FRENCH ENGRAVERS IN THE REIGN OF LOUIS XIV.
We have followed through all its stages the progress of the art of
engraving, from the time of its earliest more or less successful
attempts, to the time when a really important advance was accomplished.
However brilliant these early phases may have been, properly speaking
they include but the beginnings of the art. The epoch we are now to
traverse is that of its complete development and fullest perfection.
We have seen that the schools of Italy and the Low Countries had, each
in its own direction, largely increased the resources of engraving,
without exhausting them. The quality of drawing would seem to have
been carried to an inimitable perfection in the works of Marc Antonio,
had not examples of a keener sense of form and an exactness even more
irreproachable been discovered in those of the French masters of the
seventeenth century. The engravings produced under the direct influence
of Rubens only remained the finest specimens of the science of colour
and effect until the appearance of the plates engraved in Paris by
Gérard Audran. Finally, though the older engravers had set themselves
the task of accentuating a certain kind of beauty, suitable to the
peculiar tastes and capacities of the schools to which they belonged,
none of them had sought, at least with any success, to present in one
whole all the different species of beauty inherent in the art. It was
reserved for the French engravers of the age of Louis XIV. to unite
in one supreme effort qualities which till then had seemed to exclude
each other. While they proved themselves draughtsmen as skilful and
colourists as good as the best of their predecessors, they excelled
them in their harmonious fusion of whatever qualities are appropriate
to engraving, as also in the elasticity of their theory and the
all-round capacity of their method.
The works of the Louis XIII. engravers heralded this new departure,
and prepared the way for the real masters. As soon as, with a view
to securing a certain measure of independence, the French school
of painting had begun to free itself from the spirit of systematic
imitation, the art of line engraving proceeded resolutely along an open
path, and marked its course by still more significant improvements. To
say nothing of Thomas de Leu--who for that matter was not, perhaps,
born in France[33]--and nothing of Léonard Gaultier, who, like De Leu,
principally worked in the reign of Henri IV., Jean Morin, whose method,
at once so picturesque and so firm, was the result of a peculiar
combination of acid, dry-point, and the graver, Michel Lasne, Claud
Mellan--in spite of the somewhat pretentious ease and rather affected
skill of his handling--and other line engravers, variously capable,
each after his kind, are found to owe nothing to foreign example.
Their works already do more than hint at the new departure; but we are
approaching the period when distinguished engravers become so common in
the French school, that in this place we need only mention those whose
names are still of special importance.
Robert Nanteuil, one of the most eminently distinguished, and, taking
them chronologically, one of the first, was destined for the bar, and
in his youthful tastes showed none of that irresistible tendency to
the arts which is the common symptom of great talent. Whilst studying
literature and science at Rheims, where he was born in 1626, he also
took up drawing and engraving, but with no idea of devoting himself
steadily to either. It seems, however, that after having merely dallied
in odd moments with the art which was one day to make him famous, he
very soon concluded that he had served a sufficient apprenticeship;
for at nineteen he set about engraving the frontispiece to his own
philosophical thesis.
[Illustration: FIG. 82.--JEAN MORIN.
Antoine Vitré. After Philippe de Champagne.]
It was in those days the custom to ornament such writings with
figures and symbols appropriate to the candidate's position, or to
the subject of his argument. The most distinguished painters did not
disdain to design originals, and the frontispieces engraved from
Philippe de Champagne, Lesueur, and Lebrun, are not unworthy of the
talent and reputation of those great men. Nanteuil, in emulation,
was anxious not only to produce a masterpiece, but to invest it with
an appearance of grandeur as little fitted to his position as to his
slender acquaintance with the art. However that may have been, he
sustained his thesis to the satisfaction of the judges; and, albeit an
exceedingly bad one, his engraving was admired in the society which
he frequented.[34] Some verses addressed to ladies[35] still further
increased his reputation as a universal genius. Unfortunately, to all
these public successes were added others of a more purely personal
nature, which were soon noised abroad; and it would appear that, fresh
adventures having led to a vexatious scandal, Nanteuil, who shortly
before had married the sister of the engraver Regnesson, was compelled
to leave, almost in secrecy, a place where once he had none save
admirers and friends. By a fatal coincidence the fugitive's family was
ruined at the same time: it became imperative for him to live by his
own work, and to seek his fortune in the practice of draughtsmanship.
