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Title: Engravers and Etchers: Six Lectures Delivered on the Scammon Foundation at the Art Institute of Chicago, March 1916
Author: Carrington, Fitz Roy
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Engravers and Etchers: Six Lectures Delivered on the Scammon Foundation at the Art Institute of Chicago, March 1916" ***
ENGRAVERS AND ETCHERS
[Illustration: MASTER OF THE AMSTERDAM CABINET. TWO LOVERS
Size of the original engraving, 6½ × 4⅛ inches
In the Ducal Collection, Coburg]
ENGRAVERS
AND
ETCHERS
SIX LECTURES DELIVERED ON THE SCAMMON FOUNDATION
AT THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO, MARCH 1916
BY
FITZROY CARRINGTON, M. A.
CURATOR OF PRINTS AT THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS,
BOSTON; LECTURER ON THE HISTORY AND PRINCIPLES
OF ENGRAVING AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY; EDITOR OF
“THE PRINT-COLLECTOR’S QUARTERLY”
WITH 133 ILLUSTRATIONS
[Illustration]
THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO
1917
COPYRIGHT 1917
THOMSEN-BRYAN-ELLIS COMPANY
DESIGNED AND PUBLISHED BY
THOMSEN-BRYAN-ELLIS COMPANY
WASHINGTON BALTIMORE
NEW YORK PHILADELPHIA
TO THOSE
WHO HELPED ME MAKE THIS BOOK
IN GRATEFUL RECOGNITION
_NOTE_
_The lectures presented in this volume comprise the twelfth series
delivered at the Art Institute of Chicago on the Scammon Foundation.
The Scammon Lectureship is established on an ample basis by bequest of
Mrs. Maria Sheldon Scammon, who died in 1901. The will prescribes that
these lectures shall be upon the history, theory, and practice of the
Fine Arts (meaning thereby the graphic and plastic arts), by persons
of distinction or authority on the subject on which they lecture, such
lectures to be primarily for the benefit of the students of the Art
Institute, and secondarily for members and other persons. The lectures
are known as “The Scammon Lectures.”_
CONTENTS
PAGE
_LECTURE I_
GERMAN ENGRAVING: FROM THE BEGINNINGS
TO MARTIN SCHONGAUER 13
_LECTURE II_
ITALIAN ENGRAVING: THE FLORENTINES 51
_LECTURE III_
GERMAN ENGRAVING: THE MASTER OF THE
AMSTERDAM CABINET AND ALBRECHT
DÜRER 95
_LECTURE IV_
ITALIAN ENGRAVING: MANTEGNA TO MARCANTONIO
RAIMONDI 139
_LECTURE V_
SOME MASTERS OF PORTRAITURE 181
_LECTURE VI_
LANDSCAPE ETCHING 227
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
MASTER OF THE AMSTERDAM CABINET. Two Lovers
_Frontispiece_
MASTER OF THE PLAYING CARDS. St. George 15
Man of Sorrows 16
MASTER OF THE YEAR 1446. Christ Nailed to the Cross 19
MASTER OF ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST. St. John the
Baptist 20
MASTER E. S. OF 1466. Madonna and Child with Saints
Marguerite and Catherine 23
Ecstasy of St. Mary Magdalen 24
Design for a Paten 27
St. John on the Island of Patmos 28
MARTIN SCHONGAUER. Virgin with a Parrot 31
Temptation of St. Anthony 32
Death of the Virgin 33
Pilate Washing His Hands 34
St. John on the Island of Patmos 37
Christ Appearing to the Magdalen 38
Virgin Seated in a Courtyard 39
Angel of the Annunciation 40
The Miller 43
Censer 44
MASTER L CZ. Christ Tempted 47
Christ Entering Jerusalem 48
ANONYMOUS FLORENTINE, XV CENTURY. Profile Portrait
of a Lady 53
Wild Animals Hunting and Fighting 54
Triumphal Procession of Bacchus and Ariadne 57
Jupiter 58
Mercury 63
Lady with a Unicorn 64
The Christian’s Ascent to the Glory of Paradise.
From “Il Monte Sancto di Dio,” Florence, 1477 67
Dante and Virgil with the Vision of Beatrice.
From the “Divina Commedia,” Florence, 1481 68
Assumption of the Virgin (After Botticelli) 71
Triumph of Love. From the Triumphs of Petrarch 72
Triumph of Chastity. From the Triumphs of Petrarch 75
Libyan Sibyl 76
ANONYMOUS NORTH ITALIAN, XV CENTURY. The
Gentleman. From the Tarocchi Prints (E Series) 79
Clio. From the Tarocchi Prints (S Series) 80
The Sun. From the Tarocchi Prints (E Series) 83
Angel of the Eighth Sphere. From the Tarocchi Prints (E Series) 84
CRISTOFANO ROBETTA. Adoration of the Magi 87
ANTONIO POLLAIUOLO. Battle of Naked Men 88
MASTER OF THE AMSTERDAM CABINET. Ecstasy of St.
Mary Magdalen 97
Crucifixion 98
Stag Hunt 101
St. George 102
ALBRECHT DÜRER. Virgin and Child with the Monkey 107
Four Naked Women 108
Hercules 111
ANONYMOUS NORTH ITALIAN, XV CENTURY. Death of
Orpheus 112
ALBRECHT DÜRER. Death of Orpheus 113
Battle of the Sea-Gods (After Mantegna) 114
Adam and Eve 117
Apollo and Diana 118
St. Jerome by the Willow Tree (First State) 121
Holy Family 122
Knight, Death and the Devil 125
Melancholia 126
St. Jerome in His Cell 129
Virgin Seated Beside a Wall 130
Christ in the Garden 133
Erasmus of Rotterdam 134
ANDREA MANTEGNA. Virgin and Child 141
Battle of the Sea-Gods 142
The Risen Christ Between Saints Andrew and Longinus 147
SCHOOL OF ANDREA MANTEGNA. Adoration of the Magi 148
ZOAN ANDREA (?). Four Women Dancing 151
GIOVANNI ANTONIO DA BRESCIA. Holy Family with
Saints Elizabeth and John 152
SCHOOL OF LEONARDO DA VINCI. Profile Bust of a Young
Woman 155
NICOLETTO ROSEX DA MODENA. Orpheus 156
JACOPO DE’ BARBARI. Apollo and Diana 159
St. Catherine 160
GIULIO CAMPAGNOLA. Christ and the Woman of
Samaria 163
Ganymede (First State) 164
St. John the Baptist 167
GIULIO AND DOMENICO CAMPAGNOLA. Shepherds in a
Landscape 168
MARCANTONIO RAIMONDI. St. George and the Dragon 171
Bathers 172
St. Cecelia 173
Death of Lucretia 174
Philotheo Achillini (“The Guitar Player”) 177
Pietro Aretino 178
MASTER W CADUCEUS S. Head of a Young Woman 183
ALBRECHT DÜRER. Albert of Brandenburg 184
Philip Melanchthon 187
ANTHONY VAN DYCK. Portrait of Himself (First State) 188
Frans Snyders (First State) 191
Lucas Vorsterman (First State) 192
REMBRANDT. Jan Cornelis Sylvius 195
Rembrandt Leaning on a Stone Sill 196
Clement de Jonghe (First State) 197
Jan Lutma (First State) 198
CLAUDE MELLAN. Virginia da Vezzo 201
Fabri de Peiresc 202
JEAN MORIN. Cardinal Guido Bentivoglio 205
ROBERT NANTEUIL. Pompone de Bellièvre 206
Basile Fouquet 211
Jean Loret 212
J. A. McN. WHISTLER. Annie Haden 215
Riault, the Engraver 216
ANDERS ZORN. Ernest Renan 219
The Toast 220
Madame Simon 221
Miss Emma Rassmussen 222
ALBRECHT DÜRER. The Cannon 229
AUGUSTIN HIRSCHVOGEL. Landscape 230
REMBRANDT. The Windmill 233
Three Trees 234
Six’s Bridge 237
Landscape with a Ruined Tower and Clear Foreground 238
Landscape with a Haybarn and a Flock of Sheep 239
Three Cottages 240
Goldweigher’s Field 243
JACOB RUYSDAEL. Wheat Field 244
CLAUDE LORRAIN. Le Bouvier 249
CHARLES JACQUE. Troupeau de Porcs 250
Storm--Landscape with a White Horse 253
CHARLES-FRANÇOIS DAUBIGNY. Deer in a Wood 254
Deer Coming Down to Drink 257
Moonlight on the Banks of the Oise 258
CAMILLE COROT. Souvenir of Italy 261
JEAN-FRANÇOIS MILLET. The Gleaners 262
SEYMOUR HADEN. Cardigan Bridge 265
By-Road in Tipperary 266
Sunset in Ireland 267
Sawley Abbey 268
J. A. McN. WHISTLER. Zaandam (First State) 271
REMBRANDT. View of Amsterdam from the East 272
TO THE READER
When that most sensitive of American print-lovers, the late Francis
Bullard, learned that I was to deliver at Harvard, each year, a course
of lectures on the History and Principles of Engraving, he wrote me
one of those characteristic letters which endeared him to his friends,
concluding his wise counsels with these words: “_Nothing original--get
it all out of the books_.”
In these six lectures I have endeavored to profit by his suggestion. In
them there is little original: most of it _is_ out of the books. Books,
however, like Nature, are a storehouse from which we draw whatever
is best suited to our immediate needs; and if in choosing that which
might interest an audience, to the majority of whom engravings and
etchings were an unexplored country, I have preferred the obvious to
the profound, I trust that the true-blue Print Expert will forgive me.
These simple lectures make no pretense of being a History of Engraving,
or a manual of How to Appreciate Prints. My sole aim has been to share
with my audience the stimulation and pleasure which certain prints by
the great engravers and etchers have given me. If I have succeeded,
even a little, I shall be happy. I would add that the lectures are
printed in substantially the same form as they were delivered.
Consequently they must be read in connection with the illustrations
which accompany them.
The Bibliographies which follow each chapter have been prepared by Mr.
Adam E. M. Paff, Assistant in the Department of Prints at the Museum of
Fine Arts, Boston.
FITZROY CARRINGTON
_Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
June 26, 1916_
ENGRAVERS AND ETCHERS
GERMAN ENGRAVING: FROM THE BEGINNINGS TO MARTIN SCHONGAUER
Where were the beginnings? When were the beginnings? Germany,
the Netherlands, and Italy have each claimed priority. Max Lehrs
has settled these rival claims, so far as they can be settled at
the present time, by locating the cradle of engraving neither
in Germany, in the Netherlands, nor in Italy, but in a neutral
country--Switzerland, in the vicinity of Basle--naming the MASTER
OF THE PLAYING CARDS as probably the earliest engraver whose works
have come down to us. Undoubtedly this artist was not the first to
engrave upon metal plates, but of his predecessors nothing is known,
nor has any example of their work survived.
The technical method of the Master of the Playing Cards is that
of a painter rather than of a goldsmith. There is practically no
cross-hatching, and the effect is produced by a series of delicate
lines, mostly vertical, laid close together. His plates are unsigned
and undated, so that we can only approximate the period of his
activity. That he preceded, by at least ten years, the earliest dated
engraving, the _Flagellation_, by the Master of 1446, may safely
be assumed, since in the manuscript copy of Conrad von Würzburg’s
“The Trojan War,” transcribed in 1441 by Heinrich von Steinfurt (an
ecclesiastic of Osnabrück), there are pen drawings of figures wearing
costumes which correspond exactly with those in prints by the Master
of the Playing Cards in his middle period. The Master of the Playing
Cards is, therefore, the first bright morning star of engraving. From
him there flows a stream of influence affecting substantially all of
the German masters until the time of Martin Schongauer, some of whose
earlier plates show unmistakable traces of an acquaintanceship with his
work.
[Illustration: MASTER OF THE PLAYING CARDS. ST. GEORGE
Size of the original engraving, 5⅞ × 5¼ inches
In the Royal Print Room, Dresden]
[Illustration: MASTER OF THE PLAYING CARDS. MAN OF SORROWS
Size of the original engraving, 7¾ × 5⅛ inches
In the British Museum]
_St. George and the Dragon_ is in his early manner. Here are plainly
to be seen the characteristics of this first period--the broken,
stratified rocks, the isolated and conventionalized plants, and the
peculiar drawing of the horse, especially its slanting and half-human
eyes. _The Playing Cards_, from which he takes his name, may safely
be assigned to his middle period. The suits are made up of _Flowers_
(roses and cyclamen), _Wild Men_, _Birds_, and _Deer_, with a fifth,
or alternative suit of _Lions_ and _Bears_. Like all the early German
designers of playing cards, he has given free rein to his fancy and
inventiveness. The position of the different emblems is varied for each
numeral card; and each flower, wild man, bird, or beast, has an
attitude and character of its own, no two being identical. No engraver
has surpassed him in truthfulness and subtlety of observation and in
the delineation of birds few artists have equalled him. His rendering
of the growth and form of flowers would have delighted John Ruskin.
In the _King of Cyclamen_ and the _Queen of Cyclamen_ the faces have
an almost portrait-like individuality. The hands are well drawn and
do not yet display that attenuation which is characteristic of nearly
all fifteenth century German masters and is a noticeable feature in
engravings by Martin Schongauer himself. The clothing falls in natural
folds, and in the _King of Cyclamen_ the representation of fur could
hardly be bettered.
To his latest and most mature period must be assigned the _Man of
Sorrows_--in some ways his finest, and certainly his most moving,
plate. Not only has he differentiated between the textures of the linen
loin-cloth and the coarser material of the cloak; but the column, the
cross with its beautiful and truthful indication of the grain of the
wood, and the ground itself, all are treated with a knowledge and a
sensitiveness that is surprising. The engraver’s greatest triumph,
however, is in the figure of Christ. There is a feeling for form
and structure, sadly lacking in the work of his successors, and his
suggestion of the strained and pulsing veins, which throb through the
Redeemer’s tortured limbs, is of a compelling truth.
Chief among the engravers who show most clearly the influence of the
Master of the Playing Cards is the MASTER OF THE YEAR 1446,
so named from the date which appears in the _Flagellation_. His prints
present a more or less primitive appearance, and were it not for this
date, one might be tempted, on internal evidence, to assign them to
an earlier period. In the _Passion_ series, in particular, many of
the figures are more gnome-like than human. Such creatures as the man
blowing a horn, in _Christ Nailed to the Cross_, and the man pulling
upon a rope, in the same print, recall to our minds, by an association
of ideas, the old German fairy tales.
Contemporary with the Master of 1446, and belonging to the
Burgundian-Netherlands group, to which also belong the two anonymous
engravers known as the MASTER OF THE MOUNT OF CALVARY and the
MASTER OF THE DEATH OF MARY, is the MASTER OF THE GARDENS
OF LOVE. His figures are crude in drawing and stiff in their
movements. His knowledge of tree forms is rudimentary; but his animals
and birds show real observation and seem to have been studied from life.
[Illustration: MASTER OF THE YEAR 1446. CHRIST NAILED TO THE CROSS
Size of the original engraving, 4⅛ × 3¼ inches
In the Royal Print Room, Berlin]
[Illustration: MASTER OF ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST. ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST
Size of the original engraving, 8½ × 5⅞ inches
In the Albertina, Vienna]
In the larger of the two engravings from which he takes his name, we
see reflected the pleasure-loving court of the Dukes of Burgundy. On
the right, a lady leads her lover to a table spread with tempting
viands. She stretches forth her right hand to take the fruit. It is a
fig, the sign of fertility. To their right, drinking from a stream,
is a unicorn, the sign of chastity. The artist seemingly wishes the
lady’s message to read that she is still unwedded, and that, were she
wedded, she would be a good mother. Observe, likewise, the way in which
the engraver has placed the wild hogs, deer, and bears emerging from
the woods, while, in the sky, numerous birds wing their flight. In the
immediate foreground a lady and a cavalier are reading poetry to each
other. Another lady plays to a gallant who, in a most uncomfortable
attitude, holds a sheet of music. In the right-hand corner is a fourth
pair, the lady busily twining a wreath for her lover’s hat, which lies
on her lap. We have here a compendium of the courtly life of the time,
which is about 1448.
THE MASTER OF ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST may fittingly be called
the first _realist_ in engraving. His plates do not display that
extraordinary delicacy in cutting which is characteristic of the Master
of the Playing Cards. Like that earlier engraver, he makes little use
of cross-hatching, and his strokes are freely disposed--more in the
manner of a painter than a goldsmith-engraver. His birds and flowers
are closely observed and admirably rendered.
The mullein, the columbine, and the iris in _St. John the Baptist_ are
each given their individual character; the tree trunks to the right no
longer resemble twisted columns, as in earlier work, but have real bark
with knot holes and branches organically joined, though the foliage
is still conventionally treated. One cannot but remark, also, the
skilful way in which the engraver has differentiated between the furry
undergarment and the cloak which St. John the Baptist wears.
In _St. Christopher_ we have probably one of his latest works. His
representation of the waves, of the sky and clouds, is noteworthy,
while, on the beach, the sea-shells give mute testimony to his love for
little things.
Of the predecessors of Martin Schongauer, none exerted a greater
influence than the MASTER E. S. OF 1466. On the technical
side he was the actual creator of engraving as practised in modern
times, and was a determining factor in the progress of the art. Even
the Italian engravers were unable to withstand it; their Prophets and
Sibyls are partly derived from his Evangelists and Apostles, the easy
disposition of his draperies furnishing them with models. Over three
hundred engravings by the Master E. S. have come down to us, and over
a hundred more can be traced through copies by other hands, or as
having formed component parts of his two sets of playing cards--the
smaller set made up of _Wild Animals_, _Helmets_, _Escutcheons_, and
_Flowers_, while the larger set comprises _Men_, _Dogs_, _Birds_, and
_Escutcheons_.
[Illustration: MASTER E. S. OF 1466. MADONNA AND CHILD WITH SAINTS
MARGUERITE AND CATHERINE
Size of the original engraving, 8⅝ × 6⅜ inches
In the Royal Print Room, Dresden]
[Illustration: MASTER E. S. OF 1466. ECSTASY OF ST. MARY MAGDALEN
Size of the original engraving, 6½ × 5 inches
In the Royal Print Room, Dresden]
His work shows unmistakably the influence of the Master of the Playing
Cards, and we may safely place him in the region of the upper Rhine,
probably in the vicinity of Freiburg or Breisach. In the _Madonna and
Child with Saints Marguerite and Catherine_ his peculiar qualities and
limitations may clearly be seen. The plants and flowers, with which
the ground is thickly carpeted, are engraved in firm, clear-cut lines,
betokening the trained hand of the goldsmith. The figures and drapery
are rendered with delicate single strokes; but in the shaded portions
of the wall, back of the Madonna, cross-hatching is skilfully employed.
As is the case in nearly all the works of the early German engravers,
the laws of perspective are imperfectly understood, but none the less
the composition has a charm all its own.
The _Ecstasy of St. Mary Magdalen_ is of interest, not only technically
and artistically, but because of its influence upon the Master of the
Amsterdam Cabinet, who has twice treated the subject, and upon Albrecht
Dürer, by whom we have a woodcut seemingly copied from this engraving.
Martin Schongauer, likewise, may have profited by the feathered forms
of the angels which reappear, somewhat modified, in his engraving of
the _Nativity_. The birds and the isolated plants in the foreground
still show the influence of the Master of the Playing Cards.
_St. Matthew_ (whom we shall meet again in our consideration of
Florentine engraving, transformed into the _Tiburtine Sibyl_, engraved
in the Fine Manner of the Finiguerra School) and _St. Paul_ (who
likewise reappears as _Amos_ in the series of _Prophets and Sibyls_)
show an increasing command of technical resources. The draperies are
beautifully disposed; and, in _St. Paul_, the system of cross-hatching
upon the back of the chair, in the shaded portions beneath, and upon
the mantle of the saint, is fully developed.
The _Madonna of Einsiedeln_, dated 1466, is usually accounted the
engraver’s masterpiece. Beautiful though it is in composition and
in execution, it suggests a translation, into black and white, of a
painting, and on technical grounds, as well as for the beauty of its
component parts, one may prefer the _Design for a Paten_, dating from
the same year [1466]. Here the central scene, representing St. John
the Baptist, owes not a little, both in composition and in technique,
to the Master of St. John the Baptist. The four Evangelists, arranged
in alternation with their appropriate symbols, around the central
picture, are little masterpieces of characterization and of engraving,
and there can be nothing but unmixed admiration for the way in which
plant and bird forms are woven into a perfectly harmonious pattern.
[Illustration: MASTER E. S. OF 1466. DESIGN FOR A PATEN
Size of the original engraving, 7⅛ inches in diameter
In the Royal Print Room, Berlin]
[Illustration: MASTER E. S. OF 1466. ST. JOHN ON THE ISLAND OF PATMOS
Size of the original engraving, 8⅛ × 5½ inches
In the Hofbibliotek, Vienna]
_St. John on the Island of Patmos_ likewise shows unmistakably
the influence of the Master of St. John the Baptist and is doubly
interesting inasmuch as, in its turn, it had a shaping influence upon
the engraving of the same subject by Martin Schongauer. It is dated
1467, the latest date found upon any plate by the Master E. S., and it
is assumed that in this year his activity came to an end.
MARTIN SCHONGAUER, who was born in Colmar about 1445 and is
known to have died in 1491, is not only the most eminent painter and
engraver in the latter third of the fifteenth century, he is one of
the very greatest masters of the graphic arts. His plates number one
hundred and fifteen, and, as in the case of Albrecht Dürer, it is upon
his engraved work, rather than upon his all too few paintings, that his
immortality must rest.
Schongauer’s prints can be arranged in something approximating
chronological order. In the earliest twelve engravings the shanks of
the letter M, in his monogram, are drawn vertically, whereas in all
his later prints they slant outward. This apparently minor point is
really of great significance in a study of his development, since it
enables us to place correctly certain plates which, until recently,
were assigned to his latest period, such as the _Death of the Virgin_,
the _Adoration of the Magi_, and the _Flight Into Egypt_.
One of the richest toned plates in this first group is the _Virgin with
a Parrot_, an engraving which, incidentally, exists in two states. In
the second state, the cushion upon which the Christ Child is seated,
instead of being plain, has an elaborate pattern upon the upper side,
and the flowing tresses of the Virgin are extended more to the left,
thereby greatly improving the composition as a whole.
For Martin Schongauer, as for nearly all the earlier German masters,
the grotesque had a strange fascination. His power of welding together
parts of various animals into living fantastic creatures is nowhere
better seen than in the _Temptation of St. Anthony_. Vasari tells how
the young Michelangelo, meeting with an impression of this engraving in
Florence, was impelled to copy it with a pen “in such a manner as had
never before been seen. He painted it in colors also, and the better to
imitate the strange forms among these devils, he bought fish which had
scales somewhat resembling those of the demon. In this pen copy also he
displayed so much ability that his credit and reputation were greatly
enhanced thereby.” It would appear to be one of Schongauer’s early
plates, not only from the form of the monogram, but also from the
treatment of the upper portion of the sky, shaded with many horizontal
graver strokes, growing stronger as the upper edge of the plate is
reached--a treatment which does not occur in any other print by him.
[Illustration: MARTIN SCHONGAUER. VIRGIN WITH A PARROT
Size of the original engraving, 6¼ × 4¼ inches
In the Public Art Collections, Basle]
[Illustration: MARTIN SCHONGAUER. TEMPTATION OF ST. ANTHONY
Size of the original engraving, 12⅜ × 9⅛ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: MARTIN SCHONGAUER. DEATH OF THE VIRGIN
Size of the original engraving, 10⅛ × 6⅝ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: MARTIN SCHONGAUER. PILATE WASHING HIS HANDS
Size of the original engraving, 6⅜ × 4½ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
Among the myriad renderings of the _Death of the Virgin_, by painters
and engravers, it is doubtful if any version is superior, so far as
dramatic intensity is concerned, to Schongauer’s. As a composition,
Dürer’s woodcut from the _Life of the Virgin_, is simpler and more
“telling,” in that certain non-essentials have been eliminated; but
could we well spare so beautiful a design as that of the candelabrum
which, in Schongauer’s engraving, stands at the foot of the bed?
From the twelve plates of the _Passion_, each of which repays study,
it is not easy to select one for reproduction. The _Crucifixion_,
a subject which Schongauer engraved no less than six times, has a
poignant charm; and for sheer beauty the _Resurrection_ is among
the most significant of the series. _Pilate Washing His Hands_ has,
however, a double interest. The faces of Christ’s tormentors and of
the figures standing beside and to the left of Pilate’s throne, are
strongly characterized, portrait-like heads, in marked contrast with
the gentleness of Christ, and the weak and vacillating Pilate. The
enthroned Pilate later reappears as the _Prophet Daniel_ in the series
of _Prophets and Sibyls_, Florentine engravings in the Fine Manner.
We have already referred to _St. John on the Island of Patmos_ by
the Master E. S. A more significant contrast between the work of the
earlier engraver and that of Schongauer could hardly be found. The
Master E. S. gives a multiplicity of objects, animate and inanimate,
charming and interesting in themselves, but distracting from the main
purpose of the composition--witness the _St. Christopher_ crossing
the river in the middle distance, the lion and the terrified horse in
the wood to the right, the swan in the stream to the left, and the
life-like birds perched upon the castle-crowned cliff. Schongauer
eliminates all these accessories. One vessel and two small boats alone
break the calm expanse of the unruffled sea. Save for the two plants in
the foreground (which betray the influence of the Master of the Playing
Cards) the ground is simply treated and offers little to distract
our attention from the seated figure of St. John, who faces to the
left and gazes upwards at the Madonna and Child in glory. The eagle
bears a strong family likeness to the same bird in the _Design for a
Paten_ by the Master E. S. Schongauer has here drawn a tree, not bare,
as is his wont, but adorned with foliage beautifully disposed
and artistically treated, in marked contrast to the conventional and
decorative manner of the Master E. S. and his predecessors.
