One would hardly venture to say that Gérard Audran was an engraver of genius, because it does not seem permissible to apply the term to one whose business it is to interpret the creations of others, and subordinate himself to models he has not himself designed; yet how else can one characterise a talent so full of life, so startling a capacity for feeling, and a method at once so large, so unstudied, and so original? Do not the plates of Gérard Audran bear witness to something more than mere superficial skill? Do they not rather reveal qualities more subtle--a something personal and living, which raises them to the rank of imaginative work? Their real fault, perhaps--at least the fault of those after Lebrun or Mignard--is that they are not reproductions of a purer type of beauty. And even these masters are so far dignified by the creative touch of their translator as almost to seem worthy of unreserved admiration. We can understand the mistake of the Italians, who thought, when they saw the "Batailles d'Alexandre," in black and white, that France, too, had her Raphael, when, in reality, allowing for difference of manner, she could only glory in another Marc Antonio. [Illustration: FIG. 86.--GÉRARD AUDRAN. "Navigation." After Raphael.] Gérard Audran was born in Lyons in 1640, and there obtained from his father his first lessons in art. Afterwards he went to Paris, and placed himself under the most famous masters of the day, by whose aid he was soon introduced to Lebrun, and at once commissioned to engrave one of Raphael's compositions. When Audran undertook the work, he had not the picture before him, as Edelinck had when he engraved the "Vierge de François I." His original was only a pencil copy which Lebrun had brought back from Italy; hence no doubt the modern character and the French style which are stamped on the engraving. Feeling dissatisfied with his work, the young artist did not publish it, but determined to study the Italians in Italy, to educate himself directly from their works, and thenceforth to engrave only those pictures of which he could judge at first-hand without the danger of an intermediary. He set off therefore for Rome, and remained there for three years, during which time he produced several copies painted at the Vatican, many drawings from the antique, several plates after Raphael, Domenichino, and the Carraccis, and the engraving of a ceiling by Pietro da Cortona, which last he dedicated to Colbert.