HYALE UKIVBRSITYIIIIIK >SCHOOL OF THE FINE AECTS < PRINTS AND THEIR MAKERS Profile Bust of a Young Woman After Leonardo da Vinci "Of the prints attributed to Leonardo, the fascinating Profile Bust of a Toinip Wo^iian stands out from the rest for the sensitive quality of its outline, but even here I would be more ready to see the hand of an engraver like Zoan Andrea." Arthur M. Hind. Reproduced from the unique impression in the British Museum PRINTS AND THEIR MAKERS ESSAYS ON ENGRAVERS AND ETCHERS OLD AND MODERN EDITED BY FITZROY CARRINGTON EDITOR OF "THE PRINT-COLLECTOR'S QUARTERLY' WITH. 200 ILLUSTRATIONS NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1912 Copyright, 1912, by The Century Co. Copyright, 1911, 1912, by Frederick Keppel & Co. Published October, igis THE DEVINNE PRESS TO FREDERICK KEPPEL IN MEMORY OF A FRIENDSHIP OF TWENTY YEARS THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED BY THE EDITOR CONTENTS PAGE Dueee's Woodcuts 1 By CAMPBELL DODGSON, M.A. Some Eaely Italian Engeavbes befoee the Time OF Maecantonio 17 By aethue M. HIND A Peince of Peint-Collectoes : Michel de Maeolles, Abbe de Yillbloin 33 By LOUIS E. METCALFE Jean Moein 52 By LOUIS E. METCALFE ROBEET Nanteuil 70 By LOUIS E. METCALFE Eembeandt's Landscape Etchings 94 By LAUEBNCB BINYON Giovanni Battista Pieanesi 112 By benjamin BUEGBS MOOEB Feancisco Goya y Lucientes 153 By chaeles H, CAPFIN A Note on Goya 164 By WILLIAM M. IVINS, JE. vii 1309 |l/7/.<^ n viii CONTENTS PAGE The Etchings op Foetuny 166 By eoyal CORTISSOZ PeESONAL CHAEACTEEISTICS OF SlE SeYMOUE Haden, P.R.E 173 By feedeeick KEPPEL The Watee-Coloes and Deawings op Sie Eaden, P.R.E By H. NAZBBY HAEEINGTON Seymoue Haden, P.R.E 196 Meeyon and Baudelaiee 204 By william ASPENWALL BEADLBY FiLix Beacquemond: An Etchee of Bieds .... 220 By PEANK WEITENKAMPF Auguste Lepeee 228 By ELISABETH LUTHEE OAEY Herman A. Webstee 239 By MAETIN HAEDIB Andees Zoen — Paintee-Etchee 259 By j. NILSEN LAUEVIK LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Profile Bust op a Youns Woman Frontispiece FACING PAGE Durer. Portrait of Albert Diirer, aged 56 2 The Four Eiders of the Apocalypse 3 The Whore of Babylon, Seated upon the Beast with Seven Heads and Ten Horns 4 Christ Bearing His Cross 5 The Eesurrection . 6 Samson and the Lion 7 The Annunciation to Joachim 8 The Annunciation 9 The Flight into Egypt 10 The Assumption and Crowning of the "Virgin .... 11 St. Jerome in his Cell 12 The Holy Family 13 Saint Christopher 14 The Virgin with the Many Angels 15 Bartolommeo di Giovanni. Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne 18 Botticelli. The Assumption of the Virgin 19 Finiguerea School. The Libyan Sibyl 20 Finiguerra School. The Libyan Sibyl 21 Maso Finiguerra. The Planet Mercury 22 Finiguerea School. A Young Man and Woman Each Holding an Apple . . 23 Antonio Pollaiuolo. Battle of Naked Men 24 Ckistofano Eobetta. The Adoration of the Magi ... 25 Andrea Mantegna. The Eisen Christ between St. Andrew and St. Longinus 26 X LIST OF ILLUSTEATIONS FACING PAGE Zoan Andeea (?). Four Women Dancing . . . .27 NicoLETTO DA MODENA. The Adoration of the Shepherds . 28 jACoro de 'Barbakl Apollo and Diana 29 Giulio Campagnola. St. John the Baptist ... . . 30 Giulio and Domenico Campagnola. Shepherds in a Land scape 31 Claude Mellan. Portrait of Michel de MaroUes, Abbe de Villeloin 38 Nanteuil. Portrait of Michel de MaroUes, Abbe de Villeloin 39 Jules, Cardinal Mazarin 42 Louis XIV 43 Claude Mellan. Agatha Castiglione 50 Claude de MaroUes ... ... 51 Moein. Louis XIII, King of France 54 Anne of Austria, Eegent of France ... ... 55 Cardinal Eichelieu . . 58 Pierre Maugis des Granges . 59 Henri de Lorraine, Comte d 'Harcourt ... . 62 Guido, Cardinal Bentivoglio .... .... 63 Nicolas Chrystin ... ... 66 Antoine Vitr6 67 Jean-FranQois-Paul de Gondi .68 Omer Talon 69 Nanteuil. Louis XIV 76 Anne of Austria, Queen of France . . .... 77 Jules, Cardinal Mazarin 78 Bernard de Poix de la Valette, Due d 'Epernon ... 79 Jean Loret . . 82 Francois de la Mothe le Vayer 83 Nicolas Fouquet . . 86 Basile Fouquet .... . . 87 Jean Chapelain . . .... 88 Pompone de BeUiSvre 89 Henri de la Tour d 'Auvergne, Vicomte de Turenne, Marechai de France 90 Jean-Baptiste Colbert .... . . .... 91 LIST OP ILLUSTEATIONS xi FACING PAGE Eembrandt. The Windmill 96 View of Amsterdam . . 97 The Three Trees. . 10'2 Six's Bridge 103 Landscape with a Boat in the Canal 104 Farm with Trees and a Tower . . 105 The Gold- weigher's Field 106 Landscape with a Milkman 107 F. Polanzani. Portrait of Giovanni Battista Piranesi . . 112 Pieanesi. Arch of Septimius Severus . 113 Arch of Vespasian 114 Arch of Trajan at Benevento, in the Kingdom of Naples 115 The Basilica, Psestum 116 The Temple of Neptune at Paestum . 117 The Temple of Concord 118 Site of the Ancient Eoman Forum . . ... 119 View of the "Campo Vaccine" 120 The Arch of Titus 121 The Arch of Titus 122 Fagade of St. John Lateran .... 123 View of the Euins of the Golden House of Nero, Com monly Called the Temple of Peace 124 Interior of the Pantheon, Eome 125 Piazza Navona, Eome . . 126 Interior of the Villa of Msecenas, at Tivoli .... 127 The Temple of ApoUo, near Tivoli 128 The Falls at Tivoli . . 129 The Falls at Tivoli 130 St. Peter 's and the Vatican 131 The Villa d'Este at TivoU 132 Title-page of "The Prisons" 133 The Prisons. Plate III . . 134 The Prisons. Plate IV 135 The Prisons. Plate V 136 The Prisons. Plate VI . . . . . -137 The Prisons. Plate IX 138 The Prisons. Plate VII . . . • • -139 The Prisons. Plate VIII 140 The Prisons. Plate XI . . . . ¦ -141 xii LIST OF ILLUSTEATIONS FACING PAGE Piranesi. The Prisons. Plate XIII 142 The Prisons. Plate XIV 143 Francesco Piranesi. Statue of Piranesi 146 Piranesi. Antique Marble Vase 147 Section of one of the Sides of the Great Eoom, or Li brary, of Earl Mansfield's Villa at Kenwood. En graved by I. Zucchi 148 Ionic Order of the Anteroom, with the rest of the De tail of that Eoom at Sion House, the Seat of the Duke of Northumberland in the County of Middlesex. En graved by Piranesi 149 Title-page to "II Campo Marzio dell 'Antica Eoma ' ' . 150 Upper left-hand Portion, bearing a Dedication to Eob ert Adam, of Piranesi 's etched plan of the Campus Martius 151 Goya. Portrait of Goya, drawn and etched by himself . . 154 The Dead Branch 155 Back to his Ancestors! 156 "Birds of a Feather Flock Together" 157 They have Kidnapped her 158 ' ' Bon Voyage ! " 159 The Infuriated StaUion 160 The Bird-Men 161 Good Advice ... 162 God Forgive her — It 's her own Mother! 163 Love and Death 164 Hunting for Teeth 165 FoRTUNY. Arab watching beside the Dead Body of his Friend 166 Idyll 167 The Serenade 168 A Moroccan Seated 169 A Horse of Morocco . . 170 Interior of the Church of Saint Joseph, Madrid . . . 171 Portrait of Seymour Haden. At the Age of Sixty-two. By C. W. Sherborn 174 Haden. Portrait of Seymour Haden etched by himself at the Age of Forty-four 175 Portrait of Sir Seymour Haden. By A. Legros . . . 176 Woodcote Manor. By Percy Thomas 177 LIST OF ILLUSTEATIONS xiii FACING PAGE Haden. Eeproduction of a Page of Manuscript in the Handwriting of Sir Seymour Haden 178 Facsimile of the Certificate of Seymour Haden 's Can didacy for Membership in the Athenseum Club . . . 179 Whistler's House, Old Chelsea 180 Battersea Eeach 181 Out of Study Window 182 Thomas Haden of Derby 183 PORTRAIT op Seymour Haden in 1882 (photograph) . . . 184 Portrait of Sir Seymour Haden. By J. Wells Champney 185 Mytton Hall 186 On the Test 187 A By-road in Tipperary 188 A Sunset in Ireland 189 A Lancashire Eiver ... 190 Sawley Abbey 191 The Breaking-up of the Agamemnon 192 Calais Pier 193 An Early Eiser 194 Harlech 195 Salmon Pool on the Spey 198 Old Oaks, Chatsworth 199 Course of the Eibble below Preston 200 Dinkley Ferry 201 Encombe Woods 202 An Elderly Couple, Chatsworth Park 203 Bracquemond. Frontispiece for "Lea Fleurs du Mal" of Baudelaire 206 POETEAIT OF CHAELES BAUDELAIRE. By Bracquemond . . 207 Poeteait of Charles Meeyon. By Bracquemond . . . 208 Meryon. Le Pont au Change 209 Le Petit Pont 210 Portrait op Charles Meryon. By Flameng 211 Bracquemond. Ducks at Play 220 A Flock of Teal Alighting 221 Pheasants at Dawn: Morning Mists 222 The Bather (Canards Surpris) 223 Geese in a Storm 224 xiv LIST OF ILLUSTEATIONS FACING PAGE Bracquemond. Sea-gulls 225 The Old Cook 226 Swallows in Flight 227 LEPi)RE. Eheims Cathedral 228 Belle Matinee. Automne ... 229 Vue du Port de la Meule 230 Peupliers Tetards 231 Le Moulin des Chapelles 234 A Gentilly 284 La Chaumi6re du Vieux Pecheur . . 235 Le Nid 235 Proving 236 L 'Eglise de Jouy le Moutier 236 L'Enfant Prodigue 237 Webster. St. Ouen, Eouen 240 La Eue Grenier sur I'Eau, Paris . 241 Quai MontebeUo 242 Le Pont Neuf, Paris 243 La Eue Cardinale . . 244 La Eue de la Parcheminerie, Paris 245 St. Saturnin, Toulouse . . . 246 Ancienne Faculte de Medecine, Paris .... . 247 Notre Dame des Andelys .... 248 Port des Marmousets, St. Ouen, Eouen . . ... 249 VieiUes Maisons, Eue HautefeuiUe, Paris ... . 250 La Eoute de Louviers . . . 251 Bendergasse, Frankfort . . 252 Cortlandt Street, New York 253 Lowenplatzchen, Frankfort . 254 Der Danger Franz, Frankfort . ... ... 255 The Old Bridge, Frankfort 256 La Eue St. Jacques, Paris 257 Zoen. Portrait of the Artist and his Wife 260 The WaUz 261 Madame Simon . . . ' 262 Ernest Eenan 263 August Strindberg 264 Sunday Morning in Dalecarlia 265 The Bather, Seated 266 Edo 267 PREFACE ' /^~AOOD wine needs no bush," and these essays need I -»- no commendatory word from the Editor. The ^-^ plan of this book is a simple one. Certain lov ers of prints have been asked to write on the engravers, etchers, or periods which chiefly interest them and upon whieh they are best qualified to speak ; and, further more, to treat their special subjects in their own way. So far as subject matter is concerned, the essays are grouped approximately in chronological order, and the reader may range from Italian engravers before the time of Raphael and woodcuts by Albrecht Diirer to contemporary etchings by Zorn, Lepfere, and Herman A. Webster. Throughout the essays one dominant note will be found — a sincere love of Prints and an interest in their Makers. FiTzRoY Carrington. New York, September, 1912. DURER'S W^OODCUTS By CAMPBELL DODGSON, M.A. Keeper of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum Author of the Catalogue of German and Flemish Woodcuts in the British Museum and Honorary Secretary of the Durer Society THE first decade of the twentieth century lies not very far behind us, but perhaps it is not too soon to assert that one of its marked fea tures, in the retrospect of a print-lover, is a great revival or extension of interest in every form of engraving among cultivated people who are not spe cialists. Increased attention has been paid, among other things, to the German woodcuts of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which used to be rather despised by the old-fashioned nineteenth-century col lector, with a few enlightened exceptions, as rough and ugly old things which were curious as speci mens of antiquity or instructive as illustrations of the life and religion of the generations that pro duced them, but were not to be taken very seriously as works of art. That estimate is being revised. A generation no longer blinded to the merits of primi tive art by the worship of Raphael and the antique is ever tapping fresh sources of delight and enriching itself by the perception of beauty where its fathers saw nought but the grotesque and quaint. It is not surprising, indeed, that German art has made slower progress than Italian on the road to popularity. Even 2 PRINTS AND THEIE MAKEES the primitives, on the south side of the Alps, shared in the winning grace and suavity of the old Mediter ranean culture, while their brethren in the North, the French excepted, were indisputably more rugged and barbarous in draughtsmanship and painting, and few of their engravers, except Schongauer, can vie with the Florentines if their achievements are judged by the test of formal beauty. But it is wonderful how, in the North, now and again, art could suddenly blos som and ripen under the creative impulse of an in novator, whose successors, rather than the pioneer himself, lay themselves open to the charge of angu larity and uncouthness. The perfection of the very earliest printed books is a commonplace. Less gen erally known, perhaps, is the great beauty to which the earliest of all the German engravers known to us at all as a personality, though not by name, was capa ble of attaining. The "Master of the Playing-Cards, " who was at work about 1430-40, produced work of extraordinary charm, not only in some of the figures, animals and flowers of the playing-cards themselves, but especially in the large engraving of the Virgin Mary with the human-headed serpent, or Lilith, be neath her feet, which is one of the most splendid and mature creations of the fifteenth century. Then, again, the early book illustrators of Augsburg and Ulm, in the seventies, when the use of blocks for such a pur pose had only recently come in, produced woodcuts that were never surpassed by any successors in their simple and direct vivacity and strength, with the ut most economy of line. But the real beauty of some of the much earlier single woodcuts, illustrating, chiefly, the legends of Our Lady and the Saints, has been Durer. Portrait of Albert Durer, aged 56 The rare sefond state (of 3 states) before the monogram of Diirer and the date 1.527 Size of the orii,^iii:iI woodcut, 12^4 < 10 inches Durer. The Four Riders of the Apocalypse From "The .Vpiifalypse" Size of the original woodc-nt, ISH xll inches DtJEEE'S WOOD-CUTS 3 much less generally appreciated. They are very rare, and most of them repose, in a seclusion seldom dis turbed, in their boxes in the great European print- rooms or even in monastic libraries. They are only beginning to be reproduced, and they are rarely ex hibited. But such an exhibition of the earliest Ger man woodcuts as was held at Berlin in the summer of 1908 was truly a revelation. The soft and rounded features, the flowing lines of the drapery, in the prints of the generation before sharp, broken folds were in troduced under the influence of the Netherlands, have something of the charm of Far Eastern art, and the gay coloring with which most of the prints were fin ished has often a delightfully decorative effect when they are framed and hung at a proper distance from the eye. Such praise is due, of course, only to some of the choicer examples; there are plenty of fifteenth- century woodcuts in which the line is merely clumsy and the coloring merely gaudy, but these are more often products of the last quarter of the century than of its beginning or middle. It would not be true to say that the advance of time brought with it progress and perfection in the woodcutter's art; on the con trary, the flrst vital impulse spent itself all too soon, and gave way to thoughtless and unintelligent imita tion. What was the state of things when Diirer appeared upon the scene ? He did so long before the close of the fifteenth century, for his flrst authenticated woodcut is an illustration to St. Jerome's Epistles, printed at Basle in 1492. Whether he or an unknown artist is responsible for a large number of other illustrations produced at Basle about 1493-95, is a question about 4 PRINTS AND THEIE MAKEES which no consensus of opinion has been formed, and this is not the place to discuss it. All the woodcuts that the world knows and esteems as Diirer 's were pro duced at Nuremberg after his return from the first Venetian journey (1495) . Let us see, for a moment, how they stand comparison with what had gone before them. The older woodcuts are nearly all anonymous, and if they bear any signature, it is that of a woodcutter (Formsehneider or Brief maler) who was a craftsman allied to the joiner, rather than the painter. Just be fore Diirer 's time the painter begins to make his ap pearance on the scene as a designer of woodcuts. There are a few isolated cases in which the almost universal rule of anonymity is broken, and we learn from the preface to a book the name of the artist who designed the illustrations. Breydenbach's "Travels to the Holy Land" (Mainz, 1486) was illustrated by woodcuts after Erhard Reuwich, or Rewich, a native of Utrecht, who had accompanied the author on his journey, and the immense number of woodcuts in the "Nuremberg Chronicle" by HartmannSchedel (1493) were the work of the painters Wohlgemuth and Pley- denwurff ; to whom the much finer illustrations of the ' ' Schatzbehalter" (1491) may also safely be attributed. It is now almost universally believed that the "Master of the Hausbuch," one of Diirer 's most gifted prede cessors in the art of engraving on copper, was also a proliflc illustrator, the principal work assigned to him being the numerous illustrations in the "Spiegel der mensehlichen Behaltnis" printed by Peter Drach at Speyer about 1478-80. There are speculations, more or less ill-founded, about the illustrators of a few other woodcut books of the fifteenth century, but I be- DijRER. The Whore of Babylon, Seated upon the Beast with Seven Heads and Ten Horns From "The Apocalypse" Size of the original woodcut, 1514 x 11 inches DijRER. Christ Bearing His Cross Prom "The Great Passion" Size of the original woodcut, 15%xlll^ inches DtJEEB'S WOOD-CUTS 5 lieve it is true that the first book after those already named in which the artist's name is settled beyond doubt is Diirer 's "Apocalypse" of 1498. Dr. Naumann, the editor of a recent facsimile of the cuts in the Speyer book just mentioned, claims for the "Hausbuchmeister" that he was the flrst painter, or painter-engraver, who attempted to get the most out of the craftsmen employed in cutting blocks from his designs. That is rather a speculative opinion, and the woodcuts in question are not, from the technical point of view, superior to many other contemporary illus trations. But there can be no question that Diirer effected an immense reform in this respect, and carried the technique of wood-engraving to a perfec tion unparalleled in its previous history. Not by his owu handiwork, for there is no reason to suppose that Diirer ever cut his blocks himself. All the evidence points, on the contrary, to his having followed the universal practice of the time, according to which the designer drew the composition in all detail upon the wood block, and employed a professional engraver to cut the block, preserving all the lines intact, and cut ting away the spaces between them, so that the result was a facsimile of the drawing as accurate as the craftsman was capable of making it. Diirer set his engravers, we may be sure, a harder task than they had ever had to grapple with before, and he must have succeeded in gradually training a man, or group of men, on whom he could rely to preserve his drawing in all its delicacy and intricate com plexity. This was a work of time, and perfection was not reached till after Diirer 's return from his second joumey to Venice, when a great increase 6 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES of refinement on the technical side becomes no ticeable, culminating in that extraordinary perform- .ance, the Holy Trinity woodcut of 1511. But even in the large fifteenth-century blocks, the "Apoca lypse," the earlier portion of the "Great Passion" and the contemporary single subjects, much cross- hatching is used and the space is filled with detail to an extent hitherto unknown. Without ever losing sight of the general decorative effect, the telling pat tern of black and white, Diirer put in a vast amount of interesting little things, with the conscientiousness and care that characterized everything that he did, and every detail of the leaves of a thistle or fern, or of the elaborate ornament, birds and flowers and foli age and rams' heads, on the base of a Gothic candle stick, had to be reproduced so that the crisp clearness of the original pen-drawing lost nothing of its pre cision. The result was a work so perfectly complete in black and white, as it stood, that nobody ever thought of coloring it, and that in itself was a great innovation and advance. The flfteenth-century "II- luminirer," or the patron who gave him his orders, seems to have had an instinctive respect for excellent and highly finished work in black and white, whieh made him leave it alone. Line-engravings of the fifteenth century are very frequently found colored, but they are usually quite second-rate specimens, and prints by the great men,suchasthe "Master E. S." and Schongauer, were respected and left alone. But such consideration was not often shown to woodcuts, which were frequently colored, especially when used as illus trations, well into the sixteenth century. It was very rarely, however, that any illuminator laid profane Durer. The Resurrection From "The (Ji(.':it Pa.ssion" Size of the original woodcut, 15% - Kiyi inches DiJRER. Samson and the Lion Size of the original woodcut, 15 x 1117^ inche DUEEE'S WOOD-CUTS 7 hands on anything of Diirer 's, woodcut or engraving, and when he did so the result is stupid and disagreea ble, for it is always the work of a later generation, out of touch with Diirer 's genius. It may be said that if Diirer and his contemporaries did not cut their own blocks, the woodcuts are not original prints by the masters themselves. It must be conceded- that they are not original prints quite in the same sense as engravings and etchings, in which the whole work was carried out upon the plate by the masters' own hand, but it would be a mistake to de scribe them as examples of reproductive engraving. Such a thing as a reproductive engraving was, in fact, unknown in the Germany of Diirer 's time. A design originally projected in one medium might be repro duced in another in a case where an engraving by Schongauer, or Meckenen, or Diirer himself, was copied by some inferior woodcutter, as an act of piracy, for a bookseller who was too stingy to pay an artist to draw him a new Virgin or Saint for his pur pose. But it would never have occurred to any one to reproduce an engraving or woodcut, a picture or draw ing, done for its own sake, as a separate and complete work of art. Eeproductions of pictures scarcely ex ist in German art of the sixteenth century; they are commoner in the Venetian School, among the wood cutters influenced by Titian, and Rubens established the practice once for all by his encouragement of en graving from his pictures, a century after Diirer 's time. But when woodcutting was taken up by the German painters, with Diirer as their leader, for the purpose of circulating their compositions at a cheaper price than they could charge for engravings of their 8 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES own, they always had a strictly legitimate object ac cording to the canons of graphic art. Rarely work ing even from sketches, never from a work already finished in another medium, they drew the subjects intended for printing directly upon the block in a technique adapted for the purpose, avoiding such combinations of lines as the most skilful craftsmen would be unable to cut. Their actual handiwork was preserved upon the surface of the block, much as in the modern original lithograph the artist's actual work survives upon the surface of the stone ; if it was in any way disfigured, as often, no doubt, it was, that must be set down to failure on the cutter's part. Any thing original that the cutter puts in, any swerving that accident or clumsiness permits him to make from the line fixed by the painter's pen for him to follow, is a blemish, and the best woodcuts of Diirer, Holbein, Baldung, Cranach, Burgkmair and the rest of their generation have no such blemishes. They are strictly autographic: the lines that the artist's pen has traced remain and are immortalized by the printing-press; the white spaces, also limited by his controlling will and purpose, result from the mere mechanical cutting away of blank wood that any neat-handed workman can perform. So when we speak of the woodcuts of Millais, Rossetti, Whistler, Walker, Pinwell, Sandys and the rest of the "Men of the Sixties," we know that the blocks were cut by Dalziel or Swain, but every good print is none the less what the designer meant it to be, and what none but himself could have made it. Of Diirer 's woodcutters, unluckily, we know noth ing till the comparatively late period when he had DiJRER. The Annunciation to Joachim From "The Life of the Virgin" Size of the original woodcut, 11%x8%g inches Durer. The Annunciation From "The Life of the Virgin" Size of the original wnodcnt. ll-^'i; x 814 inches dUeee's wood-cuts 9 been enlisted in the service of the Emperor Maxi milian, whose imposing, but somewhat ponderous and pedantic. Triumphal Arch was cut from the de signs of Diirer and his school by Hieronymus An drea. There is much more information about the Augsburg cutters than about those of Nuremberg, and there is no single artist in the latter city whose work is so strongly marked out by its excellence from that of his contemporaries as was Liitzelburger's, who cut Holbein's "Dance of Death." To understand Diirer 's woodcuts aright, it is neces sary to get to know them in their chronological se quence. In conservative collections, where they are arranged by order of subject, on the system of Bartsch, the student is continually confused by the juxtaposition of quite incongruous pieces, placed to gether merely because "Jerome," for instance, comes in alphabetical order next after "Jean." The British Museum collection has been arranged for more than ten years past in chronological order, which, in Diirer 's case, is unusually easy to determine with ap proximate accuracy, because his methodical turn of mind caused him to be fond of dates, while the un dated pieces can be fltted in without much difficulty by the evidence of style. The justification of the sys tem became all the more apparent when the woodcuts were exhibited for a few months in 1909, and fell naturally into consistent and coherent groups upon the screens, while separated, as a matter of practical convenience, from the engravings. Since then two even more interesting experiments have been made, in ex hibitions held at Liverpool and Bremen, toward a reconstruction of Diirer 's entire life-work in its 10 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES chronological sequence, his pictures, drawings, en gravings and woodcuts — represented mainly, of course, by reproductions— being merged in a single series. That is a timely warning against the risks of excessive concentration upon one single side of his many activities, but here we will not digress further from the woodcuts, which are at present our theme. The series opens magnificently with the group of large and stately woodcuts, abounding in vitality and dramatic invention, produced by Diirer between 1495 and 1500. These include the fifteen subjects of the "Apocalypse," the seven early subjects of the "Great Passion" (not completed until 1510-11) and seven detached pieces uniform with the two series already named in dimensions and style, but independent of them in subject. The blocks of the majority of these single pieces are now, by the way, in an American collection, that of Mr. Junius S. Morgan, but they have suffered sadly from the ravages of the worm. There is a certain exaggeration and over-emphasis of gesture in the "Apocalypse" woodcuts, but Diirer never invented anything more sublime than the cele brated Four Riders or the St. Michael defeating the Betel Angels, which I regard as at least equal to the subject more frequently praised. Superb, too, is the group of Angels restraining the Four Winds. The landscape at the foot of St. John's Vision of the Four- and-twenty Elders (B. 63) is a complete picture by itself, and there is a rare early copy of this portion alone, which is itself a beautiful print, and doubtless the earliest pure landscape woodcut in existence. Samson and the Lion, the mysteriously named Ercules and the Knight and Man-at-arms, often described as Durer. The Flight into Egypt From "The Life of the Virgin" Size of the oriKinal woodcut, 11% X 81/4 inches Durer. The Assumption and Crowning of the Virgin From "The Life of the Virgin" Size of the original woodcnt, 11^2,^ ^Vs inches DtJEEE'S WOOD-CUTS 11 its companion, and the Martyrdom of St. Catherine are among the finest of the single subjects. After this tremendously impressive group, there is for a time a certain relaxation of energy, or rather Diirer was more bent on other things, especially engraving. To the years 1500-04 belong a number of woodcuts of Holy Families and Saints, much smaller than the "Apocalypse," and rather roughly cut. Some critics have wished to dismiss one or another of them as pupils' work, but for this there is really no justifica tion. Then comes another very good period, that of the "Life of the Virgin," of which set Diirer had finished seventeen subjects before he left for Venice in 1505, while the Death of the Virgin and The As sumption were added in 1510, and the frontispiece in 1511, when the whole work came out as a book, as suredly one of the most desirable picture-books the world has ever seen ! It is impossible to weary of the beautiful compositions, the details drawn with such loving care, the tender and homely sentiment, the humor, even, displayed in the accessory figures of The Embrace of Joachim and Anne, the beer-drinking gossips in the Birth of the Virgin, where the atmos phere of St. Anne's chamber is sweetened by an an gelic thurifer, and the merry group of angelic chil dren playing round Joseph, bent on his carpenter's business, while their elders keep solemn watch round Mary at her distaff and the Holy Child in the cradle. We find landscapes at least as beautiful as those in Diirer 's best engravings in the pastoral background of the Annunciation to Joachim and the mountainous distance of the Visitation. The architectural setting of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, and the 12 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES tall cross held aloft, with the happiest effect on the composition, by the Apostle kneeling on the left in Mary's death-chamber, are among the memorable features of the set. Beautiful again, especially in fine proofs, is the next and latest of the long sets, the "Little Passion," con sisting of thirty-six subjects and a title-page, begun in 1509 and finished, like all the other books, in 1511. But it has not the monumental grandeur of the earlier religious sets, and there is an inevitable monotony about the incessant recurrence of the figure of Our Lord, when the history of the Passion is set forth in such detail. The most original and impressive sub jects, in my opinion, are Christ Appearing to St. Mary Magdalen and the next following it. The Sup per at Emmaus. The years 1510 and 1511 were the most prolific of all, and witnessed the publication of other connected pieces, the Beheading of John the Baptist and Salome bringing the Baptist's Head to Herod, and then the three little woodcuts, Christ on the Cross, Death and the Soldier, and The Schoolmaster, which Diirer brought out on large sheets at the head of his own verses, signed with a large monogram at the end o:f nil. The single sheets of 1511 include, besides the mar velous Trinity already mentioned, the large Adora tion of the Magi, the Mass of St. Gregory, a St. Jerome in his Cell, which is the best, after the celebrated en graving of 1514, of Diirer's repeated versions of that delightful subject; the Cain and Abel, which is one of the great rarities; two rather unattractive Holy Families; and the beautiful square Saint Christopher, of which many fine impressions are extant to bear wit- Durer. St. Jerome in his Cell Size of the original woodcut, 91/4 x GVi inches Durer. The Holy Family St. Anne, attended hy St. Joseph and St. Joachim, receiving from His Mother the Infant Jesus Size of the original woodcut, 914x6% inches DUEEE'S WOOD-CUTS 13 ness to its technical virtues. The average level of all the work of the year 1511 is so astonishingly high, that it must be regarded as the culminating period of the woodcuts, just as a slightly later time, the years 1513-14, witnesses the climax of the engravings. In the next few years Diirer's time was much taken up with carrying out the emperor's important but rather tiresome commissions for the Triumphal Arch and two Triumphal Cars, the small one which forms part of the Procession, and the much bigger affair, with the twelve horses and allegorical retinue, which did not appear till 1522. All this group offers a rich field of research to the antiquary, but is simply unintelligible without a learned commentary, and appeals much less than the sacred subjects to the average collector and lover of art, who cannot unearth the heaps of pedantic Latin and German literature in which the motives by which Diirer was inspired, if I may use the word, lie buried. Inspiration certainly flagged under the in fluence of Wilibald Pirkheimer and other learned humanists who encouraged Maximilian in his pen chant for allegory, and compelled Diirer, probably somewhat against his will, to use a multitude of sym bols, intelligible only to the learned, instead of speak ing directly to the populace in the familiar pictorial language derived from old tradition but enriched and ennobled by his own matchless art. The later woodcuts are comparatively few in num ber. They include a few that are primarily of scien- tiflc interest, such as the celestial and terrestrial globes and the armillary sphere, besides the numerous illustrations to Diirer's own works on Measurement, Proportion, and Fortiflcation. But among them are 14 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES the two splendid portraits made from drawings now in the Albertina, the Emperor Maximilian of 1518 and the Ulrich Vambiiler of 1522. Of the former several varieties exist, from no less than four different blocks, and it is now established that the only original ver sion is the very rare one in which the letters "ae" of the word "Caesar" are distinct, not forming a diph thong, and placed within the large "C." The other cuts are all copies, produced probably at Augsburg, the fine large one, with an ornamental frame and the imperial arms supported by griffins, being indisputa bly the work of Hans Weiditz. Only three impressions of the original are known, in the British Museum, the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett, and the Hofbibliothek at Vienna, in addition to which the ificole des Beaux- Arts at Paris possesses a fragment damaged by fire at the time of the Commune, when it was still in private hands. It is more generally known that the handsome chiaroscuro impressions of the Vambiiler date, like those of the Rhinoceros, from the seventeenth century, the color blocks having been added in Holland. The brown and green varieties belong to different editions, distinguished by the wording of the publisher's ad dress at the foot, which in the majority of cases has been cut off. The Virgin with the many Angels, of 1518, is one of Diirer's most accomplished woodcuts, and quite good impressions of it are comparatively common to day. The latest of his compositions of this class, the Holy Family with Angels, of 1526, is, on the other hand, extremely rare. Some critics doubt its being an authentic work of Diirer, but in spite of certain rather eccentric and unpleasant peculiarities in the drawing. Durer. Saint Christopher Siz(- of the original woodcnt, 8^10X814 inclics Durer. The Virgin with the many Angels Size of the origiuiil woodcut, HI^'k; x S^ inche DUEEE'S WOOD-CUTS 15 I consider this scepticism unfounded. Quite at the end of Diirer's life comes that rather fascinating sub ject. The Siege of a Fortress, unique among Diirer's woodcuts in the tiny scale on which its countless de tails are drawn. Of the many heraldic woodcuts and ex-libris attributed by Bartsch and others to Diirer, very few can be regarded as his genuine work, and most of these are very rare. The best authenticated are his own coat of arms ; the arms of Ferdinand I in the book on Fortification; those of Michel Behaim, of which the block is extant with a letter written by Diirer on the back; the arms of Roggendorf, men tioned in the Netherlands Journal, of which only one impression is known, and the arms of Lorenz Staiber, of which the original version is also unique. There can be no doubt that the Ebner book-plate of 1516 is by Diirer; the much earlier Pirkheimer book-^late is intimately connected with the illustrations to the books by Celtes, and cannot be regarded a.s a certain work of the master himself, while the arms of Johann Tschertte are also doubted. It is a fortunate circumstance for the museums and collectors of to-day that Diirer's prints have always been esteemed, and his monogram was held in such respect and so generally recognized as the mark qf something