Nuremberg, Augsburg, and Ulm appear to have been the chief towns in Germany for the manufacture of cards about the middle of the fifteenth century; and, from the following passage, cited by Heineken from a manuscript chronicle of the city of Ulm, ending at 1474, it would appear that the German manufacturers, besides supplying the home market did also a large export business: "Playing cards were sent in small casks [_leglenweiss_] into Italy, Sicily, and also over sea, and bartered for spices and other wares."[99] It was probably against the German card-makers and painter-stainers that the magistracy of Venice issued an order in 1441, forbidding the introduction of foreign manufactured and printed coloured figures into the city under the penalty of forfeiting such articles, and being fined xxx liv. xii soldi. This order appears to have been made in consequence of a petition from the fellowship of painters at Venice, wherein they had set forth that "the art and mystery of card-making and of printing figures, which were practised in Venice, had fallen into total decay through the great quantity of foreign playing cards, and coloured printed figures which were brought into the city."[100] The magistrates' order, in which this passage occurs as the preamble, was discovered by an Italian architect, of the name of Temanza, in an old book of rules and orders belonging to the company or fellowship of Venetian painters. Temanza sent an account of his discovery to Count Algarotti, who published it in the fifth volume of his 'Lettere Pittoriche.' As it has been assumed that the earliest professional card-makers were wood-engravers, and that the engraving of cards on wood led to the execution of other figures, it appears necessary to trace the Briefmaler's progress, and to show how he came to be identified with the "wood-engraver in general." That the early card-makers or card-painters of Ulm, Nuremberg, and Augsburg, from about 1418 to 1450, were also wood-engravers, is founded entirely on the assumption that the cards of that period were engraved on wood, and that those who manufactured them, both engraved and coloured the figures. It is not, however, certain that the figures of the earliest cards, not drawn by hand, were engraved on wood; in the oldest cards, indeed, which I have had an opportunity of examining, and which appear to be of as early a date as the year 1440, it is evident that the figures were executed by means of a stencil.[101] From the circumstance of so many women occurring as card-painters in the town books of Nuremberg between 1433 and 1477, there appears reason to conclude that they, at least, were not wood-engravers.