[Illustration: MARTIN SCHONGAUER. ST. JOHN ON THE ISLAND OF PATMOS
Size of the original engraving, 6½ × 4⅝ inches
In the Kunsthalle, Hamburg]
[Illustration: MARTIN SCHONGAUER. CHRIST APPEARING TO THE MAGDALEN
Size of the original engraving, 6¼ × 6⅛ inches
In the Kunsthalle, Hamburg]
[Illustration: MARTIN SCHONGAUER. VIRGIN SEATED IN A COURTYARD
Size of the original engraving, 6¾ × 4⅞ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: MARTIN SCHONGAUER. ANGEL OF THE ANNUNCIATION
Size of the original engraving, 6⅝ × 4½ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
The type of the Redeemer, which Schongauer has made so peculiarly his
own, is nowhere seen to better advantage than in the two beautiful
plates of the _Baptism of Christ_ and _Christ Appearing to the
Magdalen_. Max Geisberg acclaims the last-named as Schongauer’s most
beautiful engraving. “Here, the contents of the composition have
received an embodiment, the fervor, depth, and delicacy of which have
never been surpassed in art.”[1] It can, however, share this high
praise with the _Virgin Seated in a Courtyard_ and the _Angel of the
Annunciation_. For sheer beauty, these plates remain to this day not
only unsurpassed, but unequalled. What quietude and restraint there is
in the _Virgin Seated in a Courtyard_, the wall back of her discreetly
bare, the grass indicated by a few small but significant strokes,
while the branches of one little, leafless tree form an exquisite
pattern against the untouched sky! By contrast one of Dürer’s technical
masterpieces--the _Virgin Seated by a City Wall_--seems overworked and
overloaded with needless accessories.
[1] Martin Schongauer. By Dr. Max Geisberg. The Print-Collector’s
Quarterly. Vol. IV. April, 1914. p. 128.
The _Angel of the Annunciation_ marks the culmination of Schongauer’s
art and belongs to his most mature period. Everything not absolutely
necessary for a clear presentation has been eliminated. A slight
shadow upon the ground gives solidity to the figure. All else is
blank. The art of simplification can hardly go further, and were one
to be restricted to the choice of a single print by any of Dürer’s
predecessors, one might wisely select the _Angel of the Annunciation_.
That Schongauer was equally interested in things mundane is
convincingly proved by _Peasants Going to Market_, _Goldsmith’s
Apprentices Fighting_, or _The Miller_. How well he has differentiated
between the mother-ass, filled with maternal solicitude, and the
woolly, stocky, and somewhat foolish little donkey which follows, while
the miller with upraised staff urges her onward.
The _Crozier_ and the _Censer_ furnish unmistakable proof, were such
needed, that as a goldsmith-designer, no less than as an engraver,
Schongauer is entitled to the loftiest place in German art. They are
masterpieces, alike in invention and in execution. His influence was
not confined to his contemporaries, but can be traced in many ways, and
in many media, long after his death. His School, however, produced no
engraver worthy, for a moment, of comparison with him.
[Illustration: MARTIN SCHONGAUER. THE MILLER
Size of the original engraving, 3½ × 4⅞ inches
In the Albertina, Vienna]
[Illustration: MARTIN SCHONGAUER. CENSER
Size of the original engraving, 11½ × 8¼ inches]
The MASTER L Cz alone seems to have caught something of
Schongauer’s spirit while, at the same time, preserving his own
individuality. The face of the Redeemer in _Christ Entering Jerusalem_
is reminiscent of the earlier engraver; and, among the Apostles to
the left, two, at least, are taken, with slight modifications, from
Schongauer’s _Death of the Virgin_.
_Christ Tempted_ has a singular charm. The figure of Satan,
realistically treated, is an interesting example of that passion
for the grotesque from which even the greatest artists in the North
seemed unable to shake themselves wholly free. The wood in the
middle distance, to the left of Christ, evinces a close study of
natural forms, while the landscape takes its place admirably in the
composition. The excessive rarity of engravings by L Cz alone has
prevented them from being appreciated at their true worth. They are
original in composition, full of fantasy and charm. Even so universal
an artist as Albrecht Dürer did not disdain to borrow, from _Christ
Tempted_, the motive of the mountain goat gazing downward, which
reappears, slightly modified, in _Adam and Eve_, his masterpiece of the
year 1504.
ENGRAVERS AND ETCHERS
GERMAN ENGRAVING: FROM THE BEGINNINGS TO MARTIN SCHONGAUER
BIBLIOGRAPHY
LE PEINTRE GRAVEUR. _By Adam Bartsch._ 21 volumes. Vienna:
1803-1821. Volumes 6 and 10, Early German Engravers.
LES DEUX CENTS INCUNABLES XYLOGRAPHIQUES DU DÉPARTEMENT DES
ESTAMPES. _By Henri Bouchot._ Volume 1, Text. Volume 2, Atlas
(191 reproductions). Paris: Librairie Centrale des Beaux-Arts. 1903.
GESCHICHTE UND KRITISCHER KATALOG DES DEUTSCHEN, NIEDERLÄNDISCHEN
UND FRANZÖSISCHEN KUPFERSTICHS IM XV. JAHRHUNDERT. _By Max
Lehrs._ Vienna: Gesellschaft für vervielfältigende Kunst. Volume 1.
The Primitives. With portfolio of 114 reproductions on 43 plates.
1908. Volume 2. Master E. S. With portfolio of 237 reproductions on 92
plates. 1910.
DIE ÄLTESTEN DEUTSCHEN SPIELKARTEN DES KÖNIGLICHEN
KUPFERSTICH-CABINETS ZU DRESDEN. _By Max Lehrs._ 97 reproductions
on 29 plates. Dresden: W. Hoffmann. 1885.
KATALOG DER IM GERMANISCHEN MUSEUM BEFINDLICHEN DEUTSCHEN
KUPFERSTICHE DES XV. JAHRHUNDERTS. _By Max Lehrs._ 1 original
engraving and 9 reproductions. Nürnberg. 1887.
LE PEINTRE-GRAVEUR. _By J. D. Passavant._ 6 volumes. Leipzig:
Rudolph Weigel. 1860-1864. Volumes 1 and 2, Early German Engravers.
HISTOIRE DE L’ORIGINE ET DES PROGRÈS DE LA GRAVURE DANS LES
PAYS-BAS ET EN ALLEMAGNE, JUSQU’À LA FIN DU QUINZIÈME SIÈCLE. _By
Jules Renouvier._ Brussels: M. Hayez. 1860.
DIE INKUNABELN DES KUPFERSTICHS IM KGL. KABINET ZU MÜNCHEN.
_By Wilhelm Schmidt._ 32 reproductions. Munich. 1887.
MANUEL DE L’AMATEUR DE LA GRAVURE SUR BOIS ET SUR MÉTAL AU
XVᵉ SIÈCLE. _By Wilhelm Ludwig Schreiber._ Volumes 1-4,
Text. Volumes 6-8, Reproductions. Berlin: Albert Cohn, 1891-1900.
(Vol. 4 in Leipzig: O. Harrassowitz.)
A DESCRIPTIVE CATALOGUE OF EARLY PRINTS IN THE BRITISH
MUSEUM. _By William Hughes Willshire._ 2 volumes. 22
reproductions. London: The Trustees. 1879-1883.
MASTER OF THE PLAYING CARDS (flourished 1440-1450)
DAS ÄLTESTE GESTOCHENE DEUTSCHE KARTENSPIEL VOM MEISTER DER
SPIELKARTEN (VOR 1446). _By Max Geisberg._ 68 reproductions on 33
plates. Strassburg: J. H. Ed. Heitz (Heitz & Mündel). 1905. (Studien
zur deutschen Kunstgeschichte. Part 66.)
MASTER OF THE GARDENS OF LOVE (flourished 1445-1450)
DER MEISTER DER LIEBESGÄRTEN; EIN BEITRAG ZUR GESCHICHTE DES
ÄLTESTEN KUPFERSTICHS IN DEN NIEDERLANDEN. _By Max Lehrs._ 28
reproductions on 10 plates. Dresden: Bruno Schulze. 1893.
MASTER E. S. (flourished 1450-1470)
DER MEISTER E. S.; SEIN NAME, SEINE HEIMAT, UND SEIN ENDE.
_By Peter P. Albert._ 20 reproductions on 16 plates. Strassburg:
J. H. Ed-Heitz (Heitz & Mündel). 1911. (Studien zur deutschen
Kunstgeschichte. Part 137.)
THE MASTER E. S. AND THE “ARS MORIENDI”; A CHAPTER IN THE HISTORY
OF ENGRAVING DURING THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. _By Lionel Cust._ 46
reproductions. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1898.
DIE ANFÄNGE DES DEUTSCHEN KUPFERSTICHES UND DER MEISTER E. S.
_By Max Geisberg._ 121 reproductions on 71 plates. Leipzig: Klinkhardt
& Biermann. 1909. (Meister der Graphik. Vol. 2.)
GESCHICHTE UND KRITISCHER KATALOG DES DEUTSCHEN, NIEDERLÄNDISCHEN
UND FRANZÖSISCHEN KUPFERSTICHS IM XV. JAHRHUNDERT. _By Max
Lehrs._ Vienna: Gesellschaft für vervielfältigende Kunst. 1908-1910.
Volume 2. Master E. S. With portfolio of 237 reproductions on 92
plates.
THE PLAYING CARDS OF THE MASTER E. S. OF 1466. _Edited by Max
Lehrs._ 45 reproductions. London: Asher & Co. 1892. (International
Chalcographical Society. Extraordinary Publication. Vol. 1.)
SCHONGAUER, MARTIN (1445(?)-1491)
ZWEI DATIERTE ZEICHNUNGEN MARTIN SCHONGAUERS. _By Sidney
Calvin._ 2 illustrations. Jahrbuch der königlichen preussischen
Kunstsammlungen, Vol. 6, pp. 69-74. Berlin. 1885.
MARTIN SCHONGAUER’S KUPFERSTICHE. _By Max G. Friedländer._ 5
illustrations. Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst, Vol. 26, pp. 105-112.
Leipzig. 1915.
MARTIN SCHONGAUER. _By Max Geisberg._ 14 illustrations. The
Print-Collector’s Quarterly, Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 102-129. Boston. 1914.
MARTIN SCHONGAUER; NACHBILDUNGEN SEINER KUPFERSTICHE. _Edited
by Max Lehrs._ 115 reproductions on 72 plates. Berlin: Bruno Cassirer.
1914. (Graphische Gesellschaft. Extraordinary Publication 5.)
SCHONGAUERSTUDIEN. _By Wilhelm Lübke._ 3 illustrations.
Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst, Vol. 16, pp. 74-86. Leipzig. 1881.
SCHONGAUER UND DER MEISTER DES BARTHOLOMÄUS. _By L.
Scheibler._ Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft, Vol. 7, pp. 31-68.
Berlin and Stuttgart. 1884.
MARTIN SCHONGAUER ALS KUPFERSTECHER. _By Woldemar von
Seidlitz._ Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft, Vol. 7, pp. 169-182.
Berlin and Stuttgart. 1884.
MARTIN SCHONGAUER ALS KUPFERSTECHER. _By Hans Wendland._ 32
reproductions. Berlin: Edmund Meyer. 1907.
MARTIN SCHONGAUER. EINE KRITISCHE UNTERSUCHUNG SEINES LEBENS
UND SEINER WERKE NEBST EINEM CHRONOLOGISCHEN VERZEICHNISSE SEINER
KUPFERSTICHE. _By Alfred von Wurzbach._ Vienna: Manz’sche K. K.
Hofverlags und Universitäts Buchhandlung. 1880.
MASTER OF THE BANDEROLES (flourished c. 1464)
DER MEISTER MIT DEN BANDROLLEN; EIN BEITRAG ZUR GESCHICHTE
DES ÄLTESTEN KUPFERSTICHS IN DEUTSCHLAND. _By Max Lehrs._ 19
reproductions on 7 plates. Dresden: W. Hoffmann. 1886.
MECKENEM, ISRAHEL VAN (c. 1440-1503)
DER MEISTER DER BERLINER PASSION UND ISRAHEL VAN MECKENEM.
_By Max Geisberg._ 6 reproductions. Strassburg: J. H. Ed. Heitz (Heitz
& Mündel). 1903. (Studien zur deutschen Kunstgeschichte. Part 42.)
VERZEICHNIS DER KUPFERSTICHE ISRAHELS VAN MECKENEM. _By Max
Geisberg._ 11 reproductions on 9 plates. Strassburg: J. H. Ed. Heitz
(Heitz & Mündel). 1905. (Studien zur deutschen Kunstgeschichte. Part
58.)
MASTER =W A= (flourished c. 1470)
DER MEISTER =W A=; EIN KUPFERSTECHER DER ZEIT KARLS DES
KÜHNEN. _By Max Lehrs._ 77 reproductions on 31 plates. Dresden:
W. Hoffmann. 1895.
STOSS, VEIT (c. 1450-c. 1533)
VEIT STOSS; NACHBILDUNGEN SEINER KUPFERSTICHE. _Edited by
Engelbert Baumeister._ 13 reproductions. Berlin: Bruno Cassirer. 1913.
(Graphische Gesellschaft. Publication 17.)
OLMÜTZ, WENZEL VON (flourished 1480-1500)
WENZEL VON OLMÜTZ. _By Max Lehrs._ 22 reproductions on 11
plates. Dresden: W. Hoffmann. 1889 (In German.)
[Illustration: MASTER L Cz. CHRIST TEMPTED
Size of the original engraving 8¾ × 6⅝ inches]
[Illustration: MASTER L Cz. CHRIST ENTERING JERUSALEM
Size of the original engraving, 8⅞ × 7 inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
ITALIAN ENGRAVING: THE FLORENTINES
Engraving in Italy differs, in many essentials, from the art as
practised in Germany. Germany may claim priority in point of time, but
it is doubtful whether the Florentines--for in Florence, and among
the goldsmiths, the art took its rise in Italy--in the beginning were
influenced by, or even acquainted with, the work of their northern
contemporaries. In Germany the designer and the engraver were one, and
some of the greatest masters embodied their finest conceptions in their
prints. We may truly say that the world-wide reputation which Dürer
and Schongauer have enjoyed for four centuries and more, rests almost
entirely upon their engraved, rather than upon their painted, work.
In Italy it was otherwise. There, with a few signal exceptions,
engraving was used merely as a convenient method of multiplying an
existing design. It may be that we owe to this fact both the color
of the ink used in these early Florentine prints, and the method of
taking impressions. This would seem, in many cases, to be by rubbing
rather than by the use of the roller press, which appears to have been
known and used in the North substantially from the very beginning. The
Florentine, aiming to duplicate a drawing in silver-point or wash,
would naturally endeavor to approximate the color of his original.
Consequently we do not find the lustrous black impressions, strongly
printed, which are the prize of the collector of early German
engravings.
Vasari’s story of the invention of engraving by MASO FINIGUERRA
(1426-1464) was long ago disproved, and for a time it seemed as though
Finiguerra and his work were likely to be consigned to that limbo of
the legendary from which Baldini--at one time accredited with many
prints--is only just now emerging. Yet Finiguerra, although not the
“inventor” of the art, is, beyond peradventure, the most important
influence in early Italian engraving, not only on account of his own
work on copper, but still more through the Picture-Chronicle, which
served as an inspiration to the artists working in his School and
continuing his tradition after his death. So that Vasari’s tale, though
not accurate in the matter of fact, was veracious in the larger sense.
[Illustration: ANONYMOUS FLORENTINE, XV CENTURY. PROFILE PORTRAIT OF A
LADY
Size of the original engraving, 8⅞ × 5⅝ inches
In the Royal Print Room, Berlin]
[Illustration: ANONYMOUS FLORENTINE, XV CENTURY. WILD ANIMALS HUNTING
AND FIGHTING
Size of the original engraving, 10⅛ × 14¾ inches
In the British Museum]
The Picture-Chronicle is a book of drawings illustrating the History
of the World, and evidently proceeds from the hand and workshop of a
Florentine goldsmith-engraver of about 1460. It was acquired by
the British Museum from Mr. Ruskin in 1888. The drawings are in pen
and ink and wash, often reinforced with open pen-shading like that
imitated later by the Broad Manner engravers. At its best the work
has the true early Renaissance combination of archaic strength with
attractive naiveté--the ornamental detail carried out with a masterly
power of pen, and with the patient delight of one who is by instinct
and training above all things a jeweler.
Finiguerra’s fame as the leading worker in niello was firmly
established by 1450; and although we cannot assign certainly any
engraving by him to a date earlier than 1460, there is a group of
Florentine primitives which may be placed between the years 1450 and
1460, thus antedating Finiguerra’s first plate by about ten years. The
most beautiful of these early prints in conception, and the purest in
execution, is the _Profile Portrait of a Lady_, a single impression of
which has come down to us and is now in Berlin. In style it recalls the
paintings of Piero della Francesca, Verrocchio, Uccello, or Pollaiuolo,
and although it would be unwise to attribute it to any known master,
there is a sensitive quality in the drawing, and a restraint, which
differentiates it from any other print of this period.
Among the engravings which may be by Finiguerra himself, one of
the most interesting is the plate of _Wild Animals Hunting and
Fighting_, wherein we see a number of motives taken directly from the
Picture-Chronicle--motives which reappear again and again in works
undoubtedly by other hands. This print, as also the _Encounter of a
Hunting Party with a Family of Wild Folk_, is unique. In the last-named
we see a number of motives repeated from the _Wild Animals Hunting and
Fighting_: such as the boar being pulled down by two hounds, the hound
chasing a hare, in the upper right corner; and the dog, slightly to the
left, devouring the entrails of yet another hare.
The _Road to Calvary and the Crucifixion_ is a far more elaborate and
important composition, and in this engraving we see that which is
especially noteworthy in the _Judgment Hall of Pilate_--the largest
and most important of all the Fine Manner prints--the goldsmith’s love
of ornament. In the _Judgment Hall of Pilate_ the head-dresses, and
especially the armor, are highly elaborate, while the architecture
itself is overlaid with ornate decoration directly drawn from the
Picture-Chronicle. In the only known impression the plate seems to have
been re-worked, in the Broad Manner, by a later hand.
[Illustration: ANONYMOUS FLORENTINE, XV CENTURY. TRIUMPHAL PROCESSION
OF BACCHUS AND ARIADNE
Size of the original engraving, 8⅛ × 22 inches
In the British Museum]
[Illustration: ANONYMOUS FLORENTINE, XV CENTURY. JUPITER
Size of the original engraving, 12⅝ × 8½ inches
In the British Museum]
Somewhat later in date, by an engraver of the Finiguerra School, is the
_Triumphal Procession of_ _Bacchus and Ariadne_, the most joyous of
all Florentine engravings. The original design was attributed at one
time to Botticelli; and although, as Herbert P. Horne has shown, it
cannot be by this master, it is similar in style to his compositions.
Whatever the immediate original, it shows marked traces of classical
influences, and its motive is directly derived from antique
sculpture--a sarcophagus in all probability. “The splendid design has
suffered not only from the feebleness of the engraving, but also from
the florid manner in which the engraver has exaggerated some of the
decorative details and added others.... In spite of the feebleness of
its execution it remains an incomparably greater work of art than any
other print in the Fine Manner.”[2]
[2] Sandro Botticelli. By Herbert P. Horne. London: George Bell & Sons.
1908. p. 84.
The Fine Manner, in which all of the engravings hitherto mentioned
are executed, owes its name to the method employed. The engraver has
incised his outlines upon the plate--probably unbeaten copper or
some even softer metal--and for his shading has employed a system of
delicate strokes, laid close to one another and overlaid with two, and,
at times, three, sets of cross-hatching. Such engravings, when printed,
as is usually the case, in a greenish or grayish ink, give a result
similar to a wash drawing. In the Broad Manner the style of engraving
is based upon that of pen drawing, with open, diagonal shade strokes
and without cross-hatching. The Broad Manner was finally developed by
Pollaiuolo and Mantegna, who modified it by a series of delicate lines
laid at an acute angle to the heavier shadings, blending the main lines
into a harmonious whole.
“None of the sciences that descended from antiquity,” writes Arthur
M. Hind,[3] “possessed a firmer hold on the popular imagination of
the Middle Ages than that of Astrology. That science took as its
foundation the ancient conception of the universe, with the earth as
the centre round which all the heavenly bodies revolved in the space
of a day and a night. Encircling the earth were the successive spheres
of water, air, fire, the seven planets (Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun,
Mars, Jupiter, Saturn), the firmament with the constellations (the
_cœlum crystallinum_), and the Primum Mobile. To each of the planets
were ascribed attributes according to the traditional character of
the deity whose name it bore, and these attributes were regarded as
transmissible under certain conditions to mankind. The influence of the
planets depended on their position in the heavens in respect of the
various constellations, with which each had different relations. Each
planet had what was called its ‘house’ in one of the constellations,
and according to its position relative to these was said to be in the
‘ascendant’ or ‘descendant’. In regard to individual human beings the
date of birth was the decisive point, and the degree of influence
transmitted from the planets depended on the respective degree of
‘ascendance’ or ‘descendance’ at the particular epoch.”
[3] Catalogue of Early Italian Engravings ... in the British Museum. By
Arthur Mayger Hind. London. 1910. pp. 49-50.
The planets and their influences afforded subject matter for many
artists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and the finest and
most important series is that engraved in the Fine Manner by an artist
of the Finiguerra School, who has, as usual, drawn directly upon the
Picture-Chronicle for his ornamental accessories. We can reproduce two
only from the set of seven--_Jupiter_ and _Mercury_. The inscription
beneath _Jupiter_ reads, in part, as follows: “Jupiter is a male planet
in the sixth sphere, warm and moist, temperate by nature, and of gentle
disposition; he is sanguine, cheerful, liberal, eloquent; he loves
fine clothes, is handsome and ruddy of aspect, and looks toward the
Earth. Tin is his metal; his days are Sunday and Thursday, with the
first, eighth, fifteenth and twenty-fourth hours; his night is that of
Wednesday; he is friendly to the Moon, hostile to Mars....” In the
landscape we again meet with several of the stock Finiguerra motives,
the muzzled hounds, the dog chasing the hare, etc. Of especial interest
is the group at the right--“wing-bearing Dante who flew through Hell,
through the starry Heavens and o’er the intermediate hill of Purgatory
beneath the beauteous brows of Beatrice; and Petrarch too, who tells
again the tale of Cupid’s triumph; and the man who, in ten days,
portrays a hundred stories (Boccaccio).”
_Mercury_--“eloquent and inventive ... slender of figure, tall and
well grown, with delicate lips. Quicksilver is his metal”--sets forth
various applications of the arts and sciences. Especially interesting
is the goldsmith’s shop at the left, where we see an engraver actually
at work upon a plate. The goldsmith is seated, his apprentice behind
him, as a prospective purchaser examines a richly ornamented vessel.
In the foreground a sculptor is chiseling his statue, while, standing
above, on a scaffolding, a fresco painter is actively at work--a record
of the Florence of 1460 or thereabouts, full of interest for us.
[Illustration: ANONYMOUS FLORENTINE, XV CENTURY. MERCURY
Size of the original engraving, 12¾ × 8½ inches
In the British Museum]
[Illustration: ANONYMOUS FLORENTINE, XV CENTURY. LADY WITH A UNICORN
Size of the original engraving, 6¼ inches in diameter
In the British Museum]
To a slightly later date, 1465-1470, belong the group of Fine Manner
prints, known as the OTTO PRINTS, also emanating from the
Finiguerra workshop. They are not a series, in any true sense, and owe
their name--also their fortunate preservation--to the accidental
circumstance of their having belonged at one time to Peter Ernst Otto,
a merchant and collector of Leipzig. The purpose served by these
prints--twenty-four in all--was the decoration of box lids, either as
patterns to be copied, in the case of metal caskets, or to be colored
and pasted on the lids of wooden boxes. The escutcheons are usually
left blank, to be filled in by hand with the device of the donor or the
recipient, or with some appropriate sentiment.
In the print entitled _Two Heads in Medallions and Two Hunting Scenes_
we again meet with the animal motives taken from the Picture-Chronicle.
One of the most charming is the _Lady with a Unicorn_ (Chastity), in
its arrangement suggestive of the beautiful drawing by Leonardo da
Vinci in the British Museum; and its symbolic meaning is doubtless
the same. “The unicorn,” writes Leonardo in his “Bestiarius,” “is
distinguished for lack of moderation and self-control. His passionate
love of young women makes him entirely forget his shyness and ferocity.
Oblivious of all dangers, he comes straight to the seated maiden and
falling asleep in her lap is then caught by the hunter.” The ermine,
likewise a sign of chastity, is to be seen at the right, gazing upward
into Marietta’s face.
Still later than the Otto prints, and greatly inferior to them in
execution, are the three illustrations for _Il Monte Sancto di Dio_, of
1477; and the nineteen engravings for Dante’s _Divina Commedia_, with
Landino’s Commentary, of 1481. _Il Monte Sancto di Dio_ is the first
book in Italy or in Germany in which there appear illustrations from
engraved plates printed on the text page. This entailed much additional
labor, and was soon discontinued in favor of the wood-block, which
could be printed simultaneously with the letterpress, and was not taken
up again until nearly the end of the sixteenth century.
Alike by tradition and internal evidence, Botticelli is unquestionably
the author of the Dante designs; but no artist has been suggested as
the probable designer of the three illustrations for _Il Monte Sancto
di Dio_. In the first illustration the costume and general attitude
of the young gallant to the left are strongly reminiscent of the Otto
prints. The lower portion of the plate shows all the characteristics of
the Fine Manner, but the angel heads are treated in a simpler and more
open linear method. _The Christian’s Ascent to the Glory of Paradise_
is allegorically represented by a ladder placed firmly in the ground
of widespread Knowledge and Humility, and reaching up to the triple
mountain of Faith, Hope, and Charity, on the summit of which stands the
Saviour. This ladder is called Perseverance, one of its sides being
Prayer, the other Sacrament. It has eleven steps: Prudence, Temperance,
Fortitude, Justice, etc.
[Illustration: ANONYMOUS FLORENTINE, XV CENTURY. THE CHRISTIAN’S
ASCENT TO THE GLORY OF PARADISE. FROM “IL MONTE SANCTO DI DIO,”
FLORENCE, 1477
Size of the original engraving, 9⅞ × 7 inches
In the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University]
[Illustration: ANONYMOUS FLORENTINE, XV CENTURY. DANTE AND VIRGIL
WITH THE VISION OF BEATRICE. FROM THE “DIVINA COMMEDIA,”
FLORENCE, 1481
Size of the original engraving, 3½ × 6⅞ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
The second illustration depicts the glory of Paradise; the third the
punishment of Hell, the main motives of the last-named being adapted
from the fresco attributed to Orcagna, in the Campo Santo at Pisa.
In the illustrations to the _Divina Commedia_, of 1481, there is little
left of the beauty which the original designs must have possessed.
They are, indeed, “disguised into puerility by the feebleness of
the engraver”; but, none the less, they remain, with the exception
of Botticelli’s superb series of drawings on vellum, in Berlin and
in the Vatican, unquestionably the best, one might say the _only_,
satisfactory illustrations of Dante’s text. No known copy contains
more than the first three engravings printed directly upon the page
itself. In every other case, where a greater number of illustrations
appear, they are printed separately and pasted in place, indicating the
difficulty experienced by the Renaissance printer in making his plates
register with the letterpress.
