Comic Crawhall

         Welcome to the April A to Z Blog Challenge!  My theme this year is Relief Printed Alphabet Squared, an alphabet of alphabets illustrated with relief block prints.  The rest of the bloggers don’t start until April 1, but in the meantime you can find the list of Theme Reveal posts here.

        Joseph Crawhall II (UK, 1821-1896) dabbled in many pursuits, but his interest in old chapbooks, broadsides, and their woodcuts is very much reflected in his own work.  His Old Aunt Elspa’s ABC is a bit of an oddity.  Published in 1884, it makes a somewhat tongue-in-cheek ye olde imitation of books that were already going on a century older.  For C, Crawhall gives us a Clown that I find a little disturbing, and I’m not even one of those people with a clown phobia.  But my 

favorite letter is E, which is illustrated by the sun, but which actually stands for Everything.  This amuses me.  You’ll be able to see one more of Crawhall’s letters coming up later.  See if you can spot it!

        Next up is another somewhat odd alphabet, A Comic Natural History, featuring detailed wood block prints of anthropomorph-ized animals with enormously oversized heads.  C is for Cat, another rather hideous illustration.  (C doesn’t seem to be serving us well, I’m afraid!)  But I 

also give you another E, the slovenly Elephant, which I find rather more endearing.

        Finally, we can’t talk about block printed alphabets without mentioning Walter Crane (UK, 1845-1915), an enormously influential force in children’s picture book illustration for decades.  He published at least four lavishly illustrated alphabet books, and possibly more I’m forgetting about.  I’ve shared a few letters previously, including A and Q from Baby’s Own Alphabet, as well as V and X from The Absurd A.B.C.  I include here today the Calf for C (along with A-D) from his Noah’s Ark Alphabet, and the C (Cuckoo) from Baby’s Own Alphabet.  Crane's illustrations were originally color wood block prints, but were then sometimes reprinted with lithography in later editions.

        The moral of C comes from both the clown and the comic cat, and is the reminder that humor is very much in the eye of the beholder.  (And more on that topic here.)

        Riddle of the day: which letters encircle the earth?  (Or possibly another one: which letters carpe the diem?)

        So, all of today’s alphabets are aimed squarely at children.  Do you remember any alphabet books from your childhood?  Did you have a favorite?

[Pictures: Clown, Everything, wood block prints by Joseph Crawhall II from Old Aunt Elspa’s ABC, 1884 (Images from Toronto Public Library);

Cat, Elephant, wood block prints from A Comic Natural History, (1886?) (Image from Hathi Trust);

Calf, Cuckoo, wood block prints by Walter Crane from Noah’s Ark Alphabet c. 1871, and Baby’s Own Alphabet, 1875 (Images from Toronto Public Library).]

Bewick #AtoZChallenge

         Welcome to the April A to Z Blog Challenge!  My theme this year is Block Printed Alphabet Squared, an entire alphabet of alphabets illustrated with relief block prints.  As usual, I’ve started early, but you can find out more about the A to Z Challenge here.

        Today I’m spotlighting two alphabets and they both come from Thomas Bewick.  Bewick (UK, 1753-1828) is generally considered to be the artist who brought wood engraving to its pinnacle as a medium of illustration.  Read my prior post about him to learn more.  He was an early proponent of making illustrations for children with as much care as those for adults, and you can certainly appreciate the level of accuracy and detail in these wood engravings, which are quite small.  The first alphabet today was made when Bewick was only about 24, but he’d already been a wood engraver for a decade.  I’ve gone ahead and included the entire thing, since it’s all one sheet.  (Remember you can always click on the pictures to see them bigger.)  Here B is for Bull, but I particularly like the Elephant, Fox, Goat, and Ibex.  (Why should I have to pick just one when I’ve already included them all?)  Dating to 1777, this one is about tied as the oldest alphabet I’ll be sharing.

