PRINTS AND THEIR MAKERS
[Illustration: PROFILE BUST OF A YOUNG WOMAN
After Leonardo da Vinci
“Of the prints attributed to Leonardo, the fascinating _Profile Bust of
a Young Woman_ stands out from the rest for the sensitive quality of
its outline, but even here I would be more ready to see the hand of an
engraver like Zoan Andrea.”
Arthur M. Hind.
Reproduced from the unique impression in the British Museum]
PRINTS
AND THEIR MAKERS
ESSAYS ON ENGRAVERS AND
ETCHERS OLD AND MODERN
EDITED BY
FITZROY CARRINGTON
EDITOR OF “THE PRINT-COLLECTOR’S QUARTERLY”
WITH 200 ILLUSTRATIONS
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1912
Copyright, 1912, by
THE CENTURY CO.
Copyright, 1911, 1912, by
FREDERICK KEPPEL & CO.
_Published October, 1912_
THE DE VINNE PRESS
TO
FREDERICK KEPPEL
IN MEMORY OF A FRIENDSHIP OF TWENTY
YEARS THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED BY
THE EDITOR
CONTENTS
PAGE
DÜRER’S WOODCUTS 1
BY CAMPBELL DODGSON, M.A.
SOME EARLY ITALIAN ENGRAVERS BEFORE THE TIME
OF MARCANTONIO 17
BY ARTHUR M. HIND
A PRINCE OF PRINT-COLLECTORS: MICHEL DE
MAROLLES, ABBÉ DE VILLELOIN 33
BY LOUIS R. METCALFE
JEAN MORIN 52
BY LOUIS R. METCALFE
ROBERT NANTEUIL 70
BY LOUIS R. METCALFE
REMBRANDT’S LANDSCAPE ETCHINGS 94
BY LAURENCE BINYON
GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIRANESI 112
BY BENJAMIN BURGES MOORE
FRANCISCO GOYA Y LUCIENTES 153
BY CHARLES H. CAFFIN
A NOTE ON GOYA 164
BY WILLIAM M. IVINS, JR.
THE ETCHINGS OF FORTUNY 166
BY ROYAL CORTISSOZ
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF SIR SEYMOUR
HADEN, P.R.E. 173
BY FREDERICK KEPPEL
THE WATER-COLORS AND DRAWINGS OF SIR
SEYMOUR HADEN, P.R.E. 196
BY H. NAZEBY HARRINGTON
MERYON AND BAUDELAIRE 204
BY WILLIAM ASPENWALL BRADLEY
FÉLIX BRACQUEMOND: AN ETCHER OF BIRDS 220
BY FRANK WEITENKAMPF
AUGUSTE LEPÈRE 228
BY ELISABETH LUTHER CARY
HERMAN A. WEBSTER 239
BY MARTIN HARDIE
ANDERS ZORN--PAINTER-ETCHER 259
BY J. NILSEN LAURVIK
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PROFILE BUST OF A YOUNG WOMAN _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
DÜRER. Portrait of Albert Dürer, aged 56 2
The Four Riders of the Apocalypse 3
The Whore of Babylon, Seated upon the Beast with
Seven Heads and Ten Horns 4
Christ Bearing His Cross 5
The Resurrection 6
Samson and the Lion 7
The Annunciation to Joachim 8
The Annunciation 9
The Flight into Egypt 10
The Assumption and Crowning of the Virgin 11
St. Jerome in his Cell 12
The Holy Family 13
Saint Christopher 14
The Virgin with the Many Angels 15
BARTOLOMMEO DI GIOVANNI. Triumph of Bacchus and
Ariadne 18
BOTTICELLI. The Assumption of the Virgin 19
FINIGUERRA SCHOOL. The Libyan Sibyl 20
FINIGUERRA SCHOOL. The Libyan Sibyl 21
MASO FINIGUERRA. The Planet Mercury 22
FINIGUERRA SCHOOL. A Young Man and Woman Each
Holding an Apple 23
ANTONIO POLLAIUOLO. Battle of Naked Men 24
CRISTOFANO ROBETTA. The Adoration of the Magi 25
ANDREA MANTEGNA. The Risen Christ between St. Andrew
and St. Longinus 26
ZOAN ANDREA (?). Four Women Dancing 27
NICOLETTO DA MODENA. The Adoration of the Shepherds 28
JACOPO DE ’BARBARI. Apollo and Diana 29
GIULIO CAMPAGNOLA. St. John the Baptist 30
GIULIO AND DOMENICO CAMPAGNOLA. Shepherds in a Landscape 31
CLAUDE MELLAN. Portrait of Michel de Marolles, Abbé
de Villeloin 38
NANTEUIL. Portrait of Michel de Marolles, Abbé de
Villeloin 39
Jules, Cardinal Mazarin 42
Louis XIV 43
CLAUDE MELLAN. Agatha Castiglione 50
Claude de Marolles 51
MORIN. Louis XIII, King of France 54
Anne of Austria, Regent of France 55
Cardinal Richelieu 58
Pierre Maugis des Granges 59
Henri de Lorraine, Comte d’Harcourt 62
Guido, Cardinal Bentivoglio 63
Nicolas Chrystin 66
Antoine Vitré 67
Jean-François-Paul de Gondi 68
Omer Talon 69
NANTEUIL. Louis XIV 76
Anne of Austria, Queen of France 77
Jules, Cardinal Mazarin 78
Bernard de Foix de la Valette, Duc d’Epernon 79
Jean Loret 82
François de la Mothe le Vayer 83
Nicolas Fouquet 86
Basile Fouquet 87
Jean Chapelain 88
Pompone de Bellièvre 89
Henri de la Tour d’Auvergne, Vicomte de Turenne,
Maréchal de France 90
Jean-Baptiste Colbert 91
REMBRANDT. The Windmill 96
View of Amsterdam 97
The Three Trees 102
Six’s Bridge 103
Landscape with a Boat in the Canal 104
Farm with Trees and a Tower 105
The Gold-weigher’s Field 106
Landscape with a Milkman 107
F. POLANZANI. Portrait of Giovanni Battista Piranesi 112
PIRANESI. Arch of Septimius Severus 113
Arch of Vespasian 114
Arch of Trajan at Benevento, in the Kingdom of Naples 115
The Basilica, Pæstum 116
The Temple of Neptune at Pæstum 117
The Temple of Concord 118
Site of the Ancient Roman Forum 119
View of the “Campo Vaccino” 120
The Arch of Titus 121
The Arch of Titus 122
Façade of St. John Lateran 123
View of the Ruins of the Golden House of Nero, Commonly
Called the Temple of Peace 124
Interior of the Pantheon, Rome 125
Piazza Navona, Rome 126
Interior of the Villa of Mæcenas, at Tivoli 127
The Temple of Apollo, near Tivoli 128
The Falls at Tivoli 129
The Falls at Tivoli 130
St. Peter’s and the Vatican 131
The Villa d’Este at Tivoli 132
Title-page of “The Prisons” 133
The Prisons. Plate III 134
The Prisons. Plate IV 135
The Prisons. Plate V 136
The Prisons. Plate VI 137
The Prisons. Plate IX 138
The Prisons. Plate VII 139
The Prisons. Plate VIII 140
The Prisons. Plate XI 141
The Prisons. Plate XIII 142
The Prisons. Plate XIV 143
FRANCESCO PIRANESI. Statue of Piranesi 146
PIRANESI. Antique Marble Vase 147
Section of one of the Sides of the Great Room, or Library,
of Earl Mansfield’s Villa at Kenwood. Engraved
by I. Zucchi 148
Ionic Order of the Anteroom, with the rest of the Detail
of that Room at Sion House, the Seat of the Duke
of Northumberland in the County of Middlesex. Engraved
by Piranesi 149
Title-page to “Il Campo Marzio dell’Antica Roma” 150
Upper left-hand Portion, bearing a Dedication to Robert
Adam, of Piranesi’s etched plan of the Campus
Martius 151
GOYA. Portrait of Goya, drawn and etched by himself 154
The Dead Branch 155
Back to his Ancestors! 156
“Birds of a Feather Flock Together” 157
They have Kidnapped her 158
“Bon Voyage!” 159
The Infuriated Stallion 160
The Bird-Men 161
Good Advice 162
God Forgive her--It’s her own Mother! 163
Love and Death 164
Hunting for Teeth 165
FORTUNY. Arab watching beside the Dead Body of his
Friend 166
Idyll 167
The Serenade 168
A Moroccan Seated 169
A Horse of Morocco 170
Interior of the Church of Saint Joseph, Madrid 171
PORTRAIT OF SEYMOUR HADEN. At the Age of Sixty-two.
By C. W. Sherborn 174
HADEN. Portrait of Seymour Haden etched by himself at
the Age of Forty-four 175
Portrait of Sir Seymour Haden. By A. Legros 176
Woodcote Manor. By Percy Thomas 177
Reproduction of a Page of Manuscript in the
Handwriting of Sir Seymour Haden 178
Facsimile of the Certificate of Seymour Haden’s Candidacy
for Membership in the Athenæum Club 179
Whistler’s House, Old Chelsea 180
Battersea Reach 181
Out of Study Window 182
Thomas Haden of Derby 183
PORTRAIT OF SEYMOUR HADEN in 1882 (photograph) 184
PORTRAIT OF SIR SEYMOUR HADEN. By J. Wells Champney 185
Mytton Hall 186
On the Test 187
A By-road in Tipperary 188
A Sunset in Ireland 189
A Lancashire River 190
Sawley Abbey 191
The Breaking-up of the Agamemnon 192
Calais Pier 193
An Early Riser 194
Harlech 195
Salmon Pool on the Spey 198
Old Oaks, Chatsworth 199
Course of the Ribble below Preston 200
Dinkley Ferry 201
Encombe Woods 202
An Elderly Couple, Chatsworth Park 203
BRACQUEMOND. Frontispiece for “Les Fleurs du Mal” of
Baudelaire 206
PORTRAIT OF CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. By Bracquemond 207
PORTRAIT OF CHARLES MERYON. By Bracquemond 208
MERYON. Le Pont au Change 209
Le Petit Pont 210
PORTRAIT OF CHARLES MERYON. By Flameng 211
BRACQUEMOND. Ducks at Play 220
A Flock of Teal Alighting 221
Pheasants at Dawn: Morning Mists 222
The Bather (Canards Surpris) 223
Geese in a Storm 224
Sea-gulls 225
The Old Cock 226
Swallows in Flight 227
LEPÈRE. Rheims Cathedral 228
Belle Matinée. Automne 229
Vue du Port de la Meule 230
Peupliers Tétards 231
Le Moulin des Chapelles 234
A Gentilly 234
La Chaumière du Vieux Pecheur 235
Le Nid 235
Provins 236
L’Eglise de Jouy le Moutier 236
L’Enfant Prodigue 237
WEBSTER. St. Ouen, Rouen 240
La Rue Grenier sur l’Eau, Paris 241
Quai Montebello 242
Le Pont Neuf, Paris 243
La Rue Cardinale 244
La Rue de la Parcheminerie, Paris 245
St. Saturnin, Toulouse 246
Ancienne Faculté de Médecine, Paris 247
Notre Dame des Andelys 248
Port des Marmousets, St. Ouen, Rouen 249
Vieilles Maisons, Rue Hautefeuille, Paris 250
La Route de Louviers 251
Bendergasse, Frankfort 252
Cortlandt Street, New York 253
Lowenplätzchen, Frankfort 254
Der Langer Franz, Frankfort 255
The Old Bridge, Frankfort 256
La Rue St. Jacques, Paris 257
ZORN. Portrait of the Artist and his Wife 260
The Waltz 261
Madame Simon 262
Ernest Renan 263
August Strindberg 264
Sunday Morning in Dalecarlia 265
The Bather, Seated 266
Edo 267
PREFACE
“Good wine needs no bush,” and these essays need no commendatory
word from the Editor. The plan of this book is a simple one. Certain
lovers of prints have been asked to write on the engravers, etchers,
or periods which chiefly interest them and upon which they are best
qualified to speak; and, furthermore, to treat their special subjects
in their own way. So far as subject matter is concerned, the essays
are grouped approximately in chronological order, and the reader may
range from Italian engravers before the time of Raphael and woodcuts
by Albrecht Dürer to contemporary etchings by Zorn, Lepère, and Herman
A. Webster. Throughout the essays one dominant note will be found--a
sincere love of Prints and an interest in their Makers.
FITZROY CARRINGTON.
New York,
September, 1912.
DÜRER’S WOODCUTS
BY CAMPBELL DODGSON, M.A.
Keeper of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum Author of the
Catalogue of German and Flemish Woodcuts in the British Museum and
Honorary Secretary of the Dürer Society
The first decade of the twentieth century lies not very far behind
us, but perhaps it is not too soon to assert that one of its marked
features, in the retrospect of a print-lover, is a great revival or
extension of interest in every form of engraving among cultivated
people who are not specialists. Increased attention has been
paid, among other things, to the German woodcuts of the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries, which used to be rather despised by the
old-fashioned nineteenth-century collector, with a few enlightened
exceptions, as rough and ugly old things which were curious as
specimens of antiquity or instructive as illustrations of the life and
religion of the generations that produced them, but were not to be
taken very seriously as works of art. That estimate is being revised.
A generation no longer blinded to the merits of primitive art by the
worship of Raphael and the antique is ever tapping fresh sources of
delight and enriching itself by the perception of beauty where its
fathers saw nought but the grotesque and quaint. It is not surprising,
indeed, that German art has made slower progress than Italian on the
road to popularity. Even the primitives, on the south side of the
Alps, shared in the winning grace and suavity of the old Mediterranean
culture, while their brethren in the North, the French excepted,
were indisputably more rugged and barbarous in draughtsmanship and
painting, and few of their engravers, except Schongauer, can vie with
the Florentines if their achievements are judged by the test of formal
beauty. But it is wonderful how, in the North, now and again, art could
suddenly blossom and ripen under the creative impulse of an innovator,
whose successors, rather than the pioneer himself, lay themselves open
to the charge of angularity and uncouthness. The perfection of the
very earliest printed books is a commonplace. Less generally known,
perhaps, is the great beauty to which the earliest of all the German
engravers known to us at all as a personality, though not by name,
was capable of attaining. The “Master of the Playing-Cards,” who was
at work about 1430-40, produced work of extraordinary charm, not only
in some of the figures, animals and flowers of the playing-cards
themselves, but especially in the large engraving of the Virgin Mary
with the human-headed serpent, or Lilith, beneath her feet, which
is one of the most splendid and mature creations of the fifteenth
century. Then, again, the early book illustrators of Augsburg and
Ulm, in the seventies, when the use of blocks for such a purpose had
only recently come in, produced woodcuts that were never surpassed
by any successors in their simple and direct vivacity and strength,
with the utmost economy of line. But the real beauty of some of the
much earlier single woodcuts, illustrating, chiefly, the legends of
Our Lady and the Saints, has been much less generally appreciated.
They are very rare, and most of them repose, in a seclusion seldom
disturbed, in their boxes in the great European print-rooms or even
in monastic libraries. They are only beginning to be reproduced, and
they are rarely exhibited. But such an exhibition of the earliest
German woodcuts as was held at Berlin in the summer of 1908 was truly
a revelation. The soft and rounded features, the flowing lines of the
drapery, in the prints of the generation before sharp, broken folds
were introduced under the influence of the Netherlands, have something
of the charm of Far Eastern art, and the gay coloring with which most
of the prints were finished has often a delightfully decorative effect
when they are framed and hung at a proper distance from the eye. Such
praise is due, of course, only to some of the choicer examples; there
are plenty of fifteenth-century woodcuts in which the line is merely
clumsy and the coloring merely gaudy, but these are more often products
of the last quarter of the century than of its beginning or middle.
It would not be true to say that the advance of time brought with it
progress and perfection in the woodcutter’s art; on the contrary,
the first vital impulse spent itself all too soon, and gave way to
thoughtless and unintelligent imitation.
[Illustration: Albrecht Dürer Conterfeyt in seinem alter
Des L V I. Jares.
DÜRER. PORTRAIT OF ALBERT DÜRER, AGED 56
The rare second state (of 3 states) before the monogram of Dürer and
the date 1527
Size of the original woodcut, 12¾ × 10 inches]
[Illustration: DÜRER. THE FOUR RIDERS OF THE APOCALYPSE
From “The Apocalypse”
Size of the original woodcut, 15¼ × 11 inches]
What was the state of things when Dürer appeared upon the scene?
He did so long before the close of the fifteenth century, for his
first authenticated woodcut is an illustration to St. Jerome’s
Epistles, printed at Basle in 1492. Whether he or an unknown artist
is responsible for a large number of other illustrations produced
at Basle about 1493-95, is a question about which no consensus of
opinion has been formed, and this is not the place to discuss it. All
the woodcuts that the world knows and esteems as Dürer’s were produced
at Nuremberg after his return from the first Venetian journey (1495).
Let us see, for a moment, how they stand comparison with what had
gone before them. The older woodcuts are nearly all anonymous, and if
they bear any signature, it is that of a woodcutter (Formschneider
or Briefmaler) who was a craftsman allied to the joiner, rather than
the painter. Just before Dürer’s time the painter begins to make his
appearance on the scene as a designer of woodcuts. There are a few
isolated cases in which the almost universal rule of anonymity is
broken, and we learn from the preface to a book the name of the artist
who designed the illustrations. Breydenbach’s “Travels to the Holy
Land” (Mainz, 1486) was illustrated by woodcuts after Erhard Reuwich,
or Rewich, a native of Utrecht, who had accompanied the author on
his journey, and the immense number of woodcuts in the “Nuremberg
Chronicle” by Hartmann Schedel (1493) were the work of the painters
Wohlgemuth and Pleydenwurff; to whom the much finer illustrations of
the “Schatzbehalter” (1491) may also safely be attributed. It is now
almost universally believed that the “Master of the Hausbuch,” one of
Dürer’s most gifted predecessors in the art of engraving on copper, was
also a prolific illustrator, the principal work assigned to him being
the numerous illustrations in the “Spiegel der menschlichen Behaltnis”
printed by Peter Drach at Speyer about 1478-80. There are speculations,
more or less ill-founded, about the illustrators of a few other woodcut
books of the fifteenth century, but I believe it is true that the
first book after those already named in which the artist’s name is
settled beyond doubt is Dürer’s “Apocalypse” of 1498.
[Illustration: DÜRER. THE WHORE OF BABYLON, SEATED UPON THE BEAST WITH
SEVEN HEADS AND TEN HORNS
From “The Apocalypse”
Size of the original woodcut, 15¼ × 11 inches]
[Illustration: DÜRER. CHRIST BEARING HIS CROSS
From “The Great Passion”
Size of the original woodcut, 15¼ × 11⅛ inches]
Dr. Naumann, the editor of a recent facsimile of the cuts in the
Speyer book just mentioned, claims for the “Hausbuchmeister” that he
was the first painter, or painter-engraver, who attempted to get the
most out of the craftsmen employed in cutting blocks from his designs.
That is rather a speculative opinion, and the woodcuts in question
are not, from the technical point of view, superior to many other
contemporary illustrations. But there can be no question that Dürer
effected an immense reform in this respect, and carried the technique
of wood-engraving to a perfection unparalleled in its previous history.
Not by his own handiwork, for there is no reason to suppose that Dürer
ever cut his blocks himself. All the evidence points, on the contrary,
to his having followed the universal practice of the time, according
to which the designer drew the composition in all detail upon the
wood block, and employed a professional engraver to cut the block,
preserving all the lines intact, and cutting away the spaces between
them, so that the result was a facsimile of the drawing as accurate as
the craftsman was capable of making it. Dürer set his engravers, we may
be sure, a harder task than they had ever had to grapple with before,
and he must have succeeded in gradually training a man, or group of
men, on whom he could rely to preserve his drawing in all its delicacy
and intricate complexity. This was a work of time, and perfection
was not reached till after Dürer’s return from his second journey to
Venice, when a great increase of refinement on the technical side
becomes noticeable, culminating in that extraordinary performance, the
_Holy Trinity_ woodcut of 1511. But even in the large fifteenth-century
blocks, the “Apocalypse,” the earlier portion of the “Great Passion”
and the contemporary single subjects, much cross-hatching is used
and the space is filled with detail to an extent hitherto unknown.
Without ever losing sight of the general decorative effect, the telling
pattern of black and white, Dürer put in a vast amount of interesting
little things, with the conscientiousness and care that characterized
everything that he did, and every detail of the leaves of a thistle or
fern, or of the elaborate ornament, birds and flowers and foliage and
rams’ heads, on the base of a Gothic candle-stick, had to be reproduced
so that the crisp clearness of the original pen-drawing lost nothing of
its precision. The result was a work so perfectly complete in black and
white, as it stood, that nobody ever thought of coloring it, and that
in itself was a great innovation and advance. The fifteenth-century
“Illuminirer,” or the patron who gave him his orders, seems to have
had an instinctive respect for excellent and highly finished work in
black and white, which made him leave it alone. Line-engravings of
the fifteenth century are very frequently found colored, but they are
usually quite second-rate specimens, and prints by the great men,
such as the “Master E. S.” and Schongauer, were respected and left
alone. But such consideration was not often shown to woodcuts, which
were frequently colored, especially when used as illustrations, well
into the sixteenth century. It was very rarely, however, that any
illuminator laid profane hands on anything of Dürer’s, woodcut or
engraving, and when he did so the result is stupid and disagreeable,
for it is always the work of a later generation, out of touch with
Dürer’s genius.
[Illustration: DÜRER. THE RESURRECTION
From “The Great Passion”
Size of the original woodcut, 15⅜ × 10⅞ inches]
[Illustration: DÜRER. SAMSON AND THE LION
Size of the original woodcut, 15 × 10⅞ inches]
It may be said that if Dürer and his contemporaries did not cut their
own blocks, the woodcuts are not original prints by the masters
themselves. It must be conceded that they are not original prints quite
in the same sense as engravings and etchings, in which the whole work
was carried out upon the plate by the masters’ own hand, but it would
be a mistake to describe them as examples of reproductive engraving.
Such a thing as a reproductive engraving was, in fact, unknown in
the Germany of Dürer’s time. A design originally projected in one
medium might be reproduced in another in a case where an engraving by
Schongauer, or Meckenen, or Dürer himself, was copied by some inferior
woodcutter, as an act of piracy, for a bookseller who was too stingy
to pay an artist to draw him a new Virgin or Saint for his purpose.
But it would never have occurred to any one to reproduce an engraving
or woodcut, a picture or drawing, done for its own sake, as a separate
and complete work of art. Reproductions of pictures scarcely exist
in German art of the sixteenth century; they are commoner in the
Venetian School, among the woodcutters influenced by Titian, and Rubens
established the practice once for all by his encouragement of engraving
from his pictures, a century after Dürer’s time. But when woodcutting
was taken up by the German painters, with Dürer as their leader, for
the purpose of circulating their compositions at a cheaper price than
they could charge for engravings of their own, they always had a
strictly legitimate object according to the canons of graphic art.
Rarely working even from sketches, never from a work already finished
in another medium, they drew the subjects intended for printing
directly upon the block in a technique adapted for the purpose,
avoiding such combinations of lines as the most skilful craftsmen
would be unable to cut. Their actual handiwork was preserved upon the
surface of the block, much as in the modern original lithograph the
artist’s actual work survives upon the surface of the stone; if it
was in any way disfigured, as often, no doubt, it was, that must be
set down to failure on the cutter’s part. Anything original that the
cutter puts in, any swerving that accident or clumsiness permits him
to make from the line fixed by the painter’s pen for him to follow, is
a blemish, and the best woodcuts of Dürer, Holbein, Baldung, Cranach,
Burgkmair and the rest of their generation have no such blemishes. They
are strictly autographic: the lines that the artist’s pen has traced
remain and are immortalized by the printing-press; the white spaces,
also limited by his controlling will and purpose, result from the mere
mechanical cutting away of blank wood that any neat-handed workman
can perform. So when we speak of the woodcuts of Millais, Rossetti,
Whistler, Walker, Pinwell, Sandys and the rest of the “Men of the
Sixties,” we know that the blocks were cut by Dalziel or Swain, but
every good print is none the less what the designer meant it to be, and
what none but himself could have made it.
[Illustration: DÜRER. THE ANNUNCIATION TO JOACHIM
From “The Life of the Virgin”
Size of the original woodcut, 11⅝ × 8³/₁₆ inches]
[Illustration: DÜRER. THE ANNUNCIATION
From “The Life of the Virgin”
Size of the original woodcut, 11⅝ × 8¼ inches]
Of Dürer’s woodcutters, unluckily, we know nothing till the
comparatively late period when he had been enlisted in the service
of the Emperor Maximilian, whose imposing, but somewhat ponderous and
pedantic, _Triumphal Arch_ was cut from the designs of Dürer and his
school by Hieronymus Andreä. There is much more information about the
Augsburg cutters than about those of Nuremberg, and there is no single
artist in the latter city whose work is so strongly marked out by its
excellence from that of his contemporaries as was Lützelburger’s, who
cut Holbein’s “Dance of Death.”
To understand Dürer’s woodcuts aright, it is necessary to get to know
them in their chronological sequence. In conservative collections,
where they are arranged by order of subject, on the system of Bartsch,
the student is continually confused by the juxtaposition of quite
incongruous pieces, placed together merely because “Jérôme,” for
instance, comes in alphabetical order next after “Jean.” The British
Museum collection has been arranged for more than ten years past in
chronological order, which, in Dürer’s case, is unusually easy to
determine with approximate accuracy, because his methodical turn of
mind caused him to be fond of dates, while the undated pieces can
be fitted in without much difficulty by the evidence of style. The
justification of the system became all the more apparent when the
woodcuts were exhibited for a few months in 1909, and fell naturally
into consistent and coherent groups upon the screens, while separated,
as a matter of practical convenience, from the engravings. Since then
two even more interesting experiments have been made, in exhibitions
held at Liverpool and Bremen, toward a reconstruction of Dürer’s
entire life-work in its chronological sequence, his pictures,
drawings, engravings and woodcuts--represented mainly, of course,
by reproductions--being merged in a single series. That is a timely
warning against the risks of excessive concentration upon one single
side of his many activities, but here we will not digress further from
the woodcuts, which are at present our theme.
