The impetus given by Lucas van Leyden to the art of engraving was seconded, even during his life, by several Dutch artists who imitated his method more or less successfully. Amongst others, Alart Claessen, an anonymous engraver called the "Maître à l'Écrevisse," and Dirck Star, or Van Staren, generally called the "Maître à l'Étoile." The movement did not slacken after the death of the leader of the school. The engravers of the Low Countries, accentuating more and more the qualities aimed at from the beginning, soon surpassed their German rivals, and seemed alone to be gifted with the knack of dealing with light. Cornelius Cort, who engraved several of Titian's works in Venice in the great painter's studio, and the pupils he educated on his return to Holland, began to exhibit a boldness of touch not to be so clearly discovered in their predecessors; but this progress, real in some respects, was not accomplished without injury to truthful study and the exact interpretation of form, and certainly not without a deplorable exaggeration in the use of means.
The workmanship of Hendrik Goltzius, for instance, and still more that of his pupil, Jan Müller, is strained and feeble owing to their affectation of ease. The constant use of bent and parallel lines unreasonably prolonged imparts to the plates of these two engravers an appearance at once dull and florid; they present something of the same aspect as those caligraphical specimens of the present day, in which the faces of Henri IV. or of Napoleon are drawn entirely with the curves of a single stroke. Still, in spite of this extremely affected workmanship, the prints of Goltzius, of Müller, and even of Saenredam, are characterised by a comparative intensity of tone, as well as by singular skill in cutting the copper. This abuse of method, however, had not yet become general in the schools of the Low Countries. Side by side with the intemperate or daring craftsmen we have mentioned, there were certain Flemish and Dutch engravers who imparted to their work a delicacy and a reticence of expression better suited to the traditions and the models bequeathed by Lucas van Leyden. These were Nicolas van Bruyn at Antwerp, the brothers Wierix at Amsterdam, and some few others, all of them disciples more or less faithful to the old teaching, and apparently more or less hostile to the effort at emancipation going on around them. When, however, Rubens took the reins, individual resistance and impulse ceased, and all controversy was at an end. Principles, method, and aim became the same for every one. Both Dutch and Flemish engravers openly set themselves to represent with the graver the infinite gradations of a painted canvas, the delicacy and the daring, the nicest punctilio and the most summary smearing, of the painter's brush.