        Our second alphabet today was published 38 years later, and is another of those small educational pamphlets that we’ll be seeing lots of in the letters to come.  In this alphabet B is Black, along with the text “Black Men and Wo-men are na-tives of warm coun-tries.”  Here’s the time to note that when you go researching English children’s books from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries you are likely to come across some pretty appalling examples of racism, sexism, and other messages that should definitely not be taught to children any more.  (People of various nations and cultures was a particularly popular theme as the British Empire began to overtake more and more of them, and I find it fascinating to see the varying attitudes the authors and artists could take with their subjects.)  But in this case, although Bewick is certainly exoticizing black people, I actually like how simply matter-of-fact he is.  He portrays the Black man on a par with the white men who show up in the alphabet (including the Captain, the Fiddler, and the Haymaker), and with far more dignity than the 

Drunkard and the Userer.  However, I’ve passed over all those people and chosen W for Weathervane as my favorite illustration in this little book, because I always like rooftop views.

        Today’s first bonus B is the Bird of Paradise flower from A Wood Engraver’s Alphabet by Gerard Brender à Brandis.  I’ve shared a number of images from this one before, including F, M, R, Z, and also Q.  The ones I posted already were chosen because they’re my favorites, but today I’ll go ahead and add D for Day Lily.

        You can also revisit an alphabet of funky linocut letter designs by James Brown.  I previously posted A, F, H, K, U, and Z.  (The A is also in the title collection in the Theme Reveal post, and one more of Brown’s letters will show up as one of the letter icons before the end of the alphabet.)  And here’s his B, Bravo.

        The moral for B is Be kind, Be honest, Be brave, Behave yourself, and sometimes, if you’re feeling overwhelmed, just Be.

        And also, beware of B’s in your bonnet.

        So, to be or not to be?  That is the question, as we all know.

[Pictures: Alphabet, wood engraving by Thomas Bewick, 1777 (Image from The British Museum);

Black, Weathervane, wood engravings by Thomas Bewick from The Child’s Instructor, or Picture Alphabet, 1815 (Images from McGill Library);

Day Lily, wood engraving by Gerard Brender à Brandis from A Wood Engraver's Alphabet, 2008;

Bravo, linocut by James Brown (Image from James Brown).]

Animals #AtoZChallenge

         Welcome to the April A to Z Blog Challenge!  My theme this year is Relief Printed Alphabet Squared, an alphabet of alphabets illustrated with relief block prints.  As usual, I’m starting early, but you can find out more about the A to Z Challenge here and see what varied and interesting themes other bloggers will be exploring this year.

        Without further ado, we’ll start with An Alphabet of Animals, a little paperback book published in 1865 and billed as being by “A Lady,” with no attribution for the illustrator of the wood engravings.  Given common practices at the time, it’s entirely possible that the 

illustrations were reused from unrelated blocks the publisher already owned from past projects, so they could well be done by all different more-or-less anonymous artists.  A is for Ape in this alphabet, and it’s a pleasing enough depiction, if nothing too exciting.  I like how cheerful this ape looks.  My favorite letter from this alphabet is the frog of F, which has lots of attractive detail.  I’ve also included the entire verse for the frog because it’s a nice one.

        Today’s second alphabet is also animals.  This one is by illustrator Andrew Wightman.  His linoleum block A is Albatross, and it shows the clean, clear, bold style shared by all his animals in this series.  My favorite, though, is D’s Dung Beetle, which has a cartoonish charm.  Although most of Wightman’s animals are fairly realistically portrayed, the dung beetle is more anthropomorphized, and is really quite adorable.

        I’ll also share a few bonus alphabets for the letter A, which I’ve mentioned in the past.  Most important is Mary Azarian, who has published two lavishly illustrated wood block alphabets.  Here’s her A for Arbor from A Gardener’s Alphabet, in which she has water-colored her wood block prints.  You can also see the letters G, Q, U, and X from this book in previous posts.  They’re some of my favorites, but today I’ve added J to the list.

        And I love Azarian’s black and white A Farmer’s Alphabet even more.  (The book is black and white, but she's also made watercolored versions of some of its wood block prints.)  From that one I’ve already shared not only A (which is Apple), but B, D, G, H, M, X, and Z (Zinnia, probably my favorite).  Be sure to check them out.

