DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.51584#0181
MANTEGNA.
177
This relic is preserved in the Royal Library at Paris,
where it was discovered lying among some old
Italian engravings by the Abbe Zani. The date
of the work is fixed beyond all dispute; for the
record of the payment of sixty-six gold ducats (324
sterling) to Maso Finiguerra for this identical pax
still exists, dated 1452. The only existing im-
pression from it must have been made previously,
perhaps a few weeks or months before. It is now,
like the first woodcut, framed and hung up in the
Royal Library at Paris for the inspection of the
curious: we have given a reduced copy in the an-
nexed illustration.
Another method of trying the effect of niello-
work before it was quite completed, was by taking
the impression of the design, not on paper, but on
sulphur, of which some curious and valuable speci-
mens remain. After seeing several impressions of
niello plates of the fifteenth century, we are no
longer surprised to find skilful goldsmiths converted
into excellent painters and sculptors. In our own
time this art, after having been forgotten since the
sixteenth century, when it fell into disuse, has been
very successfully revived by Mr. Wagner, a gold-
smith of Berlin, now residing at Paris.
We have no evidence that it occurred to Maso
Finiguerra, or any other niello-worker, to engrave
designs on plates of copper for the express purpose
of making and multiplying impressions of them on
177
This relic is preserved in the Royal Library at Paris,
where it was discovered lying among some old
Italian engravings by the Abbe Zani. The date
of the work is fixed beyond all dispute; for the
record of the payment of sixty-six gold ducats (324
sterling) to Maso Finiguerra for this identical pax
still exists, dated 1452. The only existing im-
pression from it must have been made previously,
perhaps a few weeks or months before. It is now,
like the first woodcut, framed and hung up in the
Royal Library at Paris for the inspection of the
curious: we have given a reduced copy in the an-
nexed illustration.
Another method of trying the effect of niello-
work before it was quite completed, was by taking
the impression of the design, not on paper, but on
sulphur, of which some curious and valuable speci-
mens remain. After seeing several impressions of
niello plates of the fifteenth century, we are no
longer surprised to find skilful goldsmiths converted
into excellent painters and sculptors. In our own
time this art, after having been forgotten since the
sixteenth century, when it fell into disuse, has been
very successfully revived by Mr. Wagner, a gold-
smith of Berlin, now residing at Paris.
We have no evidence that it occurred to Maso
Finiguerra, or any other niello-worker, to engrave
designs on plates of copper for the express purpose
of making and multiplying impressions of them on