ornaments and dolphins on a black ground. At the corners of the border are figures of the four Evangelists. In the text there are twelve dozen large woodcuts and two dozen half-length figures of prophets, evangelists, and epistle-writers. Of the larger cuts eleven represent S. Paul writing and one S. Peter, most of the rest scenes from the life of Christ, several of those representing the Passion having previously appeared in an undated edition of the Meditatione attributed to S. Bonaventura from the press of Mischomini. The cuts form a treasure-house of Florentine art, and were frequently drawn upon by the printers of the later Rappresentationi, at which we shall soon have to look.

We must return now to Antonio Mischomini, who published many other illustrated books besides the Savonarola tracts. In 1492 he printed an edition of Cristoforo Landino's Formulare di lettere e di orationi uolgari, with a large title-cut of a very young teacher addressing a class, and at the end of the book his mark (a cross-surmounted M within two squares and a circle), surrounded by the arabesque border which we have already noticed in the Arte del bene Morire of 1496. The next year (i.e. 1493) he printed the Libro di Giuocho delli Scacchi of Jacobus de Cessolis, with a large title-cut (repeated at the end of the book) representing courtiers playing in the presence of a king, and thirteen smaller cuts personifying the various pieces. These comprise a king and queen, a judge, a knight, a 'rook,' or vicar of the king to visit in his stead all parts of the realm, and the eight 'popolari' or pawns, a labourer, smith, wool-merchant, money-changer, physician, tavern-keeper (here shown), city-guard, and a runner to be at the rook's service. Chess-players may be interested to know that the pawns actually in use in 1493, as shown on the board in the title-cut, had already lost this excessive individuality, and resemble those of our own day.

In 1494 Mischomini printed the commentary on the Ten Commandments by Frate Marco dal Monte Sancta Maria, which has a title-cut of the friar preaching, and three full-page allegorical illustrations freely copied from those in an edition printed at Venice. The first of these represents 'la figura della vita eterna' by a picture of the glories of heaven,[16] and the earthly devotions by which they are to be attained; the second, which is in three divisions, the traversing of the Desert of Sin; and the third, Mount Sinai, up which Moses is seen climbing. In the same year, 1494, Mischomini also published a catechism known as the Lucidario, to which he prefixed a title-cut showing Damocles at his feast, the sword hanging over his head, and in another compartment some little rabbits running happily in a wood. Damocles and the rabbits have nothing whatever to do with the Catechism, and the occurrence of the cut proves that before this date Mischomini must have printed an edition of the Fior di VirtÙ, to which it rightfully belongs. We have already looked at the Venetian editions of this book, and shall not be surprised to find that the Florentine printers had the good sense to copy their charming title-cut, though they did not improve it by their addition of an incongruous border of pilasters, a vernicle, and an Image of Pity. The first Florentine edition of this book, with which I am acquainted, has a fitfully rhyming colophon, adapted from that of the Venetian edition of 1493, showing that it was printed at Florence in 1498, and ought, at any rate, to be read on feast-days. To entice readers to persevere in this task, there are thirty-five illustrations, some of which, like the one in the Lucidario, are divided into two parts, so as to secure a contrast or comparison between an animal and a man—as, for example, between a humble sheep and a proud general riding in triumph, or, as shown in our illustration, between the constancy of the phoenix, who permits herself to be burnt to ashes rather than quit her nest, and that of an Emperor Constantine who (by a gross plagiarism upon Solon) quitted his country for ever, after making his counsellors swear to observe his laws unaltered until his return. The book was printed yet a third time, probably about 1515, by Gian Stephano da Pavia, at the request of Bernardo Pacini. The printer of the 1498 edition is not known; it cannot have been Mischomini, who seems to have brought his brilliant career to a close about 1495. The foregoing notice of his illustrated books is by no means exhaustive. Passing mention has been made in the chapter on Venice of one other important one, the undated Meditatione, attributed to S. Bonaventura, with cuts of peculiar interest, from the opportunity they afford of comparing the different styles in vogue in the two cities.

Three other Florentine books issued during the fifteenth century remain to be mentioned, none of which I have seen. The first of these, an undated edition of Domenico Capranica's Arte di bene Morire (not to be confounded with Savonarola's), published by Morgiani and Johann Petri about 1495, contains twelve large cuts and twenty-two small ones. The larger cuts are interesting, because ten of them are based on those found in the old block books of the Ars Moriendi, the other two coming from Savonarola's book of the same name. The smaller ones seem brought together rather at haphazard. The other two books, an Æsop, printed in 1495 by Francesco Buonaccorsi for Piero Pacini, and the Morgante Maggiore (a long poem on the adventures of Orlando) of Ludovico Pulci, printed in 1500, both exist only in single copies in foreign libraries, but a good many illustrations from both have been reproduced by Dr. Kristeller.

