CORT, CORNELIUS, a designer and very celebrated engraver, was born at Horn In Holland in 1536. He worked in his youth for Jerome Cock, a printseller of Antwerp. He then went to Italy, where in Venice he was received by Titian into his house, and engraved several of his pictures for him in (at that time) an unusually large raise ; they are dated 1566. Cort however settled finally in Rome, and established a school of engraving there, in which Agostino Carucci is said to have studied. This however is doubtful, as Agostino was only twenty years of age when Cort died, if 1578, as is believed from the letters on an old portrait, was the year of his death. The earliest prints of Agostino are dated 1582, four years after the death of Core 1'hat Agostino studied the printe of Cort, and to a great extent adopted him as • model, his works sufficiently evince. Cort'e prints are large and his outline correct ; they display great mastery of the graver, but a want of perception of the more delicate qualities, such as colour and relative distance; he was also deficient in discriminating the more delicate Indications and varieties of expression. His works,
for their size and style, and conaideriug the comparative shortness of his life (forty-two years), are very numerous; they exceed 150. Ile made the first engraving after the "Transfiguration ' by ltaffaelle ; he engraved also the ' Battle of the Elephants,' and the ' Battle of Cote atantiue: after Itaffaelle. lie executed also several prints after Federigo Znooare, and others after Taddeo Zuccaro, G. iluzziaue, l'olidoro da Carravaggiu, Corregelo, Michel Angelo, Sabbatlni, and many other celebrated masters, Italian and Flemish ; and likewise some from his own designs. (Gandellitii, Notizie htoriche dcgti Inta9liatori, do. ; Heineken. Dicticornaire des Artistes, afte.)