[Illustration: DÜRER. THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT
From “The Life of the Virgin”
Size of the original woodcut, 11⅝ × 8¼ inches]
[Illustration: DÜRER. THE ASSUMPTION AND CROWNING OF THE VIRGIN
From “The Life of the Virgin”
Size of the original woodcut, 11½ × 8⅛ inches]
The series opens magnificently with the group of large and stately
woodcuts, abounding in vitality and dramatic invention, produced by
Dürer between 1495 and 1500. These include the fifteen subjects of the
“Apocalypse,” the seven early subjects of the “Great Passion” (not
completed until 1510-11) and seven detached pieces uniform with the
two series already named in dimensions and style, but independent of
them in subject. The blocks of the majority of these single pieces
are now, by the way, in an American collection, that of Mr. Junius S.
Morgan, but they have suffered sadly from the ravages of the worm.
There is a certain exaggeration and over-emphasis of gesture in the
“Apocalypse” woodcuts, but Dürer never invented anything more sublime
than the celebrated _Four Riders_ or the _St. Michael defeating the
Rebel Angels_, which I regard as at least equal to the subject more
frequently praised. Superb, too, is the group of _Angels restraining
the Four Winds_. The landscape at the foot of _St. John’s Vision of
the Four-and-twenty Elders_ (B. 63) is a complete picture by itself,
and there is a rare early copy of this portion alone, which is itself
a beautiful print, and doubtless the earliest pure landscape woodcut
in existence. _Samson and the Lion_, the mysteriously named _Ercules_
and the _Knight and Man-at-arms_, often described as its companion,
and the _Martyrdom of St. Catherine_ are among the finest of the single
subjects. After this tremendously impressive group, there is for a
time a certain relaxation of energy, or rather Dürer was more bent
on other things, especially engraving. To the years 1500-04 belong
a number of woodcuts of Holy Families and Saints, much smaller than
the “Apocalypse,” and rather roughly cut. Some critics have wished to
dismiss one or another of them as pupils’ work, but for this there is
really no justification. Then comes another very good period, that of
the “Life of the Virgin,” of which set Dürer had finished seventeen
subjects before he left for Venice in 1505, while the _Death of the
Virgin_ and _The Assumption_ were added in 1510, and the frontispiece
in 1511, when the whole work came out as a book, assuredly one of
the most desirable picture-books the world has ever seen! It is
impossible to weary of the beautiful compositions, the details drawn
with such loving care, the tender and homely sentiment, the humor,
even, displayed in the accessory figures of _The Embrace of Joachim
and Anne_, the beer-drinking gossips in the _Birth of the Virgin_,
where the atmosphere of St. Anne’s chamber is sweetened by an angelic
thurifer, and the merry group of angelic children playing round Joseph,
bent on his carpenter’s business, while their elders keep solemn watch
round Mary at her distaff and the Holy Child in the cradle. We find
landscapes at least as beautiful as those in Dürer’s best engravings
in the pastoral background of the _Annunciation to Joachim_ and the
mountainous distance of the _Visitation_. The architectural setting of
the _Presentation of Christ in the Temple_, and the tall cross held
aloft, with the happiest effect on the composition, by the Apostle
kneeling on the left in Mary’s death-chamber, are among the memorable
features of the set.
Beautiful again, especially in fine proofs, is the next and latest of
the long sets, the “Little Passion,” consisting of thirty-six subjects
and a title-page, begun in 1509 and finished, like all the other
books, in 1511. But it has not the monumental grandeur of the earlier
religious sets, and there is an inevitable monotony about the incessant
recurrence of the figure of Our Lord, when the history of the Passion
is set forth in such detail. The most original and impressive subjects,
in my opinion, are _Christ Appearing to St. Mary Magdalen_ and the next
following it, _The Supper at Emmaus_.
[Illustration: DÜRER. ST. JEROME IN HIS CELL
Size of the original woodcut, 9¼ × 6¼ inches]
[Illustration: DÜRER. THE HOLY FAMILY
St. Anne, attended by St. Joseph and St. Joachim, receiving from His
Mother the Infant Jesus
Size of the original woodcut, 9¼ × 6⅛ inches]
The years 1510 and 1511 were the most prolific of all, and witnessed
the publication of other connected pieces, the _Beheading of John
the Baptist_ and _Salome bringing the Baptist’s Head to Herod_, and
then the three little woodcuts, _Christ on the Cross_, _Death and the
Soldier_, and _The Schoolmaster_, which Dürer brought out on large
sheets at the head of his own verses, signed with a large monogram
at the end of all. The single sheets of 1511 include, besides the
marvelous _Trinity_ already mentioned, the large _Adoration of the
Magi_, the _Mass of St. Gregory_, a _St. Jerome in his Cell_, which is
the best, after the celebrated engraving of 1514, of Dürer’s repeated
versions of that delightful subject; the _Cain and Abel_, which is one
of the great rarities; two rather unattractive _Holy Families_; and the
beautiful square _Saint Christopher_, of which many fine impressions
are extant to bear witness to its technical virtues. The average
level of all the work of the year 1511 is so astonishingly high, that
it must be regarded as the culminating period of the woodcuts, just as
a slightly later time, the years 1513-14, witnesses the climax of the
engravings. In the next few years Dürer’s time was much taken up with
carrying out the emperor’s important but rather tiresome commissions
for the _Triumphal Arch_ and two _Triumphal Cars_, the small one which
forms part of the _Procession_, and the much bigger affair, with the
twelve horses and allegorical retinue, which did not appear till 1522.
All this group offers a rich field of research to the antiquary, but
is simply unintelligible without a learned commentary, and appeals
much less than the sacred subjects to the average collector and lover
of art, who cannot unearth the heaps of pedantic Latin and German
literature in which the motives by which Dürer was inspired, if I
may use the word, lie buried. Inspiration certainly flagged under
the influence of Wilibald Pirkheimer and other learned humanists who
encouraged Maximilian in his penchant for allegory, and compelled
Dürer, probably somewhat against his will, to use a multitude of
symbols, intelligible only to the learned, instead of speaking directly
to the populace in the familiar pictorial language derived from old
tradition but enriched and ennobled by his own matchless art.
The later woodcuts are comparatively few in number. They include a
few that are primarily of scientific interest, such as the celestial
and terrestrial globes and the armillary sphere, besides the numerous
illustrations to Dürer’s own works on Measurement, Proportion, and
Fortification. But among them are the two splendid portraits made from
drawings now in the Albertina, the _Emperor Maximilian_ of 1518 and
the _Ulrich Varnbüler_ of 1522. Of the former several varieties exist,
from no less than four different blocks, and it is now established that
the only original version is the very rare one in which the letters
“ae” of the word “Caesar” are distinct, not forming a diphthong, and
placed within the large “C.” The other cuts are all copies, produced
probably at Augsburg, the fine large one, with an ornamental frame and
the imperial arms supported by griffins, being indisputably the work of
Hans Weiditz. Only three impressions of the original are known, in the
British Museum, the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett, and the Hofbibliothek
at Vienna, in addition to which the École des Beaux-Arts at Paris
possesses a fragment damaged by fire at the time of the Commune, when
it was still in private hands. It is more generally known that the
handsome chiaroscuro impressions of the _Varnbüler_ date, like those
of the _Rhinoceros_, from the seventeenth century, the color blocks
having been added in Holland. The brown and green varieties belong to
different editions, distinguished by the wording of the publisher’s
address at the foot, which in the majority of cases has been cut off.
[Illustration: DÜRER. SAINT CHRISTOPHER
Size of the original woodcut, 8⁵⁄₁₆ × 8¼ inches]
[Illustration: DÜRER. THE VIRGIN WITH THE MANY ANGELS
Size of the original woodcut, 11¹³/₁₆ × 8⅜ inches]
The _Virgin with the many Angels_, of 1518, is one of Dürer’s
most accomplished woodcuts, and quite good impressions of it are
comparatively common to-day. The latest of his compositions of this
class, the _Holy Family with Angels_, of 1526, is, on the other
hand, extremely rare. Some critics doubt its being an authentic work
of Dürer, but in spite of certain rather eccentric and unpleasant
peculiarities in the drawing, I consider this scepticism unfounded.
Quite at the end of Dürer’s life comes that rather fascinating subject,
_The Siege of a Fortress_, unique among Dürer’s woodcuts in the tiny
scale on which its countless details are drawn. Of the many heraldic
woodcuts and ex-libris attributed by Bartsch and others to Dürer, very
few can be regarded as his genuine work, and most of these are very
rare. The best authenticated are his own coat of arms; the arms of
Ferdinand I in the book on Fortification; those of Michel Behaim, of
which the block is extant with a letter written by Dürer on the back;
the arms of Roggendorf, mentioned in the Netherlands _Journal_, of
which only one impression is known, and the arms of Lorenz Staiber, of
which the original version is also unique. There can be no doubt that
the Ebner book-plate of 1516 is by Dürer; the much earlier Pirkheimer
book-plate is intimately connected with the illustrations to the books
by Celtes, and cannot be regarded as a certain work of the master
himself, while the arms of Johann Tschertte are also doubted.
It is a fortunate circumstance for the museums and collectors of
to-day that Dürer’s prints have always been esteemed, and his monogram
was held in such respect and so generally recognized as the mark of
something good that they have been preserved during four centuries,
while so much that was interesting was allowed to perish because it was
unsigned or its signature was not recognized as the work of any one
important. It may be paradoxical to say that Dürers are common; few of
them are to be had at any particular moment when one wants to get them;
but they are commoner than any other prints of their period, and a
large number of impressions of some subjects must come into the market
in the course of every ten years. But the sort of Dürer the collector
wants, the really beautiful, fresh, clean impression, with the right
watermark and genuine, unbroken border-line, is not, and never has
been, common. It is surprising how few, even of the famous museums of
Europe, have a really fine collection of the woodcuts, perhaps because
so many of them were formed some generations ago in uncritical times,
when people were apt to think it enough if the subject was represented,
in whatever condition it might be. The first-rate proofs are scarce,
and getting scarcer every year; when they are to be had, they should be
grasped and treasured.
SOME EARLY ITALIAN ENGRAVERS BEFORE THE TIME OF MARCANTONIO
BY ARTHUR M. HIND
Of the Department of Prints and Drawings, British Museum
Author of “Catalogue of Early Italian Engravings in the British
Museum,” “Short History of Engraving and Etching,” “Rembrandt’s
Etchings: an Essay and a Catalogue,” etc.
Fifteenth-century Italian engraving is not an easy hunting-ground for
the collector, but it is one of the most fascinating not less for its
own sake than for the difficulty of securing one’s prize.
From the time of Raphael onward Italian engraving presents an
overwhelmingly large proportion of reproductions of pictures, and loses
on that account its primary interest. But in the fifteenth and the
early sixteenth century, the engravers, though for the most part less
accomplished craftsmen, were artists of real independence. We may in
some cases exaggerate this independence through not knowing the sources
which they used, but the mere lack of that knowledge adds a particular
interest to their prints. Treated not only in virtue of their special
claim as engravings, but merely as designs, we find something in them
which the paintings of the period do not offer us.
In general, the presence and influence of one of the greater artistic
personalities of the time may be recognized, but seldom definitely
enough for us to trace the painter’s immediate direction. Mantegna is
the most brilliant exception of a painter of first rank who is known
to have handled the graver at this period. But forgetting the great
names it is remarkable how in the early Renaissance in Italy even the
secondary craftsmen produced work of the same inexpressible charm that
pervades the great masterpieces.
One of the most beautiful examples I can cite is the _Triumph of
Bacchus and Ariadne_, which is known only in the British Museum
impression. It has all the fascination of Botticelli’s style without
being quite Botticelli--unless the engraver himself is to account for
the coarsening in the drawing of individual forms. Mr. Herbert P.
Horne, the great authority on Botticelli and his school, thinks it
is by Bartolommeo di Giovanni (Berenson’s “Alunno di Domenico”). But
whether immediately after Botticelli or after some minor artist of the
school, there is the same delightful flow and rhythmic motion in the
design that one thinks of in relation to Botticelli’s _Spring_.
[Illustration: TRIUMPH OF BACCHUS AND ARIADNE
After a design by a close follower of Botticelli, possibly by
Bartolommeo di Giovanni
“But whether immediately after Botticelli or after some minor artist of
the school, there is the same delightful flow and rhythmic motion in
the design that one thinks of in relation to Botticelli’s _Spring_....
We could ill afford to lose the charm of the early Florentine _Triumph
of Bacchus and Ariadne_ for all the finished beauty of Marcantonio’s
_Lucretia_, and it is still the youth of artistic development, with its
naïve joy and freshness of outlook, which holds us with the stronger
spell.”
Arthur M. Hind.
Reproduced from the unique impression in the British Museum
Size of the original engraving, 8⅛ × 22 inches]
[Illustration: THE ASSUMPTION OF THE VIRGIN
Florentine engraving, in the Broad Manner, after a design by Botticelli
“Most important of all the contemporary engravings after Botticelli
is the _Assumption of the Virgin_.... An original study by Botticelli
for the figure of St. Thomas, who is receiving the girdle of the
Virgin, is in Turin, and clinches the argument in favor of Botticelli’s
authorship. The view of Rome, a record of Botticelli’s visit, is an
interesting feature of the landscape.” Arthur M. Hind.
Size of the original engraving, 32⅝ × 22¼ inches]
Botticelli was in early life under the immediate inspiration, if not
in the very service, of the great goldsmith Pollaiuolo (witness his
picture of _Fortitude_ in Florence). One almost expects in consequence
that he may at some period have tried his hand at engraving, but there
is no proof that he did anything besides supplying the engravers with
designs. His chief connection with the engravers was in the series of
plates done for Landino’s edition of Dante’s “Divine Comedy” (Florence,
1481). Altogether nineteen plates (and a repetition of one subject)
are known, but although spaces are left throughout the whole edition
for an illustration to each canto, it is only in rare copies that more
than two or three are found. Even the fine presentation copy to
Lorenzo de’ Medici (now in the National Library, Florence) is without
a single plate, showing perhaps the small regard that was paid to
engraving for book decoration at that period. This lack of appreciation
and the difficulties (or double labor) the printers experienced in
combining copperplate impressions with type led soon after this and
a few other experiments of the period to the use of woodcut as the
regular mode of book illustration for well over a century. Apart from
the plates to this edition, Botticelli’s devotion to Dante is shown in
the beautiful series of pen drawings--in the most subtly expressive
outline--preserved at Berlin and in the Vatican. It seems on the whole
probable that they are later than the 1481 edition, so that we cannot
point to the original drawings for the prints.
Most important of all the contemporary engravings after Botticelli
is the _Assumption of the Virgin_, the largest of all the prints of
the period (printed from two plates, and measuring altogether about
82.5 × 56 cm.). An original study by Botticelli for the figure of St.
Thomas, who is receiving the girdle of the Virgin, is in Turin, and
clinches the argument in favor of Botticelli’s authorship. The view of
Rome, a record of Botticelli’s visit, is an interesting feature of the
landscape.
This engraving is produced in what has been called the BROAD MANNER
in contradistinction to the FINE MANNER, e.g. of the _Dante_ prints.
In the BROAD MANNER the lines are laid chiefly in open parallels,
and generally the shading is emphasized with a lighter return stroke
laid at a small angle between the parallels. Its aim is essentially
the imitation of pen drawing after the manner of such draughtsmen
as Pollaiuolo and Mantegna. The FINE MANNER on the other hand shows
shading in close cross-hatching (somewhat patchy and cloudy in effect
in most of the early Florentine prints), and gives the appearance of
imitating a wash drawing.
The two manners may be well compared in the series of “Prophets and
Sibyls,” which exists in two versions, the earlier being in the Fine,
and the later in the Broad Manner. The first series shows a craftsman
who drew largely from German sources (putting a _St. John_ of the
Master E. S. into the habit of the _Libyan Sibyl_). In the second we
have an artist who discarded all the ugly and awkward features which
originated in the German originals, and showed throughout a far truer
feeling for beauty and a much finer power of draughtsmanship than
the earlier engraver. Mr. Herbert Horne suspects, rightly I think,
that Botticelli himself directly inspired this transformation of the
“Prophets and Sibyls.”
Through our lack of knowledge of the engravers of this early period
in Florence we are driven to a rather constant use of the somewhat
unattractive distinctions of the Fine and Broad Manners. We may
claim, however, to have advanced a little further in the elucidation
of questions of authorship, though the great German authority on
this period, Dr. Kristeller of Berlin, would still keep practically
all the early Florentine engravings in an unassailable anonymity.
This is of course better than classing all the engravings of the
period and school, both in the Fine and Broad Manners, under the
name of Baccio Baldini, which has long been the custom. A certain
“Baccio, _orafo_” has been found in documents as buried in 1487,
but there is practically nothing to connect his name with the
substance of our prints. We would not on that account regard him as
a myth, but are reduced at the moment to Vasari’s statement that
“Baldini, the successor of Finiguerra in the Florentine school of
engraving, having little invention, worked chiefly after designs by
Botticelli.” Considering the fact that both Broad and Fine Manners
(in all probability the output of two distinct workshops) show prints
definitely after Botticelli, we are still in entire darkness as to the
position of Baldini.
[Illustration: THE LIBYAN SIBYL
From a series of the “Prophets and Sibyls,” engraved in the Fine Manner
of the Finiguerra School
Size of the original engraving, 7 × 4¼ inches]
[Illustration: THE LIBYAN SIBYL
From a series of the “Prophets and Sibyls,” engraved in the Broad
Manner of the Finiguerra School
Size of the original engraving, 7 × 4¼ inches]
With regard to an important group of Fine Manner prints, Sir Sidney
Colvin has given strong reasons for the attribution to Maso Finiguerra,
made famous by Vasari as the inventor of the art of engraving.
Considering Vasari’s evident error in regard to the discovery of
engraving (for there were engravings in the north of Europe well before
the earliest possible example of Finiguerra), modern students have
been inclined to regard Finiguerra as much in the light of a myth as
Baldini. But there is no lack of evidence as to his life and work, and
without repeating the arguments here, which are given in full in Sir
Sidney Colvin’s “Florentine Picture-Chronicle” (London, 1898), we would
at least state our conviction that a considerable number of the early
Florentine engravings, as well as an important group of nielli, must be
from his hand. Vasari speaks of him as the most famous niello-worker
in Florence, and he also speaks of his drawings of “figures clothed
and unclothed, and histories” (the “figures” evidently the series
traditionally ascribed to Finiguerra in Florence, but now for a large
part labeled with an extreme of timidity “school of Pollaiuolo”; the
“histories,” probably the “Picture-Chronicle” series, acquired from
Mr. Ruskin for the British Museum). Then considering Vasari’s fuller
statement that Finiguerra was also responsible for larger engravings in
the light of a group of Florentine engravings which correspond closely
in style with many of the only important group of Florentine nielli
(chiefly in the collection of Baron Édouard de Rothschild, Paris) as
well as with the Uffizi drawings, we can hardly escape the conviction
that Vasari was correct in his main thesis. A curiously entertaining
side-light is given by one of these engravings, the _Mercury_ for the
series of “Planets.” Here we see the representation of a goldsmith’s
shop in the streets of Florence, stocked just as we know from documents
Finiguerra’s to have been. And the goldsmith is evidently engaged in
engraving, not a niello, but a large copperplate.
[Illustration: THE PLANET MERCURY
Florentine engraving in the Fine Manner, attributed to Maso Finiguerra,
or his school
“A curiously entertaining side-light is given by one of these
engravings, the _Mercury_ for the series of ‘Planets.’ Here we see
the representation of a goldsmith’s shop in the streets of Florence,
stocked just as we know from documents Finiguerra’s to have been. And
the goldsmith is evidently engaged in engraving, not a niello, but a
large copperplate.” Arthur M. Hind.
Size of the original engraving, 12¾ × 8⁹⁄₁₆ inches]
[Illustration: A YOUNG MAN AND WOMAN EACH HOLDING AN APPLE
A Florentine engraving in the Fine Manner, attributed to the school of
Finiguerra
“One of the “Otto Prints” (so called from the eighteenth-century
collector who possessed the majority of the series), _A Young Man and
Woman Each Holding An Apple_, is in the Gray Collection, Harvard, and
it is a charming example of the amatory subjects of the series, prints
such as the Florentine gallant might have pasted on the spice-box to
be presented to his _inamorata_. The badge of Medici (the six “palle”
with three lilies in the uppermost) added by a contemporary hand in
pen and ink suggests that this one may have been used by the young
Lorenzo himself between about 1465 and 1467, which accords well with
the probable date of the engravings.” Arthur M. Hind.
(The inscription above reads _ò amore te qª_ (questa) and _piglia qª_:
“O Love, this to you” and “Take this.”)
Size of the original engraving, 4¼ × 4¼ inches]
The engravings most certainly by Finiguerra, such as the _Judgment
Hall of Pilate_ (Gotha), the _March to Calvary and the Crucifixion_
(British Museum), _Various Wild Animals Hunting and Fighting_ (British
Museum), are of course rarities which most collectors can never hope to
possess. The same may also be said of somewhat later prints in the same
manner of engraving (which may be the work of the heirs of Finiguerra’s
atelier, which is known to have been carried on by members of his
family until 1498), such as the Fine Manner “Prophets and Sibyls” and
the “Otto Prints.” We will in consequence devote less space to these
rarities, possessed chiefly by a few European collections, than their
artistic interest would justify, keeping our argument henceforward
more to the engravings that the American amateur has the chance of
seeing or acquiring at home.
One of the “Otto Prints” (so called from the eighteenth-century
collector who possessed the majority of the series), _A Young Man and
Woman Each Holding An Apple_, is in the Gray Collection, Harvard, and
it is a charming example of the amatory subjects of the series, prints
such as the Florentine gallant might have pasted on the spice-box to
be presented to his _inamorata_. The badge of Medici (the six “palle”
with three lilies in the uppermost) added by a contemporary hand in
pen and ink suggests that this one may have been used by the young
Lorenzo himself between about 1465 and 1467, which accords well with
the probable date of the engravings.
The only known engraving by the goldsmith and painter Antonio
Pollaiuolo, the large _Battle of Naked Men_, shows a far greater artist
than his slightly elder contemporary Finiguerra. They had both studied
in the same workshop and probably continued a sort of partnership
until Finiguerra’s death. Pollaiuolo’s draughtsmanship evinces a grip
and intensity that Finiguerra entirely lacks in his somewhat torpid
academic drawings, and it is seen at its best in this magnificently
vigorous plate. An excellent impression, surpassed by few in the
museums of Europe, is, I believe, in the collection of Mr. Francis
Bullard of Boston.
Before leaving Florence for north Italy we would allude to that
attractive engraver of the transition period, Cristofano Robetta. His
art has lost the finest flavor of the primitive Florentine without
having succeeded to the sound technical system of the contemporaries
of Dürer, but it has a thoroughly individual though delicate vein of
fancy. The _Adoration of the Magi_, one of his finest plates, is a
free translation of a picture by Filippino Lippi in the Uffizi, but
the group of singing angels is an addition of his own, and done with
a true sense for graceful composition. Fine early impressions of this
print are of course difficult to get, but it is perhaps the best known
of Robetta’s works, because of the number of modern impressions in the
market. The original plate (with the _Allegory of the Power of Love_
engraved on the back) belonged to the Vallardi Collection in the early
nineteenth century, and is now in the British Museum, happily safe from
the reprinter.
Among the greatest rarities of early engraving in north Italy is
the well-known series traditionally called the “Tarocchi Cards of
Mantegna”--somewhat erroneously, for they are neither by Mantegna, nor
Tarocchi, nor playing-cards at all. As in the case of the “Prophets
and Sibyls,” there are two complete series of the same subjects by two
different engravers. Each series consists of fifty subjects divided
into five sections and illustrating: (1) the Sorts and Conditions of
Men; (2) Apollo and the Muses; (3) the Arts and Sciences; (4) the Genii
and Virtues; (5) the Planets and Spheres. A considerable number of the
earliest impressions known are still in contemporary fifteenth-century
binding, and it seems as if the series was intended merely as an
instructive or entertaining picture-book for the young. There is the
most absolute divergence of opinion as to which is the original series,
and the student is encouraged to whet his critical acumen on the
problem by the excellent set of reproductions which has recently been
issued by the Graphische Gesellschaft and edited by Dr. Kristeller.
Unfortunately Dr. Kristeller takes what seems to me an entirely wrong
view of the matter. I cannot but feel that the more finely engraved
series is at the same time the more ancient, and almost certainly
Ferrarese in origin, so characteristic of Cossa is the type of these
figures with large heads, rounded forms, and bulging drapery. The
second series shows a more graceful sense of composition and spacing
(the heads and figures being in better relation to the size of the
print), but its very naturalism is to me an indication of its somewhat
later origin. The less precise technical quality of this second series
is closely related to the Florentine engravings in the Fine Manner,
and I am inclined to regard it as the work of a Florentine engraver of
about 1475 to 1480, i.e. about a decade later than the original set.
