Engravers and Etchers / Six Lectures Delivered on the Scammon Foundation at the Art Institute of Chicago, March 1916

WHERE were the beginnings? When were the beginnings? Germany, the Netherlands, and Italy have each claimed priority. Max Lehrs has settled these rival claims, so far as they can be settled at the present time, by locating the cradle of engraving neither in Germany, in the Netherlands, nor in Italy, but in a neutral country—Switzerland, in the vicinity of Basle—naming the Master of the Playing Cards as probably the earliest engraver whose works have come down to us. Undoubtedly this artist was not the first to engrave upon metal plates, but of his predecessors nothing is known, nor has any example of their work survived.

The technical method of the Master of the Playing Cards is that of a painter rather than of a goldsmith. There is practically no cross-hatching, and the effect is produced by a series of delicate lines, mostly vertical, laid close together. His plates are unsigned and undated, so that we can only approximate the period of his activity. That he preceded, by at least ten years, the earliest dated engraving, the Flagellation, by the Master of 1446, may safely be assumed, since in the manuscript copy of Conrad von Würzburg’s “The Trojan War,” transcribed in 1441 by Heinrich von Steinfurt (an ecclesiastic of Osnabrück), there are pen drawings of figures wearing costumes which correspond exactly with those in prints by the Master of the Playing Cards in his middle period. The Master of the Playing Cards is, therefore, the first bright morning star of engraving. From him there flows a stream of influence affecting substantially all of the German masters until the time of Martin Schongauer, some of whose earlier plates show unmistakable traces of an acquaintanceship with his work.

St. George and the Dragon is in his early manner. Here are plainly to be seen the characteristics of this first period—the broken, stratified rocks, the isolated and conventionalized plants, and the peculiar drawing of the horse, especially its slanting and half-human eyes. The Playing Cards, from which he takes his name, may safely be assigned to his middle period. The suits are made up of Flowers (roses and cyclamen), Wild Men, Birds, and Deer, with a fifth, or alternative suit of Lions and Bears. Like all the early German designers of playing cards, he has given free rein to his fancy and inventiveness. The position of the different emblems is varied for each numeral card; and each flower, wild man, bird, or beast, has an attitude and character of its own, no two being identical. No engraver has surpassed him in truthfulness and subtlety of observation and in the delineation of birds few artists have equalled him. His rendering of the growth and form of flowers would have delighted John Ruskin. In the King of Cyclamen and the Queen of Cyclamen the faces have an almost portrait-like individuality. The hands are well drawn and do not yet display that attenuation which is characteristic of nearly all fifteenth century German masters and is a noticeable feature in engravings by Martin Schongauer himself. The clothing falls in natural folds, and in the King of Cyclamen the representation of fur could hardly be bettered.

To his latest and most mature period must be assigned the Man of Sorrows—in some ways his finest, and certainly his most moving, plate. Not only has he differentiated between the textures of the linen loin-cloth and the coarser material of the cloak; but the column, the cross with its beautiful and truthful indication of the grain of the wood, and the ground itself, all are treated with a knowledge and a sensitiveness that is surprising. The engraver’s greatest triumph, however, is in the figure of Christ. There is a feeling for form and structure, sadly lacking in the work of his successors, and his suggestion of the strained and pulsing veins, which throb through the Redeemer’s tortured limbs, is of a compelling truth.

Chief among the engravers who show most clearly the influence of the Master of the Playing Cards is the Master of the Year 1446, so named from the date which appears in the Flagellation. His prints present a more or less primitive appearance, and were it not for this date, one might be tempted, on internal evidence, to assign them to an earlier period. In the Passion series, in particular, many of the figures are more gnome-like than human. Such creatures as the man blowing a horn, in Christ Nailed to the Cross, and the man pulling upon a rope, in the same print, recall to our minds, by an association of ideas, the old German fairy tales.

Contemporary with the Master of 1446, and belonging to the Burgundian-Netherlands group, to which also belong the two anonymous engravers known as the Master of the Mount of Calvary and the Master of the Death of Mary, is the Master of the Gardens of Love. His figures are crude in drawing and stiff in their movements. His knowledge of tree forms is rudimentary; but his animals and birds show real observation and seem to have been studied from life.

