[22] Herr Moriz Thausing has treated this question exhaustively in his important work on Albert Dürer.
[23] The oldest known dated engraving by Marc Antonio, the "Pyramus and Thisbe," bears the date of 1505. If Marc Antonio, as we have reason to think, was born about 1480, he must have been already over twenty when he published this extremely commonplace print.
[24] Michael Huber ("Manuel des Curieux et des Amateurs de l'Art," t. iii.) says, word for word: "All that is wanted in these prints is a richer handling and that general aspect which we admire in the subjects engraved from Rubens." One might as well say that Petrarch's style would be improved by being Ariosto's.
[25] Agostino Caracci, who deserves to be numbered amongst the cleverest engravers of the end of the sixteenth century, did not blush to devote his talents to a similar publication, serious in style, but of most obscene intention. The Bolognese artist, like his celebrated countryman, seems to have wished to display at once his science and his shamelessness. The one only serves to make the other more inexcusable, and it is even still more difficult to tolerate this austere immodesty than the licentiousness, without æsthetic pretension, which characterises the little French prints sold under the rose in the eighteenth century.
[26] Passavant: "Le Peintre-Graveur," iii. 5.
[27] "Les Maîtres d'Autrefois," p. 165.
[28] In the National Library at Paris a collection of over a hundred trial proofs, retouched by Rubens himself, exists to bear witness to the careful attention with which he overlooked the work of his engravers.
[29] At the time of Callot's birth Lorraine was not yet French territory; but as it was during his life that Nancy was taken by the king's army, we have a right to include him among French artists.
[30] He was in all twelve years in Italy: three in Rome, and nine in Florence.
[31] William Faithorne, the first line engraver worth mentioning in the history of English art, did not even begin to be known till after Charles I. After the king's fall, Faithorne, who was a Royalist, went to France, where, under Nanteuil, he perfected himself in his art, and did not finally settle in England till near the end of 1650.