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Very early plates—Albert Dürer—Other German artists—Early English.

THE bookplate here given as a frontispiece, may be the oldest in the world. At all events, it remains to this day a fifteenth-century bookplate in a fifteenth-century book. The work is a Latin treatise on logic, in a German hand. Mr. W. H. J. Weale has very kindly looked at the book, and writes: “The binding is German, I think Bavarian; but although the same stamps, or rather, to be accurate, some of them, occur on several bookbindings I have copied, I have never been able to locate them. The S. Benedict with the book, and glass with the serpent issuing from it, is evidently German; the arms have nothing to do with the Saint, or the order, nor are they the arms of an abbey, but no doubt those of a layman to whom the book belonged.”[A]

Now to come to the real or almost personal story of engraved bookplates or ex libris, as we may call them indifferently. First we will talk of the oldest, and then gradually come down to our own time. Germany was the fatherland of bookplates, and it is of great interest to remember that it was, too, the fatherland of printing and of wood-engraving.

The earliest known engraved bookplate is that of Hildebrand Brandenburg, a monk of the Carthusian Monastery at Buxheim, near Memmingen, to which he was evidently in the habit of presenting books. The woodcut shows an angel holding a shield on which are displayed the arms of the Brandenburg family, a black ox with a ring passed through its nose.

The late Karl Emich Count zu Leiningen-Westerburg, the great authority on German ex libris, suggests that either Biberach or Ulm was the birthplace of this bookplate, and in or about the year 1470, which is a year before Albert Dürer was born.

Another bookplate, also armorial, of about the same date, and found in a book given to this same monastery at Buxheim, is that of Wilhelm von Zell. Lastly, there has as yet been found one other which is grouped with these two, as of about the same date. It represents a hedgehog with a flower in its mouth, on grass strewn with flowers. It was engraved for Hans Igler. Igel means a hedgehog, and at the head of the ex libris is cut the inscription: “Hanns Igler das dich ein Igel Küs.”

After this there may be mentioned the following six plates before we turn over the leaf of a new century. The inscribed armorial ex libris of Thomas Wolphius, Pontificii Juris Doctor, and that of Rupprecht Muntzinger, a block of South German origin, and ascribed by some to the hand of M. Wohlgemuth. Two anonymous plates, both armorial, and in saying anonymous it must not be supposed that the owner was not well known in his day, and probably long afterwards. One represents the head of a bull caboshed, with a sickle issuing from it. The other, the fleur-de-lis, is on a shield, and for crest, the half figure of a man with a battle-axe. Then two bookplates, the body of which has been engraved and space left for one or another person to use them.

Passing now into the sixteenth century, and still keeping to chronology as our main guide, we can turn at once to Albrecht Dürer as a designer of ex libris, and we now move on to safer ground, as we begin to find dates, and then soon names or monograms of engravers.

Albrecht Dürer, the second son of Albrecht Dürer, goldsmith, was born in the good city of Nuremberg on the 21st May, 1471.

Like Benvenuto Cellini, born some thirty years later, young Albrecht Dürer’s first experience of handiwork was in the goldsmith’s craft; but with a difference, as Benvenuto Cellini learned the goldsmith’s art against his father’s will. On St. Andrew’s Day, 1486, young Albrecht had the joy of inducing his father to apprentice him for three years to Michel Wohlgemut. This step, important in the young artist’s life, is especially important in our consideration, as, with the aid of Anton Koburger, the princely printer, who was Albrecht Dürer’s godfather, Michel Wohlgemut founded the great Nuremberg school of wood-engraving. From 1490 to 1494 Dürer was on his travels, and spent some while in Venice, where he was again in 1505 to 1507. On the 14th July, 1494, after his home-coming from his first wanderings, he was married to Agnes, the daughter of Hans Frey. For the rest, this is not the place for a history of his works. His noble life was closed on the 6th of April, 1528, and thus before he had reached the age at which many artists have done their best work; but what vast treasures he had wrought within those fifty-seven years!

The following five ex libris have been, on good authority, distinctly ascribed to Albrecht Dürer’s art: two varieties of a woodcut made for Willibald Pirckheimer, of Nuremberg, one with and one without the well-known motto “Sibi et Amicis.” This is a fine armorial plate with helmet, and arms of himself and his wife. One of three ex libris used by Johann Stab, a learned mathematician and poet, a friend of Albrecht Dürer. This is an armorial plate, and is distinguished by having a laurel wreath; but no inscription. In the Albertina Museum at Vienna is Dürer’s original drawing in violet ink for the armorial woodcut bookplate of his friend Lazarus Spengler, Recorder of Nuremberg. The armorial woodcut ex libris of Johann Tscherte, exhibiting a satyr and dogs. Tschert, in Bohemian, means a satyr or devil.

Besides the foregoing, there exist several sketches by Dürer which can hardly have been intended for anything but bookplates; and also, before passing from Dürer, the large bookplate for Dr. Hector Pömer, the last Prior of the Abbey of St. Laurence in Nuremberg, must be mentioned. In itself a beautiful work of art, it bears a date, 1525, and the wood-engraver’s initials, “R. A.” The drawing is worthy of the hand of Dürer himself, and “R. A.” probably cut the block in Dürer’s studio, from the great master’s own design. On the chief shield are the arms of the monastery, the gridiron of St. Laurence quartering the arms of Pomer. By the shield, stands St. Laurence holding in one hand a gridiron, and in the other the martyr’s palm. The motto: “To the pure all things are pure,” is given, as was Dürer’s wont, in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. At the bottom of all is the owner’s name, “D. Hector Pomer Praepos S. Lavr.”

Before quite leaving Dürer, the earliest dated German bookplate should be named, as some think that he had a hand in it, especially as it was for a friend of his, Hieronymus Ebner von Eschenbach, born in Nuremberg on the 5th of January, 1477, educated at Ingolstadt, and afterwards in the household of the Emperor Maximilian, he became a learned lawyer and judge. He was a friend and ally of Martin Luther, and engaged in a cultivated correspondence with many of the leaders of that age.

Following the start given by Albrecht Dürer, Nuremberg continued to be the home of bookplate engraving; but very soon copper-plate engraving took the place of woodcuts.