FIRST ATTEMPTS AT INTAGLIO ENGRAVING. THE NIELLI OF THE
FLORENTINE GOLDSMITHS. PRINTS BY THE ITALIAN AND GERMAN
PAINTER-ENGRAVERS OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY
We have seen that Gutenberg's permanent improvements in the method of
printing resulted in the substitution, so far as written speech was
concerned, of a mode of reproduction almost infinitely fruitful, and
even rapid when compared to the slowness and the limited resources of
the xylographic method. Typography was destined to abolish the use of
block printing, and more particularly of caligraphy, which, till then,
had occupied so many pious and patient hands both in monasteries and in
schools. The art of printing from engravings worked similar mischief
to the illuminator's craft. Such were, before long, the natural
consequences of the progress made; and, we may add, such had been from
the first the chief object of these innovations.
Perhaps this double revolution, so potent in its general effect and
in its influence on modern civilisation, may have appeared to those
engaged in it no more important than a purely industrial improvement.
Surely, for instance, we do no injustice to Gutenberg if we accept
with some reserve the vast political and philosophical ideas, and the
purposes of universal enfranchisement, with which he has been sometimes
credited? Probably the views of the inventor of printing reached
neither so far nor so high. He did not intend to figure as an apostle,
nor did he regard himself as devoted to a philanthropic mission, as we
should put it in the present day. He considered himself no more than a
workman with a happy thought, when he proposed to replace the lengthy
and costly labours of the copyist by a process so much cheaper and so
much more expeditious.
A somewhat similar idea had already occurred to the xylographic
printers. Even the title of one of the first books published by them,
the "Biblia Pauperum," or "Bible for the Poor," proved their wish to
place within the reach of the masses an equivalent to those illuminated
manuscript copies which were only obtainable by the rich. One glance at
the ancient xylographic collections is enough to disclose the spirit
in which such work was undertaken, and the design with which it was
conceived. The new industry imitated in every particular the appearance
of those earlier works due to the pen of the scribe or to the brush of
the illuminator; and, perhaps, the printers themselves, speculating
on the want of discernment in the purchasing public, thought less of
exposing the secret of their method than of maintaining an illusion.
In most of the xylographic books, indeed, the first page is quite
without ornamentation. There are neither chapter-headings nor
ornamental capitals; the blank space seems to await the hand of the
illuminator, who should step in to finish the work of the printer, and
complete the resemblance between the printed books and the manuscript.
Gutenberg followed; and even he, although less closely an imitator of
caligraphy, did not himself disdain at first to practise some deception
as to the nature of his method. It is said that the Bible he printed
at Mayence was sold as manuscript; and the letterpress is certainly
not accompanied by any technical explanation, or by any note of the
printer's name or the mode of fabrication. Not till somewhat later,
when he published the "Catholicon," did Gutenberg avow that he had
printed this book "without the help of reed, quill, or stylus, but
by means of a marvellous array of moulds and punches." Even in this
specimen of a process already settled and finally disclosed to the
public, the capital letters were left blank in the printing, and were
afterwards filled in with brush or pen. It was a farewell salutation
to the past, and the latest appearance of that old art which was now
doomed to pass away before the new, and to leave the field to the
products of the press.
Did the inventor of the art of printing from plates cut in intaglio,
like the inventor of the art of typography, only wish at first to
extend to a larger public what had hitherto been reserved for the
favoured few? Was early engraving but a weapon turned against the
monopoly of the miniature painter? We might be tempted to think so,
from the number of manuscripts belonging to the second half of the
fifteenth century, in which coloured prints, surrounded by borders
also coloured, are set opposite a printed text, apparently in order to
imitate as nearly as possible the familiar aspect of illuminated books.
Next in turn came printed books with illustrations, and loose sheets
published separately for every-day use. The Italian engravers, even
before they began to adorn with the burin those works which have been
the most frequently illustrated--such, for instance, as the religious
handbooks and the poem of Dante--employed the new process from as early
as 1465, to assure their calendars a wider publicity. But let us return
to the time when engraving was yet in its early stages, and when--by
chance, by force of original genius, or by the mere completion of
what had been begun by other hands--a Florentine goldsmith, one Maso
Finiguerra, succeeded in fixing on paper the impression of a silver
plate on which lines had been engraved in intaglio and filled with
black.