        Then there’s the linocut alphabet by Walter Inglis Anderson (USA, 1903-1965).  I’ve written about him before, as well as sharing his letters A (also Apple), D, M, S (my favorite perhaps? Sea), and T.  Plus his B (Butterfly) appears in the title collection in the Theme Reveal post, and his Z will help us close out the A to Z Challenge.

        For a moral today I can’t do better than “A Lady” in her observations on the frog.  Children, let’s not be cruel to any living creatures.  Instead, we need to treat all around us gently.

        And also, the journey of 26 letters starts with a single A.

        So, if you were to select an alphabet of animals, what’s the one favorite animal you would be absolutely sure to include?

[Pictures: Ape, Frog, wood engravings from An Alphabet of Animals, 1865 (Images from McGill Library);

Albatross, Dung Beetle, linocuts by Andrew Wightman, c. 2015 (Images from AndrewWightmanPrints);

Arbor, Japanese Garden, wood block print by Mary Azarian from A Gardener’s Alphabet, 2000.]

#AtoZChallenge 2023 Theme Reveal

         It’s time for the 2023 April A to Z Blog Challenge!  The A to Z Challenge involves bloggers from all around the world, who each share 26 blog posts throughout the month of April, working their way through the alphabet from A to Z.  This will be my 8th A to Z, and yes, there are some things that I intend to do the same way I always do:

     • Starting early so I can take a few extra days off during April

     • Offering you lots of links to previous posts with additional bonus information

     • Morals!  Sure, morals have absolutely no intrinsic connection to this year’s theme, but you know what?  My A to Z posts have included morals for the past 4 years, and I reckon by now it’s simply what I do.  What can I say; I’m just a sententious kind of person.

        However, despite continuing to observe my own customs, what will be unique for this year is, of course, a new and exciting theme.  After several years of fantasy topics, it’s time to give block printing the spotlight, and this year I’m going meta and offering an alphabet of alphabets.  Get ready for Relief Printed Alphabet Squared!  In each post I’ll introduce you to some alphabets that are all illustrated with relief block prints.  I’ll give you the illustration for the letter in question, as well as my favorite illustration from the entire set.  And of course sometimes there might be more.  (If you miss the fantasy, don’t worry.  I can never resist letting a few strange and fantastical characters sneak in!)

        As for today, of the seven letters in the title picture above, five will be introduced later, as will this A is for Apple.  You’ll have to stay tuned and join me throughout April to find out where they all come from!  The other letters featured today are part of alphabets that aren't going to get their own posts.  In some cases that’s because I wasn’t able to find a complete (or even mostly complete) alphabet.  In other cases it’s because I couldn’t figure out any way to assign their alphabet to a letter that wasn’t already full!  (As usual in alphabets, some letters are oversubscribed, while others go begging for more.)  Therefore I’ll tell you about those letters today.

        The second B in the title picture, with a Boat, comes from a nineteenth century primer, and although we’ll see many primers in the coming weeks, there will be no more from this particular book.  The second C in the title collection, shaped like a crocodile, is a modern linocut by Mark Long.  I’d have loved to feature that alphabet, but I couldn’t find good pictures of most of its letters.  However, there will be one more from his alphabet coming up as an icon for one of the letters, and another in the grand finale, so keep your eyes open for them!  The yellow X comes from Cousin Honeycomb’s New Royal ABC from 1855.  That little book has no pictures illustrating its letters, but just large, fancy colored capitals (of which one more will also appear shortly as a letter icon).

        The A for Alligator is a 2 color linoleum block print by Kerry and Neil Stavely.  I like the spiky A which looks appropriate to both the water plants and the alligator’s teeth and claws.

        B is for a number of things in Karin Rytter’s Linocut ABC.  Bear is the most obvious, but her detailed and accurate scene also includes Birch trees, Berries, and possibly some other things.  I particularly like the bear cub climbing up the trunk of the letter.  My other B is for Bridge and I find this a particularly charming little composition.  It’s one of the earlier alphabets in this series, dating back to 1808.  Like all the early ones, the color was hand-painted over plain black wood block printing.

