A treatise on wood engravings : historical and practical . ntion isto be applied to discover the secrets of Fate, I have not been able to comprehend. 394 FURTHER PROGRESS AND DECLINE OF those in the edition first published at Cologne by the heirs of ArnoldBirkman in 1555. In fact, the wood engravings in books printed atLyons and Venice from about 1540 to 1580 are in general moredelicately engraved than those executed in Germany and the LowCountries during the same period. Among all the Venetian printersof that age, Gabriel Giolito is entitled to precedence from the numberand comparative excell
A treatise on wood engravings : historical and practical . ntion isto be applied to discover the secrets of Fate, I have not been able to comprehend. 394 FURTHER PROGRESS AND DECLINE OF those in the edition first published at Cologne by the heirs of ArnoldBirkman in 1555. In fact, the wood engravings in books printed atLyons and Venice from about 1540 to 1580 are in general moredelicately engraved than those executed in Germany and the LowCountries during the same period. Among all the Venetian printersof that age, Gabriel Giolito is entitled to precedence from the numberand comparative excellence of the wood-cuts contained in the numerousillustrated works wliicli issued from his press. In several of the worksprinted by him every cut is surrounded by an ornamental border; andthis border, not being engraved on the same block as the cut, butseparately as a kind of frame, is frequently repeated : sixteen differentborders, when the book is of octavo size and there is a cut on everypage, would suffice for the whole work, however extensive it might. be. The practice of ornamenting cuts in this manner was very prevalentabout the period under consideration, and at the present time somepublishers seem inclined to revive it. I should, however, be sorry tosee it again become prevalent, for though to some subjects, designedin a particular manner, an ornamental border may be appropriate, yetI consider the practice of thus framing a series of cuts as indicativeof bad taste, and as likely to check the improvement of the ornamented borders have, in a certain degree, the effect otreducing a series of cuts, however different their execution, to astandard of mediocrity ; for they frequently conceal the beauty ofa well-engraved subject, and serve as a screen to a bad one. InLudovico Dolces Transformationi—a translation, or rather paraphraseof Ovids Metamorphoses—first printed by Giolito in 1553, and again WOOD ENGRAVING. 395 in 1557, the cuts, instead of having a border
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, booksubjectwoodengraving, bookye
