But if decoration by means of relief blocks found a favourable reception in Italy and, above all, a group of artists capable of carrying it to success, there were at the same time other experiments conceived in a different way. The discovery of Maso Finiguerra gave to the art a new process of reproduction, and printing presses had now to render possible and practicable the working of engraved plates. In order to make that which follows comprehensible, we enter into a few technical details, the whole subject having been so admirably and fully treated by MM. Delaborde and Duplessis. In the engraved wood block, as in the printing type, it is a projection in the wood or metal which, being inked and passed under a press, leaves on paper its lines in black. Naturally then the intercalation of an engraving of this kind in typographical composition is made without difficulty, and the impression of both is taken at once. On the other hand, a line engraving is obtained from incised lines on a plate of copper; that is, an instrument called a burin traces the lines, which are filled with greasy ink. These incised lines only are inked. The surface of the plate is cleaned off to avoid smudging. The sheet of paper destined for the impression has then to be made very pliable, so that at the striking of the press it runs, so to speak, to find the ink in the lines and hold it. It is therefore impossible to take a text from relief characters at the same time as an engraved plate. [Illustration: Fig. 15.--Engraving on metal by Baccio Baldini for _El Monte Santo di Dio_, in 1477.] However, this kind of reproduction, which, contrary to that from wood, allowed of half-tints or toning down, attracted in good time the workers at the Book. It appeared to them possible to reconcile the two printings by the successive passage of the same sheet of paper through the press, to receive at first the impression from the type and afterwards to find the ink deposited in the incisions in the copper. The first manifestation of this new method of illustration was made at Florence, the home of line engraving, by Nicholas di Lorenzo in 1477, for the work of Antonio Bettini, of Siena, called _El Monte Santo di Dio_. Here the artists were never known. Common opinion has it that Baccio Baldini borrowed from Sandro Botticelli the subjects of his plates. Italian engraving always seeks its source in Pollajuolo, Botticelli, and Baldini. It is not the simple work of a niellist, but it had not yet reached perfection either in the work or in the impression; the illustrations of the _Monte Santo_ are proof of this, as are also those of the _Dante_, by Baldini, in 1481, for the same Nicholas di Lorenzo. From this we reproduce the Misers. [Illustration: Fig. 16.--Metal engraving by Baccio Baldini from the Dante of 1481.]