Diana Bowers
Pratt in Venice
Summer 2013
Venetian Early Illustrated Books
and
The Work of Erhard Ratdolt
Bowers 2 From 1476 to 1486, a young German man named Erhard Ratdolt made his mark
on the Venetian book printing industry. Working at first in conjunction with two other
men, Bernhard Maler and Peter Löslein, then striking out on his own in 1478, Ratdolt
introduced one innovation after another to the printing process, including printing in
multiple colors, printing in gold, and using woodcut capitals extensively rather than
leaving space for illuminators to hand paint capitals. The first decades of book printing
overlapped with a continued desire from the reading public for illuminated, handwritten
manuscripts, and the earliest books, called incunabula,1 conformed to the aesthetic
expectations of clients accustomed to manuscripts. Printing was an expensive but
lucrative business, requiring a great deal of manpower, raw materials, and technical
know-how, but offering rich financial rewards. One way for printers to court the
manuscript market was to provide illustrations in their texts, and Ratdolt was one of the
forerunners in developing printed illustrations, displaying a technical skill surpassing that
of his contemporaries. As one of many German printers working in Venice at the time,
Ratdolt combined German and Italian aesthetics successfully to create a new artistic
model for book printing, even as stiff competition caused a rapid decline in the quality of
printed books.2 This time period saw an extremely important shift in Western intellectual
consciousness, brought about in part by the major changes in the way texts were
produced, presented, and understood by the reading public. With his technical
innovations and skill, Ratdolt contributed a great deal to this shift, securing his place as a
significant figure in Renaissance history.
1
The term usually refers to any book printed before 1501.
Leonardas Gerulaitis, Printing and Publishing in Fifteenth-Century Venice (Chicago, IL: American
Library Association, 1976), 10.
2
Bowers 3 The transition from handwritten manuscripts to printed books in Europe is not as
clear-cut a line as some scholars make it out to be. Manuscripts remained popular for the
first decades of the printed book’s existence: the peak of European manuscript production
was from 1451 to 1470, though it declined sharply thereafter.3 There is also a chickenand-egg element to the development of image printing (or what we now call printmaking)
and type printing on presses.4 The widespread use of printmaking corresponds almost
exactly with the rise of the printing press; we know of about 50 to 60 woodcuts that date
from 1400 to 1440, and the numbers climb rapidly thereafter to reach about 5,000
examples before 1500.5 For this reason, there is often confusion surrounding the term
“print culture,” especially when referring to the second half of the fifteenth century.6 This
vague phrase makes it more difficult to distinguish between printmaking and text
printing, even more so because the two coincided in printed books, along with
handwritten textual additions and decorations. These three arts—scribal work,
printmaking, and typography—often overlapped, and much of the appeal of the most
successful early books, including those of Erhard Ratdolt, hinges on the successful
combination of the three.
The earliest printing press in Italy was at Subiaco outside Rome. The abbot of the
Santa Scolastica monastery invited the two German printers Conrad Sweynheym and
Arnold Pannartz to come to Italy and bring their knowledge of printing technology with
3
Paul Needham, “Prints in the Early Printing Shops,” in The Woodcut in Fifteenth-Century Europe, ed.
Peter W. Parshall (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2009), 42.
4
As this sentence perhaps makes clear, there is confusion inherent even in the semantics: how to
distinguish “printing” from what we would now call “printmaking”? In German, some scholars distinguish
linguistically between hand-printing (Press-druck) and printing with a press (Pressendruck) (Hind, 3), but
even this can lead to a lack of clarity. In this paper (as in most of the literature), I will only use the phrase
“printing press” to refer to printing text, and “printmaking” to refer to printing images.
5
Needham, 41.
6
Ibid, 39.
Bowers 4 them. Their earliest dated book, and the first printed book in Italy, was an edition of
Lactantius produced in 1465. Two years later, the same abbot (Johannes Turrecremata)
supervised another German printer, Ulrich Hahn of Strassburg, in printing Italy’s first
illustrated book. The volume was Turrecremata’s own Meditationes illustrated with
scenes from the life of Christ, inspired by frescoes at the church of Santa Maria sopra
Minerva in Rome.7 As these editions were produced by German printers, however, the
first truly Italian printed book—not only printed in Italy, but also by an Italian printer—
was an edition of Robertus Valturius’ De re militari, printed by Johannes Nicolai Alvise
in 1472. The more than 100 woodcuts in this edition were printed by hand separately
from the text.8 They show military equipment and maneuvers in a “serious scientific and
technical exposition”9 of which Leonardo da Vinci had a copy. In contrast, the first two
illustrated books printed in Southern Italy were editions of Boccaccio and Aesop. This
difference may indicate that the reading public in Italy’s Northern cities possessed a
heightened interest in scientific and mathematical study, a hypothesis to which Ratdolt’s
multiple successful editions of scientific texts would attest. Though printing was born in
Germany, Italy soon caught up to, and some would even say surpassed, its Northern
neighbor’s achievements.
One reason why printing was able to proliferate in Italy was the ready availability
of paper. Paper came to Europe from the East, and the first paper mill in Europe opened
in Xàtiva, Spain in the twelfth century. Arab settlers brought the technology with them.
Soon thereafter, paper began to be made in Italy, at Fabriano in the province of Ancona,
7
John Harthan, The History of the Illustrated Book: The Western Tradition (New York, NY: Thames and
Hudson, 1997), 69.
8
H.P.R., “Six Early Illustrated Books,” Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts 33, no. 199 (Oct., 1935): 78.
9
Harthan, 70.
