The First Experiments in Book Decoration at the Fust-Schöffer Press

39

THE FIRST EXPERIMENTS IN BOOK DECORATION AT THE

FUST-SCHÖFFER PRESS1

Mayumi Ikeda

After their separation from Johann Gutenberg, Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer opened a press in Mainz. The two may be regarded as the first successful pub-lishers in Europe, who turned the invention of typography into a profitable business. One of the keys to their success was their deep concern for how their products were embellished, an aspect which hitherto has received little atten-tion.2 In this article I will discuss the experiments with various decoration pro-grammes in three early publications from the Fust-Schöffer press, namely the Mainz Psalter published in 1457 (ISTC ip01036000), the Rationale divinorum officiorum of Guillelmus Durandus published in 1459 (ISTC id00403000) and the Latin Bible published in 1462 (ISTC ib00529000). Examination of these three editions not only provides us with a coherent view of how the decoration programme was developed in the context of these publications, but also reveals the innovative and strategic minds of these publishers. In such discussions of the decoration of books published by the Fust-Schöffer press, one cannot ignore the contribution of the illuminator known as the Fust Master, who appears to have worked continuously for these publishers.3 Here, through new evidence and fresh perspectives, new light will be shed on his contributions to the press.

The Mainz Psalter The Psalterium cum canticis et hymnis dated 14 August 1457, commonly known as the Mainz Psalter, is the first publication from the Fust-Schöffer 1 I wish to thank Bettina Wagner for asking me to present a paper at the Pre-IFLA Conference at

Munich in 2009, from which this article has been developed. During the conference, copies of the three incunabula discussed in this article were on display in the exhibition Als die Lettern laufen lernten, see the catalogue nos. 18 (Mainz Psalter of 1459), 38 (Durandus of 1459) and 53 (Bible of 1462). The article is based on parts of my PhD dissertation, “Illuminating Gutenberg: The Fust Master and Decoration of Incunables and Manuscripts in Mainz and Palatine Heidel-berg”, submitted to the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 2010.

2 This aspect has been touched in Eberhard König, “Für Johannes Fust”, in Ars Impressoria: Ent-stehung und Entwicklung des Buchdrucks. Eine internationale Festgabe für Severin Corsten zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Hans Limburg, Hartwig Lohse and Wolfgang Schmitz (Munich: Saur, 1986), 285-312; idem, “Buchmalerei in Mainz zur Zeit von Gutenberg, Fust und Schöffer”, in Gutenberg – Aventur und Kunst. Vom Geheimunternehmen zur ersten Medienrevolution, ex. cat. (Mainz: City of Mainz, 2000), 574-75.

3 See for example Adolph Goldschmidt, “The Decoration of Early Mainz Books”, Magazine of Art 31 (1938): 579-81; König, “Für Johannes Fust” (see above note 2).

AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR


Mayumi Ikeda

40

press and the second substantial book in Europe to be printed with movable type. It is an accomplishment of creativity and technical virtuosity which no doubt reflects the aspirations of this newly established press. To name a few: it is the first book with a printed colophon; the first book to be printed with three colours, namely black, red and blue; the first to use two sizes of type; and the first book with printed decorative initials (ills. 1-3, plates 5-6).4 Among the many innovations introduced in this Psalter, the series of printed decorative ini-tials is arguably the most complex in terms of technical procedures involved in its realization. In the past, these decorative initials have drawn scholarly inter-est insofar as the complex structure and operation of the initial blocks were concerned.5 However, by shifting the focus to the design process of these ini-tials, it is possible to uncover a hitherto unknown involvement of a designer in them.

William Scheide’s 1973 article on the decorative initials of the Mainz Psal-ter and the subsequent publications from the Fust-Schöffer press is the only study that considers the design and designers of these initials.6 Based on the different styles of flourishes, Scheide has proposed that three or four different designers may have worked on the initial blocks of the Mainz Psalter.7 He attrib-uted two initials in the Mainz Psalter to a single hand, namely the four-line initial ‘C’ and the two-line initial ‘K’ (ills. 2-3, plate 6). According to him, the same designer worked on the six-line initial ‘T’ printed in the Canon missae, c. 1458 (ISTC im00736000, ill. 4), and the four-line initial ‘Q’ printed in the 1459 Duran-dus (ill. 5, plate 7), both of which have been produced in the same manner as the decorative initials of the Mainz Psalter.8 He also noted that the flourishes extending from the main initial body of these four initials are quite different in style from the flourishes of the main initial field, and in fact they are close to those drawn by a designer who worked on other initial blocks. He therefore speculated that the two designers collaborated in designing these four initials, 4 For an overview of the Mainz Psalter see Otto Mazal, Der Mainzer Psalter von 1457: Kommen-

