Licence: In copyright
Credit: Antoine Vérard / by John Macfarlane. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.
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![title a cut also to be found on the last leaf of the Postilles pub- lished at Troyes in 1492. Yet the appearance of this cut in a book of Verard’s is proof enough that Lerouge printed it, if we are to believe M. Monceaux. A fine capital I, exhibiting Christ with upraised finger, appearing in vol. 2 of the Mer des Hystoires, is to be found in an edition of the same work printed at Lyons in 1491, which Lerouge, presumably, had nothing to do with. This exchange of cuts among printers and publishers is further illus- trated by a book printed for Jean Petit, the Genealogie . . . Godefroy de Bouillon (Paris, 1504, 40), which contains a varied assortment of Verard’s cuts, e.g., Nos. 38, 4 (and others from the Ccesar of 1488[?]), 44. The sources whence Verard took cuts for imitation were doubt- less many—a few can be perceived. Thus the title-page of the Destruction de Troie la Grant is imitated from that of the Lyons edition printed by Husz in 1485; the Kalendar of Shyppars (No. 68) contains numerous cuts imitated from the German, and one at least imitated from a cut used by the Lerouges at Troyes ; the Exposicions des epitres et evangiles (No. 100) contains a set imitated from Knoblouch’s editions of the Passionis Christi unum ex quatuor Euangeliis textum printed at Strasburg about 1508. Before leaving the subject of the illustrations one or two of Verard’s contrivances may be mentioned. When blocks became worn out, or when perhaps it was merely desired to produce a cheap book, the blocks were shortened. This may be seen in Verard’s latest edition of the Bible des Poetes (No. 155), published about 1507, in which all the folio cuts have been thus treated, and in the 1509 edition of Senecque des motz dorez (No. 188), where the well-known frontispiece-cut (No. 10) appears in abbreviated shape. In using cuts for books that they were not meant to illustrate, it became necessary for Verard to remove the existing legend. Thus the blocks of the Chevalier Delibere appearing in later books bear evident traces of mutilation, and sometimes from the appear- ance of the border (as in No. 29) it is evident that a piece has](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28040181_0032.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