In the larger of the two engravings from which he takes his name, we see reflected the pleasure-loving court of the Dukes of Burgundy. On the right, a lady leads her lover to a table spread with tempting viands. She stretches forth her right hand to take the fruit. It is a fig, the sign of fertility. To their right, drinking from a stream, is a unicorn, the sign of chastity. The artist seemingly wishes the lady’s message to read that she is still unwedded, and that, were she wedded, she would be a good mother. Observe, likewise, the way in which the engraver has placed the wild hogs, deer, and bears emerging from the woods, while, in the sky, numerous birds wing their flight. In the immediate foreground a lady and a cavalier are reading poetry to each other. Another lady plays to a gallant who, in a most uncomfortable attitude, holds a sheet of music. In the right-hand corner is a fourth pair, the lady busily twining a wreath for her lover’s hat, which lies on her lap. We have here a compendium of the courtly life of the time, which is about 1448.

The Master of St. John the Baptist may fittingly be called the first realist in engraving. His plates do not display that extraordinary delicacy in cutting which is characteristic of the Master of the Playing Cards. Like that earlier engraver, he makes little use of cross-hatching, and his strokes are freely disposed—more in the manner of a painter than a goldsmith-engraver. His birds and flowers are closely observed and admirably rendered.

The mullein, the columbine, and the iris in St. John the Baptist are each given their individual character; the tree trunks to the right no longer resemble twisted columns, as in earlier work, but have real bark with knot holes and branches organically joined, though the foliage is still conventionally treated. One cannot but remark, also, the skilful way in which the engraver has differentiated between the furry undergarment and the cloak which St. John the Baptist wears.

In St. Christopher we have probably one of his latest works. His representation of the waves, of the sky and clouds, is noteworthy, while, on the beach, the sea-shells give mute testimony to his love for little things.

Of the predecessors of Martin Schongauer, none exerted a greater influence than the Master E. S. of 1466. On the technical side he was the actual creator of engraving as practised in modern times, and was a determining factor in the progress of the art. Even the Italian engravers were unable to withstand it; their Prophets and Sibyls are partly derived from his Evangelists and Apostles, the easy disposition of his draperies furnishing them with models. Over three hundred engravings by the Master E. S. have come down to us, and over a hundred more can be traced through copies by other hands, or as having formed component parts of his two sets of playing cards—the smaller set made up of Wild Animals, Helmets, Escutcheons, and Flowers, while the larger set comprises Men, Dogs, Birds, and Escutcheons.

His work shows unmistakably the influence of the Master of the Playing Cards, and we may safely place him in the region of the upper Rhine, probably in the vicinity of Freiburg or Breisach. In the Madonna and Child with Saints Marguerite and Catherine his peculiar qualities and limitations may clearly be seen. The plants and flowers, with which the ground is thickly carpeted, are engraved in firm, clear-cut lines, betokening the trained hand of the goldsmith. The figures and drapery are rendered with delicate single strokes; but in the shaded portions of the wall, back of the Madonna, cross-hatching is skilfully employed. As is the case in nearly all the works of the early German engravers, the laws of perspective are imperfectly understood, but none the less the composition has a charm all its own.

The Ecstasy of St. Mary Magdalen is of interest, not only technically and artistically, but because of its influence upon the Master of the Amsterdam Cabinet, who has twice treated the subject, and upon Albrecht Dürer, by whom we have a woodcut seemingly copied from this engraving. Martin Schongauer, likewise, may have profited by the feathered forms of the angels which reappear, somewhat modified, in his engraving of the Nativity. The birds and the isolated plants in the foreground still show the influence of the Master of the Playing Cards.

St. Matthew (whom we shall meet again in our consideration of Florentine engraving, transformed into the Tiburtine Sibyl, engraved in the Fine Manner of the Finiguerra School) and St. Paul (who likewise reappears as Amos in the series of Prophets and Sibyls) show an increasing command of technical resources. The draperies are beautifully disposed; and, in St. Paul, the system of cross-hatching upon the back of the chair, in the shaded portions beneath, and upon the mantle of the saint, is fully developed.

