LINE ENGRAVING AND ETCHING IN THE LOW COUNTRIES, TO THE SECOND HALF OF
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
The history of engraving in the Low Countries really dates but from the
early years of the sixteenth century: that is, from the appearance of
the prints of Lucas van Leyden (1494-1533). Before that time certain
line engravers, such as the so-called _Maître aux Banderoles_, the
"Master of the Streamers," and those other anonymous artists of the
fifteenth century who composed the group called "the Dutch primitives,"
had attempted to widen the domain of the art, till then confined to
the wood-cutters who were the contemporaries or successors of the
xylographists of the "Speculum Salvationis" and the "Biblia Pauperum."
But, whilst the German and Italian engravers were distinguishing
themselves by the brilliancy of their achievement, their contemporaries
in the Low Countries were producing works little fitted to compete with
those of the foreign masters. They only succeeded in showing themselves
more or less able artisans. Lucas van Leyden was the first to use
the burin artistically, or at least to handle it with a boldness and
knowledge never foreshadowed in the timid essays of his predecessors.
[Illustration: FIG. 52.--ANONYMOUS ARTIST OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
Hercules and Omphale.]
While still a child Lucas van Leyden had already attracted the
attention of his countrymen by his talent as a painter, and his sketch
in distemper, the "Story of St. Hubert"--done, it is alleged, at the
age of twelve--placed him at once amongst artists of repute. Some
years later the publication of his prints brought him to the first
rank. He maintained his place till the end of his life; and if, after
his death, the Dutch and Flemish engravers still further perfected the
art he had practised, they did but follow in his footsteps and draw
more abundantly from the source he had discovered.
The principal feature of the works of Lucas van Leyden, and in general
of all those belonging to his school, is a keen feeling for the
phenomena of light. Albert Dürer, and even Marc Antonio, despised or
misunderstood this essential quality of art. In their works there is
hardly any gradation of tone to suggest atmospheric distance, and we
might mention engravings of theirs where objects consigned to the
background are almost as distinct as those in the foreground. It was
Lucas van Leyden who conceived the idea of perceptibly diminishing the
values according to their distance, of giving to the shadows more or
less of transparency or depth, as the case might be, and of endowing
the lights and half-lights with relatively greater force or delicacy.
Reasoning so valid--based as it was on the real appearances of
nature--was the principal cause of the young Dutch master's success. In
his numerous engravings, however, qualities of another order are added
to the merit of this innovation. The variety of facial expression,
the truth of attitude and gesture, are no less remarkable than the
harmony of effect, and the attempts at what we may venture to call
_naturalistic_ colour.
[Illustration: FIG. 53.--LUCAS VAN LEYDEN.
Adam and Eve driven from Paradise.]
Considered only from the point of view of execution, the pieces
engraved by Lucas van Leyden are far from possessing the same largeness
of design and modelling, and the same simplicity of handling, which
the works of Marc Antonio exhibit, and, in a word, have none of that
masterly ease in the rendering of form which characterises the Italian
engraver. Nor do they exhibit the determination to pursue the truth
even in minute details, and to sternly insist on the portrayal of
such truth when recognised, which distinguishes the work of Albert
Dürer. They are to be specially praised for delicacy of handling,
and for the skilful application of the processes of engraving to the
picturesque representation of reality. Thus, instead of surrounding
with an invariably firm outline objects or bodies at a distance from
one another, instead of treating alike the contour of a figure in the
foreground, and that of a tree, or group of trees, in the background,
Lucas van Leyden altered his work to suit the degree of relative
clearness or uncertainty presented in nature by the forms of objects at
different distances from the eye. An unbroken line is his method for
giving the required boldness to such contours as, from the place they
occupy, must be strongly defined and dominate the rest. When, on the
contrary, he wishes to reproduce the half-veiled lines of a distant
landscape, and to imitate that tremulous and floating aspect assumed by
an object in proportion to its remoteness and the amount of intervening
atmosphere, he changes his touch; and, instead of bounding by a single
continuous line the object reproduced, employs a series of small broken
lines, superimposed in a horizontal or oblique direction; and thus,
instead of a dry definition of outline, he renders with deliberate
hesitation that floating quality which is to be observed in nature.
