In 1627, however, Callot met, at Nancy, Claude Lorraine, and probably instructed him in etching. Claude left Nancy for Italy in the same year, and in the following year etched his first plates. Between 1630 and 1663, he published a considerable number, among them some of exquisite delicacy and beauty. And from these etchings many of the Dutchmen derive their inspiration; and Claude is said to have employed men like Swaneveldt, Andries Both, and Jan Miel for inserting figures in his landscapes. Another foreign master who exercised a widespread influence over the Dutch etchers was the German, Adam Elsheimer. Traces of this influence pervade the history of Dutch art, as Dr. Bode in his _Studien zur Geschichte der hollädndischen Malerei_ has very fully demonstrated. Elsheimer etched a few plates; but, with all deference to Dr. Bode’s authority, we find it difficult to attach to them the importance which he gives them. Through the etchings and engravings made from his pictures Elsheimer was undoubtedly a source of inspiration to the Dutchmen, but scarcely through the rare and by no means remarkable plates which he etched himself. The real importance of Elsheimer, and the secret of his fascination over his contemporaries, lie in his fresh treatment of light and shade. Problems of lighting occupied his contemporaries, Caravaggio and Honthorst, but these devoted their skill chiefly to effects of double lighting and strong contrast; it was the rendering of luminous shadow and subtle tones of twilight that Elsheimer was the first to attack. In this he is a forerunner of Rembrandt, who undoubtedly took suggestions from him, and was helped by him in his own development of chiaroscuro. Rembrandt cannot be fully understood without a knowledge of what Elsheimer had done before him. But Rembrandt was by no means the only Dutch master who profited by the German’s art. The whole of the Italianised Dutch school at Rome, men like Poelenburg for instance, felt his influence more or less strongly. Nor was he without followers in the native school of landscape painters and etchers in Holland, as we shall see when we come to them. Elsheimer, in fine, though by no means a great painter, is of considerable historical importance, and the admiration which he excited in his [Illustration: _Fig. 4.--The Child and the Doll. By Ostade. B. 16._] own day can hardly be over-estimated. So great a man as Rubens admired him so much that he had three of his landscapes on his walls, and made copies from his paintings and designs.