[Illustration: ANTONIO POLLAIUOLO. BATTLE OF NAKED MEN
“The only known engraving by the goldsmith and painter Antonio
Pollaiuolo, the large _Battle of Naked Men_, shows a far greater
artist than his slightly elder contemporary, Finiguerra. Pollaiuolo’s
draughtsmanship evinces a grip and intensity that Finiguerra entirely
lacks in his somewhat torpid academic drawings, and it is seen at its
best in this magnificently vigorous plate.” Arthur M. Hind.
Reproduced from the impression in the Print Department, Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston
Size of the original engraving, 15¹¹⁄₁₆ × 23⁷⁄₁₆ inches]
[Illustration: CRISTOFANO ROBETTA. THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI
“Cristofano Robetta’s art has lost the finest flavor of the primitive
Florentine without having succeeded to the sound technical system of
the contemporaries of Dürer, but it has a thoroughly individual though
delicate vein of fancy. The _Adoration of the Magi_, one of his finest
plates, is a free translation of a picture by Filippino Lippi in the
Uffizi, but the group of singing angels is an addition of his own, and
done with a true sense for graceful composition.” Arthur M. Hind.
Size of the original engraving, 11⅝ × 11 inches]
Leaving the pseudo-Mantegna for the master himself, we are in
the presence of the greatest of the Italian engravers before
Marcantonio--if not of all time. Like the Florentines, Mantegna was an
ardent lover of antiquity, but his spirit was far more impassive, far
more like the antique marble itself. His classical frame of mind was to
some extent the offspring of his education in the school of Squarcione
and in the academic atmosphere of Padua. His art has a monumental
dignity which the Florentines never possessed, but it was without the
freshness and inexpressible charm that pervade Tuscan art. An engraving
like the _Risen Christ between St. Andrew and St. Longinus_ is an
indication of the genius that might have made one of the noblest
sculptors, and one regrets that he never carried to accomplishment the
project of a monument to Vergil in Mantua, which Isabella d’Este wished
him to undertake.
Seven of the engravings attributed to Mantegna (including the _Risen
Christ_) are so much above the rest in subtle expressiveness, as well
as in technical quality, that we cannot but agree with Dr. Kristeller’s
conclusion that these alone are by Mantegna’s hand, and the rest
engraved after his drawings. They are similar to Pollaiuolo’s _Battle
of Naked Men_ in style, engraved chiefly in open parallel lines of
shading with a much more lightly engraved return stroke between the
parallels. It is this light return stroke, exactly in the manner of
Mantegna’s pen drawing, which gives the wonderfully soft quality to
the early impressions. But it is so delicate that comparatively few
printings must have worn it down, and the majority of impressions that
come into the market show little but the outline and the stronger lines
of shading. Even so these Mantegna prints do not lose the splendidly
vigorous character of their design, but it is of course the fine early
impressions which are the joy and allure of the true connoisseur. The
seven certainly authentic Mantegna engravings are the _Virgin and
Child_, the two _Bacchanals_, the two _Battles of the Sea-Gods_, the
horizontal _Entombment_, and the _Risen Christ_, already mentioned.
[Illustration: ANDREA MANTEGNA. THE RISEN CHRIST BETWEEN ST. ANDREW AND
ST. LONGINUS
“Of all the early Italian engravers, Andrea Mantegna is by far the most
powerful, though scarcely the most human. Like many of the Florentines,
he was an ardent lover of antiquity, but his spirit was far more
impassive than theirs, and far more like the antique marble itself. His
art has a monumental dignity which the Florentines never possessed, but
it lacks the freshness and inexpressible charm that pervade Tuscan art.
His was a genius that would have made one of the noblest sculptors: the
engraving of the _Risen Christ_ shows what he might have achieved in
the field.” Arthur M. Hind.
Size of the original engraving, 15⁷⁄₁₆ × 12¹¹⁄₁₆ inches]
[Illustration: ZOAN ANDREA(?). FOUR WOMEN DANCING
This engraving, based on a study by Mantegna for a group in the Louvre
picture of _Parnassus_, is one of the most beautiful prints of the
school of Mantegna. It is most probably by Zoan Andrea.
Size of the original engraving, 8⅞ × 13 inches]
Nearest in quality to these comes the _Triumph of Caesar: the
Elephants_, after some study for the series of cartoons now preserved
at Hampton Court. But it lacks Mantegna’s distinction in drawing, and
Zoan Andrea, who is probably the author of one of the anonymous
engravings of _Four Women Dancing_ (based on a study for a group in the
Louvre picture of _Parnassus_), one of the most beautiful prints of
the school, was certainly capable of this achievement. Even Giovanni
Antonio da Brescia, who did work of a very third-rate order after
migrating to Rome, produced under Mantegna’s inspiration so excellent a
plate as the _Holy Family_.
Other prints attributed to Mantegna, such as the _Descent into Hell_
and the _Scourging of Christ_, possess all Mantegna’s vigor of design,
and reflect the master’s work in the manner of the Eremitani frescos,
but we can hardly believe that they were engraved by the same hand
as the “seven,” even supposing a considerably earlier date for their
production.
Each of Mantegna’s known followers (Zoan Andrea and G. A. da Brescia)
entirely changed his manner of engraving after leaving the master; in
fact, except in his immediate entourage, Mantegna’s style was continued
by few of the Italian engravers. For all its dignified simplicity,
it is more the manner of the draughtsman transferred to copper, than
of the engraver brought up in the conventional use of the burin. We
see Mantegna’s open linear style reflected in the earlier works of
Nicoletto da Modena, and the Vicentine, Benedetto Montagna, but each of
these engravers tended more and more in their later works to imitate
the more professional style of the German engravers, and of Dürer in
particular. Dürer was constantly copied by the Italian engravers of the
early sixteenth century, and details from his plates (chiefly in the
landscape background) were even more consistently plagiarized.
In the example of Nicoletto da Modena, the _Adoration of the
Shepherds_, which we reproduce, it is Dürer’s immediate predecessor,
Martin Schongauer, from whom the chief elements in the subject are
copied. But in this example the background, with its vista of lake with
ships and a town, suggested no doubt by one of the subalpine Italian
lakes, is thoroughly characteristic of the South, while Schongauer’s
Gothic architecture is embellished with classical details. Isolated
figures of saints or heathen deities against a piece of classical
architecture, set in an open landscape, became the most frequent
type of Nicoletto’s later prints, which are practically all of small
dimensions.
Like Nicoletto da Modena, Benedetto Montagna gradually developed
throughout his life a more delicate style of engraving, entirely
giving up the large dimensions and broad style of his _Sacrifice of
Abraham_ for a series of finished compositions which from their smaller
compass would have been well adapted for book illustration. Several of
these, such as the _Apollo and Pan_, illustrate incidents in Ovid’s
“Metamorphoses,” but there is no evidence for, and there is even
probability against, their having ever been used in books. Several of
the subjects are treated very similarly in the woodcuts of the 1497
Venice edition of Ovid in the vernacular. When engravings and woodcuts
thus repeat each other, the woodcutter is generally the copyist, but in
this case the reverse is almost certainly the case, as the Ovid plates
belong to Montagna’s later period, and could hardly have preceded 1500.
[Illustration: NICOLETTO DA MODENA. THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS
“In the _Adoration of the Shepherds_ it is Dürer’s immediate
predecessor. Martin Schongauer, from whom the chief elements in the
subject are copied. But in this example the background, with its
vista of lake with ships and a town, suggested no doubt by one of the
subalpine Italian lakes, is thoroughly characteristic of the South,
while Schongauer’s Gothic architecture is embellished with classical
details.” Arthur M. Hind.
Size of the original engraving, 9⅞ × 7¼ inches]
[Illustration: JACOPO DE’ BARBARI. APOLLO AND DIANA
“Jacopo de’ Barbari is of peculiar interest as a link between the
styles of Germany and the South. Whether of Northern extraction or not
is uncertain, but the earlier part of his life was passed in Venice.
Dürer was apparently much impressed by his art on his first visit to
Venice between 1495 and 1497, and ... even seems to have taken an
immediate suggestion for a composition from Barbari, i.e. for his
_Apollo and Diana_. Dürer’s version shows a far greater virility and
concentration of design, but for all its power it lacks the breezier
atmosphere of Barbari’s print.” Arthur M. Hind.
Size of the original engraving, 6¼ × 3⅞ inches]
Apart from Mantegna, Leonardo and Bramante are the two great names
which have been connected with engravings of the period. But I incline
to doubt whether either of them engraved the plates which have been
attributed to them. The large _Interior of a Ruined Church_, splendid
in design and reminiscent of the architect’s work in the sacristy of S.
Satiro, Milan, might equally well have been engraved by a Nicoletto da
Modena, with whose earlier style it has much in common. Of the prints
attributed to Leonardo, the fascinating _Profile Bust of a Young Woman_
(p. 252), unique impression in the British Museum, stands out from the
rest for the sensitive quality of its outline, but even here I would be
more ready to see the hand of an engraver like Zoan Andrea, who after
leaving Mantua seems to have settled in Milan and done work in a finer
manner influenced by the style of the Milanese miniaturists (such as
the Master of the Sforza Book of Hours in the British Museum).
In Venice Giovanni Bellini’s style is reflected in the dignified
engravings of Girolamo Mocetto, and in the region of Bologna or Modena
one meets the anonymous master “I B (with the Bird),” whose few
engraved idyls are among the most alluring prints of the lesser masters
of north Italy.
More individual than Mocetto and far less dependent on any other
contemporary painter is Jacopo de’ Barbari, who is of peculiar interest
as a link between the styles of Germany and the South. Whether of
Northern extraction or not is uncertain, but the earlier part of his
life was passed in Venice. Dürer was apparently much impressed by
his art on his first visit to Venice between 1495 and 1497, and his
particular interest in the study of a Canon of Human Proportions was
aroused by some figure-drawings which Barbari had shown him. Dürer even
seems to have taken an immediate suggestion for a composition from
Barbari, i.e. for his _Apollo and Diana_. Dürer’s version shows a far
greater virility and concentration of design, but for all its power it
lacks the breezier atmosphere of Barbari’s print; it is redolent of the
study, while the latter has the charm of an open Italian landscape.
There is a distinct femininity about Barbari; perhaps this very feature
and the languorous grace of his treatment of line and the sinuous folds
of drapery give his prints their special allure.
I would close this article with some reference to two other engravers
of great individuality of style--Giulio and Domenico Campagnola, of
Padua.
Domenico’s activity as a painter continued until after 1563, but
the probable period of his line-engravings (about 1517-18), and his
close connection with Giulio Campagnola (though the exact nature of
the relationship is unexplained), justify his treatment among the
precursors rather than in the wake of Marcantonio.
Giulio Campagnola, like Giorgione, whose style he so well interpreted,
was a short-lived genius. He was a young prodigy, famous at the tender
age of thirteen as a scholar of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, besides being
accomplished as a musician and in the arts of sculpture, miniature, and
engraving. Little wonder that he did not long survive his thirtieth
year. Probably his practice as an illuminator as well as his particular
aim of rendering the atmosphere of Giorgione’s paintings led him to
the method of using dots, or rather short flicks, in his engraving,
which is in a sense an anticipation of the stipple process of the
eighteenth century, though of course without the use of etching. Most
of his prints are known in the two states--in pure line, and after the
dotted work had been added.
[Illustration: GIULIO CAMPAGNOLA. ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST
“One of the most splendid of his plates is the _St. John the Baptist_,
with a dignity of design whose origin may probably be traced back to
some drawing by Mantegna, though the landscape is of course thoroughly
Paduan or Venetian in its character.” Arthur M. Hind.
Reproduced from the impression in the Print Department, Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston
Size of the original engraving. 13⅝ × 9⁵⁄₁₆ inches]
[Illustration: GIULIO AND DOMENICO CAMPAGNOLA. SHEPHERDS IN A LANDSCAPE
“It is Giorgione again whom we see reflected in the _Shepherds in a
Landscape_, a plate which seems to have been left unfinished by Giulio
and completed by Domenico Campagnola. There is a drawing in the Louvre
for the right half of the print, and there is every reason to think
that this drawing as well as the engraving of that portion of the
landscape is by Giulio. But the group of figures and trees on the left
is entirely characteristic of the looser technical manner of Domenico.”
Arthur M. Hind.
Size of the original engraving, 5⅜ × 10⅛ inches]
One of the most splendid of his plates is the _St. John the Baptist_,
with a dignity of design whose origin may probably be traced back to
some drawing by Mantegna, though the landscape is of course thoroughly
Paduan or Venetian in its character. More completely characteristic,
and the most purely Giorgionesque of all his prints, is the _Christ and
the Woman of Samaria_, one of the most wonderfully beautiful of all the
engravings of this period.
It is Giorgione again whom we see reflected in the _Shepherds in a
Landscape_, a plate which seems to have been left unfinished by Giulio
and completed by Domenico Campagnola. There is a drawing in the Louvre
for the right half of the print, and there is every reason to think
that this drawing as well as the engraving of that portion of the
landscape is by Giulio. But the group of figures and trees on the left
is entirely characteristic of the looser technical manner of Domenico.
The existence of a copy of the right-hand portion of the plate alone
points to the existence of an unfinished state of the original, though
no such impressions have been found. In any case it distinctly supports
the theory that the other part of the original print was a later
addition.
We may have to admit in conclusion that there is nothing in Italian
engraving before Marcantonio quite on a level with the achievement of
Albrecht Dürer, but the indefinable allure that characterizes so much
of the work of the minor Italian artists of the earlier Renaissance is
more than enough compensation for any lack of technical efficiency.
With Marcantonio we find this efficiency in its full development,
joined to a remarkable individuality in the interpretation of sketches
by Raphael and other painters. Yet we could ill afford to lose the
charm of the early Florentine _Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne_ for all
the finished beauty of Marcantonio’s _Lucretia_, and it is still the
youth of artistic development, with its naïve joy and freshness of
outlook, which holds us with the stronger spell.
A PRINCE OF PRINT-COLLECTORS: MICHEL DE MAROLLES, ABBÉ DE VILLELOIN
(1600-1681)
BY LOUIS R. METCALFE
The French make a fine distinction between three varieties of that very
special individual to whom we refer in a general way as “a collector.”
They have always been authorities on that subject and one of them has
said: “On est amateur par goût, connaisseur par éducation, curieux
par vanité.” While another adds: “Ou par spéculation.” By “collector”
we simply mean a person who has formed the habit of acquiring the
things in which he is particularly interested, and these in as many
varieties as possible. It implies neither an artistic pursuit nor a
deep knowledge of the subject. By _curieux_, however, is meant, as a
rule, an _amateur_, a man of taste who collects things which pertain
to art exclusively; he is in most cases a _connaisseur_, and always an
enthusiast.
Paris, the home of taste, has never been that of the _curieux_ more
so than at the present day, when, it seems, every one who can afford
a rent of over four thousand francs has a hobby of some sort and is
a mad collector. A general history of the weakness for things either
beautiful or odd or rare, or merely fashionable, would be both
voluminous and chaotic, if a distinction were not made between that
which pertained to art and that which did not. A complete description
of the latter, a hopelessly heterogeneous mass, would make an amusing
volume, for there is no end to the variety of things in which vanity
and folly have caused human beings to become interested to the point of
collecting in large numbers.
George IV collected saddles; the Princess Charlotte and many others,
shells. Tulips were so madly sought after in Holland that one root
was exchanged for 460 florins, together with a new carriage, a pair
of horses, and a set of harness. Shop-bills and posters have been
the specialty of many, while thousands of persons have collected
postage-stamps and coins. A Mr. Morris had so many snuff-boxes that it
was said he never took two pinches of snuff out of the same box. A Mr.
Urquhart collected the halters with which criminals had been hanged;
and another enthusiast, the masks of their faces. Suett, a comedian,
collected wigs, and another specialist owned as many as fifteen hundred
skulls, Anglo-Saxon and Roman. If there have been men who have shown a
propensity to collect wives, Evelyn tells us in his diary:
“In 1641 there was a lady in Haarlem who had been married to her
twenty-fifth husband, and, having been left a widow, was prohibited
from marrying in future; yet it could not be proved that she had ever
made any of her husbands away, though the suspicion had brought her
divers times to trouble.”
Although we much regret that such an intensely interesting work as a
Comprehensive History of Collecting has never been written, we realize
that a mere description of rare and beautiful objects would be
unsatisfactory as long as we did not know their history and the way in
which they had been gathered together. It is the soul of the collector
which we should like to see laid bare. Was his work a labor of vanity
or one of love? Were his possessions mere playthings, speculation, to
him, or did they represent treasures of happiness greater than all the
gold in Golconda?
Without a doubt, it is one thing to collect what is highly prized on
all sides, with large means at one’s disposal, and the constant advice
of experts, and quite another to search patiently oneself for things
which the general public has not yet discovered, and then to acquire
them with difficulty.
Who shall know with what admirable zeal some collectors have made
themselves authorities on the things which they loved? with what
untiring energy they have sifted for years masses of trash in the
hope of finding the hidden pearl? Who can tell the inner history of
the auction-room, the heart-beats of those who were after the jewel
which no one else seemed to have noticed, the sacrifices which many
with a slender purse have made in order to secure the precious “find,”
and lastly the enjoyment which they ever afterward derived from its
possession? Many of the great French collections of the last century
were made in this spirit: they were begun with a modest outlay and
devoted to things which, at that time, no one else wanted. I know of
one of the first collectors of Eastern Art in the nineteenth century,
who at one time had greatly to reduce his household in order to satisfy
his passion for Japanese vases; and of another wealthy enthusiast who
would travel third-class to London to secure an old Roman bronze. The
history of such collections becomes that of human beings for whom life
is nothing without beauty, and it is too personal to be recorded. The
collector will seldom believe that his enthusiasm can be understood by
others besides himself: maybe, also, he would be unwilling to reveal
the more or less innocent subterfuges to which he had recourse in order
to acquire more than one of his treasures.
The American chapter of such a history is the most recent one, and the
world is now watching its development with bated breath. The art of
the Old World is being imported by the ship-load; fortunes are paid
for single paintings, while the paneled wainscots of French châteaux,
the ceilings of Italian palaces, the colonnades of their gardens,
and the tapestries of the Low Countries, not to mention a hundred
varieties of _objets d’art_, are constantly wending their way to the
treasure-houses--still in course of construction--of the New World. All
this is taking place to the indignation of Europeans and the æsthetes
who consider such a radical change of background a desecration, and do
not stop to think that this transplantation is hardly more unnatural
than the sight of the Elgin marbles in foggy London, or the winged
bulls of Ecbatana in the halls of the Louvre.
So long as we as a nation will learn a much-needed lesson and thereby
greatly improve our taste, let all honor and glory be given to those
who have been responsible for such valuable acquisitions. Our American
collections already contain many “gems of purest ray serene,” and who
will dare say that they are not destined to become in time worthy
successors of the famous ones which have preceded them?
From the writings of Pliny and other classic historians, and from
several catalogues and rare documents which have come down to us from
the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, we have abundant proof that
there never was a time when works of art were not treasured. Cicero,
Atticus, and Varro collected writings, and the libraries of Aristotle,
Theophrastus, and that of Epaphroditus of Chæronea, which contained
thirty-two thousand manuscripts, were famous. Hannibal was a lover of
bronzes: it was he who owned the little Hercules of Lysippus which the
master himself had presented to Alexander the Great and which afterward
became the property of Sulla.
Both Pompey and Julius Cæsar possessed splendid masterpieces of that
Greek art which was so highly prized in Italy. The Venus of the
Hermitage comes from Cæsar’s gallery, and the Jupiter of the Louvre
from that of Antony; while the Faun with the Child, and the Borghese
vase, now treasured in the Louvre, were once among the possessions of
Sallust in his palace on the Quirinal. Not only sculpture was collected
in those times, for we also hear of the tapestries of Saurus, valued
at twenty millions in the currency of the day; the jewelry of Verres,
reputed the finest in existence; the priceless crystals of Pollio; and
the two thousand vases of precious stone owned by Mithridates, King of
Pontus.
Throughout the Middle Ages the _trésor_ of the kings and the most
powerful nobles was in reality their collection. That of Dagobert was
the result of four Italian conquests. The inventory of the jewels of
the Duc d’Anjou, son of John the Good, contains 796 numbers, while
his brother, the Duc de Berry, had a passion for reliquaries, old
church ornaments, and rare manuscripts which he caused to be mounted
like jewels. The library of Charles V and his _trésor_ were valued
at twenty millions of francs, and the collection of curiosities of
Ysabeau de Bavière had not its equal. It contained, among other things,
an ivory box in which was kept the cane with which Saint Louis used
to flagellate himself. The Dukes of Burgundy for centuries were the
greatest collectors of richly inlaid armor. And what of the treasures
of Jacques Cœur, the great banker of Charles VII? With his fleet of
trading-vessels and his many banking-houses he secured the pick of the
market. We know that his silverware was piled up to the ceiling in the
vaults of his palace at Bourges.
In the _Gazette des Beaux-Arts_ for the year 1869 we read a description
of the home of Jacques Duchié, a famous art collector who flourished
during the first half of the fifteenth century. In the courtyard
were peacocks and a variety of rare birds. In the first room was a
collection of paintings and decorated signs; in the second, all kinds
of musical instruments--harps, organs, viols, guitars, and psalterions.
In the third was a great number of games, cards and chessmen; and
in the adjoining chapel, rare missals on elaborately carved stands.
In the fourth room the walls were covered with precious stones and
sweet-smelling spices, while on those of the next was hung a great
variety of furs. From these rooms one proceeded to halls filled with
rich furniture, carved tables, and decorated armor.
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF MICHAEL DE MAROLLES, ABBÉ DE VILLELOIN
Engraved by Claude Mellan, from his own design from life, in 1648]
[Illustration: _Illustrissimi Viri L. H. Haberti Monmory libellorum
Supplicum Magistri, EPIGRAMMA in Effigiem_
_MICHAELIS DE MAROLLES Abbatis de Villeloin._
_Nobilitas, Virtus, Pietas, Doctrina MAROLLI Debuerant Sacrà cingere
fronde comam._
_Nantüeil ad viuum faciebat 1657_]
The Renaissance was the Golden Age of Collectors. What could have
withstood the influence of that tremendous movement? The art of Italy
and the magnificence of the nobility and the princes of the Church
shed, like the Augustan Age, a golden glamour over civilization.
The Médicis set the example, and they were closely followed by the
Sforzas, the Farneses, and the Gonzagas. The patronage of the Fine Arts
was on such a scale, and the rivalry among the collectors so keen, that
in 1515 there were in Rome thirty-nine cardinals who had veritable
museums for palaces. It was for Agostino Chigi that Raphael decorated
that Farnesina Villa in which such treasures were stored, and for whom,
later, he designed those plates on which parrots’ tongues were served
to Leo X.
What a rage for beauty there was when Baldassarre Castiglione advised
all the sons of noble families to study painting, in order that they
might become better judges of architecture, sculpture, vases, medals,
intaglios, and cameos. What a madness for antiques, when Cardinal San
Giorgio sent back to Michelangelo his “Amorino” because he considered
it too modern. Would that we could follow the vicissitudes through
which went the great collections of the day--the drawings of Vasari,
the books of Aldus and Pico della Mirandola, the armor of Cellini, the
portraits of Paolo Giovio and the medals of Giulio Romano!
Certain is it that many of their treasures eventually crossed the Alps.
It was after Charles VIII had shown to the élite of his nation “the
remnants of antiquity gilded by the sun of Naples and of Rome” that the
French Renaissance, already well on its way, received new inspiration,
and that the French collectors renewed their activity. Judging by the
fabulous accounts given by the country-folk, the contents of many
a turreted castle on the Loire must have been wonderful, indeed.
Following the lead of Francis I, who had his library, his _pavillon
d’armes_, and his _cabinet de curiosités_, and the example of Catherine
de Médicis, who had brought from Italy many of her family’s treasures,
the leading nobles, like Georges d’Amboise in his Château de Gaillon,
collected beautiful things with admirable catholicity. It was not only
books in sumptuous bindings which were sought after by Louis XII and
the Valois, Diane de Poitiers, Queen Margot, Amyot, and de Thou, but
art in every form. In the case of Grolier himself, are we not told
by Jacques Strada, in his “Epithome du Thrésor des Curiositez,” that
“great was the number of objects of gold, silver, and copper in perfect
condition, and remarkable the variety of statues in bronze and marble,
which his agents were collecting for him all over the world”?
Most significant is the inventory of the collection of Florimond
Robertet, the able treasurer of the royal finances under Charles
VIII, Louis XII, and Francis I, which was made in 1532 by Michelle
de Longjumeau, his widow. Never was a catalogue such a labor of love
as this one. It is a detailed description of the entire contents of
a museum on which a great financier spent his entire fortune; it is
full of significant touches concerning the customs of the time and
the origin and use of the objects described; and it bears witness to
the great enjoyment which both husband and wife derived from their
treasures throughout their lifetime. There were many jewels and some
pear-shaped pearls of great size, silver andirons, thirty sets of silks
and tapestries, bronzes and ivories. Among the paintings and sculpture
were a canvas and a statue by Michelangelo. The porcelain was the first
brought to France from China, and there was much pottery from Turkish
lands and Flanders, French faïence, Italian majolica, church ornaments,
precious books, and four hundred pieces of Venetian glass, “gentillisez
des plus jolies gayetez que les verriers sauraient inventer.”