[Illustration: FIG. 54.--LUCAS VAN LEYDEN.
The Visitation.]
Lucas van Leyden was the first amongst engravers who took into account
with any measure of success the assumed distances of his models, in
order to organise in their representation a varying value of tones and
a general gradation of force. This important change he introduced from
the beginning: that is to say, from 1508, the year of his first dated
print, "The Monk Sergius Killed by Mahomet" (which, by the way, might
be more appropriately entitled "Mahomet before the Body of a Hermit
Murdered by One of his Servants").[26] Here, as in the master's other
prints, the backgrounds are treated with so light a touch that their
distance can be felt; the handling becomes less energetic, the burin
ploughs the copper less heavily, as the objects recede from the front
of the composition. Moreover, every subordinate form is observed and
rendered with singular delicacy; every face and every detail of drapery
bear testimony, by the way they are engraved, to the clear insight of
the artist and his extraordinary skill of hand. His work is strictly
realistic, his style precise and clear rather than loftily inspired;
and we look almost in vain to him for taste, properly so called, the
feeling for the beautiful, in fact, the understanding of the ideal
conditions of art.
[Illustration: FIG. 55.--LUCAS VAN LEYDEN.
Pyramus and Thisbe.]
This it is which constitutes the principal difference, and clearly
marks the distance, between the talent of Lucas van Leyden and that of
Mantegna, of Marc Antonio, or of any other Italian engraver of the
fifteenth or sixteenth centuries. Besides, neither the defects nor the
merits of the master are entirely the result of his inclinations or
his personal habits. The very spirit of Dutch art and the instinctive
preferences of the future school of the seventeenth century are to
be found in embryo in his works, which tend less to initiate us into
the mysteries of the invisible, than to place before us the faithful
image of what really exists. "It was the fate of Holland," as Eugène
Fromentin has well said,[27] "to like _ce qui ressemble_, to return
to it one day or other, to outlive all besides, and to survive and
be saved itself by portraiture." Taking the word in its widest
acceptation, Lucas van Leyden is already engraving "portraits." It is
by the careful imitation of living nature or still-life that he means
to interest us: even when his models are in themselves of little worth,
or, as is sometimes the case, are the reverse of beautiful.
[Illustration: FIG. 56.--LUCAS VAN LEYDEN.
Portrait of the Emperor Maximilian I.]
In representing, for example, "David Calming the Fury of Saul,"
with what simple good faith he makes use of the first type he comes
across--a stout clodhopper whom he has picked up in the street or
at the tavern! No more is wanted save a harp under his arm and a
slashed doublet on his body; just as in picturing the most tragical
scenes of the "Passion"--the "Ecce Homo," or the "Crucifixion"--he
thinks it enough to surround his Christ with the Jew peddlers or the
home-keeping citizens of his native town, without altering in any way
their appearance or their dress. What could be more contrary to the
traditions of Italian art and the principles which have governed it,
from Giotto down to Raphael? What less unusual in the history of Dutch
art? Later on Rembrandt himself was to work in the same way; but with
what mighty powers of invention! What a startling expression of the
inner meaning, the philosophy of a subject, is united in his fashion of
treatment with the realistic ideals of the national genius! In truth,
it is not merely the peculiar characteristic of an individual--the
indifference to, or aversion from, conventional beauty of form which
is apparent in this great master, so far-reaching in moral vision, so
pre-eminently sagacious and profound among painters of the soul; it
sums up and reveals the innate disposition and æsthetic temperament of
a whole race.
In his brief career Lucas van Leyden had the happiness to see his
efforts rewarded and his credit universally established, and of this
authority and influence he ever made the noblest use. Looked upon as
a leader by the painters of his country; in friendly relations with
the German engravers, who, like Albert Dürer, sent him their works, or
came themselves to ask advice; possessing greater wealth than usually
fell to the share of the artists of his time; he never employed his
riches or his influence except in the interest of art, or of the men
who practised it. He refused no solicitant of merit, however slight.