Abandoning the law, he therefore set out for Paris, where he arrived
poor and unknown, but determined to succeed. The question was,
how without introductions to gain patrons? how to make profitable
acquaintances in the great city? After losing some days in quest of a
good opening, it is said that he hit upon a somewhat strange device. He
had brought with him from Rheims some crayon portraits, as specimens
of his ability; he chose one of these, and waited at the door of
the Sorbonne till the young divinity students came out of class. He
followed them into a neighbouring wine shop, where they were wont
to take their meals, and pretended to be looking for some one whose
portrait he had taken (he said) the week before. He knew neither the
name nor address of his sitter, but thought that if his fellow-students
would look at the drawing, they might be able and willing to help
him. It is superfluous to say that the original of the portrait was
not recognised; but the picture passed from hand to hand, and was
admired; the price was asked, the artist was careful to be moderate in
his demands, and some of the young men were so taken by the smallness
of the sum, that they offered to sit for their portraits. The first
finished and approved, other students in their turn wanted their
portraits for their families and friends. This gave the young artist
more remunerative work. His connection rapidly increased, and before
long he was entrusted with the reproduction, on copper, of drawings
commissioned by distinguished parliament men and persons of standing
at the Court. At last the king, whose portrait he afterwards engraved
in different sizes--as often as eleven times--gave him a number of
sittings, after which Nanteuil received a pension and the title of
Dessinateur du Cabinet.[36]
Louis XIV. was not satisfied with thus rewarding a talent already
recognised as superior; he was also desirous of stimulating by general
measures the development of what he had himself declared a "liberal
art."[37] Engravers were privileged to exercise it without being
subjected to "any apprenticeship, or controlled by other laws than
those of their own genius;" and seven years later (1667) the royal
establishment at the Gobelins became virtually a school of engraving.
Whilst Lebrun, its first director-in-chief, assembled therein an army
of painters, draughtsmen, and even sculptors, and wrought from his own
designs the tapestries of the "Éléments" and the "Saisons," Sebastien
Leclerc superintended the labours of a large body of native and foreign
engravers, entertained at the king's expense.
One of these, Edelinck, had been summoned to France by Colbert. Born at
Antwerp in 1640, and a contemporary of the engravers trained by the
disciples of Rubens himself, he was distinguished, like them, by his
vigour of handling and knowledge of effect. Once settled in Paris, he
supplemented these Flemish characteristics with qualities distinctively
French, and was soon a foremost engraver of his time. Endowed with
singular insight and elasticity of mind, he readily assimilated, and
sometimes even improved upon, the style of those painters whom he
reproduced, and adopted a new sentiment with every new original. He
began, in France, with an engraving of Raphael's "Holy Family," the
so-called "Vierge de François I.," which is severe in aspect, and
altogether Italian in drawing; and he followed this up with plates of
the "Madeleine" of Lebrun, his "Christ aux Anges," and his "Famille de
Darius," all of them admirable reproductions, in which the defects of
the originals are modified, while their beauties are increased by the
use of methods which make their peculiar and essential characteristics
none the less conspicuous. In interpreting Lebrun, Edelinck altered
neither his significance nor his style; he only touched his work with
fresh truth and nature: as, when dealing with Rigaud, he converted that
artist's pomposity and flourish into a certain opulence and vigour.
When, on the contrary, he had to interpret a work stamped with calm and
reflective genius, his own bold and brilliant talent became impregnated
with serenity, and he could execute with a marvellous reticence such a
translation as that from Philippe de Champagne--the painter's portrait
of himself--a favourite, it is said, with the engraver, and one of the
masterpieces of the art.
When Edelinck arrived in Paris, Nanteuil, his senior by some fifteen
years, had a studio at the Gobelins, close to the one where he himself
was installed. This seeming equality in the favour accorded to two men,
then so unequal in reputation and achievement, would be astonishing
unless we remember the object which brought them together, and the very
spirit of the institution.
