EARLY HISTORY OF BIBLE ILLUSTRATION.

HE use of pictures for the illustration

or receiving ideas by pictures is the pur

To ide of his history quite distinct suit of a science allied to philology.

When the missionaries in China published an illustrated edition of the Pilgrim's Progress for Chinese use, they represented Christian as a Chinaman, with Chinese dress and pigtail. Why? Because they were illustrating an idea, and they wished to make it intelligible. They were not illustrating an event or the life of a person. No rule of art controlled them except the rule of so mak

ligible.

from what is commonly called the history of painting. It is not the intent of this paper to give even an outline sketch of this long history, but only to notice some interesting points in it. It may thus be possible to suggest the importance of studying the art of picture-making with special reference to the illustrative character of the works produced by artists in various ages and among various peoples. It will at least be made plain in this briefing the picture as best to accomplish the article that some new and important parts object. Intelligibility is essential to ilof the history of the art of picture-making lustration. Truth is not always intelare to be discovered by studying the art with strict regard to the purposes of pictures as means of making ideas visible to the eye, and thus conveying information. For example, it will be seen that a vast deal of religious art in modern times in the illustration of Bible history grew up very much as a written or spoken language grows, from time to time and even from century to century, successive generations of picture-makers and picturereaders using the old ideas and designs of artists as an adopted language, varied to suit the varying characteristics of men, new designs going into the body of the picture language from time to time, and remaining there, to be used by successive generations.

In a similar case Albert Dürer, that mighty illustrator, who never made a blunder in his art, when he published a Life of the Virgin in a series of woodcuts, represented the birth of the Virgin as if it had occurred in a Nuremberg house of his own day. Why? Because he was not representing a scene the surroundings of which he imagined. But he was relating to the religious mind of Germany a grand fact in history connected with the coming of the Lord among men, and this picture was intended to show, not an occurrence, but a truth, that His mother, she who was blessed among women, from whom He received His human nature, was herself a woman, of the same flesh and blood with the women of Nuremberg, born like any Bavarian child to humanity with ordinary human surroundings. Critics call the modern accessories of this picture anachronisms. There is no anachronism in them. The picture. would teach us the same lesson

In fact, there are a number of pictures which have impressed ideas of Bible story on the minds of millions of men whose origin is almost as difficult to determine as it is to say who first designed the form of a Greek amphora, or krater, or other vase of common use. Bible pictures which are attributed to eminent artists of the six-to-day that it taught the people of Gerteenth century are found, when we study this history of illustration, to be older designs, which had been long before adopted in what might almost be called an alphabet of Scripture illustration.

The value of a picture as an illustration depends on its intelligibility to the mind for which it is made. No considerations known to that peculiar fungous growth on modern art called art criticism have any value in our history. The questions arising in the study are questions wholly of fact, and never of taste. Picture history in this way becomes essentially a part of the history of the race, and the study of men's ways of expressing

man Europe (and of Italy, when Marc Antonio copied it there), if our habit of religious thought were like theirs, and our domestic life the same.

No one can mistake the intent of an Egyptian illustration. A contemporary Egyptian could not mistake it; a Persian of the invading army could not mistake it; no one can now fail to understand it. It was almost or quite destitute of what we call accessories. The artist painted a story, and did not attempt to paint anything but the story. The outline form of everything was carefully drawn. It is notable that there is so much possible expression in outline drawing. You can

not misunderstand what every person in illuminations of manuscripts in the Midan Egyptian drawing is doing. The dle Ages had many characteristics in commerest child sees which are dead and mon with Egyptian illustrations. These which are living men in it. In short, illuminated pictures in many cases were the Egyptian illustration was truthful, al- very simple, and intelligible even to chilthough it was simple, and the Egyptian dren. A single thought, a single incident, artist knew how to express an idea with was represented, and it was told with exthe fewest lines and with absolute sim-ceeding truthfulness. Now and then, plicity. Was not this a wonderful art, practiced four thousand years ago, which has thus preserved a story? Mark its greatness. The language of old Egypt, the ancient Coptic, is almost a lost language. If a dead Egyptian could rise and tell his story, there is no scholar in the world to-day who could understand more than here and there a word, if, indeed, the pronunciation would permit so much as

that.

And yet so skillful were his contemporary painters and artists, such exceeding power was theirs in using the language of illustration, that every event in the home life and the public life of the man was made legible, so that for age after age Greek, Latin, German, French, English-speaking men and women-nay, even children of whatever race and age, speaking and reading whatever tongue could read and understand the stories of that life as well as the contemporary neighbors and friends of the Egyptian himself.

among these delicate little pictures, a human face, the work of some unknown artist, is full of expression, winning the eye and soul of him who sees it shining on the page. With exceeding patience and very tender love, those artists, from year to year and age to age, painted, for the few who possessed books, faces of saints which gleam out of their frames of gold and flowers and arabesques. The saint does but one act, prays, meditates, sings, gives alms, looks into heaven in rapture. There is one clear expression of the countenance, and this is sometimes so truthful-made truthful by the long contemplation and labor of the artist-that you think that face could never have on it the expression of any other emotion. So the pictures of those times, many of them, strange old flat pictures, became embodiments of the ideal of characters, powerful illustrations of the one truth they were designed to teach, and their possessors must have grown to loving them devoutly. Was it out of this love of a man for a picture, or rather for the character of the saint shown in the picture, and his desire to give it to other men for their comfort, that the invention of an art came by which copies of a picture could be reproduced-the art we now call

Beyond this it is impossible that the art of conveying ideas by pictures should ever go. It is very much the fashion in some of the modern schools to tell inquirers that there is nothing in Egyptian art worth studying, that it is barbarous stuff. Does not such teaching indicate a very super-wood-engraving? ficial knowledge of art, in view of the fact that Egyptian pictures serve the purpose for which most pictures are made, and certainly the purpose for which they were made, during four thousand years, and are likely to serve the purpose among all generations of men, till the faith of the old artists becomes vision, and they return in the resurrection to see their work?

