Engraving: Its Origin, Processes, and History
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Title: Engraving: Its Origin, Processes, and History
Author: comte Henri Delaborde
Contributor: William Walker
Translator: Robert Alan Mowbray Stevenson
Release date: June 13, 2013 [eBook #42936]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENGRAVING: ITS ORIGIN, PROCESSES, AND HISTORY ***
THE FINE-ART LIBRARY.
EDITED BY JOHN C. L. SPARKES,
_Principal of the National Art Training School, South Kensington
Museum_.
ENGRAVING:
_ITS ORIGIN, PROCESSES, AND HISTORY._
BY
LE VICOMTE HENRI DELABORDE.
TRANSLATED BY
R. A. M. STEVENSON.
_With an Additional Chapter on English Engraving_,
BY
WILLIAM WALKER.
CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED:
_LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK & MELBOURNE._
1886.
[ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.]
EDITORIAL NOTE.
The author of "La Gravure," of which work the present volume is a
translation, has devoted so little attention to English Engraving, that
it has been thought advisable to supplement his somewhat inadequate
remarks by a special chapter dealing with this subject.
In accordance with this view, Mr. William Walker has contributed an
account of the rise and progress of the British School of Engraving,
which, together with his Chronological Table of the better-known
English Engravers, will, we feel sure, add much to the value of the
Work in the eyes of English readers.
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I. THE PROCESSES OF EARLY ENGRAVING. THE BEGINNINGS OF
ENGRAVING IN RELIEF. XYLOGRAPHY AND PRINTING WITH
MOVABLE TYPE 1
II. PLAYING CARDS. THE DOT MANNER 30
III. FIRST ATTEMPTS AT INTAGLIO ENGRAVING. THE NIELLI OF
THE FLORENTINE GOLDSMITHS. PRINTS BY THE ITALIAN AND
GERMAN PAINTER-ENGRAVERS OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 49
IV. LINE ENGRAVING AND WOOD ENGRAVING IN GERMANY AND
ITALY IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 86
V. LINE ENGRAVING AND ETCHING IN THE LOW COUNTRIES, TO
THE SECOND HALF OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 118
VI. THE BEGINNING OF LINE ENGRAVING AND ETCHING IN
FRANCE AND ENGLAND. FIRST ATTEMPTS AT MEZZOTINT. A
GLANCE AT ENGRAVING IN EUROPE BEFORE 1660 150
VII. FRENCH ENGRAVERS IN THE REIGN OF LOUIS XIV 178
VIII. ENGRAVING IN FRANCE AND IN OTHER EUROPEAN
COUNTRIES IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. NEW
PROCESSES: STIPPLE, CRAYON, COLOUR, AND AQUATINT 211
IX. ENGRAVING IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 248
A CHAPTER ON ENGLISH ENGRAVING 287
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF ENGLISH ENGRAVERS 331
INDEX 343
ENGRAVING.
CHAPTER I.
THE PROCESSES OF EARLY ENGRAVING. THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGRAVING
IN RELIEF. XYLOGRAPHY AND PRINTING WITH MOVABLE TYPE.
The nations of antiquity understood and practised engraving, that is
to say, the art of representing things by incised outlines on metal,
stone, or any other rigid substance. Setting aside even those relics of
antiquity in bone or flint which still retain traces of figures drawn
with a sharp-pointed tool, there may yet be found in the Bible and in
Homer accounts of several works executed by the aid of similar methods;
and the characters outlined on the precious stones adorning the
breastplate of the high-priest Aaron, or the scenes represented on the
armour of Achilles, might be quoted amongst the most ancient examples
of the art of engraving. The Egyptians, Greeks, and Etruscans have left
us specimens of goldsmith's work and fragments of all kinds, which, at
any rate, attest the practice of engraving in their countries. Finally,
every one is aware that metal seals and dies of engraved stone were in
common use amongst the Romans.
Engraving, therefore, in the strict sense of the word, is no invention
due to modern civilisation. But many centuries elapsed before man
acquired the art of multiplying printed copies from a single original,
to which art the name of engraving has been extended, so that nowadays
the word signifies the operation of producing a print.
Of engraving thus understood there are two important processes
or methods. By the one, strokes are drawn on a flat surface, and
afterwards laboriously converted by the engraver into ridges,
which, when coated with ink, are printed on the paper in virtue of
their projection. By the other, outlines, shadows, and half-tints
are represented by incisions intended to contain the colouring
matter; while those parts meant to come out white on paper are left
untouched. Wood-cutting, or engraving in relief, is an example of the
first method; while to the second belongs metal-work or copperplate
engraving, which we now call engraving with the burin, or line
engraving.
In order to engrave in relief, a block, not less than an inch thick,
of hard, smooth wood, such as box or pear, is used. On this block
every detail of the design to be engraved is drawn with pen or pencil.
Then such places as are meant to come out white in the print are cut
away with a sharp tool. Thus, only those places that have been covered
beforehand by the pencil or the pen remain at the level of the surface
of the block; they only will be inked by the action of the roller; and
when the block is subjected to the action of the press, they only will
transfer the printing ink to the proof.
This method, earlier than that of the incised line, led to engraving
"in camaïeu," which was skilfully practised in Italy and Germany during
the sixteenth century. As in camaïeu engraving those lines which define
the contours are left as ridges by the cutting away of the surrounding
surface, we may say that in this method (which the Italians call
"chiaroscuro") the usual processes of engraving in relief are employed.
But it is a further object of camaïeu to produce on the paper flat
tints of various depths: that is to say, a scale of tones somewhat
similar to the effect of drawings washed in with Indian ink or sepia,
and touched up with white. Now such a chromatic progression can only
be arrived at by the co-operation of distinct processes. Therefore,
instead of printing from a single surface, separate blocks are employed
for the outlines, shadows, and lights, and a proof is taken by the
successive application of the paper to all these blocks, which are made
to correspond exactly by means of guiding marks.
A third style of engraving in relief, the "early dot manner," was
practised for some time during the period of the Incunabuli, when the
art was, as the root of this Latin word shows, still "in its cradle."
By this method the work was no longer carried out on wood, but on
metal; and the engraver, instead of completely hollowing out those
parts destined to print light, merely pitted them with minute holes,
leaving their bulk in relief. He was content that these masses should
appear upon the paper black, relieved only by the sprinkling of white
dots resulting from the hollows.
We just mention by way of note the process which produced those rare
specimens called "_empreintes en pâte_." All specimens of this work are
anterior in date to the sixteenth century, and belong less strictly to
art than to industry, as the process only consisted in producing on
paper embossed designs strongly suggesting the appearance of ornaments
in embroidery or tapestry. To produce these inevitably coarse figures
a sort of half-liquid, blackish gum or paste was introduced into
the hollow portions of the block before printing. On the block thus
prepared was placed a sheet of paper, previously stained orange, red,
or light yellow, and the paste contained in the hollow places, when
lodged on the paper, became a kind of drawing in relief, something like
an impasto of dark colour. This was sometimes powdered with a fluffy or
metallic dust before the paste had time to harden.
Though simple enough as regards the mere process, in practice line
engraving demands a peculiar dexterity. When the outlines of the
drawing that is to be copied have been traced and transferred to a
plate usually made of copper,[1] the metal is attacked with a sharp
tool, called the dry-point. Then the trenches thus marked out are
deepened, or fresh ones are made with the graver, which, owing to its
shape, produces an angular incision. The appearance of every object
represented in the original must be reproduced solely by these incised
lines: at different distances apart, or tending in various directions:
or by dots and cross-hatchings.
Line engraving possesses no other resources. Moreover, in addition
to the difficulties resulting from the use of a refractory tool, we
must mention the unavoidable slowness of the work, and the frequent
impossibility of correcting faults without having recourse to such
drastic remedies as obtaining a fresh surface by re-levelling the plate
where the mistakes have been made.
Etching by means of aquafortis, originally used by armourers in their
damascene work, is said to have been first applied to the execution
of plates in Germany towards the close of the fifteenth century.
Since then it has attracted a great many draughtsmen and painters,
as it requires only a short apprenticeship, and is the quickest kind
of engraving. Line engravers have not only frequently used etching
in beginning their plates, but have often employed it, not merely to
sketch in their subject, but actually in conjunction with the burin.
Many important works owe their existence to the mixture of the two
processes, among others the fine portraits of Jean Morin, and the
admirable "Batailles d'Alexandre," engraved by Gérard Audran, after
Lebrun. But at present we are only occupied with etching as practised
separately and within the limits of its own resources.
The artist who makes use of this method has to scoop no laborious
furrows. He draws with the needle, on a copper plate covered with a
coating of varnish, suggestions of form as free as the strokes of pen
or pencil. At first these strokes only affect the surface of the copper
where the needle has freed the plate from varnish. But they become of
the necessary depth as soon as a certain quantity of corrosive fluid
has been poured on to the plate, which is surrounded by a sort of wax
rampart. For a length of time proportioned to the effect intended, the
acid is allowed to bite the exposed parts of the metal, and when the
plate is cleaned proofs can be struck off from it.
With the exception of such few modifications as characterise prints in
the scraped or scratched manner, called "sgraffio," and in the stippled
manner, the methods of engraving just mentioned are all that have been
used in Europe from the end of the Middle Ages up to about the second
half of the seventeenth century. We need not, therefore, at present
mention more recent processes, such as mezzotint, aquatint, &c., each
of which we shall touch upon at its proper place in the history of the
art. Before proceeding with this history, let us try to recollect
the facts with which we have prefaced it; and, as chronological order
proscribes, to differentiate and classify the first productions of
relief engraving.
However formal their differences of opinion on matters of detail,
technical writers hold as certain one general fact. They all agree in
recognising that the methods of relief engraving were practised with a
view to printing earlier than the method of intaglio. What interval,
however, separates the two discoveries? At what epoch are we to place
the invention of wood engraving? or if the process, as has been often
alleged, is of Asiatic origin, when was it brought into Europe? To
pretend to give a decisive answer to these questions would be, at
least, imprudent. Conjectures of every sort, and even the most dogmatic
assertions, are not wanting. But the learned have in vain evoked
testimony, interpreted passages, and drawn conclusions. They have gone
back to first causes, and questioned the most remote antiquity; they
have sometimes strangely forced the meaning of traditions, and have
too often confounded simple material accidents with the evidences
of conscious art properly so called. Yet the problem is as far from
solution as ever, and, indeed, the number and diversity of opinions
have up till now done little but render conviction more difficult and
doubt more excusable.
Our authorities, for instance, are not justified in connecting the
succession of modern engravers with those men who, "even before the
Deluge, engraved on trees the history of their times, their sciences,
and their religion."[2] Nor is the mention by Plutarch of a certain
almost typographical trick of Agesilaus, King of Sparta, excuse enough
for those who have counted him among the precursors of Gutenberg. It is
by no means impossible that Agesilaus, in a sacrifice to the gods on
the eve of a decisive battle may have been clever enough to deceive his
soldiers, by imprinting on the liver of the victim the word "Victory,"
already written in reverse on the palm of his hand. But in truth such
trickery only distantly concerns art; and if we are to consider the
Greek hero as the inventor of printing, we must also allow that it has
taken us as long as eighteen centuries to profit by his discovery.
We shall therefore consider ourselves entitled to abandon all
speculations on the first cause of this discovery in favour of an
exclusive attention to such facts as mark an advance from the dim
foreshadowing of its future capabilities to the intelligent and
persevering practice of the perfected processes of the art. We shall
be content to inquire towards what epoch this new method, the heir of
popular favour, supplemented the old resources of the graphic arts
by the multiplication of engravings in the printing press. And we
may therefore spare ourselves the trouble of going back to doubtful
or remote information, to archæological speculations, more or less
excused by certain passages in Cicero, Quintilian, and Petronius, or
by a frequently quoted phrase of Pliny on the books, ornamented with
figures, that belonged to Marcus Varro.[3]
Moreover in examining the historical question from a comparatively
modern epoch only, we are not certain to find for ourselves, still
less to provide for others, perfectly satisfactory answers. Reduced
even to these terms, such a question is complicated enough to excuse
controversy, and vast enough to make room for a legendary as well as
a critical view of the case. Xylography, or block printing, which may
be called the art of stamping on paper designs and immovable letters
cut out on wood, preceded without doubt the invention of printing in
movable metal characters. Some specimens authentically dated, such as
the "St. Christopher" of 1423, and certain prints published in the
course of the following years, prove with undeniable authority the
priority of block printing. It remains to be seen if these specimens
are absolutely the first engraved in Europe; whether they illustrate
the beginning of the art, or only a step in its progress; whether, in
one word, they are types without precedent, or only chance survivals of
other and more ancient styles of wood engraving.
Papillon, in support of the opinion that the earliest attempts took
place at Ravenna before the end of the thirteenth century, brings into
court a somewhat doubtful story. Two children of sixteen, the Cavaliere
Alberico Cunio and his twin sister Isabella, took it into their heads
in 1284 to carve on wood "with a little knife," and to print by some
process seemingly as simple a series of compositions on "the chivalrous
deeds of Alexander the Great." The relations and friends of the two
young engravers, Pope Honorius IV. amongst others, each received a
copy of their work. After this no more was heard of the discovery till
the day when Papillon miraculously came across evidences of it in
the library of "a Swiss officer in retirement at Bagneux." Papillon
unfortunately was satisfied with merely recording his discovery. It
never occurred to him to ensure more conclusive publicity, nor even
to inquire into the ultimate fate of the prints he only had seen. The
collection of "The Chivalrous Deeds of Alexander the Great" again
vanished, and this time not to reappear. It is more prudent, in default
of any means of verification, to withhold our belief in the precocious
ability of the Ravenna twins, their xylographic attempts, and the
assertions of their admirers, although competent judges, such as the
Abbé Zani,[4] and after him Emeric David, have not hesitated to admit
the authenticity of the whole story.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.--THE ST. CHRISTOPHER OF 1423.]
The learned Zani had, in truth, his own reasons for taking Papillon
at his word. Had the story tended to establish the pre-existence of
engraving in Germany, he would probably have investigated the matter
more closely, and with a less ready faith. But the glory of Italy was
directly at issue, and Zani, honest though he was, did not feel
inclined to receive with coldness, still less to reject, testimony
which, for lack of better, might console his national self-respect,
and somewhat help to avenge what the Italians called "German vanity."
Pride would have been a better word, for the pretensions of Germany
with regard to wood engraving are based on more serious titles and
far more explicit documents than the one discovered by Papillon, and
recklessly passed on by Zani. Heinecken and the other German writers on
the subject doubtless criticise in a slightly disdainful manner, and
with some excess of patriotic feeling. For all that, they defend their
opinions by documents, and not by mere traditions; and if all their
examples are not quite evidently German, those which are not should in
justice be attributed to Flanders, or to Holland, and by no means to
Italy.
In this struggle of rival national claims the schools of the Low
Countries are entitled to their share of glory. It is quite possible
that their claims, so generally ignored towards the end of the last
century, should in the present day be accounted the most valid of all;
and that, in this obscure question of priority, the presumption may be
in favour of the country which supplied an art closely connected with
engraving with its first elements and its first examples. It would
be unbecoming in every way to pretend to enter here on a detailed
history of the origin of printing. The number of exhaustive works
on the subject, the explanations of M. Léon de Laborde, M. Auguste
Bernard, and more recently of M. Paeile, would render it a mere lesson
in repetition or a too easy parade of borrowed learning. Anyhow, the
discovery of printing with type is so intimately connected with the
printing of engravings, and the practical methods in both are so much
alike, that it is necessary to mention a few facts, and to compare a
few dates. We shall therefore, under correction, reduce to the limits
of a sketch the complete picture drawn by other hands.
If printing be strictly understood to mean typography, or the art of
transferring written matter to paper by means of movable and raised
metal types, there can be no doubt that its discovery must date from
the day on which there was invented at Mayence the process of casting
characters in a mould previously stamped in the bottom by a steel die
bearing the type to be reproduced.
Gutenberg, with whom the idea of this decisive improvement originated,
is in this sense the earliest printer. His "Letters of Indulgence" of
1454 and his "Bible" are the oldest examples of the art with which he
is for ever associated. In a general sense, however, and in a wider
meaning of the word, it may be said that printing was known before
Gutenberg's time, or at least before he published his typographical
masterpieces. People previously knew both how to print broadsides from
characters cut on a single block, and how to vary the arrangement of
the text by using, in place of an immovable row of letters, characters
existing as separate types, and capable of various combinations. On
this point we must trust to the testimony of one of Gutenberg's
workmen, Ulrich Zell, the first printer established in Cologne. Far
from attributing to his master the absolute invention of movable type,
he merely contrasts with the process known and practised in the Low
Countries before the second half of the fifteenth century "the far more
delicate process" of cast type "that was discovered later." And Ulrich
Zell adds, "the first step towards this invention was taken in 1440 in
the printing of the copies of Donatus,[5] which were printed before
this time in Holland (_ab illis atque ex illis_)."
Now if these copies of Donatus were not printed by means of movable
type, why should they be mentioned rather than the many other works
equally fitted to give a hint to Gutenberg? Why, in going back to
the origin of the discovery, should his pupil say nothing of those
illustrated legends which were xylographically cut and sold in all
the Rhenish towns, and which the future inventor of printing must
have seen hundreds of times? For the attention of Gutenberg to have
been thus concentrated on a single object, there must have been some
peculiar merit and some stamp of real progress in the mode of execution
to distinguish the copies of Donatus printed at Haarlem from other
contemporary work. Laurence Coster--the name attributed to the inventor
of the process which Gutenberg improved--must have already made use of
a method more closely allied than any other to the improvements about
to follow, and destined to put a term to mere experiments.
To suppose the contrary is to misunderstand the words of Ulrich Zell
and the influence which he attributes to the Dutch edition of Donatus,
from which Gutenberg derived "the first idea of his invention." It
is still more difficult to understand how, if the Donatuses are
block-printed, reversed letters are sometimes found in the fragmentary
specimens which survive. There is nothing the least extraordinary
in such a mistake when it can be explained by the carelessness of
a compositor of movable type, but such a mistake would really be
incredible on the part of a xylographic workman. What possible caprice
could have tempted him to engrave occasional letters upside down? One
could only suppose he erred, not from inadvertence, but with voluntary
infidelity and in calculated defiance of common sense.
The discovery which has immortalised the name of Gutenberg should be
recognised and admired as the conclusion and crown of a series of
earlier attempts in printed type. Taking into account the inadequacy
of the movable type, whether of wood or of any other substance, first
employed by the Dutch, and the perfection of the earliest specimens
of German printing, it can and should be admitted that, before the
publication of the "Letters of Indulgence," the "Bible," and other
productions from the workshop of Gutenberg and his fellow-labourers,
attempts at genuine typography had been already pursued, and to a
certain extent rewarded with success.
From the very confession of Ulrich Zell, a confession repeated by the
anonymous author of the "Chronicle of Cologne" printed in 1499,[6] the
first rude essay in the art (_prefiguratio_) was seen in the town of
Haarlem. We may, in short, conclude that the idea of combining designs
cut on wood with a separate letterpress in movable types, belongs in
all probability to Holland.
One of the oldest collections of engravings with subject matter printed
by this process is the "Speculum Humanæ Salvationis," mentioned by
Adrian Junius in his "Batavia"--written, it would seem, between the
years 1560 and 1570, but not published till 1588, many years after his
death. Therein it is expressly stated that the "Speculum" was printed
before 1442 by Lourens Janszoon Coster. It is true that Junius is
speaking of events which occurred more than a century before the time
to which he ascribes them: "on the testimony," as he says, "of very
aged men, who had received this tradition, as a burning torch passed
from hand to hand." And this belated narrative has appeared, and may
still appear, somewhat doubtful. We ourselves consider the doubt to be
exaggerated, but we shall not insist on that. The specimens survive
which gave rise to such legends and commentaries; and it is fitting
they should be questioned.
Four editions of the "Speculum" are known, two in Dutch and two in
Latin. It must be understood that we only speak of the editions which
have no publishers' names, no dates, nor any sign of the place where
they were published: the "Speculum," a sort of Christian handbook,
much used in the Low Countries, having been frequently reprinted, with
due indication of names and places, during and after the last twenty
years of the fifteenth century. The oldest Dutch edition that is
dated, the one of 1483, printed by John Veldenaer, reproduces certain
engravings which had already embellished the four anonymous editions,
with the difference that the plates have been sawn in two to suit the
dimensions of a smaller volume. Hence, whatever conjectures may exist
as to the date of the first publication, we have, at least, a positive
fact: as the original plates only appear in a mutilated state in the
copies printed in 1483, it is evident that the four editions where they
appear entire are of earlier date. These questions remain:--first,
whether they are earlier, too, than the second half of the fifteenth
century--earlier, that is, than the time when Gutenberg gave to the
world the results of his labour? and second, whether they originated,
like the edition of Donatus, in a Dutch workshop?