The first print of the series shows Dante lost in the wood, emerging
therefrom, and his meeting with Virgil--three subjects on a single
plate. The second represents _Dante and Virgil with the Vision_ _of
Beatrice_. Dante and Virgil are seen twice--first to the left, where
Dante doubts whether to follow the guidance of Virgil further, and
again on the slope of the hill to the right, where Virgil relates how
the vision of Beatrice appeared to him. Near the summit of the rocky
mountain is seen the entrance to Hell.
“Of the extant engravings in the Broad Manner, unquestionably the most
remarkable is the large print on two sheets of the _Assumption of the
Virgin_, after Botticelli. The original design [no longer known to
exist], whether drawing or painting, from which this engraving was
taken, must have been among the grandest and most vigorous works of
the last period of Botticelli’s art. The large and rugged treatment of
the figures of the apostles, their strange mane-like hair and beards,
their fervent and agitated gestures and attitudes, lend to this part of
the design a forcible and primitive character, which recalls, though
largely, perhaps, in an accidental fashion, the grand and impressive
art of Andrea del Castagno. Not less vigorous in conception, but of
greater beauty of form and movement, is the figure of the Virgin, and
the motive and arrangement of the angels who form a ‘mandorla’ around
her are among the most lovely and imaginative of the many inventions
of the kind which Botticelli has left us.”[4] In the distant valley
is a view of Rome showing the Pantheon, the Column of Trajan, the
Colosseum, and other buildings.
[4] Sandro Botticelli. By Herbert P. Horne. London: George Bell & Sons.
1908. p. 289.
[Illustration: ANONYMOUS FLORENTINE, XV CENTURY. ASSUMPTION OF THE
VIRGIN (After Botticelli)
Size of the original engraving, 32⅝ × 22¼ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: ANONYMOUS FLORENTINE, XV CENTURY. TRIUMPH OF LOVE. FROM
THE TRIUMPHS OF PETRARCH.
Size of the original engraving, 10⅜ × 6¾ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
If the _Assumption of the Virgin_ is the noblest print in the Broad
Manner, the _Triumphs of Petrarch_--a set of six prints--may be said
to possess the greatest charm, not less by its subject than by its
treatment. Petrarch first saw Laura on April 6, 1327, in the Church
of Santa Clara at Avignon, and “in the same city, on the same 6th day
of the same month of April, in the year 1348, the bright light of her
life was taken away from the light of this earth.” The poet’s aim in
composing these _Trionfi_ is the same which he proposed to himself in
the _Canzoniere_: namely, “to return in thought, from time to time,
now to the beginning, now to the progress, and now to the end of his
passion, taking by the way frequent opportunities of rendering praise
and honor to the single and exalted object of his love. To reach this
aim he devised a description of man in his various conditions of life,
wherein he might naturally find occasion to speak of himself and of his
Laura.
“Man in his first stage of youth is the slave of appetites, which may
all be included under the generic name of LOVE, or Self-Love. But as
he gains understanding, he sees the impropriety of such a condition,
so that he strives advisedly against those appetites and overcomes them
by means of CHASTITY, that is, by denying himself the opportunity of
satisfying them. Amid these struggles and victories DEATH overtakes him
and makes victors and vanquished equal by taking them all out of the
world. Nevertheless, it has no power to destroy the memory of a man,
who by illustrious and honorable deeds seeks to survive his own death.
Such a man truly lives through a long course of ages by means of his
FAME. But TIME at length obliterates all memory of him, and he finds,
in the last resort, that his only sure hope of living forever is by joy
in God and by partaking with God in his blessed ETERNITY.
“Thus LOVE triumphs over man, CHASTITY over
LOVE, and DEATH over both alike; FAME
triumphs over DEATH, TIME over FAME, and
ETERNITY over TIME.”[5]
[5] Le Rime di Francesco Petrarca con l’interpretazione di Giacomo
Leopardi ... e gli argomenti di A. Marsand. Florence. 1839. p.
866. Translation in, Petrarch: His Life and Times. By H. C.
Hollway-Calthrop. London. 1907. pp. 41-42.
With the exception of the first plate, _The Triumph of Love_, none
of these engravings illustrates, in any strict sense of the word,
the text of Petrarch’s poem. It is the spirit which the engraver has
interpreted. Who may have been the designer we know not, but they
show certain affinities to the work of Pesellino and Baldovinetti.
[Illustration: ANONYMOUS FLORENTINE, XV CENTURY. TRIUMPH OF CHASTITY.
FROM THE TRIUMPHS OF PETRARCH
Size of the original engraving, 10 × 6⅜ inches
In the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University]
[Illustration: ANONYMOUS FLORENTINE, XV CENTURY. LIBYAN SIBYL
Size of the original engraving, 7 × 4¼ inches
In the British Museum]
In the first plate, Cupid, the blind archer, with flame-tipped arrow,
is poised upon a ball rising from a flaming vase, the base of which,
in its turn, rests upon flame. Jupiter(?), chained, is seated in the
front of the car, while Samson, bearing a column, walks upon the
further side. Four prancing steeds draw the car; behind, Love’s victims
follow in endless procession. In the second plate, _Chastity_ stands
upon an urn; in front of her kneels Cupid, still blindfolded, with his
broken arrow beside him. Two unicorns, symbols of chastity, draw the
car, while upon the banner borne by the maiden at the extreme right
there appears the symbolic ermine. Then follow in order the Triumphs of
_Death_, of _Fame_, of _Time_, and of _Eternity_.
This series of illustrations reappears, somewhat modified and
simplified, in the form of woodcuts, in the editions of the _Trionfi_
published in Venice in 1488, 1490, 1492, and in Florence in 1499.
We have already referred to the _Evangelists and Apostles_ engraved by
the German, Master E. S. of 1466. It is from him that the anonymous
Florentine engraver borrowed his figures, in many cases leaving
the form of the drapery unchanged but enriching it with elaborate
designs in the manner of Finiguerra. The Prophet _Ezekiel_ is thus
compounded of _St. John_ and _St. Peter_, while _Amos_ is copied in
reverse from _St. Paul_. The seated figure of _Daniel_, in its turn,
is derived from Martin Schongauer’s engraving, _Christ Before Pilate_,
but the throne upon which he is seated is strongly reminiscent of the
Picture-Chronicle, and likewise recalls Botticelli’s early painting of
_Fortitude_. The _Tiburtine Sibyl_ is derived from _St. Matthew_, who,
in changing his position, has likewise changed his sex. The precedent
thus established has been followed by _St. John_, transformed into the
_Libyan Sibyl_ in the Fine Manner, with the addition of a flying veil,
to the right, copied from the _Woman with the Escutcheon_, also by the
Master E. S. In the Broad Manner print the figure of this Sibyl gains
in dignity by the elimination of much superfluous ornament upon her
outer garment, and from the fact that she now sits in a more upright
posture, the Fine Manner print still suggesting the crouching attitude
of its Northern prototype. It is to the influence, if not to the hand,
of Botticelli that such improvement is most likely due.
The twenty-four _Prophets_ and the twelve _Sibyls_, engraved both
in the Fine and in the Broad Manner of the Finiguerra School, are
individually and collectively among the most delightful productions
of Italian art. It was doubtless as illustrations of mystery plays or
pageants in Florence that this series of engravings was designed,
and we are able to reconstruct from the _Triumphs of Petrarch_, and
from these prints, a Florentine street pageant at its loveliest.
[Illustration: ANONYMOUS NORTH ITALIAN, XV CENTURY. THE GENTLEMAN.
FROM THE TAROCCHI PRINTS
(E Series)
Size of the original engraving, 7⅛ × 4 inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: ANONYMOUS NORTH ITALIAN, XV CENTURY. CLIO. FROM THE
TAROCCHI PRINTS (S Series)
Size of the original engraving, 7⅛ × 4 inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
However great their beauty and however strong the fascination which
they exert, they have a rival in the series of fifty instructive
prints, which, for many years, were miscalled the _Tarocchi Cards of
Mantegna_. Tarocchi cards they are not, and of Mantegna’s influence,
direct or indirect, there would seem to be no trace whatsoever. They
are of North Italian origin and are the work, in all probability, of
some anonymous Venetian engraver, working from Venetian or Ferrarese
originals, about 1465--contemporary, therefore, with the Florentine
engravings of the _Prophets and Sibyls_. Forming, apparently, a
pictorial cyclopædia of the mediæval universe, with its systematic
classification of the various powers of Heaven and Earth, they divide
themselves into five groups of ten cards each. First we have the ranks
and conditions of men from Beggar to Pope; next Apollo and the nine
Muses; then the Liberal Arts, with the addition of Poetry, Philosophy,
and Theology, in order to make up the ten; next the Seven Virtues,
the set being brought up to the required number by the addition of
_Chronico_, the genius of Time, _Cosmico_, the genius of the Universe,
and _Iliaco_, the genius of the Sun. The fifth group is based on
the Seven Planets, together with the Sphere of the Fixed Stars and
the Primum Mobile, which imparts its own revolving motion to all the
spheres within it; and enfolding all the Empyrean Sphere, the abode of
Heavenly Wisdom.
Much wisdom and many words have been expended upon the still unsolved
riddle as to which of the two sets, known respectively as the E
series and the S series (from the letters which appear in the lower
left-hand corners of the ten cards of the _Sorts and Conditions of
Men_) may claim priority of date. Both series are in the Fine Manner,
the outlines clearly defined, the shadings and modelling indicated
with delicate burin strokes, crossed and re-crossed so as to give a
tonal effect. These delicate strokes soon wore out in printing, and the
structural lines of the figures then emerge in all their beauty. It may
seem absurd that one should admire impressions from plates obviously
worn, but the critic would do well to suspend his condemnation, since
the Tarocchi Prints present many and manifold forms of beauty--in
the early impressions a delicate and bloom-like quality; in certain
somewhat later proofs, a charm of line which recalls the art of the Far
East.
[Illustration: ANONYMOUS NORTH ITALIAN, XV CENTURY. THE SUN. FROM THE
TAROCCHI PRINTS (E Series)
Size of the original engraving, 7⅛ × 4 inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: ANONYMOUS NORTH ITALIAN, XV CENTURY. ANGEL OF THE
EIGHTH SPHERE. FROM THE TAROCCHI PRINTS
(E Series)
Size of the original engraving, 7⅛ × 4 inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
_The Gentleman_ is the fifth in order in the first group of the _Sorts
and Conditions of Men_, and is from the so-called E series (claimed
by Sir Sidney Colvin and Mr. Arthur M. Hind, of the British Museum, to
be the earlier of the two sets). The sequence runs: (1) The Beggar, (2)
The Servant, (3) The Artisan, (4) The Merchant, (5) The Gentleman, (6)
The Knight, (7) The Doge, (8) The King, (9) The Emperor, (10) The Pope.
_Clio_ is the ninth of the Muses and is from the S series (placed first
in point of time, by Kristeller, and about ten years later than the E
series, by the British Museum authorities).
_The Sun_ naturally finds his place in the group of _Planets_ and
_Spheres_. There is a delightful and childish touch in the way in which
_Phæton_ is pictured as a little boy falling headlong into the river
Po, which conveniently flows immediately beneath him. To this group
belongs likewise the _Angel of the Eighth Sphere_, the Sphere of the
Fixed Stars, one of the loveliest prints in the entire set, both in
arrangement and in execution.
Nothing could be in greater contrast to the gracefulness of such a
print as the above than the _Battle of Naked Men_ by ANTONIO
POLLAIUOLO, “the stupendous Florentine”--if one may borrow Dante’s
title; but, for the moment, we will hold Pollaiuolo and his one
engraving in reserve while we glance at the work of CHRISTOFANO
ROBETTA, who, born in Florence in 1462, was consequently the
junior of Pollaiuolo by thirty years. As an engraver, Robetta is
inferior to the anonymous master to whom we owe the E series of the
Tarocchi prints. His style is somewhat dry, and the individual lines
are lacking in beauty; but his plates have that indefinable and
indescribable fascination and charm which is the peculiar possession
of Italian engraving and of the Florentine masters in particular. The
shaping influences which determined his choice and treatment of subject
are Botticelli, and, in a much larger measure, Filippino Lippi, though
only in a few cases can he be shown to have worked directly from that
painter’s designs. The _Adoration of the Magi_ is obviously inspired
by Filippino Lippi’s painting in the Uffizi, though whether Robetta
actually worked from the painting itself, or, as seems more probable,
translated one of Filippino’s drawings, is an interesting question. The
fact that the engraving is in reverse of the painting proves nothing;
but there are so many points of difference between them--notably the
introduction of the charming group of three angels above the Virgin and
Child--that one can hardly think Robetta would have needlessly made so
many and important modifications of the painting itself, if a drawing
had been available. It is interesting, though of minor importance, that
the hat of the King to the right, which lies on the ground, is copied
in reverse from Schongauer’s _Adoration_, and that the _Allegory
of the Power of Love_, one of Robetta’s most charming subjects, is
engraved upon the reverse side of the plate of the _Adoration of
the Magi_, the copper-plate itself being now in the Print Room of
the British Museum. Whether the _Allegory of Abundance_ is entirely
Robetta’s, or whether the design was suggested by another master’s
painting or drawing, can be only a matter of conjecture. It shows,
however, so many of the characteristics which we associate with his
work that we may give him the benefit of the doubt and consider him as
its “onlie begetter.”
[Illustration: CRISTOFANO ROBETTA. ADORATION OF THE MAGI
Size of the original engraving, 11⅝ × 11 inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: ANTONIO POLLAIUOLO. BATTLE OF NAKED MEN
Size of the original engraving, 15¾ × 23½ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
_Hercules and the Hydra_ and _Hercules and Antæus_ show so markedly the
influence of Pollaiuolo that we may conclude them to have been taken
from the two small panels in the Uffizi; though, in the case of the
first named, Pollaiuolo’s original sketch, now in the British Museum,
may also have served Robetta.
Whether POLLAIUOLO based his technical method upon that of
Mantegna and his School, or whether Mantegna’s own engravings were
inspired by his Florentine contemporary, is an interesting, but thus
far unanswered, question. Pollaiuolo’s one print, the _Battle of Naked
Men_, is engraved in the Broad Manner, somewhat modified by the use
of a light stroke laid at an acute angle between the parallels. The
outlines of the figures are strongly incised; while the treatment of
the background lends color to the supposition that, in his youth,
Pollaiuolo engraved in niello, as well as furnished designs to be
executed by Finiguerra and his School. In this masterpiece the artist
has summed up his knowledge of the human form, and has expressed, in
a more convincing and vigorous measure than has any other engraver in
the history of the art, the strain and stress of violent motion and the
fury of combat.
“What is it,” asks Bernhard Berenson, “that makes us return to this
sheet with ever-renewed, ever-increased pleasure? Surely it is not the
hideous faces of most of the figures and their scarcely less hideous
bodies. Nor is it the pattern as decorative design, which is of great
beauty indeed, but not at all in proportion to the spell exerted upon
us. Least of all is it--for most of us--an interest in the technique
or history of engraving. No, the pleasure we take in these savagely
battling forms arises from their power to directly communicate life,
to immensely heighten our sense of vitality. Look at the combatant
prostrate on the ground and his assailant, bending over, each intent
on stabbing the other. See how the prostrate man plants his foot on
the thigh of his enemy and note the tremendous energy he exerts to
keep off the foe, who, turning as upon a pivot, with his grip on the
other’s head, exerts no less force to keep the advantage gained. The
significance of all these muscular strains and pressures is so rendered
that we cannot help realizing them; we imagine ourselves imitating all
the movements and exerting the force required for them--and all without
the least effort on our side. If all this without moving a muscle, what
should we feel if we too had exerted ourselves? And thus while under
the spell of this illusion--this hyperæsthesia not bought with drugs
and not paid for with cheques drawn on our vitality--we feel as if the
elixir of life, not our own sluggish blood, were coursing through our
veins.”[6]
[6] Florentine Painters of the Renaissance. By Bernhard Berenson. New
York: Putnam’s Sons. 1899. pp. 54-55.
Pollaiuolo is the one great original engraver Florence produced, and
with him we bring to a close our all too brief study of Florentine
engraving.
ITALIAN ENGRAVING: THE FLORENTINES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
LE PEINTRE GRAVEUR. _By Adam Bartsch._ 21 volumes. Vienna:
1803-1821. Volume 13, Early Italian Engravers.
THE DRAWINGS OF THE FLORENTINE PAINTERS. _By Bernhard
Berenson._ 2 volumes. 180 illustrations. New York: E. P. Dutton &
Company. 1903.
CATALOGUE OF EARLY ITALIAN ENGRAVINGS PRESERVED IN THE DEPARTMENT
OF PRINTS AND DRAWINGS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM. _By Arthur Mayger
Hind. Edited by Sidney Colvin._ 20 illustrations. London: The
Trustees. 1910.
----. Illustrations to the Catalogue ... 198 plates. London: The
Trustees. 1909.
SOME EARLY ITALIAN ENGRAVERS BEFORE THE TIME OF MARCANTONIO.
_By Arthur Mayger Hind._ 22 illustrations. The Print-Collector’s
Quarterly, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 253-289. Boston. 1912.
SULLE ORIGINI DELL’INCISIONE IN RAME IN ITALIA. _By Paul
Kristeller._ 4 illustrations. Archivio Storico dell’Arte, Vol. 6, p.
391-400. Rome. 1893.
LE PEINTRE-GRAVEUR. _By J. D. Passavant._ 6 volumes. Leipzig:
Rudolph Weigel. 1860-1864. Volumes 1 and 5, Early Italian Engravers.
DES TYPES ET DES MANIÈRES DES MAITRES GRAVEURS ... EN ITALIE, EN
ALLEMAGNE, DANS LES PAYS-BAS ET EN FRANCE. _By Jules Renouvier._
2 volumes. Montpellier: Boehm, 1853-1855. Volume 1, Engravers of the
Fifteenth Century.
LIVES OF THE MOST EMINENT PAINTERS, SCULPTORS, AND
ARCHITECTS. _By Giorgio Vasari._ Translated by Mrs. Jonathan
Foster. With commentary by J. P. Richter. 6 volumes. London: George
Bell & Sons. 1890-1892.
FINIGUERRA, MASO (1426-1464)
A FLORENTINE PICTURE-CHRONICLE; BEING A SERIES OF NINETY-NINE
DRAWINGS REPRESENTING SCENES AND PERSONAGES OF ANCIENT HISTORY,
SACRED AND PROFANE; REPRODUCED FROM THE ORIGINALS IN THE BRITISH
MUSEUM. _Edited by Sidney Colvin._ 99 reproductions and 117 text
illustrations. London: B. Quaritch. 1898.
SANDRO BOTTICELLI. _By Herbert P. Horne._ 43 plates. London:
George Bell & Sons. 1905. pp. 77-86.
THE PLANETS (c. 1460)
THE SEVEN PLANETS. _By Friedrich Lippmann. Translated by
Florence Simmonds._ 43 reproductions. London. 1895. (International
Chalcographical Society. 1895.)
THE OTTO PRINTS (c. 1465-1470)
FLORENTINISCHE ZIERSTÜCKE AUS DEM XV. JAHRHUNDERT. _Edited
by Paul Kristeller._ 25 reproductions. Berlin: Bruno Cassirer. 1909.
(Graphische Gesellschaft. Publication 10.)
DELLE ‘IMPRESE AMOROSE’ NELLE PIÙ ANTICHE INCISIONE
FIORENTINE. _By A. Warburg._ Rivista d’Arte, Vol. 3
(July-August). Florence. 1905.
ENGRAVINGS IN BOOKS (1477-1481)
WORKS OF THE ITALIAN ENGRAVERS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY;
REPRODUCED ... WITH AN INTRODUCTION. _By George William Reid._ 20
reproductions on 19 plates. First Series: Il Libro del Monte Sancto di
Dio, 1477; La Divina Commedia of Dante; and the Triumphs of Petrarch.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE DIVINA COMMEDIA, FLORENCE, 1481
SANDRO BOTTICELLI. _By Herbert P. Horne._ 43 plates. London:
George Bell & Sons. 1908. pp. 75-77, 190-255.
ZEICHNUNGEN VON SANDRO BOTTICELLI ZU DANTE’S GOETTLICHER KOMOEDIE
NACH DEN ORIGINALEN IM K. KUPFERSTICHKABINET ZU BERLIN. _Edited
by Friedrich Lippmann._ 20 reproductions of engravings bound with
text. With portfolio of 84 reproductions of the drawings.
Supplemented by--DIE ACHT HANDZEICHNUNGEN DES SANDRO BOTTICELLI
ZU DANTES GÖTTLICHER KOMÖDIE IM VATIKAN. _Edited by Josef
Strzygowski._ With portfolio of 8 reproductions.
TRIUMPHS OF PETRARCH (c. 1470-1480)
PÉTRARQUE; SES ÉTUDES D’ART, SON INFLUENCE SUR LES ARTISTES, SES
PORTRAITS AND CEUX DE LAURE, L’ILLUSTRATION DE SES ÉCRITS. _By
Victor Masséna_, _Prince d’Essling_, and _Eugène Muntz_. 21 plates and
191 text illustrations. Paris: Gazette des Beaux-Arts. 1902.
ÉTUDES SUR LES TRIOMPHES DE PÉTRARQUE. _By Victor Masséna,
Prince d’Essling._ 6 illustrations. Gazette des Beaux-Arts. 2 parts.
Part I. Vol. 35 (second period). pp. 311-321. Part II. Vol. 36 (second
period). pp. 25-34. Paris. 1887.
PETRARCH; HIS LIFE AND TIMES. _By H. C. Hollway-Calthrop._ 24
illustrations. London: Methuen & Co. 1907.
BROAD MANNER PLATES (c. 1470-1480)
SANDRO BOTTICELLI. _By Herbert P. Horne._ 43 plates. London:
George Bell & Sons. 1908. pp. 288-291.
THE TAROCCHI PRINTS (c. 1467)
DIE TAROCCHI; ZWEI ITALIENISCHE KUPFERSTICHFOLGEN AUS DEM XV.
JAHRHUNDERT. _Edited by Paul Kristeller._ 100 reproductions on
50 plates. Berlin: Bruno Cassirer. 1910. (Graphische Gesellschaft.
Extraordinary Publication 2.)
DER VENEZIANISCHE KUPFERSTICH IM XV. JAHRHUNDERT. _By Paul
Kristeller._ 6 illustrations. Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für
vervielfältigende Kunst, Vol. 30, No. 1. Vienna. 1907.
ORIGINE DES CARTES À JOUER. _By R. Merlin._ About 600
reproductions. Paris: L’auteur. 1869.
THE TAROCCHI PRINTS. _By Emil H. Richter._ 13 illustrations.
The Print-Collector’s Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 37-89. Boston.
1916.
CATALOGUE OF PLAYING AND OTHER CARDS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM.
_By William Hughes Willshire._ 78 reproductions on 24 plates. London:
The Trustees. 1876.
POLLAIUOLO, ANTONIO (1432-1498)
FLORENTINE PAINTERS OF THE RENAISSANCE. _By Bernhard
Berenson._ New York: Putnam’s Sons. 1899. pp. 47-57.
ANTONIO POLLAIUOLO. _By Maud Cruttwell._ 51 illustrations.
London: Duckworth and Company. 1907.
NOTE SU MANTEGNA E POLLAIUOLO. _By Arthur Mayger Hind._ 2
illustrations. L’Arte, Vol. 9, pp. 303-305. Rome. 1906.
GERMAN ENGRAVING: THE MASTER OF THE AMSTERDAM CABINET AND ALBRECHT DÜRER
With the exception of Martin Schongauer, none of Dürer’s immediate
predecessors better repays a thorough study, or exerts a more potent
fascination, than the MASTER OF THE AMSTERDAM CABINET. The
earlier writers, from Duchesne to Dutuit, were united in their opinion
that this engraver was a Netherlander; but Max Lehrs, following the
track opened up by Harzen, has proved conclusively that the Master
of the Amsterdam Cabinet (so called because the largest collection
of his engravings--eighty subjects out of the eighty-nine which are
known--is preserved in the Royal Print Rooms in Amsterdam) was not
a Netherlander but a South German, a native of Rhenish Suabia--the
very artist, in fact, who designed the illustrations of the Planets
and their influences and the various arts and occupations of men, for
the so-called “Medieval House Book” in the collection of Prince von
Waldburg-Wolfegg.
In subject-matter he owes little to his predecessors, and in technique
he is an isolated phenomenon. _St. Martin and the Beggar_ and _St.
Michael and the Dragon_ show that he was acquainted with the work of
Martin Schongauer; the _Ecstasy of St. Mary Magdalen_ is obviously
based upon a similar engraving by the Master E. S. of 1466; but for
the most part he stands alone. He seems to have worked entirely in
dry-point upon some soft metal--lead or pewter, perhaps--and the ink
which he used, of a soft grayish tint, combines with the breadth and
softness of the lines to impart to his prints much of the character of
drawings in silver-point.
The Master of the Amsterdam Cabinet has treated a wide range of
subjects, his preference being for scenes of everyday life. His
prints show appreciation of the beauties of landscape, his skill in
the treatment of wide spaces is masterly, and there is a beauty and
sweetness in the expression of his faces which makes him a worthy rival
of Martin Schongauer himself. He has left us no purely ornamental
designs, such as might serve in the decoration of vessels used in the
church, and we may infer, from the character of his engravings, that
he was a painter, who used the dry-point as a diversion, rather than
a professional engraver, pursuing his craft as a means of livelihood.
In power of composition he can hardly rank with Martin Schongauer,
and in range of intellect he falls short of the heights reached by
Albrecht Dürer; but his very limitations, perhaps, render him a more
companionable personage, and his modernity makes an immediate appeal to
us all.
[Illustration: MASTER OF THE AMSTERDAM CABINET. ECSTASY OF ST. MARY
MAGDALEN
Size of the original engraving, 7⅝ × 5¼ inches
In the Royal Print Room, Amsterdam]
[Illustration: MASTER OF THE AMSTERDAM CABINET. CRUCIFIXION
Size of the original engraving, 6 × 5¼ inches
In the Royal Print Room, Amsterdam]
The _Ecstasy of St. Mary Magdalen_ is one of his earliest plates and
is a free translation of the same subject by the Master E. S. It would
seem as though his dry-point was the immediate original of Dürer’s
woodcut. The position of the Magdalen’s hands is the same in both
compositions, but Dürer has added a landscape which, admirable though
it be, detracts from the main interest of his print.
The Master of the Amsterdam Cabinet, in a second rendering, herewith
reproduced, has eliminated all superfluous or distracting details and
imparted a surprising degree of grace and purity to the lovely design.
Anything like a chronological arrangement of the master’s work would
be difficult, but one may safely assume that this beautiful engraving
belongs to the latest and most mature period of his art, to which
period we also may assign the _Two Lovers_.