The Madonna of Einsiedeln, dated 1466, is usually accounted the engraver’s masterpiece. Beautiful though it is in composition and in execution, it suggests a translation, into black and white, of a painting, and on technical grounds, as well as for the beauty of its component parts, one may prefer the Design for a Paten, dating from the same year [1466]. Here the central scene, representing St. John the Baptist, owes not a little, both in composition and in technique, to the Master of St. John the Baptist. The four Evangelists, arranged in alternation with their appropriate symbols, around the central picture, are little masterpieces of characterization and of engraving, and there can be nothing but unmixed admiration for the way in which plant and bird forms are woven into a perfectly harmonious pattern.

St. John on the Island of Patmos likewise shows unmistakably the influence of the Master of St. John the Baptist and is doubly interesting inasmuch as, in its turn, it had a shaping influence upon the engraving of the same subject by Martin Schongauer. It is dated 1467, the latest date found upon any plate by the Master E. S., and it is assumed that in this year his activity came to an end.

Martin Schongauer, who was born in Colmar about 1445 and is known to have died in 1491, is not only the most eminent painter and engraver in the latter third of the fifteenth century, he is one of the very greatest masters of the graphic arts. His plates number one hundred and fifteen, and, as in the case of Albrecht Dürer, it is upon his engraved work, rather than upon his all too few paintings, that his immortality must rest.

Schongauer’s prints can be arranged in something approximating chronological order. In the earliest twelve engravings the shanks of the letter M, in his monogram, are drawn vertically, whereas in all his later prints they slant outward. This apparently minor point is really of great significance in a study of his development, since it enables us to place correctly certain plates which, until recently, were assigned to his latest period, such as the Death of the Virgin, the Adoration of the Magi, and the Flight Into Egypt.

One of the richest toned plates in this first group is the Virgin with a Parrot, an engraving which, incidentally, exists in two states. In the second state, the cushion upon which the Christ Child is seated, instead of being plain, has an elaborate pattern upon the upper side, and the flowing tresses of the Virgin are extended more to the left, thereby greatly improving the composition as a whole.

For Martin Schongauer, as for nearly all the earlier German masters, the grotesque had a strange fascination. His power of welding together parts of various animals into living fantastic creatures is nowhere better seen than in the Temptation of St. Anthony. Vasari tells how the young Michelangelo, meeting with an impression of this engraving in Florence, was impelled to copy it with a pen “in such a manner as had never before been seen. He painted it in colors also, and the better to imitate the strange forms among these devils, he bought fish which had scales somewhat resembling those of the demon. In this pen copy also he displayed so much ability that his credit and reputation were greatly enhanced thereby.” It would appear to be one of Schongauer’s early plates, not only from the form of the monogram, but also from the treatment of the upper portion of the sky, shaded with many horizontal graver strokes, growing stronger as the upper edge of the plate is reached—a treatment which does not occur in any other print by him.

Among the myriad renderings of the Death of the Virgin, by painters and engravers, it is doubtful if any version is superior, so far as dramatic intensity is concerned, to Schongauer’s. As a composition, Dürer’s woodcut from the Life of the Virgin, is simpler and more “telling,” in that certain non-essentials have been eliminated; but could we well spare so beautiful a design as that of the candelabrum which, in Schongauer’s engraving, stands at the foot of the bed?

From the twelve plates of the Passion, each of which repays study, it is not easy to select one for reproduction. The Crucifixion, a subject which Schongauer engraved no less than six times, has a poignant charm; and for sheer beauty the Resurrection is among the most significant of the series. Pilate Washing His Hands has, however, a double interest. The faces of Christ’s tormentors and of the figures standing beside and to the left of Pilate’s throne, are strongly characterized, portrait-like heads, in marked contrast with the gentleness of Christ, and the weak and vacillating Pilate. The enthroned Pilate later reappears as the Prophet Daniel in the series of Prophets and Sibyls, Florentine engravings in the Fine Manner.