Finiguerra's great glory does not, however, lie in the solution of
the practical difficulty. Amongst the Italians none before him had
ever thought of trying to print from a work engraved in incised
line or intaglio on metal; and therefore, at least, in his own
country, he deserved the honours of priority. But the invention of
the process--that is, in the absolute and literal sense of its name,
the notion of reproducing burin work by printing--was certainly not
peculiar to Finiguerra. Unconscious of what was passing elsewhere,
he may have been the first in Florence to attempt this revolution in
art; but, beyond the frontiers of Italy, many had already employed
for the necessities of trade that method which it was his to turn
into a powerful instrument of art. His true glory consists in the
unexpected authority with which he inaugurated the movement. Although
it may be true that there are prints a few years older than any
Florentine niello--the German specimens of 1446, discovered but the
other day by M. Renouvier,[15] or the "Virgin" of 1451 described by
M. Passavant[16]--it cannot change the real date of the invention of
engraving; that date has been written by the hand of a man of talent,
the first engraver worthy of the name of artist.
That Finiguerra was really the inventor of engraving, because he
dignified the new process by the striking ability with which he used
it, and proved his power where his contemporaries had only exhibited
their weakness, must be distinctly laid down, even at the risk of
scandalising some of the learned. He has the same right to celebrity
as Gutenberg, who, like him, was but the discoverer of a decisive
advance; the same right also as Nicolò Pisano and Giotto, the real
founders of the race of the Great Masters, and, truly speaking, the
first painter and the first sculptor who appeared in Italy, although
neither sculpture nor painting were even novelties at the moment of
their birth. As a mere question of date, the "Pax" of Florence may
not be the earliest example of engraving; be it so. But in which of
these earlier attempts, now so much acclaimed as arguments against
the accepted tradition, can we glean even the faintest promise of the
merits which distinguish that illustrious engraving? He who wrought it
is no usurper; his fame is a legitimate conquest.
It is a singular coincidence that the discovery of printing and that of
the art of taking proofs on paper from a plate engraved in intaglio,
or, to speak more exactly, that the final improvements of both these
processes, should have sprung up almost simultaneously, one in Italy
and the other in Germany. There is only an interval of two years
between the time when Finiguerra printed his first engraving in 1452,
and the time when Gutenberg exhibited his first attempts at printing
in 1454. Till then, copies drawn, painted, or written by hand had been
the only efficient means of reproduction. None, even amongst those
most capable of original thought or action, considered it beneath them
to set forth the thought of others. Boccaccio and Petrarch exchanged
whole books of Livy or of Cicero which they had patiently transcribed,
and monkish or professional artists copied on the vellum of missals
the paintings which covered the walls or adorned the altars of their
churches. Such subjects as were engraved on wood were only designed
to stimulate the devotion of the pious. Both by their inadequate
execution, and the special use for which they were intended, they must
rank as industrial products rather than as works of art.
Besides illumination and wood engraving, there was a process sometimes
used to copy certain originals, portraits or fancy subjects, but more
frequently employed by goldsmiths in the decoration of chalices,
reliquaries, and altar canons. This process was nothing but a special
application and combination of the resources belonging to the long
known arts of enamelling and chalcography, which last simply means
engraving on metal. The incised lines made by the graver in a plate
of silver, or of silver and gold combined, were filled with a mixture
of lead, silver, and copper, made more easily fusible by the addition
of a certain quantity of borax and sulphur. This blackish-coloured
mixture (_nigellum_, whence _niello_, _niellare_) left the unengraved
parts exposed, and, in cooling, became encrusted in the furrows where
it had been introduced. After this, the plate, when carefully polished,
presented to the eye the contrast of a design in dull black enamel
traced upon a field of shining metal.
Towards the middle of the fifteenth century this kind of engraving
was much practised in Italy, especially in Florence, where the best
niellatori were to be found. One of them, Tomaso, or for short, Maso
Finiguerra, was, like many goldsmiths of his time, at once an engraver,
a designer, and a sculptor. The drawings attributed to him, his nielli,
and the bas-reliefs partly by him and partly by Antonio Pollajuolo,
would not, perhaps, have been enough to have preserved his memory: it
is his invention--in the degree we mentioned--of the art of printing
intaglio engravings, or rather of the art of engraving itself, that has
made him immortal.