good that they have been preserved during four centuries, while so much that was interesting was allowed to perish because it was unsigned or its sig nature was not recognized as the work of any one im portant. It may be paradoxical to say that Diirers are common; few of them are to be had at any par ticular moment when one wants to get them ; but they are commoner than any other prints of their period, 16 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES and a large number of impressions of some subjects must come into the market in the course of every ten years. But the sort of Diirer the collector wants, the really beautiful, fresh, clean impression, with the right watermark and genuine, unbroken border-line, is not, and never has been, common. It is surprising how few, even of the famous museums of Europe, have a really flne collection of the woodcuts, perhaps because so many of them were formed some genera tions ago in uncritical times, when people were apt to think it enough if the subject was represented, in whatever condition it might be. The flrst-rate proofs are scarce, and getting scarcer every year ; when they are to be had, they should be grasped and treasured. SOME EARLY ITALIAN ENGRAVERS BEFORE THE TIME OF MARCANTONIO By AETHUE M. HIND Of the Department of Prints and Drawings, British Museum Author of "Catalogue of Early Italian Engravings in the British Museum," "Short History of Engraving and Etchmg," "Rembrandt's Etchings: an Essay and a Catalogue," etc. FIFTEENTH-CENTURY Italian engraving is not an easy hunting-ground for the collector, but it is one of the most fascinating not less for its own sake than for the difficulty of securing one 's prize. From the time of Raphael onward Italian engrav ing presents an overwhelmingly large proportion of reproductions of pictures, and loses on that account its primary interest. But in the flfteenth and the early sixteenth century, the engravers, though for the most part less accomplished craftsmen, were artists of real independence. We may in some cases exaggerate this independence through not knowing the sources which they used, but the mere lack of that knowledge adds a particular interest to their prints. Treated not only in virtue of their special claim as engravings, but merely as designs, we flnd something in them which the paintings of the period do not offer us. In general, the presence and influence of one of the greater artistic personalities of the time may be recog nized, but seldom definitely enough for us to trace the painter's immediate direction. Mantegna is the most 18 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES brilliant exception of a painter of first rank who is known to have handled the graver at this period. But forgetting the great names it is remarkable how in the early Renaissance in Italy even the secondary crafts men produced work of the same inexpressible charm that pervades the great masterpieces. One of the most beautiful examples I can cite is the Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne, which is known only in the British Museum impression. It has all the fascination of Botticelli's style without being quite Botticelli — unless the engraver himself is to ac count for the coarsening in the drawing of individual forms. Mr. Herbert P. Horne, the great authority on Botticelli and his school, thinks it is by Bartolommeo di Giovanni (Berenson's "Alunno di Domenico"). But whether immediately after Botticelli or after some minor artist of the school, there is the same delightful flow and rhythmic motion in the design that one thinks of in relation to Botticelli's Spring. Botticelli was in early life under the immediate inspiration, if not in the very service, of the great goldsmith Pollaiuolo (witness his picture of Fortitude in Florence). One almost expects in consequence that he may at some period have tried his hand at engrav ing, but there is no proof that he did anything besides supplying the engravers with designs. His chief con nection with the engravers was in the series of plates done for Landino's edition of Dante's "Divine Com edy" (Florence, 1481). Altogether nineteen plates (and a repetition of one subject) are known, but al though spaces are left throughout the whole edition for an illustration to each canto, it is only in rare copies that more than two or three are found. Even Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne After a design by a close follower of Botticelli, possibly by Bartolommeo di Giovanni "But whether immediately after Botticelli or after some minor artist of the school, there is the same delightful flow and rhythmic motion in the design that one thinks of in relation to Botticelli's Spring. . . . We could ill afford tolose the chai-m of the early Florentine Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne for all the finished beauty of Marcantonio's Lucretia, and it is still the youth of artistic development, with its naive joy and freshness of outlook, which holds us with the stronger spell." Arthur M. Hind. Reproduced from the unique impression in the British Museum Size of the original engraving, 8^/^ x 22 inches i ' -^r The Assumption of the Virgin Florentine engra-ving, in the Broad Manner, after a design by Botticelli "Most important of all the contemporary engravings after Botticelli is the Assumption of the Virgin. . . An original study by Botti celli for the figure of St. Thomas, who is receiving the girdle of the Virgin, is in Turin, and clinches the argument in favor of Botticelli's authorship. The view of Rome, a record of Botticelli's visit, is an interesting feature of the landscape." Arthur M. Hind. Size of the original engraving, 32% x 22^,4 inches ITALIAN ENGEAVEES BEFORE MARCANTONIO 19 the flne presentation copy to Lorenzo de ' Medici (now in the National Library, Florence) is without. a single plate, showing perhaps the small regard that was paid to engraving for book decoration at that period. This lack of appreciation and the difficulties (or double labor) the printers experienced in combining copper plate impressions with type led soon after this and a few other experiments of the period to the use of woodcut as the regular mode of book illustration for well over a century. Apart from the plates to this edition, Botticelli's devotion to Dante is shown in the beautiful series of pen drawings— in the most subtly expressive outline — preserved at Berlin and in the Vatican. It seems on the whole probable that they are later than the 1481 edition, so that we cannot point to the original drawings for the prints. Most important of all the contemporary engravings after Botticelli is the Assumption of the Virgin, the largest of all the prints of the period (printed from two plates, and measuring altogether about 82.5 x 56 cm.). An original study by Botticelli for the flgure of St. Thomas, who is receiving the girdle of the Vir gin, is in Turin, and clinches the argument in favor of Botticelli's authorship. The view of Rome, a record of Botticelli's visit, is an interesting feature of the landscape. This engraving is produced in what has been called the Broad Manner in contradistinction to the Fine Manner, e.g. of the Dante prints. In the Broad Man ner the lines are laid chiefly in open parallels, and generally the shading is emphasized with a lighter return stroke laid at a small angle between the paral lels. Its aim is essentially the imitation of pen draw- 20 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES ing after the manner of such draughtsmen as Polla iuolo and Mantegna. The Fine Manner on the other hand shows shading in close cross-hatching (somewhat patchy and cloudy in effect in most of the early Flor entine prints), and gives the appearance of imitating a wash drawing. The two manners may be well compared in the series of "Prophets and Sibyls," which exists in two versions, the earlier being in the Fine, and the later in the Broad Manner. The flrst series shows a crafts man who drew largely from German sources (putting a St. John of the Master E. S. into the habit of the Libyan Sibyl). In the second we have an artist who discarded all the ugly and awkward features which originated in the German originals, and showed throughout a far truer feeling for beauty and a much finer power of draughtsmanship than the earlier en graver. Mr. Herbert Horne suspects, rightly I think, that Botticelli himself directly inspired this trans formation of the ' ' Prophets and Sibyls. ' ' Through our lack of knowledge of the engravers of this early period in Florence we are driven to a rather constant use of the somewhat unattractive distinctions of the Fine and Broad Manners. We may claim, however, to have advanced a little further in the eluci dation of questions of authorship, though the great German authority on this period. Dr. Kristeller of Berlin, would still keep practically all the early Flor entine engravings in an unassailable anonymity. This is of course better than classing all the engravings of the period and school, both in the Fine and Broad Manners, under the name of Baccio Baldini, which has long been the custom. A certain "Baccio, orafo" has '^^¦ .•SiblLLAlll^KA' llDl ViR^'x CHEUETTEPJ-IO SICNIOBE LVME pKPA ALLE CHOtE NA^CHO^e ELEGAW r^COPA DELHOZrW EPPORE EKW\ lEifMACOGf LV/AINOaE E20LVEPA -LElAvt. MP6CHATORE i^i. tTADERA tXTVTE LECHOSE l5NGMHbOAllA RINA DELLE gUNTEV^ qvE^^j> re zAf^o evivente The Libyan Sibyl From a series of the "Prophets and Sibyls," engraved in the Fine Manner of the Finiguerra School Size of the original engraving, 7 x 4^4 inches KCEVEMltNTEM DIEA^ ET LATEMTIAAPERIEKJ EM TENEBITGRIMIO GENT1VA\P,EG1MA I IDI VERpXq-llLftTTERNO S I GN O R.E CVME DARAALIE COSE. NASCOSE ElfGAMI ISCORA, DIUSroSTRO ERRORE FARAtlSlNAGOGE LVMINOSE ESOIVERAitELABBAALPECHArOBE EEIE STADCRA DIT VTEEE CHOSE ENCRENBOALlAREtNADEllE GEtJTE SEDRA.*.i?ESTO WE SANTO EViyENIE The Libyan Sibyl From a Relies of tho "Prophets and Sibyls," engraved Broad Manni'r of the Finignerra School K\'/.e of the original engraving, 7 X 4i/i inclifs ITALIAN ENGRAVERS BEFORE MARCANTONIO 21 been found in documents as buried in 1487, but there is practically nothing to connect his name with the substance of our prints. We would not on that account regard him as a myth, but are reduced at the moment to Vasari's statement that "Baldini, the successor of Finiguerra in the Florentine school of engraving, hav ing little invention, worked chiefly after designs by Botticelli." Considering the fact that both Broad and Fine Manners (in all probability the output of two distinct workshops) show prints definitely after Botticelli, we are still in entire darkness as to the posi tion of Baldini. With regard to an important group of Fine Manner prints. Sir Sidney Colvin has given strong reasons for the attribution to Maso Finiguerra, made famous by Vasari as the inventor of the art of engraving. Considering Vasari's evident error in regard to the discovery of engraving (for there were engravings in the north of Europe well before the earliest possible example of Finiguerra), modern students have been inclined to regard Finiguerra as much in the light of a myth as Baldini. But there is no lack of evidence as to his life and work, and without repeating the arguments here, which are given in full in Sir Sidney Colvin's "Florentine Picture-Chronicle" (London, 1898), we would at least state our conviction that a considerable number of the early Florentine engrav ings, as well as au important group of nielli, must be from his hand. Vasari speaks of him as the most famous niello-worker in Florence, and he also speaks of his drawings of "figures clothed and unclothed, and histories" (the "figures" evidently the series tradi tionally ascribed to Finiguerra in Florence, but now 22 PRINTS AND THEIR MAKERS for a large part labeled with an extreme of timidity "school of Pollaiuolo"; the "histories," probably the "Picture-Chronicle" series, acquired from Mr. Ruskin for the British Museum). Then considering Vasari's fuller statement that Finiguerra was also responsible for larger engravings in the light of a group of Flor entine engravings whieh correspond closely in style with many of the only important group of Florentine nielli (chiefly in the collection of Baron fidouard de Rothschild, Paris) as well as with the Uffizi drawings, we can hardly escape the conviction that Vasari was correct in his main thesis. A curiously entertaining side-light is given by one of these engravings, the Mercury for the series of "Planets." Here we see the representation of a goldsmith's shop in the streets of Florence, stocked just as we know from documents Finiguerra 's to have been. And the goldsmith is evidently engaged in engraving, not a niello, but a large copperplate. The engravings most certainly by Finiguerra, such as the Judgment Hall of Pilate (Gotha), the March to Calvary and the Crucifixion (British Museum), Vari ous Wild Animals Hunting and Fighting (British Museum), are of course rarities which most collectors can never hope to possess. The same may also be said of somewhat later prints in the same manner of en graving (which may be the work of the heirs of Fini guerra 's atelier, which is known to have been carried on by members of his family until 1498), such as the Fine Manner "Prophets and Sibyls" and the "Otto Prints. ' ' We will in consequence devote less space to these rarities, possessed chiefly by a few European collections, than their artistic interest would justify, AEP.CVWO E PLMJETO A'ASCHVUNO PojTO ntUECOHOO CIEIO ET ZECliu /V^EKGHE lA a-A eiCtTAEMOLTOPAaSIVA LVI EFftCDO COMWEOU eBNONrcHSoMOFRE^'Dl EWAllW COa I,( WAtP] ELOqVSHTE IHGEHaNlOSO AMA Lt?,C|EHfI( /^fl,T£A\ATlCA ElTIVOfA NILtEDlVl HAfTOHE A ILCOWO CPACn-E CO* eCHIETTo ELfc W J-O TTlLl rSTATVlV. CHONpiVTA D( MITAlUAlARGlEtlTO VfVO ELOI EVO E ^^ERCOlEIdCOLLA PRIMA OftA * if EZ3 L^MOTTE ZVA EDELPI PELLAPOMENICHA AP6PAMKO U3or,E PEP- HI/AiCO AVfllE M L/i8\?s Vr¦l^OVEp.0 EZAL1AT10N6 EVIKOO tAcV /v\OP,T F o^'EP^O [J V>^IirAeiOMB 6PieC£ HA HAblTNtloNE Gl/AflJ Di DI Virgo nuj'JTrE va f ir lEiiCN; in jr' ¦j.,_,-/t)tCQ/'ilNC{AN0O DA- V?JftGO l» ZO D\ i Z OfU V;\ Vfi ZFNQiiC i^- The Planet Mercury Florentine engraving in the Fine Manner, attributed to Maso Finiguerra, or his school "A curiously entertaining side-light is given by one of these engrav ings, the Mercury for the series of 'Planets.' Here we see the repre sentation of a goldsmith's shop in the streets of Florence, stocked just as we know from documents Finiguerra's to have been. And the goldsmith is evidently engaged in engraving, not a niello, but a large copper-plate." Arthur M. Hind. Size of tbe original engraving, 12% x S^lg inches A Young Man and Woman Each Holding An Apple A Florentine engraving in the Fine Manner, attributed to the school of Finiguerra "One of the 'Otto Prints' (so called from the eighteenth-century col lector who possessed the majority of the series), A Young Man and Woman Each Holding An Apple, is in the Gray Collection, Harvard, and it is a charming example of the amatory subjects of the series, prints such as the Florentine gallant might have pasted on the spice- box to be presented to his inamorata. The badge of Medici (the six 'palle' with three lilies in the uppermost) added by a contemporary hand in pen and ink suggests that this one raay have been used bv the young Lorenzo himself between about 1465 and 1467, which accords well with the probable date of the engravings." Arthur M. Hind. (The inscription above reads d amove te q^ (questa) and piglia q3i : "O Love, this to you" and "Take this.") Size of the original engraving, 4^/^x414 inches ITALIAN ENGEAVEES BEFOEE MAECANTONIO 23 keeping our argument henceforward rpiore to the en gravings that the American amateur has the chance of seeing or acquiring at home. One of the "Otto Prints" (so called from the eigh teenth-century collector who possessed the majority of the series), A Young Man and Woman Each Hold ing An Apple, is in the Gray Collection, Harvard, and it is a charming example of the amatory subjects of the series, prints such as the Florentine gallant might have pasted on the spice-box to be presented to his inamorata. The badge of Medici (the six "palle" with three lilies in the uppermost) added by a con temporary hand in pen and ink suggests that this one may have been used by the young Lorenzo himself between about 1465 and 1467, which accords well with the probable date of the engravings. The only known engraving by the goldsmith and painten Antonio Pollaiuolo, the large Battle of Naked Men, shows a far greater artist than his slightly elder contemporary Finiguerra. They had both studied in the same workshop and probably continued a sort of partnership until Finiguerra's death. Pollaiuolo 's draughtsmanship eA'inces a grip and intensity that Finiguerra entirely lacks in his somewhat torpid aca demic drawings, and it is seen at its best in this mag nificently vigorous plate. An excellent impression, surpassed by few in the museums of Europe, is, I believe, in the collection of Mr. Francis BuUard of Boston. Before leaving Florence for north Italy we would allude to that attractive engraver of the transition period, Cristofano Robetta. His art has lost the finest flavor of the primitive Florentine without having sue- 24 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES ceeded to the sound technical system of the contem poraries of Diirer, but it has a thoroughly individual though delicate vein of fancy. The Adoration of the Magi, one of his finest plates, is a free translation of a picture by Filippino Lippi in the Uffizi, but the group of singing angels is an addition of his own, and done with a true sense for graceful composition. Fine early impressions of this print are of course difficult to get, but it is perhaps the best known of Robetta 's works, because of the number of modern impressions in the market. The original plate (with the Allegory of the Power of Love engraved on the back) belonged to the Vallardi Collection in the early nineteenth cen tury, and is now in the British Museum, happily safe from the reprinter. Among the greatest rarities of early engraving in north Italy is the weU-known series traditionally called the "Tarocchi Cards of Mantegna"— some what erroneously, for they are neither by Mantegna, nor Tarocchi, nor playing-cards at all. As in the case of the "Prophets and Sibyls," there are two complete series of the same subjects by two different engravers. Each series consists of fiifty subjects divided into five sections and illustrating: (1) the Sorts and Condi tions of Men; (2) Apollo and the Muses; (3) the Arts and Sciences; (4) the Genii and Virtues; (5) the Planets and Spheres. A considerable number of the earliest impressions known are still in contemporary fifteenth-century binding, and it seems as if the series was intended merely as an instructive or entertaining picture-book for the young. There is the most absolute divergence of opinion as to which is the original series, and the student is encouraged to whet his critical acu- Antonio Pollaiuolo. Battle of Naked Men Zt! °sh^wsT'?ar|rl:lef artS' S"hi^ ^r'^ ?tf °*'f/"'™'? P°"^™'°' "'^ ^^rg. Battle of NaUed dranghtsmanship evinceff ffiTn and iTten^ftv tW=f 'w- "^^"^ contemporary, Finiguerra. Pollaiuolo's academic drawings and « is se™ at iJs best ?^ thl^ Finiguerra entirely lacks in his somewhat torpid Reproduce! from^L' i^ressfof in^^te' pS T.f^^^^^, ^I^IZ ^'^L i^rSXfto^'"'^- Size of the original engraving, 15U/ie x 237/ie inches Cristofano Robetta. The Adoration of the Magi "Cristofano Robetta's art has lost the finest flavor of the primitive Florentine without having succeeded to the sound technical system of the contemporaries of Diirer, but it has a thoroughly individual though delicate vein of fancy. 'The Adoration of the Magi, one of his finest plates, is a free translation of a picture by Filippino Lippi in the Uffizi, but the group of singing angels is an addition of his own, and done with a true sense for graceful composition." Arthur M. Hind. Size of the original engraving, 11% xll inches ITALIAN ENGEAVBES BEFORE MAECANTONIO 25 men on the problem by the excellent set of reproduc tions which has recently been issued by the Gra- phische Gesellschaft and edited by Dr. Kristeller. Un fortunately Dr. Kristeller takes what seems to me an entirely wrong view of the matter. I cannot but feel that the more flnely engraved series is at the same time the more ancient, and almost certainly Ferrarese in origin, so characteristic of Cossa is the type of these figures with large heads, rounded forms, and bulging drapery. The second series shows a more graceful sense of composition and spacing (the heads and fig ures being in better relation to the size of the print), but its very naturalism is to me an indication of its somewhat later origin. The less precise technical qual ity of this second series is closely related to the Flor entine engravings in the Fine Manner, and I am inclined to regard it as the work of a Florentine engraver of .about 1475 to 1480, i.e. about a decade later than the original set. Leaving the pseudo-Mantegna for the master him self, we are in the presence of the greatest of the Italian engravers before Marcantonio— if not of all time. Like the Florentines, Mantegna was an ardent lover of antiquity, but his spirit was far more impas sive, far more like the antique marble itself. His clas sical frame of mind was to some extent the offspring of his education in the school of Squarcione and in the academic atmosphere of Padua. His art has a monumental dignity which the Florentines never pos sessed, but it was without the freshness and inexpres sible charm that pervade Tuscan art. An engraving like the Risen Christ between St. Andrew and St. Longinus is an indication of the genius that might 26 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES have made one of the noblest scidptors, and one regrets that he never carried to accomplishment the project of a monument to Vergil in Mantua, which Isabella d'Este wished him to undertake. Seven of the engravings attributed to Mantegna (including the Risen Christ) are so much above the rest in subtle expressiveness, as well as in technical quality, that we cannot but agree with Dr. Kristeller 's conclusion that these alone are by Mantegna 's hand, and the rest engraved after his drawings. They are similar to Pollaiuolo's Battle of Naked Men in style, engraved chiefly in open parallel lines of shading with a much more lightly engraved return stroke be tween the parallels. It is this light return stroke, exactly in the manner of Mantegna 's pen drawing, which gives the wonderfully soft quality to the early impressions. But it is so delicate that comparatively few printings must have worn it down, and the ma jority of impressions that come into the market show little but the outline and the stronger lines of shad ing. Even so these Mantegna prints do not lose the splendidly vigorous character of their design, but it is of course the fine early impressions which are the joy and allure of the true connoisseur. The seven cer tainly authentic Mantegna engravings are the Virgin and Child, the two Bacchanals, the two Battles of the Sea-Gods, the horizontal Entombment, and the Risen Christ, already mentioned. Nearest in quality to these comes the Triumph of Caesar: the Elephants, after some study for the series of cartoons now preserved at Hampton Court. But it lacks Mantegna 's distinction in drawing, and Zoan Andrea, who is probably the author of one of the Andrea Mantegna. The Risen Christ between St. Andrew and St. Longinus "Of all the early Italian engravers, Andrea Mantegna is by far the most powerful, though scarcely the most human. Like many of the Florentines, he was an ardent lover of antiquity, but his spirit was far more impassive than theirs, and far more like the antique marble itself. His art has a monuraental dignity which the Florentines never possessed, but it lacks the freshness and inexpressible charm that pervade Tuscan art. His was a genius that would have made one of the noblest sculptors; the engraving of the Risen Christ shows what he might have achieved in the field." Arthur M. Hind. Size of the original engraving, ISyuj x 12iyi(; inches Zoan Andrea ( ?). Four Women Dancing This engraving, based on a study by Mantegna for a group in the Louvre picture of Pariio.«.s«s, is one of the most beautiful prints of the school of Mantegna. It is most probably by Zoan Andrea. Size of the origiiinl engraving, 8%xl3 inches ITALIAN ENGEAVEES BEFOEE MAECANTONIO 27 anonymous engravings of Four Women Dancing (based on a study for a group in the Louvre picture of Parnassus), one of the most beautiful prints of the school, was certainly capable of this achievement. Even Giovanni Antonio da Brescia, who did work of a very third-rate order after migrating to Rome, pro duced under Mantegna 's inspiration so excellent a plate as the Holy Family. Other prints attributed to Mantegna, such as the Descent into Hell and the Scourging of Christ, pos sess all Mantegna 's vigor of design, and reflect the master's work in the manner of the Eremitani frescos, but we can hardly believe that they were engraved by the same hand as the "seven," even supposing a con siderably earlier date for their production. Each of Mantegna 's known followers (Zoan Andrea and G. A. da Brescia) entirely changed his manner of engraving after leaving the master ; in fact, except in his immediate entourage, Mantegna 's style was con tinued by few of the Italian engravers. For all its dignified simplicity, it is more the manner of the draughtsman transferred to copper, than of the en graver brought up in the conventional use of the burin. We see Mantegna 's open linear style reflected in the earlier works of Nicoletto da MoSena, and the Vicentine, Benedetto Montagna, but each of these en gravers tended more and more in their later works to imitate the more professional style of the German engravers, and of Diirer in particular. Diirer was constantly copied by the Italian engravers of the early sixteenth century, and details from his plates (chiefly in the landscape background) were even more consis tently plagiarized. 28 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES In the example of Nicoletto da Modena, the Adora tion of the Shepherds, which we reproduce, it is Diirer's immediate predecessor, Martin Schongauer, from whom the chief elements in the subject are copied. But in this example the background, with its vista of lake with ships and a town, suggested no doubt by one of the subalpine Italian lakes, is thor oughly characteristic of the South, while Schongauer 's Gothic architecture is embellished with classical de tails. Isolated flgures of saints or heathen deities against a piece of classical architecture, set in an open landscape, became the most frequent type of Nico letto 's later prints, which are practically all of small dimensions. Like Nicoletto da Modena, Benedetto Montagna gradually developed throughout his life a more deli cate style of engraving, entirely giving up the large dimensions and broad style of his Sacrifice of Abra ham for a series of finished compositions which from their smaller compass would have been well adapted for book illustration. Several of these, such as the Apollo and Pan, illustrate incidents in Ovid's "Meta morphoses, ' ' but there is no evidence for, and there is even probability against, their having ever been used in books. Several of the subjects are treated very simi larly in the woodcuts of the 1497 Venice edition of Ovid in the vernacular. When engravings and wood cuts thus repeat each other, the woodcutter is gener ally the copyist, but in this case the reverse is almost certainly the case, as the Ovid plates belong to Mon tagna 's later period, and could hardly have preceded 1500. Apart from Mantegna, Leonardo and Bramante are Nicoletto da Modena. The Adoration of the Shepherds "In tlie Adoration of the Shepherds it i\^^l^^>. Zfr^f^f -m^t^e ces^nr Martin Schongauer, from whom the chief elements m tne subiec't ai-t copied But in this e.xample the background with its vSa of lake wi?h ships and a town, suggested no doubt by one of (he subalnine Italian lakes, is thoroughly characteristic of the feouth while sXngauer's Gothic architecture is embellished ^with cUssical deta^ils-." ,, . , Si/e of Ihe origiiiiil engraviuK, !)Vv < VA mfhes Jacopo de' Barbari. Apollo and Diana "Jacopo de' Barbari is of peculiar interest as a link between the styles of Gei'raany and the South. Whether of Northern extraction or not is uncertain, but the earlier part of his life was passed in Venice. Diirer was apparently much impressed by his art on his first visit to Venice between 1495 and 1497, and . . . even seems to have taken an immediate suggestion for a composition from Barbari, i.e. for his Apollo and Diana. Diirer's version shows a far greater virility ;ind concentration of design, but for all its power it lacks ihe breezier atmosphere of Barbari's print." Arthur M. Hind. Size of the original engraving, GY^ x 3% inches ITALIAN ENGEAVEES BEFOEE MAECANTONIO 29 the two great names which have been connected with engravings of the period. But I incline to doubt whether either of them engraved the plates which have been attributed to them. The large Interior of a Ruined Church, splendid in design and reminiscent of the architect's work in the sacristy of S. Satiro, Milan, might equally well have been engraved by a Nicoletto da Modena, with whose earlier style it has much in common. Of the prints attributed to Leo nardo, the fascinating Profile Bust of a Young Woman (p. 252), unique impression in the British Museum, stands out from the rest for the sensitive quality of its outline, but even here I would be more ready to see the hand of an engraver like Zoan Andrea, who after leaving Mantua seems to have settled in Milan and done work in a finer manner infiuenced by the style of the Milanese miniaturists (such as the Master of the Sforza Book of Hours in the British Museum). In Venice Giovanni Bellini's style is reflected in the dignified engravings of Girolamo Mocetto, and in the region of Bologna or Modena one meets the anony mous master "IB (with the Bird)," whose few en graved idyls are among the most alluring prints of the lesser masters of north Italy. More individual than Mocetto and far less depen dent on any other contemporary painter is Jacopo de' Barbari, who is of peculiar interest as a link between the styles of Germany and the South. Whether of Northern extraction or not is uncertain, but the earlier part of his life was passed in Venice. Diirer was ap parently much impressed by his art on his first visit to Venice between 1495 and 1497, and his particular in terest in the study of a Canon of Human Proportions 30 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES was aroused by some figure-drawings which Barbari had shown him. Diirer even seems to have taken an immediate suggestion for a composition from Barbari, i.e. for his Apollo and Diana. Diirer's version shows a far greater virility and concentration of design, but for all its power it lacks the breezier atmosphere of Barbari's print; it is redolent of the study, while the latter has the charm of an open Italian landscape. There is a distinct femininity about Barbari ; perhaps this very feature and the languorous grace of his treatment of line and the sinuous folds of drapery give his prints their special allure. I would close this article with some reference to two other engravers of great individuality of style — Giulio and Domenico Campagnola, of Padua. Domenico 's activity as a painter continued until after 1563, but the probable period of his line-engrav ings (about 1517-18), and his close connection with Giulio Campagnola (though the exact nature of the relationship is unexplained), justify his treatment among the precursors rather than in the wake of Marcantonio. Giulio Campagnola, like Giorgione, whose style he so well interpreted, was a short-lived genius. He was a young prodigy, famous at the tender age of thirteen as a scholar of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, besides being accomplished as a musician and in the arts of sculpture, miniature, and engraving. Little wonder that he did not long survive his thirtieth year. Probably his practice as an illuminator as well as his particular aim of rendering the atmosphere of Gior gione 's paintings led him to the method of using dots, or rather short flicks, in his engraving, which is in a TrrarmrrrTi-TnnHiriiBrmiffirTfffii Giulio Campagnola. St. John the Baptist "One of the most splendid of his plates is the St. John the Baptist, with a dignity of design whose origin may probably be traced back to some drawing by Mantegna, though the landscape is of course thor oughly Paduau or Venetian in its character." Arthur M. Hind. Reproduced from the impression in the Print Department, Museum of Pine Arts, Boston Size of the original engraving, 13^x9^^; inches Giulio and Domenico Campagnola. Shepherds in a Landscape "It is Giorgione again whom we see reflected in the Shepherd.