Things went on in the Gobelins almost as they did in Florence, in
the gardens of San Marco, under Lorenzo de' Medici. Artists of
repute worked side by side with beginners: not indeed together, but
near enough for the master continually to help the student, and for
the spirit of rivalry, the excitement of example, to keep alive a
universal continuity of effort. French art had been lately honoured
by three painters of the highest order--Poussin, Claude,[38] and
Lesueur; but the first two lived in retirement, and far from France;
whilst the third had died leaving no pupils, and, consequently, no
tradition. It seemed urgent, therefore, in order to perpetuate the
glory of the school, to gather together both men of mature talent
and men whose talent was yet young and unformed, and to impel them
all towards a common object on a common line of work. Colbert it was
who conceived and executed the plan, who assembled all the great
masters in painting, sculpture, and engraving, whose services he could
command, without omitting any younger men who might seem worthy of
encouragement. He quartered them all at the Gobelins, and put over them
the man best fitted to play the part of their organiser and supreme
director. "There was a pre-established harmony between Louis XIV. and
Lebrun," says M. Vitet,[39] "and when the painter died (1690), neither
he nor his master had as yet permitted any encroachment upon their
territory." Lebrun might have appropriated a famous saying of the king,
applied it to his own absolute supremacy, and said, with truth, that
he alone was French art. Everything connected with the art of design,
whether directly or indirectly, from statues and pictures for public
buildings down to furniture and gold plate, were all subject to his
authority, and were all moulded by his influence. It was an unfortunate
influence in some respects, for it made the painting and sculpture
of the epoch monotonously bombastic; but to engraving, under whose
auspices contemporary pictures were sometimes transformed into real
masterpieces, it cannot be said to have been unfavourable.
[Illustration: FIG. 83.--JEAN PESNE.
The Entombment. After Poussin.]
When Lebrun was called to the government of the arts, the number of
practical engravers in France was already considerable. Jean Pesne, the
special interpreter of Poussin, had published several of those vigorous
prints which even now shed honour on the name of the engraver of the
"Évanouissement d'Esther," of the "Testament d'Eudamidas," and of the
"Sept Sacrements." Claudine Bouzonnet, surnamed Claudia Stella, who
by the force of her extraordinary gift has won her way to the highest
rank among female engravers, Étienne Baudet, and Gantrel--all these,
like Jean Pesne, applied themselves almost exclusively to the task of
reproducing the compositions of the noble painter of Les Andelys. On
the other hand, François de Poilly, Roullet, and Masson (the last so
celebrated for his portrait of Count d'Harcourt, and his "Pilgrims
of Emmaus," after Titian), and many others equally well known, had
won their spurs before they devoted themselves to the reproduction
of Lebrun. Finally, Nanteuil, who only engraved a few portraits from
originals by the director, was already widely known when Colbert
requested him to join, among the first, the brotherhood which he had
founded at the Gobelins. As soon as in his turn Edelinck was admitted,
he hastened to profit by the advice of the master whom it was his
privilege to be associated with; and, aided by Nanteuil's example,
and under Nanteuil's eye, he soon tried his hand in the production of
engraved portraits.
No one indeed could be better fitted than Nanteuil to teach this
special art, in which he has had few rivals and no superior. Even now,
when we consider these admirable portraits of his, we are as certain
of the likeness as if we had known the sitters. Everybody's expression
is so clearly defined, the character of his physiognomy so accurately
portrayed, that it is impossible to doubt the absolute truth of the
representation. There is no touch of picturesque affectation in the
details; no exaggerated nicety of means; no trick, nor mannerism
of any sort; but always clear and limpid workmanship, and style
so reticent, so measured, that at first glance there is a certain
indescribable appearance of coldness, no hindrance to persons of taste,
but a pitfall to such eager and hasty judgments as, to be conquered,
must be carried by storm. Nanteuil's portraits come before us in all
the outward calm of nature; possibly they seem almost inartistic
because they make no parade of artifice; but, once examined with
attention, they discover that highest and rarest form of merit which is
concealed under an appearance of simplicity.
If the "Turenne," the "Président de Bellièvre," the "Van Steenberghen"
(called the "Avocat de Hollande"), the "Pierre de Maridat," the
"Lamothe Le Vayer," the "Loret," and others, are masterpieces of
refinement in expression and drawing, they also prove, as regards
execution, the exquisite taste and the marvellous dexterity of the
engraver. But to discern the variety of method they display, and to
perceive that the handling is as sure and fertile as it is learned and
unpretentious, they must be closely studied.
