Note 8 — THE TRANSFERENCE OF WOODCUTS IN THE FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES[5]

The Venetian origin of this cut is made almost certain by the character of its border. In style and touch (cleverly as the reproduction here given has been made from the thickly-painted original, the lines are necessarily thickened) the design is closely akin to the borders in the 'Omelie et Sermones' of S. Bernard (1491), and the 'Dialogo de la Seraphica Virgine S. Caterina' (1494), while in the border and woodcut initials of the 'Supplementum Chronicarum' of 1492 we get both the bull's skull and the dolphin's, and in the 'Rudimenta Grammatices' of Donatus 1493, a top border to the first page which resembles the lower border in our cut. There is no suggestion of copying here, but a series of designs probably all by the same artist which begin with this border to the 'Arte' in 1490 and can be traced for several years, always at Venice.