To mark the period of Advent, this month we have chosen two woodcut illustrations, taken from one of the earliest printed books in the Cathedral’s collections: an edition of the Missale Saresberiense, printed in Paris by Johannes Higman and Wolfgang Hopyl in 1500.
These illustrations, which depict scenes from the Nativity, offer a lovely example of woodcut technology and its use in the production of printed books at the turn of late 15th and early 16th centuries.
In the first woodcut, Mary kneels before the baby Jesus, surrounded by animals in the stable. In the second, she is visited by the Magi, who bear gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.
Woodcuts are a form of relief printing. They are created where an image is cut into a woodblock and the non-printed parts are removed. The carved woodblock is then covered with ink and leaves an impression of the image when imprinted on the page.
The practice of creating woodcut images far predates the creation of movable type in Europe during the mid-15th century. Block printing – that is, the use of carved wooden blocks to imprint an image on a flat surface – first originated in China. As European printing presses developed and the market for printed books expanded, woodcuts offered a cheap and easy method to reproduce illustrations at scale.
Over time, the carved woodblock could become worn through overuse. In our examples, the woodcut of the Magi appears sharper, while the woodcut of Mary and the animals has lost some of its initial clarity. The illustrations have been used to decorate the initial letter of a new section of text – this is called an ‘historiated initial’, meaning it contains a picture.
The Cathedral’s copy of Higman’s Missale is one of only two complete copies to have survived, the other being held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.
