[Illustration: Page from the “Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.” (_Venice_, 1499.) [_To face p._ 104.] The first Italian book in which wood engravings were used is, as far as is now known, the “Meditations” of Turrecremata, printed at Rome in 1467, by Ulrich Hahn. The illustrations are of a simple character in outline. Then came instances in books printed at Naples, Rome, Verona, and especially at Venice, where Erhard Ratdolt produced several with beautiful initials, borders, and pictures. Numbers of the books published at Venice in the later part of the fifteenth century are illustrated with exquisite wood cuts; among them the most celebrated and the most beautiful is the _Hypnerotomachia Poliphili_, printed in 1499. This celebrated book was written by Francesco Colonna, whose name is curiously shown by the initials of the chapters, which read “Poliam Frater Franciscus Columna peramavit,” “Brother Franciscus Columna loved Polia very much.” Polia has been presumably identified with Lucretia Lelio, who was a native of Treviso, the place of Polifilo’s dream. The many engravings are in outline, and several of them are full page. Italians have always excelled in wood cutting, but although there have been numbers of illustrated books issued in the sixteenth and later centuries, those of the fifteenth century still remain pre-eminent. Dr. Paul Kristeller has, moreover, shown that the Italian printers devices are well worthy of attention, and many of them are very fine both in design and execution. Block books, Japanese wood blocks, and all very early wood cuts, were cut by a knife, and such outline work, not too small, is easier to execute with a properly shaped knife than with anything else. But as soon as wood cutters began to be more skilled, and compared their work with line engraving, they found that a knife was not so useful as an engraver’s burin, and so wood _engraving_, as distinct from _cutting_, came into being. The cuts in the _Nuremberg Chronicle_ of 1493 show some sort of a transitional stage; there are hatchings and shadowings which would have been much more easily done with a graver than with a knife, but I believe, nevertheless, they are all knife work. Roughly speaking, it is easier to cut a broad outline drawing with a knife than with a graver, and it is easier to cut a small detail drawing with a graver than with a knife. At the same time we must remember that a skilled engraver could execute either sort of engraving in the wrong way, just as William Harvey cut his well known wood blocks of the Death of Dentatus in such a way as to show every technical peculiarity, except one, of an engraving on metal.