^ in a Landscape, a plate which seems to have been left unflnished by Giulio and completed by Domenico Campagnola. There is a drawing in the Louvre for the right half of the print, and there is every reason to think that this drawing as well as the engraving of that portion of the landscape is by Giulio. But the group of flgures and trees on the left is entirely characteristic of the looser technical manner uf Domenico." Arthur M Hind Size of the original engraving, 5% x lOi s inches ITALIAN ENGEAVEES BEFOEE MAECANTONIO 31 sense an anticipation of the stipple process of the eighteenth century, though of course without the use of etching. Most of his prints are known in the two states— in pure line, and after the dotted work had been added. One of the most splendid of his plates is the St. John the Baptist, with a dignity of design whose ori gin may probably be traced back to some drawing by Mantegna, though the landscape is of course thor oughly Paduan or Venetian in its character. More completely characteristic, and the most purely Gior- gionesque of all his prints, is the Christ and the Wo man of Samaria, one of the most wonderfully beau tiful of all the engravings of this period. It is Giorgione again whom we see reflected in the Shepherds in a Landscape, a plate which seems to have been left unfinished by Giulio and completed by Domenico Campagnola. There is a drawing in the Louvre for the right half of the print, and there is every reason to think that this drawing as well as the engraving of that portion of the landscape is by Giulio. But the group of figures and trees on the left is entirely characteristic of the looser technical man ner of Domenico. The existence of a copy of the right- hand portion of the plate alone points to the existence of an unfinished state of the original, though no such impressions have been found. In any case it dis tinctly supports the theory that the other part of the original print was a later addition. We may have to admit in conclusion that there is nothing in Italian engraving before Marcantonio quite on a level with the achievement of Albrecht Diirer, but the indefinable allure that characterizes 32 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES so much of the work of the minor Italian artists of the earlier Renaissance is more than enough compen sation for any lack of technical efficiency. With Marc antonio we find this efficiency in its full development, joined to a remarkable individuality in the interpre tation of sketches by Raphael and other painters. Yet we could ill afford to lose the charm of the early Flor entine Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne for all the finished beauty of Marcantonio's Lucretia, and it is still the youth of artistic development, with its naive joy and freshness of outlook, which holds us with the stronger spell. A PRINCE OF PRINT-COLLECTORS: MICHEL DE MAROLLES, ABBE DE VILLELOIN (1600-1681) By LOUIS E. METCALFE THE French make a fine distinction between three varieties of that very special individual to whom we refer in a general way as "a col lector." They have always been authorities on that subject and one of them has said: "On est amateur par gout, connaisseur par education, curieux par vanite. ' ' While another adds : " Ou par speculation. ' ' By "collector" we simply mean a person who has formed the habit of acquiring the things in which he is particularly interested, and these in as many varieties as possible. It implies neither an artistic pursuit nor a deep knowledge of the subject. By curieux, however, is meant, as a rule, an amateur, a man of taste who collects things which pertain to art exclusively; he is in most cases a connaisseur, and al ways an enthusiast. Paris, the home of taste, has never been that of the curieux more so than at the present day, when, it seems, every one who can afford a rent of over four thousand francs has a hobby of some sort and is a mad collector. A general history of the weakness for things either beautiful or odd or rare, or merely fash- 34 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES ionable, would be both voluminous and chaotic, if a distinction were not made between that which per tained to art and that which did not. A complete description of the latter, a hopelessly heterogeneous mass, would make an amusing volume, for there is no end to the variety of things in which vanity and folly have caused human beings to become interested to the point of collecting in large numbers. George IV collected saddles ; the Princess Charlotte and many others, shells. Tulips were so madly sought after in Holland that one root was exchanged for 460 florins, together with a new carriage, a pair of horses, and a set of harness. Shop-bills and posters have been the specialty of many, while thousands of persons have collected postage-stamps and coins. A Mr. Morris had so many snuff-boxes that it was said he never took two pinches of snuff out of the same box. A Mr. Urquhart collected the halters with which criminals had been hanged; and another enthusiast, the masks of their faces., Suett, a comedian, collected wigs, and another specialist owned as many as fifteen hundred skulls, Anglo-Saxon and Roman. If there have been men who have shown a propensity to collect wives, Evelyn tells us in his diary : "In 1641 there was a lady in Haarlem who had been married to her twenty-fifth husband, and, having been left a widow, was prohibited from marrying in future ; yet it could not be proved that she had ever made any of her husbands away, though the suspicion had brought her divers times to trouble. ' ' Although we much regret that such an intensely interesting work as a Comprehensive History of Collecting has never been written, we realize that a MICHEL DE MAEOLLES, ABBfi DE VILLELOIN 35 mere description of rare and beautiful objects would be unsatisfactory as long as we did not know their history and the way in which they had been gathered together. It is the soul of the collector which we should like to see laid bare. Was his work a labor of vanity or one of love? Were his possessions mere playthings, speculation, to him, or did they represent treasures of happiness greater than all the gold in Goleonda ? Without a doubt, it is one thing to collect what is highly prized on all sides, with large means at one's disposal, and the constant advice of experts, and quite another to search patiently oneself for things which the general public has not yet discovered, and then to acquire them with difficulty. Who shall know with what admirable zeal some col lectors have made themselves authorities on the things which they loved? with what untiring energy they have sifted for years masses of trash in the hope of finding the hidden pearl? Who can tell the inner history of the auction-room, the heart-beats of those who were after the jewel which no one else seemed to have noticed, the sacrifices which many with a slender purse have made in order to secure the precious "find," and lastly the enjoyment which they ever afterward derived from its possession? Many of the great French collections of the last century were made in this spirit: they were begun with a modest outlay and devoted to things which, at that time, no one else wanted. I know of one of the first collectors of East ern Art in the nineteenth century, who at one time had greatly to reduce his household in order to satisfy his passion for Japanese vases ; and of another wealthy 36 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES enthusiast who would travel third-class to London to secure an old Roman bronze. The history of such collections becomes that of human beings for whom life is nothing without beauty, and it is too personal to be recorded. The collector will seldom believe that his enthusiasm can be understood by others besides him self : maybe, also, he would be unwilling to reveal the more or less innocent subterfuges to which he had recourse in order to acquire more than one of his treasures. The American chapter of such a history is the most recent one, and the world is now watching its develop ment with bated breath. The art of the Old World is being imported by the ship-load ; fortunes are paid for single paintings, while the paneled wainscots of French chateaux, the ceilings of Italian palaces, the colon nades of their gardens, and the tapestries of the Low Countries, not to mention a hundred varieties of 06- jets d'art, are constantly wending their way to the treasure-houses — still in course of construction— of the New World. All this is taking place to the indig nation of Europeans and the aesthetes who consider such a radical change of background a desecration, and do not stop to think that this transplantation is hardly more unnatural than the sight of the Elgin marbles in foggy London, or the winged bulls of Ec- batana in the halls of the Louvre. So long as we as a nation will learn a much-needed lesson and thereby greatly improve our taste, let all honor and glory be given to those who have been re sponsible for such valuable acquisitions. Our Amer ican collections already contain many ' ' gems of purest ray serene," and who will dare say that they are not MICHEL DE MAEOLLES, ABBfi DE VILLELOIN 37 destined to become in time worthy successors of the famous ones which have preceded them ? From the writings of Pliny and other classic his torians, and from several catalogues and rare docu ments which have come down to us from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, we have abundant proof that there never was a time when works of art were not treasured. Cicero, Atticus, and Varro collected writings, and the libraries of Aristotle, Theophrastus, and that of Epaphroditus of Chseronea, which con tained thirty-two thousand manuscripts, were famous. Hannibal was a lover of bronzes : it was he who owned the little Hercules of Lysippus which the master him self had presented to Alexander the Great and which afterward became the property of Sulla. Both Pompey and Julius Caesar possessed splendid masterpieces of that Greek art which was so highly prized in Italy. The Venus of the Hermitage comes from Caesar's gallery, and the Jupiter of the Louvre from that of Antony ; while the Faun with the Child, and the Borghese vase, now treasured in the Louvre, were once among the possessions of Sallust in his palace on the Quirinal. Not only sculpture was col lected in those times, for we also hear of the tapestries of Saurus, valued at twenty millions in the currency of the day ; the jewelry of Verres, reputed the finest in existence ; the priceless crystals of PoUio ; and the two thousand vases of precious stone owned by Mithri dates, King of Pontus. Throughout the Middle Ages the tresor of the kings and the most powerful nobles was in reality their col lection. That of Dagobert was the result of four Italian conquests. The inventory of the jewels of the 38 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES Due d 'Anjou, son of John the Good, contains 796 numbers, while his brother, the Due de Berry, had a passion for reliquaries, old church ornaments, and rare manuscripts which he caused to be mounted like jewels. The library of Charles V and his tresor were valued at twenty millions of francs, and the collection of curiosities of Ysabeau de Baviere had not its equal. It contained, among other things, an ivory box in whieh was kept the cane with which Saint Louis used to flagellate himself. The Dukes of Burgundy for centuries were the greatest collectors of richly inlaid armor. And what of the treasures of Jacques Coeur, the great banker of Charles VII? With his fleet of trading-vessels and his many banking-houses he se cured the pick of the market. We know that his silver ware was piled up to the ceiling in the vaults of his palace at Bourges. In the Gazette des Beaux-Arts for the year 1869 we read a description of the home of Jacques Duchie, a famous art collector who flourished during the first half of the fifteenth century. In the courtyard were peacocks and a variety of rare birds. In the first room was a collection of paintings and decorated signs; in the second, all kinds of musical instruments— harps, organs, viols, guitars, and psalterions. In the third was a great number of games, cards and chessmen; and in the adjoining chapel, rare missals on elabor ately carved stands. In the fourth room the walls were covered with precious stones and sweet-smelling spices, while on those of the next was hung a great variety of furs. From these rooms one proceeded to halls filled with rich furniture, carved tables, and decorated armor. MICHAEL DE MAROLLES ABB. DE VILLELOIN AifS.-i'^s- dd. i:lr J/ VAA I (j 4-_ ^ Portrait of Michel de Marolles, Abbe de Villeloin Engraved by Claude Mellan, from his own design frora life, in 1648 ¦yuuSlrLiy.rru ^iri L. H.HaJ>e,rti AIonrfLory lihelLrruTrL cSiaplicujrv Jt/IaniJiri, EPIGRAMMA irtSfft^icm. Michaelis DE aiarolles AbhatL!2e^iiMain. .yt7oh'//mj, 'yi.rUu!,.S'ierM,.3)octrLncL MAROLU SjccuLerant Jacra ciiia^re Fronye con-uirtv. ^//"antLLdi ad vui-itrrvfacle/jac tS^y MICHEL DE MAEOLLES, ABB:fi DB VILLELOIN 89 The Renaissance was the Golden Age of Collectors. What could have withstood the influence of that tre mendous movement? The art of Italy and the mag nificence of the nobility and the princes of the Church shed, like the Augustan Age, a golden glamour over civilization. The Medicis set the example, and they were closely followed by the iSforzas, the Farneses, and the Gon- zagas. The patronage of the Fine Arts was on such a scale, and the rivalry among the. collectors so keen, that in 1515 there were in Rome thirty-nine cardinals who had veritable museums for palaces. It was for Agostino Chigi that Raphael decorated that Famesina Villa in which such treasures were stored, and for whom, later, he designed those plates on which par rots' tongues were served to Leo X. What a rage for beauty there was when Baldassarre Castiglione advised all the sons of noble families to study painting, in order that they might become bet ter judges of architecture, sculpture, vases, medals, intaglios, and cameos. What a madness for antiques, when Cardinal San Giorgio sent back to Michelangelo his "Amorino" because he considered it too modern. Would that we could follow the vicissitudes through which went the great collections of the day— the draw ings of Vasari, the books of Aldus and Pico della Mirandola, the armor of Cellini, the portraits of Paolo Giovio and the medals of Giulio Romano ! Certain is it that many of their treasures eventually crossed the Alps. It was after Charles VIII had shown to the elite of his nation "the remnants of antiquity gilded by the sun of Naples and of Rome" that the French Renaissance, already well on its way. 40 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES received new inspiration, and that the French collec tors renewed their activity. Judging by the fabulous accounts given by the country-folk, the contents of many a turreted castle on the Loire must have been wonderful, indeed. Following the lead of Francis I, who had his library, his pavilion d' armes, and his cabinet de curiosites, and the example of Catherine de Medicis, who had brought from Italy many of her family's treasures, the leading nobles, like Georges d 'Amboise in his Chateau de Gaillon, collected beauti ful things with admirable catholicity. It was not only books in sumptuous bindings which were sought after by Louis XII and the Valois, Diane de Poitiers, Queen Margot, Amyot, and de Thou, but art in every form. In the case of Grolier himself, are we not told by Jacques Strada, in his "Epithome du Thresor des Curiositez," that "great was the number of objects of gold, silver, and copper in perfect condition, and re markable the variety of statues in bronze and marble, which his agents were collecting for him all over the world"? Most signiflcant is the inventory of the collection of Florimond Robertet, the able treasurer of the royal finances under Charles VIII, Louis XII, and Francis I, which was made in 1532 by Michelle de Longju meau, his widow. Never was a catalogue such a labor of love as this one. It is a detailed description of the entire contents of a museum on which a great financier spent his entire fortune; it is full of significant touches concerning the customs of the time and the origin and use of the objects described; and it bears witness to the great enjoyment which both husband and wife derived from their treasures throughout MICHEL DE MAEOLLES, ABBE DE VILLELOIN 41 their lifetime. There were many jewels and some pear-shaped pearls of great size, silver andirons, thirty sets of silks and tapestries, bronzes and ivories. Among the paintings and sculpture were a canvas and a statue by Michelangelo. The porcelain was the first brought to France from China, and there was much pottery from Turkish lands and Flanders, French faience, Italian majolica, church ornaments, precious books, and four hundred pieces of Venetian glass, "gentillisez des plus jolies gayetez que les ver- riers sauraient inventer. ' ' It was the religious wars of the end of the century which brought French collecting to a stop. Constant strife and persecution discouraged the last artists of the Renaissance, ruined many a noble family, and scattered the contents of their palaces. Not until years afterward, during the seventeenth century, was it taken up again ; then it was to reach great brilliancy during the reign of Louis XIV. The leading families of France began to rebuild their collections when Henry IV and his favorite, Gabrielle d'Estrees, in dulged their fondness for medals, cameos, and in taglios, and Marie de Medicis had brought from Tuscany those paintings which she considered such an indispensable luxury. In after years Louis XIII collected armor; Aime of Austria, delicate bindings; and Richelieu, finely chased silverware. And when Louis XIV began to reign, Paris was the proud center of the collecting world. From this time on we have full records of the treasures amassed by many people of taste and culture and we are able to follow them into the following century, no matter how often they change hands— this, thanks to specialists like Felibien 42 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES and Germain Brice and the thousand references to art in the memoirs of the time. In 1673 there were in Paris eighty-five important art collectors who owned among them seventy -three libraries, and twenty years later this number had increased to one hundred and thirty-four, a remarkable development for such a short space of time. The greatest example was set by Cardinal Mazarin and Fabri du Peiresc. The wily Italian who had suc ceeded Richelieu gave as much time to his collections as to the ship of state, and his fellow-grafter, Nicolas Fouquet, treasurer of the kingdom, was allowed to make himself the most powerful man in France just as long as he was able to supply his Eminence with the millions he was so constantly in need of for the army and his gold-threaded tapestries and busts of Roman emperors. Just before his death, Mazarin had himself carried through a gallery lined with 400 mar bles, nearly 500 canvases (among them seven Rapha els), and 50,000 volumes, while he kept weeping and exclaiming: "Faudra-t-il quitter tout cela?" In the south of France, Fabri du Peiresc, great savant and collector, had agents in constant quest of rarities. It is related that "no ship entered a port in France without bringing for his collections some rare example of the fauna and flora of a distant country, some an tique marble, a Coptic, Arab, Chinese, Greek, or Hebrew manuscript, or some fragment excavated from Asia or Greece. ' ' By this time there was a new fine art to be collected seriously— that of Engraving. To the masterpieces of Diirer, Lucas van Leyden, and Marcantonio, now over a century old, had succeeded the spirited etchings Nanteuil. Jules, Cardinal Mazarin Engraved in 1655 when Mazarin was fifty-three years of age Size of the original engraving, 12% x 91/2 inches Nanteuil. Louis XIV Engraved in 1664, from Nanteuil's own drawing from life Louis was twenty-si.\ years of age when this portrait was engraved Size of the original engraving, 15% x 12 inches MICHEL DE MAEOLLES, ABBE DB VILLELOIN 43 of Callot. It was he who first popularized the art in France and paved the way for the enthusiastic ap preciation of Morin, Mellan, and Nanteuil. The school of engravers established by Colbert at the Gobelins made their art rank in importance with Painting and Sculpture, and their work won such popular favor that many engravers became publishers, and did a great business selling their prints and those of their pupils to the leading collectors. The first man of taste to make a serious collection of engravings was Claude Maugis, Abbe de Saint Ambroise, almoner to the Queen, Marie de Medicis. He spent forty years mak ing a collection which at his death was sold to Charles Delorme, that physician-in-ordinary to Henry IV and Louis XIII of whom Callot has made such an interest ing little portrait. It was when the first part of the Delorme Collection and that of a Sieiir de Kervel had been added to his own possessions by the Abbe de Marolles that there was begun the greatest coUection of prints and drawings ever assembled. Michel de Marolles, Abbe de Villeloin, was one of the most picturesque figures of the seventeenth cen tury. He was born in Touraine in 1600, and died in 1681, the son of the gallant Claude de Marolles, mare chai de camp in the army of Louis XIII, who had won a famous duel fought in the presence of two armies in the War of the Ligue. His life was indeed a peaceful one. At the age of twenty-six, after having pursued a complete course of studies, he was presented by Richelieu with the abbey of Villeloin in Touraine, and for the remainder of his days he drew its income, cultivated the most interesting people in France, translated the classics, wrote his memoirs, and col- 44 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES lected prints as no one ever did before him, or after. Truly, an ideal existence ! Although he tells us that at the age of nine he dec orated the walls of his bedroom with prints given him by a Carthusian monk, we know that for the first half of his life the Abbe de Villeloin did little more than collect friends. This must have given him little trou ble, for his rank gained him admission to the entire nobility, and his appreciation of literature and the fine arts enabled him to carry on a friendly inter course with the best-known artists and connaisseurs. During this intercourse there was a constant exchange of gifts; in fact, to receive presents seemed to have been the Abbe's object in life. In his "Memoirs" there are one hundred and fifty pages devoted to a complete enumeration of all the persons who have presented him with a gift, or "honored him extraordi narily by their civility," and the list includes the best-known personages of the day. What did de Marolles give them in return, besides the pleasure of his company and the charm of his ap preciation? A mass of bad translations of the clas sics: that was the great weakness of the Abbe de Villeloin. Chapelain, the poet, complained of it in a curious letter to Heinsius, saying : "That fellow has vowed to translate all the classic authors, and has almost reached the end of his labors, having spared neither Plautus nor Lucretius nor Horace nor Virgil nor Juvenal nor Martial, nor many others. Your Ovid and Seneca have as yet fought him off, but I do not consider them saved, and all the mercy they can expect is that of the Cyclops to Ulysses —to be devoured last. ' ' That Chapelain was not the MICHEL DE MAEOLLES, ABBE DE VILLELOIN 45 only one who did not appreciate the literary talent of the Abbe, and that he often found difficulty in finding publishers for his translations, is admitted by de Marolles himself when, in his poem on "The City of Paris, ' ' he says : " J 'ai perdu des amis par un rare caprice Quand je leur ai donng des livres que j 'ai faits Comme gens offenses, sans pardonner jamais Bien qu 'on n 'ait point blessg leur mechant artifice. ' ' But it is not as a man of letters that de Marolles inter ests us : it is as a great lover of the art of Engraving and the greatest collector of prints in history. Not until he had reached the age of forty-four did he be gin to collect them systematically. Then he purchased the first part of the Delorme Collection for one thou sand louis d'or, the prints owned by Kervel, and those of several other small collectors. His activity was so great that nine years later, in his memoirs, he was able to refer to this collection as follows : "God has given me grace to devote myself to pic tures without superstition, and I have been able to acquire a collection numbering more than 70,000 en gravings of all subjects. I began it in 1644, and have continued it with so much zeal, and with such an ex pense for one not wealthy, that I can claim to possess some of the work of all the known masters, painters as well as engravers, who number more than 400. ' ' He further adds : "I have found that collecting such things was more suited to my purse than collecting paintings, and more serviceable to the building up of a library. Had we in France a dozen such collectors among the nobil- 46 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES ity, there would not be enough prints to satisfy them all, and the works of Diirer, Lucas, and Marcantonio, for whieh we now pay four and five hundred ecus when in perfect condition, would be worth three times that amount. ... It seems to me that princes and noblemen who are collecting libraries should not neg lect works of this kind, as long as they contain so mueh information on beautiful subjects; but I know of no one who has undertaken to do this except for medals, flowers, architecture, machines, and mathematics. ' ' The collection of the Abbe de Marolles had become so famous by 1666, that Colbert, after having had it examined and appraised by Felibien and Pierre Mignard, advised Louis XIV to purchase it for the royal library. The deed was signed in 1667, and in the following year the Abbe de Villeloin received from the royal treasury the sum of twenty-six thousand livres ($25,000) for what was described in a seal-col ored document as "un grand nombre d'estampes des plus grands maitres de 1 'antiquite." Let us see what this meant. De Marolles tells us himself, in his catalogue of 1666, that his collection consisted of 123,400 original drawings and prints, the work of over 6000 artists, and that it was contained in 400 large and 141 small volumes. As to the variety of subjects represented, it had no end: it included, for instance, landscapes, views of cities, architecture, fountains, vases, statues, flowers, gardens, jewelry, lacework, machines, gro tesques, animals, costumes, decoration, anatomy, dances, comedies, jousts, heraldry, games, heroic fables, religious subjects, massacres, tortures, and over 10,000 portraits. MICHEL DE MAEOLLES, ABBfi DB VILLELOIN 47 In describing his collection to Colbert, the Abbe made especial note of his greatest treasures as follows : "Leonardo da Vinci. His work is in 5 pieces. "Anthony van Dyck. There are 210 plates after his work, of which 14 are etched by his own hand. "Marcantonio from Bologna, that excellent en graver who has done such beautiful work after Diirer, Mantegna, Raphael, and Michelangelo, is the greatest of all engravers, and the one whose works are the most sought after. I own 570 of them, in two volumes. "Andrea and Benedetto Mantegna. The work of the former is in 104 pieces, that of the latter in 74, all rare, making 178 pieces in all, some of which are engraved by Marcantonio. "Lucas van Leyden, excellent painter and en graver, of whom I have collected in one volume all the works engraved both on copper and on wood, besides 25 drawings in pen and pencil from his own hand, all very singular. I have 180 of these engravings, many in duplicate, all of great beauty, among them the por trait of Eulenspiegel, unique in France, the other having been sold more than twelve years ago for 16 louis d'or. Among the woodcuts, the Kings of Israel are here done in chiaroscuro, and unique in this state. "Albert Diirer. One folio volume, bound in vellum, contains 12 portraits of the artist by various masters ; 15 drawings by his own hand, which are singular and priceless ; his three plates on brass [sic] , his six etched plates, and all his copper engravings in duplicate, with three impressions of Maximilian's sword-hilt, all having been collected by the Abbe de Saint Ambroise, almoner of Queen Marie de Medicis. . . . "Rhinbrand [sic] . The work of this Dutch painter 48 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES and etcher consists of many prints, of which I have collected 224, among which are portraits and fancy subjects most curious." He further adds that he possesses 192 original crayon portraits by Lagneau, a successor of the Clouets, and 50 by Dumonstier, and that the prints of the old masters of Italy, Germany, and Flanders are contained in 19 folio volumes. After this enormous collection had passed into the hands of the King, the Abbe de Marolles was engaged to catalogue and classify it, and also to superintend the binding of its 541 volumes. For this he received on two occasions a payment of 1200 livres. The bind ing was done in full levant morocco, decorated with the royal arms, Louis's monogram, and richly tooled borders ; for this purpose 500 green and 1200 crimson sMns had been specially imported from the East. Our indefatigable collector had hardly parted with the result of the labor of twenty-two years when he began the formation of a second collection. To the second part of the Delorme Collection which he then purchased were added the prints of MM. Odespunck and la Reynie, the collection of M. Petau, who had made a specialty of portraits, and that of the Sieur de la None, which contained a great number of original drawings. We know very little about this second col lection of the Abbe de Marolles, except that when it was catalogued in 1672 it was contained in 237 folios. What became of it has never been ascertained ; in all probability it found its way into the print-cabinets of the many amateurs of the end of the century. It is evident that he wished to dispose of it, probably for the purpose of starting a third collection, for we have MICHEL DE MAEOLLES, ABBJg DE VILLELOIN 49 a letter on the subject addressed to M. Brisacier, se cretaire des commandements de la Reine, of whom Masson made that famous engraved plate known as "The Gray-haired Man." In it de Marolles describes his second collection as being hardly less important than the one he had previously sold to the King, and as containing a great number of masterpieces which were unique. Not satisfied with such extensive researches in the realm of art, the Abbe de Villeloin decided to record all his information on the subject, and in the spring of 1666 announced the title of a colossal work on which he was engaged as: "Une histoire tres ample des peintres, sculpteurs, graveurs, architeetes, inge- nieurs, maitres-ecrivains, orfevres, menuisiers, bro- deurs, jardiniers et autres artisans industrieux, ou il est fait mention de plus de dix mille personnes, aussi bien que d'un tres grand nombre d 'ouvrages conside rables, avec une description exacte et naive des plus belles estampes ou de celles qui peuvent servir a donner beaucoup de connaissanees qui seraient ignorees sans cela." This work was, unfortunately, never pub lished, and its manuscript has never been found; it would have been a wonderful compendium of French art during the seventeenth century, and would have given us much precious information concerning a number of prominent engravers of whom so little is known to-day. All that remains of it is the summary, written in bad verse and published under the title of "Le livre des peintres et des graveurs." It is a curious little book, containing little more than the names of thou sands of artists who were obscure in their day and who 5ff PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES are now completely forgotten. To many of them, how ever, and particularly to the most prominent, are affixed such descriptive little touches, that what would otherwise have been a monotonous pattern becomes an original piece of historical ornament. As to the "Memoirs" of the Abbe de Marolles, they possess the same defect as many other autobiographies of the time: they were published too soon, and they prove how anxious the author was to witness the sen sation he thought he would make. In this case they were published in 1653, fourteen years before the Abbe had sold his first collection, and they tell us little more than that he possessed a very extended circle of acquaintances who thought the world of him on account of his patronage of the fine arts and his literary talent. It is evident that he included himself among his most sincere admirers, and that he regarded the friendship of such a charming woman as Louise- Marie de Gonzague, who later became Queen of Poland, and the incense which all the engravers in France ostentatiously scattered before him, as both natural and deserved. Claude Mellan, Poilly, and Robert Nanteuil were on particularly friendly terms with him, each in turn engraving his portrait from life, the last with such delicacy and finish that that plate ranks among his most successful portraits. Mellan, further more, engraved the portraits of his parents, Claude de Marolles and Agatha Castiglione. The tastes and the mania for collecting of the Abbe de Villeloin were so well known that it is not impos sible that it was he of whom La Bruyere was thinking when, in his famous " Caracteres, " he gives the fol lowing description of a collector : '^ '^,^ Agatha Castiglione "Wife of Claude de Marolles and mother of Michel de Marolles, Abbe de Villeloin Engraved by Claude Mellan from his own design Size of the original engraving, 614x5 inches CLAVD d^' M/mOLLES jcncrofuf Turcncnfii .£ qucy utirulii-: / ¦ ¦ ¦ cataphraLtoi-um inilituni 'pricfcctus Tcrcntanoi'wncn Dw. .¦¦',¦.¦¦' '' ' ¦' ¦ ¦''¦ T.-irrik.pi'o 'Rcae.pfD 'RcUiftoncui duello ::'anis.tn h:lh Jan,:i'r. ;« m^.^- bfhs . in fprrnfdii Jiuttiu CKunius . apud J uos mkr Muh Ai'l'^ti/ '^<^ \^%-iJklom ac LudoiucL 'tiami mdUis can/fims/rum Jiiiorum amplcx '(^hr.i'.nh ouubiilt jnn . natui, LXIX W id Tice MIX-tOCK-.i'i Claude de Marolles Father of Michel de Marolles, Abbe de Villeloin Engraved by Claude Mellan from his own design Size of the original engraving, 9^/4 X ''•^ inches MICHEL DE MAEOLLES, ABBE DE VILLELOIN 51 ' ' ' You wish to see my prints, ' says Democenes, and he forthwith brings them out and sets them before you. You see one which is neither dark nor clear nor completely drawn, and better flt to decorate on a holi day the walls of the Petit Pont or the Rue Neuve than to be treasured in a famous collection. He admits that it is engraved badly and drawn worse, but hastens to inform you that it is the work of an Italian artist who produced very little, and that the plate had hardly any printing ; that, moreover, it is the only one of its kind in France; that he paid much for it, and would not exchange it for something far better. 'I am,' he adds, 'in such a serious trouble that it will prevent any further collecting. I have all of Callot but one print, which is not only not one of his best plates, but actually one of his worst; nevertheless, it would complete my Callot. I have been looking for it for twenty years, and, despairing of success, I find life very hard, indeed. ' ' ' This is .admirably descriptive of a born collector; and what would have been a ridiculous mania in a philistine became a natural attitude on the part of such a connaisseur as the Abbe de Marolles. In our eyes his weaknesses were insignificant, and we forgive him his bad translations, his unpublished history of Art, and the rather monotonous self-sufficiency of his Memoirs, for the encouragement which his honest en thusiasm and indomitable collecting gave to the artists who made the Golden Age of Engraving— for having been the Prince of Print-collectors. JEAN MORIN 1600-1666 By LOUIS E. METCALFE THE Exhibitions of French Engraved Portraits of the Seventeenth Century recently made at the New York Public Library and at the Bos ton Museum of Fine Arts, give one an excellent idea of the vogue of the portrait and the excellence at tained by that remarkable school of engravers whieh fiourished under the auspices of Louis XIV. A score of masters are represented, from Michael Lasne to the superb Nanteuil, and their models, the most representative personages of that grand century of French history, whether plotters against Henry IV, friends and foes of Richelieu or fiatterers of Louis XIV, stand proudly on parade for the twentieth- century American, in all their glory of immense wigs, armor and lace collars, or in the quieter garb of prelates and counselors to the king. It is a remark able illustration to the history of a great period. The nobility represented the survival of the fittest, for in the early part of the century four thousand of them had died in those street duels which Richelieu had abolished only with the help of the executioner. As to the clergy, no wonder that so many of those portly prelates could afford to have their portraits painted JEAN MOEIN 53 and engraved: the wealth of the church had never been greater. Their example was followed by every one of any importance in the public eye; he had his portrait made with no more hesitation than one has nowadays to sit to a photographer of recognized ex cellence. It was the Golden Age of Portrait-painting, for they were the days of Rubens, Van Dyck, Rembrandt and that host of splendid Dutch artists for whom phy siognomy had no secrets. They in turn inspired Phi lippe de Champaigne and, later, Lebrun and Mignard, Rigaud and Largilliere. Many of their glorious can vases have long been public property and remain to-day enshrined in national museums, but many more have for years remained jealously guarded heirlooms in private collections, and have been known only to a few. Many of those which have not been destroyed have become so altered by time and damaged by faulty restoration that they hardly do justice to their creators. Thanks to the engraver, these portraits are just as alive to-day as when they were painted, for in an engraving there is no paint to fade or darken, no values to become altered. A brilliant impression of an early state remains to-day what it was when it emerged from the master's hand two and a half centuries ago. Such collections as are now exhibited represent more than brilliant examples of an art which is lost; they are historical and artistic documents of great impor tance, and the French Engravers of the Seventeenth Century deserve infinite praise for having showed all the possibilities of an art which, as Longhi claims in his book La Calcografia, "publishes and immortalizes 54 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES the portraits of eminent men for the example of present and future generations, better than any other serving as the vehicle for the most extended and remote propagation of deserved celebrity." Among the many artists who were responsible for the Golden Age of Engraving, Jean Morin occupies a unique position. He was born in 1600 and died in 1666. Morin has the distinction of having not only immediately preceded and influenced the master of them all, Nanteuil, but also of having produced fifty portraits which, in contradistinction to all other re productive engravers, he etched instead of engraved with the burin. It is difficult, however, to realize what a strikingly original and personal artist he was, without first considering in what stage of development his first efforts had found the art. When had engraved portraiture begun in France? We must look for its first steps in the illustrations of the books whieh were published during the second half of the sixteenth century; they teem with care fully executed small-sized portraits which, as a rule, were framed in decorative cartouches and bore lengthy inscriptions. Very few of them have been drawn from life; the first engravers, not trusting their own pow ers, were content to copy those exquisitely sensitive and delicate drawings, the crayon portraits which the Clouets made of royalty and the court at the time of Francis I, Henry II, and Catherine de Medicis. They are a wonderful pendant to Holbein's drawings of the courtiers of Henry VIII. The finest are now hanging in the famous Gallery of Psyche at Chantilly. Noth ing can describe the subtlety with which the artist has combined refinement and realism and drawn with Morin. Louis XIII, King of France After the painting by Philippe de Champaigne Size of the originiil