As a rule, his least successful engravings are those dealing with
religious themes. At times, however, as in the _Crucifixion_, he rises
to heights of dramatic intensity, and Dürer may be indebted more than
we realize to this rendering of the divine tragedy. _Aristotle and
Phyllis_ and _Solomon’s Idolatry_ are satirical illustrations of the
follies of sages in love. Both plates are illumined by a truly modern
sense of humor, while the arrangement of the figures within the spaces
to be filled is admirable.
Such subjects as _The Three Living and the Three Dead Kings_ and _Young
Man and Death_ are variations upon a theme which was uppermost in the
minds of many men at this time, when the _Ars Moriendi_ and the _Dance
of Death_ were constant reminders of man’s mortality. In agreeable
contrast is the dry-point of _Two Lovers_--a little masterpiece--one
of his most charming designs. “The sweet shyness of the maiden, the
tender glances of the lover and the soft pressure of their hands are
rendered with an inimitable grace, and the work is altogether of such
exceptional quality that we may count this delightful picture as one of
the rarest gems of German engraving in the fifteenth century.”[7]
[7] The Master of the Amsterdam Cabinet. By Max Lehrs. International
Chalcographical Society, 1893 and 1894. p. 7.
The _Stag Hunt_ is filled with the spirit of outdoor life, the
exhilaration of the chase, and the joy of the hounds in pursuing their
quarry. No other engraver of the fifteenth century has left us any such
truthful rendering of a hunting scene, and the life-enhancing quality
of this little dry-point makes even Dürer’s rendering of animal
forms seem cold and relatively lifeless.
[Illustration: MASTER OF THE AMSTERDAM CABINET. STAG HUNT
Size of the original engraving, 3⅝ × 6¾ inches
In the Royal Print Room, Amsterdam]
[Illustration: MASTER OF THE AMSTERDAM CABINET. ST. GEORGE
Size of the original engraving, 5⅝ × 4⅛ inches
In the British Museum]
The master’s knowledge of the anatomy of the horse, and his treatment
of that noble beast, unfortunately fall far short of his rendering of
the dogs and stags in the _Stag Hunt_. The figure of _St. George_ is
sufficiently graceful and convincing, but the horse (seemingly of the
rocking-horse variety) can hardly be proclaimed a complete success. In
spite of this obvious defect it is one of the artist’s finest plates,
remarkable for its exceptional force and animation. The unique proof,
of which the British Museum is the fortunate possessor, is in splendid
condition and rich in burr.
And now, with some trepidation of spirit, we approach ALBRECHT
DÜRER and his engraved work. His many-sidedness foredooms to
failure any attempt at an adequate and comprehensive treatment. His
compositions, as Max Allihn justly says, may fittingly be likened to
the Sphinx of the old legend; for “they attack everyone who, either as
critic, historian or harmless wanderer, ventures in the realm of art,
and propose to him their unsolvable riddles.”
Of his own work Dürer says: “What beauty may be I know not. Art is
hidden in nature and whosoever can tear it out has it,” and his
life-long quest of knowledge, his truly German reverence for fact,
hangs like a millstone around his neck. “Of a truth,” writes Raphael,
“this man would have surpassed us all if he had had the masterpieces
of art constantly before him,” Raphael himself--“Raphael the
Divine”--hardly paralyzed æsthetic criticism for a longer period than
has Dürer, and in studying his engravings, if the student would see
them for what they are, as works of art, and not through the enchanted,
oftentimes stupefying, maze of metaphysics, he must be prepared for
the gibes and verbal brick-bats of his contemporaries, who hold in
reverence all that has the sanction of long-continued repetition by
authority after authority.
“If you see it in a book it’s true; if you see it in a German book it’s
very true,” applies with only too telling a force to a considerable
share of Dürer speculation. For better or worse I cannot but think
that Dürer’s prime intention in his engravings was an artistic one,
though obviously this intention was often overlaid with a desire to
supply an existing demand and to introduce, into otherwise simple
compositions, traditional moralistic motives which should render his
engravings more marketable at the fairs, where mostly they were sold.
So many and so fascinating are the facets of Dürer’s personality, so
interesting is he as a man in whose mind meet, and sometimes blend,
the ideas of the Middle Ages with those almost of our own time, that
if we are to study, even in the briefest and most cursory fashion,
his engraved work, we must perforce confine ourselves strictly to the
artistic content of his plates and not be seduced into the by-ways of
speculation which lead anywhere--or, more often, nowhere.
Earliest of his authenticated engravings, without monogram and without
date, crude in handling, possibly suggested by the work of some earlier
master, and in all probability executed before his first journey to
Venice (that is to say, before or in the year 1490) is the _Ravisher_,
susceptible of as many and as varied interpretations as there are
authorities; from a man using violence, to the struggle for existence.
It has even been connected in some way with a belief in witchcraft!
The _Holy Family with the Dragonfly_, to which Koehler gives second
place in his chronological arrangement of Dürer’s engravings, shows an
astonishing advance in technique and in composition. It is undated, but
the monogram is in its early form. The galley and the two gondolas,
in the distant water to the right, would seem to indicate that it was
engraved in or about the year 1494, upon Dürer’s return from Venice,
and it is probably his first plate after his return to Nuremberg. There
is a sweetness and an attractiveness in the face of the Virgin which
points to an acquaintance with Schongauer’s engraving, the _Virgin
with a Parrot_. The poise of the head and the flowing hair lend color
to this supposition.
To how great an extent not only the engravings, but the theories, of
Jacopo de’ Barbari may have influenced Dürer in such plates as _St.
Jerome in Penitence_, the _Carrying Off of Amymone_, _Hercules_, or
the _Four Naked Women_, is difficult to determine. It may have been
considerable, though, at times, one cannot help wondering whether the
theory of proportion of the human body, of which Jacopo spoke to Dürer,
but concerning which he refused (or was unable) to give him further
detailed particulars, may not have been more or less of a “bluff,”
since there is no record of Jacopo having committed the results of his
studies to writing, and in his engravings there is little evidence
of any logical theory of proportion. That a potent influence was at
work shaping Dürer’s development is clear, and the figure of _St.
Jerome_ undoubtedly owes a good deal to Jacopo. The landscape is all
Dürer’s own, the first of a long series finely conceived and admirably
executed. The long, sweeping lines in the foreground recall the
manner of Jacopo de’ Barbari, but otherwise the engraving owes little
technically to that artist.
[Illustration: ALBRECHT DÜRER. VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH THE MONKEY
Size of the original engraving, 7½ × 4¾ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: ALBRECHT DÜRER. FOUR NAKED WOMEN
Size of the original engraving, 7½ × 5¼ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
_The Virgin and Child with the Monkey_ is the most brilliant of Dürer’s
engravings in his earlier period. In the opinion of many students
it is, likewise, the most beautiful and dignified, not only in
the figures of the Virgin and Child, but also in the breadth and
richness of the landscape. The loveliness of the background was early
recognized, and several Italian engravers, including Giulio Campagnola,
availed themselves of it. When Dürer’s drawings and water-colors
are more generally known, he will be acclaimed one of the masters
of landscape. There is a freshness, a breeziness, an “out-of-doors”
quality in his water-color of the _Weierhaus_ which will surprise those
who hitherto have known him only through his engraved work, wherein the
landscape undergoes a certain formalizing process.
The _Virgin and Child with the Monkey_ is so beautiful in simplicity of
handling, so delightful in arrangement of black and white, that it is
hard to reconcile oneself to the comparatively coarse line work, the
insensitiveness to beauty of form, the disregard of anatomy, shown in
_Four Naked Women_ of 1497--Dürer’s first dated plate--especially the
woman standing to the left, who combines the slackness of Jacopo de’
Barbari at his worst with the heaviness and puffiness possible only
to a Northerner unacquainted with the classic ideals of the Italian
Renaissance.
Speculation is again rife as to the meaning, if it has a meaning, of
the skull and bone on the ground, and the devil emerging from the
flames at the left. The engraving seems to be a straightforward,
naturalistic study of the nude, with these accessories thrown in to
give the subject a moralizing air which would make it palatable to
the artist’s contemporaries. There could hardly be a greater contrast
to this frankly hideous treatment of the human form than _Hercules_
(called also the _Effects of Jealousy_, the _Great Satyr_, etc.). In
this plate we are able, as in few others--the one notable exception
being the _Adam and Eve_ of 1504--to follow out, step by step, Dürer’s
upbuilding of the composition. The figures are, in this case, idealized
according to the canons of classical beauty, rather than realistically
rendered. Incidentally, the landscape is quite the most beautiful
which appears in any of Dürer’s engravings. Its spaciousness instantly
commands our admiration, and the gradation from light to dark, to
indicate differing planes in the trees, is managed in a masterly manner.
[Illustration: ALBRECHT DÜRER. HERCULES
Size of the original engraving, 13¾ × 8¾ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: ANONYMOUS NORTH ITALIAN, XV CENTURY. DEATH OF ORPHEUS
Size of the original engraving, 5¾ × 8⅜ inches
In the Kunsthalle, Hamburg]
[Illustration: ALBRECHT DÜRER. DEATH OF ORPHEUS
Size of the original drawing, 11⅜ × 8⅞ inches
In the Kunsthalle, Hamburg]
[Illustration: ALBRECHT DÜRER. BATTLE OF THE SEA-GODS.
(After Mantegna)
Size of the original drawing, 11½ × 15¼ inches
In the Albertina, Vienna]
Beginning with the _Death of Orpheus_, engraved by some anonymous North
Italian master working in the Fine Manner of the Tarocchi Cards, the
next step is Dürer’s pen drawing, dated 1494. The figures of Orpheus
and of the two Thracian Mænads remain unchanged, as does also the
little child running towards the left. Dürer has, however, changed
the lute into a lyre, as being more suited to Orpheus, and has added
the beautiful group of trees which reappears, little changed,
in his engraving of _Hercules_. There is a drawing of the Mantegna
School which Dürer may, or may not, have seen; but the face of Orpheus
in his drawing shows certain unmistakable Mantegna characteristics,
far removed from the North Italian Fine Manner print. From Mantegna’s
engraving, the _Battle of the Sea-Gods_ (right-hand portion), Dürer has
borrowed the figure of the reclining woman to the left and the Satyr.
That he was acquainted with this engraving by Mantegna is attested by
a drawing of 1494. The man standing to the right, with legs spread
wide apart, wearing a fantastic helmet in the shape of a cock, recalls
the work of Pollaiuolo, by whom there exists a similar drawing, now in
Berlin. From these various elements Dürer builds up his composition.
Its full meaning he alone knew. It has remained an unsolved riddle from
his time to our own.
The _Carrying Off of Amymone_ belongs to this same period. Here Dürer
has again used the motive taken from Mantegna’s engraving, the _Battle
of the Sea Gods_; but in this instance he follows his original much
more closely. Dürer alludes to this print in the diary of his journey
to the Netherlands as _The Sea Wonder_ (_Das Meerwunder_); and although
the interpretations given to it are many and various, its true meaning,
as in the case of the Hercules, remains a matter of conjecture.
By 1503, the year to which belongs the _Coat-of-Arms with the Skull_,
and also, in all probability, the magnificent _Coat-of-Arms with
the Cock_, Dürer seems to have overcome successfully all technical
difficulties and is absolute master of his medium. From this time
onwards, although his manner undergoes certain modifications in the
direction of fuller color and of a more accurate rendering of texture,
his language is adequate for anything he may wish to say, and he is
free to address himself to the solution of scientific problems, such as
are involved in the elucidation of his canon of human proportion, or
the still deeper questions which stirred so profoundly the speculative
minds of his time.
With the exception of _Hercules_, _Adam and Eve_ is the only engraving
by Dürer of which trial proofs, properly so-called, exist, whereby we
can study Dürer’s method. First the outlines were lightly laid in; then
the background was carried forward and substantially completed. In the
first trial proof Adam’s right leg alone is finished; but in the second
trial proof he is completed to the waist. This method of procedure
is significant, in view of the endless controversies, based upon an
incomplete study of Dürer’s technique, regarding the use of preliminary
etching in many plates of his middle and later period.
[Illustration: ALBRECHT DÜRER. ADAM AND EVE
Size of the original engraving, 9¾ x 8⅝ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: ALBRECHT DÜRER. APOLLO AND DIANA
Size of the original engraving, 4½ × 2¾ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
In _Adam and Eve_ Dürer has summed up the knowledge obtained by actual
observation and by a series of drawings and studies extending over a
number of years, and combined with it his theoretical working out of
the proportions of the human figure, male and female. In no other plate
has he lavished such loving care upon the representation of the human
form. The flesh is, so to speak, caressed with the burin, as though,
once and for all, the artist wished to prove to his contemporaries that
the graver sufficed for the rendering of the most beautiful, the most
subtle and scientific problems. That Dürer himself was satisfied with
the result of his labors at this time is made manifest by the detailed
inscription, ALBERTUS DURER NORICUS FACIEBAT, on the tablet,
followed by his monogram and the date 1504. This plate proclaimed him
indisputably the greatest master of the burin of his time; and along
the lines which he laid down for himself it remains unsurpassed until
our own day.
_Adam and Eve_ is followed by a group of prints which, though
interesting in treatment and charming in subject, such as the
_Nativity_, _Apollo and Diana_, and the first four plates of the _Small
Passion_, reveal nothing new in Dürer’s development as an artist
or a man. In the year 1510, however, is made his first experiment
in dry-point. Of the very small plate of _St. Veronica with the
Sudarium_ two impressions only have come down to us, neither of them
showing much burr. The _Man of Sorrows_, dated 1512, likewise must
have been very delicately scratched upon the copper, all existing
impressions being pale and delicate in tone. Whether Dürer’s desire
was to produce engravings which should entail less labor and be more
quickly executed than was possible by the slower and more laborious
method of the burin, or whether, as seems much more likely, he was
influenced by an acquaintanceship with the dry-point work of the
Master of the Amsterdam Cabinet, cannot be asserted with any degree
of assurance. Dürer’s third dry-point, the _St. Jerome by the Willow
Tree_ (like the _Man of Sorrows_ dated 1512), is treated in so much
bolder and more painter-like a manner, is so rich in burr and so
satisfying as a composition, that one can hardly account for such
remarkable development unaided by any outside influence or stimulation.
The British Museum’s impression of the first state, before the
monogram,--the richest impression known--yields nothing in color effect
even to Rembrandt. Thausing is inclined to think that Rembrandt must
have been inspired by this plate to himself take up the dry-point--an
interesting speculation and one which would do honor to both of these
great masters.
[Illustration: ALBRECHT DÜRER. ST. JEROME BY THE WILLOW TREE
(First State)
Size of the original dry-point 8⅛ × 7 inches
In the British Museum]
[Illustration: ALBRECHT DÜRER. HOLY FAMILY
Size of the original dry-point, 8¼ × 7¼ inches]
The _Holy Family_, though without monogram and undated, belongs so
unmistakably, from internal evidence, to this period, that we may
safely assign it to the year 1512. The background and landscape to
the left are indicated in outline only. Did Dürer intend to carry the
plate further? We can never know. It is his fourth and, unfortunately,
his last dry-point. There is a beauty in _St. Jerome by the Willow
Tree_ and in this Holy Family which leads us to read in these two
masterpieces certain Italian influences. There is the largeness of
conception of the Venetian School, and both _St. Jerome_ and _St.
Joseph_ show strong traces of such a master as Giovanni Bellini.
With the brief space at our disposal, what shall we say of the crowning
works of those two wonderful years, 1513-1514--_Knight, Death and
the Devil_, _Melancholia_, and _St. Jerome in his Study_? Are they
three of a proposed series of the four temperaments? Should they
be considered as parts of a group--or is each masterpiece complete
in itself? One thing at least they have in common: they are truly
“Stimmungsbilder”--that is, the lighting is so arranged, in each
composition, as directly to affect the mind and the mood of the
beholder, and “the sombre gloom of the _Knight, Death and the Devil_,
the weird, unearthly glitter of the _Melancholia_, with its uncertain,
glinting lights, the soft, tranquil sunshine of the _St. Jerome_, are
all in accordance with their several subjects. These, whether or not
originally intended to represent ‘classes of men’ or ‘moods,’ certainly
call up the latter in the mind of the beholder--the steady courage of
the valiant fighter for the right, undismayed by darkness and dangers;
the brooding, leading well-nigh to despair, over the vain efforts of
human science to lift the veil of the eternal secret; and the calm
content of the mind at peace with itself and the world around it.”[8]
[8] A Chronological Catalogue of the Engravings, Dry-Points and
Etchings of Albert Dürer, as exhibited at the Grolier Club. By
Sylvester R. Koehler. New York; The Grolier Club. 1897. p. 65.
Dürer, unfortunately, sheds no light upon the inner and deeper meaning
of the _Knight, Death and the Devil_. He speaks of it simply as “A
Horseman.” The many and various titles invented for it since his time
carry us very little further forward than where we began. The letter S,
which precedes the date, the dog which trots upon the further side of
the horse, even the blades of grass under the hoof of the right hind
leg of the horse, have all been matters of speculation and controversy,
and we choose the part of wisdom if, disregarding the swirling currents
of metaphysical interpretation, we enjoy this masterpiece of engraving
for its æsthetic content primarily, and for its potential meanings
afterwards.
[Illustration: ALBRECHT DÜRER. KNIGHT, DEATH AND THE DEVIL
Size of the original engraving, 9⅝ × 7⅜ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: ALBRECHT DÜRER. MELANCHOLIA
Size of the original engraving, 9⅛ × 7¼ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
_Melancholia_ favors an even wider range of speculation than the
_Knight, Death and the Devil_. This woman, who wears a laurel wreath
and who, seated in gloomy meditation, supports her cheek in her left
hand, while all the materials for human labor, for art, and for science
lie scattered about her--does she symbolize human Reason in despair
at the limits imposed upon her power? Or does the plate have a more
personal and intimate meaning, reflecting Dürer’s deep grief at the
death of his mother--the mother to whom he so often refers in his
letters, always with heartfelt affection?
The so-called “magic square” lends color to the latter interpretation.
Dürer’s mother died on May 17, 1514. The figures in the diagonally
opposite corners of the square can be read as follows, 16 + 1 and 13
+ 4, making 17, the day of the month; as do the figures in the center
read crosswise, 10 + 7 and 11 + 6, and also the middle figures at the
sides read across, 5 + 12 and 8 + 9. The two middle figures in the top
line, 3 + 2, give 5, the month in question, and the two middle figures
in the bottom line give the year, 1514.
Artistically the plate suffers from the multiplicity of objects
introduced, and the loving care which Dürer has lavished upon them.
He has wished to tell his story--whatever it may be--with absolute
completeness in every particular, and in so doing he has weakened and
confused the effect of his plate. It were idle to speculate upon what
might have happened had so sensitive a master as Martin Schongauer
possessed adequate technical skill for the interpretation of such a
subject. What a masterpiece of masterpieces might have resulted if he
had subjected it to that process of simplification and elimination
of which he was so splendid an exponent! However this may be,
_Melancholia_ has been, and probably will continue to be, one of the
signal triumphs in the history of engraving. We may never solve the
riddles which she propounds; but is she less fascinating for being only
partially understood?
_St. Jerome in his Cell_, all things considered, may be accounted
Dürer’s high-water mark. There is a unity and harmony about this
plate which is lacking in _Melancholia_. Nothing could be finer than
the lighting; and, judged merely as a “picture,” it is altogether
satisfying from every point of view. The accessories, even the animals
in the foreground, take their just places in the composition. It is
surprising that, although the plate is “finished” with minute and
loving care, there is not the faintest evidence of labor apparent
anywhere about it; but this is only one of its many and superlative
merits. The light streaming in through the window at the left and
bathing in its soft effulgence the Saint, intent upon his task, and
the entire room in which he sits, has been for centuries the admiration
of every art lover.
[Illustration: ALBRECHT DÜRER. ST. JEROME IN HIS CELL
Size of the original engraving, 9½ × 7¼ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: ALBRECHT DÜRER. VIRGIN SEATED BESIDE A WALL
Size of the original engraving, 5¾ × 3⅞ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
To this year, 1514, also belongs the _Virgin Seated Beside a Wall_, a
plate in which the variety of texture has been carried further than
in any other engraving by Dürer. The flesh is simply treated, in line
for the most part; but the undergarment, the fur-trimmed wrapper, and
the scarf which covers the head of the Virgin, hanging down the back
and thrown over the knee, are all carefully differentiated. Again, the
various planes in the landscape leading up to the fortified city are
beautifully handled, as is also the wall to the right. It is hard to
say what technical problems remained for Dürer to solve after such a
little masterpiece as this.
His growing fame meanwhile had attracted the attention of the Emperor
Maximilian, “the last of the Knights,” who in February, 1512, visited
Nuremberg. Dürer is commissioned to design the _Triumphal Arch_, the
_Triumphal Car_, and similar monumental records of the Emperor’s
prowess; not to speak of such orders as the decoration of the Emperor’s
Prayer-Book, etc. Such distraction absorbed the greater part of the
artist’s time and energies, and there was left little opportunity for
the development of his work along the lines he had hitherto followed.
It may be that we owe to this fact, and to the quick mode of producing
a print such a process offers, the six etchings on iron which bear
dates from 1515 to 1518. But, whatever the reason, we are glad that
he etched these plates. Discarding, for the moment, the elaborate and
detailed method of line work of his engravings on copper, he adopts a
more open system, such as would “come well” in the biting--closer work
than in his woodcuts, but perfectly adapted to that which he wished to
say.
There is a tense and passionate quality in _Christ in the Garden_
which places this etched plate among the noteworthy works even of
Dürer, while the wind-torn tree to the left of Christ gives the needed
touch of the supernatural to the composition. The _Carrying Off of
Proserpine_--the spirited drawing for which is now in the J. Pierpont
Morgan collection--is the working out, with allegorical accessories, of
a study of a warrior carrying off a woman. The last of his plates, the
_Cannon_, of 1518, with its charming landscape, was doubtless executed
to supply, promptly, a popular demand. It represents a large field
piece bearing the Arms of Nuremberg, and the five strangely costumed
men to the right, gazing upon the “Nuremberg Field Serpent,” obviously
have some relation to the fear of the Turk, then strong in Germany.
[Illustration: ALBRECHT DÜRER. CHRIST IN THE GARDEN
Size of the original etching, 8¾ × 6⅛ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: ALBRECHT DÜRER. ERASMUS OF ROTTERDAM
Size of the original engraving, 9⅞ × 7⅝ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
In 1519 we have the first of Dürer’s engraved portraits--_Albert of
Brandenburg, “The Little Cardinal”_ to distinguish it from the larger
plate of 1523. Opinions as to Dürer’s importance as a portrait engraver
vary considerably. Some students feel that in these later works the
engraver has become so engrossed in the delight of his craft that
he has failed to concentrate his attention upon the countenance and
character of the sitter, bestowing excessive care upon the accessories
and the minor accidents of surface textures--wrinkles and similar
unimportant matters. On the other hand, such an authority as Koehler
maintains that the _Albert of Brandenburg_, preeminent for delicacy and
noble simplicity among these portrait engravings by Dürer, “will always
be ranked among the best portraits engraved anywhere and at any time.”
_Frederic the Wise, Elector of Saxony_, was one of the earliest patrons
of Dürer, founder of the University of Wittenberg and a supporter of
the Reformation, although he never openly embraced the doctrines of
Martin Luther. Dürer’s drawing in silver-point gives a straightforward
and characterful presentation of the man, and, in this instance,
translation into the terms of engraving has nowise lessened the
directness of appeal.
_Erasmus of Rotterdam_ bears the latest date (1526) which we find
upon any engraving by Dürer, and it well may be his last plate. Here
the elaboration and finish bestowed upon the accessories certainly
detract from the portrait interest. Erasmus was polite enough, when he
saw this engraving, to excuse its unlikeness to himself by remarking
that doubtless he had changed much during the five years which had
intervened between Dürer’s drawing of 1521 and the completion of the
plate. Technically, however, it is a masterpiece, a worthy close to the
career of undoubtedly the greatest engraver Germany has produced.
GERMAN ENGRAVING: THE MASTER OF THE AMSTERDAM CABINET AND ALBRECHT DÜRER
BIBLIOGRAPHY
MASTER OF THE AMSTERDAM CABINET (flourished c. 1467-c. 1500)
ZUR ZEITBESTIMMUNG DER STICHE DES HAUSBUCH-MEISTERS. _By
Curt Glaser._ Monatshefte für Kunstwissenschaft, Vol. 3, pp. 145-156.
Leipzig. 1910.
THE MASTER OF THE AMSTERDAM CABINET. _By Max Lehrs._ 89
reproductions. London. 1894. (International Chalcographical Society.
1893 and 1894.)
BILDER UND ZEICHNUNGEN VOM MEISTER DES HAUSBUCHS. _By Max
Lehrs._ 5 illustrations. Jahrbuch der königlichen preussischen
Kunstsammlungen, Vol. 20, pp. 173-182. Berlin. 1899.
THE MASTER OF THE AMSTERDAM CABINET AND TWO NEW WORKS BY HIS
HAND. _By Willy F. Storck._ 6 illustrations. The Burlington
Magazine. Vol. 18, pp. 184-192. London. 1910.
DÜRER, ALBRECHT (1471-1528)
LE PEINTRE-GRAVEUR. _By Adam Bartsch._ Volume 7, pp. 5-197.
Albert Durer, Vienna. 1803-1821.
LITERARY REMAINS OF ALBRECHT DÜRER. _By William Martin
Conway._ 14 illustrations. Cambridge: University Press. 1889.
THE ENGRAVINGS OF ALBRECHT DÜRER. _By Lionel Cust._ 4
reproductions and 25 text illustrations. London: Seeley & Co. 1906.
(The Portfolio Artistic Monographs. No. 11.)
ALBRECHT DÜRER; HIS ENGRAVINGS AND WOODCUTS. _Edited by
Arthur Mayger Hind._ 65 reproductions. London and New York: Frederick
A. Stokes Company, n. d. (Great Engravers.)
DÜRER. _By H. Knackfuss. Translated by Campbell Dodgson._
134 illustrations. Bielefeld and Leipzig: Velhagen & Klasing. 1900.
(Monographs on Artists.)
EXHIBITION OF ALBERT DÜRER’S ENGRAVINGS, ETCHINGS AND DRY-POINTS,
AND OF MOST OF THE WOODCUTS EXECUTED FROM HIS DESIGNS. (Museum of
Fine Arts, Boston. November 15, 1888-January 15, 1889.) _By Sylvester
R. Koehler._ Boston: Museum of Fine Arts. 1888.
CHRONOLOGICAL CATALOGUE OF THE ENGRAVINGS, DRY-POINTS AND ETCHINGS
OF ALBERT DÜRER, AS EXHIBITED AT THE GROLIER CLUB. _By Sylvester
R. Koehler._ 9 reproductions on 7 plates. New York: The Grolier Club.
1897.
