DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.7597#0234
chap, in.] SPECULUM HUMANAE SALVATIONIS. 201
" metal type, newly invented." Who this pupil of Gutenberg and
Fust was, or Avho was the author of the cuts, he has not given us
any clue to discover.*
He is also of opinion, " that we cannot safely conclude that
" the cuts and the text were engraved and printed at the time,
" merely because the cuts represent the same subjects described in
" the text. It is very certain," says he, " that Latin manuscripts
" of this work existed, ornamented with vignettes painted in dis-
" temper, in several of the libraries of Germany, at least as early
" as the twelfth century, and nothing therefore would have been
" more easy than for a designer or engraver in wood to copy these
" vignettes after one of those manuscripts, and to engrave them in
" wood, long before any one thought of printing the Latin text or
" the Flemish f translation."
To this argument, which I cannot help suspecting was used by
Heineken as a measure of caution, (lest the antiquity of the cuts,
and the school in which they were executed, should hereafter be
proved, and brought forward as evidence in favor of the preten-
sions of Harlem) it may reasonably be objected, that, had such
been the case, some copy or fragment of the work, without the
printed text, would probably be found; whereas no such copy is
known to exist: and, moreover, that the characters in the short
inscriptions at the bottom of the cuts, although they were perhaps
engraved by a different artist from the one who engraved the twenty
pages of text in the Latin edition so often mentioned, appear to be
of the same age. It should seem therefore most reasonable to con-
clude, (under the supposition that the Latin edition is really the
first) that the whole was undertaken at the same time; the execu-
tion of the cuts being confided to one or more artists skilful in
engraving figures ; the pages of text, to others more accustomed to
that department of wood engraving; and that the printer, in the
* Id6e Generate, pp. 446, 447.
f Idem, p. 449.
" metal type, newly invented." Who this pupil of Gutenberg and
Fust was, or Avho was the author of the cuts, he has not given us
any clue to discover.*
He is also of opinion, " that we cannot safely conclude that
" the cuts and the text were engraved and printed at the time,
" merely because the cuts represent the same subjects described in
" the text. It is very certain," says he, " that Latin manuscripts
" of this work existed, ornamented with vignettes painted in dis-
" temper, in several of the libraries of Germany, at least as early
" as the twelfth century, and nothing therefore would have been
" more easy than for a designer or engraver in wood to copy these
" vignettes after one of those manuscripts, and to engrave them in
" wood, long before any one thought of printing the Latin text or
" the Flemish f translation."
To this argument, which I cannot help suspecting was used by
Heineken as a measure of caution, (lest the antiquity of the cuts,
and the school in which they were executed, should hereafter be
proved, and brought forward as evidence in favor of the preten-
sions of Harlem) it may reasonably be objected, that, had such
been the case, some copy or fragment of the work, without the
printed text, would probably be found; whereas no such copy is
known to exist: and, moreover, that the characters in the short
inscriptions at the bottom of the cuts, although they were perhaps
engraved by a different artist from the one who engraved the twenty
pages of text in the Latin edition so often mentioned, appear to be
of the same age. It should seem therefore most reasonable to con-
clude, (under the supposition that the Latin edition is really the
first) that the whole was undertaken at the same time; the execu-
tion of the cuts being confided to one or more artists skilful in
engraving figures ; the pages of text, to others more accustomed to
that department of wood engraving; and that the printer, in the
* Id6e Generate, pp. 446, 447.
f Idem, p. 449.