at right), which is in the Louvre, was turned into two engravings by E. S., in doing which he complicated the compositions, filling empty spaces with new detail. Shestack considers that this reveals that his compositional method, here and perhaps commonly, was to begin by copying accurately a painting or other work by someone else. He then, in working on the engraving, introduced extra detail in a goldsmith's style. Ars Moriendi He produced a series of eleven engravings for the Ars moriendi (The Art of Dying), a very popular devotional work. These were no doubt intended to be inserted into a manuscript copy of the book. The very controversial question of whether these were copies of woodcut versions of the same compositions in blockbooks was effectively solved in 1942, when Fritz Saxl published a set of manuscript illuminations using the same compositions found in the London library of the Wellcome Institute. These clearly predated all printed versions, all of which now can be seen to be derived from no doubt different versions of manuscript drawings in the same tradition. It has also been suggested that E. S. later designed the woodcuts for the earliest of the blockbooks, which are now seen as being created later than his engravings. Notes References Alan Shestack, Master E. S., Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1967 Alan Shestack; Fifteenth Century Engravings of Northern Europe, 1967, National Gallery of Art (Catalogue), LOC 67-29080 A Hyatt Mayor, Prints and People, Metropolitan Museum of Art/Princeton, 1971, nos 118-123. External links Prints & People: A Social History of Printed Pictures, an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Master E.S. (see index) Works of Master E. S. at Zeno.org Master E. S. "Large deck of playing cards" History of Printing Costume in The Early German Renaissance 1470-1520, Master E. S. Web gallery of art German engravers Gothic artists 1420s births 1460s deaths German goldsmiths E. S., Master 15th-century engravers