Jasper County Democrat, Volume 2, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 May 1899 — FINIGUERRA AND LAUNDRESS [ARTICLE]

FINIGUERRA AND LAUNDRESS

A Kindly Act that Brought About a Great Discovery. It is always pleasing to hear a pretty story told of a man who has created beautiful things. Two groups of tourists were standing in the Pitti Palace before the large plate of pure silver upon which Flniguerra, the great master of early engraving, had depicted his lovely Madonna and Child in a trellised arbor covered with roses. As the tourists looked at the exquisite work, an Italian guide discoursed upon the value of the silver, and offered a magnifying glass with which to observe the delicate lines of the drawing, talking volubly, and uttering ecstatically, “Bello!” and "Bellissimo!” as he fell into theatrical poses of admiration. At the same time an Italian lady was telling her friends in an undertone the charming anecdote of Finiguerra and the laundress. The artist, it seems, in mastering the new and difficult ail of engraving upon metal, had acquired a singularly keen eye and delicate touch; and he also possessed a number of very fine and sharp instruments, which be used in his work. Being a kindly man, he sometimes placed both his sure hand and his fine tools at the service of his friends and neighbors, in performing for them some of the simpler operations of surgery, until he acquired quite a reputation for his skill in doctoring their hurts. One day a poor laundress who had been washing clothes in wringing out a garment in which a needle had been carelessly left, ran it deeply into ler hand; worse yet. it broke off in the w ound. and a part remained embedded in the flesh. She was in much pain, and on her way back from the stream where she had been washing, she stopped at the house of the artist and was admitted. Entering his studio, she hastily sot down her wet and heavy bundle, and held out the injured hand, begging his assistance. Finiguerra left his work to help her, and after long and delicate manipulation extracted the broken needle. The woman thanked him and turned to go, lifting her bundle from its resting-place. s Then he saw that she had set it upon one of his engravings. Like all others at that time, it was a plate of engraved metal, complete in itself, and regarded us a single and sufficient picture, exactly as if it had been a painting. But as the damp bundle was raised, the quick eye of Finiguerra saw that it had received an impression from the engraved picture beneath, and his quick mind seized at once the suggestion of the possibility of indefinite reproduction from a single original. So that from the kindness of a great artist to a poor washerwoman sprang the discovery which has placed the beautiful products of the engravers’ art within the reach of all of us today!—Youth's Companion.