Of illustrated books printed at Florence after 1500, the most important is an edition of the Quatriregio del decorso della vita humana of Federico Frezzi, printed, this also, 'ad petitione di Ser Piero Pacini di Pescia,' as late as 1508, though there is ground for believing that this may really be a reprint from a fifteenth century edition now no longer extant. Like the author of the Hypnerotomachia, Frezzi was a Dominican, and was consecrated Bishop of Foligno, his native place, in 1403. He attended the Council of Constance, and died there in 1416. He was a man of great learning and a book-collector, but rather a dull poet. His Quatriregio is an imitation of Dante's Divina Commedia, and is divided into four books treating successively of the kingdoms 'of the god Cupid,' 'of Satan,' 'of the Vices,' and 'of the goddess Minerva and of Virtue.' It was first printed in 1481, and went through three other editions before it was honoured with illustrations. The importance of this illustrated edition has perhaps been overrated. Taken individually, the best of the cuts are not superior to those in earlier Florentine books of less pretensions, while the cumulative effect of the series of one hundred and twenty-six (several of which, it should be said, are duplicates) is seriously diminished, partly by the monotonous recurrence of the same figure in every cut, partly by the coarseness and angularity with which most of the blocks have been engraved. It must be mentioned that the cut on the first page of the poem is signed with the initials L. V., which were at one time interpreted as standing for Luca Egidio di Venturi, i.e. Luca Signorelli, whose recognised signature, however, was L. C. (Luca di Cortona).

Two other great series of Florentine illustrated books still remain to be considered. The first of these is the Rappresentazioni, sacred and secular, which enjoyed a life extending over two centuries, and must be reckoned as the most artistic of chapbooks. In 1852 M. Colomb de Batines published at Florence a bibliography of these 'Antiche Rappresentazioni Italiane,' to which I am indebted for the following details concerning their chief authors. The plays are almost uniformly written in ottava rima, and poorly printed in double columns. A large number of them, at least a score, were written and printed during the fifteenth century, but these earliest editions are, as a rule, not illustrated. Maffeo Belcari (1410-1484) apparently was the first author who obtained the honours of print. His play of Abraham appeared in 1485, after which it was reprinted some twenty times, the latest known edition belonging to the eighteenth century. Belcari also wrote on the Annunciation, on S. John the Baptist visited by Christ in the Desert, and on S. Panuntius. Lorenzo de' Medici himself wrote a play of S. John and S. Paul, Bernardo Pulci (d. 1501) produced one on the legend of Barlaam and Josaphat, while his wife Antonia was quite a prolific dramatist, claiming as her own plays on S. Domitilla, S. Guglielma, the Patriarch Joseph, S. Francis, and the Prodigal Son. During the fifteenth century anonymous plays were written on the Nativity, on the life of Queen Hester, on the Angel Raphael, on the conversion of three robbers by S. Francis, and on S. Eustachio, S. Antony, and S. Antonia. Plays on the Last Judgment, on S. Agatha, S. Agnes, S. Catharine, S. Cecilia, S. Christina, &c., also appeared at an early date. An angel, as a rule, acts as Prologue, and the action of the drama is divided between numerous characters. Most of the plays were, doubtless, intended to be acted on the feast-day of the Saint whose life they celebrate, and in a church bearing the Saint's name, but the multiplicity of the editions show that they also won the favour of a reading public.

A few undated editions of these little books, from the types used in their press work, may be assigned to the end of the fifteenth century. The first printer who is known to have made a specialty of the Rappresentazioni is Francesco Benvenuto, who began printing them in 1516, and enjoyed a career of thirty years. M. Colomb de Batines mentions several of his editions, but they are very scarce, and I have only myself seen a Raphael of 1516 with a title-cut of Tobit and the Angel enclosed in a border, partly the same as that of the Fior di VirtÙ of 1498, a Barlaam and Josafat, also of 1516, with six illustrations (including our friend Damocles and the Rabbit, whose fate seems to have been to be lugged in inappropriately), and a Miracolo di Tre Peregrini che andauano a sancto Iacopo di Galitia, with a solitary cut of the Saint rescuing one of the pilgrims who is being unjustly hanged. The great majority of the extant Rappresentazioni were printed between 1550 and 1580, mostly anonymously, though Giovanni Baleni and a printer 'Alle Scale di Badia' were responsible for a great many of them. Of course, in many cases the cuts were sadly the worse for wear, but they held on wonderfully, and even in the seventeenth century editions a tolerable impression is sometimes met with. Many of them, also, were recut, sometimes skilfully, so that it is not uncommon to find a better example in a later edition than in an earlier. The illustrations here shown are from an undated edition of Lorenzo de' Medici's Rappresentatione di San Giovanni e Paulo, the careful printing of which is an argument for its belonging to the beginning of the sixteenth century, and a picture of the martyrdom of S. Dorothea from an edition of her Rappresentatione printed in 1555.

