who had imposed his style on Gobelins, and his engraved work after Lebrun's canvases departs in no minor degree from that master. The translation corrects the faulty design of the original. As an engraver of historical painting Audran has few equals. His masterly grasp of chiaroscuro and his broad treatment of colour raise him to an eminence even among the great seventeenth-century French school. He employed etching very largely to obtain his effects, and differs as greatly from his immediate predecessors as he does from the pretty school of finesse and encumbering subtleties which succeeded him.
His prints do not appeal to the English taste. The Battles of Alexander sells at £8 or £9 the set: this is his masterpiece. But many of his other prints, such as Raphael's Cartoons, sell for only 5s. apiece. The Empire of Flora, after Poussin, may be bought for 15s. in splendid state. His portrait of Pope Clement IX., a fine piece of work, may easily be had for 25s.
Among the great masters of this period Antoine Masson (1636-1700) comes nearest to Nanteuil and Edelinck. He was a portrait painter, and his work as an engraver was done solely with the burin. In the reproduction of his masterly portrait of Peter Dupuis the painter, in a fur cap, which is here illustrated, his powerful treatment of character is shown. This portrait may be bought in England for 30s. It exhibits the engraver's grasp of the essential qualities of his art. The likeness is faithful to the life, from the deep-cut lines on the face