Doubt seems impossible on the last point. These four editions are all
printed with the same cuts, on the same paper made in Brabant, and
under the same typographical conditions, with the exception of some
slight differences in the characters of the two Dutch editions, and the
insertion of twenty leaves xylographically printed in one of the two
Latin editions. Is it, then, likely, or even possible, that these books
belong, as has been supposed, to Germany?
[Illustration: FIG. 2.--THE HOLY VIRGIN AND THE INFANT JESUS.
German Wood Engraving. (Fifteenth Century.)]
The thing might, indeed, be possible, were it merely a question of
the copies in Latin; but the Dutch ones cannot be supposed to have
been published anywhere but in Holland; and the origin of the latter
once established, how are we to explain the typographical imperfection
of the work if not by ignorance of the process which Gutenberg was
to popularise? According to M. Paeile, a competent judge in such a
matter,[7] the letterpress of the Dutch "Speculum" is written in the
pure dialect of North Holland, as it was spoken in those parts towards
the end of the fourteenth century and the beginning of the fifteenth.
Armed, therefore, with but a few particulars as to printing and idiom,
it will not be too bold in us to fix the date of publication between
the first and second quarters of the fifteenth century. It may be added
that the costume of the figures is of the time of Philip the Good;
that the taste and style of the drawing suggests the influence of the
brothers Van Eyck; and that there is a decided contrast between the
typographical imperfection of the text and the excellent quality of the
plates. Art, and art already well on its way and confident of its
powers, is thus seen side by side with an industrial process still in
its infancy: a remarkable proof of the advances already accomplished in
wood engraving before printing had got beyond the rudimentary period.
For our present purpose, this is the chief point, the essential fact to
verify.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.--ST. VERONICA.
German Wood Engraving. (Fifteenth Century.)]
[Illustration: FIG. 4.--ST. JOHN.
Flemish Wood Engraving. (Fifteenth Century.)]
The discovery of printing, therefore, is doubtless a result of the
example of relief engraving, and there is no doubt either that the
first attempts at printing with type originated in Holland. Whilst
Coster, or the predecessor of Gutenberg, whoever he was, was somewhat
feebly preparing the way for typographical industry, painting and the
arts of design generally had in the Low Countries attained a degree
of development which they had not before reached, except in Italy.
Amongst the German contemporaries of Hubert and John van Eyck, what
rival was there to compare with these two masters?--what teacher with
so notable an influence, or so fertile a teaching? Whilst, on the banks
of the Rhine, artists unworthy of the name and painters destitute of
talent were continuing the Gothic traditions and the formulæ of their
predecessors, the school of Bruges was renewing, or rather founding, a
national art. By the beginning of the fifteenth century the revolution
was accomplished in this school, which was already distinguished by
the Van Eycks, and to which Memling was about to add fresh lustre.
Germany, too, in a few years was to glory in a like success; but the
movement did not set in till after the second half of the century.
Till then everything remained dead, everything betrayed an extreme
poverty of method and doctrine. If we judge the German art of the time
by such work, for instance, as the "St. Christopher," engraved in
1423, a single glance is sufficient to reveal the marked superiority
of the contemporary Flemings. It is, then, far from unnatural that,
at a time when painters, goldsmiths, and all other artists in Flanders
were so plainly superior in skill to their co-workers in Germany, the
Flemish engravers should likewise have led the van of progress, and
taken their places as the first in the history of their art.
[Illustration: FIG. 5.--THE INFANT JESUS.
Flemish Wood Engraving. (Fifteenth Century.)]
[Illustration: FIG. 6.--JESUS, SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD.
German Wood Engraving. (Fifteenth Century.)]
[Illustration: FIG. 7.--THE CRUCIFIXION.
German Wood Engraving. (Fifteenth Century.)]
It may be said that the proofs are insufficient. Be it so. We shall
not look for them in the "Virgin" on wood, belonging to the Brussels
Library, and bearing the date 1418, as the authenticity of this date,
to our thinking perfectly genuine, has been disputed; nor shall we seek
for them in the anonymous examples which it seems to us but just to
ascribe to the old school of the Low Countries.[8]
[Illustration: FIG. 8.--THE APOCALYPSE OF ST. JOHN.
Dutch Wood Engraving. (Fifteenth Century.)]
Up to now we are willing to admit that only Germany is in a position
to produce a piece of evidence beyond suspicion. With its imposing
date of 1423, its time-honoured rights, and official renown, the "St.
Christopher," now in the library of Lord Spencer, has privileges which
cannot be disputed or questioned. But it does not follow that the
wood-cuts of the "Speculum," of the "Biblia Pauperum," of the "Ars
Moriendi," and of similar undated publications, must be more recent.
Nor, because a dated German print has survived, must it therefore be
concluded that nothing was produced at that time except in Germany. It
should be particularly observed that the plates of the "Speculum" seem
well-nigh prodigies of pictorial skill and knowledge in comparison
with the "St. Christopher;" that their author must have served a long
apprenticeship in a good school; that, in short, no art begins with
such a piece of work, and that, even supposing these cuts did not
appear till after the German print, some time had doubtless elapsed
during which the progress they involve had been prepared and pursued.
It is therefore reasonable to suppose that, from the first years of
the fifteenth century, the engravers of the Low Countries began, under
the influence of the Van Eycks, to be initiated into the conditions
of art, and that, like their countrymen the printers, they showed
the path which others were to clear and level. It must be remarked,
however, that in the beginning printing and wood engraving do not
always march on parallel lines--that they do not meet in like order
their successive periods of trial and advance. In Germany, up till
the time when Gutenberg attained the final stage, and popularised
the last secrets of the printing process, painters, draughtsmen, and
engravers were all helpless in a rut: from the author of the "St.
Christopher" to the engravers of thirty years later, they boast but the
roughest and coarsest of ideas and methods. Heinecken, the exaggerated
champion of the German cause as against the partisans of Coster, whom
he contemptuously calls "the beadle"[9]--Heinecken himself, speaking
of the first German books engraved on wooden tablets, is obliged to
admit that "when the drawing is examined with a connoisseur's eye, a
heavy and barbarous taste appears to reign throughout."[10] In Germany
the artistic part was to wait upon and follow the example of the
industrial: was to lag behind and to plod on in barbarism long after
the industrial revolution was accomplished at its side. And it was long
before the "wood-cutting" engravers acquired anything like the skill of
the printers employed by Gutenberg and by Füst.
In the Low Countries, on the other hand, the regeneration of art
preceded mechanical improvement. Even when the latter was in full
progress, nay, even when a grand discovery had revealed all the
capabilities and fixed the limits of printing, engraving was by no
means subordinated, as in Germany, to the advance of the new process,
but, on the contrary, had long since acquired a clearness and certainty
of execution which was still lacking in the works of the printers. The
"Speculum," as we have said, bears testimony to that sort of anomaly
between the mechanical imperfection of the Dutch printed texts of
the fifteenth century and the merit of the plates by which they were
accompanied. Other examples might be mentioned, but it is useless to
multiply evidence, and to insist on details. We shall have accomplished
enough if we have succeeded in accentuating some of the principal
features, and in summing up the essential characteristics of engraving,
at the time of the Incunabuli.
CHAPTER II.
PLAYING CARDS. THE DOT MANNER.
In our endeavour to prove the relative antiquity of wood engraving
in the Low Countries, we have intentionally rather deferred the
purely archæological question, and have sought the first signs of
talent instead of the bold beginnings of the art. The origin of wood
engraving, materially considered, cannot be said to be confined to the
time and country of the pupils of Van Eyck. It was certainly in their
hands that it first began to show signs of being a real art, and give
promise for the future; but we have still to inquire how many years
it had been practised in Europe, through what phases it had already
passed, and to what uses it had been applied, before it took this start
and received this consecration.
We treat this question of origin with some reserve, and must repeat
as our excuse that _savants_ have pushed their researches so far,
and unhappily with such conflicting results, and have found, or have
thought they found, in the accounts of travellers, or in ancient
official or historical documents, so many proofs and arguments in
support of different systems, that it becomes equally difficult to
accept or to finally reject their various conclusions. The prevailing
opinion, however, attributes to the makers of playing cards, if not the
discovery of wood engraving, at least its first practical application
in Europe. Many writers agree on the general principle, but agreement
ends when it comes to be question of the date and place of the earliest
attempts. Some pronounce in favour of the fourteenth century and
Germany; others plead for France, where they say cards were in use
from the beginning of the reign of Philip of Valois. Others again,
to support the claims of Italy, arm themselves with a passage quoted
by Tiraboschi from the "Trattato del Governo della Famiglia," a work
written, according to them, in 1299; and they suppose, besides, that
the commercial relations of Japan and China with Venice would have
introduced into that town before any other the use of cards and the art
of making them.
Emeric David, one of the most recent authorities, carries things
with a still higher hand. He begins by setting aside all the
claimants--Germany with the Low Countries, France as well as Italy.[11]
Where playing cards were first used, or whether any particular
xylographic collection belongs or not to the first years of the
fifteenth century, are matters of extremely small importance in his
eyes. In the documents brought forward by competent experts as the most
ancient remains of wood engraving, he finds instead a testimony to
the uninterrupted practice of the art in Europe. For the real origin
the author of the "Discours sur la Gravure" does not hesitate to go
boldly back beyond the Christian era. Nor does he stop there; but sees
in the practice of the Greeks under the successors of Alexander a
mere continuance of the traditions of those Asiatic peoples who were
accustomed from time immemorial to print on textile fabrics by means of
wooden moulds.
It would be too troublesome to discuss his facts or his conclusions;
so many examples borrowed from the poets, from the historians of
antiquity, and the Fathers of the Church, appear to sustain his perhaps
too comprehensive theory. The best and the shortest plan will be to
take it upon trust, and to admit on the authority of Homer, Herodotus,
Ezekiel, and St. Clement of Alexandria, that from the heroic ages till
the early days of Christianity, there has been no break in the practice
of printing upon various materials from wooden blocks. Still less need
we grudge the Middle Ages the possession of a secret already the common
property of so many centuries.
But the printing of textiles does not imply the knowledge and practice
of engraving properly so called; and many centuries may have passed
without any attempt to use this merely industrial process for finer
ends, or to apply it to the purposes of art. Seals with letters cut in
relief were smeared with colour and impressed on vellum or paper long
before the invention of printing. The small stamps or patterns with
which the scribes and illuminators transferred the outlines of capital
letters to their manuscripts, might well have suggested the last
advance. And yet how many years and experiments were required to bring
it to perfection! Why may we not suppose that the art of engraving,
like the art of printing, in spite of early, partial, and analogous
discoveries, may have waited long for its hour of birth? And when
block printing was once brought from Asia into Europe, why may it not
have suffered the same fate as other inventions equally ingenious in
principle and equally limited in their earlier applications? Glass, for
instance, was well known by the nations of antiquity; but how long a
time elapsed before it was applied to windows?
We have said that according to a generally received opinion we must
look upon playing cards as the oldest remains of xylography. But the
evidence on which this opinion is based has only a negative authority.
Because the old books in which cards are mentioned say nothing of
any other productions of wood engraving, it has been inferred that
such productions did not yet exist; but is it not allowable to ask
if the silence of writers in such a case absolutely establishes such
a negative? Might not this silence be explained by the nature of the
work, and of the subject treated, which was generally literary or
philosophical, and quite independent of questions of art? When speaking
of cards, whether to formally forbid or only to restrain their use,
the chroniclers and the moralists of the fourteenth century, or of the
beginning of the fifteenth, probably thought but little of the way
they were made. Their intention was to denounce a vice rather than to
describe an industrial process. Why, then, should they have troubled
about other works in which this process was employed, not only without
danger to religion and morality, but with a view of honouring both?
Pious pictures cut in wood by the hands of monks or artisans might
have been well known at this time, although contemporary authors may
have chosen to mention only cards; and, without pushing conjecture too
far, we may take the liberty of supposing that engravers first drew
their inspiration from the same source as illuminators, painters on
glass, and sculptors. Besides, we know well that art was then only the
naïve expression of religion and the emblem of Christian thought. Why
should the cutters of xylographic figures have been an exception to the
general rule? and what strange freak would have led them to choose as
the subject of their first efforts a species of work so contrary to the
manners and traditions of all the schools?
Setting aside written testimony, and consulting the engravings
themselves which have been handed down to us from former centuries,
we are entitled to say that the very oldest playing cards are, at the
most, contemporaneous with the "St. Christopher" of 1423 and the oldest
known wood-cuts, inasmuch as the engraving of these cards certainly
does not date back beyond the reign of Charles VII. That the Italian,
German, or French _tarocchi_ (ornamented chequers or cards) were in use
before that time is possible; but as none of these early _tarocchi_
have survived, it cannot be known to what extent they represent the
progress of the art, and how far they may have served as models for
other xylographic works: even though it be true that relief engraving,
and not merely drawing with the pen, was the means first employed for
the making of the _tarocchi_ mentioned here and there in the chronicles.
Such French cards as have come down to us would lead us to believe,
in any case, that the progress was slow enough, for they still reveal
an extraordinary want of experience both as to shape and effect, and
have all the timidity of an art still in its infancy. This must also
be said of works of the same kind executed in Germany in the fifteenth
century; except the cards, attributed to a contemporary of the Master
of 1466, and these are engraved on metal. In Italy alone, cards, or
rather the symbolical pieces known rightly or wrongly by the name of
_tarocchi_, possessed, from an artistic point of view, real importance
from the time when engraving on metal had begun to take the place of
wood-cutting. The artists initiated by Finiguerra into the secrets of
the new method displayed good taste, knowledge, and skill; and in such
less important work, as well as in that of a higher order, their talent
at last inaugurated an era of real progress and of fruitful enterprise.
It is of no consequence, for the matter of that, whether wood engraving
was first applied to the making of pious pictures or to the manufacture
of cards. In any case the process is generally looked upon as the
oldest method of engraving, and as the first to give types to be
multiplied in proofs by printing.
M. Léon de Laborde, one of the clearest and best informed writers
on the origins of engraving and typography, considers, on the other
hand, that engraving in relief on metal, rather than the xylographic
process, was the proximate cause of the discovery of printing. In a
work published in 1839, which unfortunately has yet to receive the
amplifications promised by the author,[12] M. de Laborde declares
that the first printed engravings must have been dotted ones: that
is, prints produced in the peculiar mode already touched upon, and in
which the black parts come out sprinkled with white dots. According to
him, engraving, or, to speak more exactly, the printing of engraved
work, must have been invented by goldsmiths rather than by draughtsmen
or illuminators. The former, by the nature of their craft, possessed
the tools and the necessary materials, and were therefore in a better
position than any one else to stumble upon the discovery of the
process, if not deliberately to invent it. As matter of fact, many of
those who worked in the Low Countries, or in the Rhenish provinces,
during the first years of the fifteenth century, printed works in
the early dot manner: in other words, engraved in relief on metal.
And those xylographic specimens which are usually looked upon as the
oldest examples of engraving, are in reality only the outcome of a
reformation, and the product of an art already modified.
[Illustration: FIG. 9.--JESUS CHRIST CARRYING THE CROSS.
Engraving in the Dot Manner (1406).]
The opinion expressed some time ago by M. Léon de Laborde has recently
been supported by the discovery of two engravings, in the early dot
manner, belonging, we think, to the year 1406, and on which we have
ourselves published some remarks.[13] But our argument being only
founded on the similarity of certain external facts, so to speak, and
on the probability of certain calculations, it is not really possible
to attribute to these documents so secure a standing as to those whose
age is established by dates, and set practically beyond question.
[Illustration: FIG. 10.--THE HOLY FACE.
Engraving in the Dot Manner (1406).]
Now, the oldest of the dated engravings in relief on metal is the "St.
Bernardino of Siena," wrongly called the "St. Bernard," belonging to
the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. This engraving in the dot manner
bears the date 1454. It is, therefore, later than the "St. Christopher"
engraved on wood, and later even, as we shall presently see, than the
first engraving in incised line, the "Pax," by Finiguerra, whose date
of printing is certain. Remembering these facts, the separation of the
oldest dotted prints from the first specimens of true engraving is only
permissible on the ground that they are works executed by a special
process. Considered from a purely artistic point of view, they offer
little interest. Their drawing, still ruder than that of the German
wood-cuts, exhibits an almost hieroglyphic unreality. Their general
effect is purely conventional; and, owing to the uniform depth of the
blacks, their insignificant modelling expresses neither the relief nor
the comparative depression of the forms.
[Illustration: FIG. 11.--ST. BERNARDINO.
Engraving in the Dot Manner (1454).]
[Illustration: FIG. 12.--ST. CHRISTOPHER.
Engraving in the Dot Manner. (Fifteenth Century.)]
In short, we find in these early dotted prints nothing but perfect
falseness to nature, and all the mendacity inherent in feebleness of
taste and slavish conformity to system.
How comes it that this sorry child's-play has appeared to deserve in
our day attention which is not always conceded to more serious work?
This might be better excused had these prints been investigated in
order to demonstrate the principles of the method followed afterwards
by the engravers of illustrations for books. The charming borders, for
instance, which adorn the "Books of Hours," printed in France at the
end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries,
would naturally suggest comparisons between the way in which many parts
are stippled, and the process of the early dotted engraving. But we
may surely term excessive the efforts of certain scholars to fix on
these defective attempts in a particular method of work the attention
of a public naturally attracted elsewhere. The fact is, however, that
in this matter, as well as in questions relating to the origin of wood
engraving and printing, national self-respect was at stake, and writers
sought in the narrow field of archæology a victory over rival claims
which they might less easily have achieved on other grounds.
[Illustration: FIG. 13.--JESUS ON THE MOUNT OF OLIVES.
Engraving in the Dot Manner. (Fifteenth Century.)]
Between the authors of the Low Countries and of Germany, long
accustomed to skirmishes of the kind, this new conflict might have
begun and continued without awaking much interest in other nations;
but, contrary to custom, these counterclaims originated neither in
Germany nor in the Low Countries. For the first time the name of France
was heard of in a dispute as to the origin of engraving; and though
there was but scant honour to be gained, the unforeseen rivalry did not
fail to give additional interest to the struggle, and, in France at
least, to meet with a measure of favour.
The words "Bernhardinus Milnet," deciphered, or supposed to be
deciphered, at the bottom of an old dotted engraving, representing
"The Virgin and the Infant Jesus," were taken for the signature of a
French engraver, and the discovery was turned to further profit by the
assumption that the said "Bernard or Bernardin Milnet" engraved all
the prints of this particular class; although, even supposing these
to belong to a single school, they manifestly could not all belong
to a single epoch. The invention and monopoly of dotted engraving
once attributed to a single country, or rather to a single man, these
assertions continued to gain ground for some time, and were even
repeated in literary and historical works. A day, however, came when
they began to lose credit; and as doubts entered even the minds of his
countrymen, the supposed Bernard Milnet is now deprived of his name and
title, and is very properly regarded as an imaginary being.
Does it follow from this, as M. Passavant[14] would have it, that
all these prints, naturalised for a little while in France, ought to
be restored to Germany? Their contradictory character with regard to
workmanship and style might cause one, with the most honest intentions,
to hesitate, though their intrinsic value is not such as to cause the
former country any great loss.
[Illustration: FIG. 14.--ST. GEORGE.
Engraving in the Dot Manner. (Fifteenth Century.)]
[Illustration: FIG. 15.--ST. DOMINIC.
Engraving in the Dot Manner. (Fifteenth Century.)]
Indeed, it is difficult to conceive of anything less interesting,
except with regard to the particular nature of the process. The
outlines of the figures have none of that drawing, firm even to
stiffness, nor has the flow of the draperies that taste for abrupt
forms, which distinguished the productions of the German school from
its beginnings. The least feeble of these specimens, such as the "Saint
Barbara," in the Brussels Library, or the "St. George on Horseback,"
preserved in the Print Department of the Bibliothèque Nationale in
Paris, do indeed occasionally suggest some similarity of origin or
manner with the school of Van Eyck. But it is unnecessary to debate
the point at greater length. Whether produced in France, in the Low
Countries, or in Germany, the dotted engravings of the fifteenth
century add so little lustre to the land which gave them birth, that no
scepticism as to their origin need lie very heavily on the conscience.
