In our books we used engravings from this book many times.
It is considered, that engraving initially appeared in Holland and Flanders and only after this moved to France and Italy. The oldest dated engraving, which remained until our time, is considered a plate on the tree "Saint Christopher ", dated 1423, that is around 15-20 years before the creation of book printing by Gutenberg [544], v.4, pp.221--222. The fact, that printed engraving was not known before, is clear from the history of its appearance. First of all impressions were made with the same means as stamps of modern institutions. On a plate some places, which should be white, were deepened with a chisel. Then covering a plate with paint, they enclosed it to paper and got a rough print. But such method existed not for a long time. Already in 1452 gold–worker Tommaso Finiguera from Florence made the next natural step. He cut the picture on a silver plate, rubbed it with a mixture of oil and dust and enclosed it to a wet duster. He got a rather good picture. Tommaso Finiguera repeated the process with sheets of wet paper and assured, that renewing rubbing of paint into engraving it is possible to get any number of impressions from it. Further development of this process of multiplying pictures is connected with the name of famous Italian painter ��������� Mantegna (1431-1506) [797], p.756. He is an author of about 20 plates with pictures of mythological, historical and religious scenes, for example seven sheets of "Battle of sea deities", allegedly around 1470.