It was the religious wars of the end of the century which brought
French collecting to a stop. Constant strife and persecution
discouraged the last artists of the Renaissance, ruined many a noble
family, and scattered the contents of their palaces. Not until years
afterward, during the seventeenth century, was it taken up again; then
it was to reach great brilliancy during the reign of Louis XIV. The
leading families of France began to rebuild their collections when
Henry IV and his favorite, Gabrielle d’Estrées, indulged their fondness
for medals, cameos, and intaglios, and Marie de Médicis had brought
from Tuscany those paintings which she considered such an indispensable
luxury. In after years Louis XIII collected armor; Anne of Austria,
delicate bindings; and Richelieu, finely chased silverware. And when
Louis XIV began to reign, Paris was the proud center of the collecting
world. From this time on we have full records of the treasures amassed
by many people of taste and culture and we are able to follow them into
the following century, no matter how often they change hands--this,
thanks to specialists like Felibien and Germain Brice and the
thousand references to art in the memoirs of the time. In 1673 there
were in Paris eighty-five important art collectors who owned among
them seventy-three libraries, and twenty years later this number had
increased to one hundred and thirty-four, a remarkable development for
such a short space of time.
The greatest example was set by Cardinal Mazarin and Fabri du Peiresc.
The wily Italian who had succeeded Richelieu gave as much time to his
collections as to the ship of state, and his fellow-grafter, Nicolas
Fouquet, treasurer of the kingdom, was allowed to make himself the
most powerful man in France just as long as he was able to supply his
Eminence with the millions he was so constantly in need of for the army
and his gold-threaded tapestries and busts of Roman emperors. Just
before his death. Mazarin had himself carried through a gallery lined
with 400 marbles, nearly 500 canvases (among them seven Raphaels), and
50,000 volumes, while he kept weeping and exclaiming: “Faudra-t-il
quitter tout cela?” In the south of France, Fabri du Peiresc, great
savant and collector, had agents in constant quest of rarities. It is
related that “no ship entered a port in France without bringing for
his collections some rare example of the fauna and flora of a distant
country, some antique marble, a Coptic, Arab, Chinese, Greek, or Hebrew
manuscript, or some fragment excavated from Asia or Greece.”
[Illustration: NANTEUIL. JULES, CARDINAL MAZARIN
Engraved in 1655 when Mazarin was fifty-three years of age Size of the
original engraving, 12⅝ × 9½ inches]
[Illustration: NANTEUIL. LOUIS XIV
Engraved in 1664, from Nanteuil’s own drawing from life Louis was
twenty-six years of age when this portrait was engraved
Size of the original engraving, 15⅜ × 12 inches]
By this time there was a new fine art to be collected seriously--that
of Engraving. To the masterpieces of Dürer, Lucas van Leyden, and
Marcantonio, now over a century old, had succeeded the spirited
etchings of Callot. It was he who first popularized the art in
France and paved the way for the enthusiastic appreciation of Morin,
Mellan, and Nanteuil. The school of engravers established by Colbert
at the Gobelins made their art rank in importance with Painting and
Sculpture, and their work won such popular favor that many engravers
became publishers, and did a great business selling their prints and
those of their pupils to the leading collectors. The first man of taste
to make a serious collection of engravings was Claude Maugis, Abbé
de Saint Ambroise, almoner to the Queen, Marie de Médicis. He spent
forty years making a collection which at his death was sold to Charles
Delorme, that physician-in-ordinary to Henry IV and Louis XIII of whom
Callot has made such an interesting little portrait. It was when the
first part of the Delorme Collection and that of a Sieur de Kervel had
been added to his own possessions by the Abbé de Marolles that there
was begun the greatest collection of prints and drawings ever assembled.
Michel de Marolles, Abbé de Villeloin, was one of the most picturesque
figures of the seventeenth century. He was born in Touraine in 1600,
and died in 1681, the son of the gallant Claude de Marolles, _maréchal
de camp_ in the army of Louis XIII, who had won a famous duel fought
in the presence of two armies in the War of the Ligue. His life was
indeed a peaceful one. At the age of twenty-six, after having pursued
a complete course of studies, he was presented by Richelieu with the
abbey of Villeloin in Touraine, and for the remainder of his days he
drew its income, cultivated the most interesting people in France,
translated the classics, wrote his memoirs, and collected prints as no
one ever did before him, or after. Truly, an ideal existence!
Although he tells us that at the age of nine he decorated the walls of
his bedroom with prints given him by a Carthusian monk, we know that
for the first half of his life the Abbé de Villeloin did little more
than collect friends. This must have given him little trouble, for his
rank gained him admission to the entire nobility, and his appreciation
of literature and the fine arts enabled him to carry on a friendly
intercourse with the best-known artists and _connoisseurs_. During
this intercourse there was a constant exchange of gifts; in fact, to
receive presents seemed to have been the Abbé’s object in life. In his
“Memoirs” there are one hundred and fifty pages devoted to a complete
enumeration of all the persons who have presented him with a gift, or
“honored him extraordinarily by their civility,” and the list includes
the best-known personages of the day.
What did de Marolles give them in return, besides the pleasure of his
company and the charm of his appreciation? A mass of bad translations
of the classics: that was the great weakness of the Abbé de Villeloin.
Chapelain, the poet, complained of it in a curious letter to Heinsius,
saying:
“That fellow has vowed to translate all the classic authors, and has
almost reached the end of his labors, having spared neither Plautus
nor Lucretius nor Horace nor Virgil nor Juvenal nor Martial, nor many
others. Your Ovid and Seneca have as yet fought him off, but I do
not consider them saved, and all the mercy they can expect is that
of the Cyclops to Ulysses--to be devoured last.” That Chapelain was
not the only one who did not appreciate the literary talent of the
Abbé, and that he often found difficulty in finding publishers for his
translations, is admitted by de Marolles himself when, in his poem on
“The City of Paris,” he says:
“J’ai perdu des amis par un rare caprice
Quand je leur ai donné des livres que j’ai faits
Comme gens offensés, sans pardonner jamais
Bien qu’on n’ait point blessé leur méchant artifice.”
But it is not as a man of letters that de Marolles interests us: it is
as a great lover of the art of Engraving and the greatest collector of
prints in history. Not until he had reached the age of forty-four did
he begin to collect them systematically. Then he purchased the first
part of the Delorme Collection for one thousand _louis d’or_, the
prints owned by Kervel, and those of several other small collectors.
His activity was so great that nine years later, in his memoirs, he was
able to refer to this collection as follows:
“God has given me grace to devote myself to pictures without
superstition, and I have been able to acquire a collection numbering
more than 70,000 engravings of all subjects. I began it in 1644, and
have continued it with so much zeal, and with such an expense for one
not wealthy, that I can claim to possess some of the work of all the
known masters, painters as well as engravers, who number more than 400.”
He further adds:
“I have found that collecting such things was more suited to my purse
than collecting paintings, and more serviceable to the building up of a
library. Had we in France a dozen such collectors among the nobility,
there would not be enough prints to satisfy them all, and the works
of Dürer, Lucas, and Marcantonio, for which we now pay four and five
hundred _écus_ when in perfect condition, would be worth three times
that amount.... It seems to me that princes and noblemen who are
collecting libraries should not neglect works of this kind, as long
as they contain so much information on beautiful subjects; but I know
of no one who has undertaken to do this except for medals, flowers,
architecture, machines, and mathematics.”
The collection of the Abbé de Marolles had become so famous by 1666,
that Colbert, after having had it examined and appraised by Felibien
and Pierre Mignard, advised Louis XIV to purchase it for the royal
library. The deed was signed in 1667, and in the following year
the Abbé de Villeloin received from the royal treasury the sum of
twenty-six thousand livres ($25,000) for what was described in a
seal-colored document as “un grand nombre d’estampes des plus grands
maîtres de l’antiquité.” Let us see what this meant.
De Marolles tells us himself, in his catalogue of 1666, that his
collection consisted of 123,400 original drawings and prints, the
work of over 6000 artists, and that it was contained in 400 large
and 141 small volumes. As to the variety of subjects represented, it
had no end: it included, for instance, landscapes, views of cities,
architecture, fountains, vases, statues, flowers, gardens, jewelry,
lacework, machines, grotesques, animals, costumes, decoration, anatomy,
dances, comedies, jousts, heraldry, games, heroic fables, religious
subjects, massacres, tortures, and over 10,000 portraits.
In describing his collection to Colbert, the Abbé made especial note of
his greatest treasures as follows:
“_Leonardo da Vinci._ His work is in 5 pieces.
“_Anthony van Dyck._ There are 210 plates after his work, of which 14
are etched by his own hand.
“_Marcantonio_ from Bologna, that excellent engraver who has done such
beautiful work after Dürer, Mantegna, Raphael, and Michelangelo, is the
greatest of all engravers, and the one whose works are the most sought
after. I own 570 of them, in two volumes.
“_Andrea and Benedetto Mantegna._ The work of the former is in 104
pieces, that of the latter in 74, all rare, making 178 pieces in all,
some of which are engraved by Marcantonio.
“_Lucas van Leyden_, excellent painter and engraver, of whom I have
collected in one volume all the works engraved both on copper and on
wood, besides 25 drawings in pen and pencil from his own hand, all
very singular. I have 180 of these engravings, many in duplicate, all
of great beauty, among them the portrait of Eulenspiegel, unique in
France, the other having been sold more than twelve years ago for 16
_louis d’or_. Among the woodcuts, the Kings of Israel are here done in
chiaroscuro, and unique in this state.
“_Albert Dürer._ One folio volume, bound in vellum, contains 12
portraits of the artist by various masters; 15 drawings by his own
hand, which are singular and priceless; his three plates on brass
[_sic_], his six etched plates, and all his copper engravings in
duplicate, with three impressions of Maximilian’s sword-hilt, all
having been collected by the Abbé de Saint Ambroise, almoner of Queen
Marie de Médicis....
“_Rhinbrand_ [_sic_]. The work of this Dutch painter and etcher
consists of many prints, of which I have collected 224, among which are
portraits and fancy subjects most curious.”
He further adds that he possesses 192 original crayon portraits by
Lagneau, a successor of the Clouets, and 50 by Dumonstier, and that the
prints of the old masters of Italy, Germany, and Flanders are contained
in 19 folio volumes.
After this enormous collection had passed into the hands of the King,
the Abbé de Marolles was engaged to catalogue and classify it, and also
to superintend the binding of its 541 volumes. For this he received on
two occasions a payment of 1200 livres. The binding was done in full
levant morocco, decorated with the royal arms, Louis’s monogram, and
richly tooled borders; for this purpose 500 green and 1200 crimson
skins had been specially imported from the East.
Our indefatigable collector had hardly parted with the result of the
labor of twenty-two years when he began the formation of a second
collection. To the second part of the Delorme Collection which he then
purchased were added the prints of MM. Odespunck and la Reynie, the
collection of M. Petau, who had made a specialty of portraits, and that
of the Sieur de la Noue, which contained a great number of original
drawings. We know very little about this second collection of the
Abbé de Marolles, except that when it was catalogued in 1672 it was
contained in 237 folios. What became of it has never been ascertained;
in all probability it found its way into the print-cabinets of the many
_amateurs_ of the end of the century. It is evident that he wished to
dispose of it, probably for the purpose of starting a third collection,
for we have a letter on the subject addressed to M. Brisacier,
_secrétaire des commandements de la Reine_, of whom Masson made that
famous engraved plate known as “The Gray-haired Man.” In it de Marolles
describes his second collection as being hardly less important than
the one he had previously sold to the King, and as containing a great
number of masterpieces which were unique.
Not satisfied with such extensive researches in the realm of art,
the Abbé de Villeloin decided to record all his information on the
subject, and in the spring of 1666 announced the title of a colossal
work on which he was engaged as: “Une histoire très ample des peintres,
sculpteurs, graveurs, architectes, ingenieurs, maîtres-écrivains,
orfèvres, menuisiers, brodeurs, jardiniers et autres artisans
industrieux, où il est fait mention de plus de dix mille personnes,
aussi bien que d’un très grand nombre d’ouvrages considérables, avec
une description exacte et naīve des plus belles estampes ou de celles
qui peuvent servir à donner beaucoup de connaissances qui seraient
ignorées sans cela.” This work was, unfortunately, never published, and
its manuscript has never been found; it would have been a wonderful
compendium of French art during the seventeenth century, and would have
given us much precious information concerning a number of prominent
engravers of whom so little is known to-day.
All that remains of it is the summary, written in bad verse and
published under the title of “Le livre des peintres et des graveurs.”
It is a curious little book, containing little more than the names of
thousands of artists who were obscure in their day and who are now
completely forgotten. To many of them, however, and particularly to
the most prominent, are affixed such descriptive little touches, that
what would otherwise have been a monotonous pattern becomes an original
piece of historical ornament.
As to the “Memoirs” of the Abbé de Marolles, they possess the same
defect as many other autobiographies of the time: they were published
too soon, and they prove how anxious the author was to witness the
sensation he thought he would make. In this case they were published
in 1653, fourteen years before the Abbé had sold his first collection,
and they tell us little more than that he possessed a very extended
circle of acquaintances who thought the world of him on account of
his patronage of the fine arts and his literary talent. It is evident
that he included himself among his most sincere admirers, and that he
regarded the friendship of such a charming woman as Louise-Marie de
Gonzague, who later became Queen of Poland, and the incense which all
the engravers in France ostentatiously scattered before him, as both
natural and deserved. Claude Mellan, Poilly, and Robert Nanteuil were
on particularly friendly terms with him, each in turn engraving his
portrait from life, the last with such delicacy and finish that that
plate ranks among his most successful portraits. Mellan, furthermore,
engraved the portraits of his parents, Claude de Marolles and Agatha
Castiglione.
[Illustration: AGATHA CASTIGLIONE
Wife of Claude de Marolles and mother of Michel de Marolles, Abbé de
Villeloin
Engraved by Claude Mellan from his own design
Size of the original engraving, 6¼ × 5 inches]
[Illustration: CLAUDE DE MAROLLES
Father of Michel de Marolles, Abbé de Villeloin Engraved by Claude
Mellan from his own design
Size of the original engraving, 9¼ × 7⅜ inches]
The tastes and the mania for collecting of the Abbé de Villeloin were
so well known that it is not impossible that it was he of whom La
Bruyère was thinking when, in his famous “Caractères,” he gives the
following description of a collector:
“‘You wish to see my prints,’ says Democenes, and he forthwith brings
them out and sets them before you. You see one which is neither dark
nor clear nor completely drawn, and better fit to decorate on a holiday
the walls of the Petit Pont or the Rue Neuve than to be treasured in a
famous collection. He admits that it is engraved badly and drawn worse,
but hastens to inform you that it is the work of an Italian artist who
produced very little, and that the plate had hardly any printing; that,
moreover, it is the only one of its kind in France; that he paid much
for it, and would not exchange it for something far better. ‘I am,’
he adds, ‘in such a serious trouble that it will prevent any further
collecting. I have all of Callot but one print, which is not only not
one of his best plates, but actually one of his worst; nevertheless, it
would complete my Callot. I have been looking for it for twenty years,
and, despairing of success, I find life very hard, indeed.’”
This is admirably descriptive of a born collector; and what would have
been a ridiculous mania in a philistine became a natural attitude
on the part of such a _connaisseur_ as the Abbé de Marolles. In our
eyes his weaknesses were insignificant, and we forgive him his bad
translations, his unpublished history of Art, and the rather monotonous
self-sufficiency of his Memoirs, for the encouragement which his
honest enthusiasm and indomitable collecting gave to the artists
who made the Golden Age of Engraving--for having been the Prince of
Print-collectors.
JEAN MORIN
1600-1666
BY LOUIS R. METCALFE
The Exhibitions of French Engraved Portraits of the Seventeenth Century
recently made at the New York Public Library and at the Boston Museum
of Fine Arts, give one an excellent idea of the vogue of the portrait
and the excellence attained by that remarkable school of engravers
which flourished under the auspices of Louis XIV. A score of masters
are represented, from Michael Lasne to the superb Nanteuil, and their
models, the most representative personages of that grand century of
French history, whether plotters against Henry IV, friends and foes of
Richelieu or flatterers of Louis XIV, stand proudly on parade for the
twentieth-century American, in all their glory of immense wigs, armor
and lace collars, or in the quieter garb of prelates and counselors to
the king. It is a remarkable illustration to the history of a great
period. The nobility represented the survival of the fittest, for in
the early part of the century four thousand of them had died in those
street duels which Richelieu had abolished only with the help of the
executioner. As to the clergy, no wonder that so many of those portly
prelates could afford to have their portraits painted and engraved:
the wealth of the church had never been greater. Their example was
followed by every one of any importance in the public eye; he had his
portrait made with no more hesitation than one has nowadays to sit to a
photographer of recognized excellence.
It was the Golden Age of Portrait-painting, for they were the days of
Rubens, Van Dyck, Rembrandt and that host of splendid Dutch artists
for whom physiognomy had no secrets. They in turn inspired Philippe de
Champaigne and, later, Lebrun and Mignard, Rigaud and Largillière. Many
of their glorious canvases have long been public property and remain
to-day enshrined in national museums, but many more have for years
remained jealously guarded heirlooms in private collections, and have
been known only to a few. Many of those which have not been destroyed
have become so altered by time and damaged by faulty restoration that
they hardly do justice to their creators.
Thanks to the engraver, these portraits are just as alive to-day as
when they were painted, for in an engraving there is no paint to
fade or darken, no values to become altered. A brilliant impression
of an early state remains to-day what it was when it emerged from
the master’s hand two and a half centuries ago. Such collections as
are now exhibited represent more than brilliant examples of an art
which is lost; they are historical and artistic documents of great
importance, and the French Engravers of the Seventeenth Century deserve
infinite praise for having showed all the possibilities of an art
which, as Longhi claims in his book _La Calcografia_, “publishes and
immortalizes the portraits of eminent men for the example of present
and future generations, better than any other serving as the vehicle
for the most extended and remote propagation of deserved celebrity.”
Among the many artists who were responsible for the Golden Age of
Engraving, Jean Morin occupies a unique position. He was born in
1600 and died in 1666. Morin has the distinction of having not only
immediately preceded and influenced the master of them all, Nanteuil,
but also of having produced fifty portraits which, in contradistinction
to all other reproductive engravers, he etched instead of engraved
with the burin. It is difficult, however, to realize what a strikingly
original and personal artist he was, without first considering in what
stage of development his first efforts had found the art.
When had engraved portraiture begun in France? We must look for its
first steps in the illustrations of the books which were published
during the second half of the sixteenth century; they teem with
carefully executed small-sized portraits which, as a rule, were framed
in decorative cartouches and bore lengthy inscriptions. Very few of
them have been drawn from life; the first engravers, not trusting
their own powers, were content to copy those exquisitely sensitive
and delicate drawings, the crayon portraits which the Clouets made of
royalty and the court at the time of Francis I, Henry II, and Catherine
de Medicis. They are a wonderful pendant to Holbein’s drawings of the
courtiers of Henry VIII. The finest are now hanging in the famous
Gallery of Psyche at Chantilly. Nothing can describe the subtlety with
which the artist has combined refinement and realism and drawn with
delicate color the features of the famous personages of those tragic
times.
[Illustration: MORIN. LOUIS XIII, KING OF FRANCE
After the painting by Philippe de Champaigne
Size of the original engraving, 11⅜ × 9⅛ inches]
[Illustration: MORIN. ANNE OF AUSTRIA, REGENT OF FRANCE
Widow of Louis XIII and Mother of Louis XIV
After the painting by Philippe de Champaigne
Size of the original engraving, 11½ × 9¼ inches]
Here is Henry IV as a careless youth next to the terrible Catherine
when she was an innocent-looking young bride; further on are the
baby daughter of Francis I and the indomitable head of the house of
Guise. The sad Charles IX is represented here as a mere boy; there,
a week before his death, shaking with fever and tortured by remorse
for the fearful massacre which he had instigated. The ill-fated Mary
Stuart wears becomingly her widow’s mourning, and is surrounded by the
chivalry and the beauty of the court. The success of these drawings was
so great that every one desired complete sets of them, and the result
was that they were copied over and over again, first by other artists,
and finally by amateurs who were not very faithful to their models.
The work of the Clouets was intelligently continued by several members
of the family of Dumonstier, and the vogue of this exquisite form of
portraiture lasted until the middle of the following century.
It was these finished miniatures which the first engravers attempted
to reproduce on wood and copper; their drawing was in most cases weak,
and consequently the resemblance was seldom faithful; their knowledge
of line-work was very meager, and therefore the modeling was most
primitive; but in spite of this, their work is interesting for its
exquisite finish and its consistent effort to express the character
of the individual. Such very personal little portraits as those of
Philibert Delorme in his treatise on architecture, Orlando di Lasso in
a book of motets, and the great Ambroise Paré in his treatise on the
fractures of the skull, shared the fame of those of Henry IV by Thomas
de Leu, and greatly increased the popularity of engraving.
By the beginning of the seventeenth century it had become extremely
fashionable to dabble in engraving, and painters, architects,
goldsmiths, noblemen and even ladies were busy gouging wood and cutting
copper with an enthusiasm which has bequeathed us a mass of small
illustrations, tail-pieces, grotesques, mottos, emblems and other
embellishments. Then there appeared during the reign of Louis XIII a
peculiar genius in Claude Mellan. He adopted such an original technique
that he had practically no followers. Considering cross-hatching rank
heresy, Mellan spent a great part of his life making facsimiles on
copper of more than four score charming pencil-drawings which he had
made from life, using distinct lines which he made broader in the
shadows. Although he thereby succeeded in producing a set of very
remarkable plates, he was prevented by the exaggerated simplicity of
his system from securing all the detail, the refinement of expression
necessary to a real psychological study, and he was unable to express
any color, texture or chiaroscuro whatever.
The most original artistic genius at that time was Callot, who had
introduced etching in France; he delighted everybody with the facility
and _esprit_ with which he handled the needle, and he produced a great
number of plates full of crisply drawn little figures which possessed
so much animation that nothing like them had previously been seen. His
two attempts at portraiture, however, are far from being significant;
it may be said that he was not serious enough for such work.
By that time portrait-engraving had become extinct in Germany, and
it was achieving little of importance in Italy and Spain; in the Low
Countries, however, it was producing masterpieces. Even if Rembrandt
and Van Dyck had given the world nothing more than their etched
portraits, their fame would live forever. In the former, the world
found an artist who painted as effectively with the needle as with
the brush, and an etcher who reveled in such powerful and correct
chiaroscuro that his portraits were a perfect revelation. The glowing
light with which he illumined his faces and the boldness and freedom
of his line-work amazed the engravers of his time, for in comparison
they had worked only in outline, and those who attempted to imitate him
achieved very little success. In the plates of Rembrandt the engraved
portrait reaches the last degree of warmth of expression and life.
As to Anthony Van Dyck, he had followed the example of Rubens and
encouraged the leading engravers of Antwerp to reproduce his portraits
on copper. The result was that noble work called his “Iconography,”
which contained over a hundred portraits of the leading painters and
art patrons of the time, most brilliantly engraved by Soutman, the
Bolswerts, Vorstermann and Paul Pontius under the master’s jealous
supervision. In directing this work Van Dyck developed such enthusiasm
that he himself etched eighteen portraits from life, in which the faces
are modeled with small dots; they are charming drawings which exhibit
such a wonderful knowledge of physiognomy, and possess so much life
and color in spite of the simplicity of their treatment, that they
remain masterpieces for all times.
Through the genius of Rubens and Van Dyck the art of engraving had
become transformed; at last life and color had come into it. No such
brilliancy in the treatment of flesh and varied texture had been
attained by pure line-work before the appearance of Pontius’s portrait
of Rubens, and with the exception of the etchings of Rembrandt, nothing
so human had previously been seen as Van Dyck’s etching of Pontius
himself.
But in spite of the best achievements of the Flemish engravers, there
was still an important advance to be made before the copperplate could
give such a faithful translation of a painting that besides the drawing
and the color, it could reproduce all the refinement of detail, all the
texture and chiaroscuro, all the painter-like effect of the canvas.
That interval could be bridged only by a born draughtsman who had the
soul of a portrait-painter and by an artist who would devote himself
exclusively to the solution of that one problem. For that final step of
its development, reproductive engraving had to go to France and to the
unique Jean Morin.
[Illustration: MORIN. CARDINAL RICHELIEU
After the painting by Philippe de Champaigne
Size of the original engraving, 11½ × 9¼ inches]
[Illustration: MORIN. PIERRE MAUGIS DES GRANGES
Maître-d’Hôtel of Louis XIII
After the painting by Philippe de Champaigne
Size of the original engraving, 11½ × 9⅛ inches]
It is incredible that so little should be known about an artist of
his prominence, particularly as at that time the best artists were
constantly “_en evidence_” and undertaking distant travels for the
sake of their education and in order to gain patrons. We must assume
that Morin lived a very quiet life and cared little for recognition.
Who were his first masters remains a mystery; the references which
are made to him in the records of the time point only to the fact
that he was always held in high esteem for the excellence of his work,
and that everywhere his serious character commanded respect. Two
things are nevertheless certain concerning him. One is that he had
begun by becoming a well-schooled painter, for his etched work is of
singularly uniform excellence; the other is that he had been influenced
exclusively by the Flemish School. It was the etching of Van Dyck which
tempted him to give up the brush for the graver, and it was his own
peculiarly calm and conscientious temperament which impelled him to
carry the original technique of that prince of portraiture to the last
degree of finish.
On the other hand, it was from another Flemish artist, Philippe de
Champaigne, who had made France his home, that he received inspiration
and guidance throughout his life-work. In return for this he devoted
himself to the faithful reproduction of as many of that master’s
canvases as he could engrave before his death.
Morin’s work consists of a few figure-subjects and landscapes and fifty
portraits. These are among the finest that were engraved during the
seventeenth century, and they have the distinction of illustrating
the reign of Louis XIII and his minister Richelieu. As an historical
gallery they possess as much importance as the portraits made later by
the school of Nanteuil: four of them are after Van Dyck, fourteen are
from the works of various painters, including Titian, and all the rest,
thirty-two in number, reproduce the dignified canvases of Philippe de
Champaigne. It was natural for Morin to turn to the Flemish painter,
not only because the latter had soon after his arrival become the
painter of the court and the head of the French School, but because his
calm, precise art was admirably suited to the engraver’s work.