In the general history of the documents on the origin of engraving,
the dotted prints form a series distinguished by the method of their
execution from any other earlier or contemporary specimens of work;
the date mark 1454, borne by one among the number, gives us authentic
information as to the time of these strange experiments, these
curiosities of handicraft rather than of art. This is as much as we
need to bear in mind upon the subject, and quite enough to complete the
history of the elementary attempts which preceded or which co-existed
for a few years with the beginning of engraving by incised line in
Italy.
We have now arrived at that decisive moment when engraving, endowed
with fresh resources, was practised for the first time by real masters.
Up to the present, the trifling ability and skill possessed by certain
wood-cutters and the peculiar methods of dotted engraving have been
the only means by which we could measure the efforts expended in the
search for new technical methods, or in their use when discovered. We
have now done with such hesitating and halting progress. The art of
printing from plates cut in intaglio had no sooner been discovered by,
or at least dignified by the practice of, a Florentine goldsmith, than
upon every side fresh talent was evoked. In Italy and Germany it was
a question of who should profit most and quickest by the advance. A
spirit of rivalry at once arose between the two schools; and fifteen
years had not elapsed since Italian art had given its note in the works
of the goldsmith engravers of the school of Finiguerra, before German
art had found an equally definite expression in the works of the Master
of 1466. But, before examining this simultaneous progress, we shall
have to say a few words on the historical part of the question, and to
return to the origin of the process of intaglio engraving, as we have
already done with the origin of engraving in relief. This part of our
subject must be briefly and finally disposed of; we may then altogether
abandon the uncertain ground of archæological hypothesis.
CHAPTER III.
FIRST ATTEMPTS AT INTAGLIO ENGRAVING. THE NIELLI OF THE
FLORENTINE GOLDSMITHS. PRINTS BY THE ITALIAN AND GERMAN
PAINTER-ENGRAVERS OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY
We have seen that Gutenberg's permanent improvements in the method of
printing resulted in the substitution, so far as written speech was
concerned, of a mode of reproduction almost infinitely fruitful, and
even rapid when compared to the slowness and the limited resources of
the xylographic method. Typography was destined to abolish the use of
block printing, and more particularly of caligraphy, which, till then,
had occupied so many pious and patient hands both in monasteries and in
schools. The art of printing from engravings worked similar mischief
to the illuminator's craft. Such were, before long, the natural
consequences of the progress made; and, we may add, such had been from
the first the chief object of these innovations.
Perhaps this double revolution, so potent in its general effect and
in its influence on modern civilisation, may have appeared to those
engaged in it no more important than a purely industrial improvement.
Surely, for instance, we do no injustice to Gutenberg if we accept
with some reserve the vast political and philosophical ideas, and the
purposes of universal enfranchisement, with which he has been sometimes
credited? Probably the views of the inventor of printing reached
neither so far nor so high. He did not intend to figure as an apostle,
nor did he regard himself as devoted to a philanthropic mission, as we
should put it in the present day. He considered himself no more than a
workman with a happy thought, when he proposed to replace the lengthy
and costly labours of the copyist by a process so much cheaper and so
much more expeditious.
A somewhat similar idea had already occurred to the xylographic
printers. Even the title of one of the first books published by them,
the "Biblia Pauperum," or "Bible for the Poor," proved their wish to
place within the reach of the masses an equivalent to those illuminated
manuscript copies which were only obtainable by the rich. One glance at
the ancient xylographic collections is enough to disclose the spirit
in which such work was undertaken, and the design with which it was
conceived. The new industry imitated in every particular the appearance
of those earlier works due to the pen of the scribe or to the brush of
the illuminator; and, perhaps, the printers themselves, speculating
on the want of discernment in the purchasing public, thought less of
exposing the secret of their method than of maintaining an illusion.
In most of the xylographic books, indeed, the first page is quite
without ornamentation. There are neither chapter-headings nor
ornamental capitals; the blank space seems to await the hand of the
illuminator, who should step in to finish the work of the printer, and
complete the resemblance between the printed books and the manuscript.
Gutenberg followed; and even he, although less closely an imitator of
caligraphy, did not himself disdain at first to practise some deception
as to the nature of his method. It is said that the Bible he printed
at Mayence was sold as manuscript; and the letterpress is certainly
not accompanied by any technical explanation, or by any note of the
printer's name or the mode of fabrication. Not till somewhat later,
when he published the "Catholicon," did Gutenberg avow that he had
printed this book "without the help of reed, quill, or stylus, but
by means of a marvellous array of moulds and punches." Even in this
specimen of a process already settled and finally disclosed to the
public, the capital letters were left blank in the printing, and were
afterwards filled in with brush or pen. It was a farewell salutation
to the past, and the latest appearance of that old art which was now
doomed to pass away before the new, and to leave the field to the
products of the press.
Did the inventor of the art of printing from plates cut in intaglio,
like the inventor of the art of typography, only wish at first to
extend to a larger public what had hitherto been reserved for the
favoured few? Was early engraving but a weapon turned against the
monopoly of the miniature painter? We might be tempted to think so,
from the number of manuscripts belonging to the second half of the
fifteenth century, in which coloured prints, surrounded by borders
also coloured, are set opposite a printed text, apparently in order to
imitate as nearly as possible the familiar aspect of illuminated books.
Next in turn came printed books with illustrations, and loose sheets
published separately for every-day use. The Italian engravers, even
before they began to adorn with the burin those works which have been
the most frequently illustrated--such, for instance, as the religious
handbooks and the poem of Dante--employed the new process from as early
as 1465, to assure their calendars a wider publicity. But let us return
to the time when engraving was yet in its early stages, and when--by
chance, by force of original genius, or by the mere completion of
what had been begun by other hands--a Florentine goldsmith, one Maso
Finiguerra, succeeded in fixing on paper the impression of a silver
plate on which lines had been engraved in intaglio and filled with
black.
Finiguerra's great glory does not, however, lie in the solution of
the practical difficulty. Amongst the Italians none before him had
ever thought of trying to print from a work engraved in incised
line or intaglio on metal; and therefore, at least, in his own
country, he deserved the honours of priority. But the invention of
the process--that is, in the absolute and literal sense of its name,
the notion of reproducing burin work by printing--was certainly not
peculiar to Finiguerra. Unconscious of what was passing elsewhere,
he may have been the first in Florence to attempt this revolution in
art; but, beyond the frontiers of Italy, many had already employed
for the necessities of trade that method which it was his to turn
into a powerful instrument of art. His true glory consists in the
unexpected authority with which he inaugurated the movement. Although
it may be true that there are prints a few years older than any
Florentine niello--the German specimens of 1446, discovered but the
other day by M. Renouvier,[15] or the "Virgin" of 1451 described by
M. Passavant[16]--it cannot change the real date of the invention of
engraving; that date has been written by the hand of a man of talent,
the first engraver worthy of the name of artist.
That Finiguerra was really the inventor of engraving, because he
dignified the new process by the striking ability with which he used
it, and proved his power where his contemporaries had only exhibited
their weakness, must be distinctly laid down, even at the risk of
scandalising some of the learned. He has the same right to celebrity
as Gutenberg, who, like him, was but the discoverer of a decisive
advance; the same right also as Nicolò Pisano and Giotto, the real
founders of the race of the Great Masters, and, truly speaking, the
first painter and the first sculptor who appeared in Italy, although
neither sculpture nor painting were even novelties at the moment of
their birth. As a mere question of date, the "Pax" of Florence may
not be the earliest example of engraving; be it so. But in which of
these earlier attempts, now so much acclaimed as arguments against
the accepted tradition, can we glean even the faintest promise of the
merits which distinguish that illustrious engraving? He who wrought it
is no usurper; his fame is a legitimate conquest.
It is a singular coincidence that the discovery of printing and that of
the art of taking proofs on paper from a plate engraved in intaglio,
or, to speak more exactly, that the final improvements of both these
processes, should have sprung up almost simultaneously, one in Italy
and the other in Germany. There is only an interval of two years
between the time when Finiguerra printed his first engraving in 1452,
and the time when Gutenberg exhibited his first attempts at printing
in 1454. Till then, copies drawn, painted, or written by hand had been
the only efficient means of reproduction. None, even amongst those
most capable of original thought or action, considered it beneath them
to set forth the thought of others. Boccaccio and Petrarch exchanged
whole books of Livy or of Cicero which they had patiently transcribed,
and monkish or professional artists copied on the vellum of missals
the paintings which covered the walls or adorned the altars of their
churches. Such subjects as were engraved on wood were only designed
to stimulate the devotion of the pious. Both by their inadequate
execution, and the special use for which they were intended, they must
rank as industrial products rather than as works of art.
Besides illumination and wood engraving, there was a process sometimes
used to copy certain originals, portraits or fancy subjects, but more
frequently employed by goldsmiths in the decoration of chalices,
reliquaries, and altar canons. This process was nothing but a special
application and combination of the resources belonging to the long
known arts of enamelling and chalcography, which last simply means
engraving on metal. The incised lines made by the graver in a plate
of silver, or of silver and gold combined, were filled with a mixture
of lead, silver, and copper, made more easily fusible by the addition
of a certain quantity of borax and sulphur. This blackish-coloured
mixture (_nigellum_, whence _niello_, _niellare_) left the unengraved
parts exposed, and, in cooling, became encrusted in the furrows where
it had been introduced. After this, the plate, when carefully polished,
presented to the eye the contrast of a design in dull black enamel
traced upon a field of shining metal.
Towards the middle of the fifteenth century this kind of engraving
was much practised in Italy, especially in Florence, where the best
niellatori were to be found. One of them, Tomaso, or for short, Maso
Finiguerra, was, like many goldsmiths of his time, at once an engraver,
a designer, and a sculptor. The drawings attributed to him, his nielli,
and the bas-reliefs partly by him and partly by Antonio Pollajuolo,
would not, perhaps, have been enough to have preserved his memory: it
is his invention--in the degree we mentioned--of the art of printing
intaglio engravings, or rather of the art of engraving itself, that has
made him immortal.
What, however, can seem more simple than this discovery? It is even
difficult to understand why it was not made before, when we remember
not only that the printing of blocks engraved in relief had been
practised since the beginning of the fifteenth century, but that the
niellatori themselves were in the habit of taking, first in clay and
then in sulphur, an impression and a counter-impression of their work
before applying the enamel. What should seem more simple than to have
taken a direct proof on a thin elastic body such as paper? But it is
always easy to criticise after the event, and to point out the road of
progress when the end has been attained. Who knows if to-day there is
not lying at our very hand some discovery which yet we never think of
grasping, and if our present blindness will not be the cause of similar
wonder to our successors?
At any rate, Finiguerra had found the solution of the problem by 1452.
This was put beyond doubt on the day towards the close of the last
century (1797), when Zani discovered, in the Print-Room of the Paris
Library, a niello by Finiguerra printed on paper of indisputable date.
[Illustration: FIG. 16.--FINIGUERRA.
The "Pax" of the Baptistery of St. John at Florence.]
This little print, or rather proof, taken before the plate was put in
niello, of a "Pax"[17] engraved by the Florentine goldsmith for the
Baptistery of St. John, represents the Coronation of the Virgin. It
measures only 130 millimetres by 87. As regards its size, therefore,
the "Coronation" is really only a vignette; but it is a vignette
handled with such knowledge and style, and informed with so deep a
feeling for beauty, that it would bear with perfect impunity the
ordeal of being enlarged a hundred times and transferred to a canvas
or a wall. Its claims as an archæological specimen, and the value that
four centuries have added to this small piece of perishable paper,
must assuredly neither be forgotten nor misunderstood by any one. Yet
he would be ill-advised, on the other hand, who should regard this
masterpiece of art as a mere historical curiosity.
[Illustration: FIG. 17.--ITALIAN NIELLO.
(Fifteenth Century.)]
[Illustration: FIG. 18.
ITALIAN NIELLO. (Fifteenth Century.)]
The rare merits which distinguish Finiguerra's "Coronation" are to be
seen, though much less conspicuously, in a certain number of works
attributed to the same origin. Other pieces engraved at the same time,
and printed under the same conditions by unknown Florentine workmen,
prove that the example given in 1452 had at once created imitators. It
must be remarked, however, that amongst such works, whether attributed
to Finiguerra or to other goldsmiths of the same time and country,
none belong to the class of engravings properly so called. In other
words they are only what we have agreed to call nielli: that is,
proofs on paper of plates designed to be afterwards enamelled, and
not impressions of plates specially and finally intended to be used
for printing. It would almost appear that the master and his first
followers failed to foresee all the results and benefits of this
discovery; that they looked upon it only as a surer test of work than
clay or sulphur casts, as a test process suitable to certain stages of
the labours of the goldsmith. In one word, from the time when he made
his first success till the end of his life, Finiguerra probably only
used the new process to forward his work as a niellatore, without its
ever occurring to him to employ it for its own sake, and in the spirit
of a real engraver.
[Illustration: FIG. 19.--ITALIAN NIELLO.
(Fifteenth Century.)]
Florentine engravings of the fifteenth century, other than in niello,
or those at least whose origin and date are certain, are not only
later than Finiguerra's working days, but are even later than the
year of his death (1470). In Germany, from the very beginning, so
to speak, of the period of initiation, the Master of 1466 and his
disciples were multiplying impressions of their works, and profiting by
the full resources of the new process. In Florence, on the contrary,
there passed about twenty years during which the art seems to have
remained stationary and confined to the same narrow field of practice
as at first. You may visit the richest public or private collections
without meeting (with the exception of works in niello) any authentic
and official specimen of Florentine engraving of the time of which we
speak.[18] You may open books and catalogues, and find no mention of
any engraved subject that can be called a print earlier than those
attributed to Baccio Baldini, or to Botticelli, which only appeared
in the last quarter of the century. Yet it is impossible to find any
explanation of this sterility--of this extraordinary absence of a
school of engravers, in the exact acceptation of the word, outside of
the group of the niellatori.
[Illustration: FIG 20.--BACCIO BALDINI.
Illustration from the "Divina Commedia" of 1481.]
Some years later, however, progress had led to emancipation. The art
of engraving, henceforth free, broke from its industrial servitude,
deserted the traditions of enamelling and chasing, and took
possession of its own domain. There are still to be remarked, of
course, a certain timidity and a certain lack of experience in the
handling of the tool, an execution at once summary and strangely
careful, a mixture of naïve intentions and conventional modes of
expression. But the burin, though only able as yet imperfectly to treat
lines in mass and vary the values of shadows, has mastered the secret
of representing life with precision and elegance of outline, and can
render the facial expression of the most different types. Sacred and
mythological personages, sybils and prophets, madonnas and the gods
of Olympus, the men and women of the fifteenth century, all not only
reveal at the first glance their close pictorial relationship to the
general inclinations and habits of Florentine art of the fourteenth
century, but show us these tendencies continued and confirmed in a
fresh form. The delicacy which charms us in the bas-reliefs and the
pictures of the time; the aspiration, common to contemporary painters
and sculptors, of idealising and heightening the expression of external
facts; the love of rare, exquisite, and somewhat subtle expression, are
to be found in the works left by the painter-engravers who were the
immediate followers of Finiguerra, no less clearly than in the painted
and sculptured subjects on the walls of contemporary churches and
palaces.
[Illustration: FIG. 21.--BACCIO BALDINI.
Theseus and Ariadne.]
Whatever we may suppose to have been the part due to Baccio Baldini, to
Botticelli, to Pollajuolo, or to anybody else; with whatever acuteness
we may discern, or think we discern, the inequalities of style and
the tricks of touch in different men; all their works display a
vigorous unity, which must be carefully taken into account, inasmuch as
it gives its character to the school. Though we should even succeed in
separately labelling with a proper name each one of the works which are
all really dependent on one another, the gain would be small.
[Illustration: FIG. 22.--BACCIO BALDINI.
The Prophet Baruch.]
Provided that neither the qualities nor the meaning of the whole
movement be understood, we may, as regards the distribution of minor
parts, resign ourselves to doubt, and even ignorance, and console
ourselves for the mystery which enshrouds these nameless talents: and
this the more readily that we can with greater impartiality appreciate
their merits in the absence of biographical hypothesis and the
commentaries of the scholar.
[Illustration: FIG. 23.--BACCIO BALDINI.
The Sibyl of Cumæ.]
The prints due to the Florentine painter-engravers who followed
Finiguerra mark a transitional epoch between the first stage of Italian
engraving and the time when the art, having entered upon its period of
virility, used its powers with confidence, and showed itself equal to
any feat. The privileges of fruitfulness and success in this second
phase no longer, it is true, belong wholly to Florence. It would seem
that, after having again and again given birth to so much talent,
Florentine art, exhausted by rapid production, reposed and voluntarily
allowed the neighbouring schools to take her place. Even before the
appearance of Marc Antonio, the most important proofs of skill were
given outside of Tuscany; and if towards the beginning, or at the
beginning, of the sixteenth century, the numerous plates engraved by
Robetta still continued to sustain the reputation of the Florentine
school, such a result was owing far less to the individual talent of
the engraver, than to the charm and intrinsic value of his models.
[Illustration: FIG. 24.--PRINT BELONGING TO THE SET ENTITLED "THE GAME
OF CARDS."]
[Illustration: FIG. 25.--MANTEGNA.
The Virgin and the Infant Jesus.]
Of all the Italian engravers who, towards the end of the fifteenth
century, completed the popularisation in their country of the art whose
first secrets and examples were revealed and supplied by Florence, the
one most powerfully inspired and most skilful was certainly Andrea
Mantegna. We need not here recall the true position of this great
artist in the history of painting. Such of his pictures and decorative
paintings as still exist possess a world-wide fame; and, though his
engravings are less generally known, they deserve equal celebrity, and
would justify equal admiration.
[Illustration: FIG. 26.--MANTEGNA.
From the Print Representing a Battle of Sea-Gods.]
The engraved work of Mantegna consists of only twenty plates, about
half of which are religious, and the remainder mythological or
historical. Though none of these engravings bears the signature or
initials of the Paduan master, their authenticity cannot be doubted.
It is abundantly manifest in certain marked characteristics of style
and workmanship; in the delicate yet strong precision of the drawing;
and in that somewhat rude elegance which was at the command of none of
his contemporaries in the same degree. Every part of them, even where
they savour of imperfection or of extravagance, bears witness to the
indomitable will and independent genius of a master. His touch imparts
a passionate and thrilling aspect even to the details of architectural
decoration and the smallest inanimate objects. One would suppose that,
after having studied each part of his subject with the eye of a man of
culture and a thinker, Mantegna, when he came to represent it on the
metal, forgot all but the burning impatience of his hand and the fever
of the struggle with his material.
[Illustration: FIG. 27.--MANTEGNA.
The Entombment.]
[Illustration: FIG. 28.--MANTEGNA.
Jesus Christ, St. Andrew, and St. Longinus.]
And yet the handling alone of such works as the "Entombment" and the
"Triumph of Cæsar" bears witness to the talent of an engraver already
more experienced than any of his Italian predecessors and more alive to
the real resources of his art. The burin in Mantegna's hand displays a
firmness that can no longer be called stiffness; and, while it hardly
as yet can be said to imitate painting, competes in boldness and
rapidity at least with the effect of chalk or the pen. Unlike the
Florentine engravers, with their timid sparse strokes which scarcely
served to mark the outlines, Mantegna works with masses of shadow
produced by means of closer graining, and seeks to express, or at any
rate to suggest, internal modelling, instead of contenting himself
with the mere outlines of the body. In a word, Mantegna as an engraver
never forgot his knowledge as a painter; and it is this, combined with
the rare vigour of his imagination, which assures him the first place
amongst the Italian masters before the time of Marc Antonio.
[Illustration: FIG. 29.--MANTEGNA.
From the Triumph of Julius Cæsar.]
Mantegna had soon many imitators. Some of them, as Mocetto, Jacopo
Francia, Nicoletto da Modena, and Jacopo de' Barbari, known as the
Master of the Caduceus, though profiting by his example, did not push
their docility so far as to sacrifice their own tastes and individual
sentiment. Others, as Zoan Andrea and Giovanni Antonio da Brescia,
whose work has been sometimes mistaken for that of Mantegna himself,
set themselves not only to make his manner their own, but to imitate
his engravings line for line.