        This amazing C is for Crypt, Church, and dozens of other words in Italian, which is its native language.  Many of them also work in English.  Although I really enjoy the entire architectural alphabet by Antonio Basoli, I haven’t featured it elsewhere because it’s engraved and printed intaglio, not relief printed.  (However, I couldn’t resist one other letter from another engraved architectural alphabet by another artist, so don’t forget to look for that among the letter icons to come.)  The other C today is for Cock, and brings things back down to reality with The Farmer Boy’s Alphabet, printed with multiple blocks in multiple colors.

        So, now you’ve had a taste of some of the alphabetical block printed delights in store.  If you’re ready to get started early with this A to Z Challenge, come back for my very next post and find out what Alphabets A is for.  But if you prefer to participate at the right and proper time, don’t worry.  Each day in April I’ll include links to send you to the officially designated letter.  Either way, I’ll see you soon!

        The moral of this theme is of course that even alphabets should be alphabetized!  Just remember the famous rhyme: A before B, especially before C… Or something like that, anyway.

        So, when you see an illustrated alphabet, do you go through in order, or do you skip straight to your initials to see whether they’re good pictures?  (My name starts with A, so I don’t even have to choose between those two approaches!)

[Pictures: X, hand-colored woodcut from Cousin Honeycomb’s New Royal ABC, 1855 (Image from Toronto Public Library);

Boat, wood block print by John Gilbert from The Prince of Wales’ Primer, 1847 (Image from Toronto Public Library);

Crocodile, linocut by Mark Long (Image from Typography Daily);

Alligator, linocut by Kerry and Neil Stavely (Image from Horse & Hare);

Bear, linocut by Karin Rytter (Image from Karin Rytter Studio);

Bridge, hand-colored wood block print from The Royal Alphabet, 1808 (Image from University of California);

Church, copper engraving by Antonio Basoli from Alfabeto Pittorico, 1839, (Image from Storia e Memoria di Bologna);

Cock, wood block print possibly by Harrison Weir from The Farmer Boy’s Alphabet, 1860 (Image from University of Florida).]

Wind Dragons

         Just a short post today as I’m hard at work preparing for the April A to Z Blog Challenge (foreshadowing).  But that doesn’t mean I don’t have something amazing!  Here are two wood engravings of wind dragons by Atsushi Matsuoka (Japan, b. 1971).  To review, wood engravings are carved on hard, fine end grain, which means the block of wood is cut across the branch or trunk of a tree, not along its length.  That means there’s a limit to how big a block can be, without either joining up multiple chunks of wood, or using synthetic substitutes for natural wood.  And that means that most wood engravings are very small.  Moreover, nowadays it’s quite common for artists to use the actual irregular round shape of the tree’s cross section, as opposed to wasting surface area by chopping off the edges to make square or rectangular blocks.  Matsuoka shows this technique in today’s two pieces.  The second is fairly round, which is pretty straightforward from a design point of view, but the first is a little more irregular.  Matsuoka had to decide how to use the shape of the wood for his composition, and he put the smaller, more pointed part toward the bottom so the piece is almost more diamond-shaped.

        Both pieces show flying dragons composed entirely of tiny curled lines, so that they are simultaneously scaly and puffy like clouds.  I love how they look like wispy dragons made of air, wind, and cloud.  The first is the enormous power  of the entire sky, blowing the sailing ship across the ocean.  The second is a rain dragon.  We’re looking upward into the rain, and the power lines (printed with a separate block) evoke the electric power of a storm.

        Now that spring is upon us (here in the northern hemisphere), I hope the rain dragons are benevolent to us this year!

[Pictures: Direction of the Voyage, wood engraving by Atsushi Matsuoka, 2020;

Raining, wood engraving by Matsuoka, 2013 (Images from Atsushi Matsuoka).]

The Faëry Chasm

         It’s been a little while since I posted a fantasy poem, so today here’s one by William Wordsworth (UK, 1770-1850).  This is a sonnet published in 1820.