The canvases of Philippe de Champaigne have little of the power of
Rubens, or the coloring and supreme elegance of Van Dyck, nor do they
possess the depth and originality of the portraits of Rembrandt, but
they are characterized by an uncommon strength of draughtsmanship and
composition, and they unfailingly exhibit such profound seriousness,
restraint and dignity as few masters can boast of. As in the case
of most of Morin’s portraits, it is hard to gaze upon them without
experiencing that peculiar sensation of familiarity with the human
being represented, without being convinced that here is the bare truth
just as an intelligent and thoroughly sincere nature beheld it, without
feeling that some of the model’s soul has passed into the canvas. It
could not be otherwise with the work of an artist who had toiled so
earnestly to follow an ideal, and who himself had been visited by
so much affliction. De Champaigne became at the end of his life a
Jansenist and a devoted Port Royalist--that is, a member of a community
of austere human beings whose lives were so simple and whose thoughts
were so high that they were a perpetual reproach to the selfish
clergy of the day and the empty butterflies who crowded the salons of
Versailles.
He has never come into his own, principally because he stood in such
close proximity to more brilliant lights, and also because so many of
his scattered paintings have become darkened with age. His work as the
painter of Richelieu established such a popularity for the portrait
as it had not known before and as it has not known since. To-day, when
his name is mentioned, one shrugs his shoulders and says: “Oh, well,
but what was he compared to Rubens, Van Dyck and Rembrandt?”, and then
suddenly remembers that it was he who painted Richelieu and that the
full length portrait which hangs in the Salon Carré of the Louvre and
the triple study of the head which is in the National Gallery, London,
will always rank with the masterpieces of portrait-painting.
Such was the artist to whom Jean Morin went for advice and for whom he
developed such intense admiration and devotion. The Flemish painter
must have readily seen how much the engraver’s temperament had in
common with his own, and immediately understood that his faultless
drawing and conscientious nature would make of him an admirable
interpreter of his canvases. Certain it is that he lost no time in
encouraging him to develop his technique, and that he cheerfully gave
him his portraits to copy. The friendship which ensued continued until
death, and Morin devoted his life to popularizing the portraits of
Philippe de Champaigne, later becoming himself affiliated with the
noble sect of Port Royalists.
* * * * *
The peculiar significance of Morin’s work, aside from the fact that it
has been the principal means of perpetuating the work of a remarkable
artist, is that it represents the first effort in the history of
Engraved Portraiture to reproduce a painted portrait with all its
refinement of drawing and variety of tones. No such trouble had
previously been taken fully to represent all the color and chiaroscuro
of a picture. In order to accomplish this the engraver had to develop
a painter’s technique, and that was something very different from the
precise and methodical line-work of the engravers who had preceded him.
The etched work of Callot was mere line-work; Van Dyck supplemented
this with some delicate modeling made with small dots; and Morin,
developing this system to the last degree of refinement, bent all his
energy to the absolutely faithful reproduction of the canvas in every
detail of line and gradation of light. His technique is chiefly etching
combined with burin work. As a rule, his faces are modeled entirely
with etched dots, and he does this with such delicacy and refinement
that in many cases they have the quality of a fine mezzotint. Only
in a few of his plates does he use line-work to deepen his shadows,
and this is done over the stippling. By means of this system he was
able to express the greatest variety of tones, from the very light
complexion of a blond Englishwoman to the dark skin and blue-black hair
of a southern Frenchman. The hair he always etched with great care,
with a line admirable alike for its precision and freedom; the frame
alone seems to have been done with the burin. It is, however, in the
treatment of the costume that Morin shows his independence of technical
finish; he makes little pretense at securing realism in his expression
of texture. Compared to the work of Nanteuil the surface of his armor
and his moiré silk cassocks and rich lace collars often lack realism,
while his backgrounds possess little of that soft gradation which
enhances the beauty of so many later engravings.
[Illustration: MORIN. HENRI DE LORRAINE, COMTE D’HARCOURT
The Marshal-in-Chief of the Armies of Louis XIII
After the painting by Philippe de Champaigne
Size of the original engraving, 11¹¹⁄₁₆ × 9⅜ inches]
[Illustration: MORIN. GUIDO, CARDINAL BENTIVOGLIO
The Papal Nuncio to the Court of Louis XIII
After the painting by Anthony Van Dyck
Size of the original engraving, 11½ × 9⅛ inches]
But it is this very freedom which makes his plates so original and
gives them such especial charm. Besides, why should etching partake
of the character of slow and precise burin work? Morin’s chief
preoccupation is the rendering of the face and the preservation of all
the character of the original; it is evident that he spares no pains
to make his reproduction an absolutely faithful one. As to the rest of
the picture, he does not consider it necessary to do more than recall
the picturesque effect of the original’s ensemble, but if he treats it
with freedom he is careful to make every line serve a definite purpose;
he is never careless. It is to his great sympathy and conscientiousness
that Morin owed his success as a reproductive engraver, and the fact
that his plates had a great influence on his contemporaries. Before
him no such delicate tones and deep velvety blacks had been seen,
no engraver had been so consistently correct and expressive in his
drawing; so much justice had never been done to a painter.
The art of Morin was so personal that the efforts of his pupils
Alix, Plattemontagne and Boulanger to follow his technique remained
unsuccessful; he was as inimitable in his brilliant effects of
chiaroscuro as Mellan with his fiendishly clever but exaggerated
simplicity of line.
Nevertheless, the lesson of thorough faithfulness he had given was
not lost; the seed fell on fertile ground when Robert Nanteuil, at
the outset of his career, studied Morin’s work closely enough to
imitate his technique in such portraits as those of Pierre Dupuis, the
royal librarian, and the poet Gilles Menage. The engraver from Rheims
had doubtless profited by the example of his own master Regnesson,
whose work had already shown Morin’s influence. Those clever little
portraits as well as a few others done in that style show a marked
advance on the previous ones, in which he had followed that of Mellan,
and the delicate little dots with which their faces are modeled
paved the way for that system of close, short strokes with which he
eventually succeeded in imitating to perfection the peculiar texture of
skin. Nanteuil was to inherit the best in all who had preceded him and
to combine all previous systems into one which would carry the art of
Engraved Portraiture to its greatest development; but it was Morin who
gave him the most eloquent example and who pointed out to him the last
remaining step to technical perfection.
HIS WORK
On looking through a complete collection of Morin’s portraits one
is immediately impressed by the small number of plates which denote
crude beginnings. As none of them is dated, it is next to impossible
to arrange his works chronologically, all the more so as the engraver
perfected his technique and found his manner very early in his career.
We find only one portrait which is really unsatisfactory, that of
_Louis XI_, copied possibly from an old miniature, and only two which
show any hardness of tone, the portraits of _Augustin_ and _Christophe
de Thou_; they are undoubtedly early works, the head of the dreaded
hermit of Plessis-les-Tours being probably Morin’s first effort. Then
we have that most Gallic of Frenchmen, _Henry IV_, a quaint head drawn
with much character; _Marie de Médicis_, after Pourbus; and _Henry
II_, after Clouet. These last two are most excellent plates, the
first showing us that intriguing Italian princess shortly after her
arrival from Florence, in all the glory of her wonderful complexion and
golden hair; the second recalling the exquisite art of Clouet in the
simplicity and delicacy of the treatment of the face and the superb
detail of the costume.[1] We are then brought face to face with the
great _Philip II_ of Spain, in one of Morin’s most serenely elegant
plates after Titian, and the portraits of the two great saints of the
time, _Saint François de Sales_ and _San Carlo Borromeo_. To the four
portraits after Van Dyck we must give special attention, for they
contain Morin’s masterpieces, the portrait of _N. Chrystin_, son of the
Spanish plenipotentiary at the Peace of Vervins, and that of _Cardinal
Bentivoglio_, the papal nuncio to the court of Louis XIII. Here we have
Morin in his grand manner, transferring all the color of the original
canvas to his copperplate and interpreting his models with a boldness,
a softness, a clearness of purpose and a strength of sympathy wholly
admirable. In awarding the palm, we hesitate between the deep tones,
the velvety finish in the head of the somber Spaniard and the subtle
modeling of the beautifully illumined, sensitive Italian face. Either
of these portraits alone would have established Morin’s fame.
[1] Why such an authority as Robert-Dumesnil should have classed the
portrait of Henry IV’s queen among the doubtful plates of Morin is a
mystery. It is clearly the work of that master, and although an early
plate, it is one of his brilliant ones.
The other two plates after Van Dyck represent women, _Margaret Lemon_,
beloved of the painter, and the _Countess of Caernarvon_, a remarkable
study in high lights, and one of Morin’s most delicate plates.
The remainder of the gallery consists of his interpretation of
Philippe de Champaigne’s portraits, and the array of celebrities there
represented is a notable one. What would we know of the features of
that eccentric monarch, the melancholic _Louis XIII_, if we did not
possess this striking etching of Morin? The father of “_le roi soleil_”
is here posing, ill at ease, and probably wondering what Richelieu is
going to make him do next. An unsatisfactory human being was he whose
“principal merit was to have done what few mediocre characters ever do,
bow down to the superiority of genius.” His queen, _Anne of Austria_,
is here shown both in the quiet garb of a widow (a delightfully simple
portrait) and in the more ceremonious court mourning, while his prime
minister, _Richelieu_, is represented in a plate than which there is
none more interesting among Morin’s works. A comparison between this
impression of the great cardinal’s character and that recorded in the
superb engraving by Nanteuil is a most interesting one. In the latter
we see the steersman of the ship of state in all his grandeur of noble
purpose and responsibility, and we feel the immense will-power with
which, in constant danger of his life, he bore long with his enemies,
and then, driven to action, “went far, very far and covered everything
with his scarlet robe.” But in Morin’s interpretation of the canvas
of de Champaigne we see quite another side of the great statesman. It
is the Richelieu whom we perceive through some memoirs of the time
(and not the least trustworthy ones), and in the literary history of
the early seventeenth century. It is a man wholly lacking in a sense
of humor, possessing plenty of vanity and constantly yearning for
recognition as a literary light and a squire of dames.
[Illustration: MORIN. NICOLAS CHRYSTIN
Son of the Plenipotentiary of King Philip IV of Spain to the Peace of
Vervins
After the painting by Anthony Van Dyck
Size of the original engraving, 11½ x 9¼ inches]
[Illustration: MORIN. ANTOINE VITRÉ
Printer to the King and the Clergy
After the painting by Philippe de Champaigne
Size of the original engraving, 12¼ x 8⅜ inches]
Quite a different portrait is that of his nephew, _Vignerod_, shown
here in three-quarter figure as the Abbé de Richelieu, a most
attractive plate, and one of the only two portraits of Morin’s in which
the model is shown otherwise than in the usual bust form. The other
one is that of _Vitré_, a famous printer of the time; it is one of the
lowest-toned engraved portraits extant, and in its velvety blackness it
is a most striking production. A fine impression of it will turn one’s
thoughts to Rembrandt and show the full extent of Morin’s originality.
The list contains many famous personages: _Mazarin_; _Michel Le
Tellier_; _Charles de Valois, duc d’Angoulême_, son of Charles IX and
the beautiful Marie Touchet; the _Maréchal d’Harcourt_, the “_Cadet à
la perle_” of the more famous portrait by Masson and the valorous head
of the armies of Louis XIII; the charming _Comtesse de Bossu_ and her
secretly married second husband the _Duc de Guise_; the _Maréchal de
Villeroy_, preceptor of Louis XIV; _Potier de Gesvres_, also a warrior;
and the _Chancellor Marillac_, whose brother was executed by Richelieu
and who himself became the cardinal’s victim, though in a less tragic
way. All these plates are an admirable interpretation of their
models, and show an absolute lack of mannerism. With their brilliant
contrasts of light and shade and the uncommon amount of texture
due to the freedom of the line-work and the rich color of the ink
employed, they have a richness of tone and a decorative effect shared
by few of the portraits made later in the century. Some of them are
engraved in a rather high key and show a simply modeled head against
a light background, as in the case of _Brachet de la Milletière_,
the savant who was first an intolerant Calvinist and then became a
militant Roman Catholic. In other portraits like that of _Maugis_, the
_maître-d’hôtel_ of the king, the artist seems to have reveled in the
deepest tones of his inky palette, and he renders the olive skin and
the raven hair of this strong-featured individual with a most striking
intensity.
Splendid likenesses of prominent ecclesiastical dignitaries are to be
found among the portraits which complete this interesting gallery,
but one there is which we must pause to contemplate, and it is the
faithfully reproduced portrait of that extraordinary human being, J.
Paul de Gondi, better known as the _Cardinal de Retz_. In a masterpiece
of draughtsmanship, Morin duplicates the art of de Champaigne in
expressing all the cleverness and daring, the ambition and the sense
of humor, of this born gambler, whose genius for intrigue was at the
bottom of the war of the Fronde. One can see him, with his yellow,
oily face, unkempt and unshaven, limping through the narrow streets of
Paris, distributing largesses among a populace which, the following
hour, he would betray to the nobles, and then again champion.
As a pendant we have the brilliantly executed head of _Omer Talon,
avocat-général du Parlement_, the greatest pillar of French
jurisprudence and a great man in his day; it is a plate which Rembrandt
would have deigned to look at more than once.
[Illustration: MORIN. JEAN-FRANÇOIS-PAUL DE GONDI
This personage is better known by his later title of Cardinal de Retz
After the painting by Philippe de Champaigne
Size of the original engraving, 11½ × 9⅛ inches]
[Illustration: MORIN. OMER TALON
Advocate-General of the Parliament of Paris
After the painting by Philippe de Champaigne
Size of the original engraving, 12¼ × 9⅛ inches]
Finally the famous Port Royal is here represented in the persons of
_Jansenius, Bishop of Ypres_, who raised such a storm in church circles
of that time; _Arnauld d’Andilly_, the head of the great family
of that name and the protector of Port Royal; and _Jean Du Verger de
Houranne, abbé de Saint-Cyran_, its confessor, a man worthy of the
first centuries of Christianity. They were famous men in their day,
and their names were on everybody’s lips; their story spells the most
serious chapter of the history of their age, and still they are all but
forgotten in comparison with the great personages of the court, and
even their painted portraits are relegated to obscurity.
In these masterly prints of Morin, however, they appear to us just as
they looked in their day, with much of their strength and weakness,
their aspirations and their secret ambitions. So much animation is
there in their faces that it is no hard matter to feel like the old
monk in the Spanish monastery who, left alone of all his brothers,
said, as he looked on the new pictures by Velasquez, “I sometimes think
_we_ are the shadows.”
ROBERT NANTEUIL
1630-1678
BY LOUIS R. METCALFE
It is a curious fact that in these days of exhaustive research
in everything which concerns the fine arts, Robert Nanteuil, the
portrait-engraver of Louis XIV, has remained until so recently both
illustrious and unknown. To be sure, his name has been mentioned in all
the histories of art, and in the text-books of engraving he is dwelt
upon at some length and given a prominent place among the engravers
of his time; but he was never found worthy of any especial study, of
the least little _brochure_. His name has been familiar only to the
connoisseurs and the print-collectors; to them it has always been
synonymous with the greatest excellence attained by the lost art of
line-engraving.
This silence was broken finally in the artist’s own birthplace. In 1884
Mr. Charles Loriquet, curator of the library of the city of Rheims,
who had just completed a collection of Nanteuil’s portraits for the
city museum, addressed the Academy at one of its public sittings and
eloquently pleaded with the authorities to erect a monument to him whom
he considered second only to the great Colbert as the most illustrious
son of Rheims. His description of the artist and his work created such
enthusiasm that he was later induced to publish it, together with some
interesting documents concerning Nanteuil. The unique little book found
its way into many libraries, private as well as public, and has ever
since been unfindable.
Many new books on engraving have appeared since that day which have
devoted as much as two or three pages to this brilliant artist without,
however, giving his work more than a superficial criticism. It was
not until Mr. T. H. Thomas published his recent work “French Portrait
Engravers of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries” that the artist
received proper recognition. Nanteuil is here frankly recognized as one
of the most admirable figures in the history of art, and proclaimed not
only prince of portrait-engravers but also a great artist among the
portrait-makers of all times. The thirty pages which are devoted to him
constitute the most brilliant and thorough criticism that has ever been
made of a line-engraver,--they are a splendid analysis of the artist’s
technique, his development, his influence on his contemporaries, and
the exalted position which he occupied among them. Without doubt many
readers of that interesting work will wonder why they never had before
heard of such an important artist.
It was only four years ago that I for one made his acquaintance. While
I was looking through a large collection of old engraved portraits, one
head in particular arrested my attention; it was drawn with such rare
precision, modeled with such _maestria_, it had such expressive eyes
and mouth, that it made all the other portraits seem flat and lifeless.
My admiration turned into wonderment when I saw by the signature
that the artist had drawn it from life as well as engraved it. I had
known the work of only those showy engravers who, in the time of Louis
XV, were content to copy the work of the leading painters of the day
and improve on it if they could. There was no _traduttore traditore_
about this expressive portrait; here was something of a very different
order. The artist was a real portrait-maker, a student of character, a
worthy comrade of Holbein, a draughtsman whose ambition it was first
to represent the subject as he really looked, then to make as fine an
engraved plate as possible.
The text-books on engraving which fell into my hands informed me of the
rank he had occupied in that famous school of engraving established
by Louis XIV and of the great number of prominent people he had drawn
from life. That was enough to whet my curiosity to the limit, for
my interest in physiognomy had become a passion, and whenever I had
found in the galleries of Europe a convincing portrait of a well-known
historical personage, my delight had been keen. Holbeins, Van Dycks,
Mierevelts and Quentin de Latours had been for years the objects of my
enthusiasm; they were living documents, revelations of personalities
such as few memoirs provided. When the catalogue of Robert-Dumesnil,
the only complete list of Nanteuil’s portraits, had informed me that
Nanteuil’s models had been in great part the men who had given so much
greatness to the reign of the most splendid of modern potentates, I
felt that the collection must constitute an historical document of
no mean interest, if the likenesses of those celebrities were as
convincing as that of the obscure _Louis Hesselin, Président de la
Chambre des Deniers_, which I now owned.
But it was not until I had pored over the contents of six huge volumes
containing his complete works, at the Cabinet des Estampes of the
Bibliothèque Nationale, that I realized what a unique achievement
had been that of the engraver from Rheims. He had made, it seems, a
multitude of drawings from life of his contemporaries, in pencil,
silverpoint, crayons, and pastels, from the King himself down to the
humblest curé of his parish, and had then engraved many of them on
copper, securing thereby so many impressions that although almost
all of his original drawings have disappeared, his work has been
perpetuated for all times. (Whoever has said that a multitude of
sheets of paper scattered among the museums of the world constituted a
monument more enduring than the pyramids, must have been a collector,
for he realized with how much jealousy a treasure can be guarded.)
Throughout all this work Nanteuil exhibited such power as a draughtsman
that his portraits won international fame for their resemblance,
and moreover he engraved with such perfection that his work and the
influence he exerted over the great school formed by Louis XIV mark the
Golden Age of Line-engraving.
It is therefore in a dual capacity that Nanteuil must be admired, and
this point has not been sufficiently emphasized by his critics. He is
an inspiring example of a man who has set out to do only one thing
(for he never attempted anything but heads)--but has learned to do it
so well that he rises far above his rivals and has made his name a
synonym for supreme excellence. To carry the engraved portrait to its
greatest possible perfection had been his ambition, and he succeeded
in this, for it is not possible to imagine the burin producing more
decided color, greater fullness of tone, and finer finish than can
be found in a great many portraits by Nanteuil. It can be said that
he used the sharp metal point with the same freedom as a great
painter uses a brush; his technique was so elastic and susceptible of
modification that he was enabled to test to the fullest extent the
possibilities of his medium and to determine its limitations.
When one is lucky enough to have the wonderful collections of the
Cabinet des Estampes at his disposal, the next thing to do after having
seen the works of Nanteuil is to examine those of his contemporaries.
It becomes perfectly clear which artists have influenced him, and to
what extent; it will also be evident at a glance that he influenced all
the rest. This study, however superficial, will take several days, for
the number of _peintre-graveurs_ encouraged by Louis XIV through the
indefatigable Colbert was great, and their work was enormous. Edelinck,
who until recently has been better known than Nanteuil, was extremely
prolific, and Pitau, the Poillys, Masson, Lombart, and Van Schuppen,
to say nothing of Mellan and Morin among many others, produced a great
many portraits. What a collection! What a complete iconography of _le
grand siècle_! Here is everybody who was at all prominent in the most
civilized country of the time. Is it possible not to develop a love of
portraiture, a strong interest in engraving and a desire to collect
engraved portraits, of all pictures the most convenient, the most
possible to acquire and keep in large numbers?
I am reminded of John Evelyn and Samuel Pepys as well as of the abbé
Michel de Marolles, who were the first great or systematic collectors
of engraved portraits, the Frenchman owning twenty thousand prints and
all the portraits extant. Evelyn wrote to Pepys advising him to collect
them, for, as he said, “some are so well done to the life that they
may stand in competition with the best paintings.” He then adds: “This
were a cheaper and so much a more useful curiosity as they seldom are
without their names, ages and eulogies of the persons whose portraits
they represent. I say you will be exceedingly pleased to contemplate
the effigies of those who have made such a noise and bustle in the
world, either by their madness and folly, or a more conspicuous figure
by their wit and learning. They will greatly refresh you in your study
and by your fireside when you are many years returned.” We later see
him write in his “Diary” that he had “sat to the great Nanteuil who
had been knighted by the king for his art” and had considered himself
“unworthy of being included in that gallery of models whom Nanteuil’s
art has made famous.” We know by his own “Diary” that Pepys became
an enthusiastic collector and that he went over to Paris to buy many
prints by the great engraver, at a later date commissioning his wife to
secure for him many more which he strongly desired.
Portrait-painting had at that time become a mania, and there was no
one of any prominence who did not wish to leave to posterity a record
of his physical appearance. Richelieu in a single order had called
for an entire gallery full of portraits of celebrities. The French
_peintre-graveurs_ proved how effectively color could be translated
into black and white, and by revealing the true relation of engraving
to painting shared the fame of their contemporaries in the other arts.
It is not possible for the lover of prints to glance at this
interminable gallery and not be amazed at the number of portraits which
show much originality in their treatment and infinite skill in their
execution, but I defy the admirer of truth in art not to be impressed
by the small number of those by other engravers which are distinguished
by both simplicity and conviction. The heads of Mellan, which were
drawn with as few lines as possible, remain absurdly unique, and the
etched portraits of Morin, who was a faithful translator of Philippe
de Champaigne, are too personal for comparison. But the mass of the
_peintre-graveurs_ give constant proofs of having been influenced by
Nanteuil’s method, and in the case of Van Schuppen there is a very
close following indeed in the master’s footsteps. He is supposed to
have been his favorite pupil.
Nevertheless, Edelinck, brilliant colorist as he was and a wonderfully
clever artist with his burin, refused to do any original work and too
frequently attempted to add vigor and brilliancy to the portraits he
copied. In modeling his faces he, in the opinion of Nanteuil himself,
broke his lines unnecessarily. The work of Masson lacks quiet and
balance, when his faces are not out of drawing, while that of the
rest of the school displays that great vitality and style which made
it a model for all the artists of the following century, without,
however, combining these qualities with the solidity, consummate
science, and restraint which characterize almost all Nanteuil’s
portraits.
[Illustration: NANTEUIL. LOUIS XIV
Engraved in 1666 from Nanteuil’s own drawing from life
Louis XIV was twenty-eight years of age when this portrait was engraved
“In appearance Louis, though admirably proportioned, was slightly below
the middle height. His eyes were blue, his nose long and well formed.
His hair, which was remarkable for its abundance, was allowed to fall
over his shoulders. With his handsome features and his serious--perhaps
phlegmatic--expression he seemed admirably fitted to play the part of a
monarch.” Arthur Hassall. _Louis XIV._
Size of the original engraving, 19¾ × 16¾ inches]
[Illustration: NANTEUIL. ANNE OF AUSTRIA, QUEEN OF FRANCE
Engraved in 1666 from Nanteuil’s own design from life
Anne of Austria was the daughter of Philip III of Spain, wife of Louis
XIII of France and mother of Louis XIV. She was Regent from 1643 to
1661.
Size of the original engraving, 19¾ × 16¾ inches]
Nothing more admirable has been done in the realm of engraving than
these quiet prints in which there is no affectation, no parade of
technical brilliance, and it is a question whether anything more
sincere has been accomplished in the history of portraiture. The
portraits of Nanteuil take their place with perfect dignity alongside
of the subtle crayon portraits of the courtiers of Henry VIII at
Windsor Castle, and the exquisite drawings of the courtiers of
Francis I and Henry II, which alone would make Chantilly worthy of a
pilgrimage. Nanteuil’s drawing is perfect and his massing of tones
masterly; his expression of texture has both realism and breadth, and
his indication of skin by means of a system of very close and delicate
short strokes is an admirable solution of a problem which had been the
despair of the entire school.
The most superficial study of his modeling of that side of the face
which is in full light, for instance, will reveal the supreme delicacy,
the never-failing tact, with which he carries out this most difficult
part of the work. His burin is as light as a feather, there is not a
line too many, and he knows the exact value of each and every tone. It
is interesting to note that, according to one of his pupils, he had
made a careful study of the chiaroscuro of Leonardo, a master for whom
he had an especial admiration.
The great simplicity of his composition allowed him to concentrate all
the resources of his art on the expression of character in the head.
