The engravings of the Flemish school in Rubens' time are still widely distributed. There are few people who have not had the opportunity of admiring the "Thomiris," the "St. Roch Praying for the Plague-Stricken," or the "Portrait of Rubens," by Pontius; the "Descent from the Cross," by Vorsterman; the "Fall of the Damned," by Soutman; and a hundred other pieces as beautiful, all engraved from the master by his pupils. And who does not know that marvellous masterpiece, the "Crown of Thorns," engraved by Bolswert from Van Dyck? and those other masterpieces of Van Dyck himself—the etched portraits of artists or amateurs, the painter's friends from the two Breughels to Cornelis, from Franz Snyders to Philip Le Roy?
Fig. 57.—VAN DYCK.
Etched by Himself.
The progress, however, by which the Flemish school of engraving had distinguished itself, soon had an equivalent in the movement of reform in Holland. Towards the end of the sixteenth century, and on from the beginning of the seventeenth, the Dutch engravers, by dint of insisting too strongly on the innovations of Lucas van Leyden, had almost succeeded in causing scientific ease of handling to degenerate into mere trickery, and spirit of design into inflation and turbulence. Amongst the first, and with greater authority than any, Cornelius Visscher set himself to stay the art of line engraving on its downward course.
Fig. 58.—CORNELIUS VISSCHER.
The Seller of Ratsbane.
Most of the scenes represented by Visscher are assuredly not of a nature greatly to interest the imagination, still less to touch the heart. It would be somewhat difficult to be moved to any philosophical or poetic thought by the contemplation of such work as the "Frying-Pan," or the "Seller of Ratsbane;" but these, though the ideas by which they are suggested are trivial or commonplace, are treated with a deep feeling for truth, with admirable craftsmanship, and with an amount of sincerity and boldness which makes up for the absence of beauty, whether in thought or type. Considered only from the point of view of execution, the plates of Visscher are masterpieces; are such marvels, indeed, that they cannot be too carefully studied by all engravers, whatever the style of their work.