The worthy master was careful to disguise his aid under pretext of
some advantage to himself: he was always requiring drawings of some
building or some artistic object, and thus he spared the self-respect
of the person whom he wished to help, and whom he entrusted with
the commission. More than once he went journeying through the Low
Countries to visit engravers and painters far inferior to himself, whom
he yet modestly called his rivals. He complimented them with words of
praise and encouragement; gave entertainments in their honour; and did
not leave them without exchanging his works for theirs, which were thus
paid for a hundred times over.
It was in one of these journeys, that to Flushing, that Lucas van
Leyden was attacked with the disease which was destined to carry him to
the grave. Some people have attributed to poison the suddenness of the
attack; but of this there is no proof. Once back in his native town, he
lingered on some time, worn out and sinking, yet refusing to condemn
himself to idleness. Too feeble to rise, he yet continued to draw and
engrave in bed, remaining faithful till the end to the noble passion
of his life, to the art he had dignified, and to that nature which he
had questioned more closely, and, in certain respects, perhaps better
understood than any of his predecessors. It is said that a few hours
before his death he desired to be taken up to a terrace of his house,
that he might once more admire the setting sun; and there, absorbed
in silent contemplation, surrounded by friends and pupils, he for the
last time gazed on the place of his birth, and on that heaven from
which the light was fading, even as life was ebbing from his bosom. It
was a proper conclusion to so pure a life--to one, indeed, of the most
irreproachable careers in the history of art. Lucas van Leyden died at
thirty-eight, an age fatal to more than one great artist, and which
was scarcely attained by three men with whom he seems linked by a
similarity of genius, at least as regards early fertility and sincerity
of inspiration: Raphael, Lesueur, and Mozart.
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.
Never was the influence of a painter on engraving so direct or so
potent as that of Rubens. The great master had shown by his drawings
that it was possible to be as rich a colourist with black and white
alone as with all the resources of the palette. He made choice amongst
his pupils of those whom he believed to be capable of following his
example in this matter; he obliged them to lay aside the brush, almost
ordered them to become engravers, and so penetrated them with the
secret of his method, that he seems to have animated them with his own
inspiration. He assembled them in the vast house which he had built at
Antwerp, and which he turned into a college of artists of all sorts.
He made them sometimes labour beneath his eye; he carefully corrected
their work;[28] and in this way he taught them that comprehension of
effect which was specially his, and his own incomparable knowledge of
the right tones with which to lay in, or to support, a mass of light or
shadow.
To recall the success of these efforts is to recall the names of
Vorsterman, Bolswert, Paul Pontius, and Soutman: men boldly scientific
in their art, who, at the first rush, carried to perfection that style
of engraving which renders before all the relative richness and varied
value of tones in a picture, and whose effects are identical in some
sort with those of the painting itself. It is obvious that, in spite
of its prodigious merits, this painting is not of so elevated a nature
as that of Leonardo da Vinci or Raphael; but is it therefore less true
that it is completely summed up, and its living image reflected,
in contemporary engraving? Actuated by an idea of colour and effect
analogous to that of Marc Antonio with regard to drawing, the Flemish
engravers resolutely subordinated accessories to the importance and
splendour of essentials; and in this way they succeeded in dissembling,
by means of the breadth of the whole, the execution of details and even
the laboriousness of the process. It would seem from the sparkling look
and brilliant handiwork of these plates, that the engravers had thrown
them off in a few hours of inspiration, so completely does their dash
banish all idea of the time spent upon them, all sense of patience
and toil. And yet these lights and shades, the sweep of the flesh,
the sheen and shimmer of the fabrics, are all the result of lines
laboriously ploughed; perhaps a thousand strokes have been needed to
imitate an effect due to a single glaze, or given by two touches of the
brush.
The engravings of the Flemish school in Rubens' time are still
widely distributed. There are few people who have not had the
opportunity of admiring the "Thomiris," the "St. Roch Praying for the
Plague-Stricken," or the "Portrait of Rubens," by Pontius; the "Descent
from the Cross," by Vorsterman; the "Fall of the Damned," by Soutman;
and a hundred other pieces as beautiful, all engraved from the master
by his pupils. And who does not know that marvellous masterpiece, the
"Crown of Thorns," engraved by Bolswert from Van Dyck? and those other
masterpieces of Van Dyck himself--the etched portraits of artists or
amateurs, the painter's friends, from the two Breughels to Cornelis,
from Franz Snyders to Philip Le Roy?
