^
Died on 25 March 1635: Jacques
Callot, French etcher, engraver, and possibly painter, born
in 1592.
— Jacques Callot's father was Jean Callot, a noble, the herald-at-arms
for Lorraine, who desired that his son should become a soldier or a priest.
But the boy's inclinations for art were so intense, and he was so precocious
that parental wishes were of no avail. His work even as a schoolboy showed
a grasp of human character, and the bizarre and humerous, particularly in
people of the lower orders, attracted him. Before he was twelve years old
he had studied design, wherein he was so soon to become a master, and had
received aid from Henriet Israel, son of the Lorraine court-painter, and
from Dumange Crocq, the royal engraver.
In 1604 Jacques Callot ran away to Italy
in the company of a band of gypsies, hoping to reach the goal of his ambition,
Rome. He stopped in Florence and studied engraving under the celebrated
Remigio Gallina, and copied the work of the masters, thus tempering his
love for the grotesque. The young runaway was soon sent home, to the joy
of his parents, but his father finally consented to his accompanying the
envoy of Duke Henry II to the Papal Court. In Rome he practised engraving
and etching and invented a hard varnish for grounding copper-plates. When
he left Italy (1621 or 1622) his fame was already great, and it soon became
world-wide. He engraved for the Infanta Eugenia in Brussels and for Louis
XIII in Paris. It is said that when the French monarch in 1633 commanded
Callot to engrave a plate commemorative of the fall of Nancy the artist
cried that he "would rather cut off his right hand than use it on such a
work".
If little is known of Callot's intimate life
and traits, his 1600 plates afford full information concerning the artistic
side of his career. Callot was often ugly in his realism, but he was a master
of the art of design, clear in drawing, fertile in invention, precise in
line, and varied in his style. The freedom and naïveté in his small figures,
the lifelike manner in which he treated them, and the certainty with which
he arranged complicated groups made him the pioneer of methods followed
by Rembrandt and his forerunners. The Macaberesque note in medieval art
is dominant in his work, and there is a piquancy and newness given to the
slightest details. A peculiarity in nearly all his figures is the smallness
of the heads in proportion to the bodies. His landscapes are inferior to
his figure-pieces and architectural plates, though the latter are of great
historical and topographical interest (La
Tour de Nesle with the
Old Louvre).
No authentic finished painting by Callot
exists among the great collections, and it is very doubtful if he ever completed
a work in oil. The master of the grotesque and humerous was the father of
etching in France, and his fame comes from his etchings, which are better
than his engravings. He frequently spoiled his splendid point-work with
the burin, and his reputation as an aquafortist depends, therefore, more
on what he did than on how he did it. Notable among his works are 18
plates entitled Grandes Misères de la Guerre,; 25
plates of Les Gueux; La Sainte Famille; Cosmo III, Grand
Duc de Toscane; Charles III de Lorraine.
Callot's last years were spent industriously
in Nancy, where he died. He was buried in the church of the Franciscans
(Cordeliers). He was noted for his loyalty and courage as a subject of Lorraine,
and for his generosity, probity, and kindness of heart as a citizen.
— Callot went to Italy when he was in his teens and, working in Rome
and then in Florence at the court of the Grand Duke Cosimo II, he learnt
to combine the sophisticated techniques and exaggerations of late Mannerism
with witty and acute observation into a brilliantly expressive idiom. In
1621 he returned to France, and most of the remainder of his career was
spent in his native Nancy, although he worked in Paris and the Low Countries.
He made a speciality of beggars, and deformities, characters from the picaresque
novel and the Italian commedia dell' arte. In this respects he comes close
to Bellange,
also active in Nancy, but Callot's style was more realistic.
His last great work, the series of etchings
entitled Les Grandes Misères de la Guerre, followed the invasion
of Lorraine by Cardinal Richelieu on 1633, and is a harrowing depiction
of the atrocities of war; its themes and imagery were used as a source by
Goya. Callot's output was prodigious; more than a thousand etchings and
more than a thousand drawings by him are extant, and some his plates are
large, featuring scores of figures. He was one of the first major creative
artists to work exclusively in the graphic art.