Bowers 5 which is still famous today for fine watermarked paper.10 Italy soon became one of
Europe’s main sources of paper, to the extent that in 1373, the Venetian senate forbade
the exportation of rags used to make paper, for fear of losing their grip on the industry.11
Italy remained one of Europe’s and the world’s premier sources of paper until the end of
the 15th century, with important mills at Bologna, Padua, and Pescia in addition to
Fabriano.12 Of course, this industry affected book production: in the fourteenth century
manuscripts were 66% vellum and 34% paper, but by the fifteenth, those numbers
completely turned around to 28% vellum and 72% paper.13 Vellum is difficult to work
with; it must be scraped, smoothed and prepared before it can receive ink. In addition, it
was costlier than paper (though the cost of paper was not insignificant). Perhaps most
damning to vellum’s continued use, however, was the difficulty of printing mechanically
on its surface. As mentioned above, after an initial surge in manuscript production
keeping pace with printing, handwritten books declined sharply after about 1470, and
printing became the dominant form of reproducing the written word. With its heightened
compatibility with the printing process as compared to parchment, paper’s fortunes rose
along with those of the printing press.
The exact timing of the printing press’s invention is a matter of some debate in
the field, but most agree that Johannes Gutenberg’s famous press was in operation by
1450, though he may have been experimenting with moveable type as much as twelve
years earlier. It is known that he started printing his edition of the Bible, the world’s first
mechanically printed book, in 1452. Agricultural screw presses existed prior to
10
Pratt in Venice’s own printmaking class uses Fabriano paper.
Gerulaitis, 12.
12
Ibid and R.T. Risk, Erhard Ratdolt, Master Printer (Francestown, NH: Typographeum, 1982), 19.
13
Needham, 40-41.
11
Bowers 6 Gutenberg’s press, and it was from their model that he derived his own; however, the use
of moveable type was perhaps of greater significance. According to Leonardas Gerulaitis,
rapid pressing and rapid release were Johannes Gutenberg’s main innovations.14
Nonetheless, it is to him that the honor of “inventing” the printing press traditionally
goes. In 1568, Jost Amman’s Das Ständebuch, with woodcut illustrations of tradesmen at
work, depicted a wooden printing press with three sections: the chase, where the type was
inked; the tympanum, hinged to the chase; and the frisket beyond it, also hinged (figure
1).15 These presses were able to handle about 240 impressions in an hour.16 Amman’s
print shows two men working one press and two more at work in the shop in the
background, indicating the large number of men needed by a single printing press to
operate. For example, a Mainz printer with six presses employed about 25 men: two
typefounders, six compositors, one reader, twelve pressmen and their assistants, and a
few miscellaneous others. As at least some of these employees needed to be literate,
especially in Latin, failed university students were a popular choice. 17 The manpower
needed was just one of the considerable obstacles for anyone hoping to start their own
press.
Many an early printer, particularly in Venice, came to Italy from Germany with
“little more in his baggage than the secrets of the new art.”18 To get a printing business
off the ground, it was often necessary to start from scratch economically, especially for
Germans who had just arrived in a strange country. For this reason, many printers worked
in partnership, starting a publishing company as a way to gain more permanent financial
14
15.
Arthur M. Hind, A History of Woodcut (London: Constable and Company Ltd., 1935), 3.
16
Hans-Jürgen Wolf, Geschichte der Druckpressen (Frankfurt/Main: Interprint, 1974).
17
Gerulaitis, 16.
18
Ibid, 5.
15
Bowers 7 backing, as opposed to taking individual contracts for editions.19 As mentioned above,
labor was a significant expense (and difficulty—many of the men had to be skilled), and
the cost of paper, in the quantity needed for a press, was also quite high. In addition, “the
purchase, the collation, and the correction of manuscripts”20 cost printers a fair amount of
money, though at least, in the early years of printing, they did not have copyright laws to
contend with. Notwithstanding the fact that Venice led in the field of copyright
legislation, the medieval attitude that the “owner of a book also possessed legal rights to
its contents”21 was slow to dissipate, and printers took full advantage of this fact.22 There
were some expenses, however, for which the printer was not responsible. Bookbinding
and hand-painted decoration (or illumination) were usually done after the book had left
the printer or publisher. Printed texts were sold unbound, as stacks of loose paper
contained in a casual paper wrapper, and it was the purchaser’s responsibility to have
them made into what we would call a book, with varying degrees of embellishment and
splendor reflecting the owner’s tastes and budget.23 Bookbinders and illuminators had
their own shops and their own profitable businesses that were beyond the scope of the
average printer.
Another aspect of a successful print shop was the proper use of the correct ink.
Ancient societies used inks made of carbon mixed with gum or similar substances, which
could be washed out with a sponge and water. Iron-gall inks may have been known prior
19
Gerulaitis, 7 and Horatio F. Brown, The Venetian Printing Press. An Historical Study Based Upon
Documents for the Most Part Hitherto Unpublished (London: J.C. Nimmo, 1891), 27.
20
Brown, 25.
21
Gerulaitis, 32.
22
Though R.T. Risk asserts that “copyrights were granted in much the same way as they are today” (16) in
Renaissance Venice, Leonardas Gerulaitis provides a much more detailed examination of early Venetian
copyright law drawing on primary sources that makes clear the oversimplification of Risk’s statement and
the vast legal grey area in which early printers worked.
23
Gerulaitis, 18-19.
Bowers 8 to Theophilus’ description of them at the turn of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, but
they definitely became the ink of choice thereafter.24 Such inks could not be used for
printing, however, and modification was required. Writing ink was adapted for
woodblock printing at the beginning of the fifteenth century; the new ink was composed
of an aqueous solution of gum with either lampblack or ferric gallate. This ink, however,
could not be used with metallic surfaces. The solution was to adapt boiled linseed-oil
varnish, and that is how printers came to use oil-based inks. Jost Amman’s abovementioned image of printers at work shows one man inking the type with two “dabbers,”
circular pads of stuffed soft cloth with wooden handles, and this was the usual inking
practice until the nineteenth century (figure 1).25 Though our methods of inking have
changed, over 500 years later the ink in the earliest incunabula is still pristine and
beautiful, and printmakers still prefer to use oil-based inks, attesting to the success of the
oil-based ink formula.