However strongly Mantegna's influence may have acted on the Italian
engravers of the fifteenth century, or the early years of the
sixteenth, it hardly seems to have extended beyond Lombardy, Venice,
and the small neighbouring states. It was neither in Florence nor
in Rome that the Paduan example principally excited the spirit of
imitation. The works it gave rise to belong nearly all of them to
artists formed under the master's very eyes, or in close proximity to
his teachings, whether the manner of the leader of the school appeared
in the efforts of pure copyists and imitators more or less adroit, or
whether it appeared in a much modified condition in the works of more
independent disciples.
[Illustration: FIG. 30.--MOCETTO.
Bacchus.]
It was in Verona, Venice, Modena, and Bologna that the movement which
Mantegna started in art found its most brilliant continuation. As the
engravers, emboldened by experience, gradually tended to reconcile
something of their own inspirations and personal desires with the
doctrines transmitted to them, assuredly a certain amount of progress
was manifested and some improvements were introduced into the use or
the combination of means; but in spite of such partial divergences,
the general appearance of the works proves their common origin, and
testifies to the imprudence of the efforts sometimes made to split
into small isolated groups and infinite subdivisions what, in reality,
forms a complete whole, a genuine school.
The same spirit of unity is again found to predominate in all the works
of the German engravers belonging to the second half of the fifteenth
century. With respect to purpose and style, there is certainly a great
difference between the early Italian engravings and those which mark
the beginning of the art in the towns of High and Low Germany. But
both have this in common: that certain fixed traditions once founded
remain for a time almost unchangeable; that certain fixed methods of
execution are held like articles of faith, and only modified with
an extreme respect for the time-honoured principles of early days.
The Master of 1466, and shortly after him, Martin Schongauer, had
scarcely shown themselves, before their example was followed, and
their teaching obediently practised, by a greater number of disciples
than had followed, or were destined to follow, in Italy the lead of
the contemporaries of Finiguerra or Mantegna. The influence exerted
by the latter had at least an equivalent in the ascendancy of Martin
Schongauer; while the Master of 1466, in the character of a founder,
which belongs to him, has almost the same importance in the history
of German engraving as the Florentine goldsmith in that of Italian
engraving.
[Illustration: FIG. 31.--BATTISTA DEL PORTO, CALLED THE "MASTER OF THE
BIRD."
St. Sebastian.]
[Illustration: FIG. 32.--MARTIN SCHONGAUER.
The Virgin and the Infant Jesus.]
[Illustration: FIG. 33.--MARTIN SCHONGAUER.
St. John the Evangelist.]
The Master of 1466 may, indeed, be regarded as the Finiguerra of
Germany, because he was the first in his own country to raise to the
dignity of an art what had been only an industrial process in the
hands of talentless workmen. Like wood engraving, intaglio engraving,
such as we see it in German prints some years before the works of
the Master of 1466, had only succeeded in spreading abroad, in the
towns on the banks of the Rhine, productions of a rude or grotesque
symbolism, in which, notwithstanding recent attempts to exaggerate
their value, a want of technical experience was as evident as extreme
poverty of conception. These archæological curiosities can have no
legitimate place amongst works of art, and we may without injustice
take still less account of them, as the rapid progress made by the
Master of 1466 throws their inferiority into greater relief. If the
anonymous artist called the Master of 1466 be the true founder of the
German school of engraving; if he show himself cleverer than any of
the Italian engravers of the period--from the point of view only of
practical execution, and the right handling of the tool--it does not
necessarily follow that he holds the same priority in talent as he
certainly holds in order of time before all other engravers of the
same age and country. One of these, Martin Schongauer, called also
"handsome Martin," or for short, "Martin Schon," may have a better
right to the highest place. Endowed with more imagination than the
Master of 1466, with a deeper feeling for truth and a clearer instinct
for beauty, he displays at least equal dexterity in the conduct of the
work and in the handling of the graver. Assuredly, if we compare Martin
Schongauer's prints with the beautiful Flemish or French engravings of
the seventeenth century, the combinations of lines which satisfied the
German engraver cannot fail to appear insufficient, or even archaically
simple; but if we compare them with the engraved work of all countries
in the fifteenth century, it will be acknowledged that, even as a
technical worker, the master of Colmar[19] exhibited a striking
superiority over all his contemporaries. Such plates as the "Flight
into Egypt," the "Death of the Virgin," the "Wise Virgins," and the
"Foolish Virgins," are distinguished above all by power and by grace
of expression; but to these ideal qualities there is added so much
firmness of drawing, and so much decision of handling, that, in spite
of all subsequent progress, they deserve to be numbered with those
which most honour the art of engraving.
[Illustration: FIG. 34.--MARTIN SCHONGAUER.
Jesus Betrayed by Judas.]
[Illustration: FIG. 35.--MARTIN SCHONGAUER.
The Entombment.]
[Illustration: FIG. 36.--MARTIN SCHONGAUER.
Figure from the set entitled "The Foolish Virgins."]
Martin Schongauer, like the Master of 1466, at once raised up both
imitators and rivals in Munich, in Mecheln in Westphalia, in Nuremberg,
and in many other towns in the German States. His influence and
reputation extended even beyond the borders of Germany; and it was not
the artists of the Low Countries alone who sought to profit by his
example. In Florence young Michelangelo did not disdain to study, nor
even to copy him, for he painted a "Temptation of St. Anthony," after
Schongauer's engraving. Italian miniature painters and engravers,
Gherardo and Nicoletto da Modena, amongst others, reproduced many
of his prints. The very figures and ornamentation which decorate
the "Books of Hours," published by Simon Vostre and Hardouin at the
beginning of the sixteenth century, show that in the France of that
period a zeal for imitation of the master's manner was not always
restrained by the fear of actual plagiarism. But the influence of
Martin Schongauer on the progress of art and the talent of artists
was more extended and decided in Germany itself. Amongst those who
most obediently submitted to, and who best knew how to profit by,
that example, we need only mention Bartholomew Schön, Franz von
Bocholt, Wenceslas of Olmütz, Israel van Mechenen, Glockenton, and
lastly, the engraver with the monogram "B M," whose most important
work, the "Judgment of Solomon," was perhaps engraved from a picture
by Martin Schongauer, who like Mantegna, like Pollajuolo, and indeed
like the majority of early engravers, was not only a painter, but a
singularly good one. His painted pictures still belonging to the town
of Colmar, and, setting aside his rare talent as an engraver, even
the little "Death of the Virgin," which has been the property of the
London National Gallery since 1860, would be enough to establish his
reputation.[20]
[Illustration: FIG. 37.--MARTIN SCHONGAUER.
St. Anthony.]
The importance of such an artist is in every respect that of the leader
of a school and a master in the strictest acceptation of the word.
Martin Schongauer in his own person, and through the talent he helped
to foster, did so much, and so greatly honoured his country, that it
is only just to regard him as one of the most glorious representatives
of national art, and to place his name beside those of Albert Dürer
and Holbein, as the three men in whom the essential qualities and
characteristics of the German genius have been most typically
represented.
CHAPTER IV.
LINE ENGRAVING AND WOOD ENGRAVING IN GERMANY AND ITALY IN THE SIXTEENTH
CENTURY.
Thanks to the Master of 1466 and to Martin Schongauer, line engraving
in Germany was marked by brilliant and unexpected advances, whilst wood
engraving merely followed the humble traditions of early days. It is
true that the latter process was no longer exclusively applied to the
production of occasional unbound prints, or cheap religious pictures on
loose leaves, of which we have a specimen in the "Saint Christopher"
of 1423. In Germany, towards the end of the fifteenth century, the
custom had spread of "illustrating" (as we now call it) type-printed
books with wood engravings. To mention a few amongst many examples, we
have the "Casket of the True Riches of Salvation" ("Schatzbehalter"),
published at Nuremberg in 1491, and the "Chronicorum Liber" called the
"Nuremberg Chronicle," printed in the same town in 1493, both of which
contain numerous wood-cuts interpolated in the text.
These cuts are not so bad as the earlier German work in the same
process, yet they are far from good. They scarcely hold out a
promise of the advance in skill made some years later by wood-cutters
under the influence of Albert Dürer, and if they are compared with
the illustrations which adorn Italian books of the same period--the
"Decameron" of 1492, for instance, and especially the "Hypnerotomachia
Poliphili" of 1499--they appear still worse. Though they are not of
much value in themselves, the prints which accompany the writings in
the "Casket" and the "Nuremberg Chronicle" deserve attention. They were
done from designs supplied by Albert Dürer's master, Michael Wolgemut;
and the gulf between the rather feeble talent of the older man, and the
profound knowledge and powerful originality of his illustrious pupil,
can thus be easily measured.
Albert Dürer was the son of a Hungarian goldsmith established at
Nuremberg. He tells us himself how, at the age of fifteen, he left his
father's shop for Wolgemut's studio: not that he wished to free himself
from parental authority, but simply to hasten the time when he might
do his share towards satisfying the wants of a numerous family. "My
father," says Albert Dürer, in his autobiographical notes, "could only
supply himself, his wife, and children[21] with the strict necessaries
of life; and spent his life in great hardship and severe hard work. He
suffered in addition many adversities and troubles. Every one who knew
him spoke well of him, for he led a worthy Christian life, was patient
and gentle, at peace with every one, and always thankful to God. He
did not seek worldly pleasures, was a man of few words, kept little
company, and feared God. My dear father was very earnest about bringing
up his children in the fear of God, for it was his greatest desire
to lead them aright, so that they might be pleasing to God and man.
And his daily injunction to us was that we should love God, and deal
uprightly with our neighbour.... I felt at length more like an artist
than a goldsmith, and I begged my father to let me paint; but he was
displeased with the request, for he regretted the time I had lost in
learning his trade. However, he gave in to me, and on St. Andrew's Day,
1486, he apprenticed me to Master Michael."
Albert Dürer's progress was indeed rapid, at least his progress in
engraving, for he drew with remarkable talent before he entered
Wolgemut's studio. The charming portrait of himself at the age of
thirteen, still preserved at Vienna in the Albertine Collection,
sufficiently proves that he required no lessons from his new master in
the skilful handling of a pencil: the teaching of his own mind had been
enough. But it was otherwise with engraving, where he had to advance
by way of experiment, and gain capacity from practice. And it was not
till about 1496, after many years of apprenticeship, that he ventured
to publish his first engraved work. His early works, moreover, are very
probably only copies from Wolgemut,[22] whereas the original works
which followed, though retaining something of the traditional manner,
bear nevertheless a stamp of independent feeling. Thus too, and at
nearly the same time, the genius of Perugino's gifted pupil began to
show itself under the borrowed forms of the only style permitted in the
school; and the obedient hand which portrayed the "Sposalizio" in the
manner and under the eyes of his master, in secret already obeyed the
mind of Raphael.
Meanwhile Albert Dürer, whose fame had begun to spread beyond the
walls of Nuremberg, undertook a tour through Germany, and was absent
for four years; and when he returned to settle in his native town, he
married Agnes Frey, the daughter of a respectable and wealthy merchant
in Nuremberg. If we may believe report, the union was unhappy, and
darkened and shortened by cruel domestic troubles the life of the noble
artist. The story has often been told how his imperious and greedy
wife kept him continually at work, and how, as prints paid better
than pictures, she would not allow him to sacrifice the burin to the
brush. Dreading the reproaches and accusations of idleness to which
she gave vent on the smallest provocation, Dürer bent beneath the yoke
and rarely left his studio. One day, for instance, they relate that he
was discovered in the street by his wife, whom he believed to be at
the other end of the town, and was forced to return and to expiate
his momentary idleness by working far beyond his usual time. The poor
artist died at last of overwork and misery; and his hateful widow only
regretted his death because it set a term to his earnings.
Such is the account in all the books that deal with Dürer, from the
work of the German Sandrart, in the seventeenth century, down to the
biographical dictionaries published in our own time by French writers;
such is the story which has served as text to so many denunciations
of this new Xantippe, and to so many elegies upon her victim. But the
facts of the case were not carefully examined. The result of Herr
Thausing's scrupulous investigation of the subject, and the authentic
testimony he has adduced, show, on the contrary, that Albert Dürer
and his wife lived on pretty good terms till his death; so that we
may banish as idle fables the torments which he was supposed to have
suffered, and the sorrows that were said to have shortened his life.
The story so frequently repeated after Vasari, of Dürer's quarrels with
a certain forger of his works at Venice, where copies signed with his
monogram were publicly sold as originals, rests on a surer basis. The
said forger was a young man of no reputation who had conceived this
idea of commanding a sale for his works, and of thus quickly realising
a profit on the renown of Dürer and the simplicity of his customers.
It was not long, however, before the fraud was discovered, when he
tried, it is said, to turn it into a joke; but the German artist could
not be brought to see it in that light. It was a case in which his wife
was not concerned, and he could take his own part openly. He applied
at once to the Senate, denounced the fraud, and obtained a decree
condemning the offender thenceforth to affix to his plates no other
name than his own. This name, destined to become celebrated, was no
other than that of Marc Antonio Raimondi.
In our own days the truth of this story has been more than once
doubted, at least in so far as the legal consequences are concerned,
for the forgery itself cannot be denied. The plates of the "Life of
the Virgin," engraved by Marc Antonio from Albert Dürer, and bearing
the monogram of the latter, are known to every one; but it has been
objected as an argument against the sentence that, in the state of
morals and legislation in the sixteenth century, to affix another
person's signature to these plates did not constitute a misdemeanour;
and that Marc Antonio, by appropriating the name and the works of
Albert Dürer, did no worse than many imitators of Martin Schongauer had
done before him, no worse, indeed, than was presently to be done with
regard to his own works by imitators as unscrupulous as himself. This
is quite true; but it is no less so that Albert Dürer's signature, so
deliberately added by Marc Antonio to the copies he engraved of the
"Life of the Virgin," is not to be found on the plates of the "History
of the Passion," engraved later on by Marc Antonio in imitation of the
German master. It is impossible not to suppose that in the meantime a
judgment of some sort was passed, obliging the copyist to appear under
his true colours.
The just satisfaction accorded to the demands of Albert Dürer was
not, however, to preserve him from the injury afterwards done him by
imitators of another kind. Some Venetian painters followed the example
of Marc Antonio, and, adding insult to injury, energetically abused the
very man whose works they impudently copied. "If you saw these men,"
wrote Dürer to his friend Pirkheimer, "you would take them for the best
people in the world. For my part, I can never help laughing at them
when they speak to me. They are quite aware that one knows all about
their knavery; but they don't care. You may be sure I was warned in
time not to eat and drink with them. There are painters in Venice who
copy my works, clamouring loudly the while that I am ruining art by
departing from the antique."
[Illustration: FIG. 38.-HANS SEBALD BEHAM.
The Jester and the Lovers.]
Albert Dürer, however, found in the welcome he received from the most
celebrated Italian artists a compensation for the bad conduct to
which he was a victim. Old Giovanni Bellini himself overwhelmed his
young rival with praise, and begged for one of his works, for which
he declared himself "eager to pay well." Lastly, when Dürer was once
more in his own country, and might have considered himself forgotten
by the Italian painters, Raphael, the greatest of all, sent him as a
token of his admiration some proofs of plates that Marc Antonio had
just engraved under his own eye. What happened at Venice was nearly
happening at Nuremberg. The German engraver did not dream of copying
the works of his old imitator as a sort of _quid pro quo_; but, as he
really appreciated them at their true value, he did not hesitate to
show them to his pupils, and to recommend them to their imitation.
Aldegrever, Hans Schaüflein, Baldung Grün, Hans Sebald Beham, indeed,
the greater part of the so-called "Little Masters," who were destined
all their lives to remain faithful to tradition, were content to admire
without any thought of imitation; but those who were younger and
less fixed simply took Albert Dürer at his word. Perhaps he scarcely
welcomed such excessive docility. But their master having thus almost
acknowledged a superior, these young men hurriedly left him to put
themselves under the guidance of the conqueror. The deserters were
numerous. Georg Pencz, Bartholomew Beham, and Jacob Binck, who had been
the first to cross the Alps, succeeded in copying Marc Antonio well
enough to cause several of the subjects they engraved to be mistaken
for his own. When in their turn, and in Rome itself, they had educated
German pupils, these latter returned to their own country to finish
the revolution already begun, by spreading still further the taste for
the Italian manner; so that the school of Dürer, the only one known in
Germany some years before, was, after the second generation, almost
entirely absorbed in that of the Italians.
[Illustration: FIG 39.
HANS SEBALD BEHAM.
The Three Soldiers.]
The engravings of Albert Dürer, even those produced in the full force
of his talents, for a long time obtained but little favour in France
and England. They now possess zealous admirers, and modern painting
now and then shows signs of being affected by this enthusiasm; it
is in the new German school, of which Cornelius and Kaulbach were
the chiefs, that the Nuremberg master seems to have exerted the most
important influence, and one which is, even in some respects, to be
regretted. It would, however, be unjust to Dürer to saddle him with the
burden of errors of which he was but the involuntary cause. However
exaggerated may have been the reaction produced by his followers three
centuries after his death, considered separately and apart from them,
he remains, nevertheless, an eminent artist and the greatest of all
his countrymen. Vasari considers that, as a painter and sculptor, "he
would have equalled the great masters of Italy, if he had been born
in Tuscany, and if the study of the antique had helped him to impart
to his figures as much beauty and elegance as they have truth and
delicacy;" as a mathematician he ranked among the first of his time in
Germany; as an engraver--and it is as such only that we can look upon
him here--he enormously advanced the progress of the art. No one before
him ever handled the burin with the same skill and vigour; no one ever
cut outlines on the metal with such absolute certainty, or so carefully
reproduced every detail of modelling.
[Illustration: FIG. 40.--ALBERT DÜRER.
Willibald Pirkheimer.]
[Illustration: FIG. 41.--ALBERT DÜRER.
The Holy Face.]
[Illustration: FIG. 42.--ALBERT DÜRER.
The Standard Bearer.]
[Illustration: FIG. 43.--ALBERT DÜRER.
The Ride.]
[Illustration: FIG. 44.--ALBERT DÜRER.
The Pommel of Maximilian's Sword.]
The qualities which distinguished his talent and manner are found
to nearly the same extent in all his work. As examples, however,
peculiarly expressive of his delicate yet powerful talent, we
may mention the hunting "St. Hubert"--or, more probably, St.
Eustace--kneeling before a stag with a miraculous crucifix on its head,
the "St. Jerome in his Cell," the print called the "Knight and Death,"
and lastly the subject known as "Melancholia," which should rather
be called "Reflection," but reflection in its gravest, darkest, one
might almost say its most despairing, attitude. This piece, which even
Vasari allows to be "incomparable," represents a woman seated, her head
resting on one hand, whilst she holds in the other a compass with which
she is trifling mechanically. As though to suggest the limitations and
nothingness of human knowledge, an hour-glass and various scientific
instruments are scattered about; whilst in the middle distance a child,
doubtless an image of youthful illusions, is attentively writing, and
contrasts in its serenity with the troubled countenance and despairing
attitude of the principal figure. Had Dürer only engraved this one
extraordinary plate, had he only produced this one work, as strikingly
original in execution as in intention, it would be enough to mark
his position for ever in the history of art, and to commend him to
everlasting honour. But there are many other works from the same
hand which might be also mentioned to confirm or to increase our
admiration. There are many, besides the "Melancholia," where the almost
savage energy of the style is allied to an extraordinary manipulative
delicacy in the expression of details. Sometimes, indeed, his energy
degenerates into violence and his precision into dryness; sometimes--as
a rule, in fact--the general effect is impaired by a too detailed
insistence on subordinate forms, while the beauty of these forms is at
least affected by the minute care with which they have been separately
studied and expressed. But these imperfections, or, if you like, these
faults, may be attributed in part to the tendencies and prejudices of
the period, and in part to that national taste for excessive analysis
which has been a characteristic of the German mind in every age. That
Dürer's merits, on the other hand, are entirely his own, may easily be
seen by comparing his works not only with those of former engravers,
but with those of foreign contemporary masters. Neither in Italy, nor
anywhere else, is it possible to find in the sixteenth century an
engraver of such original inspiration and possessing so much knowledge
and technical skill. Even Marc Antonio, superior though he may be in
sentiment and majesty of style, cannot dispossess Dürer of his lawful
renown, nor take from his art its peculiar virtue and authority.
[Illustration: FIG. 45.--MARC ANTONIO.
Lucretia. After Raphael.]
