have given the means of seeing and becoming acquainted with the different inventions and modes of proceeding adopted by great artists, to those "who would not have found it possible to visit the places wherein the original pictures are preserved. They have thus conveyed to the Ultramontane people and nations a knowledge of many things which those distant lands could not otherwise have obtained; and if it be true that many plates have been badly executed, because the avarice of certain engravers has led them to think more of making gain than of obtaining honour or of doing justice to the work they were treating, yet there is much merit, on the other hand, to be discovered in many, besides those of whose excellence we have spoken above. Of this we have an example in the large design, among others, which has been engraved by Giorgio of Mantua,[1] from the façade of the papal chapel, the Last Judgment namely, by Michelagnolo,[2] as also in the Crucifixion of St. Peter, and the Conversion of St. Paul, which are painted in the Pauline chapel at Rome, and have been engraved by Giovan Battista de’ Cavalieri.
By the last-named engraver other works in copper-plate have also been engraved from the designs of various masters, among these are San Giovanni Battista in meditation, a Deposition from the Cross, after that painted by Daniello Ricciarelli of Volterra, in the chapel of the Santa Trinita in Rome; a figure of the Madonna with numerous Angels, and many besides, of which I will not further speak. There were large numbers of engravings also made by other artists, more particularly from the works of Michelagnolo, and by commissions received from a certain Antonio Lanferri,[3] who employed many engravers for that purpose. They have like-
- ↑ Giorgio Ghisi, a distinguished worker in Azamina, or Agemina, called by Vasari Tausia, Damaschina namely, or the decoration of metals with various figures and devices.—Zani. See also Bartsch, who enumerates seventy-one plates by this artist. The times of his birth and death are alike unknown, but he was working in 1578, and is believed to have been born somewhere about 1520.
- ↑ Bottari observes that this plate was afterwards engraved by Dorigny, and it has been published in our own times, with all the modem embellishments, by the Cav. Toschi.
- ↑ Or rather Lafreri, or Lafrery, a dealer in prints, who left FrancheComte, his birth-place, for the purpose of driving a traffic as above described in Italy.
