The art did not, however, fall into decline immediately. It is true that wood-engraving never won for itself in Italy a place in the popular esteem like that which it held in the North; the Italians were too fond of color, and possessed too many master-pieces of the nobler arts, to set a very high value on such simple effects; but, nevertheless, in the first quarter of the sixteenth century there appeared in Venice, the chief seat of the art, many volumes which were illustrated by woodcuts of excellent design, such as this of Nero (Fig. 31), from an Ovid of 1510, the representation of the physician attending a patient stricken with the plague (Fig. 32), from the _Fasciculus Medicinæ_, by Johannes de Ketham, published in 1500, and that of Hero and Leander (Fig. 33), from an Ovid of 1515. Of Venetian work of lesser merit, the representation of Dante and Beatrice (Fig. 34), from a Dante of 1520, and the cuts (Figs. 35, 36, 37, 38), from the Catalogue of the Saints, by Petrus de Natalis, published in 1506, may serve as examples. The whole Italian series, even as illustrated by the cuts here given, exhibits a greater variety of interest, knowledge, and feeling than does the work of any other nation, and affords a lively notion of the manifold elements that went to make up the Renaissance; it reflects fable, superstition, learning, the symbolism of mediæval theology, ancient myth and legend, the rise of the modern feeling for nature, the passion for beauty and art; and, ranging from the life of the scholar and the nunnery to that of the beggar and the plague, it pictures vividly contemporary times, while it adds to the interest of history and humanity the interest of beauty. Its prime, however, was of brief duration. Venetian engraving, and that of the other Italian cities also, continued to be marked by this simplicity and skill in design until 1530, when cross-hatching was introduced from the North; after that date wood-engraving shared in the rapid decline into which all the arts of Italy fell in consequence of the internal troubles of the country, which, from the time of the sack of Rome, in 1527, became the common battlefield of Europe for generations. But, in the short space during which the Italians practised the art with such success, they showed that they had mastered it, and had come to an understanding of its capacities, both as a mode of drawing in black line and as a mode of relief in white line, such as appears in their arabesques and initial letters, examples of which are scattered through this volume. They came to this mastery and understanding before any other nation, because of their artistic instinct; for the same reason, they did not surpass the rudeness of German workmen in skill more than they excelled in simple beauty of design the best of early French work, which was characterized by such confused exuberance of fancy and such profusion of detail. They breathed into the art the Italian spirit, and its presence made their