Page:Chats on old prints (IA chatsonoldprints00haydiala).pdf/213

 beauties. Both Rubens and Vandyck threw off the shackles of stiff and precise line work in engravings after their canvases, and introduced the grace and freedom of the Italian Renaissance into the line engravers' work done under their guidance.

Paulus Pontius, Bolswert, Lucas Vorsterman (1578-1660) and his son of the same name (who worked about 1630) and Pieter de Jode the younger, born at Antwerp in 1606, whose father was a pupil of Hendrik Goltzius (1588-1617), a masterly engraver, all engraved after Rubens and Vandyck, and it was their practice to use etching freely in the translation of the artist's picture upon the copper plate prior to the use of the graver.

We reproduce a splendid example of engraving by Lucas Vorsterman the elder after Vandyck's Portrait of himself. This cost the writer 10s., and is an excellent specimen of the school of the Low Countries of the seventeenth century.

Line engraving first makes its presence known in England in Armada days in William Rogers, who worked from 1588 to 1604. He derived his inspiration from De Bry, an engraver from Liège, who settled in England. Rogers stands foremost as the most distinctive native artist. His magnificent full-length portrait of Queen Elizabeth deserves especial praise. Thomas Coxon, who worked about the same date, engraved portraits, and has the honour of being the first Englishman to produce an engraved caricature. Renold Elstracke, a Fleming, who settled in England (1598-1635), is another early master whose work, together with the above named, had its influence in