Somewhat in the style of "The Dream of Poliphilus" is the illustration (Fig. 314) from an edition of Dante's "Inferno" of the same period.

A reduced specimen of the flat treatment of a Renaissance border, from a woodcut which appeared in an edition of "Herodotus" printed at Venice in 1470, is shown as the Frontispiece of this volume. This rich and delicate design is extremely effective in white on a black ground, and is artistically appropriate to the decoration of the page, much more so than the later French and German work in borders and title-pages, which was usually of an extremely heavy character.

Shaded Designs Of An Architectural Kind

Shaded Designs Of An Architectural Kind, such as friezes, columns, bases, and pediments, with corpulent figure decoration and heavy mouldings, were compositions which in the latter end of the sixteenth and during the seventeenth centuries took the place of the earlier light arabesque scroll-work of the Italian school, which revelled in the beauty of purer outline and in flat treatment of black and white.

Jean Goujon, Jean Cousin, Virgil Solis, Ducerceau, Stimmer, Jost Amman, and others, though versatile and vigorous to the highest degree, and clever French and German draughtsmen of the sixteenth century, their work in book decoration was more like designs for stone carving and sculpture than legitimate decoration for books. At the end of the century, however, a more correct appreciation of book-cover decoration was manifested. This was due to the happy influence of Arabian design when mixed with the prevailing Renaissance forms. The Oriental craftsmen who came to Italy, and the great commerce of Venice and Europe generally with the East, served to colour in a marked degree the design of the ornamental arts, and nowhere do we see the purely Arabian strap-work and peculiar Saracen leafage used to such advantage as in the tooled and stamped book-cover designs of this period. The Henri Deux book-cover design (Fig. 315) is Arabian in its details, but Renaissance in its general arrangement. It might have been designed by Ducerceau, but perhaps more likely by Solomon Bernard of Lyons known as "Le Petit Bernard" - who was a prolific designer of small pictures for wood-engraved book illustrations. He died at Lyons in 1570.

Both of these designers, as well as another famous designer of book decoration, Geoffry Tory, were very partial to the use of strap-work and Arab foliation. The latter artist was also a scholar and author, and produced many fine designs for book-covers. Fig. 316 is a very delicate and rich design for the cover of a "Book of the Hours," by Tory, and is a good example of the Franco-Renaissance of the sixteenth century.

Jean Grolier, Viscount D'Aguisy

Jean Grolier, Viscount D'Aguisy, was one of the earliest and greatest bibliophiles of France. Though of Italian origin he adopted France as his country, and was Treasurer-General of France when he died, in 1565, at the age of eighty-six. He was appointed ambassador to Clement VII. in the year 1534, and at this time had begun to collect valuable books, that had been chiefly printed in Venice and at Basle. These books were generally unbound copies, but were printed with great care on beautiful paper. On his return to France he employed Geoffry Tory and other designers as well as the best craftsmen in bookbinding to decorate and clothe his precious works. The illustrations we have given are such as are usually found on the Grolier bindings, which nearly always consist of designs composed of strap-work or interfacings and delicate tracery, clothed with Arabian foliage, worked on prepared costly leathers in various colours, and often heightened with gold.

Grolier's bindings usually bore in addition to the title of the book the inscription "Jo Grolierii Et Amicorum," indicating that they belonged to Grolier and his friends, at the same time adding a testimony to the unselfish spirit of the great book-lover.

The strap-work and Oriental foliage designs, which had developed so much in France, went even further in Germany, not only in bookbinding decoration, but in gold and silversmiths' work, and in architecture - as we have noticed before in this volume - and nearly all the German, Flemish, and Dutch artists of the sixteenth and following century, who designed for book decoration, adopted the above features in their ornament. Great masters like Albert Drer, Holbein the younger, Lucas Cranach, and Hans Burgmair, and the "little masters" - Jost Amman, Hans Sebald Beham, Aldegrever, Virgil Solis, Jerome Bang, Peter Fl*tner of Li*ge, the Coll*rts and Janssens of Antwerp, and Lucas Kilian of Augsburg - were the principal designers and engravers for book decoration and illustrations, in which work they were engaged among their varied and prolific labours in other branches of decorative art.

During the seventeenth century the power of design was growing rapidly weaker, the ornament became coarser in feeling and imitated the cumbersome and heavy traditions of classical art. Headpieces, tailpieces, and printers' devices or marks were now more in fashion, rather than the consideration of the design of the page as a whole decorative scheme.

Title-pages with heavy architectural pretensions and pictorial views began to be very common at the end of the century and throughout the eighteenth century.

The Pictorial Illustration In Black And White

The Pictorial Illustration In Black And White was due to the development of copper-plate first, and steel engraving afterwards, as new methods for book illustration. These processes were developed very much in Italy and France at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and in England their use in book illustration might be said to extend from about the middle of the eighteenth to the middle of the present century. This period embraced that of the publication of a type of English books of essays, poems, and short stories, known as Anniversaries, Amulets, Annuals, Keepsakes, Souvenirs, etc. These books were filled with beautifully executed line engravings of landscapes and figure subjects, and most of them were of the highest order of technical skill. The period of their existence was from 1780 to 1830.