tar zum Faksimiledruck 1969 (Stocker: Zürich, 1969). The production of the Mainz Psalter has been most carefully studied by Irvine Masson, The Mainz Psalters and Canon Missae: 1457–1459 (London: The Bibliographical Society, 1954).

5 The first thorough studies on the structure of these initial blocks, which have been accepted as essentially correct, are Heinrich Wallau, “Die zweifarbigen Initialen der Psalterdrucke von Johann Fust und Peter Schöffer”, in Festschrift zum fünfhundertjährigen Geburtstage von Johann Guten-berg, ed. Otto Hartwig (Mainz: Harrassowitz, 1900), 261-304; Franz Falk and Heinrich Wallau, “Der Canon Missae vom Jahre 1458 der Bibliotheca Bodleiana zu Oxford”, Veröffentlichungen der Gutenberg-Gesellschaft 3 (Mainz: Gutenberg-Gesellschaft, 1904), 40-51. For a concise review of past scholarship on the decorative initial blocks see Mazal, Der Mainzer Psalter von 1457 (see above note 4), 81-83.

6 William H. Scheide, “A Speculation Concerning Gutenberg’s Early Plans for His Bible”, Guten-berg-Jahrbuch 48 (1973): 129-39.

7 Scheide, “A Speculation” (see above note 6), 137-39. 8 The initial ‘Q’ of the 1459 Durandus in fact takes up thirteen lines in the Durandus text, which

was printed in a much smaller type than that of the Mainz Psalter.



The First Experiments in Book Decoration at the Fust-Schöffer Press

41

Ill. 4: Canon missae ([Mainz: Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer, 1458]). Oxford, Bodleian Library, Arch. G b.4, fol. 7r (detail). the one designing the main part of the initial and the other designing the ex-tending flourishes.9

It is not difficult to see why Scheide assumed the involvement of two different hands in the design of these four initials. In most of the initials, the flourishes that fill in and surround the letters are integral to the extended flourishes both in design and structure (ill. 1, plate 5), whereas the letter or part of the letter in these four initials is enclosed in a rectangular or oval field covered with tendrils that are in a style quite distinct from that of the extended flourishes (ills. 2-5, plates 6-7). In fact, while the extending flourishes are drawn with highly con-trolled penwork and therefore must be based on the work of a trained penwork decorator, the flourishes of the main initial field, which are more organic and spontaneous, have a closer affinity with the flourishes painted by illuminators that fill the eyes of the initials (ills. 6, 8, 9, plates 8, 10, 11).10 Because of its calligraphic nature, the design of these eye-filling flourishes tends to be different 9 Scheide, “A Speculation” (see above note 6), 139. 10 On the professional skills required for penwork decorators see Margriet Hülsmann, “Decorative

Penwork and Book Production: Evidence for Localizing Northern Netherlandish Manuscripts”, in Making the Medieval Book: Techniques of Production, ed. Linda L. Brownrigg (Los Altos Hills, Calif.: Anderson-Lovelace; London: The Red Gull Press, 1995), 97-99.



Mayumi Ikeda

42

according to individual illuminators, which means that it could be a useful in-dicator of different hands. In fact, the distinctive flourishes used in the main field of the four anomalous printed initials are closely comparable to the eye-fillers painted by the Fust Master (ills. 10, 12, plates 12, 14).11 The flourishes in the printed initials are characterized by large circular tendrils accompanied by many offshoots, many of which end with six circles and short strokes that are arranged in the form of a flower; these are precisely the characters found in the Fust Master’s eye-filling flourishes. The flourishes in the six-line ‘T’ of the Canon missae, which are closest to the typical eye-fillers of the Fust Master, can be readily compared with many of his works (ills. 4 and 10, plate 12). Con-sidering his relationship with the Fust-Schöffer press, which we will discuss further in considerations of the 1462 Bible, it is likely that he was employed by the press to design the main field of these four initials.12 While it may seem pecu-liar that a penwork decorator and an illuminator collaborated on the design of a single initial block, we see a similar collaboration in the Gießen copy of the 1462 Bible (to be discussed later), which implies that this practice, if unusual, was not unique.

