Even earlier, before the Dutch painters, a pupil of Dürer, Hans Sebald Beham, one of the “godless painters of Nuremberg,” who were exiled from their native town on account of socialistic tendencies, has taken us along this road. In one of his larger engravings he pictures the different stages of a rustic wedding, and for the first time shows us the signboard, hanging on a long stick, from a dormer window of the tavern. We might date the painted sign from the invention of oil painting on wooden panels by the brothers Van Eyck, an art which was introduced in Italy through Antonello da Messina as late as 1473. The signs of earlier date we have to imagine as either sculptures, closely united with the architecture of the house, or as mural paintings such as we still see to-day in Stein-on-the-Rhine, for instance, on the house “Zum Ochsen.” Master Dürer himself once hung out the little tablet with his famous monogram as a tavern sign over the fantastic ruin, in which he places the birth of Christ in his beautiful engraving of the year 1504, proud to have prepared such a cozy inn for Our Lady and her God-given Child. But the whole wealth of signs, from the natural simple form of the speaking sign to the most elaborate examples of signs painted or artfully wrought in iron, reveals itself to us later in the realistic pictures of the Dutch painters. The earliest representation of a speaking sign, where the merchandise itself is still hung out, I have seen in a woodcut illustrating a book printed in Augsburg in 1536: “Hie hebt an das Concilium zu Constanz.” It is a baker’s sign: large “brezels” on a wooden stick, a primitive precursor of the artful baker’s sign we observe in Jan Steen’s charming picture “The baker Arent Oostwaard” in the Rijks Museum at Amsterdam. In more modern times the real merchandise is sometimes supplanted by an imitation of the different loafs in wood and neatly painted in natural colors, such as we see in an amusing sign from Borgo San Dalmazzo, a picturesque mountain town near Cuneo in northern Italy. A similar evolution may be noted in other trade signs: first the real boots, and later a copy in wood, painted red if possible; first the big pitcher and the shining tin tankard decorated with fresh foliage, later the imitation in a wreath of iron leaves. Everywhere in the tavern and kermess scenes painted by Dutch masters, we see real pitchers and tankards hanging over the doors as speaking signs inviting the peasants to enter and partake of a refreshing drink. In northern Germany the “Krug” (pitcher) was so popular as a sign that the landlord was called after it, “Krüger,” to this day a widely spread family name. [Illustration: Panetteria Borgo San Dalmazzo·]