DÜRER; DES MEISTERS GEMÄLDE, KUPFERSTICHE UND HOLZSCHNITTE.
_Edited by Valentin Scherer._ 473 reproductions. Stuttgart and
Leipzig: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt. (Klassiker der Kunst. Vol. 4.)
ALBERT DÜRER; HIS LIFE AND WORKS. _By William B. Scott._
Illustrated. London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1869.
ALBRECHT DÜRER; KUPFERSTICHE IN GETREUEN NACHBILDUNGEN.
_Edited by Jaro Springer._ 70 plates. Munich: Holbein-Verlag. 1914.
ALBERT DÜRER; HIS LIFE AND WORKS. _By Moritz Thausing.
Translated from the German. Edited by Frederick A. Eaton._ 2 volumes.
58 illustrations. London: John Murray. 1882.
DÜRER SOCIETY. [PORTFOLIOS] WITH INTRODUCTORY NOTES BY CAMPBELL
DODGSON AND OTHERS. Series 1-10 (1898-1908). 311 reproductions.
Index of Series 1-10. London. 1898-1908.
----. Publication No. 12. 24 reproductions. London. 1911.
ITALIAN ENGRAVING: MANTEGNA TO MARCANTONIO RAIMONDI
Andrea Mantegna is, both by his art and his influence, the most
significant figure in early Italian engraving. His method or viewpoint
is a determining feature in much of the best work which was produced
during the last quarter of the fifteenth century, until the influence
of Raphael, transmitted through Marcantonio, with a technical mode
based upon the manner of Albrecht Dürer, completely changed the current
of Italian engraving, seducing it from what might have developed into
an original creative art, and condemned it to perpetual servitude as
the handmaid of painting.
Andrea Mantegna, born in 1431, at Vicenza, and consequently
Pollaiuolo’s senior by one year, was adopted, at the age of ten, by
Squarcione, in Padua. Squarcione appears to have been less a painter
than a contractor, undertaking commissions to be executed by artists in
his employ. He was likewise a dealer in antiquities, and in his shop
the young Mantegna must have met many of the leading humanists who had
made Padua famous as a seat of classical learning. From them he drew
in and absorbed that passion for imperial Rome which was to color his
life and his art. His dream was of forms more beautiful than those of
everyday life, built of some substance finer and less perishable than
the flesh of frail humanity; and as years went by his work takes on, in
increasing measure, a grander and more majestic aspect. Fortunate for
us is it that in his mature period, when his style was fully formed,
he himself was impelled, by influences of which later we shall speak,
to take up the graving tool and with it produce the seven imperishable
masterpieces which, beyond peradventure, we may claim as his authentic
work.
The _Virgin and Child_, the earliest of his engravings, can hardly
have been executed before 1475, and maybe not until after 1480, when
Mantegna had reached his fiftieth year. Mr. Hind points out that there
is a simplicity and directness about it which recalls quite early work,
similarly conceived, such as the _Adoration of the Kings_ of 1454;
but the reasons which he advances are of equal weight in assigning it
to a later date, and I am convinced that the intensity of mother-love
expressed in the poise and face of the Virgin betokens a deeper
feeling, a broader humanity, than one normally would expect in a youth
of twenty-three, even though he be illumined with that flame of genius
which burned so brightly in Mantegna.
[Illustration: ANDREA MANTEGNA. VIRGIN AND CHILD
Size of the original engraving, 9¾ × 8⅛ inches
In the British Museum]
[Illustration: ANDREA MANTEGNA. BATTLE OF THE SEA-GODS
Size of the original engraving, 11⅝ × 17 inches.
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
Technically, the plate plainly shows the hand of an engraver not yet
master of his medium. It is marked with all the characteristics which
we associate with Mantegna’s work: the strong outline, ploughed with
repeated strokes of a rather blunt instrument into a plate of unbeaten
copper or some yet softer metal; the diagonal shade lines widely
spaced; and the light strokes blending all into a harmonious whole. In
an impression of the first state, in the British Museum, there is a
tone, similar to sulphur-tint, over portions of the plate, noticeably
in the faces of the mother and child. How it was produced is still a
matter of conjecture, but that it adds much to the beauty of the print
is beyond question.
The _Bacchanalian Group with Silenus_ and the _Bacchanalian Group with
a Wine-Press_ (which, like the _Battle of the Sea-Gods_, may be joined
together so as to form one long, horizontal composition) show greater
skill on the part of the engraver. Mantegna’s increasing passion for
the antique is reflected in the standing figure to the left, who with
his left hand reaches up towards the wreath with which he is about
to be crowned, while resting his right hand upon a horn of plenty.
This figure is obviously inspired by the Apollo Belvedere, while the
standing faun, at the extreme right, filled with the sheer delight of
mere animal existence, is a delightful creation in Mantegna’s happiest
mood.
The two plates of the _Battle of the Sea-Gods_ may be assigned, on
technical grounds, to about the same period as the two Bacchanals.
The drawing which Durer made of the right-hand portion, as also of
the _Bacchanalian Group with Silenus_, both dated 1494, conclusively
prove that these engravings antedate the completion of the _Triumph
of Cæsar_. Though Mantegna borrowed his material from the antique, he
has so shaped it to his ends, so stamped upon it the impress of his
own personality, as to make of it not an echo of classic art, but an
original creation of compelling force and charm. “These are not the
mighty gods of Olympus but the inferior deities of Nature, of the Earth
and the Sea, who acknowledge none of the higher obligations and who
display unchecked their wanton elemental nature, giving a loose rein to
all the exuberance of their joy in living.... These creatures of the
sea frolic about in the water, turbulent and wanton as the waves....
The combat with those harmless-looking weapons is probably not meant to
be in earnest; a vent for their superfluous energy is all they seek.”[9]
[9] Andrea Mantegna. By Paul Kristeller. London; Longman’s Green & Co.
1901. p. 395.
To a somewhat later period belongs the _Entombment_. There is nothing
of the meek spirit of the Redeemer in this passionate plate. The hard,
lapidary landscape is in accord with the figures, which might, not
unfittingly, find a place upon some triumphal arch. Three crosses crown
the distant hill. At the right stands St. John, a magnificent figure,
giving utterance to his unspeakable grief, while the Virgin, sinking in
a swoon, is supported by one of the holy women.
Here is none of that tenderness which we associate with the divine
tragedy, none of that grace and beauty which inheres in the work of
many of the Italian painters of the Renaissance. All is stark and
harsh. It is not food for babes, but it is superb.
_The Risen Christ Between Saints Andrew and Longinus_ is Mantegna’s
last engraving. Christ towers above the two subsidiary figures, with a
form and bearing which would better befit a Roman Emperor returning in
triumph. In this plate, above all others, Mantegna’s technique shines
forth as not only adequate, but as beyond question the best--perhaps
the only one--to convey his message. Translated into another mode, one
feels that it would lose much of its appeal. It has been suggested that
the engraving was made as a project for a group of statuary--perhaps
for the high altar of S. Andrea, in Mantua, raised above the most
precious relic possessed by the city, the Blood of Christ, brought
to Mantua by Longinus--a supposition borne out by the statuesque
impressiveness of the group and by the fact that Christ gazes
downwards, as though from a height.
Although 1480 is the earliest date to which we can assign the first
of Mantegna’s original engravings, there were in existence, at least
five years before that time, engravings by other hands after designs
by the master, and it may have been either to protect himself from
unauthorized and fraudulent copyists, or as an artistic protest against
the incapacity of his translators, that Mantegna was compelled to take
up the graver. There has come down to us a letter, dated September
15, 1475, addressed by Simone di Ardizone, of Reggio, to the Marquis
Lodovico, of Mantua, complaining to the prince of Mantegna’s behavior
towards him. His story was that “Mantegna, upon his arrival in Mantua,
made him splendid offers, and treated him with great friendliness.
Actuated by feelings of compassion, however, towards his old friend,
Zoan Andrea, a painter in Mantua, from whom prints (_stampe_),
drawings, and medals had been stolen, and wishing to help in the
restoration of the plates, he had worked with his friend for four
months. As soon as this came to Mantegna’s knowledge he proceeded to
threats, and one evening Ardizone and Zoan Andrea had been assaulted by
ten or more armed men and left for dead in the square.”
[Illustration: ANDREA MANTEGNA. THE RISEN CHRIST BETWEEN SAINTS ANDREW
AND LONGINUS
Size of the original engraving, 15½ × 12¾ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: SCHOOL OF ANDREA MANTEGNA. ADORATION OF THE MAGI
Size of the original engraving, 15⅛ × 10¾ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
The letter is “proof that, in Mantua, in the year 1475, two
professional engravers, one of whom clearly designates himself as
such, were at work.... It is clear that Mantegna had a very special
interest in the engravings and drawings which had been stolen from Zoan
Andrea, and which Ardizone, ‘out of compassion,’ helped to restore,
since he sought by force to impede the engraver’s work. His anger can
also be explained by the supposition that Zoan Andrea’s engravings
were facsimiles of his own drawings which the former had succeeded in
obtaining possession of and had used as designs for his engravings; and
that being unable to win Ardizone’s assistance in his work Mantegna
thought himself obliged to protest, by violent means, against this
infringement of his artistic rights.”[10]
[10] Andrea Mantegna By Paul Kristeller. London. 1901. pp. 381-384.
It is probable that to this drastic and effectual method of protecting
against piracy his own artistic property we owe the two renderings,
both incomplete, of the _Triumph of Cæsar_. One may well be the series
upon which Zoan Andrea and Ardizone were working when Mantegna brought
their labors to an untimely close; whereas the second series, although
authorized by Mantegna himself, may have seemed to him, not without
just cause, so to misinterpret his original drawings as to impel him
to abandon the project and, in future, engrave his own designs. The
_Triumph_ series naturally remained incomplete, since, like every great
artist, Mantegna would hardly feel disposed to repeat, in another
medium, a subject which he had already treated. Of the _Triumph_
plates, the _Elephants_ approximates most closely Mantegna’s undoubted
work; but the drawing lacks distinction, and there is a feeling of
“tightness” throughout the whole plate, which makes it impossible
to attribute the engraving to Mantegna’s own hand. The plate which
immediately follows--_Soldiers Carrying Trophies_--was left unfinished.
The subject is repeated in the reverse sense and with the addition of
a pilaster to the right. This pilaster is probably Mantegna’s original
design for the upright members dividing the nine portions of the
painted _Triumphs_, since the procession is supposed to pass upon the
further side of a row of columns, the figures and animals being so
arranged as to extend over one picture to the next, with a sufficient
space between them for the introduction of the pilaster.
[Illustration: ZOAN ANDREA (?). FOUR WOMEN DANCING
Size of the original engraving, 8⅞ × 13 inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: GIOVANNI ANTONIO DA BRESCIA. HOLY FAMILY WITH SAINTS
ELIZABETH AND JOHN
Size of original engraving, 11⅞ × 10⅛ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
The _Adoration of the Magi_, which for some reason likewise remained
unfinished, is taken directly from the central portion of the triptych
in the Uffizi. The engraving, aside from its intrinsic beauty, is of
especial interest as affording an example of the method adopted by
Mantegna and his School. The structural lines are deeply incised, in
many cases by repeated strokes of the graver. The diagonal shading is
then added and the plate carried forward and completed, bit by bit.
This engraving, at one time accounted an original work by the master
himself, has received of recent years more than its merited share of
harsh criticism. It obviously falls far short, in beauty, of Mantegna’s
painting; but, for all that, it preserves many of the essential
qualities of its immediate original, and one cannot but admire the
manner in which an engraver, certainly not of the first rank, has
captured the spirit of humility and adoration, eloquent in every line
of the king at the left, humbly bending to receive the benediction of
the Christ Child.
By an engraver of the Mantegna School, perhaps ZOAN ANDREA,
working in Mantegna’s manner and after his design for the _Parnassus_
in the Louvre, is _Four Women Dancing_--one of the most charming and
graceful prints of the period. It differs in many particulars from the
painting (assigned to the year 1497) and almost certainly translates
Mantegna’s drawing, rather than the painting itself.
To GIOVANNI ANTONIO DA BRESCIA, of whose life, apart from what
we may learn from a study of his work, we know substantially nothing,
may be attributed the _Holy Family with Saints Elizabeth and_ _John_,
based upon a design by Mantegna, of about 1500, and probably engraved
at a date prior to Mantegna’s death, September 13, 1506. At a later
period, Giovanni came under the influence of Marcantonio Raimondi,
whose style he imperfectly assimilated.
In the British Museum there is a unique impression of a _Profile Bust
of a Young Woman_, which has been ascribed, with some show of reason,
to LEONARDO DA VINCI. Its intrinsic beauty might lend some
color to this attribution, were it not that, even in its re-worked
condition, the texture and flow of the young woman’s abundant tresses,
the treatment of the flowing ribbons, and the delicate shading in the
face and upon the garment, betray the hand of the trained engraver.
NICOLETTO ROSEX DA MODENA was working from about 1490 to
1515. He engraved almost a hundred plates, the majority of them being
presumably from his own designs, though in the _Adoration of the
Shepherds_ the influence of Schongauer is markedly apparent, and in
_Fortune_ and _St. Sebastian_ the inspiration of Mantegna is clearly to
be seen.
[Illustration: SCHOOL OF LEONARDO DA VINCI. PROFILE BUST OF A YOUNG
WOMAN
Size of the original engraving, 4⅛ × 3 inches
In the British Museum]
[Illustration: NICOLETTO ROSEX DA MODENA. ORPHEUS
Size of the original engraving, 9⅞ × 6¾ inches
In the British Museum]
The group of trees in the _Fate of the Evil Tongue_ is borrowed from
Dürer’s print of _Hercules_, while the _Turkish Family_ and the _Four
Naked Women_--the last-named being dated 1500--are copies of Dürer’s
engravings. Vedriani, writing of Nicoletto as a painter, speaks
of him as “chiefly distinguished in perspective,” and among the most
charming of his plates in which this quality is seen is _Orpheus_.
The bare tree is suggestive of Martin Schongauer, while the birds and
beasts, including a dog, a peacock, a weasel, a monkey playing with
a tortoise, a squirrel, a snake, a piping bird, two rabbits, a fox,
and a stag, not to speak of the ducks and swans in the water, though
not copied from northern originals, have all the charm and life-like
quality which we find in the work of German engravers such as The
Master of St. John the Baptist and The Master E. S. of 1466.
Concerning JACOPO DE’ BARBARI there is a wealth of
biographical material, in contrast with the meagerness of our knowledge
concerning the earlier Italian engravers. Born at Venice, between
1440 and 1450, he is known to have worked between 1500 and 1508 for
the Emperor and various other princes in different towns of Germany.
He was at Nuremberg in 1505, and in 1510 he was in the service of
the Archduchess Margaret, Regent of the Netherlands, while, in the
inventory of the Regent’s pictures of 1515-1516, he is referred to as
dead.
Not one of the thirty engravings by Jacopo is signed with his name,
initials, or any form of monogram, nor does any of them bear a date.
His emblem is the caduceus, which appears on the greater number of his
prints; and those upon which it is lacking can readily be identified
by his individual style. This style undergoes certain modifications
with the passing years. In the early period, the shading, for the most
part, is in parallel lines, which follow the contour of the figure, the
figure itself being long and sinuous. In his middle and later period he
indulged more freely in cross-hatching, and the faces are modelled with
greater delicacy.
Stress has been laid upon the influence exerted by Jacopo upon
Dürer’s engraving; but with the exception of the _Apollo and Diana_
this influence is theoretical rather than artistic. Dürer, in one
of the manuscript sketches, dated 1523, for his book _The Theory of
Human Proportions_, writes: “Howbeit, I can find none such who hath
written aught about how to form a canon of human proportion, save one
man--Jacopo by name, born at Venice, and a charming painter. He showed
me the figures of a man and a woman, which he had drawn according to a
canon of proportions, so that, at that time, I would rather have seen
what he meant than be shown a new kingdom.... Then, however, I was
still young and had not heard of such things before. Howbeit, I was
very fond of art, so I set myself to discover how such a canon might be
wrought out.” Dürer undoubtedly refers to the period of his first visit
to Venice, and it is, accordingly, in Dürer’s earliest plates that
we see most clearly the influence of the older master on his technical
method. Dürer soon outstripped Jacopo in everything that pertains to
the technical side of engraving and worked out for himself a method
which, for his purpose, was substantially perfect.
[Illustration: JACOPO DE’ BARBARI. APOLLO AND DIANA
Size of the original engraving, 5¾ × 3⅞ inches.
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: JACOPO DE’ BARBARI. ST. CATHERINE
Size of the original engraving, 7⅛ × 4⅝ inches
In the British Museum]
In such plates as _Judith_ and _St. Catherine_, Jacopo’s love for long,
flowing lines finds its fullest expression. There is a grace about
these single figures which is not without appealing charm, though
obviously they leave something to be desired on the score of solidity
and structure.
GIROLAMO MOCETTO, born in Murano before 1458, was living at
Venice in 1514, where he died after 1531. According to Vasari, Mocetto
was, at some time, an assistant to Giovanni Bellini, whose influence
may be traced in his work. His engravings are unpleasing in style
and often clumsy in draughtsmanship. He owes such merit as he may
possess to the originals which he interpreted. There is a compelling
power in _Judith_, after Mantegna’s design, which atones for even so
shapeless a member as Judith’s right hand. The grandeur of the plate
is, however, derived from Mantegna. Mocetto has done little more than
traduce it; but, even so, the engraving is noteworthy, inasmuch as
it preserves for us a noble composition, of which otherwise we might
remain in ignorance. The _Baptism of Christ_ is adapted, with some
modifications, from Giovanni Bellini’s painting executed between 1500
and 1510. In the engraving, the landscape, which differs radically from
that in Bellini’s painting, may possibly be original with Mocetto,
though it recalls the work of Cima, whose _Baptism_, in S. Giovanni in
Bragora, Venice, was painted in 1494.
BENEDETTO MONTAGNA was, like Mocetto, painter as well as
engraver. His earliest engravings are executed in a large, open manner,
which can be seen to advantage in the _Sacrifice of Abraham_. The
outline is strongly defined and the shading chiefly in parallel lines.
Where cross-hatching is used, it is laid generally at right angles.
Later, Montagna modifies his style and adopts the finer system of
cross-hatching perfected by Dürer, whose influence, especially in the
backgrounds, is clearly to be traced, and whose _Nativity_, of the year
1504, Montagna copied in reverse. _St. Jerome Beneath an Arch of Rock_
belongs to this later period, and the plate is probably based upon a
painting by Bartolommeo Montagna, the engraver’s father.
GIULIO CAMPAGNOLA, born at Padua about 1482, is known to
have been working in Venice in 1507 and is assumed to have died
shortly after 1514. According to contemporary accounts, he was a
youth of marvellously precocious and varied gifts and promise. To his
musical and literary accomplishments, he added those of painter,
miniaturist, engraver, and sculptor.
[Illustration: GIULIO CAMPAGNOLA. CHRIST AND THE WOMAN OF SAMARIA
Size of the original engraving, 5⅛ × 7¼ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: GIULIO CAMPAGNOLA. GANYMEDE (First State)
Size of the original engraving, 6⅜ × 4⅞ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
His engravings betray markedly the influence of Giorgione, and his
manner of engraving may have been an attempt to imitate the rich
softness of that master’s painting. He worked out and perfected a
technical system all his own. In his earliest manner he works in pure
line, as in his copies of Dürer’s engravings and in such plates as the
_Old Shepherd_ and _St. Jerome_.
In the _Young Shepherd_, the _Astrologer_, and _Christ and the Woman of
Samaria_, the composition is first engraved in simple, open lines, with
little cross-hatching. The plate is then carried forward and completed
by a system of delicate flicks, so disposed as to produce a harmonious
result, obliterating substantially all trace of the preliminary line
work. In the third group, to which two prints belong--_Naked Woman
Reclining_ and _The Stag_--no lines at all are used, and the plate is
carried out, from first to last, in flick work.
Only one of Campagnola’s plates is dated--the _Astrologer_, of 1509.
In this he shows himself ripe, both as artist and as craftsman. To
an earlier period would seem to belong the _Ganymede_, in which the
landscape is a faithful copy of Dürer’s engraving of the _Virgin and
Child with a Monkey_. The place which, in the original engraving, was
occupied by the Virgin, is now filled by a clump of trees.
_St. John the Baptist_ is, all things considered, Campagnola’s
masterpiece. The figure is unquestionably based upon a drawing by
Mantegna, and has all the largeness and grandeur of style which
characterizes the work of that master. The landscape background may
be original with the engraver but it clearly shows the influence of
Giorgione. In this superb plate Campagnola’s method of combining line
work with delicate flick work can be studied at its best. The _Young
Shepherd_, known in two states--the first in pure line, the second
completed with flick work--is as charming and graceful as _St. John
the Baptist_ is monumental. It justly deserves the reputation and
popularity which it enjoys among print lovers.
_Christ and the Woman of Samaria_ is treated in a more open manner
than either of the two preceding engravings. The beautiful landscape,
as also the hill to the left, is entirely in line, while the flick
work upon the figures and garments and, even more noticeably, in the
foreground to the right, is of a more open character than that which
appears in the _Young Shepherd_. It may belong to the latter part of
Campagnola’s career as an engraver. There is an amplitude in the design
of the seated woman which suggests Giorgione and Palma, though one
cannot definitely name any painting by either of these masters from
which Campagnola has borrowed his figure.
[Illustration: GIULIO CAMPAGNOLA. ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST
Size of the original engraving, 13⅝ × 9½ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: GIULIO AND DOMENICO CAMPAGNOLA. SHEPHERDS IN A
LANDSCAPE
Size of the original engraving, 5¼ × 10⅛ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
The last of Campagnola’s plates, left unfinished at his death and
completed by DOMENICO CAMPAGNOLA, is _Shepherds in a Landscape_ or, as
it is sometimes called, the _Musical Shepherds_. The original drawing,
in reverse, for the right-hand half of this print is in the Louvre. It
is unquestionably by Giulio Campagnola; but, equally without question,
the left-hand portion of the engraving itself is by Domenico. Whether
Domenico was a close relative or merely a pupil of Giulio’s has not
been determined; but the _Shepherds in a Landscape_ conclusively proves
that he was at least the artistic heir of the older master. Domenico’s
style is in marked contrast to that of Giulio. Flick work is almost
absent from his engravings, which are executed in rather open lines,
more in the mode of an etcher than of an engraver working according
to established tradition. The skies, in particular, have a romantic
quality which is all their own, and which can be seen to advantage in
the _Shepherd and the Old Warrior_, dated 1517.
MARCANTONIO RAIMONDI, born in Bologna about 1480, for over
three centuries enjoyed a reputation eclipsing that of any other
Italian master. Of recent years, however, upon insufficient grounds,
he has been somewhat pushed aside and belittled as a “reproductive
engraver,” his critics wilfully forgetting the fact that, with the
exception of Pollaiuolo and Mantegna, the Italian School is, in the
main, derivative, and cannot boast of any original engravers of
world-wide fame, such as Schongauer or Dürer. But Marcantonio was far
from being a mere translator of alien works. “He is like some great
composer who borrows another’s theme only to make it his own by the
originality of his setting.”[11]
[11] Marcantonio Raimondi. By Arthur M. Hind. The Print-Collector’s
Quarterly, Vol. 3, No. 3. p. 276.
The earliest influence which we may trace in Marcantonio’s work is
that of the famous goldsmith and painter, Francesco Francia, with whom
Marcantonio served his apprenticeship. Certain nielli, among them
_Pyramus and Thisbe_ and _Arion on the Dolphin_, have been assigned to
the young Marcantonio and attributed to this period of his life.
_St. George and the Dragon_ is strongly reminiscent of the niello
technique, with its dark shadows, against which the figures stand out
in relief. The landscape is clearly borrowed or adapted from engravings
in Dürer’s earlier period, the trees at the left, in particular,
recalling the _Hercules_.
[Illustration: MARCANTONIO RAIMONDI. ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON
Size of the original engraving, 11⅞ × 8¾ inches
In the British Museum]
[Illustration: MARCANTONIO RAIMONDI. BATHERS
Size of the original engraving, 11¼ × 9 inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: MARCANTONIO RAIMONDI. ST. CECILIA
Size of the original engraving, 10¼ × 6⅛ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: MARCANTONIO RAIMONDI. DEATH OF LUCRETIA
Size of the original engraving, 8½ × 5¼ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
To this early period likewise belongs _Pyramus and Thisbe_, which bears
the earliest date--1505--which we find upon any of his engravings.
It may well have been executed during his residence in Venice,
between 1505 and 1509.
The _Bathers_, of 1510, is an artistic record of Marcantonio’s visit to
Florence, on his way to Rome. The figures are taken from Michelangelo’s
cartoon of the _Battle of Pisa_; but the landscape, including the
thatched barn to the right, is a faithful copy, in reverse, of Lucas
van Leyden’s plate of _Mahomet and the Monk Sergius_; for Marcantonio,
like all great artists, freely borrowed his material wherever he found
it, shaping it to his own ends.
According to Vasari, it was the _Death of Lucretia_, engraved shortly
after Marcantonio’s arrival in Rome, about 1510, after a drawing by
Raphael, which attracted the attention of that master and showed him
how much he might benefit by the reproduction of his work. One would
be inclined to think that the _Death of Dido_ rather than the _Death
of Lucretia_ might have been the means of bringing about this artistic
collaboration; for, if Vasari is correct, the immediate result of
Raphael’s personal influence upon Marcantonio was harmful rather than
helpful, the _Lucretia_ by general consent being the finer plate of the
two.
It is significant that none of Marcantonio’s engravings interprets any
existing painting by Raphael. We may infer that the engraver worked
entirely after drawings supplied to him by Raphael--either drawings
made for the purpose of being interpreted in terms of engraving, or
the original studies for paintings, which, in their elaboration, were
subjected to many modifications and changes.
Among his most interesting engravings are _Saint Cecilia_, which may be
compared, or rather contrasted, with the famous painting in Bologna;
the _Virgin and Child in the Clouds_, which later appears as the
_Madonna di Foligno_; and _Poetry_, based on a study by Raphael for the
fresco in the Camera della Segnatura, in the Vatican.
The _Massacre of the Innocents_, usually accounted the engraver’s
masterpiece, is one of several subjects of which two plates exist.
Authorities disagree as to which is the “original,” but some
familiarity with both versions leads one to think that Marcantonio may
well have been his own interpreter. At least one cannot name certainly
any other engraver capable of producing either of the two versions of
the _Massacre of the Innocents_, in point of drawing or of technique.