No fiction was it of the antique age:
A sky-blue stone, within this sunless cleft,
Is of the very footmarks unbereft
Which tiny Elves impressed; – on that smooth stage
Dancing with all their brilliant equipage
In secret revels – haply after theft
Of some sweet Babe – Flower stolen, and coarse Weed left
For the distracted Mother to assuage
Her grief with, as she might! – But, where, oh! where
Is traceable a vestige of the notes
That ruled those dances wild in character? –
Deep underground? Or in the upper air,
On the shrill wind of midnight? or where floats
O’er twilight fields the autumnal gossamer?

        I definitely dislike the line “Is of the very footmarks unbereft” which, ironically for a poet claiming to use the language of the common man, is an opaque double negative presumably jammed in there just to get the rhyme.  But on the other hand, there are two parts of the poem I find particularly moving.  One is the mention of the changeling in lines 6 through 9.  In terms of the “plot” of the poem, it’s just a throwaway line to say “Maybe the fairies were celebrating after stealing a human child.”  But the lines beautifully express the human mother’s complex feelings in a nightmare situation.

        I also really like the punch line of the whole thing: we can see the marks of their footprints, but where is there any trace of the most important part of the dance, the music?  That leaves no vestige.  I’m reminded of the lines from my own book Sleeping Legends Lie, “When a song is interrupted in the middle, where does the music go?  Is the song dead?  Does the song have a ghost?  No, it is as though it never existed.  It leaves no ash, no shadow, nothing.”

[Picture: Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing, watercolor by William Blake, c. 1786 (Image from Tate).]

Chalandre's Nevers

         Today’s block print artist is Fernand Chalandre (France, 1879-1924).  Chalandre was born and spent most (or possibly all?) of his life in Nevers, France, where he was confined to a wheelchair, but nevertheless travelled all around his hometown sketching people and scenery and turning them into block prints.  Looking at his views of Nevers I find the steep streets and staircases extremely scenic, but I imagine they must have been quite a challenge to navigate in a wheelchair.

        Chalandre’s pieces are all rather small, and he also did quite a few bookplate designs (although I haven’t selected any of those to share today).  Many of them show small scenes tightly cropped in interesting ways.  For example, the first piece is a narrow slice of view which centers on a staircase.  None of the buildings on either side are shown in their entirety.  (By the way, the British Museum dates this piece to 1925, while telling me that Chalandre died in 1924. Since it’s signed by the artist, I don’t know what to make of this!)  Another example is the church spire, which focusses tightly on the tower rather than showing the entirety of the church.

        The second church spire, on the other hand, while still the focus of its piece, is actually in the background, the bulk of the church building obscured by the tree and house in the foreground.  The various textures may seem somewhat roughly carved, but they actually work perfectly.  Also, keep in mind that this piece is only 33x55 millimeters (about 1.5x2 inches) so in fact those are tiny little precision details.

        You can see that the details increase when the size increases, in this view of another stone stairway, which is about 4.5x7.75 inches.  I especially like the areas at the top: the lamp, the windows, the flowers on the right…

        These are all listed as woodcuts, but the tiny size of them, and particularly the carving patterns of this last one, make me wonder whether they aren’t actually wood engravings instead.  The rougher shapes on the ground look like they could be gouges, but the use of nothing but thin lines to depict shapes and textures is more characteristic of engraving.  At any rate, I always love a moonlit scene, and this one is wonderfully serene.

        Chalandre was a new discovery for me, and I’m very pleased to have made his acquaintance.  I hope you enjoy his small, sensitively observed work as much as I do.

[Pictures: Nevers, Escalier Casse-Cou, woodcut by Fernand Chalandre, 1925;

Church spire with birds, woodcut by Chalandre, 1919;

Church in Cuffy, France, woodcut by Chalandre, 1919;

Stone steps, woodcut by Chalandre, 1925;

Moonlit landscape, woodcut by Chalandre, 1919 (All images from British Museum).]

Words of the Month - Pollyanna to Paparazzi

         Not surprisingly, we have lots of words with their origins in stories, especially the names of characters.  Widely-known stories are cultural touchstones that offer us metaphors to describe all kinds of people, so they’re an obvious place to derive new words.  As an author you know you’ve arrived when your characters become words in their own right!

