wood-engraving the most illustrious in the German practice of the art. Lukas van Leyden (1494-1533), whose youthful works in copperplate were wonderful, left some woodcuts in Dürer’s bold, broad manner, which illustrate the attempt of German art to acquire classical taste, and show so much the more clearly the incapacity of the Germans in the perception of beauty. The Cranachs, father (1472-1553) and son (1515-1586), who are interesting because of the share they had in the Reformation, produced some very striking works, such as the charming scene of the Repose in Egypt, and were the first to practise chiaro-scuro engraving in the North. Hans Baldung (1470-1552?), although his designs are sometimes characterized by exaggeration and too great violence of action, ranks with the best of the secondary artists of the time; and Hans Springinklee, who has been already mentioned, reached a high degree of excellence in his illustrations to the Hortulus Animæ, which are still valued.
The works of these men, however, were only the most important and the best of a vast number of woodcuts which, during the first half of the sixteenth century, appeared in Germany during this period of the greatest popularity of the art. Under the personal influence of Dürer, or under the influence of the numerous and widely-spread prints by himself and his associates, many other artists of merit acquired skill in engraving, both on metal and in wood, and employed it upon a great variety of subjects. The devotion of mediæval art wholly to church decoration and to the representation of religious scenes had passed away in all quarters of the world; in Italy the artists had come to treat the subjects of pagan imagination, the beings and scenes of classical mythology; in Germany the people
