Illustration

I

Introduction

Illustration, pictorial material appearing with a text and amplifying or enhancing it. Although illustrations may be maps, charts, diagrams, or decorative elements, they are more usually representations of scenes, people, or objects related in some manner—directly, indirectly, or symbolically—to the text they accompany. The historical origins of illustration are as ancient as those of writing. The pictographs of early humans, and the hieroglyphics of such early civilizations as the Egyptian, contain the roots of both illustration and text.

II

Hand Illustration

Before the invention of printing, books (that is, manuscripts in scroll or codex form) were illustrated by hand. The earliest surviving example of an illustrated book is an Egyptian papyrus scroll from about 2000 bc. In ancient Egypt the Book of the Dead, a text designed to be placed in tombs, was the most frequently illustrated work. In classical Europe the earliest illustrations seem to have been made for scientific texts. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle referred to illustrations, now lost, accompanying his biological writings. Illustrations in the form of authors' portraits were the next development, followed by the illustration of literary texts such as the Iliad and the Odyssey. Literary illustration was also being produced in China beginning about the 5th century bc. Artists in medieval Europe illustrated texts with paintings in the form of miniatures, pictorially embellished initial letters, or marginal decorations. In the Islamic world, Persian and Mughal artists illustrated works of poetry and history with delicate, jewel-like paintings. Duplicate illustrations, like duplicate manuscripts, could be produced only through copying by hand. Medieval books were most often made of parchment, which had replaced papyrus about ad300; but by the late Middle Ages paper had come into use. See Illuminated Manuscripts.

III

Printed Reproduction Methods

The first mechanical reproduction of illustrations was achieved by means of wooden blocks. A picture was drawn on the smooth surface of a block, the wood on either side of the lines of the drawing was carved away, and the resulting relief image was smeared with pigment or ink and printed on parchment or paper. The process could be repeated again and again, producing many identical pictures from a single block. Sometimes an entire book page, text as well as illustration, was cut on a block; books made by this technique are called block books. With their necessarily limited texts, most block books were simple, crude productions aimed at the nearly unlettered general public, for whom they presented religious messages; the Biblia Pauperum (Paupers' Bible) and Ars moriendi (Art of Dying) are famous examples. See Prints and Printmaking.

The printing press, on which an extensive text could be printed from movable type, also made it possible for separate woodcut illustrations to be printed along with the text (see Printing). The need for greater detail in illustrations led to the development of techniques for engraving and etching metal plates, usually copper. The mezzotint, a refined form of copperplate engraving capable of reproducing subtle gradations of light and shadow, was developed in the 18th century, as was the aquatint, by which the effect of watercolor painting could be simulated. Late in the century white-line wood engraving was perfected; in this technique, metal-engraving tools were used on the end-grain surface of very hard wood to produce pictures of considerable delicacy, often with images appearing in white against a dark background. At the end of the 18th century lithography was invented, providing the artist with greater fluidity and scope in illustration technique; the possibilities were increased by the introduction, in the first half of the 19th century, of color lithography. Photography, perfected in the second half of the 19th century, ultimately provided versatile photomechanical methods of reproducing the illustrator's original, in whatever medium it might be created.

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IV

Uses of Printed Illustrations

Beginning in the late 18th century, the illustrated book was joined by the illustrated periodical, which flourished thereafter. Fiction had been illustrated almost from its beginnings, and by the 19th century the practice had grown so that few novels were issued without at least a frontispiece (an illustration facing or preceding the title page in a book), often in color. The illustration of topographical, architectural, and botanical works also proliferated in the 19th century. In the 20th century, the practice of illustrating adult fiction declined. Illustration of books for adults came to be confined principally to nonfiction, with emphasis on illustrations as learning tools, especially in textbooks and other reference books. The illustration of children's literature, however, began to be increasingly common in the 19th century, and after the middle of the 20th century it accounted for the greater part of all book illustration. Periodicals came to rely heavily on photographic illustration.