Though metal type was one of Gutenberg’s main innovations and a major reason
why the printing press and the printing industry were successful, woodblocks continued
to play a role in printing activities after metal type’s advent. The earliest woodblocks, as
mentioned above, were created in the years from 1400 to 1440, and these developed from
fabric printing methods. The wood used for woodblocks was usually fairly soft, such as
fruitwoods like pear, apple, and cherry, or sycamore and beech woods. There is some
evidence that boxwood was used in the sixteenth century, and may even have been used
for especially delicate work in the fifteenth. At the time, boxwood would have been
imported from Turkey, making Venice and its trade connections the main source of it for
24
25
Hind, 5.
Hind, 2.
Bowers 9 Western Europe. This may have influenced the delicacy and beauty of Venetian woodcut
illustration. Vasari also mentions boxwood, along with pear wood, in his chapter on
chiaroscuro woodcut technique. Woodblocks for book illustrations were often about
seven-eighths of an inch thick, so as to print at the same height as the metal type.26 Some
earlier blocks are thicker, indicating that they were printed separately from the type,
perhaps by hand rubbing, but woodcut printing generally grew up in conjunction with the
printing of metal type, and was thus well adapted for use in that process.
From the early 1470s onward, woodcut prints in combination with letterpress type
became the “dominant model” of printed illustrated books.27 Woodcuts were used in
book illustration because, most importantly, they could print in conjunction with type.
The alternative method of printing images, metal intaglio plates, involves a different
method of inking and printing that necessitates extra time and effort, and therefore
money, for book printers. In addition, if printed carefully, woodblocks will last through a
large edition, whereas metal plates are more likely to degrade over time.28 The first
printer to use woodcut illustrations was Albrecht Pfister of Bamberg, from 1460 to
1464.29 This means that books were illustrated in Germany before Italy was even printing
them. After Pfister paved the way, illustrated books proliferated, and Ratdolt’s hometown
of Augsburg later became one of the major sources for them. Günther Zainer, who
established the first printing press in Augsburg in 1468 (when Ratdolt was coming into
adulthood at age 21), was the first printer to use extensive woodcut illustrations, in his
26
See Hind, 8 and 12-13.
Needham, 41.
28
It is not that woodblocks do not degrade over time, but simply that they can take more use and wear
before becoming unusable. See Bronwen Wilson, The World in Venice: Print, the City and Early Modern
Identity (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 58.
29
Gerulaitis, 17.
27
Bowers 10 1471 Heiligenleben (Holy Lives).30 He was also, in 1472, the first printer to incorporate
woodcut initials into his text,31 rather than leaving blank spaces for an illuminator to fill
in the capitals, a practice for which Ratdolt later became famous. The German woodcuts
of early printed books “transformed from a medieval craft to Renaissance fine art,”32 and
the great beauty of early incunabula, still admired today, owes much to woodcut
illustrations and decorations.
Of course illustration added another layer to the already complex and laborintensive process of printing books, bringing its own challenges to the printer’s art. The
“black line” method of printing was most common until the 1700s: the negative space of
the image was carved out of the block, leaving the black outline of forms to print. This
style is more suitable for book illustration for a number of reasons: it requires less ink,
which lessens the chance that the type will blur upon printing; the image is lighter in
appearance and does not overpower the page; and it does not require the artist’s own
hand—there can be separate designers and cutters, meaning one designer or artist’s image
can be utilized by multiple printers or cutters.33 Like the printing process itself, the
creation of a woodcut illustration had its own division of labor among specialized
craftsmen: the Formschneider would cut the block (as noted above, usually after
someone else’s design); the pressmen would place it, ink it, and print it; and later, the
Briefmaler would hand-color the image with a watercolor wash.34 The skill level grew
30
Daniel De Simone, A Heavenly Craft: The Woodcut in Early Printed Books (New York, NY: George
Braziller, 2004), 50.
31
Risk, 23.
32
De Simone, 47.
33
See Hind, 20.
34
Hand-coloring a black and white print is characteristic of German woodcuts; see De Simone, 47-49.
Bowers 11 higher and these craftsmen’s respective areas of expertise more clearly defined as the
practice of illustration increased, leading to increasingly elegant images.
It is important to note a distinction between illustrating and illuminating:
illustrators worked with a printer to provide images for an entire edition, whereas
illuminators more often worked directly with clients (i.e. readers) to decorate individual
copies of books. There is some evidence of overlap between the trades; for example, it is
known that some illuminators hand-stamped woodcut decorations into books (as the same
patterned borders have been found in some copies of books from different printers and
editions), and some woodcut illustrations, such as those for De Re Militari, were handprinted separate from the book’s text. 35 This blurring of lines between printing-related
occupations was very common in the early days of the printing industry (i.e. the last half
of the fifteenth century), and occurred throughout the trade. This is another reason why
partnerships were often necessary, beyond the economic reasons. There were no
definitive rules about titles, roles played, or hierarchical order, though a man referred to
as a “publisher” usually provided financial support, whereas a “printer” had technical
skills and knowledge.36 This is perhaps why Ratdolt, upon arrival in Venice, entered into
a partnership with two men: Bernhard Maler (in Latin, Pintor, or painter) and Peter
Löslein, who their colophons described as “corrector” (i.e., an editor). Though about onethird of books printed before 1500 contained illustrations, according to the historian
Horatio Brown, “the practice did not become common in Venice till [sic] it was
35
36
H.P.R., “Six Early Illustrated Books,” 78.
Gerulaitis, 2-3.
