The love of colour, which is born in all Italians, led them to develop a process of making pictures in chiaroscuro—by printing several wood-blocks one upon another, each block giving a separate tint. In fact, it was the beginning of the modern colour-printing. The invention of the new process was claimed by Ugo da Carpi, who reproduced several of the designs of Raphael. In the beginning of the next century we find pictures printed in four different colours—trying to imitate water-colour, or, rather, distemper drawings. (See p. [99].)
At Lyons, about the same time, there was an illustrated edition of 'Terence' published, with well-executed woodcuts, from which we are able to give only the frontispiece, 'The Author writing his book.' It is sufficient to show that the engraving is the work of a practised hand.
CHAPTER VI
IN FRANCE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY
Before we begin our brief history of wood-engraving in France it will be well to speak of the technical part of the new art in the fifteenth century. We have already stated that the engraving of the 'St. Christopher' and other large prints were cut with a knife on planks of apple or pear or other close-grained wood; but there has always been much doubt about the small book illustrations which appeared in various countries quite at the end of the century. The discovery, however, of some engraved blocks of metal solved the difficulty. In those days workers in metal were to be found in all large towns; the age of moulding and casting everything that could be cast had not then arrived: of course, coins and medals were made in the foundry; but handwork of the most perfect kind on metal was as common as wood-carving for the churches.
Experts have discovered twisted lines in some of the old prints; a line in a woodcut may easily be broken but it can hardly be bent, and it is now asserted that many of the woodcuts, including the beautiful initial letters in Fust and Schoeffer's 'Psalter,' were really engraved on metal. The view of London at the head of the first page of the Illustrated London News is, we are told, cut in brass; Mulready's well-known envelope, engraved on brass by the celebrated wood-engraver, John Thompson, may be seen in the South Kensington Museum; and scores of other examples of metalwork of this kind might be cited.