What, however, can seem more simple than this discovery? It is even
difficult to understand why it was not made before, when we remember
not only that the printing of blocks engraved in relief had been
practised since the beginning of the fifteenth century, but that the
niellatori themselves were in the habit of taking, first in clay and
then in sulphur, an impression and a counter-impression of their work
before applying the enamel. What should seem more simple than to have
taken a direct proof on a thin elastic body such as paper? But it is
always easy to criticise after the event, and to point out the road of
progress when the end has been attained. Who knows if to-day there is
not lying at our very hand some discovery which yet we never think of
grasping, and if our present blindness will not be the cause of similar
wonder to our successors?
At any rate, Finiguerra had found the solution of the problem by 1452.
This was put beyond doubt on the day towards the close of the last
century (1797), when Zani discovered, in the Print-Room of the Paris
Library, a niello by Finiguerra printed on paper of indisputable date.
[Illustration: FIG. 16.--FINIGUERRA.
The "Pax" of the Baptistery of St. John at Florence.]
This little print, or rather proof, taken before the plate was put in
niello, of a "Pax"[17] engraved by the Florentine goldsmith for the
Baptistery of St. John, represents the Coronation of the Virgin. It
measures only 130 millimetres by 87. As regards its size, therefore,
the "Coronation" is really only a vignette; but it is a vignette
handled with such knowledge and style, and informed with so deep a
feeling for beauty, that it would bear with perfect impunity the
ordeal of being enlarged a hundred times and transferred to a canvas
or a wall. Its claims as an archæological specimen, and the value that
four centuries have added to this small piece of perishable paper,
must assuredly neither be forgotten nor misunderstood by any one. Yet
he would be ill-advised, on the other hand, who should regard this
masterpiece of art as a mere historical curiosity.
[Illustration: FIG. 17.--ITALIAN NIELLO.
(Fifteenth Century.)]
[Illustration: FIG. 18.
ITALIAN NIELLO. (Fifteenth Century.)]
The rare merits which distinguish Finiguerra's "Coronation" are to be
seen, though much less conspicuously, in a certain number of works
attributed to the same origin. Other pieces engraved at the same time,
and printed under the same conditions by unknown Florentine workmen,
prove that the example given in 1452 had at once created imitators. It
must be remarked, however, that amongst such works, whether attributed
to Finiguerra or to other goldsmiths of the same time and country,
none belong to the class of engravings properly so called. In other
words they are only what we have agreed to call nielli: that is,
proofs on paper of plates designed to be afterwards enamelled, and
not impressions of plates specially and finally intended to be used
for printing. It would almost appear that the master and his first
followers failed to foresee all the results and benefits of this
discovery; that they looked upon it only as a surer test of work than
clay or sulphur casts, as a test process suitable to certain stages of
the labours of the goldsmith. In one word, from the time when he made
his first success till the end of his life, Finiguerra probably only
used the new process to forward his work as a niellatore, without its
ever occurring to him to employ it for its own sake, and in the spirit
of a real engraver.
[Illustration: FIG. 19.--ITALIAN NIELLO.
(Fifteenth Century.)]
Florentine engravings of the fifteenth century, other than in niello,
or those at least whose origin and date are certain, are not only
later than Finiguerra's working days, but are even later than the
year of his death (1470). In Germany, from the very beginning, so
to speak, of the period of initiation, the Master of 1466 and his
disciples were multiplying impressions of their works, and profiting by
the full resources of the new process. In Florence, on the contrary,
there passed about twenty years during which the art seems to have
remained stationary and confined to the same narrow field of practice
as at first. You may visit the richest public or private collections
without meeting (with the exception of works in niello) any authentic
and official specimen of Florentine engraving of the time of which we
speak.[18] You may open books and catalogues, and find no mention of
any engraved subject that can be called a print earlier than those
attributed to Baccio Baldini, or to Botticelli, which only appeared
in the last quarter of the century. Yet it is impossible to find any
explanation of this sterility--of this extraordinary absence of a
school of engravers, in the exact acceptation of the word, outside of
the group of the niellatori.
[Illustration: FIG 20.--BACCIO BALDINI.
Illustration from the "Divina Commedia" of 1481.]