Bowers 12 introduced by the famous association of Erhard Ratdolt, Bernhard Maler, and Peter
Löslein.”37
Venice very early became a central hub for the early printing industry. The 1499
Cologne Chronicle lists Venice as the first important printing city outside Germany (after
Mainz, Cologne itself, and Strasburg).38 There is some contention among scholars about
when the first book was printed in Venice: it was either the Frenchman Nicolas Jenson in
1461or the German Johannes de Spira in 1469. De Spira is often given the honor with an
edition of Cicero in 1469. This would seem to be supported by the fact that upon his
arrival the Venetian government granted him a five-year monopoly on printing in the
city, perhaps not fully understanding the value of the new trade. Luckily for them (and
other printers), Johannes died the following year, and the rights of the monopoly were
wisely not granted to his heirs, who continued the printing business. The question of
Jenson’s claim to Venice’s first printed book arises from one of his colophons, which
bears the date 1461. Horatio Brown, however, asserts that this date is a typo. If it were
accurate, Jenson’s second book would have come nine years after the first, a period of
inactivity which would not have made economic or practical sense.39 It seems likely that
Jenson’s edition should be dated 1471 instead, and that de Spira’s book was indeed
Venice’s first.
Venice is thought to have been “responsible for almost one-eighth of all the books
printed during the fifteenth century,”40 a staggering statistic showing its importance to the
industry. Between 1470 and 1480, about fifty master typographers were at work in
37
Brown, 30.
Ibid, 4.
39
Ibid, 2-3; 8.
40
Gerulaitis, 1.
38
Bowers 13 Venice.41 Erhard Ratdolt was one of Venice’s ten most prolific incunabula printers, and
the output of those ten constitutes a third of the total.42 Many of the most successful
printers, in Venice and elsewhere, were German, having brought their technical
knowledge of the printing art from their home country all over the rest of Europe. The
writer and printer Francesco del Tuppo employed many German workers in his press,
who he affectionately referred to as Germani fedelissimi (faithful Germans), showing
both the importance and ubiquity of German craftsmen in the Italian printing industry.
Venice was particularly attractive to Germans: it was the first major stop in Italy on the
southern journey from Germany over the Brenner Pass; it had a German Exchange (the
Fondaco dei Tedeschi) where German workers could gather, hear about work, and form
partnerships; the cosmopolitan city was welcoming to foreigners (or at least more so than
many other European cities at the time); there was a steady and plentiful supply of paper
and other printing materials, as well as capital from wealthy citizens; the city had a
stabilized currency for 45 years, from 1471-1517, and a secure form of government; and
there was a large population (over 100,000 residents), meaning a large reading public.
Venice was the perfect place for a young German printer to start his business.
Erhard Ratdolt was born in Augsburg in 1447.43 His father was a woodworker and
a carpenter, which may account in part for his technical mastery of printing woodblock
illustrations and decorations in his books. His father passed away in 1462, and Ratdolt
visited Venice that year, though it is not known why. In 1468, as mentioned above,
Günther Zainer established Augsburg’s first printing press, and it is possible—even
41
Brown, 28; Redgrave, 3.
Gerulaitis, 70-71.
43
Some writers have claimed the date of 1442 for Ratdolt’s birth; however, his own autobiographical notes
(written in 1523 and now at the Österreischische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna) say that he was fifteen in
1462, when he first visited Venice, meaning he must have been born in 1447. See Risk, 48 and 50.
42
Bowers 14 probable, considering his later skill—that Ratdolt studied the trade with Zainer or another
printer. In 1474, he disappears from the Augsburg tax rolls, and does not reappear in
Venice until 1476, when he printed his first edition in partnership with Maler and
Löslein. Gilbert Redgrave, whose 1893 paper “Erhard Ratdolt and his Work at Venice”
remains one of the main sources on the topic, postulates that during the two years for
which Ratdolt is unaccounted, he may have travelled to Nuremberg and worked at the
press of Johannes Müller,44 who published his own works there from 1472 to 1475. The
only proof of this theory is Ratdolt’s clear affinity for Müller’s work: Müller’s
Calendarium was Ratdolt’s first edition,45 and he also printed many other editions of
Müller throughout his career. It is also possible, however, given the amount of time it
took to raise capital and set up a printing press, that Ratdolt was in Venice prior to 1476.
As there is no historical record of Ratdolt’s life in Venice beyond the books he printed,
there is no way to know for sure. What we can know for sure, however, taking the books
as evidence, is that Ratdolt must have received training sometime before the 1476
Venetian edition, as the work is simply too fine—and continues to be after the dissolution
of his partnership with Maler and Löslein in 1478—to have been done by an amateur.
Though little is known about his early biography, Ratdolt’s work during his time
in Venice has left a lasting legacy on bibliographic history. He is noted for many “firsts”
in the printing industry. He produced, near the end of his time in Venice, the first type
44
Also known as Regiomontanus, a Latinization of his hometown of Königsberg. Interestingly, Müller was
closely affiliated with Cardinal Bessarion, whose extensive personal library, donated to the city of Venice
upon his death, eventually formed the seed of the collection of the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana.
45
One of Müller’s works—either the Calendarium or the Ephemerides, both editioned by Ratdolt—is said
to have been taken by Columbus on his voyage of discovery (Risk, 12; Norma Levarie, The Art and History
of Books (New York, NY: De Capo Press, 1968), 116).
Bowers 15 specimen sheet, including Gothic, Roman, and Greek type (figure 2).46 He was the first
printer to print multiple colors—previous to his 1482 edition of Sacrobosco’s Sphaera
Mundi, an astronomical text, the simultaneous presence of multiple colors on a printed
page had always been achieved with hand painting (figure 3). Ratdolt was also the first to
print in gold, which he used to print the dedication to the Venetian Doge in some special
copies of his 1482 edition of Euclid. He is also credited with the first full title page as we
understand the term today, including the work’s title, the name of the author and the
printer(s), and the date, in the 1476 Calendarium. Finally, he was the first to print
mathematic and scientific diagrams, as opposed to having them drawn in later; this, I
believe, is related to his mastery of illustration and woodblock printing. The diagrams in
the margins of his 1482 edition of Euclid look as if they could be in a modern-day
geometry textbook: fine, straight lines, perfect angles, and tiny letters labeling the various
elements of each shape. With all of these achievements, Ratdolt was a true innovator in
the early years of printing books.
