etchings by Jacques Callot, which are a mine of wealth to the
painter-etcher of to-day, curious of the methods of his predecessors.
Looking at the portrait of Callot in which he appears at the height of
his brief career with well formed, gracious features, ardent eyes, a
bearing marked by serenity and distinction, an expression both grave and
genial, the observer inevitably must ask: "Is this the creator of that
grotesque manner of drawing which for nearly three centuries has borne
his name, the artist of the _Balli_, the _Gobbi_, the _Beggars_?" In
this dignified, imaginative countenance we have no hint of Callot's
tremendous curiosity regarding the most fantastic side of the fantastic
times in which he lived. We see him in the role least emphasized by his
admirers, although that to which the greater number of his working years
were dedicated: the role, that is, of moralist, philosopher and
historian, one deeply impressed by the sufferings and cruelties of which
he became a sorrowful critic.
There surely never was an artist whose life and environment were more
faithfully illustrated by his art. To know one is to know the other, at
least as they appear from the outside, for with Callot, as with the less
veracious and ingenuous Watteau, it is the external aspect of things
that we get and from which we must form our inferences. Only in his
selection of his subjects do we find the preoccupation of his mind; in
his rendering he is detached and impersonal, helping us out at times in
our knowledge of his mental attitude with such quaint rhymes as those
accompanying _Les Grandes Miseres de la Guerre_, but chiefly confining
his hand to the representation of forms, relations and distances, with
as little concern as possible for the expression of his own temperament,
or for psychological portraiture of any sort.
In the little history, more or less authenticated, of his eventful youth
is the key to his charm as an artist, a charm the essence of which is
freedom, an easy, informal way of looking at the visible world, a light
abandon in the method of reproducing it, an independence of the tool or
medium, resulting in art which, despite its minuteness of detail, seems
to "happen" as Whistler has said all true art must. The beginning was
distinctly picturesque, befitting a nature to which the world at first
unfolded itself as a great Gothic picturebook filled with strange,
eccentric and misshapen figures.
One spring day in 1604, a band of Bohemians, such as are described in
Gautier's _Le Capitaine Fracasse_, might have been seen journeying
through the smiling country of Lorraine on their way to Florence to be
present there at the great Fair of the Madonna. No gipsy caravan of
to-day would so much as suggest that bizarre and irresponsible company
of men, women, and children, clad in motley rags, some in carts, some
trudging on foot, some mounted on asses or horses rivaling Rosinante in
bony ugliness, the men armed with lance, cutlass and rifle, a cask of
wine strapped to the back of one, a lamb in the arms of another. A
couple of the swarming children were decked out with cooking utensils,
an iron pot for a hat, a turnspit for a cane, a gridiron hanging in
front apron wise. Chickens, ducks, and other barnyard plunder testified
to the marauding course of the troop whose advent at an inn was the
signal for terrified flight on the part of the inmates. The camp by
night, if no shelter were at hand, was in the forest, where the
travelers tied their awnings to the branches of trees, built their
fires, dressed their stolen meats, and lived so far as they could
accomplish it on the fat of the land--for the most part of their way a
rich and lovely land of vine-clad hills and opulent verdure.
The period was lavish in curious gay figures to set against the peaceful
background of the landscape. Strolling players of the open-air
theaters, jugglers, fortune-tellers, acrobats, Pierrots, and dancers
amused the pleasure-loving people. The band of Bohemians just described
was but one of many. Its peculiarity consisted in the presence among its
members of a singularly fair and spirited child, about twelve years of
age, whose alert face and gentle manner indicated an origin unmistakably
above that of his companions. This was little Jacques Callot, son of
Renee Brunehault and Jean Callot, and grandson of the grandniece of the
Maid of Orleans, whose self-reliant temper seems to have found its way
to this remote descendant.
Already determined to be an artist, he had left home with almost no
money in his pocket and without the consent of his parents, set upon
finding his way to Rome, where one of his playfellows--the Israel
Henriet, "_son ami_," whose name is seen upon so many of the later
Callot prints--was studying.