The discrepancy between the flourishes that fill the main initial fields and the extending flourishes in the four initials discussed here is not limited to sty-listic factors. In fact, different methods have been employed to cut the design of these elements into the blocks. Whereas the fine lines of the extending flour-ishes have been cut in relief, the tendrils that fill the initial field have been en-graved in intaglio, hence the parts that are not inked represent the design.13 This also implies that only the parts designed by the Fust Master have been cut in this method. One of the reasons for introducing the intaglio method, which is used only in these four initial blocks, must have been to save time and labour, 11 Distinctive characters of the eye-fillers by an illuminator have been discussed in Susanne

Rischpler, Der Illuminator Michael, Codices Manuscripti, Supplementum 1 (Purkersdorf: Brüder Hollinek, 2009), 22-23. For a detailed examination of the characters of the Fust Master’s eye-fillers see Mayumi Ikeda, “Illuminating Gutenberg: The Fust Master and Decoration of Incu-nables and Manuscripts in Mainz and Palatine Heidelberg” (PhD diss., Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 2010), Chapter I.

12 On the Fust Master’s relationship with the Fust-Schöffer press see for example Eberhard König, “The Influence of the Invention of Printing on the Development of German Illumination”, in Manuscripts in the Fifty Years after the Invention of Printing: Some Papers read at a Collo-quium at the Warburg Institute on 12-13 March, 1982, ed. J. B. Trapp (London: The Warburg Institute, University of London, 1983), 87-89; idem, “Für Johannes Fust” (see above note 2).

13 On the difference between the design cut in relief and in intaglio see the explanation on “black line and white line” in Arthur M. Hind, An Introduction to a History of Woodcut: With a Detailed Survey of Work Done in the Fifteenth Century, vol.1 (London: Constable and Company Ltd., 1935), 18-22. Konrad Bauer proposed that the six-line initials ‘B’, four-line initials ‘C’, ‘D’, ‘S’ and ‘E’ and the six-line ‘T’ in the Canon missae may have been cut or punched directly onto the blocks using the criblé (Schrotschnitt) technique. Konrad F. Bauer, “Gutenberg in Gesellschaft”, Philobiblon 11 (1967): 277-78. I am grateful to Paul Needham, who kindly shared Bauer’s article with me.




43

since engraving the design in intaglio would be much less laborious than pro-ducing a relief metalcut of intricate flourishes. It is worth noting that the two blocks produced for the Mainz Psalter with this method, the four-line ‘C’ used for the first time on fol. 98r, and the two-line ‘K’ used for the first time on fol. 137v, are very likely the two final initials prepared for this Psalter (ills. 2-3, plate 6).14 In turn this means that the Fust Master, the likely designer of these intaglio flourishes, participated in the production of the Mainz Psalter at a very late stage, perhaps even after the actual printing had begun. Probably because it was found to be efficient, the same intaglio cutting method was adopted for the production of the six-line ‘T’ for the Canon missae and the four-line ‘Q’ for the Durandus, again with the Fust Master as the main designer (ills. 4 and 5, plate 7).

The 1459 Durandus In the publication of the Mainz Psalter, all decorative initials were printed at the press. Thus, while all copies were decorated with finely printed two-colour initials, the buyers were not given the opportunity to have their copies embel-lished according to their tastes and budgets – some may have wished to have richly illuminated volumes, while others may have been content with initials inserted cheaply by themselves. The copy held at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Inc. 1513) hints at an owner’s dissatisfaction with its printed initials: the six-line initial ‘B’ printed at the opening of the Psalter, the largest and thus most impressive printed initial in the Mainz Psalter, has been erased and overpainted with a historiated initial ‘B’ depicting the figure of David playing a harp. In the course of marketing the Mainz Psalter, the publishers must have recognized a variety of demands concerning how a book should be finished. This seems to be reflected in the decoration programme of the 1459 Durandus.

