DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.28460#0181
156
Early German and Flemish Woodcuts.—Part I.
Tho design
points to the
:go]d8mith’s
shop as tlie
home of the
:art.
Peeuliarities
of design in
-the dotted
prints.
date. The true explanation is, rather, that they were the work
of the goldsmith, not of the painter-engraver, and that, as the
result of a new and somewhat ill-judged experiment in technique,
they stood far below the contemporary work of such accomplished
engravers as the Master E. S. and Martin Schongauer, who had
the traditions of many years behind them. The fondness for
elaborate ornament, restricted to a limited range of patterns, the
ignorance of perspective and anatomy, the comparative excellence
of technical execution in certain small points, with little regard to
proportion and general effect—all these points are suggestive of tlie
goldsmith’s shop as the cradle of this branch of art. It was thus a
later offshoot of tlie same stock as gave rise to line-engraving, and it
stood in much the same relation to the mediseval “ opus interrasile,”
or “opus punctile”1 as line-engraving to niello—each being a modi-
fication, for the sake of yielding impressions on paper, of an art
which originally regarded the engraved plate as an end in itself.
There can seldom be any doubt in the case of prints in the maniere
criblee, strictly speaking, that the plates were engraved in order to
yield impressions, for it is very seldom that in the impressions we
find inscriptions reversed or the action of the right and left hands
confused. The Apostles in pairs, Schr. 2745-7, at Dresden and
Vienna, are instances in which the inscriptions are reversed, but
there is no doubt, from the correctness of the action, that this was a
mere oversight on the part of the engraver. In one of the British
Museum prints, Schr. 2481, this oversight only extends to one
among numerous inscriptions, which are otlierwise rightly engraved.
St. Barbara, Schr. 2556, on whicli the name is engraved in reverse,
was actually used as an illustration in a book.
Among tlie peculiarities. of drawing which are characteristic of
this style, if not exclusively confined to it, I may mention the fringe
of crimped riband which serves as a convention for clouds (this is
found also in woodcuts); the chequered floors, in which each square
is composed of several compartments of black and white; the curtain
with a diaper pattern of conventional roses, which forms a frequent
background to the figures—hardly less frequent is a delicate climbing
spray of foliage with occasional flowers upon a black ground; the
conventional flowers and leaves which spring from the grass in the
foreground—the commonest form of flower is simply a group of three
dots; and, lastly, the very large size of the nails in representations of
the Crucifixion, or any subject in which the instruments of the
1 See the medueval account by Theophilus of these processes of decorating metal
plates, quoted by Willshire. Catalogue, i, 51, 52.
Early German and Flemish Woodcuts.—Part I.
Tho design
points to the
:go]d8mith’s
shop as tlie
home of the
:art.
Peeuliarities
of design in
-the dotted
prints.
date. The true explanation is, rather, that they were the work
of the goldsmith, not of the painter-engraver, and that, as the
result of a new and somewhat ill-judged experiment in technique,
they stood far below the contemporary work of such accomplished
engravers as the Master E. S. and Martin Schongauer, who had
the traditions of many years behind them. The fondness for
elaborate ornament, restricted to a limited range of patterns, the
ignorance of perspective and anatomy, the comparative excellence
of technical execution in certain small points, with little regard to
proportion and general effect—all these points are suggestive of tlie
goldsmith’s shop as the cradle of this branch of art. It was thus a
later offshoot of tlie same stock as gave rise to line-engraving, and it
stood in much the same relation to the mediseval “ opus interrasile,”
or “opus punctile”1 as line-engraving to niello—each being a modi-
fication, for the sake of yielding impressions on paper, of an art
which originally regarded the engraved plate as an end in itself.
There can seldom be any doubt in the case of prints in the maniere
criblee, strictly speaking, that the plates were engraved in order to
yield impressions, for it is very seldom that in the impressions we
find inscriptions reversed or the action of the right and left hands
confused. The Apostles in pairs, Schr. 2745-7, at Dresden and
Vienna, are instances in which the inscriptions are reversed, but
there is no doubt, from the correctness of the action, that this was a
mere oversight on the part of the engraver. In one of the British
Museum prints, Schr. 2481, this oversight only extends to one
among numerous inscriptions, which are otlierwise rightly engraved.
St. Barbara, Schr. 2556, on whicli the name is engraved in reverse,
was actually used as an illustration in a book.
Among tlie peculiarities. of drawing which are characteristic of
this style, if not exclusively confined to it, I may mention the fringe
of crimped riband which serves as a convention for clouds (this is
found also in woodcuts); the chequered floors, in which each square
is composed of several compartments of black and white; the curtain
with a diaper pattern of conventional roses, which forms a frequent
background to the figures—hardly less frequent is a delicate climbing
spray of foliage with occasional flowers upon a black ground; the
conventional flowers and leaves which spring from the grass in the
foreground—the commonest form of flower is simply a group of three
dots; and, lastly, the very large size of the nails in representations of
the Crucifixion, or any subject in which the instruments of the
1 See the medueval account by Theophilus of these processes of decorating metal
plates, quoted by Willshire. Catalogue, i, 51, 52.