Letter and Image - IV

Christoph Murer and Tobias Stimmer
Three Wild Boars
1605
woodcut and letterpress
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

André Gill
Caricature of Louis-Antoine Garnier-Pagès
(left-wing politician)
1868
lithograph
Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg

Giovanni Brun
Map of Rome
1785
engraving
Max Planck Institute for Art History, Florence

Hans Holbein the Younger
Pressmark of Michael Isingrin, Basel
1539
woodcut
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Anonymous Printmaker
Pressmark of Christoph Plantin, Antwerp
1565
woodcut and letterpress
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Anonymous Printmaker
Pressmark of Boneto Locatelli, Venice
1490
woodcut and letterpress
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel

Vincent Le Sueur
Pressmark of Marc-Michel Bousquet, Geneva
1726
woodcut and letterpress
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel

Anonymous Printmaker
Pressmark of François Regnault, Paris
1533
woodcut and letterpress
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel

Anonymous Printmaker
Pressmark of Denis Roce, Paris
ca. 1490-1510
woodcut, metal cuts and letterpress
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel

Anonymous Venetian Printmaker
Monstrous Birth in Venice
1575
woodcut and letterpress
Graphische Sammlung, Zentralbibliothek Zürich

Bernhard Peters
Monstrous Animal-Human Births
1578
hand-colored woodcut and letterpress
(broadside)
Graphische Sammlung, Zentralbibliothek Zürich

Anonymous German Printmaker
Man at age 80
16th century
woodcut
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Jan Sadeler the Younger
Allegorical Half Title-Page
1637
engraving
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Raphael Custos after Lucas Kilian
Ornamental Title-Page
1632
engraving
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki
French and German Title-Pages for Almanac
1781
etching
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Anonymous Austrian Artist
Wiener Künstler - Diskos
ca. 1900-1910
gouache on paper (print study)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Silence is man's chief learning. The sage Pythagoras himself is my witness. He, knowing himself how to speak, taught others to be silent, having discovered this potent drug to ensure tranquility.

It is a proverb, that no woman who has been a slave should ever become a mistress. I will tell you something similar. "Let no man who has been advocate ever become a judge, not even if he be a greater orator than Isocrates. For how can a man who has served for hire in a fashion no more respectable than a whore judge a case otherwise than dirtily?"

That we see murderers blest by fortune does not surprise me much. It is the gift of Zeus. For he would have killed his father, whom he hated, had Cronos chanced to be mortal. Now, instead of killing him, he punishes him in the same place as the Titans, casting him bound like a robber into the pit.

Fortune knows neither reason nor law, but rules men despotically, carried along without reason by her own current. She is rather inclined to favour the wicked, and hates the just, as if making a display of her unreasoning force.

Where, I ask, is that vast insolence? And where have they suddenly departed, the crowds of flatterers who used to walk by your side? Now you are gone to exile far from the city, and Fortune has made those whom you formerly pitied judges to condemn you. Great thanks to thee, Fortune, performer of glorious deeds, for that thou ever mockest all alike, and we have that to amuse us. 

A certain Theodorus rejoices because I am dead. Another shall rejoice at his death. We are all owed to death.

– from Book X (Hortatory and Admonitory Epigrams) of the Greek Anthology, translated and edited by W.R. Paton (1917)