engraving, 11% X 9V^ inches Morin. Anne of Austria, Regent of France Widow of Louis XIII and Mother of Louis XIV After the painting by Philiijpe de Champaigne Size of the original engraving, liy^xDiyi inches JEAN MOEIN 55 delicate color the features of the famous personages of those tragic times. Here is Henry IV as a careless youth next to the terrible Catherine when she was an innocent-looking j'oung bride; further on are the baby daughter of Francis I and the indomitable head of the house of Guise. The sad Charles IX is represented here as a mere boy ; there, a week before his death, shaking with fever and tortured by remorse for the fearful mas sacre which he had instigated. The ill-fated Mary Stuart wears becomingly her widow's mourning, and is surrounded by the chivalry and the beauty of the court. The success of these drawings was so great that every one desired complete sets of them, and the result was that they were copied over and over again, first by other artists, and finally by amateurs who were not very faithful to their models. The work of, the Clouets was intelligently continued by several mem bers of the family of Dumonstier, and the vogue of this exquisite form of portraiture lasted until the mid dle of the following century. It was these finished miniatures which the flrst en gravers attempted to reproduce on wood and copper ; their drawing was in most cases weak, and conse- quentlj'' the resemblance was seldom faithful; their knowledge of line-work was very meager, and there fore the modeling was most primitive ; but in spite of this, their work is interesting for its exquisite finish and its consistent effort to express the character of the individual. Such very personal little portraits as those of Philibert Delorme in his treatise on architec ture, Orlando di Lasso in a book of motets, and the great Ambroise Pare in his treatise on the fractures of 56 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES the skull, shared the fame of those of Henry IV by Thomas de Leu, and greatly increased the popularity of engraving. By the beginmng of the seventeenth century it had become extremely fashionable to dabble in engraving, and painters, architects, goldsmiths, noblemen and even ladies were busy gouging wood and cutting cop per with an enthusiasm which has bequeathed us a mass of small illustrations, tail-pieces, grotesques, mottos, emblems and other embellishments. Then there appeared during the reign of Louis XIII a pe culiar genius in Claude Mellan. He adopted such an original technique that he had practically no follow ers. Considering cross-hatching rank heresy, Mellan spent a great part of his life making facsimiles on copper of more than four score charming pencil-draw ings which he had made from life, using distinct lines whieh he made broader in the shadows. Although he thereby succeeded in producing a set of very remark able plates, he was prevented by the exaggerated sim plicity of his system from securing all the detail, the refinement of expression necessary to a real psycho logical study, and he was unable to express any color, texture or chiaroscuro whatever. The most original artistic genius at that time was Callot, who had introduced etching in France; he delighted everybody with the facility and esprit with which he handled the needle, and he produced a great number of plates full of crisply drawn little figures which possessed so much animation that nothing like them had previously been seen. His two attempts at portraiture, however, are far from being significant; JEAN MOEIN 57 it may be said that he was not serious enough for such work. By that time portrait-engraving had become extinct in Germany, and it was achieving little of importance in Italy and Spain ; in the Low Countries, however, it was producing masterpieces. Even if Rembrandt and Van Dyck had given the world nothing more than their etched portraits, their fame would live for ever. In the former, the world found an artist who painted as effectively with the needle as with the brush, and an etcher who reveled in such powerful and correct chiaroscuro that his portraits were a per fect revelation. The glowing light with which he illumined his faces and the boldness and freedom of his line-work amazed the engravers of his time, for in comparison they had worked only in outline, and those who attempted to imitate him achieved very lit tle success. In the plates of Rembrandt the engraved portrait reaches the last degree of warmth of expres sion and life. As to Anthony Van Dyck, he had followed the example of Rubens and encouraged the leading en gravers of Antwerp to reproduce his portraits on cop per. The result was that noble work called his ' ' Iconography, ' ' which contained over a hundred por traits of the leading painters and art patrons of the time, most brilliantly engraved by Soutman, the Bols- werts, Vorstermann and Paul Pontius under the master's jealous supervision. In directing this work Van Dyck developed such enthusiasm that he himself etched eighteen portraits from life, in which the faces are modeled with small dots ; they are charming draw ings which exhibit such a wonderful knowledge of 58 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES physiognomy, and possess so much life and color in spite of the simplicity of their treatment, that they remain masterpieces for all times. Through the genius of Rubens and Van Dyck the art of engraving had become transformed ; at last life and color had come into it. No such brilliancy in the treatment of flesh and varied texture had been at tained by pure line-work before the appearance of Pontius 's portrait of Rubens, and with the exception of the etchings of Rembrandt, nothing so human had previously been seen as Van Dyck's etching of Pontius himself. But in spite of the best achievements of the Flemish engravers, there was still an important advance to be made before the copperplate could give such a faith ful translation of a painting that besides the drawing and the color, it could reproduce all the reflnement of detail, all the texture and chiaroscuro, all the painter like effect of the canvas. That interval could be bridged only by a born draughtsman who had the soul of a portrait-painter and by an artist who would de vote himself exclusively to the solution of that one problem. For that flnal step of its development, reproductive engraving had to go to France and to the unique Jean Morin. It is incredible that so little should be known about an artist of his prominence, particularly as at that time the best artists were constantly "en evidence" and undertaking distant travels for the sake of their education and in order to gain patrons. We must assume that Morin lived a very quiet life and cared little for recognition. Who were his first masters re mains a mystery; the references which are made to Morin. Cardinal Richelieu After the painting by Philippe de Champaigne Size of the original engrjiving, 111/2x91/4 inches Morin, Pierre Maugis des Granges Maitre-d' Hotel of Louis XTII After the painting by Philippe de Champaigne Size of the original engraving, lli^ x 9l^ inches JEAN MOEIN 59 him in the records of the time point only to the fact that he was always held in high esteem for the ex cellence of his work, and that everywhere his serious character commanded respect. Two things are never theless certain concerning him. One is that he had begun by becoming a well-schooled painter, for his etched work is of singularly uniform excellence; the other is that he had been influenced exclusively by the Flemish School. It was the etching of Van Dyck which tempted him to give up the brush for the graver, and it was his own peculiarly calm and con scientious temperament which impelled him to carry the original technique of that prince of portraiture to the last degree of finish. On the other hand, it was from another Flemish artist, Philippe de Champaigne, who had made France his home, that he received inspiration and guidance throughout his life-work. In return for this he devoted himself to the faithful reproduction of as many of that master's canvases as he could engrave before his death. Morin 's work consists of a few figure-subjects and landscapes and fifty portraits. These are among the finest that were engraved during the seventeenth cen tury, and they have the distinction of illustrating the reign of Louis XIII and his minister Richelieu. As an historical gallery they possess as much importance as the portraits made later by the school of Nanteuil : four of them are after Van Dyck, fourteen are from the works of various painters, including Titian, and all the rest, thirty-two in number, reproduce the dig nified canvases of Philippe de Champaigne. It was natural for Morin to turn to the Flemish painter, not 60 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES only because the latter had soon after his arrival be come the painter of the court and the head of the French School, but because his calm, precise art was admirably suited to the engraver's work. The canvases of Philippe de Champaigne have little of the power of Rubens, or the coloring and supreme elegance of Van Dyck, nor do they possess the depth and originality of the portraits of Rembrandt, but they are characterized by an uncommon strength of draughtsmanship and composition, and they unfail ingly exhibit such profound seriousness, restraint and dignity as few masters can boast of. As in the case of most of Morin 's portraits, it is hard to gaze upon them without experiencing that peculiar sensation of familiarity with the human being represented, with out being convinced that here is the bare truth just as an intelligent and thoroughly sincere nature beheld it, without feeling that some of the model's soul has passed into the canvas. It could not be otherwise with the work of an artist who had toiled so earnestly to follow an ideal, and who himself had been visited by so much affliction. De Champaigne became at the end of his life a Jansenist and a devoted Port Royalist— that is, a member of a community of austere human beings whose lives were so simple and whose thoughts were so high that they were a perpetual reproach to the selfish clergy of the day and the empty butterflies who crowded the salons of Versailles. He has never come into his own, principally be cause he stood in such close proximity to more bril liant lights, and also because so many of his scattered paintings have become darkened with age. His work as the painter of Richelieu established such a popu- JEAN MOEIN 61 larity for the portrait as it had not known before and as it has not known since. To-day, when his name is mentioned, one shrugs his shoulders and says: "Oh, well, but what was he compared to Rubens, Van Dyck and Rembrandt 1 ' ', and then suddenly remembers that it was he who painted Richelieu and that the full length portrait which hangs in the Salon Carre of the Louvre and the triple study of the head which is in the National Gallery, London, will always rank with the masterpieces of portrait-painting. Such was the artist to whom Jean Morin went for advice and for whom he developed such intense ad miration and devotion. The Flemish painter must have readily seen how much the engraver's tempera ment had in common with his own, and immediately understood that his faultless drawing and conscien tious nature would make of him an admirable inter preter of his canvases. Certain it is that he lost no time in encouraging him to develop his technique, and that he cheerfully gave hira his portraits to copy. The friendship which ensued continued until death, and Morin devoted his life to popularizing the portraits of Philippe de Champaigne, later becoming himself af filiated with the noble sect of Port Royalists. The peculiar significance of Morin 's work, aside from the fact that it has been the principal means of per petuating the work of a remarkable artist, is that it represents the first effort in the history of Engraved Portraiture to reproduce a painted portrait with all its refinement of drawing and variety of tones. No such trouble had previously been taken fully to repre sent all the color and chiaroscuro of a picture. In 62 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES order to accomplish this the engraver had to develop a painter's technique, and that was something very different from the precise and methodical line-work of the engravers who had preceded him. The etched work of Callot was mere line-work; Van Dyck sup plemented this with some delicate modeling made with small dots; and Morin, developing this system to the last degree of refinement, bent all his energy to the absolutely faithful reproduction of the canvas in every detail of line and gradation of light. His tech nique is chiefly etching combined with burin work. As a rule, his faces are modeled entirely with etched dots, and he does this with such delicacy and refine ment that in many cases they have the quality of a fine mezzotint. Only in a few of his plates does he use line-work to deepen his shadows, and this is done over the stippling. By means of this system he was able to express the greatest variety of tones, from the very light complexion of a blond Englishwoman to the dark skin and blue-black hair of a southern French man. The hair he always etched with great care, with a line admirable alike for its precision and freedom; the frame alone seems to have been done with the burin. It is, however, in the treatment of the costume that Morin shows his independence of technical finish ; he makes little pretense at securing realism in his expression of texture. Compared to the work of Nan teuil the surface of his armor and his moire silk cas socks and rich lace collars often lack realism, while his backgrounds possess little of that soft gradation which enhances the beauty of so many later engravings. But it is this very freedom which makes his plates so original and gives them such especial charm. Be- Morin. Henrj de Lorraine, Comte d'Harcourt The Marshal-in-Chief of the Armies of Loui.s XIII After the painting by Philippe de Champaigne Size of the original engviiving, 1 1 il/n; '/ 0';,; inches MoRiN. Guido, Cardinal Bentivoglio The Papal Nuncio to the Court of Louis XIII After the painting by Anthony Van Dyck Size of the original engraving, 111/^x93/^ inches JEAN MOEIN 63 sides, why should etching partake of the character of slow and precise burin work? Morin 's chief pre occupation is the rendering of the face and the preser vation of all the character of the original; it is evident that he spares no pains to make his reproduc tion an absolutely faithful one. As to the rest of the picture, he does not consider it necessary to do more than recall the picturesque effect of the original's ensemble, but if he treats it with freedom he is careful to make every line serve a defimte purpose; he is never careless. It is to his great sympathy and conscientiousness that Morin owed his success as a reproductive engraver, and the fact that his plates had a great influence on his contemporaries. Before him no such delicate tones and deep velvety blacks had been seen, no engraver had been so consistently correct and expressive in his drawing ; so much justice had never been done to a painter. The art of Morin was so .personal that the efforts of his pupils Alix, Plattemontagne and Boulanger to follow his technique remained unsuccessful; he was as inimitable in his brilliant effects of chiaroscuro as Mellan with his flendishly clever but exaggerated sim plicity of line. Nevertheless, the lesson of thorough faithfulness he had given was not lost ; the seed fell on fertile ground when Robert Nanteuil, at the outset of his career, studied Morin 's work closely enough to imitate his technique in such portraits as those of Pierre Dupuis, the royal librarian, and the poet Gilles Menage. The engraver from Rheims had doubtless profited by the example of his own master Regnesson, whose work had already shown Morin 's influence. Those clever 64 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES little portraits as well as a few others done in that style show a marked advance on the previous ones, in which he had followed that of Mellan, and the delicate little dots with which their faces are modeled paved the way for that system of close, short strokes with which he eventually succeeded in imitating to perfec tion the peculiar texture of skin. Nanteuil was to inherit the best in all who had preceded him and to combine all previous systems into one which would carry the art of Engraved Portraiture to its greatest development ; but it was Morin who gave him the most eloquent example and who pointed out to him the last remaining step to technical perfection. His Work On looking through a complete collection of Morin 's portraits one is immediately impressed by the small number of plates which denote crude beginnings. As none of them is dated, it is next to impossible to ar range his works chronologically, all the more so as the engraver perfected his technique and found his manner very early in his career. We find only one portrait whieh is really unsatisfactory, that of Louis XI, copied possibly from an old miniature, and only two which show any hardness of tone, the portraits of Augustin and Christophe de Thou; they are undoubt edly early works, the head of the dreaded hermit of Plessis-les-Tours being probably Morin 's first effort. Then we have that most Gallic of Frenchmen, Henry IV, a quaint head drawn with much character ; Marie de Medicis, after Pourbus; and Henry II, after Olouet. These last two are most excellent plates, the JEAN MOEIN 65 first showing us that intriguing Italian princess shortly after her arrival from Florence, in all the glory of her wonderful complexion and golden hair; the second recalling the exquisite art of Clouet in the simplicity and delicacy of the treatment of the face and the superb detail of the costume. ^ We are then brought face to face with the great Philip II of Spain, in one of Morin 's most serenely elegant plates after Titian, and the portraits of the two great saints of the time. Saint Frangois de Sales and San Carlo Borromeo. To the four portraits after Van Dyck we must give special attention, for they contain Morin 's master pieces, the portrait of N. Chrystin, son of the Spanish plenipotentiary at the Peace of Vervins, and that of Cardinal Bentivoglio, the papal nuncio to the court of Louis XIII. Here we have Morin in his grand manner, transferring all the color of the original canvas to his copperplate and interpreting his models with a bold ness, a softness, a clearness of purpose and a strength of sympathy wholly admirable. In awarding the palm, we hesitate between the deep tones, the velvety finish in the head of the somber Spaniard and the subtle modeling of the beautifully illumined, sensitive Italian face. Either of these portraits alone would have established Morin 's fame. The other two plates after Van Dyck represent women, Margaret Lemon, beloved of the painter, and the Countess of Caernarvon, a remarkable study in high lights, and one of Morin 's most delicate plates. 1 Why such an authority as Eobert-Dumesnil should have classed the portrait of Henry IV 's queen among the doubtful plates of Morin is a mystery. It is clearly the work of that master, and although an early plate, it is one of his brilliant ones. 66 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES The remainder of the gallery consists of his inter pretation of Philippe de Champaigne 's portraits, and the array of celebrities there represented is a notable one. What would we know of the features of that eccentric monarch, the melancholic Louis XIII, if we did not possess this striking etching of Morin? The father ot"le roi soleil" is here posing, ill at ease, and probably wondering what Richelieu is going to make him do next. An unsatisfactory human being was he whose "principal merit was to have done what few mediocre characters ever do, bow down to the superi ority of genius. ' ' His queen, Anne of Austria, is here shown both in the quiet garb of a widow (a delight fully simple portrait) and in the more ceremonious court mourning, while his prime minister, Richelieu, is represented in a plate than which there is none more interesting among Morin 's works. A comparison be tween this impression of the great cardinal's char acter and that recorded in the superb engraving by Nanteuil is a most interesting one. In the latter we see the steersman df the ship of state in all his gran deur of noble purpose and responsibility, and we feel the immense will-power with which, in constant danger of his life, he bore long with his enemies, and then, driven to action, "went far, very far and covered everything with his scarlet robe." But in Morin 's in terpretation of the canvas of de Champaigne we see quite another side of the great statesman. It is the Richelieu whom we perceive through some memoirs of the time (and not the least trustworthy ones), and in the literary history of the early seventeenth century. It is a man wholly lacking in a sense of humor, possess- Morin. Nicolas Chrystin Son of the Plenipotentiary of King Philip IV of Spain to the Peace of Vervins After the painting by Anthony Van Dyck Size of the original engraving, 111/^x91/4 inches Morin, Antoine Vitre Printer to the King and the Clergy After the painting by Philippe de Champaigne Size uf the original engraving. 12i/.i < Svi inches JEAN MOEIN 67 ing plenty of vanity and constantly yearning for rec ognition as a literary light and a squire of dames. Quite a different portrait is that of his nephew, Vignerod, shown here in three-quarter figure as the Abbe de Richelieu, a most attractive plate, and one of the only two portraits of Morin 's in which the model is shown otherwise than in the usual bust form. The other one is that of Vitre, a famous printer of the time ; it is one of the lowest-toned engraved portraits extant, and in its velvety blackness it is a most striking production. A fine impression of it will turn one's thoughts to Rembrandt and show the full extent of Morin 's originality. The list contains many famous personages: Maza rin; Michel Le Tellier; Charles de Valois, due d'An gouleme, son of Charles IX and the beautiful Marie Touchet; the Marechai d'Harcourt, the "Cadet a la perle" of the more famous portrait by Masson and the valorous head of the armies of Louis XIII ; the charm ing Comtesse de Bossu and her secretly married second husband the Due de Guise; the Marechai de Villeroy, preceptor of Louis XIV ; Potier de Gesvres, also a war rior ; and the Chancellor Marillac, whose brother was executed by Richelieu and who himself became the car dinal's victim, though in a less tragic way. All these plates are an admirable interpretation of their models, and show an absolute lack of mannerism. With their brilliant contrasts of light and shade and the uncom mon amount of texture due to the freedom of the line- work and the rich color of the ink employed, they have a richness of tone and a decorative effect shared by few of the portraits made later in the century. Some of them are engraved in a rather high key and show a 68 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKSES simply modeled head against a light background, as in the case of Brachet de la Miiletiere, the savant who was first an intolerant Calvinist and then became a militant Roman Catholic. In other portraits like that of Maugis, the maitre-d'hotel of the king, the artist seems to have reveled in the deepest tones of his inky palette, and he renders the olive skin and the raven hair of this strong-featured individual with a most striking intensity. Splendid likenesses of prominent ecclesiastical dig nitaries are to be found among the portraits which complete this interesting gallery, but one there is which we must pause to contemplate, and it is the faithfully reproduced portrait of that extraordinary human being, J. Paul de Gondi, better known as the Cardinal de Retz. In a masterpiece of draughts manship, Morin duplicates the art of de Champaigne in expressing all the cleverness and daring, the am bition and the sense of humor, of this born gambler, whose genius for intrigue was at the bottom of the war of. the Fronde. One can see him, with his yellow, oily face, unkempt and unshaven, limping through the narrow streets of Paris, distributing largesses among a populace which, the following hour, he would betray to the nobles, and then again champion. As a pendant we have the brilliantly executed head of Omer Talon, avocat-general du Parlement, the greatest pillar of French jurisprudence and a great man in his day ; it is a plate which Rembrandt would have deigned to look at more than once. Finally the famous Port Royal is here represented in the persons of Jansenius, Bishop of Ypres, who raised such a storm in church circles of that time; Morin. jEAN-pRANgois-PAUL de Gondi This personage is better known by his later title of Cardinal de Retz After the painting by Philippe de Champaigne Size of the original engraving, 1114x91/1: inches ''/iiianinnruj •.'(tifni.r^i n 'Aiinfffho Oc/iafu • '^I'noctilu.r MoRiN. Omer Talon Advocate-General of the Parliament of Paris After the painting by Philippe de Champaigne Size of the original engrjiving, fJi/i x 91/^ inches JEAN MOEIN 69 Arnauld d'Andilly, the head of the great family of that name and the protector of Port Royal; and Jean Du Verger de Houranne, abbe de Saint-Cyran, its con fessor, a man worthy of the first centuries of Chris tianity. They were famous men in their day, and their names were on everybody's lips; their story spells the most serious chapter of the history of their age, and still they are all but forgotten in comparison with the great personages of the court, and even their painted portraits are relegated to obscurity. In these masterly prints of Morin, however, they appear to us just as they looked in their day, with much of their strength and weakness, their aspirations and their secret ambitions. So much animation is there in their faces that it is no hard matter to feel like the old monk in the Spanish monastery who, left alone of all his brothers, said, as he looked on the new pictures by Velasquez, ' ' I sometimes think we are the shadows. ' ' ROBERT NANTEUIL 1630-1678 Bt LOUIS E. METCALFE IT is a curious fact that in these days of exhaustive research in everything which concerns the fine arts, Robert Nanteuil, the portrait-engraver of Louis XIV, has remained until so recently both illus trious and unknown. To be sure, his name has been mentioned in all the histories of art, and in the text-books of engraving he is dwelt upon at some length and given a prominent place among the en gravers of his time; but he was never found worthy of any especial study, of the least little brochure. His name has been familiar only to the connoisseurs and the print-collectors; to them it has always been synonymous with the greatest excellence attained by the lost art of line-engraving. This silence was broken finally in the artist's own birthplace. In 1884 Mr. Charles Loriquet, curator of the library of the city of Rheims, who had just com pleted a collection of Nanteuil's portraits for the city museum, addressed the Academy at one of its public sittings and eloquently pleaded with the authorities to erect a monument to him whom he considered sec ond only to the great Colbert as the most illustrious son of Rheims. His description of the artist and his work created such enthusiasm that he was later in- EOBEET NANTEUIL 71 duced to publish it, together with some interesting documents concerning Nanteuil. The unique little book found its way into many libraries, private as well as public, and has ever since been unfindable. Many new books on engraving have appeared since that day which have devoted as much as two or three pages to this brilliant artist without, however, giving his work more than a superficial criticism. It was not until Mr. T. H. Thomas published his recent work "French Portrait Engravers of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries" that the artist received proper recognition. Nanteuil is here frankly recognized as one of the most admirable figures in the history of art, and proclaimed not only prince of portrait-en gravers but also a great artist among the portrait- makers of all times. The thirty pages which are devoted to him constitute the most brilliant and thor ough criticism that has ever been made of a line- engraver,— they are a splendid analysis of the artist's technique, his development, his influence on his con temporaries, and the exalted position whieh he occu pied among them. Without doubt many readers of that interesting work will wonder why they never had before heard of such an important artist. It was only four years ago that I for one made his acquaintance; While I was looking through a large collection of old engraved portraits, one head in par ticular arrested my attention ; it was drawn with such rare precision, modeled with such maestria, it had such expressive eyes and mouth, that it made all the other portraits seem flat and lifeless. My admiration turned into wonderment when I saw by the signature 72 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES that the artist had drawn it from life as well as en graved it. I had known the work of only those showy engravers who, in the time of Louis XV, were content to copy the work of the leading painters of the day and improve on it if they could. There was no tra- duttore traditore about this expressive portrait; here was something of a very different order. The artist was a real portrait-maker, a student of character, a worthy comrade of Holbein, a draughtsman whose ambition it was first to represent the subject as he really looked, then to make as fine an engraved plate as possible. The text-books on engraving which fell into my hands informed me of the rank he had occupied in that famous school of engraving established by Louis XIV and of the great number of prominent people he had drawn from life. That was enough to whet my curiosity to the limit, for my interest in physiognomy had become a passion, and whenever I had found in the galleries of Europe a convincing portrait of a well-known historical personage, my delight had been keen. Holbeins, Van Dycks, Mierevelts and Quentin de Latours had been for years the objects of my en thusiasm; they were living documents, revelations of personalities such as few memoirs provided. When the catalogue of Robert-Dumesnil, the only complete list of Nanteuil's portraits, had informed me that Nanteuil's models had been in great part the men who had given so much greatness to the reign of the most splendid of modern potentates, I felt that the collection must constitute an historical document of no mean interest, if the likenesses of those celebrities EOBEET NANTEUIL 73 were as convincing as that of the obscure Louis Hes- selin, President de la Chambre des Deniers, which I now owned. But it was not until I had pored over the contents of six huge volumes containing his complete works, at the Cabinet des Estampes of the Bibliotheque Na tionale, that I realized what a unique achievement had been that of the engraver from Rheims. He had made, it seems, a multitude of drawings from life of his contemporaries, in pencil, silverpoint, crayons, and pastels, from the King himself down to the hum blest cure of his parish, and had then engraved many of them on copper, securing thereby so many impres sions that although almost all of his original draw ings have disappeared, his work has been perpetuated for all times. (Whoever has said that a multitude of sheets of paper scattered among the museums of the world constituted a monument more enduring than the pyramids, must have been a collector, for he real ized with how much jealousy a treasure can be guarded.) Throughout all this work Nanteuil exhib ited such power as a draughtsman that his portraits won international fame for their resemblance, and moreover he engraved with such perfection that his work and the influence he exerted over the great school formed by Louis XIV mark the Golden Age of Line-engraving. It is therefore in a dual capacity that Nanteuil must be admired, and this point has not been sufl- ciently emphasized by his critics. He is an inspiring example of a man who has set out to do only one thing (for he never attempted anything but heads)— but has learned to do it so well that he rises far above his 74 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES rivals and has made his name a synonym for supreme excellence. To carry the engraved portrait to its greatest possible perfection had been his ambition, and he succeeded in this, for it is not possible to im agine the burin producing more decided color, greater fullness of tone, and finer finish than can be found in a great many portraits by Nanteuil. It can be said that he used the sharp metal point with the same free dom as a great painter uses a brush; his technique was so elastic and susceptible of modification that he was enabled to test to the fullest extent the possibili ties of his medium and to determine its limitations. When one is lucky enough to have the wonderful collections of the Cabinet des Estampes at his dis posal, the next thing to do after having seen the works of Nanteuil is to examine those of his contemporaries. It becomes perfectly clear which artists have influ enced him, and to what extent ; it will also be evident at a glance that he influenced all the rest. This study, however superflcial, will take several days, for the number of peintre-graveurs encouraged by Louis XIV through the indefatigable Colbert was great, and their work was enormous. Edelinck, who until recently has been better known than Nanteuil, was extremely proliflc, and Pitau, the Poillys, Masson, Lombart, and Van Schuppen, to say nothing of Mel lan and Morin among many others, produced a great many portraits. What a collection! What a com plete iconography of le grand siecle! Here is every body who was at all prominent in the most civilized country of the time. Is it possible not to develop a love of portraiture, a strong interest in engraving and a desire to collect engraved portraits, of all pictures EOBEET NANTEUIL 75 the most convenient, the most possible to acquire and keep in large numbers ? I am reminded of John Evelyn and Samuel Pepys as well as of the abbe Michel de Marolles, who were the first great or systematic collectors of engraved portraits, the Frenchman owning twenty thousand prints and all the portraits extant. Evelyn wrote to Pepys advising him to collect them, for, as he said, "some are so well done to the life that they may stand in competition with the best paintings." He then adds : ' ' This were a cheaper and so much a more useful curiosity as they seldom are without their names, ages and eulogies of the persons whose por traits they represent. I say you will be exceedingly pleased to contemplate the efiSgies of those who have made such a noise and bustle in the world, either by their madness and folly, or a more conspicuous figure by their wit and learning. They will greatly refresh you in your study and by your fireside when you are many years returned." We later see him write in his "Diary" that he had "sat to the great Nanteuil who had been knighted by the king for his art" and had considered himself "unworthy of being included in that gallery of models whom Nanteuil's art has made famous." We know by his own "Diary" that Pepys became an enthusiastic collector and that he went over to Paris to buy many prints by the great engraver, at a later date commissioning his wife to secure for him many more which he strongly desired. Portrait-painting had at that time become a mania, and there was no one of any prominence who did not wish to leave to posterity a record of his physical ap pearance. Richelieu in a single order had called for 76 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES an entire gallery full of portraits of celebrities. The French peintre-graveurs proved how effectively color could be translated into black and white, and by re vealing the true relation of engraving to painting shared the fame of their contemporaries in the other arts. It is not possible for the lover of prints to glance at this interminable gallery and not be amazed at the number of portraits which show much originality in their treatment and infinite skill in their execution, but I defy the admirer of truth in art not to be impressed by the small number of those by other en gravers which are distinguished by both simplicity and conviction. The heads of Mellan, which were drawn with as few lines as possible, remain absurdly unique, and the etched portraits of Morin, who was a faithful translator of Philippe de Champaigne, are too personal for comparison. But the mass of the peintre-graveurs give constant proofs of having been influenced by Nanteuil's method, and in the case of Van Schuppen there