Jacques Callot  

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"Why can't I get enough of your weird fantastic pages, you cheeky master!"--"Jaques Callot" in Fantasy Pieces in Callot's Manner (1814) by E. T. A. Hoffmann


"The irony which mocks man's miserable actions by placing man and beast in opposition to each other only dwells in a deep spirit, and thus Callot's grotesque figures, which are created from man and beast, reveal to the penetrating observer all the secret implications that lie hidden under the veil of the comical." --Hoffmann on Callot in Fantasy Pieces in Callot's Manner (1814) by E. T. A. Hoffmann


"The grotesque, also, has a natural alliance with the horrible; [...] The works of Callot, though evincing a wonderful fertility of mind, are in like manner regarded with surprise rather than pleasure. [...] in examining microscopically the diablerie of Callot's pieces, we only discover fresh instances of ingenuity thrown away, and of fancy pushed into the regions of absurdity. [...] a soil [that] produces nothing but wild and fantastic weeds."--"On the Supernatural in Fictitious Composition" (1827) by Sir Walter Scott

The Miseries and Disasters of War (1633) by Jacques Callot  With the 16th century The Miseries and Disasters of War, French 17th artist Jacques Callot anticipated Goya's Disasters of War, both of them criticizing the horrors of war in their art
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The Miseries and Disasters of War (1633) by Jacques Callot
With the 16th century The Miseries and Disasters of War, French 17th artist Jacques Callot anticipated Goya's Disasters of War, both of them criticizing the horrors of war in their art

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Jacques Callot (1592 - 1635) was a French printmaker, draftsman and caricaturist. He is an important figure in the development of the old master print and major artist of the grotesque. He made over 1,400 brilliantly detailed etchings that chronicled the life of his period, featuring soldiers, clowns, drunkards, gypsies, beggars, dwarves, as well as court life. He also etched many religious and military images, and many prints featured extensive landscapes in their background. He deeply inspired E. T. A. Hoffmann, who dedicated Fantasy Pieces in Callot's Manner (1814) to him.

Contents

Life and training

Callot was born and died in Nancy, the capital of Lorraine, (an independent state on France's North-Eastern border, now part of France). He came from a prominent family (his father was master of ceremonies at the court of the Duke), and he often describes himself as having noble status in the inscriptions to his prints. At the age of fifteen he was apprenticed to a goldsmith, but soon after travelled to Rome where he learned engraving from an expatriate Frenchman, Philippe Thomassin. He probably then studied etching with Antonio Tempesta in Florence, where he lived from 1612-1621. Over 2,000 preparatory drawings and studies for prints survive, but no paintings by him are known, and he probably never trained as a painter.

During his period in Florence he became an independent master, and worked often for the Medici court. After the death of Cosimo II de' Medici in 1621, he returned to Nancy where he lived for the rest of his life, visiting Paris and the Netherlands later in the decade. He was commissioned by the courts of Lorriane, France and Spain, and by publishers, mostly in Paris. Although he remained in the backwater of Nancy, his prints were widely distributed through Europe; Rembrandt was a keen collector of them.

Technical innovations: échoppe, new hard ground, stopping-out

His technique was exceptional, and was helped by important technical advances he made. He developed the échoppe, a type of etching-needle with a slanting oval section at the end, which enabled etchers to create a swelling line, as engravers were able to do.

He also seems to have been responsible for an improved, harder, recipe for the etching ground, using lute-makers varnish rather than a wax-based formula. This enabled lines to be more deeply bitten, prolonging the life of the plate in printing, and also greatly reducing the risk of "foul-biting", where acid gets through the ground to the plate where it is not intended to, producing spots or blotches on the image. Previously the risk of foul-biting had always been at the back of an etcher's mind, preventing him from investing too much time on a single plate that risked being ruined in the biting process. Now etchers could do the highly detailed work that was previously the monopoly of engravers, and Callot made full use of the new possibilities.

He also made more extensive and sophisticated use of multiple "stoppings-out" than previous etchers had done. This is the technique of letting the acid bite lightly over the whole plate, then stopping-out those parts of the work which the artist wishes to keep light in tone by covering them with ground before bathing the plate in acid again. He achieved unprecedented subtlety in effects of distance and light and shade by careful control of this process. Most of his prints were relatively small - up to about six inches or 15 cm on their longest dimension.

One of his followers, the Parisian Abraham Bosse spread Callot's innovations all over Europe with the first published manual of etching, which was translated into Italian, Dutch, German and English.

Miseries of War

See The Miseries and Disasters of War

His most famous prints are his two series of prints each on "the Miseries and Misfortunes of War".

Other notable works

See also




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