In Italy the older style of woodcuts in simple outline continued to be followed long after it was abandoned in the North. The designs in Italian books up to the year 1530, when cross-hatching was introduced, do not differ essentially in character from those of which examples have already been given. The names of the artists who produced them are either obscure or unknown, excepting Leonardo da Vinci, to whom are ascribed the cuts in Luca Pacioli’s volume, De Proportione Divina, published in 1509, and Marc Antonio Raimondi (1478-1534), to whom are ascribed the remarkably excellent cuts in a volume entitled Epistole et Evangelii Volgari Hystoriade, published in 1512 in Venice. From the first, Venice (Fig. 56) had been the chief seat of wood-engraving in Italy, and now became the rival of Lyons. The most distinguished of the group of artists who produced woodcuts in that city was Nicolo Boldrini (c. 1550), who designed several engravings (Fig. 59) after Titian (1476?-1575) with such boldness and force that some writers have believed Titian to have drawn the design on the block for Boldrini to engrave. The works of Titian and other Venetian painters were reproduced in the same way by Francesco da Nanto (c. 1530); and by other artists, like Giovanni Battista del Porto (c. 1500), Domenico delle Greche (c. 1550), and Giuseppe Scolari (c. 1580), who also sometimes made woodcuts from their own designs. Besides these engravings, some very large cuts, similar to those which the German artists had attempted, were printed from several blocks; but they have little interest. The illustrations in Vesalius’s Anatomy, published at Bâsle in 1543, in which wood-engraving was first employed as an aid to scientific exposition, were designed in Venice by Jean Calcar, a pupil of Titian, and are of extraordinary merit. Finally, in the cuts by Cesare Vecellio (1550-1606) for the volume entitled Habiti Antiche e Moderne, published in 1590, Venetian wood-engraving produced its last excellent work—so excellent, indeed, that the designs have been attributed to Titian himself, who was the uncle of Vecellio.
The Italians devoted themselves with especial ardor to wood-engraving in chiaroscuro, and from the time when Ugo da Carpi introduced it in Venice it was practised by many artists. Nearly all of those designers who have been mentioned left works in chiaroscuro engraving as well as in the ordinary manner. Beside them, Antonio da Trento (c. 1530), Giuseppe Nicolo (c. 1525), Andrea Andreani (c. 1600), and Bartolemeo Coriolano (c. 1635) produced chiaroscuro engravings which are now much valued and sought for by collectors of prints. The Italian love of color led these artists into this application of wood-engraving, which must be regarded as a wrongly-directed and unfruitful effort of the art to obtain results beyond its powers. The Italians had been the first to discover the capacity of wood-engraving as an art of design, but they never developed it as it was developed in Germany; when they gave up the early simple manner in which they had achieved great results, and began to follow the later manner, the great age of Italy was near its close, and the arts felt the weakening influences of the rapid decline in the vigor of society. At Venice the arts remained for a while longer powerful and illustrious, and wood-engraving shared in the excellence which characterized all the artistic work of that city; but the place which wood-engraving held in the estimation of the Venetians appears to have been far lower than its place in the North, where it was popular and living, highly valued and widely influential as it could not be in any Italian city. At last in Italy, as in France, it died out altogether, and was no longer heard of as a fine art.
In the Netherlands the art had been practised continuously from the time of the Block-books with varying success, but, excepting in the works of Lukas van Leyden (1494-1533), it had produced nothing of great value. In the sixteenth century Hendrick Goltzius (1558-1617) designed some woodcuts in the common manner as well as chiaroscuro engravings, and Christopher van Sichem (c. 1620) some woodcuts in the ordinary manner, which have some worth. The only work of high excellence was due to Christopher Jegher (c. 1620-1660), who engraved some large designs which Rubens (1577-1640) drew upon the block; they are inferior to Boldrini’s reproductions of Titian’s designs, but are free, bold, and effective, and succeed in reproducing the designs characterized by the vehement energy of Rubens’s style. Rembrandt (1606-1665) also gave some attention to the art which the older masters had prized, and left one small portrait in wood-engraving by his own hand. His example was followed by his pupils, Jean Livens (1607-1663) and Theodore De Bray (c. 1650), whose cuts are characterized by the style of their master.