This manner of representing the creation of Eve appears to have been general amongst the wood engravers of the fifteenth century, for the same subject frequently occurs in old cuts executed previous to 1500. It is frequently represented in the same manner in illuminated missals; and in Flaxman’s Lectures on Sculpture a lithographic print is given, copied from an ancient piece of sculpture in Wells Cathedral, where Eve is seen thus proceeding from the side of Adam. In a picture by Raffaele the creation of Eve is also represented in the same manner. In the wood-cuts which occur in Italian books printed previous to 1500 the engravers have seldom attempted anything beyond a simple outline with occasionally an indication of shade, or of colour, by means of short parallel lines. The following is a fac-simile of a cut in Bonsignore’s Italian prose translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, folio, printed at Venice by the brothers De Lignano in 1497. It may serve at once as a specimen of the other cuts contained in the work and of the general style of engraving on wood in Italy for about ten years preceding that period. [Illustration] The subject illustrated is the difficult labour of Alcmena through the malign influence of Lucina, as related by Ovid in the IXth book of the Metamorphoses, from verse 295 to 314. This would appear to have been rather a favourite subject with designers, for it is again selected for illustration in Ludovico Dolce’s Transformationi, a kind of paraphrase of the Metamorphoses, 4to, printed at Venice by Gabriel Giolito in 1557; and it is also represented in the illustrations to the Metamorphoses designed by Virgil Solis, and printed at Frankfort, in oblong 4to, by George Corvinus and Sigismund Feyrabent, in 1569.[IV-56] [Footnote IV-56: Mr. Ottley in speaking of an edition of the Metamorphoses printed at Venice in 1509, with wood-cuts, mentions one of them as representing the “Birth of Hercules,” which is probably treated in a manner similar to those above noticed. Mr. Ottley also states that he had discovered the artist to be Benedetto Montagna, who also engraved on copper.--Inquiry, vol. ii p. 576.]