Be this as it may, the print of the “Pax,” or rather of the “Assumption,” engraved by Finiguerra, does not fail, in the opinion of all writers and amateurs, to bear the title of the earliest print from metal; a title to which it has a perfect right, and in thus regarding it we are induced to give a brief description of the subject represented in the engraving. Jesus Christ, seated on a lofty throne and wearing a cap similar to that of the Doges, places, with both his hands, a crown on the head of the Virgin, who, with her hands crossed upon her breast, is seated upon the same throne; St. Augustine and St. Ambrose are kneeling; in the centre, below, and on the right, several saints are standing, among whom we can distinguish St. Catherine and St. Agnes; on the left, in the rear of St. Augustine, we see St. John the Baptist and other saints; lastly, on both sides of the throne a number of angels are blowing trumpets; and, above, are others holding a streamer, on which we read: “ASSVMPTA. EST. MARIA. IN. CELVM. AVE. EXERCITVS. ANGELORVM;” “Mary is taken up into Heaven. Hail, army of angels!” The first of the impressions of this _niello_ found its way into the Royal Library with the Marolles Collection, bought by Louis XIV. in 1667: the other was discovered only in 1841, by M. Robert Dumesnil, who, in the Library of the Arsenal, was turning over the leaves of a volume containing engravings by Callot and Sebastian Le Clerc. This latter impression, though taken on inferior paper, is nevertheless in a much better state of preservation than the other; but the ink is of a greyer hue, and one might readily fancy that, as M. Duchesne, the learned writer, asserts, it was printed before the final completion of the plate. In support of the opinion which we before indirectly expressed, that the practice of taking impressions from engraved plates of metal might well be a kind of fortuitous result of a mere professional tradition incidental to the goldsmith’s art, we may remark that most of the engravings which have been handed down to us as belonging to the era fixed upon for the invention of engraving, are the work of Italian goldsmith-engravers. More than four hundred specimens of this date have been preserved; among the artists we must mention Amerighi, Michael Angelo Bandinelli, and Philippo Brunelleschi, of Florence; Forzoni Spinelli, of Arezzo; Furnio, Gesso, Rossi, and Raibolini, of Bologna; Teucreo, of Siena; Caradosso and Arcioni, of Milan; Nicholas Rosex, of Modena, of whose work we have three _nielli_ and more than sixty engravings; Antonio Pollajuolo, who engraved a print called the “Fight with Cutlasses,” representing ten naked men fighting; lastly, the most skilful of the metal-chasing goldsmiths after Finiguerra, Peregrino of Cesena, who has left his name and his mark on sixty-six _nielli_.