Page:De Vinne, Invention of Printing (1876).djvu/243

Rh The thirty-eight leaves of one edition are made up in one section. This bungling method of making up a book is sufficient evidence that the printer or engraver who placed these pages together had no education in practical book-making. But the bad method shown in the plan does not prove that the book is of great age. The copy under notice contains, in the German language, the imprint of Junghannis, priffmaler, or painter of cards, Nuremberg, 1472. Whether this Junghannis was the designer, printer or engraver is not known.

This block-book was, no doubt, intended for men, but a modern observer would say that it had been made for children. The time-honored method, still used for the child's alphabet, A was an apple, is the method of the Ars Memorandi. Compared with the block-books previously noticed, it is a book of high merit. It is a thin folio of thirty pages, fifteen of which contain a text of very large, clumsily drawn and compactly arranged letters within a rule-bordered frame; the remaining fifteen pages have full-page illustrations. The edition from which the annexed illustration was copied is in brown ink.

The designs are more eccentric than those of any known block-book, but the designer has shown no artistic ability in the grouping of his figures. The four Evangelists are symbolized — St. John by an eagle, St. Matthew by an angel, St. Luke by a bull, St. Mark by a lion — but they are presented to us in uncouth attitudes, and are surrounded or overlaid by some of the familiar objects frequently mentioned in the Gospels. These objects are numbered with Arabic figures referring to explanations in the text. The dove, for it must be so considered, although it looks like an owl, perched on the head of the symbolized St. John, may be accepted as the emblem of the Deity. The two heads beside the eagle are to be understood as those of Moses and of Christ. The musical instruments, a lute and three bells, on the breast of the eagle, indicate the contents