[Illustration: FIG. 57.--VAN DYCK.
Etched by Himself.]
The progress, however, by which the Flemish school of engraving had
distinguished itself, soon had an equivalent in the movement of reform
in Holland. Towards the end of the sixteenth century, and on from
the beginning of the seventeenth, the Dutch engravers, by dint of
insisting too strongly on the innovations of Lucas van Leyden, had
almost succeeded in causing scientific ease of handling to degenerate
into mere trickery, and spirit of design into inflation and turbulence.
Amongst the first, and with greater authority than any, Cornelius
Visscher set himself to stay the art of line engraving on its downward
course.
[Illustration: FIG. 58.--CORNELIUS VISSCHER.
The Seller of Ratsbane.]
Most of the scenes represented by Visscher are assuredly not of a
nature greatly to interest the imagination, still less to touch the
heart. It would be somewhat difficult to be moved to any philosophical
or poetic thought by the contemplation of such work as the
"Frying-Pan," or the "Seller of Ratsbane;" but these, though the ideas
by which they are suggested are trivial or commonplace, are treated
with a deep feeling for truth, with admirable craftsmanship, and with
an amount of sincerity and boldness which makes up for the absence of
beauty, whether in thought or type. Considered only from the point of
view of execution, the plates of Visscher are masterpieces; are such
marvels, indeed, that they cannot be too carefully studied by all
engravers, whatever the style of their work.
[Illustration: FIG. 59.--CORNELIUS VISSCHER.
Giles Boutma.]
[Illustration: FIG. 60.--PAUL POTTER.
The Cow.]
The same may be said in another order of art for those fine
portraits--of "Boccaccio," of "Pietro Aretino," and of
"Giorgione"--engraved by Cornelius Van Dalen, the best of Visscher's
pupils. It is also on the same ground, that, in spite of most notable
differences in handling, the plates engraved by Jonas Suyderhoef, after
Terburg and Theodore de Keyse, command the attention of artists and
amateurs. Finally, side by side with these works, in the execution
of which etching was only resorted to as a preparatory process, or
sometimes was not even used at all, a number of subjects entirely
engraved with the needle--etchings, to speak strictly--make up a
whole which is the more creditable to the Dutch school, inasmuch as
it would be impossible at any time to find the like in the schools of
other countries. French engraving had doubtless reason to be proud of
the masterpieces of Claude Lorraine, or the clever and witty etchings
of Callot and Israel Silvestre. In Italy after Parmigiano, Agostino
Carracci, and certain other contemporary Bolognese, in Spain, Ribera,
and afterwards Goya, acquired a legitimate renown as etchers. But
whatever may be the merit of their individual work, these artists are
unconnected in either of their native countries with any group wholly
devoted to work of the same kind: with any artistic family of common
origin, inclination, and belief.
[Illustration: FIG. 61.--J. RUYSDAEL.
The Little Cornfield.]
Now the skilful Dutch etchers do not come singly, nor at long
intervals. They work in a body. It is within a few years, in fact
almost simultaneously, that Adrian Brauwer and Adrian van Ostade
publish their tavern scenes; Ruysdael and Jan Both their landscapes;
Paul Potter and Berghem, Adrian van de Velde, Marc de Bye, Karel du
Jardin, such a multitude of charming little subjects, their village
scenes and village people, their flocks in the fields, or their single
animals. Whilst emulating each other's talent, all are agreed to pursue
one and the same object, all are agreed as to the necessity of devotion
to the study of surrounding nature and everyday truth.
Although the Dutch etchers display in the totality of their achievement
the same ideal and the same tendency, each keeps, if only in the matter
of workmanship, a certain distinction and character of his own. One,
however, stands out from the group with matchless splendour, with all
the superiority of genius over talent: that one is Rembrandt.
[Illustration: FIG. 62.--REMBRANDT.
Portrait of Himself: _Rembrandt Appuye_.]
[Illustration: FIG. 63.--REMBRANDT.