Some years later, however, progress had led to emancipation. The art
of engraving, henceforth free, broke from its industrial servitude,
deserted the traditions of enamelling and chasing, and took
possession of its own domain. There are still to be remarked, of
course, a certain timidity and a certain lack of experience in the
handling of the tool, an execution at once summary and strangely
careful, a mixture of naïve intentions and conventional modes of
expression. But the burin, though only able as yet imperfectly to treat
lines in mass and vary the values of shadows, has mastered the secret
of representing life with precision and elegance of outline, and can
render the facial expression of the most different types. Sacred and
mythological personages, sybils and prophets, madonnas and the gods
of Olympus, the men and women of the fifteenth century, all not only
reveal at the first glance their close pictorial relationship to the
general inclinations and habits of Florentine art of the fourteenth
century, but show us these tendencies continued and confirmed in a
fresh form. The delicacy which charms us in the bas-reliefs and the
pictures of the time; the aspiration, common to contemporary painters
and sculptors, of idealising and heightening the expression of external
facts; the love of rare, exquisite, and somewhat subtle expression, are
to be found in the works left by the painter-engravers who were the
immediate followers of Finiguerra, no less clearly than in the painted
and sculptured subjects on the walls of contemporary churches and
palaces.
[Illustration: FIG. 21.--BACCIO BALDINI.
Theseus and Ariadne.]
Whatever we may suppose to have been the part due to Baccio Baldini, to
Botticelli, to Pollajuolo, or to anybody else; with whatever acuteness
we may discern, or think we discern, the inequalities of style and
the tricks of touch in different men; all their works display a
vigorous unity, which must be carefully taken into account, inasmuch as
it gives its character to the school. Though we should even succeed in
separately labelling with a proper name each one of the works which are
all really dependent on one another, the gain would be small.
[Illustration: FIG. 22.--BACCIO BALDINI.
The Prophet Baruch.]
Provided that neither the qualities nor the meaning of the whole
movement be understood, we may, as regards the distribution of minor
parts, resign ourselves to doubt, and even ignorance, and console
ourselves for the mystery which enshrouds these nameless talents: and
this the more readily that we can with greater impartiality appreciate
their merits in the absence of biographical hypothesis and the
commentaries of the scholar.
[Illustration: FIG. 23.--BACCIO BALDINI.
The Sibyl of Cumæ.]
The prints due to the Florentine painter-engravers who followed
Finiguerra mark a transitional epoch between the first stage of Italian
engraving and the time when the art, having entered upon its period of
virility, used its powers with confidence, and showed itself equal to
any feat. The privileges of fruitfulness and success in this second
phase no longer, it is true, belong wholly to Florence. It would seem
that, after having again and again given birth to so much talent,
Florentine art, exhausted by rapid production, reposed and voluntarily
allowed the neighbouring schools to take her place. Even before the
appearance of Marc Antonio, the most important proofs of skill were
given outside of Tuscany; and if towards the beginning, or at the
beginning, of the sixteenth century, the numerous plates engraved by
Robetta still continued to sustain the reputation of the Florentine
school, such a result was owing far less to the individual talent of
the engraver, than to the charm and intrinsic value of his models.
[Illustration: FIG. 24.--PRINT BELONGING TO THE SET ENTITLED "THE GAME
OF CARDS."]
[Illustration: FIG. 25.--MANTEGNA.
The Virgin and the Infant Jesus.]
Of all the Italian engravers who, towards the end of the fifteenth
century, completed the popularisation in their country of the art whose
first secrets and examples were revealed and supplied by Florence, the
one most powerfully inspired and most skilful was certainly Andrea
Mantegna. We need not here recall the true position of this great
artist in the history of painting. Such of his pictures and decorative
paintings as still exist possess a world-wide fame; and, though his
engravings are less generally known, they deserve equal celebrity, and
would justify equal admiration.
[Illustration: FIG. 26.--MANTEGNA.
From the Print Representing a Battle of Sea-Gods.]
The engraved work of Mantegna consists of only twenty plates, about
half of which are religious, and the remainder mythological or
historical. Though none of these engravings bears the signature or
initials of the Paduan master, their authenticity cannot be doubted.
It is abundantly manifest in certain marked characteristics of style
and workmanship; in the delicate yet strong precision of the drawing;
and in that somewhat rude elegance which was at the command of none of
his contemporaries in the same degree. Every part of them, even where
they savour of imperfection or of extravagance, bears witness to the
indomitable will and independent genius of a master. His touch imparts
a passionate and thrilling aspect even to the details of architectural
decoration and the smallest inanimate objects. One would suppose that,
after having studied each part of his subject with the eye of a man of
culture and a thinker, Mantegna, when he came to represent it on the
metal, forgot all but the burning impatience of his hand and the fever
of the struggle with his material.