is a Very close following indeed in the master's footsteps. He is supposed to have been his favorite pupil. Nevertheless, Edelinck, brilliant colorist as he was and a wonderfully clever artist with his burin, re fused to do any original work and too frequently at tempted to add vigor and brilliancy to the portraits he copied. In modeling his faces he, in the opinion of Nanteuil himself, broke his lines unnecessarily. The work of Masson lacks quiet and balance, when his faces are not out of drawing, while that of the rest of the school displays that great vitality and style which made it a model for all the artists of the following Nanteuil. Louis XIV Kngraved in 1666 from. Nanteuil's own drawing from life Louis XIV was twenty-eight years of age when this portrait was engraved "In appearance Louis, though admirably proportioned, was slightly )»elow the middle height. His eyes were blue, his nose long and well formed. His hair, which was remaikable for its abundance, was allowed to fall over his shoulders. With his handsome features and his .serious — perhaps phlegmatic — expression he seemed admirably filled to play the part of a monarch." Arthur Hassall, Louis XIT. Hizp of tbe original engraving, 19-'J^|X]6^4 iii'''hes Nanteuil. Anne of Austria, Queen of France Engraved in 1666 from Nanteuil's own design from life Anne of Austria was the daughter of Philip III of Spain, wife of Louis XIII of Prance and mother of Louis XIV. She was Regent from 1643 to 1661. Size of the original engraving, 19§4 x 16% inches EOBEET NANTEUIL 77 century, without, however, combining these qualities with the solidity, consummate science, and restraint which characterize almost all Nanteuil's portraits. Nothing more admirable has been done in the realm of engraving than these quiet prints in which there is no affectation, no parade of technical brilliance, and it is a question whether anything more sincere has been accomplished in the history of portraiture. The portraits of Nanteuil take their place with perfect dignity alongside of the subtle crayon portraits of the courtiers of Henry VIII at Windsor Castle, and the exquisite drawings of the courtiers of Francis I and Henry II, which alone would make Chantilly worthy of a pilgrimage. Nanteuil's drawing is per fect and his massing of tones masterly; his expres sion of texture has both realism and breadth, and his indication of skin by means of a system of very close and delicate short strokes is an admirable solution of a problem which had been the despair of the entire school. The most superficial study of his modeling of that side of the face which is in full light, for instance, will reveal the supreme delicacy, the never-failing tact, with whieh he carries out this most difficult part of the work. His burin is as light as a feather, there is not a line too many, and he knows the exact value of each and every tone. It is interesting to note that, according to one of his pupils, he had made a careful study of the chiaroscuro of Leonardo, a master for whom he had an especial admiration. The great simplicity of his composition allowed him to concentrate all the resources of his art on the expression of character in the head. With an under- 78 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES standing of character which was the most sympa thetic of his day, he strove to represent his model with all the outward calm of nature which was possi ble in an age when form reigned supreme and every one was en parade. To secure this touch of life Nan teuil, at the.last sitting, would do everything in his power to bring out in his sitter's face that look of amused attention which is so characteristic of his por traits, with the result that, as a brilliant critic has recently remarked, "instead of one vivid impression his portrait is the sum of many impressions, a bal anced conclusion rather than a single piece of evi dence." It is this which makes his work so interest ing as a historical document. Here we see in the truest light the divine monarch, the arrogant noble, the worldly prelate, the serious man-6f -letters, and the humble commoner who fill all the French memoirs of the seventeenth century. It is indeed high time that the artist who has been called "the Louis XIV of engraving" came into his own again, or that he at least be accorded some of the immense popularity which he enjoyed during the palmy days of the grand siecle. For two centuries he has lain in an obscurity which it is not easy to under stand, in spite of the fact that his style of portraiture went out of fashion long before the great monarch died. It remained extremely unpopular through out the eighteenth century, for what could those austere bust portraits against a plain dark back ground, in the simplest of settings, have in common with the decorative compositions of the days of Louis XV, in which velvet and embroideries, ermine and rich lace, inlaid armor, canopies and complicated fur- Nanteuil. Jules, Cardinal Mazarin Engraved in 1656 from Nanteuil's own drawing from life This is one of the most interesting of the many portraits of the great minister engraved by Nanteuil. Size of the original engraving, 13l,i: ¦: loy^ inches Nanteuil. Bernard de Foix de la Valette, Due d'Epernon Engraved in 1650 from Nanteuil's own drawing from life "This man was the son of the Due d'Epernon, who was seated in the carriage with Henry IV at the time when the king was assassinated. The Due was suspected of complicity in the plot, but this never was proved. Both the elder and the younger Espernon were extremely haughty and arrogant men. Their possessions in Guienne were of an almost royal character and they governed them practically inde pendent of the royal authority. Both were associated with the reac tionary party.'' J. B. Perkins, France under Richelieu a'nd Mazarin. Size of the original engraving, 12% x 10 inches EOBEET NANTEUIL 79 niture, played such an important part? In compari son with these decorative panels they seem cold and uninteresting, but on the other hand they alone rep resent real portraiture; they reflect the earnestness of Port-Royal. There cannot have been a time when they were not admired by those who possessed true artistic percep tion, but there is no indication that any special value was attached to them or that they were collected. Suffice it to say that at the Mariette sale, in 1775, the complete works of Nanteuil, two hundred and eighty proofs of two hundred and sixteen plates in choice impressions, realized only a trifle over one hundred dollars. More than five times that sum has recently been paid for one single print. In 1825, at a famous auction, record prices of twelve dollars and nine dol lars were paid respectively for the portraits of Pom pone de Bellievre and Richelieu. Half a century later their value was not mueh greater, and general inter est in them remained dormant until four years ago when the collecting world suddenly realized their ar tistic worth, and made a raid on the leading markets of Europe. It is said that Nanteuil kept a journal; if so, we must greatly deplore the fact that it has not been pre served to us, for we would have been treated to a de lightful account of the habits of painters in that time and to many anecdotes connected with their sittings. Who shall ever know the number of Nanteuil's sit ters? His studio was found full of pastel portraits many of which had never been engraved, and his pen cil and pen sketches seem to have been innumerable. In spite of his reputation of bon vivant and his popu- 80 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES larity with both the bourgeoisie and the nobility, allu sions to Nanteuil in the memoirs of the day are frag mentary and we know little about the man. We are told, however, that he was born in Rheims about 1630 and that he drew so persistently during his school years that his studies were sadly neglected. It was only through the excellence of the frontispiece whieh he engraved for his thesis that he succeeded in secur ing his degree. The conscientious engraver Regnes son taught him all he knew, gave him his sister in marriage, and sent him to Paris, not to complete his apprenticeship, for Nanteuil was already more fa mous than his master, but in order to place him under the infiuence of the court painters. In the great city his wit and conviviality won him many friends and his talent for securing an excellent likeness secured him instant fame. It is said that he received his first order by following some divinity students to a wine-shop where they were wont to take their meals. There, having chosen one of the por traits he had brought from Rheims, he pretended to look for a sitter whose name and address he had for gotten. It is superfiuous tb 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 de mands, and before the end of the repast his career had begun. He made so many portraits in a week that he was advised by a famous connoisseur to limit his production to four. At night he copied them in pen-and-ink for the sake of familiarizing himself with that burin work which later was to astonish Europe. During many months he catered to the growing de mand for the portrait, with drawings in the style of EOBEET NANTEUIL 81 those of the Clouets and the Dumonstiers. One has but to realize in what favor all portrait-makers were in those days in order to understand how this pecul iarly gifted artist sprang into such sudden popularity. The dignity of French portrait-painting was being upheld by the noble Philippe de Champaigne, un der whose influence the painters of the time produced a great number of portraits which, if not technically brilliant, were presented with that serious dignity which was characteristic of the early seventeenth cen tury and were drawn with admirable sincerity and correctness. To him Nanteuil went for advice and encouragement, and soon after presented the engraved copy of the painter's latest portrait; it met with so much success that it can be said to have started the tremendous vogue of the engraved portrait and the formation of the great school which Colbert installed at the Gobelins. Meanwhile the artist, already a perfect draughts man and very profi.cient with pastels, had carefully studied the technique of all the leading engravers, and as soon as he had evolved a system of his own bent all his efforts on revolutionizing the art. Nan teuil made a picturesque debut during that incredible opera-bouffe, the War of the Fronde. He was draughted into military service, but although fre quently active with a blunderbuss and wearing a false beard in imitation of the dreaded Swiss mercenaries, he succeeded in making a portrait of all the heroes of the day. For him sat Conde and the Due d'Epernon, the last representative of feudalism in France; the Dues de Bouillon, de Mercceur, de Nemours, and de Beaufort, who met in taverns to appoint the generals 82 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES of an army which did not exist; the Archbishop of Paris, de Retz, who appeared in Parliament armed like a pirate ; that fat poet and peasant Loret, who sold on street corners his "Muse Historique," a daily satire on the intriguing nobles "who were not afraid of bullets but who were in deadly fear of winter mud," and lastly the indomitable prime minister, Cardinal Mazarin, whom the populace twice drove from Paris and then so madly welcomed back that many were trampled to death in the riot. Of that wily Italian he engraved as many as fourteen portraits. During the few years which followed the civil war he made his most interesting portraits. It was then that he assiduously frequented the liter ary salons of the capital where, a poetaster of some renown, he was ever welcome and made that beautiful pastel portrait of Madame de Sevigne which has been preserved to us, and another of Mile, de Scudery, who thanked him as follows : Nanteuil en faisant mon image A de son art divin signal^ le pouvoir, Je hais mes traits dans mon miroir, Je les aime dans son ouvrage. At this time he engraved the set of small-size por traits which represents the high-water mark of his talent. Can one possibly imagine anything more exquisitely choice than his heads of Maridat the phi losopher and Hugues de Lionne the secretary for for eign affairs ? With equal excellence he made the por traits of Chapelain, one of the founders of the French Academy, who reported himself to the King as a greater poet than Corneille, Scudery, who signed the Nanteuil. Jean Loret Engraved in 1668 from Nanteuil's owu drawing from lite Loret is chiefly remembered for his Gazette, written in /'ers nhres, which he began to issue in ]650, and continued untd his death in Size of the original engraving, 10% X 7% inches Nanteuil. FRAwgois de la Mothe le Vayer Engraved in 1661 from Nanteuil's own drawing from life Few were Le Yayev's equal eitlier in wit or learning. His writings were exceedingly numerous. Regarded as the Plutarch of his century for his boundless erudition and his mode of reasoning. He died at the age of eighty-six, in 1672, having enjoyed good health to the last days of his life. Size of the original engraving, 10% x 71/2 inches EOBEET NANTEUIL 83 popular novels written by his sister, the witty Mar quis de St. Brisson, the poets Loret and Sarrazin, the genial Abbe de Marolles, savant and print-collector, the learned octogenarian Le Vayer, and the ex-pre ceptor of the King, the archbishop of Paris, Perefixe de Beaumont. These portraits owe their size to the fact that they had been used as frontispieces for the works of those various personages, but the special care, the con amore finish with which they are executed, is due to the fact that the subjects were warm personal friends of the artist. The portrait of John Evelyn was made in the same way, although before the artist's tech nique had reached its fullest development. Before the year 1660 Nanteuil made, besides many portraits including those mentioned above and several of Mazarin, four very remarkable ones of a larger size. They are those of Cardinal de Cois- lin, the young Due de Bouillon, Marie de Bragelogne, and the abbe Basile Fouquet. The prelate was a Jesuit who became chaplain of Versailles; the youth, as lord chamberlain of France, had the honor of handing the King his nightshirt, an honor which he forfeited forever when on two successive nights he forgot his gloves. The woman was an old love of Richelieu ; the delicate modeling of her careworn face is worthy of Holbein's best manner and is executed with a tact that baffles description. This plate re minds us of the fact that out of two hundred and six teen portraits Nanteuil made only eight of women; of these only two were made from life, — that of Anne of Austria and the one mentioned above, but they are gems of purest ray serene which make us sigh when 84 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES we think of what he could have done with Henrietta of England and Mesdames de Lavalliere, de Montes pan, and de Maintenon! As to the fourth portrait, it is that of the brother of the great Surintendant des Finances, Nicolas Fouquet; he was at that time the head spy of Mazarin as well as the chancellor of the orders of the King and the most accomplished rascal who ever fished in troubled waters. These four engraved portraits are masterpieces of characterization, and exhibit in the most eloquent way the master's powerful draughtsmanship, his utter lack of mannerisms, and the sympathetic way in which he varied his entire technical treatment to suit different subjects. Here is abundant proof that he was primarily a portrait-maker, that, in spite of the fact that he handled the burin with as much ease and sure- ness as his pencil and chalks, he never strove after effect and never allowed his skill to carry him away and mar the unity of his perfectly balanced composi tion. He is a psychologist who consistently strove to brand his model's soul on his countenance. Of no other peintre-graveur can we say as much. With the year 1660 came the royal marriage, and a twelvemonth later the death of the despotic Maza rin and the emancipation of the young King. Nan teuil's fame by this time was thoroughly established, he was everywhere recognized as a past-master of his art and was in a position to refuse as many orders as he pleased. The leading men in the church, the par liament, and the bourgeoisie, which always followed the lead of the nobility, did not rest until they had the artist from Rheims engrave their portraits and strike off many hundred impressions, which were EOBEET NANTEUIL 85 quickly enough distributed among their families and friends. Among them were the Maitre d 'Hotel and the physician of the King, Guenault, the quack who looked after the health of the Queen, and Dreux d'Au- bray, who became the first victim of his daughter, the famous murderess, the Marquise de Brinvilliers. The two great protectors of Nanteuil at this time were Michel Le Tellier and Nicolas Fouquet. Of the former, who was then war minister and who as chancellor of France died the day after signing the fatal Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, we have ten convincing portraits, as well as five of his son Charles Maurice who became the worldliest of archbishops, and one of his eldest son who became the dreaded war minister Louvois. These sixteen portraits of the Le Tellier family represent some of Nanteuil's best work. The portrait of Fouquet is a great historical docu ment, a piece of most subtle characterization done in the artist's best manner, and it is interesting to note that it was made only a very short time before the sensational fall of that then most powerful man in the kingdom. Could we but know what thoughts ran through the head of the Lord of Vaux as he sat for his portrait with a quizzical smile ! Nanteuil, by the way, has left us the record of the appearance of prac tically all the principal figures of that sensational trial which lasted three years and the outcome of which alone assured the complete independence of the King. Nanteuil had now patrons influential enough to in sure him a gracious welcome at court. His greatest ambition had been to paint the young King and he felt able to improve greatly on the efforts of both 86 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES Mignard and Lebrun. With this end in view he ad dressed to the King a petition for a sitting in such eloquent verse that the request was readily granted. The first pastel portrait of the King seems to have made a small sensation at court; "Come and look at your husband in this portrait, madame," said Anne of Austria to the young Queen; "he fairly speaks." Still greater, however, was the King's delight when he saw the engraved copy of the portrait which Nan teuil later presented to him. He rewarded with a gift of 4000 livres the artist whom he had already named court painter and engraver with a lodging at the Gobelins, and at whose bidding he had raised the status of engraving to a fine art. There are in all eleven of these portraits of Louis XIV and they give us an excellent idea of the haughty appearance, the conceited expression of the demigod during the happiest period of his life. What care we for the old monarch who later was caricatured by the pomp of Rigaud 's painting and the satire of Thack eray? This is the young Alexander who has just seized the reins of government and set up the most brilliant court in history. In the earliest one he is twenty-six years old, madly in love with Mile, de La Valliere, and building Versailles with feverish haste ; at the last sitting he is thirty-eight and hope lessly under the sway of Madame de Montespan. Here he bears our gaze with a contemptuous air, the man who, "if he was not the greatest of kings, was the greatest actor of majesty who ever filled a throne." These portraits were considered extraordinary in point of resemblance. The great Bernini himself, who had come from Italy to make a bust of the King, Nanteuil. Nicolas Fouquet Engraved in 1661 from Nanteuil's own design from life "Of the three ministers to whom Louis had openly given his confi dence, Lionne, Le Tellier, and Fouquet, the last named was the only one who possessed the qualities necessary for a prime minister. " 'It was generally believed,' says Madame de La JFayette, 'that the Superintendent would be called upon to take the Government into his hands.' There is no doubt whatever that Fouquet himself expected eventually to succeed Mazarin." Arthur Hassall, Louis XIV. Size of the original engraving, 13 x 10 inches Nanteuil. Basile Fouquet Engraved in 1658 from Nanteud's own drawing from life Basile Fouquet, Abbe de Barbeaux and Rigny, Chancelier des Ordres du Roi, was the brother ot Nicolas Fouquet, the famous Superintendent of Finance. Size of the original engraving, 12% x 9% inches EOBEET NANTEUIL 87 warmly congratulated the engraver on "the best portrait ever made of his Majesty," and this before the leading personages of the court. An unusual feature of these royal portraits is that seven of them are life-size, a feat which had not been previously attempted. It had become the fashion to hang these portraits in rich frames at the top of the high wainscots used in those days, and the very large size adopted by Nan teuil made of them decorative panels which held their own even in a roomful of paintings. Many of the nobles must have owned complete sets. They met with such favor that during the last four years of his life the artist engraved entirely in that size, about twenty- two inches by thirty, ahd had started a gallery of all the great men of France; he had actually produced as many as thirty-six before he died in 1678. The list includes the portraits of the Queen Mother Anne of Austria, decked out in all her finery a few weeks be fore she died, that of the young Dauphin, the effemi nate brother of the King the Due d'Orleans, Colbert, Turenne, Louvois, Bossuet, the Due de Chaulnes, and several other celebrities. They are admirable plates in which he secured broad masses and simple effects by means of the same system he used in his small por traits. In spite of the very large surface and what seems like a million lines there is no confusion, not a flaw in the unity of his composition. They had formed the special admiration of the last Medici Duke of Tus cany when, on a visit to France, he had insisted on meeting Nanteuil. From him he purchased for the Uffizi Gallery in Florence the portrait of the painter himself and those of the King and Turenne. He more- 88 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES over obliged him to accept a pupil dans I'intimite, a thing which Nanteuil had never done for he always locked himself up when he engraved his plates. It was that Domenico Tempesti who has left us such an in teresting record of the habits of the engraver and the ideas he held on the subject of portraiture. It is from him that we know that the master made all those de lightful pastel portraits in three sittings of exactly two hours each. Would that we knew how long it took him to engrave them ! we can only form a vague idea of this from the fact that in his most prolific year he made fifteen engraved portraits. Robert-Dumesnil limits to ten the portraits engraved entirely by Nan teuil; the selection he makes is judicious, but the number was certainly far greater. Of course the purely mechanical draughting of the frame and the filling of the background was the work of assistants, and it is more than probable that in many of the less important plates and in the life-size portraits, on ac count of the great surface to be covered, the costume was engraved by such pupils as Pitau and Van Schuppen, for instance, as their cleverness for such work almost equaled their master's. But in all the small portraits and those of Turenne and the Dues de Bouillon, for instance, we recognize everywhere the vigorous yet tactful touch of Nanteuil himself. Reproductive work was for Nanteuil an exception. The plates which he engraved from the paintings of other artists number thirty-eight; to each of them he affixed the name of the painter with a fairness which Edelinck, for one, seldom exhibited. It is natural that these plates should show little of that inspiration and originality whieh were distinctive of a born character I 111 ,|fc«F[ffiafllT ..^li III II I LfffW Nanteuil. Jean Chapelain Engraved in 1655 from Nanteuil's own drawing from life Jean Chapelain, born at Paris, Deceraber 4, 1595, died February 22, 1674. His mediocre poem "La Pucelle" brought him much more re nown than the "Iliad" brought to Plomer. It was Chapelain who cor rected the first poems of Racine. Size of the original engraving, 10% x 71/^ inches Nanteuil. Pompone dh Bellievre Engraved in 1657 (when Nanteuil was twenty-seven years of age) after the painting by Charles Lebrun. By many authorities it has been described as the most beautiful of all engraved portraits. Size of the original engraving, 12% x 9% inches EOBEET NANTEUIL 89 student like the artist from Rheims, but the majority are supremely interesting and the finest are master pieces. It is evident that in the earliest ones, notably in the head of Chavigny, reputed a son of Richelieu, he was experimenting with technique and that several others which were used as frontispieces were merely potboilers. Even the portrait of Queen Christina of Sweden and the much overrated one of the Dutch lawyer van Steenberghen are nothing more than in teresting studies of simple linework and softness of tone. In those of the two little sons of the Duchesse de Longueville, the Comte de Dunois and the Comte de Saint Paul, we see how easy it was for Nanteuil's technique to express the soft outline and the tender complexion of youth with a charming effect. After Lebrim he engraved with an admirable chia roscuro the head of the Chancellor Seguier, and that well-known portrait of Pompone de Bellievre, states man and philanthropist, whieh, if lacking in vigor, represents the highest point reached by the intelligent refinement of linework. But it is only with the sober and precise work of his master Philippe de Cham paigne that Nanteuil had a positive affinity. The two artists held identical views about portraiture and the Flemish painter found in the engraver from Rheims an interpreter who fairly breathed in unison with him. It is not possible to imagine anything more ad mirable than the engraved portraits of de Neufville, bishop of Chartres, Richelieu, and Marshal Turenne. They undoubtedly represent the last word on the subject of line-engraving. The face of the Cardinal is treated with all the subtlety of Velasquez and the head of the greatest captain of his time is modeled 90 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES with a strength of coloring which Rembrandt himself would have admired. This plate shows in the clearest way Nanteuil's ability to represent different textures: the hair, skin, lace, silk, and steel armor are treated with precision which is wholly satisfying and a breadth which commands the highest admiration. From the inventory made in his house the day after his death we learn that Nanteuil had for years been dissipating in extravagant living the large sums he had earned with his work. His household goods, his drawings, and the tools of his profession were sold under the hammer, and it is amusing at the present day to realize that a lot consisting of 2966 of his prints, together with many reams of paper and his printing-press, were valued at only seven hundred dollars. It is also explained why most of his portraits went through so many different states; it was chiefly on account of the "theses." A curious fashion it was by which wealthy students in law, philosophy, and the arts formally dedicated their graduating theses to one or another distinguished personage whose en graved portrait they ordered from a peintre-graveur. This, with a lengthy dedication, was then attached to the printed thesis as a frontispiece and sent to the patron and to many of his friends. It is thus that the Chancellor d'Aligre commissioned Nanteuil, who had the monopoly of such work, to engrave and strike off twenty-five hundred proofs of a new and extra-large portrait of the King measuring thirty inches by forty- two for his son's thesis; for this and the printing of the thesis itself the engraver received the sum of 10.400 livres, or about $9000 of our money. The price Nanteuil. Henri oe la Tour d'Auvergne, Vicoavte de Turenne, Marechal de France Engraved from the painting by Philippe de Champaigne "It is not possible to imagine anything raore admirable than the en graved portraits of de Neafville. bishop of Chartres, Richelieu, and Marshal Turenne. They undoubtedly represent the last word on the subject of line-engraving. . . The head of the greatest captain of his time is modeled with a strength of coloring which Rembrandt hiraself would have admired." Louis R. Metcalfe. Size of the original engraving, 151^x11% inches Nanteuil. Jean-Baptiste Colbert Engraved in 1668 from Nanteuil's own drawing from life To Colbert Louis XI ^^ was indebted for much, if not all, of the success of his enterprises during the twenty-five years succeeding the death of Cardinal Mazarin. Size of the original engraving, 19% x 16% inches EOBEET NANTEUIL 91 of an ordinary engraved portrait was $2000. Other less wealthy postulants had to be content with order ing a reimpression of a plate which had already been used and which needed only a change of dedication. In this way the portrait of the Dauphin for instance went through fifteen states and one of the King went through eleven; the plates were naturally often re touched by the artist in order to enable them to with stand so much use. Not to these theses alone, how ever, must the great number of royal portraits which were printed be attributed, for they had become im mensely popular throughout the kingdom and who ever could afford it had one hanging in his house. In 1667 Cardinal de Bouillon ordered the portrait of the King for his thesis, and some years later another stu dent selected for his patron the Cardinal himself. In 1675 it was the son of d'Artagnan, dear to all lovers of romance, who was presented by his father with the finest of the King's portraits for his thesis. Of course this custom does not account for all the changes of state. When an archbishop became a car dinal for instance, the engraver made the necessary modification in the costume on the copper and pro vided his patron with a new set of impressions; simi larly for a change in a title. In the case of Fouquet, the second of five states of his portrait was made nec essary by a mistake in spelling in the dedication, the others being undoubtedly due to the touching-up of the plate on account of the great number of impres sions ordered by a powerful man the circle of whose friends constituted the real court of that time. In the case of Cardinal Mazarin, politics undoubtedly 92 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES played a great part in the use which was made of his portraits. It is not generally known that Nanteuil was him self the author of most of the titles and dedications both in prose and in verse, in Latin as well as in French, which form such an attractive feature of his prints. This was to be expected of the clever versifier who had written such amusing sonnets to the royal family and the leaders of the court in connection with their sittings, and of the cheerful companion who had known so intimately the beaux-esprits whom the hos pitality of Fouquet had so often convened at his cha teau of Vaux. To the Queen, who had a complexion of marvelous whiteness, he wrote a poem thanking her for the order for her portrait, which ended with this line: "Mais prenons courage, on a peint le soleil meme avec un charbon!" Nanteuil's original drawings in pencil, crayons, and pastels are fewer by far than those of the Clouets or the pastellists of the eighteenth century which have been preserved to us ; probably not more than twenty are now to be found in public collections. To my know ledge the Louvre has two, the Museum of Rheims four, the Chartres Museum one, Florence three, Chantilly four, and Stafford House, London, six. They are su premely interesting for that simplicity and sincerity, that living truth, which make one feel as if he recog nized old acquaintances. As for his engravings, there are splendid collections of them in Paris, Dresden, and Chantilly, and there does n't exist a private col lection of any importance in the world which does not contain some of the noble work of the past-master of engraved portraiture, the painter of the most bril- EOBEET NANTEUIL 93 liant period in modern history, the genial artist who had said to his pupil: "Le temps et la peine ne font pas tant les beaux ouvrages que la bonne humeur ei I'intelligence." REMBRANDT'S LANDSCAPE ETCHINGS By LAUEBNCE BINYON Assistant- Keeper of Prints and Drawings ta the British Musetau Author of " Dutch Etchers," " Painting in the Far East," etc, THE pioneers of landscape art, those who have opened up new possibilities of design in land scape themes, were, at least until the nine teenth century, certain great masters of figure-paint ing. Titian, Rubens, Velasquez, Rembrandt, each of these gave a fresh impulse to the painting of land scape, an impulse which even to-day has not lost its inspiration; while the conventions established by Claude, Ruysdael and Salvator Rosa seem by com parison tame and more or less artificial or demoded. Of these masters Rembrandt is the nearest to mod ern feeling. The famous Mill, in which a landscape motive is treated with a richness and depth of human ity that hitherto had found expression only in figure- subjects, stands in this respect as a monument in European art. Yet landscapes form a very small proportioh of Rembrandt's paintings. Rembrandt as a painter rarely seems to treat landscape for its own sake. He composes for the most part arbitrarily, using broad spaces of level and hill-masses with ruined towers as the material elements of a scene for which some vision- EEMBEANDT'S LANDSCAPE ETCHINGS 95 ary play of gleam and cloud seems the real motive in his mind, the counterpart of the emotions he sought to communicate and evoke. We are now concerned with Rembrandt as an etcher. |, \ Here again the proportion of landscape to figure-sub- j ) jects is small. There are seven and twenty out of a j ( total of some three hundred etchings. j We note at once that the etched landscapes present ' a different aspect from the painted landscapes. In his paintings Rembrandt shows none of the char acteristics of the national landscape school of Holland, of those artists who relied on the features of their na tive land,— its wide pastures, its canals, its seaports, its sand-dunes, its farms, its great skies and immense horizons, — and made of the plain portraiture of these familiar scenes their pride and glory. Rather he took hints from his traveled countrymen and the painters who had sought the classic South. Landscape, whether treated simply or as an adjunct to some scene from Scriptural story, was to him a source of romantic ap peal. And just as Italian masters, like Botticelli, have sometimes introduced as background foreign scenes from the Rhineland suggested by the work of Northern painters, so Rembrandt, to whom mountains had all the fascination of strangeness and romance, took from actual drawings of Titian's school which he may have possessed or seen, or from pictures by trav eled Dutchmen like Hercules Seghers, the features he desired, fusing them into a world of his own imagina tion. The etchings, on the contrary, are for the most part pure_IJoUand. "Yet their inspiration is very~different from that of the typical Dutch painter or etcher. 