Page:A History of Wood-Engraving.djvu/89

87 skill more than they excelled in simple beauty of design the best of early French work, which was characterized by such confused exuberance of fancy and such profusion of detail. They breathed into the art the Italian spirit, and its presence made their works beautiful.

To the Italian love of color is due the development of what is known as engraving in chiaroscuro, a process which, although it had been practised in Germany since 1506, was claimed as a new invention by Ugo da Carpi (1460-1523), at Venice, in 1516, and was carried by the Italians to the highest point of perfection which it reached in the sixteenth century. It was an