Marc Antonio Raimondi was born at Bologna, where he studied in the
school of the painter-goldsmith Francesco Francia, and was still only
an unknown worker in niello, and the author of some rather indifferent
plates engraved from his own or his master's designs,[23] when a
journey to Venice and the careful study of Albert Dürer's engravings
showed him the inmost possibilities of an art of which he had till then
known little more than the mere mechanical processes. Unfortunately, as
we have seen, the young engraver was not content with copying these,
the best models of the day, for his own improvement, but, to secure
a double profit, pushed his imitation a step further, and copied the
signature with as much care as the style.
Some years later he went to Rome, where Raphael, on the recommendation
of Giulio Romano, allowed him to engrave one of his own designs, the
"Lucretia." Other originals from Raphael's pencil were afterwards
reproduced by Marc Antonio with so much success that these fac-similes
of the ideas of the "divine Master" were soon in everybody's hands, and
the best judges, even Raphael himself, were fully satisfied.
[Illustration: FIG. 46.--MARC ANTONIO.
Poetry. After Raphael.]
The nobility of feeling, and the purity of taste and execution, which
shine in these now classic plates have never been surpassed. These
are the qualities, and these only, which we must look for and admire
unreservedly; to seek for more, as to regret its absence, would be
superfluous. To complain of the absence of colour and of aërial
perspective would be as unjust as to expect from Rembrandt the style
and types of the Italian school. Rembrandt's prints are impregnated
with poetry in their tone and in the harmony of their effects; those
of Marc Antonio are models of beauty, as regards line and dignity of
form. The two great masters of Bologna and of Leyden, so opposed to
each other in the nature of their aspirations and the choice of their
methods, have yet, each in his own way, proved their case and carried
their point; and to each must be allotted his own peculiar share of
glory.
It would be idle to point out with regret, as some have done, what is
lacking in the masterpieces of Marc Antonio, or to say that greater
freedom in rendering colour or in managing light and shade would have
lent them an additional charm.[24] Such qualities should be looked for
elsewhere than in subjects engraved--not, it must be remembered, from
pictures--but from pen or chalk drawings. In sixteenth century Italy
they could scarcely come from the burin of one of Raphael's pupils:
an epic burin, so to speak, and one contemptuous of qualities then
considered of secondary importance. Moreover, the hand of him who held
it was bold rather than skilful, vigorous rather than patient. To model
a body in shadow, he employed unevenly crossed or almost parallel
hatchings, drawn at different widths apart, and in subordination to
the larger feeling of the form and movement he wished to express. Then
lighter strokes led up to the half-light, and a few dots at unequal
distances bordered on the light.
[Illustration: FIG. 47.--MARC ANTONIO.
Apollo. After Raphael.]
What could be simpler than such a method? Yet what more exact in its
results, and what more expressive in drawing? The exact crossing of
lines mattered little to Marc Antonio. What he was taken up with
and wanted to make visible was neither the manner nor the choice of
workmanship: that might be simple indeed, and he was satisfied if only
the beauty of a head or the general aspect of a figure were striking
at a first glance, if only the appearance of the whole was largely
rendered and well defined. Sometimes one outline is corrected by a
second, and these alterations, all the more interesting as we may
suspect that they were ordered by Raphael himself, prove both the
engraver's passion for correct drawing and his small regard for mere
niceties of craftsmanship. The time was yet distant when, in this same
Italy, the trifling search after common technicalities should take the
place of such wise views; when men should set to work to reproduce
the shadows of a face or a piece of drapery by lozenges containing
a semicircle, a little cross, or even something resembling a young
serpent; when engravers like Morghen and his followers should see, in
the reproduction of masterpieces of the brush, only an opportunity for
assembling groups of more or less complicated lines and parading their
dexterity, and should gain by these tricks the applause of all men and
the name of artists.
[Illustration: FIG. 48.--MARC ANTONIO.
Portrait of Raphael.]
The school founded by Marc Antonio soon became the most numerous and
active of all. We have seen that the Germans themselves crowded to
Rome, and surrounded the master who had caused them to forget Albert
Dürer. Engravers came to learn or to perfect their knowledge in the
same school from every part of Italy. There were Marco da Ravenna,
Agostino Veniziano, Giovanni Caraglio da Verona, Il Vecchio da Parma,
and Bonasone da Bologna. Some years later came the family of the
Mantovani, a member of which, Diana Scultori, more often called Diana
Ghisi, presented perhaps the first example, so common afterwards, of a
female engraver. Many others, whose names and works have remained more
or less celebrated, descend from Marc Antonio, whether they received
his teaching directly or through his pupils.
He, whilst so much talent was being developed under his influence,
continued the kind of work in which he had excelled from the beginning
of his stay in Rome, confining himself to the engraving of Raphael's
compositions: that is, as we have already said, of his drawings. It is
this which explains the difference, at first sight incomprehensible,
between certain prints by Marc Antonio and the same subjects as
painted by Raphael. The painter often submitted to the engraver pen
or pencil sketches of subjects which he afterwards altered with his
brush when transferring them to walls or panels: the "St. Cecilia,"
the "Parnassus," the "Poetry," for instance, which are so unlike
in the copy and in what wrongly appears to have been the original.
Raphael often drew specially for engraving: as in the "Massacre of the
Innocents," the "Judgment of Paris" the "Plague of Phrygia," &c.; but
in either case Marc Antonio had but to find the means of faithfully
rendering given forms with the graver, without troubling himself about
those difficulties which the luminous or delicate qualities of colour
would certainly have introduced.
Raphael's death, however, deprived the engraver of an influence which,
to the great advantage of his talent, he had obeyed submissively for
ten years. Marc Antonio would not continue to work from the drawings of
the master who could no longer superintend him; but he still continued
to honour him in the person of his favourite pupil, Giulio Romano,
to whom he attached himself, and whose works he reproduced almost
exclusively.
[Illustration: FIG. 49.--MARC ANTONIO.
The Three Doctors.]
The connection of the two artists resulted in the publication of some
fine engravings, amongst others the "Hercules and Antæus," but it
unfortunately terminated in a disgraceful business. Giulio Romano,
following the dissolute manners of the day, rather than the example
and traditions of the noble leader of the school, stooped to design
a series of boldly licentious subjects. Marc Antonio consented to
engrave them, and Pietro Aretino helped still further to degrade the
undertaking by composing an explanatory sonnet to be printed opposite
to each plate. The result was a book whose title is still infamous.
In publishing it the two artists took care not to sign their names.
They were, however, discovered by the boldness of the style and the
firmness of the line; for, surprising as it may seem, neither took
the trouble to alter his usual manner: they merely profaned it. Here,
assuredly, their wonted dignity of form and energy of workmanship
appear somewhat incongruous qualities.[25] The culprits were soon
discovered; and Clement VII. issued a warrant to pursue them, ordering,
at the same time, that every copy of the work should be destroyed.
Aretino fled to Venice, Giulio Romano to Mantua, and the only sufferer
was the engraver. He was imprisoned for several months, and only set
at liberty, thanks to frequent requests made by Giulio de' Medici and
the sculptor Baccio Bandinelli, from whose original, to prove his
gratitude, he executed the beautiful "Martyrdom of St. Lawrence," one
of the masterpieces of Italian engraving.
The rest of Marc Antonio's life is only imperfectly known. It is said
that he was wounded and left for dead in the streets when Rome was
sacked by the Spanish under the Constable de Bourbon; that he was then
taken prisoner, and only recovered his liberty at the cost of a ransom
large enough to ruin him; and that he then took refuge at Bologna,
where it would appear he soon afterwards died: not, as has been
alleged, murdered by the lawful possessor of one of his plates, which
he had himself forged, but, so says Vasari, "nearly reduced to beggary"
("poco meno che mendico"), and at any rate completely forgotten.
Marc Antonio's death did not bring with it the ruin of line engraving
in Italy. The numerous pupils he had educated, and in turn the pupils
of these, handed down to the beginning of the seventeenth century
the master's manner, and propagated his doctrines in neighbouring
countries. We have spoken of the revolution which their works produced
in German art; we shall presently see French art submitting in its turn
to Italian influences. Meanwhile, and even during Marc Antonio's life,
a particular sort of engraving was making rapid progress in Italy.
It consisted in the employment of a process, popularised by Ugo da
Carpi, for obtaining from several wooden blocks proofs of engravings in
camaïeu: that is, as we explained at the beginning of this book, proofs
in two, three, or four tones, offering almost the same appearance as
drawings washed in with water-colour: a process which Ugo did not
really invent, but only improved from the first attempts made at
Augsburg in 1510 by Jobst Necker, which were destined to be still
further improved by Nicolò Vicentino, Andrea Andreani, Antonio da
Trento, and many others.
A great number of pieces, executed in the same manner from Raphael and
Parmigiano, prove the skill of Ugo da Carpi, who unfortunately took
it into his head to introduce into painting even more radical changes
than those he had first promoted in engraving. He conceived the strange
idea of painting a whole picture with his finger, without once having
recourse to a brush, and, the proceeding appearing to him praiseworthy,
he perpetuated the recollection of it in a few proud words at the
bottom of the canvas. Michelangelo, to whom the picture was shown as a
remarkable curiosity, merely said that "the only remarkable thing about
it was the folly of the author." What would he have thought of Luca
Cambiaso, the Genoese, whose talent consisted in painting with both
hands at once?
The practice of engraving in camaïeu was not continued in Italy and
Germany beyond the last years of the sixteenth century. Even before
then wood engraving, properly so called, had reached a stage of
considerable importance in both countries; and it had distinguished
itself by decided enough progress to cause engraving in camaïeu to lose
much of the favour with which at first it was welcomed.
We said at the beginning of this chapter that a real regeneration in
wood engraving took place in Germany under the influence of Albert
Dürer. We have plates from the drawings of the master, engraved, if
not entirely by himself, at any rate to a certain extent with his
practical co-operation; we have others--for instance, the "Life of
the Virgin" and the "Passion," to which we have referred in speaking
of Marc Antonio's copies of them with the burin. But, in addition to
these, we have a number of wood engravings, earlier than the second
half of the sixteenth century, which prove the progress made in
the art at this time in Germany, and the ability with which it was
practised by the successors of Wolgemut. Wood engraving was no longer,
as in the time of Wolgemut, a mere mode of linear imitation, and only
fit to represent form by outlines; it was now capable of suggesting
modelling and effect, not of course with that finished delicacy and
freedom which can only be produced in true line engraving, but with an
energetic exactness quite, in accordance with the special conditions
and resources of the process. The "Triumphal Arch of the Emperor
Maximilian," by Hans Burgkmair and to some extent by Albert Dürer;
the "Theuerdannck," an allegorical history of the same prince by
Hans Schaüfflein; the "Passion of Jesus Christ;" and the "Illustrium
Ducum Saxoniæ Effigies," by Lucas Cranach, as well as many other
collections published at Nuremberg, Augsburg, Weimar, or Wittenberg,
deserve mention as remarkable examples of the peculiar skill of the
German artists of the time. Indeed, when, a little later, the "Dance
of Death," by Lützelburger, from Holbein, made its appearance, this
masterpiece in wood engraving closed the period of progress which had
gone on in Germany from the beginning of the sixteenth century, and
marked in its general history the time when the art itself had told its
last secret, and attained perfection.
[Illustration: FIG. 50.--LÜTZELBURGER.
The Miser. After Holbein.]
Whilst this regeneration in wood engraving was being accomplished in
Germany, the art continued to be practised in Italy, and especially in
Venice, with a feeling for composition, and that delicate reticence
of handling, of which the cuts in the "Hypnerotomachia Poliphili,"
published before the end of the fifteenth century (1499), and in
other books printed some years later, are such striking examples. The
Italian wood engravers of the sixteenth century, however, did not
limit themselves so entirely to the national traditions as to stifle
altogether any attempt at innovation. They had already tried to
enliven even the execution of the illustrations intended to accompany
letterpress by more decided suggestions of light and shade and general
effect. This is the reason of the successful first appearance, and
the present value, of so many beautiful volumes from the printing
presses of Marcolini da Forli, Giolito da Ferrari and other printers
established at Venice.
[Illustration: PROVER. XXI.
FIG. 51.--LÜTZELBURGER.
The Rich Sinner. After Holbein.]
Little by little, however, the domain of wood engraving widened, or
rather the object which wood engravers set themselves to attain was
changed. Instead of confining themselves, as in the past, to the part
of commentators of authors and illustrators of books, they set to work,
like the line engravers, to publish, in larger dimensions than the size
of a book, prints reproducing separate drawings and sometimes even
pictures. The works of Titian specially served as models to skilful
wood engravers, some of whom, Domenico delle Greche and Nicolò Boldrini
amongst others, are said to have worked in the studio, even under the
master's own eye. According to the careful testimony of Ridolphi,
confirmed by Mariette, Titian gave more than mere advice. He seems,
more than once, to have sketched with his own hand on the wood the
designs to be reproduced by the wood engravers; and amongst the prints
thus begun by him, several "Virgins" in landscapes and a "Triumph of
Christ" may be mentioned: the last "a work," says Mariette, "drawn with
fine taste, in which the hatchings forming the outlines and shadows ...
produce a softness and mellowness understood by Titian alone."
However brief the preceding observations on the progress of engraving
in the sixteenth century in Germany and Italy may appear, they will
perhaps be sufficient to indicate the reciprocal influence then
exercised by the engravers of both countries. Without ceasing to be
Italian in their real preferences, their tastes, and their innate love
of majesty of style, Marc Antonio and his disciples understood how to
improve their practical execution by Albert Dürer's example, exactly
as Dürer's pupils and their followers, while continuing to be German
as it were in spite of themselves, tried to become Italianised as best
they might.
But it is time to speak of the school of the Low Countries, which
appeared to stand aloof, as much from the progress in Germany initiated
by Martin Schongauer and Albert Dürer, as from the more recent advance
in Italy. Apparently unaffected by external influences, it was content
to rely on its own powers, and to make use of its own resources, whilst
awaiting the time, now close at hand, when it should in its turn supply
example and teaching to those who had till then believed themselves to
be the teachers.
CHAPTER V.
LINE ENGRAVING AND ETCHING IN THE LOW COUNTRIES, TO THE SECOND HALF OF
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
The history of engraving in the Low Countries really dates but from the
early years of the sixteenth century: that is, from the appearance of
the prints of Lucas van Leyden (1494-1533). Before that time certain
line engravers, such as the so-called _Maître aux Banderoles_, the
"Master of the Streamers," and those other anonymous artists of the
fifteenth century who composed the group called "the Dutch primitives,"
had attempted to widen the domain of the art, till then confined to
the wood-cutters who were the contemporaries or successors of the
xylographists of the "Speculum Salvationis" and the "Biblia Pauperum."
But, whilst the German and Italian engravers were distinguishing
themselves by the brilliancy of their achievement, their contemporaries
in the Low Countries were producing works little fitted to compete with
those of the foreign masters. They only succeeded in showing themselves
more or less able artisans. Lucas van Leyden was the first to use
the burin artistically, or at least to handle it with a boldness and
knowledge never foreshadowed in the timid essays of his predecessors.
[Illustration: FIG. 52.--ANONYMOUS ARTIST OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
Hercules and Omphale.]
While still a child Lucas van Leyden had already attracted the
attention of his countrymen by his talent as a painter, and his sketch
in distemper, the "Story of St. Hubert"--done, it is alleged, at the
age of twelve--placed him at once amongst artists of repute. Some
years later the publication of his prints brought him to the first
rank. He maintained his place till the end of his life; and if, after
his death, the Dutch and Flemish engravers still further perfected the
art he had practised, they did but follow in his footsteps and draw
more abundantly from the source he had discovered.
The principal feature of the works of Lucas van Leyden, and in general
of all those belonging to his school, is a keen feeling for the
phenomena of light. Albert Dürer, and even Marc Antonio, despised or
misunderstood this essential quality of art. In their works there is
hardly any gradation of tone to suggest atmospheric distance, and we
might mention engravings of theirs where objects consigned to the
background are almost as distinct as those in the foreground. It was
Lucas van Leyden who conceived the idea of perceptibly diminishing the
values according to their distance, of giving to the shadows more or
less of transparency or depth, as the case might be, and of endowing
the lights and half-lights with relatively greater force or delicacy.
Reasoning so valid--based as it was on the real appearances of
nature--was the principal cause of the young Dutch master's success. In
his numerous engravings, however, qualities of another order are added
to the merit of this innovation. The variety of facial expression,
the truth of attitude and gesture, are no less remarkable than the
harmony of effect, and the attempts at what we may venture to call
_naturalistic_ colour.
[Illustration: FIG. 53.--LUCAS VAN LEYDEN.
Adam and Eve driven from Paradise.]
Considered only from the point of view of execution, the pieces
engraved by Lucas van Leyden are far from possessing the same largeness
of design and modelling, and the same simplicity of handling, which
the works of Marc Antonio exhibit, and, in a word, have none of that
masterly ease in the rendering of form which characterises the Italian
engraver. Nor do they exhibit the determination to pursue the truth
even in minute details, and to sternly insist on the portrayal of
such truth when recognised, which distinguishes the work of Albert
Dürer. They are to be specially praised for delicacy of handling,
and for the skilful application of the processes of engraving to the
picturesque representation of reality. Thus, instead of surrounding
with an invariably firm outline objects or bodies at a distance from
one another, instead of treating alike the contour of a figure in the
foreground, and that of a tree, or group of trees, in the background,
Lucas van Leyden altered his work to suit the degree of relative
clearness or uncertainty presented in nature by the forms of objects at
different distances from the eye. An unbroken line is his method for
giving the required boldness to such contours as, from the place they
occupy, must be strongly defined and dominate the rest. When, on the
contrary, he wishes to reproduce the half-veiled lines of a distant
landscape, and to imitate that tremulous and floating aspect assumed by
an object in proportion to its remoteness and the amount of intervening
atmosphere, he changes his touch; and, instead of bounding by a single
continuous line the object reproduced, employs a series of small broken
lines, superimposed in a horizontal or oblique direction; and thus,
instead of a dry definition of outline, he renders with deliberate
hesitation that floating quality which is to be observed in nature.
[Illustration: FIG. 54.--LUCAS VAN LEYDEN.
The Visitation.]
Lucas van Leyden was the first amongst engravers who took into account
with any measure of success the assumed distances of his models, in
order to organise in their representation a varying value of tones and
a general gradation of force. This important change he introduced from
the beginning: that is to say, from 1508, the year of his first dated
print, "The Monk Sergius Killed by Mahomet" (which, by the way, might
be more appropriately entitled "Mahomet before the Body of a Hermit
Murdered by One of his Servants").[26] Here, as in the master's other
prints, the backgrounds are treated with so light a touch that their
distance can be felt; the handling becomes less energetic, the burin
ploughs the copper less heavily, as the objects recede from the front
of the composition. Moreover, every subordinate form is observed and
rendered with singular delicacy; every face and every detail of drapery
bear testimony, by the way they are engraved, to the clear insight of
the artist and his extraordinary skill of hand. His work is strictly
realistic, his style precise and clear rather than loftily inspired;
and we look almost in vain to him for taste, properly so called, the
feeling for the beautiful, in fact, the understanding of the ideal
conditions of art.
[Illustration: FIG. 55.--LUCAS VAN LEYDEN.
Pyramus and Thisbe.]
This it is which constitutes the principal difference, and clearly
marks the distance, between the talent of Lucas van Leyden and that of
Mantegna, of Marc Antonio, or of any other Italian engraver of the
fifteenth or sixteenth centuries. Besides, neither the defects nor the
merits of the master are entirely the result of his inclinations or
his personal habits. The very spirit of Dutch art and the instinctive
preferences of the future school of the seventeenth century are to
be found in embryo in his works, which tend less to initiate us into
the mysteries of the invisible, than to place before us the faithful
image of what really exists. "It was the fate of Holland," as Eugène
Fromentin has well said,[27] "to like _ce qui ressemble_, to return
to it one day or other, to outlive all besides, and to survive and
be saved itself by portraiture." Taking the word in its widest
acceptation, Lucas van Leyden is already engraving "portraits." It is
by the careful imitation of living nature or still-life that he means
to interest us: even when his models are in themselves of little worth,
or, as is sometimes the case, are the reverse of beautiful.
[Illustration: FIG. 56.--LUCAS VAN LEYDEN.
Portrait of the Emperor Maximilian I.]
