From this peculiar but fascinating artist, we pass on to another engraver of marked individuality, Jean Morin, an excellent technician who studied with profit the works of his Dutch and Flemish predecessors. He combines etching and graver-work in his plates, modeling the flesh exquisitely by means of minute stipple-like touches. Among his best productions the portrait of Antoine Vitré stands forth as a plate of great effectiveness and power, with rich, dark tones of shadow and brilliant lights. The school of Philippe de Champaigne, which disciplined the powers of Morin, set upon his way the greatest of French portrait engravers, Robert Nanteuil. A finished draughtsman, known by his pastel portraits, and an engraver who carried the technique of the graver to perfection; he knows how to blend delicacy and strength in plates like this portrait of Pompone de Bellièvre. The longer one studies such a print, the more one realizes the unerring faculty of this master in the selection of line; each stroke fits the substance which it is meant to express. The eloquence of the graver is a matter too subtle for language, and far transcends the possibilities of reproduction, however skillful; a half-hour spent with some good, early impressions of Nanteuil prints will prove the truth of this assertion. Everything is expressed there, and wondrously well expressed, yet one is quite unconscious of any display of virtuosity. Nanteuil was too great an artist not to subordinate the beauty of line, the marvelous finish of elaborate detail, to the main consideration, namely, the beauty of a well-balanced, well-harmonized _ensemble_. He was an artist-engraver in the true sense of the word, since many of his finest plates have been drawn from life, as well as engraved by him. [Illustration: POMPONE DE BELLIÈVRE Robert Nanteuil] [Illustration: PHILIPPE DE CHAMPAIGNE Gérard Edelinck] It is usual, in reviews of this period of art, to find the name of the noted Fleming, Gérard Edelinck, mentioned side by side with Nanteuil. With a technique akin to that of the Rubens school, in long, easy strokes, he models his figures and his draperies, and while he lacks the creative originality of Nanteuil, working always after the designs of other artists, his range of subjects is far more extended. In the striking likeness of the painter Philippe de Champaigne, he has left us a splendid example of his powers. His plate after the “Madonna of Francis I,” by Raphael, is a model of interpretative engraving, and when he undertakes to reproduce the canvases of Lebrun, he produces prints admittedly more attractive and brilliant than the originals.