2i)4 ENGRAVING 



Titian is said to havo furnished designs for various woodcuts, particularly the 

 sorios of Costumes published at Venice iu 1590; and a very largo coarse cut of the 

 Destruction of Pharaoh and his Ilost, moro than four foot long, is said to havo been 

 one among many of uncommon size executed from his designs ; they were printed on 

 separate blocks, and then pasted together in the manner of wall-papers. One repre- 

 senting the Sacrifice of Abraham is remarkable for the variously-tinted inks in which 

 it is printed to exhibit gradations of distance. 



Wood-engraving in the early part of the seventeenth century had sunk from its 

 high estate. The last great artist who had employed himself in connection with the 

 art was Hans Holbein ; and we do not find a great name again conjoined with it until 

 the middle of that century, when Eubens employed Jeghers, of Antwerp, to - 

 some of his drawings on wood. The generality of woodcuts in books of t \ 

 rival in coarseness the older block -books; the wood-engravers seem to have sunk into 

 mechanics, unassisted by good artists to furnish them with drawings. The art had 

 become vulgarised, its profession a trade, and the demand and supply scarcely better 

 than the requirements of the ballad-printer desired. They were ancillary to the 

 commonest uses of the press, and all art speedily vanished from the cuts manu- 

 factured probably at a very cheap rate for temporary use. Of this kind are the 

 cuts sprinkled through the English books of the time of James and Charles I. It is 

 possible that the printers were supplied with them from Germany and Flanders. It 

 was customary to use woodcuts repeatedly, particularly if merely ornamental ; in this 

 way initial letters were reproduced as the stock in trade of the printing-office ; l and 

 oven scones of adventure, adopted unscrupulously for other events, to which there 

 was the slightest general resemblance. 2 The names of these 'wood-cutters' havo 

 not descended to our time ; their works are widely scattered over general literature, 

 and it is not until the middle of the century that we meet with any instance of an 

 attempt to arrest the downward progress of the art. Then, as we have previously 

 noted, Eubens, probably anxious to rival Diirer, engaged Christopher Jegher, of 

 Antwerp, to execute, under his own superintendence and at his expense, a series of 

 large drawings made by himself upon the wood. They differ from the stylo of the 

 earlier masters, and frequently have a confused blotted look in the lines, which pro- 

 duce deep shadows ; they possess, however, all that boldness and vigour of treatment 

 for which the great Flemish painter was so deservedly celebrated ; but the engraving 

 is coarse and mechanical. Kubens appears to have felt this, and sometimes a tinted 

 block is added over all, with high lights cut upon it, to give softness and brightness 

 to the whole : an idea he may have adopted from the engravers of Italy who suc- 

 ceeded Ugo da Carpi (among whom may be honourably mentioned Andreas Andreani, 

 of Mantua, born 1540, died 1620), or from the designs of Lalleman engraved by 

 Businck, which were nearly contemporaneous in France. 



Though ' fallen from its high estate,' the art never sank into complete decay, 

 either in England or upon the Continent ; there were always a few who followed the 

 profession, and aided the printer with such cuts and diagrams as he might require. 

 The family of the Jeghers practised in Antwerp until the end of the century : a clever 

 series of woodcuts illustrative of the Service of the Mass was published at Ghent, 

 and executed by Kraaft in 1732. In France, the family of Le Sueur wore employed 

 through three generations by booksellers; the last, Nicholas, died in 1764; while 

 Papillon, the author of a Traite de la Gravure en Bois, had practised the art from the 

 commencement of the century until 1770, and had been patronised so extensively by 

 the booksellers of France and Holland that he counts his cuts by the thousand. In 

 England, E. Kirkhall executed cuts for books, and from 1722 to 1724 a series of 12 

 block-prints, in imitation of Ugo da Carpi's work already alluded to ; in this latter 

 style he prochicod a greater pupil in J. Jackson, who very successfully copied some of 

 the great works of Titian, Paul Veronese, and others, during the years 1738 to 1741 ; 

 at this time he resided in Venice, after a short sojourn in Paris, where ho was occasion- 

 ally employed as a wood engraver. Many cuts scattered through English books about 

 the same period bear the initials of F. H. for Francis Hoffman, whoso name is on- 

 graved in full on a tail-piece, representing Cupids surrounding a lighted altar, to bo 



1 In the old printing office of Plantyn, at Antwerp, is still preserved a large quantity of woodcuts 

 originally engraved for the books he issued at the end of the 16th century, particularly the emblems 

 of Alciati and Sambnco. 



2 The number of impressions a woodcut will yield has never yet l>een < '['ho elasticity 

 of wood gives it a great advantage over metal in press-printinu' ; ruuJ while copper and st- 

 out, wood shows little sign of wear : many thousands of impressions may be taken by a mod 

 careful printer without injuring a woodcut. As an instance with what impunity a bad printer 

 may use a coarse woodcut, may bo mentioned the fact, that the ballad printer-; of the middle of the 

 -last century occasionally used cnte that had been engraved in the reign of Charles I., and had headed 

 popular ballads for more than 100 years. 