96 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES They are not mere portraits of places. Even when apparently simple transcripts from the scene before the artist's eyes, the composing spirit is at work in them, rearranging and suppressing. And perhaps just because of this absence of the literal topograph ical spirit, they seem to contain the essential genius and atmosphere of Dutch landscape. Practically all Rembrandt's landscape work belongs I/to the middle period of his life. Some writers have sought to account for this by supposing that he turned to such subjects in some rural retreat to soothe his overwhelming grief at the loss of his wife. The actual dates hardly support this supposition. Saskia died in the summer of 1642. But the landscapes begin a few years before that date. The first ten years of the mas- , ter's life at Amsterdam— the years of his prosperity— V were, we know, crowded with portrait commissions; and landscape work would only have been a relaxa tion. It was hardly more than this at any time, but for some reason it interested him more during the ten or twelve years after 1640 than in his youth or old age. The earliest date on a landscape etching is 164L;-.the latestj 1652. The undated plates can be placed with tolerable certainty within a year or so. In 1634 Rembrandt had etched the large Annuncia tion to the Shepherds, in which the landscape is of the same visionary kind as appears in the paintings. The general effect is of white on black, the supernatural effulgence in the sky, whieh so startles the shepherds and their flocks, calling out of the gloom mysterious waving heights of foliage and obscure gleams of dis tance. Rembrandt. The Windmill Size of the origiji.il etching, SU/ie X 8%e inche Laurence Binyon. Rembrandt. View of Amsterdam "In the little Amsterdam, as in nearly all these etchings, the sky is left absolutely clear and empty. And how far more truly it suggests to us the brightness of a cloudless day than the raost successftil of plein-air painting in vivid color, which stops the imagination instead of leaving it free and active I This little plate is filled with air and sun," Laurence Binyon. Size of the original etching, 4% x 6 inches EEMBEANDT'S LANDSCAPE ETCHINGS 97 In none of the etchings of pure landscape does Rem brandt adopt this method and conception. None of them has that effect of illuminated gloom which is so peculiarly associated with the master's name. Their effect is of black on white, and the line is given its full value. One of the earliest, probably, is a small plate (B. 207), sometimes called A Large Tree and a House. I believe some critics have cast a doubt on it, but it is unmistakably Rembrandt's in conception and "handwriting." The little piece might well be called Twilight. We seem to be near the shores of a lake; light is fading out of the sky and scarcely permits us to discern any details; the presence of a few flg ures and a human dwelling is felt rather than seen. All is gray and quiet; nothing stands out saliently. It is the silvery evenness of tone which is the charm of this tiny plate, in no way striking, yet indefinably revealing a master's hand. Usually Rembrandt would make such quiet etched work, all of one biting, the basis of a rich effect produced by dry-point. He may have intended to have used the dry-point here, but perhaps thought the scale was too small. With the Windmill and the Cottage and Hay-barn, both dated 1641, we come to a group of plates which are typical of Rembrandt's landscape manner in etch ing. Close to these in date, presumably, are the little Amsterdam and the Cottage and Large Tree. Mr. Hind, in the latest catalogue of the etchings, follows von Seidlitz in assigning the Amsterdam to 1640, though Dr. Six maintains that the absence of a tower not finished till 1638 proves it to be earlier than that year. Rembrandt, however, was quite capable of abolishing towers to suit his composition. The sim- 98 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES plest materials presented by the country-side are used in these etchings. Though Rembrandt never seems to have cared to make pictures of such subjects, he made a great number of drawings of them. A wonderful series of these sketches, once in the possession of his pupil, Govert Flinck, is at Chatsworth; and numbers of course in the great public collections. These sum mary small drawings, made with a reed-pen and sepia, and sometimes with a wash of sepia added, do not ap peal to every one, certainly not to those whose pleasure is in the external aspect of things, the softness of ver dure, the glitter of trees; to say nothing of the want of grandeur and impressiveness in the scenes them selves, the absence of anything scenic, such as makes the most obvious appeal, whether in nature or art. But the more one studies drawings, and the more one becomes familiar with the qualities which differ entiate the first-rate from the second, the higher one inclines to rank these sketches. Por one thing, they are almost miraculous in the certainty with which the reality of things is evoked, and the planes of recession indicated. Slight as is the means employed, rough and summary as is the stroke of the blunt pen, some times even with what seems a superficial clumsiness or carelessness, the things seen are there, — trees, build ings, bridges and canals, men and women, — and not only visible but, as it were, tangible. We can walk in imagination into these little landscapes, and not only do we breathe an infinite air but we are sure of every step. And this is the great test of mastery in such drawings. Take, for instance, the landscape drawings of Domenico Campagnola, which are also in reed-pen and sepia. These, with their broken fore- EEMBEANDT'S LANDSCAPE ETCHINGS 99 grounds, upland farms among trees of delicate foliage, and distant mountain-ranges, are much more attrac tive to the eye at first sight than the great Dutchman's sketches. But when in imagination we move into these pleasant landscapes, we are disconcerted by un realities ; our steps are uncertain, for they are not on solid ground. And in fact a pleasant pattern of pen- strokes remains a pattern and nothing else. But Rembrandt's rough strokes have somehow molded all the ground with its saliences and depressions and filled the whole with light and air. It is the same with the etchings. But there is a difference : the difference of the medium. True artist as he is, Rembrandt conceives all he does in the terms of the material used. His etchings are born as etch ings and nothing else; they are not drawings trans ferred to copper. There is a specific beauty of the etched line which is quite different from the beauty of a line made by the pen or chalk, or the line ploughed by a burin on cop per. If it is unsuited to the sweeping rhythms of large movement in design, such as we associate with Rubens, for instance, its want of modulation and even char acter help a quiet dignity of draughtsmanship; and the etcher has means of enhancing homeliness of de tail unrivaled in any other medium. Old buildings, wharves, boats and shipping at a river-side or quay, — such things as these naturally attract the etcher, for they are congenial to his medium. And in the Wind mill (B. 233, dated 1641), Rembrandt found a perfect subject. There is no adventitious impressiveness lent by strong effect of light and shadow in this beautiful 100 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES plate : all is plain and simply rendered. But we have only to compare this etching with the etchings of some of Rembrandt's immediate predecessors, like Jan and Esaias Van de Velde, to see the difference not only between a great and an average artist, but between a great and a commonplace etcher. The picturesque tracery of a windmill's sails and timber-work are seen and enjoyed in the Van de Veldes' plates, but how much more than this is in Rembrandt's Mill! We feel the stains of weather, the touch of time, on the struc ture ; we feel the air about it and the quiet light that rests on the far horizon as the eye travels over dike and meadow; we are admitted to the subtlety and sensitiveness of a sight transcending our own; and even by some intangible means beyond analysis we partake of something of Rembrandt's actual mind and feeling, his sense of what the old mill meant, not merely as a picturesque object to be drawn, but as a human element in the landscape, implying the daily work of human hands and the association of man and earth. Here is a classic in its kind which many gener ations of etchers have found an inspiring model. An accident in the biting apparently is the cause of an aquatint-like broken tone of gray in the sky above the mill ; but it comes with congruous effect, and is rather a beauty than a blemish. In the little Amsterdam, as in nearly all these etch ings, the sky is left absolutely clear and empty. And how far more truly it suggests to us the brightness of a cloudless day than the most successful of plein-air painting in vivid color, which stops the imagination instead of leaving it free and active ! This little plate is filled with air and sun. EEMBEANDT'S LANDSCAPE ETCHINGS 101 A first state of this etching belongs to my friend Mr. Gustav Mayer in London, but is absolutely un known to all catalogues previous to that of Mr. Hind. In it there is a hare running over the fields, but it is a thought too big in scale, and Rembrandt doubtless suppressed it as a distracting incident. The Cottage and Hay-barn (B. 225) and the Cot tage and Large Tree (B. 226) seem companion plates ; and though the latter is not dated, it is natural to assume for it the same date as that inscribed on the former— 1641. If the Cottage and Large Tree is the flner of these two oblong plates in design, the Cottage and Hay -barn is the more brilliant as an etching. The cottage and shed which give the plate its name are in the center of the design, and the dark mass, full of tender shadows and reflections, emphasizes by con trast the play of open light on the fields stretching on either side, the river, the house nestling in a wood, beyond, and the distant towers of Amsterdam. Though all is treated in Rembrandt's broad way, it is sur prising how full, how suggestive of intimate detail the landscape is. As we look at it there comes over us the sense of sleepy, bright air and sunshine, the quiet of the fields, in which, though nothing outwardly is hap pening, we are conscious of the stir of natural life, of growing things, of flowers and grass and insects, and peaceful human occupations going on unobtrusively; of "all the live murmur of a summer's day." It is interesting, in view of Rembrandt's treatment of topography, to note that Dr. Jan Six has shown that the master has here combined two different views in a single composition. In the Cottage with White Palings (B. 232, dated 102 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES 1642), effective use is made of the broad white planks of the fence to enforce the pattern of black and white in the design. Here again the subject is placed in the center with views on either side, though the horizon is higher than usual. With the Three Trees (B. 212) of 1643, we come to the most famous of Rembrandt's etched landscapes. This plate stands in the same sort of relation to the rest as the Mill to the rest of his landscape paintings. It is the grandest and most typical, most expressive of the master's temperament. Here the composition is less accidental, and more (so to speak) architec tural. The group of three trees stands up darkly on a bank of high ground at the right. At the left one looks over the level fields to the horizon and a glimmer of distant sea. A thunderstorm is passing away, with contorted clouds piled in the upper sky and trailing over the plain, and rods of violent rain slant across the corner of the scene. For once Rembrandt builds up a landscape design out of sky and earth ; and the something elemental which inspires it gives the etch ing a pregnancy and significance which are absent from the other landscapes, in themselves, at their best, more intimately charming. There are those who ob ject to the straight, hard lines of the rain ; but I do not find them untrue, and they are of great value in the design. Then, what beauties lurk in this etching, wherever one looks into it! The return of the light after rain, than which there is nothing more beautiful in nature, gives a wet sparkle to the fields ; aSd_again we notice how the trees m their dark relief give glory to the space of luminous clearness beyond. The wagon on the top ot tUe nigh bank is moving toward the light. Rembrandt. The Three Trees S£3iSnl£? f i=f ? ?-? ^- -- - -~ of the masteJ-stempei^ament " " grandest and most typical, most expressive „. ,' , Laurence Binyon. bize of the original etching, 85^6X11 inches Rembrandt. Six's Bridge "To the same year — 1645 — belongs the well-known Six's Bridge, a plate in which the pure bitten line, with no close hatching or shadow-effect, is given full play. Of its kind, this is a perfect etching." Laurence Binyon. Size of the original etching, S^/ie X 8^^6 inches EEMBEANDT'S LANDSCAPE ETCHINGS 103 and a painter sits by the roadside, sketching the pass ing of the storm. An angler fishes in a pool ; lovers, hardly discerned, sit together, away from the world in a thicket's obscurity. All the plain, so solitary at first sight, is filled with moving life. Of what par ticular species the three trees are, it might be difficult, as often with Rembrandt, to say with confidence ; from their shape and the sturdy growth of their boughs, I suppose them to be oaks. There is no doubt, however, about the willow in the Omval (B. 209). The gnarled, seamed trunk of an old tree, with its rugged wrinkles and smooth bosses, irresistibly invites the etcher's needle; and Rembrandt, like other etchers since, has evidently found a great enjoyment in this willow- stem, as in that other old willow to which he added, not very felicitously, a St. Jerome reading, spectacles on nose, and a perfunctory lion (B. 232, dated 1648). The Omval shows a different kind of composition ; the willow at the edge of a thicket, in whose shadow two lovers are embowered, divides the plate ; the right and larger part is all light and open— a river-bank on whieh a man moves down to the ferry, and the broad sunny stream, and houses, masts, and windmills across the water — a picturesque river-side such as Whistler and Haden loved to etch. To the same year— 1645 — belongs the well-known Six's Bridge (B. 208) , a plate in which the pure bitten line, with no close hatching or shadow-effect, is given full play. Of its kind, this is a perfect etching. Every one knows the story of its being done while Six's ser vant went to fetch the mustard. But there is nothing hastjr or incomplete about it : the masterly economy of lines is perfectly satisfying in its absolute directness 104 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES and simplicity. There is great pleasure in contem plating a work like this, so clean, so free from any superfiuous element. But from this time onward Rembrandt seems to grow dissatisfied with pure etching. He grows more and more fond of dry-point, using it very frequently to enrich an etched plate, and in his later years pre ferring often to dispense with the acid altogether. Dry-point is employed in the delightful little plate, the Boat-house (B. 231), to deepen the shadows of the arch over the water ; but in ordinary impressions this has worn off and only the groundwork of bitten lines remains. This is the kind of subject which most ar tists would have drawn in delicate detail; but Rem brandt is always rather remarkably indifferent to the particular beauty and character of vegetation (prob ably this was one of the reasons why he made so little appeal to Ruskin) ; and it is surprising that with all the indifference and roughness in the drawing of the plant-forms on the river-bank, the little plate should still have so intimate a character and suggest so much of the beauty of dark, quiet water in which reflections of flower and herbage are asleep. In one or two of the plates of 1650 and thereabouts, as if tired of level horizons, Rembrandt closes the view with a mountain or range of hills. Such are the Canal and Angler and the Boat in the Canal (B. 235 and 236), which, joined together, form one composition; and one might add the Sportsman with Dogs (B. 211), though Mr. Hind assigns the completion, at any rate, of this etching to a date of a few years later. The Hay-barn with Flock of Sheep (B. 224) is an instance of a favorite feature in Rembrandt's land- Rembrandt. Landscape with a Boat in the Canal hv^^^u" ?'¦ ^"¦'¦'".y '^"^ plates of 1650 aud thereabouts, as if tired of level horizons Rem IZlel :nTLtLl77n7^:'cln':r^^''''' "'^ -""^^ "' ^"'^- ^"^'^"^d^E^^P' Size of the original etching, 31/4 x 4% inches r-J Rembrandt. Farm with Trees and a Tower [Landscape with a Ruined Tower and Clear Foreground] ... a long, oblong plnte, of great beauty for its pattern of light and shade. Part of the sky is shadowed, and the last light, before a shower pours over the trees, illuminates the foliage on one side." Laurence Binyon, Size of the original etching, 4% X 12% inches EEMBEANDT'S LANDSCAPE ETCHINGS 105 scape — a road seen in perspective at one side of the design. The Landscape with a Cow Drinking (B. 237) is a beautiful etching in a rather slight manner, with a suggestion of wind in the branches of trees, and light coming with the wind. Even in the Three Trees, though there is storm, there is little impression of movement in the air; and it is characteristic of the landscape etchings as a whole that they are serene and still, and more often suggest a sunny day than gray skies. Dry-point becomes more emphatic in the Obelisk (B. 227) ; indeed, in the earliest impressions of this plate the black of the bur is too pronounced, and only after it had been printed from till this effect had merged and blended with the etched lines was the right effect attained. Here the obelisk gives character to the design; and in the Landscape with a Square Tower (B. 218) a building dominates, — an old tower of rather blunted outlines, such as Rembrandt loved to crown dark hills with in the visionary landscapes of his painting. Another old tower occurs, less prominently, in the Farm with Trees and a Tower (B. 223), a long, ob long plate, of great beauty for its pattern of light and shade. Part of the sky is shadowed, and the last light, before a shower pours over the trees, illuminates the foliage on one side. In the first two states there is a small cupola on the tower; but Rembrandt, no doubt rightly, judged that the design would be improved by lopping it off. The change certainly subdues the local character of the scene. Another long oblong of perhaps greater beauty is the Gold-weigher's Field of 1651 (B. 234) . This is all 106 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES air and sun and space, the etched lines light and open, with dry-point adding a kind of gleam and vibration to the fertile fields. It is a revelation of what a great artist can do, unaided by tone or color, with a seene that to the average eye would be tame enough. There is a sense, too, of the riches of the earth, the farmer's pride in broad acres and growing crops, which gives a human touch, never absent from Rembrandt's work. In contrast with this is another plate of the previous year— the Three Gabled Cottages (B. 217)— where the dry-point is freely used to give color and softness to the thatched roofs, checkered with the shadow of an old tree. But it is the gratefulness of shadow in the noonday, not its gloom, which is the motive of the etching. The last group of landscapes are in pure dry-point. It is interesting to compare one of the earlier bitten plates with the Road by the Canal (B. 221), delicious in its freshness and spontaneous effect, or the Clump of Trees with a Vista (B. 222). Of this last there is a first state with a mere indication of part of the de sign; the trees, with the peep through the thicket, seem to have been an afterthought. The Wood over Palings (B. 364), the principal one of several unfinished studies on one plate, has velvety dry-point in the foliage. It is a plate that seems to have served for inspiration to Andrew Geddes, the Scotch artist who was one of the first to inaugurate the revival of etching in the nineteenth century and to realize once again — what had been so unaccountably forgotten since Rembrandt's time— the possibilities and beauty of the dry-point method. And so the series comes to an end, and landscape Rembrandt. The Gold-weigher's Field rJ,il"J-^ r' *';¦ Vi'' !""*¦,''"* space the etched lines light and open, with dry-point adding a kind of gleam and vibration tu the fertile flelds. It is a revelation of what a great artist can do, unaided bv tone or lolor .u '^.S""?'' , '° ??'' average eye would be tame enough. There is a sense, too, of the riches of the earth, the^tarmers pride m broad acres and groAving crops, whieh gives a human touch, never absent from Rembrandt's work,' Size of the original etching, 4% x 12% inches Laurence Binyon. Rembrandt. Landscape with a Milkman This etching like The -Wood over Palings, has velvety dry-point in the foliage, and may have suggested to Andrew Geddes, the Scotch artist who was one of the first to inaugurate the revival of etching in the nine teenth century and to reaUze once again — what had been so unaccountably forgotten since Rembrandt s time — the possibilities and beauty of the dry-point method. Size of the original etching, 2%(i X 6'% inches EEMBEANDT'S LANDSCAPE ETCHINGS 107 disappears from the master's work, save as a back ground to figure-compositions. One of these back grounds may be noticed for its special interest. About 1653 Rembrandt took up a copperplate already etched by Hercules Seghers— a Tobias and the Angel (after a composition of Elsheimer 's)— and transformed it into a Flight into Egypt. Suppressing the two fig ures, which were of very large size in proportion to the design, he masked the traces of them by a mass of trees, put in his own figures on a much smaller scale, and by the most vigorous use of the dry-point wrought the whole into harmony. The treatment of shadowy masses of foliage reminds us how little there is of this element of landscape in the etchings we have been considering. There is nothing of that feeling for the majesty and mystery of leafy forest-trees which Claude expressed so beautifully in the Bouvier etch ing, and still more in his sepia drawings. Critics have also remarked on other limitations of landscape inter est in Rembrandt — the absence of seas and water in movement, the comparative absence of wind and weather, in his etchings. For all that, when we think of the other Dutch etchers of landscape, we realize how far he towers over those who professed no other subject, — over Molyn, Ruysdael, Everdingen, Waterloo, and Italianizers like Both. Hercules Seghers is the one who showed most va riety and temperament; and his work evidently had a great interest for Rembrandt. He was a curious ex perimenter, and though he rarely seems quite master of his intentions, he was the antithesis of those land scape artists, so frequent, who "take out a patent," 108 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES as has been said, for some particular corner or aspect of nature, and never do anything else but repeat their favorite theme with variations. With Rembrandt landscape was a kind of interlude and holiday from more serious design. We feel it in the sunny temper which pervades the majority of the etchings. But how far superior he is to all the rest in his sensitiveness to beauty! As we have seen, he is not greatly interested in the details of landscape form. We find scribbles and shapelessness in his foliage and plants; but his grasp of essential truths overrides all criticism of this kind, and always and everywhere we feel his intense joy in expressing light. The etchings of his contemporaries seem cold and hueless, without air or sun, beside his. I find it hard to express a preference among the series. The Three Trees stands by itself, but there are others which touch one with a more vivid charm. Turning from one to another, I find each arresting the eye with some particular beauty, though the set of oblong plates, from the Cottage and Hay-barn to the Gold-weigher's Field, contain, I think, the most de light ; they are those in which all Holland seems to lie before us, with its pastures and its many peaceful waters. The landscape of Holland, with its level distances and low horizon, has inexhaustible attractions for the painter of skies and atmosphere. To the born designer it is less stimulating. One of the things that most impress in any representative exhibition of Rem brandt's etchings is the extraordinary variety and freshness of his designing. The proportions of the plate, upright, square, or oblong; the relation of the EEMBEANDT'S LANDSCAPE ETCHINGS 109 figures to the frame ; the proportion of light to dark ; the use of tone and line; — all these show a constant variety. Those who, when they think of Rembrandt, n call up the image of a dark panel with light concen- 'i trated on a head or group in the middle of it, find a,| series of the etchings quite subversive of their precon ception. Now to an inventive designer like Rembrandt the resources of the Dutch landscape offered but little. Where he blends landscape with figure, as in the in finitely pathetic Burial of Christ, or the Woman of Samaria, or the Christ Returning with His Parents from the Temple, though the human types, as always, are taken from the world around the artist, the land scape is drawn from his imagination, or borrowed from others. In the St. Jerome (B. 104) the back ground is no doubt taken from a Venetian drawing. Such methods were, indeed, inevitable, since one can not go on weaving designs of human forms and land scape material where the typical form of this last is little more than a straight line, or a series of straight lines, across the field of sight. One may wonder, perhaps with regret, why Rem brandt did not for once etch a landscape of his inner vision, like those paintings at Cassel and at Bruns wick. It may be that he felt that for such tone-effects etching was not the appropriate medium. Had he lived in a later day, he might have used mezzotint, as Turner did in his Liber Studiorum; and certainly that process should in his hands have yielded mar velous results. But we may well be content with these landscape 110 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES etchings which he has left us. They express the genius of the Dutch country, the "virtue" of it, as Pater would have said, as no other of his countrymen has expressed it. The series of plates in which Legros has expressed the genius of the country of Northern France, with its poplar-bordered streams and sunny pastures, has something of the same native quality. Each of these masters seems to have seized an essence which no one not born of the soil, however enamoured of a land's beauty, can quite possess and make his own. What is it that gives these landscapes their endur ing charm, and why do we rank them so high? Many a later etcher has had equal skill with needle and acid ; some have had even greater. Whistler is more deli cate, perhaps, more exquisite, more unexpected in his gift of spacing. Yet neither Whistler nor any other master of etching has the secret power of Rembrandt. I say "secret," because we cannot argue about it or explain it. It lay in what Rembrandt was: in the depth and greatness of his humanity. When we have wondered at the sensitive instrument of his eyesight, when we have exalted his magical draughtsmanship, when we have admired his instinctive fidelity to the capacity and limitations of the medium used, when we have recognized the profound integrity of his art, there is still something left over, beyond analysis, and that the rarest thing of all. How it is we cannot say, but there has passed into these little works an intangible presence, of which we cannot choose but be conscious, though it was not con sciously expressed,— the spirit of one of the fullest, EEMBEANDT'S LANDSCAPE ETCHINGS 111 deepest natures that ever breathed. Whatever Rem brandt does, however slight, something of that spirit escapes him, some tinge of his experience,— of those thoughts, "too deep for tears," which things meaner than the meanest flowers could stir in him. GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIRANESI (1720-1778) Part I By BENJAMIN BUEGES MOOEE THE life of Piranesi was eminently that of a man of genius, characterized by all the peculi arities ascribable to genius, perhaps as failures of human nature, but also distinguished by that which imparts to its possessor an imperishable re nown. Those peculiarities are worthy of notice, as they bear so much on the character of his work; but his works, wonderful as they are in point of execution, are less to be admired for this than for the interest of the subjects he chose, and that which he imparted to them. In an age of frivolities, he boldly and single-handed dared to strike out forjiimself a new road to fame ; and in dedicating his talentsTolEe recording and illustrating from ancient writers the mouldering records of former times, he met with a success as great as it was deserved, combining, as he did, all that was beautiful in art with all that was interesting in the remains of antiquity." These words were prefixed to an account of Pira nesi 's career published in London during the year 1831 in "The Library of the Pine Arts," and based upon a sketch of his life written by his son, Francesco, 112 Portrait of Giovanni Battista Piranesi From the engraving by F, Polanzani, dated 1750 It is impossible to studv this little known i)ortrait without being con vinced of its accurate likeness. It certainly conveys an impression of the man's daemonic force, which is not given by the more frequently reproduced statue executed by Angelini. Size of the original etching, loi4:>^ ll^H ioehes Piranesi. Arch of Septimius Severus A rendering almost as faithful as an architect's drawing, which Piranesi's unfailing genius has transformed into an enchanting work of art. This arch stands in the Roman Forum. It was dedicated 203 a.d. in commemoration of victories over the Parthians. Size of the original etching, 18^x27% inches GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIEANESI 113 but never published, although the manuscript at that period had passed into the hands of the publishers. Priestly and Weale, only to be subsequently lost or destroyed. Eighty years, therefore, have passed since this evaluation of the great Italian etcher was written, yet to-day he is no more appreciated at his full worth than he was then. At all times it has been not uncommon for an artist to attain a kind of wide and enduring re nown, although estimated at his true value and for his real excellences by only a few ; but of such a fate it would be difScult to select a more striking or illus trious example than Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Liv ing and dying in the Eternal City, Rome, to whose august monuments his fame is inseparably linked, he was the author of the prodigious number of over thir teen hundred large plates, combining the arts of etch ing and engraving, whieh, aside from their intrinsic merit as works of art, are of incalculable value on ac count of the inexhaustible supply of classic motives which they offer to all designers, and to which they, more than any other infiuence, have given currency. These prints, in early and beautiful proofs, are still to be bought at relatively low figures, while each year sees the sale, by thousands, of impressions from the steeled plates still existing at Rome in the Royal Calcography; — impressions which, although in them selves still sufficiently remarkable to be worth possess ing, are yet so debased as to constitute a libel upon the real powers of Piranesi. The wide diffusion of these ignoble prints, and the fact that Piranesi's output was so great as to place his work within the reach of the slenderest purse, are 114 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES largely responsible for the failure of the general pub lic to apprehend his real greatness; for rarity calls attention to merit, to which in fact it often gives a value entirely fictitious, while there is always difii culty in realizing that things seen frequently and in quantities may have qualities far outweighing those of work which has aroused interest by its scarcity. This is why the fame of Piranesi is widely spread, although his best and most characteristic work is almost unknown, and his real genius generally unrecognized. Born in Venice, October 4th, 1720, and named after Saint John the Baptist, Piranesi was the son of a mason, blind in one eye, and of Laura Lucchesi. His mater nal uncle was an architect and engineer, — for in those days the same person frequently combined the two professions, — who had executed various water-works and at least one church. From his uncle the young Giovanni Battista received his earliest instruction in things artistic, for which he appears to have displayed a conspicuously precocious aptitude. Before he was seventeen he had attracted sufficient attention to as sure him success in his father's profession, but Rome had already fired his imagination, and aroused that impetuous determination which marked his entire career. His yearning after Rome report says to have been first aroused by a young Roman girl whom he loved, but, however that may be, he overcame the determined opposition of his parents, and, in 1738, at the age of eighteen, set out for the papal city to study architecture, engraving, and in general the fine arts; for even in those degenerate days there were left some traces of that multiform talent which distinguished the artists of the Renaissance. When he reached the Piranesi. Arch of Vespasian In this, as iu many of Piranesi's compositions, the figures are frankly posing, but their presence adds such charm to the scene that none could wish them absent Size of the original etching, 19x27?^ inches Piranesi. Arch of Trajan at Benevento, in the Kingdom of Naples 4 fine renderiuff of that air of glory which the most dilapidated fragments of a Roman Arch of Triumnh neve?^lose The .\reh of Trajan, one of the finest of ancient arches, was .dedicated Triumph never ^ose i .^,, ^g feet high and 30% wide, with a single arch measuring 27. hy 16% feet. The arch is profusely sculptured with reliefs illustrating Trajan's life and his Dacian triumphs. g.