the Virgin by her Son the Redeemer, in presence of Saints and Angels; it contains nearly thirty minute figures most exquisitely designed. This relic is preserved in the Royal Library at Paris, where it was discovered lying among some old Italian engravings by the Abbé Zani. The date of the work is fixed beyond all dispute; for the record of the payment of sixtysix gold ducats (327. sterling) to Maso Finiguerra for this identical pax still exists, dated 1452. The only existing impression from it must have been made previously, perhaps a few weeks or months before. It is now, like the first woodcut, framed and hung up in the Royal Library at Paris for the inspection of the curious: a reduced copy is given in the annexed illustration.

Another method of trying the effect of niello-work before it was quite completed was by taking the impression of the design, not on paper, but on sulphur, of which some curious and valuable specimens remain. After seeing several impressions of niello plates of the fifteenth century, we are no longer surprised to find. skilful goldsmiths converted into excellent painters and sculptors.*

We have no evidence that it occurred to Maso Finiguerra, or any other niello-worker, to engrave designs on plates of copper for the express purpose of making and multiplying impressions of them on paper. The first who did this as a trade or profession was

* In our own time this art, after having been forgotten since the sixteenth century, when it fell into disuse, has been very successfully revived by Mr. Wagner, a goldsmith of Berlin, now residing at Paris.

Baccio Baldini, who, about 1467, employed several painters, particularly Sandro Botticelli and Filippino Lippi, to make designs for him to engrave. Andrea Mantegna caught up the idea with a kind of enthusiasm: he made the first experiment when about sixty, and, according to Lanzi, he engraved, during the sixteen remaining years of his life, not less than fifty plates: of these about thirty are now known to collectors, and considered genuine. Among them are his own designs for the Triumph of Julius Cæsar (the fifth, sixth, and seventh compartments only).

Familiar as we now are with all kinds of copperplate and wood-engraving, there are persons who do not understand clearly the difference between them. Independent of the difference of the material on which they are executed, the grand distinction between the two arts is this that the copperplate engraver cuts out the lines by which the impression is produced, which are thus left hollow, and afterwards filled up with ink; the impression is produced by laying a piece of wet paper on the plate and passing them together under a heavy and perfectly even roller. The method of the engraver on wood is precisely the reverse. He cuts away all the surrounding surface of the block of wood, and leaves the lines which are to produce the impression prominent; they are afterwards blackened with ink like a stamp, and the impression taken with a common printingpress.

When Andrea Mantegna made his first essays in engraving on copper he does not seem to have used a press or roller; perhaps he was unacquainted with that

implement. At all events the early impressions of his plates have evidently been taken by merely laying the paper on the copper-plate and then rubbing it over with the hand; and they are very faint and spiritless compared with the later impressions taken with a press.

COMMENCEMENT OF

THE VENETIAN SCHOOL.

THE BELLINI.

A.D. 1421 TO A.D. 1516.

JACOPO BELLINI, the father, had studied painting under Gentile da Fabriano, of whom we have spoken as the scholar, or at least the imitator, of the famous monk Angelico da Fiesole. To express his gratitude and veneration for his instructor, Jacopo gave the name of Gentile to his eldest son: the second and most famous of the two was christened Giovanni (John); in the Venetian dialect Gian Bellini.

The sister of the Bellini being married to Andrea Mantegna, who exercised for forty years a sort of patriarchal authority over all the painters of northern Italy, it is singular that he should have had so little influence over his Venetian relatives. It is true the elder brother, Gentile, had always a certain leaning to Mantegna's school, and was fond of studying from a mutilated antique Venus which he kept in his studio. But the genius of his brother Gian Bellini was formed altogether