V.
ALBERT DÜRER AND HIS SUCCESSORS.
Fig. 39—From an Italian Alphabet of the 16th Century.LREADY, before the Dream of Poliphilo had been published in Venice, wood-engraving in the North had passed into the hands of the great German master who was to transform it; in the studio of Albert Dürer (1471–1528) it had entered upon its great period. The earlier German engravers, whose woodcuts in simple outline, shadowed by courses of short parallel lines, showed a naïve spirit almost too simple for modern taste, a force ignorant of the channels of expression and feeling inexpert in utterance, did not know the full resources of their art. It was not until the very close of the fifteenth century, when they discarded the aid of the colorists, and sought all their effects from simple contrast of black and white, that they conceived of wood-engraving as an independent art; even then their sense of beauty was so insignificant, and their power of thought was so feeble, that their works have only an historical value. Dürer was the first to discover the full capacities of wood-engraving as a mode of artistic expression; it had begun to imitate the methods of cop-