Among Marcantonio’s portrait plates one of the most attractive is that
of _Philotheo Achillini_ (“The Guitar Player”), which is in his early
manner and probably dates from his Bolognese period. It may be based
upon a drawing by Francia, but the trees and distant landscape all show
markedly the influence of Dürer.
[Illustration: MARCANTONIO RAIMONDI. PHILOTHEO ACHILLINI
(“The Guitar Player”)
Size of the original engraving, 7¼ × 5¼ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: MARCANTONIO RAIMONDI. PIETRO ARETINO
Size of the original engraving, 7⅜ × 5⅞ inches
In the British Museum]
To a much later period, and engraved in Marcantonio’s most mature
manner, belongs the portrait of _Pietro Aretino_. Vasari refers to this
plate as “engraved from life,” but its richness and color would seem to
point to an original by Titian or Sebastiano del Piombo.
After the death of Raphael, in 1520, Marcantonio’s engraving undergoes
a change--a change for the worse, as might be expected, since a number
of his plates are interpretations of designs by Giulio Romano. There is
less care in the drawing, less delicacy in the management of the burin,
and, although we may pity him for the loss of all that he possessed
at the sack of Rome, in 1527, we cannot greatly regret that, as an
engraver, Marcantonio’s active life terminates with that date.
ITALIAN ENGRAVING: MANTEGNA TO MARCANTONIO RAIMONDI
BIBLIOGRAPHY
MANTEGNA, ANDREA (1431-1506)
DÜRER AND MANTEGNA. _By Sidney Colvin._ 5 illustrations. The
Portfolio, Vol. 8, pp. 54-63. London. 1877.
ANDREA MANTEGNA AND THE ITALIAN PRE-RAPHAELITE ENGRAVERS.
_Edited by Arthur Mayger Hind._ 75 reproductions. London and New York:
Frederick A. Stokes Company, n. d. (Great Engravers.)
ANDREA MANTEGNA. _By Paul Kristeller._ 26 plates and 162
text illustrations. London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1901. Chapter XI,
Mantegna as Engraver.
MANTEGNA. _By H. Thode._ 105 illustrations. Bielefeld and
Leipzig: Velhagen & Klasing. 1897. (Künstler Monographien. 27.)
BARBARI, JACOPO DE’ (c. 1440-c. 1515)
ENGRAVINGS AND WOODCUTS BY JACOPO DE’ BARBARI. _Edited by
Paul Kristeller._ 33 reproductions and 2 text illustrations. London.
1896. (International Chalcographical Society, 1896.)
LORENZO LOTTO. _By Bernhard Berenson._ 30 plates. New York:
Putnam’s Sons. 1895. pp. 34-50.
CAMPAGNOLA, GIULIO (c. 1482-c. 1514)
GIULIO CAMPAGNOLA; KUPFERSTICHE UND ZEICHNUNGEN. _Edited by
Paul Kristeller._ 27 reproductions. Berlin: Bruno Cassirer. 1907.
(Graphische Gesellschaft. Publication 5.)
MARCANTONIO RAIMONDI (c. 1480-c. 1530)
MARC-ANTOINE RAIMONDI; ÉTUDE HISTORIQUE ET CRITIQUE SUIVIE D’UN
CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ DES OEUVRES DU MAITRE. _By Henri Delaborde._
63 illustrations. Paris: Librairie de l’art. 1888.
MARCANTONIO RAIMONDI. _By Arthur Mayger Hind._ 22
illustrations. The Print-Collector’s Quarterly, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp.
243-276. Boston. 1913.
MARCANTONIO AND ITALIAN ENGRAVERS AND ETCHERS OF THE SIXTEENTH
CENTURY. _Edited by Arthur Mayger Hind._ 65 reproductions. London
and New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company. n. d. (Great Engravers.)
SOME MASTERS OF PORTRAITURE
You will all remember how John Evelyn, writing to Samuel Pepys, advised
him to collect engraved portraits--since, in his own words, “Some are
so well done to the life, that they may stand comparison with the best
paintings.” He then adds: “This were a cheaper, and so much a more
useful, curiosity, as they seldom are without their names, ages and
eulogies of the persons whose portraits they represent. I say you will
be exceedingly pleased to contemplate the effigies of those who have
made such a noise and bustle in the world; either by their madness and
folly; or a more conspicuous figure, by their wit and learning. They
will greatly refresh you in your study and by your fireside, when you
are many years returned.” We know by his “Diary” that Pepys became an
enthusiastic collector and that he went over to Paris to buy many of
Robert Nanteuil’s engraved portraits--at a later date commissioning his
wife to secure for him many more, which he strongly desired.
From the time of Evelyn and Pepys in England, and that prince of
print-collectors in France, the Abbé de Marolles--who in 1666 could
boast of possessing over 123,000 prints, “and all the portraits
extant”--portraits have had, for the student, a peculiar fascination,
and it may be interesting to consider briefly the work of some six or
eight of the acknowledged masters of the art.
Aside from two unimportant plates by the Master of the Amsterdam
Cabinet, which may, or may not, be portraits, the earliest engraver
to address himself to portraiture, pure and simple, is the anonymous
German master with the monogram =W caduceus B=. So far as we know, he
executed four plates only (c. 1480-1485). In them the characterization
is strong, the drawing clear and vigorous. The artist’s technique may
have owed something to Martin Schongauer, but it is singularly lacking
in the refinement and balance which mark the work of that engraver.
DANIEL HOPFER, who, in 1493, was already working in Augsburg,
has left us an etching, which certainly cannot be later than 1504,
and may have been executed five, or even ten, years earlier. It is a
portrait of _Kunz von der Rosen_, the Jester-Adviser of the Emperor
Maximilian I. The etching is upon iron, and the quality of the line
is well adapted to the rugged character of the personage. This plate
was copied, in reverse, with some modifications, by an anonymous North
Italian engraver and reappears as _Gonsalvo of Cordova_, who was in
Italy, in command of the army of Ferdinand V of Castile, between 1494
and 1504, when Ferdinand’s jealousy caused him to be superseded in the
Vice Royalty of Naples.
[Illustration: MASTER =W caduceus B=. HEAD OF A YOUNG WOMAN
Size of the original engraving, 4¾ × 3⅜ inches
In the Royal Print Room, Berlin]
[Illustration: ALBRECHT DÜRER. ALBERT OF BRANDENBURG
Size of the original engraving, 5¾ × 3⅞ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
The earliest in date of DÜRER’S engraved portraits is likewise the
best. _Albert of Brandenburg_ was twenty-nine years of age, in 1519,
when Dürer engraved this plate. There is a concentration upon the
purely portrait element lacking in some of the later prints. The burin
work is singularly delicate and beautiful. Indeed, nothing better,
from a technical standpoint, has ever been done on copper than Dürer’s
six portrait plates; and if he at times succumbs to the temptation of
rendering each minor detail with the same loving care which he bestows
upon the face itself, he remains, notwithstanding, one of the greatest
masters of the burin the world has seen.
Dürer engraved a second plate of _Albert of Brandenburg_, in 1523.
The intervening four years had left their mark upon the Cardinal,
and neither as a portrait nor as an engraving is it as pleasing
as the earlier one. In the following year, 1524, there are two
portraits--_Frederic the Wise, Elector of Saxony_ and _Wilibald
Pirkheimer_. The former was one of the earliest patrons of Dürer and
likewise one of the most liberal-minded princes of his time. The
plate is executed in Dürer’s painstaking and careful manner, nor
does it lack, as a portrait, the directness and immediacy of appeal
of the silver-point drawing, which may have served as its original.
Wilibald Pirkheimer, the celebrated patrician and humanist, was Dürer’s
life-long and most intimate friend, and it is to him that Dürer’s
letters from Venice were addressed.
_Philip Melanchthon_ is the simplest in treatment and the most
satisfying, in its elimination of unnecessary detail, of Dürer’s
portrait engravings, and is the best likeness of the mild reformer.
The inscription reads: “Dürer could depict the features of the living
Philip, but the skilled hand could not depict his mind.” Here Dürer
does himself less than justice, for it is the portrait-like character
which makes this engraving still noteworthy after the lapse of four
centuries.
To the same year, 1526, belongs _Erasmus of Rotterdam_. It is a
technical masterpiece. Dürer has lavished all his skill upon this
plate. It is magnificent; but from a purely portrait standpoint, it is
a magnificent failure.
[Illustration: ALBRECHT DÜRER. PHILIP MELANCHTHON
Size of the original engraving, 6⅞ × 5 inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: ANTHONY VAN DYCK. PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF (First State)
Size of the original etching, 9½ × 6⅛ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
For a full hundred years we have no portraits of note; then there
enters upon the scene one of the great princes of the art--VAN
DYCK--whose etched portraits vie with those of Rembrandt in vitality,
and surpass them in immediacy of appeal. Van Dyck had not that
deep humanity, that profound reading of human character, which raises
Rembrandt above all rivals; but upon the purely technical side,
working within the truest traditions of etching, with due regard to
its possibilities and its limitations, Van Dyck may claim precedence.
His fifteen original portrait etchings (together with _Erasmus of
Rotterdam_, after Holbein) undoubtedly belong to the period between his
return from Italy to Antwerp, in 1626, and his settlement in London, in
1632. From the very first, Van Dyck seems to have been in possession of
all his powers. His etchings show various modes of treatment, according
to the character of the sitter, and it would be difficult to speak of
the _development_ of his art, since, by the grace of God, he seems to
have been a born etcher.
Van Dyck’s _Portrait of Himself_ naturally interests us most, on
account of its subject. So far as Van Dyck has seen fit to carry it, it
is a perfect work of art, not the least remarkable feature being the
splendid placing of the head upon the plate. Unfortunately, the first
state is of such excessive rarity that the majority of print students
can know this superb portrait only through reproductions (in which much
of its delicacy is necessarily lost) or, in the later state, where the
plate is finished with the graver by Jacob Neefs--a distressing piece
of work, strangely enough, countenanced by Van Dyck himself; since
in the British Museum there is a touched counter-proof of the first
state, which proves that Van Dyck directed the elaboration of the
plate, no doubt with the intention of using it as a title page to the
_Iconography_, a series of a hundred engraved portraits of his friends
and contemporaries.
Of even subtler beauty is _Snyders_, unfortunately--like the portrait
of Van Dyck himself--of the greatest rarity and also, like that plate,
finished with the graver by Jacob Neefs. It is perfectly satisfying
from every point of view, combining, as it does, the greatest freedom
with absolute certainty of hand. The treatment of the face shows a
thorough knowledge of all the technical resources of the art, the high
lights having been “stopped out” exactly where needed, the etched dots
and lines melting into a perfect harmony.
In marked contrast to the delicacy of _Snyders_ is the bolder and
more rugged treatment of _Jan Snellinx_. Fortunately, the plate has
remained, until our own day, in essentially the same condition as when
it left Van Dyck’s hands, and we can better realize what an artistic
treasure-house the _Iconography_ might have been, had the public
possessed the intelligence to appreciate, at their true worth, these
fine flowerings of Van Dyck’s genius, instead of demanding, as they
did, that a plate be absolutely “finished” to the four corners by
the professional engraver.
[Illustration: ANTHONY VAN DYCK. FRANS SNYDERS (First State)
Size of the original etching, 9⅛ × 6⅛ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: ANTHONY VAN DYCK. LUCAS VORSTERMAN (First State)
Size of the original engraving, 9⅝ × 6⅛ inches
In the Collection of Charles C. Walker, Esq.]
_Lucas Vorsterman_ is, in some ways, the most purely pictorial of
Van Dyck’s portrait etchings. Even the taste of the time demanded no
further elaboration than an engraved background, which, judiciously
added, left undisturbed Van Dyck’s original work.
It would be interesting to know whether REMBRANDT was acquainted with
the etched work of Van Dyck. If so, it is all the more astounding that
his work should betray no trace of any outside influence.
Rembrandt’s earliest dated etching is also, seemingly, his first
etching--a _Portrait of His Mother_, of the year 1628--an unsurpassed
little masterpiece. In its own mode of simple, direct, open, linear
treatment, there is nothing finer, even in the work of Rembrandt
himself. _Saskia with Pearls in Her Hair_, of 1634, as also the _Young
Man in a Velvet Cap with Books Beside Him_, which belongs to the year
1637, are in Rembrandt’s best manner, but the crowning triumph of this
period is unquestionably _Rembrandt Leaning on a Stone Sill_, bearing
the date 1639 and showing Rembrandt at the happiest period of his
life--successful, prosperous, and perfect master of his medium.
The portrait of an _Old Man in a Divided Fur_ _Cap_, of the following
year, is likewise admirable--not a line too much and every line full
of significance. _Jan Cornelis Sylvius_, of 1646, shows in a marked
degree Rembrandt’s sympathy with, and appreciation of the beauty of old
age. The face is treated in a delicate and sensitive manner, and, with
the fewest possible strokes, Rembrandt has indicated the texture and
growth of the sparse beard of his aged sitter. Sulphur-tint has been
used to give additional modelling to the face, while the background
and costume are finished in a way which would have won the admiration
of Dürer himself. _Ephraim Bonus_, _Jan Asselyn_, and _Jan Six_ are
Rembrandt’s three portrait etchings for the year 1647. _Jan Six_ is
Rembrandt’s masterpiece, so far as elaborate finish is concerned. He
has availed himself of all the resources of etching, dry-point, and of
the burin--used freely as an etcher may use it--to carry forward this
plate. The center of the room is bathed in subdued light, which melts
into rich and mysterious shadows in the corners.
[Illustration: REMBRANDT. JAN CORNELIS SYLVIUS
Size of the original etching, 10⅞ × 7½ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: REMBRANDT. REMBRANDT LEANING ON A STONE SILL
Size of the original etching, 8⅛ × 6½ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: REMBRANDT. CLEMENT DE JONGHE (First State)
Size of the original etching, 8⅛ × 6⅜ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: REMBRANDT. JAN LUTMA (First State)
Size of the original etching, 7⅞ × 5⅞ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
_Rembrandt Drawing at a Window_ is one of the most characterful of
his portraits. It shows him at the age of forty-two. Years of sorrow
have left their mark upon his countenance, but what a strong, resolute
face it is! _Clement de Jonghe_ (which should be seen in the first
state before the expression of the face was entirely changed) is
executed in Rembrandt’s open, linear manner, without strong
contrasts of light and dark. For beauty of drawing and subtlety of
observation, it is one of his finest plates. _Old Haaring_, of 1655,
is a magnificent dry-point, in which Rembrandt has built up, with many
lines, a completely harmonious picture; but for grip of character and
straightforward presentation of the personality of his sitter, it must
yield precedence to the unsurpassed _Jan Lutma_, of the following year.
This portrait, in the first state, before the introduction of the
window in the background, is one of Rembrandt’s most mature works, in
that the method is perfectly adapted to the result desired.
In France there is little of significance in portrait engraving during
the sixteenth century. THOMAS DE LEU and LÉONARD GAULTIER based
their style upon the miniature portrait engravers of the Northern
School, such as the WIERIX. Although their graver work is often quite
beautiful, it lacks originality, and when, as frequently happened,
they endeavored to interpret the wonderful drawings of the Clouets
or Dumonstier, they signally failed in capturing the charm of their
originals.
CLAUDE MELLAN, who was born at Abbeville in 1598, is, in a sense,
the fountain-head of French portrait engraving. His work is
characteristically French, in that it is the result of a system
carefully worked out to its logical conclusion. In his desire to keep
strictly within the limits of what he considered to be the proper
province of engraving, he carried his insistence upon line to a point
which borders on mannerism and which, for over two centuries, has
militated against his full recognition.
Mellan’s earliest engravings recall the work of Léonard Gaultier, but
his first teacher is not known. Dissatisfied with his instruction in
Paris, in 1624 he went to Rome where, while studying engraving under
Villamena, he came under the influence of the French painter, Simon
Vouet, who not only provided his protégé with drawings to engrave, but
persuaded him to base all his training upon a thorough ground-work of
drawing. It is this severe training as a draughtsman which lies at the
foundation of Mellan’s style. His original drawings were executed in
pencil, silver-point, or chalk, and in his engravings he preserves all
the delicate and elusive charm of his originals.
[Illustration: CLAUDE MELLAN. VIRGINIA DA VEZZO
Size of the original engraving, 4½ × 3 inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: CLAUDE MELLAN. FABRI DE PEIRESC
Size of the original engraving, 8⅜ × 5⅝ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
His manner of engraving is peculiar to himself. The inventor of a mode,
he so uses it as to exhaust its possibilities and leaves nothing for
his successors to do along similar lines. Consequently, although his
influence on French portrait engraving was great and far-reaching, he
cannot, in any true sense, be considered as the founder of a “school.”
Even in his early portrait plates (incidentally, among the most
charming and perfect), such as _Virginia de Vezzo_, the wife of Simon
Vouet, engraved in Rome in 1626, we find his style fully developed.
Save for four little spots of deepest shadow, the entire portrait is
executed in single, uncrossed lines, indicating, by their direction,
the contour of the face, which is delicately modelled, while the flow
of the hair is realistically and beautifully expressed. From this
simple, linear method, adopted thus early, Mellan, with few unimportant
exceptions, never departed; and although he lived and worked until
1688, surviving Morin by twenty-two years and Robert Nanteuil by ten,
he held to his own self-appointed course, his work showing no trace
whatever of the influence of his two most distinguished contemporaries.
Among his many portraits choice is difficult, but, by general consent,
his style is seen at its very best in _Fabri de Peiresc_, which excels
in point of drawing, grip of character, and straightforwardness of
presentation. It is dated 1637 and was engraved on his way from Rome to
Paris, in which city he settled, enjoying for many years a reputation
and success second to none. Of his other portraits mention must be
made of _Henriette-Marie de Buade Frontenac_, of a delightful silvery
quality, and of her husband, _Henri-Louis Habert de Montmor_, the
richest toned of all his works. _Nicolas Fouquet_ likewise is of
peculiar interest, inasmuch as in this plate Mellan has departed for
once from his invariable method of pure line work and has modelled the
face with an elaborate system of dots, in the manner of Morin.
JEAN MORIN was Mellan’s junior by two years. His style is in the
greatest contrast to that of the older master, not only technically,
but in that he was always a _reproductive_ engraver, never designing
his own portraits, the majority of his plates being after the paintings
of Philippe de Champaigne. His plates are executed almost entirely in
pure etching, with just sufficient burin work to give crispness and
decision. The heads are elaborately modelled, with many minute dots,
recalling somewhat Van Dyck’s manner in such a portrait as _Snyders_.
_Antoine Vitré_, the famous printer, shows Morin’s method at its
richest; its brilliancy and color place it in the forefront of French
portraits, though for charm it may not rank with _Anne of Austria_ or
_Cardinal Richelieu_, both after paintings by Philippe de Champaigne.
_Cardinal Guido Bentivoglio_, after Van Dyck, well deserves the
reputation which it has so long enjoyed. It is, furthermore,
significant as an example of Morin’s power of concentrating all the
attention upon the countenance of his sitter. He was primarily a
_portrait_ engraver and never allowed himself to be seduced, as were
such eighteenth century masters as the Drevets, into lavishing his
skill upon the purely ornamental accessories, to the detriment of the
portrait itself. Fine though Van Dyck’s full-length painting is, Morin
is more than justified in taking from it the head and bust only, since
thereby he gives to his plate a vivid and compelling quality which
otherwise would be lacking.
[Illustration: JEAN MORIN. CARDINAL GUIDO BENTIVOGLIO
Size of the original engraving, 11½ × 9¼ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: ROBERT NANTEUIL. POMPONE DE BELLIÈVRE
Size of the original engraving, 12⅞ × 9⅞ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
ROBERT NANTEUIL is not only the greatest of French portrait engravers;
he is one of the greatest portraitists in the history of French art. In
his work the clarity and logic of the French temperament is enriched
by a study of the engravers of the Flemish and Dutch schools, though
in Nanteuil’s plates color is never sought at the expense of balance.
His technique is a fusion of the best elements of Mellan and of Morin.
From Mellan he derived his carefully balanced system of open line work,
while Morin doubtless suggested to him the use of graver flicks in
modelling the face.
The date of Nanteuil’s birth is variously given as 1623, 1625, and
1630, the last-named date, which is accepted by Robert-Dumesnil,
corresponding best with what we know regarding the development of his
work.
His first portrait plates were done in 1648, the year in which he
came to Paris, and from that time onwards he devoted himself almost
exclusively to portraiture, until his death in 1678. His engravings
form a gallery illustrating the reign of Louis XIV, from the King
himself, whom he engraved no fewer than eleven times, to the Norman
peasant and poet, Loret (incidentally, one of Nanteuil’s finest
portrait plates), whose “Gazette” satirized each day “the intriguing
nobles who were not afraid of bullets, but who were in deadly fear of
winter mud.”
An interesting story is told of Nanteuil’s début in Paris. It is said
that he received his first order by following some divinity students to
a wine-shop, where they were wont to take their meals. There, having
chosen one of the portrait drawings he had brought from Rheims, he
pretended to look for a sitter whose name and address he had forgotten.
It is superfluous to add that the picture was not recognized, but it
was passed from hand to hand, the price was asked, the artist was
modest in his demands, and before the end of the repast his career had
begun.
One of the most interesting portraits, in his early manner, is that
of _Cardinal de Retz_, engraved in 1650. Morin has likewise left us a
portrait of this personage, and it is instructive to compare the two
engravings. In Nanteuil’s the background is still somewhat stiff, but
the costume is treated simply and directly, while the face shows a
judicious blending of line and dot work.
Nothing could be finer and more reticent than _Marie de Bragelogne_
of 1656. The pale, elderly, and somewhat sad face of this old love
of Cardinal Richelieu is treated with the greatest sympathy. For the
most part, it is modelled with delicate flick work, and where lines
are employed, they are so used as to blend perfectly into a harmonious
whole. In contrast to the face, the collar is rendered in long, flowing
lines, without cross-hatching, entirely in the manner of Claude Mellan.
It is from Nanteuil’s own drawing from life and is perhaps the most
beautiful of the eight engraved portraits of women we have from his
hand.
_Pompone de Bellièvre_, of 1657, after Le Brun’s painting, has enjoyed
among collectors the reputation of being the most beautiful of all
engraved portraits. Fine it undoubtedly is; but it lacks that grip of
character which is so conspicuously present in Nanteuil’s engravings
from life, and for compelling portrait quality it falls short of
_Pierre Seguier_, engraved in the same year, likewise after Le Brun’s
painting. _Jean Loret_ certainly does not owe its fame to the beauty
of the personage portrayed. It is one of Nanteuil’s most convincing
and vital plates. The modelling of the face and the means employed are
absolutely adequate. This engraving alone would explain why, in his
day, Nanteuil’s greatest fame rested upon the surprisingly life-like
quality of his work, whether it be pastel, drawing, or engraving.
To the year 1658 also belongs _Basile Fouquet_, brother of Nicolas
Fouquet, the famous Superintendent of Finance. Not less beautiful than
_Pompone de Bellièvre_, there is a vitality about the _Basile Fouquet_
lacking in the better-known plate.
Three years later, in 1661, Nanteuil engraved the portrait of _Nicolas
Fouquet_--one of his masterpieces of characterization. Nothing could
be finer than the way in which he has portrayed the great finance
minister, whose ambition it was to succeed Mazarin as virtual ruler of
the kingdom. It is a historical document of prime importance, of the
greatest beauty, and preserves for all time the features of the then
most powerful man in France, gazing out upon the world with a half
quizzical expression, totally unaware of the sensational reversal of
Fortune already drawing near.
A plate not less admirable in its way--a little masterpiece--is
_François de la Mothe le Vayer_, who was regarded as the Plutarch
of his time for his boundless erudition and his mode of reasoning.
Nanteuil’s engraving shows him at the age of seventy-five, in full
possession of all his intellectual powers and in the enjoyment of that
good health which lasted until his death, eleven years later, at the
ripe age of eighty-six.
[Illustration: ROBERT NANTEUIL. BASILE FOUQUET
Size of the original engraving, 12⅞ × 9⅞ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: ROBERT NANTEUIL. JEAN LORET
Size of the original engraving, 10⅛ × 7⅛ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
The masterly portrait of _Turenne_, engraved in 1663, after a painting
by Philippe de Champaigne, is one of the engraver’s most vigorous
plates, of a size somewhat larger than had hitherto been his wont.
From this period date the life-size portraits, thirty-six of which
were completed before he died in 1678, the last four years of his life
being devoted entirely to these large plates--seven of them of the
King himself. They were obviously intended to be framed and hung above
the high wainscots used in those times, and although they do not show
Nanteuil at his best, and--in the majority of cases--are, in part, the
work of assistants, they are a remarkable performance.
Nanteuil established the tradition of portrait engraving in France once
and for all, and although his successors, profiting by his example,
have left us many superbly engraved plates, none of them were able to
combine the qualities of great engraver with great portraitist, which
make Nanteuil supreme in the history of portrait engraving.
The nineteenth century has produced three master portrait etchers. Of
what previous century can we say as much? Other portraits may possess
more charm, but none have a greater measure of dignity than those by
ALPHONSE LEGROS. He has been called a “belated old master,” and in his
portrait plates are combined the qualities which prove him to be a
master indeed--not old, in the sense of out of touch with his time, but
displaying the same qualities which make the portraits of Rembrandt or
Van Dyck so compelling and of such continuing interest.
_Cardinal Manning_--the triumph of spirit over flesh--simple, austere;
_G. F. Watts_, in which the gravity and beauty of old age is portrayed
as no one since Rembrandt has portrayed it, are plates which will
assure his artistic immortality.
MR. WHISTLER, when asked which of his etchings he considered the best,
is reported to have answered, “All.” Fortunately for us, in the case of
his portraits he has indicated his preference. “_One of my very best_”
is written beneath a proof of _Annie Haden_, now in the Lenox Library;
and Whistler, in the course of conversation with Mr. E. G. Kennedy,
told him that if he had to make a decision as to which plate was his
best, he would rest his reputation upon _Annie Haden_. It is the
culmination of that wonderful series to which belong such masterpieces
as _Becquet_, _Drouet_, _Finette_, _Arthur Haden_, _Mr. Mann_ and
_Riault, the Engraver_. Whistler himself never surpassed this portrait,
which for perfect balance, certainty of hand, and sheer charm, is not
only one of the most delightful portrait plates in the history of the
art, but one of the few successful representations of the elusive charm
of young girlhood.
[Illustration: J. A. McN. WHISTLER. ANNIE HADEN
Size of the original dry-point, 13⅞ × 8⅜ inches
In the Collection of Howard Mansfield, Esq.]
[Illustration: J. A. McN. WHISTLER. RIAULT, THE ENGRAVER
Size of the original dry-point, 8⅞ × 5⅞ inches
In the Collection of Howard Mansfield, Esq.]
