Engraving

Skillful as Cano was with the pencil, he loved the chisel above all his other artistic implements. He was so fond of sculpture that, when wearied with painting, he would take his tools, and block out a piece of carving. A disciple one day remarking that to lay down a pencil and take up a mallet, was a strange method of repose, he replied, "Blockhead! don't you see that to create form and relief on a flat surface, is a greater labor than to fashion one shape into another?"

This old Florentine sculptor was born in 1383. He was the first of the moderns who forsook the stiff and gothic manner, and endeavored to restore to sculpture the grace and beauty of the antique. He executed a multitude of works in wood, marble and bronze, consisting of images, statues, busts, basso-relievos, monuments, equestrian statues, etc. which gained him great reputation, and some of which are much esteemed at the present day. He was much patronized by Cosmo de' Medici, and his son Pietro.

At the age of twenty, Vandyck set out for Italy, but delayed some time at Brussels, fascinated by the charms of a peasant girl of Saveltheim, named Anna van Ophem, who persuaded him to paint two pictures for the church of her native place—a St. Martin on horseback, painted from himself and the horse given him by Rubens; and a Holy Family, for which the girl and her parents were the models.

In Smith's Catalogue raisonné may be found a descriptive account of upwards of three hundred and fifty of the works of this great artist, in many instances tracing the history from the time they were painted, the names of the present possessors, and the principal artists by whom they have been engraved, together with many interesting particulars of the life of the painter. There are eight of his pictures in the English National Gallery, fourteen in the Dulwich Gallery, and many in the possession of the nobility of England.

This eminent French engraver was born at Nancy, in Lorraine, in 1593. He was the son of Jean Callot, a gentleman of noble family, who intended him for a very different profession, and endeavored to restrain his natural passion for art; but when he was twelve years old, he left his home without money or resources, joined a company of wandering Bohemians, and found his way to Florence, where some officer of the court, discovering his inclination for drawing, placed him under Cantagallina.

Champollion, the famous explorer of Egyptian antiquities, holds the following language at the end of his fifteenth letter, dated at Thebes. "It is evident to me, as it must be to all who have thoroughly examined Egypt or have an accurate knowledge of the Egyptian monuments existing in Europe, that the arts commenced in Greece by a servile imitation of the arts in Egypt, much more advanced than is vulgarly believed, at the period when the Egyptian colonies came in contact with the savage inhabitants of Attica or the Peloponnesus.

In the earlier part of his career, the impetuosity of his genius led him astray; he usually painted his pictures in oil or fresco without preparing either drawing or cartoon; and his first style was gigantic and unnatural. Subsequently, however, he checked this impetuosity, and it was in the middle of his life that he produced his best works. His fertility of invention was wonderful; his genius grappled with and conquered the most arduous difficulties of the art, and he shows his powers in foreshortening in the most daring variety.

Milizia gives the following interesting account of the removal of the immense mass of granite, which forms the pedestal or base of the equestrian statue of Peter the Great, from the bogs of the Neva to St. Petersburg, a distance of about fourteen miles. He also cites it as an instance of extraordinary ingenuity and skill in mechanics. It is, however, a much easier task to move a ponderous mass of rough, unhewn rock, than a brittle obelisk, an hundred feet or so in length, requiring the greatest care to preserve it from injury.

Juan de Alfaro first studied under Antonio del Castillo at Seville, and subsequently in the school of Velasquez at Madrid. After his return to Seville, he was wont to plume himself upon the knowledge of art which he had acquired in the school of that great painter; and he also signed all his pictures in a conspicuous manner, "Alfaro, pinxit." This was too much for Castillo, and he accordingly inscribed his Baptism of St.

A rich Genoese merchant commissioned Donatello to execute his bust in bronze, of life size. When the work was completed, it was pronounced a capital performance, and Cosmo de' Medici, who was the friend of both parties, caused it to be placed in the upper court of the palace, between the battlements which overlook the street, that it might be seen by the citizens. When the merchant, unacquainted with the value of such works, came to pay for it, the price demanded appeared to him so exorbitant that he refused to take it, whereupon the mutter was referred to Cosmo.