The nine places where decorative initials can be inserted in the 1459 Duran-dus are the openings to the General Prologue and Books One to Eight. The press provided three different options for these decorative initials: the first was to print the initials at the press as in the Mainz Psalter; the second was to leave the initial spaces blank so that individual owners could fill them in as they wished; and the third was to provide hand illumination at the press. For the first decorative option the press reused the printed initials produced for the Mainz Psalter, but in addition a new block was cut for the opening initial ‘Q’, which, as discussed above, was partly designed by the Fust Master (ill. 5, plate 7). For the second decorative option, the press decided to increase several of the initial spaces by one to three lines, which means that the printer took the trouble of resetting part of these pages in order to increase the spaces. In the third decora- 14 On the sequence of the production of the decorative initial blocks of the Mainz Psalter see Ikeda,

“Illuminating Gutenberg” (see above note 11), Chapter II, which is based on the sequence of printing in the Mainz Psalter established in Masson, The Mainz Psalters and Canon Missae: 1457–1459 (see above note 4).



Mayumi Ikeda

44

tive option, which is to be examined here in some detail, the press provided the illumination of all opening initials except for the initial ‘P’ of Book One, which was either printed or left blank. What is particularly notable about this decora-tive option is that exactly the same design has been used in all ten surviving copies (ills. 6-7, plates 8-9).15 The exact repetition of the design in this group of the Durandus copies leaves little doubt that the process of decorating them was carefully orchestrated by the press.16

The illumination campaign of the third option in decorating the Durandus can be separated into three stages. The first stage is the design of the initials. Judging from the stylistic coherence of the design throughout the book, all the initials were likely designed by a single hand. However, the design of fol. 1r, which opens the General Prologue, presents an exception: regular and rather static curls formed by the ivy that fills the margins is at odds with the fluid and freer foliage in the rest of the illuminated pages (ills. 6-7, plates 8-9; compare with ill. 9, plate 11). The discrepancy in the design of this page when compared to the other pages can be explained by the fact that the designer copied an already existing design found in a Viennese court manuscript, a copy of the Legenda aurea, dated 1446/47 and commissioned by Frederick III (ill. 8, plate 10).17 It is possible that this design had already been circulating on German soil before it reached Mainz, as Elgin Vaassen has noted a similar design occurring in sev-eral German illuminations including the Fulda copy of the Gutenberg Bible, which was illuminated in Erfurt.18

The second stage of the illumination campaign involves the transfer of the design to each copy. Outlines of the same initials in the different copies match very closely and demonstrate beyond any doubt that a mechanical means was employed to transfer the design. Several methods of copying designs were known at the time, but in this case it is likely that the pouncing was used.19 In 15 The ten copies are: Amiens, Bibliothèque municipale, Rés 18; Amsterdam, Bibliotheca Philo-

sophica Hermetica, M folio; Basel, UB, Inc. 1; Cologne, Erzbischöfliche Dom- und Diözesan-bibliothek, Inc. d. 204; Leipzig, UB, Ed. vet. perg. 4; Oxford, Bodleian Library, Auct. 4Q 1.3; Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, Vélins 126 and Vélins 127; Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, OE XV 1 RES; Vatican, BAV, Membr. S. 16. I am indebted to Eric White, who informed me of the Amiens, Amsterdam and Oxford copies. I am also grateful to Monica Butz of Basel UB, who provided me with information and photographs of the Basel copy.

16 The illumination of these copies of the third-option Durandus has traditionally been attributed to the Fust Master. See for example König, “The Influence of the Invention of Printing” (see above note 12), 88. However, comparison with other works by the Fust Master clearly demon-strates that the Durandus illumination was not by him. For more detail on this matter see Ikeda, “Illuminating Gutenberg” (see above note 11), Chapter III.

17 Vienna, ÖNB, Cod. 326. The similarity between the Viennese design and the Durandus design was first noted in Elgin Vaassen, “Die Werkstatt der Mainzer Riesenbibel in Würzburg und ihr Umkreis”, in Archiv für Geschichte des Buchwesens 13 (1973): 1222-23.