With an understanding of character which was the most sympathetic of
his day, he strove to represent his model with all the outward calm
of nature which was possible in an age when form reigned supreme and
every one was _en parade_. To secure this touch of life Nanteuil, at
the last sitting, would do everything in his power to bring out in his
sitter’s face that look of amused attention which is so characteristic
of his portraits, with the result that, as a brilliant critic has
recently remarked, “instead of one vivid impression his portrait is the
sum of many impressions, a balanced conclusion rather than a single
piece of evidence.” It is this which makes his work so interesting
as a historical document. Here we see in the truest light the divine
monarch, the arrogant noble, the worldly prelate, the serious
man-of-letters, and the humble commoner who fill all the French memoirs
of the seventeenth century.
It is indeed high time that the artist who has been called “the Louis
XIV of engraving” came into his own again, or that he at least be
accorded some of the immense popularity which he enjoyed during the
palmy days of the _grand siècle_. For two centuries he has lain in an
obscurity which it is not easy to understand, in spite of the fact that
his style of portraiture went out of fashion long before the great
monarch died. It remained extremely unpopular throughout the eighteenth
century, for what could those austere bust portraits against a plain
dark background, in the simplest of settings, have in common with
the decorative compositions of the days of Louis XV, in which velvet
and embroideries, ermine and rich lace, inlaid armor, canopies and
complicated furniture, played such an important part? In comparison
with these decorative panels they seem cold and uninteresting, but on
the other hand they alone represent real portraiture; they reflect the
earnestness of Port-Royal.
[Illustration: NANTEUIL. JULES, CARDINAL MAZARIN
Engraved in 1656 from Nanteuil’s own drawing from life
This is one of the most interesting of the many portraits of the great
minister engraved by Nanteuil.
Size of the original engraving, 13½ × 10½ inches]
[Illustration: NANTEUIL. BERNARD DE FOIX DE LA VALETTE, DUC D’EPERNON
Engraved in 1650 from Nanteuil’s own drawing from life
“This man was the son of the Duc d’Epernon, who was seated in the
carriage with Henry IV at the time when the king was assassinated.
The Duc was suspected of complicity in the plot, but this never was
proved. Both the elder and the younger Espernon were extremely haughty
and arrogant men. Their possessions in Guienne were of an almost royal
character and they governed them practically independent of the royal
authority. Both were associated with the reactionary party.”
J. B. Perkins, _France under Richelieu and Mazarin_.
Size of the original engraving, 12⅝ × 10 inches]
There cannot have been a time when they were not admired by those who
possessed true artistic perception, but there is no indication that any
special value was attached to them or that they were collected. Suffice
it to say that at the Mariette sale, in 1775, the complete works of
Nanteuil, two hundred and eighty proofs of two hundred and sixteen
plates in choice impressions, realized only a trifle over one hundred
dollars. More than five times that sum has recently been paid for one
single print. In 1825, at a famous auction, record prices of twelve
dollars and nine dollars were paid respectively for the portraits of
_Pompone de Bellièvre_ and _Richelieu_. Half a century later their
value was not much greater, and general interest in them remained
dormant until four years ago when the collecting world suddenly
realized their artistic worth, and made a raid on the leading markets
of Europe.
It is said that Nanteuil kept a journal; if so, we must greatly
deplore the fact that it has not been preserved to us, for we would
have been treated to a delightful account of the habits of painters
in that time and to many anecdotes connected with their sittings. Who
shall ever know the number of Nanteuil’s sitters? His studio was found
full of pastel portraits many of which had never been engraved, and
his pencil and pen sketches seem to have been innumerable. In spite
of his reputation of _bon vivant_ and his popularity with both the
_bourgeoisie_ and the nobility, allusions to Nanteuil in the memoirs
of the day are fragmentary and we know little about the man. We are
told, however, that he was born in Rheims about 1630 and that he drew
so persistently during his school years that his studies were sadly
neglected. It was only through the excellence of the frontispiece which
he engraved for his thesis that he succeeded in securing his degree.
The conscientious engraver Regnesson taught him all he knew, gave him
his sister in marriage, and sent him to Paris, not to complete his
apprenticeship, for Nanteuil was already more famous than his master,
but in order to place him under the influence of the court painters.
In the great city his wit and conviviality won him many friends and
his talent for securing an excellent likeness secured him instant
fame. It is said that he received his first order by following some
divinity students to a wine-shop where they were wont to take their
meals. There, having chosen one of the portraits he had brought from
Rheims, he pretended to look for a sitter whose name and address he
had forgotten. It is superfluous to add that the picture was not
recognized, but it was passed from hand to hand, the price was asked,
the artist was modest in his demands, and before the end of the repast
his career had begun. He made so many portraits in a week that he
was advised by a famous connoisseur to limit his production to four.
At night he copied them in pen-and-ink for the sake of familiarizing
himself with that burin work which later was to astonish Europe.
During many months he catered to the growing demand for the portrait,
with drawings in the style of those of the Clouets and the
Dumonstiers. One has but to realize in what favor all portrait-makers
were in those days in order to understand how this peculiarly gifted
artist sprang into such sudden popularity. The dignity of French
portrait-painting was being upheld by the noble Philippe de Champaigne,
under whose influence the painters of the time produced a great number
of portraits which, if not technically brilliant, were presented with
that serious dignity which was characteristic of the early seventeenth
century and were drawn with admirable sincerity and correctness. To him
Nanteuil went for advice and encouragement, and soon after presented
the engraved copy of the painter’s latest portrait; it met with so much
success that it can be said to have started the tremendous vogue of the
engraved portrait and the formation of the great school which Colbert
installed at the Gobelins.
Meanwhile the artist, already a perfect draughtsman and very proficient
with pastels, had carefully studied the technique of all the leading
engravers, and as soon as he had evolved a system of his own bent all
his efforts on revolutionizing the art. Nanteuil made a picturesque
début during that incredible opera-bouffe, the War of the Fronde. He
was draughted into military service, but although frequently active
with a blunderbuss and wearing a false beard in imitation of the
dreaded Swiss mercenaries, he succeeded in making a portrait of all the
heroes of the day. For him sat _Condé_ and the _Duc d’Epernon_, the
last representative of feudalism in France; the _Ducs de Bouillon_,
_de Mercœur_, _de Nemours_, and _de Beaufort_, who met in taverns to
appoint the generals of an army which did not exist; the Archbishop
of Paris, _de Retz_, who appeared in Parliament armed like a pirate;
that fat poet and peasant _Loret_, who sold on street corners his
“Muse Historique,” a daily satire on the intriguing nobles “who were
not afraid of bullets but who were in deadly fear of winter mud,”
and lastly the indomitable prime minister, _Cardinal Mazarin_, whom
the populace twice drove from Paris and then so madly welcomed back
that many were trampled to death in the riot. Of that wily Italian he
engraved as many as fourteen portraits.
During the few years which followed the civil war he made his most
interesting portraits.
It was then that he assiduously frequented the literary salons of the
capital where, a poetaster of some renown, he was ever welcome and made
that beautiful pastel portrait of _Madame de Sévigné_ which has been
preserved to us, and another of _Mlle. de Scudéry_, who thanked him as
follows:
Nanteuil en faisant mon image
A de son art divin signalé le pouvoir,
Je hais mes traits dans mon miroir,
Je les aime dans son ouvrage.
At this time he engraved the set of small-size portraits which
represents the high-water mark of his talent. Can one possibly imagine
anything more exquisitely choice than his heads of _Maridat_ the
philosopher and _Hugues de Lionne_ the secretary for foreign affairs?
With equal excellence he made the portraits of _Chapelain_, one of the
founders of the French Academy, who reported himself to the King as
a greater poet than Corneille, _Scudéry_, who signed the popular
novels written by his sister, the witty _Marquis de St. Brisson_,
the poets _Loret_ and _Sarrazin_, the genial _Abbé de Marolles_,
savant and print-collector, the learned octogenarian _Le Vayer_, and
the ex-preceptor of the King, the archbishop of Paris, _Péréfixe de
Beaumont_.
[Illustration: NANTEUIL. JEAN LORET
Engraved in 1668 from Nanteuil’s own drawing from life
Loret is chiefly remembered for his _Gazette_, written in _vers
libres_, which he began to issue in 1650, and continued until his death
in 1666.
Size of the original engraving, 10⅛ × 7⅛ inches]
[Illustration: NANTEUIL. FRANÇOIS DE LA MOTHE LE VAYER
Engraved in 1661 from Nanteuil’s own drawing from life
Few were Le Vayer’s equal either in wit or learning. His writings were
exceedingly numerous. Regarded as the Plutarch of his century for his
boundless erudition and his mode of reasoning. He died at the age of
eighty-six, in 1672, having enjoyed good health to the last days of his
life.
Size of the original engraving, 10¾ × 7½ inches]
These portraits owe their size to the fact that they had been used
as frontispieces for the works of those various personages, but the
special care, the _con amore_ finish with which they are executed,
is due to the fact that the subjects were warm personal friends
of the artist. The portrait of _John Evelyn_ was made in the same
way, although before the artist’s technique had reached its fullest
development.
Before the year 1660 Nanteuil made, besides many portraits including
those mentioned above and several of Mazarin, four very remarkable
ones of a larger size. They are those of _Cardinal de Coislin_, the
young _Duc de Bouillon_, _Marie de Bragelogne_, and the abbé _Basile
Fouquet_. The prelate was a Jesuit who became chaplain of Versailles;
the youth, as lord chamberlain of France, had the honor of handing
the King his nightshirt, an honor which he forfeited forever when on
two successive nights he forgot his gloves. The woman was an old love
of Richelieu; the delicate modeling of her careworn face is worthy
of Holbein’s best manner and is executed with a tact that baffles
description. This plate reminds us of the fact that out of two hundred
and sixteen portraits Nanteuil made only eight of women; of these
only two were made from life,--that of _Anne of Austria_ and the one
mentioned above, but they are gems of purest ray serene which make
us sigh when we think of what he could have done with Henrietta of
England and Mesdames de Lavallière, de Montespan, and de Maintenon!
As to the fourth portrait, it is that of the brother of the great
_Surintendant des Finances_, Nicolas Fouquet; he was at that time the
head spy of Mazarin as well as the chancellor of the orders of the King
and the most accomplished rascal who ever fished in troubled waters.
These four engraved portraits are masterpieces of characterization, and
exhibit in the most eloquent way the master’s powerful draughtsmanship,
his utter lack of mannerisms, and the sympathetic way in which he
varied his entire technical treatment to suit different subjects.
Here is abundant proof that he was primarily a portrait-maker, that,
in spite of the fact that he handled the burin with as much ease and
sureness as his pencil and chalks, he never strove after effect and
never allowed his skill to carry him away and mar the unity of his
perfectly balanced composition. He is a psychologist who consistently
strove to brand his model’s soul on his countenance. Of no other
_peintre-graveur_ can we say as much.
With the year 1660 came the royal marriage, and a twelvemonth later
the death of the despotic Mazarin and the emancipation of the young
King. Nanteuil’s fame by this time was thoroughly established, he was
everywhere recognized as a past-master of his art and was in a position
to refuse as many orders as he pleased. The leading men in the church,
the parliament, and the _bourgeoisie_, which always followed the lead
of the nobility, did not rest until they had the artist from Rheims
engrave their portraits and strike off many hundred impressions, which
were quickly enough distributed among their families and friends.
Among them were the Maître d’Hôtel and the physician of the King,
_Guenault_, the quack who looked after the health of the Queen,
and _Dreux d’Aubray_, who became the first victim of his daughter,
the famous murderess, the Marquise de Brinvilliers. The two great
protectors of Nanteuil at this time were _Michel Le Tellier_ and
_Nicolas Fouquet_. Of the former, who was then war minister and who as
chancellor of France died the day after signing the fatal Revocation
of the Edict of Nantes, we have ten convincing portraits, as well
as five of his son _Charles Maurice_ who became the worldliest of
archbishops, and one of his eldest son who became the dreaded war
minister _Louvois_. These sixteen portraits of the Le Tellier family
represent some of Nanteuil’s best work. The portrait of _Fouquet_ is a
great historical document, a piece of most subtle characterization done
in the artist’s best manner, and it is interesting to note that it was
made only a very short time before the sensational fall of that then
most powerful man in the kingdom. Could we but know what thoughts ran
through the head of the Lord of Vaux as he sat for his portrait with a
quizzical smile! Nanteuil, by the way, has left us the record of the
appearance of practically all the principal figures of that sensational
trial which lasted three years and the outcome of which alone assured
the complete independence of the King.
Nanteuil had now patrons influential enough to insure him a gracious
welcome at court. His greatest ambition had been to paint the young
King and he felt able to improve greatly on the efforts of both
Mignard and Lebrun. With this end in view he addressed to the King a
petition for a sitting in such eloquent verse that the request was
readily granted. The first pastel portrait of the King seems to have
made a small sensation at court; “Come and look at your husband in this
portrait, madame,” said Anne of Austria to the young Queen; “he fairly
speaks.” Still greater, however, was the King’s delight when he saw the
engraved copy of the portrait which Nanteuil later presented to him.
He rewarded with a gift of 4000 livres the artist whom he had already
named court painter and engraver with a lodging at the Gobelins, and at
whose bidding he had raised the status of engraving to a fine art.
There are in all eleven of these portraits of Louis XIV and they
give us an excellent idea of the haughty appearance, the conceited
expression of the demigod during the happiest period of his life. What
care we for the old monarch who later was caricatured by the pomp
of Rigaud’s painting and the satire of Thackeray? This is the young
Alexander who has just seized the reins of government and set up the
most brilliant court in history. In the earliest one he is twenty-six
years old, madly in love with Mlle. de La Vallière, and building
Versailles with feverish haste; at the last sitting he is thirty-eight
and hopelessly under the sway of Madame de Montespan. Here he bears our
gaze with a contemptuous air, the man who, “if he was not the greatest
of kings, was the greatest actor of majesty who ever filled a throne.”
These portraits were considered extraordinary in point of resemblance.
The great Bernini himself, who had come from Italy to make a bust of
the King, warmly congratulated the engraver on “the best portrait
ever made of his Majesty,” and this before the leading personages of
the court.
[Illustration: NANTEUIL. NICOLAS FOUQUET
Engraved in 1661 from Nanteuil’s own design from life
“Of the three ministers to whom Louis had openly given his confidence,
Lionne, Le Tellier, and Fouquet, the last named was the only one who
possessed the qualities necessary for a prime minister.
“‘It was generally believed,’ says Madame de La Fayette, ‘that the
Superintendent would be called upon to take the Government into his
hands.’ There is no doubt whatever that Fouquet himself expected
eventually to succeed Mazarin.” Arthur Hassall, _Louis XIV_.
Size of the original engraving, 13 × 10 inches]
[Illustration: NANTEUIL. BASILE FOUQUET
Engraved in 1658 from Nanteuil’s own drawing from life
Basile Fouquet, Abbé de Barbeaux and Rigny, Chancelier des Ordres du
Roi, was the brother of Nicolas Fouquet, the famous Superintendent of
Finance.
Size of the original engraving, 12¾ × 9¾ inches]
An unusual feature of these royal portraits is that seven of them are
life-size, a feat which had not been previously attempted.
It had become the fashion to hang these portraits in rich frames at the
top of the high wainscots used in those days, and the very large size
adopted by Nanteuil made of them decorative panels which held their
own even in a roomful of paintings. Many of the nobles must have owned
complete sets. They met with such favor that during the last four years
of his life the artist engraved entirely in that size, about twenty-two
inches by thirty, and had started a gallery of all the great men of
France; he had actually produced as many as thirty-six before he died
in 1678. The list includes the portraits of the Queen Mother _Anne of
Austria_, decked out in all her finery a few weeks before she died,
that of the young _Dauphin_, the effeminate brother of the King the
_Duc d’Orléans_, _Colbert_, _Turenne_, _Louvois_, _Bossuet_, the _Duc
de Chaulnes_, and several other celebrities. They are admirable plates
in which he secured broad masses and simple effects by means of the
same system he used in his small portraits. In spite of the very large
surface and what seems like a million lines there is no confusion, not
a flaw in the unity of his composition. They had formed the special
admiration of the last Medici Duke of Tuscany when, on a visit to
France, he had insisted on meeting Nanteuil. From him he purchased for
the Uffizi Gallery in Florence the portrait of the painter himself
and those of the King and Turenne. He moreover obliged him to accept
a pupil _dans l’intimité_, a thing which Nanteuil had never done
for he always locked himself up when he engraved his plates. It was
that Domenico Tempesti who has left us such an interesting record of
the habits of the engraver and the ideas he held on the subject of
portraiture. It is from him that we know that the master made all those
delightful pastel portraits in three sittings of exactly two hours
each. Would that we knew how long it took him to engrave them! we can
only form a vague idea of this from the fact that in his most prolific
year he made fifteen engraved portraits. Robert-Dumesnil limits to
ten the portraits engraved entirely by Nanteuil; the selection he
makes is judicious, but the number was certainly far greater. Of
course the purely mechanical draughting of the frame and the filling
of the background was the work of assistants, and it is more than
probable that in many of the less important plates and in the life-size
portraits, on account of the great surface to be covered, the costume
was engraved by such pupils as Pitau and Van Schuppen, for instance,
as their cleverness for such work almost equaled their master’s. But
in all the small portraits and those of _Turenne_ and the _Ducs de
Bouillon_, for instance, we recognize everywhere the vigorous yet
tactful touch of Nanteuil himself.
[Illustration: NANTEUIL. JEAN CHAPELAIN
Engraved in 1655 from Nanteuil’s own drawing from life
Jean Chapelain, born at Paris, December 4, 1595, died February 22,
1674. His mediocre poem “La Pucelle” brought him much more renown than
the “Iliad” brought to Homer. It was Chapelain who corrected the first
poems of Racine.
Size of the original engraving, 10⅝ × 7½ inches]
[Illustration: NANTEUIL. POMPONE DE BELLIÈVRE
Engraved in 1657 (when Nanteuil was twenty-seven years of age) after
the painting by Charles Lebrun. By many authorities it has been
described as the most beautiful of all engraved portraits.
Size of the original engraving, 12¾ × 9¾ inches]
Reproductive work was for Nanteuil an exception. The plates which he
engraved from the paintings of other artists number thirty-eight;
to each of them he affixed the name of the painter with a fairness
which Edelinck, for one, seldom exhibited. It is natural that these
plates should show little of that inspiration and originality which
were distinctive of a born character student like the artist
from Rheims, but the majority are supremely interesting and the
finest are masterpieces. It is evident that in the earliest ones,
notably in the head of _Chavigny_, reputed a son of Richelieu, he was
experimenting with technique and that several others which were used
as frontispieces were merely potboilers. Even the portrait of Queen
_Christina of Sweden_ and the much overrated one of the Dutch lawyer
_van Steenberghen_ are nothing more than interesting studies of simple
linework and softness of tone. In those of the two little sons of the
Duchesse de Longueville, the _Comte de Dunois_ and the _Comte de Saint
Paul_, we see how easy it was for Nanteuil’s technique to express the
soft outline and the tender complexion of youth with a charming effect.
After Lebrun he engraved with an admirable chiaroscuro the head of
the Chancellor _Seguier_, and that well-known portrait of _Pompone de
Bellièvre_, statesman and philanthropist, which, if lacking in vigor,
represents the highest point reached by the intelligent refinement of
linework. But it is only with the sober and precise work of his master
Philippe de Champaigne that Nanteuil had a positive affinity. The two
artists held identical views about portraiture and the Flemish painter
found in the engraver from Rheims an interpreter who fairly breathed in
unison with him. It is not possible to imagine anything more admirable
than the engraved portraits of _de Neufville_, bishop of Chartres,
_Richelieu_, and Marshal _Turenne_. They undoubtedly represent the last
word on the subject of line-engraving. The face of the Cardinal is
treated with all the subtlety of Velasquez and the head of the greatest
captain of his time is modeled with a strength of coloring which
Rembrandt himself would have admired. This plate shows in the clearest
way Nanteuil’s ability to represent different textures: the hair, skin,
lace, silk, and steel armor are treated with precision which is wholly
satisfying and a breadth which commands the highest admiration.
From the inventory made in his house the day after his death we learn
that Nanteuil had for years been dissipating in extravagant living
the large sums he had earned with his work. His household goods, his
drawings, and the tools of his profession were sold under the hammer,
and it is amusing at the present day to realize that a lot consisting
of 2966 of his prints, together with many reams of paper and his
printing-press, were valued at only seven hundred dollars.
It is also explained why most of his portraits went through so many
different states; it was chiefly on account of the “theses.” A curious
fashion it was by which wealthy students in law, philosophy, and the
arts formally dedicated their graduating theses to one or another
distinguished personage whose engraved portrait they ordered from a
_peintre-graveur_. This, with a lengthy dedication, was then attached
to the printed thesis as a frontispiece and sent to the patron and
to many of his friends. It is thus that the Chancellor d’Aligre
commissioned Nanteuil, who had the monopoly of such work, to engrave
and strike off twenty-five hundred proofs of a new and extra-large
portrait of the King measuring thirty inches by forty-two for his son’s
thesis; for this and the printing of the thesis itself the engraver
received the sum of 10,400 livres, or about $9000 of our money. The
price of an ordinary engraved portrait was $2000. Other less
wealthy postulants had to be content with ordering a reimpression of
a plate which had already been used and which needed only a change of
dedication. In this way the portrait of the Dauphin for instance went
through fifteen states and one of the King went through eleven; the
plates were naturally often retouched by the artist in order to enable
them to withstand so much use. Not to these theses alone, however, must
the great number of royal portraits which were printed be attributed,
for they had become immensely popular throughout the kingdom and
whoever could afford it had one hanging in his house. In 1667 Cardinal
de Bouillon ordered the portrait of the King for his thesis, and some
years later another student selected for his patron the Cardinal
himself. In 1675 it was the son of d’Artagnan, dear to all lovers of
romance, who was presented by his father with the finest of the King’s
portraits for his thesis.
[Illustration: NANTEUIL. HENRI DE LA TOUR D’AUVERGNE, VICOMTE DE
TURENNE, MARÉCHAL DE FRANCE
Engraved from the painting by Philippe de Champaigne
“It is not possible to imagine anything more admirable than the
engraved portraits of _de Neufville_, bishop of Chartres, _Richelieu_,
and Marshal _Turenne_. They undoubtedly represent the last word on the
subject of line-engraving.... The head of the greatest captain of his
time is modeled with a strength of coloring which Rembrandt himself
would have admired.” Louis R. Metcalfe.
Size of the original engraving, 15⅛ × 11⅜ inches]
[Illustration: NANTEUIL. JEAN-BAPTISTE COLBERT
Engraved in 1668 from Nanteuil’s own drawing from life
To Colbert Louis XIV was indebted for much, if not all, of the success
of his enterprises during the twenty-five years succeeding the death of
Cardinal Mazarin.
Size of the original engraving, 19¾ × 16¾ inches]
Of course this custom does not account for all the changes of state.
When an archbishop became a cardinal for instance, the engraver made
the necessary modification in the costume on the copper and provided
his patron with a new set of impressions; similarly for a change in
a title. In the case of Fouquet, the second of five states of his
portrait was made necessary by a mistake in spelling in the dedication,
the others being undoubtedly due to the touching-up of the plate on
account of the great number of impressions ordered by a powerful man
the circle of whose friends constituted the real court of that time. In
the case of Cardinal Mazarin, politics undoubtedly played a great part
in the use which was made of his portraits.
It is not generally known that Nanteuil was himself the author of most
of the titles and dedications both in prose and in verse, in Latin as
well as in French, which form such an attractive feature of his prints.
This was to be expected of the clever versifier who had written such
amusing sonnets to the royal family and the leaders of the court in
connection with their sittings, and of the cheerful companion who had
known so intimately the _beaux-esprits_ whom the hospitality of Fouquet
had so often convened at his château of Vaux. To the Queen, who had a
complexion of marvelous whiteness, he wrote a poem thanking her for
the order for her portrait, which ended with this line: “_Mais prenons
courage, on a peint le soleil même avec un charbon!_”
Nanteuil’s original drawings in pencil, crayons, and pastels are fewer
by far than those of the Clouets or the pastellists of the eighteenth
century which have been preserved to us; probably not more than twenty
are now to be found in public collections. To my knowledge the Louvre
has two, the Museum of Rheims four, the Chartres Museum one, Florence
three, Chantilly four, and Stafford House, London, six. They are
supremely interesting for that simplicity and sincerity, that living
truth, which make one feel as if he recognized old acquaintances. As
for his engravings, there are splendid collections of them in Paris,
Dresden, and Chantilly, and there doesn’t exist a private collection of
any importance in the world which does not contain some of the noble
work of the past-master of engraved portraiture, the painter of the
most brilliant period in modern history, the genial artist who had
said to his pupil: “_Le temps et la peine ne font pas tant les beaux
ouvrages que la bonne humeur et l’intelligence._”
REMBRANDT’S LANDSCAPE ETCHINGS
BY LAURENCE BINYON
Assistant-Keeper of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum Author of
“Dutch Etchers,” “Painting in the Far East,” etc.
The pioneers of landscape art, those who have opened up new
possibilities of design in landscape themes, were, at least until the
nineteenth century, certain great masters of figure-painting. Titian,
Rubens, Velasquez, Rembrandt, each of these gave a fresh impulse to the
painting of landscape, an impulse which even to-day has not lost its
inspiration; while the conventions established by Claude, Ruysdael and
Salvator Rosa seem by comparison tame and more or less artificial or
demoded.
Of these masters Rembrandt is the nearest to modern feeling. The
famous _Mill_, in which a landscape motive is treated with a richness
and depth of humanity that hitherto had found expression only in
figure-subjects, stands in this respect as a monument in European art.
