598 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



lines in the sulphur with lampblack, thus enabling himself to 

 judge of the effect of his engraving thus far. 



At a later period it was discovered that a proof could be taken 

 on damp paper by filling the engraved lines with a certain ink 

 and wiping it off the surface of the plate, sufficient pressure 

 being applied to make the paper go into the hollowed or engraved 

 lines and bring the ink out of them. This was the beginning of 

 plate printing, but nobody at first suspected the artistic and 

 commercial importance of the discovery. The niello engravers 

 thought it a convenient way of proving their work, as it saved 

 the trouble of the sulphur cast, but they saw no further into the 

 future. They went on engraving niello just the same, to orna- 

 ment jewelry and furniture ; nor was it until the next century 

 that the new method of printing was carried out to its great and 

 wonderful results. Even in our day the full importance of it is 

 only understood by persons who have made the fine arts a subject 

 of special study. 



The earliest engravers on metal for the purpose of multiplying 

 by printing, of which we have reliable information concerning 

 names and dates, were the German artists, Martin Schongauer 

 and Albert Diirer. Schongauer was the earlier artist of the two, 

 as he died in 1488, while the date of Diirer's death is 1528, just 

 forty years later. 



Schongauer, though a generation before Diirer, was scarcely 

 inferior to him in the use of the graver, but Diirer has a much 

 greater reputation due in a large measure to his singular imagi- 

 native powers. Schongauer is the first great engraver who is 

 known to us by name, although he was preceded by an unknown 

 German master who is called " the Master of 1466." He had 

 Gothic notions of art, but used the graver skillfully in his own 

 way ; conceiving of line and shade as separate elements, yet shad- 

 ing with an evident desire to follow the form of the thing shaded, 

 and with lines in various directions. 



Schongauer's art is a great stride in advance, and we find in 

 him an evident pleasure in the bold use of the graver ; his outline 

 and shade were better blended, the shade being done more by the 

 use of curved lines than is found in the works of those before 

 him. 



Diirer continued Schongauer's curved shading with increasing 

 delicacy and skill, and as he found himself able to perform feats 

 with the graver which amused both himself and his buyers, he 

 overloaded his plates with quantities of living and inanimate 

 objects, each of which he finished with as much care as if it were 

 the most important thing in the composition. 



The engravers of those days had no conception of any neces- 

 sity for subordinating one part of their work to another ; they 



