Page:A History of Wood-Engraving.djvu/84

82 a place in the popular esteem like that which it held in the North; the Italians were too fond of color, and possessed too many master-pieces of the nobler arts, to set a very high value on such simple effects; but, nevertheless, in the first quarter of the sixteenth century there appeared in Venice, the chief seat of the art, many volumes which were illustrated by woodcuts of excellent design, such as this of Nero (Fig. 31), from an Ovid of 1510, the representation of the physician attending a patient stricken with the plague (Fig. 32), from the Fasciculus Medicinæ, by Johannes de Ketham, published in 1500, and that of Hero and Leander (Fig. 33), from an Ovid of 1515. Of Venetian work of lesser merit, the representation of Dante and Beatrice (Fig. 34), from a Dante of 1520, and the cuts (Figs. 35, 36, 37, 38), from the Catalogue of the Saints, by Petrus de Natalis, published in 1506, may serve as examples. The whole