Falling in with the gipsies, he traveled with them for six or eight
weeks, receiving impressions of a flexible, wanton, vagabond life that
were never entirely to lose their influence upon his talent, although
his most temperate and scholarly biographer, M. Meaume, finds little of
Bohemianism in his subsequent manner of living. Felibien records that
according to Callot's own account, when he found himself in such wicked
company, "he lifted his heart to God and prayed for grace not to join
in the disgusting debauchery that went on under his eyes." He added also
that he always asked God to guide him and to give him grace to be a good
man, beseeching Him that he might excel in whatever profession he should
embrace, and that he "might live to be forty-three years old." Strangely
enough this most explicit prayer was granted to the letter, and was a
prophecy in outline of his future.
Arriving in Florence with his friends the Bohemians, fortune seemed
about to be gracious to him. His delicate face with its indefinable
suggestions of good breeding attracted the attention of an officer of
the Duke, who took the first step toward fulfilling his ambition by
placing him with the painter and engraver, Canta Gallina, who taught him
design and gave him lessons in the use of the burin. His taste was
already for oddly formed or grotesque figures, and to counteract this
tendency Gallina had him copy the most beautiful works of the great
masters.
Possibly this conventional beginning palled upon his boyish spirit, or
he may merely have been impatient to reach Israel and behold with his
own eyes the golden city described in his friend's letters. At all
events, he shortly informed his master that he must leave him and push
on to Rome. Gallina was not lacking in sympathy, for he gave his pupil
a mule and a purse and plenty of good advice, and started him on his
journey.
Stopping at Siena, Callot gained his first notion of the style, later to
become so indisputably his own, from Duccio's mosaics, the pure
unshadowed outline of which he bore in mind when he dismissed shading
and cross-hatching from the marvelously expressive little figures that
throng his prints. He had hardly entered Rome, however, when some
merchants from the town of Nancy, his birthplace, recognized him and
bore him, protesting, back to his home.
Once more he ran away, this time taking the route to Italy through Savoy
and leading adventurous days. In Turin he was met by his elder brother
and again ignominiously returned to his parents. But his persistence was
not to go unrewarded. The third time that he undertook to seek the light
burning for him in the city of art, he went with his father's blessing,
in the suite of the ambassador dispatched to the Pope by the new duke,
Henry II.
It is said that a portrait of Charles the Bold, engraved by Jacques from
a painting, was what finally turned the scale in favor of his studying
seriously with the purpose of making art his profession. He had gained
smatterings of knowledge, so far as the use of his tools went, from
Dumange Crocq, an engraver and Master of the Mint to the Duke of
Lorraine, and from his friend Israel's father, chief painter to Charles
III. He had the habit also of sketching on the spot whatever happened to
attract his attention.
In truth he had lost but little time. At the age of seventeen he was at
work, and very hard at work, in Rome under Tempesta. Money failing him,
he became apprenticed to Philippe Thomassin, a French engraver, who
turned out large numbers of rubbishy prints upon which his apprentices
were employed at so much a day. Some three years spent in this fashion
taught Callot less art than skill in the manipulation of his
instruments. Much of his early work is buried in the mass of Thomassin's
production, and such of it as can be identified is poor and trivial. His
precocity was not the indication of rapid progress. His drawing was
feeble and was almost entirely confined to copying until 1616, when, at
the age of twenty-four, he began regularly to engrave his own designs,
and to show the individuality of treatment and the abundant fancy that
promptly won for him the respect of his contemporaries.
While he was in Thomassin's studio, it is reported that his bright charm
of face and manner gained him the liking of Thomassin's young wife--much
nearer in age to Callot than to her husband--and the jealousy of his
master. He presently left the studio and Rome as well, never to return
to either. It is the one misadventure suggestive of erratic tendencies
admitted to Callot's story by M. Meaume, although other biographers have
thrown over his life in Italy a sufficiently lurid light, hinting at
revelries and vagaries and lawless impulses unrestrained. If, indeed,
the brilliant frivolity of Italian society at that time tempted him
during his early manhood, it could only have been for a brief space of
years. After he was thirty all unquestionably was labor and quietness.
