T.Cross sculp

Although many title pages designed and engraved by Thomas Cross (active 1632-1682) are signed by the artist, such as the one above, others are not making attribution difficult. A new print has been identified. Note the name Cross in the bottom right:  Johannes Praetorius (1630-1680), Anthropodemvs Plvtonicvs: das ist eine neue Welt-Beschreibung von allerley wunderbahren Menschen ... (Magdeburg: In Verlegung Johann Lüderwalds, 1666). 2 pts. in 1 v. Title page designed and engraved by Thomas Cross (active 1632-1682). Columbia University.

Cross has been discounted over the years as a minor 17th-century engraver. The DNB states, “His style shows no attempt at artistic refinement, but merely an endeavour to render faithfully the lineaments of the persons or objects portrayed; this he executed in a dry and stiff manner.” In fact, his designs are filled with fancy and imagination. The multiple compartments used above were repeated in several other books, such as The Rich Cabinet, seen below. Both volumes are very worn, leaving one image very dark and the other very brown.John White, A rich cabinet (London: printed for William Whitwood at the sign of the Golden Lion in Duck-Lane near Smith-field, 1668). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) N-000210

Johann Amos Comenius (1592-1670), Zrelishche vselennyia na frantsuzskom, rossiiskom u nemetskom iazykakh [Pageant of the Universe in French, Russian and German languages] (Sankt Peterburg, 1788). [8] 142 p., LXXX engr. pl. 20 cm. Cotsen Children’s Library (CTSN) European 18 115
Thank you so much to Claudia Dias, John Overholt, Gabriel Swift, and Ian Dooley, who helped with the identification of the unattached bookseller who has been drifting through the Graphic Arts Collection. The plate appears to be from the 1788 Russian adaptation of the Orbis Pictus or Orbis Sensualium Pictus (Visible World in Pictures also called the Pageant of the Universe), a textbook for children first published by Czech educator Johann Amos Comenius in 1658. Happily the plate was not removed from Princeton’s copy.

There are many editions, translations, and illustrations for this textbook. Here’s an English version: Johann Amos Comenius (1592-1670), Orbis sensualium pictus… translated into English by Charles Hoole (London, J. Kirton,. 1659). Cotsen Children’s Library (CTSN) English 18 128

Here are a couple more plates:

See also: Adam Fijałkowski, Orbis pictus: świat malowany Jana Amosa Komeńskiego = Orbis pictus : die Welt in Bildern des Johann Amos Comenius (Warszawa: Uniwersytet Warszawski, 2008). Accompanies an exhibition at the Biblioteka Uniwersytecka w Warszawie and the Herder-Institut in Marburg. Firestone Library (F) LT101.C63 F55 2008

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, illustrated by Gustave Doré (London: Doré Gallery, 1876). Graphic Arts Collection GAX Over 2006-0220F

“Gustave Doré’s illustrations to Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1876) have been widely known since their initial publication in London. They appeared the following year in the United States, where they passed rapidly through nine editions and were then reprinted (and pirated) many times. During the 1880s the folio edition was published in France, Germany, Italy, and Russia. After a gap of more than half a century when Doré fell out of fashion, interest in his art once again revived in the 1960s…. Grant F. Scott, “The Many Men so Beautiful: Gustave Doré’s Illustrations to The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Romanticism. 16, Issue 1 (April 2010): 1-24

“The name of Gustave Doré, who died at Paris January 23, is one so familiar to everyone at all acquainted with modern book illustration, that a summary of those of his many art-works which were published in book-form is not out of place in a book-trade journal. The New York Tribune for January 24 gives, perhaps, the fullest account of his life, and from this we borrow the following: ‘Doré published his first lithographs at the age of eleven. When fifteen years old he published his first series of sketches, The Labors of Hercules, in the Journal pour Rire, to which he became a regular contributor . . . His first important work was in illustrating the legend of The Wandering Jew, in 1854, which made him famous outside of France. There followed chronologically his illustrations of Rabelais, Balzac’s Contes drolatiques, Montaigne (1857), Taine’s Voyage aux Pyrenees (1859), Dante (1861-68), Chateaubriand’s Atala (1862), Don Quixote (1863), Milton’s Paradise Lost (1865), the Bible (1865-66), Tennyson’s Idyls of the King (1866-68), La Fontaine’s Fables (1867) and Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner.”–The Publishers Weekly, January 27, 1883.

Listen to Richard Burton read from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Johann Caspar Lavater (1741-1801), Essays on Physiognomy: Designed to Promote the Knowledge and the Love of Mankind [Physiognomische Fragmente zur Beförderung der Menschenkenntnis und Menschenliebe]; illustrated by more than eight hundred engravings, accurately copied; and some duplicates added from originals; executed by, or under the inspection of, Thomas Holloway (London: Printed for John Murray … H. Hunter … and T. Holloway …, 1792). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize 2007-0002Q

William Blake (1757-1827) engraved four plates for the English edition of Essays on Physiognomy by Johann Caspar Lavater as well as a portrait of Lavater commissioned by Joseph Johnson. A student recently asked which plates exactly were engraved by Blake.

The Graphic Arts Collection’s three volumes of the English edition are complete with 173 engraved plates by Blake, Bartolozzi, Thomas Holloway and others, with an additional 500 engraved illustrations and vignettes in the text. Blake is believed to be responsible for three of the engraved vignettes signed “Blake S” and “Blake Sc” in volume one, as well as a full page plate engraved by Blake after Rubens.

William Blake, volume 1, opposite p. 159

William Blake, volume 1, p. 206

Attributed to William Blake, volume 1, p.127

William Blake, volume 1, p. 225

The full plate portrait of Democritus comes in Lavater’s chapter, “Harmony of Moral with Physical Beauty,” addition Eighth. Democritus” beginning on page 159 with the text:

“Here is a Democritus after Rubens, Painted from fancy. He is not the person whom the philosophers represent ‘as a vast and penetrating spirit, a creative genius capable of every thing, the author of new discoveries, and the improver of those already made. This is not the man who had his eyes thrust or burnt out, as a security against the distraction of mind occasioned by external objects, that he might give himself wholly up to abstract speculations. Neither is he the declared enemy of sensuality and carnal pleasure.’ No; this is not the Democritus before us: it is the image of Democritus the Laugher, who ‘Ridebat, quoties a limine moverat unum / Protuleratque pedem,’ [Who grinn’d and grinn’d at every one he met]. He who laughs continually, and at every thing, is not only a fool, but a wicked wretch; as he who is always crying, and at every thing, is a child, a changeling, or a hypocrite.”

The majority of the plates were engraved by Thomas Holloway (1748-1827)