Yet landscapes form a very small proportion of Rembrandt’s paintings.
Rembrandt as a painter rarely seems to treat landscape for its own
sake. He composes for the most part arbitrarily, using broad spaces of
level and hill-masses with ruined towers as the material elements of
a scene for which some visionary play of gleam and cloud seems the
real motive in his mind, the counterpart of the emotions he sought to
communicate and evoke.
We are now concerned with Rembrandt as an etcher. Here again the
proportion of landscape to figure-subjects is small. There are seven
and twenty out of a total of some three hundred etchings.
We note at once that the etched landscapes present a different aspect
from the painted landscapes.
In his paintings Rembrandt shows none of the characteristics of the
national landscape school of Holland, of those artists who relied
on the features of their native land,--its wide pastures, its
canals, its seaports, its sand-dunes, its farms, its great skies
and immense horizons,--and made of the plain portraiture of these
familiar scenes their pride and glory. Rather he took hints from his
traveled countrymen and the painters who had sought the classic South.
Landscape, whether treated simply or as an adjunct to some scene from
Scriptural story, was to him a source of romantic appeal. And just
as Italian masters, like Botticelli, have sometimes introduced as
background foreign scenes from the Rhineland suggested by the work
of Northern painters, so Rembrandt, to whom mountains had all the
fascination of strangeness and romance, took from actual drawings of
Titian’s school which he may have possessed or seen, or from pictures
by traveled Dutchmen like Hercules Seghers, the features he desired,
fusing them into a world of his own imagination.
The etchings, on the contrary, are for the most part pure Holland. Yet
their inspiration is very different from that of the typical Dutch
painter or etcher. They are not mere portraits of places. Even when
apparently simple transcripts from the scene before the artist’s eyes,
the composing spirit is at work in them, rearranging and suppressing.
And perhaps just because of this absence of the literal topographical
spirit, they seem to contain the essential genius and atmosphere of
Dutch landscape.
Practically all Rembrandt’s landscape work belongs to the middle period
of his life. Some writers have sought to account for this by supposing
that he turned to such subjects in some rural retreat to soothe his
overwhelming grief at the loss of his wife. The actual dates hardly
support this supposition. Saskia died in the summer of 1642. But the
landscapes begin a few years before that date. The first ten years of
the master’s life at Amsterdam--the years of his prosperity--were, we
know, crowded with portrait commissions; and landscape work would only
have been a relaxation. It was hardly more than this at any time, but
for some reason it interested him more during the ten or twelve years
after 1640 than in his youth or old age.
The earliest date on a landscape etching is 1641; the latest, 1652. The
undated plates can be placed with tolerable certainty within a year or
so.
In 1634 Rembrandt had etched the large _Annunciation to the Shepherds_,
in which the landscape is of the same visionary kind as appears in the
paintings. The general effect is of white on black, the supernatural
effulgence in the sky, which so startles the shepherds and their
flocks, calling out of the gloom mysterious waving heights of foliage
and obscure gleams of distance.
[Illustration: REMBRANDT. THE WINDMILL
“In the _Windmill_ Rembrandt found a perfect subject. There is no
adventitious impressiveness lent by strong effect of light and shadow
in this beautiful plate: all is plain and simply rendered.... We feel
the stains of weather, the touch of time, on the structure; we feel the
air about it and the quiet light that rests on the far horizon as the
eye travels over dike and meadow....” Laurence Binyon.
Size of the original etching, 5¹¹⁄₁₆ × 8³⁄₁₆ inches]
[Illustration: REMBRANDT. VIEW OF AMSTERDAM
“In the little _Amsterdam_, as in nearly all these etchings, the sky
is left absolutely clear and empty. And how far more truly it suggests
to us the brightness of a cloudless day than the most successful of
plein-air painting in vivid color, which stops the imagination instead
of leaving it free and active! This little plate is filled with air and
sun.” Laurence Binyon.
Size of the original etching, 4⅜ × 6 inches]
In none of the etchings of pure landscape does Rembrandt adopt this
method and conception. None of them has that effect of illuminated
gloom which is so peculiarly associated with the master’s name. Their
effect is of black on white, and the line is given its full value. One
of the earliest, probably, is a small plate (B. 207), sometimes called
_A Large Tree and a House_. I believe some critics have cast a doubt on
it, but it is unmistakably Rembrandt’s in conception and “handwriting.”
The little piece might well be called _Twilight_. We seem to be near
the shores of a lake; light is fading out of the sky and scarcely
permits us to discern any details; the presence of a few figures and a
human dwelling is felt rather than seen. All is gray and quiet; nothing
stands out saliently. It is the silvery evenness of tone which is the
charm of this tiny plate, in no way striking, yet indefinably revealing
a master’s hand. Usually Rembrandt would make such quiet etched work,
all of one biting, the basis of a rich effect produced by dry-point. He
may have intended to have used the dry-point here, but perhaps thought
the scale was too small.
With the _Windmill_ and the _Cottage and Hay-barn_, both dated 1641, we
come to a group of plates which are typical of Rembrandt’s landscape
manner in etching. Close to these in date, presumably, are the little
_Amsterdam_ and the _Cottage and Large Tree_. Mr. Hind, in the latest
catalogue of the etchings, follows von Seidlitz in assigning the
_Amsterdam_ to 1640, though Dr. Six maintains that the absence of a
tower not finished till 1638 proves it to be earlier than that year.
Rembrandt, however, was quite capable of abolishing towers to suit his
composition. The simplest materials presented by the country-side are
used in these etchings. Though Rembrandt never seems to have cared to
make pictures of such subjects, he made a great number of drawings of
them. A wonderful series of these sketches, once in the possession of
his pupil, Govert Flinck, is at Chatsworth; and numbers of course in
the great public collections. These summary small drawings, made with
a reed-pen and sepia, and sometimes with a wash of sepia added, do not
appeal to every one, certainly not to those whose pleasure is in the
external aspect of things, the softness of verdure, the glitter of
trees; to say nothing of the want of grandeur and impressiveness in the
scenes themselves, the absence of anything scenic, such as makes the
most obvious appeal, whether in nature or art.
But the more one studies drawings, and the more one becomes familiar
with the qualities which differentiate the first-rate from the second,
the higher one inclines to rank these sketches. For one thing, they
are almost miraculous in the certainty with which the reality of
things is evoked, and the planes of recession indicated. Slight as
is the means employed, rough and summary as is the stroke of the
blunt pen, sometimes even with what seems a superficial clumsiness or
carelessness, the things seen are there,--trees, buildings, bridges
and canals, men and women,--and not only visible but, as it were,
tangible. We can walk in imagination into these little landscapes, and
not only do we breathe an infinite air but we are sure of every step.
And this is the great test of mastery in such drawings. Take, for
instance, the landscape drawings of Domenico Campagnola, which are also
in reed-pen and sepia. These, with their broken foregrounds, upland
farms among trees of delicate foliage, and distant mountain-ranges,
are much more attractive to the eye at first sight than the great
Dutchman’s sketches. But when in imagination we move into these
pleasant landscapes, we are disconcerted by unrealities; our steps are
uncertain, for they are not on solid ground. And in fact a pleasant
pattern of pen-strokes remains a pattern and nothing else. But
Rembrandt’s rough strokes have somehow molded all the ground with its
saliences and depressions and filled the whole with light and air.
It is the same with the etchings. But there is a difference: the
difference of the medium. True artist as he is, Rembrandt conceives all
he does in the terms of the material used. His etchings are born as
etchings and nothing else; they are not drawings transferred to copper.
There is a specific beauty of the etched line which is quite different
from the beauty of a line made by the pen or chalk, or the line
ploughed by a burin on copper. If it is unsuited to the sweeping
rhythms of large movement in design, such as we associate with Rubens,
for instance, its want of modulation and even character help a quiet
dignity of draughtsmanship; and the etcher has means of enhancing
homeliness of detail unrivaled in any other medium. Old buildings,
wharves, boats and shipping at a river-side or quay,--such things as
these naturally attract the etcher, for they are congenial to his
medium. And in the _Windmill_ (B. 233, dated 1641), Rembrandt found a
perfect subject.
There is no adventitious impressiveness lent by strong effect of light
and shadow in this beautiful plate: all is plain and simply rendered.
But we have only to compare this etching with the etchings of some of
Rembrandt’s immediate predecessors, like Jan and Esaias Van de Velde,
to see the difference not only between a great and an average artist,
but between a great and a commonplace etcher. The picturesque tracery
of a windmill’s sails and timber-work are seen and enjoyed in the
Van de Veldes’ plates, but how much more than this is in Rembrandt’s
_Mill_! We feel the stains of weather, the touch of time, on the
structure; we feel the air about it and the quiet light that rests
on the far horizon as the eye travels over dike and meadow; we are
admitted to the subtlety and sensitiveness of a sight transcending our
own; and even by some intangible means beyond analysis we partake of
something of Rembrandt’s actual mind and feeling, his sense of what the
old mill meant, not merely as a picturesque object to be drawn, but
as a human element in the landscape, implying the daily work of human
hands and the association of man and earth. Here is a classic in its
kind which many generations of etchers have found an inspiring model.
An accident in the biting apparently is the cause of an aquatint-like
broken tone of gray in the sky above the mill; but it comes with
congruous effect, and is rather a beauty than a blemish.
In the little _Amsterdam_, as in nearly all these etchings, the sky is
left absolutely clear and empty. And how far more truly it suggests
to us the brightness of a cloudless day than the most successful of
plein-air painting in vivid color, which stops the imagination instead
of leaving it free and active! This little plate is filled with air and
sun.
A first state of this etching belongs to my friend Mr. Gustav Mayer in
London, but is absolutely unknown to all catalogues previous to that
of Mr. Hind. In it there is a hare running over the fields, but it is
a thought too big in scale, and Rembrandt doubtless suppressed it as a
distracting incident.
The _Cottage and Hay-barn_ (B. 225) and the _Cottage and Large Tree_
(B. 226) seem companion plates; and though the latter is not dated,
it is natural to assume for it the same date as that inscribed on the
former--1641. If the _Cottage and Large Tree_ is the finer of these
two oblong plates in design, the _Cottage and Hay-barn_ is the more
brilliant as an etching. The cottage and shed which give the plate
its name are in the center of the design, and the dark mass, full of
tender shadows and reflections, emphasizes by contrast the play of open
light on the fields stretching on either side, the river, the house
nestling in a wood, beyond, and the distant towers of Amsterdam. Though
all is treated in Rembrandt’s broad way, it is surprising how full,
how suggestive of intimate detail the landscape is. As we look at it
there comes over us the sense of sleepy, bright air and sunshine, the
quiet of the fields, in which, though nothing outwardly is happening,
we are conscious of the stir of natural life, of growing things, of
flowers and grass and insects, and peaceful human occupations going
on unobtrusively; of “all the live murmur of a summer’s day.” It is
interesting, in view of Rembrandt’s treatment of topography, to note
that Dr. Jan Six has shown that the master has here combined two
different views in a single composition.
In the _Cottage with White Palings_ (B. 232, dated 1642), effective
use is made of the broad white planks of the fence to enforce the
pattern of black and white in the design. Here again the subject is
placed in the center with views on either side, though the horizon is
higher than usual.
With the _Three Trees_ (B. 212) of 1643, we come to the most famous
of Rembrandt’s etched landscapes. This plate stands in the same sort
of relation to the rest as the _Mill_ to the rest of his landscape
paintings. It is the grandest and most typical, most expressive of
the master’s temperament. Here the composition is less accidental,
and more (so to speak) architectural. The group of three trees stands
up darkly on a bank of high ground at the right. At the left one
looks over the level fields to the horizon and a glimmer of distant
sea. A thunderstorm is passing away, with contorted clouds piled in
the upper sky and trailing over the plain, and rods of violent rain
slant across the corner of the scene. For once Rembrandt builds up a
landscape design out of sky and earth; and the something elemental
which inspires it gives the etching a pregnancy and significance which
are absent from the other landscapes, in themselves, at their best,
more intimately charming. There are those who object to the straight,
hard lines of the rain; but I do not find them untrue, and they are of
great value in the design. Then, what beauties lurk in this etching,
wherever one looks into it! The return of the light after rain, than
which there is nothing more beautiful in nature, gives a wet sparkle
to the fields; and again we notice how the trees in their dark relief
give glory to the space of luminous clearness beyond. The wagon on
the top of the high bank is moving toward the light, and a painter
sits by the roadside, sketching the passing of the storm. An angler
fishes in a pool; lovers, hardly discerned, sit together, away from the
world in a thicket’s obscurity. All the plain, so solitary at first
sight, is filled with moving life. Of what particular species the three
trees are, it might be difficult, as often with Rembrandt, to say with
confidence; from their shape and the sturdy growth of their boughs, I
suppose them to be oaks. There is no doubt, however, about the willow
in the _Omval_ (B. 209). The gnarled, seamed trunk of an old tree,
with its rugged wrinkles and smooth bosses, irresistibly invites the
etcher’s needle; and Rembrandt, like other etchers since, has evidently
found a great enjoyment in this willow-stem, as in that other old
willow to which he added, not very felicitously, a St. Jerome reading,
spectacles on nose, and a perfunctory lion (B. 232, dated 1648). The
_Omval_ shows a different kind of composition; the willow at the edge
of a thicket, in whose shadow two lovers are embowered, divides the
plate; the right and larger part is all light and open--a river-bank on
which a man moves down to the ferry, and the broad sunny stream, and
houses, masts, and windmills across the water--a picturesque river-side
such as Whistler and Haden loved to etch.
[Illustration: REMBRANDT. THE THREE TREES
“With the _Three Trees_ of 1643, we come to the most famous of
Rembrandt’s etched landscapes. This plate stands in the same sort
of relation to the rest as the _Mill_ to the rest of his landscape
paintings. It is the grandest and most typical, most expressive of the
master’s temperament.” Laurence Binyon.
Size of the original etching, 8⁵⁄₁₆ × 11 inches]
[Illustration: REMBRANDT. SIX’S BRIDGE
“To the same year--1645--belongs the well-known _Six’s Bridge_, a plate
in which the pure bitten line, with no close hatching or shadow-effect,
is given full play. Of its kind, this is a perfect etching.” Laurence
Binyon.
Size of the original etching, 5¹⁄₁₆ × 8¹³⁄₁₆ inches]
To the same year--1645--belongs the well-known _Six’s Bridge_ (B.
208), a plate in which the pure bitten line, with no close hatching
or shadow-effect, is given full play. Of its kind, this is a perfect
etching. Every one knows the story of its being done while Six’s
servant went to fetch the mustard. But there is nothing hasty or
incomplete about it: the masterly economy of lines is perfectly
satisfying in its absolute directness and simplicity. There is great
pleasure in contemplating a work like this, so clean, so free from any
superfluous element.
But from this time onward Rembrandt seems to grow dissatisfied with
pure etching. He grows more and more fond of dry-point, using it very
frequently to enrich an etched plate, and in his later years preferring
often to dispense with the acid altogether.
Dry-point is employed in the delightful little plate, the _Boat-house_
(B. 231), to deepen the shadows of the arch over the water; but in
ordinary impressions this has worn off and only the groundwork of
bitten lines remains. This is the kind of subject which most artists
would have drawn in delicate detail; but Rembrandt is always rather
remarkably indifferent to the particular beauty and character of
vegetation (probably this was one of the reasons why he made so little
appeal to Ruskin); and it is surprising that with all the indifference
and roughness in the drawing of the plant-forms on the river-bank, the
little plate should still have so intimate a character and suggest so
much of the beauty of dark, quiet water in which reflections of flower
and herbage are asleep.
In one or two of the plates of 1650 and thereabouts, as if tired of
level horizons, Rembrandt closes the view with a mountain or range of
hills. Such are the _Canal and Angler_ and the _Boat in the Canal_ (B.
235 and 236), which, joined together, form one composition; and one
might add the _Sportsman with Dogs_ (B. 211), though Mr. Hind assigns
the completion, at any rate, of this etching to a date of a few years
later.
[Illustration: REMBRANDT. LANDSCAPE WITH A BOAT IN THE CANAL
“In one or two of the plates of 1650 and thereabouts, as if tired of
level horizons, Rembrandt closes the view with a mountain or range of
hills. Such are the _Canal and Angler_ and the _Boat in the Canal_.”
Laurence Binyon.
Size of the original etching, 3¼ × 4¼ inches]
[Illustration: REMBRANDT. FARM WITH TREES AND A TOWER [LANDSCAPE WITH A
RUINED TOWER AND CLEAR FOREGROUND]
“... a long, oblong plate, of great beauty for its pattern of light and
shade. Part of the sky is shadowed, and the last light, before a shower
pours over the trees, illuminates the foliage on one side.” Laurence
Binyon.
Size of the original etching, 4⅞ × 12⅝ inches]
The _Hay-barn with Flock of Sheep_ (B. 224) is an instance of
a favorite feature in Rembrandt’s landscape--a road seen in
perspective at one side of the design. The _Landscape with a Cow
Drinking_ (B. 237) is a beautiful etching in a rather slight manner,
with a suggestion of wind in the branches of trees, and light coming
with the wind. Even in the _Three Trees_, though there is storm, there
is little impression of movement in the air; and it is characteristic
of the landscape etchings as a whole that they are serene and still,
and more often suggest a sunny day than gray skies.
Dry-point becomes more emphatic in the _Obelisk_ (B. 227); indeed, in
the earliest impressions of this plate the black of the bur is too
pronounced, and only after it had been printed from till this effect
had merged and blended with the etched lines was the right effect
attained. Here the obelisk gives character to the design; and in the
_Landscape with a Square Tower_ (B. 218) a building dominates,--an old
tower of rather blunted outlines, such as Rembrandt loved to crown dark
hills with in the visionary landscapes of his painting.
Another old tower occurs, less prominently, in the _Farm with Trees
and a Tower_ (B. 223), a long, oblong plate, of great beauty for its
pattern of light and shade. Part of the sky is shadowed, and the last
light, before a shower pours over the trees, illuminates the foliage
on one side. In the first two states there is a small cupola on the
tower; but Rembrandt, no doubt rightly, judged that the design would
be improved by lopping it off. The change certainly subdues the local
character of the scene.
Another long oblong of perhaps greater beauty is the _Gold-weigher’s
Field_ of 1651 (B. 234). This is all air and sun and space, the
etched lines light and open, with dry-point adding a kind of gleam and
vibration to the fertile fields. It is a revelation of what a great
artist can do, unaided by tone or color, with a scene that to the
average eye would be tame enough. There is a sense, too, of the riches
of the earth, the farmer’s pride in broad acres and growing crops,
which gives a human touch, never absent from Rembrandt’s work.
In contrast with this is another plate of the previous year--the _Three
Gabled Cottages_ (B. 217)--where the dry-point is freely used to give
color and softness to the thatched roofs, checkered with the shadow of
an old tree. But it is the gratefulness of shadow in the noonday, not
its gloom, which is the motive of the etching.
The last group of landscapes are in pure dry-point. It is interesting
to compare one of the earlier bitten plates with the _Road by the
Canal_ (B. 221), delicious in its freshness and spontaneous effect, or
the _Clump of Trees with a Vista_ (B. 222). Of this last there is a
first state with a mere indication of part of the design; the trees,
with the peep through the thicket, seem to have been an afterthought.
_The Wood over Palings_ (B. 364), the principal one of several
unfinished studies on one plate, has velvety dry-point in the foliage.
It is a plate that seems to have served for inspiration to Andrew
Geddes, the Scotch artist who was one of the first to inaugurate the
revival of etching in the nineteenth century and to realize once
again--what had been so unaccountably forgotten since Rembrandt’s
time--the possibilities and beauty of the dry-point method.
[Illustration: REMBRANDT. THE GOLD-WEIGHER’S FIELD
“This is all air and sun and space, the etched lines light and open,
with dry-point adding a kind of gleam and vibration to the fertile
fields. It is a revelation of what a great artist can do, unaided by
tone or color, with a scene that to the average eye would be tame
enough. There is a sense, too, of the riches of the earth, the farmer’s
pride in broad acres and growing crops, which gives a human touch,
never absent from Rembrandt’s work.” Laurence Binyon.
Size of the original etching, 4¾ × 12⅝ inches]
[Illustration: REMBRANDT. LANDSCAPE WITH A MILKMAN
This etching, like _The Wood over Palings_, has velvety dry-point
in the foliage, and may have suggested to Andrew Geddes, the Scotch
artist who was one of the first to inaugurate the revival of etching
in the nineteenth century and to realize once again--what had been so
unaccountably forgotten since Rembrandt’s time--the possibilities and
beauty of the dry-point method.
Size of the original etching, 2⁹⁄₁₆ × 6⅞ inches]
And so the series comes to an end, and landscape disappears from
the master’s work, save as a background to figure-compositions. One of
these backgrounds may be noticed for its special interest. About 1653
Rembrandt took up a copperplate already etched by Hercules Seghers--a
_Tobias and the Angel_ (after a composition of Elsheimer’s)--and
transformed it into a _Flight into Egypt_. Suppressing the two figures,
which were of very large size in proportion to the design, he masked
the traces of them by a mass of trees, put in his own figures on a much
smaller scale, and by the most vigorous use of the dry-point wrought
the whole into harmony. The treatment of shadowy masses of foliage
reminds us how little there is of this element of landscape in the
etchings we have been considering. There is nothing of that feeling for
the majesty and mystery of leafy forest-trees which Claude expressed
so beautifully in the _Bouvier_ etching, and still more in his sepia
drawings. Critics have also remarked on other limitations of landscape
interest in Rembrandt--the absence of seas and water in movement, the
comparative absence of wind and weather, in his etchings.
For all that, when we think of the other Dutch etchers of landscape,
we realize how far he towers over those who professed no other
subject,--over Molyn. Ruysdael, Everdingen, Waterloo, and Italianizers
like Both.
Hercules Seghers is the one who showed most variety and temperament;
and his work evidently had a great interest for Rembrandt. He was
a curious experimenter, and though he rarely seems quite master of
his intentions, he was the antithesis of those landscape artists,
so frequent, who “take out a patent,” as has been said, for some
particular corner or aspect of nature, and never do anything else but
repeat their favorite theme with variations.
With Rembrandt landscape was a kind of interlude and holiday from more
serious design. We feel it in the sunny temper which pervades the
majority of the etchings. But how far superior he is to all the rest
in his sensitiveness to beauty! As we have seen, he is not greatly
interested in the details of landscape form. We find scribbles and
shapelessness in his foliage and plants; but his grasp of essential
truths overrides all criticism of this kind, and always and everywhere
we feel his intense joy in expressing light. The etchings of his
contemporaries seem cold and hueless, without air or sun, beside his.
I find it hard to express a preference among the series. The _Three
Trees_ stands by itself, but there are others which touch one with a
more vivid charm. Turning from one to another, I find each arresting
the eye with some particular beauty, though the set of oblong plates,
from the _Cottage and Hay-barn_ to the _Gold-weigher’s Field_, contain,
I think, the most delight; they are those in which all Holland seems to
lie before us, with its pastures and its many peaceful waters.
The landscape of Holland, with its level distances and low horizon, has
inexhaustible attractions for the painter of skies and atmosphere. To
the born designer it is less stimulating. One of the things that most
impress in any representative exhibition of Rembrandt’s etchings is the
extraordinary variety and freshness of his designing. The proportions
of the plate, upright, square, or oblong; the relation of the figures
to the frame; the proportion of light to dark; the use of tone and
line;--all these show a constant variety. Those who, when they think of
Rembrandt, call up the image of a dark panel with light concentrated
on a head or group in the middle of it, find a series of the etchings
quite subversive of their preconception.
Now to an inventive designer like Rembrandt the resources of the Dutch
landscape offered but little. Where he blends landscape with figure,
as in the infinitely pathetic _Burial of Christ_, or the _Woman of
Samaria_, or the _Christ Returning with His Parents from the Temple_,
though the human types, as always, are taken from the world around the
artist, the landscape is drawn from his imagination, or borrowed from
others. In the _St. Jerome_ (B. 104) the background is no doubt taken
from a Venetian drawing. Such methods were, indeed, inevitable, since
one cannot go on weaving designs of human forms and landscape material
where the typical form of this last is little more than a straight
line, or a series of straight lines, across the field of sight.
One may wonder, perhaps with regret, why Rembrandt did not for once
etch a landscape of his inner vision, like those paintings at Cassel
and at Brunswick. It may be that he felt that for such tone-effects
etching was not the appropriate medium. Had he lived in a later day,
he might have used mezzotint, as Turner did in his _Liber Studiorum_;
and certainly that process should in his hands have yielded marvelous
results.
But we may well be content with these landscape etchings which he has
left us. They express the genius of the Dutch country, the “virtue”
of it, as Pater would have said, as no other of his countrymen has
expressed it. The series of plates in which Legros has expressed the
genius of the country of Northern France, with its poplar-bordered
streams and sunny pastures, has something of the same native quality.
Each of these masters seems to have seized an essence which no one
not born of the soil, however enamoured of a land’s beauty, can quite
possess and make his own.
What is it that gives these landscapes their enduring charm, and why
do we rank them so high? Many a later etcher has had equal skill with
needle and acid; some have had even greater. Whistler is more delicate,
perhaps, more exquisite, more unexpected in his gift of spacing. Yet
neither Whistler nor any other master of etching has the secret power
of Rembrandt. I say “secret,” because we cannot argue about it or
explain it. It lay in what Rembrandt was: in the depth and greatness
of his humanity. When we have wondered at the sensitive instrument of
his eyesight, when we have exalted his magical draughtsmanship, when we
have admired his instinctive fidelity to the capacity and limitations
of the medium used, when we have recognized the profound integrity of
his art, there is still something left over, beyond analysis, and that
the rarest thing of all.
