Processes and Schools of Engraving. 



books in which both text and illustrations were cut on the block, no 

 movable type being used. One would expect, and the older literature 

 has assumed, that this form of book preceded the introduction of movable 

 type (which occurred just before 1450), but none of the existing block- 

 books can be dated with any probability before about 1460. But even a 

 single leaf woodcut with text cut on the same block already possesses 

 all the essential elements of the block-book, and of these some certainly 

 date before the earliest printed books, so that in principle at least the 

 block-book is a forerunner of printing in type. 



Upper Germany and the Netherlands seem to have been the regions 

 in which most of the earliest woodcuts were produced. There has been 

 much discussion, and still exists great difference of opinion, as to the 

 nationality of many of the earliest woodcuts, different writers claiming 

 for Germany, the Netherlands, and France, respectively, the priority in 

 their production. The Italian school is more generally allowed to be a 

 later comer in the field. In any case single -leaf Italian woodcuts are 

 much rarer than the Northern works, and there seems no reason to date 

 any of them before the XVth century. A few names are found on some 

 of the early cuts, but practically nothing is known about the artists, and 

 the most searching critical study of XlVth and XVth century woodcuts 

 has constantly to be satisfied with mere approximations of locality and 

 date. 



Of the block-books one might mention among the finest and earliest 

 which seem to have been produced in the Netherlands about 1460-70 : 

 the Bihlia Paiijperum, the Canticufn Canticorum, the Ars Moriendi, and 

 the Speculum Humanae Salvationis ; and from a somewhat inferior 

 and slightly later group, the A'pocalyijse, the Antichrist, and the Ars 

 Memorandi. 



The British Museum block-books are preserved in the general library, 

 only a few fragments belonging to the Department of Prints and 

 Drawings. The same may be said of a very large proportion of woodcuts 

 in general, as so many of these are illustrations in books. Woodcut 

 being printed in relief, is perfectly adapted for printing in conjunction 

 with type (while an intaglio engraving used as a book illustration needs 

 a second printing in the double roller press), and the pioneer makers of 

 books soon turned to woodcut as a method of illustration. The earliest 

 books containing woodcuts (printed by Albrecht Pfister of Bamberg) date 

 about 1460-62, but woodcut illustration only became common in Germany 

 after 1470, and in Italy nearly two decades later. Thenceforward to 

 the end of the XVIth century woodcut remained the commonest form 

 of book illustration. Its popularity for this purpose yielded to engravings 

 on metal during the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries, and it only partially 

 regained its position in illustration in the XlXth century from the time 

 of Bewick onwards. 



We have described the j)rocess of dotted jirints (prints in the maniere 

 crihlee). They are not among the earliest cuts, but to judge from their 

 style seem for the most part to have been produced during the second 

 half of the XVth century. They are the first examples of the use of the 

 white line in relief prints. A considerable number of Italian (chiefly 

 Florentine) woodcuts of the XVth and early XVIth centuries also show 

 the white-line method, but apart from these, and isolated examples such 

 as Urs G-raf (Solothurn, Zurich, Basle ; about 1485-1529) and Giuseppe 



