[Illustration: Fig. 263.--Fac-simile of a _Niello_ executed on Ivory, from the original design of Stradan, representing Columbus on board his Ship, during his first Voyage to the West.] More special mention must be made of Bartholomew Baldini, better known under the name of Baccio, to whom we owe, in addition to some large engravings both of a sacred and of a mythological character, twenty vignettes designed for the folio edition (1481) of Dante’s “Inferno;” of Andrea Mantegna, a renowned painter, who himself engraved many of his own compositions; and of John van der Straet, called _Stradan_ (Fig. 263), who executed at Florence many remarkable plates. We find in Germany an engraver who dates several of his works in the year 1466, but on none of them has he left more than his initials, E. S. This has not failed to tax the ingenuity of those who would establish his individuality in some authentic way. Some have agreed to call him Edward Schön or Stern, on account of the stars he frequently introduces into the borders of the vestments of his figures; one asserts that he was born in Bavaria, because in a specimen of his works is the figure of a woman holding a shield emblazoned with the arms of that country; another believes him to have been a Swiss, because he twice engraved the “Pilgrimage of St. Mary of Einsiedeln,” the most celebrated in the country. But those amateurs who, upon the whole, think more of the work than the workman, are content to designate him as _the Master of 1466_. This engraver has left behind him three hundred examples, most of them of small dimensions, among which, independently of sundry very curious compositions, we must notice two important series, namely, an _Alphabet_ composed of grotesque figures (Fig. 264), and a pack of _Numeral Cards_, the greater part of which are in the Imperial Library. At almost the same epoch Holland also presents us with an anonymous engraver, who might be called _the Master of 1486_, from the date on one only of his engravings. The works of this artist, whose manner exhibits a powerful and original style, are very rare in any collections not belonging to the country in which he worked. The Cabinet of Engravings at Amsterdam possesses seventy-six of them, while that of Vienna has but two, that of Berlin one only, and that of Paris six, among which we may remark “Samson sleeping on the knees of Delilah,” and “St. George,” on foot, piercing with his sword the throat of the dragon which menaced the life of the Queen of Lydia. We have still three comparatively celebrated engravers to mention before reaching the epoch at which Marc Antonio Raimondi in Italy, Albert Dürer in Germany, and Lucas van Leyden in Holland, all simultaneously flourished.