Note 3 — Chapter I · ORIGIN AND PARENTAGE.

It is interesting to trace what may be called the technical descent of these artists. Thus, Aliamet was a pupil of J. P. Le Bas, who studied under Nicholas Tardieu, who learnt his art from Le Pautre and Jean Audran. The master of the last was his uncle Gerard of the same name, who, again, was instructed by his own father Claude and his uncle, Charles Audran, all of them men in the foremost ranks of the engravers. Charles, the first of the great family of “graveurs” named Audran, formed his style upon that of Cornelius Bloemaert, a member of another famous line of artists on metal, well known by his superb plate of Guercino’s “St. Peter raising Tabitha from the Dead,” and transcripts of Raphael’s, Titian’s, Parmigiano’s and his own father’s (Abraham Bloemaert’s) pictures. Now, to trace the stream of skill a little farther, and, it must be admitted, to find it getting shallow at this point, let us add that Cornelius Bloemaert’s master was Crispin de Pass, the younger, about whom centres the third family of engravers to whom we have occasion to refer in this long line of tutorage. This De Pass had a brother, William, who came to England, as also did a third brother, Simon, the reproducer of so many “Van Dycks” and “Van Somers.” Crispin de Pass the younger studied his craft under his father, Crispin the elder, who had for a master Theodore Cuernhert, beyond whom, as he was born in 1522, it is needless to carry our recollections, or trace the art-genealogy of the instructor of John Landseer—who, almost three hundred years after the line is first brought into sight here, taught his sons Edwin, Charles, and Thomas.