changing Callisto into a bear, the Council of the Gods, Penelope weaving
with her women, and other things without number, engraved on wood, and
executed for the most part with the burin; by reason of which the wits
of the craftsmen have become very subtle, insomuch that little figures
have been engraved so well, that it would not be possible to give them
greater delicacy. And who can see without marvelling the works of
Francesco Marcolini of Forli? Who, besides other things, printed the
book of the Garden of Thoughts from wood-blocks, placing at the
beginning an astrologer's sphere and a head of himself after the design
of Giuseppe Porta of Castelnuovo della Garfagnana; in which book are
various fanciful figures, such as Fate, Envy, Calamity, Timidity,
Praise, and many others of the same kind, which were held to be most
beautiful. Not otherwise than praiseworthy, also, were the figures that
Gabriele Giolito, a printer of books, placed in the Orlando Furioso, for
they were executed in a beautiful manner of engraving. And even such,
likewise, were the eleven large anatomical plates that were done by
Andrea Vessalio after the drawings of Johann of Calcar, a most excellent
Flemish painter, which were afterwards copied on smaller sheets and
engraved on copper by Valverde, who wrote on anatomy after Vessalio.

Next, among the many plates that have issued from the hands of Flemings
within the last ten years, very beautiful are some drawn by one
Michele,[19] a painter, who worked for many years in two chapels that
are in the Church of the Germans at Rome. These plates contain the story
of Moses and the Serpents, and thirty-two stories of Psyche and Love,
which are held to be most beautiful. Hieronymus Cock, also a Fleming,
has engraved a large plate after the invention and design of Martin
Heemskerk, of Delilah cutting off the locks of Samson; and not far away
is the Temple of the Philistines, in which, the towers having fallen,
one sees ruin and destruction in the dead, and terror in the living, who
are taking to flight. The same master has executed in three smaller
plates the Creation of Adam and Eve, the Eating of the Fruit, and the
Angel driving them out of Paradise; and in four other plates of the same
size, in the first the Devil imprinting avarice and ambition into the
heart of man, and in the others all the passions that result from those
two. There may also be seen twenty-seven plates of the same size by his
hand, wit