^^ ^^j ^^^ original etching, 18%x27% inches GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIEANESI 115 goal of his longing, the impression produced by the immortal city on so fervid an imagination must have been so deep, so overwhelming, as to annihilate all material considerations, although they could not have been other than harassing, since the allowance received from his father was only six Spanish piastres a month, or some six or seven lire of the Italian money of to day. By what expedients he managed to live we can not even conjecture, but it may be supposed that he was boarded, apprentice-wise, by the masters under whom he studied. These teachers were Scalfarotto and Valeriani, a noted master of perspective and a pupil of one Ricci of Belluno, who had acquired from the great French painter and lover of Rome, Claude Lorrain, the habit of painting highly imaginative pic tures composed of elements drawn from the ruins of the Roman Campagna. This style was transmitted to Piranesi by Valeriani, without doubt stimulating that passionate appreciation of the melancholy grandeur of ruined Rome already growing in his mind, and afterward to fill his entire life and work. At the same time, he acquired a thorough knowledge of etching and engraving under the Sicilian, Giuseppe Vasi, whose etchings first aroused the great Goethe's longing for Italy. At the age of twenty, thinking, probably not without foundation, that this master was concealing from him the secret of the correct use of acid in etching, Piranesi is reported, in his anger, to have made an attempt to murder Vasi. Such an act would not be out of keeping with the character of the fiery Venetian, for, before leaving Venice, he had already been described by a fellow-pupil as " strava- gante," extravagant, or fantastic, a term not restricted 116 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES by Italians to a man's handling of money, but applied rather to character as a whole, in which connection it usually denotes the less fortunate side of that com plete and magnificent surrender to an overwhelming passion which aroused so lively an admiration of the Italian nature in the great French writer, Stendhal. When we, tame moderns, judge the "extravagance" of such characters, it is only fair to recollect that, with all their faults and crimes, these same unbridled Italians were capable of heroic virtues, unknown to our pale and timid age. Men like Cellini and Pira nesi, who had much in common, are simply incarnate emotional force, a fact which is, at the same time, the cause of their follies and the indispensable condition of their genius. After this quarrel Piranesi returned to Venice, where he attempted to gain a livelihood by the prac tice of architecture. There is reason to believe that at this period he studied under Tiepolo ; at any rate there exist in his published works a few curious, rather rococo plates entirely different from his usual manner, and very markedly infiuenced by the style of Tiepolo 's etching. He also studied painting with the Polanzani who is responsible for that portrait of him which forms the frontispiece to the first edition of "Le An- tichita Romane, ' ' and gives so vivid an impression of the daemonic nature of the man. Meeting with little success in Venice, he went to Naples, after returning to Rome, attracted principally by archseological inter ests. He stayed at Herculaneum, Pompeii, and Pses tum, where at this time, undoubtedly, he made the drawings of the temples afterward etched and pub lished by his son. The drawings for these etchings of GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIEANESI 117 Psestum, among the best known of the Piranesi plates, are now in the Soane Museum in London. Having decided that he had no vocation for paint ing, which he definitely abandoned at this time, Pira nesi returned to Rome, and settled there permanently. His father now wished him to return to Venice, but he was altogether unwilling to do so, and replied, characteristically, that Rome being the seat of all his affections it would be impossible for him to live sepa rated from her monuments. He intimated that in preference to leaving, he would give up his allowance, a suggestion upon which his father acted promptly by stopping all remittances, so that, estranged from his relatives, Piranesi was now entirely dependent upon his own resources for a livelihood. His poverty and suffering at this period were un doubtedly great, but his indomitable nature could be crippled by no material hardships. He devoted him self entirely to etching and engraving, and, when twenty-one, published his first composition. At this time he was living in the Corso opposite the Doria- Pamphili Palace, but even if the neighborhood was illustrious, it is not pleasant to think what wretched garret must have hidden the misery of his struggling genius. His first important and dated work, the "Antichita Romane de' Tempi della Republica, etc.," was published in 1748, with a dedication to the noted antiquary, Monsignore Bottari, chaplain to Pope Benedict XIV. This work was received with great favor, as the first successful attempt to engrave archi tecture with taste, and from the day of its appearance Piranesi may be said to have been famous. However, he still experienced the utmost difficulty in finding the 118 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES money necessary to subsist and to procure the ma terials requisite to his work. Yet, despite his terrible poverty, his labor was unceasing and tireless to a degree that we can now scarcely conceive. It must be borne in mind that, in addition to etching and engrav ing, he was .engaged in the extensive study of archaeol ogy, which led him to undertake many remarkable researches. He became a noted archaeologist of great erudition, as is shown by numerous controversies with famous antiquarians of the day. Some idea of the copiousness of his knowledge can be gained from the fact that his argument covers a hundred folio pages in that controversy in which he upheld the originality of Roman art against those who claimed it to be a mere offshoot of Grecian genius. In the preface to one of his books, he refers to it as the result of "what I have been able to gather from the course of many years of indefatigable and most exact observations, excavations, and researches, things which have never been undertaken in the past. ' ' This statement is quite true, and when we realize that the preparation of a single plate, such as the plan of the Campus Martius, would, in itself, have taken most men many years of work, we can only feel uncomprehending amazement at the capacity for work possessed by this man of genius. The very spirit of imperial Rome would seem to have filled Piranesi, making him its own, so that the vanished splendor was to him ever present and added to the strange melancholy of the vine-grown ruins which alone remained from the "grandeur that was Romer" In every age and in every province most Italians have been animated by a lively sense of their Piranesi. The Temple of Concord From this plate it is possible to gain an idea of the greater heauty possessed by ruined Eome when still shrouded in vegetation. The Arch of Septimius Severus is seen in the middle distance Size of the original etching, 18%x27% inches ?£:'.^-'m-Jh:r:.'.^ ^"i'/li carrying nwii.v of the Seven-braiu-bed Ciindlr stick from JernsjiU'ni. A piirtii-uhirl^ bejiiilifnl and no! very well-known pbitf', whicii clcnrly shows rivjincsi's tine sense of ct>ni])osilion, nnd his keen iippreciution of that singularly pictn- rosqnc contrast between (he ancient niins and tho move modern Iniildings in wliich they were then cmhedcled. Si/e of the original elcliiiig. 15vs\--l'/i inches Piranesi. FAgADE of St. John Lateran Piranesi, almost without exception, placed a written description of the scene on every one of his plates, using it as a decorative feature. In this case it proves an integral part of a group which makes an interesting etching out of what otherwise would have heen a simple archi tectural drawing. Size of the original etching, 18% X 27^^ inches GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIEANESI 123 margins with that of Piranesi. The latter's son, Francesco, was taught design and architecture by his father, whose manner he reproduced exactly, although none of the numerous etchings which he left behind him show any signs of those qualities which constitute the greatness of his parent's work. The daughter, Laura, also etched in the manner of her father and has left some vievs of Roman monuments. These two children, together with one of his pupils, Piroli, un doubtedly aided him, but their moderate skill is a proof that their assistance could not have been carried very far. That his pupils never formed a sort of factory for the production of work passing under their master's name, as happened with some famous paint ers, is made certain by the fact that he established no school which caught his manner and produced work reminiscent or imitative of his. His unparalleled out put must, therefore, be almost entirely a result of his own unaided labor. Piranesi died at Rome, surrounded by his family, on the ninth of November, 1778, of a slight disorder rendered serious by neglect. His body was first buried in the church of St. Andrea della Fratte, but was soon afterward removed to that Priory of Santa Maria Aventina which he had himself restored. Here his family ereeted a statue of him, carved by one Angelini after the design of Piranesi's pupil, Piroli. Baron Stolberg writes in his "Travels": "Here is a fine statue of the architect Piranesi, as large as life, placed there by his son. It is the work of a living sculptor, Angelini, and though it certainly cannot be compared with the best antiquities, it still possesses real merit. ' ' 124 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES The singular figure of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, with his power, his fire, and his passionate love of Roman grandeur, not unworthy of some great period of rebirth, appears all the more phenomenal when viewed in relation to his times and his surroundings. The corruption of the pontifical city had been flagrant since the days when it filled with scorn and loathing the wonderful "Regrets" penned by the exiled French poet, Joachim du Bellay, whose homesick heart took less pleasure in the hard marble and au dacious fronts of Roman palaces than in the delicate slate of the distant dwelling built by his Angevin an cestors, — but its depravity had at least been replete with virility and splendor. After the Council of Trent, however, the Counter-Reformation spread over the Roman prelacy a wave of external reform, which left the inner rottenness untouched, but veiled it de cently with all the stifling and petty vices of hypoc risy, until Roman life gradually grew to be that curious androgynous existence which we see reflected so clearly in Casanova's memoirs. During the eigh teenth century, when Piranesi lived, the whole of Italy had sunk to depths of degradation such as few great races have ever known, not because the people were hopelessly decayed, for their great spirit never died, but lived to flame forth in 1848 and create that marvelous present-day regeneration of Italy, which is perhaps the most astonishing example of the rebirth of a once great but apparently dead nation that the world has yet seen. The debased condition of Italy at that time was caused, rather, by centuries of priestly and foreign oppression, which had stifled the entire country until it had fallen into a state of torpor little Piranesi. View of the Ruins of the Golden House of Nero Commonly Called the Temple of Peace A strilcing image of the romantic desolation in Eoman ruins long since removed by modern research Size of the original etching, 1914x28 inches Piranesi. Interior of the Pantheon, Rome A good illustration of Piranesi's originality in choosing a point of view so curious as to give a novel air to the best known subjects The Pantheon, completed hy Agrippa B.C. 27, consecrated to the divine ancestors of the Julian family, and now dedicated as the Chnrch of Santa Maria Rotonda, is 142% feet in diameter and its height, to the apex of the great hemispherical coffered dome, is the same. The lighting of the interior is solely from an opening, 28 feet in diameter, at the summit of the dome. The dome is practically solid concrete. Size of the original etching, 18% x 223/4 inches GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIEANESI 125 different to death. Any sign of intellectual or political activity, however slight or innocent, had long been ruthlessly repressed by Austria and the petty tyrants who ruled the states of Italy. Since men must find some occupation to fill their lives, or else go mad, in a land where every noble and even normal employment was forbidden, the Italian of the day was forced to confine himself within the limits of an idle inanity, concerned only with petty questions and petty interests. It is difficult for people of to-day to conceive the abject futility to which such oppres sion and enforced inactivity can reduce an entire nation. In France the comparative freedom enjoyed under the old regime gave to the eighteenth century, in its most frivolous and futile moments, a charming grace utterly denied to enslaved and priest-ridden Italy. To realize the situation, it is only necessary to consider for a moment the institution of the cicis- beo, and to read Parini's "II Giorno." In this world of little loveless lovers, of sonneteers and collector academicians, the figure of Piranesi looms gigantic, like a creature of another world. He had a purity of taste in artistic matters quite unknown to his eon- temporaries, while his originality, his passion, and his vigor seem indeed those of some antique Roman sud denly come to life to serve as pattern for a people fallen on dire days. Francesco Piranesi, after the death of his father, sold the collection formed by him to Gustavus III of Sweden in return for an annuity. He continued the publication of etchings, many, although unacknow ledged, from drawings by his father, and was,, assisted in his archaeological research by Pope Pius VI. After 126 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES various rather dishonorable transactions, as spy to the court of Sweden, he started for Paris by sea in 1798, having with him the plates of his father's etch ings, and accompanied in all probability by his sister Laura. The ship on which he traveled was captured and all it contained taken as a prize by a British man- of-war, England and France being then engaged in hostilities. By some curious chance, the English ad miral knew the worth of Piranesi's work, and per suaded the officers who had made the capture to restore the plates to his son, and in addition obtained, by some still more curious chance, both the admission of the plates into French territory free of duty, and government protection of Francesco 's ownership. At Paris, Francesco Piranesi and his brother, Pietro, tried to foimd both an academy and a manufactory of terra-cotta. He also republished his father's etchings and his own, thus creating the first French edition, already inferior in quality to the original Roman im pressions. He died in Paris, in 1810, in straitened circumstances. The plates of both the father's and the son's work passed into the hands of the publishers Firmin-Didot, who republished them once more. The original plates, whieh at one time were rented for almost nothing to any one who wished them for a day's printing, finally found a refuge, as before said, in the Royal Calcography at Rome, where they have been coated with steel and rebitten, so that it is now possible to print as many copies every year as tourists and architects may desire. It can, therefore, be seen that, most unfortunately, the world is flooded with countless impressions which, even if they have value for an architect as documents, or still retain enough Piranesi. Piazza Navona, Rome This plate shows how Piranesi could render a complicated view without confusion and, at the same time, give an air of novelty to a well-known place Size of the original etching, 18%x '21^'s inches * v-L> "¦ . ':.Si.' 'm^->.:d^'--yf-^l:^:. 1^' .;* ¦ ¦jiij; :„ ^ ^-x^x^^ "¦tl'r^"" ¦ Xi K SiiJ' ¦¦'^^1 ijSi'. - ' %&^,H fc.;S,'U;'«^S..- '¦¦; *^-''fe.^ •mllP-TBigi ' z^-m ¦ S^*^'"-^^- ^i "v. ..• -. ¦¦- BR ^m^ '1 ^A i~j^i^m"- '¦¦ j' ws^ ' ir " ^^.^ >W^Sfe ^.M WyM ^^^M '"¦' ' '^S'^l^'^'si &:,ij.* ^hS^^ '^^^. . -^msm^y ^I^S-^jBwUBb "-;'^;^^ ^^ ^^^ '^P: ^^^1 ^."^aHB^ ¦ 4ib:^{i>P^ fe"^ n^^ ^s. ^^^s ^^^m ¦'-¦¦* -'¦¦^1 HraK^^^E>I^Hi Mp.y ^f^ .X F'^ ^^K* ¦_ ¦ 'i';! ^^^1 '.s^^'*« Bn ¦'1^"" -:| Wl ^^ ^^9k^^^Bi ¦'?^^-- ' ^ . /¦ ' iL^^ 1^9111.'' JE'itlB OB ^ ^Sarf \ ^^I^Sk^^^Ih Ib ^te "^^^B^ «« ^11 Ht;p .# 5^ ^^N^: ^^*=:Z:2y''s4L*-'- ^?*^>«5^i^^...,./ IWIfilWff 1^ -^ , ^¦^Bim=^ TiTfr^riniiiihilT Piranesi. Interior of the Villa of M-ccenas, at Tivoli An example of Piranesi's skill in making a rather ordinary scene appear dramatic, and arous ing a sense of vastness greater than that imparted by the actual building Size of the original etching, 16^ x 23^fe inches GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIEANESI 127 character to give them some merit as pictures, are yet so utterly changed and debased as to do the gravest and most irreparable injustice to the reputation of the genius who created them. 128 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES Part II "LE CARCERI D'INVENZIONE" (THE PRISONS) Any one who bestows even a passing inspection on the etchings of Piranesi will be struck by the inten sity of imagination which they display, a quality whose precise nature it will perhaps . be useful to analyze, since, despite the fact that we use the word constantly, the thousand differing values whieh we attach to it render our ideas of its true meaning in general of the vaguest. Reduced to its ultimate es sence, imagination would appear to be the faculty of picture-making ; that is to say, the power of bringing images before the mental eye with absolute exactitude, and of clothing ideas with a definite form, so that they have a reality quite as great as that which char acterizes the objects of the external world. So long as ideas remain in the mind in the form of abstract conceptions, they are food for reason, but have no power to move us. It is only when, by means of the imaginative faculty, the concept has presented itself as a definite image, that it arouses our emotions and becomes a motive of conduct. When, for example, the idea of an injury to some one we love comes into our sphere of consciousness, a concrete picture of that injury presents itself in some form or other to our inner vision, and is the cause of the emotion which we experience. Our sympathy and understanding will be proportionate to the varying distinctness with which our imaginative power offers such images for our contemplation. Imagination therefore connotes s? s Piranesi. The Falls at Tivoli This etching illustrates little known side of Piranesi's talent, nainelv, his ability to etch pure landscape indent Anio) at Tivoli are fifteen miles east-northeast of Rome J. T .L, T-r -¦ - , --,,.., ionce of many Romans — M^cenas, Augustus ITadrinn mt/? tho ruins of both Hadrian's Villa and the Villa of Miecenas are still to be seen ^^=^'^ii>^n and the Size of the original etching, 18% x 2Si/fe inches The Falls of the Teverone (the , .„ ^^ „ Tivoli was the favorite place of residence of many Romans- GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIEANESI 129 the ability to conceive the emotions and experiences of others, and is thus indissolubly connected with sympathy and all the nobler qualities of human nature. The fact that our conduct is determined not by concepts, but by mental images which motive emotion, although at first it appear paradoxical, will certainly be recognized by any one- who is willing to study, if only for a short time, his own mental experiences. This truth was realized with such force as to be made the base of their entire spiritual discipline by that notable Spaniard, Ignatius Loyola, and his followers, the Jesuit fathers, who have understood the complex and subtle mechanism of the human soul more profoundly and exhaustively than any other body of men which has ever existed. In classic times Horace was cognizant of this peculiarity of man's mind when he wrote that the emotions are aroused more slowly by objects which are presented to consciousness by hearing than by those made known by sight. Burke, it is true, disputes this dictum of the Latin poet, on the ground that, among the arts, poetry certainly arouses emotions more intense than those derived from painting. Although this is probably true, for rea sons which he details and which it would be weari some to reiterate here, it is certain that poetry moves us exactly in ratio to the power it possesses of creating vivid images for our contemplation, while it is cer tainly doubtful whether any emotion excited through hearing surpasses in vivacity that experienced on suddenly seeing certain objects or situations. All artists at all worthy of the name are, therefore, possessed to a certain degree of imagination. It is 130 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES the gift which makes visible to them whatever they embody in words, pictures, sounds, or sculpture. If totally deprived of it, they could create nothing, for no man can express what does not appear to him as having a real existence for at least the moment of creation. In the domain of art, imagination, in its lower forms, is merely the power of recollecting and reproducing things endowed with material existence ; but in its highest development, when handling the conceptions and emotions of an original mind, it ac quires the power of actual creation, and is inseparably attached to the loftiest acts of which man is capable. Every plate etched by Piranesi betrays to even a careless glance the presence of imagination in some form, while in one series this noble faculty is revealed with an amplitude almost unparalleled. If it be only the presentment of fragments of Roman epitaphs, he finds a way by some play of light or shade, or hy some trick of picturesque arrangement, to throw a certain interest about them, relieving the dryness of barren facts; if it be the etching of some sepulchral vault, in itself devoid of any but antiquarian interest, he introduces some human figure or some suggestive implement to give a flash of imagination to the scene. In those very plates where he depicts the actually existing monuments of classic Rome, and in which it was his expressed intention to save these august ruins from further injury and preserve them forever in his engravings, he created what he saw anew, and voiced his own distinctive sentiment of the melancholy grandeur of ruined Rome. To-day the word impres sionism has come to have a rather restricted meaning in connection with a recent school of art, but Pira- Piranesi. The Falls at Tivoli tptV:,tLr^^ct!^:i; :nin'o'';;\^*^|-t;;?[frTRt:^* '''•^"'^^ '°^- "^'-- - "^ -"i-* of modern artists. That PiranesT acnreciatefl S^f<, I'^^f'^'^'i' '^ ''°'". considered the speciality poetry and power, could be pioved bj^tois plate alone ""*'''¦''' ^""^ '^'^ "'"'' '" <"'l»-'=^« «^ Size of the original etching, 18% x 28:^^ inches Piranesi. St. Peter's and the Vatican This is perhaps the best example of Piranesi's exaggerated perspective. It is quite justified, in this case at least, by the success with which it creates an impression of vastness and of grandeur which was certainly aimed at by the architects of St. Peter's, but which the ex terior of the actual building, quite as certainly, fails to arouse. Size of the originnl etching, 18 x 27% inches GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIEANESI 131 nesi's work, like that of all really great artists, is in the true sense of the word impressionistic. In pass ing, it may be remarked that he was one of the rare artists in earlier times who worked directly from nature, a habit distinctive of our modern impression ism. Piranesi is concerned with the expression of his own peculiar impression of what he sees; for the benefit of others and for his own delight he gives form to his own particular vision of whatever he treats. He certainly was desirous of, and successful in, recording the existing forms of the buildings he loved so well; it is also true that his etchings and en gravings are in many ways faithful renderings whieh have immense historical and antiquarian value, since they preserve an aspect of Rome none shall ever see again, but together with the actual facts, and tran scending them, he offers the imaginative presentment of his own creative emotion. What he draws is based on nature, and is full of verisimilitude, but it is not realistic in the base way that a photograph would be. It contains while it surpasses reality, and is faithful to the idea of what he sees, using that word in its Platonic sense. Taine, in what is probably the most lucid and ex haustive definition of the nature of a work of art ever given, starts from the statement that all great art is based on an exact imitation of nature ; then proceeds to demonstrate how this imitation of nature must not extend to every detail, but should, instead, confine itself to the relations and mutual dependencies of the parts; and finally states, as the condition essential to creating a work of art, that the artist shall succeed, by intentional and systematic variation of these relations. 132 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES in setting free, in expressing more clearly and com pletely than in the real object, some essential charac teristic or predominating idea. This is wherein art transcends nature, and a work of art is, therefore, constituted by the fact that it expresses the essential idea of some series of subjects, freed from the acci dents of individuality, in a form more harmoniously entire than that attained by any object in nature. Now this is precisely what Piranesi did. He is often taken to task for his departure from a literal state ment of fact in his renderings of architectural sub jects, but, in so departing, he is varying the inter relation of parts so as to disengage the characteristic essence of what he depicts, and thus create a work of art, not a historical document. If he lengthens Ber nini's colonnade in front of St. Peter's, he is only composing with the same liberty accorded to Turner, when, in one picture of St. Germain, he introduces elements gathered from three separate parts of the river Seine ; and by so doing he expresses the idea of limitless grandeur, latent in St. Peter's, with a full ness it does not possess in the actual building. In his "Antiquities of Rome," he disengages a sense of devastation and of desolate majesty which is the fundamental characteristic of Roman ruin, and one that could have presented itself with such directness and force only to the mind of an artist of genius. His own vision of the inner truth of what he saw, stripped of everything accidental, is what he gives to posterity, and what lifts his work out of the field of simple archseology into the proud realm of true art. Even in those plates where he etches actual scenes with loving care, Piranesi passes nature, as it were. Piranesi. The Villa d'Este at Tivoli It is interesting to note that at the time Piranesi etched this flne plate the avenue of Cypress trees, which now adds so much to the picturesqueness of the Villa d'Este, was not even planted. Size of the original etching, 181/2X27% inches Piranesi. Title-pace of "The Prisons" From "Opere Varie di Architettura Prospettive Grotteschi Antichita sui trusto Degli Antichi Romani Inventate, ed Incise da Gio. Batista Piranesi. Architetto Veneziano." (Rome, 1750.) Size of the original etching, 2114x1614 inches GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIEANESI 133 through the alembic of his own personality, doing this moreover in a way peculiar to him and to him alone. His originality consists in this,— that his mind, when considering an object, seized instinctively on certain distinguishing features peculiar to that object, quali ties which his mind, and only his, was capable of ex tracting from the rough ore of ordinary perception; and that for the powerful impression which he thus experienced, he was able to find an adequate and dis tinctive expression. It was his good fortune to behold Rome in a moment of pathetic and singular beauty, irrevocably vanished, as one of the penalties to be paid for the knowledge gained by modern excavation. In those days the Roman ruins did not have that trim air, as of skeletons ranged in a museum, which they have taken on under our tireless cleansing and re search. For centuries the barbarians of Rome had observed the precept: "Go ye upon her walls and destroy; but make not a full end," so that only the uppermost fragments of temple columns protruded through the earth where the cattle browsed straggling shrubbery above the buried Forum, while goats and swine herded among cabins in the filth and century- high dirt which covered the streets that had been trod by the pride of emperors. But that which, more than anything else, helped to create an atmosphere of ro mantic beauty none shall see again, was the indescrib able tangle of vine, shrub, and flower, which in those days draped and hid under a mass of verdure the mighty ruins of baths and halls that still stupefy by their vastness when we see them now, devoid of their ancient marble dressing, stripped clean like polished bones. Shelley tells how even in his day the Baths of 134 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES Caracalla were covered with "flowery glades, and thickets of odoriferous blossoming trees, which are extended in ever-winding labyrinths." The sentiment of august grandeur inspired by the indestructible mass of Roman ruins was, therefore, in those days curiously complicated by the contrast be tween them and the fantastic growth of ever-passing, ever-renewed vegetation which wrapped them as in a mantle. The poignancy of this beauty Piranesi seized with a felicity and expressed with a plenitude given to no one but to him. He was, both by nature and by volition, profoundly classical, yet he envel oped all that he handled, however classic it might be in subject, with a sense of mysterious strangeness so strong as to arouse the sensation called ih later times romantic. This contrast is one of the distinctive phases of his originality. It would be pleasant to think that Edmund Burke was familiar with the creations of Griambattista Piranesi when he wrote so searchingly of " The SubUme and Beautiful " ; but, if this be perhaps an idle fancy, it is cer tainly true that it would not be easy to find concrete examples demonstrating more clearly than the etch ings of Piranesi the truth of large parts of his enquiry, and in particular of the following definition of the sublime: "Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analo gous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling. When danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any delight, Piranesi. The Prisons. Plate 111 Size of the original etching, 21Vi X 161/4 inches Piranesi. The Prisons. Plate IV Size of the original etching, 21%xl61/i inches GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIEANESI 135 and are simply terrible, but at certain distances, and with certain modifications, they may be, and they are, delightful, as we every day experience." The application of these words to the work of Pira nesi will probably surprise those persons acquainted only with his etchings of classic ruins. However, even these plates exemplify this definition in many ways which it would be tedious to enumerate, while to feel its full appositeness it is only necessary to study Piranesi's least-known and greatest achievement, com monly called ' ' The Prisons, ' ' and known in Italian as "Le Carceri d'Invenzione." These sixteen fantasies, executed at the age of twenty-two and published at thirty, form a set of prints in which it is no exaggera tion to say that imagination is displayed with a power and amplitude that have elsewhere never been sur passed in etching or engraving, and only rarely in other forms of pictorial art. Although scarcely known to the public at large, they have always formed the delight of those who feel the appeal of imaginative fantasy, and notably of Coleridge and of De Quincey, who has recorded his impression in golden words. They are reputed to represent scenes which burned themselves into the artist's consciousness while de lirious with fever, and it is certain that they do pos sess that terrible, vivid reality, so enormously ampli fied as to lose the proportions of ordinary existence, which characterizes all oppressive dreams and partic ularly those induced by narcotics. They represent interiors of vast and fantastic architecture, complete yet unfinished, composed of an inexplicable complexity of enormous arches springing from massive piers built, like the arches they carry, of gigantic blocks 136 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES left rough-hewn. By a contrast that could only have been conceived by genius these monstrous spaces are traversed in every direction by frail scaffoldings, together with ladders, bridges, and all manner of works in wood ; and are filled, at the same time, with an inexhaustible succession of ropes, pulleys, and engines, finely described by De Quincey as ' ' expressive of enormous power put forth or of resistance over come." They are distinguished by one of Piranesi's greatest qualities, the power to express immensity as, perhaps, no ohe else has ever done, and are flooded with light which seems intense in its opposition to the brilliant shadows, so that altogether it would be diffi cult to understand their title of "Prisons," were it not for the presence of engines of torment, and of mighty chains that twine over and depend from huge beams, or sometimes bind fast the little bodies of human beings. The unusual and inexplicable nature of these "Prisons" gives to the beholder's imagina tion a mighty stimulus productive of strange excite ment. The "English Opium-Eater" in likening his visions to these pictures, — and what higher praise of their imaginative force could there be? — speaks of their "power of endless growth and self -reproduction. " One of their distinguishing peculiarities is this repeti tion -of parts, as of things which grow out of them selves unceasingly, reproducing their parts until the brain reels at the idea of their endlessness. This characteristic, together with that curious opposition between their air of open immensity and their sug gestion of prison-horror, gives them that particular appearance of absolute reality in the midst of impos- Piranesi. The Prisons. Plate V Size of the original etching, 2114 x I614 inches Piranesi. The Prisons. Plate VI Size of the original etching, 2114x15% inches GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIEANESI 137 sibility, which is a distinctive feature of dreams. In this way they arouse a sense of infinitude in the mind of the beholder; now, although size is in itself of no importance, it is nevertheless true that, when com bined with other qualities of value, "greatness of dimension is a powerful cause of the sublime. ' ' This greatness, both in conception and in material execu tion, they possess, together with that opposition of light to obscurity which "seems in general to be necessary to make anything very terrible." Indeed, that these etchings reveal a more imaginative vigor arouse a kind of awe in any one who gives them more than a passing glance, while the horror which they suggest is never physical so as to nauseate or "press too nearly" and cause pain, but imparts, on the con trary, a sense of danger and of terror that causes a delightful excitement, certainly fulfilling the defitni- tion of the sublime as given by Burke. Although it does not follow that Piranesi is a greater etcher than Rembrandt, it may still be true that these etchings reveal a more imaginative vigor than is shown in those of the great Dutchman. They do not possess that subtle imagination which envelops everything that Rembrandt ever touched in an air of exquisite mystery, and gives to his least sketch an in exhaustible fund of suggestion, nor can they be com pared to his etchings as consummate works of art; yet they do have a titanic, irresistible force of sheer imagination, which neither Rembrandt nor any other etcher, however superior in other ways, possessed to the same extent. Their preeminence in this one point is certainly admissible, and as it has been shown, presiimably, that they are imaginative, original, and 138 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES sublime, is it too much to say that, at least in the ex pression of certain intellectual qualities, Piranesi in these plates carried the art of etching to the highest point yet attained, so that no one who does not know these plates can know quite all that etching is capable of expressing? "The Prisons" are also the most notable example of that principle of opposition, or contrast, of which Piranesi made so masterful a use in whatever he did. The application of this law in the handling, and at times in the abuse, of blacks and whites, is, of course, apparent to even the most casual observer in all that came from his hand. In the present series, however, this law may be seen carried to its utmost limit. From every stupendous vault there hangs a long, thin rope, while up gigantic pillars of rough masonry climb frail ladders of wood, and great voids between im mense piers are spanned by light bridges, also of wood, bearing the slightest and most open of iron railings. In his plates of Roman ruins, Piranesi in troduces the human figure dressed in the lovely cos tume of the eighteenth century, in order to contrast ^race with force, and to oppose the living and the fugitive to the inanimate and the enduring ; but here his use of the human figure rises to the truly dramatic. In the midst of these vast and awful halls with their air of stillness and of power, of "resistance over come," he places men who seem the smallest and the frailest among creatures. Grouped by twos or threes, whether depicted in violent motion or standing with significant gesture, they are always enigmatic in their attitudes, so that their presence and obvious emotion amid this immense and silent grandeur arouse a sense Piranesi. The Prisons. Plate IX Size of the original etching, 21i4x 16 inches Piranesi. The Prisons. Plate VII Size of the original etching, 21% x 161/^ inches GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIEANESI 139 of tragic action, a feeling of mysterious wonder and curiosity that gives to all lovers of intellectual excite ment a pleasure as keen as unusual. Particularly in one vision of a monstrous wheel of wood revolving in space, no one knows how, above a fragment of rocky architecture, while three human beings engaged in animated converse are obviously unconscious of the gigantic revolutions, the limits of fantasy are reached, and the mind turns instinctively to those images of the spheres rolling eternally in infimite space which are found in Milton and all mystic poets. These plates are also interesting as a striking and curious proof of Piranesi's conscious mastery of his art. They are filled with such a fury of imagination, and are etched with such dash and boldness of execu tion that it seems as though they must be, if not, as was once said, the sane work of a madman, at least burned directly on the plate by the force of a fever- stricken mind. But not so ; they are, however fevered their original inspiration may have been, the result of careful elaboration, and are but one more proof of the saying of that other and still greater etcher. Whistler, that a work of art is complete, and only complete, when all traces have disappeared of the means by which it was created. There exists in the British Museum a unique, and until recently unknown, series of first states of "The Prisons." Now, although these first states have the main outline and, as it were, the germ of the published states, these latter are so elaborated and, on the whole, improved, as to make it at first incredible that they could ever have grown out of, or had any relation to, the earlier states. The