44'- ENGRAVING. 



till at least ten years afterwards. The earliest prints that ar 

 known to be theirs are a set of the seven plan* ts, and an almanac 

 by way of frontispiece; on which are directions for finding faster 

 from 1465 to 1517 inclusive : and we may be assured that tht- en- 

 gravings were not antedated, as the almanac would have thus ireen 

 lessvaluable. These prints must therefore have been executed in 

 146-4, which is only four years later than the Italians claim. The 

 three earliest Italian engravers are Finiguerra, Boticelli, and Bal- 

 dini. If we are to refer these prints to any of the three, we shall 

 naturally conclude them to be the work of Finiguerra or Baldini ; 

 for they are not equal either in drawing or composition to those 

 ascribed to Boticeili, which we know at least were designed by 

 him ; and as Baldini is expressly said to have worked from thp de. 

 signs of Boticelli, it will appear most probable that they belong to 

 Finiguerra. With respect to the invention of etching, it seems to 

 be not well known to whom it is to be ascribed. One of the most 

 early specimens is the print by Albert Durer, known by the name 

 of th Cannon, dated 1518, and thought by some, with little foun- 

 dation, to have been worked on a plate of iron. Another etching 

 by the same artist is Moses receiving the tables of the law. dated 

 1524. It was also practised in Italy soon after this by Parme- 

 giano, in whose etchings we discover the band of the artist work- 

 ing out a system as it were from his own imagination, and striving 

 to prodtice the forms he wanted to express. We see the difficulty 

 he laboured under, and cannot doubt, from the examination of the 

 mechanical p irt of the execution of his works, that he had no in- 

 struction; and that it was something entirely new to him. If the 

 story is true, that he kept an engraver by profession in his house, 

 the novelty of the art is rendered so much the more probable. He 

 died in 1540. As to that spccu-s of engraving in which the modes 

 of etching and cutting with the graver are united, it must have been 

 found necessary immediately upon the invention of etching ; it was, 

 however, first carried to perfection by G. Audran, and is now al- 

 most universally practised, whether tiie work is in strokes or in 

 dots. Engraving in dots, the present fashionable method, is a very 

 old invention, and the only mode discovered by the Italians. Agos. 

 tino de Musis, commonly called Augustine of Venice, a pupil of 

 Marc Antonio, used it in several of his earliest works, but confined 

 it to the flesh, as in the undated print of an old man seated upon a 

 bank, with a cottage in the back ground. He flourished from 1509 