In representing, for example, "David Calming the Fury of Saul,"
with what simple good faith he makes use of the first type he comes
across--a stout clodhopper whom he has picked up in the street or
at the tavern! No more is wanted save a harp under his arm and a
slashed doublet on his body; just as in picturing the most tragical
scenes of the "Passion"--the "Ecce Homo," or the "Crucifixion"--he
thinks it enough to surround his Christ with the Jew peddlers or the
home-keeping citizens of his native town, without altering in any way
their appearance or their dress. What could be more contrary to the
traditions of Italian art and the principles which have governed it,
from Giotto down to Raphael? What less unusual in the history of Dutch
art? Later on Rembrandt himself was to work in the same way; but with
what mighty powers of invention! What a startling expression of the
inner meaning, the philosophy of a subject, is united in his fashion of
treatment with the realistic ideals of the national genius! In truth,
it is not merely the peculiar characteristic of an individual--the
indifference to, or aversion from, conventional beauty of form which
is apparent in this great master, so far-reaching in moral vision, so
pre-eminently sagacious and profound among painters of the soul; it
sums up and reveals the innate disposition and æsthetic temperament of
a whole race.
In his brief career Lucas van Leyden had the happiness to see his
efforts rewarded and his credit universally established, and of this
authority and influence he ever made the noblest use. Looked upon as
a leader by the painters of his country; in friendly relations with
the German engravers, who, like Albert Dürer, sent him their works, or
came themselves to ask advice; possessing greater wealth than usually
fell to the share of the artists of his time; he never employed his
riches or his influence except in the interest of art, or of the men
who practised it. He refused no solicitant of merit, however slight.
The worthy master was careful to disguise his aid under pretext of
some advantage to himself: he was always requiring drawings of some
building or some artistic object, and thus he spared the self-respect
of the person whom he wished to help, and whom he entrusted with
the commission. More than once he went journeying through the Low
Countries to visit engravers and painters far inferior to himself, whom
he yet modestly called his rivals. He complimented them with words of
praise and encouragement; gave entertainments in their honour; and did
not leave them without exchanging his works for theirs, which were thus
paid for a hundred times over.
It was in one of these journeys, that to Flushing, that Lucas van
Leyden was attacked with the disease which was destined to carry him to
the grave. Some people have attributed to poison the suddenness of the
attack; but of this there is no proof. Once back in his native town, he
lingered on some time, worn out and sinking, yet refusing to condemn
himself to idleness. Too feeble to rise, he yet continued to draw and
engrave in bed, remaining faithful till the end to the noble passion
of his life, to the art he had dignified, and to that nature which he
had questioned more closely, and, in certain respects, perhaps better
understood than any of his predecessors. It is said that a few hours
before his death he desired to be taken up to a terrace of his house,
that he might once more admire the setting sun; and there, absorbed
in silent contemplation, surrounded by friends and pupils, he for the
last time gazed on the place of his birth, and on that heaven from
which the light was fading, even as life was ebbing from his bosom. It
was a proper conclusion to so pure a life--to one, indeed, of the most
irreproachable careers in the history of art. Lucas van Leyden died at
thirty-eight, an age fatal to more than one great artist, and which
was scarcely attained by three men with whom he seems linked by a
similarity of genius, at least as regards early fertility and sincerity
of inspiration: Raphael, Lesueur, and Mozart.
The impetus given by Lucas van Leyden to the art of engraving was
seconded, even during his life, by several Dutch artists who imitated
his method more or less successfully. Amongst others, Alart Claessen,
an anonymous engraver called the "Maître à l'Écrevisse," and Dirck
Star, or Van Staren, generally called the "Maître à l'Étoile." The
movement did not slacken after the death of the leader of the school.
The engravers of the Low Countries, accentuating more and more the
qualities aimed at from the beginning, soon surpassed their German
rivals, and seemed alone to be gifted with the knack of dealing with
light. Cornelius Cort, who engraved several of Titian's works in Venice
in the great painter's studio, and the pupils he educated on his return
to Holland, began to exhibit a boldness of touch not to be so clearly
discovered in their predecessors; but this progress, real in some
respects, was not accomplished without injury to truthful study and the
exact interpretation of form, and certainly not without a deplorable
exaggeration in the use of means.
The workmanship of Hendrik Goltzius, for instance, and still more
that of his pupil, Jan Müller, is strained and feeble owing to their
affectation of ease. The constant use of bent and parallel lines
unreasonably prolonged imparts to the plates of these two engravers
an appearance at once dull and florid; they present something of the
same aspect as those caligraphical specimens of the present day, in
which the faces of Henri IV. or of Napoleon are drawn entirely with the
curves of a single stroke. Still, in spite of this extremely affected
workmanship, the prints of Goltzius, of Müller, and even of Saenredam,
are characterised by a comparative intensity of tone, as well as by
singular skill in cutting the copper. This abuse of method, however,
had not yet become general in the schools of the Low Countries. Side
by side with the intemperate or daring craftsmen we have mentioned,
there were certain Flemish and Dutch engravers who imparted to their
work a delicacy and a reticence of expression better suited to the
traditions and the models bequeathed by Lucas van Leyden. These were
Nicolas van Bruyn at Antwerp, the brothers Wierix at Amsterdam, and
some few others, all of them disciples more or less faithful to the
old teaching, and apparently more or less hostile to the effort at
emancipation going on around them. When, however, Rubens took the
reins, individual resistance and impulse ceased, and all controversy
was at an end. Principles, method, and aim became the same for every
one. Both Dutch and Flemish engravers openly set themselves to
represent with the graver the infinite gradations of a painted canvas,
the delicacy and the daring, the nicest punctilio and the most summary
smearing, of the painter's brush.
Never was the influence of a painter on engraving so direct or so
potent as that of Rubens. The great master had shown by his drawings
that it was possible to be as rich a colourist with black and white
alone as with all the resources of the palette. He made choice amongst
his pupils of those whom he believed to be capable of following his
example in this matter; he obliged them to lay aside the brush, almost
ordered them to become engravers, and so penetrated them with the
secret of his method, that he seems to have animated them with his own
inspiration. He assembled them in the vast house which he had built at
Antwerp, and which he turned into a college of artists of all sorts.
He made them sometimes labour beneath his eye; he carefully corrected
their work;[28] and in this way he taught them that comprehension of
effect which was specially his, and his own incomparable knowledge of
the right tones with which to lay in, or to support, a mass of light or
shadow.
To recall the success of these efforts is to recall the names of
Vorsterman, Bolswert, Paul Pontius, and Soutman: men boldly scientific
in their art, who, at the first rush, carried to perfection that style
of engraving which renders before all the relative richness and varied
value of tones in a picture, and whose effects are identical in some
sort with those of the painting itself. It is obvious that, in spite
of its prodigious merits, this painting is not of so elevated a nature
as that of Leonardo da Vinci or Raphael; but is it therefore less true
that it is completely summed up, and its living image reflected,
in contemporary engraving? Actuated by an idea of colour and effect
analogous to that of Marc Antonio with regard to drawing, the Flemish
engravers resolutely subordinated accessories to the importance and
splendour of essentials; and in this way they succeeded in dissembling,
by means of the breadth of the whole, the execution of details and even
the laboriousness of the process. It would seem from the sparkling look
and brilliant handiwork of these plates, that the engravers had thrown
them off in a few hours of inspiration, so completely does their dash
banish all idea of the time spent upon them, all sense of patience
and toil. And yet these lights and shades, the sweep of the flesh,
the sheen and shimmer of the fabrics, are all the result of lines
laboriously ploughed; perhaps a thousand strokes have been needed to
imitate an effect due to a single glaze, or given by two touches of the
brush.
The engravings of the Flemish school in Rubens' time are still
widely distributed. There are few people who have not had the
opportunity of admiring the "Thomiris," the "St. Roch Praying for the
Plague-Stricken," or the "Portrait of Rubens," by Pontius; the "Descent
from the Cross," by Vorsterman; the "Fall of the Damned," by Soutman;
and a hundred other pieces as beautiful, all engraved from the master
by his pupils. And who does not know that marvellous masterpiece, the
"Crown of Thorns," engraved by Bolswert from Van Dyck? and those other
masterpieces of Van Dyck himself--the etched portraits of artists or
amateurs, the painter's friends, from the two Breughels to Cornelis,
from Franz Snyders to Philip Le Roy?
[Illustration: FIG. 57.--VAN DYCK.
Etched by Himself.]
The progress, however, by which the Flemish school of engraving had
distinguished itself, soon had an equivalent in the movement of reform
in Holland. Towards the end of the sixteenth century, and on from
the beginning of the seventeenth, the Dutch engravers, by dint of
insisting too strongly on the innovations of Lucas van Leyden, had
almost succeeded in causing scientific ease of handling to degenerate
into mere trickery, and spirit of design into inflation and turbulence.
Amongst the first, and with greater authority than any, Cornelius
Visscher set himself to stay the art of line engraving on its downward
course.
[Illustration: FIG. 58.--CORNELIUS VISSCHER.
The Seller of Ratsbane.]
Most of the scenes represented by Visscher are assuredly not of a
nature greatly to interest the imagination, still less to touch the
heart. It would be somewhat difficult to be moved to any philosophical
or poetic thought by the contemplation of such work as the
"Frying-Pan," or the "Seller of Ratsbane;" but these, though the ideas
by which they are suggested are trivial or commonplace, are treated
with a deep feeling for truth, with admirable craftsmanship, and with
an amount of sincerity and boldness which makes up for the absence of
beauty, whether in thought or type. Considered only from the point of
view of execution, the plates of Visscher are masterpieces; are such
marvels, indeed, that they cannot be too carefully studied by all
engravers, whatever the style of their work.
[Illustration: FIG. 59.--CORNELIUS VISSCHER.
Giles Boutma.]
[Illustration: FIG. 60.--PAUL POTTER.
The Cow.]
The same may be said in another order of art for those fine
portraits--of "Boccaccio," of "Pietro Aretino," and of
"Giorgione"--engraved by Cornelius Van Dalen, the best of Visscher's
pupils. It is also on the same ground, that, in spite of most notable
differences in handling, the plates engraved by Jonas Suyderhoef, after
Terburg and Theodore de Keyse, command the attention of artists and
amateurs. Finally, side by side with these works, in the execution
of which etching was only resorted to as a preparatory process, or
sometimes was not even used at all, a number of subjects entirely
engraved with the needle--etchings, to speak strictly--make up a
whole which is the more creditable to the Dutch school, inasmuch as
it would be impossible at any time to find the like in the schools of
other countries. French engraving had doubtless reason to be proud of
the masterpieces of Claude Lorraine, or the clever and witty etchings
of Callot and Israel Silvestre. In Italy after Parmigiano, Agostino
Carracci, and certain other contemporary Bolognese, in Spain, Ribera,
and afterwards Goya, acquired a legitimate renown as etchers. But
whatever may be the merit of their individual work, these artists are
unconnected in either of their native countries with any group wholly
devoted to work of the same kind: with any artistic family of common
origin, inclination, and belief.
[Illustration: FIG. 61.--J. RUYSDAEL.
The Little Cornfield.]
Now the skilful Dutch etchers do not come singly, nor at long
intervals. They work in a body. It is within a few years, in fact
almost simultaneously, that Adrian Brauwer and Adrian van Ostade
publish their tavern scenes; Ruysdael and Jan Both their landscapes;
Paul Potter and Berghem, Adrian van de Velde, Marc de Bye, Karel du
Jardin, such a multitude of charming little subjects, their village
scenes and village people, their flocks in the fields, or their single
animals. Whilst emulating each other's talent, all are agreed to pursue
one and the same object, all are agreed as to the necessity of devotion
to the study of surrounding nature and everyday truth.
Although the Dutch etchers display in the totality of their achievement
the same ideal and the same tendency, each keeps, if only in the matter
of workmanship, a certain distinction and character of his own. One,
however, stands out from the group with matchless splendour, with all
the superiority of genius over talent: that one is Rembrandt.
[Illustration: FIG. 62.--REMBRANDT.
Portrait of Himself: _Rembrandt Appuye_.]
[Illustration: FIG. 63.--REMBRANDT.
Faust.]
[Illustration: FIG. 64.--REMBRANDT.
Joseph's Coat brought to Jacob.]
Pains and patience have been wasted on the secret of Rembrandt's method
of etching and printing; in trying to discover his tools and his manner
of using them, so as to achieve with him those contrasts of soft shadow
and radiant light. Vain quest of technical tricks where, really, there
is no more than a style born of imagination, and, like it, inspired
from above! It may be said that with Rembrandt, as with great musical
composers, the harmonic system is so closely allied to the melodic
idea, that analysis, if not impossible, is at least superfluous. It
sometimes happens--before a Correggio, for instance--that the charm
of the painting affects one in a manner abstract enough to produce
a sort of musical sensation. Though it does not appear that the art
of engraving could be endowed with a similar expansive force, yet
Rembrandt's etchings may almost be said to possess it. They give the
feeling of undefined aspirations rather than the limited likeness
of things; the spectator is touched by the mysterious meaning of
these passionate visions, rather than by the form in which they
are conveyed. The impression received is so keen that it stifles
any trivial wish to criticise, and certain details which would be
painful elsewhere are here not even displeasing, inasmuch as no one
would dream of requiring a mathematical explanation of the special
conditions of the subject, or of the skill of workmanship which the
artist has displayed Before the "Sacrifice of Abraham," the "Tobit,"
the "Lazarus," and all the other soul-speaking masterpieces, who would
pause to consider the strangeness or the vulgarity of the personages
and their apparel? Only the critic, who, unwitting of the rest,
would begin by examining with a magnifying glass the _workmanship_
of the ray of light which illumines the "Hundred Guilder Piece," the
"Annunciation," or the "Pilgrimage to Emmaus."
[Illustration: FIG. 65.--REMBRANDT.
Tobit's Blindness.]
[Illustration: FIG. 66.--REMBRANDT.
Jan Lutma.]
Rembrandt's method is, so to speak, supersensuous. At times he lightly
touches his plate, and at times he attacks as at a venture; at others
he skims the surface and caresses it with an exquisite refinement, a
magical dexterity. In his lights he breaks the line of the contour, but
only to resume and boldly accentuate it in his shadows; or he reverses
the method, and in the one, as in the other case, succeeds infallibly
in fixing, satisfying, and convincing the attention. He uses engraver's
tools and methods as Bossuet uses words, subduing them to the needs
of his thought, and constraining them to express it, careless of fine
finish as of trivial subtlety. Like Bossuet, too, he composes out of
the most incongruous elements, out of the trivial and the lofty, the
commonplace and the heroic, a style invariably eloquent; and from the
mingling of these heterogeneous elements there springs an admirable
harmony of result.
[Illustration: FIG. 67.--REMBRANDT.
The Beggars.]
The Flemish engravers formed by Rubens, and their Dutch contemporaries,
had no worthy successors. The revolution they accomplished in the
art was brief, and did not extend beyond the Low Countries. In
Italy, Dutch and Flemish engravings were naturally despised. It is
said--and it is easy to believe--that those accustomed to commune
with Raphael and Marc Antonio esteemed them fitting decorations "for
the walls of pothouses." In France and Germany, where Italian ideas
in art had reigned since the sixteenth century, they experienced at
first no better reception. When at length the consideration they
really deserved was accorded them, the superiority of France was
established, and her engravers could no longer be expected to descend
to imitation. The movement in the schools of the Low Countries, before
the second half of the seventeenth century, is thus, to speak truth,
a mere episode in the history of the art, and its masterpieces had
no lasting influence on engraving in general. For it to have been
otherwise, the engravers of other countries must have renounced, not
only the national traditions, but even the models they had at hand. The
method of Bolswert or of Pontius could only be usefully employed to
reproduce the works of Rubens and Van Dyck. The handling of Visscher
and of Suyderhoef was only suitable to such pictures as were painted in
Amsterdam and Leyden.
[Illustration: FIG. 68.--REMBRANDT.
The Pancake-maker.]
And meanwhile, when the schools of the Low Countries were shining with
a lustre so brilliant and so transitory, what was doing in France? and
how in France was the great age of engraving inaugurated?
CHAPTER VI.
THE BEGINNING OF LINE ENGRAVING AND ETCHING IN FRANCE AND
ENGLAND. FIRST ATTEMPTS AT MEZZOTINT. A GLANCE AT ENGRAVING IN
EUROPE BEFORE 1660.
The French were unable to distinguish themselves early in the art of
engraving, as the conditions under which they laboured were different
from those which obtained in Italy, Germany, and the Low Countries:
the homes, all three of them, of schools of painting. From the
thirteenth century onwards, the architects and sculptors of France had
produced an unbroken succession of good things; but the origin of her
school of painting is not nearly so remote, nor has it such sustained
importance. Save for the unknown glass-painters of her cathedrals, for
the miniaturists who preceded and succeeded Jean Fouquet, and for the
artists in chalks whose work is touched with so peculiar a charm and so
delicate an originality, she can boast of no great painter before Jean
Cousin. And the art of engraving could scarcely have flourished when,
as yet, the art of painting had scarcely existed.
[Illustration: FIG. 69.--NOEL GARNIER.
Grotesques.]
[Illustration: FIG. 70.--JEAN DUVET.
The Power of Royalty.]
Wood-cutting, it is true, was practised in France with a certain
success, as early as the beginning of the sixteenth century, and even
a little before that. The "Danses macabres"--those aids to morality
so popular in mediæval times--the illustrated "Books of Hours," and
other compilations besides, printed with figures and tail-pieces, in
Lyons or Paris, give earnest of the unborn masterpieces of Geofroy
Tory, of Jean Cousin himself, and of sundry other draughtsmen and
wood-cutters of the reigns of François I. and Henri II. But, as
practised by goldsmiths, such as Jean Duvet and Étienne Delaune, and
by painters of the Fontainebleau school like René Boyvin and Geofroy
Dumonstier, line engraving and etching were still no more than a means
of popularising extravagant imitations of Italian work. The prints of
Nicolas Beatrizet, who had been the pupil of Agostino Musi at Rome, and
those of another engraver of Lorraine, whose name has been Italianised
into Niccolò della Casa, appear to have been produced with the one
object of deifying the spirit of sham, and converting French engravers
to that religion to which French painters had apostatised with so much
ill-fortune under the influence of the Italians brought in by Francis I.
[Illustration: FIG. 71.--ÉTIENNE DELAUNE.
Adam and Eve driven from Paradise.]
[Illustration: FIG. 72.--ÉTIENNE DELAUNE.
Mirror.]
[Illustration: FIG. 73.--ANDROUET DU CERCEAU.
Ornamented Vase.]
During the whole of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth
centuries the French school of engraving had neither method nor bent of
its own; but meanwhile it was a whim of fashion that every one should
handle the burin or the point. From the days of Henri II. to those of
Louis XIII., craftsman or layman, everybody practised engraving. There
were goldsmiths like Pierre Woeiriot, painters like Claude Corneille
and Jean de Gourmont, architects like Androuet du Cerceau; there
were noblemen; there were even ladies--as, for instance, Georgette
de Montenay, who dedicated to Jeanne d'Albret a collection of mottoes
and emblems, partly, it was said, of her own engraving. All the world
and his wife, in fact, were gouging wood and scraping copper. It
must be repeated that the prints of this time are for the most part
borrowed--are copies feeble or stilted, or both, of foreign originals.
Not until after some years of thraldom could the French engravers shake
off the yoke of Italian art, create a special style, and constitute
themselves a school. The revolution was prepared by Thomas de Leu and
Léonard Gaultier, engravers of portraits and of historical subjects;
but the hero of the French school is Jacques Callot.
There are certain names in the history of the arts which retain an
eternal odour of popularity; we remember them as those of men of
talent, who were also in some sort heroes of romance, and our interest
remains perennial. Jacques Callot is one of these. He is probably the
only French engraver[29] whose name is yet familiar to the general
public. That this is so is hardly the effect of his work, however
excellent: it is rather the result of his adventures; of his flight
from home in childhood; his wanderings with the gipsies; and the luck
he had--his good looks aiding--with the ladies of Rome, and even (it is
whispered) with the wife of Thomassin his master.
[Illustration: FIG. 74.--THOMAS DE LEU.
Henri IV.]
We have said it is Callot's merit to have lifted the French school of
engraving out of the rut in which it dragged, and to have opened for
it a new path. He did not, however, accomplish the work with an entire
independence, nor without some leanings towards that Italy in which
he had been trained. After working in Florence under Canta-Gallina,
whose freedom of style and fantastic taste could not but prove
irresistible to the future artist of Franca Trippa and Fritellino, he
had been obliged to return to Nancy. Thence he escaped a second time,
and thither was a second time brought back by his eldest brother, who
had been despatched in pursuit. A third journey took him to Rome; and
there, whether glad to be rid of him or weary of debate, his family let
him remain.
