Dodgson, Campbell: Catalogue of early German and Flemish woodcuts: preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum (Band 1): [German and Flemish woodcuts of the XV century] (London, 1903)

Part I.—Introduction.

39

The following cuts are dated:—A 7 (3), 1457; A 25, 1464 ; Dates.

A 131 (before the mutilation of the letter A), 1464; A 111, 1473 ;

A 120, 1481; A 123, 1482; A 134, 1483 ; A 127 (dated in MS.),

1487; A 128, 1496; A 129, 1499; A 143, 1499; A 145, 1499.

Some others may be dated pretty closely by inference, e.g. A 142,
before 1461; A 26, about 1480-1482. The woodcuts in Division D,
so far as exact bibliographical information about them can be given,
are assigned to definite dates and places by the colophons of the
books from which they are derived. Eemarks will be found on the
signed and dated dotted prints in the separate introduction to
Division B. Wlierever good reasons exist for assigning a woodcut
in Division A to a particular date or place they are mentioned in
the text.

I may be thought to liave erred on the side of caution in Difficulty of

. •• determining

reiraming too irequentiy irom expressmg an opmion on these aate anct
questions. Warned by the fate of some of the conjectures of my placc of
predecessors, I believe such caution to be, if a fault, a fault on tlie
right side. In some cases, for instance, I have found the attribution
of a woodcut to a particular time and a particular local school on the
ground of style or colouring to be refuted by tlie discovery that it is
an illustration from a book printed at a different place and date.1
Anyone who sliould pretend to form competent judgments on the
date and place of origin of all G-erman xv century woodcuts, must
have qualified himself by a far more tliorough study of tlie certified
examples, first and foremost among which are the illustrated books,
than I have yet been able to undertake. A scientific criticism of tlie
supposed evidence of the colouring adopted at different centres of
art lias yet to be written. The study of watermarks has made little
progress. A knowledge of the niceties of local G-erman dialects
ought to yield valuable results, but such knowledge is beyond the
reach of any but a philological specialist.

In the absence of more definite historical data it has been Arrangemcnt
necessary to retain the old-fashioned but convenient classification by colleotion.
subjects for tlie prints in Divisions A and B. Neither a chrono-
logical nor a geographical arrangement could have been attempted
without embarking on a sea of conjecture. At the most the Flemish
prints might have been kept apart frorn the German, but even this
rudimentary separation has been sacrificed to convenience.

The majority of the prints in this part of the collection have
already been numbered twice : by Willshire in his “Descriptive

For a blunder of a different, but more serious, kind, see tlie note on A 140.