ENGRAVING 283 



The practice of making paper from rags, without which the former art would have 

 proved comparatively useless, had been adopted generally throughout Europe towards 

 the end of the fourteenth century, whereby the chief obstacle to printing was 

 removed. 



Not very long after the discovery of plate-printing, the engravers, separating them- 

 selves from the mamifacturing goldsmiths and chasers, formed themselves into a dis- 

 tinct body, opened schools for pupils, and took up their rightful position among the 

 artists of the time. 



Italy and Germany have each contended for the honour of being the first discoverers 

 of the art of printing from engraved plates ; but the best authorities give to the former 

 country the priority of claim, though the Germans, to whom the printing press was 

 earliest known, soon surpassed their rivals, both in that art and in engraving : but 

 they have not always maintained the superiority. 



The principal Italian engravers, contemporary with, or immediately following Fini- 

 guerra, were Baldini, Botticelli, and Andrew Mantegna ; in Germany, the names of 

 Martin Schon, who began his career about the year 1460, and engraved his own com- 

 positions, Israel van Mecheln, Leydenwurf, andWolgemuth, stand prominently forward ; 

 but it was not till the commencement of the sixteenth century, that engraving occupied 

 a high position among the arts of either country. Singularly enough, Italy, Germany, 

 and Holland produced each an engraver, whose works to this day are held in the 

 highest estimation : while Marc Antonio Eaimondi (born at Bologna, in 1488), and 

 Albert Diirer (born at Nuremberg, in 1471), were respectively practising the art in 

 Italy and Germany, Lucas van Leyden (born at Leyden, in 1494) disputed in the 

 Low Countries the palm with these distinguished competitors. As these artists have 

 ever been considered the patriarchs of engraving, a few words respecting the merits of 

 each may not inappropriately be introduced here. 



Travelling to Venice for improvement, Marc Antonio saw there some prints, by 

 Albert Diirer, of the Life of the Virgin ; these he copied with tolerable fidelity; he soon, 

 however, quitted Venice, and went to Home, where he made the acquaintance of 

 Kafiaelle, a large number of whose works he engraved. ' The purity of his outlines,' 

 says Bryan, the beautiful character and expression of his heads, and the correct 

 drawings of the extremities, establish his merits as a perfect master of design.' His 

 works frequently exhibit a deficiency in reflex light and harmony of ckiar-oscuro, and 

 he appears to have been ignorant of the principles of rendering local colour, or tints, 

 in the abstract ; neither did he attempt, or else was unable, to express the various 

 textures of substances : these are, however, minor defects by comparison, and may 

 easily be excused when the state of art generally at that period is taken into account. 

 ' Eaffaelle,' says Landseer, ' was Mark Antonio's object ; and the blandishments, the 

 splendour, and the variety which would have been indispensably necessary to the 

 translation of Correggio or Titian, were not called for here.' 



Albert Diirer, the head of the German school of engraving, laboured under disad- 

 vantages with which the artists of Italy had not to contend : the latter had frequently, 

 if not constantly, the graceful forms and flowing outlines of antique sculpture made 

 familiar to them: and hence their works exhibit, even from the earliest time, much 

 greater elegance of manner, and refinement in execution, than those of Germany. 

 The engravings by Diirer, whom Landseer supposes to be the first who corroded his 

 plates with aqua-fortis, partake largely of the stiff, dry, and Gothic manner, peculiar 

 to the country and the period, and which to this day is more or less discernible in 

 German art. If Diirer had been so fortunate as to have had the pictures of EafFaelle 

 to engrave, he would doubtless have left the world prints of a very different character 

 from those we now see : we should have had more grace of expression, and freedom 

 of lines, but less originality in the style of execution, and probably, less vigour. 

 Diirer engraved _ only his own designs, and his faults or defects were those of his 

 time : but notwithstanding his Gothic bondage, nothing that has ever appeared in 

 more recent periods surpasses, in executive excellence, his ' St. Jerome seated in a 

 Room ; ' here all the objects are rendered with a fidelity that only the camera could 

 emulate. That very remarkable and mysterious composition known as ' The Death's 

 Head/ ia also a masterly example of execution : the helmet, with all its pomp of 1 

 heraldic appendage, and the actual and reflex lights on its polished surface, are 

 characteristically, though minutely, expressed: the skull is accurately drawn, and 

 its bony substance unmistakably described. The head of the Satyr, with its beard 

 and wild redundance of snaky tangled hair, has considerable and well-managed 

 breadth of light and shade : the drapery of the female, quaint as it is in style, is not, 

 as we^see it in Durer's other works, hard, stiff, and formal, but relaxes into freedom 

 and simplicity, and has quite a silky texture ; in fact, it approaches very nearly to 

 what we now call picturesque composition of forms, and light and shade.' Durer's 

 etching appears to have been bitten in, or corroded with the acid, at once. He seems 