        Many of these words remain rooted to this day in their stories of origin.

romeo - (often capitalized) a handsome, passionate male lover.  Everyone knows this comes from Romeo Montague in William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet written in the 1590’s.  The OED lists its first usage as a general word in 1766.  (As for me, I can’t hear it used as a common noun without starting to sing Deniece Williams’s “Let’s Hear It for the Boy.”  Get your ‘80s on with the video here.)

scrooge - miser and general sourpuss.  This is still widely recognized as hailing from Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’s 1843 A Christmas Carol.  It was fully genericized by 1905.  (Prior post about this spec fic story here.)

grinch - curmudgeonly spoilsport.  The story of grinch is similar to scrooge - both inside and outside the covers of a book.  It comes straight from How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss in 1957, and the animated television special from 1966.  (I see that there’s a sequel - by other authors of course - scheduled for release this fall, which strikes me as a hideous idea - but maybe I’m just being a grinch about it.)

Prince Charming - the perfect romantic partner to live happily every after with.  Everyone knows this comes from fairy tales… but what fairy tale exactly?  The most likely beginning is Madame d’Aulnoy’s literary fairy tale “The Blue Bird” (1697) featuring “Le roi Charmant,” which Andrew Lang translated as King Charming in 1892.  In Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Snow White says “the prince was charming,” but that’s never his name.  In short, it looks like by the time the term actually appeared, it was already being satirized as a stereotype.

        Other words come from fictional sources that might no longer be quite so widely read or recognized any more.

catch-22 - a dilemma in which one is trapped by contradictory conditions.  This comes from Joseph Heller’s novel Catch-22 (1961) and entered common usage after the 1970 movie based on the book.

malapropism - the ludicrous misuse of a big, learned word.  This one derives from Mrs. Malaprop in the play The Rivals by Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1775).  Sheridan derived the character’s name from mal à propos, French for “inappropriately,” or literally “badly for the purpose.”

lothario - seducer, womanizer.  “The gay Lothario” was a character in the play The Fair Penitent by Nicholas Rowe (1703).  We sure do seem to love our womanizing literary characters.  While we’re at it, let’s add Don Juan (popularized in English by Lord Byron’s poem in 1819) and even philanderer (from Philander, a stock character name for a lover, giving us the verb philander by 1737 and the noun by 1816).

paparazzi - freelance photographers who aggressively pursue celebrities.  The singular is paparazzo, which is the name of a photographer in Federico Fellini’s 1960 film La Dolce Vita.

        Obviously any story that gave the language a word must have been wildly famous at the time, but some of them have sunk much farther into obscurity than others.  Did you know the fictional origins of the following?  Or even if you knew their origins, how many of these stories have you actually read?

fedora - a type of hat.  This is named for the character Fédora from the play by the same name by Victorien Sardou.  In the 1882 performance Sarah Bernhardt wore such a hat, and by about 5 years later (with the play still running) the character had given her name to the headgear - which eventually became a men’s hat after the Prince of Wales began wearing them in 1924.

goody two-shoes - an excessively virtuous person or do-gooder.  Published in 1765 by John Newbery (of Newbery Medal fame), The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes was a variation of a Cinderella story by an anonymous author, in which the virtue of a poor orphan girl is rewarded.  For over a hundred years it was one of the most widely circulated books for children in both Britain and America.  The thing I find most striking about the history of this word is how viciously we’ve turned a praise of virtue into a withering insult.  (And if you want to continue your ’80s binge, with another twist on the stereotype, you could try Adam Ant’s song here.)

pollyanna - excessively cheerful or optimistic person.  Pollyanna Whittier is the hero of Eleanor Hodgman Porter’s 1913 novel Pollyanna, and the word was being applied to optimists by 1921 after the book was adapted into a movie starring Mary Pickford.  In the novel Pollyanna uses her optimism as a way of coping with the difficulties in her life, but of course nowadays we’ve once again turned the positive negative, and the only place you’ll ever hear the word used is when someone declares, “I’m no pollyanna.”

milquetoast - a weak, timid person (usually man).  It can also be used as an adjective.  Caspar Milquetoast was a character in The Timid Soul, a cartoon created in 1924 by Harold T. Webster.  The cartoon ran for almost 30 years and was, according to Time magazine in 1945, as famous as Tom Sawyer.  Webster derived the character’s name from “milk toast,” which is bland, harmless invalid food.

