CHAPTER VII
COLOGNE AND GENEVA
The early printers at Cologne do not appear to have made much use of woodcut initials, the first known to us being the R of a missal by H. Quentell of 1494. This, although cut somewhat roughly, shows considerable vigour. It is highly probable that the splendid P with the Virgin and Child and grotesque profiles in two of the corners is of the same or earlier date. The book in which it occurs is an undated Donatus, which J. Rosenthal, to whom the volume was submitted, thinks was printed by H. Quentell towards the end of the fifteenth century. It looks at first sight as if a missal or Psalter letter had been used, as was so often the case at the time, because it happened to be in stock, but the Donatus, as has been said, often began with an initial of the kind. We have not been able to trace this P to any other press or publication.
The D with a fool’s head in cap and bells is to be found frequently in Quentell’s books. The specimen from which it was copied is in a book already mentioned, the Tractatus Consultatorii Venerandi Magistri Henrici de Gorychum, printed anno supra Jubileum tertio. It is to be found at the beginning of the chapter, De observatione Festorum.
On the title-page of a treatise called Quodlibeta, by St. Thomas Aquinas, is a curious black U. This is also by Quentell.
Another class book, a Latin verse primer, entitled Sequentiarum et hymnorum Expositio, etc. etc., printed by Herman Bumgart de Ketwyck in 1501, has the strangest initials that can be conceived. The book was a very well known one, and other editions exist with a similar cut on the title-page, representing a master at his desk surrounded by scholars.
But Cologne, like other German towns, was now to feel the influence of the Renaissance, and adopt for book ornamentation such artists as Albert Dürer, Holbein, and Anton von Worms. In the case of Holbein, such ornamental letters as appeared in Cologne books were copied from models that had been used previously at Basle, in the same way that the letters of other artists were copied from books of Hagenau and elsewhere, but Dürer and Anton von Worms’s designs were printed first in works of Cologne.
Of the initials attributed to Albert Dürer, the finest are those comprising the alphabet used by Eucharius Hirtzhorn, who latinised his name to Cervicornus. These initials, which are the largest of their kind, represent children playing and romping sometimes with animals, such as horses and monkeys, and make up a very remarkable set. It is highly probable that Albert Dürer, as is generally admitted, was the designer of this alphabet, but there is no positive proof, and a writer on this special question in Le Livre, M. Glucq, gives it as his opinion that these letters were designed by Hans Burgkmair, and instances the treatment of the horses’ heads in borders by the latter as being identical with the heads in some of the letters.
This alphabet was often copied by printers of other towns, particularly Lyons, and by Hubert de Crooce of Bruges, but the copies are always greatly inferior in execution, and can be distinguished also by having a wavy linear, or criblé, groundwork instead of a black one.
The reader can compare the initials given here, which comprise the most interesting of the set, with those by H. Weiditz, described in the chapter on Augsburg. For comparison between the Cervicorn initials and the borders alluded to, reference can be made to the Bücherornamentik of Butsch.
The smallest of the Cologne children’s alphabets is to be found almost complete in different works by J. Gymnicus, and was designed by the painter Anton von Worms. The C with a child playing with a snake is an example. The D and O, from a somewhat larger alphabet, are principally found in the works of Melchior Novesianus, as are also those imitated from Holbein’s alphabet of Death. The largest Q, the S with the bishop and the symbols of the Apostles in the corners, also by Anton von Worms, and the Q with the death’s head, all come from volumes by Quentell. The three smallest letters belong to an alphabet used by Melchior Novesianus.
Geneva.
—Genevan incunabula are of the very greatest rarity, and very few initials of that town are mentioned by bibliographers. Of very large letters the most curious are two of the calligraphic L’s that are so popular on the title-pages of French impressions, and the larger of which is evidently inspired by a Paris or Lyons L of the same general design. Our reproduction comes from the Doctrinal de Sapience, printed in 1493, no doubt by Bellot, as the book has two impressions of the C of his alphabet. This composition is greatly superior to the French original, known as the January and May initial, and if the artist has intended to represent innocence and cunning, he has succeeded to perfection. Compared with it, that which may be found on the title-page of Verard’s edition of the Doctrinal de Sapience and in many other works, is insipid.
The letter with a hooded dog, or perhaps a monkey holding a book, with a clerk below, is accompanied on the title-page by a border representing the birth of Eve.
As regards the volume itself, which is entitled Les Fleurs et Manières des Temps passés, it is without date or printer’s name, but at the beginning of the front page after the title is a Bellot A, whilst on the verso of the title is the mark of Loys M. Cruse.
A still earlier Doctrinal de Sapience of 1488, also without printer’s name or date, has a C on the second page of comparatively little interest, which has been reproduced by Humphreys in his History of Printing. The C reproduced here is at the beginning of the fourth page. A Kalendrier des Bergers of J. Bellot, 1497, has a Q with a cock in the Lyons style, a curious U, and the P of his fine alphabet.
Initials are occasionally met with in which the printer’s mark is worked into the design, as, for instance, a D of Kobel of Oppenheim. In a treatise on the right way of preaching, by that sacratissimus doctor of the Christian Church, St. Thomas Aquinas, L. M. Cruse of Geneva in 1485 uses capitals which he embellishes with his own initials. Sorg and some Strasburg printers have ornamental letters with initials on them, but not corresponding to their own names—most likely to those of the artists.
Better known than the large historiated letters just described is the alphabet of which we give the M, the N, and the T. These letters occur in many of Bellot’s publications, but in the Dialogus Creaturarum it is nearly complete.
This is one of the most decorative alphabets of the time, but good proofs of the Wagner alphabet of Nuremberg, in which the same design had already been used, are even more effective—compare this M, N, or T with the Wagner E. Unfortunately, very few of the latter, which are on a black ground, print well. The Avignon initials given further on are also of this pine-cone pattern, as are those also in the Psalterium Virginis Marie of Alanus de Rupe, printed, it is stated, in the most Christian kingdom of Sweden, cum initialibus ligno incisis, in 1498. It is quite possible that the later printers copied from Wagner, but the design they all use is one that is frequently met with in old manuscripts, and, like most other fundamental patterns, there is no doubt that this was its origin.
Our last Geneva specimens are taken from the very rare missal printed by Bellot. The M is from the title-page. The other initials are somewhat in the style of the Lyons Catalogus Sanctorum, but they are even more like those of a Troyes missal printed by Lecoq.