Fig. 33.—MARTIN SCHONGAUER.
St. John the Evangelist.
The Master of 1466 may, indeed, be regarded as the Finiguerra of Germany, because he was the first in his own country to raise to the dignity of an art what had been only an industrial process in the hands of talentless workmen. Like wood engraving, intaglio engraving, such as we see it in German prints some years before the works of the Master of 1466, had only succeeded in spreading abroad, in the towns on the banks of the Rhine, productions of a rude or grotesque symbolism, in which, notwithstanding recent attempts to exaggerate their value, a want of technical experience was as evident as extreme poverty of conception. These archæological curiosities can have no legitimate place amongst works of art, and we may without injustice take still less account of them, as the rapid progress made by the Master of 1466 throws their inferiority into greater relief. If the anonymous artist called the Master of 1466 be the true founder of the German school of engraving; if he show himself cleverer than any of the Italian engravers of the period—from the point of view only of practical execution, and the right handling of the tool—it does not necessarily follow that he holds the same priority in talent as he certainly holds in order of time before all other engravers of the same age and country. One of these, Martin Schongauer, called also "handsome Martin," or for short, "Martin Schon," may have a better right to the highest place. Endowed with more imagination than the Master of 1466, with a deeper feeling for truth and a clearer instinct for beauty, he displays at least equal dexterity in the conduct of the work and in the handling of the graver. Assuredly, if we compare Martin Schongauer's prints with the beautiful Flemish or French engravings of the seventeenth century, the combinations of lines which satisfied the German engraver cannot fail to appear insufficient, or even archaically simple; but if we compare them with the engraved work of all countries in the fifteenth century, it will be acknowledged that, even as a technical worker, the master of Colmar[19] exhibited a striking superiority over all his contemporaries. Such plates as the "Flight into Egypt," the "Death of the Virgin," the "Wise Virgins," and the "Foolish Virgins," are distinguished above all by power and by grace of expression; but to these ideal qualities there is added so much firmness of drawing, and so much decision of handling, that, in spite of all subsequent progress, they deserve to be numbered with those which most honour the art of engraving.
Fig. 34.—MARTIN SCHONGAUER.
Jesus Betrayed by Judas.
Fig. 35.—MARTIN SCHONGAUER.
The Entombment.