18 Elgin Vaassen, “Die Werkstatt der Mainzer Riesenbibel” (see above note 17), 1222-23. 19 The most detailed study on the use of pouncing on manuscripts is Dorothy Miner, “More about

Medieval Pouncing”, in Homage to a Bookman: Essays on Manuscripts, Books and Printing




45

some copies, small traces of black dots, a feature found in designs transferred by pouncing, are observed in various places.20 After the design was pounced, outlines were produced by connecting the dots. Numerous fine dots clustered around minute details of the design could create confusion in following them, leading to incorrect outlines for the design. However, such mistakes do not occur in any of the Durandus illuminations, suggesting that the original design was available for reference when the outlines of the design were established. More-over, it points to the considerable care taken to reproduce the design precisely. This same care taken to follow the design continues in the next and final stage of this illumination campaign.

After the design was transferred to the page, colour was applied. In general, the colourists followed the design very closely. This is indeed notable since the colourists appear to have been skilled illuminators and therefore had an ability to make spontaneous changes to the design. In turn this highlights the strict controls placed on the colourists by the press. Similarities and correspondences in colours and execution of the Durandus illumination tend to run across a single design from different copies rather than within a single copy. This indicates that, if more than one colourist were involved in this stage, which was likely, the task of colouring was assigned to each colourist according to the design rather than according to the copy.

The scarce deviation from the design provided by the press for the Durandus illumination suggests the thorough quality control the press placed upon their products and hence the deep concern it had to provide the decoration in their ‘house style’. Indeed, it could very well be that the press itself procured the Viennese design for fol. 1r in the hope that it would appeal to the customers who appreciated the Viennese illumination (ill. 8, plate 10). In addition, the mechanical replication of design must have been envisaged as a labour-saving device. Yet this method of illumination was never repeated by the press. One reason must have been that compared to what the press had reckoned, copying and following the design precisely were far more laborious and time-consuming for the skilled illuminators, who could have easily decorated the pages freehand.21 Written for Hans P. Kraus on his 60th Birthday Oct. 12, 1967, ed. Hellmut Lehmann-Haupt

(Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1967), 87-107. Lilian Armstrong gives an example of a pricked initial in a Venetian incunable which may have been used for pouncing. Lilian Armstrong, “The Hand-Illumination of Printed Books in Italy 1465–1515”, in The Painted Page: Italian Renaissance Book Illumination: 1450–1550, ed. Jonathan Alexander (Munich: Prestel, 1994), 37.

20 Traces of pouncing were particularly evident in the Bodleian, Leipzig, the Vatican copies and Vélins 126 of the Bibliothèque nationale. The first copy was examined in the original and the others were viewed in photographic reproductions.

21 Lilian Armstrong, in her study of the use of woodcuts as a means of mechanical transfer of de-signs in Venetian incunables, has commented that a well-trained miniaturist would have been able to paint a standard wine-stem border decoration freehand almost as quickly as when a woodcut pattern was used. See Armstrong, “The Hand-Illumination of Printed Books” (see above note 19), 38.



Mayumi Ikeda

46

Perhaps the only matter for the press to consider, then, was to employ an illu-minator whose work met the standards of the press. This seems to have been the decision taken by the press in their next large-scale decoration project, which is the two-volume Bible issued in 1462.

The 1462 Bible For the decoration of the first edition of the Bible published by the Fust-Schöffer press in 1462, it seems that the publishers appointed the Fust Master to illuminate part of the edition. Today four of the surviving copies of the 1462 Bible can be attributed to this master.22 However, in contrast to the illumination project of the Durandus edition, these four copies are by no means homogene-ous. Three of them, the copies held at The Pierpont Morgan Library and the Scheide Library, respectively, and one belonging to the private collection at Bibermühle, can be grouped together; the copy at the Universitätsbibliothek Gießen appears unrelated to the other three. Furthermore, the Gießen illumina-tion shows a feature that is unusual for the Fust Master’s work, which will be discussed later in this study.

The most obvious common feature in the illumination of the Bibermühle, the Morgan and the Scheide copies is its richness. The opening pages of both the first and the second volumes are sumptuously illuminated, and the initials for Books and Prologues are also duly embellished (ills. 10-12, plates 12-14).23 These three luxury copies are closely related in their design; although no me-chanical means was used, many of the illuminated pages correspond to one another. In some cases the design varies in these three copies, while in other cases only two copies share the same design. Examination of the three copies strongly suggests that the Fust Master had a model or models to which he could refer when illuminating the 1462 Bible, which may have been some of the copies he illuminated himself.

