DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.7597#0381
344
BARTSCH'S ARGUMENT EXAMINED.
[chap. v.
previous to filling it with niello, when it became no longer capable
of being printed. Many of these proofs have been, doubtless,
destroyed; others lost; a catastrophe to which, from the minute
dimensions of most of them, they are especially subject; others still
remain, unheeded, amongst old collections of drawings; and others,
better printed than the rest, for there can be no doubt of the gold-
smiths having, by degrees, improved the process by which they
obtained these impressions, escape, undistinguished, in volumes or
portfolios of old engravings. For where the impression of a work
of niello happens to have been well taken off, and there is no in-
scription upOn it, which, by presenting its characters reversed, may
serve to ascertain it, it may not be so easily known. I have already
described half a dozen small prints in my own small collection,
which, I am fully convinced, are of the number of these proofs of
the Italian goldsmiths: some of them are printed with tolerable
effect; others, less perfectly; but, as they are destitute of inscrip-
tions, I would not undertake to convince Mr. Bartsch that they are,
really, what I consider them.
Ought not the confessed rarity of the prints, even of the early
German school, to have deterred Mr. Bartsch from having recourse
to such an argument? The plates of all these appear to have
been engraved for the express purpose of publication, and, conse-
quently, may be supposed to have furnished many impressions: for
Germany produces no document, from which it may be conjectured
that its goldsmiths of the fifteenth century practised working in
niello, or that, previous to the discovery of a well constructed press,
they made any attempts to procure impressions from their en-
gravings on metal. And yet that writer informs us, in the preface
to his Catalogues of the German engravers, from 1466 to the latter
part of the sixteenth century, " that so great was the rarity of the
" prints described in those Catalogues, that he had only chanced
' to see one single impression of about half of them;" although he
had had recourse to all the great collections at Vienna.
Having demonstrated, as he conceives, that few, if any, of these
BARTSCH'S ARGUMENT EXAMINED.
[chap. v.
previous to filling it with niello, when it became no longer capable
of being printed. Many of these proofs have been, doubtless,
destroyed; others lost; a catastrophe to which, from the minute
dimensions of most of them, they are especially subject; others still
remain, unheeded, amongst old collections of drawings; and others,
better printed than the rest, for there can be no doubt of the gold-
smiths having, by degrees, improved the process by which they
obtained these impressions, escape, undistinguished, in volumes or
portfolios of old engravings. For where the impression of a work
of niello happens to have been well taken off, and there is no in-
scription upOn it, which, by presenting its characters reversed, may
serve to ascertain it, it may not be so easily known. I have already
described half a dozen small prints in my own small collection,
which, I am fully convinced, are of the number of these proofs of
the Italian goldsmiths: some of them are printed with tolerable
effect; others, less perfectly; but, as they are destitute of inscrip-
tions, I would not undertake to convince Mr. Bartsch that they are,
really, what I consider them.
Ought not the confessed rarity of the prints, even of the early
German school, to have deterred Mr. Bartsch from having recourse
to such an argument? The plates of all these appear to have
been engraved for the express purpose of publication, and, conse-
quently, may be supposed to have furnished many impressions: for
Germany produces no document, from which it may be conjectured
that its goldsmiths of the fifteenth century practised working in
niello, or that, previous to the discovery of a well constructed press,
they made any attempts to procure impressions from their en-
gravings on metal. And yet that writer informs us, in the preface
to his Catalogues of the German engravers, from 1466 to the latter
part of the sixteenth century, " that so great was the rarity of the
" prints described in those Catalogues, that he had only chanced
' to see one single impression of about half of them;" although he
had had recourse to all the great collections at Vienna.
Having demonstrated, as he conceives, that few, if any, of these