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Excerpt from Catalogue of Early German and Flemish Woodcuts, Vol. 1: Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings, in the British Museum The following volume, compiled by Mr. Campbell Dodgson, is the first of a systematic catalogue of the collection of early German, Dutch, and Flemish woodcuts preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum. Throughout the age of the Renaissance and Reformation, the craft of the wood-engraver took a place only second to that of the letterpress printer as an instrument of popular culture in Europe; and its products were far more numerous and important in German lauds than in any others. The British Museum collection is very rich in all this class of work, standing perhaps second only, in the combination of quantity with quality, to that of the Museum at Berlin. Much of its excellence is due to the recent benefaction of Mr. William Mitchell, who in 1895 presented to the Trustees a series of some twelve hundred choice proof and other woodcuts, chiefly by Durer and his contemporaries, which it had been for more than twenty years his chief occupation to collect. The prints presented by Mr. Mitchell have now been incorporated with the general collection, and will be found described in their places in the following catalogue: a separate list of them will be added at the end of the work. The period to be covered by the present catalogue includes the whole activity of the various schools of wood-engraving in Germany and the Low Countries, from the dawn of the art at some undetermined date about 1400 to its temporary extinction about 1630-1640. In the XVI century, as is well known, to supply drawings for the wood-engraver came to be an important part of the industry of some of the most famous painters, including Durer at Nuremberg, Burgkmair at Augsburg, Cranach at Wittenberg, Hans Baldung at Nuremberg, Strassburg, and Freiburg, Holbein at Basle, H.S. Beham at Nuremberg and Frankfort, Lucas van Leyden at Leyden, Jacob Cornelisz at Amsterdam, etc. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."