Page:A History of Wood-Engraving.djvu/62

60 In 1493 an edition of Terence, in which the earlier rudeness gave way to some skill in design, showed the first signs of promise of the excellence which the Lyonese art was to attain in the sixteenth century.

In Paris, the German printers, who had been invited to the city by a prior of the Sorbonne, had issued Latin works for ten years before wood-engraving began to be practised. After 1483, however, Jean Du Pré, Guyot Marchand, Pierre Le Rouge, Pierre Le Caron, Antoine Verard, and other early printers applied themselves zealously to the publication of volumes of devotion, history, poetry, and romance, in which they made use of wood-engraving. The figure of the author frequently appears upon the first page, where he offers his book to the king or princess before whom he kneels; and here and there may be read sentiments like the following, which is taken from an early work of Verard's, where they are inserted in fragmentary verses among the wood-cuts: "Every good, loyal, and gallant Catholic who begins any work of imagery ought, first, to invoke in all his labor the Divine power by the blessed name of Jesus, who illumines every human heart and understanding; this is in very deed a fair beginning." The religious books, especially the Livres d'Heures (Fig. 13), were filled with the finest examples of the Parisian art, which sought to imitate the beautiful miniatures for which Paris had been famous from even before the time when Dante praised them. In consequence of this effort the woodcut in simple line served frequently only as a rough draft, to be filled in and finished