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 CHAPTER VII

LINE ENGRAVING—SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY FRENCH SCHOOL

The great school of Louis XIV.—Colbert founds the Gobelins with Lebrun as director—Robert Nanteuil—Gérard Edelinck—Gérard Audran and Antoine Masson—The dawn of the eighteenth century.

There is a tendency to be discouraged in the amateur who is prone to disregard the work of other countries. The collector of old Staffordshire and Wedgwood pottery is apt to lose sight of the finer productions of Italy and of Spain, and the lover of Dresden and of Sèvres is wont to forget that the whole school of Oriental porcelain puts to the blush anything that Europe has ever produced. Similarly in engraving while laboriously collecting the English masters it should be borne in mind that the whole field of Europe might similarly be laid in fee, and that English engraving is, after all, but part of a whole.

In the reign of Louis XIV., when the fine arts received every encouragement from the State, the