I have dwelt on this subject of Egyptian art because it serves to show the student the distinction between the history of illustration and the history of painting and picture-making as ordinarily pursued. There are remarkable similarities between the early history of illustration among men and the history of what is commonly called the new birth of artthe Renaissance, dating from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries of our era.

The

It is not altogether certain what was the origin of this art. Playing-cards may have been printed from wood blocks before the pictures of saints, though some of the German authorities believe that the saints were made before the cards. The Greeks, and the Phoenicians before the Greeks, and the Egyptians for ages, had engraved legends and images on metal and stone so that the design could be reproduced in wax or other soft substances. This, however, was rather the art of moulding or casting from a mould for temporary purposes than of reproducing copies of a thought for use. As the art of writing seems to have been a part of or a derivation from the art of making pictures, so the art of printing in the modern age was a part of or a derivation from the art of reproducing pictures. Soon after men

A picture of St. Christopher, found pasted on the inside of an old manuscript cover, was long regarded as the oldest known wood-engraving. It bears an engraved legend, and the date 1423. (Ill. 1.) Other engravings are pressed by various author

made pictures, they made alphabets. Soon | ried over the flood all the weak and sick after men reproduced pictures by printing, and little children, thus serving, and so they also printed books. And the two hoping to see, his Master. And one temarts went hand in hand. Illustrated books pestuous night a child's voice roused him, were common from the beginning of the begging his help to cross; and he found days of printed books. the child the heaviest load he had ever borne. And when safe over, the child said, "You who have carried over the little ones and the weak and the sick, seeking Christ, have now carried the world itself with Me, who hold it, for I am Christ, and I accept thy service." In that age of much blind faith in which the monk lived, men believed that he who saw a picture of St. Christopher in the morning was safe that day from flood and tempest and the sudden death (improvisa morte) from which in the Litany they prayed to be delivered. And the one great thought of the picture in the cell of the old man was the giant strength carrying over the flood the child-Christ, who bore in His hand the world He had redeemed. No wonder if the old man, desirous that other old men should have opportunity to look at the same picture, copied its lines of expression, so that they could be easily filled out with color, then drew the lines on a pear block, and cut away the other parts of the wood, and took impressions of the lines on sheets of paper, and so invented wood-engraving.

ities as of earlier origin. It is by no means easy to give up the St. Christopher. It is natural and pleasant to think of some old recluse, whose eyes had grown dim with long life passed in copying beloved manuscripts full of the strange and grand story of the Christ-bearer, who had in his cell a picture of his favorite saint, which he had seen every morning for a half century, and seeing, had been refreshed and encouraged, who desired to give to others the same consolation he possessed as the later years of his life grew heavy. It was a fine, a glorious old legend, that of the giant saint. Every one knows it. He sought service of the most powerful monarch, going from one to another as he discovered that one feared another, serving Satan last, until he learned that Satan feared Christ. Then he sought Christ, as Lord of all lords, but long in vain, till, holy man advising him, he took up his abode by the ford of a wild river, and car

a

This is a pleasanter view of the invention than the other, which is perhaps more likely to be true: that inasmuch as this was a mechanical invention, it originated, as most such inventions do, in the demand for pictures, and the evident opportunity to make money by producing copies of them. Traders had sold cards printed from wood blocks, and finding that religious prints would sell, made them because it was profitable. In any case the early use of the art was very largely for religious illustrations.

All the early drawings on wood were of Egyptian simplicity. It must be remembered that up to the date of wood-engraving pictures in black lines were not very common. We are so accustomed to this class of pictures that we can hardly imagine any difficulty in understanding them. But people who have never seen pictures except in colors are by no means sure even to know the meaning of a simple black and white picture.

The majority of the early wood-cuts, if not all of them, were intended only as skeletons to be colored by hand. The

The

sold the book with the cuts in black, in | then arose the great characteristic of modwhich case the purchaser was expected to ern illustration, the union of explanatory employ a colorist or color them himself. pictures with history, philosophy, theoloBlack and white pictures became familiar gy, medicine, law, romance, poetry-any to fifteenth-century eyes from the neglect and every subject of book-making. of purchasers of prints and of books to first book printed with movable type have them colored. How long after the and illustrated with wood-cuts was a invention of wood-engraving the custom book of fables in German rhyme, pubof making prints to be colored continued lished by Pfister at Bamberg in 1461. invariable is a subject of some doubt. In In a few years the number of illustrated rare instances we have fifteenth-century books was large, and although we have wood-cuts executed with so much light now so many pictured books, it is probaand shade, so much of what engravers ble that in the fifteenth and sixteenth centechnically call color, that they may be turies the proportion of illustrated books supposed to have been issued as complete was much larger than now. There was a pictures. But there are very few prints rage for illustration. Sermons, ponderdown to the time of Dürer which were ous theological controversies, ancient clasnot intended for color. The illuminators sics, even the statute laws and books of