390 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1890. 



difference in size. It is hardly necessary to point out that both, so 

 far as the means of expression are concerned, rest absolutely upon 

 the same system, although the modern artist displays not only greater 

 skill in the use of these means, but also more refined powers of obser- 

 vation. Their homogeneity is due to the fact that they are drawn with 

 white lines upon a black ground, and this again is explained by the 

 farther fact that both were executed with the graver for relief -'printing. 

 That the latter statement must be true will be easily seen when it is 

 considered that the white line is the natural product of the graver in 

 its application to relief-engraving, and that consequently the blade line 

 is used in this hind of engraving only where it can not be avoided ; 

 that is to say, in those passages in which forms have to be indicated 

 on a light ground or in high light. This explains also wh3 r we find 

 in the " dotted prints " of the fifteenth century the combination of white 

 lines on black and of black lines on white, which has seemed to some 

 investigators to be so curious, and even "irrational." The same com- 

 bination is found in the wood-engravings of the nineteenth century. 

 But while, owing to lack of skill, it produces an unpleasant crudeuess 

 in the works of the relief engravers of the middle ages, no such crude- 

 uess is apparent in the productions of the woodeugravers of to-day, 

 because they have refiued the means of expression to a degree of which 

 their mediaeval predecessors had not the remotest idea, without in the 

 least altering the principle iuvolved. 



It is literally true, therefore, as stated at the outset, that the so-called 

 "dotted prints" of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, although exe- 

 cuted in the great majority of cases on metal, are simply premature 

 precursors of modern white-line engraving. The fact that they were 

 premature, and that white-line engraving could not develop at the time, 

 but was doomed to die away again after it had hardly made a crude 

 beginning, finds ready explanation in the conditions of the period in 

 which it arose. 



The aim of the reproductive arts in their infancy was simply the 

 rendering of draivings. It would have been quite impossible for them 

 to attempt the suggestion of the effects of painting as it is understood 

 today, not only because the skill was wanting, but also because such 

 effects were not as yet within the grasp of art. It was reserved for the 

 painters of Venice and of the Netherlands to take this step at a consid- 

 erably later period. The goldsmith, therefore, who desired to become a 

 reproductive artist, took up his graver as an instrument with which he 

 was familiar, and with it he produced, on the copper plate and aided 

 by intaglio-printing, black lines and dots on a white ground, as in draw- 

 ing. On the other hand, the first artists who endeavored to produce 

 blocks for relief-printing chose a board and a knife, very likely in imi- 

 tation of the "form-cutters," or makers of wooden molds and stamps, 

 which was an old trade. The knife they were compelled to adhere to, 