As a rule, Nanteuil employs in his half-lights dots arranged at varying
distances, according to the force of colouring required, in combination
with short strokes of exceeding fineness. Sometimes--as, for instance,
in the "Christine de Suède," altogether engraved in this manner--the
process suffices him not only to model such parts as verge upon his
lights, but even to construct the masses of his shadows. The "Edouard
Molé" is, on the contrary, in pure line. The soft silkiness of hair
he often expresses by free and flowing lines, some of which, breaking
away from the principal mass, are relieved against the background,
breaking the monotony of the workmanship, and suggesting movement
by their vagueness of contour. Often, too, certain loose lines,
either broken or continued without crossing in different directions,
admirably distinguish the natures of certain substances, and imitate
to perfection the soft richness of furs or the sheen of satin. Yet it
sometimes happens that in the master's hand the same method results in
the most opposite effects: a print, for instance, may exemplify in its
treatment of the textures of flesh a method applied elsewhere, and with
equal success, to the rendering of draperies. In a word, Nanteuil does
not appropriate any particular process to any predetermined purpose.
While judiciously subordinating each to propriety, he can, when he
pleases, make the most of all; and whatever path he follows, it always
appears that he has taken the best to reach his end.
It was not only to the teaching of Nanteuil that Edelinck had recourse;
he still further improved his style by studying his countryman, Nicolas
Pitau (whom Colbert had also summoned from Antwerp to the Gobelins),
and afterwards by acquiring the secret of brilliant handling from
François de Poilly. To which of these engravers he was most indebted
is a point which cannot be exactly determined. After investing himself
with qualities from each, he did not imitate one more than another; he
found his inspiration in the examples of all three.
Nanteuil and Edelinck, first united by their work, were soon fast
friends, in spite of the difference of their ages, and the still
greater difference of their tastes. The French engraver sent for his
wife from Rheims as soon as he found himself in a fair way to success
and fortune; but he had also in some degree returned to the habits
of his youth. A shining light in society, and as intimate with the
cultured set at Mlle. de Scudéry's as with the devotees of pleasures
less strictly intellectual, his career of dissipation in the salons
and fashionable taverns of the day contrasts strangely with the sober
quality of his talent, and increases our surprise at the number of
works which he produced. Even his declining health did not change his
habits. Till the end he continued to divide his time between his work
and the world; and at his death, in 1678, at the age of fifty-two, he
left nothing, or almost nothing, to his wife, in spite of the large
sums he had made since he came to Paris.
[Illustration: FIG. 84.--JEAN PESNE.
Nicolas Poussin.]
Edelinck's fate was very different. He lived in seclusion, given
over to his art and to the one ambition of becoming churchwarden
(_marguillier_) of his parish: a position refused him, it is said,
as reserved for tradesmen and official personages, and with which
he was only at length invested by the condescending interference of
the king. It was probably the only favour personally solicited by
Edelinck, but it was by no means the first he owed to the protection of
Louis XIV. Before the churchwardenship he held the title of "Premier
Dessinateur du Cabinet." Like Lebrun, like Mansart and Le Nôtre, he
was a Knight of St. Michael, and the Academy of Painting elected him
as one of its council. His old age, like the rest of his days, was
quiet and laborious; and when he died (1707) his two brothers and his
son Nicolas, who had all three been his pupils, inherited a fortune as
wisely husbanded as it had been honourably acquired.
Edelinck survived the principal engravers of the reign of Louis XIV.
François de Poilly, Roullet, Masson, and Jean Pesne, had more or less
closely followed Nanteuil to the grave. At the Gobelins, once so rich
in ability of the first order, students had taken the place of masters,
and clever craftsmen succeeded to artists of genuine inspiration.
Van Schuppen had followed Nanteuil, as Mignard had Lebrun, from
necessity rather than right. And last of all, Gérard Audran, the most
distinguished engraver of the time--whom, for the sake of clearness in
our narrative, we have not yet mentioned--had died in 1703; and though
members of his family did honour to the name he had distinguished, none
of them were able to sustain the full weight of its glory.
[Illustration: FIG. 85.--GÉRARD AUDRAN.
"La Noblesse." After Raphael.]