We have already referred to St. John on the Island of Patmos by the Master E. S. A more significant contrast between the work of the earlier engraver and that of Schongauer could hardly be found. The Master E. S. gives a multiplicity of objects, animate and inanimate, charming and interesting in themselves, but distracting from the main purpose of the composition—witness the St. Christopher crossing the river in the middle distance, the lion and the terrified horse in the wood to the right, the swan in the stream to the left, and the life-like birds perched upon the castle-crowned cliff. Schongauer eliminates all these accessories. One vessel and two small boats alone break the calm expanse of the unruffled sea. Save for the two plants in the foreground (which betray the influence of the Master of the Playing Cards) the ground is simply treated and offers little to distract our attention from the seated figure of St. John, who faces to the left and gazes upwards at the Madonna and Child in glory. The eagle bears a strong family likeness to the same bird in the Design for a Paten by the Master E. S. Schongauer has here drawn a tree, not bare, as is his wont, but adorned with foliage beautifully disposed and artistically treated, in marked contrast to the conventional and decorative manner of the Master E. S. and his predecessors.

The type of the Redeemer, which Schongauer has made so peculiarly his own, is nowhere seen to better advantage than in the two beautiful plates of the Baptism of Christ and Christ Appearing to the Magdalen. Max Geisberg acclaims the last-named as Schongauer’s most beautiful engraving. “Here, the contents of the composition have received an embodiment, the fervor, depth, and delicacy of which have never been surpassed in art.”[1] It can, however, share this high praise with the Virgin Seated in a Courtyard and the Angel of the Annunciation. For sheer beauty, these plates remain to this day not only unsurpassed, but unequalled. What quietude and restraint there is in the Virgin Seated in a Courtyard, the wall back of her discreetly bare, the grass indicated by a few small but significant strokes, while the branches of one little, leafless tree form an exquisite pattern against the untouched sky! By contrast one of Dürer’s technical masterpieces—the Virgin Seated by a City Wall—seems overworked and overloaded with needless accessories.

The Angel of the Annunciation marks the culmination of Schongauer’s art and belongs to his most mature period. Everything not absolutely necessary for a clear presentation has been eliminated. A slight shadow upon the ground gives solidity to the figure. All else is blank. The art of simplification can hardly go further, and were one to be restricted to the choice of a single print by any of Dürer’s predecessors, one might wisely select the Angel of the Annunciation.

That Schongauer was equally interested in things mundane is convincingly proved by Peasants Going to Market, Goldsmith’s Apprentices Fighting, or The Miller. How well he has differentiated between the mother-ass, filled with maternal solicitude, and the woolly, stocky, and somewhat foolish little donkey which follows, while the miller with upraised staff urges her onward.

The Crozier and the Censer furnish unmistakable proof, were such needed, that as a goldsmith-designer, no less than as an engraver, Schongauer is entitled to the loftiest place in German art. They are masterpieces, alike in invention and in execution. His influence was not confined to his contemporaries, but can be traced in many ways, and in many media, long after his death. His School, however, produced no engraver worthy, for a moment, of comparison with him.

The Master L Cz alone seems to have caught something of Schongauer’s spirit while, at the same time, preserving his own individuality. The face of the Redeemer in Christ Entering Jerusalem is reminiscent of the earlier engraver; and, among the Apostles to the left, two, at least, are taken, with slight modifications, from Schongauer’s Death of the Virgin.

Christ Tempted has a singular charm. The figure of Satan, realistically treated, is an interesting example of that passion for the grotesque from which even the greatest artists in the North seemed unable to shake themselves wholly free. The wood in the middle distance, to the left of Christ, evinces a close study of natural forms, while the landscape takes its place admirably in the composition. The excessive rarity of engravings by L Cz alone has prevented them from being appreciated at their true worth. They are original in composition, full of fantasy and charm. Even so universal an artist as Albrecht Dürer did not disdain to borrow, from Christ Tempted, the motive of the mountain goat gazing downward, which reappears, slightly modified, in Adam and Eve, his masterpiece of the year 1504.

ENGRAVERS AND ETCHERS

GERMAN ENGRAVING: FROM THE BEGINNINGS
TO MARTIN SCHONGAUER

BIBLIOGRAPHY