Hardly less beautiful are the portraits of _Florence Leyland_,
standing, holding her hoop in her right hand, every line of the slender
figure rhythmic and beautiful; or of _Fanny Leyland_, seated, the
soft flounces of her white muslin dress indicated with the fewest and
most delicate lines; or _Weary_, lying back in her chair, with hair
outspread. _Weary_ suggests the _Jenny_ of Rossetti’s poem, but it is
a portrait of “Jo”--Joanna Heffernan--whom Whistler painted as _The
White Girl_ and _La Belle Irlandaise_, and of whom, in 1861, two years
previously, he had made a superb dry-point.
Of Whistler’s portraits of men, _Riault_ is assuredly one of the
finest, both in execution and in portrayal of character. The
concentration of the wood-engraver on his task is expressed with
convincing power, and those who mistakenly attribute to Whistler grace
at the expense of strength could hardly do better than study this
dry-point.
Could there be a greater contrast than the work of Whistler and ZORN?
Could anything better illustrate the infinite possibilities of the
art, the pliability of the medium to serve the needs of etchers as
dissimilar in method as in point of attack? With the fewest possible
lines (_slashed_, one might almost say, into the copper) Zorn evolves
a portrait of compelling power, vibrant with life. Mere speed counts
for little, and it is of small significance that a masterpiece such
as _Ernest Renan_ is the result of a single sitting of one hour only.
It was done in Renan’s studio in Paris, in April, 1892. “His friends,”
the artist relates, “came and asked me to make an etching of him. He
arranged for a sitting. He was very ill, but I sat studying him for a
little while, then took the plate and drew him. I asked him if it was a
characteristic pose and he replied, ‘No, I very seldom sit like this.’
But his wife came in and said, ‘You have caught him to perfection, it
is himself. When he is not watched he is always like that.’ She was
really touched by it.” What is significant in the portrait of _Renan_,
astounding, one might say, is that with lines so few Zorn has given
us not only the outer man, but a character study of profound insight.
Renan, sunk in his chair, the bulky body topped by the massive head,
the hair suggested with a mere handful of lines, was like a bomb-shell
to such print-collectors as previously were unacquainted with Zorn’s
work. It was, however, only one of a group of masterpieces with which
the artist made his début in America, in 1892: _Zorn and His Wife_,
_Faure_, _The Waltz_, _The Omnibus_, _Olga Bratt_, with its elusive
charm, and the piquant _Girl with the Cigarette_, and _Madame Simon_,
which still remains one of his most powerful portraits.
[Illustration: ANDERS ZORN. ERNEST RENAN
Size of the original etching, 9¼ × 13⅜ inches
In the Collection of the Author]
[Illustration: ANDERS ZORN. THE TOAST
Size of the original etching, 12⅝ × 10½ inches
In the Collection of Albert W. Scholle, Esq.]
[Illustration: ANDERS ZORN. MADAME SIMON
Size of the original etching, 9⅜ × 6¼ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: ANDERS ZORN. MISS EMMA RASSMUSSEN
Size of the original etching, 7⅞ × 5⅞ inches
In the Collection of the Author]
_The Toast_ is etched from Zorn’s picture painted by him to
celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the Society of the Idun, a
scientific and artistic society in Stockholm. Wieselgren, the President
of the Society, a Viking-like figure, is about to propose a toast;
beyond him, characterized with the fewest lines, are seen Nordenskjöld,
the Arctic explorer; Hildebrand, the archæologist; Axel Key, professor
of medicine; and Woern, the Minister of Finance. The plate has all the
freshness, all the spontaneity, of an etching done directly from life
and at a white heat.
Among his many portraits of women, it is difficult to make a selection.
_Miss Anna Burnett, seated at the Piano_, is charming. _Annie_, _Mrs.
Granberg_, and _Kesti_--each, in its own way, fascinates us; but if
one were to express a personal preference, it would be for _Miss Emma
Rassmussen_. The blond beauty of her hair, the fair, tender flesh,
sparkling eyes, and lips slightly open, showing the firm, small, even
teeth, are in perfect harmony. The line is more delicate than is the
artist’s wont, and both as a portrait and as an etching it is a lasting
delight.
SOME MASTERS OF PORTRAITURE
BIBLIOGRAPHY
PRINTS AND THEIR MAKERS. _Edited by FitzRoy Carrington._ 200
illustrations. New York: Century Co. 1912.
ETCHING AND ETCHERS. _By Philip Gilbert Hamerton._ 35 original
etchings. London: Macmillan & Co. 1868.
----. Same. 6th edition. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1892.
THE GOLDEN AGE OF ENGRAVING. _By Frederick Keppel._ 161 illustrations.
New York: The Baker and Taylor Company. 1910.
THE BEST PORTRAITS IN ENGRAVING. _By Charles Sumner._ New York:
Frederick Keppel. 1875.
DÜRER, ALBRECHT (see Bibliography under “The Master of the Amsterdam
Cabinet and Albrecht Dürer,” page 137).
VAN DYCK, ANTHONY (1599-1641)
EAUX-FORTES DE ANTOINE VAN DYCK; REPRODUITES ET PUBLIÉES PAR
AMAND-DURAND. _Edited by Georges Duplessis._ 21 reproductions. Paris:
Amand-Durand. 1874.
VAN DYCK; HIS ORIGINAL ETCHINGS AND HIS ICONOGRAPHY. _By Arthur Mayger
Hind._ 38 illustrations. The Print-Collector’s Quarterly, 2 parts.
Part I. Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 3-37. Part II. Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 220-253.
Boston. 1915.
----. Reprinted in revised form. 36 illustrations. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Company. 1915.
VAN DYCK AND PORTRAIT ENGRAVING AND ETCHING IN THE SEVENTEENTH
CENTURY. _Edited by Arthur Mayger Hind._ 65 reproductions. London and
New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, n. d. (Great Engravers.)
VAN DYCK. _By H. Knackfuss. Translated by Campbell Dodgson._ 55
illustrations. Bielefeld and Leipzig: Velhagen & Klasing. 1899.
(Monographs on Artists.)
ETCHINGS OF VAN DYCK. _Edited by Frank Newbolt._ 34 reproductions.
London: George Newnes. n. d.
ETCHINGS BY VAN DYCK. _By Walter H. Sparrow. With an introduction by
H. Singer._ 23 reproductions of the first states. London: Hodder &
Stoughton. 1905.
L’ICONOGRAPHIE D’ANTOINE VAN DYCK, D’APRÈS LES RECHERCHES DE H. WEBER.
_By Friedrich Wibiral._ 1 reproduction and 6 plates of watermarks.
Leipzig: A. Danz. 1877.
REMBRANDT HARMENSZ VAN RIJN (1606-1669)
THE ETCHED WORK OF REMBRANDT; A MONOGRAPH (WRITTEN AS INTRODUCTION TO
THE BURLINGTON CLUB EXHIBITION, 1877) WITH AN APPENDIX
RESPECTING APPROPRIATION OF THE FOREGOING IN MIDDLETON’S DESCRIPTIVE
CATALOGUE. _By Francis Seymour Haden._ London: Macmillan & Co. 1879.
THE ETCHINGS OF REMBRANDT. _By Philip Gilbert Hamerton._ 4
reproductions and 36 text illustrations. London: Seeley & Co. 1902.
(Portfolio Monographs.)
REMBRANDT’S ETCHINGS; AN ESSAY AND A CATALOGUE, WITH SOME NOTES ON
THE DRAWINGS. _By Arthur Mayger Hind._ London: Methuen & Co. 1912.
Volume 1, Text (with 34 plates illustrating the drawings). Volume 2,
Illustrations (330 reproductions).
ETCHINGS OF REMBRANDT. _Edited by Arthur Mayger Hind._ 62
reproductions. London and New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company. 1907.
(Great Engravers.)
REMBRANDT. _By H. Knackfuss. Translated by Campbell Dodgson._ 159
illustrations. Bielefeld and Leipzig: Velhagen & Klasing. 1899.
(Monographs on Artists.)
REMBRANDT’S AMSTERDAM. _By Frits Lugt._ 27 illustrations and map. The
Print-Collector’s Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 111-169. Boston. 1915.
REMBRANDT; HIS LIFE, HIS WORK, AND HIS TIME. _By Emile Michel.
Translated by Florence Simmonds. Edited by Frederick Wedmore._ 2
volumes. 317 illustrations. London: William Heinemann. 1895.
L’OEUVRE GRAVÉ DE REMBRANDT; REPRODUCTIONS DES PLANCHES DANS TOUT
LEURS ÉTATS SUCCESSIFS, AVEC UN CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ. _By Dmitri
Rovinski._ 1000 reproductions. St. Petersburg: L’Académie Impériale
des Sciences. 1890. Volume 1, Text. Volumes 2-4, Reproductions.
---- ----. Supplement. _Collected by D. Rovinski. Arranged and
described by N. Tchétchouline._ 94 reproductions. St. Petersburg: S.
N. Kotoff, and Leipzig: Karl W. Hiersemann. 1914.
KRITISCHES VERZEICHNIS DER RADIERUNGEN REMBRANDTS, ZUGLEICH EINE
ANLEITUNG ZU DEREN STUDIUM. _By Woldemar von Seidlitz._ Leipzig: E. A.
Seemann. 1895.
REMBRANDT; DES MEISTERS RADIERUNGEN IN 402 ABBILDUNGEN. _Edited
by Hans Wolfgang Singer._ Stuttgart and Leipzig: Deutsche
Verlags-Anstalt. 1906. (Klassiker der Kunst. Vol. 8.)
PORTRAIT ENGRAVING IN FRANCE
DE LA GRAVURE DU PORTRAIT EN FRANCE. _By Georges Duplessis._ Paris:
Rapilly. 1875.
LE PEINTRE-GRAVEUR FRANÇAIS; UN CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ D’ESTAMPES
GRAVÉES PAR LES PEINTRES ET LES DESSINATEURS DE L’ÉCOLE FRANÇAISE,
OUVRAGE FAISANT SUITE AU PEINTRE-GRAVEUR DE M. BARTSCH. _By A. P.
F. Robert-Dumesnil._ 11 volumes. (Vol. 11. Supplement by Georges
Duplessis.) Paris: Mme. Huzard. 1835-71.
LE PEINTRE-GRAVEUR FRANÇAIS CONTINUÉ ... OUVRAGE FAISANT SUITE
AU PEINTRE-GRAVEUR FRANÇAIS DE ROBERT-DUMESNIL. _By Prosper de
Baudicour._ Paris: Mme. Bouchard-Huzard. 1859-1861. 2 volumes.
FRENCH PORTRAIT ENGRAVING OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES.
_By T. H. Thomas._ 39 illustrations. London: George Bell & Sons. 1910.
MELLAN, CLAUDE (1598-1688)
CLAUDE MELLAN. _By Louis R. Metcalfe._ 13 illustrations. The
Print-Collector’s Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 258-292. Boston. 1915.
CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ DE L’OEUVRE DE CLAUDE MELLAN D’ABBEVILLE. _By
Anatole de Montaiglon. Biography by P. J. Mariette._ Abbeville: P.
Briez. 1856.
MORIN, JEAN (before 1590(?)-1650)
JEAN MORIN. _By Louis R. Metcalfe._ 11 illustrations. The
Print-Collector’s Quarterly, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 1-30. Boston. 1912.
NANTEUIL, ROBERT (1623(25?)-1678)
ROBERT NANTEUIL. By Louis R. Metcalfe. 12 illustrations. The
Print-Collector’s Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 5, pp. 525-561. Boston. 1911.
NANTEUIL; SA VIE ET SON OEUVRE. _By Abbé Porrée._ Rouen: Cagniard.
1890.
THE DRAWINGS AND PASTELS OF NANTEUIL. _By T. H. Thomas._ 15
illustrations. The Print-Collector’s Quarterly, Vol. 4, No. 4, pp.
327-361. Boston. 1914.
LEGROS, ALPHONSE (1837-1911)
ALPHONSE LEGROS. _By Elisabeth Luther Cary._ 10 illustrations. The
Print-Collector’s Quarterly, Vol. 2, No. 4, pp. 439-457. Boston. 1912.
CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ DE L’ŒUVRE GRAVÉ ET LITHOGRAPHIÉ DE M. ALPHONSE
LEGROS, 1855-77. _By Paul Auguste Poulet-Malassis and A. W.
Thibaudeau._ 3 plates. Paris: J. Baur. 1877.
WHISTLER, JAMES ABBOTT McNEILL (1834-1903) (see Bibliography under
“Landscape Etching,” p. 277).
ZORN, ANDERS (1860- )
DAS RADIERTE WERK DES ANDERS ZORN. _By Fortunat von Schubert-Soldern._
Illustrated. Dresden: Ernst Arnold. 1905.
ANDERS ZORN. _By Loys Delteil._ 328 reproductions. Paris: L’auteur.
1909. (Le Peintre-graveur illustré, XIXᵉ et XXᵉ siècles. Vol. 4.)
ANDERS ZORN. _By Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer._ 5 illustrations. The
Century, Vol. 24, p. 582 (New Series). New York. 1893.
ANDERS ZORN: PAINTER-ETCHER. _By J. Nilsen Laurvik._ 18 illustrations.
The Print-Collector’s Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 5, pp. 611-637. Boston.
1911.
LANDSCAPE ETCHING
In landscape, as in portraiture, we are greeted on the threshold
by ALBRECHT DÜRER. From his many drawings, water-colors, and the
beautifully engraved backgrounds in a number of his plates, we know him
to have been a profound student of natural forms and of atmospheric
effects, sensitive to the character of the country he portrays; and
it is a matter of regret that _The Cannon_ is the only plate in which
the landscape element outweighs in interest the figures. _The Cannon_,
which is dated 1518, is etched upon an iron plate, not necessarily
because Dürer was unacquainted with a suitable mordant for copper,
but rather, one is inclined to believe, because, etching having been
used in the decoration of arms and armor, iron would naturally suggest
itself as the most appropriate metal for the purpose. Although the
cannon (“The Nuremberg Field Serpent”), to the left, and the five
Turks, to the right, are the main motives of the composition, they are
drawn and bitten with lines of exactly the same weight and character
as the landscape itself, and we can, if we will, consider them as
accessory figures, concentrating our attention upon the altogether
delightful village, its church spire pointing heavenwards, while in
the distance wooded hills rise towards the sombre sky, and to the
left a seaport is indicated. Dürer either ignored or was unaware of
the effects to be obtained by repeated rebitings, and consequently
the plate is of a uniform tone. Within his self-imposed limits he has
thoroughly understood the possibilities of the medium and has availed
himself of them, adopting an open, linear technique, in marked contrast
to his highly elaborate engravings on copper of this period.
ALBRECHT ALTDORFER, who was born in Regensburg about 1480 and died
in February, 1538, is notable as one of the earliest interpreters of
landscape for its own sake. He has left us ten landscape etchings.
None of them is dated, but they clearly belong to his last period.
In them he has merely transferred to metal his mode of pen drawing,
an excellent style in a way, since it is linear and suggestive, but
lacking distinction and that passionate, dramatic quality which is so
impressive in the painting, _St. George_, in the Munich Gallery, the
engraving of the _Crucifixion_; or the _Agony in the Garden_, a drawing
in the Berlin Print Room.
[Illustration: ALBRECHT DÜRER. THE CANNON
Size of the original etching, 8⅝ × 12⅞ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: AUGUSTIN HIRSCHVOGEL. LANDSCAPE
Size of the original etching, 5⅝ × 8½ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
The etchings of AUGUSTIN HIRSCHVOGEL are even simpler in treatment
than those by Altdorfer. They bear dates from 1545 to 1549. The more
one studies his landscape plates, breathing the spirit of the true
nature lover, the more fascinating do they become. He has eliminated
all non-essentials, concentrating his attention upon what were to
him the most significant features, and in this respect he may have
influenced the work of more than one nineteenth century master.
HANS SEBALD LAUTENSACK, who was some twenty years Hirschvogel’s junior,
was born in Nuremberg about 1524. The greater number of his landscape
plates fall within the years 1551 and 1555. He is neither so simple nor
so direct as Hirschvogel, and his plates suffer from over-elaboration.
In an attempt to give a complete representation of the scene the value
of the line is lost, and, in the majority of cases, the composition is
lacking in repose.
For almost a century we have no landscape etchings of prime importance.
Then, in 1640, _Rembrandt_ appears on the scene with his _View of
Amsterdam_, the first of a series of twenty-seven masterpieces which,
beginning with this plate, comes to an end with _A Clump of Trees
with a Vista_ (1652). The _View of Amsterdam_ is, among Rembrandt’s
landscapes, comparable to the portrait of himself leaning on a stone
sill, inasmuch as it is, in its own simple linear mode, a model of what
etching can be at its best.
As in the case of all these etchings, with the exception of the _Three
Trees_ and the _Landscape with a Ruined Tower and Clear Foreground_,
the sky is left perfectly blank, and our imagination must supply the
quiet sunshine of a cloudless day or that delicate grayness which makes
Holland a perpetual delight to the painter.
The _Windmill_ (1641) is Rembrandt’s first _dated_ etching. It is truly
a portrait of a place, not only in its outer aspect, but in that inner
spirit which, if it be present, moves us so profoundly, as in the case
of Meryon’s etchings of Paris and Piranesi’s plates of ancient Roman
edifices; or, if it be absent, leaves us disappointed and cold. In the
_Windmill_, “we feel the stains of weather, the touch of time, on the
structure; we feel the air about it and the quiet light that rests
on the far horizon as the eye travels over dike and meadow; we are
admitted to the subtlety and sensitiveness of a sight transcending our
own; and even by some intangible means beyond analysis we partake of
something of Rembrandt’s actual mind and feeling, his sense of what the
old mill meant, not merely as a picturesque object to be drawn, but
as a human element in the landscape, implying the daily work of human
hands and the association of man and earth.”[12]
[12] Rembrandt’s Landscape Etchings. By Laurence Binyon. The
Print-Collector’s Quarterly. Vol. 2, No. 4, p. 414.
[Illustration: REMBRANDT. THE WINDMILL
Size of the original etching, 5¾ × 8¼ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: REMBRANDT. THREE TREES
Size of the original etching, 8½ × 11 inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
To the same year belong the _Landscape with a Cottage and Haybarn_ and
_Landscape with a Cottage and a Large Tree_, two delightfully spacious
plates. There is one etching in 1642, the _Cottage with a White
Paling_, in which dry-point is judiciously used to give richness to the
shadows.
To the following year, 1643, belongs the _Three Trees_, the most famous
of Rembrandt’s landscape etchings. Note how Rembrandt has suggested
the passing of a summer thunder-storm, the rain-charged clouds rolling
away to the left, while from the right the returning sunshine bathes
the composition in glory, making each freshly washed leaf and blade of
grass sparkle in its beams. Even the hard, slanting lines of rain in
the upper left portion of the plate have their purpose, affording a
needed contrast to the swiftly changing clouds, which the freshening
breeze drives before it over the peopled plain and the far-reaching sea
in the distance.
In 1645 there are five landscape etchings. If the _Three Trees_ is
Rembrandt’s most elaborate plate, _Six’s Bridge_ is, in some ways,
his most learned performance. According to tradition, it was etched
“against time,” for a wager, at the country house of Rembrandt’s
friend, Jan Six, while the servant was fetching the mustard, that
had been forgotten, from a neighboring village. There is, however,
nothing hasty or incomplete about it. It is, to use Whistler’s words,
“finished from the beginning,” beautifully balanced, not a line wasted,
of its kind a perfect work of art.
There are no more landscapes until 1650, a good year, since it gives
us eight plates, every one worthy of the most serious consideration.
Rembrandt by this time apparently had become dissatisfied with the
relatively limited range of light and dark obtainable by the pure
etched line, and from now onwards he relies more and more upon
dry-point to obtain his effects, at times executing his plates entirely
in that medium.
The _Landscape with a Haybarn and a Flock of Sheep_ is one of the
loveliest plates of this period. There is a brilliancy in the first
state, a quiet harmony in the elaborated second state, which makes a
choice difficult. Each, in its way, is of compelling beauty.
Hardly less delightful is the _Landscape with a Milkman_, with a view
of the sea to the right, while at the left the cottages snuggle beneath
their protecting trees.
[Illustration: REMBRANDT. SIX’S BRIDGE
Size of the original etching, 5⅛ × 8¾ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: REMBRANDT. LANDSCAPE WITH A RUINED TOWER AND CLEAR
FOREGROUND
Size of the original etching, 4⅞ × 12⅝ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: REMBRANDT. LANDSCAPE WITH A HAYBARN AND A FLOCK OF
SHEEP
Size of the original etching, 3¼ × 7 inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: REMBRANDT. THREE COTTAGES
Size of the original etching, 6¼ × 8 inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
The _Landscape with a Ruined Tower and Clear Foreground_ is, perhaps,
of all these etchings the noblest and the most dramatic. In the sky to
the left are piled thunder clouds. A faint breeze, the precursor of a
coming storm, gently moves the upper branches of the trees. There is
an expectant hush, a tenseness, and we are made to feel that in
a few minutes the first heavy raindrops will be driving through the
over-charged air. Otherwise all is still, the sky to the right being
yet quiet and undisturbed. With the fewest etched lines Rembrandt has
indicated the form and growth of the trees, adding, just where needed
to give emphasis and enrichment, touches of dry-point, concentrating
his richest blacks on the noble clump which shuts off the road leading
toward the left. With such simple means, with black lines and white
paper, he has given us by his art a more convincing record of one of
Nature’s noblest spectacles than most painters, with a full palette at
their command, could achieve in a lifetime of labor.
In the _Three Cottages_ dry-point is used with magnificent effect.
Early impressions of this masterpiece have a richness, a bloom, which
is unmatched among Rembrandt’s landscape plates. A fine impression
of the third state, with the added shading on the gabled end of the
first cottage, represents the plate admirably. To be seen at its best,
however, it should not be too heavily charged with ink, since the
tree forms thereby are confused. Work such as this is so seemingly
simple that one may readily overlook the power of analysis and the
superb draughtsmanship it displays. Everyone who loves Rembrandt’s
landscapes--and who that knows them does not love them?--must bitterly
regret that at about this time, in the very plenitude of his powers, he
saw fit to bring his landscape work to a close.
It is true that we have the _Goldweigher’s Field_ of 1651--an
unsurpassed masterpiece--and in the following year the _Landscape with
a Road Beside a Canal_ and _A Clump of Trees with a Vista_; but had he
treated a landscape motive with the passion which breathes from the
_Three Crosses_, _Christ Presented to the People_, or the _Presentation
in the Temple_, how much richer and fuller would landscape art have
been!
The _Goldweigher’s Field_, by tradition the country seat of the Receiver
General, Uytenbogært, whose portrait Rembrandt had etched in 1639 (The
_Goldweigher_), is, in point of suggestiveness, second to none of
Rembrandt’s plates. The eye is gently led from field to fertile field,
each with its own individual character and filled with interesting
little details, and finally rests upon the quiet sea which stretches to
the horizon.
Contemporary with Rembrandt, treating scenes essentially the same, a
whole school of etchers produced an enormous number of plates, many of
them charming, but none to be classed with the permanently great work
in the history of the art.
[Illustration: REMBRANDT. GOLDWEIGHER’S FIELD
Size of the original etching, 4¾ × 12⅝ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: JACOB RUYSDAEL. WHEAT FIELD
Size of the original etching, 4 × 6 inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
HERCULES SEGHERS is interesting because of his choice of wild,
rugged mountains for his subject-matter and of his experiments in color
printing, but as an etcher he is of historical importance only.
JACOB RUYSDAEL displays a knowledge of tree forms and an appreciation
of their beauty, rare at any time. His work at its best recalls that
of the great nineteenth century master, Théodore Rousseau, though
the latter’s few plates show a greater economy of means and an equal
affection for Nature in her wilder moods. The _Wheat Field_ is one of
Ruysdael’s most satisfying plates. The sky, with its rolling clouds, is
simply treated and shows a knowledge and reticence in the use of line
denied to the greater number of his more laborious contemporaries, who,
in the main, when they endeavored to “finish” a plate ended by leaving
it fatigued and stiff.
_Claude Gellée_, called _Claude Lorrain_, is the one seventeenth
century French landscape etcher. Born in the year 1600 in the Diocese
of Toul and the Duchy of Lorraine (whence he derives the name by which
he is best known), early orphaned, at the age of thirteen, after a
varied and picturesque boyhood, journeyed to Rome, thence to Naples,
and later to Venice. In 1627 he settled permanently in Rome, where he
remained until his death in 1682.
His etchings are the fruit of that indefatigable study of nature
which he pursued almost until the day of his death. Heedless of
fatigue, he would spend day after day, from sunrise until nightfall,
noting every phase of dawn, the glory of sunrise, or the majesty of
the sunset hours. For him the modest nook held no charm and exerted
no fascination. He chose for his theme Nature in her more spacious
aspects--wide-stretching horizons and deep overarching skies, with
clumps of stately trees, between and beyond which are to be seen
castle-crowned hills, or a half-ruined temple, the relic of Imperial
Rome, a passionate love for which burned with a steady flame in Claude,
more Roman than the Romans themselves in his worship of the Eternal
City and all that could recall her vanished glory.
Claude’s paintings are to be seen in nearly every European gallery
of importance, but his etchings are seldom met with. Really fine
impressions (by which alone they can be judged) are unfortunately very
rare. His work would seem to divide itself into two periods: 1630 to
1637, and 1662 and 1663. It is to the earlier period that his finest
work belongs, the later plates being heavy and stiff in treatment.
Claude’s etchings show none of that economy and suggestiveness of line
which make of Rembrandt’s most summary sketch a continuous stimulus and
delight. They are highly wrought pictures, as carefully and lovingly
finished in all details as are the paintings themselves. Etching,
dry-point, the burnisher, and a tone produced by roughening the surface
of the plate with pumice-stone or some similar material, all are called
into play to produce a harmonious result, and of their kind there is
nothing finer.
The _Dance Under the Trees_ shows Claude in his most purely pastoral
vein--classic pastoral--seen through Virgilian eyes and interpreted in
the spirit of the Eclogues. It is carefully composed and beautifully
drawn; and if, to our more modern taste, there seems a little too
obvious an “arrangement,” with the two vistas balancing one another at
the right and left of the central group of trees, we must remember that
landscape, no less than literature or costume, has its fashions, and
that, in Claude’s time, balance and proportion were esteemed of greater
value than the freedom and spontaneity which we today, more insistent
on the individual note, esteem the chief charm of etching.
_Le Bouvier_, etched in 1636, is accounted Claude’s masterpiece.