One would hardly venture to say that Gérard Audran was an engraver
of genius, because it does not seem permissible to apply the term to
one whose business it is to interpret the creations of others, and
subordinate himself to models he has not himself designed; yet how else
can one characterise a talent so full of life, so startling a capacity
for feeling, and a method at once so large, so unstudied, and so
original? Do not the plates of Gérard Audran bear witness to something
more than mere superficial skill? Do they not rather reveal qualities
more subtle--a something personal and living, which raises them to the
rank of imaginative work? Their real fault, perhaps--at least the fault
of those after Lebrun or Mignard--is that they are not reproductions
of a purer type of beauty. And even these masters are so far dignified
by the creative touch of their translator as almost to seem worthy of
unreserved admiration. We can understand the mistake of the Italians,
who thought, when they saw the "Batailles d'Alexandre," in black and
white, that France, too, had her Raphael, when, in reality, allowing
for difference of manner, she could only glory in another Marc Antonio.
[Illustration: FIG. 86.--GÉRARD AUDRAN.
"Navigation." After Raphael.]
Gérard Audran was born in Lyons in 1640, and there obtained from his
father his first lessons in art. Afterwards he went to Paris, and
placed himself under the most famous masters of the day, by whose
aid he was soon introduced to Lebrun, and at once commissioned to
engrave one of Raphael's compositions. When Audran undertook the work,
he had not the picture before him, as Edelinck had when he engraved
the "Vierge de François I." His original was only a pencil copy
which Lebrun had brought back from Italy; hence no doubt the modern
character and the French style which are stamped on the engraving.
Feeling dissatisfied with his work, the young artist did not publish
it, but determined to study the Italians in Italy, to educate himself
directly from their works, and thenceforth to engrave only those
pictures of which he could judge at first-hand without the danger
of an intermediary. He set off therefore for Rome, and remained there
for three years, during which time he produced several copies painted
at the Vatican, many drawings from the antique, several plates after
Raphael, Domenichino, and the Carraccis, and the engraving of a ceiling
by Pietro da Cortona, which last he dedicated to Colbert.
By this act of homage he acquitted himself of a debt of gratitude to
the minister who had favoured him ever since his arrival in Paris, and
who, at Lebrun's request, had supplied the means of his sojourn in
Italy. On Colbert's part it was only an act of justice to recall Audran
to France, and to entrust him with the engraving of the lately finished
series of the "Batailles d'Alexandre," for the great publication called
the "Cabinet du Roi." To the engraver, then twenty-seven years old, a
pension was granted, with a studio at the Gobelins, then the customary
reward of talents brilliantly displayed. It may be added that six years
(1672-1678) sufficed him to finish the stupendous task.
Treated as a friend, and almost on an equal footing, by Lebrun, who for
no one else departed from the routine of his official supremacy, Audran
exerted over the king's chief painter a considerable, if a secret,
influence. In spite of all that has been said,[40] Lebrun was not the
kind of man to openly question his own infallibility, nor to advertise
his deference to the advice of an artist so much younger than himself,
his pupil, so to speak, and consequently without the authority of any
higher degree; yet he frequently consulted him, and took his advice,
in private. Also (and this is significant) when the engravings of
the "Batailles" appeared--engravings to a certain extent unfaithful,
inasmuch as they differed decidedly from the originals--the fact that
the painter made no complaint points to his recognition in Audran
of the right to correct, and to his implicit submission to Audran's
corrections.
In this respect Lebrun conducted himself as a man of the world, and
one well able to understand the true interests of his reputation.
He had everything to gain by giving full liberty to an engraver by
whose perfect taste the blunders of his own were corrected, and who
harmonised his frequently harsh and heavy colouring, and strengthened
in modelling and design his often undecided expression of form. Thus
the plates of the "Batailles," in addition to the high quality of
the composition of the originals, present, alike in general aspect
and in detail, a decision which belongs to Audran alone. Force and
transparency of tone, largeness of effect, and, above all, a distinctly
marked feeling for characteristic truths, are conspicuous in them.