        Although I’ve been referring to all these sources as literary, most of the authors didn’t manage to get their words into common usage through the printed page of books alone.  You’ll notice that most come from plays, or were popularized by movies or movie and television adaptations.  Scrooge and Milquetoast had popular newspapers and magazines to deliver them into every household.  It’s not just any fictional character who can become a household word.  It takes reach, as the marketers say, and an especially iconic personality.

[Pictures: Romeo and Juliet, wood engraving by Bellenger after F. Dicksee, 1864-8 (Image from Victorian Illustrated Shakespeare Archive);

Le roi Charmant, hand-colored wood block print from L’Oiseau bleu, 19th century (Image from Wikimedia Commons);

Goody Two-Shoes, wood engraving from The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes, 1768 (Image from Wikimedia Commons);

Caspar Milquetoast, drawing by Harold T. Webster, first half 20th century (Image from Hairy Green Eyeball).]

Titian's Army

         I certainly don’t think of Titian (Tiziano Vecellio, Italy, 1488/90-1576) as a printmaker.  However, he was well aware of the value of prints as a means of marketing and expanding his reputation.  Relatively few people would ever see his paintings, let alone purchase them, but wood block prints could be mass-produced and sold more affordably.  So it turns out that Titian designed several woodcuts, as well as collaborating on adaptations of some of his paintings to be carved and printed by printmakers.

        Today I have for you his most famous woodcut, The Crossing of the Red Sea.  This was actually twelve wood blocks, and since each one was about 22x16 inches, the total picture once assembled would have been around 4 feet tall and over seven feet wide.  In short, it’s practically wallpaper, comparable to the grand history paintings he was doing for the palaces and government buildings of Venice.  That probably undercuts the whole idea of mass market appeal, and in fact no early impressions are known.  Although it was apparently made around 1515, the earliest impressions date to 1549.  I don’t know exactly what was going on to explain why it wasn’t printed in 1515 or why it was printed nearly 35 years later.

        At any rate, it’s an epic scene, showing Moses in the lower right stretching out his staff over the water and calling the waters back over the pursuing army of the Pharaoh.  It’s an interesting composition with all the action occurring in only about 4-6 of the 12 sheets.  The large areas of sea are presumably to emphasize just how formidable a barrier the Israelites have passed, and just how overwhelmed the Egyptians are now.  I have led off with the tenth panel because I find it the one with the most dramatic scene of action: lots going on, but not so much that it all blends into mush.  I like the details of the horse’s caparison of ribbons, as well as the rearing and confusion of all the animals.  A helmet is being swept away in one direction, possibly belonging to the man who has been thrown from his horse in the other direction.  Here you can see the skill and interest of the design in a way that sort of gets lost when you look at the whole thing.

        Speaking of the whole thing again, I have assembled the entire epic piece from the individual block prints that the Art Institute of Chicago lists only separately, and putting it together for the first time has revealed a few quirks.  The blocks don’t always actually fit together very well.  Perhaps the most glaring oddity is utter lack of transition between the city skyline in the second block and the ocean in block 6 directly below.  There are places with slight gaps, or not quite straight edges, or where you can’t quite make both sides of a pair of blocks line up at once.  Presumably these are artifacts of the method of carving.  It’s likely that the different squares in the grid were farmed out to different carvers, who didn’t check against each other as they each made their own block.

        One final detail to note is in some ways my favorite: the mother in the lower right corner nursing her child.  She’s completely ignoring all the epic drama behind her, of drowning enemies and jubilant allies, as she simply gazes at her baby.  Let’s never forget that the biggest events in history earn their importance for good or ill by their effect on the lives of ordinary families.

[Picture: The Submersion of Pharaoh’s Army in the Red Sea, woodcut in 12 sheets from a design by Titian, c. 1515, printed 1549;

Detail of block 10 (Images from Art Institute Chicago).]