Page:Contemporary English woodcuts.djvu/12

 events, and illustrations of all the subject matter, allegorical, mythological, scientific, instructive or amusing, that was in favour with a public of various ranks and educated in various degrees. And throughout the last century of that period, from about 1470 onwards, the woodcut enjoyed a supremacy without rival as the process for book illustration, till the competition of the copper plate, engraved or etched, became serious, and finally drove the woodblock out of the field. In the fifteenth century we rarely know the names of the illustrators, and it is generally uncertain whether the designers of the blocks also actually cut them; but there is littie doubt that in the culminating period, which may be placed at about 1490 to 1530, the practice was established in the Teutonic countries that the designing artists, many of whom were among the greatest painters and draughtsmen of the age, such as Dürer, Cranach, Holbein, Baldung, Burgkmair and Lucas van Leyden, drew the designs upon the block and employed professional woodcutters to cut the wood so skilfully that the result was practically a facsimile of the pen and ink drawing. There are some German artists, notably the leading painters of the "Danube school," Altdorfer and Huber, who may be exceptions to this rule; but the evidence becomes still stronger as the sixteenth century advances and signatures are more frequent, that there was usually this division of labour. A double signature is often met with, the initials of the draughtsman being accompanied by a little pen, and those of the cutter by a little knife, both of which implements may be seen in use upon the block in two of Jost Amman's well-known series of woodcuts (1568) illustrating various trades, arts and crafts. About the practice in the Latin countries at this period we are less well informed, Italian and French woodcuts being much more rarely signed than the German, Swiss and Dutch. We seldom know the names of the artists who designed the book illustrations; but in Italy, at least, we know that it was a very general practice for drawings and, later on, even pictures, to be reproduced by professional woodcutters.

That was the case also in the seventeenth century, when wood-engraving enjoyed more favour in the Low Countries than elsewhere. After the original woodcuts of Goltzius (d. 1617), the most striking examples are those of Jegher, who was chiefly a reproductive engraver, especially after Rubens, and Christoffel van Sichem. But some good original woodcuts were produced at this period in Holland. The best known are the portrait heads by Livens, but a few other painter-engravers less known to fame, such as Dirk de Bray, did excellent woodcuts from their own designs. In Italy the Bolognese revived