DIE(Dea Vocontiorum), the capital of an arrondissement in the department of Drôme, in France, is situated on the right bank of the Drôme, at the foot of Mont Glandaz, in a wide and fertile plain. The manufactures are woollen cloth, paper, leather, and silk; there is some trade in mules, cattle, and wood; and the neighbourhood produces excellent fruit, and the white wine called “Clairette de Die.” The town was formerly the seat of a bishop, and, previous to the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, of a Calvinistic university. The most interesting structures of Die are the old cathedral, with granite columns from an ancient temple of Cybele, and a porch of the 11th century; the episcopal palace, the walls, flanked by towers, and the ruins of a castle—all of considerable age; the triumphal arch on the road towards Gap, known as the Porte St Marcel, portions of an aqueduct, and other Roman remains. In the vicinity are several mineral springs. The population in 1872 was 3876.

DIE SINKING. The preparation of dies for stamping coins and medals is a work requiring considerable skill and care. The steel selected should be of moderately fine grain and uniform texture, and, when polished, should show no spots or patches under a magnifying glass. Two short lengths having been cut from bars of this, and forged into rough dies, are next made as soft as possible by careful annealing,—being put in an iron pot of animal charcoal, heated to a cherry red, and allowed to cool gradually. After being faced up flatly and smoothly in a lathe, they piss into the hands of the engraver, who traces upon them their appropriate images, obverse and reverse, and works these out, with steel tools, in intaglio. (The inscription is generally stamped with punches and hammer.) The new matrices, or maternal dies, when, after repeated impressions on clay, <fcc., and alteration, they are found correct, are ready for hardening—a procass simple enough as regards plain steel, but here very critical, seeing that a delicate engraving has to be kept intact. Each matrix is first protected with a mask, composed of fixed oil thickened with animal charcoal, or of lampblack and linseed oil. They are then placed face downwards in a crucible, and burned in animal charcoal. After being heated to a cherry red, they are taken out with a pair of tongs, plunged in a large body of water, moved about rapidly till all noise ceases, and left in the water till quite cool. If the matrix pipes or sings, there is probably a crack in it. The hardened die is next polished and tempered,—the former by holding it against a running iron disc coated with flouremery and oil; the latter by putting it in water, which is gradually raised to the boiling point, then allowing it to cool slowly, or by placing ...

DIEPENBECK, Abraham van (1599-1675), was born at Herzogenbusch, and studied painting at Antwerp, where he became one of Rubens’s “hundred pupils.” Rubens complains in his letters that, being overwhelmed with applications for apprentices’ indentures, he refused to accept as disciples even the children of some of his best friends. Diepenbeck was one of those who was fortunate enough to obtain admission to Rubens’s workshop. But he was not one of the cleverest of Rubens’s followers, and he succeeded, at the best, in imitating the style and aping the peculiarities of his master. We see this in his earliest pictures—a portrait dated 1629 in the Munich Pinakothek, and a Distribution of Alms of the same period in the same collection. Yet even at this time there were moments when Diepenbeck probably fancied that he might take another path. A solitary copperplate executed with his own hand in 1630 represents a peasant sitting under a tree holding the bridle of an ass, aud this is a minute and finished specimen of the engraver’s art which shows that the master might at one time have hoped to rival the animal draughtsmen who flourished in the schools of Holland. However, large commissions now poured in upon him; he was asked for altar-pieces, subject-pieces, aud pagan allegories. He was tempted to try the profession of a glass-painter, and at last he gave up every other occupation for the lucrative business of a draughtsman and designer for engravings. Most of Diepenbeck’s important canvases are in Continental galleries. The best are the Marriage of St Catherine at Berlin, and Mary with Angels Wailing over the Dead Body of Christ in the Belvedere at Vienna, the first a very fair specimen of the artist’s skill, the second a picture of more energy and feeling ...

DIEPPE, a seaport town of France, at the head of an arrondissement in the department of Seine-Inférieure, 38 miles north of Rouen and 125 north-west of Paris by rail, in 49° 55' 35" N. lat. and 1° 5' 9" E. long. It lies at the mouth of the River Arques, in a hollow of the coast,—the main part of the town being on the west side of the river, aud the suburb of Pollet on the east. Its principal street stretches for about a mile along the shore, and terminates in the west at the foot of the chalk cliff, which is surmounted by a castle of the 15 th century, now employed as barracks....

DIES, Christoph Albert (1755-1822), was born at Hanover, and learned the rudiments of art in his native place. For one year he studied in the academy of Düsseldorf, and then he started at the age of twenty with thirty ducats in his pocket for Rome. There he established his domicile, and lived a frugal life till 1796. Copying pictures, chiefly by Salvator Rosa, for a livelihood, his taste led him to draw and paint from nature in Tivoli, Albano, and other picturesque places in the vicinity of Rome. Naples, the birthplace of his favourite master, he visited more than once for the same reasons. In this way he became a bold executant in water colours and in oil, though he failed to acquire any originality of his own. Lord Bristol, who encouraged him as a copyist, predicted that he would be a second Salvator Rosa. But Dies was not of the wood which makes original artists. Besides other disqualifications, he had necessities which forced him to give up the great career of an independent painter. David, then composing his Horatii at Rome, wished to take him to Paris. But Dies had reasons for not accepting the offer. He was courting a young Roman whom he subsequently married. Meanwhile he had made the acquaintance of Volpato, for whom he executed numerous drawings, and this no doubt suggested the plan, which he afterwards carried out, of publishing, in partnership with Méchan, Reinhardt, and Frauenholz, the series of plates known as the Collection de vues pittoresques de V Italie, published in 72 sheets at Nuremberg in 1799. With so many irons in the fire Dies naturally lost the power of concentration. Other causes combined to affect his talent. In 1787 he swallowed by mistake three-quarters of an ounce of sugar of lead. His recovery from this poison was slow and incomplete. ...