[Illustration: FIG. 27.--MANTEGNA.
The Entombment.]
[Illustration: FIG. 28.--MANTEGNA.
Jesus Christ, St. Andrew, and St. Longinus.]
And yet the handling alone of such works as the "Entombment" and the
"Triumph of Cæsar" bears witness to the talent of an engraver already
more experienced than any of his Italian predecessors and more alive to
the real resources of his art. The burin in Mantegna's hand displays a
firmness that can no longer be called stiffness; and, while it hardly
as yet can be said to imitate painting, competes in boldness and
rapidity at least with the effect of chalk or the pen. Unlike the
Florentine engravers, with their timid sparse strokes which scarcely
served to mark the outlines, Mantegna works with masses of shadow
produced by means of closer graining, and seeks to express, or at any
rate to suggest, internal modelling, instead of contenting himself
with the mere outlines of the body. In a word, Mantegna as an engraver
never forgot his knowledge as a painter; and it is this, combined with
the rare vigour of his imagination, which assures him the first place
amongst the Italian masters before the time of Marc Antonio.
[Illustration: FIG. 29.--MANTEGNA.
From the Triumph of Julius Cæsar.]
Mantegna had soon many imitators. Some of them, as Mocetto, Jacopo
Francia, Nicoletto da Modena, and Jacopo de' Barbari, known as the
Master of the Caduceus, though profiting by his example, did not push
their docility so far as to sacrifice their own tastes and individual
sentiment. Others, as Zoan Andrea and Giovanni Antonio da Brescia,
whose work has been sometimes mistaken for that of Mantegna himself,
set themselves not only to make his manner their own, but to imitate
his engravings line for line.
However strongly Mantegna's influence may have acted on the Italian
engravers of the fifteenth century, or the early years of the
sixteenth, it hardly seems to have extended beyond Lombardy, Venice,
and the small neighbouring states. It was neither in Florence nor
in Rome that the Paduan example principally excited the spirit of
imitation. The works it gave rise to belong nearly all of them to
artists formed under the master's very eyes, or in close proximity to
his teachings, whether the manner of the leader of the school appeared
in the efforts of pure copyists and imitators more or less adroit, or
whether it appeared in a much modified condition in the works of more
independent disciples.
[Illustration: FIG. 30.--MOCETTO.
Bacchus.]
It was in Verona, Venice, Modena, and Bologna that the movement which
Mantegna started in art found its most brilliant continuation. As the
engravers, emboldened by experience, gradually tended to reconcile
something of their own inspirations and personal desires with the
doctrines transmitted to them, assuredly a certain amount of progress
was manifested and some improvements were introduced into the use or
the combination of means; but in spite of such partial divergences,
the general appearance of the works proves their common origin, and
testifies to the imprudence of the efforts sometimes made to split
into small isolated groups and infinite subdivisions what, in reality,
forms a complete whole, a genuine school.
The same spirit of unity is again found to predominate in all the works
of the German engravers belonging to the second half of the fifteenth
century. With respect to purpose and style, there is certainly a great
difference between the early Italian engravings and those which mark
the beginning of the art in the towns of High and Low Germany. But
both have this in common: that certain fixed traditions once founded
remain for a time almost unchangeable; that certain fixed methods of
execution are held like articles of faith, and only modified with
an extreme respect for the time-honoured principles of early days.
The Master of 1466, and shortly after him, Martin Schongauer, had
scarcely shown themselves, before their example was followed, and
their teaching obediently practised, by a greater number of disciples
than had followed, or were destined to follow, in Italy the lead of
the contemporaries of Finiguerra or Mantegna. The influence exerted
by the latter had at least an equivalent in the ascendancy of Martin
Schongauer; while the Master of 1466, in the character of a founder,
which belongs to him, has almost the same importance in the history
of German engraving as the Florentine goldsmith in that of Italian
engraving.
[Illustration: FIG. 31.--BATTISTA DEL PORTO, CALLED THE "MASTER OF THE
BIRD."
St. Sebastian.]
[Illustration: FIG. 32.--MARTIN SCHONGAUER.
The Virgin and the Infant Jesus.]
[Illustration: FIG. 33.--MARTIN SCHONGAUER.
St. John the Evangelist.]