From Rome he went to Florence, taking with him some of the plates he
recently had engraved. These at once found favor in the eyes of Cosimo
II, of the Medici then ruling over Tuscany, and Callot was attached to
his person and given a pension and quarters in what was called, "the
artist's gallery." At the same time he began to study under the then
famous Jules Parigi, and renewed his acquaintance with his old friend
Canta Gallina, meeting in their studios the most eminent artists of the
day--the bright day not yet entirely faded of the later Renaissance.
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF JACQUES CALLOT
_Engraved by Vosterman after the painting of Van Dyck_]
Still his work was copying and engraving from the drawings of others.
Had he been under a master less interested and sympathetic than the good
Parigi, it is possible that his peculiar talent would never have
declared itself. At all events, Parigi urged him, and the urging
seems to have been necessary, to improve his drawing, to drop the burin
and study the great masters. Especially Parigi prayed him to cultivate
his precious talent for designing on a very small scale the varied and
complicated compositions with which his imagination teemed. His taste
for whatever was fantastic and irregular in aspect had not been
destroyed by his study of the beautiful. The Bohemian side of human
nature, the only nature for which he cared, still fascinated his mind,
whether it had or had not any influence upon his activities, and
Parigi's remonstrances were silenced by his appreciation of the comic
wit sparkling in his pupil's sketches.
We see little of Callot among his friends of this period, but the
glimpses we get reveal a lovable and merry youth in whose nature is a
strain of sturdy loyalty, ardent in work and patient in seeking
perfectness in each individual task undertaken, but with a curious
contrasting impatience as well, leading him frequently to drop one thing
for another, craving the relaxation of change. An anecdote is told of
him that illustrates the sweet-tempered blitheness of spirit with which
he quickly won affection.
In copying a head he had fallen into an error common among those who
draw most successfully upon a small scale, he had made it much too
large. His fellow-students were prompt to seize the opportunity of
jeering at him, and he at once improvised a delightful crowd of impish
creatures on the margin of his drawing, dancing and pointing at it in
derision.
His progress under Parigi's wise instruction was marked, but it was four
years after his arrival in Florence before he began to engrave to any
extent from his own designs. In the meantime, he had studied
architecture and aerial and linear perspective, and had made innumerable
pen and pencil drawings from nature. He had also begun to practice
etching, attaining great dexterity in the use of the needle and in the
employment of acids.
In 1617--then twenty-five years old--he produced the series of plates
which he rightly deemed the first ripe fruits of his long toil in the
domain of art. These were the delightful _Capricci di varie figure_ in
which his individuality shone resplendent. They reproduced the spectacle
of Florence as it might then have been seen by any wayfarer; street
people, soldiers, officers, honest tradesmen and rogues, mandolin
players, loiterers of the crossways and bridges, turnpike-keepers,
cut-throats, buffoons and comedians, grimacing pantaloons, fops,
coquettes, country scenes, a faithful and brilliant study of the time,
the manners, and the place. Parigi was enthusiastic and advised his
pupil to dedicate the plates to the brother of the Grand Duke.
After this all went well and swiftly. Passing over many plates,
important and unimportant, we come three years later to the _Great Fair
of Florence_, pronounced by M. Meaume, Callot's masterpiece. "It is
doubtful," says this excellent authority, "if in Callot's entire work a
single other plate can be found worthy to compete with the _Great Fair
of Florence_. He has done as well, perhaps, but never better."