With these religious Rappresentazioni M. Colomb de Batines joins a few secular poems, whose title to be considered dramatic is not very clear. Of those which he mentions, the earliest is the Favola d' Orfeo, by Angelo Politiano, which forms part of La Giostra di Giuliano di Medici, printed without name or date, probably about 1495, with ten excellent cuts, that of Aristeo pursuing the flying Eurydice being, perhaps, the best. La Giostra di Lorenzo di Medici, celebrated by Luigi Pulci, has only a single cut, but that a fine one—a meeting of knights in an amphitheatre. Among other secular chapbooks which enjoyed a long popularity was a series of 'contrasti,'[17] the contrast of Carnival and Lent, of Men and Women, of the Living and the Dead, of the Blonde and the Brunette, and of Riches and Poverty. I give here the first of the two cuts of the Contrasto di Carnesciale e la Quaresima, undated, but probably early. With these little poems we must join the metrical Novelle and Istorie, now chiefly known through the discovery in the University Library at Erlangen of a little collection of twenty-one tracts, all undated, and without any indication of their printers, but which may mostly be assigned to the end of the fifteenth century. Among them are the Novella di Gualtieri e Griselda, the Novella di due Preti et un Cherico, the Novella della Figliuola del Mercatante, &c.

The charm of these little Florentine books is so great, and of late years has won such steadily increasing recognition, that I do not think an apology is needed for the length at which they have here been treated. None the less, we must remember that they were essentially popular books, and that the wealthy book lovers of the time probably regarded them very slightly. Mischomini himself did not turn his attention to them till he had been printing nearly a dozen years, and even after 1492 his more expensive books, the great Plotinus, for instance, issued in that year, kept strictly to the traditions of twenty years earlier, and were wholly destitute of ornament, even of printed initials. The two classes of books—those on good paper and in a large handsome type, and those on poor paper with small type carelessly printed, but with delightful woodcuts—were issued side by side, but the beauties of the two were never combined, and the Florentine printers would doubtless have been greatly surprised if they had been told that it was the chapbooks which were to win the day. Even in the little italic editions issued by the Giuntas, in imitation of Aldus, which appealed to an intermediate class of purchasers, woodcuts occur but rarely, and the only instance I can call to mind is a Dante, printed by Philippo Giunta in 1506, which, besides some plans of the Inferno, &c., has a single cut illustrating the first canto.

We have devoted so much space to Venice and Florence that the illustrated books of other towns must be noticed with rather unfair brevity. Brescia may be taken as an example of a town at which the native artist did his best. We have already remarked the publication there of a Dante in 1487. The same year witnessed the appearance of an Æsop, rudely imitated from the Verona edition, and in 1491 Baptista da Farfengo printed another book in which we have been interested, a Fior di VirtÙ, with a title-cut of a student, head on hand, reading at a desk. On a ledge on the wall are two flower-pots, the flowers in which reach up to a very decorative ceiling. This is quite a nice example of Brescian art, but the productions of the town have not been specially studied, and further research might show that they deserve more serious praise. At Ferrara artists of the schools of Venice and Florence appear to have combined in the production of some very notable books. Two of these were published by Lorenzo di Rossi in 1497. The first is an edition of the Epistles of S. Jerome, with numerous vignettes and three frontispieces, the third of which, somewhat in the style of the Venetian Boccaccio, bears the date 1493, divided between its two columns. This frontispiece appears also in the other work, the De pluribus claris selectisque mulieribus of Philippus Bergomensis, the illustrations in the text of which show Florentine influence in their black backgrounds. This book has a title-page printed in large Gothic letters cut in wood, similar to that of the Nuremberg Chronicle.