The Master of 1466 may, indeed, be regarded as the Finiguerra of
Germany, because he was the first in his own country to raise to the
dignity of an art what had been only an industrial process in the
hands of talentless workmen. Like wood engraving, intaglio engraving,
such as we see it in German prints some years before the works of
the Master of 1466, had only succeeded in spreading abroad, in the
towns on the banks of the Rhine, productions of a rude or grotesque
symbolism, in which, notwithstanding recent attempts to exaggerate
their value, a want of technical experience was as evident as extreme
poverty of conception. These archæological curiosities can have no
legitimate place amongst works of art, and we may without injustice
take still less account of them, as the rapid progress made by the
Master of 1466 throws their inferiority into greater relief. If the
anonymous artist called the Master of 1466 be the true founder of the
German school of engraving; if he show himself cleverer than any of
the Italian engravers of the period--from the point of view only of
practical execution, and the right handling of the tool--it does not
necessarily follow that he holds the same priority in talent as he
certainly holds in order of time before all other engravers of the
same age and country. One of these, Martin Schongauer, called also
"handsome Martin," or for short, "Martin Schon," may have a better
right to the highest place. Endowed with more imagination than the
Master of 1466, with a deeper feeling for truth and a clearer instinct
for beauty, he displays at least equal dexterity in the conduct of the
work and in the handling of the graver. Assuredly, if we compare Martin
Schongauer's prints with the beautiful Flemish or French engravings of
the seventeenth century, the combinations of lines which satisfied the
German engraver cannot fail to appear insufficient, or even archaically
simple; but if we compare them with the engraved work of all countries
in the fifteenth century, it will be acknowledged that, even as a
technical worker, the master of Colmar[19] exhibited a striking
superiority over all his contemporaries. Such plates as the "Flight
into Egypt," the "Death of the Virgin," the "Wise Virgins," and the
"Foolish Virgins," are distinguished above all by power and by grace
of expression; but to these ideal qualities there is added so much
firmness of drawing, and so much decision of handling, that, in spite
of all subsequent progress, they deserve to be numbered with those
which most honour the art of engraving.
[Illustration: FIG. 34.--MARTIN SCHONGAUER.
Jesus Betrayed by Judas.]
[Illustration: FIG. 35.--MARTIN SCHONGAUER.
The Entombment.]
[Illustration: FIG. 36.--MARTIN SCHONGAUER.
Figure from the set entitled "The Foolish Virgins."]
Martin Schongauer, like the Master of 1466, at once raised up both
imitators and rivals in Munich, in Mecheln in Westphalia, in Nuremberg,
and in many other towns in the German States. His influence and
reputation extended even beyond the borders of Germany; and it was not
the artists of the Low Countries alone who sought to profit by his
example. In Florence young Michelangelo did not disdain to study, nor
even to copy him, for he painted a "Temptation of St. Anthony," after
Schongauer's engraving. Italian miniature painters and engravers,
Gherardo and Nicoletto da Modena, amongst others, reproduced many
of his prints. The very figures and ornamentation which decorate
the "Books of Hours," published by Simon Vostre and Hardouin at the
beginning of the sixteenth century, show that in the France of that
period a zeal for imitation of the master's manner was not always
restrained by the fear of actual plagiarism. But the influence of
Martin Schongauer on the progress of art and the talent of artists
was more extended and decided in Germany itself. Amongst those who
most obediently submitted to, and who best knew how to profit by,
that example, we need only mention Bartholomew Schön, Franz von
Bocholt, Wenceslas of Olmütz, Israel van Mechenen, Glockenton, and
lastly, the engraver with the monogram "B M," whose most important
work, the "Judgment of Solomon," was perhaps engraved from a picture
by Martin Schongauer, who like Mantegna, like Pollajuolo, and indeed
like the majority of early engravers, was not only a painter, but a
singularly good one. His painted pictures still belonging to the town
of Colmar, and, setting aside his rare talent as an engraver, even
the little "Death of the Virgin," which has been the property of the
London National Gallery since 1860, would be enough to establish his
reputation.[20]
[Illustration: FIG. 37.--MARTIN SCHONGAUER.
St. Anthony.]
The importance of such an artist is in every respect that of the leader
of a school and a master in the strictest acceptation of the word.
Martin Schongauer in his own person, and through the talent he helped
to foster, did so much, and so greatly honoured his country, that it
is only just to regard him as one of the most glorious representatives
of national art, and to place his name beside those of Albert Dürer
and Holbein, as the three men in whom the essential qualities and
characteristics of the German genius have been most typically
represented.