“For technical quality of a certain delicate kind it is the finest
landscape etching in the world. Its transparency and gradation have
never been surpassed.”[13] It is the work of a real nature lover and
true poet, and sums up in a few square inches all that is best of
Claude’s art when it has shaken itself free from the “set scene” and
theatricalities. Technically it is not less admirable. The copper has
been caressed, so to speak, with the needle, until it responds by
yielding all those elusive half lights and luminous shadows which play
among the leaves of the noble trees to the left, while on the right
the landscape fairly swims in light and air. For this same quality of
sunlight Claude tries again and again in his etchings, in _Sunrise_
with complete success. When he essays to interpret Nature in her
sterner moods, as in the _Flock in Stormy Weather_ (his one plate of
the year 1651), he is far less happy. The clouds, which should be heavy
with rain, are unconvincing, though the suggestion of movement in the
trees is excellent, and in no other plate has he treated architecture
with a firmer touch or in a more picturesque manner.
[13] Etching and Etchers. By Philip Gilbert Hamerton. London; Macmillan
& Co. 1868. p. 178.
After the middle of the seventeenth century, etching, as an original,
creative art, is increasingly neglected for almost two hundred years,
though it grows in popularity as an easy and expeditious mode of
“forwarding” a plate to be finished with the burin.
[Illustration: CLAUDE LORRAIN. LE BOUVIER
Size of the original etching, 5⅛ x 7¾ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: CHARLES JACQUE. TROUPEAU DE PORCS
Size of the original etching, 5⅛ × 8½ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
To CHARLES JACQUE, in the early “forties,” belongs the honor of having
restored etching to its proper and legitimate place as a suggestive and
linear art. His method is based on a thorough understanding of its
limitations and qualities as exemplified by Rembrandt and his lesser
contemporaries in Holland; and both by his work (he has left between
five and six hundred plates) and by his influence, he is the father of
the nineteenth century revival of etching, not only in France, where
its possibilities were appreciated at once by the Romantic group and
the “Men of 1830,” but in England, through Seymour Haden and Whistler.
Charles Jacque was born in Paris on May 23, 1813, and to the last
(he died at the ripe age of 81, in the year 1894) he retained, in
country life, something of the city man’s point of view, the love of
the “picturesque,” the anecdotic, in marked contrast to his greater
contemporary, Jean-François Millet, whose few etchings form an epic of
the soil even more powerful than his paintings. For all that, Jacque is
a true etcher, working along the soundest lines and safest traditions.
He is unequal: his work suffers at times from a hankering for “finish”;
but at his best his little plates are delightfully suggestive, every
line being there for a purpose, and not a line too much.
Up to 1848 he had completed some three hundred etchings and dry-points,
and it is among this group that many “masterpieces in little” are to
be found. It would be hard to find a better model of style than the
_Wheat Field_. The print is scarcely larger than a visiting card, but
it conveys a sense of spaciousness and “out of doors” sadly lacking
in many a painting in full color and of a hundred times its size. The
_Truffle Gatherers_ is likewise of modest size, but the landscape with
its leafless trees is full of air, and the sense of life and movement,
as well as the effective composition of the “rooters” accompanied by
their herdsman, is, from many points of view, unexcelled.
The _Storm--Landscape with a White Horse_ is one of Jacque’s
finest interpretations of wind and rough weather. This dry-point,
unfortunately very rare, recalls the work of Rembrandt in his mature
period. The sky, slashed with driving showers, the trees swayed this
way and that by the gusty wind, the white horse with legs firmly
braced, its mane and tail matted by the rain against its neck and
flank, all combine to heighten and intensify the effect.
Younger than Jacque by four years (he was born February 15, 1817),
CHARLES-FRANÇOIS DAUBIGNY differs from him in that it is the lyric, the
spiritual aspect of nature, rather than the incidental and picturesque
details of country life, which moved him.
[Illustration: CHARLES JACQUE. STORM--LANDSCAPE WITH A WHITE HORSE
Size of the original dry-point, 6⅜ × 8⅜ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: CHARLES-FRANÇOIS DAUBIGNY. DEER IN A WOOD
Size of the original etching, 6⅜ × 4⅜ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
None of the other Barbizon men has so successfully interpreted the
freshness of early morning, the sparkle of sunrise on tender
young leaves or dew-bespangled grass, the tranquility of the quiet
pool hidden in the depth of the forest. His first plate, etched in
collaboration with his friend Meissonier, is dated 1838, and all
through the “forties” Daubigny continued to etch either original
motives or such as were commissioned by editors for the embellishment
of various publications, in many cases poems and songs of a pastoral
nature. It is, however, to the following decade that his finest work
belongs--a series of little masterpieces which, in their way, remain
unequalled. His plates, small in size, are as carefully worked out
as those of Claude but with a truer feeling for the elusive charm of
still, untroubled places. Later his style grows broader and bolder.
Less is actually said, more is suggested. There is a freedom in his
line work which these etchings of his middle period had hardly led us
to expect but for which, in truth, they were the finest preparation. He
has learned to eliminate the non-essential; and in etching the _art of
omission_ is the supreme virtue.
One of the most suggestive plates of his middle period is _Deer in a
Wood_. The treatment is perfectly simple and straightforward, truly
linear, as all good etching should be, but the spirit of the scene
is captured and portrayed in these few, seemingly careless, lines.
_Deer Coming Down to Drink_ is another altogether delightful plate in
the same series. The early morning air is vibrant with the glory of
sunrise, and the little leaves clap their hands in joy.
“Has it not often occurred to you, in your explorations as a tourist,
to see suddenly open before you a break in the landscape, a little
valley, calm, in repose, full of elegant and tranquil forms, of
discreet and harmonious colors, of softened shadows and lights,
bordered by hillsides with rounded and retiring forms and where no
step seems to have troubled the poetic silence? A pond, placed there
like a mirror, reflects the picture, and bears on its cup-like edge
sheaves of rushes, coltsfoot, arrow-heads, water-strawberries and the
white and yellow flowers of the water lily, amid which swarm a buzzing
world of insects and gnats.... As you approach, some heron, occupied
in dressing its plumage, flies off, snapping its beak; the snipe runs
away, piping its little cry; then everything falls again into silence,
and the valley, welcoming you as its guest, takes up under your eyes
its mysterious work.”[14] All this and more Daubigny gives us by his
art.
[14] Count Clément de Ris. L’Artiste. June, 1853.
[Illustration: CHARLES-FRANÇOIS DAUBIGNY. DEER COMING DOWN TO DRINK
Size of the original etching, 6⅛ × 4⅝ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: CHARLES-FRANÇOIS DAUBIGNY. MOONLIGHT ON THE BANKS OF
THE OISE
Size of the original etching, 4⅜ × 6½ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
Daubigny’s success as a painter, the constantly increasing demand for
his work, left him little time, as years went by, for etching. “If
only I could paint a picture that _wouldn’t_ sell,” he once said in
sheer desperation, and, momentarily, his superb renderings of the
mystery of evening and night accomplished his object, though now they
are jealously guarded in some of the world’s finest collections. But
to _etch_ night, to _suggest_ moonlight--there was a problem indeed!
Whistler in his “Nocturnes” paints, so to speak, on his plate with
printer’s ink. Daubigny relies on lines alone, to produce his result.
“_Night cannot be etched_” is the dictum of more than one authority.
No, nor sunlight either, nor clouds! None of these things can be
pictured so that blind eyes can see them. But to those who will meet
the etcher half way, who are content with a suggestion and are capable
of reconstructing from it the artist’s mood, these simple linear plates
of Daubigny’s last period are a revelation and a delight. _Moonlight
on the Banks of the Oise_ measures scant four by six inches, yet what
a feeling of space there is in it! Only a born etcher could have
succeeded by means so simple, and seemingly inadequate, in capturing
the very spirit of such a scene.
Corot’s etched work comprises fourteen plates. It was not until 1845,
when he was in his fiftieth year, that he made his first experiment.
“Corot took a prepared copper-plate and drew in the outlines and masses
of the well-known _Souvenir of Tuscany_, but did not proceed to the
‘biting in’ process. Some years later Félix Bracquemond discovered the
plate in a nail-box at Corot’s studio and begged the master to complete
it, offering to take charge of the ‘biting in.’ Corot then took the
plate and added the tones and details of the final state.... There was
something in the use of mordants and acids that seemed to frighten
Corot, and he always called in some good friend such as Bracquemond,
Michelin or Delaunay to assist in this delicate process.”[15]
[15] Le Père Corot. By Robert J. Wickenden. The Print-Collector’s
Quarterly. Vol. 2, No. 3. p. 382.
In etching his method is as personal as in his painting. He entirely
disregards all the accepted canons of the art. Line, _as line_, hardly
exists in his plates; it is scribble, scribble, everywhere. The tree
trunks, the rocks, foreground and distance, often the foliage itself,
all are as “wrong as wrong can be,” so far as accurate representation
is concerned. Yet Corot, great artist and great nature poet, can
transgress every rule and still succeed in conveying his message. In
the best of his etchings he _does_ succeed admirably. _Souvenir of
Italy_ and _Environs of Rome_ of 1865 (Corot was then nearly seventy
years of age) are among the most interesting prints of the period. In
these plates, and others like them, Corot has given free rein to his
poetic and imaginative powers and has drawn upon his memory of the
Italy of his youth. In method, in their disregard of line, form
and texture, they are shining examples of what etching should _not_
be. In decorative quality, poetic suggestion, and sentiment they are
altogether delightful.
[Illustration: CAMILLE COROT. SOUVENIR OF ITALY
Size of the original etching, 11⅝ × 8⅝ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: JEAN-FRANÇOIS MILLET. THE GLEANERS
Size of the original etching, 7½ × 10 inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
In MILLET’S etchings the landscape and the figures are so inter-related
as to make any separate study of them unavailing. They are models of
significant draughtsmanship and profound feeling, in which nothing
is introduced that does not bear directly upon the main theme.
_Shepherdess Knitting_, _Peasants Going to Work_, _Two Men Digging_,
and above all the _Gleaners_, have each their perfect setting. The
wide-stretching plain, slightly undulating, shimmers in the hot summer
sunshine, which bathes in a golden glow the three women gleaning, the
harvesters gathering in the rich fruits of their toil, and the little
village, snuggling amid its trees in the far distance to the right.
Etchers, like poets, are “born, not made.” But, as also in the case
of poets, natural gifts will avail little if they are not reinforced
by that capacity for taking infinite pains, through which alone a man
may so master his medium as to shape it readily to his artistic needs.
The etched work of SEYMOUR HADEN is no chance happening. It is the
fruit of close and analytical study, by a man of forceful character
and scientific attainments, of the best model of style, the etchings
of Rembrandt; supplemented by a familiarity with the work of his
contemporaries in France, the land of clear and logical thinking; and
in no art is clarity and brevity of speech more essential than in
etching. From the beginning, Seymour Haden was in possession of all
his powers, both in etching and in dry-point. There is no uncertainty
in that which he wishes to say, no fumbling in his manner of saying
it. The reticences and half-hesitations of Daubigny are not for him;
there is no place for Corot’s scribbled poetry. He will give us a
strong man’s interpretation of the lovely English landscape, in which
he takes a pride, as in any other personal possession--God’s visible
and abounding bounty to a superior people. It is “the bones of things”
(his own phrase) that he wishes, above all else, to give. At his best
he succeeds magnificently, but in much of his work, structurally fine
though it be, it is the frame rather than the spirit that he portrays.
[Illustration: SEYMOUR HADEN. CARDIGAN BRIDGE
Size of the original etching, 4½ × 5⅞ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: SEYMOUR HADEN. BY-ROAD IN TIPPERARY
Size of the original etching, 7½ × 11¼ inches]
[Illustration: SEYMOUR HADEN. SUNSET IN IRELAND
Size of the original dry-point, 5⅜ × 8½ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: SEYMOUR HADEN. SAWLEY ABBEY
Size of the original etching, 10 × 14⅞ inches
In the Collection of the Author]
_A Water Meadow_ (incidentally, a plate which the artist himself liked)
is a fine transcript of a sudden shower in the Hampshire lowlands. It
is bold and painter-like, admirable from every point of view, though
some may prefer _On the Test_, with its truly noble sky, etched later
in the day from a somewhat different point of view. _Cardigan Bridge_
is a model of what a sketch should be, free, suggestive, spontaneous,
yet full of knowledge. It is one of five similar plates, etched
in a single day, August 17, 1864, a “good day” indeed, such as rarely
comes to etchers or to painters! The more one sees of modern etching,
the more one is inclined to value work of this order. It is so easy,
so fatally easy, to make wriggles in the water and scribbles in the
sky; but to suggest, by these seeming careless loops and latchets, the
flow of the river, the movement of clouds, the splendor of the setting
sun--_that_ indeed is another matter! Yet all this, and more, Seymour
Haden has done in a magisterial manner.
_By-road in Tipperary_ is the largest and most highly prized of his
woodland plates and well deserves the reputation it so long has
enjoyed. Structurally the trees are very fine, both as to branch and
stem drawing; and, as in the two plates of _Kensington Gardens_, the
suggestion of foliage with the light filtering through the leaves is
quite beautiful. _Sunset in Ireland_ is a plate which the artist,
the collector, and the general public all unite in praising. “_That_
is the plate,” said Seymour Haden, shortly before his death, “which,
in years to come, will fetch the enormous prices!” And his prophecy
has come true. Both in its earlier states, less rich in burr, with a
luminous evening effect, and in the later and darker impressions, it is
“a thing of beauty”--one of the most remarkable landscape plates of
modern times, wherein the artist has captured, for once, all the poetry
and melancholy sentiment of the twilight hour. _Sawley Abbey_, on the
River Ribble in Lancashire, has, to some of us, however, a “swing” and
pattern, which make of it a better and more manly plate. It must be
seen in an early state to be adequately judged. For some inexplicable
reason the artist saw fit later to “clean up” the sky and all the
foreground to the right, leaving the plate cold, empty, and almost
meaningless.
_Nine Barrow Down_, a dry-point, is in Haden’s happiest vein. It is
instinct with that priceless quality, the “art which conceals art,” and
is so seeming simple that one may readily forget that its “simplicity”
is the result of a most rigid selection of the essential lines, guided
by the knowledge of a lifetime.
There is a growing tendency among the younger and more “advanced”
collectors to belittle Seymour Haden and his work. Unquestionably there
are many etchings which fall far short of his best; but _at his best_,
in the dozen or two plates of which he himself approved, he towers far
above any of his contemporaries, and there seems little likelihood of
his supremacy in landscape being seriously threatened.
[Illustration: J. A. McN. WHISTLER. ZAANDAM (First State)
Size of the original etching, 5⅛ × 8⅝ inches
In the Collection of Howard Mansfield, Esq.]
[Illustration: REMBRANDT. VIEW OF AMSTERDAM FROM THE EAST
Size of the original etching, 4⅛ × 5⅞ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
WHISTLER, “the greatest etcher and the most accomplished
lithographer who ever lived” (according to Mr. Joseph Pennell),
seems to have interested himself in landscape hardly at all. Not even
his most ardent disciples would assert that the master’s few purely
landscape plates contribute greatly to the pyramid of his fame. But
even here one must tread softly. _Whistlerium tremens_ is still a
highly contagious disease; and has not his official biographer written
“All his work is alike perfect”? How then may a modest lecturer presume
to praise or compare? Let Mr. Pennell speak: “Look at Rembrandt’s
prints made, I do not know whether with Amsterdam or Zaandam in the
background, and then at Whistler’s of the same subjects. Rembrandt drew
and bit and printed these little plates as no one had up to his time.
But Whistler is as much in advance of Rembrandt as that great artist
was of his predecessors. In these little distant views of absolutely
the same subject, Whistler has triumphed. It is not necessary to
explain how: you have only to see the prints to know it.... The older
master is conservative and mannered; the modern master, respecting all
the great art of the past, is gracious and sensitive, and perfectly
free.”
“You have only to see the prints to know it.” Well, let us look at
two of them: Rembrandt’s _View of Amsterdam_, of 1640, and Whistler’s
_Zaandam_. “Why drag in Velasquez?” the master of the gentle art of
making enemies is reported to have said, upon one historic occasion.
This time, so far as landscape etching is concerned, may it not be
Rembrandt’s turn to say, “Why drag in Whistler?”
LANDSCAPE ETCHING
BIBLIOGRAPHY
FINE PRINTS. _By Frederick Wedmore._ 15 illustrations. Edinburgh: John
Grant. 1905.
THE GREAT PAINTER-ETCHERS FROM REMBRANDT TO WHISTLER. _By Malcolm C.
Salaman. Edited by Charles Holme._ 191 illustrations. London, Paris,
New York: The Studio. 1914.
FOUR MASTERS OF ETCHING. [Haden, Jacquemart, Whistler, Legros.] _By
Frederick Wedmore._ Original etchings by Haden, Jacquemart, Whistler,
and Legros. London: Fine Art Society. 1883.
DUTCH ETCHERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. _By Laurence Binyon._ 4
reproductions and 29 text illustrations. London: Seeley & Co. 1895.
(Portfolio Artistic Monographs. No. 21.)
ALTDORFER, ALBRECHT (c. 1480-1538)
ALBRECHT ALTDORFER. _By T. Sturge Moore. Edited by Laurence Binyon._
25 illustrations. New York: Longmans, Green & Co.; London: The Unicorn
Press. 1901.
ALBRECHT ALTDORFERS LANDSCHAFTS RADIERUNGEN. _Edited by Max J.
Friedländer._ 9 reproductions and 1 text illustration. Berlin: Bruno
Cassirer. 1906. (Graphische Gesellschaft. Publication 3.)
ALBRECHT ALTDORFER AND WOLF HUBER. _By Hermann Voss._ 160
reproductions on 63 plates. Leipzig: Klinkhardt & Biermann. 1910.
(Meister der Graphik. Vol. 3.)
GELLÉE, CLAUDE, called LORRAIN (1600-1682)
CLAUDE LORRAIN; PAINTER AND ETCHER. _By George Graham._ 4
reproductions and 23 text illustrations. London: Seeley & Co. 1895.
(The Portfolio Artistic Monographs.)
REMBRANDT HARMENSZ VAN RIJN (See also Bibliography under “Some Masters
of Portraiture,” p. 224.)
REMBRANDT’S LANDSCAPE ETCHINGS. _By Laurence Binyon._ 8 illustrations.
The Print-Collector’s Quarterly, Vol. 2, No. 4, pp. 407-432. Boston.
1912.
JACQUE, CHARLES ÉMILE (1813-1894)
L’OEUVRE DE CH. JACQUE; CATALOGUE DE SES EAUX-FORTES ET POINTES
SÈCHES. _By Jules Marie Joseph Guiffrey._ With an original etching.
Paris: Mlle. Lemaire. 1866.
----. NOUVELLES EAUX-FORTES ET POINTES SÈCHES. Supplement au
catalogue. Paris: Jouaust & Sigaux. 1884.
CHARLES JACQUE. _By Robert J. Wickenden._ 18 illustrations. The
Print-Collector’s Quarterly, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 74-101. Boston. 1912.
---- ----. Reprinted. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. 1914.
(Print-Collectors’ Booklets.)
DAUBIGNY, CHARLES FRANCOIS (1817-1878)
C. DAUBIGNY ET SON OEUVRE GRAVÉ. _By Frédéric Henriet._ 5 original
etchings and 4 reproductions. Paris: A. Levy. 1875.
DAUBIGNY. _By Jean Laran._ 48 reproductions. Paris: Librairie centrale
des Beaux-Arts. n. d. (L’Art de Notre Temps.)
CHARLES-FRANÇOIS DAUBIGNY; PAINTER AND ETCHER. _By Robert J.
Wickenden._ 15 illustrations. The Print-Collector’s Quarterly, Vol. 3,
No. 2, pp. 177-206. Boston. 1913.
---- ----. Reprinted. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. 1914.
(Print-Collectors’ Booklets.)
COROT, JEAN BAPTISTE CAMILLE (1796-1875)
COROT. _By Loys Delteil._ An original etching and 102 reproductions.
Paris: L’auteur. 1910. (Le peintre-graveur illustré, XIXᵉ et XXᵉ
siècles. Vol. 5.)
COROT AND MILLET. _With critical essays by Gustave Geffroy and Arsène
Alexandre. Edited by Charles Holme._ 120 illustrations. London, Paris,
New York: John Lane. 1902. (The Studio.)
“LE PÈRE COROT.” _By Robert J. Wickenden._ 9 illustrations. The
Print-Collector’s Quarterly, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 365-386. Boston. 1912.
---- ----. Reprinted. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. 1914.
(Print-Collectors’ Booklets.)
MILLET, JEAN-FRANÇOIS (1814-1875)
JEAN-FRANÇOIS MILLET. _By Arsène Alexandre._ THE ETCHINGS OF J. F.
MILLET. _By Frederick Keppel._ 85 illustrations. London and New York:
John Lane. 1903. (The Studio.)
JEAN-FRANÇOIS MILLET. _By Loys Delteil._ Illustrated. Paris: L’auteur.
1906. (Le peintre-graveur illustré, XIXᵉ et XXᵉ siècles. Vol. I.)
ALFRED LEBRUN’S CATALOGUE OF THE ETCHINGS, HELIOGRAPHS, LITHOGRAPHS
AND WOODCUTS DONE BY JEAN-FRANÇOIS MILLET. _Translated from the French
by Frederick Keppel._ With additional notes and a sketch of the
artist’s life. 7 reproductions. New York: Frederick Keppel & Co. 1887.
JEAN-FRANÇOIS MILLET; PAINTER-ETCHER. _By Mrs. Schuyler Van
Rensselaer._ With a biographical sketch of Millet by Frederick Keppel.
11 illustrations. New York: Frederick Keppel & Co. 1901. (The Keppel
Booklets. 1st series.)
THE ART AND ETCHINGS OF JEAN-FRANÇOIS MILLET. _By Robert J.
Wickenden._ 14 illustrations. The Print-Collector’s Quarterly, Vol. 2,
No. 2, pp. 225-250. Boston. 1912.
---- ----. Reprinted. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. 1914.
(Print-Collectors’ Booklets.)
MILLET’S DRAWINGS IN THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON. _By Robert J.
Wickenden._ 11 illustrations. The Print-Collector’s Quarterly, Vol. 4,
No. 1, pp. 3-30. Boston. 1914.
HADEN, FRANCIS SEYMOUR (1818-1910)
A DESCRIPTIVE CATALOGUE OF THE ETCHED WORK OF FRANCIS SEYMOUR HADEN.
_By Sir William Richard Drake._ London: Macmillan & Co. 1880.
THE ENGRAVED WORK OF SIR FRANCIS SEYMOUR HADEN, P. R. E. _By H. Nazeby
Harrington._ 250 reproductions on 109 plates. Liverpool: Henry Young &
Sons. 1910.
THE WATER-COLORS AND DRAWINGS OF SIR SEYMOUR HADEN, P. R. E. _By H.
Nazeby Harrington._ 8 illustrations. The Print-Collector’s Quarterly,
Vol. 1, No. 4, pp. 405-419. Boston. 1911.
SIR SEYMOUR HADEN, PAINTER-ETCHER. _By Frederick Keppel._ 5
illustrations. New York: Frederick Keppel & Co. 1901. (The Keppel
Booklets. 1st series.)
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF SIR SEYMOUR HADEN, P. R. E. _By Frederick
Keppel._ 27 illustrations. The Print-Collector’s Quarterly. 2 parts.
Part I. Vol. 1, No. 3, pp. 291-316. Part II. Vol 1, No. 4, pp.
421-442. Boston. 1911.
WHISTLER, JAMES ABBOTT McNEILL
THE ETCHED WORK OF WHISTLER. ILLUSTRATED BY REPRODUCTIONS IN
COLLOTYPE OF THE DIFFERENT STATES OF THE PLATES. _Compiled, arranged,
and described by Edward G. Kennedy. With an introduction by Royal
Cortissoz._ 1002 reproductions. New York: The Grolier Club. 1910.
A DESCRIPTIVE CATALOGUE OF THE ETCHINGS AND DRYPOINTS OF JAMES ABBOTT
McNEILL WHISTLER. _By Howard Mansfield._ 1 portrait. Chicago: Caxton
Club. 1909.
WHISTLER AS A CRITIC OF HIS OWN PRINTS. _By Howard Mansfield._ 12
illustrations. The Print-Collector’s Quarterly, Vol. 3, No. 4, pp.
367-393. Boston. 1913.
THE LIFE OF JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER. _By Elizabeth Robins Pennell and
Joseph Pennell._ 97 illustrations. 5th edition. Philadelphia: J. B.
Lippincott Company. 1911.
MR. WHISTLER’S LITHOGRAPHS; THE CATALOGUE. _By Thomas R. Way._ 1
lithograph. London: George Bell & Sons. 1896.
WHISTLER’S LITHOGRAPHS. _By Thomas R. Way._ 18 illustrations. The
Print-Collector’s Quarterly, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 279-309. Boston. 1913.
THE LITHOGRAPHS BY WHISTLER, ILLUSTRATED BY REPRODUCTIONS IN
PHOTOGRAVURE AND LITHOGRAPHY, ARRANGED ACCORDING TO THE CATALOGUE
BY THOMAS R. WAY, WITH ADDITIONAL SUBJECTS NOT BEFORE RECORDED. 166
reproductions. New York: Kennedy & Co. 1914.
THE ART OF JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER. _By T. R. Way and G. R. Dennis._ 11
portraits and 41 plates. London: George Bell & Sons. 1904.
WHISTLER’S ETCHINGS; A STUDY AND A CATALOGUE. _By Frederick Wedmore._
London: A. W. Thibaudeau. 1886.
----. Same. 2nd edition. London: P. & D. Colnaghi & Co. 1899.
THE GENTLE ART OF MAKING ENEMIES. _By J. A. McN. Whistler._ London:
William Heinemann. 1890.
----. Same. 2nd edition. 1892.
----. Same. 3rd edition. 1904.
THE GENTLE ART OF MAKING ENEMIES. _Edited by Sheridan Ford._ Paris:
Delabrosse & Compagnie. 1890.
CAMERON, DAVID YOUNG (1865- )
D. Y. CAMERON; AN ILLUSTRATED CATALOGUE OF HIS ETCHED WORK; WITH AN
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY AND DESCRIPTIVE NOTES ON EACH PLATE. _By Frank
Rinder._ 444 reproductions. Glasgow: J. MacLehose & Sons. 1912.
CAMERON’S ETCHINGS; A STUDY AND A CATALOGUE. _By Frederick Wedmore._
London: R. Gutekunst. 1903.
BONE, MUIRHEAD (1876- )
ETCHINGS AND DRYPOINTS BY MUIRHEAD BONE. _By Campbell Dodgson._
Portrait. London: Obach & Co. 1909.
Transcriber’s Notes:
Italics are shown thus: _sloping_.
Small capitals have been capitalised.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.
Punctuation has been retained as published.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Engravers and Etchers: Six Lectures Delivered on the Scammon Foundation at the Art Institute of Chicago, March 1916" ***
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