DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.7597#0352
CHAP. IV.]
MASO FINIGUERRA.
315
**■ colour with which it is printed, that this impression must have
**. been taken off from the silver plate itself, when nothing was
** wanting to its completion, but the introduction of the niello."
" Strange would it be," says Bartsch, who has given us this infor-
mation in a note, but had not seen the impression itself, " if this
" ancient print were in reality of so much more brilliant an effect,
" than the proofs taken by the workers in niello posterior to Fini-
" guerra; which latter are generally of a greyish tint, and resemble
**. drawings done with a pen."*
However strange, such may, nevertheless, be the case; for it is
by no means improbable that the goldsmiths of different cities of
Italy—nay even those of Florence itself—may have imitated Fini-
guerra in the practice of taking impressions from works intended to
be finished with niello, by a method of their own, and even by a
common roller, moved backwards and forwards, many years before
the more appropriate contrivance, adopted by Maso himself, was
divulged.
This argument, better than any other that I am prepared to offer,
may account for the long period which appears to have intervened
—a period of perhaps not. less than twenty years—between the time
of Finiguerra's first discovery, and its application for the common
purposes of impression and publication.
Whether, or not, by the year 1460, or thereabouts, from which
Vasari dates the practice of chalcography, Finiguerra had so
far succeeded in his attempts, as to construct an apparatus fitted
to the ordinary purposes of printing engraved plates of various
dimensions for publication; whether, or not, in short, he himself
became the perfecter of his own invention, is a question upon which
it may now be proper to offer a few remarks; for certain it is that
about that period a tolerably efficient mode of impression was prac-
tised in Tuscany, and perhaps in some other parts of Italy.
As a circumstance not a little favourable to an opinion in the af-
* Bartsch, " Peintre Graveur," vol. xiii. p. 44.
2 s 2
MASO FINIGUERRA.
315
**■ colour with which it is printed, that this impression must have
**. been taken off from the silver plate itself, when nothing was
** wanting to its completion, but the introduction of the niello."
" Strange would it be," says Bartsch, who has given us this infor-
mation in a note, but had not seen the impression itself, " if this
" ancient print were in reality of so much more brilliant an effect,
" than the proofs taken by the workers in niello posterior to Fini-
" guerra; which latter are generally of a greyish tint, and resemble
**. drawings done with a pen."*
However strange, such may, nevertheless, be the case; for it is
by no means improbable that the goldsmiths of different cities of
Italy—nay even those of Florence itself—may have imitated Fini-
guerra in the practice of taking impressions from works intended to
be finished with niello, by a method of their own, and even by a
common roller, moved backwards and forwards, many years before
the more appropriate contrivance, adopted by Maso himself, was
divulged.
This argument, better than any other that I am prepared to offer,
may account for the long period which appears to have intervened
—a period of perhaps not. less than twenty years—between the time
of Finiguerra's first discovery, and its application for the common
purposes of impression and publication.
Whether, or not, by the year 1460, or thereabouts, from which
Vasari dates the practice of chalcography, Finiguerra had so
far succeeded in his attempts, as to construct an apparatus fitted
to the ordinary purposes of printing engraved plates of various
dimensions for publication; whether, or not, in short, he himself
became the perfecter of his own invention, is a question upon which
it may now be proper to offer a few remarks; for certain it is that
about that period a tolerably efficient mode of impression was prac-
tised in Tuscany, and perhaps in some other parts of Italy.
As a circumstance not a little favourable to an opinion in the af-
* Bartsch, " Peintre Graveur," vol. xiii. p. 44.
2 s 2