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Die herz-jesu
A formal history of holy cards is yet to be written. Brian DeWitt maintains an elaborate holy card website at www.donet.com/~devitt. Aimed at holy card collectors, the site features historical information, including an extensive bibliography of books on holy cards, which are mostly catalogs for collectors and mostly written in German. There are only two books in English on the subject, both by Barbara Calamari and Sandra DiPasqua: Holy Cards (2004) and Patron Saints: A Feast of Holy Cards (2007). In the introduction to their first book, they trace the history of holy cards back to the late 18th century and the invention of color lithography. But holy cards were printed from woodcuts and then wood, copper, and steel engravings for three hundred years before that. In fact, the history of holy cards mirrors the history of printing. Single-sheet woodblock prints, precursors to holy cards, began to appear in Northern Germany in the early 15th century. These were, with rare exceptions, anonymous and printed black and white, though hand-colored examples do exist. The subjects of these prints are primarily saints, the holy family, and the Passion and Five Wounds of Jesus. Three methods were used to print from woodblocks: stamping, rubbing, and finally using a press. Moveable type printing presses first appeared in China in the 11th century. Johannes Gutenberg (1395–1468) is credited with building the first one in Europe in 1439. From the beginning bibles, devotional books and tracts, religious prints, and holy cards were a large part of the output from presses that sprang up all over Europe. The 16th century saw the first wood engraving, known as xylographs, holy cards. Soon to follow were holy cards printed from copper and steel engravings. The invention of the technology for lithography is usually credited to the Austrian actor and printer Alois Senefelder (1771–1834) in 1796 as well as chromolithography (multi-color lithography) in the early 19th century. Holy cards printed by chromolithography are prized for their detail and saturated color, and those from the late 19th and early 20th centuries for their unusually evocative art, including and especially the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which has never been equaled. Although offset printing was invented in 1903 by New Jersey printer Ira Washington Rubel (1881-1908), it wasn’t until the 1950s that it came into general usage. Today almost all holy cards (and color graphics in general) are printed by this method. Novelty holy cards in recent years have been produced by reticular and holographic printing. Holy cards have been most commonly used to commemorate funerals, though they also mark first communions and confirmations. Ironically, this exquisite late 19th century holy card was produced by none of these methods. The heart is hand-painted on a silk oval glued to an embossed and die-cut lace pattern hand-painted gold. It has no writing on its reverse so its purpose, other than as an object of devotion, is unknown.
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