No illustrated books appear to have been issued at Milan during the eighties, but in 1492 Philippo Mantegazza printed the Theorica Musice of Gafori with some coarse cuts, and this was followed in 1494 by the Triumfi of Petrarch, printed by Antonio Zaroto with the usual six full-page illustrations. As befits the reputation of Milan as a musical centre, the works of Gafori were often printed there. In 1496 Guillaume Le Signerre of Rouen printed there the first edition of the Practica Musice, with a curious title-page representing the relations of the Muses and the heavenly bodies, and fine ornamental borders to two pages of text. At the base of one of these are little scenes of choir-boys practising and a music-mistress giving a lesson. The style of the borders is distinctly Venetian. In another work of Gafori's printed at Milan, the De Harmonia Instrumentorum of 1518 (reprinted two years later at Turin), the cuts exhibit the heavy Milanese shading, one of them representing a lesson on the organ, and the other a performer playing.

In 1496 Le Signerre printed a devotional work, the Specchio di Anima of Besalii, with seventy-eight full-sized cuts to its eighty-eight pages. Most of the cuts relate to the passion of Christ, and they are described by Dr. Lippmann as 'vigorously executed in coarse thick outlines, with scarcely any shading.' Some of these cuts reappear three years later in the same printer's Tesauro Spirituale, of which the unique copy is in the Berlin Print-Room. In 1498 Le Signerre printed an Æsop, the cuts in which are surrounded by small black borders relieved in white. The illustrations themselves are poor. At the end of the book is the printer's mark, a crowned stork in a shield within a circle, on either side of which stand a fox and a monkey. In this same year Le Signerre transferred his press to Saluzzo, where in 1499 he issued the Tesauro Spirituale, and four years later an edition of the De Veritate Contricionis of Vivaldus, with a fine frontispiece representing S. Jerome in the desert. The border shows typical Milanese ornament, and recalls the illumination to the Sforziada, mentioned in our first chapter. In 1507 a still finer work, an edition of the Opus Regale, also by Vivaldus, was printed at Saluzzo by Jacobus de Circis. This contains a fine picture of Saint Louis of France in prayer, and also a large portrait of the Marquis of Saluzzo, Louis II., whose taste has won for the town its little niche in the history of printing.

Italian printers' devices are very decorative and interesting, and may now be studied in Dr. Paul Kristeller's 'Die italienischen Buchdrucker- und Verlegerzeichen,' which gives nearly a complete collection of those in use before 1525, to the number of between three and four hundred. In the great majority of devices the ground is black, with a simple design, mostly including a circle and a cross, outlined in white. The mark of Bazalerius de Bazaleriis of Bologna and Reggio, taken from a copy of the Epistolae of Philelphus, printed by him in 1489, shows this class of design in almost its simplest form. In that of Stephanus Guillireti, who printed at Rome from 1506 to 1524, we have the addition of a shield (the arms on which, unluckily, have not been identified) and floral sprays. These floral sprays become the chief feature in the design of Franciscus de Mazalis of Reggio, who printed from 1493 to 1504; though the initials, circle, and cross of the simpler devices are all retained. An even more beautiful example of this class of mark was used by Egmont and Barrevelt, the printers of the Sarum Missal, who added to its attractiveness by the use of red ink, instead of black. Red ink also adds immensely to the effect of the well-known mark of Nikolaos Blastos, which occurs in a copy of the Commentary of Simplicius upon Aristotle, printed by Zacharias Kaliergos at Venice in 1499. The delicate tracery of this design is unsurpassed by any work of the time. The mark of Nicolaus Gorgonzola, who printed at Milan from 1504 to 1533, in its floral ornaments, is very similar in style to those of Mazalis and Egmont, but, as in the mark of Blastos, the cross and circle have disappeared, and the name is set out in full, instead of by its initials.

Purely ornamental designs, of the styles illustrated in these five examples, form the majority among Italian devices, but more pictorial ones were by no means unknown. One of the best of these was that used by 'Simon de Gabiis dictus Bevilaqua,' who printed at Venice from 1485 to about 1512. Another good device is that of Ser Piero di Pacini of Pescia, the publisher of so many of the Florentine illustrated books. This consists of a crowned dolphin on a black ground, with sometimes a smaller device of a bird, placed on each side of it.

As examples of later styles, though not very beautiful in themselves, we add here the rather clumsy woodcut of S. Nicholas adopted by NiccolÒ d'Aristotele da Ferrara, called 'il Zoppino,' who printed at Venice from 1508 to about 1536, and the very florid device of Hieronymus Francisci Baldassaris, a printer at Perugia from about 1526 to 1550. The arms there shown are those of the city of Perugia, while the F. and the cross above it reproduce the mark used by the printer's father, Francesco, the founder of the firm. The Aldine anchor and the fleur-de-lys of Lucantonio Giunta and his successors are too well known to need reproduction or comment, though both stand rather apart from the ordinary run of Italian marks.