Not a single condition of art is imperfectly fulfilled. Marc Antonio
himself drew with no more certainty; the Flemings themselves had no
deeper knowledge of chiaroscuro; the French engravers, not excepting
even Edelinck,[41] have never treated historical engraving with such
ease and _mäestria_. In a word, none of the most famous engravers of
Europe have been, we believe, so richly endowed with all artistic
instincts, nor have better understood their use.
The "Batailles d'Alexandre" finished, Audran engraved Lesueur's
"Martyre de Saint Protais;" several Poussins, amongst others the
"Pyrrhus Sauvé," the "Femme Adultère," and the radiant "Triomphe de
la Vérité," one of the most beautiful (if not the most beautiful)
historical engravings ever published; and, after Mignard, the "Peste
d'Égine," and the paintings in the cupola at Val-de-Grâce.
These several works, where elevation of taste and sentiment are no less
triumphantly manifest than in the "Batailles" themselves, are also
finished examples of engraving in the literal sense of the word. Audran
disdained to flaunt his skill, and to surprise the eye by technical
display, but he understood to the utmost all the secrets and resources
of the craft, and employed them with more ability than any competitor.
Associating engraving with etching, he deepened with powerful touches
of the burin those strokes of the needle which had merely served to
suggest outlines, masses of shadow, and half-tints. On occasion, short
strokes, free as a pencil's, and seemingly drawn at random, with dots
of different sizes, distributed with apparent carelessness, sufficed
for the modelling of his forms; at others, he proceeded by a consistent
system of cross-hatching. Here rough etching work is tumbled about
(so to speak) in wild disorder; there a contrary effect is produced
by nearly parallel furrows scooped in the metal with methodical
exactness; but everywhere the choice and progress of the tools are
based on conditions inherent in the nature of the several objects, and
their relative positions and distances. Audran did not try to attract
attention to any of the methods he employed; he made each heighten the
effect of the other, and combined them all without parade of ease, and
yet without confusion.
So many admirable works secured for Audran a fame such as Edelinck, as
Nanteuil himself, had never obtained. The Academy of Painting, which
had welcomed him after the publication of his first plates, elected him
as one of its council in 1681. The school of engraving which he opened
grew larger than any other, and many of his pupils became notable even
in his company, and helped to increase the renown of the master who had
trained them.[42]
Towards the close of his life Audran laid by the burin for the pen.
Following Albert Dürer's example, he proposed to put together, in the
form of treatises, his life-long observations on the art he had so
successfully practised. Unfortunately, this task was interrupted by
his death; and, excepting a "Recueil des Proportions du Corps Humain,"
nothing is left us of those teachings which the greatest engraver, not
only of France, but perhaps of any school, had desired to hand on to
posterity.
By their works, Nanteuil, Audran, and the other masters of the reign
of Louis XIV., had popularised historical and portrait engraving
in France. The taste for prints spread more and more, and amateurs
began to make collections. At first they confined themselves to real
masterpieces; after which they began to covet the complete achievement
of peculiar engravers. The mania for rare prints became fashionable;
and we learn from La Bruyère that, before the end of the century,
some amateurs had already come to prefer engravings "presque pas
tirées"--engravings "fitter to decorate the Petit-Pont or the Rue Neuve
on a holiday than to be hoarded in a collection"--to the most perfect
specimens of the art. Others were chiefly occupied with the bulk of
their collections, and treasured up confused heaps of all sorts of
plates, good, bad, and indifferent. Others there were who only cared
about such as did not exceed a certain size; and it is told of one
devotee of this faith that, inasmuch as he would harbour nothing in his
portfolios but round engravings of exactly the same circumference, he
was used to cut ruthlessly to his pattern whatever came into his hands.
We must add that, side by side with such maniacs, intelligent men
like the Abbé de Marolles and the Marquis de Béringhen increased their
collections to good purpose, and were content to bring together the
most important specimens of ancient engraving and such as best served
to illustrate the more modern progress of the art.
In France, however, it was not only the best expressions of engraving
that were considered. On the heels of the great engravers there
followed a crowd of second-rate workmen. Besides history and portrait,
every variety of print was published: domestic scenes, architecture and
topography, costumes, fêtes, and public celebrations. The engraving
of maps greatly improved under the direction of Adrian and Guillaume
Sanson, sons of the famous Geographer in Ordinary to Louis XIII.