In 1478, Peter Löslein disappears from the colophon, and Ratdolt and Maler’s
names appear alone on the edition of Müller’s Calendarium that they printed that year.
Then Maler drops out also, and Ratdolt’s last 1478 edition bears his name only. Perhaps
because he had lost the support of this partnership, Ratdolt did not produce any editions
in 1479, and he only made two or three in 1480.47 He soon, however, began to gain
steam, producing six editions in 1481, and an amazing eight or nine in 1482.48 Arguably
46
Ratdolt tended to prefer Roman type—based on the writing of Humanist scholars—to the more widely
popular Gothic type, which Maler and Löslein utilized in their limited independent editions after they
stopped working with Ratdolt (Redgrave, 15).
47
The dates of some editions are uncertain.
48
These figures are derived from Gilbert Redgrave’s bibliography of Ratdolt’s work at Venice in “Erhard
Ratdolt and his Work at Venice.”
Bowers 16 the most famous of these 1482 editions is the Euclid. Both painted and unpainted copies
of this edition survive today, demonstrating clearly which elements of the page are
printed, and which added later by hand. The first page of the edition is stunning (figure
4). The neat, regular type is enclosed on three sides by an elaborate decorative border,
with the fourth open side showing several precise geometric diagrams. The text is topped
with a woodcut version of an illuminated letter, in this case a ‘P’ entwined with vines and
curling leaves. Above the text are two introductory lines printed in red, another feature of
Ratdolt’s editions that is often praised. The calculated use of red text in manuscripts is
“characteristically German,” and its presence here displays “the Teutonic origins of the
printing craft”49 and of Ratdolt himself. The blank circle in the bottom decorative border
indicates that even an elaborately printed edition such as this one might receive some
additional decoration: it was common to leave such a space for the owner to insert his
coat of arms after purchase.50 Leaving this space shows that Ratdolt, like other printers of
his era, was still creating for a clientele that expected printed books to both appear similar
to the handwritten manuscripts to which they were accustomed and to be customizable as
were manuscripts.
The very beauty and elegance of Ratdolt’s editions is further proof of his attempt
to emulate the appearance of manuscripts. Gilbert Redgrave spoke thus of Ratdolt’s 1477
edition of Appian’s Historia Romana: “To my mind there are few printed books of any
age which can be compared with the Appian of 1477, with its splendid black ink, its
49
Paul Saenger and Michael Heinlen, “Incunabule Description and its Implication for the Analysis of
Fifteenth-Century Reading Habits,” in Printing the Written Word: The Social History of Books, circa 14501520, ed. Sandra L. Hindman (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), 250.
50
Lilian Armstrong, “The Impact of Printing on Miniaturists in Venice after 1469,” in Printing the Written
Word: The Social History of Books, circa 1450-1520, ed. Sandra L. Hindman (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1991), 182.
Bowers 17 vellum-like paper, and the finished excellence of its typography.”51 Not only did
Ratdolt’s decorative borders and illustrations recall those of illuminated manuscripts, but
the very material, the physical presence, of his books did as well. “Vellum-like paper,”
“splendid” ink, and the “excellence” of his typography recalled the finest scribal work,
and was of all the more value to fifteenth-century clients because of that. In addition,
Ratdolt had an ability to appeal to multiple national markets. Though he printed mostly in
Latin, he also produced editions in the Italian vernacular and in German. Perhaps more
importantly, the visual content of his books appealed to a broad audience: his decorations
and borders are noted for being a combination of German and Italian styles, with an
Eastern touch probably provided by the unique influence of the Venetian aesthetic. In his
balance of image and text, color and black and white, Germany and Italy, and the old and
new worlds of book creation, Ratdolt shows an adroit understanding of the realities of the
marketplace in which he worked.
A direct comparison with a hand painted manuscript (figure 5), however,
illustrates that there were still vast differences between printed books and the manuscripts
they superseded. Paul Saenger and Michael Heinlen have suggested that the intense
coloration of manuscripts had a mnemonic function that was gradually lost with the
advent of printing.52 At first, printed books followed the model of manuscripts, at least
textually: elements of text that we take for granted now, such as paragraph breaks, page
numbers, and even spaces between words, were either absent or added haphazardly by
hand. Without the intense coloring and decoration to help readers find their way through
a text, however, the need arose for printed versions of these visual aids, leading to the
51
52
13.
251.
Bowers 18 eventual proliferation of pagination, punctuation, capital letters, chapter headings,
running headings, and more. Though such additions were designed to guide the reader,
they actually, according to Saenger and Heinlen, have the effect of a less active
engagement with the text, with the reader coming to rely on these standardized markers
rather than getting to know individual texts intimately.53 This change occurred more
gradually than is sometimes depicted, however. To indicate a clean break between scribes
and printers and the use of manuscripts versus printed books is, according to Sandra
Hindman, “positivistic” and creates an “evolutionary narrative” not true to history.54 Such
narratives tend to partially ignore the social functioning of the book in society. As
discussed above, well-illustrated and aesthetically pleasing books “catered to the
manuscript clientele,”55 and Erhard Ratdolt was “instrumental in developing printing
techniques that would mimic the skill of the illuminator.”56 In pioneering the widespread
use of decorated woodcut capitals, printed decorative borders, and delicate woodcut
illustrations, Ratdolt eased a transition that continued over the entire second half of the
fifteenth century.
