RELATION OF ENGRAVING TO OTHER ARTS. 275 



merely another person of a pleasant society, but another 

 chapter of a Sibylline book. 



50. For this reason, then, I do not want Sir Joshua or 

 Velasquez in my defined group ; and for my present purpose, 

 I can spare from it even four others : namely, three who have 

 too special gifts, and must each be separately studied Cor- 

 reggio, Carpaccio, Tin to ret ; and one who has no special gift, 

 but a balanced group of many Cima. This leaves twenty- 

 one for classification, of whom I will ask you to lay hold thus. 

 You must continually have felt the difficulty caused by the 

 names of centuries not tallying with their years ; the year 

 1201 being the first of the 13th century, and so on. I am 

 always plagued by it myself, much as I have to think and write 

 with reference to chronology ; and I mean for the future, in 

 our art chronology, to use as far as possible a different form 

 of notation. 



51. In my diagram the vertical lines are the divisions of 

 tens of years ; the thick black lines divide the centuries. The 

 horizontal lines, then, at a glance, tell you the length and date 

 of each artist's life. In one or two instances I cannot find the 

 date of birth ; in one or two more, of death ; and the line in- 

 dicates then only the ascertained * period during which the 

 ertist worked. 



And, thus represented, you see nearly all their lives run 

 through the year of a new century ; so that if the lines repre- 

 senting them were needles, and the black bars of the years 

 1300, 1400, 1500 were magnets, I could take up nearly all the 

 needles by lifting the bars. 



52. I will actually do this, then, in three other simple dia- 

 grams. I place a rod for the year 1300 over the lines of life, 

 and I take up all it touches. I have to drop Niccola Pisano, 

 but I catch five. Now, with my rod of 1400, I have dropped 

 Orcagna indeed, but I again catch five. Now, with my rod of 

 1500, I indeed drop Filippo Lippi and Verrocchio, but I catch 

 seven. And here I have three pennons, with the staves of the 



* 'Ascertained,' scarcely any date ever is, quite satisfactorily. The 

 diagram only represents what is practically and broadly true. I may 

 have to modify it greatly in detail. 



