as the early Peasant Family Going to Market or the Two Apprentices Fighting, which may reflect his background in a goldsmith's house. A print of an elephant is a unique venture into the popular "prodigy" genre; it turns out that an elephant was indeed being toured around Germany in 1483, before drowning in a canal near Muiden. He also produced nine of the first ornament prints, initially intended to be used by craftsmen in various media, including woodcarvers and goldsmiths, as patterns for the elaborate and sophisticated designs. There are also two prints of metalwork objects, a censer and crosier. From his family background and time at university he was no doubt familiar with the emerging bourgeoisie of trade and the professions who provided the core market for high quality engravings, but the subjects from classical mythology so popular in German prints of the next century, and already present in Italian ones, do not appear at all in his work. The generally agreed sequence of his engravings shows an increasing sophistication of technique, but the most crowded and detailed, but highly organized, compositions are placed rather early, with "late-Gothic complexity" giving way to simpler compositions with more empty space and "an almost classical orderliness and decorum". But some of the busy early prints were his most popular and influential, as shown by the number of copies of them. These include The Temptation of St Anthony, the [Rest on] the Flight into Egypt, Death of the Virgin and Christ Carrying the Cross. There are a number of series of engravings which show this development, from the twelve "crowded and turbulent" scenes in the Passion series, perhaps of about 1480, through the Twelve Apostles, and the circular coats of arms with wild men, to the late circular Evangelist's symbols and the Wise and Foolish Virgins, perhaps of around 1490. By the time of his pair showing the Annuciation with each figure occupying its own sheet, often thought to be his last prints, the background is only represented by a simple groundline. He went beyond Master E. S. in the system of depicting volume by means of cross-hatching (lines in two directions) which was further developed by Dürer, and was the first engraver to curve parallel lines, probably by rotating the plate against a steady burin. He also developed a burin technique producing deeper lines on the plate, which meant that more impressions