Though at first the preference was for manuscripts and manuscript-like books, the
transition through which Ratdolt worked eventually led to the preference for “clean”
books that we still harbor today. It is now considered messy and rude to write in a book,
especially one that the writer does not own. In the fifteenth century and earlier, however,
handwritten additions were part of how readers engaged with and understood texts. The
advent of printing, then, helped to elucidate reading habits, as it became even easier to
53
254.
Sandra L. Hindman, (ed.). Printing the Written Word: The Social History of Books, circa 1450-1520
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), 3.
55
Hindman, 9.
56
De Simone, 9.
54
Bowers 19 distinguish notes added by the reader from the text itself. In the early years of printing,
writing in books was still very much encouraged; some libraries even had specific rules
about who was and was not allowed to write in the books, as it was thought that only
qualified scholars should be allowed to add their two cents to a text.57 As the practice
faded, however, printers gained greater control over the interpretation of the works they
printed, as they were able to shape readers’ perceptions by the way in which they
presented the text. Such manipulation used to be accomplished by colorful illuminations,
but there is a reason German bibliographic literature refers to printing as the “Schwarzen
Kunst” (black art)—there was a “blackening of the page”58 with the advent of printing,
and readers lost the guidance that colors provided. Modern highlighting practice shows
that we still look for that kind of guidance through a text. A “clean” copy, however,
allows the reader to make his or her own interpretation. Highlighting is an individual
application of mnemonic meaning rather than one handed down from powers above. It is
for this reason that I disagree with Saenger and Heinlen’s assertion of the passivity of the
modern reader. Printing certainly changed the way we engage with texts, but it did not in
any way diminish the potential of books to instruct and guide us.
Ratdolt’s books are a strong example of the potential of printing to be just as
enlightening as illuminated manuscripts. In perusing several of Ratdolt’s Venetian
editions at the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, I noticed an interesting pattern in the use
of his woodcut capitals. Certain capitals are repeated, but only in certain sections. There
seemed to be an association between specific capitals and certain sections of the text.59
Such deliberate use of repeating visual cues undoubtedly provides the mnemonic function
57
Saenger and Heinlen, 254.
Ibid, 251.
59
This was most evident in the Euclid of 1482, as it has a new capital for almost every paragraph.
58
Bowers 20 that Saenger and Heinlen attribute to the color in illuminated manuscripts. This relates to
art historian Michael Camille’s argument that in traditional manuscript miniatures,
extraneous details, application of color, and rubrics create a more meandering, separated
impression of the text overall. With woodcuts, however, the lack of extra detail and
rubrics, along with their black and white aesthetic, encourages a more integrative reading
of image and text. Camille also claims that the reuse of woodcuts, often thought to be
merely laborsaving, in fact assists readers with comprehension through the repetition of
visual patterns. For Camille, woodcuts are “a sophisticated rethinking of the pace and
flow of the pictorial narrative.”60 Printed books may thus encode a literacy of signs that
are quickly “written” and as quickly, if not more quickly, understood than that of
manuscripts.
Clearly these changes happened over long stretches of time and in multiple
locations simultaneously, and cannot in any way be solely attributed to one innovative
printer. Nonetheless, Erhard Ratdolt has a surprisingly dominant position in printing
history. In order to explore why that is so, it is instructive to compare him to his
contemporaries. Ratdolt printed a few editions of Werner Rolewinck’s Fasciculus
Temporoum, a history of the world-cum-timeline, as did other contemporaneous printers.
The de Spira shop’s 1477 edition, for example, is nearly identical to Ratdolt’s in layout,
with the same floating blocks of text and circles around significant events along the
running timeline. It is noticeably less sophisticated than Ratdolt’s edition, however; the
letters, words, and lines are sometimes lopsided and irregular and there is not enough
spacing between elements on the page. In addition, the rudimentary illustrations of
cityscapes are repeated far more often and obviously than those of Ratdolt, and many of
60
Hindman, 16.
Bowers 21 them appear simpler, blockier, and less delicate than Ratdolt’s. Another printer, Georg
Walch, was in Venice from 1479 to 1482 and printed an edition of the Fasciculus before
Ratdolt’s first which is even more similar. This has led some scholars to accuse Ratdolt
of a lack of innovation and even of plagiarism, especially considering that some of his
later illustrations bear a striking resemblance to those in Aldus Manutius’ famous
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. Such overlaps in printers’ work were, however, common at
the time, especially given the situation of copyright law (or the lack thereof). In addition,
collaboration between craftsmen was also common; for example, it is thought that
Ratdolt may have collaborated with Jacob Walch, also called Jacopo d’Barbari, because
they used the same printer’s mark (an image of Mercury; figure 6) and some of their
work shares formal qualities.61 Whether or not Ratdolt derived more than inspiration
from his fellow printers, the fact remains that his editions almost always surpass them in
beauty and sophistication.
This controversy over the source of Ratdolt’s imagery has inspired some scholars
to identify Ratdolt as a “shrewd speculator”62 whose main innovation was converting
decorative schemes from manuscripts into print form. It is undeniable, however, that he
also had technical skills that contributed greatly to his success. Ratdolt’s capitals and
decorative borders were unlike any among his contemporaries, which is emphasized by
the fact that he took many of them with him upon his departure from Venice, when many
printers tended to sell, rent, or even give their typesets to fellow printers. The striking
difference between his woodcut illustrations in the Fasiculus and those in the de Spira
edition seem to indicate a superior talent in woodcutting. It is possible that Ratdolt simply
61
62
Redgrave, 11.
Redgrave, 10.
Bowers 22 had a talented Formschneider on his staff, but I also think it likely, given that his father
was a carpenter and woodcutter, that Ratdolt himself may have possessed these skills,
especially as the excellence of his editions persisted over years and changes in both his
economic and geographic situations. Ratdolt may have been a printer in the truest sense, a
man intimately familiar with and skilled at the actual printing process as well as with the
creation of woodblocks and typesets. Perhaps one reason why his books were and are so
esteemed is that he was able, through those skills, to combine text and image in a way
that eased the transition from manuscript to printed book with unprecedented success.
