According to Vasari, Mantegna having decorated the chapel of Innocent VIII. at Rome, about 1490,[119] from that or the preceding year is intitled to the name of engraver, computing it from about his sixtieth year. He flourished more than sixteen years after this period; during which is it to be believed that he produced that amazing number of engravings,[120] amounting to more than fifty, of which about thirty appear to be genuine specimens, on so grand a scale, so rich in figures, so finely studied and Mantegnesque in every part; that he executed these when he was already old, new to the art, an art fatiguing to the eye and the chest even of young artists; that he pursued it amidst his latest occupations in Mantua, which we shall, in their place, describe, and that he produced such grand results within sixteen or seventeen years. Either Vasari must have mistaken the dates, or wished to impose upon our credulity by his authority. Lomazzo leads us to draw a very different conclusion, when in his Treatise (p. 682) he adds this short eulogy to the name and merits of Mantegna, "a skilful painter, and the first engraver of prints in Italy;" but wherein he does not mention him as an inventor, meaning only to ascribe to him the merit of introducing the second state of the art at least in Italy; because he believed that it had already arisen in Germany. Such authority as this is worth our attention. I shall have occasion in the course of my narrative to combat some of Lomazzo's assertions; but I shall also feel bound to concur with him frequently in the epochs illustrated by him. He was born about twenty-five years subsequent to Vasari; he had more erudition, was a better critic, and on the affairs of Lombardy in particular, was enabled to correct him, and to supply his deficiencies. I am not surprised, then, that Meerman (p. 259) should suppose Andrea to have been already an engraver before the time of Baldini and Botticelli; I could have wished only that he had better observed the order of the epochs, and not postponed the praise due to him until the pontificate of Innocent VIII. In fact, it is not easy to ascertain the exact time when Mantegna first directed his attention to the art of engraving. It decidedly appears that he commenced at Padua; for the very confidence he displays in every plate, shews that he could be no novice; nor is it credible that his noviciate began only in old age. I suspect he received the rudiments of the art from Niccolo, a distinguished goldsmith, as he gave his portrait, together with that of Squarcione, in a history piece of S. Cristoforo, at the Eremitani in Padua; each most probably being a tribute of respect to his former master. It is true that we meet with no specimens of his hand at that, or even a later period of his early life; though we ought to recollect that he never affixed any dates to his works. So that it is impossible to say that none of them were the