Jacques Gomboust, the king's Engineer in Ordinary for the "drawing
up of plans of towns," published, as early as 1652, a map of Paris
and its suburbs in nine sheets, much more exact and more carefully
engraved than those of former reigns. Fashion plates were multiplied
_ad infinitum_; and a periodical called _Le Mercure Galant_ steadily
produced new modes in apparel and personal ornaments. Certain
collections also, destined to perpetuate the remembrance of the events
of the reign, or the personal actions of the king, were published "by
order, and at the expense of His Majesty," with a luxury justified at
any rate by the importance of the artists participating in the work.
The very almanacs bear the stamp of talent, and are not unfrequently
inscribed with the names of celebrated engravers, such as Lepautre,
François Spierre, Chauveau, Sébastien Leclerc, and De Poilly.
In the days of Henri IV. and Louis XIII. almanacs were printed on a
single sheet, with a border sometimes of allegorical figures, but,
more often, composed simply of the attributes of the seasons. It was
under Louis XIV. that they at first appeared on larger paper, and then
in several sheets, wherein were represented the most important events
of the year, or, it might be, some ceremony or court fête. In one is
pictured the Battle of Senef, or the signing of the Treaty of Nimeguen;
in another, perhaps, the king is represented dancing the Strasbourg
minuet, or offering a collation to ladies. Of course the majority of
these prints are valueless in point of execution, and are, moreover,
of an almost purely commercial character; but those which are poorest
from an artistic point of view are still worthy of interest, since they
afford indisputable information concerning the people and the habits
and manners of the time.
Whilst many French artists were devoting themselves to the engraving of
subjects of manners or domestic scenes, or to the illustration of books
and almanacs, others were making satirical sketches of current events
and popular persons. The engraving of caricatures, though it only dates
from the middle of the seventeenth century, had been practised long
before in France and other countries.
To say nothing of the "Danses macabres," a sort of religious, or at
any rate philosophical, satire, we might mention certain caricatures
published even before the Carracci in Italy; in the Low Countries
in the time of Jerome Bosch and Breughel; in Germany in the reign of
Maximilian II.; and finally in France, in the reign of Charles IX. But
all these are either as stupidly licentious as those afterwards made
upon Henri III. and his courtiers, or as heavily grotesque as those of
the time of the League, towards the end of the reign of Henri IV.
When Louis XIII. came to the throne, the wit of the caricaturists
was little keener, if we may judge by the coarse pictorial _lazzi_
inspired by the disgrace and death of the Maréchal d'Ancre, and the
Dutch and Spanish prints designed in ridicule of the French; but some
years later, when Callot had introduced into the treatment of burlesque
a keenness and delicacy which it could hardly have been expected to
attain, the comic prints assumed under the burin of certain engravers
an appearance of greater ingenuity and less brutality.
It is needless to remark that at the beginning of the reign of Louis
XIV.--indeed, during the whole time of the Fronde and the foreign
occupation of a part of French territory--it was Mazarin and the
Spaniards who came in for all the epigrams. In the caricatures of the
day the Spaniards were invariably represented with enormous ruffs, in
tatters superbly worn, and, to complete the allusion to their poverty,
with bunches of beetroot and onions at their belts. There is nothing
particularly comic, nor especially refined, in the execution of the
prints. In piquancy and truth, these jokes about Spanish manners and
Spanish food recall those presently to be made in England about
Frenchmen, who are there invariably represented as frog-eaters and
dancing-masters. Yet comparing the _facetiæ_ of that period with the
exaggerated or obscene humours which preceded them, it seems as though
the domain of caricature were even then being opened up to worthy
precursors of the lively draughtsmen of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries: in fact, as though some Attic salt were already penetrating
to Bœotia.
This advance is visible in the satires published towards the end of the
reign of Louis XIV. The "Procession Monacale," a set of twenty-four
engravings which appeared in Holland (where many Protestants had taken
refuge), attacked with considerable vigour the revocation of the Edict
of Nantes, and the principal persons who had participated in that
measure. Louvois, Mme. de Maintenon, and all the privy councillors
of Louis XIV., are represented under the cowl, and with significant
attributes. Even the king figures in this series of heroes of the New
League; he is in a monk's frock like the others, but a sun, in allusion
to his lofty device, serves for his face, and this hooded Phœbus bears
in his hand a torch to light himself through the surrounding darkness.