At this time his production was, all of it, full of life and spirit,
vivacious and fluent, the very joy of workmanship. He frequently began
and finished a plate in a day, and his long apprenticeship to his tools
had made him completely their master. In many of the prints are found
traces of dry point, and those who looked on while he worked have
testified that when a blank space on his plate displeased him he was
wont to take up his instrument and engrave a figure, a bit of drapery,
or some trees in the empty spaces, directly upon the copper, improvising
from his ready fancy.
For recreation he commonly turned to some other form of his craft. He
tried painting, and some of his admirers would like to prove that he was
a genius in this sort, but it is fairly settled that when once he became
entangled in the medium of color he was lost, producing the heaviest and
most unpleasing effects, and that he produced no finished work in this
kind. He contributed to the technical outfit of the etcher a new
varnish, the hard varnish of the lute-makers which up to that time had
not been used in etching, and which, substituted for the soft ground,
enabled him to execute his marvelous little figures with great lightness
and delicacy, and also made it possible for him to keep several plates
going at once, as he delighted to do, turning from one to another as his
mood prompted him.
This Florentine period was one of countless satisfactions for him. More
fortunate than many artists, he won his fame in time to enjoy it. His
productions were so highly regarded during his lifetime that good proofs
were eagerly sought, and to use Baldinucci's expression, were
"_enfermees sous sept clefs_." He was known all over Europe, and about
his neck he wore a magnificent gold chain given him by the Grand Duke
Cosimo II, in token of esteem. In the town which he had entered so few
years before in the gipsy caravan, he was now the arbiter of taste in
all matters of art, highly honored, and friend of the great. When Cosimo
died and the pensions of the artists were discontinued, Callot was quite
past the need of princely favors, and could choose his own path. He had
already refused offers from Pope and emperor and doubtless would have
remained in Florence had not Prince Charles of Lorraine determined to
reclaim him for his native place.
In 1621 or 1622 he returned to Nancy, never again to live in Italy. He
went back preeminent among his countrymen. He had done in etching what
had not been done before him and much that has not been done since. He
had created a new genre and a new treatment. He had been faithful to his
first lesson from Duccio and had become eloquent in his use of simple
outline to express joy, fear, calm or sorrow, his work gaining from this
abandonment of shadows a largeness and clearness that separates him from
his German contemporaries and adds dignity to the elegance and grace of
his figures. His skill with the etching needle had become so great that
technical difficulties practically did not exist for him. What he wished
to do he did with obvious ease and always with distinction. His feeling
for synthesis and balance was as striking as his love of the curious,
and as these qualities seldom go together in one mind, the result was an
art extremely unlike that of other artists. It was characteristic of him
that he could not copy himself, and found himself completely at a loss
when he tried to repeat some of his Florentine plates under other skies.
Arrived at Nancy, he found Henry II, the then reigning Duke of Lorraine,
ready to accord him a flattering welcome, and under his favor he worked
with increasing success. Among the plates produced shortly after his
return is one called _Les Supplices_, in which is represented all the
punishments inflicted throughout Europe upon criminals and legal
offenders. In an immense square the revolting scenes are taking place,
and innumerable little figures swarm about the streets and even upon the
roofs of the houses. Yet the impression is neither confused nor painful.
A certain impersonality in the rendering, a serious almost melancholy
austerity of touch robs the spectacle of its ignoble suggestion.
Inspection of this remarkable plate makes it easy to realize Callot's
supreme fitness for the tasks that shortly were to be laid upon him.
He was chosen by the Infanta Elisabeth-Claire-Eugenie of Austria to
commemorate the Siege of Breda, in a series of etchings, and while he
was in Brussels gathering his materials for this tremendous work he came
to know Van Dyck, who painted his portrait afterward engraved by
Vosterman, a superb delineation of both his face and character at this
important period of his eminent career. Soon after the etchings were
completed, designs were ordered by Charles IV, for the decorations of
the great carnival of 1627. Callot was summoned to Paris to execute some
plates representing the surrender of La Rochelle in 1628, and the prior
attack upon the fortress of St. Martin on the Isle of Re. In Paris he
dwelt with his old friend Israel Henriet, who dealt largely in prints
and who had followed with keen attention Callot's constantly increasing
renown. Henriet naturally tried to keep his friend with him in Paris as
long as possible, but Callot had lost by this time the vagrant
tendencies of his youth. He was married and of a home-keeping
disposition, and all that Henriet could throw in his way of stimulating
tasks and congenial society, in addition to the formidable orders for
which he had contracted, detained him hardly longer than a year. Upon
leaving he made over all his Parisian plates save those of the great
sieges to Henriet, whose name as publisher appears upon them.