It is probable that during his expatriation,[30] Callot never so much
as dreamed of learning from the Old Masters; but he did not fail to
make a close study of certain contemporaries who were masters so
called. Paul V. was Pope; and the age of Raphael and Marc Antonio,
of Julius II. and Leo X., was for ever at an end. The enfeebling
eclecticism of the Carracci, and the profitless fecundity of Guido, had
given currency to all sorts of second-rate qualities, and in painting
had substituted prettiness for beauty. The result was an invasion of
frivolity, alike in manners and beliefs, which was destined to find its
least dubious expression in the works of Le Josépin, and later on in
those of an artist of kindred tastes with the Lorraine engraver--the
fantastical Salvator Rosa. When Callot settled in Rome in 1609, Le
Josépin had already reached the climax of fame and fortune; Salvator,
at an interval of nearly thirty years, was on the heels of his first
success. Coming, as he did, to take a place among the dexterous and the
eccentric, it seems that Callot could not have chosen a better time. It
was not long before he attracted attention; for when he left Rome for
Florence, where he produced some of his liveliest work, his name and
his capacity were already in repute.
[Illustration: FIG. 75.--CALLOT.
From the Set entitled "Balli di Sfessania."]
At Florence his capacity was perfected under the influence of Giulio
Parigi; and, thanks to the favour of Duke Cosmo II., which he easily
obtained, his name soon became famous in the world of fashion as
among connoisseurs. Unlike his countrymen, Claude Lorraine and the
noble Poussin, who, some years later, were in this same Italy to live
laborious and thoughtful lives, Callot freely followed his peculiar
vein, and saw in art no more than a means of amusement, in the people
about him only subjects for caricature, and in imaginative and even
religious subjects but a pretext for grotesque invention. Like another
French satirist, Mathurin Regnier, who had preceded him in Rome, he
was addicted to vulgar types, to rags and deformities, even to the
stigmata of debauchery. Thus, the works of both these two men, whom we
may compare together, too often breathe a most dishonourable atmosphere
of vice. With a frankness which goes the length of impudence, they give
full play to their taste for degradation and vile reality; and yet
their vigour of expression does not always degenerate into cynicism,
nor is the truth of their pictures always shameless. The fact is, both
had the secret of saying exactly enough to express their thoughts,
even when these were bred by the most capricious fancy. They may be
reproached with not caring to raise the standard of their work; but
it is impossible to deny them the merit of having painted ugliness
of every kind firmly and with elegant precision, nor that of having
given, each in his own language, a definite and truly national form to
that art of satire which had been hardly so much as rough-hewn in the
caricatures and pamphlets of the League.
[Illustration: FIG. 76.--J. CALLOT.
From the Set entitled "Les Gentilshommes".]
Etching, but little practised in Germany after the death of Dürer,
had found scarcely greater favour in Italy. As to the Dutch Little
Masters, spoken of in the preceding chapters, the time was not yet
come for most of their charming works. Claude Lorraine's etchings, now
so justly celebrated, were themselves of later date than Callot's.
The latter was, therefore, the real author of this class of work. In
his hand the needle acquired a lightness and boldness not presaged
in previous essays, which were at once coarse and careless. In his
suggestions of life in motion, he imitated the swift and lively gait
of the pencil, whilst his contours are touched with the severity of
the pen, if not of the burin itself. In a word, he gave his plates an
appearance of accuracy without destroying that look of improvisation
which is so necessary to work of the kind; in this way he decided the
nature and special conditions of etching. It was owing to his influence
that French art first attracted the attention of the Italians: Stefano
della Bella, Cantarini and even Canta-Gallina (who did not disdain to
copy the etchings of his old pupil), Castiglione the Genoese, and many
others, essayed, with more or less success, to appropriate the style
of the master of Nancy; and when he returned to establish himself in
France, where his reputation had preceded him, he found admirers, and
before long a still greater following of imitators.
[Illustration: FIG. 77.--J. CALLOT.
From the Set entitled "Les Gueux."]
He was presented to Louis XIII., who at once commissioned him to
engrave the "Siege of La Rochelle," and received at Court with
remarkable favour, which was, however, withdrawn some years later,
when he was bold enough to oppose the will of Richelieu. After the
taking of Nancy (1633) from the Duke of Lorraine, Callot's sovereign,
the great Cardinal, to immortalise the event, ordered the engraver to
make it the subject of a companion print to that of the "Siege of La
Rochelle," which he had just finished; but he was revolted by the idea
of using his talents for the humiliation of his prince, and replied to
Richelieu's messenger, "that he would rather cut off his thumb than
obey." The reply was not of a kind to maintain him in the good graces
of the Cardinal, and Callot felt it. He took leave of the king, and
soon after retired to his native town, where he died at the age of
forty-three.
Really introduced into France by Callot, etching had become the fashion
there. Abraham Bosse and Israel Silvestre helped to popularise it,
the latter by applying it to topography and architecture, the former
by using it for the illustration of religious and scientific books,
and the embellishment of the fans and other elegant knick-knacks then
selling in that "Galerie Dauphine du Palays" which is figured in one of
his prints, and from which a play of Corneille's derives its name. He
published besides an infinite number of subjects of all sorts: domestic
scenes, portraits, costumes, architectural ornaments, almost always
engraved from his own designs, and sometimes from those of the Norman
painter, Saint-Ygny.
[Illustration: FIG. 78.--CLAUDE LORRAINE.
"Le Bouvier."]
Abraham Bosse is doubtless a second-rate man, but he is far from having
no merit at all. He is an intelligent, if not a very delicate observer,
who knows how to impart to his figures and to the general aspect of a
scene an appearance of reality which is not altogether the truth, but
which comes very near to having its charm. He certainly possesses the
instinct of correct drawing, in default of refined taste and feeling;
and finally, to take him simply as an engraver, he has much of the bold
and firm handling of Callot, with something already of that cheerful
and thoroughly French cleverness which was destined to be more and more
developed in the national school of engraving, and to reach perfection
in the second half of the seventeenth century.
To Abraham Bosse are owing decided improvements in the construction of
printing-presses, the composition of varnishes, and all the practical
parts of the art; to him some technical studies are also due, the most
interesting of which, the "Traité des Manières de Graver sur l'Airain
par le Moyen des Eaux-fortes," is, if not the first, at least one of
the first books on engraving published in France. We may add that the
works of Abraham Bosse, like those of all other etchers of his time,
show a continual tendency to imitate with the needle the work of the
graver: a tendency worth remarking, though blamable in some respects,
as its result is to deprive each class of work of its peculiar
character, and from etching in particular to remove its appearance of
freedom and ease.
We have reached the moment when the French school of engraving entered
the path of progress, no more to depart from it, and when, after having
followed in the rear of foreign engravers, the French masters at
length began to make up with and almost to outdistance them. Before
proceeding, we must glance at the movement of those schools whose
beginnings we have already traced.
[Illustration: FIG. 79.--CLAUDE LORRAINE.
"Le Chevrier."]
The line of really great Italian painters went out with the sixteenth
century. Domenichino, indeed, Annibale Carracci, and a few others,
glorified the century that followed; but their works, although full
of sentiment, skill, and ability, are quite as much affected by the
pernicious eclecticism of the period and by the general decline in
taste. After them all the arts declined. Sculpture and architecture
became more and more degraded under the influence of Bernini and
Borromini. Athirst for novelty of any kind, people had gradually come
to think the most extravagant fancies clever. To bring the straight
line into greater disrepute, statues and bas-reliefs were tortured as
by a hurricane; attitudes, draperies, and even immovable accessories
were all perturbed and wavering. The engravers were no better than
the painters, sculptors, and architects. By dint of exaggerating the
idealistic creed, they had fallen into mere insanity; and in the midst
of this degradation of art, they aimed at nothing save excitement
and novelty, so that their invention was only shown in irregular
or overlengthy lines, and their impetuosity in bad drawing. Daily
wandering further from the paths of the masters, the Italian engravers
at last attained, through the abuse of method, a complete oblivion of
the essential conditions of their art; so that with few exceptions,
till the end of the eighteenth century, nothing is to be found save
barren sleight-of-hand in the works of that very school, which, in the
days of Marc Antonio and his pupils, had been universally triumphant.
[Illustration: FIG. 80.--ABRAHAM BOSSE.
From the Set entitled "Le Jardin de la Noblesse Française."]
After the Little Masters, inheritors of some of the genius, skill, and
renown of Albert Dürer, Germany had given birth to a fair number of
clever engravers, the majority of whom had left their country. Some
of them, indistinguishable to-day from the second generation of Marc
Antonio's disciples, had, as we said, abandoned the national style for
the Italian; others had settled in France or in the Low Countries. The
Thirty Years' War accomplished the ruin of German art, which before
long was represented only in Frankfort, where Matthew Mérian of Basle,
and his pupils, with certain engravers from neighbouring countries, had
taken refuge.
Whilst engraving was declining in Italy and Germany, the English school
was springing into being. Though at first of small importance, the
beginnings and early essays of the school are such as may hardly pass
without remark.
For some time England had seemed to take little part in the progress of
the fine arts in Europe, except commercially, or as the hostess of many
famous artists, from Holbein to Van Dyck. There were a certain number
of picture-dealers and print-sellers in London, but under Charles I.
her only painters and engravers of merit were foreigners.[31] The
famous portrait painter, Sir Peter Lely, whom the English are proud
to own, was a German, as was Kneller, who inherited his reputation,
and, as was Hollar, an engraver of unrivalled talent.[32] And while
a few pupils of this last artist were doing their best to imitate his
example, the taste for line engraving and etching, which processes were
being slowly and painfully popularised by their efforts, was suddenly
changed into a passion for another method, in which the principal
success of the English school has since been won.
Prince Rupert, so renowned for his courage and his romantic adventures,
had the fortunate chance to introduce to London the process of
engraving which is called mezzotint. In spite, however, of what has
been alleged, the honour of the invention is not his. Ludwig von
Siegen, a lieutenant-colonel in the service of the Landgrave of
Hesse-Cassel, had certainly discovered mezzotint before the end of
1642, for in the course of that year he published a print in this
style--the portrait of the Princess Amelia Elizabeth of Hesse--the
very first ever given to the public. Von Siegen for awhile refused to
divulge his secret. "There is not," he wrote to the Landgrave of Hesse
concerning this same portrait, "a single engraver, nor a single artist,
who knows how this work was done."
And, indeed, no one succeeded in finding out, and it was only after
a silence of twelve years that Von Siegen consented to reveal his
mystery. Prince Rupert, then at Brussels, was the first initiated. He,
in his turn, chose for confidant the painter Wallerant Vaillant, who
apparently did not think himself bound to strict silence, for, soon
afterwards, a number of Flemish engravers attempted the process. Once
made public, no one troubled about the man who had invented it. He was,
in fact, so quickly and completely forgotten, that even in 1656 Von
Siegen was obliged to claim the title, which no one any longer dreamed
of giving him, and to sign his works: "Von Siegen, the first and true
inventor of this kind of engraving." It was still worse in London
when the plates engraved by Prince Rupert were exhibited, and when
the English artists had learnt how they could produce the like. They
set themselves to work without looking out for any other models, and
were much more taken up with their own results than the history of the
discovery, the whole honour of which was attributed to Rupert, the man
who in reality had only made it public.
[Illustration: FIG. 81.--PRINCE RUPERT.
Head of a Young Man (engraved in Mezzotint).]
The talent of Rupert's first imitators, like that of the originator
himself, did not rise above mediocrity. Amongst their direct
successors, and the successors of these, there are few of much account;
but in the eighteenth century, when Sir Joshua Reynolds undertook,
like Rubens at Antwerp, to himself direct the work of engraving, the
number of good English mezzotint engravers became considerable. Earlom,
Ardell, Smith, Dickinson, Green, Watson, and many others deserving of
mention, greatly increased the resources of the process, by applying
it to the reproduction of the master's works. Mezzotint, at first
reserved for portraits, was used for subjects of every sort: flower
pieces, genre, even history; and step by step it attained to practical
perfection, of which, at the beginning of the present century, the
English still had the monopoly.
The methods of mezzotint differ completely from those of line engraving
and etching. With the graver and the needle the shadows and half-tones
are made out on copper by means of incised lines and touches; with the
mezzotint tool, on the contrary, the lights are produced by scraping,
the shadows by leaving intact the corresponding portions of the plate.
Instead of offering a flat, smooth surface, like the plates in line
engraving, a mezzotint copper must be first grained by a steel tool
(called the "rocker"), shaped like a chisel, with a semicircular blade
which is bevelled and toothed. Sometimes (and this is generally the
case in the present day) the "rocking" of the surface, on which the
engraver is to work, is produced, not by a tool, but by a special
machine.
When the drawing has been traced in the usual way on the prepared
plate, the grain produced by the rocker is rubbed down with the
burnisher wherever pure white or light tints are required. The parts
that are not flattened by the burnisher print as darks; and these darks
are all the deeper and more velvety as they result from the grain
itself--that is to say, from a general preparation specially adapted to
catch the ink--and are by no means composed, as in line engraving, of
furrows more or less crowded or cross-hatched.
Mezzotint engraving has, in this respect, the advantage of other
processes; in all others it is decidedly inferior. The rough grain
produced on a plate by the rocker, and the mere scraping by which
it is obliterated or modified, are technical hindrances to decided
drawing: only with graver or point is it possible to make outlines of
perfect accuracy. Again, precision, delicacy of modelling, and perfect
finish in detail are impossible to the scraper. Mezzotint, in fine,
is suitable for the translation of pictures where the light is scarce
and concentrated, but is powerless to render work quiet in aspect and
smooth in effect.
English engravers, then, had begun to rank as artists. Callot, and,
after him, other French engravers already remarkably skilful, had
succeeded in founding a school which was soon to be honoured by
the presence of true masters; Italy and Germany were deteriorating
steadily. Meanwhile, what was going on elsewhere? In Spain there
was a brilliant galaxy of painters, some of whom, like Ribera, have
left etchings; but there were few or no professional engravers. In
Switzerland, Jost Amman of Zurich (1539-1591) was succeeded by a
certain number of illustrator-engravers, heirs of his superficial
cleverness and of his commercial rather than artistic ideas: engravers,
by the way, who are commonly confounded with the German masters of the
same epoch. Lastly, the few Swedes or Poles who studied art, whether in
Flanders or Germany, never succeeded in popularising the taste for it
in their own countries; only for form's sake need they be mentioned.
The first of the two great phases of the history of engraving ends
about the middle of the seventeenth century. We have seen that the
influence of Marc Antonio, though combated at first by the influence
of Albert Dürer, easily conquered, and prevailed without a rival in
Italy, Germany, and even France, until the appearance of Callot and
his contemporaries. Meanwhile, in the Low Countries the art presented
a physiognomy of its own, developed slowly, and ended by undergoing
a thorough, but brief, transformation under the authority of Rubens.
The Flemish school was soon to be absorbed in that of France, and the
second period, which may be termed the French, to begin in the history
of engraving.
Were it permissible, on the authority of examples given elsewhere,
to compare a multitude of men separated by differences of epoch and
endowment, we might arrange the old engravers in the order adopted for
a group of much greater artists by the painters of the "Apotheosis of
Homer" and the "Hemicycle of the Palais des Beaux-Arts." Let us regard
them in our mind's eye as a master might figure them. In the centre is
Finiguerra, the father of the race; next to him, on the one side, are
the Master of 1466, Martin Schongauer, and Albert Dürer; on the other,
Mantegna and Marc Antonio, surrounded, like the three German masters,
by their disciples, amongst whom they maintain an attitude of command.
Between the two groups, but rather on the German side, is Lucas van
Leyden, first in place, as by right, among the Dutchmen. Below these
early masters, who wear upon their brows that expression of severity
which distinguishes their work, comes the excited crowd of daring
innovators, whose merit is in the spirit of their style--Bolswert,
Vorsterman, Pontius, Cornelius Visscher, Van Dalen, and their rivals.
Rembrandt muses apart, sombre, and as though shrouded in mystery.
Lastly, in the middle distance, are seen the merely clever engravers:
the Dutch Little Masters, Callot, Hollar, and Israel Silvestre.
If, on the other hand, we must abandon this realm of fancy for the
regions of fact, we might sum up the results of past progress by
instancing a few prints of perfect beauty. Our own selection would be
Mantegna's "Entombment;" Marc Antonio's "Massacre of the Innocents;"
the "Death of the Virgin," by Martin Schongauer; Dürer's "Melancholia;"
the "Calvary" of Lucas van Leyden; Rembrandt's "Christ Healing the
Sick;" Bolswert's "Crown of Thorns;" the "Portrait of Rubens," by Paul
Pontius, or the "Gellius de Bouma" of Cornelius Visscher; and finally,
Callot's "Florentine Fair," or "Garden at Nancy," and the "Bouvier,"
or, better still, the "Soleil Levant" of Claude Lorraine. Happy the
owner of this selection of masterpieces: the man who, better inspired
than the majority of his kind, has preferred a few gems to an overgrown
and unwieldy collection.
CHAPTER VII.
FRENCH ENGRAVERS IN THE REIGN OF LOUIS XIV.
We have followed through all its stages the progress of the art of
engraving, from the time of its earliest more or less successful
attempts, to the time when a really important advance was accomplished.
However brilliant these early phases may have been, properly speaking
they include but the beginnings of the art. The epoch we are now to
traverse is that of its complete development and fullest perfection.
We have seen that the schools of Italy and the Low Countries had, each
in its own direction, largely increased the resources of engraving,
without exhausting them. The quality of drawing would seem to have
been carried to an inimitable perfection in the works of Marc Antonio,
had not examples of a keener sense of form and an exactness even more
irreproachable been discovered in those of the French masters of the
seventeenth century. The engravings produced under the direct influence
of Rubens only remained the finest specimens of the science of colour
and effect until the appearance of the plates engraved in Paris by
Gérard Audran. Finally, though the older engravers had set themselves
the task of accentuating a certain kind of beauty, suitable to the
peculiar tastes and capacities of the schools to which they belonged,
none of them had sought, at least with any success, to present in one
whole all the different species of beauty inherent in the art. It was
reserved for the French engravers of the age of Louis XIV. to unite
in one supreme effort qualities which till then had seemed to exclude
each other. While they proved themselves draughtsmen as skilful and
colourists as good as the best of their predecessors, they excelled
them in their harmonious fusion of whatever qualities are appropriate
to engraving, as also in the elasticity of their theory and the
all-round capacity of their method.
The works of the Louis XIII. engravers heralded this new departure,
and prepared the way for the real masters. As soon as, with a view
to securing a certain measure of independence, the French school
of painting had begun to free itself from the spirit of systematic
imitation, the art of line engraving proceeded resolutely along an open
path, and marked its course by still more significant improvements. To
say nothing of Thomas de Leu--who for that matter was not, perhaps,
born in France[33]--and nothing of Léonard Gaultier, who, like De Leu,
principally worked in the reign of Henri IV., Jean Morin, whose method,
at once so picturesque and so firm, was the result of a peculiar
combination of acid, dry-point, and the graver, Michel Lasne, Claud
Mellan--in spite of the somewhat pretentious ease and rather affected
skill of his handling--and other line engravers, variously capable,
each after his kind, are found to owe nothing to foreign example.
Their works already do more than hint at the new departure; but we are
approaching the period when distinguished engravers become so common in
the French school, that in this place we need only mention those whose
names are still of special importance.
Robert Nanteuil, one of the most eminently distinguished, and, taking
them chronologically, one of the first, was destined for the bar, and
in his youthful tastes showed none of that irresistible tendency to
the arts which is the common symptom of great talent. Whilst studying
literature and science at Rheims, where he was born in 1626, he also
took up drawing and engraving, but with no idea of devoting himself
steadily to either. It seems, however, that after having merely dallied
in odd moments with the art which was one day to make him famous, he
very soon concluded that he had served a sufficient apprenticeship;
for at nineteen he set about engraving the frontispiece to his own
philosophical thesis.
[Illustration: FIG. 82.--JEAN MORIN.
Antoine Vitré. After Philippe de Champagne.]