The prints that make up this set, as well as many more in the same
style, are designed and engraved with a certain amount of spirit. They
serve to prove that in the frivolous arts, as well as in the comic
literature of the day, the object was to make "decent folk" laugh, and
to keep joking within bounds. In a word, in comparison with former
caricatures, they are as the vaudevilles of the Italian comedy to the
farces once played on the boards of strolling theatres.
Every sort of engraving being cultivated in France with more success
than anywhere else, under Louis XIV. the trade in prints became one of
the most flourishing branches of French industry. The great historical
plates, it is true--those at any rate which, like the "Batailles
d'Alexandre," were published at the king's cost--were chiefly sold in
France, and were not often exported, save as presents to sovereigns and
ambassadors. But portraits, domestic scenes, and fashion plates, were
shipped off in thousands, and flooded all parts of Europe. Before the
second half of the seventeenth century, the chief printsellers (for
the most part engravers themselves and publishers of their own works)
were established in Paris on the Quai de l'Horloge, or, like Abraham
Bosse, in the interior of the Palace. Rather later than this, the most
popular shops were to be found in the neighbourhood of the Church of
St. Sèverin. If we examine the prints then published in Paris, we may
count as many as thirty publishers living in the Rue St. Jacques alone,
and amongst the number are many famous names: as Gérard Audran, "at the
sign of the Two Golden Pillars;" François de Poilly, "at the sign of
St. Benedict," and so forth.
Hence, we may mention, in passing, the mistake which attributes to
engravers of the greatest talent the production of bad plates, to
which they would never have put finger except to take proofs. For
instance, the words "_Gérard Audran excudit_," to be found at the
bottom of many such, do not mean that they were engraved by the master,
but only published by him. Often, too, pseudonyms--not always in the
best possible taste--concealed the name of the publisher and the place
of publication: a precaution easily understood, as it was generally
applied to obscenities, and particularly to those called "pièces à
surprise," which were then becoming common, and continued to increase
indefinitely during the following century. True art, however, is
but little concerned with such curiosities; and it is best to look
elsewhere for its manifestations.
The superior merit of the engraving of the masters of the French
school had attracted numbers of foreign artists to Paris. Many took
root there, amongst them Van Schuppen and the Flemings commissioned
to engrave the "Victoires du Roi," painted by Van der Meulen; others,
having finished their course of study, returned to their own countries,
the missionaries of French doctrine and of French manner. The result
of this united influence was an almost exact similarity in all the
line engravings produced, by men of whatever nationality or from
whatever originals. Thus, the portraits engraved by the German Johann
Hainzelmann from Ulrich Mayer and Joachim Sandrart, scarcely differ
from those he had formerly engraved from French artists: the "Michel
Le Tellier," for instance, and the "Président Dufour." The historical
plates published about the same time in Germany prove the same lively
zeal in imitation. In them art appears as, so to speak, a French
subject; and Gustave Ambling, Bartholomew Kilian,[43] and many more of
their countrymen--pupils, like these two, of François de Poilly--might
be classed amongst the engravers of the French school, if the style of
their work were the only thing to be considered.
An examination of the prints published by Flemish and Dutch artists
later than the school of Rubens and Van Dalen, would justify a like
observation. We may fairly regard Van Schuppen only as a clever pupil
of Nanteuil, and Cornelius Vermeulen as an imitator, less successful,
but no less subservient. And when we turn to the Italian engravers of
the seventeenth century, we find that, as a rule, their work is marked
by so impersonal a physiognomy, is so much the outcome of certain
preconceived and rigid conventions, that one could almost believe them
inspired by the same mind, and done by the same hand.
Whilst French influence reigned almost supreme in Germany and the Low
Countries, and Italian art became more and more the slave of routine,
English engraving had not yet begun to feel the influence of the
progress elsewhere achieved since the beginning of the century. The
time was, however, at hand when, in the reign of Louis XV., London
engravers who came to study in Paris should return to their own
country to practise successfully the lessons they had learned. We
must, therefore, presently turn to them; but, before speaking of the
pupils, we must briefly mention the achievements of the masters, and
narrate the story of French engraving in France after the death of the
excellent artists of the age of Louis XIV.