OLD ITALIAN MASTERS.*
Mn. TIMOTHY COLE'S wood-engravings are among the wonders of modern reproduction. In faithfulness to the original pictures they go beyond photographs, in ways to be explained presently ; and the ingenuity of contrivance by which this is effected, is as remarkable as the minute exacti- tude of eye and hand with which the work is executed.
This close imitation of pictures would never probably have been attempted but for the practice of translating photo- graphs into wood-engravings to print with letterpress. The photograph has made people more exacting in the matter of correspondence between reproduction and original; and in the illustrated American periodicals, a school of exact and in- genious reproductive engravers has been trained, among whom Mr. Cole is a chief. The Century magazine, for which he works, commissioned him to go to Italy and execute engravings after the Italian Masters. These have appeared in the pages of the Century during the last five years, and are republished
in the handsome volume issued in this country by Mr. Fisher Unwin. The pictures reproduced range from the Byzantines, through the chief Italian masters of painting, down to Correggio. An account of each of the painters illustrated is furnished by Mr. Stillman, and supplemented by an engraver's note from Mr. Cole. Some other notes are added by the well- known connoisseur, Mr. Fairfax Murray,--so that the book gives, at a reasonable cost, a history, with illustrations, of painting in Italy down to Correggio, besides being, in the faithfulness of these illustrations, a remarkable achieve- ment of human skill and patience. Mr. Stillman tends to spoil a good deed by the false emphasis he gives in his preface to one period of painting at the expense of others. He describes the book as " an educational measure of the highest significance to those who desire to study art in its purest manifestations." By this, as some other passages show, he means that to go back to the four- teenth century in Italy, is to find the true period of painting from which the modern art is a decadence. He speaks of " the heartlessness of the mass of modern art, the apotheosis of brushwork, and the banishment of poetry and intellectual motive." How much better to have said simply I enjoy the old painters immensely for the particular bent of their spirit and expressive powers, and it has been a pleasure to me to put together the documents about them alongside of those reproductions. Modern painting I don't like and don't under- stand.' Then those who share Mr. Stillman's delight in the Primitives, but have the advantage of him in admiring the painters of other times, would not be irritated, and those who read in ignorance and innocence would not be misled.
The faithfulness of the engravings has been insured by the following method :- " A photograph is first taken of the picture, on which the engraver makes all the corrections needed for the translation of the values of colours into white and black. This is then copied on the wood-block in the following manner. The surface of the block is prepared of an intense black, and on this is laid a sensi- tive collodion film, such as was used for the once-popular ambro- types, or later `tin-types; on which the photograph is copied in the camera, so that a positive image is produced, reversed in posi- tion, but correct in light and dark, the light being formed by a deposit of metallic silver, and the dark by a black ground. The block is then treated as in the case of a drawing on wood, the lights formed by the silver deposit being cut away, showing in turn the pale tint of the wood under the blackened surface, while the shadows are formed by the undisturbed surface. As the cutting progresses the collodion-film is removed by india-rubber, leaving the black shadow, and gradations of tint in clear black lines as they will be printed. The incised lines being then filled in with finely powdered chalk, the black becomes its own proof, and the effect as when printed can be exactly judged."
The actual engraving, with the photographic basis as a guide, was done before the pictures themselves, except in such parts as could safely be worked from the photograph. The mention of a photograph is apt to suggest to the un- technical reader some sort of mechanical process-reproduc- tion, so it may be well to remind him that the art in question is a very different thing. In the first place, each tone in the picture has to be translated into a net-work of lines or dots
" Old Italian Masters. Engraved by Timothy Cole. With Historical Notes by W. J. Stillman, and brief Comments by the Engraver. London T. Fisher Unwin. 1892. that will produce at the due distance the effect of a stronger or fainter continuous tone, and this net-work, when contrived,• must be cut out by hand. But farther, in the picture two spaces may come together, which are equal in tone but distinguished. by being different in colour. The engraver here has recourse to the device made use of in a rudimentary way in heraldry, by which lines mean different colours according to their direction. A difference of texture stands for a difference of colour. And Mr. Cole, with other engravers, like Clossen and Jungling, attempts to make this texture-device actually sug- gestive and expressive of differences of colour instead of being arbitrary. " Jungling, I remember, said he could give a feeling of a warm colour by a tremulous line, and of a cool one by a. smoother treatment." But short of such easuistries, " the brilliancy, transparency, or opacity of a colour may be repre- sented by the judicious contrasting of textures, and by the use of black-and-white line." The variety and aptness of Mr. Cole's devices can only be appreciated by looking carefully into his plates; but attention may be drawn to the sensitive way in which he has rendered the quality of the painting, the plaster surface of the frescoes, and so forth.
We have insisted on the ingenious fidelity of this work ; it is an art in which extraordinary fineness of eye and hand and fertility of resource and combination are necessary. It must be distinguished, however, from the art of wood-engraving, as it would be practised, not in servile dependence upon an original, but for the sake of its natural power of expressior. In the art as so practised, there would be a greater feeling for continuity in the medium ; it would not be pressed into such microscopic competition with the photograph ; the line would not break off suddenly into dots in the anxiety to explain. Wood-engraving, as practised by M. Lepere, is a free art, expressive within the limits and beauties of the materials; with Mr. Cole, it is in harness to the picture and the photograph, but in the hands of an extremely skilful driver. As examples of what can be told about pictures in black-and-white, these engravings are unlikely to be surpassed; and the book may be- cordially recommended to lovers of painting and admirers of rare technical accomplishment.
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