Closer comparison of the three copies further reveals that there seems to have been a difference in the cost and care being taken for these three copies. Among them, the Scheide copy was evidently meant to be the most luxurious. 22 The four copies are: Ramsen (Switzerland), Bibermühle, Heribert Tenschert, private collection;

Gießen, UB, Inc. V 3801; New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, PML 19208 (vol. 1) and PML 19209 (vol. 2); Princeton, Scheide Library, S4.3. The Morgan and the Scheide copies have been attributed to the Fust Master by Adolph Goldschmidt. See Adolph Goldschmidt, “The Decoration of Early Mainz Books” (see above note 3), 579-81. For the attribution of the remaining copies as well as the latest survey of the 1462 Bible see Eberhard König, Biblia pulcra: Die 48zeilige Bibel von 1462. Zwei Pergamentexemplare in der Bibermühle (Ramsen: Tenschert, 2005). The copy at Cambridge University Library, Inc 1 A 1. 3a (3762), which has also been attributed to the Fust Master in König, ibid., no. 10, can no longer be included in his œuvre. On the attribution of this copy see Ikeda, “Illuminating Gutenberg” (see above note 11), Chapter V.

23 The opening page of the second volume of the Scheide copy has been lost and is replaced by a facsimile.




47

It stands out in the generous amount of gold used; whether burnished or in shell gold, it appears that for this copy the Fust Master seized every opportunity to use this material. Gold is used for decorative balls, leaves, and occasionally the initial itself, while silver is used for most of the eye-filling flourishes (ill. 12, plate 14). In neither of the two other copies is gold used as extensively as in the Scheide copy, nor was silver used for eye-fillers. Other aspects, such as the atten-tion given to the finish of the painting or the richness of design, also indicate the extra care taken in finishing the Scheide copy. For example, in many places in the Scheide copy where two-line chapter initials have been blind-printed or printed in greyish blue ink, they have been hand-painted with bright, thick blue pigment.24 On the other hand, no such elements appear either in the Bibermühle or the Morgan copies.

The Bibermühle, the Morgan and the Scheide copies together demonstrate the ambitions of the publishers to have their works finished in high quality. This must reflect their interest in maintaining and further improving the stan-dard of their previous works, such as the Mainz Psalter and the Durandus edition, and possibly to preserve the reputation they had established for the quality of their products. Yet even within this group certain distinctions are evident: the Scheide copy surpasses the other two in its richness and the care taken in its production, suggesting that this copy was the most expensive of the three. While the special treatment of the Scheide copy may derive from the publishers’ intention to enrich the choice of their products for potential buyers, it is also possible that this copy was a response to a request from a customer who wished to acquire a richly illuminated copy.

The Gießen copy clearly belongs to a category different from the group of the three sumptuous copies discussed above. Represented now only by the sur-viving second volume, this is the only copy of the four 1462 Bibles discussed here that is printed on paper instead of parchment. Its opening page is illuminated by the Fust Master but much more economically than those of the sumptuous copies (ill. 13, plate 15). For the remaining initials, however, the Fust Master seems to have painted only the initial letters per se, either in pink or green. Curi-ously, these initials have been decorated with penwork flourishes by a hand that is evidently different from that of the Fust Master (ill. 14, plate 16). Judging from the skilfully depicted drolleries such as the profile of a man accompany-ing the initial ‘H’ on fol. 176v, this hand must be that of a trained penwork decorator. The two artists very likely worked side by side, because the penwork decorator uses the same green and pink paints employed by the Fust Master. On two occasions we even see the Fust Master attempting to assume the pen-work decorator’s task: on fol. 112v, he has filled in the initial with his typical 24 Adolf Schmidt has suggested that the likely reason for the blind printing in place of many of the

blue chapter initials is because the dull blue-grey ink used for the printing yielded unsatisfying result. Adolf Schmidt, “Untersuchungen über die Buchdruckertechnik des 15. Jahrhunderts. (Schluss.)”, Centralblatt für Bibliothekswesen 14, 4. Heft (1897): 164.



Mayumi Ikeda

48

flourish design, after which the surrounding flourishes were added by the pen-work decorator. On fol. 35r the Fust Master seems to have decorated the entire initial by himself, as evident from the style of the flourishes. The illumination of the Gießen copy convincingly demonstrates the close physical working rela-tionship of these two craftsmen.

