ompositions from
the life and passion of Christ, ending with the Descent of the Holy
Ghost and the Last Judgment. Its title was _Figurae Passionis Domini
Nostri Jesu Christi_; and it was furnished with a set of the Latin
verses of Chelidonius.

The third of Duerer's great works in wood-engraving was "The Life
of the Virgin," with explanatory Latin verses by the Benedictine
Chelidonius. This was published in 1511, and contains twenty pictures,
full of realistic plainness and domestic homeliness, yet displaying
marvellous skill and power of invention. To the same year belong the
master's engravings of the Trinity, St. Christopher, St. Gregory's
Mass, St. Jerome, St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata, the Holy Family
with the Guitar, Herodias and the Head of John the Baptist, and the
Adoration of the Magi; and the copper-plates of the Crucifixion and
the Virgin with the Pear.

Duerer was much afflicted by the boldness of many imitators, who
plagiarized his engravings without stint, and flooded the market with
pictures from his designs. His rights were protected but poorly by the
edicts of the Emperor and the city of Nuremberg; and a swarm of
parasitical copyists reproduced every fresh design as soon as it was
published. Marc Antonio Raimondi, the great Italian engraver who
worked so many years with Raphael, was the most dangerous of these
plagiarists, and reproduced "The Little Passion" and "The Life of the
Virgin" in a most exquisite manner, close after their publication.
Vasari says, "It happened that at this time certain Flemings came to
Venice with a great many prints, engraved both in wood and copper by
Albert Duerer, which being seen by Marc Antonio in the Square of St.
Mark, he was so much astonished by their style of execution, and the
skill displayed by Albert, that he laid out on those prints almost all
the money he had brought with him from Bologna, and amongst other
things purchased 'The Passion of Jesus Christ,' engraved on thirty-six
wooden blocks.... Marc Antonio therefore, having considered how much
honor as well as advantage might be acquired by one who should devote
himself to that art in Italy, resolved to attend to it with the
greatest diligence, and immediately began to copy these engravings of
Albert, studying their mode of hatching, and every thing else in the
prints he had purchased, which from their novelty as well as beauty,
were in such repute that every one desired to possess them."

It appears