Faust.]
[Illustration: FIG. 64.--REMBRANDT.
Joseph's Coat brought to Jacob.]
Pains and patience have been wasted on the secret of Rembrandt's method
of etching and printing; in trying to discover his tools and his manner
of using them, so as to achieve with him those contrasts of soft shadow
and radiant light. Vain quest of technical tricks where, really, there
is no more than a style born of imagination, and, like it, inspired
from above! It may be said that with Rembrandt, as with great musical
composers, the harmonic system is so closely allied to the melodic
idea, that analysis, if not impossible, is at least superfluous. It
sometimes happens--before a Correggio, for instance--that the charm
of the painting affects one in a manner abstract enough to produce
a sort of musical sensation. Though it does not appear that the art
of engraving could be endowed with a similar expansive force, yet
Rembrandt's etchings may almost be said to possess it. They give the
feeling of undefined aspirations rather than the limited likeness
of things; the spectator is touched by the mysterious meaning of
these passionate visions, rather than by the form in which they
are conveyed. The impression received is so keen that it stifles
any trivial wish to criticise, and certain details which would be
painful elsewhere are here not even displeasing, inasmuch as no one
would dream of requiring a mathematical explanation of the special
conditions of the subject, or of the skill of workmanship which the
artist has displayed Before the "Sacrifice of Abraham," the "Tobit,"
the "Lazarus," and all the other soul-speaking masterpieces, who would
pause to consider the strangeness or the vulgarity of the personages
and their apparel? Only the critic, who, unwitting of the rest,
would begin by examining with a magnifying glass the _workmanship_
of the ray of light which illumines the "Hundred Guilder Piece," the
"Annunciation," or the "Pilgrimage to Emmaus."
[Illustration: FIG. 65.--REMBRANDT.
Tobit's Blindness.]
[Illustration: FIG. 66.--REMBRANDT.
Jan Lutma.]
Rembrandt's method is, so to speak, supersensuous. At times he lightly
touches his plate, and at times he attacks as at a venture; at others
he skims the surface and caresses it with an exquisite refinement, a
magical dexterity. In his lights he breaks the line of the contour, but
only to resume and boldly accentuate it in his shadows; or he reverses
the method, and in the one, as in the other case, succeeds infallibly
in fixing, satisfying, and convincing the attention. He uses engraver's
tools and methods as Bossuet uses words, subduing them to the needs
of his thought, and constraining them to express it, careless of fine
finish as of trivial subtlety. Like Bossuet, too, he composes out of
the most incongruous elements, out of the trivial and the lofty, the
commonplace and the heroic, a style invariably eloquent; and from the
mingling of these heterogeneous elements there springs an admirable
harmony of result.
[Illustration: FIG. 67.--REMBRANDT.
The Beggars.]
The Flemish engravers formed by Rubens, and their Dutch contemporaries,
had no worthy successors. The revolution they accomplished in the
art was brief, and did not extend beyond the Low Countries. In
Italy, Dutch and Flemish engravings were naturally despised. It is
said--and it is easy to believe--that those accustomed to commune
with Raphael and Marc Antonio esteemed them fitting decorations "for
the walls of pothouses." In France and Germany, where Italian ideas
in art had reigned since the sixteenth century, they experienced at
first no better reception. When at length the consideration they
really deserved was accorded them, the superiority of France was
established, and her engravers could no longer be expected to descend
to imitation. The movement in the schools of the Low Countries, before
the second half of the seventeenth century, is thus, to speak truth,
a mere episode in the history of the art, and its masterpieces had
no lasting influence on engraving in general. For it to have been
otherwise, the engravers of other countries must have renounced, not
only the national traditions, but even the models they had at hand. The
method of Bolswert or of Pontius could only be usefully employed to
reproduce the works of Rubens and Van Dyck. The handling of Visscher
and of Suyderhoef was only suitable to such pictures as were painted in
Amsterdam and Leyden.
[Illustration: FIG. 68.--REMBRANDT.
The Pancake-maker.]
And meanwhile, when the schools of the Low Countries were shining with
a lustre so brilliant and so transitory, what was doing in France? and
how in France was the great age of engraving inaugurated?