vii] Leonhard Fucks 177 



necessary here. If the drawings have any fault, it is 

 perhaps to be found in the somewhat blank and unfinished 

 look, occasionally produced when unshaded outline drawings 

 are used on so large a scale. This is the case for instance 

 in the figure of the Aloe. It may be that Fuchs had in mind 

 the possibility that the purchaser might wish to colour the 

 work, and to fill in a certain amount of detail for himself. 

 The existing copies of this and other old herbals often have 

 the figures painted, generally in a distressingly crude and 

 heavy fashion. The colouring in many cases appears to 

 have been done at a very early date. In the octavo edition 

 of Fuchs' herbal published in 1545, small versions of the 

 large wood-cuts appeared. It is perhaps invidious to draw 

 distinctions between the work of Fuchs and that of Brunfels, 

 since they are both of such exquisite quality. However, 

 merely as an expression of personal opinion, the present 

 writer must confess to feeling that there is a finer sense of 

 power and freedom of handling about the illustrations in 

 Fuchs' herbal than those of Brunfels. 



Sometimes in Fuchs' figures a wonderfully decorative 

 spirit is shown, as in the case of the Earth-nut Pea (Text- 

 fig. 87) which fills the rectangular space almost in the 

 manner of an "all-over" wall-paper pattern. It must not 

 be forgotten, when discussing wood-cuts, that the artist, 

 who drew upon the block for the engraver, was working 

 under peculiar conditions. It was impossible for him to 

 be unmindful of the boundaries of the block, when these 

 took the form, as it were, of miniature precipices under his 

 hand. These boundaries marked out the exact limit of 

 space which the figure could occupy. It is not surprising, 

 under these circumstances, that the artist who drew upon 

 the block should often seem to have been obsessed by its 

 rectangularity, and should have accommodated his drawing 

 to its form in a way that was unnecessary and far from 

 realistic, though sometimes very decorative. This is 

 exemplified in the figure of the Earth-nut Pea, to which 

 we have just referred and also in Text-figs. 41, 44, 62, 

 92, 95, 1 01, etc. The writer has been told by an artist 

 accustomed, in former years, to draw upon the wood 

 tor the engraver, that to avoid a rectangular effect re- 

 quired a distinct effort of will. At the present day, when 



A. 12 



