Small as is the cycle of genuine prints, they embrace a wide range of subject; pagan myths, Roman and Christian themes, are all treated in turn with the same seriousness of purpose and marvellous variety of invention. Sometimes he reproduces his own pictures—the “Virgin of the Grotto” from the Uffizi triptych, in later years we have the “Triumphs” and the “Dancing Muses of the Parnassus.” The Bacchanalia, and still more the “Battle of the Sea-gods,” remain to show us how deeply the spirit of classic bas-relief had sunk into his soul. Certain subjects there are in which he takes especial delight, which he treats with as great freshness and originality as if he had never before approached them. Such are the “Hercules and Antæus,” already represented in grisaille on the ceiling of the Camera degli Sposi, and the “St. Sebastian,” which hardly yields in beauty to the sublime painting of the Belvedere. At other times he reveals some altogether new conception, as in the noble “Descent from the Cross,” which supplied the motives whence Albrecht Dürer, Luca Signorelli, Daniele da Volterra, and Rubens in turn took their inspirations. In dramatic power and intensity of feeling this plate is only equalled by the well-known “Entombment,” where all the horrors of death, all the depths of the wildest despair, seem gathered up and concentrated in that one figure of St. John wringing his hands aloft and uttering the great and bitter cry which cannot be restrained. The same strong feeling shows itself under another form in the seated Madonna, whose whole figure is swayed with the foreboding of coming anguish that mingles with her love, as she bends forward to press the Child closer to her face. But although these figures, animated with rage and despair, with a great hatred or a still greater love, are the subjects on which Andrea seemed to dwell with preference in his engravings, he returns at times to the serene repose of ancient statuary, and designs for us a group of perfect majesty in the three grand figures of “St. Andrew, St. Longinus, and the Risen Christ,” who stands between them, calm and strong, with the awe of that death which he had conquered still upon his brow. Again, in vivid contrast with reeling satyrs and angry Tritons battling on the rough sea-waves, we have the quiet portrait heads of Lodovico Gonzaga and his wife, Barbara,[2] whose homely faces and earnest eyes look out of the same quaint costumes as on their palace walls at Mantua, and on whose brocaded robes infinite pains have been bestowed. This is not the place to enter into further details, or a whole volume might with profit be devoted to the consideration of Mantegna’s engravings, but enough has been said to show how important a part of his works they form, and how extraordinary was the genius of the man who could, in his leisure moments during the brief intervals which elapsed between his greater tasks, give to the world so rich a treasure of profound and varied thought.