A plate not less admirable in its way--a little masterpiece--is _François de la Mothe le Vayer_, who was regarded as the Plutarch of his time for his boundless erudition and his mode of reasoning. Nanteuil’s engraving shows him at the age of seventy-five, in full possession of all his intellectual powers and in the enjoyment of that good health which lasted until his death, eleven years later, at the ripe age of eighty-six. [Illustration: ROBERT NANTEUIL. BASILE FOUQUET Size of the original engraving, 12⅞ × 9⅞ inches In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston] [Illustration: ROBERT NANTEUIL. JEAN LORET Size of the original engraving, 10⅛ × 7⅛ inches In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston] The masterly portrait of _Turenne_, engraved in 1663, after a painting by Philippe de Champaigne, is one of the engraver’s most vigorous plates, of a size somewhat larger than had hitherto been his wont. From this period date the life-size portraits, thirty-six of which were completed before he died in 1678, the last four years of his life being devoted entirely to these large plates--seven of them of the King himself. They were obviously intended to be framed and hung above the high wainscots used in those times, and although they do not show Nanteuil at his best, and--in the majority of cases--are, in part, the work of assistants, they are a remarkable performance. Nanteuil established the tradition of portrait engraving in France once and for all, and although his successors, profiting by his example, have left us many superbly engraved plates, none of them were able to combine the qualities of great engraver with great portraitist, which make Nanteuil supreme in the history of portrait engraving. The nineteenth century has produced three master portrait etchers. Of what previous century can we say as much? Other portraits may possess more charm, but none have a greater measure of dignity than those by ALPHONSE LEGROS. He has been called a “belated old master,” and in his portrait plates are combined the qualities which prove him to be a master indeed--not old, in the sense of out of touch with his time, but displaying the same qualities which make the portraits of Rembrandt or Van Dyck so compelling and of such continuing interest. _Cardinal Manning_--the triumph of spirit over flesh--simple, austere; _G. F. Watts_, in which the gravity and beauty of old age is portrayed as no one since Rembrandt has portrayed it, are plates which will assure his artistic immortality.