When compared with the three sumptuous copies, the considerably different standard of illumination of the Gießen copy questions whether this copy was il-luminated at the publishers’ request. In the instance of the Mainz Psalter we have seen that the Fust-Schöffer press had already experienced the collabora-tion of the Fust Master and a penwork decorator for the designing of initial blocks. Considering the publishers’ experimental spirit as well as their ambition to produce a publication with different levels of embellishment (as seen in the 1459 Durandus), it seems likely that this copy was illuminated under the direc-tion of the Fust-Schöffer press. It is clear though that the modestly embellished Gießen copy was meant to be less costly than the three sumptuous copies, despite the fact that the Gießen copy was also illuminated, at least in part, by the Fust Master. Following the example of the Durandus edition, the press seems to have offered different types of illumination with different price ranges in order to satisfy the various market demands.

Conclusion For the decoration of the three early publications by the Fust-Schöffer press, the publishers experimented with different methods of decorating their publica-tions. These experiments reveal the great care taken by the publishers to establish and ensure the high quality of their products, but it also demonstrates their eventual acceptance of the traditional mode of decoration by hand as the most effective means for their purposes. The Mainz Psalter, the first publication from the Fust-Schöffer press, was an ambitious attempt to reproduce not only the text but also the multi-coloured initials by typography. In this sense the Mainz Psalter is the most progressive of the three editions discussed here.25 However, since the entire edition was produced with printed initials, the Psalter probably was unable to satisfy the wide-ranging array of requests in the market; some customers may still have been fairly conservative and preferred hand-painted initials. The three different options of decoration prepared for the 1459 Durandus were probably a response to the market by the Fust-Schöffer press. Yet in their preparation of a more ‘conservative’ option with hand-illuminated initials, the publishers experimented with a creative idea, by which means the illumination of all copies of this type was reproduced mechanically using the pouncing tech- 25 It should be noted, however, that the press did not print the music staves and notes but left ap-

propriate spaces blank to be inserted by individual owners. On the printing of music see Mary Kay Duggan, “The Design of the Early Printed Missals”, Journal of the Printing Historical So-ciety 22 (1993): 55-78, esp. 72-75.




49

nique. The strict control placed upon the reproduction of the illumination meant that it maintained a relatively high standard despite its ‘mass production’. Yet the procedure may have turned out to be less efficient than had been anticipated by the publishers, because the same procedure was never used again in subse-quent works from this press. Instead, in their illumination project for the 1462 Bible, the Fust Master, who was probably involved in the design of initial blocks for the Mainz Psalter, was employed once again by the press. The illu-mination plan for the 1462 Bible is the most traditional of the three; neither a mechanical means nor printed initials has been used.26 The Fust Master seems to have been able to respond competently to the press’s request, which was likely to illuminate part of the edition at a respectable standard. Still the press did not fail to introduce something different in the illumination of this Bible: the sur-viving volume of the Gießen copy attests to the unusual collaboration of the Fust Master with a penwork decorator. Similar to the 1459 Durandus, the press offered a single edition with a choice of different levels of embellishment.27

Large-scale decoration of publications continued after Fust’s death in 1466; for the decoration of the�1470 edition of Hieronymus’s Epistolae published by Schöffer alone, the systematic employment of illuminators and penwork deco-rators reached its height, as demonstrated in the studies by Lotte Hellinga and Eberhard König.28 On the other hand, common means of mechanically repro-ducing images, such as woodcuts, failed to attract Schöffer; only in its 1483 edition of the Missale Vratislaviense was the graphic technique of the woodcut introduced at his press, considerably later than other printers.29 Having experi-mented with various creative and innovative ways of embellishing their products, perhaps Fust and Schöffer concluded that the conventional mode of illuminating books by hand served both their purposes and their customers for the time being. 26 However there is a single example of the use of a decorative initial block in the 1462 Bible: it is

the five-line initial ‘S’ for the Prologue to the Book of Chronicles printed in a copy at Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, fol. T 57. See König, Biblia pulcra (see above note 22), 61-62.

27 Though it has not been discussed here, it seems, as König has pointed out, that several copies of the 1462 Bible with hand-painted red and blue initials have been finished by calligraphers em-ployed by the press, which indicates yet another group of the 1462 Bible offered in a different level of finish. See König, Biblia pulcra (see above note 22), 66-68.

