Virgin of the Long Thigh; the Virgin reclining on the ground her left leg outstretched supporting the infant Christ who reaches across to the infant John the Baptist, Joseph seated at left, buildings in the background

Printmaking in woodcut and engraving came to Northern Italy within a few decades of their invention north of the Alps. Engraving probably came first to Florence in the 1440s, the goldsmith Maso Finiguerra (1426–64) used the technique. Italian engraving caught the very early Renaissance, 1460–1490. Print copying was a widely accepted practice, as well as copying of paintings viewed as images in their own right.