himself of them, adopting an open, linear technique, in marked contrast to his highly elaborate engravings on copper of this period. ALBRECHT ALTDORFER, who was born in Regensburg about 1480 and died in February, 1538, is notable as one of the earliest interpreters of landscape for its own sake. He has left us ten landscape etchings. None of them is dated, but they clearly belong to his last period. In them he has merely transferred to metal his mode of pen drawing, an excellent style in a way, since it is linear and suggestive, but lacking distinction and that passionate, dramatic quality which is so impressive in the painting, _St. George_, in the Munich Gallery, the engraving of the _Crucifixion_; or the _Agony in the Garden_, a drawing in the Berlin Print Room. [Illustration: ALBRECHT DÜRER. THE CANNON Size of the original etching, 8⅝ × 12⅞ inches In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston] [Illustration: AUGUSTIN HIRSCHVOGEL. LANDSCAPE Size of the original etching, 5⅝ × 8½ inches In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston] The etchings of AUGUSTIN HIRSCHVOGEL are even simpler in treatment than those by Altdorfer. They bear dates from 1545 to 1549. The more one studies his landscape plates, breathing the spirit of the true nature lover, the more fascinating do they become. He has eliminated all non-essentials, concentrating his attention upon what were to him the most significant features, and in this respect he may have influenced the work of more than one nineteenth century master. HANS SEBALD LAUTENSACK, who was some twenty years Hirschvogel’s junior, was born in Nuremberg about 1524. The greater number of his landscape plates fall within the years 1551 and 1555. He is neither so simple nor so direct as Hirschvogel, and his plates suffer from over-elaboration. In an attempt to give a complete representation of the scene the value of the line is lost, and, in the majority of cases, the composition is lacking in repose. For almost a century we have no landscape etchings of prime importance. Then, in 1640, _Rembrandt_ appears on the scene with his _View of Amsterdam_, the first of a series of twenty-seven masterpieces which, beginning with this plate, comes to an end with _A Clump of Trees with a Vista_ (1652). The _View of Amsterdam_ is, among Rembrandt’s landscapes, comparable to the portrait of himself leaning on a stone sill, inasmuch as it is, in its own simple linear mode, a model of what etching can be at its best. As in the case of all these etchings, with the exception of the _Three Trees_ and the _Landscape with a Ruined Tower and Clear Foreground_, the sky is left perfectly blank, and our imagination must supply the quiet sunshine of a cloudless day or that delicate grayness which makes Holland a perpetual delight to the painter.