The Cranach Press
Aristide Maillol
Restores to this world its innocence and its bliss… and therefore is an art which is religious in the Greek sense
The Cranach Press Virgil is one of the greatest achievements of 20th century fine printing. Described by Harry Graf Kessler as an attempt ‘to create a complete harmony between type area, illustration and paper by which, as was the case in Carolingian manuscripts and in the illustrated incunabula, all elements of the book are combined to a complete work of art’ (Kessler, from the prospectus).
The design of the page was influenced by Edward Johnston, who explained to Kessler that the strict rules of William Morris should be seen only as ‘a jumping off ground, a starting point, which was to be left behind. The guiding principle should be one’s artistic sense’ (as quoted in J.D. Brinks, The Art of the Cranach Press). Maillol’s woodcuts radiate a prelapsarian naivety, which ‘restores to this world its innocence and its bliss… and therefore is an art which is religious in the Greek sense’ (Kessler, Warum Maillol Vergils Eklogen illustriert hat), the result of ‘a love which burns out from its object all which will not feed its fire… a love which is not, like the academic one colder than nature, but warmer, more pregnant, more stimulating’ (Kessler, Aristide Maillol). ‘The book did not owe its supreme unity to the proportions of the type area or to the balance of picture and letters, but to Kessler’s musical – or poetical – sense of the unity of his vision’ (J.D. Brinks, The Art of the Cranach Press)
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