Page:A History of Wood-Engraving.djvu/83

Fig. 30.—Poliphilo meets Polia. From the "Hypnerotomachia Poliphili." Venice, 1499

tious fancy, which cannot be too much admired. They have that union of force and energy with a sober sweetness, beneath a last vestige of the primitive, which in the northern schools of Italy betokens the concurrent influence of the school of Mantegna and the school of Bellini." Italy never afterward produced so noble a monument of the art as this work of its early days.

The art did not, however, fall into decline immediately. It is true that wood-engraving never won for itself in Italy