[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY.
HANS HOLBEIN. (BASEL, ADAM PETRI, _circa_ 1524.)]
[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY.
HANS HOLBEIN. HIST. VET. TEST. ICONIBUS ILLUSTRATA.]
Albrecht Dürer and Holbein, indeed, seem to express and to sum up all the vigour and power of design of that very vigorous and fruitful time of the German Renaissance. They had able contemporaries, of course, among whom are distinguished, Lucas Cranach (the elder) born 1470, and Hans Burgmair, already named, who was associated with Dürer in the work of the celebrated series of woodcuts, "The Triumphs of Maximilian;" one of the fine series of "Der Weiss König," a noble title page, and a vigorous drawing of peasants at work in a field, here represent him. Other notable designers were Hans Sebald Beham, Hans Baldung Grün, Hans Wächtlin, Jost Amman, and others, who carried on the German style or tradition in design to the end of the sixteenth century. This tradition of convention was technically really the mode of expression best fitted to the conditions of the woodcut and the press, under which were evolved the vigorous pen line characteristic of the German masters. It was a living condition in which each could work freely, bringing in his own fresh observation and individual feeling, while remaining in collective harmony.
[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY.
[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY.
AMBROSE HOLBEIN. "DAS GANTZE NEUE TESTAMENT," ETC.
[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY.
HANS BURGMAIR. "DER WEISS KÖNIG" (1512-14).]
[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY.
[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY.
HANS BURGMAIR. "HISTORIA MUNDI NATURALIS," PLINY. (FRANKFORT, 1582.)]
[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY.
HANS BURGMAIR. "DIE MEERFAHRT ZU VILN ONERKANNTEN INSELN UND KUNIGREICHEN."
The various marks adopted by the printers themselves are often decorative devices of great interest and beauty. The French printers, Gillett Hardouyn and Thielman Kerver, for instance, had charming devices with which they generally occupied the front page of their Books of Hours. Others were pictorial puns and embodied the name of the printer under some figure, such as that of Petri of Basle, who adopted a device of a stone, which the flames and the hammer stroke failed to destroy; or the mark of Philip le Noir--a black shield with a negro crest and supporter; or the palm tree of Palma Isingrin. Others were purely emblematic and heraldic, such as the dolphin twined round the anchor, of Aldus, with the motto "_Propera tarde_"--"hasten slowly." This, and another device of a crab holding a butterfly by its wings, with the same signification, are both borrowed from the favourite devices of two of the early emperors of Rome--Augustus and Titus. This symbolic, emblematic, allegorizing tendency which had been more or less characteristic of both art and literature, in various degrees, from the most ancient times, became more systematically cultivated, and collections of emblems began to appear in book form in the sixteenth century. The earliest being that of Alciati, the first edition of whose book appeared in 1522, edition after edition following each other from various printers and places from that date to 1621, with ever-increasing additions, and being translated into French, German, and Italian. Mr. Henry Green, the author of "Shakespeare and the Emblem Writers" (written to prove Shakespeare's acquaintance with the emblem books, and constant allusions to emblems), said of Alciati's book that "it established, if it did not introduce, a new style for emblem literature--the classical, in the place of the simply grotesque and humorous, or of the heraldic and mystic."