— Callot was one of the earliest great creative artists to practice
the graphic arts exclusively. His career can be divided into two periods:
an Italian period, c. 1609-1621, and a Lorraine period from 1621 until his
death. Callot studied the technique of engraving under Phillipe Thomasin
in Rome. About 1612 he joined Guilio Parigi in Florence. At that time Medici
patronage expended itself almost exclusively on "feste," and both Parigi
and Callot were employed by Cosimo II (de Medici) to create visual records
of these entertainments. Callots compositions are organized as if they were
a stage setting and reduced the figures to a tiny scale, each one being
rendered by the fewest possible strokes. This required an extremely fine
etching technique. Callot enjoyed a lasting popularity all over Europe.
He returned to Nancy after Cosimo*s death in 1621. During the Lorraine period
Callot illustrated sacred books, made a series of plates of the Apostles,
and visited Paris to make animated maps of the sieges of La Rochelle and
the Ile de Ré.
Callot was one of the first etchers to used
the technique of repeated biting, and sometimes combined graver work with
etching.
— LINKS
— The
Battle of Avigliano _ The
Battle of Avigliano (after 1631, etching 35x53cm) _ Callot, adventurous
from his youth, carried his daring and curiosity into his craft and is responsible
for inventive brilliance in the preparation of his etched plates. He was
born in Nancy, France; his family planned a life for him in the Church.
However, he ran away from home on two occasions while still a youth. The
first time (1604) he met a band of gypsies and traveled with them to Florence.
His memory of this escapade resulted in a group of etchings done in later
years. From Florence he traveled to Rome, where he was recognized by merchants
from his home town, and compelled to return to Nancy. A second attempt to
escape was successful only as far as Turin, where an older brother found
him. About 1608, the family finally accepted defeat and permitted him to
leave for Rome to study art.
Callot studied in both Rome and Florence
under various masters, and learned the craft of etching. But he soon outstripped
his teachers and in the course of his lifetime produced some thousand plates,
along with over fourteen hundred drawings, which have influenced and inspired
many artists since his day. There were many imitators, but Callot's prodigious
accomplishment remains unequaled.
Typical of Callot's genius is this view of
a battle, in which the vantage point of the artist seems far removed from
the field of action. The horsemen in the left foreground are clearly depicted,
and as the action recedes into the distance, mere scratches on the plate
become, by some miracle of craftsmanship, footmen and cavalry engaged in
fierce action. With incredible patience Callot draws a walled town at the
right, delineates other small towns perched on huge rocks, and creates plains,
mountains, and rivers that move into the far distance. It has been estimated
that Callot crowded a thousand figures into compositions of this size. In
this magic of suggestion he remains unsurpassed.
— The
Holy Family at Table _ The
Holy Family at Table (1628 etching, 19x17cm) (aka Le Benedicite)_
The subject matter of Callot's etchings was extremely varied; in a host
of tiny compositions, he represented vagabonds and dwarfs, and characters
from the commedia dell' arte. He did two series of the Miseries of War,
one large and one small, as well as views of cities and representations
of elaborate pageants and fêtes. His Caprices have a spirit more like that
of Tiepolo, unlike the moody aquatints of Goya. In the preparation of this
series of fifty plates, Callot used a hard-ground varnish in place of the
softer variety. He also mastered the technique of immersing the plate in
acid a second time to create more deeply bitten lines. Callot visited France,
worked on a series of plates illustrating the siege of La Rochelle for Louis
XIII, and in 1629 created View of the Louvre, View of the Pont-Neuf; and
Tour de Nesle, memorable records of seventeenth-century Paris.
The Holy Family at Table is not
typical of Callot's general style or subject matter; rather, it indicates
his desire to experiment with new effects. The composition here is circular;
in another print executed the same year (The Card Players) he employs an
oval format. The nocturnal scene is made dramatic by the lighting, the table
illuminated by a candle and the heads of the three figures brightened by
the radiant halos of the Christ Child and the Madonna. It has been suggested
that the inspiration for this handling of the subject came from the impressive
night scenes of Georges
de La Tour. Saint Joseph makes Jesus drink, saying to him (according
to the inscription at the bottom): EIA
AGE CARE PVER, CALICEM BIBE, TE MANET ALTER QUI TENSIS MANIBVS NON NISI
MORTE CADET.
— Painting
of Le Benedicite, after Callot (21x16cm)
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