At the end of his years in Venice, Ratdolt returned to his hometown of Augsburg,
whence he was invited by the bishop to print religious works for the diocese. Though
Ratdolt is famous for his astronomical and mathematical editions, religious texts are tied
with historical texts as the second-largest category among his Venetian editions,63 so the
bishop’s assignment was not an overly large leap for him in terms of content or
philosophy. The appointment came with great financial and societal benefits, and Ratdolt
had immense success in Augsburg. When he died in 1528 at the age of 81, he was a rich
and well-respected citizen. During his years in Augsburg, Ratdolt continued to innovate
in his printing process, and his Augsburg editions are decidedly more complex than his
Venetian ones when it comes to illustrations. He reused some of the blocks from his 1482
edition of Hyginus (figure 7), as well as other blocks and types that he brought back with
him from Venice. In so doing, he continued the cultural mixing he had first stimulated by
his use of German aesthetics in Italy; the use of his Venetian blocks brought back to
Germany an aesthetic “differing essentially in style and feeling from those in use at the
63
This statistic is again derived from Redgrave’s bibliography.
Bowers 23 time” in that country.64 Though his career post-Venice was undoubtedly significant, it
was in his Venetian years that Ratdolt made his greatest strides as a printer, and in so
doing he changed the development of the printed word.
Some scholars claim that the printing press caused the Renaissance.65 While this
is undoubtedly an exaggeration, the rise of printing technology had a definite influence
on cultural and societal development at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the
sixteenth centuries, particularly in Northern Italy. The use of printed illustrations and
decorations in books helped immeasurably in the transition from manuscripts to printed
books, and Erhard Ratdolt and the Venetian printing industry in general were
instrumental in making illustration a common part of book printing and thus, the way that
we understand texts. The study of incunabula, and the multitude of conclusions that may
be reached thereby, proves that books not only record history, but make it as well.
Though it was often common for printers at the time to be more like businessmen than
craftsmen, given the consistent quality across Ratdolt’s oeuvre, it is probable that he
himself possessed a great deal of technical printing skill. In particular, he may have
learned some woodworking skills from his carpenter father that contributed to his delicate
handling of woodcut illustration and decoration. Further, Ratdolt used his woodcut
capitals as a way of guiding the reader through his text, anticipating a need to replace the
mnemonic functioning of color and image in manuscripts. By this and other concessions
to the visual appearance of manuscripts, Ratdolt played to the reading public’s desire for
consistency from the manuscript era. In his embrace of and great success with
incorporating visual elements into his texts, Erhard Ratdolt participated in an important
64
Redgrave, 5.
See Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, “The Advent of Printing and the Problem of the Renaissance,” Past &
Present 45 (Nov., 1969).
65
Bowers 24 change in Western society’s engagement with textual materials, and thus in that society’s
intellectual development as a whole.
Bowers 25 Figures
Figure 1. Jost Amman, woodcut image of printers at work from Das Ständebuch (1568).
Source: Source: Hind, Arthur M. A History of Woodcut. London: Constable and Company Ltd.,
1935.
Bowers 26 Figure 2. Erhard’s Ratdolt’s type specimen sheet, c.1486.
Source: http://inkunabeln.ub.uni-koeln.de/vdibDevelop/handapparat/wassI/corsten/corsten2.html
Bowers 27 Figure 3. Page from Erhard Ratdolt’s 1482 edition of the Spaera Mundi showing two-color
printing.
Source: Redgrave, Gilbert Richard. “Erhard Ratdolt and his Work at Venice.” Paper read
before the Bibliographical Society November 20, 1893. London: Printed for the
Bibliographical Society at the Chiswick Press, 1899.
Bowers 28 Figure 4. First page of Erhard Ratdolt’s 1482 edition of Euclid.
Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Euclid3a.gif
Bowers 29 Figure 5. Venetian illustrated manuscript from 1420.
Source: http://www.guentherrarebooks.com/images/catalogues_publications_en/Catalogue_10/16_DaVenezia_Apokal
ypse_1420_3_fol1.jpg
Bowers 30 Figure 6. Erhard Ratdolt’s “Mercury” printing symbol.
Source: Redgrave
Bowers 31 Figure 7. Woodblock reused from Erhard Ratdolt’s edition of Hyginus.
Source: Redgrave
Bowers 32 Bibliography
Appianus. Historia Romana. Venice: Erhard Ratdolt, Bernhard Maler, and Peter Löslein, 1477.
Consulted at the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice, INC. V. 0582.
Armstrong, Lilian. “The Impact of Printing on Miniaturists in Venice after 1469.” In Printing the
Written Word: The Social History of Books, circa 1450-1520, edited by Sandra L.
Hindman, 174-204. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991.
Bland, David. A History of Book Illustration. London: Faber & Faber, 1958.
Brown, Horatio F. The Venetian Printing Press. An Historical Study Based Upon Documents for
the Most Part Hitherto Unpublished. London: J.C. Nimmo, 1891.
Camille, Michael. “Reading the Printed Image: Illuminations and Woodcuts of the Pèlerinage de
la Vie Humaine in the Fifteenth Century.” In Printing the Written Word: The Social
History of Books, circa 1450-1520, edited by Sandra L. Hindman. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1991.
Darnton, Robert. “What is the History of Books?” In Books and Society in History: Papers of the
Assn of College and Research Libraries Rare Books and Manuscripts Preconference 2428 June 1980, edited by Kenneth E. Carpenter, 3-26. New York, NY: R. R. Bowker,
1983.
De Simone, Daniel. A Heavenly Craft: The Woodcut in Early Printed Books. New York, NY:
George Braziller, 2004.
Diehl, Robert. Erhard Ratdolt: Ein Meisterdrucker des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts. Vienna:
Herbert Reichner, 1933.