idea of vast masses of ma- 140 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES sonry is there, thrown on the paper with a simplicity of decorative effect and a directness of touch which have been lessened in the later work ; but, on the other hand, all those scaffolds, engines of torment, and groups of men above described, are lacking, so that the power of contrast and the sense of terror, productive of the sublime, are entirely wanting, and are, therefore, shown to be the result of conscious art used by Piranesi in elaboration of an original in spiration. Piranesi possessed a style so intensely individual that every print he produced is recognizable as his by any person who has ever looked at two or three of his plates with moderate attention, yet this style never degenerated into manner; that is to say, into an imitation not of nature, but of the peculiarities of other men or of one's own earlier work. It became a manner or process in the hands of his son, Francesco, but with Giovanni Battista it always remained style, which is the expression of an original intellect observ ing nature before consciously varying the relations of elements drawn by it from nature, to the end of pro ducing a work of art. This style, whose faults lie in excessive contrasts of black and white, in inadequate handling of skies, and, at times, in a certain general hardness of aspect, is marked by great boldness, breadth, and power, both in conception and in actual execution, but it is never marred by crudity or rough ness. It is a remarkable fact that the immense force, which first of all impresses one in Piranesi's work, does not exclude, but is, on the contrary, often com bined or contrasted with extreme elegance and fine ness of touch. To cite but one instance: in that Piranesi. The Prisons. Plate Vlll Size of the original etching, 211/^ x 15% inches GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIEANESI 141 wonderful print which forms the title-page of "The Prisons,"— the figure of the chained man, who imparts such a sense of terror to the whole scene, is handled with a grace and delicacy worthy of Moreau or any of those French contemporaries who filled the land with their exquisite creations for the endless delight of later generations. It is this contrast, together with his dramatic introduction and grouping of the human figure, which gives to Piranesi's style a character that has been aptly qualified as scenic. An etching by Piranesi produces very much the same curious effect that a person experiences on entering a theater after the curtain has risen, so that he receives from the stage a sudden, sharp impression, not of a passing moment of the play, but of one distinct, dramatic picture. His etchings are never theatrical in the sense of something factitious and exaggerated beyond likeness to nature, but are always truly dramatic. It will have been noticed that plates by Piranesi have been referred to both as etchings and engrav ings; this is because he used both etching and en graving in the same plate, a proceeding which, if decried by theoretical writers, has none the less been habitually employed by many of the greatest masters of both means of expression. Despite his faults and his Latin exuberance, Piranesi is technically one of the great etchers, in whose hands, particularly in cer tain plates in "The Prisons," the etching-needle at tained a breadth of vigorous- execution that no one has surpassed. In judging an artist, the obvious pre cept, to consider what he was aiming to do, is unfor tunately too often neglected. To expect of Piranesi either the incomparable delicacy of Whistler, or the 142 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES unsurpassed crispness of Meryon would be futile, but he does possess certain forceful qualities which are not theirs. When he used the burin, he could handle it with the greatest precision and skill. In such a plate as the one known as The French Academy, the build ing is engraved with a skill not at all unworthy of the engravers who were at that time doing such wonder ful work in France, while the plate, as a whole, gains a delightful quality,— that neither pure etching nor pure engraving could have given, — from the contrast whieh the sharp and delicately engraved lines make with the figures that are etched with a consummate freedom and dash worthy of Callot, who, one can not but think, must have infiuenced Piranesi. In his valuable monograph on Piranesi, Mr. Arthur Samuel makes the statement that "architectural etch ing has culminated with him"; and it is certain that in this field his work surpasses, both in architectural correctness and in artistic merit, any that has been done either before or since his day. GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIEANESI 143 Pabt III THE INFLUENCE OP PIRANESI ON DECORATION IN THE XVUI CENTURY There is still another side of Piranesi's originality, public ignorance of which may be said to be complete —namely, his relation to architecture, and the very great debt owed him by that art. That he was an architect who signed himself as such on many plates during his entire life is a fact ignored even by many of those architects who are most indebted to him ; but this fact is negligible, together with the work whicii he actually executed as an architect. The benefits whieh he conferred were rendered in other ways. His first, and perhaps greatest, service consisted in the collection of materials. The classic motives which he gathered and etched form an inexhaustible store of ornament on whieh generation after generation of architects has drawn, and will continue to draw. The enormous quantity and variety of classic fragments of the best quality that Piranesi brought together is in itself astounding, but a fact of still greater impor tance is that it was he who, more than any one else, gave these motives currency. In his day no one, ex cept Winckelmann — now known chiefly by his influ ence on Goethe, and by his tragic death — did as much as Piranesi to foster appreciation and spread know ledge of classic antiquity; while his plates, both by their greater currency and higher artistic merit, did wider and more enduring good than could ever be accomplished by the work of a critic and connoisseur. 144 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES even of Winckelmann 's talent and prestige. His bound less enthusiasm and his real learning aroused more people than we shall ever know, at the same time that his labors, so indefatigable as to be incredible, spread abroad in prodigal profusion the reproductions of the remains of classic buildings, statues, and ornament. The greater part of these relics would have continued, but for him, to be known to only a few collectors and frequenters of museums; and it is certain that more classic motives have come into use, directly or indi rectly, from the works of Piranesi than from any other one source, with the possible exception of mod ern photography. In this connection it is impossible to insist too much on his exquisite taste, which, although it had its lapses, as in his designs for chimney-pieces, was on the whole of the highest. This fact seems quite incredible if the time and place of his life be considered. The intellectual degradation of all Italy at this period has already been alluded to, and, art being always a reflec tion and expression of contemporary life, it follows that the artistic degradation of Piranesi's Italian con temporaries was complete. It is difficult to conceive the rococo horrors of eighteenth-century Italy. In France the most contorted productions of the Louis XV style, or the most far-fetched symbolic lucubra tions under Louis XVI, never reached such depths of bad taste; for the French, in their most unfortunate moments, can never divest themselves entirely of an innate taste and a sense of measure which give some redeeming grace to their worst follies. The lack of tact, of a sense of limitations, which often charac terizes Spanish and Italian art, and at times makes GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIEANESI 145 possible splendid flights never attempted by the French, also permits them, when misguided, to sink to abysmal depths. It would be hard to find much good in the heavy contortions of the rococo work of eighteenth-century Italy, which, starting from Ber nini, exaggerated all his faults and kept none of even his perverted genius. Amid this riot of bad taste, Piranesi, with his love of classic simplicity, his sense of the noble, and his feeling for balance and distance, stands out an inexplicable phenomenon. In certain plates, Piranesi, while using elements taken from antiquity, created a style of ornamental composition which inspired or was copied in work praised for its originality, and passing under the name of other styles. No one dreams of speaking of a Pira nesi style, yet there is many a piece of decoration that calls itself Louis XVI, or Adam, or anything else, which comes directly from the work of this much- pilfered Italian. He stands in relation to a great deal of architectural decoration much as do, in science, those profound and creative minds who discover a great principle, but neglect its detailed application, only to have it taken up by lesser inventors of a prac tical trend, who put it to actual uses, the tangible value of whieh excites so great an admiration that no thought is taken of the man who discovered the very principle at the base of it all. In such plates as those dedicated to Robert Adam and Pope Clement XIII there can be found, fully developed, the style we call currently Louis XVI, although the greater part of it was produced under Louis XV contemporaneously with the work which goes by that name. The style in question is there, with its exquisite detail copied from 146 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES the antique ; we can see its inspiration taken from the classic which it wished to reproduce, together with its fortunate inability to do so, and its consequently suc cessful creation of something entirely original but yet filled with classic spirit. That interruption of orna ment, that alternation of the decorated and the plain, that sense of balance and of contrast, distinctive of the Louis XVI style— all are here. To think that these qualities came to Piranesi through French influence would be ridiculous, for the style under discussion obviously took for its model classic art, to which it was an attempted return ; and as Piranesi was all his life in direct contact with the source of this inspiration, he could scarcely have been formed by a derivation of that which he knew directly. If this be true, it may be asked why Piranesi's work did not create in Italy at least sporadic attempts at a style analogous to that of Louis XVI. The reason for this lies in the already mentioned condition of the Italy of that day, for a work of art is absolutely con ditioned by, and a result of, the environment in whieh it occurs. Here and there a work of art may, by some phenomenon, occur in opposition, or without apparent relation, to its surroundings; but in such circum stances it will have no successors, just as an unusually hardy orange-tree may thrive far to the north, but will not bear fruit and propagate itself. A great critic has said : ' ' There is a reigning direction, which is that of the century; those talents who try to grow in an opposite direction find the issue closed; the pressure of public spirit and of surrounding manners com presses or turns them aside by imposing on them a fixed fiowering. " The torpor and bad taste engen- Lfe= :*iiiiiii Statue of Piranesi, by Angelini, assisted by Piranesi's son, and erected in the Church of Santa Maria in Aventino (Rome). It faces the great candelabra which Piranesi had designed to illuminate his statue. This plate was engraved by Piranesi's son, Francesco, in 1790. Size of the original engraving, 19% X 12-;'i inches Piranesi. Antique Marble Vase From "Vasi, Candelabri, Cippi, Sarcofagi, Tripodi, Lucerne ed Orna- menti Antichi Disegn. ed inc. dal Cav. Gio. Batta. Piranesi." (1778) Vol. II, plafe No. 73. Piranesi's dedication of this plate reads: "Al Suo Carissimo Amico II. Sig. Riccardo Hayward Scuttore Inglese." Size of the original etching, 24 x 16% inches GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIEANESI 147 dered in Italy by political and intellectual oppression precluded the work of Piranesi from bearing any fruit in his own country. To think, on the other hand, that Piranesi exerted an infiuence on French art of his day is not so fanci ful as might at first be supposed. If it be true, as just stated, that it is impossible for the work of an artist to produce any result when his environment is hostile, it is equally true that an artist, or a body of artists, can exert an enormous infiuence when their surround ings favor and the ground is ready to receive the seed they sow. France was ripe for such seed as Piranesi cast abroad vainly in Italy, and in the former country an incalculable infiuence in the creation of the Louis XVI style was exerted by those men who accompanied Mme. de Pompadour's brother, Abel Poisson, Marquis de Marigny, on his travels in Italy. Three years pre viously this great patron of art had caused her brother to be appointed to the succession of the "Surinten- dance des Beaux- Arts, " and after three years of ap prenticeship, in order to make himself worthy of this important and exalted position, she sent him, in the company of a numerous suite, to Italy in December, 1749, to complete his education by remaining there until September, 1751. In his following were Soufflot, the architect, and Charles Nicholas Cochin fils, the celebrated engraver. On his return from Italy, M. de Marigny directed all the works of art undertaken by the govemment throughout France, while Soufflot built the church of Ste. Genevieve, now known as the Pantheon, and was one of the most conspicuous and influential men in the world of art in his day. Cochin, aside from being a great engraver, was intellectually 148 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES one of the most interesting artists of the day, and, as M. de Marigny 's right-hand man, wielded an influence almost incomprehensible to us of to-day. The latter part of his life, he really ruled in M. de Marigny 's stead, and his absolute dictatorship in all matters of art in France can only be compared to that of Le Brun under Louis XIV. That his Italian travels were the decisive influence of Cochin's career is clearly shown in his own work, and is expressly stated by Diderot, who says of him that, "judge everywhere else, he was a scholar at Rome. ' ' Soufflot was only seven years older than Pira nesi, and Cochin but five. Now, when these distin guished Frenchmen were in Rome, Piranesi was al ready famous and frequented the most interesting artistic circles. His talents and his remarkably im petuous personality made him one of the curiosities of Rome, so that it is scarcely credible that these visit ing foreigners should not have seen much of him. As their express object was the study of antiquity, and as no one in Rome knew more of the ruins or had so lively an enthusiasm for them as Piranesi, it is cer tainly probable that he influenced them deeply. Aside from these men, the list is long of famous Frenchmen who studied in Rome during the height of Piranesi's artistic production, and must certainly have felt his influence. It includes Augustin Pajou, the sculptor, who went to the Villa Medicis as Prix de Rome in 1748, at eighteen, and who afterward decorated the opera built at Versailles by Ange Ga briel, architect of the faultless buildings which en noble the Place de la Concorde ; Jean Jacques Caffieri, the sculptor, who was in Rome from 1749 to 1753; Section of one of the Sides of the Great Room, or Library, of Earl .Mansfield's Villa at Kenv Robert Adam Architect, 1767. Engraved by J. Zucchi in 1774 iineVisis :S? l^'V ?1 S^H P»^^€^^?-4i,^^^^^^ Piranesi. Title-page to "Il Campo Marzio dell' Antica Roma" (Rome, 1762) The dedication to Robert Adam is upon the column to the left Size of the original etching, 19% x 131/4 inches a 0. a << GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIEANESI 151 teet of the Bank of England ; and of many more. The subject of Piranesi's influence in England has been so exhaustively treated by Mr. Arthur Samuels in his monograph as to make useless any attempt to rehandle the subject here. Still another example of Piranesi's influence is to be found in the sketches of the present-day German, Otto Rieth, the originality of whose drawings is so vaunted. Very talented and individual they certainly are, but to any one thoroughly familiar with the archi tectural fantasies of Piranesi, the source of inspiration is so obvious as to make it impossible that Rieth should not have known the work of his great Italian pre decessor. The influence which Piranesi exerts on the l&cole des Beaux-Arts, and consequently on the leading contem porary architects of both France and the United States, is enormous, if hard to define. The use of detail which he furnishes is never-ceasing, but more important than this is the constant inspiration sought in a study of those architectural fantasies which he has filled with the qualities of grandeur and immensity so much valued by the French to-day. The buildings of New York are covered with motives either inspired by Piranesi or taken directly from his work— orna ment much of which would never have come into vogue but for him ; while a recent number of a leading architectural periodical, without acknowledgment, printed a design of his for its cover. It is ardently to be hoped that a wider and more just appreciation of Piranesi's unique work may gradually gain currency. Mere productiveness is, of course, of no intrinsic value; but that any human 152 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES being should be capable of so vast a labor as Piranesi must in itself excite in us a lively sense of wonder and admiration. When, moreover, it is found that his work, in addition to putting the art of architec ture under an enormous debt, is distinguished by imagination, originality, sublimity, and immense skill of execution, — a certain portion of it at least possess ing these qualities to a degree unsurpassed by any artist using the particular medium employed, — it is surely not unreasonable to attribute to their creator the rare quality of original genius. Note : I desire to acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr. Arthur Samuel of London, both for material contained in his book and for personal courtesy. FRANCISCO GOYA Y LUCIENTES By chaeles H. CAPFIN Author of "The Story of Spanish Painting," "Old Spanish Masters, Engraved by Timothy Cole," etc., etc. THE phenomenon of Goya is among the curiosi ties of the history of art. For in the latter half of the eighteenth century, when, under the feeble Bourbon dynasty, Spain had reached the lowest ebb of her national and artistic life, an artist arose who represented more than any other her racial characteristics and was destined to exert a world-wide infiuence on the art of the succeeding century. While the rest of Europe was seething with the spirit of revolution, Goya, the man, was already in revolt, and at the same time had discovered for himself a revolutionary form of art, which anticipated by half a century the consciousness elsewhere of the need of a new method to fit the new point of view. In a word, he drove an entering wedge into the con- ^ temporary classicalism that was based upon a dry| imitation of Roman marbles and Raphaelesque com- 1 positions, restored nature to art, and adapted his vision of nature to the spirit of inquiry, observation, and research that was in process of fermentation. Finally, he adjusted to his vision of life a method of composition, freer and more flexible than the older ones: that was preoccupied less with the representa- 154 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES tion of form than with the expression of movement and character; its aim, in fact, being primarily ex- ^pressional. Thus he anticipated the motive of modern f impressionism and determined in advance the methods of rendering it. No less remarkable is the degree in whieh he was an avatar of the mingled traits of his race. For ethno logically the Spaniard is a Celt, who first was disci plined by Roman civilization, then merged in the flood of a Germanic wave, and later infused with the blood and culture of the Arab and the Moor. A truly won derful amalgam— the ironic humor of the Celt; the mysticism, vigor, and grotesque imagination of the forest-bred Goth; the subtle inventiveness, sensuous ness, and abstraction of the Orient, and the uncouth strain of the Black Man, whom to-day we are discov ering to be the flotsam of a far-off submerged civiliza tion in Darkest Africa. All these traits are recog nizable in the work of Goya that he did to please himself: namely, in his painted figure-subjects, other than portraits, and in his drawings and etchings. In the modern craze for making over biographies of past worthies, so as to bring their lives into con formity with the standards of respectability in the present, there is a tendency to suggest that many of the records of Goya's career may be apocryphal. This would rob the story of art of a very picturesque per sonality; one, moreover, which seems to be quite con vincingly represented in his art. He was born in 1746, in the little town of Fuendetodos near Zaragoza in the province of Aragon, his father being a small Goya. Portrait of Goya, drawn and etched by himself Size of the original etching, 5^16X4% inches Goya. The Dead Branch From "The Proverbs" (Lefort No. 126) A reference to the Spanish court, which rests on a dead branch over an abyss Size of the original etching, 8% x 12^6 inches FEANCISCO GOYA Y LUCIENTES 155 farmer. Reared among the hills, he breathed inde pendence, throve mightily in bodily vigor, and proved precociously disposed to art. Accordingly, at the age of fourteen he was put under a teacher, Luzan, in Zaragoza. But it was never Goya's way to take in struction from a spoon, and at this period he distin guished himself less as a student than as a roistering young fellow, apt for gallantry and brawls and ready with his rapier. Having drawn on himself the atten tion of the authorities of the Inquisition, he found it convenient to proceed to Madrid. Here again his escapades aroused notoriety, so that he abandoned the capital and set forth for Rome, working his way to the sea-board by practising as a bull-fighter. In Rome he mainly nourished his artistic development by ob servation of the old masterpieces, meanwhile indulg ing in gallantries, which culminated in a plot to rescue a young lady from a convent. This time he found himself actually in the grip of the Inquisition and was only released from it by the Spanish ambassador, who undertook to ship him back to Spain. Arrived the second time in Madrid he found a friend in the painter Francisco Bayeu, who gave him his daughter, Josefa, in marriage and introduced him to Mengs, the arbiter of art at Court. Josefa bore him twenty chil dren, none of whom survived him, and patiently put up with his infidelities. Mengs had been urged by the king, Charles III, to revive the Tapestry Works of Santa Barbara, and intrusted Goya with a series of designs, which to-day may be seen in the basement galleries of the Prado, while some of them, executed in the weave, adorn the walls of a room in the Bscorial. The vogue at the time was for Boucher's pretty pas- 156 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES toral ineptitudes, but Goya took a hint from Teniers and represented the actual pastimes of the Spanish people. He, however, far outstripped the Flemish artist in the variety, naturalness, and vivacity of his sub jects, while in the matter of composition he showed himself already a student of the harmonies of nature rather than a perpetuator of studio traditions. These designs secured his general popularity and paved the way for his entree into royal favor at the accession of Charles IV in 1788. Goya, turned forty, was already the darling of the populace and now became the cynosure of the Court. He would pit his prowess against the professional strong man in the streets of Madrid and plunged with equal aplomb and assurance into the gallantries of the royal cir cle, which was a hotbed of intrigue under the lax regime of Queen Maria Luisa, whose amours were notorious. Foremost among her lovers was Manuel Godoy, whom she raised from the rank of a guards man eventually to be prime minister. He embroiled his country in a war with England, and finally ratted to Napoleon, conniving at the invasion of the French troops and the placing of Joseph Bonaparte on the throne of Spain. Meanwhile, in the interval before this debacle, Goya, while dipping into intrigue, nota bly with the beautiful Countess of Alba, and estab lishing his position as an artist to whom every one who would be anybody must sit for a portrait, maintained an attitude of haughty mental exclusiveness. He was the rebel, the insurgent, the nihilist; lashing witii the impartial whip of his satire the rottenness of the Court and the shams and hypocrisies of the Middle Class, the Church, Law, Medicine, and even Painting. . .;,^, Goya. Back to His Ancestors ! "P;ppr animali The genealogists and the kings of heraldry have muddled his 'brain,' and he is not the only one." l^^^^i^hel Godoy,., satirized in this prifit,. hapl a long and ficti- tJ.OiU.§ genealogy made for himself,' according , to 'which he was a direct "descendant of the ancient Gothic'kings of Spain. ^- ,/^' ^ Trom "The Ca/jrice's" (Lefort No. 39). Goya. "Birds of a Feather Flock Together" "The question is often raised whether men or women are su perior. The vices of either proceed from bad upbringing; where the men are depraved the women likewise are depraved." From "The Caprices" (Lefort No. 5). EEAN CISCO GOYA Y LUCIENTES 157 Also, like many devotees of sensual pleasures, he was hot in his denunciation of lust, a terrible exponent of its consequences in satiety and sapped vitality. This last is the theme of one of his most horribly arresting subjects in oils, an allegory of the Pates, wherein lust and its accompanying exhaustion repre sent the futility of man's existence. It is painted in colors of extreme neutrality that almost amount to monochrome. Thus it illustrates a dictum of Goya's that color no more than line exists in nature; there are only differences of light and shade. It accordingly prepares one for an appreciation of his etchings, in which aquatint plays so intrinsically important a role. As a painter he had begun with positive hues— to abandon them, as soon as he reached his maturity, for a sparing use of color and a liberal differentiation of color values. In this he was following Velasquez, whom he admitted to be one of his teachers, the others being Rembrandt and nature. It was Rembrandt, unquestionably, who helped him to a vision of nature that reduced itself to the principle of light and dark ; but from nature herself he gained corroboration of the essential truth of such a vision. How true it is the artist of the present day has learned from Goya. Like the latter, he sees color in nature not as positive hues, but as a complex weave of varying intensities of light and shade that play over and transform the hues. It is by the correlation of these varying values that he builds up the structure and secures the planes of his composition, and realizes a unity and harmony of ensemble. And it is in Goya's etchings that he finds these principles of color in relation to composition represented with most adequate reliance on simplifica- 158 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES tion, organization, and expression— the three watch words of contemporary artists who are working in the latest modern spirit. Expression is the keynote of Goya's etchings, as it is of his paintings. It is the quality of feeling rather than of seeing that is interpreted. Thus, in the oil painting of the Maja, Nude, it was Goya's intent not so much to represent the young form as to interpret the expression of its youth through the play of light and shadow on the supple torso and limbs ; an expres sion so exquisitely subtle and tender that it defies the copyist's attempted imitation and eludes the resources of photographic reproduction. Similarly, in the sjplen- did impressionism of the group-portrait of Charles IV and his family it is not the appearance of the jewels, clustered on the breasts of the royal pair, but the effect of their luster that he designed to render. And so throughout his drawings and etchings the prime purpose is not to represent the thing seen but to sug gest its effect upon the feelings. Goya's etched work, as catalogued in 1907 by Julius Hofmann, comprises 268 pieces. These include 22 Various Subjects; 16 Studies after Velasquez; 83 Caprices; 21 Proverbs; 82 Disasters of War and 44 Tauromachies, or Scenes from the Bull-Fight. To this list of engraved work are to be added 20 lithographs. The best known of these groups is Los Caprichos, etch^edUia._1794;;4798 but not published until 1803. These Caprices represent the most spontaneous ex pression of Goya's temperament and of his attitude toward the life and the society of his day. At the Goya. They have KmNAPPEo Her "The woman who does not know how to guard herself is the first to be attacked. And it is only when there is no longer time to protect herself that she is astonished that she was carried off." From "T]ie Caprices" (Lefort No. 8). Goya. "Bon Voyage !" "Where go they across the shadows, this infernal cohort which makes the air ring with their cries ? If only there were day light — . . Then it would be another thing; because with a gun we could bring them down. . . , But it is night and nobody can see them." From "The Caprices" (Lefort No. 64). PEANCISCO GOYA Y LUCIENTES 159 same time, the designs, as in the ease of all his etchings and lithographs, were executed with due deliberation, worked out previously in drawings in which every effect was carefully calculated and as sured. With corresponding fidelity the drawings were copied on the plate. It is in this set that the creative quality of Goya's imagination is most demonstrated. He could not only summon visions from the void, but clothe them in convincing shape. Whether he stretched some human type to the limit of caricature or invested it with attributes of bird, beast, or reptile, or used some familiar form of animal, or created a hybrid monster, he had the faculty of giving it an actuality that makes it seem reasonable. As to the meaning of the subjects, the titles which he himself gave them furnish, except in a few instances, an intelligible clue. Prints of this set were brought to England by officers engaged in the Peninsular War and later found their way to Paris and exercised a very conscious influence upon Dela croix. For they not only echoed the turbulence of his own spirit, but helped him to give expression to his own visions of the horrible and fantastic. The best proofs are those of the first edition, many of which were pulled by the artist himself. The Proverbs, although engraved between 1800 and 1810, were not published until 1850. While their sub jects are often difficult to comprehend, they show gen erally a marked technical advance over the previous work. This is apparent not only in the character of the drawing, but also in the increased simplification and more highly organized arrangement of the compo sition. Some of the latter, as for example in the case 160 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES of The Infuriated Stallion and The Bird-Men, present designs of extraordinary distinction. The last prints of La Tauromachie are dated 1815. This series falls short of the others in esthetic inter est, being more conspicuously illustrative. It was, indeed, designed to represent the various phases through which the baiting of bulls in Spain had passed. Beginning with the early hunting of the bull in the open country, both on horseback and on foot, it proceeds to the methods introduced by tbe Moors, who are represented in the attire of Turks. Thence it gradually traces the development bf a precise science and technique in the management of the sport and incidentally commemorates the prowess of indi vidual bull-fighters, beginning with the Emperor Charles V, and passing to well-known professional toreadors. Contemporary proofs of Goya are very rare; and it was not until 1855 that a complete set was published in Madrid. A later issue, including seven extra prints, was published by Loizelet in Paris. Of the Disasters of War no prints exist prior to those of the set published by the Academy of San Fernando in 1863. Etched during 1810 and the suc ceeding years of the Peninsular War, the Disasters are regarded as the finest products of Goya's needle. Yet he was sixty-four years old when he commenced them. Though he had subscribed to the Bonaparte regime and still held the position of Court painter, he lived apart from active affairs in the seclusion of his country home. The prints are inspired by his coun try's sufferings, but he did not publish them. To do so would have been to raise a protest against the crime of the French invasion and to stir his countrymen to Goya. The Infuriated Stallion Prom "The Proverbs" (Lefort No, 133) Size uf the onginal etching, S%x I2V2 inches Goya. The Bird-Men From "The Proverbs" (Lefort No. 136) Size of the original etching, 8>^ x 12% inches FEANCISCO GOYA Y LUCIENTES 161 increased patriotism. Under the circumstances of his equivocal position Goya may have thought such a course impolitic. Perhaps he felt the national condi tion to be hopeless. At any rate, he closed himself around in an atmosphere of profound pessimism. "Was it for this they were born?" is the legend be neath one of the prints which shows a heap of mangled corpses. It is the note of the whole series — the crimi nal horror of war, and its futility. Nowhere else is the element of the macabre in his genius more fully revealed. The designs are in no sense illustrative; they are visions of his own brooding, projected against darkness and emptiness. Yet, just as in the Caprices he gave bone and flesh to the eery fabrics of his imagi nation, so by the magic of his needle his abstract imaginings of the enormity of war became visualized into concrete actuality. Of Goya's lithographs it must suffice here to men tion the set of four prints. The Bulls of Bordeaux. They were executed in that city in 1825. For after the expulsion of the French by Wellington and the restoration of the Bourbon dynasty in the person of Ferdinand VII, Goya again turned his coat. "For your treason you deserve to be hanged," remarked the new king, "but you are a great artist and I over look the past." He was reappointed Court painter; but, broken in health and spirits, so deaf that he could no longer indulge his musical taste in playing, he obtained the king's permission to retire to Bordeaux, where he was cared for by a Madame Weiss and her daughter. It was during this time that he visited Paris and was enthusiastically welcomed by Delacroix and the other Romanticists. When he drew The Bulls 162 PEINTS AND THEIE MAKEES of Bordeaux he was in his seventy-ninth year and able to work only with the aid of a powerful magnifying- glass. Yet the prints in their intense and vigorous movement show no slackening of artistic power. He died three years later, in 1828, and was buried in the cemetery of Bordeaux. After lying there for seventy- one years, his body was claimed by his country and interred with honors in Madrid. For by this time the modern world of art had recognized Goya's great ness and its own indebtedness to his genius. Goya's etchings reveal him a great master of design. The versatility of his invention. suggests the exuber ance of nature, yet calculated art determines each composition. It is architectonic, organic, functional; possessing the quality of a built-up structure, with perfect correlation of its parts and absolute adjust ment of means to end. Moreover, it carries the final mark of distinction in that it appears to have grown : it has the vitality, movement, and character of a living organism. It is discovered to be the product of a new mating of nature and geometry, inspired by a wider and more penetrating observation of the former and a more extended and imaginative use of the latter. Hence, at times it strangely anticipates what we are now familiar with in Oriental composition. Most remarkable also is the plastic quality, which is realized not only in the ensemble but also in the com ponent parts. Goya's compositions are no mere pat terning of surfaces, but an example of actual space filling, in the true sense that they occupy the third dimension. The substance of his forms and their 1 1 I ! ¦H [ SlEfi^