DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.28460#0282
INTRODUCTION TO PART II.
NKW FEATUBES IN XVI OENTUBY WOOD-ENGBAVING.
The year 1500 is not merely a convenient clate with whicli to close
a period; it coincides, closely enough, with a real and far-reaching
change in the conditions under which wood-engraving iiourished.
Hitherto the process had been left, in the main, to craftsmen in the
service of monks, stationers, and booksellers ; nowj the painters took
it up, as tliey had taken up line-engraving from tlie goldsmiths, for
the purpose of reproducing, in a popular form, tlieir original designs
in black and white. Frorn 1500 to 1530 especially, there were few
eminent painters in Germany, except Matthias Grtinewald, Martin
Schaffner, and the leading artists of Cologne, who were not designers of
woodcuts. To mention only the chief names in eacli local scliool, we lmve
Durer at Nuremberg, Burgkmair at Augsburg, Altdorfer at Ratisbon,
Cranach at Wittenberg, Holbein at Basle, Wechtlin and Baldung on
the Upper Rhine, Lucas van Leyden and Jacob Cornelisz in the
Retherlands, producing woodcuts in abundance, whether as illus-
trations, as single sheets, or in sets tliat told again, in the language
of a new generation, the traditional story of the Life and Passion of
our Lord.
Thus we find, on crossing the thresliold of the xvi century,
an interest of a new kind. We deal less witli abstractions, rnore
with personalities. Documents are still rare, but signatures are
frequent, and we know enough about rnost of the leading artists to
enable us to recognise with some degree of confidence their unsigned
works, and to trace each master’s influence on the group of lesser
men who were his pupils or admirers. Much xvi centurywork, and
some good work among it, remains anonymous. We stili meet with
monograms that lack an explanation, but few of these conceal a name
of much importance in tlie history of art, except the signature D.S.,
which is that of the rnost remarkable draughtsman at Basle in the
days before Holbein, and the initials IT.W., wliicli occur on two
woodcuts only, among hundreds, by the most prolific and charming of
the Augsburg illustrators,
iSiguilicttuoe
of the date
1500.
Our know-
ledge of tlie
designers of
woodcuts after
that date.
NKW FEATUBES IN XVI OENTUBY WOOD-ENGBAVING.
The year 1500 is not merely a convenient clate with whicli to close
a period; it coincides, closely enough, with a real and far-reaching
change in the conditions under which wood-engraving iiourished.
Hitherto the process had been left, in the main, to craftsmen in the
service of monks, stationers, and booksellers ; nowj the painters took
it up, as tliey had taken up line-engraving from tlie goldsmiths, for
the purpose of reproducing, in a popular form, tlieir original designs
in black and white. Frorn 1500 to 1530 especially, there were few
eminent painters in Germany, except Matthias Grtinewald, Martin
Schaffner, and the leading artists of Cologne, who were not designers of
woodcuts. To mention only the chief names in eacli local scliool, we lmve
Durer at Nuremberg, Burgkmair at Augsburg, Altdorfer at Ratisbon,
Cranach at Wittenberg, Holbein at Basle, Wechtlin and Baldung on
the Upper Rhine, Lucas van Leyden and Jacob Cornelisz in the
Retherlands, producing woodcuts in abundance, whether as illus-
trations, as single sheets, or in sets tliat told again, in the language
of a new generation, the traditional story of the Life and Passion of
our Lord.
Thus we find, on crossing the thresliold of the xvi century,
an interest of a new kind. We deal less witli abstractions, rnore
with personalities. Documents are still rare, but signatures are
frequent, and we know enough about rnost of the leading artists to
enable us to recognise with some degree of confidence their unsigned
works, and to trace each master’s influence on the group of lesser
men who were his pupils or admirers. Much xvi centurywork, and
some good work among it, remains anonymous. We stili meet with
monograms that lack an explanation, but few of these conceal a name
of much importance in tlie history of art, except the signature D.S.,
which is that of the rnost remarkable draughtsman at Basle in the
days before Holbein, and the initials IT.W., wliicli occur on two
woodcuts only, among hundreds, by the most prolific and charming of
the Augsburg illustrators,
iSiguilicttuoe
of the date
1500.
Our know-
ledge of tlie
designers of
woodcuts after
that date.