Page:A History of Wood-Engraving.djvu/54

52 heavy and rude as much of it is, it surpasses other German work of the same period; and it must not be forgotten that the awkwardness of the drawing was much obscured by the colors which were afterward laid on the designs by hand. It is only by accident or negligence that woodcuts were left uncolored in early German books, for the conception of a complete picture simply in black and white was a comparatively late acquisition in art, and did not guide the practice of wood engravers until the last decade of the century, when, indeed, it effected a revolution in the art.

Of the many other illustrated Bibles which appeared during the last quarter of the fifteenth century, the one published at Augsburg, about 1475, and attributed to Gunther Zainer, alone has a peculiar interest. All but two of its seventy three woodcuts are combined with large initial letters, occupying the width of a column, for which they serve as a background, and by which they are framed in; these are the oldest initial letters in this style, and are original in design, full of animation and vigor, and rank with the best work of the early Augsburg wood-engravers. It is not unlikely that these novel and attractive letters were the very ones of which the Augsburg guild complained in the action that they brought against Zainer in 1477. Afterward the German printers gave much attention to ornamented capitals, both in this style, which reached its most perfect examples in Holbein’s alphabets, and in the Italian mode, in which the design was relieved in white upon a black ground.

Next to the Bibles, the early chronicles and histories are of most interest for the study of wood-engraving. They