It is well known that the art of chasing on metal dates from prehistoric times, but the art of engraving for the purpose of taking and multiplying impressions on paper or similar fabric can be traced with certainty no earlier than the fifteenth century. Obvious, as the process now seems to us, it is related that accident alone gave it a beginning in Italy. It was the Florentine goldsmith's delight to produce the work called "niello," consisting of engraved sunken designs on metal, into which, when finished, was poured the tough and nearly indestructible enamel termed "nigellum." In the process of tracing these designs it was of course desirable to ascertain accurately how the work progressed, and the cumbrous practice existed of taking casts of the work in its incipient stages in fine clay, which were then reversed in sulphur, and the lines filled with black to bring out the pattern.

Chance revealed the fact that by filling the lines of the original design with oil and lampblack an impression might be taken directly on damp linen or paper, and this simple method soon superseded the older and more complicated process.

In Italy our earliest print is one of these "niello" trial pieces the impress of a "Pax" engraved between 1450 and 1452, for the Church of St. John at Florence, by Tomaso Finiguerra. In this celebrated design of the "Coronation of the Virgin" the figures are full and rounded, the facial expressions various, and the fall of the draperies easy and natural. The advanced character of the execution forbids the prevalent impression of Finiguerra's position as an originator of his art, but the reversed position of the figures and of the inscription proves that the plate was not originally designed as one from which prints were to be taken.

It is doubtful whether a similar accident gave rise to the art in Germany, although German "nielli" of archaic type are not unknown. There, however, wood engraving seems to have the precedence in date. Our earliest wood-cut illustration whose date is generally conceded (1423) is the celebrated and familiar "St. Christopher" in Earl Spencer's library at Althorp. This famous print was found in 1769, pasted in the cover of a fifteenth century manuscript, by Heineken, the Keeper of the Dres

den prints, at the Chartreuse Convent of Buxheim. Priority is disputed with this principally by the print known as the "Brussels Virgin" of 1418, found at Malines, in 1844, in the cover of an old chest; but the jealous critics do not agree in regard to the genuineness of the assigned date in the inscription. The National Library of Paris boasts of two prints to which the date of 1406 may with probability be assigned, but upon external and purely circumstantial evidence.

Turning attention now to the early German engravers we are reminded of the large class of early prints by the anonymous masters" or "monogramists," preceding, perhaps, the productions of known artists. The mention of the masters of 1446, of 1451, of 1464, or of the "Banderoles," of 1466, the master of the letters M. Q. and he of the Gothic letters E. S. calls up the curious story of many rare or even unique prints. It is a commentary upon the value of fame and of the most careful endeavors to preserve it, that so large a number of impressions have descended to us, bearing the stamp of individual hands and often carefully designed cyphers or trade marks, and quite often a recorded date, yet the names of their designers have either wholly perished or are preserved only in faint and varying traditions.

Most of these "masters" indicate by their handiwork an early stage of the engraver's profession. The disappearance of their names may be thought to argue no recognized or immediate novelty in the art they practiced; yet it is not to be denied that nearly all the examples of these early masters show traces of the goldsmith's hand. A tendency of shading to parallelism in the lines, unmarked by cross-hatchings (which was a treatment used by niello workers) is almost universal, as is also an archaic draughtsmanship both in figure and perspective.

A strongly marked example of the method of shading spoken of is, however, found, in the comparatively late Italian prints of Mantagna (1431–1503), but this is an exceptionally late preservation of the method, and the master of E. S. shows the prevailing practice in Germany in the middle of the century. The works of all the anonymous masters are pervaded with a purely Gothic feeling, marked by mannered and ungainly figures, and draperies fluttering in sharp angular folds; de