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BULLETIN OF

The New York Public Library

Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations

VOLUME 32

AUGUST, 1928

NUMBER 8

SEAL-PRINTS AND A SEAL-PASTE-PRINT
OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY

(SIEGELDRUCKE AND SIEGELTEIGDRUCK)

A DISCUSSION OF CERTAIN OBSCURE EARLY PROCESSES OF PRINT MAKING,
WITH A STUDY AND COMPARISON OF TWO SEAL-PRINTS, OWNED

BY THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY AND THE METROPOLITAN
MUSEUM OF ART, AND A SEAL-PASTE-PRINT

BY THOMAS OLLIVE MABBOTT

HE art of printing, or rather, the arts of printing have had a long

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tion of students. The xylographic relics were revered, but very imperfectly understood; and the separate sheets or Einblattdrucke were somewhat neglected in the examination of the curious but comparatively late block-books. But with the growing interest felt for forty or more years in all the productions of the Fifteenth Century, scholars have made special studies of its more obscure fields, and cleared up much that before was puzzling. Under the leadership of Professor W. L. Schreiber, scholars are making our knowledge of the still more difficult field of the early woodcuts and metalcuts complete and accurate. But besides printing from relief blocks of wood (xylography) or metal, and from copperplates, where the design is incised, there were other methods known to the Fifteenth Century. Scholars have long known of what they regarded as one other method which I regard as several allied but distinct methods of printing - which resulted in the production of paste-prints (Teigdrucke). And it is my good

fortune to point out another curious method of printing, known to the Nineteenth Century, which had been experimented with, as two unique surviving prints show, as early as the Fifteenth Century.

When Cicero came to write of philosophy in Latin, he found that he must make a vocabulary, of Greek words new to the Latin tongue, and of Latin words with newly-fixed meanings, to express his ideas. In the more obscure fields of the study of Fifteenth Century printing, most of the discussion has been in German, and I must be pardoned if I use some new expressions in this article. One or two of the German words also are new, but Professor Schreiber has shown me how to spell them, and I think they are correct enough. My first new word is Seal-Print (Siegeldruck) — which may be given as describing the hitherto unnoticed variety of Fifteenth Century printing alluded to above. A few words on its characteristics are in order, and a hypothetical discussion of its origin.

Now, an ordinary print may be called a mechanical miniature, drawing, or painting. The artists of the Fifteenth Century had found several different ways of producing them. Shall we wonder that, in the infancy of the art, certain bold spirits considered whether they might not extend it in new directions? For untold thousands of years men had made miniature basreliefs mechanically-seals in wax and mud; and coins and medals for two thousand years in metal. Could not some similar technique be applied to this new art of printing? Obviously the answer was yes, and in more than one way. In the Fifteenth Century, almost any German artist might have seen a bracteate. A bracteate is a silver coin, struck from wooden dies - the obverse looks like any coin, but the silver is extremely thin, and the reverse is a reversed copy of the obverse, incused, as we say, or sunk in the metal, every raised line of the obverse backed up by a depressed line in the reverse. Now paper is almost as capable of being made to retain an impression as metal. One has seen a notary public seal a document — it is, in paper, the equivalent of the bracteate in metal. Seal-Prints are not unlike such seals. They were made, I think, with a single formwoodblock or metal-plate which was cut, not in reverse, like an ordinary woodblock, but to look like the miniature bas-relief to be produced. The paper was then, I believe, placed over the plate, and pressed down upon it, and "printed by friction" perhaps with a soft damp cloth - and allowed to dry. One of the two specimens known to us shows slight shrinkings at the edges, where the paper crinkled when pressed. No ink was used. The result was, as I say, a miniature hollow bas-relief- a pleasing enough work of art, but very perishable, and hard to preserve. The technique would work

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better with leather; we have all seen bookbindings made in some such way. But the use of this art to make separate pictures must have been extremely limited; and of the seal-prints made, the proportion that has survived is probably extremely small. Specimens of the art may be reckoned among the rarissima. Indeed, only the two specimens discussed in this paper are yet known to us, and, so far as I know, nobody has before pointed out by publication the true nature of these prints. The smaller one had indeed been seen by Mr. Campbell Dodgson of the British Museum some twenty-odd years ago, and he, in a conversation I had with him last summer, recalled the print and agreed with me as to its nature. But he has never written on the subject, though he very kindly helped me by finding certain records of the sale of that print, and also told me that the British Museum had a Nineteenth Century production -a portrait of Queen Victoria, produced by a similar method. Indeed, the art seems to have been popular in the last century for a time, for I find similar prints as illustrations or "plates" in issues of Graham's Magazine of Philadelphia, for 1841, 1842, and 1847.

No. 1

The larger seal-print was in the von Lanna Sale of May 11-22, 1909, item 341. It was described in the catalogue as a "fine composition in a patterned background... Exceedingly interesting and probably unique attempt to produce a raised impression on paper, giving the effect of a relief in wood." The print was purchased, Dr. Weitenkampf informs me, by The New York Public Library in April, 1910. It was there formerly known as a "paper-relief impression." The general use of "relief-print" as a generic name for woodcuts and metalcuts makes this designation confusing. And while the Public Library print in its present condition does remind one of a wood-carving a few worm holes heightening this effect the smaller seal-print suggests nothing of the sort. But both have a certain. apparent kinship with seals, as with prints.

