Nor was this tradition due to the creative impulse of one man. There was nothing in Holland parallel to the renovation, the re-creation rather, of Flemish art by Rubens. Rembrandt came near the beginning, but he did not start the period. One cannot say precisely how this great tradition began; it seems as if the flowering time came all at once throughout the country, with the mysterious suddenness of spring. Till the seventeenth century, it was Italy from which Dutch artists took their inspiration, but henceforward it is a native impulse. Only men of lesser importance went to paint at Rome, and even then they took there more than they brought away. III Considered as etchers, the Dutch masters range themselves somewhat differently. Only a few, seemingly, realised the specific capacities and limitations of etching: the rest regarded it merely as a method of reproducing their drawings, as an easier kind of engraving. This was probably the conception of those who first applied acid to metal for the purpose of reproducing designs, at the beginning of the sixteenth century: the art had been formerly employed only in the damascening of swords or armour. Albert Dürer is an exception; for, though he did not develop the method far, he saw that it required a different kind of handling from that suitable for the burin; and in his few etched plates the work is freer and more open than that of his line-engravings. The first men to use etching extensively were the Hopfer family of Augsburg, who produced a great number of prints, chiefly decorative designs. It was employed in landscape by Altdorfer, Hirschvogel, Lautensack, and others among the Little Masters. But these did little more than [Illustration: _Fig. 3.--Game of Backgammon. From a drawing by Ostade. British Museum._] carry on the Nürnberg tradition of engraving, through another medium. They had little or no influence on the Dutchmen. A new and powerful stimulus, however, was to be given to etching with the beginning of the seventeenth century, by the prolific and famous French artist, Jacques Callot. Born in 1592, Callot produced a great mass of work before his death in 1638, and his etchings, by which alone he is known, had a great popularity in his lifetime. In 1624 he was invited to Brussels by the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia, and was commissioned by her to commemorate the Siege of Breda, an event which also occasioned a masterpiece to Velasquez, the famous _Lances_ of Madrid. Callot undoubtedly brought the art into prominence and favour in the Netherlands. Yet of direct influence over either Flemings or Dutchmen, Callot had little or none. His spirit was too essentially French, his method too individual, for him to be imitated by men of such different race and temperament.