Callot's return to Nancy marked the close of the second period of his
art, the period in which he painted battles with ten thousand episodes
revealed in one plate, and so accurately that men of war kept his
etchings among their text-books for professional reference. The next
demand that was made upon him to represent the downfall of a brave city
came from Louis XIII, upon the occasion of his entering Nancy on the
25th of September, 1633. By a ruse Richelieu had made the entry
possible, and the inglorious triumph Louis deemed worthy of
commemoration by the accomplished engraver now his subject. Neither
Callot's high Lorraine heart nor his brilliant instrument was
subjugated, however, and he respectfully begged the monarch to absolve
him from a task so revolting to his patriotism. "Sire," he said, "I am
of Lorraine, and I cannot believe it my duty to do anything contrary to
the honor of my Prince and my Country." The king accepted his
remonstrance in good part, declaring that Monsieur of Lorraine was very
happy to have subjects so faithful in affection. Certain courtiers took
Callot to task, however, for his refusal to obey the will of His
Majesty, and to them Callot responded that he would cut off his thumb
rather than do violence to his sense of honor. Some of the artist's
historians have made him address this impetuous reply to the king
himself, but M. Meaume reminds us that, familiar with courts, he knew
too well the civility due to a sovereign to make it probable that he so
forgot his dignity. Later the king tried to allure Callot by gifts,
honors and pensions, but in vain. The sturdy gentleman preferred his
oppressed prince to the royal favor, and set himself to immortalizing
the misfortunes of his country in the superb series of etchings which he
called "_Les Miseres de la Guerre_." He made six little plates showing
in the life of the soldier the misery he both endures and inflicts upon
others. These were the first free inspiration of the incomparable later
set called "_Les Grandes Miseres_," "a veritable poem," M. Meaume
declares, "a funeral ode describing and deploring the sorrows of
Lorraine." These sorrows so much afflicted him that he would gladly
have gone back to Italy to spend the last years of his life, had not the
condition of his health, brought on by his indefatigable labor,
prevented him.
He lived simply in the little town where he had seen his young visions
of the spirit of art, walking in the early morning with his elder
brother, attending mass, working until dinner time, visiting in the
early afternoon with the persons, many of them distinguished and even of
royal blood, who thronged his studio, then working until evening. He
rarely attended the court, but grew constantly more quiet in taste and
more severe in his artistic method, until the feeling for the grotesque
that inspired his earlier years were hardly to be discerned. Once only,
in the tremendous plate illustrating the Temptation of Saint Anthony,
did he return to his old bizarre vision of a world conceived in the mood
of Dante and Ariosto.
Callot died on the 24th of March, 1635, at the age of forty-three. Still
a young man, he had passed through all the phases of temperament that
commonly mark the transit from youth to age. And he had used his art in
the manner of a master to express the external world and his convictions
concerning the great spiritual and ethical questions of his age. He
enunciated his message distinctly; there were no tender gradations, no
uncertainties of outline or mysteries of surface in his work. It is the
grave utterance of the definite French intelligence with a note of
deeper suggestion brought from those regions of ironic gloom in which
the Florentine recorded his sublime despair.
CARLO CRIVELLI
VI
CARLO CRIVELLI
Among the more interesting pictures acquired by the Metropolitan Museum
within the past two years are the panels by Carlo Crivelli, representing
respectively St. George and St. Dominic.