The earliest wood engravings that contain Albert Durer’s mark are sixteen subjects, of folio size, illustrative of the Apocalypse, which were printed at Nuremberg, 1498. On the first leaf is the title in German: “Die heimliche Offenbarung Johannes”--“The Revelation of John;”--and on the back of the last cut but one is the imprint: “Gedrücket zu Nurnbergk durch Albrecht Durer, maler, nach Christi geburt M. CCCC. und darnach im xcviij. iar”--“Printed at Nuremberg by Albert Durer, painter, in the year after the birth of Christ 1498.” The date of those cuts marks an important epoch in the history of wood engraving. From this time the boundaries of the art became enlarged; and wood engravers, instead of being almost wholly occupied in executing designs of the very lowest character, drawn without feeling, taste, or knowledge, were now to be engaged in engraving subjects of general interest, drawn, expressly for the purpose of being thus executed, by some of the most celebrated artists of the age. Though several cuts of the Apocalypse are faulty in drawing and extravagant in design, they are on the whole much superior to any series of wood engravings that preceded them; and their execution, though coarse, is free and bold. They are not equal, in point of well-contrasted light and shade, to some of Durer’s later designs on wood; but considering them as his first essays in drawing on wood, they are not unworthy of his reputation. They appear as if they had been drawn on the block with a pen and ink; and though cross-hatching is to be found in all of them, this mode of indicating a shade, or obtaining “colour,” is much less frequently employed than in some of his later productions. The following is a reduced copy of one of the cuts, No. 11, which is illustrative of the twelfth chapter of Revelations, verses 1-4: “And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.----And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth; and the dragon stood before the woman.” [Illustration] In 1502 a pirated edition of those cuts was published at Strasburg by Jerome Greff, who describes himself as a painter of Frankfort. In 1511 Durer published a second edition of the originals; and on the back of the last cut but one is a caution addressed to the plagiary, informing him of the Emperor’s order, prohibiting any one to copy the cuts or to sell the spurious impressions within the limits of the German empire, under the penalty of the confiscation of goods, and at the peril of further punishment.[V-18]