Even the St. Bridget, which he considers to be of a date not later than the close of the fourteenth century,[II-19] Mr. Ottley, with a German inscription before his eyes, is inclined to give to an artist of the Low Countries; and he kindly directs the attention of Coster’s partisans to the shield of arms--probably intended for those of Sweden--at the right-hand corner of the cut. Meerman had discovered a seal, having in the centre a shield charged with a lion rampant--the bearing of the noble family of Brederode--a label of three points, and the mark of illegitimacy--a bend sinister, and surrounded by the inscription, “S[igillum] Lowrens Janssoen,” which with him was sufficient evidence of its being the identical seal of Laurence, the Coster or churchwarden of Harlem.[II-20] [Footnote II-19: Mr. Ottley’s reason for considering this cut to be so old is, that “after that period [1400] an artist, who was capable of designing so good a figure, could scarcely have been so grossly ignorant of every effect of linear perspective, as was evidently the case with the author of the performance before us.”--Inquiry, p. 87. Offences, however, scarcely less gross against the rules of linear perspective, are to be found in the wood-cuts in the Adventures of Sir Theurdank, 1517, many of which contain figures superior to that of St. Bridget. Errors in perspective are indeed frequent in the designs of many of the most eminent of Albert Durer’s contemporaries, although in other respects the figures may be correctly drawn, and the general composition good.] [Footnote II-20: An engraving of this seal is given in the first volume of Meerman’s Origines Typographicæ.] We thus perceive on what grounds the right of Germany to three of the oldest wood-cuts known is questioned; and upon what traits of resemblance they are ascribed to Italy and the Low Countries. By adopting Mr. Ottley’s mode of reasoning, it might be shown with equal probability that a very considerable number of early wood engravings--whether printed in books or separately--hitherto believed to be German, were really executed in Italy.