It was in those days the custom to ornament such writings with
figures and symbols appropriate to the candidate's position, or to
the subject of his argument. The most distinguished painters did not
disdain to design originals, and the frontispieces engraved from
Philippe de Champagne, Lesueur, and Lebrun, are not unworthy of the
talent and reputation of those great men. Nanteuil, in emulation,
was anxious not only to produce a masterpiece, but to invest it with
an appearance of grandeur as little fitted to his position as to his
slender acquaintance with the art. However that may have been, he
sustained his thesis to the satisfaction of the judges; and, albeit an
exceedingly bad one, his engraving was admired in the society which
he frequented.[34] Some verses addressed to ladies[35] still further
increased his reputation as a universal genius. Unfortunately, to all
these public successes were added others of a more purely personal
nature, which were soon noised abroad; and it would appear that, fresh
adventures having led to a vexatious scandal, Nanteuil, who shortly
before had married the sister of the engraver Regnesson, was compelled
to leave, almost in secrecy, a place where once he had none save
admirers and friends. By a fatal coincidence the fugitive's family was
ruined at the same time: it became imperative for him to live by his
own work, and to seek his fortune in the practice of draughtsmanship.
Abandoning the law, he therefore set out for Paris, where he arrived
poor and unknown, but determined to succeed. The question was,
how without introductions to gain patrons? how to make profitable
acquaintances in the great city? After losing some days in quest of a
good opening, it is said that he hit upon a somewhat strange device. He
had brought with him from Rheims some crayon portraits, as specimens
of his ability; he chose one of these, and waited at the door of
the Sorbonne till the young divinity students came out of class. He
followed them into a neighbouring wine shop, where they were wont
to take their meals, and pretended to be looking for some one whose
portrait he had taken (he said) the week before. He knew neither the
name nor address of his sitter, but thought that if his fellow-students
would look at the drawing, they might be able and willing to help
him. It is superfluous to say that the original of the portrait was
not recognised; but the picture passed from hand to hand, and was
admired; the price was asked, the artist was careful to be moderate in
his demands, and some of the young men were so taken by the smallness
of the sum, that they offered to sit for their portraits. The first
finished and approved, other students in their turn wanted their
portraits for their families and friends. This gave the young artist
more remunerative work. His connection rapidly increased, and before
long he was entrusted with the reproduction, on copper, of drawings
commissioned by distinguished parliament men and persons of standing
at the Court. At last the king, whose portrait he afterwards engraved
in different sizes--as often as eleven times--gave him a number of
sittings, after which Nanteuil received a pension and the title of
Dessinateur du Cabinet.[36]
Louis XIV. was not satisfied with thus rewarding a talent already
recognised as superior; he was also desirous of stimulating by general
measures the development of what he had himself declared a "liberal
art."[37] Engravers were privileged to exercise it without being
subjected to "any apprenticeship, or controlled by other laws than
those of their own genius;" and seven years later (1667) the royal
establishment at the Gobelins became virtually a school of engraving.
Whilst Lebrun, its first director-in-chief, assembled therein an army
of painters, draughtsmen, and even sculptors, and wrought from his own
designs the tapestries of the "Éléments" and the "Saisons," Sebastien
Leclerc superintended the labours of a large body of native and foreign
engravers, entertained at the king's expense.
One of these, Edelinck, had been summoned to France by Colbert. Born at
Antwerp in 1640, and a contemporary of the engravers trained by the
disciples of Rubens himself, he was distinguished, like them, by his
vigour of handling and knowledge of effect. Once settled in Paris, he
supplemented these Flemish characteristics with qualities distinctively
French, and was soon a foremost engraver of his time. Endowed with
singular insight and elasticity of mind, he readily assimilated, and
sometimes even improved upon, the style of those painters whom he
reproduced, and adopted a new sentiment with every new original. He
began, in France, with an engraving of Raphael's "Holy Family," the
so-called "Vierge de François I.," which is severe in aspect, and
altogether Italian in drawing; and he followed this up with plates of
the "Madeleine" of Lebrun, his "Christ aux Anges," and his "Famille de
Darius," all of them admirable reproductions, in which the defects of
the originals are modified, while their beauties are increased by the
use of methods which make their peculiar and essential characteristics
none the less conspicuous. In interpreting Lebrun, Edelinck altered
neither his significance nor his style; he only touched his work with
fresh truth and nature: as, when dealing with Rigaud, he converted that
artist's pomposity and flourish into a certain opulence and vigour.
When, on the contrary, he had to interpret a work stamped with calm and
reflective genius, his own bold and brilliant talent became impregnated
with serenity, and he could execute with a marvellous reticence such a
translation as that from Philippe de Champagne--the painter's portrait
of himself--a favourite, it is said, with the engraver, and one of the
masterpieces of the art.
When Edelinck arrived in Paris, Nanteuil, his senior by some fifteen
years, had a studio at the Gobelins, close to the one where he himself
was installed. This seeming equality in the favour accorded to two men,
then so unequal in reputation and achievement, would be astonishing
unless we remember the object which brought them together, and the very
spirit of the institution.
Things went on in the Gobelins almost as they did in Florence, in
the gardens of San Marco, under Lorenzo de' Medici. Artists of
repute worked side by side with beginners: not indeed together, but
near enough for the master continually to help the student, and for
the spirit of rivalry, the excitement of example, to keep alive a
universal continuity of effort. French art had been lately honoured
by three painters of the highest order--Poussin, Claude,[38] and
Lesueur; but the first two lived in retirement, and far from France;
whilst the third had died leaving no pupils, and, consequently, no
tradition. It seemed urgent, therefore, in order to perpetuate the
glory of the school, to gather together both men of mature talent
and men whose talent was yet young and unformed, and to impel them
all towards a common object on a common line of work. Colbert it was
who conceived and executed the plan, who assembled all the great
masters in painting, sculpture, and engraving, whose services he could
command, without omitting any younger men who might seem worthy of
encouragement. He quartered them all at the Gobelins, and put over them
the man best fitted to play the part of their organiser and supreme
director. "There was a pre-established harmony between Louis XIV. and
Lebrun," says M. Vitet,[39] "and when the painter died (1690), neither
he nor his master had as yet permitted any encroachment upon their
territory." Lebrun might have appropriated a famous saying of the king,
applied it to his own absolute supremacy, and said, with truth, that
he alone was French art. Everything connected with the art of design,
whether directly or indirectly, from statues and pictures for public
buildings down to furniture and gold plate, were all subject to his
authority, and were all moulded by his influence. It was an unfortunate
influence in some respects, for it made the painting and sculpture
of the epoch monotonously bombastic; but to engraving, under whose
auspices contemporary pictures were sometimes transformed into real
masterpieces, it cannot be said to have been unfavourable.
[Illustration: FIG. 83.--JEAN PESNE.
The Entombment. After Poussin.]
When Lebrun was called to the government of the arts, the number of
practical engravers in France was already considerable. Jean Pesne, the
special interpreter of Poussin, had published several of those vigorous
prints which even now shed honour on the name of the engraver of the
"Évanouissement d'Esther," of the "Testament d'Eudamidas," and of the
"Sept Sacrements." Claudine Bouzonnet, surnamed Claudia Stella, who
by the force of her extraordinary gift has won her way to the highest
rank among female engravers, Étienne Baudet, and Gantrel--all these,
like Jean Pesne, applied themselves almost exclusively to the task of
reproducing the compositions of the noble painter of Les Andelys. On
the other hand, François de Poilly, Roullet, and Masson (the last so
celebrated for his portrait of Count d'Harcourt, and his "Pilgrims
of Emmaus," after Titian), and many others equally well known, had
won their spurs before they devoted themselves to the reproduction
of Lebrun. Finally, Nanteuil, who only engraved a few portraits from
originals by the director, was already widely known when Colbert
requested him to join, among the first, the brotherhood which he had
founded at the Gobelins. As soon as in his turn Edelinck was admitted,
he hastened to profit by the advice of the master whom it was his
privilege to be associated with; and, aided by Nanteuil's example,
and under Nanteuil's eye, he soon tried his hand in the production of
engraved portraits.
No one indeed could be better fitted than Nanteuil to teach this
special art, in which he has had few rivals and no superior. Even now,
when we consider these admirable portraits of his, we are as certain
of the likeness as if we had known the sitters. Everybody's expression
is so clearly defined, the character of his physiognomy so accurately
portrayed, that it is impossible to doubt the absolute truth of the
representation. There is no touch of picturesque affectation in the
details; no exaggerated nicety of means; no trick, nor mannerism
of any sort; but always clear and limpid workmanship, and style
so reticent, so measured, that at first glance there is a certain
indescribable appearance of coldness, no hindrance to persons of taste,
but a pitfall to such eager and hasty judgments as, to be conquered,
must be carried by storm. Nanteuil's portraits come before us in all
the outward calm of nature; possibly they seem almost inartistic
because they make no parade of artifice; but, once examined with
attention, they discover that highest and rarest form of merit which is
concealed under an appearance of simplicity.
If the "Turenne," the "Président de Bellièvre," the "Van Steenberghen"
(called the "Avocat de Hollande"), the "Pierre de Maridat," the
"Lamothe Le Vayer," the "Loret," and others, are masterpieces of
refinement in expression and drawing, they also prove, as regards
execution, the exquisite taste and the marvellous dexterity of the
engraver. But to discern the variety of method they display, and to
perceive that the handling is as sure and fertile as it is learned and
unpretentious, they must be closely studied.
As a rule, Nanteuil employs in his half-lights dots arranged at varying
distances, according to the force of colouring required, in combination
with short strokes of exceeding fineness. Sometimes--as, for instance,
in the "Christine de Suède," altogether engraved in this manner--the
process suffices him not only to model such parts as verge upon his
lights, but even to construct the masses of his shadows. The "Edouard
Molé" is, on the contrary, in pure line. The soft silkiness of hair
he often expresses by free and flowing lines, some of which, breaking
away from the principal mass, are relieved against the background,
breaking the monotony of the workmanship, and suggesting movement
by their vagueness of contour. Often, too, certain loose lines,
either broken or continued without crossing in different directions,
admirably distinguish the natures of certain substances, and imitate
to perfection the soft richness of furs or the sheen of satin. Yet it
sometimes happens that in the master's hand the same method results in
the most opposite effects: a print, for instance, may exemplify in its
treatment of the textures of flesh a method applied elsewhere, and with
equal success, to the rendering of draperies. In a word, Nanteuil does
not appropriate any particular process to any predetermined purpose.
While judiciously subordinating each to propriety, he can, when he
pleases, make the most of all; and whatever path he follows, it always
appears that he has taken the best to reach his end.
It was not only to the teaching of Nanteuil that Edelinck had recourse;
he still further improved his style by studying his countryman, Nicolas
Pitau (whom Colbert had also summoned from Antwerp to the Gobelins),
and afterwards by acquiring the secret of brilliant handling from
François de Poilly. To which of these engravers he was most indebted
is a point which cannot be exactly determined. After investing himself
with qualities from each, he did not imitate one more than another; he
found his inspiration in the examples of all three.
Nanteuil and Edelinck, first united by their work, were soon fast
friends, in spite of the difference of their ages, and the still
greater difference of their tastes. The French engraver sent for his
wife from Rheims as soon as he found himself in a fair way to success
and fortune; but he had also in some degree returned to the habits
of his youth. A shining light in society, and as intimate with the
cultured set at Mlle. de Scudéry's as with the devotees of pleasures
less strictly intellectual, his career of dissipation in the salons
and fashionable taverns of the day contrasts strangely with the sober
quality of his talent, and increases our surprise at the number of
works which he produced. Even his declining health did not change his
habits. Till the end he continued to divide his time between his work
and the world; and at his death, in 1678, at the age of fifty-two, he
left nothing, or almost nothing, to his wife, in spite of the large
sums he had made since he came to Paris.
[Illustration: FIG. 84.--JEAN PESNE.
Nicolas Poussin.]
Edelinck's fate was very different. He lived in seclusion, given
over to his art and to the one ambition of becoming churchwarden
(_marguillier_) of his parish: a position refused him, it is said,
as reserved for tradesmen and official personages, and with which
he was only at length invested by the condescending interference of
the king. It was probably the only favour personally solicited by
Edelinck, but it was by no means the first he owed to the protection of
Louis XIV. Before the churchwardenship he held the title of "Premier
Dessinateur du Cabinet." Like Lebrun, like Mansart and Le Nôtre, he
was a Knight of St. Michael, and the Academy of Painting elected him
as one of its council. His old age, like the rest of his days, was
quiet and laborious; and when he died (1707) his two brothers and his
son Nicolas, who had all three been his pupils, inherited a fortune as
wisely husbanded as it had been honourably acquired.
Edelinck survived the principal engravers of the reign of Louis XIV.
François de Poilly, Roullet, Masson, and Jean Pesne, had more or less
closely followed Nanteuil to the grave. At the Gobelins, once so rich
in ability of the first order, students had taken the place of masters,
and clever craftsmen succeeded to artists of genuine inspiration.
Van Schuppen had followed Nanteuil, as Mignard had Lebrun, from
necessity rather than right. And last of all, Gérard Audran, the most
distinguished engraver of the time--whom, for the sake of clearness in
our narrative, we have not yet mentioned--had died in 1703; and though
members of his family did honour to the name he had distinguished, none
of them were able to sustain the full weight of its glory.
[Illustration: FIG. 85.--GÉRARD AUDRAN.
"La Noblesse." After Raphael.]
One would hardly venture to say that Gérard Audran was an engraver
of genius, because it does not seem permissible to apply the term to
one whose business it is to interpret the creations of others, and
subordinate himself to models he has not himself designed; yet how else
can one characterise a talent so full of life, so startling a capacity
for feeling, and a method at once so large, so unstudied, and so
original? Do not the plates of Gérard Audran bear witness to something
more than mere superficial skill? Do they not rather reveal qualities
more subtle--a something personal and living, which raises them to the
rank of imaginative work? Their real fault, perhaps--at least the fault
of those after Lebrun or Mignard--is that they are not reproductions
of a purer type of beauty. And even these masters are so far dignified
by the creative touch of their translator as almost to seem worthy of
unreserved admiration. We can understand the mistake of the Italians,
who thought, when they saw the "Batailles d'Alexandre," in black and
white, that France, too, had her Raphael, when, in reality, allowing
for difference of manner, she could only glory in another Marc Antonio.
[Illustration: FIG. 86.--GÉRARD AUDRAN.
"Navigation." After Raphael.]
Gérard Audran was born in Lyons in 1640, and there obtained from his
father his first lessons in art. Afterwards he went to Paris, and
placed himself under the most famous masters of the day, by whose
aid he was soon introduced to Lebrun, and at once commissioned to
engrave one of Raphael's compositions. When Audran undertook the work,
he had not the picture before him, as Edelinck had when he engraved
the "Vierge de François I." His original was only a pencil copy
which Lebrun had brought back from Italy; hence no doubt the modern
character and the French style which are stamped on the engraving.
Feeling dissatisfied with his work, the young artist did not publish
it, but determined to study the Italians in Italy, to educate himself
directly from their works, and thenceforth to engrave only those
pictures of which he could judge at first-hand without the danger
of an intermediary. He set off therefore for Rome, and remained there
for three years, during which time he produced several copies painted
at the Vatican, many drawings from the antique, several plates after
Raphael, Domenichino, and the Carraccis, and the engraving of a ceiling
by Pietro da Cortona, which last he dedicated to Colbert.
By this act of homage he acquitted himself of a debt of gratitude to
the minister who had favoured him ever since his arrival in Paris, and
who, at Lebrun's request, had supplied the means of his sojourn in
Italy. On Colbert's part it was only an act of justice to recall Audran
to France, and to entrust him with the engraving of the lately finished
series of the "Batailles d'Alexandre," for the great publication called
the "Cabinet du Roi." To the engraver, then twenty-seven years old, a
pension was granted, with a studio at the Gobelins, then the customary
reward of talents brilliantly displayed. It may be added that six years
(1672-1678) sufficed him to finish the stupendous task.
Treated as a friend, and almost on an equal footing, by Lebrun, who for
no one else departed from the routine of his official supremacy, Audran
exerted over the king's chief painter a considerable, if a secret,
influence. In spite of all that has been said,[40] Lebrun was not the
kind of man to openly question his own infallibility, nor to advertise
his deference to the advice of an artist so much younger than himself,
his pupil, so to speak, and consequently without the authority of any
higher degree; yet he frequently consulted him, and took his advice,
in private. Also (and this is significant) when the engravings of
the "Batailles" appeared--engravings to a certain extent unfaithful,
inasmuch as they differed decidedly from the originals--the fact that
the painter made no complaint points to his recognition in Audran
of the right to correct, and to his implicit submission to Audran's
corrections.
In this respect Lebrun conducted himself as a man of the world, and
one well able to understand the true interests of his reputation.
He had everything to gain by giving full liberty to an engraver by
whose perfect taste the blunders of his own were corrected, and who
harmonised his frequently harsh and heavy colouring, and strengthened
in modelling and design his often undecided expression of form. Thus
the plates of the "Batailles," in addition to the high quality of
the composition of the originals, present, alike in general aspect
and in detail, a decision which belongs to Audran alone. Force and
transparency of tone, largeness of effect, and, above all, a distinctly
marked feeling for characteristic truths, are conspicuous in them.
Not a single condition of art is imperfectly fulfilled. Marc Antonio
himself drew with no more certainty; the Flemings themselves had no
deeper knowledge of chiaroscuro; the French engravers, not excepting
even Edelinck,[41] have never treated historical engraving with such
ease and _mäestria_. In a word, none of the most famous engravers of
Europe have been, we believe, so richly endowed with all artistic
instincts, nor have better understood their use.
The "Batailles d'Alexandre" finished, Audran engraved Lesueur's
"Martyre de Saint Protais;" several Poussins, amongst others the
"Pyrrhus Sauvé," the "Femme Adultère," and the radiant "Triomphe de
la Vérité," one of the most beautiful (if not the most beautiful)
historical engravings ever published; and, after Mignard, the "Peste
d'Égine," and the paintings in the cupola at Val-de-Grâce.
These several works, where elevation of taste and sentiment are no less
triumphantly manifest than in the "Batailles" themselves, are also
finished examples of engraving in the literal sense of the word. Audran
disdained to flaunt his skill, and to surprise the eye by technical
display, but he understood to the utmost all the secrets and resources
of the craft, and employed them with more ability than any competitor.
Associating engraving with etching, he deepened with powerful touches
of the burin those strokes of the needle which had merely served to
suggest outlines, masses of shadow, and half-tints. On occasion, short
strokes, free as a pencil's, and seemingly drawn at random, with dots
of different sizes, distributed with apparent carelessness, sufficed
for the modelling of his forms; at others, he proceeded by a consistent
system of cross-hatching. Here rough etching work is tumbled about
(so to speak) in wild disorder; there a contrary effect is produced
by nearly parallel furrows scooped in the metal with methodical
exactness; but everywhere the choice and progress of the tools are
based on conditions inherent in the nature of the several objects, and
their relative positions and distances. Audran did not try to attract
attention to any of the methods he employed; he made each heighten the
effect of the other, and combined them all without parade of ease, and
yet without confusion.
So many admirable works secured for Audran a fame such as Edelinck, as
Nanteuil himself, had never obtained. The Academy of Painting, which
had welcomed him after the publication of his first plates, elected him
as one of its council in 1681. The school of engraving which he opened
grew larger than any other, and many of his pupils became notable even
in his company, and helped to increase the renown of the master who had
trained them.[42]
Towards the close of his life Audran laid by the burin for the pen.
Following Albert Dürer's example, he proposed to put together, in the
form of treatises, his life-long observations on the art he had so
successfully practised. Unfortunately, this task was interrupted by
his death; and, excepting a "Recueil des Proportions du Corps Humain,"
nothing is left us of those teachings which the greatest engraver, not
only of France, but perhaps of any school, had desired to hand on to
posterity.
By their works, Nanteuil, Audran, and the other masters of the reign
of Louis XIV., had popularised historical and portrait engraving
in France. The taste for prints spread more and more, and amateurs
began to make collections. At first they confined themselves to real
masterpieces; after which they began to covet the complete achievement
of peculiar engravers. The mania for rare prints became fashionable;
and we learn from La Bruyère that, before the end of the century,
some amateurs had already come to prefer engravings "presque pas
tirées"--engravings "fitter to decorate the Petit-Pont or the Rue Neuve
on a holiday than to be hoarded in a collection"--to the most perfect
specimens of the art. Others were chiefly occupied with the bulk of
their collections, and treasured up confused heaps of all sorts of
plates, good, bad, and indiff
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