It would be idle to point out with regret, as some have done, what is lacking in the masterpieces of Marc Antonio, or to say that greater freedom in rendering colour or in managing light and shade would have lent them an additional charm.[24] Such qualities should be looked for elsewhere than in subjects engraved--not, it must be remembered, from pictures--but from pen or chalk drawings. In sixteenth century Italy they could scarcely come from the burin of one of Raphael's pupils: an epic burin, so to speak, and one contemptuous of qualities then considered of secondary importance. Moreover, the hand of him who held it was bold rather than skilful, vigorous rather than patient. To model a body in shadow, he employed unevenly crossed or almost parallel hatchings, drawn at different widths apart, and in subordination to the larger feeling of the form and movement he wished to express. Then lighter strokes led up to the half-light, and a few dots at unequal distances bordered on the light. [Illustration: FIG. 47.--MARC ANTONIO. Apollo. After Raphael.] What could be simpler than such a method? Yet what more exact in its results, and what more expressive in drawing? The exact crossing of lines mattered little to Marc Antonio. What he was taken up with and wanted to make visible was neither the manner nor the choice of workmanship: that might be simple indeed, and he was satisfied if only the beauty of a head or the general aspect of a figure were striking at a first glance, if only the appearance of the whole was largely rendered and well defined. Sometimes one outline is corrected by a second, and these alterations, all the more interesting as we may suspect that they were ordered by Raphael himself, prove both the engraver's passion for correct drawing and his small regard for mere niceties of craftsmanship. The time was yet distant when, in this same Italy, the trifling search after common technicalities should take the place of such wise views; when men should set to work to reproduce the shadows of a face or a piece of drapery by lozenges containing a semicircle, a little cross, or even something resembling a young serpent; when engravers like Morghen and his followers should see, in the reproduction of masterpieces of the brush, only an opportunity for assembling groups of more or less complicated lines and parading their dexterity, and should gain by these tricks the applause of all men and the name of artists. [Illustration: FIG. 48.--MARC ANTONIO. Portrait of Raphael.]