We are therefore bound to antedate the epoch of the Bolognese engraving several years before the publication of the book, which belongs perhaps to the year 1472.[124] I shall not, however, set myself up as an umpire in this dispute; anxiously expecting, as I do, an excellent treatise from the pen of Sig. Bartolommeo Gamba; which I feel assured will not fail to gratify the public.[125] In regard to Bologna, therefore, I shall only seek to prove that the progress of the goldsmith's art to that of engraving upon metal, was more rapid than it has been supposed. Heineken himself observes, in describing the Ptolemy, that it is evident, from the traces of the zigzag, which the goldsmiths are in the habit of putting on the silver plates, the work is the production of one belonging to that art. The earliest works that can be pointed out with certainty at Florence, are the three elegant engravings of the Monte Santo di Dio, published in 1477; and the two in the two cantos of Dante, 1481; one of which, as if a third engraving, was repeated in the same book; while all of them seem to have been drawn from the roller, the art of inserting the plates in the letter-press being then unknown. We have yet to notice the thirty-seven geographical charts, in whatever way executed, affixed to the book of Berlinghieri, which was printed about the same period, without any date. These also contain several heads with the names _Aquilo_, _Africus_, &c., but they are all of youthful appearance, and tolerable in point of design; whereas the same heads in Bologna are of different ages, with long beards and caps, and in a coarser manner. The three before mentioned works appeared from the press of Niccolo Tedesco, or Niccolo di Lorenzo de Lamagna, the first who printed books at Florence with copper plates.