4 HISTORY OF WOOD-ENGRAVING
in her left hand; her right hand clasps a laidly dragon, and a cross leans upon her arm. Outside the palings a rabbit is feeding; a bird sits on the rail behind St. Catherine, two others are flying, and, above all, three angels are offering chaplets of roses to the Virgin; a palm-tree is growing on each side of her. But the most important part of the print is the very solid three-barred gate at the entrance to the garden, for on the uppermost of the bars we distinctly read m:ccccoxviiio. The print itself measures 14½ inches in height by 9 inches in width, without reckoning the border lines. It was found pasted at the bottom of an old coffer in the possession of an innkeeper at Malines in 1844 by a well-known architect, M. de Noter, who, recognizing its great importance, offered it to the Royal Library at Brussels. It has been reproduced in scrupulously exact facsimile and fully described in the work entitled 'Documents iconographiques et typographiques de la Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique', published by MM. Muquardt of Brussels. The small letters o are supposed to represent nails in the gate.
M. Georges Duplessis tells us that he has examined the print minutely several times, and that he does not believe this date has been tampered with in any way. Some collectors and would-be critics maintain that the drawings of the figures and the folds of the garments are of a later date than 1418; if they were to examine the works of Hubert and Jan van Eyck, and the paintings of Meister Stephan Lochner of Cologne, Rogier van der Weyden, and other artists who lived about this time, they would be sufficiently answered. Mr. Linton is of opinion (and there can be no better judge) that the style of the engraving does not compel him to attribute it to a later date than 1418, yet both he and Mr. Chatto express their doubts as to its authenticity—it appears to us, without sufficient reason.
About the middle of the eighteenth century Herr Heinecken, a German collector of engravings, discovered, pasted
