. Old picture books; with other essays on bookish subjects. ings, with 1492 as against 1490 ; inGenesis, Leviticus, and Joshua, partly with one, partlywith the other. In two other cases he steers a middlecourse. The 1490 artist had illustrated far too realisticallyboth the temptation of Joseph and the sin which calledforth the zeal of Phineas. In the 1492 edition thesesubjects are very wisely omitted. In that of 1493 theyappear, but in a modified form. My own theory toaccount for these discrepancies is that between 1490 and TWO ILLUSTRATED ITALIAN BIBLES 47 1492—presumably in 1491—Giunta publi
. Old picture books; with other essays on bookish subjects. ings, with 1492 as against 1490 ; inGenesis, Leviticus, and Joshua, partly with one, partlywith the other. In two other cases he steers a middlecourse. The 1490 artist had illustrated far too realisticallyboth the temptation of Joseph and the sin which calledforth the zeal of Phineas. In the 1492 edition thesesubjects are very wisely omitted. In that of 1493 theyappear, but in a modified form. My own theory toaccount for these discrepancies is that between 1490 and TWO ILLUSTRATED ITALIAN BIBLES 47 1492—presumably in 1491—Giunta published yet anotherissue of the Bible, adding a few illustrations, but not somany as in 1492, and substituting two new cuts of thesubjects unpleasantly illustrated in 1490, which he subse-quently thought well to pass over altogether. Such anintermediate edition would supply a model which wouldexplain all the early illustrations in the edition of 1493,and would also allow a more reasonable time to * AnimaMiato get them made, and his Dook printed, than the. • THE FOOL HATH SAID IN HIS HEART. FROM THE MALERMI , GIUNTA, I490 nine months which separate the editions of July 1492, andApril 1493. Anima Mia, however, was by no meanswholly a plagiarist, as is proved by the fact that while inhis first volume the 236 illustrations stand midwaysnumerically between the 215 and the 252 of the two Giuntaeditions of 1490 and 1492 ; for his second volume he pro-vided no fewer than 208 against the 176 and 187 of hispredecessors, the new cuts being fairly evenly distributedthrough the different books, while their artistic merit is ofaverage quality. It is by this touchstone of artistic merit, and not byconsiderations of quantity that the comparative claims of 48 OLD PICTURE BOOKS the two rival editions must be decided ; and on the wholethere can be no doubt that both for originality of designand for the highest merit in execution the palm must begiven to the artists and craftsmen em
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