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The New York Public Library Seal-Print (or Siegeldruck) represents The Virgin Mary crowned by the Trinity -a subject common enough in woodcuts and dotted prints. The Virgin kneels facing, her hands pressed together before her breast in prayer. She wears a long cloak, clasped at the neck with a round brooch, and beneath it a robe. Her flowing hair is parted in the center and worn long. At the left of the print is seated, almost facing, God the Father, with flowing locks and a full beard and moustache.

He wears a triple Papal tiara, a cloak clasped at the neck with a large jeweled brooch, over a robe. His head is surrounded by a plain nimbus. In his right hand, on his lap, is a book with clasp and jeweled cover. With his left hand he holds one side of a small crown ornamented with stars, etc., over the Virgin's head the other side of the crown is supported by the right hand of her Son, Christ, seated at the right, facing somewhat to the left. He wears a robe(?) and mantle clasped with a brooch, his hair is flowing but shorter than that of God the Father, his beard and moustache less full, his head bare, but surrounded by the lily nimbus, in which the three visible arms of the cross are indicated by three conventional fleursde-lys. Directly above the Virgin is the Dove descending in a glory, his head slightly to left, his wings outspread - at the top of the glory apparently an orb with a cross upon it. A conventional triple canopy, with one arch over each Person of the Trinity is near the top. Beneath it is a tapestry background of conventional design made up of diamond-shaped compartments, in each of which are four dots. Above the canopy the print is plain except for the inscription (with seven petaled flowers for periods) SANCTA TRINITAS VNVS DEVS (The Holy Trinity [is] One God). The print is now brown (whether originally so, I am not sure) but portions have been colored red. The dimensions are 147 by 113 mm. The Schreiber number will be 2863 m.

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Professor Schreiber writes1 concerning the probable date of this print that "the beard of God the Father, similar to, though larger than, that of Christ, is of a style popular in Eastern Germany about the end of the Fourteenth and beginning of the Fifteenth Century, but the hair is represented in a later fashion, and the lily-nimbus can hardly be so early." Prof. Schreiber believes that the print is copied, with some modernization, from a Bohemian or Moravian altar-piece of the beginning of the Fifteenth Century. The print has a tapestry background which recalls that represented in the metalcuts, described as nos. 2487, 2487a, and 2571 in the Handbuch, which date from about 1460; and Prof. Schreiber would attribute our seal-print to an artist in the district of the Upper Rhine, at about that time.

1Gutenberg-Jahrbuch, Mainz, 1927, p. 44. Professor Schreiber wrote his article from a photostatic reproduction of the print which I sent him- -a picture unfortunately capable of being misinterpreted through a common optical illusion. Prof. Schreiber believed the chief lines of the design sunk in the paper, instead of being raised above the general surface. He wrote me that my letter explaining the true nature of the print came a few days too late to change the article in the Jahrbuch. His remarks on the style of art of course still apply, and the present article has been submitted to him for approval before publication, so that I should not be supposed to disagree with his present views. Mr. Dodgson kindly read my proofs too.

No. 2

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A second, and smaller seal-print the only other known to me, is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It represents three saints, the patrons of the city of Regensburg (Ratisbon) -St. Denis, St. Emmeram, and St. Wolfgang. The three saints stand in a triple ornamental grill-work, supported by four columns and consisting of seven interlacing Gothic arches and half-arches, terminating in ornamental crosses. At either side are slightly shorter upright columns, terminating in small crosses and connected with the grill work, suggesting rather than representing the doors or wings of a shrine. The floor of the shrine is covered with a diamond pattern. The three saints stand, each as if in a niche, between the four columns described above, and each in front of another column, of which the capital alone is visible, save in the third niche, where part of the shaft is seen. At the left stands St. Denis, clad as a bishop, wearing a miter, a nimbus about his head, a crozier in his left hand; in his right hand he carries a human head, mitered but not nimbate (his own head, for he was beheaded); he faces slightly to right. In the center is St. Emmeram, nimbate and clad, like St. Denis, with robes, miter, and crozier; in his right hand is a ladder of eight rungs; he is almost facing, but turns very slightly to left. Third is St. Wolfgang, facing slightly to left, nimbate and clad like the others. He holds his crozier before him in his left hand, with which he also rests an axe against his left shoulder. On his right arm he carries the model of a church with two round towers with pointed spires terminating in crosses, in the church two windows are seen, and one in each steeple. Below in the corners are two shields of arms. That on the left bears the crossed keys of Regensburg. The shield at the lower right corner shows in the right half (heraldically) a silver key on a red field, in the left a red palm branch on a silver field. The two halves are exchanged, but otherwise a similar shield has been found by Mr. H. C. Strippel of the Genealogy Division in Siebmacher's Wappenbuch, Band 1, Abt. 5, Reihe 2, Tf. 44, figured as that of the Abbey of St. Emmeram in Regensburg.

Across the bottom is a label, with the Saints' names properly placed beneath them upon it as follows:

S. dionili". Semeram". S. volfgag

(S[ANCTUS] DIONISIUS S[ANCTUS] EMERAMUS S[ANCTUS] VOLFGA[N]G •)

The inscriptions are not easy to decipher but I am sure of practically all save two of the forms. The er of the second name might possibly

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