How it is we cannot say, but there has passed into these little works
an intangible presence, of which we cannot choose but be conscious,
though it was not consciously expressed,--the spirit of one of the
fullest, deepest natures that ever breathed. Whatever Rembrandt does,
however slight, something of that spirit escapes him, some tinge of
his experience,--of those thoughts, “too deep for tears,” which things
meaner than the meanest flowers could stir in him.
GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIRANESI
(1720-1778)
PART I
BY BENJAMIN BURGES MOORE
The life of Piranesi was eminently that of a man of genius,
characterized by all the peculiarities ascribable to genius, perhaps as
failures of human nature, but also distinguished by that which imparts
to its possessor an imperishable renown. Those peculiarities are worthy
of notice, as they bear so much on the character of his work; but his
works, wonderful as they are in point of execution, are less to be
admired for this than for the interest of the subjects he chose, _and
that which he imparted to them_. In an age of frivolities, he boldly
and single-handed dared to strike out for himself a new road to fame;
and in dedicating his talents to the recording and illustrating from
ancient writers the mouldering records of former times, he met with a
success as great as it was deserved, _combining, as he did, all that
was beautiful in art with all that was interesting in the remains of
antiquity_.”
These words were prefixed to an account of Piranesi’s career published
in London during the year 1831 in “The Library of the Fine Arts,” and
based upon a sketch of his life written by his son, Francesco, but
never published, although the manuscript at that period had passed
into the hands of the publishers, Priestly and Weale, only to be
subsequently lost or destroyed.
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIRANESI
From the engraving by F. Polanzani, dated 1750
It is impossible to study this little known portrait without being
convinced of its accurate likeness. It certainly conveys an impression
of the man’s dæmonic force, which is not given by the more frequently
reproduced statue executed by Angelini.
Size of the original etching, 15¼ × 11¼ inches]
[Illustration: PIRANESI. ARCH OF SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS
A rendering almost as faithful as an architect’s drawing, which
Piranesi’s unfailing genius has transformed into an enchanting work of
art. This arch stands in the Roman Forum. It was dedicated 203 A.D. in
commemoration of victories over the Parthians.
Size of the original etching, 18⅜ × 27¾ inches]
Eighty years, therefore, have passed since this evaluation of the great
Italian etcher was written, yet to-day he is no more appreciated at
his full worth than he was then. At all times it has been not uncommon
for an artist to attain a kind of wide and enduring renown, although
estimated at his true value and for his real excellences by only a few;
but of such a fate it would be difficult to select a more striking
or illustrious example than Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Living and
dying in the Eternal City, Rome, to whose august monuments his fame
is inseparably linked, he was the author of the prodigious number of
over thirteen hundred large plates, combining the arts of etching and
engraving, which, aside from their intrinsic merit as works of art, are
of incalculable value on account of the inexhaustible supply of classic
motives which they offer to all designers, and to which they, more than
any other influence, have given currency.
These prints, in early and beautiful proofs, are still to be bought at
relatively low figures, while each year sees the sale, by thousands,
of impressions from the steeled plates still existing at Rome in the
Royal Calcography;--impressions which, although in themselves still
sufficiently remarkable to be worth possessing, are yet so debased as
to constitute a libel upon the real powers of Piranesi.
The wide diffusion of these ignoble prints, and the fact that
Piranesi’s output was so great as to place his work within the reach
of the slenderest purse, are largely responsible for the failure of
the general public to apprehend his real greatness; for rarity calls
attention to merit, to which in fact it often gives a value entirely
fictitious, while there is always difficulty in realizing that things
seen frequently and in quantities may have qualities far outweighing
those of work which has aroused interest by its scarcity. This is why
the fame of Piranesi is widely spread, although his best and most
characteristic work is almost unknown, and his real genius generally
unrecognized.
Born in Venice, October 4th, 1720, and named after Saint John
the Baptist, Piranesi was the son of a mason, blind in one eye,
and of Laura Lucchesi. His maternal uncle was an architect and
engineer,--for in those days the same person frequently combined the
two professions,--who had executed various water-works and at least
one church. From his uncle the young Giovanni Battista received his
earliest instruction in things artistic, for which he appears to have
displayed a conspicuously precocious aptitude. Before he was seventeen
he had attracted sufficient attention to assure him success in his
father’s profession, but Rome had already fired his imagination, and
aroused that impetuous determination which marked his entire career.
His yearning after Rome report says to have been first aroused by a
young Roman girl whom he loved, but, however that may be, he overcame
the determined opposition of his parents, and, in 1738, at the age of
eighteen, set out for the papal city to study architecture, engraving,
and in general the fine arts; for even in those degenerate days there
were left some traces of that multiform talent which distinguished
the artists of the Renaissance. When he reached the goal of his
longing, the impression produced by the immortal city on so fervid an
imagination must have been so deep, so overwhelming, as to annihilate
all material considerations, although they could not have been other
than harassing, since the allowance received from his father was
only six Spanish piastres a month, or some six or seven lire of the
Italian money of to-day. By what expedients he managed to live we
cannot even conjecture, but it may be supposed that he was boarded,
apprentice-wise, by the masters under whom he studied. These teachers
were Scalfarotto and Valeriani, a noted master of perspective and a
pupil of one Ricci of Belluno, who had acquired from the great French
painter and lover of Rome, Claude Lorrain, the habit of painting
highly imaginative pictures composed of elements drawn from the ruins
of the Roman Campagna. This style was transmitted to Piranesi by
Valeriani, without doubt stimulating that passionate appreciation of
the melancholy grandeur of ruined Rome already growing in his mind, and
afterward to fill his entire life and work.
[Illustration: PIRANESI. ARCH OF VESPASIAN
In this, as in many of Piranesi’s compositions, the figures are frankly
posing, but their presence adds such charm to the scene that none could
wish them absent.
Size of the original etching, 19 × 27⅜ inches]
[Illustration: PIRANESI. ARCH OF TRAJAN AT BENEVENTO, IN THE KINGDOM OF
NAPLES
A fine rendering of that air of glory which the most dilapidated
fragments of a Roman Arch of Triumph never lose. The Arch of Trajan,
one of the finest of ancient arches, was dedicated A.D. 114. It
is of white marble, 48 feet high and 30½ wide, with a single arch
measuring 27 by 16½ feet. The arch is profusely sculptured with reliefs
illustrating Trajan’s life and his Dacian triumphs.
Size of the original etching, 18⅜ × 27½ inches]
At the same time, he acquired a thorough knowledge of etching and
engraving under the Sicilian, Giuseppe Vasi, whose etchings first
aroused the great Goethe’s longing for Italy. At the age of twenty,
thinking, probably not without foundation, that this master was
concealing from him the secret of the correct use of acid in etching,
Piranesi is reported, in his anger, to have made an attempt to murder
Vasi. Such an act would not be out of keeping with the character
of the fiery Venetian, for, before leaving Venice, he had already
been described by a fellow-pupil as “_stravagante_,” extravagant, or
fantastic, a term not restricted by Italians to a man’s handling of
money, but applied rather to character as a whole, in which connection
it usually denotes the less fortunate side of that complete and
magnificent surrender to an overwhelming passion which aroused so
lively an admiration of the Italian nature in the great French writer,
Stendhal. When we, tame moderns, judge the “extravagance” of such
characters, it is only fair to recollect that, with all their faults
and crimes, these same unbridled Italians were capable of heroic
virtues, unknown to our pale and timid age. Men like Cellini and
Piranesi, who had much in common, are simply incarnate emotional force,
a fact which is, at the same time, the cause of their follies and the
indispensable condition of their genius.
After this quarrel Piranesi returned to Venice, where he attempted to
gain a livelihood by the practice of architecture. There is reason
to believe that at this period he studied under Tiepolo; at any rate
there exist in his published works a few curious, rather rococo plates
entirely different from his usual manner, and very markedly influenced
by the style of Tiepolo’s etching. He also studied painting with the
Polanzani who is responsible for that portrait of him which forms
the frontispiece to the first edition of “Le Antichità Romane,” and
gives so vivid an impression of the dæmonic nature of the man. Meeting
with little success in Venice, he went to Naples, after returning to
Rome, attracted principally by archæological interests. He stayed at
Herculaneum, Pompeii, and Pæstum, where at this time, undoubtedly, he
made the drawings of the temples afterward etched and published by his
son. The drawings for these etchings of Pæstum, among the best known
of the Piranesi plates, are now in the Soane Museum in London.
[Illustration: PIRANESI. THE BASILICA, PÆSTUM
Size of the original etching, 17¾ × 26⅝ inches]
[Illustration: PIRANESI. THE TEMPLE OF NEPTUNE AT PÆSTUM
Size of the original etching, 19½ × 26⅜ inches]
Having decided that he had no vocation for painting, which he
definitely abandoned at this time, Piranesi returned to Rome, and
settled there permanently. His father now wished him to return to
Venice, but he was altogether unwilling to do so, and replied,
characteristically, that Rome being the seat of all his affections
it would be impossible for him to live separated from her monuments.
He intimated that in preference to leaving, he would give up his
allowance, a suggestion upon which his father acted promptly by
stopping all remittances, so that, estranged from his relatives,
Piranesi was now entirely dependent upon his own resources for a
livelihood.
His poverty and suffering at this period were undoubtedly great, but
his indomitable nature could be crippled by no material hardships.
He devoted himself entirely to etching and engraving, and, when
twenty-one, published his first composition. At this time he was living
in the Corso opposite the Doria-Pamphili Palace, but even if the
neighborhood was illustrious, it is not pleasant to think what wretched
garret must have hidden the misery of his struggling genius. His
first important and dated work, the “Antichità Romane de’ Tempi della
Republica, etc.,” was published in 1748, with a dedication to the noted
antiquary, Monsignore Bottari, chaplain to Pope Benedict XIV. This
work was received with great favor, as the first successful attempt to
engrave architecture with taste, and from the day of its appearance
Piranesi may be said to have been famous. However, he still experienced
the utmost difficulty in finding the money necessary to subsist and to
procure the materials requisite to his work. Yet, despite his terrible
poverty, his labor was unceasing and tireless to a degree that we can
now scarcely conceive. It must be borne in mind that, in addition
to etching and engraving, he was engaged in the extensive study of
archæology, which led him to undertake many remarkable researches. He
became a noted archæologist of great erudition, as is shown by numerous
controversies with famous antiquarians of the day. Some idea of the
copiousness of his knowledge can be gained from the fact that his
argument covers a hundred folio pages in that controversy in which he
upheld the originality of Roman art against those who claimed it to be
a mere offshoot of Grecian genius. In the preface to one of his books,
he refers to it as the result of “what I have been able to gather from
the course of many years of indefatigable and most exact observations,
excavations, and researches, things which have never been undertaken in
the past.” This statement is quite true, and when we realize that the
preparation of a single plate, such as the plan of the Campus Martius,
would, in itself, have taken most men many years of work, we can only
feel uncomprehending amazement at the capacity for work possessed by
this man of genius.
[Illustration: PIRANESI. THE TEMPLE OF CONCORD
From this plate it is possible to gain an idea of the greater beauty
possessed by ruined Rome when still shrouded in vegetation. The Arch of
Septimius Severus is seen in the middle distance
Size of the original etching, 18⅛ × 27⅛ inches]
[Illustration: PIRANESI. SITE OF THE ANCIENT ROMAN FORUM
A very interesting historical document which makes it possible to
realize an aspect of the Forum at present difficult to conceive
Size of the original, 14⅞ × 23¼ inches]
The very spirit of imperial Rome would seem to have filled Piranesi,
making him its own, so that the vanished splendor was to him ever
present and added to the strange melancholy of the vine-grown ruins
which alone remained from the “grandeur that was Rome.” In every age
and in every province most Italians have been animated by a lively
sense of their direct descent from classic Rome,--a feeling that its
fame was peculiarly their inheritance in a way true of no other people,
so that this glorious descent was their greatest pride and claim to
leadership. In the darkest days of oppression and servitude, when Italy
sat neglected and disconsolate among her chains, there were never
lacking nobler souls who kept alive a sense of what was fitting in the
descendants of classic Rome, and took therein a melancholy pride. But
no Italian was ever more completely an ancient Roman than Piranesi,
who certainly, in despite of his Venetian birth, considered himself a
“Roman citizen.” This sentiment played an important part in, perhaps,
the most characteristic act of his whole life, namely, his fantastic
marriage, of which he himself left an account not unworthy of Cellini.
He was drawing in the Forum one Sunday, when his attention was
attracted by a boy and girl, who proved to be the children of the
gardener to Prince Corsini. The girl’s type of features instantly
convinced Piranesi that she was a direct descendant of the ancient
Romans, and so aroused his emotions that on the spot he asked if it
were possible for her to marry him. Her exact reply is not recorded,
although it must have conveyed the fact that she was free, but it can
surprise no one to hear that the girl was thoroughly frightened by
such sudden and overpowering determination. His hasty resolution was
confirmed when Piranesi afterward learned that she had a dower of one
hundred and fifty piastres, or some three hundred lire of to-day, a
fact certain to arouse a keen realization both of his poverty and of
the value of money in those days. Without any delay, he proceeded to
ask the girl’s hand in marriage of her parents, who, like the girl,
appear to have been so terrified and overwhelmed by the cyclonic nature
of the man as to be incapable of the slightest resistance. Whatever may
have been the motives of all the parties concerned, the fact is that
Piranesi was married to the descendant of the ancient Romans exactly
five days after he first laid eyes on her classic features! Immediately
after the wedding, having placed side by side his wife’s dowry and
his own finished plates, together with his unfinished designs, he
informed his presumably astonished bride that their entire fortune was
now before them, but that in three years’ time her portion should be
doubled; which proved to be no boast but a promise that he actually
fulfilled.
According to report, he told his friends that he was marrying in
order to obtain the money required for the completion of his great
book on Roman Antiquities. However, even if he did marry for money,
he maintained all his life, to the poor woman’s great discomfort, as
jealous a watch over his wife as could be expected of the most amorous
of husbands; so his affections as well as his vanity may, perhaps,
have been called into play by his marriage. At any rate, his ideas as
to family life were worthy of the most severe Roman _paterfamilias_.
His son, Francesco, born in 1756, relates that, when absorbed in
his studies, he would quite forget the hours for meals, while his
five children, neither daring to interrupt him nor eat without him,
experienced all the miseries of hunger. His domestic coercion and
discipline were doubtless extreme, but the family would seem to have
lived not too unhappily.
[Illustration: PIRANESI. VIEW OF THE “CAMPO VACCINO”
The Site of the Ancient Roman Forum showing the Arch of Septimius
Severus, Columns of the Temple of Jupiter Tonans and of the Temple of
Concord and, in the distance, the Arch of Titus, the Colosseum, etc.,
etc.
Size of the original etching, 16⅛ × 21½ inches]
[Illustration: PIRANESI. THE ARCH OF TITUS
In this plate can be seen a favorite device of Piranesi’s, which is
to enhance the size and stability of massive architecture by placing
on some part of the ruin a human figure in active motion. The Arch of
Titus was built in commemoration of the taking of Jerusalem. The vault
is richly coffered and sculptured, and the interior faces of the piers
display reliefs of Titus in triumph, with the plunder of the temple at
Jerusalem.
Size of the original etching, 18⅝ × 27¾ inches]
Every two years, if not oftener, a monumental book would make its
appearance, to say nothing of separate plates, and Piranesi was now a
famous man. With the exception of Winckelmann, he did more than any
one to spread a knowledge and love of classic art, while his learning
and his researches aroused a widespread appreciation of the nobility
of Roman ruins, thereby largely contributing to their excavation
and protection. His exhaustive acquaintance with antiquity and his
impassioned admiration for its beauty, combined with his singular and
interesting character, caused him to mingle with all that was most
remarkable in the world of arts and letters in Rome, at the same time
bringing him into relation with whatever foreigners of distinction
might visit the city. He was, however, then and always a poor man, for
his first important work, “Le Antichità Romane,” sold in the complete
set for the ridiculous pittance of sixteen paoli, or about seventeen
lire, while later the Pope was wont to pay him only a thousand lire for
eighteen gigantic volumes of etchings. The very fact that his fertility
was so enormous, lowered the price it was possible to ask for his
plates during his lifetime, just as since his death it has militated
against a correct valuation of his talent. Forty years after he came to
Rome, he wrote to a correspondent that he had made, on an average, some
seven thousand lire of modern money a year, out of which he had had to
support his family, pay for the materials required in his business, and
gather together that collection of antiquities which was a part of his
stock in trade.
The rapidity with which Piranesi worked, and the number of plates, all
of unusually large dimensions, which he executed, are so extraordinary
as to leave one bewildered by the thought of such incomprehensible
industry. Competent authorities vary in their statements as to the
number of plates produced by Piranesi, but accepting as correct the
lowest figure, which is thirteen hundred, it will be found that for
thirty-nine years he produced, on a rough average, one plate every two
weeks. Ordinarily, great productiveness will be found to have damaged
the quality of the work accomplished, but this is not true in the case
of Piranesi. Although his work is of varying merit, like that of all
true artists, and even comprises examples lacking his usual excellence,
there is no plate which betrays any signs of hurry or careless
workmanship, while in many the meticulous finish is remarkable. Such
an output is in itself phenomenal, yet in preparation for these works
he found the time to pursue archæological researches and studies, in
themselves sufficiently exhaustive to have occupied the life of an
ordinary man. Moreover, in his capacity of architect, he executed
various important restorations, including those of the Priorato di
Malta, where he is buried, and of Santa Maria del Popolo. Most of
his restorations were undertaken by command of the Venetian, Pope
Clement XIII, who bestowed on him the title of Knight, or Cavaliere,
a distinction of which he was proud, as he was of his membership in
the “Royal Society of Antiquaries” in London, of which he was made an
honorary fellow in 1757.
[Illustration: PIRANESI. THE ARCH OF TITUS
Showing the relief of the Triumph of Titus and the carrying away of the
Seven-branched Candle-stick from Jerusalem. A particularly beautiful
and not very well-known plate, which clearly shows Piranesi’s fine
sense of composition, and his keen appreciation of that singularly
picturesque contrast between the ancient ruins and the more modern
buildings in which they were then embedded.
Size of the original etching, 15⅞ × 24¼ inches]
[Illustration: PIRANESI. FAÇADE OF ST. JOHN LATERAN
Piranesi, almost without exception, placed a written description of the
scene on every one of his plates, using it as a decorative feature.
In this case it proves an integral part of a group which makes an
interesting etching out of what otherwise would have been a simple
architectural drawing.
Size of the original etching, 18⅞ × 27½ inches]
The question of how much assistance Piranesi received in the execution
of his plates is an interesting one. In a few prints, the figures
were etched by one Jean Barbault, whose name sometimes appears on
the margins with that of Piranesi. The latter’s son, Francesco,
was taught design and architecture by his father, whose manner he
reproduced exactly, although none of the numerous etchings which he
left behind him show any signs of those qualities which constitute the
greatness of his parent’s work. The daughter, Laura, also etched in the
manner of her father and has left some views of Roman monuments. These
two children, together with one of his pupils, Piroli, undoubtedly
aided him, but their moderate skill is a proof that their assistance
could not have been carried very far. That his pupils never formed a
sort of factory for the production of work passing under their master’s
name, as happened with some famous painters, is made certain by the
fact that he established no school which caught his manner and produced
work reminiscent or imitative of his. His unparalleled output must,
therefore, be almost entirely a result of his own unaided labor.
Piranesi died at Rome, surrounded by his family, on the ninth of
November, 1778, of a slight disorder rendered serious by neglect. His
body was first buried in the church of St. Andrea della Fratte, but was
soon afterward removed to that Priory of Santa Maria Aventina which
he had himself restored. Here his family erected a statue of him,
carved by one Angelini after the design of Piranesi’s pupil, Piroli.
Baron Stolberg writes in his “Travels”: “Here is a fine statue of the
architect Piranesi, as large as life, placed there by his son. It is
the work of a living sculptor, Angelini, and though it certainly cannot
be compared with the best antiquities, it still possesses real merit.”
The singular figure of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, with his power, his
fire, and his passionate love of Roman grandeur, not unworthy of some
great period of rebirth, appears all the more phenomenal when viewed
in relation to his times and his surroundings. The corruption of the
pontifical city had been flagrant since the days when it filled with
scorn and loathing the wonderful “Regrets” penned by the exiled French
poet, Joachim du Bellay, whose homesick heart took less pleasure in the
hard marble and audacious fronts of Roman palaces than in the delicate
slate of the distant dwelling built by his Angevin ancestors,--but
its depravity had at least been replete with virility and splendor.
After the Council of Trent, however, the Counter-Reformation spread
over the Roman prelacy a wave of external reform, which left the inner
rottenness untouched, but veiled it decently with all the stifling and
petty vices of hypocrisy, until Roman life gradually grew to be that
curious androgynous existence which we see reflected so clearly in
Casanova’s memoirs. During the eighteenth century, when Piranesi lived,
the whole of Italy had sunk to depths of degradation such as few great
races have ever known, not because the people were hopelessly decayed,
for their great spirit never died, but lived to flame forth in 1848
and create that marvelous present-day regeneration of Italy, which is
perhaps the most astonishing example of the rebirth of a once great
but apparently dead nation that the world has yet seen. The debased
condition of Italy at that time was caused, rather, by centuries of
priestly and foreign oppression, which had stifled the entire country
until it had fallen into a state of torpor little different to
death. Any sign of intellectual or political activity, however slight
or innocent, had long been ruthlessly repressed by Austria and the
petty tyrants who ruled the states of Italy. Since men must find
some occupation to fill their lives, or else go mad, in a land where
every noble and even normal employment was forbidden, the Italian of
the day was forced to confine himself within the limits of an idle
inanity, concerned only with petty questions and petty interests. It is
difficult for people of to-day to conceive the abject futility to which
such oppression and enforced inactivity can reduce an entire nation.
In France the comparative freedom enjoyed under the old régime gave to
the eighteenth century, in its most frivolous and futile moments, a
charming grace utterly denied to enslaved and priest-ridden Italy. To
realize the situation, it is only necessary to consider for a moment
the institution of the cicisbeo, and to read Parini’s “Il Giorno.”
In this world of little loveless lovers, of sonneteers and collector
academicians, the figure of Piranesi looms gigantic, like a creature
of another world. He had a purity of taste in artistic matters quite
unknown to his contemporaries, while his originality, his passion, and
his vigor seem indeed those of some antique Roman suddenly come to life
to serve as pattern for a people fallen on dire days.
[Illustration: PIRANESI. VIEW OF THE RUINS OF THE GOLDEN HOUSE OF NERO
COMMONLY CALLED THE TEMPLE OF PEACE
A striking image of the romantic desolation in Roman ruins long since
removed by modern research
Size of the original etching, 19¼ × 28 inches]
[Illustration: PIRANESI. INTERIOR OF THE PANTHEON, ROME
A good illustration of Piranesi’s originality in choosing a point of
view so curious as to give a novel air to the best known subjects
The Pantheon, completed by Agrippa B.C. 27, consecrated to the divine
ancestors of the Julian family, and now dedicated as the Church of
Santa Maria Rotonda, is 142½ feet in diameter and its height, to
the apex of the great hemispherical coffered dome, is the same.
The lighting of the interior is solely from an opening, 28 feet in
diameter, at the summit of the dome. The dome is practically solid
concrete.
Size of the original etching, 18⅞ × 22¼ inches]
Francesco Piranesi, after the death of his father, sold the collection
formed by him to Gustavus III of Sweden in return for an annuity. He
continued the publication of etchings, many, although unacknowledged,
from drawings by his father, and was assisted in his archæological
research by Pope Pius VI. After various rather dishonorable
transactions, as spy to the court of Sweden, he started for Paris by
sea in 1798, having with him the plates of his father’s etchings,
and accompanied in all probability by his sister Laura. The ship on
which he traveled was captured and all it contained taken as a prize
by a British man-of-war, England and France being then engaged in
hostilities. By some curious chance, the English admiral knew the
worth of Piranesi’s work, and persuaded the officers who had made the
capture to restore the plates to his son, and in addition obtained, by
some still more curious chance, both the admission of the plates into
French territory free of duty, and government protection of Francesco’s
ownership. At Paris, Francesco Piranesi and his brother, Pietro, tried
to found both an academy and a manufactory of terra-cotta. He also
republished his father’s etchings and his own, thus creating the first
French edition, already inferior in quality to the original Roman
impressions. He died in Paris, in 1810, in straitened circumstances.
The plates of both the father’s and the son’s work passed into the
hands of the publishers Firmin-Didot, who republished them once more.
The original plates, which at one time were rented for almost nothing
to any one who wished them for a day’s printing, finally found a
refuge, as before said, in the Royal Calcography at Rome, where they
have been coated with steel and rebitten, so that it is now possible to
print as many copies every year as tourists and architects may desire.
It can, therefore, be seen that, most unfortunately, the world is
flooded with countless impressions which, even if they have value for
an architect as documents, or still retain enough character to give
them some merit as pictures, are yet so utterly changed and debased as
to do the gravest and most irreparable injustice to the reputation of
the genius who created them.
[Illustration: PIRANESI. PIAZZA NAVONA, ROME
This plate shows how Piranesi could render a complicated view without
confusion and, at the same time, give an air of novelty to a well-known
place
Size of the original etching, 18⅜ × 27⅝ inches]
[Illustration: PIRANESI. INTERIOR OF THE VILLA OF MÆCENAS, AT TIVOLI
An example of Piranesi’s skill in making a rather ordinary scene appear
dramatic, and arousing a sense of vastness greater than that imparted
by the actual building
Size of the original etching, 16⅝ × 23⅝ inches]