Dunston, A.J. “Venetian ‘Woodcut’ Capitals.” Studies in Bibliography 30 (1977): 136-144.
Eisenstein, Elizabeth L. “The Advent of Printing and the Problem of the Renaissance.” Past &
Present 45 (Nov., 1969): 19-89.
Euclides. Elementa. Venice: Erhard Ratdolt, 1482. Consulted at the Biblioteca Nazionale
Marciana, Venice, INC. V. 0300.
Gerulaitis, Leonardas Vytautas. Printing and Publishing in Fifteenth-Century Venice. Chicago,
IL: American Library Association, 1976.
Harthan, John. The History of the Illustrated Book: The Western Tradition. New York, NY:
Thames and Hudson, 1997.
Hind, Arthur M. A History of Woodcut. London: Constable and Company Ltd., 1935.
Bowers 33 Hindman, Sandra L. (ed.). The Early Illustrated Book: Essays in Honor of Lessing J. Rosenwald.
Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1982.
Hindman, Sandra L. (ed.). Printing the Written Word: The Social History of Books, circa 14501520. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991.
Hindman, Sandra. “State of Research in Northern Renaissance Art: The Illustrated Book.” The
Art Bulletin 68, no. 4 (Dec., 1986): 536-542.
Hippocrates. Libellus de Medicorum Astrologia. Opusculum Repertorii Prognosticon in
Mutations Aeris. Venice, Erhard Ratdolt: 1485. Consulted at the Biblioteca Nazionale
Marciana, Venice, INC. V. 0624.
Hirsch, Rudolf. Printing, Selling, and Reading 1450-1550. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1974.
H.P.R. “An Exhibition of Illustrated Books.” Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts 27, no. 159
(Feb., 1929): 14-15.
H.P.R. “Six Early Illustrated Books.” Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts 33, no. 199 (Oct.,
1935): 77-79.
Ivins Jr., William M. Artistic Aspects of Fifteenth-Century Printing. Paper of the Bibliographical
Society of America. Chicago, 1932.
Ivins Jr., William M. “Italian Renaissance Prints and Illustrated Books.” The Metropolitna
Museum of Art Bulletin 32, no. 12 (Dec., 1937): 275+280-285.
Ivins Jr., William M. “Prints and Illustrated Books on Exhibition.” The Metropolitan Museum of
Art Bulletin 14, no. 1 (Jan., 1919): 4-5.
Ivins Jr., William M. “Some Venetian Renaissance Woodcut Books.” The Metropolitan Museum
of Art Bulletin 29, no. 3 (Mar., 1934): 46-50.
Levarie, Norma. The Art and History of Books. New York, NY: De Capo Press, 1968.
Landau, David and Peter W. Parshall. The Renaissance Print, 1470-1550. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1994.
Malerbì, Nicolò. (trans.). The Malermi Bible, vols. I and II. Venice: Gabriele di Pietro, 1477.
Consulted at the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice, INC. V. 0880.
Mayor, A. Hyatt. Prints and People: A Social History of Printed Pictures. New York, NY:
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1971.
McMurtrie, Douglas C. The Book: The Story of Printing and Book Making. New York, NY:
Oxford University Press, 1953.
Bowers 34 Needham, Paul. “Prints in the Early Printing Shops.” In The Woodcut in Fifteenth-Century
Europe, edited by Peter W. Parshall, 39-91. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art,
2009.
Parshall, Peter W. (ed.). The Woodcut in Fifteenth-Century Europe. Washington, D.C.: National
Gallery of Art, 2009.
Parshall, Peter W. and Rainer Schoch. Origins of European Printmaking: Fifteenth-Century
Woodcuts and Their Public. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, in association
with Yale University Press, New Haven, 2005.
Pollard, Alfred W. Early Illustrated Books: A History of the Decoration and Illustration of Books
in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co.,
1893.
Redgrave, Gilbert Richard. “Erhard Ratdolt and his Work at Venice.” Paper read before the
Bibliographical Society November 20, 1893. London: Printed for the Bibliographical
Society at the Chiswick Press, 1899.
Regiomontanus, Iohannes. Ephemerides. Venice: Erhard Ratdolt, 1481. Consulted at the
Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice, INC. V. 0619.
Risk, R.T. Erhard Ratdolt, Master Printer. Francestown, NH: Typographeum, 1982.
Rolewinck, Werner. Fasciculus Temporum. Venice: Spira, 1477. Consulted at the Biblioteca
Nazionale Marciana, Venice, INC. 0449.
Rolewinck, Werner. Fasciculus Temporum. Venice: Erhard Ratdolt, 1480. Consulted at the
Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice, INC. V. 0555.
Rolewinck, Werner. Fasciculus Temporum. Venice: Erhard Ratdolt, 1484. Consulted at the
Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice, INC. V. 0298.
Saenger, Paul and Michael Heinlen. “Incunabule Description and its Implication for the Analysis
of Fifteenth-Century Reading Habits.” In Printing the Written Word: The Social History
of Books, circa 1450-1520, edited by Sandra L. Hindman, 225-258. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1991.
Scholderer, Victor. “Printing at Venice to the End of 1481.” The Library 5 (1924): 129-52.
Stewart, Alison G. “Early Woodcut Workshops.” Art Journal 39, no. 3 (Spring, 1980): 189-194.
Thompson, Wendy. "Woodcut Book Illustration in Renaissance Italy: The First Illustrated
Books". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of
Art, 2000–. October 2004. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/wifb/hd_wifb.htm
Bowers 35 Wilson, Bronwen. The World in Venice: Print, the City and Early Modern Identity. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2005.
“Woodcut Books before 1550.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 22, no. 12 (Dec.,
1927): 295-298.
Wolf, Hans-Jürgen. Geschichte der Druckpressen. Frankfurt/Main: Interprint, 1974.