28 Lotte Hellinga, “Peter Schöffer and the Book-trade in Mainz: Evidence for the Organization”, in Bookbindings & Other Bibliophily: Essays in Honour of Anthony Hobson, ed. Dennis E. Rhodes (Verona: Valdonega, 1994), 131-83; eadem, “Peter Schöffer and his organization: a bib-liographical investigation of the ways an early printer worked”, Biblis: The Georg Svensson Lectures, 1993, 1994 & 1995, ed. Gunilla Jonsson (Stockholm: Föreningen för Bokhantverk, 1995), 67-106; Eberhard König, “Buchschmuck zwischen Druckhaus und Vertrieb in ganz Europa: Peter Schöffers Hieronymus-Briefe von 1470”, in Johannes Gutenberg. Regionale Aspekte des frühen Buchdrucks: Vorträge der Internationalen Konferenz zum 550. Jubiläum der Buchdrucker-kunst am 26. und 27. Juni 1990 in Berlin (Berlin: Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, 1993), 130-48.

29 ISTC im00731000. The first dated incunable with woodblock is an edition of Der Edelstein published by Albrecht Pfister of Bamberg in 1461 (GW 4839, ISTC ib00974500). See Paul Need-ham, “Prints in the Early Printing Shop”, in The Woodcut in Fifteenth-Century Europe, ed. Peter Parshall (Washington, D.C.: The National Gallery of Art, 2009), 55.



COLOUR PLATES



Mayumi Ikeda

Plate 5

89

Ill. 1: Psalterium (Mainz: Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer, 1457). Vienna, ÖNB, Ink.4.B.1, fol. 70r.



Mayumi Ikeda

Plate 6

90

Ill. 2: Psalterium (Mainz: Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer, 1457). Vienna, ÖNB, Ink.4.B.1, fol. 98r (detail)

Ill. 3: Psalterium (Mainz: Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer, 1457). Vienna, ÖNB, Ink.4.B.1, fol. 137v (detail).



Mayumi Ikeda

Plate 7

91

Ill. 5: Guillelmus Durandus, Rationale divinorum officiorum (Mainz: Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer, 1459). Munich, BSB, 2 Inc.c.a. 2, fol. 1r.



Mayumi Ikeda

Plate 8

92

Ill. 6: Guillelmus Durandus, Rationale divinorum officiorum (Mainz: Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer, 1459). Leipzig, UB, Ed. vet. perg. 4, fol. 1r.



Mayumi Ikeda

Plate 9

93

Ill. 7: Guillelmus Durandus, Rationale divinorum officiorum (Mainz: Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer, 1459). Cologne, Erzbischöfliche Dom- und Diözesanbibl., Inc. d. 204, fol. 1r.



Mayumi Ikeda

Plate 10

94

Ill. 8: Legenda aurea. Manuscript. Vienna, ÖNB, Cod. 326, fol. 1r.



Mayumi Ikeda

Plate 11

95

Ill. 9: Guillelmus Durandus, Rationale divinorum officiorum (Mainz: Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer, 1459). Leipzig, UB, Ed. vet. perg. 4, fol. 68r (detail).



Mayumi Ikeda

Plate 12

96

Ill. 10: Biblia latina (Mainz: Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer, 1462). Ramsen (Switzerland), Bibermühle, Heribert Tenschert, priv. collection, vol. I, fol. 1r.



Mayumi Ikeda

Plate 13

97

Ill. 11: Biblia latina (Mainz: Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer, 1462). New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, PML 19208 and 19209, vol. I, fol. 1r.



Mayumi Ikeda

Plate 14

98

Ill. 12: Biblia latina (Mainz: Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer, 1462). Princeton, Scheide Library, S4.3, vol. I, fol. 1r.



Mayumi Ikeda

Plate 15

99

Ill. 13: Biblia latina (Mainz: Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer, 1462). Gießen, UB, Inc. V 3801, vol. II, fol. 1r.



Mayumi Ikeda

Plate 16

100

Ill. 14: Biblia latina (Mainz: Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer, 1462). Gießen, UB, Inc. V 3801, vol. II, fol. 232r (detail).



The First Experiments in Book Decoration at the Fust-Schöffer Press

Documents

Transcript of The First Experiments in Book Decoration at the Fust-Schöffer Press