be a large form of r, but I believe the two letters are intended. The reading of the antepenultimate letter of the third name is not certain or satisfactory. It may be a or n, but cannot be both. I should like to read volfgag but I can find no trace of the superscript n, so common in the Fifteenth Century, in this place.

There is no border; the dimensions of the print are 85 × 71 mm., and there are very small margins preserved, 90 × 76 mm. in all. The lower right corner is slightly torn. The print is entirely uncolored. The Schreiber number (in the fifth volume of the Handbuch) will be 2863x.

At present the print is pasted on the blank verso of a leaf of a block-book - one of a series of ten block-book leaves. Upon the versos of the other nine are pasted nine separate woodcuts (Schreiber nos. 747a, 1210c, 1376d, 1413b, 1489a, 1603a, 1693a, 1708d, 1730q) which form a complete series or Heiligenfolge. Originally (as the cut and uncut edges show) these little pictures were printed, and perhaps even sold, on a single large sheet, which was cut up, by the original vendor or some early owner. From the style one would date them about 1460.2 There is no proof that the prints were pasted on the block-book leaves by the Fifteenth Century owners the chances are against it, for a fragmentary Sixteenth Century etching accompanies them. But a very recent owner would hardly treat his prints so, and one has a feeling all ten prints have been long together. Professor Schreiber ascribes the Heiligenfolge to Augsburg. One can hardly doubt that the Siegeldruck comes from Regensburg. But perhaps it is nearly contemporary with the woodcuts, and may be tentatively dated about 1460, which fits the style of art.

The Siegeldruck has long been recognized as a print, and referred to as such, but its exact nature has been curiously misunderstood. When it was sold eighty years ago in London, the compiler of the auction catalogue described the print of the Patrons of Regensburg as made of "thick white paste." In this error he was followed by the compiler of Quaritch's Catalogue 209 in 1901, and by the author of the Fairfax Murray Catalogue. Had any of these gentlemen pressed a portion of the print ever so gently,

These prints will be more thoroughly treated in the Appendix to Professor Schreiber's Handbuch than they have been in the earlier volumes. All were sold together, on the block-book leaves, over eighty years ago in London, and they have been briefly described in the Fairfax Murray Catalogue of Early German Books, London, 1913, where 1210c, 1693a, and our Siegeldruck are reproduced on Plate I. Professor Schreiber and I hope to reproduce the complete series in the volume of Fifteenth Century Woodcuts and Metalcuts in American Public Collections, which we are preparing for the Heitz Series, Einblattdrucke des fünfzehnten Jahrhunderts. All the prints were purchased at the sale of the Fairfax Murray Collection at Christie's, Dec. 10, 1917, for the Pierpont Morgan Library, where eight of the prints now are. No. 1210c and the Siegeldruck are on block-book leaves presented to the Metropolitan Museum by Mr. Morgan.

it would have yielded. Indeed, had they looked at it closely they would have seen the paper around the edges of the design slightly wrinkled, but the surface continuous. But paste-prints are known to be fragile. Such care was taken of the three saints that no one save Mr. Dodgson looked very closely at the print, and the erroneous idea that it was a paste-print appeared in the last description published.

No. 3

But if that description was wrong, at least one curious print does exist, which is really made much in the manner the Patrons of Regensburg was wrongly supposed to have been made-save that the paste is covered with a brown paint or varnish. As in the ordinary paste-prints of the earlier types (1475-1495) the paper has been first covered with a layer of glue, upon which a layer of paste has been laid. But in ordinary paste-prints, the raised lines of the design are pressed through the paste to the glue base, the chief outlines of the picture being made by these lines cut through the paste, while the paste is forced into the interstices of the plate and molded by minor lines engraved on the sunken surface or lower level of the metal; the method having kinship with both relief-cuts and copper-plates. In the Seal-Paste-Print or Siegelteigdruck, the artist has modified the technique of the ordinary paste-print so as to produce something akin to our seal-prints - so as to make something which is both a print, and yet reminds one of a waxen seal a hybrid form of the most curious nature, and great interest to one who would study how closely knit are all the graphic arts. In the seal-paste-print, the chief lines of the design were not raised but sunk deep into the plate. The paste mass is extraordinarily thick writers on Teigdrucke speak of thick or thin paste, but in the Siegelteigdruck the paste is at least twice as thick as in the thickest ordinary paste-print. And in the impression the outlines stand out upon the level and uncut surface of the paste- which was nowhere pierced through to the paper. The result is an object which resembles indeed a seal, but is in purpose, use, and art akin rather to the woodcuts, the paste-prints, and the seal-prints — akin to all these, yet itself a distinct combination of qualities characteristic of the last two.

The subject of the Siegelteigdruck is a very popular one with the early print designers. It represents the Virgin and Child Enthroned. In an architectural arch with two curiously decorated supporting towers at the sides, the Madonna is seated left upon a cushion. She is clad in a mantle,

and wears a cloak with decorated borders represented by hatched lines (which, however, do not cross each other) and she wears a crown or coronet with three points visible, and showing three jewels. Her hair hangs loose in very slightly wavy lines. Upon her lap she holds the naked Babe, who smiles up at her to right; his curly hair is represented by curved lines. Each head is surrounded by a plain nimbus. There is a double border of square dentels. The whole is surrounded by a vermilion painted border, such as one finds around many early prints.

The design is impressed upon an irregular thick mass of paste (of uncertain composition, but brittle and not waxen, and evidently similar to that in ordinary Teigdrucke, though far thicker). The form of this mass is roughly rectangular, but the upper right corner of the paste mass seems to have been imperfect, though the brown glue base was applied there, too. Since the print was made the paste has broken off in one or two places; and upon examining the fractures one finds the core white, but the mass is covered by a chocolate-brown paint or varnish, hard to distinguish from the paste proper, save at the chief recent fracture. The whole paste mass is cracked in several places — the deeper breaks seem to date from the time of the making of the print, for the brown paint or varnish has penetrated them and that was surely placed on the paste before the vermilion border was painted on the paper around the print, for in two places the red coloring may be seen on top of the brown. Certain more recent cracks in the paste may be seen. There are slight margins at the bottom, top, and upper left side, though the vermilion border is slightly shaved. At the upper left corner the paper shows a trace of a worm-hole. The greatest dimensions of the paste mass are 89 × 66 mm., those of the surrounding vermilion border 98 x 80 mm. The margins have obviously been cut, but now measure 110 x 80 mm. There is no evidence that the print was ever pasted (as most surviving paste-prints seem to have been) in the inside of a book cover. The paper may have been part of a fly-leaf of a manuscript (if so, with blank verso) or it may always have remained a separate print. The extreme frangibility of paste-prints, which has probably caused them to survive in such small numbers, is of course greatly increased by the greater thickness of the seal-paste-print. For the thicker mass which, unlike a real seal, not waxen, increases in fragility with size, is less likely to adhere to the glue base, is exposed to more knocks and blows, and is by its shape rendered unfit for that preservation inside a book cover, which accounts for the survival of almost all known paste-prints. The survival of even one specimen is a matter for surprise. But the difficulty of preserving seal-paste